"Okay. I - think that I probably need some time - more than two minutes, anyway - but I am not sure if that's the only thing I need. I'm honestly having trouble thinking about exactly what those things are, here - "

She should take a moment to think about that. She's - well, she's scared of what the outcome is going to be, but really even more scared that seeing them having a conversation with her will make it obvious that they know how to talk to one another and she doesn't - not that this wasn't already obvious from the last conversation the three of them had together, even if that one probably shouldn't count -

" - maybe I could use a list of things we're going to need to talk about."

"The children. Who we're going to tell what's really happening, and what we're going to tell everyone else. The hospitals and the healing circuit – actually, before that, you should try to prepare spells and see what abilities you have. 

...That said, taking a few minutes before we try to put our lives back in order might not be the worst idea."

"...yeah." Deep breath.

"We shouldn't figure out everyone we're going to tell and everything we're going to tell them until we know more. Plausibly until we've - how many days has it been?"

"Day and a half, outside"

At least he didn't keep her booked for any significant time longer than he needed to, then; part of her unclenches a little at that. "Plausibly until we've handled the lich and whatever his plan was, assuming you haven't had a chance to yet. I don't want any large group of people knowing about this until it's no longer a vulnerability. But I should talk with the party and with her before that."

"We haven't dealt with the lich – it didn't seem like a priority until you showed up. 

Do you think you're ready to talk to her?"

It has always been the right decision to talk to Elie about her feelings before. It has taken a while to stop hurting, sometimes, but it has always worked out in the end. Although, technically, she does think she made the right decision in avoiding talking to him about her feelings until she was sure that she wanted to marry him and not resurrect her late husband, but that was only because she didn't know what she actually wanted, then -

- and she doesn't know exactly what she wants now. But whatever it is certainly involves Elie liking her, and the main reason talking to him wasn't a good idea the one time it ever wasn't was because she didn't know whether she wanted him to see her as someone who might be a wife to him at all. She's pretty sure that consideration no longer applies.

"I am noticing myself feeling enormously tempted to stop talking to you about how I feel until I've figured out what I want to happen, but intellectually I expect that that would almost certainly be counterproductive for getting any of what I expect that is.

I'm - scared of her."

"I'm very glad you told me instead of doing that. – She said the same thing." 

She makes a ridiculous sound that cannot quite decide whether it's a laugh or a sob. "See, on the one hand that makes me feel better, because if we come up with the same ideas and responses to things then maybe I can trust her to reliably behave in ways I think are reasonable - and maybe I don't have to worry about actually being worse than her, given that she's the one who actually did almost every tremendously good thing that I've done and it's occurred to me in the last minute to wonder whether I would have handled everything as well as she did if I were the one here and not her -

"- and on the other hand it makes me feel worse, because, if she's thinking the same things that I'm thinking then she's scared of me, too, and I do not have an enormously good track record of being kind and reasonable to people I'm scared of, it's just been... four years... since this has especially come up."

"You've grown a lot in the last four years, and not only in power. I know what you're going to say: she has. But I've read the book, Naima – every thought, every memory she has, it's there. In some ways this would be easier if you were more different, but you're not." 

Nod.

"I can probably manage to be civil. I should prepare spells and get some basic items and.... wear something that wasn't selected by a lich, probably, if I want to give myself every advantage at being reasonable."

"Do you want to wait here while I fetch some items and some clothes and Wishbone?"

"Wishbone should stay on the healing circuit until the end of the day, I think. I don't want to tip people off that something has happened. But I can wait for items and clothes, yeah."

That's a relief. He wasn't looking forward to telling Naima – other Naima – argh – that he needed to take her dog. 

"Done." 

It'll take him about ten sidereal minutes to gather everything and come back. 

She'll wait, and change into something that makes her feel somewhat more like herself, and then come right back to him for another hug.

"Thank you. Do you need anything, right now?"

"No." 

Wants, yes, but that's a different story. 

"You're sure? This must be - destabilizing." And she's realizing now that she doesn't actually know what to do with herself until the other gets back. She's not used to having large stretches of unscheduled time. Normally she would spend any she did come across with her husband or her children or the pile of de-prioritized papers at her desk, but every action she can think of seems fraught, right now.

"I think you're dealing with enough yourself just now." 

"All right." She's not really sure that there's much she can do to deal with it at the moment, but - "I suppose we should head home and give time a chance to pass, then."

"Diobel or – I thought Isarn. I'd like to avoid having to explain anything to the children until we've all gotten our story straight." 

"...right. That's - sensible." It's not very productive to let it sting, is it. "Isarn is fine."

"And – I don't have all the things for the permanency, but I can give us a telepathic bond." 

" - right. I don't think I even want the permanency until I've thought more about things. But I would appreciate the bond. Thank you."

Maybe it's a good thing, she tells her earrings, clipping them back on between patients.

