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Chapter Text

Lesson

“I want you to know,” said Fingon, staring fixedly at his mortar and pestle, “That I think you brave.”

“A remarkable accolade,” Maedhros said. He was, apparently, alert enough to speak in several syllables. “But why?”

“You suffered so much.” Now Fingon looked at him; if there was unease in him it was all in the twitching corners of his mouth; his gaze was steady. “I know it must seem futile, but it means something.”

“Does it?”

“Well, I might seem as if I didn’t know, but I think so.”

“I suppose it depends on the man,” said Maedhros.

Fingon flushed, eager to correct. “But you—”

“I don’t mean the man suffering, cano.” He tapped the last three fingers of his hand against the coverlet; thumb and forefinger lay still. “I mean that, if whoever holds the whip or brand is very…vexed, or eager to ‘learn a pupil’, I suppose, it doesn’t much matter if you should whinge or stand firm. They’ll string you up all the same.”

“I…” Fingon murmured, troubled.

Maedhros shook his head. “Don’t,” he said, before he levered himself up a little, ready for his medicine. “Don’t imagine yourself there.”

Wind

“I hate the sound of it,” Fingon muttered, so fiercely that Maedhros blinked in surprise.

“The sound—”

“Of the wind. When it howls, I…” He should have kept his mouth shut, perhaps, if he had not wanted to speak of the cold. “I feel the ice in my bones.”

Resurface

“It’s ghastly,” Maedhros said. “And I’m sorry.”

Fingon’s confusion looked just as it had in babyhood. “Sorry? For your nightmares?”

“For bloody screaming like a lunatic whenever I wake. Think of it as a gasp for air. Feels like I’m swimming, really. That’s all.”

Sometimes he really was incorrigible. “Maitimo, that isn’t all.”

Maedhros smiled piteously. “Let me lap a little pride off your boots, Fingon. You were drying my tears a moment ago.”

Winter

“It has not snowed yet,” Fingon said. “I don’t know that it ever shall, unless we were farther north. But it is for the best. When you are a little stronger, perhaps we can take you out into the fresh air. A milder clime than New York ever was, but—” He stuttered a little. “I—I am forgetting. You have already wintered once, here.”

“Yes,” said Maedhros.

“I tried to imagine you…in the west. It was hard. Hard to see beyond—well, where we were.”

“You must have been angry,” Maedhros murmured. He looked frightened; yes, Fingon had seen fear in his eyes often enough, now, to know. And this was a fear spoken of before, if rarely stated outright.

So Fingon said only, “Maitimo, it is behind us now. I shouldn’t have resurrected the past.”

Cruelty

“But you’re curious.”

Fingon shifted in his seat. His father’s Bible was his knee, but he felt foolish and posturing, somehow, reading it before Maedhros’ still-shrewd eyes. Fingon the priest, Maedhros’ eyes could say. Fingon the Savior.

“Of course I am,” he said. “But as it would hurt you to tell me—anything—I shan’t ask.”

(This was a daily resolution, out of necessity. Often, he did ask. Often, he had to.)

“Sometimes I want to tell you,” Maedhros said, in one of the most unpleasant of his new voices. This one was low, almost a purr, and it always sent a chill down Fingon’s spine upon its chance appearance. “Sometimes I feel as if it’s all choking me, and I want nothing more than to spit and spit until you’ve heard the very worst of it.”

Fingon set the Bible aside before it slipped. “Well?” he said, thrusting his chin forward a little. “What was the worst of it, then?”

“The waiting,” said Maedhros simply. “Endless waiting. Naked, powerless, trembling. It drives you mad. It isn’t even pain. Sometimes pain is mercy, Fingon. You know that.”

Uncle

When Fingolfin had stepped away, Fingon cleared his throat twice before he spoke.

“You know, he really is glad that you are with us.”

“Your father?”

That was Maedhros; quick as ever.

Fingon nodded.

“Gladness is not the winter spirit,” said Maedhros, as though Christmas were not closing in rapidly, threatening the prospect of forced cheer. “But he is unfailingly kind. If I were him—”

He stopped short.

“He never hated you,” Fingon said. The memory was heavy; his mother’s face and voice pressed like lead. “Not even—not even when we were surprised—”

“If I were him,” Maedhros continued, as if Fingon had not offered something like comfort, “I should have left these ungrateful bones rotting. But that is the Feanorian in me. Or on me, as it were.”

He began to cry a little while later.

Fingon thought of graves.

Happiest

When the children departed, the room felt emptier. Fingon knew they did not quite like him, but he found himself grown increasingly fond of their high, small voices and wide eyes.

There was innocence about them, despite their history.

Maedhros was a little gloomier, after they had gone. His hand fretted with his shirtfront.

“They are so chary with their affections,” Fingon said. “Yet they are utterly loyal to you. You must have been just like an elder cousin to them.” He did not want to presume and say brother. Not with Amrod gone.

“Sticks found a good deal in me to scold,” Maedhros said. “An endless diversion, for one with such wit and good sense as she has. And Frog…” His gaze was distant, but not haunted, for once. “He was good company.”

Bunting

Maedhros’ breast rose and fell scarcely at all, until Fingon covered it freshly. Still, the letters seemed to twitch and crawl; the brand marks glowed unholy bright.

Fingon was tired, though it was noon. Tired, and imagining things.

“I…” Maedhros’ sentences often trailed away when he did not want to make a request. This time, however, he rallied a little. “I should like to wear a shirt properly again.”

Fingon considered. “Your arm,” he said at last, bitterly wishing that it was for once a doctor’s lot to be encouraging and impatient. “I think that moving your arm, without necessity, may still cause unexpected…difficulties. But if I cut away a sleeve—”

Cutting away your hand did not heal you. I was a fool to ever think it could.

“No matter,” Maedhros interrupted. “I’ve no need to be clothed at present. And it will only cause you more trouble.” His hand closed resolutely among the loose cotton folds.

Fingon found himself suddenly remembering a fine leather coat he had seen at Formenos. It had been new: russet and bright.

He had not seen it in Mithrim. There were several conclusions that could be drawn from this. He misliked them all.

Stalked

Celegorm, stumping away, had taken some piece of Maedhros’ sanity with him. Fingon raked the coals of recent memory to divine what phrase or exclamation had been the afternoon’s undoing. But he had not much time to ponder, for Maedhros required the basin, and vomited.

“There, there,” Fingon said, stroking his hair. “A good effort, Maitimo. You’ve gone two days between times, now.”

And there—

He will beg, if you command him to. Each night he has begged me, straining his leash. Water for the dog, he says. Or at least, he tries to. And it is effort, Master Fingon, that we honour. It is effort, sir.

Water for the dog, Celegorm had said, almost merrily, his golden hair shining at the touch of light. Come, Huan. We’ll have a little food for you, too, if you mind your manners.

Sick at heart, Fingon laid the basin on the floor. He would not empty it, yet. Maedhros’ forehead rested against his knee. The awful pain that must be in his ribs, both from the exertion, and the twisted angle of his body, shook him so much that Fingon knew it was better for him to prevail over the spasm.

He did not stroke his cousin’s hair any longer. That seemed too—too falsely tender. He moved his hand to rest against Maedhros’ feverish neck, where the eye-rune seamed the skin, and he held it there firmly.

Maedhros croaked, “Fucking hell,” when the tremors had ceased.

“I know,” said Fingon.

Immortality

Once, in the night, he said, “I really thought I was going to die.”

