Chapter Text
Maedhros is gone.
Maglor curls on the sand and writhes, howling, holding very firmly his burnt hand to his chest. He'd chanced a glance down at it once, after he had thrown the Silmaril, and seen it blackened, withered, and bloody. He does not want to look at it now; does not want to look at it and picture Maedhros' hand the same way, identical to Morgoth's.
He cries wretched tears and stays far away from the lapping waves of the ocean, because he knows, he knows, he knows, that if he gets to close Ulmo will drag him in and hold him down until he drowns, and maybe too he will toss the Silmaril in front of Maglor's face in a taunt.
The waves seem very, very hungry.
He stops rolling, eventually, and lies still on the sand. He can feel it in his hair, and his clothes, and he knows that if it were hundreds of years prior, and trees lit the sky rather than the sun, he would be tossing himself into the sea to scrub it free. He would be wailing, and his brothers would be laughing viciously, and his father would shake his head amusedly, as he had done dozens of times before. Instead he draws his left hand— his uninjured one— up over his head and presses it deeper into the sand. Let it tangle and mat if it wishes; truly, then, he will embody the wicked creature the Silmaril has told him he is.
It rejected him. His father's greatest work, his stolen jewels, and they had rejected him.
Maglor thinks that he must be very evil indeed.
He lies there in that place upon the beach for hours, unmoving. His body shakes only with the force of each shallow breath that he takes, and even those are few and far between. He wonders if he should have followed Maedhros down, deep into the fires and the roaring earth, and as spirits find both rest and pain eternal in the everlasting dark. His father, his brothers, lost to him until the breaking of the world; are they at peace in the silence of the void?
At last he groans, and with quivering arms and weak legs Maglor pushes up onto his feet. Sand comes tumbling down from his hair, and he feels more of it still woven into the strands, blanketing his scalp in grit. Nothing will ever feel worse than the rejection from his father’s work, he thinks.
Fëanor put a piece of himself in those jewels, he knows, and they hate him now— does his father also? Is he disappointed? Ashamed? Does he hear and see and know what Maglor has done?
There have been times where he has wondered whether Fëanor put his heart into those jewels, and that is why he stopped loving them as he did. Did he put the eyes of his soul in there too? He wonders if his father saw the flames the way Maedhros did, or perhaps sees now the angry waters of Ulmo and the quiet sea floor.
Shakily, he takes one step, then two, and a third and a fourth, until he is stumbling unsteadily across the shore. Unbidden a song falls from his lips, because he can never be silent, never, and it is mournful and grinding and unstoppable.
The tears fall from his eyes, unwelcome as the song, and into his chest curls the charred hand.
Wreathed in robes of tattered shadow upon the sands, Maglor sang his pain and his regret.
*
Elrond is calling his name.
Maglor remains curled up tightly behind the cluster of rocks that lie on the sand. It is where he spends most of his time, these days, and he thinks that if he could remain there forever he would.
He thinks he might have to, now, because every day for the past week or so— he has, quite frankly, given up on tracking time— Elrond has come to pace up and down the sands of his beach and call for him. Maglor does not know why Elrond figures he is here, because it has been many years since last he saw anything living other than the occasional crab. How could word have possibly made its way back to him?
He watches the child— full grown now, really— stride closer and closer to him, and when he is near enough Maglor sees his face clearly, torn between frustration and hope and grief. His heart hurts, because in truth he would love nothing more than to rush forward and take Elrond in his arms, the way he had done when he was only an elfling, but he cannot.
He cannot, because to love him now would be to doom him, he knows. What love might the Valar hold for him, and any of his likeness? It was enough that he had raised the boy, and given him a history none would see him take pride in. He has burdened Elrond already; how could he hurt him any more?
Maglor very badly wants to weep, but with Elrond so close he can’t risk it. It’s for his sake, he tells himself, it’s for the better. He is doing him a kindness. This becomes harder to believe when Elrond falls to the ground and drops his head into his hands, shoulders shaking.
”Maglor,” he cries again, “where have you gone? Why do you elude me still? Come home.”
I cannot, oh, but I wish.
“I know you are here,” says Elrond. “The sailors tell of a voice that haunts their sleep, so enchanting that they may throw themselves into the sea, for so it draws them. Who else could it be, but you?”
I wish for none to drown but me, I swear.
“Will you not come to me?” he says weepily. “At last, will you not let me take you home? You are in pain, I am most sure. I might heal you, if I may.”
No respite will have me.
Elrond sighs very heavily, in the manner that Maglor himself had once wielded, and rises again to his feet. He casts one last mournful look around the shore, and then he is gone.
Maglor crawls free of his false encampment nestled in the rocks and, once he is very sure Elrond is safely far away, raises his voice to the seaside wind.
*
Celegorm had once known nearly every beast-tongue of Oromë’s woods.
