Patpat. "Are you doing okay?"

"Mhmmmm."

"I love you."

She giggles. "That's nice."

" - okay. 'm looking into ways to get the spell to last longer, so I don't hurt you.""

"Mhmm," she says again, and nods repeatedly, sort of like a four-year-old who is aware that she is supposed to be serious but is kind of unclear on how being serious works.

Well, that's fine, the idea here was to give her some space to get accustomed to things. He holds her and waits out the spell.

Happy snuggles!

...and eventually the spell is over. She's not quite willing to say that it hurts, exactly, but the tired is back, and a bunch of vague soreness is back, and something in the neighborhood of crushing despair is back, and she's kind of trying very hard not to cry about being hit with all of this.

"It's over," she says, when she's a little more acclimated to how terrible things are.

"You okay?"

"Yeah. It's just - a rough transition back."

" - is it like smoking opium - I mean, in the sense that it makes you always want to be on it -"

"I dunno. It's not really logistically possible to get addicted the way you get addicted to normal stuff, right, if you can only cast it once a day? But - everything's a lot easier. For a couple minutes."

"I want stuff to be easier for you all the time. Once we have an heir, we'll figure it out. How you can - get what you need."

Nodnod. Snuggle. Maybe snuggles'll make it easier to hide the level of fragility she's at right now.

"Wanna do some more?"

"What's next?"

"Waves of Ecstasy. - if you'd rather just cuddle, tonight, that's okay, right - this is for you -"

Nodnod. 

The thought of dealing with Waves of Ecstasy right now sort of makes her want to cry more. Probably she could articulate the reasons why to herself if she were less tired. Right now she sort of can't.

"I'm not - really sure if I'm in a good place for it. Right now."

"Okay." Patpat. Fazil had thought that maybe they could take turns, with whose night it was to decide what they did, if they were having a hard time balancing in the moment between what they each wanted. It'd be an easier compromise to agree to if she were at least pregnant but - they clearly have to figure something out. 

She has no idea that that's what he's doing, so she's just kind of - stupidly hopeful, again, that he actually doesn't want to hurt her, and kind of sickeningly grateful for being given a chance to breathe. She doesn't really like feeling like this, because she feels like being a person with standards was actually kind of neat, but that doesn't make the feelings go away.

She thinks her plan right now - insofar as she has a plan - is to give him pretty much everything she's capable of giving, no rationing, no holding herself back, no protecting herself without being invited to do so, no asking for things that might put a strain on his end of things, no expecting anything of him, and then - maybe that'll be enough, maybe he'll be satisfied with that and only hurt her in ways that she can bear, maybe she'll be able to do it.

She holds him. She feels a little less tired like this. She doesn't cry, not quite.

"Know it's hard. I'm sorry."

Nodnod. Snuggle. She doesn't have any more words about complicated things. Just snuggles.

Sure. Fine. Whatever.

Eventually he'll put them to sleep.

In the morning she is... moderately less despairing. She feels this sort of weird clarity, actually, like she really understands some of the stuff that various teachers and clerics were always going on about when she was a kid, about how suffering isn't really important, and all of the important things are about what sort of person you are, even when you're undergoing tremendous amounts of suffering, and sometimes the only way to become a person who is more worthy of our Lord and Master Asmodeus is to go through a lot of suffering.

She stares at the map on the ceiling for a while and tries to find the spot where she used to live.