"I have a wild guess that sadly there's no safe way to test. I was - thinking about - how I bet Eru hadn't engineered marriage for the good of Quendi at all, that he'd probably engineered it for tragedy just like every other fucking thing, that - the thing I actually thought of as important, the thing that mattered to me - wasn't a thing a god could hand down. 

I want to have a gay couple that actually wants to be married try the same thing and see if it works for them too or if it was a one-off."

Suddenly there are tears in his eyes. “That is - approximately what I have wanted to tell you all this time. It was hard to convey. Anyway, you could in fact inform a gay couple and have them test in once they are back in Arda, I assume you know people.”

"Yeah." Faint smile. "I know people. But it does seem like the kind of advice you might not want to take from someone everyone knows is literally working with Sauron on bringing about the ruination of the world."

"True." Telumë smiles back, it's not an uncomplicated smile but - there's still a crumb of happiness to be found, even here. He feels shaky and almost dizzy and weirdly exhilarated from it. "Gods. The lives we live. I still like you, even with...everything." 

"I'm glad. - I am aware that it's also, uh, distressing and somewhat violating to be married against your will when you're not a Quendi and not a prisoner and I'm sorry."

"It is not ideal. It is definitely very inconvenient. If I could turn back time and not make that mistake again I would, for many reasons. However, I will be significantly less distressed about it once you are less miserable. Only partly because whenever you are miserable I get to know all about it." 

"Even if it hadn't happened - I don't really think you can keep me like this. If there weren't a war on, maybe."

"No. I think we had not really realized how damaging it would be, and also...were not thinking longer-term, before. I actually had a very low expectation on getting you out alive." A little half-shrug. "Also the specific precautions were mostly figured out by Jisa and Stef and probably others in Arda, without my involvement. I - know you better, if I had needed to reason through it myself I might have predicted it more." 

- complicated bundle of emotions but want is in there pretty prominently. 

(The Thoughtsenser or Mindhealer listening can tell that he is thinking that if he wins he's not going to treat Telumë like this at all.)

Telumë can feel the emotional part of it, obviously. He takes a slow breath in and lets it out. "I apologize for this, although the fact that I am a person without any scruples is hardly news to you. Anyway. If the letters are ready to go then I had better pass them along." 

"Mmhmmm."

Vanyel,

I'd appreciate it if you could drop by soon to talk, after making sure these letters to my father and Findekáno made it to the right place, preferably without my father being aware there is a letter to Findekáno. Findekáno and I have been in a romantic relationship for the last hundred Years. My father doesn't know and while at this point I'm pretty decided on telling him after the war right now would for several reasons be a particularly bad time and manner for him to find out. 

Some of those reasons are obvious but one is very not-obvious! At least I hope you are not going to tell me and Telumë it was obvious because then we're going to feel very stupid. On two occasions while I have been here, we had sex. On the second one it caused a one-way marriage bond of the form that Quendi usually develop when a man and woman first are intimate. I am aware (and Telumë is aware) that this looks really bad. It is not great and probably when you come talk to us we can get into more detail about what parts of it were obviously mistakes even before they happened, but it is not as bad as it looks. I have a lot of complicated feelings but a prominent one is that it's very annoying that everyone's going to lose their mind about this, which made me very happy, and not about the general conditions of my captivity, which have made me very miserable. Telumë and I think that I should go back to Arda at this point, unless my father disowns me, which - well, we'll see, but if we manage the thing where he does not learn of the letter to Findekáno I would bet against it. 

I think I am meaningfully of sound mind and I know it mattered to Telumë what I wanted. I am aware this was really stupid anyway and Telumë is bracing himself for you to show up and yell at him and probably that's a good idea, not the yelling specifically but any help you can offer with - reminding him how Leareth is generally shaped and reflecting on what he ought to be doing to avoid this category of stupid mistake while he's not quite grown back up into being shaped that way. 

Yours,

Maitimo

Vanyel is pretty confused when Jisa arrives unannounced in Valinor, drops off three letters for him, one of which has his name on it and the other two of which are definitely not for him to read and he should read his before doing anything with them.

It's a good thing he's sitting down when he reads it. He swears a lot. At one point he starts laughing and immediately claps a hand over his mouth in horror, even though he's alone and no one is there to watch and be appalled.

He's - mostly too shocked to even name his other feelings, yet, though one of them is anger, and if Telumë were here in front of him right now there would be shouting happening. Probably by the time he actually makes it to Velgarth he'll have cooled off a little. 

Stef has no idea what has Vanyel in a tizzy but he excuses himself from the conversation he's in and runs all the way back to their rooms. "–Van, what...?" 

"Just read it." Vanyel shoves it at him. "Extremely secret. It was intended for just me." It's not like anyone can expect him to not tell Stef, though. 

Stef reads it. His eyebrows go all the way up to his hairline. (The appalling brown dye has finally washed out all the way; Jisa's hair is unfortunately less reversibly ruined.) 

"...Oh," he says faintly. "Everyone is going to lose their minds over this, aren't they. I see why he's annoyed. It's very frustrating." 

"You're not angry?" Vanyel says, tiredly. 

"Don't see what the point would be. Anyway, you and Fëanáro are going to have that taken care of. And - oh, for Findekáno too? That makes sense. Should I deliver it? It's a lot less weird for me to go visit him, reduces the chance of Fëanáro finding out, and that way we can do it in parallel." 

