Chapter Text
“Say my name,” she teased, pressing her lips to the collarbone of his neck.
“Tasarie,” mumbled Maglor as his hand found purchase at the small of her back, pressing her ever closer against him. “Tasarie, Tasarie, Tasarie–”
Tathiriel laughed. “Say this one–” and a strange sound in a language he had not heard left her mouth. It scraped. It was odd. It made him uncomfortable– was it–
“I would not call you by anything in the Black speech, my love.”
“It means golden one,” she said quietly, tracing a finger along his breastbone. “Golden one.”
“Would you have me call you that, then?”
“When you are near to me, like this– I would be golden one. The way you would say it.” A little gasp escaped his parted lips, and she softened, leaning backwards against the bed, pulling him with her by the crook of her leg.
“Golden, golden woman with those eyes–” He put his head against her neck again, then kissed along her shoulder. “If we ever had a baby–”
“We could not, you know it–”
“But I imagine your eyes on them, still. Someday. I know. Once the Oath is fulfilled, we will return home, you will be healed, I will make love to you just like this–”
“On a softer bed, maybe?”
“The softest. The most beautiful silks for you. You’ll be a princess there, my golden one. And we will have a beautiful golden eyed baby. Just like you want.”
“I want you right now more than I want a baby,” she said with a breathy laugh, and he tangled one hand in her hair while he tilted his neck to at last meet her lips.
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Process notes 11.27.340
Turalora presiding
I believe as of today, my work with Tathiriel on sensory therapy and manifestation is finally complete. Huzzah! We sat outside today, which she has taken a liking to in the autumn, and discussed what she intends to do once she has fully re-embodied. Due to understandable constraints placed on most subjects of the Halls of Mandos, we do not typically engage with anyone outside of the halls unless they choose to visit of their own accord, and Tathiriel is not an exception, though there is nobody to visit her that is in Valinor. This is the nearest to confirmation that we will likely ever receive that her relatives are either unhoused souls remaining in Arda, have faded, or remain in Arda of their own will.
In the coming weeks, I will make a step that many would likely deem concerning or cause for worry. I intend to reintroduce Tathiriel to Nelyofinwe, as he chooses to call himself. Both of them have spoken of the other in very limited terms. I get the sense that they were at some point, close friends; however, I believe that the circumstances under which death parted them were painful for both, and are a wound which will be painful for both. Nelyofinwe is not yet done healing, and I anticipate there will be some points of contention between the two of them. Tathiriel seems to hold her husband’s family in some contempt, including him, but both have agreed to meet one another. She will attempt to embody before then, but I told her not to strain herself.
Over tea she has discussed with me that she does not believe she will ever find her family. I disclosed to her that my attempts to find any of her possible relations had, indeed, been a failure, and that while it was very possible that they were out there, it was more likely that they had fallen under thralldom in Angband, to be lost forever. She accepted this with a neutral placidity.
It is times like this that I must evaluate my work, and survivorship bias. Tathiriel, who to me and many others in Valinor has become very dear, survived by chance. Many of her kin and many other thralls never escaped the bowels of Angband, trapped there in both body and spirit, faded or turned to things which are worse, after the collapse of Beleriand. How much worse their pain must be than that which I now treat. I think often of them, the souls who I could not help. Many of them must have never known what waited for them if ever they were released, and thought their torment endless. I cannot help but mourn for it. It is my nature to grieve now.
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“Tathiriel.” The elven prince was a half-shade, a blur of red, a glimpse of a memory in the chair. He was not embodied fully yet, only a murmur. He could not yet let himself be seen as he wished, unable to resemble his hroa.
“Nelyofinwe.” Tathiriel, body whole, cheeks warm and full, hair growing beyond the perpetual shoulder length bob at last, smiled and sat down in the other chair. Turalora had departed but said that if need arose, they would be there. “What wonders never cease. I had thought that you and all who followed your path were consigned thereafter to oblivion.”
“If this was true– and I still fear that it is, for my brothers I have not seen– so too would you be, lest you forget who you have wed, and who you have slain.”
“Turalora said as much to me,” she said simply. “There are certain reasons that have been considered, for my freedom. They claim that the Valar determined that I had no way of knowing nor understanding the gravity of the sins of your father, and of your people.”
“You knew fully well.”
“Certainly,” she said primly, “and the Valar do not hold any of Turalora’s patients culpable for what follows their captivity. They have spent a long time assuring me of that. Strenuous situations, distress, prolonged captivity and trauma–”
“I know.”
