Chapter Text
It should have gone like this:
Maeglin would have returned late from his trip, admitting to a cave-in and a small injury, and been quietly upset when Turgon banned him from any more of these already illegal expeditions, and he would have softened when Eärendil came up to him and offered the child a colorful stone saying he'd managed to keep one thing he found when the tunnel collapsed and the other end snowed in, and Eärendil never would've realized he'd gone into his own collection to have something to give him.
Maeglin would have put Eärendil on his shoulders and taken hands with his partners and walked home to allow himself to be comforted at the loss of his only small freedom, and Eärendil would have complained that sitting on his shoulders barely made him any taller than normal, and Idril would have laughed, and Maeglin would have threatened to put him down and make him walk, and Tuor would have given Eärendil a kiss on the head, and everything would have turned towards the better.
But that was not how it went.
Maeglin took the news that he was no longer allowed out calmly, without visible disappointment, and went directly home afterwards, not even looking at Tuor when he tried to follow after him to provide comfort.
"Do you think he's alright?" said Tuor, worried. "I thought he'd be more broken up about it; he's only ever this flat when he's been overstimulated."
Idril watched Maeglin with narrowed eyes as he turned a corner and disappeared down a cross street. "I don't know. He doesn't seem as tense as he should be, and he hasn't gone to the healers for his injuries."
"He barely even looks injured," Tuor noted.
Idril inclined her head in agreement, still staring off into the distance with a frown.
Eärendil came running up to his parents and hugged Tuor's legs. "Granddad said Ada was back, where is he?" he asked, looking up with eager eyes.
"He's--" Tuor darted a glance at Idril. "He's going home right now. It's too bright for him outside and he needs rest after his trip."
Eärendil pouted. "But he said he'd bring me a rock!"
"Maybe we can all go look for rocks tomorrow," said Idril. "If he's feeling better, that is. In the meantime, do you want to go play with Glorfindel?"
"Yes, please!" said Eärendil, disappointment forgotten, and they set aside their worry.
The worry, however, did not set them aside.
Maeglin spent the next month and a half barely talking to them, even though they still spent time together, and it wasn't the same as his contented silences, instead distant and drawing further away every moment. His mind was shielded even against Idril, and no amount of gentle prying could convince him to tell them what was wrong.
Then, one night as the three stood on a balcony under the light of the Moon, Maeglin sighed and turned from where he had been leaning on the railing.
"I don't think this is working out," he said apologetically. "We ought to go our separate ways. It's been lovely being with you."
There was a stunned silence.
Then, "Are you breaking up with us?" said Tuor hesitantly.
Maeglin tilted his head in a familiar birdlike gesture that he'd always blamed on having met Lúthien. "I fail to see what else I could have meant."
"Might I ask why?" said Idril, face a mask of perfect calm though Tuor could feel her heartbreak echoing his own. The words were callous, even for him.
"I don't think we're suited. We're too different, the two of you and I, and I had a good deal of time to think when I was trapped in that tunnel," said Maeglin, driving the knife in further with every word. "It's not that I don't care about you, just that we're not right for one another in the long run. Besides, I'm not cut out to be a parent."
Somehow that was worse than any insult. He would reject Eärendil? Their child, who called him Ada and looked up to him like he'd hung the stars?
With trembling hands, Tuor removed the engagement ring that Maeglin had made for him, silver fashioned lovingly to look like a blackbird and a mole facing a piece of aquamarine. "Will you be wanting this back?" he said.
"No. I made it for you; keep it."
Idril removed hers as well (worn on the middle finger rather than the index, as was customary for partnerships of heart's-friends), a likewise silver band, inscribed with a panorama of the Echoriath as they appeared from the center of Gondolin, a sapphire set in the northernmost peak.
He hasn't been wearing his rings for weeks, said Idril, and true enough, Maeglin's fingers were bare. He often removed jewelry to work, but before he had always put the rings back on.
"I suppose this is goodbye, then?" said Idril.
"I still do live here," said Maeglin. "And I'm not allowed to go out on my own anymore, so I'm stuck in this cage with you. Don't get any ideas about trying to win me back."
With that he departed, leaving a gaping wound.
"How are we supposed to tell Eärendil?" said Tuor once his former betrothed was out of earshot. "He'll be devastated."
"Keep them apart for a bit, I think," said Idril. She tapped her foot. "He still seems so off. Why wouldn't he tell us the reason? That was an evasion and you know it."
"And he's never been shy about telling us when he doesn't like something," Tuor agreed.
"I have a bad feeling about this," said Idril. "A foresight bad feeling, to be clear. There's more at play than just a sudden change in his feelings."
The next weeks were difficult and unpleasant, and whispers proliferated, the private lives of the royal family being considered public property. Many gossiped that Maeglin's love had always been lacking, or taken the wrong direction, and Tuor and Idril didn't dare argue for fear of worsening the rumors or Maeglin finding out.
Maeglin himself was unavailable, brushing by Tuor in the streets without looking at him and only interacting with Idril to argue with her in council meetings in favor of things uncharacteristic of him. He ignored Eärendil almost entirely, and Eärendil hated this with all of his almost-seven-years-old heart.
After three weeks of this maddening behavior, Idril decided she'd had enough.
"We're breaking into his house," she announced. "I want a look at his journal."
Maeglin had kept journals ever since two years after coming to Gondolin, and updated them meticulously. If there were a reason for his change of heart, it would be recorded there.
"What if we get caught?" said Tuor. "He notices everything."
"But he doesn't," said Idril. "I wore the engagement ring on a chain around my neck yesterday and he didn't even blink. He's not as sharp-eyed as usual, even if he's sharper-tongued than ever. He should have made a snide comment."
She was right about that. "Breaking and entering it is, then."
They decided to go over in the evening, when Maeglin would certainly be out of the house, given that the bright light would have died down leaving his eyes safe, and most of his people would be too busy turning in for the evening to notice anything.
It was far too easy to get into his study, and to open the case where the journals were kept, since at a mere touch from Idril the lock undid itself without need for a key.
She frowned. "Did he not adjust the spell after leaving us?"
"I didn't know it would open for us in the first place," Tuor whispered back.
Idril scanned the shelves and took out the most recent journal, labeled with the year 509. That was strange, too. It was already the beginning of 510, and he should have put a new journal in for the new year, but there was no evidence that one had ever been placed in the cabinet, and a cursory search of the desk yielded nothing, so they cracked open the journal and turned to the last few entries, all of them written in the Cirth runes he had first learned as a child.
"Girithron 19.
The gossips are at it again. I have to get out of here.
Fair weather has been forecasted for the next two weeks. I'm going to the outer mines, planning to be back by Mettarë if possible or Turgon will be upset. Will write my findings here.
Eärendil's birthday is just a few months away. Obviously the baby armor that Idril asked for isn't exactly an appropriate gift, since it's mostly for her, but it's just about finished, only in need of embellishment. Maybe a new mechanical toy? A bird?"
There were no further entries. Not even in invisible writing.
"Okay, I get why you have a bad feeling," said Tuor. Maeglin would never fail to update his journals -- and he hadn't come back until the eighth day of Narvinyë, twenty days after the entry. True, he'd blamed it on an accident and bad weather, but he was altogether too careful in the practice of his craft to have such an accident, and the weather hadn't been quite so severe, even if it was less clear than forecasted and the mountains had seen snow. "What do we do now?"
The enchanted lamps along the walls flared to life.
"I think you can start by telling me what you're doing in my house," said Maeglin.