Maedhros

I'd only entered the boys' chamber once before. So when I awoke in the morning, it took several moments to realize where I was or how I had come to be there. I blinked stupidly for a moment until the memories washed over me. Maglor had sung! I could barely believe it. He had been silent for so long, but I'd immediately recognized his voice as I went to my room.

I don't know how things came to be so damaged between Maglor and me. At one time we were the best of friends. Even when Fingon was alive, Maglor embraced what I'd thought to be an untouchable place in my heart. I barely remembered a time before he had been born, when I was still the only child. My sweet songbird, who never failed to lift my spirits with his magical voice.

He wrote little duets for us on his piano when he was a child. I don't have the gift of music as he does, but he penned out simple plodding chords that even I could follow, to accompany the complex parts he composed for himself. I was diligent enough to beat out the steady rhythms, and he was talented enough to play even while he spoke. And we would sit for hours at that piano, heads bent close together and unfettered secrets spilling between us, sparkling notes concealing our words. Once, when Atar had come to the door and demanded my presence, Maglor had turned to him pleadingly and whimpered, "but Maitimo is still helping me!" Our father had shrugged and turned away. I'd thought it cunning at the time, but it must have been extremely obvious to our parents what we were doing, for Maglor certainly didn't need my help with his music. Still, they let us persist in that charade for many years. We'd done it one last time before leaving for our exile in Formenos, whispering fervently about our father's increasing madness and his love for the Silmarils.

And now it was just him and I again, as it had been at the beginning.

I say that I didn't know when things became damaged between us. But when I'm honest with myself, I do know. Before Doriath, Maglor had wanted to hold back, to send one more missive demanding the jewel before we attacked. But I'd warned Dior and offered him peace if he would just hand the accursed thing over, and my patience had finally been worn down. Maglor was not made for that type of blunt action, and he'd been scathing, hissing warnings to me that I'd chosen to ignore. I didn't listen to him, and he was still angry with me for it. Because even if we'd managed to destroy Menegroth, we hadn't gotten our jewel back.

And in the process we'd lost three brothers. Half of the remaining of my father's son, struck down senselessly in a wasted effort to wrest the Silmaril from Dior's grasp. I found Curufin in a wide courtyard, surrounded by his fallen enemies, face splattered with mottling gore. He clung to life still, and my last words to him had been a lie. I told him we'd gotten the Silmaril back. It was just one more thing to add to my list of sins, that I'd lied to a dying man. But Curufin had smiled vaguely with his last shreds of strength and died in my arms. Just like our father had died in my arms. And just like our father, his last thoughts had not been about his surviving son, but of the Silmarils.

Evil had wrought more evil that day. The destruction we'd caused was wicked enough, but Celegorm's men had abducted Dior's sons and led them out into the woods. I still don't know if Celegorm gave that order or if it was simply a final act of retribution from his soldiers; nobody had been willing to come forward with the details. In the end it didn't really matter, because now Celegorm was remembered for that last deed, whether he had ordered it or not.

I'd tried to find the children. I hadn't seen them, but I knew they were twins. My heart ached with the thought of Amrod and Amras, and I pictured their identical faces with Dior's black hair. I searched for days, calling for them until my voice was hoarse. I looked for them, and finally looked for their bodies, or some scrap of torn cloth or bloodstains in the snow or something to tell me what happened to them. If I had found them then perhaps I could set things right and deliver the orphans to someone who might care for them. But I could just add those little boys to my list, right underneath Curufin.

The unsuccessful hunt haunted Maglor too, even though he was too angry with me at the time to help me search for them.

If Menegroth had begun to chip away at the friendship Maglor and I shared, Sirion had destroyed it.

