"...I suppose that makes sense. I had not thought of myself as unusually confusing, but I suppose Caris also found it hard to figure out where he stood with me. - It was not personal distrust of Bastran, my reasoning was general operational security and - to some extent wanting Caris to feel safer, I think? My model at the time was that he would have found it alarming and threatening if the Emperor knew everything." 

It hadn't at all occurred to Bastran that Caris feeling alarmed about the attention of the Emperor might have been a consideration. He nods stiffly. 

"All right, let's turn then to what you said about Caris. You said he might have considered you 'pointlessly sad' for a long time, and you sort of agree with that and think the sadness might have impaired you. What effect did your sadness have on Caris, do you think? How did your sadness get in the way of things Caris wanted?"

Altarrin frowns, thinking. 

"I suspect it made Caris feel less safe, somehow? ...As well as judging me negatively, probably, because in Cheliax I suspect it would be seen as a sign of personal weakness to be visibly grieving about - bad things. I think Caris also assumed this was more a general trait I had than related to anything I learned from him - I am not sure how that fits in here." 

"So it's not so much that you were so busy being sad that you didn't come through for Caris overtly -- you think it was more implicit than that? Caris interpreting your sadness in the context of his own culture and temperament, and being alarmed by what it might mean?"

"I...think that seems mostly right? I was explicitly supporting Caris' work in all the ways I had agreed I would, but I think my support might have felt less secure or more conditional because I was often visibly unhappy in his presence? Also I think it is just emotionally unpleasant being around unhappy people even if it has no strategic ramifications." 

"Caris, is Altarrin right? What was it like for you to be around him when he was sad? Could you tell? How did it affect you?"

"That he was super miserable? Yeah, it'd have been hard to miss. And it was unpleasant, and I guess it made me feel insecure, because - I mean, most of the time, if you make someone miserable, they are going to endeavor to stop being in this situation that makes them miserable, and if that situation is you, and you can't live without them, that's kind of scary, right. I think if I'd been sure he wasn't going to stop protecting me it would've been less bad. 

I do judge people for being sad all the time, I guess. Not for - ever being sad? I've been sad. But - I dunno, if I went around trying to feel sad an amount that was appropriate to how bad the things I've done are, that's just trying to do the purifying flames of Hell thing and it turns out that doesn't - actually work, I don't think."

Okay! Now we're doing therapy! Or at least, Ramona is seeing where the therapy could happen. Caris struggles to tolerate emotions in himself or anybody else, and that's a thing people can learn how to do, if they want to! Also, Caris took Altarrin's grief and made it about himself.

Wait, was the grief about Caris? Ramona realizes she's lost track, or never knew, why Altarrin was so sad in the first place, and has to backtrack to ask.

"Altarrin, I apologize, I've lost track. Did you already tell me why you were so sad at that time?"

"I think partly but maybe not entirely? I had come to the realization - after Caris cast the Wisdom spell and temporarily dispelled my compulsions - that the Empire was not going to improve, so I was - grieving for the project I spent the last seven hundred years on. I had also seen a potential solution, that I - do not really want to talk about right now, I think the specifics are not relevant and it should hopefully be moot anyway, but it was very upsetting and I endorsed recognizing that and having the appropriate feelings." 

Sigh. "I think I would not have tried to be less sad if I had understood how it was affecting Caris at the time, but I would have communicated more and maybe tried harder to hide it around him. Though I was already hiding it as much as I could from everyone else, Bastran did not need to be worried about it, and it - I was concealing it less in Caris' presence because I trusted him, but I think that is not how it came across." 

"Ahhh, yes, that does explain it and fits with other things you told me earlier. Thank you, that helps a lot."

"And Caris, you presumably had some idea why Altarrin was so sad, and you were indeed the person who'd helped him gain that Wisdom, so I can see how you might have blamed yourself for that."

"Though I wonder if it would just have been hard for you to be around a sad person, even leaving aside blaming yourself and fearing Altarrin might want distance from you."

