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Chapter Text

Fingon had been so fond of his little room at Olorin’s, a place for a boy to become a doctor, whenever he had a moment to spare. There was his humble cot, and there, the ever-growing mountain of books that his mentor assigned for reading. There was the kneehole desk, lined so thickly with bottles and rolls of linen that there was scarcely space to write.

On that day, a crisp October Saturday, Maedhros’ note had said eleven. Maedhros knew that Fingon, still bound to the occasional constraint of his lecture schedule (a compromise with his father), had taken to spending his Saturday forenoons at the doctor’s offices, his afternoons on charitable calls, and evenings (if he could) with his family.

“I trust we do not intrude too much,” Maedhros said, when he arrived. Maglor was with him, which was to be expected, and so was Celegorm, which was…not. Fingon felt his smile grown unnaturally wide. There was a certain strain to making oneself look pleased. Still, they were his guests. He commanded himself to be hospitable.

“You could never intrude!” he said, not quite swiftly enough for his own comfort. “Doctor Olorin has his own patients to attend to, during these hours. I am laboring over another treatise, but I can give you half an hour of my time—and give it happily!”

“And yet you have forgotten to open your window,” Celegorm said, sniffing at the dusty air. “Hullo, Fingon. Not dead yet, of your own fumes?”

Disdain, from the very outset! Was it any wonder, about the ether?

But in the polite minutes before that particular development, Fingon showed them everything he could. Maedhros, who had rarely found an opportunity to join Fingon in this favorite habitat, was all wonderment and gamely questions. He bemoaned his bad grasp of Latin as he tried to read the labels on the tinctures and dilutions. He begged that Fingon would “Give him the sound of it, there’s a good man.”

Fingon was flushed with pride, at that. Even the sour faces of Maglor and Celegorm—rather matched, for once—could not dispel his good humor. Doctor Olorin’s library, directly adjacent to Fingon’s smaller chamber, was always open to his use, and the visit soon shifted there, as Fingon’s desire to impress his visitors outweighed his desire for careful attention to the clock.

“Athair would love these texts,” Maedhros breathed, his fingers clasped loosely behind him. Today, his coat was deep green, his trousers grey. With his hair unruined by his tall hat (how did he manage it), he looked like a benefactor too fine for Olorin to solicit. Fingon committed that mental picture of quiet, noble interest to his mind forever.

Something fell with a crash in the room behind, and Fingon cried out. “Oh bother!”

“Never mind,” Maedhros said absently, his nose still in a book. “It’s only Celegorm.”

So it was. He was examining a vial of belladonna, which fortunately remained undamaged by its fall. “Bobbled it,” he said, without remorse, when Fingon dashed in.

“Please be careful.”

“One bobble! Shan’t happen again.”

Fingon could have—and should have, perhaps—returned to the library at once, but he was wary of Celegorm, and quick to imagine what other havoc his wild-haired, clumsy-handed cousin could wreak.

“I didn’t know you were in the city,” he said, putting the belladonna safely out of reach.

Celegorm shrugged. “Didn’t know you had your own hidey-hole.”

“It’s not a hidey-hole,” Fingon retorted. Then, in an attempt to regain his dignity, he asked, “How are the puppies?”

“Oh, they’re scarcely pups now,” Celegorm said. “Hey there, what’s this?” He had a scalpel in his hand.

“Please put that down,” Fingon said. It was unjust, for Celegorm to come here, under Maedhros’ protection. Were it not for him, Fingon could have joined in the laughter he heard coming from Olorin’s library. He would not have to mind a childish interloper—even though the child in question was nearly his own age.

Celegorm had his back turned. He was standing near a heap of bandages, but Fingon’s eye alighted on something else.

A little knot of meanness in his breast, unchecked, ruled him that day. No real harm came of the ether—or so he told himself afterwards, when greater family sins superseded any cousinly prank. But it will be hard, for the Fingon of the future, to mend the little grooves carved by jealousy and pride, no matter how warranted the Fingon of the past thought their making—

And all for love of Maedhros!

Of course, they meet again in darkness.

Not the same darkness: the light of the lamp is warmer and more revealing than any moonbeam. It offers no sight of blood, save for the pitchy crusts dried along the crest of the swollen nose, at the corners of the ragged mouth. Fingon himself did away with the blood. He bathed it from seeping wounds, and bandaged them. He seared it from pulsing flesh, and called the scar salvation.

“Do you know me?” he asks, quite stupidly.

Maedhros, so close in body, so distant in all else, does not smile. His eyes are weary but sharp; they move more than any other part of his shrouded form. Until he must, Fingon dares not look at the hand, or at the emptiness where a hand should be.

“Fingon,” answers Maedhros, low, but without much hesitation. “I know you.” It is the first time he has spoken, in the moments since Fingon arrived. Fingon talked in a perfect volley, at first. Then he fell silent, because he felt tears coming. Now he begins fresh, as best he can.

“That is good,” Fingon says. “You’ve had—you’ve had so many shocks. And you’ve been asleep for a long time. That was for the best, in my opinion. It is very good for you, to have some rest.”

Maedhros is still looking at him. Fingon wonders what his father thought of this intent, silent gaze—what his father will think, and Celegorm, oh, damn it all, Celegorm. Before they return, Fingon must understand what has become of his cousin. He is the one who ought to do it best.

“Father—you saw him?”

A continuation of the same pause, and then a break. It is only the parting of lips, the shift between silence and a spoken word, but it has all the features of a fault line to Fingon. He knows, now, what ice looks like when it cracks clear across with gunshot thunder. He does not know what he is to make of the elision of the two in his mind: Maedhros, and breaking.

“Yes,” says Maedhros. “He said…you. And my...” He swallows deep in his bruised throat. Fingon has seen the prints of hands there, black and blue, fading green. He has seen the rawness left by binding rope; a noose that did not hang him.

Even wounds cannot tell the whole story. That, more than almost anything, is terrifying.

“Your?”

“My brothers.”

“They are all here,” Fingon says eagerly, and then wishes he could bite the tongue out of his head. Amrod, Amrod, Aredhel said that Amrod—

But Maedhros does not alight with hope, nor quaver with despair. He does not ask for Amrod; his eyes move over Fingon’s face again. They are still grey. Still the same eyes. Somewhere, this is the same body, but Fingon has known it only as something to grieve and to heal, since he found it and split it in two.

“Are they coming?”

“Soon.” Fingon wishes it were not so. But Father’s promises are never breached. He told Celegorm he would find him. Maglor will be nosing about, too, and in time—

It is not kind, to think of them so. To think of them like traitors, even if they left Maedhros to die.

(Fingon, if he digs deeper in the well of honest memory, can see the white panic masking Celegorm’s hard features, when he learned that Maedhros lived.)

“Soon.”

“We will not overwhelm you,” Fingon assures him. “I am the doctor here, though we are only lately come to Mithrim. I like to think I have some mastery over them. And even Celegorm was content to let Huan stand guard.” When Fingon entered, Huan had his nose in Maedhros’ left and only hand. Now the hound sleeps again, his spine against the edge of the bed. It is as if some human instinct directs him to sleep, and let them speak alone.

Maybe Maedhros believes that, too, for now, he asks a question.

“How?”

Fingon waits. He is…he is afraid.

“How did you find me?”

“It is a long story,” Fingon tells him. “It would pain you, to hear it now.”

There is a smile at last. It is like none that has ever been written before on that face.

“Then pain me,” Maedhros says. “Tell me why I can feel it still, but cannot see it. It is gone, isn’t it?”

Fingon weeps. This means that he cannot see anything clearly, for a moment. His voice, at least, is still in working order. He says, “It is gone.”

“I thought as much,” Maedhros replies, with a reed-dry sigh. “I dreamed as much, when I dreamed. Now I must…” He is weary, and talking too much for his wasted, battered body, but he forges on. That is the first recognizable trait: his stubbornness.

It offers no comfort.

Maedhros continues, “Tell me how you found me. Please. It will set me right.”

“On the mountain,” Fingon says. “You were…you were high, high, on the mountain.” When Maedhros’ gaze was on him a little while ago, unreadable and hard, Fingon could scarcely bear it. But now his cousin looks down, down where the hand is—gone. When he turns, it is to Fingon’s hand. He says,

“Then you…”

Fingon used to know him very well. He used to know when pretense was a gift he ought to give; a sacrifice from his frank heart. Maedhros was always so grateful for Fingon’s rare lies, but they never spoke of it.

If only Fingon could lie to him now.

“Yes,” he says, as if Maedhros had finished the question. “I did it. I had to. You were—trapped there.”

“Ah,” Maedhros sighs, still staring, still speaking softly through his twisted lips. “So it was the only way.”

It is Fingon’s turn to swallow in a bruised throat. He does not follow Maedhros’ movements. He looks instead at his own hands, browned and calloused, clasping his knees.

There are teethmarks, there, in the flesh between his right forefinger and thumb.

But of course.

Maedhros is not guessing; he is remembering.

“I am very sorry,” Fingon whispers. “I—”

It is over, this moment, whatever it was. Maedhros shuts his eyes. Fingon dashes at his own with his knuckles, clearing the stickiness of tears. When he has recovered himself, he finds that somehow, in a manner illegible to him, Maedhros has done the same.

There is even less life; even less movement. When Maedhros opens his eyes again, he does not look at Fingon. He stares upwards, at the thrown lamplight that falls cascading down.

Huan rises. Huan’s hoary head presses against the far side of the bedcovers. Fingon feels the sympathy in the dog-soul, but cannot accept it as useful for himself.

Perhaps this what Celegorm loves; perhaps that is what Celegorm understands.

There is the sound of people running, in the hall outside.

The door opens. Fingon sees his father, and knows at once that his father will recognize the signs of his weeping, though that makes him grateful rather than ashamed. Celegorm and Gwindor are close on Fingolfin’s heels, but Gwindor stops a few paces in from the door. It is Celegorm who rushes forward and kneels beside the bed, making both his height and bluster seem small.

Kneeling—why didn’t Fingon think of that, when he came to greet Maedhros? Perhaps if he had knelt, his cousin would not have been so afraid.  

But was it fear, that he saw in Maedhros’ eyes?

“Maitimo,” Celegorm gasps, grinning almost ghoulishly in his frantic, violent joy. “Oh, God, you’re awake! The others don’t know yet—I’ll keep ‘em out, if you like.”

It is very Feanorian, to promise that first.

A spasm twitches down Maedhros’ left side: Celegorm has taken his hand. Fingon watches, bile rising in his throat, as the stump trembles, too, trapped at his right. Fingon even moves to intervene, but suddenly, his father is there.

“Fingon,” Fingolfin murmurs. “Fingon, let them be. He will survive this.”

Maedhros says something, too low to be heard by anyone but Celegorm, who shakes his head.

“No,” Celegorm says, still with that painfully wide smile stretched over his face. “No—not taller than you.” He still has his massive, blunt hand smothering Maedhros’. Because of this, Fingon cannot appreciate what should be a tender moment between two brothers. He is too wretched with the certainty that Maedhros does not want to be touched—does not want to be held.

Not since Fingon—

He looks to Gwindor to confirm it, but Gwindor is gone. Fingon is alone again, for his father must stand between all the rivers of conflict and reunion, must make a peaceful whole of this sad familial clash. Fingon does not want to even take his eyes off Maedhros, lest Celegorm hurt him more, and so he waits with his feet rooted to the floor and his hands knotted at his sides.

“You lived,” Maedhros is saying, tenderly and piteously. “I did not know—I was so sure—”

What was he sure of? Celegorm cannot know either…Celegorm did not come for him, or save him, or know what saving him asked of Fingon. Fingon spoke truth to his father and truth to Maedhros, and in doing so, he thought the dreadful duty discharged. But now his guilt makes him angry. What can Celegorm have done, to deserve his brother’s patience? How can Celegorm not see that his brother wants freedom more than affection, just now?

“‘Course I lived,” Celegorm answers. “We lived for you. You know that. You bastard, you should have known that.”

“Yes,” Maedhros says, his voice the same ugly, creaking thing it has been since he said Fingon’s name, a mere quarter of an hour before. “Yes, forgive me. I should have known that.”

Forgive me. Pain me. The stump keeps jerking slightly against his hip.

“Yes, it’s all right,” Fingolfin says quietly. Fingon has a boy’s furious retort ready on his doctor’s tongue, but then he realizes that his father is speaking not to him, but to Gwindor, who shuffles back into the room, looking conscious of a red nose and redder eyes.

“Needed a moment,” Gwindor mutters.

And at that—at that voice, as he did not thrill even for Fingon’s—Maedhros turns his head.

“Gwindor?”

He speaks first. Fingon must not mind it. Must not—hold it against Gwindor, or Maedhros, or anyone.

“Russandol.” There must be another encouraging nod from Fingolfin, or perhaps one such is no longer needed. Gwindor is brave enough on account of his own cause to encroach on the sacred domain of Celegorm’s brotherhood, crouching beside him.

Huan, who has retreated some yards away, upright and interested, yawns with a snap of his jaws.

A change comes over Maedhros’ face. It is neither a grimace nor a spasm. There is a little thrust and tremor of the chin which suggests a child caught in a scrape. A pale shadow of his old charm? Fingon can only dream.

“It was…rather…hopeless,” Maedhros says. “Wasn’t it?”

Gwindor drags a hand over his mouth. Two hands has Gwindor, and both are scarred and strong and hard. Gwindor was a child once—is that what softens him so much to Maedhros? Fingon strains to attain some of Olorin’s gently probing insight. Did their love of Sticks and Frog, recalling happier days once lived themselves,  bring them so close in kind?

“They’re safe.” It is not quite an answer to Maedhros’ question, but perhaps it is a better one to make. Fingon understands at once, because of his late wisdom; wisdom that Olorin must have bestowed by a chance, far-off prayer. “Better than safe,” Gwindor goes on. “They’re even happy, ‘cept that they’re twisted up with worry, over you. So much worry, in such little heads. I tell ‘em it can’t do any good—”

Celegorm has been quiet; his hand locked on Maedhros’, his shoulders hunched forward as if he will cover Maedhros’ body with his own, should need or Gwindor’s approach demand it. But now he is pushed back, spurned, as Maedhros tears his hand free.

Fingon watches its bruise-knuckled progress; watches the bird-bone fingers, pecked free of flesh by months of starvation, as they curl and claw against the bandaged breast.

(He has not let himself consider, until now, how they would have hammered the device into his hand very slowly.)

(There were so many nails.)

The hand is not the only tell; Maedhros’ mouth works. His shoulders convulse. All this must cause him pain. His eyes blink furiously, and Fingon at last has sympathy for Celegorm, who again looks very frightened, just as Fingon feels, at the thought of seeing Maedhros brought to tears.

(On the mountain—)

(But Celegorm will never know.)

Father strides forward, at once in command. “There, there,” he says softly. “Night is upon us. Maedhros, it is Fingolfin—I do not know how brightly this lamplight shows us, so I announce myself. We shall clear the room, and let you rest for a little while. Is there anyone whom you would like to have remain with you?”

There is a moment’s infernal pause.

“Gwindor,” Maedhros says. The name is scarcely louder than a drawn breath. Fingon feels its condemnation in his bones, in his heart, and somehow, in the choked gasp dragged from Celegorm’s chest as Celegorm rises.

For this space of time, with little love for each other, they suffer side by side.

“Very good,” Fingolfin is saying, with perfect calm. “Fingon will need to attend to you in—will a quarter of an hour do, Doctor?”

Fingon, his eyes and ears stinging, does not deserve such respect. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, that will do.”

Chapter Text

It happened, once, when he was sixteen. The first month of the year had been blissful; Maglor’s tutors furnished him with as many sheets of blank paper as they did concertos and sonatas by old masters. His hand cramped with the effusions of his pen. The very roofs of the city were bars and notes to look upon; the waterways flowed with melody. Only he could see and hear. For the first time in his life, he thought he understood his father.

And then it all ended.

They were still living with their grandfather, then, and they still took breakfast with him when he had meetings to attend that called for him to rise early. Then Maglor and Maedhros walked to school for their morning lectures. Maedhros was nearly finished with his education; he had been rather indifferent about it for some time, Maglor knew.

Oh, to be indifferent!

On the dreadful morning—which followed the dreadful night—Maglor was near tears. Near tears, and near enough to manhood that the humiliation of being seen by anyone in such a state was keenly felt.

He almost decided not to go down to breakfast—to plead illness, and stay in bed, but then Maedhros would worry. If Maedhros worried, he would stay at home. He would ask questions, and Maglor (who could never be quiet for long—never before, at least—) would answer them.

As it was, he ate quickly, said little, and went to school alone. Maedhros had a reason not to accompany him, after all. He would be attending a council meeting with Grandfather. Maedhros, too, was near manhood.

Maglor was left to mathematics, the classics, and Fingon.

Fingon arrived in the afternoon. His studies were complete for the day, whatever they were. Maglor refused to know what they were, because he had no interest in the present stage of Fingon’s nascent rebellion against father, country, and half-a-dozen other ideas that had been put into his head by Finrod.

“Are you unwell?” demanded Fingon.

Maglor turned his back and gazed out the sitting room window.  

The shuffling of papers turned him back again.

But of course! Here was the root of the trouble: blearily waking, his slippered feet upon the stair, the certainty that music would cleanse him and lull him back to sleep…

And then nothing. A river dammed. His mouth silent and his pen dry, a creeping feeling of ugliness, even of sin.

He could not hear anything.

“Are these yours?” Fingon asked. “Are you hiding them? The top sheets are all empty.”

“Leave them alone,” Maglor said. Snarled, really. He should never have left his private papers about, not even in his midnight distress. “What do you know of composing?”

Fingon frowned. Then he squared his shoulders under his snug blue coat. Uncle Fingolfin ought to buy him a new one, but perhaps Fingon had been a regular martyr and refused the expense as frivolous. “I do it quickly,” he said. “For I’m not always trying to be clever.”

“You might as well,” said Maglor scathingly, “Not do it at all.”

“You said that to him?” Maedhros asked, hours later. His hand in Maglor’s hair was almost unbearably gentle, for all that he was finding new tangles with every stroke of his fingers.

“I lost it,” Maglor said, turning his face so that his voice was well and truly muffled against Maedhros’ knee. “I’ve never lost it before. The—the song—”

“It’s only been a day.”

“But if it goes on? Not just days, but years—”

“Macalaure, I don’t think it will. You’re too talented for that.”

“Talent can be spent,” Maglor said bitterly. He wasn’t done wallowing. Maedhros would stop stroking his hair if he was. “Think of the golden goose!”

“Goodness, I wish Mamaí had never told you that fable, when we were small.” But then Maedhros lowered his voice, so that it was as reverent, as hushed and wondering, as if they were in a church. “You’re something I cannot ever be—an artist. I—the rest of us—we plod along, because what we work at and live for and study does not consume us, as it does you. I remember when you were five years old—the way you already sang what others only said. You could find music in anything. Once we found you touching the piano keys…it was beautiful, and Mamaí asked you what you played. Do you know what you said?”

“What?”

“You said, the river. I’ve never forgotten it. Cano, how have you come so far, never losing your song until now? How has it not burned you to glorious ash? I’ve often marveled, but done so silently, trusting that you knew.”

Maglor swallowed hard. Maedhros’ voice was its own song, but not one for his writing.

He did not say this, however.

“You shall hear it again,” Maedhros said. “I know you shall. Pray, don’t be vexed. Not at yourself, and not at Fingon.”

The moment wasn’t spoiled; wasn’t even close to spoiled. But there was ever that subtle insistence, that the moment be shared.

He wants his mother. The first desire of a child; the last desire of a man.

Maglor sways; his hands and his brow kiss cold stone. The wall, not the floor. He is still on his feet and still alive, though he has not been able to measure which way life runs, and which way death follows, in some time.

He has hidden in Mithrim’s storeroom. Here, it is cool and dark; the part of the fort set most deeply into the earth. It was the only place to come, fleeing from the new inhabitants and the unspeakable return. Rumil’s study was laden with memory. Athair’s old room was his unfriendliest brothers’ domain. And as for the room he shared with Caranthir and Amras—

What will it do to him, to hear for very long the voiceless breath, to dream (if he sleeps) of the color of those sightless eyes, never seeing them himself?

Maglor wants his mother: the simplest, most impossible need. A world with her in would not have returned this Maedhros to him. No, it would not have taken Maedhros at all.

Mithrim cannot steal enough heat from his skin. He pushes himself back and folds his arms across his chest. He is burning with shame and guilt, if not outright fever. His throat feels swollen and thick.

That last, at least, is familiar. He has known the sin-dark silence before.

I’ve never lost it before. The song—

He laughs bitterly. It is a harsh sound. He hates it. He hates himself more than his laughter and his silence, more than the choice he made six months ago—because he made it and lived after it, and is thus he is far wickeder than that single sin.

“Maglor?”

He curses, startled, and turns. Amras is standing in the cleft of the doorway, a slim shadow of what Maedhros used to be.

Maglor moves his thick tongue in his mouth. It forms nothing: no word.

“Maglor,” Amras says again, practically twitching. “He’s—he’s awake.”

Eyes—voice—

“What?”

“Maitimo. He’s. He’s awake. Fingon went to him. Uncle Fingolfin, too. And Celegorm will be next, no doubt. What do we—do we—”

Does Amras suffer the same doubt? What sin has Amras committed, except the sin of being born in Maglor’s shadow—marked his godson—marked by the same cowardice, perhaps, or the same longing, that haunts him now?

(But it was Amrod who rode for Mother. They cannot forget that. None of them ever will.)

Maglor saw the offer on Fingolfin’s face, hours ago. The offer stands, as Maglor does, in a cold dark present with no escape. He supposes Amras is right, to come to him, hoping to be excused from the necessity of a decision.

He supposes that, after what he did to Celegorm—what he did with Ulfang’s word and blood—he must face his brother. Must face the scars, the lost hand, the eyes.

When he sees him, he will want him again. That is half the trouble.

(The first desire is comfort, the last is forgiveness.)

“Come,” Maglor says, to Amras’ waiting worry. “We’ll go together.”

(He hears it in his song-deafened ears as Maedhros’ voice.)

But Amras shakes his head. “I want you to go first,” he pleads. “I can’t say it to Celegorm. He won’t understand.”

You’re afraid.

Maglor understands. Understands so well that he needn’t say it. He puts his arms around this youngest brother, holding him greedily and close, imagining himself the younger, clasped in arms that promised peace.

“I will go first,” he says. Then, with generosity—“Find Caranthir, too, and wait for me in the hall. I’ll send for you both, if—”

If what? There is not a word for that.

He finishes, aided by no poet’s skill, “If it is right to.”  

Rapping lightly at the door with his knuckles elicits no response from within. Maglor must speak, must croak his arrival—and it is Fingon who opens the door, grim-faced, barring the way.

“Maglor,” he says. “I…it is late. Maedhros should be resting.”

Maglor hid in the storeroom when he could have claimed his place at Maedhros’ side. Is it too late, now? Did he damn himself as thoroughly as he deserves? Since he is a Feanorian (or what is left of one), he is stubborn despite his failings, and he recalls, too, his recent words with Amras. “But,” he says in answer, “He is awake.”

“Yes, I am awake.”

And then it is as Maglor knew it would be. Knew, and feared. His heart in his throat; his heart breaking. There are no other brothers. There is no other self.

He thrusts Fingon aside, without regard for his cousin’s possible retaliation. He forges forward, and even though he was obliged to see the bruised features and raw flesh, the awful thinness, while Maedhros slept—it is nothing like. He is destroyed anew to see his brother’s animated form, to see his brother’s eyes.

Yes: he is looking into his brother’s eyes.

It all happens so quickly, after that. Maglor’s knees buckle, but his arms do not forget their aim, nor his heart its ballast. He is careful—yes, very careful—not to rest his weight against Maitimo’s form, but he does, he must embrace him. What other comfort is there? What other love has there ever been?

“Maglor, you mustn’t—” Fingon begins, but then he stifles whatever else he had to say. It is only when no hand comes to rest on his hair that Maglor lifts his head.

From his knees, from his arms thrown over the old, known body that is so very changed, Maglor prays to the face he will remember, with time.

“It hurt so badly,” he says, still craving his brother’s touch. His brother’s acknowledgement, by more than this rapid-blinking gaze. Beneath the underside of his left forearm, he can feel the tight rise and fall of Maedhros’ breathing. “Losing you. And I—I know I was not kind to you, before you rode away, I was so afraid. Or I thought I was—it wasn’t really fear, then, was it? It couldn’t have been fear. Fear was when you did not return.”

“I feared for you, too,” Maedhros whispers. His voice is strange and dry and unbeautiful. Maglor grieves for it. His eyes are still weary and bloodshot, but the irises bloom with the same silver gleam as always. That is something, at least. “You—you are not hurt?”

Dear Maitimo—the same Maitimo—to ask such a question as that!

“I have lost my song,” Maglor whispers. “But beyond that, you find me as whole in body and spirit as can be expected.”

“I am glad.” Still that reedy murmur.

“Are you? I—” His voice is lost to him suddenly, and he hides his face against Maedhros’ nightshirt, which clings to the bony breast beneath. That breast heaves a little against him, heaves and cringes—and then Fingon is there, his rude hands dragging Maglor away.

“Maglor, you can’t, Lord, he’s—”

“It’s all right,” Maedhros says, his voice stronger now, but only for an instant. “Fingon, let him be.”

Fingon, with a sound that is almost a grunt, releases him. But his rude intervention has ruined something ineffable that had dwelt between brother and brother, until then. Maglor is shaken, and the world shifts, as it did when Maedhros was not awake. Not himself. How hurt is he, beyond the unspeakable wound on his right side and the vicious bruising over his poor face?

How is Maglor to learn of his wounds, without wounding him further?

There is only one thing to be done, now. “Fingon,” Maglor says, very much on his dignity (or the shreds of it that are left), and knowing full well that Fingon has half the answers he seeks, if only he deigned to seek them: “Will you give us a moment alone?”

Fingon doesn’t hesitate. “No.”

“I have not seen my brother in—” Maglor stops short. He won’t beg. Not while Maedhros can hear him. He knows that he groveled before Fingolfin this very forenoon, but that was different. They are in Mithrim now; Maedhros is in Mithrim, and his eyes may be weary, but they are the right color, suffused with their old intensity and perception. There must be dignity preserved there, too. Even in the old days, Maedhros did not guard himself as he should, from eyes friendly or unfriendly. Fingon, for all his daring, is not the oldest and most faithful companion of Maedhros’ suffering.

Yes, here at last, it is Maglor’s hour. He can do more than intercede. He can understand, if only Maedhros is given time to tell him of the broken months they spent apart.

To this end, he tries to call on a little of his dead father’s rage for strength, for certainty. Was that how Feanor covered his guilt and made it power? Maglor, most of all his sons, perhaps, saw him guilty. Knew that that trenchant intellect and lock-walled heart were capable, even, of the feeling.

And Maglor’s heart is no locked thing.

“Leave us,” he says, more forcefully.

Fingon, Maedhros will say. Do as he says. Please, for me.

Maglor waits. Fingon does not move.

It is Maedhros, rather, who stirs his too-thin frame. He labors to do so, as if the coverlets are leaden shackles. He turns his head so that his cheek rests against his tangled hair—which is clean, now, but the wrong length and texture.

Yet: his eyes remain fixed on Maglor.

“Maglor,” he says. No Macalaure. No cano. “I am very sorry, but—it is better if Fingon stays.”

There were two sins that began the world. The first was knowledge; the second was violence.

For Maedhros, Maglor committed both. Against Maedhros, Maglor committed both.

The Lord said—

With limbs like blocks of ice, heavy and numb, he stumbles to his feet. Back from the bed. Over the familiar floor. He slept here—or did not sleep—for a hundred nights of nothingness. No one cares for that sort of information, now. Not from a traitor.

A man with a clean heart would challenge even an invalid. Would say, How can it be better? All our lives, we two have had only each other for safekeeping. Do you remember—do you remember—do you remember—

But the Lord said,

Where is your brother?

“Of course,” is what Maglor says, instead of arguing. Each word is an island. The song is not the flight some people believe it to be; it is a chain. It links one word to another, one life to the next.

It is blood and mercy, that song, and he was born with it.

Violence. Knowledge.

“It is late,” Fingon says, his voice grown horribly gentle. “Tomorrow—Maedhros has said that he will see all of you, tomorrow.”

“Yes,” Maedhros says. “Tomorrow, I shall be…I think I shall be ready.”

Maglor does not look at Maedhros. “Fingon, you cannot watch all night,” he chides, gazing stupidly at the floor.

(They sat together in this room. In this room, and Maglor spread the long, smooth hair over his knee, and Maglor was chosen and forgiven, without even asking for either gift. That is the old life, and he would give anything for it.

He would give the song for it, only—

That life was the song.)

Fingon is still speaking. Maglor hears the last words “—and Father, of course. Father is used to late watches.”

You were going to find him.

(He does not say this.)

“Has he eaten?” he asks, in a stiff, almost courtly manner. “I will go, good doctor, but I must know if he has eaten.”

He used to think he loved other people.

“He cannot eat much yet.” Fingon has a hand on his arm. Warm and steadying. Fingon is good. Damn him, strike him down, Fingon is very good. Fingon would not leave his younger brothers waiting in the dark. “But you’re drinking broth and my hideous teas here and there, aren’t you, Maedhros?”

A blur. An answer that is only a blur.

You were going to find him. You were going to find Amrod. You left us the body to bury. We needed you, then. I needed you! Athair gone, and Curufin gone mad! Amras with no Amrod beside him! Oh, I was not angry. I have never been angry with you. Not really. Forget the past, it isn’t true. Please, we can live the goodness of our lives again together. Maedhros, you came back. You were dead, and you came back from the dead.

He used to think he loved other people. It was not so.

“Well, if all is in order, I shall not keep you,” Maglor says. “Goodnight.” He smiles, then, at the whole world that closes in around him, lock-walled and ready for death. He continues to look at no one in particular. It is the end of love, elsewise. “Goodnight, Maedhros. I—”

“Goodnight, cano.”

Knowledge is the first sin. Maglor peers out of his cringing soul, out of his welling eyes, out of the shadow.

He sees a stranger.

Chapter Text

A memory within a memory—

Maedhros, himself again as long as liquor flowed freely. Loose-limbed, talkative. Toasting a thousand ridiculous features of the west that Finrod knew were fantastical: three-headed serpents and cactus spines a foot long; skeletal horses of riders long-dead—

“You’ve had too much,” Finrod said, trying to reconcile guilt and guile, and how they fit together in the flushed and handsome face of his eldest cousin. The dinner party, a month ago, was still fresh in his mind; Maedhros and Feanor had worked in concert to draw forth Finrod’s knowledge. Despite the forthcoming revelation of their plans to leave New York—the union of all of their plans, in fact—Finrod did not yet understand why they had played so seemingly false over truths he would have given freely.

“No such thing as too much,” Maedhros said, and then, as if quoting something, “No such thing as too far. Eh, Finrod?”

Brought back to the low-lit parlor and the sound of Fingon’s gentle snores on the sofa, Finrod grimaced. It was like Maedhros, to raise a specter from the past with careless precision. Had he guessed, how often thoughts of their disastrous adventure crossed Finrod’s mind?

He said, dismissively, “We were little fools, then.” Then he did not heed his own counsel, and poured himself another glass of sherry. He had missed his father’s fortified wines; as it turned out, his cousins’ house at Valinor Park was stocked with them, too.

“I was the fool,” Maedhros said, sighing. “For I should have known better.”

They had been young, but not so young as to have the excuse of childhood. Finarfin had brought the whole family to Formenos for a week’s blissful stay—at least, that was his design. Finrod did not recall much bliss, though he enjoyed visiting Maedhros and Maglor wherever they were.

In those few, overlong days, the July heat rose shimmering from the high grass. It freckled cheeks and burned noses. The hardwood stands, and better still, the pine forests, were a cool refuge from its golden-fingered reach. Perhaps Finrod should later have blamed himself and Maedhros for getting on too well with the younger ones. They had had a spat with Maglor—Finrod had had a spat—and as such, Maglor was sulking in his room.

If Maglor had been with them, they never would have gone into the forest that day. Maglor did not care for such exertions.

“Storm’s coming,” piped up little Celegorm, but Maedhros said,

“We shan’t be long.”

The storm came in quickly, stripping the heat from the air before it began to take the branches from the trees.

“But you must have learned,” this Maedhros was saying, the one with the glass held lazily in three fingers, not the one with the lightning-white face and the frightened eyes. “You must have learned how to survive a storm.”

“I did. More than one.” It sounded foolish to say it aloud. To prove himself to a drunkard.

(Had the west made him so hard? So hateful?)

“You are a man among men.” Maedhros turned his head to look at Fingon, and though there had been no harshness in the lines of his face before, the look that spread there now was a softened one. “Both of you. I shall be so glad, Finrod. To go where you lead.”

Finrod said, “You are mocking me.”

Maedhros was startled, but startled slowly, on account of the scotch whiskey in his veins. His head practically lolled when expressing his amazement. “Am I?” he asked. Then he smiled, and laughed, merry and long. “Yes, I suppose I must be.”

Mithrim is quiet in the morning. Finrod is used to the wide, clear silences of field and mountain, broken only by nature’s voices. But here, a mere low murmur echoes within the solid stone walls. Perhaps these people have made a pact to attend to their early business discreetly, while the late-shift sentries stumble in, heavy-eyed, to sleep.

Finrod had a restless night; he rises in the strange calm and slips his arms through the sleeves of his coat. It was his coverlet; there were not enough blankets to be shared. Galadriel has not yet woken. Her hair is a bright banner over her face; her hands curl in tight fists as they have, in her sleep, since babyhood. Finrod watches her breathe for a stolen moment, then surveys the hall’s other occupants. Room was made beside the table and benches. He sees his cousins (save Fingon), and their companions new and old. Wachiwi alone greets him; she is sitting on one of the benches, redoing the braids in her hair.

Finrod smiles, close-lipped, and leaves the hall. Not to enter the corridor—he has not done much to search within the bowels of the fort, since they arrived yesterday—but to the gates.

The gate sentry eyes him with interest. The man looks fresh; he is beginning a shift, then. Not ending one.

Finrod is hungry and thirsty, but the cool air sates him with its nip to nose and ears. Whenever he needs time to think, he goes away. The fort’s perimeter is as good an escape as he can presently manage.

Phillips is the sentry’s name; Abe Phillips. A spare man with a keen mind. He has a sharp nose and frank eyes. He claims no leadership of the fort, but Finrod finds him a worthy conversationalist.

When their talk of the east has dwindled, Finrod considers his next move. Fingolfin does not ask him to strategize, but Fingolfin does not ask for much of anything. They have been on the right side of this water not even a day; it is time to learn something, requested or not.

“You must resent us,” Finrod says, deciding that honesty remains the best policy, no matter how many bullets are buried in the wrong breasts.

Phillips shrugs. “No offense intended, son, but this new invasion’s a sight better than we’ve had, even if it’s not ideal.”

The sun is rising. In the east—always in the east. Finrod ventures, “Better?”

“Your uncle’s honest folk. You’re honest folk. I can tell.” Phillips stuffs a little fresh tobacco in his pipe, and offers the same. Finrod has no pipe, but thanks him anyway.

“You’ve been here long?”

“Six years. Rumil and I were friends.” Phillips peers at him. “But you don’t know Rumil, do you?”

Finrod rifles through the two dozen names and faces he has been presented with of late. “I don’t think I’ve met him, yet.”

“Oh, he’s dead.”

To make a move in the dark is to make the wrong move. “I’m sorry.”

“Twasn’t you that killed him. No, there’s been trouble here for more’n a year now. There’s always trouble, of course, but I’m referring to that which is inside the fort.”

Feanorians. Were they the cause of Rumil’s death? There is too much uncertainty—too much uncertainty even before he speaks to whatever has become of his cousin Maedhros.

“What kind of trouble?”

Phillips’ answer is hardly an explanation. “Word gets round. Now mind you, we knew Feanor. Some of us liked him.”

Finrod asks, still cautious, “Did you?”

“No. But I didn’t mind Maedhros. Sharp as a nail. Just as hammered in, I suppose. But he was a good soul. Tried to keep things neat where he could. He couldn’t do much, of course. They were out skirmishing almost every other night.”

Skirmishing. There is so much, that Finrod does not yet know.

“We came to settle,” he says, working his way back to several questions, all thus far unanswered. “Not to fight. But…luck was not with us. More than luck. Fate, and family were not with us. I am not saying too much, I think, if I admit that my uncle—Feanor—was on…uncertain terms with our party. Still, we had nowhere else to go but here.”

Phillips’ thin nose twitches. His lips, too. It’s a smile of sorts, on a face unused to smiling. “Mithrim is the place for those without a home,” he says. “Or at least, so it is at its best. I am not saying too much to admit that some of us here welcome fresh blood. We’re all trying to stay alive, you know. We’re not fools, and we’re not all fighters. Feanor was both.”

Finrod is very tempted to agree. Instead, he says, “I want peace, too.”

Phillips says, “Doubt you’ll find it.”

Finrod is surprised into laughter. “Indeed, sir, I doubt it, too.”

He leaves Phillips to search for some breakfast. It is too easy to let the hours slip by on an empty stomach—that was the rationale that drove them through the mountains: saving sustenance as a prize to be won by toil and time. Finrod must train himself out of this; must train himself out of older habits, too.

“Finrod?”

Red hair. Light eyes.

But it’s only Amras.

Finrod knows that Amrod is gone. He was told, not by a Feanorian. Aredhel carried the news to her father, and Fingolfin made certain that it was known before they entered Mithrim. The wounds they bear, his uncle said, are not deserved. I do not ask you to forgive—and he had been speaking to Turgon, and Galadriel, and yes, to Finrod, too—but when I see them, I still see children. Let us not speak ill of their young dead.

“Amras,” Finrod says. “What is it?”

“You don’t like us,” Amras says. He does not wait for a retort, but forges ahead. Was he always the more talkative twin? Finrod could never keep them strictly separated in his mind. “Curufin doesn’t like any of you. Still, it won’t change things, will it? We’re all here until the end of time. Or the end of something.” He sighs.

He is younger than Galadriel; not yet fifteen.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Finrod says. There is a basket of bread set out on the table, and apples besides. The apples are fresh; but of course, the climate is gentler, here. The growing season is longer. He takes one, and pares it with his pocketknife, so that he will have something to do with his hands. “Amras, I don’t mean any insult, but there is much you don’t—”

“Don’t understand?” Amras interrupts, impatiently. “We were at war with you a few days ago, weren’t we?”

“No.” Finrod wants to call it all a misunderstanding, but he won’t lie. Won’t soften the truth, even to an almost-child.

“I didn’t want to be,” Amras says. “At war. I hate all of it. I hate this place. I don’t hate any of you, particularly, though Artanis is insufferable.”

There is a defiant tremble about him, in the wake of this bold and unexpected speech, which reminds Finrod not so much of Maedhros as of Maglor. A kind of frailty, outlining his growing body and his angular features. All the Feanorians share the same kind of suspicion of outsiders. Amras, in telling whatever truth he does now, is merely feinting with the only weapon he has.

That is like Maedhros. Honesty, from him, sometimes seemed too cunning to be anything but a lie.