That day I ascended the stairways of the white tower slowly, worn weary by grief and loss. I would find my last remaining brother, and maybe—just maybe, I thought— things might be well. His guards were standing at the entrance to the last room of the citadel, and they let me in with only a little hesitation. I passed through the heavy wooden door to find even more destruction. Glass, shimmering like diamonds, littered the floor. Books, papers, maps were everywhere. Nothing remained untouched. I knew my brother as I knew no one else, and I understood that a great fury must have taken him to overturn the office in the way he had. A guard from our army, one of Maglor's own force, lay dead upon the floor, an unsightly gash rending his armor. Blood pooled around the lifeless form of an elf I might have known. In another age I might have called him a friend, but now he was yet another deserted body to step over.

And amid the ruin, sat Maglor.

The smoke that entered the room might have been harsh, but it bathed him in a warm diffuse glow, swirling around his carefully poised form. He sat at the oaken desk, basked in light from the meek sunbeams that had decided to filter through the windows, chaos wrought by his hand all around him. But he sat uncaring, as if nothing could touch him. He looked beautiful to me then, tendrils of dark hair sneaking out of their braids stuck to his cheeks, as if he had simply spent too many hours toiling over books in our father's stuffy library. Basked in gentle sunlight that I thought well-befitted my slightly younger brother. I saw him as he once was, a quiet spirit that deserved nothing but peaceful light.

That spell was diminished somewhat as I looked more closely at his face. His nose was broken, and two black bruises were blossoming under his eyes, hideous circles of violence. Blood, hastily and carelessly wiped away, still stained his lips and chin pink. Maglor has always looked to me like a charcoal drawing, all pale skin and dark hair and silver eyes. Just a black and white image against whatever landscape he stood before. He had color on his face now, but it was not how I wanted to see it.

To say that Maglor was not good with a sword would have been a lie. He knew how to kill. But when our father had instructed us in Formenos, Maglor had always been the last to arrive at the lessons and the first to depart. He had tried to be a good student, but he just hadn't cared as much as the rest of us. He was hesitant, where we were not. It had been at Alqualondë, I suppose, that he realized the sharp steel of his blade could save his own life. He knew how to fight from our father, but he'd really learned on the battlefields of Middle Earth. In battle, he had become as rashly brave as Tyelkormo and Carnistrir throwing himself into the darkest pits of the fight. He was a talented swordsman, but he endangered his life too much, and it was always him that emerged from the confusion, alive but battered.

His broken nose gave his face a strange, swollen quality that I couldn't immediately recognize. No matter. It was a painful but harmless wound, and I knew then I would gift him a helmet with a nose guard at his next begetting day. (I'd asked him later what had happened and he'd shrugged it off saying he didn't remember. It was a ridiculous thing to say, for one does not have their nose broken, even in the heat of battle and not recall how it happened. I knew then it had been some mistake that embarrassed him and I still hadn't learned what caused his injury.)

Surrounded by chaos, he seemed at peace and patient at the desk. Solemn eyes, ringed in purple, met mine.

"Brother." Pitiful, but it was all I could think of to say.

"I saw Elwing... and her tragic descent. A strange bit of magic that was." His voice was cold, devoid of life. It invited no conversation and I drew in a sharp breath upon hearing his tone. He wasn't the brother I had known. He was different, a cold and heartless bit of person who should mean nothing to me, as little as the dead elf that lay on the floor. But he was still my brother, and I loved him even in this horrible moment.

"But I..." He waved his hand in the air and the dappled sunlight sparkled off the ring he wore on his right index finger, the finger where his wedding ring, long ago abandoned, should rest. Emeralds twinkled at me. "I have some other treasures that you might be interested to see".

I knew the piece on his hand. Twin serpents wrapped his finger with a ring of flowers that one upheld while the other devoured. It was the sigil of our Uncle Finarfin's house.

"Felagund's ring." I whispered.

"Barahir's ring! Haven't you been keeping up? I thought you liked lore!" he frowned, apparently disappointed in my lack of diligence.

"We don't steal from the dead, Maglor!" I said hoarsely.

He looked at me, and his face was a picture of sadness, prying eyes holding mine. "If the Silmaril were here, we would take it. Without hesitation. Without thought. So please do not tell me we do not steal from the dead. That would be the least grievous act we've committed." He sighed again. "That isn't all. I have better prizes than a silly ring." He looked pointedly at the closet door, splattered in blood.

