Various things are about that specific Elf. That leaves the option of espionage from the main division of Angband, and I have nothing against the Elven residents of Valinor either.

You don't actually want a deal with Sauron, you just want him to leave you alone.

That's about the size of it. He talks a good game about defeating the Valar and splitting the galaxy with me and blah blah blah but he actually spends all his time doing unconscionable things.

What he was doing with the Men wasn't particularly unconscionable.

He wasn't there very long before I iced his ass, and in that time he did have terrible ethical standards for his werewolf experiments.

So no mutually beneficial agreements. Anything you'd be willing to trade for ten years' time that isn't mutually beneficial, just worth it?

...I'm sure there is but I don't know what.

Well, you're not telling me what makes 'Elves' an unacceptable trade, that's his favorite evil currency, you're not happy about the sword, information is a 'no' - grand gestures? Tell all the Elves you've switched sides, while he illusions some atrocity you needn't actually commit?

That's out too. Reasons.

Look, if he wanted me to go yell rude things at a beach we might be able to manage, although I'd probably want to check how Ulmo answered a question he may have gotten around to answering by now first. I feel like Angband would be an extremely unhealthy environment for me to get anything done in.

I mean, I know they're there. Could be a tossup in how it affects my work, honestly. But proximity allows mindfuckery and that's a problem, potentially an irrecoverable one.

I mean, the Oaths for this would need to be airtight. I'd spend several weeks writing them and go over them with a dozen different people. But you would definitely include 'no mind-affecting magic'.

It'd have to cover absolutely everyone capable of it in the place and a locally broad definition of 'mind-affecting magic' - I was horrified the first time I learned osanwë existed at all, for instance, I can live with communicative telepathy but that's it. And I wouldn't care to stay there literally all the time, I'm not an Elf and I miss people if I don't see them for five years. But merely being physically located in Angband is not necessarily intolerable even if occasionally I have to look at suicidal people.

I'll tell Sauron you said so.

Thanks. I think. There may be some reason this would still be a horrible idea, it just hasn't come to mind.

I'm not trying to fuck you over. I've gotten attached to the idea of being alive in four hundred sixty years, and for fate to get back on track after all this adventure would just feel so disappointing.

Thank you.

The Elf you're unwilling to hand over to Sauron is fated to a hopeless campaign to fulfill his word that starts to look increasingly like repeated attempts at suicide-by-other-Elves, massacring his way across the continent until the name of his house is synonymous with crimes we thought only Melkor could dream of, until at last he's free of the oath that restrains him from ending his life. Don't hand him over to fate either.

I'm not planning on handing anyone over to fate. It just depends on what shiny things I need to pick up in my galaxy to bludgeon this universe into behaving.

Well. Thanks for dropping by. When you're empress of the galaxy and deciding whether to shred me for various horrible things that I really probably did do, keep in mind that I'm also by far the most helpful neutral party on the continent.

Who are you competing with, there?

Did Melian tell you she's good? Because she might be lying to herself rather than to you, but she's crossed lines I would balk at.

She's helpful. In a very stationary way.