Reflection by Nibeneth

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Chapter 1

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“We shall start on the dried herbs tomorrow, and the ointments the day after that. Oh, don't look at me like that, you should know by now that as soon as the Autumn equinox comes—”

“—We must lay up fresh supplies for winter,” Elrond finished. “Yes, Master Osgardir, I will not complain while we work. I just wish...” He trailed off, embarrassed, and instead busied himself with gathering up the infirmary's book on skeletal anatomy and the notes he had taken while studying it. He was too old to say what he wished.

“What is it?”

“Never mind.”

Osgardir clapped him on the back. “Dear boy, you are my apprentice, not my servant. If something vexes you about this arrangement, we can work it through.” He went across the infirmary to his desk and began to lock it up for the night. “Well?”

Elrond hunched his shoulders. “I wish something exciting would happen.” Sure enough, as soon as the words left his mouth, he wished he could call them back. Osgardir just laughed.

“'Exciting' around here is likely a bit more exciting than you're prepared for. You'll see plenty of that, Elrond. But for now, we'll stock up on medicine.”

It wasn't as if Elrond was completely new at this. Osgardir had been visiting a patient elsewhere in the fort when Bredhrien's hunting party brought her back with a gaping laceration in her leg from a boar's tusks. He was alone and there was no time to wait for someone to fetch the experienced healer. But he had also been studying very hard and assisting where Osgardir needed it, and when he looked at the mangled wound, all that came to his mind was a calm, ordered list of what he needed to do. When one of Bredhrien's companions finally returned with Osgardir, both of them wild-eyed and out of breath, they found her calm and swaddled against shock while Elrond slowly but confidently stitched the clean wound.

“I could have killed her!” Elrond cried later, when it was clear that Bredhrien would be all right. Although he had been calm during the procedure, he'd been reduced to a shaking wretch for some time afterward.

“Well, yes,” his master said. “Blood loss, shock, infection, if not one than it might have been another.You kept a cool head and remembered what you've learned. Well done indeed.I would not have left you alone in the infirmary if I didn't have faith in you and your studies, understand that. Someday you're going to be much better at this than I am,” Osgardir told him with a grim smile. “I got my name during the wars. It's an epessë, obviously, and given for good reason.”

That was a handful of years ago. Elrond was still more of a boy than a young man, but his understanding grew by great leaps, and every wound he patched up bolstered his confidence.

The door slammed open just as Elrond had shouldered his bag and turned to leave. It was Maedhros. His brow was dotted with tiny beads of sweat and his eyes scrunched in pain.

Elrond, as he progressed in his healer's training, noticed more and more frequently that Maedhros lived with pain as his constant companion. He hid it well. His pride did not allow him to do anything else.

“Evening, m'lord,” Osgardir said.

“It's been like this for weeks,” Maedhros growled, not wasting energy on an explanation.

“Ahh, why do you always wait until it's unbearable before you get help? Sit here and I'll take a look.” Osgardir bent to unlock his desk again while Maedhros, with an air of resignation born from centuries of being scrutinized by healers, unbuttoned his overtunic and tossed it over a chair.

“My brother will worry if you're not at supper,” he said when Elrond set his bag down again and rejoined Osgardir to observe and help.

“He worries more about you,” Elrond replied. The years had soothed his fear of Maedhros, from his temper and reputation to his scars and missing pieces—his hand, a chunk of his left ear, many of his teeth. As grim as he looked and often acted, he would never hurt Elrond or Elros. He was just and loyal to his followers. He loved his brother, and that was something Elrond could definitely understand. He even had a sense of humor, albeit one that was dark and bitingly sarcastic, but Elrond thought it was funny anyway.

Maglor periodically asked the boys if they wanted to leave. Elrond's answer was always the same.

“You took us in for the wrong reasons,” Elrond said plainly. “But I don't care. I don't want to leave, not yet.” He had had years to think about it, to receive messengers from Lord Círdan and the young King Ereinion Gil-galad, both of whom had promised grave consequences for the Fëanorians if the boys were being mistreated or held against their will. Years to wonder who to be angry at, or if anyone in particular was the root of the suffering. Years to see and understand both two kinsmen and two kinslayers at the same time.