“You may be–”
“I swore my oath before any horror had befallen me. I do not think my captivity would have changed the choices which I made after. I understand why you think this is a kindness, but I would rather answer for what I have done than linger as a coward. Oblivion, Tathiriel, should not be so bad.”
“To swear upon Eru implies that no judgment could follow without his own sentencing.” She paused. “Your brothers have not yet become Oblivion, for Eru has not yet pronounced anything upon them.”
“It is cruel, isn’t it?”
“Pardon?”
“Cruel. To exist in this way. Maglor, in a way, is suffering the most of us all.”
“He lives yet,” she recited, as if it was something she had reminded herself of for many years. It must have been, actually.
“And a shame that he does. I bet he would be eager to find his beloved wife and brothers and mother, waiting for him on the horizon, only to have them ripped away as he is flung into the void along with the rest of us. Wives and beloved children and commanders all alike, oath at last unable to be fulfilled– straight to the darkness by the very hands of Manwe and Varda.” He paused. “Not that this darkness would be, to the two of us, Tathiriel, anything worse than what we endured.”
“I confess I have never missed such things as darkness.” Tathiriel reached for her tea. “I know you have not, whether you play at tough to ignore it or not.”
“That is your problem.” Nelyofinwe sighed and stretched, an illusory cat. Tathiriel noticed new scars on his form since the last time she had seen him. “You are terribly wise and perceptive. No vulnerability around you goes unnoticed, sister-in-law. The darkness is not my friend, no. Oft did I dream of it in Arda. Its maw.”
“I dreamt of the pain, the exposure. Light where it should not have been,” she admitted. “I dream of nearly nothing here. They say it is a protected garden. A safe place.”
“If you dream of nothing here, then it is because you have nothing good to dream of.” Nelyo slumped. “I spent many years in naught but dreams, the sort which are not good, and are not bad. For I had nothing good to dream of.”
“What changed?” Tathiriel paused.
“I had the opportunity to see my mother.”
Tathiriel felt a sick twist in her stomach. She had no mother, not anymore, none which she could find. She had no memory of one to console her. And there was a fear she associated with Nerdanel, who had ever sided with Maedhros, her beloved eldest, and who Maglor scoffed about having a favorite. She was not sure she would have her favor. She didn’t really know if she cared.
“I see.” Tathiriel paused. “You are the nearest to family that I have been able to see, since I came here.”
“Turalora mentioned as much. I believe they thought it would be some help to you, if I were to offer my presence, support– such forth.”
“More than that, I actually would have just liked to see someone who was familiar to me here.” She crossed her ankles. “Haldilosse lives yet.”
“I know that she does,” said Nelyo uncomfortably. “She and I parted in a way which was not amicable. I believe if she were here things would be perhaps rougher on us both.”
“Do you?” Tathiriel pursed her lips.
“Her grief of you was a great burden later in the time she and I were together.”
“I imagine.”
“I would hate to see how her heart would cry out at seeing you again, and all her family. Her father, the brothers and mother she never knew. It would be a great shadow to her to encounter you again in the midst of that joy, to experience that pain again.”
Tathiriel paused. “I did wound her greatly.”
“An understatement.” Nelyo’s form shimmered discontentedly a little, as if something was settling into place, shuddering and tremulous in the light. “You must be ignorant of what you have put her through. Do you think she would so quickly mend from the bond between you?”
“I know she has not.” With a softening of her face, Tathiriel glanced out the window. “I know that she has likely never forgiven my marriage to your brother.”
“Forgiven is not the question.” Nelyofinwe softened. “Recovered from, more accurately.”
“I did not break her heart–”
“Splintered it, actually,” said Nelyo. “But I do, for what little it is worth to you, understand.”
“You do not,” said Tathiriel coldly.
“I know what it is to be looked at with pity by one who loves you most of all, I know it makes you feel as small as a gnat.” He stared hard at her, those luminant grey eyes peering through the spectrous form. “You cannot bear such things, neither could I.”
“Was it him?” said Tathiriel simply, and Nelyofinwe groaned.
“All my cousins and aunts and uncles and brothers, Tathiriel. But him, too. Yes. You, in your desolation, at least had privacy. The whole world did not know your great tragedy.”
“I could imagine.”
“Could you?” Nelyofinwe looked hard. “My mother knew of my injuries, my pain, my suffering, not from me, but from the countless deaths of soldiers under my command and people in my lands. There was no privacy. There is only the knowledge that not even my most private pain, and suffering, is truly concealed from others. To be seen that way no matter what, makes one feel– minute.”
