I'm free in six hours and I can free up tomorrow morning my time if that's better.

Six hours is good, that's the middle of the night here. (I'm in Edda right now, though can come to you.)

Yes please, prefer to stay in awesome cosmic power neighborhood when possible.

I can't imagine why. 

He drops by that evening.

Predictably, Sibyl is having dinner. Hey, how're you? Want some potatoes or anything?

I'm all right, thanks. How are you doing -

Been better, doing all right, empires are marvelously occupying.

I saw the summary on that! Nicely done. 

I - had some notes on things to mention, should I start there, or -

Sounds good.

They- make gestures in the direction of driving you away. It isn’t because they want you to leave. You can ask them about that, even before they’ve gotten anywhere on putting themselves back together you’ll get ‘no, why would I have a preference about that’ and after a little you’ll get ‘I want you to be happy’ and eventually you’ll get ‘no, please stay’, which was there all along but – internally unexamined for safety’s sake – anyway, the motive is something like “I am too damaged to do this right so it is better not to do it at all” – being in an ongoing state of doing wrong by someone is kind of horrible for Maitimos, see – and the other part of it is “Sauron wanted you to be hurt by me in this way, if you don’t care about me then Sauron has failed” – in Ardas where Fëanor burns the ships his alt does not tell my alt that he tried to stop it. He tells my father, because it is politically relevant – he lets my alts hear it thirdhand, and the reason he gives is “I thought it’d make it easier on you”. As if thinking he never really loved me is better -

We're on "I want you to be happy". She's so good at understanding people usually and is just sort of...

Yep. I don't know how much of it's actually damaged and how much of it's being unwilling to actually try when they're not sure it's real but it's -

- another thing you need to know here is that Quenya used to not distinguish in language between ‘smart as in clever, quick, capable with complex concepts’ and ‘smart as in possessed with good judgment’, and they invented the distinction because my cousins exist. Maitimo is not in fact possessed of that much common sense. And – a lot less, under the circumstances – anyway, she is not hurting you on purpose but she does know, and expect, that it’s alienating, and whatever she's saying or projecting or whatever isn't true, and if you point out that it’s working really effectively to hurt you and not at all to drive you away then she’ll cut it out -

- don’t know how that part plays out if it is, in fact, possible to drive you away, I got a lot of mileage off ‘I am as capable of ever falling out of love with you as vice versa’, but you’re human, you could in fact get over her, I’m pretty sure she’ll still cut it out if you tell her to but it probably – makes it more overt – she isn’t capable of getting over you, ever, for whatever that’s worth, which isn’t to say there isn’t a point at which you should call it quits and dump her on my alt’s doorstep, the way Elves fall in love does not confer infinite obligation – but you should know that if you do she’ll just be sadly in love with you forever and consoled by the thought she’s not inflicting herself on you - she’s pushing away, not pulling away, there’s a difference -

It's possible but she's nowhere near accomplishing it.

So tell her to cut it the fuck out. They do get better judgment eventually – or, rather, yours will always be better than hers but she will defer to it more unhesitatingly and the fact there are gaps will become much less apparent.

Oh, and - you aren’t hurting her, even if failing to help her hurts like hell -

Lately I'm not actually sure what I'd be telling her to cut out. We've been doing empire stuff. She's doing very nicely on the empire stuff.

Is she not - mine, recovering, was pretty needy -

He wouldn’t ever have admitted it, he continued to insist he didn’t want anything, but he demanded I teach him to swordfight with the left hand since I’d cut the right one off, he’d call me over at random to come stand still so he could dither for half and hour and then hug me – Loki’s talked her into teleporting him across the continent so he could show up in my alt’s rooms and interrupt whatever he was doing and demand he come cuddle with him instead -  and I am guessing the neediness isn’t any different, so it’s probably the relationship dynamic intervening? She wants – whatever the other ones got out of that, your time, your attention, assurance that you’ll drop other things for her, assurance that she can be aggressively and openly damaged at you without driving you away – but you have – hand gesture – it isn’t, itself, a part of the relationship dynamic between you that she will sometimes make unreasonable demands just because it will delight her so much that you follow them –“

I mean, I'm affectionate with her, I no longer feel like I had better promptly convert to a religion that does confessions and penance if I hug her, but she doesn't solicit it. She used to, it's not like it's ruled out? Although usually she'd do it in the form of asking me if we'd get caught and that's approaching moot on the object level these days.

Would that help?

It'd be nice.

Can you just tell her that?

That it'd be nice for me if she solicited affection or that it might be good for her or both?

I think knowing what you need will be more helpful to her, but if that's harder -

It's not, I just feel better about it if I know it'll also be good for her, I don't like flying blind.

It'll be good for her. 

All right. Better presented as permission or instruction?