One In the Fires of the Heart of the World by Isilme_among_the_stars  

Maedhros had not expected the searing pain. The jewel branded him none-the-less.

Unclean. Evil.

Though weary and deeply regretful, he had never considered himself thus. Stained, perhaps. Broken, certainly. But not evil. There had been no comprehension of having sunk so low. Even after all that had come to pass, Maedhros still considered that at his core he was fundamentally good, even if it were buried under a multitude of sins. But the jewel burned, and the anguish of being unworthy of it was too much to bear. With no more illusions, no more purpose to fill, all that was left to him was despair.

The despair wasn’t new. He had lived with its shadow for an age. But now, stripped bare of all else that he had clung to, its black maw opened before him, drawing him inexorably in. He chose instead to be swallowed by flame.

What was a little more heat when he already burned? He hadn’t reckoned on its exponential curve of intensity. He had not known it possible for pain to so far surpass even that of hanging from Thangorodrim. Even his bones felt incandescent. He would have screamed had there been air in his lungs. They instead expanded with pure, molten heat. This unbearable brightness was far beyond agony.

Then suddenly, all stopped.

Awareness remained, softened but somehow unfathomably deep, now that the flow of sensation had ceased. And his awareness, awash in an encompassing sea of relief, resounded with one thought.

I am free of it.

The relief did not last long.

He no longer had eyes to see with, nor skin to feel, and yet he could perceive. What he perceived first, of course, was Maglor. His brother’s fëa was now jagged with pain and anger, rising in peaks above the dark waters of sorrow with an undercurrent of fear that ever had their home in his soul these past centuries. Once, it had been like a clear, melodious stream.

Images came to him, of his brother’s face cast in umber by the light that spilled from the crack in the earth. How at the last moment Maglor had thrown himself forward, arms out, too late. The wildness in his eyes, his hair tossed about by the rising heat in the air, was seared onto Maedhros’s soul.

Then came guilt and regret. For then he remembered Maglor had no one left to him in the world. Instinctively he reached out, just as he had done many times before. Without thinking, Maglor welcomed him.

His thoughts were not words precisely. But the shape of them was this: You are dear to me still. I do not wish to leave you alone in the world. I am sorry.

The tides of Maglor’s sorrow boiled and crashed, inflamed by fury. Yet tossed to the surface like seafoam there was still pity, and the shape of it was this: Go. I grieve the suffering you may find in Mandos. Yet do not linger, for perhaps by small chance, hope still there remains.

Mandos indeed already called him, a light yet insistent tug within.

To Maglor he conveyed assent, even as he anchored himself to his brother still a while longer with a firm yet warm thread of care. He tried to be stillness, the unmoving foundation of rock that he had been in earlier days. Maglor accepted this. He smoothed around him, as disturbed waters whose want is to return to stillness. The great burgundy towers of his anger sunk slowly below them, though Maglor was still shot through with bright, white, streaks of pain. When at last the waters becalmed, Maedhros realised they had travelled to the shores of the sea. His brother tasted salt and heard crashing waves.

The call of Mandos grew stronger.

From Maglor came the shape of a sad smile and his long, skillful fingers regretfully untying knots to release the thread of care that bound them. Then came a singular wave pushing him gently but firmly to the shore. Thus, Maedhros finally left, and allowed the summons to drag him down into the dark. 

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The whisper came into the back of Maedhros’s mind whenever someone mentioned the Halls of the Dead…

Míriel.

As he hovered uncertainly on their threshold the name reverberated through his thoughts. Míriel Therinde, his grandmother, the first fëa to grace Námo’s halls.

Everyone in Aman knew the story. But he, the eldest son of her own son, was intimately familiar with it in a way no other could be. He had not merely heard the tale but grown up in the aftershocks of it and walked in the spaces hidden between its words.

Awareness had come one stifling summer night when, awoken from restless sleep by his father’s raised voice, he’d seen his tears. Peering around the doorway at Fëanor’s face, twisted not in anger but sadness, Maedhros suddenly understood that the stinging criticism on linguistic shifts that he vented once again to an ever-patient Nerdanel, only papered over the fear that Míriel’s memory was being forgotten. Neither father, nor mother saw him. Small and frightened by such raw emotion, Maedhros crept back to his room with knotted stomach. He lay curled and sweating with the covers over his head until shouting dissolved into sobs, and sobs faded to silence. There were many other such scenes, kept secret in the privacy of their home, never spoken of in daylight. To be part of his family was to be intimately acquainted with grief. A poor exchange for the grandmother that should have been there to give her their love. Mandos for him would forever be associated with the vast space that a person could take up in their absence.

In his youth Maedhros wondered if the stories of Míriel’s death, claiming the child possessed of such singularly fiery spirit had carved it from his mother’s very soul, had any truth to them. Was Fëanor truly so exceptional only because of her sacrifice? No. Maedhros decided that had only come to be believed because grief sharpened his father’s fire, made it brighter, drove him on.

Father’s grief is what truly sets us apart, he had often thought, in the days when it had not been so ubiquitous, a bitter spring from which all must drink. Grief was the reason they could never remain long in one place, the unspoken barrier that prevented them from finding the belonging he and his brothers so craved among their cousins, uncles and aunts. Fëanor had never been content to rest in one place, physically or intellectually. Always striking out in new directions, frustrated with the confines of existing only in one place at a time, and the limitations of possessing only one set of hands. Fëanor’s endless search for mastery was a frantic thing, a way to keep running always away from that gaping darkness, toward some new source of light. An already brilliant mind polished blinding bright through constant movement, so to never have to touch the sadness. Because if he did? Well, they’d all seen what had happened when he could run from that wellspring of grief no longer, beginning the night that Finwë had died. When the darkness caught him, all was madness and devastation. Father was a wildfire roaring up the slopes of the Pelori, he and his brothers were flames crackling in its heat, and they had all watched the world burn.

What had driven Míriel to Mandos? Perhaps no one would ever know. Perhaps the sickness came with her on the long march to Valinor. Newly emancipated and shivering, his strengthless body languishing under thinning bedclothes that did little to shield against the chill winds blowing from lake Mithrim, Maedhros had nothing to do but think. He imagined his grandmother, her vitality drained by illness to its lowest ebb, and pictured its birth on the shores of Cuivienen, fulminating from the fear that moved in the shadows there. He was no stranger to shadows, had been almost all shadow himself then. He knew what they could do. He’d felt close to her in that sickbed, as if she lay alongside him, beckoning and warning by turns. Whispers gifted to him of surrendering to the dark by a woman he thought, perhaps, he now understood. Maedhros had been so weary, but he would not follow to Mandos the invitation that she proffered. There was too much of Finwë in him to take Míriel’s path.

Finwë’s people, his people, dallied on either side of the lake in those days, complacent prey animals ignorant of the unseen threat gathering beneath Angband’s reeking smokestacks. That threat he saw only too clearly, and so it must be him to corral them, no matter how exhausted he was. Neither could he disappoint his father, forswear the last promise made to him and consign his younger brothers to the everlasting dark. Even on desperate nights, Míriel’s morbid whispers the loudest in his ears, he would not have chosen to fade away. Like Fëanor, grief, that most efficient fuel, he allowed to sharpen him. The diffuse candle-light warmth of his own spirit had become a single point of deadly flame, so bright as to be almost colourless, hot enough to cut steel. Intended as a rallying call, to bring devastation on their enemies, it had consumed him in the end.

Can you forgive me, Maglor? he wondered, For following grandmother? I tried for so long not to, to shut my ears to the beckoning call. Can you forgive me for deserting you in the end?

Mandos opened to him. Maedhros accepted its cold embrace.

“Death found you at last,” Námo said simply, in a voice far gentler than Maedhros had any right to expect, making no mention of the manner in which it had done so. He was not kind, but neither did Námo condemn with words that dropped like stones, as they had when he prophesied the Exiles’ Doom.

Yes.

He longed for rest. No doubt Námo sensed this.

“You will not enjoy being houseless.”

I did not imagine it would be so. It is still preferrable to torment.

“We shall see. It will be harder on you than others I suspect.”

I have endured much before. At least in houselessness I may find peace.

“Of a kind. Go then and take your rest.”

The halls were vast and strange. An endless twilight landscape, they stretched out before Maedhros like Thingol or Finrod’s caves, though lacking the majesty and warmth of either. But beauty was not absent. He had expected it to be severe, but a cold sort of elegance graced the place, like Varda’s stars shining in a cloudless Midwinter sky. But it wasn’t this that surprised Maedhros the most.

He should have expected it. When the prophecy was spoken, he had been there to hear it along with everyone else. He’d turned those words over in his mind, holding them up to a candle as if through examination he could somehow find the flaw that would cause them to unravel. Maedhros knew the prophecy spoke of yearning and entreating, so it perhaps should not have come as a shock. The Halls of Mandos were not quiet.

So many souls. So many fëar around him, and all were thinking thoughts, connecting, colliding in a cacophony of colour, meaning and the remembrance of sound. It was all so loud.

Maedhros shut it all out. 

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It was impossible to tell how long Maedhros remained closed off. There was no way to measure time here. No coming up of the sun, nor turning of stars in the sky. It could have been minutes, or hundreds of years.

The great thunder of noise had ceased. In the renewed quiet his thoughts sparked like lightening, terrifying flashes illuminating the darkness, impossible to ignore. It was the choice of one storm or the other. He chose the lightening.

When Námo brushed against Maedhros’s consciousness, he was quite polite about it. It was as if he tapped on the kitchen window and asked to join him for a warming pot of tea and casual conversation. Maedhros suspected the subject matter would not be casual at all. When a Vala wished to speak to you it rarely was. He let down his barrier cautiously, admitting Námo, and Námo only.

“It will do you no good you know,” Námo said, “Closing off like that.”

It… it was so… loud. I just needed quiet.

“Yes, it is rather busier here than when Míriel came,” Námo said drily. He gave the distinct impression that if he had been wearing a physical form, he would have been staring intently at his fingers as he picked a speck of dirt from beneath a fingernail.

