So if it'd happened, like, last year or something, that could be cute, although when I put it like that it sounds ridiculously unlikely.

They grew up to be great kings.

That doesn't sound like much of a benediction.

I don't know if they were happy. At least most of the time, I think. Our family hurts whoever we touch, if by no mechanism more magical than that they have to live with knowing what became of us.

I love you so much. I--I don't want to know, but I don't want to hide from it either. I want to support you. I just--I'm scared. And that's not--thirty thousand years, and, and my scared is not more than what you went through, and--

Oh, sweetheart. Stop making it complicated and just ask me things you're curious about. I cannot possibly be sad with you in my arms. And I trust you not to leave.

Of course I'm not gonna leave. What happened? To everyone else.

Telvo died in the ships, when they burned. Father died in the first battle for Beleriand, almost as soon as we'd crossed. Everyone else made it five hundred years, after that. By then the war was lost. Moryo and Curvo and I all died in the fight in Doriath I told you about. Pityo at another fight with more Silmaril-stealing idiots. Nelyo and Cáno made it until the Valar came and arrested Melkor, and then announced they were claiming the Silmarils as their own to take back to Valinor, so they snuck into the camp of the victorious host of the Valar and took them and thought they'd die there, die fighting, but no one stopped them. So they left, and Nelyo jumped into a chasm in the Earth - Endore was crumbling - with the Silmaril in hand and Cáno threw his into the sea.

It is really remarkably convenient that she can't possibly hurt him by hugging too tightly.

How not-okay is everyone right now?

Moryo's wife and kids are dead-forever, he - puts up a much more functional front than me, don't know if you can be okay. Curvo's - happy, I think, as much as he can be, but don't bring up Tyelpe because he died horribly. Father'll be happy if we make it to other planets and build thriving societies and make it all have been worth it.

Nelyo's not going  to ever be okay. 

I don't even want to think what that's going to do to Imliss.

Why her specifically?

Because he was her favorite, and because she blames herself. For me dying, for everything that happened when we weren't there to have a chance of preventing it. She--I was going to try to fix aging, you know, if you hadn't been there, and I don't know that I would've succeeded but--if we succeeded at everything we put our minds to I was going to fix aging and we were going to get strong enough to invade Valinor and Mandos and bring you all back and eventually everything was going to be okay and that was going to be her absolution, for her, and I didn't try to fix it because I didn't have the first idea how and I don't know how to make her forgive herself now--

Even doing all that wouldn't have fixed him anyway.

Yeah, no, the 'now' is how bad it apparently is, not the fact that rescue was unnecessary. She wouldn't want rescue to be unnecessary. The point was more that she could forgive herself when everything was okay, not that she could only forgive herself because she caused the okayness.

He's a really good liar.

And do you think Curufinwe hasn't already told her that he'd be lying? She'd--objectively prefer to know, anyway, if she were choosing things primarily for her own comfort then she wouldn't have the fucking guilt complex in the first place.

I used to think maybe someday. But he just gets worse with time.

To be fair it sounds like your lives have mostly been getting worse with time.

True. Only coming back was a new start for a lot of us. Not for him, I don't think. He'd hoped our oaths could actually take us to the everlasting darkness, and Mandos was - rough on him.

Then maybe someday after we've fixed everything else and he has time to heal.