Archive of Our Own

Watch that old fire as it flickers and dies

That once blessed the household and lit up our lives

It shone for the friends and the clinking of glasses

Elros’ left arm is wrapped tightly around his brother, as much for his own reassurance as for Elrond’s. His right hand is gripping a dagger. 

He’s not technically allowed to have weapons, being only six, but he knows where Nana keeps her emergency knives and this is definitely an emergency. Their home is on fire, and the kinslayers who killed Nana’s family are here. It’s the biggest emergency there can be.

He needs to get himself and Elrond out of here. Nana might have told them to stay hidden in the secret cupboard, but if they stay there, they’ll choke on all the smoke. She’ll understand when she finds them later.

Tugging his brother with him, Elros moves carefully into the next room. There isn’t fire in here, but there are two bodies sprawled awkwardly on the stone floor, leaking blood. He carefully doesn’t look too closely to see if they were anyone he knew well.

It’s not unlikely that they were--Sirion’s one of the bigger settlements left, but it’s still not all that big, and Ada and Nana had tried to make lots of friends. But he can’t think about that right now, about how their home has been ruined. He has to focus on getting to someplace safe.

But then the two elves run in, all streaked with grime and blood, and holding long swords with more blood on them. They’re both wearing armor with that eight-pointed star that everyone knows belongs to the kinslayers, and one of them has fiery red hair and is missing his right hand.

It’s the Fëanorians, and Elros knows then that he’s going to die.

He backs up a little, still holding onto Elrond, and points the dagger at them even though he knows it wouldn’t do a single bit of good. “Stay away from us,” he chokes out, and then coughs, because even if this room isn’t on fire, there’s smoke everywhere.

The red-haired one just looks at them blankly, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. The other one, with tangled dark hair and a smear of blood on his cheek, looks angry, and as his sword arm moves Elros tries his best not to flinch--

*******

Capture the wild things and bring them in line

Maglor sheathes his sword with perhaps an unnecessary amount of vehemence, and tries to get a handle on the seething storm of emotions welling up in him.

(--he’s supposed to be the calmest brother, which isn’t saying much in this family, but all his hotheaded angry brothers are dead now, so perhaps someone has to fill in for Tyelko’s and Moryo’s quick tempers--)

More people dead, another city destroyed, the aching discord of the jarring notes in the Song of the world for each life that ends under his blade, even as the Oath hums in satisfaction--and again for nothing. Elwing is gone with the Silmaril, and judging by these children’s resemblance to her and to Dior, she left her sons behind when she made that awful leap.

She left her children behind in a city being slaughtered, at the mercy of people she would rather die than hand over that cursed jewel to. 

Maglor hates her for it in that moment, hates Eärendil for not being here regardless of whether his presence would have done any good, hates this city for not at least learning from what happened to Doriath and handing the Silmaril over, and most of all hates the Oath, hates his family and himself for bringing all this about.

And here are these two tiny peredhil, one of them trying to fend him off with a ridiculously undersized and dull dagger, and they’re so young, but they’ve already seen far more horror than he or his brothers had dreamed of at ten times their age. 

He steps closer to them, holding up his hands to show that he’s unarmed. “It’s all right,” he says softly. “I’m going to help you.”

The unarmed twin lets out a short, scoffing laugh that’s almost a sob into his brother’s shoulder.

“It’s not safe here,” Maglor continues, trying to keep his voice gentle and soothing. “If you come with us, we can protect you.”

“No! Go away!” the twin with the dagger yells. “We’re going to find Nana, and if you try to stop us I’ll...I’ll hurt you!”

“Your nana isn’t here anymore,” Maedhros speaks up abruptly, his voice hoarse. “She fled; she’s long gone.”

“You’re lying!” the other twin asserts, finally whipping around to look at them with a death glare. “She wouldn’t leave us behind. You must have killed her!”

“We have not,” Maglor says firmly. They have killed any number of people in this city, but not Elwing. “She was very afraid and she ran--” Best to not bring the window and the transformation into a bird into it just now. “--but she is alive. But this is not a good place for you to wait for her.”

They just stare at him. Behind him, Maedhros is being no help whatsoever, no doubt still in that awful hollow state that Maglor first saw in Doriath and then again today, only letting himself process the next blow and the next kill and their ever-consuming goal.

“Put away your sword, for pity’s sake,” he hisses over his shoulder, before kneeling down so he’s on the twins’ level.

“I’m sure your Nana didn’t mean to leave you,” he says. Whether or not he believes it doesn’t matter; it’s what they need to hear right now. “She probably didn’t know you were still all right. If you come with us, we can get you out of the city safely and try to get word to her or your Ada, and they’ll come for you.”

