They win. It's ugly but they win. They spend a few exhausted weeks making sure they've gotten out everyone who they had a chance at, making sure people have food and clean water, singing until they are hoarse.

Then the King says he's going to Lórien. 

Want me to come with?

It'd be hard to explain.

Yeah. Okay. Let - let me know -

Certainly.

And he goes to Lórien, who gives him back his memories or purports to, gives him back his hand, heals the scars, and he is an exemplary patient, quiet and grateful and politely awed by Lórien, and then he asks for the portals.

The Valar demur.

He travels to Taniquetil and he pleads and he petitions and he makes friends and he finds angles and it is going to take years, because of course it will, so he goes home. Waves to his people with both hands, tries to hide everything that remains unfixed, everything he did not give Lórien leave to touch, certainly hides the doubt it was Lórien at all. Not all of his brothers believe it. The Noldor sing and grieve and at Elf-pace start to build a city. It's a short boat trip, shorter by air, so once everything is underway he goes back and he pleads and he petitions and eventually he gets somewhere.

The portals open. 

He goes back to Tirion and walks through them and - Kib?

!

I'm here I've been waiting where are you is the portal where it used to be?

Yeah - yeah, it is...

Okay just a minute -

She's still got her zebra, trots up thereupon. The zebra kneels to let her down and she slides off and beams up at him. "- hi."

Well.

"...hi," he says. "War's over, we won. I'm - I'm sorry we let you die - have you been okay -"

"I've been fine - how did I even die, I don't have that yet - how did you win?"

"It was complicated, took half a million servants and weapons my father developed - Aydanci helped him - Aydanci needs to know you're alive and alright, want to - send a servant through, that'll be fastest...you had a golem kill you when you were trapped and about to be captured. Would have been quick."

"- oh. Um, yeah, I'll get a courier -" She whistles, a courier lands on her shoulder, she writes up a letter - How's Findekáno?

He's okay. He's doing a lot of the heavy lifting on running the country for me, since I'm not - have you dreamed that yet -

Bits. ...Your hand's back.

The Valar are actually sort of competent within sufficiently narrow domains. 

Okay. Are my notes available, I want all my notes, dreaming things is so slow I know I'm missing huge chunks of everything -

Unfortunately most of them got destroyed when the continent sunk, I'm so sorry, I think Aydanci might have a few and we can at least tell you everything that happened - Lórien also might be able to put all your memories back, he did it for me -

...worth a try. The continent sunk?

When the Enemy died.

Bleah. Well. At least he's dead.

Indeed. Uh, do you want to sit down somewhere and get - the history, at least, first...

Yeah! I have an apartment here, that work?

Um.

Yes.

She gets back on her zebra and stuffs the letter into the courier and sends it through the portal to get word to Aydanci and then directs her pet apartmentward.

She has not yet remembered that the majority of her boyfriends are gay. He should say something. Instead he just watches her, looking for Kib, and -

Well, she moves like a clumsy person - like he did before he got his ring -

- uses her face like he used his, looks at her surroundings the same way, she's got an accent in Quenya which isn't the same one he had but she does use his phrasing -

- here's her building, she slides off her zebra and tells it to go home and shows him upstairs.

We have magic for the clumsiness. A ring. Should have brought it with me, I'm sorry, that was thoughtless.

I figured it was something like that but he was never actively thinking about it being the ring in any dreams I got!

Yeah there's a lot that it looks like hasn't come through yet.

He sits down.

...uh, like what.

She sits too.

Don't know where to start. You got that in Valinor we - had to be a secret, because Elves aren't supposed to -

Not as such, actually, I picked that up off the Little Valinor infosheet and from how people here talked about Kib.

Okay. So - Kib grows up here, gets eaten by a weird snake, lands in Valinor, meets me. I am horrified about the babies dying and we start brainstorming things to do about it. He starts writing a scriber for the palace libraries, working with my father on understanding mortality, playing games of Governor with me. I liked him a lot. I told Findekáno about cute things he did, constantly. 

There was a party, in public, lots of people, and he said he was gay, and I snapped at him that that was awful and he'd better not hit on anyone there - I am, um, also gay, but was terrified people'd guess... and then we avoided each other miserably for a week until Findekáno decided to ask him out- 

Wow, I know you recovered from that somehow but I don't have anything on how it happened.

