“I could tell from the start,” Uriel brags over a new cup of coffee. He is gross and disheveled from the lunchtime fray. An entire bowl of mashed potatoes had dropped on the back of his jacket. He had not managed to make it to the door before time ran out and the events were to begin again. “You two didn’t listen, because you never do, but maybe you should sometime, huh?”

Magnus doesn’t look up. “Yeah, yeah. We’re hiding our faces in shame.”

“It bothered the hell out of me. If you spend any time around actual human beings, you could see there was something going on. You can tell, by the way a person moves or touches someone else, especially if he’s usually all over the place, it takes a serious change to keep his mind on that one special thing...”

“We’ve got a pro in here,” Magnus declares, and sets his chin on his hand, an attentive student. “So, did you sensitivity training tell you how people like that always end up?”

“People are different, aren’t they? Or am I about to hear something I’d rather not out of you?”

“You’re maintaining the idea that the led themselves to a happy end, then.”

“We don’t know, because they ain’t here.”

“What are you talking about?” Ritz groans.

“Ritz,” Magnus says, “You've been brushing up on reading, on people and your TV. So you've heard it all by now. As soon as one person attaches themselves to another, they immediately become the most special beings in the world. They can do no wrong, because what could possibly go wrong when you think with nothing but the heart? Idiots, innocent virgin women and self righteous - sorry, misunderstood - monsters, they'll all change each other with that power. They'll 'fix' each other. Slow down. Calm down. Look human for once. And they're feeling real good, so that means everyone wins, right? Does it ever end there, though?"

“Uh...”

“Of course not. People don't live in vaccuum. The monster always finds a reason to get loose, and when that happens, now there’s someone standing real close to the blast radius. Hell, even if things get under control for a second or two, the very fact that someone’s standing so close means infinitely more triggers for disaster. And then maybe family dies. Maybe friends do. Maybe an inspector or two. And we are supposed to consider the righteousness of this. All that they ruined was in the name of Love and-”

“Wha- are we talking about Uriel?” Ritz stammers, turning to his suspect. Magnus gets a snide laugh out of this.

“No, he’s talking about Val.”

“And there was a woman this whole time?”

“You’re confusing him,” Uriel accuses Magnus. “And excuse me a sec, are you comparing that fucking executioner buddy of his to a fucking battered girlfriend?”

“I never said who the girlfriend was. Maybe the monsters are on both sides of the equation, or we get double virgins, you never know. And neither side may require a battering for the innate problems to arise. So much more can be done than a simple smack around, especially if one trusts themselves so complacently.”

“Do you fucking hear yourself? Got a sicko running the city, I can't believe it.”

“That’s not denial I’m hearing, is it?"

"If that's the way you see things, why don't you do something about it then?"

"Ethical tangles." Magnus waves a hand. "And if I had a hand in every lovers' spat, things would be even uglier than they are. I'm only here to see one of them, anyway. Just here to hand over information."

"If you took the effort to understand, it just might help."

Magnus smiles out to the Ring and says, "Well, I suppose as someone with experience, I should really be listening to you. How’s your wife, by the way?”

Uriel goes silent, but his every feature is on fire.

Magnus basks in his victory, though it’s not a valuable one.

So he lets it up, just a bit. “You are such a hopeless romantic. It’s eye opening sometimes, eye-prying. Painful. It’s because you’ve felt it, you've been in your own nice story, but you haven’t seen enough. I’ve looked through thousands of files, thousands of lives, sad through more divorce and abuse cases than relationships I ever thought to exist. In these cases, everyone thinks they're right. And all I can say is something as simple as meeting someone and liking them cannot, in most cases, change who they are. And you know how they were.”

Uriel picks up on that tiny concession immediately. “In most cases.”

“As convenient as it would be, people aren’t perfect. So yeah, there’s your small chance things may go a different way.”

Uriel isn't outright pleased, but he smirks, "Trying to hide a romantic streak of your own, huh? Though I should have guessed - you must read a lot of shitty books or reports to have given us that sap story with so much confidence."

“Can I read some of those?” Ritz interjects again.