A Hundred Miles Through the Desert by StarSpray  

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Fourteen

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The summer wound on, lazy and warm. Maedhros spent most of his time with his brothers or with his grandmother, though he remained unsure how to really speak to her, but on one drizzly afternoon he slipped away to explore parts of the house that he had not yet seen. Aechen followed until Maedhros stopped to pick him up; once nestled in the crook of his right arm, Aechen purred happily. The light through the many windows was pale and grey, but lamps were scattered throughout the corridors and rooms, all in warm shades of yellow and gold. 

He came to a large room, with skylights as well as windows to let in as much natural light as possible while leaving plenty of space on the walls for paintings. There were dozens of them, in all sizes and of all kinds, and there were statues and sculptures scattered around the room as well. Maedhros spotted one of his mother’s works, a delicate stone sculpture that seemed to change its form as one passed it by. He remembered when she had first begun to experiment with such effects—it had been just before she’d left Tirion. It seemed that since then she’d fully mastered it, and he walked around the sculpture several times to see it from all angles. No matter how closely he looked, he could not quite tell how she had done it, how it was that from one side it looked like a horse rearing up, and from the other it was a dancer with her hands lifted above her head. 

Maybe when he returned home he would ask her to show him, even though he’d never be able to do it himself. 

Many of the paintings were by hands he did not recognize, and showed scenes and faces of Middle-earth rather than of Valinor. Maedhros paused before a painting of a courtyard where a traveling party had gathered. At first he had thought four of the members were children, but he realized quickly that was not so—they were halflings, and so the party must be the Fellowship. Gandalf was unmistakable, and having met them Maedhros could easily recognize Gimli and Legolas, though Gimli was much younger, with no hint of white in his hair. 

Maedhros had known that halflings were small, but it was strange to see. He looked into their faces, able to see at a glance which was Frodo Baggins by the way he held himself, by the protective hand that Gandalf had resting on his shoulder. Not only did he seem small, he seemed so young, though Maedhros knew that he wasn’t, not really—not by the measure of his own people. It was only the Ring that made him seem so. 

He walked slowly along the wall, looking at the other portraits and paintings, trying to guess who the people were, and probably failing. He stopped before one, a formal portrait of a family that could only be Arwen and Aragorn’s. Arwen looked so like Elrond—even more than her brothers—that it was startling. Maedhros knew the names of their children from stories Maglor had told, but with such a painting it was hard to see past the finery and the serious expressions to the people underneath. Aragorn looked grave, almost grim—so at odds with the picture Maedhros had had of him in his mind thanks to Maglor, of a laughing child with muddy feet and scraped up knees. His childhood had been a joyful one in the safety of Imladris; adulthood had taken him down dark roads, into deep shadows—and then out of it again, into a New Age. 

His feet brought him back around the large room to the painting of the Fellowship before their departure from Imladris. Maedhros looked not at the faces this time but at the backdrop, at the winter-brown trees and bushes, the pathways branching off of the courtyard into the gardens beyond. A statue of Nienna was visible just behind Aragorn’s shoulder. 

Footsteps behind him heralded Elrond’s arrival. “Arwen painted that,” he said.

“It’s beautiful,” said Maedhros, turning from the painting. He hadn’t given much thought yet to the painter, but now that he knew he could see the care with which every portion of the painting had been rendered, from the flagstones of the courtyard to the lines on Aragorn’s face. He glanced at few other paintings along the same wall, many of them done in watercolor, soft and dreamlike. “Those are her work too?”

“Yes. This painting she insisted I bring with me.” Elrond reached out to brush his fingertips lightly over the frame of the Fellowship’s scene. “The others came with Elladan and Elrohir. There were letters, too, and journals and sketchbooks.”

“She seems to have been very happy,” Maedhros said. 

“Yes, she was.”

“Was Elros?” It felt almost like a dangerous question to ask, almost as though he had no right to ask it. 

“Yes,” Elrond said, his answer quick and steady. “He had the same idea—letters and journals. A large chest full of them was awaiting me in Finrod’s keeping when I came west.” He looked at Maedhros then, a small and rueful smile on his face. “I still have not read through them all. But he was happy. They all were, in Númenor, in those early days. The sorrow and the shadow did not come until later. And it has been said and sung that the line of Lúthien will never end, which is also to say the line of Elros will never end. That brings me comfort—to know that his children will continue to live and laugh under the sun, even if I cannot see them again.”

