Traveler adopts the affect of a professor who's looking forward to being off work answering a good and slightly complicated but not especially remarkable question from a student. Luka makes a popcorn face.

"The... hypothetical person most similar to me who would find this deeply emotionally appealing would find it appealing because... they would be deeply curious how Luka feels toward them, as I am, and have faith that talking to him would provide information about that, which I don't. They would also desperately want, as I do, to find a way we could still achieve the lives we dreamed of building together," (Luka snorts) "and they would have hope that that's still possible, which I don't - or, rather, I do, but insofar as this represents an opportunity to try, I think so because our mysterious benefactors might be able to offer us something more useful than relationship therapy, though they tell me they can't. I might want, if I were an only slightly different person, to try to salvage some kind of personal relationship even if we're inevitably going to war and inevitably both going to die," (Luka bites his lip and seems to be straining to keep from grinning) "but that seems... deeply fraught, since our last conversation ended with Luka asking me not to speak to him again, and I rather assume he believes I'm not actually myself because I did grant him that. At least until this remarkably contrived excuse for us to talk to each other came up."

Ramona turns to Luka. "I found that a little hard to follow, but you seemed to be keeping up. Could you summarize it for me?"

It's true that Ramona is confused. She wonders if Traveler speaks more to show off than to communicate, or if it's just taking a while for the caffeine to kick in. She does actually hope Luka can help her understand -- but it's also helpful to see the same information filtered through each of the clients' points of view.

He tilts his head. "Do you want the kind of answer that 'he's trying so hard to technically answer all your questions as completely as possible without ever at any point engaging with the whole therapy thing' is or do you want the kind of answer I could give if I were trying to say every sentence he just said but just, like, not in an 'I have proper grammar because I'm so fucking detached' kind of way?"

Ramona laughs quietly, but tries to make warm eye contact with Traveler while she does so, so he feels included in the laugh, rather than laughed at.

Turning back to Luka: "Mostly the second thing -- what's the actual content? Why is Traveler potentially invested in this therapy, according to him?"

(Traveler raises an eyebrow but smiles slightly.)

"He misses me - wants to know what I'm thinking about him, because he's remarkably vain, wishes we were going to remake the world together, whatever. We haven't been talking because when he chained me up in his - let's say his incredibly stupidly designed torture chamber - I told him to leave me the fuck alone and he did exactly that, and now he's trying to imply that I just out of the blue told him we shouldn't talk anymore and he respected my boundaries." Luka delivers these last few words in a mocking tone.

Traveler grimaces, looks straight at Luka, and makes a vaguely incredulous face.

"He... chained? you up? in a torture chamber? that was stupidly designed?"

"I'm sorry, I'm going to need you to back way up and explain what was going on there."

Literal torture? BDSM? Or some alien thing that Ramona can't comprehend yet, or maybe ever?

Luka's face goes very like Traveler's has been; he was already very still, and he doesn't move. "I was under the impression that you weren't the sort of therapist who would like to hear about my trauma." His voice is almost as detached as Traveler's has been, but with a slight hint of something biting.

"Like to? No, I never enjoy hearing about my clients' trauma, but hearing about trauma is central to my work."

"And in this case, I think I need to know at least at a high level what happened there. It would not be responsible for me to help mend a relationship that is cruel or abusive."

"It is. Both of those."

"Thank you for telling me that."

"Given that, my top priority is to do whatever is in my power to prevent it from continuing to be abusive, and I might not be able to do that at all with both of you in the room at the same time, but I don't want to be too hasty. Do either of you have anything to say that would change the picture, here?"

Luka shakes his head slightly.

"I could say that I restrained him only to prevent him from taking rash actions that would endanger and probably kill not only himself but many other people. I could say that, and it would be true, and it would be wildly unfair, because - I knew at the time that if he were calmer, he would take actions that would have even higher odds of killing people." Traveler sighs. His voice is getting less bland, more quietly sad. "I knew at the time that what I was doing was torture. It would be emotionally satisfying to get you to see him as insane, like the people you would yourself imprison - you would want him in prison if you knew more - " (Traveler attempts to share a Meaningful Look with Luka; Luka, who is visibly blind and not looking at him in the first place, nonetheless looks pointedly away) " - but it would be just as accurate to say that he’s part of a geopolitical faction opposed to mine. What I did was in some ways best understood as an act of war."

And he stiffens and then shifts to sit on top of the arm of the couch, very casually, one knee drawn up to his chest and his hands linked loosely in front of his calf.

