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“What were you thinking.”
It ought to have been a question, but it wasn’t, and that was bewildering in a moment that Elros was already bewildered. He had woken up to the usual dusty fabric of his and Elrond’s tent stretched over him, but he hadn’t expected to wake up at all, and certainly not to not-questions.
He tried to sit up, in the hopes that it would orient the situation better, but every inch of him screamed in protest. Everything hurt, and that made sense; he had expected it to hurt, just as he had not expected to wake up, or at least not to wake in any of the usual senses of the word. He was not sure arriving in Mandos’s Halls counted as waking, and he hadn’t even been entirely certain he would do that.
He had not expected to wake. That was important; he had not wanted to wake. If he was doing so anyway -
“Elrond,” he gasped out, never mind the fire racing through his ribs. “Elrond - “ He forced himself up onto his elbows, surely he could stand if he just tried -
Maglor was there in a moment, pressing him back down with a gentleness that did not at all match the fire that was blazing in his eyes. “He is sleeping off the miracle he had to work to save you,” he said, voice as sharp as the knife at his side. “He worked himself far past exhaustion.”
And - yes. He could feel Elrond’s mind now, faint and weary but there.
Not too late then. He could still try again.
He stopped fighting Maglor’s efforts to get him to lie down and turned his limited energy to glaring at him instead. “Why would you let him do that?”
“I don’t know if it’s escaped your notice,” Maglor said in a voice that could have sliced through Angband’s gates, “but your brother loves you. The general opinion around camp was that it was better to let him exhaust himself saving your idiot neck than to let him fade of grief after losing you.”
That was a hit. He flinched a little, and then flinched again at how it jarred his ribs.
He should have found a higher cliff to throw himself off of.
Maglor pressed his point. “How could you do this to him?”
He should have done it quicker; if he had done it quicker, Farande wouldn’t have realized he was missing and tracked him in time to see him do it. If they had thought it was an accident - It would have been easier on Elrond. He did realize that.
But Elrond wouldn’t really fade of grief, surely. Not - not when they had so much Mannish blood. Men didn’t do that, he didn’t think.
It was hard to think when every breath brought fresh fire racing through his ribs.
Maglor’s voice softened, ever so slightly. “Life has not been kind. Well do I know it. But the war has turned at last; there is no call for despair. There are even reports of your parents in the forces from Aman - ”
And that was too much. “Exactly,” he said.
What point was there in pretending? The masks might as well all come off now, as much as a small, childish part of him still wanted to flinch back from seeing it. The truth would not change just because it hurt to look at it, and he needed to look at it, needed to remember it, if he was going to have the strength to do what he still knew he must.
“And not just reports of them,” Elros continued, grinding out the words around the pain, because Maglor was still stubbornly refusing to see that the moment for pretending was past, was still blinking as if he couldn’t comprehend what Elros might possibly mean. “You got a messenger through to them.”
Maglor went very still.
“Ah,” he said at last. “You are a better eavesdropper than we gave you credit for. Well done,” he added after a moment.
He was always so vigilant with that; always so quick with praise. The words always coiled up in Elros’s chest, warm and sharp all at once.
“I imagine you overheard at least part of your parents’ response,” Maglor added after a long moment of silence. “Certainly, that might have been - upsetting - and I will not try to tell you not to feel so, but I worry that you did not hear the whole of it. Their care for you came through very plainly - ”
Elros laughed. He couldn’t help it, no matter how badly it hurt. “You think I cared about that?”
He had. Of course he had. But he wouldn’t have left Elrond over it.
“Then - ”
“I heard Farande’s question,” he interrupted. “After.”
Do you think they didn’t take the message seriously?
“I’m not an idiot,” he continued. “If they didn’t take it seriously this time, you’re going to have to make them. And there’s a reason, all this time, that you’ve bothered to keep two hostages.”
Maglor went as still as death.
