"That's why she's a special case. She's gonna keep throwing me out, but hell, she's threatened to kill me and that didn't work. Hell, we've actually managed to talk almost civilly lately, I think the italian's good for her."

The thought of him and Nialla as lovers cracked him up just a little.

"Well, can't blame her, it ain't like I haven't slept with a lot of people. Just not her. That would be..." he grimaced a bit, and then continued with all the disgust of a twelve year old "....icky."

Icky and still too good.

"That would be very icky," Morgana agreed, with her slightly kittenish serious look: chin tipped down and grey eyes upward. "Back in the day, I would say she was too young to gang with you. Now I think you may be too young to gang with her."

"Seriously, she worries me sometimes. It's like someone took and wrung all the fun out of her and dipped her in Court." Jochy grimaced as if that was the most terrible fate of all.

"At least I hope the Italian will have her thinking about something other than managing her domains."

He fell silent a moment before he cast Morgana another, more serious look. "I... was a bit of an ass back then. Maybe I shouldn't have stuck my nose in and told her the truth. Maybe things would have been different."

"Jochy, that was long ago. We had to do the best we could when our plans changed, and so we did. You didn't make anything happen. You only sped along what we would have had to do." Morgana did not indulge in much regret, but she did now, her gaze going off to one side, fingers twisting together. "Still and all, I would agree with you. I wonder if she would not have been happier if we could only have held it off a little longer."

"Or it might have been worse. Maybe she'd resent you lot for keeping the truth from her for so long. It's impossible to say, but damn that girl can hold a grudge. At least she didn't turn out like her father, eh?" He aimed an easy grin at Morgana.

Hell, he was over Neely, but even when he had been crushing on the man he had to admit he was a right arse.

But what an ass...

Morgana looked irritated. "Do you honestly still believe that lying was the issue? I'd lie to her all day long, right now, if it kept her alive. We weren't lying to her about her father to keep her from her father; we were lying to keep her out of Titania's sights."

"Sorry." Jochy looked a bit sheepish. "Never really considered you lot's side of the story before. Just... suppose I was trying to deal with my own shit at the time, and saw her as some sort of weird way of fixing the things that were done wrong by me. I dunno."

He sighed, looking a bit frustrated.

"Honestly, looking back I find it hard to figure out why it made such sense at the time. But it did."

Morgana, much like Judith, had never gotten anywhere in life justifying her reasons to anyone else. Unlike Judith, she was more sensitive about how she threw that arrogance around. "We were all doing the best we knew. You included. If I thought I could trust you then, I might have told you more. But it's as I say: it was long ago, and everything came right in the end."

"I suppose so. We're all alive and the queen ain't, so that's good." He couldn't help but wonder how things could have turned out.

If he hadn't been such a bastard. If Seth hadn't stayed with him regardless. If Morgana and Seth had been more than friends.

Would Acorn have had pale hair and a big nose then?

Maybe the girl was luckier this way. Probably.

"Honestly, I ain't sure if you can trust me now," he admitted. "I'm trying, but... sometimes it just feels like I'm half a step out of tune with everybody else."

Morgana's eyebrow went up. "Why should we not trust you, then?"

Instantly her mind supplied half-a-dozen reasons, but she wanted to hear Jochy's first.