“You say then that I am more free than you are.”
“Were.”
“Past tense?”
“We are captives of the same oath now. The same vow which bound you to Maglor binds you to his fate, binds you to the fate of the Silmaril.”
“To everlasting darkness, then,” said Tathiriel. “Cheers.”
“So lackadaisical.” Nelyo crossed his arms. “Was it worth it?”
“To marry your brother in exchange for eternal darkness?” She twirled a long black bit of hair around her finger in thought. “Well, I do not know if it will be our lots. Surely there is something beyond?”
“By our oath there is not.”
“What if Eru Illuvatar does not hold you to it?” She squinted. “I wonder if he is satisfied. I made my oath to Maglor in love, by Eru Illuvatar also. I think I would, and ought to be– held to it, but it is not Illuvatar now doing the binding. It is me.”
“He is doing his fair share.” Nelyofinwe glanced at his sister-in-law. “The coat you made for a wedding gift, he wept over for many years. Last time I saw him, it was still folded into his pack. That is one who loves your memory.”
“It has been nearly five hundred years.” She smiled, a soft thing. “He must be living, but I cannot say that I trust that he has kept it.”
“Nobody so treasures memory as Kanafinwe,” said Nelyofinwe simply.
“Did he so treasure his brothers when they fell?” Tathiriel gave him a look.
“He wept for you and not for Turko and Morvo, for your demise, he feared was near and theirs had already come to pass.”
“I wish that the last memories I possessed of my husband were not of him, so weeping over me in those last days.”
“Would you rather he be absent, as I was?”
“Ah, Nelyo. You so love to twist knives into yourself.” She sighed. “You are one of my dearest friends. I am in some way, glad that you did not see me, at the end. My hroa was not– intact, as it should have been.”
“Maglor had dreams of that for a very long time.” He chewed the inside of his cheek in contemplation. “Burnt?”
“Smoke, and the burns,” she agreed, “and not only by heat, there were poisonous defenses I could not overcome. Another of the Eldar may have been merely inhibited, but I– I had not the strength. I should not have survived for more than a few moments let alone days, yet by his ability, I did.”
“You speak of his ability to sing people back to– to the union of their fea and hroa in moments where they would part.”
“I thought it was fiction when he spoke of it.”
“I know he possessed the ability, because he once did so for me.”
“Yet I still passed, and you lived a far longer life.”
“I was not as you were,” said Maedhros, dismissive and dry. “Dying is an active process that begins the moment you feel pain.”
‘The very instant?” Tathiriel raised her slender brows. “All I remember, Mae, is pain. Was I dying from the very start?”
“Yes,” said Nelyofinwe, unhesitant. “We all were, there in Arda.”
“Arda is all I knew.” She paused. “Do you mean we were born in a dying land, in order to die? I spoke once to a human, that they seem to believe such things. Yet I know also that this place was our home, long ago. The eastern lands are where we came from.”
“I don’t know, Tathiriel.”
“But you say that we were dying from the start. How could you know?”
“I couldn’t.”
“I long for Arda.” Tathiriel pondered a moment, clearly thinking of something far away. “I do not care if it was a dying land, Nelyofinwe. It was my home.”
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“Tathiriel, do not do this.”
“I haven’t got a choice, Haldilosse.”
Tathiriel stood straight, inspecting her body. She had regained, in the last hundred years, much of her strength and physicality, but was still, very evidently, not quite so strong as most of the Eldar. The vapour that had sprung forth after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad had made her constitution frail, too, regressing so much of the strength that she had worked to build. “I will not let you throw yourself to the wolves with this–”
“And I made a vow to my husband,” said Tathiriel patiently, “that I should follow him where his oath would drive him, as his equal in love and devotion. If the Oath brings my husband to Doriath, then I will follow him. I have spent many long years, my friend, training to defend myself once more, in case something like this did occur. At your insistence! Now hand me my armor.”
“In case you had to defend yourself in a siege or in an attack from the enemy. I will not abide you following us to battle.” Haldilosse held her head high. The morning light was already in the windows, and the two women stood in Tathiriel and Maglor’s bedroom suite. Amon Ereb was not their place, but where else did they have? Caranthir had let Maglor and Maedhros take up residence with them for the past thirty years, and though Haldilosse disliked it strongly, at least the milder winters were easier on Tathiriel.
