don't touch me

[lintamande]

Confirmation reaches them in the spring that Elwing of Sirion has the Silmaril.

It takes as long as the spring only because they weren't looking. They can stretch the oath that far, they can be disinterested in knowing - but now they know, and so there it is. Elwing of Sirion is twenty-three. Half-man, so fully grown. Sirion is a city of refugees. Elves and Men and, since there are Men, children. Elwing herself has infant children.

They debate whether to send messengers. Debating is allowed, even protracted debating. The Oath, these days, is loud in their minds, and louder when they're pushing it like this, but they drag out the debate for a few months. Messengers will probably be shot on sight. The last time Elwing of Sirion received news of the House of Fëanor it would have been the news that her brothers, twins, aged seven, had not survived the sack of Menegroth.

They send messengers anyway. The messengers are shot on sight. They have good armor, Fëanorian armor, and return home injured but not lethally. Maglor's songs no longer stitch them together. War makes you worse at healing. Maglor's songs are more powerful than ever - he can knock back a wave of approaching enemies, he can make a blade's next touch deadly, he can make them faster and more impervious to danger, but he can no longer do healing.

Maedhros, when he thinks about this, thinks that perhaps there needs to be part of you that is not broken for healing spells to draw on. Or perhaps the Enemy is amused to strip that away first. Perhaps the Enemy finds it suited to the theme as the Oath tugs and yanks and twists them into violence against the lands they once defended and the peoples they once sheltered.

They send messengers to Sirion again. The messengers deliver a plea for the Silmaril, an offer of anything at all in exchange. The messengers do not return at all.

The Enemy is many many hundreds of miles from here but at night Maedhros can hear him in his head. Is it so implausible that I really let you go? the Enemy likes saying. You serve me better free than you ever would have willingly.

The Oath allows them to work slowly. They begin planning the sack of the refugee camp even more slowly than the Oath allows, so slowly that its currents are constantly tugging at them. Any slower and the currents would erode all the things they care about which are not the Oath, and it would be a disaster to go to Sirion once they've been stripped of their capacity to care about anything that is not the Silmaril. So they do not hold out forever. But they work as slowly as they can.

Comments

[imeanforever]

"I don't know what the spectrum of commitments you'd be prepared to offer for that would be, but in principle you could get me considerably less hostile."

[lintamande]

"I plan to command the Valar and control this world. I have no particular designs on yours and am happy to grant you significant latitude if I could be confident you would not use it to work against me."

[imeanforever]

"I am opposed to torture and death in general, would like to go home eventually if there's a way to do that from here after all, hold up better psychologically given time to draw, want him to stop touching me..."

[lintamande]

He raises an eyebrow at Sauron, who does not take his hand off her shoulder. "It doesn't sound like we can be happy collaborators, then. Tell me, if you had the names of the Valar and ordered them to obey me, how would you expect that to go wrong from my perspective?"

[imeanforever]

If he understood orders perfectly he would have fucking qualified that for truth and therefore - "They could interpret your instructions. They could do things to avoid hearing them. They might have some way to break fairy control, yours over me or mine over them, because they're Valar. They could warn each other if I didn't speak to them all at once. They could render me unable to communicate before I finished the order."

[lintamande]

He nods. "Very well. Sauron, I think you owe someone the Silmarils. Kill him and bring them right back. Fairy, climb up here and sit where you can see, and then order all the orcs in this room to kill themselves. I shall feed you names."

[imeanforever]

Promise gamely attempts to climb. She is pretty bad at it. She falls.

[lintamande]

He picks her us, sets her level with his shoulder.

[imeanforever]

...well. She can see from there.

[lintamande]

And he can give her names.

[imeanforever]

And she can tell orcs to kill themselves.

[lintamande]

He gets bored before Sauron gets back. He tries lighting her on fire. That doesn't work. He tries crushing her. That doesn't work. This is intriguing. "Why can't I hurt you?"

[imeanforever]

"Because I know your name."

[lintamande]

"Hmm. Jump down from there."

[imeanforever]

She jumps.

[lintamande]

He picks her up and puts her back. "Could I order the orcs to injure you? Could I order you to injure yourself?"

[imeanforever]

"Yes."

[lintamande]

He feeds her more names, instead.

[imeanforever]

She is still under orders to tell the orcs to kill themselves if they're in the room.

[lintamande]

Sauron comes back. He has three Silmarils. Melkor stops feeding her names.

[imeanforever]

So she sits there.

[lintamande]

They confer for a moment. Sauron tests whether he can hurt her by breaking several bones, remotely, from where he's standing on the ground. Morgoth is not amused. He lights a section of the ground on fire and tells Promise to go stand there.

[imeanforever]

She goes. She screams.

[lintamande]

"Don't make noise," he says, and they confer a while longer.

[imeanforever]

She stops screaming.

Eventually there is not enough of her to be awake.