Was that a sense of humour? In Námo?

“I don’t know why you’re so surprised. Serving as the Doomsman of the Valar doesn’t preclude humour.”

You are not what I was expecting. None of this is what I was expecting.

“All manner of things in this world rarely are.”

The statement did not particularly invite an answer. Maedhros stayed silent.

“She still comes here. Quite often actually. Though she was re-embodied long ago.”

Whom?

“Míriel. Her name has been bouncing about your fëa since you arrived. You were practically broadcasting it, before you closeted yourself away. The two of you are not as alike as you think, yet not entirely dissimilar.”

Why do I not find rest here as she did?

“Because of the ways you are different, Maitimo.”

Don’t call me that.

“Why not? Is it not your name?”

Not one I am comfortable with.

“You may want to consider why that is so. Do not give me any nonsense about being “well-shaped” no longer, for we both know that has nothing to do with it.”

Maedhros scoffed. When have I ever said as much? Though it was convenient not to correct that assumption. No, Maitimo is the name of someone long gone. Someone who would not have been burned by a Silmaril.

“Good, you have already begun. But there is a long way yet to go.”

That is both cryptic and ominous.

“Both benefits of being Doomsman. I can be as cryptic and ominous as I like, and no one can complain.”

I know what you are doing, you know. With the humour.

“And what am I doing, son of Fëanor?”

You’re putting me at ease. I have done it enough times with men before a battle to know it when I hear it. What I have not worked out is why. We are not gearing up for battle, are we?

“Not in the way you are imagining. Does everything truly feel like war to you now? No, do not answer that. You already know that it should not. Come. Not all Mandos is as crowded as this chamber. I shall lead you to a quieter one, provided you endeavour to open a little. There are others here I believe you shall find it very helpful to connect with.”

Are you…pitying me? I thought…

“The prophecy said little pity, not none. You may also wish to consider the meaning of that while you are pondering on your name.”

Maedhros shuddered.

“Why do you assume it is because I do not wish to give any?” There was a distinct amount of annoyance in that statement.

Because it was your proclamation.

“I speak truth, not my own will. Sometimes, they even align. Think on that too.”

There are many things you seem to wish me to think about.

“There are many things in which you seem to remain ignorant. I hope it is not wilfully so.” Námo gave the impression of looking down his nose at Maedhros, one eyebrow raised, “You will have an abundance of time. When you tire of the company of your own thoughts, I suggest you seek out Finwë. He will be pleased, if that is the right word, to speak with you again.”

That name slapped stingingly across Maedhros’s fëa, carrying the weight of dark memories he had thought long put aside. Rushing headlong back to Formenos under a newly darkened sky, Maglor had cried out in warning, “Do not go so fast! Do you wish to break your neck?”

None of them could see very well and likely neither could their horses. It was dangerous, galloping as they did, but he and all his brothers besides, feared more what may await them in the unnatural dark. They did not slow. Maedhros had meant to seek out Finwë’s leadership and was already planning a step ahead for the ride to Tirion. For surely Finwë’s first thought would be of Fingolfin, who ruled in his stead, and of coming to his aid without delay.

“Haru!” he called, dismounting and leaving the reigns to Celegorm, “Haru, where are you? Are you here still?”

Mounting steps two at a time, he came to the broken doors, and saw over late the pool on the threshold, inky dark. The blood was on Maedhros’s boots before he knew what he stepped in. Like ice, he recalled. It was like ice, the feeling that ran down his spine at the sight of Finwë’s broken form. The cold horror stole his voice. It was Maglor that had broken the silence, screamed out a raw feral cry that reverberated off the stones and echoed through the woods beyond. He could still hear that awful sound.

Maedhros tried to pace away the memory lest it overwhelm him, tried to convince his legs to take him back and forth. But, of course, he had none. If he had still had a voice, he would have yelled in pain, as feral and low as Maglor’s long ago. But he did not have that either.

“It is harder to hide from such things here,” Námo’s voice was soft, carefully picked clean of emotion, “but they will not tear you apart as you think they are wont to do. You are stronger than that. Find your grandfather. It will help.”

It had been some time before Maedhros could bring himself to approach that horribly still, broken form. Caranthir was the first, gently righting all the wrong angles and smoothing dishevelled hair. Longer still it took, until he could see past it. The awful shape had burned itself onto the back of his eyelids, returning with every blink. Maedhros did not know if he could face that horror again now.

Námo withdrew and Maehdros chose to remain alone.

The chamber where Námo deposited him was hung with richly embroidered tapestries. Not only tapestries, but weavings and textiles of all kinds graced the walls, even stretched out upon the floor. Many were only that, beautifully crafted furnishings, fabrics eerily reminiscent of home. Paintings there were too. One depicted the great migration, another Mereth Aderthad, and a more recent work half-obscured behind it captured Finarfin in what was unmistakeably Beleriand. What was the point of all this, Maedhros wondered, it was not as if he could touch or use any of it. How he could see it at all was a curiosity that niggled at the back of his mind, one that Curufin or father would have pursued for the chance to learn more about the nature of fëar and their interfacing with the spiritual and physical worlds. No doubt they would have learned enough to produce a thesis on the subject, he thought wryly.

Maedhros drew nearer to the portrait of Finarfin. This must have been near the end of the War of Wrath. His uncle’s face, rendered exquisitely in subdued oils, wore the overwrought expression he had often seen after battles when Finarfin’s carefully maintained mask slipped. Galadriel leaned against his side as they sat, gazing into and beyond the small flames of a campfire, Gil-Galad and Elrond set in counterpoint.

It would have been a cheerless fire, Maedhros knew, kindled for utility, kept alight only long enough for the necessary tasks of feeding, and boiling a little water so they could cleanse what they must to stave off infection and infirmity. Both, merely important for the Eledhrim, were crucial for the Edain and Peredhil. Maedhros could almost insinuate himself into the scene, feeling the echo of the unceasing worry for their weaker allies that had always overcome his own weariness. For Elrond and Elros truly, he corrected himself, as whether or not they were present with him on any given night, it was always the concern for them that drove him. That livid fear had bred almost metronomic routines that allowed them, he, Finarfin and Gil-Galad all, to go through the motions of keeping them alive, despite crushing exhaustion and grief. Gil-Galad’s weary shoulders sagged, his forehead resting on one hand, but Elrond looked intently at their two golden-haired companions, his expression curiously deep, a mingling of knowing that can only come with personal experience, and great pity.

The pain written on Finarfin’s face was not hard to read. It spoke volumes on the losses, both personal and as regent, that he had sustained. The High King wept sometimes, alone by the fire at night, for the brothers he had lost, the men’s lives their yet to be realised victory was dearly bought with, and for the three sons that were no more. For them most of all.

The sudden realisation that they, Finarfin’s sons, along with Maedhros’s other cousins and uncles besides, were somewhere here too, cut Maedhros like a knife. A large part of his heart ached for them, wanted to embrace them. But fear, sharp and cold whispered they would only want to push him away. His heart bled.

What of all the other dead? The ones who had succumbed to the slaughter brought about by the rotten core of his attempt at a union. Worse still, the ones that died at his hand, refugees and his own men some of them. Guilt tore at what was left of his heart, until he was in tatters, a bloody, pulpy mess. Then he took a boot to it, stomped on those quivering pieces and trod them down into the dust as thoroughly as the enemy had done to what had remained of Fingon. Maedhros recalled them all, remembered their names one by one, a self-imposed parade of damnation marching steadily on for uncounted hours.

Stop! He commanded, shakily mustering all that was left of the Lordly command he had wielded at Himring, bringing it to bear on himself. Tearing away from the painting, he fled to a nook in the opposite wall, framed by vaulted columns and furnished with a carpet of an identical pattern and palette to the one by Finwë’s favoured fireplace in Formenos. Broken, in exquisite pain, and startled, Maedhros found himself thrust into a memory of the two of them together, sitting warm and cross-legged upon it, each with an open book on their knee. Reflexively, he lifted his hand from the page and reached for his grandfather. Finwë, the slightest of smiles teasing across his lips, took it in his own without even looking up.

Finwë’s soul was starlight rippling over clear, calm waters. He was the smell of fresh sprigs of cedar, crushed and fragrant between one’s fingers. Maedhros came close, felt him like a cool breeze on his face on a warm day, comfortable and refreshing. Finwë turned his attention toward him, and he could feel it, calm, constant, eternal.

Child?

Maedhros sighed, his grief briefly flushed by remembered contentment.

Haru. Had the word been spoken aloud, it would have been half sob.

Finwë seemed to wrinkle his brow, grasping for recognition. Maedhros opened his heart to him, feeling once again like he had as a child, climbing onto his grandfather’s snug, safe lap.

Then the images came. An inky pool. Dark hair spreading like a curtain, half-covering a bloodied face. Maedhros pushed them away, but Finwë had already glimpsed them.

Nelyo? He asked, incredulous.

Maedhros pulled himself closer.

What happened to you, child?

Maedhros knew what he was thinking for Finwë did not hide it: that Maedhros was the wrong shape, the wrong colour. Finwë’s flickering mind-pictures remembered him as once expansive, a morning sky in the hour after dawn, warmth and light for the earth to bask in. But now, his grandfather saw instead a point of white flame amid shimmering air, incandescent and self-consuming. It was not a comfortable mirror that he held up, but Maedhros was not ashamed. He had become a beacon, for that had been what was needed. Did it matter if he burnt himself down to the quick in the end?

You were the one who must needs be strong, with little to sustain you, and for too long. Finwë rightly guessed, sadness mingling with pride as he surveyed the memories that sprang to Maedhros’s mind. But there are other ways to be strong.

Not for me, Maedhros told him, rippling with the unvoiced thought that he was not like Finwë, could never compare to his calm, well-spring of strength. Finwë considered this, and Maedhros saw suddenly the man that he had become through his grandfather’s eyes.

Haru, you surely could never have stooped so low. The thought was infested with shame, and followed by a myriad of other, equally dismal self-castigations.

