"Taking care of the knife is up to the seventies now, that's an interesting side effect."
"It's a little bewildering and I'm not sure how to explain it. Basically I realized abruptly that the knife is really, excessively dangerous to you and I want to make it go away more."
"If you'd like me to let go, I will, I'm just - I really, really want you to be safe."
"If the knife wanders onto campus you have my permission to pick me up and lock me in a closet."
"Thank you." He pauses. ".... If it were to randomly wander onto campus and - and get you, can I - the necklace, I'm - I don't want you to be forced or - but I - do you prefer that over -" He makes a little unhappy sound and curls around her more. "What do I do in that situation?"
"Okay," he whimpers, obviously rather distressed. "But I don't want either option. Okay? I will go with locking you in a closet before any of those options and - and I don't know, I would rather grab teleportation than let the knife near you."
"I need to make the knife go away," he growls, a little desperately.
He nods, a little. "They should have - multiple people touched with the harp, it's not efficient."
Aldaras quietly mutters some very impolite obscenities about them and their stupid power games getting people killed.
"I'm not sure if they're really turning away a lot of volunteers at the door," Annie points out quietly.
"The side effect isn't strictly unpleasant, but I don't think he has time to do anything but eat and work, when he's awake. If he were more efficient - if I thought I could get ahold of the damn thing without having to give the university all my privacy and undying loyalty and complete control over my care - if artifacts needing identification turned up often enough that he had a backlog - then I'd consider it. But none of those things are true."
"Still, sorry. The - extreme reaction to you being - not safe caught me by surprise. I knew it was important to keep you safe but I hadn't though about what would happen if you weren't." He shudders, a bit.