Something Un-Feanorian by Himring

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Chapter 3

Valinor: No dreams, no corpses, but a double flashback.

Glimpses of Fingon and Celebrian.

The whole story was originally conceived to fulfill a prompt by Alasse: Elrond visiting Maedhros after his reincarnation in Valinor--which the third and final chapter has now delivered...

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Former High King Fingon is beginning to get on my nerves.  I could swear he has spent almost an hour already explaining to me that Maedhros had a very difficult time of it in the last days of Beleriand. I know.  I was there. He was not.  I was also aware that Maedhros had committed suicide. Does he really imagine that is news to me?

 

Yes, I do realize that Maedhros has only been recently released from Mandos.  Yes, I have met others who were only recently released and know what I can and what I cannot expect of them. Yes, of course, I know Namo has judged him! Honestly, who does Fingon Fingolfinion think he is? Or more to the point, who does he think I am?

 

He is eyeing me as if he thought I had a bow and arrows concealed about my person or maybe an undetectable poison that will make Maedhros die in hideous convulsions if I so much as touch his hand. Yes, I know he is Maitimo’s cousin Findekano, the one who saved Maedhros from Thangorodrim, but hasn’t Maedhros told him anything at all about me? Well, actually, knowing Maedhros, he probably hasn’t… 

 

Well, even if he hasn’t, I was the most famous and highly-qualified healer in all of Middle-Earth before I left, for goodness’s sake. I have earned the professional respect of Olorin and even of Lorien himself! But Fingon Fingolfinion believes he can treat me as if I were a mere butcher…   

 

Ah, at last he is beginning to see the light. He will graciously permit me to see Maedhros by myself and not insist on standing guard over him as we speak! But oh, how reluctantly he agrees to conduct me to the garden and leave me there to meet him on my own, how he cannot resist adding a parting admonition or two! Yes, yes, I will call him right away if I see the need. But we definitely will not be needing you, Your Royal Highness.

 

Still seething, I open the back door and step out into the garden. A gleam of sunlight on red hair, as a familiar figure at the opposite end raises its head—and at once I forget all about the greatest healer of Middle-earth and his professional dignity. Even as Maedhros is slowly getting up from the bench against the garden wall, I launch myself straight towards him, narrowly missing trampling someone’s cherished bed of petunias, and fling my arms around his neck.

 

…and instantly I realize the extent of my mistake. He rears up like a deer startled from its thicket of guilt and shame, rigid with shock. Far too late, I remember that, as far as Maedhros is concerned, we almost certainly never had a nocturnal conversation in the ruins of Eregion. His last memory of me, if he does remember it, will be my voice in his mind calling to him in vain as he fell…

 

Oh fool, fool! Do I call myself a healer? Why did I not heed Fingon’s warnings? I can feel the panic rising in him underneath my hands, his pulse thumping in his veins, as if he is about to dump me on the gravel of the garden path and flee. For a moment, I envision Fingon and myself side by side on our knees, trying to coax Maedhros out from under the bed, while Fingon throws me reproachful glances—and all because of my lack of common sense and petty jealousy.

 

I whip my hands away, as if his skin had burnt me, and stagger backwards. But even as I lose my balance, he regains his—and his other, deeper instincts take over. For it is not in Maedhros, son of Feanor, to allow someone to drop right before his eyes. A quick hard grip on my elbow—and he is holding me up just by the strength in the fingers of his left hand. I look up into those haunted eyes of his and remember how we met the first time…

 

***

 

Maglor grabbed me by the arm pits and lifted me up, thrusting me unceremoniously at the tall stranger on his horse, who stared down at me as I dangled in front of his chest, looking horrified as if he thought I might bite him.

 

‘Makalaure!’, he exclaimed and launched into agitated Quenya.

 

My Quenya was limited to a couple of words and the simplest of sentences. The only word I understood, because it was being emphatically repeated, was: Children! Children!  Apparently, children were a very bad thing as far as the tall, red-haired stranger was concerned.