"Probably, yeah. I think it would've been much less scary if he'd been sad because, I don't know, his son had died or something, that makes sense to me and obviously wouldn't be something he was likely to react to by getting rid of me. But it's still - if I were hiring for apprentices, and one was a very visibly sad person, I wouldn't hire that one, even without being scared factoring in at all."

"We have just one more idea to check out. Caris, Altarrin thinks maybe you were disappointed or hurt when it turned out that Altarrin did not have romantic interest in you. Is there anything there to address?"

"I ...don't think so? That was mostly me being pathetic."

Ramona is not sure if it's really been resolved within Caris, or if Caris is just extremely effective at shrugging off apparently unproductive feelings. Or maybe that's actually the same thing if you're Caris.

She decides there's enough obvious work to do here that she doesn't need to coax Caris into feeling bad about Altarrin's indifference.

"All right, I think we've finally come to the end of this marathon question. We've talked through all the things you each thought the other person thought about you."

"I have some great news for you! A lot of the things you thought were problems, were not really problems. When we checked them out with the other person, it turns out those concerns were off base."

"When I sum everything up, here's what I'm left with."

"Caris - the others do seem somewhat adversely affected by the way you were shaped by your upbringing. They wish you could tolerate a wider range of feelings in yourself and others. They wish you wouldn't sort of expect Evil and torture and were a little more amenable to trust and cooperation."

"And then there's the knot of confusing issues that lie mostly between Bastran and Altarrin. These issues are hard to work through, because they're hard to think clearly about, and I don't need to belabor the explanation of why they're hard to think about."

"But because they're hard to think about, we have a bunch of problems that seem pretty intractable:"

"1. Bastran, you are very tortured about how you keep finding yourself in terrible situations with impossible choices and people end up getting hurt. It would be nice to figure out if you are actually doing the best you possibly can, in which case you need to go a little easier on yourself, or if in fact you should be able to find a better way, in which case you should... do that. Do better. And it's hard to have 'the wisdom to know the difference' because of the not being able to think clearly."

"2. You all seem very stuck on this question of whether Bastran should actually let Altarrin leave the capital."

"3. There is a difference of opinion or values or something about whether people truly dying in Velgarth is a problem that should be fixed, and if it should, whether it can be fixed."

There is also item 4 that Ramona doesn't say out loud, which is who knows what other Bastran damage lies beneath the compulsions, too clouded to see from here.

"How was that as a summary? What do you think I missed or got wrong?"

"That all sounds about right to me. I think."

She would probably be more Good if they didn't both make it seem wildly unappealing but she isn't going to say that.

'Tortured' feels like it's putting it a bit strongly, but Bastran also feels like arguing with that characterization is mostly just going to lead to Ramona paying more attention to him, which is the last thing he wants right now. 

And he does want to know if he could be doing better. If there's some obvious alternate route he's missing that would solve some of the impossible-feeling problems without compromising something else he can't afford. It's a topic that hurts to think about, but, well, that doesn't make it less important. Though he would like it if everyone else could agree to be less hung up on Altarrin leaving the Empire that's not fair of him. 

"That - seems like a reasonable summary," he says tightly. Not that it feels like an incredibly useful summary, right now, he has no idea what Ramona thinks she can do about any of it. 

Nod. "I am not sure all of those are relationship difficulties, exactly, or - problems that can be addressed by talking about them here in this room. It seems like a reasonable summary of what we discussed today." 

"All right. I propose that we wrap up this session, and consider our options for how to proceed from here. Altarrin makes a good point that some of these can't necessarily be fixed in this room... at least under our current conditions."

"What I would like to do next is meet with each of you individually. There are a few things I need to check out with each one of you."

Oh no terrible awful that's not fair That makes sense. Bastran nods. 

Bastran is clearly stressed about the prospect, but Ramona has eyes and is presumably just as qualified if not more than Altarrin to notice this  and handle it appropriately. "That makes sense," he says levelly. "Were you thinking to pause for the day at some point and resume at a planned later time?" He doesn't have any pressing commitments, it had seemed like a good idea to block out the entire day, but Bastran might find it easier to know how much more of this he needs to face in one go.