Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mithrim is a cage. A series of cages, locked within each other. The borders, the outer wall, the inner gates: these are the obvious and intentional bars to intrusion or escape. But then one must consider the fort itself, the hushed sickroom, the grey-eyed prisoner whose lost hand is a manacle on Fingon’s conscience forever—

Alone in the corridor, Fingon scrubs the heels of his palms against his eyes. His hands are calloused with the work of incising flesh and stitching it up again. Bone-setting, poultice-laying, herb-grinding. He’ll never be free of it, not if he lives the way he ought.

A doctor’s hands are meant to be destroyed, with time. He has often thought that there is a kind of mercy in such inevitability. Olorin had knobbed knuckles, the skin of his fingers thickened like leather. Bent shoulders, too, for all the years he spent stooping over bodies that cried out for healing. Despite their wear, his hands were dexterous; his strength immense. He bore the marks of his labor as a humble testament to his own success; his dependability.

Fingon still thinks of him whenever he is caught between one cage and the next. He likes to think that Olorin would know what to do.

You know what you have to do.

A weak and selfish part of Fingon’s heart claims it an injustice that he must play doctor, peacemaker, and prophet, all at once. He must bite his tongue when a younger cousin’s bruised feelings, taken on their own, would loose it; he must forgo the enjoyment of resting on laurels no matter how rightly gained.

(If he had stayed in that room a moment longer just now, with Maedhros and Maglor forgiving each other and ruining each other in ways he refused to understand, he would have kept no peace. He would have done harm.)

Casting a glance to each side so as to be certain that neither Celegorm (bent on bloodshed) nor Caranthir (bent on badgering) have appeared, Fingon slows his pace. His father must be around here somewhere—no doubt he is keeping Caranthir from stealing any blankets or broth-bowls from the few straggling invalids yet recovering in the main hall.

His father is not one to forget about the soldiers, even when greater warriors fall.

A quick survey of the dining room, however, does not reveal Fingolfin—though it does satisfy Fingon’s concerns as to the wounded. They are comfortable. Less than a dozen are still laid up. One had his leg badly broken; another took a slash to the belly; a third has a shoulder wound from which Fingon cleared bullet fragments over the course of five dreadful hours.

Fingon nods to them in greeting. He has been controlling his heart and his mouth all day; as such, he does not shudder when he passes the man with the shattered leg.

“You’re looking for your pa, ain’t you?” asks Nathan Stokes, cheerful as ever despite the bandage bound about his brow. Fingon notes that it is still stained rust-red.

“I am,” he says. “But Nathan—have a care. You should be resting, until the wound seals up.”

“I’m not even lightheaded!” Stokes protests. “Go on, Doctor—your father’s out by the wall.”

At Christmas, Fingon heard tell of a New Year’s celebration. It did not come to pass, of course. The battle would have curtailed it as it was; his cousins’ antics of this morning dampened what little cheer remained. As such, there will be extra ale at supper tonight, and black rather than chicory coffee: nothing more.

But people fight for what they love, even celebration. Out of doors, the late afternoon light reveals a few knots of men and women standing and talking down by the river and the bridge. Breathing the freest air that they can touch.

Fingon cannot smile on them. Fingon can only see how the sunset on the lake turns the water to blood.

Nearer to him than the inhabitants stretching their legs are his father and brother. They are, as Stokes averred, by the wall. Their dark heads are bent; they are examining something. Fingon is a doctor and Turgon is a builder. Their father is party to the same conversations over and over again.

This is another thing to be sorry for.

He quickens his pace. If he reaches them, they’ll heal him. They’ll put him to rights again.

Turgon’s voice rises on the breeze, as familiar to Fingon as his own. “…here and here. It’s serious, is what it is. I don’t put the small ones in for show.”

“I will have a word with Estrela,” Father says, his tone conciliatory. “The children are old enough not to pry at your work, but not so old that we should frighten them.”

“If you say so,” Turgon grumbles.

Of course Turgon is fretting over his precious wall. Fingon must find it in himself to sympathize, if this is to be a productive conversation. But Fingon, who climbed the unfenced jaws of a dark Olympus, cannot desire in his heart of hearts that the cages of Mithrim be always shored up.

(He was a younger, brighter fool then; perhaps he should be wiser now. He considers himself at least a tired fool, in between doctor and prophet and peacemaker.)

He’s upon them, but they haven’t turned to greet him yet. Turgon’s arm hangs in the sling Fingon made for him. Father’s coat is not his own; it is borrowed, because he is always giving his to Gwindor and forgetting to take it back again. They are not aware that they are being watched. They are not skilled at safety.

Fingon is with them, but not with them. He is seeing them for the good, solid-souled men they are, and feeling the failure of everything he himself swore to be. Not a doctor, a prophet, or a peacemaker, after all. Not in the evening of another longest day.

His mouth is dry. He is so very, very angry.

“Father,” he says, stupid with the sudden loneliness that anger brings. “Turgon.”

“Doctor,” says Turgon, always cutting to the bone without knowing it. An architect, not a surgeon. He wants to hammer his nails into something sturdy. He does not expect his timbers to feel.

“Have you had a bad time of it?” Father asks, which is how Fingon learns that he must have winced.

“No one is in imminent danger,” he answers, because he is not quite ready to open the floodgates of his soul. Maybe his conscience, his pride, play cages themselves. Maybe he came seeking his family without any idea of what he would ask them.

(You know what you have to do.)

“Save for that into which they thrust themselves,” Turgon rejoins dryly.

“Have you eaten?” Father asks, unperturbed.

Fingon shakes his head. “No, but it will be suppertime soon.”

“You must eat,” Father says. “You should tie a string to your little finger to remind you.” He is smiling, and his eyes are so kind that Fingon feels like weeping.

“And you,” he returns, “Must tie one to yours, to remind you to find your own coat when Gwindor is not using it.”

Turgon grunts in sharp amusement, and pokes at the array of stone and wood and mud-daub before him.

“How is Maedhros?” Father asks. He lowers his voice a little as he speaks the name, no doubt out of deference to Turgon—but it is a useless deference, for they are all standing close together and Turgon can hear every word he says.

Nonetheless, Fingon intended to speak of his cousin despite his brother’s presence. Sometimes, he relies on Turgon’s strength to override his scorn. This is a time of—of need.

“He’s running a fever,” he says. “It abated a little—that’s why I stepped away—but I expect it to return.”

“Could that not be his body trying to get warm?”

“Yes and no. He swallowed a good deal of water, no doubt, which will cause indigestion at the least. My foremost fear—” This is a lie, for there is a greater fear, a knowledge, that Fingon hasn’t spoken to anyone—“Is that his lungs are very susceptible to illness, if strained. They have been damaged, I fear, by the injuries to his ribs.”

“Have you tried tying him to the bed?” Turgon asks. “How did he know to jump in the lake anyway?”

Fingon flushes. “He woke up worrying over Maglor,” he says. “I went looking, and in the meantime he took the task on himself. I’m not his nursemaid.”

Turgon clears his throat.

“Turgon,” says Father, placating.

Fingon squares his shoulders. “It’s all right,” he says. “You needn’t be gentle with me. The truth is, I’m furious. What doctor is glad for a setback? What doctor is pleased to know that their charge can give them the slip whenever they please, bedrest or no?”

“Oh, if we are to make plain, then I’ve a few things to say,” Turgon snaps, dusting off his hands. “Namely: Maedhros is a setback. Always has been, always will be. It’s a peculiar kind of galling, when the bag of bones you trekked three thousand miles and a mountain to save can’t go more than a few weeks without pitching itself back into hell.”

Fingon says nothing. Father says,

“Turgon, your brother is tired.”

“No,” Turgon says, with a strange, stubborn light in his eye. “No, he said he’s furious. Well I say, stoke that fury.  Warm our half-frozen cousin with it. Maybe that will fix him. Or fry him, which would be more to my taste.”

Fingon feels as if he is watching himself, watching all of them, from the outside. He watches himself say, with surprising calm, “He was saving Maglor. You know that.”

“Do I? I shouldn’t call it saving.”

“You’d have done the same for me.”

That only serves to fuel Turgon’s fire. “Oh, damn it all, Fingon. The only time you’re suicidal is when you’re running after him. Where in the Bible does it say you should lay down your life for those who kill your mother, eh?”

“Turgon!” Father’s voice brooks no argument, though he does not shout. “Enough. Not here.”

Not here. Not with the traitor-brother. The memory of Elenwe and little Idril flashes before Fingon’s eyes. Turgon has lost a wife, too. A child, too. Turgon has lost more than any of them, save perhaps Father, who must feel every arrow to his children’s hearts as keenly as if it were his own that was pierced.

Fingon lost his mother, lost his brother, but reclaimed his friend. Somehow, Fingon has found a cliff to cling to, while the rest of them fell freely.

“You’re right, Turgon,” he says, heavily. “There’s a debt there that shall never be repaid. And I…I’ve been selfish, in choosing to busy myself with what seemed good to me, when you…you could not.” The wall is less a cage, he realizes, than a lifeline. Something for Turgon to do in the lonely, futile days when Fingon was madly distracted by the urgency of healing.

Turgon turns half away, reaching for a stone. He moves it from one meaningless place to another.

Fingon cannot ask for counsel here. Not because they do not love him, but because they have given enough. He meets his father’s eyes.

“I’ll go and have my supper,” he says. “You should do the same, soon.”

“Fingon,” says Father. “Come here.” He opens his arms, and Fingon cannot resist that. Never, since he recovered from his boyhood airs, has he been able to resist that.

His head still fits perfectly in the crook of his father’s shoulder. His father’s borrowed coat crumples between them. Turgon is clearing his throat again.

“I’m sorry,” Fingon says. “I’m sorry, Father.”

“What for, dear boy? I can think of nothing to forgive.”

That is mercy, and mercy can be shared. Fingon steps away from Father, not in rejection, but in resolution. He keeps his hands on Father’s shoulders, but he fixes his gaze on Turgon until his sad, stubborn brother meets his eyes.

“Then,” says Fingon, “I am sorry, Turgon. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve failed you. A brother should have done more. I haven’t so much as doctored you.”

“You dressed my arm, Fingon,” Turgon growls. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“A doctor doesn’t abandon his charges merely because another case presents itself,” Fingon insists. He holds fast to Father: yes, Father can save him. Father can save them all, and let them go. That’s the wonder of him. The wonder of a humble, gentle, steadfast sort of love. “I’ll see to your arm again later, shall I? Wachiwi found some calendula in Miles’ stock. There’s enough to go around. It will be soothing, and it prevents scarring.”

“Thanks,” says Turgon.

Fingon drops his hands. Reclaims them, really, for the work they’ll have to turn to whether he likes it or not. “I’m going to find Finrod for now. His lungs also need seeing to. Who knows how much algae-ridden water he took in.”

“It’s a clean lake,” Father ventures.

Fingon shakes his head. “Not clean enough.”

He finds Finrod indoors. Seated beside the fire, in fact, with his chin resting on one hand. He looks dry and whole and healthy. Supper is being laid on the table—the first shift of supper. Fingon is too far past the point of being hungry to appreciate the smell of roasted goose.

“Finrod,” he says, drawing near, “I need your counsel.”

“I doubt I’m qualified to give any,” Finrod says, but he pats the bench beside him with his other hand. “Sit down, cousin.”

Fingon is glad, in truth, that he did not call him doctor.

“It’s about Maedhros.” If they keep their voices low, there is not much danger of being heard. Too many voices are mingling around them.

“Yes,” says Finrod, still staring at the fire.

“I must…” Fingon dislikes the blast of heat; the way the shadows dance. It all feels like hellfire. Like time running out. “There is some bad news that must be conveyed to him.”

This gains Finrod’s full attention. “Bad news,” he repeats. “He and Maglor made it out of the lake. Celegorm’s been lurking, I hear, but in one piece. What else could possibly have gone wrong since the morning?”

Fingon stalls. The moment is here, and he chose his confidant as ably as he could, but that does not make it easier.

“What, then? Wait—first off, have you eaten? You shouldn’t be doing all that you do on an empty stomach.”

Fingon shakes his head. “I haven’t had more than a bite, here and there, but frankly, I couldn’t stomach another morsel.”

“Must be serious.” Finrod’s brow furrows, but his mouth quirks with amusement. “Life-threatening.”

Somehow, it is the softness of humor that breaks Fingon down at last. He turns his face quickly away, so that Finrod cannot see the tears rising in his eyes.

Too late. “Fingon,” Finrod says, very gently. “I’ve had two or three catastrophes of the soul today. No reason not to have another. Tell me what it is.”

Fingon sniffs, as bravely as he can. “You know half of it,” he says. “Not all of it. Yes, he’s feverish, and his lungs are in no state. God, I wish I—I wish I’d forced him to stay behind, when they went on their little expedition. I shouldn’t have left them to themselves. Whatever passed between him and Maglor at Feanor’s grave, I—”

“They are Feanorians,” Finrod points out, with remarkable calm. “Maedhros and Maglor both. They won’t listen to any of us, when we’re down to brass tacks.”

Fingon stares into the rosy heart of the flames. “Maedhros will have to. I’ll tie him down if I must.”

“What?”

“The other half. What I haven’t told you. It’s his leg, Finrod. A cruel irony, no? That I’d take from one limb first, and then the other…”

Finrod’s hand waves across his line of sight. “Fingon, you’ll burn a hole in the fire. And that’s no mean feat. Did he rebreak the leg plunging into the water? If so, I imagine he knows it.”

“It’s worse than that.” Fingon slips from cousin to doctor; it’s the only way he’ll get this out. “They broke his leg violently, you know. Broke it, then forced it to mend wrong. A splint built round to keep it from straightening: something of that sort.”

“Bastards, the lot.”

“Bastards we can’t kill, at present. And even if we could, it wouldn’t reverse my soft-hearted errors. For, as you also know, it did not heal.” Fingon smiles, awfully, feeling as if he is parting veil after endless veil, all of which conceal the hideous rather than the divine. “It did not heal, and I knew that when I found him—or knew near enough. I could tell he was crippled. But I didn’t—at first I told myself that it wasn’t safe to force the matter. And then I simply put it from my mind, savoring every scrap of improvement he gave me. And all the while the leg has worsened, and the case become more desperate.”

Finrod has listened to all this very gravely. Fingon knows his cousin’s expressions well, and knows that no false reassurance will form his reply.

When Finrod does speak, he asks only, “Fingon, what must you do?”

(You know.)

Fingon takes a breath. “Today I learned that he is able to go from the fort to the lake without help. That means his full weight is resting on the bad bone. If he keeps on like that, the muscles will strengthen as would a gnarled tree, and proper alignment will be nigh impossible. So.”

Finrod only nods.

“If he is ever to walk right again, the leg must be broken and reset. It won’t be simple, having waited so long, but at least his recent immobility will have softened the muscles. As for what I must do? It will require an incision. A brace—or more of a, a fixture, really. I shall have to speak to Curufin. I expect he will have an idea or two as to how such a thing can be made.”

“Oh, my poor dear,” says Finrod. “Forgive yourself, at least, for waiting.”

“Should I?”

“Yes, you should. He was tortured, Fingon. Tortured and starved within an inch of his life. If you hadn’t been careful, and slow, he’d be dead now. Goodness me, we’ve seen how easy it is to lose him. You’ve done the best you can.”

“You’ve seen as often as anyone how insufficient my best can be.”

“How can you talk so? No—” Finrod raises a finger—“Don’t answer. You’ve picked up a bad habit of self-deprecation from our sad cousin.”

“You are kind to me, Finrod,” Fingon says, much moved. “It is only that I do not know how to be kind to him in turn.”

“The truth reveals kindness in time,” Finrod promises. “Whether or not you can make Maedhros understand that, I think you must forge ahead.”

“I know. It is for his own good.” Fingon tries for a little humor of his own. “He’s always been rubbish at seeing his own good.”

Finrod does not laugh at the jest. He tilts his head, with one of his searching looks—as keen as Maedhros’, but without the edge of fierce, affectionate distrust that makes Maedhros magnetic and unbearable, all at once.

“He is not as he always was, Fingon. Things have changed. Truly they have—and not in him. Oh, I know he’s practically in ribbons. But it’s we who see the world differently now.”

Fingon is taken aback. “How do you mean?”

“We expect more from him than we ever did before.”

“I—”

“From his heart. His mind. Not his body—as I have said, you have done your best by his body.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” Fingon answers, cautiously. “For if he will not agree…Finrod, I hate the path that is before us, but that path cannot be changed. Not by me or him, no matter how he twists my intentions to his purpose.”

“That’s just it,” Finrod says, “You expect more—more accountability, because you no longer trust him. And nor should you.”

“He cares for us,” Fingon murmurs, but that is not an answer, and he knows it.

“Take care, is all,” Finrod says. “Consider whether you will be able to accomplish the dreadful kindness of surgery, which is your heart’s aim, if you are…angry with him.”

“I didn’t think I was.” That’s almost a lie. “I mean, I am angry. But—”

Finrod presses, “Are you angry that Maedhros would live for Maglor and not for us? Not for you?”

“No!” Fingon spoke too loudly; he lowers his voice. “It’s his right, to—to cling to his brother. No matter how pathetic that brother may be.”

“Believe me,” Finrod says, “I’d be inclined to agree if…if I was powerless to choose the kind of man I want to be. You’re a better man than I, Fingon, without even choosing. I am only suggesting, more for your own peace of mind than Maedhros’, that you do not punish him too much.”

“I wouldn’t. I swear I wouldn’t.” To his own ears, the words sound like a child’s.

“You’ll hurt him to help him,” Finrod says. “You must. There is a great deal there—a great many ways in which motive cannot matter, just as it doesn’t in the game of survival, wherever that game is played. But where we are men…civilized men in the best sense, our intentions are indispensable. It will matter to Maedhros, in the end, whether you are confining him to more pain to give him strength and freedom someday, or whether you are teaching him a lesson.”

Fingon rises. He must collect his own thoughts, now, not because Finrod is wrong, but because Finrod is wise and Fingon is weaker than he knew.

“Thank you,” he says, haltingly. “I’ll think on this.”

“I have faith in you,” Finrod says. “Do find a little supper now, Fingon.”

Obedient, for once, Fingon finds supper. Meat and bread, both cold and a little tough. He washes it all down with some water and some ale, though what would best suit his frayed nerves is tea. Then he passes out of the doors for one final venture, to breathe the cold air and regard the pearlescent moon, sailing smoothly amidst its cloud shadows.

The smell of burning has faded. That is, he cannot smell the dead.

The mercy and cruelty of time are one: time passes. Cruelty is known only to man; both man and God know mercy.

“I forget to pray,” he whispers. “Yet when I work—and work well—I must believe You are with me.”

Indoors, he avoids the welcoming glow of the hall entrance and continues down the smoke-ridden corridor. Kitchen-grease and the woodfire are always here, clinging to the stones.

It is all quiet in Maedhros’ room. All quiet, for Maedhros and Maglor are both asleep, simple as children.

Fingon takes up his usual chair. He also takes up his book, though the lonely lantern is bad light to read or write by. He is thinking of how swiftly, how dangerously, his life once moved. Ever since they left the East, it was one heartbreak after another. One mountain scaled, only to reach the next. One frozen loss, only to thaw—burning.  

He’ll never see Olorin again—nor those whom he loved more. Grandfather. Grandmother. Mother.

I must hurt us to help us, he offers, to his cousin’s violet-etched eyelids. I must steal you from this dream. From all your dreams, so that you can walk in our world again.

So that you can walk.

Once more, time passes. Estrela comes in with a cup of tea. She looks upon Maedhros with dreadful tenderness, then goes out again. Fingon exchanges friendly words with her, but in truth, he does not know what tenderness is left to him. When Maedhros stirs and speaks at her parting—when he murmurs Cano? to the brother beside him and not to the cousin sitting still as a corpse at his back, Fingon is wracked by another wave of uncertainty.

The tea undrunk; his two hands clasped on his knees, a duty before him.

At first Fingon thinks that Maedhros has fallen asleep again, but then he moves more restlessly under his smothering covers. Maglor lies atop the blankets, free to move, but he goes on sleeping. He must still be muzzy thanks to the sleeping draught—and Fingon, for all his vows of forbearance, cannot feel particularly guilty for that sin. Maglor will rest, and Maglor will wake some hours from now, and no one shall die on Fingon’s watch.

Not tonight.

Careful not to scrape the chair-legs loudly over the flags, Fingon stands and approaches the bedside. What comes next happens suddenly. The whites of Maedhros eyes shine out. He twists his body violently, his uneven arms raised together in a protective instant over Maglor’s still form.

“Don’t,” he whispers hoarsely.

Fingon, stooping half-over him like an awkward ghost, says, more tightly than he would like, “No need to be frightened, Maitimo. I’ve just come to check you for fever again.”

“Oh, Fingon.” Maedhros murmurs, his hand and wrist lowering. “It’s you.”

On the tip of Fingon’s tongue is one of many unaskable questions: Whom did you see instead?

What Fingon does ask is, “May I touch you?”

Maedhros goes obligingly limp.

Counting his pulse and testing his forehead is enough to confirm that there is a fever rising anew. Fingon says, “I have some feverfew left, at least. Our supplies are getting low. Nothing for you to be worried over, of course. We will trade at Hithlum for more.”

“How could I worry?” Maedhros—Maitimo, looking so young again—responds. Then—“Oh, no, no. Mamaí, not here.”

Fingon presses his lips together. His hand is resting, at present, over his cousin’s heart. He can feel it fluttering like a bird behind the bone bars of crooked ribs.

He dares not meet Maedhros’ gaze. Nevertheless, Maedhros’ fingers brush his, questioning.

“I’m straying, aren’t I?” Maedhros asks, quiet and solemn.

“Only a little,” Fingon says, quieter still.

“Ah. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

His skin is hot and dry under Fingon’s palm, like a broad, deep sunburn. Fingon swallows a sigh. “I will let you sleep again in a moment,” he says. “Only—I would like to ascertain how your bones have settled. You went walking, today.” It is an understatement so profound as to almost seem like a mockery. Fingon hopes that Maedhros does not hear it as one.

To say so little; to mean so much: it is simply that he cannot know what words are the best to say. He shall have to settle for caution in speech and decision in action. He shall have to hope, as ever, that Maedhros understands someday.

For now, Maedhros does not protest to the examination. Gently, Fingon strips the blankets down to his knees. Then he continues his exploration of the ribs, palpating the stomach slightly and listening for the lungs. He examines both legs, prodding the thigh-bones, as if this is strictly necessary.

Through it all, Maedhros does not make a sound.

For a moment, Fingon can almost pretend that his silence is promising. That it portends well; that it demonstrates how thoroughly pain has fled.

But Fingon is a doctor, and knowledge is his cage.

The bone is misshapen in its binding of flesh and skin. The bone must be rebroken, and the man remade.

Fingon rearranges the covers, drawing them to Maedhros’ throat again. Maglor has not so much as shifted in his breathing.

“Feverfew, next,” says Fingon, but Maedhros is too lost in his dreams to answer. His eyes shine unseeing, and Fingon does not tarry to meet them. He fumbles for another candle and a match, and makes a little more light.

Chapter Text

“A tall order,” says Curufin, smiling with half his mouth.

“Can you do it?” There is sweat under Fingon’s collar, and a pinch of unease in his stomach.

In truth, no setting could have made this conversation a simple one. Mithrim’s forge is small and dark and dusty, and Curufin’s particular idea of order is illegible to an untrained, un-Feanorian eye. Such gloom and confusion layer doubt on existing doubt, but Fingon has stood his ground thus far, based on the only insight he has. That is: his firm belief that Maedhros’ brothers desire him to be strong again. They are all, in their own way, as horrified by what the loss of a hand means for battle as they are by what the loss of a hand means to its owner. How much more, the loss of a straight and well-formed leg?

As such, Fingon brought his notes and simple sketches, and explained what he had in mind. It will require a pin—perhaps two—thrust through to the femur. These pins will hold the bone in place so that the two fragments can fuse together properly.

At his question, his cousin’s crooked smile disappears. “Of course I can do it,” Curufin says. “Whether Maedhros will let us have at it is, I suppose, another question entirely.”

He turns half away, and Fingon is struck, as if for the first time, by how this cousin of his has changed. When he last knew him, or thought he did, he was a wisp of a boy with inky hair and a sharp, unfriendly gaze. He was the most Feanorian of the Feanorians, perhaps.

(In those years, too, Fingon had wanted to believe that Maedhros was the least like his family. He no longer considers them through the same lens, but even setting aside the question and that manner of asking, it cannot prevent him from understanding better and more terribly how fiercely entwined they are with their family name.)

(Melkor Bauglir must have understood that well, when he ordered it carved in Maedhros’ breast.)

The Curufin of the present bears more resemblance than ever to his dead father. He has listened to Fingon’s plainspoken request as if he can hear only the desperation threaded beneath it. All the while, he has not ceased to work with his hands. Till now, he has not even offered a polite interruption—a nod, a hum of understanding, something to calm Fingon’s nerves.

Fingon tries to calm his own nerves. He says, lowering his voice, “Will you help me to help him?”

“Yes,” says Curufin, without hesitation. “Yes, I’d be cruel not to mend my brother’s leg, wouldn’t I?”

Fingon does not answer the question. “How will you do it?”

“How will you hold him down and screw a pin into his thigh? Keep to your trade, cousin, and I’ll keep to mine.” The smile has made an unwelcome reappearance. It does not fade when Curufin tilts his head, his eyes still fixed on the narrow blade he is sharpening on his whetstone. “Although, in truth, there is some aid you could offer. I will need a selection of nails, and an animal trap. Any size will do—though something larger than beaver and smaller than bear would be best.”

Fingon is bemused. “An animal trap?”

“I do not forge everything out of my own sugar-plum fancies,” Curufin responds impatiently. “The hoops of a trap will provide a good model for the brace. Your sketches are utterly useless, of course. And as for nails, I will experiment with length and thickness so as to shape the right pin. Are you satisfied?”

“I will search the storerooms, if you wish,” Fingon agrees. “But wouldn’t you rather look yourself?”

“I have better things to do than poke around in Caranthir’s territory.” Curufin grins full now. “Part of our bargain, Fingon, is that you are the one to quarrel with our resident brooding hen.”

Fingon does not immediately return to the fort. The lake, silver-plated, beckons him like a will o’wisp. In truth, he has been a near-stranger to all outdoor places since Maedhros crossed the bridge on a stretcher. The lake, he has particularly avoided. Perhaps his distrust runs as deep as its waters.

(Another cage, though its whispering bars are nothing more than mud-rooted cattails.)

Today, however, he must return to the scene of heartbreak and salvation that he did not even witness. He must imagine Maedhros and Maglor, here without him, finding each other without him, and see them locked in each other’s arms. He must imagine them dying, as if he has not watched Maedhros die and spring back to life so many times in the last month and more.

With the mud sucking at his boots, Fingon stands with his hands in his pockets. The queer ache in his chest, a thing best called memory, gapes and expands until he feels as if he is crouching within the wound of himself. He must tamp it down, must suture it shut.

He must remember more than happiness lost; he must remember his duty. Surely, Providence laid the path between the Fingon on this lakeshore, and the Fingon of long ago who set out to study medicine. If Providence is all-knowing, then it was known that Fingon would learn his trade well enough to maim his cousin. To set him free.

Free. He shivers, and admits as he once would have in the shadowy closeness of a confessional, that he is afraid.

“I am afraid,” he says aloud, “That you hate me for what I have done. What I will do.”

There is silence from the water; not even a duck rising up with a cacophonous beating of wings.

The man who almost drowned here is gone.

The shirt is too stained to be worn again without grisly effect, but clean enough to be used for bandages. Fingon pauses with his shears set to the cloth, and reconsiders. Then he half-turns to look at Maedhros, who is watching him with his hand and his bare stump resting on his knees.

They have had a tiring half-hour together, while Fingon examined the burn-sealed wrist for any signs of infection or irritation, due to the touch of lake-water.

“What is it?” Maedhros asks.

“This shirt,” Fingon says, carrying it to him. “I was going to rag it. But now—I wonder if it might not be better for you to practice.”

“Practice?” Maedhros is so capable of making one question one’s very deepest convictions with a mere twist of his eyebrows. It is a habit Fingon must be grateful to not see more often deployed.

“Yes,” he answers steadily, resisting the arched challenge. “Practice. With buttons.”

“It’s a small task,” Maedhros says.

“It’s not your only assignment.” Fingon ought to check himself, perhaps, before a schoolmaster tone overtakes him. But he is all nerves today, and when he is nervous, he talks. “Your left hand can do just as much, you know, as the other. But it will have to be trained.”

“Trained.” Maedhros’s repetition is neither encouraging nor skeptical. It is merely—flat.

Fingon nods, scrambling for examples to demonstrate the practicality of his scheme. “Buttons. Holding a pen. You’ve already done wonders with a spoon.” His smile does not elicit one in return. “All right. I’ve been too kind. I shouldn’t have said wonders. You’re passable with a spoon, Maitimo.”

Maedhros smiles then, but he drops his eyes. Fingon sits, watching as Maedhros runs his fingers over the linen folds. At last, he finds a button, and dutifully catches its warped metal edge with his thumb and forefinger. His stump, he hides in the billows of cloth. Fingon, who steels himself out of necessity when examining it, is rather grateful. It is, plainly put, a hideous thing. The healing flesh still shines savagely pink. Due to the method of amputation, it is also uneven and sunken in the places where the terminus of the bone does not pull the scar tissue taut.

All the ugly colour will fade, with time, but that is cold comfort. Fingon cannot take refuge in his own deeds.

“My hand is very stupid,” Maedhros says, after a moment. The buttons on this shirt are small. “Do all your assignments take that into consideration, Fingon?”

It is not a need for sleep that presses heavily against Fingon’s brow. It is the knowledge of his task, his assignment, and how he must find the proper words to thread the needle eye of hope and future. He says, “I suppose even Maglor’s hands were very stupid on the harp, once.”

“Why did you never learn the harp?” Maedhros inquires, glancing sharply up from his button, then down again. “You always tried to match him with the fiddle.”

That isn’t true. “Maybe your right hand was Maglor,” Fingon ventures. “And I am your left. Enough to scrape out a tune or two, though without genius.” He pauses. “Enough to hold a gun again, in time.”

A little silence follows. Maedhros does not finish with the button. Fingon does not remember exactly when he stopped knowing his cousin. It crept up on him gradually; that is the strange thing. It was not the year and more of separation that did it. Nor, even, was it the violent meeting on the Mountain. Not altogether.

Not at the time. But Fingon is a doctor: he knows how wounds can fester. And they were wounded, against each other. They were wounded, and the wounds were not so much mended as they were overwritten in fresh blood. Fingon’s tongue cleaves in his mouth.

“It would be pleasing,” Maedhros says at last, in a murmur, “To be useful again.”

