A Hundred Miles Through the Desert - Chapter Forty Six

[starspray]

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Sons of Feanor, Elrond, Feanor, Daeron, various others
Warnings: n/a
Summary: After years in Lórien, Maglor and Maedhros are ready to return to their family and to make something new with their lives--but to move forward, all of Fëanor's sons must decide how, or if, they can ever reconcile with their father.
Note: This fic is a direct sequel to High in the Clean Blue Air. 

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Eressëa was quiet. Maedhros had not spent so much time away from any of his brothers since Caranthir had returned from Mandos, and it was strange—but though he missed them, it wasn’t bad. Caranthir’s letters were rambling and Celegorm’s were short, and Curufin’s somewhere in the middle, mostly talking of Náriel and Celebrimbor.

He didn’t hear from Maglor again until sometime after Midwinter which Maedhros spent quietly with Elrond and his household, with no large parties or great feasts, though they all went down to the beach to watch the fireworks set off over the bay. They were marvelous, sparkling over the water and falling like a shower of stars, but Elladan and Elrohir both proclaimed that Gandalf’s were better. Maglor’s letter did not answer any of the questions Maedhros had sent, only thanked him for the sketch and wrote about Daeron and the holidays in Taur-en-Gellam as though nothing had happened at all. Daeron’s only reply to Maedhros was a quick greeting jotted at the end of Maglor’s letter, as cheerful as Maglor’s but even less informative.

In the days following the holiday, Maedhros spent more time near the water, often with his sketchbook, and also often in Elrond’s company. Most often they spoke of nothing particularly consequential—Elrond’s projects in copying and transcribing and in gathering lore, Maedhros’ attempts at painting, their various relations, and speculations about Gil-galad’s reception in Tirion when he came there sometime in the spring.

“I’ve seen so many depictions of Finwë since I came here, but somehow I never realized before seeing Gil-galad again just how much they look alike,” Elrond remarked one afternoon. They sat on the white sand, warmed by the sun even though the breeze from the west carried a bite, and through the Calacirya the sky was wintry grey.

“I’m not surprised,” said Maedhros. “Fingon also looks a great deal like Finwë.” He leaned back on his elbows and watched a few dolphins jumping about in the water, to the delight of some Telerin youths out on their sailboat.

“Not so much that they might be mistaken for twins,” Elrond said.

“I always thought Gil-galad took after Gilheneth,” said Maedhros, “but he was still a young child when I saw him last. Is he very tall now?”

“Oh yes, taller than me but not as tall as you or Turgon. Will you visit before you go back to your mother’s house?”

“I doubt it. There’s no real rush, is there? And Fingon and Gilheneth sound as though they have their hands full juggling everyone who wants to see Gil-galad now, while keeping them away from Maeglin…how did they get along when they met?”

“Maeglin is terribly skittish,” said Elrond, “even if he hides it well, and Gil-galad is—well, he’s pleased with everything, and especially to meet and know his cousin and his aunt. Gil-galad was very happy to see Celebrimbor again, at least, and Celebrimbor seems to have taken Maeglin under his wing.”

“Yes, he decided they should be friends within about two minutes of their meeting, and Maeglin didn’t really get a choice in the matter.”

“I think it is a good thing,” said Elrond, “but I have not yet told my grandparents of his return—or my parents, though I don’t know when I’ll next see my father.” His other grandparents, Dior and Nimloth, had spent Midwinter at Elwing’s tower, and had visited Eressëa a few times over the course of the last few weeks—but Maedhros had made himself scarce when they came after the initial introduction to Dior. “My father rather famously does not hold grudges,” Elrond went on, “but I think Maeglin might be an exception.”

Maeglin was to Eärendil, Maedhros thought, what he himself had once been to Elrond. Worse, even—if the tales of the battle that Maedhros had heard were true. “What will you do if he is upset by Maeglin’s return?”