“What do you want from me?” Finrod asks quietly, speaking across a chasm to a child he barely knew—a someday-man whom he may never trust. “For I am not here to do anything but help our family.”

“Our family.” Amras seems to savor the possessive. Then he says, with another hard and trembling look, “I haven’t talked to him. He’s awake and I haven’t talked to him. Have you?”

Finrod answers truthfully. Maybe he should be honest with himself, and acknowledge the truth to be his weapon, too. “No,” he says. “I haven’t. I’ve been trying to be helpful in other ways. Learning names and occupations. But I will visit Maedhros, when he is rested. Or when he wishes to see me, if he does.”

“Of course he will,” Amras says. “He’ll want to see all of us.” Then his shoulders slump. He turns away, and makes for the gate that Finrod entered a few moments before.  

God, Finrod thinks invoking no deity. I’ll never understand them.

…a man among men.

Fingolfin reappears before noon. He looks weary and even old to Finrod, but that is likely because he has not slept. Finrod recognizes the grey cast to his face; the weariness in his limbs. And yet, the citizens of Mithrim look on him respectfully; one hurries to bring him an early dinner, another volunteers a report of the expected reach of supplies. They welcome a man into their midst whom they did not know a week ago. Perhaps Phillips is right; they want a chance at survival, and not war.

As it is, Finrod is obliged to wait before he can speak to him.

“Uncle,” he says at last, sitting down on the bench beside him. “How goes—how goes it with Maedhros?”

Fingolfin lifts a spoonful of soup to his lips before answering. “Fingon is with him. Gwindor, too. He has been talking a little, but he will not eat yet.”

“Should he?”

“Fingon is worried, but even he says that it is wise to wait a little longer. Vomiting would cause further damage to his organs. They are—or at least, Fingon says they may be badly bruised.”

“But he is talking.” Finrod already knew this; Amras said almost as much. But it is something quite other than a tortured conversation between a brother and a cousin, to hear Fingolfin say so. Half an hour past, his uncle was seated beside Maedhros’ bed. Hearing his voice. Answering questions, or asking them. “Should I see him?”

That is his true question. He thought he would not ask it, for some time, but in the end, it falls quite simply from his lips.

He wants to know, does Finrod. A child who loved knowledge, a man who loved freedom, and now what?

To lead is to understand the virtue, and the danger, of both.

“Yes, I think you should,” Fingolfin tells him, without equivocation. He is eating his soup slowly and steadily. He is tired, of course, but he is also comfortingly prosaic. There are no declarations of fate at a quarter to noon, from Fingolfin. “It would do him good to see you. I told him that you are here; I told him of every one of us that are here. I think it helped to know, even though…our losses pained him.”

“Pained him?”

His uncle raises his eyes to gaze at him. His soup spoon lies untouched, now. “Yes. Would you expect otherwise?”

“No,” Finrod says. “I will go to him, now.”

“Hello, Finrod,” Maedhros says, in a low, rust-dull whisper.

It hurts more than Finrod could have dreamt, to hear his cousin speak his name.

“Finrod!” Fingon exclaims. “You’re here. Good, good. Here, mix this while I pour it. It will dissolve the powder without clotting, that way.”

Finrod’s mind desires to study the stump of a wrist that he has already seen; he resists the urge. It is a temptation, to ogle a maiming when the one maimed knows of it. How much would it pain Maedhros, if Finrod were to force him to be seen?

“Hello, Maedhros,” he says. The words hang in the air, so he steals his uncle’s. “It does me good, to see you again. To hear you speak.”

“I do not have much to say,” Maedhros answers, with an ironic twist of ragged lips. “You must think that…a great change.”

It is a bladed jest, maybe. Finrod has not had time, even when he saw the fresh wounds and the old ravages, to long consider the humanity of his cousin’s captors.

But they were men. Men who likely mocked. Men who surely arrayed themselves with words, as much as with knives.

Death has long been a thing feared. One feels a little differently, observing what life left Maedhros.

“What I think does not matter, on that score,” Finrod says, when the silence stretches too long. “Fingon would say on any score, wouldn’t you, Fingon?” And he reaches for the bowl of powder, as Fingon asked.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Fingon pours hot water from a steaming pipkin, and Finrod stirs up the dust until the mixture is evenly clouded. “Maedhros, I haven’t been teasing Finrod, any more than I—”

It is all wrong. How does Fingolfin make his kindness palatable rather than poisonous?

Finrod hands over Fingon’s concoction and, against every desire of his heart, takes the chair at Maedhros’ bedside.

“Uncle says he has told you who came with our party.”

“Yes.” Maedhros’ eyes stay fixed on his. He looks like a madman, but he cannot help that.

He looks like a madman, but a very quiet madman.

“I have been acquainting myself with Mithrim,” Finrod says, breathing as deeply as he can through his nose. “Fingon, I’m sure you’ll be glad to know—they are all very friendly, and they make delectable stews.”

“I have had the stew,” Fingon says, distracted.

“All very friendly,” Maedhros says, shaping the words so that they might still be Finrod’s. “There now. You have already said something quite comforting, Finrod.”

His voice—his own voice—is so thin.

“Did you know any of them?”

“Not well.” Maedhros looks away at last. “Six months, you know, is not such a long time.”

Fingon’s head snaps up as if jerked by a string. Finrod presses his nails into the palms of his hands.

“Maitimo—” Fingon begins.

“Here,” Maedhros interrupts softly. He stares between them, eyes on nothing but the door. “I lived here less than six months.”

Chapter Text

“Of course you have been here before,” said Maedhros modestly, stepping aside so that Fingon could pass over the threshold before him. “I do not pretend to present any novelty but the circumstance.”

Fingon cast his gaze about, taking in the rising stair, the grand open hall. The sitting room visible on the right. “In truth, I haven’t visited often,” he said. “We always meet—met—at Grandfather’s, you know.”

There were uncomfortable truths layered beneath that, but Maedhros was too delicate to mention them, just as Fingon had hoped he would be. Fingolfin had never been to Feanor’s family home in Valinor Park. It had been strongly hinted on more than one taunting occasion that he would not be welcome. Indeed, the subject arose often enough that it almost seemed as if Uncle Feanor dared his half-brother to request an invitation—only so that he might have the pleasure of rejecting it.

In one of his more conflicted moods, Fingon would have claimed that to be solely his own conjecture. Then he would feel ashamed over it. But when he considered how unfriendly the house still felt—a house he had scarcely known and never loved—he did not think his prior suspicions unjust.

For now, he had been silent too long. Maedhros was peering down at him, the door already shut and locked behind him, a heavy brass key switching between his fingers like a talisman. “The hall is a little formal, isn’t it?” Maedhros said, teeth glinting white in his most charming smile. Fingon loved that smile; loved all his smiles. Maedhros’ virtues were arrayed like a hand of cards, constantly raised before the eyes of his friends, his fortunate cousins. There was so much to choose, in him.

“It is a graciously appointed home, Maitimo,” Fingon said, returning the smile. The words were ones he had heard his mother speak once. He hoped they were properly directed, here. “Shall I see more of it?”

“Later—later. We shall go and beg something of Cook, posthaste,” Maedhros said. “I know you are hungry. It is past dinnertime.”

“And you’ll eat, too?” Fingon asked, since that was a particular project of his, lately: making certain that Maedhros nourished his body as much as he satiated his mind.

“Yes, cano. Goodness, you are fit for one of the great schools already.”

The kitchen was a cozier space, and Cook—Mrs. Williams, as Maedhros addressed her, most politely—was a capable woman who carved them cold chicken to eat with thick-cut rye bread and cranberry jelly. “Master Maglor is dining elsewhere,” she said, in answer to Maedhros’ question. “A luncheon, he told me. He was dressed up very fine.”

“Maglor is happier than I am to have a house to himself,” Maedhros confided in Fingon. “But in truth, he is hardly here. You must come very often. You and Finrod. Else what shall I do? Watch the carriages roll by from the windows of that cold front hall?”

Fingon knew he should give pride of place to his studies—he almost always did—but he was touched by the pleading look in Maedhros’ eyes. It was in jest, surely, but even in jest, his cousin was a regular poet of companionship, much as Maglor was with melody.

“Of course I shall visit you,” he said. “But Grandfather shall need you, I am sure. The whole world shall need you, Maitimo. Don’t you know?”

“Who has taught you flattery?” Maedhros asked, laughing. “Surely, it was not I.”

A week ago, he considered weariness proof of hope. He knew his father feared that such prolonged exertion was incautious, but thought better of admonishing him; he knew that Finrod’s patience was profound but complicated, extending to Fingon’s concerns but not to sickbed vigils; he knew that he himself would rather be dead than to find himself failing now.

Weariness was proof of life, for Fingon. He labored, and Maedhros lived.

But when a week has passed—eight days, to be exact, since Maedhros’ waking—Fingon is still weary, and has little else to show for it. His bones cramp and ache; his neck seizes and spasms; his head throbs.

What does it matter? What does any of it matter? For every twinge, for every minor thorn that he would count in his flesh and memory, his cousin’s body bears stigmata upon stigmata of past gore, past inglorious hurts.

Eat, said the eager Fingon of a few days ago, bringing a bowl of steaming hasty pudding to Maedhros’ lap, hovering over him to guide the spoon, should Maedhros’ clumsy left hand need that. Let me help you up a little—there—there—

(Eat, pounded his heart. You can eat again. It will all be well, no matter that you were lashed to the bone, branded like a beast, pierced through to your ruin.)

A quarter of an hour later, he was holding Maedhros’ shoulders in a much different manner. One arm behind his back, the other hand supporting his brow, that it might not strike the basin.

His cousin wept as he vomited. Fingon, holding his tears in his eyes and mouth by a sense of obligation alone, could well surmise how great was the agony of broken ribs, forced to grate and heave together.

Fingon could well surmise; he was a doctor.

Despite the seeming cruelty of the act, he has fed Maedhros steadily each day following that one. Small, bird-pecked portions of broth-sopped bread. Teaspoonfuls of boiled apples, mashed fine. No meat—Maedhros had, when pressed, admitted that he could not stomach meat.

Fingon wishes that he did not have to press him, for such truths. Wishes, coequally and almost violently, that he could press him just far enough, far enough to flush the poison from his system. Like wringing a rag of water, that press. Would it require an account of his torments?

Why did they cut our mark from your arm? Why did they brand you, and when? When did you fight? You fought—even at the end—

But even in his own mind, these sound like questions fit for Celegorm’s lips.

Where does that leave Fingon?

He is collecting the day’s meal now. Wachiwi is in the kitchen; she claps a hand on his shoulder in brief greeting, then points him to the small kettle where Maedhros’ meal simmers separately from the rest. Men and women and even little Sticks, the scrap of a girl from Maedhros’ recent life, pass in and out and around Fingon, who hears and sees them only from a great distance, only in a blur.

Wall—Curufin says—orcs on patrol—take a weapon and a friend—

Words that have meaning, even knife-edges, but for Fingon’s weariness. He sags a little. Nearly fumbles the precious apples when transferring them between pot and bowl, nearly wastes his time.

“Steady,” Wachiwi says, reappearing from the blur. “Fingon, when did you last sleep?”

He does not lie. Not to her, because she is quick and shrewd and will chide him, kindly, for it. “A day ago. No matter. I am well.” A lie there, after all. But before she can question him, he takes the apples with him out of the kitchen, down the hall.

Every day, he must share Maedhros. Share him with Father, who, to be fair, does not intrude much save to be of help—share him with Celegorm, who has all but made the room his home—share him with Gwindor and Estrela, neither of whom are greedy with the love of their friend Russandol, but…but who are his most trusted confidantes, now, nonetheless.

It is not just weariness, then, that burdens him. In serving, Fingon tries to put aside the Fingon of the hour, petulant and jealous, as utterly as he shed (he believes) the Fingon of last week. How many skins of self and selfishness must be treated as the worthless husks they are, before he will be what Maedhros needs to heal? The others have already learned this lesson better, or did not need to learn it at all.

He raps at the door before he enters. Waits for the hushed welcome. Since Maedhros…taunted him, is the only apt descriptor, as much as it cleaves Fingon’s heart in chambers—

Since Maedhros taunted him, he has endeavored to seek out every opportunity for request and anticipation, for respect above all, whenever he can.

It is of great importance, to find such a balance, since he must force him to eat and rest and heal, to learn new ways of living.

“Apples, is it?” Maedhros asks. Father is here, reading from his Bible (a gift from Mother, long ago). Caranthir is here, no doubt praying in silence. Fingon feels unholy, compared with them. Man shall not live by bread alone...He must reflect on all that that precept demands of earthly saviors.

(The knife, the promise, the deafness in his heart if not his ears, to Maedhros’s pleas.)

“Apples,” he agrees. “Not even a speck of cinnamon on them, I promise.”

Very badly, he longs to say, Remember when I made my first stew for you—did I not use cinnamon—

But he cannot. He cannot mistreat Maedhros with their shared, dead lives of long ago. To do so would be to manipulate him, and Fingon must not succumb to any such temptation.

He takes up his chair, and Maedhros smiles at him, just with the corners of his lips, so that it is not, in truth, a smile at all.

“Thank you, Fingon,” he murmurs.

Fingon lifts the spoon to his lips, because Maedhros has agreed, by hint and implication, that he prefers it. His left hand lies still. Maedhros opens his mouth, his eyes fluttering closed.

It goes on like this. Fingon watches, pretending not to. Maedhros swallows. The lines of his throat twitch in distress. He makes no sound. Fingolfin turns another page of his Bible.

If Estrela is present, and Gwindor, as they sometimes are, they might share a quiet word with each other, the unintelligible murmur of people who have had frequent cause to keep all such words secret.

Fingon fills the spoon again.

Afterwards, he waits, ready to reach for the basin if it should be needed. Today, it is not. Maedhros lies very still, his left hand tight as a walnut.

Fingon glances at the bench. Caranthir is posted on it at present, of course, but it is Celegorm’s damn-fool bench. Celegorm will be here, soon. He always appears in the afternoons, often around the time that Caranthir departs. Sometimes Celegorm stays all night.

Who would have supposed that he would be most faithful? Amras is shy, a tentative shadow of his former self…or perhaps, Fingon thinks guiltily, of Amrod.  Curufin’s visits are dreadful, of course, but that is to be expected. He is the most like Feanor, and his relentless questions, somehow barbed yet reaching nothing relevant, never fail to tire Maedhros, to wear his soul thinner than even it was, housed in a skeletal body.

Four brothers accounted for, two clumsy yet steadfast in their attention, two flitting like moths round a flame that may destroy them.

But—where is Maglor?

“You are unhappy,” Maedhros murmurs. It is his secret voice, the one that Fingon believes he is trying to pitch low enough to be heard by as few as possible.

Fingon does his best to smile, to relax the lines of his brow. “Just thinking.”

“I shan’t be sick. You’ve done well.”

Praise. Praise from his Maitimo. He has ached for that, but it is poor comfort, now. “I am glad,” he says, keeping his voice low not to conceal it, but because that way, it will be more difficult for his cousin to read the emptiness there.

Maedhros’ lips move, then still. He is like this, with Fingon. Forming thoughts he does not speak. It is another grief. Fingon used to marvel at how little work was visible in the exercise of Maitimo’s charm. Now it is…it is all work, and nothing to show for it.

But there. There is that selfishness again. Does he really desire that this frail, wasted soul should muster enough strength to entertain and divert him?

“Fingon,” his father asks, setting aside his book, “Do you have the time?”

Fingon—freezes. He has thus far avoided revealing the gifted pocket-watch before Maedhros, but his father does not know its origin and will not realize the danger of causing pain. Fingon waits too long, an awkward moment, and then, despairing, rises and walks to the window.

“It is one o’clock.”

“Already?” Fingolfin makes no comment as to Fingon’s strange behavior. He stands, tucking the Bible beneath his arm. “I told Turgon I would help him with the wall while there are some hours of light left in the day. You remember, boys, that Turgon has undertaken the task of reinforcing the low outer wall.”

Fingon nods.

Maedhros offers no acknowledgment.

“You have not had your dinner yet, Caranthir,” Father says, next. “Join me?”

And to Fingon’s surprise, Caranthir rises, too. He asks, rather shyly, “Do you mind, Maitimo?”

“You should eat,” Maedhros says, with another of his sad smiles.

Father shuts the door quite gently behind them. He will send someone back with dinner for Fingon, no doubt. Maybe Celegorm—ha!

“You still have it.” Maedhros speaks softly. A secret voice though there are only the two of them, here. “The watch.”

Fingon feels his face heat with panic. He has never been subtle; never been good at hiding things. “Yes,” he answers. “I would not have parted from it.”

“So forgiving.”

Fingon remembers something else. Celegorm’s admission, spoken before Estrela of all people, who did not know their family history. That was before Maedhros woke. That was when Maglor came to him, and fawned over him, as if an unconscious body was preferable above all else.

“There’s nothing to forgive,” says Fingon.

“Isn’t there?”

“Celegorm told me,” Fingon says. Credit should be given where it is due; Celegorm defended his brother, and spends each day by his brother’s side, and so far, he has not complained of either. Fingon must…allow for that. “Celegorm told me that you didn’t burn the bridge.”

Maedhros—laughs.

It is a horrible sound, and it hurts him, and he coughs afterwards, his handless wrist striking against the coverlet as if that, too, does not cause him pain.

“The bridge,” he gasps, when he has recovered himself. "Oh, yes. I set no fire to the bridge.”

I know that you killed. Father knows that you killed. Gwindor and Estrela know that you killed, and they would follow you to the ends of the earth.

“It matters,” Fingon says. “It matters to me.”

“Did you tell your father?”

“Yes.”

“No wonder,” Maedhros says, sighing. “No wonder he has been so kind. Our family always did love the symbol of the thing, as much as the thing itself.”

“That isn’t—”

“I’m tired, Fingon,” he whispers. “Please.”

Fingon reminds himself to breathe deeply. The watch is so heavy in his pocket. So, so heavy.

It was a gift. A gift.

When Celegorm arrives, his very roughness is almost a relief. He begins to regale Maedhros with a report of what Curufin has been forging, and Fingon uses the cover of their conversation to slip away.

In the corridor, he pauses. Stares at what is in his hands. This empty bowl should be a victory. Maedhros, eating, is more than Fingon dared hope when he supported those heaving shoulders. Why, then, is he so near tears? Can he call this yet more weariness?  Or has he, by acknowledging his darkness, forbade himself that refuge?

He blinks swiftly now, clearing his eyes of any telltale moisture, and hurries to the kitchen. It is too early, yet, for supper preparations. Perhaps luck shall be with him and he shall remain unseen. Perhaps, given a moment’s respite, he should step outside the fort. Remember the touch of fresh air and careless wind upon his face. His father’s largely unspoken warnings ring inside him: Fingon, you will lose your strength and sanity both, if you spend day and night confined—

The kitchen is not empty, after all. Miles Red Cloud is scraping dried leaves and seedheads from his carefully preserved herb bundles, and Maglor is eating a bowl of soup.

“Maglor,” says Fingon, and Maglor jolts, tin rattling against tin.

“God, Fingon. Have a little pity on my nerves.”

Fingon is angrier at Maglor, suddenly, than he has ever been at Celegorm in all his life. He controls himself for a moment more, turning to Miles. “Miles, would you give us a moment?”

Miles is a patient man—at least, Fingon has found him so, in consultation over roots and herbs unfamiliar to Fingon—but he looks ill-pleased to abandon his current project. Embarrassed, Fingon reconsiders.

“Beg pardon,” he says, feeling heat in his cheeks. “Maglor and I will leave you the room. Maglor—” heat in his voice, there—“Walk with me.”

Maglor’s gaze is narrow, catlike. “I haven’t finished my dinner.”

Fingon says, “We’ll walk slowly.”

Maglor isn’t Celegorm. It won’t come to fisticuffs. But Maglor is stubborn, and very like Feanor—more so, Fingon thinks, with Feanor gone. Facing another Feanor, then, Fingon only has his anger, his certainty that he is in the right. Those will not be enough to persuade Maglor, unless…

Unless, as he can see now, Maglor’s resolve and Feanorian obstinacy are riddled with guilt.

Maglor leaves his soup in the kitchen. They leave the fort, standing in the yard, where grey- and dun-colored laundry dries, trembling, in the crisp air.

“What do you want?” Maglor asks. If Fingon had not lately left Maedhros’ side, had not lately seen just how near bones can come to the edge of skin, he might think Maglor painfully thin.

“Why won’t you see him?”

A silence. A long, dreadful silence, with nothing of the past holding them together. Not their ill-matched musical talent; not their knowledge of New York streets; not their shared pursuit of Maedhros’ affection.

And then, when Maglor makes his inquiry, it is one that chills Fingon like a long winter.

“Has he asked for me?”

Fingon stares at him. His stomach howls with hunger—it is hard to be hungry as he lifts stewed apples to Maedhros’ lips, but Fingon is still a flesh-and-blood man, and he has not eaten since the day before. The hunger he perceives in Maglor, though, is something different.

Twisted.

“You think he doesn’t want to see you?”

“I can’t know,” Maglor says, maddeningly calm, despite whatever is living and dying behind his eyes. “He hasn’t asked.”

“He’s fucking half-alive, you—” Fingon drags the anger back. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe that that—he’s here, Maglor. I brought him back. To you.” He bites down on yet another chance for colorful invective. “And you’ve seen him—once? Twice? Since he woke.”

You’ve abandoned him. Again.

“You wouldn’t understand,” Maglor cries, his cold composure fraying a little. “You’ve never understood—us. I know what you did, bringing him back. Didn’t I thank you for it? Didn’t he?”

Oh, yes. Maitimo has thanked him. Fingon struggles to speak. When he does, he knows that the blows will not come from Maglor, but from him, if he keeps on like this. “I don’t understand you, it’s true. But I know him. And if you love him, you’ll know better than to make him beg.”

“I don’t want him to beg,” Maglor mutters. His mouth pinches shut, after that. Likely, he thinks he is telling the truth.

Fingon almost prefers the close air indoors. He almost prefers the dull flagstones, rush-covered. Behind him is not only a history of winter, but a history of crabapple trees, green valleys, grey-washed streets, old books, camphor and lavender.

(Another history, or perhaps a future: bullets, blood, ash, black soil, knife to bone.)

What does he know, what did he ever know, of his own family?

He opens Maedhros’ door. It feels like an ending; an agreement to endure beyond what counts as his own life. Thus, someone walks through the doorway, in his bones, and after an instant of pondering that false poetry, he admits it is himself.

His mother. His brother. His whole damned family.

Hasn’t he changed for them? Failed them? Lived despite it?

It is all the same here, of course. The bed, the bench, the chairs, the window. The helpless huddle of his supplies, arranged in mocking rows.  

And Celegorm, with something silver in his hands. “Curufin makes endless shapes, but this one—four points—that’s my favorite. Keep one dull so I can grasp it, treat it like a knife.”

Silver—a blade. A weapon.

“What are you doing?” Fingon demands, lurching forward. He has the presence of mind to stop himself a few paces back, since wresting a deadly edge from Celegorm’s grip is likely to end badly, but otherwise he rages on. “Good God, Celegorm. You can’t bring that in here!”

Celegorm is on his feet at once, spoiling for a fight. “Lay off,” he warns and Huan springs to his side, ears alert, but not baring his teeth. Not matching his master. “I’m showing him something, is all.”

“Fingon—” Maedhros says, but Fingon has had his fill of Feanorian wiles for the moment.

“You’re showing him a blade?”

“He’s going to have see one eventually,” Celegorm spits. Lord, but he turns to flint and tinder so quickly, sparking the whole room ablaze. “Might as well be a clever one. One he can use.”

Again, Maedhros pleads, “Fingon—”

Fingon does not mind him. “What would he possibly need to use it for?”

“Head as full of shit as your mouth is? Holy hell.” Celegorm twirls the star demonstratively in his fingers, and only Fingon’s fury keeps him from flinching. “Your fucking brother is building a wall! We’ve armed our people to the teeth! But what’s that to you, doctor? A fairy story?”

Calm. I must be calm. “He,” Fingon says, jabbing a finger in the direction of the bed, but without daring to look at its occupant, “Needs rest.”

“He needs to learn how to throw with his left hand,” Celegorm says, angling his body between the foot of Maedhros’ bed and Fingon, so that Fingon could not even see his cousin’s face if he wanted to. “And you need to learn your goddamn place.”

“As you have observed, I am a doctor. And I say that knives have no place in a sickroom,” Fingon says. Realizes what he has said, too late. A clever blade—too clever. He shuts his mouth, sick. Opens it again to say only, and much more quietly, “Put it away, please.”

“Put yourself away,” Celegorm snaps. He slides the throwing star into one of his many pockets, and does not look at his brother or at Fingon, only at his dog. “Come on.” At the threshold, he says over his shoulder, “Fuck you, Fingon. You’ve made it all worse.”

Then he is gone.

Fingon is terribly afraid to look at Maedhros. They always find a way to trap him—no, he always traps himself.

“It’s only a knife,” Maedhros says. Just a voice, because Fingon is staring at the ground. “I’m not as far gone as all that, cano.” That name itself, enough to open a wound. “I did not think that Celegorm would harm me. I know what is real.”

“But it must have been alarming.” Fingon plods to his chair, sits down, imagines himself on trial. A lawless land, yet he has driven a hypocritical stake deep enough in his own heart to make the earth cry for justice. “I should not have shouted, I think.”

“I did not have a choice,” Maedhros says, and lets the words linger a little too long, before continuing, “There. I did not have a choice there, as to whether a knife or a brand or a whip should appear before. There they always were, at belts and furnaces. Ready, without regard to my shrinking fears. Do you understand?”

“I want to spare you that, here,” Fingon says, salt stinging his eyes. “This is not—it is not your life, any longer.”

“Yet there was a kind of logic, in that life,” Maedhros says gently. His voice can still weave power, especially when Fingon’s ears are already humming. “True, the price was very great, for my misdeeds, but it was a price. Measurable, exacted. If I was bold or vicious in captivity, I bled for it. If I admitted a past sin, or if someone had admitted it for me, it was marked on me. A reminder to sin no more.”

Fingon is too weak, too far in the wrong, to ask what this has to do with Celegorm.

Maedhros anticipates the question. “Celegorm is not angry with me,” he says, as if this is the logical conclusion of his words. “Why, then, would he hurt me?”

Fingon bites the inside of his cheek. He knows he must not weep, nor even whimper. To do so is to admit defeat. (Defeat?)

“But you were right, perhaps.” Maedhros’ tone is so near, so near to being tender. Which of them offers comfort? Which wields the blade? “A weapon, a knife—it has no place in a sickroom.” A pause, unbearable. “At least, not anymore.”

Fingon is sorry, so very sorry, for everything but that. Everything but what he knew he had to do. He looks, at last, at Maedhros. There are no tears on his cousin’s cheeks to match his own.

“I cannot ask your forgiveness for that,” he says, as humbly as he can. “But I understand if you are angry. And I understand, if you wish to tell your brothers, that it was I—if you wish to tell Celegorm—”

“Celegorm,” says Maedhros, suddenly sharp and clear, an oracle for truths beyond Fingon’s ken, “Cannot know. Celegorm would kill the one who did it.”

This is a merciless truth. Separated from its circumstances, from its necessity, the maiming of his hand is a worse injury than the mockery carved along his loins, than the lash against his back, than the bone in his leg healed wrong. Celegorm is a hunter, a fighter, a knife in himself.

His idea of justice is revenge.

“That may be,” Fingon says. “But Celegorm was not there, Maitimo.” The Maitimo slipped out before he could catch it; he has been careful, but the habits cultivated by his eager thirteen-year-old heart are difficult to break. “He does not know what we know.”

The lines of Maedhros’ face stretch long. That, too, is weariness. “You saw him. You saw him, Fingon, and you did not fear him, and afterwards, you told me of it, able to scorn and reflect—” All this in a nigh--unintelligible rush which Fingon does not immediately comprehend. “What do we know?” Maedhros finishes, the thread of his story broken. “What is that we know?”

“I hope you know that I am sorry,” Fingon offers, praying that the words, spoken aloud, will anchor him, for he is thoroughly at sea. “For quarrelling with Celegorm. For reminding you of past hurts. For this whole dreadful world. It isn’t what I wanted for us, Maitimo…It isn’t. God, don’t we know that?”

See you on the other---

Maedhros looks at him until Fingon can hear the tendons snap, the bone creak. Then Maedhros says,

“I want Maglor.”

“What?”

“Please.” Maedhros’ eyes water. “Will you ask Maglor to come?”

If Fingon had had his wits about him, he would have used this time to bathe and bandage and soothe, not to bandy strange, hard words. Not to listen to this last, humiliating request. He does not want to speak to Maglor anymore than he wants ever to see Celegorm again. He told Maglor not to make Maedhros beg.

But now Maedhros is begging him, recrossing the chasm that stretches wider and wider between them.

“Yes,” says Fingon, because it feels, today, like he has tried and failed to say everything else.  

Chapter Text

In the dark, Maglor listened to his breath go in and out. Water poured from the spout, and tea from the pot, but water and tea didn’t go back in afterwards. He thought thoughts like this, when Mamaí put out the little white candle and kissed him and said,

Sweet dreams, my baby.

She still said the words, but Celegorm was the baby now. There could only be one baby, Maglor knew, and remembering that he knew this, he cried. Then he grew tired of crying and pulled his breath in and out again. What if he forgot to take it back someday, like the teapot did?

Sleep, baby, sleep. Your athair tends the sheep. Your mamaí shakes the dreamland tree, and from it—

He tried to sing the song that Mamaí picked out on the piano, but then his voice sounded too little in the great, wide night, so he put his hand over his mouth.

Maitimo was taking a very long time to come.

Maitimo was almost five years old. A tall, grown-up boy, Athair said. He was so grown and tall that he could even help Athair in the smithy. Maglor could not go there at all unless he was carried on someone’s hip. And Mamaí’s hip always had Celegorm on it now. Fat baby. He was all pink and rolly and he grunted.

Maglor had said, I didn’t used to grunt. I wasn’t fat. I was a pretty baby.

Well, Maglor, Athair said. You are crowing, now. And that is unbecoming.

Mamaí and Maitimo both heard and everything. Maglor had cried.

He scrunched his face up. That was from the day. The day was gone now, resting.

Why wouldn’t Maitimo come?

The door creaked open, letting in yellow light. Maitimo’s feet crept over the floor, and his breathing went in and out too, but funny. It hitched along the way.

Maglor rolled over and looked for him. But the door had shut with a soft snick and the light was gone. Maglor wriggled down in the covers. He couldn’t see, but he could hear. Maitimo’s feet stepped closer, closer.

The wall of the crib was high, but that never stopped Maitimo. Athair said it wasn’t for little boys to climb over, of course, because he was an athair and he knew all about everything. Except! Athair didn’t know that Maglor could climb it almost as well as Maitimo, didn’t know that he did climb it when Athair was not watching—

But even Maitimo wasn’t quick, tonight. He made a little hissing sound, holding onto the edge.

Maglor sat up.

“Shhh,” Maitimo said at once, still with that funny hitch. Then his breath stayed inside him, and he tumbled in all in one go.

Maglor lay down again. “You’re funny,” he said. “You sound funny.”

Maitimo hushed again. Maglor stayed quiet, but he poked at Maitimo’s cheek and found that it was wet, there. “Oh,” he said, a soft whoosh. And then, because Maitimo always did the same thing, he reached down with his hand to find Maitimo’s. He did find it, but it didn’t help.

Maitimo cried. Just once. A sob as great and dark as the whole room. That frightened Maglor, more than Athair shouting, and he felt the tears rise like water, water that would fall and not come back again.

“No, no,” Maitimo whispered, and he brought his hands back again, this time behind Maglor’s neck, pulling him against him like Mamaí did when they were hurt. “Let’s go to sleep, Macalaure. Let’s go to sleep.”

“Your hand,” Maglor said, all wobbly. “I-it’s fat.”

“It’s not.”

“It i-is.”

“I’ll sing,” Maitimo said, which was a very fine thing, a very fine thing indeed, and not one that always happened at night. “I’ll sing, but you must try and go to sleep.”

“Yes,” said Maglor, after considering. He pulled his hands out of the blankets where he’d hidden them and put them around Maitimo’s back.

Maitimo sang a different song. A good one. It was more than the teapot, more than the spout of the pump. It was a river, and they were boats. Two boats, Maglor thought, very close in size.

Sleep little one, go to sleep,

So peaceful the birds and the sheep.

Quiet the meadow and trees.

Even the buzz of the bees.

The silvery moonbeams so bright,

Down through the window give light,

Over you the moonbeams will creep.

Sleep little one, go to sleep.

His hands patted Maglor’s back, over and over.

They felt just like they always did.

He is already sorry. Already moving, in heart if not in body, when Fingon comes to find him with a heavy slant to his shoulders a heavy question on his face.

“Maedhros is asking for you,” Fingon says, and a filament of Maglor’s mind recognizes that Fingon did not call him Maitimo, while the rest of Maglor leaps forward, forward, scarcely surprised, to answer—

“Yes. Yes, I’ll come.”

It is as if all of him is breaking. He can feel his skin crackle, and his heart splinter, and if his veins have turned to a network of slender branches in his limbs, perhaps they split and shatter, too.

It was so wrong, and so cruel, for them to be separated. There at Mithrim’s gate, there in the turn of the year, there in a deathbed room. Fingon cannot possibly understand this, not with his judgment of their family, of what they all have done.

“He’s not very well at the moment,” Fingon says. “He’s…he’s a bit skittish, really. You must be gentle, Maglor. You must be calm.”

“Fingon. He’s my brother.” But it is difficult to press that point too hard, when Fingon saved him and Maglor failed.

Deep, deep, deeper than he will permit his mind to go, there is a face, four hands, and a great quantity of blood.

“Has he eaten, finally?” Maglor asks. “I know you said, last time, that he could not.”

Last time is more than a week ago, and that is Maglor’s fault.

“He’s had apples, porridge, that sort of thing. For a few days, now, in fact—for he’d be dead otherwise.” Fingon walks ahead of him, each step a condemnation.

“He asked for me.”

Fingon answers, “Yes.”

“Do you know what—what prompted it?” Maglor is saying more than he should. More than he wants Fingon to hear, but he is saying it.

Fingon turns his head, the dark strands of his hair slapping impatiently against his shoulders. Then he stops short, wheeling to face Maglor fully. His voice, when he speaks, is hushed. “Celegorm showed him a knife. Not a knife, but some—some bladed thing that Curufin made.”

“Blast Celegorm,” Maglor mutters. There is no denying the giddy thrill that shivers through him; anger at Celegorm is something that they can share, something to which Fingon will pose no opposition. “All right, then. All right, you need me.”

Fingon’s face is a mask, at that. Perhaps he doesn’t want to clarify the state of their sole affair, to say, he needs you, and so he says nothing at all.

Maglor’s shoulders lift. Then they are at the door, the door to the future and to Maedhros, and Maglor’s breath catches in his throat as he remembers how heart and veins have crumbled, where life and courage were not enough to act.

Dark is that secret. Dark is Maglor’s unshriven soul.

Fingon passes inside the room first. “He’s here,” he says, and that means that there is no time left. There is nothing else to do, and Maglor—

—has missed him, missed his brother so terribly, every moment that he was not here—

It is a small room, yet the bed is so far. Maedhros’ body is covered, in the folds of a shirt and a woolen blanket, and so only his face and his ragged hair are visible. Both face and hair are too thin at the edges. Shadows, only shadows, of their former selves.  

Maglor’s heart and eyes are full. Words, then, would be empty.

(A poet, however lost, knows these things.)

Without uttering a word, accordingly, he takes the chair nearest his brother’s left side. The side where a hand twists in that woolen blanket; the side where a hand still is.

“Macalaure,” Maitimo says, casting a lifeline into the deep. Macalaure and Maitimo are their names to hold, now. They can belong to no one else. Mother gave Macalaure to him, Maitimo to Maedhros, and Mother is gone—but she left him this brother. This brother, who has come back. This brother, who says, “I’m terribly sorry.”

Sorry.

Maglor could fling his arms about him, for that, but he won’t. Blades have hurt Maedhros. The world has bruised him. And as for Maglor? Maglor has learned much in his week away, if only from nightmares, and he will not reach with hand or hope this time, except to take what is offered.

Now, something else is offered, here.

“I’m sorry, too,” he says. “I shouldn’t have stayed away. Strange, isn’t it? I thought if I stayed, I might lose you again.”

Now it is Maedhros, who has nothing to say. But he has said enough. Maglor can do the rest. Has not Maglor always risen to meet him? Waited when he ought? But for this foul year, but for Athair’s madness—Feanor’s madness, nothing of Athair about it, separated by betrayal from what a father ought to do to sons—

Beyond that madness, has not Maglor been a brother, wholly?

“I shall remain here as long as you desire it,” he says, patting the lumpy mattress as Celegorm might stroke Huan’s flank. “And if you wish to tell me anything—anything, Maitimo—I will bear it. And if you wish me to talk instead, I will, and if you wish me to be silent—”

“I don’t.” Maedhros swallows something down, or at least, his throat twitches. “I don’t ever want you to be silent.”

Maglor smiles. It hurts, but brittle veins and open hearts must be thawed somehow. The pain of his joy, the bruise spreading under it in shades of wronged blood, threatens to be too much. Maedhros is gazing back at him, all edges and honesty, and in a moment Maglor the poet shall read the language of his brother’s eyes and understand a history that his burdened spirit cannot hope to heft, to hold.

Maglor turns, thus, to Fingon, who stands alone in open space.

Fingon’s arms are folded across his chest; Fingolfin’s attitude, or his own. But his shoulders are slumped. His head a little bowed.

“Thank you, Fingon,” Maedhros says. “Maglor can look after me for a little while, now.”

Fingon’s lips compress, as if his words must be withheld by physical effort. When he speaks, he does so very quietly. “Maedhros,” he says. “The bandages need changing. The poultices, too.”

Bandages. Maglor flinches. There are still bandages, for more than the maimed arm! The damning question is not, after all, how long he kept away from Maitimo. It is whether he can countenance the knowledge of the hurts suffered in that absence.

(Not only that absence.)

His own voice answers Fingon’s gentle challenge. “I can do it,” he says. Reasonable, he is being reasonable. “If you will tell me how—and if—”

Fingon does not much like this prospect, either. “I…Maglor, I don’t know if that is wise.”

Because of what you will see there. Maglor staunched a wound, once, left by a woman’s gleeful hatred. Fingon braved a mountain that Maglor never saw.

(It is always Maedhros who bleeds.)

“I will do whatever Maitimo wishes,” Maglor says, and he feels a thread of song in his voice again. The harp is broken; his flute is long since hidden in his pack. But the song has never lived for either of these. Maybe sin and failure, loneliness and loss, are all facets of the same cloying stone. A weight around the neck; a lump in the throat.

And Maglor has choked on fear as much as anyone, until now.

Fingon, for his part, sighs. Fingon is unburdened by sin, and is, despite his losses, still quite young. Because of their cruel and empty-handed meeting, Maglor has been afraid of him. Has, before he returned with Maedhros, and after, thought of this fear as anger. Despite the lasting pain, the telltale bandages, the purpose of song and its rebirth restores a little of the old love he had for his cousin.

Yet: none of that can truly matter, of course, until Maedhros speaks.

Maglor trusts what Maedhros will say.

