Chapter Text
He doesn’t know his own brother.
Caranthir has thought this before in the past few weeks, or maybe the past few months, but never has the notion ached so deeply in his bones.
Athair’s men have built a fire with which to honor the dead, and so they have done, listing name after name, but having mourned and dined on bread and Mithrim’s finest meat, they wheel around the flames toasting anyone and everyone with a wine so strong and sweet that Caranthir spat it out after one small sip.
He hunches over on a log in the shadows, grasping his elbows. The bitter night presses cold against his back, slips down between his collar and his neck, but he cannot bring himself to draw nearer to the fire. To do so would be to draw nearer to Maedhros, and Maedhros is staggering about with an entire bottle of wine in his hand.
Maedhros is drunk, Maedhros is hurt, and Caranthir can’t tell which is more true.
He has never seen his brother so loose, like a string doll stretched and twisted and worn.
Who has used him so?
Caranthir leans over, picks up a broken stick, and pushes it into the chill dirt with such force that it snaps in half.
Someone lays a heavy hand on Caranthir’s shoulder and he starts upright.
“Do you mind?”
The voice is high-pitched, the hair flashes dark and red in the firelight, and the face—Caranthir would give anything to cloud the face hovering above him so that he can’t see the glazed, animal eyes and the bleeding lips.
Someone has hurt Maedhros.
“Do you mind?”
Caranthir, glaring balefully at the plate of nasty, tasteless turnips sitting in front of him, cannot find it in him to rejoice that Maitimo has playfully shoved Maglor aside and claimed the portion of bench next to Caranthir.
Maitimo sets down his own meal, a bowl of steaming broth that Caranthir would trade his turnips for in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, Mother is busy upstairs with the twins, who lie abed with a mild fever, as they have done for two days and two miserable dinners, and Athair alone reigns over the evening meal.
Athair leads them in Irish grace, and Caranthir stumbles over the words and is grateful for Maglor’s clear voice drowning out his own mistakes.
Across from Caranthir, Celegorm digs right into his chicken, smothered in mushrooms. Caranthir distinctly remembers Mother saying she would roast rosemary chicken to mark the beginning of summer, but Mother has not had time nor strength to cook, and Athair told the hired help he wanted mushrooms instead of rosemary.
Athair loves mushrooms, and so does Caranthir, and any other day (week) Caranthir would smile secretly to himself, because not even Curufin likes them so well. But it is this week and this day, and the mushrooms that smell deliciously earthy are forbidden to him, a punishment almost as great that sitting before him.
Caranthir stares at his turnips and almost gags. He manages to shove two very small bites down his throat. Athair, sitting just to his right in a chair with intricate scrollwork, scarcely looks at him.
He’s eying Maitimo’s bowl of opaque broth instead, and frowning.
“Maedhros,” Athair says abruptly, “don’t you like mushrooms?”
Maitimo smiles, and his too-thin face—well, it sort of glows.
“I would prefer to say my relationship with them has its ups and downs.”
From somewhere on the other side of Maitimo’s tall frame, Maglor chokes, and Caranthir drops his spoon in his turnips.
For all he loves his brother, for all he has missed him, Caranthir has forgotten so much about him. The fact that he hates mushrooms like he has never hated anything in his life. The fact that Caranthir has always envied him for getting to eat whatever he wants, that Mother always has his favorite foods specially prepared and ready to heat. The fact that Maedhros gets so giddy to be back home that he gets borderline flippant about things he usually flushes to acknowledge.
The fact that, for a whole day or two, Maitimo will joke with Athair, and Athair will smile.
Athair is not smiling now. His eyes are fixed on Maitimo, who calmly sips broth from a wide silver spoon, and Athair grunts as though he would speak except his lips have been pasted together and stuck that way.
Caranthir’s stomach rumbles, and he hunches over instinctively. If he can squish his insides together, maybe he can trick himself into believing he isn’t hungry, not even for the mushrooms Celegorm is disappearing at an incredible rate.
(Celegorm doesn’t love mushrooms, he just loves food.)
Maitimo doesn’t say another word, just continues to sip at his broth, such tiny sips it will take him an hour to finish.
(Caranthir wasted two hours last night, eating his turnips. And that was a smaller helping than Athair gave him tonight.)
It takes five minutes and one small scoop of mush that almost ends up back on Caranthir’s plate before it strikes Caranthir that the table is awfully quiet.
Everyone is eating except for Caranthir and Athair.
Athair grips his silverware in both hands, and his brow furrows still in Maitimo’s direction, but there is something odd about him.
Caranthir struggles to put his finger on just what. No, there it is.
Athair is biting his lip.
A distinct shock tremors down Caranthir’s neck and shoulders. Athair never—
Athair pushes his chair back, grating it against the floor, probably scratching the wood, and Mother will scold him if she can single it out from all the other scratches already present, and Athair leaves his dinner behind and leaves his sons behind. He just turns and stalks out of the room, and every remaining pair of eyes stares at his empty seat.