Finwë did not recoil, but somehow weaved his way among them, and matched them with a fierce embrace. Maedhros could read there the threads of disappointment and anger, but overwhelmingly what he found in that embrace was love.

Finwë took hold of Maedhros and tumbled him below those calm, star-lit waters to the turbulent and murky depths below. Only when he knew that his grandson had seen the dark currents, rotting weeds and sharp-toothed creatures that lurked there did he let him rise once again to the calm surface, where the cedar smell carried on a cool breeze was no longer the heart of the landscape, but a deep contrast to what lay below. Maedhros saw the dark potential there and was not sure if it were meant to comfort, or to stand as a testament that Maedhros could have chosen a different path and become a different man.

Both, Nelyo, and the promise of what is still possible besides. We shall have to do something about this, child. It is time that this marring was washed away. Come back to me, my Nelyo, become again the boy who let his heart stay open and warm, and who was not afraid of tears, nor to look himself in the eye.

That boy is gone, haru.

No, I think he is not, Finwë answered, pointedly prodding an image of Elrond, tiny and terrified, comforted by the steady pressure of Maedhros’s hand and crooning words whispered in his ear. Look, here I still see the warmth and kindness of the morning sky. This is the Nelyo I know.

It was not a memory Maedhros had thought about for a long time, and he wondered at its floating to the surface of their shared connection now. Had he done that, or had Finwë? Finwë’s embrace pulled him nearer, and Maedhros pressed still closer, curled himself into Finwë’s arms. He was again just a boy aching with emotion, in need of a steady hand and kind words.

Rest Nelyo, I am here, and I will hold you for as long as you need.

And finally, Maedhros could. He remained, swathed in that embrace, a long time. 

Chapter End Notes

Yes, that was some Sindarin you spotted mixed in with the Quenya words I often sprinkle throughout! I've tried to use both in accordance to what language Maedhros would likely have been speaking or thinking in at the time. This goes for names too. 
 

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Glimmers of gold shimmered across the surface of the cool waters that were Finwë, and they were distinctly not of his grandfather. The eyes of Maedhros’s soul lifted to watch them. The gold continued to play across the waters, leaping and dancing, it’s distinctive shade half-remembered from happier times. Maedhros wondered what it could mean.

I am having a conversation, Nelyo, Finwë explained, sharing other meanings beside. Maedhros saw threads of pale blue growing, branching out amid bone-white, and felt the relief Finwë experienced, thinking that some semblance of his grandson at last began to return and to seek out around him, like pale shoots emerging from the earth. Maedhros saw them now, the delicate tendrils coiling out from his soul, tentatively seeking that which lay beyond, drawn by the light. The observation was equal parts unsettling and pleasing.

Who are you talking with? Maedhros asked, politely curious.

Findekáno.

Memories unbidden thrust themselves to the fore. This was the battle Námo would not name as such, he now realised, grappling with a mind unbridled by the physical, ever fleeing to the most painful of moments at the slightest reminder. Blue banners lay in the dirt, so fouled that one would almost not know they were blue unless they had seen them before. A white flash rent the air, threatening to blind Maedhros even with his view of it half obscured, and his attention drawn to the orc that tried rather desperately to relieve him of his remaining hand. Pivoting and thrusting to dispatch his foe, Maedhros turned only to see black, fiery creatures where Fingon should have been. Later, as Himring’s forces surged forward, he saw a tiny glimmer of gold. Winking in the sun out of the bloody mire those banners wallowed in, it confirmed his worst fears. The same gold played on the waters now. Maedhros pulled back, hoping it would stop the flow of images.

No. Don’t pull away. Finwë gripped him securely, sharing reminiscences of his own.

Two boys ran down a long, ornately painted corridor and skidded around a corner. One was red-haired, one dark, and both spilled over with clear, unspoiled laughter, as if the sound would never stop. Findekáno’s guileless smile shone golden in the light of Laurelin, and though he wore no ribbons in his braids, no adornment was needed to set his hair gleaming.

There were far more of these moments than you realise. The sum of them far outweighs the horror. He knows you’re here, Nelyo. You could talk to him yourself.

I think I am too afraid to, Haru.

Nonsense. It will hurt less than the punishment you inflict on yourself with those memories. Come, I am with you. The two of you used to vie for my attention like greedy puppies at feeding time. I would like it to be so again, though perhaps you can be civilized about it, now you are both grown. Finwë’s amusement underscored his words with the sound of his own half-voiced laughter. The kind that lived on the edges of their childhood, hidden in knowing smiles and twinkling eyes.

Maedhros let the tendrils of awareness creep out a little more, until the gold shimmers separated themselves from the water to become ribbons streaming in the wind. Above the waters they flew, up to a great, green mountain, where eagles circled and dived. The wind returning from its peaks carried jubilant exhilaration, and the promise of golden sunrises after darkest night. Fingon had ever been hopeful, thrilling with life. How he remained so after the long grim years that followed Dagor Bragollach, how he was still so after the horror of Nirnaeth Arnoediad was a mystery to Maedhros. He wondered how he appeared to his cousin. As desolate and ugly as the Anfauglith likely.

A path opened before him, leading from the bank into the fir forest at its rocky base. Maedhros arose from the depths of those waters, a leviathan of the mountain lake, to stand hesitantly at its gravelly edge, one foot on the path. Fingon’s greeting was warm, but his fëa felt almost as hesitant as Maedhros’s own.

Hello, Russandol.

Fingon, I am glad to have found you.

Waters rose up from the lake behind him, slapping his legs impatiently as if to push him forward. The depths rejected him. Not a monster, they whispered, but a man, and no place is there for him in the murky depths. Finwë thought his halting, formality tedious and unwarranted it seemed. Maedhros took a step forward, and another, brushing against Fingon as he did so. An answering touch brushed back, and it felt in his soul as a warm breeze curling around him, wrapping him in it’s embrace and driving him forward. The scales of the leviathan fell away, torn from him in the eagerness of the wind, leaving tender pink skin in their place. All hesitation evaporated as they embraced each other, and Maedhros clung to his cousin as if he might disappear again if he let go.

Open your eyes, Finwë prompted. And he did, widening his awareness obediently until the room with its rugs, tapestries and paintings came into focus, and there before him were Finwë and Fingon.

Much better, came words from his grandfather in the shape of an approving nod.

Maedhros was not so sure. It felt vulnerable, being this open again, with tender new skin painfully exposed to the insults that would surely come and scar it anew.

What were you discussing?

Life, death and rebirth, Finwë answered with a wry smile, as always.

As always?

What else is there for the dead to discuss? We who yearn so much to return to life but may not attain it.

Did the souls here forever linger on subject matter that walked the line between profundity and self-torture? Would connection only ever serve to bruise anew that which he laboured reluctantly to heal? Perhaps it was better to pick up each scale one by one, to clothe oneself in the serpent’s skin anew. Perhaps it was better to sit in the dark torturing oneself, than to stand with your loved ones throwing darts at each other, and to see in them the pale gleam of sea-monster scales you wished they did not also call their own. But could he really look away from those he loved, even if the shape of them had changed, even if it caused both sides pain? Not once had he accomplished this feat yet.

Grandfather has earned himself a lifetime ban from re-embodiment for daring to suggest Míriel should be allowed to return to life, Fingon informed him, Apparently the Valar do not take so kindly to the suggestion that they were perhaps not quite being fair to all parties.

How rebellious of you, Maedhros remarked.

Indeed, Fingon agreed, projecting a mix of pride and amusement, You see where our father’s got it from?

Is it true, Haru?

There was something indescribably sad about the thought of Finwë rotting in Mandos forever. The bulwark of their youth, shielding them as best he could from the darkness, even as he climbed like a vine toward the light, should not remain sundered from the world.

It was not quite so simple as Findekáno makes it out to be, but yes. I chose to remain here so that Míriel may have the chance to live. I thought it a worthy trade. She would not have been granted life otherwise. Tell me, knowing all that you know of the matter, could I have chosen differently?

No, Maedhros agreed simply. Knowing what he knew, Fëanor’s own choices aside, Míriel yet alive may have been the one chance for events to play out differently.

But the Valar could have. Fingon’s anger flared hot like the sun and stood tall like a righteous sword held high.

Don’t start on that Findekáno. You won’t be allowed to leave this place if Námo does not believe you are at least repentant, if not entirely reformed. Save your indignation for a future in which it might achieve something.

Though it was clear that Finwë was keen to let the matter lie, Maedhros’s curiosity had been awakened.

What do you mean they could have chosen differently?

In their wisdom, the Valar have decreed it is wrongful for an elf to have two living spouses. How unfair to Finwë’s wives, they said, that he should be torn between them. Surely it will cause strife. And thus, they decided it was instead preferable to deprive both of our grandmothers of their husband. This, my dear cousin, is justice.

You see why he is still stuck here, Nelyo? Talk some sense into him, will you? Finwë pleaded, a sense of long-suffering exuding from him.

Far be it from me to counsel Fingon to run from a just battle, Haru.

Maedhros remembered their grandfather lowering his shaking head to hide a smile when Celegorm had trained Huan to howl loudly whenever Maglor began to sing. He was sure, had they all been alive, this is how he would have appeared now.

I am not foolish enough to believe I can stop him. Rather I hoped you might impart some of your own strategic expertise regarding timing of such endeavours.

Fingon, kindly convincingly repent so that you may take your sword to Manwë’s stuffy marriage laws after your re-embodiment. Then perhaps we and our cousins shall be the first elves blessed with five living grandparents.

Fingon became like Autumn rains washing away the last warmth before Winter’s chill set in, like the mournful blue waters resting over forever lost Beleriand.

He won’t return even so.

Why?

Finwë remained silent.

Because your father is never getting out of here. Fingon supplied.

That is not all of it, nor even the greatest reason, Finwë corrected gently, reaching out to them both and wrapping them in the myriad of trails of conversant thought that had led so many of the Eldar back to life. They looped and turned like spools of blazing thread, twining together in one thick rope made of light; a new march of the Quendi from Mandos to the living lands. Finwë taking his place in history forged anew, guiding his people toward life, as ever he had sought to do. And he was happy, Maedhros saw, that in this version he did not fail and did not lead his people to a promised land only for it to fall to darkness. In this version, he brought all the time and patience available to him to bear to guide souls back to the world, no longer promising that there would be no darkness, but confidently declaring that life could and would still be wonderful in spite of it. His legacy would be a people that would not so easily become bitter, having learnt to look for wonder even in the darkest of places. This was not so different from the purpose Maedhros had taken up in Beleriand, though he had become the fire to rally behind, blazing in the dark, where Finwë guided others to find light of their own. Perhaps that was where Maedhros had gone wrong. It was a beautiful vision, and Finwë radiant within it.

I would not have you give that purpose up, grandfather, so long as you wished to continue this work, even if it meant we were parted until the breaking of the world. But you are not only the earth to nourish the green things that grow, but a seed longing to burst forth anew.

Maedhros felt Fingon’s soul beside his echoing with agreement.

You were not made to remain in the darkness. When longing for the light grows too strong within you again, we would wish you the opportunity to pass on the burden and rejoin the living.

These words were rather eloquently put for Fingon, Maedhros thought. But he had often a way of surprising him so at the most poignant of moments.

I would like that too. But for now, I will be content to set you both on your path. Finwë gave Fingon the equivalent of a hard look, you have tarried here long enough.

Ah, and how I long for a body that can run and feel the wind on my face again! The yearning that flooded his cousin broke over Maedhros like a wave. But Haru, it is hard to return to a world with so many I love missing.

Fingon, who’s soul was rooted to his body more strongly than most, must find it terribly difficult here. One who felt the life-pulse of song recreating the world each day thrumming through his very veins as strongly as the beat of his own heart could surely not feel whole without the earth under his feet. How terribly constraining for his cousin, who could never feel happy unless he were moving, could never experience enough of the world, to have no legs with which to run. Would he really forsake these things for the mournful dead, no matter how dear?

That is the lot of us all, in Mandos and the living lands. The dead you trade the living for will follow in time.

Finwë spoke sincerely, as a promise. But would they? Maedhros remained unconvinced that he himself would. After the indelible trails of bloodshed his family had left in their wake, it seemed inconceivable for Námo to release him. Even if he saw fit to, would Maedhros want to rejoin such a place? How unbearable would it be to return to a world where thousands of living reminders of his failures walked? How much pain would his presence cause to those that had been wronged? His mark upon the world had been an ugly one in his first life, and what was there to suggest it would be any better in a second? But Fingon? He would make the world shine brighter.

You should go, as soon as you are given the chance.

Maedhros did not promise that he would follow. Fingon took his words as a vow anyway, for they had always followed one another. It had begun so innocently before the world turned dark, leading each other into mischief before into battle, across the ice and into the pits of hell. Fingon did not expect this to be any different, and Maedhros chose to let him believe it. He would not see his cousin denied a second chance at life for anything, least of all himself. Perhaps the places Fingon’s feet would take him would be lighter now, without Maedhros at his side, binding his cousin to his own destruction. Finding himself once more unaccountably weary, Maedhros withdrew into the quiet and dark once more.

Finwë sought him out again after a time. It was easier to let him in now. Sick and weary as he felt, his grandfather’s presence would always be welcome. Particularly as his thoughts now turned to his father. Fingon’s words echoed in his mind: he is never getting out of here.

I saw what you did, Nelyo.

Maedhros’s first thought was a condemning one, bringing to mind Doriath, the Havens of Sirion and slaughter.

No, not that. This! Finwë waved this continued self-castigation away as he would a gaggle of irritating seagulls calling loudly for scraps, clearing the air to better point out the beauty of a sunset. And he showed Maedhros an image of his own still form. Crowned in the lesser lights Fëanor had created. A net of fine shining gems upon Finwë’s brow that Maedhros had arranged carefully, trailing back into the hair that Caranthir had washed clean of blood, and Curufin had braided with trembling hands.

How? How can you have seen this?

My son showed me. He may not have thanked you at the time. Grief can rob a person of thoughtfulness as I suspect you well know. But you cannot know how grateful he was, and how grateful I am. I remember how it felt when I fell…. The…mess I must have been. You boys spared him that, though I am very sorry the seven of you had to bear it.

Grandfather was soft and warm, nestled next to him as they once used to when he was small, and father let him stay up with his aunts and uncles as they talked into the night. Back then, Fëanor still had enough forbearance for his siblings that the evenings were pleasant. Grandfather’s strong hand rubbed lazy circles over his shoulder blade, as they listened to father and uncle’s back and forth on laws and language, punctuated often by aunt

Írime’s laughter. This was the comfort Finwë had wished for them after that black day, not the sharpness and steel that had come instead.

It was mostly Caranthir, with some help from Curufin and Celegorm.

But the gems, my dear, that was you. Oh, Moryo and Tyelko cleaned the blood, I know, set my body to rights, and Curufin neatly arranged my hair, and for that also I am grateful. But you restored to me the dignity that my son needed to see. That is what stopped him from breaking asunder the moment he came to Formenos.

I did not know. Though we worried for him, my brothers and I. How could we have missed that he was this fragile?

He was your father, of course he tried to protect you from that side of himself. But ever he has been in some ways like spun glass, and that is how he caught the light. He is not as strong as you.

I thought he was the most infallible thing I knew once.

Most children think their fathers are. But I knew his faults well.

Will he really never leave this place?

A sighing breeze passed over the cool waters of Finwë’s soul, disturbing them. Deep and dark they now seemed.

I do not know. Perhaps eventually, but I believe it will be a very long time. Far longer than for you or your brothers.

If there is little hope for father, then there can be little for me. You still do not understand how detestable we became by the end. I was meant to guide us, haru, and I let us wander into the dark. 

No Nelyo, you sought a path out of a darkness you found yourself in and merely didn’t find your way. Fëanor walked in with eyes open to it. Mark that distinction. Your heart is very different from your father’s, and that is important. You would still choose wisdom, humility and kindness at times his would be clouded by pride, even now. You must remember these times you chose kindness, when the darker decisions come back to haunt you. Do not mistake me, for nothing will undo such horrors. But neither do your most awful choices undo the good. They are not ALL that you are. You must keep choosing the good.

Which is why I will refuse to inflict myself on the world. It is the kindest choice I could make.

No. As Findekáno said of me, you too are a seed, made to grow, not to wait in the dark. You will follow Findekáno eventually, and without the oath hanging around your neck, you will do more good than harm, I think.

A sudden pang of longing for Fingon stung his heart, and Maedhros knew that Finwë had spoken true.

Has he gone?

Not yet, but I believe the day will come soon for him.

But I will remain here long yet.

Maedhros let the resignation settle over him like a cloak, comfortable and familiar from long use. Finwë seemed to eye him sadly, with the sense of twitching fingers, as he longed to tear it off.

Perhaps, he said finally, but not, I believe, for the reasons you assume.

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It was a strange thing, to find a living soul in the halls, thrumming with a quality that the dead did not share, anchored in a way they could not be. Stranger still was the one that followed, a many faceted, kaleidoscope of a soul, just as dead as he. The fëa was deep, deep green, like an oval-cut emerald with many precise facets coming together to shape a thing of beauty. Each face, polished and smooth, reflected something of the person within, a multitude of streams of consciousness at once travelling in many directions, yet remaining resolutely side-by-side. Maedhros looked on in fascination, thinking there was something familiar to the light that gleamed along the edges. 

             Silver was the living soul, at once as sharp as a needle and possessed of the silken-tough softness of sheep’s fleece. Certainly, he had not met this one before, though there was something about her brightness that drew him in. As Maedhros watched on, the living one began to work, and to his surprise the workings were visible to him, though her tools were not. She bent before an image that slowly took shape, growing one small stitch at a time. As the jewel-bright soul leaned over her shoulder, watching her work, the facets began to smooth and shift as if they sang together in a rich harmony, running into one great sheet of glass of a thousand shades, mysterious and deep as the forest. Caranthir, for that is who Maedhros now knew it was, could not stitch as the living soul did, but he watched on and bent toward her to lend what help he might, as before them a thing of beauty took shape. Maedhros leaned closer to see Maglor picked out in rich colours before him, a harp in hand, sadness in his eyes, and an ironic little smile playing at his lips.

             “I wondered when I would see you, my dear,” the woman spoke in the familiar form of address. This should have registered as an offense, from a stranger, but Maedhros could not find indignity within him at her words, so affectionate and gentle was her tone. There was instead only the curious feeling of a well-worn word on the tip of the tongue that remains obscured.

             Who are you? He asked, almost certain he would be expected to know, vaguely concerned about causing offense himself.

             A rich, melodious laughter rang out from the woman instead.

             “Míriel,” she said, “and do not worry so. How could you have been expected to recognise one you have never met?”

             Námo said you came here still, but I was not sure whether I should believe him.

             “Námo is not known for untruth.”

             Míriel went deftly about her work, apparently little inclined to drive the conversation further. Maedhros supposed that one who had waited long years in these halls, wishing not to come forth, must be comfortable with silence. He found himself likewise content, watching as silver threads gradually strung the instrument in his brother’s hands. After a time, Míriel spoke again.

             “It is a joy to finally meet you, Maedhros.”

             And you, grandmother. He replied, mystified by the use of his Middle Earthen name, from one who had never set foot on those shores.

             “Are you surprised that I know it, or that I use it?” Míriel asked, a rhetorical question, as she went on without waiting for an answer, “Caranthir has spoken to me much of what passed between the seven of you in the Hither Lands. And, grandson, as you have always done me the courtesy of using my preferred name, should I not also greet you with yours?” 

             Thank you, that is kind.

             “Kindness has nothing to do with it. Only respect. Do you not wish to greet your brother?” Míriel prompted, completing the last string. The work paused for a time, perhaps as Míriel prepared a thread that Maedhros could not see.

             I would, but it has never been prudent to interrupt Caranthir when he is deep in thought. I am content to wait until he is ready.

             An amusement emanated from her then, shivering along the silver-bright soul like the gold of Laurelin melding with Telperion during the mingling. 

