Chapter Text
Alassion
A Simarillion A/U Crossover Fanfiction
By Sif Shadowheart
Chapter One: Heavy is the Heart
Himring, East Beleriand; Year 421 of the First Age
“My Lord Maedhros!” The call could be heard before the guard had entered the study of the Lord of Himring, Prince Maedhros of the House of Fëanor, who lifted his head to stare, unimpressed by the ruckus, at the elda who interrupted the quiet of his personal rooms.
“My lord,” the guard was quick to salute at being on the other side of that stare. “My lord, you are needed at once at the gate.”
Growing alarmed, both at the lack of apology over the intrusion as well as the implications of his personal presence being required at the gates of Himring, the prince was quick to rise and stride forward, asking questions all the while.
“What has occurred?” He demanded. “Who has arrived?”
“They will not say.” The guard admitted, which was a large part of why the guards - many of whom had moved to surround the receiving/mustering yard just within the gates as well as the battlements overlooking the gate itself - were on high alert. Guests and messengers alike were not unknown to the elves of Himring. Ones who would only speak with the hold’s lord, on the other hand, were an ill portent. “Though,” he hesitated, then spoke when those cold silver-grey eyes fixed on him unblinking. “He called himself Irission.”
Maedhros felt his heart and breath alike quicken at the name given by the stranger, as it harkened to the loss of a cousin most dearly missed and long mourned.
Irissë, one of his most beloved kin, who none had had word of for more than a century and had been assumed lost to either the dangers of the wilds or the work of Morgoth for now more than twenty years since her bond had grown dormant within those who loved her dearly. She, unlike Artanis and others, had never judged her uncle for his Oath, nor his sons, Maedhros among them. If anything, Irissë, like her brother Fingon, had clung to Maedhros and his brothers all the stronger with every dark whisper that passed the lips of their kin and people.
Maedhros braced himself, controlling both his temper and his hopes with ruthless strength.
A stranger spoke of Irissë at his gates, but would not come in.
Such could either be due to the summoning of his cousin’s memory as a ruse, or as a search for kin, or even be happenstance and the stranger might not bear any kinship to the line of Finwë at all.
The only way to know, was to treat with them.
Though if they sought to use Irissë’s beloved memory against him and his brothers for gain or as some foul plot of Morgoth’s, they would swiftly learn why Fëanor and his sons had so long been feared even, or perhaps especially, by their own.
Such portentous news and distracting thoughts carried the eldest son of Fëanor with great speed through the halls of his home and out to the parapet overlooking the gate, where he took a moment to study the party below.
It was a single elda afoot, no horse or cart to be seen, with a cloak covering him from head to foot, Maedhros only able to guess at their being male by the guard’s use of ‘he’ as well as the -ion suffix which implied the wanderer to be the son of Irissë rather than the daughter or child.
There wasn’t much to be seen of the elda from above, which suited Maedhros not. He seemed tall and well-made beneath the concealing cloak, but such could be false. The cloak itself was well-made, but the dark color was unidentifiable and dirty from long wear, and had no visible sigils or ornamentation beyond the blackened steel or iron leaf-shaped clasp holding it closed.
A leather bag of good make hung from a firm grasp in the elda’s left hand, and as the wind shifted the draping of the cloak, Maedhros spied the dark hilt of a weapon through the shifting center edges of the same.
It was the work of no time for the tall Lord of Himring, third tallest of the elves alive in Arda behind his cousin Turgon and Elu Thingol whose height (and ego) had grown upon his marriage to one of the Maiar, to bound down from the parapet and stride through the gate, both his curiosity and his potential ire thoroughly roused by this stranger.
“Hail, stranger!” Maedhros greeted him, silver eyes studying the elda with sharp regard. “I am the Lord of this Hall, Maedhros Nelyafinwë. Who am I addressing?”
Standing out of sword’s reach, Maedhros could see at once that this strange Irission was nearly of a height with himself, likely of a match to his own brother Maglor or perhaps their father. As his arms shifted and moved with motion, he saw good muscle play in his arms and shoulders, more than it would appear at first between the otherwise lean form and the cloak. This was no Silvan and likely not a Sindar playing at being a Ñoldo, only a rare few of those elven lines grew as great in height and breadth as Maedhros’s people, the odds of one using such to play Aredhel’s son was so slight as to be ridiculous.
Then the stranger, the Irission, dropped the hood of his cloak and Maedhros knew that he was seeing his lost cousin’s son in the flesh, unless his uncle Fingolfin or his cousin Fingon had a loose son running about Arda no one in all their family and long memories had ever met or heard of.
He could be none other, as a familial bond, long dormant inside himself, ignited with the meeting between two eldar of shared blood and kinship.
