Yet Were Its Making Good, For This by LadySternchen  

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Two Versions

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In Mablung’s memory, there would forever more be two different versions of events, and at times in later ages, he would not be able to tell with certainty which one was true, and which one a fabrication of his mind.

There was the one in which he stood unmoving in the doorframe until the first wave of terror had passed, then shouted to the guards, covered the body, waited for the Queen. That was the one he told later when asked, the one he chose to remember even after Mandos, the one where he behaved as was expected of a captain of Doriath.

In the other version, he did not stand petrified with shock, but sank to his knees beside his lord, trying, trying with his bare hands to make the blood-flow stop.

“No, Elu, don’t die, please don’t die, you cannot… leave us. Please.”

It was futile. His senseless babbling as well as the pressure he tried to put on the wounds. Nobody could survive such an injury, and Elu’s heart had already ceased to beat before he had knelt down in the pool of warm blood. Mablung had in truth known from the start, yet admitting it straight away would have been simply too much to bear.

His own breathing sounded deafening in his ears. He should not be here, not like that, he should call for help, make Menegroth aware of that hideous crime, that betrayal, should avenge what those dwarves had done… nonetheless, he remained motionless on the smithy’s floor, staring down at the dead king.

Elu lay as he had fallen, blood still gushing from the terrible wound that split his torso, a knife protruding from his back. Mablung instinctively reached for the handle to pull the knife out. The blade had severed Elu’s spine, as Mablung was sure it had been supposed to. This had been the stroke to bring the King down, so that they could deal him his death, which they had done with a brutality that quite unsettled Mablung. He grasped Elu’s hands and examined his palms, which were unscathed. So he hadn’t even tried to defend himself. This was not a strife that had got out of control- this had been an execution.

Elu’s eyes were open still, and Mablung dreaded to look into them and see them devoid of the light that had ever been mirrored there, see life gone from them. He could read the shock in Elu’s gaze, but more lay in it that he could not decipher- pain? Dread? Disbelief? Regret? Longing? Relief? Mablung could not tell.

Carefully, he reached out to cup his hand around Elu’s pale cheek, acting upon a sudden impulse that remarkably resembled madness.

“Grant me this last kiss, my king.” he murmured softly, bending down to press his lips onto Elu’s, not minding the blood, not minding anything.

For the briefest moment, this felt to Mablung so normal, as if Nan Elmoth had never been, as if four millennia had not passed since they had last shared a kiss.

“I love you.” Mablung whispered against Elu’s lips before he straightened up again, tears at last streaming down his face.

He tore his mantle off with one hand and covered Elu as in a blanket, so as to shroud his torn flesh, but could not bring himself to cover his face as well. Not yet.

Instead, he carefully pulled Elu’s body into his arms, and rocked him gently as if he were comforting a distressed child. All the while he stroked his head, noting only dimly that the blood on his hands dyed Elu’s fair hair scarlet. That would surely have upset Elu quite a bit, Mablung mused, getting his hair bloody. His silver tresses had always rightly been his pride, and he had meticulously taken care of them even in his earliest youth. Unbidden, an image slunk into Mablung’s mind, of Elu combing out his hair carefully before joining him and Beleg for the night, and of Beleg making fun of their friend’s vanity. The memory of those days clawed at Mablung’s insides like some fell monster, and he cradled the body ever more tightly to his chest.

“Oh Elwë, beloved Elwë…” he sobbed, using the ancient form of his beloved’s name for the first time in many thousand years “…remember how Beleg and I used to tease you, call you our princeling? Remember that? You will see him again now, and Galadhon, and Finwë. You go now in peace, you will not be alone over there, I promise it will be alright… but alas, need you leave me behind? I would have defended you to the death, or fallen side by side with you. But even without me… how is it that you could not find anything to defend yourself within a smithy? Have you been planning this? Did you really mean it when you said you wanted it all to end? Did you want to be killed?”

“I wondered about that also…” said a quiet voice beside him, and Mablung started.

He had not heard Melian arrive, as for the first time since he had known her, her nightingales were not beside her, nor did they sing within Menegroth. Instead, Mablung heard distant calls and shouting. So they had found out even without him telling anyone. All the better.

