"I know. Sorry." He winces a little, fragments of Essi's memories rising in his mind. "...He was thirteen. The person I killed." 

"D'you know his name?"

"Essi. He ran away from home, I think. Lived with an abusive uncle who disapproved of mage-gift. I...do not think he would have survived the winter. But I am not sure." 

Belrun gives a little shudder.

Leareth says nothing, just stares into the distance for a moment and then leans against Belrun again, more tentatively. 

She puts her arm around him. "Well," she says. "This sucks."

"Maybe I could ask Nayoki to look at the - well, not the lifebond, but where it would be - see what is going wrong. I might be too young for it." 

"Yeah. Getting Nayoki to look is a good idea."

"I know you do not like Mindhealing but it seems worth at least having her look." 

"Yeah. I'll deal."

Leareth hugs her silently for another minute and then Mindspeaks Nayoki. 

Nayoki arrives shortly. Nods to Belrun. "It is good to see you again. I am sorry the circumstances of coming back are not better." 

"You and me both."

"May I look?" 

Nod.

The broken lifebond is very obvious, a space missing from the centre of Belrun's mind, the edges ragged. 

Leareth's side of it is subtler. She can see the potential lifebond there, just in the shape of his mind, but it's not doing much yet, if anything.

"The usual effect of a potential lifebond when one of the people is too young, would be that the people involved find each other unusually interesting, but nothing else notable. It is hard to tell if that is happening here, since Leareth remembers you, Belrun." 

"That makes sense."

"I am not sure if there is anything I can do to help with Mindhealing, assuming you even wanted me to do that. It might be worth waiting overnight to see if just spending time together helps." 

"That makes sense. Thank you."

It's not anywhere close to a reasonable bedtime, but Leareth is tired anyway - his current body is still recovering from preexisting malnutrition plus the arduous journey north - and he wants to cuddle with Belrun, even if this doesn't result in them being lifebonded again at least it's something. 

He's very irritated at how he just spend days agonizing over whether it was the right tradeoff to be lifebonded again, and now after all of that he isn't and his former-lifebonded is still miserable. 

She will follow him to wherever he's been sleeping and cuddle him.

He's back in the same bedroom they used to share. The bed is waaaaay too big for him and it's felt very lonely without her there. 

Leareth stretches out next to her. Doesn't say anything for a long time. 

:I am so angry with the Star-Eyed: he sends, eventually. :And Vkandis, if He was involved. It is one thing going after me, I expect it at this point, just - now that you are involved...: It's hard to even explain why that feels so much more beyond the pale. His mind keeps wanting to yell that it's not fair, even though he's never thought reality cared about fairness. 

:I'm upset too, yeah. Maybe they were after me the whole time. That'll teach me to try to eradicate the flu:

:I am sorry the world is like this: Snuggle. It doesn't feel like there's any real reassurance he can offer; it's tempting to say that he made a vow to fix it, but it's already taken such a very long time, and might still come at such a high cost, and it won't fix anything right now. 

She holds him, sighing.