Well, that's new and different. Okay.

"Hi."

"We're going on a trip," he says, and then teleports them, one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine times. They land in what is obviously the interior of a spaceship.

He has no idea what's going on, but it's interesting, whatever it is.

"What's the occasion?"

"I don't have any more daeva on hand but we got them to make us some things while we did, including the morph technology the Yeerks' enemies have - this is a Yeerk ship, decommissioned -"

"Huh."

It's certainly a fascinating environment. Taliar has not been around spaceships very much.

He still doesn't have any good guesses about what might be going on here, but he's not trying particularly hard. Too many unknowns for guessing to be very useful.

There's a pool. There's a setup for doing exactly this. But the pool's drained, and - "do you need an explanation in order to do what you're told?"

He smiles slightly.

"No."

His face changes. Kind of - recedes into his scalp, actually. It takes about two minutes and it's mildly horrifying to watch and -

you hold it up to your ear.

He does that.

There are instincts. He'd read that in a description somewhere but they're strong, not that he's trying to defy them -

- and here is Taliar, laid out before him in more detail than he could ever have absorbed from reading his mind.

There is some mild discomfort associated with having a slug wriggle into his ear. Less than he was expecting, and he was expecting it to be pretty trivial.

Okay, Maitimo turned into a Yeerk to go in his brain. That's, uh, terrifying. He observes that he's terrified and he picks it apart in fascination: an abstract fear of loss-of-control, a more visceral fear prompted by being unable to move under his own power, uncertainty about what Maitimo wants from this, uncertainty about what is going to happen next... his alt would go crazy for this. His alt would be burning like a sun right about now. He can feel that reaction at one remove, it's not how he feels right now but it could be, he could go there. Being terrified is... weirdly comfortable, though, and it would feel sort of rude to deliberately ignite himself into a stellar furnace of lust when he has received no indication that Maitimo is interested in him in that way. He'll leave it.

And underneath those surface thoughts:

The entire architecture of Taliar's mind rests on an intricately interconnected set of foundational concepts. One is exaltation. His social skills are built around helping, encouraging, uplifting, giving people what they need to become more themselves, more the people they want to be, the people they aspire to be. And that flows into cooperation - he is highly gifted at analyzing situations from the right perspective to let everyone involved come out ahead, finding ways to bring different people's interests into genuine alignment. From there, integrity: he is able to make utterly unwavering commitments, he is the sort of person who would find it almost impossible to betray a trust. These things are a vital part of how his entire mind functions.

A lot of this information can be picked up by staring at his soul for long enough, but his soul only says what he is; this is a detailed look at how and why.

He is an extrovert. People, their personalities and interests, their loves and hopes and dreams, are a huge part of how he perceives and interacts with and understands the world. He wants to make people happy and safe and fulfilled, he wants to give them the things they want and need, he wants to help them achieve their dreams. He wants to be around them and interact with them and see them flourishing.

He is a problem-solver. He finds immense joy and fulfillment in fixing things that have gone wrong, in coming into a situation and leaving everyone in it better off than they were before he arrived. The very best thing is when he can leave people not just better off than they would've been without him, but better off than they could possibly have imagined being.

It's been said that a Taliar's favourite pastime is accomplishing the impossible. There is some truth to that. Challenges are intensely compelling, the more difficult the better, and Taliar has developed both the skill and the inclination to look at a problem, figure out what the best possible outcome is and what would be necessary in order to bring it about, and then do that. He is intensely ambitious but not quite in any of the ways people usually mean to evoke when they use that word: what drives him is the satisfaction of succeeding at difficult things and the fulfillment of achieving something meaningful, of making a positive difference in people's lives. There's some competitiveness in there too, but it's secondary to the rest.

