Silenced by Rocky41_7

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Silenced

Prompt:

What it says on the tin: someone sews Maglor's lips shut

Up to you who does it any why - perhaps Maglor gets captured by Morgoth/Sauron, perhaps someone wants revenge for Doriath or Sirion, perhaps something else entirely

DNW Maglor to be killed

           Winter was chasing hard on the heels of autumn, the golden leaf-fall rapidly browning as the boughs of the trees thinned towards dormancy. It was during this time, when the mornings had become brisk and the nights uncomfortably cold that Maglor Feanorion came upon Daeron of Doriath the second time.

           Daeron, having demanded to know what Maglor expected of him, was looking firmly at the trunk of a nearby tree. He could not bear to look at Maglor. 

           Obviously, Maglor did not answer.

           He knelt not five feet from Daeron in the damp leaf-mold, watching. He must have been in pain. But he made no noise—that was the most unsettling thing of all. Daeron had never known Maglor Feanorion to not make noise.

           They did not encounter one another much in their self-imposed exiles; Maglor preferred the beaches, and Daeron remained under tree (once the lord of the plains of the Gap had scoffed at the Wood-elves, saying they were as prey animals, afraid to venture under open skies), and so their paths had never chanced to cross but for the one time, when Maglor had ventured inland, and Daeron out into the prairies. Daeron had done them both the courtesy of not trying to kill Maglor; it would have embarrassed them both to watch him try. Even weakened as the wretch was, Daeron was nowhere near a martial match for him. 

           Now, he ought to have taken pleasure in Maglor’s suffering, brought about by another. But he could not. He did not want to see Maglor suffer; he did not want to see anyone suffer; he wanted to cry.

           “Was it orcs?” he asked, his eyes flicking over briefly to verify the nod or shake of Maglor’s head. But the gesture he made was harder to parse than that. “Men?” Daeron ventured, and knew at once he was right on both accounts.

           Most of Melkor’s orcs had disappeared after his defeat, but some few lone bands remained. Yet alone, they would have simply killed Maglor. This intentional yet purposeless cruelty spoke of another guiding hand, and Daeron knew well that both Men and Elves could be cruel when it suited them. 

           It was further apparent that Maglor’s presence there was no coincidence. Maglor had managed to avoid him this long; he knew that Daeron was known to inhabit wooded areas; if he had wished to keep avoiding him, it would have been as easy as staying out of the forests. But here he had come, and so Daeron was forced to acknowledge that Maglor had most likely looked for him.

           “Did you go to someone else before me?” he asked. Maglor shook his head. “That was stupid of you. I ought to leave you just as you are.” 

           But he wouldn’t. Did Maglor know that? Or only hope?

           He wondered what had become of whomever had sewn Maglor’s lips shut. If they had slipped up even for a moment, Daeron was sure they were no longer in this world. 

           The first time he had encountered Maglor, after the Third Kinslaying, he had still been indulging in the fantasy that he’d pay him back for all he’d done. Now, he just wished Maglor would leave him alone. In spite of the condemnations and vitriol he had hurled at him during that encounter, still Maglor had begged him to stay, grabbing at his clothes until Daeron kicked him away in a rage and left him in the dirt. 

           Now, he briefly nursed the fantasy of allowing another’s violence against Maglor to be his payback for the atrocities he had perpetrated against Doriath, against Sirion; for the great ragged hole in Daeron’s chest where once his people had been. He ought to suffer. And yet, if Daeron left him now, he was complicit in this horror, and that, he found, he could not abide.

           He had always been a coward. 

           He took the knife from his belt, and the small whetstone from his bag. The knife would need to be as sharp as he could make it, to avoid much sawing at the thread. It took him a few minutes of whetting and examining the edge of the blade in the light—it was just afternoon, as bright as this day would get—before he was satisfied.

           “Hold still,” he warned as he rose to his feet, waiting for Maglor’s nod until he would come nearer. Being within touching range of Maglor Feanorion made his skin crawl with the desire to be away; he half-expected a blade in the ribs for his thanks. Maglor shifted as he approached and Daeron jumped back, but he was only adjusting himself, slouching so his face would be at a better height for Daeron’s knife. Daeron still waited several moments, to reassure himself Maglor was doing as he was told, before he would kneel in front of him.

           He thought of a time when Luthien had held him by the chin and smeared something on his eyelids for a party, and he had made her laugh by imitating various members of the royal court caught in an amorous embrace. A time when Melian smiled at him and said How lovely is your playing, Daeron, and how he had preened; a time when Thingol called for him and sat him by his side for Daeron alone did he trust to make record of the kingdom’s most important doings; a time when Beleg let him explain the function of his runes and their deceptive simplicity. Was it possible he had been happy once? Sometimes he dreamed he still remembered the feeling.

           He took Maglor’s chin in hand, and turned his face side to side. His skin was harshly tanned from the exposed areas in which he lingered; there were broad scaly patches along his cheekbones and forehead from healing sunburn, his nose recently blistered; his cheeks were gaunt; his hair a tangled, salt-sprayed mat. Daeron did not consider what he looked like in his turn. 

           His stomach turned as he examined the damage to Maglor’s face. Whomever had done this, he thought, had no idea who Maglor was. They had done it just to be terrible. It wasn’t justice for anything. 

           “Did you tell them you were a singer?” he asked. Maglor did not move, which meant he had, the great fool, and the mastermind of this work had thought themselves quite amusing, to silence a singer. 

