"...I won't fight you on that. Let's let him wake up, I guess, and tell him what the options are." 

Maitimo wakes up in a familiar - oh, of course. He had a plan for if this happened again; he is going to make his toenails grow like human ones do so he can estimate how long it's been. He spends a little while focusing on this. 

What has been done to his head right now.

Not that much! Suicide isn't blocked, oaths aren't blocked, osanwë is allowed. He feels pretty groggy, like he's overslept except multiply that feeling by twenty. The vague disorientation from the spatial-reasoning block is back. He can't tell right now if the memory block is in place but it's not obviously there. 

- huh. 

If they aren't trying to stop him from killing himself he'll go eat breakfast and drink something and see if that helps at all with the grogginess.

Standing up is BAD at first, he feels lightheaded and weak and unsteady, but it eases a bit once he's been up for a minute, and eating and drinking help with that as well as the grogginess. 

It seems pretty unlikely they'd have deliberately given him physical problems? Probably it's just the having been unconscious for a while. He can lie back down once he's had some food and water, try to pay more attention to his body and notice if there's anything to repair. 

(They might just kill him.)

(He still doesn't want to die. That is probably why he is not torturing himself right now even though it's probably the right thing to do.)

(If they don't want to kill him then it's because Telumë still wants him, after everything, and in that case this body is Telumë's and Maitimo should fix it up nicely for him. (He enjoys the thought of how Telumë will interpret that emotion, it is a mostly-unfamiliar one.))

Not long after he gets back to bed, there's a knock somewhere, the spatial confusion makes it hard to tell where it's even coming from. "May I come in?" 

He sits up. "Of course."

Telumë comes in, pulls up a chair at the foot of the bed, tucks his legs under himself - it's a posture more appropriate to the apparent age of his current body than to Leareth from before.

He looks well. Like he's been sleeping enough, probably because Maitimo has been unconscious rather than torturing himself. 

"The Valar apparently wished you gone from Arda," he says. "And so you are my responsibility again. Your father - did not wish to express any preferences about your treatment. It is apparently left up to me to decide that." 

- and that's a complicated mix of emotions, like you might expect if you got everything you wanted but everything you wanted was to destroy your homeland and all the trust its people placed in you in order to kill as many people and wreck as many alliances as possible, and also this action through a surprising turn of events landed you back a prisoner of your husband again. And you're kind of into that.

He shivers a little, involuntarily. 

"I have some ideas."

Telumë is presumably picking up said emotions through the empathy bond, but his face doesn't show it much. "You can say them in a moment. I have two ideas right now. Well, three - you will notice I am not forcing you to stay alive, and if you decide at any time you prefer to be dead, that is your choice. I think it unlikely you will, though, so. One option is to send you to an island somewhat larger than Tol Eréssea, several hundred miles from shore and well out of osanwë range of random human strangers on the mainland, cleared of people except a few mage-guards and perhaps any Quendi willing to come across and keep you company there. I would allow that with no mind-effects in place."

"The second option I see is - staying in the north. You would not be able to see me all of the time, but sometimes, if you wished. Much of the tundra is rather empty, so you could go out with guards rather than always stay underground. I would wish for a number of additional precautions, however, including mind-control, and the exact kind I decide on is not up for negotiation and may be subject to change if I notice gaps. If you prefer not that, you can have the island." 

He sits back in the chair. "And your ideas?" 

- cautious, but steadily growing, happiness. 

"I was going to point out that you should probably feed me as fuel to your god, as you're going to need it and it'd be very dramatically appropriate, and then suggest that I could beg you for my life, which I bet I would be spectacularly good at. But you're already ahead of me. 

Do you imagine that any of the mind control would interfere with concluding that I'd rather be on a desert island, and if so would you be willing to take it off once a month or so so I can reconsider."

"I am not sure if it would or not - I would wish to have specific compulsions against running away from the guards and such, if you were going outside, and I suppose that could interfere. I can express an intention to remove it once a month so you can reconsider; I am hesitant to make any more promises to you, at this point, given everything." 

" - all right. I want to stay here and be yours."

Nod. "Your preference is noted. I am going to speak to other people before deciding exactly what to do here and I may decide on the island anyway, if I judge it is better for security or for my own wellbeing."

(If Findekáno informs him that being within a hundred miles of Maitimo is an insane person's idea, is most of what he means.) 

"I will also reassess it regularly on my side, and have others sanity check that assessment; I may change my mind. Just so you are aware." He ducks his head. "You are going to remember this conversation, and today; it seems only fair. If we do settle on the option where you stay in the region, I will wish to sometimes use the memory block, if ever I want to speak with you a bit more freely, but not most of the time. I realize it makes it difficult to hold together your sense of self." 

If Maitimo wanted to remember some occasions, he muses, they could opt not to speak at all - he could place a compulsion on himself against it, even... He's  not going to say that right now though.  

"Okay." Loving happy hopeful - "This feels more like you. I'm glad of it."

Feels more like him than what, he wants to ask and doesn't. 

"Something else I wished to mention," he says. "Jisa at one point had an idea, for - in the event of my side winning the war, how to make it less damaging to you. It would involve scaffolding the oath, so that everything in your mind would stay approximately in place even as the oath breaks. Nobody is sure what would happen after that, but - it would be gradual, and more your decision. Is that something that you would want us to do?" 

" - yes. Would you ...want to? It sounds like it would mean I didn't lose all my values when you kill Sauron, if you kill Sauron?"

"Not instantly, no. I–" what he wants is very complicated and not entirely safe to try to explain, "–among many other priorities, I want you to be well. After the war with Melkor, some of the orcs took it very badly when their oaths broke. I would rather you be whole, and still evil - but in a way that argument could shift, perhaps, not immutable - than shattered into pieces. And it would not be a great additional resource cost, keeping you away from opportunities to wreak havoc for a time longer. If it did not seem to be helping it would be possible to change afterward." 

"Oh.

Yes, I'd want that."

"Then we can do it soon. It will probably not be very noticeable to you now." Telumë glances away for a moment. "Is there anything else you wish to say to me, now? Anything that would help you be comfortable here, while I consider things - I cannot promise we can provide it but I do weight your comfort some." 

"I would enjoy reading books. I would enjoy having paper, for drawing. If there's anything wrong with my body besides that I was unconscious for a while I would like to know what so I can fix it for you."

"Books and paper," Telumë says half to himself, nodding. "I did not hear of any medical problems - we did have a Healer attending you while we...waited. It has been a week, though, which is a long time to be bedridden and would explain it if you are feeling unwell." He frowns. "Fix it for me?" 

"That's what I said."

It's still his body - but 'stay here and be yours' is what Maitimo said. Telumë puts it aside. He stands up. "I can send in one of the humans who kept you company before. Do you remember Kalira? The one who likes birds. She missed your conversations."