“You were probably going to pick me anyway,” Elros conceded. “Since Elrond’s more useful. But I couldn’t be sure you’d still trust him to be useful after - after. Better to make sure you made the right choice.”
It was why he had jumped instead of trying his luck at stabbing himself; jumping would leave all sorts of injuries that the Feanorian messenger could helpfully imply had been entirely intentionally inflicted, and then -
Then his parents would trade the silmaril for Elrond. They would have to, then; they had to.
Maglor looked -
Maglor looked like Amil had. Right before she had jumped out the window.
Despite himself, Elros automatically reached to catch hold of Maglor’s arm, but the movement jarred to a halt at the immediate stab of pain.
“No, don’t move,” Maglor said, jolting back into motion in an instant, once again too gently easing Elros back onto the bed. “Just - ” He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, he looked like himself once more, only he looked like himself when talking to Maedhros.
Something curdled in Elros’s gut at the comparison.
“Your mother,” Maglor said, in a very carefully reasonable tone of voice, “watched us slaughter her father, her mother, her brothers, and the near entirety of two cities. The addition of one body to the tally is not going to increase her surely already absolute conviction in the inevitability of us carrying out abhorrent violence when we hear the call of our oath. The answer to Farande’s question is that yes, we are entirely certain at this stage that people are taking our threats seriously. The only possible question is whether or not they believe us when we say you are still alive, a question that your mangled corpse would not be at all productive in answering.”
It took a moment for Elros to process this and then several more to attempt to accept that perhaps - just perhaps - his blinding moment of white hot clarity and purpose outside that tent had not been entirely rational after all.
“Oh.”
But.
“So if one of us is going to be travelling to them as proof,” he said with the last desperate pride of having at least accomplished something, “it’s going to be the one that can walk.”
“While you are absolutely correct that I would not currently send you across the tent, much less across a score of miles that would present a myriad of ways for your collection of pulverized bones to get further crushed, we are also not going to be sending the only person who can keep you alive out of shouting range.”
“Farande could,” Elros protested. She couldn’t sing the healing songs anymore, but she still knew things.
“Do you have any idea - ” Maglor stopped himself for a calming breath. “No. She couldn’t.” He paused for a much longer moment. “There was a period at around midnight when there was severe doubt whether Elrond could. And serious concern at what point we ought to stop him before he ended up inadvertently following you.”
Elros cringed back against the blankets and gritted his teeth against the accompanying pain.
“But yes,” Maglor said brightly, “when you are no longer quite so close to crashing through Mandos’s door, Elrond is now the logical choice. Congratulations. Assuming, of course, we can keep a lid on the rest of the message that long.”
“Rest?” Elros repeated.
“The part that was not meant for my brother and I’s ears; your parents apparently convinced Gil-Galad, Eonwe, and our dear uncle to offer full immunity to anyone willing to defect from our camp and bring you and your brother back.”
Why Maglor had to speak so loudly, Elros didn’t know. It wasn’t doing the pounding in his head any favors.
“They said that to Farande?” he asked in disbelief.
Maglor sighed. “Yes, well, I don’t believe any of them are personally acquainted with her. If the message gets out to anyone not Farande, however, I’m sure it will find a great many takers.”
Elros considered this.
He considered the way Maglor’s eyes were currently drilling into his, for just a moment free of the fires of the Oath.
He considered the cry he had heard tearing out behind him from Farande's throat as he jumped, and he considered the way Maglor's eyes kept darting to his chest as if to check he was still breathing, and he considered the far too small, far too pale, lump of his brother, lying with his arm outstretched to Elros even now.
“Oh,” he said once again, very quietly.
“Excellent,” Maglor said, still far too brightly. “Wonderful. Our little secret, I’m sure. I’ll just go and tell Maedhros you’ve woken up, shall I? Lauriel’s - ah, right outside the tent flap, when could she possibly have gotten there - well, regardless, I’ll send her in, shall I? I’m sure you need something to keep your mind off things, and I’ve always found her an excellent person for a chat.”