He doesn't, though it's sort of distantly familiar, and it helps him feel open, somehow - that this is finally the right time to stare at it fully...

I was so scared. I...was not afraid of you, exactly, although honestly I should have been. I was scared of Sauron. Of - what if Melkor did come back. I was terrified of failing, of losing, and - and it kept feeling as though it was completely impossible to do what I had to do - that it would be possible if I actually had you and instead I had almost you, except my enemy. 

And you must have been so incredibly scared as well - I know you were, I was reading your thoughts some of the time - and that feels very unfair, that we both were, and that there was still no way to - do something better instead. 

I was really, really scared. Of winning, of losing, of having to destroy everything in order to win, of destroying everything and then losing anyway - of you looking at me, one day, and saying that this wasn't the person you loved, and telling Melody to go ahead and break it and see whether anything better grew back -

He wants to apologize but that also feels wrong - he can just see it, instead, witness the things Maitimo went through that no one should ever have to go through, including the parts that were his fault. He doesn't think Maitimo destroyed everything but he aches for what was destroyed, and the fact that in some other possible world he could have prevented it. 

He's glad that he never did the last thing. It might have made things very complicated at the time, but now there exists a Maitimo who is still himself and that's good and he thinks it was worth the damage it caused him, personally, at the time. (He doesn't feel good about the fact that it might have negatively affected their odds of winning, but he's also not sure that it did; it was awful but all of the alternatives were awful too - if he'd killed Maitimo, he might have just fallen apart entirely...)

Foundation's Foresight thinks Maitimo's recovery would have gone worse if he still had the Noldor, if he could have gone back to Arda after they won. This doesn't make any sense to Telumë, but he's fed a lot of detail into it and it still comes out that way. 

Worse for Foundation's values, probably. Because I wouldn't've had to get rid of as many parts, if I still had the Noldor. I spent a while - trying to figure out which bits of me I could keep and still function in a world that was basically good, and I bet I would've kept more if I had the Noldor.  

That feels...sort of uncomfortable, actually. Like there's tension, there, in the fact that he both cares about Maitimo intrinsically and also wanted him back as an ally - as Foundation's ally - he doesn't think they can ever have the same flavour of trust in each other as before but he so badly wants them to build something new, and - it feels like that could be pulling things sideways, here, in a way he can't quite put his finger on.

Would you have preferred to be in that world, where you kept more of the parts? 

I mean, no? That's what it meant to give them up. There wasn't any point in trying to - stay someone who was a grudging ally of good for my own advantage, it wouldn't work, you couldn't actually rely on me - I don't want to be supervised and that means it has to all be done internally - 

- but, uh, I do still have complicated feelings about the idea that I'd be a worse person if I hadn't lost everything -

That makes sense. I am - right now I am feeling very angry with reality for being that way. 

Yeah. Me too. But - I want to be on your team, there wouldn't be any point to trying to do this if I didn't think I was really in a place where I could be on your team. I want to be on Findekáno's team. I want to be on Vanyel's team. I think I am -

He's actually vaguely surprised that Telumë hasn't had more questions about whether he's still evil and how evil, and he sends that thought, the first thing he's sent that wasn't carefully put into words first -

...Well, to a significant extent he knows Maitimo isn't working toward Sauron's values, or else it would show up in the Foresight footprint; there's more nuance, there, of course, he suspects Maitimo has held onto chunks, in a way where many people's ethical systems would judge him as a bad person. Telumë finds it hard to be upset by that, given that most people's ethical systems would have judged him to be a bad person too. 

I think we ought to talk about that. But - it feels important that you are the one steering you? I am scared I will - apply pressure - make it feel as though you have to pass a test, to be allowed resources and freedom, and I - just - that feels wrong? He's having trouble digging into why so he just leaves that uncertainty there. 

There was an available motion where I - gave up on trying to have values about the world and decided to just work well with whoever is around me and that would've been bad for me. But I didn't do it. I can't say there wasn't still pressure involved, there was - the bare fact that I couldn't do anything with the rest of my life unless I ended up somewhere satisfactory to Foundation - but I feel like I got the chance to steer, given that. 

Some stuff I'm working with is - Sauron and Melkor don't like death. Death is - Eru's style. I don't like death, I want everybody to live forever. Including birds. 

I have this deeply rooted sense that torture is good, that it's - beautiful, and interesting, and a significant part of what people are for. But - but I don't actually torture myself very often, even though none of you would object. And that feels like it's for reasons that generalize? It's beautiful and interesting and all but also it sucks and I feel motivated to avoid it. ...I don't know if this is making any sense, probably your head has to start out very weirdly configured for this to be a reasonable line of reasoning -

- weirdly it almost does make sense, at least in the moment that he's there in Maitimo's arms hearing it, but then it makes him go sort of cross-eyed trying to hold that up alongside everything else he believes, and he shakes his head a little. 

I am not sure, this is probably not related to how you got there, but - I could see that as carrying an argument I do actually just believe to its furthest extreme? A world that contained only people all experiencing exactly the same kind of happiness, forever, would feel - empty - even if it were a very good kind of happiness? I have a sense that a world with more things and more interesting things in it is better, though I do not feel that this carries as far as torture being a significant part of what people are for. 

(Actually that sort of conflicts with his worldview period, the sense that people are 'for' something in that way, instead of just...the beings they are, the world that is, taking each moment and being the sort of entities that push the future toward one they prefer.) 

Shrug. From my side torture is not even very interesting, honestly? I am still quite miffed that one-thirtieth of what I remember from my previous life is being tortured and - that is not a memory that contains very much useful information at all, I would much rather have remembered something else about Vanyel instead. Or Fëanáro, I remembered zero things about him and in my opinion he is much more interesting than torture.