“Fingon,” Maedhros says. Then, “Cano. I do not mind. I want him to stay, and I want you to rest.”

“I’ll rest in death,” says Fingon, with a strange little smile. (Still young.)

“Don’t say that,” Maedhros murmurs. “No—go to your father, and relieve me of a little guilt. He looks tired, doesn’t he, Maglor? He looks as though he shall drop, standing there.”

“You do look tired, Fingon,” Maglor says. “I thought so at once.”

Fingon rubs his shoulder, his arm crossed in front of his chest as if to protect his heart from a blow. Maglor can understand that. Can understand, again, how deeply Fingon cares. Such understanding shall strengthen him for what is to follow. For what he is about to see.

“I’ll direct Maglor,” Maedhros promises. “I promise I shall tell him, if it hurts.” That with a smile, a smile which Maglor cannot meet.

Some pains run like rivers, coursing with the blood of the earth. Some are ocean-deep.

“Very well,” Fingon agrees. It is not defeat, not from Fingon’s strong and blameless bones. It might better be called acceptance. So called, it is another sort of song, simpler than Maglor’s, and perhaps more honorable. Fingon tips his head. “Maglor, a word?”

Maglor rises. Flashes his own smile for his brother quickly, choosing a moment in which he need not stay.

He joins Fingon at the window, where a few dishes of herbs are swimming in amber on the sill. Fingon says, “Soak a length of linen in this, fold it between two more, and apply it to his chest.”

“What is it for?”

Fingon’s eyes remain on the herbs. “The scarring.”

Maglor holds himself still, so as not to shudder. He must rally his courage before Fingon departs, so that it may remain rallied thereafter. To this end:

“Don’t worry,” he says, speaking low, in the hopes that Maedhros’ sharp ears will not catch word of a memory. “I’ve tended him before. He took a bullet to the shoulder, you know, and I was the one to stitch it closed.”

Fingon’s chin jerks up. His eyes—there is pain, awful pain there. So much for Maglor’s courage! Fingon says, “I don’t know. I did not see it.”

Before Maglor can question this curious declaration, Fingon rattles on, explaining that there should be no external bleeding, but to carefully observe any fresh bruising around the ribs, the lower abdomen.

“You needn’t open the bandages at his wrist,” says Fingon, last of all. “It should be disturbed as little as possible. I shall unwrap it again tonight.”

That is everything: everything Maglor must know to make amends.

(If only it were so.)

Fingon leaves them with a labored attempt at cheerfulness. He pauses at the door, peering at them both as if by his gaze alone he could remove the dim, shading clouds of the present to reveal the clarified contours of the past. Or maybe that is what is in Maglor’s mind.

Whatever it is, Fingon closes the door behind him, and Maglor has his brother to himself.

“Did he frighten you with an account of my flesh?” Maedhros asks. Voice: thin. Face and hair and remaining hand—too thin as well.

“No,” Maglor answers, taking refuge in honest. “He said very little.”

“It isn’t a pretty sight, Maglor.”

All his life until this end, Maedhros has been a pretty sight. Even Thuringwethil called him so, sphinxlike and mocking, when she promised him a quick and brutal death.

A kinder death than the one Maglor visited upon him, all told—

But of course, Thuringwethil was a liar.

“I’m not a child any longer, Maitimo,” Maglor whispers. Then, a little stronger: “I’ve been your doctor before.”

That means nothing. They look at each other, and they both know.

“Yes,” Maedhros says, pretending that they do not know. “Yes, when we had no Fingon.” Then resolutely, with his left hand, he draws down the loose shirt that covers him from breast to waist. “You’ll have to manage the bandages, I’m afraid. I’m clumsy with this one.” He means his hand.

Maglor doesn’t speak to that. But he examines the worn linen, torn in strips, and sees how the strips are simply tied beneath his arm, along his side. “I…” Maglor wants to ask a hundred dreadful questions, and so cannot choose one.

“Do not pain yourself needlessly, Macalaure.” The name again. “Call Fingon back again, if you must.”

Maglor’s blood rises, and he reaches to unbind the first. The second. It is a thankless show of dedication. His work is not half done when his tears begin to fall.

His tears, as Maedhros well knows, have never been quiet, or calm.

“A hideous tapestry, isn’t it?” Maedhros murmurs over the sound of Maglor’s weeping, his own eyes shining. “I try to think of it all, all at once, and I find I cannot. A great black swarm of cadaver-flies, my thoughts.”

Maglor thought his lonely waking hours, his undead guilt, to be such a swarm. All his life he has had points of parallel and connection, even in grief. This is like to that, and so on. Guilt is like to drowning, sorrow is like to winter, love is like to the warmth and swell of blood.

For this—for what has become of Maedhros—he is alone. Alone at last, here beside the one constant in all his pauper-life.

A hundred dreadful questions, and just one. “Why?”

Maedhros parries emptily: “You know why.”

“I don’t.” Maglor swallows a sob. “I don’t know why they would hurt you. You’d done no…you’d done nothing but fight. If they hated you so…why was death not enough?”

“I asked myself that, too.” Maedhros shakes his head. Their name—their father’s name, red and crooked—rises and falls with his breath. “I wanted them to kill me, but they wouldn’t. Not until the end.”

“And then Fingon came,” Maglor whispers. Fingon, for whom death was not enough.

No word from Maedhros. But he nods.

Fingon knew no bullet wound because the skin and some of the flesh beneath it was carved full away. Fingon, whatever he knows of the past, knows now the same present that Maglor does, though of course Maglor also knows so much else.

Here is what they know but do not have a memory to build their love and dread upon: the slurs and criminals’ marks, the slashing scars, the bone-deep bruises. The starvation, the false salvation, the truth of all the kindnesses and killings that this body offered when it was whole.

A mottled map, now, is made of him. A boy, a man, a swarm of something that is trying, and failing, to stitch itself back together.

His brother has become too many people, in one. A fallen battlefield. Is it any wonder, that Maglor weeps? Is it any wonder that he cannot run any longer? For a week, he hid and scarcely slept. For six months before that, he felt his mind waste away like a shore battered by the storm of failure.

I am strong enough for this. I am.

But poets are liars, too, unless they are dead men.

“Jesus, Maitimo, is that…”

It is the same size and shape, pressed just where it used to dangle. Maglor thought it gone.

And Maedhros, masked and quiet, tells him: “Yes.”

“But how…”

The room has tilted, and Maedhros’ cheeks run brackish with tears.

Maglor sees the many wounds as stanzas, as scraps and tendrils of a tragedy to be read one after the other, rather than as a whole.  

“It was in my pocket.”

“All that time?”

“Yes. What better way to mar me, Maglor? Few would know it—would know to recognize—”

“I would.” Its placement, as much as its dimension, is what yielded the suspicion. Once proved true, the meaning is vast; unconscionable. If one of Maedhros’ scars was created from something old and holy, something beloved, the rest must also have meaning—even if they are not epithets, or insults, or oaths.

The scourged back, then, has meaning. The burned and beaten ribs have meaning.

Maglor cannot help himself. He slumps forward from the chair, kneeling, and cradles Maedhros’ head in his arms, so that his brother’s face may be hidden against Maglor’s shoulder, so that Maglor’s hands may caress the back of his brother’s neck.

But there is a scar there too.

“God…” gasps Maglor. Not a prayer. Once, Maitimo, when he was Maitimo, called out the Lord’s name as he crawled to reach their earthly father’s judgment.

It wasn’t a prayer then, either.

“I’m sorry,” Maedhros is muttering again, muffled by Maglor’s shoulder. “I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

Fingon will return and find Maglor useless. He will send him away, and Maglor has sworn—swears now—that this is a new beginning. He will not leave this time. He grasps Maedhros’ shoulders and eases him back a little, only to see the particular ugliness of a face crumpled by too much readiness for pain.

“Would it help to tell me?” Maglor asks. “To tell me any of it?”

Maedhros, his running eyes screwed shut, shakes his head.

Maglor’s gaze, stripped of another to meet it, slips down to trace the smooth, skinless hollow, where Athair’s little prayer medal should hang in silver, not in red.

What is there, after all, for Maedhros to tell him? That wound was made by heat. The rough-healed stripes across his shoulders, like tongues of lapping flame, were made by rope or leather.

Again, again, the answer to one question—why—is all that there is left to learn.

“No trouble,” Maglor says, searching for his strongest voice. His deepest song—as deep as an ocean, perhaps. “No trouble, Maitimo. Lie here. I promised Fingon I would change these bandages; not merely strip them away.”

“Thank you.”

“You need not thank me,” Maglor tells him, sick at heart.

Maglor must go to fetch the herbs from the windowsill, because he promised Fingon that he would apply them to Maedhros’ breast and hips. He can scarcely acknowledge to himself what is written over Maedhros’ hips, and once more, why it is written there. He thrusts the notion away, and returns to his present dilemma: how to attend to the pressing duties, without leaving his brother alone and untouched.

(His hands have moved, now, to cover Maedhros’ sole remaining one.)

“You were there,” Maedhros says, not opening his eyes. “So many nights, in the dark. Until I sent you away, you were there.”

Maglor drags his fingers against the strange callouses, the thin-stretched flesh.

Of course Maedhros remained Maitimo, in whatever hole they kept him, if only for a time.

Of course he thought of me.

If Maglor begs forgiveness now, it shall be for everything. For far, far too much.

“In the city,” he says, one thin trembling note like the trill of a flute, “I never understood how it all could seem less than whole, to you. I was so dazzled by music, friends, sights, curios.” His thoughts flit to Annabella, the girl he thought loved. She is now a paper-doll memory, nothing more. “You always wanted to go home.” Maedhros’ hand seizes in his, at that, but Maglor presses on. “You loved so many, Maitimo. But as for me—if we were together, at each other’s sides, then I was ready for the world.” He releases Maedhros’ hand. It is red and white and black and so very homely, that Maglor aches at the sight of it.

Not until the bandages are replaced, covering him and his hurts, does Maedhros open his eyes again. He tries to smile again, too. Maglor wishes he would not, but he prides himself on knowing better than to say so.

“You are very skilled,” Maedhros murmurs.

On unchecked impulse, Maglor reaches out to smooth the hair back from his brow. “And you are very tired, Maitimo. It isn’t just Fingon, who sleeps so little.”

“And you, cano? Am I to be blind to those…those red eyes?”

“I’ve been crying, as you well know,” Maglor says, his voice a little pettish, and Maedhros’ smile gentles, becoming less grisly with strain.  

“I don’t sleep, much,” Maedhros admits. “Fingon has offered me draughts that would…make it possible, I suppose, but I do not want to be drugged.”

They drugged him, then. Whether by treachery or by forcing poison past his lips. Maglor strokes his hair again. How lustrous and long was this hair, once, even when they had gone wild and the world had gone wrong.

“It is ugly, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“A regular scarecrow’s thatch. Surprised Fingon didn’t cut it off.”

Despite its state, Maglor is surprised by the revulsion Maedhros has for something once beloved. “You…would want that?”

“It has been done already.”

Maglor cannot doubt this: it is the wrong length, ragged or not. He teases a strand of it with his fingers, examining the tattered end. “The slaves Fingolfin rescued,” he says, thinking of Estrela, “Their hair was cut, too. You were treated like one.”

It isn’t safe ground, exactly, but it is better than nothing.

“I wasn’t treated like a slave, Macalaure,” Maedhros says. “Just punished like one.”

The ugliness that had departed from his smile has returned in his voice.

Despite this, Maglor summons his courage. After he finished with the bandages, he reclaimed his seat, but he has drawn the chair so close that his knees press the edge of the bed. This is close enough to take his brother’s hand, to touch his arm or his hair or his shoulder. For now, though, Maglor folds his own hands in his lap.

“I told you,” he says, “That I had lost my song. I had. But I think I could sing for you.”

Maedhros’ face lightens, at that. It becomes almost unbearably young.

“I would like that.”

There chanced to be a pedlar bold,

A pedlar bold he chanced to be;

He rolled his pack all on his back,

And he came tripping oer the lee.

By chance he met two troublesome blades,

Two troublesome blades they chanced to be;

The one of them was bold Robin Hood,

And the other was Little John so free.

Maedhros’ fingers droop. His breathing evens. His eyes are closed. Maglor would call this victory, would call it peace to have his voice his own again, but his eyes sting and blur.

Softly, he sings on. On and on, omitting only the man killed in his father’s land, until he comes to the ending, which is as familiar as his brother’s face.

More so, now, because his brother’s face has changed.

If you are Gamble Gold of the gay green woods,

And travelled far beyond the sea,

You are my mother’s own sister’s son,

What nearer cousins can we be?

They sheathed their swords, with friendly words,

So merrily they did agree,

They went to a tavern and there they dined,

And cracked bottles most merrily.

Oh, Mother, Maglor thinks, for it was she who taught them the song. Damn us all, forget us all—but you could save him.

You could save him.

It is all peace, for a little while. Maedhros, sleeping in a natural stupor; Maglor, with music ringing in his ears for the first time in months.

They must be grateful to Fingon, perhaps, and to whoever else stays graciously outside the door, for giving them this chance. When Maglor takes his chances, he likes to think that his ultimate aims are, if not nobler, exactly, at least more likely to achieve success.

He thinks this fondly, his own eyes drooping shut as afternoon turns to evening.

Then Maedhros’ body jerks with violence, snapped straight by the tug of invisible strings, and Maglor’s peace is spent.

The screams are worst of all. They are close-lipped and choked and raw, as if Maedhros fights against an unseen, muzzling hand. Maglor cannot wake him. He shakes him by the shoulders, he calls his name, and Maedhros thrashes at knees and waist and neck, awful and inhuman and…somehow restrained.

Fingon bursts through the door with Caranthir at his heels. “Good lord,” cries Caranthir. “What’s gotten into him?”

But Fingon moves without asking any useless questions. He skates to the window, gathers something in his hand, and pushing past Maglor and Caranthir, who crowd the bed together, he holds an unstoppered bottle beneath Maedhros’ nostrils.

Maglor, resting on his heels, wonders where Fingon has possibly gotten smelling salts. But it is only a flash of curiosity, for Maedhros is at the heart of all wondering, all worrying. And Maedhros wakes, gasping, still not quite himself.

“Fuck you—” he heaves. “Fucking—child killer—”

“Maitimo,” Fingon says, holding him by the upper arms. “Maitimo, it’s Fingon. Fingon and Maglor. And Caranthir. You’re safe. You’re among family.”

Maedhros’ wide eyes—too wide—rove over them. When he speaks next, it is no longer in the hold of a nightmare, but the words mean nothing to Maglor. Nothing but further, deeper fear.

“See…what you have done…” Maedhros murmurs, docile under Fingon’s hold. “See…what you have done to yourself since.”

“I helped him to sleep,” Maglor says, low. The door is at his back. Maedhros is quiet, now—dozing even—but escaping the more profound rest that only seems to bind him. “I shouldn’t have.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Fingon says, generous as Maglor remembers him to be. “Truly, Maglor. He needs you.”

“I know.”

The guilt is so much more, when paired with truth.

“So you’ll come back? You won’t be…” Frightened away. “Dissuaded?”

“I shall be here daily,” Maglor promises, scraping the bottom of his soul for a little of his old pride. “It is only that I want to be of help to him. And that—that was no help.”

“That was a nightmare,” says Fingon, never shying away from speaking the obvious. “He is fighting sleep because the demons…come, then, I suppose. No doubt we all can understand. When I sleep—” But Fingon doesn’t say what he sees, when he sleeps.

Maybe Fingon has secrets, too.

Maglor has touched his brother’s hair, his skin, has felt the tightening of his grasping bones. There is so much of Maedhros, lost, and there was so much of Maedhros to be lost, that it is difficult to measure what remains.

Whatever remains, though, is Maglor’s to protect.

“Let us go back in,” he says, with a hand on Fingon’s shoulder, now. “And cheer him a little. You know how he does not like to be left alone.”

His lot is so bitter, his secret so unholy, his love so great—

His madness so near.

Chapter Text

He was still breathing hard. It was tempting, almost above anything, to try and stifle his nose and mouth against his sleeve—to do everything in his power to keep silent. It was tempting to go beyond that, to shut his eyes as well, to try to hide from the swaying branches of his tree-perch; to hide from the moon itself.

But Finrod knew that none of this mattered.

Below—ten feet below—were vast, rough, shaggy shoulders; limbs of monstrous length and breadth; and a head larger than any dog’s, any wolf’s, that Finrod had yet known in the east, or yet seen in the west.

He would have preferred the howl of a nearby pack, almost, to that snuffling snout which swayed, almost from shoulder to round-ruffed shoulder, with each flicker of the wind. The bear knew where he was, and had no reason to forget it. There was blood running on Finrod’s raw palms, where he had scraped them in his rapid ascent. Even without fresh blood, bears could catch a scent from miles away. This beast might have encountered men before, and killed them. It was also possible that Finrod was the first of his kind to look into those small sharp eyes, more than a head above his.

Like the face of night itself, that face.

Whatever the truth was, the bear seemed hungry.

George Ord had named it ursus horribilis. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark had brought back many specimens; Finrod had no doubt that one such bear as this had been the most impressive of the lot.

He was awfully afraid.

His thigh was bleeding too. The claws had raked it as he tumbled away from its reach; had raked through deerskin and cotton as if they were damp paper. Finrod did not scream, did not breathe much at all, as he scrambled to his feet and ran. Running should have been his downfall, but the dense forestation had saved him. It had allowed him just enough advantage to find a tree, which, by dusky light, he could see had stout branches. He climbed as high as he reasonably could.

Unlike the black bears of the east ursus horribilis could not climb. The bear had broken away the lower branches, though, while Finrod went up—up—tearing at the bracken and finding his breath again in wheezing gasps.

Hours later, or at least, the time between day and darkness, found them waiting out a terrible truce. Here was Finrod and his oozing wounds; there was the bear and its interest in supper.

Finrod was never much one to pray. God was his Father, he supposed, in a general sense—but he had a father already, one whom he loved dearly and quietly, as he did most of the secret, childish things that still mattered to him. He could be loud in his intellectual convictions; he could elevate them, even, as matters of both mind and heart.

But how could he speak of his love for his father’s arms, or his mother’s kiss, or his yellow-haired siblings playing before the fireplace or chasing one another at the seashore?

How did anyone speak of such things?

For these and other reasons, some of them no doubt nothing more than youthful arrogance and indolence, he usually petitioned man rather than God, worshiping at ideas rather than at altars.

There were no men but him, in this wilderness. And there were no ideas, for the beast’s low rumble drowned them all out.

Through the pitch-painted eaves of heaven peered the moon. Finrod saw its eye with his eyes; saw its sight fall in hoary silver on the monstrous shape below. He saw the claws again, and his leg throbbed, and his throat closed. The natives sent out warriors to hunt bears, when they hunted them at all. Finrod he had to pray, but he did not know if God would turn to an ear to a man like him.

An almost-boy.

“Maitimo,” he whispered. It wasn’t even his name for his cousin; it was Fingon’s name, and therefore, it was, by necessity, worshipful. There was nothing of color in this forest, at night, to call to mind that bright visage, glory-tressed. But before Finrod set out, with a gun and a satchel and a map and a dream, he had been lost in the woods with Maedhros.

Had trusted him then, and been led out alive.

“Would you laugh?” he murmured. “To see such a fool as I?”

The light shifted as the moon was shrouded in clouds. Finrod continued to speak, pitching his voice low but raising it a little in volume, lest by some mad chance the bear would hear the sounds of a creature so unlike its usual prey as to relinquish its patient interest.

“I was so afraid,” Finrod said, “Still am, of course—but I was so very surprised to find myself staring into that face. Lord, Mae—Maitimo, he’s taller than you.” He paused. He had to blink away tears. “But I shouldn’t have run. He and I might have gotten on well, if I hadn’t run.”

So on and so on, went his words.

It was a hard thing—very hard—to keep Maedhros there. To see the long legs dangling carelessly over this sustaining bough; to see the tilt of lips and jaw and eyes. All measuring: all gently mocking. They had always mocked each other a little. Finrod had never quite been willing to crown Maedhros king, as Fingon and Maglor did readily, if each for their own reasons.

Yet it was Finrod who prayed to him now, crowning him a god.

Please. Please give me strength, and courage.

There were no answers from the darkness. But after a time, the bear lumbered away. The night seemed to resume some indefinable remoteness, wild yet ordinary, It took no notice of Finrod, asked nothing of him.

Not his prayers; not his life.

He bound himself to the trunk of the tree all the same, that he might not fall in his sleep. When he woke, it was morning: clear and bright, the sky red with dawn.  

Fear makes men useless.

This truth is a harsh one, and in practical application, Finrod softens it with as much compassion as he can. If a man or a woman or a child is afraid, it is one’s first duty to alleviate, as a self-fancied leader—for only then can progress be made.

Here in the west, too, only then can survival win a fighting chance.

Finrod has seen fear on his cousins’ faces, in Mithrim. After a few weeks’ observation, he believes them to be the chief cultivators of its root among the other inhabitants of the fort. Without the Feanorians, Mithrim might be animated by a different soul; a more outward-bound and industrious soul. As it is, the population is paralyzed; the reaches of what should be a secured land are shrouded in indecision rather than strength.

He talked of this to Beren, somewhat, on their journey outside the walls, to the settlement some miles hence. Beren listened patiently, as was his custom.

Beren has heard him rant (Finrod can admit that he rants) of familial betrayal, of silver tongues and squandered trust. But Beren has not heard so much on the subject of fear.

 Fear, Finrod said, wastes the last precious moments before a death blow, if it is not checked.

Why do you think your cousins are afraid? Beren asked. Because of what was done to their brother?

Likely. But… He did not know how, exactly, to explain what he had come to believe: that it was fear that drove Feanor to fire, to ruin, to death.

This world offers little certainty. Beren knows that; reminds him of that, after they have attempted civil intercourse with some of the nearby folk and been met with cautious words plucked, by exertion, from even more cautious silences.

These people are prepared for conflict, Beren says. Look how they keep their eyes low, and their hands near their weapons.

Finrod is certain that if conflict—if outright war, with whatever demons Feanor smelted from the fear and wrath and pride burning in his soul—is to come, Mithrim afraid shall not be Mithrim ready.

Therefore, he turns his mind first to the demons.

Gwindor stays close by Estrela and the children, in the few hours that he does not spend at Maedhros’ side. Finrod thinks of his cousin’s recent history in scraps and snatches: if pieced together they make something of unimaginable horror, and yet, something also of friendship and loyalty. It is evident that Gwindor, hoary and weary and scarred, would follow Maedhros. He did follow Maedhros—into the profound darkness of forests, up and up the chill steeps of wind-scraped mountains.

Finrod could ask him why he followed, but he presumes the answer, having known half a dozen versions of Maedhros in childhood and beyond. He was beautiful, your cousin, Estrela told him, and he wept with her, then, because he thought Maedhros dead.

Beautiful after they raked beauty from his flesh like sparks from coals. Beloved even in the shadows.

Yes, Finrod knows.

What he does not know are the shadows themselves. Thus he seeks Gwindor out with panther-like purpose, greeting him with a smile on his face.

It is noontime on a day like other days, these recent weeks. The man is eating his meal too quickly.

“Friend,” Finrod says, “I need your help.”

Gwindor says, around a mouthful of bread, “Eh? What?”

“It has now been more than a fortnight since Fingon’s return,” Finrod says. Fingon’s return is one safe way of describing what was, of course, so much more than that. “There has been, as yet, no retaliation.”

Now he has Gwindor’s full attention.

The man drops his crust on the table, wipes his hands on his trousers. “What have you seen?”

Finrod’s turn for a question. “What?”

“You must have seen someone. Someone…poking about.”

“No.” Finrod shakes his head. “It’s true, Beren and I left Mithrim, and entered the nearby town—if so it can be called—but we learned little there, save that there is a general sense of unrest.”

“But you think there’s an attack coming.”

“I am asking you,” Finrod says, dropping his voice lower. Caranthir is not far off; others of the fort, less directly connected to Maedhros, are closer still. “What chance there is of an attempt to…reclaim my cousin.”

Gwindor stands, shoving back the bench. “I’d rather talk out of doors,” he says, and Finrod follows him.

“Let’s lay our cards out,” Gwindor says. They are walking in the wide, south field. “You’re Fingolfin’s right hand—” He pauses there, choked and a little strange, as if his thoughtless idiom slashed him deep. Perhaps it did. Finrod, for his part, felt nothing. “More so than Fingon is. Older, are you? I never asked.”

“Yes. And Maedhros is a year older than I.” As a child, Finrod wondered what it would be like to be the eldest.

“You were children together.”

“We were.” There is no need for secrecy; he spoke of much of this to Estrela, and is only surprised that she did not, in turn, relay the whole to Gwindor. Or maybe she did, and Gwindor is making conversation out of caution, or to cover his nerves.

Finrod tries to think of what else he can say. “We lived in New York,” he says. “My family and Fingolfin’s family and our grandfather. Are you familiar with the City?”

“No.”

“Our Feanorian cousins lived north of it, not far from the Hudson River. Perhaps you have heard this already. But Maedhros and Maglor stayed often in the City, first with our grandfather, and then in their father’s house.”

“One gathers bits and pieces,” Gwindor says. He thrusts his hands in the pockets of his coat. The coat is, in fact, Fingolfin’s.

We can share it, said he, when he offered it. I sit so often indoors, and do not need it there.

Gwindor had taken the coat. There was always something in Fingolfin’s manner that dispelled doubt and shame. It was the opposite of Feanor’s.

“You aren’t humoring me for all that history,” Finrod says, too conscious of the half-dozen Gwindors he does not know, and has not seen suffering. “You understood my question at the table, did you not?”

“Yes. You’re fixed on learning of Bauglir.” Gwindor’s cragged profile is made harsher by the sun. “Well, I’ll answer your question with a question, and maybe it’ll cross paths and purposes with that old history of yours. Why don’t any of you know him?”

“Bauglir?”

“Yes.”

Finrod considers. “I’d scarcely heard of him, myself. As a boy, that is. He was a figure…well, he is the brother of New York’s governor, Manwe Sulimo. I suppose that was, heretofore, his greatest claim to notice.”

Gwindor’s surprise gusts out in a great breath. “Brother to a governor? Lord—it beats all. Or maybe it doesn’t.” He shudders. Picks up his pace; a resolute march to nowhere in particular. Finrod matches it.

“He was commissioned to oversee the railroad.”

“I know that. Broke our backs splitting timber, painting ties, curving iron. Digging. Goddamn, the digging! Men died for that. Men die for everything.”

(But Maedhros lives.)

“Fingolfin and I…were not at particular enmity with him. It was Feanor.”

Gwindor stops abruptly, amid the matted grass. “It’s always Feanor, isn’t it? You’ve given me hints of that, before. So has everyone else.”

Oh, much does Finrod have to say of his uncle! To say of his family, and its bloody kingmaking, and its secret, homely hearts. Where is his father to laugh gently at him, to calm that white-hot anger that stemmed, if not from Finwe, then from Earwen’s blood? How close did Earwen’s son come, time and again, to shaping the thought, I do not respect you… of all the heroes that the rest commended?

(Finrod stood before his grandfather Olwe, a man he did admire, and he begged.)

“Feanor is buried yonder,” Finrod says, after a moment that lasts too long to escape Gwindor’s lynx-eyed notice. “I’ll leave him there.”

“Very well,” says Gwindor. “But if you do not know much of Bauglir, save that he is a man used to money and power, then know this: he shan’t stop until all the world he can touch is his world.” His face and shoulders and hands twitch, at this, as if even speaking such words causes him discomfort—or instills in him a powerful desire to run. He finishes his thought in contradiction. “He’s patient and impatient, both.”

“He’s a man,” Finrod says. “Tyrant or not. He can be killed.”

“Killed? Easier said than done,” Gwindor retorts. “He’s an army in himself, and he has an army to run for him. Sometimes you don’t need an army, ‘course. You don’t need much, once you’ve tied your prisoner down, hobbled him, muzzled him.”

“Muzzled him?”

Gwindor doesn’t answer that. Finrod does not truly want him to. “I don’t know if Bauglir will send an army here. He could. But I don’t know. I wasn’t ever his favorite.”

“And Maedhros was?”

“You said it was Feanor who knew him. Did—Maedhros know him, too?”

Finrod is entirely ignorant, and feels that ignorance for the danger it is. “Not that I know.”

“You’ve seen,” Gwindor mutters. “You’ve seen what’s writ on his breast. His name, and his father’s. Wherever the feud began, it ended with—your cousin. Bauglir took interest in him. Still might, with more anger than…”

“Than what?” Another question he doesn’t want the answer to, but Gwindor gives it.

“Than amusement.” Gwindor resumes his hurried steps. “But as you said, I’ll say likewise. You aren’t humoring me for all that history. You want to know if Bauglir’s about to storm down the mountain.” He spits. “Hate the name in my mouth, to be frank.”

“He was angry at Maedhros for the escape.”

“Among other things.”

“He’ll want him dead, then.”

“I imagine so. But I also—they might suspect him dead already, what with…” Gwindor’s gaze flashes suspiciously. “It was a hard chance of survival, at first.”

“Because they’d cut off his hand,” Finrod supplies, nodding. Again, there is a curious emptiness within him, where grief should be. He wonders whether he loved too much, once, or too little. “And the hunter—this Mairon—”

Gwindor clears his throat. “Fingon put him out of sorts, for a stretch.”

Finrod cannot derive the vengeful joy he wishes he could at the remembrance that Fingon—as Fingolfin’s story, calmly told, proceeded—had blinded their pursuer in one eye. Only after the man made at him with a knife, Fingolfin added, as though Finrod would object on pacific grounds.

Finrod is bereft of anything but another purpose; a sharper purpose.

Gwindor cannot tell him of a world he does not rightly recall.  It will be Maedhros who remembers. Maedhros knew Bauglir and all the rest.

The injustice of this plot, and what it will require, is as immediately apparent as is its necessity. After all, in the wilderness, Finrod learned to trust the first flicker of unease that set in about the stomach and whirred in the ears. He cannot wait and idle, while Fingolfin and Fingon are consumed by sickbed care—while the rest are consumed with bonds broken and re-forged.

Of any of them, Turgon has it to rights, building up a stronger wall. Turgon is strong-minded and strong-willed, and his edges are kept keen by the memory of recent loss.

A wall is all very well, therefore. Yet—someone must understand the blow that is coming. Turgon cannot manage all of it. Turgon cannot ask Maedhros for the truth.

“Thank you,” Finrod says to Gwindor, and means it. He has done the man a wrong, dredging up old pains, but he sees no blame on Gwindor’s plain countenance.

Instead, he sees—and is pained by—goodness, loyalty, friendship. Deep in deep shadows; deep in lives he cannot see.

It is hard for Finrod to accept the judgments of a cruel world, when he had judgments of his own.

It is hard for Finrod, for whom shadows are only a trick of the sun, to let live inside his heart the dozen-faceted souls of those who lost their freedom, without regard to their former flaws.

Oh, Maedhros. Oh, my sorry cousin.

He climbs back up the hill.

It is not easy to find Maedhros alone. Fingolfin confided, a day or so ago, that sleep has brought violent nightmares—a testament to the double-edged sword of returning strength. As such, the turnstile passage of his guardians and nursemaids presents a daunting obstacle to those who wish for private conversation. Finrod chooses the supper hour, only to overhear Maglor and Fingon both behind the door.

Maglor, it seems, has found his courage.

Hesitating, Finrod loiters in the hall, stepping out of sight when the door opens. Maglor hastens by, quick-footed. His face is drawn and tired. Does he wear a mask to speak to his brother? For all his poetic transparency, he must.

Finrod slips to the door, and raps thrice.

Fingon’s voice bids him enter. Estrela is there, also, in the other chair, with a heap of mending in her lap. She looks so much improved by these few weeks, with color in her scarred cheeks and less stiffness in her hands.

The same cannot be said for Maedhros.

“Finrod!” Fingon exclaims, too cheerfully. Fingon has been often too cheerful in Finrod’s hearing, since he plunged into hell as eagerly some men strive for heaven.

For his part, Finrod has always been best-suited to earth.

“You just missed Maglor,” says Maedhros, thin in voice and smile, but not transparent—not even now. “Had you come a moment earlier, how like old times it would have been.”

Estrela’s head bobs a little at that, but she doesn’t lift her eyes (her eye) from her mending.

Fingon clears his throat. “Doesn’t Maedhros look well today, Finrod?”

Finrod finds a smile of his own, and wears it. “Yes.”

“Fingon tells me I am making a splendid recovery,” Maedhros says, his gaze unwavering.

Fingon stands, offering his chair. Torn between pleasing two cousins? But how can that be? Finrod never replaced Maitimo in his lofty throne, and though eighteen months gave ample opportunity, he did not try.

“I’ve been busy learning the ways of this place and this land,” Finrod says, after greeting Estrela and taking the chair. He has felt Maedhros’ stare burning like ice does on shrinking flesh. You don’t know how afraid you are of freezing, until the blizzard is all that there is. “I ought to have seen you more often.”

“Everyone sees me,” Maedhros says. He is swallowed up by a shirt that is not worn properly, but is rather draped over him like a shroud. Finrod imagines that it would be too much trouble to dress and undress the rough-scarred back, the scabbing knife-cuts, the vicious bruises. Mere recollection of those hurts is enough to make a man wince, but Maedhros’ face is peaceful, at present. Or—it appears so.

(Fingolfin also said that he believes Maedhros is hiding the full measure of his pain as best he can, whenever he can.)

(Finrod does not know if he should call the blizzard inside his heart, fury.)

“Maglor went to fetch supper,” Fingon says. “Have you eaten, Finrod? And you, too, Estrela—did Maglor say he would bring back a dish for you?”

“You asked him to,” Estrela reminds him, gently. Fingon claps a hand to his forehead, distressed.

“Lord! I’m as forgetful as—as—”

“As your similes,” says Maedhros, the smile widening a little. But then he is looking at Finrod again, and what passes for good humor, now, twists into something that better resembles mockery, or waiting.

The mockery of waiting…for a blow, perhaps. Finrod knows the precise way to describe the look, not because its definition is easily perceptible, but because all his life with Maedhros, there was an undercurrent of friendly threat between them.

Such a spark elicits good fun; noble rivalry—so Finrod used to believe. If equal in faculty, what matters birth-order? If, in freedom, one can educate one’s mind entirely, what matters legacy?

Like all half-truths, these have grown sharp and rather ugly with the fullness of time.

“How goes it with my other cousins?” Maedhros asks. “I would not ask them to attend me—I would not trouble them as I do Fingon—but I hope they are well.”

Finrod accepts the subject as a safe one. “Aredhel and Galadriel occupy themselves with a good many tasks and companions, from what I know,” he says. “But Turgon has chosen one task: the outer wall.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. He is fortifying it with wood and stone.”

“Fingon,” Maedhros says. “When did you last look at Turgon’s wall?”

Fingon is surprised by the question. His braids snap against his shoulders as he turns. “A day or so—I do not recall.”

“It is not so very late yet,” Maedhros says, almost coaxingly. “You could see it now.”

“It is after dark,” Fingon says. His confusion is apparent, but Finrod’s ears ring a little. Maedhros has anticipated him, evidently.

How he does it, invalid that he is, remains a mystery.

Maedhros shrugs a little, under that shirt-shroud, and Fingon’s brow creases, his face shifting from Fingolfian consternation to Fingolfian concern.

“Would you like me to go away?”

Yes, that is Fingon’s brave voice, sacrificing his own comfort for someone else’s. And yes, it is fury that Finrod feels, buried deep. He must own that, if he is to do good. To seek justice.

“Seeing Finrod has put me in mind that you are a brother as well as a cousin, to some here.” Maedhros turns his head, his cheek against his faded hair. “I have no right to command you, but I feel a little selfish, keeping two cousins here. Two eldest brothers.”

“Three,” Fingon says, crouching beside him and smiling again. Finrod does not smile, watching them. They are watching each other; he need not perform. “Three eldest brothers, Maitimo.”

“You make me put so fine a point on it,” Maedhros says. “I think, my dear cano, that Finrod wants to speak to me privately. But he is so like Uncle Finarfin that he has tricked me into asking you to leave myself.”

“Is that true, Finrod?” Fingon asks. “Beg pardon, I…”

“You are the doctor,” Finrod says. He is thoroughly ill at ease now, and if he were not in a sickroom, he would know whom to blame. “I should not intrude.”

“I shall go and speak to Turgon about his wall,” Fingon says, brave but almost more nervous, now, for having heard an explanation. He jolts upward and is out the door in an instant.

Estrela gathers her mending, and quietly excuses herself. Maedhros has a smile for her, too.

It fades as soon as she is gone.

“You did not have to do that,” Finrod says, though in a way, Maedhros has given him what he wanted. “You did not have to send them out.”

“There is very little peace here,” Maedhros says. “And since whatever you have to say is not, I expect, quite peaceable, I thought that tender ears should be shielded from it.”

“You think Fingon, tender?”

Maedhros sighs. “I think that Fingon shall yet outdo us all, and in that at least, you will find me unchanged.” His left hand turns this way and that, much in the manner a child would turn its hand upon first discovering it. It lands palm up, beckoning. “Come now, Finrod. Out with it.”

You think I came here to accuse.

“I have been thinking about Turgon’s wall,” Finrod says stubbornly.

“Well! It must be a grand one.”

“He is finishing something half-made.”

“Ah.” It is Finrod’s understanding that Feanor began the wall, but Maedhros’ exclamation does not confirm that.

“Turgon has always had a good head on his shoulders,” Finrod continues. “And his work has directed my own concerns, of late. Indeed, I come to you with a difficult question—one that, it is true, I had rather not put forth before Fingon. Do you think an attack on Mithrim is likely?”

Maedhros’ knees shift beneath his blankets. His hand remains still; his face is unreadable. “An attack?”

“I tried to ascertain, from your friend Gwindor, what manner of enemies we face.”

“And Gwindor, good man that he is, could not tell you what you wished to know.” Maedhros lifts an eyebrow. His face is too thin, the skin too stretched, for such an expression to look natural. “You find him simple, don’t you?”

“No.”

“I am not simple. Though I am a fool, which you hate most of all, I think.”

Finrod says, “Will it pain you too much to speak of Morgoth Bauglir? And of what he is capable?”

“Of what he is capable! Good lord, Finrod. Would you really like to know?” Maedhros’ eyes flash; then the flash is gone. He says, plucking at the blanket’s edge with his five lonely fingers, avoiding Finrod’s gaze, “I am quite certain that you would.”

“What do you mean?” Finrod is angrier by the minute, but he must not—he owes it to so many, to keep calm.

“You have not forgotten,” Maedhros says, still studying the thread he draws out with thumb and bruised forefinger. “All that I am.”

“You think I’m here to punish you?”

There’s his mother’s temper. Or maybe he shouldn’t blame it on anyone else; maybe it is Finrod’s temper, only, slow—slow—and then aflame.  

“I stood aside.” Maedhros’s chin dips against ripples of twisted shirtfront. “That is my great redemption, I have learned. I stood aside, at the bridge. Do you know why?”

Finrod can guess.

“Did it help Fingon? Or any of you?”

“No,” Finrod says. “You know it didn’t.”

“How good it is to hear a little honesty.” Maedhros shuts his eyes briefly. “Not, you understand, that I think Fingon lies.”

