Elrond: The Feanorian loyalists have decided I'm the next best thing and have been petitioning Erenion to allow them to name me their ruler. To combat this I am petitioning Erenion to disown me.
but actually do you ever think about how maedhros probably spent the better part of a few hundred years trying so hard to trust anyone at all and have hope and recognise when he was being paranoid and keep it in check and so if he had any suspicions something was amiss in the union he was probably so used to them being irrational and so practised in telling himself that those feelings weren’t reality that he didn’t really heed them? and basically the one time he’s like “fuck it I’m going into this with full faith” it’s the fucking nirnaeth arnoediad?
My Silmarillion hot take is that Maedhros was the optimist and Maglor the pragmatist. Which is what makes Maedhros's fall to despair all the more dramatic, and what makes Maglor's attempts to shore up Maedhros all the more ineffective.
Here it is, y’all! More Nolofinwëan feels that nobody asked for! :’’’’)))
This was inspired by the lovely dtiys entries that y’all have done! So many people chose to do the painting of Argon’s death, and after looking at all the marvelous art styles and getting feels, I decided to elaborate a bit on the scene XDD The rest will be posted over the next few days!
I ended up getting the script translated into Quenya (huge thanks to the awesome folks on the Vinyë Lambengolmor discord chat!!), then transcribed that into Tengwar (Classical Mode). Here are the translations, not including Arakáno’s name:
Do not follow her, Turvo. Don’t go there, you mustn’t go! You cannot leave Itarillë – you cannot leave me! Don’t leave me!
Fingon and Turgon on the Helcaraxë! Since I still had these two on the brain, I decided to indulge in some more brotherly feels (or angst, in this case). This scene is sometime after Elenwë is lost; I imagine Turgon was so taken by despair in the days after that he nearly followed his wife, but Fingon stopped him in time. So Turgon had to release his grief some other way!
For Turgon’s face, I referenced War Pieta by Max Ginsburg since I really wanted his expression to be visceral. For some reason, drawing these types of expressions is lots of fun! XDD
My first submission for @fall-for-tolkien's Scribbles and Drabbles event, featuring Hurin and Turgon! This was inspired by the original poem of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, specifically the gift-exchange game where Gawain receives six kisses while being hosted at a lord's home and passes those on to the lord himself.
My first submission for this year's @fall-for-tolkien S&D event! Fingon and Turgon reunite during the Battle of Unnumbered Tears for the first time since Turgon went away to Gondolin. I wonder how that'll turn out! :'''D
I was inspired to draw this when Clamavi de Profundis released their cover of the Oath of Elendil, but then I just left it to gather dust in my folders for months loll As messy as it is, I’ve decided to post it anyway because I really do like it (though I wish I had the energy to clean it up more).
Anyways, for context, it’s yet another scenario with Maglor and Tar-Minyatur! Maglor was wandering around the beach, only for Elros to sneak up on him and bring him back to Numenor. As for how Maglor was caught off-guard, I imagine Elros used a trading ship that Maglor was tracking in the hopes of doing some trade with humans, and he didn’t expect Elros to be there.
Then again, I think it’d be funnier if Elros appeared out of nowhere in his fancy king’s ship, and Maglor just stood on the beach staring at him like a dumb crab XDD
I like to think that Fingolfin made a big point of making sure that all four of his kids got exactly the same amount of hugs.
He never made a big declaration of it or rubbed it in Finwe's face but it was rather important to him to not repeat that particular mistake
Perhaps there was one kid that he found slightly easier to talk to (maybe Argon since hes the first one to tragically die, or Turgon as they were both on the "stay in tirion" team during the debate) and though this never affected his actions he may have carried the slightest twinge of low level guilt for it
You’re absolutely right, and this is one of the things that really gets me about Fingolfin…
…because when he hits Middle-earth he’s suddenly in a position where he has no choice but to choose one son’s desires over the other’s. Fingon risked his life to save Maedhros and enable reconciliation with the Fëanoreans. Turgon lost Elenwë on the ice and hates the Fëanoreans with every fibre of his being. No matter what Fingolfin chooses - both in the first decision to reconcile at all, and in many subsequent decisions - he has to choose between them.