Maglor has learned one, now, and it is that of the shorebirds.
They had steered clear of him once, when he was far more prone to fits of screaming rage and tossing stones. He is over that now, he thinks, not least because anger takes all of the energy that he no longer has.
Now, when they come to swagger on the sands and commune, or whatever it may be that they do on land, they approach him, cawing and hacking and coming scarily close to pecking at his skin. He flees from them, usually, but there are times when the silence becomes over-loud, and it condemns his ears to a violent pressure. It abates with sound, he finds, only never when it is his.
It is in these moments that he seeks the shorebirds out, and they greet him in the ways that they do, and for a moment Maglor finds peace. They let him sing to them, and they join in how they might, and it is not beautiful but it is kind.
The pressure, lately, comes more often, and so he finds himself frequently seeking out the birdsong, and with every caw their speech comes easier.
They have begun to bring him news.
For centuries he has gone uninformed, and in honesty uninterested in the happenings of Middle-Earth. It seemed too much of a risk to make the effort of seeking news out, but the birds chatter is unavoidable, and he finds himself hungry for the tales they tell.
What they bring him began as mundane, but then they told him of histories; of deeds long done and words long spoken. They tell him of Celebrimbor’s death, dear Tyelpë, and they tell him of Sauron’s defeat at the hands of Isildur.
They tell him also of the Ring’s re-emergence.
Most often he begs for news of Rivendell, of Elrond, of his home and sanctuary. More than once he finds himself struck with an intense longing to see it for himself; to stay there, and live with food and water and a warm bed, and to hold Elrond in his arms again.
Then he chastises himself for his greed and settles amongst his bed of sand and stone again.
He hears of the hobbits, a bright little race, and of one Frodo Baggins’ guardianship of the Ring. Maglor grieves for him at times, because it cannot be anything of a burden most heavy, and he knows all too well what that feels like.
The shorebirds leave him for a while afterwards, and he paces listlessly, as he does, mind drawn as ever to thoughts of oaths and jewels, flames and sea. He plucks squirrelly fish from the waves when he must, and on occasion tosses them over a fire, though not always. There is an appeal to them raw.
When the gulls return, they are triumphant and proud. They hawk of Sauron’s final defeat, of Frodo and Samwise, of Isildur’s heir; their tales are twisting and winding and he is very lost, but he understands that Sauron is gone, and they are free.
Aragorn, they say, has been crowned, and he has wed Arwen, daughter of Elrond, and they danced and kissed and love most beautifully, and now nearly all of the elves take ship and sail for Valinor, and the hobbits— the ones that bore the Ring— sail with them.
With this news, he very much should have expected Elrond to appear on his shores one last time.
The shorebirds guide him, and Maglor wishes he could hiss at them resentfully, but he is far too busy trying to remain unseen tucked behind the jagged, sky-reaching rocks. Elrond settles on the sand only a few lengths away, and he is not alone.
“Maglor,” says Elrond, and he pauses, as though waiting for a response. Maglor does not give him one, only presses his burnt hand very close to his chest. “We are sailing for Valinor. I understand you have stayed away for reasons I both can and can not comprehend, but the time has come at last for us to seek the Elven-home. Will you not come with us?”
It is very silent, and then Elrond’s companion speaks.
“End this pointless exile, Makalaurë,” says Galadriel, and Maglor freezes, because he is certain he hears that voice right— yes, yes, that is Galadriel standing only a few paces away from him. “Come home with us, and face whatever judgement the Valar may have for you. You know I hold just as much love for them as you do, but they will be merciful, I know.”
No.
”Please,” Elrond begs. Maglor finds it very, very hard to keep his head turned away.
Silence falls, and it is suffocating, he thinks. He wishes the gulls would raise their voices in song; he wishes he had the courage to.
They say nothing more, but after a while they stand, brushing the sand off of their fine clothes. Maglor’s robes are nothing but rags, now, salt-stained and torn.
They turn from him, and start down the beach, but Galadriel calls over her shoulder: “Whenever you are ready, Makalaurë, any ship will bear you.”
*
Over the years, Maglor has retreated further and further down the shore. He has long abandoned his little nest of rocks, and instead has settled in a nice little alcove far to the east. He finds that here, he is bothered much, much less.
Where once the silence was grating pressure on his ears, it has become now a comfort, and one that he retreats to often.
He chases the gulls off, now, because their voices hurt his ears and his mind and his soul. They are not offended, he thinks; they shoot him only sad, pitying glances, and leave him be.
There are fish, here, sleek and smooth, and they taste so natural on his tongue he bothers no longer with fires to roast them. He is often cold at night, but it is as deep as his bones, and he knows that no flame will ward it off. Even still, the sight of roaring, hungry flames makes his right hand writhe and coil.
He thinks, even, that it has gotten worse.
