A/N: I don't own Middle Earth.
Elrond and Elros are unsettling children from the first.
All of the children in their family are.
It starts with Luthien. Or, rather, it starts when a Maia, a being caught up in the music of creation and who views the world with a mind alien to that of elves and Men, falls in love with Thingol.
Two hundred years of enchantment seem reasonable to her. It is such a short time, really, and it makes for such a beautiful song.
She gets the impression sometimes that some of his people disagree, but her husband is careful to keep such whispers from him as much as he can. She is not sure why. The whispers are nothing to her.
But then, there are many things about her husband that she does not always understand. Their marriage bond helps with that some, but she has to be so careful not to overwhelm him. She does at first, sometimes, and it always hurts him so badly.
So she is careful with him and allows some things to remain mysteries, and when she bears Luthien, she is quick to teach her daughter that she must be careful too.
Luthien is a unique child everyone says, and this is absolutely true. It also can even be construed as a compliment, which is why people say unique and not terrifying.
It is impossible to ignore her when she cries. Her wails send everyone in earshot rushing to attend her. There is no choice in the matter.
As she grows and her control over her power increases, this problem declines, but others arise. She does not always look at people when they talk to her, the greater part of her attention caught by some wondrous piece of the Music. At other times, she gives entirely too much of her attention, staring without blinking like she can peer into their souls.
She gets better about this too. She learns to blend in as best she can. By the time she meets Beren, there is only an unsettling sense of wrongness and a lingering inclination to stare that is noticeably odd.
Beren doesn't notice. He has no idea what's normal for elves, and even if he did, he's so starved for interaction with people that aren't trying to kill him, he wouldn't notice.
He thinks of her as compassionate, and she is, but she is compassionate in the ways of the Maiar, who see in the beauty in the Music's most tragic sections and who look at a far wider picture than even the elves can dream.
Luthien thinks that objectively most of the elves in Beleriand would be better off dead and safely in the Halls of Mandos. Her mother, she knows, agrees with her, even though she has cautioned Luthien not to speak of it. It is not compassion that motivates the Girdle. It is her selfish love for Luthien's father, and her father's wish for his people's protection.
Luthien falls in love first with the beauty of Beren's Doom and then with Beren himself. She understands her mother's love better then; Beren would probably be better off safe in whatever afterlife is provided for Men, but Luthien is willing to do whatever it takes to prolong his time here with her.
When he tells her of his father's death, she is breathless with the beauty of it.
She forgets herself enough to say to something to that effect when her breath returns. Beren takes it as a compliment to his father's heroism, and that's not quite it, but Luthien knows better than to correct him.
Dior is the same when he is born. Luthien had wondered if the child's Mannish blood would dilute her mother's influence, but it seems that Maia blood runs strong.
She worries that Beren will notice and comment, but Beren is too wounded in spirit to cringe from their son's oddities. Some he does not even seem to notice until the arrangement to see if Nimloth would do as a match for him start to fall into place, and Nimloth visibly struggles not to react to some of the things Dior says, and the way he hums the music only he and his mother can hear whenever he is distracted.
"That's not normal, then?" Beren finally asks her.
"He'll outgrow it," she assures him. "I did."
She grieves her father's death, but she loves again having possession of the Silmaril. It's Music is wondrous, and she cares not how the way her own rises up to meet it burns through her mortal flesh.
She suspects that when Dior inherits it, he will feel the same.
Dior does feel the same, and he can barely spare a thought to the messengers that come to persuade him to surrender it, a decision that proves costly.
The servants of Celegorm find Elured and Elurin, and they abandon them in the woods. This is a decision they do not regret until Maedhros discovers it and gives brutal justice.
They are not sure if they would have done it had the children been . . . different. They think that they might have at least hesitated more.
As it is, the children's uncanny stares and the disinterested look they had given to their fallen nurse and the blood that had splattered their clothes had made them very glad to leave them behind.