Perhaps they can try and get the Silmaril in exchange, he briefly muses, but after what he’s witnessed today, he is not as sure as he’d like to be that such a proposal would be accepted.

The twins still hesitate. Then there’s the sound of Maedhros sheathing his sword, and he says roughly, “The city is falling apart; you won’t make it out on your own. If you try, you will probably die an uglier death than anything we would care to devise, were we so inclined.”

In the near distance, there is the crash and rumble of buildings collapsing. The smoke in the air thickens.

The tiny dagger falters, then falls to the floor.

Maglor swoops in and scoops up the children, holding them close to himself and trying not to think about the blood he’s covered in rubbing off on them. “Let’s go,” he mutters to Maedhros, and they take off running.

(They only discover as they’re gathering what’s left of their people to leave Sirion that the Ambarussar have fallen. Maedhros goes terrifyingly blank and frozen when he hears the news, and Maglor wants to rage and scream and howl a lament at the smoke-clouded stars.

But he can’t, at least not right then, because the battle that has stolen his last little brothers away has left him with another set of twins, passed out from overwhelmed exhaustion in his arms, and he doesn’t want to wake them.)

*******

And own what was never your right to confine

It’s supposed to be a temporary solution.

It takes Maglor a handful of months to realize that it’s not.

He doesn’t come to this realization when Elros and Elrond reach the point of no longer cringing in fear at his approach, although he does pick up on the shift in behavior and is glad for it--they shouldn’t have to live their lives in fear, particularly when no one here in Amon Ereb means them any harm.

He doesn’t realize when the new star rises in the sky, either. The star is obviously a Silmaril, but it doesn’t occur to him or Maedhros or anyone else to imagine someone up there with it. For all they know, the Valar might have suspended it completely on its own. If anything, Maglor assumes that this means that Eärendil and Elwing must have reached Aman safely with the jewel, and now have it no longer and will be returning to find their sons at any moment.

When they hear no rumor of any such thing, he and Maedhros discuss very quietly, far from where the children might hear, that Eärendil and Elwing might be dead. They discuss a few other people who Elrond and Elros might be safe with, but come to no conclusion, and this doesn’t cause Maglor to realize either.

Neither does the night when, as he heads for his room later than usual, he happens to pass by the twins’ door and hears muffled sobbing. He pauses, and after a moment’s listening, determines that one of them has suffered a night terror.

Quietly, he slips into the room, light from the cracked-open door slicing a path across the stone floor to the bed the boys share. Both are awake, and Elros, normally stoic in daylight, is the one in tears, with Elrond pressed close against him murmuring something. 

“What’s wrong?” Maglor asks softly, crossing to them. To his astonishment, Elros latches onto his arm as soon as he’s within reach. 

“Don’t go away!” he cries out. “Everybody always goes away!”

“I won’t,” Maglor promises, still slightly confused as to why this would be such an earnestly desired outcome.

Elrond might not be in tears, but he’s still noticeably distraught. “Grown-ups go away,” he says, quiet and with an awful matter-of-factness. “Nana’s parents went away when she was little, and then Ada’s parents went away as soon as he was grown up, and then he left us and then Nana did. It’s what happens.”

Maglor does his best not to choke on the irony that his brothers were the ones to take Elwing’s parents from her, and focuses instead on comforting the children. “But that’s not what I’m going to do,” he says, in as calm and soothing a tone as he can muster.

It doesn’t strike him as a permanent kind of statement, in that moment, sleep-deprived and confused as he is. All his focus is on Elros and Elrond tugging him down insistently to sit on the bed, and on holding them and offering nonsense reassurances, and on singing softly to them until they’ve settled into sleep again.

When the realization hits him as a conscious thing is several weeks later, when it comes to his attention that the twins are growing out of the clothes he’d scraped together for them when they first arrived, and that he’ll need to find new ones somewhere because the old ones are at the very limits of how much they can be altered and are also nearly worn through, and he goes to Maedhros about it and they get halfway through a conversation about whether, in the current early summer, they need to worry about winter clothes yet or whether the twins will have grown by then--

--and then it strikes him like a blow that they’re talking in terms of Elrond and Elros still being here for certain in several months’ time, even next year. They’ve never discussed the boys’ future further in advance than a few weeks, before.

He staggers slightly in place, and from Maedhros’ expression, his brother knows exactly where his thoughts have just arrived.

“Of course,” Maglor tries to course-correct, “that’s assuming they will still be in our--our custody by then.”

