“Oh. I hadn’t been - trying to be ambiguous - I didn’t want you to think it was your fault -

Better for me if you were gone because you thought I was - too weak to actually step back otherwise? Or -"

"You do kind of a lot of - wanting me to think that things which are my fault are in fact your fault - "

"I didn't think you wouldn't be able to step back eventually but - It would be hard for you. And you'd blame yourself. Which I now see I utterly failed to prevent anyways, but - "

“The murdering seventy nine people was your fault. The fact you didn’t feel like you could talk to me about it in advance was my fault. The breakup was my fault. I could’ve prevented it by being - better at being me - and I don’t, actually, see how you could’ve prevented it, except by not being you, and I don’t wish you were someone else instead. Arazni was my fault I’m not emotionally prepared to argue that one with you right now. What else even is there -

- the whole state of Creation is your fault, I know Pharasma consulted you and implemented all your suggested changes and you should’ve made some more suggestions.”

"Well, you know, at first She didn't think we needed Good or Neutral afterlives at all, just the Evil ones - really the problem is that I asked for free choice of afterlives first, and good afterlives second, and if I'd done it the other way around you could maledict someone anywhere -"

"I think if I had been a better version of the person I want to be I would have noticed that I could talk to you. And - probably it still wouldn't have worked, for us to be romantically involved, but -

Usually I do find it - charming - when your standards for yourself are ‘be a living god,' but - not when it's about my mistakes -"

"The thing you don’t like about gods is the - oh, I don’t actually know how to say this, but I do think I understand the thing you don’t like about gods and I try not to do it to you. I try to be straightforward with you and make plans that, if they route through you, work better the more you understand of them, even if for whatever reason I can’t afford to have you understand all of them, and I try to let you make decisions that to me seem like mistakes, because you do me the same courtesy, and I try not to treat you as - something I can maneuver -”

"I appreciate that, but - It feels like there's something missing, if you try not to manipulate me and then - decide later that things are your fault and not mine because you could have made different choices. Usually I could have made different choices too."

"That makes sense. I guess - sometimes it’s hard to see why you would have made different choices, if whatever happened was - fine, by your lights. Or if - there aren’t realistic choices of yours that would’ve made anything okay. Or if - I can’t actually identify a thing I wish you’d do differently the next time, a concrete thing that holds from your perspective not from mine -”

Sigh. “I think it wouldn’t have worked no matter what. When we were thirty. I - was a bit of a wreck, in hindsight, at thirty. I was checking which things you could burn forever and which burned out, and I’m not sad I checked that, but.”

"It wouldn't have, no. And we both knew it, by the end, and we both left."

"I should… go. Maybe. And let you get back to - whatever it was you were doing, before I came in. I'm sure it was important." She makes no particular move to extricate herself.

“Mmmm,” says Iomedae reflectively, and doesn’t let her go. “I think things are more or less in shape, actually. Aroden is conveniently easy to evangelize for. Must be how He’s objectively correct about almost everything. Tar-Baphon’s going to try something, at some point, but I don’t have an actionable next step there beyond getting Aroden more visibility. Maybe we want to Wishnap all his lieutenants at once, but that’s definitely something to contemplate with higher Wisdom. The Emperor doesn’t want to talk to me and I don’t actually think anyone can help him; when we’re kind to him he feels guilty and starts sobbing.” 

There is a kind of prisoner who doesn’t want you to be kind to them, not in the sense that they want to be tortured but in the sense that they derive more assurance from your competence than from your apparent inclination to mercy, and in the sense that if they’re not permitted to leave they’d rather be Dominated, or chained to the wall of an antimagic cell, than gently persuaded that trying to depart isn’t in their interests. She doesn’t think that’s Bastran. She thinks Bastran is just having a nervous breakdown and will need some time to see if it’s permanent or not.

“There’s lots to do in Urgir but I’ve decided not to be trying to - hop in and out on that, it’s too easy for miscommunications to happen while everyone’s diligently scurrying around with more power than they’re accustomed to and a mission they think I gave them. Karlenius will handle it worse than me but he won’t commit any atrocities and the mistakes will be repairable.

