Down. Out. Up. by Himring

Down.

In the following, Maedhros hears Elrond ("a boy") calling him in his mind, but does not recognize that that is what he is hearing. This incident and the walk in the forest with Elrond that Maedhros remembers are told from Elrond's view in A Walk in the Forest, an Evening by the Fire.

Macalaure is Maglor's Quenya name.

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He's not an orc. He's worse; he's Maedhros. Elves withstand orc attacks. Elves don't die of diseases. But they die of Maedhros. He looks at them, and they sustain irreparable damage. He touches them, and they die. When they don't die quickly enough, he helps them along. Why? Were there reasons? Were there reasons for anything? He's forgotten them.

Clearly, he should not be here, should not even be. Because he is here, nobody else is. If he weren't here, everybody else might still be—might be safe in that Other Place that he also doesn't remember. Maybe if he ceases to exist, everyone else will reappear. Admittedly, it seems unlikely.

'Not kill anyone again', promises the Earth, 'not hurt anyone again, not fail anyone again.' There is no choice. He steps onto the edge of the gaping chasm.

Someone calling him? Macalaure? But it cannot be Macalaure. He killed Macalaure, destroyed him long ago. He is sure he must have done, although he can’t remember doing it. The voice is a delusion. There is nobody left. There cannot be anybody calling him.

He steps off the edge. He begins falling. The flames roar up to meet him. Searing heat slams into him like a wall. Then fire is all about him, so bright that he can't see, like Outer Darkness. His body has gone into shock; pain burns out pain and leaves him floating.

Shield...flame...shield... flame...shield. Another voice calling him? A memory. The thoughts of a boy filtering into his mind, a boy thinking: How strange! How very safe it feels to walk through the forest beside my mad, murderous cousin. He examines the memory carefully. It has to do with green things, young things, growing things. Safety? It can't have anything to do with Maedhros. He dismisses it, regretfully. Another delusion.

He goes on falling. He seems to be falling very slowly now. The roar of the flames is so loud that he can't hear it anymore. But suddenly he hears his own voice speaking, quietly but with utter conviction; he hears it inside himself. His voice says: ‘I love you.’

He begins to think about that sentence, taking time to look at each of the words that go to make it up. First, he realizes that he doesn't know what ‘love’ means, although he has a vague feeling that he might have done, once. Then he wonders who ‘you’ might be. Someone, anyone among all those he killed, failed, betrayed? Such a short time ago, it was the particularity of all those lost lives that was tearing him apart, but now he can't seem to remember anymore who they were. No individual face, no name presents itself; pain has fused all into one comprehensive failure, one aching mass of betrayal and death. After a while, he realizes that not only can he not identify ‘you’, he has only the haziest notion of who ‘I’ might be, either. Someone who loves? He decides the sentence is meaningless. Another delusion? He seems to be subject to a lot of delusions.

'Smoke poisoning,' he reasons. 'Breathing in fumes.'

He congratulates himself on the lucidity of that deduction and slowly goes on falling.

After a while, he finds that although the sentence that he heard might be meaningless, the conviction with which his voice uttered it has gone on resonating inside him nevertheless. It seems to be getting stronger, as if the resonance was gradually building up in his mind rather than abating. Eventually, it begins to demand a response—something to do with the tension in his wrists.

He begins to try to open the fingers of his left hand. They are clamped tight and refuse to budge, but he insists. Reluctantly, they unfold. Something falls, slips downward. There, that was the first part, the easy part.

The second part is much, much harder. The fingers of his right hand seem to be knotted together inextricably; they won't move at all. He goes on trying. It seems impossible, but he's stubborn, he's patient, and he seems to have all eternity to work with, for he has been falling forever and still just goes on falling. After a very long time, he finally feels those rock-hard fingers shift, just an infinitesimal fraction of an inch, and something very small, very thin, very light escape from in between. It seems to go flying upwards.

It occurs to him that, although he still doesn't know what the words in the sentence meant—in fact, he seems to be fast running out of words altogether—, he must have known all along what the sentence itself meant, otherwise he couldn't have followed instructions, wouldn't know that, somehow, in some incomprehensible way, he's just succeeded in carrying them out. Maybe it is even about to come to him, what exactly he just did, why it was important.

Instead he remembers, with amazement, that he has no right hand. Then something enormous comes rushing up and hits him in the face, hard.

Out. Up.

The story of how Fingon finds the newly reborn Maedhros in the Gardens of Lorien is told at the end of Looking at the Stars and Counting the Hours. Maedhros has meanwhile followed Fingon to Tirion.

Quenya names: Feanaro=Feanor, Findekano=Fingon, Macalaure=Maglor, Maitimo=Maedhros, Turukano=Turgon.

Read Out. Up.

I

Fingon:

He lies on his back on the bed. A full complement of hands, smooth, intact skin without scars...   Drop-dead gorgeous—as long as you manage to ignore the expression on his face. I can’t.

