So many ghosts we're dancing around - 

He holds him still and tries to think what it might be. 

The day you died? 

Maybe. He has that memory, now, albeit sort of weirdly since it's from Maitimo's perspective. Telumë takes a deep breath and tries to relax again, to focus on being here, now, with Maitimo, in a place they have much stronger reason to believe is actually safe. 

He carries him up to his bed and sits down. Cradles him. You, too, deserved better from your world.

So did all of the other people in it. And - at least I finally made sure that someday - not yet, not everywhere, but someday - none of the children born here will need to deal with that. Thinking about it now isn't exactly helping him stay in the moment. There are tears in his eyes. I am sorry to be so maudlin today. I can...try to be more in the mood. 

No. No. I - I think probably there are a bunch of things other than sex we need to work through, and we shouldn't be aiming for a particular order, there. And it is probably going to be really hard to segregate the good stuff and the bad stuff. And that's fine.

Mmm. I - think right now I just want you to hold me. To know that - I belong to you - and we are working to build something together. 

There were so many times when this was exactly what he wanted, and it was one of the things he couldn't have even thought Maitimo was there, and it felt like reality taunting him, it felt like Eru taunting them both, and he leaves that thought public because one of Maitimo's Sauron-flavoured comments on Eru seems like it might be weirdly comforting right now. 

He holds him. 

I kept trying to find - angles on it, ways I could give you that - but 'we're working together on not forcing you to kill me' doesn't have quite the resonance, right - 

- I was cheered at one point by the thought that Eru does seem to eventually decide he's had enough of pointless tragedy, because nothing awful has happened to Vanyel since he made it to Arda. 

I know. It is complicated. And on some level he feels bad about it, almost, like it's greedy to want something that specific, and that difficult to achieve; probably almost no one has that, really. And, huh, I had not really noticed it but Vanyel's life has contained fewer awful things than the previous baseline. ...Though I think he did find this war to be very awful to endure, particularly the very end. 

It must have been. Though - 

- in a way much less ugly than how you'd originally planned it, I think -

Perhaps. It was very rushed, which was not ideal, but - in the end, less than five million human lives were lost, which was much less than the original estimate. It is not as though we have figures on the exact total. Perhaps we never will. Helpless shrug. I suppose one might say it was less ugly because Sauron would have killed them otherwise, but I am not sure that makes any difference, they are still dead. Hopefully not forever.

He still feels especially bad about Jkatha, a country with no existing alliance or relationships, taken out in a fiery blast without consulting any of its human political leaders, there was barely time to consult its god, and he isn't sure if all of the lives lost there will be coming back. 

Consulting the human political leaders doesn't feel at all relevant to him. It says something touching about Foundation, that he tried to ask, but human political leaders don't seem relevantly entitled to choose these things for their citizens; Quendi leaders are, he thinks, but only barely, and that earned through thousands of years of service that lets Maitimo guess offhand who among the Noldor would have volunteered and who wouldn't have.

On the other hand it seems much less ugly to him because Sauron would have killed them anyway; it changes how people think about Foundation's rise, from something accomplished at their expense to something accomplished with lives doomed anyway. It would be - painful, to be under the dominion of a god who claimed your whole family in its rise to power; people submit to conquerers, but it's a hurt that doesn't go away. It's different, if the god was part of the desperate plan to avenge them. 

That makes sense. It tells a very different story. I think I would not feel differently, if I were one of the people to be killed, or one of the people losing my entire family; I think even my very young self would not have. But - most people are not shaped like me. 

And even he isn't entirely that shape anymore; he can still understand his past self's feelings and choices, but a growing chunk of him does understand how and why this way was less ugly. 

Huh, I can believe that. Maitimo is more stubbornly shaped that that, he thinks, he would have resented conquerors however noble their intentions and however noble their actual results, maybe resented them more if they were in some sense in the right. He used that, actually, when he was wrestling with the oath - he started out by asking himself to imagine that Leareth had done this to him, not Sauron - as the simplest way to get the Noldor to stop fighting, as Maitimo had once been afraid he might - 

- there was a Maitimo who agreed with that Leareth about pretty much everything, and he would still have bitterly resented him. Would've wanted to not work for him, just on principle, once he had a choice. And that turned out to be a useful point to start from, when he wasn't able to look head-on at the question of whether he still wanted to work with Sauron -

Telumë thinks he understands that. He would've predicted it at the time, even, if more from outside-view priors than from a deep understanding of the pattern there. And, hmm - he would have done it anyway, if it had seemed like the alternative was Melkor winning in Arda, or even just a lot of Quendi dying horribly. He would have known that he was permanently sacrificing something, giving up the possibility of a true, unforced alliance. (He's very glad that he ended up deciding it wasn't the best path.) And, well, probably at least some of why it wasn't the best path is related to what Maitimo's pointing at. That people would bitterly resent it, and it would be reasonable of them to. 

...Now his mind is off trying to imagine the hypothetical scenario where Sauron instead tried to get Maitimo's help the honest way, just by being very very convincing, and he's not sure why it feels like such a ludicrous concept but it does. 

- giggle. I guess Melkor kind of tried that with you but it didn't work well enough to encourage repetition. 

Now he's giggling too. And Melkor cheated! A lot! I think you could have done better on the first try. Which is maybe sort of frightening, but also he's never been able to feel negatively about Maitimo being competent at things, not even when they were very solidly and inevitably on opposite sides and it was horrifically inconvenient. 

I could have! I remembered thinking so when I watched him, that it was impressive for a Vala because they usually can barely have human interactions at all but that I wouldn't have needed more than one try. ...would've held Sauron's alliance with Vkandis together, too. He doesn't feel regretful that it didn't pan out that way, not right this minute at least. I am very useful to Team Evil. 

You are very useful to anyone lucky enough to have your help. I love that about you. I remember how - every time you did something very clever, even the first few times when that very clever plan was 'nearly murdering me', I would miss you so much more... 

It was a gesture of respect, you know, how hard I tried to murder you. I knew that if you made it back to your people then somehow, eventually, you all would manage to win.

Well, then I feel very respected, he sends, as lightly as he can. He finds himself wanting Maitimo very badly, right now, and he isn't sure how to feel about the fact that this seemed to arise when they were talking about dangerous situations and fighting each other. 

Well, it was like that before anything, so I wouldn't think it's a - hurtful pattern all by itself. And it doesn't bother me. And you're beautiful - he is aching with it -

That said I'm not going to, tonight. You didn't want to earlier and - that's not how I do things exactly, with policies and precommitments, but it is how you do things, and so it is how I shall do things I'm doing to you.

I know. I appreciate it. I think I mostly did not need to do things that way before, and probably at some point I will not need to here, just - I need to feel more calibrated in myself first. He hesitates. May I play with your hair, though? We said that could happen tonight. 

(He's aware in the back of this mind that this is something they did when Maitimo was his prisoner, quite a lot of times actually, and so it's likely to have associations linked to memories Maitimo doesn't currently have, and he ought to be mindful of that.)

Yes, we did. And you may. He changes positions on the bed to enable this.

Telumë starts undoing Maitimo's braid, occasionally bending to kiss him. 

And Maitimo melts obediently against him and gasps and reciprocates kisses and feels - safe, and small, and - maybe a little confused but not in a way he's paying a lot of attention to -