OK, I wrote one story in which the protagonist is a creepy kid with strange powers (absorbing magic, reading the minds of supernatural beings, turning off his emotions at will) who hears a voice in his head giving him advice. When the voice falls silent, he decides to try to figure out what happened and where his mentor went. During the course of this, he has a run-in with a team of supernatural detectives who sort-of killed his mentor (his mentor was possessed and they killed the spirit possessing him, which was the one really talking to the kid). The team consists of a vampire and a moonlighter (a sort of elflike being that controls moonlight), and while the kid's powers work fine on vampires, they don't work much at all on moonlighters. However, the kid finds out by accident that he can mind-control the vampire, and he sends the vampire to attack his moonlighter sidekick. The moonlighter figures this out and tries to break the mind control, and the vampire ends up severely brain-damaged and unable to walk or talk. Last we see them, the moonlighter is busy taking care of the vampire, and the kid decides they're no longer a threat. Over the next ten years, the vampire guy slowly recovers (everything's still there, he just has to rebuild the connections). Right around the point when he's regaining the ability to speak coherently, it turns out that some of the mind-controlled messages are still in there, and he starts attacking his moonlighter friend (who has been caring for him ever since his injury). Now, I'm a bit stuck on how the moonlighter guy will get past this stage. He has a knockout spell that he can use if in imminent danger of death, but it scrambles the vampire's mind and sets his recovery back a little. When the moonlighter guy figures this out, he resolves to do his best not to use it. He also can't just chain the guy up, because the mind-controlling kid kept the vampire chained up while he was figuring out how to do the mind control, so it triggers the vampire and freaks him out even more. Reasoning with the vampire will eventually work as his reasoning skills improve, but it'll be a long hard slog. So, any advice on how he should react when he's in the middle of being attacked?
Google cult deprogramming methods I'm not sure much can be done in mid-attack other than physically restraining him, though.
But there are pretty serious ethical concerns with de-programming. I do not want him brutalizing his friend in an attempt to fix the mind control. I see many stories dealing with mind control, possession, etc using the exact same techniques that many former psychiatric patients report having been deeply traumatizing to them. I'm hoping for this character to find a method that isn't likely to cause serious psychological harm in the name of 'helping' him.
How about he has him unrestrained but in a room with a glass wall that they can speak through, but not physically touch?
