"Well done!"

"Usually at this point I would suggest we end the session and come back another time to discuss the first topic. Simply making the list is often nerve-wracking enough that clients need a break afterwards. How are you doing? Do you need to return to other duties or otherwise rest, or would you prefer to continue?"

If they want to take a break, Ramona might ask them to send Marit over sometime soon, but that'll keep if they want to keep going.

"I am willing to continue." Especially since they are starting with the question of whether Iomedae harmed her by dating her, which does not seem dangerous at all and is mostly just confusing in its presence on the list. Which, she supposes, is the point of ordering the conversations this way.

"I am also willing to continue, I was unsure how much time to set aside for this and set aside a lot in anticipation of it - potentially causing problems we have to fix afterwards or similar."

"All right. I also have time today!"

Intakes from Astral are extremely unpredictable but they also pay really well, so Ramona tries not to book anything later the same day.

"Before we begin, let me remind you that you can pause at any time, you can leave things out if that's best, you can say you're not ready to talk about something today, or ever. Everything we're doing here is voluntary."

"With that in mind, it looks like we're starting with whether Iomedae wronged Alfirin by dating her. Iomedae, you contributed that topic, so you can lead us off. Do you think you wronged Alfirin? Or do you think maybe Alfirin thinks that? What's the story?"

"I mean, I think I was poorly equipped to be in a relationship and should not have attempted it, but I think we've both agreed on that for a long time. But when we travelled to the other timeline, it was put to me by followers of, uh, my religion, that it was an inappropriate exercise of power, to pursue any relationship with someone on the Crusade, and while I think the most straightforward analysis there isn't quite right it does seem true that Alfirin - left the Crusade for five years afterwards, because it would have been hard for her to continue to do the work that she did that was important to her, and that she is obliged even today to maintain a relationship she might prefer not to because the world will end otherwise, and that this was predictable in advance. 

This is mostly not very fraught because Alfirin is going to say that, being a human being equipped with a Teleport and the power of reason, she could've done something else if she'd wanted to do something else, and that we were foolish to approximately equivalent degrees. But - if people who've thought more about it think you've wronged someone you should rarely be totally satisfied that there's no important insight there."

"I do not think I was wronged and I do not think that Lastwall gets a say in whether or not I was, though it seems at least possible that they identified some manner in which you might have risked harming someone else in my position. I think... we could probably debate that at length but I'd need to hear their case in more detail. And that doesn't seem topical. If you in fact think there's good reason to think I was wronged in spite of my insistence to the contrary then I suppose that is topical and I'd like to hear why in more detail."

"I don't really consider it any of my business if you don't want it to be my business. I think - the rest of what I think is more about the breakup than about this."

"It can be your business if you want it to be your business. I object somewhat to it being any of Lastwall's business off of what I presume was a fairly brief summary, but... You know what happened as well as I do and if you did think I was harmed in some way I - trust your judgment enough that I would want to hear why."  Not that she really has any doubts that Shelyn will follow through on Her end of the bargain, but Shelyn had better follow through on Her end of the bargain, here.

"It seems to me that if Alfirin thinks she was not wronged, then she is correct about that."

"I wonder, Iomedae, if the remaining doubt you have about this is not so much about wronging Alfirin as about -- your standards for your own behavior. Like maybe you didn't think enough about the repercussions to the Crusade, if you began a relationship and then ended it? Or maybe you thought about it but didn't give it enough weight? What do you think?"

"I did not really anticipate repercussions to the Crusade, I never imagined the series of events by which we'd end up needing Alfirin, needing to work together closely even if Alfirin no longer preferred to have a relationship with me. I did worry about whether I was - doing sometimes less than the maximally good thing. I try to only do the maximally good thing at all times. But Arazni felt this was a concerning habit of mine, and I should try being a bit more of a human...this is perhaps venturing ahead to topics which accumulated a higher rating.

I believe you that I didn't wrong you," she adds to Alfirin, "but I think I probably did harm you? I have been operating on that assumption."

"Where the difference between harming and wronging is that both hurt the other person, but wronging is intentional or preventable, whereas harming is inadvertent and mostly unforeseeable?"

"...Hm. I think I would draw the distinction slightly differently than that on my own, but that's probably close enough to go on if Iomedae agrees... I will accept that I was probably harmed. I imagine Iomedae was, too." She frowns. "I assume thoughts that touch on later conversational topics should be reserved for those conversations?"

"Yes, ideally. Obviously everything is pretty intertwined! But going slowly helps us avoid damage."

