Chapter Text
He falls asleep holding his mother's limp hand.
The room they have laid her out in is too big for her, white marble walls and delicate tapestries that Maeglin's eyes slide off of whenever he tries to study them. The sheets on the bed are almost translucent with how light they are, so white against her dark skin, and Maeglin wants to tear them away and replace them with the thick wools that she used to wrap around his shoulders in the evenings, the lopsided and lumpy quilt she had taught him to make one winter when the snow had closed them in and the fuel for the forges ran so low his father closed them for near a month. She should be covered by the dark blues from the woad that grows down by the river, not pale white sheets so sheer that he can still see her beneath them.
He falls asleep holding her hand, with the thin sheets still over her body.
He wakes up when the door opens, clutching at her hand as he turns to see Turgon. He is in armour, plate that matches the rest of these endless rooms of clean white stone and intricate tapestries depicting scenes Maeglin doesn't recognise, and his hand rests on the hilt of a sword at his hip. "Maeglin," he says. "Ëol's sentence has been decided. I will deliver it now."
Maeglin makes himself nod, and ask. Turgon's eyes skip briefly to the bed. "In Gondolin, the penalty for kinslaying is death."
Maeglin doesn't think he knows what the penalty was back home.
He lets go of his mother's limp hand, tucking it back beneath too-thin sheets, and makes himself get up and follow Turgon out of the room. The city is an endless blur around him as he walks, streets and houses and courtyards all passing him by like the imaginings of a story he's being told. The sound of his feet on paved stone is muffled, barely even there.
It all coalesces into focus when he finds himself standing on the cliff edge. The wind screams at him from the endless drop beneath his feet, and his father's words flay the skin from him until he stumbles from the force of them as they are spat at his feet.
One of the guards steps in front of him as his father makes a desperate lunge towards him, and Maeglin isn't sure whether to be grateful or disappointed as his father is tossed over the cliff edge and it is only him that falls.
The wind isn't strong enough to cover up Ëol's screams.
He thinks that someone tries to talk to him as they walk back down, Turgon yards ahead down the steep path, but Maeglin isn't sure if he responds. He is sure that the two guards walking in front and behind him introduced themselves at some point, but he cannot remember their names. Everything is sharply in focus now, so sharp that it hurts, and he thinks he could estimate the distance between the blade at the hip of the guard behind him and his own back down to the inch.
They return to the endless white stone and paved streets, people stopping and staring as their party winds their way through from courtyard to courtyard and neverending stone upon stone. The chill of that screaming wind seems to have settled deep into his bones, shivers still rolling through him with every step.
They disappear entirely when he steps back into that cold room where the sheets are too thin, and his mother is gone.
The cold stone floors drop out from beneath him entirely.
"Where is she?"
The bed has been stripped. The bowls and bandages and endless medicines that the healers had become more desperate with every passing hour as the poison spread, once scattered across the room, have been cleaned away. There's nothing left but cold stone and those tapestries he doesn't understand.
"Where is she?"
He's in an atrium without knowing how he got there. Everyone is slowly rising to their feet from the low sofas precisely arrayed around the room, matching frowns on their faces, but Maeglin can't look away from Turgon, still in his armour, as he closes the gap between them step by step.
"They've taken the body to prepare it for burial," he says quietly. His face is set in stone, barely a crack in it.
Maeglin thinks he might be one solid tap of a hammer away from flaking apart completely.
"What…what are they doing to her?" Maeglin makes himself ask. "What do they need to…to prepare?"
Turgon's frown deepens. "Maeglin, you don't need to worry about it. I have people who will take care of all of this. We'll bury her…" He takes a breath, and his face hardens even more. "We'll bury her at the end of the week. The stonemasons have promised a tomb fit for…well, for her. It’s all taken care of.”
He steps forwards and sets one hand firmly on Maeglin’s shoulder.
Maeglin flinches.
He doesn’t mean to, he doesn’t, but he can’t help himself. He knows nothing good will come of it, but he’s been here only three days and nothing is as he expected, as his mother described in all her stories, and he could tell it was going to be difficult enough with his mother standing right beside him and giving him a foothold in this strange city of endless stone, but now she is gone, and his father fell to his death not two hours ago on the orders of the man standing in front of him now, the uncle he never met until two days ago, and Maeglin knows that Turgon didn’t push Ëol over the edge himself because he was there, he watched , but somewhere in his mind a part of him has decided that the hand settling on his shoulder is the same as the one that was placed between his father’s shoulder blades and pushed , and so…
So, he flinches. Skittering back away from Turgon, slipping on the lush rug underfoot. He can feel his heart beating so fast in his chest that it might escape him entirely. Turgon’s frown deepens. “You don’t have to worry about anything, Maeglin,” he says. He takes a step back, putting a few feet between them. “You’re the son of my sister, and I will look after you here.”
