Chapter Text
The year was 1985, and as far as Maglor was concerned, the best thing about it was Whitney Houston’s debut.
The AIDS crisis was here, and he’d already lost a bunch of good friends in this lifetime. Not too long ago was the Vietnam War, and he had some friends that didn’t even want to go but the draft came coming, and they couldn’t keep running. At the time, he’d been rooming in San Francisco with two brothers: Bobby and Sammy. Bobby got drafted and shot himself in the parking garage. Devastated, Sammy moved to New York and invited Maglor to tag along.
As far as anyone was concerned, Maglor was a Canadian called Mark Leroux. It had been his surname in a variety of places across the world over the past several centuries, although he alternated which Francophone country he was from.
His true origin was something murky. The furthest he could recall was wallowing on a beach, to a Sea he could not remember. He’d been there for a long time, Maglor knew that much. He just could not remember why he was there. Maglor did not remember his family, if he ever had one, or if he spawned like some twisted trick of the universe.
He was called Maglor once upon a time, although by whom he could not remember. He occasionally used the name Maglor McFly, and now a single person still used it. However, most of his current friends and peers used Mark Leroux.
Sammy dated around for a bit before meeting Willie. Sammy and Willie fell in love in the late 1970s after meeting at a gay bar in Brooklyn. Maglor really thought Willie healed a piece of Sammy that they’d both thought was shattered forever. Fairly early on, they all found out Sammy was sick, but Willie was too in love to let go.
He sat in his room while Willie sobbed his eyes out, before he heard the tell-tale opening of the bottle. Who the hell was Maglor to tell him not to drink himself to death?
Sam was dead, and Willie didn’t have nobody else; he’d turned away from his family for good ol’ Sammy, who’d kicked the bucket a few weeks ago.
What a shit show.
Music-wise, it was an exciting year already. Outside of Whitney Houston, David left Van Halen. Wham! became the first Western pop group to perform in China. Madonna was starting her first tour; this was a punch to the gut. Sammy loved Madonna and they’d bought tickets to the show, even as he was sick.
Sammy didn’t make it to see Madonna. None of them did, but man, Sammy was dead.
On June 11th, Maglor got on the train with the rest of the depressed motherfuckers in the city. He headed to his radio job, and slouched in his chair with its cracked leather. He unwrapped his greasy baconeggandcheese, and knocked back a black coffee.
”Good morning, New York. Expect traffic around Madison Square Garden, as Madonna ends The Virgin Tour tonight…”
Another day, another dollar.
Maglor headed out to some nowhereville hood in Queens, beyond where the train lines reached. He drove his own beat up car into the parking lot of a strip mall.
It was the least of his worries but he’d missed his audition for a residency at a chic jazz lounge in the East Village. It was the day Sammy died, and nothing else mattered at the moment.
It still sucked. He could just imagine it: the silky smooth tunes, classy little sandwiches, maybe even some caviar and Chardonnay. Velvet carpeting, and leather seats, not too brightly lit. After his set, he’d have a martini, or a Baileys Coffee.
He missed a good residency. There seemed to be few good times to be had for Maglor as of late. Well, he could say not every lifetime was a winner, but the music was so good, and yet he didn’t have a soundtrack worthy life.
Well, he did, but not the vibrant coming-of-age a fresh ten thousand year old something like himself deserved.
Death was inevitable in the human experience. What bummed Maglor out was how young so many of his friends were dying. It sucked the color out of his own immortal life, weighing him down. Regardless of his own age, his days were filled with fresh life as long as he was with the young and reckless twenty-to-thirty-somethings.
Now, there was just death.
”Well, if it isn’t my friend Maglor,” an old man cackled as he pulled into the parking lot.
”Give me a sec,” he said dismissively.
He headed up to the Chinese takeout place, and ordered himself some beef and broccoli. Next door, there was a so-called massage place with scantily clad girls on the stoop.
Massage, he was sure.
“You want a Coke with that?” the girl asked. Her name was Emilia, and she was the only person who spoke English in the joint. It was no matter, he’d lived in Hong Kong two lifetimes ago; Maglor struggled to remember beyond his last three, but two was alright enough to remember.
The main highlight was that he met a beautiful girl who worked at a brothel, and almost got his head taken off by some Englishman who had no plan to marry her anyway. Maglor ended up giving her some jewelry of an origin he couldn’t remember; it had diamonds though, and those were valuable. She’d gotten out of the brothel and started a little sewing business a few streets down, where she met the guy at the fish cake shop. Maglor had known it was time to move on then, and she’d given him a little silk coin purse as a parting gift. Maglor used it to hold his subway tokens.
”Sure.”
