"..."

They might try

Yup. Thanks.

And, a week later - Lúthien and Malak could have made it in a few days, but the rescues mostly aren't up for nonstop jogging and Beren is slow, so they take it at a walk - they're standing at the joining of two rivers and Doriath is in sight.

She waves. 

No one attempts to recapture her.

"Do you see anyone? Are you sure they saw you? -

"Eh. If we're still following the river they'll have plenty of chances to notice you're not in Noldorin custody."

They keep heading south.

"Yeah, they'll live." Sigh. Beren-hug.

So they keep following the river.

And when they pass Nargothrond there is a raft full of supplies. 

"It would have kind of meant a lot to me for my family to suck less than the literal house of Fëanor."

"I'm sorry. It's...

"It's really awful to discover that people you - your family - ...

"It sucks when they disappoint even really low expectations.

"...

"You are more than what they made you. You can be better than them. You are."

"I want them to be it. A lot of people are counting on them."

"I know. Maybe we can talk them around."

"I've tried that. It - does sometimes help. But not enough."

Nod

...

"I... I don't know if it's the best thing for you or if you have better options but. I stopped caring. Very deliberately, I stopped... thinking about how much better the world would be if She was actually a decent person. Dwelling on it wasn't helpful and it wasn't healthy, I wasn't living in a world where she was alright or was even capable of being alright in the relevant sense and in the end it was better for me to focus on the world as it was."

"I think your mother's a worse person than mine, though."

"Maybe. I don't know for sure, maybe she has some ridiculously complex scheme that ends in a world at peace forever. But, that's beside the point, it's more that... if you can't change them into better people, it's not worth worrying about their failings? Treat their flaws as obstacles to work around. Their failure to be...optimal monarchs... is the same sort of thing as Melkor's failure to not be totally evil. Not to nearly the same degree, but..."

"Maybe. Yeah."

"It's... it's not a good mindset for setting goals or deciding what values you should follow, but it's good for deciding how to deal with other people, for planning how to achieve your goals... From this perspective your mother's main virtue compared to Alfirin is that she can sometimes be talked around to agreeing with your goals, not that she's never stolen a child's body or turned someone into a sword or possibly committed genocide..."

"...those are things your mother's done?"

"Many children, twice that I know of for the sword - well, only once if you're being pedantic, the second is a belt - and I don't know about the - the third. I think she was involved but she might have been trying to stop what happened."

Malak takes a slow breath and the signs of distress slide off their face.

"Like I said. She's an obstacle. I don't think I can make her stop, I don't think I can permanently kill her. It might be best to protect her even, so that it doesn't happen very often..."

"Why can't you stop her?  - or do you not want to tell me, that's okay too -"

"She's more powerful than me, I wouldn't be able to kill her without a lot of help. Coming back from the dead is probably part of... whatever she is, and hard to stop. Nerikross killed her once, he's a necromancer so he's almost certainly acquainted with the usual methods of stopping someone from being resurrected. He would have tried them. They obviously didn't work. I tried researching her, once, sought out records She hadn't messed with yet. Talked to theologians, powerful wizards. Tried to find a way to at least stop her resurrections from being so harmful. Or at least, that's what I think I did, I don't remember any of those ten years."

"...the Valar can help with putting memories back. I don't know how it'd interact with your world's magic, but -"