This is the second installment in my series of oneshots and short stories, The Care and Feeding of Partly Human Children.

I own nothing.

Amon Ereb was a small town on a hill, constructed with rough gray rock and walled by the same. The town was battered by wind, as grim as the earth about it and the mountains rising to its west, and eerily silent. That was what stood out most about it to Elrond, on the first day when he and his brother were brought into the town. Maglor had leaned over them and murmured that he and Maedhros, who rode at the head of the bedraggled party and seemed to be doing his best not to listen, had once lived in a place called Himring. Himring was much like Amon Ereb, but it was located much further north, was much bigger, and was since lost to them.

Was it this empty too? Elrond had wondered numbly, but forbore to say aloud—for all that Maglor had thus far been kind to him and Elros, Elrond had also the image of corpses and blood fixed firmly in his mind and did not trust this nér, gentle though he seemed, not to turn on them. Even if Elros did.

That was the rub, though. Amon Ereb was a grim, rough-hewn little town almost totally devoid of inhabitants. The vast majority of the gray stone houses, great and small, were dark at the windows and empty. Those who remained greeted their Lords warmly enough, but it seemed to Elrond that they looked relieved that the only protectors left to them (for there were no soldiers defending the town when they entered) had returned alive. Being in Amon Ereb felt like teetering on the edge of the world.

But it was where he and Elros were living now. Elros did not seem so bothered by the turn of events that had led to them living in Amon Ereb with the surviving sons of Fëanor, but maybe Elros was better at hiding disquiet behind smiles and good cheer than was Elrond. Somehow though, Elrond doubted that that was the truth of it. Elros had never been good at keeping his feelings off his face. More likely, he'd done all his crying on the way here and could not weep any more.

Himself, Elrond had not wept. Sniffled a bit in the dark when no one else could hear him, but he'd not wept. Weeping would leave him vulnerable, weeping would blind and deafen him, even if only for a few moments, so he did not, and would not. It was not worth the risk. He felt as though a great beast was growing beneath his ribs, threatening to reach forth and devour him at any moment, but he did not weep.

He and Elros wandered the halls of the fortress of Amon Ereb; Elrond would not let him from his sight, not even for a moment, and though Elros complained of always having his hand tugged on and that Elrond wouldn't leave him alone, you could always find the twin sons of Elwing together.

Amon Ereb was a fortress town, a crude, lonely place after the Havens of Sirion. Sirion had been a massive city, home to thousands, though it had not had as many of its people as it once did, thanks to war. Sirion had gleamed bright white, vibrant and beautiful, full of hustle and bustle. The air smelled of salt from the sea lapping at its boundaries, perfumes in the shops, pastries in the bakeries, flowers growing in shaded courtyards and trailing up smooth plastered walls. And what's more, Mama was there. That made Sirion a home in such a way that Amon Ereb could never be.

The wind howled over the rooftops and the battlements, and Elrond thought of a home he wasn't allowed to see, white and shimmering, and seeming more real than the stones around him.

-0-0-0-

There were no other children in Amon Ereb. Maglor had never noticed that before, but then, there were and still are a lot of things he did his best not to notice, so perhaps he could just categorize that under the long list of things he did not notice. The absence of children laughing in the fortress and the town around it was covered up by the howling of the wind. But suddenly it became significantly more important in the wake of the fact that he'd brought two children here with him from Sirion, and that they were the only children in the entire town.

Maedhros had other concerns, greater than his, so Maglor had taken up the task of making sure that Elros and Elrond were properly looked after. That was when it had occurred to him that there were no other children in the town, when he'd tried to procure clean, dry clothing and shoes for them and had only found it among the belongings left behind by Elves who had since departed from their service or had been killed. There were no tailors left in Amon Ereb, and no cobblers, he also noticed—he'd have to send inquiries into the Laiquendi settlements in Ossiriand. Though I have no idea how we'll pay them, he admitted ruefully to himself.

Children. There were children here again. That thought made Maglor oddly giddy for reasons he didn't quite understand, though the knowledge of how he'd gotten them did something to puncture that feeling and root his feet more firmly to the ground. The nervous looks Elrond shot him still didn't help, though Maglor could not find it in himself to blame him. For why should he not be nervous? I am nervous of myself; why should he not see that?

Bitter thoughts easily turned to bitter words, though this night at least Maglor was able to keep them off his tongue. So far.

"Are you sure that's wise?"

Maglor turned his gaze away from the darkened window to look at his brother, who was still sitting at the table but no longer thumbing absently through a book as he had been, but looking at him with brow furrowed, wearing the sort of expression that Maglor knew well—Maedhros, unable to decide whether he should be annoyed or worried. "Am I sure what's wise?" Maglor asked quietly, feigning at being unsure of what Maedhros spoke.

That effort fell through almost immediately; though Maedhros's worry did not vanish from his face, his irritation visibly rose. "You know exactly what I mean, Makalaurë. I have to question the wisdom of your decision to put Elwing's boys down to sleep in the Ambarussa's old beds."

The words hit him like a heavy stone thrown at his chest, and Maglor looked down at the ground, bracing his hands against the windowsill. Maedhros had just found out about that today, and already he was raising doubts. "They were the closest available," he defended himself, not meeting his brother's gaze. "There was nothing else I could do. The boys had been raised like princes; how do you explain to two children of that age and raised thusly that they now have to sleep in thin military cots?"