That stings Fingon more than any mocking comparison to Maglor could. “We don’t only want you for usefulness’ sake,” he says. His father would manage this better. “We want you for yourself.”

“Interesting idea, that,” Maedhros answers. “For I don’t know much what self I am anymore. Perhaps you will have to hold up a glass for me, Fingon, and tell me all about it.”

A diversion is in order. “They needn’t all be for dexterity,” he says, fumbling in his breast pocket. There are sketches in his little book that he does not want Maedhros to see—not yet—and so he tore out the one page he intended to show him. “Your exercises. There is much that you can do to strengthen your arms. Both of them. And all your muscles, in time.”

“At least I still have two arms,” Maedhros says. “Or most of two arms. Devilishly useful appendage, the hand, when one is in short supply. Now if you’d asked me long ago, Fingon, what I’d most prefer—to lose a hand or a foot—I suppose I would have said a hand. I suppose I would have thought it a lark of a question.”

Fingon spreads the crumpled paper on his knee. “No,” he says, keeping his eyes carefully fixed on it. “No, I don’t think you would have.”

“There.” Maedhros shifts restlessly under his heavy layer of blankets. Fingon is still erring on the side of cautious warmth. “You are telling me about myself. Go on. There’s a lecture coming. A good, dear little cano lecture about how I ought to be a better man than I look, now, instead of looking a better man than I am.”

Fingon wonders what tenderness would remain between them if he scraped to the bone for it. If he broke down in tears. If he spoke for himself.

But he is a man, not a child. It is not time for weeping, and he cannot only speak for himself.

“You know,” he says, “That we were all very afraid for you. Not angry. Afraid. To think we’d come so far, only to lose you.”

“Now, now,” whispers Maedhros, before his voice comes back to him in full lilting force. “You recollect, I’m sure, that I’ve always been a lazy gadabout. If I wanted the everlasting dark, I’d have gone for a method a mite closer to hand.” He smirks at his grisly pun.

Fingon is struck by the grim implication. “Such as?”

“Tell you all my secrets, shall I? That would spoil the fun. And you were lecturing.”

Fingon picks up the paper and hands it over. “Rough sketches,” he says. “For you to look at while I lecture.”

It is true, he is no artist. He has done more with lines and angles than anything else, showing how the wrists and elbows might be moved. Maedhros scrutinizes the drawings, worrying his lower lip as usual.

Fingon says, “And I didn’t mean afraid of that, just now. Your body is still weak, that is all. Understandably weak.”

“Perhaps it’s because I have a prominent center of veneration, and nothing at present to venerate,” Maedhros says, folding the page over carefully with a turn of his fingers.

“What?” Fingon is taken aback.

There is a little glint in Maedhros’ eyes that is more cheek than fever. Or, what passes for cheek with him these days. “Didn’t I tell you? Bauglir was a phrenologist.”

Fingon knows that, of course, though it did not occur to him now that Maedhros would. Perhaps he should assume that all knowledge he or his father or Uncle Feanor, God rest his ungrateful and ungracious soul, had of Melkor Bauglir belongs to Maedhros now.

It is, after all, the same man who managed his business affairs unscrupulously, who spoke with sneering disdain of the poor and sickly, who was not brought to any lasting justice.

Merely because some of his wrongdoings were more accepted by polite society does not erase them, nor divorce his iniquitous propensities from his inmost being. He is not two men: one of newspaper-printed repute and the other of mythic proportion. He is, at all times, a torturer. A murderer.

“It is a cruel, false science,” is what Fingon says.

Maedhros does not ask him if he remembers the exhibition. It feels like an eon ago. Instead, he continues in the same flippant manner, “He made a thorough study of my skull, after he had me plucked and dressed, so to speak. Told me all manner of unpleasantries about my character, predicated thereupon. Some of them were even true. That’s what galls.”

They have had shades of this conversation before, but Fingon felt less guilty for those shades. He was then living out the last comfortable lie he could.

The lie of healer, and no harm.

“I cannot pretend,” he says, “That there is a shred of truth, or a speck of amusement, in what that man said or did to you. That he was a man, and not a wholly soulless monster—that is the worst crime there is.”

“But don’t you agree,” Maedhros presses, “That I need something—someone—to worship?”

“That’s true of everyone,” Fingon says. “It has nothing to do with the shape of your skull. Or its thickness.”

The last was another feeble attempt at jest, but Maedhros neither laughs nor looks offended. Instead, his gaze softens. He picks up the shirt again, laying it over his lap. The shawls around his shoulders slip a little, revealing the scarred column of his throat. Fingon does not rush to adjust them. He thinks that such an effort would be…less than welcome, at the moment.

“How are my brothers faring?” Maedhros asks. “Honestly.”

A truce, reached in a war that Fingon did not want to believe he was fighting.

“It was a good thought,” he answers, “To have Maglor look out for Amras.”

“How did you—”

“He told me,” Fingon says. “That he thought you were feeling more yourself, to have minded Amras’ needs like that. I think it pleased him.” He gentles his voice—and through it, his cousin—as best he can. “I do not think,” he says, “That Maglor is in any danger, now.”

Maedhros is quiet.

“Celegorm and Curufin will not tell me whether or not they are well.” Fingon shrugs. Maedhros won’t expect more from him on the subject of those two. “But Aredhel attends to them. And she has the best head out of our family.”

“Women always have the best heads.” Maedhros has managed one button, and turns to another. He is a little slower at it than Fingon might have expected, but of course, Fingon will not say so. “What about Caranthir? Can’t forget him.”

“Who do you think prepared every hot brick for your bed?” Fingon asks. It imperative that he does not permit himself to miss the fearful, fevered invalid of a few days ago.

It is difficult, because that invalid needed him. This weary, mending frame does not want to need him—at least not wholly.

Maedhros is saying, “I knew that,” and Fingon perceives the offended air he expected a moment ago. “They’ve all been in to visit,” Maedhros adds, as if Fingon had doubted it.

In point of fact, Fingon did not know that Celegorm or Curufin had come, but again, he knew little of their general whereabouts.

Truth comes to roost in his thoughts. You were with Curufin this morning.

He chases away the memory, but another takes its place. The device tacked deep into the rockface. The blood running down, and his first understanding. His swift decision; his swift act. That is the Fingon whom he must unbury, for what is yet to come.

Thus convicted, he realizes that he cannot remain here, indulging his cousinly affections instead of circulating among his other patients. Such pastimes are dangerous when a secret is in the air.

If he stays overlong, today, he will risk unburying himself and his swiftness and the many other sketches in his book too soon.

“I have a few errands to run,” he says, rising. “I’ll send Gwindor in to sit with you, if you’d like. Or Caranthir.”

“You could send them both,” Maedhros suggests. “And let the feathers fly.” His eyes follow Fingon’s movements, even to the reclamation of the folded page. Fingon sets it on the little table that has been drawn up to Maedhros’ left side, now that he is better able to feed himself from a well-balanced bowl. “Keep looking at this, Maitimo,” he urges, and then departs.

Each day that Maedhros is well enough to posture, he schemes anew. Fingon does not like to view his cousin through such a lens, but it is undeniable. Today it was phrenology, and every attempt to keep the conversation away from a future of health and meaning. Fingon should be used to it by now, but it is so different even from the villainy he blackly conjured in the prairie cold.

In his frozen thoughts, the Maedhros who betrayed him was still kind.

It will have to be done very plainly and simply, Fingon tells himself. There is no need for further counsel; the only person who could tell him more about the sad business of Maedhros’ leg is Gwindor, and Fingon does not want Gwindor’s advice on how to speak to Maedhros when the topic of conversation is strictly Fingon’s area of expertise. Anyway, Olorin always said that the best possible guide was in oneself.  

After leaving Maedhros, he attends to all his duties, not only to the secret errand for Curufin that most plagues his mind. If he is to be his own best guide, he must be well-fed on the bread of knowledge and practice. Opportunities to seek such sustenance surround him. Blood and bone, illness and injury—wherever these are, Fingon must choose to be.

Fingon must also choose to be grateful, though in truth, he never dreamt that his life would be so circumscribed. He never dreamt that his rounds would mean only walking from one room to another, talking and eating with the same people, wearying and suffering in the same quiet ways unless a sudden burst of fear or violence upended order.

In truth, he once thought that he would be too rewarded by life to think of ingratitude.

But today there are some improvements among Mithrim’s wounded for which gratitude comes easily. He determines that Stokes no longer needs a bandage for his head, and that Abe Phillips’ stitches can be removed. Turgon’s arm is still angry and sore, rather like its owner. Fingon does not raise the subject of Maedhros—or of any of his cousins—with Turgon, today. Turgon swears a little at him while Fingon checks the wound, Fingon scolds him, and their conversation is comfortable thereafter.

“If you do not strain it,” Fingon says, of the arm, “It should be much improved within the week. But I mean it, Turgon. Your wall will keep without you fussing over it.”

“Fuss over yourself,” says Turgon.

Fingon smiles, as he is expected to, and plucks up the old bandage from the floor where it fell.

The first round of supper is beginning, but Fingon’s dinner was late. He is not hungry now. He brings a basket of soiled linen, ready for boiling, to the cauldron over the yard’s firepit. In the lantern light, Wachiwi is hacking logs to “chips” for easy burning.

“You look as if you’d scare at the sight of your own shadow,” she says. “Not that you’ve a shadow in the dark. How have you slept lately?”

Fingon sets the basket down and begins to lift the bloody bandages into the bubbling water. “Same as usual. Why do you ask now?”

“I wouldn’t ask you before them,” she says, gesturing at the bandages. “They wouldn’t trust a doctor who has not slept.”

“Thank you for your forbearance, then,” Fingon says awkwardly. The smell of old blood, strengthened by hot water, is unpleasant. He knows Wachiwi is watching him, with a gaze rather like Aredhel’s, at least in sharpness.

Or maybe not. Not all women are like sisters.

Aredhel herself finds him the next day, gathering nails in the storeroom, sorting through traps. She wants fiercely to be of aid to him, to be of comfort. He scarcely remembers what she says in inquiry, or what he says to fend her off. She looks like their mother. Like Argon. Her concern is an accusation by nature of its very sincerity. Fingon is not the gentle brother she imagines. Not the perfect doctor she and Turgon and Father, against all odds, believe him to be. Fingon is not Finrod’s good and steady man.

He is not even Maedhros’ savior anymore.  

“Will these do?” he demands, dropping the nails on Curufin’s bench, along with the beaver trap.

Curufin clasps his hands behind his back and stoops forward, examining the offerings as a raptor might examine a nest of field-mice.

“I’ve some light steel,” he says. “Only a little, but it should be beaten thin and pliable. This nail here might be the right width. Rest are rubbish. Well, I’m sure you did the best you could, Fingon.”

“Do you need anything else?”

Curufin tips his chin and his sharp nose up, as if he is not a bird after all but a black-eared fox, catching Fingon’s nervous scent. “What’s the hurry?”

“I am going to speak to Maedhros tonight, unless you require further delay,” Fingon answers. His voice is level. His palms are slick with sweat. “Every day that passes unnecessarily is a wasted one. And this will be surgery, after all. It will require planning. Planning that involves his…consent.”

Curufin contemplates this. “It was his run, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“His dash to the lake. You didn’t think he could do that sort of thing anymore.”

Fingon answers, “I would have told him not to try.”

“Ah. So you hate Maglor, do you? Well, that’s a common enough ailment in these parts.”

Fingon says nothing.

Curufin laughs. Then he wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “So, Maedhros pulled on the reins, eh? And now you’re changing out the bit for a harsher one before he ruins himself completely. What? Don’t look so affronted. Horses have to learn how to run. And they’re rubbish at looking after themselves. You’ve ever had one cast?”

“No.”

“It’s a common trouble. They lie down, or roll over, or the like, with their legs against a wall.” He points the fingers of one hand against the flat of the other, demonstrating. “And then if you don’t get them up again, they aren’t getting up. Blood’ll pool in their lungs and they’ll die. Great, dumb beasts.” He scoffs. “You think I only know metalwork? I was shoeing ‘em at nine.”

Sometimes Fingon wants to strike Curufin, more than the rest, for pretending that Fingon is a stranger to their family history. He decides not to point out that he spent many weeks at Formenos farm, cast horses or no. “When will you be finished with the brace?”

“Two days. So. Talk to him tonight. Give him time to think it over, feet against the wall. Then get him up.”

Fingon leaves as quickly as he can, without looking as if he is running.  

Chapter Text

The dull, prideful boy Fingon had been in his youth had been wont to concoct half a dozen safeguards against total failure. His logic, if it could be called so, proceeded thus: If he was not charming, he would be knowledgeable. If he was not skilled in the arts, he would be righteous. If he was not a very good brother, he would be a good doctor.

But he had failed as a doctor. As a brother. Little Argon was rotting, and his mother was rotting, and what safety was there in any other hidey-hole, save the terribly dear one he had followed to ruin before? So he found himself at the end of his journey—at the end of all their journeys. After everything, Father and Turgon and Aredhel had nothing but each other, but Fingon could still be a cousin who forgave—a brother made new, as Gwindor had said, during their descent from the mountain hell.

Now that was gone. In his misspent youth, Fingon had fought to claim that Maedhros was not Feanor. He had neglected to consider, fully, that Maedhros was still Maedhros—

And that he might not know Maedhros at all.

In the dusky hall, Estrela hastens away from him, her head bowed. Fingon cannot begin to countenance the multiplicity of his shames. He turns, because the body can move more swiftly than the mind in times such as these, and sets his hand on the door.

Then he opens the door. Then he passes through it. Then he sees how Maedhros has fallen back against the pillows, his head canted to the window, his features ghastly with too many kinds of pain to name. After death, the soul is gone. The body loses what it was that gave it power, and feeling, and grief. After death, these exist outside it, in the hearts of other people. But all of Maedhros is trapped within.

Fingon should look his cousin in the eyes, should peer into the cage of his body. Fingon should be sorry.

But as he has both hands to clench at his sides, both feet to stand firmly and tall, he is strong enough to speak without mercy, just once more.

“Maedhros,” he says. “I shall leave you now. I shall ask for my father to come here, that you may not be alone.” He had considered giving Maedhros a choice of companion, for an instant, but all such choices are without meaning, now. “We have both said a good deal,” he continues, though Maedhros gives him no sign that he has heard, and indeed, reveals nothing beyond his blank, consuming pain and the pulse throbbing in his neck. “A good deal,” Fingon rejoins. “And I—”

Do not punish him, says Finrod, in memory. But it is too late for that. “I cannot unsay what you would most wish,” Fingon continues. He thinks that this, more than anything, will seem to him like a dream later—whenever later is. Whenever he is through with weeping, or raging, or staring coldly at a cold sky.

Maybe his heart is as lost to him as his cousin. Maybe it is also himself whom Fingon did not know.

“I will return in a day’s time,” Fingon decides, aloud. “That we may speak again about the surgery, and how and when it shall be done. I cannot give you more time than that. And Maedhros—” Oh, how the child-specters of themselves cry out, from the corners of this cramped room! How those selves desire that their far-flung dreams be returned to them!

“If this is what you cannot forgive,” Fingon says, heavy with the certainty that he shall not change his path, this time, “So be it.”

Maedhros keeps silent. Whether that is stubbornness, or weariness, or a desire to stifle further displays of horrible feeling, Fingon no longer has the right to ask.

He leaves the room quietly, though the fastened latch of the door rings in his ears like a gunshot. He must find his father, as he promised, and speak to him alone. Turgon cannot hear what Fingon has to say, this time, however few the words. Aredhel and Finrod cannot try to guide him by clear-sighted counsel. Even the clear-sighted see only what they want to see.

In the entrance of the great hall, he finds that his father is seated by the fire, Frog on his knee. The child does not much resemble Fingon or his siblings, save for his black cap of hair. Still, there are shades of the past to be seen here.

In another, kinder world, it might have been Argon, perched just there.

Haven’t you wondered, how we managed to track you so far? How we followed your wagons west? It was easy; at every town, all I had to do was seek out the taverns, and the saloons, and the—the houses of ill repute, in all their guises. I had only to find women I could ask, in those places.

Argon was growing tall, and strong, and rather wise, before he died. Fingon had begun to confide in him. To take an interest in his interests. To feel a little guilty over the absent older brother he had been, in recent years, and to have hope born of Argon’s swiftness in forgiving Fingon’s oversights. Yes, Argon was wise, and he was vibrant in the same way as Mama was: one had to look at them or speak to them long, to understand them.

One needed, in a word, time.

That is how Argon died. Your women told Bauglir’s men where we were, and those men riled up a posse to lie in wait for us on the road out of town; said it was justice for someone you killed.

For Argon, he struck those blows. For Argon, dead and gone and hemorrhaging under Fingon’s very hands, he had shamed an invalid and called it justice. At the death itself, Fingon had not been able to close the ruined breast, even while his father begged him to. When Fingolfin’s wretched sobs had faded—when Fingon’s returned, along with the breath in his throat—they had not been able to cast soil on a dignified grave, either. Thus, today, he cast blame, and vengeance. These fell as heavy as stones.

Is he glad for that? Did he honor his brother?

Shuddering away the memory of the sight and sounds of Maedhros, Fingon returns his mind to his errand. He has to trust his feet again, to carry him forward while his thoughts linger achingly behind. Someone greets him as he walks, but whether it is cousin or comrade, everybody is used to Fingon’s bouts of oblivion.

Everyone believes that he is a doctor, with a higher purpose in mind—and always with a place to be.

Amber glows the fire; dark race the shadows along the lines of the roof. This was never the life that Fingon imagined, comfortable city-son that he was born to be. Though he’d chosen plain linen and grisly tasks, he hadn’t chosen inescapable hardship. Who would?

Certainly, he never meant to choose this wound in his heart.

“Father,” says Fingon, when Fingolfin is close enough to hear and see him approach.

“Fingon!” Father’s knee is jittering ever so slightly, letting Frog jolt as if he is astride a horse. “How goes it?”

“Hello, you,” says Frog, with what could be disdain, or disinterest, or grudging approval. Fingon could never read children’s moods so well as Mae—

“Father,” he says again. “I must speak with you. Alone?”

Fingolfin rises, letting Frog slide slowly down to the floor while keeping hold of his hands. “Frog, my boy,” he says, his eyes still on Fingon’s, still loving his son as his son does not deserve—“You must go and find Sticks. Can you do that, for me?”

“Is it time?” Frog asks Fingon.

“Time?”

“Strela said we might see Russandol.”

Fingon shakes his head. He has an answer ready, or he thought he did. He’s tired, tonight. No visitors. But the words won’t come.

“Perhaps another time,” Father says, in his gentle way. “I must speak to Fingon now, Frog. We shall have to renew our conversation later.”

Frog concedes and bounds off, moccasins slapping. Nevertheless, even with his inquisitive little features gone, Fingon has the dreadful, crawling feeling that someone is watching. Finrod, perhaps, seeing with a glance how guilty Fingon is of disregarding his sound advice. Or maybe one of Maedhros’ brothers lurks near, ready to pounce.

“Would some fresh air do you good?” Father inquires, gesturing towards the door. His eyes are searching and grave. But Fingon shakes his head. He must not run away, no matter how scrutinized he feels in this busy room.

“I needn’t speak to you long,” he says. “I only—I would beg a favor, Father. One I haven’t earned.”

“Name it,” Father says.

“Will you go and sit with Maedhros? He should not be alone, just now. And I…I am no comfort to him.” Fingon swallows, trying without avail to dispel the lump in his throat. “Indeed, I am the opposite of comfort. The precise opposite.”

Father’s gaze shifts for an instant—to the right, then to the left—taking in the scattered throng just as Fingon had. “What passed between you?” he asks, when he seems satisfied that nobody is overlistening to their conversation.

Fingon must not run away from the throng, and he must not shirk before his father. “I tried to explain to him why the procedure to mend his crooked leg is necessary… why it is urgent, now.”

“You must break it again?”

But of course. He tried to work up the courage to tell Father, and then fell short because Turgon was there. Fingon nods. “It must be rebroken, yes, but also realigned through an incision. Then a brace—Curufin is building a brace—”

“A brace to keep it straight?”

“Yes. It will require a pin—perhaps several—screwed into his flesh to hold it so.”

“Ah, me,” Father says. “Poor boy.”

Poor boy—yes, the crumpled figure in the bed, breathing hard, hiding his face or showing it in ravaged fury. Poor boy, whose cruel words still sting like the lash of a whip driving at Fingon’s memory. He cannot say what cruel words he has heard to anybody. That would be betrayal, even if—even if he and Maedhros are no longer friends.

Afraid of you! Whatever for? What is the worst you could do to me? Tie me down hand and foot—gag me—break my bones—cut me open? All that, and still leave me living to endure beyond enduring? There is nothing you can do to me now, that I have not endured already. Do not flatter yourself, cousin.

“He became very angry,” Fingon says, in a low voice. “And I—I did not keep my temper in check. He blamed me for a good deal, and I him.”

I am sorry to hear it, Father will say, disappointment shading his face like an old picture of a time gone by, of a time when his not-brother Feanor could crush his heart with a few sly insults. Fingon stands firm, readying himself for reprimand.

He can bear it—he can bear anything—so long as Father does not ask him if Maedhros wanted to die on the mountain.

That is the secret Fingon shall take to his grave.

“I shall go to him at once,” Father says, laying a hand on Fingon’s tense right arm. “No doubt it was difficult for you both.”

Fingon nods. To say anything else will be to say too much.

“I have already had supper,” Father says, patting his breast pocket for his spectacles. “Your sister always makes sure of that. So I will be very content to sit beside him for a while, at least until a more suitable companion comes along. I do not—I do not suppose that the children ought to visit, tonight?”

“No,” says Fingon. Then—“Thank you, Father.”

“No trouble at all,” Father assures him. “Now—you ought to have some supper and some rest. How soon will you perform the procedure? You must be sharp for it.”

“Two days. Three at most.”

When Father is gone, Fingon slinks off to force a little food down as best he can. He catches Finrod’s eyes across the hall and quails under them. Though the food is more welcome than he expected, sleep feels impossibly remote. Better to take a watch, and escape both sleep and any inquisitors, then.

Wrapped in his coat, he paces the lowland by the lake and the river. The babbling voice of the water might be heard to whisper comforts to some ears, but it has only accusations to Fingon. He should never have mingled his grief with his duty; his anger with his duty.

Finrod was right.

Yet Fingon is still angry. Still shaking with the remembrance of Argon’s hot blood, his mother’s cold hands. He had been too cold himself to mourn her. His eyes kept falling shut before the sight of her still face, and tears were, of course, a danger.

One can blame Maedhros, cannot one, without wanting him starved and maimed? One can wish his good without twisting good and evil together like Bauglir—or Feanor?

With a gun in his hand, Fingon weeps for a long time. The other sentry has stayed by the bridge, and so Fingon does not fear detection by her.

The watch goes quickly, though, since his mind is roiling. He is startled when Wachiwi comes to relieve him.

“Thank you,” he says awkwardly, realizing only after he has spoken that she is not doing him a personal favor, but rather, is abiding by the rules of Mithrim. “I—I’ll take a second shift.”

“Fingon.” She tilts her head at him. “I say it again and again. You need sleep.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. See, you forget. You are tired.”

“I am thinking,” he says. It is almost pleasant to speak to someone who is likely not thinking of Maedhros, but then again, what would Wachiwi think of him if she knew how he failed as a doctor today?

“Very well. Then I shall take the watch with you. So you do not fall in the lake.”

He opens his mouth to thank her again, but to assure her that he does not want company. Wachiwi does not give him the chance, however. She turns her back and strides off, pacing the length of the riverbank with long, deliberate strides.

Fingon stays for half the watch before he accepts defeat and retreats. He is wondering, as he climbs the hill, if a full day was too long to give Maedhros to think.

After all, his physician’s resolve on that point—on what must be done—is not shaken.

The day’s for you, you fool, a specter of Olorin suggests. Collect your senses. Control your temper. An invalid will stew and ruminate whatever you do.

Thus, when morning comes, and with it no message or request from the sickroom, Fingon keeps away. Gwindor spent the night, and Maglor and Caranthir have gone to visit in the morning.

“I conveyed your dastardly scheme to my brothers,” Curufin says, appearing at Fingon’s elbow on cat-quiet feet. “There’s one trouble saved you, doctor.”

Fingon should likely be grateful for the manner of conveyance, if only because Celegorm has not come to kill him yet.

“Very good,” is what he says. “And your work? How goes it?”

“That demon contraption? A few more hours today will finish the first make.”

“The first make?”

“Well, I’ll need to fit it to his leg, or your plan crumbles like a house of cards.”

Fingon’s stomach turns. “Of course.”

“Afternoon should do—get some luncheon into him, but not too much, lest the sight of it set him spewing.” Curufin chooses this moment for one of his unsavory grins. “Don’t worry. It won’t be painful. I’ve decided on three pins for maximum stability, but those come later.”

“Afternoon,” Fingon repeats. It is past nine o’clock, now, but the hours remaining in the morning seem to dwindle to nothing. He shall have to speak to Maedhros, again, before Curufin comes.

Curufin’s eyebrows lift a little, as if he has seen something on Fingon’s face that interests him, but he does not speak on it. He turns away and says, “Well, I’ll be off. Avoid Celegorm, if you can.”

Fingon heeds this counsel. He avoids his sister and brother, too, for good measure. They know him too well, and his sins too little.

Finrod manages to find him, though. Fingon is in the kitchen, working with wild comfrey and aloe, both of which are good for quieting the brightness of scars.

“There you are,” Finrod says, the beads in his hair rattling faintly. “Thought you’d dug a hole under the fort and set up shop there.”

“No,” Fingon answers quietly. “I haven’t.”

“Good. Gwindor’s looking for you.”

“Gwindor?” This is a surprise. Or maybe not—maybe Gwindor, after his stint last night at Maedhros’ side, is as eager as Celegorm to beat his disapproval into Fingon’s face. Still, Fingon feels he would almost prefer that to Finrod’s keen observation.

“Yes,” Finrod says. He is looking a little strangely at Fingon—a little like Grandmother, truth be told, when she was watching the faultlines of their family form. “Yes, I believe he wishes to speak to you about our cousin.”

Fingon folds a square of calico small enough to stopper a glass bottle. Then he dusts his hands of fine comfrey hairs. “Where is he?”

“Turgon’s wall, last I saw.”

“Thank you,” Fingon says, ducking his head. He tries to move past Finrod to the door, but Finrod stops him.

“Fingon. I’m not going to ask.” Finrod smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not yet, anyway.”

Fingon nods. A world of failure, no doubt, can be read upon his face.

Gwindor isn’t working when Fingon finds him, though his hands, gripping his opposite elbows, are dusted with soil. He is looking out over the bright body of the hill and the tree-lines beyond it. Fingon is suddenly struck by the realization that such stillness must be a rare privilege, for one of Gwindor’s experience. Even were it not for his own consternation, his own near-certainty that the man shall shout at him, he would be loath to intrude.

But Gwindor is also a canny sort, quick to recognize when he is being observed. He turns his head at Fingon’s approach and says, “Hullo, there. Walk with me?”

“Of course,” says Fingon, and falls into step beside him.

They walk in silence down the hill, below the stables. Gwindor eyes the lake with some suspicion, and so they halt at least a dozen yards before its shore.

Fingon readies himself for harsh words, or a blow.

“Maedhros thinks you’re angry with him,” Gwindor says quietly. “Is that so?”

Fingon’s skin prickles. The question comes as a surprise, but not a welcome one. He would give much to be able to say no.

“It’s not so simple,” he answers. “It—yes, I am afraid that we have exchanged heated words that raised the painful past between us. I am angry, and I am sorry, but that does not…Gwindor, if you have any faith in me at all, you must know that I would not perform a surgery to hurt or punish him. It is necessary, if—”

“If he is to walk again,” Gwindor finishes. “Aye, I know it. I didn’t come to scold. Only—Lord, I’ve had half-a-dozen of these conversations if I’ve had one. You, Finrod, Celegorm…seems I’m always blabbing to you under the open sky, trying to feed you bits and pieces of what I know of him. If it seems a mite presumptuous, I’m sorry. But it would be wrong to let you only know him as an invalid.”

“I knew him before.”

“Before—before. Begging your pardon, lad. I don’t know if that much matters, now.”

Fingon stares at the ground. “Maedhros certainly thinks it doesn’t.”

Gwindor makes faint huffing sound. “He’s scared out of his wits. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen him so. He was in better spirits after a flogging.”

“Oh, God,” Fingon sputters, feeling, if possible, worse. “So I’ve tortured him.”

Gwindor reaches out as if to touch his arm, then draws his hand back, aborting the movement. “I didn’t—listen here. I sought you out again, in hopes that you’ll be more needful of the information than Finrod was, and more willing to hear it than Celegorm was. I’ve been trying to paint you all a cautious picture, see? Trying not to betray his confidence, while offering what I can…but I must go bolder. I’ll tell you the whole of it, Fingon. The whole that I can remember.”

Fingon’s heart beats fast. “Why? Why all of it?”

That’s it: he himself is afraid. He doesn’t want to know.

“Because that’s who your cousin is, now,” Gwindor says shrewdly, not letting him off. Not asking him to lead, as he did when they rescued Maedhros. Asking him instead to stand firm.

Fingon finds his resolve.

“Very well,” he says. “Tell me the whole of it. But let us walk while we do it, Gwindor. I am more inclined to pace, at times like these.”

Gwindor nods, and they set off towards the field. Then he begins to talk, and Fingon clenches his teeth tightly to keep from answering, from interrupting, from crying out.

“When he first came to us,” Gwindor says, “He was dressed like a slave—cast-offs, straw-soled shoes, just as you found—but they’d muzzled him in steel. I’d never seen such a thing afore. It covered his mouth, fastened behind his head…and there was a bit under his tongue, hurting him. Bauglir had it made for him, I believe. A punishment for biting. That’s just one taste, lad, of the kind of treatment that monster used him with. I know you’ve seen the scars. I know it’s hard, to understand what they mean all together. But it…there’s no denying that Bauglir was fascinated with Russandol. Maybe he fancied him in a way we can guess, maybe he didn’t. Doesn’t matter. He wanted to know every inch of him, body and soul, and I have to think that that’s what troubles Russandol more ‘n anything. There were times he was with us in the camp that he almost seemed…relieved. Glad to be treated like everybody else, even if that meant something brutal.”

Maedhros spoke of the muzzle. The rest has threaded its way into every double-edged blade of meaning that he has wielded with his words.

Fingon’s teeth catch the tip of his tongue.

Gwindor continues. “We were distrustful at first. I was no better than the rest. We would bully him. Strike him. Tell him to keep away from the women and the brats. There were…there were dreadful rumors about him, about where he’d come from and what he’d done for Bauglir. I shan’t dignify them further. But folks, even folks under the whip themselves, will talk.”

