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Nerdanel was seated on a chaise in the grand library of Formenos, a book open on her lap as she contentedly read through one of the histories she did not have in her own library.
"Our people have made lots of history, haven't they, while they were out in Arda?" Maglor said quietly, coming closer.
For the first time in millennia, he was wearing elvish clothes again, soft boots and a cloak that lightly swirled around him. His hair was clean and braided on the sides, his face was calm - more than could be said of him on his wanderings, or in the bar, even. He looked like a real Noldo again.
"They have no idea, of course, of the history that came after them. And I don't think I have the heart to introduce my dear relatives to the horrors that mortal men have wrought, horrors linked with names like Hiroshima or Auschwitz," he said. "Much for me to lament, though, in recent centuries."
She lifted her head, once more shocked by her son's changed appearance.
He looked so much like his father...
"I do not think I have the heart to ask what those words mean, ionen," she said quietly, shifting to make room for him beside her. "Returning to Aman seems to have eased your heart somewhat, has it not?"
Maglor sat, gathering the cloak around him matter-of-factly as if he'd never worn anything else in the meantime.
"It has. No dark doom has befallen me upon my arrival, no emissaries of other Valar have arrived to condemn my presence, and the Lord Mandos' atypical mercy; no warnings have arrived about angry mobs on their way from Tirion, and I am left in peace to reacquaint myself with instruments I haven't seen the like for several ages of the sun. So, I find I start trusting the situation. A bit, at least."
She was just about respond when she heard the heavy sound of footsteps and shouting outside the door. Her hand instinctively took hold of her son's, fearful that there was now a self-fulfilling prophecy at work. Nerdanel's breath stopped as shadows came closer, but when two red heads stalked through the library door, she was up on her feet, giving a cry of relief. Within moments, she was in the arms of her twin sons, inhaling their specific scent of pine and wind.
"Where have you been?" Amras asked quietly, drawing back to look into her face. "You do not normally leave our home with nothing on your back! We feared for you!"
Nerdanel shook her head. "I am sorry, my precious garnets. A friend came and took me away -- but I have brought someone for you to see!"
A hand in each of hers, she turned to Maglor.
Maglor, once again, was at loss for words. This didn't often happen to him. There they were - his youngest brothers, alive and well again. Having stayed in Middle-Earth after all other elves had left, he'd never before seen the miracle of elvish re-inarnation with his own eyes.
He came towards them, neither smiling nor weeping at the sight, incredulous, almost, as if they could go away any moment. As if this might be a good moment to wake up with his head on the table of the roaside diner where he fell asleep.
Amrod left his mother's hand, walking toward Maglor as his elder brother approached them. The last time he had seen Maglor, the had been war around them -- war wrought by their own hands. Maglor holding his hand as he bled freely from a deep, fatal gut wound. Maglor... singing to him, letting him go.
"Cáno?" he said now, staring at Maglor in quiet fear that he would disappear if touched. "Are you truly... standing here?"
Maglor stepped forwards and touched his hand. Alive. Alive and well again. "You are real," he breathed. His eyes went to the other red-headed twin. "And you..." he added, stretching out his hand.
Amras eagerly clasped Maglor's hand with his free hand, his other one never leaving his mother's -- ever the youngest, he clung to her now in the face of this. "I am real, Cáno," he whispered, his eyes bright and wide as he stared at him.
That was too much for Maglor - he reached out, and which each arm, he pulled one of his little brothers close, one to each shoulder, warm and alive and breathing. "Pityo," he murmured into one red head of hair, and "Telvo" into the other. He kept from crying, but only just.
Their arms wrapped around their their brother, hands meeting behind his back to clasp tight. Amras could not keep his tears from falling, but Amrad valiantly did. The two held him in their arms, as tightly as they could, one sobbing and the other silent.
Nerdanel hugged herself, her tears quietly falling as she watched her sons.
Her sons.
Her heart welled, filled to bursting with the joy she felt at this sight.
