He leans into the hug. <I don't know if things are terrible. Things were terrible for a while and I did not have some kind of self-inflicted brain damage about things being terrible. Things - might be all right. The Yeerks broadcast that they surrendered. If I did not have self-induced brain damage I think I would have come to some kind of conclusion by now about whether that was true.> Now on top of everything else he is feeling very tired, and is back to finding it a bit hard to string sentences together, which is terrifying - that was the most alarming part of the whole situation and he thought that at least had been fixed -

He seems calmer, which is maybe good? 

:I hate that feeling: Vanyel sends, sympathetically. :When you know you have to be making important decisions right and you can't think clearly even though you have to - when it feels like everything is terrible but you can't tell if that's true or just a feeling... It's so bad. It doesn't usually last that long though, once you calm down and get some rest I think it'll feel easier again. ...Um, when I feel that way it's often because horrible things happened and also I hadn't slept enough, when did you last sleep?: 

<Seventeen candlemarks and twenty one percent of another candlemark> he says instantly. <We were awakened after about three hours of sleep by the attack in New York.>

:That sounds like really not enough sleep! It's probably hard to sleep while you're this upset, though: He glances at Melody hopefully. 

:You're doing great: she sends privately. 

Vanyel tries to think. He - can keep giving Matirin advice about dealing with really overwhelming emotions? That seems to not be going terribly so far, anyway, and he asked to try things that would be expected to help. 

Yfandes, riding in Vanyel's thoughts, maneuvers herself around the conference table and cuddles up to Matirin's other side. :You can pet me if you want: she sends, with soothing reassurance. :That often helps for humans: 

He pets Yfandes. <If I just need to sleep I can take drugs to solve it being hard to fall asleep> he says, sounding relieved. <I am worried about needing to do something more complicated than that.>

:Van, can you try to get him to do a few more minutes of talking about his feelings with you and say we're working on that?: Melody sends privately, then turns to Matirin. :Do you want me to go to the medical bay and ask for drugs that help Andalites sleep? I don't think it's going to fix everything, but it might leave you with more resources to work with, if you also need to do complicated things: 

<Yes, please.> he says to Melody. <Has anyone properly briefed you> he says to Vanyel, <I think it would be good if you were thinking about the things I am failing to successfully think about.>

:That makes sense. I got a lot of updates from various people, right before this, and I think I know all the important pieces. I am thinking about it already and so is Yfandes, and I can think about it more once you're asleep and get a more thorough briefing from someone, but - I want to help you feel better first, because I care about you and that's also important:  

He keeps hugging Matirin. :- Um, sometimes that happens when I'm upset and it's making it hard to think, is that I'm having a lot of feelings about my feelings, er, maybe I'm really sad and then I'm frustrated with myself about being sad and feel guilty for not being better at it, or something. And when that's true it helps a lot to try to tell someone else what the pieces are, because then I can figure it out better and sometimes the frustration and such will just go away then. You could try doing that and see if it helps?: 

<Hmm. I ordered someone to go Final Strike the base that was captured - we think with gas - and in doing so kill about eighty of our own people, including Leareth though I bet they got him out first and including two of my brothers, and I was not having a lot of feelings about this because it was the right thing to do, but then the Yeerks surrendered ten minutes later, and probably they were lying or bluffing or something but if they were sincere, that is good news, but it is causing me to feel angry and sad about the earlier decision even though it was obviously correct, and angry with the Yeerks for not surrendering ten minutes earlier even though it doesn't make sense to be more angry with them once they surrendered than I was when they had not surrendered at all. 

