Fruit of the Family Tree by Rocky41_7

Introduction

Thranduil and Maglor arrive at the estate.

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The ground had grown terribly uneven; the carriage jounced about as its wheels careened through ruts scored deep into the dirt path from generations of use and absence of care. The coals of the heater had died long ago, and the further they traveled, the less Maglor seemed to speak. The amiable jabber with which he had filled up the many hours since they sailed from Mithlond had died miles back. But at last, after most of the day, he said:

            “How are you feeling?”

            It was an almost clinical question.

            “Well,” Thranduil murmured in response, not tearing his eyes from the bleak, colorless landscape passing by outside. Scrubby, nearly leafless little bushes dotted the roadside here and there, but otherwise very little seemed to grow, and the sky had been the same dull gray since they had secured this carriage and driver three days ago on the outskirts of the Swanhaven. The only building they had passed in the last three hours had been a dilapidated old shack playing home only to a murder of crows.

            “I know it has been a long journey,” Maglor observed. “And under…regrettable circumstances. You’ll be able to rest at the house. We’re almost there.”

            Thranduil said nothing. He could not be termed a great conversationalist himself, and he found Maglor’s demeanor as they neared his ancestral land somewhat worrisome. It was not like Thranduil to be hasty, and it troubled him to think that perhaps Maglor believed they had made a mistake. They had left Greenwood in such a rush; he was almost certain Maglor had skipped customs in Alqualondë entirely.

            “Wretchedly cold in here,” Maglor complained, rapping his knuckles against the window frame of the carriage and nudging the dead heater testily with his toe. “I’m afraid you’ll have to get used to that. The weather here is ghastly.”

            Thranduil at last turned his eyes from the scenery and, removing his hands from the folds of his cloak, held them out to Maglor, who stared blankly in response. The ring Maglor had given him glinted sharply on Thranduil’s finger: red diamond and gold, an old family heirloom, Maglor had told him.

            “Yes?” he said.

            “Your hands,” Thranduil said. Maglor let go of the walking stick he’d been fiddling with and almost tentatively extended his hands. Thranduil shifted to sit on the edge of his seat and took one of Maglor’s hands between his, gently, finger by finger, easing off his black leather glove. He did the same with the other, laying them both on his lap, then clasped Maglor’s hands between his own, skin on skin, pressing the dim heat of his palms against Maglor’s icy fingers.

            Maglor stared.

            Thranduil stiffened slightly, trying to feel out a misstep.

            “Warmer?” he asked softly, grasping each of Maglor’s hands individually before letting go and returning his gloves.

            “Yes…thank you.” Maglor in his bewilderment tugged his gloves back on and went on staring, before a particularly sharp jerk of the carriage turned his attention to the window. “Ah. There it is.”

            As they rounded a hill Thranduil could see the dark spires looming up as the beast of a house lumbered into view.

            “Formenos,” said Maglor. “I hope it’s not too much of a disappointment.” He did not sound excessively sympathetic about the notion.

            “Why would it be?” Thranduil asked.

            “It’s rather old,” said Maglor.

            “I am sure it is quite well.”

            The carriage creaked and groaned as it was hauled over the clay-heavy soil of the property, the soggy unpaved drive sucking at its wheels. Maglor observed the approach of the house dispassionately, and jumped out as soon as the carriage came to a halt. Almost as a second thought, he offered Thranduil a hand out.

            “My family has lived here since my father’s exile,” Maglor expounded. “Formenos was the house he built to show that nothing would deter him from his greatness. He’s dead now, by the by, though we never did recover a body. You may hear the locals refer to it as Crimson Peak.” Thranduil froze as Maglor withdrew his hand, staring up at the dark house, which seemed to pierce like an arrow shaft the pale, unbroken sky around them.

            “What?” he asked, a hoarse note in his voice. Maglor cast a glance over at him from where he was overseeing the unloading of their luggage.

            “Crimson Peak,” Maglor repeated. “It’s the pejorative nickname the locals have given to this place.”

            “Why do they refer to it so?” Thranduil asked quietly, pulling his cloak a bit tighter around himself as he continued to look up at the warped towers, the dangling eaves, the missing window sills. One window on the left side of the ground floor looked like someone had thrown a brick through it.

            “My grandfather was murdered here,” Maglor replied bluntly. “It was apparently quite the wretched scene, though I never saw it. Mother and Father and Maedhros did, but Mother wouldn’t let anyone else in after she’d seen it. It was a closed casket funeral. Maedhros said—ah, well. Perhaps I shouldn’t say such things, should I?” He chuckled and hitched a smile on his face which he hoped looked genuine. “I wouldn’t wish to give you nightmares your first night in your new home!”

            Thranduil reached for his case, but Maglor waved him off.

            “Nodien will take care of that,” he said. “Let me show you in.” He offered Thranduil his arm and after a brief pause Thranduil took it, and allowed Maglor to lead him through a courtyard bristling with dead vines and untrimmed brown grasses bursting through the stonework, and up to the front doors, easily more than twice as tall as Thranduil himself.

            “Here it is,” Maglor said with manufactured cheer, throwing open one of the oaken double doors into a main hall so shrouded in shadow it was nearly impossible to get a look at it from the front step. Maglor took Thranduil’s hand, intertwining their fingers with a smile and a vice-like grip. “Welcome home, husband mine.”

---

Chapter End Notes

Hope you're looking forward to everyone having a terrible time <3 <3 If Thranduil's speech sounds slightly more old-fashioned than the others, then I've succeeded...this is meant to reflect the somewhat archaic Iathrin dialect of Sindarin.

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Chapter I

Maedhros welcomes the newly-weds back to the estate.

Read Chapter I

Maedhros had gone back ahead of them. He had not stayed for Oropher’s funeral nor for Maglor’s wedding, but he had kissed Maglor goodbye in their hotel room and promised to have everything ready when Maglor got home. Maglor had disposed of Maedhros’ bloody clothes and held Thranduil’s hand through the funeral service, watching tears slide unendingly down that stoic face.

            Now Maedhros emerged into the ghostly light of the foyer as Maglor explained to Thranduil about the decay of the house and why it had gone so long unfixed. He wore his auburn hair in a braid, wound into a tight bun on the back of his head, and a high-collared shirt with the wrist tightly buttoned around his metal prosthetic hand. As he had no taste anymore for shopping, he had gone on with the same outdated clothes that had been in the house when they returned to it, many of which had belonged to Father or Grandfather. At his forehead glinted a phenomenal jewel, bound on a golden chain and surrounded by several smaller, less impressive companions.

Bits of insulation and flakes of unknown origin drifted down through the hole in the roof, which had expanded over the years, and allowed for considerable weather damage to everything in its path. The wooden lions which had once so pridefully guarded the base of the stairs were mossy in some places, and the former red of the painted wood columns surrounding the foyer was more a muddy orange.

            “Unfortunately the damage from the intruders was never fully repaired,” Maglor was saying. “We lacked the time, Father being keen to be off to war, and when Maedhros and I returned here at last, we lacked the resources…But I have great hopes for my latest musical project,” said Maglor with some true brightness. “It shall be a grand spectacle, as soon as I can secure some financial backing for it.”

            “The rot has spread quite far,” Maedhros remarked as he approached them. A great ring of keys jangled at his waist, and just above it, an ornately decorated dagger hilt in its own belt. “Some rooms we have had to seal off entirely. Too unstable.” Thranduil was a tall Elf among his people, but even he had to look up to meet Maedhros’ cold gray gaze, which lingered on him only a moment before Maedhros turned to Maglor and pulled him into a one-armed hug, his good hand firmly on the back of Maglor’s neck. This position they held for an extended moment before Maglor wriggled free, slightly flushed, and smoothed the front of his shirt. He did not see how Maedhros held Thranduil’s gaze throughout their embrace.

            Thranduil looked from the ring of keys over to Maglor.

            “It occurs to me I have not a housekey,” he said.

            “Ah, well…”

            “You don’t need one,” Maedhros interrupted. “As I’ve just said, some rooms of the house are dangerous, and you won’t yet know which ones. If you need to be let in somewhere, I can let you in.”

            The subsequent silence was not wholly copacetic, and Maglor cleared his throat. Maedhros managed a rictus smile at his new brother-in-law.

            “Welcome to your new home,” he said perfunctorily. “How pleasant it will be to have someone else with us here. Maglor, may I see you in the kitchen? There is something which wants your attention.”

            “Yes, of course. Nodien will show you up to our room,” he said, flashing a smile at Thranduil as their one remaining staff member, an overworked caretaker, hauled Thranduil’s trunk over the worn front steps. “I’ll be just a moment.”

***

            Maedhros was drumming his fingers on the counter as the kettle warmed over the fire. Maglor’s hands danced over the back of a chair, but he did not draw it and sit. His nose twitched slightly; the house always smelled a bit mustier after returning from abroad.

            “Is something wrong?” he asked at last.

            “You went ahead with it,” said Maedhros.

            “…as I thought we had agreed upon.”

            “I maintain my earlier assessment. But it doesn’t matter now.” He took down a tin of tea from one of the cupboards.

            “He is young,” Maglor admitted. “But still an adult. And the situation was…workable.”

            “Only one person in all the world looking out for him,” Maedhros agreed. “And one with a sizeable checkbook, too. Have you gotten the paperwork?”

            “Thranduil is still talking with the bank. He should have them send it soon,” said Maglor. “It ought to arrive in a in a month or two after that, post depending. Oropher did quite well for himself.”

            “The man was practically a self-made king,” said Maedhros. “Not that you’d know it from looking at him.” Maedhros measured tea into the pot on the tray, and added a small spoon of powder to the cup with the dove-trees on it. “Well. Nowadays you wouldn’t know anything from looking at him.” Maglor winced slightly, but Maedhros’ back was to him and he didn’t see.

            “Now, if you keep being so gloomy,” said Maglor with forced and weary playfulness, “I will think you aren’t at all glad to see me.” Maedhros looked over at him.

            “Welcome back,” he said. “If you want a red bean cake, they’re in the basket there.” Delighted, Maglor opened it, only to find them stale and one on the edge molding. He replaced the basket lid without touching them.

            “Did you really have to kill him as you did, by the way?” he asked with a sigh. “Thranduil’s been in a state about the whole thing. Surely you could’ve just cut his throat.”

            Maedhros shrugged. “I did the job. Why does it matter how?”

            “It was just rather…messy.”

            “And I do know how you detest a mess, brother dear. I’ve cleaned it up, haven’t I?”

            “You didn’t have to go to the funeral,” Maglor muttered. “Or take the boat back with him.” Maglor could not say being so exposed to another’s grief in such tight quarters was a comfortable experience, especially when the person in question reasonably expected his new and allegedly besotted husband to comfort him about it. And Thranduil possessed such a lovely visage, it was terribly dreary to see him look so depressed. Maglor had hoped he’d at least have a nice face to look at for the next few weeks.

He was on the verge of suggesting Maedhros had purposefully given Oropher such a violent and ugly death out of spite for Maglor insisting on Thranduil instead of giving way to Maedhros’ suggestion they look for someone else, but he knew no good would come of that, so he swallowed it down. Maedhros always threw a tantrum when he didn’t get his way, and he never responded well to having it called out.

            When Maedhros had fixed the tea, they went upstairs to find Thranduil examining his new bedroom. He seemed paler than usual, even, or perhaps Maglor’s eyes were still adjusting to the light of the house.

            “Tea,” Maedhros announced, setting it on the dresser. He took the cup with the dove-tree design and thrust it out at Thranduil, who seemed to hesitate before taking it.

            “Thank you.”

            “Isn’t this lovely!” Maglor chirped, never able to let an awkward silence go without making it worse. “Feel free to make whatever use you wish of the space…” It wasn’t as if Maglor spent time in this room. “It’s your room too, now!”

            “You never mentioned that you have a cat,” Thranduil said in his usual low, soft tone. Truthfully, it was one of the things Maglor had liked about him from the start. He was not a singer—not like Maglor—but he had a very pleasant speaking voice. It seemed calming, somehow.

            “We don’t,” said Maedhros, casting a pointed and displeased look at Maglor, who glanced away.

            “Did you see one?” Maglor asked while looking studiously at the wallpaper and not at Maedhros.

            “Out the window just now,” said Thranduil. “It’s not yours?”

            “Must be a stray,” said Maedhros.

            “Can we keep it?”

            Maedhros and Thranduil were both looking at Maglor, who took a too-large sip of tea which hurt his throat on the way down.

            “Ah, why not?” he said, smiling first at Thranduil and then slightly more placatingly at Maedhros. “One little cat wouldn’t be amiss.”

            “Drink your tea,” said Maedhros sharply to Thranduil, who stiffened. Maedhros softened his tone to add: “It will help with the ills of travel, and with the chill.”

            As Thranduil obediently raised the delicate white cup to drink, Maglor recalled walking through Thranduil’s solarium as he pointed out this and that to him, quietly extoling in his reserved way each and every specimen under his care. Maglor could not say he’d ever considered plants besides passingly finding this or that flower (usually embroidered on a coat or painted on a bit of porcelain) nice to look at, but Thranduil knew things about mosses and root systems and he seemed to find each as beautiful as a blooming rose.

            He’s too young, Maedhros had said back in Beleriand. But Maglor had insisted this was the right target. The notion of his age was absurd anyway—Maedhros had never cared about such things before, and Maglor tended to doubt he did now. Thranduil was an adult capable of receiving and controlling his father’s fortune, and that was what really mattered.

            Maedhros waited until Thranduil had drained the cup before he would take the tray and leave the room.

***

            Predictably, the travel and the grief and the tea made Thranduil weary, and he went to bed early, leaving Maglor free to scarper off to the room which had once belonged to Grandfather. He woke alone as he often did—Maedhros almost always rose before him—but the bed was still warm, which meant it couldn’t be too late. Sure enough, when Maglor threw himself restlessly out of bed to check the clock, it wasn’t yet 9 AM. But he couldn’t imagine trying to lay down again; he felt he must have eaten something the day before which disagreed with him, for there was an unpleasant twinging in his belly.

            He went down to the kitchen for a morning cup of tea and to reheat something for breakfast, and while he was eating he was joined by his new husband.

            “I must have slept very deeply,” Thranduil remarked as he drew up a chair. “I did not hear you come in last night, nor leave this morning.”

            Maglor smiled sweetly.

            “You were tired. I’m glad you got some rest. Do you want some fried rice? I’ll heat up some more for you.” He got up and went first for the tea kettle before hesitating and dumping some more of the rice into a pan to heat. Maedhros would make the tea later; it wouldn’t do for them to both dose him by accident.

            “Was the bed comfortable enough?” Maglor asked, because he couldn’t think of a less asinine conversation topic.

            “It was well,” said Thranduil. “Warmer with the cat.”

            “Oh, did she join you?”

            “You saw her not?”

            “No,” Maglor said. “She must have gone by the time I came in, and returned after I went to sleep.” This made no sense even to Maglor when he thought about it for just a second, but he hoped Thranduil didn’t bother with thinking about the things Maglor said.

            He set a plate of warmed rice in front of Thranduil.

            “Here you go.” Thranduil caught his hand as he drew it back, and rubbed Maglor’s fingers between his, and looked up at him with something almost...as if he were asking for something. Maglor trembled lightly, and gave Thranduil’s fingers a squeeze before drawing his own back. “I’m afraid there’s not much variance in food here…it’s troublesome to get anything shipped to the house, you see.” He took his seat again.

            “We shall manage it,” Thranduil said with a shrug. “I thought I might look at some of the house today.”

            “You want a tour?” Maglor smiled.

            “I have not professional training, but I have practiced carpentry as a hobby,” Thranduil said. “I might be able to fix some of the problems around the house.” Maglor’s face went blank. He was realizing how poorly he handled his spouse going off-script by this point in his life.

            “Fix the house?” he said.

            “Yes. Nothing structural, of course, it would only be superficial…but it might make you more comfortable.” Maglor still sat dumb. “It is as you said before,” said Thranduil, his voice dropping to a still softer, gentler register. “We are to help each other now, as a wedded couple. This I can do for you.”

            “Yes…yes, of course,” said Maglor stumblingly. “Of course, take a look if it pleases you. I’m sure you will find no shortage of projects!” He let out a little laugh.

            There they sat until Maedhros came in and saw them at the table. His fingers brushed lightly against the back of Maglor’s shoulders, just enough pressure to remind Maglor he was there, as he passed by to put the kettle on for tea.

