As Little As Might Be Thought by Rocky41_7

| | |

As Little As Might Be Thought

"...and love grew after between them, as little might be thought." (Of the Voyage of Eärendil and the War of Wrath)

Amon Ereb was quiet at this hour.

Quiet in a way that scratched at the back of Maedhros’ mind, a regular, dull reminder of their ever-dwindling supply of followers not looking to run them through the belly (not lying dead in the mud at the river mouth, piled up like driftwood with the intended targets). Himring, for all the snow that blanketed the land and muffled sound like a quilt thrown over the world, had rarely been quiet, outside the most distant corners of the fort, or beyond its walls. There was always someone clashing blades in the yard, or banging iron, or barking orders, or singing (in the early days, or after Maglor and the Elves of the Gap had come).

There had been too many of them, with too much to do, for Himring to be quiet.

But Amon Ereb was quiet. Maedhros listened to the crackle and pop of the fire in the hearth at his feet, watched the flames lick around the air beyond the soles of his boots, the heat reaching through to his skin. With one finger, he idly balanced an empty goblet on the rim of its base on the table just behind him. (Sometimes he went and called a person by name and they were simply gone, bled away into the night, leaving a reeking air of shame behind them.)

Maglor would have the Peredhil shut up in their room soon, and would come down for his nightcap.

Almost as if on schedule, he heard the sound of his brother’s whistling, and the insufferable aura of his self-satisfaction entered the dim dining hall several moments before he himself did.

“Their lessons progress quite well,” Maglor announced to an audience of zero, plus Maedhros’ back. Maedhros did not look away from the fire as Maglor helped himself to what was left of the cold spread on the cabinet, and swept aside the uncleared plates from dinner earlier to set his dish down, along with a bottle of wine. He poured himself a cup; the noise of it splashing into the goblet made Maedhros grimace and he set his own empty cup flat on the table. “I think I shall test them again soon, and perhaps introduce some more complex poetical forms to their literature studies.”

Maedhros did not turn, so Maglor could not see that he rolled his eyes.

“They still are struggling to keep focused, however,” Maglor went on, as if there were a single solitary person in the whole estate who gave a rat’s ass. “I blame their mortal blood. Short attention spans. The intelligence is there when they apply it, but too often it’s like trying to corral spooked horses!”

Maglor could not abide the silence. He never could; he hated hunting in Himring for the silence of the air away from the fort. In an empty room, he hummed or whistled or tapped on tables and books and shields. He incessantly sought someone else to murder the quiet, and in absence of a partner’s aid, would kill it himself, and talk, and talk, and talk, until Maedhros ground his teeth to dust. (Had Maglor’s noise always bothered him so much?)

Maedhros should not respond; Maglor was only talking to fill the empty space and Maedhros should ignore him, as he usually did.

“Yes, poetry,” he rasped. “Perhaps you can teach them the many metaphorical uses of fire.” Maglor hesitated; Maedhros heard the scrape of his fork against the plate; he was deciding if he was being goaded. “Or perhaps that old rhyme about children who wander off in wintertime? Certainly they would find some cultural value in that. Doubtless your vast knowledge of Iathrim poetry will prove most engaging to them.” The quiet click of the fork being laid on the table. (Maglor, of course, had no knowledge of Iathrim poetry, outside what bawdy limericks he’d picked up from Daeron at the Mereth Aderthad.)

“Ah, I see,” Maglor said, in that silky, chipper tone that preceded a fight. “Yes, always right, you are, brother dear! How foolish of me! Foolish to make an effort in educating the Peredhil. Let us rather house them in the stable and let them run about like beasts; I’m sure that would please you better.”

Maedhros snorted derisively and rapped his flesh fingertips against the tabletop.

“Oh no, let me not silence you!” Maglor implored piteously and Maedhros could see the simpering look on his face without turning. “You have more advice for me, I beg you give it! Let this poor wretch learn from such a wise and noble soul!” Maedhros snapped his head over to Maglor, who wavered a moment, debating if he had pressed too far. One didn’t want to wind up with more of a fight than was sought, after all.

“Stop making a fool of yourself,” Maedhros said at last, and turned back towards the fire. The coppery light illuminated his face and turned his hair bright, letting the brown fall under the thrall of the red; he was no less lovely to the eye then than he had been in Aman, Maitimo indeed, save for the fell shadow of his eyes that warped his fairness into something chilling. “You prance about like a trained pony and then look for someone to applaud you. Let it rest.”