"What have you done?"

"I've done nothing! Look and see!"

I approached the crimson splattered closet. When I reached my hand out Maglor said quietly "Be careful, they're armed!"

I don't know what I expected then. A band of revengeful guards, eager to have my blood on their blades, perhaps. Battered warriors who would stop at nothing to live. But that was not what I found. I found two terrified children, quivering in the corner, one of whom brandished a dagger bravely. Their dark eyes hated me immediately. The anger in their gazes reminded me of Turgon. And the fairness of their young faces could have easily been Dior in his youth.

Elwing's sons.

I tore the dagger out of the boy's hand and threw it across the room. It clattered to the ground with a ringing sound that didn't even make Maglor blink.

For the moment I could ignore the children; They were no threat. Put them carefully out of mind, as I had with their uncles, so that I could obtain some sort of semblance of peace. Why must the same torments be belched out of my wrongdoing once again? Ghosts from my past, thrust into my face, from evil deeds that I had failed to mend.

"Don't you even care that the Silmaril was lost?" I cried.

Maglor stared at me, and his eyes were deep and lost. Maybe he felt the weight of destruction as I did.

"I do care." Slowly, heavily. "I care more than you can ever know. But what do you want me to do? Grow wings and bring it back? I can't make this right."

If there was anyone I knew who should have been able to grow wings, it was my songbird brother. I, with little sense left in my mind, hated him them that he could not just sprout wings out of his back. He should have been able to. He sang like a bird; he should be able to fly like one too!

"And the children?!" I yelled, not caring that the guards outside could hear. "You're no better than Celegorm!"

He rose from the desk then, with startling speed, and was suddenly in my face. "Don't you dare say that! Don't you dare compare me to him!" His jaw tensed and he contained his emotions. "I'm not killing them. They'll be good hostages. Let the people of Sirion see what they gave away. And if Elwing returns, we can dangle her children in front of her."

"I spoke to her of her children and she didn't listen."

"Well perhaps she will listen in the future." He spoke with a certainty I could not understand. "And what am I going to do? Leave them here?" His tone was once more relaxed, lazy even. He wandered over to the desk again with an ease I did not feel at all. How, how could he be so casual in this moment? He sat again, and in a different world he could have belonged there as if that place were made for him. If smoke hadn't been curling thorough the windows and blood wasn't staining the floor. For a moment I understood how he had been King in my absence.

"We take them, and we ensure peace for our people. No retaliation will come from Sirion or Balar while we have the children. And…" his voice faltered. "They are orphans now, Maedhros." He looked up, almost pleadingly, like a child who has found a wounded animal and wants to keep it. "We made sure of that. Do you want to leave them to this? What is left to them here? To be princes of ash and death?" He sighed. "Those are our titles, brother. I won't suffer others to hold them."

I could scarcely believe it, but I could see now that Maglor was worn. He hated all of this almost as much as I did.

"We'll take them, and do what is right." I could almost imagine Maglor's voice was hollow. "They are too useful to leave. We will bring them to Amon Ereb, and…and….I don't know. We'll fix this through them."

I looked again at the trembling children, trying to hide from our sight. They were terrified. And the memories of two similar dark-headed boys clouded my head.

Maglor's long eyelashes were fixed down on the ring again, removed now from his hand and held between forefinger and thumb. "This is rough. Father could have made it much better. Curufin even could have made it better than this."

I had seen the ring on Finrods's own finger and knew it was anything but rough. Of course Father or Curufin could have made it better, but what did that matter? Irrationally, Maglor's words angered me and before I could stop myself, the words were past my lips.

"Amras is dead." I didn't soften the news at all. I was trying to wound Maglor, trying to bring him back into the life that I currently inhabited. A cold bitter world that was almost opaque with blood and death.

