"Miranda's husband is a Curufinwë? Yes, he would be. I think even with - Tireh called it 'better childhoods' - we're more vindictive people than you."

"Yeah."

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

" - sorry. I can stop."

"It's not a big deal, I'm just not psychic and don't know what to read into it."

"You said once I had permission to continue having an uncanny understanding of your thought processes. Do I, uh, still have that permission."

"I guess."

"I like being in the same room as you - particularly when you're thinking about or working on things of interest to you - because you have unusually interesting and legible thought processes and I can get a lot from watching you and they're all very - neat and reasoned and endorsed and coherent and it's - elegant, like watching dancing. That is what I am doing when I look at you that way."

"It's really hard to reconcile that with all the rape. I can sort of square it with the keeping me prisoner, but..."

Nod. "I can't quite find the words - if it's important to you I'll give it some thought - or I could bounce it to you but that seems like the kind of thing someone might not want."

"Kib told me, 'at least he couldn't do a thing about Aly's happy marriage' - I'm not sure you realize how - I got comparison-based sympathy from a fucking Angband survivor."

"Because he had this past life. And his Melkor couldn't fuck with his past life memories. So he never had to - question whether every single time it was - like the difference between having your eggs poached or scrambled, whether he wanted to be there or not. ...she, his past life was female."

"I didn't realize that, no."

"You said you missed me and you were able to address that with activities that bore no resemblance except that you got off and I was there. Everything else was apparently not what you were missing."

"Everything else I couldn't possibly have. Except with a song and that I'd never do to you -"

"...thanks, I guess."

"I'm not asking for a medal. But - it's not that it was good enough it's that everything else was gone forever anyway."

"I missed - what I thought had been going on - and it would not have even begun to approach that with so - pathetic a resemblance. I miss Gatesnest and I can't solve that problem by renaming a train station. And derailing incoming trains."

"Well. I've gotten quite good at soothing grief over irrevocably broken deeply treasured relationships by hurting the people involved just to watch how they take it."

"Now you know how I take it."

"It seems vaguely insulting to apologize but I will if you'd like."

"I don't really have a preference about that. I guess what I want to know isn't if you regret it now but if you would've done it anyway."

"I would not have."