“Your line, too,” Maedhros said quietly.

“Yes, I suppose so. Arwen’s line. She would have liked you, I think.” He looked up to see Maedhros blinking at him in shock, and laughed—quietly, softly. “Is that so surprising?”

“Yes,” Maedhros said.

“Would it surprise you to learn then that I like you?” Elrond asked him. “For yourself, not just because you are Maglor’s brother?”

“You know it would,” Maedhros said, “but now I feel as though I cannot admit to it without Maglor rolling his eyes at me later. Yes, just like that,” he said, as Elrond rolled his own eyes. He was still smiling, though. “Can I ask you something, Elrond?”

“Of course.”

“Fingon told me once that my father spoke to you about me.”

“He did. You wonder what I told him?”

“I had not made myself particularly likable then,” Maedhros said, aiming for wry but landing on regretful instead. 

“I told him that—that I couldn’t speak of you as one who loved you or who knew you very well. I told him he would be better off asking questions of Finrod or of Fingon, but he wanted to know of you after Sirion, and did not think they could give him those answers. I think they refused to tell him very much, anyway.”

Maedhros felt his stomach start to tie itself in knots as he imagined what Fëanor would have said in response to whatever Elrond told him of those years. It shouldn’t, he knew. He knew what his father’s disapproval looked like, what it felt like. He had it already—there was no point in dreading the piling on of more. “I’m sure he was not pleased with what you told him.”

“He was grieved,” Elrond said. “But I told him that I did believe you cared for us, in your own way. I told him of learning to wield a sword with both hands, and how it saved my life later.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not really. There was nothing else to tell him.” Elrond peered up at him, his soft grey eyes seeing, Maedhros thought, as much as Galadriel’s did. “He is not as he was, you know,” he said. “He only wanted—still wants—to understand.”

“I don’t think he can,” Maedhros said. 

“Maybe, maybe not. But does it not speak well of him that he is trying?”

“It does,” Maedhros said. “I know it does. I don’t hate my father, and I suppose no one ever really outgrows the desire for their parents to think well of them, but…” He already knew that Fëanor did not think well of him. Maedhros had done precious little to make anyone think well of him between the Nirnaeth Arnoediad and going to Lórien with Maglor. His own words to Fëanor on their first meeting surely ruined any chance they might have for reconciliation in the future. Whatever Fëanor said or wrote, Maedhros could not believe that he would be so forgiving. “At the end of his life he only wanted two things, and by the end of mine I had thrown them both away.”

“What he wanted at the end of his life is not what he wants now,” Elrond said. Then he asked, “Does your hand pain you?”

“What?” Maedhros glanced down at it, and saw that the scars were pinker than usual. When he closed his fingers his palm felt tender. “It’s fine.”

The look Elrond gave him was deeply skeptical. “Fine would be no pain at all,” he said. “Come.” He took Maedhros by the arm, avoiding touching his hand, and gently but firmly pulled him out of the gallery and to a room only slightly smaller, with lower ceilings but an equal amount of windows. It smelled of herbs, both dried and fresh, and Elrond sat Maedhros down by one of the worktables before going to put a kettle over a nearby brazier. Maedhros leaned down to release Aechen to sniff around as he would, though as usual he did not wander far. 

“They aren’t real scars,” Maedhros said when Elrond returned to take his hand, turning the palm toward the light so he could see it better. “They’re just—they’re just memory. I think even you cannot rid me of that, Elrond.” He meant it to be teasing, and thought he succeeded. At least Elrond smiled. 

“I know something of wounds to the spirit, too,” Elrond said. 

“I don’t think you can heal this one.”

“Will you let me at least try to help?” Elrond met his gaze, and Maedhros was reminded suddenly of a cold and rainy day long ago in Beleriand, after they had all only narrowly escaped a marauding party of orcs. Maedhros had been wounded, and Elrond, no longer a child but not yet full-grown, had insisted on cleaning and stitching it. Even then he had been as skilled a healer as was possible, lacking only proper teaching. Maedhros had let him, keeping his face turned away, knowing he was still someone Elrond feared, and not knowing any other way to ease those fears even a little. Elrond now was so much older, still as skilled a healer as was possible, with all the advantages of proper teaching and long years of study and application—and he neither feared nor hated Maedhros anymore. For a moment it was as though Maedhros was in both places and times at once, and the feeling was strange and dizzying. 