Every pair of eyes but one. Caranthir pulls his gaze away from Athair’s chair and the chicken and mushrooms half-finished on a leafy silver plate, and finds Maitimo bent over the table, face flushed, stirring his broth very slowly with one hand. His left hand supports his forehead.
“Maedhros,” Curufin hisses, and he’s probably going to blame Maitimo for Athair’s anger, such as it must be, except Maglor kicks his shin violently under the table and Curufin wails and kicks back harder.
Maglor shoves his plate aside, picks up scrawny Curufin by the waist, and carries him out of the room.
Maitimo doesn’t flinch, just continues as he was, and Celegorm shrugs at Caranthir, wolfs down the rest of his dinner, and pads away after Maglor, barefoot.
Caranthir can’t figure out what just happened.
A whole minute goes by, and Caranthir swirls his turnips with his spoon, and wishes he dared throw them out the window, or dump them in a bucket in the washroom, to be secretly transported to the woods in the middle of the night, no matter what creatures might lurk among the trees.
Then a hand is on his shoulder, and Maitimo smiles at him.
“Athair will be back soon,” Maitimo says.
Caranthir nods. Either his chin or his lips tremble. His eyes are not tearing up, they aren’t, but Maitimo still wipes at his cheeks with a gentle thumb, and suddenly Caranthir realizes that if anyone can understand, Maitimo will.
“Athair can’t cook,” he says abruptly. “The turnips were just a side, but Amrod came in from gathering eggs with yolk all over his face because he bet that Amras couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.”
“And?” Maedhros prompts him to continue. His lips are as solemn and sincere as his soft grey eyes.
“And Mother cleaned Amrod up but then realized Ambarussa were both burning up with fever and Athair came in from the forge just then so Mother told him to watch the turnips and he took them off the stove too early and they were still too raw and bitter, and he didn’t mash them hardly at all, and a string got stuck in my throat and I spat everything back on my plate.”
Something clenches in Caranthir’s stomach and he almost starts sobbing, which would be so stupid because he is too big for that, and Maitimo would be ashamed of him.
(Maitimo never tells his brothers he is ashamed of them. But if he even thought Caranthir was not brave—no Caranthir can’t bear how much he would despise himself.)
“Caranthir,” Maitimo says, voice soft as the silk on one of Mother’s cream pies, “you need to breathe.” He rests his slender right hand on Caranthir’s chest, and Caranthir exhales.
“Watch this,” Maitiomo says, winking. He takes Caranthir’s spoon, scoops up a grotesquely massive lump of turnips, and shoves it in his mouth.
Caranthir gasps. Maitimo hasn’t eaten turnips since...he has never eaten turnips. Not in Caranthir’s memory.
Maitimo swallows, grins widely, then takes another bite, almost as big as the first.
“You can’t,” Caranthir says faintly. “Athair will see.”
At the same moment, the stairs out in the hallway next to the dining room creak as they always do, and heavy footsteps that can only belong to Feanor son of Finwe near the dining room.
Maedhros son of Feanor resolutely consumes a third spoonful of the rotten turnips.
“He’ll be furious with you.” Caranthir clutches the table cloth and barely restrains himself from crawling under the table. He has to sit next to his brother, think of some way to defend him, to keep Athair from punishing him for helping Caranthir.
Caranthir grabs the spoon from Maitimo’s hand, wrestles it away with surprising ease—and freezes when Maitimo snatches up Caranthir’s whole plate and dumps the turnips into his own bowl, where the foul mush sinks into the dark broth and disappears from sight.
Never in his life has Caranthir been stunned thoughtless. Speechless, yes, thoughtless, no.
Maitimo slips Caranthir’s plate in front of him and guides Caranthir’s hand to his mouth so that Caranthir must slip the spoon inside. Caranthir does so without protest. Then Maitimo hastily swirls his turnipy broth around, mixing it into a creamy mess, and begins to consume it as though it were as tasty as one of Mother’s puddings.
Athair stands in the doorway, clasping his hands behind his back. He eyes his sons as though he were one of Celegorm’s favorite hawks.
Caranthir, who holes himself away in an oversized closet, making it his bedroom, has never felt so much like a mouse as now.
His legs shake, and his heart is pounding, but he stays. He will not leave Maitimo.
Athair steps forward, wraps forge-scarred fingers about the top of his chair, sighs.
Caranthir opens his mouth to speak (to speak what he does not know), but Athair motions to Maglor and Curufin’s plates, half full of still-warm chicken and mushrooms.
“Caranthir,” Athair says, not looking at him, “your brothers do not appreciate the food provided for them. You may take the plates into the kitchen, and I will not question what you do with their contents.”
Caranthir looks at Athair and then looks at Maitimo, but Maitimo is steadily eating his turnip soup.
Something, a boot, perhaps, nudges Caranthir’s own shoe, and Caranthir says, “Yes, Athair,” and carries Maglor’s and Curufin’s plates into the kitchen. He sets them on the little wooden table where he has spent hours forming pie crusts under Mother’s tutelage, and peeks back into the dining room.
