Do you think I don't?

You probably have it worse since you think it's real. Have you thought of anything? We have his permission to kill him, incidentally, if we can get the Valar to open the portals again...

He's mentioned.

- The Aly memories were never tampered with that he can recall. Could get a Vala to roll him back all the way to when she died and tell - her - what's going on, it'd be sort of like starting over.

You think missing memories will stick if it's the non-evil Valar doing it?

No, unless Lórien in particular can keep them from coming back by virtue of his specialty. He'd be lucid a little while, but - no, he'd notice how long ago everything was, I don't know how he'd react to that without any other information -

Well, explaining the whole truth would not be the thing the Enemy'd employ - the Enemy'd leave out that he might be able to read minds, and possibly that Kib was ever his prisoner -

I doubt very much that Kib is willing to put as much confidence in - stylistic assessments.

So you think if we told him the whole truth he'd just wind up concluding he's a prisoner after all? Again?

...Maybe not immediately.

Not telling him the whole truth is also an option, I guess.

The memories coming back may jog something loose on their own.

None of this works unless Lorien can give him persistently dreamless sleep, or control which dreams he gets back.

Yeah.

The other option is something - less urgent than a population starving to death, but something like Valinor when he arrived - new situation, where he won't starve if he goes around not thinking but he'll do a lot of obvious good if he's willing to, something that makes it worth the chance it's real.

He's not evaluating the chance it's real. He's not looking for opportunities to do things.

You really think he'd see a lot of people hurting and not do things about that? He still has a 'some things are bad' instinct, basically intact.

Intact but not - exploratory.

And I think one of the things he was doing with the not thinking was using it to avoid reacting to threats to third parties.

Wouldn't have helped. I mean, yes, the Enemy would have tried to shake it out of him with 'I will torture this person or this person, you pick, or both of them if you refuse to pick', but then he'd just torture both of them, he'd never set up a situation where Kib was actually advantaged by refusing to do anything for other people...

I haven't actually asked him about this part directly, I don't know.

I'm pretty sure he'd have done that whether Kib was responsive or not, he just enjoys doing it. Does, in fact, keep his promises, at least on every occasion I remember. Don't know if it's helpful to tell Kib that - if he's telling himself that the Enemy'd have done it anyway -

Helplessly: I don't know.

I offered to share memories with him and he - seemed like he was considering it - or considering considering it -

What memories?

Angband. The - the things I think of as tells for hallucinations, the reasons I don't think he can share surface thoughts, but it'd be artificial if I just shared those, so - everything.

I think he may just be dividing things into 'unpleasant' and 'not unpleasant' and that probably sounded unpleasant.