"To do what?"

"They can create the paradise for our people that we dreamed of—not only on Endórë, but on all the worlds. There are millions, apparently, and that's just the inhabited ones. There are billions more that are empty but habitable—although the Stones could, in theory, make even more.

"They can also, as we have seen, destroy the Valar altogether. With far less collateral damage than our previous contingency plan."

"Are you sure that's a good idea? Collateral damage aside."

"I still remember the words they spoke to us. On the House of Fëanor the wrath of the Valar lieth from the west unto the uttermost east. I still remember what they did to us, for their words came true against all our wills. I intend to make them regret it."

"I concur."

"I think this foolish, but if we come into a situation where it is not—"

"Now for the second item of business. Here are people supposedly from another world, who resemble Secondborn in every way except that they possess magic even greater than ours. In the old days I would have called it a trick of the Enemy, and though I do not think the new Enemy is a twelfth as crafty as the old, I am still suspicious.

"Nelyafinwë, you have a better eye for this than I ever did. I default to suspicion, and we can't afford to do that right now. I need you to find out whether they can be trusted. No, more than that—I need you to find out why they're here. What their true intentions are—this man Leareth runs an organization which could not possibly have been built in the aftermath of Thanos' attack, and yet has no other apparent purpose. I do not think they came here only to fight Thanos. Probably they have intentions for the Infinity Stones, which cannot be allowed to conflict with our own. Find out what they are."

"I can do that." He really, really doesn't want to; he wants to retire from politics and subterfuge, and spend his second life managing his mother's tiny village of artists. But he will.

"Very well. Dismissed."

Shavri sits under a tree near the singers, and listens to their song for...a very long time. It's sort of hard to keep track of time, here; she's not sure if that's a magic thing about Valinor, or just an effect of everything being suddenly peaceful and beautiful and soothing when, for so long, her life has been everything but. 

She thinks of Jisa and cries, a little, but less than she would have expected. She had been sort of worried the tears were a bottomless well and would never stop. 

Eventually she picks herself up and heads back to Fëanor's house to the guest wing and goes to sleep. 

Leareth is running a lot of sleep debt. And Valinor is soothing and peaceful and it's the first time since the Snap that he's slept without nightmares. He stays asleep for a while, even by human and definitely by Elf standards.

Eventually he wakes up, still relaxed but no longer drowsy, and sits on the side of the bed for a few minutes, trying to assess how he's feeling now. 

...Hopeful? Which is almost more painful than the flat resignation before, but still. 

It was hard to feel any positive emotions about Captain Marvel's revelations to him, at the time. Learning that he had potential allies in this fight was drowned out by the realization that the deaths hadn't numbered in millions after all, but in trillions. 

Here and now, though, it's finally sinking in that he's here because they have a plan. Because, even if they can't undo the damage - and maybe they can - they can at least try to stop Thanos from 'fixing problems' ever ever again. 

- given the stakes, it's very important to understand who his allies are. Which he hasn't been trying to do so far, not really. 

Does he feel really to handle those stakes? No. Not really. He's terrified - which seems like the only sane response to this, really. Especially the part where when one of the Valar tried to kill Thanos by supernova-ing a star, Thanos escaped with the help of an...evil god? Leareth - should probably have asked a lot more questions at the time. 

Fine. So he's scared. He's - upset, at the deaths, at the pointless WASTE of it all. And, lurking behind that, he's angry, though he doesn't really want to lift the lid on that. 

Well. That's where his emotional processing here is at right now, then. Probably doesn't make sense to try to batch it all now, and it wouldn't work anyway. For now, there's work to do.

He slips out of the guest wing and goes looking for one of the Elves, and also for something to eat. 

Everyone else—Shavri, Tony, Bruce, Fëanor, plus five more elves, including a dark-haired one he hasn't seen before—is at the huge table in the great hall, most of the way through an extravagant breakfast.

"The wizard lives!" announces Tony, and several people at the table laugh. "Come on, the food's still hot; I think it's magic."

He gestures to the only empty seat at the table, which is between him and the red-haired elf with the piercing eyes.

:I apologize for my lateness: 

Leareth takes the seat offered and collects some food for himself. He's still unsmiling, his expression very controlled, but he looks much less tired and also more - actually present in the room with them, than when they last spoke with him. 

Conveniently, eating doesn't interfere with Mindspeech. :So, what are our research plans for today?: Leareth asks the others. 

Well, there goes his chance to squeeze some information out of Leareth. He's assuming it was intentional on Leareth's part.

(He maintains his mental shields very carefully, in such a way so that to an untrained observer it looks like he doesn't have any, and he deliberately leaves that thought on the outside, to see how Leareth will react.)

"I'm going to attempt to produce Pym particles with my particle collider. If that's successful, I should be able to make jewels for each of us that can replace the red fluid, but are fully reusable."

"What he said."

"Unfortunately this house is thousands of years old and doesn't have decent computers, but I've remotely devoted all the free ones in Formenos to the geometry problem. I expect a solution within a few hours."

:Oh, good. It sounds like we should soon have a solution for both components of the time travel challenge, then? I can help you check the computers' solution: he adds to Calanáro. 

He does not react visibly at all to the red-haired elf's deliberately exposed thought, mostly because it's not a surprising thought to him in any way. (Leareth is also NOT an untrained observer, and absolutely does not believe that this is all that the Elf is thinking.) 

Shavri does blink in surprise, but her eyes are fixed on her plate and she hasn't been participating in the conversation at all, so this isn't very notable. 

"The hope is to attempt a trial today. Calanáro has already volunteered to be the first test subject."

"It's possible the solution will be several gigabytes of data, but your help will be appreciated if it turns out to be something that can benefit from manual checking."

Maitimo can't read Leareth's mind, but he can read his body language well enough to realize that a battle of mind-reading games is not going to be fruitful. This is useful information in itself, though not the information his father wants. He leaves all this deliberately exposed as well.

Leareth is kind of appreciating this Elf! 

He, in fact, doesn't want to play mindreading games right now either. It's hard enough trying to focus on just the research work, when every other sentence reminds him of someone who's dead or something that's lost. It's not even very informative, since all he can read is what Maitimo wants him to know.

Almost certainly they don't want him dead right now, which is the part that matters. Leareth folds away his Thoughtsensing and stops bothering to skim surface thoughts at all. 

:All right. I may not be useful for much of the preparation today, then. I definitely wish to observe the trial itself, to find out how it shows up to our mage-sight and whether my magic can interact with the process: 

He asks some questions about the trial, but tries to show in his body language that he's not opposed to the red-haired Elf talking to him directly, if he wanted to do that instead of sneakily leaving some of his thoughts out in the open. 

When they're done with the breakfast, Fëanor leads the research team toward the forbidden south wing of the house. Meanwhile, two of the elves who aren't involved in the research begin to clean up the dishes. The dark-haired one that Leareth hadn't seen before today is singing a rousing song in his own language as he does so. (In fact Maglor is attempting a Quenya translation of "That's What Bilbo Baggins Hates", a song which, to his knowledge, was never actually sung by any member of the Company of Thorin Oakenshield.)

The door to the south wing is made of heavy steel and has a strange, faceted panel beside it. Fëanor touches one of the Silmarils to the panel, and the door slides open for the first time since the rising of the Sun.