"Bella."

Here is a mug of something steaming and reddish-brown with a thin straw. Enjoy! I'm happy to loan you a book but usually have something more to go on when I give a recommendation.

"Something from the future of Benden Weyr?" Probably that is not actually on offer.

I can't guarantee that any particular Benden Weyr which is experiencing a later calendar date than yours is a genuine reflection of your own weyr's future, but with that understood, here! Book.

"Thank you."

He can sip the mysterious beverage and look at - oh huh Threadfall charts from seven turns from now, that will be slightly useful later - while Bella takes a look at him.

"Starting now."

Is there any chance the problem is glaringly obvious.

Verlan is kind of like if you took a skein of yarn, cut it open, did the same thing to a different skein of yarn, glued the cut ends together, then ripped the skeins apart and threw one of them away. There's an entire person but...

His ability to feel socially fulfilled no longer connects to anything; he can in hindsight perceive that he has had a friendly interaction but he never gets more than the afterimage. It has been more than half his life since someone hugged him and he could feel the hug happening in the moment.

His body map is overlaid with a different body map and he has phantom limb pain in all six phantom limbs. He has never, ever, gotten to feel those wings catch the air. The part of him that could - isn't him, not really. It's just traces of someone else.

He has an unshakeable sense that someone he is responsible for, someone he needs, someone he is beyond intimate with, is missing, is in danger, and he needs to find that person right now. (He's dead. Verlan is only partly capable of knowing this.) He notices this in every quiet moment when nothing else is taking up his attention. It hurts and it dovetails very badly with the loneliness.

He's been in this state since he was a boy. By now the weight of friendships he couldn't maintain, dreams he couldn't have, plans he couldn't carry out or replace, and generally being unable to have a life is crushing all by itself.

He used to like to think. He was never as intense about mental housekeeping as Bella, but the strain of being unable to do it at all has really eaten at him. He feels an intense pain that he doesn't pick apart into individual components and tries not to acknowledge at all. It's like having his soul cut open. The only time it ever stops is when he sleeps, which he always achieves through drugs and overwork so he doesn't have to spend any time alone with his thoughts. (Lying awake for a while is how he used to do his mental housekeeping.)

He knows... most of this. He could know all of it if he could stand to think about it.

OH GODS THIS POOR MAN WHO DID THIS WHAT THE FUCK.

She can - what's straightforward - she can -

She needs to slow down, she's panicking because it's so awful and she must not do that. She has to be methodical about this psychically gory horrorshow. She takes some deep breaths.

What can she do.

Phantom pain. That's easy. She does one foreleg, no new sensation real or imagined is allowed from there, and then checks to make sure she did that right.

Oh no a thing is different. He needs to not do anything startling about that.

...The thing that is different is better. Not that it matters in the face of NOPE IT'S ALIEN BEVERAGE TIME. This drink is kind of like klah, a little bit. It's better than klah. He should find out how it's made later.

Looks like she did that right. His affect is consistent with that, once it settles.

Slowly, methodically, not panicking: all the rest of the phantom pain, begone.

That would be very good if it weren't so noticeable. He wonders if it's safe to think about the thing but successfully doesn't check.

"You'll tell me if it's ever... not going to make me do anything startling to hear about what you're doing, right?"

"...I can safely take a break now, if you might want to do something startling."

"What... are your plans." He doesn't have plans for himself. He had plans and his plans were to contribute in whatever tiny way he still could to the readiness of the Weyr to protect the planet. And now that the planet is as safe as it's ever been during a Pass, he's given his notice and has nothing left to live for. He will presumably come out of this with some motive other than to never think too hard, because Bella bothered to do anything in the first place, and he has managed to muster some idle curiosity about what that motive is going to be and whether any part of the process of carrying it out will be pleasant.

"Um, I think I got rid of all the phantom pain because that looked pretty straightforward. Everything else looks much more complicated and I might be able to make it a little less awful but I don't know if I can just fix it like the phantom pain, but it'd be too early to give up on it. - if you'd rather be asleep for this, I can put you to sleep."

Oh no it's a question about his preferences. He knows less about his own preferences than his coworkers know about his preferences and is in the habit of letting them make all his choices. He doesn't really want to consider the question.

"I... think I..." which option will bring Reith back which option will excise Reith from his mind He digs his nails into the skin of his wrists. "...uh, I just woke up and should probably not go to sleep again immediately?"

"Okay, that makes sense. Do you have any questions?"

"I shouldn't." He definitely does but not well articulated. He wants to know what he's going to do if this works, and he wants to know if it's going to work. He can't even try to have hope because he can't acknowledge what he's hoping will end and also doesn't know if he's going to go back to working in the Lower Caverns doing miscellaneous menial work but somehow find this tolerable, or go follow Bella home to be useful to her somehow (how?), or something else.

"...okay. I'm not sure how much more improvement I can make but - too early to give up."

Do the cut-apart strings have - signifiers of where they used to connect, that she can find, if she is the sort of person who is willing to look at everything in a five thousand piece jigsaw puzzle looking for the corner pieces if the corner pieces are somebody's mind working right.

They're set up to connect to and through another person now, and the things that are left are no longer only stuff that was part of him to begin with or all of the stuff that was part of him to begin with. It's probably still possible to connect things in ways that are more functional than this - it would be hard to make it worse, really - but there aren't neat matching ends to join up anymore. It might be possible to just reason out the least stupid connections possible if she can tell what all the pieces do, but the last safe settings for this mind are just not available.

"Do you mind if I go ask for another book?"

"Go ahead."

He gets a book from Bar about this alien beverage.

"Why don't you know how much more improvement you can make?" This question is probably a terrible idea but maybe it won't be. And maybe he'll be able to say something useful.

"I've never seen something like this before to know what to try and what to expect when I try it, and it's very, very complicated."

"I wonder if it would help to look at a - "

He can't make himself say dragonrider. He can't quite breathe. He can't quite think or feel anything except the desperate need to find Reith, talk to Reith, hear from Reith, be with Reith.

He was on his way from the bar to his seat and now, instead, he is sitting on the floor with his head in his hands, trying with much more success than usual to focus on the sensations of the present moment.

Hopefully she doesn't need him to repeat himself.

"You said everyone you'd get is on the wrong side of your door."

That sure is a thing he should engage with that isn't any of the things he shouldn't think about.

Right. Wrong side of the door.

"But you could call someone with your thoughts. There are - people," he says in a strained voice, "in the - nearby. In the same mountain."