He shakes his head.  "Not just that.  I'm afraid of - "

" - going back to telling myself it was okay.  I can't not think it was okay without hating myself."

"I don't know how to help you with that.  I have felt that way myself, in the past, but I dealt with it by becoming evil.  The geas does not want you to do that, and it sounds like you don't want to do that either."

"I mean.  If I'm a s-slaver - "

His voice catches, like he's choking on his own throat, and he sucks in air audibly.

" - I already am evil."

"You are not evil in the way I am evil," he says.  "You are affected much more deeply by the sins you have committed than I am.  Now, understanding what you have done, you want to stop, and undo some of it if you can.  I was not affected by any of the evils I committed, and I never wanted to undo any of them."

(He is not lying: he believes he is telling the truth.)

He looks up at the stranger.

(The thought flickers across his mind that maybe someone even worse than him, but mind-controlled so they can't be a bad influence, is exactly the sort of person - the only sort of person - he's allowed to be close to, now.  Not a good person who will be insulted by his pain, nor yet an evil person who will revel in wickedness and wretchedness with him.)

(And it's not as though he has anything worth hiding, from this man.)

"Can I have a hug."

"Yes."

He moves to Thell, smoothly but not especially softly, and wraps his arms around him, loosely.  He does not know how to show physical affection to someone he is not wronging by doing so.

He clings, and buries his face in the stranger's chest.  He doesn't know what he's getting out of this hug, exactly, but - he is allowed this.  He is allowed this.  He is never allowed to receive comfort from Lylat again but he is allowed this.

He pats Thell's back, twice.  He wraps his arms a bit tighter.

Someone far away in another universe wanted good things for a bunch of prisoners, in a prison for the wicked.  Someone who did not seem to be wicked herself wanted that.  And this man hugging him is not that person, but his hug is an expression of that person's desire.  And it exists in his present, and more like it might exist in his future.

So that's - maybe - good.  In the middle of everything else being awful, maybe that can be good.

- except that the stranger was mind controlled by her, permanently for the rest of his life - in which case another slaver just wants him to feel better -

- he doesn't want to be in this hug any more.  He pulls away.

It is easy for him to pull away.  The stranger folds back into himself.

"...Are you...?"

"...If you're being mind-controlled into this...?"

"My welfare is moot.  Sealed runes without exit clauses are unbreakable.  The closest you could come would be destroying me thoroughly enough to obviate the rune entirely, which I will not permit you to do."

"...it just seems like if you're also a slave - "

He tilts his head, inviting elaboration.

"For a second I thought maybe it would be - ethical to receive comfort from you."

"The geas does not find it unethical. It wants me to help you."

"Yeah but - not just because I'm a - "

He swallows.

" - but because you're - enslaved."

"You're worried you're wronging me by soliciting comfort from me."

Something strikes him oddly about that phrasing, but:

"Yeah."

"The geas will oblige me to look after your well-being regardless.  If I can in fact help you, then trying to refuse my help to protect me from the geas will not lessen the geas's effect on me."

"I would also like to reiterate that I am a much worse person than you."

He screws up his face.

"If you're mind-controlled into trying to help me and I let you then I'm just - using you for the thing you can't choose not to do - and that's not better, I'm just being a slaver again."

"I am mind-controlled into trying to help everyone.  No action you can take would let me be more free."

"I don't think that's all there is to it," he says lamely.