“Nothing,” Elrond said. “That is between them. I can be present if they ever decide they should meet face to face—Elbereth knows I’ve had practice—but I won’t do anything more.”

“Practice?” Maedhros repeated, glancing over at Elrond.

Elrond smiled, but it was a tired sort of expression. “Your father and my grandfather,” he said. “They wanted a witness to at least the beginning of their first real conversation after Fëanor returned from Mandos, and picked me. Fingon and Finrod thought it was very funny.”

“I don’t,” Maedhros said.

“Anything can be funny if you’re trying very hard to ignore the tension in the room, and I did encourage it a little. Better to be laughed at than to have to stop everyone from arguing. It went well, though, that meeting. I think mostly Fëanor wanted me there so I could vouch for him later in case anyone was skeptical of his affirming your abdication and giving up his right to the crown. Everyone else probably hoped I would prevent violence from breaking out, but they didn’t have to worry. Fëanor offered to let Fingolfin punch him, and Fingolfin declined.”

Maedhros had heard about that from Fingon, and hadn’t known whether he really believed it. But Elrond had been there, and Elrond wouldn’t make up stories like that for a joke. “Findis took him up on it instead,” he said.

“I don’t think Findis waited for him to offer. She’s now one of his staunchest allies.”

“Siblings are strange,” Maedhros said.

“They are,” Elrond agreed.

“I’m not sure you can say that,” Maedhros said. “You and Elros never fought.”

“Yes we did—maybe not much as children, but when we were older. The worst was the time I accidentally broke his nose.”

“You—you broke his nose?” If anything, Maedhros would have expected it to be the other way around, though he couldn’t have explained why.

“It was an accident,” Elrond repeated, smiling faintly, “and it was—it was some time after you had died, and not very long after his coronation.” He paused, and then said, “It also wasn’t very long after we had each made our choices. If we were going to really fight about anything it was that, but we’d both determined not to, so we argued over other, stupider things.”

“I’m sorry,” Maedhros said.

“I was very angry with him for a while, but…it was his choice, and it was the right one for him, just as mine was right for me. He feared the uncertainty of being halfelven, of not knowing what would happen to us if or when we died. Just knowing which path he would take was a great relief, and not knowing what lay beyond it—that was a different kind of uncertainty, one that beckoned rather than frightened. My only regret is that our lives diverged when they did, and I could not be with him at the end, as I could not be with Arwen.”

“Can I ask why?” Maedhros asked after a moment. “Why you couldn’t stay for Arwen, I mean?”

“I was so tired,” Elrond sighed. “I am thankful for Vilya and all that it allowed me to do, but it took its toll, just as all the rings did. I couldn’t stay. I would have just—faded away, long before Arwen, whether I wanted to or not, and that would have broken her heart worse than our parting broke mine. But my sons were able to stay, and so was Maglor. The end was neither as lonely nor as bitter for her as I had feared.”

“Maglor speaks often of her,” Maedhros said, “and her children. The first time I saw him smile after we met again was when someone asked him about Aragorn.”

“I hate what happened to him,” said Elrond, “but I will be forever grateful that it brought him home to Rivendell in the end.” He sat up and looped his arms around his knees, watching a crab scuttle through the surf at their feet. “What of your father?”

“I don’t want to punch him,” said Maedhros, “but Celegorm might.” Elrond snorted. “I haven’t forgotten what you said before. I just…don’t know what I want to come out of it. He doesn’t even remember clearly the worst things he did.”

“How do you know that?”

“He told me. We met briefly in Tirion.”

“What is it in particular you wanted him to remember?”

Maedhros did not look at Elrond, instead watching the crab until it was washed away into the water. The dolphins were still jumping around the sailboat. Their chittering and chirping was audible even where he and Elrond sat on Eressëa. “Losgar,” he said finally, and half-wished they were somewhere far away from the water, or the ships of the Teleri.

“The ship burning?”

