"Fine," [Myr echoes, clearly dubious; they had not been fine last they spoke. (They had definitely not been fine last they'd seen each other, though his realization that L had seen the events of--that day--is dim and half-suppressed, dreamlike in a way a mage never really experienced dreams. He's the better part of the way to believing seeing others in that memory was all a product of stress and madness; had they really been there, they'd have abandoned him by now, shunned and scorned him. They couldn't have been there.

Sanity and any grasp he has on something resembling confidence in himself requires they not have been there.

But L does not give him long to reflect on that, nor long to try and read out the conflicting information flowing through their Bond, because--Maker scorn him for his uncharity, he does take the news of Mello's disappearance with an evident and undisguised relief.]

He's vanished?

[Maker be praised, he doesn't say; because that does explain the particular ferocity of the ache rooted in his own breast, and whether or not it simplified matters--in some ways--he does not wish that pain on L. But nor had he wished the crushing weight of Mello's malignant adulation on his Bonded, and knowing it's gone...]

I'm, [a breath, as he considers his words,] I am sorry. That we weren't able to do better by him.

[But I can't say I'm disappointed.

He's standing--not quite close enough to reach out and touch L, did he know the right direction to do it, but almost. There's the urge to sit himself at his Witch's feet, offer a hand to hold, and lose himself to this side conversation while drawing comfort from the touch; it is one he considers at longing length before setting it aside and leaning instead on his staff.]

I understand a little more, I think, of what you felt you owed him. After seeing what we did, in that dream.

[Which draws them neatly back around from any diversions to what he'd come to talk about, didn't it.]