a place where both our hearts may rest by ohboromir

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Life

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Doom had come to Doriath. The King was dead. The Queen was gone. Mablung’s hands were empty.

Bring the Silmaril to Lúthien.

Melian’s order rang in Mablung’s ears as he stumbled through the halls of Menegroth. His hands were empty – where was his spear? Where was the jewel? How could he take it to her if his hands were empty? What would become of Doriath without it, now that the Girdle was gone? His people needed him, the last authority left alive, until Lúthien came. He could not fail. They needed him.

The world was a blur of colour and sound. His face was wet with blood and tears, unwillingly shed. The agony was focused on a point just below his ribs, every inhale soaking his tunic in more blood. His breath came in a rattling wheeze, and his legs gave out beneath him, and he fell to his knees on the stairs. Oh, why had they built so very many stairs?

Death. He felt it, he thought, as he struggled to pull himself up the stairs on his hands and knees. The call of Mandos in his ears, tugging at his spirit. He wasn’t sure he had the strength to resist. Would he see Beleg again, when he shed his body for the embrace of the Halls? It would not be so terrible to die, if he could see Beleg again.

He collapsed again at the top of the stairs, a smear of blood behind him. Mablung rolled onto his back, the starry ceiling of Menegroth above him. He always imagined he would die in battle, but he had never thought it would be here, under the ground, and alone. He had always imagined he would fall with Beleg at his side – something romantic and brave and valiant, deaths they would sing songs to. Who would sing of him, dying alone at the top of this damned bloody staircase?

No – he was not alone. Someone was shouting, but Mablung could not hear the words. He could only hear Beleg, calling his name – his rich laugh, the lilting bird-song of his voice, the warmth and comfort and safety of him. Would there be singing, in Mandos? He wanted to hear him sing again. He would take back every teasing word he had ever said about his voice, just to hear him sing again.

Someone else – no, there were two people – lifted him over their shoulders. He hung limply between them. Mablung wanted to stop them. There was no need for a healer. Bring them for those who could still be saved. He would welcome death, now, if it would bring him closer to holding his husband in his arms again. For the guilt and grief at his failure to stay and defend Doriath, he was sure no one would deny him his chance to be reunited with the one person he loved above all else in the world.

Doriath was lost – what else had he to live for, if not for Doriath, if not for Beleg? Both were lost, and Mablung would be too, and they would be lost together, inseparable in death as they had once been in life. Perhaps they would write songs of that; of love, of the joy of being together again, of how there could not be one without the other.

He felt himself being lowered onto the ground, onto something soft. There was a healer standing over him, hands pressed to his side to stem the flow of blood. They were talking to him, begging him to stay awake, shouting for more hands and more bandages. Mablung smiled. He was glad he was not alone.

He let the darkness claim him and closed his eyes.

And then something happened that he did not expect: Mablung opened his eyes.

There was a woman leaning over him, partially obscuring his view of the tiled ceiling. His brow creased; Doriath did not have tiled ceilings, certainly not ones painted with dancing fishes. He shifted, and the woman put her hand on his chest and pushed him back down.

“No need for fussing. Your regular nurse will be back soon.” She sounded mildly amused, “I sent him off to make himself useful; for all he claims to be a healer, he spends more worrying over every little twitch than doing anything that would actually help.”

His frown deepened. Did she expect him to know what she was talking about?

“Where…?”

“Sirion.” She finished adjusting his bandages and stepped back, and Mablung could properly focus on her face. She was real, solid, made of flesh; alive. And so was he. If he tried to remember how he had gotten here, there was only pain and confusion. Sirion, so far from Menegroth. Who had carried him so far? How had he lived? He had felt death’s call in his spirit.

He was almost disappointed: he had been so looking forward to seeing Beleg again.

“But I was dying.”

“Your people love you, Captain. Did you think they would leave you to die?” She scolded him gently, “They brought you - and other wounded, of course - by wagon. We have better healers here now.”

Now Doriath is ruined. Now Melian is gone. Now his king was dead; now that his friends and his husband and soldiers he had trained from childhood were dead. And yet Mablung had been doomed to remain.

“What news from Menegroth? Did they send for the Princess? Was there a second attack?”

But the woman would not answer his questions. He could tell by the look on her face – and he had been a patient many times before. He knew how healers were. When he opened his mouth, he was told not to worry, to rest, to heal. But there was so much to worry about. Why did they never understand, it was not so simple as putting it out of his mind?

The woman paused in her tasks and looked to the hallway.

“Ah. Here he is. I will leave you two.”

She heard the footsteps in the hall as clearly as Mablung, and hurried from the room – but not before Mablung caught the hint of a smile on her lips, as though she were in on some little joke.

The door creaked open again. Mablung’s heart stopped. Perhaps he was dead after all and this was just a vision of Mandos.

Beleg Cúthalion – his Beleg, his husband, silver as the stars – came through the door, arms full of fresh sheets for the bed. Their eyes met. The bedsheets fell to the floor in a heap.

