Archive of Our Own ^beta

All around him is the crushing, oppressive dark. Maeglin’s breath comes so fast and shallow in his chest that his vision swims and he can scarcely see at all. Over him looms a figure: red eyes, immense pale face, hands and fingers stained black as though dipped in an ink of shadows, illuminated from above by the harshest, most glorious light that Maeglin has ever seen, shining from an iron crown.

Maeglin is scared, too scared to move or think, and words - agreements - fall thoughtlessly from his lips - “Gondolin is yours, take it,” - for the cessation of pain and the promises of further comforts to be given.

And he’s a traitor, self-hatred and terror spiralling together into a whirlpool that threatens to drown him. The world spins, and he’s stumbling up out of the dark with the cruel whips of orcs driving him forward, out into the valley and then into the forest, deeper and deeper until Maeglin slips away, alone, between the trees; his dizziness overwhelms him the moment he is sure he’s lost them, and he sees no more.

And then - 

Maeglin surges up from the ground, coming to consciousness like a drowning animal comes to air; he grabs blindly around him, and catches to his surprise a handful of woven fabric, worn so thin that it almost rips like paper in his desperate grip. The anaemic morning light filtering through the thin leaves is too much, too bright, after - after…

After where he has been. He can’t bring himself to even think the name. 

“It’s alright,” comes a rough voice beside him, with the faint shape of a face, both frantic with worry. “You’re alright, just breathe - you’re safe, you can let go,”

As some of the adrenaline leaves his system, Maeglin relaxes his vice-like grasp on what must be this stranger’s sleeve, finding that his hands are shaking badly.

“Thank you,” murmurs the stranger. The words are so familiar and yet so distant that they spark in Maeglin’s memory - he realises, blinking under another level of confusion, that he is being spoken to in the half-Avarin, half-Sindarin dialect of his childhood.

“Wh-” he croaks.

“No, no, don’t try to speak yet, I’ll fetch you water, hush - wait -”

The silhouette of the stranger rises hurriedly and strides out of his vision, and Maeglin squeezes his eyes shut against the burn of the blue sky through the canopies. I’m a traitor , he thinks, not worth the trouble. But he has no strength to say such a thing, and the part of him sure he deserves no water is drowned by the sensation that his throat has been scrubbed with sand.

A red shadow above his eyelids tells him the stranger is back, and he cautiously opens them again.

“Here, careful,” the man offers, cradling Maeglin’s head with one hand, angled like he’s wary of a bite, as he lifts a skin of water to his lips - and this is a mortal man, his features more weathered and his hands more broad and rough than an elf’s would be.

Maeglin’s neck aches, but he does as bid and only splutters a little. The stranger steps away for another moment, and though Maeglin is still weak enough to waver on the edge of unconsciousness, he begins to become aware of other things: the crackle and bright warmth of a fire nearby, the bed of fallen leaves beneath him. Sleep , his body begs him. This man means no harm. We need it.

He turns his head again, forces his eyes to focus. The stranger, fetching something bubbling off the fire - food or medicine - is unmistakably Hadorian, dark eyes framed by dirty golden hair, with features that Maeglin would almost say he recognises.

Sleep, his body insists again, just as a wave of realisation crashes over him. The stranger glances toward him.

“Huor?” Maeglin breathes.

The man’s eyes widen in alarm and understanding, and he opens his mouth to speak - but Maeglin has already drifted away again.

*

When he comes to, he’s alone. For a moment he wonders if the stranger had decided to abandon him to the tender mercies of the wild after that pronouncement; but, no, now that he listens there is the thud of human footfall nearby, admittedly not as heavy as they often are.

“Awake?” the man asks, a note of caution in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

Maeglin’s tongue has always moved too fast for his mind. Rather than the thanking the stranger, or merely saying that, yes, he’s awake, he blurts,

“Why do you speak this language?”

The man comes to sit in front of him, a slight frown creasing his brows.

“It’s the right one? I thought Nan Elmoth - you look…”

“It’s right.”

Maeglin pushes himself upright, ignoring his protesting muscles and trying very much against his instincts to keep his suspicions suppressed; if this man had wanted him dead or hurt, he’d have done it already, while Maeglin was helpless in his care.

“A tribe of the Nandor taught me.” the man explains simply. “I knew them well, once.”

Very well indeed, if he speaks multiple dialects of Sindarin fluently.

“Who are you?” Maeglin presses.

He hesitates. Now that Maeglin can see him properly, it’s clear that he’s not Huor - something about him certainly feels familiar, but it must only be commonalities of the whole people of Hador. These features are slightly sharper, cheeks gaunter, limbs longer, a smattering of sun-freckles across his nose and a scar on his chin that Huor never had; there are superficial things, too, the far longer hair, the wary look, the poor quality of his clothes. Besides, he’s far too young.