“They must be cultivated,” Maglor said, apparently once again determined to impart on Maedhros the importance of behaving as if the condition of the Peredhil mattered, or could be ameliorated, as he stabbed at a bit of cold sausage. “Particularly given their—well, disadvantages. I’m quite confident that can be made up for. With effort. Which you are so clearly unwilling to—”

Maedhros reached for the goblet again, Maglor fell silent, and after a moment’s contemplation of its still-empty depths, Maedhros set the cup down once more.

“Someone must look out for them,” Maglor was saying then, and Maedhros weighed the effort involved in getting up and leaving the room as opposed to cracking that plate over Maglor’s head. He should have said nothing; Maglor would have finished his wine and been gone by now if he had, perhaps.

“I can think of no one better suited to the task,” Maedhros said, but Maglor missed or purposefully overlooked how grave an insult Maedhros intended the remark to be. Perhaps he ought to be blunter.

“…there is no reason not to,” Maglor was going on, “and when they reach adulthood they will be grateful that someone—”

At this, Maedhros could not restrain the grotesque noise of amusement that burst from his throat. Maglor’s eyes narrowed; Maedhros did not have to look to see it.

“Oh, forgive me,” Maedhros said cuttingly, looking over his furred shoulder at his brother’s pinched expression. “Do carry on explaining how you’ve saved them from their pitiable state.” Maglor was twisting the fork on his plate, probably imagining what it would feel like to stick it through Maedhros’ flesh hand.

“I have given them more than you would allow them to have,” he said tightly. “At least I have attempted to treat them with some—”

“You treat them like the housecats Morifinwë used to dress in baby shifts,” Maedhros interrupted, cutting cleanly across Maglor’s voice. Interrupting him was a move successful only ever by Maedhros, for few others could sufficiently cow Maglor into silence, and in any other case, he would simply raise his voice to talk over the would-be interrupter, and he always won. Being loud was one of his true talents.

“And what precisely,” said Maglor delicately, in a saccharine tone that anyone affiliated with the Feanorians knew to be his teetering on the edge of losing his temper, “do you mean by that, Nelyafinwë?”

Maedhros twisted in his seat to look at Maglor.

“They are amusing toys for you. With them you may play your silly games and make believe we are somewhere else, that we are some other people, living some other lives, and they are too afraid of you to contradict you.”

“They…” Maglor could not refute that the Peredhil feared him, as much as he wished; Maedhros could hear how the words stuck in his throat. He hoped they choked him. “We are making progress,” he corrected himself at length. “I know what you would rather do!” he cried, accusing. “Cage them like animals! Put them in shackles! Or let them run naked through the dirt and the mud like stray dogs!”

“I, at least, am honest with them,” said Maedhros. “But you have always preferred a pretty lie to an ugly truth, Kano,” he said. “And you would have all the rest of us play your game with you.” Now Maglor was undoubtedly thinking of putting that fork somewhere soft in Maedhros. For a moment, that wounded, mulish look on Maglor’s face made him want to press harder, see if Maglor would lash out at him, but he swallowed the words and settled back in his chair, which creaked quietly under the shifting of his weight.

There were two paths they would take now: Maglor would finish his wine and meats in disgusted silence and flounce out of the room without another word; or Maglor would keep talking.

Regrettably, he chose the latter.

“They are infants,” he said lowly, his voice wavering in the way that made others start backing away from him. “They do not need your ugly truths. I know you told them you saw—that you saw their mother’s body in the Havens. I found them crying in their room! And that wasn’t even a truth! We never found her!” Though not for lack of effort, being as she still possessed something they desired.

“Fine,” Maedhros grunted, staring into the hearth. “Sometimes a lie is better than no answer at all. You know what they would think if we told them the truth.” Maglor did not reply, so Maedhros said it for him: “They would never stop believing she would return for them. To rescue them.”

“And is that such a terrible thing?” Maglor burst out, more to disagree with Maedhros than a desire for the Peredhil to rely on the return of Elwing Dioriel.

“She’s dead,” said Maedhros. Or anyways, beyond the reach of any of us, he thought, but this he did not say. He had once mentioned to Maglor about their not finding the body, but Maglor had been so resistant to any conversation about it that Maedhros did not bring it up again. She had probably washed out to sea, and that was all. “You call me cruel, and yet you would allow them to cling to such a thing.”

Maglor was silent a long moment, choosing his next biting reply, and Maedhros wished again he had said nothing at all.

“There is a difference,” Maglor said, “between being honest and being ugly.”

“Where is that line, pray tell?” said Maedhros. “Do you purpose to win their affection before they find out you drove their mother to her death, and hope that softens the blow? This is a fascinatingly stupid plan even for you, Kano.” The thunk of the fork embedding in the table.

“I did not kill—!” Maglor’s near-shriek was cut off hastily and Maedhros listened to the wood of the tabletop being abused, his ears ringing. “I did not! I did not,” he whispered. “I was only talking to her. I didn’t mean for—if she had only—if she had only given it to me!” He flexed his fingers.

