They plop him on the bench and Yfandes is there. :I missed you, Chosen: She doesn’t say anything else right away, just surrounds him in a warm bath of love and caring, which almost blocks out the chill of the air - oh, no, her body is radiating actual heat at him as well.

Abras momentarily forgets what he was going to say because warm. 

"Sorry for not  . . . doing Herald things. Being a Herald."

:You don’t need to apologize for being newly Chosen: Yfandes sends back. :Nobody’s doing a full Herald’s duty when they’ve been Chosen five days and have untrained Gifts:

A long pause, like she’s thinking over the right words.

:I’m not mad: she sends finally. :About your, er, questionable decision to avoid eating and take as many drugs as possible. I know what you were hoping to accomplish, and it wasn’t you trying to kill yourself. But you nearly died. Do you realize that?: Fear, worry, pain. :And you didn’t run it by me at all. Do you trust me, Abras?:

"I . . . want to trust you. I know I ought to. But I don't really know you. But Lissa thinks it was a bad plan too so I guess it was and I'm sorry." Then a fact he hadn't been thinking about hits him like a ton of bricks. "Oh no, if I die you die, don't you? Shit." Now he has to try really hard not to die right when that's started being a thing he isn't good at, argh.

:Hey. Abras, love, you don’t need to take every single thing that happens as evidence that you’re bad. All right? This is OUR fault. You were impaired and no one, including me, thought to check in with you. I’ll try to do better. I love you: She nuzzles at his stomach. 

"It's really nice that you love me even though you barely know me and it's just magic forcing you to. I hope it's not too weird."

Yfandes doesn’t answer that, just nuzzles him some more. 

Time passes and Lissa brings him more water and soup, and the fog continues to subside. The pain gets worse as well, but on net he can still think more and more clearly.

Thinking clearly comes with the ability to think about 'Lendel, so it's something of a mixed blessing, but at least he's more himself. Eventually he asks, "What is having a Companion supposed to be like? I want to know . . . what to aim for, I guess."

:Hmm: Yfandes lifts her head and blows into his hair, and then is thoughtfully silent for a while. 

:I'm glad you're trying so hard: she sends finally, though from the emotion-waft under the words, her feelings about it are a bit more mixed than that. :It's different for different Heralds. You're a strong Mindspeaker, so once your channels heal, we'll be able to stay in mind-rapport most of the time, even when we're not in the same place. If you want that: Blue eyes look up at him. :Most Heralds consider their Companions somewhere between their most trusted best friend, their teacher and advisor, and...just part of themselves, I suppose. But there's no one right way to do it. Whatever helps YOU the most, to be your best self and work in service of Valdemar, is what you should aim for. So we're going to have to work together to figure out what that looks like. But it's fine if it takes a while – it usually does, there's a reason most Heralds spend three to five years as trainees first: 

"I'm going to try." Privately, he thinks he is not actually the sort of person who devotes his life to serving Valdemar (he wasn't fit to inherit his father's holding, he clearly isn't fit for this either, he was just Chosen because he has a massive pile of Gifts) but he's going to pretend as well as possible and hope practice and having lots of magic can substitute for courage and wisdom and stuff. "I think it would help if you told me about yourself? What's your life like, what do you like to do . . .?" Aaaaaa he has no idea how to make friends with people and now there's someone he really needs to make friends with and he knows even less about her than he does about random humans.

:First – Chosen, you may not believe me, but a lot of very talented and goodhearted people feel the exact way you do, that they aren't fit for the role. No one is at first? Courage takes training the same way, oh, learning to ride does. Definitely wisdom only comes with age and experience; I don't think you've got any less of it than most youngsters. You have the heart you need, Abras – you're clever, curious, you care about people - when you feel safe in doing so - and you aren't someone who flees from responsibility, no matter what you think. Your father did an awful lot to make you feel unfit; nothing you did was ever right, so why bother trying, is that right? I won't–: she stops, :I can't promise I'll never make you feel that way, we aren't perfect, but I'll try very, very hard not to. It's a terrible pattern: 

Then Yfandes falls silent. His question seems to stump her for a while. Apparently it's not one she was expecting to be asked. 

:I've spent the last ten years waiting to Choose: she sends. :Longer than most Companions. I dropped two foals but they're out on their own now, we don't take as long to grow up. In fact, Dancer already Chose, before his dam! I did my best to counsel the other Companions; I was sort of the old spinster aunt, it felt like, but I had time to talk. That's going to change now though: Some more thinking. :I like maths. Do you?:

"Thanks for saying those things." He can't tell if he believes her and either possibility is kind of embarrassing, but it's so clear that she means well. "I do like maths! And it's neat that you have kids, I always thought having kids would be nice if . . . " (If he hadn't been shaych, if he had found someone to have kids with, if he had ever loved anyone other than Tylendel, but he didn't and never will and Tylendel is DEAD oh gods think about something else) "Uh, what sort of maths do you like? Do Companions have books?"

