Work Text:
In Valinor, when Fëanor turns his back on the never-ending pile of correspondence and retreats to the forge, Maedhros pens apologies and equivocations and polite refusals, graceful and diplomatic in a way his father is decidedly not. Maglor aids him: he tunes his harp to harmony. He sings away the declined petitioners’ disappointment and resentment, mollifies their anxious grandfather, turns musical deflection into high and glorious art.
*****
Bed-bound in Mithrim, Maedhros’ once-elegant penmanship is lost – his remaining hand can only scrawl. But there is just one sentence that he truly needs to write, and he practices it, over and over, until the brutal scratching disciplines itself, reshaping, as he does, into something practical, purposeful, hard. Maglor sings of Fingon’s heroism while Maedhros heals. Then, a hymn for Fingolfin’s crowning, pressing through the roughness in his own repentant throat.
*****
The East is no gentle home: the lives of the Noldor in their bright battalions are no more certain than those of the butterflies that dance above the grasses on the plains or the small, bright-eyed, soft-furred creatures of the mountains. But Maedhros gives each of them glory, when he documents their passing. He writes no formulas – the letters are different for them all. My thanks, he writes (my love, he means), for those who, in his service, fall. Maglor winds the names into the Noldolantë. Each heart remembered, each spirit honored; so many verses in the song.
*****
You have no right to it, Maedhros writes to the boy-king, and then to the child-queen. Doriath’s silence and Sirion’s evasion may be predictable, but some remnant of the diplomat in him believes that he must try. His hand shakes, forming the words. Pacing behind the writing-desk, Maglor hums in Oath-bound fury. In the deep halls, and the bloody lanes, he howls.
*****
The last of their parchment goes for it, and some boiled linen, and, at the end, some scraps of bark. Details of their education, insights into injuries and illnesses, gratitude, affection, commendation. And to smooth their passage, all the secrets of the Eastern woods: supply lines, patterns of movement, solid estimates of the Enemy’s forces and the weakest spots in their leadership chains. Rosters of the Fëanorian dead; words for those who may still love them. Maedhros writes as a king, to a king: he does not beg, nor does he command. He makes no apologies. Maglor wraps the letter in stiff, waxed cloth, holds it for Maedhros’ seal. He has been uncharacteristically silent, all this last, dark night, but he bends, before they leave, to sing a final lullaby into their stolen twins’ small ears.
*****
Maedhros flares up, swift as paper.
Maglor lingers, humming: a fading echo; sorrow; tears.