To See the End Beyond All Doubt by mainecoon

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Chapter 1

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The Sea is calling to him.

It stretches to the horizon as a mass of liquid lead, dark grey against the lighter hue of the sky that will soon be painted fiery by the sunrise. The depths have swallowed the many-coloured glow of the Silmaril, and not a single glimmer of it breaks the surface. Gone, Maglor thinks, gone gone gone and it would be a relief if he wasn't sobbing in pain, if he wasn't forsaken, if there was anything left to him except his own body that is cold and battered and bleeding. His right hand is as useless as Nelyo's, except it is still there and the flesh melts off the bone. It is over. It will never be over.

Nelyo waits for him when he stumbles to the shore and collapses on the dry sand. There is a salty taste in his mouth, wet wool and leather and hair stick to his skin, the pain makes him retch as soon as his arms touch the ground. His brother crouches beside him, grim and still, while Maglor spits water and acid and little else. When it is over he curls into a ball and weeps.

"I didn't think you'd return," Nelyo tells him. His voice sounds rough, but level for one who should be in excruciating pain. Maglor turns his head and blinks at his brother. He finds it difficult to focus. Nelyo's copper hair paints a flaming contrast to his pale skin. A streak of blood is smeared over his right cheek. His hand is hidden in the folds of his cloak.

"I didn't mean to," Maglor tries to say, but only manages "didn't", and then "how?" because it is the obvious question at this point.

"I couldn't leave you," says Nelyo. This is odd, because Maglor could have sworn he already left. But he never saw it happen; he followed too late, thinking that his brother needed to be alone, if he thought much at all. In the end, all he found was a chasm of fire and the stench of burning flesh.

Nelyo's mind is closed now, or maybe Maglor cannot feel it though the screaming of his own.

"The... jewel?" he gasps.

"Gone," Nelyo says curtly. "Your hand needs treatment."

"Yours."

"Already done. While you were out there."

He lifts his arm, the one with the stump, as if to caress Maglor's shoulder, but Maglor does not feel the touch; altogether he feels little besides agony. He drags himself up and stumbles towards the spot between the hazel bushes where he left his belongings - foolishly, perhaps, but for some reason he had preferred the idea to die without them, to float weightless beneath the waves instead of being dragged down by rations and gear he never meant to use again. In the end he has to dress the wound himself because his brother's only hand is now useless. He nearly passes out before he is finished. Nelyo watches him quietly. There is no room for pointless talk, and all talk is pointless now they have failed.

"You're wet," Nelyo points out when Maglor has fixed the bandages. "You should change."

Maglor wonders why it should matter. They have no plan, no purpose; the only objective now is survival, and to what end? But it seems unnecessarily pathetic to remain like this, so he complies. It is a chore, awkward and graceless, but he gets it done. Belatedly it occurs to him that he should help his brother do the same.

"No," says Nelyo.

"But there's blood on your clothes."

Nelyo's grimace bears little semblance to a grin. "It won't go away."

"But you can't - you need help. Maedhros, please."

Nelyo laughs softly. It is not a happy sound.

"I'll be the judge of that," he retorts, and Maglor clenches his injured hand before he remembers that this is a mistake. He sways and nearly falls. Nelyo moves as if to catch him, but draws back before they touch. For a long moment they listen to the rhythmic splash of the waves on the shore. It cannot drown the shrill cry of the seagulls; lost, they call, lost lost lost and Maglor wonders if they mean the jewels or the two ragged elves on the shore, or neither because they simply exist and care nothing for the pain of others.

"Why did you return?" Nelyo asks after a while. He sounds vexed, as though he holds it against Maglor that he failed to end his life.

Maglor shrugs. "Someone should remember."

"Oh, but they will."

"Not the good parts." He leans his forehead against his knees. Tears trickle over his cheeks as he closes his eyes. The flesh of his hand is raw and blistering, and he wants to die.

"I haven't decided," he grits out. "I never had your determination to act when the time was right. But is this really how it must end, Nelyo? Is there no better final verse to our song?"

His brother chuckles softly.

"Still looking for a way out? It is far too late for that, brother mine."

Rather self-evident, Maglor thinks bitterly, but he says nothing.

Dim sunlight pokes through the roof of leaves, and the air tastes of salt. It is warm, much too warm for mid-April, or maybe that is his own body burning with an effort to stay alive. Maglor is not sure he even wants that. Somewhere in the distance the waves still break on the shore. They carry him back to a day in early autumn: a blazing sunrise glowing back from white roofs and paved roads, boats large and small rocking near the docks, the lazy sounds of a city awakening. Beside him, the clatter of armory and the stomping of horses. Maedhros and Amras, deep in conversation: Nelyo is frowning, but Amras has his back turned to Maglor and suddenly he cannot remember his brother's face.