He has an amazing ability to order his own mind around. It's built partly out of his integrity, the ability to make it absolutely psychologically inevitable that he will do this and he won't do that, to change which things he can even consider doing; partly out of his problem-solving skills, the ability to analyze a situation and figure out which levers to pull to make it go his way; and partly out of the machinery of exaltation, turned inward to act on himself instead of others, that instinctive understanding of what to do to help people be more of the things they value about themselves.

Right now he's in the middle of a major overhaul. He's pulling together the bits and pieces he's seen or heard from his alt's life into a model of how being his alt works, and he's expanding on that and tweaking it to better serve his own purposes. Corino was right that he's reaching for emotional self-sufficiency, and right that he's getting there even faster and more successfully than he thinks. He expects to spend an unknown amount of time getting absolutely no support, suppressing or redirecting several of his fundamental drives in order to avoid exalting his soul, being ignored or tortured by someone he really deeply loves and admires who dislikes him and finds him annoying; and with serene confidence and unwavering determination, he is figuring out how to turn himself into someone who can get through that, who can not just survive it for a little while but be genuinely okay that way indefinitely.

He speaks his native language with surpassing eloquence and Quenya almost as well. He's been riding and caring for horses since he was a tiny child. He's really really good at every strategy game he's ever played. He's good at learning; he picks up new skills easily and is quick to come to a deep understanding of new subjects and disciplines. On the strength of that talent he has learned enough magical engineering in months to keep up with people who've been doing it for centuries. There are all sorts of other tidbits of skill in here too, things he found it useful to do or interesting to try. He can knit, he can sew, he can play cards, he can pick locks.

All this information about the inner workings of his mind makes it overwhelmingly obvious why he decided to come here and be Maitimo's present. Everything he said and thought when he was trying to explain it was true, but there were details missing, things that he didn't think of or couldn't articulate. Inside his head it all fits together into a picture of perfect inevitability. He made this choice freely, but he was never going to do anything else. He loves Maitimo. He admires him and adores him and wants to make him happy, and as far as he knows, there is only one way to arrange for a Maitimo to have a chance at the kind of unbelievable idyllic happiness Elaneth-imire Taliar and Tivarante Maitimo have found together, and that is for a Taliar to make a gift of himself to that Maitimo, unreservedly, and just keep pouring himself into it for as long as it takes, even if that's forever. So if this Maitimo wants him to, Raika-seren is going to do exactly that.

It is going to be difficult and arduous and he is going to suffer and he is okay with that, he is looking forward to being tortured because he has had a taste of what it's like to be tortured by a Maitimo who is magnificently thrillingly fascinated by the things it does to his head, and it is fucking amazing and he knows exactly why his alt loves it so much. He has seen bits and pieces of Elaneth-imire's bad days and he feels the pull of wanting to prove himself like that; he's watched Elaneth-imire hand his soul to his husband in cheerful anticipation of being tortured with it, he's seen the look on Tivarante Maitimo's face, watching his Taliar lie on the bed drowning in unbearable agony. His alt showed him what it was like to be raped, and it made him feel competitive, he wants to go through something like that to prove that he can.

Speaking of which - he's got some trauma going on. Atialemain left its marks on his mind. Mostly not the part where he was actually fighting the war; mostly the part beforehand, where he was drifting uncertainly around Seofar's court, getting more horrified by the day. Most particularly that late-night conversation with Nahira. Being confronted with that much overt cruelty, so intense and so intensely personal, directed right at him from close range, with her soul radiating all the relevant parts of her nature right at him, and being completely trapped and helpless while she told him what she wanted to do to him, was terrifying and overwhelming and it really thoroughly fucked him up to the point where he has vivid immersive flashbacks if he smells the flower whose scent she wore that night. (It's daffodils. His alt told him so.) He really really does not like to think about Nahira. He hasn't had a nightmare about her in a while but he gets the impression from his alt that they're by no means gone for good.

