The Fey and the Fallen

Title: The Fey and the Fallen
Author: Enismirdal enismirdal@caths.co.uk
Pairing: Maglor/Maedhros
Rating: PG-13 (this chapter is PG at most)
Warnings: Incest
Betas: Innocencest, Rei and Arhuaine (in progress)
Disclaimer: The Elves and the world belong to Tolkien; no insult to the good Professor is intended, and no money is being made.
Summary: Love can find all Elves - even the strange ones.

A/N: This fic has been beta'd and should be basically readable, but may undergo a few more tweaks at a later date. It's unlikely to be anything more than a small change or two, however.

***

Chapter 1

The Fey One, they called him, and treated him as a slightly backward
child at times. While his brothers' childhoods were spent learning to
ride and hunt, climbing trees and playfully wrestling with peers,
Macalaurë had always preferred solitude, time to himself with pen and
parchment, maybe a small flute or a lyre. He loved to create just as
they did, but his skill was with the ephemeral elements of word and
song rather than tangible metal.

Those his own age often chose to avoid him, finding his habit of
speaking aloud what others were thinking but refraining from saying
unnerving. They were wary of the way he would watch from a distance,
absorbing all that went on without participating. Macalaurë missed the
companionship at times, but his own mind was friend enough, providing
him with playmates of his own - and, later, sweethearts. He soon
learned that even the adults looked down on him for speaking to those
playmates in front of others, insisting that it was not wholesome for
him to hold conversations with those who were not real.

But they were real enough to him. He could picture them all: tall or
short, dark-haired or golden, shy or outgoing. After being discouraged
from addressing them openly, he took to conversing in his mind and, of
course, they still answered.

Few of his peers ever accepted his oddities, but Maitimo was always
tolerant. Teasing, as elder brothers invariably are, and sometimes
downright infuriating, but Macalaurë knew in his heart that Maitimo
loved his little brother no matter how fey or peculiar he may be. The
quiet, undemanding company was there when he needed it, and he never
lost sight of that kindness.

***

His childhood, therefore, was rather lonely, but he found his own
contentment in this. Crowds, busy, chaotic and noisy, had never been
to his liking anyway. With the time he spent in solitary study, he was
able to excel in lessons. And it was often said of him that he saw
more than most, a remark which took him many years to come to
understand. Perhaps he simply saw in a different way, beginning with
the details rather than ending with them. Large structures springing
from small beginnings - that was his thought.

Such was the case when he composed; he often started from a single
note or chord, building around it, linking a few notes here to another
there, eventually creating a whole song, rich and deep. The music
tutor - soon abandoned when it became clear that he could learn more
from Macalaurë than Macalaurë could from him - insisted that the young
Elf's technique could not possibly work, that the result would be
disjointed and discordant. Yet Macalaurë saw only order in the method,
as he constructed melody around chords, harmonies emerging from a
scattering of notes. In his mind it brought the focus to where the
music would be most profound for both performer and audience.

Much of his time was spent alone with his paper, pens and instruments
as he grew older. Father, realising the only part of his passion that
Macalaurë shared was the love of song, word and language, sought to
encourage these interests as much as possible, freely providing
Macalaurë with any instrument he desired and setting aside rooms with
excellent acoustics for the young Noldo's practice.

He devoted increasing amounts of his time to the pursuit of music. His
first instrument, a flute, was a gift for his fifth birthday. It was a
simple instrument in plain wood with six holes bored into it, small
enough to be covered by his tiny, slender fingers. Its sweet, shrill
sound was a delight to him but he outgrew it quickly, finding the
spacing too close for his fingers within a few short years. The second
flute was more elaborate, engraved with leaves and flowers along its
length, and the sound was richer and mellower.

That was how Macalaurë's flute collection started. Seeking different
tones and qualities to the sound, he lost faith in the instrument
makers and began to make his own. Wood worked well, but so did tubes
of silver; and once he made a gold flute just to prove it could be
done. He even tried ceramics, though he often found himself
disappointed. His father allowed him to arrange them all on brackets
in a small room in the house, neatly lined up on the walls in
chronological order. Of course, he kept lists as well. Three lists, in
fact: one was stored in the Flute Room, as it soon became. Another
resided, pinned to the wall, in Macalaurë's own bedroom. The third, he
folded up and hid under the floorboards in his bedroom, in case the
other two should perhaps go missing. He needed to have a record, just
as a precaution, and because it seemed like the organised thing to do.

