One in the Deep Waters by Isilme_among_the_stars  

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Grief By Turns Whispers and Screams

Please for the love of goodness don't try to slap someone out of a panic attack. This is unlikely to go well. Fëanorians are not known for their healthy responses to grief and trauma. This chapter has references to self-harm. Please read with care.

Through the long nights in wave-washed caves, Maglor walked through memories in his dreams. This night they rest by the banks of the Sirion, early in the journey toward Amon Ereb. 

Maedhros snorts, “they heard you sing, and their first thought was honey? Honey?”

His laughter has sharp edges. It is a hard thing, as they have become hard. Elrond’s head bobs up quickly when he hears it, fear on his face as if the laughter might be a sudden danger. Seeing no immediate threat, the child’s expression softens back to its habitual wariness, and he lowers his head to rest on the mossy ground where he and Elros lay. Maedhros catches his expression and lowers his voice, a flicker of guilt written into his own.

“Honey though?” he says, “I wonder what put them in mind of that.”

Maglor’s smile is painful, “they think I also have a sting. Elros was warning Elrond against my kindness, lest he become complacent and find himself unguarded against it.”

“Ah,” Maedhros’s voice is tinged with appreciation, “already I like this Elros. He is a survivor.”

“They are both survivors in their own ways,” Maglor says, “They should not have to be. Do you remember me at that age? Or any of us?”

“Very well. You were all so…innocent.”

The last word is like a blow, sharp and hard. That one word carries the sting of accusation against what their hands have wrought and the crushing pain of what has long been lost to them. Maglor hides his face in his hands.

“It is not all gone from them, their innocence,” Maedhros comforts him, “Mark how Elrond looks with wonder, at the trees and river, even now, mere days after his world broke apart. And Elros’s guard comes down as soon as you present him with food.”

“I did not know you paid that much attention.”

“How could I not?”

“You’ve been distant.”

Maedhros turns away, his body growing tight, like he is coiling around a wound, protecting it.

“They could use you, you know. You were always a better big brother than me. You have more of Ammë in you.”

Maedhros turns back to him sharply, and the pain is written there so plainly that it hurts to see. He does not say that he has failed five younger brothers now. He does not need to explain how it feels to hold someone when they are born, pink and perfect, only later to hold their cold body when they die before their time. Maglor knows Maedhros will never stop wondering if he could have changed their fate.

He only whispers, “That’s not true, Maglor.”

Maglor shrugs, “it is.”

Maglor makes his voice soft. Not like silk, but like the clay that so often clung to Nerdanel’s hands. Cool and soothing not long from the pottery wheel, then later powdery and warm.

“I know it hurts,” he says, “I grieve them too. But do not close yourself away.”

Maedhros’s smile is very slight. He reaches out and runs a cloth-bound wrist down Maglor’s cheek. But what Maglor feels is not linen, but skin. He jolted awake with a start.

 

Elrond’s hand felt uncomfortably cool on his forehead. Maglor shivered and flinched. Wrapped in the haze of half-sleep was a fleeting moment of content, a breathing space where Maedhros, Elrond and Elros still existed safe within arms-reach. The next brought cruel remembrance and renewed grief. Maglor rubbed his face to haste the dream away and pushed himself onto his elbows.

“You’re burning,” Elrond rocked back on his heels, hovering uncertainly there with concerned eyes fixed on him. Set carefully against the wall of the cave behind him were two travelling packs. One was Maglor’s, the other Maedhros’s. Maglor felt suddenly sick.

Subdued and quiet, he and Maedhros had packed away their belongings, going through the motions more out of habit than any other impulse. To Eonwë’s encampment they carried only what they thought necessary. Swords mostly. Left behind were the ephemera of their lives, stripped of violence, gathered in two neat bundles. A scrap of the precious little parchment that still remained, addressed to the twins in Maglor’s hand, peeking out from a fold, was the only indication of their intent. It was a paltry legacy to leave, but Maglor hoped Elrond and Elros may find within some small thing for which they’d be grateful, even if it were only permission to grieve. Neither he nor Maedhros expected to survive the night.

The thought of what was to come already curdled Maglor’s stomach. Both were heartsick, truth be told, grieving already for what was to come, and neither had wanted to cause more suffering or disarray than their imminent actions necessitated. Still more considerate of others than himself, even then, Maedhros had patiently bound up all the loose ends, arranging everything just so. Now the tidily squared away summations of their existence had found their way back to Maglor, and all the neat ends unravelled. Maglor felt frayed. He grasped at the one thing that had always kept him together: family.

“Are you hungry, Ellincë?”

