They win. It's ugly but they win. They spend a few exhausted weeks making sure they've gotten out everyone who they had a chance at, making sure people have food and clean water, singing until they are hoarse.

Then the King says he's going to Lórien. 

Want me to come with?

It'd be hard to explain.

Yeah. Okay. Let - let me know -

Certainly.

And he goes to Lórien, who gives him back his memories or purports to, gives him back his hand, heals the scars, and he is an exemplary patient, quiet and grateful and politely awed by Lórien, and then he asks for the portals.

The Valar demur.

He travels to Taniquetil and he pleads and he petitions and he makes friends and he finds angles and it is going to take years, because of course it will, so he goes home. Waves to his people with both hands, tries to hide everything that remains unfixed, everything he did not give Lórien leave to touch, certainly hides the doubt it was Lórien at all. Not all of his brothers believe it. The Noldor sing and grieve and at Elf-pace start to build a city. It's a short boat trip, shorter by air, so once everything is underway he goes back and he pleads and he petitions and eventually he gets somewhere.

The portals open. 

He goes back to Tirion and walks through them and - Kib?

!

I'm here I've been waiting where are you is the portal where it used to be?

Yeah - yeah, it is...

Okay just a minute -

She's still got her zebra, trots up thereupon. The zebra kneels to let her down and she slides off and beams up at him. "- hi."

Well.

"...hi," he says. "War's over, we won. I'm - I'm sorry we let you die - have you been okay -"

"I've been fine - how did I even die, I don't have that yet - how did you win?"

"It was complicated, took half a million servants and weapons my father developed - Aydanci helped him - Aydanci needs to know you're alive and alright, want to - send a servant through, that'll be fastest...you had a golem kill you when you were trapped and about to be captured. Would have been quick."

"- oh. Um, yeah, I'll get a courier -" She whistles, a courier lands on her shoulder, she writes up a letter - How's Findekáno?

He's okay. He's doing a lot of the heavy lifting on running the country for me, since I'm not - have you dreamed that yet -

Bits. ...Your hand's back.

The Valar are actually sort of competent within sufficiently narrow domains. 

Okay. Are my notes available, I want all my notes, dreaming things is so slow I know I'm missing huge chunks of everything -

Unfortunately most of them got destroyed when the continent sunk, I'm so sorry, I think Aydanci might have a few and we can at least tell you everything that happened - Lórien also might be able to put all your memories back, he did it for me -

...worth a try. The continent sunk?

When the Enemy died.

Bleah. Well. At least he's dead.

Indeed. Uh, do you want to sit down somewhere and get - the history, at least, first...

Yeah! I have an apartment here, that work?

Um.

Yes.

She gets back on her zebra and stuffs the letter into the courier and sends it through the portal to get word to Aydanci and then directs her pet apartmentward.

She has not yet remembered that the majority of her boyfriends are gay. He should say something. Instead he just watches her, looking for Kib, and -

Well, she moves like a clumsy person - like he did before he got his ring -

- uses her face like he used his, looks at her surroundings the same way, she's got an accent in Quenya which isn't the same one he had but she does use his phrasing -

- here's her building, she slides off her zebra and tells it to go home and shows him upstairs.