Findekáno! Asked Kib to a concert, suggested to him that he demand an apology from me - Kib'd thought I had set him up for it on purpose, in addition to being homophobic and rude about it - Kib was annoyed when he realized I was the boyfriend Findekáno'd occasionally mentioned, felt like he'd been acquired for me, but we all talked through it...

Awww we're adorable.

Yeah it was - it was really nice. And then after a while Kib dreamed he'd had a husband, he woke up between us in bed one morning and said 'I'm married' and wanted to go find him, so we did, and he was - very unhappy, very alone...

I remember a snatch of having only recently found him. Has he been holding up, the last couple decades...?

Working himself half to death but let us take enough care of him that he did not actually die.  Barely talks to anyone. He'll definitely cry on you a lot.

Helped, like I said, kill the Enemy. He killed the disease that got you the first time, too.

My poor Aydanci.

...so when you say you are also gay, um, how gay.

I could ask Lórien to fix it.

You died for us. I don't - I'm sorry -

That doesn't mean you have to go get mind-controlled for me and what about Findekáno!

I can - barely let him touch me anyway, I'm kind of - not really okay -

I do remember that towards the end of Kib's life it was not so much a touching thing. That he kind of thought about a lot.

Yeah. Still don't - still don't know if anything's real but I'm acting like it is.

Anyway it doesn't seem like it makes much difference if you aren't touching me because you're gay when anyway you wouldn't be because you're traumatized and one of these options involves mind control and being horrible to Findekáno and -

- him too?

Yeah.

Aydanci's reincarnated, is he still -

Kib thought his sexuality might be a persistent personality trait. He'll - yeah, definitely -

He thought, you don't know?

It's not like we talked about it but I'm as sure as I am of anything that he'll just - just want you back - wish we could be the same way - 

Do you want a hug or would that make things worse -

Aydanci'll probably be here soon you don't have to.

I was not under the impression that I had to.

I would like a hug if that's okay.

Yeah -

He is going to have to move or she won't believe him about the 'yeah' -

He stands up and extends his arms -

And she goes over and leans uncertainly on his chest but doesn't actually wrap her arms around him.

Well, he'll wrap his arms around her. She's a human, she's fragile, he'll be gentle. I'm so sorry -

Sigh. It's not your fault.

I know, but still- Kib -

...it's Lu now but you can call me Kib if you want, I answer to it.

I'm so sorry we let you die, I'm so sorry we couldn't protect you better, I'm so sorry for everything -

Lean. Sigh. I'm sorry too, I don't remember what I'm sorry for but I'm sure there's something I'll be kicking myself about when I do.

That'd be very silly of you, you were brilliant - 

Wasn't brilliant enough to live. And now of all the stupid things to happen I'm a girl again...

You're alive and happy and okay again, we'd all much rather you be a girl than have gotten captured -

Sniffle.

Hugs.

I love you.

I love you too.

And now she is in fact crying on him.

We weren't sure you'd come back a second time at all, we weren't sure of anything, this is everything we could reasonably have hoped for it's okay -

Mmhm.

And yet, crying.

Yeah.

Eventually she slumps out of hug and sits on her couch and wraps her arms around her knees.

"I wonder if it'll just keep happening forever."

"Don't you dare do it again in case it happens to alternate, that'd be horribly cruel to your husband and it might not."

"I'm not going to go off myself and anyway it doesn't consistently alternate Aydanci was a boy twice in a row. But, I don't know, forever's a long time - especially if Lórien can put my memories all back -"

"Go find Aydanci go be okay forever's a long time so in a decade we can worry about it -"

Nod.

And he tells her the rest of the history from there.

She listens solemnly, matches it up to her bits-and-pieces, takes notes.

At some point he'll sit down next to her, put an arm around her. Keep talking.

She leans on him and keeps taking notes.

"Went to Lórien. Got help. Played nice, begged them to open the portals."

"They had to be begged?"

"The Valar kind of suck."

"I mean, I'm not surprised that they suck, but I'm a little surprised they suck in this specific way."

"They'd probably have done it eventually but I didn't want to wait several Years."

"Yeah, I'm going to want an anti-aging necklace in less than a decade."

"For sure. We've - still got Kib's."