Maedhros did not even bother to snort. This conversation was more rote than Maglor’s wounded gazelle look every time Maedhros mentioned it. The fireplace danced, and Maedhros could almost fancy he saw the weight of a young mother plummeting through the flames.

“Do you think,” Maedhros said, drawing the words out as if he were speaking to an idiot, or perhaps an exceptionally intelligent hound, “that will make a whit of difference to them?”

“You are full of such misery!” Maglor exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “You must inflict it on everyone around you! Do you so resent that I might have a relationship with them? Does it so disgust you to see anyone not as miserable and wretched as you are?”

“You think truly that no one sees what gambit you mean to play with them?” Maedhros asked, unable anymore to hold back. He was facing Maglor then, his voice raised to fill the room. Maglor’s thin cheeks were flushed; his nostrils flared; the look in his dark eyes was every bit as wretched as he had just accused Maedhros of being; it was a look Maedhros had never seen on him before they left Valinor. If something had gotten into Maedhros, it had gotten into Maglor too, and all of them, he suspected.

“No; elaborate for me, brother dear,” Maglor said. “As usual, it seems you know something I do not.”

He should keep quiet. He should say nothing. He should get to his weary feet and go upstairs to collapse face-down, fully clothed, on his bed and lay there until the requisite number of hours had passed to say he had slept. But Maglor had that stubborn challenge gleaming in his eyes, that look that said he was spoiling for an argument, as he had worn when he insistently dropped counterpoints to Maedhros’ plans in front of their brothers simply to draw out the conversation and make everyone bicker a while longer.

“Naturally,” he replied, allowing a matching poison to seep into his tone. “You mean for them to save you.”

“Save me from what, my lord?” Maglor asked, languorously, obscenely stretching his words. “Unless it be from the stench of that cloak of yours, I should say nothing urgent. But perhaps the aroma of pig shit is bracing for you.”

“You have looked at your soul and found it wanting,” Maedhros said. “You have gazed upon your heart, upon your fëa, and you see quite a lot of dark. The fear of it creeps up into your throat; it chokes you in the shadows; this fear of what you’ve become. Away it eats at you like rust on a cheap blade until you gnaw your fingernails to bloody stumps. But here are two poor creatures which need caring for! And oh, what chance for charity! What luck, that no one else should snap them up before you do! Now there I would not quarrel with you; it was a fine move to catch them before Gil-galad did, for he will never siege Amon Ereb so long as harm may come to Elwing and Eärendil’s precious children, but I doubt that was in your mind when you dragged them out of that cave.

“So now you have them and all the better if you can protect them from your brute of a brother, and show that you are not that far gone, that you are better than that at least. You will educate them! You will—what was your word?—cultivate them! You will have them sit on your knee, trembling, while you tell them old Noldor stories and play your lute and when they leave—if they leave—perhaps it will be with a few rosy memories amid all the pig shit to remember you by. Caring for them will be your redemption; you will sing about how you saved them, when in fact it is you who has tried to claw your way out of the depths of utter depravity and rapacious self-serving desire by grabbing at their tunic hems to haul yourself free. Do you think that anyone—”

Sometimes, it was tempting to just keep going; to see how many blows he could get in before Maglor objected or simply left. Depending on the response, Maedhros could determine how far under his brother’s skin he’d gotten this time.

Judging by the wine goblet that collided with his forehead, he had done a fairly decent job.

Wine dripped copiously off Maedhros’ face and into the fur of his cloak, soaking the front of his tunic. His nose objected to the abrupt connection with solid metal. Maglor’s face had gone from the faint flush of offense to a furious red as if he had blistered in the sun. He was shaking.

“What does it matter,” he hissed through his teeth, undone, “the reason, so long as the result is good?”

“Perhaps it doesn’t,” Maedhros said with a shrug, rising to his feet, still dripping wine. He swiped a hand over his eyebrows and flicked the residue onto the floor. Truthfully, he was impressed Maglor had not tried to tackle him yet, table between them notwithstanding. He took his time grabbing the bottle of wine Maglor had set on the table and filling the goblet he had been toying with when Maglor entered. He filled it up to the brim and pushed it over to Maglor, sloshing wine over the tabletop. “Here. Don’t trouble yourself; you can see to the education of the hostages as it pleases you, and I will concern myself, as usual, with keeping Amon Ereb functional.”

He did not look again at Maglor’s face before he quitted the room. He knew the look of loathing he would see there. If Maglor wanted to hurt him, he’d have to hit harder than with a mirror of Maedhros’ own feelings.