     I don't know what you're talking about, but maybe! 

Obviously it'll take some getting used to. Obviously a part of me would prefer to have Elie all to myself. But the other Naima said that she had her hexes, and - if that's so, it potentially gives me more time to spend with my husband and children, and on everything else that matters to me, because the second Naima - I mean, the first Naima, really, I suppose - is the only person in the world who can give me days off without leaving more people to die in comparison to what I was doing before. 

     That does sound like a good thing! Can we start a fashion magazine, I liked the idea where we started a fashion magazine.

Maybe. Not really what I'm thinking about right now. Really I should be ecstatic that there's a second one of me - or a first one of me - given that another aligned archmage is tactically and economically an enormous deal on top of the enormous time saving benefits to me personally.

     Probably. What does ecstatic mean?

Happy.

     Oh. Yeah!

Yeah.

She tries not to let on that she's extremely frustrated to any of the people she's tapping. Luckily they are mostly sick infants and elderly and urban poor who are far too wrapped up in their own dramas, each as important to them as hers are to her, to care very much about her frustration, but there are some people who consider her emotions important information, and she's gotten somewhat better at hiding them from people whose business doesn't concern them since she was twenty.

The earrings, however, know her better than that.

     Ohhhh, are you saying you're not happy? There's a copy of you and you're not happy?

Naima grits her teeth and taps a patient normally and does not put any tells of frustration into her observable motions at all. I'm the copy. And I guess I might be saying that I'm not happy. But I probably should be. Or if I shouldn't be happy, it's because I'm some kind of subtly dominate-vulnerable magical lich time bomb who might kill all of my friends, not because the other me probably justifiably hates me for marrying her husband under her nose and having two children with him effectively via deception, and definitely not because I have the gall to be jealous of her. 

     Why are you jealous? What does she have that you don't?

Nothing! But she has things that I used to - well, that I thought that only I had. I guess arguably she does have a few things that I don't have. She's - Rahim's actual mother - and she's actually the woman that Elie fell in love with, so any differences between us that do exist are things where - I'm the imitation, and she's the one who was imperfectly captured.

     Do you think Elie loves her instead of you?

No! Of course not! But - he loves her in addition to me, and to the same extent, I think, which leaves the same amount of resources split two ways, which logically leaves less of them for each person. Or else he doesn't, and loves me more, which would be a terrible wrong perpetrated against her and is so painful to think about that I don't really want to consider it. Or else he... does end up loving her more, once exposed to the real thing, in which case -

Maybe the reason I'm not happy about this is that I thought I was done worrying about playing politics to control what happens in my household. That I'd never have to do it to get what I needed from Elie. That our marriage was always going to be simple, immovable, a constant that could be relied on, and it would simply go on always producing everything that I needed it to produce. That I could confidently know that the only people that Elie might prioritize above me were the ones we made together, which is really a kind of prioritizing me and the promises he made to me anyway. For four years there's been nothing that could possible challenge my reign in my own household. I haven't had to worry about whether Elie will have time for my opinions, or whether he'll get tired of me because he heard all of them from someone else already, or whether someone else with just as strong a claim to him will disagree with me about what we should be doing as a household.

This is not a very good impulse at all, is it. Needing to be the undisputed most important female member of my household in order to be happy. It suggests - a kind of person whose happiness is fundamentally at odds with those who have the same needs as her, or else who needs to live in an extremely small household, which I am obviously also not doing. It suggests a petty tyrant, which Elie would hate, and an ugliness of spirit that the first thought I have to that is to hope that the same hatable impulse exists in the other one, even though both of us feeling like this would obviously be even worse. If I were a better person I probably wouldn't feel suffocated about going back to being one of many women who gets to make decisions for my household, some of whom have more pull than I do. Or about having to share my husband with one of the only other people in the world who can plausibly be said to deserve him.

Are you still listening?

     Sorry! Yes. I am always listening. I just didn't understand any of that. It sounded complicated.

She's going to want you, too, isn't she. I don't know how to feel about that at all. It's - your decision, I suppose. If I'm going to try to be just about it.

       IIIII think you two should work that out between yourselves, reply the earrings, who have always hated social conflict over who should get to wear them.

Naima bothers to think about it, and remembers that the person who originally picked up the earrings off of Ileosa's corpse was, in fact, the other Naima. 

At the end of the day she takes her apprentices home, picks up Wishbone, and succeeds at not taking a break to meditatively wander around her hospital until she finds the copy that she intentionally made of herself, a simulacrum of her that now wanders the hospital giving out information about herbalism and medical interventions. It would be an exercise in self-hatred, to compare herself to it - which doesn't mean she's not going to do it, she's just going to do it when she won't be simultaneously disrespecting the other Naima's time.

Are you still with her? she asks Elie. I'm ready now.