Fruit of the Family Tree by Rocky41_7

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Chapter II

Thranduil settles into life in Formenos.

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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.

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Chapter End Notes

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