That does sound like the usual reaction to a broken lifebond - or, well, the surprising part here is that Vanyel is still alive. This probably ties into how Vanyel’s Gifts were awakened, unnaturally numerous and powerful, but now isn’t the time to speculate on what magical interaction was possible with a lifebond involved, and it’s certainly not a good time to ask.

(Leareth mostly isn’t having any emotions about it. He’s not in control of the body, but it’s almost like his thoughts have gone still, the way his body does when he’s processing and reacting to significant new information.)

Lifebonds are a thing out of legend, to Karal, but Leareth's thoughts provide enough context on them being both real and truly this painful when broken.  And... he knows Vanyel well enough that he can easily believe he'd live through something like that, keep living through it year after year, because people needed him to.  No wonder he puts so much effort into not thinking about it.

"Gods. That's awful, and of course you would keep going anyway..."

Part of him wants to immediately talk about what could be done about this - Leareth said it was possible to resurrect people, and surely Sing or Nayoki or someone could, with the gods' cooperation, undo this awful thing... But Vanyel deserves time to come to grips with today's world-shaking changes before starting to think about more of them, no matter how good they might be.

"I can't believe Sing would make you keep living, if you truly don't want to. But... give yourself time to see what the world will look like now. You've managed this long."

(And Vanyel deserves to hear about ideas that have first been thought through by people who aren't in terrible pain every moment they spend thinking about it. Leareth will have better answers than Karal possibly could, although Karal can't even tell if that's what he's so silently focused on right now. ...Karal notes that Leareth should probably have emotions about it at some point as well - there's no doubt that he cares, and... Karal worries it might be more complicated than that, somehow. Everything has been, so far.)

It is more complicated than that. 

The key piece of context, that somehow hasn't come up before now, is that the death of Vanyel's lifebonded, twelve years ago, was - at least indirectly - Leareth's fault. Among a number of operations intended to slowly reduce the number of Herald-Mages in Valdemar and make for a shorter and cleaner invasion, Leareth supplied some contractors with artifacts and sent them on missions to discreetly kill Herald-Mages and trainees. 

It's not very surprising that the people employed for this were often unpleasant characters. The plot that killed Tylendel, a trainee Herald-Mage under Vanyel's aunt Savil, wasn't actually one that Leareth had ordered; among other problems, it wasn't discreet at all. But he had in the past supplied the mage who carried it out, Krebain, and given him the impression that there would be bounties for taking out trainees, which is probably what raised Valdemar to salience and caused him to be traveling there in the first place, and is thus how Krebain found out in the first place that a certain noble family, feuding with a neighboring landholding, was willing to hire a bloodpath mage to take the feud further. 

It escalated. Tylendel ended up dead - by Final Strike, Leareth is fairly sure, though despite all his spies he doesn't know the entire context, the Heralds were even more secretive than usual about the events of that autumn. In the same sequence of events, Vanyel ended up with impossibly powerful Gifts, which makes Leareth think that this was probably also a plot by the gods. But it was, undeniably, also one of his plots, however much he hadn't intended the specific outcome. 

Vanyel was understandably furious, when he found out. Leareth remembers that, apparently, at least when prompted so directly.You’ve made yourself an enemy. When the time comes, I’m going to come north, and I’m going to have all of my friends with me. I will kill you, and I will make it hurt.

And the dreams stopped for the next year. Leareth wasn't surprised. It felt like Vanyel had finally concluded that there was no possibility of negotiation to be found here, let alone cooperation. It seemed understandable for Vanyel to find this particular act unforgivable, even if it was only a small piece of all the awful things Leareth had already done, let alone what he still planned to do later.

Leareth...isn't entirely sure what prompted Vanyel to change his mind? It was after the death of Darvi, King Randale's father and the then-heir to Valdemar (which Vanyel almost certainly suspected Leareth had arranged, but as far as Leareth can tell it was a genuine accident - not that that rules out it also being a plot when gods are involved but it genuinely wasn't his plot.) But the next dream conversation was the one where Leareth swore to cease all of his advance operations against Valdemar for as long as Queen Elspeth was alive. 

