Chapter Text
Salgant died weeping, and he was reborn weeping as well. His family had to be summoned to Este’s gardens to retrieve him; he had not thought to send for them on his own. No one of his family but he had made the Crossing; his aunts had died at Alqualondë, and his parents and little brother never left home. Home, Formendessë, in the northernmost reaches of Oiomurë, where winters were long and summers poignantly brief. Salgant had left for honor, vengeance, and the Swan-ships. He returned with neither honor nor ship, and no vengeance either.
His family, his beloved family, had wanted to celebrate his homecoming, and Salgant had to beg them not to. No one had told them of Gondolin, or Salgant’s role in its fall, or what became of him after. All they knew was that their lost son, their older brother, had come home. There was no celebration, but Formendessë was a small village and everywhere Salgant had to avoid well-wishers and curious neighbors. This he could tell them: Beleriand was more dread and more terrible than even rumor painted. He had songs, and he would sing some of them, but he would not talk about what he did there. And he would touch no stringed instrument at all; if anything convinced the Teleri of Formendessë that Salgant’s fëa was sorely wounded, it was that. He said nothing of Gondolin, nothing from its founding to its ending, not even the most harmless of memories. (He’d had more members in his House than made up his entire town. He had, personally, failed more people than the entire population of Formendessë, even before the rest of Gondolin was accounted for.)
He sent no message to anyone to announce his return, crowning cowardice with more cowardice. He slept poorly in his parents’ house, which was much increased in size from his youth. His little brother had wedded in his absence - wedded and had grown children! Two sons had moved to Alqualondë, but Salgant’s niece had stayed, and herself was wed and expecting a child. The house had grown apace; his niece’s husband was from Avallonë, and had no family house in Formendessë. Salgant sometimes questioned the man’s wisdom for moving to remote Formendessë, but he took such joy in Oiomurë’s raw mountains and glaciers that it was easy to see his reasoning. Niece and nephew-in-law both treated him with entirely uncalled-for awe, as some of the younger villagers did. It made Salgant want to scream. Every so often, he went out to the hills and did so. It did nothing whatsoever for his newfound reputation.
The Sea, at least, no one could take from him: Salgant put himself aboard his family’s fishing boat as soon as he stopped weeping at stray gulls and sea-foam. The work was familiar, bred into his very bones, and soon Salgant’s hands became callused again, his face toughened by clean salt. He and his brother took the dogs out sledding, as they had in his youth, and brought back game, wild sheep and elk and once even a bear. Gondolin began to seem like more of a dream than his own past; what happened after the city’s fall could have been a passing nightmare.
Maeglin came that spring.
Salgant returned from the docks one chill evening to find the other traitor lord of Gondolin speaking with Tilissë, whose two spare rooms served as Formendessë’s inn. She was pale and worried in the face of Maeglin’s circlet - the last time royalty came to Formendessë, it had been Fingolfin’s host crossing the Helcaraxë, and Salgant had gone with them.
“Salmaganto!” Tilissë called when she saw him, waving her hands. “A lord is come to see you!”
Salgant was aware that he had stopped walking, that he was staring. Maeglin looked well, clad in dark grey and blue rather than his customary black. He was unsmiling, which was reassuring; Maeglin had been full of good cheer before the fall of Gondolin. Salgant had, at the time, been too pleased to see the dour young prince happy to question it overmuch. After the fall of Gondolin, he had seen that same smile on the face of a Power and understood what it meant even before he was told. (And oh, how the Enemy had laughed in the face of Salgant’s horror! He still heard it sometimes.)
Maeglin was watching him, his face set and cold, but Salgant could see the resignation in his flat gaze. What did he expect? What grievance did he think Salgant could have against him, Salgant who had fallen even lower and for less cause? Salgant did his best to brush himself off as he walked over, abruptly aware of his rough, sturdy coat compared to Maeglin’s fine clothing. “Lord Maeglin,” he said, bowing. “I… did not expect you here.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” Maeglin said, wary as a deer. Tilissë had backed away, giving them some semblance of privacy, but Salgant knew perfectly well that she was listening for all she was worth, and news that a Lord with a Noldo accent and a Sinda name was here for Salgant would be well-known on the docks before the catch was in.
