"No, it really is. It's just that 'simple' and 'easy' aren't synonyms and you're scared." Val pointed at him with the datapad, which was getting a lot of exercise as a prop today.

"You only think there isn't a simple solution because you've overconstrained the problem and you're refusing to admit to yourself that's what you've done. You know you can't pull strings to make someone like you, not really like you, but you also don't want to risk anything by letting the situation out of your control. That's sustainable indefinitely, sure, but at the expense of unacceptable amounts of your cognitive and emotional resources, and it's cowardly. If the problem space requires a calculated risk, you take the calculated risk and accept the consequences. The alternative is stasis, and where does that get anyone?"

So there. Val folded her arms and looked up at Shockwave, adult poise in her child's frame. She might treat her entire life as a games theory problem, intellectualized away from the emotional involvement she wasn't mature enough to grapple with head-on, but one thing she'd never lacked was adult role models willing to take enormous chances, in love and in everything else.