"Hi. Did they tell you anything?"

"Not over the phone. I've been waiting for you, so I didn't get guilt tripped. Because this is obviously important information."

"Wow, I didn't even think of that - that applies even if I'm on my way?"

He nods. "If I'm not making the best effort I can to tell you - yup."

"... We should get me within ten feet of a mindreader. It obviously blocks the knife, I'm wondering if it blocks people from hearing my head, too."

"Depends, are you going to be in the same room so I can immediately tell you, while you're still outside of the mindreader's range? Because that would work fine."

"They make me nervous enough that I'd rather be farther away than that if you aren't going to be guilt-tripped about it."

"Okay." His voice softens, a little. "Then you don't have to be there, I just need to know where you'll be so I can tell you."

"I could wait by a phone."

"Do you want to be in an entirely different building from the mindreader?"

"For preference, yes. I know the safe radius, there's just a part of my brain that's always afraid they'll chase me and I can't really run."

"You can be in an entirely different building," he says, soothingly.

"Your apartment's closer than my house, I could park there," she suggests.

"Sure. And I know my own phone number and it'll take a bit to get a mindreader - somewhere anyway."

"Sure. Do you want to walk me there or do you have a spare key so I can trike over myself?"

"There go all my plans," she smirks, and she pockets the key and trikes off to his place.

She doesn't go snooping, just flops onto the nearest thing-to-sit-on to the phone and pulls out her book.

She picks up. "Salutations."

"Completely immune to mind-reading. Also, salutations."

"That," she says, "is a nice artifact effect."

"Yes, yes it is."

"Any other experiments that don't have to wait on the Dean waking up tomorrow? Should I go home?"

"We're also going to see if I can see through invisibility, but none of the others are really testable with such a defensive artifact."

"Do you want me to wait for the invisible person to show up, or will that take a while?"

"It'll probably take a while, they're less on-hand than the mindreader was. They're actually a bit freaked out about my immunity to the mindreader, too, it's kind of funny."

"I hope they aren't going to do anything unfortunate just because they can't keep mental tabs on you."

"No. I'm putting out an ad for volunteers that want to take care of the knife, they legally have no grounds to confiscate the necklace. And there's not much else they can do with me."

"Okay. I'll just go home then unless there's a reason for me to stick around. I'll leave my phone number by your phone for you in case you wake up in the middle of the night and have to tell me something."

A few hours later, there's a call at her home phone.

"Salutations. Is Annie there? There is a thing I need to tell her."

"You must be Aldaras. She's in the shower - is it important enough that I should barge in? I don't know how this works..."

"I am! We can probably manage you yelling it. Yell that I don't see invisible people, please?"

"All right. Annie! Aldaras says he doesn't see invisible people!" Pause. "I think I heard her say 'okay'."

"Mmm. Tentative pass. I'll try not to think about it too much. Anyway, sorry about that. Artifacts do strange things."

"I'll make sure she heard when she comes out, anyway. Call back if you need to."

"Thank you very much, ma'am."

"Call me Rinty, dear."

"Sure. You're Annie's mom, I take it?"

"That's right!"

"It's nice to - well, this isn't exactly meeting you, but talk to you."

"Likewise, I'm sure. Annie had nice things to say about you."

"She did! Not terribly detailed things, but nice ones."

"Aww. I'm flattered, I hope I live up to them."

"Annie's sharp as a tack, I think she has your number."

"She is," he agrees, "pretty wonderful."

"Are you likely to be visiting her here at all? Should I be taking note of your food preferences?"

"If she wants me to?"

"Well, just in case, then - allergies, aversions?"

"None, I'm pretty easy to cook for."

"How convenient."

"I try. If all else fails and it turns out to be unfavorably comparable to charcoal, I can always just cook something for myself later."

"My cooking has never been compared to charcoal before."

"See, there you are, we'll get along just fine."

"Certainly more convenient than the alte- Annie! Did you hear what I shouted?"

"Yeah, can't see invisible people, I'm informed," Annie confirms.

"Oh, good."

"You were okay in the interval?" She appears to have claimed the phone from her mother.

"Yup, perfectly fine."

"Cool. Anything else?"

"Nothing that comes to mind! Thank you."

"You're welcome - oh, um. If my mother hadn't been home when you'd called would it have been a disaster?"

"Maybe in the future you should call me before you learn things? And make sure I'll be around to hear them after you have learned them."

"Yeah, I - really should have. Sorry."

