Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

• Maedhros has… a lot of scars.
• The missing hand, of course, but also a great many others.
• You wouldn’t be able to tell just from looking at him, though.
• Himring is the Ever-Cold, warm clothes are the name of the game. The only scars you can see on him day-to-day are the amputation scars, some few thin lines on his hand from childhood mishaps and from scrabbling for purchase on the cliff face, and a rather nasty one on his face, on the right side going from just beside his nose (dangerously close to his eye) and curving unsteadily down to his jaw.
  • (He also has a tiny, faded scar on his forehead from before some brother or another learned not to throw things at people, but that’s neither here nor there.)
• If one ever saw the rest of him, though…
  • His back is an absolute mess of scars, to the point of them being an indistinguishable knot of scar tissue in places.
  • His front has quite a few scars as well, burns and cuts and slices, some random from battles and many more methodically placed.
  • Actually, most of his body looks like that.
  • For example, the lines of burn scars along the width of his truncated forearm, like someone laid hot pokers across it.
  • Or his feet, including the soles, which have scars from lashes and burns.
• So. Lots of scars, the vast majority inflicted during his capture. This makes sense.
• Very few are aware that the one big scar on his face is self-inflicted.
  • In his captivity, he was mocked with his mother-name.
  • Well-formed, well-formed they called him as they beat him. They would hold him down in a bucket of water until he thought it was the end, then use that same bucket and same water to wash his hair.
  • His hands and face and hair were kept as perfect as anything can be in Angband, something to taunt him with.
  • After his rescue, he couldn’t bear to see his unblemished face, and had in a fit of rage grabbed the shears left there for his bandages and scarred his face himself.
  • Maglor had been the one to find him after, and had helped him cut his hair to the unseemly short length he maintained for the next sixty years, until the Siege of Angband began.
  • The name Maedhros had been chosen shortly thereafter.

• But Maedhros recovers, body and soul, hröa and fëa. He grows his hair out again, learns to braid it one-handed. Has an obvious facial scar, in case the missing hand wasn’t reminder enough to allies and enemies alike what he’s capable of enduring. Collects more scars, over the next centuries of defending Beleriand, but not that many of them.
• Loses brothers.
• Loses more brothers.
• Ends up with children.
• …What, are they supposed to leave them there, in the ruins of their home with Orcs and Gil-Galad’s ships equally near? Just hope the latter reaches them before the former? Just give up the two things that might be worth a Silmaril’s ransom? Of course they take the children.
• Maedhros keeps his distance, at first. He’s big and scary, he drove their mother off a cliff, he’s not… entirely himself, some days.
• Unfortunately for him, he’s been caring for children for the vast majority of his life, and he’s very good at it.
• At least, Maglor’s hoping he’s still good at it when he begs for help. They won’t stop crying, and his lullabies aren’t helping.
• Unrelated: the unofficial-official consensus amongst the grandchildren of Finwë is that Maitimo is the best at lullabies, out of those of them that sing lullabies. This is because he holds little kids to his chest and lets them feel his deeper singing voice as much as hear it.
• Also unrelated: the children follow him around like ducklings now.
• The children — the boys, the little ones, the rascals, the tiny terrors — like to trace Maedhros’s scars. They’re delighted by the textures, like to find patterns and skip their fingers from one to the next. The funny shape of his nose, the twist of his left ear.
• Maedhros tolerates all of it without a word, and in fact will often playfully snap his teeth at them when they trace the scar on his face, seeing how close they can get to his mouth before he pretends to bite at them, and they shriek with laughter as they pull their hands away.
• Once, they had all gone swimming and afterwards were laid out drying off, and the boys had made a game of the mess of scars on his back, seeing who could get from the top to the bottom first without skipping any lines.
• Maglor had seemed stricken by this, though he tried to hide it, but when Elros leaned over to look at Maedhros’s face, he appeared perfectly content and in fact half-drowsing as they played.
• It isn’t until much later that they learn the scars are from chains and whips and knives, that his nose was broken and started to heal before it could be set (the Nirnaeth), that part of his ear was sliced off (close call in the 300s). By then, it’s long since become habit — they trace the scars when nervous or upset, follow them with sleepy fingers when curled in his lap at the end of the day. They try to stop once they learn (some of) the story, but Maedhros seems strangely sad, and they realize quickly that he has the wrong idea of it.
• “We just— we didn’t know if maybe we were making you uncomfortable this whole time and you— maybe you never said anything because we were little,” Elrond explains haltingly. “We didn’t want you to be upset.”
• “On the contrary,” he says, “it comforts me. I much prefer the memories of you two playing with my scars to the memories of how I got them.”
• “Oh.” When he puts it that way, it does make sense. “Then, can I…?”
• “Of course, little one.”
• Relieved, Elrond takes his hand and starts tracing along his fingers and palm. When he was little, he thought these scars matched the tiny scars he has from once reaching into a bramble patch after a bunny. Elros had thought they were from a very mean cat, and Elrond had responded by making up increasingly ridiculous theories until Elros started hitting him with a pillow.

