Telumë is pretty upset, but entirely with himself. Not Maitimo. He takes a deep breath. "I am very sorry - I would not have done this if I had known at all that was even in the space of possible outcomes - this is very unfair to you..."

He feels terrible about it, which is kind of unexpected, it's not a feeling he's used to having, he mostly doesn't feel bad about all the other imprisonment stuff and the interrogations. It's not like Maitimo doesn't understand why. But he failed to see this coming entirely, and obviously predicting it shouldn't have been the responsibility of the person who's been tortured and mind-controlled by Sauron, it was on him and he missed it and aaaaaaaaaaa. 

"You won't be able to - have Quendi here to see me - they'll notice, it'll cause a huge mess -"

"I did think of that - I will come up with some excuse why it is not feasible after all. Also Mindhealers will notice, obviously, but that should not cause a disaster. The - projecting, is that related?" 

"I assume so. I'm not actually sure how to check what marriage blessings he got, usually people just know and tell me." 

"Yes. I should have three new -" his face twists - "blessings - that'll be one. I don't know what the others are."

"I'm sorry. I know this isn't what you wanted - not under these circumstances... I am honestly kind of smug about being right that the marriage thing couldn't possibly be what people thought it was, though. Not that I can tell anyone." Sigh. "I understand why this is really scary and - I can't promise that dealing with the repercussions of this isn't going to involve making your life worse in some way, but we're going to try really hard not to hurt you." 

"Aside from the fact that I can never speak to anyone of my species ever again."

"I'm sorry. 'Ever again' is a very long time, though, and..." Helpless shrug. "I don't know." 

"And the fact that I won't remember this in the morning and am going to be such a wreck over it every six hours for the rest of the war."

"I could help you retain this memory in particular? If that would actually help." 

OBVIOUSLY it would help to have some recollection of under what circumstances this happened - he manages to mostly keep it off his face but Jisa can read his mind and Leareth can now read his emotions, apparently. "I'd appreciate that a lot. Thank you," he says quietly. 

"All right. This is going to feel pretty weird, sorry. Try to focus on the parts you especially want to remember, it should get the last hour but maybe not equally clearly." The room goes weirdly melty and stays that way for a minute or so before snapping back to normal. "There, done." 

And now he's crying. He's not even totally sure what he's crying over but he's so miserable. He wants to tell them to go away but he can't tell them to do things and he doesn't really want Leareth to go away, he just wants - he doesn't know what he wants, he doesn't have enough time to figure out what he wants, but he doesn't want this, he doesn't want to spend the rest of his life waking up the day after his marriage to the man who's going to kill him, he doesn't want to keep living in little bursts too short for anything of significance unless they stumble by random chance into total disaster, he doesn't want to keep living at all, he wants to go home and what a stupid childish thing to want, he wants to get married to someone who loves him and have a party and get presents and raise children, he wants to die, it's bizarre that those wants are right next to each other - he wants his mother - he wants Findekáno - 

Telumë is getting a lot of emotion-backwash but honestly he deserves it. "Is it - helping - for me to be here...?" 

Terrorangerresentment no that's not allowed tired dull indifference. "It's fine. I just need a minute."

"That seems like it is not helping, actually. I am going to step out," he'll still feel Maitimo's emotions though, "and I will come back if you call for me." 

"Okay. See you - later, then."

Telumë leaves the set of rooms, and sits in the room nearby where Jisa and the others mostly sit, and cries. 

Jisa doesn't need to be physically nearby either; she keeps paying attention to his thoughts, it seems like it would be bad to miss something right now, but she backs off as well. 

He's so miserable and now in addition to that he is lonely. He is vaguely poking his brain to try to guess what the other blessings are. He is missing his family, missing Findekáno, so intensely that it feels difficult to breathe and he is acutely aware that if he actually has trouble breathing or any other kind of minor medical emergency then Vanyel's obnoxious teenager daughter will pop up and mindcontrol him into calming down.

