This serves as a companion fic to earlier oneshots I wrote, Shades of Memory and promises to keep. While you're under no obligation to read either of them first, I'd suggest you do so. This will probably make more sense if you do—what I'm saying is that, with the exception of any AU fics I write in the future, all of my Silmarillion pieces exist in the same interlocking canon. As for Amrod and Amras, I'm going with the published Silmarillion for when they died, so they're both still alive in this fic.

I own nothing.

The black skies had given way to gray morning and the wind had stilled by the time the Ambarussa found him. Maedhros sat on a fallen tree, the pale light washing over him, but he felt no warmth, his heavy cloak drawn close about him. He sat, head bowed, staring down at the snow, and barely felt it when Amras, with uncharacteristic hesitation, put his hand on his shoulder. "Nelyo?"

"I tried to find them," Maedhros said, in what he thought was a calm, reasoned voice, never minding how it cracked. "Dior's sons, I mean. I never wanted…"

He thought for what was almost certainly the thousandth time that it had been like trying to find the Ambarussa when they would get lost, in the backwoods of Valinor or the crowded streets of Tirion. Except it had never been snowing when Maedhros went to look for them, and the Ambarussa were here now, safe and sound, but Dior's sons were…

The Ambarussa exchanged a long, unreadable look. "We know, Nelyo," Amrod told him gently. "But you're not going to find them. Or the Silmaril; it is gone. Return with us to Menegroth. We need to come away from this place."

Maedhros stared up at the sky, the blinding gray sky, and forced himself to lay the twin princes to rest in his mind. The children of his enemy, but they were not his enemies, and he should have been able to find them. After a long moment, Maedhros nodded, coming to his feet, and amidst his sense of horror and defeat, he remembered his anger. "Remind me to have a word with Tyelkormo over the conduct of his men," he muttered grimly as they started back through the thick and twisted woods of Doriath to the sacked capital.

Once again, the Ambarussa exchanged a look, this time, a look of grief and pain. Maedhros stopped dead in his tracks to see it. "What's happened?" he asked sharply, looking over the youngest of his brothers, one after another. They had never been skilled with the fine art of keeping secrets. Their emotions always showed nakedly on their faces, and now was no different; even if he felt as though he was walking through the world with a blindfold over his eyes and cloth stuffed in his ears, Maedhros had always and would always be able to tell when they were hiding. "Ambarussa, tell me."

Amrod's shoulders sagged and his face seemed to take on centuries in that moment, as though he had grown aged the way Men did. He sighed heavily. "Tyelkormo… He's dead, brother," he said quietly, not meeting Maedhros's gaze.

"What?"

"And Carnistir, and Curufinwë as well."

-0-0-0-

Three of his brothers were dead, the Silmaril had escaped their grasp again, and Maedhros did not weep, but he did corner the Elves who had been so gleeful of undertaking the task of dragging two small children out into the forest to die.

"Give me a reason why I should spare your lives," he snarled, sword drawn, and they weren't laughing anymore.

Better said, there was nothing that these Elves could have said to Maedhros now that would have persuaded him to spare them. The Ambarussa stood behind him; they did not try to stop him, and that was all Maedhros cared about, that they would not hinder them in this. Maglor sat on the ground, staring down at his hands, and had not seemed to hear his surviving (and the word 'surviving' was like a knife poised at Maedhros's throat) brothers enter the clearing where the bedraggled, much-diminished forces of the sons of Fëanor had retreated to.

The Elves, three of them, all young neri, shied away from him, ducking their heads and averting their gazes. They said something, likely meant to be conciliatory, but it did not matter. Maedhros did not hear them, and nothing they said to him could convince him to let them live. He raised his sword with a yell, his blood roaring in his ears.

"No, brother!" Suddenly, Maglor was at his side, hands curled around his wrist. His face was white as the snow on the ground about them, and his eyes were very red, but his voice, though flat it was, still had something of the power it had once possessed, long ago, and it gave him pause. "Do not," Maglor nearly whispered, looking up at him with an odd gleam in his eyes.

"Do you know what they have done? Those two boys—"

"Yes, and this past night we have slain their father and their mother, and their grandparents on their mother's side." Maglor laughed a mirthless, hollow laugh. "Look hard enough and we may even find little Elwing among the corpses." Each word was like a knife's blow, again and again, striking true each time, deeper and deeper. Reminding him that he had failed, that he was wrong, that he could neither recover his father's possessions nor even keep two small boys from dying. "Eluréd and Elurín are no different from the others we have slain. They are dead, and can neither judge nor forgive you. None of those whom we have slain can hear us to forgive us, and I doubt that they would, even if they could.

"Do not say to me that you wish to kill these three to avenge Dior's sons. But if you truly wish to prevent such a thing from happening again, then do not kill them like this. Make an example of them," Maglor said, his voice as cold as the snow and his eyes as hard as chips of ice, and Maedhros would have sworn he was looking at a stranger, only Maglor was no stranger and the suggestion sounded perfectly natural coming out of his mouth, for reasons Maedhros did not, could not understand. "Make an example of them, Maitimo."

So he did.

Things moved quickly after that. Their forces were, after all, greatly diminished, and it did not take nearly as long to get them ready to move out as they used to.

The Ambarussa were to return with their soldiers to the places where they kept watch. Maedhros and Maglor would do the same; they had been together ever since Maglor's lands had fallen to Morgoth's orcs, and had never seen a need to part. Would that Maedhros would be able to keep the Ambarussa with him, but they had their duties, and he and Maglor had his. However, as they were leaving, it occurred to Maedhros that there were some who were missing.