“Maedhros?”

Maedhros blinked, and the past faded back away. “Of course,” he said, when he could remember the question Elrond had asked. 

Elrond’s fingers brushed over the scars, and he frowned thoughtfully as he looked at them. “May I see your other arm?” he asked, and Maedhros held it up. Elrond examined his wrist, which was devoid of scar tissue. “I thought it very strange when I heard you had returned one-handed,” he said. 

“Estë said it just would not form,” Maedhros said.

“You do not sound troubled by it.”

“I ceased to be troubled by it long before I died. I’m glad I came back without it.” Maedhros looked up from his wrist to Elrond’s face and saw the surprise there. “It is irrefutable proof that it all happened. That I am not who I was before, whatever my face looks like.” That had been hard, in its own way—seeing the looks on all the faces of his loved ones after he had returned, all except Fingon, who had understood without ever having to ask. 

“It does not hurt?” Elrond asked now. “No phantom pains?”

“No, not at all.”

“Good.” Elrond released his wrist and looked at his hand again. “I’ve never seen scars like these,” he said. “The memory of them. I do not like what it says about such a wound as this—that such a punishment would follow you even through Mandos.”

“I don’t think it did,” Maedhros said quietly. “If they still wished to punish me, would they not have just kept me in Mandos?”

“One might argue that releasing you was punishment,” Elrond said. 

“I thought so, once. I don’t anymore.”

“No, neither do I. I think they were right in the releasing, if not quite in the timing. And if it was meant to be a continuing punishment, Maglor’s hand would not have healed at all. So the scars themselves are like to your missing hand, evidence of a thing that marked you and changed you; the pain, at least now, is linked to your father, not to the hallowing of the Silmarils.”

“Is that so surprising?”

“Maybe not.” Elrond released his hand and went to fetch the boiling water. He took a few leaves from a potted athelas plant growing by one of the windows. He poured the water into a basin that he set on the table beside Maedhros, and after bruising and blowing on the leaves, he dropped them in. The scent they gave off was clear and clean, like the wind off of the hills that swept around the battlements of Himring. For a few minutes they sat in silence, watching Aechen sniff along the far wall. Maedhros breathed deeply, feeling the refreshing effects of the athelas even as he felt the faint pang of homesickness that thoughts of Himring brought with them. Finally, Elrond said, “Avoiding your father will not heal this wound, you know.”

Neither would speaking to him. “It does not trouble me enough for there to be any urgency,” Maedhros said. “Even before I went to Lórien, it hurt sometimes after dark dreams, but—”

“And how often did that happen?”

“Often enough, I suppose. But they do not happen anymore, and speaking of him doesn’t make it hurt—even now it’s only a little tender, not painful, and this is the first time that’s happened. Only seeing him made it burn.” Maedhros looked down at his hand, flexing his fingers a little. It did not hurt at all now, and the scars were fading away, no longer pink. “What would you advise?”

“I don’t know,” Elrond said, and he sounded troubled by it. “There is much of Fëanor I do not understand; he keeps a great deal of himself hidden. It is clear to me that he loves you, all of you, but I do not think he knows anymore how best to show it. I do not know how one can come back from such a rift—but the rift between you and Maglor seemed equally wide, and here you are.”

“That was different,” Maedhros said without looking up. “That was…we never stopped loving one another, Maglor and I. Everything else was broken, but we still had that.”

“You don’t believe your father loves you?” Elrond asked softly. 

Maedhros thought of a letter locked away in his desk drawer at home, of its last line just three words repeating. I love you, I love you, I love you. “I don’t believe he loved anything at all when he died,” he said, “and I had ceased to trust anything he said well before that.” Maglor had not trusted Maedhros, either, when they had met again. It had taken a long time and many tears and many harsh and often bitter words for that trust to really start to be rebuilt—fighting and parting and coming back together over the years in Lórien, in between trying to find peace within themselves. They’d done it because it was the most important thing in the world for both of them—they both needed it like their lungs needed air. 