He didn't look up, still fixated upon the ring. "I know." It was a breath. Barely formed words on the air. "I saw him fall. It was in a rain of arrows." He looked up at me then, our uneager gazes meeting over the destroyed council room. "It was swift. He didn't suffer." It was a relief, I suppose, but an empty one. I would rather have my youngest brother alive.

Maglor sighed. "We won't have to cut our way out of Sirion if we have these children. There will be less bloodshed."

Less bloodshed, I wondered. As if that mattered anymore.

I tried to convince him otherwise. I recited off a long list of reasons why his plan was a bad one. Ereb wasn't made for children, it was made for soldiers. We certainly weren't suitable caretakers for such young ones. Gil-Galad was their cousin and it was best if they were with family ("We are family; we are their cousins too," Maglor had reminded me). We didn't have the resources to raise and educate them. We should be busy with rebuilding our army. And the oath. The oath must be fulfilled, and how did he expect to do that with children underfoot? I'd said it all within hearing of the children, which I realized later had just presented them with a litany of reasons to hate us all the more.

But Maglor had persisted, had pocketed Finrod's ring, and the four of us rode out of the city in secret that very night.

Maglor and I had our last large argument in the aftermath of Sirion. It had been terrible. The children were right there, in our care for less than two days. I lay on my bedroll that night, still seething, when I realized with horror that we'd fought over Amras' freshly dug grave. Maglor and I had screamed at each other, and I'm sure if we'd been younger it would have come to physical blows. In that argument we'd drudged up so many past disagreements that by the end we weren't even yelling about the hostages anymore. Finally, wanting an end to it, I'd pointed a finger in his face simply because I knew it would infuriate him and shouted: "Fine! Fine, Maglor! But they're your problem now, not mine!" I didn't want to take them, I didn't want any part in raising them, and I didn't want them in my home. But a year later, they were still here.

Maglor and I didn't speak to each other for nearly a month after we'd returned to Amon Ereb. We'd pointedly avoided each other, and when we were finally forced to discuss some matter concerning the running of our fortress, he'd been so cold that it was like a stranger sat before me. All of my brothers were cursed with Fëanor's temper, but Maglor had always been different. He didn't hold grudges, and although he could be just as heated as Caranthir in argument, the flame of his anger usually burned itself out quickly. So I knew that I was now mostly responsible for the distance that had grown between us.

I hoped my apology that morning had done something to repair it. I missed him terribly, but I also knew that there would always be tension between us as long as the boys remained in his care.

I was haunted when I looked at them, a daily reminder of my failures and the evil deeds of my brother. How Maglor could stand to be around them still mystified me. But he was fond of children. He always had been. And I worried for him now, that he had only taken them to relieve his heart of the grief that he had never had his own. I knew there was nothing to be had for him but pain if he became attached to them at all. For we couldn't keep them with us forever. One day they would have to be turned over to Gil-Galad. To make little Fëanorion loyalists out of them would mar their lives more surely than to swiftly kill them in Sirion.

They were scared of me, and I'll admit that I did little to change their opinions. With my scars and my stump and the gloomy bearing I'd cultivated, many people were scared of me these days. I was perfectly content to let them be frightened if it meant they kept their distance.

And yet, they had gotten Maglor to sing. To sing! I hadn't heard him sing in nearly seventy years. When all my brothers and I, in the last years we had spent together, had literally begged him following the Nírnaeth! If he hadn't confirmed it to me this morning, I would have thought it a wild but welcome dream. And if those two little children had coaxed my brother's gift from him, and I once again might be a recipient of that gift, then I could hardly resent their presence here.

I was ill at heart, and each day had turned into a dull relentless slog. A monotonous, boring string of time, endlessly repetitive and utterly exhausting. The oath pushed me forward, but little else. I rarely slept, my dreams disturbed by the faces of those whose lives I'd taken. But if Maglor would sing for me again, then there might still be a glimmer of something bright in my life. A light more dear to me than any the Silmarils could emit.

My second favorite character is hanging around this story and doesn't have a chapter? Blasphemy. Had to fix that.
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