Elwing grows up convinced something is very wrong with her. None of the other children are like her, not even Earendil, and there is no one left to explain things.
But Earendil is the closest, and she loves him, fiercely, more than she can clearly remember loving anyone, and it is a relief to her that she is capable of it.
She is horrified when it becomes apparent that her children have inherited her strangeness, what she is sure is her marring. Earendil assures her they are perfect, but he cannot hear them in the strange music she can, the music that is probably just a form of her madness.
He tells her that he sails to find a way to save her and the twins, and she tries to believe him. Tries not to believe the whispers that he is trying to avoid the sons he sired.
Earendil would be furious if he ever heard those rumors, but no one ever quite dares say them to his face.
Elwing loves her sons fiercely to make up for the rumors, but she can't help looking at the bits of what she thinks of as her brokenness reflected in them and thinking it wrong, wrong, wrong. And she is trying to rule a city; she cannot do that and give them contestant supervision, so she has to hire nurses.
Many of them leave quickly. Others she has to force out when she discovers them being negligent or even cruel.
Her sons never seem to miss any of them.
The Silmaril is comforting in its beauty and its song. It doesn't matter if it is all in her mind, it is comforting still. It does not seem to think she is wrong. It does not burn her as everyone says it burned Morgoth, so surely she cannot be so terribly marred.
She will not give it up. She cannot give it up. The gem is everything, and when the sons of Feanor come and it is a matter of her life and that of her sons or the jewel, she thinks of her marring, of the marring she has surely passed down to her sons, and she contrasts it to the purity, the perfection of the Silmaril. She thinks of the safety of Mandos where perhaps they can be healed and at least they can all be together.
She jumps.
The Feanorians do not kill the twins. Instead, Maglor insists they keep them.
He notices, of course, that the boys are not normal children. Frankly, however, Maglor is not expecting them to act like normal children.
Of course they sometimes stare off into the distance. He knows all too well what they're probably remembering. Of course they sometimes prefer not to pay attention. He is lucky that they do not do worse than occasionally ignore him. Of course they vastly prefer each other's company to that of the kinslayers. Of course they do not seem to care much about the fate of anyone else in their band.
The humming is the only thing he doesn't attribute to trauma, but while Maedhros might think it odd, Maglor, bard that he is, actually finds it rather reassuring. Here is a place he can start, a bridge that perhaps he can build.
They are entranced by his music. They like the way he never looks at them with fear or disgust or confusion the way some of their nurses did. They feel safer with him there protecting them from the dangers that haunt the land and providing for them even when it means sacrificing things himself.
They grow to love him with the selfish love of the Maiar, and so they begin to smile at him and sing for him, and their Maiar sweet voices calm the torment of the Oath like nothing else does.
Maedhros is uneasy around them, but he thinks it is his failures that haunt him, and not the boys themselves. He tries for his brother's sake, and the twins try too, also for Maglor's sake, and eventually they reach something of an understanding.
The twins leave them only reluctantly, only when it becomes absolutely necessary. The twins follow them when they steal the Silmarils (the lovely, singing Silmarils), but they do not find them until it is just Maglor alone on the side of the sea, Silmaril gone and him preparing to fling himself after it.
Elros dives to snatch it up. Elrond catches hold of Maglor and croons a song filled with power. He sings of rest and peace and contentment, of lingering and staying and of possessive love.
Maglor's broken mind shudders against his power, but he is too weak now to do aught but yield. Heavy with its weight, his mind begins to drift towards sleep.
"You will not abandon us, Ada," Elrond says, voice still echoing with the power of his song. "You will not be leaving us. I will not allow it."
Maglor's mind throws out one last song of desperate yearning for peace behind the sea, for family long gone and recently departed, for freedom he has not known since the Oath.
Then the warmth of Elrond's song, now strengthened by Elros's voice, steals all other thoughts, and the bard quiets.