I Won't Bite by Agelast

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Epilogue

This chapter contains some discussion of past character death. (They got better.) 

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He was like a man reprieved, blinking in the bright sunlight.

Except that wasn't quite it, since punishment had long since come and gone, leaving him once again, unmarked and given a share of time, for whatever peace he could find. He had thought (idly, as it turned out) that he could turn his hand at growing cabbages or raising pigs. But as for the former, he found that he lacked a talent for agriculture (if he had to do it himself rather than organize it), and as for the latter... He had thought raising six brothers was an onerous and smelly task!

Perhaps he should take up a new hobby entirely – perhaps underwater-basket weaving. Except, of course, the class for underwater-basket weaving would take place in Aqualondë, and that was still a place he could not go to – for all the talk of truth and reconciliation preached about by his uncle. (And aunt, he reminded himself, with a lingering hint of surprise, remembering the trace of steel behind Ëarwen's eyes when they had met again. Had she always resembled her strong-willed daughter so much?)

Now that Artanis – that was to say, Galadriel, the name she wished to be called by – was back in Tirion, he could ask her himself. That is, if she should wish to talk to him, which was doubtful. She certainly hadn't been in the mood the last time he had seen her – across the smoking wreck of Doriath, a child clutched to her breast. They had stared at each over, both unrecognizable from the people they once been. He had thought it was her daughter and had felt momentarily hurt that she had not seen fit to even send him a letter telling him that he had a new cousin.

Except the child hadn't been hers at all, but Dior's, and had had a Silmaril around her neck. The Silmaril that had always slipped through his fingers, like water.

As for his own Silmaril... He could still feel the burn of the jewel, the way it had licked at his palm and melted into his flesh... His left hand still burned at times, although the flesh was new and healed, perfect. But still, the pain hung on in memory. It was the same with his right, though for different reasons, a different pain.

Maedhros closed his eyes. The sun was far too bright.

He pulled the ancient straw-hat (an heirloom of his house, the only one left) over his face, and wondered how he dared show his face to the world now. He also wondered if the light would make him freckle, which would be, of course, just punishment for his crimes.

Well.

True repentance was one thing, but there was no need to go overboard.

He heard a step behind him and snapped that truly, he did not want for anything. Irritably, he said, “Stop hovering, Findekáno, and spend time with your wife and child!” (And though time and the world had passed, he had not quite forgiven his valiant cousin for... )

But Fingon was very kind, to let Maedhros stay on here. And 'here' was not a splendid palace as was originally offered, but a small stone cottage and a small garden, ringed with a high, high wall.

It was meant as much to protect himself from Aman, as Aman, from him.

That was yet another unfruitful thing to think about. So, he turned his thoughts back to Fingon. Well, for all of Fingon's virtues – of which there were many – subtlety was not one of them. He would appear, again and again, at Maedhros' door, with a new sheet of music, or a piece of honey-cake, or a  new chessboard on which they could play – all of it to keep Maedhros out of his awful depressive funk, as Fingon described it, as if (restless, admittedly) contemplation of his past misdeeds was merely a passing mood.

Now, Fingon was a dear old friend (the dearest friend Maedhros had ever had), but he was entirely without a clue.

And he would not stop hovering.

“I'm not what's-his-name. Findekáno. He doesn't know I'm here.”
Maedhros opened his eyes wide. He couldn't keep the wonder out his voice. “How did you get in here?”
Oropher said, “I climbed the wall.”

And he smiled, bright as any jewel.

* * *

Old habits die the hard, and he couldn't help saying, “You should be furious. You should kill me, don't you see?”

But Oropher couldn't seem to see this obvious fact. He ignored him. It was as if Maedhros hadn't spoken at all. Instead, sitting beside him in the springy green grass, Oropehr told Maedhros about what had happened after Beleriand drowned.

Oropher had gone off – to the edge of the known world, almost. He had met a woman there, had married her – she was of the Nandor, had never heard of Beleriand, of Doriath, of the Silmarils, and most of all, hadn't minded that he had loved another.

Here, Oropher gave him a swift, searching look. Maedhros took his hat off – freckles be damned – and began to twist it in his hands.