"I'm not the one who would've suffered for it. Please don't hurt yourself."

"I'll try. I'd rather not - constantly interrupt your life, though."

"Well - yeah, and I appreciate that, it would be pretty inconvenient if I couldn't take showers unless Rinty was by the phone, but I do not want to torture you to avoid experiencing an extra phone call."

"I know I'm not torturing you, but - I don't want you to be tortured. I would like there to be very few obstacles between you and avoiding torture."

"Thanks. It's all right, though, I'm pretty good at managing it."

"Are you doing that stoicism thing?"

"... A little?"

"Please don't overdo that. Torture: bad. I do not approve of it."

"Thanks, but - I think I have a bit more of a cavalier attitude about it than you do? I knew what I was getting into when I signed up. I don't want to constantly interrupt the lives of those around me."

"It's not constant if you call me twice instead of once to make sure I'm not in the shower."

"I know. This particular example isn't - the right one, you're absolutely right, I should have called first."

"Okay. I mean - don't steal somebody's car to break traffic laws on the way to my house to tell me things if I don't answer the phone, but - take reasonable precautions and please don't be afraid to talk to me."

"Agreed."

"Anyway, I'm going to bed. Please try not to learn important secrets overnight."

He snorts. "I'll do my best. Good night, Annie."

"We can ask him, but except for him being able not to retread ground he doesn't have perfect fine control over what he learns. I'm sorry."

He doesn't spot her either. Guilt, guilt, guilt. (Screw the guilt, screw the torture, he is responsible for his own actions, this is his fault. He knew what he was getting into and he has made up his mind.)

"Because, I was going stir-crazy and asked them to tell me."

"And they didn't think you'd be this st- - how long have you been sitting here?"

"I have," he laughs, "no idea."

"Why ask them, why didn't you just read a book or - or audit a lecture or bake cookies or something to pass the time - or realize that you'd been an idiot and lean into the classroom so I could pop out for the fifteen seconds it would take to tell me - or otherwise do something that didn't involve parking outside my Jaillais class and being miserable? I didn't even know you were there! Are you trying to make me feel like I need to follow you around twenty-four hours a day lest you hurt yourself?"

"No. I'm - nothing I could do would have been productive. I'm not usually this stupid, but my sister's slowly dying. And I have nothing productive to do to solve this problem. I'm waiting on the Dean."

"If you can't be productive the least you can do is not be destructive."

"I'm not being destructive towards anyone else," he points out.

"Oh, I look happy and carefree to you?" Annie snaps.

"Thank you. Believe it or not, being the only person who can help you with the secrecy safety valve for your crippling artifact-induced emotional issues imbues in me a sense of responsibility and I do not like it when my attempts to be responsible are thwarted. Stupidly."

Aldaras sighs. "I can understand that. Sorry."

"... I'm an idiot occasionally?"

"I figured that one out without help."

"Yeah," he sighs.

"An hour ago I didn't imagine anything would possess you to go to the Dean's office for important necklace information when I was in class and then decline to interrupt me," she points out.

"That's - because I decided that suffering from guilt for an hour was better than spending one more minute in my room trying not to freak out about - things. Not me deciding to emotionally manipulate you for my own selfish desires."

"I don't think 'you look all sad and huggable' is a responsibility thing," she says, and she holds out her arms.

"I'm sorry, regardless."

"Yes? Do I not look it?"

"- You stumbled a bit there."

"Oh. I'm really, really klutzy. That's all."

"I don't think there's anything else, is there? I'm just going to go home and do homework. I'll answer the phone if you need me. Call if you need me, okay?"

"I will." He hesitates, and then says carefully, "... I'm sort of wondering about your reaction to the new information about the necklace. If you don't want to tell me, though, that is entirely fine."

"Fair," he agrees. Aldaras hesitates again, and then fixes her with a very serious, sort of intense look. "If you're worried - even with this information I will never try to force or manipulate you into touching the necklace. Actually, quite frankly I think I'd rather die." Pause. "I don't want to die. If you're wondering."

"That's because you object to coercion, not because the idea of me touching the necklace regardless of why I might do it is abhorrent, right?"

He smiles, slightly. "Correct."

"How would you feel about me touching the necklace because I happened to feel like it?" she inquires.

"Unless I feel the knife calling and there's nothing for it but to touch the necklace and it's right there, I would probably only do it if I was already in love with you, and I haven't even determined if that would hypothetically be ethical, yet, let alone actually done it."