             “Your brothers were right when they said you knew them better than your father ever did, weren’t they? I should not think it a problem now though, my dear. Go ahead.” 

             Maedhros reached out as gently as he could manage, running a tendril of awareness down the smooth shifting-green glass, surprised to find it warm.

             Caranthir?

             Maedhros? His brother rippled with surprise, Is that you? You look strange.

             Hark who talks, brother! 

             Caranthir seemed to bark out a laugh, harsh-sounding and startling as it had been in life. It is you. 

             Beside them Míriel hummed in contentment as she watched Caranthir wrap him in a tentative, slightly stiff yet very genuine embrace. It was like holding Caranthir as a small child, smooth and gentle, without any of the rough edges he had quickly accrued in life. 

             I have missed you. Maedhros reached to embrace Caranthir in kind. 

             And we have missed you. 

             You are different to how I remember.

             I am better than I was. This place, it wipes away the blemishes if you will let it. 

             “It is not quite that easy!” Míriel cut in, “You and I have spent quite some time working together, haven’t we? I would say it was you that stitched together the tears and darned the holes.”

             Well, that is not untrue. It became easier once the oath stopped holding the worst of them open, of course. Caranthir turned his thought to Maedhros, gratefulness plain in the warmth that radiated toward him.

             Our brothers? Are they better too?

             Do not expect too much of them, Maedhros, we are not all the same. Change does not come easily for all of us. 

             I hoped not for change, but undoing. Maedhros confessed, the startling picture of Caranthir at two clinging to his back, trusting hands loose around his neck was forefront in his mind. All of them had been so soft and trusting once. I wished you all to become more like you were, before war made us hard and cruel. 

             Us? But what about you?

             Maedhros’s laugh was harsher than Caranthir’s had been. Me? There’s no cause to hope that I could. I’m the worst of us all.

             You don’t know yourself very well, do you?

             “No, I don’t think he does, Caranthir,” Míriel raised her eyebrow but did not look up from her work.

             You don’t know what we did before the end, Maedhros argued, the heat of shame rising like gorge inside him.

             Míriel and Caranthir seemed to be laughing at some joke that Maedhros wasn’t privy too, and worst of all, it seemed he was the butt of it. Anger began to burn inside him. 

             But we do.

             “To what do you refer? Raising two quite respectable youths? Or your stalwart contribution during the War of Wrath?” Míriel shot toward him, dripping with sarcasm.

             Moreso the orphaning of the boys you’re referring to, and certain hostile events pertaining to a particular two Valar-forsaken jewels. Maedhros snapped back.

             “You haven’t lost your spark. I was afraid for a time that you had,” Maedhros could feel the edge of concern in her voice, mingled with fire and passion, not so unlike his father’s, though hers came wrapped in softness, “peace, we don’t mean to mock you. But do try to imagine what your brothers might have done had they lived. How many of them would be men those fosterlings still wanted to cling to, by the end? Would any have forgone attempting to steal the gems from Eonwë? Don’t you imagine some of them committing worse wrongs during the act? You must ask yourself why you consider yourself beyond redemption and not they.”

             She’s a wonder, isn’t she? Caranthir cast toward him a knowing grin.

             She has father’s fire. Maedhros reluctantly conceded, feeling as though he were a field recently burned clear of the remnants of the last harvest.

             She has a point. 

             She has several and I’d rather not be pricked by them, Maedhros quipped, feeling her insufferable grin upon him even though he chose not to look. 

             “You cannot suture without a needle, my dear, but the stitches are for healing, not for harm.”

             Whatever drove Námo to agree to release you, I wonder? Did you piss him off one too many times? Surely it was not your charming wit.

             Míriel roared with laughter, “that’s more like it!”

             Maedhros found he began to feel a certain fondness for this oddly contradictory creature. His grandmother, like a caressing fleece wrapped over stone! That figured. She’d have fit right in in an argument among his brothers, or traded fire for fire with father more adeptly than any other.

             Why exactly have you come in here to stitch a picture of Maglor? Maedhros asked, seeking to divert both his temper and the topic of the conversation.

             “Hmm? I employ my talents for Vairë, stitching the tapestries of histories with her. I still find the living quite tedious, truth be told. Sometimes I work in Vairë’s halls. Sometimes I like to work here.”

             Maglor is history?

             “Did you think the only important things were the events that make it into stale treatments like Rúmil’s? The Valar find all manner of things worth recording. This one is for Lady Nienna. A morose Noldo slowly regaining a semblance of happiness.”

             He has found some happiness, then? Maedhros asked, rising up onto the tiptoes of hope.

             “A small measure,” Míriel agreed warily.

             Good. Perhaps it may grow.

             She looked at him, her gaze unfathomable as she studied his soul with an uncomfortable intensity, “the two of you were always good at finding hope in unlikely places.”

A memory came unbidden then. The first sunset had come after a day of warmth such as Maedhros had not experienced since the light of the trees had been extinguished. Its light had seemed to caress his exposed skin, almost like a promise. Later, he would discover it could also burn, but on the first day it was a comfort such as he had not felt in a wearily long count of time. When Arien sunk low in the Eastern sky she set the heavens aflame, casting the landscape in gold and bronze. Maedhros had the inexplicable thought that it was wonderful to witness the spectacle from such a height. He had not even a word for this strange golden orb that came unlooked for out of the West, but not even the unbearable pain that tore through his shoulder could stop Maedhros from hoping that it would return to paint the world in those colours again. When it continued to rise and set amid a new masterpiece each day, Maedhros was both grateful, and bitten by the guilt of thinking even the smallest good had come of his captivity.

             It was beautiful, Finwë agreed, surprising Maedhros, who had not been aware of his joining their company, even if it came amid the worst, and would not have been the same without it. Why should you be ashamed for finding what small joys that you could?

             “And now, you have shared with me something beautiful such as I have never seen,” Míriel thanked him, though she seemed also to be grieved, “for not even from the heights of the Pelori does Arien seem quite so grand.” 

             Sunsets and songs, Caranthir mused, my biggest brothers are even sappier than I suspected.

             Will you go to your other brothers now? Finwë asked, they would welcome you gladly. 

             I think they are better off without me, haru. I led them all to their deaths in the end. 

             Finwë sighed, his frustration clear, they’d surely have found those more quickly had they not had you to lead them. Go to them, Nelyo.

But Maedhros would not. Whatever Míriel, Finwë and Caranthir thought, he was sure no good would come of it. What was he to them but sword, shield an armour, well-worn and familiar, binding them comfortably to the violence of the past? What was he but a torch to set the world alight with, while his brother’s danced among the flames.

             “If I were to create a tapestry of you, do you think that’s what you’d be? Weaponry?” Míriel asked.

             Yes, Maedhros answered truthfully, what else have I ever been?

             The pictures Míriel called to her mind were as vivid as those Maedhros had comforted Elrond with when he was small and afraid. With them wrapped about him there was a hush that dulled his self-contempt in its bittersweet embrace. The sky stretched over head, a gentle gradient of lavender on the horizon rising to cornflower blue, and beneath his feet was cool grass, laden with flowers.

             “The morning sky, Maitimo,” Míriel whispered in a voice like Tussah silk, rough with tears, echoes of Nerdanel within her words, “You were the morning sky, and the promise of day to come in the midst of night. Stop living in the darkness, child, when you have the chance to walk in the sun.”

             Maedhros did not resist when Finwë began to gather them both in, until it seemed Míriel’s fields stood at the edge of a lake not so different from Mithrim. At its edge a bed of stones, smoothed over and flat, was lapped gently by the cool waters. Five figures stood on the shore. One bent, gathering the best stones to skip. Two sat with knees bent up to their chests, staring quietly across the waters. Another faced the field, all their attention bent to examining a sprig of yarrow that was held delicately in their hand. The last turned to him with a smile so open and warm that Maedhros almost thought the image a trick. For Caranthir with the stormy face and flashes of anger had never smiled like that, had he?

             What are you doing? Maedhros pushed back at Finwë, panicky alarm rising within him.

             Mending my family, Finwë told him calmly.

             Stop! Maedhros yelled. Let me go.

             I’ve never been able to hold you against your will, Nelyo. Leave if you wish.

             And he would have, except that at that moment Caranthir reached out to take his hand, and he knew from the warm smooth feel of his soul that it was no trick. 

             Stay? his brother almost begged, I promise you won’t break us.

             If a soul could be said to breathe hard, drawing in whatever passed spiritually as air in ragged gasps, this was what Maedhros’s did. Four faces turned gradually toward him, familiar but uncanny, just as Caranthir was. Celegorm dropped the stones and turned to him with an almost savage grin, Amrod and Amras scrambled to their feet and hurried forward, Curufin frowned and turned away to hide a softer expression that hid beneath. They gathered close. 

             Maedhros grasped for the familiar, commanding tones he’d used so often on his brothers in Beleriand, only to find them slip through his fingers. His words seemed more like a plea. What are you all doing? Haven’t you learnt yet that a flame will burn you? You should run far away. 

             Don’t be an idiot, Celegorm rolled his eyes, pulling him into an embrace that smelled of dirt, raw meat and smoke. Somehow it didn’t seem surprising to Maedhros that Oromë’s favoured remained marked by the Hunter even in death.  It wasn’t you that burned us. How the fuck do you still not realise?

             I can’t say I’m much shocked, Curufin answered drily, Fëanor’s eldest was never his sharpest sword.

             No, Amras agreed with teasing affection, he was too busy to sharpen it, gathering this rowdy brood under the skirts of his cloak and trying to keep us out of the cold.

             I don’t think he’s managed to shake the impetus, Amrod observed, he still tries to shield us from the storm.

             But you’re not a storm, nor a sword either brother, Amras finished, let us be the ones to wrap you in our embrace for a change.

             Hope entered his heart like a splinter, close under the surface of his skin and irritatingly hard to ignore. Maedhros saw himself for a moment through their eyes, a great, ancient cloak rent and torn in a hundred places, faded from long years exposure to all manner of weather, stained from misadventure, and yet far too valuable and dear for even the thought of discarding it to pass one’s mind. He perceived also that repairs had been made, some patches as old and faded as the original and some darns bold with threads startlingly new. When had that happened?