• When he dies, there are no scars. There is not a body.

• Reembodied Elves may choose which of their scars and markings they carry into life begun anew.
• Is Maedhros reembodied?
• Probably. Eventually. Even if only for Dagor Dagorath.
• Does he keep his scars?
• Probably. Some of them. The one on his forehead from before some brother or another learned not to throw things at people, at least.
• Honestly, I think it depends. You can make a case for just about any option.
• I like to think he forgoes the hand, though, except maybe in instances where he returns only for Dagor Dagorath and having two hands again would be supremely useful.
• Losing the hand was, contrary to what many might think, a good memory. Losing the hand was freedom. He doesn’t mind not having the hand, in fact spent over five hundred years getting so used to not having the hand that even if he did get it back, I think he’d still be left-hand dominant.
• But he does keep at least some of his scars, I think. If only to give little ones something to trace and follow with sleepy fingers, if it’s needed.

Chapter Text

Elrond finds him, quite horribly, not far from Gil-Galad’s corpse, and has an even more horrible moment where he thinks he’s going to have to bury his last father alongside his best friend and king. Then he registers Maglor’s chest rising and falling, shallow though it is, and gives in to the desire to collapse to his knees between them.

After dealing with the Men and the Elves, as Gil-Galad’s vice-regent and all-but-official heir, after a meeting with the remaining members of the council where he’d snapped and all but stated that there weren’t enough Noldor alive on these shores anymore to be worth having a High King— after all of that, Elrond goes to the healing tents and works and works until Glorfindel hauls him into some semblance of a cot.

“My father—” he manages.

“I’ll watch him,” Glorfindel promises. “If anything changes, I’ll come get you.”

Maglor doesn’t improve over the coming days and weeks, but he also doesn’t get worse. It’s a bit of a blessing, really. There are few enough Amanyar left on these shores, and tensions are still high. It’s for the better that no one can yet look at his eyes and guess who he is.

(It does not stop those remaining Fëanorians who’ve attached themselves to Elrond from recognizing him, nor from setting up a subtle guard rotation. Elrond decides to be grateful for this.)

(It does not stop Galadriel from catching him one day on his way to the healing tents and murmuring, “Perhaps it would be best to disguise any former lords or villains, at least until we are not so unstable, Lord Elrond.” Elrond decides to be grateful for this, too.)

So it is that Elrond returns to Imladris with his own troops — the ones he’d taken to defend Eregion and a few he’d rescued from it — and an additional third of Lindon’s surviving army, as well as those wounded enough to need yet more care but not wounded enough to be sent along to sail West. Among them now is a soldier called Lindir, who has been in a coma these past years but shows signs of waking now that he’s entered the Valley.

Elrond has only ever wanted a home. He supposes, as he goes to find Isildur’s now-widow to tell her that her husband and three elder children are dead, that an outpost-turned-stronghold populated by soldiers and refugees is familiar enough.

“Very good, Elrohir!”

“Very good,” corrects another voice, this time lisping.

Elrond smiles, rounding the bend to the paddock where Glorfindel is teaching his sons to ride. The boys are also learning Quenya, hence Lindir perched on the fence critiquing Glorfindel’s pronunciation.

“Grandpa, why do you talk like that?” Elladan asks. He’s already had his turn riding, it seems, evidenced by the fact that he’s perched beside Lindir on the fence and in the process of demolishing a sandwich.

“Dialectical differences,” Lindir explains. “The same reason why your Granddad Celeborn’s Sindarin is different from, say, Lord Círdan’s.”

“So you’re from a different place than Uncle Glorfindel?”

“Yes, I am.”

It’s more complicated than that, of course, but it’s enough of an explanation for Elladan to be content. Or, well— “Dad! Why do you sound like Grandpa Lindir when you’re not from the same place?”

“Because he’s the one who taught me Quenya,” Elrond explains, amused.

The story, as the boys know it, is that their father and Uncle Elros’s home got destroyed in a war, and some of the soldiers took them along when they left instead of leaving two children alone, and that Lindir was one of the soldiers.

The story, as everyone else either believes or politely doesn’t question, is that Lindir was a Fëanorian and a commander in their cavalry, who took part in every kinslaying but also helped to raise Elrond and Elros after they were taken. In shame, he exiled himself for the majority of the Second Age until word reached him of the War, which he joined anonymously, and was grievously injured trying to defend the High King.

None of this is, technically speaking, a lie.

Given the number of kinslayers now living in Imladris, those who came with Elrond and those who went with Celebrimbor and retreated to Imladris with the fall of Eregion, the vast majority of whom who now want nothing more than to live in peace, Lindir’s story is special only for his connection to Elrond and his near-sacrifice for Gil-Galad.

He now tutors Elrond’s sons the way he once tutored Elrond and his brother, though with assistance in some topics from others when needed or desired. Glorfindel’s assistance with the Quenya lessons is mainly a concession to Galadriel, who still thousands of years later makes a face at Elrond’s accent.

