"Yes, that sounds like it'd present a real challenge."

"And even if I had the perfect therapist lined up I'd have to convince him, which would be...challenging, I rather suspect."

"Stubborn person?"

"Bad at valuing his own well-being separate from his functionality."

"That is sometimes the sort of thing therapy can help with."

"If someone could help him with that it would be really really great, he had that problem even before all the torture."

"It sounds like the amount of trauma you're describing would impede him in his daily life, so perhaps he'd be willing for that reason to try to work through it."

"It's been a really long time and I think he's learned to function around it but maybe."

"It must be challenging to meet your family again and have them have experienced so much without you."

"...Mhm."

She waits.

"...When I first encountered Curufin I said I still loved all of them and he said he wasn't sure what it was I loved but it was probably gone and that turned out to be--a miscommunication--but until it was cleared up my plan was to flee to my bedroom and bury my head in a pillow and cry until I physically couldn't anymore."

"I can imagine. And then what, do you know?"

"...Hide my pain from everyone but my sister and continue to work with the rest of them on our shared goals."

"The shared goals are that important?"

"Oh, they include scaling immortality for humans."

"Wow. And you worried that if you failed to hide your feelings, that'd delay the project?"

"I think that even if they hadn't still loved me they'd feel guilty enough that they might start pretending otherwise if they knew the absence was hurting me like that."

"It sounds like there is a lot of hiding and pretending going on all around here."

"We are not the best family in the world at communicating."

"Is getting better at communicating something you would want to get out of therapy?"

"...Maybe. It's pretty far from the top of my priority list."

"What would be nearer the top?"

"More healthily cope with grief, better coping mechanisms in general--I guess that could overlap with better communication--dealing with my overinflated sense of personal responsibility..."

"Those sound like good goals. A lot clearer than many people come in to therapy for. It sounds like the grief gets pretty overwhelming?"