Scorched by polutropos

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Maglor

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Sweat beads on Maglor’s upper lip. He lowers the axe to free one hand, drags his wrist across his mouth. His sigh gathers in the air before him, bleeding white tendrils into the surrounding cold. Before it vanishes he has set another log on the chopping block. His muscles bunch and jump under the strain of lifting the axe. He ignores their protest, brings the axe down. It is a pleasing sound, the crack of the wood splitting. He sets the thicker half back on the block, strikes again. Neatly stacks the pieces, sets another log. Strikes.

He thinks of King Finarfin’s banners unfurling on the ramparts of Himring, unseemly white-gold starbursts against those siege-scarred walls. The lands of Fëanor’s sons have been reclaimed but not by them. It won’t be long before word reaches the host of the West that Eärendil’s sons live.

Maglor never meant to keep them so long. Maglor never thought they would grow so swiftly to manhood — a lapse of reason, for their mother had, and her father before her. If there is truth in the wayward scraps of history that Maglor collects (a force of habit), it was at their age that their parents wed.

They are not children, have not been for years. The path of a greater fate widens before them, the force of their mighty lineage guiding their steps. When their more virtuous kin come beckoning with outstretched arms, there will be no question of their following, and the troubled years of their childhood will fade to obscurity.

Unless with one arm extended forward they hold the other out behind, unless Maglor’s care has been enough that they might plead on their behalf, might plead for— no, Maglor does not indulge that vain hope. They will leave, and Maglor will be swept up again in the inevitable drift towards doom, snarled in the wrack with the only brother who remains to him.

A shadow lengthens over the floor before him. Elros stands in the doorframe.

Maglor lowers the axe. For a long moment they only look at one another, Maglor shocked to stillness by the anger rippling along the line of Elros’ jaw.

Maglor’s animal impulse is to hold the axe over his heart. To guard his retreat before Elros’ ire boils over, before Elros reaches for some blunt but heavy implement to hurl at him (it would not be the first time).

But worse, he fears the damning words his foster child holds behind his teeth.

Elros cannot know that he is afraid, so Maglor leans the axe against the chopping block and performs parental gentleness (he has as yet learnt no other way of relating to this grown man before him).

“Elros,” he says, deploying his right name to silence the crowd of affectionate epithets he wishes he could speak instead. “What is the matter?”

Elros snarls. “I knew I would find you here.”

“What do you mean?”

“Is this not where you come when there is some ugly truth you do not wish to confront? To swing the axe down upon your thoughts, split them off like you split that wood?”

“We need wood—” Maglor says.

Elros knows it for a weak rebuttal. He cuts him off with a scoff and scans the cords of wood lining the walls. Enough for weeks. “Tell me," he says, "how long have you known? How long have you been content to sacrifice Elrond for your dear brother’s amusement?”

“I do not know what you are talking about.” The accusation chafes and Maglor feels the defensive strain building in his voice. He is all too aware of his own brittleness.

Elros glares; Maglor’s walls rise. He tells the truth. If he had for a moment suspected that Elrond’s growing closeness to Maedhros might harm him, he would have ended it at once. Even if it meant standing against his own brother. He waits.

Elros relents, releases the tightness of his shoulders, but the delicate skin of his neck is still flush with emotion. “Maedhros is fucking him.”

The words are spoken softly, but they pelt Maglor’s heart like hailstones.

“What?” he says, a breathless syllable “No. It isn’t true. He would not." Stricken, he has no power to hold back the anger cresting in opposition. "Have I taught you so little of compassion that you would twist a spark of hope into something so vile?” Even as Maglor speaks, excuses are slipping through his fingers. “Elrond would never…”

“He did!” Elros screams. “He did! He told me. And who can blame him, when you filled his head with idolatrous fantasies of someone you have imagined. I doubt that Maedhros ever was the hero you paint him to be—”

“Enough!” Maglor snaps.

Elros kicks over a crate and groans. “How could you not have seen? He has adored him. For years! He has hung on every glance he deigns to grant him, every terse word he locks up in his heart, turns over in his mind like some precious stone.”

Maglor’s gut bunches tight. Before he can name his shame for what it is, it loses itself at Elros. “Why did you say nothing of this until now? Why did you not stop him?”

