in this expected country they know my name - Tamatoa (SaltandtheSoul) - The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth (2024)

“Ada,” says Tyelpë from just inside the doorway, his shadow choppy against the dimly red-lit floor, spilling out in two directions. “Come quickly!”

“What is it?” Curufin wants to know, grimacing as he sets down his tools and wipes his hands on his apron. The bits he was fitting together were requiring more grease than he’d liked anyway; they’ll hold for another time, or perhaps he’ll start over entirely. He’s done that enough anyway with this particular project.

“There’s a crowd gathering,” says Tyelpë, “I don’t know what for.”

Curufin freezes minutely, then throws on the wide-brimmed hat by the door to make sure he can see anything in the bright sunlight outside as he brushes past his son. “Come on then,” he bites out. Halfway out he remembers that the sky is still dark from the fumes leaking from Morgoth’s mountains, but he doesn’t stop to leave the hat.

He doesn’t mean to be harsh, but Tyelpë hardly seems to notice anyway, likely wrapped up in much the same anxieties as those crowding his father’s mind.

Please, he thinks, o Father, Eru, Ea—f*ck, not again.

Not again, not now, they can’t be dealing with this on top of everything.

Curufin spots a bone white braid just ahead of him, on the edge of the crowd. Celegorm is stock still, frozen in place. Curufin grabs the tail of the braid and tugs it, surprised when his brother doesn’t turn on him with a snarl and a knife as he’s prone to do.

“I thought we had people watching Maglor,” Curufin says shortly, switching his grip to the base of his brother’s skull and dragging him along as he shoulders through the crowd.

“It’s not,” Celegorm says softly.

Curufin’s brain shudders to a halt. “What.”

“It’s not Maglor,” Celegorm repeats. “It’s not Maglor,” he says again, though it sounds more for himself than anything. He shakes off Curufin’s hand and then begins his own push between the murmuring mass of gawkers.

“What does that mean,” Tyelpë says, slipping up beside his father. “What does that mean?”

Curufin suspects they all already know. He shakes himself like Celegorm had, then raises his voice. “Move it!” he bellows. “If you don’t have a stretcher or a healer’s bag, shove off!”

The crowd, grudgingly, begins to disperse. Curufin takes the opportunity to move forward.

It’s… it’s expected, but he still stops in his tracks upon spotting his eldest brother’s red hair spilling across the ground. It’s matted and covered his ash and grime from the mountain’s dark fumes, but it still gleams in a familiar way. Nelyo’s matching smile and bright eyes are nowhere to be seen.

Fingon bends over Maitimo’s body, pawing at his face with bloody, shaking hands. Celegorm is moving to pull him away and next to them, a group of healers are already laying down a stretcher and getting to work.

Curufin gives a shuddering breath and forces his feet to move forward. “Tyelpë,” he says, “go help prep the infirmary. Now!” His boy stumbles a bit moving off, but he goes and that’s what matters.

“Hold this,” says one of the head healers, pushing her bag into his arms. “I need gauze.”

Curufin doesn’t think about that too hard, and just starts digging through the satchel instead.

Celegorm tucks a shaking Fingon against his younger brother’s hip and helps the healers move Maitimo’s broken body onto the stretcher. Curufin accepts their cousin haphazardly, finding the gauze and shoving it at the head healer.

“Take him,” Celegorm jerks his chin at Fingon, hands dirty and bloody already, “put him somewhere quiet.”

The stretcher is then lifted and carried away, leaving a mess of blood and mud in its wake. Curufin stares for a long moment and Fingon starts shaking harder. Curufin turns to question him, then actually looks at his cousin.

The other elf is a wreck, as bloody and dirty as Maitimo, wracked with violent tremors. Curufin sniffs, then shakes his head and tugs Fingon along behind him by the wrist, heading after the stretcher.

They have a large and growing collection of permanent buildings on this side of the lake, the main healing halls being one of the most prominent. Aman had been untouched by true violence for a long time, but even before Morgoth came and brought his shadow, they’d known their fair share of accidents.

Beleriand is nothing like it.

Where in elf in the blessed lands might have fallen from a window three floors up and been bruised but fine, here the same fall results in broken bones at best, and dead bodies at worst. The healing halls see too much use to be anything other than a permanent structure with thick walls and warm fireplaces.

Curufin shoulders the doors open and pulls Fingon inside, seeking out the source of the most activity. He probably won’t be very helpful, but right now what he needs is direction—some way to help his brother at all.

He stops just outside the room Maitimo must be in, judging from the influx of healers bearing various tools of their practice. Fingon runs into his back and bounces off it.

Curufin turns, spotting his son hurrying down the hallway towards them, arms full of a steaming water basin.

“I’m sorry,” Fingon says, sounding half like he’s begging. “I’m sorry, I had too—you have experience with this, right? You know what to do here!”

Curufin takes the hysterical elf firmly by the shoulders and stares until Fingon’s rolling eyes meet his. There’s far too much white visible; he looks like a spoked horse.

“You’re going to be in the way,” says Curufin shortly. “Tyelpë’s going to take you and you’re going to sit down that way, alright?” It’s not really a question. Fingon nods jerkily anyway.

“Yes,” he says, “yes, alright, I’ll, I’ll—I can’t leave him, Curufinwë.”

“No one’s asking you to,” Curufin assures him. He doesn’t have time for bitterness or hatred; those are lessons he’s learned before. Work now, argue later. “You need to sit in the hall and let the healers do their jobs. You can come back in as soon as they’re done.”

Curufin might’ve hated his cousin in the past, fueled but his father’s righteous anger, but he feels none of it now. Not even—though he’s sure he should—indignation. Over owing a new debt, over past failures—Curufin does not care.

He trades Fingon for Tyelpë’s basin and turns back to the bustling operation area to make himself useful.

Maitimo will be okay. Maitimo will have to be okay, because none of them can do this again, least of all with another eldest brother.

:::

Maitimo wakes slowly, and painfully. That’s not surprising; he hasn’t woken without pain in a long time. What is surprising are the soft sheets and quiet voices surrounding him. He could have sworn the last thing he knew was—

Findekáno.

Maitimo snaps his eyes open, wincing. The light hurts and he squints against it but he has to see—

Someone squeezes his hand. Maitimo looks to the left and finds his beloved cousin watching him with a blank, terrified expression. Some part of his rails against being seen in such a state, but his swiftly growing voice of reason says Findekáno has seen worse, and sheer, blessed relief overpowers all of it.

“Finno,” he croaks, working his jaw.

A tear slips down his cousin’s cheek, then Findekáno leans in and wraps himself around Maitimo in an awkward hug. Maitimo barely registers someone’s sharp reprimand; his right shoulder screams as he tries to lift his arm so he gives up there and picks up the left instead to return his savior’s embrace, despite said savoir not having let go of it.

“Nelyo,” Findekáno sobs, “Nelyo.”

“Finno,” Maitimo says back. It’s the only word he says for a long time, and he’s quite content with that, lying there hugging his cousin.

His cousin who is, inexplicably, in Beleriand.

“Finno,” he speaks up again eventually as people who must be healers do their best to coax Findekáno off of him. “What?”

Findekáno looks like he might start crying again at that, but he valiantly rubs his tears away with the back of his hand and begins to explain. He starts with the Ice and Maitimo closes his eyes painfully, though he squeezes his cousin’s hand to show he’s still listening.

The healers poke at Maitimo and ask him intermittent questions, and someone mentions fetching his brothers.

“And then we were here,” Findekáno says. “We’ve been burying what dead of ours we managed to salvage. Celegorm—”

Maitimo cracks his eyes open. “Celegorm?”

“Tyelkormo,” Findekáno fills in. “Many of your people have changed their names to the local Sindarin, I’m told. It must have happened while you were… away.”

Maitimo files that away and doesn’t go picking at your people versus ours.

“Celegorm,” Findekáno continues, “met with my father and they’ve arranged to help us get settled a bit.” Maitimo frowns. There’s something there, but his slightly foggy mind is not picking it up. “When I heard that you were lost to the Enemy… I had to, Russo. I had to go looking. I know—well, I don’t know, but I could see that it was killing your brothers to leave you, and I couldn’t understand why they did, but no one told me not to, so—”

“I did,” Maitimo coughs.

Findekáno’s mouth snaps shut on his flood of words. “I figured,” he says quietly.

“I mean,” Maitimo squeezes his hand. “Thank you. It was stupid, but thank you.”

Findekáno smiles at him again, and Maitimo really hopes he isn’t about to start crying again, not least because then he might too, and crying hurts the skin of his face, raw from wind and acid rain.

“I told them not to come for me, if I was captured,” Maitimo explains, better this time. “Couldn’t trust them not to be stupid while I was gone.”

Findekáno twitches. Maitimo narrows his eyes. “What?”

His cousin opens his mouth, but whatever he was going to say is cut off by the sudden clamor of Maitimo’s brothers spilling into the room. Findekáno yelps and throws himself (carefully) over Maedhros’ torso before the flailing Ambarussar can land anywhere that’ll hurt.

“Nelyo!” the pair of them say as one, crying. Maitimo frees his left arm to pet red hair and be grasped and tugged, while everyone stays far away from his right.

None of his brothers, even the characteristically stoic Carnistir, have dry eyes. Tyelkormo—Celegorm—ducks into drop a kiss on Maitimo’s forehead, and Curufinwë steals Findekáno’s vacated chair out from behind him, laying his hand on the blanket covering Maitimo’s legs. Caranthir stands at the foot of the bed, not seeming lonely likely by sheer force of will.

Maitimo is unwillingly crying again, and it hurts. Celegorm has produced a soft cloth from somewhere and wipes his tears away tenderly.

Maitimo is, for a moment, more than happy. He’s not sure he’s ever been so pleased in his entire life, if only for the sudden lack of threat around him. He’s missed them all so.

Except. He looks up at Celegorm, frowning. “Where’s my Maka?”

Celegorm’s expression goes tight and pinched and Maitimo feels a stab of fear colder than the Helcaraxë Findekáno had described. Please, no.

His cousin feels it in his tensing body before Celegorm sees it on his face and is quick to reassure him. “He’s not dead, Russo! Or captured, just—”

“Busy,” Curufin cuts in. “He’ll be around to see you soon.”

Maitimo practically wilts with relief, ignoring the also present flush of disappointment. “Alright,” he says slowly. He breathes out. “I’ve missed you all.”

Carnistir coughs. “We’re glad to have you back, Nelyo.”

Maitimo doesn’t need to hear it to know that none of them will ever let him go again. For the moment, it’s a comfort.

“Right,” he says, squeezing Findekáno’s hand again, “tell me everything.”

And so they do.

Makalaurë, suspiciously, is not mentioned in their accounts beyond a few of his laws and the occasional mention here or there. Maitimo tries not to think about that at all, because if he does he’ll think about it too hard, and then all the suspiciousness will become outright worrying, and he’s been told by his healers not to stress.

Eventually, those same healers begin to shoo all of his guests away, citing Maitimo’s need for rest in his recovery. Maitimo would honestly rather keep his brothers close, but he’s sure they have duties, and he truly is worn out already.

“Tyelko,” he says as the blond heads out the door last, making a show of tidying things, but really only moving things around. Maitimo is familiar with that particular nervous habit. “Where is Makalaurë?”

The head healer looks between them, then moves out of the way to let Celegorm meander back over to the bedside. His expression is pained.

“Something’s happened to him,” Maitimo guesses shrewdly. He frowns; his throat is beginning to ache again. Celegorm grimaces and takes a seat. “Or, no. He’s done something you’re not happy with. What would the regent be getting up to—”

“He wouldn’t let us look for you,” Celegorm cuts in. Maitimo falls silent, going still. “He said,” Celegorm’s lip curls, “we oughtn’t waste resources and elves on a hopeless endeavor.”

Maitimo frowns. He’s put this much together already: “None of you would have been able to do it. I’m not even sure why Manwë sent Thorondor for Findekáno.”

Celegorm sighs. “I know that. He knows, probably. It was much harder to think that way when you’d just been taken and everything was rather in chaos.”

Maitimo tips his head back against the pillow, still watching his brother. “He was only following my orders. I told him—”

“I know,” Celegorm says, holding up a hand. “He said as much, though at the time I don’t honestly remember if I believed him. I’m not angry over that, though you should know—” a shadow passes across his face, fleeting, but no less revealing, “—that nearly broke us. Never again, Nelyo.”

Maitimo can agree to that, easily. He nods.

Celegorm sighs again, and rests his elbows on his knees, one hand covering his mouth. “I’m angry that he decided he could be wasted,” he says.

Maitimo almost sits up right then and there to go find his brother, never mind his inability to stand up on atrophied legs. “What did—”

Celegorm is quick to stand and push him back down gently. “He’s alright now, he was just stupid for a while. It’s not really mine to tell you about—well I suppose it’s half mine, but that’s less important.”

Maitimo shifts and frowns, distressed. “Is that why he hasn’t come to see me? Can he?”

“He can,” Celegorm tells him, burying his face in his hands completely, “if he wants to. I think—I don’t know. Half the time I can’t tell if he was trying to prove something or kill himself! I did—I can’t help thinking I drove him to it, Nelyo…”

Maitimo’s concern grows with the thickness in his brother’s voice, and he reaches for the blond’s face with his left hand, trying to see it. “Tyelko—Celegorm,” he tries.

Celegorm looks up finally, tears streaking his cheeks. “I was a f*cking terror and I know it, Nelyo. Curufin and Moryo too, but if I’d been less of an antagonistic ass, he might not have—he might—"

“Hey,” Maitimo doesn’t know what’s going on, but he knows how to comfort his brothers. Maybe. His body remembers and his mouth evidently does, even if his mind has not quite caught up. Celegorm’s head is laid against his chest in a moment, and Maitimo pets his hair. “He’s still around, isn’t he? It can be fixed, brother.”

Celegorm sobs. Maitimo is not sure where he said the wrong thing. He catches himself before he begins to tense up though, because he’s safe with his family, he is, and no one will hurt him.

Instead of asking, because he suspects he’ll get no good answers, Maitimo holds his brother as the elf shakes against him until he cries himself out. Maitimo is sure it’s about much more than whatever’s happened to Makalaurë, but he doesn’t ask after that, either.

“He’s not even mad at me,” Celegorm whispers eventually, when he has nothing left to cry out. “That’s the worst part. It would be so much easier if he was mad at me.”

Maitimo suddenly has a sinking suspicion. He tightens his fingers in Celegorm’s hair and turns the blond’s head to look at him. “Would it?” he asks.

He was wrong. Celegorm can cry more, and does, all over Maitimo’s bandages. He doesn’t mind. They probably needed to be changed anyway.

“Tell him I don’t blame him,” Maitimo says when Celegorm finally gets up to go once more. “Or not. Tell him I’m furious, if it’ll get him in here. Don’t let him break himself while I’m right here, yeah?”

Celegorm smiles at him weakly. “It’s a little too late for that, ‘Timo. I’ll make him talk to you, though. Carry him in if I have to.”

Maitimo rests against the pillows again and closes his eyes tiredly. “You do that,” he mutters. Celegorm is probably already gone.

:::

Weeks pass, and despite Celegorm’s promises, Makalaurë—Maglor, as he’s being called now—does not appear. Maitimo tries not to worry too much. The conversation with Celegorm really didn’t help on that front, but he hasn’t been cleared by the healers to go out and check on his brother, so there’s not much he can do.