There are a few stains of black on the new leather gauntlets Amrod gave him for his begetting day. He tries to clean them off, but to no avail.

He should remember what they are doing here.

"Death we will deal them," someone behind him answers his unspoken question, "ere Day's ending."

When he turns around, Amrod stands before him. He wears battle-stained armour, but the helmet is missing, and so Maglor sees that his skin is white and there is a gaping hole in his throat. Blood runs in rivulets over his breastplate.

Maglor has seen this before. He has closed Amrod's sightless eyes with his bare hands, and his gauntlets were drenched in blood.

"No," he says urgently. "We must not. Let us make one more offer... I shall carry the white flag myself..."

But he never said so when it mattered, and thus there is only red, in Amrods' hair and the sun on the sea and the rivers of blood that flood the pavements of the city, before it burns.

When Maglor wakes from his shallow dreams, he finds Nelyo sitting on a log, staring at him with unblinking eyes. His brother has not lit a fire, but Maglor's tunic is sticky from sweat. He feels feverish.

"I don't see what you expect from this," Nelyo breaks the silence.

"I haven't thought it out." Maglor draws himself into a sitting position and reaches for the water flask. The night is clouded and starless. Through a gap between bushes he can see the ocean, and faint lights in the distance where the camp of Eonwë must lie: Warmth and shelter, but not for them. "We've been desperate before. After the Nirnaeth - after Doriath -"

Nelyo gives him a hollow laugh. "If only we had given up then! We only made it worse. Don't fool yourself, Káno. This is the end."

"The Valar will never pardon us now." He knows this, with a certainty that drags him down like a rock to the ground of the sea. "But if we give up, there is no one left to change the ending of our tale. Not now, nor in a thousand years - or maybe two thousand -"

Nelyo closes his eyes and runs the stump over his face. His shoulders are slumped in a way that does not befit the defiant leader of the House of Fëanor. Only once has Maglor seen him thus defeated, and that was when the last great hope of victory against the Dark Foe was crushed. When Fingon died.

Maglor wonders if it is fear of the eternal darkness which keeps him from making an end. It does not seem likely. Eternal darkness would be a relief, compared to centuries and millennia of despair.

He drinks again, greedily. His hair sticks to his forehead, the dark strands are rough from dirt and salt water. Nelyo watches him through narrowed eyes. At least Maglor thinks so; his vision begins to blur. The shades of leaves above him move, dancing shadows in the faint light. There were dancing shades in the caves, too, but more light, soft, golden and green from thousands of torches under the enchanted ceiling. There was breathtaking beauty among the ruin, and he does not want to remember.

"Káno," says Nelyo with a warning in his voice, and "Káno," urges Caranthir as he bends over Maglor, worried, and then someone appears behind him and there is no time to react. Maglor shudders and tries to draw back from the memory, but his brother's blood splatters over his armour again, a gurgled scream echoes in his mind as Moryo collapses with a sword in his chest, and then - no - but Maglor knows he is a murderer, so reliving that particular deed should make no difference. The young Sinda dies with a grin on her face; she probably guesses whose death she bought with her own.

They look very alike, Moryo and the Sinda, as their blood mingles on the mosaiced floor. Even the stranger's dwarf-made ear clasps remind Maglor of Moryo's favourites. Strange, that he has time for those thoughts while the first of his brothers dies in his arms and he cannot even sing to him because his mind is screaming.

Bodies litter the floor, bizarre forms in the flickering lamplight. Enchanted nightingales sing, oblivious, over the sound of distant screams. The throne room smells like a slaughterhouse. Amid the corpses crouches a Fëanorian warrior, his head bent, shoulders shaking. Maglor already knows it is Amras, and that he is clinging to Curufin's body.

"I have wondered, since, what we could have done to prevent this," says a pleasant voice behind him.

Maglor has never heard it before. He swirls around and sees a fair young elf who was already dead when they found him beside Celegorm, both of them covered in their own blood and each other's. He looks unharmed now, and not dressed for battle as he was at the time. Instead he is clad in embroidered robes of green and gold, with diamonds glittering in his dark locks. Maglor is grateful that he does not wear the cursed necklace.

"Are you a ghost?" he asks.

Dior Eluchíl shrugs, a gesture that looks surprisingly casual for the King of Doriath.

