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Elrond and Elros are sent to a Mannish school in Amon Ereb, after much discussion.
Elros immediately causes trouble by telling the class, “When I grow up, I want to be a murderer.”
“You mean a warrior,” the schoolmaster corrects him.
“No,” Elros says stubbornly. “I mean a murderer.”
That's what Maedhros says they are, has told them over and over again, ever since they can remember. My brother and I are murderers. We are monsters. Elrond thinks it must be nice, not to be afraid any more. To be the thing that other people are afraid of, instead.
When asked about their family, Maedhros always says, I murdered your mother, boys. I killed her. She was fighting for you, to save you. Maglor tells them she turned into a swan and flew away, but Maglor lies. Maedhros never does. He tells them again and again, reciting his litany of the dead: I murdered the people of Sirion, boys, your family. Doriath. Alqualonde. My own brother, burnt alive.
(Elrond and Elros consider it the end of their childhood when they mention their mother's death to one of their servants, arguing for some little luxury, Elrond can't even remember what now. They kidnapped us and murdered our mother, so they owe us this. But the servant corrects them with surprise, and the twins can tell she is telling the truth.
“Why did you lie to us?” shouts Elrond, when he confronts Maedhros, furious. “You never lie to us!”
“It is basically true,” he says, shame-faced. He does not believe in lying to them. “I forced her to what would have been her death.”
That isn't what Elrond cares about. “To save the Silmaril, not to save us!”
Maglor tries to tell them that she was young and afraid, panicking.
“If you had a Silmaril, Elrond, we would murder you for it,” Maedhros tries to argue. “Why do you think I have trained you every day since you were small? So isn't that worse?”
“Would you murder us if it weren't for your Oath?”
Maedhros does not want to say of course not, but Elrond can hear it anyway. “But the Oath exists,” he says, instead.
“If I had a Silmaril,” Elrond announces, “I would just give it to you. So your brothers would not be damned, any more.”
Of course Maedhros and Maglor have never said that to him, but he has sharper hearing than they realise. If we die with the oath unfulfilled, they are damned to the Void for eternity. It underpins so many of their late-night conversations.
Maglor cries then. “Oh, Elrond,” Maedhros tells him. “We have done you and your brother great wrong.”
Elrond does not understand this until their childhood is really over.)
The schoolmaster corrects him again. “Warrior,” he says, as if Elros is stupid. “Your father is a warrior.”
Elrond gets involved, too. He can never let Elros fight alone. “Our fathers are murderers.”
That seems to raise more eyebrows, and eventually, when the schoolmaster requests to speak to their fathers, the appearance of Amon Ereb’s intimidating Elven-lord and his brother in the small, dark schoolroom is hilarious.
Maedhros is so big he makes it look like a doll’s house by his sheer presence, at least two feet taller than any of the Men, even the tallest. He has to bend to stand inside. And he glows faintly at all times, as do both his and Maglor's eyes. The schoolmaster splutters and cannot seem to find his words, faced with these unearthly murderers. He seems to believe Elros now.
Maglor insists on withdrawing them, after that. Elros is satisfied. He likes to set Maedhros and Maglor on people, when he feels he is not treated with the respect he is due.
“Why didn't they like it when we said fathers?” asks Elrond.
Maglor shrugs. “It's a nasty Mannish prejudice. They thought my brother and I were married, and they think two men should not marry.”
“Are you not married?” asks Elros, innocent.
Maglor laughs. “Yes, but not to each other. You can't marry your brother. I had a wife once. Maedhros had a husband.”
“Did you murder them?”
Maglor says no at the same time that Maedhros says yes.
*
Maglor finds them tutors at Amon Ereb, instead. They are widely beloved there: Elflings are rare in times of war, so there is no shortage of volunteers. As they get older, and know the basics, Maglor and Maedhros spend more time teaching them everything a Feanorion prince should know. (Elrond cries when they tell them that they aren't actually Feanorions, and Maglor ends up promising to adopt them formally if they still want it, when they are older.)
Maglor teaches them music, of course, but also Song, which they both have the talent for: its use both for healing and for battle. Poetry, too, the writing and reciting of it. He teaches them to ride, and archery, because Maedhros only has one hand, and then, when they have mastered that, horseback archery.
Maglor also teaches them how to camouflage: how to act as Feanorion princes, the lords of Amon Ereb: how to act as common soldiers, to fit in with everyone else, to drink and fight and shout: and how to act if they are captured (Maglor says “rescued”, but they know what he means). He makes them practice crying, thanking their kidnappers (rescuers, Maglor says, reluctantly, it is we who are the kidnappers) and telling story after story of Feanorion brutality. The more brutal they make the stories, the happier Maglor is.
(When they do go to Gil-Galad, they repeat some of the stories they had made up for Maglor. He had been right: every awful story they told made people nicer to them, more sympathetic and less suspicious of children raised by Feanorions, and most importantly, the stories make them less likely to throw them out into the orc-ridden wilderness to starve or worse. Maglor had never said they might, had told them that they were going to good people, but the intensity at which he had them practice their “kidnapped hostages” act had betrayed him.
Some people - like Gil-Galad - quickly became suspicious when their stories got a little too gory, as well as occasionally contradictory when they forgot what they'd already claimed. But by that point they were useful, and friends too, so it was fine. Celebrimbor cried when he found out the stories weren't true, and Elrond felt incredibly guilty. He spent a night drinking with Celebrimbor, telling him the truth about his fathers. Then Celebrimbor told him about his uncles, in Valinor, and when they were lords of more than Amon Ereb. Elrond also showed him his Star of Feanor tattoo, which made Celebrimbor cry again, as he showed Elrond his.)
Maglor makes sure the twins can switch from traditional Feanorion accented Quenya, to modern Quenya, to neutral Sindarin, as well as several of the Mannish tongues. He ensures they know the clothes, the manners, and the approaches. They rehearse meeting visiting princes, negotiating with traders, and how to talk people out of a bar fight. They learn to dance in the style of many peoples, and he teaches them their songs, too.
Maedhros teaches them strategy, and lordship, and war: how to defend a keep, how to provision a settlement, and how to plan a battle. How to rule a people.
He also teaches them wordcraft, how to add meaning to a sentence that sounds like something else. How to use words to get what you want, to threaten, to cajole, to beg. How to see what isn't being said.
And he teaches them to use their Wills. Maedhros is in the habit of lighting fires with his mind: he is surprised when, one day, he sees Elrond copy him.
So Maedhros teaches them. But where Maedhros’s gift is for destruction, and domination - he can make orcs flee from him and armies bow to him, as well as burn anything that stands and coerce the earth and the rivers into destroying his enemies - Elrond and Elros teach him to create. They teach him to bring flowers from the ground out of season, knit a wound together, and coax a freshwater spring to rise, not a destructive torrent. Maedhros particularly loves the flowers, and the three of them carpet Amon Ereb in bright flowers of every hue throughout the winter.