His talent for making flutes was nearly as great as his talent for
playing them. He took pleasure in finding ordinary pieces of wood and
hollowing them out to make beautiful instruments, decorating the
surface and drilling precisely-placed holes for his fingers. People
sometimes brought him miscellaneous items, challenging him to make
flutes from them. The crooked branch proved difficult; it took several
attempts before he found the right places for the finger-holes and by
the end there were numerous patches of resin from sealing up the
mistakes.

The dried gourd was an interesting challenge and the sound was rather
odd, but it worked. The length of copper piping from the water supply
made him laugh out loud when the Elf - whom he barely knew - handed it
to him. It had a bend at one end and consequently, much to his
amusement, made a different sound depending on which way up he played
it. The snail shell, though, was his pride. It was a pretty shell,
pink and yellow, with streaks of black, and he did not think
Tyelkormo, who gave it to him, really believed he would be able to get
a tune from such an item. He managed it, however. It took a few
practice runs, experimenting on ordinary brown shells he found
abandoned around the house's extensive grounds, but in the end he knew
exactly how and where to make the holes and just how to blow to gain
sharp but perfectly pure sound from the tiny instrument. It was
awarded pride of place among his collection of flutes, occupying a
little shelf on the wall which Macalaurë dusted daily - even when he
could not see any dust there. His instruments were his joy and as dear
a friend to him as any Elf.

Long evenings he would spend with them and his pen and paper,
oblivious to passing hours and lost in the distant, sheltered world
spun from the shimmering threads of his compositions. After a while,
he would see the woods and rivers, the blushing maidens and prim
suitors, rolling hills and thunderous storms that the music described.
He would hear the harsh voices of arguing Elves, or the whispered
words of lovers, and start to forget that they were not just the
shades of his own imagination.

He was not /always/ alone, though. Maitimo, already half-grown when
Macalaurë was still an infant, quickly came to recognise his younger
brother's potential and delight in his skill and creativity. Accepting
Macalaurë's many eccentricities, he often sat in the corner as the
younger Elf worked on his songs, refraining from comment but wearing
an expression of deep thought on his finely sculpted features. Like
all brothers, they argued and disagreed at times - and like all
brothers, they knew that ultimately neither would ever willingly let
the other down.

Faithful Maitimo. Macalaurë made mistakes growing up, applying his own
peculiar brand of logic with the very best of intentions, but often as
not landing himself in situations which would have enraged Father, had
Fëanáro ever got wind of them. But he so seldom did, and on most
occasions that was due to the work of Maitimo, covering up the
evidence of Macalaurë's well-meaning blunders and several times, in
fact, taking the blame upon himself.

***

Macalaurë grew used to his brother's undemanding presence on the
afternoon of every third day, as the sun filtered into his spacious
rehearsal room through gauzy curtains, made from a fragile dark blue
fabric of his own choosing. He started to feel a sense of satisfaction
and rightness when Maitimo was there, feeling comfortable with the
steady, predictable routine. Maitimo would arrive as he was tuning his
instruments - even when they did not really need it, Macalaurë liked
to tune them anyway. He never truly understood why this was, although
he always found one excuse or another.

Then the elder brother would take a stool from the stack by one wall
and place it in the corner furthest from the door. He would sit,
watching and listening with a kind of attentive peacefulness, until
Macalaurë's renditions were finished and the music was returned to its
proper drawers, shelves and files. At the end of the session, he
always returned the stool to the stack before leaving, congratulating
Macalaurë quietly and thanking him in mild, polite tones.

Therefore, on the day that Macalaurë set down his lyre after tuning,
expecting to see his brother sitting in the corner as he rightly
should today, his reaction consisted of confusion followed by another
feeling to which he was unaccustomed. He had always found such strong
feelings uncomfortable and unpredictable, rising and falling beyond
his control, so he generally tried to keep them away; when they crept
upon him anyway, he preferred to manage them by talking to his secret
friends about them. Together, they could usually establish what was
wrong and rectify it.

He spoke to them now and they suggested that maybe it made the room
look wrong, unbalanced perhaps. Macalaurë agreed, so out of a sense of
necessity he took the top stool from the stack and placed it in the
corner where Maitimo always sat. Still, it was not all quite right and
to Macalaurë's ears, the music sounded different without the quiet Elf
in the corner.

They discussed it some more and wondered if perhaps he would be more
at ease were he to find out where Maitimo was. This took longer than
he hoped; Maitimo's rooms were empty, as were the practice grounds.
Macalaurë preferred to avoid the practice grounds; the harsh clangs of
metal and shouts and occasional growls of feigned anger hurt his ears
and made him want to retreat to somewhere calm, deserted and still.

