Archive of Our Own ^beta

Belegaer’s cobalt depths swirled with opaque fury. The color spoke to the chill it carried north, where it became the Helcaraxë. Not water to swim in. Doubly so for Maedhros; Ulmo would surely see that it swallowed him whole.

The first time they had made this journey, he had seen none of it. Darkness had surrounded their ill-gotten ships, turning the water black. What little light there was struck the harsh sides of the churning waves, illuminating nothing. Starlight was not enough to live by, they had learned in those days before the sun and the moon. And yet somehow they had still pushed forward.

Sinking beneath the waves would be very easily done. That truth had dangled in front of him since the start of the journey.

Maedhros was not a poor swimmer, for all he had learned with two hands and a light heart. He had practiced in Lake Mithrim and again, later; he liked the weightlessness of it. But Belegaer’s water was cold enough to shock the breath from his lungs in one heaving and entirely involuntary gasp.

That was something they had learned the hard way, in the land they were leaving running with molten rock. Shaping itself into something he would never see again. Not to guard, not to raze. Its future was taken out of his hands — a terrible gift. A voiding of duty.

This journey would be his last chance, for that blessed oxymoron of an easy drowning. Valinor had no winter, and no freezing temperatures. The waters off the shores of Aman were warm, and welcoming by design. They clung to fabric with the temperature of the blood that had been spilled in it. That he had spilled in it.

They were headed for trial. Maedhros might as well start dropping the passive voice. It had not protected him thus far. And time enough existed in the Everlasting Darkness to recover it.

Maglor doubted his conclusions; he thought they would be sent to Mandos. Or turned loose upon the population of Valinor — back to Formenos with Fëanor's two living sons, like they had never left. To Tirion, even! Maedhros did not point to their still unkept Oath, because it upset Maglor terribly when he did. Maedhros did not like to distress him.

Still, he would have the space to think, if nothing else. From then until the end of the world, when he could finally be laid to rest. If they had been offering the oblivion of grandmother Míriel—

“Maedhros.”

That was Maglor, returned to check on him. No one else would dare. Those Eldar on the deck — working or wandering — gave him a wide berth. Even Eönwë’s taunting concern had dried up in the face of enough silence.

Maedhros did not turn. He kept his hand pressed to the thick wooden gunwale of the ship. He could vault upwards and be over the edge before anyone could catch him, if he timed it right.

He wouldn’t.

There was no point to it, not anymore. Judgment awaited him in Valinor; whether it was delivered with Maedhros in his flesh or out of it mattered not at all. In many ways, Maedhros felt it would have been preferable to skip the waiting. But he could not leave Maglor alone on this boat of murderers and children. None so prolific as them, but most had spilled kinblood all the same. Someone had planned the passenger arrangements as carefully as a dinner party.

“What thinkest thou?” Maglor asked. He was doing that now, determined little questions drawing Maedhros back to reality. In Beleriand, he’d known to leave well enough alone. But now Maglor thought they had a future, and pressed that belief on Maedhros.

Poison welled on his tongue: “Elros made the right choice.” Usually he was better at restraining it.

“I hope thou didst not tell him that,” Maglor said, clipped. Anger rolled through him like a summer storm. Good, a dark part of Maedhros thought.

Elros as a Man looked not so different from Elros as a youth, despite the time that had passed. Maedhros could not say with certainty what precisely about his body had been changed, and yet standing next to Elrond — also newly-Doomed — the differences were plain. Ever split, those two would be.

Unbelievable, that Elros had made his choice during the War. His spirit could have slipped from him so easily. Lost forever.

For his sake, Maedhros hoped it would be a quiet fate. Peaceful. Perhaps Mandos secretly farmed the souls of Men, too, and Elros would meet his famed great-grandmother in death. Or his uncles, if they wandered not still among the trees.

Or his mother.

“I did not.” He hadn’t said anything, when they’d come to see him. Hadn’t seen why they would want to, or why Eönwë would have allowed it. A fourth attempt was beyond unforgivable; it did not matter that it had not succeeded.

Maglor had spoken to them, of course. Maedhros knew not what he’d said. They’d been kept apart in the camp; few believed their surrender true. Maedhros did not blame them. He had not intended it to be. But he’d waited, and Maglor had said nothing and kept saying nothing, and then they were on the ships, and headed west.

Maglor pressed waybread into his hand until Maedhros took it, and settled next to him, back pressed to the gunwale to watch their fellow petitioners. What was the point in picking a fight with him? Constancy was the name of Maglor’s love. There was no point in making both of them miserable. Let the candle of his optimism burn while it could.

They were counting their remaining time in days, now. Awareness settled heavily over him; the hours crumbled like ashes through his fingers. They were no help against the tide of memory.

He had not wanted to raise the children. He had only wanted not to kill them.

