Chapter Text
More elves materialized out from between the trees, all clad in grey. The travelers were quickly surrounded. Although she never saw an archer, from the way the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end Ashe was certain there were many just out of sight with arrows pointed steadily at each of them.
They were led through the woods, the three princes at the head of the procession. Ashe had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and not falling, the exertion from her powers making her vision spin. When the group stopped she bumped into the back of the elf in front of her. He did not acknowledge her blunder, instead standing tall and strong like the grey trees that made up the forest. She looked up and saw that they’d arrived at a lake.
“Horaven!” called Lothbell.
The elf she’d bumped into stepped forward. She saw now that he was tall not just compared to her but to all the elves around them, nearly as tall as Daugroth. His cloak was grey but underneath it was a purple shirt. On his back were two large swords, but more cutting than the blades were his grey eyes.
"We shall continue our hunt; we leave with you some of our guard,” said Lothbell. “Take the trespassers to the Golden Caves. They are not guests, but treat them with the kindness you find they deserve."
He bowed his head, though he glared at the one giving him orders.
“Hello,” Markus said with forced cheer. “My name’s Maarrrrrrrr…” He trailed off, shrinking as Horaven fixed him with his gaze.
The princes turned away. Cirloss gave a whooping holler that replaced the need for any horn, and the hunt resumed.
“Aren’t you taking us somewhere?” Ashe asked, interrupting the stare down.
He turned, and his glare hit her like a branch to the gut. It was piercing, like he was seeing deep inside her, and heartily disapproving of what he saw. Then for a moment his eyes widened, as though he had seen something he did not expect. He gave a grunt, then turned his attention to Gregor and Thog in turn. He skipped over Kir.
Satisfied, he led them to a long boat that was hidden under a tree. He drew it out from beneath the stooping branches, and wordlessly they all got in. No one wanted to say anything that would prompt him to stare them down again.
Several others joined them in the boat and took up paddles. When they had made it a ways from the shore, Horaven spoke some commanding words.
A mist rose up, then suddenly took on shape and color. Forming in front of them was an island, crowned by a great mound. Its slopes were wooded with flowering trees, and cobblestone streets wound around it, dotted with stone houses. Colorful banners fluttered in the breeze, which now carried elven singing.
Despite herself, Ashe smiled. The colors were all so vibrant, their beauty washing away some of the terror of the battle before.
“Behold: Caras Tareb,” said Horaven. “Our hidden city. The magic of this place is what has kept us safe and strong throughout these dark days.”
“And don’t you dare forget our strength,” hissed a familiar voice from directly behind her. They were deliberately not speaking Sindarin.
She stiffened. The terror was back.
“Salveta,” Horaven said flatly. “I would have expected you to continue the hunt.”
“If they decide to fight, I want to be here to make them bleed.”
Ashe gritted her teeth and imagined how satisfying it’d be to stab them.
“Suit yourself,” said Horaven.
“Also the red human threw a knife into my shoulder and I need medical attention.”
Horaven led them through the city as quickly as they could move with their injuries. Various elves tending to stalls, sweeping the streets, carrying things too and fro stopped to stare as they passed. Some called greetings to the guards that walked with them, and their greetings were returned, but no explanation was given for the questions that came after.
They went into a cave whose mouth opened up out of the hill. The tiled floor shined with gold that sparkled red in the torchlight. They made their way through many twisting tunnels and branching paths, Horaven always choosing the passage without hesitation. Eventually they stopped in front of a door. Horaven opened it and gestured for them to go inside. They did, and he closed the door behind them. There was a scrape as it was barred, then the sound of footsteps walking away.
Ashe looked around the room. It was small, but not cramped for the five of them. The stone floor was covered with a lush red carpet, which Markus sunk into with a sigh. There were pillows scattered about, a bucket with a lid on it in a corner, and a crystal lantern hung from the ceiling.
Gregor sat down and immediately started scratching lines in the wall.