Besides, he liked it here. The cool mountain air, the sweeping forests that blanketed the hills around Amon Ereb, the collective sense that no matter how many battles they lost, they were still not defeated. The remaining Fëanorian followers were hardened in both body and spirit. They often mocked the complacent elves in their cities who passively ignored the Enemy as if he would just go away if they pretended hard enough. But there was bitterness too, and nowhere was it more evident than in Fëanor's own sons.

“The Oath will come for us again,” Maglor warned him, his eyes dull with memory. “It sleeps for now, but someday...”

“I don't want your stupid rocks,” Elrond cut him off. His heart still stung to think that his mother had chosen the Jewel over... other things. He would have nothing to do with them, no matter how beautiful they were. They only wrought pain.

Maglor smiled sadly at that. “Even so. Stay only as long as you want. You are not bound to our terrible curse, and I will not have you suffer in its name.”

He knew what he was talking about, as did Maedhros.

“What's hurting you today?” Osgardir asked when Maedhros sat down with a sigh.

“It's my hand,” he muttered. “I can still feel it. It feels like it's being crushed.”

Osgardir rubbed his chin. “Have you been exercising your arm like I showed you?”

“Yes! Nothing helps.” He gritted his teeth and carefully laid the stump of his right wrist on the table in front of him. “The damned thing has been cut off for five hundred years and still it troubles me.”

“That is strange. Normally these residual sensations subside after a few years.” Osgardir folded his arms and frowned as he thought.

“And yet here I am.” Gold teeth flashed as Maedhros grimaced in pain that could no longer be concealed. “Damn it all. It's not there! Why does it still feel like it is!”

“Maybe I can help,” Elrond said suddenly. Maedhros and Osgardir both looked at him, waiting for him to continue, and he fidgeted under their eyes. “Uh, only if you want me to.”

Maedhros rubbed his right shoulder absently. “You've helped me in the past. Do you See something?”

“I might if I could take a closer look. Master Osgardir?”

“I have no objection if Lord Maedhros consents to be examined.”

“I do.”

Osgardir took a step back. “Then I will merely observe. Your ability to See is out of my hands to instruct.”

They still had no word for Elrond's ability. The extra sense that sometimes gave him insight into the hearts of others. Hints about many possible futures. Glimpses of things that others could not see, material and otherwise. He thought it came from being descended from a Maia, but Elros did not have it. Around the time that Elrond's voice first broke, what had started out as random flashes and vague premonitions exploded into vivid nightmares and crippling hallucinations. He and many others believed he was going mad. Somehow, out of necessity, he learned to control it. Not always perfectly, but he hadn't been incapacitated by the visions in years.

He had resolved to use it to heal.

Elrond took Maedhros' right arm in both hands. He had seen it many times, but up close it told a different story. The shoulder had been broken and dislocated and had never healed right. The muscle was badly atrophied and stiff with deep scarring. Further down, the scarring continued until his arm ended just above the wrist. It was little wonder he was in pain, but Elrond had a suspicion that the physical injury alone wasn't causing the pain where his hand would have been.

He took a deep breath, still holding Maedhros' arm at the wrist and under his elbow. His pulse was strong but quick with stress and the thin, twisted muscle twitched when Elrond prodded it. That hurts, Elrond observed, and stopped. Instead he followed the lines of the arm, veins, arteries, bones, muscles, tendons, scars—those he had received in battle and in Angband and those he had inflicted on himself, because he had all three. Elrond sensed everything, though his hands did not move and thought Maedhros' shirt sleeve obscured it from his physical eyes.

Deeper, to the nerves. Though pinched and cut, their lines still extended up through the shoulder, connecting with his chest and back. With his spine and brain. Elrond drew back a little. He was not ready to get that close to anyone's brain. Such a vast well of power and potential, so deep he feared he would drown if he looked too close. He returned to the surface. They were all connected, and the bright, undimmed warmth of his fëa flowed fast and steady along those channels, all the way down from his skull to his fingertips—

“Your fëa still thinks the hand is there,” Elrond said, eyes widening.

“I could have told you that.” Maedhros did not snap as was his usual tone when he was hurting.

“The hröa has no power without the fëa, and the fëa has no power without the hröa,” Elrond murmured. His mind was moving fast, so much that he could hardly keep up with it. “That's why you can't seem to feel your fingers back into a comfortable position. Not on purpose. But maybe if I can find some way to...” He trailed off. He wasn't sure if it was possible, but... “If we try to trick your fëa. If we can make it think your hand is comfortable, maybe it will stop hurting you.”

