Dunno how this bar thing works. If she's a frequent attendee, possibly? If it helps I think Maedhros around a mindreader would be three horrifying seconds then he figures you out and stops thinking anything he doesn't want you to know. He's scary that way.

He rubs his temples. I sincerely hope that if she ever does meet him it's after she's reliably able not to read anyone.

She at least took the warning seriously. Odette told her the Enemy was 'so much worse than Shaw that I don't think you can understand' and that startled her.

To her, Sebastian Shaw is the incarnation of all evil, he sighs.

To be fair he sounds pretty dreadful.

He was. But I do worry, sometimes. I don't know if it's healthy for her to blame him for everything she conceivably can.

Well. If it helps to expose her to bad things that are the fault of different evil people. I have a brother who believes that the last four hundred fifty years of his life have been a sadistic hallucination by the Enemy, who apparently let him 'escape' ten different times, sometimes for subjective decades, just to fuck with him.

I assume this is the same one.

Yeah, yeah, rest of the family either died cleanly or is still mostly sane.

I'm sorry about your brother. I'd offer to help but I suspect that would only make it worse.

Yeah, expect the most helpful thing will be winning the war. And once he has more powerful magic himself. In a couple millenia I expect he'll start believing this is reality just because there's nothing of strategic relevance the Enemy could gain from maintaining a hallucination.

My condolences that that's the best you can hope for.

Thanks. 

Wish Odette could have met him before it happened, is all.

I'm not sure she wouldn't be badly harmed by losing the person he used to be, but I certainly understand the sentiment.

Yeah, maybe so. If she needed it he'd pretend for her, does that help any?

...That sort of the opposite of helps.

If he's honest with her about how he's been hurt and changed, then she can take any improvements at face value; if he pretends to be other than he is then she can never trust it if she finds out at all.

Problem is sometimes I think it helps him to pretend. But yeah. Maybe it's best this way.

If he's not pretending for her sake and he's not so consistent about it that she expects to be unable to tell the difference eventually I expect she'll be alright.

Don't think she has that expectation.

It might be that none of them can tell how much he's already pretending, but he doesn't say that.

I don't know what to tell you, then.

It's okay. I'm used to it all, it doesn't bother me the way it bothers people hearing it for the first time.

I'm more concerned about her than you, to be honest.

You can ask her about it but I think she's got Illia and she's got us and she's the kind of psychologically unhealthy we are very used to helping with.

Oh?

She's a lot like my dad.