“I think he remembers that well enough—and I suppose he’s made peace with both Fingolfin and Olwë over it, and what happened in Alqualondë. It’s—that was the only time I ever defied him, out loud and to his face. I spoke against it, and then I would take no part. He was—angry. Very angry.”

Fëanor’s face flashed through his mind, half in shadow as the ships still smoldered behind him, but his eyes burning brighter than anything. It would have been better had you—

“Ah,” Elrond said very softly, as though this admission had allowed him to make sense of a few things. “Are you worried he’ll repeat whatever he said to you?”

“No. No, it’s—I believe you and Maglor and everyone else when you say his regret is genuine. It’s just—even if he regretted them seconds after the words were said, he meant them as he spoke them. And it’s…it’s the future that I’m uncertain of. If there comes a time when I have to speak against him again—I’ll do it, but I don’t…” He didn’t know how to explain. Even if he never spoke to Fëanor again and something still happened to put them on opposite sides of whatever-it-might-be, facing his father’s wrath again, however unlikely it was, would break something in him and Maedhros wasn’t sure it was something that Nienna or Estë or even Námo could fix. He was stronger than he had been since before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, now, but sometimes he feared that that strength was a of a brittle kind, that it would shatter if hit in just the right way.

“You do not have to speak to him, or even ever see him again,” Elrond said. “I know what I said before, but you need not take my advice just because I am the one that gave it.”

“You were right though,” said Maedhros. “And I would—” He swallowed, and watched the dolphins all suddenly vanish, diving under the water and not resurfacing. One of the sailors dove in after them, a bright flash of silver hair disappearing into the clear blue waves. “I would like to be wrong,” he said finally. “And I am going to speak to him, once I decide what I need to say. After Maglor’s finished with his song.”

“You might be waiting for some time, if you are waiting for that,” said Elrond.

“Yes, I know.” That was rather the point.

“Come to Imloth Ningloron when you’re ready for it,” Elrond said after a little while. “It may be easier there than in Tirion. It was for both your father and Fingolfin.”

“I don’t think I will need you there to make sure no one gets hurt,” Maedhros said, trying to speak lightly. “I’m not going to punch him.”

“That isn’t what I’m worried about.”

“I don’t think he’ll do anything to me, either.”

“I don’t think either of you will try to hurt the other,” said Elrond, “but both of you are already hurt, and even if it goes as well as it possibly can it will still be painful. I would like to be nearby, whatever happens, and at least in Imloth Ningloron you will not be burdened by the memories of Tirion, good or ill.”

Maedhros looked up at the sky. An eagle soared out from the mountains over the water, lazily riding the thermals. “All right,” he said. “But this shouldn’t be your—”

“You are all my family,” said Elrond, “so I’m going to meddle as much as I like. I’m also not above leveraging the fact that none of you can get angry at me for it because I’m one of the babies of the House of Finwë.” Maedhros nearly choked on surprised laughter. “So, really, you have to indulge me—and if not me, then Celebrían, who will say the same thing if you ask her. At least you can be assured my meddling won’t send you all off across the entire continent.”

“In Mithrandir’s defense,” Maedhros said when he caught his breath, “it worked, and I’m not sure anything else would have.”

“Don’t say that to him,” Elrond said, “or I’ll never hear the end of it.” He smiled when Maedhros laughed again. “And I think you could’ve done without being attacked by a wild hunting cat.”

“I could have, yes,” said Maedhros, “but I don’t think we can blame Mithrandir for that.”

“Do those wounds ever trouble you?”

“No. Curvo stitched me up afterward, and Daeron sang many healing songs. You can look at the scars if you want, but they never hurt—they were healed long before I even went to Lórien.”

“I believe you.”

“They aren’t the kind of scars that will ache,” Maedhros said after a few minutes of silence. “The whole incident at the river—it’s never kept me up at night, and I don’t think it ever will, not like other things have. It was awful at the time, of course, but not that kind of awful. They were all furious with me, but even that was reassuring in its own way.”