“Turgon,” one of the others says quietly, exchanging a glance with the golden-haired lord seated next to him. Something passes between them too quickly for Maeglin to catch, but he’s quick enough to know that it’s nothing good.
Turgon nods to him. “Of course,” he says over his shoulder. “Maeglin, I must make it clear again that the location of this city is a secret that cannot be lost, and as such, you must stay here. I’m afraid that is the law of Gondolin.” He smiles slightly, and Maeglin can tell immediately that there is little sincerity behind it. “But you are amongst family here, of course, and Gondolin is the best place for you now. You're safe here now.”
Maeglin’s throat is dry. If he talks, he’ll only embarrass himself, so he just nods. Turgon clears his throat. “We’ll find somewhere for you to fit in here, Maeglin. Somewhere to be of use.”
Maeglin can hear the implications in that, as clear as day. It is nothing that he is not used to, after all.
He makes himself take a measured breath. He can work with this. He can survive this. He has to.
0-o-0-o-0
The first time he steps through the doors into one of Gondolin's forges, something settles just a little beneath his skin. He might be surrounded by strange customs and endless stone and people that just don't quite make sense , but he understands metal. He knows the rhythms of a forge, the way the bellows breathe and the hammers sing and how it all makes sense, if only for a few beats at a time.
"If you would like to apprentice here, then we can arrange that," Turgon says as Maeglin breathes in the smell of coal fires and solder. "Have you worked much in smithing?"
Maeglin watches a blacksmith pull a rod of iron out of the coals and begin to work it on the anvil. "My father taught me," he says quietly. "He was a very talented smith."
Turgon doesn't say anything. He never does, the rare moments when Maeglin finds himself bringing up Ëol.
Turgon keeps a careful few feet between them, even as Maeglin turns and begins to walk past him to look through the hall. Maeglin has noticed him doing that. He doesn't blame him. He looks in the mirror each morning and even though everyone has always said he looks so much like his mother, it's his father's eyes that stare back at him.
The last time he saw those eyes, they were disappearing over the edge of a cliff.
Maeglin makes himself push those thoughts away and focus on someone working on tempering steel. He has to survive this. He has to find some sort of space here for himself, because it has been made abundantly clear that there is nowhere else that he can go.
He has to make the best of this, somehow.
Someone's hammer is out of rhythm. Maeglin turns, watching the smith work. The metal isn't quite the right shade, a red instead of the dark orange he knows it should be, and the sound of the hammer striking the metal is discordant enough to make him wince.
The smith pulls back, and picks up the piece with their tongs.
"Don't!"
Maeglin is too late. The piece drops into the quenching bucket amidst a cloud of steam. A moment later, and a massive crack echoes through the halls as the piece, far too brittle, shatters into pieces and the bucket explodes.
Maeglin steps out of the way of the sudden rush of water across the stones. "What was that?" Turgon asks.
"My King-"
"It was too cold," Maeglin answers without thinking. "The structure wasn't right for quenching, and the metal was far too brittle to withstand the temperature change."
Turgon turns to him. "How did you know that?"
Maeglin is suddenly aware of the eyes of nearly a dozen smiths on him. "The sound wasn't right," he says quietly. "I just knew."
Turgon hums. "Come with me, Maeglin. I'll show you the King's forges beneath the palace. There will be work for you there."
Maeglin turns to follow him out, as the smith picks up pieces of the bucket behind him.
Turgon's palace rises endlessly above them as they approach through the wide city streets. In the sunlight now rising over the never-ending circle of mountains penning them in, the spire of the palace gleams so bright that Maeglin can't look directly at it.
Turgon doesn't look directly at him as he speaks, but Maeglin can't bring himself to care all that much. Sometimes he sees Turgon out of the corner of his eye and for a moment sees his mother in the dark brown of his skin, the long braids of his hair when left unbound, and his chest aches so much he thinks he could carve into it and it would hurt less.
The palace forges are more extensive than Maeglin could have ever believed or hoped for. He is lost in them within days. The other smiths don't talk to him much, but Maeglin lets himself get lost in the rhythms of forging blade after blade, some semblance of normalcy in a place that seems so foreign still.
