"Did he know the Elf marriage thing would happen, or could -"

"No! Everyone thought it was impossible between two men. Everyone was shocked and we still do not quite understand it." 

"So why was he probably-evilly trying to convince you to sleep with him exactly, do you know?"

"The Noldor - his people - would be very upset about it, well, they were very upset about it. Since he was my mind-controlled prisoner. I suppose in theory, without the marriage they would have been unlikely to learn of it, but - I was not even tracking that at all, I - think I had no plans beyond that week. I think it is generally not wise to do things that would greatly upset people you are trying to ally with, and have your main plan be to keep them from finding out. And he would have known that." 

He shakes his head. "I am not sure it was in fact a plan he had, at the time. It is - hard to tell - I think he genuinely was very sad and lonely, and had missed me... My main eventual conclusion was that trying to mind-control and interrogate an extremely clever person who is entirely opposed to one's goals and also one's lover is...a situation that makes a person insane." 

"It does sound pretty crazymaking, yes."

"...I was about to ask if you had considered having somebody else do it for exactly that reason, however, I can imagine why it might have seemed that it had to be you. We are very - suspicious, and careful, and paranoid. Also I imagine that you knew him better than most people." 

"...Yes, and - I think in particular, others struggled to model and predict his - evilness - I hate to use that word, I think it is usually a fake concept, but given that he shares Sauron's values which are 'maximize torture', it seems apt. The Noldor especially, but Vanyel to an extent as well." A slight, bitter smile. "In hindsight, Stef is perhaps one of the only others I would have trusted with it, however, even our world's Stef is still very young."

Sigh. "Though I suppose it is debatable to what extent I was meaningfully 2000 years old at the time, versus...mostly just fifteen." 

"I don't know Stef at all, what would his advantage have been?"

The older Stef winked at the younger one, and paused in his singing for a moment. "Because I'm a tiny bit evil. ...More seriously, I know how achieving goals by knowing everyone and manipulating people works, Bardic is like that all the time." 

"I didn't know Bards were aware of that being horrible, actually."

"I mean, it's not good, I don't think of it as evil either really, it's just - a tool? Kind of an unfair one in some ways, can be underhanded. But it's what Maitimo is." He looked a bit awed. "They put me in charge of setting up precautions and spying on him when he was in Valinor again, seemed so unfair, he's thousands of years old..." 

"Apparently being thousands of years old didn't prove especially protective."

"Anyway. What actually happened next - it sounds as though he ended up going back to Valinor, had that already been the plan when you were finished questioning him...?" 

"I think none of us had gotten as far as a plan. We were still stunned about...Melkor..." He trails off, shivers. "We had sex a second time, because I was still being stupid for exactly the same reasons as before, and then the marriage happened and - and he was so upset, it was terrible - he thought we were going to kill him, because of the security risk presented by the marriage bond... Anyway, we very clearly could not keep him prisoner forever, Elves do not handle captivity well and it was damaging him. However, he could have presented what happened in a much worse light and - likely destroyed our alliance with the Noldor, which Velgarth needed quite badly. So we negotiated an agreement. He wrote some letters explaining it, and explained to his parents and - other boyfriend - while still in my facility so that we could set matters right with a Truth Spell if he lied about what happened."

Telumë is staring very hard at the floor. "In exchange, he went back to Valinor with no mind control against anything, including murdering people. Then he somehow almost murdered Jisa and Stef, two of the most critical people in Arda - he did kill twelve bystanders, though they were Elves who come back - and also steered the Valar into confiscating Fëanáro's Silmarils. At which point Fëanáro disowned him and the Valar banned him from Arda for the next twelve thousand years, and - and he appeared back in my facility in Velgarth."

Telumë's expression is that of someone who found this very unfair. 

"He has another boyfriend?"

"Yes, for a thousand years before he even met me. He - is very good, and he approved of Maitimo also being in a relationship with me, before. He was very angry about the marriage, unsurprisingly. Afterward, he–" Telumë's voice cracks, "he thought - I was making a mistake - not killing him. But he said - it was not the sort of mistake - he wished to stop people from making, not being willing to give up yet on somebody they love..." 

And then he's crying again, his body silently shaking with it, curling away from Leareth. 

"Should we be hauling him over here? Or looking up his counterpart?"

"...He might agree to come from the other Arda. Or we could find out if he is still alive. Findekáno, I am not sure I actually know his second name. He is very sensible and he also knows Maitimo extremely well. ...I suppose the version from this world would know a different Maitimo, really." 

"Probably diverged only a few years ago relative to yours, but, yes, different."

"Why did you not kill him? It sounded as though you could not keep him captive before without slowly breaking him. And Elves come back, no?" 

"He would not have. The Vala of death cannot undo oaths, and so would not send him back. At least, not until Sauron was dead, but - we think the oath breaking there might simply shred his mind. I was trying - gambling - he was thinking, he had played all his cards and had no more routes to disrupting the war, and so he might as well just - be mine - and I do not like the pattern we were in but it seemed like perhaps it could keep him alive through the end of the war, give him a greater chance of - coming back whole - and it did not seem, at that point, to be trading off against strategic priorities, the damage there had already been done..." 

"It sounds appallingly distracting, for one." 

"It would not be less distracting if I were to kill him." 

"It might have been more temporarily so? People do move on from the deaths of loved ones."