"Tell me about them?

Are they part of the cult?"

"No. They're not.

Gale is -- very quiet and very shy and more firmly on the side of human freedom including the freedom to be weird and broken and doing person wrong than almost anyone else I've ever met, I think you'd like him and I know he'd like you. You told me once that there was someone my whole brain was wrapped around loving? That was him."

"Oh.

He sounds-- lovely."

"It sounds... like something good to know someone who isn't." She gestures.

"He's also a devout Catholic, there's a lot of things we don't talk about, but -- yeah. He's really good, and really good for me."

"No offense to your friend but the Catholic church is evil."

"It extremely is," he agrees.

"But -- so he's epileptic and he sees angels, it's the version of the world he can verify, it's what he gets when he trusts his eyes and not just consensus --"

"He does a lot better than the church does. I think that's -- not uncommon, honestly, individual people being better than the things they believe."

"I guess I see the Mouth which is why I think the Mouth exists," Inaaya agrees.

She hesitates.

Mordred is absolutely not going to make the subtext explicit here. He does put his head back on Inaaya's shoulder. 

She says, very very very quickly and nervously, "I don't think we have much room to criticize being part of a religion that's evil."

....blink blink. Mordred moves to get a better look at her face.

She looks terrified.

She is not going to trust 'no you're completely right' -- what would an actual cultist say -- no that's the wrong question the question is what's the thing he can say that is true and will not sound like a lie --

"Okay," he says, keeps his voice very soft. He's still got an arm wrapped around Inaaya.

Inaaya still looks terrified.

"I'm not-- one of you-- I just work for the cult because there's no one else who would get me out--"

She's lying.

Well even if she is lying Mordred is still going to hug her. He is not very good at not hugging terrified-looking people who he loves.

"...you've been travelling around the globe for three years and not found anywhere else you could disappear to?" He's still being very, very gentle.

"I want to learn."

"It's not like I can get tenure at Miskatonic."

"If there were a way I could support myself and learn more about how the universe really works and not--"

"But I'm from India and I taught myself to read out of books from the garbage."

It's not that the facts are wrong but she's arranging them into a story that isn't true.

"...I'm confused why you're telling me this," is the only thing he can think of to say that doesn't feel like he's digging himself into a hole.

"I thought-- maybe."

Very nervously and quickly: "do you think it's evil too?"

God, fuck, he hates this, the answer is yes, do you want to run away to New England and use the Miskatonic library or do you want to run away and fight the cult, because you have options now and he can't say that and he doesn't know what she's doing --

"I think you're trying to get a particular answer out of me and I don't know to what purpose but I would like it if you stopped."

"I'm not, I'm just trying to--"

She cuts herself off. "Joan is going to kill me."

Still hugging her. Still being gentle. "Trying to?"

"I thought maybe you'd-- you're like me, you don't, you're not one of them."

Okay.

Okay, okay, fuck.

If he's right that this is a lie-in-the-way-that-counts then-- it's a trap, she is trying to get him to admit to not actually being a cultist, and Mordred is going to fucking die. If he's wrong then Inaaya is desperately asking for any way out and he's ignoring her. Both options are very bad.

"I," he says.

"Please don't tell anyone."

"If you love me."

"I'm not going to tell anyone," he says, without even having to think about it.

(He's going to tell his team, of course, but he's not going to tell anyone involved with the cult. This he can get right whether she's lying or not.)

"Thank you."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"