(That makes Maedhros cry, the first year. When they ask him why, he only says, “My husband would have loved them.”)
Maedhros can also protect, and this comes naturally to all three of them. They practice making barriers around people, around places: hard barriers to repel siege engines or spears or arrows, and soft barriers that cannot be seen, that say quietly, hmm, you're very sleepy, aren't you? or there's nothing to see here. He teaches them to make it permanent: to sculpt a barrier perfectly and then tie off their Will when it is finished, separating it from then and leaving an invisible layer around the walls of Amon Ereb. It is exhausting work, and slow, but Elrond and Elros are thrilled to be contributing to the safety of their home.
Both of their fathers teach them to make speeches and speak publicly, to control a crowd and a narrative. And most importantly, they both stress, they teach them how to resist when someone does the same to you: how to look at what is not being said, or said in a very particular way. How to argue, and see both sides of an issue, and challenge assumptions. Of course, they immediately use it to argue about things like bedtimes. Maedhros is inclined to let them do what they like if they can argue for it convincingly enough, but Maglor is firm.
Maedhros teaches them how to kill. The lessons start from when they first arrive at Amon Ereb (when we first kidnapped you, Maedhros would insist). The twins try to cut Maedhros's throat, stab him in the heart, poison him, trip him up on the stairs, and so on. Maedhros simply corrects them: they need more pressure to cut someone's throat, rather than just scratch them. You cannot stab someone's heart through their ribcage without more force than they have: he shows them the angles to use instead. The poisons they use are too obvious: Maedhros suggests more subtle ones. And so on.
It becomes a game, long after the twins stop wanting to leave. They become more creative and more bold as they get older, and one day they actually manage to hurt him, when he comes back from a skirmish, weak and white with blood loss. They are faster than he at that moment, although he turns aside at the last second, and the blow merely opens up his side. It is deep, and the shocking red blood leaks out onto his clothes, but all Maedhros says is well done.
That evening, when they come to apologise, sick with misery and fear, their faces ashen, Maedhros offers them his knife and suggests they slit his throat. He says that they have learnt well enough now, that they are strong and brave and will survive on their own, that the people of Amon Ereb will follow them if they like, and that he is proud of them. That they can take revenge for their family, their mother and uncles and their people at Sirion. That he knows it doesn't mean anything, but he would like to apologise for everything he has done to them. They stare at Maedhros, horrified. He speaks so casually, and then he leans back on the bed, exposing his long white throat, and closes his eyes.
“Don't you understand?” Elros weeps. “You are our family.”
Maedhros says, puzzled, “I have tried to raise you right, but I fear everything I do just makes it worse.”
Elrond sees suddenly that it was not ever a game to Maedhros - that he fully expected this to end in his death by their hands, and had accepted it. Thought it just, even. Thought that was what the twins wanted.
Maedhros tells the twins that he loves them, but that they should not love him. His throat is still exposed for them.
“We love Maglor more,” says Elrond, at a loss as to what to say, and Maedhros laughs, shocked out of his bafflement. (It isn't true - both of them are their fathers, even if Maglor is kinder and softer and less strange.)
Elrond has nightmares about that day for months - no, years - no, the rest of his life.
They start calling their fathers father to their faces, after that. Maedhros tries to persuade them not to, but Maglor - Maglor is so happy he sings all day, bright songs from times lost, and the animals of Amon Ereb follow him around trying to join in, the grass and weeds grow higher where he treads, and the objects around him shiver in joy as he makes them breakfast to celebrate.
*
They attempt to kill Maglor once, when they are still new to Amon Ereb. Maglor belts them as if he were their father, and when Maedhros hears their cries from down the hall and comes to investigate, he belts Maglor, in front of them. Maedhros is furious, incandescent fire, and soon it is Maglor whose cries can be heard from down the hall. The twins are so terrified they cannot speak. Amon Ereb's people say that it is Maglor's wrong for disciplining them without their lord’s permission, but Elrond and Elros understand enough Quenya at that point to make out that Maedhros is shouting something like, have you any idea what it is like to be whipped by something three times your size, that has you against your will and you cannot escape?
Afterwards, Maglor is just as woebegone as they are, if not more so, and apologises to them. He spends the next few days whimpering and wincing, particularly when Maedhros is around. He says Maedhros is a brute. The twins do not want Maglor to be hurt again, even though he hurt them first so part of Elrond thinks it is only fair, so they do not try again. Maedhros, however, is fair game.
Not that Maglor cannot be fierce. One time, they are playing in the forest further than they should, and get unlucky: it is careless curiosity, rather than an escape attempt. Orcs trap them, and although they kill several with their hunting knives, force of numbers means they are captured.
When Maglor finds them, he uses his Song to freeze all of them in place, orc and peredhel alike: then he methodically slits throat after throat, singing to himself, his eyes dark but his movements matter of fact.
When he gets to them, last of all, still frozen by the Song that has sunk into their bones, they are hypnotised to the extent that they expect their own throats to be cut, too. They wait for it, not uncaring, but accepting. But of course Maglor does not cut their throats: he carries them back to the fire, and holds them, stroking their hair softly, until they can move again. He whispers, “My boys, my twins, how I love you,” as he does when they have nightmares. If sometimes Elrond and Elros think he sees someone else there, some other pair of ghostly twins, it does not mean it is any less heartfelt.
*
Playing the Ambarussa is one of their favourite games.
They are not sure why. Perhaps because they are the only other twins they have heard of. Which they are not related to, anyway: playing as their mother's brothers means Maedhros will be moping for days, and he will tell them how their deaths are his fault, and they will be added to his list of the dead for a while. Maglor will tell them it is not his fault, but nobody will listen.
They do it a few times, just to make their kidnappers miserable, but it makes them miserable, too. That could easily have been their fate.
But the Ambarussa haunt Amon Ereb. They have been dead just hours when Maglor finds them, when Maedhros raises his blade in weary automation, and Maglor stays him.
Their littlest brothers. Maglor tells them about how they were fierce warriors, proud and hardy, who delighted in the woods and the wild places of the world. When he is more sad, he tells them about the children they used to be, beloved by a large family and spoilt rotten, with so many toys that Curufin once hid half of them, and they never noticed, and only discovered them years later, in chests down in the cellar.
Maglor tells them about twin-things, too, how the twins always knew each other’s minds, how they would play tricks on everyone, pretending to be each other, or pretending to be just one person. Only Maedhros, who Maglor said was more their father than their father had been, could always tell them apart. The Ambarussa had had a tutor for almost four months who thought there was just one of them, and who had been sacked when Nerdanel had referred to the twins, and he had asked, “what twins?”
So Elrond and Elros play tricks on the people in Amon Ereb. Everyone knows there are two of them, though, and nobody seems to care much which is which, except for Maglor and Maedhros, who can tell. So that is unsatisfying.
