Chapter Text
When Maglor’s soldiers found them, near the bottom of the ravine, Thranduil was muttering endless curses into the boy’s ear. ‘You killed me,’ he said, ‘damn you, curse you.’ Even as he spoke he held up Elrond as best he could, to keep him from sliding down further, as he hung, upside down, legs tangled in tree roots, a rivulet of blood running from his mouth and down his face. Perhaps it was the curses that kept the boy there, though he hung still and lifeless, that kept a trickle of breath flowing in his throat.
*
Maglor ’s men were efficient. They took Elros, who had remained crouching at Thranduil’s feet, whimpering and still, and placed him on a horse. Then they had Thranduil relinquish his hold on Elrond; they were the ones who handled the boy, carefully cutting him down. As soon as he let go of Elrond, Thranduil was dragged aside, made to kneel in the mud, hands bound behind his back, and then forgotten. They did not set him free, though; after most of the rest had gone, he was tied to a horse and taken back to the fortress, along with a few soldiers.
From there he was taken to a cell again. Again a thick wooden door slammed behind him. If not for the full set of iron bars at his window, it might have been the very same cell. Perhaps it was . Perhaps the whole escape had been but a fever dream, a delusion. But no. Thranduil could still feel, thrumming softly against his fingertips, Elrond ’s pulse as he had held the fallen child. It was the frailest, the most tenuous, the most real thing he had ever felt - that life of a wounded child.
A few hours later, the door to his cell opened. Two soldiers came in, took him out. It is as Elrond said , he thought. I failed in keeping them safe, I failed in escaping. Now it is time to die .
But the soldiers took him up a narrow flight of stairs, and then to well-furnished room. A fire roared in a corner, and a narrow tub stood in front of it. On the other side stood a small pedestal table, and on it was half a loaf of bread, and a platter of cheese and meat. One of Thranduil ’s escort gestured towards it, and said:
‘Lord Maglor suggests you make use of these comforts.’
‘I want to see the twins.’
A shrug; the soldiers left.
He might have made a valiant stand, and denied himself any sustenance before he had been let in to see the children. But really he was all alone, with no witness to his righteousness; and he was too tired to resist temptation. He marched over to the table, and grabbed a handful of cheese, stuffed it in his mouth. He had no grace left, no sense of civility; he did not care. He merely ate. The food was salty and fat in his mouth, and he swallowed it without chewing. Next he took the loaf of bread with both hands, and tore into it.
He caught a flicker of movement from the other side of the room. When he looked up, he saw it was only himself, glimpsed through a looking-glass standing next to the tub. He went near it, the bread still clutched in his hands. He looked at himself.
A frightful creature stared back. Its clothes were grey and brown rags; its hair hung in tangled ropes down its back. Its eyes were too large, and its skin pallid. There were smears of blood on its face and bony shoulders. Its cheeks were distended with food; and then, when it had swallowed, sunken and narrow. And then it grinned, startled and mad. Thranduil had to look aside. He ate the rest of the food standing up, staring down at the tiled floor, unthinking.
Eventually he wiped away crumbs from his mouth. He stripped away his rags, poured hot water from a kettle on the fire into the tub, and then sank into the water. He washed himself with a little soap, a pumice stone and a towel left beside the tub. He scrubbed himself very hard, till the water was brown and grey, and his skin raw and smarting.
He noticed he had begun weeping.Warm tears ran down, across his mouth and chin, dripping into the water below. He could not understand why, at first, but then he sobbed harder. His body shook, gulped down air. He wept for his wasted body, the months he had spent in his cell, his escape and his failure. He had tried to scrub himself clean so very hard, and yet his body still remembered. His hollow, heaving chest still held his months of captivity. His raw-skinned arms would not forget the weight of Elrond as he had held him up, during the long minutes when he thought he had killed the child.
All of a sudden, he stopped, the end as sudden as the beginning; as if a door had been slammed shut again. He dried his tears, stepped out of the tub, dried the rest of himself. A change of clothes lay by the side of the tub, and he donned it, revelling in the warmth and softness of the fabric.
