This is something I have been curious about writing for a good long while, and something I've not seen much done thus far within Silmarillion fanfiction: a take on Maedhros' post-Thangorodrim recovery, but with the incorporation of some proper physiology and psychology. I do not for an instant believe that Maedhros escaped Thangorodrim unscathed other than for the loss of his hand, and this series will attempt to account for some of the myriad other anatomical and psychosomatic issues that would spring from stress-positions, exposure and torture. Healing is not so simple, guilt is not so poetic; and all too swiftly must Maedhros and his brothers come to acknowledge those bitter truths.

As I have said, I have been interested in writing an exploratory work to this effect for some time, as I have an academic background in biological sciences. Truly I am curious as to its reception, as this is an area often glossed over in fan-works, and indeed in canon itself. So tentatively I post this, and please, do let me know what you think, and if you'd like to read more.

Dedicated to my friend Melanie, who unfortunately could not be saved.

"Was there no other way?"

Fingon sat upon the edge of a bed in an unoccupied infirmary tent. He dabbed at a scrape along his forearm with an alcohol-swabbed rag, his jaw working as he ignored Maglor's question. A terse silence stretched throughout the tent, until once more Maglor asked, "Was there no other way?"

A glimmer of desperation shook in his voice, and pointedly he looked at Fingon, who would not meet his eye in return.

"Finno, please…"

"What do you want me to say?" Fingon snapped, swiping the rag so hard down his arm that the cuts broke open anew. He hissed as the alcohol stung against his flesh, and remorsefully Maglor looked on from beside the tent's quilted entranceway.

"I don't know," Maglor whispered, his gaze dropping. "I don't know. I'm sorry…"

"They should be ready now," Fingon replied dully. He cast the bloodied rag aside onto the bedside table and rolled down the sleeve of his shirt. "Nyériel said to give them fifteen minutes."

"Oh…" Maglor started as if he had been slapped, tight anticipation stabbing though his innards. "R-right…"

Horror clutched at his throat, the sheer dread of what he was going to have to face wrapping around him like coils of strangling rope. That decision, that one unspeakable decision made in regret and anger so long ago now dangled its consequences before him, and he had not the strength to even try to deny his guilt.

With dark eyes Fingon looked over, and tersely he muttered, "You do not have to do this."

Maglor swallowed. "Yes, I do."

"Káno…"

"Don't. Finno, just…just don't. I have to see him. I have to." Maglor inhaled a deep, shaking breath. "He's my brother. He's my big brother, and I cannot just abandon him. I cannot do that again."

With that, an icy resolve seemed to steady within him, and wordlessly Fingon nodded. He rose from the bed, and together they walked the short distance over to another of the healers' many tents, where the source of their sorrows lay.

Bitter purpose pushed Maglor onwards, it forced him to place one foot in front of the other, but as they reached the canvas flaps that draped across the narrow verandah of the tent, that resolve faltered. His hand gripped tightly about a thick tent-post, his knuckles showing white under his skin. Dread knotted in his lungs, his azure eyes glittered, and in silence Fingon watched him.

There was nothing that could possibly be said.

This was something that Maglor would have to decide to do for himself.

After a few shaky breaths, viciously Maglor pulled together what tenuous threads of courage he could, and before doubt or terror could grip him anew he near-lunged inside the tent. Quietly Fingon shadowed his footsteps, slipping in behind him like a solemn little ghost.

"…milk of the poppy, several ounces of witch-hazel, and as many fresh sprigs of athelas as you can find," an authoritative voice was saying. "Boil strips of cloth amid lightly-salted water, and bring with you a needle and thread. Set a brand also to the fire: this wound must be dealt with before necrosis can set in. Do this, I bid you, and with all the haste you can."

"Yes, mistress," came the reply, and as Maglor and Fingon entered the tent proper, a pale-faced apprentice dashed past them, disappearing into the glare of the sunset upon her errands.

Nyériel glanced up as they entered, pausing from where she huddled over a steaming bowl lain atop a wide oaken chest at the foot of the sickbed, which occupied the center of the room. Swiftly she moved over to them, momentarily obscuring Maglor's anxious glimpse of the figure sprawled atop the bedcovers.

"Your majesty, my lord," she nodded tightly in greeting. "We have much work to do tonight, and I am not sure it is best if –"

A wave of desperation slammed through Maglor's stomach, a terrible, perverse urge to just get it over with, to just behold in truth the horrors that he had wrought, to sever this hideous forestalling and all the evil shadows of his imagination. Quickly he stepped aside her, beginning: "Mistress, I appreciate your advice but I – Oh!"

