Ioan could have sworn that ey and May had gotten enough sleep the night before. Even with her waking em up before dawn, they'd then gone on to sleep until nearly nine. Rather late for them.
Still, that night, they slept for more than ten hours. It had taken May a while to calm down by the time they did make it into bed, the skunk tossing and turning, first leaning in against em, then shifting away, as though the last bits of her overflowing spell kept her oscillating between wanting to be touched and not. Ey stayed quiet and still throughout, letting her decide what it was that she needed; ey was just happy to be back home.
Eventually, though, they settled down into their usual spots and made it to sleep.
It was almost certainly the stress from the day before, ey reasoned. So much had happened in so short a time. Even the time spent relaxing on the beanbag with May felt at least productive, even if it was just resting. So much had been packed into those last few hours, though, and so much emotion overall through the day, that sleep became an imperative.
True Name had spent most of the rest of the evening outside, dragging one of eir chairs from beneath the balcony to park herself in the yard. Despite the lingering vestiges of snow and the chill of the evening, she spent hours out there, either staring up into the sky or grooming bits of forest litter out of her fur.
Ey imagined that she must have made it into bed at some point, though she still woke well before them, as when they finally managed to pry themselves out of bed, there were two steaming coffee mugs sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter, one black and one sweet and creamy, and the skunk was once more sitting outside on the chair, tail wrapped around her feet and coffee held against her chest.
Ioan sent her a gentle sensorium ping, just to let her know that they were awake, then sat at eir desk. Ey had no clue where to even begin, but if nothing else, ey had to have something comforting in front of em, something known.
"Well, nothing for it," ey mumbled, swiped a new notebook into being, and began to compile notes of the last few weeks. The work ey'd already done on the topic was useful enough, but it was starting to feel like it was not directed enough in the face of all that had happened.
Ey began with a timeline, starting all the way back at the arrival of the Artemisians and that first meeting with True Name. Then followed the list of the times they'd met for coffee through the years. Ey dug through eir memories for any that stood out as particularly interesting. These were primarily early on, ey found, when they were still feeling out each others' boundaries, though the last few before the assassination attempt held some fascinating insights in the context of all that had happened since, as well.
There was also information to fill in on the master timeline for the *History*, as well. Information about Zacharias, about Jonas, about End Waking's divergence from True Name.
Finally, the last almost three weeks were laid out in much finer detail. The assassination attempt, the clearing of the house, the meeting with End Waking, all the way up through the meeting with Zacharias the night before.
"Thank you for lunch," True Name said, once she'd eaten most of her pasta. "When you have a moment, Ioan, I would like to see about expanding the sim as we discussed."
"Right, yeah. Sorry I got so distracted this morning." Ey browsed the markets for appropriate wide-open spaces ey could tack onto one of the borders of eir sim. Perhaps right beneath the skunk's window would be best. Ey could even extend the balcony and provide her with a set of stairs down into the space. "Alright. What sort of environment? There's some pretty good plains and parks, an okay forest, hmm...this mountain one isn't bad, but the trees are kind of planted in a grid."
She grinned. "That sounds cheesy. However, let us go with a plain of some sort. I do not want to go back to a forest unless it is the one I remember, and a park would be too sterile. Is there nothing like Arrowhead Lake?"
"Alright, here's one that's a plain with a river and an oxbow lake. The landscape is just mirrored at the boundaries though, so it looks a little funny beyond the edges."
The skunk had perked up at the mention of the river and was already nodding. "That will do quite nicely, my dear. Are you able to scale it so that it will be a good size, at least?"
"Sure. Do you want to set it up now?"
She shrugged. "If you are willing, yes."
"Can I modify your room to give you an entryway to the area?"
The three of them stood and walked into her room. Ey was somewhat crestfallen to see that ey really had just mirrored the view out of her window, as there was the chair she had been sitting in before lunch. That would mean ey'd have to place the new plot of land first, then modify the house again.
Ey dumped a chunk of reputation into the purchase of the environment. Ey had plenty of reputation to spend and it wasn't very pricey, but it was still a noticeable ding, and ey was sure that Jonas would be keeping tabs on eir acquisitions. There was nothing to be done about it, though.
The environment landed on eir mind much as a pending merge might, demanding to be placed somewhere. Ey instructed the sim to put it in the corner formed by the fence of their yard and True Name's bedroom, expanded to be a mile on a side.
Once the pressure of the environment left eir mind, ey was free to instruct the sim to let the window view the new land, and from there to add an extension of the balcony, a second stairway down, and a door leading out from her room to the balcony.
As promised, they were greeted with what looked to be an endless series of perfectly parallel rivers fading into the distance with the way the boundaries simply mirrored the empty plain on the sides. The fact that the oxbow lakes were also repeated set up a grid effect that was slightly unnerving. Thankfully, the effect disappeared when they went down the steps and into the grass itself. They found the grass to be fairly well made and the ground to be delightfully uneven; no small feat when it was so easy to make a perfectly flat plane.
"Please do not, Mx. Bălan. This will be fine as is."
The formality in her voice and the stiffness of her tone did not invite em to continue the topic, so ey did eir best to drop it. "Alright. Well, I guess we can give this a go for a bit and make changes if we need. The weather and sun are synced across the whole sim, so if you need it warmer or drier, just let me know."
True Name bowed. "Thank you, Ioan. This will suit me quite well. It is a bit strange seeing a fence and part of a house, but at least that means I will be able to find my way back. May I have ACLs here?"
"Thank you once more." She smiled faintly and gave a hint of another bow. "If you will excuse me, I would like to explore on my own. Perhaps we can catch up over dinner."
"Sure thing."
May, who had been quiet up until then, said, "Thank you for coming back."
True Name tilted her head. "It was not safe there, May Then My Name. This will be better."
"Yes, but thank you all the same." She laughed and waved a hand. "I am sorry, disregard me. I am still not yet at baseline, and it has me feeling emotional."
The other skunk's expression softened and she leaned forward to give one of her paws a squeeze. It looked stiff and awkward, but it was at least an attempt at a gesture that was more in line with May's mode of interacting.
Ioan and May both nodded and made their goodbyes. As a last concession to giving the skunk privacy, ey made a small gate in the fence leading into their yard so that they wouldn't have to go through her room if they needed to go out into her plain for any reason. It meant pushing through lilac bushes, but ey figured it'd be rarely used.
"Can you work on the beanbag, Ioan?" May asked once they were back inside.
"Sure. Need some pets?"
She nodded.
Asking how she was feeling felt counter to simply providing what she'd asked for --- something ey enjoyed plenty, as well --- so they made themselves comfortable on the amorphous cushion. It didn't seem to be time for talking at all, so they settled on soft music instead.
Ey wasn't sure what May was doing, whether it was simply soaking up the affection and close proximity or some more thoughtful task. For eir part, though, ey went back to work on organizing events as they'd happened. Who knew what would come next.
The next few days passed in relative peace, with both Odists slowly leveling back out to their baseline moods.
Or, at least, May leveled out to her baseline mood. There still seemed to be some internal struggle within True Name. It wasn't that she was having to step away to sulk or caught in anger as she had been when she had begun to overflow, but that the conflicts were still showing in long silences that would sometimes take her in the middle of conversations, especially when the topic of meeting with Jonas came up.
"I am not even sure if it is conflicts at this point," she admitted when ey brought it up. "Or, well, I do not think it is conflicting memories any longer. Those have been integrated, by this point. I am experiencing conflicts in expectations. I feel doubled, as though there are two of me watching the same conversation and each would like to act in a different way."
"Are they not working together?" May asked.
True Name leaned back against the couch and stared out the picture windows into the yard for a few minutes as she thought. "Perhaps not, no," she said at last. "It is difficult to reconcile those two parts of me. They are arguing, in a way. Each is strident in their belief, and some higher part of me will occasionally get stuck trying to get them to just settle down and fucking agree on a course of action or the next sentence or whatever it may be."
Ioan nodded, saying, "Sort of like Michelle and Sasha?"
She shook her head. "No, not quite like that, thankfully. There are some similarities --- the sense of there being two parts of me, the internal split --- but it is lacking the dire nature, whatever it was that made her completely helpless before the duality of her self. It is still something that I have some visibility into. I can respond as True Name would or as End Waking would, but I am still just me, and I am learning to unify those natures. I will perhaps never be singular, but I will doubtless unify into a synthesis before long, just not yet."
May fiddled with eir sweater vest from where she lay against em. "I will admit that, for a while there, I was considering merging down with you before I saw how poorly End Waking's merge went." After the silence stretched out, she laughed nervously, adding, "Sorry, I suppose that is a pretty awkward thing to say."
"It is okay, May Then My Name," True Name said, smiling reassuringly. "A large part of me wishes that you had rather than End Waking, if I am honest. I understand why you did what you did, and I think I agree with it, but on a personal level, I would much rather be integrating your memories than his."
