Telumë closes his eyes, slows his breathing, focuses on the comfort of being in Maitimo's arms. He's a little tired but not desperately so. 

I can keep going. The rest are - probably easier, after the first couple. He saw Maitimo twenty-one times, in about six months. It's less that it stopped being hard, at any point, but it did get to be a pretty repetitive flavour of painful. 

All right. Whenever you're ready.

He starts with the first conversation, where he explained what had happened, asked Maitimo what he wanted, said he would go off and get advice before making a final decision on whether to send him to a desert island or keep him in the north. Agreed to bring him books, and paper for drawing, to keep himself busy. Offered to send Kalira in to talk to him. 

- do you feel badly even about that - I guess maybe we should watch first and talk afterwards -

He doesn't really think that he made any mistakes in expectation or did things that he would do differently now, from this point onward. This doesn't really prevent him from feeling bad about it. 

He goes to the next memory, the one where he came back and told Maitimo what they had agreed on. Maitimo suggested that Telumë could use a compulsion to have him share his thoughts via osanwë, rather than have someone else reading him. Telumë agreed, and so he remembers perfectly what Maitimo was thinking. And how it troubled him a lot, and he tried to nudge that aside, because he'd already made his decision here, and all that was left to do was manage as well as they could. 

I asked Findekáno for advice on this, he says, when he's shared all of that memory. And - I spoke to him regularly after that, I wanted to check that I was not hurting you in avoidable ways... I maybe ought to tell you about those conversations as well, eventually. Or I suppose you could ask him about it. 

We talked about it a little bit. He said he thought you were making a mistake, and said so, but - but that he thought I'd prefer you be allowed to make it - and he was right, I do prefer that - and he didn't think you were ready to give up, and he thought it'd be very bad for you to force you to when you weren't ready.

I'm sorry about - it turned out that not wanting you meddling with my head was tied up with a lot of my - desire to steer things at all - I think I could've explained it some way that hurt you less -

Telumë shakes his head. In some obscure hard-to-explain way, he's not sure he would have wanted it to hurt less, it would have felt - less honest, maybe. Even though he's still paying the price for that hurt now. Someday they'll both be okay again, and there's a lot of future ahead, and that's what matters. 

He can share the rest of the memories. Visiting Maitimo at intervals, looking at his drawings, talking about books he wrote in another life - playing with his hair - having sex, cuddling afterward, singing Maitimo to sleep... He remembers Maitimo trying to have varied interactions, to not bore him, and how he could never succeed at explaining that he didn't care, that was so far from the point. 

The last time, when they were about to try for the first stage of his god, and Maitimo sensed that they'd made a decision, that Telumë was distracted, and he remembers picking up on Maitimo wondering if he would ever see Telumë again. 

Maitimo holds him. Doesn't say much. 

I want back all the things that we stole from each other, eventually. For right now - can you just trust me that I can take care of myself, that I will take care of myself, that I am here and free and very very capable of doing whatever I'd like to do and declining whatever I wouldn't -

Yes. He shivers. I - was so glad and relieved, actually, that - you wanted to leave right away, after, that you did not even want to talk to me. Because it meant that you knew what you wanted, and it was not about me - I was so scared that I would permanently break your ability to do that...

I don't think you could have. Not on the path we were on, at least, you easily could have if you'd been trying to.

Telumë shudders. I am glad. He feels relieved, to be finished handing over the memories, and also exhausted, wrung out, and almost disoriented, like part of him is here in the present but another part is back there. 

Maitimo holds him and sings, because that seems always safe.

He relaxes, slowly. He's so glad that Maitimo is alive (whatever the cost was to Telumë, of picking the option where that could happen, whether or not it was a mistake in expectation). He's so grateful that Maitimo is free and capable of doing exactly and only what he wants, and that the thing he wants is to be here, now. 

"Do you want to talk about it?"

“...I think so.” He isn’t sure where to start, though. “I feel as though everything should make more sense now, somehow, and instead I am just more confused.”

"- well. I abdicated all responsibility for any aspect of our relationship except 'I won't get broken or work to hurt you', because that was the only place where if I was steering we'd even be steering in the same direction. Some people would enjoy this - I would, I think - but not you, especially not tiny traumatized teenage you who was already trying to be responsible for more than you really could. I guess the main things I'm confused about are - why you kept visiting - what you were getting out of it -"

Telumë starts to answer and then stops, because it's a lot more complicated than 'I wanted to', even though it's true that he wanted to and that he had made a decision to just do the thing he wanted, maybe a mistake, but one Findekáno hadn't wanted to stop him from making...

"I made an agreement with you, right?" he says finally, still not sure that he has the right words, but he thinks he's winding closer to it. "I had - exactly one lever left, to convince you to stop setting things on fire, so that we could - safely keep you alive - and the lever I had was me. I think you would have noticed, if I kept you there and never visited, even if you did not remember the visits. Sometimes I left you with your hair loose just so that you would know, when you woke up... But I am not sure that is really why, even. I think it just felt as though the terms we had agreed to included my visiting? - And you were happy, when I was there. You were not miserable all the rest of the time but - it would have hurt too much at the time, not letting you have some moments of us being happy together..."

He shakes his head. "I was so angry. Not even at Sauron, really, just - at reality. And I suppose it felt like - defiance, the satisfying kind, telling reality that we were going to have some moments together, in spite of everything... Probably that was a stupid motivation. I am not sure. I am still confused about exactly what I was feeling, then." 

- nod. "I felt that too. Not so much by then, I think I was steering away from it by that point, but before that - the idea that there was something we could still have even with all the universe stacked against letting us have it -"

Nod. "I think - it was probably not worth the cost, at the time, of - trying to have that thing together. I was not thinking clearly about it, because I had put you where my core values were and there had not been enough time to think about it, it was all tangled... I still feel as though - some piece of that was good, even if it would have been better not to try." 

"Not worth the cost to you?"

"I am not actually sure! It is - hard to weigh that. It feels not worth the cost to you of - well, I think if I had not made that mistake, I could have returned you to Arda under conditions that would not have let you burn so much trust with your people - where the Valar would not have exiled you..." 

"That would have - meant a lot to me. I guess I wish it'd gone like that. But - not uncomplicatedly. And ...I understand why you were trying, and what you were trying, and nothing that happened makes me love you less. Or want you less."

Hearing the words seems to loosen something in his chest - he hadn't realized he was hurting until he wasn't anymore... I love you. I want you so much– we did not talk about doing things tonight, did we. Figuring out where a reasonable place would be to draw the line feels impossible, right now, he wants to just tell Maitimo that he trusts him and Maitimo should do whatever he wants but he's not sure that's right either... 

We did not. So I guess we cannot do anything. And he leans in to kiss him and stops just short of his lips, as if there were a magic barrier to actually touching, and then draws back and lifts his hand to brush across Telumë's cheek so that Telumë can feel only the slightest ghost of a touch.

Okay, that's both weirdly touching and really irritating. Telumë tries to glare at him but bursts out laughing instead. 

Tomorrow, he decides. I mean, if you are available and interested, of course. And - I would not mind if you held me and sang a little longer, now, but only if you want to.