"Well, yeah, I assume so. I just - had not previously considered that people from Osirion might possess much in the way of shared cultural context. Compared to me."

"'s probably not that different. For most people. You grow food or you run a little store and you bring up your kids and you go to the temple and hope the gods keep all the really god-sized nonsense well away from you."

"I am not at all sure that I wouldn't be leading a very different life if I had grown up in Osirion instead of Cheliax. But I guess there are - any commonalities."

"Think it'd be a worse one?"

"I don't expect anybody would have allowed me to take care of Verita. Maybe my sister would be alive and it would be a moot point. My parents would probably have married me off to someone I didn't care about at all, and I'd have a baby right now, and I probably wouldn't have a job outside the house, and it'd be just as much a struggle, and I'd be just as alone, and whenever I tried to tell myself that I had meaningfully chosen it, I would be lying."

Nod.

"Not, admittedly, that I've had very much agency or responsibility this past month. But - I worry that the fairy slave and the one who's traded herself to devils never got much of a choice, right, and I worry that the one who's brought us here has lots of choices but maybe doesn't have a lot of insight into the circumstances of people who don't, and - maybe the one eating apples made her choices and paid for them and was everything I could ever hope to be, for a while, but I have to admit that the end result is not very uplifting."

"Thought you were all for it."

"It's kind of not how I imagined most people ended up. Like, I guess it's not actually that surprising that it's how I end up, I'm not really a very good toy soldier, but - I'd thought it would destroy different parts of me, I guess."

"I've fought devils. It's missing different parts than they are. But I don't really buy that Hell would be trying to put everyone to use anyway. Kind of eviller if a lot of it's pointless, so."

"I think a lot of good people are kind of wrong about how evil works. It's not always doing the worst thing. It's being free to do the smart thing, the selfish thing, because Pharasma can't - threaten you, I guess, because no matter what you do she can't send you anywhere worse than you're already going. It's being able to kill your kid to slay a god who needs to be slain, even if you know this lands you in the worst place possible.

"Hell isn't wasteful. It isn't stupid. If it were wasteful and stupid then I wouldn't be expecting it to win."

"The whole project of trying to destroy almost everything about people so that you can get rid of all the kinds - of minds, of ideas, of approaches to problem-solving - other than devils is the most colossally wasteful project I could conceive of. I dunno about stupid. I bet he's achieving his goals quite intelligently. I just - don't buy that he told Cheliax anything about his goals."

"I guess if you have very high opinions of how humanity currently is it'd look pretty wasteful, sure."

"I kind of hate almost everyone I've ever met and not every one of them beats a devil but all of them - ought to exist."

"I remain really confused about why you would hate almost everyone and not hate me. I'm pretty hateable. Evidence that other versions of you get along with other versions of me notwithstanding."

"You're good to Verita."

"I'm pretty sure most people have at least one sympathetic quality."

"Maybe. 

- might've been trying harder. To not dislike you. Since it'd have been really inappropriate, under the circumstances. But I think it's mostly just that there's a long list of things that make me annoyed at people and you mostly don't happen to do them."

"Huh.

"I think it'd be fair to dislike me, honestly. Like, you didn't ask to be responsible for me any more than I asked for you to kidnap my niece. You shouldn't be a jerk about it, but, like, no one says you have to like me."

"Hmm, I - think I disagree? 

You were talking a bit earlier about Osirian marriage and I - I'm not saying that you're wrong exactly but the thing you're supposed to do is just - try. Really hard. Not expecting it to be fair, exactly, or rewarding, exactly, but just believing it's something worth trying at, with however much try you have every day, and people choose that a whole lot less than we chose to kidnap you."

"I guess maybe if you don't have better options. Like how it's - it'd be bad, for Verita, if I didn't care about her. If you're going to raise a kid then you have to care. But it's - depressing, I guess, to think about everyone being stuck feeling like they have to feel certain ways about random people no matter how terrible those people are.

" - and anyway we're not married, we're not anything, we're just - momentarily stuck."

"I was kinda figuring, before all this nonsense started, we might be stuck for a really long time. They're not gonna stop looking for her."

"I guess."

"And it's not - like, I wasn't trying to have feelings for you. Was trying not to. Just to not - hate you because it was easier, or anything."

"I see."