“And where can they go?” Maglor had asked, sword sheathed at his waist. His eyes had been almost empty of treelight by then; dark and flat. He still had wet blood spattered on his face and staining the hands he was using to hold tightly to two bodies. All Maedhros registered of them was that they were small, dark, and unresisting. One of them was crying, but very quietly; he could not remember, later, whether it had been Elros or Elrond. Had that blood on Maglor belonged to their nurse? It had been a messy kill, part of his mind noted automatically. Clumsy. That was unlike Maglor. “To turn them loose is murder.”

It would have been, Maedhros agreed, and obliged. Everyone else who could argue was dead.

They’d had peace before — that long stretch they had not thought to savor. They had not known, then, the future crimes they would be driven to commit. Aberration hammered into pattern. All their prophesied evil ends. But they could hold to peace long enough to pass the small exhale of an almost-Mannish childhood.

Never mind the Silmaril with the dead woman, sinking in the sea. It would keep.

Elros had asked him, once, about that. They generally avoided talking much of the past, though it lived in the house with them, constant and restless as the spray of the sea on the rocks.

At that time, the boys had been young, though not as young as they had started. Maedhros was not familiar with the aging of Men — that had been cousin Finrod’s hobby — but even by the standards of Eldar they had seemed too small to be taken. If they had been kittens they surely could not have been separated from their mother.

(He had owned a cat in Himring, long ago. Maglor had brought her on one of his visits, and simply laughed when Maedhros had asked how precisely he was meant to send her back, now that she had gotten attached. It had been some time since he had remembered her. She had been gray and liked to curl in his bed when he could not sleep. Her fur was quite soft. She had lived her expected lifetime; Maedhros had not gotten a second.)

Maglor had turned him and the boys out of the house for the afternoon. He had wanted to do something for the twins’ birthday — though, in truth, none of them knew the correct date. But Elrond had declared it to be this day, and Elros had agreed that it was as good as any other. And so they had gone to pick raspberries from the bushes that wound along the pathways their footsteps had worn in the forest.

Each boy had been armed with a basket. Maedhros trailed behind them like a wraith, empty-handed.

He could not find any of Maglor’s enthusiasm for this life in himself. He frequently wanted to rail at Maglor, scream how could you leave me alone to carry this. This, of course, was the memory of what would come next. All killing was the same, when it came down to it, just wobbling backwards and forwards through time. Alqualondë and Doriath and Sirion tangled together in his mind — and where next? How many more times until they followed their other brothers west? (One, he knew, even then. Just one more.)

Maedhros could not say if knowing what would happen made it easier. It certainly made for exhaustion.

When they had settled by the sea, they had turned their remaining retinue out. Most were already dead, or had left in their recent years of ragged desperation; the rest, soured, were not appropriate company for child princes. Of course, neither was Maedhros himself.

Ailinel, who had been with them since Alqualondë and burned at the Dagor Bragollach, looked Maedhros in the eyes as she left. Few people managed that. Her voice was flat as she said, “This will not end well.” It was neither a threat nor a warning; just a statement of the facts.

“He is my brother,” Maedhros replied. His only brother, now. “We are bound. Cut thyself free.”

She had. Maedhros had not, though he agreed with her. It could not end well; hadn’t that been set long ago?

(In the here and now — the real one, on the ship, not the one he was caught in — he had seen her face in the solemn boarding. They had not spoken. Maglor said they had exchanged cordial pleasantries over breakfast one morning, but nothing more. Maedhros saw no point in seeking her out.)

He had known, always, that eventually the boys would be grown and gone. The summer would end. One more promising thing gone to ruin. The Oath pulled at him even as he watched them running carelessly ahead in the sunshine. It itched like a wound, stitches holding together.

Still Maglor softened like wax, more each passing year. I do not want to be alone again, he had told Maedhros twice — once at the beginning and once just before the end. Maglor poured himself into the mold of parenthood like it was all he’d wanted. He let himself believe in it, shaping himself like a melody. A cluster of notes he could arrange however he wanted. He let himself forget as he made the truth into what he wanted it to be.

Maedhros — who was made of something far less malleable, for all the good it did either of them — did not think he could bear to watch Maglor turn brittle again.

He would, of course. He could no more leave Maglor than abandon their father’s last wish and turn from the path they were on — and did not want to, besides. But he hated Maglor for making him witness it.

Among the thorns, Elros was dawdling, overcautious in separating each hollow fruit from its core. Maedhros frowned, drawing closer to him. Elrond, focused on his task, moved further down the row. It was safe enough to let him, Maedhros reasoned; there was no one else out here.

And besides, Elros wanted to talk to him alone. Alone was a relative term, of course — like any good prisoners, the boys formed a whisper network of two, and what one learned would eventually be passed to the other — but Maedhros understood the importance of solitary questions.

When Elrond was far enough ahead that he would be able to hear only voices and not words, Maedhros plucked a berry from the bush and dropped it in Elros’s basket. He’d held it too tightly; bright juice spilled over his fingertips. He wiped it up his other forearm in a long stripe. Better there than his clothes; it would stain. “What didst thou wish to ask?”