You are trying to goad me.

“Consider this an exchange, then,” Finrod says, steadying his voice. “If it will relieve your conscience, for the bridge, then tell me what threats may come to Mithrim."

Maedhros says, “That is a price I am setting?”

Price. The word is repulsive, because Finrod thought of such terms, and rejected them, upon the first and second and hundredth realizations of what Maedhros had lost.  

Now, he steels himself. Now, he says, “Yes. If you would rather think of it that way.”

“Because you are angry.”

Hang it all—

“What does it matter,” Finrod asks, calling on his father’s patience, his father’s distant good humor, his father, his father—“If I am angry?”

Maedhros replies, but not to the question. “You asked about…him. You asked what he can do. Open you like a fish belly, for one. Do you remember the City, Finrod? Before you went away? You must have hated something there, to leave as you did. He is like that.”

Too much madness to follow, but Finrod does his best. “Like—something hated?”

“No. He understands what is hated, and why. Like a judge or a confessor.” Maedhros does not sigh, now. He draws a great breath, a sail turned wrong against a storm-wracked sea. “And the judge put me out, Finrod. Condemned to death. For what, they ask? But you know for what.”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t lie. It’s lying, coming from you.” He raises his piteous left hand and covers his mouth with it.

Finrod has to stop himself from doing the same. Fingon was right; darkness crowds the world outside, the corners of this room, the shadows on Maedhros’ pillow and in the strands of his hair. Amidst it all, Finrod is the fool: it was he who formed a plan not a plan at all. He watched and waited, growing impatient; he sought out answers; he sought out lies and truths to be threshed from one another. Now, he presses.

It is unwise to press on another’s wounds without admission of his own. Hurt and harm are both caused that way, mingled as they never could be in Fingon’s kinder blood.

Finrod came here, angry and seeking justice. He had sworn off such a cause until he saw Maedhros pardoned, protected. What does that say of Finrod? And what does that promise for their future safety, if he is blind in foresight and forgiveness both?

How to thresh blood from blood?

"Maedhros," he murmurs. "I am not lying. Whether I am angry or not, I would never so much as lay a hand on you."

"But you would have accepted my death. You all would have, save Fingon. And that is...that is like, at least in principle. You want to know him, do you? You want to know Melkor Bauglir. Then I shall tell you. He kept my face unmarred, and marred the rest of me very slowly. I sold away strength, or what I can vainly call beauty, and when I...when I..."

"Stop," cries Finrod, sick at heart. "I did not ask for—"

"He beat me himself," Maedhros says. His hand has fallen from his lips and shakes on the bedspread. "When I was returned to him, he beat me until I could neither see nor remember. Indeed, I fear to try, now."

Finrod rises, breathing hard. No words for this, for the beasts below them.

"Finrod," Maedhros whispers, "they do not want me any longer. There is no threat, on account of me. Whatever ordinary violence may arise...you will be equal to it. You will be equal to skirmishes and trespassers. Bauglir's eyes turn elsewhere. They have seen the last of a crippled slave."

Finrod's hands would shake now, if he did not clench them at his sides. “It is a wonder Maglor has not returned already,” he says, clinging to the words with all he has. “Should you like me to look for him?”

“No,” Maedhros says, still in a death-whisper, "he’ll come soon enough.”

“Would you like to be alone?”

“Yes.”

Finrod does not call him a liar. 

Chapter Text

A rippling choir of cicadas had woken Fingon each morning so far at Formenos, save for the one day that it rained. He heard them now again, through the window of the little corner room that Aunt Nerdanel had appointed for him, and yet he did not feel the eager, nervous joy that had given a spring to his step during the mornings already past.

He wondered why, for half a drowsy moment, and then he remembered the events of the day before, until his throat tightened strangely, threatening tears.

Fingon was no prankster. Indeed, he and Turgon were like two stone rooks in a square-cut chess set; Aredhel had said as much, once.

But here—here among wild and impressive cousins and wild and unimpressive cousins—

Fingon dressed quickly, hoping to chase away these thoughts, but it was too late. He had slept too late, clearly, for the house was quiet as it could never be when everyone was clamoring for breakfast. There was something both terrifying and charming in how Feanorians moved around each other. Maedhros’ long arms and legs, in particular, were capable of weaving a complex yet graceful choreography to preserve the safety and stability of dishes and pots he carried, even when the twins tumbled underfoot, Curufin skated over the smooth-worn floorboards in stocking feet, and Celegorm chased his dog.

Ah, yes. That was yesterday’s trouble. Celegorm.

Fingon would smart over the snipe hunt until the ending of the age. He knew that, and Celegorm knew that, and since Celegorm was younger than Fingon he would almost certainly live longer. Accordingly, for all of Fingon’s life, he would have had to face down superior smiles and crowing, had he not taken matters into his own hands.

Boots into his own hands.

But now, no doubt, they all thought him shaken in his resolve, keeping to his bed until they were safely out-of-doors! Oh, it was all coming back with shameful vengeance: the feeling that he was a gasping fish among watchful gulls.

He screwed his face up, trying to set it.

The stairs creaked underfoot. If Uncle Feanor wanted, surely, he could have had stairs that did not creak.

As it was, Uncle Feanor was the only other soul in the house. “Good morning, Fingon,” he said, from behind a suspiciously crisp newspaper. It was a strange mockery of Father, to see Uncle Feanor reading like that. Fingon, dull, stalwart creature that he knew himself to be, did not mock his father. He criticized him. It was a very different thing. Yet, he felt that as sure as he stood there, that Uncle Feanor was thinking of his brother—his half-brother—too. No doubt he always thought of him, when he looked at Fingon.

“Good morning, uncle.”

“Maedhros and Celegorm have gone to lend a wagon to a neighbor,” Uncle Feanor said, folding his paper. “Your aunt and the smaller ones are out berrying. I had hoped that Maglor might assist me with shoeing Alexander, since Maedhros is away, but I cannot find him. Would you be willing, Fingon, to assist me?”

Father rented stables in the city for their horses, and Fingon had visited them often, had even seen the smiths at work. But he had not held a lithe yet massive hoof in his hands, had not pressed his cheek against the warm, velvet muscle of the haunch. Had not been obliged to trust, as now he was, without wanting to trust man or beast beside him.

Uncle Feanor hammered in the nails as if it were nothing.

“What do you think of your cousins?” he asked, abruptly.

Here it was, Fingon thought. Here was the trap.

“I like them very well.”

“Do you indeed? They are not like your city friends, I don’t doubt.”

“I did not come here to be with city friends,” Fingon said. There was a faint smile, switching like a cat’s tail, at the corner of Uncle Feanor’s lips. It made Fingon feel inclined to be stubborn.

“I do not mind seeing you squabble a little with Celegorm,” Uncle Feanor said softly. The last nail went in. “I hate nothing more than shrinking, timid sorts who cannot hold their own when put upon. But I cannot be quite blind to all that you are, Fingon. And all that you may one day be. Would you want me to be blind?”

Father had given no warning, of this. Fingon did not…for the first time in some time, he was struck by a blow for love and loyalty, as far as Father was concerned.

He doesn’t speak out of turn, he thought, admiringly.

 “If I’ve done something I oughtn’t to, in your house,” Fingon said, with his best manners, “Please tell me at once.”

“Were I to leave this horse unshod,” said Uncle Feanor, motioning for him to release the hoof, “He would walk lame without understanding what fate had befallen him. Alexander is, you see, a horse used to iron shoes and farm-work. He has been with us so long that he cannot unknow his lessons.” He shut the door of Alexander’s stall behind them. “But as I taught him those lessons, I remember them. That is the trouble with coming after something has already been decided, whether you be man or beast. You cannot know what paths you tread already.”

“Am I a horse?” asked Fingon, and Uncle Fingon laughed.

“My dear boy, you cannot think I am talking of you.”

“Begging your pardon,” Fingon said, not really begging it, “I cannot think of any other meaning.”

“Well, then.” Uncle Feanor did not look ill-pleased to have been caught in his little metaphor. “Have you made a choice yet, Fingon? Have you ever made a single choice—for yourself?”

“I like Maedhros very well,” Fingon said, feeling himself bold. He kept his hands at his sides, for crossing his arms across his chest would be really defiant.

Uncle Feanor’s eyebrows shot upwards. “Do you indeed?”

“Yes. He’s good and brave. And he has conversation.” Fingon thrust his chin forward, just a little. “I choose to like him. Since you are his father, I do not believe I insult you in so doing.”

“Not at all,” Uncle Feanor said, with a smile brighter than Fingon had yet seen directed at him. “It pleases me very much, to think of you and Maedhros as great friends.”

Another December dawn. Another sketch of rose, of lilac, of sun-bright silver—if one is looking out the window and not watching the play of light and shadow across an invalid’s features. No matter where one’s eyes are turned, the greater eye of the sun will find them with another day. Another day, theirs: to share and suffer through, with smiles on their faces.

As much as his child-self might wish to, Fingon cannot pretend that he is the only one who bears this burden. He has known that for weeks, of course. Has never known it better than when the litany of helpers is as settled as beads on a rosary string. Here are Maedhros’ brothers, trading off hours by his side; here are Father and Gwindor, keeping vigil; here are Estrela and the children, come to draw from Maitimo a shadow of a smile. Between them all, they do not leave the sickroom unvisited for more than a day at a time. Since Maedhros has become a little stronger, with better color in his wasted cheeks, there seems to be an unspoken agreement to divert and entertain him, to comfort and accompany him, as much as each visitor is capable of doing.

See how they love you, Fingon thinks—urges—and tries to tell himself that such a thought is not the same as an unuttered farewell. A mother might say as much to a child, warm with encouragement. A friend might say as much to a friend.

But Fingon has become something more than kin or companion. Fingon made himself a savior. Still, the price paid was Maedhros’.  

Thus, Fingon must not only accept the many visitors; he must be grateful for them. Since his choice is made, his days are numbered. He must be glad that Maglor and Gwindor and even Celegorm will not leave Maedhros alone. If Fingon’s telling goes ill, and Maedhros is anew betrayed—if the rest send Fingon from his side for a time—Maedhros shall not be alone.

Dawn says, is it time? Is it today, that you will keep your word?

Fingon told his father that he could no longer be silent. Each passing day is a mark of judgment against that resolve.

Dawn says, can you bear what you are? and Fingon does his very best not to shade his eyes, or his heart, from the peering light.

Maedhros sleeps most in the hours before dawn, and Fingon the least. Celegorm generally departs after midnight, and Fingon steps up from his corner to take his seat and pray his own prayers, before his father and Caranthir arrive. Though Maglor comes often, and at odd hours, he sleeps a heavy, murmuring sleep, waking only with Maedhros’ nightmares.

The nightmares have become a way of life. Sometimes there are words, and voices, that do not seem to belong to even Maedhros’ most tortured self.

Each nightmare is a mark of judgment, borne in a different fashion by each listener, the mark made deeper by its mystery.

There is still so much that Fingon does not know.

On this morning, Maedhros wakes hoarse-throated. As often happens, before he is full awake, both his wrists lift, one with no hand to guide it, stretching towards his face. And, as always follows, he realizes his error and jerks them down again.

“Fingon,” he croaks, shivering a little, his arms pinned firmly at his sides. “What day is it?”

“December the fifteenth,” Fingon says. “Turgon told me so this morning.”

A day like any other, save that Caranthir had a touch of cough last evening, and agreed to keep out of the sickroom for a day. A day like any other, save that Christmas draws near; whatever that means in Mithrim.

(A year ago, it meant blinding winter and little hope.)

Maedhros’ face spasms a little, though his gaze is still half-hooded. If he is surprised that it is only himself and Fingon, in the quiet room, he does not say so. Likely his mind is occupied with a silent reckoning of the pains he tries to hide.

“Is your throat sore?” Fingon asks cautiously.

“A little.” Maedhros blinks rapidly. “Did I—”

“A bad nightmare, yes,” Fingon says. “But if you don’t remember it, don’t try.”

Maedhros’ right shoulder lifts a little. Fingon takes it as a sign that he is trying to sit up, and helps him without being asked. It has seemed like the better path, when possible, to help Maedhros without waiting for him to request help. The balance, of course, remains a delicate one, and Fingon tries to give him choices, too.

“I do remember it,” Maedhros says quietly. “Strange…God, it’s strange that I should wail over that.”

Fingon busies himself with mashing apples with boiled oats, which he mixes with a little hot water from one of the kitchen kettles. “If you wish to tell me of it…”

“Just a whipping,” Maedhros says, his voice thin with impatience. “Nothing I’m particularly afraid of. A lash is a lash. Can’t see my own back, can I?”

Fingon cringes. Then he recovers himself and dips a spoon into the bowl. He was ready to suggest that Maedhros feed himself, today, but now it does not seem like the right moment. He takes his usual position beside the bed and lifts the spoon to his cousin’s lips.

They are quiet for a short while. Fingon chances a real look into Maedhros’ eyes, and sees cold anger there. Fingon looks away quickly. He does not think—he does not want or dare to think—that the anger is meant for him.  

Again, Fingon lifts the spoon. Again and again, until the moment passes. Maedhros opens his mouth without being ordered to.

“Celegorm told me he shall bring Aredhel today,” he says quietly, when he has swallowed the last spoonful.

Fingon reaches for a scrap of cloth, dampens it, dabs at Maedhros’ lips as if he is a child. Maedhros will not even do this for himself. He will scream himself hoarse with nightmares; he will speak in words both veiled and barbed. But he will not move unless he forgets himself, or until Fingon tells him that he must.

“Would you like to see her?”

“I would. I told Celegorm he should make very sure that she can bear to see me.”

So close, Maedhros’ eyelashes are visibly tipped with gold. His brows are not so red as his hair—they are shaded more fawn-like, and finely arched, even still. If the scar across his nose heals cleanly—

But it is deep, where it broke the cartilaginous bridge. Cut by more than a knuckle, Fingon imagines, though he hasn’t asked.

“How much does it hurt you?” Maedhros asks, his voice a murmur again.

“What?” Fingon’s hair swings over his shoulder as he turns to set the bowl aside. It shields him from whatever searching gaze Maedhros attempts.

“Counting the scars.”

“I don’t.”

“You must. You’ve had to see to them all.”

Even the one you made, Fingon thinks. It does not have to be said.

“It is true,” Fingon says. “I look with the eyes of a doctor, and of a—a friend. And it pains me to see you suffering, as I’ve said before. But you have a better color in your cheeks today, Maitimo. Truly you do. And Aredhel will not be alarmed at all.”

Maedhros says nothing.

“My sister is wiser than I am,” Fingon says. He doesn’t quite know why he says it. Aredhel gives him strength, even when she is not with him. Even when she has not heard his mad plan for truth-telling. “And more of an aid to my father than I could ever be.” He clears his throat.

“Celegorm is wiser than I,” Maedhros returns. “And stronger than I could ever be. Perhaps that is why they are such friends.”

Fingon does not agree, but he will not say so. Instead, he offers, “You have strength returning, too. Your bones are knitting together. I cannot claim miracles on account of my modest tinctures. It is you who heal.”

“When they whipped me,” Maedhros says, “They did not let me die, afterwards. They brined the wounds and bandaged them. Is that healing, too?”

The door opens, and the quizzical lift of those delicate brows disappears at once. Fingon is narrowly saved from choking on his own tongue.

“Hullo,” Celegorm says. He brushes his hands on his trousers. He seems both proud and shy, like a child presenting something grand. Fingon would be amused if Maedhros had not just cleft him, heart to ribs. “I’ve brought her.”

“Fingon says that his sister his better in every way,” Maedhros say, smiling in the tender way he does for his brothers. Once, Fingon thought himself as near as that kin. Now he knows not where he stands—where he can ever stand again, having set himself so high upon a cursed mountain. “Please bring her in, Celegorm, if she can accept a poor welcome.”

Aredhel steps inside, and Fingon is glad to see her. She comforts him as much as anyone can, now. His sister is near as tall as he is. Her dark brows and bright eyes, above a firm mouth and chin, reveal honesty, pride, and surprising compassion. He sees his mother and his father both, in the very line and height of her shoulders.

When she sees Maedhros, Aredhel does not flinch. She nods and smiles, and clasps her hands together.

“Hello, Maedhros.”

“Irisse,” he says. “You’re quite a woman, now.”

“You’re rather thin,” she says, taking Father’s usual chair without having to cast about awkwardly for her place. “But I shall blame that on Fingon’s cooking. Do you know, I have never been more grateful to have well-cooked potatoes than when we arrived at Mithrim.”

“It is my troublesome stomach that will not behave as it ought,” Maedhros says, with a quick glance of Fingon. “In truth, your brother concocts the few mixtures I can keep down.”

“Then we won’t shame him for that.” Aredhel pauses, then wrinkles her nose. “What about his hair? Honest now, Maedhros. What do you think of Fingon’s hair?”

Fingon gapes.

“Ridiculous, in my opinion,” Celegorm says airily, though nobody asked him.

“I think it’s becoming,” Maedhros says. He smiles fleetingly at Fingon, almost in the old away.

“Yours is a bit ragged, in truth,” Aredhel says, calmly. “Else it would look just as well in braids.”

Maedhros performs his half-shouldered shrug. “Aye, well, they cut it off for trophies.”

Fingon is the only one who knows he is telling the truth. He moves to interject, and Aredhel says,

“We’ll steal some of Finrod’s beads for it, eh? When it’s grown again.”

They talk so comfortably that Fingon does not know which way to look. How is it that his sister knows words of peace and comfort as well as his father? He called her wise, but he did not expect this.  

Celegorm might have. He is watching too, but he does not seem discomfited. He is grinning broadly and silently from his place on the bench.

Fingon could tell them now, if he threw aside all caution. He could break the fine and friendly moment. They drove nails through his flesh and bones, and pinned him like a stag’s head to a board, he could say. I severed the hand at the wrist to save him. Gwindor and I sealed it with a heated blade. A clean and cauterized wound was a gift they never would have given him. They left him to rot.

But whom would that serve?

“You’ll be up walking soon, won’t you, Maitimo?” Celegorm asks, his voice drifting to Fingon from a great distance. Fingon might as well be battered bark on wide waters. “You see, Ris, I keep saying so, but he’s playing coy.”

“There’s not a reel left in me, it’s true,” Maedhros answers. “I’m knock-kneed.”

Fingon swims back to shore. “He is getting stronger,” he says, clinging to a renewed appreciation for how easily Maedhros converses with these two. “If…if Celegorm and I should lift you, could you take a step or two?”

Later, he will own this to be a mistake.

Later, he will own that his heart is his weapon at times—in that his heart so desperately wants Maedhros to be strong. Maitimo was tender, and Maedhros was brave, and together they shone, friend and cousin, a savior asking nothing in return.

Fingon would give anything—

Now, amidst his foolishness, Fingon sees only that his cousin’s eyes are fixed on him, that his cousin’s mouth is silenced by the request. But there is no cold anger in his face, and Fingon is emboldened.  Emboldened enough, out of eager, fearful love, to hush the warning that might otherwise have stayed him. The truth is that there are many novel, subtle expressions to be found on Maedhros’ face. The truth is that none of them know how a man looks when he is told that torturous punishment awaits him, or when he is not even told.

“Very well.” Maedhros speak slowly. “I—I can try.”

Aredhel says, “I’ll cheer you on.”

Fingon remembers, then, that the shirt thrown over Maedhros’ shoulders will do nothing to cover him if he stands. Before he can decide what to do, Celegorm anticipates him. “You’re wearing trousers, aren’t you? Good. We’ll drape this blanket round your shoulders. Ah, there you are.”

Celegorm is already helping him to sit up, so Fingon can do naught but join him on the opposite side. They arrange the blanket together. Fingon listens carefully, but Maedhros breathes without agitation, even when their hands brush the web of scars over his shoulder-blades. (Just a whipping.)

Maedhros does, however, clutch the ends of the blanket over his chest with his left hand.

There is still a smell of old blood about him. Fingon has grown used to it. He has grown used to many things, and in so doing, he has believed that, even if he cannot read each new look and mood, he can measure as well as Estrela or Gwindor can, when this new Maedhros is near to panic.

Breathing is one sign of that. Color another. Maedhros’ color appears even.

His legs, long and very thin, swing over the side of the bed. Fingon guides them. The scar of a brand atop one bony, calloused foot may be visible to Aredhel’s eyes, but it is too late to help that.

Fingon and Celegorm brace an elbow each and Maedhros is on his feet.

“Look you here!” Celegorm exclaims. “Capital, Maitimo. Damned capital.” His eyes—more green than grey, and unexpectedly as young and fresh as springtime—flick to Fingon’s. “Do you have him?”

“Yes,” Fingon says.

“All right.” Celegorm releases Maedhros’ right elbow very gently, doubtless mindful of its hurt. “Maitimo, I shall stand—here, only three steps away. And with Fingon, you walk to me.”

“Celegorm, don’t press him,” Aredhel murmurs.

“He can,” Celegorm insists. “Bairn steps, Maitimo. Bairn steps.”

Fingon nods, so that his sister can see. Maedhros is standing firmly upright. With Fingon’s help, yes, yet his battered ribs are not buckling, his broken leg has not given, nor has he given any indication that he is in pain. Of course, Fingon cannot be sure until he takes a step, whether he has rested his weight on the leg. But with Celegorm only three paces away—

“Are you proud of me, cano?” Maedhros asks, very low.

Fingon turns his head, and must tilt it, for Maedhros is tall again. Tall as he has not been—oh, as he has not been in so long—

“Of course I am.” Did Maedhros speak through gritted teeth? No, surely not. He is smiling a little, and his eyes seem bright, alert. Fingon says, “Very well. One…two…”

And it is on the second step that everything goes wrong. Maedhros lurches out of Fingon’s hold, with a horrible sound, as his weight lands on the bad leg. And Celegorm is just there, arms outstretched to meet him, except that Maedhros without thinking—without any of them having thought at all in the past few damnable minutes—

—reaches with a hand that no longer is.

Celegorm recoils.

Maedhros falls.

And when he falls, he catches himself with the stump of his right hand, which is to say: not at all.

“God—fucking—damn it, Maitimo, I’m sorry—”

What happens next happens quickly, but nothing can do any good. Not Celegorm, vomiting apology after apology, gathering his brother in his arms, while Fingon does his best to shield and elevate the leg so as not to pain it further. Maedhros is shaking so violently that Fingon can only see beautiful, horrible, disjointed images in him—the wings of a bird, the flutter of aspen leaves—until at last fantasy fades and the present remains. This is the life they have made and broken. No one’s hands are clean.  

“Forgive me,” Fingon says. He will say this every moment, perhaps, until he dies: will say it for a thousand reasons, will wait for God Himself to decree it as a simple lie: “It was the only way.”

“I want—I want—” Maedhros is stuttering, his voice strangled. His eyes are shut, and his face is white and drawn, as if it awaits a blow. Yet his bruised fingers, all five of them, claw at Celegorm’s arms. “Please, sir. Please—I want—”

Celegorm sobs against his brother’s hair.

Maedhros’ voice changes. “Fingon, don’t—no, no, Fingon, don’t—”

“I’m not,” Fingon cries. He is crouched as close as he can be without touching Celegorm, his hands wrapped around Maedhros’ knee. “It is already done. It is already over, I shan’t—it is only the same pain, Maitimo. I shan’t do it again. I swear. I swear.”

Maedhros says nothing. A whine, low and animal, cuts between his lips. Then: silence.

It is Celegorm who speaks.

Celegorm whose voice has changed.

“What shan’t you do again?”

This is not what Fingon intended.

It never is.

His own eyes are blurred with tears. Nevertheless, he tries to meet Celegorm’s.

“I did it,” he says.

“Fingon!” Aredhel gasps—as if she knows. But how can she know? How can even a clever mind guess, that was not there? This is Fingon’s secret, and he can carry it no longer.

“They had…they had locked him in a device,” Fingon says. His voice sounds both clear and awkward in his ears; too calm for a blubbering child, which is what he believes himself to be at the moment. “A cruel, horrid thing.” There he pauses, blinking until his sight is cleared, so that he can see Maedhros’ face. It is still. His breathing has evened again, because he has fainted dead away against Celegorm’s breast.

In this awful hour, that insensibility allows Fingon to speak more plainly. “They had hammered nails through the flesh and the bones of his hand,” Fingon says, “And they had sealed it to the rock wall. There was no time, and it was already festering. I cut him free.”

No more silence. Celegorm’s face twists.

“Get your hands off him. Get your bloody hands off him!”

 Fingon complies. He rocks back on his heels. He is not prepared for the cunning swiftness of Celegorm’s next move, which is to lay his brother’s shoulders against the floor with all the tenderness of a mother setting a sleeping child in its crib, and then in the next instant, to leap on Fingon like a wildcat.

“Butcher!” Celegorm howls, as Fingon vainly tries to fend off his crashing fist. “Lying, bloody—”

Aredhel is cursing like a man (though one might just as easily say, like herself), and her long braid slaps Fingon’s cheek where it spills over her shoulder, as she throws her arms around Celegorm’s neck, trying to pull him off. Then there is the sound of running, and it is not just Celegorm and Aredhel and Fingon making war in the sickroom any longer. No—Father is here, and Maglor, and Gwindor, and maybe even Finrod. Fingon’s head swims. He has seen stars.

Real stars, of course, so many times—

No, no. These aren’t real stars.

He sits up. He moans a little.

“Fingon,” Father says, close by his ear, “Are you all right?”

“Yes—yes.”

“Let me at him,” Celegorm spits. Gwindor and Maglor are holding him back, and Celegorm wrenches his yellow head towards Maglor. “Listen here, Mags. It’s Fingon who’s done it. Fingon! He cut off—he cut off his hand, it was Fingon—he lied to us all—”

Fingon clings to Father’s coat without looking at him. Aredhel is on Father’s other side, her jaw clenched., but Fingon does not look long at her, either. He turns his eyes to Gwindor, as if Gwindor, who knows, can save him.

Gwindor does not release Celegorm. His shoulder is paining him. That much is visible in his face. But he doesn’t let go.

“Enough,” Father booms, rising to his feet. Father doesn’t raise his voice much, and certainly not to Feanorians.

Celegorm subsides, though his face is still murderous.

“Is it true?” Maglor sounds as if something within him is fraying. “Is it true?”

“Fingon,” Father says. “Speak for yourself.”

Fingon wants to weep, and tuck himself away. He is suddenly aware that Finrod—who is here, after all—has gone to Maedhros’ side. Has lifted his head into his lap and is stroking his brow.

Finrod did not know either. But Fingon looks at him, and at Maedhros whose tears are drying on his still face, and Fingon turns back to the cousins who are ready to hate him for what he did as a newcomer to their grief.

“It is as I told Celegorm,” he says. “Bauglir—or Mairon—I know not which, had hammered h-his hand into a metal gauntlet. I don’t know how many nails pierced it. Flesh and bone were ruined, and I—I could see that the hand would soon be gangrenous, even if I were able to remove the device. As such, I had no choice.”

Celegorm spits harshly.

“No,” says Gwindor, stiff because of his own hurts. “No, you did have a choice. You could have left him to die. You chose to free him.”

“He lied,” Celegorm snaps. “He’s lied all this time—”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” Fingolfin demands, and for the first time in his life, Fingon is reminded of his uncle by his father’s manner, “That Fingon was protecting Maedhros? From just such a conflict as this? Your brother is here, and healing, and as much a man with one hand as he was with two.”

Silence.

“And,” Fingolfin—Father—continues, “He has suffered greatly at hateful hands. All of us here have seen some of the cruel marks made on him. We all know that he was half dead from a vicious beating, from loss of blood. His leg was broken and ill-healed. Are these Fingon’s harms? Think what you may of our half-blood family. Who among you can deny Fingon’s love for his cousin? A love that drove him, all but unaided, to scale the walls of hell itself in searching?”

Celegorm’s lips stay firmly pressed together. But Maglor says,

“We do not deny it.”

"There is a time for anger. There are enemies for whom that anger justly burns,” Father says. Despite his words, his voice grows gentler with each phrase. Such is his way. “Fingon is not your enemy. And Maedhros is not lost without one part of his body, no matter how much we—and he—may grieve that loss.”

Silence upon silence now. Gifts are being offered, whether they are taken or not.

Aredhel, who has also risen, steps towards Celegorm. But it is Gwindor, curiously enough, who claps him on the shoulder.

“Come along, lad,” he says. “Go cool your head.”

Celegorm’s blank look sours. “Get the fuck off me,” he snarls, and stalks out of the room. Maglor passes a hand over his face.

“I’ll go after him,” he says, looking ill. How the world has changed, that Maglor should follow Celegorm at any time, for any reason.

Aredhel says, quick and pained, “I, too.”

Fingolfin heaves a sigh when they are gone.

“We should get him back to the bed,” Gwindor mutters, turning their attention back to Maedhros. Mercifully, nobody asks how he got out of it.

Finrod and Fingon lift him together. The blanket has slipped away, exposing the remaining bandages and all the raw expanse of his scars from ribs to hips. Fingon’s hands, lifting him, bracket the first and last letters that girdle his waist. He bites back his grief as best he can.

You are a doctor, he tells himself. You are a doctor, no matter how often you fail.

“Finrod,” he says tremulously, but addressing his nearest assistant, as a physician should. “Help me with his trousers. I need to see to his leg.”

Chapter Text

If Maglor had not already been crying, the furs and dusty velvets would have made him sneeze. He did not care whose pelisse or mantle or greatcoat he was sullying with his tears. He did not care if he died in this coat closet. It was, all in all, a rather appealing idea. Even the most ruthless of spectators would pity him, then. They would regret their judgment of him when confronted by his pale features and romantic tresses, forever wilted amongst stifling finery.

His own coat (presently rumpled) was burgundy. It was sharply tailored save for the unusually generous gussets at the shoulders and under the arms. Those had been made for ease of playing.

Maglor began to sob again.

Just then, the door to the coatroom opened. Panicked at the thought of discovery, Maglor hiccoughed, once, then pressed his hands over his mouth. To be sixteen—sixteen years old, a prodigy of unusual talent, and found to be crying in the dark!

You forgot to mention ‘failure of prodigious proportions,’ he reminded himself bitterly.

“Love,” said Maedhros, in a half-whisper. “I don’t meant to hurry you. But we don’t have much longer.”

Maglor was startled so entirely that his tears stopped flowing. “You—how did you—”

“I’ve been outside for…a while.” Maedhros pushed the door wider, stepping in. Golden light followed him. They were in the atrium of a beautiful theater. Maglor knew; he had, after all, been on stage.

“You were missed at the bow,” said Maedhros. He was so large in the cramped space. A giant imprisoned in a cupboard.

“I was dismal,” Maglor said, rising shakily to his feet. “I—oh, God, Maitimo. John David Loder was in that audience and I—” He crumpled again, but Maedhros was there to catch him.

“John…” Maedhros’ hands were thumping lightly on the back, as one might help a baby along with coughing. “John David Loder?”

“The esteemed violinist of the Loder family!” Maglor hissed, angry that Maedhros did not know, and angry that he had kept it a secret himself. The knowledge had been private, a whisper among the academy of performers—Maglor had prided himself on being (temporarily) discreet. Everyone would know where Loder had been when he began to spread far and wide the glory of one Maglor Feanorian, a delicate (though handsome) boy who had had, unexpectedly, Mozart’s vision and Paganini’s touch.

“Oh,” Maedhros said. “Yes, yes. I’ve heard you speak of the Loders. I didn’t know that—I didn’t know that he was here, or that you were expecting…”

“I wasn’t expecting anything!” Maglor stormed. “I was—” How to explain a dream destroyed?

Voices sounded out in the hall; the murmuration of a crowd. “Macalaure, I’ll carry you out if I must,” said Maedhros grimly.

“To save me from myself?”

“Yes, that.”

Mollified, Maglor wiped his nose on someone’s sleeve and followed him.  

The street air was sharp and dirty but at least it was cold. The theater had been perfumed with the fragrance of flowers and scented wood, but it had been stuffy and warm. Maglor followed Maedhros down a side street, where they might hail a hackney without too much competition.

Inside the open-front carriage, Maedhros pulled the rug over Maglor’s shaking knees. They couldn’t talk much, unless they shouted, and all the conversations left in Maglor’s soul were quiet, mournful ones.

Maedhros slipped his arm through Maglor’s, drawing him close. Maglor put his face against the shoulder of Maedhros’ coat and cried again.

The wind, quickened by the horse’s hooves, cooled his tears.

It was only when they were inside, and Maglor had bathed and dressed in his nightshirt and robe and the slippers Indis had given him (and of which Athair still knew nothing at all), that Maedhros prepared a little warm cider, spiced and shot through with whiskey.

“Drink this,” he said. “It will soothe your throat.”

“It wasn’t my throat that gave me trouble,” said Maglor bitterly, sitting sideways on the sofa with his knees drawn up. “It was my fingers, Maitimo—my damnable fingers. They were as stiff and thick as Mother’s autumn sausage.”

“No—no.” Maedhros was drinking his whiskey with no cider in it. “My dear Macalaure, I thought you played splendidly.”

“You don’t know anything,” Maglor said, and then, flushing—“I mean—”

Maedhros waved a hand. He was still wearing his rings: Grandfather Finwe’s gift, and two others, one with a dark, winking carnelian embedded in it. More opulent than fashion permitted, perhaps, but Maedhros had beautiful hands, and he always dressed himself like an emperor for Maglor’s performances.

At least, for those he could attend.

“It’s true,” he said. “I’m just a pretty fool, Macalaure, but I know you. Someday when my children are outstripping me in learning and languages, and are speaking of your talent in words and measures that I cannot grasp, I’ll still claim the honor of having taught them that their uncle was born with a world in his heart. One he writes in melody.”

“It was a bad day,” gasped Maglor.

“If you say so,” said Maedhros. “But who gives a fig for a bad day?”

“It only takes one to ruin you,” said Maglor.

“I shall make you go to bed without another drop of this good stuff,” said Maedhros, shaking the whiskey bottle like a warning talisman, “If you do not give me a smile.”

“It would look like a polecat’s grin. I haven’t your dimples.”

All the times he had smiled—all the times he made comfort as subtle and palatable as whiskey slipped into something sweet.

Maglor thinks of those moments now, or more aptly, he is haunted by them now. How many times had Maedhros hidden Maedhros so that Maglor, or Fingon, or Athair might be calmed?

“You have your artistic face on,” Maedhros says, and Maglor wishes he could catch the fluttering smile from his brother’s face like a butterfly, only so that he could set it free.

“What face is that, Maitimo?”

“The one where you are disgusted by how ill the world plays its melody.” Maedhros shifts. “No one is dancing to your tune today?”

Maglor shakes his head. So—memory on his face looks like anger or grief. This is good to know. He used to want that, when he was young. He used to want people to know that he was suffering.

He is trying to be more sensible, these days.

No, says the cruel voice within. It could be Maedhros’ voice, if Maedhros knew. You are trying to hide.

Maglor suppresses a shudder.

“Never mind me, Maitimo,” he says—another lie, but as all Maglor’s lies are unforgivable, of late, he will raise a wall with them like stones, as high as he can. “You know that a poet’s soul is often in tatters.” He is glad that Celegorm is not here to laugh at him.

“As is a fool’s body,” Maedhros agrees ruefully. The shirt that covers his breast and shoulders has slipped low enough that Maglor can read their family name.

He has amidst his other nightmares lost some hours to vivid imaginings of how such a wound is made. Conscious or unconscious? Bound to a table, arms spread wide to make a canvas of a body? Or trapped by one man to hold him still, another to drag his head back, a third to drive the blade in?

These are the sort of questions the night asks. These are the sort of details Maedhros does not volunteer. Maglor knows about the prayer medal—is sick, bytimes, over the prayer medal—but he can never be there.

Yet he should have been. If he would not bring Maedhros home, alive or dead—he should have been at his side, in body as well as in spirit, bearing the torment with him.

“You’re not a fool,” Maglor says, reaching out to a rest a hand on one of Maedhros’ knees, knobby beneath the covers. Fingon drained an abscess against the mending bone some days ago, after an aborted attempt at walking brought Maedhros much pain. The leg is better now. “You’ve never been a fool. And your body is mending. Didn’t Celegorm and Gwindor take you down the hall today?”

“I’d forgotten,” Maedhros says. “How dim and smoky these halls are.”

Maglor does not ask what halls he has known since. He has tried, with his imaginings of the Mountain, to shape its spaces. It remains black and impenetrable.

Because he is a coward, so much the better.

It is just the two of them, for the moment. A quiet noon. Fingolfin and Caranthir are gone; Gwindor and Fingon are at midday dinner. Maglor is not hungry, though he will likely pick at whatever Fingon brings back. Celegorm may come with them, but Celegorm has been absent for a day or two. Distracted, it seems, though Maglor does not attend to Celegorm’s doings enough to know what by.

Maglor searches among stones for another lie—or for a truth that will become one.

“Gwindor said you were walking steady.”

Maedhros looks pleased. “I’m glad you are getting on, with Gwindor.”

“Oh—” Maglor did not expect that. “We manage.”

“He’s gruff,” Maedhros says fondly. “He used to scold me a good deal. Not like you scolded, Macalaure. More like—” He stops.

Maglor doesn’t want to finish the sentence with a guess. A little silence grows, like the flame of a candle. Maedhros’ eyes search the corners of the room. He is restless. Maglor feels, as he often does, afraid.

If we had both been taken to the mountain, would we be dead? Would they have killed you first?

“They are planning a Christmas,” Maedhros murmurs. Another unexpected diversion. He goes on, hesitantly, “Does it not seem…strange to you?”

Maglor thinks quickly. Chooses flattery. “I think it only a trapping to disguise an overdue celebration of your return.” He speaks sweetly, though his heart twists in his chest. “You needn’t do anything, of course, but everyone wants you to know how grateful we are—”

“Grateful to Fingon,” Maedhros says wryly. Maglor holds his breath. “I didn’t do very much, after all. He runs his teeth over his lower lip. “Fingon keeps putting me off, you know, but do you think you could help me? With—with putting this shirt on properly?”

Maglor agrees eagerly. It is something he can do, of course. And something that will benefit them both. The scars will be hidden, if Maedhros is properly dressed. Not that Maglor could ever forget them.

“Will it hurt you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You will tell me?”

“Yes, cano. I will wail at the appropriate moments.” He swallows visibly; the wasted lines of his throat twitching. “If I am to be…celebrated…I must be decent.”

Maglor takes the shirt in his hands, considering it. “Would you like a fresh one?”

“Oh, that one’s new from this morning. And it’s my size. Or it was. You all keep remarking on how thin I am.”

Another smile. Another twist to Maglor’s heart.

Maedhros’ left arm goes in easily. He splays his fingers through the cuff, working it to his wrist. They both pause over his bandaged right arm.

“We could pin the cuff closed,” Maglor says. “So it won’t annoy you.”

“No—” Maedhros shakes his head. “No pins.”

When his right arm is in the sleeve, Maglor does up his buttons. Turns the collar down. The shirt hangs very loosely, yet it is—it is good to see his brother sitting upright, in his own clothes again.

“Splendid,” says Maglor.

Maedhros laughs. It’s one gust of breath, really, but it’s enough. “Splendid? I used to have a coat for every day of the month.”

“Thirty coats, Maitimo?”