“I am bound by your will or not to do so.” The small woman stepped around her and grabbed the leather plating. “Help me with the cordage. It goes over the silk layers I already have on, do not worry of it.”
“When we arrive, you do not stray from my side. For as long as you can, you must stay beside me.” Haldilosse’s hands fumbled over the silk cordage for a moment before she found herself, the callouses of her fingertips against the watery fabric. “I owe my allegiance to my lord your brother, but I would not forsake you or let you come into peril. Do not forget, I was at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. I know what grief takes us in the heat of battle.”
This was a battle which was not spoken of and Tathiriel knew it. “You have prepared yourself, then, too?”
“As much as I may.” She patted Tathiriel’s shoulder, and gently tugged the collar of the back of her robes up to hide her eye shaped scar. “There. Ready for a long ride.” She paused, looking Tathiriel in the eyes from behind through the mirror. “I never thought red was your color.”
“It isn’t,” said Tathiriel, and she softened a bit. “It’s so as not to mistake me for somebody else. I fear that– many of the people who may be mine, may live in Doriath. I do not resemble the Noldor,” she said, “and I do not wish to be confused with the enemy. Even my style of dress is not like the Noldo. So for now that must change, and I must wear red.”
“Do you fear them so?” asked Haldilosse. “I think the Silmaril will be surrendered, quickly– surely by rights Dior Eluchil realizes they are not his. When our host arrives I expect a truce to be reached.”
But Tathiriel was not sure.
She continued this uncertainty, riding beside her husband. Her own horse, a cream-and-gold piebald, kept up easily, but her body was beginning to lock up. Maglor, she had never seen with this sort of look in his eye. Even at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, when she had affixed his lyre to his belt, and his tuner to his necklace, there had been a spark in his eyes. A dangerous one, but one which was luminary, hopeful. This did not feel the same way. She may not have seen battle beyond accompanying him to small skirmishes in the March, but this– this was what she had spent a century preparing herself for. In a way, she thought. She had always assumed the march beside her husband into battle would be one where she knew she would face Morgoth, not their brethren.
“You are in thought,” said Maglor simply in Quenyar. “I do not wish you to fear too much. If you’d rather, I could stay by your side, and we might avoid the heat of battle. Would that ease your fears?”
“I know your skill is needed, my love. Haldilosse has said the same, and I know that your brothers will need you both before the end. I will stay at the rear as soon as the fighting begins. The guards will not ever leave my sight.”
“Ai,” said Maglor, glancing over at Maedhros, who was in his own world, “I do not like it.”
“You think it shall go ill.”
“I distrust my younger brothers.” Maglor hesitated. “If it turns to ill I am bound to follow them, and I owe them my love and care. I would defend even Turko with all I am given. Yet,” he paused, “I do not want this to come to pass.”
“You fear for the stability of Beleriand.”
“I fear for the stability of my family.” He looked at her. “I don’t care for rulership or kingdoms or the political squabblings over a bit of a river that it seems many of us do.” An eye lingered on Maedhros. “I care that this shall alienate half of our cousins if it goes ill, and our list of allies grows ever thinner.”
“Perhaps that should have been considered.”
“What would you have us do?” Maglor snapped. “Leave our father’s greatest creation, the last light of our people, in the hands of a usurper? One who knows not the glory it reflects?”
Tathiriel stared at him, then turned back to the horizon.
“If you regained it, Maglor, would it be, if I held it, in the hands of one who knew not the glory it reflects?”
“I did not mean–”
“It is true, though.” She switched to Sindarin. “You know who you have wed and you know whom you have pledged your love to. Do not frown upon unworthy hands when my own are no more than his.”
“Your hands are not those of a thief,” he said simply in Quenya.
“What difference is it?” she replied, retaining her Sindarin. “I have stolen one of your father’s creations as one who is unworthy, and knows not the glory you reflect.”
“Tasarie–”
“Do not sweet talk me with your pet names.”
“You are the glory I reflect.”
“Then do not snap at me as if I am a simpering pupil who has failed you.”
“I should not have. I am sorry, my love.” She sat a bit straighter, thinking of what tension and inner frustration her husband must have been enduring mentally. She knew that he resented this. Resented his Oath. Resented this part of him, the violent part, the part which hungered for blood. He had kept that far from her, for a long time. Now she knew.
“Thank you for apologizing.” Tathiriel shot him a glare.
That apology was on her mind when the fire poured down like water from the towers around Menegroth’s entrance. She had made it through the woods by her husband’s side, and he had told her that what happened within the royal city was not for her, and kissed her forehead at their parting. Yet now, the Feanorions outside in the trees were bombarded with fire.