~~~
They were sitting on a tree, on a crag above Formenos, and Maglor was showing off to his little brothers. Well, he hadn't meant to show off, really, but he found that his tales of human history astounded them, and so he kept them coming.
"... he became really infamous later on, but I always thought he only meant well. Completely crazed and off his mind, of course," he was concluding his tale.
Amrod, curled against his twin, shook his head. "Such strange things Men came to do."
"Yes," Amras agreed. The youngest son looked to Maglor, his grey eyes curious. "Brother, did you never wed in all those years? Have children of your own?"
Maglor laughed. "All the powers preserve me from the curiosity of little brothers!" he declared. "No, I didn't. Who should I have had children with? A mortal woman? There were no others; and why should I spring any more half-elves onto the unsupecting world? Bind my soul to a woman who'd go beyond at her death, and leave me for ever? No, I didn't think I'd have to inflict that on myself. Or them."
Amrod nodded. "You are wise, Cáno."
"But lonely," Amras said quietly, sadly. At least they had been with each other -- in life, death, and life again.
"I could have come here, and accepted my punishment, whatever that would have been," Maglor said, soberly. "Instead, I stayed out there in Arda Marred, and was lonely among generations and generations of mortals. That, maybe, was my punishment after all. And loneliness wasn't always the worst option, considering the sort of companions I've just told you about."
"But you are here now!" Amras chirpped happily, shifting from one brother to the other, ever affectionate and child-like in his demeanour.
"Many things do not change," Amrod said with a chuckle, brushing his fingers through hair just a shade darker than his own. The only difference between them, really.
"Things didn't change much here, no," Maglor said, happily settling back with a little brother in his arm. "It is almost scary - I just have been out there for the whole of human history, and there's still that tiny dent in the jamb of the library door where Russandol missed the turn with that new, what did he call it, that weird hunting weapon? in his hand. That's spooky, you know."
Amrod laughed. "You should visit his old room. The drawers still contain all his trinkets and letters -- the poems he wrote for our cousin." His eyes became wistful. "It is as if they will come riding into the paddock, whooping and calling to each other, stealing a kiss--"
"Amrod!" The younger twin glanced from Maglor to Amrod.
Maglor buried his face in the red hair by his shoulder, and breathed deeply. "I still miss them," he said. "And I'm not going to snoop in his personal things - that would be very painful. As if I could now, because they're both in the Halls, and not likely to be let out before the world is made again. I thought of them sometimes; I even told that strange human about them, odd as it seems."
He looked at both his brothers, and then said, "We were together to the end of the First Age, Russandol and I - we stole the Silmaril together, from the camp of the forces of Aman, and then made our ways with one, separately, each not admitting defeat to the other. I think he chose death over loneliness because there was somebody waiting for him in the Halls. I don't know how things work there..."
Amras shook his head, hugging Maglor close. "Our Russandol is alone in the Halls, except for our father and brothers. Findekáno was sent back some centuries ago. He was released from the Doom of the Noldor. He had been a good king, who had only wanted to save his people. He came back. Alone. And he has remained alone. It is so sad. Sometimes, he comes to Formenos and sits in that room, Cáno -- sits there and reads those poems and touches the pillows..."
"I will have to go quietly, then, and see him while I'm here," Maglor said, taking a deep breath to keep the impulsive tears from his eyes. "I would say I'd plead with the Lord Mandos in that place where we were, but he would not even consider letting another of our brothers go in order to get our mother to --- do what he had asked of her. So he wouldn't..."
He shook himself, trying to close his mind to the ideas and possibilities his mind kept churning up, and finally had nothing to turn to but the pity and the pain. "All the more reason for me not to go there," he said, wiping tears with the back of his wrist, ignoring them otherwise. "Do you think our father knew?" he asked, just to turn his mind away from Russandol, Findekáno, and how much they had to be missing each other.
Amrod shrugged. "I do not think he knew he had seven sons, brother," he said bitterly.