When the soldiers came back, he was ready to face Maglor.
*
He was shown to another room, the soldiers vanishing behind him as soon as they had led him in. That one was dominated by a large four poster bed. Between it and a window, sitting in an armchair at the head of the bed, was Maglor. Next to the door was a small table, not unlike that in the room which Thranduil had left before, and on it also a platter of food, save that this one was untouched. There was a knife beside it, and Thranduil took it.
In a moment he strode over to Maglor, and pressed the knife ’s edge against the other’s throat.
Maglor raised his eyes, and looked him over.
‘You had kin in Sirion. Or was it Doriath?’
‘Doriath,’ Thranduil answered. He pressed the knife closer, till a thin red line appeared on the white flesh of Maglor’s throat. ‘My mother.’
‘Still, you will not kill me.’
‘I could.’
‘Of course. You would be caught instantly and my brother would devise a terrible death for you. Or he might do worse, and give you a terrible life.’
‘I’m not afraid of dying,’ said Thranduil, lying. ‘Killing you would still be worthwhile.’
‘Yes, yes.’ Maglor sighed as if bored. ‘Even so, you will not kill me, for the same reason my brother and I did not kill you.’
The knife trembled in Thranduil ’s hand, so hard did he grip it. He tried to imagine a flow of blood, gushing from Maglor’s throat. But imagination was not enough; it only made him want to kill Maglor the harder. He had to put the image aside, calm the beating of his heart.
‘For the boys,’ he said from between clenched teeth.
Maglor nodded minutely. The thin skin of his neck moved beneath Thranduil ’s blade. He tossed the knife aside, heard it hit a wall and clatter to the ground.
He sat down heavily on the bed. The mattress shifted beneath his weight - he hadn ’t meant for that - but neither of the children who slept on it made a sound or stirred.
Thranduil looked at them. Elros on the further side of the bed, on his flank; his face still scrunched and pale, the skin around his eyes red and puffy. Yet even in sleep he seemed determined, and he had thrown a protective arm around his brother.
And there too lay Elrond. His face and neck were scratched by briars, and his cheeks and brow were badly bruised. He had broken bones as well, Thranduil knew from the chatter of the soldiers as they ’d brought them back; only by sheerest luck had he not snapped his neck too.
‘They love you,’ he said to Maglor, slowly, with loathing.
‘And I love them,’ Maglor answered in his low, beautiful voice.
Anger surged again through Thranduil. He had to focus again on the boys. To keep himself from striking Maglor, he laid his hand delicately on Elrond ’s cheek. When he spoke again, his voice was thick even to his ears:
‘Don’t say that as if it were an excuse.’ He paused. His breathing was laboured; a spot of acid at his throat. ‘I used to think that hatred and greed led you to your worst crimes. Now I understand that you can poison even love. That you have committed your worst crime with love.’
‘Have I?’
Maglor ’s voice, so very soft.
‘Yes. You’ve laid shackles on children’s hearts. If you had only bound their hands and feet, with iron and stones, their life would be simple. But you had to bind them to you and make them love you. Now they can’t ever escape.’ You’ve them their own gaolers; you’ve made a child the enemy of himself. Thranduil laughed bitterly. ‘You ought to be put to death a thousand times for that, and I would gladly be the one to do it. But of course you cannot be punished.’ Fury beat through him, and yet he poured all of his gentleness to Elrond, whose cheek he stroked with all the tenderness he could muster.
‘And you’re no stranger to the shackles of love, I think,’ said Maglor.
‘Of course not. How could I be? I loved this family before the twins were even born. And Elrond…’ He stroked the boy’s cheek gently, willing him back to health. ‘He came to me when I was most alone and lost. He gave me bread, and his company. I will always be thankful for that, no matter where he led me after, or where I led him. It started with an act of pity, of kindness.’