A bond that, due to the many painful dormancies that dwelled within him, Maedhros had never once noted amongst all the rest.
“A star shines upon the hour of our meeting, Maedhros Nelyafinwë.” The elda with Irissë’s lovely features that had been made beautifully masculine with the interjection of whatever bloodline that had granted him shining golden eyes, light-drinking black hair, and a strong jaw, greeted him. “I am Maeglin Lómion, son of Aredhel Ar-Feiniel, come to meet my kin and perhaps find a place among them.”
“You are my kinsman.” Maedhros broached the subject again, once they - the beautiful youth and he - were secreted away in his study rather than on display for all of Himring to gawk at. His hand was steady as he poured a measure of wine for the elda, taking in every motion and flicker of the younger elf to review later. “The son of my cousin Irissë.”
Without the concealing cloak, evidence that Maeglin Lómion’s path to Himring had been long and arduous was clear. His boots were worn at the edges, the leather dull and the stitching threatening to fray. The elda’s clothes were once fine but also not in strange ways, dyed leather traveling garments suitable for an elf lord of Beleriand, a once-ink black that was fading to deep grey, but had no decorative stitching done by an embroiderer's hand - whether from a relative showing care for the young elf, or a seamstress taking pride in her work. He wore no jewelry or ornamentation, though Maedhros noted piercing holes in the dwarfish fashion upon his lobes and the delicate points of his ears. The mere thought made Maedhros, no stranger to torture, shy away from it, of intentionally inflicting pain and drawing attention to such a sensative part of his body.
Maeglin Lómion had not even a ring bearing the sigil of his family upon his strong, calloused hands when he removed his gloves and accepted the crystal goblet from Maedhros’s own, a level of austerity so shocking that Maedhros couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen such among any of the elven kin.
The finest part of Maeglin Lómion’s clothing and gear was the sword that he wore prior to removing it to hang on the back of his chosen chair before Maedhros’s hearth. Unlike the unadorned leather of his clothes, his sword sheath, equally as slender as the long blade, whilst still deep black at the base, was decorated with silverwork in thin strands of almost dwarfish design and starbursts surrounding mounted cabochons of shimmering white moonstones and rare black opals matching those adorning the sword hilt. A light-drinking black as deep and endless as Maeglin Lómion’s hair was the metal of his sword hilt. The hilt was straight and smooth with no crossguard, having only a small rim or collar that separated blade and grip. Said grip had been etched and graven with leaves and stars rather than wrapped while a black opal, the largest Maedhros had ever seen outside of Aulë’s or his father’s workshops, was set in pride of place upon the butt of the hilt. In size, Maedhros estimated the black sword would be a broadsword in most hands despite the slender width, however Maeglin Lómion wasn’t most, only half a head smaller than Maedhros himself, making the sword able to be wielded one-or-two-handed by the tall elda.
Not only in height was Maeglin Lómion able to take up such an armament either, as between the calluses and burn scars on his hands and the musculature of his upper body (and being no stranger himself to the build that smithing creates) his otherwise lean form and long limbs proved a veil to the strength no doubt contained in the physique of his cousin’s son.
“I am.” Maeglin Lómion agreed with a slight nod of his head, studying the Lord of Himring much as he himself was being studied. “Mother wed my father Eöl after leaving Gondolin to roam free, more than a hundred years ago now. I followed in the year 320 of this Age.”
Maedhros was not pleased to hear that Irissë, his beloved cousin, had taken up with and married Eöl, who had often come into conflict with his brother Kurvo due to their shared craft and friendships with the dwarves of Nogrod and Belegost, but knew better than to show it to their son. (Though the dwarven friendship at least explained the pierced ears. What little Maedhros remembered and his brother had said of Eöl painted the elf as an odd being as well as set against the Exiles.) A son who despite having hung up his sword easily enough, seemed ill at ease. Uncertain. Two behaviors he’d rarely ever seen in his confident and wild cousin, but were clear in her son if one knew to look and how.
As Maedhros did after long centuries as the oldest of his generation of the House of Finwë.
“So young?” Maedhros was surprised, even as he knew that realistically Maeglin could not be much older. Unless Irissë had already been wed and with child either before or upon taking her leave from Turgon’s hidden city, Maeglin simply could not be much older than a century in age. Barely a youth having reached the age of maturity to Maedhros’s eyes. “Has your begetting day already come and gone for this turn of the year?”
“It has not.” The admission almost seemed painful, though Maedhros could not say for certain as their bond was only nascent, yet to grow in strength and connection that would allow him to read the young one before him without words. “Not until later in the year.”
