“Does it? I - was not angry before, there was no point, he was - trying to do the right thing from his information state... It would seem there is less point now, not more.”

Mhalir is having some sort of emotion about this. Not fear, that would feel ridiculous and he wishes he knew the words to reassure Carissa. He doesn’t know what emotion it is. Just that it hurts.

"I don't really know. Mhalir might, he was in Nirvana and they're big on....feelings, in Nirvana. ...I got Mhalir back. He's here."

“Oh. That - is good...” He had guessed, somewhat, and been not interacting with it because...why...just because it’s more complexity and he’s overwhelmed enough maybe, even though that’s silly.

Mhalir is still trying to pin down the nameless emotion. He - mostly hasn’t been angry with Seerow, it seemed...cruel, as well as useless. Because he’s dead.

But it still hurts, even now, that Seerow was so willing to die, to stop Mhalir from doing something he never wanted to do in the first place.

He doesn’t  know how to shape that into words, and so just sort of pushes the thought out to Carissa, like some bitter offering, ruins and ashes.

Well, Ma'ar is probably mindreading them and maybe he can get - something, out of that. It doesn't make a lot of sense to Carissa. Maybe if she tries to imagine Mhalir betraying her? She tries to imagine it and thinks she'd mostly feel - stupid, for forgetting everything she knew about the world in order to pretend she lived in a nicer one.

She pats Ma'ar. "Do you want space? We could leave..."

He considers that for a minute. 

"No. You can stay." Please stay, he almost wants to say, and he doesn't really understand that either. "I - I think I am scared too - was scared - it could still all go so badly." 

"It might." She nestles herself more comfortably, if she's going to be here a while. "I think it's less likely, though. I wish I understood Urtho. ...I wish I could've stunned him and put Mhalir in his head except that'd be an act of war and escalatory and so on."

Ma'ar snorts; it actually gets a brief smile from him. "No, I do not think that would have helped the overall situation at all. ...Can you read his mind? I could never get past his shields." 

"I didn't try. I can maybe try when I go back, if you don't think it'd cause an enormous incident."

"Can people detect it, when you read minds with your magic?" 

"Sometimes, if they know what they're doing. I could cast it on you if you want to test....depending how precisely you scoped the mind control, I guess."

"I did not specifically ban it, it - would depend on whether you internally consider it to be harming me - doing it without asking is something I would consider hostile, but..." He takes a deep breath. "You have my permission to try it." 

So she casts Detect Thoughts and tries to listen to his.

Ma'ar stiffens and jumps a little, feeling something touching his shields - it doesn't feel like Thoughtsensing probe, it feels...sharper, and like it's coming from a different angle... 

Carissa cannot get through to listen to his thoughts. 

"If you can notice I probably shouldn't try it on Urtho." Regretful sigh. "I just - wish I understood him - he seems to have a story about what he's doing that doesn't make any sense to anyone else..."

"I think that is right. He - sees himself as acting on what is morally right, I think. Doing a brave and difficult duty that someone must." Shrug. "I can say those words. It does not mean that I particularly understand it." 

"I would be so angry to have been asked to give my life for this - he didn't have a sense of under what terms the war could be over! I am not sure he had thought it through! His tower security was really confusing!"

"I mean, I expect he would always have been willing to accept a surrender. He must have believed I would never do that. ...To be fair to him, I had not considered it. I - thought I could win. And then sort out our misunderstandings, when he was not - trying to use his power to destroy what I had built, while telling himself it was good and right and necessary." 

"That was what Mhalir figured, with the Andalites, that he needed enough power to force them to listen to him -"

"You do not think this would have worked out well." It's not a question. 

"The Andalites killed millions of people on one planet to stop them falling into Yeerk hands. There were dozens of other planets - there were even more dangerous things they considered - they say they wouldn't have done it but -"

"- Oh - gods, millions..." Ma'ar hadn't realized there were greater depths of horror and fear still to be plumbed. Or - how much more it could hurt, being afraid after the worst threat was past, because before he was shoving it away to deal with later and now there's space for it to bubble its way loose.

Mhalir is pretty sure he understands exactly what Ma'ar is feeling, right now, but he's still having a hard time naming it clearly enough to describe to Carissa. He's -

- probably lonely, right, the desperate aching thirsty kind of loneliness that spikes when there's suddenly hope for not being lonely any longer, for getting back something he had thought was lost forever and ground to dust under a thousand battles... 

He's going to be tired, because it's been nearly a year of war, and before that decades of trying to drag Predain out of poverty, facing the disapproval and judgement of his teacher - whose respect and admiration he must have craved so much, Mhalir remembers how he felt about Seerow... 

He misses Seerow and he's stupidly jealous and wishes he could stop it. 

Probably at some point Ma'ar should take Mhalir himself and then they can bond over....being a Ma'ar/Mhalir person things...but she thinks if she makes the suggestion now Ma'ar will be too nervous to get any use of it. She is trying to solve the loneliness here but she doesn't really know how, if it's not about holding him. (She could kiss him? It's probably also not about that, that's not hard to get even if there's a war...)

"I think - Urtho - I don't know how much it'd even mean to have his approval because he has bad judgment and stupid values but he said he cares about you and I expect he'd want to fix ...things..."