Instead Maglor curls up each night in the safe embrace of his alcove and seeks warmth from his own body. He does not sleep often, only lays there still; when he does, he falls into haunting dreams of his brothers, watches all over again as Celegorm’s head slips from his shoulders and Curufin is torn apart right through the middle.
He does not sing much, anymore. He thinks he stopped around the time he began to chase the gulls away. He remembers there was a time where staying silent for too long was unfathomable, but he cannot find it in himself to be unsettled by his changing.
You are sweet, Kano, Maedhros had said to him once. Gentle still, though your hands drip red and your tongue is rusting. You have not changed so much as I have, in mind and in heart. I would not see it of you.
Would Maedhros be disappointed? Would he shake his head, and frown, and give him that tight-browed stare that so often cowed him?
Yes, Maglor thinks, he would. But Maedhros is in the Void, now, and he is not here to see his little brother pick apart raw fish and sleep cold and abandon song.
He is not here because he left.
Maglor lies on the sand close to where the waves touch, only just out of their reach. He does not wish to feel Ulmo’s wrath, but he stays for the push and pull, the wash and retreat: it is soothing. It settles him somewhere deep inside, the way Maedhros used to. The way music used to.
He rolls over, then, as that thought strikes him, and crawls up the sand to where the sun has baked it warm. His thoughts have been on Maedhros much, as of late.
But he is gone, Maglor concedes, and he has left him here to bear this fate alone.
*
There is a time where Maglor awakes to an unquiet shore.
It has been many centuries since last something had disturbed his silence; the birds know, now, to leave him be, and as the years go on and the land shifts the Atani draw further away from his stretch of beach.
But they are close now.
He can hear the children running, laughing, splashing. There are five of them, he thinks, and with their parents too. Seven intruders upon his shore— he remains in the shadows of his alcove and bristles.
Why are they here? Where have they come from? Maglor creeps closer to where the shelter of the alcove ends, sun meeting shadow. From here, he can see them.
Four of the children are splashing in the sea, jumping against the waves. They have all the same hair, as brown as oak, except for the little one sitting on the sand. Her hair is golden, and very reminiscent of Galadriel.
Maglor wants to growl, almost. Hiss and spit and snarl until they leave, but instead he slumps to the ground and keeps his eyes on them with his chin in the sand. He peers at them closer, and sees that they are odd.
The man— the father, he presumes— is a far length behind his family, and he is staring down at the sand as though it has displeased him. His clothes are what catches Maglor’s eye; they are white and ruffly, and unlike anything he has seen before. A growl again threatens to rise in his throat.
Must Eru take so much from him that he takes everything he knows? The taking of his family was not enough? The Silmarils? His innocence?
He looks down, then, at his tattered and worn robes. They are threadbare, and in truth do nothing at all to defend him from the elements, but they are all he has left of his time. Now, the likeness of his clothing has been swept from his grasp also.
Maglor raises his head and his fingers quiver where they are buried in the sand. Why are they on his beach? These pieces of— of a time that is not his, of a time where he has nothing, and no one. Why have they come? To break his silence and his mind? Joy can never be simple, he has learned. Nothing can be.
Lies, all of it, pleasant drapings to hide a hideous window. He has learned, through his wandering reflections, and he knows— they are not here only for pleasure.
The young girl with the Galadriel-hair rises from her lonely seat in the sand to run back to her mother. She grabs a wrist, tugs a hand, and brings her mother to the place where the waves have washed the sand wet and dark.
“Anne,” the mother laughs indulgently, and Maglor at last lets himself snarl. Anne? How far has Arda fallen, he wonders, because most certainly that must be her name, and oh, his father would be livid.
Names never were meant to be one syllable. Never has he seen a name with one syllable. It is an affront to the art of language, to the—
Maglor is very tired, he realises.
All of it is gone, then. The clothes, the names, the land, the people. For the first time he feels inexplicably drawn to the sea, and to what is beyond it. But— no. He had refused Galadriel, and Elrond, and his own heart once before; he will do so for the rest of his eternal life, because what waits for him there?
Echoes of a life he once had and will never touch again; memories of goodness defiled by pain; hatred and anger and bitterness.
Maglor cries, and it is loud and rough and miserable, and beyond him the oak-haired children turn to look. He rolls and crawls back into the safe shadows of his alcove.
The world has gone on without him, he thinks, as the children shout unfamiliar words to their parents, most certainly about the strange weeping figure in the shadows. What place has he here any longer? He draws his burnt hand to his chest.
It is well enough, then, that he has long chased off the gulls.
*
Maglor is not alone anymore. His brothers have returned to him.
He does not know why, or how, but they are here now. They come in ones, sometimes twos, and they only ever appear in the shadows. But that is okay, Maglor thinks, because he finds himself evading the sun more and more these days, also. Their faces are twisted and voices garbled, but they have come for him.