“Every day of the week, at least. God, I never thought I’d miss them—”

“Didn’t you?”

Maedhros runs his left hand over his buttons, tilting his chin down to examine them. “They were a pleasant diversion,” he says. “I was glad to leave them, when I thought that leaving that life…”

“Don’t,” Maglor whispers. “You needn’t. We needn’t—think of the past.”

Maedhros looks at him. Dry-eyed and quiet. “But we are to have Christmas,” he says.

Maglor nods.

He must consider a gift.

In the mountains—not that mountain—his harp, his love, his cláirseach was split in two. Maedhros told him, there, that he must go on without it whole. Maedhros always swore he did not know what the future held.

Maglor considers the pieces.

“Curufin,” he says, loitering at the door of the forge. Curufin has his leather apron and gloves to his elbows; they were Athair’s, of course, and Mithrim’s before that.

Curufin slips something into a bucket of water that sends up a shrieking cloud of steam.

“Aye—Maglor,” he says. Friendlier than Maglor expected, all told. In the awful months lost with Maedhros’ loss, Curufin was friendly. Maglor was too mad for gratitude. Maglor might be mad now. (You are hiding.) At any rate, with Maedhros’ return, Curufin has hidden, too. Has climbed into himself again, with only Celegorm for company.

“I know you are occupied,” Maglor says. As with Celegorm, he does not know Curufin’s schemes or movements. Not of late. “But I…I had a favor to ask.”

Strange alliances are forming in the last days before the proposed feast itself. Celegorm and Aredhel go hunting for pelts with Finrod and Beren. Curufin agrees to Maglor’s favor. Caranthir is busy in Mithrim’s kitchen. Amras and his friend—his ward, Curufin called her once, mockingly—wander Mithrim’s fields, but also join Estrela and the children at the hearth, threading dried berries into colorful garlands.

Such cheerful sights make Maglor tense and anxious, but that is scarcely a change of pace, for him.

“You sing.”

“What?” Maglor nearly jumps out of his skin. Frog has come up behind him, as he paged through his notes in the hall.

“You sing,” Frog says again, his lips thrust forward in a pout.

“I don’t…I am not singing now, little one.”

“You sing.”

“Frog, leave him alone. That one’s bendy as a reed,” announces Sticks, prancing along the flagstones with her chin in the air.

Maglor’s mouth drops open. He shuts it again and takes a long stride to cut off their progress. “I am going to see Maedhros,” he says. “Excuse me.”

“So are we,” says Sticks. Frog drops and crawls between his legs.

“We can’t go together—” Maglor curses himself for having loitered. True, he wishes to keep the contents of his notebook a secret from Maedhros, but it was foolish to think that no one would usurp his place.

The children are particularly devoted to ousting worthier visitors from their seats.

“You can follow us!” Sticks crows, over her shoulder.

Maglor does not accept defeat. He gives only the appearance of following, because running would be undignified.

As it is, when he enters the room, the chairs are already occupied. Fingolfin is in one and Estrela is in the other. Fingolfin is reading one of the rough, cheap newspapers that Finrod brought back from town. Estrela is sewing.

Frog is in the act of scrambling onto Maedhros’ bed; Sticks is peering out the window.

“Maglor,” Maedhros says. “Come to join us?”

“I was coming first,” says Maglor. It sounds more pettish than he intended.  

Frog pats Maedhros’ blanketed feet. “Russandol.”

“Yes, love?”

“He doesn’t sing.”

“Who, Maglor?”

“Him.” Frog casts a glare at Maglor, who throws dignity to the wind and glares back.

Fingolfin turns a page with perfect calm.

“Did you demand a concert in the hall?” Maedhros asks. “Good heavens. Maglor doesn’t sing on command, Frog. Any less than you do what Sticks tells you to do.”

“Ha!” cries Sticks, leaving the window and coming to lean against Estrela’s chair. “That would be a sight straight from Zion.”

“Zion?” Fingolfin asks, startled.

“It’s a spiced word for heaven,” Sticks explains.

Fingolfin clears his throat. So does Estrela. Maedhros nods solemnly, but he looks long at Estrela and Maglor sees that she is avoiding his gaze. Maedhros has exactly the sort of expression on his face that he used to have when he was trying to provoke a younger brother into laughter. Who can hold out the longest? his eyes ask, but that question has a different meaning now, for Maglor.

Maglor does not laugh.

“Heaven and earth have a good deal to do with Maglor’s singing, in my experience,” Maedhros says, after a moment. “But neither can move him to do it if he does not wish to.” To Estrela, he says, “Maglor is a fully-fledged musician.”

She sets her sewing aside. “Really?”

“Mm. Violin, piano, the occasional flute…”

“I never liked the flute,” Maglor says. Since Celegorm is nowhere to be seen, he takes the bench.

“Celegorm always made unfortunate plays on the word flautist,” Maedhros murmurs. “You understand.”

“Ah,” says Estrela. “What was your favorite, Maglor?”

The piano at Formenos, or the gold-fretted fiddle that he gave to Fingon for safe-keeping—and that Fingon kept?

The broken harp that longs to be whole again?

“The cláirseach,” he says. “It is a Celtic harp.”

“It is very difficult to play,” Maedhros explains, for Estrela’s benefit. “I do not believe anyone is established as an expert in it, who could hold a candle to Maglor.”

Fingolfin folds the paper in his lap. “I loved to hear you play the harp, Maglor,” he says, with the respect that Maglor used to think concealed mockery, but which he now knows does not. “Though I suppose I am thinking of the…the English harp, at my mother’s.”

“They are very different instruments,” Maglor says. If he had a different soul remaining, he would be pleased, to learn that Fingolfin remembers. As it is, he does his best. “But both a joy to touch.”

“Maglor sang before he talked,” says Maedhros proudly. Proudy? Yes—yes. That is what it looks like. “He could have been in the opera.”

“What’s the opera?” asks Sticks.

“A place where people only sing. No talking. They do it mostly in other languages. Italian, or German.”

“Ohh.” Sticks nods. “German.” That makes her quiet for a while. Maglor is endlessly grateful.

If nothing else, at least this Maedhros is worlds away from the one who fell and fainted when Fingon and Celegorm forced him to early steps. This Maedhros is worlds away from the nightmares that still come. This Maedhros is healing, not just from the new stitches in his leg, but from every horror carved by horror in his skin. Late nights and early mornings, surrounded by Maglor and yes, more than Maglor, by all the people who love him so—these have knit flesh and spirit together again.

But this Maedhros does not know.

Whatever you give him—

It is Christmas Eve. Finrod and Beren have chosen a fir-tree to prop up in the dining hall. It need not shed its snow, however, for what snow has fallen thus far has been light and soon-melting. The children are enamored of its presence indoors, and Maglor’s poet mind perceives that they are not the only ones whose hearts are touched by the offering of fragrant green.

“Christmas trees are a German tradition,” he heard Estrela say to Sticks that morning. “My father told me.”

Though Maglor planned to speak to Curufin, this evening, the sight of the tree distracts him. He goes down to wander by the lake. He recalls the Christmas before, the one that seemed so lonely and bleak. He was cursing his lot, then, and holding a twin by each hand. The thought makes him sick and wild, and he vomits in the cattails.  

On his way back to the fort, he visits the forge.

“I’m almost finished,” says Curufin. Not friendly, today, but not angry. He has not been seen inside, except to sleep, or to snatch a bite of food.

Maglor briefly wonders if he should question why. But if he plays the role of eldest, more than Curufin will rise up to say him nay. He will have to think of Amrod—brave, bold little Amrod. He will have to remember all the reasons why he should have died in the Mountain.

“Thank you,” he ventures, numb, and Curufin shrugs. He looks like Athair when he does it, and Maglor remembers that Athair is dead, too.

There is a feast on Christmas day. There are oranges, and a smoked ham, and cranberry jelly. There is fresh coffee and gifts for the children.  Maedhros attends with neat hair and boots on his feet, and sits among men and women, friends and cousins, brothers who fought for him and brothers who did not. He walks in with the aid of Celegorm and Fingon, Gwindor trailing behind. There is a great cheer. Then follows the clapping of hands, not meant to be cruel.

Maglor never remembers much else from those hours.

Whatever you give him—

Curufin says, “It’s in our room,” and disappears through the crowd of Mithrim’s thronged company. Maglor, heart pounding in his chest, goes to see.

“Your cláirseach,” Maedhros breathes, his stump brushing the folds of the blanket on his right as his hand clenches on his left. “You—it—”

“Curufin mended it,” Maglor says. The tears are already standing out in his eyes. They rise for many reasons, but Maedhros will not question them. Not now. “It is his gift to you—and this is mine.”

He sets the harp between his legs.

(He begged Fingon to give him the room for an hour. He was as surprised by Fingon’s acceptance of the request as he was by Celegorm’s. They helped Maedhros back to bed and departed.)

It feels—right. In addition to the painstaking repair, Curufin restrung and tuned it. He asked Maglor a few questions on the subject, but it seemed that Athair had taught him the same science he himself had learned, when Maglor first obtained the instrument. Even if the sound is a little muddled, what of it?

This is not the world of perfect hopes.

Maglor plucks a string with the nail of his right forefinger. The sound is as rich as he remembered.

Maedhros shuts his eyes.

Tuned or not, it takes a bit of doing. Maglor shuts his eyes, moving by touch, guided by sound. After a long while, he is a fully-fledged shade of his old self again, drawing forth a melody, reconstituting a dream destroyed. Over the ripple of the harp-strings, he hears a sob heave in Maedhros’ chest. At any other moment, it would be enough to make him cease. But Maglor does not cease his playing. On and on, the strains of the old carol, the Irish carol. On and on, until the thrumming sweetness must reach beyond this room, beyond this lonely age.

Amrod’s favorite. All their favorite. They were Feanorians; they weren’t allowed to love another hymn of Christmas best.

When Maglor finishes with the harp, and stills it under his hands, he sings.

Maedhros is quiet, watching him with shining eyes.

Good people all, this Christmas time,
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray,
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn,
There was a blessed Messiah born.

Maedhros thanks him. The harp remains whole. Dashed in two against the mountain he did not climb, Maglor kisses his brother’s forehead and bids him goodnight.

Whatever you give him, it will not be enough.

Chapter Text

Finrod was rarely in ill temper. He knew that about himself. He and his brothers, Angrod and Aegnor, were three of the best-humored boys in New York—or anywhere, as their father liked to say. Only little Artanis had the makings of a spitfire. Mama said she had breathed easily too soon, with her three easy boys.

And you, the laughing boy…

“I don’t want to,” said Finrod again, and saw his father’s brow crease with concern.

“Are you feeling unwell?”

That was an easy excuse. Only a day ago, Finrod had returned from a glorious three months spent in Grandfather Olwe’s fishing village. From start to finish it had been a remarkable affair. He had traveled alone—Mama had been worried—and it had felt almost unbearably bold and adventurous, for a boy of fourteen. The long ride by train and then by coach; the bustling town of yellow-haired people with rich accents and hook-scarred hands; the peaked houses and the plaited bakes; the shore festivals and swinging lanterns—Finrod was half-inclined to call himself a Swede and never again darken the doors of an Irish house or church.

Such had been his daydream; now, having learned that Maedhros and Maglor were come to stay, in the city, such was his real intent.

“I am not feeling unwell, Papa,” he admitted. His anger hadn’t receded, but he couldn’t lie to his father.

Papa came to sit beside him on the sofa. Papa often tossed aside his slippers and propped his stocking feet on cushions, or drew up one knee to his breast as if he was a boy sprawling however he pleased.

“The whole world looks different, doesn’t it?” Papa asked, with a merry smile on his lips, softened by something else in his eyes. “When you’ve become used to life beside the grand waters? I met your mother there, as well you know, and I wanted never to come back again. Only…you were on the way. We had to.”

Finrod was comforted by his voice and his smile, though, as might be considered ordinary for his age, he had little interest in learning of his parents’ courtship.

“I do not want to meet them,” he confided, at last.

“Your cousins?” Papa was, as ever, wise.

“They…” How could he say it? The Feanorians were rude and out of place wherever they went. Even though Maedhros and Maglor had decent table manners—Finrod was sure he could not vouch for those of his younger cousins—they consumed every room they entered, like a candle flame lapping hungrily at the surrounding air. For them to live and study in the City meant an end to the old ways; the old comforts of visiting Grandmother and Grandfather. To be sure, the family of Finarfin did not dine so often at the ancestral home as did Uncle Fingolfin and his children, but the point remained. Finrod had enjoyed how Grandfather Olwe engaged his mind and asked him his opinions, all while showing him how to live a useful sort of life.

Finrod had planned to be something better than an ordinary student; better than a lackluster boy.

Maedhros and Maglor, exotic and talented and sons of a very volatile father, would become the center of family life in New York—a place of pride they’d never cared to occupy before.

“They are strangers,” Finrod said. “And I do not mind meeting friendly strangers, but I do not think they will want to be friendly.”

“Oh, I would not be so sure as all that,” his father told him. He reached up to stroke back the lock of straight, fine hair that had fallen over Finrod’s brow. Then he smoothed away the lines that must have gathered in Finrod’s brow, too. “Maedhros and Maglor are very close to your age, and as such, they will be as eager to know the City as you were to know Olwe’s domain. That is the way of things, Finrod. We like to learn the truth of people and places for ourselves.”

Finrod tried to remember Papa’s words when they were all together on a Sunday afternoon. Maedhros and Maglor weren’t dressed half so fine as Finrod was. There was still a little aura of the farm around them. Finrod was not disdainful, of this, but it was comforting. One never noticed whether Uncle Feanor’s clothes were neat or not, for instance; the man himself was so commanding that he seemed to have a finger tapping on each thought in one’s head.

But here was a patch on the knee of Maglor’s breeches, and here Maedhros’ cuffs revealed his slim, knobby wrists. They were, on the whole, quiet and reserved. All the grown-ups talked over the meal, but for a few questions posed for politeness’ sake, to the Formenos cousins regarding their journey, and to Finrod regarding his.

After supper, Fingon was the one who was talking, exclaiming over the wonder of having four big boys together—though he was only twelve, of course. He suggested that they play parlor games or a hand of whist.

“Whist!” snorted Maglor, looking as sour as Grandmother’s crabapple jelly. “That’s a game for old ladies.”

Fingon’s face fell. Of course it did. Finrod knew that Fingon’s eager act of hospitality was as much a matter of nerves as the conversation he’d had on the sofa with Papa, days ago now. The difference was that Fingon didn’t understand his own feelings. He just chased them down like hens in a yard.

Twelve.

“I don’t mind whist,” said Maedhros quietly.

Finrod eyed him, still suspicious on Fingon’s behalf. Maedhros was a half a head taller than Finrod. Finrod was at least two inches taller than Maglor, but that didn’t seem to matter much. Yet somehow, Maedhros was not inclined to be bold or superior, for all his height.  Finrod’s memories of how gay he had been when they were children, romping in Grandmother’s windowed drawing room or on the rare occasions spent visiting Formenos, could not find their truth in this shy, stilted model.

“Oh, very well,” said Maglor, tossing his head. It would have been girlish, had it not also been Uncle Feanor’s manner. “If we must.”

Finrod saw Maedhros smile encouragingly at Fingon when Maglor’s back was turned. Fingon’s whole face was alight in return, and they went into the parlor together. Finrod reminded himself that he could not know Maedhros and Maglor through anyone’s eyes but his own.

It has been too long since he’s ridden. Slipping down from his mount, Finrod knows that he shall be stiff and sore on the morrow, no matter how he tries to remain limber. Beren smiles at him.

“An old man,” he says.

Finrod scoffs, “You’re little younger.”

Beren nods, and lifts his hat—one of Haleth’s old ones, perhaps, or very like—to run his hand beneath it, over his tousled hair. “You are happier,” he says. “Out of the fort.”

The settlement is visible in the near distance; a quarter of a mile away. But they cannot easily talk as they ride, since they are riding stiffly, and Finrod wanted to be sure that all his weapons were in order, and all his currency—of fish and fur—survived the journey. Thus they broke for a little while. He feeds his mare an apple, and turns to inspect the canvas that wraps the salted fish.

Then he answers Beren’s question.

“Yes,” he says. “I suppose I am. Even though we’ve mostly steered clear of blows and bloodshed, and even though Maedhros is mending, I can’t…” He clears his throat. “I find myself vexed by small things. Harmless things. Thank God he’s begun to feed himself, at least—it truly disgusted me to watch him pretend that he needed Fingon to spoon broth into his mouth twice a day—”

He stops, surprised by the ugliness of his own words.

Beren, who has been mirroring the brief inspection as to the hides, does not interrupt him to admonish or defend. He merely gives Finrod a long, somber, searching glance from his deep eyes, and is silent.

“We all grew up in his shadow,” says Finrod. “I’ve said as much to you before when I wanted to kill him; when I found that someone else had already tried, and failed. I don’t want to pity him. I don’t think he wants me to pity him either…but he’s…he’s more like his father than he ever was, and I can’t say that to Fingon. Or to Fingolfin. It would pain and confuse them. What is to be seen of Feanor in my poor cousin’s obliterated frame? But it’s that very—very brokenness that lets me see him. See all the desperate cunning, and the desire to control everything, even from a sickbed…and I think, we were deceived by that. Fingolfin was deceived, and I was deceived, and if we hadn’t met Haleth—we’d be dead.”  He steps back from the fish and its briny odor, nauseated. “And they would be just as damned as they are now. More so. All that cunning had Maedhros dead on a mountainside.”

“I don’t know him well,” Beren offers. “Perhaps never, will I know him. But I haven’t the riches to worry—the luxury to worry, if someone has been hurt enough. I must let them be.”

“You think I don’t…I thought I was past that. Wanting to hurt him.”

“You are.” Another smile. Finrod says,

“No wonder the little boy likes you so,” meaning Frog, and that earns him a full grin. “Very well. Let us forget this, and go on. I must wear my accent, just as last time, and you fill in my gaps when I pretend to know no English.”

Beren shakes his head. “I have gaps.”

“We managed then—we’ll manage again. And men are friendlier, when money’s changing hands.”

This proves to be true. They make steady if cautious headway. Finrod is accepted with general diffidence. Beren is looked upon askance by those men who do not trade with natives—but Finrod does not want their wares anyway, out of indignant loyalty. As the hours pass with haggling and waiting for desirable goods to arrive in the meeting-hub of Hithlum’s tavern, he concerns himself with those men bold or bored enough to converse with the second French trader they’ve seen recently in their midst.

“Back again?” asks one man, who offers a dozen golden oranges for half that number in salted fish. “I’d have thought he stuck you through, by now. Doesn’t fancy a rival, that one.” He is speaking of Mairon. Finrod knows he is.

“How do you know,” he asks, the tips of his ears constantly burning at the thought, of all things, of Maedhros hearing his accent, “That we are not…ensemble?”

Oh, lord, says Maedhros in his head—but not the same Maedhros as still lives. Oh, Finrod. That was dreadful.

But the man beside him now grunts in acknowledgement. “So some of us thought at first. But you’re making friendly-like. And you’ve got a friend.” He nods in the direction of Beren, currently unfurling one of the stiff-salted hides. “Nothing like Mairon.” He squints. “Nothing at all. You don’t even know him, do you?”

Finrod considers, and answers, firmly, “I will.”

The Hithlum settlement does not have much to offer in the way of gifts for children. Finrod is, therefore, surprised to meet Irmo, a bookseller who travels with his stores in a wagon drawn behind two dapple-greys.

It has been so long since Finrod held a book in his hands. He is almost greedy about it, and he is hard-pressed to remember his accent, speaking with the man outside the crowded tavern, offering the last of his hides in payment.

“You are a reader, monsieur.”

“I have been.” He fumbles for an inquiry fit to prolong their meeting. “Are you not in fear of attack, in these parts? With such a slow-moving—”

Irmo shrugs and laughs, interrupting him. “I do not stay anywhere for long. And when I am robbed, what do they take? A volume of poetry, perhaps, as you shall now. I have taken a wound, now and again, but I am largely unharried. I carry sheaves of birch-bark to trade with the natives; I make my own ink from oak galls and sell it by the bottle to the men who keep score of their money in little ledgers. I give gifts in towns like this one, to whoever can offer shelter. That is how one makes a smooth path in the world, monsieur. You must be friends with everyone.” His eyes are amused, but not unkindly. “Now, what use does a fur-trapper have for reading? And why does he look only for English books?”

“Gifts,” says Finrod, faltering a little. “For…un ami.”

“Un ami? The one with you today?”

“No.” Though he should get something for Beren. He sorts through the blank-books, full of precious letter paper. He lifts one of the poetic peace-offerings, and reveals a red-and-gold Dickens beneath it, shining like a star.

That one. That one.

“Safe travels to you, Felagund,” says Irmo, dropping his own French affectation altogether. “Yes—the men inside told me your name. And they believed you to be a Québécois.”

Finrod hangs his head, then tosses it back and laughs. “Thank you,” he says, in his own voice. “It is a great relief to give it up.”

Irmo chuckles with him. He has wrapped Finrod’s purchases in brown paper from a roll in his wagon and tied them off with string. There is something unexpectedly touching and familiar about the sight of the square-edged parcel: Finrod remembers the shops of New York, nearing Christmas time, when the whole world gathered to celebrate in excess. He had, at various times, applauded or judged the instinct to make a grand feast of the Lord’s birth. He had always, however, cherished the hours when he and his father would busy themselves finding the most ingenious toys for Angrod and Aegnor, golden-haired imps that they were…or how, in buying a doll for Artanis, father and son would laugh knowing full well that she would fit it out with weaponry of her own make.

Still feeling Irmo’s gaze upon him, Finrod must clear his throat.

Before arriving in Mithrim, Finrod carried his own guilt. Guilt over leaving Finarfin and Earwen behind; guilt that they still lived. Finrod and Artanis—Galadriel—were gifted with luck, or fortune, or showered with blessings by the uneven hand of a god who did not care to see a man as good as Fingolfin happy.

Finrod had had plenty of moments in which he doubted the goodness of a maker; or indeed, the existence of any maker at all. But he is hard pressed not to acknowledge the strange irony of a guiding hand—one that has placed him here, and let his family live.

You have no great cause for unhappiness, he reminds himself, as he returns to join Beren in the tavern. Not compared with the rest.

What use will you make of your fortune?

“We’ve done well,” Beren says. “Don’t you think?”

Finrod slaps the reins against his mare’s shoulders, picking up the pace. “I was about to ask you the same.”

Beren squints into the dying sun, and calls, over the sound of hooves and the whistle of the breeze, “No one thinks you are Mairon, any longer.”

“No real loss, that.”

Were it all and only a question of books and oranges, sausage links and leather gloves, bullets and strands of colorful buttons—things that Finrod has acquired with neither blood nor much trouble—he would smile. He would think only of the strange home ahead of them, fostering some newfound gratitude in his heart, perhaps, for its growing stability.

But it is the very question of that, of Mithrim’s stability, that troubles him so, safe as he is in his friend’s company again.

Between his conversations with Irmo and the rest, he heard warnings; rumblings of unrest. Not much more than he learned the last time he and Beren rode to Hithlum, save for the word of the increasingly voluble barkeep.

“You were headed for Mithrim, a month ago, weren’t you?” the man had asked, with a searching look. “You and a woman and a short, pleasant-faced fellow.”

Finrod nodded, surprised that the man remembered Fingon so well. “We were. We heard it was…a haven, of sorts.”

“Trouble about that place, Felagund,” said the barkeep. “If you care to concern yourself over it.”

Finrod made a gamble. “We moved on from Mithrim,” he said. “What is the trouble? Have they fought with the natives, or with Hithlum’s men?”

The barkeep shrugged, folding in on himself again. “Place like that is in the government’s way,” he said at last. “It won’t stand.”

“You think they’ll send the yrch?” Beren asks, when Finrod has recounted this conversation as briefly as he can.

“If I were the State,” Finrod answers, “I suppose I would. Mithrim is a threat to civil order, as the East and West understand it. Feanor and his sons—my cousins, as you know—were chiefly responsible for the destruction of valuable ties and worker housing. They thwarted the work of the railroad; they even took lives. And there has been no retaliation for that, save…” Even if counterarguing his own heart, and knowing that he does it, guilt surges up again. What a lie, to say that there was no retaliation.

What a lie, to pretend, even for argument’s sake, that there is order in the cruelty of this rapacious expansion and its ghoulish leader.

“Save Maedhros?” Beren finishes.

Finrod nods. They are riding side by side, at a brisk canter across the open fields, but he knows Beren—skillful rider that he is—is watching him more closely than their road. Finrod says, “I am not the State.”

“Is…Bauglir?”

“It seems so. Thus, we’ll defend Mithrim to the last man.”

And with that, he digs his heels deep so that the mare springs forward, sending the earth flying beneath them as if they were fish darting through swift water, or birds in the air above.

Maedhros is not alone when Finrod comes to visit him. This state of affairs is unremarkable. His companions are, as ever, the only variation.

At present, Gwindor and Fingon are stationed at either side of him, like the loyal and admiring sentinels they are. Sticks and Frog sit next to each other at the foot of the bed, their backs to Finrod. One light head, higher than the round dark one beside it, calls to his mind the memory of himself and Fingon, years and years ago.

He wonders who Maedhros sees.

“Finrod, good afternoon,” Fingon says, leaning down to scoop something up—and it is then that Finrod realizes that there are yet more companions in the room with them all. Two kittens—no, three—four. Four of them. The last, a little black, white-pointed creature, is rolled like a bun in Maedhros’ lap, and was concealed by a fold of his blanket.

“Well, Finrod,” says Maedhros, looking up at him through his eyelashes in a fair approximation of his old teasing way, “Aren’t you going to ask their names?”

Finrod has left some of his prizes in the kitchen, some in the storeroom, and the rest are concealed in his pack. He is thus empty-handed, now, and must find a new way to be generous. Accordingly, he admires the kittens in turn, particularly the black-and-white Thomas, who Maedhros says is his.

“He does not know his ill luck,” sighs Maedhros, smoothing the white flame-mark between the kitten’s brows with the tip of his smallest finger so that the shining eyes blink shut. “I’ve only one hand to stroke him.”

“He doesn’t mind,” Fingon says quickly.

“Cats is fools,” Gwindor rumbles.

Finrod feels out of place. But Sticks, squinting at him, says “Frog, scoot. Let the horse man sit.”

Frog makes a little growl in his throat. Maedhros chuckles. 

“Why is he the horse man, Sticks?”

“Smells of ‘em,” says Sticks, patting the bed beside her.

Finrod wonders why Sticks is so inclined to be hospitable, before remembering that they are friends of Beren’s, too.

“You do smell of horse,” says Maedhros. “Have you been riding?”

Fingon looks startled, as if he has forgotten that a world exists outside this room. Finrod says,

“Beren and I went to Hithlum. We had hides and fish to trade.”

“The trading post,” Maedhros says. “I…recall it.”

Fingon says, “Had you good luck?”

“Oh, yes,” Finrod says. He feels a trifle uncomfortable—and he has still not accepted Sticks’ offer of a seat—but he proceeds. “The folk there are wary, but not unfriendly. We did not encounter any militia.”  

“You still worry,” Maedhros says, though, likely because the children are present, he does not say over what.

“I think,” Finrod replies, “That our best strategy is to make friends where we can.”

“Friends?” Fingon asks. “Do you…is it still possible, do you think?”

Finrod shrugs. “Not every man in this territory is out only for himself, or for gain.”

“But loyalties shift with the wind,” Maedhros answers, “Or so I am told.”

There is a brief silence.

Fingon and Gwindor clear their throats at the same moment.

“Frog,” says Maedhros, brightly, “Estrela shall be along any minute now to bring you to supper. When you go, remember to tell Celegorm what I said—that you were to visit Alexander for me. He likes to be scratched along the sides of his neck. If you ask Celegorm to lift you up, I know he will.”

“No message for me?” demands Sticks.

“You may say hello to Alexander, too.” Maedhros is playing with his kitten’s ears again—splaying them like wings with his thumb and forefinger. The kitten does not open his eyes.

Maedhros is using the children as a shield from adult conversation. Finrod must not judge him too harshly for this. Perhaps the bargain is a fair one.

Maedhros, after all, gave a hand and more than a hand, to save the children from death.

Stung by a memory he does not even have, Finrod moves towards the door. “I am glad to have met all your new friends,” he says, speaking to the children as if he, too, can hide behind such a trick. “I shall go to supper, now, and eat as much of it as I can before you have at it.”

“Go on!” says Sticks, but her eyes spark with delight at being so challenged. “You’re a twig of a fellow, under all that fringe. You’ll be lucky to manage a bowl of stew.”

Finrod departs, pretending to be so much on his dignity that he does not hear his cousins’ snickers.

He smiles when he is alone in the hall. It is a bit of a painful smile, but no less real than the red-and-gold David Copperfield that he has tucked in his pack.

Christmas day is too much for Finrod to bear, really, even though he should bear up better under the witness of grief not quite his own. Turgon absents himself. Fingolfin follows him. The feast is merry, and Maedhros’ appearance at it is heartening—to those who do not know him, or those who love him too well to always know him.

Finrod is somewhere in between. He is glad to see his cousin looking more himself than ever, fully dressed and with his hair neatened above his collar.

But it is still Maedhros one-handed; still Maedhros helped to his place at the table as if he were a man many times his age.

Finrod does not give Maedhros his gift on Christmas day. He greets him, but does not, in truth, seek him out otherwise. Avoiding Maedhros means avoiding Fingon, too. Instead, Finrod spends most of his time with Beren and Estrela and the children. He finds himself missing Ames, the one of Haleth’s companions whose temperament best matched his. But through it all, he thinks with greatest feeling of his father and mother and brothers. He is chilled anew by the likelihood that they are gone forever from his life, if not life itself.

At the end of the evening’s revelry, he draws his stiff-elbowed sister into a firm embrace.

“What was that for?” Galadriel demands, prickly with surprise, but he doesn’t answer her.

When Finrod rises to take his two o’clock watch, the whispers of a harp have long faded. Mithrim is silent with sleep. The only lamp burning is the one in the sickroom, but outside, the torches glow.

Finrod steps out, and whistles the signal for the sentries who patrol the bridge and perimeter.

No answer.

Then an arrow sings past his ear.

He drops by instinct, hitting the ground hard.

Chapter Text

The crisp air bit at the tip of Fingon’s nose and the shells of his ears.

“Here,” said Maedhros. He had a woolen cap held in his two hands, and with the easy confidence of an eldest brother, he dragged it low over Fingon’s head without so much as a by-your-leave. Fingon didn’t mind.

“Thank you, Maitimo,” he said. “I should have—should have brought something warmer with me.”

He had brought a smart plaid cap with earflaps, but it was of ordinary cloth, and not very warm.

“No, no,” said Maedhros. “City air and city cold are different. As for this, we’ve always half a dozen extras…Mother knits so many, since we contrive to lose everything we put on.”

Having received this blessing, Fingon reached up to push the cap back a little. He could not help smiling at the tall cousin who was as kind in winter as he’d been in summer, as friendly in Formenos as in the City. There was something wonderful about how little Maitimo changed. Sometimes you expected a grand thing to unravel; a friendship’s warmth to chill. But in the last year, when Maitimo’s schooling had brought him to the City, Fingon had found him to be an amiable companion. Reserve gave way to delightful confidences, clever reckonings, measured advice.

Fingon had come to quite worship him.

“I though we might begin our morning with a few chores,” said Maedhros. “I know that sounds bleak—but you’ve been to Formenos before, Fingon. You’re an old hand at this. And winter chores are better than summer chores, somehow.”

“Are they?” Maglor and Celegorm weren’t within earshot, so there was nobody to mock his ignorant questions.

Another lesson he’d learned, from the summer.

“The animals are friendlier, I think. And it is almost cozy in the barn, with all the doors shut to keep out the wind.” Though mostly covered, the edges of Maedhros’ bright hair fanned out from beneath his cap, and were all the brighter because of the backdrop of snow.

Beautiful, thought Fingon, of all that snow—but only as it lay in the fields and paths yet untrampled. Most of what lay between the farmhouse and the barn had already been marred by boot-prints.

“Isn’t it a sorry thing?” Maedhros asked, pointing with one gloved finger. “All the prints? But the twins have been out since the early morning hopping about, and making great sport, so I can’t begrudge them.”

Fingon had long felt that the better path, for a grown-up boy of thirteen, was to be indulgent of upstart sprites like the twins. The alternative, he well knew, was to be frightened of them.

“Let them have their fun, I say,” he agreed, in what he hoped was a gracious tone.

Maedhros grinned sidelong. They had reached the side door of the barn; it slid open, if one drew back the wooden bar that latched it. This done, Maedhros heaved the door wide with his shoulder, and stood aside so that Fingon could go in ahead of him. With the door shut, the scent of hay, animal hide, and dung mingled with dust and timber-scent. It was not at all unpleasant.

"We’ll just feed Ronelass and Polly,” Maedhros said. “Athair milked them already—he often does, in the winter, when he wants the best hours of light for work in the forge.”

Fingon had wondered why he hadn’t seen Uncle Feanor at breakfast. “They’re still milking?” he asked, now. “The cows, I mean.”

Maedhros nodded. “Cows give the most milk after they’ve calved, but you can get almost all of the year out of them. You have to milk them, or they swell. It’s dangerous.”

“Ah.” Fingon was glad that his uncle was a responsible man. Animals were, if sometimes frightening in their own right, so helpless and in need when they were used to being cared for by people.

Maedhros went on, as they wended their way further into the barn, “The cream isn’t so bright in the winter, though. Mother dyes our butter with carrots, to keep it golden.” He smiled. “I don’t suppose you care much about the color of butter.”

“I am interested in everything about Formenos,” Fingon said artlessly. “I mean—I don’t imagine I shall ever be a farmer, but—” He tripped, then, over an uneven floorboard. A pigeon in the rafters squawked and fluttered at the commotion. Maedhros caught him with his free hand, the one that wasn’t carrying the bucket of corn-mash. Fingon had not really overbalanced, he was merely ashamed.

“I’m all right,” he muttered. “Really.”

“There’s a splintered board,” Maedhros said, poking at it with the toe of his boot. “I’ll speak to Athair about it directly. Carefully, cano. Carefully.”

When the feed had been deposited in the broad trough, they lingered a little by the two cows. Ronelass and Polly were quite friendly about having their stiff, broad ears stroked while they investigated the bounty that had suddenly appeared before them.

“You and Celegorm seem to be getting on,” said Maedhros, after a moment.

Fingon considered. “I suppose we are,” he agreed, at last. There had been a truce of sorts between them since they exchanged pretty gifts: a set of brass jacks from Fingon, and a puzzle box from Celegorm with a real bear’s tooth inside. Though one game of jacks had ended badly, a good many adventures out-of-doors had gone cautiously well. The tricks of summertime were all but forgotten.

“I always hoped you might,” said Maedhros, letting Ronelass lick the palm of his glove. “It makes…it makes us feel like such a family.”

Fingon glanced about, to making sure that Uncle Feanor had not crept in on silent feet to over-listen. “Do you—do you want that?” he asked. “For us all to be a family?”

Maedhros did not look at him, but he nodded. Even more quietly, he said, “More than anything.”

Fingon was to leave before Twelfth-Night. The twins assured him thrice-over that this was a great loss—on his part. “We shall have a grand time,” Amrod told him. “We’ll chalk the doors, and have king-cake, and lambswool. And you shan’t have any!”  

“I did help with hunting the wren,” Fingon reminded them. St. Stephen’s day, at Formenos, was called Wrenday. There had been a masked dance around a bonfire in the yard before Uncle Feanor, in his bold and lyrical way, told the story of the wren who cheated the eagle to win notice in God’s eyes.

It had not been quite as impressive, Fingon thought privately, as Maedhros’ play in the summer of the An Dagda. But one didn’t say such things to Uncle Feanor.

“Oh, Wrenday is well and good,” said Amras. “But lambswool!” He bit his lip, as if weighing a decision very seriously, and then he scuttled close to Fingon, saying, behind his hand, “It is the only time we can drink it.”

“They mean drink a little mulled ale,” Maedhros said, laughing, when Fingon asked him about it over the supper dishes. Washing the supper dishes with Maedhros was one sure way of catching him alone. “Do not worry—Mother adds only a teaspoon to theirs. The rest is cider. But it is poured over apples, stewed with spices and minced very fine, and the whole of it bubbles up beautifully.” He scoured another plate. “That is how it got its name, I suppose. At any rate, the twins like whatever makes them feel older and grander.”

“I’ll be gone by Twelfth Night,” said Fingon. “Strange to think of.” He took the plate Maedhros had finished washing, and dried it off with his clean length of rag.

“Strange to think,” said Maedhros, “That you should ever go away?” He turned to look at Fingon, his hands still working in the steaming water. “Has Formenos its hooks in you so deeply? I grant you, it’s a charming place.”

After Christmas dinner, Fingon promised that Maglor might have the hour for himself. He intends to keep his word. More than an hour has passed before he even enters the hallway, walking quietly so as not to disturb whatever private Yuletide ritual Maglor has made as his gift.

Before he reaches Maedhros’ door, however, he hears it creak open. How accustomed Fingon has become, to every sound that follows entering and leaving that room, not to mention all the sounds within it! His own voice, as it rises and falls with explanation and instruction, is grating to his ears. He wonders how Maedhros bears it—how Maedhros bears any of it.

It must matter, just as it did on the mountainside, that Maedhros has no choice.

Fingon stands back to let Maglor pass. He did not expect to see his cousin carrying the old harp he used to play to great applause in the City and at Formenos alike.

“Fingon,” Maglor exclaims, startling like a rabbit and holding the instrument close, as if he is afraid that he shall drop it. “Oh—yes. I was about to come and find you, after I put this away. I—I have given him my gift, if such it can be called.”

Fingon can see the tears in his cousin’s eyes plainly. The harp itself, of course, offers a ready explanation of what the gift was.

“It must have pleased him very much,” Fingon says softly.

Maglor struggles for an instant before he speaks. “I hoped it would,” he says. “But all beautiful things are mingled with grief now, aren’t they, Fingon? They have to be. We can’t go back.”

“We are not going back,” Fingon says. He does not always feel affection towards this cousin—indeed, theirs was ever a prickly alliance—but were it not for the harp in Maglor’s arms, he thinks he would reach out and rest a hand on one of those tense shoulders. “The past isn’t all we have.”

Maglor sniffs. “Perhaps you’re right,” he says. “Well, you go to him. Go to him and make sure that my playing has done him more good than ill.”

It is no surprise, then, that Fingon finds Maedhros quite red-eyed.

“Can I get you anything?” Fingon asks, hesitating at the bedside. “A little water? A handkerchief?”

“I used my sleeve,” Maedhros admits meekly. “Like a wee babe.” His voice is hoarse.

Fingon is reminded of the days when he felt like an eager interloper. Stolen moments with a senior cousin, the older brother he’d wished for brought own to earth.

The eagerness is gone, now. Not for lack of affection, but merely because the world is weary. What takes its place?

Patience, his father suggests.

His father and Turgon went out almost together this evening, Fingolfin following his grim-faced son. Fingon can understand why his father was watchful

Fingon’s heart aches over his own failings; his own single-mindedness. His wishes are not Turgon’s—they have never been. And Fingon forgets, too often, what Turgon has lost.

