Work Text:
Finwe was partial to his own study, because he liked to have every book fitted in its place, every map properly furled in its curlicued rack.
Manwe had an almost monastic idea of order, housed in a politician’s rich scaffolding.
“I don’t like to see you troubled,” said Finwe. Manwe had a nervous air that belied his shrewd vision, his diplomatic talent. Men had said the same of Washington, before they lionized him into something unrecognizable.
Finwe grieved for that; for the discomfort humanity so often had with its own whims and foibles. What did it matter, after all, if one great mind dwelt in a frail body, and another in almost godly form? Greatness could be male or female; of different tint; of different tongue.
“You see me more at ease than I have been in a long decade,” Manwe said, with one of his sharp-eyed smiles. “Melkor has an intellect of surpassing keenness, but his temper is a little unsteady. Though he is my elder, our father found me to be more eligible to pursue his latter vocation—the role of a statesman. Our family had success first as planters; then as merchants and manufacturers of steel and other metals. Melkor has taken that on, in addition to the southern estate, though the choice of leadership was left to me.” He sighed, and sipped at his tea. “I don’t know I am telling you all this, Finwe. You must have the sort of countenance a man trusts.”
“Feanor has high spirits,” said the pair of eyes. They were all Melkor could see—all he wished to see, since he had been much more interesting in seeing all of Feanor. “You must not take offense at his abrupt manner.”
The eyes were encased in the flesh of a face; a handsome, square-jawed face, with an intelligent brow. The eyes had a son, whom they too-clearly loved.
Melkor smiled thinly.
“Must I? He spoke with such honesty that I find nothing to forgive. But do tell me, sir, how did you expect him to have erred?”
Finwe’s brow knit and eased. He smiled. “Forgive only, then, a father’s instinct to explain and protect,” he said. “His mother died when he was young. I have always considered him to be the brightest lamp of all—and it is a hard thing, not to make myself his bushel.”
Melkor had seen what light could do. What it could reveal. If a man was chained in total darkness for many days, the sudden appearance of light could hurt him.
“How considerate you are,” he said smoothly, but he looked long and meaningfully at his brother, so that Manwe might know that Feanor had made an unpardonable insult.
Manwe would believe in that sort of thing, the fool. He would not fathom—had not the mind to fathom—that an enemy could be as tenderly cultivated as a lover, as central to one’s business as a friend.
Later that night, when Finwe and his turtledove wife were gone, Manwe asked if he was angry. He said he was.
“Whenever I am out and about on a snowy day,” said Finwe gaily, “I am torn in two. One half of me insists that I look carefully round every corner, lest a waiting schoolboy apprehend me with a cold cannonball.”
“And the other half?” asked Maedhros, who walked beside him.
Finwe grinned. The snowfall had gentled the city, and made it almost clean. “The other half of me is that small schoolboy, Maedhros. I am quite incorrigible.”
Maedhros’ laugh rang like a bell. They were not quite at Manwe’s door; a little stretch of street remained.
Finwe remembered, for half a moment, the only occasion on which Feanor had joined him for such a visit.
Times had changed. The object of Feanor’s particular wrath, at that time, had been Manwe’s brother.
He was now imprisoned—or at least kept away from the public eye. Finwe was a councilmember, and moved in a circle that specialized in extrajudicial solutions. He did not much care what happened to Melkor Bauglir, so long as Manwe was at peace, and the city with him.
Another development had flourished amidst their circumstances, and it was a happier one. Maedhros was as a good and eager a protégé as a statesman could have hoped for…and how much more a grandfather? Everything was of interest to him. Nothing was beneath his notice, and his manners were warm, smoothing over a multitude of sins.
Today, the discussion over Manwe’s table would be a serious one, though accompanied by port and pâté. Finwe would be retiring next September, and he wanted the Governor to be the first to know. His shoulders slackened a little.
Then a handful of snow hit him on the small of his back.
“Oh, you rascal!” he cried, though Maedhros’ long legs covered ground quickly and he was now strolling along as if nothing was amiss. “When had you the time to—never mind.” Finwe stooped himself, and Maedhros caught his elbow.
“Let me help you. There, there is a good fresh patch. Shouldn’t wish for horse dung to touch this coat, Grandfather—it’s newmade.”
Finwe relented, laughing, and only dusted Maedhros’ capelet with a few retaliatory flakes. “Suppose the Governor were to look out of his windows!” he said, without any real remorse. “And see us making such a commotion.”
Manwe liked him close. When they were young—Manwe still busy with his schooling, but Melkor not yet at university—Manwe pestered Melkor for news of his doings away from home. Once (more than once) the conversation ran like this:
Where are you going?
To see a hanging.
Mercy, no!
But it had been the truth. He never cared for dancing, until he saw that dance. His interest in the science of breath and lungs was expanded too, at the time, and his medical diversions occurred accordingly.
Manwe had him in a noose of sorts, now. Or so Manwe thought.
The pretense had been agreed-upon. A negotiation was a defeat for whomever had not proposed it, and Manwe had been desirous of concealment. Better to have punishment with little scandal. It was known by some that Melkor was disgraced; it was known by more that his health was indifferent.
As such, a rotating cast of physicians arrived at the house at 23 — Street, and he welcomed them all.
The windows were to be kept closed. He heeded this only when it suited his purpose. Snow had fallen steadily all morning, and now, at noon, the street and its crowded houses were blinding white.
He blinked slowly, steadily.
He saw them laughing, and hated them for it, before he even knew who they were.
It had been a hard year. Years were counted from winter to winter, of course, but Finwe’s timetable shifted as did his sons’. Midsummer had brought out Feanor’s wrath; the months that followed were in submission to the horror of long misunderstanding, and a solitary bullet—
A bullet that never flew.
Finwe could feel his age in his bones. Maedhros and Maglor were gone home for the summer, and this might well be the year that they did not return. Not to his table, at least.
He had an errand to run. A meal with Fingolfin, to be exact. Finwe had withdrawn further from public life than even he himself had expected, what with the…difficulties.
But he had done penance, too. He had done his best to treat second son with honor, with love. He had always done his best, in both regards—but Fingolfin must not have felt it.
Must have been deeply wounded, to permit himself to engage Feanor’s temper and judgment on that year-ago day.
Finwe buttoned his coat. The sun was shining; he took no hat. He was an old man, and allowances could be made for that.
He felt no pain.
The carriage was very dark. It smelled of pine, like the coffinmaker’s did, and he considered the scent with interest. It could be a motif of the moment, perhaps. A memorial.
Oh, he would live and burn and dream a thousand memorials, after this.
(He had recognized the slope-shouldered meddler first, that day long ago on the street. It was Finwe, thrice-cursed for how he had never been more than faintly consternated by the actions of any outside his immediate family. How could that be? Manwe called him a war-hero.
Manwe was, and always had been, a fool.
Then the sunlight glinted red, and there had been the other.
He had looked carefully, breathlessly, and as long as he could before he smiled. It was difficult to believe that the pretty farm-child had become a man, but it was thought to be savored as well.)
He heard the shot in his heart and his belly and last of all, his ears. He rang it again and again and again, as many times as his mind and its strange folds of understanding would permit.