"It seems like even if he wasn't behaving differently, his suddenly having the powers of the pharaoh might be alarming."

"I wouldn't have been scared of him, if he was the same person. I might have been - nervous. About some of the specifics. But I don't think I would have been scared of him. And I think he would have tried really hard to keep it that way."

"Do you feel like he's trying now?"

"I - maybe.

"Not hard enough."

"What makes you say that?"

"I can't - I can't have sex right. Yet. He's gonna try to fix it. Right now it's - really painful, a lot more painful than it's supposed to be. And on top of that I've been - not able to - since things have happened I've been afraid when he kisses me and stuff, you know, because I don't know what he's going to do, I guess?

"But when this happens he - I mean, he notices if I freeze up, right, but he doesn't care about it, he just - doubles down on whatever he's doing until I ask him to stop, and then complains about what my expectations are, and - goes around saying that he doesn't want to have to force me to do things. But that he will. I guess. If he has to."

- nod. "That really sounds like - he should maybe be married to additional people."

"We discussed this. I don't - he promised not to marry anyone else before this happened, but we talked about - maybe concubines, or something. He thought that me having sex with him anyway would be a better solution. And - it's not like I want him to sleep with other people, but - I'd rather have it on the table, if the only other thing on the table is - doing it no matter what it costs, you know - "

"I think people sometimes come down different ways on that depending what's most important to them but it's certainly a reasonable way for you to feel."

"I don't - think I actually want him to have sex with someone else. But it's -

"I dunno. Probably the healing will work and it'll just be the fear, then. I want to figure out if there's a way to fix that but I'm not entirely sure how. And - he did apologize, later, for telling me I had to do it before he'd made sure to test the healing, and that was really good, but - I guess I'm maybe not entirely over it yet. I want to be. I want to - be able to trust him not to hurt me."

"That's a very reasonable thing to want."

"He doesn't seem to think so. - that's not fair. Didn't seem to think so. Might think so now.

"I feel like even if the healing fixes things it won't fix everything, you know? But I'm not sure how to - go about making things decent with him again."

"What sorts of things might help?"

"I - wanna be able to believe that he cares. I guess."

"Is he encouraging this? You meeting with counselors?"

"He told me I had two weeks to solve the problem. This is - me trying to solve it. He approved of it being part of the plan after I brought it up."

"Is there a way to think about that as - him caring about you?"

"Him - what, giving me two weeks? Not forbidding visitors? I acknowledge that things could be much worse, but - "

"Sometimes when a marriage is unhappy, people are having a hard time seeing the things their husband is doing to support them, and it can help to try to think of those."

"I am trying. But - he gave me books, I thought because he knows I really like books, and I got excited about that? And then it was two Osirian history books and a book on the theology of Abadar, and - I don't know whether it's fair to expect him to know more about what I like to read than that, but - it ended up just being depressing. He did deliver letters to his cleric friend at my request, I did really appreciate that.

"He said 'my wonderful wife' to me once, last night, and - it made me so happy, pathetically happy, and it would probably be convenient if I could just be happy but I keep - wondering what it says that he hasn't said anything else that made me happy in, I don't know, five days?

"I don't - he thinks my standards for him are too high, and I don't want them to be, but I don't - know how to have any positive experiences with him, I guess. Without pretending he's the person he used to be."

"When did you two learn that his family was dead and he'd have to be the pharaoh?"

"Moments after we returned to this plane and Abadar teleported the helmet onto him. Maybe half an hour before we arrived in Osirion. I think it's been - five days now? And for the first few he thought he'd be able to find someone else to pass the position to, so - really just the last couple that we've been thinking of this as something that might last - a really long time."

"I understand that the - timeline he gave you, and the uncertainty, makes it hard to take advice to wait and see if things improve. But, ah, I think it is actually very ordinary, in the five days after news like that, to - give disappointing presents and say strange things and not be very comforting."

"...I guess so.

"If he were the same person he was it would be very easy to forgive him most of it. But he isn't. And - his behavior these past few days is all I have to go off of when trying to determine who he is, now."

"That makes sense. But - those don't sound like conditions that would let anyone show off their good qualities, really."