***

            Over the following days, Thranduil continued to bed early under the influence of his circumstances. Maglor could not say what he occupied his days with, besides playing with the cat and poking around what rooms of the house Maedhros hadn’t locked. Maglor spent his own days primarily concerned with his compositions, with which he had grown increasingly dissatisfied of late, and with Maedhros. However, he felt some responsibility for keeping an eye on Thranduil (and Maedhros continually reminded him that his spouses tended to get into trouble only when they were left alone too long), so he tried to check in a few times a day.

            However, he tried not to be caught in “their” bedroom in the evenings, lest Thranduil impose on him to stay. But he had gone in to make sure they had cleared the tea tray out from Thranduil’s last cup, and his no doubt confused husband was sitting up in bed with a notebook when Maglor came in, clearly dressed for bed.

            “Ah, I wondered if I had left my book in here.” Maglor couldn’t even really pretend he put effort into that lie, but as Thranduil was not expecting to be lied to, he didn’t quibble with it.

            “I have seen it not,” said Thranduil.

            “I suppose I shall have to look elsewhere,” said Maglor cheerily, heading for the door.

            “You might borrow one of mine, if it pleases you,” Thranduil offered. “Though I did not bring many with me.” They were heavy, which made for expensive travel costs, and they had departed Beleriand with very little time for preparations.

            “Oh, how kind. I think I’ll look for mine, though.”

            “You may read in here, if you wish,” Thranduil added. “It shan’t bother me to keep the light on a while longer.”

            “Oh, how generous. I wouldn’t want to keep you up. I know you must still be adjusting to the time change, and I still have to brush my hair and teeth and…” Maglor was reaching around for some other task that might be disruptive and believably part of a nighttime routine.

            “I could do that for you,” Thranduil offered. “Your hair.”

            “Oh.” Maglor blinked at him, and it was suddenly very hard to escape noticing that Thranduil was all but begging for his company. Maglor had seen so many people come into this house turned around and alone and bewildered and leave it not long after that it had grown disturbingly easy to simply disengage from their distress the same way one might tune out the irritating buzz of an insistent fly. “Well. Why not? What a lovely offer.”

            Thranduil set aside the notebook and sat up as Maglor brough the brush and comb over. Maglor took a seat with his back facing Thranduil, taking in a quiet breath as he felt Thranduil’s hands let down his hair. Such gestures had long carried a particular intimacy among the Noldor. Maglor wondered if Thranduil knew that.

            Thranduil’s hands were steady but gentle, carefully picking apart Maglor’s braids of the day before taking the brush to his long dark locks.

            “Do you use oil on this?” Thranduil murmured. “It smells quite nice.”

            “Do you like it?” Maglor smiled. “It’s one of my little indulgences.” This one Maedhros permitted, for he also liked the smell of Maglor’s freshly-oiled hair. Thranduil worked the brush and comb through Maglor’s hair, patiently teasing out any knots.

            “It has been some time since you sang,” he commented.

            “Has it? I suppose we’ve been busy, with the marriage and the move!”

            Thranduil brushed on in silence and then, in his ponderous way, said: “I should like to hear it again, when you have the time. If it pleases you.”

            “Of course!” Maglor could not help but preen at such a request. “I should be happy to. Always pleased with an audience!”

            When Thranduil had finished brushing Maglor’s hair into a fall of glossy waves, he bound it up in a loose braid for bed.

            “How sweet you are,” Maglor said with a smile, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “I knew I had found a good choice for my husband. Now, I must find my book!”

            And he made to Thranduil alone in the dark room once more, but paused at the door.

            “It’s rather cold in here, isn’t it?” he said. Thranduil shrugged.

“It is rather.”

“Do you want a larger fire? Let me.” Maglor went over to the hearth to add another log to the fire, but the cache was empty. “Hm. You need more wood. I’ll mention it to Nodien. And where’s your cat? Oughtn’t she be with you?” Thranduil shrugged again.

            “She comes as it pleases her,” he said. “Usually later in the night.”

            “I’ll leave a candle out for her then,” Maglor joked with a wink. “Sleep tight!”

            Satisfied he had done his duty, he took his leave, but found himself still thinking about the temperature of the room.

***

            Predictably, and yet somehow catching Maglor by surprise, Maedhros noticed the length of time it had taken him to go and check on their guest.

            “Here I had begun to think you had tripped on the stairs and broken your neck,” Maedhros remarked from the bed, where he was reading, wire-rim spectacles poised on the end of his nose. He wore them more and more often for reading these days.

            “Thranduil was in the mood to talk,” said Maglor, which was…possibly accurate. It was just that Thranduil’s “mood to talk” looked somewhat like Maglor’s “catatonia.” He had once in Greenwood tried to convince Maedhros that Thranduil’s disinclination for chatter also made him a good choice. Perhaps that was still true.

            “Hm, a few days at home married and you not in the bed once? I’m sure he wanted to talk.” There was a certain derisive note in Maedhros’ voice which made Maglor feel suddenly quite tired.

            “It was nothing,” he sighed, turning to the vanity to apply cream to his face and neck. “He is still processing his change in circumstances. This is not what he expected.” But that was always true.

            “So let him process it,” Maedhros said, looking back down at his book. “He doesn’t need you for that.”

            “I was gone not thirty minutes,” Maglor said, unable to keep the cranky note from his voice.

            “I know what you’re doing,” Maedhros replied, lowering the book to look directly at Maglor.

            “And what’s that?”

            “Do you really believe he would like you if he knew who you really were?”

            Maglor gripped the edge of the vanity. This conversation was not unfamiliar, but he hated it each time they had it.

            “Fortunately, I am not worried if he—”

            “If you weren’t concerned that he likes you, why spend money we most certainly do not have on that ridiculous plant encyclopedia you gave him?”

            “I was wooing him, if you recall,” Maglor said defensively, spinning around to face Maedhros. “Not that you would know anything about it. I always have to do the work with them. Do you know how hard it is? You have no respect for…I have to prostitute myself just to get our hands on some funding.”

            “Don’t make it sound like you’re performing more than you are. Besides, you enjoy the chase and the attention,” Maedhros snorted. “And it’s you or no one. You know that.” Sending Maedhros out to woo could only result in catastrophe. And possibly felony charges.

            “And it was a fungal encyclopedia,” Maglor muttered under his breath as he turned his attention to applying a different cream to his hands.

            “I’m sure the fungal encyclopedia will keep his affection after he finds out what you did to Elwing.”

            Maglor went rigid, and grasped that he had underestimated how off-put Maedhros was. This was a jab he only dredged up when he wanted to cripple Maglor’s ability to argue.

            “I…did…nothing,” he said haltingly, the rubbing of his hands becoming a compulsion.

            “Mm. Of course. I’m sure he would see it that way.”

            “Stop it.” Maglor was digging his nails into his hands, clawing at the slippery flesh.

Maedhros relented.

“This is what I mean when I say he cannot understand you,” said Maedhros. “He won’t. Not as I do.” He put the book on the bedside table and reached out to Maglor, who crawled over his own side of the bed to sit astride his brother’s lap. “It will be over soon,” Maedhros soothed him, smoothing Maglor’s hair behind his ears, though there was nothing left loose after Thranduil’s careful braiding. “Oropher’s should be the last of the money we need to finance your project. And when that’s done, there will be no more marriages.”

“No more marriage,” Maglor echoed in a whisper.

“No more people in the house.”

“No more people.”

“It will be just us.” Maedhros’ arms went around Maglor, pulling him into an embrace so that Maglor’s chin was pushed up awkwardly against Maedhros’ shoulder.

“Forever,” Maglor murmured.

“Forever,” Maedhros agreed, and the word seemed to echo into the emptiness of the house.

---

Chapter End Notes

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Chapter II

Thranduil settles into life in Formenos.

Read Chapter II

One afternoon, Maglor passed by the kitchen where a fire was crackling playfully in the hearth to see Thranduil at the table with a small stack of books.

            “What are you doing?” He couldn’t resist poking his head in to see.

            “Reading,” Thranduil answered.

            “About what?” Maglor ambled in and picked up the first book off the stack. It was entitled The Great Botanical Gardens of Valinor. He hadn’t even known they owned this book. “Were you in the library?”

            “It was not locked,” Thranduil said, looking up.

            “No, it wouldn’t be…why these? I can’t say much grows on Crimson Peak. The soil isn’t good for it.”

            “But some things must,” Thranduil insisted. Maglor hadn’t paid much attention to the lush natural beauty of Greenwood the Great when he was there seducing Thranduil, but he did recall that it existed, and that Thranduil took great pleasure in it. How many hours had they spent in parks and gardens discussing such things? That was part of what had appealed to Maglor about Thranduil as one whose presence in his life was a temporary necessity: his reserved and aloof demeanor hid passions. They just tended to be about things Maglor had never fathomed held an iota of anything interesting. “I can determine what is native to the area. This is always the best place to start.” He glanced back at the book open on the table before him, then up at Maglor. “And as I do not think your brother would take kindly to any efforts of mine regarding interior decorating, perhaps it is best I go out of doors.”

            With this, Maglor couldn’t really argue.

            “Well. I don’t see any harm in trying,” Maglor allowed. Thranduil shifted to the side, inviting Maglor to lean over and have a better look at the book.

            “A few flowering plants, and some things which bear fruit would be pleasant,” he suggested.

            “Flowers! …that would be nice,” Maglor agreed, easing down into an adjacent chair. Thranduil shifted his own so they might both look more comfortably and clearly at the open book.

            “We may try starting with ground cover,” Thranduil elaborated when Maglor’s interest seemed genuine. “If the soil is depleted, this may help restore it before planting anything larger. It may take a few years to have much to show for the effort but…we have time.”

            “Yes…” Maglor said somewhat breathlessly, a tentative smile fluttering across his face. “Yes, of course. We have plenty of time.” He put a hand over Thranduil’s for a moment. “Let me know if you need anything for it,” he said. “Seeds or tools or…whatever one uses for gardening. I can put in an order from the catalogue.”

            Thranduil turned his hand over, so their palms rested together, and seemed to study Maglor’s face.

            “I will,” he said, with a look in his eyes which at some time in the past, Maglor might have dared to label affectionate.

            “Wonderful.” Maglor, on some impulse he couldn’t fathom, leaned in and pressed a kiss to Thranduil’s forehead. “It would be lovely to have things grow here.”

***

Maglor was at his harp when Thranduil found him. He could often be found in the music room, a space Maedhros did not seem to frequent, which, Thranduil realized, made it a potentially ideal place to talk with Maglor, since Maedhros did not seem to have taken much a liking to him.

“What are you working on?” he asked, and Maglor, whose back was mostly to the door, startled a little before turning to him, eyebrows raised in surprise.

“Oh! Nothing, really. I was just playing about.” Maglor seemed to sing less in Formenos than he had during their brief courtship in Greenwood the Great, yet even his speaking voice had a low, rich melody to it, a smooth timbre which made it pleasant just to hear. His looks were unremarkable, but it had been during one of their conversations in Amon Lanc when Thranduil realized with some wonder that he was sure he could have contentedly listened to Maglor talk for hours about nearly anything.

“Not something for your opera?” Thranduil asked. A little smile flitted across Maglor’s face, as often happened when his magnum opus was mentioned.

The music room was possibly the most well-kept room in the house. Someone had made an effort to ensure the windows were properly sealed and the ceiling didn’t leak and there were no holes in the walls, nor abundant evidence of rats. The wallpaper was a lovely blue (only faint and few splotches of mold in the corner behind the door) and the dark paneling had clearly once been fine work, if it was now gashed in multiple places and sun-faded in others. Maglor had stoked a small fire in the fireplace so the room was comfortably warm, and the powerful dankness which pervaded the rest of the house did not smell quite as strongly here.

“I am warming up first,” he said, assuming the perkier tone which frequently crept into his voice when speaking of his work. Thranduil wandered around the room, peering at the instruments as he circled around to a place where Maglor could see him without twisting around. “Do you like them? We used to have a great many more, but…well, as Maedhros says, keeping up the house even this much costs money.”

“Can you play them all?” Thranduil asked, looking to him in some surprise. There were nearly half a dozen instruments there that he could see.

“Naturally,” said Maglor, preening. “Would you like to hear something?”

Before Thranduil could respond, the door swung open to admit Maglor’s grim-faced brother. Maedhros had the look of a man who could have been passing fair, upon a time, but had somewhere along the way lost the desire and sunk into a run-down mire of his own making. The dagger at his waist seemed to be a daily ornament which did little to make him seem more approachable.

“Am I interrupting?” he asked, distinctly lacking in concern about the possibility. Perhaps Thranduil ought to have been politer, but he couldn’t say as Maedhros had given him much reason in the last few days.

“Maglor was playing something,” he said, in a tone intending to foreclose that Maglor be disrupted.

“Well. I’m sure that can wait,” said Maedhros, locking his attention on Thranduil. “Maglor, will you go and check our store of firewood? You were supposed to do that this morning. The weather may take a turn.”

“Oh…now?”

“Now.”

Maglor rose from his seat by the harp and cast a vaguely apologetic glance back at Thranduil before he left the room. He knew so little of Maglor’s brother, yet even their brief acquaintance in Greenwood and the last several days around him in Formenos were enough to put Thranduil’s hackles up being left alone with him. Still, he tried not to show it. After all, Maedhros had not actually done anything to him.

Maedhros paced further into the room and shifted Maglor’s harp nearer to the wall. A gust from outside rattled the windows, but the moaning that could be heard throughout the rest of the house when the winds of Formenos (for the absence of vegetation and the raised location of the house meant there was nothing to guard against them) whistled through the gaps in the walls and shook the creaky supports was muffled inside the music room.

“There’s no cause for incivility,” said Maedhros. Thranduil took a moment before he replied:

“Forgive me. I meant it not; it has only been…” As he trailed off thinking of a way to describe the discombobulating last few weeks he’d had, Maedhros went on.

“I care a great deal for my little brother,” he said, running his good hand over the side table set against the wall across from the fireplace. On it were a variety of little knickknacks, including a music box inlaid with white mother-of-pearl which must have once been very expensive. There was a large crack across the lid now. “I think I can be forgiven for being cautious to one in your circumstances.” There was some emphasis he put on that last phrase that Thranduil did not care for, but on the whole he had said nothing unreasonable, so Thranduil merely inclined his head in agreement.

Maedhros looked at a series of small portraits hanging in ovoid frames over the table. For a long moment he was silent, and then he said:

“There were more than a dozen of us, who lived here,” he recollected. “In this house Father built. And now it is only Maglor and I. Most of the family rode off to war at my father’s behest, after Grandfather’s murder. Others we expected would be waiting for us when at last we returned. But it was not so, and now it is only we two.

“Maglor has never done well looking after himself, and now there is only me to do it for him.”

“There is myself also,” Thranduil replied, which made Maedhros jerk his head around to look at him.

“And I’m sure you will do him great good,” he said, with something in his tone which prickled at Thranduil’s nerves. A smile tugged at his lips and again Thranduil had the sense that in his youth, Maedhros had been more tolerable to look on, and yet it was a smile that seemed to lord some piece of information to which Thranduil was not a party.  “Everyone has something to offer.”

***

            Thranduil had adjusted poorly to the continent switch, and he felt sure he must have picked up some kind of bug, for he hadn’t slept right since the first night in Formenos. He rested ten hours a day and still was sleepy again by late afternoon. But other times, it was just as back home, and he would wake in the middle of the night feeling like ice, and unable to shake the sensation that something was about to take hold of him.

            The Formenos estate creaked and cracked like a ship about to go under the waves, and for whatever reason, Maglor never seemed to retire to their room, which meant Thranduil woke alone. Even if he had a fire going when he went to sleep, the room always seemed to descend into the same level of chill overnight. In the morning, there was ice on the inside of the single-pane windows and there were mold spots along the sides of them. There had been moths in the curtains when he arrived, and mice had chewed at the carpets. He was intensely grateful for the nights Bargwend spent curled up beside him in bed.

            He had woken earlier that night in such a state (Maglor was absent), and determined to prove to himself there was nothing wrong, that he was allowing the upset of the move and the new marriage to make him jumpy, he lit a candle and journeyed down to the kitchen to get himself a glass of water. He considered simply staying there until morning, but it was pitch black outside, suggesting it was several hours until dawn. Better to try to get more rest.