“They were angry because they were frightened for you.”

“Mostly they were angry because I wasn’t more upset myself.” It was the sort of thing that would have broken them all apart and sent them scattering before they’d gone to Ekkaia, before they had all decided not to let something like that happen again. “But I wasn’t dead or going to die, and I’d survived worse before.” He shrugged. “Mandos wasn’t going to let me in a second time, I don’t think.”

“I’m sure I should object to that line of thinking,” Elrond said, “but I don’t know enough about Mandos to do so.”

“I didn’t want to go back, by then,” Maedhros said. “But they had kicked me out once, and I don’t think Námo would have been very pleased to see me again. It doesn’t matter, because I didn’t die, no matter how often Curufin wants to remind me exactly how bad it was. I lost more blood, but it was Maglor who had a worse time at the river.”

“He told me about it when he came back to Imloth Ningloron. Did you know what was happening, after his voice gave out?”

“Yes, though not why. I tried to break him out of it, but nothing was working—and I think the fact that it was me only made it worse.” Maedhros did not look at Elrond. The dolphins had returned, and all the sailors had jumped off their boat to swim with them. “It almost makes me disappointed that Sauron is gone—that I can’t go find him myself.”

“He got what was coming to him,” Elrond said quietly. “Do you now why now, though? I’m never quite sure what Maglor has told—well, any of you, really. I know he’s told Curufin.”

“Curvo told the rest of us, which is what Maglor had intended. I’ve never asked him anything, myself. About any of it.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t have to. I’ve seen the scars; I know what they mean. There are some things you just—they’re impossible to explain to someone who doesn’t already understand, and if someone already understands you don’t need to try anyway. I don’t need to ask Maglor about Dol Guldur just like he now doesn’t have to ask me about Angband. It’s—it’s very hard to walk that line, between not wanting anyone to know what happened because it would horrify them, but needing them to understand that it did happen and that you aren’t the same, and you can’t ever be the same. Anyone who’s lived in Middle-earth understands enough to be getting on with, for the most part. Curvo didn’t need to ask for more of an explanation than he got. But those who never left here—they can’t.”

“I understand.”

“You lived in Middle-earth,” Maedhros said, offering what he hoped was a wry smile.

“Is that why you gave your father one of your mother’s palantíri? Why you’re so afraid to speak to him—because you believe he expects to see someone you aren’t any longer?”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You didn’t think you were afraid of Lórien, either.”

The sailors were climbing back onto their boat now, dripping and laughing and falling onto the deck. One of the dolphins leaped clear over the prow to land with a splash on the other side. Finally, Maedhros said, “I’m not afraid, exactly—I don’t fear my father now. But I became someone my father hated, though I was not the one who had yet changed then. I don’t know what he will think of who I am now when he starts to know or understand me. At least through the palantír he’ll have some idea of why I am who I am.”

“I don’t think he will hate you,” Elrond said softly.

Elrond had not been at Losgar. “I haven’t disagreed with him yet.”

“I am not Fëanor, but I am a father,” Elrond said after a little while, as the sailboat’s sails were raised and it began to drift away back toward Alqualondë. “My children have often made choices that I disagreed with, or spoke out in disagreement with me. I could never hate any of them, though I spent several decades unable to speak to my sons without it dissolving into a terrible fight that had them storming out of the room and then out of Rivendell—precisely the opposite of what I wanted them to do. I also never wanted Arwen to make the choice that she did—because I knew it would be a bitter and painful end for her, and because I, more selfishly, did not want to lose her. In the end she did make that choice, and our final farewell was bitter, but I never hated her for it, not for a moment. Neither she nor her brothers ever doubted that I love them more than life itself.”

“You said so yourself,” Maedhros said, “you are not Fëanor. My father never liked to be gainsaid, even before things went wrong. And it is still true that the things I regret least are the things he would have been even angrier over than he was over the ships. But what did Elladan and Elrohir ever do that put you at such odds?”