Gwindor has told him a little of this before. Told him about it after Maedhros had assured Fingon that Gwindor was never less than a good friend. But even building on this past knowledge, Fingon has nothing to offer, nothing to lift up in his own mind, that will pair the imagined pariah with the bright, beloved cousin of their city youth. Nothing, save for the dreadful words of yesterday.

“Then there was the fighting. It was a pleasure of Gothmog’s, and his underlings, to let us men have at each other, come nightfall. Work is done, and every bone is aching—how’d you like to drive your fist into another man’s teeth? That sort of thing. Russandol was an unlikely candidate for winning—mind you, this was before we saw what scars he bore, but he was a toothpick as always. Yet, he won. That’s the first time I couldn’t deny his fighting spirit.”

“He fought with—with the muzzle still in place?” Fingon forgets his vow of silence at last.

“No—no. Gothmog removed it, I think. Gothmog had a curious interest in Russandol, though it boiled into a hatred like none I’ve ever seen from the man. The thing you have to understand about Gothmog,” says Gwindor, carefully, “Is that he’s not easily offended. He’s a man of base interests and stone-cold efficiency. He’s not afraid of anything I know, save the wasting of his own time.”

Fingon says, “Just another in a collection of vile men.”

Gwindor shakes his head. “I fear Gothmog more’n Bauglir,” he says. “Though I don’t know what Russandol would choose. Anyway, Gothmog pitted me against Russandol, and I…I’m the one as first bruised his leg.” His face twists: the expression is a familiar one to Fingon, for it is regret. “I’m the one who began it. But he won anyway.”

“Did he?”

“Aye. And then Gothmog…Gothmog let him take a whip to me, five lashes, for a prize. Oh, we were hopping mad. My friends and I.”

Fingon’s mind races. “He—Maedhros—he whipped you?”

“Don’t blame him,” Gwindor says, almost sharply. “With Gothmog, it would be death to defy an order like that. And likelier death for me than him. That was the wonder of Russandol, even then. Even when we all maligned him. He didn’t want other men to suffer for him.”

Fingon’s heart yearns to thrill to such word, but his thoughts are haunted by the bridge.

“Perhaps he didn’t then,” he says, despite himself.

“You knew his father, didn’t you?” Gwindor demands, sharper still.

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Fingon, was he a good sort of man? Did he treat his sons right?”

My father used to make a game of putting needles beneath my fingernails. I was all of five years old. Did you know that?

“No,” says Fingon, a trifle breathlessly.

Gwindor nods. “So. I can’t tell you what to forgive, Fingon. I know Russandol hates himself for the part he played with all of you, but by my reckoning, the truest self he is sprang forth despite the brand and the knife and the lash. He never uttered a word against us. Never tried to put himself above us. Was kind to the children…saved the children, time and time again. I don’t care what he did in his life before. The man who joined us in the camp had been punished more than any rightful judge would deem just. That’s enough for me. Is that enough for you?”

“It’s not that simple,” Fingon says again, which is not like him at all. Not like—his old self.  

“Have it your way.” Gwindor shrugs crookedly. “Anyway. He tried to save one boy’s life—Haldar was his name—and couldn’t. But the deed alone cost Russandol dearly.” He seems to be struggling to find the words. “Haldar was angry on my account,” he says at last, his voice low. “He attacked Russandol in broad daylight because—because he was a loyal little fool, God rest him.”

Fingon asks, “What happened?” though he does not really want to know.

“Gothmog broke his neck, bare-handed.”

The ground rolls a little under Fingon’s feet. “You said you feared him,” he mutters.

“Aye,” Gwindor says. “I fear him. He didn’t like the ruckus. Russandol had tried to reason with Haldar, see, and an overseer had interrupted. Started beating Russandol black and blue—though that was not an uncommon occurrence. Those slugs hated him.” He ran a hand through his sun-bleached hair. “I’m telling it all wrong. Point is, Russandol was trying to keep the boy from harm, even though the boy wanted to take it out of him. Gothmog came upon a brawl, and he doesn’t—didn’t brook brawls of any kind.”

Fingon considers. They are down in the field, now, though keeping clear of Feanor’s grave. “Did he…did he have Russandol whipped for that?”

“Did he have him whipped? Lad, he did it himself, and not before he had him stripped for all of us to see, and left him scorching in the sun for an hour or more while he had his goddamn breakfast. Then he laid into him. Thirty strokes—I can’t uncount ‘em. Tore the flesh off his bones in spots. Kept going even after Russandol was blessedly unconscious. But here’s what I remember most, though the hell of it is nigh unforgettable altogether.” Gwindor stops short and turns, staring Fingon boldly in the eye. This is something he wants Fingon to hear above all else. “Your cousin didn’t scream.”

Fingon stays quiet.

“Didn’t scream, even though men twice his age, hardened on sailing ships, would have wept like babies. Lord knows I—” He swallows, and recollects himself, beginning to walk again. “Oh, he gasped and groaned a little in his throat—your body’ll do that for you whether you like it or not. But Russandol had decided he wasn’t giving Gothmog the satisfaction, and nothing would shake him. Gothmog didn’t like that much. I think that’s when his aggravation turned to outright hate.”

“It must have been dreadful,” says Fingon. Tears are pricking in his eyes, and he doesn’t want them to fall.

He doesn’t know what else he wants.

“We weren’t allowed to go near him for a day. That’s right. Blazing summer, and the boy hung there bleeding and burning till sundown. Broke Estrela’s heart—and mine. Yes, I was sorry for what I’d thought of him…sorrier still for what trouble I’d put in Haldar’s head. We got him down together, she and I, and then…” A shadow crosses Gwindor’s face. Fingon is too muddled, too heartsick, to know what to expect. He merely waits, following as Gwindor leads, in step and in speech.

Gwindor says,

“Then Bauglir came down from the Mountain.”

“What?” It is a warm enough day, for January in these parts, but Fingon feels cold.

“You’ve heard bits and pieces before, from me and Be—Estrela, I reckon. But not this.” Gwindor is, if possible, graver than he was before. “Yes, Bauglir came down and…and he offered him comfort, after a fashion. Ordered me to tend to his wounds properly, so that he wouldn’t die. You understand, Fingon, how important it was to Bauglir that Russandol didn’t die.”

Fingon would give much—no. Fingon would give anything not to know all that he knows now. Not to willingly learn more, and yet he walks beside this man who is, to him, half-brother—

“That is the root of it,” Fingon admits. “That is the root of…of my quarrel with Maitimo. He thinks I am like Bauglir, forcing him to remain here, through all my…all my ugly arts.”

Gwindor nods. “I know that’s what he thinks, lad. But I don’t think it.”

“Then why are you telling me all this?” Fingon demands, pushed to the point at last.

Gwindor doesn’t take offense. “I’m telling you that your cousin’s a fighter and a hero. I’m telling you that he held his pride in a way most men don’t—to hold in stock for the good of others. He’d kiss the overseers’ boots, if they bade him—and they did. He’d strip and show them his scars, if it would keep them from the women and children. But when he was wild with fever, and Bauglir came—when Bauglir offered to take him back to himself, he said no.”

Fingon lifts both hands to his face, trying not break down entirely. He rubs his eyes, and then combs his fingers through the crown of his hair, loosening the day’s braids. “If he’d disappointed Bauglir, somehow,” he says, “Then why did Bauglir still want him?”

“Same reason Gothmog was so furious about his silence,” Gwindor says, as if it should be obvious. “They wanted to win, and he wouldn’t let them. When he blew the forge to pieces, and ruined all his work…”

“His work?”

For the first time, Gwindor looks as if he’s said something he shouldn’t. “Can you take it like a man?” he asks, finally.

“Yes,” says Fingon, without hesitation.

“Russandol made fancy guns for Bauglir,” he says. “It was a bargain to keep the rest of us alive and in relative health.”

“Oh,” says Fingon. “Oh, well…well Uncle Feanor’s secrets don’t matter much to me, if that’s what you’re after.” But they would mean something to Curufin, and perhaps to the rest.

“And more than that,” Gwindor goes on, seemingly encouraged, “He wanted to look out for his brothers. Not that I knew it then—he never spoke of them, or of anything that could be used to hurt them—but he was frightfully worried over what Bauglir would do, once he was sick and tired of playing with the toys he had close at hand.”

“Russandol has always been clever with metalwork,” says Fingon, feeling rather stupid for saying it, but desiring to show that he has not wholly come to disdain his cousin.

“Russandol’s clever at everything,” returns Gwindor. “But he thinks himself a worthless fool.” He clears his throat. “He told me, you know,” he says. “That he wanted…what he wanted, when you found him.”

Fingon flinches. Overhead, the sun is very bright. It has burned the rough grass tangled under their feet to the color of sand. “He told you that he wanted to die?”

“Yes. But you know—we all know—it wasn’t him as tried to drown himself in the lake.”

“Of course not. In fact,” Fingon says bitterly, “It was very like my cousin Maglor, to try a thing like that.” He does not add what he most fears: that Maedhros’ survival, in the lake and after it, is not a flicker of hope at all. Rather, it could be a punishment of its own, for Fingon.

Would not the Maedhros of yesterday say as much? You kept me alive, against my will, and you will not be permitted to forget it.

Had not the Fingon of yesterday tried and failed to assure him that miserable life is better than eternal death?

(Does the Fingon of today still believe that?)

“There’s another quarrel I wasn’t present for,” Gwindor muses. “But they’ve mended it now, or pretended too, for Maglor’s sake.”

Fingon isn’t really thinking of Maglor. “Is there more I ought to know?” he asks, trying to be brave. “I’m to go to him, soon, even though I said I wouldn’t—Curufin needs to fit the brace to his leg, and that’s…I can’t imagine Maedhros will be glad over that.”

Gwindor considers him. The man always claims to be dull and slow, but Fingon has found him remarkably sharp in his own way. Not cunning like a Feanorian or minded for figures like Turgon, but—sharp. Used to a hard world.

“You should know that I lost him, too,” Gwindor tells him, finally. “When Mairon drug him away. I—he was coming to me, Fingon. And it wasn’t the first time. He fled the forge and made his way to camp, though it meant hoisting that twisted leg of his over the back of a horse.” The sigh that moves through Gwindor is a heavy one. “What I’m meaning by all this is: he wanted to live then, I think. After all the brands, and all the beatings, and even the crippling of ‘im. It’s whatever happened between my losing him and your finding him that took his…his light.”

“So there was light in him? When you knew him?” Fingon feels foolish and far away. A boy with a hamper of provisions, perhaps, trying to heal what he did not understand.

Gwindor smiles—a pained, creased thing, but a smile nonetheless. “Yes,” he says. “There was. He made me terrible fond of him, with his little jokes and well-intended lies. And more than that, more than anything I’ve told you yet—he was the first I’d ever known who saw a way out, then made it. Made it for us all—save himself.”

Fingon has nothing else to say. Gwindor has made him question his own anger, but he has no reason to doubt the profundity of Maedhros’. Fingon, not Gwindor, heard the words strike home. Fingon, not Gwindor, will be the one with the knife in hand, with the steel jaws ready to close around tender flesh.

It is no easy task, to doctor a man who wants death.

They return to the fort in short order. It is almost as if they have agreed by mutual thought, without another word passing between them, that Gwindor had said enough to soften Fingon’s judgment and prepare him for his duties.

No storm creeps up in the stiff, cool air behind them; no cries rise from the lake. All that divides Fingon from his near future is whatever war he carries inside him.

“I shall go to him now,” he says to Gwindor, at the fort’s outer gate. He speaks his purpose into being, thus. “I shall bring him his dinner, and concentrate on what we must do, without forcing him to thank me, or to understand me.” He extends a hand to Gwindor. After a brief pause, Gwindor takes and clasps it. “But I will thank you,” Fingon says. “For showing me…well, a good deal. Knowing this, I can be kinder than I was. Steadier.” It is his turn to smile, as brightly as he can. “And steadiness is very important, for a surgeon.”

“I wish you luck,” Gwindor says. “And I’ll—if you’ve room enough for a useless assistant such as myself, when the surgery is to be done, I’d like to attend. Not that I’m fine company, it’s just—he’s woken a good many times, when he’s in a bad way, with me at his side. Might be familiar.”

“Of course,” Fingon says. “Of course, Gwindor.”

Fingon readies himself for an accusation from his cousin that he has returned too early. He is met, instead, by Maedhros’ cool silence. Maedhros sees him first, sitting up in his bed, but he is not alone. Maglor is with him, reading aloud from a sheaf of papers. Something in the Gaelic tongue, Fingon recognizes. He never mastered it himself. He wonders if it is actually pleasant for Maedhros to hear it again, now, but that is one of a score of questions he cannot ask.

“Good morning,” he says, to both of them. Maglor’s glance is not unfriendly, and he returns the greeting.

“Fingon. Maitimo said you were busy.”

“I was.” Fingon is not brave enough to take a chair. “I came to see how you were faring, Maedhros, but I see that Maglor is keeping you company. And that you have eaten.” The dishes in his hands are superfluous now; just another mockery from the past.

Maedhros is still staring at him, unspeaking, but Fingon refuses to quail under that lance-keen gaze. “Curufin shall visit in a few hours,” he says, his tone much calmer than his pulse. “He has nearly finished the brace for your leg, but he needs to fit it before it can be used. That will keep us from repeating the source of the secondary injury—the crooked healing.”

“Oh,” Maglor interjects. Fingon has never before been grateful for Maglor’s interjections. “That is a relief. And the fitting itself shan’t hurt, shall it?”

“No,” says Fingon.

Maglor turns to Maedhros, seeming to realize only then that Maedhros has not said a word. “That’s a relief,” he says again. “Isn’t it, Maitimo?”

 “Cano,” Maedhros answers, “You know perfectly well that I cannot bear to have you present for the operation. So do not even speak of relief. Remember, we are pretending that there will be no pain to follow after.”

Maglor laughs quietly, at that. Fingon tastes bile in his throat.

“When you are up and dancing again,” Maglor is saying, “All the grisly details shall be a thing of the past. Fingon will make sure that it doesn’t even scar.”

“It will scar only a very little,” Fingon agrees. He wishes that he could gather some strength from the knowledge of Maedhros’ past strength, which Gwindor so painstakingly bestowed upon him. He wishes he could see here the man who did not scream, without praying that the laudanum and chloroform shall keep him from screaming this time, too.

Unlike all the rest who hurt him, Fingon does not want Maedhros’ screams. He only wants his leg to be serviceable again. Healed as a lost hand cannot.  

“Do you hear that?” Maglor’s voice passes through the haze of Fingon’s thoughts. “Only a very little.”

 Fingon cannot stay. The fitting and the procedure—those most occupy him now, rather than attempting to parse the depths of Maedhros’ grey eyes. There is the storm, and the cry of a drowning man.

It is enough.

“I’ll return with Curufin,” he promises. Then, because to address such words to Maedhros would seem a sin, he says to Maglor, “You seemed as if you were happy, just now. Please, return to your reading.”

Chapter Text

Fingon says his prayers at dawn, as is his custom. There is a peculiar peacefulness about a California winter, at least one hemmed in by grass-clad foothills and evergreen stands. A few waterbirds court the smooth surface of the lake, examining their reflections. Black squirrels rustle in the underbrush. There is little other sound, save the lived-in murmur of the fort and stables.

Fingon offers his rosary, then intercedes with his saints.

Faith is no longer the simple affair it was in childhood. He first stopped praying after Argon died, and kept up a fierce aversion to the act until he was revived in the dead of winter. New life brought with it a new sense of obligation. When he was well enough to think again, to learn again and fully that his mother was dead, guilt overcame him.

But maybe guilt is too small a word. Maybe penitence suits better, at least for a boy who once intended to serve God in holy priesthood.

Fingon, the not-priest, continues to pray.

He prayed on his quest for Maedhros, of course, and he has prayed at his cousin’s bedside in the weeks that have fled by thereafter.

He prays today that his hands will be steady.

There is less trouble from some quarters than might have been expected. All of Maedhros’ brothers are content, for one reason or another, to stay away. Celegorm has not been seen since the day before. Maglor concedes he has not the stomach for surgery. After submitting a few suggestions as to how to turn the sickroom bench into an operating table, Curufin reminded Fingon that his work was done. He said it was Fingon’s duty now to ensure that that work was not wasted.

As for those who remain, Caranthir and Amras, they do not often quarrel with Fingon.

Only Gwindor, Finrod, and Beren shall accompany Maedhros and his doctor through the valley of death. Estrela and the children will not be anywhere near the ugly business. Though Aredhel would have the stomach for it, Fingon would never ask her service in this regard. Turgon, of course, is out of the question.

But Beren—Beren their yearling friend—comes readily by Finrod’s request. Fingon, when he asked for Finrod’s assistance, tried to soften the unsavory task by insisting that Finrod might choose another to join him. Finrod chose Beren, and Fingon trusts the choice.

Though at ease with his companions, Fingon is anxious as to almost everything else. No amount of preparation seems to set him straight. He has all his tools, cleaned and sharpened; he has bandages, and tourniquet leathers, and the gag that will keep Maedhros’ tongue from slipping down his throat if he is to be properly unconscious.

Ah! But there is the first snag.

Olorin gifted him a finger-width vial of chloroform, which remained miraculously unbroken in the tumultuous journey. Until now, Fingon has never had cause to use it—and indeed, he is not now wholly certain that he should use it.

The great danger of chloroform, dazzling improvement that it is over alcohol or laudanum or even ether, is that it can paralyze the patient’s lungs. This is of especial concern when the lungs in question are weak and damaged. Then there is the matter of the vial’s diminutive size. He cannot hope to hold Maedhros in oblivion by its powers for long; if Fingon is to use it, it will have to be for the imperative moment.

The whole day, as he contemplates it, seems overrun with imperative moments.

How does one choose among pains?

He spent the evening prior in Mithrim’s kitchen, putting this question from his mind as he labored over a dozen odd tasks. The women had finished the washing up; the place was quiet. He cleaned his scalpel, knives, and bone-saw of rust with vinegar and a salted potato. He heated a vat of water, and dip-boiled all that he could—bandages, rags for tamping, his blades, and the metal parts of Curufin’s brace.

Miles helped. Though taciturn, the man was not unfriendly. He showed Fingon the herbs and barks he had gathered that soothed pain and calmed panic. Chief among them were willow bark and a paste of poppy seeds that Fingon could use to supplement what little laudanum he had remaining. Fingon thanked him when they had finished. He wrapped everything that he had sterilized in clean cloth.

Miles loitered a moment, which was unlike him. “I never saw someone wash as much as you do,” he said.

“Eh?” said Fingon, stupid with distraction. “Oh, yes. It is not yet a custom of the medical world at large, though I hope it may someday be. Olo—my teacher believed that the way to save lives was through cleanliness and order. He boiled all his instruments, washed his hands, and kept the room as bare as possible. Others thought it a strange business, but I saw the proof of his methods over and over. He saved—” he paused, then, choked suddenly by memories of Olorin, teaching an eager-eyed boy who always listened to his lessons with half an intention of learning them, half an intention of impressing Maitimo. “He saved so many lives.”

Miles nodded, satisfied. Then he departed, leaving Fingon to his thoughts.

Coming up from the water’s edge, Fingon encounters Finrod and Beren beside the stable. Their arms are full of various leather oddities.

“Hullo,” Fingon says. The dread of the day falls more heavily on him when he realizes that he can well guess what their offerings are for. “Saddle girths?”

“No need to link two belts together, that way,” says Finrod. “It was Beren’s idea. The shorter straps can be used for his arms and legs. You’ll need to bind both legs, won’t you?”

“Yes,” says Fingon. “At his knees and ankles.”

“Leather will be more comfortable than rope,” says Beren, with a kindly smile.

Or iron, Fingon thinks, ill at heart. He cannot deny, even in his own mind, how indistinguishable these are from the shackles of Maedhros’ nightmares. He bears scars at his left wrist, his ankles. For a bystander to this tragedy, perhaps, it would be easy to direct the full force of fury at those who bound him in malice. But Fingon is not a bystander, and he can only spare so much anger for his tormenting forebears when he is on the verge of repeating their tricks.

Gwindor is nibbling on a heel of bread in the corner of the hall, where the women and the men not sleeping after their watches are breakfasting.

“Ready, are we?” he demands, with the dogged air of a man who is about to be put to death.

“I am,” Finrod says. “And Beren? Did you wish to eat?”

“I’ve had an apple,” says Beren. “Good enough for me, when there’s blood to be seen and smelled.”

This seems to be the general consensus.

“I’ll just have a word with my father,” Fingon murmurs, hoping that doesn’t make him look weak. But perhaps if Finrod were the doctor and Finarfin here, he would wish—

There is, at least, no judgment on any of their faces.

“Go on, lad,” Gwindor urges. He takes some of the saddle girths from Beren, as if he is eager to have something to do with his hands. Fingon can understand that desire.

Father is with Davy and Abe Phillips, but he sees Fingon approaching and breaks away from them. “It’s time, is it?” he asks, and Fingon is nearly shaken by the sound of his voice alone.

“Yes, it is. If I may—if I may ask one favor, Father, it is that everybody be kept away from the room. I’ll send Finrod or Beren on any errand I may have.”

“Of course,” Father says. Then he clasps one of Fingon’s hands in both his own, and says, “A father’s blessing on you, Fingon.”

Argon’s lifeless eyes, staring in eternal surprise, flash before Fingon’s sight. He tears his hand from Father’s grip and mutters his gratitude, his need for haste.

It was a mistake, to let himself feel.

Maglor opens the door of Maedhros’ room for them, looking very nervous. “He hasn’t eaten,” he says, in a hushed tone, “Though I thought that was just as well.”

“It’s all right,” Fingon says, his confidence restored by sheer will in the passage through the corridor. The bundle of his ready instruments is on the windowsill. A fresh oil lamp is there as well. The bench, dragged in by Celegorm so long ago, has been raised on stout blocks and extended with a length of board. It is, as Curufin measured, the proper width for Maedhros’ shoulders and hips, while still being narrow enough for restraining him to it.

Maedhros himself is sitting up in bed, pale and quiet. Instead of offering any greeting, he says,

“You’ll be going, Maglor?”

Maglor returns to his side. Fingon can see that he is trembling. “Yes,” Maglor says. “Yes, but I’ll come afterwards.” He stoops to kiss Maedhros’ forehead, without any attempt to conceal such tenderness, and Fingon and the rest are forced to watch as Maedhros reaches up to grip his brother’s shoulder with his thin left hand. This shall be followed by the scalpel, the saw, the piercing pins.

Fingon bows his head an instant, not in prayer.

When he lifts it again, no fretful ghost flits before his eyes. No tremor plagues his hands, nor yet his voice, when he says, “Very well, Maedhros. We four shall do the best we can with you.”

With Maglor gone, Maedhros’ gaze is free of any diffidence, and more surprising to Fingon, after the events of the past few days, it is free of fear. “What am I to do?” he asks.

“Gwindor and Beren shall help you to the table,” Fingon says, since it is a table now, to his purpose. “Finrod, take the straps to the kitchen and clean them—but wait, let me select among them first.”

“Saddle girths,” says Maedhros, easing his legs over the edge of the bed. “Clever.”

“Don’t walk, not even a step,” Fingon snaps. Gwindor and Beren hasten to support him under his arms and thighs. Once seated on the bench, Fingon says,

“We can lay a blanket beneath your back and head, but I’m afraid that’s all the comfort I can allow.”

“It does not promise to be a comfortable time,” Maedhros murmurs. His hand is curled around the wooden edge. “You’d best take my trousers, Gwindor. Caranthir would not like Fingon to cut them to ribbons.”

Gwindor kneels before him, and helps to drag them off. Fingon is preoccupied with the order of things, and how to calculate the best angle of light—he would have given much for a looking glass to reflect the window, but there was none of consequence to be had in Mithrim. He breaks away from his thoughts, however, to observe the bloated flesh into which he must carve.

“Damn it all!” he exclaims, eliciting a flinch from Gwindor and Maedhros alike. “You’ve been walking on it, haven’t you?”

Maedhros looks down at his thigh, and then at Fingon, and says, “A little, yesterday.”

Fingon sucks his teeth to prevent more curses from slipping out. Finally: “That was very ill-advised.”

“So was riding helter-skelter on the back of a nag mare, and crawling through a damp forest,” Maedhros says quietly. “But needs must.”

“Russandol,” Gwindor admonishes.

“The swelling makes the bone harder to reach,” says Fingon, not trying to conceal how grim he is at the propsect. “That’s all. I’ll examine it, and see if it’s enough to wait over.”

He takes Gwindor’s place, and probes a little at the site of the crooked bone. Maedhros keeps quiet.

“Not too bad,” Fingon says. He does not try to meet Maedhros’ eyes as he says it. “Laudanum next.” He turns and fumbles for a vial, which he wishes was not so light.

Maedhros’ eyelids flutter. “Only laudanum?”

Now, Fingon holds his gaze. “I’ve poppy and willow bark as well.”

Maedhros says, his voice weakened for the first time, “Am I not to have chloroform?”

Fingon’s hand, holding up the vial, looks heavy and foolish in midair. “Not yet,” he says. “When I fit the brace.”

Gwindor mutters something.

“Not for the chief bloodletting, then,” Maedhros says, with a faint, ugly smile. “All right.”

“I’ve a gag,” Fingon says. “So you needn’t break your teeth. But drink this, first.”

Maedhros blinks rapidly, but he opens his mouth readily enough. Out of unconscious old habit, born of handling Olorin's unsteady patients, Fingon slips a hand behind his cousin’s neck.

Mairon’s mark is rough against his fingers. He drops his hand at once.

“Very well, lie back," he says, when the vial is empty and the willow bark and herbs have been administered thereafter. "Gwindor, if you would arrange that quilt beneath his head—capital. Maedhros, direct him.”

The remainder of such moments, before Finrod’s return, pass interminably. Beren stations himself by the window, looking out. Gwindor talks to Maedhros in a low tone, an endless patter of words that receive no answer. Fingon busies himself with arranging everything just where he wants it. There is a basin and a pitcher, as well as the necessary alcohol, for ablutions. His small table, cleared for the purpose, has been moved within easy reach of Maedhros.

Fingon ties his hair back and his sleeves up, and puts on the oilcloth apron that Wachiwi cobbled together for him eight months ago, when he performed some minor procedures in a town they were passing through. It is uncannily like a butcher’s apron.

When Finrod comes in again, Maedhros is on his back. Fingon has one clean bedsheet, thin but untorn, that he intends to use as a covering against dust and the like. It has been a devil to dry away from smoke and soot, and as such, he does not want to take it out too soon. Therefore, Maedhros has only his shirt and short underdrawers. If he is cold, he gives no sign.

“These are clean,” Finrod says, in unnecessary explanation, and hands over the belts and straps. He then copies Fingon, drawing his hair away from his face. In another time, in another world, Fingon might venture to tease him for approximating a recognizable queue for the first time in years. Instead, he surveys the straps, laid upon the bed, then turns to Maedhros.

“I’m settled,” says Maedhros. “If that’s what you’re wondering.”

If he could be anything less than his distinctive self, Fingon would think him a stranger. His tilted face is very pale and his eyes are hard.

Fingon tries to imagine himself tightening the bonds and is in danger of losing his nerve again.

“I’ll do it,” says Beren, leaving his post by the window.

Fingon flushes, but he nods. “I’ll wash my hands now,” he says, retreating into the fleeting safety of the physician’s importance.

Beren says, quietly, “I am Beren, a friend of your family’s,” and then reaches to draw the first belt around Maedhros’ chest.

Maedhros does not comment on the mention of family. Instead he says, a little breathlessly,

“What happened to your hand?”

It is so bald a question that Fingon is startled. Startled, and reminded how skilled and discreet a tongue Maedhros keeps in his head on most occasions. Even in a quarrel, he never forgets to employ the very wordplay that made Uncle Feanor’s conversation so biting.

Maedhros must be uncommonly distracted to speak so to a stranger. Uncommonly distracted, while Fingon, finishing with the alcohol, begins to unwind the glittering tools from their cloth.

Beren does not seem offended, however. “It was shot through,” he says. “A little stiff, it is. But I can use it.”

“I see.” Maedhros shuts his eyes, and is quiet as Beren works methodically, tightening the girth at his chest, another at his waist, then using the smaller straps to bind his knees and ankles together.

“Your arms,” Beren says. “I…Fingon, what would be best?”

Fingon turns to survey his handiwork. Though he did not close the buckles, he must circle the table now, tugging and adjusting to his preference, which is just as bad. At last he answers Beren’s question, though his tongue feels leaden. “Draw them through the belt at his waist.”

Beren does so, fastening them at the elbow.

“That’s all,” Fingon says.

Maedhros does not open his eyes, but he says, “You’ve forgotten my neck.”

An unpleasant little silence follows. Finrod says, “Maedhros, Gwindor can hold your head, I’m sure.”

“Yes,” says Gwindor, looking at Fingon.

“Yes,” says Fingon.

Only the gag remains. Fingon cleans his hands again, and takes the curious object, rather like a top, in hand. He is trying not to say too much, for that is a habit of old, but this has to be explained. “It is to keep your airways open,” he says. “Lest you faint."

Then there is nothing else to do but begin.

The first blood weeps rather than rushes, thanks to the tourniquet Fingon tightened above the incision. It is necessary to cut the muscle as well as part it, so that the bone may be reached. Maedhros’ body shudders violently. Finrod and Beren are crouched at either side of Fingon, holding the leg down. Fingon takes occasional, professional glances at Maedhros’ face, to see how he fares. His skin is ashen as a corpse’s, and sweat stands out on his forehead in great drops, but he is still conscious. Gwindor is at his head, whispering in his ear.  

At length the white of bone appears. Fingon turns, cleans his hands of slick blood, then probes with a thin metal instrument through the split muscle to find the knob of the break. The sick, hot wetness surrounding him again is enough to consume him, to blot out the sight of Finrod to his left, jaws clamped, of Beren quiet to his right.

Maedhros screams and spits out the gag.

“Leave it,” Fingon says. It was a mistake to begin with the smaller gag, when Maedhros was not yet unconscious, but he has little time to spare worrying. “A belt, fast-like, else he’ll crack his teeth.”

“God—” That, from Maedhros. It is no mean feat to speak under the weight of such pain. Fingon’s instrument is clenched tightly in his hand, away from the gaping wound.

“The belt, Gwindor,” says Fingon.

“S-strike me,” Maedhros pleads. His wide eyes are no longer unseeing, as they have been. They seem to pierce the fog of his own agony as well as Fingon’s concentration. “Send me—send me out. Goddamn it, Fingon, have mercy!”

Again, Fingon raps out, “Gwindor!”

With a muttered I’m sorry, lad, Gwindor forces leather between Maedhros’ parted, panting lips.

