Work Text:
"Intercontinental ballistic missiles!" Kirei crowed. "You would never have lost if you had just kept up with our level of technological advancement."
Sophia elbowed him in the sternum, hard. "You are an idiot," she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
Fëanor looked intrigued and amused. "What are these...intercontinental ballistic missiles you speak of?"
"Kirei could lend you a few to find out," Sophia said sardonically. "His country owns hundreds; I'm sure they won't notice if a few go missing."
"It shouldn't be too difficult to achieve on your own given your people's level of technological advancement," Kirei said, rubbing at his chest. "The biggest challenge would probably be extracting fissile material from the raw uranium ore—"
Sophia elbowed him again. "Don't give him any ideas!"
"Keep up your assassination attempts, darling, I think they need some work," Kirei groaned. "Just...use a practice dummy instead. I think I might die from internal bleeding if you keep this up."
"Looks like it's up to me to keep history from being irreversibly changed by idiots with too much knowledge and too little sense," Sophia muttered.
"We've already landed ourselves in First Age Valinor, kept the first High King from being murdered by Morgoth, took the Silmarils before they could be stolen, and essentially removed a major impetus for the Flight of the Noldor," Kirei replied. "History has been changed, in case you've entirely forgotten your reading."
"Excuse me," Fëanor said, "what do you mean by Flight of the Noldor?"
"And yet here you are, trying to initiate the Industrial Revolution early," Sophia retorted. "I think you're the one who needs a refresher: when the Necromancer's cronies tried that, it didn't turn out so well."
"Necromancer?" Fëanor's eyebrow twitched.
"If you'll recall, the Red Book of Westmarch was written by Hobbits and thus has a huge pro-Hobbit bias," Kirei said. "Who's to say that either Bilbo, Frodo, or Sam—or all of them, for the matter—didn't alter the story slightly to suit their pastoral English countryside fancies? You can't count on a non-academic's work, mark my words."
"BOTH OF YOU, EXPLAIN!" Fëanor roared. They stopped and turned to him, Kirei mildly surprised and Sophia irritated.
"Excuse me," Sophia said, in the tone of someone who has just been told off by a lesser being—say, a fruit fly or a banana."We're trying have a conversation about a now-hypothetical future history that should have happened but didn't, so do you mind if we get on with it!"
Fingolfin mused that he had never seen Fëanor look so much like a stunned rabbit as he did at that moment.