"If we could make our decisions again," he says, instead of answering, "what would we do? I suppose I would have given you the Silmaril. Even if I don't think you deserve it."

"That was not for you to decide," Maglor says through clenched teeth.

"No," Dior admits thoughtfully, "it truly was unforgivable for me to decide. I should have known better, should I not? Given my age and experience, and the glowing praise I heard from my family about the house of Fëanor..."

Maglor cannot think of anything to say to this, so he considers the first question instead.

"We had no choice," he says. "This was what the Oath demanded of us."

Dior raises an elegant eyebrow. "Interesting. We were never told how it was worded. Did it explicitly forbid to use diplomacy? How appalling."

"Well." Maglor fiddles with his sword belt, uncomfortably aware of his blood-soiled armour. "No. We might have offered our friendship - our protection, after the girdle of Melian was gone - though we never believed you would agree to it. But we did not try." He looks over to his dead brothers and the grieving one. "We should have known better than to give in to Celegorm's and Curufin's wounded pride. That was a very foolish thing to do."

"And they say foolishness is a privilege of youth." Dior crosses his arms and looks at him pensively. His eyes are very dark and do not reflect the light. "There is a lot of time to think in the Halls of Mandos. The what-ifs haunt you. You start to consider, for the first time, the roads not taken - the choices you made that seemed, at the time, not like choices at all - but they were. You see the possible outcomes, some more ruinous, some blissful, a tapestry of realities that never came to be. Once we had the power to shape them."

He is very wise for someone so young, or maybe it is the wisdom of the dead. Maglor thinks of the Sea, and wonders about his own choices.

"You chose to be good to my grandsons," Dior muses, startling him. "After you caused a lot more suffering, but I will not talk of that, or we will never find an end. There is one small thing that lifts you above the brood of Angband... They love you still, though they are grown now and know the full extent of your deeds. It surprises me. It makes me think that we should have talked when there was time."

"It is good of you to say so," Maglor admits, "but the time has passed. You are long gone, and what Maedhros and I have become is not deserving of your pity."

Dior watches him for a long moment with his strange, unsettling eyes. "My pity is my own to give," he says. "You should not mistake it for forgiveness. Do you like sweets, son of Fëanor?"

"I... certainly, yes."

"So did I. My mother used to scold me because I would eat too many and refuse the venison. It showed, later, when only my desserts could be inflicted on the general public. I was an appalling cook, but my strawberry pancakes were legend." His mouth curls slightly at the corner. "Nimloth was a gifted storyteller," he continues. "She could capture the hearts of all and took us upon journeys to the far ends of Arda, or to worlds born entirely from her own mind... Elured and Elurin looked very much alike, but Elurin was studious and Elured preferred to handle animals. Elwing was a rogue, it was a nightmare to keep track of her. She always slipped off to the kitchens, the weapons chamber, the throne room in the middle of a council."

Maglor swallows bile and forces himself to hold Dior's gaze. The son of Lúthien gives him an appraising look.

"Will you tell Elrond all this, Fëanorion," he asks, "when you meet him again?"

"I will never meet Elrond again," Maglor objects with miserable certainty, but Dior shakes his head and repeats, "Will you tell him?"

He steps closer now, and the smell of blood is overwhelming. The spirit is clearly not malicious, but Maglor shudders in his presence, whether from awe or fear he cannot tell. Dior raises a hand and lifts Maglor's chin with fingers that feel like running water.
"I will, if I can," Maglor whispers. "I am sorry."

Dior smiles, and the room around them fades to nothing.

It is almost dawn when Maglor wakes again. Light rain rustles in the leaves, not heavy enough to inconvenience them, especially since there is no fire. Nelyo sits huddled against a log with his head buried in his arms, a mass of red hair obscuring his face from view. He has not changed out of the blood-stained clothing he has been wearing for days. When Maglor stirs, he looks up. Tears are smudged across his cheeks, and this is wrong because Nelyo does not weep. Not in front of his younger siblings.

Maglor reaches out to him, but Nelyo draws away and gets to his feet. Maglor wipes away the sweat that tickles on his upper lip. There is nothing left to say.

A few birds greet the hour of dawn with intricate melodies. In the distance, the Sea: always the Sea. It would be easy to give in at last and be at peace.

But then no one will remember the whole song.

The cloth of the bandage sticks to the wound when Maglor changes it. It is not healing yet and still hurts worse than any injury he suffered before. The process of tending to it is slow, laborious, and excruciatingly painful. Nelyo watches him, his own hand hidden in his sleeve.