“I passed Maglor in the hall,” Fingon says, pouring a little water anyway and handing Maedhros the cup. “He was a trifle worried, I think, that he’d left you worse off than he found you.”

“As it turns out,” Maedhros gasps, when he has swallowed the water, “I have a little too much—sentiment—still left in me.”

Fingon smiles. He can find some equilibrium between cousin and doctor, between friend and ally, like this. He has never been to Maedhros what Maglor is, and no matter what Maglor may have thought in the past, Fingon’s attempts at claiming a sort of brotherhood were never intended to usurp the place of Maedhros’ oldest companion.

“A little sentiment is a very good thing, I think,” he says. “And Maglor’s music…I declare I did not expect to hear it again. You know I brought his fiddle, all this way. The one Grandfather had made for him? But the wood is ruined—the damp got to it.”

More than damp, in fact. Snow and ice, but Maedhros doesn’t need to know that.

“No one has ever accused you of being unsentimental,” Maedhros agrees.

“Then will you—” And this does feel like the right moment, though Fingon was half-certain it would never come. “Will you accept my gift?”

He draws the beautiful silver watch out of his pocket, offering it in the palm of his hand.

Maedhros does not react immediately. He says only, “Fingon…”

“It should be yours again.” Fingon moves to lay it on his cousin’s knee, but stops when Maedhros flinches.

“No. Please. I don’t—I don’t want it.”

So much for Fingon’s gift! He tries to rally; to recall the calm of a moment ago. “He made it for you, Maitimo.”

Maedhros’ cried-out eyes survey him blearily. “He’s gone.”

Fingon is at a loss. He cannot imagine his own father dead, though he supposes he ought to try, given that his mother was taken little less than a year ago, and died in Fingolfin’s arms. Had the winter’s rage gone unchecked by Haleth’s aid, Fingolfin would be dead too.

We would all be dead, Fingon thinks, and is again ashamed of how little he seems to grieve, though the sources of grief are thick around him. Where is his loyalty? When Argon died—

“Do you see?” Maedhros asks softly. “Already, you are remembering how cursed we are by time. If the watch comforts you, Fingon, then keep it. It serves a better purpose in your hands than it ever can again in mine. Why, I haven’t even enough fingers to hold and wind it. Not with any ease. He—” There is a pause, there, sharp as a blade dropping down. Then: “He would not have liked to see me fumble with it.”

“There is much I do not yet understand,” Fingon concedes. He feels sick. He puts the watch back in his pocket, since he doesn’t want to look at it, now.

“I’m sorry,” Maedhros says. “I…more than anything, Fingon, I want to be sorry enough. And I never can.”

“I—”

“Let me say it. I’ve never rightly, truly said it. I should have stopped him. Not just at—at the bridge. Before the bridge. We hadn’t been gone a week before trouble came, and he…it was everything I’d feared.” He tosses his head against the pillow, seeming vexed. “Oh, Lord. I’m starting in the middle. I don’t—I don’t want to go back to the beginning. I never have. I want—I wanted, when I could still keep up the illusion, to be a fanciful child with an empty head. With not a duty to my name, you know? Whereas you—you’ve always wanted to serve other people. Maglor has always wanted to master his art. And Finrod—damn Finrod has been trying to understand the world and make something of himself in it since he was ten years old. The horrid thing is that I was born first, and you all looked to me on that ground alone. No merit. No…”

Fingon interrupts him, driven by some strange conviction, to say, “You were speaking of your father.”

“My father trusted me,” Maedhros says, allowing himself to be led back to the subject, though the strain of engaging it stands out on his pale face. “Since I was young, to steady him. He was a genius, Fingon. He couldn’t always steady himself.” It is the closest Maedhros has come to a criticism of Feanor in a long while, and yet Fingon cannot be grateful for it.

“You,” Fingon says, imagining how his father would manage it, “Were—are his child. It wasn’t your task.”

Maedhros answers, thinly, “You wouldn’t understand.”

“Wouldn’t I?”

“I shouldn’t tell you,” Maedhros says, avoiding the question, “That he was frightened. I betray him still, that way. But he—he was frightened, Fingon. Almost all my life. He could always see, so clearly, what…what nobody else could. He knew who his enemy was.”

He also thought my father an enemy, Fingon thinks, with a flash of a different loyalty, just as old as his loyalty to Maedhros. He doesn’t speak the thought aloud.

“Everything he did…he thought it right. And everything I’ve ever done—most of it is wrong, and the rest of it is selfish. Was I wrong to befriend you? Or to—to make those children care for me, even? I cannot say it was wrong, for all of you are worthy and—and dear, but—”

He coughs. It is not so wretched a cough as it has been of late, but Fingon can see that it still hurts him. He rests a light hand on Maedhros’ knee, covered by the blanket, and says, before his cousin can speak again,

“I won’t give you the watch, then. But the more I learn—the more I know—I hear so many lies from you. And not your own lies, Maitimo. Everybody else’s.”

Maedhros is silent.

“I know you didn’t mean to leave me. I know when I—” His whole vision is suddenly blurred and blinded, by memories of green Formenos, a raised arm. Forever a raised arm. “When we bade each other farewell, I believe we were both speaking truth.”

“Yet you found the bridge burned.”

“Not by your hand.” A poor choice of words, as it often is of late, but as it is already spoken, Fingon lets it go.

Maedhros says, “You know he…there was a moment. A choice. We were in the inn, and he had just spoken of his intentions. That we should go on ahead, and take what wagons there were. And—Fingon, I’ve been in that room again, so many times. Sometimes, I think I might laugh…laugh at—at Bauglir. For thinking that he could torment me more than a quarter hour in that room tormented me. Break me more than it broke me.”

He looks like himself again. A very tired, wax-skinned self. But Fingon is overcome by knowledge, much like he was at the mountain itself. “Will I never have done telling you,” Fingon says, “That you did not earn these hurts?”

“I killed men at the bridge,” Maedhros whispers. “It is less than a moment, you know. Less than an instant, the shot. But for what else was I trained? I taught my brothers to shoot—I taught you, Fingon. Did you think of that? When they told you, there? Did you remember?”

“Yes,” Fingon replies, also whispering. Perhaps if they are quiet, no one else will ever know. “Yes, I remembered.”

“I taught you to kill, then. And yet you choose to heal. As I said, no merit of mine, that.”

“I remember everything,” Fingon insists, feeling that he shall soon be crying himself, “Because most are happy memories. You taught me to shoot, yes, and also to garden. We traded books and played cards by the fire. Why, just this evening I recalled how I left—left Formenos before Twelfth Night, and yet you contrived to make lambswool for me to drink at Sunday dinner, that I might see how delicious it was.” He taps Maedhros’ knee for emphasis, a gesture that was also Fingolfin’s when animated. “It wasn’t only your choice to befriend me, you know. I befriended you, too. And I’ve never learned not to be fond of you. It isn’t because I’m still a child. I’m not. It’s because I will never tire of being fond of you, Maitimo, no matter how dreadfully you behave.” Maedhros does not begin to weep again, as Fingon feared he might. His eyes are, instead, more all-seeing than his father’s ever were.

“It was foolish to think I could keep both promises,” he says. “His and yours. I don’t…I know you must all wish for me to hate him. I can’t. He was a world to me—a thousand worlds. I can’t imagine this one without him in it, not unless I’m forced. And I have been—forced. “

“I don’t want you to hate him,” Fingon says. “He loved you. In his way.”

“I know he did.” Too quickly answered. “But I don’t know where it all went wrong. If we all loved each other, somehow or another, why are half of us gone and the rest in mourning? Why must we always draw the sharp and watchful gaze of those who would harm us? A-Athair met Bauglir long ago. He was scarcely older than I am now. And I—” He stops, there, shaking his head. “Never mind. It is only…I find it very heavy, I suppose. Being a living testament to Athair’s loss and Bauglir’s victory.”

Fingon considers this, to decide on how best to attack it. “Do you really think Bauglir has won?”

“Fingon.” Crisply. “What’s left of me is written up in hieroglyphs. Caesar himself couldn’t have engraved a more notable monument.”

Fingon refuses to wince. “They’re having a Christmas feast in the hall, Maitimo. And you and I are speaking as friends. Sad friends, perhaps, but friends. I shan’t call that his victory.”

Maedhros rubs his hand over his eyes. “You’re incorrigible.”

“May we have done, then? With your apologies?”

“Oh, but I like making them so.”

Doubtless that is Feanor’s legacy, too, but it was said in jest. Fingon smiles. “Perhaps I shall permit one, now and again, if only to interrupt my own.”

“What have you to be sorry for, Fingon?”

For all my family. Whether dead or living, I put them aside when they need me most. “I am no longer the would-be priest, Maitimo.”

“Oh, indeed. A priest would not wear such cunning braids in his hair, I am sure.”

Fingon makes a great show of glaring. “Now, then, maybe I’ve been too lenient, letting you sit up so late after a party. You should be sleeping, Maitimo, and dreaming a civil tongue back into your head.”

“I don’t expect pleasant dreams tonight,” Maedhros murmurs. “But no matter. I am keeping you from Finrod, and your brother and sister, and Wachiwi…”

Fingon has no reason to blush, but Maedhros’ tone is undeniably implying.

“Maitimo, surely you do not…suspect me of having designs upon poor Wachiwi!”

“Poor Wachiwi? No, no.” Maedhros yawns against his hand. “Well, doctor. Just as you said. I am tired now.”

“I’ll stay,” Fingon says, hoping that that is a gift, if a little one.

“Will you sing, like Maglor?”

Now he is blushing. “You know I can’t.”

“But you did,” Meadhros murmurs, his lips hardly moving. His eyes are closed. “You did sing, then. In the dark.”

Fingon does not know what he is speaking of, and then, quite simply, he does.

He sang as he carried Maedhros on his back, bleeding and half-dead.

Tell me the tales that to me were so dear,

Long, long ago, long, long ago…

“Do you mean,” Fingon asks, drawing one of those deep, lung-aching breaths that swimmers draw before the plunge, “When I…when we were coming off the mountain?”

“Long, long ago, long, long ago,” Maedhros answers, still without opening his eyes. “I don’t remember much. But I heard you.”

This, of all things, is what brings the tears to Fingon’s eyes. “Oh, very good, then,” he says. “I meant you to hear. Just—because it was a bleak hour. More than an hour, I think.”

“Oh, much more than an hour,” Maedhros agrees, lifting his eyelids to reveal a slitted gaze. “I’ve gone up and down that winding road a few times myself, you know.”

“You were very heavy,” Fingon says, hoping that it is still proper to make a joke. “And very long.”

“And I not even at my fighting weight.” A little curl of a smile, there. Good, good. All is, if not quite well, better than it was.

“Do you know I nearly had a fight with a lion,” Fingon says. “On my way—my way to you. Full-grown, in the forest. Gave me an awful start. But it didn’t spring at me.”

“What’s a lion to a wolf?” Maedhros asks. “If I had any money to bet, I’d place it on you, Fingon. Really I would.”

Fingon is thinking of yellow-eyed Mairon, now, though he doesn’t wish to. Indeed, a cold chill of certainty, of being watched, comes over him all of a sudden.

But it passes.

It passes, and softly, Maedhros slips into sleep. A quiet sleep, upon which no nightmares trespass—at least none visible to Fingon, who soon draws near to sleep himself.

In this way, maybe, he has become most like his father: learning to doze upright, seated at a bedside, clinging to more than his own life.

He wakes to the sound of shouting. Fingon has known little fighting in his life, but it does not take much to prime the body for war. He is on his feet and reaching for his scalpel—the nearest weapon at hand, if a foolish one—when the door is flung open. Gwindor, not shouting, but very grim, says only, “We’re under attack.”

“Attack?”

“Arrows, so far—” A crack like sudden, shallow thunder, interrupting him.

“More than arrows,” says Fingon, his pulse humming high. He knows without looking that Maedhros is awake also, but now he does look, and finds Maedhros stiff and silent, the whites of his eyes shown by shock.

“They haven’t gotten in,” Gwindor says, his tone more level. His gaze must have followed Fingon’s. “I came fast as I could, once Finrod sounded the alarm. Seems they took the sentries out—we might be surrounded. Don’t know how many.”

“The window,” Fingon snaps. “We must get him away from any windows.”

More gunfire. Without another word, Fingon and Gwindor move together, helping Maedhros from the bed and hurrying him out of the room with only a spare blanket flung over his clothes.

“Belle’s taken the children to what Maglor called the map-room,” Gwindor says. “I don’t know where—”

“That way,” Maedhros says, surprising them.

“No windows there?” Fingon asks, shifting his grip on Maedhros’ right arm so that he does not apply too much pressure below the elbow.

“None.”

If the fort is breached, or if any interloper slips in and down this hall, Fingon expects that their three-man company will be finished almost at once. He is unarmed, having set down the scalpel. Even if Gwindor has a weapon, he’ll be hard-pressed to reach it, supporting Maedhros. They must hurry.

Gwindor kicks the door of the room to which Maedhros directed them. It doesn’t budge. “Estrela, it’s us!” he roars, and the bolt slides back.

A lantern burns to light the windowless room, with its dizzily papered walls. In front of a broad wooden desk, Sticks and Frog huddle together.

Estrela darts forward to greet them. “I’ll take him,” she says, receiving Maedhros from them so that he drops gently to his knees with her hands supporting his elbows. Once down, he sways a little but does not collapse. “You two go on,” Estrela urges. “Go where you’re needed.”

Fingon looks at Gwindor. Between them, only Fingon has two good arms.

“I’ll go,” Fingon says. “Stay with them. Have you—”

“A knife?” It glints as Gwindor raises the blade. “Aye. Keep the guns away from us. I’ll not let anyone past this door.”

Fingon is ready, and he turns to leave.

Fingon is not a child any longer. Not only a doctor, for he cannot stay at his patient’s side. Not only a cousin, for blood flows no matter its bond. He cannot long savor the surprise of Maedhros’ hand closing around his wrist. Looking down into the frightened, upturned face, Fingon says,

“I will return.”

(A promise.)

“Don’t go,” Maedhros says, deadly urgent. Twisted so as to keep his grip, he is in danger of falling, now, if not from a very great height. “Fingon, you mustn’t—in dreams—”

“You taught me to shoot,” Fingon reminds him, though the cheer is gone. “I shall find a gun, and give them a taste of their own medicine. A doctor should.”

He does not want to have to pry Maedhros’ fingers from his wrist; to do so seems a cruel irony. But he has no time, and so he moves quickly.

Only when the door is shut and locked behind him, only when he realizes wholly that Father and Turgon and Aredhel are out there in the iron-raining dark, does Fingon feel very sorry for what he has done, tonight and before tonight.

But the past is not all that makes a man. Fingon is not sorry for what he is about to do.

Chapter Text

Maglor woke, stiff in every limb and damp with dew. It was a wretched way to live; he thought that daily. He knew sharp disgust and vague unease each bleary-eyed morning, even before he recalled what had driven them to such a hard road.

Then, as dawn revealed the shapes and shadows of the maple grove around them, he remembered all of it: leaving the City, leaving Annabelle, Athair’s increasing suspicions, the gem and gunshots one after the other—

And just yesterday, Maedhros’ self-sacrificial attempt to restore a little comfort.

Where was Maedhros now? Maglor rose, taking his unfortunately sodden blanket with him, and glanced around. Athair and Mother were sleeping side by side, but turned from each other. Discordant even in sleep, Maglor thought, tasting the bitterness of familiar unrest.

But of course, Mother slept poorly now, anyway, what with her healing arm.

The sky was golden and rose. It ought to have been marveled over for its beauty, but Maglor continued his surveillance. There were the twins, also side by side. There was Curufin, and there was Caranthir, flat on his back with the blanket over his face and his boots poking out—

Maedhros missing; Celegorm missing. Huan wherever Celegorm was, no doubt.

Maglor turned to look through the trees.

There they were, a mere twenty paces off. He had turned his back on that angle of the camp too soon; Celegorm was looking straight at him, and had offered no directional aid.

Maglor bit down on his desire to scold, however. A scolded Celegorm would raise his voice, and there was no way of knowing if Athair’s foul mood had worn off while he slept. Rousing him was a risk not worth taking.  

Awkwardly, then, Maglor crossed the ground between them, careful not to trail his blanket in the dirt. Huan was sitting bolt upright and looking out into the field beyond the trees. But Maedhros—Maedhros was slumped against Celegorm, his head on Celegorm’s shoulder. One hand was locked around Celegorm’s forearm; Maedhros did like to cling to things while he slept.

Not a word, Celegorm mouthed.

Maglor glanced back at Athair. It was past dawn; the rest would wake soon. And Athair had ordered Maedhros to take every watch—

“Maitimo,” Maglor said, kicking at the sole of Maedhros’ boot.

Maedhros gasped, and tossed his head, twitching under the blanket that was too ragged and dogeared to be anyone’s but Celegorm’s. “I—I was asleep,” he said, raking back his hair with both hands.

“No, you weren’t,” Celegorm said stolidly, still glowering at Maglor. “You and I were talking all night.”

“It’s—the light has changed.”

Celegorm elbowed him. “Calling me a liar?”

“Goodness, no,” Maedhros said, freeing himself from the blanket. He stood up, rubbing his shoulder absently. Then his eyes fell on Maglor again—he had been looking outwards, much like Huan was—and he said, smiling, “Poor Macalaure. You look as if you hardly slept yourself.”

“We can be tired together, then,” Maglor answered. He could hear voices murmuring; everyone else was waking.

“Watch him eat as many apples as the rest of us,” Celegorm muttered. “For all his storming.”

He meant Athair.

Maedhros said only, “Let’s be easy,” but Maglor thrilled to the desperate meanness of the jest, and nodded approvingly at Celegorm.

One truce, if not another. Sometimes he thought that Celegorm and he would be almost friends, if all they had between them was Maedhros. Then again, perhaps he was the root of all their division, too.

Athair was seated cross-legged by last night’s fire, his map on his knee, and he did not look up as his three eldest sons joined them. Even Huan gave him a wide berth.

Mother greeted them with one of her warm smiles, frayed a little at the edges. She was moving stiffly, folding the quilts and rolling the blankets. The Ambarussa were rubbing their eyes, still sleepy. Curufin and Caranthir were eating breakfast at opposite edges of the fire-circle.

“It feels like it’s going to rain,” said Amras, when the silence became oppressive.

Maglor glanced at the sky. Though the glare of the sunrise half-blinded him, he could see the heavy clouds hanging overhead.

Christ have mercy, he thought, not quite a blasphemy.

Maedhros plainly wanted Athair to speak to him, but, in his usual fashion, he had accepted his fate and joined Mother in her packing. Maglor saw her put an apple into his hand.

Maglor, of course, had to go find an apple for himself.

“Can we give the cores to the horses?” Amrod asked—then, with a glance at Athair, “May we, I mean?”

“Yes,” said Mother.

Athair still said nothing.  

“I’m going to piss,” said Celegorm, still venomous.

Athair lifted his head. “Did you take one of the watches?”

Everyone stopped moving.

“No,” said Celegorm, scratching behind his ear as Huan did when annoyed by a flea. “Sir.”

Athair stared at him for a long moment, then said, “The twins should go with you. I don’t want them wandering off on their own, and we shan’t stop again for many hours.”

“Athair,” said Curufin, shifting positions so that he was at Athair’s knee, “May I see the map?”

Maglor moved away from them, facing (he believed) west. Every day was the same, in its broad shape—differing only in small cruelties. That was what he told himself, even as the crush of dread pressed sickeningly against his lungs.

Change would come, as it did in the road, drawled in southern speech, fired like a bullet. Change will come and you will hate the self you are now for bemoaning this stillness.

“Macalaure.” Maedhros had come up close beside him, his hat tilted back a little on his head. “Will you help me saddle the horses?”

This ordinarily would have been a task shared with Celegorm. Maglor followed him, and together they tightened the saddle-girths and hoisted the packs.

Maglor had tossed his apple core aside without thinking. Maedhros picked it up and fed it to Alexander, then said, with half a grin,

“I suppose I should have given it to your horse.”

“Oh, he’s fat enough,” Maglor said, dismissively. He wanted better words, a better touch, with which to cheer his brother. Celegorm was rough and stubborn, and yet he always found a way. He said, at last, “We’re all grateful for the food, you know. He is, too.”

Maedhros shook his head. At first Maglor thought it was in disagreement, then he realized that his brother was bracing himself with his hand against Alexander’s neck.

“Lord,” he said. “I just had such a dizzy spell. Never mind. I was going to tell you, Maglor, of a dream I had…but perhaps it’s better if I don’t. My dreams are always so violent, and we’ve had enough of that these days, haven’t we?”

Maglor imagines dying. A bullet, a blade, an arrow—

A steep fall. Yes, Maglor imagines death by falling, as if whoever swarms the keep of Mithrim now will bear him up under the arc of pitiless night, and cast him down, a traitor.

There is no light by which to see his fate. No torches cross the bridge. After the first flight of arrows, which Finrod dodged and came within to warn them of, silence reigns. The land below Turgon’s half-finished wall is bathed in the deepest darkness of all the year. Cloud-cover is heavy here; the air smells of snow.

When Finrod brought the news, Curufin sprang to action almost before any of them. He returned from some secret storeroom bristling with guns. He handed them out like Christmas candy, though it did not escape the notice of those who knew his work that the cleverest—those most like Athair’s—landed in his brothers’ hands.

Then, with Gwindor gone to make Maedhros safe, and Fingolfin arraying an inner guard in the fort, Maglor and his brothers joined the outermost defense.

Is that bravery?

He cannot ask questions. He is the oldest who can fight—the oldest son of Feanor with two hands, which remains unjust, and indeed horribly sad, even in the face of grinning death. Maglor clenches his jaw, his shoulders, his grip—and settles next to Celegorm, who is shoulder-to-shoulder with Huan.

A stiff and quiet Huan; a dog ready to leap.  

What does Huan know? Celegorm used to leave him behind when they skirmished, or at least, if he ran with them, bid him to wait far back from the fighting.

Huan has not killed a man. Maglor has killed one—deservedly—in these walls.

My brother lives. He lives. He lives.

The madness shrieks in his belly; his heart pounds in his ears.

So. Maedhros is waiting in a mockery of safety. Celegorm is beside him; Curufin, too. Caranthir is a little farther away, with Phillips and Finrod, crouching behind the next section of the wall. They have made it thus far unscathed, because they did not exit Mithrim from its front gates. Those are marked by lanterns, and such a move would have revealed them to enemy fire between the uneven teeth of their protective border. Instead, Celegorm led them through the backdoor, bringing them round by the vegetable garden. The stable acted as one shield to their path, though, afterwards, it bears considering that the attackers might have already reached it.

But the horses would have made some protest, surely.

Maglor tries, as he waits at the ready, to be grateful. It is difficult, for selfish thoughts creep in: why are Feanorians at the forefront, ready to sacrifice themselves for lives they don’t love, as well as the few that they do?

He cannot ponder long. A volley of shots splits the silence open. Turgon’s wall bears the brunt imperfectly; shards of wood and chips of stone fly. A muffled cry—not from a brother’s mouth—

“Light a torch,” says Finrod grimly. “They know we’re here. Might as well have something to see by.”

“No,” hisses Celegorm. “The wind is coming. The moon is full.”

And as if he uttered a prayer, the snow-clouds retreat like a flock of birds. White light rains upon them.

Beneath it, runners are revealed—a score of them, Maglor thinks—weaving like a wolfpack up the slope, running low to the ground. Their shapes are distorted; Maglor breathes sharply.

There comes another volley of shots.

“Answer them!” cries Curufin, in Athair’s voice.

Through the gaps and arrow-notches, and at the edges of Turgon’s building, they do. Howls confirm their marksmanship.

Huan barks sharply. Celegorm says,

“Fuck, they get you?” and then he must be satisfied that Huan is unhurt, for he laughs. “I’ll let you at their corpses, old boy,” he mutters, before shouting, “Come at us, you rank motherfuckers!”

Another shot; another glancing bit of stone.

In the distance, one of Curufin’s landmines explodes.  

This changes everything.

“They’re going up along the ridge,” Curufin snaps, scrambling to his feet from where he had knelt a moment before, sneaking shots low to the ground to cripple all comers. “Celegorm, with me!”

They leave Maglor behind.

“Maglor.” It’s Finrod. “Maglor, are you hit?”

“I’m not.” He’s only dazed.

“They’ll be through this wall in a moment, Maglor. Be ready.”

Fighting a man, when you want to kill him, is surprisingly like a boyhood game. At the last instant, when the boots on the ground are no longer silent, Maglor slips his gun into his belt and drops low enough to trip the one who comes through the gap in the wall. He tumbles head over heels; Maglor went for his knees.

Not quite Curufin’s game of shooting for the shins, but something like it. He doesn’t let the man up. He rolls backwards and twists, pinning him down so that the stranger’s face is pressed into the damp earth.

Then Athair’s gun—Curufin’s gun—Maglor’s gun—fires into the base of the skull, its recoil so great that Maglor is tossed on his back, crushing the dead man’s legs.

The war surrounds him, now. Gunfire, knife-wounds, the smell of burning, the smell of blood. It is like their terrible ventures to the edge of the railroad. He feels himself become a different person, in times and torrents such as this.

Maglor is a shrinking, sniveling, harp-strung coward, when he isn’t fighting for his life.

Not just—my life—

“Caranthir!”

Caranthir and a man twice as thick as he is, judging from the shoulders, are an indistinguishable mass upon the ground. Maglor cannot shoot down, not without awful risk, but with surprising spirit, Caranthir shoots up.

A terrible pause; then he heaves the man off him.

“I’m all right,” he says, though he shudders. “I’m—”

The body is not broad-shouldered, Maglor realizes dimly, connecting one sight with his own recent memory of touch. All these men—all these blood-stinking men—are dressed in rough furs.

He has not a moment more for further rumination; a score of men do not die quickly, even when faced by a score fighting in fierce defense.

When they next can breathe, Caranthir stoops double at the waist over the man he killed, as if he is about to vomit. “Crowley,” he says, disbelieving.

“What?” Maglor pants. His arm is bleeding. His hands are scraped raw. These same fingers plucked the harp tonight—how is that so? How can it ever be so?

“Crowley,” Caranthir repeats, louder, swiping his sleeve over his sweaty brow. “He was one…one of Mithrim’s.”

“Lord help us,” Abe Phillips says, joining them. A knife, filthy with gore and mud, is in his hand. “So he was.”

There once were almost eighty men and women in Mithrim.

This is a fact that nobody has told Fingolfin and his company; or rather, it is a whole history of facts that nobody speaks of. Those who know it keep their silence out of a strange sort of pride and loyal memory. The reason there are no longer eighty bodies to be fed and clothes and housed is a shameful one. Yet it is true enough that sleeping in the dining hall was just as much a necessity then as now. It is no mere accommodation made for the belated newcomers.

After Rumil died, Mithrim waited. After Ulfang died, Mithrim dwindled to its very bones. Men would go out hunting and not return. They would take their women to trade vegetables, and word would come later that the couple had been seen in one of the mining settlements. Once a whole score of hard-faced fellows, who had always kept to Ulfang and themselves, marched out together.

It was understood that Ulfang was not a traitor all alone.

No matter what so-called friends disappeared thereafter; no matter how many of Mithrim’s faithful slept with weapons in their hands, and not for fear of an outside threat—

Men like Crowley were not missed. Winter drew in, and the Feanorians were not blamed. Those who remained for as long as their lives would last them had loved Rumil, and wanted the rot that had devoured him cleaned out. But none of them guessed that their own would return to kill them.

Maglor knew that Crowley was a foul fellow, harassing poor Mollie, the spy-messenger whom Amras had taken under his fledgling wing.

Maglor did not expect to see more ghosts tonight.

“Never mind,” Maglor says. “We’ve still more than forty, do you hear me, Caranthir? We’re strong.”

“I know we are,” his blunt-faced brother answers. “Stay close. Maitimo won’t want you hurt.”

You neither, Maglor should say, but he is too struck at heart by all of it to speak. He and Caranthir and Finrod, and yes, Phillips and Miles Red Cloud and even Uncle Fingolfin’s old carriage driver—they all form a ring, an unbreakable bond, only if for an hour.  

The next onslaught is waged against the stables through one of the unfortunate gaps in Turgon’s wall. Just as Maglor expected, however, the horses are their own defenders. It is not possible for most men to either capture or kill a horse quietly.

Thankfully—ah! He has felt some gratitude, in all this dreadful nightmare—these raiders do not seem to think a dead horse as valuable as a living one. They are doing their utmost to distract the wall-guards with fresh fighters, while a few thieves slip in and drag out their quarry by hook and crook, rope and rein.

Finrod and Maglor, as well as two or three of Mithrim’s crack shots, dart down the hillside to stop them. They chase the horse-thieves into the haymow. There is a brief standoff, guns raised in the dim light. Then a man, deep in the shadows, strikes a match.

But Finrod, also from the shadows, dispatches him with a throwing knife. The match falls anyway. With a gluttonous gasp, it catches in the loose straw littered over the floorboards. As the other thieves move swiftly away from its sparking hunger, Maglor springs forward. He is not thinking. He throws himself on the would-be inferno, smothering it with his chest and belly.

It scorches him a bit, but it goes out.

“You absolute fool,” Finrod chides him, fondly, coming to help him up. One more of the thieves is near death, gurgling and clutching at the gunshot to his breast. The other has fled into the darkness.

Are they all fleeing?

A shout from out-of-doors, Caranthir’s voice calling, suggests that they are not.

“Retreat!” he cries. “Retreat, the lot of you! They’re rushing us!”

What course, now? Abandon the horses and the stables, to be robbed and burned? Linger here while Caranthir and Phillips and the rest wait for them in vain, only to be destroyed by whoever else is coming?

Are you not a son of Feanor?

Oh, God. When I have I cared for that?

“You go.” Maglor is bright and firm with decision. “You’re quick and quiet, Finrod. Go and help them, and send reinforcements when you can. We’ll lie in wait, aye?” He turns to the others, whose names he scarcely knew, before tonight.

Enough moonlight has entered the stall windows that he can see them nod, as one.

“Are you certain?” Finrod asks, low. His hand is a warm weight on Maglor’s shoulder; it is the first real touch of friendship they have shared in years. “Really certain?”

“No time for it!” Maglor snaps. “Go now! My brothers are there.”

Finrod heeds him. It is likely the first and last time that Finrod has ever heeded him. Maglor does not pause to savor this. He has another task. He need not instruct his companions, however; they all find hiding places at once.

His is with Alexander. From the first whinny that pierced the air, Maglor knew that he must find and stay with Alexander, if only so that Maedhros’ horse would not meet a lonely end.

It is true that Mithrim bled allies like a dying man bleeds life, after the Feanorians made their mark inside and outside its walls. Maglor bleeds too, where people cannot see. Never again in his foolish poet’s life shall he live a single day, a single hour, without his father and mother, and both his dead brothers, crossing the rivers of his mind. Maglor cannot pass a single moment, without being reminded, bitterly and beautifully, how Maedhros has come back to life.

Is it any surprise that he seeks shelter here?

Is it any surprise that he crawls towards any opportunity, to protect?

Trying to quiet his breathing, he twists his left hand in Alexander’s mane. He hides against the high shoulder, the broad flank.

This was his brother’s horse, and he smells like summer, and home, and all the kind things that bloodshed has ruined. Alexander used to be a fixture—just one of many—in a life that Maglor thought would achieve only delicate renown. A life that would meet only philosophical challenges.

And now he is imagining dying.

“Not without you,” he whispers, as if Alexander will understand. Through the window, he can see that dozens of figures are coming over the bridge, not silent, this time, but chanting and shouting and swearing like devils. All of them wear the rough garb of Mairon the fur-trader.

That is surely no accident.

“Not without you,” Maglor whispers again, because he is so very afraid.

Up the hill, the gates of Mithrim slam shut. 

Chapter Text

Finrod had never visited Formenos in autumn. He certainly wondered at the wisdom of doing so now, riding beside Maedhros in the teeth of November wind.

They had departed the City before dawn. Now, they were moving swiftly through the early hours of the morning, while pale sunlight stretched cold fingers over the fields and through the muted forest shades. Most of the trees had already shed their leaves. These stood in skeletal quiet, with their slender limbs crosshatching the sky.

Not all the branches are empty, though: one stubborn, flaming aspen proclaimed itself by its gold-coin rustle in the stiff, unyielding breeze.

“That would be you, if you were a tree,” Maedhros called gaily. Finrod laughed.

“As we well know, you are the maple—first to be stripped of your raiment.”

Maedhros doubled over his horse’s neck as if the jest had sent a real arrow his way. “Oh, Lord. I’m reformed.”

“Like hell you are!” But this was an opening for something Finrod had been wondering over, of late. He must take advantage of it, before their journey ended. He had precious little time remaining to discover what lay ahead of any of his cousins or friends, so occupied must he be by his own path.

They were riding to Formenos so that Maedhros could discuss some business with his father—These things are sometimes better managed in person, Maedhros had said, volunteering no further information—and so that Finrod could buy a horse suitable for his long road west.

It still seemed impossible that, in a month’s time (his father and mother had begged he keep Christmas with them) he would be journeying southwest to Olwe’s village, there to winter only as long as was necessary, before his path took him still further into unknown country.

Where will you end? his father had asked him.

Finrod had answered, confident in his principled ignorance, I do not know.

Whether Maedhros was happy or sorry to lose a frequent companion, he never exactly said. Instead, he took an eager interest in the details of Finrod’s plan, down to the best place to find a ready steed. Appreciative, yet a little disconcerted, Finrod thought—and then thought better—of teasing him about some secret of his own.

It was easier than thanking him repeatedly, since Maedhros dodged such gratitude and teased the one who sought to bestow it (unless the one was Fingon). Finrod, then, was more inclined to wit himself, but when the moment came and Maedhros offered to travel with him to Formenos to select the best mount from the country round, the joke had felt too dangerous.

Too dangerous, that was, to suggest that Maedhros, son of Feanor, grandson of Finwe, should ever want to escape.

But something less than that…a more ordinary, domestic sort of change…

Finrod waited until they had stopped to water their horses. Though Maedhros often took this route by carriage, he knew every brook and pond that could be easily accessed from the roadway. They dismounted and made their way to the streamside.

“You will not have a wedding without me there, will you?” Finrod asked, busying himself with his own flask while his borrowed mare drank.

“A wedding?”

Finrod said, “Are you to court her forever, then?”

“Oh, goodness. You are awfully bold, with the cold stirring your blood. No, Finrod. I shan’t court her forever.”

They were both speaking of Esther Landau, of course. It had been more than a year since Finrod had introduced her to Maedhros, and nearly as long that she and Maedhros had been, quite privately but also quite unmistakably, a set. Esther was a seamstress and a governess with a mind for fine ideas and a taste, it seemed, for dandified men who could lilt in voice and step.

Finrod said, almost severely, “Make an honest woman of her, then.”

“She is an honest woman! Won’t let me see her without a shawl and high collar.” His tone was very fond.

Finrod considered him. “I don’t mean to trifle over it,” he said. It wasn’t a joke he wanted, after all. With Maedhros, he only ever desired sincerity. “She’s a lovely girl.”

“Aye,” said Maedhros, looking at him full-on with those mad, beautiful grey eyes, “And I love her. Now, Finrod. Come along. I’d like to have my mother’s dinner at the hour, not heated through afterwards. She makes a splendid potpie with two chickens’ worth of meat baked into it, of a Saturday. Let’s see if we can beat it out of the oven.”

Formenos’ chimney revealed itself before the house and barns did. A plume of smoke—a welcome sight. Finrod would soon be leaving his home, and though he had done so since childhood, for extended visits to Grandfather Olwe and excursions to the capital with his father, he had never…never left it with no real intention of returning as the same boy.

The same man.

What did Maedhros make of Formenos? Was it home or was it memory?

As news of their arrival spread, and all the young Feanorian cousins flocked out to fling themselves at Maedhros with whoops and war-cries, Finrod decided that it was likely both.

“So,” said Uncle Feanor. “A horse, is it? The one you rode in on looked sturdy enough.”

“She isn’t mine,” said Finrod. She was Uncle Fingolfin’s—or at least, one boarded at his stable and which he was permitted to use when need arose. But of course, it was best not to mention Fingolfin’s name before Feanor. “Maedhros advised me that there are some excellent specimens to be found at the local farms.”

“Celegorm will escort you,” Uncle Feanor said, waving a hand. “I’m afraid Maedhros may have deceived you a little, Finrod. I shall require him for the afternoon—I leave at first light tomorrow, on an errand of my own. I must claim his hours while I can.”

“Of course, Athair,” Maedhros said, promptly. “Finrod, I’m sorry…I hope you do not feel misled. Celegorm knows ever so much more about horses than I do.”

Finrod supposed he had no grounds on which to feel offended. He rarely chose to take affront, anyway. As long as Celegorm would help him—and Celegorm, ever a bit uncouth and taciturn, said that he would—it would all come to the same thing.

He would have a new horse, and Maedhros would be shut up indoors with his father. They would be successful in their errands, though Finrod now preferred his.

The day was warm, for the season. The wind had gentled and the sky was clear.

Finrod was at the railroad’s end, the day they burned the shanties to the ground. To swoop down on the corpus of industrial progress and pick it clean would seem, to many minds, both brutal and divisive. It would have seemed, to the Finrod of a year before, utterly unlike Fingolfin.

But Finrod had not questioned it when he and Fingon and Turgon charged forward, weapons and torches in hand. The railroad itself was an ugly rut of land swarmed by lumber-heaps and sag-roofed outbuildings. They would not have burned it for its ugliness alone. They burned it because the men who toiled over the ties were slaves.

This was something Haleth had given them: another piece added to their prior understanding of how a suave businessman of the east could and did employ cutthroats and child-killers. Melkor Bauglir, the celebrated, steely fist of New York (his southern ties, Fingolfin had bitterly noted, were swept aside when convenient), enslaved whom he wished of natives and runaways in lawless lands.

No one but their own kin knew their names.

Few but Haleth could still fight for them. Haleth, and her new allies.

Finrod had been glad, to watch wood crumble to ash, leaving iron in disarray.

He is thinking of all of this now, panting hard in Mithrim’s hall, as Fingon practically bowls him over in greeting.

“Heavens, Finrod. All right? All right? Where’re the rest?”

“I left Maglor and a small party in the stables,” Finrod says. So many of Mithrim’s stock stand at the ready here, watching every hall and door, clustering in the open space by the hearth. Fingolfin is approaching, though. Finrod sees that much over Fingon’s shoulder. In a louder voice, he continues, “I do not know where my cousins—where Celegorm and Curufin are gone. When we shut the gates, there were a few dozen men at least, charging the hill. They’ll be battering at our doors in an instant—some of them, I daresay. I think we have fire to fear first, but only as it concerns the stables and Turgon’s wall. We’re safe in stone, here.”

An alarmed murmur ripples through the ranks at the mention of fire. Even behind sturdy walls, it is a real and ancient fear.

“Lord have mercy,” Fingon mutters.

“We heard some of the mines explode,” Fingolfin says. He has a gun at his belt, but crosses his arms over his chest as he paces a few steps. Everyone is looking at him. He is the leader. The only person who might not know that is himself. “We are ready at the backdoor, should they try that way.”