“So young, alone and unknown to your kin.” Maedhros shook his head, grieving for what hardships his cousin’s son had to have faced that brought him to Himring with little more than a single satchel, the clothes on his back, and the sword at his hip. “You are within the care of the House of Fëanor now, young one.” Maedhros decided, regardless of what story it was that surrounded his cousin’s marriage, death, and the birth of her son, that he would be cared for better now that he was known to him than whoever had been given charge over it previously was without question in Maedhros’s mind. “Will you tell me your story, and what brought you in such straits to my stronghold?”
Maedhros studied the lovely youth once more, searching for any sign of ill-health or wounds in need of care or treatment, but other than the signs of strain surrounding and beneath his golden eyes, the elda seemed in good health.
Though Maeglin had only sipped, and barely that, at the wine, one of his better vintages at that, which spoke to either an overabundance of caution in a strange place, or a lack of thirst or appetite that would be concerning indeed.
“I will,” Maeglin agreed after taking a deep breath, his fist clenching on the satchel that he had rested upon his lap rather than the floor, as it loath to let go of it. “But first,” he warned. “I would have my other kinsmen hear, so that I may tell the tale only once. Both in regards to myself, and what I have brought you, Maedhros Nelyafinwë, kin of my mother, as a gesture of good will.”
Maedhros’s silver gaze flitted, naturally, down to the bag on the handsome youth’s lap, his interest spiking once more at the mention of bringing a ‘gesture of good will’ to a Fëanorion.
With ease and no sign of hesitation, Maeglin reached across the slight gap between them as they sat before the fire of the hearth and offered over the leather satchel, gaze firm and unflinching as Maedhros accepted it. If anything, it seemed as if a burden had been taken from him as his shoulders relaxed and his kinsman took another slight drink of wine. His golden eyes - a unique color, one that Maedhros could not in all honesty recall seeing on another living being - turning away from Maedhros’s own and focusing on the hearth, the shine and dance of the flames making that extraordinary gaze seem to glow and twist with a hidden fire of their own.
For one endless moment, it was as if the world itself held its breath as Maedhros flicked a glance between the firelight playing off of Maeglin’s face and form, and the oiled leather of the bag.
The flap was embossed with a heraldic device or maker’s mark that he’d never seen before despite the familiar element of a stylized sun that most descendants of the House of Finwë tended to incorporate into their personal marks in one form or another. Set in a lozenge that denoted it as the personal device of a male member of a House, the stylized sun boasted twelve arms, but only those at the topmost and bottommost points reached the border of the device, as was proper for the son of a princess. The two empty corners on the left and right contained elements of what was likely Eöl’s marker’s mark or device, a pair of crescent moons with a star held between the points, the waxing crescent on the left with the mirrored waning crescent on the right.
When he could no longer delay, as he knew without question that whatever his kinsman had decided was a fitting gesture to build good-will between them that it would be as startling as Maeglin’s very existence, Maedhros loosed the ties of the bag and flipped back the flap.
Only to lose the very breath from his lungs at the vision that met his sight.
Resting there, upon a bed of pristine white silk, were three shining stones.
Stones that Maedhros, eldest son of Fëanor, recognized in blood and bone and soul.
So much so that for the first time since he was younger than Maeglin, his cousin’s new found son, he lost control of his bond to his brothers and Fingon, sending through osanwë the image that he feared was false but straight to the heart of him he knew was true.
Are those-? Fingon, Crown Prince of the Ñoldor, hundreds of leagues away, blinked and reared back in shock where he was reviewing reports at his desk.
It can’t be. Maglor, his next-eldest brother, found even his mental voice lacking in breath as he stared through the eyes of his brother at the sight that had stunned him - stunned them all.
Only one way to be certain. Maedhros sent at last, as his brothers and dearest friend all descended into bickering, using him as a medium.
Reaching out with his left hand which had clenched uncontrollably on his goblet and utterly bent the metal out of shape, while his right hand, his enchanted prosthetic forged in magic and steel and song by his brothers, remained holding (grounding him) onto the leather of the bag, Maedhros spread his fingers wide and rested them, as gentle as a babe’s sleeping breath, on the surface of the shining stones.
And all at once, like an iron band coming loose from where it had been tight and unyielding around their necks, both the Sons of Fëanor as well as the elf himself deep in the Halls of Mandos, felt the dreaded Oath shatter and break.
Shaking his head, trembling almost imperceptibly from head to toe, Maedhros blinked away tears as he kept his hands resting upon the stolen Silmarils of his father, and turned to look at the impossible son of Aredhel.
“Maeglin Lómion.” His voice shook, his brothers and Fingon silent inside his mind as they listened through him. “What have you done?”