And he can remember a fragment of Vanyel's answer. You would say that anyway, if you thought it was the best way to get in my good graces. No reason for it to be especially correlated with what you really think. Still. Thank you, I guess.

And then they kept talking, and years passed, and - maybe it doesn't matter anymore what was going through Vanyel's head when he decided to pick up their conversations as though nothing had happened. But they never cleared the air; it’s still part of the history between them, impossible to erase, and maybe that’s the only kind of thing left that matters, now.

Karal wonders how he knew to expect something like this.  It's something about the... entire shape of Leareth's and Vanyel's relationship, how clearly they were aimed against each other... it was the god-plot that he instinctively guessed at, without realizing it, because he had already seen so much of it that it would be surprising if that one incredibly important event in Vanyel's life was untouched by the influence that so obviously shaped all the rest of it.

What an awful thing to do to both of them.  And what an awful thing for them to get past and still be talking to each other like this...

If Vanyel is looking, he can see the long inward-looking pause, and the shocked grief on Karal's face.

"You can... probably guess what I just found out.  You two need to talk to each other."  Leareth is right, it matters - it matters why Vanyel decided it was still worth talking, and it matters more that now they can have a conversation about it that isn't too marred by distrust to be possible.  This is not something they can avoid or pretend out of existence.  It'll always be there between them, until they somehow make sense of it together.  (And it'll still be there afterward, too, but - differently.)

...Vanyel can, indeed, guess. For a moment he feels almost angry, that Leareth apparently hadn't told Karal before - was he hiding it on purpose, how could it not have come up - but, on two seconds' further thought, it's not actually surprising. Things could keep coming up at a rate of one thing every five minutes for weeks and it still wouldn't cover a fraction of all the things Leareth has done in his millennia of life. This particular thing was huge for Vanyel, but - for Leareth it was just another cost paid in service of a future plan. 

"Do we?” Vanyel sounds abruptly very very tired. "Is there any point, now? ...I'm not angry. Anymore. I grew out of being that childish, I guess, it was - he was one person - if it makes you a monster to kill one person then so am I, any of the people I've killed could have been lifebonded to someone."

He shrugs, helplessly. "I was angry at the time, I guess. Just. Leareth did apologize. I mean, sort of, but - I think it's the only sort of apology I would have believed, he never said he regretted - having the goals he has, or being willing to actually try to win - he didn't say he would do anything differently. But he didn't mean for - for any of the worst things that happened to me."

Vanyel might not be angry with Leareth specifically over it anymore, but he definitely doesn't sound like he's - okay (who would be?), or at peace with his own feelings about it, or - something. 

And Leareth has - some sort of emotion - actually probably Karal is right and he should just talk to Vanyel. 

"...I think I do have regrets," he says, and he's also suddenly very tired. "I am not sure if there is anything I could or should have done differently, with what I knew at the time and the resources I thought I had, but - well, I was clearly wrong about something -

- actually, I am not sure if that part even matters. I think it is possible to regret things even if one is not sure what one could have done differently."

(And he was putting off his regrets for a future where he had succeeded and could afford it, and - assuming his plan worked - he would have had to face this eventually even if Sing had never come to Velgarth. Leareth doesn't think he can say that to Vanyel without explaining what his plan was, which he - still thinks they aren't ready for.) 

After a long moment, when Vanyel still hasn't said anything, Leareth meets his eyes again. "- Did I apologize? I cannot actually remember what I said to you in that conversation, and we had not gotten that far in reviewing my notes." 

Vanyel shakes his head. "It was a really, er, characteristic-of-you apology. I'll try to remember exactly what you said..." 

He closes his eyes. "I - threatened you, more or less," which in hindsight was a completely absurd thing to do, "and then I asked if you had anything to say for yourself. You said there was nothing to say, except that - the world hadn't changed, that there were still children starving in Valdemar and you still intended to fix that and wouldn't let anything get in your way. Which was, you know, honest at least? But then you said that - that Tylendel was a light in the world, just like everyone else, and that you were sorry you had hurt me."

Another shrug. "I don't know, I think it's right that he was - just one of the lights in the world. I just, I don't think it makes sense for it to be a - bigger - regret than that, for you?" 

