"A few months, honestly. I wanted to talk to you about it a bit when we got ah... paired up but there were other problems to be dealt with. Guts and Dan helped me understand things."

He shrugs his shoulders. "It took a while to parse that my body and psycho-conditioning weren't doing what they normally did, and then I had to decide what to do about it."

He looks her in the eyes, "Maybe being happy, if only for a little while, isn't completely forbidden."