And then Beleg’s warm arms were around him, his face pressed to Mablung’s neck. Mablung fought against the pain to wrap his arms around him in turn, pressing soft lips to his hair, breathing in the reality of him – he still smelt of beech-wood and pine, even here by the Sea.

Fourteen years. Fourteen years, he had been lost to him. Those years had passed in quiet grief; he had heard from those in Brethil of Beleg’s fate, and though he had thought to search Dorthonion for a grave, he had never been able to bring himself to do it.

Now, like the shade that haunted his dreams, he was returned.

Beleg shifted, moving back, and Mablung grasped him tighter. “Stay.”

“I am not going anywhere without you again.” Beleg pulled himself free and sat on the chair by the bed, taking one of Mablung’s hands in his own and holding it, clasping between both of his. His eyes were watery, he hardly blinked. “Never again. I swear, I swear it. Oh, meleth-nin…”

Mablung curled their fingers together. “I thought you…” The words tasted like bile. “I thought you were dead.”

Beleg’s face clouded with guilt. “I thought the news had reached you.”

“You could have brought it yourself.” It was hard to keep the hint of sharpness from his words; had Beleg been here all these years, while Mablung grieved him?

“No,” Beleg’s gaze darted to their joined hands. “I could not have. I was as near to death as you were in Doriath, I was in the grave, Mablung, when He – when Lord Araw pulled me from the dirt –”

“The Lord of the Forests pulled you from the dirt?”

“Yes. Did I not just say so? You remember- he was always fond of me.” Beleg frowned, and leaned forward, brushing his fingers through Mablung’s hair. “You do remember, don’t you? You do not have a head wound, do you? I tended you best I could, I did not find any.”

“I am fine. Stop fussing. I want to know the story.”

“Oh, yes. Lord Araw saved me, he came to me, in the form of a great beast, and dug me from my grave. He saved me, Mablung, but I was so weak, I could hardly move. He brought me here on his back.” Beleg gestured to the room with his free hand. “And here I have been since, too weak and wounded to do anything but lie in my bed. If it were not for his power, I would be long departed to the Halls of Waiting.”

“You are not abed now.”

“No.” Beleg admitted, “I tried to send word to Doriath, but you know I do not write, so I suppose the messenger must not have passed through the Girdle. And… I could not go back there, Mablung. It would have been too much for me.”

Guilt rose anew in Mablung’s heart. He thought of sweet Niënor, of brave Morwen, of Túrin, the boy he had seen grow into a man. All of them dust now, and neither he nor Beleg had been able to hold back the tide of fate, no matter how they had tried. He closed his eyes. Of course, Beleg had not wanted to return so soon – what was fourteen years to one as old as either of them? It would only have been a cruel reminder of his failures.

“Doriath…” Mablung opened his eyes again, “Elwë, the Silmaril, I was… I was supposed to bring it to the princess.”

Beleg shook his head. “Dior is king of Doriath now. He has it. It is our burden no longer. We have played our part, and look at what it has cost us.”

Mablung squeezed his hand.

“When I am well, we will leave this place. I want to see the wilds again, Beleg. I have hidden away in Doriath too long – if war in Beleriand is inevitable, I want to die free, not armoured and desperate.”

He remembered how they had once desired glory. How they had once wanted to take part in great deeds. And how that battle had ended in nothing but betrayal and bloodshed. No, Mablung did not wish to be a warrior any longer – he longed for his books and journals, for the comfort of song and the company of friends.

Beleg exhaled deeply. “We will not be soldiers again; not captains, not lords, only Beleg and Mablung.”

He pressed his forehead to Mablung’s, and then kissed him softly.

“You need to sleep. Your wounds were serious. We have all the time in the world to talk. Sleep now, and I will be here when you wake.”

Mablung smiled and closed his eyes.

They were soldiers again in the end, once more, when Sirion fell, bow and spear defending their kin. But when the Calaquendi came over the sea, with their shining spears and golden armour, they declined both ship and sword, and remained among the civilians – prepared to muster a last stand if it came to it.

But it did not.

It ended.

There was peace.

The waters rose and swallowed Beleriand; swallowed the world that they had known. They let their suffering be swallowed with it; let the Sea take all their grief and erode it away, until their hearts were light again. It could not undo their hurts, but to know that they at last had a chance for peace was like healing from the hands of Estë herself. The Sea would not erase their memories – those they cherished, and shut away in their hearts, where the world could not tarnish them.

Círdan had offered them welcome in Mithlond, but they had other plans. If they were not to be counted among the Great and the Wise, – Beleg protested they should be counted among the Old, if nothing else, but that did not win them a place on any council – then they would relish their freedom.

Once, so very long ago, they had walked the length of Middle Earth. Now they planned to do it again, to cross Ered Luin and walk east until they could no more – and they planned to take their time, and savour the joy of discovery.