Work Text:
It starts like this:
Donna Noble is humming.
The tune is rough, out of tune, incomplete, but it catches at the edges of Maglor’s attention, entrancing. It sounds of the Music, of fate, and yet it does not sound of Arda at all, harmonizes with the air upward, does not sink into the ground, does not grow among the trees, and it thrums in Maglor’s chest like starlight.
It starts like this:
Maglor is singing.
He sings the song Donna was humming, adapting, completing, tangling himself within its strangeness. He longs to meet its composers, there is something luminary about this music, something he reaches for, cannot quite touch. It is not meant to be sung singly, there is a great choir of music here, far off, a joining of minds touching the universe. Maglor sings, not quite right, until, until, there. The music rings out. Donna turns, realization, shining in her face. She falls.
Maglor rushes to his beloved, panic joined with guilt joined with confusion. There had been no malice to the song, it had throbbed with pain and empathy, and proud, patient, undaunted, furious good. It was a song of Power certainly, and perilous as such, but it was a song of Knowing, of Remembering, of Learning, of Sharing, not of Change, and certainly not of harm, so how…
Maglor is not a healer, has never been a healer. He was pretentious in his youth, art for art’s sake only, he scorned those who sang for making, for growing, for healing. Was not music a Making enough in and of itself? Then later, his hands felt too dirty for it.
Maglor is not a healer, no, but he raised two sons who were; the greatest healers Middle Earth had seen before or since. He taught them to sing, and he watched them grow and perfect their work. Maglor knows much from raising them, from watching them heal, from being the recipient of their healing, and Maglor is the greatest musician that Arda has ever known.
So Maglor sings over his wife, his words reach out and touch her soul, and there it is, the rift, burning.
Maglor has always known Donna to be touched by starlight. From the very first moment he met her there has been a strangeness to her, a humming beneath the skin, dissonant but not unbeautiful. Now he sees that her soul is split in two, or rather, two souls of different sorts are crammed into the space of one, but still both are the same soul. One half was hidden, cut into, a barrier erected to keep it contained. It is not human, this part of Donna, it burns with the brightness of the trees, too bright, too much, for mortal hearts and minds, and Donna’s mind is being consumed by it.
Someone has saved her from this before, but clumsily. They could not heal her, so they took from her this part of herself, so that it was a bright void, aching gently. Maglor can do better.
He sings first of cool waters, the song Elrond would sing for Maedhros long ago when the encroaching fires of his memory grew too hot. Maglor sings gently of healing and strength, until her heart calms and her mind no longer burns, feverish. Then he sings of weaving and joining, intermingling the parts of herself that had been torn apart, separated. He sings of growing and changing, rebuilding pathways in her mind, forging her nature into something new, something whole.
Donna’s eyes fly open.
“The Doctor!” She says, “That arsehole.”
“Are you alright?” Maglor asks.
“Of course I’m alright. You are a wonder, husband mine. I remember everything. ”
Maglor smiles. “Then tell me everything,” he says.