Hug. "I don't suppose if I somehow time-traveled I could just explain--you--and your younger self would just go 'wow that sounds much more appealing'."

He laughs. "Much as I might hope you could, I don't think I'd bet on it. I was very... set in my ways."

"So if I do end up in the past I should either try to thwart you from the beginning, or wait until everything's gone to hell and you're setting up the mountain and deliver your thoughts on how you might have done it differently."

"The second one's probably safer."

"If safe were my highest priority, do you think I would have agreed to dance with you at that party?"

"Well. No. No, I don't suppose you would have."

"I would not have. So whether I'd try for thwarting or damage control would likely depend on how good I'd gotten at magic in the interim between now and time travel, and thus what chance I have of the former being effective as opposed to just throwing away my chance at the latter."

"I just imagined you meeting my younger self's best friend and this silly hypothetical got a whole lot less fun," he says, hugging her tighter for a moment.

"Why, what were they like? Besides presumably torturey, I guess."

"She was..."

He sighs.

"Her name was Hali - Halieve Narafaer - and she liked to break people. I've played that game myself a time or two, but it was what she lived for. She taught me pain magic. Imaging you meeting my younger self is kind of fun in a slightly awful way; imagining you in Hali's hands is just..." He shakes his head and hugs her again.

"Aha. Well, if you show me what this person looked like--can you do illusions, I was assuming yes but I really don't know enough about pain magic to do that--anyway if you can or have a portrait somewhere you can show me I promise that if I am ever in the past and see her I will get the hell out of dodge."

He laughs softly.

"Yeah," he says, and an image takes shape in the air, like an object being conjured out of smoke and not quite solidifying all the way.

"Pretty, isn't she?"

"Yeah, she really is.

Of course, lilies are an incredibly poisonous flower."

"You've got the right idea."

He dismisses the image.

"Well, I can't imagine it ever coming up, but if I ever see that face I promise to run."

He kisses her on the cheek.

"Not to get all paranoid on you, but if anybody would have some kind of contingency plan that resurrected her four thousand years after her death, it'd be Hali. I don't think she did, but it's the sort of thing she'd do."

"Delightful."

"So if she comes wandering up the mountain one day, introduce yourself politely as my friend, and if she still looks like she wants to turn you inside-out, yell my name and run."

"If I say I'm your friend is she going to assume I like to torture people?"

"She might. But she'd probably be able to tell which side of that line you actually fall on."

"Okay. Having an ancient psychowitch think I was evil would not actually stop me from doing the thing, but I prefer that people not be under misapprehensions concerning my basic nature."

Snuggle. "I like you, have I mentioned that recently?"

"I think I just received a pretty comprehensive demonstration."

He giggles.

"I like you a lot too."