"But the other one will be tapping at full power."

"We could claim you're a different person entirely. Pretend a new witch is picking up the art and working alongside me."

"That won't work. We'd have to tell the children." 

"Well, we weren't going to lie to the children about the situation anyway, were we? So any lie we tell the public is going to be different from what we tell the children. I admit this leaves some opportunity for things to leak, though."

"For what it's worth, I really do think we could claim that bilocation works any which way we like and be believed. I don't necessarily like it, but – actually, what is the reason not to just tell the truth?"

She's silent for a moment.

"It's embarrassing and I don't want to. I am not sure whether there's a tactical reason."

"That's enough, then. This is hard enough already. For both of you."

"I suppose we could always have invented some new spell that does something similar but different to what bilocation has been seen to do before. Give it a new name, make up whatever effects we like."

"It certainly wouldn't be the least plausible thing we've done."

She looks off to the side and holds herself, unhappily. 

"People will expect us to have access to all of the same information. Or they will correctly suspect that one of us is a copy, and not the real one."

"Maybe. Maybe they'll be afraid to ask questions."

Is that better? She's not sure it feels better. "We can't hide which one is the secondary, though, if we're both out tapping."

That is idiotic! She successfully doesn't say that that's idiotic. Maybe assuming the weaker one is a less real copy is the obvious conclusion, but it's a wrong conclusion, and therefore ought to bow in the face of evidence to the contrary. Although presenting evidence to the contrary might involve being open about the fact that the archmage who runs half the disease healing in the inner sea is some kind of monstrous lich-created experiment, which might not be better for either of them.

"Well, you don't have to tap," she says, which probably is a much worse thing to say than 'that's idiotic' would have been.

"It's possible" – he attempts to say delicately – "that the question of who came first means far more to the two of you than it will to anyone else."  

"Maybe."

Of course, what matters in terms of how people relate to them isn't exactly who came first, it's -

"The question is whether they're going to take both of us equally seriously. We have a copy, right now, and nobody takes it remotely seriously."

Oh. Of course the other one is also thinking about the simulacrum. 

"Well, in fairness to people, the previous copy doesn't really deserve to be taken seriously." She hopes. She hasn't spoken to it in a while. "You're obviously not a simulacrum."

- that was another patently stupid thing to say. She really means that she's obviously not a simulacrum, which she can't say because it feels obviously self-congratulatory. Making claims about her humanity seems sort of crass under the current circumstances.

UGH this is so much trying to ignore her feelings by way of talking about what feelings other people are going to have.

She thinks about saying that to the copy. It sounds excruciating. She thinks about saying something reasonable on the current topic, and that hurts, too. She thinks about hugging Elie, and immediately feels sort of suffocated about how she can't, right now.

She turns to him anyway. She can't really be honest and forthright, and she can't claim him as hers when the copy is here, but she can talk to him like a person about his goals, at least. They hurt less to think about than hers, but perhaps only because she doesn't know yet what they are.

"I'm sorry, this isn't the conversation I need to be having either. I'm sure our tapping procedure will be very important to figure out eventually, but it isn't urgent except in the sense that taking any time off at any point is already a bit of an atrocity. What do you need us to talk about, Elie?"