to all things housed in silence by queerofthedagger  

What is more dangerous—a moving body 
or the land it catapults into? When I left home, I let

the space behind me close rapidly,  
not a wound,

but a winking eye shut—a round lump, 
a clean seam. 
—Aishvarya Arora

*

Valinor

One of Celegorm’s first memories is getting lost in the woods.

In hindsight, it is far less perilous than it sounds. There was nothing in Aman, in those blissful days, intent on harming an Elf. Not in those almost-domesticated woods close to Tirion.

Celegorm does not remember how he ended up alone there in the first place. He remembers the trees, how they seemed gigantic, larger than life. He remembers being unafraid.

Remembers, above all else, the silence. Even with only two elder brothers then, their house was rarely quiet, rarely knew a moment of peace. He remembers listening to the wind in the trees, the creaking of wood. The rustle and calls of the beasts.

He remembers realising, with wonder in his bones, that it was not silent at all. It was just finally a music that he could feel the notes of, much like Makalaurë always claimed to be capable of.

Celegorm does not remember how he made it home that first day, but from that day onward, he returns as often as he can.

It is no hardship, no difficult feat. His brothers and parents are caught up in their own projects often enough, and Celegorm learns to slip away unnoticed. To wander the forest, deeper and deeper into its dark green, without anyone the wiser. To return with the mingling, and laugh along when Maitimo pulls twigs from his hair, asking if he got lost in the gardens again.

Something like that, he would say, flashing his teeth, and Makalaurë would roll his eyes, and his mother would smile, and Maitimo would make sure that corners of the garden are left to grow wild even as it makes their neighbours sigh.

Celegorm appreciates it, loves it all. And still, ever the forest calls to him.

He is not sure when he meets Oromë for the first time. There are, in hindsight, animals crossing his path a little too often, beasts trailing in his wake with a little too much interest, to keep believing it a coincidence.

The first time he knows, though—

The first time Celegorm meets his God, he gets lost in the forest for the first time in his life.

There is a pup, fur white and gleaming, its hind leg stained red. Celegorm is no longer a child, no longer sneaks away while pretending to wander the gardens. Can come and go as he pleases now, for the most part, even as his father still watches him more closely than all the others. More, at times, than even Carnistir, ridiculously small and always screaming until his entire face turns red.

Celegorm has learnt, by then, that Fëanáro’s overbearing attention is not because he is the youngest, the hypothesis solidly disproven. It is not even because his father loves him best of all, and with Celegorm’s lack of interest in forge work or the theoretical framework behind linguistic practice, perhaps that should have come as little surprise.

The likeness of Míriel, they whisper; not a daughter, but still, closer than the others.

As if he could only ever be someone to look through, or to be coloured with ancient grief not of his making.

Carnistir’s raven-black hair felt like a personal offence that day, and so Celegorm wandered, had found the forest, had let it pull him in, deeper and deeper, his mind not keeping track of where his feet were treading.

And then there is the pup. It is entirely silent, just watching Celegorm from where it stands between the trees, keeping its weight off the injured leg.

Celegorm wants to help. Thinks that maybe—maybe if he can fix this, fix something, can save a life instead of abandoning it to its own fate—

The moment he gets closer, the pup retreats. It does not flee, though—keeps a steady distance between them, clever black eyes fixed on Celegorm even as it limps deeper into the forest.

“I just want to help,” Celegorm murmurs, following. It does not matter that he has no idea how to do such a thing, that there is nothing but the forest, endless wilderness of plants he does not know the use of because everyone in his family cares more for Aulë’s creations than for Yavanna’s.

Until today, Celegorm has only ever found it baffling. Now, helplessly wandering in the hurt beast’s wake, he feels for the first time something almost like resentment.

It startles him enough that he would have lost sight of his target, if not for the bright-white fur gleaming through the underbrush.

It is the moment Celegorm realises that he is lost. He hesitates, the span of a breath, before he keeps following. The look on the pup’s face almost seems to judge him for it, even as it keeps limping ahead.

What a strange procession they must make.

They reach a silvery clearing just as Laurelin’s light fades for good. Celegorm has not marked the passing of time; it slams back into him, unexpected, with the sight of the figure that stands on the other side of the clearing, edges melting into shadow, vines and roots tangling in its hair.

It is not the first time that Celegorm meets an Ainu. It is the first that he falls to his knees, as if some age-old instinct is pushing him down.

He bows his head. The weight of a gaze has never been this physical.

“Tyelkormo,” Oromë says, his voice a rumble through the trees. “You have been wandering my woods for a long time.”

“I was told they were Yavanna’s woods,” Celegorm says, before he can stay his tongue. Never has it been his talent to think before he speaks, much to his family’s eternal despair.

He might have finally understood their plight if the God across from him had not shaken the forest with his laughter.

It sounds like a revelation. Celegorm pushes back to his feet, feels something taking root deep in his chest.

Oromë, in his mirth, no longer appears as fey. The burnished gold of his hair is still a riot haloing him, the forest still bows its tree-crowned head to him, and his dark skin gleams in the light, but—

But. A spark of kinship, of recognition. Celegorm meets the golden eyes and, for the first time in his life, feels like someone is seeing him, and him alone.

It is years before Celegorm gets to ride in the hunt. Years of growing distance from his family, of nursing Huan back to health, of naming him, a gift and a claim. Of riding ever deeper into the woods alongside him, changing lands and savage beauty filling him, finally, to the brim.

It is years, and Celegorm always, unfailingly, gravitates back home—to his mother’s laughter and his father’s rare smiles. To Maitimo’s care, and Makalaurë’s songs, to Carnistir’s silence, and the brothers that come after. To Curufinwë, and how he takes a hold of Celegorm one day and simply refuses to let go—out of all the people in the house, and, for the first time, someone other than a God picks him without a second thought.

It leaves him split in two more often than not. The forest, the hunt, the heady rush of being something other. His family—parents, brothers, Finwë, his cousins. Írissë joins him, and it is like coming up for air, for the first time in years; finally, someone to understand.

And yet. And yet.

The first time Celegorm dares to touch Oromë in anything other than supplication, he is drunk on the rush of his first kill. There is blood on his hands, his face, on his skin; he still does not know if he wants to flinch from, or bathe in it.

It tastes heady on his tongue. The fires in the clearing burn bright. His skin feels too tight to contain all of him.

He drops to his knees before Oromë, and there is nothing innocent in the gesture. He meets the gold-burnt eyes, all his devotion smeared crimson across his face to see.

He has never been more unashamed.

“Please,” he says, and it sounds like a dare, like an oath. Like something he can never take back.

Oromë frames his face, touches his mouth. It burns like reinvention.

Exile

In many ways, Formenos does not feel real.

Celegorm goes because he must, because he loves his family. Because he does not think that his father is wrong, no matter the lectures that Írissë treats him to.

But even the north has its forests, and by then, it is easy, always, to find the hunt. Huan is a steady companion by his side. Oromë may frown in disapproval, and yet, he never forbids Celegorm his liberties.

It is not easy, but it is alright; a short snatch in an endless unspooling of time, and what does it matter, then, if increasingly often Celegorm finds himself watched by Oromë with dark eyes. If increasingly often, his father’s fury is directed his way, accusations of fraternising, of vitriol where once Fëanáro had ever dared to raise his voice least of all against Celegorm, against the likeness he embodies.

“A God,” Curufinwë scoffs, one night, when Celegorm returns from the Hunt. “If ever it comes down to it, who do you think he will choose? His brethren, or you? And can you blame him, then? When it comes down to it—oh, when it finally comes down to it—after all, you will make the same choice, will you not?”

Will he not? Celegorm wonders, as he cleans his knives.

The forest has been his home for as long as he can remember; Oromë’s pillow the bed he slept in most easily for years.

But then—but then.

His father’s unflinching love, even when the mere sight of Celegorm cut him to the bone; the endless trips across Aman, the determination to learn about plants and beasts to teach Celegorm, once it became obvious that it was the thing he cared for most.

His mother’s patience, her humour, her steady, calloused hand on the back of his neck, even when he brought home beasts and bugs and divine creatures in the form of dogs. Maitimo keeping the gardens wild, and his door ajar, always. Makalaurë singing his strays to sleep, so that he may set their bones and stitch up their wounds with little suffering. Carnistir, always ready to leap to his defence. Curufinwë—Curufinwë. As wild and careless as Celegorm, racing across open plains, always, always a dare on his tongue.

The twins, late-comers, eager pupils to all Celegorm, by then, had to teach.

His grandfather, always so full of stories of a wide, wild world beyond. Celegorm could never bear to lose them.

And yet.

He realises, when Aman goes dark, that he does not know fear, not truly.

He sees it in the white of his brothers’ eyes, in the tension running like a thread through all of his cousins. Notes it taking root in his chest when they cannot find their father, and watches as it tangles itself up in the one thought that keeps ricocheting through his mind—Finwë, dead. Dead, dead, dead and gone.

Celegorm does not yet know loss. He searches for Oromë’s eyes in the crowd, searches for a response, for action, and finds none.

He turns to Maitimo and finds grim determination on his face. Then, in the darkness of Tirion with Huan steady by his side, it is the only thing that matters.

Celegorm knows the weight of an oath, its meaning. Knows that it is no light thing to utter, especially not while dragging the name of a God across your tongue.

Knows, too, how easily such an oath can be broken. It has been countless years of his place in the Hunt, of Oromë’s heavy hands on him.

It has been the decision of a split second, his father and brothers shining brilliantly in the light of torches, to leap to their sides. To doom himself, then, because the only people in Finwë’s stories of old who have made two promises have always been the ones to come to ruin, some sooner, some later.

Celegorm may be many things; he is not delusional enough to think himself exempt from them.

And so, he follows.

The darkness is a bristling, breathing thing. His father and brothers, for once, seem as wild as Celegorm feels. There is a fight, and Celegorm meets it, crimson across white-washed wooden planks.

He knows the weight of a life, what it means to take it. This is no different (it isn’t, it isn’t, it isn’t).

It is not until Mandos’ Doom echoes across the land that he realises that, still, he had been waiting—for Oromë to appear, to intervene. To stop him.

Oromë does not, and his glaring absence is all the louder for it.

Celegorm did not think himself so easily abandoned. He refuses to look at the irony of that.

It drives him forward, a building sense of prideful resentment. Aman had always been too narrow, his lover always temporary, his faith never been anything other than—

He takes a torch to the boats right alongside Fëanáro and Curufinwë. His oldest brother stands aside, his grave face twisted in grief that Celegorm loudly judges him for, and silently cannot endure.

His youngest brother’s screams cut through the night, and there, on the shores of the land they are now bound to call home, Celegorm learns of regret.

Or perhaps he would have, if he had not turned away, shutting his heart against it as he had been taught to do so long ago.

Early Beleriand

He plunges himself into battle, into rallying their people, into racing across Hithlum’s rocky hills.

He kills Orcs by the dozens, black blood smearing his sword, his clothes, Huan’s fur. Does not think of Írissë, at the edge of the heaving Ice. Does not think of Oromë, unmoving, inert, leaving him and all his kin to their fate.

He does not think, merely wins battle after battle, his blood singing with the thrill of it.

At the end of it, his father still dies in flames. At the end of it, his oldest brother is still captured.

At the end of it, Curufin still looks at him with barely contained accusation, and Maglor with barely concealed resentment as he repeats, demands, orders Celegorm to yield, his voice twisted into inescapable law.

The twins no longer look at him at all. It is this that makes him bow his head in deference, accept the weight of the guilt for his failures—to his father, his brothers. None other still matters.

He loves his brothers, he does. He wonders how much longer it will be enough, the dark reality of this new land, of their self-wrought doom, seeping into all the cracks already.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

It is only Caranthir, stern face and harsher words, that stops Celegorm from confronting Maglor about his cowardice, that stops him from yelling, I told you, I told you we could have done it. Instead, you have left him to rot, you who claim to love him best. Instead, we are now indebted to Findekáno, for daring what you did not.

It is only Caranthir who stops him, but Maglor knows. A small mercy, and one that means little throughout their eldest brother’s arduous recovery. Means little as he speaks more intimately with Amrod about their shared disfigurement, Maedhros the only one who had no part in it. As he speaks once again most with Findekáno, his low voice rough and threadbare in a way he no longer allows the rest of them to hear.

Give it time, Caranthir tells them. As if giving it time had not meant their brother’s torture for endless turns of the moon, had not meant sitting idle and useless.

Still, Celegorm does. Grits his teeth, avoids meeting Maglor’s eyes, avoids letting his gaze linger on the mangled, broken form of Maedhros. Tries to take heart, instead, from the sharpened edge that Maedhros’ words now carry, the cold-white hardness of his eyes. They may yet arise anew, they may yet rally themselves, claim their rightful places, may yet—

Oh, how Celegorm resents the hope. They have doomed themselves the moment they raised their swords in Alqualondë. It was no Oath that drove them, no divine fate. There is only one way this will end, and it is only a question of how they will reach it.

He believes that, he does. He still feels it like a blow when Maedhros announces his abdication to Fingolfin.

“My brothers and I will remove east in the wake of it,” Maedhros adds, and he stands tall and terrible, an immovable mountain. He meets Celegorm’s eyes, and Celegorm knows there is no longer any use in trying to appeal to him for anything.

He refuses to show deference. He follows regardless, Aredhel’s dark eyes burning like a living thing into the soft skin of his neck.

She has not spoken to him once since she arrived on these shores. Has only made it clear, through impenetrable distance, that if it had been Celegorm up on that mountain, she, unlike her mad brother, would not have come after him.

Celegorm tells himself that it matters not. When they leave, he refuses to look back.

The Long Peace

In truth, Himlad is a relief, is, during those first few decades, almost enough to banish the lingering doubts into the shadows.

They build their strongholds. They rally their people. They besiege Morgoth, they hunt through endless woods, they come and go as they please and only rarely are they reminded of all that came before.

Only rarely does Celegorm think of Oromë riding through these same woods in ages past, of what it would have taken, perhaps, to bring him back alongside Celegorm. If he tells himself that it is rarely, he may believe it eventually.

He does not pray, and no one answers. Not any longer.

Celegorm grows ever-closer to Curufin, the spaces left open between them in Aman now closing. He spends as many a night worrying about the empty, faraway look his brother gets too often, whenever he thinks of their father, the burn marks on his arms a perpetual reminder, as he delights in having someone as unapologetically determined and vicious as himself beside him.

They gather at Himring, even the twins making their way up north, every once in a while.

It is not that any of them greatly enjoy those days, those long dinners, those strange attempts to reenact what once was dear and now is ever fraught with tension. It is just that at the end of the day, they have always stuck together, no matter their differences.

There is no land, no foe, no crime against each other that could ever change that.

Of course, it cannot last. Deep down, Celegorm had always known that, and for all their disagreements in recent times, in this, he and Maedhros are perhaps the most alike.

He returns from weeks of hunting with Amrod and Amras, the relationship between them strained and strange since the boats, no matter how hard he tries (and he tries, and tries, and tries; and yet Amrod will never look at him the same again. Celegorm knows this; he does).

He returns and hears of Aredhel’s visit, the time she had spent in their Keep, waiting, riding out, growing impatient.

It is so like her that it burns. In the notes of her absence, he can hear the shadows of their Doom creeping in again, like rotten roots and poisoned flesh, the stench of death ever trailing in his wake.

He hears of her death long after the fact, from Maedhros, who had been told by Fingon.

Celegorm thought that he knew rage, knew what it meant to grit his teeth, raise his chin in the face of contempt. What it meant to lose something dear, and how to survive it.

He stands on Himring’s battlements, the wind howling around him, and fixes his eyes on Doriath’s forest in the distance. He thinks, with the savage certainty that comes right before a kill, that he could burn it and all that ever came from it, without losing a single night of sleep over it.

The Dagor Bragollach

The land burns.

Celegorm would laugh at the inevitability of it, but he is too caught up in fighting, in making Morgoth bleed for every inch that he gains.

And bleed he does. In the end, it makes no difference.

The pass falls. Himlad is overrun. In the distance, they can see the Gap go up in flames.

Celegorm has never before felt this helpless, this cornered—has never felt so much like prey. All they have built and fought for, crumbling to ashes in moments, and no amount of rage, of determination, of endurance, can change the way everything goes up in flames around them.

Never again, he vows, and knows it to be an empty promise. It only fuels the rage burning like poison within him.

“Shall we try for Himring?” Celebrimbor asks, his face cast sharp in the dancing shadows.

Celegorm does not know when his nephew has grown up so much. He thinks of Maglor, then, inexplicably, of the sharp-thorned distance that has grown between them ever since they left Aman.

He shakes his head. “No use. We will lose more trying to make it through than it is worth.”

The north burns. Doriath will never let them pass. He has no hope for any of Angrod and Aegnor’s people and ignores the sting that comes with it.

It has been a long time since they were family in anything but name. Except—

“We ride South. We ride for Nargothrond.”

The fact that his brother does not protest, merely passes the word along, speaks to the dread of their situation.

Celegorm wonders if they will ever get to stop running again.

He knows the answer, of course. He ignores that, too.

Nargothrond welcomes them with open arms, and Celegorm wants to scoff at the naiveté. He knows better than to underestimate their cousin though, and so he does not.

And for a while, all is stable. He watches as Curufin’s eyes follow dear, golden Ingoldo through the dim halls. Watches as Finrod looks back, his eyes sharp and contemplative. Watches as their people settle into Nargothrond, as they grow content once more. As Celebrimbor spends time in the forges, and Curufin his nights in Finrod’s bed.

Celegorm swallows his cruelty about it, a part of him still too relieved at the absence of hollowness in his brother’s face.

Occasionally, his tongue will slip, though, will make him bare his teeth at Curufin, will mock and jeer, and ignore the bold-faced lies of it all following some kind of genius plan.

“You like that golden cock in your mouth, admit it; if only father could see you so,” he says one night, drunk on heavy wine and the festering, bitter cavity within his chest.

Even as he says it, he knows it to be cruel. It is the only reason he does not block Curufin’s punch; merely wipes the blood off his mouth and keeps grinning. “You can deny it all you want, Curufinwë, but you are just as wretched as I am. As we all are, in this godforsaken land.”

He does not wait for the pity to wash across Curufin’s face, mocking and unbearable. Tomorrow, all will be forgotten; between them, it always is.

Still, always, the rage simmers just beneath the surface. Celegorm has long since given up on any desire to tame it into something less ruinous.

When Finrod announces his Quest with the Man at his side, Celegorm does laugh.

Eru must possess some humour, clearly, for this to come upon them.

“It is the Oath,” Curufin insists, his jaw clenched tight. “We have no choice.”

Celegorm has not yet grown cruel enough to tell him otherwise. He knows, though. He does, and so does Finrod; in the end, it is only ever their choices that have brought them here.

In the end, there is little left for them but to keep moving. His brother does not need to hear this, though. Not yet.

And so Celegorm speaks in front of the court, pulls forth fear and uncertainty, plants the same seeds of rebellion that his father had sown, so long ago.

He may have never had the same inclination to linguistic theory and lettering that his father did, but oh, Celegorm knows how to speak the language of any beast. Their fallen kin is no different; the effect marvellous.

Finrod leaves Nargothrond with a mere ten companions. As Curufin watches with dark eyes, as Celebrimbor lingers in the background, unwilling to be close to them, Celegorm feels nothing at all.

The rage, at least, returns not long after. Flares bright and devastating once they find Lúthien, her fair skin and black hair moving through the forest, calling to his mind someone else entirely.

“It is revenge,” he tells Curufin, when his brother watches him with a crease between his brows. “It is power. What do you think we will be able to accomplish with Doriath’s allegiance?”

It is the Oath, he does not say. Knows that Curufin hears it regardless, lets it drive him, as if they hold no power in all this.

They do. This, this is all them, and it is merely a matter of following it through to its inevitable conclusion.

Celegorm has nothing to prove but his point. If Huan’s judging eyes follow him into sleep, he has grown well-skilled in ignoring that, too.

And then, and then.

Lúthien escapes. Finrod dies. Huan leaves.

So does Celebrimbor, and Celegorm could hardly blame him, if he ever stopped to think.

He does not, cannot, no longer.

He wants to tear the world in two. Wants to bite and snarl, show whoever is still watching over him that they were right to give him up.

Oh, he will show them how right they were (him, he will show him; at the end of the day, that is still the only one who matters, ever has. Celegorm will not be so easily discarded and forgotten, he will not).

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

The fury, Celegorm learns, is a faithful companion, more faithful than any God.

It is the only thing to make Himring bearable.

His brothers no longer look at them the same. For the most part, they do not look at them at all, whenever they can help it.

Darling Findekáno visits Himring once, in the wake of Finrod’s death. It is the only time Celegorm ever wonders if Fingon might attack him.

He does not; he fights with Maedhros long into the night instead, and leaves the next day.

“You could have condemned us and been done with it,” Celegorm says, when they break their fast in the wake of it.

Maedhros meets his eyes, cold and terrible. “You are still my brothers. You know well enough what I think of you; I will not make a spectacle out of it to anyone else.”

It is, in truth, more than Celegorm would have expected. It is almost touching, if not for the contempt in the twist of Maedhros’ mouth.

It is what they do, though.

And so, when Maedhros calls, they follow, his grand Union almost, almost, almost enough to bring something akin to hope back into the cold and dreary fortress.

Celegorm does not so much as expect them to win as that he refuses to contemplate losing. Regardless of the outcome, he has been itching for a battle since they fled Himlad, since Finrod, since, since, since—

It still amazes him, how spectacularly they lose, the utter devastation that is wrought against them all. The betrayal, the dragon that he had vowed such vengeance against, scant years ago, and Celegorm fights, and fights, and fights, blood drumming in his ears and coating his armour, his hands, his hair, until Curufin physically drags him off the battlefield, his hand a vice on the reins of Celegorm’s horse, his eyes an order that leaves no room for argument.

Celegorm wants to fight against it, wants to rip to shreds whatever stands in his way. In the end, he does not. He paces in the aftermath, caged once more, and cannot bear to think of how little there is left of them, now.

Of none of them less than of Maedhros, truth be told. After Thangorodrim, Celegorm had not thought it possible to see his eldest brother brought any lower, and yet—

And yet, it had nothing on the figure before him now, sitting on a bedroll that Maglor had rolled out. Celegorm had not realised, until then, that he had never before seen someone devoid of any hope.

It is almost enough to move him to pity.

Celegorm gives it some time. Watches—Maedhros, Maglor, their people. The power vacuum that is settling into their midst.

They have removed to Amon Ereb, the only one of their Keeps still in their power. The Ambarussa’s forces are the largest remaining one they have, too; Celegorm and Curufin’s people had, infamously, mostly stayed in Nargothrond. Caranthir’s were hit the worst by the Men’s betrayal.

It is mainly Maedhros’ and Maglor’s men, still holding the balance. Maedhros is in no state to lead, and Maglor, this time, refuses to fill the void, refuses to leave Maedhros’ rooms for longer than necessary, to so much as speak to any of them, really.

Someone needs to take charge. No one ever said it had to happen for selfless reasons.