Fingon cannot afford to be so swayed again. He is ashamed; his ears are burning and his nose twitching with the iron scent of blood. He must put aside even shame, however. There is no emergency—yet. The artery running down the thigh is untouched.

“Hold him very still,” he says, to Finrod and Beren.

From his collection of clean metal, Fingon takes one short, blunt rod, then another. These, he positions to hold the carefully severed muscle agape.

(Damn it all, how he wishes that Maedhros would faint!)

The bone-saw has never looked larger, clumsier, or crueler. Fingon sees his hand lift it as if both hand and saw were someone else’s, sketched in a gory pictorial for medical students to ponder. Yet it is in his steady grasp, it is angled down into the wound by a turn of his wrist. He plants his left hand above Maedhros’ knee, where Finrod’s hand was a moment ago, and then, without a glance at anyone, without a prayer to any power, he begins his quick, strong strokes.

One wish is granted: Maedhros faints, then. Fingon feels his body slacken, and the sudden silence lingering after one final, strangled groan is proof enough.

“Beren,” says Fingon, without pausing or erring in his work, “Clean the gag, if you please. Insert it as I did before; so that his tongue is depressed—held down.”

Beren moves to complete the task. His footsteps, and the steady rasp of the saw are the only sounds other than breathing. The femur is a thick bone; the place where this one healed even thicker.

The thin, once-sterile bed sheet, draped around Maedhros’ still body, is scarlet-spotted and uncannily like a shroud. But rising to his full height, his eyes awash with white and red, Fingon and his blade have finished their work.

The bone, swimming in muscle and tendon, is in two.

It is a sight better than the parting of hand and wrist on a black night not two months past, but only Fingon will ever know that.

“Finrod, Beren,” he says, setting the saw aside, and removing the rods. “Unbind his knees and ankles. We need to pull his leg straight. The muscles will protest. I’ve cut only what I must; nevertheless, we must endeavor not to tear them further. Slow and steady, on my word.”

With his leg stretched straight and the board of the brace laid beneath it, Maedhros remains insensible. He did not so much as twitch when Fingon stitched the incision shut. Olorin’s chloroform may well remain unused for another day. There is no anesthetic equal to that of the body utterly spent, burying the mind in deep recesses.

Maedhros’ hair clings to his brow, darkened to blood-auburn. The gag, now slick with spit, has done its duty: he is breathing.

“I shall fit the brace,” says Fingon. The position of the sun through the window, its light overpowering the oil lamp’s glow, does not translate to a sense of time. Hours…days…he would be surprised by nothing.

Before he touches the metal pieces, he washes his hands again. The wound is sutured, yes, but blood has a way of getting everywhere. It is still under his nails, no matter how he scrubs at first with soap and water, and afterwards with whiskey. Perhaps it is right and meet that his hands cannot be made clean today. They have done a torturer’s work, after all. Fingon’s heart and soul are all that stand between the act of violence and the pursuit of virtue.

Or maybe his heart and soul hold both.

Taking what Curufin made him, he turns to his little table. He rolls the raw end of a bandage under, then winds it around the metal band twice, leaving the ends exposed. Finrod straightens the board at Fingon’s command. This done, Fingon slips the bare end of the band through one of the slots in the wood, bending the end outward to keep it in place. Then he arches the flexible metal over Maedhros' thigh, three or four inches above the stitched incision, and runs it through the slot on the far side. Curufin’s measured marks are true. Fingon reaches underneath the far side of the board, bends the end flat. He does the same with the second band, a little above Maedhros’ knee. The last piece is carefully laid lengthwise over the incision, but not held stationary quite yet. This is the piece with the pins. It is not possible to wrap a bandage around it, so Curufin took special care to blunt the edges.

Maedhros, were he conscious, would want no gifts from him. Fingon would not give him death; Fingon’s offer of freedom is reached only by a long road. You can break a man once, and he might still call you friend. It is when he returns to you, open-armed with hope or even memory, that you risk all by breaking him again.

Fingon learned that at the bridge.  

Fingon’s heart is battered, sawn open to the marrow, and in it he dares not separate love from loss, fury from fealty. But he can offer Maedhros this, for what it matters:

He does not hammer in the pins, nor split bone with them. He drives them in almost gently, with his own hands.

Chapter Text

Two weeks pass before Fingon and Maedhros quarrel again.

Indeed, the first week is a slow-swimming loss of time, during which Maedhros, insensible despite his lack of fever, seems to slip the bonds of reason altogether. He prattles and cries when half-awake, recognizing few faces. When he sleeps, aided by the dregs of Fingon’s herb-store, he is gone more hours than he has been since his first stupor.

In the prattling, Fingon hears his own name, occasionally, though it is never addressed to him. He hears Mamaí and Macalaure and Amrod in endless succession, but the words between the names are rarely spoken loud or clear enough to string together.

If he has to guess—and he does, because there is little to do as a doctor after surgery beyond changing the dressings—Maedhros is telling stories.

Fingon wonders to whom.

The life of Mithrim continues in his absence. He has no more invalids to tend to, outside this room. He broods over Maedhros, and only departs to stretch his legs in the early evening, when the sun is dying and the wind is low.

Fingolfin and Gwindor come often, and Maglor sleeps in the bed each night beside his brother. Celegorm is wholly absent, though Fingon learns through various means that he and Aredhel are scouting the surrounding region and even venturing into the town nearby.

Do you think that wise? he asks his father, and Father says,

I have not forbidden it, though Turgon thinks I should, with a troubled brow that Fingon himself has too little energy to question.

Towards the end of the first week, Fingon begins to fear that Maedhros is really lost to them. His pain-weary mind has broken at last. He will languish here for a few more months, perhaps, the leg healing for no purpose whatsoever. He will whisper his broken tales of Formenos until broth is too little to sustain him, and then he will die.

A bitter end to a bitter life. Fingon no longer has the luxury of considering any portion of it a happiness.

Then Maedhros wakes.

The second week is different. Maedhros is alert and quiet, save for the screaming nightmares that crash like waves and ebb into stony (if shuddering) silence as soon as he opens his eyes. He asks for nothing—not for the children, though Gwindor brings him reports of their doings; not for rest nor food nor drink; not for Maglor, though Maglor comes of his own accord and is for once too wise to press his brother for talk.

As for Fingon, Maedhros scarcely speaks to him at all, beyond a yes or no when prompted.

I do not know you, Fingon thinks, as miserable, almost, as he was days before…as miserable, almost, as he was after their quarrel.

I do not know you any longer.

It is impossible to sit much beside an invalid who stares at you coldly, dropping his eyes whenever you turn to him, and so Fingon in the second week starts to make little useless errands. He gathers to himself the few books that are kept in Rumil’s study. He pores over Estrela’s new maps. Heavy with irony, he writes cramped notes about the surgery in his doctor’s journal.

And Maedhros remains stubbornly quiet.

The middle of January comes and goes. The new year already feels settled and lived-in, as much as a new year can.

One fine morning, almost balmy, the sun flows in the little window and makes the air feel close. Maedhros is propped up by pillows; Maglor combed his hair before he went to breakfast, but the warmth has already made it curl. He is looking at Fingon, and Fingon at last accepts his challenge and returns his gaze.

“I am hungry,” says Maedhros.

Fingon rolls up the latest scrap of mapmaking before answering, so great is his surprise—as well as his desire to react with equanimity.

“Hungry? I can have a little apple stewed and—”

“I want meat,” says Maedhros.

His voice is level, though it may never lose the faint roughening it gained in the time lost between them.

“Meat.”

“Yes, Fingon. There’s no need to parrot every word back to me. I am hungry, and I am tired of drinking broth.”

Fingon keeps his seat. “You’ve not had meat in weeks, Maedhros. Since the surgery, you’ve only just started eating solid food again. I don’t recommend—”

“Say yes or no,” Maedhros snaps. “I despise the complexity of a medical opinion.”

Fingon does not exactly throw up his hands in disgust at this insult. He does kick his chair back with no little force.

In the kitchen, he recalls that last night’s meat is salted pork. He is just vexed enough to plate it and bring it back with him.

Half an hour later, Maedhros has vomited pork, bile, and anything else that his stomach found fit to yield. Fingon helped him sit up, taking care not to jostle the braced leg, and cleaned his lips with a damp rag thereafter in total, awful silence.

Maedhros, bent over his own straightened knees, rasps, “I’ll try again tomorrow.”

“The devil you will,” says Fingon.

Sharp grey eyes peer at him through a copper tangle. “You’ve the upper hand in every respect,” says Maedhros. “But since you’ve insisted I live, you’ll not outlast me on this.”

“On making yourself ill with cold fat-back?”

“On accomplishing the very end you lectured me about so often, my dear cousin.” Maedhros’ smile is thin-lipped. “I’m to be well again, you know.”

“I shan’t talk to you if you’re like this.”

“Spirited? Uppity? I’ve accepted your punishments for my recalcitrant displays, and I’ll continue to do so.”

Fingon drops the rag in a basin, takes up his seat, and unfurls the map.

“Aren’t you going to offer me a drink of water?”

Fingon does not glance up. “You seem to have found your tongue; you only have to ask for it.”

“Beg, you mean.”

“If you choose to viciously romanticize in that manner, so be it. But most people do not consider a simple please to be begging.”

“Lord, you don’t have need of your knives today, do you?” Maedhros taunts. He is still shivering a little, Fingon sees, hazarding a swift observation. He is also a little green, yet.

Fingon traces a slow finger down a blue-inked river.

“Please, doctor, may I have a cup of water? My tongue feels as if something died on it.”

Fingon fetches him water. When Maedhros has drunk, he wipes his mouth with his sleeve and asks, “What is it you would like me to be?”

Fingon sets the cup on the bedside table and stands, towering over his cousin as he so rarely did in the old days. “I don’t know how to answer that,” he says, trying to put his anger aside and finding only grief moving like a glacier beneath it. “If I were to call on any memory, you would tell me I was wrong and foolish for having it. If I were to express any hope for your future, you would decry the cruelty of my optimism. And in all this, apparently, I am a brother-in-arms with Melkor Bauglir. A perfect mirror.”

“Not a perfect mirror,” says Maedhros, tilting his head. “In some ways, he knew me better.”

Fingon’s head feels as if it is rushing full of water. He says nothing.

“Though in one respect,” muses Maedhros, still with that awful flippancy, “You play the same trick. He would always make a point of being near after I’d been turned to mincemeat. He knew I blabbered when I was feverish. He knew that if you put your hand in a fresh wound, you’ll draw forth anything to make you stop. Even gratitude.”

It is no use. No matter what fierce words he’s bandied, Fingon is not forever master of his face. His eyes are beginning to smart. Exhaustion, he’s sure of it. Exhaustion, and an endless array of wounds to what was once a friendly heart. He rises. Slowly, this time, with no abuse to the legs of his chair.

“Since you want meat,” Fingon says, for even now he will not say, Please excuse me, much less launch a final insult and push himself to tears, “I will go to the kitchen and see if any fowl have been brought in. That will be milder, generally, than pork.”

He does not wait for Maedhros’ permission. He does not, of course, need Maedhros’ permission. But he cannot see much of anything, as he charges down the corridor, his whole world blurring with the realization that this now, will be life with Maedhros.

Whether Maedhros dies in a few months or is restored to health and vigor, he will not care for Fingon, nor will he be kind.

The kitchen is full of women and Caranthir, who always seems to take up half the room himself. Head down, Fingon hastens through the throng. They are used to the doctor’s mad errands, though they have no way of knowing at present that he has abandoned his errand and wishes only to get away. He bursts out into the yard., where laundry billows white on its staked lines.

“Fingon!”

Wachiwi, her arms full of dripping shirts, has spotted him. He tries to look as if it is only the blast of sunshine that makes him blink fretfully.

“Hello,” he says. “Just taking in the air.”

“You could take in the air while helping me hang shirts,” she points out. “What? A doctor can’t touch any chore that isn’t a bandage?”

He is grateful to have something to do with his hands. The sodden calico smells a little like smoke and a good deal like lye and lavender.

“I hear the invalid is talking again,” Wachiwi says, sliding one of the split wooden pins over a cuff.

“Where do you hear such things?”

“Maglor talks. Not to me, just—loudly.”

“Ah.” Fingon scratches his nose. “Yes, Maedhros is awake.”

“But you are in hiding,” Wachiwi observes. She stoops to lift a chemise from the basket at her feet. “Again. I ask if you are sleeping and you shut yourself behind doors with a candle burning all night so that I cannot ask again. I ask if you are well and I do not see you for many days.”

Fingon tries for a joke, struggling to fling a bedsheet over the line. “You only had to ask me to help you with the washing, Wachiwi.”

“Ah.” She appears from behind the sheet, closer than he expected, startling him. “It is so easy?”

His hands clench in damp cloth. “It is.”

She shakes her head. And because she is as calmly bold now as she has been through all their acquaintance, she does not go away. Standing toe to toe with him, she stares him down, her long dark eyes unflinching.

Fingon says, softly, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

“I won’t hate him,” Wachiwi says. “That’s what you fear, yes? That Finrod will hate him, and Turgon—”

“Turgon already hates him.”

“But Estrela does not.” She shrugs. “Estrela is like the sun. She makes whatever she touches warm, and she touches him. He is safe from my hate, because of her and the children. And you.”

“Me?”

“Foolish cow-boy.” Wachiwi smiles sadly. “Here, hold the pins for me.”

Fingon takes a handful of the ash splints and toys with them while she wrangles several heavy skirts to her liking. “I’ve hurt him so dreadfully,” he says, “That he cannot forgive me. I have not accepted that yet. I know I must.”

“He is sick,” says Wachiwi. “Very sick. But I do not think he will die.”

Fingon stutters out his darkest fear. “And is that not worse? He wanted me to kill him thrice over.”

“Men do not die too late,” Wachiwi says. “Only too soon. If he is alive, he should be. Two pins, Fingon.”

“But he must…he must endure so many dreadful memories.”

“And the kind ones.” She sighs. “The kind ones bleed most.”

“He says they were not real.” Fingon swallows hard. “All that we—we shared, before. Some might say his point was proven more than a year ago, when we—when we first were parted. But I—it is not so simple. I cannot believe it is so simple.” He stops, knowing he is rambling, with more feeling than sense.

“Then do not believe it.”

“What?”

“He is a snake and a wolf and an eagle,” Wachiwi says. “He killed, yes. He ran with his pack, yes—he would not leave his father. He gave himself for two children, when no one else did. He is not simple.”

“Perhaps I am.”

“No,” Wachiwi says, beginning to laugh. “More pins, Fingon. And tell me, what will you do this year?”

“I—”

“Do not talk about Maedhros anymore. You may come to me every day, and tell me about him, but then you must stop.”

Fingon is not quite ready to laugh yet, but he smiles. “Very well. This year, I am going to help Turgon finish his wall. Otherwise I shall grow fat, with all my sitting.”

“A good plan. I am going to bring flowers to Caranthir’s garden.” Wachiwi is done hanging clothes. “Come with me. I will show you where.”

He takes her at her word, and the heaviness of the next few days is leavened by Wachiwi’s company. She is not willing to keep always near the fort. She drags Fingon to the farthest reaches of the field…she leads him up and over the hill, where he has never gone before.

It is Celegorm’s usual hunting ground, Wachiwi tells him, but Celegorm is nowhere to be seen.

“Likely he is with your sister,” Wachiwi says. The wind is high, waving like eddying water in her loosened hair. “They are everywhere together. But Aredhel and I came here when—the day you cut Maedhros’ leg.” She clambers up a heap of broken boulders, nimble as a goat. “There is a word. I forget.”

“Operate? Surgery?”

“Yes.” From her higher perch, she peers down at him. “You have not talked of him today. Maedhros.”

“Oh.” Fingon feels as if it is both a victory and a defeat. “You were…we were talking of other things. You were telling me about when you were small.”

“My sister was born in spring,” Wachiwi says. “I am thinking of spring, and her, and what is gone.” She pats the rock beside her, and with less grace—for he has become stiff with sitting, though not fat—Fingon climbs up. “She was called Ehawee, my sister. Laughing maid.”

“Did she laugh?” Fingon asks.

He knows, of course, that Wachiwi’s sister is dead.

“Yes. So did my mother. If you can believe it,” she adds, with a twinkle in her eye, “I was the sober one.”

He ponders that, and then he laughs. “I was a dreadful child,” he says. “It shames me to think of it.”

“Dreadful? No.” She leans forward with interest.

Fingon can feel himself flushing. “Oh, well,” he says, “I do not mean that I was in the habit of fighting my schoolfellows or stealing apples. I mean—I decided, when I was quite young, that my father was a bad man, and that it was my duty to catch him out.”

Wachiwi’s mouth twitches. Fingon is suddenly distracted by the shape of her lips, the upper slightly more pronounced than the lower.

“Your duty?” she asks, and he glances quickly away.

“Oh, yes. I—I don’t know what came over me. I picked apart everything he did, and scolded and…and lectured, until I was fourteen at least.”

“Poor Fingolfin.”

He covered his face in his hands. “Goodness, I know.”

“I am only teasing. Anyone can see that you love your father, and that your father loves you.” Her hand brushes his shoulder than, light and swift. “The same with my mother. Even when they are gone, that is comfort. That is comfort, to be sure.”

A memory presents itself: one that has lived in Fingon’s soul like a flame kept sheltered to ember steadiness and strength. He does not speak of it to Wachiwi. It is—it is too private.

It is for Maedhros alone.

His cousin has been pettish and pointed by turns. Has insulted him in enough ways, this last week, to make both tears and retorts rise. Fingon has not always been as patient as he might wish. Once he chided Maedhros for having fidgeted his leg without being mindful of the brace and pins, and was treated to a vivid retelling of a diabolical play with metal-tipped darts.

But on the whole—

“I know I’m fortunate, in many respects,” Fingon says. “Even finding Maedhros, as gruesome as the whole ordeal was to live through…I can’t deny that God was with me. Too much of my path was laid before my feet for me to think otherwise.”

“Ah yes,” Wachiwi says. “Your god.”

He turns his face to hers, and is struck now less by her mobile lips, more by her fringed dark eyes. They can see his soul, and all the religion in it, he is sure.

“What you call god, I call a man who is walking tall and proud,” Wachiwi says. “Tell me true, Fingon, did you take the white devil’s eye?”

That is not the memory that Fingon reflected on a moment ago. Nevertheless, it is not one he shall soon forget. “Yes,” he says. “By sheer necessity, because—but hold. You know him? Mairon?”

“His name and his…” Wachiwi pauses, searching for the word. “Reputation. He was like one of your ghost stories in this part, before.”

“In…Doriath?” He knows that Wachiwi spent time in Doriath, with Haleth and the rest.

“All along this coast, two years now. Maybe three. He’s a face-stealer. I mean it.”

“I know,” Fingon says. “I’ve seen…I’ve seen his work.”

Carved into Estrela’s face, as Wachiwi must know, and etched into Maedhros’ skin. But Wachiwi knows as much about the marks Maedhros bears as Fingon intends to tell her. If there is anybody—even a friend—who has not yet seen those scars, Fingon will not enlighten them further.

Every thrall in Melkor’s—or Gothmog’s—camp, every guard and overseer…

“Tell me,” Wachiwi says, suddenly fierce. “Tell me about his eye.”

“Oh.” He clears his throat behind his curled fist. “I—well, it all happened very suddenly. After I freed—” He pauses. Here, the whole truth must be spoke, or else he is a coward. “After I cut off Maedhros’ hand, I carried him down the side of the mountain. And as it turns out, Mairon was following us.”

She does not flinch, but the wariness in her eyes is as near to fear as he’s seen Wachiwi come. “In the night?”

“Yes, it was dark. He ran on ahead of us, and lay in wait in a sort of…cave, where Bauglir had had a forge. Maedhros destroyed it, when he freed the camp. It was burned within, but I needed…I myself needed to build a fire, and I’d seen it on the way up. Mairon anticipated me.”

Wachiwi keeps quiet, now, listening to his story.

“I tended to Maedhros as best I could, but when I lit a flame, Mairon was there. We fought, and he taunted me. I did not know him at all, so he informed me.” Fingon’s blood rises at the whisper of those vile words. “He told me that it was he who had hurt Maedhros. Had made a—a dog of him. I was angry.”

“And Maedhros?”

“Barely conscious. But—” and here, Fingon chokes a little, overcome with emotion he did not expect, “He tried to tell me to run.”

Wachiwi exhales a long, slow breath, and leans back on her hands. The rock is warm in the sun. “He was afraid for you,” she says.

“Yes. It is only that I did not know to be afraid for myself.”

“Brave Fingon,” she says, looking at him so that he blushes not out of anger, but out of rather delicate embarrassment. “Good man.”

“Not as good as my father,” he says. “Nor as brave as Maedhros, come to that. As I said, I was angry, and ignorant, and I rushed him with what weapons I had. The eye was a—a lucky shot.”

“There is a good story, I think, under all your telling,” Wachiwi observes. Now she leans forward, so close that Fingon half-expects—no. He does not know what he expects. But she is only moving to descend the rock. “Come. I hear the noon bell ringing.”

Fingon returns to Maedhros that evening in better spirits than he has known in a long while. He does not mind so much that Maedhros is stubbornly mute, or that he glares while Fingon draws back the blanket and inspects the loose bandaging around the entry points of the pins.

“No infection,” Fingon says, as he always says. “That is good.”

He surveys the room. He has been gone most of the afternoon, but the chairs are in different places than they were when he left. There is also a stack of dishes on the windowsill.

“Did you eat?”

“Are you keeping a list?” Maedhros retorts, finally speaking.

“Yes,” Fingon says. “As a matter of fact, I am. I am trying to note what you can stomach and what you can’t. The list is growing, if that comforts you.”

Silence. Then:

“Turkey.”

“All right,” Fingon says, fetching his little book. “Turkey. Anything else?”

“Potatoes. Carrots. Bread.”

“And did you keep it all down?”

“Yes.”

Fingon forgets, for an instant, that they are no longer friends. “That’s excellent!” he exclaims. “That’s really excellent. How are you feeling?”

Maedhros’ lips twist unpleasantly, but he does not say what seemed to be his first impulse. He narrows his eyes, and studies Fingon a little longer. “You’re happy today,” he says, softly. “Am I to have another surgery?”

“No.” Fingon checks his mood—or rather, it is checked for him. He is not impervious for long against Maedhros’ slings and arrows. “No, it is only…I took in the fresh air, and it did me good.”

“There is nothing like fresh air,” Maedhros agrees, too warmly. “Nothing like walking free over the hills and dales, to set the mind at ease.”

Fingon takes up his mortar and pestle, grinding a little valerian for Maedhros’ nightly dose. “When spring comes,” he says, “You will be walking again, too.”

“Ah yes! Twenty-five and so much to show for it.” Maedhros’ fingers are twined in a ribbon, Fingon observes…a ribbon full of knots. So he has been practicing his exercises, when Fingon is not there to see.

That is a reason for hope.

Fingon breathes deeply, preparing himself. Then he says, “Maedhros, there’s something I’d like to tell you.”

Maedhros’ eyebrows arch. “Let me spare you the trouble. I don’t want to hear it.”

Fingon will not be waylaid. “It isn’t a lecture.”

“Ah. Thought you’d never run dry of those.”

Fingon smiles as best he can. “I know you’re trying to hurt me. You’re succeeding. There. Now that I’ve given you the satisfaction you crave, will you listen to me?”

“I can’t even stop both my ears,” Maedhros says, waving his hand demonstratively. “So go on.”

Fingon thinks of Wachiwi. Of what she has said and observed; what she has suffered. He thinks of Finrod, who, even with less desire for forgiveness, seemed to believe that Fingon should forgive.

And above all—

“I don’t pretend to understand what your life has been, this last year,” Fingon says. “You could tell me a hundred tales of it, and show me a hundred hurts, and still I—I will never have lived it.”

“Fingon—”

“Please. Please, it’s important.”

Maedhros shuts his mouth.  

“We’re not children anymore,” Fingon says. “It doesn’t matter what we played, or hoped, or even what we believed, ten years ago. But still, there are things you don’t know.”

The bruising on Maedhros’ face has faded entirely now, though he never has enough healthy color in his cheeks. The cut across the bridge of his nose is sealed, and will fade further, but it will never entirely disappear. He looks both younger and older than he is. There are white strands hidden in the red of his hair.

To this man, or boy, or stranger, Fingon must unburden his memory.

“At Ulmo’s Bridge,” Fingon says. “When we came to Ulmo’s Bridge, and found you—gone, I spoke to her.”

What color there was in Maedhros’ face recedes, but his lips remain sealed.

Fingon does not take this as encouragement, but he is not seeking encouragement—only opportunity. “Aunt Nerdanel was still unwell,” he admits, “But she was recovering. We visited her in a sort—a sort of hospital that they had, there. I came with—Mama, and Aredhel, to call on her.”

“Fingon,” Maedhros says, strained. “Stop.”

Fingon shakes his head. “You don’t understand,” he says. “She spoke of you.” Once begun, he must finish. He knows that this hurts—hurts worse than a blade or a brand, perhaps. But it is a needed pain, more than any that has gone before. It is no useless torment.

Maedhros’ father is dead, and his mother is gone, and though Feanor was with him to the last—

Maedhros must have lived all these hellish months without being certain that Nerdanel still loved him. Fingon alone can set him to rights.

“I was angry, then,” Fingon says, glad that his voice is steady. “Though almost too afraid to turn that anger at you. Desperately, I wanted someone to tell me that what I had heard was false. That I was dreaming, or walking in another world. I wanted to be awoken, and instead I heard the truth from your mother’s lips.”

Maedhros does not speak again. Fingon continues to look at him, to mark the pallor, the stiff-set shoulders, the wide eyes.

These are not signs of death, but of the uncomfortable business of living.

“The truth,” Fingon says gently, “And also, a plea. She told me that you would not wish me harm. More than anything, Maedhros, she asked me not to hate you.”

You knew my son, Nerdanel had said. Fingon had been unable to find grace within himself, then. The crimes were still too near. He had been bruised, frightened, furious—

Yet Nerdanel had still reached for him. Through him, to find what was left of their Maitimo.

Their Maitimo is buried deep. Maedhros’ gaze does not falter. He says, “And you’ve taken such a fair message to heart, have you?”

“I have. But you already knew that.”

“Then why—” Maedhros swallows his question.

“At the bridge,” Fingon says, “That was your worst…your worst sin, was it not? What was done there?”

A tight little shrug. “Presumably even Père Fingon believes that murder is a sight worse than drunkenness and fornication?”

Fingon ignores this. “Forgiving you doesn’t mean I think you faultless. That would be a lie that could not last us. But—but even there, and even then, when we were reeling in shock, she loved and forgave you, I think. And her love matters more than mine, or anyone’s.”

Maedhros presses his left hand against the mattress, shifting himself back against his pillows. Then, with his chin sinking to his chest, his eyes still wide and keen, he says, “Argon died of a bullet to the chest, didn’t he?”

Fingon manages not to flinch. “Yes.”

“And your mother froze to death, didn’t she?”

“Yes.” He knew, of course, bringing such a memory to Maedhros, that unkind words might follow, but he swears he is ready, this time.

Ready to offer a mother’s healing, though it be distant and long ago.

“What a pity,” says Maedhros, “That you could not save them. I think, Fingon, that if you had, you would have left my sin-ridden body to rot. And by so doing, you would spared me a good deal, as I have already made plain.” His breath whistles through his teeth. “But even so. Even saved, I do think I might have been allowed to limp along without—without a widow’s blessing.”

“Maedhros.” Fingon grips the seat of his chair with his knuckles, determined to see this through. “I know it hurts.”

“Because your mother is dead?”

“No. That is not the same pain.”

“I daresay it isn’t. I daresay you and your precious, empty-headed family, falling like flies along a road you never should have taken, know only the pure animal pains of something that dies weak.”

Fingon’s stomach churns sickly. He must keep on. He doesn’t want to, but he must keep on.

(Argon—Argon—Mama—)

“I’ll leave you now,” Fingon says. If this were a dream, it would be more merciful. His chest would be cloven and his heart stopped. His body would be broken and his mind freed. “I’m not sorry. I wanted you to know—”

“What my mother said, yes. What my mother begged from a sickbed like this one, trying to paper over the crimes of the husband she used to rage at, the sons she was so very proud of—before they revealed what they’d be as men. Well! So be it. Make me bleed, and I will endure it. But I will not live for you, Fingon. My survival shall not follow the path of your choosing. And when next you lay such a story at my door, by God I’ll drag myself out of this bed and beat you silent. Know I’d do it now, if I had the strength.”

“Maedhros!”

“Jesus, are you not finished?” His chest heaves. “You said you were finished.”

Fingon nods. Not another word. It all happened too fast for him to understand it as a failure.

Some fatal blows are like that.

Fingon does not remember leaving the room or closing the door. He is halfway down the corridor when he can even see again, and his knees shake under him. He is struck by a sudden, heated wish that he could find a key for that door, that he might run back and lock it inexorably behind him.

Nothing doing. There is no key. He grips his thighs with both hands, breathing, steadying himself.

(After Argon, Fingon would wake and hear Mama crying in Father’s arms at night. He thought it was the worst agony he could ever know, and for a time, it was.)

He must find Father and warn him. The stifling air of the sickroom has muddled his head, that is all. Fingon is not weeping, is not at all in danger of weeping. He straightens and strides, purposeful and firm, into the main hall.

Speaking to a small knot of listeners—Turgon, Stokes, and Tabitha Phillips—Father is leaning over a sheaf of rough-edged paper, a cup of tea in hand. “Oats are better than barley,” he says. “If we can have them. But of course, whatever is least—”

“Father,” Fingon says. Perhaps they are planning an expedition to Hithlum; perhaps they have resumed trade in full force. Fingon is only ever vaguely aware of such happenings. “I…”

“Ah, Fingon.” Father’s eyes and mouth crease with the warm familiarity of his smile. “If you will give me but a moment more, I shall be with you.”

“It cannot wait,” Fingon says, avoiding Turgon. “I am sorry.”

“No matter.” That from Stokes, whose head-wound is nicely scabbed. “Go on, sir.”

Father follows Fingon away. Unfortunately, across the room, Finrod’s yellow head turns. He leaves whatever self-appointed post he had and approaches.

Fingon tries to speak quickly, for he does not want the audience of another cousin, but his throat is too tight for words.

Father says,

“Is it Maedhros?”

The name stings. Thoughts of those eyes, that voice, that hideous stump of an arm sting too. “Yes,” Fingon says. “He is not in any danger, at the moment, but he…” He stops and starts again. “No one is to go in that room tonight. No one.”

“What?” Father strokes his chin in consternation. “Does he wish to be left alone again?”

“I do not know what he wishes, particularly,” Fingon says. Finrod is almost to them. “He—”

“Fingon? Is all well?” The beads in Finrod’s braids twinkle in the lamplight.