"We tried for so long," he says after a while. "Everything we could think of. Diplomacy and stealth, heroism and murder. We are doomed."

"So I recall."

"They think us no better than Morgoth. What point is there to keep fighting?"

Maglor almost drops his bandages. Maedhros is their leader; he always was, ever since their father died, and as far as Maglor is concerned, he remains so even if there is only one person left to lead.

"You always keep fighting," he points out. "I meant to surrender. It was you who argued against it."

"It was a foolish thing to do. I feared... but it matters not. I am sorry, Káno."

Maglor ties the gauze into a tight knot and sinks back against a tree trunk. It is too late for regrets.

"We could leave all this behind," Nelyo says. It sounds like a plea.

Maglor does not like the way the words sneak into his spirit and lure him towards brightness where only ruin awaits. He shakes his head; there is still defiance in him while Nelyo seems to have used his to the last bit.

"I saw Dior," he tells his brother.

Nelyo freezes.

"It was a dream. I walked the ruins of Doriath...." His voice cracks when he thinks of Moryo, but he forces himself to continue. "I believe it truly was Dior. He asked me to tell Elrond about his family."

"Elrond," Nelyo reminds him sharply, "is so far out of your reach that he might as well be in Valinor."

"I know. But he made me promise." Maglor fiddles with his bandage. "I think he could see a reality where it happens. If we end this now, it never will."

"And even if you find him, what are you going to do? How can you even look him in the eye after all we've done? Or Elros, if he stays long enough?"

"Nelyo..."

"Even if they still care for us, which I hope they don't because all it brings is doom..."

"Nelyo!" Maglor struggles to his feet. The look in his brother's eyes alarms him. The light in them has turned cold and pale, and there is something odd about it, something Maglor thinks he should understand.

"To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well," Nelyo snarls. "Will you bring this upon them, Káno? Will you?"

"But if Dior saw hope..."

"You don't even know he was real! You're clinging to dreams, what else will it take to make you see that we are lost?"

Maglor steps quickly towards his brother, to shake some sense into him, cling to him, embrace him and breach the distance between them and share the little strength he has left. Nelyo shrinks back, but this time he is not fast enough.

A moment later Maglor is on his knees, wailing. His hand, his unbandaged hand, hurts as if he thrust it into the fire, and this is precisely what happened, for when he touched his brother he found not flesh but liquid heat. For a moment the illusion of Nelyo's face fell away and revealed the pure fëa, charred and blackened, the blaze of fire around him an echo of his copper hair.

Maglor screams until his voice gives out, whether from pain or heartbreak he cannot tell.

The ghost sings softly to him while he lies curled on the wet ground. It is a silly little song the brothers used to share a long time ago. Nelyo never managed the precise intonation and he knows full well that it amuses Maglor. Now it does not, but eventually Maglor calms a bit and his sobbing slows down. He is so exhausted that he wonders if his spirit will depart right here and leave his body to the beasts, for the Sea seems too great an effort to reach.

But Dior saw Elrond, and a future.

How long they remain like this, Maglor does not know. Nelyo's voice weaves itself through his thoughts. Sometimes he drifts into memories: swaying torches at the quays of Aqualondë, his father's hands guiding his own on a small harp, Nelyo, laughing, bathed in golden light - Nelyo, ruined, in Fingon's arms - the castle at the Gap, burning, with too many trapped inside - death at Sirion, death at Doriath, death in Eonwës camp...

Elros and Elrond at the kitchen table, nearly grown, listening quietly as he tells them everything from the beginning. Beside the fireplace stands Maedhros, his face shrouded in flickering shadows. Elros drills his knife into the wood, although he knows that he is not supposed to. Maglor's hands are shaking; very deliberately Elrond reaches out and covers them with his own.

No one is left to touch him now, and his hands are burned.

"I won't come with you," he tells the spectre that wears Nelyo's face. His voice is hardly recognizable.

Nelyo falls silent and remains so for a long moment.

"I have no words to ask your forgiveness, Káno," he says finally. "I was sure you would follow. It seemed so clearly the end of the road."

Maglor says nothing.

"I should have known." Nelyo leans a bit closer. The spirit radiates heat. Nelyo's fist is clenched into the muddy ground, mere inches from Maglor's. He wants to reach out and curl his own hands around his brother's, to intertwine their fingers and draw strength and life from the touch. So often, in these past few years, this was the last comfort they had left.

"You refused the call of Mandos," he says instead.

