Title: cause i'm only a crack in this castle of glass

Summary: The memories are beginning to come back, but not fast enough for him. And then they're coming too fast. It takes a while for them to even out.
Fandom: this is completely Silmarillion/Marvel

Characters: Maglor, Sam, Steve, Thor, Bruce, Natasha, Clint, Tony, Pepper, Maedhros (mentioned), Caranthir (mentioned), Fingon (mentioned)
Words: 1,385

Warnings: None for this, I think.

Technically speaking, this is set years after the Winter Soldier. I didn't get Bucky in here, but he is around.

It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll.

I am the master of my fate:

I am the captain of my soul.

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (1875)

It takes him far too long to remember anything after he remembers his name, but for a while, he's fine with just knowing his name. A name has so much significance. A name means he's a person, a name means he had a family, a name means he mattered to somebody one.

For 4 years, a name is enough. He has people who care for and about him now. That's enough.

But it doesn't remain enough. It takes him exactly 4 years, 3 months, and 8 days to begin pushing into his past. His name is no longer enough. He wants to know the people who gave it to him, why they gave that particular name to him. He wants to remember his family. He know that they're gone (what else could the lingering emptiness inside him mean?) and he knows that they're lost to him, but he also knows they weren't always. There was a time when he had them with him, but it's been taken from him and he wants it back.

Try as he might, he cannot recall them. He doesn't even know how many siblings he had, or if he had any at all. The people who have taken him in are good people and he loves them, in the childlike way that is the only way he knows, but he feels that they are somehow not enough. There's pieces of the bigger picture missing and the holes they have left behind are gaping and empty. Maglor hates it.

He begins to search for records of someone with his name, but there are none to be found. He's a ghost.

He finds that darkly amusing. He's been a ghost in the physical sense of the word before. He thought he had put that part of his life behind him, but it seems that he is still a ghost, albeit a ghost under a different definition of the word.

He continues to search none the less. He still cannot find his family. He realizes, as that awful disappointment creeps up, that he is also searching for himself. He has his name, but that's all he has. The person he used to be is completely to him. He finds absolutely no humor in that, dark or otherwise.

It takes him 2 years to stop searching the family records the world has. He doesn't know where to go next, but he knows he needs to go somewhere. He spends a month looking for that somewhere. He never does find it, but that's almost alright because he's beginning to discover himself on his own.

The memories finally start coming back when he hears someone playing a harp on the radio. By the time someone comes to check on him, he's written 25 pages of a lay, no a lament. rewritten he tells Steve and the tall blond man doesn't seem to know what to say to that, but by the next day there's a harp in his bedroom, and finally there's progress.

It takes 3 months for another memory to return and it comes in his sleep. He wakes screaming Maedhros and it isn't until the next morning that he looks back and realizes that he can remember who Maedhros was.

His breakfast doesn't stay down.

How could it?

Maedhros was so weak and that was wrong because Maedhros was strong. He was the eldest and he was the strongest of them all.

He had 6 brothers, he tells Natasha. Her hair matches 3 of them, he tells her. He had 9 cousins, he tells Thor. Well, half cousins, he amends. Fingon was an archer too, he tells Clint. He almost had to shoot Maedhros, he says quietly. I don't envy him that, he thinks.

After he remembers Fingon, the memories stop coming for a while, but he doesn't feel that upset. It takes him another 4 months to remember something new.

People said a lot of bad things about our father, he tells Tony one day out of the blue, but if there was one thing he wasn't, it would be a bad father. Tony not-so-subtlety kicks him out of the lab after that. Maglor doesn't begrudge him that. People these days think he doesn't listen much, but that's all he ever seems to do anymore.

My mother was a sculptor, he tells Bruce, people used to say her creations could come to life.

You don't agree, asks Bruce.

He shakes his head. They were too otherworldly for that, he says. They were beautiful though, he whispers. They were too perfect for this flawed world, he thinks, but he doesn't convey that thought to anyone.

Tears unnumbered ye shall shed, he tells Pepper and doesn't bother to explain. He's beginning to remember the tragedy that took his family from him. He doesn't want to remember that.

A year goes by and sometimes he finds people watching him as if they expect him to share some fact or story from his life that he's remembered. He doesn't. He never does anymore. Or so he likes to tell himself.

Amras burned, he tells Natasha quietly one day. Amras burned and I set the torch to the ship to start the fire that consumed him, he admits and when Natasha just squeezes his shoulder silently he feels better.

We all burned he thinks to himself and doesn't repeat that thought aloud.

Natasha listens quietly whenever he needs to get something off his chest. He likes Natasha. She almost reminds him of Caranthir. He tells her that. He also tells her he's not sure who Caranthir was. He was his brother, he remembers that much, but he doesn't remember much else about Caranthir. He tells her all this and she just listens. She feels like the sister he never had. He doesn't tell her that. He doesn't know why he doesn't. She smiles as if she knows and returns to the food in front of her. She doesn't push him to talk more, she just listens. Maglor likes her a lot. She understands.

The first time Maglor meets Sam, he tells him that he behaves a little like a feanorian. No one knows what that means and he laughs at them and says it's not a good thing. He cries after he says that and he's not sure why.

The second time they meet, he tells Sam that a feanorian is a good person and a bad person. People just like to focus on the bad and push aside the good that outweighs it. He says that a feanorian is someone who feels the goal justifies the means sometimes. He doesn't mention what means he is talking about and Sam doesn't ask. He does say that he is a feanorian and when he thinks Sam isn't listening, he whispers the goal didn't justify the means. No goal could morally justify the means we used. Sam was listening, but Sam doesn't say anything.

Maglor thinks he likes Sam as well and he tells him so the third time they meet. Sam looks at him for a moment and then tells him he likes him too. Maglor doesn't know who Sam reminds him of, but Sam feels familiar and Maglor doesn't want him to go away.

I was married, he tells Sam one day and the man looks at him, listening. Tony and Clint are also in the room and he knows that they are listening too, but he's only talking to Sam.

Later, he's asked why he and Sam was lip-reading each other. He doesn't know what that's supposed to mean. He didn't want anyone else to hear about his wife.

Thor thinks he is a mage, Maglor is still confused. He is a song warrior. He doesn't see the connection. The incident soon slides out of mind for most, but Maglor doesn't forget. What is a song warrior? He doesn't know and he wants to know. Practice yonya, he hears and he doesn't recognize the voice in the slightest, even though he somehow knows that it is his father speaking.

Practice, he repeats and the next time he sings, the ghosts of his family dance around him.

yonya = I think this is 'my son' in Quenya, but I might be wrong. Please correct me if I am.