Reaching for his own pack was a mistake. It took two hands to open. In the moment before Maglor remembered one of his was indisposed, his palm already seared anew. Sucking in a breath, he pulled the offending appendage to his chest and reached for Maedhros’s instead. That only required one hand. A little stash of emergency rations, nuts and dried fruit usually, was always kept tucked in an easy to reach pocket sewn into the lining near the opening. At need, his brother could reach it quickly, without even slowing if necessary. Maedhros was nothing if not efficient. Maglor had been surprised how many times that simple measure had saved a life. Flagging energy had been renewed without slowing the pace of a hasty retreat. Edain swaying dangerously where they stood revived enough to fight off an ambush. Maglor offered a handful to Elrond now.

“Here, take some.”

Elrond did not refuse. He was not hollow-cheeked, though his clothing fell looser than it aught. These were lean days. The ruined landscape did not provide as easily as it once had. Food had become scarce, especially where many gathered in a great host as Elrond kept company with. Maglor would find it easier to sustain himself when he recovered the will to forage and hunt once more. But pain and grief had effectively bound him to this cave, and he too was hungry. Maglor nibbled at a dried berry, trying to ignore the nausea that rose in his belly.

“May I see your hand?” Elrond asked.

Maglor held it out obediently, wincing as Elrond unwrapped the now filthy strips of cloth. The flesh beneath was livid. Blisters clustered on the heel of the hand and on the insides of his fingers, but in the centre of Maglor’s palm the skin had been almost entirely burned away. There, what remained blazed, swollen and weeping.

“This does not look good. How much does it hurt?”

“I’ve survived worse, as did many after Dagor Bragollach.”

“Mmm, because they actually cared for their wounds and did not let them fester, no doubt,” Elrond chided, “This, however, looks infected. It’s painful enough to steal your appetite, right? Let me see if I can ease the discomfort.”

With a gentle and steady hand, he put to use the small kit of medical supplies that he had brought. When he had finished deftly cleansing and redressing the wound with fresh linen and ample salve, Maglor was surprised to find how significantly the pained eased.

“When did you become so accomplished at this? It was not something you learned from me.”

“The healers among are host are more than happy to teach anyone with even a vague aptitude if they seem inclined to put the skills to good use. I have learned much.”

“Better a healer than a fighter. I am proud of you.”

“Oh no, I am both,” Elrond clarified.

“With the upbringing you had, how could you not be?”

Elrond laughed at that.

“Still, choose healing not wounding when you can. You’re rather good at it.”

Elrond remained with him the better part of a week. Though ostensibly to ensure Maglor’s hand was sufficiently on the mend before he departed, and Maglor able to adequately care for it as well as himself, Maglor thought the company good for them both. Elrond was quiet in his grief, but it told in the shadows Maglor saw in his eyes and the pauses that held time as he carefully excised certain subjects and emotions from his words. Elrond was altogether too quiet, and too grim. They cared for each other, in the ways that each were able. Maglor perceived the gentle but decisive shift in their relationship and wondered when it had come to pass. How strange it was to find the child he still habitually thought Elrond, now become a man, and discover they stood on almost equal footing. Little was spoken, though much passed between them, as they fell easily into rhythms that needed no words, and quiet understandings came readily.

 

Maglor watched Elrond one morning as they perched on a boulder, he, dangling a baited line into a tide pool to entice crabs, and Elrond with a net at the ready. The lines of his body soft and relaxed, warmth suffusing his face, Elrond was freer of care than Maglor had seen him in years. Joy again carved out small corners in his life that grief was unable to touch, and they grew. Slowly, but steadily they grew. Though in body he was stronger, Maglor’s own heart was fallow field, desolate earth, with no hope of joy to be found, except in tending the vulnerable but persistent seedlings that grew in others. The line went taught, the net flew down swiftly, and a large, black crab clicked at them, furious with its sudden loss of liberty. A triumphant smile playing over his lips, Elrond caught his eye with a look at last free of worry. Maglor knew then he would not stay much longer. With Gil-Galad preparing to remove to Lindon, time would march on far before Maglor would see him again.

Alone again, Maglor carefully emptied the travel packs, neatly laid out all the items within and surveyed the results, wondering what was to be salvaged of their previous life. Wrapped carefully in a blanket, securely nestled between spare clothing, Maglor found his flute and lyre harp. Among his most treasured possessions, they were survivors of half a century of rough living with hardly more than a few scratches. Among Maedhros’s ever practical collection of belongings, he found the switchblade, much older and just as well cared for. It probably said something pertinent about his eldest brother that he treated the thing with the same level of care Maglor lavished on his instruments, but he could not think what. For several minutes he stared at them, feeling the pull of both. He picked up the lyre. It took only a week after Elrond departed before he chose instead the blade.