And yes, there are any number of solid practical political, diplomatic, and strategic reasons why mending fences with the Fëanoreans is a good call. But that doesn’t make anyone, especially not Fingolfin or Turgon, feel any better about the fact that it feels like he’s picked Fingon over Turgon.
And then, a while after several such decisions, Turgon just straight-up disappears and Fingolfin never hears from him again.
It never ceases to amuse me that Feanor’s narrative arc ends like THAT.
like this guy is built up to be a genius in 2384739847 different ways, charismatic as fuck, insanely spiritually powerful, made the magical artifacts the book is named after, he’s got Sexy Protagonist Energy for days, you’re only like a few chapters into the actual story of the Silmarillion, so you’re like “yeah, alright, this guy’s our guy, i can’t wait to see what crazy shit he gets up to in Middle-earth, what kind of character development he has–”
and then he gets to Beleriand, tries to fight Satan, and IMMEDIATELY dies. like. Battle #1. he beefs it. literally spontaneously combusts.
AND YOU STILL HAVE MOST OF THE REST OF THE BOOK LEFT. absolutely ICONIC of tolkien to kill his main character in the first third of the story, and then despite elves being able to return from the dead, he literally never does, not even post-canon. NO ONE ELSE CAN PULL THAT OFF. this is SUCH a power move.
….on a more serious note, Feanor’s decisions and motivations leave a huge impact on every other character, almost every other plot point in the entire story can be traced back to what he did, and killing him off not only increases his narrative importance to those he left behind but also makes it impossible for any character to actually confront him or reconcile with him. he’s a ghost throughout the whole rest of the story, but he’s haunting everyone in myriad ways, through the Oath, through the Silmarils, through his sons, through the repercussions of the First Kinslaying, through the unrest of the Noldor and the rebellion against the Valar, through everything.
So like. Feanor might die as soon as he sets foot in Beleriand, which is hilarious from a narrative standpoint - but only at first glance. Because he’s still there for the rest of the story. You can’t escape him, no matter how hard you try.
I realized something else while scrolling back through this post. It is so, so fascinating to me that Fingolfin gets the death that Fëanor’s character arc seemed to lead to. I think we can agree that an elf isn’t gonna kill a Valar, especially not the most powerful of them all. But Fingolfin did the next best thing—going toe-to-toe with Morgoth for seven blows before crippling him.
And yet it’s Fëanor who swears vengeance, Fëanor who lost his priceless jewels, Fëanor who has the arc building towards a dramatic death in battle against his greatest enemy. But no. Fëanor bites the dust on, like, day three in the most embarrassing and pointless way possible. And Fingolfin is the one to claim the honorable, fulfilling death. I’m not really sure what that thematically says about the brothers’ relationship yet, but I’m so here for it.
I feel like this is something of key importance to the book. Fëanor is the driving force of the Noldor’s return to Middle-earth, he’s the one with the vendetta against Morgoth, but everything of importance done by the Noldor in the actual war against Morgoth is done by the children and grandchildren of Indis, whom Fëanor hates and resents and thinks should never have been born.
So Fëanor dies pointlessly shortly after getting to Middle-earth, and it’s Fingolfin who has the dramatic climactic duel and dies injuring Morgoth. And it’s Finarfin who ultimately is the leader of the Noldor among the armies who defeat Morgoth.
And it continues to the second generation – among the Noldor it’s the grandchildren of Indis, not the sons of Fëanor, who strike the major blows against Morgoth. Fingon has a massive price on his head. (Beren, a Man, the race Fëanor fears and despises, later gets an equally big price on his head from his victories fighting entirely alone.) Morgoth fears Finrod in Nargothronds and especially Turgon in Gondolin, and both are crucial to his defeat – Finrod from his role in the Quest of the Silmaril, Turgon via Eärendil. Fingon saves Maedhros, and thereby probably saves the House of Fëanor given that Maedhros is the only member of that house with a demonstrable ability to negotiate. And with Maedhros accepting that secondary role to the House of Fingolfin, it’s not just the kingship that passes from the House of Fëanor – it’s the protagonist energy. They’re secondary to the story after that, and the one time Maedhros tries to take on the protagonist role – the Nirnaeth Arnoediad – it fails disastrously. From that point, and in stark contrast to Morgoth’s fear of Nargothrond and Gondolin, the Sons of Fëanor are basically Morgoth’s patsies – he regards their oath not as threatening or dangerous, but as convenient and useful, as they take out Doriath and Sirion for him.
Fëanor is right about the Elves not belonging in Valinor and about the need to fight Morgoth, but he’s wrong about this being his story. And because he’s wrong about that, because he centres everything on himself, his story and legacy is one of failure, while the people he was unwilling to share the spotlight with, and those he never even thought about, become the heroes.
I would LOVE to read a fic or just hear your headcanons on maedhros or maeglin in the halls of mandos, becoming elves again after they 'made themselves' into orcs. I think your idea is fascinating!
I’ve had a mental fanfic about Maedhros’ time in the Halls in my head for a long while that I never managed to write down. Your question’s given me the impetus to put one part of it on the page, so thank you for that. Beyond that snippet, I’ve added some headcanon.
I have written very little fanfic before, so I’m very nervous about this.
The burning in his hand, sharper even than the fires into which he cast himself, had not abated with his death, not even in the Halls where all sensation was muted. It was not the flesh that had offended the holy jewel, not skin and blood and bone. It was the spirit that was corrupt, and the spirit that burned.
It enforced clarity. It meant that he could not deny the knowledge as his brother had, his brothers who had laughed at him when he had looked in their faces and shrunk back at seeing their eyes. Faces that might have still passed for Eldar at a brief glance. Eyes such as those he had seen in Angband.
The pain was a small thing in comparison to this knowledge.
He had feared it, during his imprisonment, more than any other danger. Needlesly. Morgoth had needed to do nothing at all. This was their own work, their own craftsmanship.
In any moment, the knowledge was nigh unbearable. In the measureless time the Halls offered, it was unimaginable. He might go a year, a hundred years, ten thousand, with nothing but the knowledge of what he had become.
When he could endure the knowledge no longer, he sought Nienna and cast himself at her feet. He could not look at her, could not raise his eyes from the floor, but managed to find strength for a voice scarce above a whisper. “Is there any hope? For any of us?”
Her voice was low, and deep, and gentle. “Look at me.” He raised his face a little, paused, forced himself to look up, and then collapsed back to the ground without meeting her eyes. She was Ainur; she could not be ignorant of what he was when he lay before her, whether he met her eyes or not. But he could not bring himself to; could not bring himself to see in her eyes the same revulsion and horror he felt in his whole being. “I have no right to seek you. I know what I have made of myself, and it is a thing abhorrent to Eru, and to the Valar, and to myself.”
Her voice remained unchanged, still gentle. “Maedhros. Look at me.” He dragged himself to his knees and, trembling, met her eyes, looked away in disbelief, then met them again, seeing no horror there but only love, and compassion, and measureless sorrow. “How-? How can you -?” he choked out.
“My siblings and I each have our own cares and loves. The seas are Ulmo’s, the winds Manwë’s, the plants and animals Yavanna’s. The lost and the broken are mine, and how should I not love them?” She placed a hand gently on his head. “There is always hope. Will you give me your hand?”
It was more claw than hand, charred and blackened across the palm and to the first joint on the fingers, and still clenched as it had been when he held the Silmaril, but he placed it in her own, and she began to weep. And as her tears fell on it a steam went up, and it began to cool, and the pain faded at last.
And then he was in her arms and she was weeping over him, her tears running through his hair and down his face and across his shoulders, and it seemed that by this his own tears were loosed and he too began to weep, choking out confessions of all things done and suffered in the past centuries, in no order or sequence. His sword at Sirion, plunging through the chest of a soldier who had stood by him in every battle of the long Siege. Flames at Losgar. The wrath and despair that consumed him after the Nirnaeth, crying if all we do must turn to evil whether we will or no, how may we be blamed for doing it? Salt and blood at Alqualondë.
