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.

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.