 Fingon reminds himself that he is not in a panic. Nor, indeed, is he in any real distress. It is only—it is only for their safety, their peace of mind, that he must keep them away.

“Maedhros is in a foul mood,” he says, calmly and evenly. “I was just telling Father that it is…quite important…that he be left to himself, this evening.”

Finrod does not answer immediately. He only looks, in that way of his that means he is deciding. It makes Fingon itch, at present. Father, for his part, nods gravely.

“We have let the duty of his care fall too much on your shoulders lately,” he says. “You are our surgeon, yes, but you are also a man. You need rest, and more fresh air than a walk a day can give you. Do not worry over it, Fingon. I am used to Maedhros’ moods. I will—”

“No!” Fingon exclaims, so forcefully that both Father and Finrod take a step back. More heads are turning near them, though nobody intervenes. “No,” says Fingon, more quietly. “Father, please. I—you mustn’t. I’ll rest, I’ll take the air, I promise—but you must promise me that you shall not go in tonight.”

…you and your precious, empty-headed family, falling like flies along a road you never should have taken, know only the pure animal pains of something that dies weak…

(Here is the worst agony Fingon knows: he was only half-conscious when Mama died. The cold made him numb. He did not farewell her.

When he was finally well enough to call for her, she was already gone.)

“Father. Promise me.”

“If it matters so much to you, Fingon, of course I shall promise.”

The world turns. The fire sings in its hearth; the tin plates ring in the kitchen washtubs like distant bells. Fingon is not going to weep, no matter how the shapes of men and women blur in the hall, swimming in and out of the gates with the first change of the watch.

Father’s hand is firm and sustaining at his elbow; Finrod talks in his most reasonable voice about fatigue and the length of each dark day.

“Fatigue!” Fingon’s voice says, strange in his ears. “Yes, yes. That’s all it is.”

Fatigue is not the same as failure. Surely, it also means that he is too tired to spin pride-saving lies.

Then Wachiwi is there, her voice mingling with Finrod’s. “Here you are,” she says. “Come with me?”

Nobody protests, and Fingon willingly goes with her—willing in body, at least. His mind is still fixed on a solitary point, like a sentinel stone rising amidst churning waters.

By God…

“Fingon,” Wachiwi says. “Fingon, can you hear me?”

They are walking together towards the door; they are passing out into the chilly breeze. One of the watchmen is swearing over the injury due a stray stone in his path, down below in the twilit haze. Fingon is conscious that Wachiwi has taken his arm, like Father did a little while ago.

“I’m quite well,” he assures her. The air is bringing a little shame back to him: a trickle where soon there shall be a deluge, if he is not…careful. If he does not regain his strength. He must keep to his purpose. He must remember his duty.

Everybody is worried about him, which he never intended. His message—his ban on entry—was for their good, not his.

“You’re not,” Wachiwi says, but only after she has led him over the short winter turf, to the shelter of Turgon’s wall at its strongest point. She lowers herself to the ground, and him with her.

“How did you—” He looks at her for the first time, choosing a bad moment for it, since they are now sitting in the dark. Still, he can make out the shape of her hair, braided over her shoulder, and the line of her nose. “Did I have the whole fort listening?”

“No,” she says. “I always look for you when you come running out of…there.”

“Running. I…” The shame grows and grows, and it is inside him, not washing over him. He can feel it like bad liquor in his throat.

“It is a habit,” she says. “Do you know why?”

He doesn’t.

Wachiwi huffs out a sigh.  

“No matter.”

“You must think something very wrong with me,” Fingon says, as bravely as he can. “To bring me here and—and gentle me like a frightened horse.”

“Hmm.” Wachiwi hums a little in her throat before answering. “Yesterday you told me that Maedhros thought you were punishing him.” Her voice is soothing, her shaping of the words unlike his own, though he understands her perfectly. “Today you seemed to have more hope. What happened?”

They are shoulder to shoulder. It is not so difficult to turn his body against hers, to hide his face against her neck, and weep.

Turgon, his brother, who has never betrayed him nor lied save in the petty fear of youth, built this wall firmly. Here is an arm of earth raised to shield them. Here, beneath Fingon’s grasping hands, is the crumbling brush of soil. Here, at his turned shoulder, is the irregular edge of stone.

Wachiwi, both softer in touch and harder in spirit than what is merely natural, encircles him in her arms.

Fingon lifts his head, only a little. Her nose and cheek brush against his. His tears touch her skin. Without forethought, Fingon slips one hand beneath her shapeless coat to find her ribs through warm, rumpled linen.

They are steady, like this. They are safe from the storm.

Her heart cries under his fingers. Her mouth is welcoming against his.

Fingon kisses her, and the world turns.

Chapter Text

It is quietly agreed that Fingon shall abdicate, for a time, his post of doctor.

There is no longer any urgency. Until the pins of the brace are ready to be removed—a prospect still weeks away—there is no need for a surgeon, only a nurse. Fingon realized only when he must how much he had trained his family and friends to tend to Maedhros as he did in the months now past.

Father, Gwindor, Maglor, and most surprisingly of all, Finrod, fulfil Fingon’s absence in the sickroom. In that there is not so much change as to make him feel essential. He certainly never hears of Maedhros missing him. He is not called upon to stop bleeding, or to lower a high fever, or to counsel on the matter of herbs.

February begins, and Fingon, a week and more removed from the fight that cost him the last of his boyhood memories, is faced with the slow, uncomfortable business of finding something to do.

Turgon’s wall is finished. What can be planted in the garden has already been planted. Errands to Hithlum are conducted either by parties of three or four, carefully planned, or by his sister and Celegorm, not planned at all. Fingon feels that neither sort of expedition would welcome him. The first, because so many trapped longer in Mithrim than he has been are eager to be out, and the second, because—Celegorm. Anyway, he does not much want to go.

He wants something to do, to distract himself from his failures and his follies, but the contours of his desire are not further developed.

He is beginning to think that kissing Wachiwi was a folly, if only because she must think it so—a kiss from a weeping child who never endeavored to prove himself more to her.

Wachiwi does not let him think this for long.

“There you are,” she says, surprising him from behind when he is hunched over the long table, occupied with the slow task of weapons-cleaning. Fingon came to know his own gun well in his travels, but he is not equal to the regulars when it comes to swiftly dismantling and reassembling the whole Mithrim armory. Wachiwi says, “Come with me.”

Fingon casts a doubtful glance at the row of methodical workers. His absence will not really be felt.

He rises, and follows Wachiwi, trying to ready himself for a deserved lecture.

She does not take him outside the fort, as she had on their previous excursions—excursions that have not been repeated since more than a week ago, when he ended his performance by falling asleep in her arms against the wall. That, too, is the source of some embarrassment. After kissing her as passionately as if she were a fall of water and he a man dying of thirst, he cried again and drifted off in a stupor of blank exhaustion.

No wonder she has avoided him.

Squaring his shoulders, Fingon follows her to the fireplace, where the cat-purring crackle of the logs, always kept burning, can cover their conversation a little.

Wachiwi is smiling. This is a surprise. “Are you finished?”

He blinks at her.

“I have given you…one of your weeks. I understand that it is span of time with some meaning. Now, are you finished?”

“I am very sorry,” he says, “But I still don’t understand. Finished with what? With Mae—”

She lifts a finger. “No. With hiding.”

Fingon considers how he has shadowed his father and brother this week, in their doings around the fort—or at least for Father, his doings outside Maedhros’ room. In watching those he knew best, Fingon was trying to learn in reverse the life they’d led while he was blinded by a greater purpose.

It had not been enough.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I don’t know what I am doing at all.”

“Would you like to kiss me again?” Wachiwi asks, quite innocently, and Fingon feels his face flush more than the fire can account for.

“That was…I was…”

“You don’t want to?” She is still smiling.

“It would be dastardly,” Fingon says, collecting his shattered wits, “To vent my confused sense of purpose, my failed duty, by seeking…seeking comfort in such intimate affections.” An honorable speech, he hopes, if a little stiff.

Wachiwi says, “I do not understand. And not because it is English, but because it is mad.”

“Oh.” Fingon breathes deeply, shudderingly. “Well, I only mean, I think I’m in no fit state to be good to you.”

“I will be good to you.”

Having once known it, he cannot easily forget the press of her lips, the aching surprise of her tongue and teeth grazing his. Fingon clenches his hands at his sides. Then he says,

“And I thank you. But I must…” Spurred by a sudden impulse, he unfurls his right hand, reaching for hers, clasping it as he would a man’s. “I must set myself to rights,” he says. “Before I begin anything anew.”

Wachiwi’s black eyes move slowly over him, pondering. Then she says, “Very well, Fingon. Let us be friends.”

Her hand is strong and lithe in his. He drags the pad of his thumb against the sharp joint of hers. “Friends,” he agrees. “But Wachiwi—someday—”

“You need more weeks,” she says, her smile brightening to a white-slivered grin. “I will give them to you.”

Their companionship is resumed in the days thereafter, and their adventures over the lands of and around Mithrim are much the same as before, save that Fingon no longer speaks of Maedhros. Wachiwi does not ask about him, either. She leaves that and every other door of pain well-fastened.

But better than Turgon or even his father, she gives him things to do—in the stable, in the storerooms, in the kitchen (though Caranthir, when present, objects with stony glares). Fingon, oblivious as he has been to the everyday life of his companions, is humbled to learn that Wachiwi has made a place for herself here. She is friends with old and new inhabitants alike.

She lets Fingon share that place with her, and Fingon wants very badly to kiss her again.

Supplies of all kinds are being brought back to Mithrim, by Celegorm and Aredhel and the rest. There are sacks of flour and grain, there are tools and weapons, there is new cloth and new thread and shining needles, new leather for the horses, new boots for the men. Many hands work together to make right the leanness of the storerooms, to mend and mold what wore thin in the long stretches of isolation.

Fingon sits beside Turgon, one cool evening of February’s first week, affixing new axe-heads to old shafts. Turgon looks as if a thunderstorm has taken up residence on his brow. As such, he is not very pleasant company, though it was he who sought Fingon out. Fingon has kept silent with his own thoughts. Acknowledged to nobody, they stray always to Maedhros in quiet moments.

To Maedhros, and how Fingon has failed.

All his preceding life, whether ten years ago or ten days ago, feels as if it is no more than a distant dream. Where once the years seemed beaded together like a rosary, they are now scattered and indistinct. Fingon cannot articulate the workings of the eager young boy in New York who chased after schemes of piety and predestination. Nor can he reclaim, by following a chain to the heart of the matter, the white-flaming surety that once gave direction to his knife and hands.

The past is broken. Its only remaining links are the phrases flung distressingly into the midst of his carefully guarded thoughts. Phrases edged like his own blades.

In some ways, he knew me better.

It makes one wonder not only how Maedhros became Maedhros, but how Feanor became Feanor, and how Melkor Bauglir became a deviling doctor himself.

“Fingon,” says Turgon, and Fingon starts.

“Beg pardon?”

“I need to talk to you.”

“Oh,” Fingon says, inanely. “I’m sorry. Were you talking already?”

“No.” Turgon’s lips tighten, an expression that can indicate either annoyance or amusement, from him—and in this instance, perhaps both. “It’s about Aredhel.”

Fingon has not exactly prided himself on the success of his reentrance into what passes for society, here, but now he is guilty to discover just how unobservant he has continued to be. “Aredhel…is there something amiss with Aredhel?”

“She’s gone to Hithlum again, for one thing,” Turgon says. “For the fourth time. Maybe the fifth. Which will be her last, d’you suppose?”

Fingon considers. “Father told me,” he says, “When Aredhel and Celegorm first went to Hithlum. The whole fort seems happy enough to accept what they collect there. I know that Father was concerned, at first, but surely—”

Turgon interrupts. “Oh, I’ve heard what Father has to say on the subject, more than once. I warn him every time she goes, but to no avail. We’re at an impasse. Now that you’re…a free man, or trying to be, perhaps you’ll have the time to try your own tongue at convincing him.”

The axe-head slips in Fingon’s fingers, nicking his knuckle. “Convincing him…” He pauses. “What is that I should say to Father?”

“Tell him that he’s been too soft on her.” Turgon’s eyes, deep-set, are most like Mother’s eyes—but there is no shred of softness in them. Nothing boyish, either. Fingon’s only remaining brother is full a man. “He should have forbidden her to leave the fort the second she arrived back from her first fool errand.”

“Do you think she would listen?”

“She cares about Father,” Turgon says. “It’s just that he has decided, seemingly, that caring about her doesn’t mean protecting her from the world outside.”

“That’s not fair.” Fingon knows he hasn’t much right to scold his brother, but maligning Father is so unlike Turgon that Fingon’s words flow quicker than his thoughts.

“I’m not blaming him,” Turgon says. “It’s the lifeblood of the men in our family, letting their women go.” He drops his gaze.

Fingon’s mouth is dry. “Do you really think her in such danger?”

“You know more about Maedhros’ scars than I do,” Turgon says darkly. “But I know just as everybody does, that you cut him free from a trap to bring him back half-dead. How much worse do you think they’d treat a woman?”

Cold fear grips Fingon by the throat, but he doesn’t surrender to it. He is thinking not of Maedhros, now, but of Estrela, whose marring is inescapable, and of Wachiwi, who, though physically whole, was robbed of family and innocnence. Wachiwi has suffered, and seen others suffer, but she has continued to invite Estrela and even Sticks to accompany her outside the walls. To teach them to fish, to hunt, to defend themselves.

We are all going to die, Wachiwi said to him, a few days since. Is that not freedom?

Fingon says, “I’ll talk to him, if that’s your wish. But Turgon, we…we can’t stay here forever. We mustn’t. We must find safety outside these walls as well as in them, or make it. I expect she is trying to begin that difficult work.”

“So you’d see her die? You’d bring her body back, broken and in pieces, and tell me that she tried?”

Fingon passes a hand over his face. He used to know how to save people. How to say what was right, with such conviction that it did not matter if he could not say it in the right words.

Turgon huffs an impatient breath, still not looking at him. “Find your conscience,” he says. “If it’s not still buried in our enemies’ sorry graves.” Then he puts down the axe, heavily, and leaves Fingon alone.

Fingon used to dream about Maedhros. When he was dying of the cold, he saw vividly the joys of their youth, and all the hopes he’d had for their family’s future. Feanor wouldn’t live forever, thought Fingon as a boy, and we won’t live forever, dreamed Fingon in the cold, so we might as well forgive.

But Turgon, even when he was dying, too, never accepted the prospect of forgiveness.

Aredhel never accepted the prospect of death.

“Father,” Fingon says, when everyone else is at supper, but Fingolfin is standing in the fading light at Turgon’s wall, “May I speak to you?”

“You need not carry Turgon’s message,” Father says. “I am worried, too.”

“Worried?”

“Your sister hasn’t yet returned,” Father says. He is wearing his coat, the one he trades back and forth with Gwindor, and though the air is not particularly biting, his arms are folded tightly around himself. “She and Celegorm are usually back by suppertime. It is the one request I made of her, when she began to go abroad. That she stray only in the hours of daylight.”

Fingon has nothing to say; no advice to give, no questions to ask, since a real worry has risen before them as surely as the sun sets. He steps forward and puts a hand on his father’s shoulder.

Fingolfin reaches up to clasp it in his own. “Thank you,” he says. “I saw from afar that Turgon was speaking to you, earlier, and that he left you in a state of some…frustration. I assumed, given Aredhel’s latest absence, that he was seeking to enlist you to his cause.”

“I told him we could not stay in Mithrim forever,” Fingon says.

“Indeed,” Father looks almost cheered by this. “That is your sister’s idea—I confess, I did not expect to hear the same from you, Fingon, although—”

“Although I am changed, these recent weeks,” Fingon says grimly. “I no longer have a desire to remain here, Father. Surely you must know that.”

Father says nothing at first. Then, “You’re still angry.”

“Yes.”

“Maedhros and I have spoken a good deal,” Father says. “And I hope…”

“Please,” Fingon cuts him off again. “I’m immeasurably grateful to you, and Finrod, for putting aside your own differences while I collect myself. But I really think that, when I’ve completed the second surgery…when it is safely past, I will be ready—”

“Hold,” Father says, and at first Fingon thinks that Father is trying to prevent him from speaking out of turn against the absent invalid, but then he sees what Father sees: a ragged streak of grey bolting towards them through the gathering dusk, alone.

Huan.

Huan’s paws are torn with running. His jaws are foam-speckled. Fingon does not expect the last weary launch of the great hound’s dash to break against his knees. He is fortunate that Father is there beside him, helping him with a hand at his elbow.

“Good lord,” Fingon says, stupid with shock and the innate unwillingness to realize what the arrival of Huan, alone, must mean. “Good lord…Huan, boy, are you hurt?”

A howl, a whine. Down the hill, the bewildered sentries are beginning to climb up. They did not bar Huan’s passage, of course, because they were expecting him to be followed.

We are all expecting, Fingon thinks, his heart beating faster and faster. We are all—

“Nobody else is coming,” Father says, voicing the deepest dread.

Fingon realizes that, since his last words left him, he has been holding his breath.

Father tells the sentries to return to their posts. He asks Davy, coming from the stables, if he will fetch some water for Huan, who needs it badly. Then he and Fingon quicken their steps towards the fort.

But there is a wrench in this call for calm planning; a wrench in the form of Curufin, pale and black-capped and ruthlessly hurrying from the smithy-side of Mithrim, looking like his dead father and a warning in one.

“Where is he?” he demands shrilly, as Huan continues to butt against Fingon’s knees. “Where is Celegorm?”

Fingon’s thoughts race not to worries for Celegorm, but for Aredhel—the little sister nearly his height, the fierce and ardent flame of their family, the daughter unlike their mother save for the ways in which she is the sole living memory of her.  

“Curufin,” Father says, “Listen to me. We shall go after them. But our attempt must be well-orchestrated if it is to have any chance of success.”

“Huan,” Curufin snaps, turning his attention away from Father as if his face has been slapped to one side, “Huan, here boy! Here, and show me what you know—”

But Huan will not leave Fingon. Flushing bright and desperate, Curufin lurches forward, crouching at the dog’s feet.

“He’s bleeding,” he exclaims. “Damn it all, he’s bleeding—”

“I believe it is only from running,” Father says. He crouches too, examining, leaving Fingon standing above them with his hands clasping his elbows. Fingon tries to remember what it was he thought so very important, when he told Turgon that Aredhel should be free. Turgon—Turgon will be furious with fear, and rightly so.

Maedhros’ scars are no longer a grief only on account of Maedhros.

“I shall round up the men and women who know this land best,” Father says. “There is no hope for searching while there is still light, but we will bring torches. I know it is hard, Curufin, it is very—”

“Enough of this,” Curufin snarls, and Fingon is once more nearly knocked off his feet as his cousin brushes rudely past him. It took less time for Fingon to order his frantic thoughts, than for Curufin to decide that no power on this earth—least of all his uncle’s words—could divert him from the path he deems right.

Father rises, too. He strokes Huan between the ears with a lingering, shaking touch, then turns his gaze to Fingon. There is anguish in his eyes, deep and blank, but his voice retains its control. “We must go,” he says, “Before he stirs the whole fort to a frenzy.”

“Yes,” Fingon says, following him. He wants to say Aredhel, Aredhel, as if her name will call her to them. Huan lopes loose-limbed behind.

Curufin’s agitation has already drawn the attention of those nearest the entrance of the hall. Caranthir is trying to talk to him, trying to hold him back, but Curufin elbows him viciously away.

“I don’t want your miserable coddling,” he says. “Spring to whatever action suits you—though likely that is none at all.”

“You can’t ride out blindly and alone!” Caranthir cries, very red-faced. “We don’t know what happened to them. What’s to stop it from happening to you, if you—”

“Because I will be educating myself with the information we have at our disposal,” Curufin snaps. “Something all of you have been too lily-livered to force. Out of my way, Caranthir. I’m going to speak to Maedhros.”

“You what?”

“Now, now,” Fingolfin says, intervening with a hand on each boy’s arm. “Let us not be rash, or our sortie will fail. Maedhros is abed and cannot help us. Listen to me, Curufin, we are all—”

Curufin strikes him.

The hushed murmur in the fort changes, drawn in as a single shared gasp. Fingon does not feel the anger due this moment until Turgon expresses it for him, springing forward out of the gathering throng with a string of curses aimed at Curufin.

 But Father, turning, unconscious of the insult paid him, steps between Turgon and his nephew. “No,” he says, while Curufin, white-faced, wheels away towards the mouth of the corridor. “No, Turgon. It’s—we do not have time to quarrel. We must concern ourselves with planning, now. Come.”

Fingon meets his brother’s eyes, then, and is shamed by them. He is frozen in his uselessness as the rest of the assembly trails after his father to be seated in council at the long table. His hands work against his sides, and his feet are locked like tree-roots to the floor—

“You’d better follow him, hadn’t you?” Caranthir says. “Whatever you may think about Maedhros, you’d better. Curufin might hurt him.”

The abdicated doctor opens his mouth and shuts it again. He is a brother, and a cousin, and the storm is coming to claim all whom he loves and hates and is in confusion over, because that is the nature of storms.

Fingon and Caranthir reach the door of Maedhros’ room just as Curufin is flinging it open. They witness the interrupted tableau before them, thus, as Curufin also must: two faces, rather more alike than Fingon prefers to recognize, turned towards their entry. Maedhros is in his bed, as always, and Maglor is seated in one of the chairs beside him, reading aloud by candlelight from a red-and-gold bound book.

Could the moment have been a happy one? It matters not at all, now. Maglor’s voice falls at once. Fingon, though it is hardly the time for remorse on other subjects, is instantly drawn to meet Maedhros’ startled gaze.

This is the same room Fingon has lived and died and dreamed in, the same room where he has both shed blood and staunched it.

And this is the same cousin he nurtured and condemned. Maedhros is still too thin, but with a better color in his pallid skin, and a week’s less starved sharpness in his collarbones. Fingon’s eyes cannot help but see that; it is his heart that offers nothing more.

Aredhel, Aredhel. His sister’s name rings like an alarm in his mind; she is his purpose, at the moment.

(Is it his age-old weakness, to acknowledge that Maedhros would understand that?)

“Fingon,” says Maedhros, quietly. “You—”

“No,” snaps Curufin. “We haven’t come for doctoring, much less a social call. Celegorm is gone, Maedhros, and Aredhel too.”

“Gone?” That is Maglor, filling the silence left by Curufin, and Maedhros, who moves to make no answer of his own. “Gone to Hithlum?”

“Huan returned at a dead gallop,” Curufin says. “Alone. He ran so hard his feet bled.”

The silence that follows is a painful one. Then Maedhros says,

“Huan was otherwise unhurt?”

That seems to spark Curufin’s frenzied nerves to rage. “God above,” he says. “Yes, let’s ponder the hound. He’s unharmed, save for raw paws. Oh, look for yourself—here he is, now.”

Sure enough, Huan ambles through the open doorway. When he sees Fingon, his ears prick up, and he resumes his earlier occupation of nudging Fingon’s knees with his head. Fingon does not know whether his own silence, his own lack of action, is because he is afraid, or angry, or merely swept under by too much grief.

He does not think he will find his courage and resolution, in Maedhros’ room.

“Perhaps his brain is addled, too,” Curufin remarks, speaking again of Huan. “Since it seems he only wants Fingon. But never mind that. I’m going after them—after Celegorm and Aredhel. If you don’t mind, Russandol, I’d like to know what else I’ll face in the way of nasty surprises.”

“What are you implying?” Maglor demands.

“No time to imply,” Curufin retorts. “I’ll say it straight out. Guns aside, Maedhros, what did you give them?”

Maedhros’ left hand is in his lap. His right arm, too, ends there, and Fingon sees that he has closed his fingers tightly around the stump. Pain. He wants the pain.

“Curufin,” Maglor says severely. “That isn’t—”

“Nothing to say, or too much?” Curufin ignores Maglor utterly. “Come now. When you were whoring your way through Athair’s enemies, what other secrets did you offer for their pleasure? The list of our kills? The ground-fire? The mine?”

Fingon knows of no mine, but he knows that Curufin has said quite enough. Caranthir, breathing hard, must feel the same, for he steps between the bed and Curufin, his arms spread wide.

“Don’t listen to him, Maitimo,” Maglor is saying desperately, and Fingon, trying to reclaim a little of his spurned father’s stoic wits, if nothing else, says,

“I think you’d better go, Curufin. Take a horse—take your weapons, but—”

“No,” says Maedhros, quiet yet unmistakable.

“No?” Maglor is, in comparison, almost hysterical.

“Caranthir, it’s all right,” Maedhros says. “Curufin should hear what I have to say. I will gladly give what help I can. I owe you all that—and Celegorm as much as any.” He clears his throat, then, and Caranthir, his face twisting, steps aside.

“I didn’t speak of the mine,” Maedhros says. He has lifted his left hand, slightly, as if to fend off Maglor’s protests. “Nor of any of Athair’s inventions, save the guns. As for how my other…degradations may endanger Celegorm, I cannot fully guess. Every enemy I met bore a different sort of hatred towards me. Towards us.”

“Ah yes,” Curufin spits. “Hatred—hatred that your belated bravery spurred enough to turn their favor. Feanorian whore, you are remembered there, and not fondly.”

A sharp intake of breath, from Maglor. “How did you know that? You little snake!”

“Oh, hold your tongue,” says Curufin. "Maedhros' decoration is old news.”

“Maglor, don’t.” Maedhros still speaks softly; his hand is caught in Maglor's shirt, now, urging him back. Maglor had leapt to his feet. “You have shamed me enough, Curufin, short of seeing the marks yourself. Another time, perhaps—it is apparent that gossip has traveled fleetfooted, even in Mithrim. For now, I think I can help you a little—and then you must go. I believe Celegorm and Aredhel are still alive.”

“Alive?” Caranthir croaks, voicing the word that passes in an unheeded whisper on Fingon’s lips.

It is Curufin’s turn to look, in a shattered instant, as if he is holding back tears. He rallies swiftly, though.  “How can you be sure?”

“Huan,” Maedhros says, turning his head and tilting his gaze downward, to where Huan has accepted momentary defeat and is sprawling over Fingon’s boots. “You said that he only wants Fingon. Huan’s a clever dog. If he’s clinging like a burr to Fingon, it’s because he thinks that Fingon can help him. And what does Fingon do, at times such as these? He rescues. He saves the living.”

All this, Maedhros says with his eyes lowered. Deference born of humiliation or some other emotion—it is impossible to tell. Nonetheless, Fingon’s eyes flood, and his breath catches in his throat.

(He used to be able to save people.)

“That eliminates Mairon,” Maedhros continues. “Mairon would not have left Huan alive, if he attacked by ambush or numbers. If he attacked head-on but alone, I think Celegorm and Aredhel and Huan together could have a chance of defeating him.”

“Not Mairon,” Caranthir affirms. “That’s good.”

Maedhros shakes his head. “There is no good,” he says, “Not yet. Our best hope is that they have had a skirmish with ordinary regimental soldiers and have been taken into custody by strangers.”

Curufin draws himself up. He is trembling. “And our worst fear is that we are too late, and they are dead.”

“No,” Maedhros says. He raises his eyes, and looks at the cruel boy, his brother, and then he looks at Fingon. It is a gaze without kindness or warmth, but also without hatred. Still, the honesty there is enough to burn the spirit like a brand to flesh. Fingon’s heart does not yield under that honesty, but he is certainly no longer numb. “The worst fear is that, by some chance, they are already in the hands of Melkor Bauglir. Whatever happened, that is still unlikely—for a time. The mountain road is hard, and unless Celegorm is wholly insensible, he may be able to fight. Whether or not he can get free—” But that seems to sicken him. He passes his hand over his face. “Go,” he says. “Take as many as you can safely spare. I’ve given you all I can, I promise. All that can help you.”

Without another word, Curufin departs. Caranthir and Maglor stand like statues until Maedhros speaks again.

“I can’t stop Curufin,” he says, wearily. “I trust Fingolfin and the rest are organizing a search.”

“Yes,” says Fingon.

Maedhros doesn’t look at him. “Caranthir,” he says, “I will not choose for you. I cannot order you.”

“You could,” Caranthir mutters thickly. “I’ll do whatever you say.”

Maedhros shakes his head again. “Please,” he says, instead of commanding. “I will only request it. Stay with Amras, and the children. And Maglor—”

“I will stay with you,” Maglor says, reaching out to grasp his shoulder. Maedhros does not shrink from the touch, though Fingon minds the heave of his ribs as he breathes.

“Thank you, Macalaure.”

Fingon nudges Huan gently with his foot, and the hound springs up. “But I will go now, too,” Fingon says, his voice clear of tears and doubt alike. “I must.”

Maedhros has no words for him. Fingon has no time to wait for them. They nod to each other, briefly, a truce and an acknowledgement more than anything else, and then Fingon leaves the sickroom behind him, seeking to save in the wider world.

He is only just in time. Torches and lanterns have been distributed, and every horse that can bear a rider has been saddled. There are a dozen who will go: Father, Turgon, Finrod, Beren, and, of course, Wachiwi, are the faces that Fingon looks for and finds. Curufin has been just barely convinced to ride with the company, rather than on his own. Fingon snatches up his coat and checks for his weapons; he has a gun and a knife, and these will have to do, for the whole party is now leaving ahead of him, Huan included. The hound will lead them, Father has decreed, since he alone can guide them to the place where last he left his master and half-mistress.

“Remember!” Father calls, before they depart single file over the bridge, and the chance for easy speech is lost to them, “We are searchers only, not soldiers or attackers. We use violence only if we must. No matter the strain, we must be friendly and coolheaded to anyone we meet, for we are in no position of strength—this could be a trap.”

“We know,” Turgon growls, mounted beside Fingon, and perhaps only for Fingon’s ears. “And yet we’re still going to war.”

“No,” Fingon answers, turning his head to look at his brother, who is ruddied by the suffusion of flame through night air. “This is a rescue.”

Chapter Text

Hithlum appears disarming enough, with its single-story dwellings huddled like sheep against a world ranged with unknown wolves. Fingon has only been within its limits once, and that was when they were coming from the west, riding east.

That was when he did not know much about anything.

No matter how frequently he resolves to be immovable under the twisting of fate’s noose, there is always another breathless tug to break him.

Tonight, that break is Aredhel.

They halt shortly before the trodden land turns to a proper road. Father, who has taken command of this mission in much the same manner as he does in Mithrim—that is, by action more than word—proposes that four of the company remain here to stand lookout and hold the horses. A few sparse trees will serve for hitching posts. The rest will go into Hithlum on foot.

“We must be discreet,” Father urges. “We cannot know, easily, who is friend or foe.”

“Wait,” Curufin says. They have lit no lanterns, but Fingon can see enough of his face in the near-dark to envision the rest of it: the taut skin laid over nervous, unfriendly bones. The distrust inherited from his dead father. “Celegorm knew a smith—Azaghal. That was his name. A blacksmith. He intended to see him today.”

