It doesn't feel like being forced to calm down, so much as - finding that pathway suddenly available, when it wasn't before, and of course he's going to decide to follow it. And, he still isn't feeling very ready to go interact with Lórien, but this is a fine moment, and if there are blackberries anyway he'll have some. 

There're blackberries. Also pretty flowers. Maitimo keeps holding him, keeps singing, makes a point of not moving at all and a point of not touching his hair. 

That's very considerate of him, really, even if Leareth wishes it wasn't necessary for him to be so careful. He doesn't like being - fragile - in this way, it's jarring. 

He keeps ending up in not-very-useful places, when he tries to empathize with Leareth here, because Quendi take very very poorly to being imprisoned; a compulsion like the one they put Leareth under would almost certainly just kill a Quendi. But if he abstracts that away for a second - Vanyel had been entirely sure that Leareth couldn't die from being a prisoner itself - if he were in Leareth's position he would hate it very very passionately. That alone would account for all the distress and then some, without even getting into the torture and the trauma and the missing memories. The situation is very bad and it makes sense that Leareth is somewhat fragile about it.

...Quendi die just from being prisoners? Leareth's first thought is that this is terrible design and he's very glad humans don't have that problem. Dying is bad! Leareth hates not having his Gifts (the compulsion was honestly not that bad, since at the time he was incapable of doing things on purpose anyway so it's not like it made much of a difference really.) He was extremely miserable about the parts of the torture he remembers and there's probably a lot more misery he doesn't remember. Nonetheless. Dying is worse than any of that. 

(...Probably dying is less bad for Quendi because they know they're going to come back.) 

Maitimo is scared of dying because Mandos will fix him but he doesn't think most Quendi are, really, and probably being scared of death is a sign of immaturity or something. Dying of being a prisoner is...sort of strategic? It means you can't be taken prisoner, except by an evil god who can override your physiology.  It would be sort of inconvenient if a Quendi went to another world where people didn't realize they would kill the Quendi by doing a thing otherwise reasonable to do.

Anyway that's not really the point it just means that when Maitimo asks himself 'how would you feel if you were badly damaged and couldn't trust yourself and were Leareth's prisoner and couldn't sing' he has to handwave some stuff away before he can consider how he'd feel, which would be very very scared.

It's relieving, that Maitimo understands why he feels this way and thinks it's reasonable, and isn't offended that it means Leareth doesn't like or trust him. Leareth does. That part of it not, objectively, a bad situation; it's good for his goals, Maitimo is being smart and sensible and Leareth is really glad he can trust him to do that. It's just - still scary.

...He's probably calm enough to go see Lórien now. At which point he may or may not want to then get out of the magic garden as fast as possible. 

Lórien will probably be right around the corner if Leareth wants to stand up and go looking for him.

Leareth gets up and cautiously leaves the bush-protected hollow - is Lórien there? 

Probably the Quendi man sitting in this clearing is Lórien, judging from how the air feels still and heavy around him.

He does not say anything.

aaaaaaaa magic and he can't even sense the magic part and–

"I would like you to put back my memories that Melkor altered," Leareth says, and his voice only shakes a little. "I would like you to - not - do anything else. Please." 

I UNDERSTAND. YOU MUST CHOOSE YOUR OWN PATH TO HEALING. I WILL NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.

And then the memories are back. There are years of them. They aren't sorted, they aren't in any kind of order, far too many of them feel sort of like they happened yesterday. 

This is extremely overwhelming. 

"Thank you," Leareth says, it seems probably strategic to be polite to the god who just helped him, and then he turns and runs and really, really hopes that the bush-hidden campsite area is still there to hide in. 

It is!!

Hide – curl up – he's too overwhelmed to even cry. It feels hard to breathe again. Probably this is just emotions having really pointless side effects again and he is not actually dying. 

Hug. Sing. 

Eventually Leareth calms down enough to think. Sort of. Half his thoughts keep accidentally going down threads that end up on SURPRISE TORTURE MEMORY and this is really bad for thinking actually.

Probably he wants to not be in the magic mindreading garden anymore, but he also wanted to wait for Vanyel - is there a place they can camp that's kind of nearby but not actually in the magic part? 

Yes, they can leave Lórien and camp in the normal nonmagical forest right nearby.

Then Leareth wants to do that right away please. Also for walking out of the garden to not require going near Lórien.

If the garden is any good at all it should deposit them outside it with very little walking and no running into people. 

Maitimo could carry him?

Leareth really would prefer to be able to walk on his own but it seems like that's a decision and he's stuck on it, and he wants it be out of the garden more than he wants to not be carried, so sure that would be very helpful and considerate. 

He will carry him out of the magic forest. Into some normal forest where it's a bit more work to clear a patch of ground and set up a tent.

Probably Leareth is just going to need...lots of processing time. For years of memories of torture and manipulation to get through.

Before this, Leareth was impatient to get to the part where he could figure out how Melkor manipulated him and what his mistakes were, but that feels several steps too hard right now, it's not like he can just start at the beginning, and also there's a lot more not-very-interesting-but-still-horrifyingly-salient torture every time he tries to even find an example of Melkor attempting to convince him to switch sides.

...Possibly the thing he actually wants right now is to not be conscious, so maybe Maitimo can sing a sleep song? 

Yeah. He can do that.

Unfortunately, NIGHTMARES. 

Leareth is used to - was used to before, at least - his dreams being pretty muted, often not even in images - most of his memories aren't formatted that way. This is not at all the same. He wakes up gasping and shaking just a few hours into sleeping. It's probably a good thing he doesn't have any magic to throw around right now, all things considered.