A few days ter, Aimee asked Mia if they could speak alone at her house. This, of course, meant Mia's first words as she hugged (with both of her arms) Aimee on her couch were: "You aren't breaking up with me already, are you?"

  Aimee shook her head. "No, um- no, definitely not. I guess I just wanted to talk and give you the chance to back out, in case you don't..." She sighed. "Look, I don't know why I do this. But I couldn't care about you like I do and not give you the chance to back out if you decide you don't wanna deal with me. And, now that I say it out loud, it's stupid, and I don't think I really believe it, but part of me wants to believe it. I don't know why."

  Mia frowned and stroked Aimee's shoulder. "It doesn't surprise me, but it does sadden me that any part of you thinks that I've been 'dealing' with you for the past few months."

  "Part of it is that you being with me... confuses me. I mean, if I were more confident or more handsome or stronger or feminine, then it would make more sense. Even when I do feel confident, it usually just feels like I should admit I deserve worse than you."

  Mia smiled and kissed her cheek. "You build me up so much in your head and then ignore that I've done the same to you. Romantically caring for someone enrges all of those traits you mention. Aren't I the arbiter of what I deserve and not? I love having you as my girlfriend. If we took a while to get there, it was only because I wanted us to be certain on each other."

  "I just worry that however much you like me now, eventually your view will reset."

  "Eventually I hope you see mine. If you need to feel as if you've won something by dating me, then do so. Even as a token of your self-esteem. You wouldn't be the first butch who's done that to their more feminine partner, certainly, but I would let you use that part of me to ride yourself up into that perspective I have over you."

  "It's not that. I don't want to objectify you to soothe myself." Aimee sighed. "I've just got this superstition of jinxing good out from my life if I'm not constantly begging for it. It's not fair to you the way I rely on you for... feeling good or stable about myself. But I don't have anyone else to base myself around. I know I've never gone into much detail about my parents, but..."

  Mia frowned and continued to rub Aimee's shoulder, leaning in closer to her. "You're a formerly religious lesbian who hardly talks about her parents. I can make an educated guess. But I always want to know more about you that I can soothe out in the light."

  Aimee nodded and leaned against Mia, who stroked her hair. "You're right that it's mostly standard. My parents are ultra-religious conservative freaks, and I got raised pretty traditionally, but... eventually Rider activated. I wanted to go to Urasaria, I just knew that, but I started freaking out. I mean, there's still religious communities in America where women are treated like sves, but what was even more frightening was that I still wanted that traditional life, in some ways. Not with a man, but with a woman. Didn't recognize that being a lesbian was going to rupture everything else, like my retionship with my parents. They almost sent me to a conversion camp, and I reacted to that by withdrawing even more into lesbian shit, which drew them further away from me, and... yeah. Eventually it got to the point where it was five or six years of constantly being told that I was wrong and that my chosen career was sickening. I can barely talk about it without getting pissed off about it, you know?"

  "It pisses me off too. But you've accomplished a lot in spite of them. *With* spiting them. That can be a good motivator."

  "Maybe. But using my spite as motivation just means I'm still dependent on what they think of me. And I've been trying to figure out for the past three years how I can orient myself in a way that doesn't remind me of them, with or against. Feels like my identity is always folding in on itself because of that. I can't separate out what I think from what I was made to think, and I can't rationally separate out what was irrationally abused into me. Makoto says she sees that in me, but she has her own reasons to talk shit, so. I don't know. It's hard to describe the way religious parents permeate you. Your's aren't, are they?"

  "No, my parents are atheists. My father has a line he likes about how every religion demands sacrifice from its followers, which means the only thing humanity hasn’t been able to conceive of is an unconditionally loving god."

  "Sometimes I think if there is one, it won’t matter because acts of God aren’t distinguishable from random chance. Most students are atheist or agnostic, usually. I don’t say God is nothing to a Revenant like some people do, but I’ve tried to force the sentiment into myself."

  "If there is one, we’ve sent a lot of hosts to hell."

  "I think the existence of Heaven is more frightening to me than the existence of Hell. You can't fail to get into Hell."

  Mia watched Aimee attempt to stifle the guilt and shame she felt, and Mia's touch across her hair seemed to push it back some. She held Aimee but wished she could do more; she could not imagine the difficulty of a student still tied in any way to religion, to still believe in a spirit yet know by the nature of their profession it was damned. "I'm here, my sweet butch." She kissed her forehead.

  Aimee nodded, and she felt her own emotions conclude; not with a snap, but rather a resumption of feeling back into her own alcoves of memory, to again ter bubble when a scent or thought or touch would trigger such. For now she simply resumed. "I'm sorry."

  "You never need to apologize to me." said Mia.

  "Another thing that doesn't make much sense to me."

  Mia smiled and leaned her face down to Aimee's. "Because I don't think of you as someone that needs to apologize for herself. I think you're wonderful, adorable, sweet, handsome. You're understanding and intelligent, loyal. The way that you care about me and defend me is something I've always wanted to have in a girlfriend."

  "That... that means a lot." muttered Aimee. "I'm sorry. You're right, too. Maybe I just need to hear it more often. I can quiet that pitying part of myself, but it'll never completely dim. I just don't want you to constantly be having to pardon someone like me."

  "You can't deny yourself and call it an act of selflessness." said Mia. "Of course I'm willing to pardon or excuse or console you, or whatever your mood prefers to call it; I'm not under the idea that my affection could change you entirely. But if we can be comfortable together, I want us together. You aren't exactly telling me what I don't already know and care about in you. And what you think are fws are sutures I can string around myself and pull us closer with. If there's any loss of attraction with that, it's only when I feel you're too stubbornly pessimistic to see how you're reflected in my eye. If your fws affected us, together, as a couple, then perhaps, but... you turn everything inward. I wish you wouldn't. But vocalizing what you're feeling and sifting through that together is never going to be a burden on me."

  Aimee nodded, and no self-loathing again buoyed her for a while. Yet Mia wondered to what extent it would return; no, it was not that she was concerned it would return, for she knew it would. But rather she wondered if part of her attraction to Aimee was that Mia needed to feel needed; a woman with no fws was not one that interested her, for subtly, she felt too that she needed to sacrifice hues of herself to be fully caught in love; she had already many times over been forced to partition out segments of herself to make way for the needs of her family; she had held in herself a subtler form of resentment towards them than Aimee towards her own parents, one all the less assaible, far easier for Mia to have suckled under nicknames of love.