"Oh." There's a little faint smile on his face. "That - makes me feel much better about the entire affair. I don't know if I can comment on if it's ethical or not - I certainly wouldn't mind."

"What's not clear is what you'd think about it from a - more clear-headed perspective. Come on, let's not stand around in the hall, if we're going to have this conversation we might as well go to your place."

"Sure," he agrees. "And - it's completely fine for you to ask whatever questions about this topic without compromising my privacy. I'm fine with talking about this."

"Okay, but - the fact that you have to tell me that is - a thing. There is no balanced way to maintain information flow, it's either me pretending as hard as I can to be uncurious and waiting for you to spontaneously volunteer things, or me seizing control of what you tell me almost entirely. I mean, yes, demonstrably you can sit in the hall not opening the door for stupidly long periods of time, but I doubt you could do that forever. You are in general spectacularly vulnerable," she says. "I mean, that creative writing teacher who was fired amid scandal and the gnashing of teeth last year, for sleeping with a student? The only power imbalance was that he could have screwed with her grades in one class."

"I am," he sighs, "rather spectacularly vulnerable. I don't know how to even that out. I'm fairly certain that if necessary I can run to the hills and play brokenhearted hermit, if that helps."

"I mean - I don't want you to have to do that, that does not qualify as a good outcome."

"I'm not going to try to, but I've already screwed up a few times asking questions I didn't really want to force you to answer and not noticing before I'd obviously started to ask a question." She shakes her head. "Even if I got to be perfect at walking the tightrope - I mean, what if we dated and then for whatever reason it wasn't working for me - would breaking up be worse than just never starting?"

"I'm - not sure. My guess is yes and no. I would have a specific reason for being unhappy, but I would knw why it didn't work out for - whatever reason. And that's preferable, I think. It's - with my dad we got to the point where I was genuinely fine answering any question he'd ask, the same's probably going to be true with you, I just need time to get used to you."

"And how does - investigating that avenue compare with the possibility that there's some other artifact that can un-touch you?"

"I think that searching for an artifact that can manage that would waste valuable time and - genuinely not be worth the effort and the side-effect that would go along with it. Maybe I'd be proven wrong, maybe we'll find something that can manage it, but it's - I think I'd prefer trying the other avenue over working for ages just to rearrange my head again."

"And - the necklace itself is the most promising avenue for undoing mental effects, anyway - okay," sighs Annie. "So - I don't need to squish any attempts my brain makes to develop a crush on you? Is I think the conclusion?"

"You don't," he agrees. "... How would you squish attempts to develop a crush on me?"

"Paying attention, mostly. I do a fair amount of conscious management of my thoughts."

"Oh. That's - useful and also kind of impressive."

"It is useful! Most people just think it's weird."

"I categorize things into numbers and make extremely complex algorithms to sort my opinions of people and how useful they are," he shrugs. "The only thing that worries me about policing your own thoughts is - accidentally changing who you are. And I like who you are now, you changing that would be distressing."

"Ceasing to have the ability to change who I am would be a bigger change than any I'm likely to make," she remarks. "It wouldn't happen accidentally, anyway. How does the math version work?"

"Well, for one, I can't change my head," he says. "But I'm pretty good at weighing how important I consider things, and - organizing the results of that. Into number forms so they're easy to compare to one another - I spend ages calculating how important something is to me, get the number from that, and then I compare that to other things on the same scale."

"What's the scale like?"

"In what way? Do you mean in - what's my range on the scale, what makes up my method for figuring it out...?"

"Both."

"Hmmm... Absolute highest single number was a sixty-seven point three. It's for making the knife go away. The average person tends to rate a seven. It becomes harder and harder to get higher numbers as you get up the scale. I weigh things I find important and how important it is that they be attended to or not, or - how much they matter to me. One point is how much I care about a person who has zero personal qualities aside from being sentient. Er - you also broke my scale, I have no idea how to even begin at figuring out what number you are."

"Is the rest of it still functioning even with me leaning on it like that?"

"Oh, yeah, it's working out fine. You're just - sort of my mental number equivalent of 999999, I'm sort of working around it because it's rather bewildering."

"I guess that makes sense. I don't do it with numbers like that. Just - rankings, relative ones, felt out rather than calculated."

"I'm sort of - obsessively accurate. So."

"What's next, after me and getting rid of the knife?"

"Saving my sister."

"I do try to make sense," he agrees, softly.

"Any responses to your ad about knife-hunting yet?"

