:It was not unreasonable of them! They eventually decided on a plan to retrieve Emril and see if she could come to an agreement with her Yeerk that would let Enstat leave her head so that Emril would have her Thoughtsensing back and could read both of us and ensure I was not mind-controlling the Visser: 

Nod. <That would have put her in an awkward position if you were but I guess both you and the Visser were sure that was not the case.>

:My Gifts were blocked! They had already been blocked before, from the first Yeerk, there is nothing I could have done to him. Except think very convincingly, it seems: 

He shakes his head. <Well. I'm very glad you could do that. Otherwise a lot more people would be dead and also every Yeerk on Earth would be starving to death, and - that was itself a much better outcome than I originally expected but it looks like we can do even better than that.>

Nod. :I am - so angry, that it could not happen a day sooner, before...: Vague gesture, he doesn't need to repeat it. :And I was so afraid that it was already too late, past the point of no return...: 

This time, Leareth doesn't manage to notice and stop saying things before the cracks spread and shatter and he's suddenly crying. 

Matirin's going to just pretend that he's not, it was helpful to talk when his morph was doing that. It was also helpful to pet Yfandes. 

<Do you want me to demorph so you can pet me. I have been told it helps when humans are traumatized.>

Leareth gives him a nonplussed look. 

:You know: Melody sends dryly, just to Matirin, :you could just offer him a hug: 

He feels very weird about doing that, in a way he does not feel weird about being his own shape if that's helpful. 

<I also wish it had been a day sooner> he says, instead of further discussing Leareth's crying. <I kept trying to think - whether there is any way we could have guessed - but it would have been so dangerous, to make it known to them that we were on Earth at all...>

:If you want to demorph so I can pet you, maybe that would help?: He's shivering hard for some reason now, and can't tell if it's because he's cold or some kind of other delayed physiological reaction to stress, but either way leaning on a warm furry thing sounds...kind of nice, actually? 

:- could have guessed what? That Mhalir would listen to me because he looked at my mind and decided I was the - much older and wiser alternate-world version of him? I do not think there is any possible scenario where I guessed that, it is too bizarre and still makes no sense to me:  

He starts demorphing. <It really really doesn't make any sense! I am tempted to reach for - legends about the Ellimist, they're sometimes like that - but that just makes the confusing thing located somewhere slightly different. But maybe it would have been enough to guess that the Yeerks might - be interested in talks, might be willing to stop conquering planets...> Tail-shrug, as soon as he has his tail. <Maybe there was no way to end it a day sooner.>

:There may not have been. Guessing that the Yeerks were operating from a different belief-state about the world than ours, maybe? But - I already had that thought, I just did not think it mattered to the outcome... Neither of us knew each other's resources, so we could not predict how badly out of control it would escalate in just a few hours, but that could not have been different, I think: 

Leareth pets Matirin, tentatively and feeling weird about it, but it does kind of help, it seems to provide the same outlet that curling up in a ball would have. He leans against Matirin's flank, finds that he's shaking less now. 

He wants to ask who the Ellimist is, but that should wait until he's actually done here. :Anyway, the next thing that happened is - he left my head, I negotiated that they had to be very careful not to startle me because I am paranoid in general and I was very nervous, so it might not take a lot to accidentally feel threatened enough that my Final Strike compulsion would trigger. I slept, I woke up. The Visser came back and - I persuaded him to return Alloran, even though you had not asked, as - a sign of willingness to cooperate: 

Nod. <I took it as one. It means he cannot be relying on many previously laid plans, as Alloran would know of them. And - it would have been galling, to negotiate with him while he casually tortured someone I personally know, though I was not going to ask for it yet because I don't want to spook him. He seems, uh, impulsive.>

:My model is that he no longer has any plans he expects to work, and - is almost entirely trusting that I can be the one to represent his interests, and - that I am right, that I can help negotiate for a far better outcome than what he had expected would occur if he ever lost to the Andalites. And - I am not sure if he is impulsive, but he can be hasty, when he feels cornered. I was much more that way when I was young, too: 

He takes a deep breath. :–I swore to him that I would not let the Andalites execute him. That I would sneak him out to Velgarth if necessary. I also said that I deeply preferred to work with rather than again you on that front, and that I was very confident returning Alloran would help. I am a little surprised he was willing to trust me when not in my head, but apparently he was: He looks Matirin in the eye. :Please, please do not make me betray that trust, when it might be the only thing that avoided a far worse outcome here: 

He exhales slowly. 