Findekáno visits every day, and often Maitimo’s brothers as well, bringing news from the camp and surrounds. And reports. Many, many reports. Maitimo did ask to be kept up to date, but still—

Makalaurë—Maglor, now, Maitimo has to remember that—does not plan on allowing an audience with Nolofinwë until Maitimo can adequately present himself.

Mak—Maglor is organizing for more housing to be built, so they’re going to be cutting some of the wood on the south side of the lake.

Maglor doesn’t think Maitimo is eating enough (which is ridiculous, and Maitimo says so, because Maglor hasn’t even been in to see him!) and he should eat more.

Maglor is beginning to defer important paperwork to Maitimo again, turning over kinging duties.

Maglor wants to know if he should start organizing a proper steed for Maitimo now or later—

“Maglor can f*cking well come ask me himself!” Maitimo bursts out. He really isn’t angry with his brother for leaving him to Angband, but this is another thing entirely.

He flops back against his pillows, huffing. His right shoulder isn’t happy about it, but Maitimo has gotten very good at ignoring it. “What’s the issue?” he says to Caranthir flatly. “Is he mad at me? Does he think I’m mad at him? Because I am now, and about two more Maglor this or Maglor that away from taking my kingship back and just ordering him in here.”

Caranthir just shuffles his papers. “You could,” he suggests blandly.

Maitimo groans. He could, that’s true. Maglor might even comply, too. He’s only really been avoiding it to give his brother a chance to come and explain himself willingly, and because he does love the idiot and doesn’t want to hurt him. But soon enough he’ll be able to go find his brother himself, and then his urge to spare Maglor’s feelings will be little match for the argument of his walking ability.

He shakes his head and waves the paper he’s holding with another sigh. “Give it a little longer. I will need to speak with Nolofinwë, though…”

Caranthir scribbles something in his ever-present notebook and nods. “Of course,” he says, “though I believe Maglor’s precaution was mostly an attempt to give us time to figure out what you want to say to him.”

Maitimo blinks.

“You are the king, Mai,” Caranthir adds, tilting his head at his brother, birdlike.

“Right,” says Maitimo. He’s been acting more like a commander since their father’s death, he supposes. But indeed it falls to him to repair relations after the disaster which parted the hosts in the first place. He very much doubts Nolofinwë will care that Maitimo stood aside, considering his losses.

“Remind me to think about that when you leave,” he says. “Caranthir, I think I want to change my name.”

Caranthir nods, unbothered by the abrupt shift in the conversation. “Sindarin translation?” he asks

“Mhm,” says Maitimo. “I don’t… he ruined it for me, in Angband.”

Caranthir sits up no straighter, but Maitimo can feel his attention sharpen like one of their father’s precision jewel cutters.

Maitimo has no wish to feel as powerless as Nelyafinwë was, anymore. Neither does Maitimo fit him without feeling like an ill-cut robe; a mockery.

“Russandol is fine,” he says after a moment, “but we’re looking to make statements, aren’t we?”

Caranthir nods. As with Nolofinwë, every interaction with the people currently residing in Beleriand matters. Maitimo cannot afford for his people to seem aloof and inflexible if he wants to make allies.

“We can work on that,” the dark-haired elf agrees. Then he pauses, eyes narrowed. “Why haven’t you so far? You’ve been thinking about it.”

Maitimo sometimes regrets picking this brother as his assistant in most political matters. Caranthir is not as good with people as some of their brothers, but in a less front-facing area, he excels at pattern recognition and planning.

The most unfortunate bit there being the pattern recognition.

“I don’t want to shuck it all before I’ve even talked to him,” Maitimo says with a sigh. “I don’t like it, but if he still blames himself that’ll only make it worse.”

Caranthir frowns. “You don’t want to become someone new… before seeing him.”

Maitimo slants his hand in the air side to side. “Somewhat,” he agrees. “It’s not easy to explain… Maitimo forgives him, even if Maitimo can no longer exist, for my sake. But Maglor doubtless blames himself for the, death, I suppose of Maitimo. So Maitimo needs to tell him he’s not at fault, because doing it as the new me is a platitude, and he’s not stupid.”

Caranthir’s frown deepens. “The new you…” he says. He puts his papers down flat on the table. “Do you know, he nearly bit Celeg’s head off yesterday for calling him Laurë. He can’t stand to be his old self because he still blames Makalaurë for failing you—twice over I imagine, in his eyes.”

Before Maitimo can question that, Caranthir forges on. “Of course he’s an idiot, but he’s not staying away because he thinks you hate him. Trust that he hates himself enough for both of you.”

Then Maitimo’s brother stands right up, says “Wait here,” like the bed-bound king was going anywhere, and stalks out of the room.

Maitimo sits back, taking that in. He knew Maglor wasn’t doing well, of course; he’d have to be stupid to not take that away from Maglor staying anywhere but by his side.

He does not understand why Maglor would blame himself doubly, but he can add up the figures. Celegorm’s complaint over their brother’s self-value points to Maglor doing something stupid. Celegorm would have been nagging him, in all likelihood, and it probably didn’t help whatever self-blame Maglor was dragging himself through at the time.

Caranthir’s comment suggests whatever Maglor did was not effective. Short of assaulting Morgoth himself, Maitimo can only really think of one major doomed plan floating around while he was gone. That would be, naturally, rescuing him.

And Maglor broken… Maitimo really, really hopes he’s wrong.

A loud horse’s braying distracts him from his thoughts, and Maitimo blinks around his room. His window shutters have been closed against the cold weather recently, but they’re thin enough that Maitimo can hear some of what goes on on the little street outside though he can’t see it.

At the moment, what he hears is cursing. Cursing that sounds distinctly like his brother.

Many Noldor turn to patron deities, or whoever best represents their craft, when it comes time to blaspheme. All of Maitimo’s brothers do it; Moryo to Varië, Celegorm and Ambarussa to Oromë or Vána, Curufin to Aulë, when he’s feeling religious. There is no Vala of music. It permeates all of Ea, so naturally Maglor has always gone straight to the top.

“f*cking Eru and all his songs!” he shrieks. “Let go of me, asshole!”

Faintly, Maitimo’s straining ears catch Caranthir’s muffled “No.”

Well, it’s good to know that nothing is wrong with Maglor’s pipes, he supposes.

There’s a crash followed by more indistinct shouting outside, and Maitimo listens on interestedly. It sounds suitably hectic.

“Idiot,” Caranthir says loudly in the middle of an unclear sentence. Maitimo smiles, because it shows that his brother cares.

After a moment, the chaos seems to die down, or at least move away. Noise towards the front of building suggests Caranthir has dragged Maglor—in whatever state he may be—bodily into the healing halls.

Not dragged, he sees as a hissing, spitting brother is deposited in his doorway, carried.

Carried, of course, because Maglor has no feet.

Maitimo stares.

On the floor where Caranthir dropped him, Maglor crosses his legs then brushes himself off, glaring at Caranthir.

“I can put you in a chair, if you want,” Moryo offers. He doesn’t sound bothered by the soul-melting glare, nor the fact that their bardic brother’s feet are gone.

“f*ck you,” Maglor spits. He lifts his hands anyway, and Caranthir picks him up again from under the armpits, letting Maglor wrap his legs—what’s left of his legs—around his waist as he moves to a seat. Distantly, Maitimo notices leather patches on the knees of Maglor’s trousers, which are tied below the cut off points mid-calf, where the rest of his legs should be. For crawling, he supposes a bit hysterically.

He’s supposed to be the one hurt. He’s the eldest; he can take it. It’s his responsibility to step between his brothers and danger and yet while he’s been gone—

Something happened. Something terrible, Maitimo thinks, though Maglor hardly acts bothered. It’s a front, probably. His most musical brother is good at that. Or was, last Maitimo saw him.

Now, he doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know what happened to his brother, and he’s not sure he even knows the elf now sitting next to him.

Maglor is watching him nervously. He doesn’t look terrible physically, apart from the obvious, and the deep shadows beneath his eyes and slight pallor. All the self-assured confidence he’d had on the floor leeches away and leaves a swaying, unsteady shell.

Maitimo reaches out. “Maka,” he murmurs, “my Maka.”

There are tears glittering in Maglor’s eyes, and he brings a hand up to rub them away rather than meeting Maitimo’s. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Maitimo returns. “You did everything I asked you to—”

“No,” Maglor interrupts him, “I didn’t. The most important thing—and I failed that too.”

He’s half smiling, but the expression feels more doom-like than anything. It makes Maitimo shiver.

“You’re alive,” the eldest says. “You kept our brothers alive. That is what I wanted from you.”

Maglor laughs bitterly. “Then you should have stood aside at Alqualondë instead. I’d have stood with you. They’d have stood with you.”

Caranthir snorts, and Maglor makes a rude gesture in his direction without looking.

“I’m not talking about past mistakes,” Maitimo cuts in between their little exchange. “I’m talking about you not failing me. Which you didn’t. By all accounts our people are right as rain as well. You did well, Maka.”

Maglor scoffs. “All I am is a reminder of past mistakes, Mai.” He lifts one leg by pulling on the trouser to emphasize the lack of foot at the end. “Successes don’t get you missing limbs.”

Maitimo waits in silence.

“Oh f*ck,” sighs Maglor. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—hah, I haven’t even got my silver tongue anymore, look at me. What a wreck.”

Maitimo snorts. “So we’re a little f*cked up. You no worse than me.”

That was the wrong thing to say too. Maglor puts his head in his hands, breath hitching. Maitimo reaches for him again, making soothing sounds. This time, Maglor takes the offer with a bit of cajoling, and soon ends up on the bed beside his brother. Maitimo tucks his regent’s head under his chin and does his best to pet Maglor’s hair and rub his shoulder soothingly.

Caranthir chooses that moment to silently vacate the doorway, not that Maitimo minds.

Eventually, Maglor’s shaking subsides and he lies quietly, wrapped limpet-like around Maitimo’s much larger form.

“I’m sorry,” he says again. He doesn’t say it like he wants forgiveness. He says it like he needs to get it out to clear his airways so he can breathe again.

Maitimo hugs him close with his left arm and drops a kiss into his hair, which is done up in spiraling braids.

“We’ll be alright now,” he says quietly. Now he understands Celegorm’s reaction when Maitimo had suggested that Maglor’s problems were fixable. They’ll have to adapt together then, he supposes, just as they always have. He says as much and it gains him a faint smile. It doesn’t feel like a victory yet, but Maitimo will take it anyway.

“I’ve a head start,” Maglor says, “by four and twenty years or so.”

Maitimo huffs and pokes him. “Has Curufin made you feet yet? Because he came in here yesterday to poke and prod with what I suspect were plans for a prosthetic hand.”

“Has he?” Maglor snorts. “The elf won’t stop plying me with feet. At this point I’m beginning to think he has the real problem.”

Maitimo laughs, then subsides. “Do you like any of them?”

Maglor shrugs against his chest, quiet for a while. “I haven’t the heart to tell him I won’t wear them,” he says after a while. “Not yet. I think maybe that part of me was meant to die, so this one could learn to thrive.”

Maitimo presses his nose into his brother’s hair, humming. “There’s a difference between thriving and surviving.”

Maglor reaches up to pat the side of his face. “When did you get so wise?”

Maitimo allows the deflection, leaning into the bard’s hand. He doesn’t answer, instead employing a deflection of his own, in a way. “What happened to you, my Maka?”

Maglor sighs gustily. “Hubris,” he says. “And terrible luck, or perhaps Beleriand conspiring against me. Most literally? A landslide.”

Maitimo cradles him closer, tightening his hold. “Tell me?”

Maglor leans his head against Maitimo’s chest, right next to his beating heart. “Alright,” he says.

:::

Makalaurë is fine. Perfectly alright, even.

He has no issues with his people or his brothers or his endless piles of responsibilities, all clamoring at his door like when Huan was a puppy begging for attention. The main difference of course, is that if he doesn’t feed and pet and care for these puppies, they’ll go walk into a meat grinder.

A cruel analogy, but an accurate one, he feels.

“Laurë,” Tyelkormo says for the eighth time this week (it’s only second day).

“No,” says Makalaurë, and rolls over on his small camp cot. While most of their people now live in sheltered long halls erected for a dozen families each, Maglor himself remains in a tent as a show of solidarity with those (not small numbers) they are still building for. As regent, Makalaurë gets a very nice tent, aye, but within those they brought, even very nice tent is neither particularly large nor private.

At least this morning Tyelkormo shows no signs of crawling into Maglor’s bedroll and breathing down his neck until the elder brother gets up and leaves out of frustration. That, at least, had warmed him up in the spring chill. This—

Makalaurë yelps as Huan’s cold, wet nose meets the back of his neck under the warm cover of his hair, flailing. “Leave me be, hound!” he cries. “Your master is foolish, and you don’t need to help him!”

“Foolish,” Tyelkormo says slowly, crouched by the entrance of the regent’s tent. “And yet one of us is keeping the one who would lead us better in chains.”

It smarts, to be constantly berated for things beyond his control, but the day is young yet and Makalaurë can’t afford to lose his temper so early in the morning; he knows from experience he’ll never reign it back in.

“Get gone, Tyelko,” he says instead of bristling at the remark. He hauls himself out of bed with a soft groan. “Don’t you have troops to be maintaining?”

“Eh, they can sleep in,” Tyelko says flippantly. “It’s not as if we’ll need them for anything. Certainly not fetching the king back.”

“You have your responsibilities,” Makalaurë murmurs, doubling up on leggings and pulling on a warm, thick over-tunic. “And I have mine. Just make sure we aren’t caught unawares, brother.”

Tyelkormo snorts and stands up, crossing his arms as he leans against the tent pole. “Of course not,” he says shortly. “That’s what scouts are for. But the camp is well secured and you know we have more than enough elves to send a few—”

Makalaurë turns and cracks out, sharp as a whip, “No one goes into the northern mountains. This is the last time I will tell you so before I give your command to Carnistir and the twins, you hear me? Stop asking.”

Of course, the twins would only give him twice as much trouble as Tyelkormo does, as they’ve been trailing in his footsteps all their lives and certainly haven’t quit now. Carnistir, while more level-headed, isn’t likely to be much better. He’d undoubtedly complain less, and scheme more.

It’s unbearable, Makalaurë thinks as he brushes past his fuming brother at the tent’s entrance and steps out into the early morning, being surrounded by people who know you too well and have no mission but getting under your skin.

He makes his rounds as he does every morning, checking in with the kitchens first, then stables, then builders, then barracks, then kennels, and so on. Around midmorning he’s able to sit down for a light snack with the former head of the apothecaries in Tirion, who now manages supplies for their little healing halls, and is working with their botanists to find replacements among the local flora for herbs and important ingredients left in Aman.

The elf is always a bit harried, likely because the healing halls are always full which means his job is never done. Makalaurë is really just seeing if there’s anything he can do to help, but it seems that that answer boils down to listening and nodding while being complained at. At least there’s nothing to be truly worried about, it seems.

When he’s done with that, he moves on to more individuals. Makalaurë has always been an outspoken proponent of social investment—even among thousands, he works constantly to make his face a known friendly one.

He’s spent time finding families for children who lost theirs on the crossing, and solving small disputes and minor issues between the common people. He has a bunch of organized circles of lords and ladies who do similar work on a broader scale all day long, but he still tries to dedicate at least a few hours to the people every day. He’s their leader, but he lives with the same meager accommodations they do.