Part of it had been, in all honesty, that Maglor wanted to spare himself the trouble of having to explain to Elrond and Elros why they were having to sleep in cots, and the beds Amrod and Amras slept in when they were alive happened to be handy. It might have been better simply to sell them—the beds, not the boys—or chop the beds up for use as firewood come winter, but Maglor could not stand to do so to his late brothers' possessions. That they were dead did not seem entirely real; it still seemed as though Amrod and Amras would come barging back in through the front doors of the fortress at any moment, fresh from the hunt, and then they'd want to know what these two little boys were doing in their beds. (Maedhros had offered their dead brothers' surviving men release from service, and most of them had taken it—what would the Ambarussa say if they could know of that?) It had seemed the same after the assault on Menegroth and the loss of those who had been close to him then. Maglor could only hope that it would fade soon. The numbness was worse than grief.

The other part of it had been… Maglor could not rightly say what it had been, but he'd immediately put the thought of the twins sleeping in cots brought up from the mostly-empty barracks away as being untenable. He'd not rejected the idea from the standpoint of Elrond and Elros being hostages of high rank who warranted better treatment, either—as Maedhros had pointed out on the way here, with Elwing dead and the Silmaril she'd held at the bottom of the sea, her twin sons might be hostages of high rank, but they were not valuable. He wasn't sure where the thought had come from.

"I'm concerned about you blurring the lines between past and present and never-was and never-will-be."

Blood roared in Maglor's ears at that, quick and hot and sudden, and he took a few deep breaths, wondering exactly what it had been that had stoked the flames of his temper into life. Calm yourself; he meant nothing by it but to express worry, and nothing more than that. Calm yourself or you won't be able to say anything coherent. He took a few more deep breaths and though himself calm, but apparently not, for when Maglor opened his mouth to reassure Maedhros that he wasn't confused in any way, it came out as "You're one to talk."

Disturbing enough that was, but more disturbing was that Maedhros's only reply was to say, running his hand over the open pages of his book, "Perhaps."

-0-0-0-

"I like them."

Spring was lengthening and the weather warming, but it was still cold at night and Elrond and his brother felt more comfortable crawling under the blankets of the same bed than asking for firewood for the hearth. It was marginally easier to get warm that way, but that thin, childish voice almost made Elrond wish that he hadn't let Elros crawl under the covers with him. "They took us from Mama," Elrond retorted, glaring at him in the darkness. And killed our people, he added mentally. "She must be worried about us."

Elros shrugged, looking uncomfortable. "They seem nice. Especially Maglor." Elrond didn't ignore the omission of Maedhros from that statement—if there was one thing they agreed on concerning their kidnappers, it was that Maedhros had not made a good first impression and did not need to be approached unnecessarily. "And Mama doesn't always get worried about us."

No, she didn't, though Elrond didn't like to be reminded of that. Elwing had her Silmaril, always about her throat whether visible to the eye or hidden beneath a gauzy scarf. When not occupied with her duties, Elwing was absorbed with the sight and facets of her jewel, staring into it for hours at a time. Her sons could be standing at her side, pleading into her ears, and she wouldn't hear them. They could be absent from a meal, or at bedtime or when it was time to take a bath, and she wouldn't notice. It was always their nurse Glessil, or one of the members of the court such as Thranduil or Erestor who went looking for and found them in the end, not Elwing. Elrond preferred to remember the times when she would smile at them and spend time with them. He preferred to remember the smell of her perfume and her scented scarves, and the sea-salt caught in her hair beneath that, than to remember how enraptured she was with that jewel.

"If anybody's worried about us," Elros went on, with a tone of forced cheer in his voice that even Elrond, young as he was, could recognize—but then, he'd known Elros for all of their short lives, so perhaps that accounted for it, "it's probably Glessil."

"Glessil's probably dead," Elrond snapped in return, mind's eye suddenly flooded with the images of corpses huddled against the walls of their home as though living and sleeping, but their bodies leaked blood and their eyes were open and empty.

Elros whimpered at that, and Elrond winced. "Sorry," he whispered. In the darkness, he stared into the eyes of a face that was nearly identical to his own, stared into eyes the same shade of dark gray as his own. Elros's eyes must have been the mirror image of his own, unsure of himself and homesick, missing their mother and nurse and everyone they'd known in Sirion, missing Sirion itself.

After a while, Elros fell asleep, sleeping more deeply than Elrond could manage, but Elrond did not, and he was awake to hear the creak of their door being opened.

What? Elrond's heart pounded in his chest as the door to their bedchamber creaked slightly open, a narrow sliver of golden light from the hall falling over their bed, mostly blocked by someone standing in front of it. Elrond's eyes flicked momentarily towards the door, and he realized that it was Maglor. Checking to see if they were asleep, or something else. Mercifully, he took the twins to both be sleeping, and left.

Elrond rolled over, turning his gaze towards the window, and willed himself to sleep, dreaming of waves crashing against sharp rocks and air full of the smell of salt.

Makalaurë—Maglor
Ambarussa—Amrod and Amras

Nér—man (plural: neri)
Laiquendi—'Green-Elves' (singular: Laiquendë)