He was not in the habit of prompting. As children, his brothers had not needed it. Their energy was boundless; their curiosity immense enough to fill all of Eä. Father had been good at nurturing it. But the twins were still very quiet around him, and naturally reticent even past that.

Elros eyed him a moment longer, before: “Did ye kill our mother?” He was holding his basket very still, pressing his fingertips into the sharp woven edges.

Maedhros did not close his eyes. “Yes.”

“Maglor said ye did not.”

Maglor shouldn’t have been talking about it. If the boys ran, they would have to chase. Maglor’s polite falsehood of fostering held for now, but it could not survive that. Maedhros chose his words carefully. “In a way, Maglor is right. Thy mother chose her to make her end. That’s the privilege given to her kin. But we drove her to it.”

“Oh.” Elros did not ask any of the further questions Maedhros expected. “But how could thee, if thou lovedst her?”

“I did not know thy mother.” What had Maglor been filling their heads with? They recalled parts of the massacre, Maedhros knew. It stained their minds like ink spilled on a map, blotting out the finer details of their earlier life.

But their bodies remembered more.

When the nightmares came, Maglor let the twins creep into their bed. Somehow Maedhros was still always surprised when Elrond and Elros slipped quietly through the door. Often singly, but sometimes as a pair. Then none of them would sleep. Maglor would tell stories until dawn — old ones, from the shores of Cuiviénen, which had populated their own childhood. Nothing more recent.

Every time seemed like it ought to be the last. Maedhros imagined that the boys would prefer to seek comfort with each other, rather than the perpetrators. Even as Maglor set them as the guardians of sleep, Maedhros tried not to let him obscure their role there. Night could be for children’s stories. But in the light of day, Maglor sang the history of their people in all its terrible brilliance, from Cuiviénen to the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Then Maedhros spoke of the inglorious rest.

Still they came.

Perhaps it was cruel to allow. He well remembered Gorthaur’s false kindness during his own early captivity, and those memories were irrevocably marked by a simmering resentment. But Maedhros could not deny them outright.

There had been another question from Elros on the day with the raspberries; what had it been? Ah. “But she was thy kin.”

Maedhros put the matter as simply as he could. “We are not thy kin. Claiming so would be disrespectful.”

Disrespectful, but not strictly untrue: Eärendil had been their cousin Turgon’s grandson. But kinslaying cut ties.

“Then why…” Elros’s voice was beginning to raise. Elrond was lingering. He was unskilled at pretending not to eavesdrop. “Why do ye keep us?”

“Thy father is unreachable, and Maglor loves ye. I would see ye safe. When thou art full-grown, thou canst go out into the world and make thine own kind of life. And then Maglor and I will finish our task, and the world will be free of a great evil.” It was nothing they had not been told before, except perhaps for the last. Maedhros had not meant to say it. He had forgotten to whom he spoke.

Elros did not cry. Maedhros thought this to be a promising sign. The boys grew at a startling pace; in a handful of years they had aged decades. “Dost thou not love us?” he asked, in a trembling voice that still managed to be as imperious as a king’s.

Maedhros was silent for too long. He did not love them. He could not. This was only an interlude — one of them had to remember that. And yet he struggled to find an explanation for this boy, with his face shining and open like a well reflecting the night sky. “Love is not a luxury allotted to me,” he said eventually — or wished he had. He could not be sure. “Go fill thy basket. Maglor’s making a surprise.”

He did not know if Elros ever understood it, though he did not ask again. Elrond was the more expressive of the two, and even he avoided direct affection with Maedhros. Maglor gave them all they could want; too much, Maedhros felt. They’d fought often, in the months after that conversation, about what was appropriate.

“They are not ours,” he hissed at Maglor, after a day watching overstep after overstep. Anger burned in him for reasons he could not entirely grasp. The children were asleep; there was little worry of being overheard. Maedhros kept his voice low regardless.

Maglor threw up his hands. “I know that!” He was not as quiet a disputant as Maedhros — his passion came through more easily. “But it is no crime to love them, Maedhros. Get that through thy head. And start showing it.”

That argument proved unresolvable, so they had stopped having it.

We cannot shape them was an indefensible position for Maedhros to hold; what was this life but shaping? But they had no right to it — that was something Maedhros always had to remember for all four of them.

When they were small, the twins sided with Maglor’s style of rearing, which pretended the wrongs of their past did not exist. It was a comforting lie. Maedhros could see the appeal in it, but he could not bring himself to enact it on the children.

He was grimly pleased with that decision when they were older.

Still, it was difficult not to fall into a pattern of life. Especially when Maglor was made so happy when he did. The day-to-day tasks spread out before him like a quilt. They did not require him to think, beyond do it like this, not like that. And there were so many of them! Elrond and Elros ate often and in large amounts. They slept frequently: nearly every other night. They could not be left without direction. Maedhros learned their preferences despite himself.

