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Fingon has touched his cousin often, since the mountain. He has carried him in his arms, and upon his back. Stroked his hair and his feverish brow. Traced the knife-cut words with salve, and sluiced away the blood. Felt the shape of what is broken inside him and what is missing—a leg, a ribcage, a tooth, a—hand.
Fingon has seen the empty wrist five times now, since. He has handled it tenderly, dispassionately, as he has cleaned and rewrapped the seared, sponge-like flesh that remains. It is not yet anything like skin, but it is not sick, either. It is healing well, Doctor Olorin reassures him, from very far away; you have done so well, Fingon.
It is always Olorin’s voice reassuring him, and if not Olorin’s, then it is his father’s.
These are neither of them the voice he wants to hear.
“He looks better,” Aredhel says, somewhere behind him, with a rustling sound as she lowers the tent flap behind her. She sounds surprised, and Fingon feels the mirthless smile pull at his mouth, as he rests the back of his hand lightly against the side of Maedhros’ face. Not deathly-burning, now; not deathly-cold. Just: Maedhros. Just skin, and bone, and beneath that, a soul still warm.
How many foolish, foolish times Fingon had begged leave to practice the taking of temperature upon his eldest cousin, in the city; how many patient times did that cousin laugh, and roll back his sleeve—pull back his hair—look at him with trust, and say—
Do as you will, cano.
“He looks not half as bad as he did when you first brought him back.”
“Celegorm will not know that,” Fingon says, flatly. “Nor Caranthir.”
“Well I know it.” His sister’s hand rests unexpected and gentle on his shoulder. “You have worked miracles, Fingon.”
Maedhros is more recognizably himself now, with the swelling gone down, and with his crooked jaw realigned. The familiarity is almost more frightening. Fingon knows the bones of the face, now, but not the bruises; the shape of the brow, but not the line of strain there, pain drawn sharp like a bowstring.
Maedhros sleeps, but he is not peaceful. Fingon is both physician and friend enough, to know that.
“They have already taken down Father’s tent, and the first group are nearly ready. Beren shall stay behind with the rest to break down the remainder of the camp, until we can be sure everything is sorted. Father sent me to see if you were ready.”
“In a moment,” Fingon says. He is measuring the pulse beneath Maedhros’ starved jaw; it is faster than it should be, for a man deeply asleep, but not alarming. Nothing like it had been mere days before. He has seen his cousin’s eyes move, restless, beneath their bruised lids. When Fingon questioned his father last night, Fingolfin had confessed that Maedhros had stirred during his watch but no more. Maedhros did not open his eyes during Maglor’s visit, either, but surely it cannot be long now. It is both heartening and frightening: the thought that Maedhros shall soon awake, and be himself again.
Or, that he shall not be himself.
(The Feanorian at the bridge murdered innocents.)
(The outlaw Fingon tracked across the continent had left behind a reputation as a drunkard, as a gambler, as a fornicator.)
(The Maitimo who farewelled him at Formenos had laughed, and had not lied.)
(The man who had screamed into his hand—the body that had heard Mairon’s voice and had begged Fingon to run—)
Russandol, Fingon reminds himself, stubbornly, gritting his teeth as his own pulse quickens. Russandol was brave, and kind to the children.
Whoever you are now, I know you. Whoever we are, I will know you.
“Do you really think he is safe to move all the way to Mithrim?”
Aredhel has bent a little closer, her chin resting lightly on top of Fingon’s head. She had used to do the same when she found him studying on the settee in their drawing room, back in New York; he had made such a fuss over her teasing, in those days. How young, he had been! How young, both him and everyone else in his world.
Fingon pulls his hand away from Maedhros, and rests it instead a moment on his sister’s.
“I think he is strong enough to make the risk worth it,” he answers her at last, with a sigh. He has slept too much for conscience, and still: he is so weary. “Father is right; there is more chance for him to develop a new fever, or even pneumonia, out here under our poor shelter. He shall have better care, and better food, in Mithrim. Maglor said they have medicines there, too, and my own store is almost gone.”
What he does not say, but what they both know, is: And they have walls, and a bridge, if Bauglir’s men come seeking revenge.
Fingon knows Haleth and his father doubled the guard around their camp since his and Maedhros’ return. He has not spoken about it, but he knows.
“Speaking of medicines, could you pass me my bag?”
Aredhel does, wordlessly, and Fingon selects from the near-empty bottles one still nearly half-full with liquid which moves against the glass more like syrup than water. Aredhel, now crouched beside him on the ground, peers at the faded label.
“It is a cordial to keep him sedated,” Fingon explains to her unvoiced question, unscrewing the cap and measuring a small amount carefully into as longhandled, tarnished spoon from his kit. He sets the bottle aside, and nods to Aredhel.
“Help me lift his head?”
His sister hesitates. Then she squares her shoulders, and carefully does, supporting Maedhros’ head and neck in her hands. If she is shaken to feel the deep scarring there, as Fingon had been, she makes no sign. There is nothing to read in her face as she waits, watching Fingon mix the cordial in a cup with a little water to make it more easily swallowed. He refills the spoon, bringing it to Maedhros’ lips. He tips it very slightly.