Is that the right sort of thing?>

:...Yes, I think so. I, just - gods, war is so bad, I'm so sorry, I've...: Recounting some of his biggest regrets probably isn't helpful right now, actually. :All of those feelings make a lot of sense to me, too. I'm also angry with the Yeerks even though you're right, this is better than the alternative. It just makes it feel - stupid and tragic and wasteful, right, if it could've gone differently, if it was ten minutes away from going differently...:

He rubs Matirin's back. :I'm really sorry about your brothers. And - Leareth...: He's not sobbing but he is sniffling a bit. :We'll figure out the best way forward from the situation we have, but - gods, it's so much awfulness in so little time: 

<It was very dense with awfulness. Also one of the mages did a Final Strike in an inhabited city and about fourteen hundred people are dead from that and I am pretty sure it didn't even prevent his paired Mindspeaker from being captured, I think that must be how they got to Leareth...>

:I heard. It's really upsetting: 

Vanyel is silent for a while, just holding him. :...How are you feeling now?: he asks Matirin after a while. 

<I am not sure if I am entirely recovered yet. I keep trying to think things through and getting stuck. My theory of why the Yeerk surrender might have been sincere is that we killed a lot of their leadership when we had everyone on the Blade ship eaten by demons. But it would be pretty surprising, really, for Visser 3 to still be there when he knew we'd Gated in a few hours earlier.>

:Mmm, that makes sense: Hug. So much hug. :I'm going to think about this for you, remember? I have ten years of practice trying to outscheme Leareth, and I've fought a war too. You just had the worst seventeen hours I can imagine and you held it together the whole time, I'm honestly incredibly impressed, but - it's okay, you can rest for a bit now: 

<I am doing that! I am hiding in here hugging you two. But also -> Sigh - <I can phrase it to be about my feelings if you would like - if I mess up on Earth five billion people will die and it will be my fault. And maybe we will lose the whole war and it'll be - a thousand times worse than that. And it is very profoundly unfair to all five billion or maybe five trillion of those people for - my feelings - to have had ownership of their fate.>

Squeeze. :I know. The stakes are so stupidly high, just - I mean, it's not fair to the five billion either that Cayaldwin got tossed into a wall and can't help plan right now, sometimes the world is like that. And...just, hmm. That's kind of the thing I was talking before, having layers of feelings about feelings? I know you can't decide to stop feeling bad about it, but...I think it helps to notice when your mind is doing that thing, and fighting it really hard usually doesn't work until you've gotten some sleep: Patpatpat. :Anything else you want to talk to me about before you do that? Melody must be nearly back: 

<Is she not planning to strategically time her arrival for once she feels I have done an appropriate amount of emotional processing?>

- Vanyel bursts out laughing, he can't help it. :...Um, it hadn't occurred to me she would do that but I wouldn't put it past her. Er, do you think you've done an appropriate amount of emotional processing?: 

<My only metric for whether I've done enough emotional processing is whether I can figure out why the Yeerks surrendered and I cannot, but it is possible that in addition to emotional processing I need additional information. I think the morph is doing less physiological distress but I don't know how correlated that is.>

:For what it's worth, I think I now have all the information you do and I also don't know. Have some guesses but they're all really low confidence until we hear more. Less physiological distress is pretty correlated for me, so that's a good sign, I think. Is there anything else that, um, makes the physiological distress worse whenever you remember it?: 

<There is someone I love who isn't dead but he must be pretty sure I betrayed him and hate me, I am trying to not think about that since it's distracting. Whenever I replay the visual of our mages being eaten by demons on the Blade ship it makes the physiological distress worse but I could just...stop doing that...I am not entirely sure why I keep doing it in the first place, I do not think there is much valuable strategic information there. When I think that maybe our people are not dead but in the possession of Yeerks to live out the rest of their lives as their slaves I experience distress.>

:Oh, gods, the replaying things even though there's not really a lesson, I hate it when my brain insists on doing that. I - well, I don't want to make this about me, but there's a battle where I made a decision and it was probably right but it's how Mardic lost his Companion, and: yep now he is crying about it again. :It's... I think sometimes it's - important - to remember that real people pay the cost of war, even for the right decisions, and - remember that it's horrible - it should hurt, if it stops hurting it means you're starting to think of people as just - numbers on a ledger, or something... I don't know, but I think that's what my brain is up to when I have that kind of distress: