starspray | High in the Clean Blue Air

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

In the days after Maglor’s departure, peace settled again over the valley. The birds sang and the flowers bloomed. There were peaches for every meal, and more leftover for jams and preserves. Mablung arrived in the company of Beleg Strongbow, newly returned from Mandos, bearing greetings from Thingol’s court and a lively curiosity about the recent goings on in Imloth Ningloron. “We set out in the company of Daeron,” Mablung told Elrond in a quiet moment after the initial flurry of greetings and welcome. “He wished to see Maglor—and we met him on the road, so Daeron left us to join him. I do not know where they intend to go; Daeron has never been one for planning very far ahead.”

Elrond smiled. “I’m glad that they are traveling together,” he said.

“Maglor might not be,” Mablung said. “He seemed troubled and ill inclined towards company—not that such a thing has ever stopped Daeron. It was he that warned us that things might be…tense, here in your valley.”

“It isn't so bad thus far,” Elrond said. “And I think Daeron’s company will do Maglor more good than traveling alone, however he might feel about it now. Thank you for telling me.”

“You are welcome, of course. I would ask one thing of you—may I show your memory garden to Beleg?”

“Yes, of course. It is open to anyone, and there is already a memorial there for Túrin and his family.”

“Thank you. I think he will appreciate it very much.”

Fingolfin remained in the valley, but kept his distance from Fëanor, apparently content to let things proceed as they would without trying to force it. Elrond was grateful for that; it would do no one any good to have any meeting between the brothers turn into another confrontation. For his part, Fëanor kept to himself, speaking to few people and resting after the exertion of traveling farther than he should have so newly reembodied, and after his encounters with both Maedhros and Maglor.

“They said some very similar things to him, I think,” Celebrimbor told Elrond when they spoke of it, sitting by one of the ponds and watching a family of ducks splash in the shallows.

“I can imagine,” Elrond said. “They aren’t so different, Maedhros and Maglor.” They seemed quite different on the surface, but Elrond had grown up seeing how alike they were in thought—they had needed as few words as he and Elros had needed, having whole conversations in a glance and then acting in tandem without exchanging a single word.

“Don’t say that to Maedhros. He’d be horrified.”

“Was he any better when you saw him last?”

“No,” Celebrimbor said, sighing. “I saw him just before they all left, and he was…I don’t know. Defeated, somehow. As though it had been Fëanor who had the last word, rather than him.” They watched one of the ducklings topple off of the bank into the water, surfacing a moment later with a great deal of splashing. “I was so glad to see my own father again,” he said after a while. “He came to Lórien before I was ready to leave it. I think I was slower than most to adjust to having a body again.” He grimaced when Elrond winced, both of them thinking of why that was. Elrond had seen Celebrimbor’s body only once, a glimpse at a distance when it was raised before the armies of Mordor as they marched out of the smoking ruins of Ost-in-Edhil—even that had been enough to see how terrible his end had been. “But I just—I suppose it’s that I said all the cruel things already, when I turned my back in Nargothrond, and once we were both here again we could start anew. None of my uncles ever got that chance. Grandfather understands, though. He isn’t angry. I think he hoped but did not expect it to go any differently.”

“Why did he come, then?” Elrond asked.

“He had decided that whatever they had to say, even if it was that they never wanted to see him again, he wished to hear it from them—and it has always been that once he is settled on a course he will not be swayed. I would not be surprised if he goes to my father and my other uncles after they return from their journey, though I did warn him that Celegorm and Ambarussa will probably leave again to rejoin Oromë’s hunt, and it would be useless even to try to track them when they do. He’s lucky he caught Maglor here, come to think of it.”

Maglor wrapped himself in subtle enchantments of hiding and secrecy without even thinking about it. “Luck is one word for it,” Elrond said.

“I think it’s for the best that Maglor was able to say whatever he needed to say,” Celebrimbor said.

“I agree, but that doesn’t lessen the pain of it in the present. Is Fëanor reading the Red Book?”

“He’s nearly finished, and fascinated,” Celebrimbor said, laughing a little. “It’s a shame that Bilbo isn’t still here. I don’t know if they would get along, but it would certainly be something to witness their conversations. I did have to explain my part in the whole thing, though—that was hard.”

“I’m sorry.”

“He knew some of it already, and then he managed to get me to promise to show him how to make ithildin. He might ask you about Vilya sometime. I told him that you and Mithrandir and Galadriel still have the Three.”

“We do,” Elrond said. Gandalf still wore Narya, but Elrond had been quite happy to tuck Vilya into a jewelry box and close that chapter of his life. He would be forever grateful for it, for having had its power when he’d most needed it, but it had been a burden as much as a blessing. His hand felt so much lighter without it, and these days the only ring he wore was his golden wedding band. He knew Galadriel had kept Nenya, too, but he did not know what exactly she’d done with it. “It was my hope in giving him the book that he would come to understand something of the world we left, that he never knew. In doing so he might understand Maglor better.”

“I think he does,” said Celebrimbor. “It will be hard, though, for him to hear the full tale.”

“I think,” Elrond said, remembering that afternoon that Finrod had gotten the three of them drunk on wine and old grief, “that you may know more of it than I do. I can guess much, but he never speaks of it.”

“He tried to sing the tower down, once,” Celebrimbor murmured. “It didn’t work. That was when they…” He gestured at his own lips. They both fell silent; Elrond tilted his head back to look at the clouds gathering, promising rain showers later in the afternoon. Galadriel had taken the stitches out as soon as Maglor had been brought to her, and his mouth had been well healed by the time he’d come to Imladris months later. It wasn’t the physical wounds that had marked him most deeply; they were only the most visible. It was what had happened after the stitching that had left the deepest and most lasting damage—when he had been thrown into cold dark silence and left to wander in dreams and nightmares as the years marched on outside, and the lock on the door slowly rusted. Elrond had not known that he’d tried to sing down the tower—an inversion of Lúthien’s song long ago at Tol-en-Gaurhoth, a last desperate attempt at something like escape. The thought made him shudder.

But it was over. Sauron was no more, and Maglor had been brought out of that place alive—and he had healed. The Maglor who had first come to Imladris would not have been able to face Fëanor at all, let alone speak to him. He would not have been able to sing with Elemmírë or tease Finrod, or even hear the news that all of his brothers were alive again. He hadn’t even been able to look Elrond in the eye when he’d first come to Rivendell.

“I know it may not seem like it,” Elrond said after a few minutes, “but he is better—he is so, so much better than he was, even when I left him after the War of the Ring.”

“I know,” Celebrimbor said. “I know what it is to be broken by Sauron, and what it takes to come back from it. Maglor is far stronger than he will let himself believe.”

Elrond returned to the house to seek Fëanor, and found him in the gallery, a bright and wide room with high ceilings and many windows and skylights to let in the sunshine. Paintings lined the walls—portraits, landscapes, many depicting people or places in Middle-earth beloved by the artists. Sculptures and busts were also scattered throughout the room. The artwork was often changed and rearranged as more was made or brought to the valley. Elrond knew that Celebrían was already planning where to place the last paintings that Arwen had sent them, once they were unwrapped.

Fëanor stood looking at a painting Arwen had made long ago, of the Fellowship gathered in the courtyard of Rivendell before setting out on the Quest; she had insisted that Elrond take it with him when he set sail. “Are they truly that small?” Fëanor asked. He had his hands clasped behind his back, and his hair was loose; from the back Elrond might have mistaken him for Fingolfin if he hadn’t known better.

“Hobbits? Yes. Merry and Pippin, I have been told, caused quite a stir when they returned home several inches taller than when they had left. And of course there is the tale of Bandobras Took, the only hobbit that ever grew tall enough to ride a horse, who led them to victory against the goblins in the Battle of Greenfields. He was an ancestor of Bilbo’s, and Bilbo was very fond of telling that story.”

Fëanor was looking at Frodo, standing in the center with Sam at his side and Gandalf’s hand on his shoulder. After a few moments he shifted his stance and turned to Elrond. “Will you tell me now what happened to Canafinwë?”

“You read of Dol Guldur, in Mirkwood?”

“Yes…”

Elrond took a deep breath, and told him—of Maglor’s capture by the river, of his years of captivity, of Sauron’s desire to break his will. He did not go into detail, but he did not shrink from describing just how terribly fragile and afraid and wounded Maglor had been when he had come to Imladris after his rescue and the winter in Lothlórien under the care of Galadriel and Elrond’s children. Fëanor listened, ashen-faced, in silence. “Before he was taken by the orcs,” Elrond said at last, “he was alone for a very long time—but not so isolated as he was in that prison cell, and free to wander wherever he wished. It was the years alone in the dark, unable to escape, that wounded him most deeply, in ways that do not show on the body.”