After lunching around a cookfire with his favorite group of gossipy tailors (not that any of the gossip matters to him, but it’s entertaining nonetheless), Makalaurë makes his way back to the central command buildings and buckles down to get some administrative work done.

He’s hired a few dozen people to help as well, and only the really important stuff gets passed up the ladder to him, but even with the delegation, his desk is never empty.

And neither is his office—as much as a curtained off corner of a tent can be called such.

“I could have sworn I told you to get out and stay out.” Makalaurë mutters as he sits behind the rickety desk, tired of the conversation already.

Tyelkormo buffs his nails, then examines them. “Nope,” he says, “that was yesterday. It was ‘get gone’ today.”

Makalaurë gives him a sardonic glance. “And you chose to ignore me because…?”

“You started it,” Tyelko points out. “I’m hardly the only asshole around these parts.”

“At least you admit it,” Makalaurë says lowly.

Tyelko shrugs, lazing in the seat in front of the regent’s desk. Makalaurë suspects if the thing wasn’t already under threat of imminent collapse from all the paperwork piled on it, the blond would kick his heels up too.

“I’d play into the righteous and just angle, but I figure you’ve had enough of putting on faces. I just want my brother back. Don’t you?”

Makalaurë takes a staying breath. So Tyelko’s in one of those moods. Great.

“Or do you like his desk?” Tyelko continues, tone turning nasty. “Do you like the way all those people look at you, like you’ve come down from on high to rescue them each personally, like you care. Though you won’t even rescue your own brother. You won’t even try.”

Makalaurë doesn’t point out that he wouldn’t have new, non-bardic callouses from lifting stone with the builders and flowers in his hair from entertaining orphan children if he didn’t care at all. There’s no point, when Tyelko gets like this.

That’s what he tells himself, at least, as his brother does his damnedest to shred him apart like wet parchment, verbally punching holes through him as the ink smears and bleeds.

“I keep asking myself why you would keep refusing,” Tyelko is saying. Makalaurë stares down at a letter in his hands, not reading it though he does try to. “And everything I come up with points to the same answer, brother. That you don’t care about Nelyo at all, do you? Would you be happy to give up your power, if he returned? Perhaps it’s easiest to not find out.”

Makalaurë stands up abruptly. His chair scoots back and the desk shudders, sending notes and pages to the ground. Makalaurë finds that he doesn’t particularly care.

Teylkormo has paused to watch him, and Makalaurë glares back.

“Do you think I wouldn’t trade places with him in a heartbeat?” the older brother snaps. “Spare you all the hellish discomfort of having me around? Save him the pain? I would. You don’t believe me, but I would. In a f*cking heartbeat, Tyelko.”

Tyelkormo sneers, teeth flashing. “We’d be better off with him,” he says.

If the situation were less of a normal occurrence, Makalaurë thinks he wouldn’t care so much. Or maybe he’d care more. It doesn’t really matter; he’s reached the very end of his rope now, been burning down slow since Maitimo was taken.

He’s done. The only way to amend the situation is evidently exactly what Tyelko has been saying; retrieve their brother. Easier said than done, undoubtedly; and the saying doesn’t require Makalaurë breaking the one promise Maitimo himself would’ve begged him to keep.

But. He’s so f*cking tired of living like this. Every day reminded that everyone he loves is either dead or gone or hates him.

Maybe it’s stupid, but Makalaurë leaves the tent without another word, Tyelko watching silently all the while. Maybe it’s incredibly dumb, and he definitely should’ve thought it through, but he’s got his voice and some rope and a good belt knife—at least he can hang himself if nothing else, and rid everyone else of the problem of his existence.

Tyelko will lead them all to their deaths, but at least Makalaurë can say he’d tried. He snorts bitterly as he pulls on his climbing boots. What a lovely little justification.

He tells his steward not to bring him dinner, because he’ll be eating in the mess hall. And he does; he takes a roll and a bit of venison from the buffet-style options and wraps them into a vaguely sandwich like creation, though he can’t be bothered to make it look pretty as he stuffs it into his mouth.

Maybe he passes through the tables because he’s hoping someone will stop him, or ask where he’s headed. No one does. Makalaurë keeps moving.

The regent of the Noldor walks out of the camp at Mithrim around sundown. Nobody sees him go. Perhaps he knows, even then, that he will never walk back.

Tyelko might hate it, but he follows orders. His scouts patrol only what is necessary at the feet of the northern mountains, barely peeking into the plains beyond, and across them at Angband. This fact makes it very simple to slip past them into the night. They might find his tracks later, but they’re on guard for people coming in, not going out, so it’s unlikely to matter anyway.

Makalaurë walks. The ground is muddy and slick from recent rains, the going slow due to paths untrodden. None of it really matters. He walks on.

At times he finds his path blocked with boulders and rock faces, and then he climbs. It’s not particularly difficult until it starts raining once more. It’s a cold spring rain, from up at the frozen tops of the mountains; the dismal drizzle rather matches Makalaurë’s mood.

He supposes rescues should probably involve a good deal more hope and excitement, but he honestly can’t be bothered. He follows the north-easterly river through the mountains, nearly slipping on the mud and shale even with elven steps.

He really should have seen it coming, what with the weather. In Valinor, even, snowmelt from high on the Pelori occasionally seeped down in the spring, soaking the dirt into mud and adding to rushing mountain streams. Those streams wove around boulders and smaller rocks and ate away their support until they began to shift, then tumble.

It probably wouldn’t have happened in Aman, this way and at this time, but Beleriand is either a horribly unlucky place, or it has a genuine vendetta.

Makalaurë gets about four seconds of warning via a building, shaking rumble, and then he’s promptly buried.

When he wakes up, he can’t feel his feet.

Well, that’s not entirely correct; he can feel something. A spattering of sparking nerve receptors, firing haphazardly in confusion. Makalaurë stares up at the morning sky for a long few minutes before looking down.

He sees a mess of red at the end of his legs, and the white shine of bone.

Ah, his brain says, that’s what we’re feeling. Pain!

Makalaurë passes out again.

When he wakes up the second time, he’s in a bed in the healing halls, wrapped in blankets and bandages.

Tyelko is sitting at his bedside, staring straight ahead, apparently in deep contemplation of the universe. He blinks back to consciousness as Makalaurë shifts, then his eyes widen and he stands quickly to grab his brother’s hands, clutching them tightly.

“I didn’t mean it, you know.” The words seem to tumble from him like rain from fat clouds, unable to stop or slow down. “What I said about you not caring. I know you do, I was only angry.”

“Hey Tyelko?” Makalaurë tries. It sounds breathy. He’s very cold, though he’s covered in blankets. That’s strange. Makalaurë shifts to try and get some of them off, feeling dazed.

“If you want me to go, I’ll go,” Tyelko says quickly. “I know I’ve been a terrible brother, I know you probably don’t want me around. But I never wanted you to die—I wouldn’t, I mean, you can’t replace Nelyo, but we can’t replace you either—"

Eru, he hurts so much. “Tyelko. I can’t breathe.”

The blond stops babbling in a moment, then shouts for a healer. He leans over Makalaurë, holding his hands tight enough to distract from the pain of everywhere else. “Just stay awake, Laurë, stay with me—don’t close your eyes, Laurë.”

“Please don’t die, I didn’t mean it,” Makalaurë hears, then he fades back into unconsciousness.

:::

“Septic shock,” say Maglor. “It took a day and a half for Celeg to find me—he got suspicious when I wasn’t there to bother the next morning—it’s a miracle I didn’t bleed out, I’m told, but then the infection set in.”

Maitimo hugs his brother very tightly and tries not to think about losing him. “You couldn’t have used them again anyway?” he asks softly.

Maglor shakes his head. “My feet were crushed, Mai. More mash than elf. I don’t know why they didn’t just amputate in the first place—but then, I haven’t asked.”

“I’m sorry,” it’s Maitimo’s turn to give a broken whisper against his brother’s shoulder. You don’t have to go through the same kind of hell to deserve more than a scrap of empathy.

Maglor waves him off. “It’s my own damn fault anyway. Thought I could actually do something, I suppose.”

Maitimo closes his eyes tightly; if he starts crying, he won’t be able to wipe it away because his good arm is holding his brother. “No you didn’t.”

Maglor stills.

“No,” he agrees after a long moment. “I didn’t.”

Maitimo breathes out shakily. There were times, in his captivity, when he considered looking for an out. Not that there were any—Sauron probably knew elves don’t kill themselves, but he was always meticulous about what he left within reach anyway.

Elves don’t kill themselves—that doesn’t mean they’re always averse to dying.

“Promise me it’s better now?” Maitimo asks, pulling Maglor away as much as he can to look him in the eyes. “That you won’t leave me here alone?”

Maglor releases his tension with a sigh, pursing his lips. “No oaths,” he says, with the air of an eye roll, though none appears. “But fine. I do not intend to commit that final act at any point while you are still with me. I promise.”

Maitimo searches his brother’s face for the truth. Even now, after going through hell itself, he struggles to understand how he ever could have considered giving up his spark. He wants to wrap his beloved little brother up until he understands again, and even still, some part of him is deeply afraid of it.

“You’ll tell me,” he says quickly, “if you—if it gets bad again.”

Maglor does roll his eyes at that. It’s not very inspiring, but Maitimo will take a joking promise over none at all. “I promise I’ll tell you if I ever think about throwing myself off a cliff or some such. Though I might have to have you carry me to the top, which would rather defeat the purpose, I think.”

Maitimo pulls him close again and Maglor goes willingly enough, which is an acceptable consolation.

Later, if the Makalaurë Maitimo knows is not so unchanged, he’ll feel guilty over causing Maitimo so much grief in his recovery. The eldest brother resigns himself to talking the bard down from that, too, and the next one, and the next.

He doesn’t truly mind; it’s for his brother.

:::

There has never been a horse who hasn’t loved Maglor, nor a horse Maglor hasn’t loved. At least, not that he’s met. To give credit to his data, however, he has met a great many horses.

Horses are infinitely better than people, and he tells them so. Especially people you’re related to.

“Rude,” Caranthir mutters from where he’s securing the saddle. “I’m helping you out, here.”

“I could’ve got one of the stable hands to do it,” Maglor points out. “They probably would’ve complained less.”

“f*ck you,” says Caranthir, but he means it with love.

“Thanks,” Maglor grumbles as his brother then picks him up and lifts until he can get his leg over the saddle. Curufin has designed quick-release straps to replace stirrups for him, and he leans down to get the left while Caranthir does up the right.

“Don’t you hate it? Being carried?” The newly renamed Maedhros leans on Fingon in the stable’s large doorway, giving Maglor a bemused look.

“It’s not my favorite activity, certainly, but it gets me where I need to be,” Maglor tells him.

Besides his personal feelings on the topic, he’s always been short and it’s not like his brothers weren’t picking him up and putting him places willy nilly before he lost his feet too. It doesn’t bother him—hell, now they actually feel obligated to get him down from wherever they’ve stuck him!

Not that he’d go complaining about that to Maedhros; it’s all in good fun really, and nothing the eldest needs to worry himself over.

That does not, of course, mean he appreciates not having feet—he’s been constantly discovering over the last quarter century just how much he’d been taking them for granted, and not enjoying it at all. But he’s got to find his bright sides, or he knows he’ll slide back into the depression pit, and he promised Maitimo he wouldn’t do that. Maglor can at least keep this one.

Mëonil is well trained—Maglor was as involved as he could be in her rearing, despite his limitations—and waits patiently while he gets settled in the saddle. She and a few other horses have been trained to respond to his commands and know how to behave with him, but the steady bay mare is his favorite of the lot. (Certainly not due to her involvement in an incident where Curufin ended up covered in horse sh*t, though. That would make Maglor a terrible brother.)

Maglor clicks his tongue—at his brothers and Fingon, not at Mëonil—to clear a path out of the stables, then squeezes his thighs to get her moving. Maedhros’ condition is steadily improving, but while he’s busy with that, Maglor is still managing half of his king sh*t. That means making the rounds, and Maglor has a group of gossipy tailors to visit at lunchtime, so he’d better get moving.

Then, in the afternoon, Maedhros will make his first meeting with Nolofinwë.

Maglor is… feeling a bit conflicted over it, not that he’ll say so where his other brothers or father can hear him. He knows it’s a necessary peacekeeping move, and that Maedhros doesn’t want the crown, feeling that it shouldn’t remain with their side of the family.

Curufin thinks Maedhros has been weakened by his ordeal; Celegorm thinks the eldest finds himself unworthy. Maglor knows that it’s neither of those; the crown paints a target on Maedhros’ back and that of his family, who will even tear into each other over it. The main goal is to keep infighting down in the ranks of their people, but it’s also a family settlement, of a sort.

Maglor likes to pretend it’s not at least in small part for his own sake. That he hadn’t been planning to give it up anyway, if Fingon hadn’t brought Maitimo back to them.

But for his people, he can’t afford to stop acting like a king.

Maglor helps lift a giggling elfling—not so young anymore, but smaller than he would be if they could afford to feed everyone properly—onto Mëonil’s rump and lets the boy wrap thin arms around his waist.

“You said your foster father was working in the armories today?” Maglor checks.

The boy, Hresto, nods. Maglor makes sure to give him a smile before nudging Mëonil. “Onward, then! Are you excited to be helping him now? Lord Curufin decided you were big enough to, right?”

Hresto nods again with a small, proud smile. “I’ll run water for them, m’lord.”

“Wonderful!” Maglor says cheerfully.

He delivers the boy a few minutes later, Mëonil’s trot cutting down the time the walk would’ve taken him. Maglor looks around furtively as Hresto slides off, but isn’t quick enough in fleeing to avoid his brother.

“Maglor?” Curufin pokes his head out of the dim entrance to the workshop connecting to the main forges, squinting. Maglor would like to wallop whoever tipped the smith off to his presence. He can pretend he didn’t hear, but Curufin is liable to come bother him later anyway.

He sighs. “Yes, Curufin?”

“Get in here a minute,” Curufin says, stepping forward to help Maglor out of the saddle.

“These don’t look like feet,” Maglor says a few minutes later, blinking at the odd, curvy, blade-like prosthetics.

“No,” Curufin agrees. “I’ve decided that functioning ankles can wait until I have more time to figure them out. Try these?”

At least he’s asking, Maglor supposes. “Alright,” he sighs, “but later. I have to go prepare for Nelyo’s meeting.”

“Oh, right,” says Curufin like he hasn’t been stewing over it all day. “You’re going?”

Maglor has carefully avoided meeting with their uncle and cousins since their arrival, always sending Celegorm or Caranthir as a proxy, despite the growing complaints from the other side of the lake, and demands to see his face.

“I am,” he says. He’s not, scared, of them. He’s not. Maglor has only been avoiding it because his people need to look strong, and a leader who can’t even dismount a horse by himself is not exactly inspiring. That’s why.

“Okay,” says Curufin. “Okay, if you’re alright with that.” He puts the newest set of prosthetics aside on a shelf and gestures to the door.

Maglor uses the table as a support to get himself down from the stool he’d been placed on, then crawls. Much like Curufin, Caranthir is always working on some new improvement to make life more comfortable for Maglor. Most of these he appreciates, because he ends up with lovely, durable gloves of all sorts and pants with padded knees that won’t be ripped up when he has to move on his own.

