Chapter Text
The workshop looked as if it had recently contained a small to medium sized explosion.
That concerned Gil-Galad a great deal less than what had been left in the wake of that explosion.
Namely, a very small peredhel currently perching catlike on one of the few sets of shelves still standing and who was hurling every throwable object in reach at a wincingly placating Annatar.
The thrown objects were accompanied by what he first interpreted as a yowl, which was really only reinforcing the cat impression, right up until he belatedly realized it was actually a wail, at which point he had to remind himself that it was not at all appropriate for him to throw things at an emissary of a Valar.
Even if he was almost entirely certain that, despite the seeming impossibility of the thing, the very small peredhel in question was Elrond.
Still. He was king. Kings did not throw things. Kings very calmly and not at all frantically demanded, “What happened?”
Elrond’s wail at last became intelligible words. “He lied!”
Gil-Galad switched his gaze to Annatar.
The maia was holding his hands out in a conciliatory fashion. “Dear Celebrimbor and I have been working on some things to better help Men preserve their minds as they age. Perfectly safe for both elves and Men, I assure you. Lord Elrond expressed a natural interest in the research. I had no idea that with his . . . unique nature . . . it would react this way to his touch.”
“It exploded,” Gil-Galad said flatly.
“Not at all!” Annatar assured him. “It merely . . . affected his fea in an unexpected way. And it seems his hroa followed. At which point, he was unsurprisingly distressed . . . “
Gil-Galad reconsidered the explosion in the context of a highly frightened descendant of Luthien.
“ . . . and I am afraid that the resulting . . . incident . . . led to it . . . ”
Gil-Galad redirected his attention to the scorch marks on the workbench as Annatar very visibly searched for a word that was not “exploding.”
“And at which point in this process did you lie to him?” he asked pleasantly.
Annatar winced even more deeply. “He asked where his brother was,” he said apologetically.
Gil-Galad went very, very still.
He remembered, very clearly, just how closely the twins had stuck to each other in the early days of their being sent to Balar.
He remembered, very clearly, the grief on Elrond’s face when Elros had sailed.
And he remembered, very clearly, the grief that even still had not vanished when the bond between them at last had fully snapped.
“I’m afraid in my distraction that I said that was an interesting theological question.”
And Elrond, even at this age, had put the pieces together between that statement and the aching void Gil-Galad was sure he still felt in his soul when he reached for his brother.
Maiar, he had to remind himself very firmly, did not view death as Men or elves did. Annatar had not intended his statement to lead to . . . this.
This was even now changing. Whatever expression was on Gil-Galad’s face must have convinced Elrond that it was not a lie after all because there were no more objects being thrown from the shelf.
Unless, of course, you counted Elrond himself, who was slowly but surely turning the color of bleached bone and sliding inexorably off the shelf.
Gil-Galad sprang for him, catching the far too light body just in time.
“Fix this,” he ordered Annatar, clutching Elrond to his chest. Elrond had gone deathly quiet, and he had to move his hand on Elrond’s back until he could feel the heartbeat through the ribs just to be sure it was still pumping.
It was not the correct way to talk to an emissary of the Valar.
Gil-Galad did not have enough left in him to care.
Several hours later, he still had not determined what precise age this version of Elrond was.
This failure was mainly because of what else he had discovered. Namely, that this version of Elrond did not want to talk.
Or eat. Or sleep. Or do anything, really, but curl up into the smallest ball he could manage and block out the rest of the world.
He did not object to Gil-Galad talking. Or singing. Or pacing.
He did object, after those first few moments, to being touched. Gil-Galad had set him down in the window seat of his borrowed office the moment he could. As far as he could tell, Elrond hadn’t moved since.
He also objected to Annatar’s entrance. At least, that’s what Gil-Galad assumed the infinitesimal tensing of his shoulders meant. It was tempting to drag Annatar into the hallway to just meet there, but that would mean leaving Elrond alone, and Gil-Galad felt . . . uneasy about that.
(The window was narrow. The window was covered with beautifully stained glass that some of the artisans here had apparently been experimenting with. The window was not that high off the ground, really, as elves usually considered things.)
(On the other hand: Elwing. Maedhros.)
