Sleep was a long time coming that night, given the emotional gauntlet Len had been run through during the day. Everything from rage and frustration over the saboteur to terror at an imminent threat to confusing feelings about Astrid and having to reassess her judgment of the woman as a bitch not worth dealing with unless one had to. Nothing had really been resolved and the only silver lining to the whole thing was that she finally had Kila here to take some of the heavy lifting off her shoulders.

It’d be great to have a proper forge up and running, they’d be able to manage their supplies better, properly reinforce things against the winter, and eventually start producing goods for trade (assuming that they weren’t barreling towards an outright conflict with the humans). More than that, having another truly reliable member of the team at her disposal was priceless. She didn’t really have room to trust most of the regulars at the camp, though Ramos seemed pretty content with things. Kila was also another pair of eyes. All in all, it was a major boon.

All that did nothing to quiet the nagging voices in her head, the relived trauma, the gnawing fear that she was missing something. It was a constant parade of all her past failures waving cheerily at her while she tried to push them aside. Naturally, this sort of mindset was exactly the sort of thing that Pitch was eager to exploit.

“Are you enjoying playing toy soldier, Namethief? Having them cower whenever you bark and blame you for every misdeed? You know that they’re losing faith, don’t you? It’s only a matter of time before they turn on you.”

“Oh piss off, jackass. Even if they WERE about to turn on me, I have a good team, we could take them. Besides, they’re not anywhere near that point yet.”

“Sure they are, Namethief. They’re just destroying your works, setting you back. Seeking to hinder your progress. It will just take the tiniest spark. Maybe you’ve already lit it with that Valkar fellow. Maybe it’s someone else. Surely Weaver can’t be so far from breaking. Who’s it going to be?”

“No one’s going to ‘be’ anything. This will get resolved, and once it is I’ll be able to deal with bigger threats. I’m going to get myself home, get the real Lenore back here, and forget this whole thing ever happened.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do. I can feel it, that little thing inside your head. Doubt. Doubt in yourself. Doubt in others. It eats at you. It’s delightful.”

“Fuck off.”

“I can help, you know?”

Len hesitated. The words left her mouth almost unbidden.

“What do you mean?”

“We can deepen our bond. It’d be an easy thing. I can strengthen you in mind and body. Grant you the power to be certain whether they’re lying to you or not. Help you find the traitor in an instant, and give you the power to punish them properly.”

It was tempting, she had to admit. There was a part of her that relished the thought of a quick fix to all this grief. To be able to know she was making the right decision on who needed to be dealt with. Of course, she wasn’t an idiot, and knew she couldn’t take the deal. At least not yet.

“So that’s your game? Petty temptations to make me accept more sacrifices on your behalf? That’s… kinda lame, if I’m honest.”

“Lame?” Pitch sounded ever so slightly offended. “I make an offer in earnest and the best you can respond with is that it’s lame? I do not think you grasp the gravity of your situation.”

“No, I get it. I really get it. It’s an easy thing to grasp. The thing of it is, you and I both know that I’m not going to be accepting any deals at a time like this. It’s too obvious, too easy. It’s boring. And if it’s boring for me, I can only imagine how boring it is for you. You seem to have an angle here at every moment. Every time you pop your head in you’re after something. It’s not always obvious, but whatever it is right now, it’s not getting me to agree to some new pact.”

“Very good, Namethief. But I’m not going to answer an obvious question. Maybe I’m trying to teach you something. Maybe I’m just putting it into your head that you CAN ask for more from me. Maybe it’s all a lie. Or maybe, just maybe, I’m offering you the assistance you need now while you still might have some power to set your own terms. Because trust me, dear Namethief, when you’re at your lowest and most desperate, begging me to save you from your own foolish choices, that is the time where I will demand the harshest payments from you. It will mean that you’ll have failed to entertain me, that you’ve bored me, and that there’s no point in dealing with you further unless you make it truly worth my while. Do you really feel so comfortable shrugging off my offer knowing that it may well cost you everything down the road?”

“Oh, absolutely without question. Don’t you dare waste my time by pretending that you have any interest in making my life easier. I don’t know much about you, Pitch, and I suspect that I never will, but whatever you are, you’re not a friend or ally. You’re an accomplice, maybe, but our interests are only as aligned as you feel like making them, and whatever you do, you’re doing for yourself. Frankly, it’s a bit encouraging that you’re so eager to offer me your help. Probably means that I’m doing just fine on my own and can keep doing what I’m doing. Maybe it ends horribly for me, maybe it doesn’t. But whatever your game is, it’s over for tonight. Scurry off, now. I need to get some sleep.”

There was the briefest moment where she could feel the frustration emanating from Pitch’s formless body. It was not satisfied with the results of this conversation, but recognized that it wasn’t going to get any further in whatever its goals were this night. With a sort of shrug, the creature faded back into the shadows and its presence was gone. Len heaved a sigh of relief and went back to fretting about the rest of her problems, hoping that exhaustion would get the better of her soon.

It took three hours for sleep to finally take her. Her mind insisted on spending far too much time running over every conceivable possibility as fast as humanly (elvenly?) possible. Every time she felt like she was nearing drifting off, something would snap her back into focus and start the whole process over again. She tried to get a handle on it, tried meditation, tried counting backwards from 100, tried every damn trick she could think of. In the end, she simply faded away after taking far too long. It was a truly miserable night.

* * * * *

She woke barely three hours after that, still exhausted, but at least too numb to really feel the pressure of all her worries. The sun was just beginning to rise and she stumbled into the mess hall, barely even managing to put on her boots before the zombie-like craving struck her. Cookie, for his part, was already awake, hard at work preparing the morning rations. Seeing her stumble in, he prepared a cup of that coffee stuff he made. She accepted it gratefully and retired to a corner of the room to sip it slowly.

The night hadn’t really brought her any more clarity, nor broken any funk she might be having, but it also didn’t matter. What she needed to do now was keep an eye on things and get back to work. Eventually new news would be made. Something would happen, and they’d have more to work with. Right now, though, letting it eat her up was just doing the traitor’s work for them, and that pissed her off a bit.

First cup downed, she claimed a second from Cookie, who was fast getting used to her lack of pleasantries in the early morning. She didn’t mean anything by it, and she hoped he understood that, but until the caffeine really hit her system, social niceties were entirely too much work for her.

Fifteen minutes and three more cups of not-coffee later, she had managed to reclaim just enough of herself to be ready to take on whatever fresh hells this day had to offer. Bidding Cookie a slight wave and a sardonic smile, she headed back to her own tent to start getting ready for the day in earnest. She hadn’t really spent much time assessing what supplies they’d need to rebuild, though the glass seemed like the biggest issue. Ramus would’ve had an easier time reworking the shattered glass than the first time ‘round, thanks to some alchemy with melting temperatures. With all the practice he’d had of late, it’d probably take him a fair bit less time to make the panes a second time.

What all that meant was that they could start putting themselves to the task of building a proper greenhouse. It didn’t need to be too massive, and probably would be best if it wasn’t. They didn’t have too terribly strong winds as far as she could tell, but making the structure too big would just be inviting trouble. The raised beds had been a bit difficult to dig up and prepare, but they were now fully built up, two three foot by ten foot stretches of wooden troughs full of soil. It was still frozen stiff, but now it was completely separate from the main soil and would be able to hold the temperature of the greenhouse rather than absorb ambient temperature from the frozen earth around it.

They would need to build the structure up around those beds, Len would’ve preferred something dome-shaped that would curve pleasantly with the horizon, but she didn’t have anywhere near the materials to do that properly, so she supposed she’d have to make do with the basic box structure with a slanted ceiling.