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“I am not your son! That happy, carefree boy died. He died in Sirion and he died at Amon Ereb and in the ashes of Eregion and seeing the debris of Númenor wash ashore. He died with Maedhros, and Elros, and Gil-galad. He was long gone by the time a pack of orcs decided to have some fun with what was left!”
Elwing burst into tears, hand coming to her mouth in a futile attempt to stifle them.
Elrond fled.
--
It was harder to fade in Valinor than Middle Earth, but Míriel had managed it, ages past, and Elrond thought he would too. It was worse here. At least there, as he died, Celebrían would have been with him. His children would have been at his side. He could have felt the faint tether of the only parental bond he’d felt for millennia, stretching towards the kinslayer on the shore.
Here, he was surrounded by family, and he was alone. Eärendil was no more present than he had been when Elrond was six, and he looked at Elrond as if something was wrong with him. Idril was hard and angry at the world for hurting him. Tuor was soft and the gentleness of him burned. Turgon appeared sometimes to watch Elrond, as if seeing Maeglin’s reappearance in him.
Elwing tried. She was trying so hard and it didn’t help, because she wasn’t trying for Elrond. She was doing it to fix him, to make him like he was before, but those bonds were in pieces. They’d shattered lifetimes ago, when she’d sailed to Valinor instead of coming back for him.
There was no one here who understood and loved him. He pulled himself onto the parapet, looked out towards the sea. Celebrían had been right to send him away. He knew, rationally, that it would have been cruel to make her and the children watch him die. They could have hope that he was happy here, with Elwing and Eärendil and (perhaps, in a more just world) with Gil-galad. They did not know that hope had come to nothing. He was alone; the only living people who loved him remained a world away, under threat from Sauron. They might all die and he would fail to protect them just as he had everyone else, all his life.
He envied Elwing so deeply her wings. She’d thrown herself off a height like this and emerged free from the chains of her form.
But then, Maedhros had done the same, and he’d just died. That was Elrond’s true inheritance, and it was a cold and miserable one.
The rap of knuckles on the wood of the open door was unobtrusive, more a method to alert Elrond to their presence than anything.
“I’m not jumping,” he snapped, perhaps too defensively.
“Alright,” agreed Prince Fingon, and came to sit on the edge of the wall beside him, unafraid of heights in the way that most elves were. He was more soft-spoken than his reputation might have indicated, and in all Elrond’s months in Valinor, he had only appeared twice, once on the docks at Elrond’s arrival, and yesterday on some courtly matter that required him to interrupt Turgon’s visit.
“You heard…”
“Everyone heard. The curse of elvish hearing.”
No, the curse of elvish hearing was the ability to hear as much as feel your own flesh tearing.
“And they sent you?”
“I argued to Idril, rather compellingly, that I was the only one of them here who had done this before, though I confess I was better at the dramatic-rescues bit than the painful aftermath.”
No one else had been willing to speak to Elrond of Fëanor’s sons. In fact, when he’d tried to raise the topic with Idril, to determine whether any of them had been reborn, or if Nerdanel would be willing to speak to him, she’d only said, “they can’t hurt you here. No one in Valinor will.”
“Do I look like him?”
Fingon turned his head, frowning. “I’m not sure what the right answer to that question is.”
“The true one. I’ve been told I look like Elwing, but I don’t. I’m not light the way she is. I’ve never looked like Eärendil. I used to think I looked like Maglor, but now I wonder…”
The frown turned from uncertainty to scrutiny. “Not much. To me, you don’t look particularly like anyone. But that hard-set determination on your face, that anger? You’re right. That’s Maedhros.”
It was a benediction, to have someone else see what Elrond saw, every time they let him get near a mirror. “You didn’t mention the…” He gestured to the totality of his scars.
“If that were enough, I would think half the survivors of Beleriand looked like Maedhros. No. It’s the glare too, as if he would like to watch you melt into the ground. He got it from Fëanor, and you get it from him. You might do better than to turn it on Elwing, though. I think you know that.”
“She doesn’t want me. She never has. She doesn’t even know me.”
“That wasn’t her fault.”
“So said Maedhros! Many, many times. But she has the chance to know me now, and every piece of me is broken to her. ‘This isn’t you, darling.’ How would she know what I am? Maglor would remember that I was angry then too, if he hadn’t been too miserable and afraid to crawl off that fucking beach and help me. Maedhros would know-”
He cut himself off, recalling that he was not the only one of them who loved Maedhros, beyond reason or desert.
