"I can try suggesting it. ...the point is that, if, this were permanent, and the evil god was dead, then - I would definitely benefit from having someone around who can - be a check on me and think of things I wouldn't and expect better of me and so on, it wouldn't - involve touching - but it would be close to the way I can imagine having a relationship in the future - but I'm just not going to be ready in time -"

"It's kind of unlikely that my healing factor is anywhere near good enough to make me immortal. There are actually artifacts that do it but they've all got awful drawbacks, way worse than the music allergy, I think even worse than Elves react to the idea of the music allergy."

"And you could've gotten some unknown artifact that does it with some unnoticeable drawback but we're Doomed so how likely is that, really. Anyway - I don't have a picture of what I'd want from the next century if the evil god went away. I wouldn't mind spending it with you, but it wouldn't be -"

"It wouldn't have to be."

"Well then, lovely, let's just defeat the evil god I couldn't even scratch with an army of five hundred thousand and then we can be happy until you die."

"...sounds nice."

"I am sorry."

"You didn't put the evil god there."

"No, I did not. I tried - we tried - Lírnith said she told you why we came in the first place -"

"I've gotten a pretty comprehensive history between her and the books, yeah."

"The oath part doesn't make much sense to me but everything else does."

"If I tried convincing my sisters not to my mother was going to die of grief and I didn't think we could win it without her. Might even have been right about that, but - she died anyway. If I didn't try convincing them and just refused myself, then I'd lose any power to steer - and that, too, ended up not mattering, because I still couldn't deter her from burning the boats and then was too insane to try to rule."

"- why would she have died without it -?"

"Elves die of grief. My mother - was a very broken person who under the right conditions could do some good things anyway, and one of her things was an absolute terror of everyone abandoning and forgetting her, and the Queen'd just been assassinated and the library burned, all her notes, all her work, and she was dying of grief and we were - sort of delaying it, by being there for her, but not really more than delaying it, and then the oath - well, we sold her our souls, she didn't have to worry we would abandon her now - she pulled through it -"

"Oh."

"I knew at the time it would be personally disastrous, I just had no idea how many other people I could hurt..."

"I probably wouldn't have guessed people would be quite that stupid about the Silmarils either."

"It was stupid even without the benefit of hindsight but - yes, it was all so avoidable -"

There really aren't any non-touching things that fill the gap of comforting hugs so Annie draws quite a blank but she nods slowly.

There really aren't any hugs that hug away hundreds of thousands of people dying, either. She shakes her head. "Does the magic - not let you be mad at me -"

"I'm - not really sure. It let me be scared of you, I was for a while, but that might be different."

"I don't want you to be scared of me."

"I'm not any more."

"I treated you pretty badly. I try really hard not to act any differently towards people than I would if I thought they were real but - if I'd thought you were real I wouldn't have just dragged you along with no explanation -"