Maedhros stared at him, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the near-dark. His silence frightened Fingon more than any contradiction could have. There was something deeper than despair, in that silence.

“But of course,” Fingon said hastily, “I didn’t.”

Chapter Text

Carnivore

“There’s a goose roasting.” Fingon rubbed the cloth, damp with disinfectant, between each finger. “If you would like to have a little.”

“No,” Maedhros said. “Thank you.”

“It is rather greasy, isn’t it?” Fingon hoped that, rather than belaboring the subject, such meaningless asides would offer Maedhros roundabout reassurance that there was nothing wrong with the small and timid choices he made.

“It’s the smell,” Maedhros said, turning his face away as if to prepare for what was coming. “I can’t bear the smell.”

The smell of burning meat lingered, of course. Burning—flesh. Fingon drew the chair close so that he could lift Maedhros’ right arm into his lap.

When he undid the bandages, they were dry and clean, as they had now been for many days.

Clutch

Maedhros had seen Fingon with the watch, of course. It was unavoidable. They had spoken of it sincerely once, but Maedhros raised the subject again, when Fingon used it to count his pulse.  

Fingon always took his pulse from the left wrist.

“It is his work, you know.”

“Yes,” said Fingon. “I remember.”

“You do? Oh—that—” But Maedhros, it seemed, had no words for the days following his nineteenth birthday, when Fingon had come to visit him in his mysterious sickbed (less a mystery now), and had even deigned to read Celegorm’s sprawling letter.

(For Maitimo, he could not pretend that he had really deigned. He had thought it an honor.)

(Oh, for the times that were gone.)

“Do you think him damned?” Maedhros asked quietly.

Turgon would answer with a resounding yes. Argon could not answer at all. Fingon thought his father would say, No—no— as if to prove the thing to himself.

“You said I was very forgiving for keeping the watch,” Fingon said. “But it wasn’t—it was useful, and not heavy to carry. It reminded me of you. I knew he made it. I didn’t think of him. And I don’t think much of him now. I do not—I do not say it to pain you.”

Maedhros’ gaze, though markedly intent, did not seem exactly pained. At least, not more than usual.

“If he is damned,” Fingon said, “No word of mine can undo it. And if he is not, I cannot make him so.”

“He knew he was hated,” Maedhros said. “I…do not think it was a crime, that he could not hate himself.”

Fingon said, “Your pulse is strong, today. And even.”

Wednesday

Fingon did not wish to tell him that the leg would have to be rebroken. This was cowardice on his part, and he knew it. Still, his hands pretended that they were doctoring, lifting and lowering the leg, bending the knee a little more each day.

Maedhros made no sound, but he watched his knee go up and down. While Fingon rubbed his thin, scarred calf with light hands, he said,

“They were cheated of a good slave.”

“What?” Sometimes—often—Maedhros shocked him.

“Broke the leg not too long in. I was sent down the beginning of September.”

Fingon stayed quiet. It all meant too much.

(Maedhros had been taken in May.)

“Caused trouble at once. Not the brave kind. I was just unused to serving that sort of master.”

Now Fingon asked, “What sort is that?”

“An overseer. No use for a pretty face, or what was left of mine. I couldn’t sweet-talk him. Utterly immune to blarney. So. I took my licks rather more than was strictly common, and learned to do children’s work.”

“Where you met Sticks and Frog?”

“Yes, we crossed paths. What is this great tall scarecrow doing with the brats, being the general inquiry. Rather like school again, only I’d no chequered trousers to be proud of.”

“It sounds vile.”

“It was. But it was all vile. And occasionally I was thrashed hard enough that Gwindor and Estrela took pity on me. They’d never seen a scarecrow so full of woe.”

Cavity

For every truth and half-truth that slipped between Maedhros’ lips, Fingon knew there that were a thousand more held back. He imagined them marshaling in in the blank darkness of thought, arrayed with weapons that hurt Maedhros first, and through him, others.

There was no end to that pain; no depth to which it did not reach.

But just as he was thinking this, Maedhros sat upright by himself, without noticeable difficulty.

Saint

“Did you ever pray, there?” Fingon asked, one morning after Caranthir had gone. The question was not a kind one. Sometimes the sight of Maedhros’ face, martyred and meek, made Fingon so angry at the whole of their world, and his own stolid place within it, that he struck with the lancing scalpel before he considered the course of wisdom.

Maedhros returned to his old habit of worrying his lower lip between his teeth. But then he answered.

“Yes,” he said. “But not with much belief.”

Fingon ducked his head, ashamed.

“And not,” said Maedhros, suddenly sharp—for two could play at the game of unkindness—“Always to your God.”

Sinner

The key to it all, Fingon imagined, was understanding Melkor Bauglir. Understanding his purpose here, beyond the press of anonymous industry, beyond the alluring gleam of profit.

What had made him so cruel? What could make any man so cruel?

“Did they tell you…” Fingon ventured, “Why they bore such hatred against—against you?”

Another unkind question.

“Sometimes,” Maedhros said. “And sometimes I told them.”

Outcome

Fingon said, “I thought you might wish to practice holding things in your left hand.”

Maedhros’ eyebrows lifted. “You thought I might wish that?”

Fingon knew he could only be a doctor, not a cousin, at times such as these. “The sooner you learn,” he said, “The sooner it will come naturally.”

Maedhros moved his fingers obediently around a spoon, a bottle of camphor, a pen—all the smallest objects that Fingon could find. But scarcely ten words did Fingon wrest from him all the remainder of that day.

Replacement

“Give me your hand?” Fingon said. He felt his ears flushing, at the implication, but Maedhros said nothing. He offered his hand. Fingon turned it from side to side, inspecting the fingers.

Maedhros’ hand was warm.

“There now, you see?” It was a bit of good news at last. “The nails are starting to grow.”

Three had fallen out, dead and blackened. The new nails were soft, pink things against the empty beds.

“A long fucking time,” said Maedhros. He seemed unhappy.

“A few months,” Fingon agreed, giving the hand a gentle squeeze. “It shall pass quickly. And they will be stronger for it.”

“They took one with the tooth,” Maedhros said, soft, almost secret. “But that—from the other.”

Westbound

The railroad was proceeding apace. So said the latest reports.

Fingon had never cared two straws about the railroad. Oh, he would (in New York) have assumed that it was a plan rotted by corruption, but he would (in the spirit of age coming with humility) have accepted that there was little he, an aspiring doctor, could do about it. His father had been sufficiently scandalized by Melkor Bauglir’s involvement to pledge allegiance to Feanor, but the principle of the thing had been swept-over by tragedy after tragedy, and Fingon did not much remember why it had mattered, then, at all.

Thus, he was caught off-guard by the news that his cousin—his cousins—had waged a direct war upon the laying of ties, and he asked Maedhros about it one afternoon when the sunlight made winter seem almost warm.

“Oh, yes,” Maedhros said. “We had a few bonfires. I paid for it many times over.” His wry smile dared Fingon to ask him why.

“Why?” Fingon was thinking of the skirmish his own father had led. But there were, of course, other pieces to fit together.

“What do you think we labored for, under Gothmog’s whip?”

Smallest

“Should I keep it secret,” Maedhros said, his voice thick with awful sleep and recent tears, “That you have nightmares, too?”

Fingon bit his tongue. He remembered of what he had been dreaming; he could well imagine what name he had muttered in the dark.

“Yes,” he said, almost harshly. More harshly than Maedhros, who was still shivering in Fingon’s arms, deserved.