He made their clothing, which they outgrew on a yearly basis; it gave him something to do when Maglor insisted the four of them spend time together as a group. Maglor would play or sing or teach, depending on what was asked for, and Maedhros could sew quietly, unnoticed. His embroidery skills had not been used for decades, but Elrond was so charmed by the clumsy stars — only five points, not eight — sewn into his collar that he insisted Maedhros teach him to do it himself.

It was not Maedhros’s right to do so, but there was no one else, and Maedhros did not know what was taught in Sirion and Doriath and Nargothrond and all the other places their rightful parents had scattered from.

“What does it matter who they learn it from, so long as they learn it?” Maglor asked, when Maedhros finally tired of puzzling it over himself. They had been watching the new star, which traveled across the sky like the sun — someone was pulling it.

Maedhros wanted to weep at the sight: a Silmaril, lingering so far beyond their grasp.

“Oh, may I, Maedhros?” Elrond piped up wistfully from the nearby dark, proving that his eavesdropping was improving. And the matter was closed.

Ultimately, embroidery was a practical skill; Maedhros taught it the way he had learned. There was no more meaning to it than that. But the other legacies had haunted Maedhros since well before the children had entered their lives, and only intensified with their presence.

When their life with the children began, Maedhros had thought to slip away into the woods and live as they had in the years previous, until Maglor was ready to move on.

It had gone poorly.

Still, he had the long tether of trips into the nearest trading town, almost a week away. Maedhros was the more identifiable of their duo, but he could not bear to be left alone in the house with the twins for long periods of time. If he was, he would start to lose himself in a life where all this was true. He did not like the feeling. It starved the bird of his guilt enough that Maedhros feared it would slip the bars completely, and wing into the sun.

Not often, but sometimes, one of the boys would come with him, so they could learn skills that were harder to teach with only two, like the behavior of crowds and how to haggle. Handling them was easier on the road, where the newness of the experience could distract the boys; they would ask him answerable questions.

Still, even that was not always enough. Sometimes he confused them with other children — their uncles, the Ambarussa, and even his brother-son Celebrimbor, who he had not seen past the twins’ age — but he did not think he said it to their faces. It would have scared them. Still, whether or not Maedhros spoke of it, death followed the boys. They were, at least in those days, mortal.

The times when they sickened were terrifying. When Elros broke his wrist and Elrond wrenched a finger out of joint Maedhros could splint them handily, and let Maglor scold them. They would heal, if too slowly. But illness was something Maedhros and his kin knew almost nothing of, and certainly nothing practical. It had never been relevant enough to learn.

Regret was a bitter tonic and a terrible teacher.

They had to be careful with not only the food, for the twins would sicken far easier than most Eldar, but also the air. Unlike those caused by Morgoth’s poison, these illnesses could not be seen in the neighboring wildlife. The snow would sit, crisp and white, traversed by numerous fat squirrels and rabbits. Only the boys would be burning to the touch, leaking fluid and struggling for breath. Coughing through the night, too miserable to sleep.

This was typical for Men, the healer they had eventually sought out had said. It might improve and it might not. If they died—

Maedhros had taken up a watch over them with the grim vigilance once applied to the border he had guarded for four centuries. Even when Maglor gave in to the need for sleep, Maedhros sat up through the duration of their illness. It was not the most taxing thing he had asked of his body. Rarely did one sicken without the other; a horrible symmetry of fate. Easier to believe they might die when it was both of them. Their health always did improve, but the possibility of next time lingered heavily through each passing winter.

Sometimes, when they were sick and Maedhros was tired and Maglor was not there to hear him break his word, he spoke to them in the Quenya their great-great-grandfather had banned. Just little things, stories of a childhood he hardly remembered, which seemed like they had happened to someone else. Something funny that Tyelkormo or Makalaurë had done that had come dislodged in his mind. How Carnistir had been such a fussy baby. What better patients they made! And beautiful discoveries, unseen by any eyes before theirs save those of the Valar. Hard to speak of in Sindarin, which did not have the right words for light.

He had thought the two of them too ill to comprehend anything but the rhythm of words. They had burrowed into his cooler touch when he held them upright so they would not drown in their own fluids, and they let him see them cry.

Those tears were more about the misery of a lasting pain than any sign of a worsening condition, Maedhros thought. He remembered his own very bad days just after his rescue well enough. So he wiped their faces clean and spoke to them of a time before pain, taking comfort in the fact that they could understand none of it.

He had underestimated their abilities. Through a hacking cough that made Maedhros tense each time he heard it, Elros asked what the edge of the world truly looked like. A question he could have plausibly stumbled upon in his own imagination; excusable.

"Like the sea, but made of black glass," Maedhros had said, Sindarin words scraping over his throat, and had thought no further on it.

But then only a short time later, healthy and cheerful over dinner, Elrond remarked that he had a hard time imagining eyes could be any brighter than they already were, were the Trees why they glowed? And could they not get a dog? Surely a little one could not be so much trouble as Huan.

