Author's Notes: This one's a gift to leavesinwinter. I dearly hope you do not mind my coopting your request to write a brainworm that had been in my head for a while. I am a big fan of elves-in-modern-day, and the only thing I like more than transplanting everyone wholesale into modern settings is putting them there when they don't know what they're doing.

I am also a fan of family clusterfuck dynamics, but hey, look, this one sort of gets better?

"Matt. Hey, Matt!" He realized, abruptly, that someone was waving a hand in front of his face, and jerked back, startled. "Dude, you okay?"

"What? Oh, yes, of course," he said, quickly. Leah frowned dubiously at him.

"Really? Cause you defs just completely checked out. Are you sleeping enough? Are you getting sick? I told you if you were getting sick-"

"I don't get sick," he said automatically, and then frowned, and added, "I think." He summoned a smile that felt false even to him. "I am fine, Leah. Stop worrying for me."

She scrutinized his face. "Your dark circles have circles. Are you sure you're all right? I can find someone to cover if you need a day off…"

It had been the ships, last night. Blazing in the dark like beacons of his failure to do what he should have. The first fire. The promise of all the rest that would come.

"No, thank you," he said firmly. "I will be fine. I am fine. I promise you."

~.~

It was what he told everyone. Maedhros had begun to lose track of the number of times he had said those words, or nearly. Don't even ask, Caranthir had begun to say with disgust when it came up, We all know, Nelyo's fine.

But then, Caranthir always sounded angry, the same way Curufin hardly spoke at all and Celegorm oscillated wildly between explosive temper and brooding twins were locked in their room together almost every hour of the day. And Maglor…

Maglor's gone, Caranthir said, harsh and flat. He's not coming back. Sooner we all get used to that, the better. Celegorm had yelled at him for that.

He'll come back, Celegorm insisted. Just wait, he will, he won't have abandoned us.

I don't know, Curufin had drawled, barely audible. If you were he, wouldn't you?

Maedhros sometimes wondered if this was his punishment. That he must watch them all fragment like this. To be denied the peace of Mandos that he had chosen. I wish you were here, Kano, he caught himself thinking sometimes, and hated himself for his selfishness. Fingon deserved better.

He'd been ready to die. He'd known what to do with death. This world was chaotic and confusing and too loud and too – much.

But it was what they had.

Caranthir was sprawled on one of the couches when Maedhros returned, reading a magazine with a startlingly busty, mostly naked human woman on the cover. He glanced up, and then turned his head and yelled up the stairs, "Nelyo's home!"

Maedhros rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Was someone looking for me?"

"Uh-huh. Tyelko." Caranthir rolled his shoulders back. "Oh, fair warning. He and Kurvo got into an argument this afternoon. I'm pretty sure I heard something break."

Maedhros sighed. "Break what," he asked, tiredly. Caranthir raised his eyebrows.

"What," he said, "No commentary on how weird it is that those two, of everybody, were fighting?"

"No," said Maedhros tiredly. "Not really. What were they arguing about?"

"Damned if I know." Caranthir turned the page. "One thing I can say for Men now is that they've got at least a few good ideas." He held up the magazine. "You ever read one of these, Maitimo?"

He could feel a headache coming on. "No," he said, not quite shortly. "No, I haven't. Are they upstairs?"

"Unless Tyelko's flung himself out a window, I assume so. Curufin's in his room again. Locked the door. I checked. I swear he just sits up there sobbing about how our damned father isn't here-"

"Stop it, Moryo," Maedhros said, sharply. "You don't need to be spiteful."

"Why not," Caranthir asked, slapping the magazine down on the coffee table. "It's all I've got left, isn't it? All any of us've got. Does me better than you, anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Maedhros snapped, and Caranthir rolled his eyes.

"You're a damned mess, Nelyo. Don't think I can't see it. Everyone can see it. Our next door neighbors can see it. How's your brother, they ask me, he looks pale, he looks tired. Let me sum it up for you, Nelyo: you look like shit."

"What do you expect me to look like?" Maedhros said, voice rising. "Trying to deal with the lot of you, this isn't what I-"

"What you wanted?" Caranthir said, and his voice was loud and brassy and strangely vicious. "Surprise, Nelyo, this isn't what any of us wanted, this isn't anyone's Valardamned idea of fun, but would you rather be dead?"

Yes, Maedhros thought. No, he knew he was supposed to say. He hesitated too long for either. Caranthir made a disgusted noise and flopped back, putting his magazine over his eyes. "All of you," he said, voice dripping with disgust. "All of you are just…"

Maedhros left him there. Whatever the end of that sentence was, it couldn't be worse than what he called himself.

