Chapter Text
Maglor had imagined he’d lost the capacity for hope. After all, he had spent the last several Ages rooting it out of his heart like a particularly noxious weed.
“Káno,” Maedhros says. “At last I’ve found you.”
Of course the figure is in his head, but the smile is what throws him. Maglor hadn’t known he could imagine Maedhros smiling thus. Not so easily.
A frown darkens that clear brow.
Yes, that is more like Maedhros…
“Look at you.”
Maglor waves it off. He is not so horrible to look at. Is he being mocked by his own mind? “You always worried too much,” he says. He wants to see the smile again. Loose and dizzying, it made his heart ache.
“For good reason,” Maedhros mutters, the stubborn bastard.
He sits beside Maglor where the rocks cede to pebbled sand, flecked with dried seaweed the last storm had cast up. Maglor’s heart, traitorous, skips and throbs.
“Why must you return and torment me?” he grumbles—to himself, the only soul present—secretly terrified Maedhros really will vanish at the words.
Maedhros looks pained. Ah, bitter regret! “Give me but a chance. I know you must be angry. But I will not be parted from you so easily—not this time. I crossed the Straight Road for you, you know.”
Maglor stares—again. He stares and his brother’s tall leanness blurs in his vision.
“I have never yet thought of anything so cruel,” he whispers, tremulous and hating himself for it. He looks not at Maedhros—perhaps then, finally, Maedhros shall vanish, as he did into that fiery precipice those long years ago.
“Cruel?”
There’s a new cast to Maedhros’ Sindarin, something homelike. Did Maedhros begin in Sindarin, or did Maglor switch over? He cannot recall… He has made dream-Maedhros unhappy.
“It is customarily thought of as cruel to dangle a fruit before one who cannot eat it.” Maglor laughs and clutches his burned hands to one another, the old scars aching sharply. “A treasure before one who cannot seize it—!”
“Káno,” his brother says reasonably, “what are you talking about?”
It’s funny, it is!
“Cruel,” Maglor repeats, “to hold something so keenly desired before someone who cannot reach for it.”
Grim, Maedhros’ unscarred face. With that expression, it could almost really be him.
“But you can,” he says. A hand takes Maglor’s own. Flesh and blood, its touch is unfamiliar—horribly unfamiliar. Maglor looks anxiously at his own hands. He is not clasping his own hand, is he? No, Maedhros’ pale-brown fingers interlace with his own, scarred and knotted ones. Maglor shudders. His brother’s—the vision’s hand bears no trace of the old sword-calluses—
Maedhros draws his hand to his chest. Maglor feels the soft, exquisitely-woven cloth of a simple tunic, and then the insistent beat of a heart against the scar which spiderwebs across his palm.
“You can, Káno,” Maedhros says. “And if you do not, it will reach towards you. I am here with you, I swear it. Months I have searched for you, and I shall bring you back with me to Aman.”
Maglor’s free hand skitters anxiously at the coarse rock by his side, at his own chest, before holding to Maedhros’ wrist, his bold forearm. There is warmth under his hands.
Maedhros. Maedhros.
The sight before him swims and teeters.
“Maitimo,” he says in a small, deathlike voice. Darkness overtakes him like a flock of birds’ wings and he slumps forward into his brother’s arms.
He wakes to the slick black of stone overhead: the sea-cave where he has hidden himself away like an animal from the worst ravages of the elements. He wakes and pushes himself up with jagged elbows, though his limbs ache. He makes it to a sitting position, but then he remembers the dream.
Maglor stifles a needle-sharp cry. The sea shudders with him beyond the rock: low tide, now.
He cannot think: the cry, the sob, the song all choke in his throat. His lazy heart has jolted abruptly into beating, alive and piercing suddenly through him; uncomfortable as though it had shifted and taken root wrong in his chest. Perhaps it’s some foolish hope, some dull expectation of disappointment, that has him leaving the cave, following the dull scent of smoke.
He blinks.
Maedhros crouches by a driftwood fire, stirring it with a branch. He shifts the position of two skewered fish. The smell of the woodfire, of the fish’s skin searing, knocks Maglor out at the knees.
The sight of him—
Maglor passes a scarred hand across his eyes.
He looks again. He sees hair red as sea-beech fronds, scooped practically behind one shoulder. Maedhros straightens one precariously-balanced skewer with his left hand. His right reaches to steady the other.
Maglor feels weak—ephemeral, as though he might slip away, fading at last in truth and finally. Maybe he already has.
"Nelyo," he starts, but cannot quite fill the word’s bare shape with sound.
Grey spins bright and absorbs him: the ebbing waves embrace him with their lacy foam. The sunlight refracts Maedhros’ smile from every wavecrest. Then again the beach looks empty, its bleakness flickering beyond the silhouette of his brother. Maglor blinks, trying to fix it in his gaze…
Someone wraps an arm about him and he turns into it, lost until he finds himself settled by the sputtering fire.
“I meant to come back in to wake thee,” Maedhros’ voice says into his hair. “I should not have left thee alone.”
“I don’t understand,” Maglor says truthfully.
Maedhros—for it is Maedhros—draws back, and Maglor again sees his face. How strange and clear it looks.
