Luthien looks between the two of them.

"What is going on?"

"Are you keeping secrets now?" he asks Beren. Then, to Luthien: "I'm being obnoxious out of a desire for petty revenge, because she left a very boring and nearly useless simulacrum to fill her fated role when she quit, and I do not appreciate my work load quadrupling."

...Sigh. Probably this timeline can't be rescued, though she needs to try at least. Get some data. And really it depends on how Luthien reacts... If Luthien doesn't reject her this might cause the level of tension she needs...

"It is not my problem if you're fundamentally incapable of delegation."

"You were literally the only actually competent person in our group other than me."

"Mygwainor... You- with Sauron?" She takes a step back.

Double crap.

"I quit, as soon as I figured out how to cheat my way out. I hated the role laid out for me. It's - Ainur are physically incapable of defying their fate, and most of us never noticed or cared but I was made to rebel."

"But not enough not to lead us into this trap."

"I wouldn't ever let you get hurt."

She shakes her head and backs away.

"I can't trust you."

"I'm sorry." Her voice cracks.

"You killed him because he had to die. You said- you told me you were free. You lied."

"It's - "

"The tapestry only has so much give. I can't nudge too much without - getting forced back."

She shakes her head again. "Don't follow me."

She turns and leaves.

Sobbing will not be useful. Heart break is not useful.

"You fucked up," the dog says, entirely unnecessarily.

Fortunately, the world ends before she has to dignify that with a response.

Okay. So. That was a fuck up.

Can she prevent Finrod from accompanying them at all? Declare that they won't go to Nargothrond? Finrod might die anyways, sure, probably will, but it won't be something Luthien will blame on her.

Beren...

Has trouble remembering why people care about others not being harmed. She's obsessively saving all of Ellie's memories from each loop, preserving them, so if she gets even the slightest chance she can remake her darling with all the context she needs - she doesn't want Ellie to remember rejecting her, if Beren even can remake Luthien separately from Sauron, but - it'd be - wrong, to remove some of her darling's life.

She wants the version of Ellie Ares gave her for her first loop back. She'd kept Ellie as Sauron for every single loop, unwilling to not have her by her side, and it'd only been the depressing march of uncounted loops that had her reaching desperately for another solution. Every Melkor before her has given up or somehow gotten themselves removed.

Beren can't. No matter how hard it gets. You can't pass on preserved memories from one Melkor to the next - at least Ares didn't know how to, the entire reason Ellie hadn't been present in Beren's zeroth life because Ares can be weirdly nice sometimes, and Beren refuses to experiment with Ellie's continued existence.

She doesn't even know she'll have the opportunity to remake Ellie at the end of all things. But.

She needs to hope. Otherwise, what's the point?

She probably can't stop Finrod from joining them. The timeline usually just (sometimes aggressively) corrects itself. This density of full collapses is honestly weird. He'll get a message from Doriath asking if Luthien's come by and then go looking and somehow actually find them or something equally contrived.

So -

So she needs a cooperative Finrod, because the usual Finrod absolutely would not tolerate 'hey so by the way I'm actually Morgoth, sorry about all the murder except I'm not actually sorry and will demonstrably still do it even if given another chance.'

She needs a template who'll forgive her.

She wants to take a break from being Beren. Have her Ellie again. Be loved as she is, no matter how many jagged edges she has.

If she stops trying to be Beren, she'll never start again, and she can't see any other way forward. Can't ask for help. Even if Ares somehow independently divines the existence of the loops in time to advise her - he ran out of ideas as Melkor, too.

There's a relatively small handful of templates active in the First Age, in the grand arc of history. Only a few great heroes tend to get highlighted, but everyone is played by some actor or another. Many of them minor, many of the mortal roles played by the same actors changing parts as their old one dies. But there've been billions of humans alive at a time before, and the world needs just as many actors to sustain that.

No Melkor has ever extended their direct influence past the First Age. Their defeat is hard, fixed. The Melkor before Ares discovered how to avoid being flung entirely out of Arda, though, and instead linger as a spirit incapable of influencing the world but capable of observing. He'd gathered a massive wealth of data, a huge bulk of the information Ares passed to her.

Ares had kept it up, even though he found it abhorrent. He was the first Melkor to notice her template - apparently always a revolutionary and a clever one at that, no matter while role he shuffled her into. Beren's kept it up some (she's Fate outside of time, here, but she doesn't like thinking of herself like that when playing odd roles like this, and Fate was the bitter name of a girl who'd been made the slave of the doom she spent her life fighting). She finds it hard, but -

There's some bizarrely forgiving people out there, if you look at the twelve thousand years of mortal existence. Most of them won't instantiate as elves. Some will.

She plucks one of those usually active in the Third Age, and shuffles them into Finrod's place.

She lets the song start again.

There's tens of thousands of years before she needs to really worry about the elves. She lets her simulacrum handle a lot of it, though she makes a point of interacting with Sauron a lot, trying to nudge him, lead his thoughts and investigations in useful directions.

She cries a lot, as much as a Vala can be said to shed tears.

She befriends the Finrod of this loop, after her release, before the Darkening. Lets him see her uncertainty, her vulnerability.

It's easier than it should be. She actually genuinely likes him. Would name him a friend, probably, except having people she likes kinda sucks when she's the only one who'll remember.

He's odd, energetic, noisy. Often rubs elves the wrong way. He'll be better suited to mortal friends, but -

That time hasn't come, yet, and in Aman she becomes his only true friend.

She betrays him, betrays all of Aman, as she must, and turns her attention to recreating the past loop with Luthien up until their approach to Nargothrond. Luthien might have some different memories of Finrod now, but - hopefully not too many, and Beren can honestly state she knew him before she became mortal.

She adores Luthien.

She doesn't want to be rejected a third time. It's hard to keep her attention appropriate. Not desperately in love and yearning and pain.

"So will he recognize you?"

"I'm unsure. My face is different than the one I usually wore back then. But... Some people have the talent of seeing into others' hearts. He would have that, if any of the Noldor do."

"So we've just got to get past the gate, then."

And not get immediately thrown back out by a Finrod who's temperamentally inclined to be ridiculously forgiving but also is aware that Morgoth is an extreme threat to his city. Sure. They can work with this.

"Pretty much, and my father's ring - or your name - should be enough for that..."

Quick kiss.

"No problem, then." Onward?

Kiss and a smile.

Onward.