Becoming (Maedhros & Maglor Week 2025) by 0ur_Ouroboros
Fanwork Notes
Mature themes including: profanity, non-sexual abusive/inappropriate behavior
Fanwork Information
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Summary: Drabbles created (and now polished) from February 15, 2025 Maedhros & Maglor week-themed Instadrabbling session) Major Characters: Maedhros, Maglor Major Relationships: Maedhros & Maglor, Fingon/Maedhros Genre: Challenges: Rating: Adult Warnings: Check Notes for Warnings |
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| Chapters: 5 | Word Count: 1, 027 |
| Posted on 16 February 2025 | Updated on 20 February 2025 |
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This fanwork is a work in progress. | |
To become a star
Day 1 Prompts: Elrond & Elros; Seeing Gil-Estel
Read To become a star
Elrond is angry more often than not these days.
It has something to do with the new star in the sky, blazing anew from early evening til just past dawn. He should feel something else, he knows, some sort of gratitude. Pride, even. Hope.
Instead its light seems to have burned every other feeling out of him and kindled something else there instead. Something dark. Something he does not like.
Something like them.
They would have used him and his brother, traded them – traded children – for a jewel, a rock. Have they ever stopped to consider just what in the holy night sky they are actually going to do with it, should their wish be fulfilled? Fashion a new crown for their heads? A pretty necklace to prance about in the mirror? Would they make a shrine to it, worship it?
No, Elrond thinks. He knows just what they would do with a silmaril.
They would tear each other apart.
Chapter End Notes
cross posted to Tumblr, maybe ao3
To become a leader
Day 2 Prompts: Maedhros’ abdication, Leadership, Power dynamics
Read To become a leader
Curvo is angry. Whatever, Maedhros thinks. Let him rage. The Ambarussa seem relieved. The others act exactly as he expects them to. There is a real comfort in that, he thinks, as he hears their reactions, stone-faced & unmoved. Spoken or not, their words pass him through, not even a chink in his armor. So be it, he thinks. Maedhros’ resolve is as hard as the iron he hung from. Let the other get of the spirit of fire burn themselves out, as he has.
It is the second brother’s reaction that weighs heavy on him. The one called Commander, a false prophecy, destined for failure – for Káno has many strengths, but leading men is not among them. But still, Káno had looked at Maedhros, silent, as if he was cursing Fingon for choosing his knife and not his arrow. It was not that Káno wanted the throne, Maedhros thinks. It was the knowledge that Maedhros never considered Káno for it, not really. If Maedhros had offered but a few words of recognition, some insincere thanks, even if only for Káno’s skill at keeping the seat warm upon his return. But Maedhros, scarred and silent, did nothing of the sort. Instead, he cast their father's dream away, right from under Maglor, without so much as a cursory glance. Maedhros should have acknowledged his service, spoken words in gratitude, however insincere.
No, Maedhros thinks, as he walks up the dais where his grim-faced uncle sits. He has no gratitude to spare.
To become a father
Day 3: The Oath and the Doom, Angst
Read To become a father
Maglor’s new wife is crying.
“Shut her up, I can’t think with all that wailing,” Fëanor yells from his desk across the hall, penning something in a hasty script as he rushes to leave. “Fuck, can you believe it’s come to this?” he says to anyone in earshot. “I’m going to fucking slice his throat, cut off his balls and feed them to him. To his spider. Make them both choke on it.”
Nerdanel, realizing her husband is long gone, grabs her second and kindest son by the shoulders as he shoves weapons and a change of clothes into an overstuffed satchel. “Your wife, Káno," his ammë says. “Think of your wife.” Maglor says nothing, because he has thought of her, he has thought of nothing else since the dark foe destroyed the light of their world.
But his wife has spoken against him. She chooses to stay here in thrall rather than avenge their shared loss. “Finwë was murdered,” Maglor snarls in his wife’s direction. “The trees desecrated. The only hope of ever again bathing in that holy light rests now in the clutch of that beast. And you would have me do nothing? Roll over like a beaten hound? No. I will follow my father.”
“Káno, Káno, I’m-,” but his wife cannot say the words, only clings to him and weeps louder than ever.
“She’s pregnant, you fool,” Nerdanel says.
To become someone else's
Day 4: Mereth Aderthad
Read To become someone else's
Maglor is playing his harp with a smile while his voice forges the gold it’s known for. Tonight under the stars, the elven-folk dance by the lakeshore and the fires burn hot. Glimpsing what bright light in his spirit remains, Maedhros’ heart leaps with love for his brother.
But more than anything else he feels for Maglor now, it is gratitude – for Maglor’s music flows freely alongside ale that night, and no eyes see nor ears hear nor minds care when the scarred face leaves alongside the brave one, the one whose hair is braided with gold. The one for whom Maedhros would pay any tribute, any sacrifice. The one who could look upon the very fires of Angband and say: No, not him, not my kinsman. This one is mine, you cannot have him. Here am I – this I claim.
Maedhros does not think of Tirion much these days, those memories so distant they could in truth belong to another. But tonight he wonders what he must have done in that holy light to deserve the devotion of one so pure of heart as he who rests his head upon Maedhros' shoulder now.
But Fingon only looks at him and laughs, pressing a kiss to his lips before he says, “It is not what you have done, you fool. It is who you are.”
To become afraid
SWG instadrabbling session prompts: aroused, heart, cry, forest
Read To become afraid
They met in the dark, for it is always dark now. Their usual spot in the forest outside Tirion provides the privacy if not the comfort needed today.
There, Nelyo and Finno argue after making love for the last time in the Blessed Lands. Nelyo is fretting again, going on about their shared secret having doomed them at last. But today, Finno will not indulge his lover so stupid a thesis, no matter that Nelyo needs to think himself accountable somehow.
For the reality – that such fate has befallen them even here, even in the land that was promised, even under the protection of the mightiest beings in Arda, and it has all happened through no fault of Nelyo or Finno’s own.
That is a thought far, far more fell than the furtive embrace of a cousin.