Maglor balanced it on the tip of a finger, considering it through squinted eyes, thinking of all the things it had wrought. Like the knife, he teetered, tipping dangerously for want of a weight to anchor him, scrabbling for something that would balance despair, returning him to an even keel. The knife was an easy way out, a means to dampen the relentless surge of raw emotion enough to stop it from immobilising him. There were other ways, of course, but none quite so effective and immediate as opening oneself just a little for the small rush of calm that it could bring. Most days Maglor picked it up to make tools, to strip bark from a stick, or to gut a fish, but not always. The longer he was alone, the harder it became to look at the knife and not see the possibility of spilling his own blood.

Late one afternoon as the season was turning and the days becoming longer and warmer, Maglor had an unexpected visitor. Small rocks clinking, dislodged under foot despite careful tread alerted him. He tensed. Someone had crept very near. Holding the line he fished with securely, he turned just enough to catch a glimpse of the dark-haired elf that approached slowly, still some hundred metres behind. It was only Elrond. Maglor relaxed, and pulling in the line, rose to greet him.

“Alla, Elrond.”

He did not receive a reply. On second look something about the young elf’s face was not quite right. The smile was too open, the sparkle in his eyes less like the stars and more like the sun. Maglor blinked.

Not Elrond. Elros.

Running forward, he embraced him, arms flying about the young man’s shoulders.

“Anarinkë! I didn’t think you would come.”

Elros laughed, “you finally learned to tell us apart?”

“I could always tell you apart,” Maglor scoffed.

Elros’s laughter only grew, “most of the time, maybe. But not from behind, on a moonless night.”

Now that had been an interesting experience. Maglor breathed him in as he would the air in the forest, refreshing and full of life. Elros embraced him fiercely. He had never done anything by halves.

“I have missed you,” Maglor admitted.

“You could have sought me out.”

“Would I have been welcome?”

“With me? Always!”

“But?” Maglor prompted gently.

“But perhaps not amongst all that I keep company with. You do have a point. But if they tried to drive you away, I would fight them over it.”

“That is precisely what worries me.”

Elros drew back and fixed him with a look that managed to be both questioning and defiant.

Maglor laughed.

“You, my dear,” he looked Elros straight in the eye, “are like the sun. Men will bask in your warmth and find themselves inspired to fall in love with life, but when your temper runs hot, you burn them.”

Elros had the grace to look a little ashamed.

Maglor squeezed his shoulders, “Don’t burn the ones you want to keep looking up to you. How goes the ship building?”

Elros erupted with laughter. A wild sound that carried on for longer than it should, his shoulders trembling and shaking when he tried to contain it. Finally, Elros pulled away from a stunned Maglor to wipe away the tears that were leaking from his eyes.

“What amuses you?”

“How casually you can use the words burn and ship in the same breath.”

“That’s really not funny, Elros,” Maglor warned.

He took a step back, wary of how furious he could feel himself becoming.

“No, it’s not,” Elros agreed. To Maglor’s surprise his voice suddenly held no mirth at all. The tears running down his cheeks were just that, only tears. No laughter remained, and Elros looked broken before him. The heat that had been building in the pit of Maglor’s stomach turned to stone.

“This is not like you. What’s wrong?”

“Elrond,” he said simply, and the tears didn’t cease.

Maglor frowned and taking Elros by the shoulders, guided him away from the water. Sitting on the sun-warmed sand in Maglor’s arms the tears became sobs, tearing themselves free of a throat already grown raw.

This is not the first deluge in the onslaught, Maglor thought, surprised that he did not hear it in Elros’s voice before. He had grown inattentive from solitude and pain. This would not do. He let the force of Elros’s grief crash against him, like breakers throwing themselves upon the cliffs during May storms. All wind, and fury and violence, until they thrashed themselves out and the sea was becalmed once more.

“The choices you both made?” Maglor guessed.

Elros nodded. He was quiet now, but still shaky and restless against Maglor’s chest.

“And what do you imagine that means for you both?”

Elros builds up whole worlds in his mind, lives whole lives in the space between breaths. Maglor had stepped into them. His imagination was so vivid, and the emotions it awakened so real, that he did not always remember none of this had yet come to pass.

“That we must be parted. That we will not see each other again.”

“Why should that be so? You are building ships, are you not?”

Elros was suddenly still.

“I am an idiot,” he said.

“You are no such thing. It will still be painful, to be divided by the sea. The distance will feel great when it has been long since you last saw each other, but the reunions will be sweet.”

The approaches to Himring and Thargellion came unbidden to the forefront of Maglor’s mind. With them the memory of what that first breath felt like, the moment after he caught first sight of a long-missed brother. How sweet it felt for that breath to be squeezed out of his chest by their embrace. It was not a feeling he would experience again. A sudden pang caught him in the stomach like a knife. He flinched. Elros curled a little closer.

“Elrond is not the only one I will miss.”

Maglor said nothing, only held him a little closer.

The next time Elros spoke, it was a whisper. A little shred of quivering air, too small, really, to contain the worlds of emotion that hid within it.

