"By all means. I am not excited about itchy snuggles either." He undresses as well and lies down on his back, staring vaguely at the ceiling. 

Snuggle. "Didn't mean to dredge up bad memories, I'm sorry."

"Usually I am better at not being bothered by things in the past that I cannot change, it rarely helps. I - suppose I am worried what you must think of me." 

"I did awful things that didn't even make anything better and weren't part of any plan that ever might, just because I didn't want to die."

"And I am very glad you are not dead." Leareth isn't sure what else to say. Or why it seems vaguely like he might feel better if she were more - offended, angry, something, about all of it. 

Snuggle. 

"...The past is in the past," Leareth says finally. "I think going forward, we can both - try to do better, Cheliax should have better, that is what Aroden was trying to do here. And - I am not sure, but it is almost harder to adjust to that, having done awful things in the name of fixing other things, it...makes it harder to tell. I want you–" He stops. "I am not sure how to say this, I do not want to - just give you another duty - but I want you to know you can say if you think a choice I made was horrible. I am generally not defensive about it, Vanyel has shouted at me plenty. And - I think it would be good for both of us, but maybe especially for you, to - practice expecting better. At least of ourselves, it is not fair to hold everyone in Cheliax to that standard, yet, but... Does that make sense?" 

"All of the things you described sounded horrible? I'd need to know - what other ways of doing things you considered and why you picked this one and what you considered the most likely and most harmful ways it could fail, and whether you tended to be good at predicting those things, and - I think - I believe that the answers would usually be that you thought about it about as much as people can, right, and -"

"Yes. I am not perfect at making such predictions, and usually it is a prediction-in-expectation anyway, the fact that I will be wrong sometimes is taken into account. I think most people are far more willing to be wrong about choosing not to act than choosing actions that cause harm as well as benefit. I do hold a somewhat higher barrier to action than inaction, but inaction is also a choice with the consequences that it has, often unpleasant ones. I have very detailed records of nearly all my decisions and I review them afterward. I did make some stupid and probably unjustified calls in the war with Urtho, but in my defence I was not even forty and he attacked first." 

- giggle. "I don't know how I'd figure out when you were wrong, then. I can try if it's important to you, especially for stuff where there's also other peoples' records."

He squeezes her. "It would be a good idea at some point to go through the past records, but I am more worried about the present, and things that might seem ordinary to me but that Iomedae would be appalled by." 

"If you have been using Suggestion on me we can talk about it and figure out something that's okay and lets us both feel safe and trust each other though it will involve you promising to stop that."

"I have absolutely not been doing that! It would defeat the point of what I am hoping for here, I want us to be allies - also Iomedae could probably tell and She would be so furious and - I really do not wish to upset or disappoint Her–" Leareth is kind of surprised how emphatic that feeling is. "Look, I will take down my shields and you can read my thoughts and see." 

She looks a little startled by his vehemence but she casts Detect Thoughts. 

Leareth is also kind of startled by it. He's trying to unpack why it feels like such an obviously different category in his mind - it's not just the specific details that make it unnecessary and pointless, here, it's... It feels tangled up in why Abadar looked at him and saw a pattern shaped like an ally, a process that could make and keep agreements, that could participate in trades. Which was so startling to Leareth, because most people don't consider him the kind of person one can cooperate with in good faith - because Iomedae was right, he sacrificed that when it seemed like it would be more effective, on net, to have Evil options open to him. 

It's - related to why he never tried to mind-control Vanyel, right, and hadn't planned on it, he wouldn't have hesitated if Vanyel had actually ridden north to try to kill him (though in that case he also wouldn't have made it subtle or hard to notice at ALL.) But for ten years they've been talking, and he was trying to communicate. Which is a back-and-forth, it's not really communication anymore if the thing you're doing is slipping alien thoughts into someone's mind, and the latter it's fundamentally not the kind of motion you do toward someone you hope will be your ally. If you're using involuntary, unremarked compulsions then you've already decided someone is an object in the world to be manipulated, not an agent to make trades with.

Leareth is willing to do that, but he doesn't prefer it; he dislikes it, overall, that just isn't very relevant in comparison to what will or won't help him succeed. And the difference between before in Velgarth and now in Golarion is that he can try to have real allies, even make that his default stance, and expect it to work better, because there are enough people in this world who are actually trying to win. Iomedae is also Good, and Lawful, but those aren't even the point, the point is that She is the goddess of defeating and destroying evil. As She said, not of fighting evil, that's different.

...Also he thinks it's very possible Iomedae would set him on fire or something if he mistreated her cleric, and given that, Carissa should maybe feel like she has a little more security to push back on things that bother her, instead of...it seems like she thinks he holds all the cards, here, and that bothers him. 

She leans against him, and nods, and -

"Oh -"

And she stops shielding herself, it seems only fair, and tries to explain.