Crawling is, fine. In some ways it’s less of an indignity than being carried, though Maglor has long since stopped giving much care to being dignified. He’s trying not to be too dependent on his brothers at the end of the day, though, which means getting used to it.

(It helps that his brothers all notice when people look at him with pity or distaste, and tend to tear into the guilty party. That is perhaps too satisfying to watch, not that he’ll say so.)

Curufin lifts him back onto Mëonil and pats her rump while Maglor does up the straps. “You won’t be joining us?” Maglor assumes.

Curufin shakes his head. “Missed my chance to see the blow up of the century between Aikanáro and Moryo, and there’s not really any other reason for me to be there.”

Maglor raises an eyebrow but chooses not to comment on that. It’s probably for the best that the smith won’t be bringing his caustic temper. He can be overly cruel at times.

“Drop back in before dinner or I’ll bring my business to you,” Curufin delivers a parting warning, then disappears back into his workshop.

Maglor returns to his tent to get changed, employing a passing guard to help him down from Mëonil’s back. The horse will graze while she waits for him; he doesn’t bother tying her to anything as he makes his way laboriously into his tent.

Unexpectedly it’s Celegorm sitting on his bed, whittling, rather than Caranthir.

“Huh,” says Maglor, and crawls over to his dresser.

“Moryo says he’ll flay the guilty parties alive if the robes he made you for this get dirty ‘cause you’ve been in the floor in them,” the hunter says by way of explanation. “He’s busy briefing Nelyo, again. I don’t know why he needs to do it four times, but Moryo will Moryo.”

“Huh,” Maglor says again.

Indeed there are a new set of robes piled in the lowest drawer and Maglor sits back and pulls the pieces out to examine them. They’re dark red, he notes, Caranthir’s favored colors rather than the greys and blues he knows Maglor prefers. The embroidery on the cuffs is yellow rather than true gold, but still Maglor wonders how much Caranthir had to barter around for even a few threads of the color.

Underneath the outer robes are a cream-colored shirt, slate grey vest, and light brown pants that won’t show dried mud stains well, though Maglor isn’t stupid enough to think Moryo won’t know. He grumbles a bit at the lack of knee padding or even leather guards, but ultimately can do little more than accept it. All the rest of his pants are worn and stained, hardly fit for the sort of ceremony they’re about to be commencing.

“Hold this up,” he says to Tyelko, tossing him the outer robes. There’s a dark grey coat hanging by the tent flap that probably goes over it all, too.

Unfolded, Maglor can see clearly that Moryo does not mean at all for Maglor to be getting down from his horse. The fall of the clothing and the slit backed bottom half of the robe will probably serve to cover his legs fully if he wants it too. How thoughtful.

“Alright, help me get it on,” he says, crawling over to the bed. Of course, he can clothe himself perfectly well kneeling on his cot, but Celegorm has to help him sort out the robes without trailing anything on the ground. Maglor suspects the long ends of the pants are not meant to be tied off, either.

Mëonil is delightfully patient as Maglor situates himself, making use of Celegorm’s ground view to ensure he’s fully covered.

Maglor will go along with whatever Caranthir is planning, sure, but he’s not sure how his younger brother intends for him to bow to their new king from on horseback without giving it all away. (He does truly appreciate the effort put in to shield him.)

“Ready?” Celegorm asks, fiddling with the ends of the robes.

“It’s fine,” Maglor swats at him. “Yes, let’s go.”

Celegorm has already given him the run down several times before, when he went to meet with their uncle and cousins the first time. That doesn’t stop him from doing it again, probably feeling whatever sense of urgency makes Moryo continuously drill Maedhros on details.

The Arafinwëans are pissed. Artanis is still in the ripping-people’s-faces-off stage, Angaráto is much closer to a negotiating mood, and the other two brothers swing back and forth. Findaráto is probably waiting to settle his reaction on Maglor’s appearance, while Aikanáro should only be approached with Caranthir in tow.

The Nolofinwëans are also pissed, but less likely to talk about it. Arakáno is dead, as is Turukáno’s wife, Elenwë (Maglor feels a pang at that; he had known her through association with Turukáno, and she was a wonderful elleth). Irissë is not talking to anyone from the Fëanorian side, but especially not Celegorm himself. Maglor detects a hint of something there, but it’s swiftly buried as his brother continues. Fingon, as they know, is safer territory, though he and Maedhros are still working out their own sh*t. Turukáno is… best kept at a safe distance.

Nolofinwë himself seems tired. Maglor would be too, he supposes. Celegorm really doesn’t have much else to say about their half-uncle, apart from the fact that he took the news Fëanor’s death hard.

“Thank you,” says Maglor, though his brother hasn’t said anything he didn’t already know. The acknowledgement is enough to make the blond stop fidgeting.

Maedhros is waiting for them near the edge of their camp with Fingon and Caranthir beside him. Maglor has picked out a huge grey stallion to gift their uncle as a show of good faith, and the beast huffs and stamps in the cold beside the redheaded king, blowing steam.

Maedhros smiles thinly upon spotting Maglor; he, likewise, is dressed all in red. His right arm is tucked into a many-strapped supportive leather brace which holds it close against his side, bent at the elbow, but the left gives a little wave.

“You look very princely,” he tells Maglor.

The bard snorts. He hasn’t dressed in anything this fine since he first became regent, too busy managing everything to care about it. Makalaurë, who did care, is gone.

“Moryo’s finally got his chance to dress me up,” he says. “He’s been biding his time for many long years.”

Caranthir flips him off, and Maglor smiles beatifically at his brother. Their entourage is approaching though, and the brothers Fëanorion should present a united front, so he says nothing.

The few captains and head steward who are coming with them are probably long used to it anyway, but it doesn’t do to build bad public habits.

Maglor… does not particularly want to do this. But he imagines Maedhros doesn’t either, and his older brother is getting by with minimal leaning on Fingon, so the bard will not complain. He shifts uncomfortably as the rest of the party mounts up.

Huan noses at Maglor’s leg and he looks down, then leans over to pet the beast. “I’m fine, boy,” he murmurs. “Don’t get hair on these pants, Moryo might skin you for a carpet.”

It’s possible that their uncle’s group will be angry with him for failing to show his face since their arrival. Maglor doesn’t really have an excuse; he supposes he’ll burn those bridges when he comes to them.

The ride is a quiet one; Mëonil walks placidly beside the tall courser Maglor had picked for Maedhros, Fingon on the redhead’s other side and Celegorm and Caranthir just behind them. No one says much of anything until they’re nearly halfway around the lake and the Nolofinwëans’ camp comes into sight.

“I’m going to,” Maglor speaks up at the same times as Caranthir says his name. The bard pauses, turning to raise an eyebrow at his brother.

“If you want to stay back…” Caranthir hedges. He doesn’t have to finish the sentence for Maglor to hear what he’s trying to say: You are not the king. You need not present yourself here.

Maglor’s lip curls. He knows his brother doesn’t mean it cruelly, but it’s still one step away from saying You have no purpose, anymore. And that stings.

So maybe he’s sharper than he needs to be when he bites back, “I will see to my duty.” Just like he has for the past thirty years, just like the rest of them still do for their people. He’s not useless just because he can’t stand.

Caranthir pulls a face, but clearly sees where he went wrong. “I know you did not wish to meet with them yourself,” he says coolly. “I hope that with the current arrangement—” he means the clothes he so lovingly picked out for his older brother, to hide any trace of what’s wrong with him “—you will be free to show only what you want to show.”

Maglor twists in his seat, not caring that the move pulls up fabric and exposes one leg. “What I want to show, Moryo? They’ll f*cking well find out eventually, won’t they?”

Caranthir purses his lips. “Either you don’t care,” he says, “and you’ve insulted them by not making time to go yourself, sending us in your stead. Or you do care, and you’ve taken great pains to hide your own weakness. Which image do you want to perpetuate?”

Maglor jerks as if slapped, his gaze going unfocused.

“Moryo,” Maedhros says in a tone of warning.

“Don’t Moryo me!” Caranthir snaps. “I’ve been managing our image since before that lot even arrived on these shores! I’ve let Maglor have his head for this long, but it comes time to sort out what we’re really doing here. How long are you going to keep hiding, brother?”

“Caranthir Morifinwë,” Maedhros cuts in, “that is quite enough.”

Caranthir glares mutinously, his face flushed with frustration.

“Am I or am I not still your king?” Maedhros asks.

Caranthir subsides with a final glare. “Fine,” he says waspishly. “Figure it out yourself. But you’d better do it quick because we have company.”

Maglor turns slowly to face forward again. He watches Nolofinwë’s party approaching on foot for a moment. Then without another word to his brothers, he clicks his tongue at Mëonil and guides her forward to circle around.

“Maglor,” Celegorm says, giving him a worried look.

Maglor shakes his head, staring straight ahead as he retreats from the group. He hears Celegorm ask Huan to follow him, but doesn’t bother to look back.

It’s not as if he doesn’t struggle enough with self-agency already. Being unable to walk or mount a horse by himself is simple to deal with in comparison to being called a burden.

A small voice in the back of his mind points out that that’s probably not what Caranthir meant with his little tirade, but Maglor is not feeling particularly charitable towards his brother at the moment, and ignores it.

He reigns Mëonil in outside Curufin’s workshop, where the clamor of the forges drowns out the crunch of Mëonil’s hooves on the gravel strewn in the dirt to keep it walkable when it thaws enough to become mud.

Huan gives a concerned whine as Maglor undoes his leg straps. He doesn’t want help and he doesn’t ask for it, but the hound scratches at the doorway of his brother’s space anyway and elicits a muffled acknowledgement from inside.

Maglor murmurs soothingly to Mëonil, who shifts her feet warily as he leans forward to put his arms around her neck. He brings his left leg over her back as Curufin appears in the doorway, hands sooty and eyes wide.

“Maglor? Hold on a moment—” he wipes his hands on his apron and rushes over to Mëonil’s side.

Maglor ignores his brother. He throws his body weight around and slides off the mare’s back, swinging around her front with his legs held up until he can get them under him.

“Hold on,” says Curufin hurriedly, “I’ll help you!”

“I don’t, f*cking, care,” Maglor bites out, dropping to the ground. The landing hurts, and he’s ruining the knees of the nice pants Caranthir made for him and dragging the tailored ends of the robe through the dirt but he doesn’t give a sh*t, honestly.

Maglor doesn’t enjoy trying out the many prosthetics Curufin has tried to fit him with, time and time again. It’s rarely a very comfortable process and he stands by what he said to Maedhros—or doesn’t stand, he supposes—Makalaurë, who was flighty and careless and went where his whims took him, is dead. Maglor remains. Maglor, who has to take care with each movement, who must seek assistance to make simple choices and who spends hours every other evening just trying to breathe until he can manage his own pain.

That’s what’s left, and Maglor isn’t trying to change that. It was a lesson of sorts, and he’s taken it to heart as it was intended.

But he’s come to realize that the situation is, once more, untenable. He can’t live like this, reminded every day that he’s of no use unless someone is standing nearby to carry him.

Full circle, he thinks bitterly. “Give me feet, Curufin.”

:::

Curufin is concerned.

Maglor, who should still be meeting the Nolofinwëan delegation with Maedhros and the others, is in his workshop. Maglor wouldn’t just abandon Maedhros though, which means something happened.

“Can I, help you?” he asks carefully.

Maglor pauses in crawling across the dirty floor to wave him off in a way that very much threatens a slap if Curufin tries to pick him up. The bard uses Curufin’s main table to haul himself up onto a stool, then shuffles around on it and sticks his legs out.

“Feet, Curvo. You had new prosthetics for me?”

“Yes,” Curufin says carefully. In truth, he only intended to see if Maglor liked the fit and weight more than those that he’d made before, but Maglor appears to be on something of a warpath. Curufin suspects he’ll either be walking out of this workshop, or not leaving at all.

He fetches the newest iteration of his attempts from their shelf and presents them for inspection. Maglor takes one and looks it over curiously.

Curufin, as is his wont, begins to explain.

“It’s a very thin sheet of metal reinforced with layered wood,” he says, pointing out the various parts. “Held together with the glue they use for bows. Everything I tried in regular foot-shapes was either too heavy or getting too complicated for the tools I have available—”

“I am aware,” Maglor says dryly. Curufin supposes that makes sense, because the smith does tend to complain about it often enough.

“Right,” he says. “Well. The shape is meant to be springy to make walking less jerky, but also afford you a bit more balance.”

They’d tried simple pegs to begin with, so Curufin could have a baseline for experimenting, but quickly realized that the rolling heel-to-toe step most elves walk with is not conducive to blocky, unyielding feet. These should have a bit more give.

“I haven’t put anything on the bottoms yet,” he continues, “so that’s just plain steel right now. We may add treads like boots have or something similar if you like these.”

Maglor’s expression suggests he’s not liable to like anything Curufin produces to replace his feet, but he’ll try it anyway. Curufin is, once more, concerned.

“It usually takes a whole afternoon of cajoling to even get you in here,” he says. “Are you feeling alright?”

“Fine,” Maglor snaps.

Curufin holds up his hands. “I was just asking,” he says. “No need to bite my head off.”

Maglor takes a deep breath, then forces it out. “I’d probably go for the knees, actually,” he says.

Curufin blinks. “What?”

“The knees,” Maglor says, which clarifies nothing. “I mean, if I was going to bite a part of you off. I’d have to climb you to reach your head.”

Curufin gives a snort of startled laughter. Maglor doesn’t joke often enough anymore that he’s used to it, and certainly not about his own disability.

“Alright,” he says, taking the prosthetics back and putting them on the table behind him then leaning against it. “What’s wrong with you? All of this is highly abnormal.”

Maglor stares at the replacement feet blankly for a long moment before he speaks. “I’m trying to accept it,” he says slowly. “Or, myself. I don’t like being useless, Curufin.”

Curufin opens his mouth, then pauses. He doubts what Maglor wants is placating reassurance, nor a firey demand to know who has called his brother such. “You know,” he says, “I wouldn’t have been able to make those without you.” He nods at the blade-like feet on the table.

Maglor squints at him. “You wouldn’t have needed to,” he points out.

Curufin shakes his head. “Plenty of Nolofinwë’s people lost limbs on the ice. I would have been doing this anyway. But without the new minds you directed to me, I would still be stalled on clunky, ungainly foot-shapes for half of them.”

“What’s your point, Curvo?” Maglor sighs.

Curufin shrugs. “I don’t play well with other people unless I want something from them,” he says. “You know that, I know that. Do you think I’d be working with anyone else here if you hadn’t brought them in?”

Maglor huffs. “So you can follow instructions. Well done. We’re so proud.”

“Maglor,” Curufin snaps. “Think of the talent wasted and work undone if you hadn’t found people to try smithing. Ilcamro—Hreso’s father—was a clock-maker before you directed him here for work. If you didn’t make camp rounds, if people didn’t know you enough to ask you for help when they needed it, he’d still be out of work, living on the system you made to feed everyone else who’s out of work, because we don’t need clocks.”

Maglor is silent, watching him narrowly.

Curufin waves a hand. “He brought me that idea—that your new feet don’t need small bits at all, that we should scrap it and start over. And sure we haven’t tried these, but at least they look more functional that what I had before.

“You connect people, Maglor. You’re the socialite grease helping to cogs turn together. Do you think people wouldn’t come to you if you stopped going to them? We’d have to set up a whole audience hall. Our people love you because you’ve helped them.”

Maglor sighs but Curufin continues before he can say something self-effacing.