"He loved us," Amras whispered. He clung a bit harder to Maglor. "Mother knew. As did Grandfather. If Father did not know, then he chose not to know."
"He loved the idea of having sons, but did he really love us, once he had us?" Maglor said, feeling argumentative. And preferring to think about his father, rather than his brother, their cousin, their love, and the fact they were still apart, and would probably be for the rest of the world's lifetime.
Amras sat back and glared at his brothers. "How could he not love us if he went through the trouble of having seven? It is more than just the idea -- Mother would not bear a child she did not think it would be loved!"
Amrod's posture showed he and his sibling had this argument often, and his eyes became unreadable. "Mother is pregnant."
"She is not!" the other twin snapped. "She would tell us if she were."
"You never had much of a second sense, brother," Amrod sighed. "She is with child." He turned his gaze to Maglor. "You know."
Maglor actually chuckled, even though his eyes were still wet. "You've always known how to crack people between you, easily, like so many mallorn seeds," he said. "There is still no resisting you - yes, she is."
No point in hiding it from them; they would soon see, anyway.
Amrod laughed as well. "We were the youngest. You and Russandol always babied us."
"Another child?" Amras was still stuck on the baby thing. "Perhaps we shall have a sister."
"Perhaps it is better to ask who fathered the child," Amrod prodded.
"Perhaps it is better not to ask," Maglor said, deciding to tell Nerdanel about this conversation as soon as they came back to the house. Of course, he realised, knowing his little brothers, that answer just now made things even more interesting.
Oh, it did. Amras, ever a child, wrapped his arms around Maglor. "Is it one of the Noldor? Grandfather Mahtan will be displeased if she has taken a Telerë or a Vanya as a spouse."
"Not an elf, even," Maglor said, putting an arm around Amras and pulling him close. "This is really going to shock you, little one; no jokes about it."
Amrod watched his twin. Of the two of them, it was Amras who had always been able to get any of his brothers to do for him. Be it tell a secret, steal a sweet, or take blame, just a hug and those eyes -- and Amrod did not mind. Amras was... special.
"Tell us, Cáno. Are we to have a Peredhel as a half-sibling?" Amras asked, cuddled close.
"Think the other direction," Maglor said, and then gave up. "It was the Lord Mandos - that is what he did our mother huge favours for. Like finding me and bringing me to her."
The twins became very, very still.
"One of the Valar?" Amras whimpered.
"No," Amrod said, his voice trembling ever so slightly. "Not just a Vala. Mandos -- Mandos is one of the Aratar!"
Amras began to tremble in Maglor's arms.
"It's rather overwhelming," Maglor admitted, holding on to one little brother, and inviting the other to his other shoulder with a gesture. "She's not just hiding from petty scandal here, you know."
Amrod accepted the invitation, curling himself around their brother as the twins used to during storms late in the night. "Why does this not frighten you?" he asked quietly.
"I have spoken to the Lord Mandos, and to other powerful entities that live in that place. One of them put Mother and me up for the first night, even. And I have seen Mother make the decision, and promised my support for whatever she would do; so I am used to the thought. That place where we are does things to your perspective."
"Can we come back with you?" Amras looked up at Maglor, his eyes full of pleading.
"You can if the door lets you pass," Maglor said. "But if you can't pass it, we can't force it; the place has a will of its own. That rather purple god who's Mother's good friend, and mine as well, told us he was stuck in another world for a while because he tried to help somebody escape from there that wasn't meant to - how much worse would it be to force somebody's entrance?"
Amras nodded his silent understanding. "Will you come back to us often?"
Maglor hugged them both. "I will need help every time I come and go, as this isn't where I came from, but yes, I will come as often as I can. Either the Lord Mandos or my purple friend will help me."
Amrod looked up at the darkening sky. "Do you think Mother is expecting us for supper?"
"Definitely!" Maglor said. "Yes, let us think about supper, and not huge plots of doom that we can't change even if we tried."