west of the moon, east of the sun

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Maglor, Elrond, Maedhros, various others
Warnings: References to torture and trauma
Summary: Maglor keeps a promise, and comes to Valinor, only to find the ghosts he thought he'd left behind are alive and waiting for him.
Note: This fic is a sequel to Clear Pebbles of the Rain, which is itself a sequel to Unhappy Into Woe.

Prologue / Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

 

Things got easier after Curufin and Celegorm reconciled. They weren’t perfect, but no one was perpetually angry, and no one was not speaking to anyone else. They stayed a few more days by the river; they drank one of the bottles of wine over the course of those days, eating the fish that Ambarussa caught, cooked with herbs that Caranthir and Celegorm found. Maedhros spent most of that time under the tree, sketching portraits. Nerdanel would want to see them—proof that going away had been the right choice, that they had indeed found something to celebrate.

The night before they left, Celegorm brought out the palantír, and bent over it for some time, communing with their mother. When he put it away, he was frowning. “What is it?” Curufin asked. 

“Atar went looking for Maglor,” Celegorm said. “He’s still at Imloth Ningloron, but Maglor’s gone off somewhere.”

“Huan is with him, though,” said Curufin. “He’ll make sure he’s all right.”

“Fingolfin is also at Imloth Ningloron.”

Caranthir wrinkled his nose. “Poor Elrond,” he said. Curufin snorted.

“At least no one has swords anymore,” Amrod murmured. 

“I’m glad we left when we did,” said Celegorm. “I don’t want to be anywhere near that. Maglor had the right idea, leaving.”

Maedhros leaned back against the tree, one knee pulled up to his chest. “Did Ammë say whether Maglor had spoken to him?”

“She thinks he did, but she doesn’t know what he said; no one does, because he isn’t there and Atar isn’t saying. And he hasn’t come to her house—she heard the news from Tyelpë, who is also still at Imloth Ningloron, and wrote her a note to tell her about it.”

That was strange, Maedhros thought. It was one thing to avoid Nerdanel’s house when the rest of them were there, but Maglor would surely know by now that they’d left. It should have been the first place he went. Maedhros looked out over the river, westward toward the sunset. He had been apprehensive, when he’d first come from Mandos, about going to see her—but he’d still gone. She was their mother, and all of them had gone to her first after leaving Mandos. Why would Maglor avoid her in his turn? Something was wrong, and Maedhros did not like not knowing what it was. 

“Can I see the stone?” Caranthir asked. Celegorm brought it back out and handed it over.

“What are you looking for?” Amras asked. “We’re all here.”

“Maglor.”

Amrod snorted. “Good luck. Those things never work on him.”

“They did once,” Maedhros murmured. Celegorm got up and came to sit beside him, pressing their shoulders together. 

“I want to try anyway.” Caranthir bent over it, expression intent, but after a few minutes he shook his head and straightened. “Only mist.”

“Let us try!” Ambarussa chorused, and each took their own turn. They had no luck finding Maglor either, though Amras reported that he’d seen their mother at work on a bust of Varda, and their father reading a book in Imloth Ningloron. “I think he is teaching himself Westron.”

“I really don’t know why that’s surprising,” Curufin muttered as he took the palantír to have a turn of his own. He looked longer, and when he straightened he said, “I think I saw him—just a glimpse, under a tree by the side of the road. I think his cat was stuck in it.”

Maedhros held out his hand, and Curufin gave him the palantír. He might as well, he thought as he steadied it with his other wrist. He looked for Maglor in the present, but saw nothing but mist. “Nothing,” he said, and handed it back to Celegorm. 

“What if we looked for the recent past?” Caranthir said suddenly. “There’s no hiding that; it’s already happened.”

