"Whether he lives alone - whether he even has a place to stay in town, come to think of it - we have no idea what kind of social support he has access to. Or what his insurance is, which affects whether we could discharge him to rehab if he doesn't have any support at home..." 

...Ugh this is going to be complicated. Marian can be pretty sure that her patient doesn't know anywhere in town, doesn't have anywhere to stay, and definitely doesn't have US health insurance. Which, yeah, is kind of complicated! They - probably want the medical team to end up believing he's new to town, rather than homeless? Though there obviously won't be any records of his arrival and she's not sure if, like, that's the sort of thing the police would check for... Claiming that he's confused or doesn't remember what happened might be a simpler way to avoid suspicion, but risks having the medical team decide he can't be safely discharged. It would really suck if they decide to admit him to the psych ward and Marian is not totally sure how to steer away from that without raising other suspicions. 

She nods. "Can I at least try to communicate to him that our goal is to get him recovered enough to safely discharge home, and we just don't know exactly what that's going to look like?" 

Candace glances over at the patient again. "I suppose that is what we're hoping for." She doesn't seem incredibly convinced that it's a realistic hope. 

"Yeah." Marian looks over at her patient as well. She has no idea how much of the conversational subtext his psychic powers let him follow, but hopefully some? 

It's... complicated, more than he would have hoped or even expected.  And complicated in a way Marian doesn't like.  Candace wants to know... if he has a life here, if he belongs here, and of course he doesn't - he doesn't know any of the language! - but Marian doesn't want to say that and isn't sure what the best thing to do is?  

It sounds like they should talk about it once Candace is gone, but it'll be so difficult to communicate... He can't tell what the problem is, but he can tell there's something about how they're - how this whole society is - thinking about him that doesn't make sense to him and that he's oddly sure he won't like.  The straightforward thing, just letting him go once he's better, is unlikely to happen, and he doesn't understand why.  It's not about the guard wanting to talk to him about the violence, or mostly not, it's... confusing and complicated, and he feels like he may have trusted Marian's basic confidence in her society a little too much.

It won't help anything, to be visibly frustrated about it.  If Marian isn't sure what to say, then they should clearly leave it alone for now.  He looks disappointed, but understanding rather than impatient, and too tired for a long conversation.  Projects the same, and muted frustration which he's clearly putting off for later.

"I'll try to explain to him later when I have time to focus on it," Marian says. "It takes kind of a while." 

...Man, under other circumstances she would be pleased that this social worker is apparently taking her job seriously and trying to outperform the common scenario - even more common back at her old job at Montfort - where homeless patients would be discharged without anyone really considering where they were going to go. And her patient in fact doesn't have anywhere to go - he certainly can't go home - it's just that, uh, the circumstances make it hard to navigate having the system help him without making everything way more complicated. 

(She has a feeling that something else about this interaction is bothering her patient, but she isn't sure what, and in any case she can't worry about it right now.) 

Candace doesn't have much else to accomplish here today, in any case. She'll point at the guy's drawing-communication asking about his discharge planning, shrug apologetically, and point at Marian, and then she'll go take photos of the other important drawings that Marian is giving her, and then she'll retreat outside the room to finish charting everything. 

...Well, Marian is at least pretty sure they got through that without any additional suspicion being raised, and will probably have the next several days to figure out how to approach the next conversation? 

Karal nods at Candace and copies pointing at Marian, looking subdued but content enough with that.  She is, for multiple reasons, much easier to communicate with.

It's reassuring that Marian thinks there will be plenty of time without anything inevitable happening.  (It also means it will take that long before anyone can even theoretically expect to have a thorough conversation with him, which is less good, but it's not as if he could have truthfully expected better.)

He should definitely not try communicating anything until he can't feel Candace's mind any more, and likely for a while after, given how small his range is.  He'll rest, pay attention to her emotions and Marian's, and think about how to draw any of the new questions he has.

…After a while, Leareth (who was slightly tracking the conversation, but mostly drifting as an alternative to being stressed about the lack of control) pulls his thoughts together more firmly.

He thinks they - probably learned something, from Candace, and from Marian’s reactions to Candace, not exactly about their prospects over the next week but more about the world they find themselves in? He’s not sure what, but he agrees with Karal that it didn’t feel like Candace’s reactions and concerns were mostly about the violence. It was - something he doesn’t fully understand but definitely wouldn’t have been expecting?

