"You haven't actually done anything to me," she points out.

Leareth drags his crate next to hers and opens his arms. (Has he hugged literally anybody while in this body? He doesn't think so.) 

She's still kind of hugging herself but she scoots over and leans against him, head on his shoulder.

Oh no now he's having some completely different emotion and he has no idea what it is except that it's very very loud and giving him an overwhelming urge to scoop her up and take her somewhere safe. Leareth does not do this. He does very carefully put his arm around her and let it rest there. 

"...What are you sad about?" She is definitely sad as the dominant emotion, rather than furious or terrified, and Leareth is confused by this. 

"Um. It's complicated. ...the reasoning is complicated the actual thing isn't complicated. Uh. I can't have children. ...as of a minute ago."

Leareth is not stupid. He traces back the last couple of things he told her and the emotional reactions he felt. Compulsions, right, he knew that was going to be upsetting...and the details of his immortality...and, oh no, she's a Healer, she was scared, she thought he was going to–

"You thought I was going to mind-control you into having my children and then possess them?" he says, horrified. "I am so sorry - actually I would not do that at all - you are very smart and so it would be a huge waste to mind-control you at all much less in order to have children, also I think at least half a million people are my original body's descendants at this point so it is not as though I need to do that. But I can see why you thought I would, I said everything in such a terrible order, and I can also see why you would very reasonably not believe my reassurance now. I am so incredibly sorry."

Also he even more wants to personally slaughter the gods about it. 

"I didn't think you were going to possess them. That's obviously a replaceable function even if it needed to be the current body. But you probably need me alive, and I don't know much about what other condition you might need me in or how you might need me to get there. You might have wanted to arrange for me to possess them."

"...I had actually not gotten as far as thinking through the part where you will die of old age if nothing else at some point and this will cause - damage," Leareth admits. "This whole lifebond emotions thing is making me much stupider, right now, I am not used to it enough to think through it."

He tries to imagine it. "...It feels as though I would be very sad if I were mind-controlling you, because I would know that this was not what you wanted, and being lifebonded seems to mean that I intrinsically care a great deal about what you want?" Pause. "Anyway, you actually think immortality is good, and also you are very clever, and hopefully by the time it would come up, we can figure something out that does not involve descendants and ideally does not involve anybody dying at all." 

"Okay." She shifts a little in the hug, sighs. "I can tell that it's - steering you now? But it's new, and when it's not new I don't know how much you'd endorse letting it tell you what to do, right - and I'm extrapolating how it works for you from my end but I definitely already feel horrified about mind control if I imagine it happening to total strangers so that makes it hard to figure whether the lifebond is actually making you care much about it as applies to me rather than a total stranger. And you said - not to me because I have ridiculously good shields? And you mentioned you have a Mindhealer -"

"All of that is very fair. I...definitely would have read your thoughts that first time in the library, if you did not have such shields, because I am a very paranoid person - I would argue it is a very appropriate level of paranoia given the extent to which the gods are actually after me. And, I am in fact not sure what I will end up endorsing, here, mostly I am very irritated with the gods about this scheme. I...suppose if you were actively going to sabotage my plans, I would stash you somewhere rather than let you do so, and would try to ignore how much it bothered me that you were sad? However, my preference would be to actually talk to you and figure out if we can come to some better agreement that is not letting the gods win this round." 

"Yeah. So, from a position of not knowing the scope of your plans opposition to which might get me stashed or whatever... To be clear I didn't specifically want kids. I wanted the option but -" Shrug.

"It was an understandable and not unreasonable reaction on your part and also I am very, very sorry." Leareth sighs. "...I think that I ought to tell you about my current plans, but - I am definitely being steered by the lifebond into feeling that I trust you, which makes it hard to consider objectively. However, I think my endorsed action here would still be to attempt good-faith communication first? Though possibly I should try to ask for a second opinion from somebody I work with about it." 

"Even in situations where I can wreck stuff you might want later?" she asks tiredly.

"I think that from where we are right now, it would be difficult for you to wreck anything that I will badly need later," Leareth says, with equal weariness. "...Also I notice that I have been doing a great deal of talking about what I want and how this affects my life and goals. I think I ought to give you a turn?" 