“I know we gave you hell for those first few years. I’m sorry. I don’t think I say that often enough. But you were always an egotistic sh*t, weren’t you. You can’t tell me a few years destroyed all of that self-worth.”

Maglor is staring at him again. It’s probably because he apologized for something without prompting.

Curufin shakes his head. “Pick yourself up, Maglor. If you want to be useless, you can go sit in your tent and try to ignore all the people asking for you. Or you can get up, go back out there, and help them again.”

Maglor is quiet, then he nods firmly. “Get me those feet, Curvo,” he says. “And next time put them somewhere I can reach.”

“Right,” says Curufin, and does so. He’ll have to remember that in the future. His brother is far from useless, but he can only do so much on his own.

That thought gives him pause as he demonstrates how the prosthetics are worn and held on, though his hands helpfully keep moving without his input.

Maglor can only do so much on his own. Put them somewhere I can reach. There’s dirt ground on to the knees of Maglor’s nice formal trousers, and he has to roll the untied ends out of the way to fit the prosthetics on.

Curufin is very slowly coming to a realization he probably should have had a long time ago.

“Do you want to do it yourself?” he asks.

Maglor stops fiddling with the leather cup of the one Curufin is holding to look at him. “Yes, please,” he says. “I think I would.”

He does need help standing, and then Curufin helps him hobble over to a longer workbench that he can practice walking back and forth along, but the smith makes a point to not mention it.

“Weird,” is Maglor’s main input on the function of the newest feet. “Bouncy. Not bad, though.”

Curufin takes notes.

“I wouldn’t go for a hike or try to perfect a new dance routine with them, but they’ll do,” Maglor decides. He still hasn’t let go of the nearest grabbable surface, but he manages to do a bit of shuffling around.

“I wouldn’t expect perfect balance with them today,” Curufin warns. “You’ll need a good deal of practice, I imagine. And I’ll need to see how they held up and make different prototypes—”

“Mhm,” Maglor says, probably not actually listening. “Do you think I could get on a horse?”

Curufin looks at his brother’s white-knuckle grip in the table top dubiously, noting the slight shudder in his legs as he sways a bit, unused to holding him up fully after so long. “Don’t subject Mëonil to that,” he requests. Maglor’s horse is sweet and patient and really doesn’t deserve it.

“Alright,” Maglor wobbles back around the room towards the stool he’d been sitting on. He loses balance halfway and tips—

Curufin steps in to catch him and Maglor lands in his arms with a yelp before he can hit the ground. Once he’s seated on the stool again, the bard takes to examining the prosthetics, turning them this way and that in the dim lantern light.

“Off?” Curufin asks. “You’ll likely not want to wear them all the time, especially when you’re just getting used to them.”

“Thank you,” Maglor says quietly. “I don’t think I say that enough. Here you are working so hard for me, and all I do is complain about it.”

Curufin shifts uncomfortably and shakes his head. “I do my fair share of complaining too, I assure you,” he says.

Maglor just nods and pulls one leg up to begin undoing the straps holding the prosthetic in place. Curufin does not ask if he’d like help. He doesn’t ask if his brother wants to talk about it, either.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Maglor tells him as Curufin lifts the bard onto Mëonil’s back. “We’re going to try walking again.”

“I’ll put it in the schedule,” Curufin assures him.

“Good,” Maglor agrees distractedly. “Good… Good evening, Curufin.”

“Good evening,” Curufin returns, then watches Maglor leave as dusk settles in around them.

:::

Irissë has missed horses. The one she’s chosen from Maedhros’ apology gift is a soft-snouted pony with a lovely blue-grey coat and sure feet. Irissë is calling her Cenpat for her measured steps and intelligent brown eyes.

She stands beside her horse beside the lake watching a storm roll in, contemplating her options.

Irissë has avoided contact with her cousins when they’ve come in the name of diplomacy, unsure that she can keep herself from either crying or killing them if they get close enough.

It’s not something she’s proud of, but she hung back anyway as her father and Turukáno went to meet with the king. Somehow, them coming back with a crown was not as surprising as it might have been.

She rubs between Cenpat’s ears with frost-bitten fingers, humming softly.

Irissë knows she’ll have to go eventually. It’s a call in her heart rather than any pressing business, but still unignorable.

With a sigh, she turns and climbs onto Cenpat’s bare back. “Come on then, lady, let’s go.” Now is as good a time as any, and her cousin is not getting any farther away.

The world goes grey and quiet with falling snow as Cenpat bears Irissë around the lake, the edges of which are beginning to crust with ice as winter approaches. The Fëanorian camp includes more buildings than her people have, long wood and thatched halls interspersed with many dozens of tents. She spots barren plots that must be for growing things, and wide open spaces filled with footprints in the mud—training grounds, probably.

In the very early dawn there aren’t many people out and about, just a few sentries here and there peering into the grey, slow-coming morning. Some of them nod to her as she passes and Irissë nods back. Her quarrel is not with them but with their lords; there’s no reason to be rude.

The command center of the camp is easy enough to spot; several large halls and smaller outbuildings mark the central area fairly unmistakably. And crossing the open space between a few of the buildings and tents—exactly who Irissë is looking for.

She doesn’t call out to him, and he doesn’t see her, facing away as his picks his way through the mud. Irissë slides off of Cenpat’s back, rubs the pony’s nose with a soft command to find shelter, and follows.

Tyelkormo—who Findekáno says is going by Celegorm now—taught her to stalk in the forests of Oromë in years long past and she puts it to practice now, shadowing her cousin’s footsteps as he lifts the flap of a tent and slips inside. There are no guards around it but Irissë is careful anyway, stepping up to the side to listen before making any moves.

She can’t even be sure why she’s being so cautious, but perhaps to put off seeing him even further. Irissë curses herself for a fool and puts her ear to the canvas.

“I’m sure you can,” Celegorm is saying, muffled, “but Curufin’s not even up yet, so I’m not sure what good it’ll do you.”

“Fine,” says what sounds like Makalaurë, who none of her folk have met with so far—but perhaps her eldest brother, though he speaks naught of it if he has. Turukáno said they’d seen him leaving just before they spoke to Maedhros yesterday. They were not told why he’d left, but it lines up with his behavior so far.

“I’ll see him later—don’t touch that, it’s fine,” he continues, the last bit snapped and sharp.

“Maglor,” Celegorm says in almost a whine. “What did you do?”

“Nothing that won’t heal in a day or two,” Makalaurë—Maglor, evidently—says, sounding offhanded, unbothered.

Irissë catches a heavy sigh from her blond cousin. “You’ve got blood on the sheets. At least let me clean them. Moryo won’t be happy.”

She frowns. Perhaps her bardic cousin has been plagued by some injury and sent his brothers as replacements while he heals?

Her ears twitch as Maglor speaks again, now sounding irritable. “You know, I really don’t care what Moryo has to say right now. Besides, I washed it all out last night; I’m disabled, not stupid.”

Irissë sucks in a breath.

Celegorm continues as if that’s not new at all: “I didn’t say you were, but I can’t well let you crawl on busted knees.”

“Implication, Celeg,” Maglor huffs. “I’ll be on Mëonil then. Or better yet, I’ll just stay here. Go tell Curufin I want to see him when he’s up, and fetch something for breakfast if you want to be helpful. Yalmië will have reports for me around lunch, if I’m still here by then.”

“Maglor…” Celegorm says.

Irissë recognizes that tone. It’s the one he used to use when he knew she shouldn’t be out with him, with his uncanny sense for people who are about to get in trouble. It still sounds the same, and there’s something incongruous about that.

Maglor evidently recognizes it as well. “Get out, Celegorm. Go.”

There’s a huff and some shuffling around the front of the tent, then Irissë watches Celegorm stalk away. She can talk to, scream at, speak with him later; right now there’s more important reconnaissance to be doing.

On silent feet, she slips into the tent.

From his seat on a cot close to the back wall, Maglor looks up. He freezes.

Irissë, too, is frozen. Somehow she didn’t expect this to be the stalling block keeping them from seeing the regent. The injury is obviously old—they seem to have healed well, at least. Were she a healer, she’d be more concerned about his knees, which are a bit cut up, bruised and bloody. It does little to distract her.

“Irissë,” Maglor chokes. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to speak to Celegorm,” she says, still a bit caught up.

“…I am not he,” Maglor tells her warily. He seems paler than he should be, wound tight with some unspoken tension.

“I noticed,” Irissë says. “What happened to your feet?”

“Amputated,” says Maglor rather obviously.

“No sh*t,” Irissë replies with the eye roll that answer deserves. “This is why you haven’t come out,” she guesses. For a moment she fumbles for something kind to say, before she remembers that she doesn’t care and falls silent.

Maglor sighs, rolling his shoulders and shaking his head. “Can we have this conversation when I have pants on?”

It takes Irissë a moment of waiting to realize that his only effective course of action is crawling across the rushes packed on the floor to get to the dresser, though it’s not too far away, but his knees are abused enough already. That’s also when she surmises that he’s not going to ask for her help, preferring to simply sit in silence.

Irissë contemplates being an asshole just for revenge’s sake, then determines that they’ll probably get nowhere if Maglor the silver-tongued obfuscator is uncomfortable. She moves towards the dresser.

“Bottom drawer, left side,” Maglor tells her.

Irissë swiftly retrieves a pair of double-layered woolen trousers with scraped-up leather patches over the knees and passes them to her cousin. He’s quiet as he pulls them on over his short linen braies. Irissë waits.

“So,” she says, the moment he has pants on and not a second later, “what happened?”

“I tried to pull a Fingon and failed because living was driving me insane,” Maglor tells her.

While she parses that, he lowers himself to the floor with a wince and makes his way over to the lone desk at another wall.

Maglor… tried to save Maedhros, she guesses. And failed, obviously; he said so, and Manwë wouldn’t have sent an eagle for him anyway. Probably. Who knows what the elder king is thinking if pulling Maedhros himself down is on the list.

She supposes existence couldn’t have been particularly simple for the Fëanorians either, though they were notably spared from burning their dead for warmth when they ran out of kindling.

Irissë sighs. “Not that you could’ve anyway.”

Maglor shoots her a flat look that very much suggests he’s more than aware. Irissë pointedly thinks of her dead little brother instead of the living asshole her cousins still have with them.

“Fingon knows?” she asks.

Maglor shrugs. “He’s been around. I didn’t ask him not to tell you.”

“No,” Irissë agrees. “But he’s considerate like that.” Even when he really, really doesn’t need to be.

She sighs, taking a seat on the vacated cot. If her brother has not seen fit to tell her, he probably has a reason. “Why haven’t you been, seen, then?” she asks.

Maglor lifts one leg for a moment as if to tuck it up to his chest, then stops halfway and drops it back down. He curls his arms around himself loosely instead and looks at her with hollow eyes.

“Why did you come in the morning when people are abed?” he asks. “Why didn’t you call him back and speak to him? Do you know what you want to say? Do you know what will make any of it better?”

Irissë shivers. “You were the king,” she points out. “Acting,” she says as he opens his mouth, waving it away. “The meaning is the same. We—people cannot simply attack the king.”

“On the contrary,” Maglor says, “who better?”

Irissë is fairly certain his problem is not about that at all, but she lets it go, mostly because that’s when Celegorm comes back. And she, for much the same reasons as her half-legged cousin, if with a different focus, is not prepared to actually see him.

“Irissë?” Celegorm stops just inside the tent, looking a bit blindsided. “What—”

Irissë leaps up from her seat and streaks across the tent, slipping past him out into the fresh day. There’s a horse waiting outside who eyes her curiously—Maglor’s ride, probably—but she darts past it too and whistles for Cenpat instead.

She leaps up onto her mare’s back and tucks her heels into the horse’s sides. Cenpat springs away as behind them, Celegorm calls Irissë’s name.

She gets halfway back to the Nolofinwëan camp before he hears the pounding of hooves behind her and it’s only another few moments before Celegorm is right beside her.

“Irissë!” he shouts over the wind and rush of running horses. “Will you slow down!”

She doesn’t really want to. But she also chose Cenpat for a reason, of all the horse stock her father was given. The mare was bred and trained to help the elves managing Yavanna’s cattle pastures back in Aman, and has, of course, retained her skills.

Irissë pulls back and down on the reigns and Cenpat promptly lowers her rump and digs her hind legs in, dirt and snow flying as she comes to an abrupt halt. Celegorm’s horse—the one from outside the tent—barrels on until the blond can slow it.

“What do you want,” she snaps when he wheels and trots back to her.

“To talk,” says Celegorm, sounding appropriately demure. “I can’t—don’t tell them, ‘Rissë. He’s—he needs time.”

“Don’t call me that,” Irissë snarls, surprising even herself with her vehemence. “And I think he’s had more than enough time to grow out of being chicken sh*t.”

Celegorm looks pained. “He’s not a coward,” he defends. “He’s just been going through a lot.”

Irissë snorts. “And that’s supposed to make it better? You think any of us aren’t going through a lot, Tyelkormo?!”

Celegorm grimaces deeper. “More people won’t help,” he says bitterly.

The huntress laughs, bright and painful. “Imagine all of this cools down, we all get settled right in, and then you tell Ingo that Káno’s gone and tried to kill himself.”

Celegorm flinches, but he can’t have not known. Irissë realizes in that moment that what she holds in her throat is fire, and Celegorm is currently indecently flammable. It’s going to come out, one way or another. All she can do is spit it as far away from herself as possible to try to avoid being burnt.

“You know it’s your fault,” she says, and watches her favorite cousin of all of them take that straight to the heart. Living was driving me insane, she remembers. Her lip curls. “And he’ll never get them back.”

Celegorm says nothing to that. He just sits, looking struck, as Irissë clucks at Cenpat and rides away.

Turukáno and Findaráto have been sharing a tent since before Elenwë died, and that hasn’t changed on solid ground. Irissë does not intend to question whatever comfort they’re found in each other, but she does have to interrupt their morning.

“Gah,” Turukáno yelps as Irissë puts a knee on his stomach, squirming in between him and the still drowsy Findaráto. “Ow, ‘Riss, what in Ea—”

Findaráto blinks at her as she flops down between the two. He grumbles wordlessly and fumbles for the thick ice bear skin she’d given him many years ago as less a gift than a familial gesture on the Ice, pulling it back over them all.

“What do you want?” Turukáno groans, trying to get his own arms between his ribs and her elbows.

“Only came to say good morning,” Irissë tells him in her best chipper voice.

“Good morning,” Findaráto says, then reaches out with all four limbs to grapple her and reel her in against his clothed chest. “C’mere,” he adds, “get warm.”

“I saw Makalaurë this morning,” Irissë says.

Turukáno stills his wriggling, then says darkly. “Aye, we saw him too, yesterday. Not that he deigned to stop and chat.”

Findaráto has gone quiet as well, though she suspects its’s for vastly different reasons. “How…” he says after a moment, but can’t seem to make himself finish the question.

It’s up for interpretation, but Irissë chooses to be kind and not drag things out. “He looked well. Apart from missing half his legs.”

Both her brother and cousin jerk bodily, then freeze.

“Tssh*t,” Findaráto hisses, scrambling out of the pile of furs. He shivers visibly at the cool air even in the tent, but begins digging around in the bags strewn around anyway. Turgon follows at a much more sedate pace, leaving Irissë to curl up under the ice bear fur alone and watch them both.

“How?” the blond bites out again, this time decidedly more pointed.

