#maedhros on the cliff and stepping off the edge and falling into the sea

[wethecelestial]

put morton’s fork on repeat because unfortunately it’s my pavlovian conditioning editing music but it got tangled up in the silmarillion brain worms and now i’m like. morton’s fork maedhros animatic

[veliseraptor]

quietly they go

oh did someone order more Maeglin-lives AU? No? well you’re getting it anyway. 1.9k of it! Hella suicidal ideation! Maeglin being an absolute mess! Heavy angst in which nothing actively improves! Me being a Maeglin apologist! everything you could want in a fic really, I assume

previous installments in this series: 1 / 2 / 3 / 4; or read on AO3 here.

---

The sea was a splendid thing.

Maeglin had tried to imagine it, but his imagination had not done it justice. The vastness of it, the motion, the way the light flickered off the waves. It was unfathomable, unknowable, endless. Maeglin thought he could fall into it and never stop falling.

He was glad, briefly, that he had remained long enough to see this. He could carve it into his mind, a last thing of beauty before he sought out his end. It was not deserved, but he would, selfishly, claim it nonetheless. This: the sun falling where the endless sea met the endless sky.

Taking a deep breath of the salt air, he turned his back and walked over to the pack he had assembled. He wasn’t bringing much. He didn’t expect to need much, and was not inclined to take much needed supplies from those who deserved them more.

Maeglin glanced back toward the west. Somewhere far away, he thought, was Valinor. His mother’s birthplace, where perhaps one day she would return; where he would never go. “I will not make you proud,” he murmured, “but at least perhaps I can cleanse some of your shame.”

His eyes stung and he blinked once, hard, controlling himself before he walked away for the last time.

**

A horse would carry him faster, but Maeglin had decided against it. He had been tempted - he could mirror the High King’s famous ride that way, though he would never get so far as the gates of Angband. But the horses, too, might be needed at the Havens, and any mount he brought with him would likely perish when he did. He did not need to condemn a horse needlessly to a death it didn’t deserve.

So he walked, as his mother’s brother had walked, into the falling night. He did not stop when it was dark, but kept moving, pace steady and even. For the first time in months, his head felt clear.

For the first time in months, since Idril’s husband had dragged him away from Gondolin against his will, he knew what he was doing.

There was a profound relief in that. A profound release. At last, at last, it could be finished.

**

Mid-morning, the day after he left the Havens, he heard the pounding of hooves behind him. His jaw tightened, but he stopped walking, bitterness welling up hot and thick in his throat.

So much for letting me go.

He didn’t bother to run, or hide. Just stopped, and turned, and waited to see who was following, not entirely sure who to expect, but not surprised when he saw who it was.

“You,” he said sourly. Tuor looked down at him from the back of his horse, expression neutral.

“Maeglin,” he said. “You did not bring a mount.”

“I did not. What do you want?”

Tuor studied him for another few moments and then dismounted. He gave the horse a slap on the rump, sending it back toward the Havens. Maeglin frowned after it.

“What are you doing?”

“Joining you.”

Maeglin blinked once and stared blankly at the man, for several moments quite sure he’d misheard, or at least misunderstood. Tuor just looked back at him, though, gaze level and steady.

He regathered himself and said, “no.”

Tuor shook his head. “I was not asking.”

“I am still refusing you. Does Idril know you are here?”

“Do you think I would leave without informing her, as you did?”

It was pointed, of course. Maeglin did not let himself flinch from it. “I assume nothing about what you would and would not do, considering you said you would not stop me from leaving and yet here you are.”

“I haven’t stopped you,” Tuor said.

Maeglin’s jaw tightened. “Go back,” he said. “I do not want you here, and you do not want to be here. I have no notion what you think you’re doing, but it is needless, and foolish.”

“No more needless and foolish than what you are.”

Maeglin held back his snarl. The calm he had so briefly possessed was rapidly evaporating, and he wanted it back. “You cannot stop me,” he said. “Nor save me. You have done so once, against my will. I will not allow it again.”

“Unless I am mistaken, you didn’t allow it the first time.” Tuor still did not move. Maeglin took a shallow breath through his nose.

“Do you not understand?” he demanded. “I am going to my death, Adan.”

“I understand that is your intent.”

“I will not be responsible for yours.”

