"They didn't just straight up give her to her dad because orcs. Love. Babies."

" - okay -"

Protective snuggling of smol Kat.

Unhappy Elf. 

"If you don't believe me ask your brother what he thought of - whose face was he using in - the hallucination with the - should I not tell you this -"

"I believe you and no you shouldn't."

Nod.

"She's mine."

"You brought us Maitimo, you can have whatever you want that doesn't endanger us."

"No I can't."

" - would you not have come here if you'd anticipated we wouldn't have sex with you."

"I would've come here if I thought you'd set my hair on fire once a week but I thought this was not your standard and anyway that's not what you said."

"It's not sufficient but it's necessary. And - sorry, I know it's important to you, to Elves 'you can have whatever you want' does not mean 'you can have sex with whoever you want' -"

"Well, sure, but if you're fundamentally not interested you could've said that any time."

"If we'd met under happier circumstances I'd been delighted. Under the extant circumstances I am fundamentally not interested."

"Oh."

"Let me know if you need anything."

"Mmhm."

He feels a little bad. He leaves. 

He sings to Maitimo.

He's done with everything that could be life-threatening and growing his hair back out and keeping everything else stable pending more direct attention once his hair's done. He teases his brothers. He watches his brothers carefully - the Enemy's acting was never quite good enough, though it had been getting better.

"I," he says to Macalaurë, "endured numerous constructed scenarios in which our cousins were here and angry at us."

"I'm delighted to reassure you that's not so."

"Because they'd crossed the Ice. Every time. There's scenarios where Thingol was at war with us over Alqualondë and scenarios where he was at war with us over something stupid someone said and scenarios where he wanted to be bribed and scenarios where he wouldn't talk to us at all. But whenever the cousins featured it was because they had crossed the Ice. As opposed to sometimes building boats or sometimes finding a passage down south or sometimes getting ejected by the Valar - who did after all exile us -"

"Your point?"

"Check."

"- how -"

"The palantirí aren't good enough?"