Instead, they play hunters, in the days of Valinor. They ride horses, and hunt wolves, and Morgoth. They pretend to be the Valar - Maglor tries to raise them to be pious, or at least respectful, but it is difficult to respect anything that has possibly Doomed you before you were even born and definitely damned your family. Maedhros tries to tell the twins that he and Maglor deserve it, that it is just. Elrond cannot see how it can possibly be just, when all it would take would be giving back the heirlooms of their house. Or cancelling the stupid Oath.
Elrond is afraid that they will be in trouble when Elros first calls it that, but both Maedhros and Maglor quite agree. They hate the Oath. They hate the Silmarils. They hate their father, but they love him too. It's complicated. Elrond and Elros understand that. They hate and love all four of their parents.
The Ambarussa live in a different time, a better time, and Elrond and Elros enjoy playing there. They also like that their rooms are still as they left them, full of their drawings and trinkets and clothes, and Maglor lets them do what they want with it all.
Maedhros goes crimson the first time he sees the twins in the Ambarussa’s too-big clothes, struggling to carry the Ambarussa’s too-big shields, even if they are the small, round kind.
Maglor gives his brother a sharp look, though, and says, “They won't be needing them, and it makes them happy. They would have been pleased.”
Maedhros makes a small, unhappy noise in his throat, and disappears for days. Maglor puts a fixed grin on his face when he goes to read the twins to sleep, and they ask for more Ambarussa stories.
But he tells them more, and even sings them the Ambarussa’s favourite songs. They ask what their voices were like - “Were they like mine and Elrond's?" - and Maglor tells them, very like.
When they ask Maedhros about the Ambarussa, he just tells them how it is his fault they are dead, how he burnt one alive. It makes Elrond less keen on becoming a monster, on being a murderer, because he does not want to have to kill his brother.
They once ask Maglor if they will meet the Ambarussa if they go to Aman. Maglor's face blanches. They know that he and Maedhros are damned - they have overhead that many, many times, have even been told that by their parents, before Amon Ereb - but they also know that Maedhros and Maglor are trying to save their dead brothers from the same fate. Then, they don't doubt that their fathers will succeed.
It takes Maglor a few tries to answer them. “Of course,” he says at last. “They will love you so much. All of my brothers will, just like Maedhros and I.”
Sometimes Maglor imitates his brothers, consciously or not: at least, that's who Elrond assumes he is imitating. Maedhros's air of command and authority when speaking to their people, the twins easily know: but there are others, too, that they come to recognise. The master of words, who can be cruel, who can say anything to get what he wants and can persuade anyone of anything: Maglor is him, sometimes, when he takes a visiting dignitary aside before a meeting with Maedhros and his council. The hunter, casual and arrogant and one with his environment, so completely in-tune with nature: Maglor is him when they are in the woods, and they can tell it is his words that Maglor says when they make their kills.
There is the shrewd one, quiet and watchful, never missing a thing. There is the warm one, kind and bold, who laughs sweetly, that Maglor is mostly around Maedhros, but on a good day, he is the warm one when he plays with the twins. There is the fierce, kind, protective one, who laughs wildly, a little reckless, a little dangerous. They like to play with him, too. They never dare ask who is who, but the last two are their favourites, and they imagine those are the Ambarussa.
Their least favourite is scornful, implacable, superior control, but that only comes out occasionally, and even Maglor seems shaken afterwards.
*
Feanorians are known for their loyalty. Nobody ever explicitly tells the twins that, but they learn, very quickly. It is in the way that the servants boast about how long they have followed their lords, heads held high and proud. It is in the way that the twins are widely pitied, not for their family being massacred, because that is almost normal, but because their parents are considered to have abandoned them: Maglor tells them that their mother is a victim and father a hero, gone to petition the Valar and save them all. Maedhros had muttered once and punished for it, too. But Amon Ereb's people clearly think little of parents who would choose stolen property or the Valar’s commands over their children's lives, even though Maglor insists otherwise.
It is also in the way that the soldiers bear Feanorian stars as tattoos, marking allegiance for life, and the way that they criticise other armies, other towns, for not meeting their standards. It is in the way that they touch their foreheads to the ground when Maedhros walks into a room, and when Elros asks why they do that, as they had never seen that where they lived before, they are just told, why, he is the head of the house of Feanor, little ones.
This is not much of an answer, so they ask Maedhros, who looks faintly irritated and says, “They started it long ago, and I have never been able to persuade them not to.”
They find this strange, at first. Why does he then just tell them not to? Maedhros's commands are obeyed to a fault at Amon Ereb, but there is something about the fire of Maedhros’s will that makes it a little uncomfortable to resist and somehow rewarding to please him, the fire turning warm and welcoming instead of burning. Elrond knows it is not on purpose, but he thinks wherever Maedhros goes, people will try and do what he wants.
But the Feanorians obey Maglor's requests too, in much the same way, as long as they do not contradict his brother's: in fact, Elros discovers quite quickly that the servants will listen to the twins as well in a way they never did in Sirion. He delights in requesting things, mostly their favourite sweets and meals, and the servants delight in spoiling them, until Maglor has to lecture them about people having jobs to do and food shortages. The twins roll their eyes.
But as they stay there longer, he sees that loyalty does not run only one way. Soldiers storm into their sitting room one evening, complaining about the injustice of their commander: of course they are polite, and follow all the etiquette, kneeling for Maedhros, but they clearly believe they have the right to appeal to him if they are being wronged. And Maedhros listens, and takes it seriously. The twins are shocked: their mother would have thought that beneath her, in Sirion.
When Maedhros is away, it is Maglor who is called upon to settle disputes: at one point, a servant child requests his help, and Maglor treats her with as much respect as if she were a neighbouring lord. The person who has wronged her has fled to escape punishment, so Maglor gives her gold out of his own stores as weregild, squeezes her hand, and checks up on her several times.
Elrond and Elros realise that there are real food shortages, sometimes: just Maedhros and Maglor give them their portions, too, so it only seems like less variety than normal. Maglor comes up with excuse after excuse as to why they cannot eat together in those times, so it takes them longer than they'd like to admit to realise.
“Loyalty runs both ways, and duty runs both ways,” Maglor tries to explain to them. “I have a duty to my Lord and brother - to obey - and he has a duty to me, to protect me and make sure I am safe, to see I am treated right and have justice. And the same for those under me: I have as much a duty towards them as they do to me. Every person in Amon Ereb has the right to petition their Lord, from the highest to the lowest. Justice is for everyone, and we need everyone to play their part for Amon Ereb to run. Without the gardeners, the laundry-maids, the cleaners, the seamstresses, the builders, we would be just as lost as if we had no soldiers or commanders.”
