"My well-being is not an independent concept here."

"There are things about this scenario that make it unusually tolerable and you are one of them. I don't want that to come at your expense, though."

"...I'm going to take that as a compliment, I guess."

"Sorry I can't get more specific but then you can design the next one better for whatever your purpose is. Just in case he either doesn't have fully general mindreading or it costs him something, you know."

"Be less of a compliment if I needed coaching to manage 'unusually tolerable'."

"I can do compliments. You've hung on really well over tragedy after tragedy without even developing an unhealthy fear of losing people, it's very impressive. You've made a lot of progress on the golems that I'm not supposed to seek more information about. You've handled this whole mess with adorable equanimity and I'm so, so glad Findekano has you, it takes so much pressure off me."

"...wasn't fishing, but thank you. It'd be a lot harder without Findekáno."

"It's not that you were fishing, it's that I was. It is hard to describe how afraid it makes me, being useless..."

"I'm sorry."

"Not Kib's fault. I love him. Don't let me keep you."

"Kib loves you too," murmurs Kib, and off he goes.

You look like you got hit by a fully loaded mining cart at top speed. Maitimo?

No, it was the mining cart, see, you can tell because of all the colorful bruises the golem wouldn't have let Maitimo land.

Hugs. He's going to be okay.

Lean. You think so? Really?

Not on a timescale you're going to find acceptable, but yeah. After the war we'll go find him some population with pressing problems the Enemy couldn't possibly benefit from seeing him work on and he'll do that for a few centuries and then he'll realize that it's definitely been an objective few centuries, there's been enough art and music and invention that the Enemy couldn't have all duplicated....

Okay.

I'm hoping it won't take him that long to pick an attitude towards us other than 'terror alternating with fake normality alternating with upsettingly needy subservience' but that's not really what's important, what's important is that he's happy.

Agreed on both counts.

Want to talk about the metaphorical runaway trolley?

Sure.

And Findekáno gets a digest of the conversation. And clinging, some of that.

He clings back. I am inclined to give him a method of suicide, if his stated reason for not asking is that it'd make us sad. I think I'll refrain from asking him what I did to him in past iterations, with that to work from - still think he'll someday be okay - do you think it'd be better for him if I asked him for more things - 

If they're plausibly useful to you, maybe.

I'll try to think of some. How are you doing?

I'm glad I'm not dealing with this alone.