“Azaghal,” Father says. Nobody else seems to know the name—how could they? Celegorm speaks to so few. “Very well. Where is this smithy?”

“Like any forge,” Curufin answers shortly, “I expect it will be on the outskirts of the settlement. Near to the road.”

Fingon has never given much thought to the best location for forges, but he supposes what Curufin describes is sensible. Less risk of fire, and men in need of horseshoes can find it quickly as they enter the town limits.

They set out. Huan, weary though he must be, is most eager to be off. He swings his great head back to make sure they are following.

Where is she? When did you see her last?

These are questions even the most faithful of hounds cannot answer.

Vaguely, Fingon remembers Hithlum’s tavern. Finrod is beside him, moving as silently as a wraith, and Fingon wonders if Finrod remembers, too, the ridiculous French accents they put on. It seems so long ago. They thought themselves serious, then. They thought their playacting a crucial part of seeking understanding.

But how could one who has not met Mairon understand him?

How could Aredhel have known the world she might face, before she faced it?

Fingon could have advised her, it is true. He could have been harsher in his words, as Turgon was, or more attentive, as Father was. This goes for anybody he is beholden to, including Maedhros. They none of them seem to have discovered the unpleasant truth: Fingon is selfish. He considers first what helping other people can offer him.

Once, he was forced by necessity to be better than that. He faced the world, even if he could divine no useful lesson from it to be communicated afterwards.

Fingon was alone on the Mountain for a few hours, passing out of the agony of Gwindor’s knowledge into the agony of Maedhros’. And then once more, he had to fight for his cousin when his cousin was nothing but a voice in the dark, a hand left unmatched.

Yes, in memory, there is  both his blood on Fingon’s blade, and Fingon’s choice to save him after Fingon ruined him.

These were choices that Fingon could never have contemplated, that he never would have reached at all if the path had been shown to him before he walked it. So it is that the acts that Maedhros thinks most selfish were his least. Fingon acted without a thought for himself, on the Mountain.

It was afterwards that he failed to learn or teach his lesson to anybody else. Afterwards that he closed in on himself and demanded healing, and quickly, because he was as afraid as Maedhros of more pain.

On this cursed day, who has been teaching Aredhel a new and awful life?  

Azaghal’s smithy is recognizable by the outbuilding with its forge chimney. There is a light in the window of the small, snug house nearby.

“Curufin with me,” Father says. “The rest of you, be ready.”

Turgon huffs his displeasure, likely at the choice of Curufin. Everyone else is quiet. Finrod and Beren and Galadriel are grouped together, two gold-touched heads and one dark. But Fingon realizes, then, that Wachiwi is beside him. Her hand closes briefly over his, but when he turns his head to look at her, she is staring straight ahead, her eyes fixed on the glowing beam they are tracking.

Father raps at the door. Curufin stands close, his hand at his belt.

The door opens a crack.

“Good evening, sir,” Father says, in his most reasonable tone. “Are you Azaghal?”

Curufin did not know his last name.

“Depends on who’s asking,” says a gruff voice, and then Curufin, pushing eagerly forward, says,

“We’re friends of Abe Phillips.”

“Curufin, enough,” Father says. “We must—”

The voice counters, interrupting, “Abe has a lot of friends, it seems.”

“Celegorm,” Curufin says, ignoring Father’s admonition. “We’re looking for Celegorm.”

It is fortunate for all of them that Azaghal is goodhearted man, loyal even to a taciturn fur-trader whom he has not met more than twice.

“I haven’t seen him today,” Azaghal says, “But at our last meeting, he ordered tools. Forge tools. I’ve finished ‘em, too, around the time that I said I would, so I’ve been expecting him to call soon enough.”

He is short and stout and bearded. Standing beside his low-burning fireplace, under the gleam of an oil-lamp, Fingon’s gaze is drawn to his hands. They are very unlike Uncle Feanor’s or Curufin’s in shape, but alike in one respect: the small, smooth burn scars that fleck them.

“He rode to town this morning, with Aredhel, my daughter,” Father says. He stands gripping his elbows, a stance Fingon has found himself in more often than not, and one which he knows means that nerves are strained to rawness.

Father adds, “They are missing.”

Clearly worried by this news, Azaghal does his best to offer his account of the town—which of the Army’s stationed soldiers keep to themselves, which have been heckling travelers or attending to business seemingly not their own; which of the trappers will cheat you and which are fair. None of this information produces a useful lead. The small parlor where they stand, humbler even than Mithrim, is too small for eight anxious, perspiring interlopers. Fingon feels he shall go quite mad while Azaghal ruminates.

“Come to think of it, there is a queer fellow whom I’ve seen about lately,” the bearded man says at last. But just then, Huan sends up a howl.

“Quiet, you damnable creature!” snaps Curufin, but Fingon stoops to grip Huan’s ruff as the hound bounds toward him, circling in as best he can in the cramped space.

“That’s a clever dog,” Azaghal says, unexpectedly.

Huan’s a clever dog, said Maedhros, offering them the only help he could—wisdom born of suffering.

“Maybe he’s picked up a scent,” says Finrod. Fingon, whose mind turns scent to blood, must gather his courage and stem his tears in this stranger’s cabin.  He must remember the rest of Maedhros’ words.

“Maybe he has,” Father agrees. “We ought—I—”

If he’s clinging like a burr to Fingon, it’s because he thinks that Fingon can help him. And what does Fingon do, at times such as these? He rescues. He saves the living.

“I’ll go with him,” Fingon says, steadying himself with his hands against Huan’s rough fur and warm muscle. “I’ll let him lead me where he will.”

Father hesitates.

“I won’t go alone,” Fingon says, chagrinned. Of course they would suspect him of planning a mad-dash, solitary mission. “I—”

“Take me.” That’s Turgon. Wachiwi steps up beside him, and nods.

“Beren, too,” Finrod suggests. “If you don’t mind? You’ll want as many trackers as you can get.”

He does not offer to go himself, Fingon realizes, because he wants to stay with Father. Of course. In some ways, before and after their bitter arrival, Finrod has become more the eldest son than Fingon ever was.

He has no time to grieve or resent this, now. He is only concerned with being an eldest brother, before it is again too late.

It is agreed that they shall go while the rest listen to Azaghal and learn who may be trusted in the town. Next, Father shall have to decide whether the horses should be reclaimed and ridden out into the countryside. This last is presented as the ground for his strict orders to Fingon—that Fingon and his company report back any findings they make, any trails they might follow, without first following them.

“Agreed,” says Turgon, and Fingon offers his assent as well, hoping he can honor it.

But already in his heart, he knows that he will have to go after Huan, no matter the cost. Huan is their only witness of consequence, and Fingon half-wonders why Curufin did not leap to join the quest with the best chance of an immediate discovery.

Is he vexed over Huan’s attention to Fingon? Is he so Feanorian that he simply cannot bear to be second-best?

But now they are out in the cool air again, and Fingon has put all thoughts of Curufin out of his head. He is flexing his rein-stiffened fingers against his palms, moving through shadows alongside Huan’s hulking shadow.  

(Why must Fingon, in times of trouble, always feel a knife in his grasp?)

Here is the tavern, where first they came to hear of Mithrim. Here still ring the sounds of men and even merriment. If Fingon peers through the smoky glass, will he be brought to a black-mawed cave again, or to a sheer face of rock? Are Celegorm and Aredhel there, being tormented for the enjoyment of men who only look like men, but are demons within?

Of course, it isn’t so. Not all men are Melkor Bauglir or Mairon the hunter. Some are simply content to eat meat and drink ale, without hungering for violence, without thirsting for blood.

Huan’s tireless tread leads them behind the tavern. And there, with his whole wild, ungainly body changing in shape, he catches a scent. His head flung back--his ribs caverning and expanding—it is a transformation from hope to hunt.

Huan thrusts his shoulder, hard, against Fingon’s thigh, and then he is off.

Fingon’s heart is in his throat.

“We have to report back to Father,” Turgon hisses, as if compliance with an order is still his first and greatest necessity.

“We haven’t any time,” Fingon says, as he knew he might have to. He strains to see where Huan has gone, and Wachiwi says,

“Turgon, he’s right. One of us should go back, and the rest should follow.”

“I’ll go and tell them,” Beren says. “Run, now!”

And so they run.

The town ends. The fields begin. They are, as always, unlike eastern fields: rough and uneven, spotted with trees, treacherous with dry stone. For light, there is only the moon, a waning moon, behind shreds of high-flying cloud. Fingon has not run like this in a long time. His lungs are still not what they should be, but he blesses Wachiwi for forcing him out of the fort, away from the sickroom.

He would never have had the strength, elsewise.

Fingon must learn to be unselfish. He must learn not to take for granted the gifts he is given by those who love him more than he deserves.

Huan is a black spot ahead of them.

“Damn that dog,” Turgon pants, though he is keeping pace easily with Fingon, and could likely match Wachiwi if he tried.

“We must keep on,” Fingon answers, gasping. “No matter—how far. We must—”

The northwestern arm of the evergreens they passed through to reach the town rears up ahead. It encircles; it chokes. Here is the noose, and Fingon brings his neck to it.

At the edge of the forest, Huan draws up short. He sniffs the air. He is trembling from nose to tail. For the first time, Fingon wonders whether Celegorm’s faithful dog will survive this.

He is as mortal as the rest of them—more so, for all that he is a clever beast.

I am sorry, Fingon thinks, while he drags the cool air into his hot, ragged lungs. I am sorry. Aredhel…Maedhros…am I always too blind? Why can I never save you before you need, so desperately, to be saved?

A flicker of his cousin appears before his sealed, aching eyes.

Never the same twice, Maedhros says. It’s never the same twice.

Huan plunges into the trees. Fingon, Turgon, Wachiwi—they are after him. They are close on his heels, though the low branches lash them and the darkness seems absolute.

Suddenly, Huan howls. The loneliest sound in the world, if it comes unseen and unlooked-for from a hound’s wilder kin, but here it is born of hope.

Huan is calling for someone.

For his master?

Or for Aredhel?

Let me die before she does, Fingon prays. Let me be the sacrifice, if our family must be tested again. Please.

Sometimes he feels that his God is just as unforgiving as Maedhros’. Sometimes Fingon must be the one to bargain, to beg.

“Huan!”

A voice, lonely and un-looked for and dreadfully dear.

“Huan!”

With all the voice he can muster in answer, Fingon calls her name. And then with strength he did not know he had, he leaps ahead, outstripping Wachiwi and Turgon. He runs as if his muscles are freshly rested, as if his bones are made as the mountains are. He runs and calls, following the sound of Huan, the sound of his sister’s voice.

Hope is dangerous, even deadly—but it is his birthright. It is a flame bright enough to burn away all the selfishness and ignorance of youth, leaving son and brother behind.  

His sister is a dark shape crouched on the forest floor, her white face touched by what moonlight slips the net of the canopy. Huan stands over her, nosing at her, and her arms are clasped around his neck.

Fingon forgets every physician’s rule. He ought to ascertain first whether she is injured. He ought to keep her calm, by virtue of his calm. He should, if she is well enough, administer a little reviving spirits from the flask he keeps at his side.

He does none of these things. He dives past Huan and takes Aredhel in his arms, drawing her up against him. She is shaking, but solid, in his hold.

Though he had air in his lungs for riding and running, he did not truly breathe until now.

“Aredhel,” he repeats, over and over, against the hard curve of her brow. A hard, Fingolfian brow, housing a clever mind.  He found her whole, and unassailed—does he dare pray that she did not need saving after all? That she is well? “Aredhel.”

“Fingon,” she gasps, but it is a sob, and more sobs follow. She weeps wildly into his shoulder, the tangled braids of his hair, and he does not release her for a long time.

Indeed, they are still embracing thus when Turgon arrives, and Wachiwi. Turgon says their sister’s name only once, and brokenly.

“She is here,” Fingon says. “We are here.” He is not surprised by the feeling of Turgon’s arms closing around them both—he is only surprised by the memory jarred loose.

A riverbank, in the unflinching light of summer.

Fingon, opening his arms to two brothers, when he had two brothers.

Argon had said he was not wanted. Had said he was at odds and ends, while their family scrambled to understand what was lost.

How could they understand? How could they know, when it was not yet taken from them?

Well, I want you, Fingon had said. And the three of them, Fingon and his brothers, stood locked together, as if by their arms and hands they could rebuild the bridge that lay in ash beside them.

This is like that.

This—two brothers and a sister—is a bridge to the future, even though a part of their shared heart is gone.

Aredhel is, characteristically, the first to break away. “Maeglin is hurt,” she says, drying her eyes on her sleeve. “He was shot. Wachiwi, is that you?”

“Yes,” says Wachiwi. “I have been your guard,” she adds. “But I did not know whether this was an enemy.”

Though the forest is dense, Fingon’s eyes have adjusted, and he can see a little. He can see that there is another body lying at Wachiwi’s feet.

“He’s not an enemy,” Aredhel says, crossing to kneel beside him. “Maeglin, can you hear me? Maeglin—Maeglin!”

“Aredhel,” Turgon says. “Are we safe here? How did you—”

“We are safe for now,” she says. “But we shouldn’t stay. Fingon, please see to him. The bullet got him in the shoulder. He hasn’t eaten, either, in at least a day.”

So charged, Fingon recalls who he is and what he can do, in ordinary circumstances. He moves across the springing needles underfoot to join his sister next to Maeglin, whoever he is. 

The first thing that Fingon learns is that Maeglin is only a boy. The insensible face is young, and very pale. There is indeed a wound at the shoulder, still oozing blood. Fingon packs it with handkerchiefs and torn strips from his shirt. There is a coat lying nearby. Fingon can feel that it is of expensive make, but that does not matter now. He hoists the boy up with Aredhel’s help and draws the open sleeve tightly over the wounded arm.

“This will keep the dressings in,” Fingon says. “We’ll have to carry him. Who is he?”

“He was a captive,” Aredhel says. “We escaped together.”

“A captive?” Turgon’s voice cracks under the strain.

“Never mind that now,” she says, herself again—sharp and quick. “Where is Father? Did he come, too?”

“We had a party of about a dozen,” Fingon answers. Though an occasional breeze sways the trees, there is no other sound. How Aredhel came to be here, with an injured boy, remains a mystery. “Father led them. They are on their way to us, I hope.” He stands, peering into the gloom.  

“And Celegorm?” she demands, a little less certain, now. “Have you seen Celegorm?”

“No. It was only—Huan came back to the fort alone. We left as quickly as we could, and we scattered in Hithlum. Huan brought some of us away to you.”

Aredhel is silent.

Wachiwi says, “Beren knows our direction, but not that we are in the forest. We must go to open ground.”

Wachiwi keeps close to Aredhel, and Fingon and Turgon carry Maeglin between them. He groans a little but does not fully wake. If it is true what Aredhel has says, and he has not eaten in more than a day, he is weakened as much by that as by his wound.

He is not very heavy.

They are not harassed as they retrace their steps through the forest. Moving more slowly, Huan still keeps ahead of them, and it is in his unworried demeanor that they must trust. Fingon, though far less strained by these efforts than he was almost three months ago, cannot help but feel the skin on his neck crawl at the thought that they may be followed.

In the shrubby fields once more, Wachiwi begins to utter the birdcalls perfected by Haleth’s band, and known to everyone in Fingolfin’s company. For a maddening span of moments, there is no reply.

And then, there is.

Fingon and Turgon join their calls with hers, and Huan does the rest. With one last burst of speed, he bounds to meet the riders, and bring them together with the rescuers, who, though disobedient above all, have succeeded in their aim.

Fingon will bear any reprimand Father sees fit to give, but he does not really expect one. He sags a little, beneath the stranger’s weight.  

The first flush of relief is over; now he wants only to be home.

Yes, Mithrim is home. 

Chapter Text

It seems a kindness to offer Huan some doctorly attentions, after all he has endured. By the time Fingon thinks to do it, however, night has come and gone, and Huan’s paws are already bandaged. Celegorm turns Fingon away at the door of the Feanorians’ room, disgust written over his sleep-creased features, and Fingon reminds himself that there is no point in taking offense at anything Celegorm does, in living or dying or looking after his dog.

Fingon is not needed, it seems, to bandage Celegorm’s wounds either.

He comes again to Maeglin’s cot in the women’s quarters, and finds the boy sitting up, plucking nervously at his borrowed trousers.

“Good morning,” Fingon says. “Has anybody brought you breakfast?”

He meant to do it himself, after seeing to Huan. He is back sooner than expected, of course, but forgot to visit the kitchen on his way.

“No,” Maeglin says. “But that’s all right. I’m not very hungry.”

This cannot be true—sick and weak though he was, he was nearly ravenous last night when Fingon gave him some bread sopped with broth. Aredhel said he was underfed, and Fingon’s inspection of his ribs and chest have confirmed the dismal fact.

“You are not imposing on anybody,” Fingon tells him, as gently as he can. He has wondered, lately, if he no longer knows how to be properly gentle. “I do not know if that is what worries you, or if you fear you may not be safe here. I can promise you that you are. This is Fort Mithrim. It is known everywhere as a—a stronghold.”

Maeglin says nothing.

Fingon sits on one of the other beds, feeling strangely useless. He has already checked the boy’s injuries this morning; there is really nothing else for him to do. But one must tend to the mind as well as the body, if one is to be a good doctor.

If he is to be—

“You have my gratitude, at least,” Fingon says. “You helped save my sister. I’ll never forget it. And nor will anybody else in this fort. There are friends here, Maeglin, though I don’t blame you at all for being…cautious.” He clears his throat. “You’ve had a hard life, haven’t you? Well, never mind. There are comrades in that history here as well. And in the meantime, would you like to see Aredhel again? I can find her for you.”

“Yes, please,” Maeglin murmurs, meeting Fingon’s gaze at last with brief, sloe-dark one.

Fingon rises, but there is no need to look for Aredhel, as it turns out. She is already at the door. “Ah,” she says, looking quite herself, her hair rather wild but a good color in her cheeks. “Judith said you were here together. Good morning, Maeglin.”

“Good morning,” he answers. Fingon cannot help but notice how his whole face changes at the sight of his rescuer; there is a smile beginning to bloom where none seemed imaginable before.

For his own part, Fingon is also overcome. He supposes it would be a little shocking to embrace her, so he does not, even though he dearly wants to. It is still hard to believe, after those harrowing hours yesterday, that she is solidly before him again. “I was just telling Maeglin that you would come if he wished,” Fingon says. “And here you are. But had you another errand?”

Curiously sober, she nods. “Maedhros is asking for you,” she says. “I know that—oh, I shan’t try and persuade you. I will only say plainly, you ought to go. It is important.”

At the moment, Fingon could not deny her anything. And of course, she does not know that he has already seen Maedhros, and spoken civilly to him, on her behalf.

“I’ll go,” he says, and ducks away from this new sickroom before he can lose his nerve.

Maedhros is alone. He is expecting Fingon, too, because when Fingon enters after only a single knock, Maedhros says levelly,

“You came.”

“Aredhel said it was important.”

“First off, I’m glad she’s well.” Maedhros is holding himself almost at attention, his hand and wrist clasped in his lap, his spine stiff. “It was the greatest relief in the world to see her, just now.”

“She…” Fingon had not stopped, really, to puzzle out the happenings of this morning. “She came and saw you?”

“I’d like to swear you to secrecy, if you don’t mind,” Maedhros says, “Before we proceed further.”

“My goodness.” Fingon remembers, just then, that they are still at odds. He had put it out of his head as soon as he came in the room. He doesn’t know why. “That’s rather dire.”

“We thought we might be each a sibling short, twelve hours ago. I’d say a good deal, these days, is dire.” Maedhros does not smile, but there is something almost supplicating, in his eyes, that keeps Fingon from wanting to start any sort of quarrel.

In truth, he is tired of quarreling.

“As long as it will not hurt anybody,” Fingon says, carefully, “I suppose I could swear.”

“It is to protect someone, in fact.” Maedhros plucks at the shirt-sleeve that hangs about his stunted forearm. “Maeglin.”

 Fingon moistens his dry lips, and repeats, “Maeglin?”

“Yes. Are you game?”

Maedhros’ hair has lengthened a little, or at least, curled a little more about his neck, since Fingon last looked closely at him. He is not so horribly thin as he was. He might be in pain—but then again, he might always be in pain, with the hurts he has endured.

Most notably, there is a strength and determination in him, without anger, that Fingon feared he might never see again.

Yes, he was afraid. Afraid of so much, and yet willing to bring about ruin on account of those fears, rather than letting time answer them.

“I will keep my mouth shut,” he says. “I can do it, you know.”

“I bow to my betters,” Maedhros says dryly. “I’ve already told Aredhel this, and there is one other person who knows—well, two, if we count Maeglin himself. Maeglin was in Bauglir’s keep when Gwindor and I were making guns in that blasted forge.”

Fingon takes a moment to digest this information. When he has done so to a reasonable degree, he asks carefully, “He was…a prisoner?”

“Do you give a damn about the guns?” Maedhros asks abruptly.

“The guns?”

“You know. The whole of Curufin’s outrage. I paid my way to something-or-other with Feanor’s secrets.”

“I don’t care at all,” Fingon says, surprised into honesty, and somehow that surprises a smile from Maedhros—however briefly.

“Very good,” Maedhros says. “I showed Maeglin how to make the guns. I think you’re right. I think he was a prisoner. But he wasn’t treated as harshly as a slave, and so Gwindor…doesn’t trust him.”

Fingon is learning to be… cautious, as he said to Maeglin perhaps a quarter of an hour ago. “Did Gwindor have good reason not to trust him?”

“Gwindor is very loyal,” says Maedhros. “I think the trouble is, I was not treated very well—a subject on which reasonable minds may differ, of course—and Maeglin was at times a…slight participant in some of the schoolyard torments.”

“I see.” The boy does look a little like Curufin, and it all sounds like something Curufin would do. More than that—it is what Curufin did last night, in this very room, when Fingon did nothing to stop him.

That has rested heavier on his conscience than he knew.

“Maedhros,” Fingon says, “About last night, when Curufin…”

“Don’t. I don’t care about the guns either. I know why I did it.”

“Still,” Fingon says, feeling his face growing heated, “What he said was cruel.”

“We love to say cruel things to each other,” Maedhros points out, “In this family.”

Fingon clears his throat for the second time that morning, or tries to. It does not dislodge the sudden lump there.

“He’s a child,” Maedhros says. “A mistreated child, even if he wasn’t chained or whipped with the rest of us. You must understand, Fingon, that his plight was different but no better. He was trapped in the hold of the worst kind of monster, one that poisoned his mind and was, at best, indifferent to his body. That isn’t kindness, or loyalty, you see. It’s—”

“I understand,” Fingon says, his heart sick within him. (He isn’t thinking, just then, of Maeglin.)

“So you’ll look out for him?” Maedhros asks. “That’s my chief concern. I asked Aredhel to do the same, but two is better than one, and I… cannot do much for him myself, at present.”

Fingon ruminates. Then he realizes that Maedhros is waiting for an answer. “I will protect him as best I can,” he says, “Though I do not expect there to be trouble. Who else would think to suspect him?”

“Glaurung knew,” Maedhros says. “A good deal, which means I am still being bandied about as a death’s-head trophy in enemy camps. Pleasant thought.”

“Glaurung—you knew him?”

“No.” Maedhros’ shoulders slump a little. His hand flits to his brow, and he thrusts it quickly down again.

 Fingon narrows his eyes but does not investigate further, at present. “You might be assumed dead,” he says, “Even by those who know you escaped.”

“A fair guess.” Maedhros nods. “Which…oh, Jesus. Well, somebody ought to break it to Maeglin that I’m alive, then. Aredhel might. It—” He stops speaking altogether.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” Maedhros says. Another smile—this one, very strained. “I hope he will not be alarmed overmuch.”

“How did he get away from the Mountain?” Fingon asks, trying to sort the timeline.

Quietly: “I don’t know.”

Fingon decides, in that moment, not to ask when Maedhros saw Maeglin last. Instead, he ventures, as a doctor should, “Is your head hurting you?”

The question is a lifeline, thrown. Fingon did not recognize the significance of it fully until the words left his mouth. It is an offer of medical interest, yes, but also an olive branch. To step into this role again is to offer forgiveness and restoration. He does not yet know if he is ready.

Maedhros must feel the same, for his eyes widen. Then he looks carefully downward. “Yes,” he says. “But not much worse than usual.”

“You have headaches often?” Fingon lifts himself from the chair he had taken, out of habit, when he came into the room. “Where is the pain located?”

Maedhros lifts his hand again to tap the center of his forehead. “Here. It’s—beating like a pulse, rather.”

Fingon takes another leap, and reaches out to place one hand at the base of Maedhros’ neck, the other over his forehead. He applies gentle pressure at the points Olorin taught him, and explores a little with his fingers to see if there are any troubling indentations.

“I never thought to ask,” he says, “But were you often knocked unconscious?”

“Often enough,” Maedhros answers. The pulse in his temple patters.

“I suppose nobody has given you feverfew in a while,” Fingon says, “Since you have had no fever. But it is useful for this as well. I will speak to Miles about it.”

Maedhros makes no reply.

“Am I making it worse?” Fingon asks, worried that he has forgotten all he ever knew of doctoring.

“No—no.”

Fingon is suddenly conscious, as if the for the first time, of the scar beneath his hand, the eye etched into Maedhros’ neck. He is reminded, also anew, that his cousin has suffered enough to set him apart from every friend he has known, every self he has ever been.

And yet: Maedhros is still Maedhros, more himself than Fingon might have been, under the same circumstances. And Maedhros is still sorry, Fingon thinks. Yes, there is an apology in this touch, in his gaze of a moment ago.

An apology Fingon both does and does not deserve.

“Have you found the center of veneration yet?” Maedhros asks softly.

“What?” Fingon is jarred to the present, pausing the slow, searching circles he has been tracing with his fingers.

“You are making a rather phrenological study,” says Maedhros. “Of my battered head.”

“Heavens,” Fingon sputters. “Don’t even joke about it. It sickens me that, along with all his other sins, he was also—” He stops, searching for the right words. Words to insult Bauglir, without alarming Maedhros.

“A man of bad science? Yes, I think he also attributed some of my flagrant immorality to the color of my hair.”

It is said lightly, and Fingon almost laughs at it, but looking down through the gap of his finger and thumb, stilled against Maedhros’ forehead, he can see the glint of a tear on his cousin’s cheek.

“Maitimo,” he says. It has been a long time since he called him that.

“Don’t mind me,” Maedhros says. “You’d better go, hadn’t you? You’ve another invalid to look after.”

“Aredhel is with him.” Fingon stands, and restrains the urge to pat Maedhros’ head as if he was a child. “Since I’m here, I might as well look at the brace.” It is the awkward truth that he ought to have looked at it much sooner.

“Oh,” Maedhros says. “Yes, I suppose you must.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not really. It is only stiff and…well, rather pinned-and-needled, I suppose.”

“That is natural.” Fingon has heard that the ghost sensation of amputated limbs is much the same, but dares not ask out of lingering, delicate cowardice. He draws down the sheet that covers Maedhros’ leg, and sees that there is some deterioration of the muscles, as was to be expected, but no swelling around the brace. “Has someone been massaging the muscles?”

“Yes. Caranthir, mostly.”

“That’s good of him.”

“Caranthir,” says Maedhros, “Is always very good. He’s like Turgon.”

Fingon turns this over in his mind as, with his hands, he gently turns Maedhros’ knee from side to side. “Yes, I can see a little resemblance. Though Caranthir still seems like a child, to me.”

“Oh, Lord, don’t let him hear you say that.” Maedhros’ voice does not seem strained: the inspection of his leg must not hurt him. “When…when do you think it will be ready to come off?”

“Soon,” Fingon says, straightening up. “Within the week, in fact. You’ve healed very well, and quickly.”

“First time for everything.”

“Not really.” Fingon should go, now. He has overstayed his welcome, and the confines of his own conscience, his own grudges. But he cannot seem to tear himself away. “How—how did you manage to make the guns, in Bauglir’s forge? Weren’t you injured?”

Maedhros opens his mouth and shuts it again before answering, like he is unsure of his answer. “At the time,” he says, a little breathily, “I thought that a man named Ulfang—dead, now—was going to kill Celegorm.”

“Ulfang?”

“He was a spy, in this fort. He’d already killed once. He came to the Mountain, when I was…”

Fingon catches himself trying to sort the timeline again. It must show on his face.

“It’s an unpleasant little story, is all,” Maedhros says, abandoning whatever thread he had been using to lead Fingon, Ariadne-like, to the monstrous center of his memory. “I thought I was living on borrowed time. I tried not to think of my leg, and just of my hands, since they were what mattered for gun-making.”

Fingon feels the silent, ultimate blow: the shot to the head. “And what mattered for destroying the forge,” he says. “And everything in it.”

Maedhros nods. He bites his trembling lip until he is quite steady, quite calm. “You see now,” he said. “Why it did have to be a hand, that paid the price.”

It is so easy to be drawn into his world again. To believe that everything he ever did was noble, and necessary.

To forget one’s own hurts.

Is forgiveness a weakness, if it is wholly founded on friendship?

“You will not be able to walk at once,” Fingon says. “Your legs will be unsteady and not at all strong. But with help—and I will ask Curufin if he is willing to fashion a crutch—it will be only a week or two before you are making real progress. And that is sooner than I would have predicted, so we must consider it another victory.”

Another nod. Fingon is, somehow, exasperated by it.

“Maitimo—” Again, Maitimo. It slips out so easily. “You needn’t agree with me if you don’t mean it.”

Maedhros’ gaze is downcast, but his voice is clear. “It’s a sight better than sparring, isn’t it?”  

Fingon is a little stung. “Are you…still angry?”

Maedhros counters, “Are you?”

“I should be.” Fingon says, and then, hastily, “According to some people.”

Maedhros is startled by this, or amused by it, enough to look at him again. “Some people? Have you ever cared for the opinions of some people?”

Usually just Father, though I didn’t always know it, and you. “I am trying to take the counsel from several sources lately,” Fingon says. “I’m told that’s the best way to achieve wisdom.”

“The best way to achieve wisdom is located several thousand miles away from here,” Maedhros says, “I’m fairly certain.”

“We can agree on that, at least,” Fingon ventures, thinking of Olorin.

“I’ll be glad to be out of this bed,” Maedhros says. “Didn’t think it was worth saying again. If it’s on crutches, so be it.” He thumps his thigh lightly, absently, with his right wrist.

“About that feverfew,” Fingon says. “I should fetch it before your head has run away with you entirely.” Once again, he’s made a poor choice of words, but he is still rather befuddled by how the whole of this exchange has gone.

It began with Maedhros asking a favor of him, and Fingon intending to grant it only insofar as it helped those connected to them by chance and circumstance.