"...Sure, I guess?" At least that way he only has to do one instead of two extremely awkward social calls. He can understand why Jisa ran off before he had a chance to read the letter - she must've known, gods, what was she thinking, even if Maitimo and Telumë managed to sneak that particular terrible decision past her the first time someone should've intervened before they could make it twice. 

Sigh. "I guess we're going to Vinyamar again." 

Findekáno is not very surprised to see Stef because Stef has been passing him periodic updates on Maitimo, as the one person who knew that this might be unusually important to him. "Hey. Can I help you?"

...This is more awkward than Stef expected, actually. He falls back on osanwë since he isn't sure if the office has good soundproofing. Maitimo wrote you a letter. Some, er, things happened. You should just read it, he'll explain better. I can stay while you do that or I could leave and you can osanwë me if you have questions after, although I probably won't know any more than what's in the letter.

"Uh, okay. You can stay. Is he still evil, did they figure out anything they could do about that -"

"...He's still the same amount of evil. I don't think there's anything to be done about that except winning the war and murdering Sauron." Stef leans against the wall and waits. Fidgets a bit, hums under his breath. 

Findekáno,

I have absolutely no idea if anyone has updated you at all since I went missing seven months ago. I'm sorry about that. Obviously if I'd had any idea what was coming we would never have gone to Velgarth at all but probably I should've arranged for Vanyel to know that you should get updates. I suspect I am going to double the number of apologies ever issued by the house of Fëanor again in this letter. I miss you a lot and once you have read it I am hoping you can make arrangements with Jisa or Vanyel to come here and talk with Telumë and I. Ideally do this without my father finding out, but if that looks intractable, do it a week after he got his own letter; I am feeling unusually dependent right now on him reacting to a complicated situation in a helpful way and I hate feeling dependent on him reacting to a complicated situation in a helpful way and I think if this were in the mix he's much likelier to fuck it up. Though I am planning to tell him about you pretty soon, for reasons that will become clear farther on in the letter. I am really sorry to have written it in such a confusing way but there's a lot of context and I don't see how I can omit any of it. 

First of all, I was taken prisoner when Sauron and Vkandis attacked Haven while Leareth and I were there. Leareth did a Final Strike. I tried to commit suicide but there were Healers on hand who were able to reverse it ...

... so for the last three weeks I have been in Telumë's army base while they interrogated me about the movements of Sauron's armies. Also, Telumë and I had sex. I am not sure if this earns one of the letter's many apologies all by itself. Probably it does. It was really stupid. Because I know you'll ask: I could have told him to leave and he would've left. I could've told him to stay but not do that and he would've stayed and not done that. I was affected by the oath (still am; it changes my personality less than you might initially imagine and I don't think it was responsible for this decision except in the sense of being the reason I was a prisoner in the first place and being the reason I expected to remain a prisoner for the rest of my life) and by the magic they've done to make it safe to keep me a prisoner and to make the interrogations go more smoothly. I considered it kind of likely that that was affecting my judgment and didn't care because I missed him a lot. I would generally prefer to be allowed to make decisions in that state of information, considering that I am going to continue being sworn to your enemy and probably being in that state of information for a really long time. It would have bothered me to be treated like I couldn't possibly know what I wanted under these conditions (they are pretty unpleasant conditions but I know full well what I want), though it wouldn't have bothered me if Telumë had said as he obviously should have that the situation was far too politically complicated to even consider it.

I would not have regretted it except for the thing that happened next. 

The thing that happened next is that a one-directional marriage formed. I had no idea that was possible. I have never heard of it. I'm so sorry. I obviously would not have had sex with another person if I had known this was a thing that might happen, and I wish it hadn't. I kept writing drafts of this where I tried to say more about what I'm feeling now but I think I just need you here. I would understand if you don't want to come, though. I'm so so sorry. The plan is for me to go back to Arda but I want to talk with you first because there are a lot of complicated geopolitical implications. By which I mostly mean that I'm worried that the Noldor might decide to abandon Velgarth to Sauron and (soon) Melkor, or at least insist on taking Telumë out of future plans, and as I am evil I am rooting for this outcome but - I don't have it in me, right now, to try to use this awful thing to bring it about. I want you to come yell at Telumë and take me home. I know that it's wrong to end one's apologies with demands for favors of enormous proportions and I'm really really sorry about that, too, and will say in my defense that since I vowed to be more aware of this dynamic and not cut you out of the loop until the moment when I desperately need you in it, I killed myself and was raised by Sauron and compelled to serve him and captured by Jisa and Stef and taken prisoner and there were not really a lot of opportunities to do better by you. I think Vanyel or Jisa will take you here if you want to come. Telumë knows to expect you. 

Love,
Russandol

"Okay," he says to Stef. "We're picking him up today?" He looks, in fact, murderously angry though not at Stef in particular.

"Jisa can Gate you," Stef says quietly. "Vanyel is delivering the message to Fëanáro and will probably get the same request and will Gate him to Velgarth immediately. ...You might actually beat him there because I don't think Vanyel has a Gate location in the north, and Jisa does." He looks at his feet. "This is awful and I'm sorry it's happening. I do think it'd go better - for Maitimo, for both of you - if Fëanáro didn't bump into you while you're likely to both be there, he'll be angry and take it out on you. But we can go right now. You can osanwë Jisa if you want, she should be in the city, or I can go find her."  

"I plan to leave with Maitimo so perhaps I should wait until Fëanáro is done. Assuming that's in the next - he said a week, in the letter. I am not going to wait a week. But assuming he leaves promptly. You'll know as soon as Vanyel is in Velgarth, and as soon as he gets back -"