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Maglor cuts his hair the night after his brother’s rescue.
It’s a rushed job, done in faint torchlight on the edge of the camp with one of his swords instead of a proper knife. But for all that it only takes a few moments, his mind won’t keep quiet, constantly trying to pull free of the matter at hand and dwell on more familiar tasks— supplies, meetings, making sure the Ambarussar got back safe from their hunting trip. He has to force himself to focus on why he is here; thirty years of being regent when Maitimo should have been king, and he’s already made hiding behind his distractions into an art.
He almost slices his palm, where the old oath-scar still is, trying to get the blade through a particularly stubborn braid. The torch sputters— he really should be doing this in front of a mirror, somewhere inside where he can see what he’s doing.
(But Maitimo is inside)
He makes a small, choked-off sound and claps his hand to his mouth. No one can hear him like this. That is another thing he has learned, that no one must see the leader crumble like the child they left behind in Tirion, no matter how many things he has to cry for.
No matter how many brothers you have killed, you mean, he corrects himself. He isn’t sure if he has said it out loud; it doesn’t matter, really, does it? Not when Maitimo is inside and he’s been avoiding him and his rescuer for the entire day, not when he ought to be on his knees in front of Findekano, for having the nerve and wits to do in days what they, under Maglor’s own leadership, have been neglecting to even attempt for decades.
They’d come back with the eagle, and Maitimo had been only half aware, flinching from his brothers’ concerns, covered in the marks of all they had not protected him from, and Maglor had only heard the air singing you have let this happen, you could have done something all along.
He can feel himself slipping again. The urge to shout, to move, to do something crests inside him, and for one wild second he starts to run back to the center of the camp where they have taken his brother, absolutely convinced that he must apologize to him again. But no, that can’t be right— he has forfeit all right to talk to Maitimo, to even look at him, after what he has failed to do. Before long, he ends up in the shadows again.
He throws down his sword. His hair is now approximately chin-length, the proper expression of utmost grief and regret that not even Losgar could convince him to wear. With nothing for his hands to do he sinks to the ground himself. Wind strikes hard and fast at the back of his neck; clouds race across the stars.
I should have come for you, he thinks at the distant light. I could have come for you.
(Songs of power are his specialty; he should have gone instead of letting Findekano risk his life for the friends who abandoned him, he should have thought of using the music faster. He should have done everything faster.)
His quiet sobs now come as ragged as the wind, and he searches helplessly for any sort of relief, any way to fix this fix all of it, surely there must be some way. That kind of thinking can be dangerous, he knows this, but he needs solace, guidance, he needs to put himself back together— he needs—
Never again.
He draws in one long, ragged breath and leaps to his feet. Yes— that was what their father had told him, No regret, no turning back now Kano, before he had gone to his doom. That was what Lady Nerdanel had told them, Lady Nerdanel who deserved better sons than this but whose advice he is not yet above taking for himself: You cannot improve the past, but you can improve the future. The past has done that to Maitimo. The future must not be allowed to hurt anyone else who matters.
He looks back at the distant firelight. Somewhere Maitimo is lying down for the first time in years, and somewhere his brothers are all back together again. Hope, Makalaure, he thinks, courage where you had none.
“Never again, Maitimo,” he vows in a low, trembling voice. He does not dare to swear to anything else, but he feels the words settle in the blurred chaos of his heart, anchoring him, and repeats them once for each person he can lose.
“I will do what I must next time”— and it pains him to know there will most likely be a next time, but the ache is a little less now that he has promised. “Next time, I will come.”
Next time, I will be of use; next time, I will come to you, I will not hesitate to help. And underneath it all, sure and steady as his brother always had been: Forgive me, Maitimo. I am so very glad that you are back. I am sorry, I am so sorry.
(He will be sorry for a very long time.)