~.~

His job did not pay much. They did not, strictly speaking, need the money. Maedhros simply liked to feel…productive.

We all have hobbies, Caranthir was fond of saying. Kurvo plays the stock market. Maedhros likes to make himself miserable catering to mortal cravings for overly flavored drinks. It's a thing.

It was good work. Simple, fairly mindless, and he liked the smells. Leah, his manager, was kind, and patient with his struggles to understand the electronic parts of the job. He got to watch the people as they moved through, different faces, voices, some polite, some less so.

He daydreamed, sometimes, that one day he would look up and it would be Maglor there. Ordering a latte. Giving him that small, crooked smile.

It never was.

~.~

He went to speak to Curufin first.

Knocked on the door, and waited. When no answer was forthcoming, he knocked again and then tried the doorknob. It turned easily and he stepped inside. Curufin's back was to him, sitting on the windowseat with a book cracked open on his knee.

"Maedhros, I presume. If you wish me to apologize, I am afraid I must disappoint you yet again." Curufin's tone was acerbically dry.

"Kurvo-" Maedhros bit his tongue. "…I just want to talk."

"Oh, that's all. Such a relief."

"It doesn't have to be some odious ordeal. Can't we just…"

"We have never 'just talked,' Nelyo. Only ever when I had done something you objected to. We are brothers, but we were never friends. That has not changed."

That stung, no matter how true it was. And it wasn't unfair, he knew that. He'd been busy for much of Curufin's childhood, distracted by other matters. By the time he'd been paying attention, Curufin was already aloof, closed to almost all overtures. That had only become more true, with time.

He sat down on the bed after hovering awkwardly a moment more. "What did you and Tyelko argue about?"

"I fail to see that it is any of your business. And we did not argue. We…discussed. You know how Tyelko gets."

"I know how you get."

Curufin's head turned and he looked directly at Maedhros, finally. "Oh? How do I get?"

Maedhros rubbed the bridge of his nose. "I don't – that's not the point. I didn't come here to scold you, or start a fight, or-" He stopped. Took a deep breath to collect himself, and rubbed the bridge of his nose again. "—I'm sorry. I just want to know what's going on."

"Just want to fix everything," Curufin corrected coolly. "Put us all to rights. Everyone getting along. Yes, Nelyo, I know what you want."

"Is that so much to ask?"Maedhros asked, and then shook his head. "Don't – just. What did you and Tyelko discuss, then?"

"I don't want to discuss it."

"Why must you always-!" Maedhros swallowed the rest of that sentence. Curufin was watching him with that cool, almost incurious gaze, like he knew exactly what Maedhros was going to say and do and was just waiting for him to make his move, response already planned. He needed to…this wasn't going to go as Curufin wanted it to. It wasn't. "Please, Kurvo. Humor me, at least."

Curufin looked away, eyes shifting to look out the window on the street below. "It doesn't matter, Nelyo. It's not important."

"You and Tyelko never used to fight."

"Yes, well. A great many things have changed, haven't they?" Curufin's voice sounded, suddenly, faintly tired. "Apparently that is one of them."

Maedhros sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose, then pinched it between two fingers. "I wish you wouldn't shut me out. I hardly see you."

"It's not just you," Curufin said, calmly. "All of you, really. You're not the only one who would rather not have to deal with...all of this. No. I am not about to disintegrate, or have a breakdown. Save me your concern and spend it on someone else."

You would spurn an offer of water if you were on fire, brother, Maedhros thought. Forgive me if I do not trust your words. "You would not tell me if you were."

"Likely not."

Maedhros sighed. "Kurvo…"

"Leave it, Nelyo. There's nothing you can do." Kurvo turned his back resolutely. And that was just it, wasn't it, that there was nothing he could do.

"I'll leave you to your reading," he said quietly.

"Close the door on your way out."

~.~

There had been no word from the Valar. No grand sentencing. One day they had simply found themselves here, equipped with the tools to live in this new mortal world. Well. More or less.

"It's a damn sight better than Mandos," Caranthir had said, and most of Maedhros' brothers, at least, seemed to agree with that. If not, perhaps, by much.

Maedhros tried to count his blessings. He had most of his brothers with him again. He had two hands, though he kept forgetting that he could use the right. It was the little things.

At the beginning, he'd thought Maglor would come to find them. That they would all be together and set things right, try again, do better. Make up for everything they'd done wrong before. Do penance, make amends.

He'd realized quickly that this wasn't a fresh start. It wasn't even a punishment. It was just…life. Messy and ugly and difficult, and he was floundering as much as he ever had.