His throat closed painfully, his speech cut off in a strangled choke of dismay as he beheld his brother.

Mercifully Maedhros was unconscious, but that was where mercy ended. Scars lanced over his body: whip lines and knife-marks and faded, pink burns scored over his chest like some obscene tapestry carved of flesh. In erratic punctuations they ridged over his stomach, over his legs, even curling about his pale cheeks. A length of cloth was poised over his waist to preserve his modesty, but against the stark exposure of such abused flesh its serene presence was almost unseemly.

Maglor whined as his eyes skated his brother's body, an unconscious noise of horror flickering out from his deep within his throat.

So thin he was, so wasted; his muscles seemed to have melted from him, stripped down to their barest essentials. The lanterns dotted about the tent's interior cast clotting shadows amid the hollows of his ribs, between the jut of his hipbones, his skin stretched taught over the abnormal concavity of his stomach.

This is all your fault.

Aghast, Maglor's eyes slipped at last from his brother's form, and involuntarily he focused instead upon the dark smears that marked the bed sheets beneath his back; wet, crimson stains seeping through the white cotton. For over Maedhros' back festering wounds were clawed, borne of skin ripped open time and time again against the remorseless shale, and they leaked a foul mixture of pus and blood over the sheets, like crippled wings unfurling beneath him.

You did this. You left him.

Shakily, Maglor pressed a hand over his mouth, his fingertips digging painfully hard into his cheeks to try and quell the nausea that brimmed within him. Despite himself, he staggered as a sudden wave of dizziness washed through him. Fingon quickly stepped up behind him, placing one steadying hand upon his shoulder, and with his cousin's support he braved himself to look once more.

As if caught in the viscosity of some suffocating nightmare, his eyes ran over the knotted brand stamped beneath Maedhros' left clavicle, the abhorrent device picked out in twisted scar-tissue among the scatter of other, deeper marks. At last he could avoid it no longer, and with such crushing anticipation he followed the twisted route of Maedhros' right arm, the muscles there contorted into unnatural bunches beneath his skin.

The gaping emptiness where his brother's hand should have been stopped the breath in his lungs.

Dark, swollen veins lanced up from beneath a ragged tourniquet, a strip of Fingon's tunic torn off and secured tightly around the stump, its blue ribbon soaked in gore.

You did this to him.

Maglor's jaw trembled, and faintness lapped at him once more. Savagely he pushed it aside: he was no stranger to wounds or injuries of the battlefield. He did not have that innocence to profess anymore.

But this…

This was different.

This was so much worse.

Seeing his brother so abused, so mutilated filled him with such anger, such abhorrence and hatred and guilt that the force of them felt like it would cleave his ribcage in two.

"How," he gulped, "how is he still alive?"

Ashen-faced, Nyériel looked up at him, picking apart the fibrous threads of a plant-stem and casting them into the steaming bowl beneath her.

"I do not know," she said solemnly. "They say the ever-life of the Eldar is a gift. But now… Now I am not so sure."

Maedhros' chest rose and fell in shallow little movements, each tiny movement of his ribs highlighted in horrible clarity beneath his skin.

"Is he…is he going to be…"

Looking once more at his brother's right arm, Maglor's words faltered as anger and despair rocked through him anew. The unfinished question hung in the air, and desperately he looked to Nyériel for an answer. Calmly she regarded him, but all the poise and dignity that her craft demanded could not deny the melancholy note that wound through her voice, as gravely she whispered: "I don't know."

Maglor swayed, the cloying scent of the herbs sending his senses reeling. Resolutely Fingon held onto him, keeping him firmly upright, his own mouth set into a tight line at the healer's grim pronouncement.

The brooding silence that fell was shattered by the apprentice's return, an overflowing basket balanced precariously in her arms. Praying that Maglor would not suddenly faint, Fingon darted over to help her, and between them they balanced the basket upon the edge of the chest at the foot of the bed.

"I have brought everything you requested, mistress," the apprentice declared, flicking the golden strands of her hair back from her sweaty brow. "And more besides that may be of use. In the stores I found some powdered peppermint, and some fresh leaves of aloe. The brand is set, and the rags boil as we speak. I will fetch them now."

"Good, good," Nyériel muttered, poring through the basket's contents. She picked out several herbs, and then began crushing them into a bitter-smelling paste within a small mortar.

"My lords," she said, a clinical crispness to her voice as the pestle rolled in her hand. "I know that this is a trying time for you both, but I require either your assistance or your absence. My patient shall not die this night, not under my watch, but I cannot treat him best with you two fluttering around over my shoulder. My sole duty of care lies with the wounded, not to nurse hurt feelings.