<It would have been really nice if it had been literally any other Yeerk. I - every person on our homeworld knows his name, and his crimes, and they won't see - surrendering when he was going to die shortly anyway - as redeeming that in the slightest. It will help if he can help with - the other fronts of the war. I am not going to stop you from stealing him away but the Andalites are going to be much more reluctant to - really feel at peace, to really believe that it's over and we should be thinking how to help the Yeerks - if the enemy they fear the most somehow escaped. I guess we could swap him out for another Yeerk, or a rabbit-morphed-Yeerk for that matter, it's not as if we can tell them apart, but - that's setting us up to have a lot to lose if it ever comes out somehow...>

:I am sure he will do his best to help with the other fronts of the war. I am sorry - I know it is very inconvenient. I wish I had been here before it all started, to try to stop it - it hurts so much, knowing what it cost, in this world which is so much bigger than Velgarth: 

<It will cost us a lot of other things, to protect him now, but I do not think it is impossible. I will think about how to do it best.> Matirin privately feels that if the Andalites had somehow committed a long list of unfathomable atrocities most of which he'd personally ordered and then belatedly realized the folly of their ways and surrendered, and his execution would help improve relations with the people who had stopped them, he would accept that if he wanted to avoid this outcome the time to do so would have been when he was committing all the atrocities.

Expecting Yeerks to be that decent would of course be ridiculous. 

:Thank you: And Leareth braces himself again. :Matirin, if I tell you something now, which is pure speculation and not confirmed at all, can you promise you will not speak of it to anyone else?: 

<Yes.>

This is, of course, a huge gamble, but unlike Mhalir, Leareth has several millennia of experience mapping out a situation and laying his bets, over and over, and he's very confident this one is correct in expectation to make. (Which isn't at all the same thing as being confident this particular time will pay out. That's not how expected value works.) 

:If Mhalir is, in fact, another world's version of me - whatever that even means - then that predicts he has an immortality setup. Perhaps even one that does not involve killing people; I had several others that were much less horrible but only one survived the Cataclysm. In which case it is not impossible he would accept a formal execution, and - to start fresh elsewhere: 

< - that would be really convenient. I - think it would help his people a great deal, for what it's worth, with Andalites - being invested in building their future with them.>

Sigh. :I think he would agree, that it would help - that he did not know better at the time, but he burned something very precious and important, in his - youth and haste and fear. And the leaders above him, he is not remotely the one who has made most of the decisions, that is part of all the pointless tragedy here: It feels so unfair and now he's weeping again, a little, but quietly and it doesn't much get in the way of talking. Matirin is being very polite about ignoring it. 

<Yes, there are definitely some other people I would also want to send to my homeworld for trial. He is the most notorious but not, I think, the worst. The notoriety is mostly about Alloran, on our homeworld. It is one thing to know that millions of hosts are being tortured and another to - see it, in someone who could be you -> Tail-swish. <I am grateful, that he - stopped, when he saw a way out.>

:So am I. That is a fact about me - us - I think. That I will always, always take the best option I see, and sometimes that is awful: Matirin understands the quality if not the scope, Leareth thinks, he sent Leareth's people on a suicide mission to be eaten by demons along with every Yeerk-infested human on the ship, :but - if a better opportunity arises, I will always stop: 

Sigh. :One could claim it is not that much more meaningful than killing a Yeerk-morphed rabbit, to execute Mhalir if both of us know he is not gone forever, but - I do think it has symbolic value: And, of course, is easier to keep secret. 

<Yes.> Tail-sweep. <It may be wise for you to get some rest before this, but the other thing I wanted to discuss at some point was the conditions under which we'll permit humans who want Yeerks to have them. I in particular wanted to know how many people can do the compulsion that lets the human have control unless they choose to cede it to the Yeerk.>