Chapter Text
Maitimo lies in bed. He is not supposed to get up. He cannot quite remember why.
Oh—the chain—the eagle—Finno—
Maitimo—no! ah perfect Maitimo how your father would scorn to see you like this well-made well-sculpted do you like how i have re-made you—Nelyafinwë—third of your grandfather’s name and just as fragile as him look this is how easily a blade can cut through flesh oh don’t faint my master and i want to hear you scream—
Russandol—?
“Russandol,” the figure at his bedside whispers, “Russo, shh, do not move, it will be all right—”
His shoulder hurts.
His leg hurts.
His back hurts.
“I hear they are calling you Maedhros now,” he hears—or remembers; he is on the edge of sleep, and feels drunk, and can’t tell. “In Sindarin. It does have a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
Maedhros. Yes. Maedhros.
He remembers.
The chain—the eagle—Finno—his hand—
Ai, my Maitimo, what makes you believe you ever escaped?
His left hand flies to his right, checking, and its tense tendons relax when he finds nothing but thick scarring over the bones of his wrist—no hand, no chain, no cliff—no trick.
Maedhros. Is Maedhros. In Beleriand. Free.
In a bed.
Maedhros lies in bed. He is not supposed to get up. He cannot quite remember why.
He is not supposed to get up. Findekáno said to go to sleep—
He is not supposed to get up. Makalaurë said to go to sleep—
He is not supposed to get up. Carnistir said to go to sleep.
Amon Ereb. It’s milder than Himring. When he slips out of bed, his scarred, calloused feet barely feel the cold, even as he pads off the carpet and onto the icier stone. His hair—cut to his shoulders; Finno cut it for him that first time and he keeps it shorn now at that same length—is unbraided, falls in a mess of russet strands with streaks that are fading to gray.
Outside, afternoon is slipping away as the sun sinks down into the west. He can hear the twins arguing down the corridor—speaking, not shouting; Carnistir must have told them not to wake him.
He must have fallen asleep.
He must have fallen asleep.
Makalaurë said to go to sleep. He can hear the twins arguing down the corridor—speaking, not shouting; they’re still too frightened of him to wake him intentionally, and for once Makalaurë doesn’t try to assuage their fear. He checks to make sure he remembered to lock the door.
He checks to make sure he remembered to lock the door. Once he stabbed Tyelko in the arm with the dagger he keeps under his pillow, and now he makes sure they all knock on his bad days. On his good ones, too, just to be sure.
It’s locked, so he sits down on the bed again and tries to remember what he was doing before he fell asleep. A patrol should be coming back today; he can’t recall who is in it. Makalaurë is leading it, maybe?
He goes to his desk to check his paperwork, but stops when he remembers why he locked the door. Curvo.
Curvo. He must have been dreaming, because he recalls Curvo standing over his bed, holding a dagger their father had made, stroking its blade. The tip of his finger was sliced from it, and red.
He was smiling.
Curvo. Curvo kept barging in last night, bothering him about Tyelkormo’s asinine plan again, and he had felt a headache coming on. He’d locked the door. Did someone wake him this morning, or was he screaming in his sleep, thrashing in bed, and telling them to stay away?
But Curvo should be out on that patrol by now, with Makalaurë and Tyelkormo. Still, Maedhros doesn’t unlock the door, because he can hear a sound going back and forth—the slide of wood, a gentle thud. Carnistir’s shuttle sliding across his loom. And he can hear footsteps, light and deliberate. Tyelkormo, on the hunt.
Slide. He looks up.
Carnistir sits at his flying shuttle loom, the one he had to leave behind at Thargelion. The yarn strung across it looks—and smells—like strips of sinew, cut thin and stretched over the wooden frame. At the smell, his left hand flies instinctively to his right, checking—
His left hand flies to his right. Checking.
No hand.
He exhales.
The person sitting by his bed shifts, and gentle fingers, harp-calloused, ghost with utmost care over the tensed knuckles of his hand. “Are you awake, Russo?” the person whispers.
The sunlight—he has been told that is what it is called, the new burning in the sky, sunlight—streams through the window, and catches on the gold woven through dark braids. Findekáno.
“I am awake,” he rasps.
“Are you well? Would you like water?”
“No.”
“Are you cold?”
“No.”
“Then why are you trembling?”
He realizes it is not his bed that is shaking, and wills his limbs to still; they do not. “It hurts, Finno,” he breathes.
The warm shadow of braids falls over him, filtering out the burn of the sun. “What hurts?” Findekáno murmurs, stroking his hand. “Shall I call for more medicine?”
He shakes his head, and the ragged side of his cheek scrapes against the pillow. Something warm pools beneath the torn skin; he is so accustomed to the sensation that it takes him a moment to recognize it as blood.
“Oh,” Finno murmurs, shifting, “hold still. Don’t worry, my Nelyo. I can fix it.”