“You don’t have to bother pretending,” Maedhros drawls. “They’re not going anywhere for the foreseeable future, and we might as well admit it. Their parents aren’t coming back, one way or another, and I trust our protection of them more than anyone else’s.” He cracks something almost like a sideways smile. “I don’t know why this is coming as such a shock. You’ve been treating them like your own sons since we brought them here.”

Nana’s parents went away and blood on his brothers’ swords, on his own, and “I don’t have any right to them.” Then, honesty forcing itself past his teeth, “Regardless of the love I have for them.”

Maedhros shrugs. “Nobody has gotten what they had a right to since we came to Alqualondë,” he says with studied evenness. “Just thank the Valar this is one of the things that’s worked out for the better so far.”

*******

The lives and the loves and the songs are what matters

Elrond isn’t stupid. He knows he’s probably supposed to hate Maglor and Maedhros.

It’s not that he doesn’t know about all the terrible things they’ve done, just because he’s a child. Nana told him plenty of stories, before. And he wasn’t so little when Sirion burned that he isn’t aware of who set it on fire.

He and Elros have talked it over in whispers late at night, more than once as weeks have turned into months that turn into years. And in the end, it’s a fact that Maglor and Maedhros have killed people, killed their neighbors and their mother’s people. And these are also facts: that they could have easily left him and Elros to die in Sirion and no one would have been surprised, that they were under no obligation to treat them particularly well and yet they had. That more than once, in lean seasons, it would have been expedient to abandon the pair of them to fend for themselves (and die) in the wilderness rather than expend precious resources on them, and yet they had not only been kept, but cared for.

More than that, cherished .

Maglor teaches them everything he knows, even and especially music, even after someone tried to argue that it was dangerous to hand scions of Lúthien a weapon like that. He tells the best stories, and he can’t resist playing with their hair and putting it in complicated braids if they’re in arm’s reach, and he holds them and sings to them at night (and they’re almost too big for that now, but they’re not about to point that out).

Maedhros is more distant; he approaches them less and touches them hardly at all, like they’re sharp and will cut him open if he gets too close. But he lingers on the edges when they’re with Maglor sometimes, and usually when they’re playing in the courtyard and anytime they leave the fortress, he comes with them because he doesn’t trust anyone else with their safety, and when they turn ten, he gives them matching daggers (sharper and a big bigger than the one of Nana’s Elros tried to use) and teaches them about safe handling and the most effective places to stab someone in an emergency, pointing out different spots on his own body.

Engraved very small on the blades of the daggers is Work of Curifinwë Fëanorion . They know that name from the stories about what happened to Doriath.

Maglor and Maedhros are kinslayers. It’s undeniable. But they are also, as of now, the grown-ups who have stayed the longest in his and Elros’ lives, and they were never obligated to. No one made them. They chose, and they chose to do their best. 

Elrond is good at telling about people, and getting better all the time. He knows Maglor and Maedhros love them, even if sometimes they think they shouldn’t, and he is starting to realize that they are perhaps the one bright and stable thing in their guardians’ lives.

That doesn’t make him love them, because he had already started that before he was paying attention. But it does make him and Elros somewhat less conflicted about it.

It’s the end of the day, the evening darkening a bit early as autumn starts to set in, and the chilly air breezing through the fortress has the four of them huddled together by the fireplace in their designated living space, Maedhros’ need for warmth to soothe his old injuries overriding his habitual distance. He’s leaned against Maglor’s left side, and Elros scoots up under Maglor’s right arm. Elrond wants to be closer yet to the fireplace, and also to have his hair played with, and curls up with his head on Maglor’s knee. 

“Do you know any stories about the good kind of fire, atya?” he asks. “Like this?”

Maglor’s fingers twitch, and still for a moment as they’re carding through Elrond’s hair.

“Yes, I believe so,” he says after a moment, sounding slightly shaken. “Let me think.”

His cadenced words, musical without music, seem to wrap an extra layer of warmth around them as the shadows lengthen.

*******

Do you feel heavy? Your eyes drop with grief

Your spirit is wild and your suffering is brief

So never you buckle and bend to the masses

Maedhros knows better than to fool himself.

Elros and Elrond love Maglor more, need him more. He’s the one they call “atya”, the one they spend the most time with. While it might not be the healthiest thing to be so attached to someone who waged war on their former home, they need someone, and of the two of them, Maglor is the clearly better candidate. He was the one whose head was clear enough to get the children out of Sirion in the first place. He is...not unbroken, because this war has broken all of them a little, but at least more emotionally available.