Yfandes doesn't comment on his thoughts, if she hears them, just nuzzles his face again. :It was nice. Though they were a lot lower-maintenance than I hear human babies are: a mental chuckle, :I'm not so sure I would've been up for dirty nappies and being woken in the night for years on end: Pause :We don't have books, no, but we do have much better memories than humans tend to. I like geometry a lot – anything I can visualize, really – and some areas of algebra and logic: Nuzzle nuzzle. :How's your head? I should probably stop Mindspeaking your ear off at some point and let you rest your channels: 

"Algebra and logic are good. Um, you Mindspeaking hurts but it's not like it stops hurting when you aren't. But yeah, rest sounds good." This conversation is the most, well, anything that he's done since the Thing happened (a wall of fire filling the horizon, Tylendel's big bright beautiful self expanding beyond his body and expending itself as destruction, dead dead DEAD) and if Yfandes has a reply he might take a while to hear it on account of how he's fallen into the hole in the world 'Lendel left behind.

Yfandes keeps sending him a wash of love and affection that tries very hard to drown out the hole-in-the-world part, it can’t really compete but it’s still loud enough to be felt in spite of the hole.

And then Lissa is scrambling up beside him, her mind radiating shock and displeasure, and a scrap of loud surface-thoughts even through the barrier Yfandes has been keeping on him. What in all hells is FATHER doing here?

Abras tries to leap to his feet and does a terrible job of it, trips on a combination of Yfandes' hoof and his own foot, and ends up on his butt on the ground, hitting everyone in the vicinity with a loud projective-Empathy wave of Aaaaa what do.

:Easy, Chosen: Yfandes replaces her Empathy-smashed shield over his mind. 

(Ow ow ow ow - his head and, presumably, mage-channels don’t approve either).

Lissa picks him up like a sack of potatoes and deposits him on the bench again, then bows. “Father.”

Withen is approaching at a stiff march, eyes set on Abras, with Savil trailing apologetically behind him. He stops midstride, his head twisting as though an imaginary set of reins is being yanked. “Lissa, girl, what are you doing here?”

Ow ow ow bugger why does he injure himself so much more often now that he's injured, that's fucking stupid, and why is his father mad at Lissa who has been nothing but kind and helpful and patient?

"I obtained Lord Corey's permission to travel to Haven," Lissa says, cool and poised. "When I got Abras' letter about the, er, bad business. Only a few weeks early, actually, he and his daughters just arrived to be presented in front of the Queen." She raises her chin, just a flicker of defiance. "Aren't you glad? I know you got here as fast as you could – I've been helping Aunt Savil hold down the fort in the meantime, don't worry."

(It is, perhaps, possible that Lissa thought of the fact that Withen would be showing up earlier than, oh, thirty seconds ago, and rehearsed her speech accordingly.) 

Abras, having rehearsed precisely nothing and also not having been actually spoken to yet, is alternating between staring at the ground and staring at the air next to Withen's head. His body hurts and his brain hurts and some argonel sure would be nice right now, or failing that a nice dark quiet hole to hide in. But his father came all this way and Abras owes him a conversation and even if he is failing at conversing, per se, he is at least present.

Withen reaches them and stops. Shuffles his feet. "You look like hell, son." His voice is tight, controlled." Er, congratulations on being Chosen, it’s more than I expected from you. And Gifts, too." He ducks his head. "I’m sorry you were hurt."

(His spoken words don't match his face, which is red with a vein pulsing at his temple, or the fragments of emotion and thought coming through Yfandes' shield. Humiliating and anger - heard my own son was rolling in the hay with that pervert - freak - I'll be damned - a father's got every right to feel what I do - and my damned sister puts a muzzle on me...) 

His father being angry with him and finding him an embarrassment is nothing new, and his lying about it is, but neither of those is important next to how dare he hate 'Lendel, how dare he think he understands. He doesn't even realize he's reading minds again, just ignores the polite lies and answers "He was a hero! You don't--you don't know a damn thing! And you never will because he's DEAD!"

The shields around Abras shatter and everyone in the garden, but especially Withen, feels a wave of grief sweep through them like a flash flood. A watering can off to one side violently explodes, its contents turning instantly to steam. Abras chokes on a scream of pain and collapses into a heap, half-falling off the bench again.