Leareth takes a deep breath. It really isn't any scarier than being asleep here on his own, which he keeps trying to do. Being here without any magic is terrifying in itself, but letting Bella put him to sleep doesn't make it worse. Also, trying and failing to sleep is very unpleasant and he's been doing that a lot lately. 

"I can knock people out against their wills but I do need a willing target for sleep. Let me know when you're ready."

He takes a deep breath and tries to get more of his mind on board with this plan. (Trying at anything, even internally, feels wrong and unnatural and dangerous, but he can remind himself that being asleep is, in itself, not helpful to Melkor at all.) "Ready." 

And he's asleep.

Local Leareth watches his alt for a moment, with an unreadable expression, then moves to stand up. :Thank you. I think that went reasonably well? I apologize, again, for springing the immortality part on you: 

No harm done, if he'd started asking me to kill him I would in fact have consulted you and he didn't even do that, just.

Sigh. :I understand: 

Leareth walks a little ways down the hall outside, then stops. Leans his forehead against the wall. :I am so - frustrated, and I am not even sure why, it is really not helpful: 

It's a frustrating situation! It'd be weird if you weren't frustrated by it at all.

:It sounds as though he is still making faster progress toward engaging with us than you were expecting, though?: 

Yeah. Elves wouldn't be this responsive a year in, even if they weren't asking to be killed.

:I wonder if part of the difference is that his previous experience contains things that, to his knowledge, Melkor cannot fake and has not included in past hallucinations? Much of his productive confusion seems to be around the compulsions. I imagine that the Elves you saw before would not have had things like that. ...Also, he might have been there for a shorter time period. I am not sure how long the previous war was, but in this case it was only five months of outside world time: 

Which is clearly plenty to very thoroughly damage a Leareth, but...maybe, hopefully, in a way that's not as slow to fix. 

Yeah, I think typical prisoners would have spent longer inside and have fewer useful comparisons like that.

:Also he is a me, and apparently I am worse at handling boredom than I realized! He is trying so hard not to finish lines of thought and he is so bad at it: Leareth is smiling, sort of fondly. :I am glad he wanted you to relay his thoughts, even if I am sort of confused about the justification there: 

Well, if you're real then they are in a sense your thoughts, he reasoned, and if you're not real then it doesn't matter whether he says I may or not.

:I suppose he could get quite far via decisions that he can reason would be harmless in both versions: 

Yeah, I think that's normal, insofar as anything is.

Nod. :What is the plan next, then? I can talk to him tomorrow and ask if he wants you to come back - or we could leave him be with some books to read and wait for him to ask. It seemed as though he might want some space to absorb things more: 

Yeah, I think letting him ask is good.

:All right, we can plan on that. Aside from that, I think I will have a summary of relevant magic for the other Vanyel in three days, so you could check in then. Did you have any other news from him?: 

She shakes her head. Hypothetical questions but not news.

Leareth looks like he maybe wants to ask, but he leaves it alone. 

She goes back to Haven. She resumes her assorted work.

Angband Leareth is overall relieved when she doesn't make an appearance the next day and neither does his alt. 

He pokes at his memories of the conversation, which aren't as clear and ordered as he likes, his memory is terrible right now for some reason and he didn't take notes because he doesn't have paper for it and asking feels too much like a decision to - to something. 

He's still confused. Nothing makes sense and he's tired and maybe for a while he'll go back to not trying, because trying isn't safe and it's not even working. 

...

This lasts most of the day, but then the restlessness is back. He sates it for a while by reading, but then he finds himself wandering around the various hypotheticals again. It's all sort of fake, right, he can't actually draw inferences about his situation this way, because even if he's not still in the hands of an evil god, his mind is broken and it's not safe. But he can still ask the what-if, as long as he reminds himself not to believe it. 

Leareth does this for maybe an hour and then he's exhausted again and also sort of panicking for very unclear reasons - it takes a while and a lot of effort to calm down, he sort of wishes Bella were there to just make it stop, but asking for her to come here is too close to trying to influence the world, so he doesn't. 

Local Leareth leaves him alone and does not peek in at what he's doing, even with scrying which he wouldn't know about, and focuses on the summary work for alternate-Vanyel. He has it put together in two and a half days. 

And she can relay to Van when she has it.