(Even if Elrond currently remembered only one of those formative experiences, Gil-Galad was not in the mood to take any risks.)
“You have a solution?”
Annatar shook his head mournfully. “I have a better idea of what went wrong,” he corrected. “A solution will likely take weeks. Longer, perhaps. It is a good thing you accompanied Lord Elrond on this visit; I am not sure a messenger could have found Celebrimbor in time.”
Gil-Galad paused in his pacing. “In time,” he repeated.
“Since the dwarves have been so reluctant to share the location of their sacred places to others in the past . . . ?” Annatar’s voice hinted gently, embarrassed to repeat what Gil-Galad already knew.
He knew full well why a message might take a while to find Celebrimbor; the complications of Celebrimbor’s expedition with the dwarves of Khazad-dum falling, he was assured unavoidably, in tax year, coinciding with a few mix-ups in delegation and communication . . .
But “in time.”
Were the effects going to get worse or - ?
“He’s a child,” Annatar said, very slowly, in response to the confusion Gil-Galad feared was on his face. “His fea will need to be nurtured. Preferably by a relative.”
“That’s just superstition,” he protested.
Annatar looked at him very oddly.
“ . . . I’ve heard,” Gil-Galad tacked on, like an elf who had certainly had two very present and alive elvish parents to nurture him throughout his childhood, and not at all like a feral former fugitive who had been raised by human bandits in the woods.
“From whom?” Annatar asked incredulously.
“Elrond,” he said after a slightly too long pause. He flicked his eyes hopefully to the child on the window seat; Elrond hadn’t so much as twitched. “He survived the first time around, didn’t he?”
“Yes,” Annatar agreed after an equally baffled pause. “Forgive me for any indelicacy here, but you do realize that no matter how forsworn the sons of Feanor may be, they do still count as relatives . . . ?”
Right.
And Gil-Galad . . . did not.
Which shouldn’t matter, he told himself firmly. He had survived, hadn’t he? And he was perfectly fine.
Perfectly alive, at any rate. And any of his various moral shortcomings were just down to his personal failings. And the more practical side of his upbringing.
Definitely.
His eyes flicked worriedly to the very pale, very still, very small figure in the corner.
"I'm sure we'll manage," he said.
Annatar looked between the two of them doubtfully. "Of course," he said. "If there is anything I can do to help . . . ?"
"Just focus on fixing this," Gil-Galad said firmly. "I can handle things here."
"Please," he said quietly. "Please, Elrond, please eat. It doesn't have to be this. There's a whole city of elves who would be delighted to get you anything you liked."
He had thought he was good with children. He had looked after the little ones when he was young: played with them, protected them, taught them to hunt and to fight -
He knew a hundred ways to stretch scanty food further for them, to make rotting food safer for them, to make empty bellies less distracting to them. He knew what to do for a child that was wasting away in front of him, no matter how much the memories still stuck in his throat.
He had thought his worst problem would the nebulous issue of nurturing a fea, and he had tried to convince himself that wouldn't matter at all.
He had not thought he would sit across from a child worn hollow from First Age Beleriand who would look at a literal king's banquet of food and refuse to touch a bite.
"I will get you a literal jar of honey from the kitchens," he said. "I will tear through this city to find someone who still remembers the way they used to make your favorite food in Sirion. I will get you anything you want, but it has been days. You have to eat."
Elrond stayed curled in the window seat that he moved from only when physically lifted. He did not lift his head toward the food.
He had seen it before. In Men. In elves. The turning away from everything; the waiting for what came after.
He had just never seen it in a child before.
In Elrond before.
He knew loss; he knew the horror of standing alone, covered in blood, the only survivor of the band of Men who had raised him. He knew the horror of watching Finrod ride away and hearing what had become of him after. He knew the aching, biting teeth of the feeling.
But always, always, that bite had kept him lunging forward, grasping tighter, doing whatever he could to cling to life.
Gil-Galad was kneeling in front of the window seat. Close enough to Elrond that he could reach out and catch him at any moment; far enough that Elrond trusted that he wouldn't.
So close.
Carefully, fumblingly, he tried to reach his spirit out to Elrond's. Tried to show him the way to hold on.