Teleport. Beijing, it's the capital of this world, and in Taliar's body he won't stand out. He has two hours but Taliar doesn't know that, and watching Taliar rearrange his mind to be all right with the thought that it might be much longer will be fascinating, and - you can convincingly impersonate someone after half a second in their head, that's how they were able to do what they do, you pick up their whole self, all at once - I could think your thoughts for you now -

His first thought is bet you can't fool Da; his second thought is that his alt would be even more lit up by this than he initially predicted, he's kind of into it himself and not just by proxy anymore; his third thought is that he's mildly worried for Maitimo, and he hopes that suddenly being able to be Taliar won't make it any harder to be himself, that it isn't annoying or upsetting to be so deeply immersed in someone so - whatever Taliar is. And his fourth reaction is to be sort of shyly pleased that Maitimo decided to do this, glad that Maitimo now knows him.

...then the fear catches up with him again. He is going to spend an indefinite amount of time as a helpless passenger in his own head while Maitimo does whatever he likes with his body. Probably not weeks, Maitimo has a kingdom to run, but days is plausible if he arranged for some time off. Fuck.

Okay. He doesn't need to be okay. He can be terrified, he can feel trapped and helpless and almost-but-thankfully-not-quite reminded of being frozen in place by the power of Nahira's soul. He can feel these things, it is okay to feel them, he doesn't need to be calm right now, freaking out is a perfectly legitimate response to the situation.

And once he's settled into that perspective, it's easy to get back into the state where fear is comfortable, where it's something interesting that's happening in his head, it's not overwhelming him or making it hard to think. It hurts but it's okay that it hurts.

This is sustainable for now. He turns his attention back to what Maitimo is doing with his body. He's curious about what's going to happen. Terrified, sure, but curious.

Maitimo is sitting on a park bench watching what are obviously some Andalite tourists. Maitimo is contemplating whether to find some daffodils to smell. Maitimo is unraveling his way through Taliar's memories.

Taliar grew up half in the imperial palace, half in the Kazaryne family home overlooking Lake Kalas, high in the mountains that separate the western edge of the continent from its center. His family's mountains are stunningly beautiful. He was an incorrigible little shit, but in an inexplicably charming sort of way. His childhood adventures were creative and intricate and occasionally property-damaging. He spent a lot of time in pain as a kid because he bruises really easily, legacy of an assassination attempt on his mother while she was pregnant with him.

He knew from very early on what sorts of things would exalt his soul if he had it in front of him to see, and what sorts of things would debase it. He knew from not long after that that he wanted to be the sort of person whose soul would shine brightly. He has been building the skill of self-creation ever since, learning through practice how to rearrange his head to make himself into the person he wants to be.

(And in the present: he's calming down gradually, enjoying the fascinating sights of this strange planet, listening to languages he doesn't understand and trying to see if he can pick up any words. But every time he absently tries to move and nothing happens, every time his head turns or his eyes shift without his input, he gets another little jolt of fear. He gives his mind a gentle push in the direction of enjoying that, recontextualizes it as a nicely exhilarating thrill, but doesn't send himself all the way into the intense incredible rush of delight and desire that Elaneth-imire would be feeling if Tivarante was doing this to him.)

He still doesn't talk to him. He pokes at his memories of his relationship with the other Maitimo. He makes up his mind and goes looking for daffodils.

It was an incredibly lovely and wonderful time, unquestionably the best thing that had ever happened to him, and then a moment of soul-shattering horror, and the rest, as they say, is history.

He's managing to get used to the experience of feeling himself move and not being the person making it happen. It's, yeah, it's kind of hot once he's less distracted by the fear. Although the fear is definitely a part of the draw. Okay, he can handle this. (So it's probably going to get worse. It's hopefully going to get worse. Torture means interest, torture means appreciation, torture means a chance to test himself.)

He can see the appeal, now, looking through it, the light on the horizon of a potential end to the war, its instrument totally open to him and in love with him and expecting nothing in return - it would have felt so delightfully effortless, taking a lover because why shouldn't he -

There's a florist. 

...Raika-seren isn't familiar with the local context, but he manages to recognize the florist. It's not hard to guess what that's about, when his body turns in that direction.

