What does Leareth want from him! He’s just sitting there, as opaque as stone, and Brightstar can’t think of anything more to add to the apology! 

(He is not going to ask about resurrecting his parents. Jisa said - but Jisa is not in the room right now - and Brightstar feels like he's going to be very lucky if the worst that happens is Leareth shouting at him. Why isn't Leareth shouting at him?? What does he want??) 

What would Leareth say if he wasn't too impaired to have coherent thoughts let alone trust any of them to accurately reflect reality? ...There's something nuanced, there, about - what it means to assign fault, the overlap and difference between being - causally entangled - with a certain outcome, and what people would consider moral responsibility for the outcome happening - but Leareth absolutely cannot piece together anything coherent, there, just form a fragmentary sense that there's a sense in which Brightstar being the person he is was...related...to why his parents died but the same is true of Leareth. 

He is not going to try to formulate an honest apology for whatever his part in this is when he can't think. 

Is there anything - simple and clean - enough that he can be fairly sure there is no possible world in which he wouldn't mean it? 

:- It is a tragedy that your parents died: he manages. :They were lights in the world, as all people are.: 

??????????????

And someday they'll fix it. Maybe not even a very distant someday. They have access to the ability to raise the dead, now. It's - he thinks it's something he would prioritize, not just for the eventual future but - sooner. But he can't think, and it would be so unfair to say something this grieving child might interpret as a promise or even an intention, when Leareth has no idea what his endorsed position on it is going to be. 

But it's possible now, and not sometime in the more-or-less distant future, because of what Brightstar did. A lot of things are possible now, sooner and cheaper, because of what Brightstar did. That isn't complicated.

:You did a good thing for our world: he sends, as gently as he can. 

?????????????????

Underclothes on. Tunic on (unlaced). Trews on. Slippers on feet. Vanyel’s hair is a soaking-wet mess but that doesn’t matter.

<Leareth there’s going to be a Gate, it’s okay, it’s just me>

Even Vanyel can do a Gate pretty easily when it’s only half a mile and he’s using the doorway of the room he just spent ten days dying in as a destination threshold. It hurts but mostly just in a backlash way.

The warning is appreciated. Leareth holds perfectly still and does not startle when he senses the Gate.

And Vanyel only stumbles very slightly as he crosses the threshold. He takes the Gate down, properly.

He runs.

Brightstar was not expecting a Gate, but he's too exhausted and miserable to even startle. 

Vanyel reaches the door. 

He puts his hand on Brightstar's shoulder. He doesn't shout "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" like he wants to. 

"Brightstar," he says gently. "Featherfire is on her way. Why don't you go wait by the center station for her?" 

Brightstar does not really understand what Vanyel is doing here in such a hurry but, insofar as he's thinking about it at all, the obvious guess is that there's an emergency and Vanyel needs to consult Leareth about it in private. He considers asking if he can help with the emergency, whatever it is, but - probably Vanyel would tell him? And he might maybe need a little while to stop crying. 

He goes to the center station. 

Vanyel steps into the room and shuts the door firmly behind him. 

"I'm so sorry about that. We should've made sure the Healers knew not to let him in." Why didn't they do that??? Well, probably because it's BAFFLING AND INEXPLICABLE that Brightstar tried to show up! What was he thinking!!

Does Leareth seem...okay. 

Well, he isn't crying! He's sitting on the edge of his cot, a bit stiffly, his face expressionless and blank. His breathing is controlled and maybe a bit faster than it should be. 

Leareth is incredibly not okay! This isn't surprising at all given the circumstances but that does not make it less upsetting and Vanyel doesn't really know what to do! 

...Probably Leareth doesn't know either. Vanyel is pretty terrible at answering "what do you need" even in situations that aren't nearly this stressful. 

"...I'm going to come sit with you, all right?" Vanyel isn't sure where the stool he was using before ended up. He looks around uncertainly, and then pushes ahead and does what he would do unthinkingly in a heartbeat with anyone else, which is to sit down on the bed itself next to Leareth. 

Apparently this is just the thing that's happening now? Leareth...is having a lot of trouble querying whichever part of his mind would be reporting how he feels about it.

 It...doesn't feel like the sense-memory of dying? It's in a direction away from that? 

Sitting beside Leareth doesn't seem to be making things worse, at least. Leareth is tense but he didn't flinch when Vanyel moved closer. It's probably still not the right time to offer Leareth a hug, even though he really wants to, Vanyel's read right now is that Leareth is not going to be able to answer a question about whether hugs are okay and he sure is not hugging Leareth without asking first aaaaaaa. 

It would be easier to figure out what to say if he had the slightest idea why Brightstar came in here– ...on consideration he feels like he can more or less guess. Brightstar came because he's racked with guilt, which is understandable, and flailing around for something like closure or forgiveness, which is also understandable, and because he's young and overwhelmed and in his own head and it wouldn't have occurred to him that Leareth, the terrifying (formerly)-immortal archmage, would...have feelings. Which is also understandable! Vanyel could easily have made the same mistake even when he was a decade older than Brightstar is right now! It's, just, gah. 

...Right now he doesn't think it matters, yet, the part that matters is that Leareth is obviously terrified and overwhelmed and having trouble calming down even Brightstar out of the room. 

