"Not really.

I wish I had been on the boats. I'm not actually hubristic enough to think I could have saved everyone but I bet if I had gone with you to the parley I could have killed both of us before they knew to stop me and that would have been a much better way to spend my death than throwing it away on the Ice."

"Wouldn't have taken you, wouldn't have been an acceptable risk -"

"Okay.

I still wish I could have done something. Given that you prefer to stop existing you should but I don't think I'll ever stop wishing it had never come to that. I love you."

"I love you too. It's so good we found you."

"I was so scared that you'd have--not forgotten, exactly, but--after thirty thousand years--and you didn't even know us for that many of them--"

"I'm not going to praise Mandos' general competence but he did put all my memories back."

"As far as I can tell the problem with the Valar was not their technical capability."

"Sometimes I think it actually was? They didn't have a good way to stop Melkor. They absolutely should have tried bad ways but they didn't have a good one. Mandos would have made me want to live if he could have, I think."

"The most personally offensive problem, then, I suppose. Honestly, what any reasonable person could do with those abilities, even if they are limited."

"That I'll grant you."

"The most personally offensive thing about the Valar was the fucking Doom. Which. Hopefully the fact that we're not in Arda right now and/or being outnumbered by the Abbadon and Singularity people will obviate that for practical purposes."

"I should ask them if they're doomed."

"I don't think the Abbadon ones even could be, considering that their Valar are just daeva."

"And that's the one who wants to be emperor of the multiverse, so. That's something."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure the people who came in from Abbadon are doing most of the steering, thankfully enough. Although I must admit I'm slightly intimidated by ten each of the engineers. Forking is a marvelous and terrifying thing."

"I'm surprised my alt didn't go for it, I often used to wish there were two of me."

"Apparently your Singularity alt sort of did."

"Hmm?"

"He got captured too. The version that currently exists was forked from before that happened."

"That's an interesting way to do it."

"Singularity and Abbadon Angbands are worse than ours, by all relevant accounts. And our kind of Elf can't fork."

"Yes, I know. It's probably the right solution, but - I don't want any of me to exist."

"Makes sense."

"It's such a big multiverse and forever is such a long time."

"'It's only forever, it's not long at all,'" she sings softly. "But yes."