The amputation at his wrist must be cauterized. Undoubtedly my lord Fingon has saved his life with the tourniquet by stemming the blood-flow, although from your description of his conditions it is unlikely that there was much vascular integrity left. Nonetheless, the wound cannot be allowed to fester, and I fear that the underlying trauma to the tissue may yet have grave consequences."

Tipping the ground herbs into the bowl, Nyériel moved over to the far side of the bed, crouching upon Maedhros' right. Dipping a rag into the liquid, she began to bathe his marbled skin above the border of the tourniquet, the yellowish flesh there laced with burst capillaries. As the cloth moved over Maedhros' wasted muscles she frowned, and more concernedly she began to probe gently at his arm. Following the swollen pattern of his veins she moved slowly upwards, her eyebrows knotting as she moved over his elbow and up to his biceps.

"He was hanging, you said, my lord?"

"Yes," Fingon replied softly. "By his right wrist he was fully suspended."

Nyériel's frown deepened, and delicately she squeezed at the oddly corded muscles of Maedhros' upper arm. She ran the cloth over the jut of his clavicle, and at the mangled twists of tissue she found patterned over his shoulder her lips tightened.

"My lord," she said softly, looking over at Fingon who was still busy unpacking the basket's almost legion contents. "My lord, if I might request your assistance. I need him held upright for a moment. I must assess his shoulder blade and the condition of his spine."

At the gravity in her voice Fingon was dismayed, and Maglor's eyes widened in alarm.

Quickly Fingon moved over and knelt upon the bed upon Maedhros' left side, facing towards the headboard, and inch by painful inch they lifted his limp torso.

Strips of skin peeled from his back as his shoulders came free of the bedsheets, raw curls of clotted scabs and viscera left sticking to the cloth. Carefully Fingon pulled him up, and Nyériel helped to support his head until at last they overreached the vertical and Maedhros tipped lifelessly forward into Fingon's chest. Into the harsh light of day were thrust the wounds that scraped over his back, and at their extent Fingon heard Maglor choke.

Over the ugly wounds Nyériel wrung out the cloth, dripping the infusion over the inflamed skin there; yet for all their unpleasantness they were not her true concern.

Gently she gripped his shoulder, slowly sliding her hands down his scapula, feeling each knot and whorl of muscle with excruciating clarity beneath his wasted frame. Over the flayed mess of his back she lightly skipped, moving instead to the sides of his ribs, yet even that slight motion sent fresh ribbons of watery blood trickling through her fingers.

"His muscles are badly damaged," she said at last. "Such a stressed position has wreaked havoc upon his physiology; and for one to endure it for so long… The rotator cuff of his shoulder is maimed beyond what I have the skill to repair. His deltoid is torn completely, and it is likely that the rhomboids and his trapezoid have suffered also. By some fortune his spinal cord still seems aligned, although the intercostal muscles of his ribs are desperately weak. The biceps, triceps and adductors will heal with time, but what extent of use he will have of them I cannot say.

What concerns me most, however, is the girdle itself. His clavicle no longer aligns with the scapula; the ligaments here have ruptured under the stress of holding his weight and the entire socket is badly misaligned. Even relieved of the stress now, and under my care, I have doubts as to whether it might ever realign properly. And what damage there is to his nervous system it is impossible to tell. If the axillary nerve has been severed then there is little hope."

"What are you saying, then?" Fingon said, a pleading note creeping through his voice no matter how hard he strove for neutrality.

"My lords, I do not know whether he will ever have use of his arm again. The damage here is too great, and has been inflicted for too long. Even with all of my years of knowledge, I do not know if it can be restored into even the semblance of usage."

A dreadful silence hung in the air and taking a deep breath, Nyériel continued: "Professionally, I would counsel an amputation of the entire limb."

"No!" Maglor spluttered, and Fingon looked on in shocked silence. "No! Please there must be some other way. There must be something else that you can do!"

"I know that this is a distressing time, my lord, but I fear that this will be the consequence in the end. We can wait, and see with time what may come to pass, but I worry that for your brother's sanity it might be more prudent to act now."

"No! No, please. Please, wait until he wakes. Give him time. It will heal, it will heal, I know it…"

"My lord, there is no certainty of that."

"B-but…"

"We wait," Fingon said curtly. "He has endured this far, and I have not lost faith yet that in time he may be healed. I will do all that I can; I will help him with the recovery that will be required, this I swear. But we wait. We will not steal from him this chance of recovery, no matter how slim."

