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 want to accomplish a lot of things. It seems like having Sauron around might make some of them more convenient but whatever Maedhros likes to call it I draw some distinction between fairy orders and mind control and I really don't like the idea of mind control even compared to people ceasing to exist."

[lintamande]

"I'm not sure being a prisoner in your own head while your body carries out someone else's will is even slightly better than changing someone's will. But if you'd rather kill him I have no objections."

[imeanforever]

"I've tried the first. Second scares me more."

[lintamande]

"I used to try to make decisions based on what scared me most. Then I learned I'm unusual."

[imeanforever]

"...I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take from that."

[lintamande]

"That you're probably also unusual and a world designed to your tastes in the naive sense wouldn't be designed to your taste in the broad sense of desiring that people get what they want."

[imeanforever]

"Point taken. I would still find it unsettling to have an actually-not-just-fairy-orders mind-controlled Maia following me around and do not prefer it, at least not if he's indifferent between that and death."

[lintamande]

"In that case just kill him."

[imeanforever]

"I guess," she sighs. It's not a very satisfying conclusion, but I don't think trying to lead him along a redemption arc would actually be satisfying either.

[lintamande]

All right, says Eru, sounding disappointed. Are you done already?

[imeanforever]

Done with...?

[lintamande]

Sauron. So it is time for me to put him in a black hole. You should ask for last words, it's more dramatic.

[imeanforever]

Okay then. Back into the fortress.

"Would you like to say any last words, and if so, what are they?" she asks Sauron.

[lintamande]

"If you think it will be helpful to him you should tell Maitimo that I was able to talk in his head at great range, he wasn't crazy. And that none of us can properly imitate the sensation of holding one's breath, in a hallucination, so if he is ever in doubt he can do that."

[imeanforever]

Promise relays this information to Maedhros by osanwë.

[lintamande]

That's interesting.

[imeanforever]

Technically I asked him what he wanted his last words to be and he could have wanted those to be them even if they weren't true, I can check.

[lintamande]

Please do.

[imeanforever]

"Is that true?"

[lintamande]

"Yes."

[imeanforever]

Confirmed.

[lintamande]

Thank you. Osanwë can apparently sound very brittle.

[imeanforever]

Promise regards Sauron thoughtfully. He probably picked those last words for a last-ditch attempt at evoking mercy, but they were genuinely helpful and everything -

...I don't think I'm going to get any less conflicted in any direction for the foreseeable future.

[lintamande]

It was a very short redemption arc, Eru says with satisfaction.

Sauron vanishes.

[imeanforever]

Well, as long as Eru's happy with it.

Okay, he's gone.