“There will never be a reunion for me with Maedhros. Do not say we must also part forever when I sail. Please, Maglor…”

The knife twisted in his gut, and how it made him bleed! Maglor doubled over. He knew there was no steel there, but his hands went to his stomach anyway, as if that could make any difference, in a world that grew dark not because of blood rushing out, but air that would not come in.

“Shit!” he heard Elros curse next to him, the sound of the following string of coarse language quieter than it should have been. Maglor tried to pull in some air, but it stubbornly wouldn’t come. Not until the stinging sensation landed on his cheek, anyway, shocking the air into his lungs.

Had Elros just slapped him?

“You have to breathe!” Elros’s face, eyes wide and serious, was so close to his that their noses almost touched. Maglor blinked.

“You don’t do that to Elrond I hope,” he said, finding breathing in order to talk marginally easier than breathing only to breathe.

“Not often, only when nothing else works.”

“I don’t know if I should be angry or grateful.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

“Yes, but it shouldn’t have. Was that Taliska by the way? What colourful words you are learning.”

Maglor stood up, trying to distance himself from the emotion still bubbling within.

I’m meant to be the one offering comfort.

“You’re not as well as you’d like me to believe, are you?” Elros accused.

“I’ll be fine, Elros,” Maglor replied, but he couldn’t keep the weariness out of his voice.

“No, don’t say that,” Elros was shouting now, “Don’t say that when you can’t even bring yourself to leave this beach. Don’t say that when I still hear your bloody laments on the wind every evening. Maedhros burned and now he’s gone. He abandoned us, Maglor! You’re not supposed to be fine. You’re an idiot if you think you could be even close to fine!”

“I see.”

“So don’t lie to me! And come and visit me once in a while,” Elros’s voice cracked. He stalked off down the beach.

 

Maglor let him go. He knew Elros. He’d be back. It didn’t take very long, actually. Maglor sat by the entrance of his cave, knees up to his chest and arms tucked around them, watching him approach.

“You’re right, I’m not fine,” he said before Elros could open his mouth. That pulled him up short.

“Neither are you,” Maglor said pointedly.

Elros sat heavily beside him, crumpling against his side.

“I have something for you,” he said, holding out a small, roughly carved wooden whistle he’d found with Maedhros’s things.

“Why would I want that?”

“Look a little more closely, Elros,” Maglor said patiently, pushing it into the young man’s hand.

“It’s one of the ones Maedhros made for us. I never did work out how he managed it.”

Maglor laughed, “he didn’t. Or at least, not without help.”

He’d carried this, or one like it, for much of his childhood. A swift way to call for help if trouble found him in the wild. Elros ran his thumb over the little etching of a sun on its surface, “It’s even mine. Which of you carved this into it?”

“Maedhros did.”

“He did?”

“There was no small amount of cursing, I can tell you.”

Elros laughed, “thank you, but it’s hardly very helpful to me now.”

Maglor gave him a sad smile, “It’s still a promise. I don’t intend to desert you.”

Elros’s jaw was clenched, everything about him bunched and quivered with tension.

“You’re angry with him, aren’t you?” Maglor guessed.

“Yes, furious. But how can I be angry with a dead man?”

“Quite easily, I’m afraid. The trouble is exorcising the anger when they are no longer there to yell at or punch in the face.”

“Quite,” Elros agreed, pushing sand around angrily with his toes.

“I wish I had asked Fingolfin how he managed it after atar got himself killed. Imagine nursing your anger for years. Imagine crossing that Eru-forsaken hellscape, Elros, all the while finding your resentment growing, only to have no nose to break at the end.”

Elros stared at him, “You’re furious too.”

“Yes.”

“What was he thinking? It wasn’t even about the fucking oath. I could understand it if you’d both gone down swinging because of it. I know how much that fucking thing maddened you both. How far you’d go to appease it. I hated it. But you had the bloody jewels. So why? Why did he leave us, atya?”

“The jewels were pure torment. He did not think, only ran.”

Elros was silent for a moment, digesting this.

“If your atar were not already dead I would kill him myself. Why are all the people I want to scream at dead?” He demanded, face stormy.

“You can scream at me,” Maglor offered, “you can even hit me if you want.”

“Would it do any good?” Elros crumpled, the last of the fight going out of him.

“Not likely.”

They stared at the waves for a while, shoulders pressed together, a ballast to hold each other steady in a new world that was still shaking itself into place from the ruins of the old. There was little Maglor could say that would offer any real comfort, so he turned to the familiar mainstays of parenthood. He fed Elros, combed and washed his salt-tangled hair, bedded him down, then lay beside him to rest. By his side, Elros’s breathing was soon flat and even, his face peaceful in sleep, but Maglor lay awake long into the night. 

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