Justice is not the only expectation that the people of Amon Ereb have. Before one council, at which many foreign princes and lords will appear, a bodyservant kneels politely in front of Maedhros in his private quarters, proffering much more elaborate outfits than the ones Maedhros likes to wear, and that he has dressed Elrond and Elros in today.
The bodyservant doesn't glare, exactly: his expression is perfectly blank and deferential. But still, Maedhros and he look at each for several minutes before Maedhros sighs and gives in. They all wear the outfits, along with a lot more jewellery than originally planned, and their people can be proud of them. Elrond and Elros are grateful when they see how the luxuriantly the visitors are dressed: Maedhros, with his air of command, would seem a lord if he turned up in his tunic, since he towers over everybody and his copper red hair is one of a kind, never mind the fact that he glows faintly unless under direct sunlight: but Elrond and Elros are small and dark, like most of the Eldar of Amon Ereb, though people tell them they are beautiful. Still, without the clothes, they would not feel like princes, nor have the courage to treat these beautifully dressed people as equals, with their strange clothes and stranger manners.
Maglor is a much more useful example. He is quiet, and looks unassuming, and he learns everything he can about the foreign lords and princes, their languages, their customs, what to give as presents and how to talk to them, and then he teaches it to the twins. Elrond loves this, for some reason: he is endlessly curious about the differences between people and finds that it is an easy source of conversation, as people always love to talk about themselves and their homes. At first, he often finds things which are a bit disconcerting, truths that he thought universal questioned, or worse, people asking him why things were the way they were, when he often had no answers for them.
“So, you're… about ten percent Noldor?” a visiting Lord of Men asks, once, after Elrond had been explaining his heritage. Like Eldar, many Men were fond of family trees, Elrond finds. It is usually a good source of conversation.
“That's right,” says Elrond, though he would leave the maths up to her.
“So why are you Noldor, then? Why aren't you… Sindar? That's what you are most by blood, aren't you?”
Elrond looks at her in bafflement. “But my fathers are Noldor,” he explains.
The Man clearly did not see that as an adequate explanation, and keeps on looking at him, waiting for something more. But Elrond has nothing more to give her.
One of the lords of Amon Ereb's duties is distributing rewards, which Elrond and Elros particularly enjoy. Rewards for loyalty can be gold, or jewellery, because, Elrond thinks, they are Noldor after all. But they can also be land, giving particularly sensitive pieces of land to lords who were particularly loyal and astute, or higher positions or responsibilities: an soldier who shoots an orc from an impossible distance is rewarded with admission to Maglor's horse archers, and a servant girl who protects Maedhros's weak side when someone had let orcs into Amon Ereb in the middle of the night is promoted into Maedhros's personal guard, and trains with Elrond and Elros for a while.
The traitor survives the attack, though dozens of others die, and is to be executed publicly. He had been offered gold, he admits. Elros begs Maglor to let them attend, but when he turns his begging to Maedhros, Maedhros says:
“It is your duty, Prince of Amon Ereb, to watch him die. He is one of our people, and in a way we failed him, and he failed us. So the least we can do is witness his death. It is our last duty to him.”
After that, Elros is a lot less enthusiastic, but both he and Elrond stand beside Maglor at the execution with dignity. Elros's eyes are grave.
Elrond cries afterwards, and Elros is sick, but Maglor is kind, though Elrond could tell he thought they were too young to attend. He holds Elros's hair and rubs Elrond's back. Even Maedhros tells them, “Well done, little lords. You did your duty.”
“Death is not a game!” he hears Maglor say to Maedhros, angry, after the twins are supposed to be asleep.
“No, it is not,” answers Maedhros, grimly. “They have to learn that.”
*
They both learn to fight left-handed. Actually, Maedhros makes them learn how to fight with both hands, and makes sure they are competent with both, but since Maedhros teaches them so much, they both end up fighting predominantly with their left. It is useful, because most people use their right, so it is an advantage.
Maedhros makes sure they are competent with swords, short-swords and great-swords, sword and shield and two-handers, as well as the ugly long knives that orcs often use. Elrond does not want to use them, does not want to touch them, even, but Maedhros says, “What if you lose your weapon in battle?”
He is not kind. Elrond and Elros always have bruises, and they are always aching from the relentless training. Often they have cuts, or they limp. It is not that Maedhros wants to hurt them: he just does not particularly notice, and if he did, he wouldn’t think anything of it. He treats himself the same, or worse, rolling his eyes as Maglor fusses over even quite serious wounds or breaks.
Maglor intercedes one evening when the three of them troop in for dinner. Elros’s sleeve is torn off and his arm is bloody: he had been too slow to dodge, and Elrond had got in a blow that opened up Elros’s left arm, from shoulder to elbow. It is deep, and even Maedhros had stopped pushing them for a few minutes. He had held the sides of the wound together and Healed until it was no longer bleeding, and then they went right back to practice.
“It is too much, Nelyo,” Maglor says angrily, after having sent away the servants. “Every time I see them they have a new cut, or bruise, or one of them is limping. Anyone would think Gil-Galad is right and we abuse them.”
Maedhros looks genuinely surprised. “You know they have to learn how to fight orcs, and how to fight us. We wouldn't be doing them a favour if we stopped.”
“Not like this, though! You're hurting them!”
Maedhros’s voice is quiet, but he sounds baffled. “They have never broken anything! They're getting stronger and faster all the time. I Heal them if it’s serious. I treat them with more care and gentleness than anyone else, brother, I don't know what to tell you -”
“That,” hisses Maglor, raising his arm and letting his sleeve falls so a jagged scar shows, “does not reassure me.”
There is a pause, and then Maglor continues.
“Think of us training Curvo, when he was young. Would you have worked him like this?”
Maedhros slams his hand on the table, making everyone jump. “If I had, maybe he would be alive now!”
Nobody moves, and after a beat, Maedhros looks around, realising how loud he has been.
“Sorry,” he mutters, looking embarrassed.
Maglor tries again. “Does it benefit them to be hurt, brother? Look at his arm. Will that make him a better fighter?”
“It might make him pay more attention,” mutters Maedhros. But then he sighs. “I see your point. What do you think, boys? Would you do better with more recovery?”
“Yes,” says Elrond, immediately, because weapons training takes up too much of his day, and he wants to spend more time in the library. “We are old enough now.”
Maedhros nods seriously at him, as if his opinion is important, and looks at Elros.
“I don't know,” says Elros, eventually, who cares a lot more about weapons and fighting. “We are still so small, we need every edge we can get. But… you are slower after an injury, father, and faster when Maglor notices and treats it. Being injured is inefficient. But we also need to learn to fight so.”
Maedhros shakes his head. “Don't worry about that. The battle-lust means you don't even notice.”
“Well,” Maglor says brightly, triumphantly. “It looks like we are agreed!”
Maedhros starts asking them to train, rather than telling them. Elrond takes a lot of time off, at first, hiding in the library with his books: but neither Maedhros nor Maglor ever question him, and he feels so guilty that he is old enough for them to trust with something so important and he is taking advantage, that eventually he goes back to training nearly as often.
