Fruit of the Family Tree by Rocky41_7

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Chapter VI

Final girl

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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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