Laugh that's not really a laugh. "The only person who'll actually cause my death here is you."

You are not going to die, Mordred thinks, not here not now and not of this. He can't really say that in a way she'll believe but it's true.

"I love you," he says again instead, "mi amas vin, main tumse pyar kartha hoon."

"I love you.

Please don't make Savitree have to murder me to show Walker how strong she is."

Jesus fucking christ Mordred hates the cult so much. "I won't. He won't hear about any of this."

"I just-- I don't think someone could pretend to be you."

"You'd have to care about freedom to be able to pretend that well. And-- I thought--"

"Maybe even if you were working for Walker, if I trusted you, then. The person who cares about freedom would come out."

Did you know that's almost exactly what I thought about you, Mordred thinks, and We are trying so hard to rescue each other.

It's kind of funny, in the way where if he laughed he'd be crying at the same time.

"I saw the way your mind was shaped, and it's--"

"I trust you. I shouldn't but I do."

"...the first time we spent time together," he says, very carefully, "you told me you were lucky the obelisk at Axum was broken because if it hadn't been you would probably have spent the rest of your life in an asylum. And what I wanted to say, and didn't because I barely knew you, was that if it ever came up I would break you out."

"And -- I didn't make that promise then, and I probably shouldn't be making it now because I shouldn't trust you as much as I do either, but it's true."

"If it ever comes up I will break you out."

"I think it should go the other way. I'm much more terrifying than you are."

"I can't make you promises the other way, though, that's not how promises work."

She laughs.

"I... don't know what I can promise because I have to do my job, no matter what."

"You don't have to promise me anything."

"Okay, but you can't say things like that to me without me reciprocating!"

Laugh. "Fair. I love you." I wanted to save the world for you, I still do want to save the world for you, we might be on the same side, saving the world together --

He can't say any of that. But if he could.

"I love you."

"If someone kills you and I can I will wreck horrifying vengeance."

Mordred smiles into her hair. "You're very good. I'm very lucky."

"You too."

Mordred... is going to have to workshop with Lev how he tells this to the others in a way they'll believe at all, which means that trying to think of ways to explain things right now is not helpful, and so right now he is going to set that entire thought process aside and focus on hugging Inaaya.

Hug.

...

"Catholicism," she complains, "is also evil."

"They don't even have the excuse of their evil god actually existing."

"Catholicism is evil but-- it's kind of interesting, honestly, Catholicism is evil but most of the specific Catholics I know are not? And with Gale, it's... he starts from the same premises we do? People should be allowed to be weird in peace, you should believe your eyes and not start from an idea of how the world must be and work backwards from it, and then he sees angels, what he gets when he trusts his eyes is Catholicism, and -- we still disagree about a lot of things but I think the premises are as important as the conclusions."

"I think a lot of the way Catholicism is evil is what it does to Catholics."

"It takes people who were good-- or just normal-- and sets up an environment where they have to destroy each other."

"It's-- one of the things I hate most in the world."

"And if they don't destroy each other a lot of people destroy themselves-- and some people would have been like that anyway but--"

This is a completely true statement about Mordred's experience of Christianity but also it feels a little bit like they're subtexting about the cult again.

"The thing is that most people aren't evil."

"So if you want to do something really evil, very grand-scale evil, you have to-- take people who would have been fine and turn them into someone who can-- torture, or rape, or murder, or make little children hate themselves for normal human emotions."

"And I think there are things that evil ideologies do that are worse but that's the thing that's most horrifying to me. The way it corrupts everyone who touches it."

"You shouldn't have to be exceptionally good not to be complicit in atrocities."

I love you so much. "You shouldn't. And-- on one level I absolutely do understand how people decide things are fine but-- we can do so much better than we're doing, I know people can--"

"I think this is my biggest disagreement with Lev? He thinks the world is broken and most people will hurt you and it's good that some of them won't but you really can't expect much, and I think the world is broken but broken is not the best we can do."

"And I'm angrier than he is about the world that exists because he thinks 'well, sure, in America they lynch Jews, but every country does that' is the best we can do and I don't."

"I-- everyone around me thinks this is the best we can do."

She almost says something, hesitates, and says, "Louise thinks that if we tell people the truth we'd be lucky if they went insane."

"Because if they just can't handle it then at least they're not using it to destroy other people."