"Yes, of course, I don't mean that he can't withhold things, just that if he were telling us false things you probably wouldn't help with that."

"To the extent I can verify the information. Quendi seem to take lying much more seriously than Asgardians do, as a group, but I've preferred to avoid lying outright my whole life, even when fewer people would assume I was forever without honor if they caught me in one fib."

"So you think I should, just, what, assume Maitimo's mostly trustworthy, and has a specific failing when it comes to boats?"

"That wasn't actually a jab at you, although now that you mention it..."

"You can't possibly believe that."

"Not the 'specific failing when it comes to boats' part, admittedly."

"But you don't think it's likely he'd lie to us about his plans at this point, lie to us about the landscape of Beleriand, you don't think he was lying to me when we were younger -"

"People who don't have an actual psychological problem do not lie by default, not even when the consequences are exasperation on the level of stepping on someone's foot and nothing greater. They need a reason."

"Well, yes. The motive here just happens to be really obvious. Maitimo wanted us to trust him so he could try to fix relations between the hosts, he wanted me to care about him so I'd tell him everything and do whatever he asked, and when he decided relations weren't fixable he wanted our trust so he could extricate all his people and be halfway across the sea before it occurred to us to doubt them. And now - now he presumably wants us to forgive him and trust him again, though I can't imagine how he'd pull that off. I don't just reflexively assume everything he says was a lie, I assume everything he said, ever, first and foremost served his ends."

"I don't think he does want you to forgive him and trust him again; I think in fact that he does not. This is me inserting my opinion that the entire thing is tragic and ought to stop being so tragic into the proceedings. My point is that you would have noticed if he were an actual pathological liar, noticed very, very early; and that I think your general emotional complication is applying itself to your own memories with a will."

"Everyone else thinks I'm being too generous to him."

"It's not impossible that you're making errors in both directions, actually. But this is the one that I find irritatingly tragic."

"It's not exactly that I think you're being too generous now, in action of any kind, as that I think I see the - remnants of a pattern of withholding nothing, whatsoever. Maybe you never needed to, maybe this was not as desperately unhealthy as it would be in relationships of my acquaintance because he simply never asked too much, but you seem like - like even your shadow remembers falling where he asked it to fall without wondering if that was appropriate to ask."

"He asked for a lot. But towards a goal I thought we shared, and which I was willing to devote my whole self to anyway."

"I wasn't there. I cannot contradict you if you tell me that it was only in such matters that you acted in this way," she shrugs. "But I'm still of half a mind to chastise him for encouraging the habit."

"Even if he didn't think you were the Enemy, I doubt you'd think of anything to say that my family didn't - or his family - they were both disgusted with us -"

"Well, I don't think he'll suspect that my chastisement is motivated by inheriting the Valar's bigoted opinions about boys preferring boys, which would be the obvious assumption in the other cases."

"Fëanor? I really don't think so. He was vaguely fond of me when I was younger and I flirted with men pretty openly, then. I think it was that I wasn't good enough for Maitimo, on their end, and that he wasn't good enough for me on ours."

"Ah. Well, I don't have those motivations either. I suspect had I known you pre-tragedy, apart from my reservations about whether you retained the ability to think twice about anything he suggested, I would have just thought you were adorable."

"I wish you had. We were happy. Not just the two of us, everyone was happy. Turvo'd just gotten married and was happier than I'd ever seen him and there were new things being invented all the time and it really felt like sometime our fathers would have enough grandchildren running around to give them some perspective on their stupid old hurts."

"Unfortunately, if I had actually appeared in Valinor in the first place I wouldn't have had long to go 'awwww' before I found out about the situation on this continent and went and yelled at whichever Valar was closest about it."

"They were used to that, too. Wouldn't have gotten you anywhere. But maybe you could have talked Fëanor down from stealing the boats, pointed out to him that you can't try taking things by force without anyone getting hurt -"

"Maybe, I don't know. I might have had better luck trying to convince the people with the boats to loan them out than that."

"I don't know why Olwë didn't, save fear of the Valar and dislike for Fëanor. It was his people we were going to save. And the boats were treasured by them, priceless works of art, but still, they could have taught us how to build our own -" He shakes his head. "That doesn't justify it."