...Oh he should probably check, shouldn't he. "Am I taking your time away from other important work?" 

"My work is to help my people recover from the war, right now. And you're - uh, I don't mean this as any kind of political claim - you're my people, and you want me here. There couldn't be anything more important."

Leareth ducks his head. He believes Maitimo - and it makes strategic sense, too, he can notice that at a distance without following that thread too far, it would be really valuable for the Noldor if Leareth could safely do things again.

...The trouble is that he doesn't know what will help. He's aware that Maitimo doesn't know either, that they're trying to navigate unknown territory, but at least Maitimo is sane right now, he might have any sense of what kinds of things Leareth can try to be less...like this. 

"Melody offered to do more, once you were lucid enough to talk to her about it. - I don't think she liked being assigned a patient who couldn't form enough expectations about the situation to seriously consider whether they agreed to what was being done to them, though she was very polite about it. And Lórien can give you back all your memories, and do something to help you distinguish memories that you actually at some point experienced from ones that were - stuffed in as background -"

Unfortunately Melkor was also aware of Lórien, which means that rather a lot of Leareth's jumbled memories of fake rescues involve something horrible happening in Lórien's garden. Also gods are terrifying.

...he does need to get his memories eventually, that's a mandatory step toward anything making sense again, and he's pretty sure Valdemaran Mindhealing can't do it, but Melody has the advantage that Melkor had no idea she existed and never tried to fake Mindhealing. Probably it makes sense to eat something and then attempt to talk to her. 

They are keeping the other recovering prisoners on the other side of the island from Leareth because Leareth is more dangerous and more likely to pose some kind of complication that need not stress everyone else out. Melody can be asked to make her way over while Leareth has something to eat.

Leareth eats. He's starting to pay enough attention to his surroundings to actually notice what food tastes like. 

Also to draw a several-step chain that he hadn't managed before. "...Is my hair going to bother people?" he says dully. It's grown pretty long and nobody has tried to do anything with it - nobody's been touching him at all - so it's thoroughly matted, and if he's modelling Quendi sensibilities right then this is definitely going to be some variant of horrifying to them.

(Also it's kind of uncomfortable, when he's in bed it gets caught on the pillow and pulls, he didn't care much because it's a very minor discomfort but it is tiresome.) 

"Does it bother you?"

“I guess a little.”

"It looks like it will be pretty complicated to detangle it but I am sure we can do it, if you are okay with someone touching it."

Leareth thinks about it. Nods. That seems better than just leaving it like this forever - and, it's an action, right, it's a decision he can make that he's pretty sure cannot possibly result in damaging anything he cares about. 

He's tempted to ask Melody if she'll do that but it's really really really not the best use of her right now. 

It's fine. 

(The last time Leareth will have seen him this expressionless is when Leareth asked for braiding help.)

"All right. I think Melody is almost here so you should do that first but then I will get some things together to detangle your hair."

"All right." Leareth looks around. "Can I...go outside, for a minute?" Seems probably safe but he wants to check. 

"Yeah, of course. If you wander right up to Vanyel's or my father's workroom you will be stopped but you can go anywhere else you want."

Very reasonable. Leareth gets up, goes to the door.

Stands outside. Looks up at the stars. They...mean something, he thinks, something he can't quite remember? Something he - was supposed to never put down. Except he's lost it, now. But...Maitimo still has it, he's pretty sure. So maybe it's all right. 

Melody thinks you shredded - most of your motivation system - yourself. So that you couldn't be tricked again into doing things for Melkor.

Oh. 

It's a relief and it hurts at the same time. And...again? How many times did Melkor trick him? He - it's hard to even go near - did he hurt people - how much damage was he responsible for, thanks to being the shape of person who Melkor could exploit in this way...? 

Not that much, not that we know about, and at this point it seems unlikely there was lots we didn't know about. Melkor Gated some orcs into Valinor. I don't even think they killed anyone, just made the Valar ban Gating which was inconvenient for the war effort. Some of them were near Vanyel and I but - you can't have been trying to kill us, no one tries to kill Vanyel with eighty orcs.

"I am sorry for that." It's confusing what it means to apologize on behalf of a past Leareth who he doesn't remember being and isn't anymore, but it's not like that past Leareth is around to apologize for himself. "I - am glad - it was not more." 

He looks at the stars for a minute longer and then goes back inside and sits on his bed. 

This is delicate enough he should send it rather than say it, probably -

He's not angry with Leareth, obviously. It's hard to guess what exactly Melkor did but if it were him he'd just erase all Leareth's recollection of being in Arda, feed him all the same input that put him on the side of the Quendi from within Angband - and probably Melkor is at least that smart - and it wouldn't be better if Leareth wasn't the sort of person who did things. 

He'd been angry at the time. Mostly scared, but - some amount angry. He'd been unsure if - if maybe Leareth had just decided that actually the most important thing, given his goals, was to have powerful allies - it felt a little off but not impossible, and there were Gates popping up all over Valinor to prove that Maitimo wasn't paranoid enough -

- and he'd thought about it and decided that even if that was what had happened, he would use Vanyel to kill Melkor and rescue Leareth, and then - what, right, hold him prisoner forever? For wanting to save his world more than he wanted to save Maitimo's? For being the kind of person he had to be to have landed in Arda in the first place instead of dying thousands of years ago, a person who played the cards in his hand, even if none of them were nice ones - 

- it's not even an applicable line of reasoning right now, not having seen what Melkor did to Leareth's head, but - maybe it's a useful bound on things. If Leareth had spent this whole time devotedly working against them Maitimo would, well, firstly be confused that they'd still won and then he would work on making sure that he was on all of the best roads to accomplish Leareth's goals.

Probably the part where he held him prisoner would've hurt less, though.

...Leareth doesn't know what to do with any of that, yet, mostly what he's thinking is that this is such a Maitimo-shaped line of reasoning, and, and–

–And it seems like he's curling up into a ball and crying now, that is definitely the thing that's happening. 

Possibly he should not have told Melody to come right over. But he doesn't want to make Leareth wait, once he's ready, and - probably it's a good idea to have people with more expertise on hand, actually.

Leareth is aware that crying is not helping right now and the main effect is in preventing him from doing anything else. That's not enough to stop immediately, but does give him enough impetus to find something else to focus on, and calm himself down over the next couple of minutes.

...He wants to make sure Maitimo knows that he didn't say (well, think) anything wrong and this isn't his fault and Leareth is sorry for having completely random emotions in response to everything that happens. 

This is incredibly unsurprising and does not require an apology at all. (has Leareth gone all these lifetimes in Velgarth without ever having - well, yes, he probably has, since mages who don't like their surroundings can emphatically say so and ones who'll resurrect are probably more so inclined than average -)

Melody Mindspeaks him from outside the building before coming in. :Now still a good time?: