"- it's not a no," he says, hoarsely, though he still hasn't moved. "We should - talk first, though. Catherine. De Litran. Is she…dead?"

Catherine is now less hurt but only because she's too confused to be hurting, exactly.

(Alfirin understands what's happening but was caught off-guard and hasn't decided how to respond yet - )

"...That's the first time kissing a man has caused him to doubt that I'm alive. I'm not really sure what to say to that."

Now he is confused, and defaults to assuming they're being spied on, even though this really by rights ought to be very hard to do.

He scans the room for magic or movement, and when this gets him nothing throws out the heightened Glitterdust that beats even Tar-Baphon's Invisibility.

They both sparkle intensely, as does one of Marit's invisible spies, right where it's expected to be in the corner. Nothing else in the room does.

Well this is incredibly awkward now and she's not sure she wants to explain in front of one of Marit's archons. She glances in its direction.

It isn't authorized or able to listen, in his private quarters, just get help if needed, but he gives the signal to send it away anyway. 

"I'm sorry," Alfirin says when it's gone, "She's not dead, that was her, I have been avoiding taking actions around you lest you recognize me - how did you do it?"

Okay, possibly there are some downsides to being the kind of person that he and Alfirin both are. 

He feels like he's in free fall, suddenly attempting to recategorize months of interactions as having apparently been with Catherine, a woman he barely knows.

He did of course contemplate in advance whether he was willing to tell her if she asked, and decided that he was. Good decision, past Marit, because present Marit can hardly think at all right now. "- I visited the gardens. The first time there wasn't a clone but the second time there was. I -"

No, actually, he has absolutely no idea what he wants to say here, except that apparently and substantially to his own surprise he wishes the kiss had been real.

Alfirin is not sure what to address first and settles on practical matters because they're less uncomfortable. "I'm not going to ask for your forks but I do want to be able to find them all if anything happens to you."

...And then she realizes how that might sound and adds, "You are my only living friend and I wouldn't do anything to hurt you without reasons you'd agree are good enough."

That's her, all right. An enormous swirling pile of confusion about literally all of their interactions for the last six months but at least at the base of it there's something he does recognize.

(Does he believe the promise? He's not in the habit of believing promises, really, just separately tracking what it means if they're true and what it means if they're false. But. He comes closer to trusting her than anyone else alive or dead. And he cannot, actually, afford any of the precautions that'd be necessary were she an adversary. That's spending too much, in the worlds where she's not.)

'You are my only living friend'. He ...just does believe that, actually. It's how she would feel; he knows because it's how he feels.

"One on my person, in separated parts labelled ‘16' and ‘i', one on Sunhammer's demiplane encased in a block of copper. I bought a scroll of Gate off Morgethai to get there in the first place."

And that first time she wasn't keyed to the alarms, and the latter times - She hadn't thought she'd need alarms for plane shifts, knowing where all the tuning forks were. She was obviously wrong about that.

"Thank you - I know this does in fact make me the world's greatest hypocrite, but - When I looked for you in Heaven you were there. You're also here, a lot younger-looking than when we parted ways." She leaves the question implicit.

"I don't know what happened," he says. "It was 3824, and then I was in Kenabres, and they seemed to be having a truly astonishing array of problems caused by some combination or demons, incompetence or conspiracy. It took me a few weeks to confirm that this even purports to be the world I was familiar with. …the holy books were edited, or she was lying about what she meant to put in them -"

"Her church made changes, I helped make them stick. I'm not sure why She let me."

"Something went very wrong," he says flatly. "Beyond the blindingly obvious, though maybe related to it. She wouldn't have allowed - once things had settled down in Kenabres I pulled aside Her most senior priest in Mendev with a list of about forty questions so I could decide how far I could work with Her, and got told that only Lastwall is permitted Communes. Either the Church or the god has something to hide and even if it's the church - She shouldn't have allowed it."

"Cansellarion's alright, and planning to do something about Cheliax. I don't think the church as a whole is hiding something, so much as stubbornly convinced that their way of doing things is the best way and nobody else has anything to offer them more useful than unthinking obedience." She could say almost the same about Hell, though.

It's hardly exculpatory even if true and anyway Marit is not persuaded. He knows he has an inclination to see malice where incompetence is an adequate explanation, but also this inclination has served him well on this Crusade where people keep being Baphomet cultists. "Hmm," he says neutrally. "Well. As I thought I told you five minutes ago, I'll take everyone here who can handle it as far as they'll go and then you can have them for Cheliax. She can make herself useful if She sees fit." It would be very very hard to detect the bitterness and injury in his voice if one hadn't known him for his entire adult life. 

"I am not counting on Her help." Alfirin has had many more centuries of practice hiding bitterness and injury in her voice; The fact that he cannot detect any doesn't mean anything.

That's that, then. "Do I - need to apologize to Catherine - I had no intent to -" He's at this point deeply confused about what Catherine and Alfirin are doing - a voluntary body-sharing partnership seems too optimistic - but regardless he wouldn't have shown special friendliness to a young female subordinate if he'd had any idea she was there to interpret it at all -

Alfirin thinks, for a moment. "I don't think so. She wasn't feeling any - pressure - and she has an item for alter self. She will probably be disappointed but won't think you wronged her." She sighs. "I will talk to her and tell you if I'm mistaken about that."

Now he's even more confused about what that relationship is. He nods, though. "I don't think there's anything else - oh, Daeran's possessed by some kind of extremely powerful evil outsider who murders anyone which it realizes knows it exists." He thinks Alfirin is safer warned than not warned.

"Oh. That explains some things. Um, how powerful, Balor? Demon lord? Worse than that?"

"No idea. Everything I know it to have killed is weaker than us. One of Her inquisitors is looking into it. Liotr, not one of the idiots." And he of course has an archon spying on Liotr, and a few leads on independent research into Daeran's situation once he has the time, but Alfirin will take that as given.

She thinks about the rest of their adventuring companions, and what secrets they might have. "Do you know what's up with Nenio? Is Sosiel secretly part-demon, or just a terrible Shelynite for other reasons? - Oh, Ulbrig does seem to be legitimately Sarkorian if you weren't sure."