He has... complicated feelings about this. That's definitely a version of him who is deeply, happily in love - and Maitimo must be a soulbearer because that affectionate hint of Silmaril-light in the married Taliar's soul couldn't possibly have come from anywhere else - but his last memory of Maitimo is -

"Why me in particular, why this moment in particular? What do you need a maximally powerless Taliar for?"

Ah, fuck it.

"We encountered another Arda and it has its own Maitimo and I want to give him a present because I think we're the best thing that can possibly happen to them but he hates me because he had some allies who invaded Nuime and I killed them all."

"All right, let's hear your pitch," says the fork.

He should've expected something like this. Convincing his fork to do things was never going to be like rearranging his own head - his own head tends to more or less hold still for him while he messes with it; his fork is definitely not doing that - but he's keeping on top of it, it's just surprising.

"I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Maitimo and I are happier than either of us could've imagined being. And I want to give that to the other one, but he won't take a me who's a sun-bright god-killer, he's a Maitimo, and he doesn't like me. So if you're lucky he'll torture you, if you're not he'll ignore you, listen in on your head once in a while to try to figure out how you're put together, decide in his own time whether he wants anything to do with you. And I can't even tell you for sure it'll work, he might decide he doesn't - we don't think so, but it's not a sure thing. And if he does want you, it'll be better than you're refraining from imagining, but not necessarily by much."

"I'm thrilled," the fork says dryly. "I'm ecstatic. Sign me up."

"Well," says the original, "if you don't feel up to it, you can always stay with us. My husband would be delighted to have two of me. He's amazing, we're amazing, you'll be inconceivably happy forever."

...He thinks about it.

He should obviously just say 'fuck you both', get dressed, pick up his soul, find his mother, and tell her to keep both these lunatics away from him by any means necessary. If they're in as good a place as they say, they won't stop him, and if they do stop him, he'll know what to expect from their lovely vision of eternity.

But.

But fuck it all, he loves Maitimo, deeply and truly, for very good reasons. No matter how much that hurts, it's still true.

He nestles into the blankets and looks up at his - creator - and says, "Anybody ever tell you you don't play fair?"

"Probably not as frequently as I deserve."

He closes his eyes.

A thought half-occurs to him and it's insane it makes no sense he's not supposed to be this self-destructive but he can't get it out of his head - what the fuck does he think he's doing -

- he says to Maitimo, I would like you to bring me my soul, please.

He grabs a pillowcase and picks it up and carries it in. "It appeared without the chain." His own soul says that he loves people and loves making them happy and should not be pushed around. 

"Thank you," he says, sitting up and taking it from the pillowcase.

He honesly expected Maitimo to just pick it up with his bare hands, but this works too, in a way - he turns and offers it to the other Taliar, saying, "We'll never live with ourselves if we don't find out what happens. And I assume yours is self-protecting already."

"You are me," he says.

He touches the misty silver soul.

It's not like having his soul touched by an entirely different person, but it's - definitely not nothing - he's half out of his senses, but only half - his suspicion and admiration and envy and affection and annoyance and trust for his other self are all filling up his soul but he can still see and think and breathe - "wow," he says hazily, "wow."

He lets go.

"I should show you a few things before you hurt yourself," he says. "If you wanted to know more about what soul-touching is like, you could've just asked me."

"Where's the fun in that?"

"There is a quite astonishing lot of fun in soul-touching even when he knows exactly how it'll go."

The fork looks at the original.

"...Okay, I'm not quite Da, but if you're accusing me of asking my husband to be unusually nice to you for strategic reasons, I absolutely did not do that," he says.

"Good."

"If I decided not to torture you just so you'll be likelier to get curious and go find my sad alt, I decided that all by myself and didn't tell him about that."

"Hm," he says.

And he tosses his soul at Maitimo.

Well, fine. He catches it.

Amusement and affection and triumph and fear and uncertainty and a lingering trace of an awful trapped feeling and envy and love, and love, and love...

He tests if his ability to make it feel like strangers are touching Taliar's soul works on the new Taliar.

It does not.