Fingon was watching him, no trace of judgement on his face. It was a surprise, after Maglor’s larger-than-life descriptions, to learn that Fingon was kind. That was always the reputation of Finarfin’s house. But it made sense. It explained how he and Maedhros would have fit together.
“Would you like to run away?”
“What?”
Fingon shrugged. “You’re far from home already, but… Maedhros always found us stifling afterwards, in too-large doses. We spent a lot of time walking around Lake Mithrim, when he was well enough. Thus Himring, in part, where he had clear sight-lines and the cold as protection against creatures of fire and a little blessed distance from the chaos. I live in the north now, no more than two days flight inland from your mother’s tower. She’ll be loath to let you go, but if it would help, there is very little she would not do for you.”
“And you live alone there?”
If it helped, it helped. If it didn’t, at least he could fade without everyone watching.
That kind smile took on a mischievous character. “Well, almost alone.” He opened his hand and showed Elrond a ring nestled in his palm. It was plain gold, brightly polished, and Fingon no doubt had good reason for choosing not to wear it in the presence of his family.
“Yes,” Elrond said, with more enthusiasm than he’d been able to muster for anything in so very long. “Please.”
“See,” Fingon said, wedding ring vanishing back into a pocket, “I told you I was better at the rescuing bit.”
--
Dear Russo,
We’re on our way, love. He didn’t even take any convincing, after I told him you were there. I’ve left Turno the far more difficult task of persuading Elwing that this will help, but in truth she’s quite at her wit’s end. He’s got all your anger, and Makalaurë’s sharp tongue, and Elwing is a very easy person for him to wound. His words carry more weight for her than Manwë’s. He’ll probably be angry with you too, and almost certainly with me. I think he’s already tired of my singing. But it can’t be worse than Tyelko or Írissë going through puberty!
It will be slow going, since he can’t be on horseback for long and I have no desire to face Idril’s wrath if I hurt him. Resist the urge to come meet us and spend the next few days working through all your own anger over the fact that no one was there to protect him. Let him get used to the idea that you’re here, before we see you.
Love,
Findekáno
P.S. – remember to give the dove seeds! She’s earned them. x
--
At the dock, when Lindir had helped him from the ship, Elwing had run to embrace Elrond, and he had flinched away. In that moment Elrond had realized that he wasn’t what she wanted and never would be. The betrayal had been so deeply etched on her face that he saw it still, every time he looked at her.
When Fingon helped Elrond from the horse, Maedhros remained on the front step, still tall even seated, and extended his right hand.
“El-nín.”
Elrond felt a little absurd grasping the hand – perfectly formed, the name was earned – without going in for a hug or any more natural contact, but Maedhros didn’t seem to see it that way. He didn’t even flinch, taking in the scars on Elrond’s hand, the missing tip of his index finger.
“Hey, Ada.”
Maedhros’s smile no longer caught on his scars, but in memory of them it remained a subtle thing. This one, showing just a flash of perfect teeth, was for him nearly delirious with joy.
He wasn’t looking at Elrond like a tragedy; he was looking at him like a miracle.
“I told you you’d get taller.”
“You could have been there to see it!” There was more bite than he’d intended in the retort.
Maedhros nodded, placid as a garden pond. “I’m sorry. I should have been there, for you and for Elros.”
It was a wound that sat unaddressed with Elwing, but not so, it seemed, with Maedhros. “You should have. And yet I can hardly be righteous in my anger with you, because I left my children behind too. The choice yet hangs over them, and I-”
Maedhros guided him to sit at his side on the step, shoulders barely brushing together as Elrond wept. Fingon and the horses vanished, and their joined hands hung between them, brushing the green painted wood of the step.
“You did nothing wrong,” Maedhros said, no trace of doubt in him. “You would never say another had, in your position. Or at least I hope you would not. I doubt you will ever forgive me, otherwise.”
“You should have come to us. We could have figured something out, spoken to Gil-galad, brought them to you–”
“Which was precisely why we didn’t. I would not and will never ask that of you.”
If Maedhros had been the sort of person to ask it, Elrond supposed, he wouldn’t have loved him well enough to do it.
“I don’t hate you for dying. That it happened, perhaps, but never you.”
“I never thought you did.”
