"I admit it sounds hard to fix. But like - we can't afford it now but someday we could offer a Milliways room and money for the tab to everyone in the universe. And then if Milliways security is as good as claimed, everyone'd have a place to go where no one could hurt them, and where they could sleep and eat and nothing bad would happen. And then - then everyone would have a lot less power, in the bad sense of it."

Nodnod.

"Sounds good. For someday. - kind of unclear on what that would do to currency."

"Moryo says there's a way to do that. Uh, my friend who liked the stock exchanges."

Nod.

"Anyway. Everything's okay now. We can go pick up your family and you can pick out a city and - no one'll come after you."

Nod. She should probably ever do anything besides nod.

"Thanks."

There. Half a point.

Shrug. "And Matt says no vampires but if there are any you can just, like, shout at me, okay? With the telepathy. And I will stab them. Nonlethally cause they're people too."

"How far away does the telepathy work?"

"Couple miles, for strangers. More when you know people."

"Which way do I count?"

"You know, I'm not really sure. I guess we can test and see."

Nod.

"Um, can I ask, like, why? As far as the wanting to live within a couple miles of me goes?"

" - so you don't get yourself killed again? Or Azalea or Connor or the baby - or your other friends - that's just a lot of people for you to be keeping safe without any powers."

 "Yeah, but they're not, like, objectively any more important or any more likely to get themselves killed than any other people? And you don't, like - I understand the helping me, you guys are like, good guys, or something, but there's only one of you and you don't - like me? So it seems like kind of a weird thing to focus on."

"Before you showed up I was hanging out in Milliways drinking. Not - helping people."

"I feel like 'I don't care about helping people' is not an answer that gives a better understanding of this."

"'s also not what I said, right -" sigh - "sometimes people can't, actually, do the most useful of all the things you could write down on a list of useful things to do, or many of them, or maybe any of them. I can't go - god, I don't even know - fight the good fight, right now. But I can keep you out of trouble."

"OK. Sorry. If you really want to."

"You said I didn't like you."

"I feel like people mostly don't say 'I'm not going to pretend that meeting my friend's mildly evil alternate universe version is the best thing that's happened to me all week' about people who they are, like, super happy to meet."

"I mean I was worried you were, like, mildly evil for reasons other than 'if I stop I will get murdered and it won't even improve anything'. That's just a pretty good reason. And being mad at people for not wanting to get murdered and sent off to who-knows-where is - I mean then you're pretty much just Angel. He told us he wasn't bothered about the slavery because not too many of you were saints."

"I mean, we're not."

"There's already someone looking out for the saints, isn't there?"

"I wouldn't really know."

Sigh.