He got a vague impression that Osgardir approved of his conclusions, but he set that aside and started looking around the infirmary for something he could use. A tool, a drug, a dressing, anything that would help him create an illusion.

His eyes fell on a utilitarian steel tray currently holding several glass vials. He moved the vials and picked up the tray. It was slightly dim and scratched, but his reflection stared clearly back at him as he inspected the surface. He was aware of Osgardir and Maedhros watching his back, but neither of them said anything. Elrond brought the tray back to where Maedhros sat.

“I want to see if reflecting your left hand in this tray will make your fëa think it's looking at two hands,” Elrond said. He felt stupid for trying as soon as it left his mouth. How in the world had he thought this would work? But Maedhros just shrugged his good shoulder in assent.

“Well, I can't see any needles or scalpels in your plan so far, so I might as well try it. How shall we proceed, Master Elrond?” He gave Elrond a bleak, tired half-smile, no more than a stretch of his lips.

“Uh, just stay sitting for now, but lean both of your arms over the table. Out straight, like his,” Elrond said, demonstrating. Maedhros, eyebrows raised, laid his arms out straight in front of him on the faded wood, his palm up. Elrond could feel himself sweating under the eyes of his master and his lord, both men whose approval he dearly wanted. But his head remained cool as he kept his theory in mind. It should work. And if it didn't, the worst that would happen was that he would look a little silly. He would survive it.

Elrond set the tray on its edge between Maedhros' arms. His whole left arm was reflected int its surface. “Just look on the left side of the tray,” he said. “Stretch out your hand. Watch the reflection.”

Maedhros did it. Elrond was surprised. He had never known him to be compliant or patient when it came to his injuries. “It seems like every charlatan in Beleriand has peddled his miracles to me,” he had said one time. “I do not suffer fools who think they can fix what has been broken beyond repair.”

So why was he humoring Elrond now? He kept his eyes fixed on the tray and his hand, slowly stretching it out finger by finger, turning it over, flexing his wrist.

Elrond held his breath. For a few minutes no one said anything. He watched, holding the tray steady, as Maedhros clenched and unclenched his hand, looking from the healthy limb to the reflection that showed where his right would have been.

It's not going to work, Elrond thought, his spirit falling more with each passing second.

But Maedhros let out a long, relieved sigh. Unbelievably, the hard lines of his face softened. His eyes widened, his lips parted a little as if he was about to say something, but all that came out was a quiet “oh.”

“What is it?” Elrond asked, trying not to sound nervous.

“I don't know how, but it's working,” Maedhros said. “My hand. It's... relaxed.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore. Elrond!” Elrond looked up and was astonished to see that the tension had drained out of Maedhros' eyes. For a moment it seemed as though he was in no pain at all, as if he would stay that way for good. His scarred face broke into a miraculous smile—his eyes crinkled, his cheeks dimpled, and even his gold teeth did not seem quite so grim in contrast to the white ones. “You... are a blessing.”

Elrond did not know how to respond to that. He ducked his head, a smile pulling at his mouth.

Osgardir cleared his throat. “I think you may have discovered something far larger than you anticipated,” he said. “We should work on further experimentation. Later, of course.”

“I can't believe that worked,” Elrond admitted.

“Believe it, because I am in less pain than I have been in... ah, never mind.” Maedhros kept flexing his hand and watching the reflection, as if he did not dare look away for too long and have the pain come back.

“Is it really better?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” Finally, he looked away from the reflection and lifted his arms from the table. He waited as if for the pain to return, but when a full minute had passed and it had not, he stood up and retrieved his discarded tunic. “Thank you. I was at my wits' end.” Fondly, he reached down and tucked a stray twist of hair behind Elrond's ear. In all of Elrond's years living at Amon Ereb, that was the most demonstrative he had ever been.

It must really have worked.

“You two should go to supper,” Osgardir said. “I'll finish up here. Excellent work, Elrond.”

“Thank you, Master Osgardir.” Elrond finally managed to smile up at Maedhros, who still looked as peaceful as he had ever looked. He set the tray down on the table, but Maedhros picked it up again once his tunic was buttoned.

“This is coming with me. I might need it.”

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Chapter End Notes

Osgardir means "Amputator" in Sindarin. My idea is that he's good at keeping people from dying, but not great at helping them recover.

Mirror therapy is a real thing that can help treat phantom limb pain in amputees! It's awesome!