"I think I can handle that," she says quietly. 

"Okay."

"It says, I'm sorry."

This is the most terrifying interaction Carissa has ever had except for the one while she was being tortured to death. "...what for?"

"I'm sorry that Keltham hasn't seen through all this.  He has enough information and he's refusing to see it because he doesn't want to believe.  I'm sorry that Keltham is refusing to realize what, what's being done to you, to make you do all this, the threats being held over you that people in Golarion yield to, what they had to do to you to force you to lie and be part of this and have sex you didn't want when he didn't turn you on at all, to pretend to gasp in pleasure while he was hurting you and hurting you -"

Keltham is crying.

At some point Carissa's going to have to stop having her brain just flail in panic internally and force it to produce some outputs. Outputs. Those. What. Good girlfriend. What does a good girlfriend say to that. But actually what - if she were a paladin she's not sure she could figure out what to say to that -

She is not at all, she has built a firm wall internally against, parsing any of what Keltham is saying as real sympathy for the real Carissa, who he would hate, if he knew. Thinking about that is the road to feelings about that and the literal only advantage of feelings about that are that Abrogail would like them. The rest of the time, worse than useless. 

Good girlfriend. What do good girlfriends say, about these words that do not mean anything to them.

"Oh," she says quietly. "Oh, I didn't realize how that'd be tied up with - should I, should I try to argue with you or should I just listen -"

"If you're not going to tell Keltham the truth, and you're not, because you'd get executed in a public execution and sent straight to the afterlife with people burning which is what all of the afterlives here are actually like, then no, arguing with me isn't going to help me or him."

Ouch.

"...okay. " she says, and - and wishes, even though she shouldn't, that there weren't any lies - 

If the world were that bad, she is tempted to say, and ...places in it might be, you could've landed on Nidal, then, I expect, that Carissa would - be grateful, be awestruck, see in you proof that there's something else there, that humans can be more.

She shouldn't say that. What if it sounds too true. 

What if she told Keltham they should run no. no. she didn't even really think it and she's very fucking sure that there's someone listening in with a Dominate Person, probably the Grand High Priestess herself, and she's not that weak and she's not that pathetic and she's not going to destroy her one chance to fix Cheliax and fix Hell because Keltham cried on her while saying things he didn't even mean. That's not who she is. She isn't going to choose feelings over her country, over her god, over the entire eternal fate of everybody. She accepts whatever punishment for having thought it but she honestly and thoroughly did not mean it, and if offered the choice right now she would not take it. 

"I think that Carissa says sorry back," she says instead. "For hurting Keltham, even if she didn't have a choice and didn't mean to. For living in such a lousy world and not having fixed it up before she had guests over from another planet."

He's going to cry about that very hard for a while.

Hopefully that means she did it right? If the Grand High Priestess does happen to be listening, and also reading Keltham's mind, that would be EXTREMELY HELPFUL RIGHT NOW. 

No. 

Just her, her and Keltham's sense that something is wrong -

"I think that Carissa also says that, uh, that world needs a Keltham even more than this world, and she's glad it has one. Though real Carissa disagrees with her on that one and does not want that world to have a Keltham. Maybe it can have a Nemamel."

"The real Keltham wanted to chuckle.  He thinks it's funny.  I - don't."

"I want to promise you that I'll save you, that Keltham will save you, that he'll figure out everything and wake up out of this and save you.  But he won't.  He's just a dath ilani kid in over his head against the people wearing intelligence headbands who actually run Cheliax and who have been gaming this all out against him from the beginning.  He's not going to figure it out, he doesn't want to figure it out, he wants to believe in his happy impossible world with masochists that's being constructed around him after the people here read his desires and probably read his actual mind, he wants to believe so he can go on hurting you and not thinking about how the real Carissa is screaming inside and he's only letting me talk like this in hopes that I go away and stop bothering him."

That would be good news, objectively. It still hurts to hear. And she's - not sure it's an accurate prediction. 

She keeps wanting to reassure him but that's - probably not strategic - what's strategic -

- her brain is stuttering really hard on that question, probably because the strategic thing is something like get Keltham to identify with the incredibly cynical picture he just painted, and she both has no idea how to do that and is worried it might break the entire thing that everything else is built on. 

"That's a lot to put on him," she says. "That if all the smartest people in an entire civilization are running an elaborate lie on him it's still - his fault, for believing them -"

"Keltham is thinking that you saying that helps.  Because he wants to feel comforted.  The truth is, they're not trying that hard, he's probably not even that important, they're doing all this just in case he knows something useful in there somewhere that the last thousand visitors they did this to didn't already know.  They're not trying that hard.  He doesn't see it anyways.  Because he doesn't want to.  Because he benefits from being blind.  It's all been his fault from the beginning."

"Your world needed a Nemamel.  Keltham can't save it."

"...well, in that case I guess that Carissa is pretty annoyed with him. Or I guess maybe not, since if he saw through it all they'd both be killed? Maybe she's judgmental, but also grateful for his ignorance."

"Keltham doesn't want to save it.  He wants to be the protagonist of the little harem and the little 'eroLARP' that they made for him and seem to live happily ever after, until they conclude he doesn't have any useful information and throw him away to burn."

"You should hate him.  He deserves it and not just for raping you."

Carissa's brain is really not functioning well enough to navigate this conversation. 

It's not rape if she didn't say no even if you suspect her government has ordered her to keep you happy - no. 

Why would you hate someone just for wanting to be comfortable and have a harem - no.

Keltham will be valuable to Cheliax his entire life - DEFINITELY NO.

"That seems like a really improbable thing for him to want!" she says eventually. 

"And even though you should hate him, I want to ask you for forgiveness anyways, even though you shouldn't, and even though, if there was any part of you that felt forgiveness, you couldn't say it for real, because they're watching you right now and if you made me believe it, if you looked too much like you were thinking about it, they'd use mind-control on you and the next day there'd be a different actress playing you.  I know all that and I still want to hear you say you forgive me but don't say that because I'll know you'd still be lying with threats of being burned and healed and burned and healed hanging over you and this whole conversation must be terrifying for the real Carissa and all I'm doing is hurting her even more because even this part of me is selfish."

Blind instinct -

"Keltham -

- this hypothetical Carissa -

- she's not thinking about what she thinks of Keltham, whether he's cruel, whether he's nice, whether he deserves to be hated, whether she hates him - 

- she's thinking about whether he's going to help her fix stuff, or not. Because she's not actually so in love that it'd be the center of her life even if there were that much that badly wrong. And does she forgive him is a wrong question, because, gods, Keltham, she'd have so much on her plate!"

"Hypothetical other Carissa isn't - she's not - the best spellcrafter for real, she's just -"

"I lost it.  Real Keltham speaking."

"It couldn't say out loud that you were just a helpless victim.  Couldn't believe it even in the part of me that disbelieves everything else.  Slightly funny how that's the thing that broke it."

Carissa's brain is generating no things to say.  

Except that she's probably in a lot of trouble. She's not sure what for. Something.

"Am. Actually. The best spellcrafter of my age my school has records of, at least. And whatever's wrong with my world, I was working on it before you got here and I'll be working on it long after you leave, if you leave."

"I know."

"But right now I need to hold you for a while and not have anybody say anything."

He's tempted to use up that Early Judgment but knows, very well, that this is not the correct move.

That sounds good because maybe it'll give Carissa's brain time to start working again.

She's crying, for some reason she's going to blame on the Queen.

Checking in? Do I have comms? Any urgent suggestions??