Macalaurë walked all the way round the outside of the house, twice,
just to make certain, and then methodically searched the inside of the
house too. He was beginning to wonder if perhaps Maitimo had turned
invisible like his friends, or left the grounds altogether, when he
looked out of the window in the high tower he was searching and
finally spotted his elder brother.

Maitimo was walking in one of the formal gardens, hand in hand with a
slim, dark-haired nís. They were smiling, but it did not look like
they were doing anything particularly important. Macalaurë leaned on
the windowsill to watch them, frowning. Whatever they were doing did
not look urgent enough to warrant Maitimo skipping the practice
without even sending notice. Perhaps he had found that the nís made
better music and Maitimo was not interested in his younger brother's
compositions any more…

Macalaurë went to his room after that and began to compose again. He
was determined to make this better, more beautiful, more intricate
than anything she could create. He wanted Maitimo to like him again.

He worked on the composition for the next two days, tirelessly
absorbed in it to the point where his mother had to come and fetch him
to meals - and more than once he fell asleep on the freshly inked
paper. He worked with a kind of frenzied single-mindedness, notes
scattering themselves over sheet after sheet, and by the time he next
expected Maitimo to come and listen, it was very nearly ready.

Maitimo came with the nís.

Macalaurë was quiet. Had she come to listen and laugh at him? Maitimo
took his stool to the usual place and sat down. The nís looked at
Macalaurë, smiling and greeting him as if he knew her already.
Macalaurë did not reply. He was playing for himself and his brother,
not for her.

"I am sorry about the last practice," Maitimo was telling him. "I
completely lost track of time." Macalaurë nodded slowly. The friends
discussed it between themselves and concluded that Macalaurë was
feeling let down and more than a little betrayed. They all agreed that
Maitimo needed reminding that he would enjoy his third afternoons here
much better than with the nís.

Therefore he played with everything he had, well enough to leave both
Maitimo and the nís in stunned silence. They applauded at the end,
smiling, and he sketched a neat little bow to his brother. Maitimo
came and hugged him, offering congratulations.

As they left, Maitimo touched his lips to those of the nís, in one of
those strange, affectionate kisses he claimed to enjoy. It was then
that Macalaurë's secret friends simultaneously gasped and then sighed.
For some reason, that small gesture made Macalaurë…jealous. That was
/his/ Maitimo, his brother. He wanted to be the one to make his
brother smile.

Maitimo still came to listen to his music after that, sometimes with,
sometimes without her. When she was not there, Macalaurë found he
could concentrate far better, and he made sure to play little special
pieces as a treat for his brother on those occasions, sweet solos with
flute or lyre.

***

"What is wrong?" he asked Maitimo quietly, coming in and seeing his
brother slouched in a chair, staring vacantly at the wall. Like a
concerned mother, he checked his elder brother for fever and signs of
discomfort.

"You would not understand, my little fey one," Maitimo replied. "Which
is why I came here rather than going elsewhere. I never feel like I
have to justify myself to you. You just…accept."

"Is it her?" Macalaurë did not know why he asked this, except that his
brother was wearing his hair loose, and he had learned that the nís
liked him to braid it normally. "Has she made you upset?" He ordered
wine for his brother and then hugged him cautiously. He was careful
about hugging Maitimo; the elder Elf seemed to think it was not a good
thing to embrace in public and sometimes seemed uncomfortable about
doing so in private as well.

"No, little one. I made myself upset. She and I…our friendship is
over, one might say. She is not fond of our father, and I told her
that I would be loyal to him even when he acted impulsively and
occasionally unwisely."

"We are all loyal to Father…" Macalaurë trailed off. "He is…not like
me, or like you, but he teaches me, supports me. He has never refused
me anything I needed for my music. And he gives better lessons than my
governess used to…"

Maitimo smiled. "Yes. And he loves you, even though you are not like
him. He is always impressed by your skill." He paused. "But you know
that Father and I do not always agree?" Macalaurë nodded, having heard
their arguments on occasion - his usual response was to flee to the
far end of the house, covering his ears with his hands and singing to
himself until he was quite sure they had stopped. "Still I stand by
him. Family care for one another, even when mistakes are made."

Macalaurë nodded again as his brother continued, "She could not see
this, so I suggested that perhaps we ought not continue our friendship
if she would not accept my loyalty to Father and might one day ask me
to choose between her and him." Macalaurë's response was to hug his
brother once more, this time without a trace of awkwardness. He was
glad, now, that his brother was no longer being 'borrowed', yet oddly
saddened by the expression on his brother's face.

After a while, Macalaurë whispered, "I will always be loyal to my family."

"I know, little one."