Conversely, Maedhros knows he is more an object of intimidation, grown into respect, than of love. They might call him “atar”, but it is surely out of politeness after their claiming of Maglor. He didn’t bond with them the way Maglor did, rather keeping his distance at first and only realizing after months that he cared for them despite his best efforts at armored indifference. And anyway, it is already stretching what should be believed or expected for them to have grown attached to Maglor, let alone him, even if he has belatedly come to realize his own love for them.

So he shows it in the ways that he can, ways that won’t impose on them. He makes sure they can take care of themselves, and more than that, makes sure that they will never have to, that they will always be safe in Amon Ereb.

He leads patrols frequently, and throws himself into battle with any orcs or other dark creatures he thus encounters. More often than not, he doesn’t return home unscathed, and Maglor always gets a kind of shuttered, angry expression at his injuries, but Maedhros doesn’t always care. Since Sirion, he doesn’t really believe, deep down, that any of Fëanor’s blood (with the possible exception of Celebrimbor) will make it through this war, and he is so tired of finding himself still standing at the end of a day when more of his brothers have died.

So when the last, desperate orc from today’s skirmish gets an opening and seizes it, planting a knife in his side, Maedhros is almost relieved. He doesn’t have to wonder anymore how it’ll end, doesn’t have to slog onward. He’s getting a better death than his brothers did, fighting to protect his family rather than to destroy someone else’s. And Maglor and the twins will be all right; they’ll take care of each other.

He passes out somewhere in the middle of being frantically borne back to Amon Ereb on someone else’s horse--and is rather surprised to wake up later in the healing rooms, his side aching but no longer dangerous.

Elrond is sitting at his bedside, his face drawn and expression grim. He’s been growing at an alarming rate lately, but he’s still so young, Maedhros thinks absently. He shouldn’t know how to look like that.

“What were you thinking,” Elrond says flatly. “I’ve seen you spar, and I know you managed to survive four battles with the Enemy’s forces. A normal orc pack should’ve been nothing to you. Don’t try to play it off, I talked to the others who were with you, and they said you were being...reckless.”

Maedhros searches for words. “I am...sorry for distressing you,” he manages eventually. “It will not happen again.”

Elrond doesn’t seem satisfied with this. “Look, I...I know you’ve been through more than should be asked of anybody. I could feel the pain in your fëa when I was helping to heal you, and it’s slightly staggering that you’ve hung on this long.” He reaches out and grips Maedhros’ hand in both of his, hard. “But you have to keep hanging on. It will shatter Atya if you leave him alone, if he has to be the last one. I know he looks like he’s mostly all right, but it’s because he’s being strong for you .”

Maedhros lets his eyes slide close against the spike of pain in his heart. Of course Elrond would only care so vehemently for his well-being for Maglor’s sake.

Then, in a low mutter, “To say nothing of the fact that it would break Elros’ heart, and mine, to lose you, for whatever that might be worth to you.”

His eyes snap open, and he shifts to stare at the boy. “I would hope,” Maedhros says slowly, “that I have not erred so much as to make you think I could be indifferent to any pain of yours or Elros’. I simply had not considered that such pain would occur if I were to fall.”

Elrond’s fingers twitch around his. “You are our Atar,” he says quietly after a moment. “You have been our father just as much and just as long as Maglor has, even if you would not have chosen it.”

“I tried not to,” Maedhros admits. “The two of you should not have to love someone like me if there is an even marginally better option.”

Elrond’s mouth thins into a hard line. “Our ability to love is not so little as all that. There is room enough in it for at least both you and Atya.”

Unfortunately, before Maedhros can respond to that in one way or another, the door to the healing room crashes open, banging against the wall, and Elros comes running in, Maglor on his heels in an apparent attempt to deter him. When he sees Maedhros awake, he darts towards the bed, skidding to a halt before he can crash into it and jar the occupant.

“Atar. You’re awake,” he pants. “Atya tried to tell me it would all be fine, but he was so worried and he never lets us see when he’s worried--”

He looks like he wants to throw himself onto Maedhros and hug him, but is wary of aggravating his injured side; after a moment of hesitation, he compromises by dropping to sit on the edge of the bed and holding onto Maedhros’ right arm. “You have to promise to stay, too,” he insists. “We made Atya promise ages ago, but that was supposed to mean you as much as him.”

Maedhros looks at the two boys holding onto him from either side, at Maglor standing over the lot of them looking pale and drawn with relief finally starting to creep in, and then back again.

“All right,” he says softly, even as his energy starts to flag again. “I promise I’ll stay. All right.”