"Makalaurë, where is Gladhrien?" Caranthir had brought his young Laiquendë wife with him on this venture, fearing for her safety if he left her alone.

"She asked to go home." Maglor's speech was oddly stilted, almost childish.

Maedhros stared incredulously. "And you let her go off by herself?" He suddenly had a horrible image of that small slip of an elleth being waylaid by orcs or other foul creatures, or even Elves or Men who could not be counted friendly and good.

"She took the servants who had come with her from her people with her," Maglor elaborated, as though this made everything better and solved every problem raised by Gladhrien going off on her own. Because going with three—or was it four—servants who had come with her when she was wed was so much safer.

Maedhros bit back an exasperated sigh and suddenly it seemed as though this was nothing more than a conversation in their youth—Maglor had done something particularly absent-minded, and now it was time to correct his mistake. It was, at the least, obvious that they would be making a side trip on the way back to Amon Ereb; the least they could do for their now-widowed sister-in-law was make sure she got back safely to her homeland. But there was someone else missing as well. "And Ilmanis?" Maedhros asked, remembering that Maglor's wife had come along as well.

"Dead," Maglor said shortly, not looking at him, instead fiddling with the reins on his horse. "I buried her with our brothers."

-0-0-0-

It disturbed Maedhros—Maglor seemed entirely too calm, if rather numb and silent. He gave no sign of disquiet, of mourning, or grief, though there was no telling what was going through his mind when he would look away, out into the darkness at night when they made camp. Of course, Maedhros gave little sign of mourning either. He was still struggling to discern how he should feel. It was as though Fëanor had died all over again; the family was smaller, and Maedhros did not know what to do. Was he supposed to weep, or rage? Was he supposed to seek revenge? He was aware that he was supposed to give comfort to his younger, smaller siblings, but…

But that was just it. Three of the people he would have been trying to comfort under such circumstances were the ones who were dead. Two of his surviving (and still, the word felt like a knife) brothers were gone away from him as well, and the one he still had with him was unapproachable and silent.

They caught up to Gladhrien and her small party before long; they weren't exactly going at break-neck speeds. Gladhrien expressed gratitude as best she could, hindered as she was by a tongue that spoke nearly no Quenya and only slightly more Doriathrin Sindarin. All the while, Maedhros got the impression that she almost rather would have been left alone, but he shook it off, and did not think on it over-long.

After that, it took surprisingly little time to reach the settlement in Ossiriand where Gladhrien had originally come from, considering the weather (there was still snow on the ground and had snowed most of the way there) and that such long journeys were typically punctuated by at least one ambush of some sort, by orcs or by simple brigands. The journey was remarkably uneventful.

Their forces stopped for two days in the settlement to re-supply, taking full advantage of the market found there, open at all times of the year. On the evening of the first day, Maedhros found himself looking through said market for Maglor, whom he had not seen for hours.

Maglor was sitting alone on the steps leading to the settlement's well, hunched over, his face in his hands. Maedhros frowned. That posture did not bode well for the sort of state his brother was in. Moreover, Maglor had never liked the cold, and he hadn't acquired a liking for it as he aged, so why…

Maedhros cut a quick path to the well, his boots crunching in the snow and frost. "Makalaurë?" He got no answer. "Kano?" He spoke more gently this time, or tried to. Maedhros could not remember the last time he'd referred to his brother by the nickname he'd had as a child.

Moving with stiff slowness more befitting a very ancient Man, Maglor removed his hands from his face, and looked up at his brother, who stood over him. The sight of Maglor's face set an uncomfortable warm churning in Maedhros's stomach. His eyes were red and swollen, still leaking tears. His cheeks glittered with half-frozen tears and his nostrils were every bit as red and inflamed as his eyes. "I was just… I was just thinking," he croaked, staring up at him with a lost, hopeless look on his face. "I was walking through the market, and I saw a flute maker with his wares. I wondered if Ilmanis would like one, and then I remembered that she was dead." His shoulders began to shake, and Maedhros sank down to the ice-slick stone beside him. "It didn't… It didn't really… I mean, I could barely understand that she was dead until…" He broke off, sucking in deep, jagged breaths, thick, congealing tears clogging in his mouth. "And then I thought about the others, our brothers—"

"And you thought that they were dead as well," Maedhros supplied heavily. He drew Maglor close, letting him sob inconsolably into the crook of his neck as he had done when they were still young and Maglor was a small child, crying over a scraped knee or a scolding. There came a pounding in his head, very far away, but drawing closer with each moment.

It occurred to him that Celegorm, Curufin and Caranthir had died because he wasn't there. It occurred to him that had he been there, they likely would still be living. That for two boys, the children of his enemy, for two boys he had never found and could not save, he had been wandering the woods of Doriath when he could have been in Menegroth, could have saved his brothers' lives. That for a jewel, he had lost three of his brothers.

Then, Maedhros remembered that he hadn't asked Maglor where he had buried their brothers, that he had never looked upon the place where they had been laid to rest. Everything came crashing down in that moment, sharp and cold and deep, and Maedhros was left howling just as hard and loud as his brother, feeling a grief too deep and too dark to be soothed.

Ambarussa—Amrod and Amras
Nelyo, Maitimo—Maedhros
Tyelkormo—Celegorm
Carnistir—Caranthir
Curufinwë—Curufin
Makalaurë, Kano—Maglor

Neri—men (singular: nér)
Laiquendë—"Green-elf" (plural: Laiquendi)

Note: Yeah, I remember Legolas riding bare-back in Lord of the Rings, but my guess is not all Elves do that, and Legolas was raised "closer to the earth" and all that. The Noldor have a history of wanting to build and create and control, besides.