Reckoning by sallysavestheday

Reckoning

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Turgon wakes in Mandos in a tearing rage, white hot and still howling in defiance.  He will not be bound or held: his first instinct is to make for the dark doors and escape. Turned back first by the guardian Maiar and then by the Lord of the Dead himself, he wails and fights and hurls himself against their bindings, demanding justice, and freedom, and revenge.

Finding the way held firm against him, he turns bleak and bitter, stalking the Halls in search of those he believes have done him wrong. Fëanor, first among his nemeses, is nowhere to be found, and Maedhros lingers yet in Middle Earth. His other cousins slip away, as they always have: no matter how he chases them they are always just beyond reach, spurning him, dismissing his pain.  

But someone pulls him, wincing and flaying himself with a hopelessness that mirrors Turgon’s own. He follows the slim thread of that misery down into the silent fringes of the Halls, traces the aching spirit to a darkened corner, watches him flinch and twist away when Turgon draws near. By now he has seen the weaving of his own fate among the many tapestries that line the walls. He knows Maeglin by the taste of desperation in the air, and a grim satisfaction fills him. He will have vengeance here, at least, if nowhere else. Disembodied or no, he will find a way to make his nephew pay.

Whatever he might do stutters to a halt at the almost-touch of fingers on his arm, the soft breath of laughter from behind him. He knows that restraining clasp, that bubble of exasperated humor. Always Elenwë calmed him thus, when anger claimed him, or despair.

A great wash of shame and regret spills over him. In his fury he has not sought her: so deeply loved, so bitterly mourned.

He cannot bring himself to turn to her, so she slides herself between them – the furious King, the frightened youth. As much as is possible in this incorporeal realm, she leans into him, tangles her spirit with his own. Soft as she ever was, and yet unyielding, when justice must be done. He sees Maeglin through her eyes, eyes that have watched him for so long from Mandos, forgiving, accepting, unsparing in her love.

Maeglin’s grim childhood passes, then his loss at Turgon’s hands: mother and father both, for grief and pride. His star rises in Gondolin but it is a pale gleaming, always uncertain, ever afraid. His mole-like preference for the silence and the separateness of the mines goes terribly wrong, and there is Morgoth, and misery; freedom bought, but with such pain. Compelled and bound, he cannot speak – the hook through his tongue and heart burns and burns whenever he tries, and he can only fall silent and slink away, weeping. The end is as Turgon remembers: the dawn in the wrong quarter, the dragons, the Doom.

In the stillness of the Halls, Maeglin stares up at him, shivering. Turgon sees him, sees that he is trapped, yet, in his terror and his pain. The battlements are long ago and far away, but Maeglin has never stopped falling.   

Elenwë breathes a reminder that eternity waits. Forever is too long to be furious.

She draws him down to where Maeglin huddles, cringing, and winds them both in warmth. Mandos’ doors open only to a new life, for souls that are ready for beginning. They will have all the time they need to heal, to learn each other as they might have been and still could be. There is no moment better than now to start becoming.