"...in this scenario he won't do it without your express advance consent. Since he is a decent person and loves a you and all. If that's reassuring."

"Mm-hm."

"...sorry?"

"He's looking for threads that'll be picked up later to justify everyone suddenly hurting him and you're dropping some."

"But he knows one of us, he knows we'd never -"

"Yeah, I started to say 'I'd never' to my Maitimo once. He said 'Kib would never'. The difference has been rather driven home - it's really amazing how convincingly your personality goes on all sorts of nastiness, works way better than trying to pin it on Aydanci or Findekáno -"

He looks neutral.

He just looks confused.

"Is the premise here that you are too innocent to fill in the blanks," Kib asks Bright. "I could relate the highlights of the time I was rolled back and Aydanci decided he didn't want me to have boyfriends and Maitimo didn't like that answer, would that be fun."

"...I've never actually dated anybody so I think I'd be missing the implications of a story about romantic strife for that reason, rather than innocence as it relates to how terrible other worlds are? You can tell me about it if you like..."

Snort.

"...'romantic strife'."

Okay now he's totally bewildered. 

"Yeah I guess you could sum it up like that if this seems to you to capture the spirit of 'he told me he didn't mind being secret from Aydanci too, I told him no we actually had to break up, he fucked me anyway, I told Aydanci I wanted to move back to our world and why, Aydanci - they had to try thirty times to get something I didn't find completely outrageous, eventually they went with "had doubts I was really Aly". Left me, and left Maitimo with nobody who needed appeasing by my presence - told everyone I'd gone with my husband, threw me in a dungeon for variously abusive visits at his convenience'? Does that seem best summarized that way."

"Eventually I escaped and took Findekáno off into my world and I don't know what that was supposed to turn into because around then I could no longer be kept awake and the scenario was abandoned when I shut down."

"What does the Enemy even - get out of -"

"I'm pretty sure Sauron gets off on it but I don't know about Melkor or for that matter special guest star Thuringwethil."

"Do you want us to leave?"

"It doesn't matter, I don't have built-up flinches about this stuff. When I get a rescue hallucination I'm very snuggly."

" - I kind of think it matters - I wouldn't want to - if there was any point at which you thought that was plausible, no matter how misinformed you were at the time -"

"Normally when confronted with the evidence of my senses and not aware that I'm in Angband I do in fact believe them. My Maitimo would never. He just gets adorably turned on trimming my hair for me, that's all. Or he used to."

Shiver.