"Oh. Good." 

He drags himself into a sitting position and fixes his eyes around Iomedae's left nostril. "I. Wanted to apologize. For - a lot of things - I guess mostly for the paladins. I shouldn't have approved Arbas' idea, it was stupid and horrible and it didn't even accomplish anything and I should've - known that - " 

(It's taking a lot of effort not to cry but this conversation is important.) 

"- is she all right?" he manages. "I - told myself - she would be - if I ordered her to be sent back to you - everyone on the Council thought I'd been so stupid and it was stupid and I, just, I - thought it was one way it could be - not the most horrible way to do it..." Great now he is in fact crying, though not hard enough to prevent speaking. Just enough to be humiliating. 

“Kiritan? She’s going to recover. 

Arbas - explained to us why from your perspective it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. I - appreciate the apology. Kiritan will too, if I may convey it to her.

And I appreciate deeply that you meant to send her back afterwards. We would - probably have noticed, if you hadn’t, but I think you could have done a lot more damage, pressing her afterwards, and - I am glad that you didn’t.

It is a rare and important strength, to try to make things as not horrible as possible once you’ve decided to do them.”

"Mmm." He's pretty sure she's being wildly too generous to him, it's not a strength to make flailing incoherent tradeoffs on decisions because some things make him sad. "I - of course you can convey it to her. Please." 

He hugs himself. "M'sorry about - blaming you for Altarrin - he must've been so frustrated about it." 

“I would have made the same assumption, if one of my people vanished under similar circumstances. I think Altarrin is all right. He’ll be very glad to hear that you’re talking to us.”

Shiver. "...I'm worried about him. I - was angry, but s'not fair, really, he, was trapped too, even if it's, a trap, he made. M'sure it wasn't on purpose. And he– I can't imagine going back, once I - was out - but he did it for me..." He pulls his knees in to his chest. "I - just - it's tempting to think that he can - bear anything - I used to think that. But he's still, human, things still hurt him." 

And acknowledging it out loud is awful, but he's tired of talking around it. "...I don't really. Want to be alive. But I - I already did so many things that - made Altarrin's life worse - I owe him more than that - he wouldn't just, give up, even if he had, broken everything, even if all the horrible problems were his fault - especially if it was all his fault..." 

“I think that we’ve asked a lot of him, asking him to go back to the Empire, but that - he is someone who derives a great deal of reassurance from having powerful allies, and he has the means to update us continually, and we can raise him if anything goes wrong, and - it’s not a losing battle, anymore, trying to make the Empire a good place. It never will be again.

I do think he hopes very dearly that you’ll choose to stay alive. But I don’t think he thinks he has the right to ask it.

Would you want to go on, do you think, if you died, to a better world that cannot ask as much of you? Or have your soul recycled by the local gods?”

He blinks at her. It feels like there's a very heavy weight on his chest. 

"Does it matter? What I want? I don't...think...I deserve. To - go somewhere better. And I'm - pretty sure I would be Evil. In your world's - way of doing things." 

“Everyone deserves somewhere better.”

“…and you are, in fact, Evil, but if you don’t want to be, I would not actually expect that to be hard to change. Having been mind controlled your entire adult life is a substantially mitigating circumstance, and the first thing you did when you stopped being mind controlled was stop hurting people.”

Bastran has no idea how to respond to that. The way he is responding in practice is, apparently, by crying harder. It doesn't feel like it's a decision under his control. (It doesn't really feel like anything is a decision under his control, right now, the world feels too close and bright and made of broken fragments and there isn't a thing where he is that can do things on purpose.) 

"I...know...I should, try to, fix it," he says miserably. "I don't– it's too hard - I can stop doing things that hurt people, or just - stop doing things, I guess - don't know if I can do things that help people. To make up for it. I know I - owe them that - just, I'm, so tired -"

And Altarrin wouldn't give up and walk away but he has never, in fact, been anywhere close to as strong as Altarrin. 

"I don't particularly think you should try to make up for it."

Well then what does she want him to do to not be evil, if it's not - the sort of thing that Altarrin is doing right now? He doesn't really feel like he understands what she's asking of him, here. He looks very tiredly at her. 

"I think people mostly shouldn't be - trying to get a score that's above zero. That's - one of the many things wrong with the whole sorting system. Who you were up until now just doesn't mean much of anything, about who you should be starting now. 

What kind of life do you wish you had lived?"

"...I don't know. I - have no idea how to think about what I want, it doesn't - it's never mattered, so what's the point." 

"- and I think Altarrin would - tell me it's not a duty, to help people because I have the power to - but I think it is, actually? I mean. If the thing he's doing isn't - thinking he has a duty to help people - then I don't understand what it is instead." 

" - so, some people, if they saw a cart hit a child and the child lying there bleeding and in need of help, would think 'oh, I suppose it's my duty to go and help the child, as little as I wish to', and then do it. This is...genuinely better than not going to help at all, obviously. I won't claim that duty is never what moves me. ...when I was very angry with you and Arbas over Kiritan, it was duty that I turned to, to make decisions that were right instead of satisfying. 

But many people, if they saw a cart hit a child, would think 'oh no, that child is bleeding, I should get them a healer at once'. Not because it is their duty but because it'll cause the child to be alive, instead of dead, and they want that.

I think Altarrin may have been trying to say - that if you can do that instead, then it's in fact a whole lot better for people. And that if you've gotten to the point where you want to die, then you're probably resorting to duty much too often and should stop being in situations where it's all you can call on."

Nod. "...I guess I wish I'd - had a life that was more - the people I could help were children hit by carts, and not - having to decide which set of thousands of people are going to die." 

"That makes a lot of sense. So, then, probably the thing to do from here is go have the kind of life you wish you'd had. Where you don't make any decisions about which people die, but can save children hit by carts, hopefully mostly because you want to."

"...I used to want to be a minstrel. When I was a child. To - not be anyone important, just travel around and write songs about other people who'd done important things."

Wow he's not sure why he said that out loud. It's not even very on topic and Iomedae is probably going to think he's pathetic. 

"That seems like a reasonable thing to do."

"I don't - actually want to right now. I just - remember wanting to." Back when he could want things. Back when just existing didn't hurt. "Feels - too late to start over, now."

(But Altarrin would. Altarrin would never say it was too late.) 

"Why's that?"

Bastran puts his head down on his knees. 

"Just feels like I - can't go back to being that person," he says, muffled. "I've - ordered too many executions - to just be. Someone who plays music and helps children. I can't - pretend it didn't happen." 

"If some other person, some stranger, had - by magic woken up in your place, in your life yesterday, they could have - walked away and become a musician? And you wouldn't feel that they had a duty to do something different?"

Wow, that's a really horrifying and upsetting thought experiment! Poor stranger person waking up in his life and having to face the consequences of all his worst mistakes! Aaaah! 

Bastran makes a miserable sound. "I - no - it wouldn't be their fault -" 

"But if it's you, it feels like - there's something that would be unaddressed, if you walked away, because you think it is your fault?"

"Yes! Obviously it's my fault! I - it's not like I was under compulsions to do into - any of the things I did - I was less mind-controlled than Altarrin, he had to obey orders and be loyal to me, I just - had to do what was best for the Empire and its people. And I didn't even get that right, because I was - scared, and tired, and didn't want to have more meetings, and didn't want to think about decisions longer... That's my fault. And Altarrin still managed to...realize...way before I did, and leave - so not realizing is my fault too..."