About how I'm feeling about you? You wouldn't mind that? 

I don't know exactly how to feel about that, but I am more scared of you not talking to me than about you talking to her about me.

I devoutly hope she feels the same way. 

Obviously if we disagree a lot about a lot of things that is going to cause some problems. It seems - unlikely, except insofar as we have asymmetrical preferences about one another.

You can tell her anything you want about me and not consider it a breach of my privacy, for now. I want you to keep talking to me. The thing I am most scared of is that you will stop talking to me. Or - that I will be less important to you than I once was. And that's probably what she's the most scared of, too, so you should feel free to talk to her about me if it makes it at all easier to continue being honest with me in return.

- actually the thing I am most scared of is that I am a horrible lich-created monstrosity probably grown for malicious purposes and this might have bad effects of some kind even if we do destroy his phylactery, but, you know, relationship-wise.

If this actually makes things harder or is terrible then we can revisit it.

I'm not worried about your being a horrible lich-created monstrosity grown for malicious purposes. That is, it looks quite likely that you were created by a lich and I'm sure his purposes were malicious – oh, that can't be very comforting – but it doesn't much signify, does it? The thing he made is you. 

And I know you. I've lived with you, shared my mind with you, upset the natural order of creation with you. I'm sure that lich was very frightening when we were small. But now – whatever he intended, I can't imagine it matters. We'll fix it. Very few people have succeeeded as thoroughly as we two at surpassing our creators.

I suppose you're right. It's certainly no worse than what we expected to happen to me when we got married in the first place.

I should probably heal people. I don't want to, but she'll want to talk to you without me there, and I really should try to be reliable. Just - can we talk more when I get home?

Of course. Ideally the three of them, but he can wait to raise that notion until he's spoken to all parties concerned. 

All right. I love you.

And she can plane shift out and return to work. She supposes she's lucky that her primary work requires almost no ability to think about anything complicated.

He's not ready to have this conversation, but then, he doesn't expect he's going to be. 

Freedom. 

It's a weird experience, being turned into a book and coming back. It's a bit like being killed and waking up in your clone. There's nothing in between the spaces, as if one didn't exist at all for a while.

"Did you determine what I am?"

"You're exactly what you think you are. The lich did create a clone – a perfect copy, all your memories, all your abilites, you link to Wishbone, and no, I can't explain how – but that's not you. You're the original Naima.

I think it happened about a month after our wedding. I think you've been in that cave ever since." 

It's monumentally inadequate, of course, but – 

"I'm sorry."

"Oh."

She wants to ask if he knows what the other one is, but he just said he didn't. It's hard to think; she's not sure if that's her missing headband, or the week without seeing anyone, or a side effect of being booked, or the enormity of the situation.

"The other one, she's - you don't know anything else about her?"

"I'm going to go back for the lich's notes and try to figure out what happened. It's been four years, and I didn't know anything was wrong until two hours ago."

Well, they didn't know each other as well back then - but that's not fair, if she has all of the other one's memories, it's not as though she doesn't recognize herself in them. Or, well, thinking back to who she was right after they saved Isarn - that's so long ago, so hard to remember all the specifics of how her attitude has changed since then - there was a sense in which she was a different person, a person she likes much less well than the person she is today. Or, at least, the person she thought she was today. But it's not a person whose transformation was sudden, or implausible. It felt natural.

She wants a hug. She wants to cry. She doesn't really have any idea how Elie is thinking of her now and isn't confident what will happen if she acts like she would have a week ago. Or - like the copy would have, a week ago.

"Are the memories I have from since then accurate?" 

"Yes. Which suggests some limitations on how the psychic link between you could have worked, because Naima – the other Naima – was mind-blanked or in other planes for much of that time –" 

He cuts himself off. Magical theory is a particularly cowardly way of avoiding the subject at hand, and he doesn't know what she wants. He should be able to tell, but he's gotten lazy, relying on their psychic rappaport. She might be furious. She might want to pack up her children and never speak to him again. She might want him to tell her that of course they'll be disposing of the copy now – but no, she's Naima. He knows her better than that. 

"We can figure that out later. What do you need right now?"

- she stops in the middle of trying to think of the next mature, responsible question to have about the situation, the next thing she ought to think about before letting herself feel anything. It sounds like a real question, a question meant for Naima, not for a stranger who thinks she's Naima and who he's trying to be polite to on account of her being very confused and having traveled for six days to get to him.

"A hug?" she says, trying not to hate the tremor in her voice.

Yeah. He can do that. 

She hugs him tight. She sobs, but only once. It turns out she needs to know that he'll let her cry on him more than she needs to cry on him right now.

