Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Part 1

• The Valar did not lie when they told the Eldar their lost kin would return to them, only that it would take a long while. The healing of the dead cannot be rushed.
• (A number of the dead have known Melkor and his ilk. Their healing cannot be rushed.)
• More, the souls of the dead must patiently wait their turn when there are still newborn souls being made.
• It is fine to wait. Are they not immortal? 
• The first lost kin to be reborn are some of the oldest elves, the elves to recuperate the longest; a joy to have these treasured elders back amongst them.
• Maitimo feels so special when the dreams start. Reborn elves are so rare still! It brings pride to the House of Fëanáro, pride to the House of Finwë, pride to Nerdanel’s kin to be gifted one of their lost ones back.
• Maitimo’s heart swells with love for the parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and grand-relatives in his dreams, for a community under the stars at Cuiviénen that now no longer exists
• (Maitimo’s heart swells with grief for the parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and grand-relatives in his dreams, for a community under the stars at Cuiviénen that now no longer exists)
• (He cannot find any of them in Aman)
• ( Fëanáro pretends he isn’t struggling with making himself believe he isn’t being replaced. He isn’t he isn’t)
• (Maitimo pretends to believe him)
• The flow of memories runs smooth right up until some random day his old self was out hunting and every dream now ends with a splitting headache and desperate panic that steals his breath and dampens his brow and makes his heart race fit to burst in his chest
• Every dream
• This isn’t normal
• Matimo goes to Lórien, to seek Irmo
• “Nothing unnatural blocks these memories, save your own apprehension,” says Irmo thoughtfully, after Maitimo spends a night under his supervision. “It seems to me some trauma occurs that your subconscious desires not to remember.”
• “Can anything be done?” Maitimo asks, worn by weeks of constant pain and unrest.
• Irmo frowns, concerned and gentle and thoughtful.
• “I do not like meddling with minds unduly, and unduly it would become if I tried to force you to cross your own will,” Irmo says. “So it seems to me best if we let time and patience and a certitude of safety teach your dreaming mind that, whatever it remembers, you will still be alright.”
• That’s not especially welcome news
• “But we can certainly do something about the headaches,” Irmo hastens to add.
• Maitimo adjusts, and the House of  Fëanáro adjusts around him. He keeps tinctures by his bed for the headaches, and his family take care not to disturb him in the morning until they take the edge off.
• The memories stay stuck, sometimes stuttering forward a few minutes, sometimes cutting off minutes early. The closest he ever gets to figuring out what comes next is a looming shadow in the corner of his eye.
• “Maybe you got gutted by a boar,” a Celegorm fresh from a hunt with a Oromë suggests. “I wouldn’t want to remember that either.”
• “It is too tall to be a boar,” Maitimo tiredly refutes, clutching a cool, damp cloth to his eyes.
• “A bear then,” Celegorm says. “Bears aren’t very befriendable.”
• It is so much worse than a bear, Maitimo thinks, and doesn’t know why
• The year is 1400 YT and the Valar agree to let Melkor out on parole.
• First the first time, Maitimo experiences the panic and the headache while awake, and doesn’t know why
• The year is 1410 YT and Melkor mingles with the Ñoldor, smiling like a man with a secret and promising to share
• The first time Maitimo sees him is on the streets of Tirion, wandering home from the university, head aching fiercely as he fears he will never escape
• He sees the tall form, an Ainu who’s crafted his form almost eye-searingly fair as if to flaunt-
• He knows those eyes
• Those eyes know him
• Maitimo is back in his memory, the one he knows as well as his own bedroom by this point, but this time he completes the turn that reveals the shadow, gangling and wraith-like, with too bright piercing yellow eyes, that chases him and corners him and takes him far away north to a place where the cold has jagged teeth and nothing of green grows
• Maitimo is not the only Quendi taken, there are others. Some are new, like him, others are not and the sight of them tells a story by itself
• It is a truth that goes largely unspoken by the elves in Valinor that the Valar invited them to their fair land as much because they found them beautiful and desired their company as they also desired their safety, for Melkor had been cast down before the invitation was issued
• It is a truth never known to them, and therefore never spoken, that Melkor and his ilk are cut of the same cloth, for all they cannot be in the presence of beauty without wanting to possess and despoil it
• Grey Glitter had his old self been named, for the gleam of his eyes reflecting starlight. Mísrilya he’d been, long before the elves knew of the metal.
• Mísrilya, like Maitimo, was very comely
• Too comely for his own good
• In the throne room he’d been stationed, a pretty thing to look at and order around and torment for everyone’s amusement. 
• He witnessed a hundred thousand evils there; to himself, to other elves, to Ainu who displeased their vile so-called king or even merely each other
• The process of breaking was long, slow, and humiliating. It takes untold years of the stars
• Almost more humiliating for the fact it wasn’t even the point; being broken makes him boring
• By the time Mísrilya gets passed to Langon, he’s no longer so comely
• What Langon does to him, how Langon eventually kills him, doesn’t bear speaking of
• Maitimo stands on a street in Tirion, not far from the University, with blood all down his face and neck from a nose bleed caused by the tumult of memories finally coming unclogged
• Melkor stands before him
• “Oh my!” he says, with very well faked concerned surprise. “That looks serious! Let’s get you to a healer.”
• Maitimo is too shaken to dodge the hand closing around his elbow in time.