It took him longer to realize that Maglor wasn't coming.

~.~

Every so often Celegorm's left hand twitched like he was reaching for something, fingers curling into thin air for a moment before dropping back to his side. Maedhros wondered if his brother knew he was doing it, knew that even still after all this time he was reaching out thoughtlessly to the dog that had been his constant companion for so long.

"I shouldn't have lost my temper," Celegorm said, his eyes lowered to the floor, away from Maedhros. "I know that. I'm sorry."

Maedhros resisted the urge to rub at his eyes. He could feel a headache coming on, a little at a time. "I didn't come up here for you to…you don't need to apologize. Can you tell me why you argued?"

Celegorm's hand did that little twitch again. He looked at it as though startled, and then pulled it back in and folded his hands together like he could keep them from wandering that way. "It wasn't anything important. Anything serious. It was just…I don't know. I'm sorry."

Maedhros wondered, as he often did, if Celegorm knew how much he looked like a scolded puppy when he got that expression. He shook his head.

"With how much you and Kurvo are both avoiding the subject, I'm starting to wonder if it was about me."

Celegorm's head shot up. "No!" he said, sounding genuinely appalled. "No, it's not – that's not-"

"Hush, Tyelko," Maedhros said wearily. "I was joking. I do that sometimes. Still." If seldom. They'd become a grim, morbid lot, their jests all touched with death and a little too much truth. He remembered his brothers as laughing. Or he might have, once; the memory was now blurred and indistinct. "If you don't want to tell me…fine. I just wanted to know what the problem was. If I could help. You know how I worry."

"I know," said Celegorm, and then, eyes moving a little away, "You shouldn't."

"Why not?"

"You don't have to be our minder," his younger brother said, nearly mumbled. "Or – or you shouldn't have to be, just because you think you're responsible for - this."

A number of people made the mistake of thinking Celegorm stupid. With the dulling of his memory by time, Maedhros had begun to think it as well, or at least in relative terms, but that was Celegorm. Seeing more than he said, and so very good at picking out what someone was thinking or feeling. It had used to drive Maglor mad. Private, secretive Maglor.

I wonder where you are, Maedhros thought, and then pushed that away. "I never said it was my fault."

"You don't need to say it. I can see it in the way you look at us."

"I look at you as I always have."

"No," said Celegorm, and chewed his lip. His eyes were wide and a little damp. Dog's eyes. "You look at us like you've seen us die and keep expecting us all to do it again if you look away. You look at us like someone gave us to you as if we were a bag of abandoned kittens and you don't really know what to do but there's no one else to help."

It was, Maedhros thought, and uncomfortably apt metaphor. "I'm your older brother. It's my sole purpose in life to look after you, didn't you know?"

Celegorm looked upset again. "No, that's not – that's not right. It's not fair. You can't do everything by yourself."

I don't see the rest of you standing up. "And that's why I need you to try to get along with each other," Maedhros said, keeping his voice cautiously even. "So at least there's that-"

"With Maglor not here I should be helping more," Celegorm said, almost anguished, and Maedhros felt a sudden surge of anger welling up that made him want to say you're not Maglor, you can't be Maglor, I don't need you I need him.

But that was more than just cruel. "We're all doing what we can," he said, instead. "It's…hard. I know it's hard."

"You deserve better than this," Celegorm said earnestly. And then again, more firmly, "It's not your fault."

This time he couldn't keep it back. "It's not my-" Maedhros choked on a laugh that he knew would come out hysterical. "—no, Tyelko, I'm sorry, but that's not true. This is my fault. I damned myself as much as – maybe more than – any of you. You can't take that from me."

Celegorm's brows pulled together and he started to frown. "That's not-"

"It is true," Maedhros said, and stood up jerkily. "You and Kurvo should make up. We can't…we can't fight each other now."

"Why not," Celegorm muttered, his expression stormy. "It's not like there's any reason to-"

"We just can't," Maedhros said, and left, closing the door a little too hard behind them. If we fall apart now, he couldn't say, what is there? Without each other, we're nothing. I'm nothing.

And then what's the point?

What's the point of any of this?

For all his brothers mocked him for it, there was something soothing about his work. The monotony of it, the sheer harmlessness – no lives in his hands, no battles to be fought and lost, no great matters to be decided. Just him and an order of a drink that might be redone with no great trouble if it was wrong.

It was…nice, to have so little resting on his shoulders.

He found a sort of calm, in the work, mundane and dull and unimportant. Calm he never had otherwise. Calm none of them had. They all adjusted in their own ways, but none of them well. All of them…teetering. Strange. Out of place.