            He was sitting at the pockmarked old table when he heard the rustling in the corner. Nerves immediately alight, he forced himself to rise to his feet. Something was moving just there, at the edge of the pantry. With a trembling hand, Thranduil lifted the candle and all the air went out of him in a nervous laugh when he saw it was just a large rat.

            But he frowned again when he saw that it was getting terribly close to one of the mousetraps Maedhros had put out earlier.

            “That won’t do,” he said aloud. He set the candlestick down and grabbed a mixing bowl from one of the cupboards. It took a moment to manage to sneak up behind it, but eventually he was able to bring the bowl down on top of it, trapping it inside. Then he took the thinnest of the cutting boards which he could find and carefully slide it underneath. “You must not find your way back into the house,” he said, as he carried the upset rat out the side door which let from the kitchen into the yard. “This is no place for you; it’s much too dangerous!”

            The scrubby ground was bitingly cold against his bare feet, but he still carried the rat a few hundred yards away from the house before letting it out into the grass. He would have preferred to slide it under a bush, but there was so little plant life of any kind on Formenos.

            “Farewell,” he said, and returned to the kitchen. At least if it was eaten by an owl now, its death would be serving something else’s survival. Feeling refreshed by the night air, he grabbed his candle and headed back up to the bedroom.

            He was thus entirely unprepared for the ghost which punched out of the wall as he started down the second-floor hall and sent him reeling to the side. The candle hit the ground and went out immediately, dousing the hallway in darkness. Thranduil crashed down beside it, instinctively flailing away from the gory red creature who reached for him with impossibly long, spindly fingers, the mouth of its half-melted face agape as if the jaw muscles were too decayed to hold it closed anymore. It dragged itself through the wood paneling with splintered fingernails, a low groaning emanating from the terrible well of its mouth, visible to him through the blotches of darkness subsuming his vision as his eyes tried desperately to adjust to the sudden absence of light.

            At once he was seven years old again, cowering in his room, too frightened even to wail and feeling that cold that choked the breath out of him. Mother had warned him of this place—warned him to keep away from Crimson Peak—but of course now that he knew what she’d meant, it was too late. He closed his eyes and covered his ears with his hands against its gurgling, crossing his legs and forcing himself to sit still, trying to force away that base fear and wrangle his mind into accepting there was no danger present.

            “’tis only a dream, it isn’t real,” he whispered to himself. “Only a dream, nothing more, nothing real, nothing there…” He kept up this repetition, trying to overpower the noise of the ghost with the echo of his own voice in his head. This was not always enough to make them go away—the apparition of his mother had never been so easy to banish—but often it was, as if, seeing he would give them no attention, they vanished.

            It was not so with this one.

            When Thranduil opened his eyes, it was still there, leering at him with that misshapen face, something sorrowful and poisonously bitter hanging in the air around it. It hovered just in front of him, staring with the sightless, eyeless caverns in its face, and then raised a grotesque hand and pointed. Thranduil turned his head; it seemed to be indicating the elevator. He looked back at the ghost and when he did not move, it lunged at him, reaching for his shoulder.

            Choking on a silent shout, Thranduil seized the fallen candleholder and swung blindly at the ghost before springing to his feet and sprinting away. The bedroom door slammed shut behind him and he ran to the far wall, pressing back against it, shaking enough to bring the fragile house down, but when minutes passed and the ghost did not follow, he forced himself away from the wall. He built up the fire again, and spent the rest of the night curled up in the center of the bed, wrapped in the covers, staring into the flickering flames.

            If some part of him had hoped that he had left his ghosts behind in Beleriand, it had been soundly put to bed.

***

            They had to go and pick up the mail, which was meant to contain the paperwork from Thranduil’s lawyer regarding the addition of Maglor onto his account as a spouse with full control over the funds, and because Thranduil wanted to send a letter to Elrond back home.

            On the way there, Thranduil gave Maglor some more detail about the garden plans, including a few sketches he had made of tentative plot designs, and Maglor was surprised to find listening was not a chore at all. He insisted they order away for several packets of seeds as well, so that when spring came, they would have some supplies to begin, and it wasn’t until he had filled out the forms he remembered Thranduil would not be with them anymore by spring.

            He had meant for them to take care of their tasks (the bank paperwork had not yet arrived) and be back at the house by dinner time, but the weather appeared to be taking a turn, and Maglor found he was not in as much a rush to return to Formenos as he expected. Still, he felt almost furtive as he proposed to the postmaster that they pay to spend the night in the room downstairs.

            The little trip had been so pleasant thus far, was it wrong of him to want to extend it a little? Was it wrong that he should try to make Thranduil’s few remaining weeks alive relatively pleasant?

            On the ship over the Sundering Sea, Maglor had gallantly insisted they each have their own cabin, out of respect, of course, for Thranduil’s mourning. (His father’s service, like Grandfather Finwë’s, had been a closed casket affair. For the Wood-elves, who did not use caskets, this meant they sealed the body up in a sack of plant-based, biodegradable fabric so the mourners could not see it.) The sparse, cozy post office room meant it was virtually unavoidable that Maglor watched Thranduil undress for bed, feeling unusual palpitations in his chest, and was keenly aware as well of eyes on him as he did similarly. He couldn’t remember the last time someone other than Maedhros had seen him this way. He wanted to check and see if Thranduil was watching him, but he couldn’t bring himself to look and risk catching his husband’s gaze.

As Thranduil had removed his outerwear, it had hitched up his shirt and given Maglor a glimpse of something which appeared to be inked onto his back, and Maglor could not let go of his curiosity about this. Thranduil, now with just a single, thin layer of clothing shielding his body (Maglor could practically see the designs on his skin through the shirt), came and sat beside Maglor on the bed, one leg tucked under him to sit as close to Maglor as he could.

            “You seem distracted,” he said in that gentle tone, which always seemed to invite Maglor to say more, yet offer no judgement if he chose not to do so. Maglor was fumbling with a convincing lie when Thranduil’s hand brushed through his hair with such tenderness it stopped Maglor up short. Thranduil’s thumb passed over the tip of his ear, and he pressed gently on the far side of Maglor’s head, nudging him to lean over until he rested against Thranduil’s shoulder.

            “I’m only rather sorry,” Maglor admitted. “I…I fear Formenos is a terrible disappointment for any newly-wed. There’s so little here. I have so little to offer you. Our family is nothing anymore. We have failed to recover anything of what we once had. What a mistake you must feel you made.”

            Now Thranduil shifted, forcing Maglor to sit up again, and looked straight at him. Thranduil’s eyes were so very green, as if something of the forest had got into him and remained there still, even so far away from the wooded hills of the Greenwood.

            “You have offered me everything for which I asked,” he said seriously.

            “And what was that?”

            “You,” Thranduil answered.

            Maglor could not even pretend to grasp for words; his throat felt tight, for the longer he looked on Thranduil’s guileless face, the more convinced he became that his words were entirely genuine, that Thranduil was tolerantly accepting everything Maglor had put him through because he considered it a bearable burden in exchange for Maglor’s companionship, of which Maglor had offered next to nothing.

            Before he knew what he was doing, his mouth was on Thranduil’s, and after just a moment of surprise Thranduil’s strong arms went around him, and when his back touched the mattress, all he could think of was how desperately he wanted this to continue.

            So they did.

Thranduil took Maglor up to some peak of pleasure he had forgotten he was capable of feeling, until his toes curled in the sheets and stars burst behind his eyes and he lost all semblance of control over what noises came out of his mouth. And then he wept.

            And Thranduil, bless him, curse him, stopped immediately and drew back to lay down alongside Maglor, hands fluttering as he could not decide whether to touch or not to touch Maglor.

            “Did I hurt you?” he asked, with real anxiety in his voice.

            “No,” Maglor gasped, trying and failing to calm himself. “No, no, you were perfect.” He tried to focus on Thranduil’s face, blurry through his tears, but failing that, reached out to put a hand on his cheek. “You were perfect,” he repeated. He leaned in and molded his mouth to Thranduil’s, half climbing on top of him, still crying.

            “Maglor…” Thranduil spoke like he was trying to calm a spooked horse.

            “I don’t want to stop,” Maglor insisted between kisses. “Please, please…don’t stop.”

            Something in his beseeching must have rung true, for Thranduil’s black-inked arms went around him once more, and Maglor was pulled tight against his illustrated chest, and he quickly forgot his tears, and a great deal else besides.

***

            It wasn’t kind, to send Thranduil into the house ahead of him the next morning. But no one had ever accused Maglor of bravery, and so keenly did his body and spirit still seem to feel their lovemaking of the night before he felt almost that it was written across his face, and should be perceived at once by anyone who looked on him. (He recalled, as he entered the foyer, waking up beside Thranduil in their cocoon of shared warmth amidst the snowy detritus outside, and the gentle affection with which Thranduil pushed his hair from his face, and kissed him good morning, until Maglor nearly trembled in his hands.)

            He could hear the squabbling before he even entered the kitchen and once, the sound of something slamming. When he shuffle in, the sight of Maedhros’ white-faced fury made his chest constrict. Maedhros had no logical reason that Thranduil knew of to be so upset, and Maedhros was deeply aware of that, and yet Maglor could see he was failing to constrain his temper even so.

            (It seemed to him that Maedhros had not always been so quick to wrath, that in their childhood and youth he had been much slower to take offense or see betrayal, but somewhere along the way his fuse had grown shorter by far than even Father’s.)

            “You could have died out there, and I none the wiser!” Maedhros appeared to make a renewed effort to get himself under control as Maglor entered the room.

            “I am regretful if you were made to worry,” Thranduil said stiffly, and Maglor wondered what words had passed between them before he arrived with some dim pang of guilt.

            “Let us not fight,” he pleaded. “We had no intention to worry you, Maedhros. It was an unavoidable delay.” The look Maedhros fixed him with was positively poisonous, but he argued no more.

            (A part of Maglor wished he had conceded to Thranduil’s suggestion they take their time leaving the post office, his insistence that they were in no rush, rather than allowing his own anxiety to drive them back to the house as soon as possible.)

            “Of course,” Maedhros said, equally rigidly. “I’ll put on some tea.” And so he did, with an aggression that threatened to shatter the tea set.

            It was later in Maedhros’ study, when they were alone, that the real fight happened.

---

Chapter End Notes

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Chapter III

Who's a good boy? Is it Maglor?

Read Chapter III

“What were you doing?” Maedhros had returned to the thin-lipped rage of before, pacing jerkily, equal parts the sharp movements of a solider and the clumsy frenzy of a madman, before the desk. (Maglor could never quite banish the specter of Father bent over that desk, scribbling away at some project or missive or diatribe. He never said so to Maedhros.) “What were you doing?” he asked again, far more quietly, far softer, yet none the more reassuring as he paused to look at Maglor. The walls groaned uncomfortably as a breeze struck the house and Maglor felt his heart skip a painful beat.

            “I told you,” said Maglor. “The weather took a turn. I was worried the carriage would wreck if we tried to return. It seemed safter to wait it out.”  

            “The weather!” Maedhros flexed his hands and put his back to Maglor and then whipped around, snarling, “You needed to swallow his cock that badly, is it?” Maglor’s mouth dropped open.

            “I—didn’t!” he exclaimed, stammering in his shock.

            “But you did fuck,” Maedhros said.

            “He is my husband, I can only put him off so much,” Maglor said defensively. “And Thranduil needed…reassurance.”

            “Bullshit you can. You have always managed before. But not this time. You were so insistent that he was the perfect target, the right choice, the only real option…I’m sure he found your hand on his balls quite reassuring!” Maedhros was breathing through his nose like a bull about to charge, with that wild look that came over his face sometimes, the one that said there was no logic Maglor could use to talk him down. He was nearly trembling when he hissed out: “How long have you been planning to leave me?”

            If Maedhros’ last accusation had surprised Maglor, this one took him entirely aback and for a moment he merely blinked, mouth agape.

            “I’m not! I wouldn’t—I would never! Maedhros, what are you talking about?”

“Don’t lie to me.” A vein bulged in Maedhros’ temple. Maglor had for so long envisaged Maedhros’ anger as something cold—calculated and controlled, directed to an end. But if that had ever been the case, it was not now, or at least not on this subject.

Maglor softened his expression and stepped nearer. “I wouldn’t leave you,” he said. “I love you.”

            Maedhros hesitated; Maglor could see the gears in his mind turning, weighing Maglor’s words, deciding if he believed him or not.

            “It was one time,” he ventured. “It won’t happen again. Maedhros…why is it so important? He’ll be…gone soon, anyway. Then we won’t have to think about it anymore.”

            “No…we won’t,” Maedhros agreed after a lengthy pause. Maglor reached out and took his hand, and when Maedhros did not pull away, he leaned against Maedhros’ chest.

            “It was just the once,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “And we’ll never think of it again.” Maedhros placed a hand on the back of Maglor’s head, holding him in place.

“Never,” he said. For a few moments, they rested this way, and then goosebumps prickled over Maglor’s arms and he said:

“Rather cold in here, isn’t it?”

Maedhros shrugged. “I don’t feel anything.” Maglor was silent and then at last he murmured:

“No, I suppose not.” And as they did with many things—many, many things which piled up in the house, filling it until they spilled out under the eaves—they spoke no more of it.

***

            The sound of footsteps in the hall woke Maglor in the dark of night, and it was the rush of them that jarred him from the idle, resting-but-not-sleeping stupor he had been laying in. He kicked back the covers, careful not to wake Maedhros, and fumbled to light a candle in the dark before he stepped into the hallway.

            “Hello?” he called softly. The footsteps sounded again, downstairs, so Maglor crept down the steps, and was nearly run straight down by Thranduil, blanched with terror he tried very hard to disguise when he saw Maglor.

            Maglor threw up a hand and caught Thranduil’s waist as they both tried to avoid a collision, and then he saw how wide Thranduil’s eyes were and how rapidly his chest was rising and falling.

            “Thranduil?” he said quietly. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

            Thranduil panted, clearly trying to gather himself to make a response, and then he blurted out: “Has any other died in this house? Besides your grandfather?”

            Maglor could not move, nor speak, until at last he choked out, with a high, tremulous laugh, “Who else would have? No one lived here after that, until Maedhros and I returned. The ones who stayed—they left after we did and didn’t come back.”

            “A woman,” Thranduil said softly. “Young, with dark hair?”

            Maglor wasn’t breathing anymore. He meant to say something mollifying—“Have you had a nightmare?”—or some such thing, but he couldn’t make himself speak. All he could see were the claw marks Elwing’s fingernails had left on his face when she realized what he was doing to her.

            “Maglor?” Thranduil’s voice was uncertain. His breathing was still a touch quick, and Maglor shook himself hard inwardly. Thranduil had had a nightmare. “Young with dark hair” was hardly a description belonging to only a few women in the world. Maglor’s mind was making connections where none existed.

            “I’m sorry, I was trying to think if there was any opportunity for someone else to die here,” Maglor lied. “I can’t think of any now. What were you doing up, though?”

            “I could not find sleep,” Thranduil said, though there were shadows under his eyes. Maedhros had likely upped the dosage, which ought to have knocked him out all night, but it was possible it was having irregular effects on his sleep patterns. He coughed, and Maglor lifted his hand and wiped a bit of spittle away from the corner of Thranduil’s mouth with his thumb.

            “But where were you?” Thranduil asked. “It looked like you had not yet come to bed.”

            “I hadn’t, I’m sorry. I dressed for it but I was distracted and then I fell asleep in the study.” It was hard to believe there had ever been a time in Maglor’s life when lies didn’t flow off his tongue like sour honey from a rotted hive. He paused, and then said, “Let us return, though.” He could see that Thranduil was still deeply unsettled and felt reluctant to walk away from him like this.

            He led Thranduil back to his bedroom and lit one of the candelabras to give some more light.

            “More rest will banish these phantoms from your mind,” he asserted, but when he turned from the candles, Thranduil had not returned to bed, but stood behind him. Thranduil grasped his hand and drew near to Maglor, who felt his heart suddenly thumping against his chest.

            “I know not that I can sleep now,” Thranduil said.

            “Ah…” Maglor’s eyes flicked towards the door, then back to his spouse.

            “Would you not stay a time with me?” Thranduil pleaded with him. “I know often you sleep away from here, I shan’t ask why…if you prefer more space to yourself, let me not take it from you. But would you not stay just a short time?”