He clung to her like a lost child, and sobbed harder at this thought. For the abandoned children of Doriath; for all those he had killed, and betrayed, and led into evil. And when at last he was done with weeping, still she held him, and smoothed his hair, and kissed his forehead, and he met her eyes with a gratitude deeper than any words.
He could see now a path forward, for the first time since he had entered the Halls. It was no a pleasant one; the thought of facing those he had killed, those who had suffered by his deeds, terrified him. But it was a path, and that was a greater gift than he had dreamed possible.
That’s all of what I’ve managed to put into fic. My headcanon beyond this is mostly a great many apologies (some of which are accepted, some of which are definitively not) and a gradual process of healing. After quite some time, probably a point after the fall of Ost-in-Edhil, other elves in the Halls start to seek out Maedhros. There are a lot of people in the Halls with regrets and wrongs and mistakes, some greater and some lesser; they find Maedhros a convenient confidant because no matter what they’ve done, he’s done worse and has no right to judge them (and some are inclined to tell him so at length; he’s used to it by that point). For the most part, he doesn’t advise, just listens.
At some point, Maeglin starts talking to Maedhros. Mostly unpleasantly; Maeglin is rather far past the point where he can conceptualize the possibility of being anything but orcish. But Maedhros is by this point pretty much incapable of taking offense at anything, and he’s the one elf in the Halls who’s able to sincerely regard, and treat, Maeglin as not fundamentally different from himself. And over time this relationship manages to pull Maeglin towards being something that more resembles a person, and to at least realize that he doesn’t want to be the way he is and, just maybe, doesn’t have to be the way he is.
Another element of this is that there’s a different part of the Halls where real orcs (i.e. orcs by no fault of their own) go, and Nienna cares for them. Healing is a very long process, but every so occassionally, one of them heals and returns to life as an elf. (With no memory of their previous life; it would be too horrifying for them, and additionally, this is a closely guarded secret because it would cause a great deal of trouble if living elves started speculating about which of their friends and acquaintances were former orcs. So as far as anyone living is concerned, they just come across as former Avari who have been rehoused.) At some point, in a rare exception to this secrecy policy, Nienna tells Maedhros about this and he starts assisting her in this work; just being there as someone to talk to when they’re already well on the way to recovery. As with Maeglin, it’s something that works because Maedhros doesn’t regard them with horror or see them as something fundamentally different from himself.
you mentioned your headcanons on when and if other finweans forgive maedhros... if you wanted to share some (or all) of them I'd be very interested!
Okay, wow, I have a lot of thoughts on this….it basically covers large parts of a fanfic that I’ve had broadly plotted out in my head for a long time but am completely incapable of actually writing.
This is going to be very long (EDIT: extremely long, apparently) - and rather messier and more scattershot than my usual posts - so I’m putting it under a cut. This one only covers events in the Halls of Mandos; I would need another one to lay out post-Mandos headcanons, if I can put it together.
Fingon is deeply conflicted and unhappy about Maedhros; he’s horrified by Maedhros’ actions, but he can’t stop caring about him even if he wanted to, and he doesn’t know what’s happened to him after death and isn’t sure he wants to know. For at least the first couple hundred years that Maedhros is in the Halls, he’s in extremely bad shape and is not communicating with or visible to anyone. (This is not unusual for elves who are wrapped up in their own thoughts or deliberately avoiding others.) And between Maedhros’ actions, and the manner of his death, and the Oath, Fingon can’t be sure of whether he’s even in the Halls, or if he refused the Halls and is a lost spirit, or even if he’s in the void.
Fingolfin is sympathetic to his son’s pain but doesn’t really see any hope for Maedhros, and tries to say that it’s hard, but that sometimes you have to accept that you’ve lost someone you love to evil and they’re not coming back. Fingolfin’s lost his brother (who he still has complicated feelings about. Aulë has lost people. Even Manwë has lost his brother -
That comparison doesn’t go over well and from that moment Fingon isn’t speaking with his father anymore.
