#(though i'm sure it's nigh incomprehensible to everyone else XD)

[hirazuki]

Maedhros and Mairon + 49

…out of necessity | Maedhros & Mairon

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Aman, somewhere in the north. Fourth Age.

"And you are absolutely certain I cannot persuade you to come?" Maedhros asks, only half in jest, over the rim of his near-depleted glass.

Mairon tucks away the warm bloom of pleasure he feels at the Elf's clear approval of the vintage -- made from fruit harvested just over the hill; he has been experimenting, in the hope of finally discovering a drink to his own liking -- and casts a withering glare at him instead, of the kind that once flayed servants and kings alike and stayed dragons in their tracks.

His visitor, true to form, remains entirely unaffected.

The Maia clicks his tongue and runs a subtly-clawed hand through a strand of hair that has fallen over his eyes, examining its ends before flicking it back.

"No, thank you," he declines, feigned sweetness and a hint of fang slipping in, in reminiscence of bygone days. "I have no desire to mire myself in the politics of Valinor and Tirion and Tol Eressëa and whatever new settlement the latest group of reembodied discontents has elected to erect."

Maedhros chuckles into his glass, with sympathy and, likely, no small amount of envy -- he does not possess the luxury of choice in this matter -- before he drains it.

To say receiving him had been a surprise -- wine-dark elegance walking down the garden path to his doorstep, his Fëanorian finery a far cry from the remembered bronze and battered steel; hair, once and forever, a bloodstain in the sun -- would be to say the Grinding Ice was cold.

Awkwardness and cautious circling had gradually given way to unspun talk of things both great and small, held over sectioned wooden plates and light-colored tea in patterned cups; Mairon eagerly lapping up every scrap of information offered, starving mind ever at odds with his self-imposed isolation in the wilderness of Aman's empty north. He'd come here in pursuit of peace -- to remove himself from the noise and the tangle, the unbearableness of eternity's everyday; and the price for soothing his spirit was boredom. There was a line between too much quiet and not enough, and it was as gossamer stretched between the trees.

Neither had the irony been lost on him: he who, once, had stood on sheer precipices, feeding news of the world below to hungry ears upon its peaks. An unthinkable case of turned tables.

The paltry heat of the day -- a ghost of the burning summers across the sea -- had eventually faded into bland evening, with a suggestion of night-flowers in the air too timid to be truly called a scent. They had barely noticed, until firelight hair started shining brighter against the window panes.

Mairon has enjoyed this far more than he would have anticipated; certainly more than he will ever admit. He supposes he should not be surprised at it -- he has been alone since coming here, after all, and Maedhros has always proved to be intriguing, intelligent company, even in throes of imprisonment; even in torture.

Fëanor's eldest stands, apology on his lips. "I should be returning; it is some way to Formenos, and there are those among my family with a predilection for hasty conclusions; regardless of however little actual information they possess." His face does something complicated, that echoes the tightness the Maia feels in his chest. "I did not think I would stay so late."

Mairon pauses, halfway to standing himself. "You did not tell anyone where you were going?"

"Should I have?"

The former Lieutenant of Angband -- Gorthaur; Sauron; the Second Dark Lord and erstwhile Lord of Mordor -- stares at him, blankly.

Maedhros laughs, and it is the same mirthless, rueful laugh he remembers from a different land under a different sky, if somewhat filed down around the edges by time spent in silver vapors and vast caverns that trail below the seas.

"And what designs do you have on me, here in Aman?" the Elf asks him, with a manner that is heedless of the eggshells others have strewn all about him since his return to the West, and it feels like the fire coursing through his veins when he runs after being confined for too long. "What have you ever done towards me, in person, other than argue yourself hoarse to have me unhung?"

Oh. He'd noticed. His one-time prisoner had noticed, somehow, through the haze of blood and pain and stinging northern winds. Mairon is not certain how he feels about that.

"I dislike waste," is the response he settles on; it is not a lie. "And you forget too easily."

"I have not forgotten anything," Maedhros assures him, and holds up his left hand to look at the yawning black that graces its reincarnated palm. "I simply think I am no longer in a position to cast stones."

Mairon looks at it, too.

He thinks of Celebrimbor, of how he has heard that his shirts are always sleeved to the wrist and he avoids eating with knives, and of Maeglin, and how he shirks high places, and of the blistered skin still stamped around his own throat, a collar fashioned of previous flesh and soul-carved fear that hounds him in every form.

Is it the same for a Vala? he wonders, suddenly; does Melkor also wear the wounds of an old life? He has not seen him, yet, though Nienna has reached out.

"I have not been for a long time." Maedhros' voice is a half-whisper, but it draws him out from where he has fallen into his own head, before he can sink in deeper to drown in the sirenic call of afterthoughts long dead.

He watches him take out a glove from a pocket in his cloak and, using his teeth, pull it over his hand.

"You keep it hidden?"

The question is intrusive, insensitive, and wholly involuntary -- Maedhros has not shown any indication that the burn of the Silmaril bothers him, and the care with which he covers it now strikes the Maia with the suddenness of hammer upon anvil.

"I grew tired of both pity and censure," comes the answer -- raw in honesty and distressingly intimate, it devastates like Song.

And yet, Fëanor's firstborn leaves his right wrist bare for all to see. Perhaps it is because the injury is older, Mairon thinks; or, perhaps, it is that some scars are more private than others.

He catches Maedhros smiling at him, and at the hand he did not realize he has raised to cradle his own neck.

The Elf says nothing, and turns to make his way to the front door.

Mairon follows; it is only proper to walk him out.

He is about to bid him goodnight on the threshold, in the fashion of old Beleriand, when Maedhros leans forward and places a quick touch of his lips on him, once on each cheek.

Mairon stills, for the span between seconds, before flinching back. "What are you doing?"

"Satisfying the demands of Noldorin etiquette," Maedhros replies, brow slightly creasing under the plain band of burnished copper that goes around his head. "I should have thought you familiar with all our customs."

Mairon retreats within his mind and quickly flips through the tome of his life labeled 'Eregion' -- still within easy reach, though riddled with dust and disuse.

There is nothing there.

Curious; but, it is possible the Elves of Ost-in-Edhil -- Tyelpë, in particular -- had kept more of a distance from him than he'd been led to believe. Despite the long winters and the late nights and the celebrations, there had always been a boundary between Elf and Maia: too insubstantial to ever be commented on, just solid enough to be vexing. That, or they had left some traditions behind when they had crossed over the mountains, alongside everyone else, in the wake of rising water and incalculable loss.

None of that is pertinent, however, at the moment. What matters is his old counterpart standing before him, the lingering trace of foreign warmth on his face, and his ever-burning need to know.

"And what does it signify?"

"It means," Maedhros begins, speaking words that Mairon could not have imagined existed on the other side of howling cliffs and deep fire and wretched hallowed light, "that it is good to see you again."