"She does not seem to have acted, for the most part, like someone who wants you to be happy and free. She enchanted you for sixty years and had you sell your soul to Hell and work in the old Chelish court."

"Oh, I didn't think she cared about me at all." That is slightly more candid than Lilia had intended to be. "I was very surprised when we started talking after the war about - me - and she kept making suggestions like 'you should do what makes you happy' and so on." 

"I am going to not act on that information but if you later allow me to and allow me to confirm it in Aktun that will actually help me trust you substantially more… It seems like it would be very upsetting, to have a mother who you thought did not care for you at all. Was it upsetting before today?"

"Not really. It's not as if other Chelish people have imitable loving maternal relationships one could reasonably envy. And she was proud of me. I was perfect. I was happy about that."

"I can see why she was. When did she start saying you should pursue your own goals?"

"After the war. Well. We did not speak much between after I spoke to you and the end of the war. She proposed I take some time off, which could have been concern for my welfare but which I interpreted at the time as noticing I was damaged but repairable. And then I know Iomedae - spoke to her -

The next time we talked she was different, and she said it was because I wasn't in Egorian any more, it was less costly to tell me more things. She did not say that she loved me and wanted me to be happy until - more recently than that. But she was - telling me things I'd find interesting - it was different."

"Do you know exactly what Iomedae said to her and do you want to? - Actually, I am not sure if I can tell you, I'll need to think about that. I am to act as though I do not know it was her that Iomedae spoke to until I learn that through means other than our negotiations and I don't know if this counts… I should spend at least ten minutes thinking. If you would want to know."

"You're adorable," says Lilia. "There were dozens of witnesses, I got myself an account. Iomedae said the person you'd be if you were living up to your own values is someone I have no quarrel with and my mother got upset with Her. But it seems - maybe relevant. To whether 'my mother removed the mind control because she is trying to be - better -' is a reasonable theory of what happened or whether I am being silly to believe it. I do believe it. I don't think she had anything at all to gain by it except that the previous situation wasn't fair to me, was getting in the way of things that are important to me, and she cared about that. I don't think she would have pretended because she didn't need to."

Or she just wants her mother to be a person she can ally with and suddenly feels on some level like that would require her mother to be a better person. That thought is almost too frightening and nauseating to look at directly.

"I don't know if she was necessarily trying to be a better person in general, or just trying to be better to you, even very evil people often love their children… most evil people who treat their children the way she treated you probably do not love their children but some of them might."

"It doesn't really matter very much," says Lilia, "whether my mother loves me. It matters a lot whether she is going to keep trying to - help me - but I think if she was going to stop me she'd have stopped me before I did this."

"I cannot figure out why she would do this if she was not trying to help you or would not keep trying to help you, but I have never been able to guess her plans before they unfolded. Unless you count dominating Lastwall's government in Vellumis, where I may have guessed wrong and the actual plan was to provoke me into helping her fake her death."

"I think that is what she was trying there," agrees Lilia. "Her plans have usually made perfect sense to me. She wanted me to join the Chelish intelligence service so I could betray it to whoever was going to take Cheliax from Hell. Her, if she was positioned to do it, but someone else, if she wasn't. And that worked. And now she says she wants me to - be a friend -  and so she undid the mind control."

"She tells you more of her plans than she tells me." he agrees.

"I don't know her to have any evil plans right now," she says, after a moment. "She counseled me to - keep my head down and not annoy the paladins. ...I like working for the Reclamation government. I do not think that the mind control was very important to my desire for Cheliax to not fall apart. I was hoping that once I - was internally committed to ignoring my mother if she ordered me to do things that were wrong - I could get the atonement to go through. I tried intending this already but it is a fairly specific kind of intention."

"I would be happy to take you back to Heaven to try again. It would have to be in Heaven because you are very good at what you do."

"Yes. I can change my aura however I want -" Chaotic Good, though Alex probably can't appreciate it. Maybe he can appreciate this as-far-as-she-knows-unique talent of hers if she flickers Evil at him. "...I haven't been abusing that. And it wouldn't work on forbiddances though I could probably get it to if I'd been trying, which I haven't. I haven't been trying to get things past you - I have been trying to do a good job." ...she needs to not displace her desperate need for approval onto Alex, that's not romantic at all. "And negotiating with my mother about this proposal of hers where we are friends."

"And trying to convince me you had a lovely childhood. I never asked if you were telling deceptive partial-truths during our Aktun chats. It didn't seem - fair. It was your story to tell the way you wanted to."

Oh. He's really very easy to underestimate, isn't he, especially if mercy is not among the motivations you're in the habit of recognizing. She should apologize for misleading him. She doesn't want to.

"I wanted to have chosen my life. It was a pretty good life. It seems to me like it would be perfectly satisfactory, to have chosen it."

"I would be very impressed by someone who chose that life. I am still very impressed by you but - I wish you had gotten to choose it."

"That would have been nice. Though then maybe I wouldn't have, and we'd have lost. I don't actually wish that had happened."

"I can't find myself wishing that either. But that doesn't mean I don't wish we had won - cleaner. Same as all the dead soldiers, and the dead in Corentyn."

"You care about everybody. It's very endearing. Very disconcerting, at first."

"I imagine it's easier when you're raised into it and… it would not have been strategic to raise you to care about everybody. Even if I'd had the skills and connections to do what you did it would have broken me." Also Myrabelle is Evil and does not, herself, care about everybody. "Also I don't think even absent strategic concerns your mother would have valued that."

Lilia feels defensive of her mother, again. It seems she feels defensive of her mother exactly as much as before but is now uncomfortably aware that it's unreasonable of her. "I thought she would be disappointed in me for deciding to be Lawful Good. Or - feel disconnected from me, feel like I was becoming something she didn't like. She didn't really do that. It might just be - I was more Evil than her, by the end of the war, and moving back in her direction. I don't know."

Myrabelle has a complicated history with Lawful Good. He cannot say that. He needs his ten minutes and then he's pretty sure he can say that, in this confidential conversation, but he's not going to without the ten minutes.

…sitting in silence for ten minutes would probably communicate a lot that he's not supposed to communicate without first sitting in silence for ten minutes. That's… a bit of a pickle. "That seems possible. Or - if she wanted you to be free, she might have considered it an encouraging sign that you were becoming Lawful Good, even if - or because - she didn't approve."