This time the crate flies across the floor and cracks against a support post. Elros shouts, incoherent in his rage. “You are vile,” he spits. “Do not dare tell me I ought to have kept him from your brother’s depraved lusts. Surely, surely that you knew. Do you deny it? Do you deny that you excuse your own brother’s desire for you?” He pauses only to wince in disgust. “Nay, you cultivate it, ever teasing and soft. As if you want his attention, as if you thrive on it. Do you? Does it please you to be the object of his desire?”

Elros waits, heaves several breaths. He lets a space yawn open between them, one that Maglor might fill with denials, apologies. But he cannot. He is choked with too many memories, too much regret.

Elros takes several steps backwards. He shakes his head, works his jaw, eyes widening. He cannot even speak, so horrifying is Maglor’s continued silence.

The beginning of a confession stumbles from Maglor’s mouth: “There was— Maedhros and I, we had…”

“No.” Elros shields his face with a hand, palm turned out. “Do not tell me. I do not want to know. Just know that whatever it was you had, whatever it was you did, he has found another. One who will bend more easily before him. And you drove them to it. Both of them.”

Maglor is aware, suddenly, of tears wetting his cheeks. “I am sorry, Elincë,” he says. “I will talk to him.”

Elros is already gone.

---

There was little left of Maglor’s heart but ash, after the Bragollach. With wounds still smarting, Maedhros climbed into his bed, eager; for had not Himring triumphed? Thus he spoke into the curve of Maglor’s neck, tugging the hem of his tunic up to his waist, familiar fingers pressing into his ribs, saying, “Not all is lost, so long as Himring stands there is hope.”

But with the heat of Maedhros’ body over him, his breath in his ear, all Maglor could think of was the roar of flames. “No,” he said, and, “No,” again. “I am used up, brother. I am empty.”

Maedhros was no monster. He peeled himself back from the bed, though the movement seemed to pain him. “As you wish,” he said. “I love you, brother.”

It was never meant to be so final. Maglor had trusted in the passage of time. He had waited for old yearnings to return. They never did. And while Maglor became accustomed to dullness, Maedhros brightened. His hope burgeoned, and Maglor asked himself if it had not been he who, through overfondness, had held his brother back from greatness all these years.

Then Himring fell, and Maedhros, and all the world with them. The ache when he imagined shadows of Maedhros as he had been was not for him, not as he had become. There was no returning.

All the same, he cannot but ask himself if he should go to Maedhros now. Should he offer himself in place of his foster child? Would Maedhros accept him? Would Elrond forgive him? Ever has he been plagued by uncertainty. He does not sleep, but he does not rise either.

He waits until morning, gets as far as Maedhros’ door, but finds him gone. He makes his rounds of the stables, soothes the horses with melodic endearments, soothes himself with combing of fingers through their manes.

Then he goes to Elrond.

The door is open, but he raps his knuckles against the frame. “Elincë,” he says.

Elrond is seated at his desk, tracing the shapes of pressed flowers onto parchment. “Come in,” he says without looking.

Maglor crosses the room to stand behind him, takes the edge of a sheet he has set aside. “They are beautiful,” he says. “What are they for?”

“I know Elros told you.” Elrond sets his pencil down. The chair legs clatter, the old wood groans as he turns to face Maglor. “Are you going to stop it?”

There is a soft-edged mingling of hope and defiance in Elrond’s expression. “You are a man grown,” Maglor says, “I cannot direct your choices.” He smiles. “Does he care for you?”

Elrond nods, does not break his gaze. “I believe he does.”

It is impossible for Maglor to resist the lure of relief to hear him say so; impossible to consider he may be wrong. “And do you care for him?”

Now Elrond’s eyes fall to his hands, open on his lap. Maglor fights the impulse to reach out, tilt his chin up.

“I do,” Elrond says. “But…” He sighs and lifts his face back up. “There is so much I do not know.”

Maglor clears a space on the edge of the desk and perches on it, hands gripping the contours of the wood. You are better not knowing, he should say. You are better loving someone else.

“What is it you want to know?” he says instead, and the wincing of his conscience is so slight he barely feels it.

At the glimmer in Elrond’s eyes, his sudden reanimation, it is altogether forgotten.

Elrond says, “You will not stop it?”

“Not unless you wish me to,” answers Maglor.

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Chapter End Notes

Elincë = Little Star in Quenya