"I still think I can probably eat him."

"I feel like if it were that easy to kill him Erik would have managed by now. He's really dedicated."

"Doesn't matter how easy it is, if the answer is 'eaten by a dragon' and until now he didn't have a dragon..."

Shrug. "I'm not necessarily saying you're wrong, I'm just failing to model why that would be the magic bullet."

"Maybe not, but it's worth trying."

Nod. "As long as he doesn't blow your jaw off or something."

"Doesn't matter, I'll just grow a new one."

"As long as the 'or something' isn't blowing your brains out," she says, hugging him a little tighter.

He laughs.

"I love you. It's just--this guy sounds really scary and I don't want anyone to get hurt from underestimating him. That's how Darwin died."

"I spent a few years roaming the north of Canada with no control over my shape. A lot of people tried to kill me. As far as I can tell, there isn't any part of me I actually need."

"I think there is nonzero grounds to worry about the possibility of you getting someone else killed--it was Alex's fuckup that killed Darwin, not Darwin's--but okay I feel better now."

"How would I manage to get someone else killed?"

"Ending up feeding Shaw a lot of kinetic energy?"

"Eating him doesn't seem like it'd do that."

"Maybe depends on how? I don't know, I'm just being paranoid."

Snuggle.

Snuggle. "If tiredness is the worst I have to complain about my regeneration I'm getting off lucky, really. I don't scar and I don't get stuff embedded and I've never had a bone heal crooked and if I lose something altogether it grows back."

"Lucky." Kiss.

Kiss. "If I tell you the story of how I figured that last part out can you restrain yourself at least enough that the bed doesn't end up bloodstained?"

He laughs. "Sure."

"I was sixteen and had lost my virginity the week previous and I miscalculated and thought my period was late and ripped my whole uterus out in a panic."

"Thought you might react like that."

"Well, you were right."