For just a moment, he brushed Elrond's spirit with his own and felt the void of utter desolation.
Then Elrond's fea flinched hard away from him.
For all that Elrond was only a foot in front of him, Gil-Galad had never felt so far away.
He had felt guilty before about lying about his place in the Finwean family tree.
None of it came close to what he felt watching Elrond slowly wasting away. It didn't matter at this point whether it was his failure to nurture Elrond's fea or his failure to get more than occasional honeyed water down his throat; it was going to steal Elrond away regardless.
He had lied and cheated his way to this point, and if this point got Elrond killed -
No.
He could stay here and pray Annatar finished fixing the device before his own deficiencies got Elrond killed.
Or he could take his company and ride hard for Galadriel.
Probably that would be the end of his masquerade; probably all that sharp edged suspicion in her eyes would turn to certainty and that would be that. Definitely of his career and possibly of his life.
But Galadriel was Elrond’s cousin; Galadriel was a mother. Galadriel would know what to do. Elrond would be alright.
(“I’m sure this isn’t necessary,” Annatar said as Gil-Galad’s guards prepared the horses. Elrond had let himself be hauled like a terrifyingly heartbroken statue onto one of them. “You must be a closer relative to him the sons of Feanor were; surely with a few more days of trying to bond with him - ”)
(He considered just blurting it out. ‘No, actually, he might be more closely related to you, considering that maiar blood.’ Or: ‘No, actually, I wouldn’t know Finwe from a dead toad on the ground.’)
(‘No, actually, there’s something terribly wrong with me. Possible more wrong than there was with thrice kin slaying Feanorians because Elrond's fea keeps flinching from mine like I'm the Enemy himself.’)
(He smiled, instead, with a closed mouth. “I’m really not father material,” he said. “Lady Galadriel, I’m sure, will prove as ferociously competent as always in my stead.”)
(Annatar did not argue with this.)
(There weren’t any Feanorian guards with them. Gil-Galad had insisted after what had happened the last time he had let Elrond bring Farande to Eregion. He wasn’t sure if that was for the better or the worse now; if Elrond would be relieved to have a face he recognized or terrified due to how he recognized it.)
(At least that might be better than the terrifyingly hollow look that was currently in his eyes.)
(But it would be better soon, he assured Elrond. They would reach his cousin Galadriel soon, and wouldn’t that be nice?)
(Elrond remained curled in the tightest huddle he could manage by the campfire. He no longer bothered to wince when he was touched.)
(Possibly he no longer felt he had the energy to. Gil-Galad knew how long elves could last without proper food; as far as he knew, no one had ever fully tested the point with peredhel.)
(He refused to test the point any longer than he had to. He ordered them onward at the very first hint of first light.)
Galadriel met them at the edge of the forest she had made her new home in, so at least the messengers he had sent had managed to find her. She gave her usual shallow courtesies to her nominal king, but her eyes were locked on Elrond.
Now, at last, was the moment to confess.
Gil-Galad slid from his horse. Carefully, oh, so carefully, he helped Elrond down.
His ribs had been less prominent when the Feanorians had sent him to Balar.
“I couldn’t help him,” he said, his quiet voice sounding like the crack of doom through the silence.
“Of course you could not,” Galadriel said.
Of course.
“His fea was orphaned once; it will not accept a replacement again. Not - ” And here, in the face of Elros, even she faltered. “Not under these conditions.”
A different, more dreadful doom wrapped around his heart.
If Celebrimbor had been deemed too difficult to find, then the task of finding the last surviving son of Feanor - finding him now after failing for centuries -
He noticed, dully, that Galadriel had come alone.
And that despite wearing a fine woven cloak against the snap of the late autumn chill she was carrying another one.
And a flute.
“Lady Galadriel,” he said slowly.
“Do you want to help him or not?” she snapped. She paused. “My king.”
“Oh, I want the help,” he said instantly, fervently. “I’ll welcome Maglor into Lindon with open arms if he can do this.”
“Well,” she sniffed. “I don’t know that you need to promise that.”
“Especially since it seems you came well prepared with bribes yourself,” he said, nodding with considerable relief to the goods in her hands.
She looked down at them. “ . . . Yes,” she said. “Bribes.”