There are strategic implications of this and he is trying not to think about them, other people will figure all of that out, it is not safe for him to do things or think things and he's going to try to stop. He is trying to draw a connection with the feeling he woke up with, the odd conviction that he'd misjudged something very badly - did he figure out somehow that this was possible and then forget, did he arrange this for himself deliberately on some level - that thought is incredibly cheering, actually - except for the part where now that he's had it, Telumë will look and kill him -

- he's so scared, he's so tired, he's getting so accustomed to flinching away from his own brain - he contemplates what sorts of things the block on suicide might let by and decides he is not emotionally equipped to handle Jisa showing up to tap him to sleep and shore it up a little better - he should get to kill himself if he wants to, they have the information they need by now - and why does he feel strongly about that, he doesn't want to die, it's such a bizarre thing to grip him so strongly  - no actually that's not mysterious at all, he tried, he tried and Sauron stopped him no wonder he cares - 

- Findekáno Findekáno I'm sorry - probably no one has even told him anything, they wouldn't have any reason to think he should know - 

- everything's going to be such a mess in the morning and he won't even fucking remember anything he comes up with now that might help - he hates them, for doing this to him, for doing this to him once they could have stopped, obviously they were going to grind him into whatever pieces they needed to to learn Sauron's plan but now they could have just - killed him, given him to Lórien, whatever, he hopes that when they get their nice Maitimo back he slaps them all in the face and goes home - home - he hopes that they're too late and Melkor's back now and they're his and he'll just do this, precisely this, this set of games with their head, for the rest of time, it'd be so exquisitely fair - this is such a dangerous line of thought and he's angry with himself for it and he's not totally sure how to make it stop. He lies there and cries and waits for Jisa to come flick this Maitimo away in favor of a nicer one, and Jisa and Leareth and Sauron are the same thing in his head and he loves and hates them, passionately. 

"Wow, I feel very bad about this," Melody says, later. "No, Telumë, I don't think this is on you - I mean, it was a pretty bad idea, but you knew that, I knew that, it was really much more on me to tell you to stop - you've been through a lot recently and this is not somewhere I expected you to have un-compromised judgement, so. I thought it was - probably fine. That there wouldn't be any irreversible consequences, at least, and that it was understandable to - care how he's feeling now, even if he doesn't remember it, I also care. Obviously we were very wrong about the not-irreversible part, and now we've made our bed and we have to lie in it. Just..." She tugs on her sleeve, fidgets with the hem. "We're going to win the stupid goddamned war and someday, somehow, we will find a way for this to be all right." 

Maitimo wakes up in a pretty room with some memory of the previous night. 

He manages not to burst into tears again. It's a bit of a close thing though. He feels - scared, and tired, and guilty - which is really silly - because he must be making Telumë so miserable -

(There are a lot of other things he stows away to not think about). 

He thinks for a little bit. Then he announces to the room at large: "I am going to be okay. However, I think it will take me a couple of days to be okay. I don't know if the memories thing is necessary so I don't die of being in this box or if it's just so people can worry less about what they're leaking but if it's the latter you could just not send anyone in and let me remember the next couple of days. If you can't do that - I don't exactly know what to do, here.

I have still not identified the other blessings. I will let you know if I figure them out."

And he waits. 

Melody turns up after a minute or two. 

"The memories thing is mostly just the latter," she says. "We did a different thing about, er, you not dying of being in this box. I suppose we can avoid sending in anyone for a few days, if you think that won't be too bad. We will have someone keeping an eye on your thoughts from a distance though." She ducks her head. "I'm sorry about this." 

(Contempt, exhaustion). "I mean, if you're willing to have someone here and let me keep my memories obviously that is even better, but if I have to pick one, I want to be able to remember things. Thank you."

"We can't have Telumë in particular here. Might be fine to have someone else here and just not talking about very many things, although you would probably then have to never see them again." Telumë's organization can definitely find them people who do not know anything of particular strategic relevance and also won't be needed for anything important afterward. "I realize we are taking rather a lot of precautions overall, but also, we know you're very smart."