The stone was passed around again, this time with far more success. Caranthir saw him racing down the road, though he couldn’t tell which road or when; Celegorm saw him at the pottery wheel, intent and focused on the bowl taking shape under his hands. Ambarussa each saw him with his cat, laughing as he dragged a piece of string around for her to chase. Curufin dropped the stone after looking into it and would not share what he saw. 

Maedhros picked it up, feeling uneasy—but not uneasy enough to stop him from catching a glimpse of Maglor outside of Dol Guldur. The mists cleared in an instant as he gazed into the stone, and he saw a golden wood, a wood of mallorn trees in late autumn, and tucked into the boughs of the tallest of them was a talan, and in that talan was a window. Maglor sat in a bed beside just inside it, leaning on the sill. He was painfully thin and pale; his hair was cropped very short, with threads of white in the dark strands; his wrists were bandaged, and his mouth was red and swollen, as though the cords that had stitched his lips shut had only just been removed. Maedhros had looked too far back; this was years and years ago. But he couldn’t stop staring as, weak and in pain as he clearly was, Maglor reached out to pluck a leaf from the branch before him, sending a shower of raindrops cascading down to the forest floor below as he leaned back inside. He looked lost, lonely—but also it seemed to Maedhros that he was full of wonder as he turned the leaf in his trembling fingers, looking wide-eyed at it as though he’d never seen anything so lovely.

He set the stone down and shook his head when Celegorm asked what he had seen.

Even then, so newly rescued from the horrors of the dark, Maglor had had hope—he had seen beauty and he had reached for it without hesitation, even though he barely had the strength to lift his arms. Not even Sauron could take that from him. 

“I wish we knew where he was going,” Celegorm said as he put the palantír away.

“So we could intercept him on the road?” Curufin asked, raising an eyebrow. Celegorm shrugged. “I’m sure that would go very well, especially if he left Elrond’s house after a confrontation with our father.”

“It would surely go better than that,” Amrod protested. 

“We’ll find out how it will go eventually,” said Caranthir quietly. “I’d rather he came to us because he wanted to, instead of because we got impatient.”

Maedhros looked out over the river, and at the stars shimmering in the wide open sky. Wherever Maglor was and wherever he was going, Maedhros hoped that he would find what he was seeking, even if it was just escape from their father. There was a strange comfort in that—that even though so much stood between them, they were united in something, even if it was opposition to their father. 

“Do you think eventually we’ll all be at home again?” Amrod asked after a while. “I mean—all of us?”

“Not for a long time,” Celegorm said. Curufin turned away as Caranthir murmured agreement, pulling his cloak around himself even though the night was warm. It was not for his own sake that he kept his distance from Fëanor, Maedhros knew. But then, Curufin knew what it was to be rejected by a son, didn’t he? And he and Celebrimbor had managed to reconcile, though both of them still tread carefully, lest it prove more fragile than either of them wished. Maedhros wasn’t sure if that gave him hope for the rest of them and Fëanor, or not. Or if he wanted it to.

When Amras glanced at him Maedhros said quietly, “I don’t know.”

They left the river the next day, traveling leisurely across the plains, leaving the roads behind. Celegorm and the twins ranged ahead, and Maedhros fell back beside Curufin, who had been quiet all morning. “If you want to see him, go see him,” Maedhros said.

Curufin shook his head. “I don’t want to—”

“It’s no betrayal of us, Curufin.”

“Arimeldë is still very angry at him.” Curufin looked away. “She said she would not argue if I wanted to, but—it feels wrong to want to see him when no one else does.”

“It might be that we are all wrong,” Maedhros said. “And it’s—I wish that I was glad to see him. I hate that it’s come to this. If you can take the first steps the rest of us can’t…”

Curufin looked at him. “Does it bother you that I look so much like him?” he asked.

“No,” Maedhros said. “No, of course not. By now it’s—it feels as though it’s the other way around. He looks like you.”

“He’s most likely to listen to you, Curvo,” said Caranthir, having dropped back to join them. “Anyway, he’s not Morgoth. We don’t all have to put up a united front against him.”