"The Valar couldn't possibly be more wrathful towards us." Nelyo shrugs, but his features are strained. "I want it all to end, Káno; oh, how I want it! But I must not condemn you to all ages of the world alone, if such is the fate you choose for yourself."

"You have already left me."

"Not in spirit."

"Nevertheless." Maglor draws himself into a sitting position. The burn on his left hand has already faded; it will heal entirely in a matter of days. Nelyo puts his arm around his knees. His features are partly concealed by a veil of hair, so the scars are hidden from view. He looks painfully young and lost.

"You should not be here," says Maglor, because he knows it is true. When Nelyo does not answer, he continues, "You need to rest. I will not hold you back."

"But neither will you come with me."

"No."

Maglor watches a bug crawl out of a hole on the ground and make its way right through Nelyo's left foot. It is a very pretty bug, with a shimmering greenish coat.

"I won't give up now," he says. "If those we have slain retain hope for us, who am I to cast it away?"

"But what can you do?"

"I want my life back," Maglor says with vehemence, surprised by his own anger. It makes the darkness recoil a little. "All this time I thought I couldn't change the song. So I went along with it, and it has led us here... is this the end that was meant for us, I wonder? Dior said there are always choices, and different outcomes shaped by them."

Nelyo shakes his head, softly, furiously. "I have fought ever since the Darkening, and nothing I did saved me from this. Or anyone else." He wraps his arms around his ghostly body. "Were the Valar entertained by our struggle, or did they merely turn their faces away? Either way, we never stood a chance."

"Perhaps not. Doomed, you say? Ah, but that would make a fine ending to the story, would it not? The last sons of Fëanor slain by their own hand. Let it be told in the halls and at the fireplaces, so their tale is a warning to all who come after! Do not follow their path. Do not rebel against the Valar, for it will set you upon a road from which there is no return, and you will find neither pity nor redemption." Maglor draws a deep breath. "I will not be part of this story any longer. Not by my own choice. If fate wants to wrap it up cleanly, it will have to kill me. That's not nearly as satisfying in terms of poetic justice."

Nelyo's smile looks genuine. "I thought you valued stories brought to a satisfying conclusion."

"Not this one. It is a terrible story. I will spoil the ending if I can."

"That is a brave thing to do, and also very foolish." Nelyo's hand twitches, as though he wants to reach out, but he does not. "I'm proud of you, little brother, but what if all it brings you is more pain?"

"Then I will bear it." Maglor laughs, because here he is, desolate and severely injured and talking to a ghost, and perhaps he is truly losing his mind. "I do repent, you see? I wish none of this had ever happened. I wish we had stepped out of this story when there was still time..."

"It was too late when we swore the Oath."

"Oh, but was it? Anyway, I am doing it now. I will be the open ending, the missing part of the puzzle. Maybe those that hear the story in ages to come will question the moral. Maybe they'll wonder if we truly deserved our fate."

A long silence follows. Maglor repeats the words in his head and wills himself to take heart. He does not want to speak again, for he dreads what he must say. If only he could hold onto this moment, even at his most desolate, to be with his brother a little while longer! One precious hour, perhaps, one more day, one more week...

"You should go," he says aloud.

Nelyo nods. He does not meet Maglor's eye.

"I am sorry," he says. "I would give you my blessing, if I thought it would do you good. Go and find Elrond, Káno. See if you can change the song."

"Maybe not now, nor in a hundred years," says Maglor. "But I have time. Be at peace, brother. Your memory shall live on with me."

Nelyo gets to his knees, slowly, as though the shadow of his body weighs more than all the rocks of Thangorodrim. He leans over Maglor, who closes his eyes to hide his tears, and for a moment Maglor feels a sharp pain on his forehead, the brush of ghostly, burning lips. Maedhros rises and walks away without another word. Maglor watches his tall figure retreat, and with every step it becomes more translucent, until it has faded entirely.

The new burns heal overnight, and two more days of rest leave Maglor strong enough to gather his belongings and move on. A light breeze tousles his hair, and he inhales the scent of seaweed and wild apple blossoms. The sun parts a few ragged clouds with sharp, luminous rays that make the water sparkle and glisten.

The Sea is calling to him, but he will not follow its lure. Not today.

He has no destination, for the way across the ocean is barred and he cannot risk to seek out his own kin, not yet. But Middle Earth is precious and fragile and full of wonder, and there are many paths to tread. He can take them all in his own time. The Oath will no longer lead his steps.

Maglor slings his bundle over his shoulder and begins to sing.