Leareth, at some point earlier when he was failing at sleeping, managed to slowly and arduously reason his way to the conclusion that either this is real, in which case they're actually trying to help him, or it's a hallucination, in which case his consent or lack thereof isn't actually going to make a difference in the long run. And to the extent that he's allowing himself to have a few preferences, now, he prefers the option that gives him more information, sooner.

"You can start." 

She nods and reads.

Leareth is scared. He's not sure why, and is trying to figure it out. 

...He's scared that any minute now he'll catch the slip-up that confirms he's still in Angband - well, not that he can trust his reasoning to produce true beliefs from observations, but in the hypothetical where he could do that. If that happens then it means Melkor has access to compulsions, somehow, and that only seems possible if he's won the war, and that would be an awful conclusion to come to, in the imaginary world where he can form conclusions at all. 

He's scared that he won't notice that - that the situation will keep being confusing and ambiguous, but with some observations that would be evidence of him not being in Angband, if evidence were still a thing. And...then what? There's a blank wall of refusal that he can't see past.

He's scared that he's giving Melkor a lot of valuable information, by inexplicably not being able or willing to stomp on all his thoughts until they stop. 

He's scared that she's going to hurt him.

"You might be scared of becoming confident you're not in Angband because then, if you were wrong, you might take actions that could help Melkor," suggests Bella.

Leareth instantly, involuntarily, runs the mental check on whether he's taking actions right now that could be helping Melkor if he were completely wrong about the context - he's pretty sure he isn't, he can't do magic. He has to remind himself that he can't trust his thoughts here either, but he suspects he's at least a dozen steps away from doing something genuinely helpful for Melkor. 

So as long as he stays right here, it's almost certainly still safe, he's not currently very exploitable. 

The problem is that there are steps that lead from here to eventually doing magic, maybe, he at least can't be certain there aren't, and–

- a shattered tower - stars obscured by blood and jagged rubble - 

–and he can't, he can'tcan'tcan't do things, he is nothing and no one and it isn't safe to care, it isn't safe to try, because he's in the hands of a power that will twist that to its own purposes and there is no longer any way out...

"Do you want me to calm you down -"

It takes Leareth a while to even process the question, but - being too panicked to finish thoughts doesn't seem that helpful in either scenario, so sure, he wouldn't mind being calmer. 

She pushes calm and waits.

...Well, now Leareth is thinking approximately the same things, but calmly, and mostly feeling very stuck. 

He's noting, quietly to himself, that even if this is real, he still has to assume that taking actions in the world isn't safe, since Melkor knows how to destroy and reshape people, he has to assume he's been permanently compromised at this point. Which means it doesn't matter either way - except, he would still prefer to have a probability estimate on torture happening soon, even if it's not decision-relevant. 

"Well, I'm not going to torture you but I suppose having me just say that isn't very helpful. I don't think you have to assume you're permanently compromised, but it's normal for recovery to take a very, very long time, and if you need a very very long time, that's - not in a general sense all right but it's strategically all right, I think, there's no specific hurry."

That makes sense, in the version where this is real, there's another Leareth, who can presumably handle all the usual Leareth things - is he advising the people in charge of the war effort right now, that seems important. (Leareth isn't very worried about giving Melkor information, here, since he was captured before even exchanging hellos with Vanyel, and has no idea what's been happening since.) 

"Yes, he's helping."

...Honestly, in the version where this is real, it seems possible, from a strategic perspective, that the other Leareth should just kill him rather than trying to fix him - he's not useful, he won't be for a very very long time if ever, and in the meantime he's just taking up resources, which they probably don't have to spare if there's a war still going on.

It's scary to think about in a distant way, he doesn't want to die, and...he's finding it weirdly hard to model how his past self would have felt about that. But, well, other Leareth should know that he would understand the necessity. 

(Leareth isn't at all worried about giving Melkor reasons to kill him, there is a zero percent chance Melkor is ever going to do that. At worst he's going to find this hilarious.) 

"He did check if your immortality setup is still working, and it is."

Leareth had actually been thinking that the other him could disable it, trivially. It seems like a terrible idea to risk him dying and coming back right now, given the whole 'compromised by Melkor' thing - although, on reflection, it's not clear it would work. He needs to - fight, a bit, to contest for his new body with its previous inhabitant, and right now he probably just...wouldn't... He has no idea what would happen then, actually. Maybe he would get evicted and come back again and repeat the whole process over and over, which sounds incredibly stupid. 

(Leareth is, on reflex, not thinking about the details of his setup; this is a pre-existing habit, longstanding, because Velgarth contains a lot of mind-readers and there's one thing he wants the gods to never, ever hear the faintest whisper about.) 

She doesn't say anything right away; she goes pretty still.

I really think, she tells Local Leareth, that even if you weren't going to tell me your immortality method kills people, it would have been due diligence to ask me if I were prone to mercy-kills, before putting me in a room with your similarly immortal alt who has been through Angband.

Local Leareth freezes halfway through writing a sentence. He should have thought of that, and he didn't, and he's not even sure why he didn't - well, he definitely didn't imagine the scenario where Bella mercy-killed the other Leareth without asking him, it still seems very implausible. And he hadn't thought she would learn it, because he's so cagey with that information and had vaguely expected another him would be too, but of course the other Leareth is different, probably less in control of his thoughts, and...in short, he really, really should have thought of it. 

:I am sorry. You are correct. I ought to have reassessed my policy here, and told you, as soon as this happened. What were you talking about such that it even came up?: 

I told him you'd checked his immortality method and it was still in place.

Leareth wants to ask how that ended up being relevant, but doesn't. 

:I try not to make the same mistakes repeatedly: he sends, :so I am going to come over there right now, and tell you all of it, in private Mindspeech. Please be aware that this is something literally nobody in my organization knows the details of, since I wish to avoid giving the gods any more ideas: 

If you're still worried about the security of Mindspeech, having me read it off you instead doesn't introduce a new vulnerability.

:All right, you may do that: 

Leareth is thinking that his immortality setup is a spell (still unspecified in its details) which hides his spirit as soon as he dies, so it doesn't get snatched by the local god's usual afterlife process, and then - allows it to find a new body. Specifically it has to be the body of one of his original incarnation's descendants, but he was very prolific about that at the very start, and two thousand years is a long time. Probably it wouldn't be possible for the gods to eradicate all of them at this point even if they made a concerted effort, but he doesn't want to give them an incentive to try. 

He tries to die as rarely as possible, because killing people is actually bad and something he prefers to do less of, and nowadays that he's better at avoiding being murdered by gods and has centuries worth of magical research in life extension, he can generally stretch each body close to two hundred years. 

Wow, Elves would hate that so much. I wonder if the Elves this one met know.

How long's this one got?

:He is maybe twenty years older than I am, so - ordinarily I would think at least a century, but also he spent several years with his magic blocked being tortured, which one assumes does not help. My Healers were not sure how much damage was done and whether it is reversible. Almost certainly he has fifty years, though: 

Okay. I will probably have a chance to figure out arcane immortality in that time if things will just stop happening so damn much.

:I am not sure if it would help to have a number of additional very clever people on the project, but that is a resource I could offer you if you wished. It is somewhat self-interested of me, of course, but also this would benefit you greatly. ...If I have not already said this, I would also offer you our life extension magic, if you need longer to work on the problem: