My friend and I are rolling with the near death experience for the RP, thanks for the suggestion. Esperon's going to be mortally wounded by a powerful enemy, and eventually together they are going to fight and kill him. I guess I forgot to mention, the RP is cross universe D&D and Homestuck. It's going to be interesting, my friend and I know little about each other's fandom, so our characters know about as much about how it works as we do.
And then the thing to think about is 'how much of it is actually delusion'. Since it sounds to me like this character legitimately wants to be the better person, what with suppressing the vengeful tendencies.