Maitimo pets him. I think that's part of it? That diversity of experiences matters, and intensity - and also there's an angle that I have decided to absolutely ignore for at least the next century that's, like, specifically enjoying letting someone hurt you - and also something about how games ought to have real stakes - but the point is, when I have internalized both the costs and the benefits of this experience under my worldview I don't actually end up wanting it very much, and that feels like evidence about how good it actually is. And I'm not - motivated to torture other people so I don't have to internalize the costs, it's not that kind of want. 

And I don't want Sauron or Melkor to have won because it'd be awful for everyone I love and probably result in me having less ability to do interesting things, in the long run. That one took a while but I'm there now. They might not have even let me have you. - I do still, sometimes, wish things had mysteriously worked out such that I got to keep you, without all of the other horrible implications of them winning. I could work on that if it were important to you that I not. 

Telumë's feeling here is that, while maybe it should bother him, it seems to not actually bother him much in practice - it seems pretty fair of Maitimo to wish that on some level - also, on some even weirder level, he's distantly tempted by it too, not in a way that cashes out as anywhere close to actually-wanting, but...there would be something restful in that having been the way it ended. 

For a while it kind of felt like - the only route he could imagine to being with Telumë and being all right - which is silly, of course, because it wouldn't really have been all right - 

- but he wouldn't have been scared and he wouldn't have been alone - 

- also Telumë is a lot easier to keep than Maitimo - Maitimo apologizes for being so astoundingly difficult to keep -

- another thing he finds himself wondering about is what people have been told. It would be reasonable for people to all know that Telumë kept his husband as a prisoner and to figure that he keeps him now with just Foundation watching and an unknown amount of mind control but it makes Maitimo sad.

Almost no one knows details? Findekáno and Nerdanel are the people he actually told, among the Noldor, though he supposes they might've informed other people. Both of him knew that his plan was to stop mind-controlling Maitimo as soon as there wasn't the downside risk of him somehow helping Sauron win. (He thinks Melody wouldn't have cooperated with any amount of that anyway, even if he'd thought it was justified.)

Most of the Velgarth humans, at least the ones in the Valdemaran government, knew at the time and also thought it was a horrible situation. Vanyel might've argued against just letting Maitimo head out on his own if not for Foundation, but he wasn't happy about the previous setup at all. 

Apart from that Telumë isn't really sure what people have said amongst themselves. 

With the Noldor he thinks he can probably revise history very neatly, though it'd be a lot easier if he were there. Have it so he got married before he was evil. With everyone else - well. It's fine. It's a bit hard to even explain why he minds.

It bothers Telumë a little, the thought of revising history around, it, but - on reflection it's mostly because he feels like he did something quite bad and ought to be held to account for it, because it would be wronging Maitimo further if he weren't, but - actually it makes sense for it to be up to Maitimo how he wants that handled. 

He thinks it makes sense for Maitimo to mind. If it were him and their positions were reversed, the thing he'd be feeling is - roughly that he wants them to be equals, and wants them to be seen as equals, and this seems harder if the circumstances of their marriage very much weren't ones where they were on even footing. 

Maitimo does not particularly want Telumë held accountable for what he did and especially not in a fashion, that, yeah, cuts against the idea that they have a normal marriage and cuts in the direction of the vague Quendi prejudice that homosexual relationships are an abuse of power, because the desire for someone outside marriage goes hand in hand with the desire for power over them - 

- which is not zero true in Maitimo's experience but that doesn't mean it's a helpful attitude -

It does seem, at this point, like it wouldn't add anything; in practice he feels pretty well held accountable by Vanyel and Findekáno (he's so glad Findekáno is back now.) 

So - finding something that does work. I asked Vanyel what normal people with normal relationships do and he laughed and said he was probably not the correct person to ask - maybe Findekáno would know - I feel as though there is probably a way we could sort of start fresh? As the people we are now, and, well, I kind of want to have a relationship that is not nontraditional amounts of confusing for a while, the rest of the world is confusing enough already. 

I don't think Findekáno would either, what we did was got to be very close friends who desperately wanted something else, for Years and Years, I thought I was hiding it entirely successfully, until eventually after we'd been swimming naked off the coast of Valinor for a couple of weeks, on vacation, he said to me 'I mean, if you wanted to ruin my life you'd already have been able to figure out how', and kissed me.

I would be interested in trying to do something that is not confusing.

We could...have tea somewhere? He doesn't really remember the times they had tea in Vinyamar, but it's mentioned in his notes, and he thinks some of them were after they started a relationship. The nice thing about having tea in the capital of my - our - country, is that nobody would mind about us being in a relationship. 

That does sound nice. 

I need - no mind control, pretty much ever, if it's an emergency make it obvious and explain it right after. I would like to have a place where I live which you don't go to. I would like to discuss it if you want to marry other people or when Foundation is ready to resurrect any of your children. And then I think - I would like to get tea.

That makes sense. I am having trouble thinking of any kind of emergency that would require using mind control on you but it does seem possible there are types of emergency I am not thinking of. 

It seems straightforward for Maitimo to have his own place to live (and a relief for Telumë, too, he feels like it might stay true for a long time that he needs periods before and after seeing Maitimo to find his balance.) The capital city, which still doesn't have a good name, has lots of new housing with nobody living in it yet, and also some areas ready for new building.

He's not in a particular rush; he can Gate over anytime, or he could come back later if Maitimo prefers that. 

I should pack, but then I think I'll be ready to leave.

Then Telumë will walk around a bit, if that's all right. He doesn't get to spend a lot of time in forests these days.