"I bet Aydanci carries it around with him or something."

"Yeah."

"It's so weird remembering only little bits..."

"Yeah. Remembering that you love someone but not why..."

"I have bits of why, they're just all scattered around...

"I got a puppetable boat, went out and found the island. It's still there."

"Valian plants are very hardy."

"And soft."

"Do you have - Kib trying to talk to me after I was rescued -"

"Not right after, nothing for at least the first couple of months after that... or the rescue itself... some of the planning it, that I have."

"He was right to kill himself."

"Okay."

"Enemy can read through your memories, get everything you've ever experienced -"

She shivers.

"You're here, safe - he can never hurt you -"

Nod. Lean. "Love you," she murmurs. "- Kib thought he should've been able to prevent you getting captured, he kept ruminating on it even when he'd decided it was pointless to keep doing that -"

"In one sense anyone could have, in another sense no one could have - we thought we were being appropriately careful..."

"Well, I'm sorry anyway."

"Please don't be. I'm okay. I'm King and we won and everything's lovely." 

"You don't even think that really happened, do you?"

"Well. No."

"What would the point even be of this hallucination, it's not drawing you in or I'd be a boy again, it's not upsetting you or I'd be gone and all the storks in the world couldn't find a new incarnation of me..."

"Maybe Kib actually died and actually reincarnated and he's feeding me real content so he can - I don't know - impersonate me better -"

"Well, if it's real content you know time's passed."

"Or that he has foresight that still works once there's people with free will running around."

Sigh.

"It's okay. This is better than Angband even without believing it's real."

"Okay."

"Want to come - back with me - bet we'll meet Aydanci in transit -"

"You don't think we'd pass him...?"

"He'll be within osanwë range if we do."

"Okay, yeah, I'll pack up. Where've you all been living since the continent collapsed?"

"South. That one's still standing. We're building a city."

"Okay. I should probably just plan to move in, huh."

"You can do whatever you want - I bet Aydanci'd be happy to move back here if you'd prefer to live here..."

"I'm not really attached to the place and it'd probably be weird for Findekáno to visit and Aydanci's got a family."

"Okay. 

We'd both visit. Even if it raised some eyebrows. Just so you know - unless you don't want us to -"

"Why wouldn't I want you to?"

"If you preferred to - stop being in love with us -"

"...I mean, that is definitely not something I want to have to do once a week for the next three hundred years until the dreams stop, seems like a waste of time..."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault the dreams work that way."

"I am causing someone I love pain. Not having set up the mechanics of the universe that are making this a thing doesn't - change that -"

"Well - stop guilt tripping yourself about it or we'll be in a stupid feedback loop, okay? I love you and you're wonderful and I want to remember it all."

"Okay. I'll wait here while you pack - do you want me to sing -"

"Yeah. That'd be nice."

So he sings while she packs.

And she boxes up her most recent incarnation's worth of notebooks and some clothes and "I probably shouldn't bring Rainbow, huh? - The zebra."

"...we could get a big enough boat but if you mostly ride because you can't walk, you'll be able to walk..."

"Yeah. Rainbow was a present from my teacher when I was nine but I don't think I'm sufficiently sentimental to drag her across an ocean where she will be promptly redundant. I'm not sure what to do with her though."

"Can she take care of herself around here?"

"I'd have to take her a ways away from town and find her someplace to graze but yeah."

"We can do that."

"Or I could sell her, or maybe somebody in Valinor would want a pet zebra?"

"I'm sure lots of them would take very good care of it, at least - I can probably recommend someone who'll be a responsible zebra-owner -"

"I'll bring her as far as Valinor, I assume you don't have a grace ring waiting right there anyway and there are various reasons you should not carry me everywhere yourself."

"Yeah. Okay."

Lu nips out for more boxes, puts more things in them. "It'll be nice to have Charps for tedious chores, I couldn't remember enough to reinvent 'em..."

"It was the project of a decade, I would bet you'd need a lot to reinvent that. Aydanci has the notes for all - all his technical projects -"

"- all Aydanci's or all Kib's?"

"I'm pretty sure he also has Kib's. You can ask him."

"Stored separately from the personal notes?"

"Other people were doing the programming work, after Kib died, and we needed the technical notes."

"Makes sense."