             “A cloak,” Míriel mused, “is much like a shield is it not Maedhros? Though it remains useful in times of peace too.”

             Maedhros could not disagree. 

Chapter End Notes

I'd always planned for Caranthir to make an appearance with Míriel. He was originally going to do so alone, but you know how it is with the Sons of Fëanor, they rarely appear without at least one other brother. To my surprise they've all decided to show up at once. If Maedhros thinks he's likely to be left to quiet contemplation after this he's in for a rude shock. As for what else the future holds, I doubt Námo is foolish enough to leave a tangle of Fëanorians unsupervised in his halls.

I hope you've enjoyed this one. Please let me know what you thought!

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Námo surveyed the gathering of souls from a distance. Communing of sizeable groups was unusual in Mandos, where souls reached habitually only for those dearest to them in life. There were exceptions of course, but the Fëanorions were not one of them. Their chief peculiarity remained the number of children to be found in the one family, in life or in Mandos. Their flight and war-making had brought them, as prophesied, almost all to death. Only one brother had yet to pass the threshold of these halls.

“They cling to one another, almost desperately,” Námo observed.

“Are you surprised, brother?” Nienna asked.

“It is not surprise, but dread anticipation that irks me. Alone they are a concern, together they are a force. Is it wise to allow such closeness?”

“It is kind. There is often wisdom in kindness. Together they may achieve what is impossible apart.”

Námo frowned, “That is what worries me.”

“Brother, you think too much on devastation, but not all dooms lead to that end. Turn. Look from another angle.”

To Námo souls were colour and shape. Each being came from Eru’s thought vibrant with a colour of their own and a form like no other. This was of course, a simplification, but a helpful one, for his purposes. For thousands of years Námo had watched souls bend, twist, muddy and darken. Their essences would always be a beautiful thing, he supposed, a child of Eru still, no matter how far out of shape they became. Still, there were days when he found them almost unbearable to look upon, so wrong did they seem set beside the memory of their original design. Not least of all the brothers he now studied. The eldest, sapped almost entirely of his colour, to Námo appeared burned black and collapsed inward. Before him, the souls shimmered and shifted.

“What is your meaning sister? I do not see it.”

“Watch the points at which they touch.”

The changes were small, but obvious under close examination. A small shift in colour or smoothing of the texture at the point of contact. Not every touch brought it forth, and some achieved greater shifts than others.

“I see it. Yet, I cannot determine the trajectory of this change. How do you judge it?”

“I do not. I withhold judgement. If it is further marring, which to my mind is doubtful indeed, it will soon become apparent, and you shall intervene. Until then, let them be. The middle brother is healing well, is he not?”

A jewel-bright green shone in the midst, still far from perfect, and yet closer to the original design than any of the others.

“He is,” Námo admitted.

“One grief in my heart that begins to ease,” Nienna whispered, a quiet note of hope tantalising on the edges of her words.

Námo rounded on her, “Do you not cry for the harms they have caused?”

“I cry for all griefs.” Nienna turned her ever-weeping countenance toward him as it to emphasise the point. “Does any one tear weigh more than the others? I shall be glad for every single one that I am no longer obliged to shed.”

“And yet an ocean of weeping must outweigh a puddle, surely.”

“Does the drying of the puddle prevent evaporation from the sea? Besides, there is good that can come from even these if moved to pity. I have already seen some such reparation, and that before any healing your domain could offer.”

Námo shifted uncomfortably. “You speak of the twins?”

“Indeed. Their hearts are clean, courageous and compassionate. Their mark in the world will be a hopeful one, I deem.”

The Noldor had spawned too much false hope over the last age for that to sit comfortably inside him, squandered too much unrealised potential. Not that Námo could admit to the degree to which that stung his heart. He was not one for displays of emotion.

“Do not cheapen their integrity by attributing it to others.”

“I do not,” Nienna countered, seeing more truly the barb that inspired his words than the Doomsman would have liked. “The mortar does not take credit for the pestle’s labour, and yet enables it. So it is with the peredhil twins.”

Námo pondered this. “There is reason in your words, loathe though I am to admit it.”

Nienna reached out to him, her embrace kind. Her next words came with the softness of understanding, not accusation. “You spit bitterness like venom so easily for one who has already shown pity to the red-haired one.”

“Pity does not preclude anger.”

“Well do I know it.”

Long Nienna and Námo surveyed the souls before them. Shifting shades bright and dim a kaleidoscope of thought, character and emotion careening toward a thousand touch points. The language of souls was a strange and beautiful one. At length a new pair of fëar joined the six, causing a bright ripple to pass through them, a warm welcome drawing both into their circle. Finwë embraced his crowd of grandsons (seven of them at once, for with him had come Fingon) a feat not possible in the physical world. Fingon’s gilt embrace blew like a spring breeze, touching each of his cousins in turn, pausing to wrap the blackened hull of the eldest long in its warmth.

Nienna looked with warm approval upon the unfolding scene, “The golden one, he seems much amended. Will you release him soon?”

Námo sighed, turning to her with pleading eyes. “The time draws near, but I must be sure he is ready. It is no easy call.”

In Nienna’s ever mournful face there seemed to grow a twinkle of humour, “that, my dear brother, is your domain.”

“Will you go among them?”

“Soon, and often it shall be needed, I think. How does it go with their father?”

“Do you know,” Námo told her conversationally, “not one of those boys has yet drawn near Fëanor, though their thoughts endlessly and anxiously seek him. I myself am shocked. Is it not shocking, sister?”

Nienna narrowed her eyes. Námo caved.

“He burns hotter than Arien and scorches anything that comes near save Finwë. Likely his sons have come to realise they are not fire-proof. I do not blame them.”

“That fire wreaths a wound I would dearly like to soothe, if only he would let me at it.”

Námo snorted, “I wish you luck.”

“Oh, I have something much better. Patience.”

The time of renewing drew near. Fingon knew this the way he knew the signs of spring would soon appear in Hithlum. It was a deep sense in his core, at once a settled rightness and a restless stirring. It may have been foolishness, but Fingon did not think he could leave without reaching out at least once. It was not to satisfy curiosity, nor to exorcise anger. Neither was it out of love for Maedhros, or some sense of familial responsibility. In the end, he did it for himself, for the sake of gaining perspective. Of course, once he’d taken the first step, the action morphed and took on purposes of its own.

Fingon had stood before Fëanor, and the elf had not seemed to him as formidable as he had once thought. His uncle’s soul, sharp and edged with danger though it was, did not seem like a siren call that might master him any longer.

Why have you come? Fëanor had asked.

To understand, he had answered, forthright.

I am not some phenomenon to be studied, nephew.

The words had bite but lacked venom. Fingon had kept his own response mild.

Fortunate for you I am no scholar, uncle.

Then what is there for you to understand?

I never truly knew you in life. You would not allow it. Were there any you permitted close enough?

Findekáno. A warning. The touch point of their souls quivered with apprehensive tension.

No, fear not. I do not ask it of you. I will ask nothing that you do not wish to give. In truth, I have satisfied my need already.

You are not as formidable as you believe you are, uncle, Fingon thought to himself, you burn, in truth, less brightly than your son once did. And I am no longer daunted by fire.

Fëanor’s curiosity was piqued. Wary reticence receded as he leaned into their connection. Pray, tell. What have you learned?

That we have all grown past what we were at the darkening.

And you have gleaned that from me how?

I have learned, uncle, that you, soul of fire though you may be, are still only an elf. I was young and your words were full of promise. But if I was enchanted by them, it was because I was ready to be enchanted. If father was goaded to cross the ice for you, it was because he was ready to be goaded. And before you bristle and spark at me, hear this: since you are only an elf, then there is hope. For even as generously endowed with stubbornness as you are, an elf can learn. I did. Father, mulish though he can also be, did. Maedhros did.

Fëanor had flared then. You presume-

Fingon, finding himself more impatient than he liked, had pushed back. I presume nothing! I know more of our nature than you might think. For that, war is a fine teacher.

Fëanor, unused to being answered thus, had been silent. He seethed, but did not make riposte with harsh words, did not seek to wound him, as he might once have done, but took time to master himself.

You have my brother’s flint, but you are not as he, he had said, and his thoughts had carried with them a sense of esteem Fingon was not expecting. Fëanor had seen him in a new light and was surprised to find it more favourable than expected. In the touch of his uncle’s mind there was to be found a picture of Nerdanel, hands on her hips, unswerving, yet patient and warm with hope in her defiance. Fëanor had fit Fingon’s own response beside this old one of hers.

I am not as wise as she, Fingon told him.

You misunderstand the comparison. Not many stand firm before me with generosity still in their heart. You are a rare one, Findekáno. What can you tell me of my son?

He is suffering, uncle. He has been for a long time. I would see it lifted from him, if I could.

He had not meant for their interaction to take this turn, purposing only to get the measure of Fëanor and in doing so of his younger self. But concern for his cousin had been prodding at his fëa since their meeting. Fingon, unpretentious as they come, could not keep that sentiment from surfacing. Fëanor, at least, did not judge his forthrightness with rancour, seemingly the opposite. His thought was soft, bordering on resigned.

You tried, did you not?

He had wondered then what Fëanor already read in his fëa. A flood of memories inundated their shared space: the comfort that he had tried to give, Maedhros resolute and wilful. Yes, but it was not my burden to lift.

Just as it was not my wife’s to turn me from my course, nor divert that of our sons.

His uncle’s sharp edges had dulled, his fire banked. Fingon sent his next thought gently, as a fortifying hand resting on a shoulder.

No. You must do that for yourselves.

You lay it at my feet.

I know Maedhros. He will come to you eventually. When he does, do not point him again down a path of ruin. Filial and fraternal loyalty have ever been the largest stumbling block for his good sense.

