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Manwë will think his brother reformed because you, of all others, gave consent, before most. It is not that you do not know, not that you do not care, but that if it will be, it already is. It is not yours to shape. If you did, you would be no better than your chained groveler; all would fall to chaos. It is yours to judge, never preempt.
A fine line. A gentle line. Silk thin, thrown across windblown abyss.
Did we judge rightly? Irmo asks on a whisper, on a soothing sleep-sigh.
We made the only judgement, Nienna answers, and she, she has a voice like an ache with a lilt to hope. Without mercy, without choice—
There is nothing, you say. It is a thing you know. Still, you leave first.
Manwë will think his brother reformed because you, the Doomsman, did not oppose his release. He would confirm it, if he did not respect that the things you know are to be seen by you alone. He is wrong, but of course, he will not see it; the intent of your father was to build, to continue ever onward in theme and intent, but with repentance Melkor could achieve that very thing, and so why would Manwë question?
~-~
Time is not immaterial. You paid rather close, fascinated attention when your wife unspooled Time from a tongueless, mouthless voice, and so no, it is not immaterial. But your beginning is…relative, and so Time is fluid.
The spirit imitates the taken body, and so when Melkor is allowed to walk free in Aman, you are half-living, half-bone. It is no affliction; the shape of the body of an Ainu is self-directed, and self-directed it is. At the dawn of the world the shape you assumed was whole. But if your hardship is knowledge, the hardship of the Children is injury, and when they are injured mortally they are yours. So, as the Children newly-awoken began to die under the ministrations of Melkor, as the Firstborn were never supposed to but will continue to do, death was writ on the face of their host. As their numbers rise you decompose.
If Time is a fluid thing, you remember the search of Utumno. Know very well what the misshapen beasts you found used to be. If Time is a fluid thing, when Aulë raises the Pelóri against your brother and seals out his favored Firstborn, a crease of consternation in his brows as the spirit imitates the taken body, he will look as he did when you turned away from Utumno, with his Maia, his apprentice, his charge remaining unaccounted for. Mairon, the adored; Sauron, the abhorred. Your eyes pulled from the fortress and alit on his, who was watching. There was question written on his face; what becomes of his absence? And you had an answer, spanning Age and Age. There are always many things your brethren would ask of you. There are, of course, many things you know.
There are few things you say.
And, if Time is a fluid thing, this is the current that pulls you as Melkor repents on his knees, smiles his thanks, accepts as graciously as he is capable Tulkas’ suspicion. You remember the first Children you housed, and know some will never take a body again until the world is made anew, for shame, for trauma. So when Melkor is freed, you already know the Doom that will come. Apprehension swooshes at the back of your mind, and, in this form, words you do not say lodge at the back of your throat.
Time is not immaterial, but it is fluid, and so you will think forward to Manwë’s realization that it is not Fëanáro at fault, no—it is Melkor, as it always is, as it always was, as it ever will be. And—there is not pity, no. This is the way of the world. This is the way; this is the way.
~-~
It is not yours to shape. Only to judge—never preemptively, and never alone.
You walked with Manwë’s at the dawn of the world, knowledge across from intent, and you had skirted subjects in conversation—and what subjects they were, the shapes that moved and shook the fates of the world. You never broached too far, but you came—very close, very close to peace of mind.
You—do not wish for knowledge both of what will and what should be, for the same reason you do not discuss it. There would be too little difference between yourself and your father, then, and more, it would be easy, so very easy, to become the one to Mar the world. Because, it would be harder, so much harder, not to act.
But you do wish, at times—you do wish you knew more what to do. ‘Nothing’ is—a difficult answer to exist under.
It is not yours to shape, but sitting near Melkor at the festivals of the Children, with the knowledge that he shares at least some part of the gifts of his brethren, including yours… Sharing a glance that is too quick for you to tell if there really is something glinting in black-blue depths, you—are moved nearly to anger, because how can he sit there, how can he sit there, and smile, and know—
But then, how can you?
