Thinking about how perhaps it would have been a more permanent solution to erase qifrey's memories, or at least of what he found out in the tower, but olly decided against it. Partially because qifrey has already admitted that hurting olly is the the thing that he can stomach the least and therefore the most potent stressor. Partially because that's just who olly is—he'll always automatically think that he ought to be the one to pay the cost to save someone. Partially because he simply doesn't have it in him to take away qifrey's memories after what was already taken from him. But there is also another significant part of what influenced olly towards this solution: he wanted to keep qifrey in his life. Not just alive, not just untreed, he wanted qifrey with him. In any other scenario, he'd have to pull away, to retreat from qifrey, to refuse him more often, to stop supporting him, but olly knows he can't. He loves qifrey, not just as a boy to save anymore but as a person he can no longer imagine himself going into the future without.
That the thing that kills me—the solution that olly picked wasn't just about survival, it was about the future. Olly wants a future with qifrey and if that costs him some memories whilst qifrey looks for something permanent, so be it. He's willing to do this, keeps being willing to do this, over cutting qifrey out of his life in any form. And over and over again he picks this because freedom from this cycle means nothing to him if qifrey isn't free and happy and growing old side by side with him
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