           The wounds were still leaking fluid, desperately trying to crust over with scabs. Daeron supposed the injury was a week old at most. (Before he left Doriath, he would not have been so able to speculate, but he had watched enough of his own injuries by then to make a guess.) His throat felt tight, but he swallowed hard. At least no one would see to condemn him for rescuing this vile man.

           “It will hurt,” he warned. Maglor did not respond; of course it would hurt. But even if Daeron was clumsy with it it was still not likely to hurt as much as Maglor trying to do it himself.

           “Be still,” he said again, and began in the middle. The black thread was thick and coarse, not the fine kind one might use for construction of clothing. It took two tries to break it, but Maglor neither flinched nor cried out. Daeron broke the next segment of thread. “I must draw it out now,” he warned. Maglor was still as he worked the small piece of thread from his mouth, sticky with half-dried fluids, and cast it aside. One down. There was a hole in the upper lip where it had been. The lips themselves were so dry they were cracked like the earth of the Anfauglith, seeping blood in a few places.

           “You should not have come to me,” Daeron murmured. He went on slicing through the thread, one segment at a time, and removing the bits into a small, disgusting pile next to them. The stitching was crooked and uneven; it had not been done with a skillful or careful touch.

Even with his tan, Daeron’s hands stood out darkly against Maglor’s face, and Maglor’s eyes never left him as he worked, though Daeron studiously avoided his gaze. He did not want to look into the burning eyes of this man, by whose hand so much of what Daeron cherished had been destroyed. Once, Daeron had found the Tree-light glow of Thingol’s eyes comforting, beautiful. On Maglor, it made him shudder.

           Maglor shouldn’t have come, should not have laid this at Daeron’s feet, should not have taken the chance Daeron would refuse to help him…yet how could Daeron say he had been wrong, when he sat there doing just as Maglor wished? 

           Daeron’s lip curled as he cut through another thread.

           “What a miserable waste you are,” he said, bitterness overflowing. “You could have been remembered for art. And instead…you’re this.” Then, and only then, did Maglor flinch, and Daeron did not know, could not have known, that from him above all others could that remark draw that reaction. He said no more. Daeron had always found Maglor somewhat insufferable: arrogant, vain, voluble yet pedantic, perpetually convinced of the superiority of the Noldor and of his own house in particular. But beneath all the pretentions, he had been a real artist. In another world, another life, he could have been someone Daeron admired. Few had ever reached enough skill for Daeron to consider them a peer. 

           And he had thrown it all away, and destroyed much else besides, and gained nothing, and now he would be remembered, if at all, only for the horrors he had wrought. What a curse, that such beauty should be cast off to better serve the warlord he had come to be. What a damning show of Maglor’s priorities.

           When half of the stitches had been removed, Daeron felt obligated to take his waterskin and offer Maglor a drink. He at least appeared to make an effort not to guzzle the whole thing down. Water spilled around the remaining stitches and dripped off his chin, and he offered it back almost sheepishly, licking thoroughly at the freed side of his mouth. 

           Daeron said nothing, and put it aside, and went back to work.

           By the end, Maglor had begun to clench his hands against his thighs; his breathing had grown heavier; Daeron imagined his nerves were worn thin by the pain of the process. At length, he freed the knot at the left corner of Maglor’s mouth, and it was done.

           “There.” Daeron withdrew his hands.

           Maglor burst into tears, immediately. 

           Daeron had always hated it when people cried in front of him. He never knew what to do, except to be vaguely uncomfortable and annoyed that some emotional labor was being asked of him. He did not want to think of himself in Maglor’s place, but he supposed tears were not an unwarranted response to the whole thing. 

           “They should not have acted this way,” he couldn’t stop himself from muttering. Maglor raised his wild, tear-streaked face, astonished. 

           “Them?” he said, his once-lovely low voice as dry and strained as his parched lips. “I would not waste tears for them!” Privately, Daeron thought he was too dehydrated to be wasting tears for anyone. He needed the moisture. But he did not respond, only gave Maglor that faintly irritated look as if to say what the devil are you crying for then? Then he got to his feet.

           Maglor wobbled, and Daeron’s expression grew more severe, anticipating another departure as the last, where he had to pry Maglor off his tunic-hem to get away from him. Maglor, perhaps in sudden awareness, stilled and stayed where he knelt. 

           “I have helped you as I can tolerate; now I must go,” said Daeron stiffly. He picked his things up off the ground; the sound of Maglor’s panting was audible over the rustle of the trees. He was tense, waiting to hear Maglor beseech him to stay, but no pleas came. 

           When he was at the edge of the little clearing, Maglor called out to him: raw, tremulous, unbound, with a question held too near to ask aloud, until at last desperation dared.

           “Wait!” Daeron half-turned to listen. “Before you go…” Maglor licked his lips and winced; his tongue writhed instinctively at the foul taste of his wounds. “Before you go, will you…will you…will you play something?” He pointed with an unsteady hand to the panpipes still hooked on Daeron’s little bag. Carved by his own hand, they were the same pipes on which he had first warbled at the foot of the royal dais in Menegroth, and so been welcomed into the home of Elu Thingol and Melian the Maia. 

           For a long moment Daeron was silent, not looking at Maglor. A part of him was tempted to rip them away and cast them aside, or perhaps to throw them at Maglor, but this he could not do. Of all things, this one he could not bear to part with; it was all that remained of who he had once been, the last recollection of the person who had cast the shadow that he was now. (If he had known that one day Doriath would be no more, not even left as shelter for the wolves and rats, would he have taken more with him when he left?)

           “No,” he said at last, turning his back to Maglor. “There is no music in me anymore.” And he left Maglor weeping amid the falling leaves.

Chapter End Notes

Hope this is satisfying for you anon!

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