"Yes, that was why," Maedhros said, with a faint ring of guilt. He had unlocked a door he had meant to keep shut as long as they would allow it; it could never be sealed again. The feeling mixed queerly with the shameful pride engendered by the look Maglor had given him for a long moment after Elrond had asked — wide-eyed and tender. But Maglor recovered soon enough to chime in that, no, little dogs were even more trouble than Huan could ever be; they had so much less space within their bodies to hold it. And Elros had giggled at the thought, though it had not stopped Elrond from asking again.

When they retired to bed, Maglor had said nothing about the conversation, but kissed Maedhros so sweetly. He tasted like endless summer.

And so Maedhros taught the twins as much Quenya as they suffered to learn, which was still too much. But no metalworking. It was far too specialized, and they had not the equipment besides. Maedhros did not even have to argue for that one. Maglor’s determined cheer could be thin as gilt, sometimes. He carried his regrets, too.

And yet determined he remained.

Maglor handled their Tengwar, and music, and manners, and everything else hopeful. Everything that implied the twins retained their right to rule. Still, it was not enough. Gaps would remain in their education. If they were clever, the twins could play them off as the result of their chronological youth, their unnatural growth. They did not have the luxury of time.

But Maedhros taught them to fight, knocking them down into the sand again and again until they learned how to fall.

And fought they had, although it was words they used as weapons in the end.

Maglor held onto them too long; that was the generally expressed truth among the household, by the end. Although who among them could truly say when maturity came for a Peredhel? Only Beren and Lúthien; only Idril and Tuor; only Elwing and Eärendil. All passed over the sea. Adulthood seemed to arrive all too quickly and yet not at all. They were still so young.

In the end, events forced their hand.

“Thou wantedest them not,” Maglor accused, towards the end. At dinner, Maedhros had taken Elros's side instead of remaining silent, as he usually did. It wasn't helping anyone to pretend his arguments didn't make sense. Although Maglor was practiced at hiding his emotions, they had boiled over into tears that evening. He blamed Maedhros for stirring them up.

It was easier than facing the truth that they wanted to go, and it had been a long time coming.

Maglor had taken to mimicking the rhythms of sleep on the same schedule as the twins; Maedhros followed him. Their faces were bare inches apart on the pillow. Sleep threatened to pull Maedhros down often in those late days: a warning sign he had not heeded. By that point, they had settled well enough to fight in words without body, so Maglor’s anchoring touch was gentle on Maedhros’ shoulder.

Maedhros felt himself guiltless in this particular matter. He had seen it coming from the start; he had warned Maglor and taken every precaution. But he let Maglor be angry, because he knew it was afterwards that Maglor dreaded: the redonning of cruelty, the thrum of the Oath, the loneliness.

It would have been less terrible if they had not stopped in the middle of the path. The gap between their life now and what it would soon be widened with each rising of the sun. But stopped they had. It would be worse for Maglor, anyway; he had loved the twins so desperately and for so long. He had thought they could hold to this forever.

“They aren’t children any longer,” Maedhros said, tracing the starburst a poisoned arrowhead had left on Maglor’s chest. Had it been any closer to his heart, his own body would have helped to kill him. Little betrayals everywhere. “War is on our doorstep.”

His body knew it. War was what it had been shaped for; he could feel it in the air. Maglor, master as he was of music, blocked out the sound of rising violence. He scrambled after more time, though they would not fight in this one. They had no company, and no army would trust them.

Not anymore.

Not after turning thrice on their own kin — and worse was rumored, besides.

Gossip was Morgoth’s weapon of choice, and accusations stuck more easily to those covered in the mire of kinslaying. Truth was irrelevant: it was the speaking that mattered.

That was the argument that convinced Maglor, in the end. He understood the power of stories, and knew more than Maedhros did of the kind of rumors that had dogged them since the great defeat.

There was at least one ballad of the vulgar kind. Probably there were others, but Maglor had sung it for him precisely once, guessing at the tune. It was particularly titillating, if not quite as bad as the one he’d heard about Celegorm and Curufin after the fall of Nargothrond.

Its subjects were unnamed, of course. All good monsters were. But it was not terribly difficult to guess who the handless thrall and his closer-than-kin minstrel lover were, in their barren gray land.

The ballad had sat heavy in him for long after it faded from the air.

The ending had been particularly bad. Crude and cruel. Venomous. Their Maglor had little gift for verse. Their Maedhros had no head for anything. What did I do to you? Maedhros wondered at the anonymous author, and could guess at too many griefs to name. Although, of course, it could have been nothing at all. Was it worse if the rumor was not the product of revenge — merely the fastest way to blacken their reputations?

At least the one about him and cousin Fingon had the decency to be romantic.

Still, the ballad was not altogether terrible. Maedhros had, in a strange way, been touched by the salacious opening with his and Maglor’s play-flirting in Valinor. It spoke to a Sindarin author, or a very young Noldo — close enough to know of the practice, but removed enough to not understand it. It was not something they had done publicly since before the rising of the sun; before the smithing of swords, even.