He was so much steadier than Elrond had ever known him, as if the wounds on his fëa had been sutured.
“How are you here, Ada?”
“How am I not thrown out of the void? Or how am I not confined to Námo for all eternity?”
“Either. Both.”
“Nienna refused to let her brother keep me, or any others who were thralls, if we did not want to stay. The solitude of Mandos may be healing for some, but for me it was… stifling, once she had helped me through the worst of my pain. I needed peace, but the fact of confinement made things worse, and I was not alone in this problem. She told him he would become no better than Morgoth, if he kept us. And so he let every thrall who wished to leave go, with some conditions. I waited for Fingon, and we’ve been living here for an age or so. As to the void, I do not know. Perhaps I shall be taken, someday, but not today.”
What a tenuous thing to build a life on. It was a greater hope than Elrond had felt since the orcs.
“You’re free of the Oath? It doesn’t pain you?”
“Still my little healer?” Maedhros asked, with overwhelming fondness. “No pain, I promise. Not from the oath or anything else. Although I confess that Fingon’s singing has been known to give me a headache.”
This last was said with a raised voice, no doubt to carry to the elf in question. Elrond breathed out half a laugh. Ada teased his husband just the way he’d teased them, the way he’d teased Maglor. It was still part of how he showed love.
He wanted so badly to hug him, but knew equally that the confinement of it would shatter him.
“El-nín,” Maedhros said, calling him gently back to the present, “would you like to come inside?”
“Can we stay here a little longer?”
“Whatever you like.”
--
Dear Turno,
Elrond is safely delivered. Russo was so beyond overjoyed to see him that my marriage bond is still thrumming with it. I have second-hand parental instincts now.
Tell Itarillë that I’m not judging her. It’s the sort of pain that spills everywhere, and it’s not easy to know what to do with that. Russo will be the first to tell you that I’ve made thousands of mistakes, and will probably keep making them as long as we live, because this is also the sort of pain that does not vanish easily.
Please give the enclosed map to Elwing and tell her that I’ll write to her directly soon.
Thank you for speaking to her for me, and for inviting me down. Russo was so sure that Elrond would reject him that I never would have come if you hadn’t. Credit to you, for listening to everything that I’m sure Elrond wasn’t saying.
Love,
Finno
--
“Would you like to learn to weave?”
Elrond stared at his father for a long while. “Why?”
“Because you need to do something,” Maedhros informed him. “I have yet to meet a Noldo who was truly happy with still hands, and in truth, I think the same is true of your other family, if the songs of Lúthien spoke half accurately, though in her case I suppose it was more still feet.”
“I have my craft. I’m a healer. Or I was, before they took that from me. Forgive me for mourning it a while.”
Maedhros took the hit easily. “You are a healer. Only, there isn’t much to heal here, unless someone intends to resume his amputation-related hobbies.”
Fingon made a very rude gesture from the kitchen.
“Maglor and I were perhaps lacking in the roundedness of your education.”
“I play the lyre.”
Had played. Could his hands manage it now? Maglor could have played better with less, but Elrond had not enough skill to compensate for his injuries. He didn’t even know if he could heal with them, in truth. Was his fëa too wounded to carry others? Could these damaged hands set bones cleanly? Did this fractured mind yet carry all the knowledge of medicine that Elrond had honed across centuries?
“Maglor shared his gift with you. But I was too consumed by grief and madness to do so. I would be honoured if you would allow me to now.”
“You weave?”
“Of course he does,” Fingon said, “who else was going to teach you?”
“Not as my craft,” Maedhros said, ignoring him. “But my verbal gift was hard to identify as a child, so my father tried everything. Naturally, he was very pleased when I chose to study his mother’s art. I also embroider very well, though I have yet to resume the habit now that my right hand is returned to me.”
Could Elrond’s hands yet hold a needle, make fine and perfect stitches?
“I could teach you that as well,” Maedhros offered, “if you will forgive me a few missteps as I relearn it myself.”
“Could I?”
Maedhros did not dismiss the question with platitudes. Instead, he took Elrond’s hands and examined them carefully, turning each over to look at the palm. Maedhros’s own left palm was marked with a burn like a star.
“You’re a healer,” he said, “better than I could ever be. Look with your eyes, not with your pain. What do you see?”
Elrond’s throat closed.