"Gregor!" exclaimed Kir. "What are you doing? This is beautiful rock!"
Gregor gave a hollow little laugh. "Oh Kir, you have some things to learn about jail."
"Are we even in jail?" Kir asked. "They didn't take any of our weapons."
Gregor thought for a moment. "Maybe they have some things to learn about jail too." He went back to scratching the wall.
Ashe sank down into a pillow, forcing herself to relax. Even though she knew that the immediate threat was over, her body still sang with tension. Bit by bit, her muscles untensed and as they did she became aware of all the hurts she’d sustained. Her ribs ached and there was blood and broken flesh in her mouth where a tooth used to be.
Thog eventually broke the silence by clearing his throat. “So, uh, I know we all need a moment to recover, but I just have to know.” He turned to Markus. “What the fuck was that?”
Gregor stopped scratching the wall and also turned to face him. “You’re a monster.”
“Hey now!” Ashe pushed herself up. “How could you say that? He was willing to die for us!”
“Ashe it’s alright,” Markus slowly sat up. He looked thin at his edges, not the pallid tone that Ashe would expect from someone who had lost a lot of blood, but instead like he was barely part of this world. “Gregor is not entirely wrong. I certainly have been a monster, and I could be one again. If that means I am a monster now, then I cannot argue. I am kin to many of the worst monsters.”
“Enough riddles Markus.” Thog crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Either tell us plainly why elves attacked us because they thought we were all evil, or just stop talking.”
“Right, yes, I’m sorry,” Markus grinned. “It’s just, where to begin?” He tilted his head up towards the ceiling, gathering his thoughts.
Ashe looked around at each of her friends. Thog and Gregor stared at Markus intently while Kir focused down at his hands.
Markus sighed. “So you all know about Morgoth, right?” he said at last.
“Of course,” said Gregor.
“How could any of us not?” said Thog.
“Well, he was once my mentor. One could say that I served him for a time, though I never felt like a servant.”
Ashe felt a leaden weight settle in her stomach, and from the faces of her companions, they all felt the same. Or likely enough, their weight was heavier, since she’d only seen the devastation from Morgoth’s forces since she’d journeyed south, while all the others had grown up suffering under his long arm.
“I left that life behind long ago,” Markus spoke again, pushing through the curtain of silence. “Long before the sun first rose, when the new stars were recently kindled and elves were first arriving into Beleriand. But unlike others of my kind who turned from that path, I have never sought judgement and forgiveness from the high seat of Manwë. Instead I have dwelt on these shores, wandering still. I suppose the old cloud of darkness remains on me.”
“Your kind?” Ashe said, feeling a sudden hurt. “What do you mean “your kind?””
Markus looked at her with an expression of pity, and she was caught off guard by the depth of history behind his eyes. Older than the world she suddenly knew.
“I’m sorry I lied to you, that night we first met. I am not like you, I have always known what I am.”
“Do you know what I am? Have you always known that to?”
“No,” he said with regret.
Ashe fell silent.
“Markus,” Kir’s voice quavered as he spoke. “What are you then?”
“I am Maiar, a spirit. Like Melian, or… or like Gorthaur, though lesser than both. I am a spirit of fire, not that I ever served Aulë as I was expected to.”
“You are Balrogath,” said Gregor. “I can’t believe I trusted you.”
“I was a Balrog, yes. And in the woods back there I lost control for a moment and some of that power slipped out. But I would like to believe that I am something else now, something of my own.”
“And what is that?” Gregor asked.
He spread out his hands. “I’m Markus Velafi. I’m me.”
“And this you, do you hate Morgoth?”
“I hate what he is doing, and I oppose him.”
Gregor’s words were as sharp as his glaive’s edge. “That wasn’t what I asked.”
“I would never reenter his service.”
“But you served him willingly once.” Gregor drew his glaive.
“Woah woah woah,” Thog said as both Ashe and Kir got to their feet. “Let’s make a new team rule where we don’t kill each other.”