Elros and he agree to keep a closer eye on Maedhros as well, and bully him when he is injured. Maedhros protests, at first, but Elros tells him we can't have our monster not at full strength, can we, who will protect us? and he relents. Maedhros also lets Elrond practice healing on him, stitches and bone-setting and experimental herbs he has read about in the library that Maglor doesn't know about, so Elrond thinks he has come out on top after all.
The twins also learn spear-throwing, formation fighting, axe-fighting, even how to fight with a whip. Maedhros is never quite happy with them, and they are never able to beat him one-on-one, which Elrond knows is a source of private unhappiness for him: but sometimes, when Elros or he takes a risk and Maedhros hesitates, unwilling to really hurt them, they can defeat him as a pair.
The first time this happens Maedhros takes them to the Mannish pub in the nearest town to celebrate, and they all get, completely, roaringly drunk.
Maedhros tells the Men, “My sons beat me at the sword today!” Quite a lot of Men celebrate with them, partly because Maedhros is paying for drinks and partly because people always want to obey Maedhros, to please him, even just to be around him. And also, he is a novelty, and people come from neighbouring villages to see the drunken Elf-lords.
Maedhros praises the twins’ bravery, their skill, and their strength to anyone who will listen, and Elrond is embarrassed. Elros is trying to persuade a patron of the bar to kiss him, but she is unimpressed, and more curious about Maedhros. Elros tells her he is a monster, but that makes her more interested, not less. Baffling.
Maglor comes to collect them eventually, hissing about making a scene and no dignity, but Maedhros is unrepentant, grinning broadly.
“My beloved brother, Maglor the Mighty,” he announces. “More skilled than any other child of Illuvatar at the song and at the harp. Come, Kano, won't you play for us?”
Maglor grumbles, but Maedhros coaxes him onto his knee, as if Maglor were a child still, and flatters him, and eventually he sings for them.
Elrond is used to Maglor, fussy mother-hen Maglor, who worries over cuts and bruises and tells them stories every night until they are far, far too old, and who sings them songs when they are sad or afraid or lonely. Who loved them from the beginning, unafraid.
He has seen Maglor play and sing at festivals, and yes, his voice is beautiful, and his songs are lovely, but that is just Maglor, and everyone is used to him.
But in the Mannish pub, they are not, and the closest word Elrond can find for them is bewitched. Nobody moves throughout Maglor's song, except to cry at its heartrending, everlasting grief.
When he is done, there is still silence. Maedhros is gazing from Maglor to him to Elros, the pride shining on his face.
Elros breaks the silence. “Not one of your best, Maglor,” he says casually. “Can you play something we can dance to?”
Maglor does, a song that makes feet want to move by themselves, that it would be impossible to hold still for.
When the twins are finally allowed to fight side-by-side with their fathers, they find that Maglor is actually a sight to behold in battle, too: where Maedhros is a white flame, burning his way through orcs, sometimes literally, Maglor is a whirling demon, with his twin swords and his bloodlust, using Song as another weapon.
Even their own people look at their fathers in admiration, and Elrond can see how they can sack cities and take townships. He thinks they probably could if it were just the two of them, without anyone else at their side. But now, they will never be alone again: they have him and Elros.
*
“Why don't you care that we hate you?” Elros cries one day. He has been in a temper, flying off the handle, saying cruel things to everyone. Elrond is staying out of his way, but Maglor is still bringing Elros his meals, and brushing his hair, and offering to sing him to sleep. Elros does not say no to any of it, because he knows if does, Maglor will back off: and he wants to hurt someone, not be left alone. Maedhros would have given up long ago from the look on his face, but he obediently helps his brother, ignoring Elros's insults.
“Fingon would hate you,” Elros says spitefully. Maedhros is more fun to bait than Maglor, because he is a challenge: if you hurt Maglor, his face will crumple immediately, and if you keep going, he will cry. It is always a victory to make Maedhros react.
Maedhros merely says, “Yes.” His hand does not falter as he keeps brushing Elros's hair.
“You are a monster,” Elros tries. “And a murderer.”
“Yes,” agrees Maedhros, with a small sigh, but it seems more bored than sad. “I tell you that all the time. Try saying something new.”
“Hmm,” Elros says thoughtfully.
“We do care,” Maglor protests, presumably not wanting to experience Elros's something new. “Just… you cannot love someone if you're trying to control them.”
“What does that mean?” asks Elros, scornfully.
“It means,” says Maedhros, his voice weary, “that if we tried to change your mind, to force you to love us, or told you lies to make you think better of us, then we would not love you. We would only be trying to control you.”
“Which is the opposite of love,” Maglor adds. “The two cannot grow together.”
Elros wrinkles his nose, and immediately argues. “You try to change our minds all the time. Like now!”
“Yes, with reason,” says Maglor, at the same time as Maedhros says, “Yes, unsuccessfully.”
Elrond thinks about it, though, and he likes it, knowing that they love him regardless of what he feels. Back at home, his mother had been so busy, and so sad, that he felt he had to be useful to her, fit into what she needed and what she wanted from him. She loved him when he was smart, and helpful, and brave: when he cried for his father, or was scared, she did not know how to talk to him, and turned away.
But Maedhros and Maglor do not turn from his anger or fear or sadness. They are kind - or, rather, Maglor is kind, and Maedhros is practical - but they treat him curling up into bed with one of them, tear-sodden and shaking in fear from a nightmare, the same way they approach him bringing them an interesting stone. Not exactly the same, of course, even they react appropriately: but they accept him either way. It is freeing.
Elrond thinks about this again, many years later, when he is the herald of Gil-Galad, whom he desperately wants to please. And sometimes he does, when they are fighting side-by-side in battle, or he is persuading the alliance of the king’s will, or he is warming the king's cock. Then Gil-Galad looks at him like he is the only person in the world who matters, and Elrond would do anything for him. But when he disagrees with Gil-Galad, or after the king comes, or simply when Elrond is not doing anything particularly worthwhile of notice, Gil-Galad looks through him.
For a while, Elrond tries harder and harder to please his king, until he imagines what his fathers would say, about someone whose love he has to try so hard to gain for such a short time. It is not that Gil-Galad is cruel: it is simply that Elrond wants more than he is willing to give, or possibly able to give. When Elrond stops sleeping with him, Gil-Galad is disappointed, and Elrond knows it was the right decision, because if Gil-Galad had called it off, Elrond’s heart would have broken. He isn't sure it isn't breaking, now.
When he meets Celebrian, it is easy. Their love is eager and boundless and they take joy in giving to each other, time and attention and touch and love, and Elrond does not feel like he has anything to prove. Celebrian just loves him, and he just loves her. He could give a thousand reasons why, and all of them are true, but none of them are why.