Prelude to Doriath

Still, for many years, little happens.

They hunt—Orcs, for food, their ghosts. They wander.

They cannot stand to spend much time in each other’s presence any longer. Or, perhaps, the others cannot stand to spend much time in his and Curufin’s presence any longer, but then, it boils down to the same thing. It matters no longer.

They avoid each other where they can. Return to each other when they must.

And then, and then; Doriath falls. Lúthien dies. The boy-king wears their father’s jewel like a taunt.

Maedhros still refuses to lead, and Celegorm calls his brothers together.

The truth is—the truth has always been, from the very start—

Celegorm knows monsters, knows the shape and make of them. He knows what they have all become, what they are hurling towards—no Oath, no Doom, nothing other than themselves walking every single step of the way.

Celegorm knows monsters, and he knows what awaits them, at the end of it all. There is nothing but to play this through to its bitter, inevitable conclusion.

He calls for his brothers and is obeyed.

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Valinor

Curufin remembers the way a smithy smells before anything else; the wood fire, the melting metal, the dry, hot air.

It is dirty and harsh and real in a way that few things are, back in Aman. He wonders often—later, after—if perhaps that is why his father loved it so.

It is its own world, is the first place his father truly looks at him—the fifth of seven children, and the only one to show any real interest in his father’s most beloved craft.

Later, Curufin can never tell what came first—his interest, or his father’s eagerness for it. He tries to tell himself that it does not matter; that, clearly, it was ever meant to be like this, his own son, too, following in their footsteps.

Some nights, though, in the darkest hours, he cannot quite bring himself to believe it. Cannot quite look at the way he always, always falls wildly, ridiculously short of his father’s achievements. Cannot help but wonder if perhaps, there had once been something, someone else he was supposed to be.

That comes later, though.

For most of his youth, Curufin splits his time between his father’s forge and trailing in Tyelkormo’s wake, whenever his brother deigns to be around.

This, at least, never poses a question. Why Celegorm, Carnistir asks him once—not sullen, just curious, his head tilted almost birdlike.

Curufin had shrugged and watched where his brother was driving Makalaurë to tears of rage. “He is the only one who understands.”

It had not made sense, except for all the ways in which it did. Carnistir had seemed to understand it too, for he had not asked again.

It is less simple with the others.

While he is still young, Maitimo cares for him often, whenever their parents are occupied. As he grows older, Curufin keeps finding things to begrudge him, though—his status as the eldest; the easy pride their parents have of him; all their brothers and cousins gravitating around him.

Curufin has his father’s love above all else, he knows this. Some days, in shameful, secret moments, it does not quite feel like it can be enough.

He has no patience for Makalaurë. The same, very obviously, is true in return.

“You are too similar,” Tyelkormo jokes, one day. Curufin does not speak to him for weeks, in the aftermath.

Still, when it comes down to it, he loves them, their close-knit entanglement, the way he is never alone.

It is one of the earliest things his father teaches him, outside of the forge; they may drive you to madness some days, little Curufinwë, but always remember—there is nothing more important than those you belong to by blood and skin and bone. Never, ever forget it.

And Curufin does not. He does not.

It is a strange thing, when he is the first of his brethren to take a wife.

He knows what many in Tirion say, when the engagement is announced; a well-respected Noldor maid, her own craft jewellery work—a fitting choice, for Fëanáro’s favourite. A little too fitting, perhaps.

For once in his life, though, the choice has nothing to do with his father. Turundë understands him as few others do; she does not bow to his temper or his sharp tongue, only ever rising to meet him. She knows what he speaks of when he talks of his work, does not flinch from the messy harshness of it.

The day she bears him a son is happier than the day he held a hammer for the first time.

And still, and still.

She does not stay by his side, refusing to be pulled into the brewing conflict. Their son does. Curufin considers that a worthy price for her to pay for her faithlessness, and does not think about the way it burns.

Exile

He moves back home, once his family removes to Formenos, his son in tow.

It means Telperinquar grows up among the same madness that Curufin was raised in, and even if he had not come for loyalty and love of them, this alone would have been an argument in favour of it.

It is, for a brief time, like being taken back to simpler days. No matter his father’s knife-edge temper; no matter the concern that, more often than not, now graces Maitimo’s features.

No matter the absence of their mother, and Curufin has never been as close to her as his older brothers, but this—

“It was her duty to stay with us, no matter what,” he says to Tyelkormo, one night. “She did not; it is her own choice.”

Tyelkormo looks at him and says naught. Curufin knows it is right, though, and does not think of the ache deep in his chest whenever he thinks of her, or Turundë after her, turning their backs.

Tirion goes dark, his father raises his voice to an Oath, and Curufin is the first to join him.

His father leaps at an unarmed elf, sword glinting with menace in the light of torches, and Curufin is the first to unsheathe his own blade. His father sets fire to the boats, eyes expectant on Curufin, and he is the first to join.

He only pays mind to keep his son shielded, leaving him in the rearguard. It had been Telperinquar’s own choice to come, but he is still young, still untested. It is still on Curufin, above all else, to protect him when he must.

He does not pay the same attention to his youngest brother. Amrod is brought off the burning boat, coughing and howling, and Curufin—

Curufin did only what he had to do.

Always remember—there is nothing more important than those you belong to by blood and skin and bone. Never, ever forget it.

And Curufin does not. Except. Except.

Early Beleriand

Amrod no longer looks at him. Neither does Amras. Whenever Maedhros does, his eyes are dark.

Curufin stops meeting them. He did what he must, as his father had demanded.

That ship I destroyed first, his father had said, and Curufin had felt the ice-cold shiver of doom down his spine. Refused to acknowledge it. Refused to do anything other than raise his chin, meet his brothers’ eyes—as if any of you had done anything other than he and I.

If it were Amrod and Maedhros he cannot bear to look at, alas—it does not matter.

And it does not, when they find their father crumpled amidst burnt earth and grey ash. When he looks at them, his eyes still burning, burning, burning, and makes them promise their vengeance anew.

When he bursts into flames, and Curufin tries, tries and tries and tries, to hold onto him. When it accomplishes nothing, leaves him with nothing but his skin blistering, peeling away, one last souvenir of the father he loved to the point of ruin.

It does not matter. Perhaps none of it does, after all.

It would have been easy in the aftermath to lose himself to it—his father’s absence, Ambarussa’s judgement, Maedhros’ capture. In his fury, for Maglor and his inaction, and the grey-scale despair of those first few weeks on the clammy, joyless shores of Mithrim.

But there is Celegorm, who pushes him with sharp, impatient words; whose edges are all for show, only there for Curufin to cut himself against, whenever he needs to. There is Celebrimbor, who watches him with dark, worried eyes. There are their people, and their promise, and the dark enemy still holding what is rightfully theirs.

There is the Oath, inevitable and iron-heavy.

There is no escape. Most nights, almost, almost, almost all nights, Curufin believes that he is not looking for one.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

Findekáno brings something back from the mountain. Curufin is not sure that the mangled creature is his well-wrought brother, inexorable pride and joy of the House of Fëanor.

“He will heal,” Celegorm says, his face grim.

Curufin looks at Amrod, who, nowadays, only ever stares back in hatred. He is not sure that that would be a good thing.

There is no joy in being proven right when Maedhros announces—not to them, but their people and Fingolfin’s, also—that he will forfeit their father’s crown.

You will avenge me, their father had said, blistering certainty bright in his eyes, even as he was fading before them.

Curufin stares at his oldest brother and wonders with scorn running so deep that he can taste it in the back of his throat how he could betray such a promise so easily.

Back in Aman, he would have never—

“You will fall in line,” Maedhros says, when, in private, Curufin tries to argue. His eyes are silver-bright and fey, and in that moment, he burns so terribly that it feels worse than looking at Fëanáro in a rage. “This House stands together, Curufinwë, as it ever has. Or have you forgotten our father’s teachings so quickly?”

Curufin flinches from the words, bows his head. Bites his tongue until it bleeds.

Maitimo would have never spoken to any of them as such. Whatever animal Findekáno had returned to them, Curufin is not certain he still recognises it.

It is the only time he ever tries to argue with Maedhros.

No use, bargaining with beasts, Celegorm used to say.

No use, his father used to agree, eyes alight on Indis and her brood.

Curufin knows better than to ignore a lesson well-taught.

The Long Peace

Himlad is an escape. Is a reprieve to lick his wounds, a chance to fall back into a routine that does not have to take into account the sensibilities of brothers that try his patience.

Still, often, the grief catches up with him, racing along in his shadow across the open plains. Still, the scars winding around his arms sting when he spends long nights in the forges they built. Still, the Oath drives him on, ever sharp-edged in the centre of his chest.

He is not so blind as to be ignorant of Celegorm’s worried eyes, Celebrimbor’s uncertainty. What do you want me to do, he wants to snarl, some days—does so, once or twice after too much sour wine, into Celegorm’s obnoxiously unmoved face. He is gone, dead and gone, gone, gone, and we still have accomplished nothing to avenge him.

But there is Celegorm, their hunts, the steady constant of his company. There is his son, long nights in the forges, his skill soon surpassing Curufin in spades (and he does not doubt, then, if this is truly what he was meant to do. He does not).

There is the Oath, like fire beneath his skin, driving them against Orcs and beasts, against Morgoth’s never-tiring reach for them.

Curufin learns to meet him head-on. Learns to wield his sword as easily as his tools. Learns to forge weapons better than anything they had ever accomplished in quiet, peaceful, narrow Aman.

Maedhros is pleased whenever Curufin presents him with those, and he thinks—

In this, at least, they still recognise each other, eyes ever fixed northward with hatred.

They will have their vengeance. They will, because they must.

The Dagor Bragollach

When the land goes up in flames, Curufin feels, for one brief, terrible moment, the exact same sensation he had felt just a little under 450 years ago—chest caving in, lungs being crushed, skin and flesh and any ounce of hope being burnt away in brief, agonising seconds.

“Atar.” Celebrimbor’s hand is warm and steady on his shoulder.

Curufin comes back to himself. Looks at his son, his most beloved creation. Looks at his brother in the doorway, watching—always watching, never hiding his concern as well as he thinks he is.

“Do we leave, or do we fight?” Celebrimbor asks. He is watching Curufin as closely as Celegorm is. There is no fear in his voice.

He wonders if Fëanor had felt the same kind of pride, back when Curufin had leapt to his side without hesitation. When he had set fire to his own brother, if only to be given another spark of his father’s approval.

He straightens his shoulders, raises his chin. “We fight. Always, we fight.”

They last a week.

A week of choking smoke, of poison belching forth from Angband’s pits, of the air being thick with the stench of dying land, dying Orcs, dying kin.

A week of fighting until their limbs shake and their armour is caked with blood and grime.

At the end of it, he meets Celegorm’s eyes and knows it is no use.

When Celegorm says, “We make for Nargothrond,” Curufin does not protest.

Anything, anything is better than having the same grey-fell eyes of his oldest brother look at him and all his failures with judgement anew.

Finrod takes them in, and for once, Curufin cannot muster his usual derision.

They barely made it to Nargothrond. Celebrimbor had carried away injuries that he survived only, Curufin knows, due to Celegorm—still praying, always praying, making use of the skills a God long ago taught him.

Being listened to yet, every once in a while. Curufin refuses to feel gratitude, but for the time, he has tired of the scathing hatred.

They settle into the deep halls. They tend to their injuries. They grieve their fallen, theirs and those of Nargothrond, Angrod’s and Aegnor’s names heavy upon Finrod’s bowed shoulders.

For a time, back in Aman, Curufin had liked Finrod well. Before—before the chasm between their families grew. Before his father looked with increasing scorn on the golden House of Arafinwë, and all that associated themselves with it. Before, before, before; Curufin thinks, wandering dimly lit corridors at night, that ever his life seems to split in two, these days.

The truth is, those first few weeks, no one has the energy for anything other than reeling recovery. News still makes it to them daily—Fingolfin’s death, the fallen Gap, their brothers’ survival, against all odds.

In the midst of it, Curufin does not see much of Finrod. Does not pay his absence much mind, either. He sleeps. He eats. He tends to their people. He finds a forge for himself and Celebrimbor to work in, and returns to forging swords and knives, to forge arrowheads that will not miss their mark.

He does not pay Finrod much mind. Until he does.

It starts with late nights. With running into Finrod when he wanders Nargothrond’s corridors, mapping the lay of the caves. Avoiding sleep.

They never talk, those nights; mere silent acknowledgement, and a mutual refusal to prod and poke at what keeps the other awake.

“Stop staring,” Celegorm tells him during dinner one night. His eyes are knowing. Curufin ignores the urge to get up and leave.

Curufin does his best work at night. Their strange camaraderie grows when Finrod discovers that fact and starts visiting his forge in those late hours.

“It is because no one disturbs me then,” he tells Finrod, pointed, brow raised.

Finrod smiles and gestures as if to say, go on then; his eyes a tangible, burning weight at the back of Curufin’s neck.

They talk, then. Short and casual at first, a testing of boundaries. Thinly veiled insults met by infuriating humour. Discussions of craft met with far-reaching knowledge. Grief not spoken of but sitting between them, their eyes ever drifting into the empty, burnt north, before finding each other once more.

A challenge met, every time.

After that, it is easy, so very easy. Finrod talks of building Nargothrond, and takes him riding the next day to show him the outposts, the guards and scouts.

They add their people to Nargothrond’s defences shortly after.

Curufin shows him how to temper steel, how they imbue their weapons with power beyond what the forge fires offer. He and Celebrimbor start outfitting Nargothrond’s warriors alongside their own.

They talk, and talk, and talk, as if there rests not an age-old chasm between their houses, gaping and raw.

Celegorm watches with dark, knowing eyes. Curufin takes to avoiding looking at him.

It is easy, is the thing. An endless dance of battling wit and wills, and Finrod somehow, shockingly, meeting him for each and every step.

Curufin thinks of Turundë often, those days. How she had refused to come with them.

Thinks of Findaráto, brightly golden and unwavering in the dark of Tirion’s torchlight. He had never made a secret of his opinion on Fëanor, the name today still a blank, untreated space between them.

And yet, he had come, across the Ice and through torment he speaks not of. Curufin wants to dig his fingers in, slide his nails under the edges of the armour Finrod wears like second skin. Wants to break him open, and find what he hides so skilfully underneath.

He kisses Finrod for the first time on the one-year anniversary of their arrival in Nargothrond.

He had been drinking with Celegorm, too much, too quickly, both of them growing too maudlin.

Recently, his brother has grown crueller. In response, Curufin has grown less patient, less tolerant. Most nights, it stays at harsh but brief exchanges, at subtly veiled digs for the soft parts they know of, all too well.

Tonight, though, Celegorm had aimed his vitriol at Celebrimbor, at how much time he is spending in Finduilas’ company. “Just wait, your son will end up a real Teler, after all; just make him sing and dance like dear Ingoldo used to on Alqualondë’s beaches, and they will take him as one of their own in no time.”

It had taken everything within Curufin to get up and leave, rather than throw the heavy goblet of wine at his brother’s face. It had taken no thought at all to find himself in Finrod’s chambers.

The moment Finrod opens the door, Curufin pushes inside, hands on Finrod’s chest before he knows what he is doing.

He does not expect resistance. Does not expect Finrod to stop him with an easy shift of his weight, hand fisted into the front of Curufin’s tunic, his knee lodging itself firmly between Curufin’s legs to stop him from moving.

“You have been drinking,” Finrod says, his voice mild but eyes sharp. “Did you know the Edain have a saying? That the drunk and the children are always honest? I am not sure the hypothesis holds up, but—“

Which is when Curufin kisses him, something brittle within him finally giving way.

It is graceless and clumsy, too many teeth and frantic hands. But then, oh then—

Finrod stills him, steady hands, solid body. Tangles his fingers firmly into Curufin’s hair and pulls, moves his head just so. Kisses him properly, then, and Curufin knows he ought to protest, should wrench back control, but—

But. He lets Finrod touch him however he likes and, for once, refuses to think it all to death.

He should, of course, have known that it would not last. He simply did not think he would be replaced this easily by a Man who seems not to have seen a bath in considerable time.

Finrod does not speak to him in private first. He announces himself to the court, spreads out his betrayal as if it were nothing, and it does not hurt, it does not, because that would mean that it meant something. It does not. It did not.

He announces himself to the court, and Celegorm rises to meet him. In his wake, Curufin delivers the final blow, his rage a spitting, merciless thing eroding the innards of his chest. He does not look away from Finrod’s face once as he does it, condemnation rolling off his tongue as smoothly as endearments did, mere days ago.

Celebrimbor leaves the hall, keeps his distance from them. Curufin lets him and ignores the desperate anger that ever seems to sit on his son’s shoulders in the days that follow.

Perhaps in some distant part of himself, he still hopes that it will stall Finrod, any of it. That he will not leave; that he will not betray them so utterly.

It does not. He does not.

Curufin gratefully takes the wine that Celegorm hands him that night, and remembers his father’s words.

There is nothing more important than those you belong to by blood and skin and bone. Never, ever forget it.

It had been folly to think they could shirk their duty, even if only for a while.

“The Oath demands its answers,” Curufin tells Celegorm, the night they prepare to go in search of news. “We do what we must.”

He does not think of Finrod, marching into Angband on his own. He does not.

Celegorm does not answer him, but Curufin can read his thoughts on his face plain as day, the silent doubt in the Oath’s power.

That is alright, though; if Celegorm must think himself yet free of the weight of their duty, he may as well. It does not change the existential fact of it.

It does not change what they do in its wake, Oath and Doom finally catching up with them, making them pay for the time wasted.

Lúthien, how low it makes them sink; her escape, and the humiliation of it. Huan, and his betrayal, yet another one in the line of sacrifices to be made, in their pursuit; his abandonment, and how it hollows Celegorm to the core.

Finrod’s death, for the forsaken Man and his maid; Curufin, when he sees them in the aftermath, thinks he has rarely ever loathed anything or anyone more.

Celebrimbor, looking at them with bristling, burning disgust that is more alike to his grandfather than he would ever like to hear, and spitting words of repudiation and reproach.

“My father I can call you no longer, after all that you have done. Do you not see what you have come to, turning into the very thing you claim to resent?”

Even now, underneath the anger, Celebrimbor sounds desperate, sounds like a child.

Curufin does the only thing he can; cut him loose, atrophy the wound. Make sure that he will never, ever change his mind, and hope that perhaps, if there is any mercy left in the world, that may yet save him.

“Weakness is an evil, dearest son,” he sneers, and watches as it runs across Celebrimbor’s face like a punch. “To stay like a dog, even after having been betrayed, is worse than that—it is what a coward would do.”

Celebrimbor stares at him, a moment, two.

In the end, he turns and walks back into the caves that have ousted his family, and does not look back.

Curufin hopes he never will.

They reach Himring in the death of night, humiliated and sore on a single horse and with none of their people.

Curufin meets Maedhros’ accusing eyes, all his failures laid bare, and feels nothing, nothing at all.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

Unlike some of his brothers, Curufin needs little convincing.

They have a duty to fulfil. They have vows to keep, and they have tarried and done nothing for way too long.

Not to mention that victory would lend them power beyond the fulfilment of their Oath. It would not bring back his son, or Celegorm’s mutt, certainly; but it would prove that they merely did what they had to. That there had been no other way, and that they were right—they were, they were, they were.

He throws his support behind Maedhros, ignores his brother’s disdain at the act. Ignores how Fingon ignores him with derision written all over his features, the few times they fail to avoid each other, and how too many of even their own people look at him with wariness, now.

Ignores Maedhros’ silent accusations at all the support that is not given, due to their actions.

We did what we had to, he wants to snarl. What else would you have us do? March into Angband alongside golden Ingoldo, and betray our house and name and Oath?

But Maedhros never admonishes them with words, and Curufin never defends himself.

That, perhaps, says everything that needs to be said on the matter on its own.

They flee from their defeat with nothing but their horses and the armour on their backs.

They flee with nothing but utter demolition, with no hope left, with everything taken from them.

Maedhros crumples into a shell of himself, and Curufin finds no energy left within himself for derision. Finds it not within himself to prod at his brother until he builds himself back up, if only to answer; finds in himself no pity, no sorrow.

They flee to the Ambarussa’s fortress, and Amrod still does not speak to him. They survive; they hunt; they wait.

When Curufin hears of Nargothrond’s fall, it is only Celegorm who stops him from tearing the fort apart piece by piece.

“Perhaps he survived,” Celegorm says, one strong arm around Curufin’s chest, holding him fast.

He does not know what he would do if Celegorm let go. Would like to find out.

He laughs, and he sounds like his father. “Yes, perhaps; because ever luck has been on our side, has it not?”

Celegorm says naught. Curufin thinks, involuntarily, of Finrod. Golden head and brighter heart, sharp tongue ever knowing exactly what to say.

Not even he could fix this now. Perhaps he should be glad that he is dead, has been so since before everything began to fall apart.

But then, that is not true. Then, everything has been rotten from the very start.

Prelude to Doriath

If anyone were to ask, it is the insult of Dior’s brazen display. It is revenge against Doriath as a whole. It is the Oath, their duty, their vengeance.

When Celegorm calls, Curufin follows without hesitation.

If anyone were to ask—

No one does. The truth is this: Curufin is tired. The truth is: they do what they must. The truth is: all he wants now is to raise his sword and sink it into something soft. What comes before or after is of little consequence.

He was never going to be anything other than that.

Chapter End Notes

The name of Curufin's wife, Turundë, comes from the marvellous list of Elvish names by Chestnut_pod, and means "She who triumphs." <3

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Valinor

Caranthir’s favourite place in all of Aman is his grandfather’s library.

He spends a lot of his early childhood in Finwë’s palace, easily irritated by the ever-loud house, his boisterous brothers, his parents, who love them but are unpredictable whenever either of them is hit by an idea for a new project, by bouts of inspiration too all-encompassing to be put off for long.

It is calmer, with Finwë, his own children moved out by then, starting families of their own. Grandchildren visit often, but where his father’s house ever feels as if it refuses quietude as a matter of principle, the palace has an abundance of it.

Most notably, the library—not the large, beautiful, carefully curated one where Finwë welcomes guests from all over Aman, friends and courtly adversaries coming together for long, benign debates that never seem to lead anywhere.

No, Caranthir admires that open, light-flooded space, but what he loves, what he almost considers his, his and his grandfather’s alone, is Finwë’s private library. Tucked away in the private wing of the palace, it is cramped, dusty, and dimly lit. The volumes lining the shelves are brittle with age and often do not contain anything of grand note.

Finwë loves those books, though, their long-faded stories of the continent to the east that Caranthir, when he was a child, only believed in as one does in fairy tales. It certainly sounded plausible, but so did a lot of things that had, once you looked more closely, little actual substance.

Not so when Finwë speaks of it. Often, he sits with Caranthir in the creaking leather chairs, Laurelin’s light only barely reaching through the high windows, and talks of the land he left behind—its star-struck skies, its mountain ranges. The sharp, clean air of winter, the dark entanglement of woods. Of legends, and lurking shadows, and how often they could not tell apart thrill and fear.

