The king is silver-haired and ancient-eyed, but young and fair of face, taller than any human, regal and immovable as the ancient stone oak which his throne has been made to resemble.

He emits a stream of stern-sounding Elvish at Tony.

His queen is even more inhumanly beautiful than him and nearly as tall. She is so still that Tony could swear she's not even breathing.

You'll have to forgive my husband, she says, though her lips do not move and she makes no sound. In fact he speaks your tongue perfectly well. He thinks it sacrilegious for mortals' tongue to be heard in the Blessed Realm, though I have assured him it is not, and I ought to have a better idea of such things than he.

Okay that's creepy as fuck.

Are you going to translate what he said? he thinks in her direction, testing to see if she can actually read his mind.

Of course not. It was not, ah, particularly diplomatic. Let's see if he can't do better the second time.

"Mortal and guest," he says, with a snooty British accent that sounds a bit fake. "Trespasser in the Blessed Realm. Thou standest now before Elu Thingol, Lord of Doriath and of Tol Eressëa, High King of all the Elves of the Twilight, who hath gazed with his own eyes upon the Light of the Trees of Valinor ere the Sun and Moon were made. What hast thou to say for thyself?"

Tony ignores the pretentious titles and the archaic language and the claim to be older than the Sun.

"Uh, I can hardly be considered trespassing when I didn't mean to come here and still have barely any idea where I am. A few hours ago I thought he was a character in a book—" he gestures at Legolas—"and apparently they didn't make a movie of the book you're from, because I hadn't even heard of you."

"Yes, the accursed Kinslayer gave an old history to a mortal, and he translated it, and called our history his own invention, and apparently now it's become quite popular among the Men of Middle-earth. I had hoped that this would save me from the tedium of having to explain to future errant mortals the full import of their being suffered to walk in the land of the Powers. Apparently this is not the case."

"Uh, I remember Frodo getting on a boat at the end of Return of the King. I suppose this is where he was going?"

"Very good. But Frodo Baggins was the hero of the Third Age. He destroyed the Enemy at unimaginable cost to himself, such that there was nothing left for him but to come to the West or slowly die of despair. Who are you, to deserve the same fate?"

"I—" he pauses for effect—"am Iron Man."

"Yes, yes. And no doubt you consider yourself the hero of your own Age, with your own Fellowship to go along. But there's one difference between you and Frodo. You lost."

"Not yet.

"And at any rate, when I showed up here, I wasn't imagining it as a fucking reward. If I was brought here for any reason at all, Your Wise and Benevolent Majesty, it was probably to get your help. Speaking of which—this is the land of the gods, no? Where were they while we were out there getting our asses kicked?"

A look of recognition spreads across Elu's face.

"Oh," he says. "You're the new Eärendil. Allowed to come make a last, desperate plea for the aid of the Valar. I don't think it will do you any good, this time. The attack of the new Enemy slew half of the Powers as easily as it slew half of all Elves and Men."

Based on the panicked whispers that spread around the room, this probably wasn't widely disseminated information before.

"Nonetheless, you are beyond my authority. I am remanding you to the custody of the Valar, who brought you here, and must have some idea of your purpose if they did, or will punish you appropriately if they did not. Melian will escort you to them."

There is a flash of brilliant light, and then there is a woman—a goddess, probably—standing between Tony and Thingol. It is a provably true fact that she is the most beautiful being in the universe, though she isn't ostentatious about it: she's probably shorter than Melian, and not physically glowing in the sense that one could see by, and dressed in unornamented white. She does not need anything more. If she wore the fairest of jewels, the Silmarils of old themselves, their light would only seem to cast a shadow before her. But her eyes are the deep blue of late evening, and sparkle as though the host of the stars were only their reflection, and her skin shines as though all light in the universe were her creation. (It is.)

Looking at her is like looking directly at the Sun, but it's nearly impossible to look away. The memory of the Incarnates is too small to capture her beauty, and every moment one looks on her seems to be their first and their last. One might be content to stare at her for all the Ages of Arda.

Thingol gets up from his throne, kneels, and bows his head.

Okay, this new arrival must be really important. Tony does the same.

THERE WILL BE NO NEED FOR AN ESCORT FOR MY GUESTS, LORD ELWË. The sky seems to ring like a bell when she speaks.

Then she turns to Tony and smiles. RISE, TONY STARK. I AM VARDA ELENTÁRI, LADY OF THE STARS. COME, AND JOIN OUR COUNCIL.

Tony feels his heart stop for an uncomfortably long time. Long enough that, were he wearing his suit with vitals monitoring, FRIDAY would definitely be beeping at him right now. But he recovers, and rises to his feet.

YOU TOO, FINDARÁTO. She is speaking to the Noldo who was arguing with Legolas earlier, who had accompanied them to Thingol's court.

The world changes, and now Varda, Tony, and Findaráto are standing on a smooth hard floor that is neither metal nor stone nor glass, beneath a transparent dome. Based on the color of the sky beyond, they must be almost at the edge of space.

Tony walks to the edge of the room and looks down.

He's on top of a really high mountain. Its base lies nine miles below him, covered in equatorial jungle, but it extends up through cold forest, and alpine tundra, and everlasting ice, to an uttermost tower of stone in air so thin and cold that not even snow can form, and on that tower stands Ilmarin, mansion of Manwë and Varda, from which one can see the entire world.

He can see Tol Eressëa out to sea and far below him, in impossible detail, down to the smallest leaf, down to the cells that make up the leaves, and on scales smaller still. He can see the planet's curvature, easily, but he can see beyond the horizon, to the other side of the world. If he looks up he can see stars, thousands of light-years away, with planets around them, and on those planets, craters and continents and oceans and forests and individual trees—

He can see Earth, if he wants to.

He's afraid to look.

Varda looks at Tony playing with his new infinite-resolution vision, and laughs, a sound as though the crystal spheres of heaven had been made into wind chimes. IT'S COOL, I KNOW. TRY NOT TO GET LOST IN IT. WERE MY HUSBAND WITH ME, I COULD HEAR AS WELL AS SEE ALL THINGS THAT CAME TO PASS IN THE UNIVERSE. BUT— Her words fail, and she gestures to the two thrones of translucent crystal in the center of the room, and Tony remembers what Elu said about the Snap extending even to the Valar.