They had had a golden-haired child, who he had named Thranduil. In looks, he had been very much Oropher's son. But in mood, he had taken after his mother – “A regal woman,” Oropher said, a touch wistfully. “She will never leave Middle-earth. Not to meet me here, nor to follow Thranduil, if he should decide to sail one day. She follows her own path.”

Maedhros tried to make sense of what he was being told, and what he could remember as a naked fëa, peering anxiously into Vairë's tapestries. “You were a king, the king of Greenwood.” Greenwood the Great, a forest almost without end.

Oropher looked vaguely embarrassed. “I did not want them to call me that! The Nandor had no king, and wished for none in honor of Lenwë who was slain, and Denethor his son. But the survivors from Doriath were used to such things.” Maedhros gave him a distraught look, but Oropher continued on. “They  insisted on calling me that. Soon, everyone followed. When Gil-galad started sending letters addressed to the King of Greenwood, I was the only one who could answer back with what he sought.”

(Maedhros was far too polite to mention the giant spiders.) 

Instead, he nodded, remembering the Second Age, Sauron, the Last Alliance of Elves and Men. The Men, Maedhros remembered only vaguely and with some faint loathing – since the Nírnaeth, he could not help but regard Men as a whole as a bad lot.

(As ironic as that was.)

But he could remember Gil-galad easily enough, though his paternity was more of a challenge. True, he was a cousin of some sort. But then again, Maedhros did have a very great number of cousins. As for Elrond – wise and brave – who could forget him? He was his brother's own foster-son, after all.

“Prigs, both of them,” said Oropher, briefly. “Well, pricks, really.” Maedhros bit his lip and regarded the hem of his shirt cuff studiously. It was fraying, he realized with dismay.

“But pricks though they were, and though they had their heads stuffed up their own asses half the time, it was me, only me that – well, I sent my own men to their deaths, and it was no consolation that I died with them.”

Maedhros couldn't help but staring. Who was this strange elf, and what had he done with Oropher? (Though the profanity, regrettably, was familiar.)

As for Oropher himself, he went on, his face flushing in excitement, “Oh, but don't you see? I've spent ages being angry and bitter. Being thoroughly ashamed of myself. I couldn't decide who I blamed more, you for doing what you did – or myself for running away when they needed me most. It poisoned me, ate me up inside, so in the end, I ran straight to death, because I thought that was what I deserved.”  

Maedhros said, a tad impatiently, “But? There is a but, isn't there?”

Oropher laughed, a rich sound that sprang over the hum of growing things, and reverberated in the garden, and around the high walls that surrounded them. “But –  I am alive again! And so are you, and so are they. Why hold on to ancient hurts? What good will they do us now?”

After a while, Maedhros conceded this much: “You've grown wise since I saw you last.”

“And you,” Oropher said, reaching out to tuck away a stray lock of hair from behind Maedhros' ear. “Have grown positively young! I would not have recognized you, except, of course, for the fact that you're very hard to miss.”

They sat together in companionable silence for a long time. The afternoon sun sank lower into the east, and the shadows grew longer in the garden. Suddenly, Oropher got up and started busily to dust his leggings, the seat of his pants, stained green with grass.

He looked up as he finished. “Well, are you coming?”

Maedhros' hat was straw-colored dust in his hands. It was a pity. His grandfather had loved that hat, had exchanged a golden crown for that hat, when they had been exiled to Formenos. And now it was dust.

No, he thought. I should stay here. I should stay here, and wait for my brothers to be rehoused, for Maglor to come back from the other shore. I should wait for Amil to forgive me, for the rest of my family to decide to speak to me again. I should -- 
I should do all of these things.

What would Atar say?

But Fëanor was dead and could say nothing, his brothers were dead (mostly) and unreachable, certainly. They needed nothing. The Oath was void. His Silmaril burned in the heart of the world.

Maedhros looked up at Oropher, who stood over him, looking very pleased with himself.

The realization crashed over his head. He was free. For the first time in his life. For the first time in both of his lives.

“Where?” said Maedhros. “What would we do? Where would we go?”

“Anything – as long as we don't hurt anyone –  and anywhere – as long as we stay in Valinor, I suppose,” said Oropher.

And that was what they did.

 

 

 

 

The End.