What are you sorry for -?

I don't know, not - coming to you whole? Not being able to be everything you deserve - because you deserve everything -

It's okay I love you anyway.

I know you do. I'm so glad you do. I want to hold you again -

I - pace yourself a little, I'm all yours and I still will be if you need a breather to calm down -

Contented sigh.

Annie can't hear it. It could be any sort of sigh. She sighs too, shuts her unhelpful eyes.

I love you and I'm going to be okay for you.

I love you too and I hope you can.

They can just lie here for a while. Annie can get back to work later.

Yeah.

It's not transcendently perfect or anything but it's nice.

She will get transcendently perfect figured out with enough time. Somehow.

They tell everybody what is going on. Everybody is - concerned, but on the other hand, no more oath, perhaps that's worth becoming attracted to girls over.  She does not correct them. People make assumptions that would be wildly implausible even if Rirosseth could handle being touched. She does not correct those, either. 

She is in love. Annie's okay, Annie's happy enough, so she can poke at being in love and try to make sense of it - her opinions about topics other than Annie don't seem to have changed much, her emotions about anything else are no different except by comparison - love-for-Annie isn't the most intense thing she's ever felt, she's been in Angband, but she can identify it abstractly as a feeling that would have been the most intense thing she'd ever felt, before a Vala set her considerable talents to breaking her.

She doesn't really experience things. Hasn't for centuries. She observes them, and she has a pretend-Rirosseth who reacts to them if they're within parameters that the pretend-Rirosseth can handle, and if she can't then she lets models of other people do it, and if there's anything no one can handle then she still doesn't let it penetrate to whatever real person is at the center, because how likely is it that she'd be able to handle it? Things happen to someone else, someone she's puppetting. It's the only way they're tolerable.

She is terrified to take that down so what she needs to do instead is propagate the being-in-love. It's slow going. It doesn't make the panic attacks go away either. 

No rush. Annie will be right here waiting.

Yeah. That - well, it would probably be even more unpleasant to be in love with her and afraid of somehow messing up and losing her. But it doesn't especially help. If Annie didn't want her then she might be able to persuade her brain that its most urgent priority was something other than figuring out how to kiss Annie.

Annie, if quizzed, remains nonurgent on the kissing part, although she definitely doesn't object when kissed. Annie does like that Rirosseth wants to kiss her but mostly because this is a result of Rirosseth being in love with her.

Yeah, she is. Forever, apparently. (Dwarves have apparently tried working out immortality; they, too, age and die. They have not made any progress on it, but since Annie has healing that might fix the problem where curing one cause of death just brings a new one.)

That's promising!

She doesn't get better, exactly, but she gets better at pretending. 

Annie does her very best to take her at face value. In a conservative way that doesn't involve ever kissing first or moving much when cuddled, but still.

But is Annie happy, that's what is important.

Annie is extremely emotionally complicated. There is some happy in there and she tries to present that first and foremost.

Once upon a time she would be a good person to go to with extremely complicated emotions. That is - not true anymore.

Not really her expertise, but she can do relationship counseling if either of them express interest.