Maglor had been an incorrigible flirt in his youth. He often practiced on Maedhros, simply because he could. His wit against Maedhros’s politician’s mask.

And of course it had been public; an audience was required to admire the skill of the performance. It had not caused eyebrows to rise at the time. Not in Tirion and not in Formenos, though their brothers had little patience for it. Grandfather Finwë had merely declared that the ways of youth were strange to him. Play-flirting was not uncommon between young Noldor of the same sex, even if they were too closely related for marriage, precisely because it wasn’t marriage; it was only a dalliance. Only a game.

But, of course, once politically convenient, all behavior became suspect.

Perhaps Maedhros had indulged Maglor somewhat more — and for longer into true adulthood — than most people would have, but they had not even been sharing a bed, then. Not until the Long Peace had broken, and they were both in Amon Ereb. Maedhros did regret that. He should have taken more advantage of the time allowed.

It was not enough, when it was all added up and measured against eternity.

But Maedhros skipped past the less-objectionable opening of the ballad and began in the horrendous middle. Out of deference to the sleeping boys, he did not attempt to sing. After he recounted a few choice lines, Maedhros paused and said, “We’ve done enough to them. Don’t add cowardice to the list.”

Maglor could not argue with that.

Maedhros was a shell of a person around a howling void. He had been braced for the inevitable impact all these years; the weight of his brother collapsing against him added nothing. He could ensure Maglor did not need to hide his grief at losing the twins — losing this life — until the sun rose. He could give Maglor time. Let him keep running until the bitter end.

“It will be easier when it’s done,” Maedhros murmured, and Maglor nodded.

And so the twins would emerge alive and glorious from their captivity. Lúthien’s legacy, not Fëanor’s. Unbowed and uncanny, they would be walking straight out of a myth. It would not protect them on the battlefield — Maedhros knew well that death came to legends as easily as any other — but it would perhaps save them from their fellows.

Let Elros and Elrond ruin them further, if they wished. Add another accusation of monstrosity. This one would have the dubious benefit of being accurate, and in any case, it was their right. But let the twins begin their true lives unstained. Let them end well.

But all of that was gone now, Maedhros reminded himself, watching the great unblinking eye of the sun sink below the waterline. The house by the sea was empty, swallowed up in the shifting of continents. The boys he raised were gone. He would never meet them again.

Maglor was touching him, uncaring of who saw them; an arm around his waist, a hand pressed to his chest over his rabbiting heart. His grip was overtight, but Maedhros stayed within it as he swam against the currents of memory toward the present. His fingers ached, and he looked down to find they were clenched and bleached of color. Deduction said he had eaten the waybread previously held there, though he had no memory of doing so. He loosened his fist deliberately, saying, “I am here,” because Maglor would worry more if he didn’t.

Maglor released him slowly, as the sky bled color. “Come below,” he urged, but Maedhros would not go.

He wanted to remember the sea.

Their remaining time passed in a vast expanse of blue. No land yet smeared the line of the horizon with black, though birds were beginning to circle.

“They say a princess wheels out here in the guise of a white bird, once we get close enough to shore,” Maglor said lightly one morning, observing the last. They were his conversation partners at breakfast, most likely.

“What, an egret or a gull?”

“Or a swan, perhaps. I heard all three.”

“Thou shouldst not listen to sailors’ tales, Maglor. Whyever should a princess become a bird, let alone three?”

“They say Ulmo took pity on her," Maglor paused, and then said carefully, “when she threw herself into the waters of the river Sirion.”

Sunlight flashed on the waves, making the water glitter. Maedhros felt his skin begin to crawl as nausea roiled in his stomach. Perhaps the promised seasickness had finally caught up to him. He took a deep breath, conscious of a burning in his chest. “And Finrod Felagund walks still among Men, wrapped in a wolfskin, and the ships of the Teleri sang themselves out of ash to migrate home.”

“I thought thou shouldst know,” said Maglor, humor gone from his tone. A candle suddenly extinguished. It was the closest they had come to discussing Maedhros's struggle outright.

Maedhros did not want to know. If the rumor was simply a flight of fancy — an easy recuperation of a hard death — it was disgusting. How dare they. It echoed over again in his mind: how dare they. Maedhros could well remember the sinking of a body beneath the almost-stilled water, as if the whole of the river had held its breath in the moment of her furious fall — although of course it had not, of course the screams had begun shortly thereafter and the night had been lost. The jewel at her brow had burned so brightly, even as the water swallowed her. He remembered red fabric and black hair and open eyes that turned so familiar in the years after.

And if it was true—

If it was true—

Maedhros could not bear to watch the sea at night, and so he had made himself do precisely that. He could not go trembling to Maglor when the enormity of his crimes rose in him. Maglor already spent too much time watching him; he did not trust Maedhros to stay during the day. Maedhros could not fault him for that. At night, Maedhros opened his mind so that Maglor could rest. Not peacefully, unfortunately. Terror of the Everlasting Darkness pricked at the edges of Maedhros’s consciousness whenever he stopped forbidding it. He must face it now, he told himself, while it was still escapable.

