And after a little while he wakes. " - you okay -"

"New you is set to open a door whenever."

Hug. " - there's a case to be made that any Vala who'd hurt you over it is a Vala we don't want with access to Milliways and the multiverse, that it's a good proxy for value alignment and there are lots of them and we should just close the door again if -"

"If you wanted to look harder for more certainly cooperative Valar you probably should have said so before I forked your alt."

"I don't think we could find better from a book. Doesn't mean that if it's not going as well as the books would have suggested we're stuck -"

"I suppose, theoretically, you could shut the door on us, have Minor and an Elf from my Arda respectively make a drone and hold the door to get me dismissed, and resummon me if you didn't like how things were looking."

"Okay. I am not promising not to do that but I'd make sure Miranda agreed." Hug. 

Hug. "It'll probably be fine."

"I hope so. Have you talked to Miranda -"

"Came here first."

Squeeze. "Doesn't make a ton of sense to hurry, given that it may not have been any time at all downstairs."

"This is true."

Kiss.

No hurry at all.

Cam says a very thorough maybe-goodbye to his boyfriend.

Who holds it together. Though he's maybe not going to interact with an alt for the time being they'd see right through him - these Valar had better not be evil -

And then Cam goes and talks to Miranda, and then he goes downstairs to the new Maitimo.

"Okay."

He goes over to the door and opens it.

And closes it again and leans against the wall, expression carefully blank -

"...what?"

"- I have kids. Uh, he has kids. I-have-kids-in-the-next-140-Years, I should have thought of that, it's not even especially surprising -"

"I didn't. Even think of that. I'm so sorry - should've - my alt is a thirteen year old girl of course there could be more variety we should've checked I'm sorry."

"I'd still rather - at least you didn't grab me from when they were three or something -"

"Should've maybe asked one of your dad, at least then it's a known quantity, they like forking one of 'em wanted ten -"

"He wouldn't be okay with missing their childhoods either, though, don't think -"

"No, of course not, but wouldn't've been mid-childhood the same year - or at least we would've known to check the dates - I'm so fucking sorry."

"Anyway. Sorry. I'll go through, just need a minute."