Do you care not for my other sons? Are they not also your cousins? Fëanor quipped. It was easier, perhaps, for him to find a point of contention and draw it out than to acknowledge the realisation that echoed within his soul. From its shape, it was a conclusion that Fëanor had come to some time ago: that his actions had doomed his children, and moreover he no longer thought them right. This, though, he did not quite hide from Fingon. Nor was there outright refusal, as had come of most attempts to counsel Fëanor during his life. Does he actually intend to heed my words? Fingon had wondered.

You need only steer Maedhros. Where he leads, his brothers will follow, or else be corralled. Always it was so in Beleriand.

And do you presume to lead me, Findekáno?

A bubble of wry mirth had burst within him then, its ripples reaching Fëanor. More fool would I be if I tried! I know how that goes, uncle. Kingships, thankfully are ceded upon death. Good riddance to the crown too. No, I merely advise.

Life coalesces around you. You will not dwell here much longer, Fëanor observed. Then hesitantly and with much self-chagrin, as though it pained him to ask, he had added, when you find yourself again with breath, if you remember this conversation, give my apologies to my wife and brother. Not that I expect Ñolofinwë will believe it of me.

That had been a surprise. Fingon had begun wondering lightly if Námo had done something nefarious to Fëanor that evoked such a wild swing in character.

I shall, he had agreed, beginning to withdraw. And uncle? You forgot the ‘half’.

The strangeness of that interaction still pulsed through Fingon as he drew near to his cousins, though they were too preoccupied to notice it within him. Maedhros’s brothers huddled about him like hands around a candle on a windy day. How odd to see the fierce and proud Fëanorions thus, with all the care of one tiptoeing about shattered glass. Fingon wondered if it were like this between them in life and he just hadn’t been able to see it. The nakedness of souls in Mandos often showed a person in a way one was unaccustomed to seeing them. Not Maedhros, though. At least not to Fingon. Then again, from him there was very little that his oldest cousin had ever sought to hide.

Turning his soul toward Maedhros dulled the noise of chattering thoughts to a low hum. His cousin was quiet. This, though, was a false stillness, only as silent as the frozen North which hid much beneath. It had never been truly quiet on the Helcaraxë. There had been an endless wall of noise, so static as to have lost all meaning, drowning out all coherent sound until one was left with only their own thoughts. If not the wind, then the ice howled and shrieked, as eerie and ominous as it was unending. Such, he thought, was his cousin’s now habitual quietude.

There had been an accident, early on in the journey, before the perils had become as familiar as breathing. An elf had gone over the side of a widening crevasse, and with him, the crystal lamp that he bore. Fingon had rushed to the edge, still naive enough not to know. And he had discovered, among other things, that ice could be blue. It was the kind of phantom colour that shifted as you looked, with no apparent origin beyond the translucent white ice. The aqua deepened without seeming to wholly be there, somehow imbued within each atom of the cleft, and would yet show in none unless it were packed hard and deep enough. That was what Maedhros put him in mind of at that moment.

Maedhros, he called.

You have come to say farewell, his cousin guessed.

I do not know if I will get another chance to do so. If Námo offers life now, I will take it.

That is as it should be.

And yet, I do not like to leave you as you are.

With the twisted form of ruin at your feet, and the truth of you translucent and weak within your soul still, he added to himself.

“Look up, Findekáno,” his father had said as he stared down at a sight that would have been kinder had it truly been an abyss. Fingon, unable to pull away entirely, had fixed his eyes instead on that ephemeral blue. Staring until the reality of what lay below it faded before the spectre of the crevasse’s grandeur and his eyes blurred helped little. But little was enough to steel himself and finally drag his body away. After that there was blue in every shelf of ice. He could not help but see it, nor what had lain below.

Maedhros cut into his thoughts. Do not concern yourself over me.

He may as well have asked Fingon to forget about that which lay wedged and lifeless in the illuminated dark below, first victim of a beautifully ferocious landscape.

And since when have I failed to do so? I will be waiting for you Maedhros. I will be waiting where the sun shines.

And I will come to you, if I can, Maedhros promised with no surety at all.

You had better, he pressed, for I do not wish to become used to a world without you in it.

Images of the lost graven behind his eyelids had faded in time, but the ice had never ceased to be blue. Fingon had sat with Maedhros musing over that once, high in the hills over Mithrim, when his body had become hale but his mind was yet decidedly not. Ribbons of emerald and magenta streaked in grand displays across the cloudless sky. Maedhros had snorted. The unguarded sound of amusement still rare enough to have taken Fingon by surprise.

“You will always see the beauty in the world. Perhaps most when it bleeds. You always have,” he had said. It had re-wired Fingon’s brain slightly, and suddenly he knew why he had searched for that elusive shade then and ever since.

“Well,” he had answered, “if there is good to be found, why not seek it? Why not hold it close?”

“Perhaps because it will hurt all the more when it fades?” Maedhros, ever the cynic in those days, had suggested.

“Or perhaps, if I do so, it will grow.”

And there had been the ghost of a smile on Maedhros’s lips then, as his eyes tracked the lights through the sky. A ghost of hope flickered between them now. Fingon watched colour flare and deepen a shade within his cousin once more. There it was. Clean, warm and beautiful cornflower blue. 

Chapter End Notes

urprise! A POV other than Maedhros’s to break things up a little. I thought it might be interesting for us to see Maedhros from Námo and Fingon’s perspectives this time. I hope you’ve enjoyed something a little different.

I checked the dates for this one the other day, and wow, it really has been over 2 months since I updated it. Life has been wearing on me a bit lately so I have not kept up the pace of writing I wanted too. The good news, though, is I have been working on stories for Scribbles and Drabbles in the background for you to enjoy come reveals in November (including one bittersweet Russingon Nirnaeth story I am quite excited about). Thanks for sticking with me!

For the curious, these are the kind of sounds I imagine Fingon and the others in the Noldorin host would have heard crossing the Helcaraxë.

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There was a crackling, low and insistent, that pervaded his dreams. It was not an ominous or irritating sound, but a soothing one, and from it Maedhros unconsciously drew comfort. He was barely aware that it was there, until, flitting between one strange vision to another, he found himself turning toward it to find that it was warm; warm like the sun, or a hearth fire brightening the hall on a winter’s day. Maedhros let the radiance caress his cheek and went on dreaming. It was strange to realise that in Mandos a soul could sleep. This was not merely a walling of one’s consciousness from others, but a stilling  of one’s mind. Asleep, one could dream. The visions were not cruel, not like the images Maedhros conjured habitually when awake and alone. Irmo it seems, was kinder and gentler with his heart than he was himself.

Sometimes the dreams were mere nonsense: a kaleidoscope of strange images with little meaning. At other times it seemed that Maedhros slipped behind the eyes of another. On this night Elrond’s vision swam as he read by lamplight, a dozen books and scrolls piled before him across a beautifully made walnut desk. Rest, elenya, Maedhros wished to say, you are burning the candle at both ends. And Elrond stretched tired limbs, kicked off well-worn boots and stumbled his way beneath a fine feathered comforter. His body felt deliciously comfortable as he closed his eyes. Vision dimmed then, vague shapes swirling in the pulse-pink dark that one sees behind their eyelids, until the world coalesced again in a different form.

Elros stood on the docks of a sheltered bay with the unaccustomed weight of a crown pressing upon his brow. Mingling in the warm air hung a fecundity of blooming evergreens, cut through with the tang of fresh, salt breeze. Over the wine-dark sea, sped a small Telerin fleet, bound for their home. As the white ships diminished to hazy shapes on the horizon, Elros treasured in his heart the continued friendship between their peoples. Ai, what a fair thing you have found! Maedhros thought. Elros agreed as he turned toward the green slopes that would take him to his home. As his foster son’s thoughts turned to the comforts of dark ale and hearth fires, Maedhros withdrew, questing outwards over sea and land. Briefly, he caught a snatch of song in a secluded cove and continued on, soon settling in a harbour city.

Boundless energy thrummed through Celebrimbor, who was far from sleep though the stars wheeled in the sky overhead; his mind teemed with aspirations and plans. Maedhros watched on in awe as his nephew riffled through dozens of schematics in his mind, discarding and sketching with imaginary quill until the solution he sought was found. Adept fingers brought the vision to life in chalk on slate. This sketch his nephew tinkered with and improved until, satisfied, the design was set aside to test in the morning light. Afterwards, his mind drifted unmoored, enamoured with thoughts of mountains and buildings. In his thought shone a fair city; a sister to Mithlond that could one day be. This place, unlike cosmopolitan Lindon, would be imbued with a distinctly Noldorin flair, full of craft and ambition. Maedhros thought, not for the first time, how like Fëanor Celebrimbor was, and the both of them smiled. The hearth fire that crackled away beneath it all, burned a little brighter.

Then came images that were Maedhros’s alone, delved from memory of long ago. In them Fëanor leaned back in his seat and stared intently at the wall with faraway eyes. Standing on tiptoe, Maedhros saw that the kitchen table was spread with plans, scrawled thick with notes in a hasty hand. Really, Fëanáro? Nerdanel had said, a spurious frown creasing her brow and a twinkle in her eye as she set a steaming, cobalt-blue mug before him. Must your work invade the entire house? But father caught her in a kiss and the frown dissolved into a laugh. Maedhros had crawled into his lap then, placed his small hands on Fëanor’s cheeks and asked, atar, what do you see? And Fëanor had shown him a whole world that spun with the scutter of creation: crystals and fine powders melted and combined until they caught cerulean light, shapes unfamiliar to his young mind rotated through endless configurations, a melody repeatedly hummed, and in the centre of it all, a design was coming to life. Maedhros and his father had smiled in unison.

There had been no swords then, and no open dissent. Here was the undoing for which he had hoped, not for his brothers, but him; a soft and trusting child, untouched by cruelty. Here was a boy who did not even know yet what a sword was, let alone the kinds of atrocities he would be capable of reaping with one. And here too was a version of his father unravelled from the dark stains that would later mark him. And Maedhros wondered, could this Fëanor and this Maitimo have ever made a different choice? Was there a world in which they did not become what they later had?

