He didn't mean to cause her to feel bad about it. To him it was just how he is.

"It's fine." He said, waving his hand a little. "Just- I just ask because I'm not catching something. Context, or body language or whatever." He sighed. "When I was younger I didn't try so, I'm not terribly good at it yet. So..." He squirmed a bit. "Sorry."

There, an apology, that was pretty rare to get out of him. "That said, I'm not trying to hurt myself. I'm concerned by how much this thing knows about us and what it knows that we don't know. It's obviously connected to the tether. My goal is to figure that out to make this a consensual trip. People don't have to go if they don't want to, but I have to. That's what this is about."