“In the wake of Celebrían’s departure they threw themselves into hunting orcs, into combing the Misty Mountains for them, into—into anything that I deemed too dangerous and often foolish. They took part in the Battle of the Fields of Celebrant the year after Celebrían left, and I had no knowledge of it until they came back, both wounded and both of them having been careless with those wounds. I was furious—angrier than I had ever been with them, before or since.”

“You were angry because you feared for them,” Maedhros said, “not merely because they disobeyed you.”

“Of course I was afraid. I thought they were going to get themselves killed, and they hadn’t—they had not yet made their choice, and I did not know what that would mean. I have a better idea now, having since met my grandfather Dior who died before such a thing was ever offered, but I couldn’t know, then. And they were angry, I think, in the same way that your father was. Their grief for their mother’s suffering had hardened into something else once she was gone, and there were times when I found myself wondering if they really realized what they were doing—how they sometimes frightened myself and their sister. I know Celebrían’s departure is not the same as her death would have been, but for those of us who had lived all our lives in Middle-earth, and with the future still so uncertain and growing ever darker, it did not feel very different.”

“Even your future?” Maedhros asked. If Elrond had been slain, he would have come to Mandos and then again to life in Valinor—as he had chosen.

“Especially mine,” Elrond said, but did not explain further. Instead he went on, “They calmed eventually, with time—Elladan and Elrohir. They never stopped riding out, but they started to listen to me again, and more and more often I was the one sending them out as the world grew darker and more dangerous. And you have seen them now. There is nothing of that rage left.”

Maedhros heard what Elrond was telling him, but found it as hard to imagine either Elladan or Elrohir burning with that kind of anger—not now, when they were making silly bets with one another and singing even sillier songs just to make Celebrían laugh—as it was to imagine Fëanor having burned his anger entirely out. It was equally hard to imagine Fëanor laughing as he once had, or doing or saying anything that might be considered silly or playful.

He didn’t want to think of his father any longer. “Have you heard from Maglor?”

“Yes, and whatever was going on between him and Daeron, they seem to have sorted it out.”

“You noticed too, then.”

“Yes, of course. I’m not going to question him about it though, not when I can’t see him in person to know whether it would help or just make things worse. I think they are both feeling a great deal of strain right now, between the songwriting and Daeron’s family and Ingwë’s upcoming feast. If they fight with one another it’s because they both know that that’s safe in the end—I don’t think either would ever say or do anything the other could not forgive.”

“Have you met Daeron’s family yet?”

“Yes. Celebrían has decided we should all be friends, not least because she believes it will make things easier for Daeron; but I doubt you’ll see any of them while you’re here. Netyalossë and Vinyelírë are unlikely to come to Eressëa if Daeron is not here, and Simpalírë and their parents have gone to Taur-en-Gellam.”

Wonderful, Maedhros thought. An additional source of stress neither Daeron nor Maglor needed. Hopefully they had reconciled before Daeron’s parents arrived—hopefully Daeron’s parents weren’t the root of the argument. “What do you think of them?”

“They aren’t bad people,” Elrond said. “It’s only that family is always complicated, and so is the history of the Eldar, and we are seeing that playing out in miniature between Daeron and Aldalëo and Escelírë. So often we find ourselves with an idea of someone in our minds, only to meet them and find they are not at all the way we thought they would be. I’ve had that experience nearly every time I met someone new after coming here—and I came into those meetings usually with much more knowledge than either Daeron or his family had of each other. People change, and sometimes people just don’t get along for reasons that aren’t really anyone’s fault. I think that might be the case for Daeron and his sister, with the added complication of Netyalossë disliking the fact that she is no longer the eldest sibling in practice and not just in name.”

“Daeron mentioned that to me,” said Maedhros. “I know all about being the eldest—but obviously it’s different, since I’ve known my brothers all their lives.”

“As I said,” Elrond said a little wryly, “family is complicated.”