“Why did you leave then, if you loved it so?” Caranthir asks once, only once. He does not understand yet the wistful twist to his grandfather’s mouth, the strange mixture of love and longing with which he looks at the world around him.

Finwë ruffles his hair in the way that Caranthir hates but tolerates from Finwë alone. “You will understand, one day. I wish you would not, but you will. Patience, little Moryo, is a virtue.”

Then, Caranthir rolls his eyes, bites back his protests and, yes, his impatience.

Later, much later, he does understand. When he does, he will think of Finwë, basked in golden peace, and wish that he had listened.

Caranthir grows up like this, between the ceaseless chaos of his father’s house and the quiet of his grandfather’s palace.

Where Maitimo shines in court and at his grandfather’s side in public, Caranthir stays in the back, watching, listening. Where it pulls Makalaurë onto any stage he can find, Caranthir likes that he can easily fade into the background. Where Tyelkormo races through forests and Curufinwë spends hours in hot, dirty smithies, Caranthir broods over long, weathered documents, crams his head full of numbers and logic, with abstracts and law and science.

It is not like his family does not understand; often, Fëanáro will spend long evenings talking to him about whatever he is currently working on—linguistics, geometrical applications to different crafts, philosophical concepts. History, politics, anything that Caranthir currently burns for, his father will meet. So will Maitimo and Makalaurë, Amras once he is old enough. Nerdanel is ever happy to clean him out a corner in her workshop, let him work there, let him talk through whatever theorem is currently twisting his brain into knots, until it clicks. Always she knows how to ask the right question, to force him to take breaks for tea at the right moment. To let him brood in silence in others.

It is just that it never quite changes the fact that, at the end of the day, Caranthir, for the most part, prefers his solitude.

It was not always so, is the truth. He remembers trying.

Early on, when he was very young, it had been Makalaurë. Makalaurë, who sang for him, Makalaurë who approved of his childish mischief, Makalaurë who would follow Caranthir’s pragmatic, mathematical mind like few others did, musical theory closer to it than most would expect.  

Inevitably, though, Makalaurë would return to Maitimo. Theirs was an understanding, Caranthir learnt early on, that he could never hope to match.

He tried only a few times with Tyelkormo, for all intents and purposes the designated brother Caranthir should have been closest to. It fails spectacularly—not immediately, not for lack of trying on Tyelkormo’s part, but it does. It is like they are as different as they can possibly, painfully be, and not in a complementary way.

Curufinwë never tried anything he had no interest in; Caranthir was scarcely insulted when he did not make the very short list.

He did not bother at all with the twins.

He loves his brothers, each and every one of them. It is only that each and every one of them loves someone else a little better than they love him.

He learns to make his peace with it, to not begrudge them their love.

After all, there is always Finwë, too. Out of all his grandchildren, it is only ever Caranthir he lets handle those ancient relics he had carried all the way to Aman.

Caranthir ever makes sure to do so with the utmost care. By then, he has learnt to recognise a rare and precious thing when it is offered to him.

Exile

There is no question about Caranthir’s going to Formenos.

His family might drive him to exasperation some days, but they are his family. He has no interest in staying in close or any other kind of contact with his brood of cousins, no matter what Finwë wishes for, not-so-subtly, sometimes.

In many ways, little changes in their fortress up north. Like all his brothers, he is used to travelling around, is used to carving out space for himself in any new environment. He has his family close, those who matter, for the most part.

He does not think of his mother, hard-eyed and proud, watching them leave. Does not think about his father’s increasingly harsh words, his short temper. How they will not see him for days on end, not even Curufinwë. Does not think of the growing sadness sitting on Finwë’s brow, the way he bears himself as if he knows something the rest of them do not.

The darkness comes, and Caranthir learns of fear. Learns how it wraps around your throat, seeps into your skin, tastes in the back of your throat. How it will render you immobile, struck stupid. How no book, no great theory will help you in the moment that your heart starts beating out of your chest.

It is Caranthir who finds Finwë on Formenos’ marble steps, crimson like a taunt spilling across the white; Finwë’s long, black hair, so much like Caranthir’s own, looking wrong, wrong, wrong, fanning out around the mutilated, once beloved head.

Then, Caranthir learns of rage. Learns what it means to have it alight every part of you, to feel it burning in your blood, teeth rattling, bones shaking. Then and there, he finally understands Celegorm, the animal wildness of him.

It is Curufin who leaps to their father’s side first, the moment they reach Tirion, but it is Caranthir whose voice rises the highest, who bares his teeth at the horrified faces around them. Oh, how he despises them all, useless and helpless, even now, even as their beloved king lies to rot. The one who had brought them all here; the one to pay for all their folly.

Everything after is a blur—the boats, the blood on his hands. The retching over the side of the railing as the sea rages beneath them.

“You will get used to it,” Makalaurë says, a cold hand heavy on Caranthir’s shoulder. Caranthir does not tell him that it is not the boat making him shake with furious misery, still.

In retrospect, he is not sure that that is what Makalaurë meant, either.

He comes back to himself, only truly comes back to himself, when his father takes torches to the boats.

The night is cold, the sky full of stars. Caranthir stares up at the constellations Finwë had taught him—from books, more often than the sky, Tirion rarely ever dark enough to see many of them—and feels himself grow numb all over.

What would he think of them now, if he could see them?

“Carnistir,” his father says, and there is a warning in his voice, something foreign and terrible.

Caranthir holds his gaze. Looks at where Maitimo stands to the side, arms crossed, his pale face white in the darkness.

Such a waste, he wants to say. What point does this prove, what use does it have?

“Carnistir,” his father repeats, flashing teeth and fell eyes.

Caranthir takes the torch.

When his youngest brother’s screams tear through the night air, he wishes, he wishes, he wishes—

Early Beleriand

Caranthir learns quickly that there is no use in wishing for anything. Learns to understand his grandfather in ways he never had before, whenever Finwë had talked of Middle-earth; its fascinating beauty, yes, bursting from between the dark and the rot of it. Why he would leave, too. How, ever it feels as if something is watching, as if a draft always makes its way beneath your clothes, no matter the number of layers. How any joy is ever followed by fresh grief, as if any reprieve has to be dearly bought.

And oh, how dearly they pay.

Their father dies, and Maedhros is taken, and it is all they can do not to shatter in the face of it.

It is all Caranthir can do to function; Celegorm and Curufin may rage, and Maglor may drown in his grief, and the twins may loathe them rightfully, but they must go on. They must; there is no other way.

So, he lets Maglor lean on him. Meets Celegorm head-on, over and over, laying out the strategic soundness of not marching into Angband, no matter the cost. He helps Amras care for Amrod, and he makes sure their people settle into a camp that can sustain them. Takes care that Celebrimbor spends time in all their company and not only with his father, half-mad as he is in his own grief.

He has a new appreciation for his grandfather’s successes and failures at keeping peace between his children and grandchildren. It does not make him resent the half of them any less, only makes him miss Finwë more.

No use in shedding tears, though. They move forward, because they must. Because one day, they will enact their vengeance for all that Morgoth has already taken from them.

Caranthir will make sure of it.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

“You may think of it whatever you like,” Caranthir says, for what feels like the dozenth time, “but that does not change that it is the logical choice.”

Caranthir may think of it privately whatever he likes, but it is true; he has listened to his grandfather and oldest brother, has watched them in court, with enough attention to know it to be true.

Maglor looks at him with furious, red eyes, the wine long-since having gone to his head. “I know it is, Moryo; I made the logical choice for thirty godforsaken years. That does not mean that it was the right one.”

It is no use arguing with him, Caranthir knows. They have been over this endless times. Taking the wine from Maglor, he sits beside him, leaning back against the old oak, and casts his gaze across the lake. In the distance, the Nolofinwëan camp is a bustle of activity.

“Be that as it may, he is asking you to support him now. You do not need to agree with him for that, but how could you deny him, after everything?”

It is a low blow, and Maglor makes a noise so full of contempt and sorrow, Caranthir feels almost bad about it.

“I know what you are doing,” Maglor says, rolling his head until he can look at Caranthir up close. His expression is impossible to read. “And I know that you are doing it for me—why you are doing it. But that does not mean that I do not hate you for it a little.”

Caranthir nods and looks away. There is nothing to add to that, after all.

The Long Peace

Thargelion is a reaching, a becoming. He knows of the weight, the importance, of Maedhros trusting him with the outpost. Knows it is its own wordless gratitude for Caranthir’s support, and he pours that into the foundations he builds, into the strength of his people, into the alliances he forges.

It takes years, takes endless, endless hours of work and late nights, of failures and trying again, again and again and again. Of gritting his teeth and swallowing his pride, but the results, at last, flower beneath his hands.

He sees his brothers more or less often, those days. Celegorm and Curufin less, which suits him just fine. Maglor more, although some of the ease and rhythm they had fallen into during those first few years stutters, fails.

Maglor returns to Maedhros as he was ever wont to do, and Caranthir does not begrudge him, he does not—has not done so since he was a child, and saw the way Maglor’s face would transform whenever Maedhros turned to him.

He does not begrudge them. He does not visit Himring as often as he could, either.

He meets Haleth at the height of the flourishing of his realm.

In truth, Caranthir knows that domestic life is not to be his lot, all other reasons that would stand against them aside. They have a duty, and while any Oath is simply a contract, and a contract can be broken if one is determined enough—well.

Loyalty means something yet, after all. He cannot abandon his family any more than he can negate his own nature. He would not.

And still, and still, they fall together for those few, precious nights that she stays. Long have the Noldor in Beleriand forsaken the strict scriptures that relationships had once followed in Aman, and yet.

He does not tell her what it means—what it would have meant to him, once.

She, too, knows loyalty, ever fierce before her people, ever smart enough to talk circles around him into the deep of night. She never tires of him, or of how to prove him wrong, and they may only have days—short, precious days—but he knows that this would not change.

He knows it in the same way that he knows that she cannot stay. It would not be her, if she did.

He asks regardless, because he would never forgive himself if he did not. Knows the answer before he finishes the question.

Haleth leaves with the dawn, a brush of lips and a sharp smile, and Caranthir loves her all the more for it.

She grows old, for her kind. They see each other occasionally, in those almost, almost peaceful years.

He never asks again. She never does either. And yet, she takes no husband, leaves no heir.

And yet, when she dies, Caranthir is ready to uproot the very fabric of Arda, of anything that dared to ordain the fate of Men to be so.

He understands his grandfather better than ever before. Understands him less than ever he thought possible.

The Dagor Bragollach

In a way, the fire feels like retribution. Like an inevitable conclusion, like the only possible ending point to the weight on his shoulders.

It is not, it cannot be. Unlike some of his brothers, he may not think the Oath an inescapable power of its own—no contract that does not have a loophole if one is only clever enough to find it—but it is not nothing, either.

It is a promise, if nothing else. And Caranthir may be many things, but a traitor has never yet been one of them.

The flames drive him south, and Caranthir is grateful for it. In a way, the cold indifference of the Ambarussa is easier to bear than spreading out his failures for Maedhros to pick apart. Easier than Maglor’s pity, his concern, than bearing it all within Himring’s walls.

And truly, the twins are not so much indifferent as rightfully distant. It is a kinder attitude than anything Caranthir could have mustered, had his own brothers almost burnt him to death.

He strengthens their forces with what is left of his own. He makes himself useful.

He thinks of his fortress, the clear mountain lake. The library, small and dusty, with high windows letting in little sunlight.

He thinks of home, and then he takes the thought and puts it away.

No use, Finwë used to say, tugging at Caranthir’s braids with a knowing smile, shedding tears about the past, or the futures you did not choose. Remember it well.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

Caranthir works. He functions. It is what he does.

He builds new alliances. Tries to restore old ones. When Maedhros calls for his Union, he hearkens.

He goes over strategy with Maedhros and Fingon endlessly. Establishes supply lines. Negotiates with the Dwarves, deals with the Men. Does not think of Haleth and her fierce loyalty, how much he wishes it were her at his side now, standing firm as the waves crash over them.  

Caranthir knows what hinges on the outcome of this. Knows it on the grand scale—Morgoth gaining strength, their own people breaking into smaller factions, growing weaker.

Knows it in terms of their family—Celegorm and Curufin, barely constrained from their madness anymore. Maedhros, unfaltering in the north but ever short on hope since he returned, and whatever he can muster ever tied inextricably to Fingon—a disaster waiting to ensnare them all.

The chances of victory grow thinner with each year of their idleness; Caranthir would never admit so out loud, but Fingolfin, in years past, had been right to be concerned.

So, this—it is all or nothing. Caranthir knows this.

He does everything, everything he can to make sure that it will not end in cataclysm.

He does not see Uldor’s betrayal coming.

He should have; looking back on it, he should have.

But he did not—only sees Maglor leaping, with fury twisting his fair features, and skewering the Man with one well-aimed blow before he ever gets close to Maedhros.

Caranthir thought he knew what failure felt like, after Finwë, Haleth, after Thargelion went up in flames. As they leave the heaving, shaking mess of a battlefield behind them, the forest swallowing them whole, he knows that it had been nothing compared to what awaits them.

There is nothing more to work for, no need to function.

Maedhros does not see any of them but Maglor. Maglor looks at nothing but him.

Caranthir knows he deserves this, in a twisted sense. He should have paid more attention; he should have known, should have—

He pulls away from the others as much as he can. Watches, silent, as Celegorm and Curufin whisper among themselves. As Maedhros lets them, hollow-eyed and silent, at last. As Amras bears their presence, and Amrod does not, whenever he can help it.

We are hurling towards our doom, if we do not do something—anything, Caranthir wants to say, some nights. Wants to shout it, snarl at their inaction, invoke their Oath if only it rattled them out of their inaction.

He no longer trusts himself to. Finwë had ever said that one was never quite done learning lessons, in life; Caranthir thinks that this cannot possibly be what he meant.

Prelude to Doriath

When Celegorm calls them together, Caranthir knows it is a terrible idea.

And yet.

They need a plan. They need a chance, a splinter, only, of hope; anything to hold onto, anything at all. If there is anything left worth dying for, then Caranthir thinks it would be this.

If only they can win this one fight, carry away the Silmaril, if only—

It may not fix everything, but it may stop Maedhros from looking like he will wander off one day and not return. Will make Maglor forgive Caranthir, if not for all of his failures, perhaps for a fraction of them.

He knows it is a terrible idea; knows, deep in his bones, that the dread breathing down his spine is a warning.

And yet, and yet. 

Celegorm calls, much like Maedhros had, not too long ago.

And so, Caranthir answers.

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Valinor

It takes many years for Amras to understand that he grows up somewhat differently from his older brothers.

He always knew it to be true to some extent, of course—none of his siblings has a twin, and no matter how close the pairs of them, it is a different kind of closeness. For one, none of them ever struggled to be seen as only one part of a whole.

Amras loves his twin, but that is not the point.

The point is that Amras grows up in a house that alternates between silence and fighting. His brothers have all moved out by the point Amras is old enough to understand; to understand, too, that perhaps it would be better if his father did the same thing.

By then, Fëanáro still lives with them, though. He spends most of his time in his smithy, or at Finwë’s court, and Amras does not understand most of what lies beneath, but he does understand the expression that his mother wears, whenever his father is around. Understands the tight-pressed line of her mouth whenever the two of them clash, and what it means when Amras watches her, hacking away at stone until what once was meant to be beautiful and splendid is ruined and malformed.

He is too young to feel the metaphor to be on the nose, but it makes no real difference.

She never burdens him with what she thinks, but he can tell. He asks her once why she stays; never does so again, at the sorrow that washes across her face in response.

He knows the answer, all the same; for them. She stays, always, for them.

Despite all that, he lives through a mostly happy childhood, a happy adolescence.

He spends endless hours in his mother’s workshop, learning everything he can from her until stone and chisel feel as at home in his hands like her steady, unflinching warmth does beside him.

His brothers are there often—Tyelkormo, taking him and Atyarussa into the forest, atop Aman’s highest peaks. Teaching them how to hunt, how to read the land and all it has to offer. Carnistir, taking them along to Finwë’s palace, showing them the hidden nooks and crannies, where to go if they need a quiet place to rest.

Finwë is ever happy to see them, no matter how busy. He is one of the first, even when they are small children yet, who can reliably tell them apart. Amras never forgets it, the pleased thrill of it. Finwë’s knowing smile, almost conspiratorial.

Maitimo, ever a constant. He has long since his own life, when Amras and his brother are born, but he always makes it a point to be around. To let them stay with him for long, glorious days during which Makalaurë will visit, and their countless cousins that their father would rather keep them apart from will step by. Long days at Alqualondë, and nights spent up in the hunting lodges of the mountains, family drawing a close, tight circle around the two of them.

And yet, and yet. They learn early on not to tell of their exploits at home, when their father is around. Not to tell their mother either, lest she be made to lie for them.

It is not that it always goes wrong; it is just that it is impossible to tell when it will.

The truth is, Fëanáro tries. In more forgiving moods, looking back on it, Amras knows this.

He, too, stays for them. He, too, takes time to teach them—in this, ever has he been patient and enduring, with his children.

He tries, he does. The truth is that, once all is said and done, this matters not at all.

Exile

Amras does not want to go to Formenos. He thinks his father mad for his actions towards his brother. Thinks the pride folly, the northern fortress cold and foreboding.

But Atyarussa goes, eager to follow Tyelkormo—eager, as ever, for something new, something different.

By then, their parents had not lived together for a while, both he and Atyarussa grown enough to be thought capable of handling such a thing.

Maitimo goes, brows furrowed, but the set to his jaw determined. Carnistir and Finwë do.

They all, all go, except his mother. She watches from the sidelines and says naught.

And so, at last, Amras follows, unable to look back and meet her eyes as he does.

Those are twelve long years, and yet, much like his childhood, there is much happiness to be found there. He is among his brothers; he gets to see Telperinquar grow; Finwë, as ever, is a source of comfort.

He has his own workshop, and his father spares no effort to equip it as well as Nerdanel’s, back in Tirion. Amras flourishes there, despite her absence; learns, in truth, to be not only more than part of a whole, but also something other than his mother’s most beloved son.

Perhaps it is this that drives him later. Looking back on it, he never can tell; it remains the kindest possible answer.

It is Carnistir who finds Finwë, but it is Amras who finds Carnistir.

Formenos is an anxious, bristling beehive of activity, people coming out of whatever places they hid in, when darkness fell like the blow of an axe.

People are hesitant, and then they come all at once, clamour rising at the evidence of broken doors and shattered marble.

Everyone races for the armouries and treasuries, but something—something within Amras knows.

He finds Carnistir kneeling next to their grandfather’s body—whatever is left of it. His skull is barely recognisable, except for the hair. His limbs are twisted at strange angles.

He does not look like something that had once been a living thing should look. Amras has been on the hunt; he knows the difference between taking a life and violence.

When Carnistir raises his head to look at him, Amras knows, too, with a bone-rattling certainty that would have scared him if he were capable of any more fear, that this is the beginning of the end.

He is the last to join his father and brothers in their Oath, but join he does.

Tirion is strange, dark and foreign, torchlight painting everything red and violent. The image of his grandfather, beaten bloody and beyond recognition, still burns behind Amras’ eyelids.

And oh, he does want vengeance. Atyarussa bares his teeth at him, expectant, and holds out his hand. So, Amras follows, raises his voice, joins it to those of the family that, when it comes right down to it, he still loves more than any doubt he can muster.

Amras should have been prepared for his father’s rousing speech, the insistence to leave Valinor behind.

He should have, but he is not. He stands in mute horror as the crowd crests and falls, spiralling higher and higher in its agitation. Watches as it all takes on a life of its own, as his brothers are swept up in it.

His mother finds him, certain like a compass will find north. He recognises the tight-lipped line of her mouth, the hard glint to her eyes, before she speaks.

“You cannot contemplate going.”

He loves her, he does; loves her, he thinks sometimes, uncharitable and desperate, more than any of his brothers do.

“They will all go,” he says, not an answer. She knows it, too.

“It is madness, Ambarussa. Surely, you must see it.”

Something hardens within him at the use of that shared name.

Umbarto, she had named Amrod, no matter what their father liked to claim. Amras knows its meaning well.

His heart breaks when he finally looks at her. He is taller than her, has been for years now. Still, he feels like a child, clumsy and helpless, when he touches her shoulder.

“I do. And yet, I must go. Surely, you must see it, too.”

In the bristling upheaval of Tirion’s dark streets, she closes her eyes in defeat. His proud, unwavering mother, who has never once faltered even in the face of the worst of Fëanáro’s tempers, and yet it is Amras who finally makes her cry.

She pulls him close, holds him fast. Argues with him no more, and only presses a small, stone-carved talisman into his palm, before she disappears back into the crowd.

She had known that he would go from the very start, he realises.

He turns to find his brothers and tries not to let the resentment spill across his face.

In the wake of it, Alqualondë almost feels like an inevitability.

Amras hangs back, hands shaking, revulsion high in his throat. Then a Teler is running at Amrod’s back with what, in the torchlight, looks like a butcher’s knife, and Amras is moving before he knows it.

Twins they may be, both a beloved thing and an exasperating burden, some days. And yet—it has been Amras who was born first. Was Amras, who, oftentimes, had an easier time with his parents than Amrod with his short-fire temper and impatient unwillingness to ever find a compromise.

Amras would never tell him so, but he had learnt from five others how to be an older brother. Nothing in the world, no doubt or fear or uncertainty, could ever stop him from guarding Amrod’s back.

And so he does, Noldor-forged steel sinking effortlessly through flesh and muscle and bone.

The Teler’s eyes are wide and deep blue, where they stare up at Amras, after.

He does not stop to see the light go out of them. Merely presses his back against his brother’s and makes sure that there is no other such close call.

“You do not think it a wise idea,” Amrod says to him, days later, only the two of them in the small cabin of their boat.

It is no surprise that Amrod can read him so. That he is wise enough not to speak the precise subject of doubt out loud, not even here.

Amras does not take his eyes off the ceiling.

“No,” he says, “I do not. I do not think that, by now, it changes anything.”

He fails to keep the bitterness out of his voice, this time. Or perhaps, he does not try; Amrod, inevitably, will hear it anyway.

“No, I think it would not,” Amrod finally agrees.

They speak of it no more, but oh, how they should have.

When his father presses a torch into his hand, Amras considers refusal once more.

Losgar is as chaotic as Tirion had been, those final hours, the night dark and unforgiving.

Still, it had been impossible to miss Maitimo’s row with Fëanáro, the unflinching, unforgiving rock of him. Still he stands to the side, arms crossed, daring any of them to go on whenever they meet his eyes.

Amras wants to join him, he does. A voice in the back of his mind whispers, sly and cruel, what does it matter, to stop now? You have sworn your Oath. You have chosen your path. Do you think flinching at setting fire to timbre will absolve you, will wash the blood off the white-washed wood, after all?

Oh, how Amras knows that it will not. Already the cracks are turning visible, Mandos’ Doom reverberating after them. Neither Ossë nor their mother’s love may have stopped them, and yet Amras can no longer look at any of his brothers without resentment tangling like a vice around his ribs.

