"You keep asking me to just do what I want and I don't know! I don't even know how I would be able to tell! It's just...way easier to figure out what other people need." 

"It's true. There are lots of other people and they need lots of things and it doesn't take much self-reflection and grieving and kindness to oneself, to figure out what those things are. It's much easier."

"...Leareth knows what he wants. He wants - all the broken things in the world to be fixed, and everyone to be all right. I, I don't know how he - wants that so hard and keep trying at it for so long and he somehow doesn't have all the stupid problems I have where I can't manage to take care of myself even when it'd make me better at helping other people in the long run..." 

"Well, he doesn't have a broken lifebond, that probably helps."

"I guess." 

Vanyel leans forward in the chair and cups his face between his hands and thinks. He can think better, here, and he - hasn't exactly been taking advantage of it to try to make a reasoned, correct, endorsed decision instead of the kneejerk one. 

"...I think it's hard to know what I want because - the biggest thing I want is to have Tylendel back, and I can't, I can't ever have that, and it's - so hard to even notice anything else, around that..." 

He trails off. 

"- Actually, I - somehow didn't think of this at all." Probably because he spends most of his time trying as hard as he can to never ever think about the entire topic of Tylendel. "But - gods - your world has resurrection magic. Is that - could that work–?" 

"I hope that eventually we'll be able to resurrect the souls from your world that your gods are holding onto, or at least get them an afterlife. I think it can be done, but - not straightforwardly. The local gods are not easy to communicate with."

Snort. "I've noticed. But - I'm grateful that you're trying." 

Vanyel closes his eyes. Takes a few breaths.

"...I think I want to go back. But - not just yet, if that's all right? I - I could use a little longer with it not hurting all the time." 

He also really wishes that Iomedae would offer to hold him, like the Shadow-Lover always does, but he feels way too self-conscious about the prospect of asking Her. 

"As long as you need."

She walks over and sits down in the chair beside him - it's somehow large enough for that, though it wasn't a minute ago - and pulls him into her arms.

In that case, Vanyel is going to spend a while resting in the circle of Iomedae's arms, where nothing hurts and no one is demanding anything of him and he can feel on a gut level, if not quite make himself believe in words, that somehow everything is going to be all right in the end. 

Vanyel is still limp, but after Rovira casts the spell that Leareth doesn't have - huh, the magic of that one looks fascinating, it's not a huge quantity of power but it's so efficient and neatly aimed - he takes a breath. Some colour returns to his face. 

Leareth shifts so he can support Vanyel's head. ...And then puts a shield over him, just in case.

:He might wake up disoriented: he warns Rovira. :Sometimes when that happens with mages they set things on fire: 

"Vanyel," he says quietly. "This is Leareth. You are in my facility in the north. We are safe here." 

It takes Vanyel another ten or fifteen seconds to drag himself all the way to consciousness. He doesn't set anything on fire. He does try to open his eyes, with significant effort. 

All of it happened incredibly fast, and this is the point at which Nayoki actually reaches the room, at a dead run, followed by three of the Healers. 

"Leareth, what–" 

:Vanyel tried to kill himself. With Healing, I think. The cleric has a spell that stabilized him and we are going to...try to talk with him about it: 

:Oh. ...I am not very surprised: 

Sigh. :I suppose that neither am I. I - we are going to speak with him, but I think we will...not prevent him repeatedly, if he - endorses wanting to die: 

:He is suffering so much. - Though his mind does seem a little better?: She peers in closer with her Sight. :...Odd, though, something seems - disrupted?: It reminds her a little of Leareth's mind, yesterday. 

One of the Healers bends over them and rests a hand on Vanyel's forehead and closes her eyes. 

:He's surprisingly not too badly off, physically? Mostly he's just very worn down - he clearly hasn't been eating or sleeping anywhere near enough. We should get him to a bed: 

:I can carry him to the infirmary: 

Vanyel's eyes seem a little more focused, now. Leareth squeezes his hand again. "Vanyel? I am not sure if you remember what happened, but - you stopped your own heart. Rovira was able to stabilize you and...shhh, do not try to talk yet, we can speak soon. I am going to carry you to somewhere you can lie down, all right?" 

Vanyel did not need reminding of what just happened! He remembers it all too well and oh gods that was such a mortifying thing to do in front of Iomedae's poor cleric, he's so embarrassed - Leareth must have been upset, though right now he sounds very calm - 

He doesn't protest being carried. 

Leareth gets him to the bed - someone ran ahead and very hastily changed the bedding on it so it's not the same sheets Leareth slept on before - and he gets Vanyel settled and tucks him in. He adjusts the pillow under Vanyel's head. "Are you comfortable?" 

"I'm fine." It would probably be polite, or something, to convey that they don't need to worry, he's not going to try that again. But he doesn't.

He's not entirely sure why. But it's - nice, in a way, to have Leareth fussing over him. (It's also highly amusing.) 

- oh, right. "Yfandes...?" 

"Nayoki, scry his Companion's location, please." 

Is Rovira still watching her own scry in the other room, or did all of that cause her to lose the spell? 

(Yfandes is still curled up in a meadow, being brushed by Ignasi. Her ears are flattened back and her tail is flicking unhappily, but she doesn't seem to be in significantly more distress than before.) 

In Haven, Randi sits across the table from his lifebonded partner. His mind keeps insisting that he's too tired to lift his chin from his hands and meet her eyes - and he is tired, exhausted in fact, it's been an incredibly stressful week and he's not getting any better at handling crises as his illness gradually-but-inevitably worsens. But it's not just that. 

He can't tell Shavri. The weight of the secret that Vanyel shared with him seems to fill the room, and he can't talk to his lifebonded, and it's gnawing at him. 

"...I wish I could order Van to come home and expect that to work," he says, bitterly, flicking absently at a speck of dust on the tabletop.