She trusts him, and she is planning to work with him, on Cheliax and then whatever comes next, to be immortal and learn magic from Aroden and take on all of this, even though there's so much and so much of it is things she's not had very long at all to think about, and it seems really likely, right, that he and she are on basically the same page about what being good to each other is and they'll do that and it'll just get easier with time and be kind of uncomplicated eventually and be the thing in real life that gets called true love in stories, and Iomedae will be backing her if she needs it which she won't because she's going to learn magic from Aroden -

- but it would be silly and a mistake, to try to - in reaching for that, make that the only kind of situation she could operate in, make this something that would break if actually he and she have different ideas of what being good to each other is, if actually she has less resources than expected, if actually there's a lot they disagree on - and there are a lot of parts to building something that still works in that case, she hasn't put them all together yet, but one part of it is -

- there's a world where there's a Leareth who isn't very different, right, but who doesn't happen to see Suggestion as a thing-you-don't-do-towards-an-ally, or is undecided about whether she's an ally, and who was surprised, when she said that earlier tonight, and the thing she said - closed a door, right, it told him 'that's a thing you don't do towards an ally' but not what to do instead, and she still wants to marry that Leareth, she still wants to be his ally, and she has to give him a way to get there, and she was thinking of it as kind of a - free thing to offer, right, to say that they could talk about it, it helps in the world where it's needed and it doesn't matter in the world where everything's good and she wins no matter what because, well, that's the world where everything's good and she wins no matter what. And she wasn't thinking about how even in that world it might hurt him, hurt them, for her to be - holding everything in suspension like that -

- and she's not totally sure yet what to do about it but she does want to be his ally, and she mostly is not afraid of him and she thinks she might have lots and lots of security but she doesn't want to count on it, right - she doesn't only want to be able to work if it's true - 

:That makes sense: He holds her, quietly, for a moment. :I want...: It would really, really help if he knew what. :Does it help, when I just show you my thoughts?: It's oddly - comforting is entirely the wrong word, it's uncomfortable, but it still seems to ease something in him, doing that. 

:I think it caused me to notice something I wasn't noticing before? About it being bad to hold everything in suspension, I mean.:

:If it is doing something important I think you should not worry about whether it hurts my feelings. But - if it is hurting you then I want to help you find a way to not need to keep doing it: 

Maybe it's mostly that she would feel so stupid, right, if she decided Iomedae had her back and her husband loved her and everything was going to be okay, and then a predictable bad thing happened and she wasn't prepared for it because she'd been so busy enjoying a fairy tale where it was safe not to, because she - let herself live in a world that was nice to think about -

- if things are nice to think about they're probably a malicious lie, it was a pretty good rule her entire life -

Leareth understands it a bit, he thinks, it's not the exact same mental pattern - his is the kind of paranoia you develop when you're powerful and have a lot of equally powerful adversaries, hers the kind that you develop when powerless in a hostile world - but he also finds it very hard to just trust and feel that things are good.

And things aren't a nice fairy tale, the world is still dangerous, she shouldn't let down her guard, but - the thing Aroden has with Parmida, that they wanted him to have, is that at the very least the two of them can shield each other, and then it's that much easier to handle all the rest, but that is a lot of trust and it's a big thing for him to ask for, from her, especially when he struggles so much with his side of it as well. 

That being said, he doesn't think 'feel stupid' is quite the right framing, here - if he brought his entire army to point A because it was the best plan based on what he knew, and then the enemy went to point B, he wouldn't feel stupid unless he had made a mistake, and - sometimes the highest-value gamble to make does have a downside, a very bad one, but if the likelihood of it is low and the upside is high then it can still be worth it. 

Also he really, really doesn't want to hurt her, he's surprisingly distressed about doing it by accident - maybe this is why it was easier with Khemet, who's powerful enough and in control enough that Leareth doesn't worry about that - he should stop thinking about Khemet, this won't help...

"He's important to you. I don't expect you to - partition that away from me all the time so I'm not reminded."

Shiver.

"I have been - telling you when I need things. Even though it's scary. Haven't been - letting you fail tests you didn't know about, that wouldn't be fair. I - 

- Iomedae did a thing, when she manifested, I wanted to collapse on the ground or cry or - hide - and instead I was full of sureness that - that saying everything I was too scared to say would actually go fine, that I was safe - and this was a reasonable enough thing to do in that specific context and probably she could've made it - stick - and didn't - because it wouldn't be good for me. But she did also tell me to my face that you were worthy of me and it'd go better than all right, which isn't exactly being subtle -

-

-

- I'm scared that if I fall in love with you then you'll think I'm pathetic and want to be around someone who - isn't -"

“...That sounds like a very scary thing to imagine. But why would falling in love with me be pathetic?” 

"Because it is stupid and the kind of thing people do when they have stopped trying to track reality and have decided to pretend they live in a story instead."

Leareth can't figure out how to say the answer in words, so he just holds his thoughts bare for her. It's - just - he's been under the impression here that the entire point of this is that they'll fall in love with each other, and he's definitely in the process of trying; that's part of what's hard, just having a straightforward unemotional business relationship with someone would be treading familiar ground. But instead he's doing his best to be open with her and work toward trusting her, and he's at least partway to being in love with her, he is pretty sure he doesn't go around with nearly so many urges to hold hands and cuddle with people he isn't in love with, and he can sort of see where the rest of that path goes, now...

...and there's a kind of trying to live in a story that involves not-looking at reality, though he doesn't think it's pathetic because why would that help, he thinks it's - beautiful and tragic and very human, and it makes him want to change reality so that all the people who need things desperately, and don't have the strength or cleverness or courage to stare at the ugliness of the broken world and spend years shaping it themselves, will be able to find their stories anyway. But there's a different kind of living the story you want to live that isn't pretending, it's just planning, and Carissa is clever and brave and - wonderful - and she is entirely capable of writing the story she wants to live into the fabric of reality around her, and that, to Leareth, is the opposite of pathetic, it's triumphant and precious and close to the core of why thinking, feeling beings matter. Carissa successfully snuck a cactus familiar past Leareth and Aroden and learned their secrets (fondness, warmth, he's still so impressed),and he absolutely believes she can join him in writing the story where they're in love. Partly because he's pretty sure he wants that and that Iomedae would have known.