~-~
When Melkor is released, you return to your Halls, and many of the Children you pass you will house come the next Age. There are things you could say, and warnings you could give, but it is not yours to shape.
You stand in the space occupied by he who arises in might, and—something lingers there, something wrong, something suffocating, and you cannot stay, for long.
“She is not wholly wrong,” you say to Irmo, when you go to Lórien for some sense of…something. You amongst your brethren most use your body to speak, because you know many things, but say very little, and only what you mean to. But, seldom, what you mean. And Nienna is not wrong, because mercy knows no reason, and not wholly wrong in the schema, because without mercy, without choice, the world would be nothing—but. But. You are reason. Mercy relies on best intentions, and you know the consequences of everyone’s.
Irmo, who is gentle, who can be gentle, who sets out the tools for the Children to make sense of and find succor from their lives, who is neither mercy nor reason but empathy, says—nothing, because he can assume but he can never know. But there is still the ghost-brush of genuine sympathy, and in the garden of rest, that is enough.
*
One can tell much of the future from parsing the past, from stitching together and laying bare the threads of its subtle machinations, and the lingerer in that chamber was there for all to feel, and so Vairë knows more than most. She stands with you and contemplates the edge of the world.
It is not ours to shape, says she, her voice the rustling slide of threads going back to no beginning and forward to infinity. It is not; yours is only to know, and bear witness.
Together, you look Out.
~-~
“Not the first,” you tell Fëanáro, and when the elf turns to you and does not understand, you do not pity, because you know what he will chose. The intent of your father was to build, to continue ever onward in theme and intent, and he will choose instead to go back and destroy. But you would not have tied yourself to the fate of Eä if you did not love it, and you—regret, all that will come.
The Noldor will say, in their councils, that it is your fault, and your brethren’s, because it is the Valar’s devoir to control their own, and they could have, and they knew, and they did not. But you will not sympathize, because you are not surprised, no, but a choice is still a choice. Their blades still sang, the blood still pooled; the dying still keened and your Halls still filled.
The Noldor will blame the Valar, and the Doomsman, for their Doom—but your judgements are not things you hand down, but make known. Eä had laws sung into it before the beginning, laws that no Child can escape; you only say what you mean to, and, at times, what you mean.
Time is a fluid thing for the Ainur, and so when Melkor evades capture with the lady of the Unlight and when he offers thanks for his freedom on his knees, when Finwë first marvels at the Trees and when he dies for their three small seeds—they are not so very different at all. Not the first, and not the last; it is Nienna’s to comfort the bereaved.
~-~
It is not yours to shape. It is not yours to pity. It is yours to know, with sharp, straight edges and clear-cut folds, and to judge the Children once they are dead. It is Nienna’s to comfort them. She weeps upon the Trees, upon the hurt of the world, this new beginning, while you…accept it. Mercy—is not the downfall of the world, but, perhaps, a conduit.
Is that what you truly believe? Yavanna, whose gaze is bent the same direction but who watches the ruined earth, her voice the sound of windblown leaves if they knew to be shrewd.
We are the Powers of the World, you say. We do not believe that which we know.
~-~
It is not yours to shape, and you take no liberties, seeking the council of your brethren, one of whom seeks the council of your father. He gave you your sight before he asked you your course, and so until you decided inactivity you saw Nothing. If the nothing was the precipice of paths or the result of your best intentions, you still do not know.
You do not regret your passivity.
It is still a burdensome existence, to know and never do.
Nienna comforts the bereaved, but you take heart still in the ones who leave your Halls. To release them is to release some good into the world, as you have not done since you sang Doom’s self-fulfilling undercurrents into it at its dawn.
~-~
Lúthien sings in Halls that have not known song since you built them, her voice shades of her mother’s, and though you knew you would be, you are still moved.
You do not know what happens next.