‘Do you want to?’

‘No. Not unless you do—and I don’t think you’re ready for that.’

He accepts my answer without a flicker of emotion. It was only the most polite, most disinterested of inquiries in any case. I lie down beside him and cradle his head against my chest.

‘I forgot you.’

I had not expected this, not after what he said to me in Lorien. It’s surprising how much it hurts. Vanity outweighing all other considerations? Did I think he had my name on his lips as he went kin-slaying in Sirion? Would I have wanted him to?

‘When I threw myself into the chasm’, he says, unconsciously deflecting my train of thought. ‘As I was falling, I tried to remember you—your name, your face, who you were... It was as if the Silmaril had burned you out of my mind, as if I was falling into a hole in my memory as well as a hole in the earth...’

There is nothing wrong with his eyes, as far as I can make out, but when I came to find him in Lorien, he had to strain to see me. When I speak to him, he listens hard, as if my voice was almost beyond the range of hearing.

‘I don’t recall anything at all of what happened in the Halls of Mandos, except that it seemed to take a very long time... But do you think, maybe, I was let out just for that—so that I might be allowed to remember you?’

I can’t answer, but it seems he doesn’t expect me to. He settles his cheek more comfortably against my ribs and closes his eyes.

The last time I slept in this bed, I slept alone. Tonight I share it with a lunatic who claims that he tried to remember my name seconds before he burnt to a cinder. It occurs to me I would find it difficult to explain to anyone why this constitutes a definite improvement.

 

II

Finarfin:

Findekano has forbidden visitors. Findekano is behaving like a cat defending a single new-born kitten. I don’t quite understand this and, because I don’t understand it, it worries me. 

‘Is Maitimo likely to make trouble?’, I ask him, allowing myself to be diverted to the political in the face of more indefinable personal worries.

‘Trouble?’ He looks startled. ‘What kind of trouble?’

‘Will he try to interfere with the status quo—to upset the balance of power in Tirion?’

‘Uncle...! Tirion is practically swarming with former High Kings in Middle-earth, and you managed to handle them all. And you worry about the one who abdicated almost as soon as he succeeded to the crown?’

I fully realize I am about to be tactless, but there is this nagging worry at the back of my brain...

‘There are rumours that he didn’t really abdicate at all, that he was the one who made most of the decisions...’

He looks at me, exasperated. ‘Yes, I’ve heard those rumours. They were put about by kind, generous people who decided that I couldn’t possibly be to blame for the Nirnaeth, so it must have been all Maitimo’s fault. No, Uncle, the Nirnaeth was very much a mistake Maitimo and I made together. It wasn’t even, strictly speaking, a mistake, except in hindsight and except for the obvious flaws in execution, of course...  I know that Turukano and his family never gave up hope of rescue by the Valar, but you must admit that at the time we had no real reason to expect such a thing and Turukano’s attempts to appeal to Valinor hadn’t been exactly crowned with success...’

He notices my slow, reluctant wince. ‘Oh, Uncle—you know I’m not reproaching you in any way!’

I know he isn’t. None of them has ever uttered the least reproach. Even after all this time, it still gets to me, every time one of them is reborn. ‘If I was so obviously right, as you all pretend to believe now,’ it makes me want to yell, ‘why didn’t you listen to me then!’

Because Findekano is conscious of having unintentionally hurt me, he relents in the matter at hand and, with an anxious frown, consents to fetch Maitimo. I sit back on the garden bench and try to get to the bottom of my own concern, without much success. Findekano returns, followed by a tall, silent shadow: Maitimo the famous diplomat, like a bashful overgrown adolescent trying to conceal himself behind his cousin’s back. He’s even hiding his face in his hair like a schoolgirl.

Maitimo sits down opposite me, and still all I’m seeing is red hair. I know it makes me sound ridiculously like a teacher, but I say it nevertheless: ‘I can’t see your face, Maitimo. Look at me.’

He hesitates, lifts his left hand and sweeps back the swath of hair from his face.  We look at each other, and I gulp. I was wrong about the bashfulness. None of the newly reborn has been easy to look in the eyes, but Maitimo is something else. I have to remind myself firmly that I am absolutely certain that Tirion is not going up in flames behind my back.

‘Findekano says my presence in Tirion worries you. I’ve pointed out to him that any responsible king would be worried at having Maedhros the Kin-slayer within the walls of his city, but he appears to think that is not really the problem.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ I agree, realizing that, however shaken I may be feeling just now, this is true. ‘It is because you killed yourself.’

He waits patiently for me to continue. His eyelids are lowered now. His hair is beginning to drift back over his face.

‘When the War was over, you sent a message to Eonwe, demanding the Silmarils. Why did you never send any message of any kind to me? Everyone was ready to tell me terrible and damning tales of the deeds of the sons of Feanor, but the most terrible and damning thing of all was your silence... You had done all that, and you seemed to feel you had nothing at all to say to me—or to any of us!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? You launched a suicidal attack on our camp and then, when Eonwe allowed you to get away with it, you committed suicide anyway. I know they say it was the Silmaril...’