Chemicals, she knew these, they had them in Angband, something like it– Maglor had once mentioned that it was not unlike the substance used to light the lamps Curufin’s wife made. She had lost her horse. It had darted. There were men about her, whether her own or another’s, she did not know. Tathiriel stopped and pressed herself against a tree, breathing hard.
There was a booming noise, and more fire spread as mud, as molasses, and her brain did not process something, a short circuit as light seemed to envelop her. The guards– where had they gone? She had promised her husband they would not leave her sight. She stumbled.
“Tathiriel!” Her scream sounded so pained. This voice–
Haldilosse.
Tathiriel couldn’t answer. It was as if she was completely locked into place.
It hurt.
She fell to the burning ground, clutching at her robes, desperately trying to pull them off along with her armor. A scrape escaped her throat, not a scream, but a rasping scrape, and she could not move. She could hear soldiers around her crying out, she could see one of her guards desperately trying to climb a tree. She realized she was a branch in a river of liquid fire– this was not what her husband had in mind, when he had begged her not to follow him.
Where was Haldilosse?
Tathiriel lost consciousness then, looking for the guards, looking for her brother-in-law’s steward and retainer, looking for any refuge.
It was white.
Then, she heard song. Her husband’s voice. She could feel it calling her, coaxing her, soothing her. It sounded so somber, she thought, her heart giving out. “Maglor,” she managed, trying to force her body to feel anything, trying to reconnect, to hang on, dig her claws in– yet–
She cried out in pain.
“Where is my brother,” demanded Maglor, turning to someone nearby. “I need Maedhros. He will know what to do.”
“He was last seen in the woods, searching for the princes–”
“Damn fucking idiot,” swore Maglor angrily. “Tathiriel. Stay. Please stay.” He ran his thumb over the back of her hand. Everything burned. How had this happened? The fire? No– no, she had felt that before. This was like poison. Had that been the real impact of what happened there? She tried to turn her head and open her eyes and was met with natural resistance, as if her body was physically unable to move in this way. “Still, my love. Still. The battle is over. You may rest. You are safe.”
There was an edge of fear to his voice that she did not trust. He was afraid. But not of the battle, there was grief, a heaviness there had not been before, there was something awful, and Maglor had not said it. “Makalaure,” she said, sweet as her voice could manage, before realizing it came out so painfully. She was thrown into a violent coughing fit.
Her husband was sobbing as he soothed her back, lowered her back down onto the blanket, cradled her gently, smoothed her hair. “Please, don’t try to speak. I need you to listen to me. The burns, I have healed, but I cannot draw the smoke and poison out from your– your lungs or your blood. They have made you weak, they have diminished your voice. Many of your muscles may be paralyzed. But I will see you healed.” He cradled her face. No wonder her skin felt raw. She had seen her husband heal burns before, and while it was quick, it left one tender and fleshy for a long while. Like the skin of a new babe from its mother. “I will not leave your side.”
“They have found Caranthir, my lord–”
“Leave me!” snapped Maglor, clutching close his wife in his arms. “I know my brother is gone, I need not see bodily reminders of it.”
She did not know how long she laid there, unmoving, barely able to breathe without unbearable agony. It was like the fortress all over again, but this time, she was being consoled, comforted, clung to. Her husband did everything in his power to soothe her. Haldilosse, who was out with her liege, had carried her here, and Maglor, blood now shed in the snow, had sprinted back to be by her side, to sing her fea home to him. And it had worked. Yet now she could feel herself still slowly drifting away. It did not matter how many furs and incense burners and fires were offered at her altar. Maglor brought her teas and herbs, things that might sweat out the poison or soothe the slow pneumonia taking her lungs, things to relieve the pain, and once she swore Maedhros had come to speak to Maglor in the night– but her own life was slipping away from her, like a boat drawing far from its mooring. Her husband had tied the rope, but how long could that truly hold?
She did not know when it happened.
Her eyes were still shut, after all, mostly, but for a few bleary, weak glimpses and blurs of her husband’s raven hair. But at one point the pain fully subsided. She realized she felt nothing at all, the darkness had lifted. She heard more sobs, a cry of her name, but it felt far away, through distant fog. Then, she had opened her eyes, laying in a bed, beneath a blanket of weaving more intricate even than her own, whose tapestry depicted, to her shock, her own life and memories in Arda.
And it was over. This was Valinor. She had died. And they were parted, for many ages.