Poisoned Peace by eris_of_imladris

Chapter 1

It began with a broken promise.

Maglor should have known, by now, not to trust Men, even after all this time, but their promise of a war to end all wars was spoken from everyone on every street, from the children who played in the mud to their grandparents who muttered over the daily newspaper. Even in the little town where he settled in silence, the words made themselves known, slipping through his defenses until even he began to believe them.

It would be nice to see the end of war, he allowed himself to think. There had been too much war in his too-long life.

And yet, it took less than a Man’s lifetime for war to erupt again, fiercer and bolder, and he set off for the sea once again. Ever-changing yet constant, it shuffled the same sand across the beach even when most of the men who would watch it from their homes were an ocean away.

(His hands kept him safe, an irony he would never forget.)

That empty loss, that gaping hole where hope once sent out a fragile tendril, made him weak. Vulnerable to the appeal of the army recruiter who offered him another way to be useful, even when this war seemed to be drawing to a close.

It was only a matter of time until the next one, he believed. But the rumors of this war that still tapered down, tales of the atrocities that defied his knowledge that his own deeds were the worst that could be, swayed him to take a stand. Even he couldn’t sit by any longer, not when a mixture of relief for not holding a warm gun and terror of what his inaction had bred to take away all doubt.

It would work, the recruiter promised, under the deepest terms of secrecy. And it would work with no involvement in the fighting, nothing that could reopen old wounds. He’d looked at Maglor’s hands then, a quick glance, nothing more.

A way to make himself useful, to contribute to lasting peace stuck in Maglor’s mind. A way to ensure that war would never happen again, to provide such a tool that would make his country invulnerable. From a position like that, peace could come. And he could be a part of it, on the right side of history for once. Perhaps never lauded, for the work was too secret, but at least he would know in his heart that he had finally done the right thing.

He shook the man’s hand as firmly as he could, and returned to his little house with a new sense of purpose. Maybe all his waiting would come to something, after all. Maybe it was even time to trust again.