"I need my magic items," she blurts. The words come out like vomit, like they always do at times like this, when she isn't insistently preventing them and being reasonable. "Not all of them, necessarily, maybe, I realize this is a horrifically inconvenient thing to need when many of them can't easily be duplicated, but I don't even have a ring of sustenance or a basic headband right now and it's awful, not having anything at all while you and she have all of your normal things. I need to see Wishbone, to talk to him and prepare my spells and stop feeling unnervingly helpless. I need to see the children, I know I've gone longer without them before but I need to see them this time. I need to talk to Catherine, or maybe Ione, so you aren't the only person I can talk to about this - actual Catherine, I mean, she'll have better advice - and I need to know who we're keeping this secret from. I need to know what we are, to one another, soon but not immediately if you need time to think about it. I need to know what's going to happen to the copy. I need to know more about the copy, what she is, what all of the implications of this are. I - might need you to apologize for how you treated me when you thought I was a random person, not because I think you did anything wrong whatsoever, it's just that it hurt and it still hurts and I need to hear that it was based on false information and doesn't apply anymore - I might need the telepathic bond back but I assume you still have one with her and I'm not really sure whether it'll be the same, but I hate not having one -"

It is too much, she knows, too many things to need at once - but Elie has asked, and the twenty seconds she spent trying to be strong and responsible hurt, and she's terrified that if she doesn't get all of the need-vomit out now, while the offer is open, then there might not be another offer that successfully convinces her that she's allowed to ask for whatever she needs, and then she will have to keep all of the needs inside her forever, budgeting enough of herself to be strong about them. The need-vomit feels safer than risking that, right now. At least if Elie actually cannot handle this many requests, he will fail to address them, or tell her that he can't, and she will be able to know which ones are too much, and afterwards she can direct her strength at bearing whichever hardships are actually necessary for her to bear.

It's probably bad form to feel a great wash of relief when one's wife is sobbing into one's shoulder, but thank gods, those are some concrete things he can do. It's not quite vanishing into his workshop for three days and making the whole problem vanish in a fit of concentrated magical brilliance, but he'll take it. 

"I can get you the basic items right away. I have my old headband of vast intelligence, you can use that until I have time to make another one. Everything except the earrings and the robes of the cerulean pharaoh I can probably duplicate – and if you tell me what you want in a set of robes, I can do something there too. Wishbone is with the other Naima right now; she's out on her healing circuit. And I had Rasima take them out when we still weren't sure what was happening. When we go back to the material I'll tell everyone to come back home, and we can tell Alfirin you need to speak to Catherine tomorrow. We probably should tell Alfirin all of what's going on, because I want her help trying to understand it, but beyond that it's up to – well, it's up to the two of you. I wish I could tell you more about what she was, but I don't know, we both thought you'd want to be turned back into a person as soon as possible so that's what we did. I don't have the things for a permanency here but we can put the telepathic bond back, I can have two – " 

Or ideally one with the three of them but he doesn't think either Naima would go for that – 

"And I feel awful about what I said before, and I'd never have done it had I known. I feel awful for having let any of this happen in the first place, but that doesn't change the fact that you are my wife. It's just – it's just that she is, too."

She's not sure she's ever felt so many emotions at once in her life. She feels - relief, that he's holding her and agrees that he's married to her and is not afraid to tackle any of the dozen problems she's experiencing right now. She feels scared, that neither of them knows what's going on with the copy, or whether the copy has some hidden goal that might trigger before any of them are capable of taking the lich out of the picture. She feels a little stab of pain at the idea that he's decided that he's also married to the copy, but - 

"I understand." They both thought - " - you've spoken to her?"

It isn't until she hears the accusatory edge in her voice that she realizes that of course he spoke to her, they have a telepathic bond, and now she can add embarrassment and shame and jealousy to the list. The other Naima probably wasn't such a hag about the situation.

"You have to understand – oh, that's not fair. This is all very new and you don't have to do anything. But if you can, I'd very much like for you to try to understand that this is someone I've shared my life with for four years. You know that. They're your memories too."

She is going to bury herself further in this hug until she stops feeling sick, how about that. 

" - I know. Sorry. I'm - overwhelmed, not angry." She is also a bunch of other things, but she doesn't think angry is one of them, apart from maybe at herself, and she really feels like that shouldn't count. 

"When you're feeling ready, I badly want all three of us to talk. But that can wait." 

"That makes sense." She takes a deep breath. She feels - scared, and wants to talk to Elie about it so that he can come up with ideas for how to respond to the problem, except that part of her is totally convinced that if Elie's first instinct was to talk to the copy and not to unbook her and talk to her it's because he's implicitly thinking of the copy as one that he has an actual emotional connection with, as the person who is really his wife, and not the person who is also his wife out of dogged desire to stand by his promises. It does not feel very safe or very comfortable to think about talking to Elie as she would have a week ago, not if it's possible that his heart is mostly with the other one.

- but if she pulls away from him unnecessarily, and the other one doesn't, then he will belong to the copy even more, and that thought hurts even more than talking about her feelings while feeling like the second favorite, even though talking about her feelings still feels like it might hurt really quite a lot in this situation. All of her feelings are incredibly ugly right now, and if he hadn't been so forgiving of every embarrassing thing she's ever said for four years, she would be pretty sure that he was going to be disgusted with her. But he's never been disgusted with her before - even if it was technically someone else that he wasn't disgusted with - so -

"I understand that this is probably necessary. I admit that it feels kind of scary right now."

He's scared too. He's scared of the hitch in Naima's breath when she asked if he'd spoken – dear gods, they're going to need nicknames – and he's scared of heavy little pauses and thinking about who he goes to first. But Naima has enough to worry about without concerning herself with him. 

"You don't have to do anything before you're ready."