Or maybe not. But Fingon couldn’t think of that.

“Yes,” he said again. “Keep it secret.”

Argon’s death would always feel too near.

Chapter Text

Revealing

“I’ve been thinking.” Fingon paced the floor, his hands behind his back. He hoped it didn’t seem like a mockery—the pacing, that was. But he was restless and already on the verge of apology.

“Cano,” said Maedhros. “Look at you scampering. Say what’s on your mind.”

The mockery, running the other way, was more bearable. At least, with a cano to soften it.

Fingon said, “We were traveling with Haleth. And Haleth—saw you.”

Maedhros pursed his lips, questioning. “Oh?”

Fingon was, whether he liked it or not (he didn’t) a very different man from the one who had vowed himself fearless and resolute, clambering through watchful forests by night. At present, safe as they were in this room, he was terrified.

“We had gone to do a little burning of our own,” he said. “They’ve rebuilt it now, I suspect, and restored the supplies, since the railroad continues. But if I—”

“You’d have given me a shock,” said Maedhros. He chose now, of all times, to smile. It was a small and secret thing. “Considering the state I was in. God, I thought I—”

Fingon’s hands, behind his back, were clenched like walnuts.

“I thought I saw you once in the woodland,” Maedhros said. That was the small secret, but it meant a world—meant many worlds—to Fingon. “Perhaps the veil of past and future was torn a little. No matter. I’ve always been strange.”

“I should have gone with Haleth. She did not know that she would find the slaves, of course, but—I could have been helpful there. A doctor. And more than that—oh, damn it all.”

“You couldn’t have saved me,” Maedhros said. “Any sooner than you did.”

“I would have liked to try.” Fingon unfurled one hand, scratched the back of his neck. The next words were especially painful. “I ought to have been more like—like that Fingon in the woods.”

Maedhros’ eyes sparked strangely at that. “No, no,” he said. It was almost his father’s manner. “He was only a dream, and an ill-timed one. Really, Fingon. You must believe me. I’m too tired to quarrel.”

Fingon didn’t know that they had been quarrelling.

Mistake

The apples, prepared with a little cinnamon and honey today—Fingon thought it worth the attempt—did not curdle Maedhros’ delicate good humor.

Fingon, having lifted the spoon to his lips thrice, grew a little bolder.

“Try managing it yourself,” he said. And then, with the spoon in his right, he reached for Maedhros’ hand with his left.

Maedhros’ lashes swept down. His fingers curled around the spoon, and when Fingon let go, he lifted it, the stem trembling only a little, to his mouth.

“This feels more childish,” Maedhros said, swallowing. His face was flushed. “Not less.”

“Children grow,” Fingon said, encouragingly.

“With the proper guides,” Maedhros agreed, capturing another spoonful.  

Melodramatic

When Maglor visited, he undertook various offices that were, Fingon had to acknowledge, useful in their way. He sang softly while scribbling over his precious paper; he massaged Maedhros’ hand and left forearm while gossiping of the exasperation stirred by life crowded in Mithrim’s walls. He was, as was his wont, nervous and petulant and sometimes absent. Yet he did not muddy his efforts towards Maedhros with much uncertainty, and Maedhros, for his part, seemed more willing to be touched by him than by any other.

Fingon, the doctor, had to be grateful for that. Maedhros’ muscles would atrophy, without exercise. They were weak and wasted already. His body, once strong and lean, looked like that of an old man.

Maglor was the one to suggest that Maedhros should try walking again. “It will be a Christmas surprise for your little bairns,” he said, almost maternal in his coaxing. Fingon had never seen much resemblance between Maglor and Nerdanel, but he was pierced, suddenly, by the realization that they must miss their mother as much as he missed his.

They wronged her, he thought—a thought he wanted to set aside as one belonging to Turgon, but which he couldn’t, quite. Then, a thought all his own:

You wronged Mama, too.

“I don’t think I should,” Maedhros was answering. He glanced up at Fingon. “I don’t think it’s wise.”

“We were too hasty, last time,” Fingon agreed.

Maglor huffed an impatient breath. “We shan’t let him go this time. Maitimo, you will tell us at once if you feel a bit of pain.”

Maedhros said, “I feel a bit of pain, Macalaure.”

“Don’t be coy,” scolded Maglor. “You needn’t take a single step today. But what if you sit up, here, at the edge of the bed with me, and rest your feet on the floor?”

Fingon had to say something. He was guilty, of course, but also riddled by the same perplexity that had plagued him since his scuffle with Celegorm. Maglor did not seem to blame him for the hand. In truth, Maglor had not even spoken of it. Fingon did not think any Feanorian save Maedhros to be forgiving.  

“If you can bear it, Maitimo,” he said, a little stupidly. “Maglor is right. We must help your legs remember.”

Maedhros nodded. Maglor said nothing, uncharacteristically. He moved to assist Fingon with shifting Maedhros’ hips and knees. When Maedhros’ feet touched the cold floor, recoiling a little, Maglor broke his own silence.

“Stockings!” he cried, jolting up. “I’ll fetch you stockings.”

“He would do anything for you,” Fingon said, reminding himself not to grip Maedhros’ arm too firmly.

Maglor was strangely useful, but he was not comfortable for anyone but Maedhros.

Paranoia

“We washed your hair,” Fingon said tentatively, moving the cloth over Maedhros’ neck and collarbone. Lightly—very lightly—but the drops of water running down his chest still could be likened to blood. “When you were—not yet awoken.”

“I assumed,” Maedhros said. “Or—perhaps it is fairer to say I gave no thought to it.”

Fingon couldn’t know if this was true.

“I think it should be washed again,” he said. That had been his purpose in raising the subject in the first place.

Whether at the suggestion or at the touch of the cold, wet cloth, Maedhros trembled. “It’s tangled,” he said. “Horribly tangled, from lying here.”

“I’ll be gentle.” But the conversation had already gone wrong, Fingon knew, and he swallowed his frustration like a large and bitter pill.

“It should be cut off,” Maedhros said, hunching so that Fingon could reach his back more easily. “Why—may I ask why you didn’t do that, while I slept?”

The scars from shoulder to waist were a grisly puzzle, but many had healed well enough to begin fading. Fingon—prior to this—had known little of flogging, but he had seen a sailor or two at the ports of New York. From that, he knew that the lash left permanent marks, not deep ones. On Maedhros’ back there were several deeper scars, but most would be pale rivers, no wider than Fingon’s smallest finger.

If Fingon had not started in on the subject of Maedhros’ hair—which was now straggling, dampened at the ragged ends—he might have said something about this, instead. Something hopeful.

Now, he was obliged to say, “I did not want to take anything from you. Anything else.”

There was a pause.

Then Maedhros said, “It isn’t of any use to me.”

Fingon finished sponging his back. “I could cut it now,” he said. “If you like.”

“No,” said Maedhros, a trifle mulishly. He let Fingon wrap a blanket around his shoulders and lay back against his pillows. His mouth was a hard line.

No doubt remembering.

Remembering what had been done; fearing what Fingon could yet do.

Surprise

As if he had wrestled some demon of doubt and prevailed, Finrod began to visit more frequently after the occasion on which he had had to drag Celegorm away from Fingon.

On one occasion he brought a set of checkers, and challenged Fingon to a game, with Maedhros to advise.

Maedhros, it turned out, did not know how to play checkers.

“Chess,” he said ruefully, “Was our—my game. And of course, cards.”

“They don’t play chess in Mithrim,” said Finrod. “I’ve inquired, and was all but laughed out of the room.”