And yet on the fifth night he could not see the waters at all, only heard the faint scream of the birds — of the Teleri? — and the smell of salt sharpened again, hitting him all at once. Elf-blood or sea-blood, it mattered not. He went below.

It was not that he feared weeping. All his tears had burnt with his father’s body, cremated on Ered Wethrin with all his children clustered around. As if they thought their concern could save him. As if they thought death would halt in its tracks simply because they loved the one it had come for. Maedhros had still been raw then, reeling from Losgar but unshaped by Angband. Death he knew, but not suffering.

When grandfather Finwë had died, his body had been the only still thing in a rush of people who could hardly comprehend the impossibility that had just occurred. Death! Murder — a word dredged up from the silt of Cuiviénen — in Valinor! His blood had pooled around his face, drying sticky in his hair. Someone finally had the presence of mind to drape a sheet over him, but the body had remained until Father had returned from Tirion. A very solid thing; a typical corpse, Maedhros learned later.

But Fëanor’s ashes had floated towards the sky, except for those that stuck to their damp faces. A horror devoid of feeling, now.

It had burned at the time, delicate skin no match for the concentrated power of his father’s spirit. Still, like all but the most grievous of injuries, it had healed. Six unmarked faces greeted Maedhros even upon his rescue, eagle feathers clenched in his tight grip and yet somehow unreal.

He could not slip into that feeling again. So he went to Maglor, who was not asleep.

Maedhros crawled into his hammock like they were still in their house by the sea. He had his own — also nestled in this far corner of the hold, away from the others — but it was untouched. They could not force him to sleep; up until now he had not abandoned his post on the deck. But he wanted not to be alone, and the strength of the longing was terrible. Desire, always an inconstant friend, curled in him now.

Maglor was still soft enough to welcome touch. There had been a long period when he had not been. Although their wanderings after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad had been marked by frantic touch — Maedhros’s spirit not yet dulled and drowning in grief — after the second kinslaying they had both been vicious, unwanting of kindness and carapaced by guilt. Burning with the sickness of what they had done. Learning — again — that it was irrevocable. They were bound by blood; not just that which ran in their veins but that which they had spilled.

Doomed together.

“Shh,” Maglor said, settling a hand on the crown of his head. Maedhros could not tell whether he meant it as soothing or reproach. Still, he quieted, and was rewarded with Maglor’s arms around him, Maglor’s chin tucked against his shoulder. Maglor did not otherwise speak, and Maedhros was glad: he did not want to fight, and any explanation of his thoughts would bring such upon them. He did not want to think, either.

He kissed Maglor so gently it did not make a sound. Any more than that was risky, here in a ship of unfriendly and potentially volatile strangers. Himring had taught them speed and children had taught them silence, but Maedhros did not push them off the edge of release.

He merely kissed, pressing them together in body and mind, and pretended it tethered him to the earth they were leaving behind.

Maglor’s affection was not uncomplicated, was not ungrieved, but it was familiar. He favored Maedhros’s hair, pressing lips along his jaw as he sent images of other times. They had not seemed happy when they occurred, but carried the vast weight of memory now. The two of them pressed up against the wall with wine-stained lips at the Feast of Reuniting. Staring into the bright field of stars above them in the forest; hard to say when that was from. An impression of lust and another of affection, detached from their original contexts.

Maglor tried hard to scrub the shadows of stress and pain away before passing them on, though Maedhros’s mind filled them in gleefully. Still, they reminded him whatever the terrible truth of Maedhros, it was in Maglor too.

Maedhros stayed, unsleeping, until the light of day — thin and weak from a passing storm lashing out at their vessel — reached down the stairs. Then he crept out and up, resuming his watch of the sea.

“I worry for thee,” Maglor said with no preamble when he emerged from the hold some time later.

It was sooner than usual; Maglor liked to attend the ship’s breakfast, and observe the other passengers. They let him do it easily enough. He relayed his findings to Maedhros; half report, half anecdote. Anything to pull Maedhros away from himself. They were good stories, Maedhros had to admit. People generally liked Maglor, if they had not lost anyone to him. Sometimes even then.

But they were having a conversation. Maedhros could not let himself think on the twins again.

“Worry for thyself,” Maedhros told him. The rain fell lightly around them, dampening their faces. The reply was too long in coming, but Maglor was not unused to that. Maedhros tumbled, often, into the pits of memory. “Thou hast done no less than I.”

“Thou truly canst not believe they’ll let us free?”

Maedhros shot him a heavy glare. It slid off Maglor like the rain. “‘The Dispossessed shall they be for ever.’” Eönwë’s first words. “Well, we have dwelt in the shadow of death long enough to make it our raiment. There will be no forgiveness.”

“And yet they’ve asked us back,” Maglor said. It was the same argument they had been having since Eönwë issued his orders. They would keep having it until they got off the boat, were dragged before the Valar, and summarily cast into the Everlasting Darkness.

