Shudder.

"He might actually be there, where he'll fit right in with all the other evil gods and where the portable solution to Melkors needing dead cannot be relied upon to work."

"Does he need dead particularly by the standards of a world with multiple evil gods?"

"Melkors are a little more single-minded about the being evil gods thing, most of the ones from my worldcluster have something else going on too. But mostly my entire world needs to be evacuated and then condemned as unsafe for sapient beings. We're working on it."

"Sounds like a very worthy project."

"Thanks."

"How much has my family been told about -"

"They know that I whisked you off to see an alternate universe psychic therapist version of myself who I anticipated being told about, and that more alternate universe versions of people may swing by to visit, and that I'm reading up on all the interesting alternate-universe-related facts and will be more able to answer questions after I have finished doing that."

"Okay. I should let them all know I'm going to be okay -"

"It's also probably going to be impractical to keep certain secrets when some of your alts are openly married to their Findekános, you - possibly after consulting them - know better than I how to handle that. Kib thinks that as soon as that part is known your mom will put together the part about me."

"And how do versions of her typically take it -"

"They are fine with the disapproved-kind-of-monosexuality thing and your mom likes me in principle; they don't like Findekános, Kib went for a while with his Fëanáro aware that he was dating his Maitimo but unaware that either one was dating their Findekáno. Then Kib turned out to be married and his Fëanáro was passive-aggressive about that because he wasn't clear on the whole 'reincarnated, gradually recovering memories from last time around' thing until Kib noticed he was being passive-aggressive and went and repeated the story to his face. Kib thinks he figured out about Findekáno around the time he rode a pterodactyl to Angband and came home with their Maitimo, but that was never explicitly brought up until they got married."

"How'd he take that?"

"Loudly announced that his children could do whatever they liked, did not as far as I'm aware make a fuss about it even in private, not sure how much leeway the pterodactyl-borne rescue mission earned the Findekáno-whose-nickname-is-Pterodactyl."

"I think it'll upset my cousin to learn that her alts usually rescue me. Just a bit."

"Well, for a value of 'usually' that means 'three times of eight Ardas', but by default sure - why?"

"Because it'll mean she should have tried? Even though that's stupid. And was presumably also stupid in the universes where they did it."

"Intensely stupid in the case where it only worked because of a timely Eagle, a bit less so in the better-equipped Shine instance, prohibitively stupid when she'd have had to mount the rescue mission from Valinor - also default trajectory it takes fifty years."

"Would the killing me part have worked sans Eagle -"

"Probably but only because for some reason it turned out to be possible to make it to the inexplicably outdoor holding location on foot while fucking singing a fucking song not even a magic song instead of trying that resulting in immediate death by orc. Probably doesn't work even that well with Liz around."

"...yeah probably not -"

Squeeze.

And if she tilts her head up for a kiss -

Kiss.

"I will be out of your way for the day in forty-five minutes."