            You want me here? Maglor wanted to ask. He looked at this poor man he’d brought here: exhausted, frightened, ill, dying though he did not yet know it, reaching out to him of all people for comfort, the very one tormenting him. Believing that Maglor could comfort him. Briefly, he thought of Maedhros up in their bedroom, but he brushed that aside and put a hand on Thranduil’s arm.

            “Let us lie down,” he said, guiding Thranduil back to bed. Weary, Thranduil seemed resigned to the rest of the night alone. But Maglor went around to the other side of the bed and turned down the covers he hadn’t touched since he had returned from Beleriand, and slid into the bed he had once promised to share with this man.

            He meant only to lie there and give Thranduil some company, but Thranduil scooted closer to him over the mattress and for a moment again Maglor worried he would want to make love, and he wasn’t sure if he could say no, whether or not his brother lay asleep above them. But Thranduil settled down and seemed content just to lie near Maglor, which made Maglor all the more certain that if Thranduil had reached for him that way, he could not have refused him.

            They lay like that a moment, and then Thranduil reached out and took Maglor’s hands.

            “Cold,” he observed, and clasped them between his own. The corners of Maglor’s lips twitched in almost a smile.

            “How attentive you are,” he teased as Thranduil lowered his head to breathe his warm breath over Maglor’s chilly hands.

            “I try to be so,” Thranduil said more solemnly. To this, Maglor had no response, but when Thranduil released his hands, he put an arm around Thranduil and drew near to him, until Thranduil’s forehead was pressed against his chest. It felt presumptuous and strange, but Thranduil curled nearer and put a hand against Maglor’s breast, and breathed calmly, and Maglor felt curiously and suddenly alert. Not quite tense, but poised in a sense, as if prepared for any danger Thranduil might fear to come through that door.

            “I’m here,” he murmured, rubbing Thranduil’s back, for it seemed for some reason the right thing to say. “Get some sleep.”

            “She was missing a finger.” Thranduil spoke so sleepily Maglor could almost believe he wasn’t even awake. “On her right hand. Her ring finger.”

            He was glad that Thranduil’s eyes were closed, because he could not see the frozen look on Maglor’s face and hopefully did not notice the stuttering in the movement of Maglor’s hand. Thranduil was talking about the ghost, but Maglor saw only the room—saw it with Vanimiel laying in that same bed, and Maedhros over her with a knife from the kitchen, for his own was not made to cut through bone. It’s mine, he said, turning to Maglor with the wedding band bloody on his hand. She doesn’t need it anymore. Maedhros had made sure of that.

            “Shh…” he whispered at last, hoping he did not sound as frightened as he felt. “There’s nothing here. You’re safe.”

            He held Thranduil this way until his breathing relaxed into a slow, sleeping rhythm, but he lay against Maglor, and so Maglor would not move away or disturb him. It felt he lay awake for some hours, but he must have slept, for he awoke definitively with morning light pushing its feeble way through the dusty, cracked windows, and Thranduil still loosely in his arms.

            Jerking himself more awake, he reached for the covers at once. If Maedhros woke and Maglor was gone, his paranoia would be up, particularly after their fight over the post office visit. Maglor could not be caught here, most especially not at this hour. But his movement had stirred Thranduil, who woke incredibly groggy, as he usually did (another side effect of the tea).

            “Maglor?” he croaked, reaching for Maglor before his eyes were even open properly.

            “I’m here,” Maglor said at once, grasping Thranduil’s hand. Thranduil blinked open those captivating eyes and looked up at him and smiled. Faintly, but that was considerable, coming from him.

            “Good morning,” he said, and Maglor couldn’t stop himself from smiling back.

            “Good morning,” he returned. “Did you sleep well?” Thranduil nodded slowly, his eyelids still heavy. Maglor got the sense his body wanted to go back to sleep.

            “It was good to have you here,” he murmured, shifting to put his head on Maglor’s chest. His eyes slipped shut again.

            “Of course,” Maglor said, worried Thranduil would hear the rapid beat of his heart. He placed a hand on Thranduil’s back, rubbing gently. “I felt terrible about last night…”

            “’tis no fault of yours,” Thranduil sighed. “I have always had…unpleasant dreams.”

            “And in this house, who could blame you?” Maglor said with a touch of bitterness. “It’s so cold in this room! Surely something can be done about that.”

            “It was warm enough with you.”

            Maglor flushed, and tightened his hold on Thranduil just a bit.

            “I’m glad,” he said truthfully. It would have been nice not to rush, to simply lay there and enjoy the moment, with this beautiful being who for some unfathomable reason wanted to be with Maglor, but he knew every minute he stayed here he risked Maedhros realizing where he was, and that was not a quarrel he wanted to have. “Shall we get something to eat?” he asked, giving Thranduil a little nudge.

            “Mm…yes, we should.” Thranduil spoke in a sigh, and peeled himself off of Maglor, sitting up to yawn and stretch. His pale gold hair was terribly mussed, and Maglor couldn’t help but snigger a little.

            “You’re looking a bit of a mess this morning,” he said, reaching out to smooth down the worst of Thranduil’s bedhead.

            “You might help me with it, if it pleases you,” he said, rubbing his eyes, working hard to flush the drowsiness from his system. It was no good, as he would get another dose later that afternoon.

            “Oh.” Maglor blinked and then hopped out of bed and fetched a brush from the dresser. “Let me fix that.”

            While Thranduil tried in vain to force away the effects of the drug, Maglor carefully brushed out his hair and braided it back for him, and despite his lingering guilt over leaving Maedhros alone for the night, he was smiling when they arrived in the kitchen at last.

***

            Knowing of Thranduil’s troubled dreams, Maglor found it harder with clear conscience to leave him alone night after night, but Maedhros, he knew, would not be sympathetic to Thranduil’s plight. He seemed to be determined to particularly dislike Thranduil, on account of Maglor’s own sympathy for him.

            Maedhros had gone into town that day, not long after Thranduil’s nightmare, though he had not wished to, and he and Maglor had quarreled that morning about it in their room.

            “Can you manage yourself for a few hours? Or should I worry about you tripping and falling cock-first into our bank account while I’m gone?” Maedhros had asked, and Maglor had responded with something snippy in return, and so they had only begrudgingly said any sort of goodbye.

            It meant that Maedhros was still out when Thranduil took his bath, a fact Maglor was aware of primarily because the warped door on the second-floor bathroom often refused to stay shut, and he passed by it ajar and occupied. He could not resist poking his head in.

            “Did you manage to get the water warm?” he asked.

            “I did,” Thranduil replied. His relaxed tone pleased Maglor, who sidled into the room. Her—Thranduil’s cat was sitting under the sink, and she squinted in Maglor’s direction, putting her ears back and crouching, but when Thranduil held a dripping hand out to her, she came right over to rub her face against his hand as if it weren’t still sudsy with bathwater.

            “She quite likes you!”

            Thranduil shrugged. “I am certain if you gave her a bit of food, she would like you too.” Being as Maglor was the one who tossed her out and chased her from the house to die, he tended to doubt it. (Although perhaps she might harbor some gratitude that he had not done what Maedhros told him to and snapped her neck.)

            Thranduil’s broad shoulders glistened in the light from the stained-glass window—it had a simple pattern of yellow flowers—and when he lifted his golden hair over his shoulder, his body flowed in a smooth curve from his neck down his back to where the cloudy water hid things Maglor would rather see. Exposed too were the tattoos Maglor had first seen in the post office, the rippling calligraphic strokes of ink marking out the tree on his back, the stars under his collarbone, the bird which Maglor could not identify on his chest, the dragon around his right bicep which had nearly made Maglor weep with arousal the first time he saw it. He stirred to the sight of Thranduil then, feeling a thrilling tug in his gut and the wonderous delight of potential.

            Maglor was going to say something else—maybe offer to wash Thranduil’s back, when he heard the sound of the front door, and the familiar pattern of Maedhros’ footsteps.

            “Ah, that must be Maedhros with our supplies…” With this awkward close, he exited the bathroom, doing his best to shut the door behind him.

            Maedhros spoke to him of the visit into town, but Maglor was preoccupied with the thought of Thranduil upstairs in the bath. Perhaps it had been rude to leave so quickly. Perhaps he ought to go back.

            But fate and Maedhros conspired to keep him busy until dinner, and only after it was all said and done and Thranduil had retired to his room for the night did Maglor find his way that direction. Maedhros, perhaps worn out from his excursion, took a rare early departure to bed before the other two. When Maglor entered the room, Thranduil was tying off his dressing robe, a delicate purple-gray piece which Maglor thought complimented his fair complexion quite well. His hair, still damp from the bath, remained in the simple braid he had put it in before dinner.

            “Do you want a bit of help?” Maglor offered, picking Thranduil’s comb up off the top of the dresser. Thranduil did not smile, but Maglor thought him pleased, and he nodded, and sat down on the edge of the bed, tucking a leg neatly under himself. Maglor settled in behind him and quickly unwove the earlier braid.

            “I should count myself lucky to have such a comely husband,” Maglor remarked. “I have said so before, I believe, but no one else at that party in Amon Lanc came close to being as lovely as you.” He worked the comb smoothly through Thranduil’s hair, careful not to scrape the tips of his ears, and was pleased when it hung in a flawless curtain down Thranduil’s back.

            “Shall I sing something for you?” he offered, being in a buoyant mood and willing to be generous. And also, Thranduil had always seemed to like his singing.

            “Yes,” Thranduil agreed at once, seeming, if Maglor was permitted to say so, eager. He could not help but smile at that, and hummed his way into a familiar old folk song, to which Thranduil listened with rapt attention, encouraging Maglor to add a second song, something more complex of his own invention.

            Thranduil leaned back on one hand on the bed, and never looked away from Maglor, and Maglor felt drunk on the attention.

            “How was that?”

            “I should never tire of it,” said Thranduil. “I am afraid I have not your gift for words of praise, but I think you could make even the dreariest cave feel a palace were you singing in it.”

            For this, of course, Maglor had to kiss him. And kiss him he did, with vigor and a need that caught him by surprise, despite its having been lurking beneath the surface since the sight of Thranduil in the bath earlier—or possibly since their encounter at the post office. Maglor’s arousal seemed to spring up at once and he was half on Thranduil’s lap before he thought about what he was doing, and remembered that Maedhros was bedding down upstairs—possibly asleep already.

            By the time he paused to consider that, Thranduil’s robe was slipping off his shoulders, his mouth flushed from Maglor’s attention, though Maglor had managed to avoid mussing his braid.

            “I—forgive me, I shouldn’t have…” he began, but it was hard to convincingly apologize when his body was throbbing to continue. His mind supplied some horrible vision of Maedhros bursting through the door, but Maglor could not say if it made him less or more aroused; a shiver went up his back.

            “I thought perhaps I had displeased you, before,” Thranduil admitted, brushing a stray strand of Maglor’s hair behind his ear, in a way that made Maglor ache. “You claimed I had not hurt you, yet you have stayed so far away since…”

            It was hard to think.

            “Do you…do you think of that night?” Maglor asked, wetting his lips. “At the post office?” Thranduil’s eyes drifted down to Maglor’s mouth, and then lower, lingering for just a moment.

            “Yes,” he said. “Were you unhappy?”

            “No,” Maglor whispered. “I was not.” Thranduil’s fingers brushed over his chest, and Maglor felt like he was going to burst through his trousers.

            “Do you wish to…?”

            “Yes.” Maglor pounced on him again at once, forgetting to even trouble with the lock on the door, hands fumbling to undo the buttons on his pants to give his swollen member room to breathe. Thranduil’s arms wrapped firm around him, pulling Maglor tight to him, and Maglor moaned helplessly as he rocked against Thranduil’s lap. “Please,” he begged. “Touch me, please. Like you did before.”

            Maglor thought of Maedhros lying upstairs in the dark, perhaps still awake, perhaps waiting for him, but the first thrust of Thranduil between his legs made it impossible to care about what Maedhros was or wasn’t doing. He bit down on his fingers, trying to muffle his noises of pleasure, but he felt as if he radiated the fact of it so intensely that surely anything and anyone else in the house must be aware of the experience he was having.

            His head was emptied of everything but Thranduil’s existence until he realized he was moaning his husband’s name like a chant or a prayer. Thranduil kissed him and stroked him like some delicate, beautiful thing, and it was as if Maglor were discovering sex for the first time in his life. Thranduil did not touch him like a wildfire, burning through everything in its path without care for the ashes in its wake, nor as a drowning man seizes the only buoy in sight, but as if he were something valuable, something worth preserving—something which had the capacity to suffer harm.

He knotted his fingers up in Thranduil’s hair, clawing apart the braid he’d just put in, and pulled Thranduil’s head down to him, pleading: “Tell me I’m your good boy.”

Thranduil went on with what he was doing, possibly processing this request, and then he kissed Maglor’s jaw and his cheek and his ear, and murmured, pressed body to body to him: “Good boy. That’s my good boy.” Maglor’s eyes rolled back as he finished instantly, thrust over an edge he had been riding for minutes.

            When they were done, Thranduil lay down alongside him and traced his fingers lightly up and down Maglor’s bare chest and stomach.

            “Was it to your liking?”

            “Could you not tell?” Maglor asked hoarsely, turning his head to look at Thranduil.

            “I…believed it had been before,” Thranduil said hesitantly. “Yet you have not sought me out for this since…”

            Maglor closed his eyes for a moment, then looked at Thranduil again.

            “My work often keeps me busy,” he said. “And I keep odd hours. I must beg your forgiveness for these disruptions. But I have…enjoyed this very much.” Suddenly coldly aware he still needed to return to Maedhros, he sat up.

            “You will not stay.” Thranduil’s words were not a question. Inwardly, Maglor winced.

            “I must have my own bath,” he said with an effort at a smile, but he did not invite Thranduil to join him, for of course it was a lie.

            Thranduil seemed simply to deflate into resignation; he sank into the pillows and looked at the sheets and not at Maglor.

            “As you wish,” he replied flatly, and Maglor could see him receding away. He cursed inwardly.

            “But that can wait,” he said, silently praying Maedhros was asleep and not waiting to ambush him as soon as he entered the bedroom. He settled back down, but Thranduil had been disturbed by his effort to leave, and Maglor could see he suspected he was being mollified now.

            Maglor drew nearer, and stroked Thranduil’s cheek.

            “I must apologize if you have felt neglected here,” he said, and though Thranduil bristled slightly at the notion he was capable of feeling neglected, he did not dispute it. “I know this situation is…not ideal. Once I am able to get backers for my opera, things will change,” he said, his eyes brightening as they did whenever he spoke of this plan. “We will be able to fix the house and have a full staff again—and have parties! Real parties! We’ll host all sorts of artistic types from the city. It will be marvelous, grand fun. Just wait and see!”

            Sensing that Thranduil was still not reassured, Maglor went on:

            “My family tends to become…focused on a task,” he said by way of apology. “This is mine. I hope you can forgive it.”

            “If you are content,” Thranduil said, leaning in to kiss him so gently Maglor’s breath caught in his throat.

            “I will be,” Maglor said. It took him a moment, but he gathered himself to reach for Thranduil’s hand, and draw it near to him, which Thranduil allowed. When Maglor let go, Thranduil put an arm around him, tugging Maglor a bit closer, and though the embrace was unfamiliar, it was not lacking in comfort. For some time they lay that way, and then Thranduil slid out of bed and extinguished the candles, and Maglor did not stop him, only allowed Thranduil to embrace him again before they closed their eyes.

            He woke toasty under the covers with Thranduil’s breath against the back of his neck and Thranduil’s arm slung loosely over his waist, his body half-caught in remembrance of the night before. His right arm was numb, pressed under his body. The barest light of dawn was peeking around the curtains, and Maglor was prevented from vaulting out of bed only by the necessity of not waking Thranduil.

            He stuffed himself back into his pants in case Maedhros was already up and nearly sprinted to the nearest bathroom, where he took a soapy washcloth and scrubbed himself as vigorously as if he were trying to remove a venereal disease, as if Maedhros might take a magnifying glass to his ass and realize someone else had been there.

            When he was done trying to polish the hair off his groin, he took the stairs two at a time up to the master bedroom, hurled his clothes into the chair in the corner (which contained several other outfits of his already) and stopped from flinging himself into the bed by reminding himself he couldn’t wake Maedhros either.

            His heartrate had finally returned to normal and he was starting to think he might close his eyes a while more when Maedhros stirred and threw back the covers. Maglor held his breath, but Maedhros said nothing, only went quietly about the room dressing and preparing for the day.

