"I wasn't particularly expecting you all to keep your promise once I'd tried to kill Stef and Jisa. I'm glad you did - your word, and the circumstances under which you're known to keep it, is really valuable, I'm glad I wasn't able to force you to handicap yourself for the rest of forever like that - but I wasn't expecting it."

"I think Stef would have really liked to Truth Spell you, I am sure he pressured Vanyel about it, but - Vanyel understood what I had promised and why, I think. I am not, as I have said before, a very good person in normal terms, but I do avoid breaking my promises." Slight smile. "I mostly avoid making them in cases where they might end up being inconvenient, but you rather outmaneuvered me, in this case. Still, fair is fair and I had agreed." 

"And if you weren't the kind of person who kept your promises it would've gone much worse! Which is what being the kind of person who keeps promises is for." Kiss. "I had all planned out what I was going to say about what had happened and it was very well crafted and would get me many things I wanted and it made me feel sick, every time."

“I am sorry.” He’s both morbidly curious and probably doesn’t actually want to know. 

"Don't be. I - I think in some senses I was the only adult in the room, and I was trying to destroy everything. And whatever it is you were trying to do, you hurt yourself very badly. I don't want to keep - holding that - I don't want to retain the option to cut you with it ever again -"

Telumë shudders, leans into his arms. “I could have - been an adult about it - if it had happened even a year later. I think I am probably not usually much of an adult yet, when I come back into the world remembering about thirty things. I can relearn it much more quickly than most people, since my records are so compressed, and I keep some habits, but...there was so little time.”

Snuggle. "I think I knew that. Or - was figuring it out. I wasn't expecting - to have an interaction that wasn't under the truth spell, with the front you put up when you don't want to feel things - I remember waking up with my hair loose and feeling so surprised - that you hadn't sculpted me off of yourself the second it was inconvenient -"

“I think I would not have done that even if I had still been Leareth? Because - I wanted to win and part of why was you. Because you had taught me how to care about people by caring about one specific person very much.”

He frowns. “If I had been Leareth, as an adult, I think I could and would have kept up the front even though you were right there, missing me and being lonely - I would not have tried to solve that problem by coming back later and hugging you... But I would have wanted to.”

Nod. "It would have been better that way but - I love you and I am not going to be very good at regretting that you couldn't stay away from me.

Though I wish you hadn't hurt yourself so much? Why did you do that? I can imagine having had sex with you when it was a bad idea because it'd make you happy but if you weren't going to remember it and I didn't want it then I'd instead just do your hair, I think, so you couldn't tell -"

"I mean, it would be complicated to say I did not want it. The - first and second times, before the marriage happened, I think I did want it very much and I did not really realize it would be bad for me - I was afraid it would be bad for you but, well, I think I was not doing a very good job of reasoning about it in general. And then afterward... It was very complicated, I think I did know it was hurting me although not how badly, until I had a chance to look back on it. I did not want to lie to you about that?" 

"You're a very honest person." Kiss. "Even to your enemies."

"I never lied to Vanyel, not directly to his face. Even when I thought he would almost certainly die trying to kill me me. I withheld information, often - I told him I was doing so - I told him it would be very reasonable of him to be concerned that I could be lying. But in fact I did not. When I do bad things I prefer they not come as a surprise to anyone who I am, in fact, trying to work with." 

"I - really admire what you did with Vanyel. It must have seemed entirely hopeless - almost definitely would have been, had things proceeded with no interworld interruption - and it would have made what was almost-inevitably going to happen hurt so, so much more...and then it turned out to be the most important thing in history, that you'd built the foundations for trust -"

"I think it was no longer seeming entirely hopeless by the time I landed in Arda - I had told him of my full plan and he did not instantly convince his kingdom to fight me. It was still unlikely to work, in the end... I am glad of the interworld interruption. It would have been very awful to kill him." 

"I can imagine." He buries his face in Telumë's hair. "I don't have the slightest doubt you would have done it and it would have been one of the things that was never ever all right, not in a thousand years."

Now he's crying again. That keeps happening. Telumë had finally managed to get the rate of crying to something more reasonable, like once every few months. It's - less just-bad though, crying with Maitimo there, and it feels maybe important, like it's one of the things they have to look at together at some point. 

Maitimo will shift to a cuddling position that restrains Telumë a little less, and hold him, and sing. 

Telumë is getting drowsy at this point, it's late - he's thinking sleepy half-formed thoughts, mostly about how Maitimo is very good and his voice is lovely to listen to, and accidentally thinking most of them publicly since he's been doing so much of that all evening. 

Maitimo is kind of tired, too, and can hold him with his eyes closed, pleasantly drowsy, until he falls asleep.

Dawn sunlight through a crack between the curtains shines on Telumë's eyelids, and he mumbles something and rolls over and buries his face in Maitimo's chest. 

Petpet. Snuggle.

He drifts pleasantly without quite falling asleep again. Love you, he sends finally. Ready to get up? 

Well, we could. But you are very soft and this bed is very warm, so we could also not.

Those things are both true! I am also kind of hungry though. Perhaps being warm will win out until I am hungrier, though.

Do you not have servants who bring you breakfast in bed. Servants who bring you breakfast in bed are most of the point of ruling a country, I think. Also the opportunity to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people but you know, when you improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, some of them end up wanting to be your servant and bring you breakfast in bed.