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Part 2! In which Melkor does damage control

• There’s a reason the memories are supposed to come gradually, in their dreams, Maitimo remembers, numbly ‘escorted’ through Tirion’s streets
• Irmo told him
• It was so the mind had time to assimilate them, to delineate between self that was and self that is. The dreaming mind can lay to rest what a waking mind cannot
• He’s not supposed to be struggling between he who died broken, and he who lives proud
• “Tell me, do you still go by Mísrilya?” Melkor asks, all lightly conversational as if Maitimo didn’t know that Melkor knew that Maitimo remembered what Melkor used to do to him.
• No, says the part that is Mísrilya who had defiance beaten out of him
• Yes, says the part that is Maitimo who would rather lie for the sake of being defiant
• “I wasn’t aware you ever knew that name,” is what comes out of his mouth, neither truth no lie
• “I remember you used to cry about it when no one would use it,” Melkor says, as if remarking on a fond habit of an old friend. Maitimo jerks in his grip. “Of course, I think by the end of it we had you answering to–”
• “Something foul and unnecessarily cruel,” Maitimo snaps, and the entirety of him is behind it. The epithet he died under is not his name. Never again will he bear hearing it, and certainly not in the good, clean air of Valinor
• And the thought is pure revelation
• By the time Mísrilya died, it had been so long since he last heard his name he’d half-stopped thinking of himself by it, too used to his captor’s cruelty
• But he has no trouble thinking of himself by his proper name now, either of them
• Whatever will to fight Mísrilya lost, Maitimo has it once more
• It reminds him that he would not have left the Halls were he not healed enough to do so
• Melkor just laughs, even as his grip tightens with bruising force. “Things don’t have to be necessary to be fun.”
• A haze of rage takes him so strongly he halts in place and is nearly yanked off his feet as Melkor keeps walking
• “Is what I would say, were I not sincerely repentant,” Melkor finishes, smiling and friendly still, as if ice wouldn’t melt on his tongue. The only reason Maitimo doesn’t make a scene right then and there is the too-close memory of dark Utumno lingering in the forefront of his mind
• “How can you be forgiven when you have only apologized to your own kin?” he still hisses anyway. 
• “I was only required to apologize to my kin to be declared forgiven. Isn’t that something?” Melkor grins down at him. Wherever Melkor is dragging him, it is not to a healer. They near the western edge of Tirion, rather, where it opens into the great meadows of Valinor. “Why, do you think there’s anyone else who deserves my acknowledgement?”
• The sheer callousness sweeps the breath out of him
• “I have the ear of the Ñoldóran, I could have you run out of Tirion,” Maitimo says, and he means it as threat and plea both. If I disappear, it will not be quiet no matter what you do
• “Ah, but what a silly fuss that would make. Manwë would hardly approve.” In the unfettered view of Ezellohar, Mingling gives way to Laurelin waxing. “After all, a penitent must be given a chance to prove their change of character, or otherwise what is the point of rehabilitation?”
• What change of character, Maitimo wants to howl, I see no change!
• “Where are you taking me?” He asks stiffly
• “To Lórien, of course!” 
• “Why is that necessary; there were healers nearer by.” Around them the land flashes by with the swift speed of a Vala bending space to walk days of distance in the span of minutes. Maitimo swallows, tastes the blood that dries on his lips
• “Ah, but I’m so new to the city, I know not where they are.” Melkor grins, as if enjoying a private joke
• “You lie.” As if Maitimo couldn’t have pointed them in the right direction himself
• “And you make accusations none will believe.”
• “There will be some!” 
• Melkor rounded on him then, grin fixed and gaze heavy with intent. Maitimo flinches on instinct, hating himself for it. 
• Melkor grins wider
• “Oh, I’m sure some will,” Melkor purrs, all too delighted for the malice he exudes, and the air about them is still, dead. Their words won’t travel. “But none, not one, has either the will or the power to naysay my brother and make him heed above his own counsel. But go ahead, try. You will be branded naught but a hardhearted rabblerouser. So long as Manwë is against you, all who heed him will be against you, no matter what.”
• Mock tenderly, Melkor cups his face, and traces his thumb over his upper lip through the still wet blood
• Maitimo jerks out of his grasp, revolted
• “Remember who has the real power here, Mísrilya,” Melkor croons, and licks his thumb clean
• “You–!”
• “Ah, there’s the Garden,” Melkor turns away, abrupt and jarring. “Irmo! Oh, Irmo, my kinsman, I’ve someone to see you!”
• Maitimo is rooted to the ground, sick to his stomach with dread, nigh dizzy with it
• Is it true?
• It cannot be true
• Melkor is a liar. 
• He lies for the joy of it
• But this conversation has been astonishingly honest for the person Melkor now purports to be
• About him, the wide meadow seems to yawn wide, and the breeze that shifts his hair makes him hunch his shoulders, feeling exposed, needing to hide. He can no longer take comfort in the touch of Manwë’s Breath upon Arda, for there is no help to be found there
• “Maitimo Nelyafinwë!” Irmo’s call jerks him to attention. Over the Vala’s shoulder, he sees Melkor mouth his name, eyes glittering. “Ai, little Prince, you look a frightful mess! What happened?”
• Irmo is gentle as he leads him into the Gardens
• Melkor watches them walk away, until the Gardens obscure them
• “My memories came unclogged,” Maitimo dully reports. “My headache’s really bad.”
• “Ai,” Irmo hisses sympathetically. “I’ll get my wife. You’ll be alright.”
• No, Maitimo thinks in familiar despair, I don’t think I will be
• But the words are caught in his mouth, mired by Melkor’s poison
• Who will believe him?

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  Part 3! Maitimo is a friend-maker and that should scare his enemies