When Fingon decides that not knowing is worse than anything he could know about Maedhros’ fate, he goes to Námo and asks whether Maedhros is in the Halls, and Námo tells him that yes, Maedhros is.
He looks for Maedhros. He seeks quiet corners of the Halls, and sings, and hopes Maedhros will hear him, and one day he senses in his spirit that someone else is present near him. He continues to sing, simple things, and then moves to the song he sang at Thangorodrim -
- and Maedhros is there, ragged and shaking and trying with all his might not to look at Fingon. Stop he says. Please, stop. Why must you torment me?
The last thing Maedhros wants is to be reminded that once, he had a chance to do right, that once, he had a chance to recieve mercy and he has thrown it away, to be reminded of the gaping gulf between the person he wanted to be and person he is. You still think you can rescue me? he says with a twisted smile, and holds out his hand. Across the entire palm and to the first knuckle of the fingers, it is charred black. Fingon’s expression goes stubborn and he takes Maedhros’ hand in his own - and then releases his hold in shock. The hand is hot - not as with fever, but as metal newly withdrawn from a forge. Maedhros gives a bitter laugh and disappears.
Fingon cannot find him again.
This brings the story roughly to the start of the part I wrote in response to your last Ask, where Maedhros goes to Nienna and recieves, beyond his hope, mercy and forgiveness and help and healing. That’s not the endpoint of his journey to recovery, but it’s the beginning; it gives him the knowledge that there is someone who can love him absolutely unconditionally, that he’s not beyond redemption. And that gives him the foundation he needs to start facing the people he knew and the people he’s harmed and answering to them and seeking their forgiveness.
The Halls have a will of their own, if you let them; their geography is as much spiritual as physical, and they’ll lead spirits to the people whom they need to resolve things with. Fingon isn’t the first person Maedhros talks to, but he’s one of the first.
*****
FIc snippet
It would have been easier if the Halls had brought him to the Teleri, or even the Sindar. He could bear condemnation from them.
He did not know how to bear it if Fingon turned him away. As he had every right to.
He wanted to flee to some abandoned corner of the Halls and never face Fingon again.
He wanted to lay at his friend’s feet for a year, for a yen, for an Age, and beg Fingon not to despise him forever.
He forced himself to do neither of these things.
Fingon had still not seen him; his eyes were shut, his head bowed to his knees and his lips moving wordlessly, and it was the evident misery in his hunched shoulders that gave Maedhros the courage to kneel down beside him say softly, “Fingon.”
He did not seem to hear. “Fingon. Fingon.” Fingon looked up, made a choked noise of surprise, and grabbed Maedhros by the shoulders, staring into his eyes for a long moment, and then pulled him into an embrace. “Thank you,” Fingon said, low and fervent, and Maedhros knew it was not him that Fingon was addressing.
“You’re all right. I mean - not all right, but - better.” A spirit’s appearance in the Halls drew on both their true condition and their perception of themself. Maedhros was clothed in rags, his hair matted, but his hand no longer burned and he could meet Fingon’s eye with a look that, though still deeply ashamed, was no longer tormeted.
“The Lady of Sorrows has been very kind. Far more than I could ever deserve. Though in truth even to be in the Halls is better than I deserve.”
“Maedhros, surely you cannot believe that you deserve the Darkness?”
Maedhros’ laugh was rueful. “Deserve it? I believe I specifically requested it. Demanded, even! What does it say, that the very worst anyone could do to us would be to take us at our word? But by the end I earned it more in keeping the Oath than in breaking it.”
The question refused to be suppressed. “Maedhros, why? We beseiged Angband for over four hundred years without attempting regain the Silmarils, and the Oath did not trouble you then, yet the moment one was in the hands of Elves - ” Fingon paused. “Maedhros, please tell me it was not because of my death.”
Maedhros’ words came halting. “I blamed myself. I blamed the Valar. I blamed the Doom. I told myself that abandoned you again, this time to your death. I told myself that if this was how I was repaid for trying to win the war, if the Powers had mandated that any attempt to do good could only turn to evil and the destruction of all that I loved, then they had no right to judge me for doing ill. I told myself that I had chosen war on Angband to avoid war on Doriath, and if they were going to punish me for that choice, well, then they were in no position to complain when I made the other.