            Maglor feigned he had been woken and put a feeble grogginess into his voice when he spoke.

“Maedhros? What time is it?”

            “Seven-sixteen,” Maedhros reported.

            “Mm.”

            Maedhros said nothing else, and Maglor let out a silent breath. If Maedhros had not yet reproved him, he was none the wiser as to where Maglor had spent the night.

            Maglor’s night with his husband was their secret.

---

Chapter End Notes

It is definitely not Maglor.

AO3 | tumblr | Pillowfort

Chapter IV

How many frogs in this pot?

Read Chapter IV

The weight of Maedhros’ poison continued to drag on Thranduil’s health, which took a sharp downward turn. Maglor had caught him napping in the library and there were moments at mealtimes when he seemed not to be present at all. He often slept until after nine or ten in the morning, when he had before been accustomed to rising at six or seven even when there was no work to do. (Sometimes, Maglor would poke his head into the room and sit on the edge of the bed to pet Thranduil’s hair for a few minutes while he slept. It never roused him.)

In the early afternoon not more than a few days after their encounter in Thranduil’s room, Maedhros and Thranduil chanced to return in from the yard at the same time. Hearing their footsteps, Maglor came out of his study to greet them, in time to see Thranduil slip and fall on the stairs. He insisted it was nothing to worry about, but Maglor could see he was unsteady on his feet when he rose. Later, privately, Maedhros told Maglor it was time to get out the wheelchair, and he wasn’t wrong.

            Maglor told Thranduil some passable story about how the old rattan chair was left over from an old injury of Mother’s, but he could see the wariness in Thranduil’s eyes before he consented to sit in it. It might’ve been more believable if Vanimiel hadn’t scratched her fucking initials into the arm. But Thranduil didn’t ask about that. Maglor wasn’t even sure he noticed.

            There was blood in Thranduil’s handkerchiefs these days.

            He spent more and more time indoors, and it seemed to Maglor that he was wilting, like a sunflower in the shade (Maglor did not know much more about plants than this less-than-apt comparison. In truth, Thranduil was more like a plant which preferred shade and had been moved into a dank basement with poor drainage.) The sight of it seemed so dismal to Maglor that he could not bear it, and he offered to push Thranduil outside in the chair. He was almost surprised when Thranduil agreed.

            “When you can start on the garden, you’ll feel better,” Maglor posited as he maneuvered the chair out the back door. It had not been made with wheelchairs in mind (nor had any entrance to the house, unfortunately), so Thranduil had to vacate the chair for it to be moved down onto the ground before he could sit in it again. “The fresh air will be good for you! My aunt used to say that, before we left Tirion.”

            Thranduil sighed and leaned back in the chair.

            “I believe it,” he said. “And I hope very much it proves true. I find myself quite weary of this affair of sickness.” Yet there was an absence of optimism in his voice that Maglor found unsettling.

            He pushed the chair through the scraggly brown grass of the backside of the yard. There wasn’t much to look at, but in healthier days, Thranduil could still spend hours walking around the property.

            “What is it you look at out here?” he asked. “When you go walking?”

            “The sky,” said Thranduil. “The clouds. The birds.”

            “Birds?” Maglor said. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen many birds around here.”

            “I imagine that is because you have not looked, Maglor,” said Thranduil with amusement in his voice. “I have seen many since I came.”

            Maglor smiled, and found he did not mind looking a bit foolish if it might make Thranduil laugh.

            “No, I do believe I’ve never seen a single bird here,” he declared. Thranduil tilted his head back to look at Maglor, and when he saw that Maglor smiled, he returned the look.

            “Your age must warrant spectacles then,” said Thranduil. Maglor sputtered and made a noise of great offense.

            “It was you that wed this old man!” he said.

            “It was,” Thranduil agreed, facing forward again, though one of his hands groped backwards until it found Maglor’s. Maglor gripped his hand and squeezed it, something airy fluttering in his chest. Thranduil’s wedding ring was cool against his skin. So they stayed for a moment, and then Maglor took his hand back to continue pushing the chair.

            “Did you play here, as a child?” Thranduil asked.

            “Oh…no. We were more or less grown when we moved here. Celebrimbor—my nephew—he played here, though.” He had been too young to go to war when they left—but he had aged into it before they came back. Few who knew him were willing to speak of how he had died, so Maglor had never been clear on the details.

            “Maedhros said you had five other brothers,” said Thranduil, and Maglor could hear in his tone he knew he was edging towards something Maglor might not wish to discuss.

            “That’s true. Myself and Maedhros and Celegorm and Caranthir and Curufin—that was Celebrimbor’s father—and Amrod and Amras,” said Maglor, and saying their names felt like shattering some small spell he hadn’t realize had been pulled over the house. He could not remember the last time either he or Maedhros had spoken the names of their brothers. He could not remember the last time he’d thought of them, except in passing, in concept.

            “It must have been a loud house,” Thranduil remarked. “I was an only child.”

            “I cannot imagine that,” Maglor admitted. “I cannot imagine a childhood not elbowing other children out of the way at the dinner table!” He went quiet a moment, lapsing into recollections he hadn’t thought of in years. “It was a loud house, I suppose,” he said softly. “Here, and in Tirion. And I hated it. I would scream at my brothers for making too much noise when I was trying to focus, and I slammed the door in their faces if they tried to speak to me of their problems, and I tried ever so hard to convince Father to pay for me to have someplace of my own.” He swallowed, finding his throat constricting. It had been a house full of life, once—he and Maedhros had never managed to recapture that, had they? “Now I suppose I’m pleased he always refused. I have more memories of this place from when we were all here together.”

            He would not think now of what his brothers might think of him at that point.

            “You should tell me later, when we have tools to plan,” Thranduil suggested, “where you would like to start with fixing the house.”

            “Oh. Yes, of course. If I have a say,” said Maglor with a smile.

            “Of course you do,” said Thranduil. “You know far better than I what it once looked like.”

            “Well, I don’t believe it must be restored to exactly what it was,” Maglor said. “I may allow for some of your creative opinion.” His smile grew.

            “We might go into town to look at supplies,” Thranduil suggested. “It might be well for both of us to get out of the house. We could stay the night.”

            “Oh…I don’t know,” Maglor said haltingly, his expression dropping. “Maedhros gets anxious when I am away too long.”

            “One night is too long?”

            Maglor twisted his hands on the bars of the chair and cast his eye around for something to distract the conversation, but the landscape looked as empty as ever.

            “What types of birds have you seen here?” he asked in what was transparently a desperate bid to change the subject. Thranduil did not respond, until at length he said:

            “Maglor…do you ever act on your own wishes?”

            “I don’t know what you mean by that,” he said, but the snippiness of his tone was undergirded with anxiety. Thranduil grasped the wheels of the chair to bring it to a halt.

            “Only that you seem very keen to appease your brother,” he said. “And I wonder if sometimes it is…not the best choice for you.”

            “My brother and I are a team,” said Maglor. “What’s good for him is good for me.”

            “I…understand. Yet…” He was leading into some other thing that Maglor did not want to hear, so he jumped in front of it, babbling to stop Thranduil from saying anything else.

            “Maedhros has always been…well, he is my protector, you see? He has always been there for me. No one knows him as I do! Even when there were others, it was always I who knew him best!” Something Maglor would have said to Fingon’s face (and probably had, though he didn’t remember it then, and Fingon had probably not been polite enough to keep from rolling his eyes). “Now we are—well, he has no one left but me. He worries a great deal for me, you see? Because he cares. And so he likes to keep me close, where he can see. It worries him when I stray too far. But it is only because he wishes to keep me safe. Maedhros loves me,” he said, which having said it, seemed a rather foolish and obvious thing to say. He gave a jittery kind of laugh, tinged with something more pointed. “It’s just that with fire is the only way my family knows how to love. You haven’t had siblings, so you can’t understand. He may be hard to understand at times, but I don’t mind, because I love him also. We are brothers. Who could understand us as we do each other? I don’t mind doing things his way, if it makes him feel better.”

            Thranduil went silent in the face of this monologue.

            “I see,” was all he said, at last, and Maglor’s anxiety spiraled into the absence of talk.

            “You mustn’t think I never contradict him! It isn’t that way! Only that Maedhros is usually right, and I have no talent for making plans, so it’s for the best he takes care of it. I haven’t the head for it. And he’s much braver than I. Especially after everything he’s been through. I wasn’t able to—I didn’t help him when—and he hardly complains about it, you see. His hand, I mean. And he’s given me so much, you know? But he’s stayed here with me all this time, useless as I am.”

            “Just as you have remained here with him,” Thranduil pointed out.

            “Oh, well I…I’m sure I would have been here regardless.” Thranduil did not respond to this and Maglor fretted, biting his lip, until Thranduil pointed into the distance, to a black spot against the watery sky.

            “Do you see it there?” he asked. “It looks to be an upland buzzard.”

            “Oh! How can you tell?”

            “They are endemic to the region,” said Thranduil. “And if you observe how it moves, and the shape of the tailfeathers…”

            “How do you know this?” Maglor laughed.

            “There is a book on them in your library. Birds of the region.”

            “What do you think it’s doing?” Maglor asked, leaning forward against the back of the chair.  “Looking for food, I imagine.”

            “It may be,” said Thranduil. “Most likely. But perhaps it is simply enjoying a lovely day for flying.”

            “You think so?”

            “Why not?”

            Maglor smiled and watched the bird swoop and wheel through the air. “Why not indeed,” he said. “If I could fly, I would go out just to take the air as well.”

            By the time they came back in, Maglor was shocked to realize nearly three hours had gone by. He had been sure they hadn’t been gone but perhaps forty minutes!

            “This was lovely,” he said, squeezing Thranduil’s shoulder. “We should do it again.” Thranduil said nothing, but beckoned him down, and when Maglor leaned over, Thranduil kissed his cheek warmly, and Maglor blushed.

            “We should,” he agreed.

            “Are you busy?” Maglor blurted out. Thranduil blinked at him.

            “Busy with what?” Maglor’s cheeks darkened.

            “Oh, I thought perhaps, ah, you might come with me to the music room. I could show you what I’ve written this week. I have made some significant changes to one of the arias in the second act of the opera. But of course, only if you haven’t another obligation.”

            The corners of Thranduil’s mouth were twitching and Maglor’s face burned.

            “I have no obligations,” he said.

            “Marvelous!” So they retired to the music room and Thranduil shifted from the chair to the old green divan which had once held Maglor’s guests, where he lounged against the arm, quite contently, it seemed to Maglor, listening.

            After, Maglor tried to take Thranduil out every day, and he began to think Aunt Lalwen had been right about the fresh air.

***

Maglor took the steps two at a time up to the bedroom and made a beeline for the top shelf of his armoire, certain he had stowed the jade elephant there. When he heard the sound of footsteps, his first thought was that Thranduil had followed him.

“Just give me a moment! I’m sure it’s here,” he said from inside the armoire.

“I thought it was Elwing’s cat in here. What are you looking for?” Maedhros asked.

“Oh.” Maglor drew back and peered curiously out. “Do you remember that jade elephant carving Grandfather gave me? I was sure I put it up here.” Maedhros closed the door behind him as he entered and came up next to Maglor to dig through the shelf with him.

“Hm. I don’t see it.”

“No, I’m sure it’s here…I must have just buried it under something…” Maglor started yanking scarves out of a box.

“What do you need it for?” Maedhros asked.

“I wanted to show it to Thranduil!”

When Maglor drew back again and saw Maedhros’ face, the temperature of the room dropped ten degrees.

“Do you mean to impress him with trinkets?” Maedhros scoffed. “You are already wed, Maglor. Your work is finished.” Maedhros’, on the other hand, was still ongoing.

“I…I just feel it must be rather dull for him, being so confined…” Because they were poisoning him. “I thought this might…” Maedhros was looking so derisive that Maglor forgot what had been in his head about it and he stepped uneasily down from the armoire’s lower shelf where he had been standing. “I had just mentioned it, now, so…” Maedhros crossed his arms.

“It feels that you are losing sight of what the goal is here.”

“I’m not!”

“This man is not your friend, Maglor.”

“No, we’re only married,” Maglor could not help but snipe, even though he knew it would only gall Maedhros further.

Maedhros sneered, but there was a flash of real anger in the way his jaw tightened. “Perhaps you’d like him to bury your bodies and pay your bills?”

“They aren’t my—”

“Need I remind you of what this man would think of you if he knew whom you really loved? The true contents of your heart? What you really seek from him?”

            Maglor looked down at the floor.

            “I know how little he would think of me,” he mumbled.

            “Then why do you waste everyone’s time with these stupid games? Would you be keener to hurry things along if I made it a bit harder for you to play house? If I told him of the others? Of how you treated—”

            “Stop it!” Maglor cried, wringing his hands.

“Yet another job you started and couldn’t finish; another mess you left for me to clean up. Do you think you did the kinder thing, leaving her there when you couldn’t manage to end it? Running away, as you always do?”

The scene of that day had grown dimmer and foggier, overlaid with the violent emotions which had never faded. Maglor had thought that after weeks of drinking poison, confined most often to the wheelchair, Elwing would not be difficult to kill; he had not known how hard a body would fight to live. He had also been ignorant of how long it took a person to suffocate.

“She knew the truth,” Maglor wailed. “She was going to tell the press, she said—she was going to tell someone! And she said—she said I was—” Once he had disdainfully observed the coarse personal violence of Celegorm, sneered behind his back—and to his face—along with Caranthir, but he had heard Celegorm’s wild laughter over the scene of Maglor grappling on the parlor floor with Elwing.

“She could barely walk, Maglor. And you so lost your mind the moment she said something you didn’t like that you tried to wring her neck like a Sunday roast. How long until this one says something that upsets you?”

“Stop it, stop it!” Maglor shrieked. His cheeks darkened in anger. “You wanted me to do it! You wanted me to! You told me she would ruin us! And you have been holding it over my head—Stop doing this! You’re hurting me!”

            “I’m not hurting you,” Maedhros snapped, that fey look in his eyes that Maglor so despised. “Do not speak to me of being hurt. I am only making you see the truth which you continually strive to ignore.” He waved his prosthetic at Maglor. “When I was a prisoner of the enemy, that was being hurt. And where were you? Tucked safely away in camp.”

            Maglor’s throat bobbed; he had no words, and Maedhros knew it.

            “I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I didn’t…of course I’m not…”

            “It’s alright,” said Maedhros after a pause, drawing back to an eminently reasonable, even gentle, tone. “I understand your limits. I am happy to suffer in your stead. But do not speak to me as if your petty grievances are hurts.”

            Maglor just cringed.

            “And remember what our work here is for.”

            “Yes, Maedhros,” Maglor whispered. He left the room without the elephant.

***

            Baths in Formenos were tepid at best, and yet there was something still relaxing about them. Given how tiresome the rest of Thranduil’s life felt of late, he felt justified in taking them as often as he had the energy to do it. He could spent over an hour laying there, occasionally even draining the chilled water to add more warm water to it and draw it out a while longer (He would have rather gone swimming, but there was nowhere nearby that he knew, and in any case he was probably as likely to drown these days). Bargwend often joined him in the bathroom, as the door never seemed to close properly—likely related to the water that often seeped down the bathroom walls from pipes that had probably rusted through—and would sit by the bathtub, or even up on the rim, silently keeping him company.

            They were there when the red ghost returned.

            One moment, Thranduil was lounging in the claw-footed tub, his elbows hooked loosely over the rim, contemplating the play of light through the stained-glass window on the vibrant green of the tile floor; the next it was there.

             He was certain it was the same ghost who had assailed him in the hallway that night he’d gotten up for water. It oozed through the opening in the door, and the water of the bath sloshed as Thranduil flung himself back, heart pounding instantly, wanting to wail that he could not have one moment of peace or one place sacred from these wretched apparitions.

            The ghost advanced, and Thranduil looked frantically about for something to use as a weapon, besides the bar of soap. He had never yet seen that weapons could be effective against ghosts, but if they could touch him, it stood to reason he might be able to touch them, didn’t it?

            But the ghost was stopped on the approach by Bargwend, who leaped out from under the sink, hissing and snarling with sounds Thranduil had never heard a housecat make. Her ears flat against her head, whiskers trembling, she took a step nearer to the ghost hovering in the middle of the bathroom, and then took an ambitious swipe at it.

