"Get some more sleep," Iomedae says. She doesn't sound annoyed, though. "In Carissa's bed, if that's where you sleep best; the point is to have more resources. When you're not tired, ask the paladins if you can read their minds.

We are on the same team, Leareth. It is our shared aspiration to fix everything. I want you to believe that, and I sent you people who I think will help you understand it."

“- Thank you.” 

Leareth thinks, distantly, that he probably ought to have some sort of emotion about - all of this - but he doesn’t. 

(He also has no idea if he would sleep better in Carissa’s bed, and feels sort of bemused about why she brought it up at all.)

And then he's alone, with a slight headache, in the infirmary.

Leareth is fairly sure that he won’t sleep better in Carissa’s bed, overall -

— though it’s going to be very awkward if and when he wakes up and can’t move or talk or Mindspeak. Which is plausibly an argument for being near Carissa. 

He sighs, gets up from the infirmary bed, and trudges down the dark quiet hallway to Carissa’s guest room. 

He knocks, and tentatively reaches out with Mindspeech to check if Carissa is even still awake.

Awake and pacing and - 

Yes? She's relieved it's Leareth; it'd be worse if he'd sent someone.

:- Can I sleep here?:

Leareth is aware that he’s being abrupt, and probably very confusing, but his head hurts and he can’t find the will to try to do any better.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhwhatwhatwhataaaaahhhh?

She is tempted to point out that it's his underground base and he can sleep wherever he pleases, but he looks like that - wouldn't go over well - some tiny suicidal part of her is also tempted to tell him to fuck off, but she tugs it out by the roots, very efficiently -

"Yeah, of course."

:- I am very sorry, I - just - I realize I have been very rude to you tonight and I am not sure how to explain in any way that will actually help?:

Carissa would not particularly have thought of framing any of her feelings as "Leareth is being very rude". Leareth can communicate whatever sentiments he cares to!

Help with what, she almost asks, and then realizes that that's practically obliging him to give the explanation he said he doesn't think will help. 

"I'm used to belonging to gods," she says instead. "They're much ruder. And not as huggable."

:…I realize that it seems to be a more legible framing for you, or something, that you belong to me? I do not think that would even be a coherent concept?:

This is probably just making the rudeness even worse, isn’t it. 

:- Iomedae said I should sleep here if it would cause me to rest more easily?: he adds, just as abruptly. :And I realized that if I wake up without you there then the geas will be an issue again:

Yeah, I can watch more closely and lift it faster when you next wake up.

The observation that she belongs to Leareth isn't - like, she knows that Leareth says they're allies, she appreciates that, she is very much aware that she had a deal with him and that he is treating her as someone who has bargaining power and that her position is not that of a prisoner or a slave or even a nominally-free girlfriend who'll lose everything if she stops being interesting -

- but, Leareth is the person who cares if she lives or dies, and Leareth is powerful, and she has thrown in with his goals, and it is better to be more useful towards those goals rather than less useful, and - it's dangerous to have low expectations because people certainly won't treat you better than you act like you deserve but it's also dangerous to have excessively self-important expectations, to pretend that you are the equal of a thousands-of-years-old immortal mage who is planning to build a god when, well, you're not.

And then she's distracted by his claim that Iomedae said he should sleep here. Distracted by being SO SATISFIED. She thought Iomedae's 'get a hug from Carissa' meant 'you need an emotional support girlfriend' and she is going to take this as evidence she was RIGHT.

"Well, Iomedae's pretty far down the list of gods I want to pick a fight with," she says, aloud, and pats the bed. 

There is such a giant pile of unresolved complicatedness, there. Leareth does not even slightly have the energy to try to address it now. 

He nods and sits down on the bed.

What even is this??? What does he need here????

"If Iomedae told you to sleep then probably you should sleep. Do you want me to make you, with magic."

“- Not especially, no? I think I can manage.”

He lies down on her bed and closes his eyes.

Carissa is going to be so chill and uncomplicated. She will do this. She'll get a perfect grade at being chill and uncomplicated.

She sits there watching him. Chillly. Uncomplicatedly. She thinks about flowers, ranks them by prettiness. Fabrics. Ranks them by scratchiness. Leareth beard hairs. Ranks them by curliness.

It takes Leareth a long time to fall asleep. 

(He lies still and breathes slowly and deeply and does not change his mind and ask Carissa to make him sleep with magic.) 

- and then, inevitably and unsurprisingly, he finds himself standing in the snow, facing a man in ragged Heralds' Whites. 

This is extremely predictable and Leareth didn't consider the possibility at all. 

Vanyel takes a few steps forward from the mouth of the pass.

"...Leareth. Um." 

(Vanyel is ALSO thinking that this is extremely predictable - the dream tends to happen when he's just learned something new, and, well - but it was a very long day, on the tail of a series of very long exhausting days, and he doesn't have a script prepared at all.) 

"- Leareth. What. Just - I don't - what." 

...He is bizarrely tempted to ask Leareth if he's all right, but he isn't going to do that. 

Vanyel's tongue is now getting tangled on which question to ask first. 'Why did your representative leave in such a hurry' is probably not a question Leareth is going to answer.

'Why did you get Carissa pregnant and also HOW and WHEN' is...well, it's not really the top priority here and also Vanyel is pretty sure he can't actually make himself say it out loud with his actual mouth. 

"...Why did you send Jisa back?" he hears himself say.

What. Is that Vanyel's highest priority question here. 

"- I did not intend for her to escape with us and I did not wish to start a war?" he says blankly. 

"- Er, right, we knew it was, um. Her idea. But you could've held onto her as a hostage." 

"That would not have achieved any of my goals?" 

It's weirdly tempting to snap back that he doesn't have any way of knowing whether Leareth is telling the truth about what he wants. Even though that's...not the case, anymore, they interrogated Leareth thoroughly under a coercive Truth Spell and Vanyel - and all the other Heralds - now have an (unfortunately) clear sense of what Leareth wants and what he was planning to do and why and how. 

(And Yfandes went back to being cagey and uncomfortable and unhelpful as soon as the immediate situation with the Chelish diplomats and Jisa and all the rest was resolved, and Vanyel tried to talk through some of it with Savil but she was - very unsurprisingly - not especially up for that. He sort of wishes he'd been able to grab Shavri to go through it all - it feels like she would understand better - but, of course, she's busy and overwhelmed and the last thing he wants to do is add another burden. 

He sighs.

"....I'm confused, all right? It - really does seem like Jisa did it on her own reckoning? Melody checked her mind very thoroughly, and she– well. You met her, you know what she's like. But, just... It seems awfully convenient?"