He reaches for the gauze at the bedside, and begins to hum a Song of healing. Russo-who-is-Maedhros-now watches him, but his eyes are falling shut. He wants to speak—he has a thousand words to say—am I dead? Did you kill me? What are you doing here? And if I live, why do you stay? I love you. Thank you for staying.
I would love you even if you did not stay.
Sleep steals his words from his stitched-up mouth, and Findekáno blurs away.
“Are you awake, Russo?”
Maedhros opens his eyes, and Carnistir is gone. He follows the trail of ribbons on the floor—golden ribbons, stained brown by drying blood, leading to a figure bleeding gold from his twisted braids and wounded chest.
Findekáno clutches his hand over his heart, and limps over to him. His eyes shine bright; his mouth glistens.
“I am awake,” Maedhros says. “What are you doing here? You are . . .” He frowns. “You are not supposed to be here.”
Findekáno limps closer. He takes Maedhros by the hand. Something is wrong.
Maedhros leans away.
Looking hurt, Findekáno pauses, and then he reaches out; caresses the shorn locks of coppery hair falling into Maedhros’s face. He smiles, a little sadly. He leans in and—
He leans in and—
—something is wrong—
—he presses his lips to Maedhros’s, and Maedhros can feel his mouth begin to bleed. He sputters on it, chokes on it, but Findekáno only crushes his mouth in closer, snakes his tongue between Maedhros’s teeth, and Maedhros gasps and pushes him away.
“No—Finno—”
“What’s wrong, Russo?” says Findekáno, head tilted, pulling away. “I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you!” he says. “But I’m not—we’re not—“
“You said you loved me.” Betrayal is beginning to creep its way across Findekáno’s features, thinned and hollowed by the Ice, still streaked with the smoke of Angamando. “Did you . . . lie to me, Russo?”
“No!” he cries, seizing at Findekáno’s hand. “I love you, Finno.”
But Findekáno yanks his hand away. “Liar!” he cries, eyes brimming with tears. “You are not him. You can’t be him. He loved me.”
“No, Finno, I swear to you it is me,” he says desperately. “I have always loved you. I cannot . . . you said . . . I thought you understood. . .”
Findekáno shakes his head, and the gold in his braids shakes with it; back and forth, swaying, a hypnotic breeze. “What did he cut out of you, Maitimo?” he whispers, his voice scraped raw with grief.
Maedhros winces. “Do not call me that, please.”
“Did he take your heart as well as your beauty?”
“I still have—”
“Don’t you want me, Russandol?” Findekáno cuts him off, his eyes wide, pleading. “Don’t you love me? Would you marry me, if I asked?”
“No—only because I will not marry anyone—”
“Why not?” Findekáno screams.
“I cannot fall in love, Findekáno!” Maedhros shouts, tearing himself away, and chunks of his flesh tear away with him: off his mouth, off his hand, off the muscle of his throat, littering the floor between them, spattering the abandoned ribbons of gold in pinkish gore. “You know I cannot!”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“I am not afraid of it!”
Findekáno seizes his right wrist, and Maedhros screams—the grip burns. “Then why are you trembling?” Findekáno whispers.
“It hurts, Finno,” he gasps.
The grip on his wrist relaxes, and Findekáno strokes his skin. “Don’t worry, my Nelyo,” he croons. “I can fix it. I can fix you right up.” He melds his lips to Maedhros’s again, and Maedhros wants to die. “See? You are a monster now, after all—you are broken, but I can make you whole.”
Perfect, well-formed Maitimo, you are broken now—or have I made you whole?
No hand. He exhales, and tries to ignore the stench of gore that wafts from his brother’s loom.
“Not today, Moryo,” Maedhros murmurs, looking away. “I am busy.”
“You are always busy,” Carnistir scoffs, and pulls a thread through deftly without even looking—over, then under, then over again. “And yet here you sit—doing nothing.”
“You told me to sleep,” Maedhros reminds him.
“No,” says Carnistir, “I didn’t. Not this time.”
Behind Carnistir, Tyelkormo prowls like an animal, spine hunched, head cocked, his silver-white hair streaked with mud and blood both red and black, with wild eyes and claw-shaped fingers. Where he paces, his feet leave gore-drenched footprints, wolf’s paws on the stone.
“Nelyo,” he snarls, through teeth like a bear trap. “NELYO.”
Carnistir pulls another strand of sinew through his loom. His hands are beginning to ribbon apart, joining the mess of threads beneath his fingers—but still, he weaves, he weaves.
“You’re no elf, Nelyo,” Tyelkormo sneers, and bares a gaping black mouth with too many rows of teeth. “You’re an animal.” Claws burst through his splintering nails. “I hunt animals.”
Behind him, Telvo laughs, high and echoing—or is it Pityo crying? Sometimes it sounds the same—and the stones shiver and crack and seep out blood as somewhere, Makalaurë sings.
Tyelkormo lunges. Maedhros does not dodge.
