"Oh."

Hug. 

"I'm sorry. I would've mentioned it if I'd known it was - the kind of thing that might be important to you."

Nodnod.

" - really really want you to care about me."

"I do care about you. I care a lot about you. I don't want you to be scared, or to worry that I'll get bored, or - I don't think it's bad, hoping someone would spend twenty years pretending you weren't dead because it hurt so much, though I don't think I'll really successfully do it on account of I don't think I could really believe it deep down -"

"'s kind of an excessive analogy. 

"I'm sorry for scaring you, I'm really so sorry, I just - I love you, and I don't want you to go, and I don't know how much it's fair to ask for, but I guess that doesn't keep me from wanting it, and - I was just so scared I'd imagined it all and you didn't really - "

"I'm glad it's not - I thought you said something wrong to someone and they hurt you -"

"M'sorry. I just - I wasn't thinking and I scared you and then I overthought everything. I think."

"It kind of seems - I don't know - 

I wouldn't like it at all being in your position here and it seems like even though you don't mind it the ways I would, the - overthinking things was -"

But here he runs out of words and shrugs.

"Hmm?"

"You're fragile because you're in a fragile place? So it seems like ....misattributing, or something -" Another shrug.

"I mean - for some of that I was just really scared that I was going to say something that wasn't really true and then burst into flames. And then I said less than I should and I made you way more upset than I meant to. But - 

"I think - a lot of why I don't like it here is that it's really obvious, here, what my place is and how vulnerable I am and how much I'm at everybody else's mercy all the time? But - when it's just you, it's - you let me decide things? And you care about what I think, and what I feel, and what I want, and I know you could hurt me if you wanted, but you don't, and I trust you to not? So it's - 

"I don't know if anybody's ever really free, entirely. But it's like being free, in a lot of the important ways, I think, as long as you keep being like that? And so - I'm OK. Trusting you. I'm not, like, entirely done, learning how to trust that you're not going to be horrible to me someday, but - I'm a lot of the way there. Usually. And it's just that - if I'm wrong about you, then the situation is really bad. So it's really really important, that I not be wrong. Right?"

Nod. Squeeze.

"I don't think I'm wrong. I know I thought exactly the opposite of that an hour ago, and I'm really bad at being certain of things anyway, so I'm not certain, but - I don't think I'm wrong."

"I don't think you're wrong. And I want you to be certain but - 

- I could promise to stay with you. I couldn't really promise to love you - or, rather, if I did it'd just destroy me and everyone I care about if circumstances ever made me a liar, it wouldn't make it stay true."

"Yeah, don't - don't say anything about feelings that you're not sure of, I think we are probably supposed to have learned some kind of valuable lesson about that. I don't - I don't know if it's a good idea, especially if we're not a hundred percent certain I won't someday magically become a fairy and then we'll have thousands and thousands of human lifetimes to hurt each other. But - you could promise for as long as I'm human and mortal, or something? Maybe? If you thought it was safe. And probably if you thought about the wording more carefully. And maybe if I thought more about what I actually needed to hear. Not right now. But - I guess you could."

"I'm not sure it'd even be - good, to try to stay, if we didn't even like each other. But you could - think about what you needed to hear, yeah."

"Yeah, I don't - it's different, for humans, you get married and then you have six kids and it's important that you don't leave behind your wife and six penniless children, you know, and it's not really very long, just the one human lifetime, if you have to stick it out in a bad place. So I guess it makes sense that fairies are - different. I just - I wanna get to a point where I'm not afraid anymore. I think. At least not of you."

"I mean when someone's having a fairy kid they have to trust their partner to stick around ninety sunsets and then go get them, and people do promise to do that - carefully, with some caveats usually - and they wait the sunsets and do it - 

- they don't avoid having sex with people in the interim but that didn't really seem like the core thing really -"

"'s kind of important," she says, quietly. "I... don't want to ask for unreasonable things."

"But you're not going to feel entirely safe if I -"

"I'm gonna - I dunno. I have to think about stuff. It would definitely make me sad, I think? I - would it be really upsetting for you if you didn't, for a while, at least until we've - talked some more stuff out, maybe - "

"Uh, if someone asks, and I owe them, I can't really just - I could explain that I'd much rather do something else, but -"

"Oh. Right.

"I'm gonna - I'm not gonna be mad at you. And I'm gonna try not to be sad. I'm just - I'm sorry. For having so many feelings about everything."

"M'not mad at you. I -

 I think in the long run it would probably be pretty bad for me to be thinking of - an entire category like that - as something that was bad when it ended up happening - 

- not to mention having a predictable - vulnerability like that - 

- not to mention only having sex when I couldn't get out of it -"

"Yeah. That all makes sense. Okay. It's not - I mean, lots of the people the Emperor kidnapped were married, and I think if their husbands had ever gotten them back they would mostly just - want them to be okay, and not be upset with them at all, if they were any good at all? And I want to be any good at all. I want you to be okay."

"I know you do. It's - 

- maybe we should talk about it some other time when we've had more time to think."