“I’d rather we were a united front,” said Curufin. “I dislike being caught in the middle.”

“You’re no more caught in the middle than Ammë is,” said Maedhros. “I can’t see him again—but that’s because, as you are all so fond of reminding me, I came from Mandos unhealed, and that’s no one’s fault but my own.”

“Have you changed your mind about going to Lórien?” Caranthir asked.

“No.”

“Why not?” Curufin asked, frowning at him. “You always look like you’re in pain. Even when you’re asleep. Why do you still punish yourself?”

I’m not, Maedhros wanted to say, but he knew they wouldn’t believe him. “There’s nothing Estë can do,” he said instead. 

“What about Nienna, then?” Caranthir asked. “Her halls are near to Ekkaia anyway.”

“There’s nothing Nienna can do either.” 

“You don’t know that,” Caranthir protested.

“Not everything that’s broken can be repaired,” Maedhros said shortly, “whatever Mithrandir says.” He rode forward, though he stopped short of joining Celegorm and the twins, who were debating something about hunting, or tracking. Maedhros let his gaze and his mind wander, trying to ignore the quiet voices of Curufin and Caranthir behind him. He had no idea where they were; they’d left the roads far behind, and there was nothing but rolling hills as far as he could see, green and gold under the sun. Stands of trees marked other rivers or watering holes. It was quiet but for their own voices and the whisper of the wind through the grasses. The air was clean and fresh, and the breeze was cool even as the summer sun blazed hot overhead. 

None of them spoke of Fëanor again, or of Maglor. As they drew near to Ekkaia it rained—not hard, but steady, for several days. There was no good place to take shelter, so they just kept traveling, Celegorm grumbling about being wet and Ambarussa taking charge of setting up the large tent they’d packed but not yet used—they knew some secret to keeping everything inside dry even if the ground was wet when they started, and refused to tell anyone how they did it. Those nights were filled with grumbling and elbows in ribs and someone’s cold feet on someone else’s legs, but Maedhros somehow slept better than he had any other night of their journey. 

It was still raining when they came to Ekkaia. The clouds stretched out over the waters, ending somewhere in the distance where they could see golden sunbeams breaking through, and pale skies beyond. The waters were dark and quiet on the stony shore. Maedhros left the others to make their camp tucked between two large dunes, and made his way down the beach to the water. He’d left his shoes behind, and the stones were smooth under his bare feet; when he stepped into the waves he found the water cool but not cold. The rain had eased a little, taking on a fine misty quality, and as he stood there it turned to proper mist, hovering around him and making his brothers’ voices echo oddly. 

Movement out of the corner of his eye made him turn sharply, hand going to his side, but it was only mist, swirling a little around him. Maedhros dropped his hand, but did not turn away again; there was no breeze to make the mist move like that, and as he watched it coalesced into a figure, tall and slender, robed in soft grey. “Lady,” he murmured, bowing his head as Nienna stepped forward.

“Maitimo,” she said, smiling and reaching out to take his hand in both of hers. Her voice sounded like the waves of Ekkaia itself. “I am glad to see you, child. You are better than when we last met.”

He had last seen Nienna in Mandos, but they had not spoken. Or if she had spoken he hadn’t listened. He hadn’t wanted to listen or to speak—not to Nienna, not to anyone. Now, he said, “Lady, why did Mandos release my father?”

“Because he asked,” Nienna said. 

“It can’t be that simple.”

“It is very simple, though it was not easy—not easy for him to ask, though it was easy for Námo to answer. In doing so he parted himself from his father, as he was once parted from his mother. But he is a father, too, and he could bear no longer to be parted from his children or from his wife.”

Maedhros closed his eyes. “He could bear it when he left his wife behind in the dark,” he said. “When he—” His eyes burned with sudden tears and he had to stop speaking before they started to fall. “Does he not understand?” he whispered finally.

