"It seems like it'd maybe be good for you if you were? I dunno, though. When I had friends it was good for me."

"Yeah. It seems like the sort of thing that might help.

"I imagine I am not a very interesting friend. Or very easy to become friends with, what with the lack of... selfhood."

"Well, I like you."

"I'm not really clear on why. 

"And kind of worried you'll stop, if I never get any better than this."

"I won't. Though it'd be awfully lonely, if you never get any better than this."

"I guess that makes sense.

"I keep thinking about how to get back to being - okay trying to do things that might help build up to being able to ever try having sex again - but I think I am missing some pieces that I used to have. And I don't really know how to get them back."

"Well, I don't think we should ever have sex again, so maybe don't worry about that and worry about other things."

"I think there's a non-negligible chance that Abadar won't want to take the first one."

"Well, then he can go wherever Aroden did, far as I'm concerned."

"It's - not necessarily your choice? What if he can't take him, what if he's chosen by another god, or he never learns to speak, or he - I don't know, manifests tiefling ancestry that I somehow didn't know about - "

"...well in that case it wouldn't help if we could have sex. 

I just really don't -

- I thought you were all right. I thought it wasn't awful anymore. Since you always asked, and you didn't cry - I mean I was pretty clear that you didn't love me anymore and you didn't like it but I didn't think I was hurting you. I didn't want to hurt you. I'm not sure I could, now, knowing I'm hurting you. And - trying for the first one destroyed every good thing still remaining in my life so I'm scared to find out what I'd destroy if I tried again."

- she has a lot of feelings about that, and is not immediately able to sort them all out. She feels - incredulous, that he could have failed to notice for nearly a year that she was acting like someone trying very hard not to cry about an injury, and incredibly sad thinking about what she could have had if she had maybe just been able to communicate what she needed better, and maybe even a spark of anger, remembering how completely impossible this had seemed at the time, and how terrified she was, and how she had eventually twisted herself into believing that giving up all of her desires and hopes and boundaries was the only thing that could be counted fairly as helpfulness or loyalty.

None of that seems like it's going to be super helpful to report without refining it.

"M'not like this just because we had sex," she says, quietly.

"Well. If you want me to also swear off anything else I'll do that too."

"That's not what I - you didn't let me decide. Whether, or when, or how. Didn't let me have control of myself. Didn't - approach it with the attitude that it should involve things that were good for me, or ask me how you could provide those things, or practice making me feel safe, and then check with me to see how well you did. And - maybe you meant to - but you didn't, not well enough, not enough to counterbalance the fact that every imperative sentence you construct has the full weight of the law behind it.

"And I wish I could show you how we might try something better, but I'm scared that - I don't know how to get back the pieces I'd need."

"Well. If you get them back - maybe we could try it. But if you don't and then Abadar says the baby's no good I will tell Abadar to rot in Hell and that I don't care if all of Osirion goes with him."

"But then I never get you back."

"I mean once I've told Abadar to go to Hell I might as well take off the helmet I guess."

"Do you have any way of knowing whether he has more helmets than you have diamonds."

"Fine, I'll swear to him that if he does this to me again I'll just surrender the whole country to Cheliax immediately and then I'll take off the helmet. I'm done, Korva. He asked too much of me and I thought I could do it and only hurt us both very badly and if actually I hurt you in some way that can't be fixed then - I don't know what to do with that - but I hate him for it, and I would've let them all go to Hell, if I'd realized that was really the only other choice."

She snuggles him a little closer.

"I don't - I don't want everyone in Osirion to go to hell. I - very much appreciate that you wish you hadn't done things this way. And I know that whatever we do is your choice. But - I don't want Osirion to go to hell. And I don't think that the Good version of you would want that, either."

"I don't want it either. I - I wouldn't have hurt you if I didn't think it was the most important thing that could - reasonably happen -

- but I still didn't intend this. Didn't - think of it - as something that might go wrong - I thought we'd figure out what had you sick eventually and then you'd get better -"

"Which part of the sick? - I guess the part where I wasn't having emotions, if you thought I wasn't being hurt anymore."

"And you moved very stiffly and were tired all the time and didn't really have conversations anymore and didn't try to help me with stuff. - none of that is how being hurt works, I have been near-fatally injured a lot."

"I'm not - as bad, on all of those fronts, now. Bad on different fronts. But it doesn't hurt to move as much, anymore. - it hurt all the time, before. Eventually. I was trying not to move like it because - not supposed to be manipulative."

"I didn't even know that was possible. Healing magic is supposed to...fix things..."