It was not like old times, exactly. It couldn’t be. But Finrod had been leaving the fort properly, and going out hunting and scouting with Beren—a person whose existence Maedhros took in stride easily—and so he had interesting stories to tell.

Maedhros had, it seemed, little familiarity with the town.

Fingon recalled conversations deeply buried, hitherto irrelevant—conversations during which he, at twelve years old or so, had been pleased to teach an older cousin the ways of the city. How soon Maedhros-not-yet-Maitimo had acclimated to the bustle of New York! How soon his plain, country Sunday best had been exchanged for tailored workmanship that caught the eyes of every schoolfellow (and every schoolfellow’s sister)!

Would it be so again here, with Maedhros-no-longer-quite-Maitimo? Would he be well enough to learn the land?

Fingon kept this to himself, while Finrod talked. It was good, if nothing else, to hear those familiar voices rising and falling again, together.

Parade

Fingon was of course not present when all four kittens were brought to visit at once. He had not the heart to shoo them out immediately, though he debated inwardly whether Olorin would have or not.

Overindulge

The smell of alcohol was sharp. Fingon apportioned it carefully, but he was beginning to require the Fort’s stock of drinking whiskey. He concealed this from the other inhabitants as best he could, and he had privately told Finrod that, whatever of Fingon’s was valuable enough to trade should be traded at the nearby town for more of the medicinal stuff, if it could be had.

Valuable? Finrod had said, with an incredulous laugh. Fingon, we’ll hunt some pelts if we must. You’ve nothing but your tools, and you need every one of them.

“Strange to think that you know,” Maedhros said, when Fingon began to unbind the dressing. As usual, Maedhros did not look at his wrist; but he did not turn his face fully away this time. Rather, his eyes met Fingon’s.

“That I know?”

“That all those years—when I was sick, or tired, or absent—I was really flat on my back. Stewed.”

“It must have been very miserable,” said Fingon stolidly. He had spent much of the way west contemplating exactly this; he had no desire to return to such ruminations at present. Not when he had the stump of his cousin’s limb in his hands.

“And you admired me,” Maedhros said, drawing it out as if it were a delicious joke and not, to Fingon’s mind, the sole province of suffering. “Good God, Fingon. No wonder your father—” He stopped.

Fingon crumpled the bandage in his hand. “What about my father?”

Maedhros blinked. “Prays for my soul.”

Point

“When did you meet Gwindor?”

“I couldn’t give you a date. Not…long after I was sent down, but not immediately. I wasn’t allowed to mingle, much, with the other menfolk. Gothmog had to be sure of me.” Maedhros grinned crookedly. “He never was quite sure of me.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Fingon said, awkward as ever, “It is only that he is…such a good man, and a good friend. To me, also.”

“He is a just man,” Maedhros said. “And when you know him well, a kind man. I am glad you know him well.”

Counterpoint

“Gwindor told me a different tale.”

“Did he?” Maedhros’ right arm was curled protectively against his chest; his left hand was clenched at the edge of the mattress, supporting him. His feet, shod in the stockings Maglor had acquired, arched and flattened against the floor, as Fingon had directed.

“He told me…he told me he was cruel to you, at first.”

Maedhros shook his head. “He’s too hard on himself.”

It had seemed difficult for Gwindor to say. Fingon had been almost unable to believe it; then he had admitted, both to himself and to Gwindor, that he could not understand what they had suffered.

“He said he used you ill. That he’ll never atone for it.”

“Stuff and nonsense,” said Maedhros. “He’s a dear. Don’t let him open his mouth about it again. Don’t ask him to. Fingon, you mustn’t encourage martyrs.”

Fingon gaped.  

Antagonistic

Frog and Sticks had both contrived to fit into Maedhros’ bed. Sticks sat cross-legged at his feet, and Frog was tucked in his usual place against Maedhros’ side.

“But it’s not a pig,” said Sticks. “It’s a cat. He doesn’t understand. Never seen a pig.”

“Tig-Pig,” growled Frog. “Pig has tigs. He has tigs.”

Tig-Pig, for his part, had nestled between Maedhros’ knees and tucked his tail comfortably around his haunches. His paws, too, were turned inwards, resembling nothing so much as tiny baker’s buns set side by side. He did not seem fussed over the matter of his name.

“What’s tigs?” asked Sticks, disdainfully.

Maedhros stroked his chin. It was an old gesture. Fingon could have called it studied patience, the sort that made one feel a little teased and very much loved.

“Tigs is tigs,” said Frog, extracting his hands from where they were rolled up in Maedhros’ shirt-tail, and flicking his fingers outwards. “Pokers.”

“You mean a hedgehog, do you?” asked Maedhros. “What do you think, Fingon?”

Fingon was baffled. “I—there are no hedgehogs, here.”

“Strela said,” Frog announced, glaring darkly at Fingon. “Tig-pigs.”

“She said hedge-pig,” Sticks said, realization. “That’s not tig, you silly conker.”

“Nor is it hog for that matter,” said Maedhros. He looked amused. “But we must ask Estrela ourselves. What did she mean?”

Estrela, when she came to collect the children, was mortified by their inquiries. Fingon could see the color rising to her brown skin. “I did not know the word,” she said. “I mean, I did not know they were porcupines, here. Gwindor told me. I called them hedge-pigs because…a pig is a hog. Back home—in Portugal, I called them ouriço-cacheiro.”

Maedhros imitated her pronunciation well, and with interest, but that did not seem to cure her of her embarrassment. She lifted Tig-Pig up and held him to her face, kissing him between his ears.

“His stripes look like spines, I suppose,” she said softly. “Is that what you were thinking, Frog-boy?”

“Tigs,” said Frog. He turned his face against Maedhros’ side.

“Tigs and children must both come with me,” Estrela said, with more confidence. “We cannot sit with Russandol all day, much as we might like to.”

Then she went hurriedly out of the room.

Sticks gave a great yawn and followed her. Frog lingered a minute longer, until Maedhros said he really did have to go.

“No tigs,” Frog said, patting the blanket. “Goodbye, Russandol. Good night."

Chapter Text

Book

It occurred to Fingon, amidst the conversations that sometimes halted painfully or jerked along even more painfully, like three-wheeled carriages, that a library would be a good thing to have at his disposal. Maedhros had been a great—if restless—reader, in the old days. He often had a book turned over on the sofa arm when Fingon came to visit at Valinor Park. Maedhros loved Dickens inexorably, and loved Scott, too, though not as much as Maglor. He knew the best adventure stories, and the rowdiest sailing stories, though none of these were considered highbrow, and could not have won him much favor from his tutors.

When Fingon visited alone, and they spent an afternoon playing cards in the window-seat, Maedhros retold stories about the Indies and the Asiatic slopes as enchantingly as if he had seen those far-off wonders himself.

Now we have traveled, thought Fingon ruefully.

There were no beautiful stories to be told from it.

“I could read to you a little, from the Bible,” he offered, when his father had left the book behind one afternoon. “If you are tired of—of the silence, or of me babbling on about nothing.”

“I don’t feel particularly religious, at present,” said Maedhros. There was a little Irish softening of the religious that belied his words, if only because the Irish and the Catholic had always seemed so inextricable to Fingon. Still, when Maedhros had spoken, his lips moved only slightly; it was the reply of someone being careful.

You couldn’t force a man to piety, or to belief.