It has ended with a flood of recollections, most of past friendship, a few of recent strife—but none of them so bitter as he would have expected them to be.  

Fingon makes no explicit promise that he will return to his doctorly duty, and he is rather proud of that, until he realizes that his mention of fetching feverfew accomplished the same end. Then he decides that he does not really care one way or the other. They are not quarreling at the moment, and there is more important business to attend to.

He will never like Celegorm, but he understands just as well as Maedhros does, on this bright morning, what it means to have someone brought back from near-death.

When he next sees Aredhel, he does not stand on ceremony. He puts his arm around her shoulder and draws her close to him. She arches her brows and says nothing, but she does not shy away from him.

“Have you befriended Maeglin, then?” he asks.

She sighs. “I’ve tried.”

It is only much later that Fingon realizes how little he knows about the crimes or character of the boy he is supposed to protect. 

Chapter Text

Nothing has strictly changed, Fingon reminds himself, save that he has been taught another lesson in gratitude. It nearly came too late.

He must never think that Turgon and Aredhel are safe because they are often beside him; he must never trust that they will live forever merely because they have survived this long.

Newly chastened by these realizations, it is everything he can do to keep from embracing them at the breakfast table each morning following their return to the fort.

And yet—

The reemergence of Maedhros as his ally, even as his friend, is as great an obstacle to Fingon’s brotherly obligations as it has ever been. Try as he might to prevent his focus from shifting, to remember, too, that Maedhros’ case is no more hopeful on account of his recent conciliations, it is never enough.

Fingon will always be eager to prove himself the hero, and Maedhros seems ready to let him do so again. Aredhel would understand this, maybe. Turgon would not.

Maedhros is still in a disadvantaged position, a voice rather like Turgon’s, but too sympathetic to their cousin’s plight to be Turgon’s, chides in Fingon’s mind. And you are his most powerful adversary. You hold the power of life and death, in a way that those who do not trouble themselves with the double-edged blade of doctoring shall never know.

Does the mysterious Maeglin, on whose behalf Maedhros pled, feel something the same? Does he fear Fingon when Fingon’s hands probe lightly at his wound and wind new bandages?

Maedhros swore that Maeglin was not an enemy, to Fingon.

What would Maedhros say of Fingon, to a stranger, if he could? Would Maedhros call him a hero, if he was not forced?

Out of practical cowardice, Fingon does not ask such questions, during his increasing return to sickroom duties. In truth, it is scarcely a sickroom any longer, and that shift in itself brings new tasks. Fingon informs Maedhros that the second surgery—the removal of the pins—shall scarcely hurt at all. He ignores Celegorm’s glares, but tries to be patient with Maglor’s fretful interference.

In all this Fingon insists, inwardly, that he has been mindful of the balance between brother and cousin, between wronged and worshipful. But when Wachiwi finds him in the kitchen with Miles, once more absorbed in the business of preparing concoctions for Maedhros and Maedhros alone, he wholly expects her warning to be about some dark turn in his cousin’s health or mood.

“You’d better come at once,” Wachiwi says. “It’s Aredhel.”

How soon Fingon falls into old ways, old interests, and forgets all else—

In the stable, a tableau: Curufin and Celegorm, looking far more like attack dogs than Huan ever has. And a few paces away, lit by the arc of sunshine flooding in through the still-swinging door, is Aredhel.

She is wrapped protectively around Fingon’s other recent charge—the one whose wounds he treated as a matter of course, and the one he vowed to look after, as a matter of favor.

Aredhel is holding Maeglin in a way Fingon doesn’t remember her holding anyone before, close to her chest with one arm wrapped almost around his head, her hand against his brow, shielding him. But of course, Aredhel has never had cause to shield anyone. Turgon and Fingon did not plague Argon with rough games, as their Formenos cousins did. If anything, Aredhel was the hoyden among her staider brothers, the one who had to be told to mind the constraints of decorum.

(Doubtless there is something very wrong, here, but Fingon’s heart still has time to leap at what can only be described as a motherly aspect.)

“Oh,” Curufin says at the sight of him, caustically, “Saint Fingon. Thank God, we were in such need of salvation.”

Celegorm, hulking beside him, says nothing. Fingon does not wonder over that; he is too taken, suddenly, by the flash of the blade that Celegorm holds.

A practiced angle, a white-knuckled grip: ready to strike.

“I don't understand,” Fingon says, which is the truth. He doesn’t know why Wachiwi called him here, not really. All it took was the mention of Aredhel, for Fingon is only three days past losing Aredhel forever.

“It doesn’t concern you,” Curufin snaps.

“It most certainly does,” Aredhel lashes back, sharp and fearless and furious. “You two bullying, murderous bastards—what were you thinking?”

Silence. Obstinate, violent, Feanorian silence.

“This child,” says Aredhel, “Is in my care. He is under my protection. Cut my throat, Celegorm, if you’re so bent on bloodshed.”

Curufin laughs, horribly. Celegorm breathes like one of the horses shifting uneasily in the stalls around them—a sharp exhale through his nose. Then he says, in a tone that Fingon thinks might be intended to be reasonable, but is instead strangely flat, strangely dead—

“You don’t know who he is.”

Aredhel looks at Fingon, then. She seems grateful in her own way for his presence, but there is something remote in her expression: she knows something he doesn’t. She is making her own path.

And she is not letting Maeglin go.

She says, keen and unyielding, “Maedhros knows who he is, Celegorm. And Maedhros charged me with his protection.”

Fingon looks to Celegorm as if, by his brutish silence, Celegorm will somehow reveal what the spoken words cannot. Who he is—but how could Celegorm know, without the indiscretion of one of Maedhros’ confidants? Aredhel and Fingon alone were told of Maeglin’s identity. As for Gwindor, he would never—

“Maedhros knows,” Curufin interjects, “About his—about the brat’s mother?”

Maeglin makes a sound for the first time, then, muffled by the crook of Aredhel’s arm. It is a sobbing, childish sound, and forces again on Fingon the realization that Maeglin is little more than Argon’s age. The strangers who seemed to welcome him at first now threaten him with violence. He is still far from strong; he is hungry and hurt. Fingon can see how his thin body trembles.

How he cannot hide his fear.

“Aredhel,” Fingon says, as levelly as he trusts their father would, under the circumstances, “Perhaps we should speak to Maedhros.”

“No,” Celegorm practically spits. “Leave him alone, d’you hear? Leave him the hell alone. Nattering self-righteous—”

“Celegorm, enough,” Aredhel snaps. “Your own dog disapproves of you, at present. Go and cool your temper. If you think Maedhros wants you to hurt this boy, think again.”

“This whimpering spawn,” says Curufin, “Will turn out to be as needle-toothed as his mother. Wait and see.” He has already accepted defeat in act if not in word—he is moving towards the open door with the casual stride of a disinterested observer. Celegorm does not follow. At the door, Curufin turns back and seeks Fingon with his gaze. “In all your doctoring,” he asks, quite lightly, “Did you ever happen to look at dear Maitimo’s throat?”

The knife shifts in Celegorm’s hold.

Fingon gapes, but can think of no proper retort. Does one even exist? He cannot remember anything particular about Maedhros’ throat. Any part of his cousin not broken or bleeding or missing outright was to be counted a victory, then disregarded.

“Celegorm,” Aredhel is saying, in a softened tone.

“I killed her,” says Celegorm. “And he thanked me. But you’d bind him to another monster.”

He casts a cruel, slender knife at Aredhel’s feet. Then he stands as one transfixed, a moment longer, and Fingon waits for another rush of violence. Perhaps he ought to step between his sister and this fiendish cousin—but that would be likelier to provoke Celegorm than calm him.

Only when the stable door swings shut behind him does Aredhel heave a long, painful sigh. “I should go after him,” she says. “He might do something else…rash.”

To whom? Fingon, it seems, is uneducated as to the latest bounds of adversary. Maedhros said nothing as to Maeglin’s mother—he said only that Maeglin sometimes gave him trouble, in Bauglir’s smithy.

Dear Maitimo’s throat—I killed her, and he thanked me—

What does it all mean?

Fingon shakes himself. “Maeglin,” he says. “Are you hurt? Other than the old wound.”

“No,” Maeglin whispers. Though he is quiet, Fingon suspects he is also on the verge of hysterics. “No, I’m—”

Aredhel takes a step back, gripping Maeglin’s hands in her own, meeting his eyes. “I am going to speak to Celegorm,” she says. “I am going to make certain he does not try to hurt you again. Stay with Fingon.”

Then she, too, is gone. But Celegorm won’t hurt her. Even at his most righteous and least trustful, Fingon knows that.

He wishes he had a tenth of her affection and confidence—the sort of warmth that could comfort or burn as needed. Left alone with her charge, he is awkward, flexing his weaponless hands at his sides.

Then he decides that there is something he can do. Something he has the confidence to act upon, fly as it does in the face of Maeglin’s wishes.

In the face of Maedhros’ wishes.

Fingon is convinced that they are both wrong.

“Come with me,” he says. “Take my arm, if your knees are shaking. It is not every day that one is threatened by one of my mad relations.”

Maeglin is quiet and docile halfway up to the fort. Then he says, low,

“I deserved it.”

That is a lesson you learned from another relation, Fingon thinks ruefully, but he does not voice the thought. Instead he says,

“Maeglin, you oughtn’t to think so poorly of yourself. I am sure you ought not.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Perhaps not.” Fingon says, steeling himself to stand firm against any panicked arguments Maeglin may try. “But there is somebody here who does know you, and we are going to speak with him now.”

They are outside of Maedhros’ door, and Fingon, who too often forgets to pray these days unless a crisis is falling straight from the listening heavens, utters a swift entreaty that Maedhros will be alone. Maglor will only complicate things.

He supposes that anybody else could be easily sent away, but he would rather not have the trouble.

Fingon has been spared one trouble, a few moments before. To his surprise, Maeglin did not argue with his plan to go to Maedhros. He bit his ragged lips, as Maedhros himself often did, and then he nodded.

It was not a childish look on his face, then, but the expression of a condemned man being led away to his death. Fingon accepted his compliance anyway, and now, not looking at him, Fingon knocks at the door.

Maedhros is alone, and reading from the fine edition of David Copperfield that Finrod brought him from Hithlum at Christmas, when everybody had a little more hope. Christmas is getting on two months past, and it was only a month before that that Fingon returned from the Mountain.

Maedhros puts aside his book at once, so that Fingon has no chance to see whether he was leaning over it in his old fashion, being obliged from time to time to brush the hair out of his eyes. His hair, if one does not happen to catch sight of a white thread among the touches of Celegorm's gold, is very much as it ever was.

Maedhros says, “Fingon,” cheerful and low, but when Maeglin enters, he checks whatever else he was going to say.

“We need to talk,” Fingon says, keeping up the pretense that he has a plan, and that it is a good one.

“Hullo, Maeglin,” Maedhros says. For all the tumult that Celegorm created, Maedhros does not seem alarmed at the sight of the boy.

But the same, Fingon realizes, cannot be said for Maeglin. His eyes are saucer-wide and fixed on Maedhros; his mouth pinches in his white face. Then his eyelids flutter shut, and he bows his head.

“They told me you came back with Aredhel,” Maedhros goes on, as if there is nothing wrong. “I hope you’ve been comfortable enough. Mithrim is a comfortable place.”

Fingon prepares to counter this remarkably optimistic assertion, but Maeglin says, without lifting his gaze,

“I have. Thank you.”

“I asked Fingon and Aredhel to look after you,” Maedhros says, still grave but—strangely unruffled, despite the appearance of this complicated figment of the past. For all his griefs and fevers, his panics and pains, Maedhros has, on occasion, a careful composure that Fingon does not recall from before. It would remind him almost of Grandfather Finwe, if it reminded him of anything save the time lost between them. Maedhros adds, almost diffidently, “I thought you might want some looking after.”

“I’ve failed in that,” Fingon says, able to bear it no longer. “Maedhros, I brought him here because--”

“Because I am my mother’s son,” Maeglin says, and that produces another change in Maedhros’ expression, fleeting but enough to twist Fingon’s heartstrings quite painfully.

“Did someone...” Maedhros says slowly. “Did Aredhel—”

“Celegorm and Curufin were menacing him,” Fingon explains. “They blamed it on his mother.”

“I will speak to them, then,” Maedhros answers. “Maeglin, you needn’t—”

“I do not know what her wrongs were,” Maeglin says. “But Doctor Fingon does not know what my wrongs are. I am…I am only sorry that Aredhel came when she did. I think it would have been better to let—to let your brother Celegorm do what he wished with me. You know I deserve it, Russandol.”

Fingon is flummoxed. Maedhros says,

“Maeglin, it’s not like that at all. Please sit down. Fingon, will you fetch him some tea? Maybe one of your stronger concoctions? He needs something to steady him—he’s shaking like a leaf.”

“It was all a lie,” Maeglin chokes out, heeding Maedhros’ gentle directions not at all. “You didn’t—you didn’t kill her. He only said you did.” He turns now to Fingon, a wrenching movement and a wretched look, and says, “You ought to hear the truth of it, before you—before you save me.”

“Maeglin, don’t.” In the periphery of his sight, Fingon sees Maedhros leans forward, no doubt cursing the steel pins that hold him in place. “Don’t—Fingon doesn’t need to hear anything.”

Fingon is still looking at Maeglin. But Maeglin’s gaze moves, leading Fingon’s, to fix on the indelible wrong of Maedhros’ right arm. Because he is leaning forward, he uses it to help support his weight. The effect is one of a curious foreshortening.

Then Maeglin’s eyes drag back, seeking out Fingon’s again.

“I did that,” he says. “I did that to—to Maedhros, because I trusted Melkor Bauglir.”

“Did what?” Fingon asks. Maeglin cannot mean—he was a captive. A child. He cannot have—

“Please,” Maedhros is saying. “Maeglin, listen. I know we didn’t leave things very pleasantly, but it’s all right now. It’s all right, don’t you see? Fingon has patched me up. Soon I’ll be walking again. Good as new.”

“They killed you,” Maeglin says, and then, seeming to draw all the air out of the room, “I killed you.”

Fingon is not so slow and stupid, no, nor yet so innocent, that he fails to take this new meaning. “You were there,” he says. “When…”

“When they dragged him back,” Maeglin says, tears standing out in his black eyes. “I was there in the hall, waiting, because—because it was I who gave them word. I—”

“Gave them word?” Fingon asks, breathlessly. He saw the body pinned to earth and stone; he saw nothing that came before. Does Maeglin speak of Maedhros’ escape? “Gave them word of…”

“I told Bauglir,” Maeglin says to Maedhros. Maedhros, who bears no resemblance to Grandfather Finwe, now. He is a ghost, instead.

A ghost that even Fingon—especially Fingon—knows.  

“When you set off the explosives, I ran for Bauglir. And I found him. And I told him what you had done and he—he praised me, later. All but thanked me, for what I did. I—I still believed you had killed her. I still told myself I hated you. I lay in her bed at night and tried to hate you. Then they found you.” His breath is coming in wracking heaves. “Then they brought you back.”

“And the rest need not be spoken of,” Maedhros says. “Your sin was one I have forgiven long ago, Maeglin. I knew that you were in his charge. I knew what sort of power he must have over you, even if I did not then know—who your mother was.”

Who was she? Fingon wants to shout. Someone Celegorm would kill twice-over, it seems. An ally of Bauglir’s? She must be.

“Fingon, how did you help him?” Maeglin asks. “Was it help, really, or was it—”

“Yes,” Maedhros interrupts. “Fingon cut off my hand. He saved my life. A hand is a small price to pay for that. I’ll not let Celegorm kill you over it.”

“But she hurt you, too,” Maeglin says, his voice breaking in earnest. He hiccoughs. “She hurt you, and I—I don’t even know how. I was grieving her, when I knew—I knew enough to believe her to be very w-wicked, but I—I blamed you—”

“Jesus, Fingon, why didn’t you go and get him some tea?” Maedhros sighs. “Maeglin, sit down, I implore. If you must know, I don’t remember any of it. I was out of my head. That sort of pain—it doesn’t stay with you.”

Maeglin does not sit down. An endearing, distracted obstinacy, Fingon thinks. Worship of Maedhros, perhaps, no matter how twisted the lens.  

“It doesn’t?” Maeglin asks. (Yes, that is worship.)

“Being whipped was far worse,” Meadhros says. “One feels every stroke. And you never oversaw a whipping, Maeglin. You never associated with Mairon.”

“I was afraid of him,” Maeglin concedes.

It is like they are speaking in another language, one Fingon has half-forgotten, or was never fluent in to begin with.

“So was I,” Maedhros answers, the reassurance warm in his voice. He might be speaking to one of his irascible, sometimes-murderous brothers—or he might be speaking to Fingon himself. “And Bauglir, too.”

“I hate him.”

“Believe me when I tell you,” Maedhros says, “That hatred of him does not mean he cannot use you to his ends. Quite the opposite, I believe. Maeglin—it wasn’t your fault. What happened to me wasn’t your fault.”

Fingon’s reflexes are just swift enough to send him grasping for the boy’s elbows before he slips entirely to the floor. Maeglin sags against him. He is still trembling, and breathing strangely, but being very quiet.

No doubt he was taught to be quiet, all his life.

Maedhros’ voice floats, almost disembodied, from behind them. “It’s doing him no good to look at me.”

Fingon finds he can’t speak.

Why did he bring him here? Why did he think—

“Find Maglor,” Maedhros says. “He will give you the key to the old study—if he balks, I’ll reason with him. Maeglin needs somewhere to stay—somewhere quiet and protected. He can sleep there, tonight.” He pinches the bridge of his nose, where the scar is, then shakes his head. “No—never mind that. Curufin has a key.”

“I’ll take him to Father,” Fingon suggests. Father, surely, will protect against any assault that either Celegorm or Curufin attempts.

Mutely, Maedhros nods.

Fingon helps Maeglin up and the boy moves with him. Fingon slings an arm around his shoulders, a most familiar act, and only finds his voice at the threshold. “I’ll come back in a little while, Maitimo,” he says. “A quarter of an hour, at most.”

In the corridor, he grips Maeglin’s shoulder with what he hopes is perceived as a kindly touch. A brotherly touch, only—Maeglin has no brothers that Fingon knows of.

No brothers, and his mother is dead.

“I thought it might help you to see him,” Fingon says softly. “I thought—I thought you should know that he did not hate you.”

But I did not understand what you had done. I still do not.

No answer from Maeglin. Fingon tries to start smaller.

“Maeglin—” The corridor is empty—“Who was your mother?”

“Her name was Thuringwethil,” Maeglin whispers.

But that means nothing to Fingon.

“Fingon!”

Wachiwi, indispensable as ever, is striding briskly but silent footed towards them. The ability to move stealthily is a trick of hers that Fingon has not been able to emulate entirely.

“I’ve been making sure there was no trouble,” she says, “Since you brought him in.”

This is no surprise, really. Wachiwi was the one who came to fetch him when it seemed that Aredhel was embroiled in disaster. Fingon’s blood was too high when he marched Maeglin back to the fort, to pay particular attention to who was watching him come in, but Wachiwi must have lingered to see that no further violence broke out.

She had followed him to the doors of the stables.

Why is he always forgetting to give her the notice she deserves? Why does he forget to thank her?

“Thank you,” he says, now, and she stares at him quizzically.

“What for?”

“Oh,” Fingon says stupidly. “For…”

“He is ill,” she says, gesturing at Maeglin. “What can I do?”

“I—” Fingon finds himself lost, suddenly, as to what he must do. “I need to find my father,” he mumbles. “And we must make sure that Celegorm and Curufin have settled, a little. Aredhel was going to—going to do something. I don’t know what. I don’t know if Celegorm can be reasoned with.”

He hopes he is not frightening Maeglin further.

“I shall see if I can find her,” Wachiwi offers. “You go to Fingolfin.”

More than a quarter of an hour has passed before Fingon returns to Maedhros. Fingolfin was occupied—he is so often occupied, these days—but when he saw Fingon with Maeglin leaning against him, he cut through the watchful crowd mingling between them.

Suddenly, Turgon was there too.

“What is the trouble?” Father asked, and Fingon said,

“My cousins,” quite simply. Turgon lifted his blunt eyebrows.

“Cousins?”

“Celegorm and Curufin,” said Fingon. “They mustn’t be let near him, understand?”

Father nodded; he did not need to know the details. He took Maeglin’s thin hand in his.

“Maeglin,” he said, in his kindly way, “You look as if you’ve had a hard time of it. Come and sit by the fire with me.”

“And me,” said Turgon stolidly, shocking Fingon nearly out of his boots. “Aredhel said you were a blacksmith. We could use one of those.”

That isn’t Curufin, was naturally implied.

Maeglin looked back at Fingon wordlessly, painfully, and it was everything Fingon could do to force a smile to his lips. He nodded, too, and Maeglin did not drag his heels. He followed Father and Turgon to the hearth.

Fingon surveyed the room. No sight of his cousins, save for Maglor, who was writing by the window—oblivious to all else—and Amras, who was playing checkers with Sticks and Frog.

No more bloodshed, thought Fingon. That is all the protection we can ask of this place.

He does not know what state he shall find Maedhros in, but as it is, his cousin is much as he left him. Sitting up in bed, staring at the straight line of his left leg. When Fingon enters, the first thing Maedhros says is,

“Do you think you could take the brace off now?”

Fingon stutters. “I—you mean—”

“It can’t be that much of a surgery, can it? You have to draw the pins out, and unbend the hoops, but that is all.”

“It will still hurt a bit,” Fingon says, playing for time. “Or at least, it will be uncomfortable and strange. But I—I suppose I could do it. I meant to, very soon.”

“I know.”

“You won’t be able to walk immediately,” Fingon says. “I mean, you will have to build your way up to it.” He feels as if he is watching himself talk to Maedhros, or watching a stranger talk to a stranger. He expected Maedhros to be weeping, or to confide in him. Not to be direct—and about his leg, of all things!

Still, it is something to do: cleaning his hands, selecting a few tools that may be of use. He has some fresh bandages packed and ready, though he is not even sure he will need them.  

At last he draws down Maedhros’ blanket, so that the brace is exposed, and only then does Maedhros ask, rather breathlessly,

“You’re really going to do it?”

“Yes,” Fingon says. “I said I would.”

“So you did.” Maedhros reaches out to touch the pale, sunken flesh of his thigh where it is trapped between wood and metal and the meagre saving grace of linen. “I shall feel very queer with two legs belonging to me again.”

Fingon cut off my hand. He saved my life.

“I’m sorry,” Fingon says. “I’m very sorry that it took so much time.”

“It’s over now,” Maedhros says, in that same hesitant way. “The worst of it, I mean.”

Fingon disinfects, as best he can, the area where the pins break the skin. The incision and the entry points have long since healed; he expects very little bleeding.

Then, kneeling at the bedside, he begins to unbend the slender hoops.

It is over quickly. It is nothing like the savage hours that still haunt Fingon’s dreams. There are only a few little spots of blood, quickly remedied with the application of the bandages, and then—

“It’s gone,” Maedhros says. “How lovely.”

He doesn’t sound quite like himself, but Fingon, hastily removing the brace from sight, does not think he can ferret out anything about Maedhros’ mood today.

“You can move it—carefully,” Fingon says. “It will be awkward at first, to be sure, but you can try to raise and lower it a little on the bed with no danger at all.”

Maedhros keeps his eyes downcast, fixed somewhere near his knee, and then he hooks his left hand under his leg to draw it up a little, bending it. “Oh, fuck. That’s something.”

“Does it hurt?” Fingon asks, worried.

“It’s numb,” Maedhros says. “Numb, but soon to be all needles.”

An uncomfortable turn of phrase. Fingon finishes putting everything away. Then he takes the chair—his old chair.

He does not know who he is to Maedhros, now. A friend? A cousin? A confidant? All of these or none—but there seems to be, at present, no harshness between them.

“We will get you a crutch.”

“I could just use Maglor.” A pause. A flicker in his eyes—an old look. Teasing. “Or you.”

“I think I am a little taller than I used to be,” Fingon says, valiantly trying to keep his spirits up, to keep his face from showing his chagrin and confusion.

So we are not to speak at all of what just happened?

“And I am a little shorter, maybe, from always standing so stooped,” Maedhros concedes. “It wouldn’t work, would it?”

Fingon lets the question hang in the air. He doesn’t know what to say.

Maedhros says, “If you must know, I couldn’t bear it any longer. Felt intolerably stupid, being pinned like a butterfly while…while talking to him.”

Fingon holds his breath.

“He’s not a bad sort,” Maedhros says. “It’s only that a good many people tried to make him that way.”

“I know,” Fingon says, though he doesn’t. “You’ve wanted to protect him despite his…past.”

They killed you. I killed you.

“Do you think he believed me?” Maedhros murmurs. “Do you think he—can pretend that I don’t remember?”

Fingon is standing on the edge of a cliff. It is a familiar one. He stood there at the ashen jaws of Ulmo’s Bridge, at the gates of Mithrim, at the choice between leaving Maedhros to die and finishing the grisly work that others began.

“Maeglin was there, I take it,” Fingon says. “At the end.”

Maedhros nods. “And at the beginning, in a way,” he says. “Though I didn’t—I didn’t know she was his mother.”

Fingon keeps very calm and quiet. One cannot coax a frightened animal to approach without stilled nerves and gentle words, and Maedhros, of course, is not an animal.

“It is enough to drive me mad, Fingon,” Maedhros says, “How every noble effort I have ever made—and they are few enough, I grant you—has been made ridiculous…has faded out of being altogether…and yet my every mistake has been sharpened like the point of a nail, yes, a nail, and hammered into me. An everlasting mark. I did not think, when I met her, that I should one day be reduced to a quivering heap of offal in front of her son, whose hands, as it happens, were skilled enough to make my father’s guns…”

“I’m very sorry, Maedhros,” Fingon says. “I am utterly lost.”

“Of course you are. I’ve been damnably secretive.”

“You needn’t tell me anything you don’t want to,” Fingon says. “I mean it this time. You have every right to conceal what you wish. You don’t—” And this, this is like freeing a bird from a cage—“You don’t owe me anything.”

Maedhros runs his hand over his knee, halting slightly at the scars that mark his skin, both new and old—those bandaged and those left bare. Then he reaches for the blanket again. When he has covered himself, he says,

“I would be a fool indeed to pretend that that is true. I owe you, always, more than you know.”

“Is that what prevents us from…” Fingon is too topsy-turvy to be anything but honest. “From being friends?”

“No, Fingon. It’s shame that prevents me. Shame and horror, and the way they bar me from ever again being the only Maedhros you could properly love. The city dandy, rascal though he was.”

Fingon is too tired, he realizes, to be teary-eyed or maudlin. He can only be sincere. “That wasn’t the Maedhros I loved.”

Maedhros is startled. “Wasn’t it?”

“I loved my Formenos cousin, who taught me to split kindling and guarded me against Celegorm and—and saved me from stumbling over the Gaelic,” says Fingon. “I loved that you were happy there. There at your home. I knew you were unhappy in New York. I didn’t want you to be. Our frolics were grand, of course, and we had many good times there, but I—I always hoped that someday you would go back to the farm, and live in peace, and I would become a country doctor, or something like.”

Maedhros’ lips twist. For a moment it seems that he won’t be able to speak. When he does, it is about something else. “You wouldn’t have liked the country. There wasn’t enough excitement.”

“Mm, yes, I had to come west for that,” Fingon says, which is the sort of cautious humor that seems to agree with Maedhros, of late. “But really, Mai—Maedhros, I hope you can think better of yourself once you are out of this dreadful bed and able to do—well, to do anything you like. Within reason.”

“Do anything I like, within reason? Or think well of myself, within reason?”

“Both,” Fingon says, and Maedhros laughs outright.

“Oh, Lord. A tall order.”

“I won’t hurt Maeglin,” Fingon says. “You needn’t worry over that. We’ll keep him safe, for even if he did wrong, he is not very old, and most of all, you don’t wish it. But I am terribly sorry that you must be reminded of what he did to you, and of what—whatever it was his mother did to you. That is unjust. It is all so unjust. I hate each new turn of the wheel.”

Won’t you let me in again?

“Do you remember Violet Tibbs?” Maedhros asks, his voice changing.

Fingon scrapes at his memory. Because he never forgets a grudge, he need not dig too deeply. “Yes. Father’s banker’s daughter.”

“The very same.” Maedhros lifts his eyebrows but lowers his eyes, so that he appears to be examining the quilt over his lap very critically. “There’s something I want to tell you, Fingon, because I don’t think I’ll be right again until I do—but oh, God. It’s a dreadful thing for the telling. I don’t suppose you’d face the wall while I talk?”

“If you like,” Fingon says, gamely.

“No—no. I’m being silly. We must ‘fess up bravely, as the Fathers taught us, and most of what I have to say is no longer mine to be prudish over. Anyway. You remember Violet, then. I met her when I was a lonely, dull, boorish boy, and she—she kissed me. It was all over from there.”

Almost a decade on, and three thousand miles away, Fingon still finds it in himself to be deeply furious over the thought of Violet Tibbs doing anything of the kind. She was always a vicious, cold-hearted sort.

“I never liked her,” he says.

“She was never particularly kind to me,” Maedhros admits, very quietly. “But—oh, God, I’m going to blush. And over this! Well, it rather…suited me that she was cruel. Which sets up the rest of my life just grandly, doesn’t it? And this story in particular.” He flicks a glance in Fingon’s direction now, just quick enough to check him. “You must be patient with my rambling self-deprecation, please. It’s indispensable.”

“Very well,” Fingon says, feeling one of his father’s solemn expressions settle over his face.

“Lonely boys with weak wills get up to a certain sort of nonsense, which you know all about, having followed me west.” Maedhros picks at his half-grown fingernails. “What you don’t know—what you couldn’t have guessed, because it is entirely ludicrous—is that I thought I’d made something…something useful out of the habit.”

“Useful?”

“I’d already killed,” Maedhros says. “I’d already—betrayed. Being loose with my morals didn’t…matter. And it was expedient, because—because, having left you all high and dry, my father needed new allies. New companions. New information.”

Fingon is beginning to understand, though his heart rebels against it.

“It was an exchange.” Maedhros shrugs. “It seemed simple. Nothing less than I deserved, given—what I’d done. And it was a c-comfort, at first, too. In its own way.”

“Was it?” Fingon cannot help but be incredulous.

“No.”

Fingon must not get angry, for if he does, he will speak out of turn. But a new thought has entered his head, and it galls. “Did your father know?”

“Getting to that.” Maedhros clears his throat. “I kept at it, all west. At first, I would pay them to talk, and that was all, but after a while…”

“You needn’t say anything you don’t want to,” Fingon says.

“A further explanation doesn’t do much good, does it? I was trading everything in the end, no matter how nice I was about the transaction at first. But what’s worse is I—I invoked your name.”

