Imperfection
Disclaimers: Middle-earth and all its inhabitants belong to J.R.R. Tolkien and his estate. I own nothing. I intend no infringement of copyright and I am making no money by this.
Rating: PG.
Summary: One night in Himring, when the past is remembered, the future imagined, and hard decisions made. Characters: Maglor, Maedhros, Elrond and Elros.
A/N: Elmin – Star-One – Elrond.
Eltâd – Star Two – Elros.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY LITTLE SHE-BEAR!
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Maglor stood in the doorway and watched the slumbering peredhil tenderly. Eltâd had once more crept from his own bed into his brother's, and now they slept side by side, two tiny thumbs firmly jammed into identical mouths. But Elmin's forehead was slightly furrowed and he whimpered unevenly in his sleep, his breathing ragged. Maglor could almost perceive something in his babyish countenance that was incongruously ancient, something that he fancied he might find in his own face, if only he dared to look in the mirror any more. And this, he reflected, was his greatest sin in all the long years: to make these two frailly innocent babes resemble the last of the kinslayers in any way. With a sigh, he slipped from the room, his soft leather boots making virtually no sound on the stone floors, almost more like a shadow than a living Elf, clad as he was in a black tunic and breeches, clinging to every line of his too thin body. But he could not find it in himself to eat when his mind was over-heavy with sorrow and old grief.
He encountered his brother in the library, cradling a glass of mellow brandy in his left hand, the mutilated stump of the other draped carelessly across the back of his chair. His hair was as red as the dancing firelight, as red as the blood, the ceaseless blood, on both their hands. Their eyes locked, and Maglor thought for a moment that this was what the Timeless Void must be like, so blank was the gaze that looked back at him.
"'Twould have been better to have taken them not," he said at last, anything to fill that hideous silence. He remembered, with a pang of pain as bright and cruel as the first dawn, the unnatural gravity lurking in Elmin's grey eyes and the quick clever movements of his young hands as he wrote, the sharp snap of the quill as some unwelcome thought assailed him; Eltâd's forced jollity as he careered through the halls of Himring like the very wings of the storm. "Perhaps we should have left them…"
"To burn in the ruins of Sirion?" Maedhros laughed caustically, and that strange, deathly bright light flared in his eyes, as it had more and more often in the last, terrible years. "Nay, filit, your thought is too fleeting swift for your mind to comprehend. Once we left the peredhil to their fate: never again, never again… Is it not better by far for them to be living hostages than frozen carcasses and wolf-fodder … I meant, burnt carcasses…" He stumbled to a halt, stricken, lost in his memories.
Maglor turned his head away, unwilling to meet that haunted stare. "Better by far that we had consigned them to neither of those fates," he murmured.
"Can you deny that the need for jewel-fire is within you? Can you deny that the Oath we swore binds you?" Maedhros' face was contorted with rage and despair.
"Nay." The Minstrel felt the gorge rising within himself, the need to scream, to strike out. Now he could not stop the flood of memories which had been threatening him since early that morn. Once more he was standing on the quay at Alqualondë, once more he felt for the blood for the first time slicking his hair to his skull, drenching his clothing…
"Maglor? Makalaurë? Filit?"
"I am here," he said in a weak voice. "I am here." He scrubbed absent-mindedly at his right hand, as if by that simple gesture of despairing hope he might obliterate the stain of the blood that he trickled down his death-bright sword and soaked his hand. "And by admission that the jewel-lust is within me still, I … I damn myself, and you with me."
"You go to deep, brother mine." Maedhros essayed a chuckle, but it came out as more of a choked sob. "And I fear I cannot follow you."
"Or will not."
"Or will not," he conceded. "And thus it is that I bid you good night."
He brought the hewed wreck of his right wrist up to caress his brother's dark hair in a gesture so redolent of sweeter times beneath the Trees when their souls had been whole. But his fair face was stained with shadows like ink spilt in water, and his grey eyes were grim and as filled with tears as Maglor's own black ones. And his younger brother realised that more and more as the stars wheeled by overhead and one year faded into the next, Maedhros had been using that limb, as if he wished to prove quite how useless it was, quite how marred he was. Then he was gone in a soft flutter of cloth.
Maglor sank down into the chair, hooking one lanky leg over the arm, and gazed sightlessly at the map of the Vale of Sirion. As if of their own accord, his fingers came to rest on the minute depiction of the Havens, now ruined by their fell Oath. He let his errant thoughts drift, but by no happy chance, no effort of will could he compel them to return to those far-off days of glory before all this began, or to what it had been like not to be constantly aware of the blood under his nails, besmirching his soul. He picked up the ceremonial dirk that lay on the desk and twirled it in his hand. The blade caught the scarlet firelight, and he was reminded – as everything seemed to remind him these days – of the Silmarils. He glared into the mithril's echoing, merciless depths.