            “Bargwend!” Thranduil started to rise from the bath, suddenly terrified the ghost might do some harm to the cat. If she were killed, he did not think he could bear it.

            The ghost looked at him standing in the bath, dripping pathetically, and then at the cat, still spitting, and then it plunged through the mirror over the sink and was gone. Thranduil let out a slow exhale, and quickly pulled the plug on the tub and removed himself. He hurried over to the cat, who sprang up with her forepaws on his knee as he crouched down, and rubbed her face against his hand and cheek, as if to verify that he was unharmed. Thranduil murmured various praises and pleasantries to her and kissed the top of her head.

As he grabbed his towel and wrapped it tightly around himself, he noticed the mirror had fogged up again, although the bath had been cold for at least twenty minutes before the ghost’s arrival. There was something else, too: Into the fog on the mirror was scrawled two letters:

            E.D.

---

Chapter End Notes

"You'll feel better!" says Maglor to a man he is actively poisoning to death

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Chapter V

Read Chapter V

Maedhros, in absence of any real staff in the house outside the one caretaker, took on many of the roles which might have been filled with maids and valets, and that included the laundry. Yet somehow, coincidentally, it always seemed to take him three times as long to get to anything of Thranduil’s, and so he had started doing it himself not very long after his arrival.

            But when he meandered towards the side room behind the kitchen where the laundry tub was kept and where most of the laundering took place, he could hear shuffling about that was not merely rats or beetles scurrying about business of their own.

            He slowed down and was able to approach the door silently, a trick he had perfected in childhood for no reason other than his own entertainment (he had then nursed a desire to sneak up on a deer, something he never did achieve to his satisfaction).

            Maedhros was there, sorting through a bin of laundry, and as Thranduil observed him, he withdrew one of Maglor’s unwashed undershirts and pressed his face into it for a long moment. When he drew back, he breathed deeply, as if to calm himself, at which point Thranduil was seized by a coughing jag. Maedhros’ attention snapped over to him and his expression promptly dissolved into a subtle scowl.

            “Is there something you want?” he asked.

            Thranduil gestured to the laundry, but was wracked with coughing once again and had to grab the doorframe to stay upright. He had left the chair upstairs, thinking he could sit to do the laundry and so it would be alright, but he regretted now, clutching at the doorframe for support, that he hadn’t brought it.

            “You should go upstairs,” said Maedhros, and then, horrifyingly, approached.

            “No,” Thranduil wheezed, but he was not in a position to effect that desire, and Maedhros grabbed his elbow. That great, clear jewel at his forehead glimmered even in the dimness of the room. Thranduil thought he heard the house wailing in the wind, or the long-lost echo of some ghost’s scream.

            “Let me help you.”

            “N—” Thranduil broke off choking and the violence of his body’s convulsing forced him away from the doorframe; Maedhros grabbed him more firmly and held him up.

            “You should be in the chair,” said Maedhros. “I’ll get you there.”

            “No,” Thranduil’s feeble protest was barely audible and he found himself desperately wishing Maglor would arrive and interrupt. Maedhros’ fingers were just as cold as his prosthetic and his nails dug in as if he were a hawk securing its prey.

            “I hear Maglor has finally been overnighting in his room,” Maedhros said with a thinly conversational tone, pulling Thranduil back into the hall. He felt dizzy, trying to suck in air around coughing fits, but even so, had a sense that he did not want to share any information about Maglor.

“I know not where he spends his nights,” he rasped, swallowing against the sticky feeling in his throat, stumbling against Maedhros as the taller man continued to guide him forcefully away from the laundry room. “Working on his opera, I imagine.” It took him a few tries to get this short sentence out.

“He’s always been a bit flighty,” said Maedhros, his fingers tightening on Thranduil’s arm until his grip felt bruising. “Prone to running after the most recent shiny thing he’s seen. Someone must keep him focused. He breaks things, otherwise.”

Thranduil realized Maedhros was leading him towards the elevator, and he had a sudden vision of the red, red ghost and her accusing finger, pointed straight at the elevator gates. The dread that overtook him swamped the bounds of reason; he could not have even articulated what he was frightened of, only that he felt sure he could not allow Maedhros to put him in that elevator.

“No,” he gasped, throwing his weight back against Maedhros’ encircling arms. “No—”

“It will be easier than going up the stairs,” Maedhros soothed, pushing him forward.

There was blood spotting his lower lip and his muscles seemed unwilling to obey as he tried to dig his feet in, to lean back, to do anything to stop from being propelled into the elevator, but none of it mattered. It took a moment for his panicked animal mind to realize he was not going to be successful no matter how much he wanted to be, and if he did not determine an alternative strategy in short order, it wouldn’t matter anymore.

So rather than continue to fight against Maedhros’ forward momentum, he let all his muscles relax. Maedhros was not expecting it, and Thranduil dropped right out of his grasp and landed on his hands and knees. Unfortunately, he had not planned much beyond that, and simply tried to crawl away towards the foyer, blood dripping from his mouth onto his hands.

“It will be much easier if you go into the elevator,” Maedhros said, grabbing his shoulder.

“I can walk,” Thranduil gasped, flailing out to grab the wall and drag himself back up to his feet. His gambit, albeit successful, had already run its course; he needed something else. Part of him was tempted to call for Maglor, but he did not want to make Maedhros panic, and he was not sure he could raise his voice loud enough for Maglor to hear him anyway.

“You never said,” Thranduil panted, his breath starting to come back to him, “why you went to war.”

Maedhros seemed to consider this and Thranduil dared a modicum of relief when he answered instead of making another bid for elevator.

“Revenge, of course,” said Maedhros. “What else does one go to war for? Revenge or greed. Perhaps it was a bit of both columns.”

“Maglor told me of your grandfather,” said Thranduil. He took a few deep breaths, reaching for both air and words.

“Mm. Did he say that’s where the name of this place comes from?” Maedhros said. Thranduil nodded. Maedhros looked up at the ceiling, and then around them at the hall, coolly appraising. “Father built it. After his exile. We all came with, naturally, and Grandfather too—felt he needed to take a stand in support of Father. Everyone gravitated around him, whether they loved him or hated him, so when he went mad, well…” Maedhros smiled a humorless smile.

“He went mad?” Thranduil supposed Maglor had made some implications to that effect, but neither of them had ever said it so plainly.

“Of course. After Grandfather was killed he lost his mind. I don’t know that he ever slept again. He had always been prone to fits of mania, particularly with his work, but this one seemed to consume him entirely. That’s the thing with love,” said Maedhros, and Thranduil hadn’t a prayer’s chance of reading his expression. “It consumes, it burns, and when it has nothing left to swallow, it combusts. He raged against the gods, defied anyone who would advise him against his course of conduct. No one was innocent in the path of his force; not bystanders, not our allies once he decided they did not see eye-to-eye enough with him, not even our family. You were either with him, or you were against him and had to be destroyed.

“He loved my grandmother so he hated and betrayed his half-siblings to prove it. He loved my grandfather, so he set fire to the world to prove it. Allegedly, he loved us too. He was killed very soon after we first saw real combat. Refused to retreat.”

“Is that when you came back?”

Again, that sickly, venomous smile. “No. Then we were left to prosecute his war for him, which we did. Unsuccessfully. I wonder how many family graves we can attribute to my father?”

Thranduil finally felt he had caught his breath again, but he was not convinced he could make it back up the stairs without a chance to sit down. He would have to try.

“You have my condolences,” he said, and he meant it.

“It’s rather late in the day for those,” said Maedhros.  

“I should lie down.” Thranduil made himself move away from the wall and shuffle into the foyer. Maedhros loped along behind him.

“Are you worried about the safety of the elevator?” Maedhros asked. “It’s quite stable. More than the rest of the house. It wouldn’t be much use to us if it was too dangerous to function.” Thranduil did not believe any of that.

“I prefer the stairs,” he said, as if he wasn’t exhausted by the time he reached the halfway point. Maedhros was still watching him from the ground floor when he sank down onto one of the steps to catch his breath.

“You seem to be feeling poorly. Let me make you a pot of tea.”

“Yes, thank you,” Thranduil muttered, relieved for anything that took Maedhros away from him. When Maedhros had vanished into the kitchen, Thranduil hurried up the rest of the stairs and into the library, where he collapsed gratefully into an armchair. He pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, but he could feel no sign of a fever.

He had a sudden vision of himself as just one more ghost of Formenos, and the thought of being forever bound to this place so far from home was like a weight on his chest, and yet if there were some way out of it, it seemed to recede further every day, like he were on a boat being borne from shore with no way to reach back.

He wanted to sleep, but he made himself sit up and dig out some loose papers from one of the library desks. It was time to write a more forthright letter to Elrond, and be honest about his grim prospects. In the past, he had not wished to worry his friend, or seem to complain too much, but now he felt he was losing the chance to tell the full truth. If he perished of this illness and Elrond knew he had never even mentioned it, he would be terribly hurt.

When Maedhros came in with the tea, Thranduil directed him to set it near the edge of the desk.

“Make sure you drink it all,” he said, pouring a cup of it for Thranduil.

“Thank you.”

“I will see if we have any medication which might serve,” Maedhros offered.

“I would rather have just the tea,” said Thranduil.

“As you prefer.”

When he was done with the letter, he sealed it to give to Maglor to send, as he had with the past letters. And then he wrote a letter to his father too. Oropher was gone, and could receive nothing from him anymore, but Thranduil wrote anyway, and once he started, he could not stop. He filled more than a dozen pages double-sided with everything that had happened since his father’s death, including the job of identifying the body which had fallen to Thranduil, and had to take several breaks to keep from spilling tears on the page and smudging the ink.

There were times he felt his grief for his father was under control, abated, but it often took only a quick look under the bandages to see that it was still there, as raw as ever.

He even mentioned his mother’s ghost, about which he had never spoken to his father, and her warning about Crimson Peak.

I fear there was merit in her concerns, he wrote. But the time with which I made have made use of her warning is past.

How he wished there was someone waiting across the Sundering Sea to receive this letter. There was not much his father could have done for him where he was, but it would have comforted him to know that Oropher was aware of his situation. It would have comforted him to know that Oropher was there, that somewhere on Arda, his father was there, writing his papers, going on his hikes, running his business. That his thread continued, even if Thranduil were not there to see it.

Instead, once Thranduil had finished the letter, he stoked a fire in the hearth and dropped the pages into it, watching his words curl up and dissolve into ash, never to have an audience. No ghost of his father appeared—it was not like Oropher to linger on when his business was done. It was the first time an absence of a phantom had made Thranduil feel alone.

***

            Maedhros seized upon him in the music room. Not that it was hard to know that’s where he was—Maglor retreated there most of the day. It was centrally located within the house, which meant while the rest of the building became increasingly unlivable, the music room was spared the worst of the ravages, and was often warmer than the extremities. This was, of course, in addition to it containing the objects in the house with the most interest for Maglor. Maedhros had left him alone with it, allowing him to arrange it as he liked, which was not the case with the rest of the house.

            “This is taking too long,” said Maedhros as soon as he swept into the room, the door banging shut behind him. Maglor jumped at his harp, and his brow knit at once, aware of where this conversation was going.

            “It hasn’t been so long,” he protested.

            “It is taking too long,” Maedhros insisted. “We should be done with it by now.”

            “It will be over soon,” Maglor pleaded. Maedhros fixed him with a hard stare, and Maglor knew he was in danger of signing the go-ahead order simply by being too concerned. “Everything will play out as we planned, dearest. Please, let’s not…let’s not make it messy.” This was an excuse he was sure Maedhros would take, and he did.

            “Don’t I always clean up our messes? Your messes?” Maedhros said. “I will take care of it.”

            Maglor rose to his feet, his eyebrows pulling together, unable to stop the frown which etched itself into his expression.

            “Maedhros, no…”

            Maedhros, still believing in Maglor’s lie, attempted to soothe him through it, as he had done successfully in the past. He came over and took Maglor’s upper arms. The great jewel gleamed at his forehead and made Maglor feel queasy; he looked away.

            “I will take him down into the cellar first,” he reassured Maglor. “You will have to see none of it.”

            “Maedhros,” Maglor tried again, giving Maedhros the most beseeching look he could, and then, on impulse, added in a much softer voice: “I don’t want to see you that way.”

            At this, Maedhros relaxed his mania, rubbing Maglor’s arm with his good hand.

            “Alright,” he agreed at last, though Maglor could see his reluctance. “If it upsets you so much. But I will not wait more than another fortnight. And I will increase his dosage.”

            That was…not ideal. But it was also the best deal Maglor was likely to get; if he pushed harder, he would only arouse Maedhros’ fatal jealousy.

            “Thank you,” he said, leaning forward to rest his cheek against Maedhros’ chest. Maedhros’ good hand touched the back of his head, massaging the base of Maglor’s skull.

            “Of course,” Maedhros murmured. “Anything for you, as always.”

***

            Maglor found himself incurably restive lately. He hadn’t worked on his opera in days, even when he meant to (and what he did write, he despised and destroyed). He couldn’t sit still long enough to read, and even harping only barely occupied him enough to keep him from getting up to pace.

            On one such day, he wandered into the library, thinking he might find Thranduil there, which he did. Thranduil was slumped over in his wheelchair, dozing, and Maglor hesitated, deciding perhaps it was best not to disturb him, when Thranduil opened his eyes, and seeing Maglor, straightened up.

            “Maglor,” he said, beckoning him over. Maglor came at once, pulling a chair over to sit beside Thranduil. “I need to talk with you,” Thranduil said grimly.

            “Of course, my darling,” said Maglor, reaching out to take his hands. “What is it?” Thranduil drew in a wheezing breath.

            “My illness,” he said, and there was strain in his sweet voice which had not been there when they met in Greenwood. “It improves not a bit. There are things which must been seen to. The paperwork, from the bank. Have you received it yet?”

            “No…” Maglor frowned deeply. Admittedly, it had been some time since he’d checked the post office. Thranduil broke off coughing, and Maglor reached up when it subsided to wipe a smidge of blood from his chin, but Thranduil caught Maglor’s hand and clasped them both in his lap.

            “You must retrieve it as soon as possible,” he said. “I would sign you on now, as soon as we can. You must have access to my account.”

            “Why?” Maglor whispered, clutching at his hands.

            “The money,” Thranduil said, and turned his head away to give a single, sharp cough. “From my father. It must be yours.” Maglor felt like someone had punched him in the throat. “It would have been regardless, were I to live. But as that seems now unlikely, I wish to make sure there are no questions over to whom it belongs.” Even this small speech seemed to have wearied him. The bruises under his eyes were perpetual, and those beautiful green eyes had grown bloodshot and dull. “I will not be able to make the improvements to the house we discussed before,” he apologized, his voice barely more than a ragged whisper. “Nor the garden. But this I can still give to you.”

            Maglor realized he was shaking.

            “It can fund your opera,” Thranduil went on. “Then you will need no backers. Or at least, I imagine not. I confess I know little of how much capital is required to fund an opera. This will give you a considerable start, I hope. When I have gone, you can pay others to do the work I might have done. Make the house livable again.”

            “You still think it can be saved?” Maglor asked, his voice breaking.

            “Of course,” Thranduil murmured. “Anything can be saved, with enough love and attention. Isn’t it so? You require only the resources, which I can give to you.”

            Maglor’s self-control broke, and then he was weeping openly.

            “You won’t die,” he lied.

            “I am afraid I very likely will.”

            “No, you can’t,” Maglor wept. “You just need more fresh air. I’ll take you out more. I haven’t done it enough, I’m sorry. You aren’t dying. I won’t allow it!” Thranduil reached for the dove-tree teacup and Maglor snatched it out of his hand. “Stop drinking this!” he wailed. With a flick of his wrist he emptied the contents into the fireplace. “It’s no good for you! It hasn’t helped at all! I’ll get you something else. I’ll make you some chamomile. It’s so bloody cold in here!” he cried. “Are you cold? Where’s the damned cat? She should be with you! Are your feet warm enough? Wait here, I’ll be back soon.”

            Maglor ran off and returned later as he’d said he would, with a tray of hot chamomile tea, and a blanket for Thranduil.

            “Here,” he said, pouring a cup and setting it in Thranduil’s hands. “Warmer now? Is that better?” Thranduil nodded, and Maglor was almost certain he was being placated, but it didn’t matter. He arranged the blanket over Thranduil’s lap so that it hung down over his feet. “What were you reading?”