“Then I suppose you will have to prevent it.”

Maeglin’s breathing quickened. Anger and fear and hatred tangled together, and he grasped after some semblance of self-possession. “No,” he said again. “Go back. Go home to your wife and your son.”

“You asked me to allow you some choice. Will you not permit me mine?”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear out his hair. He wanted to grab Tuor by the shoulders and shake him. Or hit him. He wanted him gone; he wanted him dead. “What do you want of me?” he demanded. “What is your goal, here? Do you desire confirmation of my demise? Then do it yourself, by all means. I will even provide you with the blade.”

Tuor shook his head. “I have no interest in your death, Maeglin.”

“Then why.”

Tuor’s expression hardened. “Because I intend to see that you survive.”

There was a thundering in his ears. “Have I not made clear enough-”

“You have,” Tuor said. “You have. But I will not accept it. And if I cannot stop you from going - then I will go with you. And if you do not want Idril to grieve - and I am quite certain you do not - you will not leave me alone and in peril among enemies.”

Iron bands were tightening around his lungs. “You are gambling your life on this?”

“I do not consider it a gamble.”

Maeglin clenched his jaw until his teeth ached. Hatred bled into despair bled into a numb resignation. He turned his back. “I could simply knock you unconscious. Without your horse, you could not match my speed.”

“There are wild beasts here. And you cannot be certain there are not worse.”

His heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped animal. A scream built up in his throat and caught there. An overpowering anger shook him like a dog with a rat, and was just as quickly gone, draining out of him and leaving him empty.

He closed his eyes, the glimpse of freedom, of relief, slipping away. “When will you consider it punishment enough?” he asked, soft and hoarse.

“Must it be punishment?” Tuor asked. “Can it not be opportunity?”

You do not understand, Maeglin wanted to howl. I am broken. I am rotten at the core, a ruined thing. There is nothing left of me but ash.

I am so tired of lingering on.

He turned away and started walking once again without responding. Tuor caught up to him, keeping pace even as Maeglin lengthened his stride, but at least he did not try to talk.

**

He stopped at midday to eat a small meal, ignoring Tuor as completely as he could. He found himself thinking of his and his mother’s flight from Nan Elmoth. What if they had never gone? Or what if he had convinced Aredhel to go alone?

Would she still be alive now? It was him that Eöl had meant to kill. He imagined, for a moment, a world in which he had died there in Gondolin at the end of his father’s poisoned javelin, and his mother had lived.

If you could see me now, would you regret saving me?

“Why did you tell me?”

Maeglin did not look in Tuor’s direction, nor answer. His heart was a stone in his chest.

“I have wondered that. Why you confessed to me, and not to Idril, or the High King.”

I tried, Maeglin thought. More than once, I was on the point of it, of saying...but it was easier, with you, who I hated, who was my enemy, who had never borne me any love. He said nothing.

“Idril feels she should have known.”

A bitter sound burst from between Maeglin’s lips. “She knew enough to be suspicious. How much more should she have guessed?”

“Enough to ask the right questions.”

Maeglin shook his head. “I would not have answered.”

“What changed? Why did you speak then, to me?”

He closed his eyes for a moment, then stood. “Does it matter?”

“Does it?”

“No,” Maeglin said. He should have done it then, on the cliff. It would have been such a small step. A small step, a long fall, and it would have been finished. Why had he thought it was worth waiting? Why had he thought it would matter if he lived? Had he truly believed there was any redemption to be found, any chance at making amends?

Ill-gotten son. Anguirel felt heavy in its sheath.

Eöl had been right, in the end.

**

Maeglin dreamed of the darkness beneath Angband. He lay trembling with his back to the wall. His eyes were closed as though it made a difference; the horrors were in his mind, not before his sight.

Maedhros had endured torments at Morgoth’s hands for years until his rescue. It was becoming clear to Maeglin that he was no Maedhros. That he was going to break, and it was only a matter of when.

He woke up weeping, curled into himself with his hands over his ears as if that could shut out the whispers. Maeglin lurched to his feet, relieved to see that Tuor was still sleeping. He stared at him there, shudders running through him.

What if I am still there, he thought dizzily. What if I never left?

