At the Eleventh Hour by AdmirableMonster

At the Eleventh Hour

Read At the Eleventh Hour

It should not have happened.

He had promised Lôminzil that he would be careful.  He had not gone out hunting in months.  He had sent messengers to Elrond, making sure that his brother would be there several weeks before the expected date.  He hadn’t even sparred in sword practice.

In the end, none of his care mattered; a little heavy rain and a moment of distraction was enough.

Elros shut his eyes against the pain, blinding and awful, and did not scream.  He had been in worse pain before, he told himself, though he could not bring to mind the exact moment.  Surely he had been in worse pain before.

“Where is my lord Elrond?” Lôminzil’s voice, high with worry, her hand tight about his.  

“My queen, he is not due to arrive for another day, and with the storm, he may well have been delayed on the road.”

“I’m all right,” Elros panted, then wished he hadn’t, because opening his mouth meant he couldn’t stop the short scream that came out after the words.  There was moisture between his legs, and he didn’t need to look down to see that red was soaking through the sheets.

“Hush, hush, it’s—” Lôminzil’s voice caught.  “I’ve sent for the healers.  They’ll—they’ll—” Her voice was trembling, her face pale; a moment later, she commanded herself, every inch a queen.  “The healers will help with the pain, my love.”

Elros nodded tightly.  He shut his eyes.  His bond with Elrond had become a strange and finicky thing, these days, but it was still there.  He reached down it, felt sudden concern and then warm strength from that end as well.  Stay strong.

“He’s coming as fast as he can,” he panted.  His body contracted, twisted, and Elros yelled with pain again, quite unable to stop it this time.

“Where are the healers!” Lôminzil had dropped his hand.  “Can you not see he’s bleeding!”

But there were not so many healers, Elros knew.  He might be the king, but he was the king of a small, small kingdom still.  And he might have made a Choice, but his ears had not become any rounder for it. 

There was noise all around him.  He wasn’t afraid.  He wouldn’t be afraid.  His queen was here, directing the healers.  There was no reason to be afraid.  (None but the copper-bright smell of blood that grew stronger by the minute.  None but the way his limbs felt weak and sluggish.  None but the fact that this was no enemy he could fight, but his own body turned against him, and the child—what would happen to the child?) He was not alone.  His brother might not be here, but his queen was.  She wouldn’t let anything happen to him.

Everything turned into one long grey blur of pain.  Elros didn’t know if the bleeding had stopped.  He wasn’t afraid, he told himself, over and over again.  (But he was.)  It was nothing to fear, he told himself.  But someone was screaming, in a hoarse voice.

“Please, my lord,” another voice begged.  “You must calm yourself.  They’re sending for the healers.”  

Lôminzil’s grip was tight on his hand.

“Please, love, don’t cry,” she whispered.  “Just hold on.  Just hold on.”

At first he tried not to, and then the pain worsened, and worsened.  “Oh, gods,” he heard Lôminzil say.  “Where are they—where are they, they must come soon, someone must come—”

Elros heard the door open.  “You’re not the healer,” Lôminzil’s voice said.  “Who—”

“What has happened?” asked a musical voice that sent an impossible thrill of longing and anger through Elros. Somehow, he dragged his eyes open, clawing himself upright even against the pain.  There was a slim figure standing in the doorway, taking a cloak from off his shoulders to reveal ragged robes that might once-upon-a-time have been red.

“Who are you?” Lôminzil put her hand upon her sword, but Elros reached out and took her wrist.

“No need,” he rasped.  “He will not harm me, though I may harm him.”

“You will need to finish birthing those children first.”  

“What are you doing here?” Elros demanded, as the figure approached the bed, and the worn grey eyes looked away from him.

“I heard thy screaming on the wind,” said Maglor, and he laid a long-fingered hand across Elros’s belly.  “Well, that will not do at all, will it?  One of them is trying to come out the wrong way round.”

“And how would you know?” spat Elros, but he did not pull away.  Instead, his treacherous body angled itself slightly into the touch.

“Well, horses and humans are much the same.”

“They don’t even have the same number of legs!” Elros shouted at him.  

“Both are mortal, are they not, my son?”

“How dare you!” Elros shouted.  “How dare you!”  How dare you leave us, he wanted to say.  How dare you come here, now, when there is only myself and my wife and my brother is not here to see you.  How dare you come here alone—

He had said the last aloud.  Maglor flinched minutely, but he gazed back, his eyebrows drawn together.  “Stop yelling and thrashing and put thy energy to better use pushing,” he said, then looked over at Lôminzil.  “Come, fetch more blankets and alcohol.”  She stared at him for a long moment, then obeyed.

“How were you close enough?” Elros demanded, but Maglor only shrugged.  Elros growled.