Maedhros said, “a lost fingertip, roughly done but neatly healed. The new-sung skin needs callouses worn in, as can only be done by work. This finger was broken, but it was rebroken and set cleanly. Here there were chains that have left marks, but their scars, I think, are not truly in the flesh. Here the wound of a knife, but I do not think it severed any tendons. Here a tendon was severed but rejoined. A skilled healer would have a plan for further healing there no doubt.”
He could feel his own heartbeat, pulse gone strangely slow.
“They’re hands, El-nín. Good, steady hands. And they’re yours. And they will not be the same, but all will be well. You know wounds, and you know this, but you must look at them.”
He traced with his eyes, as Maedhros had with his fingers, the marks of blades and breakage. Elrond had trained his apprentices well, and even without him they had done a masterful job. Any lingering details had been seen to by the Chief Healer of Tirion herself, a stern Noldë who had been present for the births of all Indis’s children.
But Elrond was more powerful than any of his apprentices and a better healer than the Chief Healer of Tirion. She had no real experience as he did, in bloodshed and sweat and tragedy. He had seen the melted flesh left behind by dragonfire, the bone-deep lacerations of a Balrog’s whip, and every poison known to orcs.
“They won’t be perfect,” he said, “but they can work. I can make them work.”
“And will you entertain your old father’s desire to have a pupil again?”
The foundations were there. He knew how to work with thread, and it would not be the worst thing to find a new use for it. He’d never really been able to make Celebrían a gift with his craft, as any good Noldo should have. Perhaps she could have one if she came after.
“Yes.”
--
Dear Elwing,
I am sorry for stealing away your son. I know you’ve lost too much time with him already, and you deserve better. I’m a villain and a hypocrite, because if my Ereinion were here now, I would hold him so tight that I would choke the life right back out of him. I’ve asked you to do the very opposite of that, which is the hardest thing in the world.
It’s one step forward, two steps back here sometimes. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Elrond is very, very angry. At the world and at us and, more than anything, at himself, for not living up to the ridiculous standards that everyone in this family manages to set for themselves (blame Finwë, Valar know I do). But things are going better too. Elrond’s been learning to handle needle and thread for aesthetic pleasure rather than out of sheer practicality. He’s embroidering a handkerchief. He’ll help me in the garden, when he’s stronger. He wants a bed of his own herbs, which I suppose should have come as no surprise. I don’t know a Beleriand-trained healer who wouldn’t.
He won’t speak of the specifics of what happened, but that may never come when speaking to any of us. Maedhros, certainly, has never spoken to his mother of his time in Angband. We have been trying to convince Elrond to speak about it to a follower of Nienna. He told us he didn’t like Lórien (I don’t blame him. It can be trying to be asked to change your pain to bliss when it still feels so very real), but the maiar of Nienna are very good listeners, and as a rule, Nienna likes Maedhros. She’ll probably send someone by, if he asks.
I know it probably brings you little and less joy, to remember that Maedhros is here, but I swear to you on my life that he means Elrond no harm. Some harm cannot be prevented, as well you know, but Maedhros will do anything in his power to avert that which he can. And so will I, for as long as you trust your son to my care.
I’ll write to you again. This too I swear.
Sincerely,
Fingon Golfinion, Emeritus King of the Noldor
--
Dear Fingon,
Tell your kinslaying husband that if he hurts my son he will wish the everlasting darkness had taken him.
Tell him also thank you. Elrond is the most precious thing in the world. I made a mistake in not knowing that, once upon a time, and though the sky is brighter for it, my regret remains.
Sincerely,
Elwing Dioriel
--
Dear Elwing,
He would already wish that, if he hurt Elrond.
Today, they had a fight about Elrond’s hair. Well, I say fight. Maedhros offered to cut it for him, if he had no intention of tending it. He did the same at Himring, when braiding his own hair proved a challenge. Elrond advised him in no uncertain terms that he was ‘Morgoth’s dog, well trained by him’. Maedhros did hold it together until the end of the conversation, but afterwards he went to go cry in the woods. I’m not sure the point of this story, except to tell you that you’re not the only person who Elrond knows exactly what to say to wound.
Also today, Elrond helped me make lunch, and afterwards I saw him looking at the lyre Finrod sent up for him. I think he may take it up soon.
Arda is marred, and more than anything, Arda is messy. But there is always light. The dawn comes slowly, but it does come.