Even when his faith faltered, Fingon appreciated the psalms. Some of them were angry and intimate. You could recite them in a rush of consternation, or grief. But if Maedhros did not wish to think on any of it, what could be done?

Fingon wished a priest was to be found, though none were likely to travel freely and willingly, in this outlaw land.

“Never mind,” he said. “Quiet is better.”

His father’s Bible, he recalled, was written in French anyway.

Sustain

Another nightmare.

“Maitimo,” Fingon whispered, soothing him with a cold compress to the brow. “Wake—wake.” Maedhros was so tired that he was still not quite conscious; imprisoned by sleep.

“I yield,” he rasped. “Not Maitimo, I beg. I yield. It was her name—it isn’t yours.”

In every moment such as this, Fingon was compelled to sketch another brutal line of the map that charted Maedhros to Russandol. The children’s name did not hurt him; his own child-name did.

In every moment such as this, Maedhros did not know who Fingon was.

“Russandol,” Fingon sighed, stroking his cheek. “Russandol, you’re safe, now.”

Hair

Fingon was beginning to count.

The brands, he counted. The number of gashes that formed each letter. The lash-marks were almost too many and too muddled, but he counted them as best he could.

These were what had been left to him.

That, and a rough mop of hair that, Fingon discovered, had streaks of white at the roots.

He said nothing of that. But he was troubled by the tattered, tangled ends.

“I won’t cut it,” he said, “And I won’t wash it. But it will become matted if I do not comb it. Will you let me?”

“Not everything is an agony,” said Maedhros, as if he was vaguely insulted.

Fingon did not contradict him. Instead he found his simple comb and began. It took a long while, even when the ends were wetted, and Maedhros did not move at all, and Fingon, though he should have been occupied by rolling the treacherous little knots between his fingers, was thinking of the past.

The near past—the light in the cave and the shine of copper, woven where it did not belong, like ribbons hanging among the bristling fur—

The pricking of angry tears in his eyes only worsened as he gathered other vicious points of knowledge. Whoever owned each hurt—Mairon, or Melkor Bauglir, or Gothmog the overseer—had seen cringing unmarked flesh as something to be destroyed. Whatever his hands were busy with, Fingon had to hold in his mind the image of Maedhros as he had been, and Maedhros as he was now. Whatever distractions Fingon tried to hide behind, he readily envisioned each moment in which the eternal change had been cruelly made.

A mouthful of teeth—and then tongs or a hammer, driving one out.

A hand with all its nails, and then a quick, sharp tearing.  

A knife—in Fingon’s grasp—

Somewhere, Maedhros’ nail and tooth lay discarded, and yes, awfully, the bones of his hand rotted among metal and stone.

Unless all of these had been kept, just as the hair was. Fingon had had little stomach for hunting, as a city boy. Dutifully and reservedly, he had borne the sight and the touch of Olorin’s skeletons and the occasional cadaver. As a doctor’s apprentice, it had been service towards a higher good. Healing wasn’t about rotting. Wasn’t about coveting.

Fingon could only pray that the scraps of flesh and bone were deemed useless.

(He would have thought shorn hair useless, too.)

How dreadful it was to think of Maedhros in pieces. Fingon had had a part in that; he clung to the hope that it had been a doctor’s part.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked, now, as Maedhros moved at last, shuddering as the comb grazed his temple.

“No,” said Maedhros.

Not everything is an agony.  

Fingon used to believe him, when he lied.

Exchange

“How long will you stay?” Maedhros asked.

Fingon lifted his drowsy head. “Tonight?” he said. “I’ll go out for late supper, but then I’ll come back. Just like every night. And Gwindor will be here, too—”

“I didn’t mean that,” said Maedhros. The blankets were rucked up a little and revealed his stockinged toes. Fingon was somewhat warmed by the sight of the stockings; they made a part of Maedhros seem ordinary again. Then he was ashamed for admiring what was ordinary, rather than what simply was. “I meant—when I do not need to be minded like this, any longer.”

“How long will I stay in Mithrim?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose that’s…” Fingon almost said Father’s decision to make, but he was a man now, not a child. It was his decision too—and Turgon’s—and Aredhel’s. They would all have to choose for themselves, whether to stay or go, when and if Father did.

“I don’t suppose Fingolfin has money left, to buy land.”

“He doesn’t,” Fingon agreed. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “And of course, at the outset we…did not know the particular dangers.”

“You have an intimate acquaintance with them, now,” said Maedhros, sighing. “And yet I imagine that lesser proximity to this dung-heap of spoilt dreams—I refer not to the good people of Mithrim, of course, but to more recent developments—would spare you a good deal.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Fingon said. “It turns out that you are quite rubbish at going on ahead.”

“I would give anything…” Maedhros shook his head. “But you’ve heard that before. And I did give a good deal, didn’t I?”

“Yes,” Fingon said, not merely answering the question asked, but also reaching those that swarmed beneath it. “Yes, you did. And I am not parting from this bedside, much less Mithrim, anytime soon, Mai—Maedhros. There is a long way for you to go, yet. I shall bring you a little bread, this evening. How is that?”

Morning

“I know it’s you,” Maedhros said.

“Oh,” said Fingon, turning back the coverlets. That was one of the things that seemed simple, but wasn’t, for someone without two hands. “That’s splendid.”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Maedhros said softly. “When I first wake. When the sun is up, that is—at night’s a different matter, of course. But in the morning, I know now.”

Asphyxiate

“It’s a new dream,” Maedhros said, heaving a breath so frantic and deep that Fingon imagined his lungs bursting with the strain. That was a false fantasy, to be sure. A lung could not burst because a man gasped.

“A new dream?” Fingon held his shoulder, through the blanket. He had found that it was not always wise to stroke Maedhros’ hair, or to lay a hand over his forehead, though those were his first inclinations.

Fingon’s nightmares had always been comforted by his father. Mama, of course, needed her sleep because of poor health. His inclinations were Fingolfin’s, then.

But his father was not here, just now.

“It is because—” Maedhros’ laugh was close to a whimper. Fingon was not ashamed of him, but he was glad that nobody else witnessed it. “It is because I am better.”

Fingon squeezed his shoulder a little. This seemed to have no ill effect.

“Tell me?”

(Sometimes a simple question found success.)

“I am not listening to him,” Maedhros said, in an urgent whisper, as if they would soon be found out. “And he—” He recovered a little. Raised his voice. “Lord. It’s humiliating.”

“Nothing could be less so,” said Fingon firmly. “I wish that I—that I had had a little longer with Olorin, I suppose, that I might have learned more from him what dreams portended. I don’t know if he believed all the poppycock some people say about dreams, but I know they have value.”

“Oh, mine in particular,” said Maedhros. In the dim shadows, his abbreviated right arm rose and fell. He wanted to pass a hand over his face, perhaps, but Fingon was holding his left arm down.

Fingon sat back; released his hold.

Maedhros did not move again.

“My dreams are so valuable,” he said, “That I can see the future without knowing what to make of it, the past with perfect clarity, and enough pretty lies and bloody horrors to make me mad by day or by night. He wants me to listen to him, Fingon, and I swear he is really beside me and I—I—”

Fingon wondered if he was Bauglir or Mairon or Gothmog. He could not bring himself to ask.

“If you—if you tell me what he says, I could—I could set him right,” he said, but he knew once he had spoken that it was a foolish plot.

Maedhros’ eyes widened as if he was shocked anew by how much of a simpleton his cousin was.

“Tell you?” he said. “No—not this. No, I’m too ashamed.”