He sat on the hood of his dirty car in his worn out jeans.
“Don’t touch my Coke,” he barked as he set it on the hood before breaking the flimsy disposable chopsticks open.
“You guys were supposed to go today, huh?”
”No shit,” he mumbled. “You got the goods or not?”
Mithrandir, or Methrander as his clients called him, simply smiled, his eyes twinkling under yellowed street lights. He was the type of crazy old man nobody believed. Maglor had met him in Ireland while doing a decade or two as Maglor McFly. Mithrandir was always old, it seemed. They ran into each other again in Sedona, Arizona. Two oddballs in the world. It was what it was.
”I do. What do you want? Weed? Acid? Shrooms?”
”You got LSD?”
”For you, my friend? I…hm, it seems I left it behind.”
Maglor just sighed and cracked open his Coke.
Mithrandir looked up at him with a grin. “Let’s take a trip and get it, shall we?”
“Fine,” Maglor said crossly.
”Let’s see..oh, I was last in Germany. It’s all the rage, with lots of exciting new acts like Nena. 99 Luftballoons, have you heard of it?”
”Obviously. I first listened to it in 1983 when it came out,” Maglor said as he climbed into the car.
”What model is this? And from where?”
“Yes, yes, of course. It’s a DeLorean, which was only in the market for a small time.”
”Why?” Maglor asked cautiously.
”Oh, you know, many people aren’t ready for the future,” Mithrandir sniffed.
Maglor shrugged and glanced outside. He closed his eyes and took a deep sip of his Coke as the car began to buzz around them.
”Is it supposed to do that?”
”Oh, yes. Stop fretting—“
“Hey, Methrander! Pay up!”
”Who the hell is that?” Maglor hissed.
”I may have gotten some financing support from a local mob,” Mithrandir said casually before he stepped out of the car.
”What?! Why—“
“Oh no. Strap in. I’ve set the destination already. Oh, here’s some Deutsche Mark, tell them you’ve an order for Mithrandir.”
Maglor barely had time to protest before he was shoved into the car, and Mithrandir pressed a button to close the doors.
”It was plutonium I needed,” he said with a queer smile. “Remember that, Maglor. You’ll come across someone who’ll know what to do eventually. Just drive.”
”The fuck—“
Gunfire exploded in the night and Maglor watched in slow horror as Mithrandir crumpled in the shitty little parking lot. He slammed his foot on the gas, and whipped the DeLorean out of the parking lot. Maglor drove almost blindly, direction-wise. Was he going to the city? Long Island? Who the hell knew, anymore? The car picked up speed and he panicked as everything got brighter and warmer…
The car roared into the light of day, and Maglor looked around wildly, before he looked forward and screamed as the car smashed straight into the mountain side. The car groaned and he dared to look outside to see the car was barely caught by some trees which were also groaning. Then, he saw him.
A young man (was that a man?) was standing right below his car, glaring contemptuously.
”Um, can you move?” Maglor called. I think this car is about to fall straight on your head. Sorry.”
”A plot by the Valar to suffocate my ambitions, I assume,” the random hiker sneered.
“I don’t know who that is, but it sounds like some kinda movie villain. But if I were a villain, I wouldn’t try to stop you from getting crushed by this freaked out car,” Maglor reasoned.
”And what is this car? A creation of Melkor?”
”Again, I don’t know who the fuck you’re talking about but it’s gotta be at least a few tons of metal and you don’t look more structurally resilient than this gigantic shitload of metal. Scoot over or go splat.”
“I’d rather go splat, as you so eloquently put it, than submit to the will of a thrall of Melkor!” his new least favorite person shrieked.
”For the last time, I don’t know who the fuck Melkor is!” Maglor yelled back, and the tree trembled. “Shit, you fucking moron, move!”
He scrambled down from the car, groaning as he landed clumsily. The weirdo gave him a disgusted look before Maglor yanked him out of the way before the DeLorean collapsed for good.
”You’re welcome—“
The wrist was ripped out of his hold and a knife placed at his throat.
”My name is Fëanáro Curufinwë and I am the crown prince of the Noldorin Kingdom. I also care not for the rulings of the Valar, for I do not acknowledge their regime. Touch me again and I will harvest your guts…and where did you get that?”
Maglor looked down as the royal hypocrite slipped his fingers under Maglor’s necklace.
“I dunno. Some old junk that ran in the family.”
“It is wrought of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, and you call it junk? What is this junk anyways?”
”You don’t know what junk is and you’re getting mad?”
“I can tell by your tone,” the strangely pointy eared man sniffed. “And you called it old.”
”It is old. I don’t even remember where it came from.”
