He pulls him closer. Sometimes I very much regret dragging you into our sideways world at all. Not that I know how I'd cope without you. 

Kib faceplants into Findekáno's shoulder. I love you.

I love you. Thank you for - trying, to reassure him -

Didn't work.

Not sure he'd tell you. And it means he doesn't have to explain it to anyone else, that's something...

Suppose there's that.

I am assuming that it's a conversation he'd rather not have more than once, and he chose to have it with the person who gave him the golem. So.

Yeah.

If I hadn't waited so long - if I'd gone right away -

We don't actually have a timeline for when any of this happened; maybe the fake rescues are the first thing. Don't know when he was moved someplace pterodactyl-accessible and you wouldn't have had a pterodactyl before.

I could have gone in on foot. Wouldn't have gotten out, but.

You might not even have gotten to him.

I know. And - obviously better to do it late, and right, and maybe this is better than Mandos, hard to say - or maybe I was just selfishly trying to keep him out of Mandos - we could probably have torched Angband and hoped it killed most of the non-Maiar in there....

Personally I don't think my desire to keep him from being yet further mind-controlled is particularly selfish of me. It remains totally intact if I assume he will never want to tell his golem to let anyone approach him again.

...yeah. Same. 

We are going to fucking kill him.

That'll probably solve any oaths he might be under, too - not definitely, but probably...

Would it?

Oaths to obey someone snap when they die. If he's sworn things like to pursue the goals of the Enemy known to him at the moment he so swore, no - but I can't imagine he would have, unless the Enemy has actual mind-control - though I suppose the ability to erase all of someone's memories might functionally qualify, if you could make them forget oaths were binding....

I don't know what to assume he remembers, or what he has consistently remembered.

Seems like that might be something worth asking, since it's not as if if we were characters in a hallucination we wouldn't already know.

Maybe. I'm inclined to batch things unless they're urgent, though. And he won't be able to answer the 'consistently remembered' part. He could forget forgetting.

Agreed. I can't think of anything that'd be urgent. We were already assuming the worst on the information security front.

Humans don't have the thing about being imprisoned but we have a thing about isolated. I don't want to - hassle him - but is it in fact safe to leave him alone for really extended periods of time, he's not even introverted -

He won't die of it but it'd probably be very psychologically unhealthy, yeah. I suppose we ask, except I'm guessing he's going to be reluctant to tell the Enemy answers to 'what will make you happiest' -