“I am ashamed for asking, then,” said Fingon humbly.

“It was a trick of his,” said Maedhros, “To make me sorry. I wasn’t always meek, Fingon. Really I wasn’t.”

Fingon had never imagined him meek at all, until he had the care of him, and saw how he flinched at a gentle touch, or dropped his gaze to hide from searching eyes.

“His words have no hold, here,” said Fingon. “I—I haven’t heard them, unless you are speaking of…well, it doesn’t matter. But it is just you and I in this room, Maedhros.”

“His hold,” muttered Maedhros, “Is what I dreamed of.” He turned his face away, and was quiet.

Fallow

“I’ll show you as soon as you are ready,” Aredhel said. “We can steal the paper from Maglor.”

“There is so little,” said Maglor, and then, catching himself, “But yes. Maitimo may have what he likes.”

“Such generosity,” said Maedhros, sounding a little flummoxed, as he did when kindness hurt him. “But really, Aredhel. I shall not be satisfied until we are rich enough that I can—hire a secretary, and be pettish about dictating by letters. Until then…”

“I’ll be your secretary,” said Maglor. “Unless of course, Fingon claims that as his right.”

It was a sharper dig than Maglor must have intended, for he looked embarrassed at once. Maedhros’ gaze was flung to Fingon, all worry, but Fingon smiled to reassure him.

For whatever reason, Maglor was no threat, these days. And Fingon would not take offense where he did not need to.

It was victory enough to see Maedhros’ shoulders ease.

Ring

The knock at the door came thrice, impatiently, and Fingon’s fury was rising full by the time he had crossed the distance from chair to threshold.

“I said come in,” he snapped, opening the door—for he had expected Celegorm, it being his usual hour.

It was Turgon. Quickly, Fingon slipped out and shut the door behind him. “Oh,” he said. “I did not—”

“Did not expect me? I didn’t, either, but I can’t find Father anywhere.” Turgon’s face might have been a block of granite, for all the feeling it evinced. “I’ll not step in the room, as you know. I don’t want to see…him.”

“He can hear you,” Fingon said, as low as he could.

Turgon scoffed. “Just another ghost in his head, eh?”

“Turgon, for Christ’s sake—”

“Sorry,” said Turgon. He must have been shaken by the oath, rare as such were from Fingon’s lips. He dragged a hand over his face. The wedding ring glinted there, and Fingon’s anger faltered yet again. “When I can’t find Father I’m unreasonably worried. He’s a tall man, how does he lose himself?”

“He left shortly after the children visited, this morning,” Fingon said. “They might have seen him.”

Turgon had a child, too. Fingon had held her, even blessed her, as best he could. Godfather. Oh, he was unworthy for that.

That, and so much else.

“I’ll look for them,” said Turgon, and stalked away quickly.

Fingon blinked hard, hot, before he reentered, hoping his face did not betray him.

Maedhros’ cheeks were flushed. His face was too unstudied, otherwise. Fingon knew that he had heard.

“Just looking for Father.”

“Mm.”

“Turgon is fretting because of the wall,” Fingon said. “I know he enjoys it, but he can’t—”

“I don’t blame him,” said Maedhros. “Really, Fingon. You and Aredhel and my uncle…you’re very kind. But Turgon? God, he was a good, solid lad when I…I could claim any acquaintance with him. He sees clearly, I imagine. Clearly enough to see through me.”

Worse than that, thought Fingon. He doesn’t want to look at you.

“None of us have good enough cause to be harsh,” was what Fingon said, uncomfortably. His eyes still fancied they saw that glimmer of metal, the bond immortal, the signet of a husband and father who was cleaved from, not unto, those lives.

“Because I am an invalid,” said Maedhros. “Well, I have cause to hope I may recover my strength, that you may all take turns at me. It will refresh our family mightily, I think.”

Lunch

“It was the driest, coarsest bread you can imagine,” Maedhros said.

“The bread in—the camp?”

“Yes. And there was this one fellow—Larsen, his name was. Took mine from me on a lark, ground it underfoot.”

Fingon reminded himself not to gape or scold. Larsen, after all, was not here to be scolded.

Or killed, he thought. For that was what he would really do to Larsen, given the chance.

“I don’t expect you were given new bread,” he said ruefully, trying for black humor.

“Oh, no. I ate that anyway. Grime and shit in it, most likely, but I couldn’t be a chooser.” Maedhros took another spoonful of his soup.  “Devils take his soul, though. I could have killed him.”

Fingon wondered, suddenly, if he had. Maedhros must have guessed the thought.

“He’s dead, true enough, but not by my hand. Gothmog shot him in the head,” he said. “A story for another day, cano, if indeed you ever hear it.”

He didn’t keep the soup down. Strange; he had been much better for several days before.

Discipline

“You didn’t know me,” Maedhros said. It was not a nightmare; it was a blue-browed afternoon. Celegorm had gone; had even patted Maedhros’ shoulder before he went. Huan had licked the thin left hand. And the children would come soon, for Estrela had promised she would bring them to visit before supper.

It was not a nightmare that had loosened his tongue, then. Some daylight dread, or a fear of a fear, layered in a past life that Fingon was desperately trying to learn without enduring.

(He would have endured it, if he could. But Maedhros all but begged him not to even imagine it.)

“When did I not know you?” he asked, busy with waxing his thread.

“You knew what you were good enough to believe. I showed you what I wanted you to see. We made a poor pair of friends, all told.”

“I liked being your friend. I do still.” Fingon thought that was a good answer, a bold answer, but then—

“For all that B-Bauglir was a monster,” said Maedhros, “He did know me.”

Fingon almost dropped his spool.

“He tortured you,” said Fingon.

“He punished me,” Maedhros said earnestly. “He knew what I had done, and he punished me for it. A devil’s office, maybe, but isn’t it God who condemns souls? And the law that condemns men? I escaped the law and ran—ran into his arms. And what can you—” He paused, listening for footsteps, perhaps, but none came. Then he went on, urgently. “What hurt can you point to that is not deserved?”

“Maedhros.” Fingon tried to summon some of his father’s subtle severity. “We’ve spoken of this.”

“You’ve told me not to believe what I know to be true, Fingon. I am a thief, and a liar, and a m-malefactor—” He was stuttering badly now. “And a murderer. You know I am. You know it all!”

“I know that you killed. And I know no court of law would condemn you to this—”

“They’d condemn me to death—”

“It was Feanor!”

“It wasn’t,” Maedhros said, with tears in his eyes. “It wasn’t because of him—Athair. I made my own choice.”

Free will, or another false philosophy? “Did Bauglir tell you that?”

“Bauglir scarcely…these scars weren’t made by him. Not until the end.” Maedhros did something he hadn’t, yet: he touched his face slowly, intimately, with the seeking fingers of his left hand. “Before he—when we—”

Fingon was sure he would crack the teeth out of his head, clenching them so. Clenching his neck and his shoulders and his spine and his knees, so.

“He bared me,” Maedhros whispered, through his fingers. “To the soul. And he made me look at what he found there. It was all real, Fingon. It was I who wanted—to lie about it, yet. I lied and railed and fought and he—he told me the terms, by which I would be ruined. I flouted them, and he had me ruined. That is a kind of justice.”

Fingon could have cried out with the voice of every soul he had seen bared in death, but he did not. He stood, shakily, and put his things aside. It was a wonder he did not drop anything.

Then he crossed to the bed, sat down half upon it—just enough that he could gather Maedhros to him, in an embrace as crushing as a doctor could in conscience give a patient whose ribs were broken and whose back was bruised.

