"As you like."

"Sometimes it bothers me that on an emotional level I honestly don't care about the Ice and Alqualonde. I mean, yes, those things were terrible, I know this, but when they're brought up my emotional reaction is 'ugh is this person going to try to manage who I'm friends with' instead of 'that sure is something awful the Feanorians did' and at the very least this is not remotely fair to the people who were genuinely harmed by those things and have every right to bring it up around me without risking my accidentally belittling their suffering."

"Can't help you there. I have the same reaction, except with Alqualondë there's also everyone we lost and still miss and cannot talk about..."

"...I sort of feel similarly about the collateral damage from when my mom went after the guy who killed her mom. If I have something in my head that just--turns off caring about terrible things when someone I care about did it, that's...worrisome."

"Would you feel that way if you were reading a book and stumbled across a eulogy written for one of them? Or is it just that when someone confronts you with it as a reason you're wrong to love someone -"

"--It bothered me the right amount when you told me about your cousin's wife missing her daughter's childhood. I don't have an off switch for empathy in my brain, thank Aten."

"Just defensiveness when it's used against people you care about, which makes perfect sense."

"Yeah. If--if you want to talk about the people you lost at Alqualonde--well, I think you might know me well enough by now to tell I won't mind at all."

"I do. I - maybe when we're a bit closer to getting them back."

"How likely is it that people are going to yell at me for bringing back those people in particular, and do you think it would be...politically expedient...to claim something like that I asked you for a list of soldiers and then didn't check to make sure they had all died in battles on this continent?"

"I think that most people realize their grievance should be with the people who gave the orders, not the ones who followed them, and of course lots of our dead at Alqualondë were children, so bringing back Noldorin dead from the fight wouldn't be bad-"

"Children?"

"What have you been told about what happened?"

"People died, it was awful, it was you guys' fault, everyone who died on their side is probably alive again by now."

"I certainly hope so. And expect so.

There's no way out of Valinor. I'm not sure if it's deliberate or an unintentional oversight - they forget the limitations on incarnate beings, they might not have realized that we couldn't cross the Ice. When Morgoth declared war, killed my grandfather, killed the Trees, and fled for the Outer Lands, we wanted to go after him. We wanted to go fast, because we figured he'd kill everyone here and if we arrived in time we could be reinforcements to them instead of having to get a foothold on a  conquered continent. Plus, you know, keeping anyone out of the Enemy's hands -

The Valar said no, bad idea, you can't take him and you'll die trying. My father said 'then we will fucking die trying' - it was more eloquent, actually, but. We went for the Ice. Scouted it. There was no way across. There was no light in the world and we were eating through our food supply and we went to the harbor city of Alqualondë and we asked if they would join us for the war. They said no. We asked if we could borrow their boats for the trip out of Valinor. They said no. We asked if they would help us make our own boats. No. Teach us how? No. 

They said if we waited our hearts would cool and we'd see the folly of our plans and we'd stop making trouble and go home. I think if they'd seen our determination only strengthening with time they might have changed their minds, but every week we waited was how many dead? We had no idea.

My father said we'd steal the boats. Go in, move everyone on and out, quickly and cleanly as possible. It went well for the first few boats - we were loading civilians and supplies on them, it wasn't a military operation, there were children on some of the boats - and then the alarm went up. They raced to the shore with bows and fishing spears and - I honestly don't know who opened fire first, no one does, I would tell you - they would have killed us all but Fingon arrived on the scene, saw a fight ongoing, and stepped in to help us, and by the end of it all of them and half of us were dead on the shore. And then the god of the sea, angry with us, swallowed some of the ships. And then the Valar Doomed us."

"I don't really regret it. Or - only the way I regret every orc we kill out there. War is awful and this war is the awfullest of wars but I am going to save my regrets for situations where I had more choices than 'sit and do nothing' or 'try to do something'."

"Yeah, no, that was not me being horrified at you, that was me being horrified for you." Her hands clench into fists. The Valar. Are going. Down.

"Ice was actually our fault, that one I do regret."

"Sometime closer to when I think I can pull off resurrection I should overfly the Ice looking for corpses. Repairing frozen bodies should be easier than constructing new ones."

"Good idea."

"Why did you do it?"

"Having two factions that hated each other and couldn't coordinate seemed like a recipe for disaster. Theirs contained a bunch of members who had said they were only crossing so they could avenge Alqualondë by stopping us. So my father thought we'd cross, fight the war with fewer numbers but no politics - and you can't imagine how much he hated politics, and how much it distracted him from what he actually needed to do, which was invent something that could take down Morgoth - leaves them in Valinor, but defeating the Enemy mattered more - we did not expect that they'd attempt to cross the Ice."

"Okay. That makes sense."

"If we had we'd have - we didn't want them dead, we just didn't want them in our way. Maedhros is the only one who saw a way for them to not be in our way, and it was surrendering the crown and my family's claim to Finwë's line, my father could not have brought himself to do it..."