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

[lintamande]

"What? No, I don't have the right to withhold anything from him, there's just stuff I'll be happier if he doesn't think to ask. He probably won't."

[imeanforever]

"...I could make it sound like it was about me."

[lintamande]

"When I said "I don't have the right" I didn't mean "I can't get away with". But thank you."

[imeanforever]

"Why wouldn't you have the right?"

[lintamande]

"He's my King. He's my father. You have neither, it's a little hard to explain."

"Promise," says Maedhros' boyfriend, "would you go change the orders for me? Maitimo does not understand that he is allowed to want things that don't serve big worldly ambitions."

[imeanforever]

Promise glances between them uncertainly and sets down her pile of leaves and flies Angbandward.

[lintamande]

Fëanor is talking about current and voltage with Thauron.

[imeanforever]

She contemplates wordings, then remembers Sauron can do the telepathy thing. Inconspicuously as possible, omit from your remarks details about how you tortured people and the fact that I made this update. Melkor gets a copy too, she's assuming he's next.

[lintamande]

Fëanor does, eventually, get around to asking "what else do you know that'd be of interest to me?"

"Your son is in love with Nolofinwë's," Thauron says, "and has and would choose him over you, your mother swore to kill you as a child, your only grandchild disowned his whole family, Elwing of Sirion leapt off a cliff after she lost the Silmaril, Elu Thingol regarded you as a pathetic waste of your father's line, the Silmarils will burn your hands, most of your children do not love you -"

"What's my fathername?"

"Curufinwë", Thauron says, and falls silent.

Promise? I think we're ready to dispose of this one.

[imeanforever]

You're done already? I was expecting you to be there for weeks, she says from out where she has been accumulating leaves.

[lintamande]

I am a fairly fast learner.

[imeanforever]

If you're sure.

I think we are out of uses for Sauron now.

[lintamande]

He could have a redemption arc, Eru says.

[imeanforever]

How would you go about doing one of those?

[lintamande]

I would strip him of his powers in the hope that he would be humbled and that, if not, he could not do harm. I would put him into a form that inspires pity - perhaps that of a small child - and give him reasons to pursue understanding of the wrongs he did and opportunities to try to right them.

[imeanforever]

I am fairly sure he does not strictly require magical powers in order to do harm.

[lintamande]

We could figure out what he does require! If he does harm through talking he could lose the ability to talk. And so forth.

[imeanforever]

So you want to metaphorically turn him into a frog.

[lintamande]

I want him to have the chance to seek a better path.

[imeanforever]

Does it seem at all likely that he will do that?

[lintamande]

You have messed up all the likelihoods. You are going to have a strange and varied history. There are lots of worlds where he brings the world more good than harm, and some where he regrets the harm.

[imeanforever]

Do you mean there are a bunch of Saurons in various worlds or that this is just the distribution of futures you observe in potentia and you can't tell which one is going to happen or what?

[lintamande]

The latter is much closer to what I mean. There are no other worlds with Saurons in them.

[imeanforever]

What proportion is 'lots'?

[lintamande]

One in ten, perhaps.