:He wants to talk to you again. I am not sure about what but he seems to perhaps have a plan:

Huh, okay. I'll be by.

She is by.

Angband Leareth sits up when he sees her. He seems sort of surprised that she’s there, despite having asked.

"I heard you wanted to see me?"

Leareth looks at her for a bit, seems to be about to speak a few times. Finally gives up. “Can you just read my thoughts again.”

(Assuming she isn’t already doing it anyway because he’s in Angband, but Leareth’s priors are actually almost tipping away from that, now, shocking as that is.)

"Okay." Read.

He's scared, again, he's dived past the edge of what feels safe, asking to talk to her is way too close to deliberately trying to affect the world even if it, in itself, probably isn't an exploitable action. 

If he were capable of drawing conclusions from evidence, hypothetically, then - he would at this point be placing less than even odds that he's still in Angband. The situation doesn't make much sense either way but it makes less sense in the version where it's Melkor. 

Of course, that's something a hypothetical person who could trust any of their reasoning would want to be a lot more sure of before putting any weight on it. (He's letting it guide his anticipations toward 'probably not torture' for now, because it's not like that prediction is doing a lot, it's not really making him less stressed even.) 

If he were more sure, a lot more, if any one thing seemed genuinely conclusive, then - he isn't sure what, actually, all of this is still off in hypothetical-space, but...something, on the other side of a wall his mind won't let him cross. 

Would you like me to guess things that might happen if you were more sure?

Sure, she can do that. 

You might want to make requests about your treatment, like the compulsions. You might want to go back to working on the war in some capacity; or you might find yourself in a position where you have to deal with not wanting to even though you technically could, and maybe having to explain that or ask someone to do it for you.

...He actually hadn't considered whether he would want to go back to helping with the war effort. Probably not? Wanting to do things seems impossible right now, and he shouldn't do things, that's still true in both possible worlds, even if he's not in Angband then Melkor has still been all over his mind and really no one should let him do things. (He's assuming that the other Leareth, if he's real, would take care of this, because he's not stupid.) 

Also, the second part of his recent thinking has been that he maybe wants to make some requests anyway, on the grounds that he's carefully looked at them and they don't seem likely to lead to actions that help Melkor, not without a lot more steps that he has no intention of taking until something changes. The compulsions are kind of tiresome, obviously he shouldn't have access to his Gifts (FEAR, which he tries to shove away), but if they have a different way of blocking them - his Nayoki has some research, maybe the earlier Nayoki doesn't yet though... It's fine either way, he's wrestled himself back to lacking a strong preference, but it's been on his mind. 

The constant sleep deprivation is more annoying. He doesn't know if Bella can do things about that in general, but if she could help him sleep again after this, that still seems harmless and he would appreciate it. 

I can put you to sleep without having to teleport up if you'd like me to do that every evening, though you'll have to go to bed before I do for that to work. I can also contact the other Nayoki if you'd like.

Sure.

He's also still poking at avenues for getting more information, one way or another, so far he's mostly just come up with 'ask the other Leareth to let him read his thoughts in return' because that seems very hard to fake, but also it would require letting him use Thoughtsensing, and probably the other Leareth knows a lot of strategically sensitive material and won't want to let him. 

He keeps finding that he wants to talk to Vanyel. He isn't sure why, it's maybe partly that Melkor isn't that good at Vanyel in any context other than 'very sad' which...isn't hard...but it's mostly not that. 

There's not a straightforward way to let you talk to your Vanyel - well, I guess if I told him to expect you and I loaned you the earcuff he could Mindspeak and Thoughtsense even if you couldn't actively do anything? I guess I could invite mine here but he's significantly earlier. I could bounce you local Leareth's thoughts if he wanted, though, same as I was doing before but the other way around.

What year is it? 

Autumn 792.

That's a lot earlier. He wouldn't mind talking to the local Vanyel but it's very possible local Vanyel doesn't want to talk to him, they hadn't gotten very far toward being on good terms at that point.

He's very skeptical about an artifact that can let Vanyel use Gifts at him from another world when Leareth is the one who has it, and also probably no one should be lending him their magic artifacts, why would they do that. 

If other Leareth is fine with that plan then he would appreciate Bella bouncing his thoughts. (He's not expecting the other Leareth to be fine with the plan at all.) 

The thing the artifact does is shrink range for telepathic abilities to nothing, both ways. If the earcuff has use left, and I'm out of arts, I can still talk to Quendi; I just have to go 'near' them and unshield things for them to pick up with osanwë and let them send things they want to send.

I'll ask him.

She does.

Leareth does the due diligence of thirty seconds thinking about it. 

:Honestly, he would know literally everything that I did before your arrival, since he is from further in the future. We already explained you. Even on the very remote chance that this will end up mattering, I do not actually know much about the war in Arda. I think that seems fine, if he wants it: 

"He says it seems fine."

Nod. 

Local Leareth might as well head over, while he's thinking thoughts to be bounced.

He's sympathetic to Angband Leareth's confusion, and presumed frustration about it. Things not making sense is terrible. He's thinking that a number of things about his alt's situation would be driving him up the wall, despite the fact that he hasn't experienced Angband. Being stuck somewhere without control of his environment, not having magic, not having - goals or plans - or even knowing what reality is. It's hard to imagine how awful he would find that.

Probably his alt has found some way of dealing with it, though, Leareth wouldn't let himself go on being any more miserable than the adaptive level of misery, if he could avoid it, and it seems like the other Leareth has found a stance toward himself and his own mind that - reduces the tension, or pressure, or something.

That's probably hard to shift back from. And it's probably terrifying in both directions, actually.

He wishes he could help more with the war effort in Arda, but the people over there are being understandably cagey, so he can't. It sounds like adult Vanyel is really quite competent, though. 

He absorbs the thoughts, so familiar yet alien. There are no notes of off-ness at all, and he doesn't have any memories of Melkor getting thoughts convincingly for even a second, generally the rescue hallucinations just involved him not having access to Thoughtsensing.

...If he could read Maitimo's thoughts, that would actually be pretty convincing, given that he spent a while doing that all the time, he has that baseline. Also Melkor can't get just Maitimo's exterior perfectly even when it sure looks like he's trying to rather than leave deliberate discrepancies. That does not seem logistically feasible though. 

"If Maitimo wants to let me I can do the same thing with him, after some amount of rigmarole to be able to specify him to the earcuff anyway. I don't know how likely he is to want to let me, since we've never met."

(Vague memories of Maitimo starting out with nowhere near the level of paranoia appropriate for a war with a god, and then - getting there. He almost certainly won't agree to something like that and if he does Leareth ought to be suspicious on principle.) 

Leareth is feeling kind of overwhelmed again, in a way that pushes away from curiosity. Although, while he's thinking of things, he does sort of want paper to write on, he's not sure how much he'll trust himself to use it but he could at least count days. He has no idea how long it's been.