The twins show up sometimes. They are together always, and they never speak to him. They only sit in silence, with their watchful eyes, and they are as bloody and battered as they had been in Sirion, when Maglor had seen them being cut down and overrun. When they come, he sits and stares, and greedily he drinks in the sight of them.
Caranthir appears on occasion also. He is ever alone, as he had chosen to be in his first life. He speaks only in angry, grim whispers, but he is kind to Maglor. When he is bound to the corners on the ground, deep in the dusty shadows, shaking and howling for mercy, it is Caranthir who comes. He sits at Maglor's head and in his rough whisper he speaks the kindnesses he had once murmured in life. Maglor only wishes that Caranthir would touch him, hold him, let him feel for the first time in ages, but he does not. Every time he reaches out, Caranthir flees.
Celegorm and Curufin come often, either together or apart. When they are together, he thinks that they are the best of his brothers. They are calmed in each other's presence, and endlessly they recount times of joy from their youths in Valinor, under the light of the Two Trees. Maglor knows that his memory has been slipping from him lately, and so frequently when they tell him these tales they dig up memories he had long lost.
When they are alone, however, they are wicked. Curufin curses Finrod's name, mourns his son, and speaks of Nargothrond with the all-consuming hate he had once driven towards his forge-work. "It is their fault," he will say, "they are to blame for this. You believe me, don't you? I am the one who was wronged!"
Celegorm spites against Lúthien and Beren and Huan. "I loved her!" he will cry, "greater and more than Beren ever could! What can be found in a man that cannot be found in me? And Huan! Traitorous, wretched mutt; he never had a breath of loyalty in him! I was deceived. Servant of Oromë, I might have known."
Of his brothers the one that comes most often is Maedhros.
Maglor wishes he wouldn't.
Maedhros is angry at him, he thinks, but he does not know why. It was not him that left, thrown over by the weight and pain of the Silmaril! He was the one who endured. What right does Maedhros have to hold any anger for him at all? He tries to say this, many times, but when he works the words up into the heights of his throat they fall still and grow weak, tumbling down, down, back into his roiling stomach.
"Coward," Maedhros calls him, as though he has seen it. "Why is it you that is left? Last and least, I name you. Haunting the shores of a dead world; you do not belong here. Leave! Why not sink into the sea and drown, so that you might amend your crime? Chase the Silmaril you threw away, now, and we might see Father forgive you."
"Father thinks of me a traitor?" Maglor asks.
"Father thinks far worse of you than a traitor," Maedhros replies. He smiles very cruelly.
"Go, go!" Maglor yells. "Leave me now! You are not my brother, who are you? A phantom most evil! Do not return."
And yet, there is never a day where Maedhros does not come back to him.
*
Something is being built far, far too close to his beach. Several somethings, he thinks.
Days ago, a hoard of Atani swarmed the beach, and along the length of the shore they have begun to lay down foundations. Since then, Maglor has kept concealed in the shadows of his alcove, peering out only to keep himself aware of the progression.
It has been ages— how many, he isn’t sure— since he last came face to face with one of the Children. Men stopped coming to this place long ago, haunted as it is by shadows and regret. He does not sing anymore, and he thinks his voice would give out if he tried, but sometimes he wonders if he should, if it might drive them away and give him some peace.
They are dressed in strange clothes: they wear vests of bright orange, and on their heads are firm yellow hats, and each of them has hair cropped very short. How strange is it, the way the world changes?
There is one moment, only one, where one of the men comes dangerously close to the entrance of his alcove. He’s shed his hat and vest and wanders the sand on the waterline, but it seems he cannot leave well enough alone, because then he is hovering only a few paces away from Maglor.
He cannot see him, he knows, because Maglor is very artfully concealed in the shadows, but he is there, and Maglor cannot keep in the snarl.
The man is foolish, most certainly, because the violent breaking of the silence does not chase him away, or even frighten him; it seemingly only emboldens him. He steps closer and reaches out blindly with one hand. Maglor panics and, spitting, throws out his unburnt hand to catch the man on the wrist. His nails are long and ragged with the weight of ages, and against pale skin wells bright blood.
The man yelps, stumbling backwards, and wraps his hand around his wrist. "Jesus!" He cries, "There's something feral in there."
Another man laughs from further up the shore. "Get you good, did it? That's as much as you deserve, sticking your nose around in places you've got no business being. Get back here!"
With a grumble and a shake of his head, the man backs off and slips out of Maglor's sight.
Relief.
Trembling, he scrabbles deeper into the darkness, where placed against the back wall lies his bed of soft moss and leaves he'd dragged back with him forever ago, on one of his infrequent excursions into the light woods near the shore. So his peace is to be gone, then; all of it.
His only safety rests in this alcove, he thinks. Might it be best, were he to never leave it again at all.