Maedhros did not feel that same need for his father, and he wondered sometimes what that said about him. Aloud he said, “The two things my father wanted then were the crown and his Silmarils. I gave the one away and I destroyed the other alongside myself, and I regret neither. Maybe when he tells me that he loves me he believes it now, but I don’t believe he has forgotten either one of those things.” He sighed. “You know him better than I do now, though, I think.”

“I suppose I do, but your brother knows him best.”

“Curvo would never try to tell any of us what to do regarding our father.”

“I think you need to speak to him,” Elrond said after a few moments of thought, “really speak to him—both of you need to hear what the other has to say. That is true for all of you, whatever the outcome may be. You and Maglor have spoken to him already of course, and I think both of you needed to say whatever it was you said, to get it out and let him begin to understand what his actions have wrought. But there is more work to be done before any of you can truly move forward. It is the same work Curufin is doing already.”

“I know you’re right,” Maedhros said. “I just…don’t know if I can.”

“And I know that it is far easier for me to give such advice than it is for you to take it.” Elrond reached out to take Maedhros’ hand again, this time grasping it firmly. “Know this, Maedhros: whatever happens, you and your brothers have my support. Imloth Ningloron was not made to be the same kind of refuge that Imladris was, but if ever you have need of it, we are here.”

After he retrieved Aechen and left Elrond, Maedhros retreated to his room. His brothers would be wondering where he was, but he needed a little time alone where no one would scold him for brooding. He set Aechen down and sat on the rug to watch him wander around. Maedhros set his hand on his lap and looked down at it, and thought of the Silmarils—of the first time he had seen them, when his father had pulled him into his darkened workshop and opened the chest into which he had placed them. It had been a finely-wrought chest, then, not the clumsy and quick box cobbled together after the War of Wrath. They had lain on fine velvet, and when Fëanor had opened the chest Maedhros had been dazzled and astonished. He remembered how happy his father had been at his reaction, how he had picked one of them up to place it in Maedhros’ hands. It had been warm to the touch but not hot—not yet hallowed, his own hands not yet stained—and as he had turned it in his fingers it had flared and sparkled, as though the stone itself was happy to be seen and admired. Now he wondered if that Silmaril, the one he had been the first after his father to hold, the first after his father to see, was the one he’d taken with him into the fire so many years later. 

A few tears splashed onto his palm, and Maedhros closed his eyes, drawing his legs up to rest his face in his arms. After a little while he heard a soft knock, and then the door open, but he didn’t lift his head. “I’m not brooding,” he said into his arms. 

“Could’ve fooled me,” said Caranthir as he sat down beside him. “Did something happen?”

“No.” Maedhros turned his head, catching a glimpse of Caranthir’s frown through the curtain of his hair. “Just—thinking of Atar. Curvo’s going to be going back home soon.” He and Rundamírë both had work to return to, and the girls missed their brother. 

“I know. Lisgalen and I are going with them. What are you thinking of Atar for?”

“I’m trying to convince myself that speaking to him will help. Elrond thinks it will.”

“He’s probably right. He is about most things.”

“Yes, I know. I just—”

“I know. Curvo told me of the plan to give him a palantír. Maybe wait until after he’s had a chance to look into it.”

Maedhros stood by what he had said, that he wanted his father to understand, and it didn’t really matter to him what Fëanor saw. But it would hurt him to see, especially if he really was as everyone said—if he really had learned how to care again. The time for such pain and heartache should be past, no matter who felt it. “Do you think it will help? The palantír?”

Caranthir shrugged. “It’s the closest he can ever come to being there.”

“You don’t think it will just…hurt?”

“Of course it will hurt—it should hurt, if he really cares. It hurt all of us to watch him die, didn’t it?” Caranthir moved to sit behind Maedhros, tugging gently on his hair until he sat up straight so Caranthir could finger comb the tangles out and braid it properly. “Are you going to live here now, or do you plan to return to Ammë’s house?”

“I suppose I’ll be going back and forth, but when I think of home I think of Ammë’s house. Where does Tyelko stay these days?”