He can't quite find it. He is standing on the cliff edge with just his toes digging in for purchase, and one wrong movement will send him plummeting and shattering to pieces on the rocks below.
Maeglin reminds himself that he is no stranger to this, as he sets a fire in one of the forges and shovels in coal. He knows what it is to have to be perfect, and he's well practiced. He can balance this.
He lies awake at night, staring up at the expansive canopy over his head, and makes himself breathe until it feels like he's not just going to drift away.
0-o-0-o-0
He first sees her in the library.
It's been nearly a month since he first walked through the seven gates of this city, a month since he stepped up to the cliff edge and never stepped back from the precipice, and he is searching through dusty tomes when he sees a gleam of golden hair through the shelves.
He thinks she was there at the funeral, thinks he saw a glimmer of gold out of the corner of his eye, but he doesn't remember much beyond the grinding of stone as the lid of the tomb slowly closed over her shroud-covered face. But she hadn't talked to him, hadn't done anything but stand there with tears in her eyes, and then she was gone before he could do anything to try and move from where his feet were rooted to the ground.
But now he seems a gleam of gold through the shelves, and then Idril appears around the corner, almost running into him. "Oh!" she says. "Maeglin. I'm sorry, I didn't see you there."
"It's fine," Maeglin says quietly.
Idril smiles up at him, and then glances down at the book in his hands. "Oh, did you know that book is out of date? We have some more recent copies, if you would like."
Maeglin tries not to flush as he looks down at the book in his arms. It's a brief introduction to Gondolin's history, the finding of the vale and building of the city by Turgon and his people. "It's fine for somewhere to start, of course," Idril is saying with a smile. "I imagine that there is a lot about this city that is strange to you."
Maeglin glances down at his feet. "There is a lot to learn, my lady."
"Oh, please call me Idril. We are cousins after all." She reaches out and gently squeezes his arm. "Let me find you a few more books that are more recent."
Maeglin can't help but follow her through the towering shelves, edging past a few scholars bent over their desks who barely notice them go past. He can still feel the imprint of her hand on his forearm. His shirt sleeve had ridden up a little, reaching for that last book, and her fingers had just grazed the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. He reaches over and presses his thumb into the same spot until the tingling of her feather touch quietens.
Idril leads him to a row of books, just above her head. "Here," she says, going up on tiptoes to reach for one. "These contain copies of the original plans made for Gondolin, if I can just-"
"Let me," Maeglin says quietly. He reaches up behind her and pulls out one of the books. "Thank you. This will be helpful."
"It's lovely to see you interested in our home," Idril says as she flips the book open to what looks like a set of early blueprints for the palace. "I hope that means you're beginning to settle in here a little."
Maeglin doesn't know what to say to that. How to explain the precarious footing that has him staring down at the rocks far below. He thought the smithing might provide some sort of rope, something to hold him back from the edge, but the moment he steps outside of the forges it all turns insubstantial again.
He has no idea what he's doing here. He needs to find something else to keep him in place. If he can work out how this city runs, if he can just understand all the things around him that don't quite make sense, the obsession people seem to have with jewelleries or why it seems so important that they build in white stone, the upcoming festivals that don't fall anywhere near the days that he's expecting to be celebrated, then perhaps he can find another way to be useful.
If he can make himself useful, if he can make himself indispensable…
He needs everything he can find to make sure Turgon doesn't look at him and just see his father.
Idril's hand covers his, on the page of the book. He jumps at the gentle touch, nearly dropping the book entirely, and can feel his cheeks heating up at what he's sure must be such a pitying gaze. "How are you doing, Maeglin?" she asks quietly. "This must all be very hard."
Maeglin doesn't trust his voice to hold. He just nods sharply.
"I don't know if you know this, but I lost my mother when I was young," Idril says quietly. "She fell through the ice when we crossed the Helcaraxë." She gently squeezes his hand. "I know it doesn't seem like it right now, but it does get easier." She grimaces slightly. "Well, it gets less painful. You'll be able to remember the good things more than the bad. It won't ever be easy, I'm afraid, but it does us no good to try and forget them."
"I know," Maeglin gets out.
Idril hums. She gently takes the book out of his hands and sets it to one side. "We'll come back for this later. I have plenty of stories about Aredhel, if you would indulge me."
Maeglin is helpless to resist her. She links her arm through his and walks him out through the city, and even though every story she tells carves deeper into his chest until he feels like all of his ribs have been stolen from him, he can't look away from her smile as she talks.