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“You were distraught when you swore it,” Elrond said to Maedhros. Maglor's history lessons on the departure of the Noldor from Aman had not put his family in a flattering light, but the twins had long since learnt to seek out more than one account. They had prevailed upon some of his followers for, as Elros had put it, 'a version of history only somewhat steeped in guilt'. “Your grandfather had just been murdered. You wanted vengeance against his murderer. Against Morgoth, not anyone else. You couldn’t have known it would send you against, well, us.”
Maedhros raised an eyebrow. “Does ignorance of the outcome of a course of action absolve one of its consequences, once one has chosen that course?”
“Well, no, not entirely, not absolves,” Elrond hedged, “but I would think it makes some difference, doesn’t it?”
“You’ve been talking to Eärion, haven’t you.”
Elrond looked down. Beside him, though, Elros pressed his lips together and lifted his chin: So what if we have?
“I served as my grandfather’s clerk in Tirion, did you know that?” Maedhros looked up almost dreamily, eyes half-lidded. The twins, who knew by now that he must have a reason for this apparent non sequitur, remained silent. “I organised his papers, attended him at council, kept notes on the discussions as a record for any not in attendance. And I wrote the first drafts of any law or judgment he planned to issue. He was very particular that any decree that bore his seal be as clear and comprehensible as possible. No unnecessary language.”
His gaze landed on Elrond, keen and challenging. “I took his tutelage to heart. ‘Foe or friend, foul or clean,’ we said. ‘Elda or Maia or Aftercomer.’ We knew the Oath bound us to pursue our friends and our kin, if they held a Silmaril. Why include those words if we believed they would never be relevant?”
Elrond had no answer. But Elros replied, in a dry voice, “Poetic license?”
Maedhros’ penetrating gaze shifted to him, one corner of his mouth quirking faintly. “If it had been my brother and not my father who had the main hand in crafting it, I might believe you. But let us say Elrond is right, and we swore not in clear-eyed choice but in the madness of grief. Let us even say we could not have imagined where the Oath would lead us, though its very words laid out the path. Even then, our first thought upon the slaying of a beloved family member was for vengeance and violence. Was that necessary? Or inevitable? I would think your own case proves it was neither.”
Elros gave him a blank look. “Our own case was that we were six. And you had swords that kept back the spiders.”
“We used those same swords to kill your friends,” Maedhros pointed out. “By that logic we ought to have forgiven Morgoth himself, had he but lent his strength against Ungoliant.”
“This is ridiculous,” Elrond broke in. “You’re the one who taught us that drawing a false equivalence is poor rhetorical strategy. For that matter you’re also the one who taught us to use swords. You aren’t Morgoth. Our own case proves that, too.”
“Perhaps I am simply sparing you now to make the torment of my later betrayal sting all the worse,” Maedhros said lightly. “The thralls who were granted favour only had further to fall.”
“That threat would carry a lot more weight if you hadn’t been distinctly failing to betray us for eighteen years,” Elros informed him, with all the dismissiveness of a part-Mortal youth for whom eighteen years was a great deal of time—not enough to forget Sirion, exactly, but enough that the image of Maedhros and Maglor, fell murderers, had receded in his consciousness relative to the image of Maedhros and Maglor as guardians, teachers… something like parents. And Maedhros mentioned Angband infrequently, and never in front of Maglor; but when he did it was always in tones of mordant humour that, so far as Elros was concerned, had long since stripped the terror from such conversations.
Elrond, who on two or three occasions had caught a fragment of Maedhros’ dreams, thought his wry detachment less a sign of recovery than a symptom of what remained unhealed. But mentioning that was a surefire way to end the conversation, so instead he said, “We’re hardly thralls. If we ever do meet Eärendil, we’ll tell him so, and maybe he’ll be convinced to give you the Silmaril. And if not, well…”
“Any darkness everlasting that comes for you will have to come through us,” Elros finished for him, and grinned. “We’ve gotten quite good with swords now; the darkness will have rather a task of it.”
Maedhros looked startled, and then very strange for a moment—like someone about to cry, or be sick, only he never did either of those things—and then his expression smoothed over.
“If I were darkness everlasting, I should be thoroughly intimidated.” He didn’t quite smile, but his eyes softened. Even that was enough to transform his scarred face.
Elrond could almost see why he had been called Maitimo, once.