"That is typical of practice."

"Relevant because I could do less dubiously consensual training eventually, maybe figure out how to do it for my family."

"Nobody else you'd trust with it?"

"Most of the people I'd trust with it have principled objections to mind control spells for some reason. And I feel - as weird about trying to convince people to learn the Imperius as I feel about trying to convince them to learn to throw it off -"

"So, surmountably."

"To the point of 'ask once', wouldn't press it. And first answer if I ask, like, my cousin to learn the Imperius will be 'um, no'."

Oh look Cam has no opinions about his cousin.

" - should I not try to draw inferences about what you clam up about, I can avoid doing it but it's definitely there by default -"

"I assume Ister's going to remember this conversation, regardless of whether you think your alt would want any secrets from you."

"I didn't ask you to tell me, I asked if I should avoid deriving the information from your expressions."

"Go ahead, I guess."

More flying. He experiments with fine control - shift a finger, brush a hair back, make this precise facial expression. He concludes he's definitely getting better at the Imperius Curse.

He enjoys it, too. It feels very invigorating. 

After an hour or so he has Ister land and he takes the spell off. "Thanks so much."

Ister smiles at him. "Anytime, that was lovely, it's just a pity it's not actually a thing I can make."

"Yeah, sorry, we tried making magic stuff and none of it goes through. I'll summon you if I need any stuff made, though. Take care."

Ister laughs and wraps his wings around himself.

He sends him home. "He mentioned how you described the spell in your letter to him."

"He would've asked. - Which bit, I went on for a few sentences."

" feels like a direct experience of not being responsible for your actions -'"

"It did. But that's not how it works."

"Yeah, there's no spell for that.

I read a bunch of the peace treaties. They're doing okay, swords into ploughshares and everything or so I take it when it's all weaponry I've never heard of.

I take it you don't think it'd be good for you to, uh, give yourself a break occasionally -"

"In some sense other than flying around while time's paused?"

"I was a bit surprised you didn't want to learn to throw it off faster."

"I'm not sure it wouldn't wind up being unhealthy somehow - make it harder to manage my head on my own - or wrecking my unpleasant-but-endorsed perspective on the whole mess."

"I was very serious about not pressuring anybody to pick it up. Just - I would ordinarily say 'let me know if you need anything' but I don't actually trust you to do that, not if the reason you need it is that you ended the war -"

"This is one of those times when what might conceivably help is 'credible unprompted expressions of specific attitudes' and even if I wished to demand to be soothed it wouldn't work. But it's nice that you'd offer."