Talking Hurts by Lipstick

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Chapter 3

Warning: This is seriously AU. Non-con sex. Slightly gory imagery.

 

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Chapter Three

Maglor has not asked about Thangorodrim. For that, at least, I am grateful. Events, even terrible events can be comprehended. Nothingness is beyond description. However long I was there for, I was there forever. One memory, repeated over and over, gasping for breath.

It does not sound like much. I am sorry I cannot describe it in any way that will make another Quendi understand. My legs are broken. They have healed all-shapes. Luinianth has told me they shall have to be broken again and re-set.

I know, Lady Healer. You did try and save me from this. But that does not mean you were right.

My legs are broken because I smashed them against the rock-face. To try for another kind of pain. To try and make something else happen. Breathing in, breathing out, scrabbling with bleeding feet against the precipice for a foothold that was not there. I dragged the whole of my body up by my right arm every time, every time I stole a little sip of poisoned air.

And still I kept breathing. My spirit sobbed to rest, just rest and my body kept refusing. It was the instinct of an animal, something base and deep. I could not stop breathing.

The leg thrashing must have happened fairly early on, when I still had some strength spare to struggle with. Perhaps it became easier after that, when my Hröa became too weak to tense against the agony. Or perhaps I just lost the wits to comprehend pain. I know I hallucinated wildly, although not all of these amazing visions turned out to be untrue. There was a little blood then, bubbling and snapping around my lips. And my vision darkened.

The last thing I remember was the stench. Above the reek of Angband's fumes, the smell of decaying flesh. I remembered it from long ago, Fingon and I, finding the den of a fox who had curled up to die. My hröa was rotting around my spirit. Then there was nothing until the singing in the dark.

By then, I am sure I was a waste of a good arrow.

***

It occurs to me I have rather a lot of brothers. I do not know if this is yet another of those dreamy observations caused by the healer's cures, or if it has only struck me now, when I cannot run away from them at will.

Today, I am playing host to Curufin. He, at least, keeps his hands to himself.

"It is a rowan tree," He says, noticing the direction of my gaze. "They mainly grow in the mountains to the south of here."

I nod.

"I planted the one here for Celebrimbor. He is very fond of them."

"How long have I been here?" I ask.

"Three weeks."

"How long has Fingolfin been in Middle-earth?"

"Five years."

"What?"

"Five solar years. Half a Valinorian Year. Years have now been shortened due to a surplus of events."

"Curufin, I heard him. I saw them come over the hills and ride past the gates of Angband."

"You also saw Maglor die."

"But Fingolfin really did follow us to Middle-earth. Maglor told me."

"You could not have been chained to a mountain for five years, Maitimo. It would have killed you."

"It does not appear to have."

"It is impossible."

"I saw Fingolfin, honestly brother." If I were not lying down, I would be in grave danger of screeching.

"Then how, pray tell, are you here to speak of it?"

I am not lying to you, Curufin. I can prove it.

"I was hung on the Thangorodrim, eight days after Morgoth received your final letter."

"Then," Curufin stops and looks at me with a kind of wonder, "You were there for a lot longer than five years."

"Tree-years or Solar?" I ask.

"It does not matter."

He is right. Impossibly long is impossibly long however you measure it. Agony has its own unique timescale. It cares nothing for sun or moon.

"Why do you live?"

"I do not know." I pause. "Perhaps the Lords of the West have unfinished business with me yet."

 

***

Something very unusual is happening to my skin. I am peeling. I must look peculiar. Looking at my arms, I can see patches of grey skin hanging loose, tearing away. I leave pieces of dead skin behind me when I turn over in bed. They lie on the mattress like the wings of a crushed dragonfly.

The new skin underneath is pink and smooth, like the skin beneath a scab. Luinianth slathers the baby skin in ointment. If the heir of Fëanor has decided to live on in an orcish state, she at least will make sure as little of the yurch as possible is visible to the naked eye. Like Akasân, she too puts henna in my hair. Like him, she is preparing me to play a role.

I can sit up now, although doing so for too long makes my back and hips ache. I sit up in bed and practice writing. I copy pages and pages of the same letter, over and over, like when I was a child. I remember it being frustrating then, and it is equally frustrating now.

I write my name. Maedhros. Sheets and sheets of paper, covered in clumsy approximation of what I am. What I was not permitted to be.

This obsession clearly bothers Maglor. I am cross from the effort. My explanations are somewhat more terse than they should be.

"It is my name, Maglor." I snap. “I doubt you realise how important names are until yours is taken from you."

"Of course I realise how important names are."

Of course he does. He is a poet. But I feel curiously determined to be unfriendly.

"We were supposed to be nameless, identifiable only by the numbers hacked into our arms or our ankles. But we gave ourselves names in the foul speech we were forced to use. It was a Quendi trait, but it brought us closer to orcishness even in our rebellion."

Then again, what do I know? I was in the mines for a few weeks at most. I saw enough there to make me grateful I should never return.

"What did they call you?"

"Drìznak."

"What does that mean?"

"It cannot be translated." Thankfully.

What I was, was Drìznak. I reflect Akasân had intended that to be my fate from the outset. I was merely sent to the mines to make sure I had no delusions about the alternatives.

"I do not believe that."

"It means an elf-thrall who is passed around among the ruling elite for sex."

I think I should have broken that to my brother more gently. He sits for a long time, eyes wide, saying nothing.

"You?"

"Me."

He looks pale.

"Did you think of that? Did the thought occur to you at all?"

"No."

"Maybe you should think more, Maglor."

Maybe you should think before you send letters to Morgoth abandoning me to my fate. A fate you cannot even comprehend.

I do not know if I have said the last words aloud, or if I thought them so forcefully my brother read my mind. He reaches out to my hair.

"Do not touch me." I say with poison in my voice. "Do not think for one moment a little tenderness from you now can repair the damage you have done."

Maglor just sits there looking stung. Then he gets up and leaves me to my temper.

The next letter I write, I snap the quill. So I sit and hold my knees instead, sick with rage.

I know I am being unreasonable.

I know I would have done the same in his position.

I know I would do the same to him, knowing what I do now.

Is this what was meant by the doom - Treachery of kin unto kin?

At least for the mariners of Alqualondë it was over fairly quickly.

After a while, the storm passes. We are cursed and we shall just have to get on with it.

That night Maglor slept in my bed. We used to do that as children, when our parents fought or there was thunder in the sky. He curled up against me like a dormouse and I stroked his hair while he cried.