*******

Get round the fire with a glass of strong ale

And tell us a story from beyond the pale

“...in Aman, though, it seemed like there was always some festival somewhere either coming or going,” Maglor says, warming to his subject. He hasn’t talked about any of this, any of their life Before, in uncounted years, but the children had asked more than once, and he’d finally given in. “I don’t know how far apart they were actually spaced; time worked differently in the Tree-light, I think--but we never got tired of them. Everyone would dress in bright colors, and gleaming jewels, and the music at those times was unsurpassed--

He breaks off as someone raps on the door to their living quarters, and a moment later, their lieutenant Alassenca enters. Elros and Elrond’s heads swivel around, and Maedhros looks up from his pretending not to listen.

“The most recent scouting party has returned from the west, my lord,” she says, her voice flat and matter-of-fact as ever. “They haven’t much to report, but I thought you should be informed.”

“Yes, you did right,” Maedhros acknowledges. “I’ll speak with them later. They should have a chance to rest and recuperate; they would not have had an easy ride.”

Alassenca nods shortly, but as she turns to go, her gaze catches on Maglor, with the boys perched on stools near him. “If you don’t mind my saying so, Lord Maglor,” she says slowly, “why do you bother telling them about Aman? It’s not as though they’ll ever go there, even if we do all live through this mess. What good does it do any of us to dwell on those days when it’s all we can do to survive in the here and now?”

Maglor doesn’t mind the bluntness, or what some might call Alassenca forgetting her place. Those qualities are why she’s risen to the position she has, and have elevated their battle strategy in life-saving ways more than once. He does take issue with what she’s saying, but can’t seem to find words for all the reasons why.

“Because they ought to know, in case any of us do live through this mess, that there is the possibility of a world where such things can exist,” he finally says, acutely aware that Elrond and Elros are hanging on his every word. “If all they know is war and barest survival, that is all they will be able to make of themselves, even when given the opportunity to do otherwise.”

And they will get such an opportunity, he is determined of that. It bothers him intensely, sometimes, that they were born into a world being torn apart at the seams, but they will not live their whole lives in a world like that. Not on his watch.

Unexpectedly, Maedhros chimes in. It’s one of his rougher-edged days. “And if we all end up dying horribly anyway,” he comments, “at least we’ll have had some moments of not thinking about something completely miserable, in the meantime.”

Which is not quite the argument Maglor would have gone for, but is nonetheless true. 

Alassenca purses her lips, bows briefly, and leaves, which is probably the most they could have expected: she’s never been much inclined to anything resembling hope since Maglor’s known her.

In his private opinion, hope isn’t really something anyone can be inclined to in Beleriand. You either fight to hold onto it, with teeth and fingernails and a bruising grip, or you don’t.

“Go on, then,” Elros says. “Tell us about the music.”

So Maglor does, and Maedhros doesn’t bother to hide that he’s listening now, and for a little while his words take them across the sea and back through the centuries to a time when nobody really knew what darkness was.

Later, they will still have to deal with the war and the rest of the world. But right now, they can steal some peace.

*******

Bury some seeds and expect some strong branches

“Watch your feet--better! Now block! Try that backwards slash again.”

Elros, panting slightly, complies as best he can. The sparring lessons for him and Elrond are a recent development, as they had lobbied hard around their twenty-fifth birthday to be trained in combat beyond emergency self-defense situations. By elvish standards, they might still be too young, but the blood of Men in them had them grown or nearly so already. Their parents and their maternal grandfather had married at around the age they were now, after all.

Sparring, he’s learning, is not as easy as it looks. Maedhros and Maglor and their soldiers always make fighting seem, if not effortless, than at least as though it doesn’t require remembering a dozen different things at once. Elros had expected to be worn out physically after the first few sessions, but it’s been several weeks, and training continues to leave him tired and sore not just in body, but in mind. 

Right now, his instructor is Maedhros. He and Maglor switch back and forth every day which twin they work with, so as not to get either of them used to a single fighting style. Maedhros is ostensibly the easier opponent, with only the one hand, but he makes up for it by being significantly more demanding and harder to please.

Elros knows that the exactingness is born of love, that Maedhros wants more than anything for them both to be safe and this is the best way he can ensure that. It doesn’t lessen the sting at all when his foster-father finds a way past his guard and whaps him lightly on the ribs with the dulled practice blade. 

He bats the sword away with his own and takes one, two, three swings. Maedhros blocks the first two easily, but the third time he’s distracted by a yelp as Elrond tries to trip Maglor up and gets reflexively kicked in the shin, and--

--Elros, through sheer luck, gets through Maedhros’ guard and pokes him in the chest with his own practice sword. It’s the first time he’s managed to land a blow all week.