“He does,” Nienna said. “He will not come to you again; but he will be waiting, when someday you decide you are ready to speak to him. But what will you do, Maedhros? Will you come to my halls? Or perhaps I shall find you in Lórien, where you can find rest for both body and spirit?”

“I will not find rest anywhere, Lady,” Maedhros said, “not until—” 

Nienna stepped forward and drew him into her embrace. Maedhros let her. In spite of the rain and her forever-falling tears she was warm, and he felt that if he were to fall she would catch him with no trouble, as though he were no more than a child. It was strange and reassuring and frightening all at once, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the tears, but they escaped anyway; that was the way of Nienna. Her very presence drew them out, and he didn’t know if it was a relief or not. “Your brother misses you as much as you miss him,” Nienna said. “He has been sorely tried and he needs you.”

“He does not want to see me.”

“He was left alone for a very long time. Perhaps he has forgotten what it is to have brothers. Should you not remind him?”

“I left him alone,” Maedhros said.

“You were in pain, Maitimo.”

“But I knew—I knew he couldn’t bear to be alone and I still—”

“You cannot change the past,” Nienna said. “Neither can he. There are many things both of you might have done differently, but you did not, and now you are here. What will you do next? Will you leave him alone now as you did then?”

“He is not alone.”

“Neither are you,” Nienna said, very softly and very gently. “But you can feel the missing piece among you, can you not? He is the missing piece, and he has been without the rest of you for so long that he has forgotten what it is to be part of a greater whole. You must remind him—all of you, but you most of all, Maedhros.” She drew back and took his face in her hands, wiping away his tears as her own continued to fall. “I do not say that it will be easy, or that it will not hurt. There is hurt on both sides, and you may find that he is angry too. You will not be what you were before, but neither is the cup that Maglor gave to your mother. Sometimes there is beauty and joy anew in the healing.”

“Not all broken things can be fixed,” Maedhros said.

“You are not a broken thing. You are wounded and weary, and for those things there is healing.”

“Maedhros!” Celegorm called through the mist. “Where have you gone?”

“Go back to your brothers, Maedhros,” Nienna said.

“I don’t think I can fix it,” Maedhros whispered. 

“It is not for you alone to fix.” Nienna leaned down and kissed his forehead. “It is for the seven of you to find your way back to one another, full brothers in heart once more. You have let them help you thus far, and you are finding your way back to yourself. My halls will always be open to you, but it is not solitude that you need. That is why, perhaps, you found no rest in Mandos.” She stepped back as Maedhros heard the stones crunching under someone else’s feet, and by the time Celegorm reached him she was gone.

“Maedhros? What is it?” Celegorm took one look at Maedhros’ face and threw his arms around him with enough force to nearly send them both falling into the surf. “What’s wrong?”

Maedhros wrapped his arms around Celegorm and bowed his head. “Everything,” he heard himself say.

“Come back to the tent and dry off. Caranthir’s opened the wine. We’re going to get drunk and make up stupid stories. You don’t have to,” Celegorm added as he pulled Maedhros back toward the tent. “Do either, I mean. Get drunk or tell stories. But you have to stay in the tent.”

“I’m not going to wander off,” Maedhros said, trying to sound reassuring but knowing he fell far short. “That was always—” It was always Maglor that wandered off, when he got annoyed or just tired of the noise, and Maedhros who had gone to drag him back.

“Come on,” Celegorm said, opening the tent flap. “Maedhros isn’t playing the game,” he announced as Maedhros ducked in after him.

“What happened?” Caranthir asked, moving over so Maedhros could drop to the blankets in between him and Celegorm. Curufin, on Celegorm’s other side, leaned forward to peer at Maedhros with a frown.

Maedhros sighed. “Nothing. Nothing new. Where’s the wine?” He accepted the bottle from Amrod and took a sip. He could tell immediately that it was far stronger than their usual fare. “What is this?”

