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“It is not like your father, you know, to be so brash.”
Fingon rests his head against his mother’s knee and says nothing. She strokes his hair, and he leans into her touch, welcoming the rare caress.
Anaire is a loving mother, but not particularly affectionate.
When he was young—a child, still—he harbored a bit of shameful envy for his Feanorian cousins. Their mother was always rosy with health and generous with kisses. She could knock anyone off his feet with her embraces—Fingon had seen her do it to everyone from tall Maitimo to the still-small twins.
In later years, when Fingon’s eyes opened, the envy faded though the memory remained. He found it far from simple to discern how there could be more formality in Fingolfin’s household, yet less fear.
He’d asked Maedhros once, if he was afraid of his father.
Of course, Maedhros had answered, light and immediate. That was one way to tell a lie. You could tell the truth so cheerfully that it seemed like something else entirely.
Fingon picks at a threadbare spot on the knee of his trousers. If Father sees that, he’ll be quite displeased, urging Fingon to remember that a doctor should keep up appearances.
Or maybe he won’t, because Father has decided to be brash.
It is like him, he thinks, after moment’s reflection. His father has a flame within his heart, just as Uncle Feanor does—it is just that Father’s flame burns for different reasons.
If he thought his family was in danger, he’d battle the devil himself.
When he conveyed Maedhros’s—Feanor’s—message weeks ago, he did not think it would lead to this. He thought, perhaps, that his father would concede out of a filial instinct to reason with Governor Manwe in the absence of Grandfather Finwe.
Grandfather Finwe’s death, in itself, should have been enough to destroy them all. And maybe it would have, had not its precursory event been one that did much of the destruction beforehand.
Fingon is not in the parlor; he is in his mother’s sewing room. Therefore, he need not twist his neck round to glare at the dueling pistols.
His father holds brother-love like a matchstick burning down between his fingers. He does not drop it until his skin is scorched.
The matchstick, of course, is never grateful.
“Are you worried for him?” Fingon asks. Brash.
“I have never wanted to leave New York,” Anaire answers. “And I do fear the journey. But I understand your father’s concerns. He has been shut out by the council, and he has never liked the city himself.”
“Never liked the—”
“He has always craved countryside.” His mother speaks calmly, as if the words should not be surprising. To Fingon, who always read disdain in his father’s attitude toward Formenos, they are. “He saw it as his duty to support your grandfather in all his works. Such is my Fingolfin’s heart, and I honor him for it. He would not have set aside his books and records, his endless meetings among men with whom he shares no common interest, as long as Finwe lived. But I am worried that he should wish to go so far! Across the country—”
Her hand, in Fingon’s hair, trembles.
Diagnose the root of the illness, Dr. Olorin always said. Roots and beginnings.
“I think,” Fingon says, “That Father believes our family is strongest together. And now—” He smiles up at his mother, and her smile answers him with the same shape of lips, the same brightening of eyes—“For the first time, we truly are.”