They look at each other and then take hands and head up the stairs.

He curls up in a ball against the bar and starts very quietly crying.

"Hey, it's okay, don't cry."

"Don't lie."

"I am not going to let things not be okay. You're - look, when you have as many people as there are in that picture of the city, you have to delegate some things, you can't be personally responsible for everything. I think you should delegate this particular thing."

"This is not a thing you are equipped to solve. You will be someday and you'll be so good at it but you don't need to be yet."

"...I want to solve it. Even if it wasn't my resonsility and it is because Valinor is my home and I have to keep it safe and these people are my people and they trust me -"

"There are lots and lots of worlds out there and lots of people who would be our people if we knew them and all of them need your help and there is only so much of you. Your Valinor's safe. It'll be safe forever. I promise. - want to help me interview demons who want to adopt children from 1802 orphanages?"

Aww.

"Orphanages?"

"- my world is not as nice as Valinor and some kids had both their parents die and they don't have anyone to take care of them, and there's another world that doesn't have kids at all but some of the people in it might want to be parents - Cam did we get any mail while Hell wasn't going at a crawl -"

"...form thank-you-note from the poppy gardens."

"I wanted to ask him why - there are a lot of things magic can help with - but it seemed - rude, like I'd be claiming I had the authority to decide if his reasons were good enough or not - anyway, it's good it didn't work but I felt badly for him."

Nod.

"Looks like there're no people to interview yet, kiddo. You want to go sing with the Elves some more?"

He scampers off. 

"Still need an answer on whether dead summoners daevafy outside Revelation before it's even worth considering bringing the Valar in."

"Yes, but at least now waiting for that information doesn't involve sequestering a little kid from his parents."

"Yeah." Sigh. "Any results on the mysterious not-magic thing that checks whether the Doom affects chips?"

Cam checks the report from his machine learning boxes upstairs. "...yes and it does."

" - so what does that imply -"

"It implies the Valar are big on mind control?"

"I don't think we should let them anywhere near a universe that has been rid of them."

"Maybe sense can be talked into them, maybe soul-Elves have a better class of Valar, maybe the New Valinor population would rather have them back anyway..."