“Elves from the Greenwood have been trying to recreate the wines they used to get from—somewhere east of Wilderland, I think,” Amras said. Maedhros couldn’t stop himself wincing at Wilderland, but he didn't notice. Caranthir did, though, as he took the bottle for a sip of his own. “I forget what it was called—it was the stuff the captain of Thranduil’s guard and his butler got drunk on when Master Baggins snuck thirteen dwarves out of their dungeons! They’re all very fond of that story. Anyway, I’m told this is the closest they’ve gotten, though it’s sweeter than the real stuff.”

“It’s potent,” said Curufin after he took a sip, grimacing. “We can’t drink this whole thing tonight even between the six of us.”

“Oh, certainly not!” said Amrod. He took a swig—his second—and launched into a story about a rabbit and a hedgehog having a quarrel over a burrow. As he expanded on the story in response to picky questions from Curufin and Caranthir, Celegorm nudged at Maedhros until they could shift around with Maedhros leaning back against Celegorm’s chest. Celegorm unraveled his braids and combed his fingers through the damp tangles, and Maedhros sighed again, letting himself relax, letting his brothers’ voices was over him without paying much attention to the words. Celegorm’s laughter rumbled through his chest and made Maedhros think of Fëanor long ago, when Maedhros had been small enough to sit on his lap—when he had still laughed. He pushed the memory away. When the bottle was passed around again he took another sip but declined a third. 

Sometime in the evening he dozed off, and only halfway woke up when his brothers shifted around him. “Go back to sleep, Nelyo,” Caranthir whispered. Someone kissed his forehead, just where Nienna had before. Someone else cursed about an elbow to the spine, but Maedhros fell back asleep before the ensuing scuffle resolved. 

He dreamed of Maglor, walking along a sandy stretch of shore strewn with driftwood and seashells. He was not dressed like one having wandered for centuries; his clothes were travel-worn but not tattered. Nor did he look like the glimpse Maedhros had had of him in the palantír; he was not nearly so thin, he was stronger, and his wounds had healed into old scars; he did not look unhappy, precisely, but there was something melancholy in his bearing, a quiet sadness that seemed to be as deeply rooted in him as music was. He stopped and looked out over the waves. His cloak whipped around him as the wind picked up; it was fastened with a brooch in the shape of a spray of golden flowers. As the wind tore his braids loose Maglor tilted his head back and began to sing, but it was drowned out by the wind and waves, and when Maedhros woke he could not recall having heard a single note. 

The rain stopped that afternoon, the wind picking up and driving the clouds away eastward. By evening it was dry enough to take the tent down and spread their blankets out on the grass. The sunset over Ekkaia was beautiful, though not quite as brilliant as it had been over the grasslands at Midsummer. Maedhros sat atop the dune and watched it; Ambarussa had walked away down the coast together, and Curufin and Caranthir were talking by the fire below—something about forge work. Celegorm had disappeared earlier in the day, but he returned to climb up beside Maedhros. “Want to talk about it?” he asked, sitting down and leaning back against Maedhros’ chest this time. 

Maedhros looped his arms around Celegorm’s shoulders, resting his chin atop his head. “It’s nothing new.”

“Is it Atar?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him what our legacy is,” Maedhros whispered. “I told him what it means to be his son.”

“You think he didn’t already know?”

“I think,” Maedhros said, “that he could convince himself of almost anything. But he couldn’t ignore me.”

“You don’t have to keep punishing yourself, Nelyo,” Celegorm said quietly. Maedhros didn’t answer. “You seem…you have seemed better, lately. Please don’t make us watch you get worse again.”

“I can’t make any promises, Tyelko.”

They had made no plans for what they’d do when they reached Ekkaia, or even how long they would stay. Now that they were there, though, Maedhros felt as though they were waiting for something. He just didn’t have any idea what. “I feel the same,” Caranthir said when he mentioned it a day or so later. “I don’t think Mithrandir would have sent us here just because it’s a good place to visit in the summer.”

