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He's a sweet kid and she should maybe ask if he's okay. But he looks fine.
"Good luck," she says, and disappears in a puff of smoke.
au
"And couldn't tell myself it was a trade-off except insofar as I'd set up my brain to let it be one."
" - that and having a prospect of the war ending and having to think about what I wanted my life to be like now that there was more than a ghost of a chance I could actually live it, and - when I meet someone I get a model of them, very quickly, and my model of you was just - better than me at thinking about this - and no matter how I tried to explain it I could just reason right out how unconvinced you'd be - started thinking all the time about it, trying to explain it in terms you'd understand - and they just weren't there, once you looked straight at it it was just horrible..."
disapparatus
"I'm... curious what would have happened if you hadn't had the luxury to - time the news -"
"I don't know. I would have been - a lot less credible in claiming that I'd meant to tell you soon anyway. And - and the telling you is important. I was tempted to just stop and let Findekáno leave and maybe get himself deoathed down south and pretend it hadn't happened - it'd be so much easier - the only thing to gain by telling you was that it was the only decent thing to do -
- anyway. I don't know. As long as it was after Melkor died I think I'd mostly have just - explained the same - before then I would have been concerned entirely with the revelation not torpedoing the war effort -"
disapparatus
"It doesn't have any bearing directly on whether I ought to have killed Melkor - I guess I might have been scared, if I'd found out badly, that would have been a problem -"
" - yeah, that would have been, if you tried to leave -" squeeze. "Findekáno thought I should wait until after the war to ask you out. I should have. I would if I met you now, but that was before I - thought everything through."
disapparatus
Nod. "Then if I'd found out before you decided to tell me it wouldn't have seemed - personally threatening -"
"Yes, exactly, you'd have been upset in general but not scared. And wouldn't have - felt like you'd consented under false pretenses -" headshake - "I am sorry for not waiting."
disapparatus
"Careful with your declension there then. - Are there ways it could have shaken out where I would've been in danger -"
"- if you found out while Melkor was still around and refused to help I can imagine committing to hurt you if you didn't help."
"Demilitarize, start pressing on various social progress things, import and translate books that you or someone else recommends as - transmitting good values. Work out a more distributed chain of command now that we can afford it. Talk with Huan about maging to scout, send aid south."
disapparatus
"My world is not uniformly great on social progress either, it's just different and Gatesnest was cosmopolitan enough to do a sort of common-denominator thing."
"I'm not expecting it to be a panacea, just that - there exist books which would be a good influence if widely read."