"I would ordinarily think my impression on this was being colored by how Elves are compared to humans and psychologically-humans about marriage but Kib's the same way so I think it applies - this is awkward to put in words, I can rephrase it if I need to - if policy decisions have effects like this on the relationship something somewhere has gone horribly wrong, and if the expressed regret is having disclosed information that adds to the completeness of a relationship, the obvious place wherein something may have gone horribly wrong is in attempting to have a complete relationship."

"- maybe do rephrase that -"

"If you regret telling him things that he regards to be part of a fully realized partnership to tell, then from his perspective that reasonably backpropagates into regret about embarking on that serious a partnership in the first place. Wishing you hadn't told him reads as wishing you'd been less involved, in general. I don't think he actually expects you to dump him but he may have serious doubts about whether this is because you're young or chasing sunk costs or something."

" - oh. No, I'm treating 'I have panic attacks at the thought people close to me think that child rape cases should be reported to Ganymede without the consent of the victim and have enough information to act on that even if they currently think highly enough of me they can probably be dissuaded' as a inconvenient thing about me which I should mostly work around until I can look up the state of the art on trauma processing or whatever and make it stop being true. The deficit is with me."

Nod. "That makes sense. What he heard was that you wish he didn't know, not that you wish you could - cope with him knowing - so that's where he's making inferences from."

"I'll talk with him about that."

"That will probably help."

"Thank you for stopping by."

"Of course." Hug?

Hug. "If you figure out more information please don't act on it. I'll make sure no one else can get hurt and beyond that I don't know but I know it's really important to me that I decide."

Nod.

And he goes to find Cam.

Couch by the fireplace, eyes closed, trying to fall asleep but not there yet.

He sits down. "Hey. Uh, you're not kicked out of your room or anything."

Cam opens his eyes. "No? I could get another one. Or steal yours, I think rent is current on it. Musical rooms."

"I'm not mad at you. I'm sorry I didn't explain things more clearly, I didn't mean for you to think I was."

"I didn't think you were mad per se."

"Mirelóte did some translating." Snuggle. "I feel scared, I feel helpless, I am not used to feeling that way and don't know how to go about changing facts about my head so I don't feel that way, so it feels easier to wish I hadn't made the decisions that put me in that position but those aren't - really the problem. I - are you going to go report him to whatever authority claims jurisdiction, should it come up -"

Wingwrap. Headshake.

"Thank you. So, uh, that doesn't make the feeling scared and helpless go away, it's sort of tied to - the difference between feeling like I have something as a matter of course and feeling like I have it because I've performed my way into a special exception, but I think I can probably get there eventually. And that's much preferable to never having told you."

"Will it help if I list material differences, or...?"

"That would help a lot, yes."

Cam belatedly pulls out his wand and casts the conversational privacy spell. "Your mom has not summoned the creep to make him stand in a five foot circle till she gets rid of him or dies. You consciously and at more than twice the girl's age took a risk, which doesn't mean you couldn't decide you wanted to prosecute him if you were so inclined but means it implies a markedly different risk profile for people who didn't take that risk and don't know how he conducts himself. Insofar as he has the ability to appear in assorted locations that may be inadequately secured against his magical powers, that is a security problem we are currently pausing his whole world to fix in the general case rather than a feature of his being dead which feature is addressed by an existing imperfect but usually okay justice system."

"If people'd rather handle things like this with a vigilante summons than have to testify to Ganymede I'm - not unreservedly okay with that but I'd talk to them before calling the cops on them. I agree that letting him free would have been a bad solution."

"You usually get good or at least informative results from talking to people; it makes sense for you to have it as a first resort.

"I don't know if it makes any difference that it didn't even occur to me to compare the situations at the time I said I was going to go send the tips in, you presented yours as - sort of distinct in character and I mostly don't think about it unless the creep comes up in conversation, I probably should've."