Chapter Text
“How shall you mend it?” Maedhros asks.
“I don’t think I can,” Maglor answers glumly. He has the pieces of his clairséach in his hands, and Caranthir could swear his lip is trembling like a child’s. Maglor can kill a man, can ride out into darkness with his head held high—
And can be as soft as a fretful woman sometimes.
“If I was any hand at woodworking...” Maedhros says, before his voice trails off. He is sitting cross-legged on the floor of their room, his and Maglor’s. Athair convinced Rumil to give them a few small chambers: two, to be exact. They were once storage rooms beside the larger one that is now Athair’s.
Athair’s and Curufin’s, most nights, since they work in the forge and mine until the wee hours.
Maglor did not ask for another opinion, but Caranthir has one. He snorts. “Galway said he’d try.”
Maglor purses his mouth, as if Caranthir’s presence annoys him. Likely it does, but since it was Maedhros who invited him here, under the pretense of cleaning the family guns, Maglor cannot send him away again.
Such is the power of Maedhros. Caranthir stifles a sigh.
“I know what Galway said. It’s just that I can’t trust anyone to do it properly.” Maglor puts the sorry splintered pieces back in their place, rolled in the tattered Mother-quilt that used to be Celegorm’s. Celegorm must have been like to throw that quilt away, otherwise he wouldn’t have given it to Maglor.
“Perhaps Athair, now that we are settled,” Maedhros offers, but does not pursue the subject further, since Maglor has stowed the harp. He picks up Amrod’s pistol. “Caranthir, the grease? You’d think he used dirt for bullets, the barrel’s right clotted.”
As if summoned, the door bursts open and the Ambarussa tumble in. They smell like fish.
“We caught ten!” Amrod announces proudly. “Crackers, the trout were biting!”
“Celegorm caught ‘em, mostly.” Amras follows his twin’s example and flocks to Maedhros, slipping in between Caranthir and the guns to do so. Maedhros stretches his legs out in front of him, to make more room, and a little knot in Caranthir’s chest tightens or loosens. He doesn’t quite know which.
“You’re in the way,” Maglor protests to the twins, as if he worries about the care and keeping of guns. He’s been doing nothing for half an hour, just moping over his harp.
“No matter,” Maedhros says quickly. “Will we be having fish for dinner, then?”
The twins groan collectively. “Celegorm said we had to help scale them.”
“You did that on the road.” Maedhros points out. “You know how.”
“Yes, but…” Amras smirks. “There was nowhere to run, on the road.”
Caranthir is happy to see their faces bright with color, even laughter. None of them laugh very often these days. The skirmishes keep them too close to forget, although Caranthir is often left behind with the twins.
He wouldn’t say he envies Curufin for going. Indeed, when the guns are laid out like this, who can tell which are brought to battle and which burst harmless holes in bags of sand or soil?
The fish are forgotten. The twins are examining the finished guns, clucking over Maedhros’s work (which is perfect) and utterly ignoring Caranthir.
They are also utterly ignoring Maglor, which is rather more amusing.
“The vultures are bigger than eagles here,” Amrod says abruptly. They were not talking of birds. He takes his gun from Maedhros and starts to clean it himself, likely to show he can. Amras follows suit.
It doesn’t seem to matter, Caranthir thinks for the thousandth time, that Amras is slightly the elder.
“Condors,” Amras corrects. “They’re called condors.”
“Celegorm doesn’t like ‘em.” Amrod frowns.
Because they pick over the dead, Caranthir doesn’t say. He knows that that is what Amrod is thinking. They’ve seen—well, they’ve seen everything.
The door swings open.
“You little fuckers,” Celegorm growls. “Here you are.”
“Seeking protection,” Maglor mutters, and he and Celegorm exchange a unified glare for once.
“Go on, you two.” Maedhros speaks with his own quiet authority, and the twins scramble to their feet. They are getting very tall. Caranthir tries to imagine three red-haired brothers towering over him, and cannot quite manage it. Maedhros will always be tallest, and the twins will always be—small.
Caranthir lacks imagination. He shakes his head to himself, and picks up the last of the guns: Athair’s second side-piece. He oughtn’t clean it, perhaps; he won’t do it as properly as Maedhros would, and then Athair will chide him for it.
Caranthir begins on it anyway.
“Leaving me with a brace of trout,” Celegorm complains, like he can’t merrily butcher a deer with brutal speed. Celegorm is tall, too, but Caranthir does not admire him in the same way. He smells more like fish than the twins do—yes, those look like bits of fish-guts drying on his hands. His tawny hair is spilling, wild and matted, down his shoulders.
“You look like an ogre.” Even now, Maglor finds it in himself to be prim.
“Sure I do. Hey, Maitimo, you have a bit of string? Need to tie this lot back.”
“Or cut it off.” Maglor again.
“Says Lord fuckin’ Byron.”
“I’ve a string,” Maedhros agrees. He stands up. “Here, keep your hands out of it. I’ll do it.”
There is gun grease on Maedhros’s hands, but Celegorm won’t mind that. Celegorm has not a care for filth, only for convenience. And yet he is grander than Caranthir—loved by Maedhros, which is the same as victory, and admired by Curufin, which is something else. Caranthir is the forgotten brother, even in Mithrim, when Athair says they need to have every ally they can.
Maedhros is the only one who never forgets him, because Maedhros never forgets anyone.
And so, softened, Caranthir remembers the image long afterwards: Maedhros’s hands carding gently through tangled gold, and Celegorm looking much like Huan does when his shaggy head is stroked.