“Come, now, or do you want to join Nelyafinwë in his sulking?” Fëanáro asks, and there is malice in the substructure of it. Amras has not recognised him once, since they have left, and he had never known a father that was carefree and loving as his brothers did, but this—

This, he wants to flinch from.

He takes the torch and seals his fate.

There are no words left, in the aftermath.

It is Maitimo who moves first, when the screaming starts. Who runs onto the burning boat amidst the rising clamour, amidst Amras’ sinking, breaking heart.

“Have you not woken him before you started this?” he asks, somehow finding himself beside Fëanáro.

His father looks at him, his eyes fell. “No,” he says, his voice a crooked thing. “It is the boat I set ablaze first.”

Something breaks, then. Amras can feel it resonating through his entire being, tearing and ripping until there is little left of him.

Atop the boat, he sees someone move. A moment later, two figures plunge across the railing, falling, falling, falling until they hit the still raging waves.

Losgar is silent except for the roaring fire and the furious sea, keeping the stillness of a tomb at bay.

Maglor and Celegorm wait at the shore. They pull two figures out of the water, holding so tightly onto each other, they are almost impossible to tell apart.

When they are separated, at last, Amras recognises only one of them.

There are no words left, in the aftermath.

Amrod stops screaming once Maglor begins to sing to him, power leeching from his voice. Their healers set to taking care of his injuries—burns, wild and large, twisting along his arms, his legs, his chest. Half his face is burnt, most of his hair gone.

They build a makeshift cart so that he does not have to ride as they push further into the land. Amras sits beside him and takes nothing in, nothing, nothing, nothing but the mutilated caricature of what used to be his twin.

I did this, he thinks. He can still feel the weight of a torch within his hand.

You did this, he thinks, staring at the back of Fëanáro’s head. At his brothers, all of them silent, once faced with the horrific reality of what they had done. We all did this. What use or threat can be this Oath of ours, when this is what we do to our own?

Maedhros is quiet in the midst of it. He, the only one who had not raised his hand against one of their own. He offers no comfort, no reassurance. Tells none of them that they had not meant it, had not known.

Amras is grateful for it as he is for little else, now.

The others do not speak so either, not anywhere that Amras can hear. He knows they think it, though, can see it in the tilt of Celegorm’s chin, the harsh glint of Curufin’s eyes.

But then, what right does he have to be angry, to feel the rage licking at his bones? Had he not done the same thing? Does he not tell himself so, through long, dark nights, while Amrod dreams of terrors beside him?

Early Beleriand

They barely settle into a camp before battle is upon them once more.

Amras stays back, with a handful of healers. No one argues.

He has an inkling that this, too, is Maedhros’ doing, and the gratitude tastes acrid on the back of his tongue.

Their father does not return. Amras wants to rage and rage and rage at how much the mere fact still hurts.

He does not take part in the funeral rites—what point, after all that has happened? What point, when there is not even a body left, Fëanor contrary even in death?

Amras does not attend. Curufin finds him after, hollow and wild-eyed. He has never looked more like their father than he does in his mad grief, and Amras would feel compassion if he were capable of still feeling anything at all.

Most of what Curufin says, Amras barely hears. But then, almost at the end, Curufin turns, one last time. Meets Amras’ eyes, sneers. Says, “It was not he who named him Doomed, you know. You should remember that. You should pay him some—“

Amras throws the heavy-set goblet before he knows it.

That is a lie.

He knows what he is doing. Knows it as the words register, as he finds the nearest, heaviest object. Knows that he will not miss, always a sure shot. Knows what it could do, if it hits its mark the wrong—the right—the wrong way.

The heavy, iron-wrought goblet slams into the back of Curufin’s head with a sickening sound, and Curufin goes to his knees—one smooth move, shock rocking through his body, his gasp loud in the healing tent.

Do not disturb the resting, Amras wants to taunt. He says nothing.

Then Caranthir is there, appearing out of nowhere. He takes one look at the scene before him—Amras, positioned before the cot where Amrod sleeps. Curufin cursing, spitting mad, a hand pressed to the back of his head, but kneeling, still.

“Right,” Caranthir says, voice tight but even. He grabs Curufin under the arm and pulls him up, almost effortlessly, and then drags him away.

Amras meets his eyes once, when he turns back. It is the last time that he speaks to Curufin, for a very long time to come.

Maedhros is captured. Amrod, slowly and agonisingly, recovers.

Amras spends his time in the healing tent, then in the hut that their people built for them. He helps Amrod wash and eat. Helps to change the bandages. To take care of his hair, which grows back only in some places and not in others.

Amrod rarely speaks to him. Says, once, in the dark of night, “I do not blame you, you know. You did not want to go from the start, and we all would have been wiser to listen to you. But we did not, and so, here we are.”

And so, here they are—Amras, still capable of telling when his brother lies. Amras, no longer capable of speaking that truth past the guilt lodged firmly within his throat.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

By the time that Maedhros is returned to them, Amrod has healed as much as he ever will.

There is still stiffness to some of his muscles, especially when the weather turns damp and cold. The scars marring him still stand out starkly within their camp, still make people flinch.

They make Amras flinch, too. He has long since learnt to hide his reaction, the substantial roll of nauseating guilt that sweeps through him every time he meets his brother’s eyes and finds one of them scarred and discoloured. Has long since learnt that Amrod can tell regardless, and that there is no use, no use at all, for them to try and talk about it.

Amras can hardly blame him, after everything.

Some nights, shameful nights, he wishes for the simplicity of those first few weeks of their exile—after Alqualondë, but before Losgar. How easy it had been, then, to think himself purer, less fallen from grace, than the rest of them. He who did not want to leave; he who mourned for Aman and all they were leaving behind. He who already had a whole family ready to take the blame for all that was awaiting them, an Oath like a noose trailing in their wake.

And now? Now, well, now. What could the Oath possibly still make them do that they have not already done to each other tenfold?

Maedhros returns, a mutilated, broken shell of himself.

Amras looks at Amrod, scared of what the sight will do. Amrod, who, ever since he had woken up, insisted alongside Celegorm that they could not just abandon Maedhros to Morgoth.

Amrod, who now looks at Maedhros with something like recognition. Amras can feel his stomach sink and feels more wretched than he ever thought possible.

It takes countless turns of the newly risen moon before Maedhros is at all responsive.

He mainly speaks to Fingon, when he speaks at all. He sleeps a lot. He screams.

He reminds Amras of Amrod in those first couple of weeks, if things had somehow, inconceivably, been a hundred times worse yet.

It comes as no surprise then when, once Maedhros is better—for whatever meaning of the word—Amrod spends a lot of time in his room.

Amras finds them once, early on, slipping into the room unnoticed. It is dimly lit and warm, despite the constant Mithrim cold.

The picture he is met with strikes him motionless, and he lingers by the door; Amrod on the edge of the bed, Maedhros propped up on pillows. He has his one remaining hand raised, fingers pressed to the scarring of Amrod’s face.

“I am sorry,” he says, his voice rough as it now ever is.

Amrod swallows, smiles, the scars moving with it. For once, he does not look like he wants to flinch away from someone paying attention to them.

“Out of everyone, you are the least to blame. And after all, we match now, do we not?”

He touches Maedhros’ face in return, the wrecked mess of it. Maedhros still looks haunted, but he smiles back.

Amras leaves the room as silently as he arrived. He thinks, perhaps, he finally understands how Maglor must feel, watching as Fingon accomplishes so easily what all this time, Maglor could not.

The abdication itself is a relief.

He would never say so out loud, among the outrage of their brothers, but it is. Finally, a chance to slip away from this godforsaken lake, from the suffocating politics of every movement.

Maedhros is in no condition to rule, even as none of the others see it. Mithrim is no place for them to stay.

Morgoth lies in wait in the north; their Oath lies in wait within the bones of them all. They cannot fall any further, and the best they can do—

The best they can do is to finally accept that. Maedhros, Amras thinks, is perhaps the only one who understands it, an immovable rock even in the face of all their brothers’ outrage.

The Long Peace

In the woods and open plains of East Beleriand, Amras finally learns to breathe again without choking on smoke in the back of his throat.

He lets himself think of his mother there, for the first time in years. It still slices him open, but he can bear the thought, at least. Can bear the knowledge that she would rightfully turn from them for good if only she knew.

He hopes she does not. Hopes his father sees, though, from wherever he is being tormented now. Hopes that he sees what he has made of all his children, scattered and accursed.

He wonders what Nerdanel would think of him now, full of vitriol where she had ever made it a point not to be.

But then, it had been she who had given Amrod his fateful name. Some days, Amras wonders if he ought not hate her for that, too.

Things do get better, is the truth.

He and Amrod find a balance again, find a common footing that does not constantly feel like walking barefoot across shattered glass. It is not the same as it once was—will never be the same again—but they build their keep atop Amon Ereb, steer clear of most of their brothers, and roam the wilderness.

It is good. And yet, it is living on borrowed time; Amras knows this, he does. Whether it is Oath, or Doom, or what they wreak upon themselves—there is only one way that all this may end.

The Dagor Bragollach

When the north burns, the belief becomes a fact.

It affects them less, in the immediate sense, and Amras, truth be told, is glad.

Amrod is itching for the fight, though, and is restless as the wind carries down the smoke.

Amras wants a fight, too, but for different reasons. Wonders if ever it will be his lot, to watch his family come to flame and ash. Wonders if it will ever stop, thinking of his father and tasting sorrow, underneath all that fury.

Caranthir arrives with his people a week after the smoke.

He looks beaten and changed. Looks like he had not only lost his fortress and land, but a piece of himself.

They do not ask. It has never again been easy, with any of their brothers but Maedhros, in the aftermath. Out of all of them, Caranthir is bearable, though; he is pragmatic, taking quarters and directing his people; adding to their defences, to their patrols, to their hunts and trades.

Beleriand changes in the wake of the broken Leaguer. Down south, they change with it. They adapt. They keep pretending that this can ever be anything other than waiting for the hammer to fall on them, next.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

When Maedhros calls, he calls on all of them.

Even if he wanted to, Amras knows that this time, there is no keeping Amrod from answering.

And so they answer. They muster their people. They coordinate with Himring for weapons, supply lines, for strategy. They watch as it becomes clear that ever since they have been ousted from Nargothrond, Celegorm and Curufin have played their hand at Himring with little success. How it makes them dangerous.

They watch as the fruits of their labour fall rotten, Nargothrond and Doriath both refusing to come.

Amras and Amrod call on their own allies—Elves of Ossiriand, Men who have not gone with the main hosts of their lords but stayed in their lands. It is no Nargothrond, but it matters.

Amras watches as Maedhros meets them with gratitude, adjusts. As there grows hope in his eldest brother’s eyes that makes dread run down Amras’ spine, ice-cold and foreboding.

He had felt it once before, long, long years back on the last eve in Tirion. He knows what it means.

He speaks not.

In spite of the dread, to be proven right is no relief, is nothing but a cataclysm.

It is proof, yes—of the hopelessness of it all, the inevitability of their situation. It is also witnessing another unmaking, to see Maedhros collapse into himself. It is to watch Celegorm and Curufin take advantage, watch Maglor do nothing, this time, and to stand by helpless, still.

They retreat to Amon Ereb, and so, Amras hunts. He keeps them fed. He works with Amrod and Caranthir to keep the fortress safe and well-equipped, as best they might.

He makes no effort to mitigate Celegorm’s scheming or Maedhros’ despair. He knows he has not the skill. Knows that it is only delaying the inevitable.

There is no way out for them. There is the Oath, there is their Doom, and above all else, there is what they have long since become.

They might as well accept it.

Prelude to Doriath

And so, when Celegorm calls—

Theirs—his and Amrod’s—is the largest remaining force. They had been in the rearguard at the Nirnaeth, had been on the opposing side of Ulfang’s men. Theirs is the keep, theirs are the supplies.

Any plan, all of it, hinges on them.

“What is the point in sitting here, waiting?” he asks, when he and Amrod talk about it, deep within the night.

It is how they ever talk now, wrapped in darkness. As if the mere act of looking at each other has grown too heavy.

“You know what it is Celegorm wants us to do,” Amrod says, and his voice carries no judgement, just intrigue.

“Yes,” Amras says, because he does. “And is it not what we must do? What we swore ourselves to?”

“Do not act like the Oath drives you now, of all times.”

In the darkness, Amras shrugs. “Ever it drives us. It is merely inconsequential, weighed up against everything else. Our father’s jewels, what do they matter to me now?”

“Why, then, consider supporting this?”

“Why not? We need to do something. We will not do anything we have not already proven ourselves capable of. Who knows, perhaps a shiny rock out of three may change something, after all. Any of it must be better than sitting up here, waiting for Morgoth to fall upon us.”

Amrod is silent for a long time.

In the end, he rolls close, presses his face to Amras’ shoulder.

“Then we will fight,” he says. He sounds resigned, and so finally, finally, Amras knows himself understood once more.

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Valinor

The first time Amrod understands what his name means, his mother refuses to let him join the rest of his brothers on a hunting trip.

They have been planning it for weeks, the first long trip without anyone accompanying them. For all the needless caution of it—they are not going far; there is nothing that would harm them here—Amrod has been looking forward to this like to little else ever before.

“It is a feeling,” Nerdanel insists now, now after all the planning, now after all the excitement. Now that they are about to leave, everyone but Amrod already half out of the door.

To his mother’s credit, she looks as miserable about this as Amrod feels. To his mother’s misfortune, he is not feeling particularly charitable right now.

“Right. A feeling,” he repeats, bites his tongue. Cannot keep it in, and tilts his chin up in challenge. “Why only me, then? Why not all the others? Why not Minyarussa—why not, when all other times we are ever the same?”

She waits too long to reply, fixing her eyes everywhere but on him.

“If Atar were here, he would let me go,” Amrod says, the words making it out of his mouth without his leave.

Fëanáro is in Tirion, visiting Finwë, but still—it is true, Amrod knows. Knows, too, that it is a cruel thing to say, that his parents have been fighting whenever they are talking at all, he and Minyarussa always caught in the middle of it, no matter what Nerdanel and Fëanáro tell themselves.

Her expression hardens. She would never lose a bad word about Fëanáro to them, but her eyes speak volumes. In that moment, Amrod resents her more for her silence than he would if she were simply honest and cruel.

“Umbarto,” he says, watching her closely. She does not flinch. “A fine name you have chosen, then; if you feel the need to prove it, this is a poor attempt. I am sure dangerous, terrible Aman will make your point soon enough.”

He leaves without letting her speak. She does not stop him again.

And yet, the conversation lingers throughout their trip, trails in his wake like a shadow he cannot seem to shake. It almost makes him want to prove her right—wants to show her see, here, doomed you have named me, and doomed I am; curse us both if I am going to let that stop me.

It is far from the only time that they clash over this particular topic. The manner changes every once in a while, the things that trigger her overbearing protectiveness of him, that awaken the itch beneath his skin to run, run, run, until he can leave the gilded certainty of Valinor behind and plunge himself into lurking darkness. Until he can rise from it on the other side, and tell her once more, see, see, I am more than what you make me. The factual conflict of it always stays the same, though.

It is not that simple an escape, of course.

Tyelkormo is willing enough to take him and Minyarussa along into the forests. Maitimo ever lets them stay gladly, lets them do as they please, once they reach a certain age.

Still, still. His parents fight more and more often. Amrod knows that not rarely, it is about him; about Fëanáro’s stubborn insistence that there is nothing to justify why she should treat him so differently. About her refusal to fight this out, to insist, to explain herself.

She never does, not even to Amrod. Whenever they brush the topic, her eyes turn dark and her expression haunted, and he cannot bear the wretched love with which she looks at him.

She is only worried, Minyarussa says, whenever they speak of it. Amrod knows this, he does—and yet.

“Easy for you to say, with how she dotes on you, without ever treating you like a small child.”

Minyarussa never rises to the bait; it only ever serves to fan the flames of Amrod’s livid restlessness.

Exile

Unlike most of his brothers, Amrod jumps at the chance to relocate to Formenos. The land around it is wild, and the fortress has none of the stifling splendour underneath which Tirion heaves and moans.

Minyarussa is reluctant. Amrod hugs his mother goodbye and breathes easier with every step that he puts between them.

Those years are some of the happiest of his life. It matters not that their father alternates between absences and bursts of temper—Amrod hardly knows him different, even as his older brothers struggle with it. It matters not that he spends much time in a forge with Curufinwë, learning how to forge weapons, now.

He will never have their father’s skill, will never come close to Curufinwë’s or Minyarussa’s position of the most beloved sons, but he knows his way around an anvil and hammer, and enjoys the comfortable routine of it well enough.

In between, they roam the forests, spend time among their people, wrestle and fight. He wonders if this is how the rest of their brothers grew up. Wonders if he should envy them, or if that comes too close to admitting that something has irreparably changed; that they are all hurling towards something that, even within the blissful peace of Aman, may yet turn the name his mother graced him with into something more than a poor and uneasy joke.

The answer comes in darkness and dread. Comes and finds him cowering in a supply closet of a wash kitchen, Makalaurë holding him fast like iron.

Amrod tries to move once, to follow Maitimo when he goes to check on what is happening outside. Makalaurë starts humming, low, disharmonious notes that crawl beneath Amrod’s skin, making him stay where he is.

He glares at Makalaurë when he is finally released, but it moves his brother not at all. It is no surprise; is no resentment that can last, when they step into Formenos’ courtyard and find it reduced to rubble.

Even then, Amrod does not grasp the seriousness of it all. Looking back on it later, he thinks none of them do. There is fear, and uncertainty, and an instinctive, driving urge to stick together as closely as possible, but—

But. Truth be told, there is also a thrill sitting in the back of his neck, one that he finds mirrored in the silver of Tyelkormo’s eyes, shining unnaturally in the darkness. There is a drive in them all, as they make for Tirion as quickly as they can—a change, a chance, an upheaval. Amrod urges his horse forward on unsteady ground and hides his wide grin in the blanket of unfamiliar darkness.

The Oath is like a current, and he lets it sweep him along. Lets the torchlight and the resonating voice of his father wrap around him, feels his brothers steady to his sides. Thinks of Finwë, ever a source of joy and comfort, and lifts his sword, certain, so very certain, up high beside Fëanáro’s own.

He sees Minyarussa talk to their mother and, for the first time since darkness raced across the land, something almost like doubt settles around his shoulders.

He knows what she would say. Cannot even blame her, not now, not here. And yet.

He cannot stay. Not for her. He does not know what he would do if Minyarussa did; does not know how to live with the fact that Minyarussa never would. Not, that is, if Amrod leaves.

They do not speak of it, not before they have washed blood off their hands and held each other’s hair, heaving over swaying buckets on a furious ship, both still seeing and not talking of the lifeless eyes of Elves they had once spent their summers with.

Do you hate me for it? Amrod wants to ask. Wants to make Minyarussa look at him, truly look at him; ask if he thinks the name fitting now, or if perhaps he thinks it should have been his, after all.

They do not speak, but the journey is long enough that by the time Middle-earth’s shores come into sight, Amrod feels his own selfishness like a weight upon his shoulders. Feels, when he is truly honest with himself, that perhaps, whatever is about to happen, cannot possibly be worth the expression Amras seems to wear permanently, now.

Amrod wakes to smoke and heat and a quickly fading dream of his mother calling his name. Movement hurts. Panic races through him faster than any rational thought.

The boats, he thinks, frantic. It is burning; it is all wood, and it is burning.

He cannot see. The flames are too bright and the smoke is too thick, and he has no sense of direction, remembers not where it goes onto the deck and where deeper into the ship.

Doomed, he hears his mother in the back of his mind. For once, for the first time in his life, he feels like joining her in her weeping.

He coughs instead. Stumbles forward blindly, leans into the heat; thinks, hysterically, that surely, surely some of his father’s love for fire should have rubbed off on him, only a little, even—just enough to withstand the heat of a forge and the heat of a forest fire, eager to eat him alive.

He cannot breathe. The room sways. He remembers teasing Amras for his seasickness as Ossë raged against them. Remembers Amras’ blank expression, the resentment he tried and failed to hide at having been made to be here.

Amrod cannot leave him to it, cannot—

He coughs, and it gets more smoke into his lungs. It is bad enough to bring him to his knees, and he falls, fear, real fear, finally sweeping through him.

The movement makes his robes catch fire, makes sparks bury into his braids.

Amrod screams, then. He cannot say why he has not before, why he has not called for help, but he does, now—screams and screams and screams as the heat closes in on him and his lungs heave; as his skin starts to blister and the pain tears through him and he thinks—

If only he had listened. If only, if only, if only—

Early Beleriand

He is not sure how long he drifts in and out of consciousness.

He learns at some point that it was his own family that had set fire to the boats. Learns that it was his father who ordered it. Learns that Maedhros alone had stood aside, and thinks not of how that had been for Findekáno’s sake.

He learns that his father is dead. Finds it fitting in a deeply ironic kind of way that Fëanor died in flames, where Amrod did not.

He learns that Maedhros has been captured. That no one is doing anything to free him.

Amrod learns that his mother had been right; doomed to burn. Doomed not to trust any of his family, not any of those who remain, having punished the one who had, at least, been honest with him from the start.

He heals slowly. The healers are inexperienced with injuries such as these, Celegorm says, his voice level. Amrod does not look at him.

Maglor sings for him, sometimes, and out of all of them, Amrod is furious with him the least.

It is no forgiveness; it is just that Maglor so obviously punishes himself already, each day that he is cursed to wear their father’s crown, cursed to convince himself that letting Maedhros rot in Morgoth’s dungeons is the right thing to do.

There is nothing Amrod could possibly say to him that would amount to anything worse than what he is already doing to himself.

He does, once, regardless. Maglor asks, “Do you think it is the right choice? To leave him there?”

Amrod stays silent for a long time, eyes fixed on where Amras is sorting through bandages.

When it becomes clear that Maglor will not leave without an answer, Amrod turns his head to look at him. Speaking still pulls at the scars covering one half of his face, but he makes the effort—never let it be said that he does not give everything for his dear, dear brothers.

“You have already proven that we will do anything, anything at all, even to our own, if we think it the wiser choice. I do not see how this is any different from any other decision you have made so far, Makalaurë.”

He hears the sharp intake of breath, the slamming door as Amras leaves.

Maglor says naught and does not ask again.

He does keep visiting, though, and really, Amrod thinks—almost, almost, almost without bitterness—it is the small things that matter, is it not?

He heals slowly. Eventually, the sharp, urgent guilt his brothers carry wears off, other things more important; supplies for their people, establishing camps and structures. The quarrels among themselves that now never seem to be far.

In some ways, it gets easier. He heals slowly, but he does. Amras rarely leaves his side, and for all the harsh and ugly things that now lie between them, nothing could ever, truly, come between them.

One night, long after they arrived, Amrod hugs him close. It barely hurts anymore.

“We will be alright,” he vows, and exhales at the hitch in Amras’ breath. “We will be, I am sure of it.”

Neither of them believes it, but then, perhaps, that does not matter at all.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

By the time Findekáno returns Maedhros to them, Amrod is as recovered as he can hope to be.

It has been long years.

For the most part, he is fine now; can move with little hindrance, his skin pulling uncomfortably only with certain movements. He is short of breath faster than his brothers. He still cannot bear to have a fire going in his rooms, but he tolerates them outside.

Tolerates half of his brothers again, too, which is also about as good as it is going to get. He has stopped mourning for what he used to have in Celegorm.

And so, Maedhros returns. Amrod looks at him and wonders if Maedhros will ever come close to forgiving them, too—not for their actions, this time, but the lack thereof.

Maedhros returns, and Amrod recognises himself in the horror twisted on the white sheets.

Back in Valinor, they have never been particularly close. Maedhros cared for him, the way he cared for all his brothers. Amrod loved him, the way he loved all his brothers. But there never seemed very much to be shared between them specifically, and so they shared space and time, and little else.

It is different, now. Amrod is drawn to the sick room in the Nolofinwëan camp, over and over, even as their brothers avoid it as much as they can. The guilt of its sight, the heavy air, the stares of the healers and Fingon, always Fingon, sketching the guilt too sharp for them to bear. Amrod, after all, is familiar with their cowardice.

Perhaps Amrod feels less responsible. Perhaps it is just more of a novelty to him, this feeling of bearing responsibility for the misery of one of their own.

Or, perhaps it is simply the feeling of recognising another ruined thing. It matters not. Where at first he can do little more than stay out of the way, his presence eventually, turns useful.

He knows how to change bandages, how to care for hair that has been ruined beyond help. How to feed someone who can barely pay attention, how to talk low and soothing.

The healers and Fingon alike never complain about his being there either, not like they do with his brothers. He hears them talk, once—of how it feels not like betrayal, to help Maedhros. Of how he has paid his due and ten times over, for what was done to them.

Amrod thinks it must be much the same with him. It is refreshing, the lack of pity and guilt, enough so that he cares little for his agreement or disagreement with the logic of it.

And so, he stays. And so, once Maedhros wakes, and sees him, and weeps, they finally find that shared understanding they have been lacking, before now.

“Would that it were not over something like this,” Maedhros says once, turning Amrod’s hand with its gnarled skin and two useless fingers in his one, remaining own. “And yet I am glad that you understand.”

Amrod hums in agreement, and does not think of the shock of water tearing him to consciousness without mercy; about salt seeping into all his wounds like agony come alive; about strong, unyielding arms around him, dragging him along, forcing him to breathe, no matter how desperately he wanted to sink.

“Ay,” he says, squeezes Maedhros’ hand. “So am I.”

Perhaps, then, he should have seen the betrayal coming. He did not the first time, and clearly, he still has not learnt.

“I know you do not understand—“ Maedhros starts, and he stands immovable, unflinching.

He reminds Amrod so much of their mother, then, he wants to throw something hard and heavy and unforgiving.

“It is no matter of understanding,” he spits instead, and by then it has been long months since either of them had to stay in a sick bed, but there is still something that feels fundamentally wrong about fighting, now. “It is—after all that we have lost already, how can you give any more of it away? Has it not been enough—“

“What good is the kingship to us, in the wake of fire and captivity?”

Amrod snaps his mouth shut. He has no argument for this, has no reason, really, why the announcement of Maedhros’ abdication rolls through him like a blaze.

“If you think it so strategically useful, you would have told us in advance,” he says regardless because—because it is not about the kingship, truly, Maedhros is right. It is the fact that Amrod had thought—

“If I had told any of you beforehand, no strategic value would have stopped any of you except for perhaps Carnistir and Amras from doing everything in your power to change my mind. You, out of all of us, should know how little strategic thinking factors into any of our brothers’ decisions, half the time.”

That, at last, hits its mark like a punch. Amrod bites his tongue until it hurts, and leaves Maedhros’ chambers without another word.

The Long Peace

By the time he and Amras settle in the south-east, he has mostly forgiven Maedhros. It is less understanding and more the thought that, ultimately, it makes no difference who wears the crown among a clan of people as doomed as they all are, but, well. Forgiveness is forgiveness.

He is still glad for the distance between himself and the rest of his brothers. The southern forests welcome him and Amras, and they make easy acquaintanceship with the Elves who live there, none of them as shocked at Amrod’s scars as so many of their own people still were, in Mithrim.

The Elves in Beleriand, they learn, are no strangers to torment and injury. It could be a hopeless thought, just one more in an overall hopeless land. Amrod knows that for Amras, it is so.

But he finds comfort in it; a sense of belonging that he had thought lost, waking up in a dim, stuffy healing tent with all his brothers around him, looking like they will never be able to meet his eyes again without horror sketched into the lines of their faces.

They spend long, peaceful years there.

They meet Men when they come across the mountains, who live in their lands and mingle with their people. Often, Amrod marvels at them, their short lifespans, their bristling, impervious hope against all odds.

They thrive, in that time, finally free of familial expectations and duty. Maedhros leaves them be, for the most part, except for the occasional family reunion.

So, of course, Amrod should have known that it would not last.

The Dagor Bragollach

The fire does not reach them, but Amrod wakes from the smoke, sweat-soaked and panicked.

Amras is there, but it helps only a little.

Any Orcs that make it down south to them meet a quick end on Amrod’s blade. He still feels it like a failure, their decision not to go up north to join the fight.

“It will reach us on its own in time,” Amras says, the one time they debate it. “What use, then, to run towards it?”

Amrod knows it is not even solely for his sake—Amras, more than he, has little interest in Beleriand’s battles.

And so, they wait. They take in any of the refugees coming down south that are not admitted into Doriath or move on west to Nargothrond. They hunt and restock their stores. They wait on word from their brothers, even after everything, still breathing easier with every carrion bird that tells of another one of them still drawing breath.

Too many do not. It takes a full week for news of Caranthir, and then it is in the flesh, he and a good remnant of his people reaching Amon Ereb in the early hours of dawn.

Amrod orders open the gates and does not think of the letter in his rooms, telling him of Aegnor and Angrod being devoured by flames.

Caranthir stays with them, and for the most part, it is good.

He has never been prone to sentimentality, and he approaches their cohabitation with the same practicality that he approaches everything else with.

Back in Mithrim, he had apologised to Amrod once. When Amrod had held him forgiven, he had considered the matter laid to rest.

It is not that simple, of course, but Amrod prefers it, in truth, over the refusal to admit any fault that Curufin still insists on, or the endless self-flagellation that Amras took years to come out of.

And yet still, still. Everything is falling apart, one piece at a time. Most of their brothers losing their own dwellings to Morgoth is simply the most recent symptom of it.

Umbarto, she had named him. Sometimes he wishes that he could tell her how right she had been, after all; that he could curse her for putting this on him. That he could apologise, weep into her skirts like a small child, for never heeding her at all before it was long too late.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

When Maedhros calls for them, Amrod is ready.

He knows that Amras is reluctant. That he, too, thinks that there is no hope to be found in this land, no matter how desperately they want to close their eyes to the fact.

But—but.

Doomed Amrod may have been from the start, may they all be, but he will not sit on his hill and wait for the fire to take him. Will not kneel and stick out his neck, waiting like a lamb for its slaughter.

They may not die today, may not even die tomorrow. And so, they may yet take down as many of Morgoth’s brood as they can—if Maedhros wants to tie the undertaking yet to hope he has carved out for himself, well. Who is Amrod to deny him, really?

But then, perhaps, he should have.

Two weeks—of debating hope, of final preparations, of final strategy, of the battle itself. Two weeks it takes, until they are back on Amon Ereb, this time all their brothers with them.

This time, with everything lost, more than he could have feared even in his most despairing moments.

“We should not have fought,” he says to Maglor, during one of those first nights.

He sees Maglor rarely, even now. Maedhros seldom leaves his rooms, and Maglor ever stays by his side—as if this, now, will be able to make up for his lack of doing so in Mithrim, before and after the capture.

“We had to,” Maglor says. They sit in the kitchen, the light low, a pot boiling on the stove. Maglor is sharpening a knife with quick, certain strokes of the wet stone. He hums to it as he does, imbuing it with whatever power his voice lends it. “We had no choice.”

It takes Amrod a moment to understand what Maglor is referring to.

“The Oath? Really, Makalaurë? We have easily ignored it for centuries before. We could have put it off a little longer, until we were at full strength, had perhaps recruited a few more allies. Rooted out those that were no allies at all.”

Maglor looks up at him with sharp, haunted eyes. “It drives us all, followed by Námo’s Doom. You, out of all of us, should know that.”

It is meant to anger, Amrod knows; ever has Maglor been skilled at making his words slide past any armour, slip past all defences.

It is a little startling, in fact, to note that it no longer quite works on Amrod.

He leans across the table, pins Maglor with a look. “Is that what you tell yourself? That it makes you do whatever it is you do? That there is no choice? That that is why you all set fire to the boats, and why we lose battle after battle, why we—”

Maglor slams the knife into the table with such force, the blade shatters. Neither of them flinches, and Maglor stares at him, teeth bared. “Do not deny that you feel it, too, Atyarussa; it drives us all, and it will drive us all to our end. In fact, if you cared to look, you could see that for Maedhros, it already has.”

He leaves the kitchen with quick, elegant strides, leaving Amrod to stare after him.

“It feels different for all of us, I think,” Caranthir says, making Amrod jump. He had not noticed him enter the kitchen from the other side. “It is a contract, one we are bound to. Any contract can be broken; any contract can be a death sentence.”

He takes the pot off the stove and leaves it there, unopened. Touches Amrod’s shoulder briefly as if in comfort, and then is gone again.

The words still do not resonate with Amrod, not in the way Caranthir meant, perhaps. Amrod feels no loyalty, no obligation. It was no Oath driving his father and his brothers, when they set the boats ablaze.

It is not nothing, he knows. It is just that—well. In the end, much like anything else, what does it matter? They will not win. They will not succeed. So what, then, is the point in letting yet another thing wield any power over them?

There is only rage and inevitability. Amrod does not understand the urge to deny either, to let it take away those last pieces of his own will that he still has left, as they hurl toward their end.

Prelude to Doriath

Where, in the first few weeks after their defeat he had understood Maedhros’ absence, his patience grows shorter with it as the seasons turn.

His brother emerges eventually, but it is no longer his brother. Where captivity and torture could not break him, he now sits hollow-eyed and silent. Where learning how to continue existence with a lack of hand, a lack of hope, and continuous pain had not cowed him, he now lets Celegorm take the reins, lets him talk, lets him lead.

Some days, he looks almost grateful for it. Those are the worst; those, Amrod finds himself staring at him with revulsion in his gut that, until then, he had never once felt for Maedhros alone, out of all his brothers. 

So, when Celegorm calls them together—

It is not that Amrod is eager to attack Doriath. That he thinks a success might yet save them. But—

But. A success might rattle Maedhros back to life. Eru, the mere plan might finally get through to him, might shock him back from whatever place inside his mind he has retreated to. Even a defeat might, if they make it out of such a thing alive.

And what does it matter, in the end, what the means for it are? There is only one end awaiting them, whether they fight for victory or to shed the blood of kin; Amrod, unlike the rest of them, has accepted this fact long ago.

And so, when Amras asks, he agrees. And so, when Celegorm calls, they follow.

Inevitable, step after step, ever towards their doom.

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Valinor

Many people, then and later, call Valinor paradise. Some do so with wonder, some with awe, some with envy. Some with scorn, a sneer curling their mouths. Many—most—say it with at least a hint of disbelief and doubt in the substructure of the word.

Not so Maglor. Not in hindsight, which makes it easy to see what one has lost. Not when he is still in the midst of it, basking in Laurelin’s light, the world laid at his feet.

Maglor loves Aman. Loves the art and skill that may be found everywhere, anywhere—large, boisterous stages that put on plays and concerts with countless nights of practice behind them. Spontaneous singing in the streets, in the kitchens, at work. The festivals, the beauty, the jewellery, Alqualondë’s gleaming, glittering beaches.

He loves the adoration. Prince of the oldest House of Finwë, most skilled of his craft. Makalaurë is indulged, revered, loved wherever he goes, and he knows how to live off of the attention, the wonder—how to soak in the laughter, the applause, the delight on people’s faces. How to wrap glances following him around himself, carry them with him.

He loves, he loves, he loves—the richness, the excitement, the heavy potent wine and how, no matter how often Maitimo might roll his eyes in affection, none of the consequences ever last for very long. A broken heart here, a shed tear there, but what does it matter—every day is as the other, and so, what to do but to bask in it? Than to take the little changes, the chances, and let them carry him like the song that is woven into everything?

Nothing matters but to learn, to shine, to rise, to love—and oh, how Makalaurë loves. How he is loved. It could have driven any person to madness, that kind of veneration.

Exile

Where Tirion and its crowds and feasts are the light, tinkling notes of flight and excitement, the foundation on which it all rests is his family.

Maglor knows this, has always known this. People think him heedless, intemperate, but the truth is that Maglor is only ever so in a way that is still charming. It is an act, the way any good performance is.

Sometimes, the curtain must fall, though—even Maglor knows it. His sanctuary is family, is Maitimo in particular. Ever the immovable rock unshaken by Maglor’s tempest, and so, ever where Maglor keeps his roots.

He knows of loyalty, of faith; it is merely a matter of knowing, too, that few people are worthy of that kind of consideration.

Always, without hesitation, his family is among those—Maitimo, first of all, but his parents, his siblings, their grandfather, too. They may drive him to tears of rage, his younger brothers in particular, but what they never seem to understand is that it is just another iteration of rapture. It makes him feel, makes him shake with life, and song, and emotion—why, then, would he ever turn his back? No other could drive him to such madness, after all. They may not understand how much he loves them for it, but he does, he does.

It is no question, then, that he removes to Formenos.

Maitimo may be concerned, may be sternly disapproving of their father’s actions, but Maglor, well. It is all exciting, all change, and chance, and newness. What could possibly come of it, after all? In Aman, all waves return to still waters eventually, as even the most violent of symphonies must find its ending notes. This will be no different.

“A fortress,” he says to Maitimo, laughing, the night before they are to leave Tirion. They sprawl on the divan in the empty living room, a bottle of wine between them. Maitimo’s house has been packed up, furniture covered, the kitchen emptied.

Maglor has never kept his own fixed residence, moving between places too often. It makes for light packing, and he does not quite understand the pre-emptive nostalgia already making a home around Maitimo’s eyes.

“Do you not think it thrilling? We have not been up north in years, and I have ever loved the winters there.”

Maitimo raises a brow and tugs lightly on the silken robe Maglor is wearing. “You spent any winter complaining about what the cold was doing to your vocal chords, your skin, your hair—“

“I always complain,” Maglor says, waving a dismissive hand. “It is an art form—I have learnt it from Atar, as you should know.”

At the mention of Fëanáro, Maitimo’s expression tightens. Maglor sighs and drops the cheer.

“It is twelve years, Russandol. We will have some time to roam about and be stupid as if we were still children. Atar will hopefully calm down a little, and at the end of it, all will be well.”

Maitimo exhales, a long, tired sound. “Would that I had your confidence, Laurë,” he says, and no more than that.

Maglor is not sure it is hope so much as that there is no other way. It must, for how could the alternative, that looming disharmony, be where the piece is taking them?

And yet, and yet.

For many years, it is as he said, that last night in gleaming Tirion.

Living with all their brothers once more is as aggravating as it is delightful. Maglor regularly wants to wring all their necks, and simultaneously mourns the day when they will all go their own ways once more already.

In fairness to Maitimo’s pessimism, it would be a lie to say that Fëanáro has done anything as reasonable as calming down. In truth, it rather seems to be getting worse, but they are also all good at ignoring it by then, as best they might.

Except Curufin, but then, that is more inexplicable choice than a lack of skill.

At least, removed up north, there is little harm their father can do beyond tirades at the dinner table.

And yet, and yet, and yet.

When the darkness comes, it is Maglor who senses it first, a descending scale of discordant notes that sets the air alight. It is Maglor who ushers them into the fortress, who meets Finwë’s eyes across a bustling corridor and knows, and knows, and knows—

The very air brims with malice and death. Maglor can feel it penetrating the walls, the stone, the earth beneath them. Can feel it in his bones, notes twisting in ways he had not thought possible, and once he feels them, cannot understand how he could ever have mastered his craft without noticing the massive, glaring blind spot in it.

When he keeps Atyarussa from running after Maitimo by melody alone, he knows that no song will ever leave him the same. Something may have been learnt, but something bigger has been taken. He has sung his brothers many lullabies, but never before has he robbed them of their will.

He ignores Atyarussa’s outrage, his youngest brother laughably unaware of what Maglor has truly done.

He himself would ruminate on it more, but the sudden absence of sheer noise leaves him light-headed. He still tastes death in the air, but the relief is intoxicating and almost euphoric—all he can think is that darkness came, and he made it out on the other side of it. For now, that is enough of a victory to sweep him along.

Tirion is a current, a cacophony, is madness and thrill and terror that sings in Maglor’s blood.

His father had ever known well how to strike the notes of the world’s Song. Maglor has ever been best-skilled at meeting him, at letting it propel him higher and higher, until he stands amidst his brothers, sword raised, and adds his own voice to the apex.

It would be easy to say in the aftermath that he had not known what he was doing, bacchanal ecstasy of orchestral voices and oaths rousing him into action.

It would be a lie, and an insult also. Maglor is a master of his craft—never would he lose himself in it so utterly that he does not know what his most beloved instrument is producing.

And oh, Makalaurë knows the weight of words, of their power. How they can thrill, and bleed, and sing.

But Finwë is dead, and the darkness still resonates within the marrow of his bones. Aman is shaken, ruined, dark—no artistry, no self-indulgence, will ever change that fact.

And at last, well—no great story has ever been written by those who stayed behind at their hearth. Maglor watches the torches washing faces into sharp-drawn things, and already tastes the thrill of invention, of making, on the tip of his tongue.

And so he raises his voice, joins it to his brothers’—neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor's kin. Weaves his own notes into it, the notes of the world around them, until it echoes through their bones, into the earth, up to Varda’s stars. Our word hear thou, Eru Allfather! To the everlasting Darkness doom us if our deed faileth. On the holy mountain hear in witness, and our vow remember, Manwë and Varda!

He wishes that he had faltered at Alqualondë, but he does not. He is no longer sure that he knows what he is doing, firmly in the midst of the current now, but there is blood on his hands, and death on his tongue, and madness is singing, singing, singing—

He listens to Ossë’s song of rage as they ride along Aman’s coast. All is dark. Beneath the rage—Ossë’s, his father’s, his own—the sorrow cuts bone-deep.

And yet, and yet, and yet—

Maglor finds himself prodding at it, turning it over and over. He thought, out of all his family, he would be most intimate with feeling, with all the emotions one could plunge themselves into.

It is a curious revelation that it is one thing to play grief on a stage, and another to feel it beneath his breastbone, impossible to shake. One thing to flash a dagger to an enraptured audience, another to press it through skin, tendon, bone. The blood will not come off, red-rimmed beneath his fingernails like expensive paint. He picks at it. Picks at his innards, horror and still, still, still curiosity like an insatiable beast at the centre of it.

He watches as the Eastern Shores rise up to meet them. Watches Maitimo’s expression, ever concerned and wary. Watches his father’s madness, the graceful arc of the first torch hitting the sail of the nearest boat, and oh, he wants to know how that feels, too.

Among his brothers, his family, his people, the collective charge of furious energy is irresistible. They will never be here again, it will never be like this a second time—any regret, much like Alqualondë, will be borne as it must.

He sets fire to the boats and lends his voice to the flames. When he meets Maitimo’s dark, judging eyes from afar, he thinks, for the first time in their lives, that he does not understand his brother at all.

Early Beleriand

The truth is—reality should catch up with him when his brother lies before him, unconscious and skin blistering. When Amras weeps and weeps and weeps, and Maglor has to sing him to sleep, because they are all terrified of what he will do to himself if he does not.

It should catch up with him when their father dies, yet another one of their family claimed by fire. Poetic justice, Maglor thinks, and feels the sting of conscience but not the remorse.

Not yet.

It comes when Maedhros looks at him and says, “No matter what happens today, Laurë, you cannot come after me. If I do not return, you must lead as I would.”

“But you will return. You—“

“Laurë,” Maedhros says, both hands coming to rest on Maglor’s shoulders. “Promise me. No matter what happens.”

And Maglor—Maglor knows the weight of a promise, what it means to give his word. Already, he can feel their Oath making itself at home around his shoulders.

But—but. Maedhros looks at him, imploring and unyielding. The weight of the crown already wears on him, no matter how high he holds his head.

We were never meant for this, Maglor thinks, and it is this, this thought, that brings forth memories of Aman—childhoods spent running through its endless wilderness, spinning, brilliant nights until Laurelin waxed once more, and the wine made them slow and tired, at last. Joy and light and beauty that felt like terror—and now look what they have come to. What they have made of themselves.

A grey land, an iron crown, and duty like a noose around their neck.

Maglor swallows and presses closer until Maedhros embraces him.

“I promise,” he says, the words like dragged from him. At last, then, in a dreary tent at the shore of a dreary lake, regret finds him, all thrilling novelty washed away.

Maglor ever hated facing the consequences of his own folly, but face them he must.

He steps back, raises his chin. “You will return,” he says once more. He refuses to let Maedhros’ lack of response shatter the last remains of his composure.

He will. He must. Maglor watches him go, and does not think of the last time he insisted such a thing—how it went, in the aftermath, his hands feeling like blood is still stuck beneath his nails.

The only thing that returns is Maedhros’ horse, lame and encrusted with blood and mud.

Once Maglor is summoned, he takes the torn reins. He ignores the stares and the whispers and walks into the makeshift stables they have built, by then.

The weather on these shores, they have found, is not nearly as forgiving as Aman used to be. Neither they nor their horses are used to it.

He removes the reins, the saddle. Celegorm appears in the doorway, Maglor knows, without turning around.

“Get out,” he says, voice like thorns inside his throat.

“Káno—“

“Get out.” This time, there is power to it. The horse throws its head, but the presence behind Maglor vanishes. He runs a hand down its neck, hums a melody beneath his breath.

His voice breaks. His fingers clench in the mane, chestnut strands stark against his pale skin.

Blood on his hands, a voice whispers in the back of his mind.

I promise, he had said. I promise, I promise, I promise. He leans his forehead against the warm flank and searches for anything inside himself that is not hollow.

“If we strike quick—“

“His forces have been overwhelmed the last time, too—“

“If we split up, attack from various ends—“

“What about supplies? About those still wounded? We need to—“

“We will not go.” Maglor’s voice cuts easily across his brothers. The silence is a tangible, terrible, immediate thing in the aftermath.

Celegorm is the first to recover, his eyes narrowing. “What do you mean, we will not go? The longer we wait—“

“It is not about timing. There is no point at which it will be different.”

“You cannot mean—“ Amras. Poor, washed-out Amras. Maglor wonders how any of them could have ever believed that anything other than ruin and desolation awaited them here.

He stands. The table before him is made of good wood, good craft, a gift of the Sindar they had found in these lands.

He wonders if he will bring ruin to them, too. Cannot find it within himself to care.

“It would be a trap, either way. We do not even know if he is still alive, what they have done to him. We will not go.”

Ever, among his brothers, has Maglor been the merriest one, the one to yet turn anything into a game.

Now, not one of them raises their voice against him. He knows they want to—can see it in the furious twist of Celegorm’s mouth, the misery in Caranthir’s eyes.

It is Amras who breaks the silence, his expression a wildfire staring back at him. “One brother we have already almost killed; I should not find surprise in the fact that you are willing to seal the fate of another so soon.”

He leaves the tent without another word. Maglor stays silent until all the others follow. He stays where he is until the candles burn out, and what little light there is fades.

The song of the world rages, and he hears none of it.

I promise, I promise, I promise—oh, how Maglor knows of regret now, of a vow squeezing all life out of him.

He does not move. Casts out his mind, north, north, north, and hears no answer.

It is, of course, not the last of the matter.

Maglor would have resented them all far more if it were. In a way, there is liberation in his brothers and their people fighting him on his decision. It is nothing Maglor does not want to do himself, even if he cannot.

Lead as I would, Maedhros had demanded. It is the only solace as he tears his heart out through his ribs, over and over—that, no matter what, Maedhros would choose no different.

He has to believe that, through endless, vicious fights with his brothers. Through blank-faced speeches to their people, all their expressions hurling accusations at him, through the punishment of those who try to revolt against him.

Through long, endless nights with no beginning and no end, where his mind conjures ever-worse scenarios—kept and tortured in Morgoth’s dungeons; dead and gone, disappeared into the void to join their father, never to return.

Maglor learns of darkness, in that first year, of the stars watching on, cold and unmoving, no matter his prayers.

Truly abandoned, then, he thinks one night, sitting by the lake, its still surface reflecting Varda’s most well-wrought creations.

He sings, no plea but in sorrow. Predictably, there is no reply.

Eventually, subtly but unmistakably, Caranthir starts throwing his support behind him.

“It is strategically sound,” he says, when Curufin starts on the ever-same topic again in a meeting that had been meant to concern their attempts at harvesting food from the land. “We can throw all our people at Angband and lose half of them in the process, with no hope of success. Or we can establish ourselves here, build a good camp, and wait for an opportunity that is less of a suicide mission than our dear father embarked on.”

It is more successful in shutting Curufin up specifically than anything Maglor has tried so far, save the few times he blatantly abused the power of his voice. He hates doing it, more than his brothers hate being subjected to it, but he has learnt quickly that few things, here, are about what one wants.

Maglor does what he must. Ever he hated the consequences of his own actions, but ever he has faced them. This is no different, a word given impossible to take back.

“Our Oath—“ Curufin tries, but it is a feeble attempt, even before it can come to its conclusion.

“Will not be fulfilled by senseless self-sacrifice,” Maglor finishes, gathering his papers. There will be no more fruitful discussion on how to feed their people tonight. “We are much wiser to wait for a feasible chance there, too, and you know it.”

Curufin’s mouth tightens into a thin line, and Maglor knows that he has won another day of acquiescence. Has won another night of dark dreams and self-loathing.

“How can you abandon him like this?“ Curufin murmurs, as they pass each other upon leaving the tent. “Do you not wonder, if he ever comes back, how you will face him?”

“It is no else than he would have done. He will forgive me, in due time.”

“But will you?” Curufin asks, and Maglor laughs, then, a sound like thunder splitting ancient wood.

“We will never be forgiven, Atarinkë; this was true long before we set foot on these shores. You, like all of us, had better make your peace with it. The everlasting Darkness will be our lot, Námo’s Doom otherwise. There is no salvation; all we can hope to accomplish is to keep our word and our Oath, and not wreak an even worse fate for us and all those dear to us in the process.”

That night, he dreams of the flash of terror on his younger brother’s face. He thinks this, too, would have been easier for Maedhros than for him.

But then, Maedhros is not here. Maglor only has himself to blame for that.

Word comes among them of an elf chained to Angband’s highest peak a year, after their old reckoning, of their stay in Mithrim.

No one can tell where the rumour started, or when—only the whispers of copper, bright and blinding, against dark rock and grey sky. Only of a voice rising and falling in torment.

Maglor sits upon the throne that, by then, has been built, and meets his brothers’ eyes blankly, one by one.

“A trap, still,” he says. No more. There is no more argument about it, after.

He walks, that night, a straight line away from their camp.

It almost deserves the name no longer, houses and structures having grown—too much, either way, to risk causing any damage to it.

So, Maglor walks until his legs carry him no further. Sinks to his knees then, there to the soft earth of the forest. Screams, and screams, and screams, until everything around him has been levelled, ancient trees reduced to dust.

He had promised, but by then, it barely matters. He gets back up, turns around, and walks back to his own personal torment.

Fingolfin’s host arrives with glaring light and blowing banners.

Maglor has not the energy left to resent them for it, not even from afar.

Any desire he may have liked to have for such resentment vanishes for good when his uncle and cousin are admitted to his council chambers.

It is clear from Fingolfin’s face that no one had warned him—that he had not expected Maglor, wearing the crown, sitting at the head of the table. Had, most likely, not even expected Maedhros, if the rage that drops off his face is any indication.

They regard each other across the long table. Fingolfin must be putting the pieces together the same way Maglor is—the emaciated weakness of his uncle’s body, the dull skin, the frostbitten fingertips.

“You crossed the Ice,” Maglor says, at last. No use in talking around it—the reason for their having done so will be a matter of contention soon enough.

As expected, Fingolfin’s expression hardens. “So we have, and lost many to its treacherous surface. Where is your father?”

Maglor holds his gaze. Fingolfin tries hard not to show it, but he is so very unsettled by whatever he has found in Maglor, after all these years.

“Dead,” Maglor says, and no more.

Fingolfin swallows, but his face betrays nothing. Maglor, too, finds himself admitting in the silence of his own mind, is unsettled by what stands before him.

“And Nelyafinwë?”

Maglor tries hard and fails not to flinch. He grits his teeth. “Dead, too, if he were lucky. Enjoying Moringotto’s hospitality, if the rumours are to be believed.”

There is a sharp, furious intake of breath from Fingon, then, standing behind Fingolfin. He, unlike his father, is doing a terrible job at containing his rage—he has ever been a terrible performer, if not a bad musician.

“And you just left him there?” he asks now, his dark grey eyes fixed like knives onto Maglor. “You, who has always claimed to love him—“

“Mind your tongue,” Maglor says, and against his intent, power seeps into his voice. Fingon snaps his mouth shut, but the fury stays sharp upon his face.

The chamber falls silent, the air thick with tension. Maglor knows he should feel—something. Anger, joy, worry. Anything.

There is nothing. Lead as I would have. He clears his throat, raises his chin. “I welcome you, Uncle. May you recover well from your journey and ordeal of it, and please, do not hesitate to let us know if you need anything.”

Again, Fingon scoffs. He says no more, though, and after a long, tense moment, Fingolfin merely inclines his head. He leaves before anyone else can say something to be regretted later.

“You should have—“

“I do not remember asking for advice, Tyelkormo.”

A beat of silence. “No,” Celegorm says, and there is a note to his voice that one could almost call sorrow, if one did not know Celegorm at all. “I did not think you had.”

Turning from the window, Maglor meets his eyes. “Good. Anything else?”

Celegorm does not look away, but he says nothing else, either. It is really all that Maglor wants.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

It takes Maglor three days to bring himself to visit the Nolofinwëan camp. To go see his brother, the one he has ever loved best.

When he finally does, he makes it not past the door—stays there, heart a clamour inside his chest, and stares at the ruined, wretched form until bile races up his throat.

You did this, he hears, over and over, as he retches into the nearest brush. You did this, you did this, you did this.

He comes back the next day. Consequences ever want to be faced, no matter Maglor’s dislike for them, and what is left of his brother is no different.

Fingon resents his presence, Maglor knows. The feeling is mutual, and Maglor knows, too, that it is an unfair thing, bitter and vile, the way guilt calcifies into resentment.

He does not want to feel anything other, truth be told—any anger is easier to bear than the bone-crushing revulsion he feels whenever he lays eyes on Maedhros, more bandages than skin, more horror than brother.

He keeps returning, though, silent and weary. He will face this. He must.

Maedhros’ recovery is a slow, arduous process, but recover he does.

It has little to do with Maglor, truth be told. He recoils from it—the helping of the healers in the beginning. The facing of the wounds, the confrontation of all that Maedhros can do no longer.

It is Fingon who fills the gaps, who is ever-patient even in the face of Maedhros’ frustration.

But Maglor stays. It is all that he can do, and somehow, inexplicably, for Maedhros it seems to be enough.

Never once does he cast blame or accusation, never once looks at Maglor with anger.

Some days, Maglor wishes he would. Some days, he wishes it were that easy.

It never is. He knows that he deserves that, too.

The rage arrives, at last, when Maedhros announces his intention to abdicate to Fingolfin, two years after Fingon has brought him back.

It is not Maedhros who rages then. Maglor waits until all their brothers have said their piece, save Caranthir only. Waits until Maedhros removes to his rooms, his spine straight but his face weary.

No one else would notice, but Maglor has ever known how to read him well. Has been the only one who could do so, once, before Fingon had cut him off the accursed mountain with song and harp, where Maglor had failed.

Maglor follows. Maedhros looks not surprised to see him, but his expression tightens once more at whatever he finds on Maglor’s face.

“You, too?” he asks, simple and tired.

Maglor wishes it were not so, except—

Except.

“You have made up your mind. There is no need for my telling you what I think of it.”

“I thought you, of all people, would understand.”

There is an accusation in it, then. Maglor looks away, cannot stand to keep that kind of contact. The room Maedhros had moved into a year ago—now, these days, reckoned by sun and moon—is still bare.

“If I had known it such an expandable thing…” he starts, but his voice falters.

Maedhros does not look like he understands.

“Thirty years, I have kept it for you. For thirty years, I have done as you asked, kept my promise to you. And you throw it away like—like—“

“Oh, Laurë,” Maedhros says, his expression softening. Maglor wants to weep and rage at the use of that name. “It was never about the crown.”

He blinks. Swallows. Curls his hands into fists until his nails are biting into skin. It takes effort to keep his voice even. “What, then, was it possibly about?”

Maedhros steps closer, ever wilfully ignorant of Maglor’s temper. He should no longer be, neither of them the same, and Maglor cannot tell if it is unawareness or disregard, and which option would be worse.

“To keep you safe, of course. You and everyone else.”

Maedhros presses a kiss to his forehead, then pulls away, beginning to pack—slowly, painfully, with only one hand and a refusal to be helped.

Right then, on the eve of their departure into the east and with everything unspoken between them, Maglor hates him more than words could possibly say.

The Long Peace

Eventually, inevitably, things mellow.

Maglor has ever been prone to temper, and his tantrums have ever prone to running their course quickly.

Maedhros waits him out, as he ever does. Maglor does not quite forgive him, but he is too glad to have him back to linger on it.

He establishes his own forces at the Gap. Finds that, without a crown’s weight bowing his head, he quite enjoys the chance to lead, to build, to fight. Hones his voice into the perfect weapon and uses it to enact his vengeance on Morgoth’s forces whenever he can.

In Himring, Maedhros grows infamous for his valour and ruthlessness against Morgoth’s forces. To his right, Maglor turns the decimation, too, into an art form.

He alone accompanies Maedhros to the Mereth Aderthad. Models his voice back into something soft, something beautiful and pleasant.

Feels, for the first time since they set foot on these shores, like he rediscovers something of himself that he had thought lost to Alqualondë’s blood, to Losgar’s fire. To Morgoth’s violence.

He begins to hope again. It is a foolish notion, and he is wise enough to keep it to himself, for the most part. But the years pass, and they hold the siege. He and Maedhros spend long nights in Himring, and his brother is not the same, is ever balancing on the edge of madness, but he is still his brother.

He spends blissful days in Thargelion, too, and Caranthir is not the same either, not as they were in that long night of Mithrim, but they are brothers still, also.

The peace holds. The land grows less dreary. The Oath, for the time being, waits alongside them for its turn.

It will come eventually, Maglor knows. There is no escaping it. But perhaps, perhaps, perhaps—

Perhaps, despite all that suffering, they might yet lift into a second, hopeful crescendo, after all; might yet find a conclusion that does not leave everything torn open.

The Dagor Bragollach

The Gap is not the first place to go up in flames, when the dragon comes. Maglor knows this because he can sense it, heat like discordant notes setting the fabric of the world far beyond his land alight.

He stays long after the point where he should be ordering his forces to retreat. Throws his voice against the beasts and the flames, over and over, until the smoke chokes him, until he cannot breathe, or see, or move, caught firmly in the dragon’s thrall. Until he cannot raise his voice to order anything, and it is only his captain, disregarding authority, at last, that drags him along. Such an audacious thing is helped by the simple fact that Maglor can no longer protest; it is the only reason he makes it out of the flames at all.

It takes them almost a week to fight their way through to Himring. Maglor tries not to think of his brothers, his cousins, caught in the flames. He fails miserably.

Maedhros, when they finally make it, looks much the same—soot-stained, bloodied, and like he has not slept in days.

“I did not have word from you,” he says, once he and Maglor are alone in Maglor’s usual chambers. “I did not know—“

Maglor cannot meet his eyes. He sits down on the divan, too tired to care for the imbalance it puts between them—Maedhros looms over him either way, he might as well rest his shaking legs.

“It was—“ he tries, but his voice, too, fails, breaking and tearing through his throat.

He swallows, and gratefully takes the wine Maedhros hands him.

He is wordless too, his brother. There is nothing to be said for this ruin. Maglor needs no news of their brethren to know that the days of the siege are over.

And still. “Anything of the others?”

Maedhros sighs, and sits down beside him, pressing their shoulders together. Maglor does not deserve the comfort and leans into it regardless. If only he had been better, if only they had been prepared, if only—

“All alive, of our brothers, last I heard. Not so Aegnor and Angrod. Finrod lives—Celegorm and Curufin have removed to Nargothrond. No news from Barad Eithel yet.”

Maglor winces in sympathy. He needs not to see Maedhros’ face to guess at his concern.

He offers no consolation. He has none left.

Neither does Maedhros.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

In some ways, they learn to grow around each other once more, in those years after the fire.

They are different to what they were, and living in the same space both drives that home and makes it easier to accept. Makes it easier to find all those little pieces that are still the same—the way Maedhros sits up late, brooding over some paper or other; strategy and plans of war now, where it was statesmanship and indulgence, back in Tirion. How he says Maglor’s name, forces him to rest his voice until it is recovered, lets Maglor slip into all those open spaces beside him like he belongs there.

In other ways—well, they are not the same young Elves they used to be. Have not been in a long time. Maglor cannot bear the callous viciousness Maedhros carries, some days—the way he revels in battle, in vengeance, in making Orcs and Morgoth’s Men flee before his face.

Maglor has no qualms about fighting, about winning. But too often, Maedhros’ rage now reminds him of Celegorm, of their father.

He cannot bear the way his brother now only ever softens for Fingon, only ever changes his mind when it is Fingon who asks. Jealousy is an uncouth companion, and Maglor fails to shake him off, once he moves into Himring.

In turn, he knows that Maedhros cannot stand his despair, how Maglor talks of the Oath as fact. Maedhros, for all his sharp-drawn realism, would like to believe, still, that the Darkness they swore themselves to might not claim them, regardless of their success.

He is not the only one, among their brothers, and Maglor ever wants to laugh at their delusion. How simple to think that something that squeezes the air out of their lungs with looming malice could ever leave them any room for choice—how else, otherwise, could any of them explain what they have become?

And so, they parse out the blind spots, the spaces they carefully step around on the good days, and the ones they press into on the bad ones.

It is a far cry from what they once used to be. Maglor thinks this, more than anything, is something he will never be able to forgive.

And then, and then—hope. Wild, treacherous, terrible hope. A story as fantastical as the old tales they used to spin in Valinor to delight the masses, and yet, a more real, more tangible success than any of them have accomplished in centuries on these shores.

Fingon comes to Himring still grief-ridden and with fury in his shadow, their brothers’ most recent transgressions a wedge between them.

Maglor makes himself scarce, makes sure that Celegorm and Curufin do the same. It is no hard task; both are worn down and angry, isolated among even Himring’s people.

Not that Maglor has much sympathy. If they were not his brothers—

But they are. Any quarrel they may have with each other will stay between them. It is what Findekáno has never understood, and still does not, even now.

It is not Maglor’s problem. He only rejoins them when Maedhros starts talking of his plans, eyes bright and animated.

Maglor sees his own doubt mirrored on Fingon’s weary face. And yet—it has always been the two of them who were incapable of resisting Maedhros at his most persuasive.

For what it is worth, it is not like they have much choice. Sooner or later, the borrowed time they are living on will run out; their Oath will demand an answer. Already it is rearing its head, if Celegorm and Curufin’s actions are anything to go by.

“Everything will hinge on this,” he tells Fingon, one late night as Maedhros disappears from the war room at the behest of his captain. “If it fails—I am not sure he will be able to rally his hope and defiance once more.”

Fingon does not look at him, as he never does, these days. Maglor knows that to this day, his cousin has not forgiven him for leaving his Maedhros to his torment at Morgoth’s hands.

Some days, Maglor wants to hate him for it. Most days, it is nothing that he does not already condemn himself for.

“Indeed,” Fingon finally says, draining his wine. He, too, has been stripped to bone and marrow and sheer defiance—a brother, a sister, a father lost, already. The last brother disappeared. Maglor would pity him if he could. “So, we will win, because we must.”

Maglor smiles, a brittle thing. So they will win, because they must.

“As you say, your Highness.”

Fingon flinches at the title. Maglor’s good deed for the day is that he pretends not to notice.

In truth, it is good to have a goal again, something to work toward.

He and Maedhros fall truly back into step, then. They plan. They calculate supply lines alongside Caranthir, train their men alongside the rest of their brothers. Men and Dwarves join their ranks. Fingon recruits on his side of the continent.

There are setbacks. Neither Doriath nor Nargothrond will join, and the fights Maedhros has with Celegorm and Curufin behind closed doors turn more vicious with each iteration.

“Perhaps it would help if you did publicly condemn them for it,” Maglor says one night, the two of them up on the battlements. “It is not like they have any great force left to contribute.”

He needs not to clarify further. Maedhros shakes his head, not turning to meet Maglor’s eye. “We are family, for better or for worse. Any conflict, we solve between ourselves—I will not give Thingol the satisfaction of publicly humiliating my siblings for his sake, no matter how much I cannot stand the sight of them myself.”

“Not even if it will win us the war?”

“If we turn on each other, we have already lost, Laurë; surely, you must know this by now.”

Maglor does. He leans against Maedhros’ side and fixes his eyes northward, wondering if one day, they will come to regret this, too.

The battle goes sideways from the start, their forces delayed and undisciplined.

They arrive late, only to find that Fingon’s own host has already attacked. They adjust. Fingon’s force is much larger than expected, and it takes them some time to recognise Turgon and his people amidst the frenzy.

They do not have much time to revel in the unexpected hope, the dragons and beasts swarming the field. Vengeance burns bright in Maglor’s blood then; in spite of it, he sticks close to Maedhros’ right, too aware of every one of Morgoth’s forces being bent on keeping their and Fingon’s host separated.

He does not see the betrayal coming.

He notes the chaos breaking out in the rearguard, notes their lines breaking, their forces scattering. Sees groups of unfamiliar Men assail their ranks, and oh, Maglor knows of betrayal, but in that moment, he thinks that he understands his father, at last, the all-consuming rage that could drive anyone to frothing, vicious madness.

When Uldor appears beside Maedhros, Maglor moves without thinking, without deliberation. His voice snaps and slashes across the field, already hewing routes of escape, but this—this is personal. He can see in Uldor’s face the purpose, the single-minded goal—the aim for Maedhros, and Maedhros only.

Maglor has spent years, countless, terrible years failing his brother, over and over and over.

No more.

He lets Uldor run into his sword, relishes in the shock that washes across his face. Buries the blade deeper, pushes in closer; leans in, close, close, and watches in satisfaction as, in increments, the purpose leaves Uldor’s face, until there is only horror left.

And still.

“You may kill me, proud Elfling,” Uldor heaves, his knees buckling. “But you will still lose all that you hold dear. And you will think of me, when you do.”

Maglor screams, and twists his sword. He leaves Uldor on the battlefield. It is not such an easy thing to do the same with his words.

Maglor had known that a defeat would be devastating.

When the news of Fingon’s death reaches them, he knows that he had no idea, in truth, what was coming for them.

Maedhros stares at the messenger, and it is like seeing the dissolution of a person in real time. Is like seeing all that hope, all that defiance, all that stubborn, white-knuckled refusal to give up slide right off his brother, leaving behind nothing of substance.

Maedhros turns, without a word, and disappears into his rooms.

Maglor knows, then, that this is the end. He will not admit it—not yet, not quite yet—but looking back on it, he knows.

“There was nothing left of him,” the messenger had said, and truly, there was nothing left. Not of either of them, after that.

Prelude to Doriath

Little changes, in the following years.

Maedhros does not fade, which is a concern, for a while. Maglor sits beside him in his rooms as much as he can. Hums and talks sometimes, and, most often, does nothing but keep their shoulders pressed together and little else.

There is nothing he can do, he knows this. But he had known this once before, and he had made all the wrong choices, then. This time, there is no one left who will walk into hell to bring his brother back except himself.

He knows what it means. In the wake of everything, their House needs to be led. If Maedhros does not—cannot—it should be on Maglor.

Maglor refuses. Refuses Caranthir’s imploring questions, the twins’ accusing eyes.

Let Celegorm lead. What, after all, is there left to ruin?

When Celegorm does as expected, Maglor feels no surprise. Feels, in truth, not much aversion.

They still have an Oath to fulfil, and already the twins and Caranthir have spoken for it. He cannot let them go alone, cannot lose any of his brothers.

And, at last, they need—something. If they succeed, perhaps it will raise Maedhros from his grief.

It is a wrong thing to do, Maglor knows this. But then, oh then—what choice do they have? Ever, since the beginning, what choice do they have?

None, and none, and none. Maglor knows the weight of words, the shape of a promise. And so, Celegorm calls; and so, Maglor answers.

Chapter End Notes

If you're thinking: Mona, this feels so much longer than the rest! He's a bard. Let him yap (you can still hear me despairing in the background, if you listen closely...)

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Valinor

Maedhros’ childhood and youth are blissful ones.

Firstborn to parents who adore him, the first grandchild to a grandfather who wants nothing more than a growing family. Elder brother to a sibling born not too long after him, just long enough that he gets to dote and protect him. Elder brother to more siblings, to cousins and a whole brood of children that all, too, adore him.