He is abruptly, intensely terrified in a way that is not at all enjoyable.

In his panic, he tries to run, which of course doesn't work, which of course terrifies him more, and he fights and fights and it's no use at all and—

—then he stops. He can't close his eyes or take a deep breath or any of those other little calming rituals, he has to do it all in his head, and it's much harder that way, but he gets ahold of himself anyway, he makes himself stop struggling for control. He can't make himself calm, but he can put himself in a state where even if he could run away, he wouldn't be. And it is important to him to do that. It is important to him to cooperate, even when his cooperation or lack thereof has no practical effect on the outcome of a situation.

Good job, he says to him, because that seems to merit it, and then he finds a bouquet of daffodils.

He feels a flash of warm affection, a glow of pride—I love you—and then he smells the flowers and he ceases to have any awareness of the present moment at all.

He is just turning the final corner on his way to his rooms in Seofar's castle, and there's a woman waiting for him there, at first anonymous in the low light—he sees her soul and recognizes it—Den-aminde Rysher Nahira, one of Seofar's crowd. She looks at him with an expression he can't quite decipher, and takes a step forward, a little farther into the light. The scent of her perfume begins to reach him, a lovely flower he's sure he's smelled before, but he can't put a name to it.

"Kazaryne," she says, and he flinches at being addressed in such overly familiar terms on such short acquaintance in that tone of voice, and she smiles, and smiles wider when he instinctively recoils. "I thought it was time we talked."

"Den-aminde Nahira," he says respectfully, trying to establish a little social distance without revealing enough discomfort to make her smile like that again. "About what?"

"Oh... let's start with family history," she murmurs, with an ambiguous glitter in her captivatingly beautiful eyes. "I knew your mother, once. Has she ever mentioned me?"

"Can't say that she has, no." Maybe she would have, if she'd had the chance. What's Esarkan's game, sending Taliar here so abruptly? He almost wishes he'd refused. He does not feel like his loyalty is being rewarded.

"No? Nothing? No stories of old times? No warnings?"

She smiles again, at that last part, but her eyes narrow slightly and Taliar reads a profound rage in that small movement. He is getting increasingly afraid. Whatever is going on here, it's on a different level from the awkward and upsetting conversations he has had with the other members of Tekhesin Seofar's court. Den-aminde Nahira means him harm, in a very real and immediate way, and he has no idea what she wants or how to talk her out of taking it - best to assume he can't possibly fight her, with her soul gleaming blood-red on its chain and Taliar seventeen and completely unarmed.

He hesitates too long. Nahira shakes her head and tsks. "Remiss of her. You'd think she'd have a word to spare for an old flame." His first thought is 'what a stupid pun' and his second is 'wait, my mother dated this woman?' and his incredulity must be visible, because she laughs and goes on, "Oh yes, once upon a time, we were in love. Well, I know I was in love. Aeleva was a little less free with her feelings."

"I've never known her to have trouble expressing herself," he says without thinking, and Nahira smiles at him and it's - almost physically painful, experiencing the intensity of how much she wants to hurt him. He flinches, then steadies himself. Maybe he'll be lucky and it'll be as easy as - "And I'm sorry, but it's been a long day and I am not interested in having this conversation right now."

It is not that easy.

He moves to step forward, and she holds up a finger as though rebuking a child for straying off the garden path, and he stops moving. There's no invisible force to strain against, nowhere to set his will and push, he just isn't going anywhere and can't make himself start.

"Let me explain how it's going to be," she says softly. "Tomorrow you join Seofar's household. You will live in our lovely castle, eat our lovely food, and bed our lovely princess. And you will be mine. Seofar promised me that, as soon as the marriage offer came in."

The way she says 'mine' is possibly the most deeply terrifying thing he has ever heard. He can feel her possessive cruelty, he can see it in her soul, hear it in her voice, read it in her eyes. It closes in around him like a suffocating cloud.