"He was - you are - really gifted at it. So's Aydanci."

"This time I was doing less hard programming and more esoteric theory. Won an award for the cryptography result I stole from myself."

"Smart, makes your knowledge less redundant with what'll be trickling in anyway..."

"I wound up in the specialty when I was seven, but thank you anyway."

"In that case merely convenient. If there are resources you need from here I can ask Little Valinor for all their money..."

"They're doing useful things with all their money! And I haven't been freeloading off them and see no reason to start. I've got plenty of books, what else would I need I couldn't get across the portal?"

"Convenient servant kinds, I suppose, we've only got the two servantmakers."

"If you want to import some servants knock yourself out, I want a Charp but you can't actually get those here."

"I'll worry about that later."

"Okay."

Packing packing packing and then she is all done.

He will help carry things.

And they can load up Rainbow with a cart, and Lu directs Rainbow through the portal.

"Valinor looks different in sunlight."

"Yeah. 

Took the Valar a Year and a half to get us a sun and moon after the destruction of the Trees. Kib was - unimpressed."

"Yeah, I remember it being dark over a pretty long spread of time, putting shines everywhere so I could see..."

"Aydanci ran around with a cloud of them, it was adorable-" he sends it -

"Awwwww."

"He's going to be so happy to see you."

"And vice versa." Sigh. "The Little Valinor Elves said I hauled him over because he wouldn't be okay without me -"

"Hasn't been. But you have forever, now, no more Enemy..."

Nod.

"I think he'd much rather have come, anyway, to stop the Enemy."

Nod. "Half a million servants and you only had two makers, once Kib was gone..."

"They both worked very long hours. My sister was a good sport about it, we're lucky we had her."

"How's she doing?"

"Good. Haven't told her - anything - and she cares about Aydanci, and he's been - a mess - but we won, she was positively gleeful, I got healed and as far as anyone knows am entirely recovered..."

"Are me and Findekáno the only people who know better?"

"I think my parents and some of my brothers have their suspicions."

Sigh.

"It's really fine. It's a very nice cozy story. We won."

"Okay."

"Maybe Lórien can help with the memories."

"Should we go there next or find Aydanci first, d'you think?"

"Aydanci. Definitely."

Nod.

It is not very long before he's in osanwë range.

Maitimo will have to serve as relay for a frantic interrogation of whether Lu is okay and what she remembers and whether she is okay and where is she and is she okay and of COURSE it doesn't matter that she's a girl that's fine what matters is that she is herself and okay (she is okay, right).

He is happy to relay all of this. Especially that she's okay.

And then he is within visual range and promptly within sobbing-on-her range and he's just going to all but completely ignore the King while he holds his wife and finds that her grace ring is too big for her but it can go on her thumb and also the hugging and the sobbing.

Eventually Aydanci is coherent enough to agree that they should totally see if Lórien can catch her up.

So they head over to Lórien, who tries to restore all of her missing memories.

Nope.

"Suppose that'd be too easy. Sorry."

"I'll get them all back eventually." Sigh. Snuggling her Aydanci. "And people can fill me in on stuff I need to know, and at least you have the technical notes... let's go home."

They go home.

Where Lu has Aydanci show her around the city so she won't get lost, and is reintroduced to his parents and brother, and then she has a gap in which to find Findekáno.

Hey. Hugs. How are you doing?

Holding up okay. Hugs hugs hugs. How've you been?

Busy. I'm so glad you're okay.

Me too.

I have overheard four different people remark about how good it is that I'm a girl again and I don't want to want to hit them but I kind of want to hit them.

I'm sorry. 

Not your fault. I restrained myself to 'you sure seem to have found a silver lining in my dying and having to wait centuries to recover all my memories and my husband grieving for nearly two decades!'.

Squeeze. Good for you.

Sigh. Lórien can't put the memories back, Maitimo probably told you - so I'm going to carry on being in love with you, I could probably stop but I'd have to do ridiculous amounts of maintenance -

I'm sorry. Maitimo also probably told you he'd offered - if you want -

Headshake. Don't. I will complain and eventually I will run out of novel ways to complain and then I will stop and it's fine - I've got Aydanci and you've got each other and it's fine -

No, it's not, but it might be the best we can do.

Yeah.

Snuggles. Platonic snuggles.