The queen was very unsteady on her feet as she walked over to Mablung and crouched down beside him on the bloody floor, and Mablung, his heart aching like it wanted to tear itself to pieces within his chest, helped her to hoist Elu’s body securely into her arms. He wanted it, wanted Melian to hold her husband, but it still meant letting go at last of the elf he had loved all his life. Melian’s composure slipped at that moment, and tears started to fall from her bright eyes, wetting Elu’s cheeks as if they could wash his face clean of the blood.

“That is all I have been able to think about on my way down here…” she said thickly “… that all is over now, that he is free to seek healing. That maybe he just had no other way out, that I imprisoned him in the end. That he suffered so much that he could not bear it anymore, and I failed to see just how badly he was truly doing. For then, we should really be glad, but… it hurts just so much.”

Melian kissed Elu’s forehead, and like Mablung before, she cradled him gently, whispering assurances, and telling him again and again how much she would always love him, no matter what. After a while, she lifted her gaze to Mablung again.

“Did he… were you with him when he… when he…”

She faltered, and for a moment there, Mablung considered lying, just so as to assuage her sorrow for a moment, but could not. He had never been able to tell lies, not even white ones.

“No. I came too late.”

“So he was alone. He died alone. My Elu, who would use a night spent alone as self-punishment, died all alone.” Melian sobbed so much that Mablung could hardly understand her words. “Oh Mablung, he must have been so terrified. Even if he did embrace death, he… I felt his fear, his despair, but I hoped… that he found solace before the end.”

Mablung just nodded, his throat too tight to speak. Melian lifted the cloak a little so as to examine the wound, but looked away again quickly, closing her eyes for a moment.

“It was not for long…” Mablung managed to say, and Melian nodded her agreement.

That at least was a comfort- that Elu’s death throes would not have lasted long.

“Stay here with me, Mablung. Please.” Melian bade at last, a note of pleading in her tone.

He would not dream of ever disobeying an open request from his queen, but that was not what made him nod and clasp her hand tightly- he had been unable to prevent his king’s death, had been unable to fulfil his vow to always protect him, so if the one thing he still could do for Elu was to support his widow to the best of his ability, then that was what he would do, and that was why he had to continue living, however horrible the pain.

All that came after was hazy to Mablung, he could remember no coherent string of events, but only shards of memory. Those small isles of sharp mind amidst the sea of despair haunted him all the more for it, playing over and over again before his minds eye, whether he was waking or sleeping.

The king lying in his own blood, with his chest and stomach ripped open. 
 

The light of the lamps shimmering on the bloody floor as in a twisted, horrible mockery of the stars that had been reflected in the waters of Cuiviénen.

Pressing Elu’s eyelids shut over his glassy gaze, in which the light of the dying embers still flickered. Silently, foolishly, telling him to sleep well.

Melian sitting still as stone beside his body as it lay in state, tears running ceaselessly from her eyes.

Elu, who looked so very peaceful, so much like the untroubled prince he had once been, so long ago. He was laid out in the utmost splendour, dressed in fine robes and covered in a shroud that bore his device, crowned and with slender hands folded over his staff. Mablung had never seen anything so beautiful, yet so heartbreakingly sad. Mablung had stood guard beside the king and queen one last time.

The wide-eyed look of blind panic and a grief far beyond tears in Elmo’s eyes as the two of them lowered Elu’s body to his grave while the storm battered the trees, making the woods sing a moaning lament of their own.

Elmo, crouching down to kiss his brother’s cheek and hug him as best he could in a last farewell. Snowflakes were whirling about them, settling on their hair and raiments. On Elmo’s hands and face, they melted instantly. On Elu’s still form, they did not.

Elmo trembling so badly that Mablung could hardly hold him as they watched the King’s guard do their final duty and build a rough wooden shelter over the king’s body, then cover the whole thing with stone and frozen earth.

Mablung forced himself to remain standing, to not betray his feelings to the outside, when truly, he wished for nothing more than to creep under that wooden roof and snuggle up to his beloved, and fall asleep, and be buried with him, and be by his side once more.