He fell back into himself, head clearing. His body felt too small, the confines of his flesh a cage. It occurred to him that he did not need to wait. Did not need to seek death in sacrifice. Anguirel’s edge was sharp. It would not be clean, would not be honorable, but was there any of that left for him anyway?

Tuor stirred, and woke. The moment slipped away.

“Maeglin?” he said.

He sank back down to the earth, too empty to weep though he wished he could. There was nowhere, he was beginning to understand, that he could go. There was no escape, no end, no release. There was nothing but this, stretching out into an endless, shapeless future.

There was a hand on his shoulder. A shudder rippled through him from head to toe, jerking half away from it, but it did not move away. Fingers pressed into muscle like hooks in his flesh.

It had been so long since anyone had touched him without the intent to hurt. It had been so long since he had allowed them to.

Some piece of him that had been falling since that moment on Caragdûr when he had spoken the truth now hit the ground, and shattered.

[rise-above-the-grave]

i: top notch

Should I be waiting for the beginning of October to start this? Probably! But I’m impatient, and want to start my Tolkien 30 Day Writing Challenge now, dammit! Plus this will give me a chance to recoup a little bit before nanowrimo starts in November... Anyway, yeah, I’m starting today. The goal is to write one oneshot/meta/headcanon post per day, as an exercise in endurance as well as creativity... We shall see how it goes. Anyway! I hope you all enjoy!

Day 1: Top Notch by Manchester Orchestra

His brother looks him up and down and prophesies How all of this should end Said they're buried underneath the yard And no one ever listens... to physics All that I know, it's no way to fix it All that I know, it's no way to fix it All that I know, it's no way to fix it All that I know, it's no way to fix it

The docks of Mithlond are bright with the midday sun, which slants down from a peerless sky. The heaven’s blue is a blue enough to hurt the eyes, and the air is hot with the promise of summer just beyond the horizon. The gulls call as they wheel overhead, their cries raucous with longing—both for the sea beneath their wings, and for the heads of fish that the fishermen toss into piles on the docks—their shadows shimmering over the boards and planks laid out in long lines deep into the lapping waves.

The fleet of ships, formed in part by the felled timbers of the forest that had once dominated the slopes and cliffs where Mithlond now rose, lines each of the docks, bobbing slightly with each undulation of water, their masts mighty and their sails brilliant white. Their decks swarm with sailors checking rigging, and with men checking their luggage for the last time, women hugging and crying as they bid farewell to their Elven friends, and children running underfoot in excitement. The air is loud with laughter, with speech, with cries of “Ho there!” and “Heave to!”

Elros Peredhel stands with his hands clasped behind his back on the last dock, his twin brother at his side. He is clad in a loose robe over a high-collared tunic and breeches tucked into tall boots, a crown of silver resting upon his dark hair, cropped to his shoulders. His shoulders, broad from many long hours spent sailing and shipbuilding, cast a long shadow behind him—a stark contrast to the thin shadow of his brother.

“Must you go?” Elrond asks his brother. His voice is low and brittle-edged, like slate or shale or ash.

Elros turns from staring at the horizon, blue and endless, to smile at his brother. “You know I must,” he tells Elrond. “My people—”

“They are not your people,” Elrond snaps. “I am your people.”

“They need me, Elrond,” Elros says softly. “They chose me as their leader—as their guardian, and their supporter, as their king. I cannot forsake them, nor the hope my presence and crown has given them.”

“But…” Elrond trails off, and swallows thickly. But Elros reads in his eyes what he meant to say.

But what of me?

Elros closes the space between them and draws Elrond into a tight embrace. “I will never forsake you, brother,” he murmurs into Elrond’s ear. “No matter how much distance may come between us, I will always be your brother. Always.”

“But…” Again Elrond falls silent, his arms rising to grip Elros tightly to him. “I will miss you,” he whispers instead.

“And I you,” Elros replies. He pulls away. “But this is not farewell for good,” he promises with a smile. “You can come and visit me on our island as many times as you like—or as many times as Ereinion will allow you from his sight.”

Elrond smiles a weak smile in reply. “Thank you,” he says.

They had spoken of this before. Elros and Gil-galad wished for their peoples to be friends, and so Elrond himself had been selected as the official ambassador between Gil-galad’s court and the newly christened Númenor. Elrond had smiled, and bowed, and thanked Gil-galad and Elros for the honor—and had not spoken to his brother of the pain he felt at his brother’s impending departure.

