Work Text:
What have you done? What have you done?
That is Curufin's voice. Though Caranthir and Amras had questions, too, Curufin was there. He seized my arm when we were the only ones left in the wide hall, hissing out his fury.
Even Celegorm was gone.
He demands what I have done, but I have done nothing--neither mended my clairséach, nor gathered up the pieces and burned them. We have been fortifying; Curufin has made me weapons and made himself maps, covered in the strange language he and our father (and maybe Rumil) knew. Men have died, in skirmishes. All of it is nothing.
I let Fingolfin and our cousins cross the bridge:
Nothing.
I shut myself in the study, shaking. We were here, once, every one of us living. Then my ghosts were here with me, and I could dream that they and I were dead.
Maedhros is dead, I told Fingon. I do not know if, in that moment, I hated myself more, or him.
There is red pigment fading on these walls. Tracks and hopes, I suppose, were written on it. I have locked the scrap of his hair in Rumil's desk, and not a one of my brothers, not even hoarding Caranthir, has asked where it is gone.
Fingon and Finrod were not the same. Yet, I claw at my face with my hands, weeping and laughing, when I know I am alone.
The Maglor of every other life never could have dreamed...no, not even in nightmare...that he would be mad and hollow, mad and hideous with silence and his brother's blood.
His Maitimo's blood.
Fingon called him that.
I hated him.