"Very well, if this is your final decision," Nyériel replied sadly. "But I cannot guarantee that you will see the results that you wish for. Set him back down, my lord. There, gently does it. There are other things must be attended to before I dress the wounds upon his back."

The apprentice at that moment returned, a cauldron of bubbling water held before her. Swiftly she set it down upon the chest, and Nyériel moved back over to it, crumbling atop its simmering contents a handful of athelas. Its fragrant, spicy scent wafted through the air, but through its pleasantry Nyériel's voice cut.

"The brand should be heated. Check on it now, and at my call bring it forth."

"Right away, mistress." The apprentice ducked out of the tent once more, this time by its concealed back entrance, and through the breeze-stirred flaps Fingon could just make her out crouching at the ready beside a smouldering campfire.

"Brand?" Maglor asked faintly. "What brand?"

Fingon, having arranged Maedhros' head delicately among the pillows, wiped his hands clean upon a rag and stepped back over to Maglor.

"They must cauterize the wound, Káno. My…severance of his wrist was not sterile. It was done in haste, and for his wrist to heal aright the skin must be sealed."

"Oh…" Maglor sighed, the room for an instant blurring before his eyes, before snapping rigidly back into clarity.

Nyériel moved back to Maedhros' right side, and gently took hold of his arm. Tenderly she began to unwrap the bindings, caught by some awful, morbid curiosity Maglor found that he could not look away, the rhythmic pass of that gore-streaked cloth becoming strangely hypnotic.

At last she eased the cloth free, and with cool professionalism examined the raw stump of his brother's arm. Raw, reddened flesh shone in horrific clarity against the white bedspread, and between the striated mess of sheared muscles and tendons, bone gleamed. As Nyériel began to wipe away the gore with a boiled rag, Maglor's stomach lurched, that curiosity vanished, and in utter revulsion he turned aside.

As if from some great distance, faintly he heard Nyériel remark: "He was fortunate, my lords. His suspension in itself halted much of the blood-flow to the site, and the amputation was smoother than I expected. The carpals split cleanly, and the end of his radius remains intact. A relief indeed, my lords, as it is a much more simple matter of sealing the wound outright that lies before us, instead of the surgery I so feared."

Grimly Maglor nodded, and Fingon's hand gripped tightly about his upper arm.

"The cauterization must be performed now, my lords, before infection can be allowed to set in. Fortunately my patient remains unconscious; but nonetheless the procedure is not…pleasant. I would advise that you leave us, especially you, your majesty. This day has been difficult enough."

"No…" Maglor protested weakly, "No, I have to…"

"Káno," Fingon began, his voice brokering little argument. "Káno, you should go."

"W-what? No, no, I'm fine." A wave of faintness flooded through him once more, and fiercely he pushed it aside, hoping that Fingon would not notice the tremble that shook through his arm. "I'm fine. I – I have to be here. I have to see it. I have to see what my inactions have wrought."

"Káno, this is pointless. Self-imposed punishment will not aid you here, and nor would Nelyo want you to suffer more on his behalf. You do not have to see this."

"But…"

"I will stay with him," Fingon said, half-dragging Maglor towards the tent's exit. "I will stay, and if anything happens, if even the slightest thing goes wrong then I will find you. This must be done, and swiftly, and you have endured enough horror for this day."

With Fingon's fingers clamped around his arm, Maglor was steered through the tent's flaps. Outside, Fingon finally released him, and in vague protest Maglor turned back to him.

"But what about you? Will – will you be all right?"

"I will be fine," Fingon replied gravely. "I will finish what I have started."

Nyériel's call emanated from inside the tent, and Maglor flinched, rocking involuntarily forward on his toes as a vice seemed to crush around his chest.

"Káno, go back to your tent. Send word to your brothers; set the messengers riding without delay. Send them also to my father, and to whomever else you see fit. Will you do that?"

Wordlessly Maglor nodded, and with that sense of purpose a modicum of calm returned to him. No matter how small, here was something that he could do besides fret, and tightly he clung to that, a slender lifeline amid the undertow of helplessness and shock that threatened to drown him.

"I have to go now," Fingon said soothingly, as if talking to an upset child. "I have to go, but I promise you, I will not fail you."

Maglor nodded once more, and Fingon ducked back inside the tent.

The sunset glimmered over the lake's rippling surface upon the far outskirts of the encampment, and against that ruddy glare Maglor shielded his eyes. Wordlessly he walked back to his own tent, and words could not suffice for the broil of emotions that broke within him: terror and loss and guilt and anger cracking and moiling in bitter, acrid warfare at the base of his stomach.

His brother was delivered.

Their rightful king was returned.

But the hurt that he brought back with him was almost more than he could bear.