‘It was, in part, the Silmaril.’

‘Maitimo...!’

‘I’m sorry, Uncle.’

‘Are you, Maitimo? And will you forgive me for not having come to find you before, wherever you were hiding in the woods of Beleriand?’

Those eyes are now looking straight at me again. Whatever terrible things they are conveying, accusation—of me or anyone beside himself—isn’t one of them. He would be puzzled by my question, if it were in him to be puzzled. It is also evident that he will readily and sincerely apologize for just about anything I might challenge him with because he thinks he is guilty of so much worse. It makes him oddly impervious to any particular charge.

I remember how I stumbled across the camp that night in Beleriand, half-dressed and confused, only to find that my nephews had come and gone, leaving another small pile of corpses behind them—and nothing to explain how these desperate killers, the notorious sons of Feanor, could possibly be the Maitimo and Macalaure I had known.

I still don’t understand. This devastated revenant is somehow both the dreaded kin-slayer and my eldest nephew, who I thought I loved. It’s a relief that at least I’m not required to judge him, for it has already been done.

‘All right then, welcome home, Maitimo.’

‘Thank you. I’m not sure I’ve still got a home, except wherever Findekano happens to be.  But I’ve been wrong about this kind of thing before.’

‘Except where Findekano happens to...? Oh.’

Findekano flushes and takes Maitimo’s hand.  Maitimo, for the first time, seems a little disconcerted. It shows less in his face than in his back and shoulders.

‘Sorry—you hadn’t realized? I thought that his coming to Lorien to pick me up like a strayed dog would have been a dead give-away, but apparently not. Are you worried all over again now?’

This is a scandalous affair, socially quite inacceptable. I find it wonderfully reassuring.

‘No. Actually, no... Although I would appreciate it if you kept it quiet. Some people in Tirion remain easily shocked...’

I take my leave. They stay sitting on the garden bench, cousins holding hands. Decorative reeds tower above them, hiding a water feature. From a dozen paces off, they look absurdly innocent.

 Even the terrifying eldest son of Feanaro has absolutely no interest in blaming me for anything.

III

Fingon:

‘I’m sorry, it looks absolutely hideous’, he says, frowning.’ I’ll have to undo it and try again... I’m not tweaking it, am I? ‘

‘No.’

‘Who would have thought it? Sometimes it seems almost as difficult to learn to use two hands again, as it was to get by with only one.’

Carefully, he pulls the gold thread out of the misshapen braid as it comes undone, trying not to let it catch. He has become so engrossed in this small task that, maybe for the first time since he came here, his face fully reflects the present moment. He has finally permitted himself to escape the ruin and destruction of Beleriand to sit with me in a sunlit room in Tirion and braid my hair. And he seems to be making a thorough mess of it, too.

‘Are you sure you’re happy to sit through that again?’

‘All afternoon, if you like.’

He raises his eyes from his clumsy fingers and looks at me.

‘Thank you for your patience with me.’

It’s our first kiss in Valinor. I’m careful not to attempt to deepen it. After a moment’s hesitation, he does.

IV

Maedhros:

It still scares me, this reincarnation of the Tirion of my youth.  It seems so fragile—solid Noldorin architecture, all granite and marble as it used to be, but I’m afraid I might accidentally punch my fist through the walls. And the people! I keep wanting to hold my breath around them, as if even the most ephemeral contact between us might eat gaping holes in their bodies like acid.

Death seemed much safer. But Findekano wants me here, and I have always made exceptions for Findekano. So I consent to exist, for his sake, and every day it becomes a little easier.

V

Fingon:

Every morning, once he has begun to venture out into the streets of Tirion again, he climbs all the steps to the top of the Mindon and leans out, looking east. As always, after our long time apart, I’m at his side.

‘What are you looking for now?’, I ask him when we’ve been doing it for a week. ‘You used to look north to Angband, but Angband is drowned deep, and so is all of Beleriand.’

‘I’m waiting for Macalaure,’ he answers me. ‘I long for his coming, because I would give almost anything to see him again.’

He gently covers my hand with his.

‘And I fear his coming, because...’

Illustration (!!) by Alasse

Maedhros braiding Fingon's hair, re-learning the use of his right hand.

(A scene in Out. Up.)

As the description implies, most of the warnings attached to the story itself don't apply. (Not explicitly slash, either.)

Read Illustration (!!) by Alasse

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Chapter End Notes

Posted here by the generous permission of Alasse. Thank you so much, both for drawing this lovely picture in the first place and also for allowing me to put it up on this site!

Alasse's modest disclaimer: characters belong to Tolkien, scene belongs to Himring, background reference was taken from LotR movies' Rivendell... Bad perspective, on the other hand, is all mine.