The King looks tired and lonely and oddly apprehensive but of course none of that is really information, nothing about Maitimo has ever really been information about anything but what he wants. When he sees him he can barely remember why he wanted to see him.

"Hello," the King says. "We're besieging Angband; the continent is safe. We just need to hold the siege, now, until we invent something that can kill him. Do you hate me?"

" - yes," he says, half because it is true and half because the sentence felt like a clumsy manipulation towards the other answer and if he's here so that Maitimo can manipulate him he's at least going to have enough pride to make Maitimo try.

But Maitimo half-smiles, instead, as if this was the answer he wanted, or at least the only answer he'd prepared the rest of the conversation for. "I knew you would. I knew you would but I thought very hard about it and this was the only move I was really sure of. I don't know if I can do it but if I can we'll win and - that really is the only thing that matters, I keep distrusting that thought and double-checking it and it keeps being right."

"It doesn't sound quite right, but maybe that's just the person speaking."

"I knew you'd hate me," he says plaintively, as if this absolves him of something.

"It takes a real visionary to predict how people will feel about you when you murder their parents."

"I'm sorry."

Aren't you going to fix it, Maitimo?

He doesn't say that, barely even thinks it so it'll be a fraction harder for Maitimo to read it off his face. "Why didn't you let me talk to you sooner? Why did you send a threat for your guards to read if I asked?"

"I was scared that I would make a mistake if I spoke to you. I was scared you'd just talk to me, permission or no, and then I'd - I love you, you know -"

He flinches. He's angry, now, and he's embarrassed that he's only angry now. There are guards within earshot. Maitimo shouldn't have - what was he playing at - "I cared for you, once, too."

Maitimo nods. 

Fix it, you idiot, Maitimo, fix it - 

- why did he even want that -

"You can go. Don't train an army, don't represent yourself as part of this government, don't tell the locals anything about what happened in Valinor, don't do anything that might make your precious loyalists think you'd welcome some news of a tragedy here. I will kill you. I will kill your family. Go away with Turukáno, he wants to found a city for civilians somewhere guarded so he can raise his baby away from the war. Don't - no, you can get married, but only have daughters, I don't want to wrangle more contestants for -"

"Maitimo, what the fuck are you talking about - are you all right -"

"No!!!!"

"Then - then maybe we should have this conversation sometime when you're all right."

"That's a good idea. If everything goes well - if everything goes well then we'll win the war and then I will look you up and we can have this conversation again, all right?"

"I swore you my allegiance."

"Yes. And that's all - go away."

"Your grace," he says, and turns, and leaves, and can't complete the calculation about what his face would look like if - if they'd merely been very good friends - so he mostly succeeds at keeping it rigidly indifferent until there's no one around and he can attempt instead to claw it off.

Three hundred years pass. People worry about the King. They try not to, because it seems disrespectful. There's a rumor that he had a secret girlfriend who was among those killed in the fighting. It is hard to imagine why the King would have a secret girlfriend but it fits, otherwise. If it's so, he never gets over her, which everyone considers very romantic. 

One day, an unconscious human covered in soot and blood appears spontaneously in the middle of a street.

There is a team of people there who are not as surprised by this as by rights they ought to be; they close off the street, put him on something comfortable, towel off the soot and blood and move him inside. They tell the King, who is also not as surprised by this as by rights he ought to be.

Eventually the human wakes up. Sits up, takes in his surroundings.

The room he's in has stone walls and a soft bed and tapestries depicting happy people - some human, some not - playing. There's a tray of food. There's a little music box playing something remarkably pretty. 

It's a big room. It also has an empty space on the floor with a bucket of ash and one of pig's blood standing against the wall. 

At the door there's a woman, who stands when he wakes and murmurs something into the hallway.