Leareth can satisfy his curiosity at some point, but - maybe not now, he was appreciating just cuddling while being very happy and would prefer to do that instead of go over the list of times he was insufficiently paranoid for the hundredth time. 

Yeah, that sounds good. Happy cuddling. When Maitimo has any thought privacy he is very good at steering conversations towards fun and light and the-right-amount-of-sexy but perhaps that is not the right tradeoff right now for Leareth orienting himself about this situation.

That's a neat skill but Leareth thinks he is getting a lot of value out of - seeing the generator of Maitimo's thoughts and feelings, maybe it's unreasonable of him to want to know, obviously most people wouldn't be able to look directly like he is, but it's helpful even if it's not exactly fun and light. 

It doesn't seem unreasonable; lots of married couples share most of their thoughts, even if they don't have the magic-derived certainty they're getting all of them. Maitimo...wouldn't be one of those people, really, by default, because he likes all of the people he is capable of being better than he particularly likes the underlying process who generates them, but Leareth is confused and shouldn't be confused, and he's been keeping secrets for Leareth's own good for a long time now and it's good to have them out in the open instead.

Huh. Leareth is pretty sure that the Maitimo he likes is the generator. He's not confused about that part at all. 

- the generator is - not the part that was promising to save all the worlds no matter how long it took, the generator doesn't do stuff like that, it just produces a Maitimo for Leareth who does stuff like that. Because of Leareth, right, if Maitimo had met someone who didn't want to save all the worlds no matter how long it took he wouldn't have gotten there independently. - his father would have, and then he could've still gotten to work on it, but. 

...There are very few people for whom that isn't true, Leareth thinks. Vanyel wouldn't have gotten there independently; he didn't need a lot of prompting, of having it pointed out to him as an option, he was the sort of person who tried to look, but he wouldn't have been looking in that direction on his own. 

He starts to form the question of whether that Maitimo, who exists because of Leareth, would keep existing if Leareth were no longer there – but he knows the answer already. Leareth wasn't there, in the middle, and then for a very long time he wasn't himself, wasn't the person who had first met Maitimo, who was capable of wanting to save all the worlds. And Maitimo would have kept trying as long as it took to help him be that person again. 

Leareth is pretty sure most people would not, in response to knowing him for a few months, build a shape of person who would do that, and keep doing it even when Leareth was in no state to care either way. So it counts. 

- well a Leareth-shaped Maitimo is a good kind of person to have. Once you have been exposed to the concept of a Leareth it is just irresponsible not to build one inside your head and carry it with you to do important things, and yeah, the actual Leareth isn't the motivating force at that point - 

- he's not really sure what he's arguing, here. He is very glad he does have the real thing right here.

Well, Leareth is very glad to be right here, so that works out well. 

He doesn't think there's anything else he's been carefully avoiding thinking, so maybe at this point they can just lie there and snuggle. 

Leareth has no complaints about this plan. 

...every once in a while he's still getting a surprised burst of happyhappyhappy, you would really think it'd have stopped being surprising by now and yet. 

Well he doesn't know about humans but Quendi are not meant to be alone and it's good for them, being loved, belonging with someone.

Probably it's not good for humans either. Leareth was perfectly capable of surviving like that, when it seemed like the best option, but...this is better. And it feels like it might make him stronger, not just happier - but even if it were all else equal except happiness, if happiness is one of the things he's fighting for in the world, in all the worlds, then his counts as well. 

It does. 

In a way one of the things it feels that you could maybe learn from this whole mess is in fact whether happiness - aimed purely at that, with no strategic plans whatsoever - makes people weaker. The Noldor grew up in paradise and it may have made them naive about the early stages of Melkor's plans but otherwise - it seems to have made them stronger? They were prepared to leave everything behind to fight a war that was sufficiently important, they were prepared to start building once it ended. They're getting along with their neighbors. It's like things being good is good for people.

Leareth has been mulling on that as well. He isn't sure how well the Noldor would do in Velgarth; there's a reason he ended up in the shape he did, and why most people in most societies ended up not like the Noldor. But in the world that they're actually in, they - fit well. They can coordinate. Shockingly well, really, he was impressed with that over and over, the bonds of implicit trust that meant it was never really an option for him to just take over. He couldn't have replicated that. 

Yes, the way to take over the Noldor is obviously with oaths. He's sort of proud of himself for having succeeded at that not being obvious when it might've mattered. And - he's really really glad it didn't come to that. It is a messy thing his people are building but he loves them and he trusts them and he thinks they'll figure it out.

A bunch of the reason it was non-obvious is that oaths are incredibly disturbing. Compulsions are one thing, they make sense to him, but oaths feel - too powerful, especially for something so cheap and easy to create, it feels like something subtly off-kilter in the fabric of reality that it works. 

He kind of feels that way about the ability to PERMANENTLY DIE in a GIANT EXPLOSION.

...You know, that's fair.

Leareth doesn't want to sit here being sad about cracks in the fabric of reality, but it seems like he's going to unless he finds something better to do, so maybe he'll turn around and kiss Maitimo again instead. 

Wow. That seems like something better to do. - and actually, there's something they can do if Leareth wants to not have too many novel experiences, which is that he can explain to Leareth the Elf thing about hair.

...Leareth was under the impression he had been told about this, but clearly he didn't get the full explanation, so, sure? 

Yeah he made several attempts but somehow they didn't succeed and he can, instead, just unbraid his hair and then let Leareth get this information firsthand, which might work better.

Sure! 

Does Leareth want to try touching his hair or does he just want to watch.

If Maitimo would like Leareth to touch his hair then he's happy to do that! Although slightly worried about somehow doing it in a bad way since humans apparently don't have the same thing.