Huor has been dead for more than twenty years.

“No one.” says the man eventually. “A runaway thrall of Dor-Lómin.”

“And you’re not going to ask who I am?”

He raises one shoulder, his expression softening.

“I thought your story might be much the same.”

Maeglin averts his eyes, uncertain and ashamed at the stranger’s assumption. He was a captive, not a thrall; he was set loose as an informant, not forced to wander the wilderness as an outlaw.

The stranger seems to take this non-response as an affirmative.

“It’s okay,” he comforts, softly, though the words sound awkward, unfamiliar from him. “Where’s your home? I know the forest well. I could guide you there.”

Maeglin makes no move.

If he goes home, he will doom his people. His mother’s people, whom she loved, his uncle and his cousin, who have sheltered him, adopted him. But also the people who distrust him for half of what he is; his uncle who executed his father, and made Maeglin watch, and would have kept him prisoner within the city walls for the rest of his life. The Gondolindrim are both, and Morgoth had spoken to the very real part of him that hates them, that wants them to understand that they’re not as benevolent as they believe, to suffer for the way they treated him.

If he was alone, the terror of his torment might have clung to him and driven that hatred further. But instead there is a half-wild outlaw here with him, with no judgement for who Maeglin is or who his father was, with nothing but kindness for a hurt stranger.

“Unless it were too close to the Easterling camp…” the man begins, as though forcing himself to fill the silence. “Or, it was destroyed-”

Maeglin cuts him off with a sharp shake of his head.

“Gondolin.” He grits his teeth. “I’m from - Ondolindë , Gondolin, the Rock of the Music of Water, the Hidden City. I can’t go back. I can never go back.”

He doesn’t expect the man to understand - he’s Hadorian, just as the sons of Galdor had been, but they had sworn a vow of silence and, even if he had resented their escape, Maeglin had never believed them oathbreakers. But when he glances up, he sees a look of shock and recognition come over the stranger’s face.

“Something will follow you back,” he says, understanding and grim. “If you do. The Enemy. And it has to stay hidden.”

Something is probably coming for him already, since he has refused aloud to do Morgoth’s bidding. With some difficulty he swallows the nauseous rush of terror, and nods.

The same fear shows on the man’s face, but there’s determination there too.

“They sent the hounds after me when I ran. It’s not - it’s not about just outrunning them, or avoiding them. You have to throw them off.”

“Or kill them.” Maeglin mutters. He’s still hurt, and exhausted, and he can feel the weight of the oaths he made to the Dark Lord pressing down on his mind. But if he can fight, he can resist them.

“I wouldn’t kill dogs unless I had to,” objects the man. It’s so ridiculous, so human, that Maeglin startles himself by laughing.

“Maybe orcs, though.”

“Maybe orcs.”

“I am Maeglin,” he says, on the spur of the moment. “Son of Eöl of Nan Elmoth and Aredhel of Gondolin.”

The man opens his mouth with intent to lie writ large on his face - but then he closes it, and swallows hard.

“My name is Tuor,” he says, quietly.

At the time of the Nírnaeth Arnoediad, Húrin Thalion had had a young son, a serious-faced little boy named Túrin. Maeglin, as he is meant to, understands immediately what the name Tuor means. The Easterlings who usurped Dor-Lómin must have made Huor’s son a thrall, whether that was before or after his time with the Nandor.

Maeglin doesn’t bother with any of the titles he could give. Tuor said he was nobody, and as far as Maeglin is concerned he can remain nobody as long as he likes.

“Tuor of the people of Hador, man of the wilderness,” he says, formally, straightening up as much as he can. “I foreswear my oath to Morgoth Bauglir, and instead I offer you my aid and my service against the Enemy and all of his servants.”

Tuor’s face seems to drain of blood, and his hands ball into nervous fists at his sides. But even through a white-knuckle grip on nothing, he manages to speak with admirable calm.

“Maeglin, son of Eöl and Aredhel, I accept your aid and your service until such time as you can offer it no more, and I ask the Valar to witness your vow.”

Something extremely heavy settles on his chest - but the dark, awful weight of his betrayal lifts.

Until such time as you can offer it no more . Less dangerous than the oath of Fëanor, though still not exactly safe.

Tuor pushes his hair away from his face, taking the opportunity to look away.

“I’ll hold no one in bondage,” he explains, uneasily. “Especially not one who has lived through that already.”

Maeglin nods, dredging up a humourless smile for the man, no matter the bad taste that his lie of omission leaves in his mouth.

I’ll tell him the truth, eventually , Maeglin promises himself. If it’s ever safe, I’ll bring him to Gondolin, and stand before the king and all the lords of all the noble houses, and the princess, and I’ll confess every crime my heart has ever dreamed of.

For now, though, he will let Tuor put him to use against Morgoth’s dogs.