"You know what I do with myself, I told you all about it. In principle it can go on unchanged except now I hang out with you, apart from the threat of assassination or whatever, which might easily mean it cannot go on unchanged."

Lifebond or no, it is probably too early in their relationship to offer her as much funding as she wants for a lab up north where the gods have less power to make anything troublesome happen. 

"I have some thinking to do," he admits. "However, I think that no matter what I conclude, it will be more pleasant for us - and accomplish less of what the gods wish to accomplish - if we can approach this as non-adversarially as possible. Inconveniently, I have made tradeoffs in the past such that it is understandably difficult for you to trust me. Is...there anything I might do to help on that front? I am willing to consider options even if they are quite costly, because this seems important – though I am absolutely not willing to give up on trying to fix all of the problems in the world, and using the methods required to do so when the gods are against change." 

"Trust you to do what?" she shrugs. "I don't even know what your plan is, so I have no idea if I can offer any upside potential to telling me about it besides being less cranky at you, let alone what tradeoffs I should or should not trust you to make about it, and I don't want to use mind control to solve my problems - I haven't yet decided where the line is between that and merely declining to adjust my emotional reactions to things as they naturally are for your comfort but I'm pretty sure grouching about being in the dark is the one and not the other. But probably I'm not useful because you were in town to talk to whoever that other person was, not me, and you are two thousand years old so if you needed a Healer/Fetcher infectious disease research specialist I assume you would already have one - my potential relevance here is somewhere between 'an inconvenient vulnerability maintained in a less inconvenient state with hugs' and 'eventually achieving the lofty position of one of those pumpkins with eyes painted on it people talk to when they're stuck on a theoretical problem' so perhaps it will never make sense to tell me what's going on, and I will hover indefinitely at being pretty sure you won't actually literally murder me. I am pretty sure of that."

"All of that is so extremely fair, and yet, ouch." Leareth is sure she can tell about the ouch part so he might as well not try to hide it. "Although, do not sell yourself short – I am two thousand years old and I never thought of the angle you are taking, and I was Healing-Gifted in some of those lives though it was rarely my main focus. More importantly, I have often had Healing researchers working for me and none of them thought of it either." 

"I think I'm great. I do not know to what extent you think I'm great in a way not mediated by the lifebond and I especially don't know if I'm great in a way that has any relevance to your plan. If your plan involved my specialty I think you would have said so by now. I can do other things, but if, I don't know, you have everything all set up and just need to feed some behemoth of a spell a few thousand people a year without getting interrupted, say, I'm not going to be uniquely helpful and I can see why you would rather hold off on informing me lest I decide to rescue them and throw off your schedule."

Of course she is correct about her level of awesomeness probably not helping. "Your specialty is not that relevant to my current plan," he admits. "I think the gods would have been hesitant to offer me someone who was." Sigh. "I would suggest we attempt a research project to see if lifebonds can be undone, but that is not your specialty either, and the person who I would usually point at it has a - cultural superstition about lifebonds and is going to shout at me if I suggest that as a solution. Also she is a Mindhealer so you would probably prefer not that." 

"I mean, I think I could manage to relax if the thing the Mindhealer is doing is removing preexisting mind control. Her cultural superstition objects to removing them even when literally nobody wants them around? - okay, literally nobody endorses having them around, for the sake of completeness I should probably acknowledge that it does seem like it might be. Uncomfortable."

"I confess I have never asked her for details. My understanding is that the Haighlei Empire's belief is that lifebonds are sacred and that anybody who interferes with them will be cursed by the gods forever and so will all of their descendants. I am not sure if this is true; it seems very extreme to me." 

"She objects to being cursed by the gods forever and she works for you? What does she think you do, sell apricot jam?"

Leareth chuckles, he can't help it. "I am not sure! Though - she objects to gods in general, she left her homeland because the gods there are an extreme level of stifling toward all change even compared to the ones east of the Pelagirs. She may just have absorbed the belief about lifebonds and never especially questioned it." 

"Perhaps she could be convinced to question it." But she shivers anyway.