            Thranduil closed the book to have a look at the title and said: “A History of Artistic Movements of Tirion.” Maglor settled into the chair he’d pulled up next to Thranduil and leaned in against his arm, so he could lay his head on Thranduil’s shoulder.

            “Read it to me?” he said.

            Thranduil took a long drink of tea, flipped the book back open to the first page, and began again, this time aloud for his audience.

***

            That night after dinner, Maglor did not go up to the master bedroom. Instead, he went into Mother’s old studio, in which no one had set foot in what felt like a million years. Her old discarded projects were still there, along with about a jumble of things he and Maedhros had shoved into the room from other parts of the house in their first days back at the estate, and about a foot of dust. He was sure no one would disturb him there. He lit up a candelabra, took up one of the creaky stools, and bawled.

            It was going to go on as it always had. Maedhros would keep dosing Thranduil with tea and even if Thranduil had given some consideration to Maglor’s warning not to drink it anymore, he might not heed it, and even if he did, the damage might be done. Were he not to take another sip of it in his life, his internal organs might have already sustained such damage as was irreparable, and death was inevitable.

            Thranduil was too weak now to flee, and he did not understand the danger he was in, or that there might be still time to avoid it. He had no idea of the bodies bricked underneath the cellar, no comprehension of the harm Maedhros truly wished on him. He wished to give Maglor what Maglor had planned take from him since first they met. It was astonishing, that anyone could be so naïve as to the cruelty which truly existed in the world, and the thought that he would be the one to teach Thranduil how terrible the world could be made Maglor sick to his stomach.

            There was no one who could save Thranduil—no one but Maglor.

            But doing that required confronting Maedhros, and exposing himself and the horrors he had committed for this place, for his relationship with Maedhros, to Thranduil. It was Maglor’s worst, most closely-held fear: that anyone other than Maedhros might see him for what he really was.

            So Thranduil would die, thought Maglor, wiping with his hands at the tears and snot that dripped down his face. Die because Maglor was so ashamed of what he had allowed himself to become that he refused to undo it.

            Maedhros’ words echoed inside Maglor’s head: I am the only one who could love you. Maedhros had said these exact words to him only once, but so many other things he’d said seemed to return to this central thesis: that Maedhros was the only one in the world who could truly know Maglor, and still love him.

            And maybe he was right.

            Maglor did not see a way he could be honest with Thranduil without making Thranduil shrink from him in hatred and disgust. So maybe Maedhros was right, and there was no love for Maglor outside of that house. But this was also true: none of that changed that Maglor loved Thranduil, and if Thranduil hated him forever, it would not stop Maglor from loving him for a single day.

            He was not foolish enough to believe in the absolution of this one act—but he also could not believe it would make no difference at all.

***

            Thranduil’s illness grew worse, and Maedhros pushed pot after pot of tea on him, followed by watery congee when Thranduil tried to turn down the tea, insisting he would fix it, but nothing helped. Thranduil’s head felt like it was full of lead; most days getting out of bed at all took concerted effort, and he spent most of the day yearning for sleep. His garden plans had been left by the wayside, and when he had started coughing blood into his handkerchief, he had realized with a distant awareness that he was likely dying.

            He spent more time in the library, but he often fell asleep at the desk or in one of the musty, moth-eaten chairs, waking sometime later to realize with resigned disappointment he simply did not have the energy to be doing what he wanted to do.

            Maglor was much more present than he had been in the earlier days of their marriage, which was a comfort, although he still often felt he understood very little about his chosen spouse. Thranduil had been too ill for much physical intimacy between them since their first encounter in the house, if there was anything about him that remained appealing to Maglor. Bloody lips and bony shoulders were not wonderful enticements. Not that it would matter long—whatever Maglor said, Thranduil was sure he would not last a few more months. He would never see spring on Crimson Peak. 

            Maedhros had promised to get him a key to the house after he had familiarized himself with it more, but he had never done so. He had also told Thranduil never to go into the cellar, but Thranduil did not think much of Maedhros’ edicts, and so one day, after waking in the library and feeling particularly spiteful, he broke the rule just because he could. Maybe, he thought bitingly, the ghost had not been warning him away at all. Or perhaps it was useless to live one’s life based on messages from the dead.

            Fitting the chair into the elevator was always troublesome, but Thranduil managed to back it in, at which point he became closely aware of how cold it was there (particularly as he had not bothered to dress that morning, and so was clad only in his cream-white nightdress and a thin shrug). That was why it startled him but little when a ghostly arm reached through the right wall of the elevator, clawing at the lever that moved it from floor to floor. A low moan rattled the elevator, and Thranduil looked at the groping hand.

            “Have you a warning for me as well?” he asked. “Shall we see what’s at the heart of that?” He pulled the lever down to take the elevator to the basement, and the ghost withdrew.

            It was clear that while the rest of the house had gone uncared for, the cellar had suffered neglect in the extreme. Thranduil was at once amazed the entire house hadn’t collapsed; there must have been three inches of water on the floor in some places. Moss and mold covered the stone walls and water dripped around like he was in a cave (he frowned as turning the wheels of the chair smeared his hands with the foul water). The rank smell of rot which pervaded the entire estate was so powerful he gagged. It appeared to play host to an assortment of random, unrelated junk.

            What a colossal disappointment.

            Thranduil had suspected Maedhros was keeping him out of parts of the house simply out of ill will, and here was the proof. There was nothing down here. Maedhros was simply bitter that he was no longer the unquestioned master of the house now that his younger brother had wed.

            To make the rickety elevator trip worth it, Thranduil poked around some of the things. There was what must have once been a very fine dress, abandoned to rot into the floor. There a delicate crown of golden flowers terribly bent out of shape and appearing to rust. There was a steamer trunk, emblazoned with a name: Elwing Dioriel.

E.D.

            Thranduil hunted around for a tool, found a shovel with a broken handle, and used it to bash open the lock on the trunk. It took him a few tries, but when he did get it open, it was mostly empty, except for a necklace—its large setting pried open and empty of any jewel—and a small, leather-bound journal. Picking it up to leaf through, he was surprised to see it was not written in the common Tengwar, but in the archaic Cirth, also known as Daeron’s Runes. It was not something taught anywhere outside of Doriath, where Thranduil had grown up, to the best of his awareness. More interesting still, Elwing’s recollections began in Tengwar, but abruptly shifted to Cirth perhaps two-thirds of the way through the journal.

            His curiosity piqued, Thranduil opened to the first page properly to read.

---

Chapter End Notes

Did you know that gold doesn't rust? Thranduil doesn't.

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Chapter VI

Final girl

Read Chapter VI

Maedhros found it amusing, to be in the attic once more, hiding their trysts as they once had when first they had begun this after their return to Formenos, as though the ghosts of Mother and Father might burst through the walls of the master bedroom and accuse them of doing exactly what they were doing (And somehow, this was not a risk in the attic? It was hard to say they had been thinking clearly in those days.) Maglor found it distasteful. But it had been weeks since he had gone to bed with Maedhros, and he knew he could not keep putting him off, and also he needed him to be in as relaxed and amiable a mood as possible for the next several days, with his paranoia resting quiet. Maglor had not told him that he had arranged a home visit with a doctor for Thranduil. It was possible, of course, that Thranduil’s physiology might reveal something incriminating, but Maglor hoped that a week since he had told Thranduil to stop drinking the tea (as it would be by the time the physician arrived) would be enough to flush most of it from his system. What he really needed to know was whether there was a chance Thranduil might still live, or whether Maglor had waited too long to act, and had doomed him already.

Anyway, to sate Maedhros, they had to be somewhere with privacy assured.

            No words passed between them as Maedhros mouthed as his neck, one hand palming between his legs. Some dull spark struggled to catch in Maglor’s body, as if some part of him remembered that Maedhros had once brought him pleasure and was trying to reach for the feeling he had known then. But his mind drifted downstairs, to where Thranduil was probably curled up in an armchair somewhere with his bloody handkerchief and rasping breath, garden plot sketches abandoned, hoping that Maglor might come by and engage him in conversation for a few minutes, or hold onto him while he napped. He imagined that if he went down now, and asked Thranduil to talk about what he was reading, or offered to push him around the yard, that Thranduil might even smile at him or let Maglor kiss his lovely cheek.

            Maedhros’ teeth scraped against the flesh of Maglor’s throat and he sighed: “Not too hard.” There was an entitlement with which Maedhros touched him, as if there were no chance Maglor would ever refuse him, that was absent with Thranduil, who touched him as if he had no right, and therefore must work to earn it.

            Maedhros cupped his hand around Maglor through his trousers and squeezed him a little and Maglor let out a slow breath, closing his eyes and remembering the night Thranduil had made love to him in the house with Maedhros sleeping above and at this memory his body stirred at last with real interest.

            “Sing the song,” Maedhros murmured, his prosthetic pressed against Maglor’s lower back. With a soft sigh, Maglor began to sing low, slow, lilting—an old lullaby which Father had once sung to them, which Maedhros had sung to Maglor as a child, which Maglor had used to soothe Maedhros after their return to Formenos. Maedhros must have found it comforting, for he often requested Maglor sing it in moments like this.

            Thus distracted, they were unprepared to have the door flung open. Maglor scrambled to find some more decent position to be in that did not involve his brother’s hand on his crotch, but Maedhros did not twitch an eyelid, and when Maglor looked at him, he was smiling.

            “Caught on, have you?” he said.

            Thranduil’s breast was pumping as if he had run up the stairs, and his face was stricken. He threw something down hard on the floor between them, which Maglor did not recognize, but Maedhros did.

            “Tch. Now, didn’t I tell you to stay out of the cellar?” Maedhros said, rising to his feet, not troubling himself to draw his house robe closed and cover his arousal. “This was a bad choice, Maglor. You picked one who reads Cirth, didn’t you? Let me guess: this one was educated in Doriath. Found Elwing’s little book of notes, didn’t he?”

            “You are despicable,” Thranduil spat. Maedhros laughed.

            “Oh, you’ll have to try harder than that.” He strode towards Thranduil, his unbound hair streaming behind him; Maglor couldn’t see what happened then, but Thranduil must have retreated, for Maedhros went further down the hall. Maglor jumped up and ran after them.

            “You want to run? This is what you married into!” Maedhros called. “This is what I am. What he is. This is our family. Did you think he was something soft, something tender? Did you think he cared for you? That he wanted you? What a good liar he is!” Maedhros followed Thranduil down the stairs. “You have always been a tool for us,” Maedhros said as he reached the landing of the second floor.

            “What happened to my father?” Thranduil demanded, coming to a halt, hands curled into fists at his sides.

            “He found us out,” said Maedhros, and Maglor felt queasy with the relish in his voice. Maedhros was enjoying this—enjoying telling Thranduil things that would make him hate Maglor forever. “So I took care of it, just like I take care of everything for dear little Maglor. You should have seen the look on his stupid old face when I smashed it into the sink after he thought he’d gotten the upper hand with me.”

            Thranduil did not care to have his emotions show, this Maglor knew, and his natural expression was such that they usually did not, but then they burst across his mien like the sunrise: the pain, followed by the flare of anger quickly and entirely eclipsed with grief.

            “He was going to the Beleriand Botanical Society’s convention in the spring,” he said, his voice tight with the effort at controlling it. Maglor remembered the conversation they’d had after Thranduil had been forced to identify Oropher’s mangled face. At the time, Maglor considered how awfully shaken he was to be a boon—it gave Maglor the chance to comfort him and so tie Thranduil closer to him. “He was to give a talk there. And you killed him.” But he was looking at Maglor.

            “He was pushing you away from Maglor,” said Maedhros. “And what if he had told someone about Maglor’s past marriages after we left? No, it couldn’t be helped. A necessary casualty.” At this, Thranduil’s jaw went so tight the muscles bulged. “Now—you have something that belongs to me.” Maedhros strode forward and grappled with Thranduil.  

            “No! Stop!” Maglor found his voice at last. His brother and his husband tussled for just a moment, which felt like years, and then Maedhros seized Thranduil’s right hand. With no small force, he jerked the ring Maglor had given him off of it.

“This is mine,” he snarled. “It’s mine. I earned it. I’m taking it back.” Then he shoved Thranduil back against the railing. The wood, weather-worn from the exposed hole in the ceiling, gave way, and Thranduil plummeted down to the main hall floor as Maglor screamed.

***

            He was rushing down the stairs then, towards Thranduil’s prone body.

            “Maedhros!” he cried. “What have you done?”

            “What does it matter?” Maedhros replied. “Dead now or in two weeks…what difference does it make?” In his mind, he knew Maedhros was right per their original plans—except that they still needed Thranduil’s signature on his bank papers—but not now! Not when he was so close to preventing this whole sad story from playing out a fourth time!

            As he came down the last few steps, Thranduil groaned, and Maglor’s heart leaped into his throat.

            “Thranduil,” he cried, falling to his knees beside the dazed man. “Shh, let me help you…” Wet snowflakes drifted down through the hole in the roof to melt against their skin.

            “Unhand me,” Thranduil snarled, jerking away from him, but he couldn’t hide the gasp of pain as he shifted his left foot.

            “Your ankle,” Maglor fretted. “You must let me help you.”

            “Unhand me! You killed Elwing,” he accused. “And Glorfindel, and Vanimiel.” He said no more, but the tightness of his jaw and the heat of his glare filled in what more words might have. “So that you could steal from them.”

            “Oh good, then we won’t have to resort to forgery,” said Maedhros before Maglor could formulate a reply.

            “Maedhros, don’t,” said Maglor, but Maedhros stooped down and scooped Thranduil off the ground in a bridal carry.

            “I’m taking dear brother-in-law to finish the last of his paperwork,” said Maedhros. Maedhros was bigger, but Maglor could see it was not easy for him to carry Thranduil that way; years tucked away in the house had weakened him. But Thranduil did not fight. He let Maedhros carry him upstairs to the attic, taken by a coughing fit before they reached the second floor.

            “Don’t hurt him,” Maglor called, and his voice sounded feeble even to himself.

***

            It would be useless to rage against Maedhros. Thranduil did not doubt that if pressed—and not terribly hard—he would simply bash Thranduil’s head in with a paperweight and forge his signature. If he was going to resist, it needed to be more calculated, particularly as he was now hobbled.

            “These came with Maglor’s last visit to the post office,” said Maedhros conversationally, digging into a desk drawer. The attic was freezing in spite of the brazier lit against one wall, and the air so musty it was hardly breathable.

            “How do you live with yourself?” Thranduil demanded as Maedhros smoothed the papers out in front of him. His ankle was pulsating with pain, and his elbow and ribs throbbed where they had hit the floor after he’d landed awkwardly on his foot. He was nearly certain Maedhros had sprained his finger jerking the ring off of it.

            “My entire life has been spent trying to salvage the legacy of this family,” said Maedhros. “A lifetime. I’ve seen more of my family put in the ground than you ever possessed. I have given my soul to this estate, to this family. A family which was once the greatest of the Noldor. And you ask me to weigh that less than your petty life? The choice to me is clear.” He uncapped a pen and set it down beside the forms. Then he fetched his usual dagger from where he had discarded the belt presumably for his encounter with Maglor, and replaced it around his waist.

            “Besides, Maglor needs me,” he said, taking a seat on a padded stool across the small table from Thranduil. “You don’t know him, although I imagine you realize that now. He may give you the impression he’s weak and sentimental and foolish. But I’ve seen him in his rages, in his viciousness. He’s a remarkably selfish person. Three others before you he threw into the maw of this house and he’d kick you in too if he thought it would save him. Maglor would toss an infant on the fire if he thought it would warm his toes a bit longer.

“Would it make you feel better to know he chose you? I wanted to look for another—I saw the way he fawned on you in Greenwood—but he insisted. He never paid so much attention to the others. Ah, but what does it matter to me if he wanted to bounce on your cock a few times before we secured your accounts? He is here, and soon you will be gone.”

Thranduil finally ceased his glowering to look down at the forms. There it was—one more signature and two initials from him and Maglor would be added to his account as a spouse with full access to everything Thranduil owned. This was it—the price Maglor had put on his life: the contents of his bank account, courtesy of Oropher’s murder. This was what he was worth, what his father had been worth.

Lowering his head, Thranduil put pen to paper, marking the two initials and signing his name at the bottom.

“Wonderful,” said Maedhros. He stood up to collect the papers, and as he scanned them to ensure there had been no tomfoolery, Thranduil took his chance and plunged the pen into Maedhros’ shoulder.

