He leans against a wall and stares at nothing. He wavers on whether he wants to bother keeping his thoughts private and eventually settles on doing that.

This was a mistake and he doesn’t want to exist anymore. It’s probably not fair to blame anyone else for his own mistake but he’s tempted to anyway.

There is really no compelling reason to move.

Thirty minutes later an unfamiliar Elf comes up to him. "I've got Ashkon with me to pick up Quenya, but he says you were supposed to be back from your appointment a while ago and he's worried," she says.

He’s not sure what to say or do about that but he looks sort of flatly at the Elf and - maybe she’s a flat one, that’d be convenient - sends the feeling of having fucked up and not being sure if he’ll ever be okay again.

She is not a flat one, apparently. "Uh, Ashkon says he wants to go in your ear and see what's wrong. Okay?"

He nods.

She puts her ear to his. Shlorp.

He should have asked something but he can’t think what. He shouldn’t have mentioned anything more than nightmares. He shouldn’t have come in the first place. When it was obvious he wasn’t going to be comfortable with it he should have walked out instead of quietly intuiting the script they were on and playing it out, only he really did think he might have succeeded in communicating that there was no reason not to tell him anything - and when it was clear he hadn’t, it was too late, they didn’t want to be disturbed - and still, he kind of thought Vyn might bother to tell him afterward instead of leaving him to guess what changed. So now he doesn’t know himself. But if anything is actually good or helpful you have to beg for it because the fucking Andalites have singled out the Yeerks to threaten genocide against instead of anyone worse. (Would he have thought that yesterday? It’s impossible to say!) He’s desperately hoping Ashkon can give him a list and also that the list won’t suck.

He kind of thought Vyn might at any point not make communicating unnecessarily hard but why would he imagine that that might happen. Maybe he should have taken that as a hint but it wasn’t the case that Vyn had always done that until they were done. And he’s not fond of how Vyn talked to him afterward - no if you like what I did, just schedule another appointment, and he certainly doesn’t require anything (or at least he didn’t but now who fucking knows!), certainly not obviously. He can’t imagine that anyone could ever blame Vyn, because - of course - Vyn insisted on getting explicit consent which is something he’s never giving another stranger again ever for anything. He hopes Vyn dies and can’t be resurrected and gets no afterlife. He would give almost anything for today to be some precog's nightmare but he could never afford that and didn’t know in advance that he wanted to. So failing that he just wants to stop existing, which might even be possible, maybe, only if he says yes to anyone they can do whatever they want and blame him.

<I love you. I've got you.>

Ashkon thanks the Elf and walks back into the office and marches up to the receptionist. "My host needs a complete after-session summary delivered to his email. Is there a place to leave a review of the artist he saw?"

The receptionist gives him a review site and says she's sent an order for an after-session summary to Vyn.

...Why is Ashkon always so good at things. It seems conceivable that maybe things might turn out okay.

He doesn’t really have warm feelings like affection in him right now and he doesn’t think he should try to predict his own choices or make any important choices right now. But it feels like there’s a sense in which it wouldn’t be entirely a lie to say he loves Ashkon too.

Ashkon thanks the receptionist, walks out, and hits the bus stop to go home and hug the nudibranch.

He doesn’t feel like he exists but that’s an improvement over how he was feeling. He doesn’t feel much about the hug but he appreciates it on an intellectual level.

<Should’ve brought you. Or just not done it but.>

<It made sense to want to go alone. It made sense to want help.>

<And now I know what to spend my money on.> Keeping a precog on retainer, if he can afford it with merely his entire basic income and comes out of this wanting anything other than to stop existing.

Ashkon does a quick check. It is too expensive for merely one's entire basic income if you want anything more complicated than death insurance.

Unfair! Maybe he should go to Eclipse himself since he could fast for however many years control training is.

<Oh, you could! I'm not sure it's the best possible idea but it's an interesting synergy.>

Yeah, there’s no actual reason to think giving him magic is a good idea. Fair enough.

<Oh, mostly I meant that now you're used to being fed you might not be happy with going back to starving.>

<It’s not that long, right? And then you have magic for the rest of your life, right?>

<It's a couple of years and yeah, though it only works in the Eclipse neighborhood.>

So not that long.

How long do they have to wait for that email? Not that it will necessarily be honest but then again apparently he could have been secretly dishonestly edited at any time since the snake so it’s not especially likely that it would have happened today, today's a notably bad day for that.

<I'm not sure how prompt she'll be. Probably has to fit it in between appointments and it'll depend if she already has a backlog.>

Imaginary fist-clenching. <What do you think I should say in a review?>

<Do you want to write it? I can do it for you, though I was going to wait till we slept to see if she actually did fix the nightmares or if there's also that to complain about.>

<I wasn’t thinking about doing it now. I just wanted to know...> The thing is, he's been refusing to care what other people think is good behavior, but a review is all about whether Vyn lived up to other people's standards. No one will care if he has his own standards that say something bad happened; the way they take that into account is consent and he consented. Did Vyn even do anything anyone else would object to? (He doesn’t quite feel like he did consent to that, but he can’t afford to let people think he can’t be trusted when he says he wants something or they’ll take Ashkon away.)

It seemed like he should write it but it also seemed like he should go to their meeting alone. So he guesses he’ll just let Ashkon do whatever.