It is not goodbye for good, he had told himself, over and over and over again. It is only farewell for a time.

That Elros’s betrayal stung as much now as it had in those first, terrible moments after they had pronounced their separate Dooms did not matter, did not matter, did not matter. And Elrond did see it as a betrayal—for was Elros not leaving him? Abandoning him? Cleaving himself from Elrond in an irreparable way, just as their choice of Doom had done? He was leaving with the intent of never returning; he was taking on the mantle and kingship of a people who were not Elrond’s, who were alien to Elrond.

Elrond had no place in his brother’s life any more—not as his brother, in any case.

“Are you angry with me?” Elros asks softly, lifting a hand to clasp one of Elrond’s shoulders.

Elrond shakes his head. “No,” he lies.

“I do not do this to hurt you,” Elros says. “If I could have done this in any other way—in any way that could spare you this pain—I would have done so. You know that, do you not?”

“Yes,” says Elrond, and this time it is the truth.

“Yet still you are angry with me,” says Elros shrewdly.

Elrond smiles bitterly. “I never could lie to you, could I?”

Elros laughs. “Never, little brother.”

Elrond closes his eyes, then turns to stare out at the horizon toward where Númenor awaits her people. He clasps his hands behind his back, much as Elros had, and for a second, with the sunlight silhouetting them, they could be a two-fold shadow.

“All will come to ruin,” Elrond says softly, his voice only barely audible over the cries of the gulls and the slap of the water against the docks and the thrum of conversation in the air. “A great wave climbs, climbs, climbs toward the heavens, and though there is a cry for absolution, there will be none for her or for her people. The blood of the innocent runs down the slope of the mountain that forms the island, and drowns the streets of the mighty city covering its beeches, covering all in wrath and ruin. There will be no grace for any that yet set foot there—no hope for those who have made their home in the destruction of children and the murder of women and the rape of men.” He shudders—and turns, and his silver eyes burn vacant and hollow and full of light. “All will come to wrath and ruin, Elros Tar-Minyatur—all to greed and destruction. But first,” he says, even softer, even mightier, “all will be glorious.”

He gasps, and blinks, and the vacant light flees from his eyes, leaving him only Elrond once more.

“What?” he asks Elros, who stands and stares at him.

“Nothing,” Elros says quickly. “Nothing at all.”

But Elros had never been able to lie to his brother either.

Elrond frowns. “What is it?” he asks again. “Tell me.”

“No,” says Elros. “No, I…I do not think now is the time for you to know what you just prophesied.”

Elrond had prophesied before, though Elros had not: of the breaking of Beleriand, of Maedhros’s death, and of a great fleet of ships bearing the Edain away from Middle-earth. He often did not recall what it was he had prophesied until later, however—until he needed the knowledge of it. Elros suspects that the same is the case now: that he, Elros, was meant to hear this warning and pronouncement of doom, but that Elrond was not yet to know its truth.

Elros smiles. “Perhaps someday,” he says, “I shall tell you.”

Elrond’s frown deepens, but he relents. Elros is pale and shivering slightly, but Elrond knows this if nothing else: that Elros will not tell him that which he does not wish to say, under penalty of death.

A great cry arises from the ships. They are ready to set sail.

“I must go,” Elros says.

Elrond nods, and steps forward to clasp his brother to him one last time. “Farewell then, brother,” he murmurs, clutching Elros tightly.

“Farewell,” Elros repeats. “Until we meet again.”

“Until we meet again,” Elrond echoes, then steps back and away, leaving Elros to walk up the gangplank of his own ship, which bobs in the harbor beside them.

Elrond stands at the end of the dock long after the rest of the farewell party has left, watching the fleet sail away until it is nothing more than a speck of shadow against the failing light on the horizon. Only then does he turn away and return to Gil-galad’s court, wondering what it was that could have shaken Elros to his core.

He will not recall what it was he prophesied until it is too late: until the dream of Númenor’s downfall comes to him while he is in his bed in Rivendell, and he wakens sweating and trembling, the taste of his ancient-spoken words echoing on his tongue. Only then will he remember—and he will wonder what the purpose was of telling Elros, from the beginning, that his legacy was doomed to fall into ruin.