“Is it necessary to sedate him? He has not even woken yet, surely—Oh!”
Aredhel gasps that last as Maedhros flinches at the touch of metal at his mouth, or at the taste of the liquid on his tongue. Fingon holds his breath, as Maedhros’ own breathing hitches, and then evens again. The fingers of his left hand curl, and then relax. He swallows as obediently as a small child would, and Fingon tries not to think about that, as he wipes the spoon clean on a rag.
“That should be enough to keep him four hours at least, enough time for us to get him inside the fort and laid in a bed. He has not woken fully yet, but he shall today, I think. Moving him would be painful, if he were awake; I cannot risk him waking on the way. You can tell Finrod we will be ready in ten minutes’ time; just give me that long to make sure the cordial is working. I shall pack away my things while we wait.”
After Aredhel has gone, Fingon busies himself with packing and closing his kit. It is the work of a moment; he then goes to his personal bag and adds to its paltry contents the dry rolls of rewashed bandaging Estrela had stacked by Maedhros’ pallet, and the last of the cotton. He is hungry, but he has no food and no time to prepare any; he shall next eat inside Mithrim, he supposes, as Maglor’s honored guest. It is a strange thing to think of, and uncomfortable. He cannot forget how Maglor looked, this morning. The begging, that had been in his eyes.
“We are going to be all right, Maitimo,” he whispers, and he takes a deep breath. For all the bustle and noise outside the tent, it is very still beneath the canopy. Fingon feels almost as alone as he had felt that terrible night beneath the moon—that night when he had seen his cousin again and had both known and not known him, all in the same caught breath. He lays his hand over Maedhros’s blanketed chest, now, steadying himself with the feeling of breathing there. Beneath the thin cloth, beneath the cruel scars: that rhythm of steady, stubborn, painful life.
When Fingon was a boy, he had loved the solitude of the confessional. The feeling of being alone had been comforting, because of the knowledge that in that silence there was someone listening: someone to hear, and to judge, and to forgive. He has not now seen so much as the inside of a chapel in over a year, but in this moment—on his knees in the silent tent, gathering his courage and recalling his sins—he feels something of that holy mystery again, wrapping him round. Alone, yet not alone, here where it is just the two of them. Who can say, when there shall be a moment for just the two of them again?
Maedhros’ hand is gone. Maedhros is here, alive.
Fingon kneels a moment, looking full upon both impossible things.
Then he leans forward gently and touches his cousin one last time before he goes—a quiet kiss pressed to an unquiet brow.
*
The litter they carry Maedhros upon is fashioned from blankets and saplings newly felled and trimmed. Beren had helped with that, Fingon finds out later; Beren and Haleth and Finrod. Finrod lifts one end of the litter over his shoulders, and Turgon lifts the other, though his expression is like stone. It is easiest this way, for he and Finrod are near in height, and though he is reluctant, he does not argue. Fingolfin’s gaze lingers a little on Maedhros’ still face, before he turns to Fingon.
“Take heart,” he says, softly. “Only a little farther, now.”
The smile he offers is tired, but reassuring. Fingon cannot quite smile back, but he nods, and he lifts his chin, and sets his face to the west.
*
Fingon shall walk beside Maedhros, with his hands free, in case he should be needed. His father shall lead at the head of their company, across the Mithrim bridge to dead Feanor’s lands.
When they are on the bridge, which is wide enough only for a single man horsed to pass at a time, Fingon shall cross before his cousin. He shall feel strangely guilty, to be the first to set foot on that side of the water, with the uneasiness Orpheus felt, when trusting Eurydice to follow.
(Fingon had loved myths, as a child. The Grecian stories he had learned from books; it had been Maedhros who had shared with him the Gaelic tales. Maedhros sounded like his father, when he told stories; Fingon never told him so. He does not think Maedhros ever knew.)
Fingon shall stand upon the path and wait for Maedhros to be carried carefully across the shining span. He shall put out his hands to help draw the litter to safety, and and shall stagger a little adjusting to the weight, and he shall marvel anew that he managed somehow to carry his tall cousin all those nightmare miles, all that long way home. But first he shall stand, shading his eyes with his hand as he stares across to where Mithrim waits. To where Mithrim waits—with gates flung wide. There will be men at the walls, and women, with weapons in their hands. Maglor will be at the open gate, and he will stand like a man who longs to be running. Like a boy who longs to welcome his brother home.
(Can I touch him? Maglor had asked, and his weeping then had not been hateful.)
*
In the broken camp Fingon leaves behind, they shall pull down the tent where Maedhros had lain, and sweep away the soiled earth. Nothing shall be left of that confessional quiet, where Fingon had paused in the last moment before his world changed again, and had tried to parse the difference between sin and miracle.
A missing hand and a life saved, two boys and two men and two lives left, still, to be lived.
Forgive me, he had whispered, into his cousin’s hair.
*
Fingon brings Maedhros home to his brothers, and he does not know what he wants forgiven.