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The first time Maedhros puts anyone to the sword, he is deeply shaken. Valinor is a place of beauty and light and peace, but most importantly it is a place of life, and he has disturbed that.
The Trees are dead or dying, he doesn't know which. Then Fëanor steps up with anger in his heart, and Maedhros is torn. He knows his father cannot be right, the Valar are never wrong. But the world has upended itself and he does not know who or what to believe. His father has always been a direct part of his life, from innumerable late night discussions about the workings of the world to their easy rhythm with how they ran the household alongside Nerdanel.
Maedhros takes his father's side, because the world has upended itself and the Valar are wrong just this once.
He is given a sword and fire is worked into his blood alongside his kin, and he follows his father to Alqualondë, seeking ships.
Instead, the world paints itself with blood, and he is standing in the center of the fighting, soaked in red and death.
He had been taught how to wield a sword, of course, but it had been naught but a formality, filled with hot summer nights sparring with his cousins when his father was one with the forge.
Now…
Now Maedhros stands on a field of red and takes a life, splattering a stain on his soul alike to how the blood dots his arms and soaks his blade.
The steel slices through the skin of the Teleri in front of him without resistance, parting before him and painting his world as red as his hands. Blood flows over the cobblestones, spreading like the roots of a plant made by Yavanna.
He drops his sword and falls to his knees, choking on his own horror and fighting the urge to retch, or he would have, had he not been forced to continue fighting or lose his own life.
He is aware of his brothers taking their first kills as well. He wonders if he will ever be free of the scent of blood as it clings to him like a second skin, coating the world that has been upended and is red, so very red, red like the colour of his house and soaked in blood.
The scent of blood never leaves him. It clings to his nose at all times, filling the air alongside the scent of the dead and the dying, so very like the trees that died, and upended his world.
The ships burn and his youngest brother does too, a piece of his heart joining Amrod in the Halls of Mandos.
He watches as his father dies, and takes up the mantle as the eldest of the brothers.
It is not enough.
It is never enough.
He is rescued from Thangorodrim by the cousin who dares to forgive him and repair the damage caused by the feud their fathers shared, but there is no longer any light in his eyes. His hair is now reminiscent of the blood his hands- hand- are soaked in, no longer the fine copper that his father would bring to life while the Trees lived and the world was the one he knew.
He learns to kill with his left hand, and wonders if the elfling who basked in the light of the Trees will ever live again, or if his blood, too, stains his hands.
But he knows naught what else to do than to allow his blade to cut flesh whenever it must, and to watch blood soak into grass and cobblestone alike, the screams of the dead and the dying echoing around him. The Oath, his last gift from his father, has tied his hands, and so he continues.
He continues, and watches those he loves join the dead and the dying, their sparks of life perishing to Morgoth as the Trees of Valinor did in another life, one wrought with joy and not with blood.
Maedhros lives, holding to those he has left and allowing the tears to burn his eyes when they, too, are slain.
The brother who walks with him until the end brings back two children, and Maedhros fears to even look at them, fears that he will spread the disease he carries should they so much as cross his thoughts. He wants to never see their fingers have to wrap around the hilt of a blade, but he knows that his own past actions will cause such a thing to pass.
His father's actions? His own? Maedhros can no longer say. The world has upended itself, and perhaps they are one and the same. Blood coats their fingers in the name of the same Oath. The only difference is that Fëanor was allowed to pass on to the Halls and Maedhros lingers, spirit broken but body fighting.
Hundreds die beneath his sword, but it will never be enough. The scent of blood does not leave him, and he cannot force his shaking hand to cease its deadly motions.
In the final days he sees, Maedhros is at last allowed to let his blade drop from numb fingers, pale with horror and grief. The War of Wrath is over. The remaining two Silmarils have been reclaimed, and he and his oldest brother are somehow, in some way, still alive. He has taken his last life.
But it will not- cannot- last.
Maedhros says farewell to Maglor and clutches one Silmaril to his chest, hand burning from his evil deeds as he does so.
But they were not so evil, he thinks. They were what he was compelled to do. His world had been upended and his father had drawn upon his loyalty. The Oath had bound him to his word, and so he killed. He killed.
He killed, and he killed, and slew and slew and slew, until not only the blade he held in shaking fingers was stained with the red of the blood that soaked him, but his entire world was.
He thinks back to the cobblestones in Alqualondë as he reaches the fiery chasm, to the site of his first kill. He thinks of how the blood ran over the cobblestones, sinking into the earth and growing until it could choke him with his own horror.
He thinks of how the scent of blood has never left him. He thinks of the hundreds, thousands, who have died by his hand.
He thinks of his brothers and his father, who had been dragged into the blood-soaked world with him, because the Valar had failed them. The Trees were destroyed and his world had been upended. A blade was what was closest, so a blade was what he grabbed.
He thinks of the first elf he slew, of the terror in her eyes when she died. He wonders if he bears that same fear in his own eyes, now.
Maedhros falls, Silmaril clutched to his chest, bloodied hands at last burning clean.