He liked his Secondborn coworkers. He liked his Secondborn supervisor, Leah, with her friendly concern and quick smile. Sometimes he laid awake at night and wondered if there was something that he ought to be doing, some grand gesture that he ought to enact to ensure that his crimes were forgiven, but he could come up with nothing.

In the end it seemed best to just keep on as he was.

~.~

The twins were in the kitchen when Maedhros came down. They sat shoulder to shoulder at the island, the way they leaned into each other barely perceptible. They were almost never apart, like when they'd been little, but there was a desperation to it now. To the way Amrod still sometimes reached out and grabbed at Amras' sleeve, or arm, as though reassuring himself that he was still there. Still real.

They both looked up. Amras tried for a smile. "Hey, Russandol. How was work?"

Easier to deal with than home, Maedhros thought tiredly. "F-Good," he amended. Another word, perhaps, might be less conspicuous. "Same as it usually is. How're you two?"

"Bored," Amrod said, making a face.

"I told him we should do a crafts project," Amras said, perfectly straight faced. Amrod elbowed him in the ribs.

"'Cause that sounds like fun. What would we even make?"

"A family portrait," Amras said cheerfully, "Out of noodles." Maedhros could feel himself starting to smile, just a little.

"Noodles? Why would we make it out of noodles?"

"I don't know. It's a thing people do. It'll be a noodle picture. We'll stick it together with glue. Or tape. I like tape better. Do you know how long it took to get that out of my hair?"

"I still maintain that one was your fault," Amrod said haughtily. Maedhros thought sometimes that the twins were the happiest out of any of them about this. They had each other again, after all. It was probably more than they'd expected to get.

They were both looking at him, he realized suddenly, and stiffened. "What?" he said, perhaps too sharply. Amrod winced.

"You look a little peaky," Amras said quietly, after a moment of silence. Maedhros scrubbed a hand through his hair. He was still unused to having it so short, but wearing it long had been too conspicuous.

"Do any of us sleep well?" he asked, only a little sardonic. Amrod made a face.

"Not really the point," he said, and opened his mouth, then winced again. "Ow," he said, to Amras, who didn't blush in the slightest as he drew his foot back from kicking his twin's shin.

"Tyelko's going to help us make cookies tomorrow. He promised. Want to join?" Amras waggled his eyebrows. Maedhros almost wanted to laugh, helplessly.

"I'm afraid I have work," he said apologetically.

"You could take a day off," Amrod suggested.

"I really couldn't."

Amrod's expression shifted, became slightly belligerent. Maedhros tensed. "Why not? Can't you-" But he cut off, suddenly, glancing down. Maedhros followed his gaze to see Amras' hand laid lightly on his arm.

"We'll save some for you," his youngest brother said, and there was something so gentle to his voice that Maedhros felt sick. Was this what he had come to? His youngest brother, looking at him like he might break. And he could not deny the possibility. "Make sure Moryo doesn't eat all of them."

"You two both," Maedhros began, and then had to look away. "—thank you," he said, and wasn't sure if it was just for the cookies.

"Don't be an idiot, Maitimo," said Amrod, suddenly, apparently no longer able to restrain himself. Maedhros looked back up and forced a smile on his face.

"I'll do my best."

~.~

"What are we supposed to do?"

Oddly enough, it'd been Celegorm to ask first. Or maybe not so odd after all; Celegorm liked to have direction, liked to have certainty and purpose and needed, often, to be given it. Sometimes Maedhros wondered what that energy and passion might have done, directed to other ends than those they came to.

He wondered it about all his brothers.

"Are we supposed to do anything?" Was Caranthir's response, dry and almost careless. "It seems plain to me we've been cast out to do as we please. Carve out our lives as we can among these mortals. Typical Valar." He spat. Curufin had looked up from where he was examining some of the stone-working.

"Please refrain, brother. That's vulgar."

"I'll be vulgar all I like," said Caranthir, nearly petulantly. "What did you think this was, Tyelko, some kind of penance?"

Celegorm's silence said he'd thought of it. Thought of it, Maedhros thought, and then pushed the idea away. "Who's to say it isn't," he broke in, before anyone else could say anything. The twins, folded together and murmuring to each other under their breaths, looked up at him. "Who's to say this isn't a chance to…to…"

Make up for our sins? Even in his mind it sounded foolish. Curufin coughed a laugh.

"For what? So we can be forgiven? I think the Valar have shown clearly enough how disinclined they are to that. How long has it been?"

Maedhros had fallen silent. So long. Too long. But he held that hope in his heart, privately. Maybe, maybe…

Without speaking of it, the bedroom next to his was left empty. Locked, but empty. Waiting.