Do you seek to understand? Or to punish yourself further? Finwë asked, reaching for him as he woke.

Starlight shone on the cool, calm waters, and only once Maedhros was surrounded by that steadying presence did he realise that his soul wept.

Neither, haru, Maedhros replied. Rather, I grieve.

Rains cold and stark raked across the lake, raising dimples and splashes in the mirror surface. He felt their melancholy chill. Finwë, too, grieved. And yet, when the squall had passed, the air was fresh and light, as if some stifling heaviness had been lifted from it. A shiver passed through his soul like a sigh, and in its wake there was a small measure of peace.

What I saw before— of Celebrimbor, Elros and Elrond—was that real? Maedhros asked.

Tell me, what was it that you saw? Finwë prompted. So Maedhros shared with his grandfather the visions from his dreams and it heartened them both when Finwë said simply, yes.

They are well. The ghost of a smile warmed Maedhros’s soul and was taken up by Finwë’s.

They are well indeed.

I am glad, Maedhros said, and he was, deep in his heart. Yet sadness gnawed at him, insatiable in its steady devouring, and for a time he strove not to dream. Wandering the halls alone, he observed with indifference their cold elegance and the stark beauty moved him not. Sometimes he caught flashes of gold in passing from a soul too bright and vital for these halls, and wondered that Fingon remained still. Go, he told him, go. And Fingon assured him each time that Námo had said the time grew near, before trying to extract a bond that Maedhros would take the same path after. He offered his cousin warm assurances that always fell short of promise.

Long it seemed he drifted, past tapestries that cut him to the quick with shame, and others that stung for reasons he did not wish to name; long he lingered in empty rooms that offered refuge from those hurts even as they caused him to ache with loneliness. Yet Maedhros was no longer who he had been when first he had died, and inevitably he found himself turning back toward those he loved.

Have you seen Celebrimbor? Maedhros asked of Curufin.

What kind of a question is that? My son is alive. His brother replied indignantly, bristling with much that went unshared, the shape of which was painful and raw beneath.

They met in stark, empty places, and touched each other only lightly, rejecting the fabricated comfort that echoes of the familiar gave; the soft furnishings of a life lost that Finwë favoured. Such a thing, Curufin considered, was like bile on the tongue, fit only to be spat out. He could not understand why others thought it sweet. They were alike in this, not wishing to escape the harsh realities of the world through vaulting fantasy. Ever had they lost themselves instead in something more tangible. Curufin designed ever more sophisticated devices and weaponry; Maedhros had built Himring and drawn up strategies. Mandos was eating at them both.

Have you dreamt, little brother?

A ripple passed through Curufin, of what, Maedhros could not tell. His brother bared his soul to none. Maedhros had long ago accepted this. Some corners of the mind were their own fortresses, and both of them had great need of those.

I see him at times, Maedhros went on, so full of intention, with designs whirling through his mind, just as it was with atar once. He is happy, Curufin.

I know. I have seen, he admitted, though it seemed to bring him little comfort.

So, you do dream. Can we influence it, the dreaming?

How should I know? If you want speculative philosophy, Curufin answered, go bother one of Arafinwë’s brood, not me.

Perhaps I would, were I more interested in morals than mechanics.

His brother would have sighed, had he lungs and air to fill them. There was exasperation and fondness within him, heavily mired with guilt.

You have worked it out, Curvo. I know you. You never could leave a mystery unsolved.

Don’t ask questions you will regret the answers to, Maedhros.

Their father was well known for his obstinacy and in this Curufin was truly Fëanor’s son. It was, in Maedhros’s mind, far more than their aesthetic resemblance or curious minds, the thing that marked him most definitively as their father’s closest likeness. Maedhros, of course, could be obstinate too, but he possessed also the stoic patience of their mother, and this had always been the stronger, overcoming stubborness nearly every time. There was a door between them that Curufin kept locked, and it could not be forced. But, if allowed to open it himself, to remain in control, his brother may let him peer inside. All he need do was wait expectantly, and eventually Curufin would yield. Time was no obstacle in Mandos.

One may only dream behind another’s eyes if that person holds them dear, Curufin explained carefully. We, the dead, may learn in time to seek out their sight, only to observe, but we cannot enter unless they allow us. I do not think they are conscious of our presence. It is something their heart has chosen for them.

The workings were benign enough, of course, but the pain, as it so often did, lay hid in the implications they revealed. Maedhros was flooded suddenly with understanding.

Oh, Curvo… He denounced you aloud, to the world…

…but never in his heart, Curufin finished, holding gently between them the image of his son as he had been when young: open-hearted, curious and even then so very strong. The loss of his love had been a devastating ache of which all of his brothers were keenly aware, even if Curufin would never bare it to any.

But why, brother, did you think that it would pain me too?

More gentle than his usual wont, Curufin asked of him, who do you dream of Maedhros?

He dreamt of Elrond, whom he had abandoned in sinking Beleriand, and of Elros on a foreign shore. Rarely, he caught glimpses from Maglor, the brother to whom he had been closest, and failed most of all. And his heart dropped like a stone to the cold and murky depths of the vast and lonely sea.

It is more painful, sometimes, to love and to be loved than to be rejected, is it not? Curufin observed cooly.

He was right. Many may not think so, but Maedhros understood. How do you bear it?

He can live in this fair world because I do not. He is happy, precisely because I am not there.

Long then Maedhros stayed with his brother, saying nothing, as they took solace in the quiet presence of each other’s souls. Sometimes, it was comfort enough merely to know another understood. Slowly, between them, the warmth of a hearth fire grew.

They have a chance, Maedhros said, remembering the innocent hands of a young boy pressed to his father’s cheeks as all about them wonder took flight. A chance that we did not have, or perhaps one we threw away. An opportunity to make this world fairer, not darker.

Maedhros. Curufin bubbled with exasperation. When have you ever thrown aside that goal?

Ai, Curvo. What wretched darkness I caused, before the end!

We were fools. Oath-bound fools. But no longer. If you found yourself back in the world this moment, you would not rest ‘til it were made fair.

Curufin was right. There was an itch in his mind to right things, to build refuges and defend them until all that was foul was swept away. Yet it had all gone so wrongly the first time, he did not dare risk trying again. And you? What would you do if you found yourself again in the world?

I do not think I wish to inflict myself upon it.

You would not be an affliction.

Yes, I would, Curufin argued, an image of Celebrimbor in his mind that he resolutely raised a balustrade around. He was, Maedhros saw, quite determined not to cause him any more harm, even if it should mean relegating himself to Mandos until the world’s end.

We can love the world even as we let it go, Maedhros mused and ignored the resolute incredulity that Curufin projected his way. Do you think atar would do the same? Let the world go on without him?

Atar could never leave well enough alone. You know that! Why do you think he is haunting us now? Though he cannot truly touch us until we too wish it.

Then Maedhros understood the hearth fire warmth for what it was and it unsettled him to realise how he drew comfort from it. For the prospect of drawing close to their father, truly meeting again with soul bared to soul, filled him with a sick sort of apprehension. This dread was mirrored in his brother beside him, who quickly sought to smother it.

You really are not the sharpest sword, are you? Curufin needled, and he was grateful for the familiarity of the taunt.

We cannot all have your brains, Curvo.

Maedhros dreamed. He dreamed of a world built anew in peace through the eyes of those he had once loved as sons. He dreamed of an island nation that grew in splendour. He saw the reams and reams that Elrond read in his quest to bring healing to the world, now he was no longer forced to cut down creatures that would befoul it. And Maedhros dreamed of his father. Memory led him through a complex tangle of contradictions. Here was Fëanor, generous beyond belief as he near carelessly distributed the works of his hands throughout Valinor, who awoke ardour within Maedhros’s breast as they tested new materials and theories side by side. And here also was father, arrogant and proud, finding insult where it had never been intended, in those who spoke with different sounds. Had his fervour led them toward damnation long before the oath had been sworn? Would he ever know? The flames, though licking at him impatiently, seemed to understand and neither sought to burn him, nor to withdraw their warmth.

Maedhros woke with the pull of the living world a small but bright spark within. Resolutely, he tried to ignore it, and turned once more to those he loved who numbered among the dead.

He found Finwë amongst the room of familiar furnishings. Maitimo, join with me. There is something I would like for you to see.

What is it, haru? Maedhros asked.

Watch. Finwë reached out for him then, and Maedhros sensed that they joined with many others in an interlacing of minds, and not all were Eldarin. What was this?

Just trust, Maitimo. It is a wonderful thing to witness.

Maedhros peered into the darkness before them; watching, waiting. Then out of the darkness there came a thread spun of golden light. And as he watched the light spiralled ever upward, trailing an iridescent path behind that shimmered bright in the dark. It climbed ceaselessly, reaching such dizzying heights that Maedhros thought he would no longer be able to bear to watch, and then, at last, the light winked out. Or no, not precisely. It had not been snuffed, he thought, but had passed onward to place unseen.

There came a long moment when all interlaced consciousness seemed to hold its breath. Maedhros almost pulled away, but Finwë was alive with anticipation beside him and so Maedhros waited. He did not know when he began dreaming. All he knew was that the world had shifted, and before him a deep pulse-pink fluttered as it does behind heavy lids in the brief moment after wakening. Then, Fingon opened his eyes to the light of the sun.

Chapter End Notes

Curufin? Being vaguely vulnerable and supportive? *visible shock* I know... look, I think Maedhros gets certain big brother privileges here for which Curufin is occasionally willing to crack open his tough, spiky shell and let out a little of the warmth hid deep inside.

I was trawling through LaCE and found this idea in the footnotes that unhoused elven fëar in Mandos could commune with the Living who remembered them, but could only observe and not act upon the world... and there was no way I was not going to riff on that!

Apologies for any typos and little errors that I have missed. Illness has been kicking my butt in real life so I am not quite on top of my editing game right now (and if I am honest, finding all the little errors is not my strong suit anyway). Thanks to everyone who is reading this story (even though updates are a little slow)! As only the second fanfic I came up with I am honestly so happy to see it getting the love it has. <3

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