Celebrian and Elrond never doubt each other, because it is beyond obvious to them. It is simple. Or, rather, it is complex, the sharing of two minds and hearts, learning to love each other how they each want to be loved, how to trust and share and know what the other wants: but the way they feel about each other is easy, even if the practice is not.
He only wishes his fathers were alive to meet her. Maedhros would love her mind, how studious she is, full of facts and people from by-gone ages and far countries: and Maglor would have loved her joy, would have danced and sang with her until morning, gossiping and giggling. They both would have loved how much she loves him.
*
“Why isn't Maedhros king?” Elrond asks Maglor.
“Gil-Galad is High King,” answers Maglor.
“Why aren't you king?” Elros asks Maedhros.
“I gave up my right long ago, to prevent civil war,” Maedhros answers.
“Why weren't you or your brothers kings, but Finrod was?” Elrond asks Maglor, when they are studying history.
“We were dispossessed,” he answers, and then has to explain what that means.
“Why weren't you queen, when your husband was High King?” Elros asks Maedhros, after studying history with Maglor.
Maedhros has a sudden coughing fit. “Good question,” he says, eventually. “I'll ask him if I ever see him again.”
“Why won't you be king?” Glorfindel asks Elrond, much, much later, when everyone else is dead.
“We have had enough of kings,” Elrond says, but he thinks, the dispossessed shall we be forever.
*
“Why are we not murderers?” Elros asks, as they are all cleaning their swords after a hunting trip.
Maglor drops one of his swords, and it clutters to the ground. Maglor tries so hard to make everything normal for them, and he hates when they bring up things like this.
“In what sense do you mean that, Elros?” Maedhros asks, his hoarse voice dry. “Have you murdered anyone? Were you hoping to? Or did you just expect that, around us, given enough time…”
Elros rolls his eyes, and so does Elrond. Maedhros is not anywhere near as funny as he thinks he is. In fact, Elros and he had agreed a few nights ago that he was not funny at all. Maedhros, however, had found that absolutely hilarious when they informed him.
“No, I mean,” Elros says, clearly thinking how best to explain. “We've killed orcs. And today we killed a deer. And we've killed birds, and so on.”
“Killing orcs and animals doesn't make you a murderer, dear one,” Maglor says gently.
“But why not?” asks Elrond.
“Well, the orcs would kill us, if they could. And the animals, we need to eat.”
Elrond frowns. “So if I killed an Elda to eat, I wouldn't be a murderer?”
Maedhros opens his mouth to say something, and Maglor elbows him hard. Very hard. Maedhros shuts his mouth again, with an injured expression, but Maglor glares at him.
“That would definitely be murder,” Maglor says firmly. “Killing Eldar is always murder.”
“Always murder? What about if we kill you, like father is always telling us to do?” Elros is teasing, but Maedhros answers seriously.
“No. That would be self-defence. That would never make you a murderer, boys, that's important. You always have the right to defend yourself, if someone else attacks you, and we kidnapped you.”
Maglor nods reluctantly, though he is giving Maedhros forbidding looks. He doesn't like the word “kidnapped”: he would rather pretend the twins just appeared in his life, magically.
Elrond is still frowning. “So… no Eldar unless they attack us first, or have us kidnapped. What about Men? And why are Orcs different? They can speak, can't they? They can think?”
“To be honest,” Maglor says, giving up on hard and fast rules, “it's complicated. There are situations where killing isn't murder, but it's not always easy to tell. Self-defence is an easy one. Defending someone else, like if someone captured your brother, and was going to kill him, and you killed them instead, that wouldn't be murder. War, under most circumstances. But also, if you know that person is going to try and kill you in future, you can kill them, and that's why we can kill orcs. Nobody has ever met a peaceful band of orcs, just living off the land, not causing trouble. Maybe they exist somewhere, but not here.”
Maglor was starting to warm to his topic. “And Men, you have to be careful with, judge each group as they come along, because they are not all the same. Some might try to kill you, and some might not, and it's important to tell the difference. And of course, as a lord or prince, you might have to make decisions that result in someone's death sometimes. Evacuating a fort when it cannot be held will save most people, but those left behind will die. Executing a traitor isn't murder. Even defending your position: some soldiers will always be killed. That doesn't make you a murderer.”
Elrond is mulling this over, when Elros pipes up. “So the Second Kinslaying wasn't murder? It was war?”
Maglor shrugs. “You could interpret it like that,” he says, which isn't an answer. It is Maedhros's turn to glare at Maglor.
“I still don't understand why there is an exception for eating people, as long as they aren't Eldar,” muses Elrond.
*
When Elrond and Elros reach their majority, their fathers finally agree to adopt them. Maglor and Elrond and Elros are delighted, as is the population of Amon Ereb: Maedhros does not like it at all. He absolutely, categorically refuses to include their oaths to him as head of the House of Feanor, which would be traditional.
“No. Oaths!” He growls, as if they had suggested swearing the Oath. No oaths had been a constant refrain throughout their childhood, so it is not a surprise, but still.
“You realise, if you want to be part of the house I am lord of and my sons, you're supposed to do what I say?” Maedhros asks wearily, after several days of Elrond and Elros arguing with him, and Maglor backing them up. Maglor does not actually mind either way: he just wants Elrond and Elros to get what they want.
“You'll be bound to me, to us,” Maedhros says, his eyes tight with misery. “To a doomed and dispossessed house. Forever. I… I cannot do that to you, no matter how much you want it. It would not be right. ”
“Yes, bound,” says Elros, who cannot understand why Maedhros does not get it. “Bound like fathers are to sons and sons are to fathers.”
“Like we should be,” says Elrond.
“Like we are,” says Elros.
Maedhros jumps on that. “If you already are, then why do we need oaths? If it is real to all of us?”
“Because we want this to matter, in other people's eyes,” says Elros.
“Because this is what it is true, and we are merely recognising it,” says Elrond.
“So you cannot leave us,” says Elros.
“Oh, Elros,” says Maglor, tears in his eyes. He takes them both into his eyes, or tries to: they are now nearly as tall as him. (Maedhros had told him that Maglor had been one of the smallest even in his extended family, but now he is taller than average among the Eldar of Amon Ereb).
“I promise, we will never leave you, my dears,” says Maglor, stroking their hair.
“Maglor,” says Maedhros, in warning. His voice is not gentle. To the twins he says: “We will leave you. We will leave you, probably quite soon. You are grown. You will be safe. The Oath calls to us, and it is dangerous, and we have been ignoring it for years, and we cannot win, boys, and we will not let it touch you. I have tried to forswear it, tried to defeat it. There is no way out.”
This is nothing both of them don't already know. They can see their fathers getting worn and thin, struggling with the Oath.
(“Must you follow the Oath?” Elrond had asked once, when small.
Maglor had sighed. “Maedhros was tortured by the Enemy for thirty years, and did not give up our secrets. But even he cannot endure the Oath.”