It succeeded in shocking him, that was one thing.

Thranduil had meant to aim for the heart though, and he was not convinced that had been a lethal strike. But it gave him a chance to run.

“You wretched little fuck,” Maedhros said, sounding more surprised and vaguely annoyed than angry. By then, and before Maedhros had time to go for his knife, Thranduil was out the door, and crashing into Maglor on his way up the stairs. Maglor caught his wrists and Thranduil’s heart sank.

***

            “Let me go!” Thranduil snarled at him, but he must know that in his current state, even Maglor could overpower him. “You miserable coward! You lied to me! Time and time again!”           

            Maglor cringed. “I did.”

            “You tried to kill me!”

            Maglor bit his lower lip and looked askance. “I did.”

            Thranduil drew in a sharp, stentorious breath and then burst out: “You said you loved me!”

            Maglor’s expression crumpled and his grasp on Thranduil’s wrists tightened. “I do!”

            This gave Thranduil pause, but not much, and Maglor could not blame him. Why should he believe a word out of Maglor’s mouth?

            “I know how wrong I have done you, I know,” Maglor babbled, at once desperate to keep talking in the hopes that as long as he continued, Thranduil would remain. “I should wish I never met you, after all the grief I have brought into your life, but I love you too terribly to wish it. Only that my part in it had been better. You make me feel…alive. I had forgotten what that felt like, and I hadn’t even realized it. I can’t change what I’ve done already, but I can try to fix what’s left. Let me deal with Maedhros.”

            Still Thranduil hesitated, weighing the risks of trusting Maglor again.

            “Can you get downstairs?” Maglor asked. “Wait for me there. I’ll send Nodien for your things.”

            “My things?” Thranduil echoed, and Maglor wondered how foggy his mind still was from the drug.

            “Yes. We can’t stay here anymore. I had called for a doctor later this week but…I think it best if we depart now. Get downstairs, alright? I’ll come down as soon as I can.” He made an aborted motion to kiss Thranduil’s cheek, but realized he was as likely to be rewarded with fingers in his eyes, and let go of him.

            It was time to have a conversation with Maedhros he should’ve had a long time ago.

***

            Maedhros was sitting on the day bed, pressing a handkerchief to what looked like an oddly-shaped stab wound just below his left shoulder in the attic.

            “Did you catch him?” he asked as soon as Maglor entered.

            “What happened?”

            “The great idiot stabbed me with the pen,” said Maedhros. “But not until after he signed the papers.” Maglor picked them up off the table, scanned them, and tossed them into the brazier.

            “What are you doing?” Maedhros demanded, staggering to his feet.

            “It’s over, Maedhros,” said Maglor. “Let it be done.”

            “So what? You’re leaving now?” That terrible wrath that came over him whenever he perceived, rightly or wrongly, that he was at risk of being left alone drew over his face then. “A few weeks with him and you would walk away from me? I have been with you since you were born, Maglor! I have done everything for you! You are killing us!”

            “We’re already dead!” Maglor screamed, trembling with the force of his voice which seemed to shake the rafters of the house. The brazier sparked and half-burned bits of paperwork slipped through the grate. “We are dead people living in a dead house clinging to dead traditions and a dead legacy…” His voice cracked and he swallowed a dry sob. “There is no life here, Maedhros! There is nothing here!”

            “Nothing?” Maedhros echoed softly, hurt flashing across his face before anger consumed it once more. “And what do you think you will find with him? You think he will love you after what you’ve done? You think he will want you after he knows how you’ve been defiled? You think he will ever stop hating you? That he will ever understand a single solitary thing about you? Only I know you! Who else your whole life has known you as I do?”

            Maglor swallowed hard.

            “I don’t know,” he whispered. But I can try. He took a step nearer. “It doesn’t need to be this way,” he urged. “I still love you. I will always love you. Don’t let’s stay here. This place is destroying us, has very nearly done it. Forget Father, forget the legacy…come with me, Maedhros. Let us leave this place behind for good. Let us have a new start. Come with us.”

            Maedhros had been listening, he was sure. He had stepped nearer, he had been receptive—until that one word left Maglor’s lips.

            Us.

            “Us? Us?” Maedhros echoed scornfully.

            “Yes,” Maglor said, talking feverishly, wringing his hands. “We can all leave, we can get away from here. We’ll find a new place to live, and there will be plenty of room for you too—”

            Maedhros laughed, hysteria edging in. Maglor remembered the wild gleam in Father’s eyes when he had leveled his blade at the Teleri standing between him and his goal. He remembered the sound of Maedhros’ voice when he ordered them to attack their own disobedient troops.

            “Oh room for me too! Isn’t that lovely! So I can hear you choking on some other man’s cock all night! So the pair of you can plan how to rid yourselves of me? Your sad, mad old brother? You said you would never leave me.” Something seemed to occur to him then, as if he were recalling his own words about what a deft liar Maglor was, and the blinding rage that came over Maedhros’ face then was awful. Maglor stepped back, but Maedhros kept pace with him. “You said you would never leave me. You betrayed me! You miserable jail-crow!” The knife in his hand flashed, but when it hit home once, twice, and then a third, final time, they both simply looked surprised. Maglor didn’t cry out, only let out a sharp intake of breath and then looked down at the knife handle protruding from his chest.

            “Maedhros?” Maglor looked up at him, and he saw the horror dawn over Maedhros’ face; he reached for the knife, but just as quickly pulled back. Maglor, unthinking, gripped the handle of the knife and pulled it out; blood spurted over his chest.

            “Maglor,” Maedhros said, his tone oddly flat. “I. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that.”

            “It’s okay,” said Maglor.

            “I…I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Maglor simply nodded and began to sink to the floor. “That was a mistake.” Maedhros knelt down alongside Maglor and pulled him into his arms.

            “Thranduil,” Maglor whispered. “He has to get out of here. Please. Help him.”

            “Of course,” said Maedhros.

            “He’s not responsible for this.”

            “No.”

            Maglor’s breathing had grown horribly shallow and painful; there was white around the edges of his vision and he had the most curious sense he could feel his spirit slipping from his body. He could no longer feel Maedhros touching him, or the floor beneath him.

            “Goodbye, Maedhros,” he murmured, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

            “I’m sorry, Maglor. I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry.”

***

            Thranduil supposed he waited for Maglor because he didn’t have much choice. Nodien would likely keep him here on the Feanorions’ orders even if he tried to leave, and he’d get nowhere on foot. He had no real option but to hope that this time, Maglor was genuine.

            The truth of Maedhros and Maglor’s relationship had come as a shock, and yet with that knowledge much else fell into place: Maedhros had been showing him not merely the bitterness of a displaced patriarch, but the rage of a jealous lover, who saw Maglor getting close to one with whom he was never meant to be close. Maglor’s many nights away from their bed, the uneasy way he engaged with Thranduil and Maedhros together, the way he had avoided physical intimacy between them while still seeming eager for it when it came…yes, most else of Maglor’s behavior made sense now, and what was not explained with the incestuous love affair was explained by the marriage for murder plot.

            At another time, Thranduil would have more room to turn over in his mind how it felt to be so lied to, how it felt to know Maglor had been unfaithful from the start, that he had never intended to love Thranduil, that anything true they had shared had been an accident, an aberration from his plans. For now, the bigger part of his concern needed to be focused on the fact that Maedhros and Maglor had intended to murder him from the first time he’d met them, and were more than capable of doing it.

            He thought of the others—he thought of Elwing, feeling the same things he felt now, furiously scribbling in her journal perhaps in the hopes that it might spare another her miserable end, her words protected by the alphabet of her birth which Maedhros and Maglor could not read.

            The thought returned to him again and again no matter how he tried to focus on the practical matters at hand: that Maglor had meant to kill him. Crush the life out of him with Maedhros’ poison and bury him with the others, even as he spoke sweetly and ran his comb through Thranduil’s hair. I love you so terribly, he’d said, with the bewildered intensity of one who had never intended it.

            What did love even mean to men such as these?   

            Love burns, it consumes, Maedhros had said.

            With fire is the only way my family knows how to love, Maglor had said.

            Even with these considerations in mind, though, Thranduil could not avoid coming to the same conclusion as before: he was still reliant, to some degree, on Maglor to help him get out of Formenos. Maedhros had ensured that.

            But it wasn’t Maglor who whirled down the stairs like a wraith, ablaze with wrath and wielding a three-inch knife already painted in blood, with more spattered across his face: it was Maedhros.

            “You killed him!” he bellowed at Thranduil. “You destroyed us!”

            “I didn’t touch him!” Thranduil cried, jumping too quickly to his feet, making pain shoot through his left leg. “Where is Maglor?”

            Maedhros didn’t answer; he simply charged with the knife, leaving Thranduil to throw himself out of the way and then scramble for the nearest exit, which was into the dining room, and from there into the kitchen, his ankle screaming in protest.

            “You killed him!” Maedhros howled again, diving after him. For a terrifying moment, Thranduil’s feet were on the small rug near the table where they seemed to catch no purchase, and he nearly coughed up his stomach with panic flinging himself towards the table. He seized a serrated knife that had been left there and spun to face Maedhros.

            There might have been a time when Thranduil could have held his own in a fight against Maedhros Feanorion (might). This was not it. He was badly weakened from months of drinking poison, and his injured ankle made him an easy target. But he also wasn’t convinced he’d have a better chance running.

            “I haven’t touched Maglor,” he said. “But I think you have!” Maedhros’ lips stood out red against his bloodless face, his eyes nearly popping out of his skull; he looked not a step away from the specters that haunted the mansion.

            “I took care of him,” Maedhros snarled. “I have cared for Maglor his entire fucking life and then you…you come here and you take him away from me!” Maedhros swiped at him and Thranduil sprang backwards, his body’s desperation to survive starting to weigh against the pain of moving on his feet. “He was all I had left and you took him from me!”

            “You would have let him die here!” Thranduil shouted. “You made sure he never saw a future beyond this…this fetid graveyard! You trapped him here and kept him away from anything else that might have given him joy or purpose! All so you didn’t have to be alone!”

            Maedhros bellowed incoherently and lunged again; Thranduil dodged slightly to the side and took a swing at Maedhros himself, but Maedhros simply caught the blade with his prosthetic hand and quicker than Thranduil could get it free, dropped his knife to grab Thranduil’s blade with his good hand, using dexterity the prosthetic lacked. He jerked it out of Thranduil’s grasp, hissing at the blade cut deep into his fingers. He threw it aside, behind him, and then seized from the knife block on the counter one of the cleavers they used for preparing food. He advanced again, fingers bloody around the cleaver handle. Thranduil, running out of room to back up, realized they had circled the table and he was not convinced he could now reach the kitchen door without Maedhros catching him.

When Maedhros swung at him again, Thranduil tried to dodge, but in the limited quarters he was tripped up by a chair, and the tip of the knife tore through his eyebrow and cut down across his left eye; it took a moment to register his own screaming as blood filled the left side of his vision. He fought the urge to grab at the injury as blood wept down the side of his face. While Maedhros drew back to strike again, Thranduil stumbled from the kitchen and sprinted for the front door through the foyer. He hurled his weight against it as Maedhros’ footsteps sounded behind him; his heart was crawling out his throat when he finally managed to shove it open and stumble out into the dim, frosty evening light. Snow blanketed the ground and burned his bare feet as he ran for the stables, blood gushing down his cheek.

            Maedhros was no fool though; he flanked Thranduil and tried to cut him off from a ride, his only means of escape. He chased Thranduil across the yard, past the one gnarled tree which survived on the barren hilltop, and against which Nodien had left an axe, perhaps intending to finally fell the old tree for wood. Thranduil seized it. Adrenaline surging through his body ensured he was only dimly aware of the pain in his leg or the way the cold cut through his nightdress. There was no possible way he could outrun Maedhros for long; already his muscles were trembling with exertion.

            “Approach me not!” he shouted. “What have you done with Maglor?”

            “As if you care!” Maedhros returned. The cold daylight reflected off the ornament at his forehead, that great jewel he had pried out of Elwing’s necklace. “You don’t know him; only I know him. Only we know each other. There is no one else in our world.”

            “This is true only by your insistence! What did you do?”

            But Maglor answered for him, appearing in shimmering transparent form not a few feet from Thranduil. The axe slipped in his hands, and Maedhros halted cold.

            “Maglor?” Maedhros’ voice sounded so very small and weak, as if he were once again a little boy worried for his baby brother.

            Maglor did not look like the other ghosts. He was not the pestilent visage of Thranduil’s dead mother, nor the tormented apparitions of Maedhros and Maglor’s past victims, howling their woes into the uncaring rafters of Formenos. He looked as he must have only moments ago, with spectral blood floating from the wounds in his chest where Maedhros had stabbed him.

            Speaking did not seem to come naturally to ghosts, in Thranduil’s experience. So it did not surprise him that Maglor was silent. It did surprise him that Maglor approached him, and reached out a white hand as if to touch his cheek, though he kept a respectful distance. 

            “Goodbye,” said Thranduil, around the tightness in his throat. Maglor touched his own chest and then gestured out to Thranduil. Maglor gave him a wordless nod, and then he dissipated like morning mist.

            Maedhros cried out as if he himself had been stabbed, and he charged at Thranduil again, who only just dodged, pain shooting through his injured ankle. He wobbled; his sense of balance felt off with half his sight gone and he no longer trusted himself to judge the trajectory of Maedhros’ weapon.

            “This will not end until I kill you, or you kill me,” Maedhros seethed, and Thranduil believed him. So when Maedhros came at him again, he swung the axe.

            Thranduil had grown up in a forest, and wielding an axe, unlike a writing utensil as a makeshift weapon, was second nature to him. He cleaved off the crown of Maedhros’ skull and dropped him to the ground well before he got within range to fatally strike Thranduil with that knife.  

            “So be it,” Thranduil said, letting the axe fall to the ground. Suddenly dizzier than he could stand, he sank down into the snow beside Maedhros, though he turned away from the house, so he would not have to look at the gruesome corpse.

            “What now?” he asked himself quietly, looking out at the desolate landscape. Overheard, an upland buzzard circled. He supposed he would still have to get to the stables, convince Nodien to saddle a horse for him (Maybe she had not yet noticed the chaos in the house?) or try to steal one (He was not sure how well he could ride with only half his sight.) But as he was contemplating the effort required for this, a single rider came around the hill at the edge of the property, and then it was traveling up the path towards the house at full gallop. When the rider saw him, the horse swerved off the path and came towards the tree. Thranduil could not bring himself to rise or reach for the axe.

            “Thranduil!” The rider threw themselves down and flung back their scarf from their face, and of all people, it was Elrond. Thranduil blinked at his familiar face, and then started laughing, which really fucking hurt.

            “Elrond!” he cried amidst his laughter. “Welcome to Formenos! Naturally you are come! Why should you not be!”

            “Elbereth, I was too late,” Elrond muttered. At that moment he seemed to notice the butchered body behind Thranduil, and bloom of blood seeping through the snow around him, and the mess of the left side of his face. “Blessed stars, what’s—?”

            “I had no wish to kill him,” said Thranduil, and he sounded so very vulnerable that Elrond dropped down to the ground before him.

            “They’re terrible,” said Elrond. “I was researching this family after you left…Thranduil…”

            “I know,” Thranduil said wearily. “I know about the spouses before me, and the incest, and all the rest.”

            “The—?” Elrond shook his head. “Never mind. We need to get away from here.”

            “How are you here?” Thranduil asked hoarsely.

            “I thought you might be in danger!” Elrond exclaimed. “I couldn’t get through to the house by telegram and when I didn’t get any letters from you, I feared the worst. I’m only sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I admit I spent some time thinking my suspicions were ill-founded.” No letters—then Maglor had never sent the ones Thranduil had given him. Somehow, he still managed to register disappointment at this.

            “But you came.” Thranduil was not much of an overtly affectionate person, but he reached out then, and Elrond allowed himself to be pulled into an embrace so that Thranduil could bury his throbbing, blood-spattered face in Elrond’s shoulder, careful to keep the left side from touching anything. He did not want to think about the potential extent of damage to his left eye. “You came.”

            “Of course I did,” Elrond murmured, hugging Thranduil’s thin, trembling body in return. He loosened the cloak around his throat and flung it over Thranduil’s shoulders. “There. You shouldn’t be out in this cold without cover. Now, let us get you out of this place.”

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Chapter End Notes

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