The success startles Maedhros briefly, and then he nods to Elros. “Well done.” The praise might be brief, but it’s rare and genuine, and Elros’ whole body fills with warm pride.

“Now to learn from it. Can you duplicate the movements by which you pulled that off--your opponent’s distraction notwithstanding?”

Elros is far from sure, but they work on it, eventually ending the training session with the sensation of having made progress.

He only thinks about it afterward, as he and Elrond go to clean up, and he’s watching his brother practice thrusts and blocks with an imaginary sword. They used to watch the soldiers training in Sirion, peering out from their window and talking excitedly about how that would be them one day. The soldiers there, trained in the ways of Doriath and Nargothrond and Gondolin, had an entirely different way of moving, one focused on economy of movement, that kept limbs close in to the body. It was a fighting style made for close quarters, that spoke of development and training in underground chambers or the limited space of a city.

The Fëanorians, for whatever reason, fight much more expansively. Their style isn’t reckless and purely offensive--if anything, it seems to operate on the assumption that no one will ever be covering your back for you--but it’s designed to take up space, to allow the fighter using it to dominate that space. 

And he and Elrond fight like Fëanorians--or they will, once they get better.

The thought doesn’t horrify him the way it would have if someone had told him such a thing when he was six. Nearly everything else in their habits is Fëanorian at this point, and that is no bad thing. He likes the person he’s becoming, the person Maglor and Maedhros have raised him to be.

*******

Now show me a man that can meet all his needs

For what we need most now is unity's seed

A common old song for all creeds and all classes

It is, for once, a pleasantly bright and sunny day in West Beleriand when Elrond comes riding hard into the camp of Gil-galad and the host of the Vanyar, Elros at his side. If either of them is stressed for any reason beyond what has become normal for elves in this age and place, they do not show it, and if they have wept, the speed of their passage has brushed any tears away.

Their arrival is the cause of some alarm on the part of the soldiers who see them, wearing red cloaks and bearing Fëanorian markings as they are, and being well-armed. They have come thus because Maedhros and Maglor had no spare resources for making them new, unmarked garments and armor, and because nowhere is safe to go unarmed anymore, but the soldiers aren’t to know that.

He and Elros do their best to seem as unthreatening and unintimidating as possible, under the circumstances, as they are surrounded and not-quite-forcefully escorted to Gil-galad and Finarfin, sitting by a brazier in a meeting tent. The high kings look startled and alarmed to see them, and then mostly confused as they realize that the newcomers look, more than anything, like Lúthien’s line. 

“Greetings,” Elrond says, bowing low. “We are Elrond and Elros Peredhel, whom you would know as sons of Eärendil Tuorion and Elwing Dioriel, and we have come seeking peace.”

King Finarfin looks like he might now be even more confused, but Gil-galad’s expression darkens, and he glares at them. “You will find no favor here by cloaking yourselves in the names of the dead,” he says flatly. “The sons of Eärendil and Elwing perished many years ago in the sack of Sirion--at the hands of the folk whose device you bear.”

So that is the tale that has been told of them. They had had some hints, from what rumors had managed to reach them, but hadn’t known for sure.

“I do not know how such a report began,” Elros says slowly, “but it is untrue. We were removed from Sirion by the sons of Fëanor, in the absence of anyone else who might have taken charge of us, and remained in their care for the intervening years. Despite their reputation, they have dealt well with us.”

Gil-galad snorts. “And I suppose now they think to send you to infiltrate our ranks and spy on us.”

“They have no need to do so,” Elrond points out, “unless you happen to have obtained a Silmaril, and if you do, we have heard nothing of it yet. If you must know, the eastern reaches have grown too perilous to remain assembled in groups larger than a handful and smaller than an army, and all their remaining people have been forced to scatter into hiding. They deemed this to be one of the safer places left in Beleriand, and would have sent more here if they had thought any besides us would not be slain on sight.”

Maglor had also thought that there might be a chance the two of them would be permitted to sail to Aman when the host returned, since their parents were there. Elrond and Elros had already privately agreed that they would do no such thing, even if they were allowed. 

Finarfin, at that point, evidently decides to take charge of the conversation. “And what do you mean to do here? Can you fight?”

“We both can fight well, at need,” Elros says. “We survived in the wilds of the east this long, after all. My brother’s gifts lie more in healing, however, which I am sure there is need for also.”

“You assume any would concede to fight beside you,” Gil-galad interjects. “And we still lack assurance that you are who you say you are, and not a deception that will betray us at the worst moment.”