"Uncomfortable," the other skunk corrected. "I do wish perhaps that I had been able to fork or that I had been more cautious with the merge, but if I wanted to remain comfortable, I would have pushed back when you urged me to accept."
"Again, easier does not feel like the correct word. It would have been more comfortable. I would have understood the resentment that others feel for me if that was indeed a goal, but it would not be the defining factor of the merge."
She nodded. "So I have learned. The self-loathing that falls out of that rests just this side of overwhelming at times. Perhaps that is why it is proving to be such a project to settle into something resembling a singular nature again. I imagine, given that May Then My Name has defined herself through something unique to her rather than some aspect of her relation to me, it would feel strange, but not so uncomfortable. Do correct me if I am wrong, though, my dear."
"Well, besides," Ioan added. "She's certainly merged down way more recently than End Waking did."
True Name tilted her head.
"Ioan," May said quietly. "Do you remember when you were working on the *History* and I said that I was worried that you would be upset with me?"
Ey frowned, nodded.
"And do you remember how Dear told Codrin that the temptation to lie would be great?"
"What did you say to em, May Then My Name?"
May sighed and brushed her paws up over her head. "I said that I was working as launch coordinator to remain more in line with your expectations so that I could merge back down after the project was over, that we tried to do so every few decades."
She let out a pent up breath as a laugh. "I know, my dear. I am sorry. I am sorry to both of you. I believed it to be a small untruth. I wanted my relationship with True Name to seem simpler than it was to keep you feeling comfortable. I hoped that that would keep you from digging into my past. Fat load of good that did."
"When was the last time you merged down, then?"
"2155," True Name said. "Longer ago than the last time End Waking merged down. It was not acrimonious, she simply declined my next request for a merger and the conversation never came up again."
Ey laughed. "Really, *really* complicated."
"I am glad you are not angry, my dear," May said, leaning up to dot her nose against eir cheek.
"It seems more silly than anything, but I can see your reasons for doing so, in retrospect. Certainly silly in comparison to the last few weeks."
"Very." May turned her gaze back to True Name and said, "I have my apprehensions about merging, though. *We* have our apprehensions, I mean. After watching what happened with End Waking's merge, it all felt so much more complicated."
"I do not know," she said, voice distant. "I said that I understand your reasons for what you did. You wanted me to change, you said, to be other than I am. You want me to be able to approach Jonas in some new way that will hopefully allow me to come out the other side with fewer assassins on my tail, yes?"
"And I also think I understand your reasons for wanting to merge down. It would make me understand your relationship to me in a very real way, and would make me all the more complete a person in your eyes, yes?"
"I am amenable to both of those, though perhaps my reasons differ. But, May Then My Name, coming at this with both full knowledge and as an open conversation has me feeling more positive than perhaps you do," she said, voice having lost its thoughtful edge. "You are a fundamentally good person and that is not something that I take lightly. You work on such a small scale and I have spoken against that in the past, but...well, a threat on one's life is a pretty good way to make one realize that the small scale is still important."
"I would have full knowledge of your apprehensions as well, would I not?" She held up her hands, smiling. "I am not trying to talk you into it, my dear, and I would still like to hear those apprehensions regardless, I am simply explaining that, given this shitty fucking month, you merging down does not at all sound bad. I am already not what I was. There is no going and there is no back."
Ioan realized ey'd settled back into observing mode, simply watching silently. Not what ey was supposed to be working on. Ey shook emself back to the present and said, "My apprehensions mostly boil down to the fact that the merge would include May and I's entire relationship. The memories are one thing, and there are some that are pretty intensely personal, but I worry you'd also risk winding up with the feelings that resulted from the formation of those memories."
Ey took a deep breath, trying to bolster eir courage with it. "This last month has made me realize how much I care about you and your well-being. I like you, True Name, but I'm really hesitant about you having memories of loving me, if that makes sense."
"And you, May Then My Name? We do not need to go too far into them, but if it is to be a discussion, I would like to at least have these thoughts laid out for perusal."
She was a long time in responding. "I am with Ioan on this, in that I am protective of my devotion to em. It...is difficult to say this so openly, but I am also coming to terms with just how complex my feelings about you are after the events of the last month, and the root of resentment that led to me urging End Waking's merge on you is no longer there, or at least no longer quite so simple. It is no longer aimless hatred, however justified it may have felt. I will ever be myself, so I am uncomfortable pushing yet more resentment and difficulties on you. I do not want to hurt you."
The longer May spoke, the more thoughtful True Name's expression became. She slouched down on the couch, until her head was resting against the back cushions. "I am not sure what to say to this just yet."