"I will hurt you in ways you've never dreamed of, and I will make you thank me prettily for it." She leans closer. The light of her soul glints from her cheek as she tilts her head and smiles, eyes alight with anticipation. "It won't always be awful, mind you. Your mother often came willingly to my bed; I'm sure you will too."

There's no escaping that implication. She has raped his mother and she is going to rape him too and he cannot stop her, he cannot get away, he cannot talk her out of it, she will take no bribe, yield to no charm, she is absolutely irrevocably intent on harming him for its own sake. He can't yell for help, and even if he could, no one would answer. Not in this place.

"I think I'll write her letters," Nahira continues in a dreamy, thoughtful tone. "Beloved Aeleva, today I tied your son to my bed and made him scream for hours until his voice gave out and he could only weep silently into my pillow. His tears are almost as beautiful as yours." Her eyes are mesmerizing. He doesn't know if it's her magic or his own sheer terror that prevents him from looking away. "What do you think? Will she come running to save you?"

Yes. Absolutely. She will petition Esarkan for an army, and he'll deny her, and she will come alone, burning with the fire of her soul, and at that point presumably Nahira has plans for what will happen next that Taliar would really rather not think about.

"I can't wait to see her face. But first, I want you all to myself for a while. I want to break you, Kazaryne Taliar. I want to make you my plaything. I can see in your eyes you don't think I can do it, and I am going to enjoy teaching you differently. You come from a strong-willed family, but you'll beg for mercy before I'm done, proud little Kazaryne."

He is utterly paralyzed in horror, not even trying to move anymore. Her soul shines red, and he can see her self in its light, the incontrovertible truth of her. This is what she lives for. Making people helpless and afraid, tearing them apart and laughing at the pieces. This is her deepest source of joy.

"Do you want to know what I'm going to do first?"

No he doesn't. There's a part of him that wishes he would just drop dead on the spot, it would be better than continuing to listen to her. Something of that reaction apparently shows, because she laughs, a beautiful sound that scares him more than he has ever been scared in his life.

"Seofar won't let me touch his daughter, so you'll have your wedding night undisturbed, if you're willing to use it. Kelora's such a shy little thing, though, I doubt you'll get anything from her you don't take by force."

What - what the fuck - is she really offering him a night's grace before she starts torturing him on the condition that he spend that night raping the princess—?

"No? Suit yourself. No wedding night for you. Tell me, Taliar, have you ever been with a woman?" He doesn't answer, wouldn't if he could. "A man, then?" Again no response. "Have you thought about it, or are you entirely innocent?" He doesn't feel very innocent right now. He feels like every sexual thought he has ever had is on display for her and she's going to take her time picking through them and defiling them one by one. Her laugh is musical, ethereal, terrifying. "Lucky me, having you all to myself. I'll take you to bed and show you every pleasure in the world. Before I ever hurt you, I'll claim you completely. And when there's nothing left of you that isn't mine, when there's no part of your body that doesn't remember my touch, then I will show you pain. I'll cut you and burn you and beat you and if I don't like how you scream the first time I'll heal you and do it over again until you get it right."

He wants to die. He wants to run away and climb the nearest tower and throw himself off of it. He can imagine her doing all these things, so vividly that his skin almost feels the touch of her imaginary hands.

"You'll beg for mercy, and I will not give it," she continues, staring into his eyes. "You'll promise me anything in the world."

Even now, even in this moment of utmost horror, he's pretty sure that isn't true. If it comes to it, he will endure. There's nothing to be gained from begging for mercy; it's clear she owns none. And it would satisfy her, and he finds himself strongly disinclined to satisfy her.

"You have that Kazaryne look," Nahira murmurs. "Oh, this will be lovely. The strong ones are my favorite, they're so much more surprised when I finally make them crack." She shifts, leaning forward slightly, and for a moment he thinks she's going to touch him and he tries with desperate urgency to scream, to run, to move at all, and he can't—and then she laughs her beautiful terrifying laugh, and shakes her head. "Don't worry, pet. The anticipation makes it all the sweeter."