Vanyel is so exactly right.  Any of the people he'd killed...  Another one of these dizzying moments, the utter disconnect between the present and the past (it's so oddly half-distant, barely any time ago, and at the same time long enough to have so entirely changed his life) - it's not the time for Karal to think about this, and he manages to push the image away, though the moment's effort must have been visible.  It's good, that Leareth takes their body soon after, and gives him something to more easily focus on.  (He knows they'll have that conversation too, eventually, but - later, because what they're doing now is so much harder and more important, and he will not interfere with it.  Once he brings his thoughts back to the present, it's not hard to keep them there.)

...Vanyel is right, too, that it doesn't make sense to think of any single death as that important, from the inhuman perspective of people responsible for the fates of countries and worlds.  But they aren't those people any more, and... they're trying to be friends, or at least he hopes they are.  Of course the things they had done to each other would weigh more on that relationship - nobody is or should be so inhuman that they wouldn't, when they can put their burdens down and talk to each other as people who still need someone to care about them as people, not just as one of the millions all of whom matter.

Telling yourself that it doesn't make sense for something to hurt so much, or that you can't really regret it if you don't think you could have done better with the options you had, is not enough to feel at peace with what happened.  This kind of pain needs... feelings, to be felt and to be seen and responded to, and not just attempts at even-handed justice out of the ethics books.  Of course, given who all of them are, the ethics books will help, and it is good to remember them - but Vanyel is allowed to be angry or hurt even if he doesn't think it's reasonable, and Leareth can feel regret for things he couldn't really have done differently.  And maybe the two of them together can feel sorrow for the world putting them both in that awful position, no less painful for the countless other awful things that happened every year since the beginning of the world.  (That might stop happening, now.)

"You know," Leareth says dryly, "sometimes the way I feel about things is not perfectly proportionate and objective. You - are a person who is important to me. Your pain matters to me, and I regret my part in it." 

(Leareth is starting to suspect that it bothers Vanyel to see Leareth as someone who - has human attachments and human regrets, someone who on an emotional level does care more about people close to him than the many thousands of casualties whose names he never knew.) 

He ducks his head. "It makes sense that it felt like - the wrong priorities - to be angry with me over this one thing,” he says gently. “When so much else was wrong in the world, and when you saw me as an enemy. But things are different now. And maybe it is unreasonable to demand amends from an enemy for wronging you, but - I think it is fair to expect more of your allies.” 

Vanyel shuffles his feet slightly in the snow. “Mm. I - guess I’ll see. Still doesn’t seem productive for anything to be angry with you. The world, maybe. But - apology accepted.”

Oh good.  They are both strange people, but they seem to have gotten somewhere.  Although Vanyel does sound like he needs more time to consider the idea of Leareth as an ally, let alone friend - and as someone with normal human feelings, too, yes.  Well, Karal can hardly blame him.

And it's almost certainly enough pushing at everyone's emotions, for one night.  What is it that they do when their conversation seems finished but the dream isn't?  Music?  He wouldn't mind that, if neither of them have more they want to talk about.

(And, a gentle check, how is Leareth doing? He was having trouble with everything earlier, and seems less so now, but is it easier or is he pushing himself?)

(Leareth is - off-balance, more than anything else. The dream is half familiar ground and half not, and it's disorienting in a way he finds very draining. He doesn't seem otherwise in distress, and - something does feel clearer and less tangled, now that he's had this initial conversation with Vanyel.) 

Music is a good low-stakes way to pass the rest of the time, sure. 

It is! Vanyel is so relieved to change the topic to something less intense! 

And some number of minutes later, Leareth and Karal wake up in bed. 

...That could have gone worse, Leareth thinks? He's very tired. 

Karal thinks it went very well!  They talked about the most important things about themselves, nothing exploded and many things seem better or at least clearer, and it should be easier every time after this.  They'll find their new balance, in time.

... And Vanyel is going to continue being miserable until the underlying problem is fixed, no matter how well their conversations go.  But it's... probably not their place to try to fix it.  Does Vanyel have people who will?