What would Vanyel need, right now, in Leareth's place - other than Yfandes, that doesn't map across - 

"Are you comfortable?" Vanyel asks him. "Do you want a - blanket, or something?" 

Leareth has no idea how to determine if he's comfortable but it's not like a blanket is going to hurt him. 

Speaking out loud is - not happening, for some reason he can't quite figure out. :All right: he manages. 

There's a folded blanket at the foot of the cot. Vanyel picks it up and drapes it over Leareth without actually touching him. 

Should he wake the Healer? She's apparently managed to sleep through the whole thing and was also fast asleep through Vanyel singing earlier and he's not actually sure that shaking her awake to talk to Leareth would even help. 

Someone appears to have left a pot of tea on the little table by the window. It's probably stone cold but mage-energy can fix that. 

"I'm going to get you some tea to drink, all right?" he says. And then retrieves the teapot and cup with Fetching rather than stand up, that Gift doesn't have backlash. 

Leareth reaches for the cup and finds that his hands are shaking rather badly. It's probably mostly the nerve damage but it wasn't this bad before, and before he could get it to stop by concentrating on it hard enough and now he...can't. 

He has no spare mental or emotional capacity to try to solve this problem and is just going to stare at his hands in blank frustration. 

That...is in hindsight predictable and if Vanyel had been thinking at all he would have predicted it, and it's not going to make Leareth feel better at all! But drinking something warm probably will still help, if Vanyel can find a way to make it physically feasible? 

"It's okay," Vanyel says. "I've got this - here -" He Fetching-juggles the mostly-emptied teapot onto the floor so he has both hands free, and holds the cup with one hand while - slowly and telegraphing all of his movements as clearly as he can - he reaches to capture one of Leareth's hands and bring it to the cup. ...Leareth is going to spill the tea everywhere if he lets go, so - how about they do this with both of Vanyel's hands over both of Leareth's hands to make sure that tea stays in cup and does not go all over the bed and floor? Vanyel wouldn't be a huge fan, in Leareth's place - and he's quite sure of that because he was in this position recently - but he hates it less than having someone just hold the cup for him without any contribution on his part, especially when that person is a bored Healing-trainee. 

Leareth is not currently very able to introspect on whether he hates it or not but Vanyel touching him doesn't feel like the memory of dying and whatever it does feel like instead of that isn't loud enough to register. 

He drinks tea. It's stressful, he thinks, because it kind of feels like he can't breathe and changing the pattern of his breathing so he can swallow feels a bit like he's maybe going to die of drinking tea even though that makes no sense, but - it does, maybe, help a little? 

And it gives Vanyel an opportunity to get a peek with Healing-Sight. His Gift is weak and his fine control at wielding it is mediocre, but he has a lot more Sight-training than he would if he hadn't been friends with Shavri for half his life. 

...Wow, it's abruptly even more surprising that Leareth is as externally controlled as he still is - enough that Vanyel isn't sure anyone else would realize he's upset or scared - because that looks like a really, really intense physical panic-reaction. 

He doesn't know the trick for slowing down a person's pulse  - and isn't sure if Sera knows it, or if she would be alert enough to pull it off if he wakes her. It might be worth hauling someone else in here if Leareth can't calm down from this soon, but it's not actually dangerous, Leareth's life-force is still bright and solid even as it's roiling in confusion, and bringing another person into the room right now feels fraught. 

He…suspects Leareth needs to be calmer than this before offering him a hug could even theoretically help. 

“You seem really panicky,” he says gently, because it’s definitely helped for him to have the obvious pointed out even if it is, in fact, really goddamned obvious and feels like a stupid, condescending thing to say. 

Yes. Leareth concurs. 

:I do not think I was ever in any danger and I am certainly not in danger now but that does not seem to make any difference: he sends, frustrated. He tries to take another sip of tea, and the only reason the tea doesn't go everywhere is that Vanyel's hands are there. 

"- Sorry." Vanyel does his part of helping the tea reach Leareth's mouth.

"Leareth, it makes perfect sense to me that you don't entirely feel safe here? It would've been a terrible idea to be here at all, let alone while you're - this incapacitated - until the Heartstone was shut down, and from your perspective that was only, like, in the last day, right? And we've just gone and demonstrated that we don't have the security to keep Brightstar out of your room. ...I know he's not a threat to you, he had no intention of harming you and I don't think he looked outside his own head for two seconds to realize you might not appreciate a sobbing apology right now, but we still shouldn't have let him just walk right in! It's really understandable to feel like you don't have adequate security here because apparently we're hopeless!" 

...Is that true? Leareth's conscious thoughts are mostly returning that he's not at all surprised this is something that slipped through, the Heralds - and the Healers especially - are operating with very little slack right now, and they're not used to the kind of paranoia where a patient in the House of Healing would be at risk from someone who has free right of movement around the Palace grounds, which presumably Brightstar does at this point, given how he's demonstrated even to Leareth's satisfaction that he regrets what happened and isn't looking for an opening to try again. And if it's not a surprise, then it's information he already had, not a new update as to his safety or lack thereof. Right? 

:I think you would have had adequate security to stop someone who did mean me harm: he manages, slowly. :I - it is not actually your job, or the Healers' job, to intercept visitors who will merely cause me emotional distress.: