The Fire of Life by StarSpray  

Two

“There Maedhros in time was healed; for the fire of life was hot within him, and his strength was of the ancient world, such as those possessed who were nurtured in Valinor. His body recovered from his torment and became hale, but the shadow of his pain was in his heart…”
- The Silmarillion, “Of the Return of the Noldor”

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It was quiet in the Halls. Time passed, but strangely—dreamlike. Maedhros knew he must have been there a very long time, but he did not care to watch for each new tapestry as it was unrolled in the vast halls where the dead gathered, and he did not care to go among the the other spirits, to listen to their whispers, hearing bits and pieces of news or rumor, or what had brought them there. He had come to death wanting it all just to stop—and stop it had, the pain and the Oath and the grinding, aching, awful weight that just existing in the breaking world had become. He had wanted rest, and he had found it. Let the world outside continue on without him. It needed him not, and he no longer wanted it. 

His brothers found him, sometimes. They spoke little, wanting nothing more than the quiet company of each other’s spirits. His father had come once or twice in the beginning, Maedhros thought, but he could not remember what was said—if anything had been said at all. The pain of his death had still been upon him and he had not been able to bear Fëanor’s presence, bright and burning as it was. Finwë had come after that, his spirit so much gentler as it wrapped around Maedhros the way he’d wrapped his living arms around him as a small child, protective and comforting, even still as wounded and diminished as he was after his own death. He had stayed with Maedhros for a very long time. 

Then Nienna had come with her ever-falling tears, to weep when he could not, for all he had done and all that had been done to him. Námo himself came, when Maedhros was a little stronger, to speak and to ask questions that could not go unanswered. He was unyielding and often stern but also gentle, there not as judge but as healer, one who saw everything and so could help untangle the fears and wounds of the dead, to set them on the road to healing. 

Mostly, though, Maedhros was left alone, and he dreamed and drowsed and even forgot for very long spans of time even who he was or why he was there.

Now everything felt clearer, and Maedhros sometimes felt the desire to leave the Halls pull at his heart—to feel the sun and wind on his face, to bathe in clear waters and run through the grass. But when he had done those things—what then? Return to Tirion? No. The bright and shining Prince Maitimo Nelyafinwë who had lived there once was no more. He had died in Angband. It was Maedhros that Fingon had cut from the mountainside, someone his younger and more innocent self would recoil from even then—and he had only gotten worse afterward. What was Maedhros to do in the Undying Lands, where peace again reigned, and his name was synonymous now with treachery and murder?

Nienna came to him more and more often as time went on, encouraging him to turn his thoughts toward life. His brothers were starting to do the same, she said, one by one. His mother wanted him to come home. Fingon came every few years to the doors of Mandos to ask after him. Sometimes Finrod came with him.

Yet it was so quiet in the Halls. It was peaceful in a way that did not make him itch and worry, that did not require anything of him—there was nothing he could do to break it, by action or inaction. No one cared who he was there. No one minded that he kept to himself, kept far away from the more crowded spaces. As soon as his spirit regained a body he would start to need things, start to want things—Maedhros did not know what those things would be, exactly, but he knew they were not to be found in Valinor. There was no way for him to right any of his wrongs there. No way to make up for any of it, not when he had forged himself into a weapon and forgotten how to be anything else. 

After Nienna’s latest visit Maedhros drifted, losing himself in dreams and hazy thoughts that were forgotten as soon as they entered his mind. He missed his brothers—all of them, he thought, now departed from Mandos to make something new of themselves. After a while he thought perhaps he might do the seeking this time—perhaps it was time he tried to speak to Fëanor, to lay to rest what still simmered under the surface, that tangle of betrayal and hurt and hate and love. Something in him shrank from it, but if he could just—

Before he could do more than think of it, though, Maedhros found himself not in his familiar corner of the Halls but in a vast wide room with high walls, with stained glass windows glowing in them, red and purple and blue. There was no roof—all of Mandos was open to the sky—and so the stars shone down from above, glittering like diamonds thrown across a vast expanse of smooth black velvet. Námo sat upon his high seat, face half-hidden under a silver cowl but for his eyes that shone like two burning stars. Nienna was there, equally bright-eyed behind her pale grey veils. With them, beyond all expectation, was Manwë, a tall and almost blinding presence in the twilight. His eyes were blue and piercing as he turned to regard Maedhros, and his raiment was all blue and gold.

“Maedhros Fëanorion,” said Námo, beckoning Maedhros forward. He approached, wary. Námo and Nienna wished to send him out of Mandos, he knew, believing him ready to return to life, but he did not know what interest the Elder King could have. “Why do you refuse to return to life? The Eldar are not meant for death. These Halls have served their purpose for you.”

“Would not my return break the peace of Valinor?” Maedhros asked. 

“Your brothers’ did not,” said Námo. 

Was he not worse than all his brothers combined, having been their leader? Maedhros said nothing. He did not know what to say that would satisfy the Valar, that would lead them to just let him continue as he had been—and both Námo and Nienna knew his answers already. “Would you release my father, too?” he asked. 

“When he is ready,” said Námo. “He is not—not yet. These Halls have served before as a prison, but that is not their purpose, not for you Children.”

“What if,” said Manwë, regarding Maedhros with star-bright eyes, blue as sapphires and piercing as blades, “you were sent from these Halls for a purpose, son of Fëanáro?”

“I suppose, my lord,” Maedhros said slowly, “that would depend upon the purpose.”

“The Shadow grows again in Middle-earth,” said Námo. “Melkor’s chief lieutenant Sauron was defeated long ago by Gil-galad King of the Noldor, and Elendil of Númenor—but not forever. He is beginning to regain his strength.”

“Five of our servants are to be sent to Middle-earth, to advise and to aid the Free Peoples,” said Manwë. “We cannot act again as openly as we did in Beleriand, or when we subdued Utumno, lest the world be rent asunder, and so they go with their full power cloaked and hidden. There will be great need, too, for talents and knowledge such as yours, someone who is not constrained by secrecy or such limitations.”

Maedhros did not understand at first. He heard the words but their meaning took a few minutes to become truly clear to him. “You would—you would send me back—back to Middle-earth?” Something in him leaped at the idea, a longing he hadn’t known that he possessed opening up inside of him. To go back to those wide and wild lands, unconstrained by any oaths, to draw his sword against only the Enemy, to do something, something worth doing—

“If you are willing,” said Manwë.

It was hardly a decision at all, made before he could even begin to think about it. “I am. I will go.”