“You do not seem to be in that much pain,” Elros had observed.
“That is because I follow my brother, and I know, I know, he will do what he has to do, to fulfill the Oath, and rescue our brothers from the eternal darkness, even if it takes time. So my Oath is content, if impatient. But his… he tries to hide from it, to hope against it, to fight, to escape.”)
“You won't love us any more, when you leave?” Elros says, in the smallest voice Elrond has ever heard.
“Of course we will,” says Maglor, but Elros is looking at Maedhros. Maglor lies. Maedhros does not.
There is a long pause, and then Maedhros speaks, and Elrond still remembers the sound of his deep, ruined voice. “We will always love you,” he says. “Always. To the end of our days, in the everlasting darkness, if we are unmade, then that love for you will still exist. I don't know what mercy, what accident, what oversight of Eru meant my brother and I could spend these years with you, but…”
He trails off, his voice breaking. Maglor is crying, grabbing his brother's hand so tightly that Elrond can see that it will bruise.
“So prove it,” says Elros, quietly.
Maedhros spends days rewriting both the adoption ceremony and the oath to him personally as the head of the House of Feanor. Elrond has never seen such a prevaricating document, with “for as long as shall be wished” and “until consent is withdrawn, for any reason, under any circumstances, at any time” every other line. It is also, very carefully, not exclusive. Elrond and Elros may have as many fathers and houses as they like, without ever having to repudiate these.
The twins recognise that this is love.
Maglor, however, plans a party. He arranges musicians. He decorates. He hires dancers. He plans course after course. He invites every vassal from anywhere near Amon Ereb, and they all attend, because they are terrified of his brother and do not wish to offend. They bring presents, which Elrond and Elros are delighted by.
Maglor also names them. Of course, they will both take Nelyafinwion and Kanafinwion as part of their names, but as part of the house of Feanor, he thinks they ought to have proper names, too. If they would like.
They would. Very much.
“None of our names are particularly creative,” he explains. “So I thought yours probably ought not to be, either.”
Elros has Wingefinwe, foam-Finwe. Elrond has Kambafinwe, cave-Finwe, which should really be Felyafinwe, Maglor explains, but then he might sound like Finrod Felagund, so he has chosen an archaic form instead. Elros’s name has the old pronunciation, too.
Elrond thinks it unlikely that anyone will ever mix him up with a legendary hero of the first age, though when he says that to Maglor, he laughs.
“What! My pretty little cousin?” Then he looks thoughtful. “I suppose he was a hero. We all thought it was a tragedy, and a stupid one at that. But he wasn't the only one trying to get himself killed at the time.”
As Maedhros rewrites the documentation, and Maglor plans the party, Elrond and Elros get tattoos. Of the Star of Feanor.
It is a common enough decoration, around these parts: Feanorians, as everyone knows, are loyal. It is their most important trait: no other house can rival them in that. So when the twins are drunk, and one of the captains offers, they are glad to accept. They too will be loyal above all.
They do not tell their fathers. They have enough on their minds.
When they are in front of what feels like the entire population of Arda, each reading out their part of the “affirmation of adoption” and “affirmation of loyalty to the House of Feanor” with all their caveats and prevarications, Elrond feels happy. He feels safe. He feels loved.
He knows this will not last. But… children never do stay with their parents. They always grow up, and leave them, and start to make their own way in the world. This is natural. If they were Men, Maedhros and Maglor would be starting to die now, as their children reached adulthood, their duties done.
The twins will always have this. Will always have had people who loved them enough to do this.
When they are finished, Maglor is crying, great streams of tears. “My boys,” he sobs, holding them hard enough that it hurts. “My sons.”
After the ceremony, the people of Amon Ereb, soldiers, councillors, lords, farmers, servants, children, all press their foreheads to the floor when Elrond walks into a room. It is unnerving: that is usually reserved just for Maedhros, their lord.
It is several days later that Elrond realises, that among all that waffling, most of which he had not listened to even as he read it out loud, Maedhros had made him heir to the house of Feanor.
*
When they sleep with one of the servant girls, both of them taking a turn with her, Maglor is furious as they have rarely seen him. “Do you think she can truly say no, when you hold her and her family's employment - their survival - in your hands? I would beat you both for it if my brother would not beat me. Give her something valuable in recompense and apologise, and if you dare take advantage of someone again…”
She had not seemed like she wanted to say no, but Elrond feels so guilty he gives her one of the nicest pieces he owns, a sapphire in the shape of a wave. He turns her away gently when she comes to their bed one night. In fact, Elrond thinks Maedhros would not object if Maglor punished them, not now they are adopted, and nearly as big as Maglor, and they would be taking the consequences of their own actions, not two small children being terrified into doing what they're told by the monsters who murdered their family and kidnapped them. He feels guilty enough that he considers telling Maglor that, but Elros talks him out of it.
Elros takes up with the daughter of the chief of a group of Men instead, who are allied to them but not their subjects. Maglor approves. Eadgyth is tiny, but so fast and vicious with her axe and so proud with her words and bearing that even Maedhros likes her. They are all horrified when she becomes pregnant, and even more so when she loses it. Maglor meets with a Mannish healer, and learns that this is all normal: even so, it is months before any of them smile without pain again. Eadgyth the chief’s daughter recovers before any of them do, runs out of patience with their mourning, and marries the chief of a neighbouring clan. She stays close with Elros, but he can never meet her children without a sense of loss.
“Their lives are so short,” Maglor tries to explain to them, though Elrond is not convinced he actually knows any more of Men than they, or possibly even less, as he would not have allowed Elros to get Eadgyth pregnant. “They cannot take the time we would. It is what gives them their tragedy, and their power.”
Still, it puts Elrond and Elros off love for the reminder of their time in Amon Ereb
*
Elrond is a natural healer. He adopts baby animals that he finds injured in the wilds. Both his Song and his Will like healing better than anything else, and before he is much older, half the Men around Amon Ereb are coming to him for healing.
Maglor laughs. “Everyone in our family has a craft,” he says. “Mine is music. Others had hunting, smithing, stone-craft, numbers.”
“What's mine?” asks Elros.
Maglor opens his mouth, and Elrond thinks he will say something else, but what comes out is leadership. Maglor looks as surprised as Elrond feels, but Elros just nods.
That is when Elrond knows, knows, that Elros is going to leave him. Or he is going to leave Elros. One or the other.
Elrond runs for it. Straight out into the forest surrounding Amon Ereb, and then further. He is not so small any more, and he has been taught woodcraft. He kills and cooks a partridge, and sleeps in a cave. It is summer, and he does not want to face the truth.
He stays out for several days, and starts to feel hurt that nobody has come for him. He has heard no shouts, seen no groups searching for him.
He decides to stay out longer, even though he is starting to get smelly and he is bored of eating unseasoned meat. But, resentfully, irrationally, he feels abandoned.
The next day, he kicks a bush as he walks nowhere in particular, and the bush says, “Ai!”
Then, in a very familiar voice, it says, “Sorry, sorry, I'm not here at all, pretend you never saw me.”
Then the bush is still.
“Maglor?” Elrond says. No answer.
“Maglor!” He kicks the bush again for good measure.
“Ai!” Maglor unfolds, and drops his Song, looking more like a somewhat dirty Noldo rather than a bush now. “I'm sorry, I know you wanted to be alone, we just were worried. There are Orcs, and we thought this way you could have some space and be safe too…”
Elrond cuts him off with a hug.
Elrond and Elros do not mention it when he gets back. They actually never talk about it, not once, not when Elros is dying and their final sundering is upon them.
What is there to talk about? Elros has always been part of him, like his hand or his eye or his heart. And then that part of him will be cut out.
When they are back, Maglor never tries to talk to him about it, either, but he does do small nice things for him: a new book appears on Elrond's desk, the servants make his favourite sugar-and-cinnamon treats, and Maglor takes a day to take the twins to the local market, which Maedhros has always insisted isn't safe enough. It goes fine, though, and pushing through crowds, watching actors perform, sucking on crystalised ginger, the twins feel like one again, even though they both know now it is only temporary.
*
“You will hate me one day,” says Maedhros. “You will. This is not how children should be raised. This is not how your childhood should have gone.”
Elrond sees his point much more clearly when he has children. He would not want his own children's childhood to be mired in so much blood, with the spectre of murder looming over them at all times. It is Middle Earth, so he teaches them to fight, but he is careful not to pass on the constant casual violence of their upbringing in Amon Ereb. He understands why it was so, and does not blame his fathers: but no child should be taught to kill, particularly not their caretakers.
He finds himself taken aback, once, when Elladan is nearly grown, and they are studying Orc anatomy, and he says, while discussing their knees, “Of course, I don't need to tell you what a vulnerable spot that is for them.”
Elladan looks at him in confusion, and Elrond looks back with, he assumes, the same expression on his face. It takes him a while to realise that Elladan has never killed an orc, and certainly not while young enough that their knees are the best place to stab one. He realises with a shock that Elladan and Elrohir have never thought that Elrond or Celebrian might kill them, nor do they play at being murderers, at killing their own parents.
He cries, partly out of relief and pride that he has broken the chain, and partly out of grief and pity for the child he once was.
They still play at killing orcs and going to war, though, and Elrond wonders if that means he has failed to protect them enough.
And Elrond learns that children will love the people who care for them, whatever they do to them, and that they need love, and can fade without it. He does not envy Maglor's attempts to give he and his brother the stability and affection and love they needed despite the circumstances, nor resent Maedhros's early attempts to make them hate him, to stop them attaching to their family's killers.
He does not know what the right thing to do would have been, any more than two half-mad kinslayers did: but he suspects it was not what happened. But still. He was loved, and wanted, as was Elros: desperately, fiercely. And that is rare enough in peace, never mind war. He has seen parent after parent who cannot see their child behind the shadow of the person they want them to be, who use them as bargaining chips or tools, or view them as a reluctant duty. Parents, too, who must dominate their child, who view any need as disobedience, and teach them their duty through fear and superior strength. His fathers would have loved him if he had killed them both, or slaughtered the entire population of Amon Ereb. They would still have saved him, if they could. They would have loved him if he had gathered up the Silmarils and given them to Sauron, or delivered them to the Valar, or tossed them into the Void and damned their entire house.
Elrond knows that this is the same love that made Feanor rebel against the Valar to avenge his father, and his sons to swear an oath damning them for eternity to follow him, and his fathers to slaughter a refugee camp in the faint hope they could stop their younger brothers from being unmade. But Elrond feels it too, breathing in his own twins’ hair, their baby smell. He would go to war for these children, right or wrong, against the whole world. He would make every mistake that his forefathers had made, if it might save them: he would sacrifice his life for them, but he would also massacre innocents, swear oaths, charge armies, destroy cities, fight the Valar, betray Gondolin, and kidnap princesses if he had to.
It is wrong, he knows. But it is true. The knowledge scares him. And it scares him that he had been loved like that, too. It was dangerous. And yet… it feels right, too, both ways. Like nothing is more real or more natural than that chain of destructive, demanding, all-consuming love. It helps him face grief after grief, tragedy after tragedy: that hard, wild piece of his heart, which loved and had been loved so.
Maglor and Maedhros had loved them in gentler ways too, and Elrond finds himself singing Maglor's songs to his children, and giving them the same cinnamon-and-sugar treats that Maglorhad given him. He shapes water into horses and falcons and dragons during bath-time, as Maedhros had done, and creates flowers for them when they cry, as he had done for Maedhros.
He tells them Maglor's stories about the world, and teaches them to cut gems and forge swords, to write and sew and cook and hunt and fight, as well as all the lore and history and languages and etiquette that Princes of the Noldor, and of the House of Feanor in specific, must know. He even teaches them the Noldolante.
They love the stories of Feanor the most, and like to work out all the different ways they are related to him. Thankfully, Celebrian is indulgent, and sees it as natural that he should teach his children of the skills of the house of his fathers, that they should be considered Noldor, the same as she considers herself Sindar even though she is half Noldor through her mother, as heritage is counted through the father-line for both peoples.
And Elrond makes sure that they only ever have to be themselves, that he does not place any conditions on who they are or might be. That he accepts their wills and their choices, even when he does not like it, even when it is inconvenient to him. It is only when it is dangerous to them that he insists. Otherwise, he forces himself to treat them like people: negotiate, discuss, treat them with respect and kindness, as he would expect to be treated himself now he is an adult. As Maglor had done, as Maedhros had done. It is not always easy, particularly when he is tired or hurt, but he does his best.
When Arwen tells him of her choice, he thinks his heart might break, and thinks about gathering her up and putting her on a ship to Valinor, in chains if need be. But he knows that really loving her is letting her choose her own path, and thinks of his brother. You cannot love someone if you're trying to control them, he says to himself.
*
When Elrond finally, sadly sails, leaving behind his children, he thinks of everyone who is lost to him. Elros. Elwing. Earendil. Maedhros. Maglor. Arwen. Estel. Maybe Elladan and Elrohir, too.
Celebrian has been lost to him, but he hopes, more than anything, that she will be there, waiting for him. It is what gives him the courage to sail.
Glorfindel squeezes his shoulder as they approach, as the shore starts to come into view.
He is searching for a single figure, silver-haired, and he cannot spot her, so that is why it takes so long.
Glorfindel has to point her out to him. “There,” he says. Glorfindel has very good eyes, Elrond tells himself mentally. Born in Valinor and all that.
She is standing in a small group: one tiny silver-haired figure, one very tall figure with copper red hair, and two small ones with dark hair.