A thunk—a searing pain—
The slap of feet against the stone as Tyelkormo, on all fours, bounds away—he looks back in the doorway, head twisted like an owl’s, and in his mouth he holds Maedhros’s right hand, severed at the wrist, bleeding orc-black down his brother’s jaw.
“Oh, Turko,” tuts Curvo, leaning down. He takes Maedhros’s hand from Tyelkormo’s mouth and examines it. “You ought to be more careful.”
But he is smiling. He drops Maedhros’s hand to the floor, licks the blood from his fingers, and he is smiling.
Telvo giggles.
Pityo weeps.
“Go away,” Maedhros growls, clutching at the stump of his hand. “All of you, begone. You are not my brothers.”
“Why, Nelyo, you would forsake your own kin?” says Curvo mockingly, and his tongue flashes silver, like a needle in his mouth. “He really did make you one of his.”
“I am not Moringotto’s.”
“You are a liar.”
“Káno’s Song hurts us,” Tyelkormo whispers, picking at the gore between his teeth.
Curvo says, “Káno’s Song hurts monsters.”
Pityo cries, “Káno’s Song hurts orcs.”
“You must be an orc,” says Curvo, and smiles, and smiles, and smiles.
“No,” Káno’s sorrowful voice comes in his ear, and Maedhros starts, and turns, but he cannot see him. “It hurts elves, too. Don’t you remember? At Alqualondë?”
“And when we hunt—” Tyelkormo growls.
“—when we fight orcs—” Curvo corrects.
“—his Song hurts us,” they all say in unison—save for Makalaurë, who plucks a single note on an unseen lyre and says:
“Because I have stopped bothering to shield you from it.”
Carnistir—his arms half-unravelled, weaving the tapestry with his own tendons and strips of his skin—slides his shuttle with a wet-slice sound across the bloody cloth. “Maitimo,” he whispers reverently, with someone else’s voice. “Aren’t you just perfect?”
“We love you,” Tyelkormo says, through his fangs.
“We’ll follow you,” Makalaurë sings.
Curvo smiles. “To whatever end.”
Pityo is crying and crying and crying and begging him, “Nelyo, please make it stop! Nelyo, it hurts, it hurts!” And he tries to asks him what hurts, but he cannot hear the response, because Telvo is climbing up onto his back to laugh shrilly in his ear. Maedhros squeezes his eyes shut and tries to forget they are there—to forget that they are not there—
Telvo cackles, digging his index finger into Maedhros’s ear. Liquid drips out. “You even bleed in his color,” he crows.
Maedhros touches the side of his head. His fingers come away black.
“Leave me alone,” he tells them, firmly. “You are not really here.”
Except Makalaurë—Makalaurë might be here; it is hard for his mind to fake a Song, and he thinks he can hear the strains of it, the rise and fall of his brother’s voice, tugging at the ragged edges of his fëa and urging them to knit back together again. And the twins—he can hear them, small footsteps pattering against the cold stone, somewhere in the fortress. But that isn’t right—the Ambarussar are grown—
Telvo laughs, and laughs, and chokes, and laughs.
—where is the music coming from?—
—The window. Maedhros limps to the window and squints outside. In the distance is the dark speck of Makalaurë riding closer, singing a Song of healing, bright notes that fit sweetly into his scarred Kinslayer’s mouth. Alongside him are an array of soldiers, with Tyelkormo and Curvo riding before them.
Tyelkormo-who-is-not howls like a wolf in his ear, and Curvo’s voice chuckles sharply when Maedhros gasps. But when he turns, Tyelkormo and Curvo are not there, because they are outside, riding in from a fight, their horses still bleeding into the snow while Makalaurë Sings them back together again.
Maedhros grips the windowsill with his left hand and blinks. For an instant, those three brothers lay dead in the snow, surrounded by blood so dark and rich it looks not red but black.
What makes him so certain it isn’t?
Maitimo, my Maitimo. What makes you so certain it isn’t?
What makes you believe you ever escaped?
Someone knocks at the door. “Russo?”
“Not now, Finno,” Maedhros says.
“Nelyo.”
“Not now, Káno!”
“Nelyo, please open the door.”
“I am busy!” he shouts through gritted teeth, and glares out into the snow, where his brothers are riding back home—where his brothers are riding—
“Maedhros, open this fucking door and let me help you or I will—”
He covers his ears with his arms and screams, “I am fine!”
“Liar!”
It’s a familiar screech, so high it’s almost a song, or a Song—liar!—and Maedhros looks between the door and the three riders outside the window, where Makalaurë—Makalaurë and the others are gone, they cannot be there—he presses his palm against the icy glass and lets his forehead fall against it—
Maitimo, Þauron purrs, and he flinches—
Blink once. They’re back.
Blink twice. They’re dead again.
Finno whispers.
Atar burns.
Makalaurë sings.
Tyelkormo howls.
Carnistir weaves.
Curvo smiles.
Pityo weeps.
Telvo giggles.
Maedhros is dead.
(Maitimo never left.)