“They are who they claim to be,” a new voice rings out, and Elrond feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as Ëonwë, herald of Manwë, enters the tent.

“I recognize the heritage of Melian in them,” Ëonwë continues. “There are only two in Arda who now carry it, and it cannot be counterfeited. Too, I can see that they speak the truth as to their intentions.”

Gil-galad still looks unhappy, but he gives a short, jerky nod before giving them a hard look. “That still leaves the question of where I may place you. As many as we are, we are still few enough that you will be needed, but I do not know that any of the factions we have united here would accept you in their ranks.”

Elrond barely restrains himself from laughing, as he had nearly this exact conversation with Maedhros a mere handful of days ago. “We may be Fëanorian in our upbringing, but we have blood ties to two different groups of Edain, to the Gondolindrim through one grandmother, and to the Sindar and Doriathrin through other grandparents. Simply because we have not had the opportunity to explore the rest of our heritage before does not mean that we do not wish to. If anything, you might have too many choices as to where to place us.”

He’s had a lot of time to think about this. He’s always going to be at least a little bit Fëanorian, no matter what, but even though he’s still bitterly frustrated that he’s had to leave his fathers behind to do so, he can’t deny that he’s intrigued by the chance to let parts of him be Sindarin and Nolofinwëan and Mannish, and whatever else he might turn out to be.

Someday, he dares to dream, all of the different peoples that he’s from will be able to be in the same room together without anybody wanting to stab each other.

Right now, though, he has to deal with this war, or none of them will get anything like that chance.

*******

What will we do when the world it is ending

And time it is halted for friend and for foe?

Beleriand is crumbling, and Maedhros feels like he might be crumbling too.

For centuries, his life has been defined by the war, by the need for the Silmarils, by responsibility to whatever is left of his family. Now the war is over, largely without help from the House of Fëanor, the Silmarils have been denied them, and his family...

Most are dead, his one surviving uncle and cousin despise him, his sons have gone and it is probably for the better, and he’s leading his last brother into an incredibly desperate, foolhardy plan.

He’s not even sure it deserves to be called a plan. It’s more of a single, terrible determination that they must do this thing, even if it kills them. He has nothing else keeping him upright and moving anymore.

They have nearly reached the tree line and can see the lights of the camp in the distance when two figures crash through the brush and nearly slam into them. They skid to a halt just in time, and there is just enough starlight through the smoke for Maedhros to see who it is before his battle reflexes kick in. It’s Elrond and Elros. They’re garbed, respectively, in the fashion of Balar and of the people of Bëor, and they look like they’ve just narrowly escaped something.

There is a small casket clutched tightly to Elrond’s chest.

“There’s no time, we have to go!” Elros hisses, cutting off their questions.

The four of them flee deeper into the woods, only halting some time later when they find their path cut through by a chasm of fire. There doesn’t seem to be anyone pursuing them, so they drop and catch their breath rather than immediately seeking a new course.

“Are you going to explain now what is going on?” Maglor demands after a moment.

Elrond, very slowly, sets the casket down. “We heard Ëonwë tell you that you would not be given the Silmarils, and we knew there would be trouble. So we pretended to agree with his judgment, and then later asked the guards if we could see the jewels that there had been so much fuss over. They didn’t want to agree at first, but we argued that we had a right after all our family had been through for their sake.”

“If they assumed we were only talking about one part of our family, that was simply error on their part,” Elros adds wryly. “Anyway, we got them to bring us to the tent where the Silmarils were being guarded, and then...well, we caught them off-guard and seized the casket and fled out the back of the tent before anyone could stop us.”

“We killed no one,” Elrond chimes in hastily, before Maedhros can register more than a rising sick sensation at the possibility. “We were moving too quickly and they were too reluctant to harm us for the issue to arise. It is surprising that they do not seem to be on the hunt for us, though.”

“Not all that surprising,” Maedhros says, thinking aloud. “They must know that you were bringing the Silmarils to us, and therefore if they come to retrieve them there will be a fight, with them as the aggressors. They will not wish to earn the name of kinslayers for themselves.”

The other three nod, acknowledging the truth of this...and then Elrond lays a cautious hand on the casket. “Do you want to see them?”

Now that it’s come to it, Maedhros is a little afraid to. Once this purpose is complete, what will he have left to hold him together? But this must be done, so he nods, and Maglor does a moment later, and Elrond unlatches and lifts the lid.

The beauty of the light surpasses all of Maedhros’ time-faded memories. It is purity, it is majesty, it is slightly beyond what the Children of Illúvatar can comprehend. 

