Lissa furrows her brow, trying to follow the string of mostly-unfamiliar concepts. :You had - some sort of tool that did Healing, and it - let you write in different instructions somehow, except only the Healer was supposed to do that?: She grins briefly. 

:Yes!  It was very funny.  Many people who were not the Healer laughed with my parents about it afterwards.  Now I'm in a new dimension where nobody knows exactly what happened back then and IN THE NAME OF MY ASS it's going to STAY THAT WAY.:

:All right, all right! I won't say a word: Lissa holds a finger to her lips. 

Her expression turns serious again after a moment, and she stares vaguely at the tent-flap. :I wish I could be there with him. I know it's not what he needs right now. Still: 

:This whole Very Serious Conversation is because Vanyel is no longer stuck in an endless loop of pain and loss, and has instead transitioned to local transient pain and loss that he can get back out of again.  Let's not lose sight of the tentative possible local partial victory!:

Elsewhere, Melody resettles herself on the crate, smoothes down her robes and tugs her sleeves straight, and then blinks owlishly at Vanyel. 

"I'm sorry, I didn't really have a chance to give you the usual talk. You've seen a Mindhealer before, so you've got some context, but I'll just run through how I do things. First, everything you tell me now is something I'll keep entirely private, unless you give permission for me to discuss it with others - I would appreciate being able to talk some of this over with Thellim, given how involved she's been, but it's your decision. I do plan to take some notes, since I see a lot of people out here and it gets hard to keep them straight. They would be in a cipher I invented; no one else can read it. Is that all right?" 

Vanyel blinks, slightly overwhelmed by the rapid-fire pace of Melody's words. "Er, yes, both of those are fine." 

"Also, I'd like to apologize for not handling this perfectly before, and in particular for going through Yfandes and Lissa without having discussed that with you first and gotten your go-ahead. You weren't in a great state to answer a lot of questions, so I am glad we had the option, but now that you're more with it, I intend to talk to you directly as much as possible. I do want to check if you're all right with making exceptions to that in any future emergencies, though. What do you think?" 

"....Do what makes sense, I guess." 

Melody sighs, tugging at her collar. "I'm getting the impression you're not totally comfortable with that. How about, for now, I'll err on the side of only asking Yfandes, and only if you're literally unable to answer. We can discuss it more later, once you've had a chance to get settled." 

"- Hey, Vanyel, listen to me. I'm sorry today went the way it did; I can't imagine it's how you wanted your day to go. I can imagine you don't like - this particular facet of your past being discussed by multiple people. And I get that you're still incredibly worn down, six months on the border'll do that to anyone and they've used you harder than most Heralds. Trust me, I've heard the songs." 

Vanyel winces. 

"Sorry. The real thing's never as glorious as the Bards make it out to be, is it? Or glorious at all." Melody lets out her breath. "Vanyel, I know we're asking a lot of you in one day, and I intend to let you get some rest as soon as possible - but if you can manage it, I do want to ask for one more thing. Can you take a couple of minutes, and think about what you need from me, to feel, well, able to talk about it?" 

Vanyel scowls, then takes a deep breath, and nods. "Sorry. I'm - not making this easy for you, am I. I'll try." 

He closes his eyes. Tries to relax. It's not easy, when he's still on edge, his nerves raw - and the exhaustion lurks, having Mindhealing work done always takes a lot out of him. It feel like the adrenaline is all that's keeping him moving. One step at a time, one endless day after another until the days turn to years, dragging himself through a war he doesn't want to be fighting - a life he doesn't want to be living, a duty he never asked for... 

Stop. The quiet voice in the back of his mind is waving an imaginary metaphorical flag.

It's different now. In some sense everything is different, and he's - what - he's avoiding it, he keeps trying to put it off until later, always later, in a war zone there's never time to stop or rest or think except that's clearly stupid and he can picture all too clearly the face that Thellim would make about it. 

He lifts a hand. "Sorry, I just - I need a minute to...think, I guess." 

"Of course. It's a lot harder to think when things keep happening and we keep hassling you. I'll wait." 

Vanyel nods, gratefully, and then closes his eyes again and rubs his face with both hands. 

Tylendel. 

(A bounce, disorienting but not painful -) 

He's trying not to think about Tylendel on sheer habit, because there's an emergency - there's been a nonstop emergency for six months - and there isn't TIME, and distractions have always helped, if he's busy enough, desperate enough, sometimes he can almost block out the part of him that never stops screaming and never stops hurting and just wants it to end - 

It doesn't hurt now. 

Vanyel pinches the bridge of his nose, and tries to notice, not how he expects to feel, not the long-worn groove of thoughts he's looped over a thousand times, but how he actually feels, right here, right now. 

The answer is 'not great'. His eyes are sore and gritty with fatigue, his head aches dully, and he's suddenly all too aware of his sore throat and the various aches and pains left by months sleeping in a tent. He wants - a flinch, he's not used to letting himself notice what he wants, it's not like it's ever mattered is the cached refrain but...is that true...he's pretty sure Thellim would have an objection, she would make that FACE again and it would be mortifying. 

What would Tylendel say? 

(- a bounce -)

Tylendel would...hug him, and say he needed a bath - accompanied by that little eyebrow-waggle, Vanyel can picture it so clearly even now - and he would call Randi half a dozen creative names, and fuss over all his new scars...

A pang of - not agony, not the howling void, what - it takes a surprisingly long time to name it as grief. Ordinary grief, like he could imagine feeling if - if Lissa died, say, or Savil. (Both of these are awful, agonizing thoughts, but there's still something fundamentally different...) 

"Vanyel?" 

He blinks back to awareness.

"...He's dead." 

"I'm sorry. I know I can't begin to imagine what it's like." 

Vanyel waves a hand, vaguely. "I - no - that isn't -" He shakes his head, helplessly. "He's dead. Gone. I - how does it make any sense that I - it felt like I knew that, it felt like I've spent a decade never ever forgetting it, but I didn't - not really - I couldn't, he was still everything, my entire life is about him and losing him and missing him and - and he's, just, gone..."

He rakes a hand through his hair, which come to think of it is disgusting, somehow he's apparently spent months oblivious to that. "Sorry. I'm not making any sense, am I?" 

"No, it makes sense to me." Melody watches him expectantly, listening, her eyes still and her fidgeting confined to one hand rolling and unrolling the hem of her sleeve. 

"I - how do I say this - it's almost like I...haven't been remembering or grieving or missing him at all? I was - missing my lifebond - it was, it took up so much space, there wasn't any left to, to actually remember him. He, I - we were only together for three months." 

"I'm so sorry." 

Vanyel ducks his head, hugging himself slightly. "I - no - I feel like I keep not saying what I mean to. It's... I mean, everyone loses people, right? If it's just that, it's - it's not this uniquely horrible thing -" 

Melody purses her lips, crossing her arms. "Vanyel. It's not a competition. You're not wronging all the other grieving people in the world by hurting."