"They sent me back to Materia. I would've gone quietly to the Outer Lands but they sent me to Materia and they said they'd make sure I was safe but I didn't think they could reliably pull that off and I'm still not sure they did, because they weren't protecting Fëanáro when he came to get me and he didn't get squished so it may be that Materia only cares about science committed in its jurisdiction and I was just careful enough."

"I see. I bet you could talk Loki around to shredding yours, I think she was vaguely disappointed it did not come to that with ours. It wouldn't even take her very long."

"I'm not at all sure that is the route I wish to go with them but I will bear it in mind."

He nods. "Fëanáro, if your mother didn't die then you never got any tedious half-siblings. I did. Four of them."

"Oh."

"I prefer to pretend they don't exist but they had children and their children can't stop clinging to mine."

"Oh."

"You came out ahead on the whole, don't worry."

"I know I did."

"But maybe let's not tell your counterfactual nieces and nephews that," Bella says to small Fëanáro.

"They know they're very boring,"  Fëanor says.

"They must be sad about it,"  Fëanáro says.

"I never really wondered, honestly."

"Many people are perfectly content to be boring and it doesn't intrude on their thoughts much."

"I hope that's true of them, then,"  Fëanor says. "Do you want to come here, Fëanáro? I want to teach you everything you need to know about engineering."

 Fëanáro looks uncertain. 

"Bar says it's guaranteed safe in here," Bella mentions.

"Are you scared of me?"

"Bella won't love me if I grow up to be like you."

"Well, Loki doesn't love me but we're very good friends, she doesn't think I shouldn't exist or anything."

"I didn't say I wouldn't I said I couldn't be sure in advance."

"And she didn't even know the good reasons we had," he says. "I studied it for hundreds of Years but I bet I can teach it to you in much less than that."

And little  Fëanáro jumps into his lap.

Bella plops down at the bar and accepts a milkshake.

An hour later they are still talking a mile a minute.

It's pretty cute. Bella has had Milliways explained to her satisfaction by Bar - they might have to planar shift back to where they left Rúmil and all their books because neither of them is from the universe they're currently living in, but they can do that if need be - and received a book, which she reads while listening with half an ear to the engineering conversation.

Eventually Fëanor concludes that he needs a forge to teach  Fëanáro anything more, and invites him back to the planet the victorious Noldor have settled. And Bella too, if she'd like.

"I would like to make sure we can place an earwire call from there to the plane we're staying in - Bar thinks that should unpause it for the duration of the conversation - so that we can be sure it's not unreachable with wizardry or anything inconvenient like that, before you close the door."

"Okay," he says agreeably. "Fëanáro, you also need to learn algorithms, but you'll pick them up quickly, computers make it trivial..."

"They have those in the world we moved to! They're cool and they do science ethernet."

"They should work everywhere, the principles are very simple and I'm not sure a world where they didn't work would have recognizable physics."

"Well, I wouldn't bet on Materia," says Bella.

"The universe smashing them in annoyance is a different problem."

"It would not surprise me in the least if a non-smashed computer without any special attention from the universe ceased to work in Materia anyway."

"...and I suppose the fact this makes physical laws inconsistent in a way that makes it stupid that leaves are green wouldn't help?"

"I do not think that would help at all."