As if in a dream, he and Maglor reach out in unison to each take a jewel.

The pain is immediate, searing both body and soul. Maedhros screams more rawly than even Angband could draw from him, for then at least he had known that the pain he was under was wrong, evil. This torment is brought on him by something bright and hallowed, and he is the one in the wrong. He longs to let the Silmaril fall, but cannot.

Beside him, Maglor is screaming as well.

Then there is a familiar hand against his, and Elros is prying the Silmaril out of his grasp, tucking it back into the casket. “It’s all right,” he murmurs, “it’s all right. Well, it isn’t right now, but it will be. We’ve got you.”

A glance to the right shows that Elrond has gotten the other Silmaril away from Maglor, and is undergoing a similar comforting litany. But there can be no comfort, not for this. 

“They didn’t burn you,” he says hoarsely, “but they burned us, just as they burned Morgoth and his creatures. What have we become? What have we made of ourselves?”

The years with the twins had, every so often, allowed him to briefly forget the horrors he had perpetrated, just as the years of the Long Peace had nearly drowned out Alqualondë in his mind. But it matters not. No matter what else he may do, he will always be a kinslayer, a monster, unworthy. 

The Oath is fulfilled, but in the doing they have made the entire endeavor futile. At what point did they become creatures unable to touch such light? At Sirion? Doriath? From the first moment they shed blood? Or was there never a time when this could possibly have ended well?

Movement catches his eye, and he sees Maglor stagger to his feet, and then take up the open casket with the Silmarils replaced in it. Before anyone can stop him, he takes two long strides and then hurls the whole thing into the nearby chasm, the two perfect lights being swallowed up by the fire.

“There,” he says raggedly. “No other wars shall be fought for those things. No one else shall make of themselves what we have.”

Maedhros finds that he can’t help but agree. And yet it tears something in him, to see the light be lost. Almost without thinking, he finds his feet, moving towards the edge of the chasm, as if he might follow the things that he has spent the better part of his life wading through blood to pursue.

His hand still burns, even empty. Is there anything left but for the rest of him to burn, too?

Something yanks him backwards, hard, and he finds himself sprawled on his back on the ground, his sons gripping him tightly and half-holding him down. There is grimness in their faces, laced with a deep fear.

They don’t speak, but Maedhros hears anyway: Atar and you have to promise to stay and it would shatter Atya; it would break Elros’ heart, and mine, to lose you .

And then Maglor is there, too, pale as a ghost, and they all end up huddled together somehow, gripping each other tightly because there does not seem to be anything else to be done.

“What happens now?” Maedhros says, an unmeasurable amount of time later. “What is left?”

“Anything,” Elros says, with all the force of a proclamation. “Anything we decide.”

*******

Try to hold on to the time as it passes

Tonight, Bilbo decided, was a night for the Hall of Fire. He had not been since the first few days of his stay in Rivendell, and he was in a mood for hearing the art of others after a long day of messing about with his own book. With this determination, he settled in there straight after supper, and was not disappointed. 

He had chosen a good night indeed. There was a new bard there, or rather, one he had no seen before, for nothing about the elf suggested he was anything but a long expert at his craft. Unlike most that Bilbo had heard before, he did not sing merry songs of nature, or sad ones of the waning of the world, but rather songs that were tales of history. He spoke of the darkest of times that had yet not been wholly lightless, of fair intentions come to foul corruption, and of bonds of loyalty and love that could not be severed by any of this, that simply were and withstood.

A few of those listening glared silently, and some wept, and some were frozen by sheer awe, but Bilbo noticed none of them until after the bard had concluded, so rapt was his attention. He had to shake himself a little, in the aftermath, to remind himself that he was still here in Rivendell, his own hobbit self, and not swept away to some far-off land and time.

The bard seemed to have vanished when next Bilbo looked around, but after a moment he spotted him again. He had retreated into a shadowed corner, and with him were Master Elrond, and an elf like none Bilbo had ever seen--incredibly tall, and scarred, and missing his right hand. He seemed very grim, and yet in the presence of the other two he softened and became almost merry, and Elrond appeared far younger than anyone would have thought.

Bilbo could hear none of their speech, but it was plain even from a distance that they were as close as kin. And yet there was clearly a gap amongst them--space left for a fourth person, though who that might be, he could not guess.

None of it was any of his business, and so he did his best to not stare. Whatever their tale, they had doubtless earned the right to their current contentment without the nosiness of other people.

At least for now--he was certainly going to try and make the acquaintance of the bard, at least, at some future time if he was able.

I'll tend to the flame, you can worship the ashes