slow progress

[keep_busy]

Eventually Annie goes home for the day. Her mother lives a long but doable walk from campus, but Annie makes the trip by tricycle for speed and safety, or bus when the ice is too bad to allow riding. This is a trike day.

She tells her mother as straightforwardly as she can what has happened.

Her mother wants to meet the boy, but accepts that this should probably wait until the situation with Zevaia changes one way or another.

A few hours after Annie gets home, she gets a call from the Dean's office. There are results in; she can go hear them at the office. Apparently they're not supposed to release them over the phone for some obscure reason of policy.

Coat goes back on Annie, Annie goes back on trike, trike goes back on campus.

Comments

[keep_busy]

"Yes? Do I not look it?"

[touchedinthehead]

"- You stumbled a bit there."

[keep_busy]

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

[touchedinthehead]

Aldaras nods, trying to disguise - vague worry.

"Okay," he says, standing. "Well. Now that this - wonderful drama is completed..."

[keep_busy]

"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?"

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

"I'd need to think about it more to go into much detail about how I feel about it - but it's better news than its opposite would be because it means I can evaluate a specific possible - necklace-target - instead of gambling."

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

"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?"

[touchedinthehead]

He smiles, slightly. "Correct."

[keep_busy]

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

[touchedinthehead]

"I'd have to know why, to properly voice my feelings of it. But at the baseline of not knowing your reasons - glad you were safe from the mind-reading you hate and the knife that's nightmares incarnate. Worried about the why, I'd be hoping you thought it through. Concerned about the moral implications of - any sort of relationship, because in this situation you didn't get to talk to me about it before the love thing." He trails off, and then a stab of guilt tells him he's not saying everything.

He grimaces at the guilt, and then sighs, "Also - to my shame, happy. Because then you'd - feel the same way about me."

Aldaras looks genuinely upset with himself about this fact.

[keep_busy]

"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 unless 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."

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

"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."

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

"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."

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

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

[touchedinthehead]

Another little smile. "I don't think it's a good outcome, either, but the fact that it exists is - somewhat nice? I am probably not ever going to get my head back to where it was, but I'm certainly not entirely in your power." Pause. "Also, I trust you. You're not going to abuse it."

[keep_busy]

"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?"

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

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

[touchedinthehead]

"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."

[keep_busy]

"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?"