Fëanor turned away, and Elrond thought at first that he was going to leave. Instead he just stood very still, shaking a little. When he turned around again, he said, “I saw him woven in your valley beneath the mountains, but he wasn’t—there were gaps in the weave. If I did not know the skill of Vairë’s weavers I would have thought them a beginner’s mistake—missing threads, or woven too loosely so that they came unraveled. Even later, the gaps were closed but it still—it seemed wrong.”

“He is strong,” Elrond said quietly. “He survived, and he healed—it may seem hard to believe to you, but he did.”

“Why were you not there when Dol Guldur was besieged?”

“My power, and Vilya’s, was anchored in Imladris. I left the valley only rarely by the end of the Third Age; my sons went out in my stead. Galadriel did not leave Lórien either, though she did not need to for the part she played for there was only the river separating her land and Mirkwood; and the Istari were there, and Glorfindel—and my sons. It was Elladan and Elrohir that found Maglor and brought him out of there, and they and Arwen had him in their care most of that winter. None of them were strangers to the devices and torments of the Enemy, after the long wars with Angmar. Nor was Galadriel. There was no safer place for him that winter than Caras Galadhon.”

“Why was he left there so long?” Fëanor asked after a moment, voice tight. “You said—sixty years and more in torment. What were you waiting for?”

Elrond sighed. “None of us knew he was there,” he said. “We had not been able to find him since the end of the First Age—you must remember that he can hide himself if he wishes to. As for Dol Guldur…Saruman’s counsel seemed good at the time. It was not until the year Frodo fled the Shire that we learned of his treachery. It was nearly our undoing—as you know, for you have read the account of it.”

“I have.”

“I don’t know why Saruman wished to wait, since we can no longer trust the reasons he gave to us, but by the time we made our move Sauron was ready, and he established himself again in Mordor within just a few years.” Elrond paused, unsure of how to proceed. “Maglor…came out of that placed filled with fear, for fear was Sauron's greatest weapon and he and the Nazgûl wielded it to deadly effect; there were few even in Rivendell who could withstand them. He was so afraid of losing himself to Sauron that he had managed to forget almost all he knew of music—because that was what Sauron wanted from him—and it was many years before he played or sang again outside of the privacy of his own room with the door firmly shut. We were all afraid as Sauron’s power grew again, but Maglor never really had any hope that we would find a way to defeat him, and even now I think he finds it difficult to let go of that fear. He is not afraid of Sauron anymore, but he dislikes performing, especially in front of a large audience. He does not like to be seen. Older wounds too have been reopened since he came here—”

“You mean that I have reopened them,” Fëanor said. The tension was gone from him; his shoulders sagged, and he sounded suddenly exhausted.

“No,” said Elrond. Fëanor raised his eyebrows in surprise. “Not only you. All of his brothers are here, too. We passed by Lady Nerdanel’s house, where they were gathered, on our way from Eressëa, and Maglor raced ahead to leave it behind as quickly as he could. I’m not so sure that he would not greet Maedhros in almost exactly the same way he spoke to you.”

“He wouldn’t,” Fëanor said immediately, with the certainty of a father who knew his sons better than anyone. “He would never speak to Maedhros thus.” When he had known his sons best, though, had been in times of peace and joy. He had not been there to see how war and suffering and their own deeds wore them down and changed them, hardened them and sharpened them like pieces of brittle stone with pieces being slowly chipped away until they were nothing but sharp edges. When Fëanor had known them it was unthinkable for Maglor and Maedhros to be at such odds—or for Maglor to speak to anyone so harshly, let alone his own brother. When Fëanor had known them best, many things that they later did were unthinkable, unimaginable even in one’s worst nightmares.

Sometimes Elrond wished that he had known them then, that he had known that Maedhros that everyone else loved, that he had known Maglor before he was weighed down by so much grief and guilt. Those wishes lived in the same place in his heart as the wish that so many terrible things had not had to happen for him to even have been born. They were impossible wishes, and so not worth dwelling upon—and he didn’t, for the most part, except when he felt particularly weary or heartsick.

“Maedhros was the last to leave him,” Elrond said quietly. “Everyone left him in the end, even Elros and I. Maglor often seeks solitude, but there is choosing to be alone for a few hours or days and there is watching everyone you love turn their back in one way or another, one by one. Losing Maedhros was the one thing Maglor feared and dreaded above all else. I never knew Maedhros as well as I knew Maglor, and I cannot guess what was in his mind when he cast himself into the fire, but it was a choice that he made, and Maglor knew it, and I don’t know if even Maglor, who can forgive his brothers almost anything, can forgive Maedhros that.”