“I was wrong. We were not wrong to fight Angband, but on my part the Fifth Battle was waged in service of the Oath, and everything done in its service turns to ill. Good becomes evil. Evil becomes…worse. The words we intended to drive us against Morgoth turned to his service, and we did his work.
“I am sorry for what I have done. I will spend the rest of Time being sorry for it. We should have thrown ourselves against the walls of Angband and died there rather than ever again raising our swords against our kin. You have every right to despise me.”
Fingon, lacking words, took Maedhros’ remaining hand and lifted the burnt palm to his lips. “I will not leave you. I hate what you have done - I would rather have seen you dead on my blade than do any of, though that would have killed me - but I will not leave you.” He wrapped his arms around Maedhros again. “Please don’t disappear again.”
“I won’t.”
The dead have times of rest of thought, even if it not what the living would call sleep. A little time later found Fingon resting with his back against a pillar and Maedhros curled on the floor, his head pillowed on Fingon’s feet and an expression of deep contentment in his face.
*****
My thoughts on Aredhel and Maedhros are in the Halls are largely covered in this post.
*****
Turgon, in contrast, is exceptionally angry at Maedhros, especially about the Third Kinslaying, and not at all inclined to forgive or to care for apologies. This is also wrapped up in Turgon’s own guilt about the Fall of Gondolin. He feared that he had left the remnant of his people defenseless against Morgoth, but Ulmo found a way to protect them through the waters at the Mouths of Sirion; instead, they were defenseless against Maedhros and his brothers. And to Turgon, Maedhros’ renunciation of both the Oath and the Silmarils after his death is meaningless, because he did so only after he had lost any possibility of achieving the Oath or obtaining the Silmarils. How can it mean anything to renounce evil only after you’ve lost the ability to commit it or to gain anything from it?
Maedhros and Turgon have an intense conversation on these points (well, intense on Turgon’s part) while Maedhros is in the Halls. Maedhros, for his part, while he does want to apologize and beg forgiveness, does not really have any expectation that Turgon will forgive him; his hope in his early conversations with both Turgon and Fingolfin is mainly to arrange a detente where the Nolofinwëans can get back on good terms with each other by dint of all of them agreeing to just not talk about Maedhros (who is the primary subject of contention between them). This, he does succeed at.
I would LOVE to read a fic or just hear your headcanons on maedhros or maeglin in the halls of mandos, becoming elves again after they 'made themselves' into orcs. I think your idea is fascinating!
I’ve had a mental fanfic about Maedhros’ time in the Halls in my head for a long while that I never managed to write down. Your question’s given me the impetus to put one part of it on the page, so thank you for that. Beyond that snippet, I’ve added some headcanon.
I have written very little fanfic before, so I’m very nervous about this.
The burning in his hand, sharper even than the fires into which he cast himself, had not abated with his death, not even in the Halls where all sensation was muted. It was not the flesh that had offended the holy jewel, not skin and blood and bone. It was the spirit that was corrupt, and the spirit that burned.
It enforced clarity. It meant that he could not deny the knowledge as his brother had, his brothers who had laughed at him when he had looked in their faces and shrunk back at seeing their eyes. Faces that might have still passed for Eldar at a brief glance. Eyes such as those he had seen in Angband.
The pain was a small thing in comparison to this knowledge.
He had feared it, during his imprisonment, more than any other danger. Needlesly. Morgoth had needed to do nothing at all. This was their own work, their own craftsmanship.
In any moment, the knowledge was nigh unbearable. In the measureless time the Halls offered, it was unimaginable. He might go a year, a hundred years, ten thousand, with nothing but the knowledge of what he had become.
When he could endure the knowledge no longer, he sought Nienna and cast himself at her feet. He could not look at her, could not raise his eyes from the floor, but managed to find strength for a voice scarce above a whisper. “Is there any hope? For any of us?”