Irissë shrugs, her job here completed. “He didn’t say. Didn’t look recent, though. Turvo, shall I take Idril by their forges to see if they have aught for her later?”

Turukáno shakes his head, pulling on a pair of what are definitely their cousin’s leggings. “Hold off for now,” he mutters. “Let’s talk to the bastard first, yeah?”

Irissë nods, cuddling into the residual warmth further. The Ice drove many people together in unexpected ways, but she can’t say she doesn’t appreciate the way that closeness provides her with warm, welcoming beds nearly everywhere she goes, with no obligations apart from adding her own heat.

Irissë doesn’t feel bad for sending her brother and cousin after Maglor. About halfway through their journey across the Ice, if Irissë’s sense of time is not entirely skewed by the dark years, they’d come across a pod of white whales, trapped under a large patch of unbroken ice but for one small hole. The whales had been forced to swim around and over each other, coming up again and again for precious air, unable to leave in any direction for the lack of it.

Irissë’s hunting team had killed them all one by one and dragged the bodies back to their people’s loose camps. It was cruel, certainly, but it fed her starving younger brother and little niece for weeks, and the poor creatures’ fat lit their fires for many nights after.

Irissë couldn’t afford to spare trapped, frightened animals, each far more innocent than her bardic cousin. Not if it helped her family.

There’s something symbolic about Maglor’s lost ability to flee when they come for him. Irissë tucks her head under her arms as Turukáno and Findaráto leave and closes her eyes, seeking another few minutes of rest before work must begin again.

:::

Maglor hurts.

His knees ache in reprimand for his choices the previous day, but that’s the least of it compared to the latent screech of his cut-off nerves, which remember every once in a while that there should be more leg attached below them.

He crawls back to his bed and curls up on it once Irissë has gone with Celegorm chasing her, tired beyond reason already, and the day has hardly begun.

Eventually the sounds of the camp waking begin to permeate the tent’s double-layered canvas walls, and there’s a rustle by the entrance.

“Maglor?” Amras asks softly.

The tent is still dim, the only light being the half-shuttered lantern hanging from a ceiling beam that Celegorm had lit when he’d entered the first time. His brother probably can’t see him well; Maglor closes his eyes and thanks the stars that it’s not Moryo first thing this morning, or he doesn’t know what he might’ve done.

Ambarussa’s hand is gentle on his shoulder, and Maglor still shudders at the touch, whimpering softly despite himself. It’s been a morning and a half before the sun is fully in the sky, and after Irissë’s visit, he finds himself even less prepared to face the world.

“Oh,” Amras huffs softly, “I’ll get—” and then he’s gone.

Maglor begins the breathing exercises the healers taught him to handle bad days, though they’re harder when he’s curled up on himself with his chest constricted. They’re close to the same as he would use before singing, or just as practice, and the thought is comforting.

The twitch of his ears catching Caranthir’s voice outside the tent is decidedly not. Maglor doesn’t have the energy to sit up and demand to be left alone, so he does nothing about it.

“I’m going to make his tea,” Amras says as the tent flap lifts, then Maglor listens to the canvas shift as it drops shut again.

“Brother,” Caranthir says. He’s probably only quiet because it seems like the thing to be in the dimness inside, not out of any sort of respect for the inhabitant’s preference.

Maglor shifts just enough to let the blanket fall more fully over his head. Caranthir sighs and the rushes on the floor whisper under his feet as he approaches.

“Come, Maglor, it’s time to be up,” the middle brother tells him, as if he’s talking to a child.

“Maedhros exists,” Maglor grumbles. He wants to scream it instead, to rail and shout about how he’s done his duty—the duty that should never have been his in the first place—he’s done his time and wishes now to be left entirely alone.

“It’s not good for you to coop yourself up in here all day,” Moryo counters. “You need fresh air, light—”

“Peace and quiet,” Maglor snarls as pain sparks under his skin.

Moryo sighs—it’s his disappointed sigh, the one where he wants you to know it, not the one where he keeps it to himself; Maglor’s made a study of these and is fairly familiar. He then reaches under the blankets to find Maglor’s midsection and get a grip on it to pull the musician out of the safety of the covers and into his lap.

Maglor squirms and elbows him, but his brother is undeterred.

“What’s today?” Moryo asks. “Knees? Legs? The rest?”

Maglor childishly bites his brother’s shoulder as Moryo leans over to untie the legs of his pants and receives a swat to the back of the head for it.

“You are an adult,” Moryo says, infuriatingly calm, “behave like it.”

Maglor kicks his brother’s hand with his shin, hard, and pushes at his chest with as much strength as he can muster. “Trust me to care for myself as and adult, and I will,” he bites back.

Moryo catches his wrists with one hand and frowns at them. Maglor knows he’s thinner than he should be, but he can’t help finding it hard to eat anything half the days of every week.

“When I can, I will,” the weaver says. He finishes untying one pant leg, and deftly rolls it up above the cut off.

The amputation was as clean as the healers could make it, but that that doesn’t keep the area from getting aggravated when Maglor doesn’t treat it well. He catches a glimpse of the red and inflamed flesh that he’d been pointedly not looking at when he put his pants on earlier, then continues the pattern by turning his gaze to the ceiling instead. If he tries hard enough, he can pretend that his feet hurt because they’re in a pot of boiling water, not because they’re gone entirely. It’s unfair that they continue to trouble him when he doesn’t even have use of them anymore.

“Maglor,” Caranthir tuts. Maglor bares his teeth at nothing. At least with his pants only rolled up part way, Moryo can’t see the damage he’s done to his knees as well, crawling around yesterday.

“Stay here,” Moryo orders, then shifts Maglor to sit on the bed while he goes to dig through the top drawer of the dresser for the cream and wraps kept there to help soothe his pain. When he returns to the bed, it’s to sit beside the bard and maneuver Maglor’s legs up onto his own one after the other to administer the treatment. Maglor grimaces and bears the perfunctory hands on his skin without complaint.

Amras comes back while Moryo is busy and grabs the little folding tea table from beside Maglor’s desk with the hand not balancing a tray with the tea service on it. The twin sets it beside the bed and sets the tray down, then pours.

Maglor inhales the soft-sharp scent of lavender and pine, the oddly calming blend he prefers on bad days.

Maglor grasps Caranthir’s arm for balance while he leans out slightly to retrieve a cup—they don’t put the table close enough to the bedside for him to kick it while sitting anymore.

The kettle is pewter, but the cups are the simple wooden set his brothers have been bringing Maglor since he showed a tendency for small acts of violence when in pain. These won’t shatter satisfyingly upon hitting the ground if he were to throw them across the tent, not that he lets that stop him.

The possibility of the hot tea scalding someone as he picks up the cup and hurls it at the door doesn’t bother him, and he tells himself Amras’ flinch doesn’t either, because he’d expected it.

He had not expected the tent flap to lift again and cause his cup to collide with Turukáno’s broad chest instead of canvas. Maglor doesn’t know if it’s fortunate or not that the tea itself had already left the cup.

“Sorry Moryo, they wouldn’t be stopped,” Celegorm says behind their cousin as Turgon blinks at the cup now on the floor.

Maglor’s eyes widen and he grabs the other cup meant for Caranthir to throw that too, but his brother’s hand catches his own and halts the action. The hot tea splashes onto their skin and Maglor hisses as he lets go, the cup falling to the floor. Moryo doesn’t release his hand, though, and Ambarussa is quick to take hold of the other one before he can reach for the kettle.

A golden-haired head appears around Turukáno, then Findaráto shoves past him. Maglor moans in the back of his throat. He’d been avoiding this so well, too!

“Laurë,” Findaráto breathes as he sees the bard.

Maglor tugs uselessly on Moryo’s tunic, suddenly wishing to be closer and more protected rather than the distance he was previously seeking. Moryo seems to understand that at least and finishes with a bandage before hauling Maglor back into his lap and wrapping his arms tightly around the bard, like someone will take him away if he lets go.

This is altogether too much for one morning. Maglor hates that he can’t handle even this—when he was regent, he’d have ridden around half the camp by this time in the morning—and tucks his face against his brother’s neck. Ambarussa lets go of his hand to move bodily in front of him, between the musician and the interlopers.

“We don’t mean your brother any harm,” Findaráto says, and Maglor’s trained ears catch the way his voice goes low and soothing, like he’s trying to gentle some wild animal. Though he supposes the twins do begin to resemble their prey at times, with how long they spend stalking the woods away from other elves. “We only want to speak with him.”

Maglor turns his face to look again as Amras shifts reluctantly out of the way, just enough for Findaráto to see past him.

The Arafinwion has Turukáno’s hand clutched in a white-knuckled grip at his side, while the taller cousin rubs the blond’s shoulder with his free hand.

“Laurë?” Findaráto asks again. “May I—can we come closer, or should we stay here?”

“Maglor,” Maglor finds his voice to croak out a correction. “I go by Maglor.”

Findaráto blinks, then nods. “Alright, Maglor. Can I come sit next to thee?”

Moryo’s grip tightens for a moment, and he starts, “That would not be—”

“Let him answer for himself,” Turukáno cuts in. Maglor’s eyebrows twitch, and Moryo falls silent.

Maglor lets out a breath, his hands unconsciously flexing against the fabric of Moryo’s tunic. “You may,” he says. Amras gives him a glance, and Maglor lets his brother read whatever he’s going to in his expression. The twin steps aside.

Caranthir glares impotently as their cousins approach, but says nothing. Maglor spots Celegorm idling worriedly by the tent flap behind them as Ambarussa passes by him and out, then Findaráto and Turukáno’s tall forms block his view.

Maglor counts his breaths for a moment, then collects himself. “What do you need?” he asks, hoping it’s something he can deal with tomorrow.

Findaráto shakes his head, appearing a bit lost for words, and Turukáno answers for him. The Nolofinwion seems bitter, but his gaze in Maglor’s eyes is more conflicted than anything. “We came to see if you were alright.”

“I’m fine,” Maglor says reflexively.

“You’re clearly not,” Turukáno rebuffs that easily, lowering himself to a crouch as he peers at Maglor’s legs. The bard feels the urge to pull them out of sight, but that’s a difficult proposition when he’s balanced as he is across Caranthir’s legs.

Caranthir, who’s body is nearly shaking with tension. Maglor unclenches the hand hidden around his brother’s back to pat it a few times.

“Truly,” he says, “they are old wounds—I’ve merely been uncareful of late.”

Findaráto practically collapses on the bed at Maglor’s back on Moryo’s left side, also almost vibrating with suppressed something. “What happened to thee, Meleth? Irissë did not say.”

Of course Irissë is the responsible party here, Maglor thinks. She would.

But another part of him is too busy rejoicing to be upset; Meleth, Findaráto had said, as if Maglor is still beloved.

“He—” Moryo starts before Maglor can find a simple way to tell the story that hides the less savory aspects of his own mental health.

Turukáno, however, stops him again. “Caranthir,” he snaps. “Did he ask you to speak for him? If not, then shut up.”

Maglor did not, but he supposes his brothers have taken up responsibility for him in a way that often precludes his own choices for a long while now. It hasn’t bothered him, perhaps because he’s needed it on days like this when he can’t force himself to do what needs doing. Of course it hasn’t been limited to days like this, but he can only ask so much.

“I,” he says, “I made a few terrible choices, years ago now.” He snorts. “It wasn’t even a battle, or conflict at all. My feet were crushed in a landslide and they had to amputate after—” he stops. If he says Celegorm found me, he’ll have to say Celegorm was looking because I was gone, which requires explaining that I was gone because I went looking for Maitimo, which is tantamount to telling them flat out that he wasn’t planning to come back.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine, I just don’t have feet,” he says.

The tick in Moryo’s jaw suggests he has something or other to say to that, but will refrain only because of the untrustworthy company. Findaráto sees it and narrows his eyes.

“If thou’rt truly fit, then,” he says slowly, “thou wouldst not mind a brief conversation with us regarding, oh, thy father?”

Maglor winces. Neither of his cousins want to talk about Fëanor, but it’s a very pointed dig at his choices in following the man, which the pair of them have had two and a half dozen cold sun-years to bitterly revile. But if he’s trying to prove himself to them, he must agree.

“Aye,” he says shortly. “Caranthir, Celegorm, leave us.”

Celegorm goes without too much fuss, but Moryo appears to be mutinously contemplating how to best remind him that he no longer has that authority. Maglor does actually, as in elder brother still, but the rest of them are inclined to ignore it more often than not.

“Go,” he adds, when the younger shows no signs of doing so.

Caranthir hisses through his teeth, but does help shift Maglor off of his lap and make his way to the exit. He looks back and Maglor nods at him pointedly, then he steps out.

Turukáno stands as soon as Maglor’s brother is gone and sits on Maglor’s other side, but far enough away that the bard doesn’t have to touch him if he doesn’t want to. “He controls you,” he points out, as if Maglor hadn’t noticed.

“He cares,” Maglor hedges.

Turukáno crosses his arms. “Perhaps he’s unfamiliar with the difference. He could try letting you speak for yourself, before assuming he knows everything you need.”

Maglor grimaces. “I can argue for myself, I assure you.”

Findaráto wipes his palms on his knees; Maglor knows from long hours spent with the golden elf that the gesture doubles as pressure to keep his legs from constantly bouncing. “But wouldst thou?” he asks. “If thou hadst an issue with it?”

Maglor doesn’t particularly want to dive into the answer to that question at the moment, or ever. His brothers are… they do care. He knows that. Celegorm brings him the best of his kills because he wants to provide, and hovers to make sure he’s alright. Maglor doesn’t particularly like venison, but it’s what they have and if it makes his brother feel better, he’ll try to eat. Moryo organizes his clothing and cares about his appearance when Maglor can’t be bothered to because he wants the bard to do well by their people. Maglor doesn’t enjoy crawling about even with padded knees, so what difference does being able to choose when he does make?

“Mak—Maglor,” Turukáno sighs. “If you aren’t willing to speak up for yourself then you’ll never move past this.”

Maglor gives him a painful look. “It’s hardly hurting me,” he says. “And everyone here has more important things to be worrying about. Trust me on that.”

Turukáno’s look is far too knowing, still edged with cold. “So it’s fine if I dress you, feed you, fetch your horse for you, and carry you around when I don’t put you on her?”

Maglor shifts uncomfortably and opens his mouth to argue.

“If you say ‘you’re not my brother,’ you’ll be proving my point,” Turukáno warns him. Abruptly, he changes tracks. “What’s in the top drawer of your dresser, cousin?”

Maglor frowns. “Bandages,” he says, “and a sewing kit and salve for my legs. A few medical supplies. Why?”

Turukáno pokes him lightly in the leg just above his knee, as if he knows they’re bruised and shouldn’t be touched. “You mean to tell me the items you need to take care of yourself are unreachable to you without assistance? Does that feel equal and fair?”

Maglor frowns harder. He doesn’t like to touch the ends of his legs—something about the inconsistency between expecting more there and finding stumps bothers him when he can still feel phantom sensations of the limbs at times—so his brothers take care of him in that respect. He rarely needs to reach the top drawer himself, but it’s true that he’s had to reach up and fumble blindly for the sewing kit once when he ripped a tunic on an exposed nail.

He does see the point his cousin is making. He doesn’t like it. And still: “Why do you care?”

Both of his prior partners cousins are silent for a long moment, staring at him.

