Makalaurë has cut himself to bleeding before. He has played the harp until both strings and fingers were dyed red with pearls of blood. He has carved instruments from wood with sharpened blade and worked for a time to learn the basic skills of smithing in his father's forge. Each has drawn blood from his body, like lttle red droplets of thick, viscous rain, a price such crafting has extracted, a stain of red.
There is a price for every craft, every creation. Usually the price paid is not so high to account, to regret overlong.
The white beaches of Alqualondë sit beneath a bright, starry sky, and all Kanafinwë can see is a stain of red. Red blood staining the sands, red blood staining the silver hair of the Teleri he has slain. Red staining his hands with the blood of kin he has sent to Mandos' Halls.
The price of his death-craft is not only small raindrops of crimson, but floods and waterfalls and pools of lifeblood which does not belong to only (barely) him.
It is the first time a craft has stained his FĂ«a in such a dark, rich color. Swearing his father's oath, he had felt himself (and his brothers) call a shadowy stain upon their souls and bind it with unbreakable chains, but the color hadn't saturated yet.
At Alqualondë, he discovers the color the stain of that terrible oath is dyed in, and silently weeps when he finds a moment alone aboard stolen ships.
Over five centuries of the sun later and Maglor can still see the stain of kin-blood on his hands. In his dreams (nightmares) the red, red blood of the Teleri mixes with the white sand beaches of Alqualondë and the bright blue waters of the sea.
Over five centuries of the sun later, Maglor adds more red dye to his already blood-soaked hands in the fair halls of Menegroth in Doriath. The Thousand Caves are drowned in blood and Maglor cannot grieve his three lost brothers without also thinking their deaths more justified than those of the Doriathrim.
(If a part of him wishes to cleanse the red stains upon his soul through death, well, not being granted such is the price he pays. He is too good a warrior, too good a Singer, and death, he knowsâwhether to Mandos' Halls or the Everlasting Darknessâwould be an escape.)
He does not, will not, cannot die.
What has he become, he thinks as he looks to his bloodied hands, /stained, stained, stained/ with the blood of innocents and kin.
What has he become that the crimson chains which bind his soul to evil acts are the chains which keep his Fëa from fleeing his Hröa? What has he become but a stain upon a once green and fertile land of peace fastly becoming a poisoned, black earth?
He is a stain. A stain which tarnishes his noble, elven grace. A stain of crimson-shadowed evil which bleeds red himself. He is a stain of evil acts when he should be a light and voice of hope and salvation.
The skin of Maglor's hands are milk-white, but he can only see the permanent stain of red upon them.
Blood for blood, as they say. Maglor thinks rather twins for twins.
His youngest brothers, copper-haired both, exchange their deaths for two little half-elven boys with night-dark hair and silver, starlit eyes.
Sirion is at once both familiar and more terrible than any other betrayal Maglor has played part in before.
Sirion burns as its streets and alleys and hidden coves run rivers of death and blood. The flames are bright, hot red, another stain added to the many Maglor has collected since leaving the land of his peaceful youth, since rejecting and renouncing his home.
And his soul is further blackened as he and Maedhros carry two little stars away from what was the last safe haven in continental Beleriand. A safe place they had come to destroy as the continued price for chains of blood and shackles of words of power sworn centuries ago.
Amrod and Amras escaped, either to darkness or the Halls, but Maglor did not, could not, die. He knew then, with a terrible dread that sounded as a rung gong of bronze, that he would not die.
Death would be a release of his collected stains, his sins, and it would not be enough of a price to pay for his crafting of death and ruin. Of his making of grief and despair.
But, oh! how he learned to love those boys, his hostages turned sons, and oh how he stained that love in return for how it had begun.
The first time Elrond and Elros call him Atto he blinks. The shock is a visible stain of crimson light in his vision and salt-water gathering in his eyes. His hoarse whisper of "yonya" is scratched from a dry throat as if opening wounds and is wet with the blood of what he has created in blood.
A family, one he does not, will not, cannot deserve.
Red-haired twins exchanged for dark-haired boys. A father and a mother exchanged for two kidnappers turned foster-fathers. Two sons in the place of children he might have has with the wife he left behind (and who has probably, deservedly, renounced him).
His family is a stain of redâeven the FĂ«anorian colors have always been soâand he cannot escape it.
When Maedhros chooses his end, his own escape, after the shining white gems their father created laid judgement upon their palms, Maglor turns to the shore with his treelit eyes blurred and the acrid scent of burning flesh and blood assaulting his lungs.
The silmaril burning his hand is not a surprise but rather an expectation, he thinks as he forcibly lobs the stone into the sea, giving it over to the Lord of Waters.
The Queen of All's very visible, very painful scar pronouncing justice is merely another added stain to the collection he has gathered since he set out to leave Aman.
Maglor's body is as his soul, stained and scared, and most of each chosen by him alone.
He knows what he isâhas always knownâand will live for however long he does as he carries the stains he has dyed himself red and black with.