Her voice was low, and deep, and gentle. “Look at me.” He raised his face a little, paused, forced himself to look up, and then collapsed back to the ground without meeting her eyes. She was Ainur; she could not be ignorant of what he was when he lay before her, whether he met her eyes or not. But he could not bring himself to; could not bring himself to see in her eyes the same revulsion and horror he felt in his whole being. “I have no right to seek you. I know what I have made of myself, and it is a thing abhorrent to Eru, and to the Valar, and to myself.”
Her voice remained unchanged, still gentle. “Maedhros. Look at me.” He dragged himself to his knees and, trembling, met her eyes, looked away in disbelief, then met them again, seeing no horror there but only love, and compassion, and measureless sorrow. “How-? How can you -?” he choked out.
“My siblings and I each have our own cares and loves. The seas are Ulmo’s, the winds Manwë’s, the plants and animals Yavanna’s. The lost and the broken are mine, and how should I not love them?” She placed a hand gently on his head. “There is always hope. Will you give me your hand?”
It was more claw than hand, charred and blackened across the palm and to the first joint on the fingers, and still clenched as it had been when he held the Silmaril, but he placed it in her own, and she began to weep. And as her tears fell on it a steam went up, and it began to cool, and the pain faded at last.
And then he was in her arms and she was weeping over him, her tears running through his hair and down his face and across his shoulders, and it seemed that by this his own tears were loosed and he too began to weep, choking out confessions of all things done and suffered in the past centuries, in no order or sequence. His sword at Sirion, plunging through the chest of a soldier who had stood by him in every battle of the long Siege. Flames at Losgar. The wrath and despair that consumed him after the Nirnaeth, crying if all we do must turn to evil whether we will or no, how may we be blamed for doing it? Salt and blood at Alqualondë.
He clung to her like a lost child, and sobbed harder at this thought. For the abandoned children of Doriath; for all those he had killed, and betrayed, and led into evil. And when at last he was done with weeping, still she held him, and smoothed his hair, and kissed his forehead, and he met her eyes with a gratitude deeper than any words.
He could see now a path forward, for the first time since he had entered the Halls. It was no a pleasant one; the thought of facing those he had killed, those who had suffered by his deeds, terrified him. But it was a path, and that was a greater gift than he had dreamed possible.
That’s all of what I’ve managed to put into fic. My headcanon beyond this is mostly a great many apologies (some of which are accepted, some of which are definitively not) and a gradual process of healing. After quite some time, probably a point after the fall of Ost-in-Edhil, other elves in the Halls start to seek out Maedhros. There are a lot of people in the Halls with regrets and wrongs and mistakes, some greater and some lesser; they find Maedhros a convenient confidant because no matter what they’ve done, he’s done worse and has no right to judge them (and some are inclined to tell him so at length; he’s used to it by that point). For the most part, he doesn’t advise, just listens.
At some point, Maeglin starts talking to Maedhros. Mostly unpleasantly; Maeglin is rather far past the point where he can conceptualize the possibility of being anything but orcish. But Maedhros is by this point pretty much incapable of taking offense at anything, and he’s the one elf in the Halls who’s able to sincerely regard, and treat, Maeglin as not fundamentally different from himself. And over time this relationship manages to pull Maeglin towards being something that more resembles a person, and to at least realize that he doesn’t want to be the way he is and, just maybe, doesn’t have to be the way he is.
Another element of this is that there’s a different part of the Halls where real orcs (i.e. orcs by no fault of their own) go, and Nienna cares for them. Healing is a very long process, but every so occassionally, one of them heals and returns to life as an elf. (With no memory of their previous life; it would be too horrifying for them, and additionally, this is a closely guarded secret because it would cause a great deal of trouble if living elves started speculating about which of their friends and acquaintances were former orcs. So as far as anyone living is concerned, they just come across as former Avari who have been rehoused.) At some point, in a rare exception to this secrecy policy, Nienna tells Maedhros about this and he starts assisting her in this work; just being there as someone to talk to when they’re already well on the way to recovery. As with Maeglin, it’s something that works because Maedhros doesn’t regard them with horror or see them as something fundamentally different from himself.
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