"- I can see how that would have been an incredibly hard situation for both of you. Blue Lantern, it sounds like that was a serious blow to your ability to trust Ceru's advice?"

"...yeah. I understand why she did it, but it's just..." she waves her hands frustratedly.

"Makes it hard to figure out how you should respond to things she says in the future?"

"Yeah." She nods emphatically, which starts her bouncing on the ball again.

"Ceru, how are you feeling about the situation?"

"...Sad, mostly? I think it's very understandable that Blue Lantern trusts me less, now. I... am grateful that she understand why I did it; she was initially a lot more angry at me, and I think that was reasonable of her."

She pauses, for a bit. 

"...I regret doing it. I had thought that the short-term gains in likelihood of her survival were sufficient to justify keeping her in the dark, but I hadn't... fully grasped what the consequences of doing that might be, and I was panicking, when I made the call." She sounds so embarrassed about this.

(Musoka raises an eyebrow in surprise at the mention of panic.)

Dr. Clark nods, then pauses - "Ceru, can you see, in a conventional sense, when I shake my head -"

"Yes; I have access to all the senses that humans typically do. Thank you for checking, though."

"Of course. Are there other features of the situation I should know about before we go in-depth on the relationship? I consider it part of my specialization in super-related matters that I keep aware of the object level and don't give patients generic advice they could get on Reddit by omitting power-related details."

"...She's right that I would have panicked, if she'd told me about it when it happened. I think the overall outcome would have been better, but I would have panicked."

She pauses, then looks at the blue orb in her hand. "Do you think I'm missing anything?"

"We're currently both under a lot of stress due to the amount of high profile attention Blue Lantern's abilities have attracted. I think that the events of last night were really hard on her, and she's handling it admirably but I'm still worried about her."

"...It's probably relevant that while I've existed in some sense since Blue Lantern got her powers 39 days ago, I was... substantially less complex, as an entity, for most of that time. I've only had the capacity to experience complex emotions for about 40 hours, so I didn't have prior experience identifying and adjusting for emotional affect when decision-making, which is something I've been trying to practice in my downtime but am not yet fully confident on." 

"...forty hours. Gosh. I can see why that would make it harder to navigate. I do mean to include broader features of the situation that affects the range of usable strategies, though - for example, is it impossible for you to functionally take a break from each other? How limiting is the need to be able to feel hope while using your powers? Are there people in your lives who know who you are, or are you juggling a secret identity on top of this?"

Blue Lantern's facial expressions make it look like she's having a silent conversation with someone else while Dr Clark is speaking. (This is because she is.)

<You've only been  having emotions and complicated thoughts for 40 hours???>

    <...it's more complicated than that? ...I can explain more later, but the short version is that my programming encourages me to grow and change in ways that will make me better-capable of helping you, and you need substantially different kinds of help here than you did back home.>

<Why didn't you tell me?>

    <Didn't have downtime to reflect on it until after you'd gone to bed, at which point it seemed like the kind of thing that I could share here. And... it doesn't actually seem like the kind of thing I promised I would share with you?>

<...Sorry. That's fair.>

    <It's okay, Musoka. I was always going to tell you! It just didn't seem urgent on the scale of hours.>

<...Alright. Thanks. And... sorry that this is all happening so fast. I hope it's not too much for you.>

<...I totally was not paying attention to what she just said, whoops. Play it back for me?>

    <Of course.>

Dr. Clark watches curiously as Blue Lantern spaces out. Makes a note.

"Ah, sorry. ...we can talk to each other silently." (This is both an explanation of what she was just doing and also a broader feature of the situation that affects usable strategies)

She starts bouncing again, and answers the questions she... sure didn't seem like she was listening to?

"Taking a break from her would mean separating myself from my powers, which is... technically possible and even safely reversible, but not something I'd want to do and is in any case likely to be unacceptably dangerous for the foreseeable future. ...We could talk/interact less, but I don't want that either, really? I really like her, as a person, and she also helps me a lot with mundane things that I'd otherwise struggle with, like audio processing and keeping track of things."

"The requirement that I'm feeling some hope to use my powers is, as far as either of us know, absolute, and their effectiveness increases greatly when I am more hopeful, both in general and about the thing I'm using them for. It gets... somewhat less limiting with practice; one of the things we've been doing is working on my ability to reframe a wider range of thoughts and emotions into hope, and that's been going well."

"I'm not juggling a secret identity, but that's mostly because... we don't really have people in our lives, at the moment? We've met Mirror and I think she's pretty great, but I haven't had the chance to really do anything with her. ...Minerva's been helping us a lot and that's been great, we both really like her. I've spent almost all my time since arriving in this world as Blue Lantern." She pauses, and then mumbles "...it has been kinda lonely".

"She did keep a secret identity back home, but superheroing is much less dangerous where we're from. She was doing it a lot less often, too, so it wasn't really a source of meaningful stress."

Oh, right, this appointment is for her, too. "I'm still figuring myself out, but I do not expect that getting space from Blue Lantern would be good for me. I do not sleep, which leaves me with a lot of free time while she does."

"All right," says Dr. Clark, scribbling on her legal pad. "On general principle, I recommend cultivating outside friendships insofar as that's possible for you - coming to see me was a good idea, but personal relationships can't be completely replaced with professional ones. But that can take time and you need a good working relationship now, for safety reasons, so we'll have to focus on that. Can you elaborate on what 'hope' means for you? I think it might affect what kinds of exercises you can usefully try - for instance, I'm not sure radical acceptance would be safe for you."

"I'd like to make some friends here! There hasn't really been an opportunity for that, yet, but I hope that changes soon."

She looks at Ceru's orb, smiling slightly. "Hope is... believing that things will get better, even if you can't yet see how. It's the faith that lets you take the first step towards a brighter tomorrow, even when you're lost in darkness. My powers are strongest when I'm taking actions that help fulfill the things I'm hoping for, and when I'm inspiring hope in others."

"What's radical acceptance?"

"It's about acknowledging and sitting with problems instead of sort of - mentally resisting the reality of those problems."

She nods. (Would that be dangerous? Has she been in situations where letting her problems be real would have caused her problems accessing her powers? (Last night doesn't count, it wasn't her who was resisting the reality of her problems, she didn't even know the reality...))

(She's visibly lost in thought again, bouncing slowly.)

After a bit, Ceru rotates her 'face' to look at Blue Lantern, then back at Dr. Clark. She doesn't say anything.

"- Blue Lantern? Can you tell me what's on your mind?"

"Ah! Sorry, I was just thinking about... times I had mentally resisted the reality of my problems? At first I was just wondering whether it'd interfere with my powers - I don't think I've been in a situation where it would, but there are a lot of different kinds of situations and I can't exactly think of all of them - but I got distracted and started thinking about... times in my life when I was... mentally resisting the reality of my problems?"

"That's a very natural train of thought, it'll just help me help you if you have that sort of contemplation out loud," smiles Dr. Clark.