Yeah. 

Have you thought about what you want to do? We can go back to the project of getting your world more resources - you didn't happen to hear about any other dimensional travellers, did you? -

The folks in Little Valinor are doing a decent job of nicening up the world given their constraints, you should probably interface with them rather than starting logistics over from nothing; I lived there for a bit, I'll help. And no, nobody else who got snaked has come back to tell the tale and I was keeping an ear out. I specialized in weird theory stuff this apprenticeship, I figure I'll catch up on my old work notes and go from there.

Sounds good. We have a lot of pieces to put back together before we set our sights higher.

Yeah. The city's going to be lovely.

It will be. And safe. War's over.

Aydanci told me about that, he was brilliant, I hope this is the last time he has to fling himself into that state to kill something that killed me though.

I very much hope so, yeah.

Nobody was there, were they? I don't have a lot of detail, just stuff he said somebody told him I'd said to tell him.

When you died? No. Just you and a Charp - it was quick - squeeze -

Mmhm. He's so leanable. Leaning happens. Sigh.

We were all the way across the continent - got back and they'd already buried you....

I'd be sort of tempted to go visit my grave but I suppose it's underwater.

It is. I'm so sorry - we should have seen it coming, he was sending things that were obviously weak at us-

Obviously weak...?

He sends a history of the war - we knew he had to be capable of more than that, we told ourselves he just wasn't very creative...

That doesn't mean you could've predicted him doing the exact thing he did, and I didn't have to be cornered like that either, that was a coincidence.

Might have been more than that, might have been going for you specifically...

Well, I don't remember being induced by anything in particular to go where I'd be cornerable but I suppose that's not useful information...

I mean he might have waited until you were cornerable to act.

Maybe, if he had a way of knowing where I was.

Shame that we killed them so thoroughly there was no real way to learn anything about their capabilities.

Shame, sure, could call it that.

I can't say I've lost any sleep over it. The world's safe. It was - 

- it was worth it -

Yeah.

You and Aydanci need anything to - settle back in - 

Nah, nothing like Elf-style vague socialism to make settling in simple.

We've got so many servants by now that even without the Valar no one really needs to work.

Even if anybody did need to work I somehow think I could go around obtaining goods and services without having to worry about how exactly I was going to pay for it right then.

Yes, you could definitely do that. Still. Let me know if you need anything, or want more of some conversation we had, or - something.

I'd like to be filled in on whatever you remember but without my notebooks I don't know much of what there is to ask for.

Uh. A lot. We probably spent the most time together in between the King getting captured and Aydanci growing up, that was - hard...

Yeah. I have a little bit of that.

He doesn't like being called Maitimo, refused to pick a nickname, but you stopped using it anyway - just so you know -

I did remember that, I have something where Kib caught himself right before saying it - I don't know why though -

Enemy liked it. As a bit of a joke, I think - Maitimo means 'beautiful' -

Oh.

Yeah.

Squeeze.

Why wouldn't he pick a nickname?

Thinks then the Enemy'll just poison that one.

Ah.

I think it'll get better eventually.

In like a thousand years?

Yeah.

Sigh. Better than nothing.

Kib basically rounded it off to 'forever' but - it is better. We will still have forever after that.

Though.

Yep here I am inconveniently feminine it's grand.

I was thinking it was more our sexualities that are inconvenient than your gender.

Your sexualities work fine when I am not a girl. Also if you liked girls then back in Valinor you'd probably never have hit on Kib, would you? But yeah, everyone should totally be whatever one would call Aydanci, he's not even just bi he's something even more sensible than that.

He has the additional sensible feature of not wanting people without a good reason, right? Well, if Maitimo or I'd been at all able to make it work with girls we'd both have been married with children by the time we met you, so.

Not wanting people without a good reason and gender is not the only thing that would be irrelevant. I asked him what if I came back as a giant praying mantis and he said "well. There would be a learning curve. And it might be a problem if you were the kind of praying mantis that eats their mate."

Awwww.

I know, right?

I'm really glad you have him.

I'd be taking the whole mess a lot worse if I didn't. But I do and I'll be okay.

And so will he. He needs you, you know.

I know. He's been very put-upon and I'm gonna try to make up for that.

We have all the time in the world.

Which is pretty swell.