Neither Linguist Nor King by eris_of_imladris

Chapter 1

There is no word for this.

No movement of his tongue can describe the bobbing lights in the distance, starting dim but getting brighter by the moment as everything rushes in all too quickly. Nolofinwë and the rest of the Noldor are here, and it is Makalaurë’s job to deal with them.

He doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t know if there will be anger or tears, resignation and strength or a long, weary sigh. He’s never been the one who knows these things. This is not his language, and he could not learn it with all the time in the world.

He wonders how to even begin. He will welcome them, he knows - his people are too weak for another war, nor does he have reason to start one. The newcomers may not know the heavy price of battle against their great enemy, but he can still feel the ashes in the air when he breathes, can still feel the gasping emptiness when the one who promised to lead them from darkness to light fell at the first charge.

His father was a true leader. Terrifying in his intensity, but he never seemed to doubt himself or his words. Makalaurë remembers standing by his side as he urged the Noldor to go to lands unknown, something unfathomable to most yet so easy when he started to speak. Everything made sense even when it shouldn’t have, and by the time the battle was lost, he was beyond the world, unable to fix the mess he’d created.

It fell to Maitimo. He was more prepared than Makalaurë. A true diplomat, the one who stood against their father when the boats lit the water as bright as Laurelin once shone. He knew how to take a stand, and do what was right - which, in a war like this, could only lead to his utter devastation in the hands of the enemy.

Morgoth’s envoy said he was alive, but Makalaurë had little hope. No one survived Morgoth’s rage, least of all one who would call himself High King of the Noldor. And yet, with no confirmation of his death, he was still the High King.

So what does that make Makalaurë?

He will not call himself High King, cannot abandon even the slimmest sliver of hope that his brother was still alive. But there were no words for a situation like this, where the king is alive but another must act in his place.

“High Prince” is not enough, to some who still held strong belief in the line of Finwë like nothing ever happened. “Regent” is a new enough word, but the circumstances that led to its creation also led to his family’s exile to Formenos, and that was no way to begin what Makalaurë hoped would be a very short reign before his brother returned.

He has to come back, Makalaurë thinks as the lights get ever closer. He simply has to. He could not turn to ash as their father did, falter in his strong steps and fall to his knees and draw away a hand stained as red as their family’s crest, stretching the fingers as though he cannot believe it can be true, and before long the eyes are glazed and the body is gone and there is nothing left to see at all.

The mere thought causes revulsion, but Makalaurë rejected the terms. As the representative of the Noldor. Not quite the High King, not quite a prince either, simply the one in charge by virtue of being next born in the right family. That was undeserving of a title, as were his actions. The tactician in him knew that there was likely no saving Maitimo, and many lives would be lost in the attempt, but the brother in him yearned to have someone else to make the choice. To have someone to blame other than himself when the long nights bled together.

The figures are no longer in the distance. Makalaurë recognizes shapes, then faces. Panic sets in his heart again. What is he to say when Nolofinwë demands or begs or even simply asks to speak to the king? He will be expecting his headstrong brother and will receive his completely unprepared nephew who speaks the rhythms of a harp better than the nuances of courtly language. His father and Maitimo would have plans, but he is not them, and he cannot be.

Prince is not enough. Nolofinwë is a prince and there could be a schism deeper than the one that already exists between their two houses. Regent is a slap in the face, and High King is an insult to the position. Desperately, he tries to recall the scratch of his father’s quill as he invented new words, wishing for some stroke of genius to appear and give him the perfect solution.

It doesn’t come. Nolofinwë is who comes and stands in front of the group, and his sons and daughter are beside him. They have all survived, Makalaurë discovers with some relief - yet their faces are hardened, there is no joy left in their eyes just as there is none left in the world. It is past time for the one thing he is good at. His golden fingers are no match for the tongue of a proper diplomat.

There are no words for what he is. Makalaurë is not a king, not a prince, not a regent, not anything any of the Noldor would ever consider to name. He is the leader of a band of leaderless men. He is the one who loses sleep trying to do the right thing, yet even he doubts every decision he makes. He is not the same as he left Tirion, and he has no word now to describe what he has become after what he has seen and done.

Nolofinwë stops before him. There is none of the fanfare of the court of Tirion, not even a single sound. It seems as though the whole world stops to listen to what will come out of his mouth this time. There is no right answer, as there is no right choice for anything that has happened since this dubious position became his.

He cannot be the king Nolofinwë asks for. All he can do is dance on the edge of a precipice while holding his people on his back, and hope that some of them can make it. All he can be is Makalaurë.

“The High King is dead,” he says. “You will have to treat with me.”