Chapter Text
What if, Maeglin given a chance by Eru himself had travel to the past, where his parent's story begins?
Maeglin died with regret lodged deeper than any blade.
As Gondolin burned and the wind tore past him, he understood at last the weight of his choices, the betrayals he had named necessity, the love he had twisted into something sharp and ruinous. In the final heartbeat before darkness claimed him, pride fell away.
Only one thought remained.
If only he could begin again.
Darkness answered.
It was not empty, nor silent, but vast and resonant, as though the Music itself lingered there. A presence beyond sight pressed against his spirit, and though no form stood before him, a question filled his being.
“Would you undo what was done?”
.
.
.
He awoke to cold.
Snow burned against torn flesh, and pain anchored him to a living body. His face throbbed as though fire had only just released him. Above stretched a sky of ancient stars untainted, unbroken. Not the ruin he remembered. Not the end.
He was found half-dead near the borders of Doriath, nameless and silent, his injuries grave enough that no one pressed him with questions.
He had been given another chance.
As he healed in Doriath, fostered quietly under the Marchwarden, Maeglin shaped a single resolve: he would mend what had broken between his parents. He would not allow pride, silence, or unspoken wounds to take root.
If he could guide them..if he could soften what he remembered as harsh then perhaps the future would not demand so high a price.
He would give them the happy ending they had never been allowed.
Yet when he fled the guarded peace of Doriath and returned to the shadowed forests of his childhood, certainty began to waver. The man he found there was not the one etched into his memory.
There was light where he had expected only gloom. Warmth where he had braced for cold iron. It unsettled him more than cruelty ever could.
Then other fractures appeared—small at first, easily dismissed. Glances that lingered elsewhere. Histories never spoken of in his lifetime. Ties and truths he had never known. The past did not align with the story he had grown up believing.
When fate drew his mother once more into that forest, hope surged within him. This was the moment he had been waiting for the turning point where he could guide their hearts toward something gentler but the pattern shifted again.
Affections were not where he expected them to be. Silences carried meanings he did not understand. And the more he uncovered, the more he realized that the tragedy he remembered had never been as simple as he had thought.
The future he had known began to unravel, thread by fragile thread and with it came a terrible understanding.
Maeglin had asked for another chance yet he had not foreseen that it might require him to choose between their happiness and his own existence.