Then his old hearts’ friend of happier years brings his hand up and slaps him only very lightly, his brown eyes darkening with anger. Findaráto takes hold of Maglor’s chin before Turukáno can say anything though and turns his face towards their golden partner.

“We love thee,” the Arafinwion says plainly. “Thou’rt part of our hearts still, of course we care.”

Maglor should probably point this out before they cut themselves on his sharp edges, though he doesn’t really want to. “I betrayed you,” he says. “I murdered your kin and left you behind. I’m not Maitimo—I did not have the strength to stand aside when Fëanor ordered the ships burned.”

“I know all of that,” Findaráto tells him, not dismissively but with a definite air of putting it aside for later. “And I still love you.”

A hand lands on his shoulder, and Turukáno waits until Maglor leans back into it to shift forward and embrace him fully. “I am ungodly furious with the choices you made,” the Nolofinwion murmurs beside the bard’s twitching ear. “And I really, truly want to hit you very hard. But I’m still glad that you live.”

Maglor suddenly finds it a bit hard to breathe, as if his airways can be clogged with pure emotion. “You probably aught to hit me,” he says quietly. “I’m not—Celegorm is the only reason I do.”

Both his lover and their partner tense, Turukáno’s grip tightening around his middle.

“What,” Findaráto bites out, “who—”

“Me,” Maglor cuts in before the blond can work himself up too much. He feels a flush of shame saying it, but they at least deserve the truth. “It’s my own fault. I meant to die. I would have left you both before you even arrived, and if you hit me for anything, it should be that.”

“Never,” Turukáno bites out, more viciously than anything Maglor remembers from him in times past. “You—I will never be so cruel.”

Maglor finds himself a bit stuffed up and sniffs, leaning back against his cousin as Findaráto draws close and flattens himself against the bard’s chest.

“I want to know why,” the blond says, pressing his lips to Maglor’s cheek. “And how, and what drove thee to such lengths. But we will never be angry that thou survived. Neither shall we hurt thee for needing support that thou evidently did not receive.”

Maglor fights against a swelling tightness in his throat, and makes a choking sound as he swallows it back down. “Because I am weak,” he manages. “I should have done better—either never left or never come back, not failure on both counts.”

“Hush,” Findaráto says, his hands running up and down Maglor’s sides over and over soothingly. “Thou’rt not weak—but indeed strong for having prevailed until now. Even still, we love thee and love that thou art with us still.”

Maglor sniff again. “Mostly hale, if not whole,” he says.

Turukáno squeezes his midsection lightly. “You are still here,” he points out. “That’s the important bit.”

They simply sit like that for some time, leaning on each other, until Turukáno breaks the silence to mutter into Maglor’s loose braids. “Come with us.”

Maglor’s breath stutters. “What?”

“Come with us,” Turukáno repeats, lifting his head so he doesn’t get a mouthful of hair when he speaks. “Back to the other side of the lake, I mean. Our tent—on the Ice, our people took to sheltering together, borders like families, feuds, and names being less important than not freezing. Our tent could use another warm body. This one is too cold for just you.”

He means to steal Maglor away from the reach of his brothers, and presumably show him the ‘right’ type of care, according to himself, Maglor supposes. He just might let him, too. But he does have responsibilities here that he can’t just drop on a whim—

“Thou must meet Itarillë,” Findaráto says, pulling back with a grin. “She has his eyes.”

Maglor freezes, then flails. His partners back off enough that he can turn about and stare at Turukáno without trouble, and he does just that for a moment, hoping he hasn’t misunderstood. The Nolofinwion nods.

“You and Elenwë,” Maglor breathes. “A daughter.”

Turukáno nods again, looking torn between grief and love. “She’s the best thing any of us have ever created,” he says, choked up.

Well, that decides it then. “I’ll come,” Maglor says. He doesn’t specify how long he means to stay, or if he means to stay at all, but Findaráto nods eagerly and Turukáno embraces him again, then both move to stand up.

“Ah,” Maglor says, glancing at his newly-wrapped legs. “My horse should be just outside by this time, but would one of you mind carrying me to the door?”

Findaráto nods easily. “If you’d like. In front or back?” he asks, rather than just picking the Fëanorion up. “I don’t suppose we can just carry thee like Itarillë—she’s just a wee bit smaller than thee, but I have to doubt thou’d fit in Turvo’s harness for her.”

Maglor rolls his eyes at the quip about his height; even at, oh she must be around twenty or nineteen, Turukáno and his wife are and were tall—Turvo himself being nearly of a height with Nelyo, so their daughter is liable to share the trait.

“Back,” he decides, perhaps as something of a test.

Findaráto nods and kneels beside the bed without fuss, then Turukáno helps steady him as Maglor clambers carefully onto his back. Then he stands with barely a wobble and walks towards the tent flap with Maglor’s arms carefully around his neck.

In the sunlight outside, Curufin stops beside a placidly grazing Mëonil and blinks at them. “Findaráto,” he greets, “Turukáno. May I ask where you are absconding to with my brother?”

He has a mid-sized wooden case in his hands; it’s a case Maglor has been before, usually carrying prosthetics and tools and showing up wherever the bard least wants to see it. But he did actually ask his brother to come this time, so he’s not surprised nor upset to see it.

“We’re going to their side,” Maglor tells him. “I’m going to meet Turvo’s daughter.”

“Ah.” Curufin narrows his eyes at their cousins. “Do you want company?”

“No,” says Maglor, “thank you. I’d like to do this myself.”

Curufin eyes him for a moment, then nods. “I brought the prosthetics you wanted to try again,” he says, lifting the case. “I’d let you take them with you, but…”

Instead of clarifying when he’ll be back, Maglor deflects lightly. “Yes, I’ll take good notes for you Curvo. Don’t worry. Turukáno, if you wouldn’t mind grabbing that, thank you.”

Curufin hands it over with ill grace, but Maglor doesn’t mind. His smithing brother is one of the more tolerable ones when it comes to him, and seems to have worked out everything Turukáno was saying much faster than the rest. Maglor appreciates that and reaches out to pull Curufin in and buss his forehead when Findaráto steps past him.

His younger brother watches carefully as Turukáno helps Maglor off their cousin’s back and onto Mëonil’s, who someone has already saddled in preparation for Maglor. The pair then go to fetch their own horses from the grassy area designated for the steeds a few plots down, leaving the brothers alone.

“Send someone to let us know if you won’t be back this evening,” Curufin tells him.

Maglor knows they worry. He nods.

Curufin pats his knee with a sigh. “And if you need help… just, I’m not saying you need to send for us, but we’re here.”

Maglor’s eyes soften on his brother. “I know,” he says. “I appreciate it.”

“Right,” says Curufin, nodding to himself. “You remember those notes. I’m going to go find Moryo and restrain him.”

Maglor laughs softly. “Set Celebrimbor on him—the boy is like a limpet when he wants to be.”

Curufin huffs at the ground. “Don’t I know it? He’s shadowing his mother today, but that may just be a good idea.” He looks up again to say seriously, “Make them take good care of you.” Then he turns and walks away.

Maglor nudges Mëonil with his knee to join his partner’s horses and they begin their trek around the lake.

“I could make you a walking stick,” Findaráto says thoughtfully as they pass a stand of bare but hardy trees. “I’ve taken up whittling for something to do.”

Maglor hums noncommittally. For once, he does hope that these newest feet will work better than the rest. This time, he’s willing to try for it.

“Curufin said you’ve been trying prosthetics?” Turukáno asks as if reading his mind. If he feels anything other then curiosity about Maglor’s younger brother in this instance, he hides it well. “How goes it?”

Maglor pats the case Curufin had passed him, which rests across his thighs. “These are new,” he says. “Lighter, and more effective, hopefully. I’ve yet to really try them for more than a few wobbling steps around Curvo’s workshop.”

“Hm,” says Turukáno. “Do you sing still? Once you’d have demanded to bring your harp with us, no?”

Maglor nods. “I do,” he says, and leaves it at that. Hopefully, with his lover and their partner returned to him, he’ll be able to produce something less than gut-wrenching regret strong enough that people ask him to put it back down whenever he picks up an instrument, but he’s not getting his hopes up about that just yet.

Findaráto, riding beside him, nudges his knee with his own and smiles. “Perhaps thou couldst sing with me ‘round our fire this night?”

A faint smile of his own is tempted across Maglor’s lips. “If you wish it so, my heartsong,” he murmurs.

Maglor was disappointed when the sun rose, for he’d been indoors in the dark and they’d told him it was as like the light of the trees, if not brighter and more brilliant. It was that, he could not disagree, but it still failed to match even a glimmer of the light of Findaráto’s joy which the Fëanorion had been so sorely missing. He envies Turukáno for that if nothing else; being able to catch it rather than just dream of it. (But then, Maglor cannot be sure there was any joy at all on the Ice, so perhaps it was a loss on all fronts.)

“He does,” Turukáno says. Maglor’s smile grows just a bit more.

He and Findaráto have always been entirely for each other, since they met as youngsters with only a small gap in age. Turgon was a later but no less beloved addition to their little partnership, and while he cleaved not to their bed nor indeed any male’s, it still delighted—and delights!—them endlessly to draw him out of his typically self-imposed shell of stern isolation.

Maglor can feel their eyes on him when they think he’s focused on ought else—he hasn’t the words to tell either that he’ll never again turn from them for more than a moment at a time, not yet—Findaráto with some well-tamed hunger, and Turukáno for the simple comfort of knowing he’s there. Maglor can’t be sure he deserves either, and her cherishes both.

They arrive in the Nolofinwean camp without much fanfare, and Turukáno waves off Maglor’s reluctant suggestion of announcing himself to the new high king. His father, he says, will understand.

Maglor’s willing to take his word for it, and lets the pair lead him instead to where they keep their own family’s tents, arranged in a central ring.

Irissë is sitting on a large flat rock in the sun with a sheaf of parchment on a board on her knees, and she looks up as they arrive. Beside her a golden-haired girl doodles on the rock with colored wax that Maglor recognizes as some of the stuff they trade with the Iathrim for. Times are hard, but no one is about to cry wastrel when it’s sacrificed to entertain an elfling.

She looks up too at the sound of hooves, and Maglor finds that Findaráto was correct, but did not do her description justice. She shares their partner’s deep brown eyes and dark skin passed down from Anarië, but is sweet-faced where Turvo’s is long and often dour. Her curls are blonder than Elenwë’s were, and he can already see the Nolofinwean tendency to be bright and bold as she sits up on her knees, half hidden by Irissë, and perches her little fists on her hips.

“Ata!” she scolds in an impetuous, bright little voice. “You were supposed to make me pancakes this morning! You said! Uncle Ingo, why didn’t you make him make me pancakes?”

Turukáno slides off his horse to greet his daughter boisterously, apologizing profusely for his ungentlemanly behavior and inquiring as to whether she ever did get those pancakes. (A new favorite of hers, Findaráto murmurs as he helps Maglor down from Mëonil’s back and directly onto his own, since they got off the Ice and she discovered food made with flour and milk.)

As Findaráto carries him over, Itarillë stares from behind her father’s leg and Maglor sees—

Her legs, too, end before her ankles. The knees of her tan trousers are sewn with leather patches much like his own.

“Finna,” Maglor whispers, slapping at his lover’s shoulder. “You didn’t say!”

Findaráto shrugs. “It no more defines who she is than your own injury does,” he points out easily. “Even without, Itarillë is precocious and sweet, and deserves to be recognized as such.”

Maglor hums distractedly, meeting the child’s curious gaze as Findaráto makes to set him down on the flat rock beside Irissë, who has not moved but seems unbothered.

“Hello,” Itarillë says, then after a moment of indecision, she sticks her hand out to him, palm down. “Ata says you’re my uncle. Well. I’m a princess.”

Maglor smiles at her and takes her hand, kissing the back. “I am enchanted to meet you, Miss Princess,” he tells her.

“Hm,” Itarillë says, unimpressed. “Can you draw, or make pancakes, or shoot monsters? All of my uncles can do that. And Aunt Irissë and Aunt Artanis too.”

Maglor shakes his head, feigning sadness. “I am afraid I’ve a poor hand for sketching, and what I make in the kitchen is barely even good for feeding livestock. I’ve stuck a few monsters with my swords, though,” he offers. “And I sing, my lady.”

Itarillë crosses her arms, peering at him dubiously. “Uncle Finno can sing,” she hedges. “I suppose if it’s a good song…”

Maglor hums. “Would you like a song, my lady? Which song shall I sing for you?”

Itarillë shakes her head, the few golden bangles in her hair jingling. “I don’t know songs, that’s your job!”

“Ah,” says Maglor, going for an air of knowledgeability. “You’re quite right. How foolish of me! I shall sing you the New Flowers Song, then.”

It’s not a very rousing thing, or even a true test of his ability, but the Song of stirring and growth is enough to coax out both an adorable, wide-eyed expression from Itarillë and a small flower bud from the chilled and frozen ground, a bit confused at the season but happy enough to answer his call.

“Does it suit well enough?” Maglor asks once he finishes. It occurs to him then that it might’ve been the first happy and hopeful thing he’s sun in thirty years or so. He tries not to think about that.

“You can be my uncle,” Itarillë agrees distractedly, entranced with the purplish petals of the flower, hungry for light and warmth. Maglor wonders if she’s seen one before, being born and raised in the bleakest north.

“Oh good,” he says, suddenly tired. “Thank you, my lady. I would hate to disappoint.”

“Thank you, Maglor,” Turukáno murmurs in his ear as Findaráto swoops in to coax the name of the flower out of a recalcitrant Irissë and strike up an impromptu lesson on plants from the expert in woodcraft.

Maglor nods slowly.

“May I lift you?” his partner asks. “We can go inside out of the cold, if you’d like.”

“Please,” Maglor agrees, holding out his arms to be picked up. He could crawl, but while his stumps feel a bit better from the soothing salve, his knees are protesting about the day enough already. “What happened?” he inquired quietly once they’re a good distance away.

Turukáno takes a bracing breath, and explains: “She stepped on a thin patch; the ice broke under her and her mother… Elenwë saved her at the cost of her own life, and the cold took her legs.”

Maglor nods and hugs his partner as best he can before being set down on a chair at a rickety, hastily made table inside one of the smaller tents. Turukáno doesn’t seem willing to speak on it much, and Maglor certainly won’t make him.

“If she wants to walk,” he says quietly, “Curufin will be happy to help.”

Turukáno snorts, sitting in the chair opposite Maglor. “I doubt your brother would be happy to do much of anything for us, but we shall see.”

“Hm,” says Maglor. “He will if I ask him too.”

Turukáno looks very tired, but he nods. “I suppose that’s something, at least.”

The bard tilts his head at his partner. “Are you going to let me go back?” he has to ask.

Turukáno gives him a look that probably means something, but is mostly indecipherable to Maglor. “I’ll help you if that’s what you want,” he says. “I don’t mean to control you in any way, m—meleth. I’d caution you against it, but if you do want to, I’ll help you onto your horse myself.”

Maglor nods slowly, considering that. “You are angry,” he observes. It’s reasonable; Turukáno, and indeed that entire side of the family, have more than enough reasons to be furious with Maglor and his people. The bard doubts he’ll be able to settle until he sees them addressed.

Turukáno groans and leans back in his seat, rubbing his palms harshly over his eyes. “I am… Manwë’s feathery arse, I want to hit you so hard—”

Maglor raises his brows at the vulgarity from his oh so proper cousin.