‘Yes.’ Maglor’s voice was tender and fond. Thranduil knew that he must be smiling, and with effort he stifled his anger. ‘It takes a kind and lovely soul to succour one in your circumstances… and even more so to love one as blighted and wretched as I am, so ill-deserving of pity, let alone affection.’ And then, more sharply: ‘Not that he is a sweet child. Elros would be a prince in any court between Cuiviénen and the Walls of Night, but Elrond…’
‘I know.’ Mad, wild little thing. He remembered what the boy had said, how he’d hoped for Maglor’s suffering, and run back to him.
But how could he not be mad, torn as he was? Perhaps Elros was the strange one, with his miraculous, impossible sanity - a child of the future, whatever it was he saw there, crowned with whatever hope he saw, steady because he must. And Elrond … Elrond, born to the past, the refugees, the slaughters and the fires, betrayals and endless fleeing. How perfectly mad to love, in this world, how perfectly right to be mad. It made Thranduil want to weep again; it made him want to snatch up that sleeping, wounded child, and smother him against his chest.
‘And yet,’ said Maglor very softly. ‘I think sometimes that if by some miracle it could all be washed away, the fear and the anger and the hate, then Elrond might be kindness itself. Kindness as bright as summer, and brighter for all the storms before. It would be a miracle, though. It would take the centuries, nay, millennia of an Elven life, and for all we know he has only the decades of a man. Perhaps even less than that.’
‘I will see him healed.’ The words slipped out of Thranduil’s mouth, almost without his volition. A sworn oath, or foreknowledge? Yet somehow they strengthened his heart. But then fear came upon him again. His gaze slid up towards Maglor. ‘If I should live this long.’
Maglor glanced back at him.
‘You wonder what is to be done with you.’
‘Yes.’
'My brother says you ought to be put to death, for attempting to steal our prisoners. I told him he of all people should not grudge a prisoner ’s attempt to escape.’ Maglor sighed. ‘In any case, you remained behind to save Elrond, when you might have run, and I shan't forget that. I'll set you loose, whatever Maedhros says.'
Thranduil nodded. Silence. Perhaps Maglor expected thanks; but Thranduil gave him none. After a little while Maglor went on, adding with an even, unconcerned tone: 'You've caused enough heartache and trouble already, however. Don't ever come back, if you value your life. If you come within ten leagues of Amon Ereb, or of the boys, wherever they are, and you'll be slain long before you ever set eyes on them, or they see you.'
'This is farewell, then?'
'It must be,' said Maglor, even as he drew from the bed. For that at least Thranduil was thankful.
For a while he stared down at the boys, unsure of what to do. At length he kissed Elros ’s brow, and the child did not stir. Foreknowledge clutched at Thranduil’s heart, and he felt somehow as if this were truly farewell - yet he did not fear for the boy. He looked at him awhile, watching his chest rise and fall steadily, and his serene profile under black curls.
Elrond was less easy to look at, with his bruised and cut face. His hand was very small in Thranduil ’s, light as a bird that might at any moment take flight. But then, even as Thranduil gazed down at him, his eyes opened, first mere slivers, and then fully - though their gaze was weary, and he did not speak. Again Thranduil felt as if he were staring into worlds - grey and silent worlds in the boy’s eyes, too distant for thought. And yet in those worlds a bright soul was travelling, travelling, through regions of hurt and strife, seeking freedom and refuge. It was only a moment, and soon the boy, sighing into sleep, closed his eyes again.
*
And so Thranduil went, league after league, alone, and with every step he took Amon Ereb grew smaller and lonelier behind him, and his breathing grew easier, and his step lighter. He did not look back, not till long after he had forded the river Gelion, and climbed the foothills of the Ered Luin. Only when the pass was near did he allow himself to turn, and gaze one last time upon Beleriand. Amon Ereb, by then, was but a speck on the horizon.
He did not think of his cell, or his captors - only of the child, Elrond, as he had first alighted on his window.
And so farewell, he thought, casting his mind over the wide silent plain. Fare well, my prince - till I see you again.