All of that is very vague. Karal is the one who was paying closer attention, and the one who’s - more specialized in reasoning from vague intuitions. What does he think?

Karal had been planning on waiting and seeing if Marian could explain, but Leareth is probably right that he has most of the pieces of it already.

It wasn't that Candace was unkind to him, it's that... she thought his life was her business, somehow?  Like he was - who...?  He tries to discard all his assumptions about who he is, she doesn't know any of that and he supposes can't know most of it, given how different their worlds are...  Who would you think of that way, and why, and what would it mean?

It wasn't quite like he was a child, she wasn't that protective and wasn't... he doesn't know how to phrase it even in his thoughts... it's not that she didn't think he was capable of having coherent opinions, it's that she thought his opinions didn't matter - like most people would treat a young highborn woman they somehow found alone and hurt on the side of the road, where it's obviously important to take care of her but the main question is not what she wants but what her father expects of you, except instead it's - what?  What this society expects for everyone?  Something like that, perhaps, although Karal can't imagine a society that treats everyone as if they're that sort of... valuable but not for anything about them... let alone why it would do such a thing.

But it's consistent with the amount of healing resources all these people have been expending on a complete stranger, if they simply think everyone is worth that.

And he supposes that if a society considers itself bound to put this much effort into saving anyone's life, it might also care very much about whether people live their lives in ways that will require that.  It might want them not to take risks, because just like a young highborn woman they're someone who needs to be saved whether their choices have been reasonable or not.

... Yes, that fits, that's the thing he didn't like about Candace's thoughts - that she didn't think the risks of his life were his to take.  He still doesn't like it, but he feels like he understands better now how things might end up that way.  And, for all that most of him resents the attitude, he cannot really complain - because if this place wasn't like that, he and Leareth would be dead.

Leareth appreciates Karal's analysis; he's not sure he could have picked up on all of those pieces on his own, but it does ring true. 

It's - not how he would choose to set up a society in a world that had such abundant resources and advanced technology - but he thinks he recognizes some of what they might be reaching for. Once you can afford it, it's appealing to make the world safer, and you can start with safety from things like war and famine, but there's also a broader thing, to make people safe from only having bad options. Which - can maybe end up sort of hard to distinguish from trying to make people safe from the consequences of their own decisions, and Leareth can see why that bothers Karal, especially since from their perspective it's not like their options are even very bad? But to a society this wealthy, being released from the House of Healing while still recovering and somewhat incapacitated, and without a specific place to go, is probably seen as an unusually bad set of options? Does Karal think that seems to match with the flavor of Marian's worry? 

Yes, that fits - that the thing Karal couldn't understand is simply that this society wants so much for all its people to be safe.  And so it thinks it gets to decide which options are the bad ones it shouldn't let people take, because it doesn't always trust them to know.  Doesn't, maybe, believe people should be allowed not to want to be safe. 

Which... half makes sense to Karal, because the category of people who don't want to be safe includes both him and reckless young men who want to take deadly risks for no good reason, and he can see why someone might want to stop them.  But... it should be easy to tell which someone is.  Is it harder than he thinks, or are they not trying, or... it feels like something else and he doesn't understand what it is.  Marian doesn't believe people will trust her word that Karal will be all right if they let him go.  That seems wrong to Karal already - Marian is perceptive and resourceful and clearly cares about people, why woudn't she be trusted about this? - but the way she thinks doesn't feel like anyone can really make the decision, and Karal doesn't understand how that can possibly be the case.  The more he considers this place the more levels of confusion there are.

But it is true that their options would not be very good, without knowing the language or the world, if they didn't have magic they don't want Candace to know about.  Karal thinks that even without Leareth and with no magic he would do better if they let him go than if they... did whatever it is that Marian is afraid of... but he supposes he cannot be sure.

What is the outcome Marian is afraid of?  He definitely doesn't understand that either, and he very much hopes she can explain what it is and why it might happen.  Lock him up somewhere supposedly comfortable, he supposes, just like you'd do with a young highborn woman you meant to give back to her parents - but there's nobody to give him back to and he doesn't know what they might want to do instead.  Except keep him forever, maybe - which would be a more frightening prospect if he thought they had any real chance of succeeding.

In the meantime - how would Leareth set up a society in a world like this?  Would he let people decide they don't want to be safe?  If it's not too hard to think about, it might help make sense of what's happening here.  And Karal is just curious.