So. Nothing to do but this, unless that was you politely telling me you have archmagery you’re supposed to be doing.”

"No. No archmagery, really. I suppose I could be trying to figure out the Mirrorgrave's cloak, but Altarrin never taught the other Adepts here how to scry it without setting off any wards. I could work on acquiring Velgarth mage-gifts but - we don't have that many adepts, and I don't know how long it would take, or if it's even possible, or a good use of time. I was planning to make that call in a couple days."

"I do want to grab some pillows or a blanket, though. Something softer."

“The armor is probably not in fact the only thing protecting us from error, and I can take it off.”

"I suppose it's not - it does seem almost a scandal in its own right, the knight-commander taking her armor off to cuddle her archmage - And one of the other things protecting us from maybe-error is - not taking off your armor just because it's probably not the only thing protecting us."

Iomedae is, of the two of them, the one much more impaired in fetching a blanket or pillow - she’d have to use her actual limbs to do it - so she holds Alfirin and waits to see if that line of reasoning ends up at ‘construct-servants, fetch a pillow’ or not.

“Obviously there is a clear and meritorious case for my cuddling my archmage. Whoever you usually have for it didn’t follow you through to Velgarth and now you are undercuddled, threatening your efficacy.”

It doesn't end there. It also doesn't end with Alfirin letting go enough for Iomedae to remove her armor.

"...I don't usually have someone for it. Unless you count Curiosity, but - I don't know whether it's because he's a fox or because he's kind of me or just that he's not you but it's very much not the same."

Going around, for years, with no human contact whatsoever that’s not for spellcasting, sounds like it would be really bad for Alfirin.

…. and Iomedae should, in fact, not let herself fall into the headspace where Alfirin not having nice things feels like a screaming moral emergency. That’s closer to being the protective factor than the armor is, and also easier to instinctively strip off than the armor is. 

“Mmmm,” she says instead, because apparently that’s what comes out of her mouth when she’s mostly trying to avoid saying things that are a bad idea instead of thinking of any good ones. “If I were Evil I would get so many deep pressure massages; they are plainly one of my great temptations towards vice.”

"You know, I'd never particularly thought of that one. Maybe when I next return to my Evil ways."

She is not going to offer Iomedae a massage, because she does not have the expertise, she does not have the strength without turning into an ogre, and because that's really the sort of decision she should think about tomorrow with Wisdom.

Yes, there is a reason she named a thing Alfirin, who is a wizard and has twigs for arms, literally cannot provide. 

“I want to talk again tomorrow,” she says, “if there isn’t another emergency. I think it’d help me a lot to have a better grip on - what tradeoffs you think your strongest self should be making. I think I’ve said - all I have for now.”

She doesn't really have anything more to say now either. She'll just mage hand over a blanket and keep snuggling Iomedae for a while longer, because she really has been lacking in human contact for some time now.

It's a quiet night. Shortly before dawn, someone who still has a Heal available will cast it on the prisoner.

The spell itself doesn't wake Bastran. 

When he eventually does wake up on his own, a candlemark later, he - isn't feeling better, exactly, but his head is a lot clearer. Which is annoying, in a way, he wants to keep drifting, and instead the misery is sharper and clearer, and he doesn't really want to be conscious or have thoughts, but sleep feels impossible and there's a growing nagging sense that he should be thinking about...something... 

What is he doing here? It's a stupid question, in a way, he knows why he's here and he can observe for himself that he's not currently doing much at all, but - everything feels fake, and pointless, and like a picture that doesn't quite cohere. It keeps being somehow surprising, that he's still here. 

Well. He expected, planned, whatever, to kill himself once it wasn't going to result in thousands of people dying? And he...hasn't. Apparently. He's still here. It doesn't exactly feel like a choice, like something he did, but it's not like it could have been someone else's decision.