“Gregor,” Markus said. “I will aid any who oppose him, I will fight against him, but I do not have it in me to hate someone who I once loved.”
Gregor looked at him, then looked at the other three who were standing. “You’re all really going to defend a monster?”
“Have you even been listening?” Ashe took a step towards him, her voice rising. “He’s on our side!”
“You’re as good as a monster too if you defend him,” Gregor stepped up to her.
Thog got between the two of them. “Hey would you look at that, it’s time for everyone to sit down and shut up.”
Gregor turned and went back to his spot, sitting down and going back to scraping lines into the wall.
One by one, they each sat down. Locked together in a small room, they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Two meals were delivered, which was the only thing Ashe could use to mark the passage of time in this room beneath the earth. One by one, her companions went to sleep. Markus, concerningly weak, had barely moved from the spot where he initially laid down. Gregor eventually curled up around some pillows. Thog fell asleep propped up against the wall, his mouth hanging open and his head angled back.
Just when she thought she was the last one awake, she heard Kir speak.
“Hey Ashe?” he whispered. “You awake?”
“Yup,” she whispered back.
“Okay.” Kir got out of the pillow fort he’d constructed and walked over to sit beside her, bringing one of the pillows with him. He settled down, hugging the pillow to his chest. “Can’t sleep?”
The question surprised her. He must’ve never noticed. “I always have a hard time falling asleep. Usually I stay up until I’m about ready to collapse.”
“Oh, that doesn’t sound like it’s good for you.”
She shrugged. “Probably not, don’t know what else I can do about it though.”
“But you’ll sleep at some point tonight? I mean, assuming it’s night.”
She shrugged again.
They sat together in silence for a moment, both trying to summon the courage to ask what was on their minds.
“Did you have any idea?” Ashe asked eventually. “Did he ever tell you anything, any clues?”
Kir shook his head. “I’ve been thinking through it, you know? And there are some things that in retrospect have different meanings. Or like, knowing what he is now I just feel like ‘oh duh, that explains it.’ I’m trying to figure out if I just missed it, if I should’ve known, or if there was no way I could’ve figured it out without him telling us.”
“Mmm,” Ashe said. She leaned back against the cool stone wall, tilting her head up to look at the ceiling. “So he didn’t even tell you.”
He shuffled about, fiddling with a trinket before answering. “No. And like, I doubt he ever planned to.”
She looked over to him sharply and saw that he was staring down at the device in his hands. “You’re not mad?”
“Mad?” He briefly met her gaze, then looked back down. “No, or, maybe… Actually I don’t know how to feel, right now. Maybe later I’ll feel mad, but right now? I mean stone and iron Ashe, I was nearly executed today. We still might be executed. More than anything right now I’m scared.”
“They won’t kill us, not without a fight. I…” Ashe’s voice caught as she thought of the pain and exhaustion, the way her power frayed at her spirit. “I could tear apart this island if I needed to. And I think Markus would use some of his power if it meant saving us. They won’t take us down.”
“I don’t want that!” Kir’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t want to have to kill all these people so that I can live. We’re supposed to be on the same side. I mean, elves and dwarves, we haven’t always been on the same side, but Gregor’s from one of the three great houses. It’s not like we’d be fighting the fucking forces of Morgoth, we’d be destroying one of probably the last strongholds against him!”
“What, so just because they’re elves we should let them kill us?”
“That’s not what I said. It’s just, I’m afraid to die, and I’m afraid of what will happen if they decide we need to die.” Kir rubbed his eyes and sniffed. “If we make it out of this, if we all make it out of this, I’ll have plenty of time to sort through my feelings about Markus.”
“We’re going to,” she said fiercely, with more conviction than she felt.
He didn’t look convinced. Instead he fiddled for a bit longer, then asked, “what about you? Are you mad?”