“…My lord, this might be a conversation for my home? It isn’t far,” he suggested hopelessly. “Tilissë, if you’d let my family know we have a guest?”
“I’ll send some bread with them,” Tilissë promised. “Your lordship,” she added to Maeglin, and bobbed another nervous bow.
“Inviting me to your home, Salgant?” Maeglin said once they had walked out of earshot. Almost everyone was at the dock; those who weren’t were, like Salgant, sent home to prepare dinner for the rest. “I did not expect such a warm welcome from you. The innkeeper had no idea who I was; news does not come here often.”
“Not about the Golodoi, no,” Salgant agreed. Not since Formendessë’s lost son had returned. “What news should I have heard?”
Maeglin glared at him with such fury that Salgant was taken aback. “You can’t have forgotten what happened. Duilin almost put an arrow between my eyes, decree or no decree.”
Salgant could hear, again, the Enemy’s earthshaking laughter, and fought down a shudder. “I know nothing of any decree, but I know what happened. You have nothing to fear from me.”
“How do you know.”
“I learned it afterward. Here, this is my family’s house.”
“Not your own?” Maeglin studied the house critically, and Salgant tried to see it as a stranger would. No Noldor had helped construct Formendessë, and shipwrights turned impatient house-builders lent the buildings a strange air. Unworked stone and earthen walls for strength and warmth, shells and mica flakes for beauty, tough driftwood for timber; it had little resemblance to anything in Tirion or Gondolin. Perhaps Cirdan’s fortresses were made of such unprepossessing material; Salgant had not seen them to compare.
“It’s the custom to add to your parents’ house rather than build another,” Salgant explained, ushering Maeglin inside. The walls were lined several times over in wood stacked up to the ceiling - a sensible precaution for the cold months, when fuel needed to be ready to hand. Spring meant the walls were thinner than usual. “I need to finish cooking before my family returns. We’d be honored if you would join us.”
“The inn can’t have much traffic,” Maeglin objected.
“Tilissë? She’s only an innkeeper because she didn’t want to take down her son’s rooms after he and his wife left for Alpalondë. Her husband is a blacksmith; she’s a baker.”
“Efficient,” the prince said, and watched Salgant cook. It was strangely companionable; Salgant had always enjoyed cooking, and Maeglin did not mind assisting him. He had never been shy of work, Maeglin.
“You should know,” Maeglin said at last, “why I’m here.”
Salgant braced himself, and nodded. Best to get it over with before his family came home. He did not want them to hear; it would not be good news.
“Lord Turgon’s alive now,” Maeglin announced. “He wants to see you. I told him not to bother waiting: you weren’t going to come unless someone fetched you.”
“You’re not wrong,” Salgant admitted. He would have been happy enough to spend his life here and never hear another word of Beleriand.
“Too bad he knew where you lived,” Maeglin said. “He thought about coming himself, you know.”
Salgant felt his face drain of color. His King, come to reveal his shame to everyone in his home? No! No. Please no.
“You’re welcome,” Maeglin said, curling his lip just a fraction.
“I am grateful,” Salgant returned, and meant it.
“I thought I’d handle the two matters at once. You sent no word, after all,” Maeglin added bitterly.
Salgant chose not to dissemble. “I did not imagine anyone would want to hear from me.”
“I am hardly in a position to judge you, Salgant.” Maeglin sighed. “At least if you already knew, my name won’t terrify your family.”
“…Ossë’s frozen grip!” Salgant swore, and added a few words that he would never have used in Beleriand. Maeglin stared at him, nonplussed, and Salgant put down the tableware. “…I have told them nothing of Gondolin at all,” he said hollowly.
Maeglin leaned back, eyebrows rising. “Nothing at all?”
“Nothing.”
Maeglin looked at him for a long time, as if searching for words. Then he shook his head, neatening the spoons beside their bowls and cups. Salgant looked at the steaming teapot and thought about what he was going to say.