A chorus of assurance. Even when spooked, Mithrim’s people are proud of their defenses. In turn, Finrod nods, relieved. He does not see the children anywhere and imagines they have been safely hidden away. Indeed, Maedhros too. Maedhros—

He takes a breath, hoping it will calm his heart. “It must be stated,” he says. “That the object of our assailants may change. They might steal horses first, if they can, and burn the stable after. But if they are—if they are driven off, they may destroy what they can while fleeing. We must be ready for that. We must be willing to drive them off.”

“Their object,” growls Edwards—one of Mithrim’s quieter occupants. “Did any of these traitors tell you their object before they died?”

Traitors. Phillips must have begun to spread the word. Finrod can’t imagine Caranthir eagerly speaking of his own kill. 

“It may be that they seek to overrun Mithrim once and for all, when they believe us to be lazy with feasting,” Finrod says carefully, answering the question put to him. “And it may be that they…” He wants to protect Maedhros and Fingon both, one for what he signifies; one for what he saved. Yet he cannot lie to these men and women. “It may be that they have come for Maedhros,” he says. “To take him back again.”

“They can’t have him!” cries a sharp voice.

It isn’t Fingon, as one might have expected. It is Amras.

Fingolfin wheels, and before anyone can dissent or placate, as the inclination goes, he shakes his head emphatically. “No, no, Amras,” he says. “You need not fear that. Whatever happens tonight—depend upon it, your brother is safe.”

Finrod cannot help but admire his uncle almost more than his own father, for how well he bears each pain, each turn, each terror, with nary a thought for his own gain, his own grudges. So much mercy, in one man.

“But our brothers are out there, too!” Caranthir chimes in. “As well as within. They are outnumbered!”

With that, all talk ends and panic surges anew. Something—many bodies, perhaps—strike the gates. Mithrim does not shake, on its foundation. 

“Brace the doors and stand ready beside the windows,” Fingolfin orders. “But have a care! We know they have guns as well as arrows.”

Finrod moves quickly, having recovered himself sufficiently to examine the long gun he carries. It has been jamming; he must find another if he can. His knives, cleaned only against his jacket, are at his belt. He has already killed tonight. The sun set before the feast; blood is shed before dawn.

What does it mean, that he feels nothing?

“There you are,” Galadriel mutters, flattening herself against the wall beside him.

“Damn it all,” Finrod snaps, finding his repose to be more fragile than he thought. This, in turn, is not quite a mercy. “You should be—”

“Don’t you dare say with the children, Finrod. While you were out front, we’ve been busy. I’ve been minding the kitchen door with Aredhel and a few others.”

“Why’d you leave?” he can’t argue with her.

“Nobody to kill, there.” She grins wolfishly. “For now.”

A burst of gunfire outside—all concentrated on Mithrim’s gates—makes them duck down instinctively. Perhaps the attackers are trying to weaken the bolts and hinges.

But that is a tiresome game, especially with a thick door on the other side of it. The pettiness of such an attempt, from such fierce, erratic fighters, doesn’t properly make sense.

Without much time to ponder, however, it isn’t until Beren dashes in from the hall shouting Fire that Finrod realizes his mistake.

They needn’t knock down the gates or try and fail to burn stone walls to the ground. They need only to smoke Mithrim’s occupants out by blocking every entrance with smoldering fuel, and wait to pick them off as they exit, spluttering and bleary-eyed.

In the moments that follow, Fingolfin orders most of the party to stay at their posts. Whether those gathered are his men or not, they listen to him. Edwards and Phillips pace the room, consulting with their comrades in low voices.

Finrod and Fingon join Fingolfin for counsel. Beren is with them; Wachiwi as well, a lantern in her hands. They’ve doused all but necessary lights.

“We must go out and face them,” Finrod says. “Uncle—Maglor and Celegorm and Curufin are out there, and given the numbers, it is no surprise that they have not held them off. I pray my cousins are not dead”—but he cannot dwell on this for long. He continues, knowing that Fingolfin heeds his counsel carefully, “These men, whether they be traitors or terrorists for hire, shall sit outside and plot our doom if we let them. We must not let them.  I shall go.”

“And I,” Fingon says. Wachiwi elbows him.

“Better keep the doctor behind,” she says. “Beren, Finrod, me and Miles. We’ll go and break down the fire-builders at the backdoor. Then you send a dozen out after us, fast-like, to chase them back.”

It does Finrod’s heart good, to leave Fingon in the safety of the main hall. He has, in their stands and skirmishes, been glad to have Fingon at his side—but perhaps a little of Maedhros’ fearful love has bled over him of late. Maedhros would not want Fingon to go into the darkness. Finrod will not be the bearer of ill news.

Better that any peril be his, this cursed night.

Better that any peril flash and fall outside of Mithrim’s walls, not within them.

The corridor is quickly traversed. They are at the door to the yard, though they cannot well make it out. It is obscured by a veil of choking smoke. More seeps beneath it. Finrod draws his neckerchief over his mouth and nose, his eyes already stinging.

Coarse laughter, and the thump of tossed logs—

“They’re ravaging our woodpile,” Miles mutters, and Finrod answers,

“This door will be blocked if we’re not careful. All together now!’

The four of them charge as one, while more footsteps hasten behind them. The dozen Wachiwi called for, only moments before. There was precious little time between that council and the actions following it. Finrod only clearly remembers how he came by the gun in his hand.

The door, under their collective weight, is thrust ajar, but not fully open.

Finrod shoots at the man barring the gap with the handgun Curufin gave Amras. Amras pressed it into Finrod’s hand as he passed. Its aim is true, and the bullet strikes the man’s belly. He howls and falls.

Then they are out. The melee is a storm, but a storm by night—you can hear it and feel it about you, feel it beneath and within you, better than you can see anything. The moonlight has not lifted all shadows behind the fort. The logs smolder but, since they have been scattered, they show little more than orange-hearted sparks.

The fighting is fierce. There seem to be a score of men here, which is more than Finrod had dared hope for. Beren grunts when an arrow buries itself in his arm, but before Finrod, who is close beside him, can shout out his alarm, Beren is already gasping,

“It’s nothing!”

They fight on. A score of men is many, and yet not so many. There is a great deal of blood. Someone falls: not an enemy. The howling mockery ceases, but the grunts and groans, the awful screams that some men make when life leaves them—those fill Finrod’s ears and throb there, as if his heart has become something that belongs to others; to his enemies.

He is, once more, thinking of his father. His father has never killed; his father is exactly the sort of man of whom men say, he would not hurt a fly. Is that virtue? Is peace found only in prosperity? Finrod is out of bullets. Finrod’s knuckles split against a man’s jaw.

Need all these men be killed?

It seems so. They seem intent on bloody triumph, abated only in death.  

“Finrod! You’re still kicking.”

The hand slamming into his shoulder is, it seems, a friendly hand. It belongs to Celegorm, whom the moonlight does find, gleaming against his grinning teeth.

“Curufin and I were picking ‘em from the hills,” he says. “We’ve come down again. Is everyone else hiding within?”

“Not everyone.” There is more time for talking now, since they are overcoming their opponents. “As you see. And Maglor—” But he must be careful. He mustn’t speak too loudly of the stables, lest Maglor is safe in secrecy.

But Celegorm takes immediate interest. Curufin covers for them, and Celegorm drags Finrod by the sleeve.

“What about Maglor?”

“He’s in the stables,” Finrod hisses. “They were going to make mischief there.”

“Shit. I’ll go to him now. Curufin—” And they are off, a flash in the night. They seem happy to be fighting, and this is no surprise.

Feanorians, Finrod thinks, wrestling another man to the ground and stunning him. All of a sudden, he recalls the haunting not-memory of the massacre at Ulmo’s Bridge.

He is Maedhros now, as Maedhros was then. Fighting for what he believes with no other thought in his head. Who is betrayed? Who is honored? The trigger draws so quick.

They do not kill every man who comes to Mithrim that night. Some flee. Those that flee shed their hideous furs like snakeskins, leaving them behind.  

The only man who was still thought to be breathing, whom Finrod stunned, is found with his throat slit.

Curufin is blackly angry over this. “Damn you all, did no one see it done?” he demands, raking back bloody hair from his brow. He has a cut over one eye. “A live one could have been useful.”

No one volunteers an account of their own brutal attempt at efficiency. No one engages Curufin’s fury. Finrod thinks this wise; they must have learned from Fingolfin.

As it turns out, Fingolfin did not hide in the fort. Celegorm spoke without knowing full the truth. Now, Finrod learns that a frontal assault burst from the gates again—Fingon among them, so much for Finrod’s attempt at protection—and was strong enough to overcome the remaining attackers. Less than a dozen of the villains departed over the bridge. Maglor and his companions thwarted their progress from the stables.  

Maglor lives. All the remaining family lives. Yet Mithrim bears losses. Eight dead, a dozen wounded seriously enough to warrant immediate attention. Those that died were some of Mithrim’s most faithful inhabitants. The man Edwards is one. His death is a shaking loss for those who remain, who are neither of Fingolfin’s company nor bound by Feanorian ties.

(Finrod considers.)

The threat is no longer beating at the walls and doors, but it cannot be gone. Perhaps it never shall be gone, if Finrod keeps on in this mad, principled charge that forces one foot in front of the other, no matter what meets him.

He returns the gun to Amras, with his thanks. It has served him well tonight; violence has served him well. He can see them all milling about under torches relit—his cousins, his friends. His uncle, offering a nod of reassurance. No sign of Maedhros; no doubt he remains behind closed doors.

At last Finrod makes his way towards Beren, who shall need stitches sewn in the ugly triangular entry pointy of the arrow, which trickles dark against his upper left arm.

“You were afraid,” Beren murmurs. “So was I. If Luthien…”

Finrod stoops to kiss his brow. The gesture is tender, for him, but the night has wrung him dry of all restraint. This is his friend; his friend returned from a war they both made without thinking or knowing. There was only the attack.

Forgive me, Father, Finrod muses. He is plying a needle through flesh; he has been appointed this task because he has a steady hand.

I do not know whether I sin.

Chapter Text

The cold, clear air followed them into the fort. There it mingled with the dense fireside warmth and the haze of smoke that hung in Mithrim’s halls. It could not cleanse killing hands, revealed by moonlight and torchlight both, but Mithrim’s people were not ready for cleansing yet.

Shivering, Fingon coughed against his sleeve, though his breathing gave him no real trouble. No, it was his heart and his limbs that plagued him, tingling fiercely, every nerve in him still singing their battle-hymns.

Tonight’s war was over, but there was little peace to be had. There were, instead, flurrying hands and boots and voices, all tripping over each other, all feeling for wounds. On your brother’s arm—on your father’s neck—you are a healer, after all—

“It’s nothing,” Father said, brushing away Fingon’s searching, shaking hand. “A scratch, only. Come, you must collect yourself, so that you can tend to those who are truly in need.”

Oh, he was glad that Father was close by him. Trembling still, Fingon was very glad. They had fought side by side for much of the mad hour—if it was an hour—that had passed, after they rushed forth from the gates.

Turgon was here, too. Turgon, clutching his left arm to himself, and—

“Fingon! Thank God,” cried Aredhel, throwing her arms around them. Her hair was damp against his cheek. “I thought I saw you fall, for a moment. It gave me such a fright.”

“I did not fall,” said Fingon, holding her tightly. He felt Turgon brush his shoulder before the crush of the crowd forced him on. All senses, simultaneously dulled and sharpened in battle, were restoring themselves. In a fight, one moved with animal fear and quickness, but the sights and smells and sensations of ordinary touch—these seemed to be but distant thoughts; here an idea, there a memory. Fingon could smell the stink of sweat and blood again. Fingon was remembering that he was, in truth, a doctor.

A doctor who had killed to keep those he loved from harm.

But—

Thank God, Aredhel had said, an instant ago, and Fingon, standing now with his back to one of the solid walls, remembered that he was a man of faith, too.

It was Christmas night—a night that ought to have been spent resting, watching. What came down from the heavens, for men of the unchurched west? What came from up from the bowels of the earth? Fingon clenched his hands and stiffened his spine to steady himself, observing the jostling of cousins and comrades alike as they fanned out around the long table.

Fingon had not prayed in days, not really. To be sure, his mind traced the contours of need and desire, on occasion, but not those of worship. He had not praised or thanked the God he had once sworn to serve—how long had it been?

(More than a year now, without sacramental grace, without the quiet enclosure of the confessional, without the hushed awe of the tabernacle.)

(And I have killed. Out of need, yes, but I have killed.)

Fingon unfurled his fingers from his palms. His sister had found him again. Her face was dirt-streaked, her braid was torn to ribbons, but her eyes were bright.

“Aredhel,” he said, “Will you help me? We must boil water…we must…”

There were bodies on the ground outside that could not be helped. There were bodies faltering but breathing here, and those were his whole duty. A dozen, ten men and two women, were seriously wounded.

Earlier this evening, when he parted from Maedhros, Fingon had accepted that he might die. That in killing, he might be killed. It had been important to understand that; to acknowledge what sprang naturally from violence, what took stubborn root along with honor.

And Maedhros—

“Water,” Aredhel said. “Well, you’ll need it for yourself, brother. You look as if you’ve been rolling in mud.”

“I know that,” he said, solemn-voiced, but it was no good. He was torn again; he wanted very badly to see how Maedhros had gotten on, even though he was, for once, the one least likely harmed.

Do your duty.

“So Doctor Fingon deigned to fight among us after all,” said Celegorm, too loudly, as he joined them. He was flushed and wild, still. Fingon had seen him only briefly, since the night began—Celegorm had been one of the first out and the last in. He and Maglor and Curufin had fought at the gates as the fighting waned, however. Even after a victory, Fingon did not think his questions would be welcome.

Aredhel asked for him. “Where were you, you lout?’ she demanded, thumping Celegorm on the arm.

“Stables. Had to collect Mags.”

“And all of you are unhurt?’ Fingon ventured, because that was his province.

Celegorm nodded. “Aye. I just saw Amras. Now—you said the study, did you not?”

“What?”

Celegorm showed his impatience at once. “You left Maitimo in the study. The map-room.”

Fingon had no excuse to lie. “Yes.”

“Good. He’ll wish to see us.” Celegorm turned on his heel and strode off, leaving Fingon to act as a doctor rather than a friend.

Eight men lay dead. Finrod reported this, having heard it from one who bore the dread tasking of counting. Finrod, also, had seen himself the battlegrounds west and east of the fort, since he had fought at both sides throughout. Fingon himself had not seen how things ended at the backdoor; he had only been relieved to see Wachiwi and his cousins returning.

Now it fell to him to make sure that the number did not increase. Fingon dug out bullets and arrowheads, directed his father and sister and friends to staunch wounds, washed his hands in steaming water until they stung, stitched until his fingers were sore.  

(A good thing, after all, that he had not rushed immediately to tend to his most constant charge. He had been able to see more proof of life and hope, like this. Had been able to make more proof.)

Finrod’s hands were gory-red, also, as he gave his report of death. He washed away the blood in what water Fingon could spare. He seemed paler and less steady than usual.

“I am fortunate,” said Fingon, worried for him, “That you’ve learned a bit of doctoring yourself. You are invaluable, Finrod.”

“A weighty compliment,” said Finrod. “For in a way, those that are dead were invaluable. They took the bullets in their breasts and brains so that we did not. If probability is anything…if we are to measure this with mathematical precision…”

“Oh, hang it all,” said Fingon, a little disturbed and yet, a little heartened, to hear Finrod philosophizing as he used to do. “Nothing in the real world comes down to mathematical precision, Finrod. Certainly not doctoring.” He paused. “Olorin would box my ears for that.”

“If he could find them beneath those braids,” said Finrod.

They grinned at each other, and nodded, as if to say, back to work.

Mithrim was resourceful. Those who were able-bodied moved swiftly, pushing the long table against the wall, making up bedrolls for the wounded to lie easily. The fire was heaped up, that they might not catch cold. The kitchen, still dim with smoke, was soon filled with the smell of herbs being boiled for poultices—a smell that seeped into the main hall as well.

Fingon was supplied with more hot water than he could have ever needed, though bandages were, as ever, in short supply. As for hands, he was markedly more fortunate. Finrod was not his only helper; he had Wachiwi, Miles, and Tabitha, not to mention his father, and Galadriel.

Galadriel had a level head about blood and bone.

Fingon had killed two men tonight. He must remember to pray for their souls—in truth, he ought to do it now. He could pray while he worked, really, if he ran through the Latin under his breath. It could provide a sort of rhythm for his hands, his blade, his needle.

Pray for your enemies, and do good to those who hate you.

Ah—but that was bitter. Fingon tied another bandage off, rested a light hand on the groaning man’s (soldier’s) shoulder, and shifted his focus to the next invalid, all while his heart rebounded from the desire to reconcile, to forgive. He was a hypocrite, this Christmas night. He knew now that he could pray for dead men, and men whose lives he intended to save, but he did not have it in his soul to pray for those whose lives had slipped unwittingly through his fingers.

No prayers for Mairon and his single eye.

No prayers for the enemies who had the blood of Fingon’s family on their hands.

I am both, said his cousin-friend sadly; the one he had wanted to run to. Fingon, you know I am both.

Fingon raised his head and saw Maedhros on the other side of the room. 

Their eyes met. Maedhros was, though flanked by Celegorm and Maglor, standing on his own legs. And no, not just standing now—he was striding, walking so quickly as to almost be running. A strange shade of the swift, sure creature he had once been. A strange shade, lurching, white-faced but as resolute—

As resolute as death, though he was living.

Fingon scrambled up, heedless of the compress under his hands. Fortunately, Wachiwi was kneeling beside him and replaced his touch with hers.

Fingon reached Maedhros just as Maedhros came to the end of his crippled strength. Fingon seized his cousin’s elbows, knobby under the billows of his shirtsleeves, holding him aright with all his strength.

“Good God,” said Fingon, staring up at his pale face, his wild eyes. “What are you—”

“You’re alive,” said Maedhros, in a very small voice, as if they had not the curious gaze of half the hall trained upon them.

“Yes,” said Fingon. “Of course I’m—why, did anybody tell you otherwise?” He immediately suspected Celegorm.

“No,” said Maedhros, now looking rather abashed. “No, I was only…I was so very certain.”

“You should not be up and about on that leg,” Fingon said softly, not knowing what to make of whatever terror the night had woven for his cousin’s tormented mind. He saw, too, that Celegorm and Maglor were approaching now. They did not have the good grace to be ashamed, and so Fingon felt he was entitled to give them a little scolding. “Hey now, what were the pair of you thinking, letting him—”

“They didn’t let me,” said Maedhros sharply. “I told them to help me in here. I am perfectly capable of a few independent steps, when the occasion requires.”

The occasion of Fingon’s supposed death had, apparently, sufficed.

“Smooth your feathers, Fingon, you’re the picture of a bantam rooster,” said Celegorm. “Come now, Maitimo. You satisfied? You’ll believe us now?”

“Yes.” Maedhros answered, meekly enough. He was faltering, amidst the excitement. He did not protest as Celegorm slipped an arm around his shoulders, and he glanced around for the first time, taking in the sight of wounded men scattered around the room.

“Back to bed,” said Maglor, tucking in against his left side. “Really, Maitimo. You must. It’s been a terribly long night.”

“You’ll come with me,” Maedhros murmured. “You must…You must all tell me everything.”

“Upon our damnable honor,” said Celegorm.

Fingon took a step back, thinking the moment over and his usefulness diminished. But it was not so: Maedhros twisted round in his brother’s yoke of support to look back a moment, as they led him gently but firmly away.

I was so very certain, he had said.

Fingon supposed that he himself had been nearly certain, too.

“Here,” Maedhros says, tapping the map spread over his knees. Fingon cannot help but notice the way he moves his left hand differently than he used to move his right. He curls his fingers inward, keeping the hand small, and gestures most often with a bent knuckle. “I would hazard that the rotting hole spans this entire stretch. The cell I was kept in at first was set back, deeper than his principal chambers. He had many windows in his rooms. Windows and even doors, opening higher on the cliffs than those concealed below.”

“An easy way in, if we should need it,” Celegorm mutters.

Maedhros shakes his head. “Too visible. We would be picked off like rock-doves. And at any rate, I think…I think destruction is the best assault.”

Curufin leans forward. “You said the foundations were weak.”

“It’s a misshapen pit, his fancy trappings aside. Horribly ill-advised.” Maedhros’ lower lip is tucked between his teeth. An old habit. Fingon is looking for old habits, at the moment, since he is feeling rather at odds and ends.

He has no particular place in the map-talk, not unless he wishes to interject the painful subject of his own journey up the mountain. He supposes it would be useful, if they are to accurately plot the land, but Maedhros has carefully avoided Fingon’s gaze today whenever possible, and the other Feanorians will never ask for Fingon’s advice on any matter but medicine—and rarely enough then.

At present, anyway, they have shifted to a more intimate (and no less distressing) landscape: the innards of Bauglir’s domain. Fingon is just as eager to interrupt this, not because of any special knowledge on his part, but because he does not think the subject a suitable one for an invalid to discuss, particularly not in the wake of a fright.

Yet, for all his worries, Maedhros is no ordinary invalid. Fingon has been knocked back on his heels trying to understand the change in him these last few days.

Ever since the Christmastide attack, Maedhros has been driven by some new sense of urgency, lit as if by a flame within. He has called his brothers to sit with him in council, and has regaled them with details of his imprisonment—or at least, of Melkor Bauglir’s operation—that Fingon never expected to hear fall so readily from his sober, if bloodless lips. Fingon would delve deeper, would ask him not to trouble himself so, but Fingon has not always the time to stay at the bedside these days; the wounded defenders in the main hall place new demands on him.

“It has weathered nearly a year,” Curufin says now, meditatively. “For the blast was in February, was it not?”

Celegorm nods silently.

“His slaves work day and night to strengthen the walls and prop up the heavy roof,” Maedhros answers. “The hall…it rises from the cell-level, up and up, and has many rooms pocked in its sides. Some of those seem—seemed—sturdier than others. The windows, you might expect, would weaken the structure most readily, but that war-room of his is little more than a glass-boxed cave dug into the outcropping of bedrock. There is not, I think, much weight atop it.”

“What madness,” says Maglor, who has been uncharacteristically quiet, save for brief, petulant interjections. “Blowing rock to bits and calling it a castle.”

Maedhros hums in agreement, but does not look up. If Maglor wished to turn the conversation, he did not succeed.

Fingon supposes that Maglor knows little of maps. They are not his province. Indeed, Maglor’s sole triumph this morning has been to claim the pride of place at the end of Maedhros’ bed, where he sits with one knee drawn up.

Maedhros has thrown off his coverlets, and has the map of Estrela’s recent making—copied from Mithrim’s cartography, sketched on Mithrim’s paper—spread across his lap. Sometimes Curufin takes it from him and makes notations with a pencil shaved to lethal sharpness. Fingon is not allowed to look at the notations.

Fingon does not particularly care to look at them. His chief desire, at present, is to oust every Feanorian but one from his sickroom, and tend to Maedhros until the light in his face and feverish eyes fades to something more human and comfortable.

It is, perhaps, unfair to expect that Maedhros can be comfortable.

Chastened by the resolution of his own thoughts, Fingon returns to his tincture-making, pretending not to listen. He is listening, of course. The room is small and Maedhros’ voice rings like a hammer feeling its way to the weakness in metal.

“There must be another way into the mountain than the path I—than the footpath that winds along its face. Horses can be brought some distance along that way, but not—” Here he pauses to cough a little into his shoulder. “Not the whole distance. Yet timbers and stone and steel were brought and moved to create what is within, now. They could not have moved so quickly, without another way.”

“To the east?” Curufin asks.

“We have not seen the mountain closely from east or west,” Celegorm says. The bitterness in his voice startles Fingon, even now. But of course: it must be difficult for Celegorm to forget, for an instant, what Fingon made his failure. All their failure.

“All ingress and egress…that I was aware of, at least, came by that footpath. Inconvenient for Bauglir’s underlings, maybe, but it afforded him greater security from any attack.”

“Did he ever trek it himself?” Curufin asks. “That you know of?”

“Yes.” Maedhros is bent over the map again.

At that moment the door opens and Frog pads in, his little moccasins snugly bound to his feet. He kicks them off so easily that Estrela has resorted to winding laces around them several times over.

Frog is undismayed by the questioning glance of every face turned to him. Nor is he exactly alone. He has one of the kittens—Tig-Pig, Fingon thinks, though he forgets such things easily—in his arms.

Maglor makes a strange, strangled sound, as if he was about to scold and then thought better of it. Remarkable, that is, for Maglor is rarely patient with children—not in Fingon’s memory, and not here. Frog skirts Huan’s thumping tail, weaves between the unwelcoming angles of Curufin and Celegorm, then deposits the kitten on the map in Maedhros’ lap.

“He’s come,” says Frog, breathlessly, rocking back on his heels at the bedside.

The kitten, wobbling on the waves of an uncertain sea, claws at the paper and tears it.

Fingon has a brief, awful vision of Maedhros flinging the hapless creature from him, dashing its small bones against the wall. His stomach curdles at the thought of such violence. Of course Maedhros would never do such a thing. And indeed, he has only lifted the kitten and its offending talons free of Estrela’s map. His hand cradles its belly and ribs so that its legs dangle, scrabbling at the air.

“Frog,” Maedhros says, “Does Estrela know you’re here?”

“I’m my own man,” Frog says, with Sticks’ inflection.

Celegorm huffs a laugh. Fingon hides a smile. These two things have nothing to do with each other.

“Of course,” says Maedhros, solemnly. “I did not mean to imply otherwise.” Over Frog’s head, his eyes meet Fingon’s for the first time in an hour. It is a look that older brothers might exchange; Fingon clings to that if to nothing else.

“Come along, Frog,” he says, putting the herbs aside. He has only one stoppered bottle before him, with three unfinished, but it will have to do. “I think we had better bring…”

“Tig-Pig,” says Frog, disdainfully.

“I think we had better bring Tig-Pig to visit later, when he is not so hungry.”

“Hungry?”

Another snort from Celegorm, which Fingon ignores. Maglor and Curufin remain in different tenors of Feanorian silence. Curufin’s is bored; Maglor’s is distracted.

“Yes,” Fingon says. “He is mewling like that because he is hungry. I am a doctor, and I know.” This last bit is embarrassing to say before the lot of them, even Maedhros, but Frog’s inquisition requires the weight of authority.

Frog consents to take Fingon’s hand and be led away. Only when the door is shut behind them do the voices resume on the other side. Fingon supposes that Maedhros is now describing the dimensions of each subterranean torture chamber where he was flogged and flayed.

He checks himself. Maedhros’ account, so far, has largely left out his own place in the Mountain’s halls. Maedhros has not said a single word about what was done to him in the war-room, though he seems to know it well, or how many nights he spent in the rough cell.

“You’re pinching,” Frog mutters, wringing his hand free. He has Tig-Pig cradled in the crook of his other arm, and when he springs defiantly ahead, Fingon can just see the fur ear-tips poking out over his elbow.

Frog is a strange, fierce little creature—but dear, Fingon thinks. Children are like that. Whether raised in comfort or squalor, they bring forth so much heart.

Fingon follows Frog into the hall, catching sight of Estrela across the room. The table has been moved aside so that cots may be laid out near the fire by day, in double rows. It has made the sleeping arrangements of the fort even more complicated. Fingon gestures to Estrela, and she moves quickly towards him, veering off with an apologetic wave of her hand as Frog darts in another direction, heedless of them both—or choosing not to heed them.

His errand complete, Fingon returns to the sickroom. He is an intruder there today—today and every day since.

“—the weather is mild this morning,” Curufin is saying, when Fingon enters. “The wind is from the south.”

“It is a long way to walk,” Maglor puts in doubtfully.

Celegorm’s turn to be silent. Huan’s great head is resting on his knees, and Celegorm prods the dent between his brows with a finger.

“What is a long way to walk?” Fingon asks, since nobody is going to tell him. Daylight brightens the room as it always does in early hours, illuminating even the mortared seams in the stone walls.

Maedhros answers, his eyes half-lidded. “In speaking of architecture,” he says, “We came to speak of Turgon’s recent construction. I have not seen it. And then…” He stops, leaving Fingon to guess at the rest of his answer.

“If you are careful, I think you can,” Fingon says. “We could procure a walking stick—”

“A crutch?” Maedhros asks. “No need. Celegorm will be my crutch.”

Fingon does not follow them out. Some tacit agreement has formed between them—between all six of them, now, for Caranthir and Amras joined them as they passed out the doors of the fort. Fingon cannot hope to comprehend it.

He shall have to take his own walk later, breathing the gentle wind. At present, he is obliged to be sensible, and join his father and the others well enough to sit at table for midday dinner, instead of fretting at the windows.

Nonetheless, he does fret when more than half an hour has passed. That is a long time for Maedhros to be out of doors, especially in the winter chill.

“So much for meddling,” he mutters to himself, and Father says,

“The sentries are tripled at every border, Fingon. Any alarm will be taken up swiftly, and a daylight attack is unlikely to achieve such stealth as night’s cover offers.”

“I—” Fingon should fear that more, perhaps. Should fear violence, imagining that Maedhros has an arrow through his throat. But he cannot credit this exactly, for it does not seem that the enemy—the Enemy, one man behind it all rather than a shapeless entity—wants Maedhros dead.

There is little comfort to be had from the thought. Fingon turns his tin mug in his hands, wondering if he is wrong to fear more from Maedhros himself than from what the outside world can yet do to him.

Fingon resolves at length that he must venture out to find them. The air out of doors still has a smell of burning in it, rising from the singed, dead grass. Fouler scents mingle, too: the aftermath of battle. The bodies of the men killed are to be buried in one deep grave, the digging of which has not yet been completed. It was a grisly choice between burning—which might attract notice, thanks to the greasy rising smoke—or burying. One grave allows them to set a guard to fend off any curious, hungry beasts of the surrounding wilderness.

Maedhros and his brothers are not at Turgon’s wall. They are, in fact, nowhere to be seen. Fingon veers south and east, towards the stables. Perhaps Maedhros is visiting the horses; visiting Alexander. The prospect is heartening; It would certainly do him good. There are voices coming from the stable at any rate; boots tramping the floorboards.

Yet before he veers from his path to investigate, Fingon espies his cousins. They are not leaving the stable. Instead, they have been south and east of Mithrim’s heart. There are fields of flat grassland down the slope, frost-burned to shades of fawn and grey.

They have been wandering there.

“He’s all right,” Celegorm calls impatiently, seeing him. “Don’t look so goddamn forbidding!”

Fingon was not aware, before this moment, that he could be forbidding. At any rate, he does not feel anything of the like now. He feels the onset of grief, instead, though grief has no urgency here.

Maedhros is leaning heavily on Celegorm and Caranthir, his bad leg dragging a little. Soon, Fingon will have to tell him that what has mended has not been to the purpose; that the leg would be better broken in two than be healing crooked. He has not yet found the words with which to say this. He knows they will be unwelcome, and that, by saying them, he may render himself unwelcome, too.

He is not prepared for that prospect.

“The sky has stayed very blue, I own,” he says loudly, addressing the remark to Maedhros, as soon as they have breached Turgon’s wall at one of its open points. “I hope you enjoyed your jaunt.”

Up close, he sees that Maedhros’ face is wan and white. “It was not that sort of jaunt,” he says, breathing heavily.

“We took him to see Athair,” Maglor explains, his eyes still brimming with tears, and Fingon understands at last what he had wished not to.

“I see,” he murmurs. “Well, blue though the sky may be, this wind nips more than I had expected. Come inside.”

“Curufin!” calls a voice from the stable; one of Mithrim’s men. “Found something.”

“Go on ahead,” Curufin says over his shoulder, already on his path away. Fingon leads the way awkwardly, glancing back and wishing he could take Maglor’s place, if only because Maglor seems to be swaying a bit himself.

It is not as long as it feels, however, before all of them save Curufin have returned to Mithrim. Maedhros sits on the edge of his bed, still breathing strangely. He does not ask for the map again. His brothers hover; eventually Celegorm is called away to speak to Curufin, and Amras goes out after him. Fingon has taken up his mortar and pestle and herbs again, and is trying very hard not to look chockful of questions.

He has more than he could count, but he will not name a one.

The bed creaks. Maedhros has stretched himself upon it gingerly, hoisting one leg up and then the other, guiding himself with his left hand.

Maglor and Caranthir sit on either side of him. Their silence is the sort of silence that barely admits an island to the ocean of deep thoughts.

Fingon misses Gwindor. The man has been a little scarcer, lately, though no reason has been given and he still comes by to sit late at night; beside Maedhros, or tucked in one of the corners with naught but a blanket.

Maedhros stares straight upwards. Fingon grinds his herbs as quietly as he can, and feels the world change.

Chapter Text

“It is not much further,” said Curufin. Then he slipped a thin smile over his shoulder. “Celegorm will carry you on his back if you are tired.”

“I am not tired,” Maedhros answered quietly. He was moving at a slow, but not terribly unsteady pace, helped as he was by Maglor and Celegorm.

Maglor, in a gesture he hoped seemed kind, had taken charge of Maedhros’ maimed arm. He did not sling it around his shoulder, as Celegorm did the left; instead, he gripped it firmly above the elbow, where the pain was—surely—not so great. He could not feel Maedhros’ heart through his ribs. He wondered if Celegorm could. He could not see Celegorm’s face, but he could imagine it. His vivid poet’s mind could see them all—all of them who lived—trudging together towards memory and death.

Though they had not said as much to Fingon, when he returned to the sickroom, the plan had always been that they should take Maedhros to see where Athair was laid. He had bid them bury Athair in his absence, after all, though nobody had known how long his absence would be. Maglor tried not to dwell on that thought, or on any thought other than the business of guiding Maedhros’ steps.

It is the eve of the new year. Mithrim shall not have its celebration, yet, what with the wounded and the dead so near—but tonight they shall light a fire in defiance and hope.

Maglor is trying not to dwell on that either.

Already, they had gone most of the way down the hill; the lower field and its lonely inhabitant were near. It was strange to see Curufin leading the way to Athair’s grave. Maglor could not reproach him for having pushed away all sense of time and loss; during the awful summer months into the autumn, Curufin hid in his mine, and Maglor hid in his troubled dreams.

But Maedhros had returned to them as winter fell, and enemies had come upon them, kindling all their blood. Maglor saw…not hope, exactly, but something to be clung to: a brother to be pieced together again. If they could set Maedhros to rights, they would not have to think of Maedhros suffering.

Curufin, no doubt, saw neither hope nor Maedhros. Whatever he chose to live for, Athair was tangled up in it. It had always been so; his devotion since childhood had been unflinching. Maglor had once disdained it, and might again, but he had been unable to deny the efficacy of Curufin’s counsel, during the dark year.

A dark year, and fire rising. Maybe Curufin saw the bridge—not Mithrim’s bridge—in his mind’s eye, and in remembering that first and awful violence, believed himself to have a purpose again.

A purpose. Yes. It is not so much further to our father’s grave.

Maedhros was breathing strangely. Celegorm said, “You all right?”

“Yes.”

Amras and Caranthir, trailing beside them, were silent. The grass still gleamed green in parts: otherwise it, like fading tresses on an aged head, was bleached pale and decrepit. It had never grown as thick or lush as it did in Eastern fields; in the fields at Formenos. It rustled under their feet.

“There,” said Curufin, pointing, and though Maglor felt a weary twinge of the old ache of jealousy—a jealousy that had most often been reserved for Celegorm, and Fingon, when they claimed the right to lead—he also thought his brother sounded young. “There,” said Curufin again, as Maedhros’ ribs shuddered a little against Maglor’s hand. “It is a good place.”

Caranthir coughed.

Grass had grown over Athair’s grave, and it looked to the unknowing eye to be not much more than another knoll. Once, it had been a deep pit, a heap of earth, and a cloth-bound body. Once, it had been the end of the world.

Maglor himself had not done much digging, though he helped to bear the makeshift bier. Celegorm and Caranthir, then, had managed with the shovels. Amras had stood like a lonely statue; Curufin had sat on the ground with his head between his knees.

Maglor had tried to sing, but the words would not come easily or nobly, at first, and then they would not come at all. Strange to consider how he had been sick with grief, and now that grief felt scarcely enough to fill him half-up.

When first we made this place… Amrod had been alive, then, in Maglor’s mind and hopes. So had Maedhros.

Curufin skirted the edge of the grave until he stood at its head. Amras and Caranthir hung back. Amras had not said a word since they passed the stable. Maglor did not wish to force Maedhros further, unless he asked to go, because every step must be weighed for the pain it caused him. It must be dreadful for Maedhros, after everything, remembering who they all had been when the grave was made.

“You may come a little closer than that, I daresay,” said Curufin, still with awful cheerfulness. He was most like Athair when he was desperately Curufin. Maglor wanted to strike him; but of course, they were all cut from the same cloth.

“Maitimo,” said Celegorm, so low that the wind almost took it.

But Maedhros did not heed whatever warning that was intended to be. Maglor felt him straining in his helpers’ hold, and so together the three of them inched forward, until Maedhros was looking down at the rising ground, beneath which Athair slept.

Are you at peace? It wasn’t a prayer—wasn’t anything so holy and impersonal as a prayer. The dead could not hear mere thoughts.

“Good even ground,” mumbled Celegorm. “See that, Maitimo? It’s solid. Dependable. Even if we’ve uncharacteristic rain in these parts, nothing’ll wash it away.”

“Thank you,” Maedhros whispered.

It didn’t quite seem the right thing to say. He was trembling under Maglor’s hand. Trembling, and his face was drawn and fierce in resignation and weariness…it was a prisoner’s look, Maglor thought. And Maedhros had been a prisoner, and perhaps he had looked rather like this after they carved and beaten and burned his flesh. It was impossible to look on that flesh without vividly imagining the gruesome harms; it was hard to look at Maedhros without imagining him (difficult as it was to do so) in the throes of such agonies.

But he had slept and eaten in Angband; he had languished and waited, too. Perhaps he had even had time—no, he must have had time—to reflect on this place, this task.

Maglor had to avert his gaze from Maedhros’ face. It told too much truth for a liar to see.

“Let’s go,” said Amras, his voice a wavering reed. “It’s cold. Maitimo will be cold.”

“It was cold when attackers flocked our gates,” said Curufin. “And we could not turn away then.” He was looking straight at Maedhros. “I’ll bring back what he stole. I’ll stand in his path no matter where he makes it.”

Maglor felt the knife of those words twisting in his innards, striking at his spine. He had killed Ulfang like that; had killed a traitor like that.

(He had become what he killed, for he had not…had not sought, or saved, or sacrificed more than his own peace of mind, while Maedhros lived.)

“Oh, Lord,” said Celegorm. He shifted, thus shifting Maedhros, and Maglor faltered. “Must we—”

“We swore an oath,” said Curufin.  

Maedhros, gone still as death, said, “Curufin is right.”

Even Curufin had no answer to that.

“We cannot fail him,” Maedhros went on. “They have tested us, so far. I have fallen short.”

Celegorm made a strange sound—almost like one of Huan’s whines, though softer. Huan had remained behind because Celegorm had ordered him to.

Maglor didn’t know why he’d done that. It didn’t seem likely that Huan would turn up the settled earth over Athair. What did Celegorm not want him to see?

“I do not know how many chances we shall have,” Maedhros said. “How much we shall be given. But I will not fail you again.”