She drew her knees up to her chest and hugged them close. It was unreasonable to feel so abandoned, she knew that. Yet for her whole life she’d been drowning in her powers and her unanswered questions, until she’d met Markus. He wasn’t a dock or dry land but he’d been a floating log to cling to in the flood. But all that was fake. She was alone in this, with a storm inside her ready to tear her apart.
“He lied to me. He made me feel like I wasn’t alone but that was all based on a lie.” Her voice cracked.
He sighed. “I know what it’s like to be alone, and it’s hard. I’ve spent a lot of time with only myself to talk to. But even if none of us are exactly like you, you’re not alone. Your friends are on your side.”
She clenched her fists. “You don’t get it. It’s different, for you. You’ve never been a stranger to yourself.”
Abruptly he felt very distant, though neither of them had moved in the small room. “No,” he said softly. “Can’t say that I have.”
She curled further into herself, curling around a little ball of hurt at her core. What was it like, she wondered, to be a human? To be a dwarf or a maia? To have the simplest answers about yourself. Her thoughts lashed out, not just towards Markus, but to Kir, Gregor, and Thog. For having something so basic that she lacked.
She opened her eyes and saw that Kir was looking at Markus with a thoughtful expression.
“Do you think we can trust him?” she asked.
He hesitated for a long minute. “Yes,” he said, sounding unsure.
It was a clear night, clear and cold with the winter constellations seeming far away in the dark sky. As the Warrior climbed up in the heavens, Kir took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. He watched the fog from his lungs rise and disappear, then turned back to the Outlaw camp.
A light went up, and voices with it. Cries of celebration roses as the bonfire caught. Then louder cries followed as one of the Alaranrim loudly announced that they’d found the place they buried the casks when they were last in this area.
As he rejoined his friends, Gregor was saying “this is a horrible idea. We have no idea who or what might notice this.”
“What’s in the casks?” Ashe asked with interest.
Gregor waved to get Thog’s attention. “Hey, this is dangerous.”
“Well, yeah,” Thog said, stopping as he passed by. “But it’s new year’s eve, we gotta celebrate.”
“We can celebrate by hiding and living another year,” Gregor said.
“That might’ve been how you Outriders did it, but among the Alaranrim, it’s not a proper holiday if there’s not some life-threatening element. Besides, the world’s miserable enough, at least we can start the new year right. We’ll spend the rest of the days hiding.”
Start the new year right. Kir nodded to himself. Time to be brave, to risk a little. Not that having a conversation was life-threatening.
“Hey,” he cleared his throat. “Hey Markus?”
Markus turned, his eye reflecting the firelight, and smiled. “Hey Kir, what’s up?”
“Hey, yeah,” he flushed, already feeling deeply foolish. “Hey man, can I talk to you? Like, alone?”
Markus looked puzzled, but nodded. “Yeah sure, what do you need?”
“Just like, to talk.”
Kir led him away from the crowd around the fire and into the woods. They slipped behind a tree. There, the darkness turned them both into silhouettes. They stopped and faced each other.
“Okay,” said Markus, keeping his voice hushed. “What’s going on?”
Kir took a deep breath. He felt like he could keep on taking deep breaths over and over again and his heart would never slow down. He’d gone over the words in his head before, but now they caught on his tongue.
“Listen, I,” he stammered. “I like you a lot, man. I feel like you get me, and I just, um…”
“Aw, thanks.” Markus’s teeth flashed in the darkness. “Same here.”
“No, I mean, that’s great, but that’s not what I mean,” he said quickly. “I mean I love you. At least I think I do, I guess I haven’t known you for very long but I just-“
“Kir.” Markus interrupted him, a smile clearly on his voice. “My answer’s still the same. Thank you, and same here.”
Kir blinked several times. “Oh, that’s cool,” he said in a small voice.
“Yeah, wonderful isn’t it?”
He hadn’t though through what happened next. “So, are we…?”
