"This morning. I'll have someone meet us with food in your room. I'm sorry, I should track that too. Three times a day?"

"Ideally, but if I have a choice between missing a meal now and then and killing a giant fucking dragon thing, or not doing that, it's okay if I don't get three meals absolutely every day."

"Noted. I can have people bring you things you can eat without looking at them and with at least one hand free, if that helps."

"Noted. Also, holy shit, that was a giant fucking dragon thing, do I even want to know where he got it."

"We don't really know. He creates them. I don't know the process at all, and Maedhros might but is unreliable on questions about the inner functions of Angband."

"I don't think I'd want to know that badly anyway."

"I don't think it causes him any pain to talk about it. Or - not more than it causes him to talk about the weather."

"Well, yes, but I can only carry around so much rage at any given time. Venting it on highly murderable servants of the Enemy helps, but I half think I'd explode like a Balrog if I actually had to hear him talk about it in that tone of voice that means that everything is so terrible forever that this doesn't stand out."

"In that case don't ask, yeah. Do I need to supervise you eating? Do I need to find someone who can give you hugs and so forth until we retrieve your sister?"

"Please don't try to retrieve her. I can go visit her and she's doing good work where she is, and it's far more efficient to have us in two different places. I don't require supervision while eating, and I would absolutely love a hug from anyone who genuinely wanted to give me one, but if someone would only be doing it to keep me in good working order, then don't bother. And if the contents of this conversation were going to lead you to tell him that it would be for the best if he started pretending to be okay--please, please don't."

"He told you to get out of a fight that you could plausibly handle because in expectation it wasn't worth it and you listened and left. I am pretty sure that is his absolutely favorite character trait in people and the one that inclines him least to pretend for their sakes. And I would be happy to give you a hug it's just not in the core don't-let-the-only-people-who-can-fix-things-work-themselves-to-death skillset and I often end up leaning on Huan."

"...I could definitely use a hug."

He gives her a hug. He is careful not to touch her hair, but it is otherwise a very forceful hug.

She is maybe burrowing a little. "I keep telling myself I'll adjust," she says. "But I don't--I've always wanted for the world to be okay and for everyone to be okay and I knew that was never going to happen--my mother's parents died when she was fifteen," she says. "They were murdered, and she was kidnapped, and the man who did it forced her to learn magic that she had an aptitude for but no resistance to. And you know what? She got away from him, and killed him with it, and she married my father, and she had my sister and I, and she's okay now. But even if resurrecting humans suddenly became possible, and my grandparents came back to life right this minute, Odette Eisenstern and Iakovah Lehnsherr would still have missed the rest of their daughter's childhood. That's something that cannot be fixed, ever. And that's always bothered me. It's such a little thing, comparatively! But I cannot remember a time in my life when--when I wasn't just sad about it sometimes. And this is so much worse, so profoundly worse, and--I tell myself, it's only been centuries, give him millions of years, billions, maybe someday he'll be okay again. But I don't know. And it will always have happened. You know when I first got here he expressed concern over how I'd handle a battlefield and honestly killing things is maybe the thing about this whole situation I've dealt with best."

He holds her closer. "You know, I lived in a place that was perfect and nothing ever ever went wrong and everyone was okay. I - don't miss it. I don't think Maedhros misses it, even. I don't really believe in perfect things, or irrevocably broken ones. My brother is a silly idiot who plays his life at too many removes from it and we love him and he loves us and he can get happier when things get better, like the rest of us, but there's no searing flaw in the world because worlds just kind of are, and people just kind of carry on. The Enemy is pretty terrible and it is pretty great that you are tearing him apart. But a world can't be irrevocably tainted, and people can't be irrevocably broken, and it will always have happened but that won't always be a painful thought. The happiness that hurt people feel is the same as the happiness that whole people who live perfect lives feel, there's no tragedy in it.

On death I agree with you entirely.  Or, agree with the thing you just said."

"I love my mother so much and I would never replace her with a version of her who had never been hurt like that," she says. "She wouldn't be her, not really. Which thing did I just say about death, that it's bad and it sucks that dead people are missing out on their loved ones' lives?"

"Yes."

"Yep." Oh hell don't think about Feanor right now you're trying to feel better. "I should probably feel guilty or something about all the Enemy's minions I've been killing. I didn't even check if the dragon-thing was a person or not. I don't, though."

"Orcs are in constant pain when they're alive. Everything else is a Maia and technically doesn't die, just can't reassemble a form for a couple thousand years. I don't think 'should feel guilty' makes much sense, well, ever. The way of thinking about people where if they don't have guilt they'll do bad things - I don't think it works. And in your case it is obviously not applicable, even if it ever were. So you should feel - whatever you want. Whatever you do. Your life isn't a morality play for someone else's edification, you're the one who has to feel whatever you think you should be feeling."

"I mean I'm concerned that my not feeling guilty might be a bad sign for me psychologically," she clarifies, "not that I'm somehow obligated to feel it. But thank you." She thinks for a moment and winces. "Um, I get in...moods, sometimes, and the most benign form of the mood is crying on someone, and, um, I could totally see myself getting worked up enough about Maedhros to find a random wall and punch it until my knuckles cracked with the hand he was missing until I fixed it. It's less likely, now, but. If this happens it's a bad sign and you should probably stop me."

"Noted. And, what, give you a hug?"

"Yeah. Um, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do this if I weren't a good enough mage to fix it, after, but it's still a bad sign."

"Hurting yourself because you deserve to suffer because you aren't God yet is a dangerous way to feel," he agrees. "I am happy to hug you and prevent you from doing that though obviously I cannot actually stop you."

"The point is less that I deserve to suffer and more that the world is already so terrible that it doesn't really matter, but that...doesn't actually make it better. Anyway I seem to have myself pretty well convinced that you're allowed to boss me around for self-care stuff, so that's good."

"There's a story I think you might like, because the people you remind me of like it. A path had been built in Valinor, through a grass field, and when there was a rainstorm worms would crawl up onto the cobblestones and when the rain ended they would be stuck and bake there in the heat of the Trees. And in that area lived three brothers, and they would walk the path to go get berries. 

The youngest brother was walking along the path one morning after a storm, and he saw the worms, and he started pulling them off the path and putting them back in the grass so they'd live.

Along came the second brother. 'That's kind of you,' he said, 'but foolish; there are thousands of rainstorms, and thousands of worms, and thousands of paths. You could do this all day for all the Ages of Arda, but what difference would it make?' And his brother picked another worm up off the path and put it in the grass and said 'makes a difference to this one'. 

And his brother was moved, and started helping.

And along came the third brother. 'That's kind of you,' he said, 'but foolish; there are thousands of rainstorms, and thousands of worms, and thousands of paths. You could do this all day for all the Ages of Arda, but what difference would it make?' And his brothers both shook their heads and said 'makes a difference to this one'. And he said 'sure, but we can do so much better than that! What if we made paths out of ceramic instead of stone, would that change worms getting trapped after rainstorms? What if we made holes in the tiles of the path so they could get back into the ground? If we start now, we can have a hundred tile types designed and put them out in the next rainstorm and see which kind keeps the worms safe on their own, without any need for intervention.'

And after a year of hard work they replaced all the paths in Valinor and then rainstorms were fine for worms.

The first part of the story is supposed to have the moral that even when things are terrible, good is always better than bad, happiness is always better than sadness, everyone always still matters. The second part of the story is supposed to have the moral that when things are terrible actually you should rip the universe apart at the roots and fix it. But I don't think it's supposed to cancel out the first."