“Mithrandir is not known,” Curufin remarked without looking up from a woodcarving he’d been working on here and there for the last several weeks, “for sending people to very pleasant places.”

“This is a pleasant place,” Amras said. “Though it’s very quiet. The waves hardly make any sound at all, and there aren’t even any birds.”

“Why would he send us here, then?” Celegorm asked. “I thought maybe he just meant we should take a long journey—you can’t go any farther than Ekkaia.” He lay by their fire, staring up at the sky. “And it’s quiet, and peaceful. We aren’t going to meet anyone else, so there’s nothing to—” A bark echoed over the water, and all of them went still. 

“Was that…?” Caranthir began. 

“It can’t be,” Celegorm said. He sat up. “I told him to stay with…” 

But it was Huan, racing down the stony beach until he spotted them. He barked again and bounded up to knock Celegorm flat on his back, greeting him with many enthusiastic kisses. “Huan!” Celegorm cried, laughing as he tried to wrestle him off. “What are you doing here? I told you to—”

Another sound had them all going still again, even Huan—a voice lifted in song, the kind of voice that one couldn’t help but stop and listen to. Maedhros hardly breathed as the song rose up toward the sky, a song of praise for Ekkaia and its dark waters under the sun. “Daeron,” he whispered as the verse ended. 

“Daeron of Doriath?” Curufin said. 

“You don’t forget his voice once you’ve heard it,” Maedhros said. It was overflowing with power, and love laced every note—love for the song’s subject and for the song itself, for the whole world. His voice was both like and unlike Maglor’s, both of them mighty but in slightly different ways. It was impossible not to listen when he sang, impossible not to forget everything else.

Then another verse was added to the song, but not by Daeron. They all leapt to their feet at the sound of Maglor’s voice, singing not of Ekkaia as it was but Ekkaia as it had been, long ago under the stars, outside the bounds of the Trees. Daeron’s voice was breathtaking but Maglor’s almost matched him in power, and what was more it was familiar, and when Maedhros looked at his brothers he saw tears on all their faces. “He’s here,” Caranthir breathed. None of them moved. Celegorm wrapped his arms around Huan and buried his face in his fur. 

Maedhros couldn’t breathe. He wanted to move but he dreaded the moment that Maglor saw him. He wanted to keep listening for as long as both Maglor and Daeron would sing, because they were the greatest singers of all the Eldar, and this—this was them singing without regard for an audience, only for the pure joy of it and for the joy of the view before them, and it was more beautiful than anything they had sung together at the Mereth Aderthad. The sheer power of their voices echoing over the waves and through the dunes was enough to make it seem as though all the world had paused to listen—the stones, the grass, the sea itself. 

It was Huan who moved first, nudging Celegorm and then the rest of them, nearly knocking Amras onto his face with the force of it. That seemed to break the spell the music had placed on them, and it was Caranthir who went first, leaving the hollow between the dunes where they had camped. Maedhros followed him, and saw Maglor and Daeron up the beach, two dark slender figures, one of them kneeling to dip his fingers into the waves. The other stood with his head tilted back, enjoying the breeze off of the water. 

Huan trotted ahead of them and barked; the kneeling figure’s head jerked up. Even at a distance Maedhros could see how he went rigid for a second before he rose and took several steps backward, as though preparing to flee from them. He couldn’t tell if the others had noticed; they were already racing down the beach, calling out his name. Huan did not follow; he came back to Maedhros, taking his sleeve in his teeth, very carefully, and tugging. 

“No, Huan,” Maedhros said, planting his feet so he wouldn’t be pulled over. Nienna’s words rang in his head, but he was not going to force Maglor to speak to him if he didn’t want to. That was what Fëanor would do, and Maedhros was done following his father’s footsteps. Huan whined. “He isn’t here for me.”