Markus leaned back against a tree and scuffed his shoe across the ground. “I’d like to, if I guess your meaning correctly, but there’s something I need to tell you that might be hard to understand.”
Kir’s mind raced as he tried to guess what it was and came up with nothing. “Well, remember that I am a genius. What is it?”
“Right! Yes!” Markus cleared his throat. “You see, I’m different, as far as I know at least. Different from all the love stories I’ve heard. Different for certain from the elves. I fall in love easily and often, with more than one person.”
He paused, waiting to see if Kir had anything to say.
“And I don’t want you to think for a moment that you’re not special,” Markus burst out after a moment had passed. “Because you are special Kir. You’re amazing. You say that you’re a genius but that doesn’t even begin to describe you. Your determination, your creativity, the way you approach all the world’s problems as if there is a solution, you’re just incredible. I can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t love you.”
“Oh wow,” he said. “I uhhh, wish I had words left, after all that. But um, keep it together Kir,” he muttered in Khuzdul.
“Too much?” Markus asked.
“You’re alright,” his voice quavered as he spoke. “I just, no one’s ever said anything like that to me before. Not that there was much opportunity.”
“Oh,” Markus knelt down, reaching out for him. “I’ve made you cry, I’m sorry.”
Kir took his hand, using his other to wipe his eyes. “No, these are good tears.”
Markus took a deep breath. “So, ah, I would like to be with you, if you can accept that it would not be a normal sort of love.”
“Markus, I was a child when Menegroth was sacked and my father and I went into hiding, and he disappeared soon after that. I know bits and pieces of my culture, but so much is lost to me. I don’t know what normal looks like. I mean,” he squeezed his hand, “probably not this since you’re not a dwarf.”
The tall beardless man with horns snorted. “You’re correct about that.”
“But what I mean is, it doesn’t matter if this isn’t normal, because if you love me, and I love you, what’s wrong with that?”
“Absolutely nothing.” Markus grinned. “But it doesn’t bother you then?”
“No, I don’t want to possess you or anything, just like, kiss your face.”
Markus laughed. “I’m certainly amenable to that!”
“Nice.” Kir’s face was hotter than the times he’d caught his beard on fire. “But, I don’t know, not to bring the mood down, but it’s kind of a relief too.”
Markus shifted about. “How so?”
“You’ve already lived so much longer than me, long enough that you stopped counting the years, and you still look young. It seems likely that you’ll outlive me then, by centuries. So I’m glad that I’m not being selfish and asking you to take the same risk as Lúthien and Idril.”
Markus squeezed his hand tighter. “I don’t want to think about losing you.”
“Hey, I’ve got probably more than two centuries in me yet. There’s time.” He ran his thumb over Markus’s fingers. “Was there anyone before me? That you’ve outlived?”
“That I’ve fallen in love with? Of course. But I never told any of them how I felt. The only person I’ve ever told I loved, well, I hope I never see him again.”
The history behind his words told him not to pry. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“But that’s in the past now!” The old wounds melted from his voice. “I have uncounted long years behind me, but that is not my now. I quite like my now, and that means I shouldn’t spend too much time regretting all the things that brought me here.”
“No, yeah that makes sense.”
“And you know what could make this now even better?” Even though it was dark, Kir could tell that Markus had quirked an eyebrow. It was all in the tone.
“What?” he asked.
“Not long ago, you mentioned wanting to kiss my face. You up for giving that a go?”
“Yes!” he said, a little louder than he meant to, but in his excitement he didn’t care to control his volume. “Yes absolutely!”
Markus shuffled about. “Let’s figure out the logistics then, shall we?”
From the glade behind them, Thog’s voice rose up over the other noises of celebration. “Okay, if you all would take a moment to look at the sky, I think we’re passing midnight now. We survived 537, let’s do it again for 538!”
Cheers, defiant and joyous, rang out through the night. Seated behind a tree, Markus and Kir could feel the heat coming off each other’s faces. Their lips met, and they started the new year right.