Mmm.

What -

I watched my father die with you, I held out hope with you, I fought with you, I died for you, I learned what you'd done when I came back to life and I grieved for you and I forgave you and I forgave everyone who drove you to it and I love you and I am not going to find a substitute. I will help you do this, if it's what you want, and then I will live off the memories, forever. I wasn't sure if it was fair to tell you but it doesn't seem fair not to, either.

I hope someday you change your mind.

Is that - is that everyone - you should ask her, if you're going to -

Boots?

Yes?

I would like to remember Maitimo without any Vala tampering, can you have a go at that?

Yes, although if there's a lot of fuzzed memories it'll take a while.

I'll ask him if he's okay with waiting.

Yeah, that's fine. 

So Boots unleans from her tree and goes over and explains the sweeping-away-fuzz procedure that will be used if Mandos didn't change mindfuckery tactics recently and - sweep sweep sweep sweep sweep -

There is a lot of it. Fifteen hundred years of it.

She gives him a time estimate. It's pretty long.

I'll check again - 

He'll talk with his brothers and with Elrond and Elros some more in the meantime - I take it they're mostly still here...

Yeah.

Sorry, should have asked you about timing beforehand.

It's all right.

Sweep sweep sweep sweep sweep sweep. Having a memory back doesn't feel like anything, doesn't call attention to itself, but in aggregate they start to make a difference.

Yeah.

Doesn't change the sexual orientation thing but that's not really the point right now.

Yup.

Sweeping sweeping sweeping. This is actually sufficiently low-intensity as arts go that she won't need to break from it if she doesn't rush.

He sings. 

He sings songs written together and for each other in Valinor, he sings songs composed without paper in Endorë and never sung aloud, too much at stake now, he sings what he sung into Angband - should have killed you then, I'm so so sorry - and the things he wrote alone, later, afterwards, with only half the memories. 

Maglor joins him. For once Maglor manages to harmonize without getting competitive and accordingly ahead fo himself. Lórien can play a concert hall, if that's what its inhabitants need, and the leaves twist around and position themselves for better acoustics and he sings and he sings and he sings and - 

- he could just be selfish, just say 'I risked more than my life for you, you have to stay alive -'

He sings.

Boots occasionally dabs at her eyes and she sweeps and sweeps and silently curses fucking Mandos and she sweeps.

There are still a lot of people in Lórien. 

Lórien thinks they ought to hear the music, apparently, because they do, and they are visible, now, a ways away, but staring curiously - 

- well, not as if it matters now - 

- Maedhros, he says, can I hold you -

Yes, he says immediately, and then wonderingly, a bit later, doesn't even terrify me, Boots must've - do you want, before I go -

There's no way that that doesn't end with me telling you to stay.

He shudders in his arms. I would. But please don't.

I'm so sorry, you asked me to kill you and I didn't do it and by now everything'd be okay -