“Good!” Maglor said cheerfully.  “Like that.”  Elros realized suddenly that he had stripped back the blankets, and his hands were busy between Elros’s legs.  There was more blood on the sheets; there was blood up to Maglor’s elbows, but he seemed completely calm and assured.  Elros had forgotten how calm he could be, at times.  When the storm raged the fiercest, that was when the twins’ Atya was at his steadiest.  It was all a performance, Elros was sure, but he took comfort in it all the same.

“There you go, little one, stop ripping your poor father up from the inside,” he was saying now.  Lôminzil made a soft, upset noise.  

“Don’t worry,” Maglor said to her.  “He’ll keep until Elrond gets here.  I’ll make sure of it.  Elros, push.”

“I’m trying!” Elros snarled.  “It hurts!”

“And since when did you let a little pain stop you?”  Mockery gleamed in Maglor’s eyes, and Elros set his jaw murderously.

“As soon as I’ve finished the rearrangements, you can hit me,” Maglor told him helpfully.  

“You’re supposed to be sorry!” Elros roared, and he got a crooked little smile in return.

“There.”  Something of the tension seemed to ease, and there was a soft little wailing cry.  “That’s the first of them.  Here, you—you’re the mother, aren’t you?”

Lôminzil, stupefied, gave a little nod.

“Take him, I need to go back in for the second.”  Maglor lifted a naked, wailing, blood-covered little scrap of a baby, and Elros could only stare at his child, at his father.

“The second?” demanded Lôminzil, though she reached out her arms and took the baby.

“Oh, yes,” Maglor said.  “Like father, like children, it seems.”

“How are you so cheerful!” Elros demanded, and once again, his father only shrugged.  

“Keep pushing,” he advised.  “The second is nearly—good.”

Elros screamed, but he wasn’t sure if it was with pain or anger, and then there was another flash of blinding pain, and Maglor’s voice singing something—a snatch of an old lullaby he used to sing the twins when they were very little—and there was more pain—and Elros was certainly screaming with it now, and there was movement inside, and then there was a release of pressure, if not pain.

Maglor stood, cradling the second child very carefully, a strange look on his face.  “Oh, little one,” he murmured.  “Thou hast strayed far, hast thou not?”

“Atya,” Elros said, feeling dread pool in his stomach beneath the pain.  “May I not hold the child?”

“A moment.”  Maglor was singing again, something dark and sweet and strange.  It made Elros feel sleepy, but perversely it seemed to tug at something deep inside him.  The pain in his abdomen intensified, and he could not stop the whimper that dropped from his lips.

For a moment, he seemed to be looking through a bit of tinted glass.  The room was shadowed; Lôminzil’s form and the babe in her arms were nothing more than a smoky blur.  Maglor stood out clearly, a figure all in white with arms outstretched, still singing that strange, sweet, calling song.  There seemed to be some kind of tunnel running slantwise away from him, and in it stood a tiny figure clad in blue and silver, with dark hair bound with silver ribbons.  She looked back at Elros with frightened eyes.

“Call her,” Maglor’s voice said, though never for a minute did he stop that strange song.  “You are close enough, Elros—call her by her name.”

Elros reached out towards the little girl and called softly the name that Lôminzil and he had chosen, “Tindómiel—Tindómiel!”

“Tindómiel,” Maglor’s voice repeated, again and again, a thousand little echoes.  “Tindómiel, come home!”

A high thin wail rose above the song; the dark glass seemed to shatter and break apart.  Maglor, swaying on his feet, came over and laid the little girl in Elros’s arms, kicking her limbs angrily; then he sat down heavily at the side of the bed, looking more exhausted than Elros had ever seen him.

There was a slick, thin membrane lying partially across Tindómiel’s face, and Elros carefully removed it.  She gazed up at him, gave another little noise and then stopped, looking at him curiously with huge dark eyes.

Elros! Elrond’s voice in his head, terrified, seeking.

Yes—I’m here—what do you need?

Valar.  Elros felt wave after wave of fading terror.  Thou wert gone.  Thou wert gone, Elros, thou wert—

I’m here.  It’s all right.

I’ll be there soon.  You’re going to be fine.

Tindómiel made a sleepy little noise and put her foot in her mouth.

“You used to do that,” Maglor said lazily, from his position canted backwards on the floor.  He was breathing harshly, still white to the lips.

“Atya,” Elros said slowly.  “What did you do?”

“I?” Maglor repeated wearily.  “Nothing at all.  It would take a far greater bard than a mere Elf to silence the call of Mandos, do you not think so?”

Elros swallowed.  “I’m going to hit you,” he said.  “I’m going to hit you, and then I’m going to throw up.”

“Give Tindómiel to her mother before you hit me,” Maglor told him.

“And then I think I’m going to hug thee,” Elros said, angrily blinking back tears.  “And I’m not certain when I shall stop.”