“Ammë’s house. It’s been nice, especially when she’s away. The house is bigger now and it feels emptier when I’m there alone. Huan sheds all over the place, though. I forgot how annoying that was.”

“Are all the rooms changed around?” Caranthir had spoken a little of the changes made to Nerdanel’s house—additions added for extra bedrooms, extending the gardens to make up for what was built over—but not in much detail.

“Not all. Yours and mine haven't been touched, and the workshops are still the same, except Ammë decided to get rid of the forge. She never uses it, and I always go over to Grandfather’s anyway. I’m going to plant some kind of fruit trees where it was, but I haven’t decided what kind yet.”

“I think I’ll be glad to be home,” Maedhros murmured. Imloth Ningloron was lovely, and he could see himself thinking of it as a kind of second home, given time, but his mother’s house had been a refuge and a place of comfort since his coming from Mandos, and he looked forward to returning to the simpler, quieter rhythms of it. He missed the river and the willow trees, and his own small bedroom. 

Caranthir tied off the braid and moved back around to sit facing Maedhros. “Whatever happens in the future, I don’t think I can forget how Atar’s first coming back hurt you,” he said quietly. “I don’t think I can forgive him that.”

“Even though that’s what made us all leave?” Maedhros asked. That had set it all into motion—trying to fix what lay between all of them, finding Maglor, and eventually Maedhros and Maglor’s own journey to Lórien. None of that would have happened if Fëanor hadn’t come back.

“I would like to think we would’ve figured something out eventually,” Caranthir sighed. “We all still stand by what we said then, though. Even Curvo. Our loyalty is to you first. Not him.”

“And I stand by what I said: I’m not your lord, Moryo. I’m just your brother.”

“That’s more important. For myself—I don’t really care if I never speak to our father again, but I know it’s not the same for me as for you or Cáno or even Tyelko.”

“What do you mean?” Maedhros knew it was different for Ambarussa, who had been born on the cusp of the discord, who had grown up wild and carefree but also somewhat neglected, but Caranthir was older. As far as Maedhros had known, his childhood and youth were were not so different from Maedhros’ own. 

“I realized a long time ago I was never going to be the sort of son Atar wanted,” Caranthir said, not looking at Maedhros but instead at Aechen as he nosed around the foot of the bed. Realizing he was being watched, Aechen scampered over to sniff at Caranthir’s fingers. “Even before it all went wrong he wanted us to follow in his footsteps, to be—we couldn’t ever be as great as he was but he still wanted us to try.”

Maedhros remembered that pressure. Until it had all started to go wrong he hadn’t felt it as such a burden, though. He was his father’s eldest son and heir and so of course much was expected of him. Back then he had felt equal to the challenge, even if he’d never managed to find anything that caught his attention and his passion the way that the forge called to Curufin or music to Maglor. He could still uphold the duties of his station, to play the role of Nelyafinwë, Prince of the Noldor. But Caranthir… “I never thought you cared,” he said quietly. 

“I tried not to. I think I am finally succeeding.” Caranthir stroked his fingers lightly over Aachen’s spines. “I’m neither talented nor ambitious enough to be a son Fëanor really wants to claim as his own, whatever he says now. I’m not kind enough to want to give him a chance, either.”

“You’re worse than Cáno when it comes to passing judgment on yourself, if you think you aren’t kind,” Maedhros said. Caranthir’s lips quirked in a mirthless half-smile. “Moryo, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—”

“Of course you didn’t know, Nelyo. I didn’t want you to. It wasn’t…I wasn’t unhappy. I never really doubted that Atar loved me, at least then, but I did know that what I wanted—or really, what I didn’t want—would have been a disappointment to him. I suppose even then I could tell that his love had limits, even if I didn’t understand what that meant and I didn’t have the words for it.”

“That was true by the end,” Maedhros said quietly, “but I don’t think it was always so.” And therein lay the hurt, knowing that Fëanor had once loved them all, fiercely and warmly and unconditionally—until he hadn’t.

“Maybe. I was never brave enough to test it, like Tyelko did when he left to follow Oromë. I am now—or at least I want to think I am.”

“You are,” Maedhros said. “And you have all the rest of us at your back.” 

“I know. So do you.”

“I know.”

“Doesn't make it easier, does it?”

Maedhros shook his head. “Not really.”