I had the thought, is what kills me. I knew that if I killed him I could bring the body back. And then I just - didn't. Fell back on the heuristic that I shouldn't go around casually killing people, instead of thinking about how to do enough damage in the second I had. And it's usually a good heuristic, for adventurers! I've been glad to have it in the past! It's just - not so good when you've been dragged bodily into Hell.

It's funny. In some ways this week is like nothing I've ever experienced, and in others it's making me feel like I'm twenty years old again. There are people in Hell today who wouldn't be if I'd been smarter, quicker, better – but I wasn't, and they are. So I've been thinking about what I wish someone had told me then. Something like – 

I won't say you did the best you could, or the best you could be expected to, because I respect you more than that. And I won't say you'll do better next time, because I – I do not hope, I insist – that it won't ever come up again. But I can say – you're fighting Hell. It is their particular talent and delight to engineer things so that their enemies always feel guilty, and they like it best of all when that guilt is justified. We're going to make worse mistakes than this. We already have made worse mistakes than this. We'll try to win as cleanly as we can, and it won't be very clean at all, but the important thing is that we win.

Also, while it's not very much help to poor M. Perrin, we will get them all back one day. 

She hugs him tighter. Not for him, this time, for her.

It hurts more than most mistakes I've made.

I suppose the best thing for him at this point is also to bring this to an end.

We can also specifically get M. Perrin, if and when we survive all this. 

I guess so, with your wish wording. It really was a brilliant one. ...I know this is completely the wrong attitude but it's really about the most romantic thing you've ever done. And also, you know, separately useful and I'm very glad not to be in hell with him.

"More romantic than the wedding jewelry?"

" - honestly, I can't decide. The wedding jewelry was a promise that you would come and save me no matter where I was, and this was actually doing that under circumstances that were previously believed to be impossible. Five seconds preventing you from technically doing the impossible part notwithstanding. On the other hand the wedding jewelry is absolutely the exact moment that I fell in love with you, you know, so it's possible that I'll end up putting rescuing me from the clutches of hell in second."

Oh. Has she said that before? 

"Really? That soon?"

"Oh, definitely. I remember that I didn't that morning, I was still thinking that all of your various positive qualities should make it very easy to cultivate love for you, and how I intended to work very diligently at it immediately once we were married. And then instead you made it effortless."

"Oh. 

I really don't want to die."

" - yeah. I really don't want to die, either. I think we should not. I - kind of wish that I could believe that that was something I could just decide, this time."

"We can."

"...That was flippant, but I think it matters. We can just walk away. If all we wanted was to protect ourselves and the children, we could. We're choosing this – and it's the right choice, I think, but it is a choice."

"I'm not actually sure of that. I would like to be, because it seems - healthier, to be choosing like that - but I did think about it, and as far as I can see, if we do back away now, we would have to accept leaving them in the dome indefinitely, or else not doing that and accepting the risk of retaliation. And - that's a kind of safety, there are things that we could still have like that, but it isn't exactly the blindingly brilliant life we've created for ourselves thus far or that we've been hoping to create in the future. So I think that I am fighting both for grand moral reasons and because I want to have that life again when we're done. ...and because it's the most important thing in the world, to you. Not that I'm doing it just for you, I'm not, but I'm not going to leave you to fight it alone, either. Or ask you to give it up."

"I think we could wait them out. They're going to strike back for real, or they're going to run through their ability to use Wishes on the material plane, or they'll give up on Cheliax. And the greatest danger isn't that, even, it's – well. There are safer courses than the one we're taking. 

I am very grateful that you're doing this with me."

"Of course. You're right either way, it isn't something we can really pass up. Or - we could, like you said, but - I am not sure whether anyone has ever been given a chance like this, and I don't think we would forgive ourselves if we didn't take it."

"Oh, I'm wouldn't consider doing anything else. It just matters that no one's stopping me."

"All right. But I don't think I'm going to rest easy until we're done. - and I'm not actually sure that this is what I want to talk about tonight, although it's hardly surprising that we are."

"We don't have to talk about it if you don't like. Still – It feels extraordinarily strange to me that we will be done. Well, that or dead. I've always thought I'd be at this fight another ten thousand years, if I had them." 

"I am looking forward to never thinking about it again. I suppose eventually, given enough time, I might decide to be bothered about one of the other horrible things in the great beyond, but I intend to spend the next century focusing entirely on things that personally annoy me. And, well, things that don't annoy me because they're actually good."

"Things that personally annoy you, like infant mortality?"

"Yes, exactly. I have excellent taste in annoyances, I just don't pick the absolute worst problems in creation the way you do."

"I don't think I deserve any credit there. It picked me."

"Well, in fairness, mine wasn't exactly irrelevant to me, although it was less... all-encompassing."

.....hey, Elie? Thinking about what I want to talk about before tempting fate, and - well, it's not actually important, but do you, uh, remember anything about when approximately you fell in love, or decided that whatever you felt counted, or...?

He doesn't remember how they decided that thoughts were more intimate than words, but it does seem to be the pattern they've fallen into. He strokes her hair.

I don't think there was any one moment in particular. Before our wedding, though. Or, rather, once we were engaged, it was very easy to see what I felt for you as love. I was – you don't need me to tell you how I was when we met. I'd lost myself completely. And then to see you, really trying – I mean, not the way adventurers try to become more powerful, trying to do something nobody had ever done before because the world as it was just didn't bear countenancing – I'd forgotten there could be people like that. I couldn't imagine why you'd want to marry me.  So it just took getting used to the idea, really. 

She hums contentedly. Right, you thought I didn't really want you at first. I really do owe Catherine for the advice to go and talk to you before the six months were up. It would have - taken longer, I think, to get where we are, if I'd been patient. For you to really believe it.