#Namo would be furious at him but it's still much better

[eri-pl]

LaCE (but not the part you think)

So everyone knows how "Laws and Customs of the Eldar" has things about elven marriage. But

It also has other, more interesting things. Namely, stuff about eElven souls. (Yes, I don't like shipping, I find it boring, your definition of "more interesting" may vary.)

bad: it has the version where Elves are reborn as babies, not reembodied as similar to when they died. I don't like this.

fine, but not fic-friendly: spirits in Mandos cannot talk with the living. I'm not saying they should a full-on social life, but I love the drama of "you have to talk through your situation with that person before you get reembodied", it's too useful sometimes.

extremely underutilized in fics and HCs: houseless spirits. Creepy elven ghosts who decided to not go to Mandos. And get more and more frustrated, and want to steal people's bodies. And Morgoth, and later Sauron and his top minions, can bind them via necromancy.

I'm not saying: ghost of Maedhros, but come on. (Some dark-ish ideas ahead)

He is so angry at Eonwe, he wouldn't want to have anything to do with the Valar. Anything. He would stay, wallowing in guilt, avoiding his brother whom he abandoned (do Elves see disembodied fear? If not, Mae could as well follow Maglor for some time. And/or E&E).

(Also, if he went to Mandos, wouldn't the Valar banish him into the Everlasting Darkness? He doesn't know.)

Anyway, spiralling into guilt and despair and anger. Trying to posess someone, to have a body to be able to help Maglor, who is messing himself up without him.

He refuses the call of Mandos all the time.

Slowly, the shadow grows... One day Maedhros hears a very different call, one he is not able to refuse. A familiar voice greets him, his elongated vowels sweet like poisonous honey. "Maitimo. It's been a long time since I had the pleasure..."

(ok, I'm not sure if it's canon-confirmed that Sauron was the one doing the torturing and not Morgoth himself but it's a popular assumprion) (Anyway, basically Thrangorodrim 2.0 but you are dead and Fingon isn't coming.)

[the-elusive-soleil]

#would he only kill himself?#or not wanting his brothers to throw themselves into the oath (or get captured by morgoth in his stead) would he kill them too?#a quick and painless and far less damned death than the one they got#which would mean he’d have to kill himself last#(assuming this is all post Finwe death but before leaving Valinor)#cue Feanor having an entirely different breakdown as all his sons start being snuffed out one by one#and Maedhros - ever practical ever willing to do the worst to keep his siblings safe - tells himself that this is for the best tags by @thescrapwitch

Now I'm thinking about the fallout of this. Is anyone aware that Maedhros is the one killing Feanor's sons, and if so, who figures this out and when? I feel like he is capable of killing his brothers and his past self without them seeing him if he feels it necessary, but...would Manwe still see? Or would the unlight potentially interfere?

I feel like this could go one of two ways. Door number 1, Manwe does see that this is Maedhros' doing and the Valar work out that he's Maitimo from the future trying to prevent...something. They don't know what, given that that timeline no longer exists, but they figure it must have been bad for him to be willing to do this. Either that or it was bad enough to drive him insane. (Or, y'know, both.) So they double down even more on keeping any elves from leaving for Middle-earth, using what's happened as evidence in their argument. Feanor is either too deep in his breakdown to fight them on this, or they manage to contain him, or maybe he's even persuaded. In any case, everyone stays home, and the Sindar and dwarves and Avari and Men are left in a starlit Middle-earth with Morgoth.

How does that play out? Do the Valar ever intervene at all? Do they create the Sun and Moon at some point for when Men happen along, or do they just stick with the stars? How long is Doriath able to hold out on its own? (Maybe the Girdle can hold indefinitely. Maybe it holds as long as Thingol is alive, and one day he gets himself killed in battle because there are fewer and fewer people to go to battle anymore.) Beor's line might last long enough to produce Beren, and he might make it to Luthien so they can have Dior and he can have Elwing...but Idril's not around to marry Tuor and come up with Earendil.

Door number 2: because of the unlight and general confusion, neither Manwe nor anyone else can tell who exactly killed Feanor's sons. Since Maedhros has vanished without a trace after killing Maitimo, the prime suspect is obviously Morgoth. In this case, I'm not sure there's anything anyone could do to stop Feanor from taking off to Middle-earth to deliver whatever smackdown he's capable of. The Valar suddenly have a much weaker case for Aman being safe if not one but eight people have been suddenly murdered. They're not happy that Feanor and almost all of the Noldor are leaving, but they don't try to stop them, either.

I can't imagine the Teleri giving up their heirloom ships even so, but maybe they help the Noldor build new ships with less historical significance. Without the Doom and without a large chunk of the army left behind, the Noldor as a whole probably do a lot better. For Feanor personally, I'm not sure. A strong possibility is that he avoids death-by-Balrogs, but only because he does a Fingolfin and tries to 1v1 Morgoth (perhaps due to a different Oath, one with a focus on making Morgoth, specifically, pay, rather than on the Silmarils and destroying anyone who gets in the way).

I think Nerdanel might have come east with him, in this AU, if Namo said that it was going to take centuries or so for her sons to be healed enough for reembodiment. She would definitely be furious with Feanor for getting himself killed like that. I would quite like to see what she does with herself and with the Noldor over the rest of the First Age.

(Is Celebrimbor there, too? Did Maedhros leave him alive because he never swore the Oath? Or had Maedhros come back from a point in time where he knows about Sauron and the rings, and made the call to put his nephew down early, too?)

(Also, what about the wives? In my headcanons, at least, Maglor and Curufin were both married at the time of the exile and both their wives came with them, and Maglor's wife became a kinslayer. Where would they fit into this?)

Oddly enough, part of me prefers the Option 1 timeline, even though it's very much the worst case scenario - largely because Option 2, in the end, could be considered to prove Maedhros right that killing his brothers and his past self was a good choice.

Time-travel non-fixit where Maedhros kills Maitimo