“—but I’m restraining myself because I can see that doing so now, while you are,” he waves a hand, “is not going to be any sort of helpful lesson. Nor will it make me feel much better.”

Maglor’s brows only climb higher. “I’m not going to grow my feet back, you know,” he says. “That’s not exactly a function of elven physiology, and I hope you haven’t been so misinformed—”

“I don’t mean your feet,” Turukáno snaps.

Maglor has been trying to keep his posture open and inviting, but now he crosses his arms to peer at his cousin with a faint frown. “Then what?”

“You are,” Turukáno starts, then stops. “Hells, Maglor, you have to have noticed how your brothers treat you! When you take away so much of someone’s agency, you have to make up for it by giving them their own choices, you do realize? Itarillë taught me that. At barely a year old—Tree years, I suppose—she knew better than you how to advocate for herself.”

Maglor looks away, examining the large, layered mattresses in the corner with a pile of white and brown furs on top rather than meeting his cousin’s gaze.

“I’m just saying,” Turukáno continues. “You’re not in a place where you can accept—not, I mean. You can’t properly apologize right now, because you can’t really act for yourself at all because of how they’ve treated you. When you do, I want you to be able to do so fully, without any threat or, or, impingement on your self hanging over you.”

Maglor looks back at him, frowning. “They wouldn’t hurt me,” he says.

Turukáno throws up his hands. “They already have, Maglor! They don’t have to beat you to break you down. And,” his gaze turns narrow and shrewd, “don’t tell me that not a one of them has raised a hand to you.”

Maglor’s eyes widen and he opens his mouth to refute that swiftly and viciously, but his partner cuts him off.

“I’ll have no lies,” Turukáno snaps. “I don’t care if you imagine it was earned or not—whatever the reason. You don’t deserve that.”

Maglor shuts his mouth with a snap.

The first time, he’d just woken up, disoriented and in pain but truly lucid for the first time. Celegorm had seemed afraid to even touch him for years after the fact, nor deliver so much as a single unkind word. Caranthir held no such reservations. Maglor had received a scathing admonishment from their ill-tempered brother that he was too dizzy and too pained to hear the hurt and fear buried within, and a firm backhand for his actions.

Maglor, his legs shrieking before the healers arrived with painkillers, head spinning from the pain and sudden anger at the seemingly new and unexpected care, had promptly ordered his brother flogged for striking the acting king.

The second time, he’d been working with Curufin to amend issues with the prototypes of Mëonil’s special saddle, and he’d fallen while taking an ill-advised loop on a busier thoroughfare when his brother had gone back inside to cut a strap to size. Curufin had dragged him out of the way of a cart whose driver had not seen him, and slapped him in what he had to think was terror.

Maglor had slapped him right back once they were out of the way, and told him that the fall was far from intentional, and he didn’t need to be reprimanded like a child.

The third time it was Amrod, upset with him for nipping food at odd hours from the kitchens the Ambarussar ruled. He’d been hungry in the night because he hadn’t been hungry at dinner, and dragged himself out to see what could be made only to find no cooks on duty. And he wasn’t a thief besides that, seeing as he technically owned all of it.

But Amrod had been in a foul enough mood already that Maglor didn’t bother to mention any of that at risk of starting an argument, and was carried back to bed hungry. He stayed hungry, and his stomach then chose to reject breakfast.

The fourth time— the fifth— Maglor can’t remember when he just stopped caring about it, though there had not been so many instances that he’d lost track. He’s going to keep doing all the things he was reprimanded for anyway, just more carefully to avoid the fear-inspired wrath of his brothers.

“They’re only hurt and afraid,” he says softly, though even now it feels like a weak defense.

“Are you going to snap and kill yourself the moment you’re out of their sight?” Turukáno asks flatly. “I didn’t think so,” he says before Maglor has even finished shaking his head. “You wouldn’t hit a child in fear or anger, and they can at least run to someone trustworthy if you do.”

Maglor examines the grain of the table because he has nothing he can really say to that.

Turukáno sighs. “Do you understand what I’m saying? I don’t want an apology until I can be sure that you are fully yourself and sincere. Feet or not, you are categorically unhealthy and hardly in a fit mental state.”

Somehow, that doesn’t sting as much coming from Turukáno as it does when Caranthir or Celegorm uses it to coax him into eating or sleeping or coming inside rather than doing his evening rounds.

“Fine,” he says eventually. “I understand. How long do you want me to stay?”

The look Turukáno favors him with is softer than before, but no less strained. “Until you are well, meleth. That is all I want.”

Maglor gives a long sigh. “I will be well when the Second Singing comes and the world is renewed,” he says. “Before then, I will continue to be Maglor.”

:::

They sleep curled together under the ice bear fur, Findaráto wrapped around Maglor’s front while Turukáno is plastered to his back, supportive and protective. Findaráto wakes to find Maglor’s eyes open and unseeing, tear tracks dried below them. Turukáno’s hands on the bard’s stomach move softly with each breath.

Findaráto snuggles closer. Their partner had told him only in brief what they spoke of before he joined them in the tent, but he suspects it’ll come up again later, and likes none of it. They’d taken Maglor and the lovely Mëonil on a tour of their camp the previous afternoon, then met with Uncle Nolofinwë and taken dinner as a family without too much fuss all around.

Findaráto knows that his siblings aren’t happy, exactly, but he knows they will come around for him. About Maglor at least, if not any of the rest.

“Ingo,” a hiss at the tent flap startles him into alternes, and he peers through the gloom suspiciously only to find his cousin’s head there, the gold in his braids indistinguishable from any other dark heads in their family in the dimness.

“What?” he breathes, knowing Findekáno will hear him.

“Maedhros is here,” Findekáno whispers.

What?

Findaráto extricates himself from the pile of limbs carefully, patting Turukáno’s head when he grumbles in complaint and tucking the blankets back in around them. He exits the tent like he never would have on the Ice, in just a tunic and the pair of thin leggings that he’d left hanging on a chair the previous night.

Where once he would have lost a finger or toe or two in minutes, now only a chilly breeze barely bothers him in the grey earliest morning outside the tent.

As Findekáno had said, he stands with the eldest cousin, cloaked in furs with his red hair gleaming with the false dawn.

“What are ye here for?” Findaráto hisses. “We sleep.”

They developed odd patterns of sleeping on the Ice; timed cycles in which each designated group could pitch camp at the beginning of the line, get a good nap in, then take it all down by the time the rest of the line passed them, then work their way up to the front again for their next turn to sleep. That way, there were eyes on the tents at all times, and the people watching were moving so they didn’t freeze. It had, however, also resulted in sleep cycles with different ratios to those the land-bound Fëanorians were used to. Findaráto would really prefer to be back in his bed.

Maedhros shifts on his feet. “I came to check on Maglor.”

Findaráto feels his lip begin to pull up in a sneer and swiftly checks himself. Maedhros isn’t the problem, he reminds himself. Maedhros didn’t have time to become the problem.

“Maglor is fine,” Findaráto says pointedly. “He’s sleeping. He will be well; Turukáno has his heart set on it.”

Findekáno rolls his eyes. “Well if Turvo has decided.”

“Shut it,” Findaráto snaps, harsher than he means to be. He loves his cousin, but the elf can be just as much of an idiot as everyone else. There’s a reason they didn’t bother telling anyone but Elenwë that Turukáno was their person before leaving those shores.

“Do not speak to that which thou dost not know,” he adds more calmly.

Findekáno holds his hand up placatingly. “My apologies,” he murmurs. Maedhros is watching the exchange narrowly and Findaráto turns to him.

“Thou can either wait until he wakes, or give me a message to deliver. We intend to do him only kindness, but I doubt he’ll sleep in too late even given the chance.”

Word of mouth in the Fëanorian camp suggests that Maglor had been a very active regent before and after losing a large amount of his mobility. Something tells him that the same principles which kept his lover hard at work then will extend shortly over the Nolofinwean camp as well as soon as he rises. He won’t sleep long past the sunrise.

“I’ll wait,” says Maedhros patiently.

Findaráto sighs at the look Findekáno shoots him. “Alright, fine. But be quiet about it.”

Even since Findekáno began spending most of his time in the Fëanorian camp, Irissë and Itarillë had fully taken over the tent they’d shared (Itarillë split time between Turukáno and the nearest motherly figure). Both elleth and elfing take on a startling resemblance to servants of the Enemy when unexpectedly woken at an hour before their choosing. Even irritated, Findaráto won’t send them back to that.

He ushers them both quietly into the tent and re-does the upper ties on the flap behind them. Findekáno swiftly begins stripping of his layers, and Maedhros curiously follows suit. They must be touching minds, because a moment later the eldest’s movements become more determined and efficient as he piles his cloak and coat on top of Finno’s things on a chair.

Findaráto clambers into back into bed beside his lover and feels Findekáno at his back a moment later, then the brush of Maedhros’ knuckles against his hip. Closing his eyes, he resolves to sleep just a little longer.

“Finna,” Maglor breathes in his ear what could be hours or mere moments later. “Why is my brother in our bed?”

Findaráto huffs quietly and pulls the bard closer against him. “Came to make sure we hadn’t abducted thee,” he murmurs.

“I wasn’t worried about abduction,” Maedhros puts in without moving from where he lies wrapped around Findekáno behind Findaráto’s back. “Was worried about what made you run.”

“Who,” Maglor bites out, though barely a whisper to avoid disturbing the Nolofinwions, whose heartbeats still suggest sleep. “And don’t bother yourself with it.”

“Well now I’m really worried,” Maedhros mutters.

“Shut, up,” Turukáno says, and they all do.

The silence seems particularly mutinous on two parts, but Findaráto closes his eyes against it again without further comment. The gentle warmth of five bodies is some solace.

A good while later Itarillë crawls onto their pile, planting sharp little knees and elbows in increasingly uncomfortable spots and whispering at them to demand an omelet (she’s trying every new thing that dry land brings in order of tastiness according to Irissë and Nolofinwë, and Findaráto tries not to cry every time he thinks about it).

“Ah!” the elfling shrieks loudly as Findekáno, who’d been lying in wait, snatches her down into his arms. Unwisely, he then begins to tickle her, which results in flailing limbs that quickly chivvy the rest of them out of the bed and into clothes for the day.

Maglor asks for a lift and is promptly deposited in a chair to sort out the rest of his clothes, half of which had been removed for sleep (and absolutely nothing else, because Turukáno would’ve hit them both indiscriminately with a chair for engaging in such pursuits while he was also in the bed).

Turukáno takes the still-flailing Itarillë and places her in Findekáno’s arms, pushing them both firmly out the door to “go find some breakfast” while the rest of them chat.

Maedhros is pointedly not looming over Maglor and appears to have taken a seat across the little table for the sole purpose of being closer to his brother’s level. Findaráto sits down at the third chair between them, leaving the last for the remaining Nolofinwion.

“So,” says the one-handed redhead. “Who is responsible for this flight to freedom?”

Maglor pulls one knee up against his chest, holding it there tightly with his arms. “No one in particular,” he deflects. Findaráto feels a pulse of fond irritation from Turukáno.

He reaches out from his own seat to poke Maglor’s hip with his toe, chiding. “Is that why Caranthir looked to be one wrong move away from turning thee over his knee yesterday morning?”

Maglor flushes furiously, not unlike his younger brother in question that way, and shakes his head. “He was not,” he snaps.

Maedhros has his head tilted curiously. He was ever a canny one; even in Aman where each radiant star in his family was constantly competing to outshine each other for their father, he had a habit of letting outsiders think him duller than the rest for lack of craft, lit only by his looks and age. But Findaráto would have ever trusted him over any of the rest with people, politics, and the complicated mesh of both.

“You said you would tell me,” the eldest cousin says, not elaborating further though there’s clearly something there.

Maglor shrugs. “Nothing to tell,” he says. “Our brothers are idiots, but that’s not unusual. I need a good nap—also my normal state of being. The only difference is me trying to do something about it.”

“Hm,” Maedhros says, eyeing him.

Maglor lets him look, then says with a sigh, “Would you like to do a full body examination to make sure I’m not hiding an urge to go jump off a cliff somewhere? I thought my will to live was in plain sight, but—”

“Maka,” Maedhros says. His brother closes his mouth and then appears to notice that bother Findaráto and Turukáno have tensed again. Findaráto just doesn’t like hearing him talk about it so blithely, is all.

“Apologies,” Maglor shakes his head. “That was unreasonably morbid. I really am fine, Mae. I’ll live, I just want to do it… over here, for a bit.”

Maedhros appears to consider that, then accepts it with a nod. “If you need me to—” he starts.

Maglor scoffs at him. “I can stand up for myself,” he says, then pauses. “Well. Figuratively.”

Maedhros crosses his arms. “But you can also come to me,” he points out. “Our brothers can be overwhelming—I know it better than most, I think—and believe that I will be having conversations with them.”

“Oh dear, not conversations.” Maglor rolls his eyes. Findaráto is not overly fond of the constant fallback to frivolity, which seems distinctly like a coping mechanism. But they have time to work on that, as long as their Laurë is with them.

And work on it they will. Findaráto scoots his chair closer to Maglor’s and wraps his arms around his lover at a nod from the bard, who leans into his chest.

Maedhros gives his brother a long, contemplative look, then nods and stands. “Would you like me to have someone bring over your harp?” he asks. “Or anything else?”

“Ah,” Maglor blinks. “Yes, please. The harp and… some clothes, I suppose. Moryo knows—”

Findaráto squeezes his lover’s arms briefly.

Maglor wiggles in response. “I know,” he says, “but he really does know what I have better than I do. He made, or at least altered, most of it…”

This is probably another thing they’ll half to talk about. Itarillë’s healing from her own injury involved a long process of making more and more of her own choices, which was natural anyway at her age. Findaráto suspects Maglor’s journey won’t be nearly so smooth.

“Shall I bring you a selection of everyday wear then?” Maedhros seems to catch this as well, probably putting together pieces of extrapolated information lightning quick as he always does.

“Sure,” Maglor nods slowly. “I guess I’ll pick from that. Thank you.”

“Of course,” Maedhros says softly, stepping around the table to drop a kiss on his brother’s hair before nodding to Findaráto and Turukáno and taking his leave.

“Breakfast time?” Findaráto asks then, standing up to stretch and yawn.

Turukáno yawns too and flashes him a rude gesture for it, which makes Maglor laugh, then follow suit.

“I’m, ah, not very hungry,” says the bard after a moment. “I’ll eat later?”

Turukáno nods. “We’ll put something aside for you,” he agrees. “Do you want to crawl today or be carried?”

Maglor frowns. “I think I’ll try Curvo’s feet, actually,” he says.

Findaráto grins and hurries to retrieve the case. The prosthetics that Maglor pulls out and shows them how they’re worn are certainly a bit odd looking, but as it’s not his own feet that need replacing, Findaráto will trust his lover’s judgement.

“I’ll be very wobbly, as like,” Maglor holds out his hands, and Turukáno offers himself to be leaned on.

The bard is indeed very wobbly, but he seems surer of himself with every small shuffle-step and Findaráto holds open the tent flap so his partners can make their way out into the sunlight.

It feels perhaps painfully symbolic, but the kind of ache that recalls battles won rather than significant loss. Findaráto will take it.

Across the circle of tents, Itarillë cheers to see Maglor walking, demanding to be carried over to ‘help him’. Findaráto hops to with a grin, feeling truly warm for the first time since he’d stepped onto the Ice.