Work Text:
Celegorm is always their hunter on the trail, but Athair refuses to let him leave the wagons alone. Thus Curufin, scrambling in his haste, takes one of the hunting rifles they share, a powder horn, and a paper twist of bullets, which he shoves into his pants pocket. His trousers are getting threadbare, ragged about the knees, and they are now two inches too short for him. Ambarussa’s breeches are all four inches too short at least and their shirts are too tight around the shoulders, their bony brown wrists fully exposed. The plan had been to stay a few days in Beleriand, to buy the boys new clothing and restock supplies.
They hadn’t, of course. And now there is the vast expanse of Utah and the desert beyond before they will find a proper town again.
Curufin is using one of the guns they keep in common, among the wagons, but Celegorm has his own rifle, given to him by Orome on his last birthday. He wears it across his back, shoulder to hip, strapped to a leather belt. It is a beautiful weapon, and he has brought down many a buck with it, since he first laid it over his arm.
Athair is an excellent shot.
Celegorm is better.
*
He had not wanted Curufin to come, but Athair had ordered it, and Maedhros had fallen asleep, for once, wrapped in his coat in the blue wagon-shade. Celegorm had looked at him with his head tipped sideways, the flask in his hand unstoppered, and had said Come, then, to his little brother. Curufin never hunted, back—before. He is too loud, when he walks. But when Celegorm tells him so, he suddenly moves so silently Celegorm has to look to check he is still following. Curufin smiles, looking pleased.
Celegorm does not smile back.
“If you could do that all along,” Celegorm hisses, aggrieved, “you should have done so from the start. Who knows what game you have frightened away, with your trampling.”
“Oh,” Curufin replies calmly, looking entirely at ease, “I know you shall catch something grand anyway.”
Celegorm wishes he didn’t feel proud, to hear his younger brother say so.
Curufin sometimes sounds all too much like Athair.
*
They follow the creek upstream towards the hills, but find no game, and halt at last to refill their flasks.
“Maedhros shall be sorry,” Curufin says as he passes his water to Celegorm, “that he missed this.”
The water is warm from the sun, and already sour and metal from the flask.
“Celegorm. Don’t you think he will be sorry?”
Celegorm swallows.
“Hm,” he says.
*
Celegorm, of course, is the one who sees the goat.
They have been moving at a low crouch a long distance already, but when Celegorm drops flat Curufin follows his lead quickly, if gracelessly. The goat is half up a steep shale slope, cropping at some of the dry mountain-grass there. It is scarcely noticeable, except for when it moves to lift its head and scan its surroundings, wary. Celegorm crawls a cautious dozen feet closer, then halts. He cannot dare moving closer, not with Curufin’s inept following. He exhales, slowly, and bites down on his lip as he carefully inches his rifle up, careful not to catch the sunlight.
He will have only one shot. If Huan were here, he could rely on his dog to chase the goat down, could shoot to drive the creature towards where his hound would be waiting, eager, as they have practiced before. If Maedhros were here, Celegorm could count on his eldest brother to bring the quarry down, if his own bullet went wide.
(Celegorm left Huan back in the blue shade, with Maedhros.)
“That’s two-hundred yards, easy,” Curufin hisses. He wriggles in closer, on his belly on the pebble-dry dirt, and the fringe of his hair pricks at the side of Celegorm’s face, where the sweat slips slowly down. They have no cover, and the sun is hot. The goat lifts its head, takes a lazy step, bends to graze again.
“I don’t think you can—“ Curufin starts to breathe, harsh in Celegorm’s ear.
Celegorm takes the shot.
*
The goat is a nanny, the enlarged teats showing it probably has a kid or two hiding nearby and the skull neatly blown open where Celegorm’s bullet went in. Celegorm points this out to Curufin, quietly, and they do not have to search far before they find them: two billies maybe four months old, stiff and uncertain with fright. The sound of the gunshot had spooked them, but in the intervening silence as Celegorm and Curufin picked their careful way up the slope to where the stricken goat had fallen, they had crept back towards their dead mother in confusion. Curufin looks impressed, as he seizes the one nearest him, hooking it by its thin neck.
It is simple enough to club them over the head with the butt of his rifle, and then Celegorm goes back to begin tying the nanny goat’s strange feet together with twine, to make the body easier to carry back to camp. He smells the blood on Curufin before he sees his brother, who climbs down the incline panting, dragging the dead kids with him. He cut their throats well, so there is little actual blood on his hands, but still the smell is there, thick and coppery.
“We are going to feed the entire damn camp with these,” Curufin says gleefully, and he looks so proud.
He looks most like the child he is, with that smile lighting his face, and that blood on his hands.
“Stop dragging them, or you’ll mangle the meat, and then you’ll feed no one except Huan,” Celegorm says, turning away.
*
“It is to our advantage, to have Fingon gone,” Curufin insists, coaxing Celegorm into the chair behind what was once Rumil’s desk. He offers Celegorm a cup and Celegorm gulps from it, blindly; there is wine inside, warmed by the fire.
“We are strong together, you and I. You know this. We never needed Fingolfin before; we never needed his children. Maglor was a fool, to let them in a second time, and this time just because they claimed to have news. News of what—of Maedhros’s capture? We knew he was captured already. We knew he was dead already, and we have learned to protect our own in his stead, since he died. It changes nothing, whether he died yesterday or six months ago. Do you understand? It does not make our strength any less strong. We don’t need any of them, Celegorm, we never did, not to keep everyone safe. They are the ones who need us. They are the ones begging at the walls, the ones trying to hurt us with false hope. You see that, don’t you? Say something, Celegorm. Tell me you understand me.”
Celegorm wants to throw the cup aside, to see it shatter on the stones. He wants Curufin to stop talking.
He wants Huan.
He wants—
“Celegorm?”
Curufin’s breathing is harsh and quick, and his hair, grown long, has fallen half into his face. All of him has grown, since Maedhros went away. He looks very like Athair, and sounds very like Athair, but he is not Athair, because Celegorm’s father never once had the decency to look afraid.
Celegorm drains the cup.
“It’s all right,” he says evenly, because he knows what Curufin is afraid of. “I won’t let Maglor open the gates a third time.”
*
“Well done,” Maedhros told Celegorm that evening in Utah, as he helped with rinsing the cups and tin plates in the creek. “Curufin told me it was a beautiful shot; I wish I had seen it.”
“They were Curufin’s kills, too,” Celegorm said. Maedhros looked surprised, at that.
“I suppose I ought to thank him, too, then,” he mused at last, looking down at the plate in his hands. He picked at something in the tin—a stubborn scrap of goat fat, or merely an imperfection in the metal—and returned it to the water to rinse it clean.
“Listen, Celegorm,” he began hesitantly, “I am sorry, that I was not awake to—“
Celegorm stopped him with an uneven shrug. The quiet water, running through his hands, was cold.
“It’s all right, Maitimo,” he said. “We managed without you.”