A doctor who was a cousin and a friend, that was.

“Not another word,” Fingon growled, in Maedhros’ ear. “Not another word, from you, on this.”

Chapter Text

Applause

Fingon feared that Maglor wouldn’t want to touch the right arm at all. It seemed so Feanorian to be horrified by an amputation, to be convinced that warped tissue was contagious. In point of fact, it could not be less so. Scars were, when viewed medically, a wonder: doing what skin and bone had once accomplished, mending and strengthening what remained.

Yet, at the last moment, Maglor rallied. When Maedhros said he thought he could stand—just for a moment, and with the bed behind him—Maglor gripped the elbow of his right arm gently, while Maedhros held to Fingon’s hand with his left.

Then he stood upright, taller than them both again.

“Put your weight on your left leg,” Fingon directed, recalling the past too vividly. On that unfortunate occasion, he had even squandered the small rewards of a step towards order and normalcy. He had reveled in Maedhros standing at his full height then, and now could not rejoice.

Maedhros shifted from one foot to the other.

“Does it hurt?” Fingon asked.

“Tell us at once if it hurts,” said Maglor.

“Not any worse,” said Maedhros, and his voice was steady. But then he said, “I am a little dizzy. Might I—”

“Of course,” said Fingon and Maglor together, and they lowered him again. Gingerly, his right arm folded against his ribs.

“You’ve done very well,” Maglor said, tears springing to his eyes.

Maedhros smiled and thanked him, very shyly, almost as a child would. Maedhros had always been shy about praise, Fingon realized. It was simply that in times before, he had had many more expressions and gestures with which to charmingly fend off the rumor of a compliment.

Now he had so little.

Fingon tried to view it medically; to treat the scraps of his cousin’s spirit like the wonders they were.

Sensitive

“They hide,” Frog said, through his fingers. Fingon had noticed that Frog often put his hands over his mouth when he was awed by some new discovery.

“Yes,” said Maedhros. He had one of the kittens in his lap, and two more frolicking at his ankles. “Their claws are sheathed. They only come out when they need them.”

“Sneaks,” said Sticks, admiringly. She had the fourth kitten, and was trying to let it climb her hunched shoulders, while she bent obligingly to the floor.

“Cats are very clever,” Maedhros said. He tickled Spot under her white chin. “Not always as friendly as dogs, but I think these shall be, since you are so friendly with them.”

“Father likes cats,” said Fingon. “He didn’t tell me that for years. I don’t know why. But I hope he comes in again soon, for he will be sorry to have missed a visit from all the family”

“I might have presumed as much,” said Maedhros, with a swift smile, “Since you never kept a dog. A preference runs often to one or the other, though I think Celegorm may secretly be partial to both.”

“Dogs is ornery,” Sticks said. “I keep an eye to that Huan fellow, around these babies.”

“Huan is kind,” said Frog. He had rearranged himself again, risking both Maedhros’ legs and the kittens, so that he was on his belly with his chin propped in his hands. “Hello, Red. Hello.”

“Why did you name that one Red?” Maedhros asked. The kitten was grey.

Frog unpropped one hand and let Red prick his finger with a playful tiny claw, no bigger than a rose-thorn. “He is nice,” he said.

“He means you’re nice, Russandol,” said Sticks. “Pleased as pie now, aren’t you?”

“Sticks,” said Estrela, from where she was sewing busily on the other chair.

Maedhros’ features twitched. Fingon could almost believe he’d seen a twinkle in his eye.  

Pattern

“They should fade a little.” Fingon did not touch the knife-etched letters; to do so, he was sure, would have distressed Maedhros entirely. “They are sealed, and the scabs have flaked away, and—”

“They won’t fade,” said Maedhros. “They didn’t before.”

Fingon curled the fingers of his right hand around his left wrist and held firm. Held on for dear life, really. “What?”

“They were reopened,” Maedhros said, blinking as if to clear his eyes. “But even—the first time, they were still plain as day for months afterwards. Never mind, Fingon. Who will see them, in future, but myself? You know no woman will have me.” He sighed. “There. I’ve made you blush.”

“No,” said Fingon stolidly. “Maedhros, I’m not a child.”

“I wish you were. I wish—no, I can’t talk of it. I’ll blubber. And I can’t blubber when you’re telling me how well whore is healing into me, can I?”

Outside, the rain fell gently and steadily. Fingon had not stepped outside the fort in two days, but nonetheless, he felt trapped within by the sound of drumming droplets overhead, by the ruination of a life he kept on saving—or trying to save.

Sometimes the knife was in Maedhros’ hold, and it cut deep at Fingon’s resolve.

“Maedhros—”

“I won’t say it was deserved. I know you don’t like, when I speak so.”

“I don’t—it’s that you think it is true. That’s what hurts me.” They were reopened. He couldn’t even ask about that.

“I am trying,” Maedhros said. His arms are spread wide on the bed, away from his exposed body. “To reconsider such truths. For you, and Maglor, and everyone. It is a very tiresome business, I find. Thinking well of oneself.”

Hypocrisy

Father had offered to take the night-shift with Gwindor that evening, for Fingon had contracted a tiresome and unrelenting headache. Everyone (Father, Wachiwi, Gwindor, and indeed, Maedhros) agreed that the best remedy was sleep.

“You can’t sleep if you’re always leaping up to see why I’ve turned on one side or the other,” Maedhros said. “It is no trouble, Fingon.”

Fingon liked to be reassured by him; such reassurances could not always be trusted, but were a sign of overall improvement.

He returned in the morning to find his father dozing, seated awkwardly on the edge of the bed, with Maedhros’ head against his knee.

Fingon had not heard the nightmare, from the hall. His father opened his eyes, despite Fingon’s attempt at creep-mouse steps, and looked as if he had a headache himself. Yet still, he smiled. With Fingon’s ready help, he extricated himself, and they shifted Maedhros’ sleeping form back amongst the pillows.

Father paced to the window and rubbed his shoulder stiffly and slowly.

I am afraid I shall hurl myself at my brother. I am afraid I shall—say so many cruel and vicious things, dashing all hope that we may reconcile.

Emergency

“Caralho—” Estrela muttered, and Maedhros’ attention flashed to her at once. Fingon had been removing the stitches from his leg, and he had been a little wan, but now he was as alert as one of the kittens.

Fingon did not know why; he had not understood what Estrela said.

“Beg pardon,” she said now, seeing that they both were looking at her. “I—I thrust the needle into my finger.” She was stitching a seam.

“Hurts like the devil, doesn’t it?” Maedhros said, his teeth showing in what Fingon recognized as a grin, real and sly. “But come now. You must humor an invalid. What did you say?”

She lifted her chin resolutely. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The children aren’t here.”

“Fingon,” said Estrela, exerting her admirable patience—Fingon was beginning to have a picture of some lost scenes, at least—“Has he always had a liking for wicked words?”

“Fingon was a child, at the time,” interjected Maedhros smoothly. “So he can’t answer that. But now I’ve a doctor to swear at. I’d like a little variety.”

“I wasn’t a child, and you did profane a good deal,” said Fingon. If Maedhros was going to tease, he could be teased, a little.

Maedhros lifted his eyebrows. “My reputation is already befouled then. And she was a sailor, Fingon. They’re known for their wild tongues. I’ve a right to know.”

“You are quite right,” said Estrela gravely. “It is just a ship’s word. It is a…it is part of a ship.”