That he adores in turn, and back in those blissful days, there was yet little strife, no bitterness. They spend their days roaming the forests surrounding Tirion, spend summer days at Alqualondë, spend late nights at festivals in Tirion’s glittering streets. And when they are not, his parents take them across the continent, to dark, vicious seas and into deep caves, atop swindling mountains and beneath star-struck skies.

He spends his youth in his father’s forge, his mother’s workshop. In Aulë’s halls, and in Finwë’s palace, and swept up in the rush of the Valar’s celebrations, ever adored as Fëanáro’s eldest, his brightest, the most beautiful child in all of Aman.

His mother named him such, and so it must be true. His brothers after him are only ever more proof of such a thing—the most skilled in song; the one chosen for Oromë’s hunt; the mathematical prodigy; the most skilled second to only their father, and ever on.

He grows up in bliss and peace, and he is not ignorant of the tension between his father and his uncles, but back then, it matters little. It only ever seems like a small thing, a counterweight, because there has to be one thing, at least, that is not utterly perfect.

Perhaps he would have valued it more, if he knew what was to come.

He grows, whip-smart and well-spoken. Finwë takes him to court and along to meetings with friends and adversaries, and Maedhros loves it—the word games, the subtlety, the strategy and thought and cunning that goes into all of it.

He knows his brothers think it dry, but he has never once lost an argument against any of them. It is hardly his fault that they fail to see the connection.

He still spends much time in his mother’s workshop, watching her work, sculpting alongside her occasionally. He does not have her outstanding talent, but he enjoys the process and peace of it.

Time that is not dedicated to his family, he spends increasingly with Findekáno. Findekáno, who can ever be found in the stables, and who will coax Maedhros out of whatever library he has holed up in. Findekáno, who will drag him back into the forest, race him across golden fields, push him into cold forest lakes, his touch ever lingering.

Maedhros learns of love, then, how it burns. He is no stranger to fire and heat, but it takes a year until he lets himself fall into it, into Findekáno’s laughing eyes and waiting hands.

This, too, is bliss, even as by then, things around them seem to darken.

Ever his father seems to grow angrier, more bitter. Behind the doors of their home, they get into fights increasingly often, Maedhros’ own temper slow to kindle but bright to burn.

And oh, Fëanáro knows how to kindle it. Where Nerdanel will purse her lips and leave the room, and where his brothers will try their best to avoid the confrontation, Maedhros can never quite stand to do the same. He knows his father, knows how fierce and all-encompassing that love can be; knows that, at the root of it all, this, too, is about love. He cannot just stand by and watch Fëanáro break things out of sheer stubborn pride.

So, they fight. So, it changes little. His father’s descent seems as steady as it seems inevitable, and all Maedhros can do is make sure to have his own space to retreat to, to have his brothers over regularly, to keep good relationships with their uncles, aunts, and cousins.

It is a balancing act, one that he manages for much longer than he should, by any right. Because the truth is, too—

Well, the truth is that it is never a question of loyalty. He and Fëanáro may disagree, they may fight, may not speak for days on end until their tempers cool. But at the end of it all—at the end of it all, they are family. Have been for rolling, endless centuries, and there is no version of this in which Maedhros would choose anyone, anyone at all, above his parents and his brothers.

Exile

So, of course, he joins his father in exile. His father goes; his grandfather does; none of his brothers truly contemplate staying behind.

Maedhros, deep down, has an irrational hope that it might help, that some distance from Tirion and its endless games of politics will get his father to focus on something else again.

Deep, deep down, he knows it to be a lost cause. His father, whenever he finds something, anything, is like a dog with a bone until its resolution. All of Finwë’s children and grandchildren have this in common, and Fëanáro and Maedhros perhaps most of all.

There is little else he can do. Findekáno asks him to, eyes dark and angry as his own father looms like a shadow across his shoulder, that last hour they see each other in a backstreet of dimly-lit Tirion.

A goodbye, they both know, and yet neither of them wants to admit it. Maedhros’ chest feels tight. He keeps his chin raised.

“You would not do anything other,” he says, daring Findekáno to contradict him.

Findekáno scoffs. “Of course, I would not. And yet, my father would never put me into such a situation.”

“Would he not? Is he not doing so already?”

“He was not the one—“

“No, he is not,” Maedhros agrees, but his voice is sharp. “And yet your father cannot exactly claim innocence in all this either, can he? Melkor’s lies spread among us all, after all.”

“It was not my father who raised his weapon first. If he had been, we would not even be standing here, would we, Russandol?”

They would not. There is no use in claiming otherwise, and they both know it.

There is nothing else to say; any promise would ring false, any attempt to soften the blow of it come out as cowardice.

They part. Maedhros lets his anger move him onwards, lets him settle into Formenos, make the most of it.

There will be endless time to set things right, if such is their fate. And if not—well, if not, they will learn to live with that, too. They always knew that theirs was a precarious relationship, at best.

Maedhros never quite gets himself to truly believe that.

They are twelve long years, at Formenos. He writes countless letters that he ends up feeding to the fire, his own pride too sharp-edged to let him send any of them.

He knows without knowing that Findekáno’s experience is most likely similar—the worst thing, after all, about all this is that it hurts them both the same. That they know this. That it does not, cannot change anything.

When the darkness comes, Findekáno is still the first thought on Maedhros’ mind.

Whether it is the same everywhere in Aman. Whether Findekáno is safe. Whether Maedhros will see him again.

It spurs him on, makes the anger boil and spit within him as he has to drag his brothers away from their grandfather’s mutilated body, as worry for their father sits like a vicious beast in his neck, driving them forward, toward Tirion.

The white city upon its hill is wrapped in darkness, too. The torches and shadows cut everything stark and imposing, and Maedhros keeps his brothers together, makes them search for Fëanáro, for their cousins, their family. Refuses to think about what he will do if he finds any of them with their innards smeared across white marble.  

He finds Findekáno first, like a moth drawn to flame. Whatever anger lay between them dissolves in the darkness, and Maedhros pulls him close, almost choking on the relief.

It is a short-lived thing, but it is relief, nonetheless.

“Is it true?” Findekáno asks, pulling back. His face is fierce and furious. “Is Finwë—“

Maedhros immediately wants to pull him close again, hold him against himself, shield him from the upheaval around them. Never has Findekáno tolerated such a thing, not even as a child; Maedhros does not try to do it now.

“Yes,” he says, swallows. “How have you news of it already? Does my father know?”

Findekáno’s expression twists at the mention of Fëanáro, but it is pity, not anger. Maedhros feels like everything around them is shaking apart, and there is no way for him to hold on to any of it.

Fury washes through him anew at the cruel, pointless unfairness of it all. Is it not enough what has been made of his father, these last few years? Is it not enough that ever there was bound to be strife between their families—now Finwë, the one they could all agree to love no matter each of their shortcomings, should also be taken from them?

“Russandol—“

Whatever Findekáno is about to say is cut short as the crowd around them falls silent. In the square ahead, Maedhros finally finds his father—or, perhaps rather, what is left of him.

Maedhros has seen his father in many states; blissfully happy, most often when he was still young. Focused on his work, his eyes bright with the pleasure of invention. Angry and bitter, cruel in words and deeds, even against his own family, too often in recent years.

Grieved, too, Maedhros has seen him before. None of it has ever been like this, like someone had taken his father and cracked him open alongside Finwë, all tender, ugly parts exposed to the unforgiving darkness.

“I am sorry, Russo,” Findekáno says, as if he sees it too. Maedhros nods, swallows; brushes his mouth against Findekáno’s temple and then goes to join his father, the fire in his own blood finding its kindling on Fëanáro’s face.

Much like Makalaurë, Maedhros knows the meaning and weight of words. Finwë, after all, had taught him well.

Joining his father in his Oath is a deliberate choice, perhaps more so than for any of his brothers.

He will have vengeance. He will reclaim what was stolen, as is their right; as might yet keep his father from succumbing to his howling grief as Fëanáro’s mother did. They will leave this land and its darkness, and whatever they will find on the hither shores will perhaps not be easier, but it will be theirs. Maedhros believes this; knows, sees, how many others do, too.

It makes it easy to dismiss Findekáno’s horror at the Oath, to disregard Findaráto’s watchful eyes as they make for Alqualondë. They will leave, because there is nothing to stay for. They will do what they must to achieve it. He is right beside Fëanáro when his father raises his sword, and it feels just, feels righteous, the blood that stains the shore. Feels like finally there is something to channel all that bristling fury into, Finwë’s dark eyes and his brothers’ terrified, pale faces running before his mind’s eye, over and over and over.

Maedhros comes to, in the aftermath, Findekáno across from him. There is blood on Findekáno’s face, a stark, crimson streak across his cheekbone. Maedhros raises his hand to it, and Findekáno flinches as if struck.

They stare at each other, Maedhros’ heartbeat loud in his ears. The air smells of salt and iron.

“Come,” Maedhros finally says, sheathing his sword. “We must go on.”

Findekáno follows. Maedhros has a sense, a fleeting touch in the back of his mind, that this, this is the moment that one day will haunt him like no other.

The truth of the matter is that Maedhros’ temper has ever burnt as bright as his father’s, but never as long. By the time they disembark on the new continent, the intermittent days have swept away his rage, and left only nauseous horror behind.

He had known what he was doing; they all had. There is but one path open to them, onward and forward.

He still wants his vengeance, his redress. Finwë still lies dead, and their father still howls and raves, half-mad with grief. Maedhros can merely think more clearly now, can see the beginning and end of the path that they are on, Mandos’ Doom echoing in their wake.

Maedhros refuses the torch, after his father laughs at his question, fell and fey-- Now what ships and rowers will you spare to return, and whom shall they bear hither first? Fingon the valiant?

His father’s eyes flash, but Maedhros is well-versed in his father’s anger. It is his own, after all—no matter what they do to each other, there will always be this.

And so he watches, silent and heavy, as the boats go up in flames. Thinks of Findekáno, left behind, the promises they never spoke now shattered between them.

As the flames dance, he wonders if perhaps it is for the best. Unlike them, Findekáno and his family may yet find forgiveness.

He cannot bring himself to believe that a mercy, even now. Cannot think of Tirion as anything other than crimson-red treason against them all.

This is the point where the screaming starts. This is the point where everything falls apart.

Early Beleriand

He refuses to let Fëanor see Amrod. He makes sure Amras eats and sleeps. He lets Celegorm lead the main host and stays close to their father, the only one with even remotely a chance to stop him if it should become necessary.

Not that he has done a great job at it, and he keeps replaying the scene—the screams, the smoke, the limp, heavy body in his arms. The red, blistering skin. Keeps thinking of the boats, the Teleri’s greatest joy; thinks of the rest of their family, abandoned to their fate.

He cannot change the past. He fails at changing anything else, either. They defeat the Orcs, and he spends mere moments re-ordering their people, but by the time he turns back, his father is gone.

Another victim to fire, and they repeat their Oath at his behest, as he lies dying. They will avenge him—what else could they possibly do? As he has to drag Curufin away from the scattering ashes, his brother’s arms burnt from clinging to their father’s remains in a twisted mirror of the burn marks on Maedhros’ own arms, from saving their brother’s life, Maedhros wonders just how much more he will be made to lose to darkness and flames.

For all intents and purposes, the responsibility should not threaten to crush him alive in the aftermath. Their father had not been of sound mind since Finwë’s death—longer, even, if one were to consider those years in Formenos, and what led up to them.

And yet; it is Maedhros, now, that his brothers look to. That Amras expects to fix his twin, that their people expect to lead, that Celegorm and Curufin test themselves against, the moment they get the chance.

He still thinks of Fingon, abandoned and furious. Thinks of their mother, how she had refused to say farewell to any of them. Thinks of his father, once ever fierce but joyful, demanding but full of love, laying the same Oath on them once more, even as he must have seen, much like Maedhros, that doom was already nipping at their heels with every step they took.

When Morgoth’s request for parley comes, Maedhros knows it to be a trap. Knows, too, in some deeply buried corner of his mind, that he stands no chance even as he takes more men than he agreed to.

Later, he will never be quite able to tell what drove him to do it—stubbornness, perhaps; the same furious self-righteousness that Fëanor had shown when he pursued Morgoth’s host. If his father can do it, so can he. Except.

Except that Maedhros does not pay with his life. It is a lesson hard-learned, that he should not aim to imitate his father in anything.

Beyond those first few days in the pits of Angband, Maedhros has no concept of time. Days of torment lie behind and ahead of him. Sometimes, no one comes to see him for days on end; others, he is sure the torture must stretch through night after night after night.

It takes what feels like aeons, but they tire of him eventually. At first, the mountain peak is almost a relief. At first, he can still curl his fingers around the manacle, hold himself up; can, every once in a while, lunge around to hold on with his left hand, keep the weight off his wrist.

It is short-lived relief. The wind is cold up here, and Maedhros is weakened from endless nights in Morgoth’s dungeons. Every part of his body hurts. Rain and hail make him shiver against the rough, unforgiving stone.

No one hears him up here. It is the only mercy he finds for a long time.

At first, he thinks Fingon another nightmare, another hallucination produced by Morgoth or his lieutenant.

When he understands that it is real, that it is Fingon’s voice meeting him up on the accursed mountain—when he understands, it is almost worse. A wretched, forsaken place, in a wretched, forsaken land; the thought that their betrayal may have yet spared his most beloved cousin from this fate had been the only comfort left to him.

It crumbles, with Fingon’s gold-plaited braids gleaming far below, in the newly risen light in the sky.

He begs for death. Is not granted this either, and he might have known; might have known the mockery of being saved for what it is, if he was not so glad to see Fingon’s face once more.

The knife sawing through skin and sinew and bone is terrifyingly real. When darkness claims him, Maedhros gladly lets it, Fingon like a pillar against him.

The Abdication

Recovery is sheer frustration. Maedhros misses the days when he barely knew what was happening to him—snatches of time, of faces, of sensation. There was pain, yes, but there was blissful ignorance, too.

He gets better. He refuses to do anything but, refuses to carry Morgoth under his skin now that he has escaped, but it is an exercise in patience that he does not have.

He makes up for it with stubbornness, but he can see the horror on his brothers’ faces, can hear them whisper when they think him asleep. He knows Maglor’s guilt is eating him alive, and he no longer finds the words to lighten its weight.

Fingon rarely leaves his side. There is betrayal buried deep in the black of his eyes, too, and Maedhros lets it. They do not speak of Alqualondë. They do not speak of Losgar. They do not speak of the Ice. Fingon’s eyes follow Amrod’s scarred face through the room, and Maedhros does not speak of how the scars on his arms are a match from the same fire, not something else he brought home from Angband.

What use is telling Fingon of his inaction? It changes little; Fingon is marked by his own scars, carrying an endless desert of ice now right beneath his breastbone.

Fire and ice—Maglor would, once, have scoffed at the triteness of the metaphor. Maedhros cannot help but think it apt, nonetheless—ever complementary; never quite made to find peace alongside each other.

Recovery is making an art form out of stubborn refusal to give up, and so, recover he does. He talks to his brothers until they no longer flinch at his address. He talks to Fingon until they can look each other in the eye for longer than a blink.

He eats, and does his exercises, and once his healers and his family are gone, he pushes out of bed and repeats them until he is shaking and nauseous with exhaustion.

More often than not, Fingon finds him so. He never tells Maedhros to take it slow, his dark eyes a mixture of understanding and guilt that Maedhros, in his less gracious moments, hates more than if he had been pitied.

He swallows it, most of the time. They swallow a lot of things, these days.

It is the only thing to get them through, truth be told. And even then, they barely do.

The first time Fingolfin comes to see him, Maedhros expects a lot of things.

He expects anger. Expects accusations, perhaps even pride, and scorn, a demand for explanation for why his eldest keeps dooming himself for Maedhros’ sake.

He is not keen to answer any of those questions. Is not sure he could convincingly appear trite enough to fool his uncle, when they have once known each other well, spending endless days in Finwë’s court over treatises and theoretical documents.

In retrospect, it all seems ludicrous. What stakes had there been, in blissful Tirion? None and none; like children they had been, playing pretend.

All this is to say that Maedhros expects a lot of things. He does not expect the grief that bows Nolofinwë’s shoulders, that darkens his eyes.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Fingolfin says, and he looks at Maedhros, but sees Fëanor, Maedhros can tell.

“I am, too,” he says, even as it is a lie. He is sorry for what became of his father; he had too many years of solitude and reflection to be sorry that it did not go further.

But Fingolfin had lost his own father, too. It would be easy to forget that—had been, in fact. But now, here they sit, an accumulation of bitter grief festering between them.

Now, it is only them left to see this through to its bitter end. Maedhros is not fool enough to believe it a kinder outcome, but perhaps a less explosive one, one that might yet have hope of not tearing their family apart for good. What is left of it, anyway.

“I am sorry too for not coming sooner to see you,” Fingolfin says, settling into the chair beside Maedhros’ bed that Fingon had vacated not long ago.

Fingolfin, too, looks worn thin and weary, much like his son. He meets Maedhros’ eyes without flinching, though, and Maedhros can see it, then—someone who has led the main host of their people across the Ice and through death, through doom and beyond endurance, and come out on the other side of it, still kind enough not to kill Maedhros where he sits.

It would be simple, too; some strength Maedhros may have regained, but it is merely enough to have a clear mind, the run of his room, and enough of a careful mask to stop his brothers from fleeing from the sight of him.

Maedhros sighs, and smiles. “Uncle,” he says, conviction blooming certain within his chest. “Have you yet thought about the future of our people?”

He does not tell his brothers. Does not tell Fingon either, and swears Fingolfin to secrecy as they plan—the one demand he sets. He can tell that Fingolfin dislikes it, but he is too much of a strategist, as Maedhros well knows, to let all this fail for the mere principle of the matter.

It takes Maedhros another year to regain enough strength to go through with it. To wield a sword again left-handed, to stand tall and ignore the pain in his shoulder without a grimace. To order his brothers and people, so that they know, once more, that his authority is not to be questioned.

In some ways, it is easier. He is not the same naive son who felt like he would buckle under the weight of responsibility. Who went to a parley knowing he would be overwhelmed, incapable of imagining the consequence of such a thing.

Maedhros has learnt, now. He knows the stakes. Knows that his brothers and people can see it in his face, some of them still failing not to flinch from the ruin that Morgoth has made of him.

Not quite a ruin, yet; it is active, gruelling work to sculpt himself back into being any kind of person at all, but sculpting, Maedhros does.

His mother had taught him well, after all.

So, when he stands before the gathered hosts of their divided camps, he stands tall. He knows what is to come, the accusations of betrayal from his brothers and Fingon both—for keeping it secret, for not asking counsel, for such a decision in the first place.

He knows why he does it, though. The strategic value, to assuage the Nolofinwëan host. The personal one to their familial relationships, even if between some of them, there will never be peace again—not in this life, at least. The necessity of it all, if they want to stand even a sliver of a chance against Morgoth.

And a mere sliver it is, Maedhros knows this better than any of them. But he counts on that sliver, he must. And so he says, voice certain and unwavering, “I have decided to relinquish the crown to Nolofinwë, the rightful heir in the wake of my father’s death. He shall be High King of the Noldor in this land, and lead us in our endeavour against the dark enemy. I trust fully that he will lead us well.”

He watches as, around them, chaos breaks out. His brothers are yelling, and Fingon is staring at him from across the clearing. Fingolfin is beset by his own people, distrust and bafflement running through their ranks.

None of them knows what is to come, Maedhros thinks, biting his tongue. They all think they do, Tirion’s darkness, flames and Ice and Mandos’ Doom, clinging to them like shadows, making them recklessly bold in their conviction that surely, surely the worst now lies behind them.

And yet, none of them know, truly, of the ruin that yet awaits them. Maedhros is long past hope, and yet he wishes that it may yet take them a while, until they, too, have to find out.

The Long Peace

He builds up Himring from the ground. He fortifies it, builds a shelter for their people. He makes sure his brothers do the same, that they thrive, that they are as safe as they can be.

He keeps close contact with Fingolfin, ever a balancing act of diplomacy that does not seem like he wants to take influence.

Fingon has not spoken to him since he removed east. Maedhros tells himself that it is for the best—must be—and finds himself looking west from Himring’s battlements more often than he can explain in any rational way.

He takes Maglor along to Fingolfin’s great feast. Those are joyful days, splendid and defiantly hopeful, so much so that Maedhros is caught up in it all.

He and Fingon reconcile, at last, pressed together by their dancing people by chance, and Maedhros’ inability to deny Fingon’s sharply smiling request for a dance.

“Will you avoid me for another decade?” Fingon murmurs into his ear as they move, and Maedhros should, he should.

Instead, he bows his head, whispers back, “Would you let me, if I tried? Even if I admit to you now that it makes me feel like I was young, and stupid, and yearning again?”

Fingon laughs, eyes warm and sharp like a summer storm. “What do you think?” he asks, and in the end, it is as simple as that.

Maedhros is too selfishly glad for it to do anything to sabotage it. What use, after all, in pre-emptive misery? He knows what is to come; he shall be damned thrice over if he lets Morgoth ruin what joy can be found before the inevitable conclusion.

They establish the siege. It holds. Maedhros still does not dare to hope, but year after year passes, and that, at least, is something.

It matters not that he knows what they have all become, what they are hurling toward; they will have lost already and worse if they let it crush their defiance in advance, and so, he does not. He meets Fingon, and rides out with Maglor, with Finrod, with the Men and Elves and Dwarves they meet. He attends Fingolfin’s court, and hosts feasts in Himring’s great hall. He makes it a sport to hunt Orcs and fell creatures until the mere sight of his face makes them flee before him.

Those are joyful years, even as the darkness lurks. Maedhros holds onto each one of those moments as tightly as he can, and does not look at the way they keep slipping through his fingers regardless, piece after inevitable piece.

The Dagor Bragollach

Morgoth’s retribution, when it comes, is as devastating as Maedhros always knew it would be. He stands on Himring’s highest tower and watches as every place filled with people he loves gets hit at once—from Barad Eithel over Dorthonion to Himlad, to the Gap and up to Mount Rerir.

The North burns, and Orcs fall upon Himring until Maedhros has no time left to worry for his family. To do so would mean death, and so he fights, and fights, and fights. Makes sure his fortress holds, and grits his teeth against the urge to ride out, to send messengers, to do anything other than what he must.

Himring holds, and yet, the cost is astronomical. Dorthonion gone, most of their strongholds fallen, except for Himring and Barad Eithel.

Barad Eithel, which no longer harbours a king. The tale of Fingolfin’s last duel comes weeks after the battle itself, and slams into them all the harder for it.

Maedhros rides west as soon as he can. Swears his fealty anew to the Nolofinwëan High King in public, and weathers Fingon’s grief and rage in private.

What did you expect? he never says. What do you think where else this will yet lead us?

He knows Fingon can read it on his face, all the same. He is no longer sure for whom it is a kindness, that neither of them says it out loud.

The accusations follow, in wine-drunk hours of morning, too little sleep ever having made Fingon irritable.

It used to be endearing. Nowadays, it merely means that those things they swallow back otherwise will finally meet the air, from Losgar over those long months at Mithrim’s shores, up to the times that Fingolfin had called them to arms, and they had not hearkened.