I remain,
Fingon Golfinion
--
Dear Fingon,
Oddly, that does help. The anecdote more than the platitudes. Idril told me many times that it was normal for your children to know exactly how to twist all your ropes, but I’ve never had the chance to see it before and he was not the same with Eärendil. Actually, he barely spoke to Eärendil at all. I suppose the things pain and grief make us do can be very unpredictable. When I think with my head rather than my heart, I know he does not truly wish to hurt us, only to make us understand the pain he feels.
Eärendil wants me to add that there is no need to write to Finrod for anything; I’m closer, and can always fly down to Alqualondë or Tirion myself for anything needed. Or we can sail down for bigger items. Be not vexed with me for sharing these with my husband; I imagine you do the same.
Evermore,
Elwing Dioriel
--
Elwing,
Elrond asked if you might come.
Fingon
--
There was a marvel in seeing a gull swoop down and turn into his mother. He’d seen her change before – had seen her first change, in fact – but there was always a child in him who saw it as a miracle. His mother could fly. It was a story for mortal children, of the sort Elrond had heard extensively and inaccurately from Maglor in an attempt to expose Elrond and Elros to their mortal heritage.
He could almost think of Maglor without being furious at him now. That was how he had known it was time to try with Elwing again.
“You don’t have to stay,” he told Maedhros, who was sitting beside him on the step.
“Because you want me to go, or because you think I want to go?”
It was the sort of question that meant the asker already knew the answer, so Elrond simply shook his head and turned to Elwing again.
She looked at Maedhros sceptically, and he showed her his empty hands, the scar on the left as stark as ever. Elrond braced himself for the confrontation.
“I don’t forgive you,” Elwing said, “but I will thank you. For now and then. Elros never had a bad word to say about you, when we saw him, and I certainly invited him to say a great many.”
Maedhros bowed his head to her.
To Elrond, she said, “there’s no you I want you to be. I’ve never known any version of you well enough to expect that. I want an Elrond that makes you happy. That’s all I have ever wanted for you. Elf or man or bird. If it makes you happy, I want it for you.”
He wanted to bite at her still, some cruel and senseless part of him. What if I’m not happy? What if I’m never going to be happy?
He restrained the instinct long enough for Maedhros to say, “I’m glad you had a chance to know Elros. I had never heard that.”
Neither had Elrond, and it flared his rage again. Did she not trust him with this?
“It was not,” Elwing said, “precisely sanctioned. But Ulmo allowed it.”
Maedhros was watching Elrond, gaze far too sharp for his liking. “Why does that cut at you so?”
He’d taken to this habit of making Elrond say what he’d already guessed precisely to get on Elrond’s nerves. A streak of Finwean stubbornness prevented Elrond from admitting that he was right to do it.
“Why don’t you talk to me about him?”
Elwing’s face fell, but to his surprise, her eyes darted to Maedhros, and she bolstered herself with whatever she found in his face. “I didn’t want to hurt you by bringing up bad memories.”
“Elros has never been a bad memory. Not a second of him.”
They stared at each other a moment before Maedhros prompted, “why didn’t you bring Elros up yourself?”
If the void ever did take Maedhros, it would spit him right back out for being infuriating. “I thought you wouldn’t want to talk about him.”
“I would always want to talk about Elros with you.”
For once, her gentleness seemed real to him, and he said, “I’d like that.”
“You don’t have to wait for things to boil over to tell me the truth,” Elwing added, “you’ve said that I don’t know enough of you, and you’re right. I don’t think any of us know each other as well as we should. But I would like to. I want to know about Amon Ereb and Lindon and Imladris. I want to know of Elros and Gil-galad and, yes, even Maedhros.”
He inclined his head, at his name.
“You don’t want to hear that.”
“I do,” she insisted. “It’s yours, Elrond, and so I want to hear it.”
“I’ve said awful things to you, even when I was trying to bite my tongue.”
“Perhaps,” Maedhros cut in, mildly, “that was part of the problem.”
Elwing said, “why don’t we start small, start honest, and start afresh? Let us share each other’s company, day by day, and speak of what pleases us without fear or judgement.”
“That does sound nice,” Elrond admitted, though in truth, he could scarcely believe it was possible.
The silence that fell between them was softer, this time, and Elwing broke it by saying, “Fingon was telling me you had plans for your own garden?”
Maedhros offered his arm, unasked for, that Elrond might receive needed assistance in standing.
“I could show you, if you’d like?”
“I would, very much.”