If she's not going to touch him now then maybe he can kill himself before she gets the chance. He hates himself a little for being weak enough to consider it, but she is a walking nightmare, the most terrifying thing in the world, he is already suffering unbearably and she hasn't even started yet - surely there's no shame in escaping that the only way he can -

"Dream of me tonight," she whispers, watching him with devouring eyes. "As I will dream of you. And when we meet again, I'll show you what I dreamed of. I promise you, it will be worse than you can possibly imagine."

His mind immediately jumps to all the worst things he can possibly imagine, which is no doubt exactly what she meant to happen. She smiles, and leans down, and he tries to run again, but she only kisses the air just shy of his forehead. "Sleep well, my darling Kazaryne. I'll see you tomorrow."

Then she steps around him and walks away. The sound of her slippers on the stone floor is soft, and he strains his ears but he loses track of it almost immediately. He can't turn around to look. She could be standing right behind him, waiting. She could grab him at any moment and drag him into his bedroom and - it would be just like her, to half-promise not to touch him for a day, and then turn around and do it anyway the moment he let himself believe it -

Her soul's power releases him. He stumbles, shaking - bruises his hand catching himself on the wall - stands there for a moment, utterly unable to move, terrified that he's going to look up and she's going to be there, and standing around waiting won't help if that's the case but he still - can't - make - himself - move -

He clenches his fists until they ache, and he straightens and deliberately turns to look behind him. There is no one there. He turns back around and does not flinch at the sound of his own footsteps and does not turn back to look for her any of the dozen times it occurs to him as he walks the remaining five steps to his door, and he shuts himself in his room and bars the door from the inside and curls up on the bed and trembles silently for a long, long time.

(HIs body doesn't have money to purchase the bouquet; he goes back outside and sits down.)

He comes out of it gradually. He is outside, sitting in the sun. He can't move she has him she's going to— no. Nahira does not have him. Maitimo is the one who has him. So that's all right.

It doesn't feel all right.

It occurs to him in a distant sort of way that if Maitimo does anything sexual with him right now, he is going to very messily fall apart. He lets that awareness sit there in his mind, just a fact about the world, somehow not even a frightening one, or maybe it's just that he's so overwhelmingly terrified to begin with that he can't detect variations in response to specific frightening things. He feels sick and awful and shaky, exactly the way he did back then. It's got to be the eidetic memory necklace, making this flashback so much more prolonged and vivid and intense. He should've expected as much.

—he wonders if Maitimo is okay, if the intensity of the flashback might have affected him—he's operating Taliar's body with perfect calm, but Taliar could operate his body with perfect calm under these conditions too if he had to, probably—it's sort of not any of his business but he really hopes Maitimo didn't hurt himself doing this.

And from that genuine concern, he builds a shift in perspective. It is all right. He gave himself to Maitimo and now Maitimo has him and that is exactly as it should be, that is exactly what he wanted. He is here to be Maitimo's Taliar, and that means that whatever Maitimo does to him, however Maitimo hurts him, it's always all right; he will always cooperate, always forgive. He will accept no less from himself than that.

He doesn't even know if Maitimo still thinks he's annoying. He doesn't know if Maitimo finds his pain fascinating or just tedious. It's an awful, desolate feeling, not knowing that. And - he would take a deep breath if he owned his own lungs - it is all right.

I love you, he says, because it's true, he can still feel it, through the sick horror, through the echoing sound of Nahira's laughter. He loves Maitimo for true reasons, reasons that don't depend on being safe from him; it's a fact about their fundamental natures, that Taliar is the sort of person who loves the sort of person Maitimo is.

I don't waste this much time on things that are tedious. And he doesn't want him, not especially, but Taliar very messily falling apart is so terribly tempting -

Aww. He'd smile, if.