”So your family is wealthy.”
”I guess they were. I don’t really remember them.”
The man tilted his head. “You are very weird.”
“High praise from Fëanáro the Weirdo.”
“You think you’re so clever,” Fëanáro said haughtily. “You’d do well with my siblings and their friends. They find it very clever when they mock me, but none of them can claim my accomplishments. I have already invented an alphabet, and it has replaced the previous one. Linguistics is not even my main craft, although I find great interest in it.”
”You seem fun,” Maglor said dryly.
“You seem illiterate,” Fëanáro fired back.
”I’ve been a scribe, a minstrel, a bard, a songwriter, a poet, and so on, but yes, if you say so, my lord.”
Fëanáro blinked. “Why do you act so stupid then?”
Maglor actually laughed. “You can’t help it, can you? You’re just…innately cruel. You think the worst of everyone and everything. It’s not even a comeback anymore. You truly think so lowly of people by assumption.”
Fëanáro had the audacity to flush slightly as if he were the one so deeply humiliated. “You just seem very…uncouth. Crass. Crude, I suppose. You use these incoherent sounds sometimes like uh and um.”
”Where am I, anyway?” Maglor asked briskly.
”Just north of the Noldorin kingdom.”
”What is that?”
Fëanáro tilted his head. “You are not Noldo?”
”Too stupid to be one, apparently.”
”This is Valinor,” Fëanáro said.
”Which is where?”
”On the Western side of the Sea.”
”Which Sea?”
”The only Sea!” Fëanáro huffed in exasperation.
”There’s many Seas,” Maglor corrected. “What is this Sea called?”
”It is just the Sea. Where are you from if you are not Noldo?”
”I don’t know.”
”Then how do you know you are not one of our folk?”
”Like I said, too stupid.” Maglor rolled his eyes. “And do I look like you?”
He took a good look at Fëanáro who gave him a look of incredulous mixed with disconcertment. He actually did look quite a bit like him.
“I meant…the whole getup. And your ears are pointy. Why are they so pointy?”
”Your ears are pointy too,” Fëanáro scoffed.
Maglor felt them. Oh. Right. He alway forgot about that.
”What language do you speak here?”
”Quenya,” Fëanáro said slowly. “We have been speaking it this whole time.”
Maglor paused. Had they?
”You are not very observant,” Fëanáro murmured with a scornful look. “And I think you’ve some sort of memory loss. Perhaps you injured yourself in this…carriage.”
”So am I no longer a thrall of Melkor?” Maglor scoffed.
“Do not jest about such a thing!” Fëanáro snapped.
“I still have no idea what that means,” Maglor said wearily.
“Then stop uttering his name!”
”I found out from you.”
”I said it with righteous indignation and defiance,” Fëanáro pointed out.
They stood around for a bit more before Maglor placed his hands on his hips. “So. What’s an important person like you doing walking around in the remote wilderness on your lonesome?”
”I prefer being alone,” Fëanáro said sharply. “And I’m going mining.”
”For plutonium?”
”What is that?”
Maglor sighed. “Guess you’re not it then.”
”What do you mean?” Fëanáro asked irritably.
“Well,” Maglor said. “A friend of mine, the one who sent me here, said it was plutonium that was needed to make the car work, and send me back to where I came from. He said I’d meet someone who knew what to do. Guess that’s not you, though. I think it’s some kind of metal or precious stone; do you have any ideas who might know more about such resources?”
Fëanáro’s mouth parted before his face flushed. His lips actually began to quiver before he stood up straighter, eyes narrowed.
“I am the greatest smith of the Eldar you shall ever meet in this land. If I cannot help you, none other can.”
“What about those Valar people?”
Fëanáro actually gasped. Then he laughed sinisterly.
“The Valar? Oh, you poor fool. Once they, if they have not already, realize you’ve some invention they’ve either not heard of or do not want us to know of, you shall be cast into the void with Melkor himself!”
”No,” Fëanáro repeated softly with a conspiratorial look. “I confess I do not know at the moment, but rest assured, if I cannot help you, nobody will.”
Dear Amil,
I met someone very odd today.
I have no reason to trust him, and yet I feel compelled to help him. He thinks it is just my pride, but I feel something greater which I have never felt before. I feel it in my Fëa; if I abandon him I shall regret it. It is the opposite of the sensation everyone calls my paranoia. It hurt me when he called me cruel. I felt a great sense of despair when he assumed I could not help him. I am struggling to comprehend it, Amil. I must trust the wits you have left me with, for Atar is useless. He barely knows what a Noldo is these days, so fascinated he is with Indis and her Vanyar ways.
Your son,
Fëanáro