"Go ahead and talk to Luka! I have the impression you two have plenty to talk about."

He opens his mouth.

"Obviously you're going to ask, obviously it isn't going to work, and it would be redundant to say anything - that's everything, right? Great. No, we don't have anything to talk about. Why don't you go wait somewhere else for the food."

Traveler, after trying and failing to interrupt, takes this advice and steps outside.

Ramona gives it a moment before she speaks. 

"I didn't understand that, and I'm not asking, what with having resigned and all. But just as a person, not a therapist, I'm sorry if I put you in a bad spot by suggesting you two talk."

"You can have this room to yourself if you'd like. It's a nice day. I can go wait outside."

"I don't mind you. If I really wanted to be alone I'd have left again." Luka uncurls a bit and looks at the couch cushions like he's sizing them up. "He's worse in his first language, by the way. Says everything in poetry just to prove he can."

"I guess I'm grateful he hasn't done that to me yet. If you manage to get him to agree to stop torturing people, make sure he knows that includes poetry."

Luka laughs. He lies down on the couch on his stomach, with his knees bent and his chin on his hands.

"Since you don’t have to worry about being professional and detached anymore, do you mind if I bitch about him?"

"Go ahead if you want, but I should warn you that 'being a therapist' is not something I can fully switch off, ever, because I am, at the core, a therapist-y kind of person. Who-I-am came before I adopted the profession. So if you talk, and I respond in any way, it might end up sounding or feeling somewhat therapisty."

"The main thing I'm doing differently is I'm releasing my sense of obligation that I have to wrestle with what you say and try to understand it, or come up with some way to be helpful."

"Which, actually, is also a way of doing therapy. It's not the way I usually do it."

"Anyway."

"Go ahead, if you still wanna."

He has his feet toward the door, so it takes a bit of doing to actually show Ramona his smile, but apparently that's worth doing because he does it. It's a very warm smile, fond, maybe touched.

"It's okay, it's only - hard to answer you in front of him, I don't care as long as he's not here. Did you know - I have more kids than the one who wants to eat the sun, and one of them, Narfi, is related to Traveler on both sides - my second and still living wife Sigyn was related to Traveler even before we were married, that’s why. Now, after the party Traveler told you about - the one where he said I only wanted to insult him - in fact, I criticized his habit of assassinating people, and he answered with a rhyme to the effect that no one cares what I have to say because I'm LGBT - anyway, after that fucking party, I was arrested and Traveler had Narfi brought to his torture chamber and cut open so Traveler could take out his intestines to use like rope to tie me up. And there was - I don't know how long - while Narfi was still alive and before I was hurt too badly to understand what was happening, and I spent that whole time joking. Last fucking gift I could give Narfi for a long fucking time, if I could just make him laugh." His voice sounds raw. He shakes his head.

"Traveler laughed. I hate that. I hate that he laughed. Hate him for fucking... pirating my last gift to my son. Using his murder of his own family to get a little more entertainment out of me. Oh, and it's entirely his fault I couldn't get as far as saying 'no, of course I weighed whether eating the sun would be bad for the world on the whole and I simply think it wouldn't be.' I know, I know, I could take responsibility and not pretend being afraid to say I care about anyone after the last thing he did to someone he thought I cared about is really the same thing as not being able to explain myself. But this isn't therapy and I have no shame." He says this last thing with a sort of sarcastic cheerfulness. "Hey, want to hear all about how Traveler likes anyone he has sex with to take the wheel and won't admit it? Do they still think that's pathetic these days?"

Ramona's brain is still stuck on the part about using someone's child's intestines as rope. She kind of didn't process very much after that part. She's heard tales of childhood sexual abuse, of neglect, of evil and indifference, and she's really pretty good at seeing the horror without feeling the horror, but this one was so vivid and specific and cruel. Part of her mind wants to know: what is the tensile strength of intestine? Does that even work? While another part just sort of anxiously giggles and jibbers. 

"I... I don't know what to say."

She looks a little pale, her voice strained. Her face and body are scrunched.

"About the Narfi, part, that is. I'm so sorry, I didn't really hear much after the ... " Ramona can't even bring herself to repeat it. "after Narfi's death."

He laughs. It isn't a happy laugh, not at all. Then he cuts himself off.

"You okay?"

"Not entirely, but I know how to recover and you don't need to take care of me." Ramona may not be the therapist at the moment, but the rule not to let your clients take care of you dies hard.

Meanwhile she just can't shake the thought that Traveler, the same obnoxious overcomplicated but seemingly good-hearted and warm person who was sitting on her couch right there a few minutes ago, did that unspeakable thing. She shudders.

Probably Luka has done equally terrible things?

"How do you..."

"How do you keep going. When that's how it is, when that's the kind of thing your people do."

Luka lets out a long, slow breath, draws another, lets that one out very slowly too. "Eventually, you don't. You say 'it's been good to know you and the next time you're all about to die don't come to me for help.' Until then, you laugh."

"I notice the thing I want to say next feels therapisty. You can just change the subject if you want. But here's what it is, since you said it was okay."

"It sounds like you've... turned a corner, maybe? I'm not sure if you grew out of the violence and could keep living peacefully, or if you just grew tired of being the butt of it."

"Do you think Traveler has turned a corner too? Or do you think he could, ever, if he hasn't yet?"

"Mmm. I... could answer that." Luka flexes and unflexes his feet. His voice is calm but grim. "It'd mean getting into - why he does what he does. Why he thinks it's worth doing." His voice gets very quiet. "What I love about him." He takes breath, lets it out in an annoyed huff, digs his nails into his cheeks a bit. And goes on, and speaks with the exaggerated calm of someone who is very close to losing it. "I don't mind you knowing, but I'd want him to do the same for me. I'm sure he would, if you asked, if you suggested you might possibly be considering going on with relationship therapy. And if you want to claim that long enough to fuck with him, I'm not going to stop you, but" (Luka's voice is getting slightly less dangerously calm) "I bet you don't want to know that badly and don't want to trick him. Right?"