 

It had been a long night full of fear and flame. Maglor later assured me that I had been extremely brave throughout, a true little hero. But just then I had had enough. Dangling there in mid-air in the chill light of dawn, I felt my arms and legs going cold. I shivered. The face of the stranger in front of me seemed to be receding, and at the corner of my eyes there was a growing darkness.

 

Above me, there came a cry of alarm. Suddenly, I was seized and found myself tucked inside a sheltering arm, my feet propped securely against the saddle. I felt the stranger’s heartbeat underneath my temple. He smelt all wrong—like Maglor, of blood and smoke and sweat, and also of something else that I could not identify, not then—but it seemed that the stranger who objected to children knew more about how to hold them than Maglor did.

 

‘Something sweet’, he said above my head in Sindarin, in tones accustomed to command. ‘Something to drink. I doubt he is in a condition to chew properly just now.’

 

‘Honey-sweetened wine?’, someone else offered doubtfully.

 

‘Not ideal, but it will have to do, under the circumstances.’ And then, as he bent closer,  Maedhros addressed his first words directly to me: ‘Little one, this is going to taste pretty vile, I’m afraid, but if you have just a tiny sip, it will do you good, I promise.’

 

It tasted as vile as he said, but I swallowed obediently.

 

‘Well done.’ He gave me a little squeeze. ‘Help me drape my cloak around him’, he said to one of the others. ‘Thank you... Now, no more time!  We leave now—discuss it later, Makalaure, when we haven’t got Cirdan breathing down our necks.’

 

And so I left Sirion, tucked in the crook of Maedhros’s arm. As the horse moved underneath us, warmth slowly seeped back into my limbs, but I felt very, very tired, so very tired that I could not think clearly at all. I could no longer even attempt to work out what had happened or where we were going. All I could do was to listen to Maedhros’s steady heartbeat.

 

He began speaking in Quenya again, very softly now, as if he was sharing secrets with me. This time, I could not understand a single word but he spoke so gently that I let the music of those sentences wash over and around me in a stream of silver, as if it did not matter. The tenderness of his voice, the care with which he cradled me against his chest seemed to convey their meaning clear enough.

 

I was wrong about that, of course. At our first halt, he passed me over to one of his companions, without another word.

 

***

 

You see, I said to Celebrian, he was rescued from Angband, yes. Do you know how long he had been there, first in its dungeons, then up there on that cliff? People have spent yeni in Lorien over lesser hurts. But because he was who he was, because it was the way things were, from the moment he returned to Mithrim, there was the feud within the House of Finwe to deal with. There was the Oath, there were the War and the Curse, all waiting for him, and he could refuse none of it.

 

By the time I met him, he had been contending with all that for centuries; even his strengths had turned against him. But I could not help thinking if only I had met him earlier! If I had been older and better trained when I did! I had the inheritance of Melian in my blood, and he was dying bit by bit before my eyes. He was Maedhros the Kinslayer, of course. I do not expect you to understand.

 

I trained. He was dead, by then, and it was too late to do anything for him, but I trained.  I found myself the best teachers; I gained any and all qualifications that were on offer. And I practised. I am a Feanorian by upbringing, my love; we have always been perfectionists. Ever since, I have healed anyone of any wound or disease that I could. And now I find it all in vain, for it seems that it is always those that are closest to our hearts we cannot help.

 

Celebrian, my love, I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to stand by and watch as everything that should uphold and sustain you turns inexorably into another painful link in the chains that bind you.  Maedhros could not leave, but you can. As far as it is in me, I set you free. Go then, go, before it is too late for you, as it was for him!’

 

***

 

Such a long time ago, all of that, ages past—but now, in a garden in Tirion, Maedhros Feanorion is clasping me with both hands. As his right hand cautiously closes on my shoulder, his face clears and the last trace of unreasoning panic ebbs away.

 

‘Elrond’, he says wonderingly, as if he has only just recognized me. ‘Why, Elrond!’