Athair has sat down again and is eating his dinner. From time to time he sets his fork down and grimaces, tightening the skin on his cheekbones, and he twice he glances at Maitimo with a strange look that is neither confusion nor anger but might be anything in between, or something else entirely. He does not speak, though, and Caranthir’s stomach rumbles again, empty as it is, and Caranthir turns away and eats what Maglor and Curufin left behind.
(A conversation Caranthir never hears: Maitimo quietly asking Athair to cease punishing Caranthir, and Athair nodding, lips pursed.)
(A sound Caranthir never forgets: Maitimo retching in the stable, where he thinks no one will witness him, but Caranthir had crawled up into the hayloft to ask God why He can’t make Maitimo like food more, because food is good as long as Athair isn’t in charge of it, and Maitimo is the best brother in the world.)
“Do you mind?”
Maedhros leans on Caranthir’s shoulder, pressing him down toward the earth without meaning to, and he holds his wine bottle in front of Caranthir’s eyes and tilts it back and forth.
“Cork’s stuck,” he says, slurring his words just a little (just a lot, Caranthir can barely understand him). “Give a fellow a hand?”
Caranthir shivers, but it has nothing to do with the cold. He can’t feel the cold anymore.
Maedhros does not recognize him.
“You’re drunk,” Caranthir says, choking. He is not blind or clueless, he knows Maedhros drinks whiskey daily, but this... “Let me take that.” He pulls the bottle from his brother’s grasp. If Athair sees—
Maedhros sways. “I suppose I am.” He squints, touches Caranthir’s short dark hair with an unsteady hand, brushes his smallish ears. His eyes widen and he sits down heavily on the ground, right at Caranthir’s feet.
His coat is open, is falling down his shoulders. The night is too cold for that, and too cruel. Maedhros’s shirt collar is rumpled, and so Caranthir sees a bit of The Scar.
(Curufin gently lowered Caranthir’s book with two fingers, but Caranthir only said, “I don’t know anything, and if I did I wouldn’t tell you.”)
“Oh fuck,” Maedhros says, and Caranthir can understand that perfectly well, because Maedhros always speaks so clearly when he swears.
(“What the devil?” This was Caranthir’s favorite curse in happier times, back when Maedhros was Maitimo to everyone but Curufin and Athair, back when Caranthir wished he could be like his oldest brother in every way. Now...he doesn’t know how much of Maedhros is left. He doesn’t ask, yet, how much of Caranthir is left.)
Caranthir wants to kneel down and grasp Maedhros and hug him until they both wake up from this horrid nightmare, and they’ll be back, oh anywhere before that awful Bridge.
No.
Caranthir calculates back further, before the Bridge, to the Room. The Room Athair locked Mother in, and Caranthir is—and was—bigger than Curufin, he should have been able to subdue him, should have freed Mother and together...Caranthir has no idea what they could have done.
Athair is unstoppable, and even after everything, Caranthir followed him across the Bridge and carried Maedhros’s body from the burning flame.
(After everything, Caranthir had no strength left, only hurt. He saw Curufin shaking, saw him struggling to breathe, and he looked away. His shoulder still hurt from where Curufin had shoved him into a wall. He still remembered Curufin’s pale, wild face and the way the blood had rushed in a hot wave to his own head.)
(Sometimes, Caranthir wishes he had forgiven Curufin immediately. Sometimes, he worries he hasn’t done so at all.)
“Fuck,” Maedhros says again, more softly, more desperately, and Caranthir flinches. “You’re not supposed to be here, Caranthir, why are you here?” Maedhros’ words stream out of him, water through a sieve. “Mamai will not forgive me—I didn’t bring you, did I?”
Maedhros is breathing hard. Caranthir crushes his hands against the wine bottle hard, but it does not shatter. Does not leave shards sticking in his hands, bleeding out his fears and pains.
He cannot handle this. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what to say.
Maedhros curls forward, out of pain or lack of coordination, Caranthir cannot tell, but Caranthir braces his hand against his brother’s chest and holds him up.
“I’ll get you to bed,” he says.
You just need sleep, he wants to add, but that must be a lie, because Maedhros never needs sleep, takes less sleep than even food, so something else must be seriously wrong.
It must be, for Maedhros is stronger than anyone Caranthir knows, maybe even stronger than Athair.
Something has hurt his brother to the core.
“Maglor,” Caranthir calls into the crowd of still celebrating men and women. They had faded out of existence for a moment, but now that he needs them, they have returned to the world loud and too rowdy to pay him any mind.
“No!” Maedhros sits up straight, clutches at Caranthir’s wrist. “No,” he repeats. His face twists like it does when he thinks no one is looking, but Caranthir sees, sometimes, and now he knows.
Someone has hurt his brother. Why the hell couldn’t it have been Curufin? That, at least, would have been normal.
Maedhros lets go of Caranthir and takes the wine back. Caranthir allows it.
He needs help.
Golden hair dances through the crowd around the fire, and in sharp relief Caranthir almost shrieks Celegorm’s name.
His brother comes.