“None of us shall,” said Curufin, as if Maedhros had been speaking to him. “We are men now, after all. Even Amras grew old in your absence.”

“Leave him alone,” muttered Caranthir, and it was only then that Maglor, turning his head, realized that Amras was gone. He had begun the trek up the hill, almost running.

“Maitimo, you’re tired,” Celegorm said. “Isn’t he, Mags?”

“I think so,” Maglor said, rather shakily. He tried to catch Maedhros’ gaze but Maedhros stared unflinchingly forward. Maglor himself felt divided between two gazes: one perceiving the world corporeal and one reaching beyond life and death into the future.

It will ruin us, his mind whispered.

He had thought as much that night by the fire, when Maedhros crept between Athair and Athair’s doom. It had been a dangerous place, even then, and Maedhros had suffered for it. They had all suffered for it. Maglor felt the weight of his own sins, and knew they would only grow heavier.

“Come now,” he said, suddenly as convicted as Celegorm, as Caranthir, that they should be away. Maedhros was not strong enough to fight both of them—and indeed, he did not seem to be trying.  

Even Curufin did not linger.

The dinner hour has come and gone. Maglor himself is not very hungry, but he has grown used to eating a little at each meal, if only to reassure Maedhros that all is well with him. It is one of the few kindly habits that did not really belong to the Maitimo of old; to the poor thin boy who quailed before spices and rich meats.

It was always Maglor who had to say,

Won’t you eat a little? Won’t you try? as if he was praying to a particularly delicate saint.

Maglor was Maedhros’ guide and savior before Fingon was, when Maedhros allowed himself to need either of those things. Now, in yet another lonely room glimmering with dust motes, far away in time, it is too late for Maglor to save much. What he can, he does by spooning up soup and gnawing at hard winter vegetables.

He does not show that he smells blood with each bite. Each day since the battle, Maglor has smelled blood. He had not, in truth, killed a man since Ulfang—until Christmas night. The irony of that is bitter; in his nostrils and on his tongue is a constant, sickening tang.

Still: he eats.

Outside, they have laid all the bodies in their grave. There are so many buried at Mithrim.

Maybe someday there shall be more under the ground than above it. More bones than living men.

At least Maedhros, eating himself, no longer waits to be spoon-fed. He sits up on the bed with the blankets thrown back, tearing his bread and dipping it in the bowl in his lap. His hair is a little untidy from their walk in the wind. His shirt is buttoned to his throat. This new Maedhros—and oh, how Maglor loathes to think of him so, but it cannot be helped, not with the unmistakable spark catching in his eyes—does not avoid his left hand and its use as much as the old did.

He is getting better, Maglor tells himself, but the words don’t ring true.

He is getting better, even though they all but renewed that dreadful oath at Athair’s grave.

Only Maglor and Caranthir remain in the sickroom at present. Fingon has gone to do his rounds among the recovering wounded in the hall. Maedhros has not complained of this new development.

“I wonder how soon I can plant here,” says Caranthir. “Last year, they seeded carrots in late January.”

Maglor is jarred from his reverie. “Why can you not do so again?”

Caranthir says, mulishly, “I don’t know the seasons well.”

“Ask someone.”

“I shall. But that is exactly why I was wondering.”

Maglor frowns, but he also waits for Maedhros to say something like we never have enough carrots, and is rather surprised to be met by silence.

Then again, it isn’t really surprise. Whatever Maedhros saw at that grave, whatever he felt—

Maglor swallows. The smell and taste of blood, phantom or no, is above all things—wearying.

No further reply follows. The door opens; Celegorm and Curufin come in together, a shadow of old belonging that will always be a pang in Maglor’s heart. Amras and Huan trail after them, half-grown boy and steady dog both looking doubtful.

Curufin has something in his hands.

Maglor first does not know what it is, and then does not know why it matters. It is only one of Athair’s guns. They are distinctive from common pieces—sleek and light, despite their capacity—but practically indistinguishable from each other. Curufin copies Athair’s work almost exactly. If Maglor turned his precision of mind to metalwork rather than music, he could doubtless assess the success of Curufin’s approximations to the millimeter.

As it is, Maglor knows the guns by touch even better than by sight. He used to kill men riled by the midnight raids, never making certain of their crimes before he gave them judgment. Yes, he has perceived the power of Athair’s guns as Athair himself must have meant them to be understood: consuming life in one’s hands.

It is worst sort of legacy. Yet: what matters this particular gun?

“It is Athair’s design,” Curufin says, laying it gently at the foot of the bed. “But not Athair’s make. It doesn’t bear his mark.” He lifts his gaze from the weapon and fixes it on Maedhros.

That gaze could be a weapon, too.

Curufin says, “I would deem this impossible, if I could.”

“But you cannot,” Maedhros answers. He sounds like an old self again, but not one Maglor wishes to be reacquainted with: he sounds like the Maedhros of miserable New York, called to account by Athair after some coldness had grown between them.

“I still don’t understand what you’re on about, Curufin,” says Celegorm, biting his nails.

Maglor is not so brave as that—so brave as to interject.

“Men found this and a few others with the corpses of our enemies,” Curufin explains. “They recognized them well enough to bring them to me. I had…” he pauses, and then says almost modestly, “I had heard shots that followed an unusual pattern, like only to our own.”

“You inquired?” Maedhros asks.

“Yes,” Curufin says. “We—they—were already stripping the bodies for burial. We cannot afford to be nice about what hand-me-downs we shall take and those we don’t.” He grins briefly.

“We ridded ourselves of the dank furs though,” Celegorm mutters.

Curufin continues, “At any rate, I asked everyone to keep a lookout for discarded weapons. We found a dozen of these.”

“Where did they come from?” Caranthir asks. He has been silent with Maglor all this while, but of course they never share the same sort of silence. Maglor grieves quietly when he is afraid; he spends many hours dreaming in silence also. Caranthir observes the world around him, but chooses to brood.  

When he does speak, he is bluntly suspicious. Maglor cannot distill the feeling of his pulse ringing in his ears to anything as simple as that.

“I do not know,” Curufin says softly. “For I did not make them, and Athair made no secret store that men like that could rob. These cannot be older than a year, for…for he added this groove along the butt last February, for a better hold. You remember, don’t you? Maitimo.”

“I made the guns,” Maedhros says, without hesitation. Somehow, that was what Maglor feared.

“You—” Curufin has lost his eloquence. Perhaps Maedhros knew he would, by giving a straight answer. Whatever it is, Maedhros pushes himself up to rigid, upright posture, leaning heavily on his left hand. His eyes are hard.

“I was given a choice,” he said. “Between protecting Athair’s secrets or protecting his sons.”

“Protecting us?” Celegorm ventures. Huan shuffles towards him.

“You had a traitor in your midst,” Maedhros says. “When I found that out, I knew I had to do what I could to break the force massing against you. On the slopes of that cursed mountain, Bauglir laid the roots of an empire. His fortress had guards, yes, but those guards needed weapons. To that end, had a hidden forge. Some work on the railroad was done there—primarily design-work. But more than that, the place was used for his experiments. His concoction of explosives. And, in my service there, guns.”

“You could not have made lesser guns?” Curufin demands, waspishly. Caranthir glares daggers at him.

Celegorm asks, “Who was the traitor?”

“Lesser guns?” Maedhros snaps—and yes, he is angry, or ashamed, or whatever passes for both in him now, burning under his thin skin. “Do you think Bauglir is fool enough to be satisfied with a paltry piece? Something that couldn’t do what he knew Athair’s guns could? I had no time to devise some poorer yet passable formula. I had scarcely time at all.”

“Because we were in danger?” Curufin’s lips curl. Maglor would hide from that smile, if he could.

“He said so!” Caranthir and Amras, voices mingling. But Maedhros does not seem to take comfort from their loyalty.

“Who was the traitor?” Celegorm asks again. His fists are clenched. Huan is pressing his shoulder against his master’s knee.

Maglor, for his part, feels faint—and is too afraid not to interject, now. “Maitimo knew Bauglir’s strategies better than any of us could,” he says. “Even Athair. Maitimo, I am sure you did only what you could—”

“What is the fucking hold?” Celegorm raises his voice. “Who was the traitor?”

Maedhros answers, “Ulfang.”

The dark room, dark eyes, dark blood. The end of every merciful despair.

I saw him. Not a week hence. Bauglir didn’t kill him.

Maglor knew this—this, what Maedhros is saying—first.

There is no secret in his dark soul. There is, as he feared, no name that could be a revelation. All that is left for Maglor, now, all that lives outside the grave, is the blade that falls on the bared neck of the condemned man that his better self would be.  

Even now, his coward self demands—What are my crimes? He, too, had scarcely time at all.

Bauglir didn’t—

Maglor does not move, does not breathe, and prays his coward’s prayer: that he not be noticed.

Celegorm heaves a breath: ill-judged relief. Celegorm is slow. “Oh, Lord,” he says. “Well, we knew that. We…” He stops short. “Wait,” he says. “Maitimo, how did you know?”

I saw him.

“I saw him,” Maedhros says. Curufin’s role in this tableau has diminished, despite his avid interest a moment ago in uncovering Maedhros’ possible deceit. It is Celegorm and Maedhros, now, who face one another in every hope of new alliance, every hope of new understanding.

Celegorm didn’t want to go to Athair’s grave; Celegorm wants to believe that Maedhros can still fight for them. He asks for very little, and yet the world.

Maglor could never attain this strength: the strength that Celegorm has like breathing, the strength Celegorm wants Maedhros to have. Maglor sees it now: sees the living image of his childhood fears coming clear.

And—Celegorm would have saved you if you let him, echoes in his thought. The blade falls. It does not carve skin, flesh, bone. It carves his spirit. It carves open his very soul, as did his traitor-killing. As did the choice of blind walls over what became Fingon’s quest.  

If I had chosen differently…

“You saw him?” Caranthir leans forward, flushed. “You saw Ulfang? When?”

Maedhros blinks. He does not answer immediately. Then he says. “Late summer.”

Maglor stares at his hands.

“Late summer?” Celegorm again.

“I was taken in May. I lost count of the days. But it was late summer when I saw outside the mountain again. The heat…the color of the grass and leaves. When there was grass to be seen.”

“I think,” Curufin says, “That you ought to tell us all about it. It is time.”

Maglor lifts his head to see that Caranthir is on the verge of tears. Amras is in the corner with his arms wrapped tightly against his chest. He should protect them. He should—

“You know a good deal of it already,” Maedhros says. “I was kept in a cell, and trotted out for torment.”

“Why?” asks Curufin.

An awful pause drags there. Finally, Maedhros repeats, “Why?”

“Was it punishment for Athair?” Curufin takes a step forward. “Or did he want something from you?”

Maglor has lowered his eyes again; he is looking at his brother’s hand, now, the only one. The knuckles are white. “Both,” Maedhros answers. “He wanted a good deal of…information. I would not give it to him.”

“But you gave him the guns.”

“Later,” Maedhros snaps, his head jerking up as if Curufin’s words had been a blow. “Later, after they’d made me much as I am now. I held my tongue, Curufin, if that’s what you’re asking, while they pried open my mouth to pull teeth. I held my tongue through the beatings, under the iron and the blade, all of it, until I believed—” He stops, and resumes, his voice breaking, “Until Ulfang.”

“Very well,” says Curufin. “What did Ulfang do?”

“Came to sup with Bauglir, and gave him a full account of what he knew. Spoke of the mine. Knew the entrance was beneath the fort, even had a guess as to the study.”

“The mine,” breathes Curufin, his face more changed than it was by Maedhros’ suffering.

Of course. Maglor remembers, dimly, that Athair always warned them of Bauglir’s desire for riches…and he could not forget the night that Gothmog, Bauglir’s underling, showed them the stolen diamond, long ago. But Maglor has long since accepted that he is far from the most devoted son, since he cares little for the disputes that existed between Bauglir-called-Morgoth, and Athair-in-the-ground.  

What matters the mine, when Maedhros—

“It was more than that,” Maedhros is saying now. “He knew the lot of you, and thought he could divide you. He—he planned to kill you, when the time was right.”

“Well, fuck him,” Celegorm answers. “He tried.”

“How,” Maedhros asks faintly, but full enough to send the last of Maglor’s heart racing, “Did he die?”

Celegorm’s fierce proud smile is a terrible thing to unworthily bear the weight of. Maglor flinches. Celegorm says, “Mags killed him.” (Celegorm is slow.)

Maedhros recoils. “Maglor—”

“Yes,” Maglor mumbles. “He tried to attack me in Rumil’s study.”

Maedhros presses, “When was that?”

“Late summer.”

“Holy…” Celegorm is biting his nails again. Maglor is waiting for the blade the finish its work. “He was gone for days, before he…he must have come straight back from seeing you, Maitimo. He must have—”

“Yes,” says Maedhros, quietly. He drops his gaze from Maglor’s face. Does he know what to read there? “Yes, he must have.”

“Tried to kill us, sure enough,” mutters Celegorm. “Killed Rumil. Poison, the bastard.”

Maglor’s breath whistles in.

“Why did he then choose Maglor, I wonder?” Curufin asks. “Why take Maglor next?”

“Maglor was our leader,” says Caranthir. His hands are clasped tightly on his knees, and his brows are pinched closely together. That is what anger looks like on Caranthir: even his rage is awkward, loyal. He is suffused by feeling that threatens to overpower his frame: perhaps that is the only kind of anger Maglor does not deserve.

“He said,” Maedhros continues, slower now, “That he wanted to kill Celegorm. Bauglir bade him wait. He thought it unwise to reveal Ulfang’s position sooner than was necessary. To this end, they thought that Maglor…they thought that Maglor could be manipulated. They were, of course, wrong.”

“He didn’t even try to come for me,” Celegorm scoffs. Then he stops short. (Then it is over.) “Maglor…what did he say to you?”

It is over.

…Think, you fool. Think.

“I accused him of killing Rumil,” Maglor says. He is not lying—he is drawing on an old strength mastered only by an older brother. It is a remnant Maedhros’ own cleverness, knowing how to tell a twisted truth and send his hearers off satisfied. “He tried to blame you, and to threaten me, and I—I—”

(He is no secret-keeper. He never has been. He was not made to be alone, to be locked in himself, to be strong, to be cruel. The world has asked him to become all of these things. He answered only with madness.)

“We knew he was a scheming traitor already,” Curufin interjects. Maglor reels; he did not expect mercy from this corner. Likely it was unintentionally bestowed. “But he waited a little while to strike.”

“Waited until he’d seen Maitimo,” Caranthir agrees grimly.

Celegorm shifts, his arms folded. He has his thinking face on. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “Why’d he act, when that snake-spawn in the Mountain hadn’t approved? Why risk his own life so?”

“I cornered him,” Maglor explains faintly. “I think I made him angry.”

“Made him angry?” Celegorm laughs, at that. “Mags, you buried that blade so deep in him you were gory to the elbow. I think it was you who…” He stops.

It will ruin us.

“Oh, Jesus,” Celegorm says. He stumbles back. All they do is strike one another; all they have ever done.

“What is it?” Caranthir snaps, but Curufin is silent, Amras is silent, Maedhros has gone as pale and cold as snow—

 Celegorm faces down Maglor, who does not want to look at him, who did not want to be cruel, and asks, “Did you know?”

It is over. He cannot keep lying forever; if it was lying, to keep a traitor’s words to himself. Right or wrong, he cannot properly defend himself, either.

Fingon did the impossible, after all. If they had been brave—if Maglor had been brave—could Maedhros’ brothers have done it sooner?

“I thought it was a trap,” Maglor says. “He told me he had seen…him…” He can neither look at nor speak to Maedhros—”And I…”

“You miserable, cowardly fucker.” Celegorm’s voice is deadly low. It would have been better if he shouted. “You…you let him rot.”

From the corner of his eye, Maglor sees the shape of Maedhros. Hunched forward, statue-still.

“I—”

“If you had trusted us…” Curufin begins.

“What would you have done?” Maglor demands tremulously. “What would—”

Celegorm thinks slow but moves fast, especially when he is angry. He has Maglor by the shoulders in an instant, his fingers digging deep. Maglor’s teeth rattle. “I would have saved him,” he shouts, his simmering fury boiling over at last. “I would have climbed that goddamn mountain, alone if need be, and saved him. I’d have chosen right, you lily-livered bastard. You let him rot for months, you let him lose his hand—” Another shake, this time more violent, and Maglor loses his footing as Celegorm bears down on him.

“Let him go!” shrieks Amras, but Maglor can’t hear much else, not with the roaring in his ears. He has squeezed his eyes shut, trying to shield them from Celegorm.

(He has no breath. At least he cannot live, without breath.)

Then there is a tumbling, thumping sound, and a groan, a groan that cuts through the fog and the pain of Celegorm’s fists striking his face. Maglor always knows Maitimo’s voice. Maitimo must have thrown caution to the wind and himself into their fray, and Maglor must look at him now in abject gratitude, if nothing else.

He opens his eyes.

Maitimo’s only hand is wavering above him. Between him and Celegorm.

“It was chance,” Maedhros rasps, somewhere in a future where Maglor can’t follow. “Celegorm, listen to me. It was only chance that Fingon came. Only chance that he found me alone. You would have…you would have died. Died or been taken. I could not bear it. I could not bear losing you. Celegorm—Celegorm. Let him go. I’d take the other hand off with my teeth if it meant—if it meant seeing all of you survive.”

“But he left you,” Celegorm says thickly. Maglor cannot see much of Celegorm through Maedhros' outstretched fingers, but he can hear Celegorm’s snuffling sobs, and each is like another blow.

“I’m here now,” Maedhros says. “We shall keep close. We shall all keep close. Help me up, Celegorm. Please.”

The weight lifts, and Maedhros' hand disappears. Maglor shuts his eyes again. Boots strike the ground instead of him, but he does not know if he even wants that safety. Caranthir says,

“Come along,” in a voice that sounds like crying, too.

The door opens and footsteps go out.

“It’s all right,” Maedhros says. “Go on.”

More footsteps. The door latches shut with all the finality of a closing coffin.

“Maglor,” says Maedhros. “Get up.”

Maglor blinks back to life. His lip is bleeding. His nose, too. It is all very sore and tender. He could cry like his brothers—he has always cried easily—but the tears don’t come. He gets up.

He looks at Maedhros, though he doesn’t want to.

It will ruin us, whispers through his mind, a prophesy from hours ago. It tells itself true tenfold, in the hatred shining out of Maedhros’ eyes.

“Go,” Maedhros says, deathly quiet. “I want to be alone.”

Maglor was not made—

Chapter Text

Too soon, Master leaves you. He cannot bear to live inside his heart, and so maybe he leaves that, too. You don’t lose the smell of him, nor the pounding of his pulse. Many other quiet feet overtake the sound of his, marching up and away. Gathering. Sometimes they go beyond the walls and beyond the trampled grasses, and you, farther and farther, cannot catch the scent of what they are following. Whatever they are searching for, they do not find it.

Whatever Master chases, it does not seem like an ordinary hunt.

You sigh. In the shadows, you sigh.

Light passes. Voices, faces, heartbeats.

It’s nothing, the red boy says, to the father-man. It’s nothing.

He has said that before.

Now, in the shadows, the young dark one sleeps with his chin down. He breathes dog-easily. The red boy sleeps painfully.

As for you, you rest your head on your paws, blinking steadily. The room was not always so calm. The air was not always so hushed and steady. Dim in your memory is the sound of their cries. They—your boys. Your sorry pups, though they grow so tall.

You were standing by as they shouted at each other, Master and the rest. You would have pushed Master away from the lanky cub he was pummeling—the saddest and softest of the lot—but the red boy intervened instead. He hurt himself, leaning hard on his thin knees, on his raw arm. He begged Master, and Master—

Too soon, Master leaves you.

You do not twitch when the door opens. Slow—slow—the arc of that door. Still too early to bring day with it. The sad, soft boy whispers in with hesitation shaping his body.

If he, like you, had a tail, it would be between his legs.

He does not speak, at first. He creeps forward, and he does not wake anybody. (You are already awake.)

“I do not ask for your forgiveness,” he murmurs, when he stands at last beside the bed. His knee is so very close to the red boy’s lonely hand that a flex of fingers would touch it. “Not any longer. Nothing can wash away my sins—but there are other uses for deep water.”

This, he says around a sob. He has something in his hand. You can smell how the warmth of his palm draws a blood-scent from it. It is like Master’s gun, or his knife, but so much smaller.

Gently, he lays it on the red boy’s chest.

Gently, he says, “Remember me, Maitimo.”

The silver star comes in and out of the dark boy’s pocket only by day. Water rises from loving hands to the red boy’s lips by night, keeping back the bile. Master comes in and goes out with the sun and the moon and the scent of the wind.

You know Master best, and though you keep your own time, you go in and out with him, just by a twitch of your ears.

(None of that happens anymore.)

“Macalaure?”

The red boy stirs. A glint and shine of something falling—he does not see it. He falls too, even while he lies still again. The life falls a little further out of him. You have seen the same in small creatures: the swift weariness. The fragile bones.

You blink at him in sympathy. Oh, you have so much sympathy in your hound-heart, if only you could tell him in a gentle howl, a sound to fill the wind and his understanding.

“Maitimo?” The dark boy lifts his head. “What is it? What—”

“Maglor was here.” A nervous movement of his narrow hand. “He—I dreamed—but it was so vivid. I could see him, standing just there.”

“I didn’t wake,” the dark boy says. He ducks his head. “But that doesn’t signify much, I’m afraid. You know how heavily I…” He draws near, making the red boy comfortable, or at least—

He is trying, as you do, when you lap gently against Master’s palm.

“He said goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” the dark one echoes. “Why—”

“Not—I—” The red one sinks lower among his covers, burying himself. “It was so real,” he murmurs. Very quiet, but you can hear him. You can always hear them: the way they whisper, and breathe. You can hear their pain. You can hear their peace, when they have it.

Again: “It was so real.”

The dark one is deciding. He turns around, chasing a tail he doesn’t have, and almost addresses himself to you. “I’ll go and look for him, Maitimo, if that would ease your mind.”

“Thank you.”

You are alone with the red boy now. You would like to lick his palm. He is stirring, moving somewhat unevenly, like a lamed deer. You snap your jaws shut.

“Oh, Huan,” he breathes. “Nothing’s right.”

You can help him. Pad surely; you know where it is. You never forget a scent, a sound. You nudge your nose against it, the little circle of silver, where it fell from his chest to the bedclothes, warm to cold.

His hand follows your nose. His hand closes around what is cold and makes it warm again. Everything you know is in that change: finding and warming, waiting and breathing.

He whispers, Macalaure, which has a shape you know.

Slowly, very slowly, he pushes himself up. He trembles. His body is sick and pained and frightened; of course he trembles. You nudge up against him, but you cannot save him from the heavy fall to his knees; the sharp, low whistle of breath that comes after.

He paws forward as best he can. As if he hopes to hurry, now that he is on all fours like you.

(Poor thing. He has only three.)

You wait for more words, words that have the proper contours to give meaning, as do the yawling voices of the wriggling kits. When they cry, they want to be licked atop their round, soft heads.

When Master says Come, Huan, he means that he does not want to be alone.

The red boy, though. The red boy is quiet.

He drags on his trousers, his face the color of milk.

This is like a hunt. To the earth, to the sky, to the blinding water you say: catch the scent and shape of this beautiful creature that teeth have ruined.

Here is how he managed: you beside him, comforting him, offering your dog-wisdom and warmth when you could. He dressed himself, he drew on his boots with his tired hand, he lifted the latch on the door.

You could hear and see it all, but no other faces arrived to watch him stumble, no hands reached to take him back. You followed, thus, as you will follow Master: so long as you both shall live.

Down the hall…blood, salt, smoke, rotting…and standverystillbythewall until the threat passed you. Down the hall, and nobody-nobody-nobody. Down the hall with your gently tapping claws and your swinging head and the way you know a hunt has begun before anyone has called you by name.  

The red boy is hunting, now.

The door slid into place. Feet found their place. Out by the knobbed vegetable rows, keeping from the sight of others like and yet unlike him, the boy hunts.

But for what?

(Who made you like this? Made you able to see?)

“Jesus,” says the red boy. He’s breathing hard, breathing red. The blood in his lungs is singing. “I’m a fool.”

You pant at his side. Coaxing. Grateful. Gratitude lives always, in a dog: a chain between dog and man. You feel it in the boy’s fingers as he ruffles his fur. His leg drags like the wounded thing all of him is, down the lean angle between wall and hill.

(You hear it call. You taste its welcome. It is more than blood, and just as necessary.)

Light is pouring like honey over the quiet-breathing ribs of the water. There are rushes furred about the water’s edge. There is someone standing at that same edge. Someone resolute, casting back his softness like a cloak.

“Macalaure!” the red boy shouts, but you alone can hear him, for it isn’t a shout, really. Not a call on the wind; not so much as a taste. He is not the water—he is still far from the water—and his word is just a whisper dying in his throat.

(He tries to run, but he can’t do that either.)

The soft-hearted, sad-souled boy in the long coat walks forward, forward, forward. He parts the honey-clad water. You can smell his fear a gallop away.

You can hear the mud suck at his boots. You can hear his chattering teeth.

You would run faster, but the red boy is doing his best beside you, and you can smell his fear, too.

You are a hunter, a follower, and above all, a beast. For beasts, the end is just the end. You know what creatures great and small look like when they are about to die: when the sickness of half-life takes them, bloody or not, swiftly or not.

The boy with the stones in his pockets and the tears dried salt-stiff on his face is going to die. He is up to his waist, and then his shoulders—and then his face wrenches back when the red boy cries out to him again.

It isn’t gratitude, that cry. It isn’t even fear. It’s something beyond what beasts can know.

(Your howl dies as a whine in your throat.)

Once they were remarkably clever, these boys. You knew them when they were small, though never as new pups. You are younger than they are, and you will be gone before they are.

When they were smaller, then, they were clever. They knew where to put their hands and feet in the water, striking swiftly through the sky-cupping surface of the pond. You were content to dabble in the mud, to hunt up snails that crunched between your teeth. But sometimes when the days were warm you would join them, going farther.

They will never run like you, but they do not need to. They can mount great steeds for that purpose. They can put the whole world beneath them, like lake-water under one of their strange vessels, and leap faster and longer than any beast.

Once, they were remarkably clever. Once, they were a pack running free. They would not seek death beneath the surface.

“Come back! Maglor, for the love of—”

“The love of what?” he cries, that sad creature, up to his neck. “It’s better this way, Maitimo. It’s better—”

“No!”

“I can’t bear for you—I don’t want you to hate me.” He chokes a little, for he is weighed down, losing his footing. “I don’t want you to hate me.”

The red boy has cast off his boots at the shore. He is barefoot in the mud, in the water, moving unsteadily. His hand splays, swinging at his side as if he is already swimming. And he is shivering. You know how cold it is. You know it is not a kindly place for—

The sad boy’s head goes under. His brother cries,

Cano

—and you understand that perfectly. You follow him into the lake. With his cleverness stolen from him, with his freedom long gone, he will need you.

Finrod has not been alone long when dawn climbs over the hills. An hour or so ago, he spoke to Maglor, who came from the backdoor of the fort and down through Turgon’s perimeter wall, with his hands buried in his coat pockets.

“Early, for you,” Finrod said then, with no intention of ruffling Maglor’s delicate feelings. After he spoke, he half-expected Maglor to take offense, but his cousin had only smiled at him with the queer, bright sharpness that always dwelt behind Feanorian eyes.

Or maybe that was just a trick of Finrod’s lantern.

“Late, for you,” Maglor said. “When does your watch end?”

Finrod was waiting for Beren to return, though he didn’t say so. “I’ve a few hours left in me,” he answered, shrugging.

Maglor did not reply. He squared his shoulders and walked away. Perhaps he was offended after all.

Finrod has not seen him since. He has been manning the hillside, with occasional ventures down to the field. Curufin’s landmines are gone, and though Finrod cannot be sorry for it, he keeps his hand close to the unfamiliar gun at his hip.

The other sentries are down below, and stay mostly in place. Two sentries by the bridge at all times: that is the present rule. Two sentries below, and one above, with a watchman sent to circle the perimeter at the end of every hour.

Finrod took the upper station today, partly because he prefers to roam, and partly because he knows Beren slipped up and over the hill-path last evening, and has not yet returned.

Of course, Beren will fend for himself. He is as resourceful as anyone Finrod has ever known, and has survived worse wounds than the arrow in his arm.

Perhaps it is not so much that Finrod worries for Beren; perhaps he worries for himself, and wants Beren’s company.

For one thing, it is still horrible and strange to stand above so many violent graves. Strange to sniff the air for blood and know that even when its scent is gone, even when the traces of soot are washed and blown away, he will still remember it all vividly.

War becomes a part of every soldier. Finrod, swallowing the war, must acknowledge that he is a soldier. It is a path he never intended to take, but he came west for something…some vengeance, in truth. Vengeance is a root of war, and soldiers are its vines and branches.

He touches the blade of his knife.

A single bird calls. A waterbird, startled up from the lake’s edge. He should venture down the hill and see for himself; though the other sentries are nearer, they have not as good a vantage point from the low ground. As he passes the stone flank of the fort, he can hear voices already murmuring within.

Fingolfin has done a good deal, these past few days, to set in place a new (if anxious) order.

A new beginning for a new year. The old year has passed, as it always does, but Finrod has been led to understand that the new one comes strangely for Mithrim. Ordinarily, all the fort’s inhabitants would have eaten and drunk good things, would have danced, would have made a heaping bonfire and burned tributes to their memories upon it.

This year, Fingolfin oversaw an inventory of weapons, the sentries kept watch, companions sat up with the wounded, and midnight came and went unremarkably.

The reason for this, of course, was safety. They could not afford to take risks at night.

And what of you, Beren? The question hangs in his mind an instant, and then is chased away with every other thought.

He has rounded the edge of the stable, and come within view of the lake. Within view, yes, but Finrod does not know what he sees.

Light on the fracturing water. A tangle of limbs. The wild, ragged head of a dog: Celegorm’s dog.

There is only one dog in the fort, anyway, but there are two men down there drowning.

Finrod runs.

The truth comes by degrees. They are not crying for help. They are known to him. They are Maglor and Maedhros, cousins whom Finrod has loved and lost, trusted and hated, as well as he could. He was never as capable of hatred as his conscience demanded.

His father would say that such innate forgiveness was a gift.

His father, if he stood here, would not understand the scene before him, anymore than he could fathom the depth of the graves behind him.

Finrod calls as he runs, but is given no answer. Now he is at the foot of the hill—now he is casting off his coat and boots—now he is crossing the shallow mud. Always, his heart is in his throat. The blade of a shorn reed stabs the arch of his foot. He plunges in.

The water is deathly cold.

Breathe, breathe deeply, he reminds himself, for he has done this before. Not to save another’s life, but to preserve his own. Though this water is not frozen, its touch can overpower a body that submits to it. He must not permit shock to stiffen his limbs.

He strikes out, teeth clenched, swimming.

Whether they see him or not, Huan must have sensed him. The hound’s sense of smell reaches miles. Huan is doing his part—Finrod does not doubt it. He feels hope rising in his chest—I am coming—but he is only halfway across when they plunge under again. The troubled surface consumes them, bubbling. Huan’s arched shoulders and spine afloat. When man and beast are held by the jaws of nature, a beast will slip more easily through its teeth.

But. Finrod must not panic. Even now, he must be calm and steady. He must be used not only to human war and false friendship, but strong, too, against the faithful brutality of the wild world.

He must be like Beren.

“I’m coming!” he gasps, his mouth filling up with silt-laden water. The lake has been stirred up. “I’m com—”

Maedhros’ head reappears first. Even from this distance, Finrod is struck by the whiteness of his skin, unsoftened by the winter sun. Maedhros’ hair, darkened, splays across his brow with all the violence of a head-wound. It is difficult to pin a thought in place, to pin it like a body, when real muscle and real bone so powerfully protest the elements. Still: plain as that winter sun is one awful truth.

Maedhros did not intend to see the New Year.

You bastard, is the first exclamation that comes to Finrod, though he is too busy spitting the lake from his mouth to utter it. Then—I’m coming to save you.

From the instant he saw them, he never considered another possibility. He would succeed; he would bring his cousins out alive.

If Fingon had done it—if Fingon could forgive—

He has half-closed the distance again. His limbs are moving easily at last. He is, for these final seconds, free.

Not so Maedhros and Maglor. They are locked in each other’s arms, the sounds of drowning still echoing in their lungs, their voices otherwise silent. Huan circles them, paddling. Rearing up and clearing his eyes, Finrod sees Huan bite down on Maglor’s collar, lifting him high enough to breathe.

Finrod is grateful for the simplicity of beasts.

“Maedhros!” he cries. “Maglor!”

There is no welcome for him—no acknowledgement, even. Finrod must force himself on them, breaking through their desperation. Maedhros’ stump of an arm is crooked through one of Maglor’s. Maglor’s coat is dragging at him, dragging at them both. Damnably heavy thing—it will make this worse twiceover, unless they can get it off. Why didn’t Maglor—but there’s no time to ponder.

Maglor, more than Maedhros, seems to be in shock. His eyes are vacant, through a seaweed tangle of water-blackened hair. Huan alone is truly focused, peering at Finrod from behind Maglor’s shoulder. Huan still bears Maglor up by his tattered collar.

Finrod seizes Maedhros around the waist, his hand slipping under the sodden shroud of his untucked shirt. Feels thin, cold skin over a lattice of rib-bones. Feels too little life in him. He must find Maedhros in the eyes, then: Feanorian, Feanorian.

Friend. Cousin. Not-dead-yet.

“Maedhros, you mustn’t,” Finrod says, close by his cousin’s ear. Compared to Maedhros, he is warm. He is hardy, after all, and water is not frozen—only very chill. “Not like this. Think of Maglor.”

“Get him to shore,” Maedhros rasps, wrenching awkwardly in Finrod’s gasp. One good arm, one good leg, and he is still clinging to his brother. How have they managed to stay afloat at all? (No time.) Maedhros coughs, water running down his lips. A sight like dying. A sight that says everything, even clear water, can be lifeblood. “Please.”

“Not without you,” Finrod snaps. He treads water ably, still, though he is encumbered by his cousins’ weight. Thank God for Huan: yes, thank God.

“I’ll follow,” Maedhros says. Then he cries out: “Maglor!”

Finrod twists his head round. Maglor’s eyes are falling shut. His lips are blue. Maedhros’ lips are blue, too, but his eyes are sprung wide, the whites fully visible.

“Damn it all!” Finrod splutters. He arcs his body forward, catching Maglor with his right arm. They all go under, and Finrod’s nose as well as his mouth is choked, pained by sharp inhalation. He kicks something—Huan’s leg. His right hand catches in Maglor’s coat.

It is heavy, Maglor’s coat.

Air floods his lungs again. A different kind of pain.

“To shore!” Maedhros’ voice is no less commanding for its hoarseness. “Huan will help me.”

“Maglor!” Finrod cries, shaking him. Maglor coughs out a good deal of water, only to swallow more. His breathing does not calm. He pitches backwards, and in the judgment of an instant, Finrod lets Maedhros go—trusting him to Huan and himself.

Maglor’s coat, once Finrod has stripped it from his tense shoulders and flailing arms, drops like a stone. Finrod holds to him. Shakes him, thrice, and calls his name. Maglor’s eyes stream and his blue lips pinch and tremble.

“Take him!” Maedhros orders. “Now.”

Huan will not let Maedhros drown. Finrod is sure of this. And Maglor is in his arms at present: Maglor, doubtless overcome by the knowledge of what Maedhros set out to do, is in need of another set of limbs to swim him ashore.

“Follow close,” Finrod spits, and sets off, his legs doing the grueling work of two men.

The sentries—useless fellows, whose names Finrod knows but could not for the life of him recall now—are waiting on the shore.

“What in the hell—” one begins, but falls quickly silent. Finrod turns from glaring at the fool to peer anxiously over his shoulder. He is satisfied—or something like—to see both Maedhros and Huan crawling through the mud.

His poor, mad cousin has been chastened, then, by a brother’s love.

God, Finrod thinks, not in prayer. God, what will Fingon say if he learns—

And he must learn. They all must know and see this new humiliation of Maedhros. He will be remembered for his attempt today, along with everything else.

Why it had to be today is a question perhaps best answered by the heated argument that he and his brothers had behind his sealed door.

Finrod remembers that his mouth must speak, must call for aid. “Your coats,” he gasps, to the sentries. “If you will. Both of them are chilled to the bone.”

He helps Maglor up out of the mud as he gives the instruction. When they are over the lip of dry grassland, wet cloth tears, and a handful of stones fall from Maglor’s trouser pocket to the ground.

A handful of stones.

The truth comes by degrees.

Finrod releases his steadying hold on Maglor’s elbow, and Maglor tumbles, catching himself on his hands. Behind them, the sentries are tending to Maedhros, assisted by Huan, who smells ripely of wet wolfhound. Maglor needs swift attention, too; it will take more than fresh air to bring color back to his cheeks. Nevertheless, Finrod stands back in this moment, until Maglor raises his head and looks him in the eye, crouched as a dog would.

“You…” Finrod begins, and he could make an ending, here. He could call this cousin a miserable creature, more crippled than his handless brother. But Finrod looks up into the light and down again, and he stills his tongue. Instead, then, he moves his body, returning to the ministrations he abandoned in something that might have been anger, or fear, or merely the horror of disappointed love. His own coat is crumpled beside his boots: dry. Useful. He fetches it, drapes it over Maglor’s hunched back. Crouches before him, and begins to chafe his hands.

Then one of the sentries speeds past. Shaken once more from his task, Finrod turns his head to see what the matter is. It is the fulfillment of another fear. Maedhros is limp and quiet, his form misshapen in the mud as if he fell there from a great height.

“Maitimo,” Maglor croaks. Speaking at last, as the running sentry joins a few straggling newcomers come down from the fort and stable.

They must have heard a commotion. They must be spreading the word. Sending for help.

“You must get warm, first,” Finrod whispers, when Maglor tries to rise.

“No,” Maglor says, shaking his head. “No, I must go to him—”

And so they go back. Maglor, teeth chattering and shoulders shaking, dragging Finrod’s coat through the mud, goes back. He joins the other sentry and Huan, trying to restore Maedhros to life.

Finrod, still cold as he is, can offer little in the way of warmth. Thus, he sits numbly on his haunches, watching while Maglor chafes his brother’s hand. Two coats are laid over Maedhros; Huan has stretched out beside him, panting. All of them are safely on the dead grass, away from the chilly touch of mud or water.

This, Finrod knows: more than himself will be needed, to save his cousins. He is waiting on the other side of certain death, but it is not enough. He is holding back his anger, but it is not enough.

He bit his tongue, with Maglor, because he thought of his father. He saw his father out of the corners of his eyes, heard his father in the silence behind the restless breeze.

Vengeance is a root of war. Fear cannot, cannot be the foundation of forgiveness—surely, it is not enough. But Finrod has no time at all to choose another calling. He is not guided by the principles he once was. He saw a drowning and he went down into the water. Fingon heard of a death and went out to defy the grave.

And Maglor? Maglor learned an awful future, from word or deed or inevitable consequence, and went to blot it out.

Whom does that make them, but their true and lonely selves?