Then Iomedae will keep talking about ethics, which is interesting and safe, and not the breakup, which has a Rating. "You can wrong people and not end up doing them harm - if you take a gamble you had no right to take but that panned out, say. I am tempted to say you wronged someone if the rules you used to decide how to treat them aren't the ones you represented yourself as using, or the ones they reasonably thought you were using, or if you applied insufficient care to the decision and so made it poorly, or if you are using an evil rule for deciding how to treat people in the first place..."

Ah, but Ramona will notice Iomedae abstractly talking about ethics and tie it back to the case!

"That helps. I had been thinking of wrongs as sort of a worse subset of harms. It makes sense now that you can have wrongs that happen to do no harm."

"And so... Alfirin suggests that both of you were harmed but that there was no wrongdoing. Does that sound correct? Or are there lingering doubts?"

"Technically, I said that I don't think I was wronged and that we were both harmed. I think the ways that I possibly wronged Iomedae here are...tied to other conversations, though."

"Fair enough! You did catch me rounding off a step there, so thank you for correcting me."

"Let me just check with Iomedae about the original question. Do you have lingering doubts about your own potential wrongdoing or has that been resolved? Did you gain any new information?"

Iomedae is not yet the kind of entity one cannot meaningfully speak of wronging, but she has spent long enough intending to be to find it slightly uncanny for Alfirin to claim to have perhaps wronged her. She isn't sure Alfirin is making a mistake, she just never particularly contemplated the question. 

"I think that's about the answer I expected Alfirin to give and she's right. I don't have particular lingering doubts - or, I have doubts about what fraternization policy to leave Lastwall, but not about my decisions particularly."

"All right. I think we may be done with our first topic. My sense is that we did not yet resolve the discrepancy Shelyn was hoping we'd find, so by default we'll keep going."

"The next item on our list is 'Alfirin's feelings about Iomedae.' It's a big step up in difficulty from the last one. Alfirin thought it was moderately risky, while Iomedae is not worried about it much at all."

"Are you ready to continue, and is that what we should talk about next?"

Iomedae is not exactly enjoying this but she doesn't do 'apprehensive'. "I am ready, and I think the policy of going through the list continues to make sense."

"All right, Alfirin, if that's what you want to do as well, then begin when you're ready."

Alfirin is apprehensive but the prospect of asking for Iomedae's aura of courage or shapeshifting into a form that doesn't feel fear is utterly mortifying so she's just going to power through.

"Well. I suppose the relevant feelings are that I never really stopped admiring her, or being in love with her, even though that's - irresponsible and unprofessional and dangerous and unkind." And gives Shelyn reason to meddle in her personal life.

Oh. That is surprising to her, in the sense where she wouldn't have predicted it and also in the deeper sense where a bunch of her other predictions suddenly have glaring holes in them. She takes a fraction of a second to gather her thoughts, but only a fraction of a second because waiting too long would probably be deeply hurtful.

"...oh. That is surprising to me," she says. "I'm now confused about a bunch of things. I ....don't see how that could possibly be irresponsible or unprofessional or dangerous or unkind, unless it's causing you to, I don't know, secretly ignore strategic objectives to sabotage romantic rivals or something....you don't have romantic rivals. Obviously. I'm just struggling to think of ways you could be being irresponsible that are compatible with what I have observed. 

...why, uh, do you suppose that in the other timeline you leave the second the war is over. I. Took that as significant evidence that you did not prefer to have any relationship with me and were only doing so out of necessity. I guess that's compatible with what you just said."

"It's irresponsible and unprofessional because it - if it was known, which it now is - makes our working relationship more complicated and might lead you to think that you had to - manage my feelings, or something - to get my help with the war. It's dangerous because it's a - temptation to believe I am safe from you. It's unkind because - I don't actually know if it is unkind for reasons separate from the unprofessionalism and irresponsibility. I have a strong felt sense that it is unkind toward you.

...I think that I leave when the war is over because I'm no longer necessary and I at the time expect you want as little to do with me as possible."

"Okay. As a clarification, I have never at any point wanted to do as little with you as possible. I realize that how I feel about you is higher on the list and this narrows down the range of answers there, but it seems like an important clarification. 

The reason I was not very worried about hearing what you felt about me is because I didn't think it would make our working relationship more complicated under any of the plausible ways you might feel about me. I won't try to manage your feelings if you don't want me to do that, and I assume you don't want me to do that. I don't think I'm owed you feeling any particular way about me, and it seems particularly absurd to demand you don't think highly of me.

I - with respect to it being dangerous - you know that I would guarantee your safety for as long as I live, if you want that. ...I have been assuming you know that. I owe you much more than that."