Gonna start dismantling everything for peacetime. Maybe have something people can enlist in instead of the army, if they want the - cross-ethnic and cross-species exposure and the immersion and the advancement opportunities - but it can be building infrastructure or making magic items...

You can send them to help colonize the south continent.

Oooooh. I shall.

They'll appreciate it!

Kiss!!

Game of Governor tomorrow?

That sounds absolutely perfect.

Then the next day they can play. He does not let Cor have anything easily but he does indulge in staring delightedly at Cor more often.

Cor likes being stared delightedly at but not too much to ruthlessly stomp Maitimo's plans.

He is, as ever, captivated by this, but this time he does not immediately sweep Cor off to bed. "Come here? I need to tell you something."

"...yeah? What -" He goes and tucks himself under Maitimo's arm.

Snuggle. "I love watching you think. It's - I watch thinking the way other people watch - sports, or something, and you're so lovely at it and it's so elegant and sculpted -"

Giggle. "That's sweet."

"A few days after I met you I realized I'd been wrong about something really important. I'd - hurt people and I hadn't needed to, because I'd thought that - being willing to hurt people went hand-in-hand with being willing to get done the sort of things I needed to be able to get done, that they were the same skill, that you could be a good and soft person or a dangerous and cruel one. It, uh, was less obviously stupid in context, I hadn't met anyone else who could match me at 'dangerous' without compromising at all on anything else."

"- I would not have pegged that in particular as my unique skill but, yeah, I have that."

"You have a lot of unique skills. That was the one that, uh, I hadn't even realized I could have."

Cor squeezes his hand. "What happened?"

Lean. "The civil war - I killed Findekáno's parents. I had to, there was no way to do it without that. I think he agreed, actually - but you can understand things you can't forgive - I needed him. He would have left. So I kept him, I made him swear to stay."

"- uh."

"I did tell you it was horrible. I can explain my reasoning in more detail if you're curious but it's, uh, really not the important thing."

"You needed him like - how -"

"Like before the war."

"Why did... you need that?"

"People were dying on my orders all the time, or worse, the stakes couldn't have been higher and it wasn't ever going to change and I was shit at this job, I wasn't ready for it - I don't think anyone could have been ready for it - and there was one thing that had been right in Valinor and it was gone but I could sleep at night as long as I had the facsimile."

"I may need to talk to him."

"Of course."