"None, yet," he sighs. "I think I need the Dean to give me more information for them to be willing to risk touching a strange artifact. Even to get rid of the knife."

Annie pauses in their walk to hug him.

"And it has been raining. But - yeah." Hug.

"Yeah."

"I hope somebody answers the ad soon."

"Me, too," he sighs. "I - think she should have been the one to find the necklace, honestly. She's better at the sort of crisis that involves hitting things. I'm - not."

Aldaras does, too, looking pensive.

"There's not really anything useful I can do, is there?"

"I - don't know, do you have some method to convince people to help?"

"No. People skills aren't really my strongest suit."

"Uh - sure, but I don't know what people on - wilderness adventures need. Food, I guess?"

"Food, water, a tent, compass - you genuinely don't have to do anything, but I can find you things to do if you want to do them."

"It's sounding like you'd probably have an easier time not worrying about occupying me," she remarks. "I can occupy myself, it's okay."

"I - okay. I'm sorry," he sighs.

"You have nothing to be sorry for."

"Well, yes, but I'm sorry that there's not an - easy fix-it solution."

"Yeah, me too. 'Ring bell for customer service and/or to fix everything in the entire universe.'."

"That'd be great," he says wistfully. "Though honestly I might not trust customer service to do it right, I'd make them hand over mythical powers so I could do it properly."

"Any mythical power currently in circulation is not being adequately handled," agrees Annie.

"It really isn't! It's so frustrating, but it's really hard to get my hands on an artifact that can manage the sort of large-scale stuff I'd like to do."

"Is there one you've been tempted to sneak in to get ahold of?" she wonders.

"No," he sighs. "Not any of the ones at this university, anyway. I just want a - 'here have some magic that's useful for infrastructure instead of just personal gain.'"

"Controlling the weather," she suggests.

Aldaras smiles. "That'd be a good one. I'd probably want to sneak in and grab that, as long as the side effect wasn't terrible."

"How terrible a side effect would you put up for really good weather control?"

"Pretty terrible, actually. Even the teleportation side-effect. I wouldn't take it if it made me incapable of figuring out how to use it properly, though. But if it's a fear of shoelaces, I wouldn't complain."

"I'm pretty sure the teleportation side effect would make me incapable of thinking straight. I might be able to follow some plan I made ahead of time, if the power were straightforward to use."

"Uh... sorry about that. I'm not planning to. You can hug me again if you want."

"I don't need to teleport nearly that badly." Hug.

Aldaras nods. "Yeah. Good, I'm - I don't ever want to see you in that kind of pain," he says fiercely. "Never."

"I'm not sure how that works."

"It's a little bewildering and I'm not sure how to explain it. Basically I realized abruptly that the knife is really, excessively dangerous to you and I want to make it go away more."

"I hope you can."

Snuggle. This is nice, except for the panic-fueled part.

"If the knife wanders onto campus you have my permission to pick me up and lock me in a closet."

"Thank you." He pauses. ".... If it were to randomly wander onto campus and - and get you, can I - the necklace, I'm - I don't want you to be forced or - but I - do you prefer that over -" He makes a little unhappy sound and curls around her more. "What do I do in that situation?"

"Okay," he whimpers, obviously rather distressed. "But I don't want either option. Okay? I will go with locking you in a closet before any of those options and - and I don't know, I would rather grab teleportation than let the knife near you."

"Yes. I know. The only thing you can do right now is wait for the dean." Hug.

He nods, a little. "They should have - multiple people touched with the harp, it's not efficient."

"It's not, but they want a monopoly on identification."

"I'm not sure if they're really turning away a lot of volunteers at the door," Annie points out quietly.

"Probably not," he sighs. "Ugh."

"The side effect isn't strictly unpleasant, but I don't think he has time to do anything but eat and work, when he's awake. If he were more efficient - if I thought I could get ahold of the damn thing without having to give the university all my privacy and undying loyalty and complete control over my care - if artifacts needing identification turned up often enough that he had a backlog - then I'd consider it. But none of those things are true."

"Same here. I'm just - upset. Sorry, I'm mildly taking it out on you..."

"It's okay."

"Well - don't dwell on it? It doesn't seem helpful."

"Yeah," he agrees. "Lesson learned."

Annie takes his hand and squeezes it.

He smiles a little at her. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

Oh look. It's the return of the adoring gaze. What a surprise.

Annie giggles.

"The gazing thing? Yes. You are."

"Sorry, I'll stop."

"I don't mind."

"Oh. Well. Okay then."