Would the Oath tear at them even then? Would Fëanor?

Had their father been trapped with Morgoth these past decades, or were they in their own separate prisons? Either seemed a terrible fate.

Maedhros thought he could bear eternity with Maglor; he was already making good on an attempt. Even as he shattered like flint, they found space for each other in the wreckage. But not alone. Maedhros was not the kind of person who was built to be alone. Even in Angband — mercifully hazy now — he had the insects, and sometimes Gorthaur. Between the two of them, the insects were better company.

“We had already gone so far and now it is all for nothing,” Maedhros said, watching the ocean as it slapped against the side of the ship. The chill had settled into his bones. Water was soaking his clothes, running beneath his collar. “Only a little further and we could have stopped and been done with it. We could have stayed.” Surely they would not have had to kill more than ten. And what was that, compared to the bodies already stacked against them?

“We have stopped,” Maglor said. His voice was low, like he was concerned about observers. No one else was on deck with them; the sea was too rough for that. And what would it matter if they were? They’d already done so much worse than talk. “They’ve stopped us.”

Did the Oath not pull him forward? Had his softening with the children truly allowed it to unhook from his self? An awareness of the Silmarils burned brighter than ever in Maedhros’s mind. It had never entirely stopped; it would not until Maedhros himself ceased. Even Eönwë was not quite trusting enough to keep them on the same ship as himself and Maglor, but he could tell that they were nearby.

Yet another reason to avoid the temptation of the water, Maedhros thought, shaking his rain-heavy hair. It did little to lessen the weight. He had not felt compelled towards death this way in centuries. It wore on him; he did not like the constant monitoring the desire required.

And yet an ending was demanded of him.

The Oath had been all that animated Maedhros for too long. Without it, he feared total collapse of the self; feared it was occurring even now. Not so for Maglor. He had the twins, and his songs. Maedhros knew not if he still composed, but thought it likely.

Soon enough, a requiem would burst from Maglor fully formed, and it would settle his grief. The Noldolantë had done that; Maedhros had thought it a wild kind of magic. How brilliant, to intentionally carve your guilt into historical memory. How terrifying. Let it be before the trial, Maedhros pleaded with no one; a long-dead habit he still carried. Let him leave it in this world.

Maglor waited for agreement that did not come. His next question was hard to hear over the wind. “Art thou willing to stop? Yes,” he said, finding the answer easily, and Maedhros realized his mind was still open. He had not meant it to be. An edge of fury burned through him and found its way into Maglor’s next words. “If thou wilt jump, I will follow thee and drag thee back. Thou canst not give up now, when we’re so close.”

Maedhros smiled at him, feeling cornered. Close to what? Not freedom. Not forgiveness. His teeth were bared; it was not a kind expression. “We all want things we can’t have, Maglor.” Why art thou asking now? he asked; it was easier to keep it from becoming an accusation when not spoken aloud.

Maglor reached for him, turning Maedhros fully away from the sea. Ósanwe did not require touch, but Maglor pressed their foreheads together anyway. Maedhros closed his eyes as Maglor pressed hope into his mind, over the bleak bedrock. It burned like the first dawn. The echoes of despair — scabbed-over though they were — made it easier to bear.

Don’t leave me, Maglor was begging on a level below conscious thought. Don’t die.

“I will do this for thee every day,” Maglor began, voice thick and no longer carrying his borrowed anger, “for as long as thou needest it. I do not know if I can make thee believe me, but we are doing good in this. Hold on long enough to become something other than a shadow of regret. Eönwë said it can be healed, with time. Canst thou make peace with that?” There was more than a little fear transmitted through his open mind, though Maedhros knew not if Maglor was still aware of it. Fear for Maedhros, and for himself, and for the future, as much as he pretended otherwise.

He had not lost his senses entirely, but Maglor believed, so fiercely, that their crimes would be forgiven. Or go unpunished, which amounted to the same. That belief would kill him, when it was swept away. Maedhros, who had given up so long ago, did not envy his coming reckoning. He also doubted Eönwë’s expertise; he was the Herald of Manwë, not a healer. And when had Maglor spoken to him of this, besides?

But he was not unmoved by the plea.

He put his hand to Maglor’s waist, holding to the soaked fabric of his woven belt. He did not say I will let thee convince me because he could not be convinced. It was simply beyond him. He could not control anything; he could only let it happen.

He would have welcomed the sundering of body from spirit, but it had never come for him. Thou canst take more, his implacable spirit always said. And he always could.

“I will not leave thee,” Maedhros promised, pushing his own exhaustion, glimmering with sincerity, into Maglor’s mind. The dregs of his spirit. Perhaps Maglor was right, and their weariness could resolve in Valinor. But they would not have that chance. In the privacy of his own mind, he silently added, Not until they make me.

And as land loomed, unfamiliar in the light of day, he resolved to watch the birds as much as the sea.