"If, when you say 'abuse', you mean a very specific pattern where one person takes advantage of another and uses threats and guilt trips to maintain a high degree of control - then neither of us has abused the other. But some of his scars are my fault, and what I've done to him is horrible, and what I've done to him is far kinder than what he's done to me - yes, Luka, I know you think it's the other way around, because you're an idiot." (Luka is still pointedly looking away and does not react.)

Ramona sits back, trying to process that entire download. It's a lot to take in.

If she can trust any of this information, she should believe that these two are opponents in a power struggle at a grand scale, and that Luka sought to kill a lot of people, possibly in the normal course of war. And to stop him, Traveler imprisoned him.

"Why was it necessary to torture Luka rather than just imprison him?"

"It was hard enough to do it at all; I couldn't have arranged a Danish minimum-security prison if I'd tried. But yes, it's worse than the bare minimum necessary suffering. It was politically expedient for me to let an ally hurt him further, both because of her reaction, and because it leaves him less lucid and less able to make plans. He would have considered it torture even if it were a Danish-style minimum-security prison, though. And - I would be remiss if I didn't say that it was - also in some respects emotionally satisfying, since he had already led a conspiracy to murder my son and then bragged about it."

"I see." And this time it's more true. A picture is starting to take shape. She's starting to feel less cranky and headachy as she gets more interested in the case. She's also not entirely sure she's trained for this, but she can make that assessment when she has a little more information.

"Luka, is there anything you want to add or edit about what we've discussed so far?"

"If we start saying 'actually, I was right to do that, because of what he did first,' we'll never stop, so no."

Ramona's training does not cover this situation. She was taught in Earthbound therapy school that if two people in a relationship are physically harming each other, attempting to murder each other's children, and so on, absolutely the last thing you should do is to help them stay close together. You should instead report the attempted murder if it involved a child and you should refer out both clients to separate individual therapists and make sure that anyone on the receiving end of violence makes a safety plan for getting out of danger.

Possibly it's different if the two people involved are from separate geopolitical factions who are at war? But that's not relationship therapy anymore, that's international diplomacy. (Interstellar? Who knows.) That's about hostage negotiations, and enforcing the Geneva Convention or the local equivalent if it even exists, and potentially some kind of spycraft.

This is, as they say, "out of Ramona's scope of practice."

She wishes she knew more about who sent this case her way, and whether that was a considered decision based on Ramona's actual skills and potential to do good. She wonders if whoever sent the case shares enough values with Ramona that "doing good" is a meaningfully overlapping concept.

Well, if she's going to have to turn down this case, she should at least assess whether Luka is in ongoing danger from Traveler first. Or possibly the other way around? And she needs to explain what she's thinking.

"I am very sorry about this, but I probably will not be able to help you. Relationship therapy is intended for people who are essentially safe for each other, but who are having problems getting along -- problems considerably smaller than yours. I help with communication breakdowns, mild power imbalances, differences in preferences and values, sexual difficulties, and that sort of thing. I do in fact help with trauma, but usually most of that trauma happened before the relationship even started. And these days, I often help people in interdimensional situations understand one another despite literally being aliens to one another."

"You two are not safe for each other. There is talk of attempting to murder each other and your families. There is torture and imprisonment. Relationship therapy is not for you."

"But before I let you go, I do need to try to assess whether you are currently safe, and try to help you become more safe if I possibly can. I have very limited power across the interdimensional divide, but I have to ask."

"Luka, are you currently imprisoned by Traveler? Or just imprisoned, more generically?"

"Surely I'm really in an absurdly implausible interdimensional relationship therapist's office," Luka says with biting sarcasm.

"The reason I'm asking is because, if you are currently in a place where you expect to be tortured more, I would like to take steps to prevent that if I possibly can. I don't know if that's within my power. What can you tell me about your situation?"

"I probably won't be tortured in your office, though I suppose you might want to see other clients here. If freeing me were within your power, we wouldn't have been extended this invitation - which doesn't mean it isn't; it just means, if you free me, it will turn out it was only ever a prophecy about a future that can't happen."

"Sorry... what? I didn't understand that."

He bites his lip and sighs and hesitates until Traveler is opening his mouth, at which point Luka finally speaks. "Some people can see the future. Possible futures, lots of them. Nothing set in stone. They can take what they see as a warning and then do something different. It would be very strange if the Astral Therapy Agency had no one they could turn to who could see the future. They promised Traveler that you weren't going to help me escape to kill him and everyone he still cares about. So, if you're about to do that, then this is all a vision of a future that won't happen. And I like meeting you, so I don't... want it to be fake... even if it probably is."