Why? He's definitely noticing some kind of tension, there, between the background misery, the reflexive loop of - internal screaming, more than 'thought' per se - repeatedly yelling that none of this would be his problem anymore if he stopped being alive, and - what - 

- and the fact that he apparently does still want other things. The screaming part doesn't want to want other things, it feels like being trapped, it feels like opening that door even a crack, or even just acknowledging that it's already open, will mean drowning in the thousands of things wrong with everything that he has (in theory) the power to do something about. He doesn't want that power or that responsibility, he thinks maybe he never wanted it, but - it's not just the compulsions that held him pinned in a shape that would be loyal to the Empire and keep bearing that weight.

It's - so much more than that - it's the ways of thinking that Altarrin taught him over decades. That he can't unsee, now, even if it feels like there's no possible way to engage with it and not have it break him. 

...he's maybe really angry about that, actually? 

Well. Add one item to the mental list of counter-considerations against killing himself: if he dies now then he won't get to yell at Altarrin for putting him in this position at all, and then for not even being here, and - he wants that. 

(Which is, of course, massively unfair to be angry about, when Altarrin isn't here because he's instead holding Bastran's Empire together, and he can yell all he wants in his head that it's not his Empire, he doesn't want it, he never wanted it, but - he can't, it turns out, not care about the actual lives of actual people at stake. He is on some level kind of mad about that too, though it's deeply unclear who he's even angry with. The world, for containing thirty million people he has to be responsible for? Himself, for being pathetically weak and unable to just handle it like Altarrin can?) 

What else does he want? 

To be six years old again and in the safety of his sister's arms, back when he still believed his sister could do anything. Wow, that is genuinely pathetic and stupid. 

For Iomedae to forgive him. 

For Iomedae not to forgive him, and to yell at him everything that he deserves and then order him executed so he doesn't have to make a decision about dying and so no one can blame him for it. 

For the paladin whose torture he signed off on to be okay. 

...that one he can at least ask about? He doesn't think they would lie to him, about it. 

Also he's hungry. Which is...probably not that surprising...he's left all the food they keep bringing him untouched, and he doesn't know how long he's been here but, based on the number of times he remembers waking up and requesting the sleep spell again, at least a day, and he hadn't eaten since supper the evening before all of this started. Some part of him still doesn't want to eat, because it - feels like it means admitting that he's decided to keep existing and that sounds awful - but it's probably stupid to keep not eating out of stubbornness or laziness or whatever it even is. 

It still takes him a very long time to find the will to move. He vaguely wishes someone would just order him to, or mind-control him about it so he doesn't have to exert any willpower, but Iomedae's people have apparently decided against that. 

He will mumble to the guard at the door, without making eye contact, that he would like to talk to Iomedae if it's convenient. 

The guard will pass that along.

She does not show up immediately.

Well, he did say 'if it was convenient'. He will go back to lying in bed staring at the ceiling and moping. 

...He should maybe make a mental list of everything he needs to apologize for? At least part of why he feels conflicted about killing himself right now is that it feels incredibly rude to beg Iomedae to get him out fo the Empire and then leave - well, die - without saying sorry for all the messes he caused. 

Well. He should apologize for being impossible to convince on the matter of whether Altarrin was mind-controlled. For being terrible to negotiate with in a thousand ways. For - the war in Oris - for having given the order to conquer Oris at all... 

Wow. There really are a lot of things he regrets. And...things where he's not sure exactly where to assign blame but probably he should regret something. 

He sort of wants to talk to someone about that but he doesn't know anyone else's name and talking to strangers about his feelings sounds agonizing. Of course, Iomedae is basically a stranger, but - it feels different, somehow. 

(He will continue to lie in bed miserably and ruminate on all the horrible things he's done in his life until something prompts him to do otheerwise.) 

She’ll come in when she’s back from praying for spells and updating Aroden. Seat herself on a chair in the corner of the room and wave the guards out; she doesn’t exactly need guards for her person.

“We are making progress on peace with the Empire, and in its internal wars.”