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There was life in him yet.
The way he smiled, even though it split open the newly scabbed cut through his lip. The way he spoke to his nephew with such tenderness in his voice, as if he was still a baby. The way he brushed Fingon’s cheek- gentle, with a lingering touch on his jawbone. He was cut like a statue.
They both were.
Maedhros was still beautiful. Fingon swore he would kill anyone that dared argue. He was beautiful in the way the ruined statues of maiar at ancient temple doors were beautiful. The hairline fractures across their perfect stone skin only an accessory to their beauty. The vines that grew up around them, tying them to the material, while they drew people away into the spiritual.
His body was a temple. Old and crumbling, but the altar was intact. Worship still occurred.
Streaks of his copper-russet, autumn leaf hair had gone white with pain. White as pure, fresh-fallen snow in the dead of winter. His eyes were the cool blue of frozen oceans, but their gaze warmed him as if he was bathing underneath a thousand suns. He was hot. He was the warmth of a blazing fire lit on a cold night in the dead of winter. Surrounding him.
He would run his fingers over the raised scar tissue along his jaw before he kissed him. And, when they kissed, he would always lean toward the site of that ugly, never-healing gash and lick the wound, praying again that it may heal- that he may finally be freed.
But he didn’t dare touch him after dark, when that gentle and cruel warmth became a raging, blazing fire. He had not inherited that passion from his father, but picked it up from his tormentors. In the night, he dreamt of clamps on his fingernails, whips on his back, jagged rock against his skin. Fingers grasping at the jewels around his throat. He told him that they had torn off his regalia- almost choked him- made his ears bleed. I’m sorry, I lost the jewels you gave me.
I forgive you.
He was stunned at how vehemently he insisted on apology. This was his mistake- his cross to bear. He would wake up screaming apologies in a violent language no one else could translate. He wouldn’t stop thrashing until he ran out of energy and was forced to rest again, tears drying on his skin- stinging the wounds that had already healed. But he was getting better. He woke screaming less, and less frequently. Being around others helped.
Occasionally, they would let him watch their children, once they were sure their grabbing hands wouldn’t make him panic. He would let them braid his hair as it began to grow back, and let them paint pretty things over his scars. He told Fingon that they reminded him that life hadn’t stopped. He confessed, he had possibly felt better when he was tortured than in the weeks after his rescue, where he was confined to a dark room through days and nights, never seeing any unfamiliar faces. He said, it was like he was stuck in a permanent cycle of bed-rest for eternity. He felt like he would never get out. I wanted to see the sunlight, at least.
I know, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
When they were finally able to ride together again, they rode as fast as they could across the plains. Open fields for miles around them, so that he could feel the wind against his skin and coming through his hair again. Over the sound of the rush he cried out ‘I love you’ for the first time since he’d freed him. For months, he’d regretted saying it then, satiating the pain with a kiss. He thought that would make it better, but now those words were painful memories, and they only hurt more. But now they were free again, once again they were in their element. They rode together as if they were still adolescent boys, with adolescent crushes and an adolescent’s disregard for danger. He cried out in ecstasy over the wind and Fingon thought that maybe, maybe for a moment, the stars had aligned for them again.
He thought of the first time they ran away together- riding for hours through the open air of their idyllic and perfect homeland. They fell onto the soft grassland and watched the stars spin around their heads, trying to find the brightest one. Now, they stopped at a river, and Maedhros stood in the cool water, arms outstretched. He looked like himself again, and the sun seemed to illuminate his skin, reflecting through the water over his bare toes.
He was alive. He was alive and breathing and feeling.
There was life in him yet.