Roused only by the faintest creak of wood against wood, he dropped the weapon and looked up, startled, to see one of the peredhil standing in the doorway, sucking relentlessly on the corner of the blanket that was wrapped around his thin shoulders.
"Up so early?" the elder Elf teased, seeking to alleviate his own deep-rooted panic with light words.
"It is still late, Father Maglor," the babe reproved him.
"Aye, I know… What has disturbed your slumber?" He guessed from the over-serious storm-hued eyes that dominated the pale, narrow face that it was Elmin.
"Nightmares."
Maglor winced, knowing what those disturbed dreams were likely to dwell on.
"May I stay with you a while?"
He had it half within him to say no, by his refusal to keep this babe far away from the thoughts of blood and darkness that belaboured his captor in the slow, shadowed hours. But in the end, he found it entirely impossible to deny either of the elflings, and Elmin was still shaking from his dream. He nodded, and the child clambered into his lap, his small fists bunched into the sombre fabric of Maglor's tunic.
"What of Eltâd? Is he awake as well?"
"No." The peredhel shook his head. "He does not have these nightmares as oft as I do, and then he just says that they are only dreams and turns over and goes back to sleep again."
Maglor chuckled a little wistfully. "He is so very like Maitimo when we were young. I would be so very afraid of the thunder, and he was not at all."
Elmin glared up at him sharply through his dark lashes, and the kinslayer had the sudden sensation that he was gazing upon rain-clouds through the branches of a winter-bared tree.
"I do not think that Eltâd would like to be told that."
The flames of fraternal rage and protectiveness leapt high within the Elf, and he involuntarily gripped the elfling so tightly that his nails dug through the fabric of his nightshirt and into his shoulders. Elmin froze like a startled rabbit as his foster-father clamped his dimpled chin between steely fingers. "Do not bethink you that you can understand one whit of what my brother is and can be. Do you comprehend me? He … he…" Just as abruptly as it had come, the fire deserted him, and there was naught left but ashes and cinders. He continued in a bare whisper, "Ai, I am sorry, little one. I should not blame you… Once Maitimo knew how to feel, how to love, but not now. That is why he shows no more tenderness towards you than to his riding boots." And probably less, he added silently. "Some days he scarce remembers that I am Cano, who once ran with him in the streets of Tirion, his brother and his friend besides."
"I am sure he really does remember you," Elmin reassured him, and, despite his misgivings about both of the surviving sons of Fëanor, he placed a sloppy kiss on Maglor's brow. "I would never forget Eltâd."
Maglor smiled ruefully. "Perhaps he does, for you are wiser by far than I, little one."
"I do not think so," Elmin said dubiously. "For if I was…" The unspoken words '…I would not have been caught by you' hung heavily in the air between them, and the tiny, warm body in Maglor's arms seemed so very far away from him.
"Nay: fear not, for you are very wise and shall be more so." A brilliant flash of foresight overcame him, and he said almost dreamily, not quite aware of his archaic words, "Thou shalt be mighty among the mightiest, pityonya, and all the lords of these lands shall seek thy wisdom." He beamed down at the tufty mop of black hair. "Thy heart shall be steadfast and thy hand kind."
Elmin appeared confused yet contented at this strange praise uttered by the Elf he had come to adore, little as it might be thought.
"And what of Eltâd?" he asked softly, rubbing at his bleary eyes.
"Why, he shall be a great sea-lord, think you not, little twin?" Not a week before, he had been bemused and a little exasperated to find the younger elfling trying to float several rather beautiful and priceless model boats in his bath water.
Elmin giggled appreciatively and snuggled deeper into the chest of his captor-captive. Maglor began to hum a lullaby that had been sung to him by his father, who had learnt it from his before him, who had first sung it by the waters of Cuiviénen long, long ago. The elfling dozed off, his black hair draped around his sweet face, and trod the merrier paths of his dreams. But Maglor sat awake, bitter tears glowing in his black eyes. He knew what he had to do, if what he had seen was to come to pass, but the deed would be harder than any before, and none could assuage the pain it would bring to him.
FINIS
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pityonya – my little one.
Filit – little bird – Maedhros' nickname for Maglor – invented by someone else.
Cano – a shortening of Maglor's father-name: Canafinwë.