Maedhros considered, and then chuckled. “I take your meaning,” he said. “I believe. There’s not so many parts of the ship that would suit, you know? One comes to mind. But I’ll inquire no further, so long as I may say it whenever I please.”

“Please do not,” Estrela pleaded, almost hiding behind her sewing.

Fingolfin entered the room just at that, and Maedhros subsided into innocent silence again.

Wound

Fingon had lost the tips of several fingers to frostbite; they were a little flat and misshapen now, but he did not much notice them. The damage had not progressed far enough to take the nailbeds.

Maedhros, with little else to do but watch Fingon’s hands moving over him (at least when he could bear to watch them), did notice, but he said nothing of it. Fingon caught him looking once and raised the subject himself.

“They were frozen,” he said. “They look a little odd, now, and it was certainly a painful business—when I could feel them again—but nothing to worry over.”

“I thought myself so unhappy,” Maedhros said quietly, “Living that winter in the mountains—and here. Mostly here. I had no right to.”

“Unhappiness is neither earned nor lightly put aside,” said Fingon. He was almost morbidly eager to learn more of Maedhros’ time in Mithrim—he knew it would hurt him to hear, of course. He was grateful for the Maedhros he had, but those last months before…

Well, it was only that Fingon did not know what had remained then, which was lost now, beyond flesh and blood and beauty.

“You were dying, Fingon.”

“No. Not really.” A little ember of grief bloomed with new flame. Mother was dying. And then we left her behind.

“Do you remember it all?” Maedhros asked.

“Mostly. It was—difficult to stay awake. But by a stroke of great luck, Haleth and her company found us. I suppose you—must have heard the story from half a dozen people, now. They were wintering in a shelter, minding cattle. And they saved our lives.”

As many lives as were left. He pressed one blunt fingertip against another. His mother—she had had no great love for Maedhros, and less for Feanor. But she was too good to hate them truly. Fingon had to take comfort in that, for he could not have banished love even if he felt it was his duty. Anger was closer than hatred, and not so easy to put in its proper place. But he didn’t feel anger, in that fire of grief.

“I’ve never done you any good,” Maedhros said. “No—this isn’t one of my bitter self-flagellations. I mean it simply and honestly.”

“You’ve never saved my life, it’s true,” said Fingon. Maedhros’ tone was neither mocking nor desperate; Fingon would talk it out with him, today. One had to try everything. “But when we were young, I don’t think we expected such a thing would be needed. And we were happier for it. You gave me many gifts. I don’t discount them.”

Maedhros did not exactly reply to this. “Do your hands still hurt?”  

Fingon shook his head.

Health

“You were talking of yourself, weren’t you?”

“Likely,” said Maedhros. He rolled the bread into crumbs between his fingers.

Fingon opened his mouth and shut it again. Then he said, “I—when you said I shouldn’t encourage martyrs, I mean. You were talking of yourself.”

“I can’t be a martyr, Fingon,” said Maedhros. “I’m not dead.”

Tyranny

Fingon began to dream of Melkor Bauglir. But though he knew he had spoken to the man once—he could not recall the sound of his voice.

Had it been dull? Sonorous? Crisp? Flat? The words he had spoken had been heavy and foolish and cruel. It followed that the vehicle for such words would match them.

Maedhros was a mimic—had always been a mimic. It was possible, amidst the nightmares, that Fingon had heard Bauglir’s voice again already.

That was his fear, though he did not name it aloud.

Loan

Maedhros asked, “Don’t you want Huan to go hunting with you?”

“I can manage alone for the day,” said Celegorm, shrugging. “And you used to let me have Breena, Maitimo. Fair’s fair. Look at him all comfortable and snug with you.”

Fingon bit his tongue. The temptation was great to point out that Huan—more than any kitten—should not be up on the bed, but there he was stretched, his front legs over Maedhros’ right leg and his body snaked around the still-healing left. His head flopped sideways in Maedhros lap, and Maedhros’ hand was tangled in his ruff.

Celegorm seemed pleased as punch with the whole affair.

“Well, I’m off then,” he said. “Huan, bite Fingon if he comes too close, eh?”

“Don’t listen to him, bairn,” cooed Maedhros to the dog, who Fingon knew had never bitten anybody.

Well, at least, not anybody well-intentioned.  

When Celegorm had gone, Maedhros smiled at Fingon. It was a dear, calm thing, that smile. His lips had healed from their scrapes and nicks; his face as a whole was becoming itself again. All the swelling gone; the bruises nearly faded. “I’ve still a horse, Frog tells me.”

“Alexander?” Fingon remembered.

“Yes. I’ll—perhaps I’ll visit him, in time.”

Fingon felt the warmth of sunshine in the dark-walled room.

Snow

“Did you say you were bored?”

“Surely not,” said Maedhros. “How could I be bored? Everyone comes to entertain me at all hours of the day, and at night, I entertain in turn—myself and everyone else—with hideous fancies. It is you must be bored, Fingon. You must be positively wishing you could crawl out of your own skin like a cicada or a—a butterfly, and flit away.”

“I wish no such thing,” said Fingon. Christmas festivities—such as Mithrim could hope to offer them—were indeed drawing near, but Fingon was not sure he wanted any part of them.

Wachiwi would have to persuade him otherwise, or Aredhel. Neither of them had tried.

“I wouldn’t mind a book, myself,” said Maedhros, contemplatively. “Not the Bible—Lord knows I’m not ready to be confessed or sworn over one—but something lighter.”

Fingon would have given his own right hand for a Dickens.

“I’m no storyteller,” he said, trying to think of some solution. Then, knowing he would regret it an instant later—“I could recite a few poems.”

“Could you?” asked Maedhros, his interest alight. “That’s capital, Fingon. That’s just capital. Speak a few poems for me, as if we’re in school again, called upon to declaim. Though you had more of a tutor’s education, didn’t you? I should have—I was always bundled away alone in some classroom, as it was. The dull boy’s lot. Anyway. What do you know?”

Fingon scrambled for something (anything) that would do. He wondered if he should stand. It seemed proper. And he should have an eye on the door, so he could stop at once if Celegorm came back from supper early.

Knowing that Maedhros was refraining from Feanorian jibes only on account of staunch affection, Fingon chose the window for his post. Facing out in to the dark—the lamplight illuminated the night only enough to show dry, weary ground—he began.

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

He stopped. There was something dancing, there, above the weary ground—not in the breeze, but softly tuned by gravity.

Snow, Fingon realized, and because he had been speaking something beautiful, the sight did not bring horror, as it should forever to one who has nearly died in winter’s hold.

“What is it?” Maedhros asked softly.

“It is snowing,” said Fingon. “In time for Christmas. Would you like to see?”

It was a great deal to ask, of course. Maedhros had not stood or walked without two others to support him, and he never requested such exercise for himself.

But—

“Yes,” he said, in that still small voice. “If we are careful.”

Fingon hurried to his side. Maedhros sat upright, and Fingon wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, and then shifted his legs to the side of the bed. “Lay your arm over my shoulders,” Fingon said. “And I’ll put mine around your waist. I can almost carry you, that way.”

They hobbled awkwardly, together. Maedhros did not protest or cry out.

It is well, thought Fingon. He is well.

He feared only that the fall would have ceased in the time it took them to approach, but heaven was merciful that evening—it was not so. Steadily the snowflakes came, large and white and drifting.

Fingon should have hated them.

Instead, he felt as if he could forgive water, stone, and earth.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.