Maedhros has no justifications, and so he offers none. Fingon eventually burns himself out, and by the time Maedhros returns east, they have fallen back into their careful equilibrium of clinging to each other, and ever factoring out all those things that could yet shatter them to pieces.

They have grown well-skilled at it. Maedhros can never tell if this will not just be another weight on the scale of their ruin.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

The story of Beren and Lúthien’s success reaches Maedhros on the back of the report of his brothers’ disgrace.

He rages for days, decimating practice dummies on the training grounds.

They have fallen far from grace, it is no secret. Ever seem Celegorm and Curufin to make it their personal goal to underscore it, though, and Maedhros—

Well. He could punish them publicly, humiliate them, disavow them. It is not like he has not fury enough, like he would lack the support from Maglor and Fingon alike.

It is not what they do, though. To abandon the loyalty of family would be to abandon what remains to them utterly, and really, what would it change, at last?

The Oath—oh, Maedhros knows they all see it differently. He never seems to be able to quite make up his own mind on it. He knows Celegorm is convinced it holds no power over him, and yet he has turned into a beast the likes of which he would not have deigned to hunt, in happier days. Maglor is convinced it has powers unbound, and yet it has been years since any of them have been truly driven by it.

The truth, most likely, lies somewhere in the middle. Maedhros can feel it, every once in a while. Other times, looking back on Angband, and Alqualondë, and what is yet to come, he knows that it is nothing but himself making choice after choice after choice.

He cannot tell which truth he finds worse. Only knows that, once he hears of Beren and Lúthien’s success, something so terribly close to hope stirs within his chest, it is much more comforting to believe that it is, in fact, anything other than that.

To convince Fingon is a simple matter. Ever since his father’s death, has he been both desperate for hope and eager for a plan. It is not like there are many roads left to them, either.

Between them, they draw up plans of strategy, of supply lines, of distribution of forces. They have ever worked well together, and Maedhros revels in it, in those years, the easy intimacy and comfort they fall back into, in spite of everything.

He ignores the threat of failure that looms over everything. He knows Fingon does, too. The truth is that they are impatient with it, eager, giddy. They are desperate too, Morgoth’s advances since the Bragollach only ever growing more devastating.

They forge alliances. They deal with the fact of those who only agree to march under Fingon’s banner; do not speak of those who refuse their call altogether for the actions of Maedhros’ brothers.

They do not speak of Turgon.

Years of planning fly by, and Maedhros has long since been past hope, but—

But. He thinks of all their plans, of the luck they have had, every once in a while, no matter the Valar’s proclamation. Thinks of an eagle coming at Fingon’s behest, and for Fingolfin’s body. Thinks of how it would feel, how it would truly feel, to see Angband’s pits torn open. To hold his father’s jewels once more.

He refuses to contemplate the alternative.

This, in the end, is ever Maedhros’ greatest mistake.

He knows from the moment dawn breaks that things are wrong. They suffer delay after delay. It is too much to be a mere coincidence, and yet, Maedhros presses on, because they cannot leave Fingon to it.

Above everything, he cannot yet again abandon Fingon to his fate.

The sentimentality of it is his second mistake. When all is said and done, Uldor may not have slain him, but he has recognised Maedhros’ greatest weakness, and he made use of it, succeeded at it.

When they reach the battlefield, the fight is already raging. This is the second sign that something has gone wrong, but there is nothing for it but to join the fray.

It does not take long until the betrayal reveals itself. Takes not long until they need to retreat, and everything inside of Maedhros is revolting against the idea of abandoning Fingon to his fate, but what else is there to do? He cannot sacrifice his people, his brothers, for the stubborn, desperate idea that he might yet save Fingon, out of everyone.

Always, it comes down to this. Always, Maedhros must choose. Always, it is Fingon who pays the price.

When, days later, a messenger brings him news of the High King’s death, Maedhros long-since knows. He sits in the tent they have thrown up in the woods south of Doriath. He listens to the news. He lets Maglor move around him. He stares at the canvas.

This is what you get, a voice murmurs in the back of his head. This is what you get for thinking that hope may yet grace you with its favour.

It sounds a lot like his father. Or perhaps, it sounds like Sauron. Truth be told, Maedhros has not been able to tell the difference in a very long time.

There is nothing to be said in the aftermath.

He does not fade because Maglor refuses to let him. There is irony in how the loyalty to his family has ever kept him from following Fingon, but Maedhros can no longer be bothered to find the humour in such a thing.

Amon Ereb is familiar as it is strange. The times he has visited the twins in their refuge down south have been few, and now, he rarely leaves his rooms.

The longer he stays there, the heavier the guilt becomes. He can see it in Amrod’s eyes, the silent accusation, the resentment. Cannot imagine how it must feel, after the things only the two of them had shared, white-knuckled recovery as they clawed their way back to something akin to living, only to watch Maedhros crumple before his eyes.

He tries, some days. Joins his brothers for meals, for conversations, painfully avoiding the state of Beleriand, or their resources, or the future. Then he will look at Caranthir and remember the traitor. He will look at Celegorm and see Finrod.

He will look at any of their people and hear the messenger’s words. There is no use in going back, my Lord. There is nothing left of any of them.

Prelude to Doriath

In a way, it is almost a relief when Celegorm finally takes charge.

In a way, Maedhros thinks, perhaps Celegorm had the right of it from the start; what foolishness, to believe them anything but doomed, anything but the monsters of this story.

Perhaps Maglor had the right of it, too. The Doom, the Oath, the inevitability of it all—no matter how often Maedhros had preached his own awareness of the hopelessness, had he not still thought they could win? That if only they held the siege, if only they defeated Morgoth, if only, if only, if only—

They had sworn an Oath. They had accepted their fate. They need to avenge their father, their grandfather, their family. They need to reclaim the Silmarils, lest all of this will have been for nothing.

Still, when Celegorm calls them together with ruthless determination in his eyes, Maedhros hesitates. There is no point in mindlessly attacking Doriath; no point in doing Morgoth’s work for him, no matter how far they have fallen.

Celegorm is reluctant to yield, but they attempt diplomacy first, or at least they call their letter that. Maedhros no longer has it within himself to put in true effort; what, after all, does this child know? Shielded beyond Doriath’s borders and in Ossiriand’s green peace, never once having faced the enemy that has been besetting his land?

They receive no answer. Amras, furious and fey, agrees to join his forces to Celegorm’s quest.

“What else is there, Nelyo?” Maglor asks, his tired face turned towards the stars. It has been a long time since he looked at them with anything other than resentment. “We swore an Oath; we need to reclaim those accursed stones. So Doriath or Angband it is, and we tried one of those, did we not?”

The mention slices deep like a knife. Maedhros grits his teeth and thinks, what does it matter? Fingon is dead already, so who is left to judge me, yet?

Celegorm calls. Their brothers cast their lot.

Maedhros knows the weight of words, knows, what a promise means. What it means to break it.

It is a deliberate choice, and yet—what choice is left to them, at last?

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I am sick of drawing this connection: there is no document 
of civilization that isn't also its ruins. Ask for rapture, get a god. 
—Natalie Eilbert

*

The fact of the matter is that it is no hard task to convince his brothers of the attack on Doriath.

Celegorm knows that they like to tell themselves otherwise, that Maedhros and Maglor like to look at him and Curufin, and think themselves better, more principled, less cruel.

Perhaps that is true. Celegorm no longer much cares for such a thing.

He cares that he calls for them, and they answer, all seven of them gathering once more at Amon Ereb. He calls for them, and they know why he does, and they come. They may tell themselves that they do it to keep him from worse things, to argue against him, to do whatever will weigh less heavily on their conscience, but in the end, it matters not.

In the end, they fight. Celegorm cares naught for the lies they have to tell themselves to get there.

He knows of them, of course—needs to, to manoeuvre each of them where he needs them to be.

They are hopeless, aimless. Most of their defiance, their illusions of nobility and righteousness, have been shattered and beaten into the mire alongside their kin at the Nirnaeth. Ever has Celegorm disdained Findekáno, Maedhros’ attachment to him. Now, the despair suits him well, the way Maedhros is all but pleading to be released from the same responsibility that had made him lead them all into ruin.

Celegorm can do that for him. He has known of their awaiting ruin from the very beginning, after all.

Still, of course, Maedhros resists. Talks of diplomacy and moderation, and Celegorm scoffs but indulges him. They write a letter. They receive no answer. It is as much of an argument as Maedhros can muster, and the rest is achieved easily with the simple fact that Maedhros would rather come along in some delusion of preventing worse than stick to his principles at the risk of letting Celegorm and Curufin run wild once more. Maedhros, like any of them, needs a goal; perhaps he does, most of all.

Maglor, too, is easy; ever convinced of the Oath’s power, much like Curufin if less proud of it. Their only difference is that, where Curufin embraces it, uses it, looks at what it makes them in the eye and bares his teeth as if his self-righteousness will save him from their doom, Maglor still thinks it an excuse, a shield. As if the deaths on their name weigh somehow less heavily, if one only sees themself as a blade, and not its wielder.

In the end, they all know themselves to be monsters, by then; it matters not how each of them has reached that conclusion.

They swore an Oath; they attempted the diplomatic route first. The boy-king in Doriath refuses, and so, what other choice do they have? Add to it the fact that Maglor cannot conceive of the twins as grown, even still, and would not let them go alone alongside Celegorm. That, above anything, he would never let Maedhros go on his own. And so, this, too, is a simple matter.

The twins are more difficult. Ever since the burning boats, they have kept their distance from the rest of them, save Maedhros only. But then, Amras has been furious ever since that same point in time. It has only been in recent years that said fury has sought outside targets, but it has. There is only so much injury and self-hatred a beast can endure before it turns against those outside itself; this, paired with the lack of alternatives, makes Amras not impossible to convince.

Where Amras goes, Amrod follows, and his resignation, his need for something to do, pushes him the rest of the way.

Which leaves Caranthir.

Caranthir, who would be impossible to convince, if not for his guilt. Uldor had not been his doing, not directly, but it may as well have been. Guilt, much like anger, is a poor adviser. Celegorm leans into it, the practicality of it, the chance of hope. So, too, Caranthir eventually yields, teeth grit and eyes hard, but yielding, nonetheless.

And Celegorm? Well, Celegorm simply wants a fight, wants revenge, wants to see his debts repaid. He wants to tear that godforsaken forest apart piece by piece, one step further on the inescapable road to their inevitable end.

He knows of monsters, after all. Knows how to speak their tongue, how to coax them along. His brothers, by then, are hardly any different.

Celegorm wants it all to end. He cares little, now, for how they will achieve such a thing.

Of course, it is not as simple as that.

They sit together often, in the weeks leading up to it.

“Is an outright attack truly the only option?” Maglor asks, studying the maps.

It is not a stupid question. Their forces are diminished, and they only have a vague idea of what kind of forces Dior still has at his disposal.

“Melian may have withdrawn her power, but we do not know what other enchantments still rest on the forest. I would rather not risk the capture of any of us, attempting to sneak into Menegroth’s halls,” Celegorm says.

Maedhros cuts him a sharp glance, his lips curling. “Yes, I am sure a city of caves pulls up rather unpleasant memories for you, does it not?”

Sometimes Celegorm forgets that cruelty now comes easily to all of them. Forgets that a part of him, one deeply buried and long gone, still looks at Maedhros and thinks of safety, rather than cold, indifferent loathing.

“Caves, pits of Angband—you would know all about that, would you not?” he counters, smiling.

Maglor leaps to his feet, is stayed only by Maedhros’ hand.

They dissemble for the day. It goes like this, on and off, for weeks.

“Should we not wait? A better opportunity may yet present itself,” Caranthir says, days later.

Curufin pushes reports over to him, minute details of their stores. “It is winter, and Morgoth’s Orcs circle ever closer. Our hunts go poorer and poorer. Our people grow despondent. Shall we wait here atop this mountain until Morgoth slaughters us in our sleep?”

“It is not like the Silmaril will feed us, if we regain it,” Amras says, from where he stands behind Amrod, taking care of his hair.

“No,” Celegorm agrees, leaning forward. “But a people with no hope will not, either. We all know where this will lead if nothing changes. A Silmaril will not feed us, but it will be a symbol, a beacon. In ways, we need this more than yet another malnourished deer that tastes of Angband’s smoke.”

“If we do this,” Maedhros says, and he looks more alert than he has in months, the strategic part of his mind coming back to life, at last. “We do not need to turn it into slaughter. A show of power might be enough to bring Dior to reason.”

Celegorm nods. He doubts it, and he cares not for Maedhros’ inhibitions, but it is just as well. “This does not have to be Alqualondë. We know what we are doing, what our objective is. There is no need to shed any blood if only Dior gives us what is rightfully ours.”

Maglor hums, his fingers drumming against the table. “And if he does not?”

“Then we will fight.”

“Celegorm—“

“No. We can sit here and wait for our death. We can despair, let our House’s memory go to waste, betray our Oath and ourselves. Or we can act. Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords, dread nor danger, not Doom itself, we swore—or have we forgotten it?”

None of them speaks, each of them meeting Celegorm’s eyes—not yielding. Not protesting.

“There is no other way,” he says, knowing already that he has won. “You all know there is no other way. If there is—if there is any other plan that does not end with us just waiting, listless, for our end, then tell me now. Otherwise, we fight.”

No one speaks, still. He can see the conflict on their faces, but also the revulsion, the hatred for the idea of becoming this—apathetic, despondent. Letting Morgoth defeat them, after all.

Across the table, Amras meets his eyes. There is something harsh and knowing in his gaze, something terribly close to recognition.

“Then we fight,” he says. In the end, it is as simple as that.

In the weeks between, sometimes they will brush against old habits; Maglor humming in the kitchen, something their mother used to sing, Amras humming along until he catches himself.

Celegorm and Maedhros will spar, fierce and hard-eyed, until one of them stumbles and they find themselves laughing, before remembering, one of them leaving the grounds quickly.

Curufin and Caranthir will brood over reports and calculations, late into the night. Will set mugs of wine beside each other, wordless care, until one of them will say something—small, careless, vicious—that shatters the peace.

Amrod will sit beside Maedhros, both of them sleepless and comfortable once more in each other’s presence until despair finds one of them anew.

Those are the worst parts, what is most impossible to endure. The reminder of what they once were; what they lost; what no attack, no heirloom, no victory or spilt blood will return to them.

It would be easy to exploit, to appeal to each of their love for each other that somehow, despite everything, still runs like a current underneath.

There is no need, Celegorm tells himself. They would not still all be here if they were not already doing it to themselves.

It is a comforting thought. If it means that he does not have to cross that one last line, well; that is only for him to live with.

The actual preparations do not take long.

Maedhros, once the decision is made, sets himself to the task of sketching out their strategy—only in case it is needed, Tyelkormo; we will still attempt to keep the fighting to a minimum—and it becomes clear once more why he had led them, for so long. Celegorm can admit it easily enough.

They rally their people, combine their divided forces back into one host. Maglor will lead the cavalry, with only archers for the sake of battle in the dense forest. Maedhros will have the command. Celegorm, Curufin, and Caranthir will lead the vanguard on foot, with the twins once more bringing up the rear with their infantry, in the case of unexpected attacks out of the woods.

Maedhros does not tell them again to de-escalate, if possible. He still, despite everything, expects to be obeyed.

And, truth be told, it is not like Celegorm plans to do anything else. It is simply that he thinks their understanding of what warrants an outright attack is considerably different, these days.

Between himself and Maglor, their people do not hesitate to fall in line once more. It is part their skill, and part the truth of what Celegorm had said already—they are all desperate. They need hope, a goal, anything to break through the pervasive gloom that has settled over them since the Nirnaeth.

Celegorm knows better than to let himself be fooled. Hope has been precarious since the day they left Aman. It has only become clearer and clearer, each step of the way, that it would be a fool’s errand to hope for anything—victory, release, mercy.

There is nothing to win. Celegorm takes his place at the head of their troops and walks towards whatever awaits him.

They march up right to Menegroth’s gates under the blanket of night, along the routes that, according to Caranthir, the Dwarves used to take in days past.

The forest lies silent and gloomy around them. Even for winter, the sheer absence of sound and movement is unsettling, and Celegorm wonders if it is an effect of its abandonment by its rulers, or if it is a welcome to them, specifically.

The wide bridge into the city lies empty. The forest watches. At Maedhros’ order, their host halts, watching, waiting. Somewhere, Maglor’s captain blows their horn, and the sound reverberates through the forest, is thrown back at them, over and over. The cold is a bristling, tangible thing.

A single elf appears on the other side of the bridge, bearing Dior’s banner. “State your purpose,” he calls, and Celegorm wants to laugh.

Yet, he answers. “We merely want to reclaim what is ours, by right. No blood has to be shed in your forest, but we will not leave without our father’s heirloom.”

“Your answer you have received already. Nothing will be given up willingly to the fey sons, and you would do well to leave this forest as you came.”

Their people shift, insult running through the ranks. Celegorm bares his teeth, and knows the effect it has, even within the gloom.

“We want no fight,” he lies. “But we will have one, if you force us. I think your king’s mother would attest to that, if you could still ask her.”

Insult runs like a wave through the forest. “Nothing forces you but your own doom,” the herald announces, voice full of scorn. He turns and disappears back beyond the city gates, without another word.

For a moment, Celegorm wonders if he will have to be the one who has to push it; who has to, once again, outright break his promise to his brothers, for whatever worth such a thing still holds.

He will, if he must; he will not leave this city with Thingol’s heir alive, without the Silmaril in one of their hands.

The stone itself may mean naught to him, by now, but it is the principle of the matter. Is what it stands for, all that they have lost, given up, been denied.

He will, if he must. Their host shifts, breathes, uneasy.

A single arrow flies from beyond the trees, most likely an accident, a result of rage and nerves. It buries itself in the eye socket of Maedhros’ captain. A cry goes up, savage and angry—starts in the front, starts with Maedhros drawing his sword, and carries throughout their ranks, until their host strong of thousands is a heaving, furious beast.

Celegorm smiles. He charges. He will have victory, at last—one way or another.

The battle turns to chaos quickly, the ancient forest outside, and Menegroth’s winding staircases and deep caves inside making it impossible to keep any kind of ranks or order.

Their people are well-trained in warfare on uncommon ground, after years of Beleriand’s endless battles. So are Menegroth’s people, but they are unprepared, scattered, weakened. They are not led well by their inexperienced king and what little remains of their warriors of old. They are no force trained for centuries to withstand Morgoth himself on the very front lines at Angband’s gates.

Celegorm bares his teeth in scorn and slaughters his way through them, room after room, cave after cave. Beside him, Curufin fights. He hears Maedhros yelling orders, hears Maglor’s voice rise and fall with the waves of battle.

Reluctant they may have been, but Celegorm had always known that once the fight was upon them, they would rise to it. It is not in their nature, to do anything but.

Menegroth’s forces scatter before the onslaught, and yet—

They have the disadvantage of the terrain. Get turned around, get caught in traps and misdirection. The very forest seems to aid its inhabitants, and Celegorm would marvel at it if there was any wonder left in him.

He loses sight of his brothers, at some point, caught up in a duel with an elf who must be old, must be well-tested, for it takes Celegorm letting himself be disarmed, letting himself be pressed back, back, back, up against a wall, until he can sink the dagger, hidden strapped to his wrist, into the Elves’ jugular to finish their dance.

He kicks the Elf away from himself, takes back up his sword. Catches his breath, for only a moment, and then hears the scream, unmistakable and bone-rattlingly real.

He would recognise any of his brothers’ voices anywhere. It is not something he could extricate, even if he wanted to. He knows Caranthir’s voice; knows the furious anguish of it, the same noise that anything dying makes.

When he skids around the corner, it takes him a moment, two, three, to understand what he sees. To understand that he is too late already, his younger brother splayed upon the brown earth, eyes wide, his chest torn open.

Takes him longer, yet, to recognise Curufin fighting beside Caranthir’s unmoving body, one against three. One of the Elves he fights goes down; the movement reveals the other opponents, a woman and a man, and Celegorm knows, then, who they are.

Dior would be impossible to mistake for anyone other than his mother’s son. The silver-haired woman beside him, then, must be his wife.

They look like children, Celegorm thinks. Throws his knife, the moment he is sure Curufin will not step into its way, with all the precision his boiling, writhing fury can muster.

It lodges itself into the back of Nimloth’s neck, and she crumbles with a sound of horrified shock. Everything stops, Dior freezing. He looks from his wife to Celegorm, to Curufin, his fair features twisting into something terrible as reality sinks in.

It happens before Celegorm can understand it, can move from his spot by the entrance, before he can so much as yell a warning. The sword sinks clean and easy through Curufin’s gut; twists once, twice, until his brother makes a sound no more, falling, right beside Dior’s felled wife, beside their brother, already dead, dead, dead and gone.

They have lost so much, lost everything. And yet this is an anguish Celegorm has not known, that threatens, instantly and without any mercy, to swallow him whole, tear him asunder.

Celegorm’s vision is whiting out at the edges. He thought that he had known rage; that he had known what it meant to lose, anything, everything. That he knew grief, and how it hollows out your bones until there is nothing, nothing, nothing at all left of you.

He looks at his brothers on the muddy forest floor and lunges at Dior with more rage than reason, more savagery than skill.

Under different circumstances, it would have been a stupid thing to do. Celegorm is not fighting to survive, though; is not even fighting to win, nothing left that could be carried out of here that could ever be such a thing as victory.

As he and Dior clash against each other in the middle of the room, blades sinking into unguarded parts until they are one dying, crumbling creature, Celegorm at last admits that there never was. He had never walked into this forest, expecting to walk back out.

There is relief in that.

He smiles at Dior, twists his sword, and drags them closer together across their twin blades. “You could have prevented this,” he rasps, tips his head back, bares his throat.

Dior, beautiful and terrible as his mother, smiles back. “So did you.”

Celegorm snarls, pushes away. Crumbles to his knees and catches himself, just enough to see Curufin’s face, Caranthir’s beside him. Their eyes are empty already; Celegorm falls between them, and embraces the pain that crests, and crests, and crests.

He knows the weight of a life, what it means to take it. This is no different from what he had known from the very beginning.

The forest floor is cool beneath him, embracing him as his blood seeps into the rich, ancient earth. Celegorm closes his eyes, thinks of what he leaves behind; feels, briefly but with vehemence, pity for the brothers that will find them such. Feels gladness, like a weight off his shoulders, that he does not have to witness their ruin, too.

Darkness claims him, at last. In it, he finds—not peace perhaps, no longer anything like that.

But the forest swallows him whole, and it feels like coming home.

*

To all things housed in her silence 
Nature offers a violence 
The bear that keeps to his own line 
The wolf that seeks always his own kind 
The world that hardens as the harsher winter holds 
The parent forced to eat its young before it grows

Every bird, gone unheard 
Starving where the ground has froze 
The winter sunrise, red on white 
Like blood upon the snow

—Hozier, Blood Upon the Snow

*

Chapter End Notes

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