"I made her a swan but I didn't stop there," he says.

"Yeah, I meant 'in addition to,' not 'instead of'."

"She set me on fire and ran, and I caught her and set the swan spell on her and dragged her back to her house intending to rape and torture her there, but she set me on fire again and burned her own house down, so as soon as I recovered enough I pulled her into the sky and did it there instead."

She sighs. She cuddles him.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm thrilled about this," she says after a moment, "but I already knew you fucked up with her in ways she had every right not to forgive, and I already knew that you knew that, and that you knew I wouldn't forgive anything like that, and that you value our relationship too much to try anything like that with me. So. Given that, it seems...wildly unreasonable to be more upset by what you did to someone who seems, miraculously, basically untraumatized afterwards, than by what I knew when I fell in love with you you had done to every person you kidnapped before me."

"I'm more upset by it," he sighs, snuggling her. "Or - I don't know. I'm upset by it, which I never was before."

"Okay. Well--you seemed, in addition to that, worried about how I'd react to it. And that's how I'm reacting to it." Snuggle. "I'm fine with talking about it, though."

Snuggle.

"I love you. I don't know what to say, how to explain... I'm not sure I even know what I'm feeling. It makes talking about it kind of difficult."

"...I could ask leading questions? I dunno if that would help, but it probably wouldn't hurt..."

"All right."

"Okay..." she thinks about it for a moment. "The thing you said last time, about how if you couldn't fix the swanning it would be your biggest regret since the Ansati Empire...I feel like that might be relevant, but I haven't thought of how well enough to ask specific questions yet."

"I think... being in the habit of hurting people is... not worth it anymore."

"Relatively trivial concern but by hurt you mean harm, right, mutually enjoyable bloodletting is I assume still fine?"

Snort. "Yes, of course."

"Thought so. I love you. ...And I didn't mean to make light of your personal revelation, I'm sorry if it came out that way."

Snuggle. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Snuggle.

"I was trying to think of something to say that engaged with what you said on the level of--I'm someone who loves you and is talking with you about this thing, and not on the level of someone who thinks nonconsensual torture is a bad thing that shouldn't happen, and I--sort of flubbed it."

Sigh. Snuggle.

"You are someone who thinks nonconsensual torture is bad, though, and that's part of it - everyone I love is upset about what I do - and then there's the thing with Anlei, where I hurt her badly enough that if she'd been anyone else - except maybe Fia, who I don't think can get hurt that badly in the first place - that would've put an end to my chance of ever being friends with her. And I like being friends with her."

"Yeah. Although part of it, for me, is that...I think it's probably likely to be easier for you to break the habit if there's less pressure. So the best thing I can do to reduce the amount of torture going on is to just--make sure you know I'm not at stake. I love you regardless. And that's true, I'm not lying to you or myself to, to manipulate you into not torturing people, that would be horrible, but--I'm maybe being more careful to make sure you know it than I might otherwise be?"

He nods. He hugs her.

Snuggle. "I love you."

"I love you too. I'm... so glad I didn't fuck this up."

"Well. You didn't.

At the party where we met, there were a lot of boring young men trying and failing to impress me with bad poetry. And the very first thing I thought when I saw you, when you showed up, was 'now that's impressive.'"

...he laughs.

"And then I remembered that I really didn't want your attention and tried to avoid it. And failed beautifully."

"Much to our mutual delight!"