Lancir waits until the two of them are sitting, then drags over a chair from near the fireplace and sits as well.
"I'm going to use my Mindhealing Gift," he says. "Just a tiny bit – I'm about to say some things I think are very important, and I want to help you both remember them." He waits for nods. "All right. You're together again. That's a wonderful thing for both of you, and - I want to remind you that it probably won't fix everything, not right away. You've both been through a lot. Tylendel – you died, that's a big thing, you came back months later and everything's different. Van's changed significantly when you weren't looking. It's still very fresh, you understandably feel awful about what happened, it's...going to be raw for you in a way that's less true for the rest of us. You went through a lot right when it all happened – even if it was only for seconds, from your perspective, you lost your Companion. You have her back but you still lost her. And all the rest that came before, still happened – to you, your lifebonded was kidnapped just candlemarks ago. That's a lot to process."
He turns to Vanyel. "And you still went through almost a year without your lifebonded. You spent most of that time expecting it to be permanent. You went through one of the worst times of your life – pain, uncontrolled Gifts – without him. You've been trying so hard to scrape yourself back together, and you did really, really well, and now everything's different again, and change is hard even if it's for the better."
Lancir folds his hands in his lap, licks his lips as he finds the next words.
"What I'm saying," he adds finally, "is that you still have hard times ahead. Memories that aren't going to stop hurting just because they're in the past. Things you need to learn about each other, feelings to be resolved. Not every day will be a happy one, probably not for a while, and - and that doesn't mean that you don't love each other, you know? It certainly doesn't mean you're ungrateful for what Lucy did – right, Lucy?"