(And really, the only reason Glorfindel is the boys’ riding instructor today is because they’ve recently become fascinated with Asfaloth, who only tolerates being ridden by anyone else when his chosen Elf is off to the side with a bag of apples as a bribe.)

Elrond leans against the fence next to his son and pretends to bite at the last bit of his sandwich, laughing at Elladan’s squawking protest, “Dad, no! Get your own!”

“I am sorry,” Galadriel says again, looking perhaps as weary as Elrond currently feels. “You did not need this on top of everything else.”

“No,” Elrond agrees, “I didn’t. Good evening, my lady.”

“Good evening,” she returns, and leaves. For once, she does not press or meddle. A shame that he’s too exhausted to appreciate it.

“Love?” comes Celebrían’s voice, which is when he realizes he’s been standing in the door to the healer’s ward for several minutes. He turns to his wife, his wonderful wife who opens her arms and lets him hunch over to hide his face in the crook of her neck.

“Fourteen hundred years,” he says into the fabric of her dress. “Fourteen hundred years we kept this secret, and one argument…”

“Well,” says Celebrían wryly, “it’s not as though my mother was the only one who wanted to yell at him for that stunt.”

“No,” he agrees, “but she’s the one who elected to yell at him in Quenya and call him Macalaurë loud enough for everyone and all the Powers to hear.”

He can tell by the shift of muscles in her neck and cheek exactly the wincing expression that she’s making. “She did do that, yes.”

“And now I have to explain to everyone that they’ve been interacting with not just a kinslayer, but one of the kinslayers, but I promise he’s nice and he never actually wanted to murder anyone, really.”

Celebrían makes a half-sympathetic noise. “You don’t have to tell everyone. All of the Fëanorians already know, and Glorfindel and Erestor.”

“Oh, yes, it’s really just the Gondolindrim and those Iathrim who followed me instead of Celeborn or Oropher, most of whom are survivors of Sirion, that I have to worry about. I’m sure they won’t react poorly at all.”

“We couldn’t have kept it secret forever, beloved.”

Elrond huffs. “Am I not allowed to dream?”

“Poor thing,” she tuts, pressing a kiss to his hair before pulling him back through the doorway. “Come on now, let’s go check on your poor father. The children are sitting on him to keep him in place.”

“Good,” Elrond says emphatically. “He deserves it.”

“Who deserves what?” Elrohir asks, where he is indeed draped carefully across Lindir’s — Maglor’s — legs with Arwen, despite both of them being full grown. Elladan is in the process of rebraiding Maglor’s hair.

“Your foolhardy grandfather deserves to be sat on by his grandchildren,” Celebrían says.

“I broke their lines; it became a rout! I rather thought you’d be thankful for that.”

“You also broke several of your bones, and were stabbed by the Witch-King,” Elrond deadpans, “which you wouldn’t have survived without my intervention.”

Maglor opens his mouth, but something must show in Elrond’s face, because he shuts it without saying anything. Elrond crosses to him and leans down, pressing their foreheads together. “Don’t scare me like that again, Atya,” he murmurs.

“I never intend to,” he counters, but his heart isn’t in it.

They all sit there for a little while, crowded in or around his sickbed, before Arwen pipes up.

“So are we calling Grandpa ‘Maglor’ now, since Grandma let the cat out of the bag?”

Maglor sighs, drooping back against the pillows. “I suppose.”

“You don’t sound very enthused by the prospect,” Arwen frowns.

“No, no,” he says. “I will be Maglor again if I must. It’s only that I’ve… Well, I’ve rather enjoyed being Lindir these past years. It’s… nice, being able to be your father and grandfather without quite so heavy a weight of history on my shoulders.”

“Then stay Lindir,” Elrohir shrugs. “They’ll get over it eventually.”

“Or they’ll move to Lórien or the Greenwood or Mithlond,” Elladan adds. “But you’ve kind of spent the past millennium and a half singing and teaching and being the world’s biggest pushover, so…”

“Brat,” Maglor — Lindir — huffs, reaching back to swat at him.

“And that’s assuming that none of them have figured it out for themselves,” Arwen muses. “Are we sure anyone but the most willfully obtuse are going to be surprised? It’s not as though you made much of an effort to disguise yourself.”

“Elrohir,” Lindir says, and Elrohir obligingly swats at his sister, who tips her head back to pout at Elrond upside down.

“I’m not sure what you’re looking at me for, darling,” he says, amused.

Arwen pouts harder. Elrohir slaps a hand down directly on her face.

“Hey!” she yelps. “Asshole!”

“I’m the asshole? You’re the one trying to abuse your baby privileges!”

“I am not—”

“You are! And it’s not even working!”

“Don’t fight in your grandfather’s sickbed,” Celebrían cuts in, before the budding argument devolves into a tussle. “He’s fragile, don’t you know.”

“Grandpa agrees with me, don’t you Grandpa?”

Lindir tries to look very put-upon, and only succeeds in looking very pleased to be exactly where he is.