He walked off a bit and took a couple of deep breaths, and turned back around.
"Thete," he said slowly and intensely. "I'm not trying to get one over on you. I'm trying to protect myself. I am not free. The time I could have been called free was a few short years. My title is the one the biggest jokes there ever was. You are fully capable of stripping me of what self determination I have until I cannot defend myself, while calling it for my own good and good of the universe. That's not an exaggeration or paranoia, it's something I've gotten closer to than I'd like, and a pattern I've seen repeated in other timelines here. Do you understand?"