“That’s alright,” Maedhros says with a determination Maglor recognizes. It must not be alright. “I’ll stay until you understand.”
He pauses, perhaps because Maglor’s scarred fingers have found their way to his face.
“There was a mark here,” Maglor says quietly.
Maedhros is still, and Maglor fears dreadfully that he has seen through the illusion, and now it will dissipate. The fish-skin crackles on the fire, and the wind changes, the smoke’s path veering closer to them.
He touches beneath Maedhros’ eye. “And another here.”
He is frightened now. What if he remembers Maedhros wrong? It can’t possibly be—and yet it could be. Maybe the memory has gone smooth with too much considering, like a rock turned over in the hands too many times. What good is he if he remembers Maedhros, Maedhros, wrong?
But Maedhros is nodding. He proffers his right hand, still a strange sight to behold. He grimaces.
“All repaired in Mandos.” The voice bears a slight shadow—an echo of the grimness Maglor remembers.
“You look so young,” Maglor says hopelessly.
At that, Maedhros actually laughs.
The sea-spray in the sun, the sun on the glint of Maedhros’ teeth and the smooth shell of his cheek—it looks like Treelight; it dazzles Maglor so much that he blinks even as he stares, and can’t speak afterwards.
You do, he thinks to himself. So much younger, or so much older. You look perfect. Radiant, and…
“Thou art the first to say that, Káno,” Maedhros is saying, laughing.
Maglor realizes belatedly that there are tears running down his own cheeks.
"Oh," Maedhros says.
“If this is a dream,” he whispers, tasting salt, “at least it is a pleasant one.”
Again Maedhros’ arms find their way around him.
“It is no dream, sweet,” Maedhros says, nudging him so his head rests upon his shoulder. “I’m here with you.” His voice sounds strained, almost ragged, as though Maglor’s weeping really does him harm.
“Yes,” Maglor says into his tunic, helpless to do otherwise before the urgency in Maedhros’ voice. The fabric is of a fine make, and again he has little explanation beyond—that he has returned, though why would he—
“You’ll feel better after breakfast,” Maedhros offers more matter-of-factly. He brushes Maglor’s tangled, salt-heavy hair back behind his ear with familiar, deft fingers. “Where are you getting your fresh water?”
Maedhros is insistent on this sort of point, asking questions about the nearby spring and Maglor’s small inventory in the cave between making Maglor eat bites of cooked fish that at the very least taste real. Maglor, for his part, is insistent on nestling himself as close as he can against Maedhros’ shoulder. If Maedhros vanishes, he will have made the most of it.
Maedhros lets him: that is fortunate. He even sighs at one point: “Káno,” he says quietly, and Maglor can feel the rise of his breathing, “I am so glad to have found thee.”
Maglor could not have dreamed something so kind, and he scarcely dares respond. He could weep again simply thinking on it. No, savor it. Weep later, when thou art alone.
But because Maglor cannot leave well enough alone, when the fishbones are picked clean and his head feels clearer, he asks, “How did you return?” He still fits himself flush along Maedhros’ side. Their father might call the way they dovetail “good craftsmanship,” approve the neat invisibility of the seam between them. Maglor would like to be convinced by it, to repair them together in truth.
Maedhros makes a skeptical, displeased little sound that is so Himring Maglor’s eyes do well with fresh tears, though he cannot see it. Maglor never runs short of tears no matter how little freshwater he drinks, as though they take the endless ocean as their source.
“Mandos released me,” he said slowly. “I understand that little.”
“Mandos,” Maglor breathes, elaborative and songlike. The fire quivers in answer; the breeze rises with his breath; the waves murmur their reply receding, a soft accompaniment of tumbling pebbles and whelks.
“Yes. We fell not beyond any circle of the world, it seems.” Maedhros’ voice is wry.
Could it be? Maglor shakes his head slightly; though it was long ago and himself yet young, he remembers the burning power of their father’s words like one fixed image. How they had seared his throat in the singing out of them; how they had seared and lit the darkness that had fallen like a shroud. Could it truly be?
“They considered it hubris,” Maedhros says, “swearing as we did. Mandos it was, as it would be for any other shade.”
He hesitates.
Maglor looks quickly at him, ensuring he is still there. Maedhros’ arm tightens about his waist.
“What is it?” Maglor whispers, the words blurring together in an anxious rush. Maedhros’ lips quirk like a splinter in wood. His brother—if this is his brother in truth—is embarrassed, Maglor intuits.
“You may think me a fool,” he says, “but I do not care, Kanafinwë. I knew you were not in the Halls. When I woke, I found you not. I went to Mánahaxar and asked the Valar to return to Middle-earth. I was told the world was sundered and the last ship had sailed from either harbor. Besides, I had yet to prove our house worthy of trust or favor.”
“You are telling me a story,” Maglor says. All the breath has left his body. “It is not like you.”
“I am telling you the truth.”
“Thou—”
Maglor will not waste air countermanding Maedhros; he shall hear out the illusion.
“The Valar changed their decision, for thee?” Perhaps in this happy dream, Maedhros, like Lúthien, softened the heart of Námo Mandos—this strange Maedhros who loves him so much.
“No,” Maedhros says. “I came in spite of it.”