Fingon is taken aback by this. “My name?”

Maedhros’ voice still carries with it that light, fluent note of amusement that has always characterized his stories, but the strain is evident on his face. “Not exactly. I invoked you. I pretended I had a lost brother, whom I’d been separated from through some hardship, and I—I always thought of you. Which was worse, wasn’t it? There I was, being positively sordid, and conscious of how inadequate the entirety of myself was, and so I gave them a fairy story to finish our rendezvouses. A story about two brothers who should never have parted.”

Fingon scrubs at an invisible spot on the knee of his trouser. He says, hoping it doesn’t sound gruff, “You must have felt very desperate.”

“Desperate. Miserable. All the same. Maglor and Celegorm were distraught over it, for I wasn’t half as clever at hiding then as I am now. Though, I will say, we did recruit some top-notch men to join our cause. Women of that persuasion always know which men are the decent ones.” He smiles faintly. “The ones who won’t fall into their beds simply because they’ve a full purse and an empty heart.”

“Do you know,” Fingon says, “In another moment I am going to have to rescind your right to speak ill of yourself.”

Maedhros’ brow furrows. “I didn’t know I was.”

“You were.”

“Ah. I’m almost to the sorry end, I promise.” Maedhros looks him full on, now, and says, “The end is, in fact, a right catastrophe. Would you have expected less?”

“You’ve had too many catastrophes heaped upon you.”

“Thuringwethil was my own fault,” Maedhros answers.

 Fingon feels a chill on the back of his neck. Maeglin’s mother. All this to tell me about Maeglin’s mother.

Maedhros adds, “I know you think I say that too often—but this time, it’s true.”

“It was in Beleriand. Did you happen to get that far? Little trading town, all a-bustle. Maglor bought the children some sweetmeats. I know they were pleased. But I—I had a different mission. And it did concern a woman this time, because Ath—my father saw her first, and told me to find out who she was. He suspected, quite rightly, that she was a spy. I thought that meant he knew. He knew, and he wanted me to—keep at it. And somehow that was worse than anything, to my pettish, aching heart. Believing it was what he wanted.”

This is more intimate than the tortures of Mairon. It can, therefore, be understood better. It does not stun so much as it wounds. Fingon knows Maedhros’ old habits, however willfully blind to them he was in adolescence. He can imagine that Maedhros, having lost his mother and his friends, having been burdened with the care of his brothers and the responsibility of managing Feanor’s madness while minding his orders, would have wanted solace. Would have readily returned to old, comfortable wrongs.  

Fingon shall leave it to others to judge his cousin’s wrongs. He has no desire to. He never shall again.

“I sought her out, in the same manner I usually did. She was different.” He has been looking at Fingon for some time now, lifting his eyes from his coverlets. It is hard to look at him. Fingon does his best. He feels sure, somehow, that this is part of what it means to Maedhros to be brave. “She was crueler than Violet Tibbs.”

…will turn out to be as needle-toothed as his mother…did you ever happen to look at dear Maitimo’s throat?

(Fingon will not let his eyes stray there now.)

“She marked me,” Maedhros says. “To you, it would look like just another scar, and not a very notable one, all things considered. But for a time, it was the worst hurt I’d ever borne. The worst—shame I knew. To be bitten on the throat by a whore, and for other men to know it! It’s a wonder any of them looked to me as a man at all.” He has held out a long while, but Fingon can tell that tears are near.

His own certainly are. He was a fool, earlier, when he thought he was too tired to be maudlin.

“She attacked you, then,” Fingon says. “Nothing could be further from your fault. There it is, Maitimo. There is the end of your loathing. I say it is enough.”

“You don’t understand,” Maedhros says. Desperate—yes. Here is the same desperation, the same misery, that must have veiled his soul, his hope, his past beloved selves, all the miles between them. “I let her hurt me. I…I wanted her to kill me. She held a chloroformed rag to my mouth and I did not fight.”

Fingon flinches. He cannot help it. And that keeps him from answering just long enough for Maedhros to forge on again, all the humorous detachment gone from his voice. In its place is anguish—weary anguish, of the sort that Fingon has heard, and failed to fully comprehend, before.

“I had come all that way, only to welcome death. I was on a mission of great importance to Athair, and I—I would have left Maglor alone to manage the children, and yet I—all I could think, lying there beneath her, breathing her poison, was, this is the end. The worst is over. I welcomed it.”

Fingon passes a hand over his mouth.

“I killed men at the bridge,” Maedhros says. “I dragged my brothers into hell with me. Winter was coming on, and we were far from Mithrim, yet. But I did not fight. They were waiting back at camp for me—Maglor and Celegorm—the twins, Fingon, both of them s-still living, and I—I did not fight.”

He leans forward, able to move as he was not able to before the brace was gone, and hooks his arms around both bent knees. It is an old pose: one Fingon has seen recreated on a dozen sofas. Maedhros, folded in on himself, his face a picture of earnestness. Seeking a confidence, or sharing one.

And now Maedhros says, “That is the worst thing I have ever done, Fingon, and though I paid for it with her teeth gouged at my throat and whore carved at my waist, I shall never pay enough.”

“No,” Fingon says, swimming out of the deepest waters of realization, of horror. “No—you were only very—very lost and sick at heart—”

He believes it more than he can say, but Maedhros must read his ineloquence as reticence.

“I knew it would pain you,” he says. “I knew it would disgust you. All the while you and Gwindor and E-Estrela have been pitying me, thinking how dreadful it is that a promising youth such as I should be brought so low, but who made me lay in her bed? Who made me pick up a gun, a knife, a flaming brand—”

“Stop,” Fingon pleads. “Oh, God, Mae—”

“You know,” Maedhros says, wiping his eyes with the heel of his hand, “I told him all the pretty, sweet stories of Formenos. Morgoth, I mean. Bauglir. I never told him this. I saved all the wretched tales of my whoring for you. Don’t you feel honored, cano?”

“My poor Maitimo,” Fingon gasps, as if he were a father himself, or an uncle, or—no, no. He is just himself. And Fingon, himself, can no longer bear to be separated from his miserable cousin, even by a chair and a few flagstones. He stands, caring not at all that it is awkward, and moves to the edge of the bed. Maedhros doesn’t stop him. He doesn’t even seem to mark the change, though his glassy eyes are now much closer. Fingon says, his knee almost knocking against Maedhros’, “Do you never let yourself rest? You are safe now, with me, and I’m not ashamed of you. I could never hate you.”

The barest whisper: “You should.”

“Nobody,” says Fingon stubbornly, “Has ever been able to make me do what I did not wish.” Then, very delicately, with the knowledge that he cannot, in fact, truly know, he says, “You must have been very frightened, when she hurt you.”

Maedhros gives an almost imperceptible nod.

“You must have been frightened, to feel such despair.”

Another nod.

If Feanor was not already dead, Fingon would kill him himself, but that would be remarkably unhelpful to mention. Instead, in his father’s best and most forgiving manner, he says,

“I only wish that someone had looked after you as they ought to. I only wish that—that you could have been freed more gently—from everything. From every pain.”

I only wish I could have done it myself, without hurting you more.

“You looked after me,” Maedhros says, chokily. “You always have. Ever since you were small. And then you found me.”

“Too late.” Fingon sniffs; he has let more of his own tears slip out than he meant to. “Too late to save you.”

“It wasn’t too late,” Maedhros says. There is a keen lance of clarity in his eyes, despite the mist of tears. He wants Fingon to believe what he says. “You came when you could. You did what you had to.”

“I know,” Fingon says, “But I am very sorry that it had to be me.”

It has been a long while since they were at ease with each other. Most of Fingon’s touches in the fraught months since their reunion have been those of a physician, not of a friend—not of the brother he once fancied himself to be. But now he gathers Maedhros against him, quite naturally, feeling the contradiction of broad shoulders and still-sharp ribs, strangely unafraid of the blunted wrist his surgeon’s blade created.

Maedhros does not resist the overture. Rather, he nestles his forehead in the crook of Fingon’s neck as a child would. As Fingon used to, with his mother, when he first grew tall enough to face her. They shall never again have their mothers with them. Maedhros is an orphan entirely. Fingon holds him very tightly, on account of this. He strokes his cousin’s hair, and pats his shuddering back, because he, after all, has two hands.

Who knows how long they cradle each other so, weeping. It is a happy sort of weeping, despite the grief to which it gives vent, because they are together again.

Fingon will never be able to hate Maeglin, either, because the twisted secret of his young life has already borne flourishing fruit. It is as good a lesson as any. As good a sign of God among men as any.

Yes, Fingon is done with hatred; with blame of any kind, save that directed against those who make it their wicked business to be cruel.

It is a hard and heavy world, but he feels lighter now. The worst is over, in his soul.

Tenderly, he raises Maedhros’ head from his shoulder, and presses a light kiss against his brow. It is as near as he can come to giving Nerdanel back to her son.

“There now,” Fingon says, to his cousin’s squeezed-shut eyes and tear-soaked lashes, “We begin again.”

Chapter Text

A February morning, even in California, has a snap to it, and Fingon’s teeth chatter as he bathes. Growing his hair to his shoulders has made for a chilling mop when it is wet, and he is grateful to Wachiwi, meeting him outside the washing shed with a length of cotton scrap to twist around his head.

“You look like one of your old women,” she says, laughing. She looks warm and fresh-faced and remarkably pretty.

Fingon can feel himself blushing, but he grins as boldly as if he were the most unrepentant dandy in New York.

“If you tease me,” he says, “I shall be obliged to kiss you again.”

“I’ll kiss first,” Wachiwi says, leaning forward for a quick peck. “Go in. It’s cold.”

Warmed now by the morning as well as by last night’s star-gazing, Fingon hurries indoors. He borrows Aredhel’s comb, and drips his way to one of Caranthir’s laundry baskets, where he deposits his old clothes.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

And here is Caranthir himself, looking like a cross between a red-bird and a thunderstorm.

“Contributing,” Fingon says, still feeling high-spirited and full of cheek.

“You may do your own washing,” Caranthir says. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you slipping your things in with ours, as if I’m a servant to be burdened.”

“Oh, let it be,” Amras says, joining them. With his bright hair and ever-lengthening stride, he is like a shade of the past. “He took the brace off Maitimo’s leg yesterday. Wash his shirts.”

Caranthir’s face changes, and though he says nothing, he takes back the rumpled clothes he had thrust back into Fingon’s arms a moment before.

“Haven’t you seen him? Maitimo?” Fingon asks, before remembering that Caranthir always visits in the morning.

“I was going now.” And there is that suspicious look again. Fingon does not know where exactly he stands with all of Maedhros’ brothers—does Caranthir think Fingon abandoned his patient and friend at a crucial moment?

He would not be wholly wrong if he did.

“I hope you find him well,” he says, trying to be solicitous. “He was ... Tired, last night.”

Tired, but at peace. He fell asleep with his head on Fingon’s breast, and did not even notice the change when Maglor came in to spend the night.

Fingon has his breakfast (Wachiwi joins him, and nudges his knee with hers under the table so that he blushes again over his porridge) and sees to Maeglin’s shoulder. To his surprise, Turgon is keeping close to Maeglin today, hovering, even, while Fingon does up the bandage.

“Do you need something?” Fingon asks.

“Maeglin and I are mending some of the windows, today,” Turgon says, as if it is the most natural thing in the world.

Fingon seeks confirmation from Maeglin.

“Yes,” Maeglin says. “I’m trying to be useful.” His is the face of a boy who is eager to please.

“That’s a fine plan,” Fingon says, handing him his shirt. “Turgon is a master of being useful.”

“Flatterer,” says Turgon, so condemningly that Fingon knows he must be touched.

Fingon himself wants to be useful, but he does not want to impose on Maedhros too soon. He visits him at the dinner hour, when he learns, from the sight of Beren stroking the head of a desolate Huan, that Celegorm is out hunting.

It is to Fingon’s purpose, really. He doesn’t want to face a possibly still-angry Celegorm, and the fact that Celegorm is in a mood to leave his precious dog behind is proof enough of his sour temper. Light-footed for once, and armed with some of yesterday’s bread—Maedhros was really too excited by the trials of yesterday to have much appetite—Fingon approaches the familiar room.

When he enters it, he finds Gwindor supporting the invalid in a few awkward, hopping steps about the room. Maedhros’ arm is over Gwindor’s shoulders, and both of Gwindor’s arms are around his waist.

They stop guiltily at once, at the sight of Fingon—who did not knock—but Maedhros smiles a little, already preparing an apology.

“You mustn’t blame Gwindor,” he says. “I teased and prodded until he agreed to let me launch my foolhardy plan.”

“Gwindor has a bad shoulder,” Fingon says, shaking his head, and trying to keep a smile from creeping over his own face in return. “He isn’t a proper crutch.”

“Fie on me for forgetting it!” Maedhros says. “I was too eager. Gwindor, you mustn’t fib about how well you are. See how Fingon can tell at once what you are and are not equal to.”

“Back to the bed with you, rascal,” Gwindor mutters. “And don’t you worry about my shoulder, doctor. It’s living a fine and fancy life these days—nothing to lift.”

“The muscles are jelly,” Maedhros says, poking his left thigh with a demonstrative finger, “But without the brace I needn’t worry any longer about making the pins twitch, so I thought it safe. My right is much better, though it was idle, too. Not strong…but good enough to put weight upon.”

“I will talk to someone about a crutch directly,” Fingon promises. “Perhaps two. Did you sleep better without the brace?”

“Maglor says I did. I don’t remember half of the times I wake, rambling,” Maedhros admits, which is more forthcoming on the subject than he has been in all the time of his confinement.

Fingon feels giddy, and almost unable to believe that the scene before him, and the nearest memories behind him, are real. It is as if he is trapped in a series of good dreams—Maedhros on the mend, Aredhel safe, Turgon occupied, Wachiwi in love…

Well. He should not be so hasty on that last front. Yet even the thought of her quickens his pulse, and he busies himself at once with serving Maedhros some bread and leftover tea.

Maedhros, of course, is watching him closely. “You look happy,” he says.

“Oh…” Fingon has a sudden, overwhelming urge to tell Maedhros everything about Wachiwi, about the secret hopes for a future that have been flourished like a garden in very little time. But no—it would not do. He must check himself, and wait until they have a quiet moment alone.

What if it pains Maedhros to hear about others’ prospects, when his own have been so narrow of late?

Fortunately, Fingon has a more immediate ground for his good humor.

“You are one cause,” he says, ignoring how Gwindor looks at first surprised and then remarkably smug. “I am glad to be warning you off wild antics once again.”

“I have not only occupied myself with ill-advised exercise,” Maedhros protests. “Look here,” and he produces a sheet of paper covered on both sides in scrawls of black ink.

Fingon puts aside the simple breakfast platter and advances. The paper has Maedhros’ name written over and over, awkward yet legible. There is, too, a labored paragraph that he squints at to make out.

“Oh,” Maedhros says, snatching it back self-consciously, “Don’t look too closely. That’s just the first page of David Copperfield. It was the only book I had on hand.” He winces, smiling, at the pun. “It’s very bad, of course. But—”

“It’s excellent,” Fingon interrupts. “Why, you’ve scarcely smudged the ink at all, and that’s the hardest thing.”

“See, Red?” Gwindor rumbles. “That’s the hardest thing. Lord, I don’t even know if I remember how to write.”

“We shall have to make a proper school,” Maedhros says gaily, or as close to gaily as he has in ages. “I know Finrod, for one, would make a capital professor. Do you remember, Fingon, his fad of collecting pamphlets?”

“Indeed I do,” Fingon says. “I tried to read them, but hadn’t the mind for it. Here now, I brought you some breakfast.” He finds that he is a little affected; he must not dwell too long on the comparison between the childish letters before him and the smooth flowing script of the past. “Perhaps I should say dinner. It’s noon, isn’t it? Did Gwindor feed you?”

“Caranthir did,” Maedhros says. “And he is as pleased about the brace as anyone, for he shan’t have to rub my legs any longer and touch all that leprous skin.”

“I don’t recall giving you permission to speak ill of yourself again,” Fingon says, sitting on the end of the bed companionably.

“It’s the one liberty he always takes for himself,” Gwindor points out. “That and walking when he shouldn’t.”

“Is it—is it still rather soon, for a bone to mend?” Maedhros asks, pretending not to hear Gwindor.

“It’s not fully healed yet,” Fingon replies. “Which is why we must not stress it. Why you must not. But a good deal has already happened to the bone. A month or so is sufficient to seal the two ends together again.”

“Mm. Nasty business,” Maedhros says, around a mouthful of bread. “Ugh. I hate seeing inside myself, and thinking of all those intricate workings.”

“May you never have another surgery,” Fingon says, and means it.

Maedhros is quiet, then.

“The brats can come and see him, can’t they?” Gwindor asks abruptly.

“Yes,” says Fingon. “Haven’t they been coming?”

“They are my reward for good behavior,” Maedhros murmurs--words that would have bitter, once, but are merely dry, now. “So no, they haven’t.”

“Frog snuck in the night you all went to town, Fingon,” Gwindor says. “Or so I heard. Sticks felt powerful ill-used, being left out.”

“Sticks shall have her turn,” Maedhros says, and his spirits have all returned; he even laughs a little. It does Fingon’s heart good, to hear him laugh. It almost makes him believe that Maedhros won’t be hurt to hear of Wachiwi. “Though I’ll never understand why they enjoy my company so much. I always cry, or explain abstract truths of existence.”

“No wonder you and Estrela get on so well,” Gwindor says. “Half your words fly over my head, I’ll not lie to you.”

“If you are very careful, Maitimo,” Fingon says, buoyed by the reminder of how many friends, new and old, his cousin still has, “Perhaps you can sit out of doors a little this week. You will have to be bundled up, and I will only advise it if the weather is fine, but—”

Maedhros’ face, though quickly mastered, is all the encouragement one could wish.

“That would be like old times, too, wouldn’t it be, Gwindor?” He asks, half hiding his expression in the fall of his hair.

Gwindor snorts. “It would not, thank heaven.”

“I used to hop about with Gwindor’s help, and I was reminded of it before you came in,” Maedhros says, lifting his head again and directing the remark at Fingon. “And we spent most of our time out of doors, of course, but not pleasantly. This will be pleasant, even if people gather and gawk.”

“They won’t,” Fingon and Gwindor say together, emphatically.

Fingon offers up his most forbidding frown. “I won’t let them.”

Fingon helps to orchestrate the placement of a chair and makeshift footstool by the wall facing the garden, where, on a sunny Saturday morning, Maedhros is positioned while a few of his brothers and a few of his friends toil in the rows.

It is a carefully timed business, getting Maedhros out of doors without an enormous and attentive audience. Since it is Saturday, most of Mithrim is either in the kitchen yard, restocking the wood pile, cleaning and refitting weapons in the sunlight—or they are down below the stable doing drills. Mithrim, long before the arrival of any descendant of Finwe, knew the value of being ready for a fight.

“All’s quiet in the hall,” Fingon says, having done a perfunctory survey. Maglor is lacing Maedhros’ boots, while Maedhros toys with the single glove in his lap.

Gwindor loans Fingolfin’s coat, which is short in the sleeves but otherwise over-large, and both he and Fingon supply a good many scarves and caps for the invalid’s approval. They ransacked the winter wardrobe of everybody willing to supplement the scraps of Maedhros’ old things.

“Tut, tut,” Maedhros chides, his voice a little muffled under all the layers about his throat. “Celegorm came to see me before he went scouting today and he told me it was positively mild out.”

“You are susceptible to chest-colds,” Maglor says, nudging Gwindor out of the way to arrange his own cap fetchingly over Maedhros’ ruddy head. “And head-colds. And every other kind of ailment.”

“Your doctor agrees,” Fingon says.

“You’re still skin and bones, lad,” Gwindor points out. “Let the woolens fill you out a bit.”

Curufin, though recalcitrant (and outright murderous) in other respects, fashioned a single crutch to guide Maedhros’ early steps. Fingon and Maglor help position it under Maedhros’ left arm, and then Maglor, who has claimed the pride of the right-hand place—though there is no right hand to be had— slips his shoulder under the other and hoists upwards. Fingon, hovering, can see that Maedhros grits his teeth a little.

“Does it hurt?” he asks.

Maedhros shakes his head, sending his curls dancing under the edge of his cap. “No. Just—jelly.”

“Oh, drat,” Maglor says. “You dropped the glove. Pick it up, won’t you, Fingon?”

“That’s all right,” Maedhros says at once. “I—I don’t want it.”

Fingon can guess why, and says, as lightly as he can, “Never mind. It is mild. I am mostly concerned with keeping your throat and chest well-wrapped.”

Gwindor stoops to collect the glove, and tucks it in his pocket.

A few spectators are unavoidable. Miles is taking advantage of the empty dining table to organize his stock of herbs, and a knot of women in the corner look up from their sewing. Nora, whom Aredhel dislikes, is among them. Indeed, Fingon finds he does not care for the naked curiosity in her gaze.

Maedhros appears to pay her no mind. He keeps his eyes fixed straight ahead, and gains a little more confidence with every step, until they are out the main gate. They have proceeded thus: Fingon on his left, Maglor on his right, Gwindor following behind; all of them ready to save him from falling.

“Careful of the uneven ground,” Fingon warns, and Maglor says,

“He’s doing wonderfully, don’t chivy him.”

Fingon opens his mouth to protest, remembers that this is a happy moment, and shuts it again. He is rewarded by a sidelong smile from Maedhros, who, because of the crutch and Maglor’s lower shoulder, is almost at his eye-level. 

“I haven’t seen the garden in a long while,” Maedhros says, as they round Mithrim’s southeast corner. “But Caranthir has made a kingdom of it, I hear.”

“A flat kingdom,” Maglor says. “Nothing is growing.”

“What would grow?” Gwindor asks from the rear, his patience as thin as it always with Maglor. “It’s February.”

Caranthir is not alone in the garden. Amras is with him, though he does not seem very busily employed, and Frog and Sticks are hunched at the end of a row like little gargoyles. At the sight of the approaching party, they leap and cut capers, but they make no sound.

“How macabre,” says Maglor, as they lower Maedhros into the waiting chair.

“I told them that they must not shout,” Estrela says, appearing beside them with a basket of shriveled seed potatoes, quartered for planting. “This is what they do instead, it seems.”

Maedhros fidgets with the folds of the coat over his knees.

“For your foot,” Fingon says, proffering an over-turned bushel. “Keep it elevated.”

“Tell me,” Maedhros says, to the three of them assembled—no, four, since Estrela is here now—“Do I look very ridiculous?”

Fingon’s heart clenches a little. Maedhros, in truth, looks rather like a child, all swaddled up in borrowed clothes. At least the crisp air has already brought good color to his cheeks.

“You look very much yourself,” Maglor says, leaning in to tug the ends of one of the scarves again. “And you have never been ridiculous.”

Estrela smiles into her potatoes and hurries off. In a moment, Fingon realizes that she must have told Sticks and Frog that they can go and see Russandol, for they bound across the distance like jackrabbits.

“I shall retire, now,” Maglor says hurriedly. “I hope you will forgive me, Maitimo, but—”

“You’ve done so much already,” Maedhros soothes. “Go on. We can’t have you with a cold in your chest, either.”

Fingon gives into a wicked little impulse to exchange a glance with Gwindor.

“Russandol!” the children cry, forgetting their vow of silence.

“Hello, bairns,” he says solemnly. “Are we going to be fed all summer with your plantings?”

“Oh, we haven’t been helping,” Sticks says, horrified by the notion. “We have been waiting for you.”

Amras sidles up, his hands in his pockets. Fingon notices the sharp glance Sticks gives him and is reminded of his sister.

“Maitimo,” says Amras.

“Amras. Are you helping Caranthir?”

“Not really,” Caranthir grumbles. He has sharp ears.

“Nothing’s good enough for him,” Amras mumbles, while Sticks and Frog sit at Maedhros’ feet.

“Why’s his leg still wrong?” Sticks demands, peering up at Fingon.

Frog pokes at Maedhros’ bootlaces and chides, “Shhh.”

“Leave him be,” Gwindor says, looming behind the chair like a guard behind a king’s throne.

“Well?” Sticks lifts her pale brows. Fingon realizes he isn’t getting off without an answer.

“Bones take a long while to heal,” he says. “Mae—Russandol’s leg is growing in the right direction.”

“Ha!” Says sticks. “You still can’t say it right. Russandol.”

“Ha, ha, ha,” chuckles Frog. Fingon sees Maedhros’ lips twitching, but his eyes are carefully downcast.

“It’s an awfully long name to give someone who already has several,” Fingon retorts, enlivened by the injustice of it all.

“Wasn’t considering what you liked,” Sticks says, and turns her back on him.

Fingon realizes that he may have offended her. That’s not fair either—she started it—but Maedhros alleviates the tension with a comforting shake of his head. He reaches with his left hand to pat Sticks’ yellow plaits and says, “All three of you ought to have chairs, instead of standing about.”

“I am supposed to be helping,” Amras says, with a sigh. “I just wanted to...well, see how you got on.”

“How he got on the chair?” asks Frog.

“No,” says Amras. “It’s just a saying.”

“You’re just a saying,” Sticks mutters.

Gwindor coughs.

Amras sighs again, rather resembling the absent Maglor, and walks back to the grooved earth where Estrela is laying potatoes.

“I don’t mind sitting on the ground,” Fingon says.

“I’ll pinch you if you come near me,” Sticks tells him.

“Good Lord, miss,” says Gwindor. “Button up that lip.”

Sticks ignores him, but Fingon sees that she relaxes like a cat beneath Maedhros’ stroking hand.

“Sit down, cano,” Maedhros says. “How curiously familiar, I shall be taller than you again.”

Fingon tightens his lips to disguise their brief trembling. He did not realize how much this venture would bring childhood to mind—Formenos to mind.

It is difficult, as always, to tell exactly what Maedhros is thinking…but in the cautious glimpses Fingon takes, he seems content. Speaking softly, Maedhros directs Frog in the tangling and untangling of his bootlaces—Gwindor’s admonition having failed to prevent Frog’s interest from being satisfied—and his hand still rests on Sticks’ hair.

The sounds of Mithrim’s other dwellers, talking and sparring, is a pleasant murmur in the distance. Fingon, more comfortable in spirit than in his seat on the hard ground, half-shuts his eyes and frees himself from the need to be watchful. Caranthir and Amras and Estrela blur in his sight, moving slowly and steadily, renewing the earth.

Fingon never knew what he was trying to make of Formenos, but he worked for it. He held a strange hope in his heart for it. It was not home, but it was like a home. When, as a boy, he used to think of himself full-grown, he imagined himself there.

“Is it forever?” Sticks asks.

“Forever?” Maedhros echoes, dreamily.

“The stick.”

“Oh—the crutch. No, not forever. Only while I am getting strong.”

“You’re getting strong?”

Fingon listens to the pause that follows Sticks’ hopes.

“Yes,” Maedhros says, finally. “Slowly.”

“S’like being good,” Sticks says. She seems to have forgotten that Fingon and Gwindor are there. “Takes a while.”

“Is that what Estrela tells you?” Gwindor asks, betraying his presence once again.  “That it takes a long time to be good?”

“No,” Sticks retorts. “I knowed it myself, from minding Frog.”

“Done,” Frog says. He has snarled Maedhros’ bootlaces into a tremendous knot.

Maedhros leans forward a little, to inspect it, and says, “Very impressive.”

Fingon does not say anything. There is no need. He can stay here—forever—and trust to one day gone right.

“He had a good morning?” Wachiwi asks, when Fingon has joined her for a leisurely review of Mithrim’s perimeter. At first, they keep their eyes sharp, looking for any disturbed ground or marks of intruders. They find none.

And so, they talk.

“He fell asleep in his chair,” Fingon tells her fondly. Fond of her, for asking after his cousin, and fond of the memory of Maitimo with sleep once more a blessing on him. “The children were wonderfully quiet, when they realized he was dozing off.”

Fingon had roused him gently, and then, with Gwindor’s aid, had helped him inside. Gwindor insisted it was no trouble for his shoulder.

Wachiwi smiles. Then she asks,  “Is it better now? To think of when you were boys?”

Fingon is not quite prepared for that question, and he contemplates for a few steps, switching a long stick he picked up for no reason at all against the tufts of weathered grass.

After a while, he says, “The pain is still there. The pain between then and now, you know—for what we suffered cannot cease to be a suffering. Certainly not for him. But I can see, now, when I look back—there was true happiness, in those times. It wasn’t all a sad falsity. I wasn’t—utterly a fool, to believe in him.”

“You are good,” Wachiwi says, putting a hand on his arm. “He is good.”

Fingon swallows against the lump in his throat. “I am trying,” he says, striving manfully to conceal the sudden wetness of his eyes. “But—you mean it? You think he is good? I am—I am glad, but I feared you would never like him, in truth, after everything I told you. Everything you know.”

“I have said before, I like him.” She squeezes his arm, a comforting pressure. “Believe me.”

There is no one in sight. Fingon turns, tossing the stick aside. He takes her face between his hands and kisses her gratefully. Afterwards, he links his fingers through hers quite boldly, and they walk up from the field together.

“Wachiwi,” he says.

“Fingon,” she answers, with a teasing imitation of his solemnity.

He flushes red, his pulse still raised from the charge of her lips. “I would like to tell my family that we are…”

“Kissing?”

His cheeks grow still hotter. “Well, I would call it courting.”

“Hmm.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know that. Courting.”

“It means that we are spending time together with the intention of…” he struggles to find the right words, not because he does not want to, but because he wants too much. “With the intention of always being beside each other.”

Wachiwi appears to be fighting a grin. After a moment, she says,

“But you have not brought me a blanket.”

“A blanket?” Fingon is perplexed. “I—”

“When a man of my people wants a woman,” Wachiwi says, and then pauses. “When he wants to marry a woman,” she amends, “He brings a blanket. A very fine blanket. His sister makes it, if he has a sister.”

Fingon rapidly thinks over all of Aredhel’s creative interests. She can sew, yes, but has she ever made a blanket? Would she be willing to try?

“What is the blanket for?” he asks, to buy himself some time. He recognizes what a suggestive question it is only after he has asked it.

“He holds it up, like a…a shield.” Wachiwi settles on her word choice with confident emphasis. “And they talk.”

“Oh.”  Fingon hopes his palm is not sweating against hers along with the fraying of his nerves. “I…we have already talked. I did not realize that—”

Wachiwi bursts out laughing. “I am joking,” she says. “Come, kiss me again. You are right: we do not need to hide.”

Fingon avoids Aredhel for the first time since her return because he feels he cannot trust his own composure. He knows that Wachiwi was jesting, but he also knows that she is humoring him and his eastern, Catholic, White-Face ways. Why did he insist on calling it a courtship? Is there a word she would have preferred? He feels sure that his sister, the would-be blanket-maker, will immediately ferret out all his secret hopes and fears and failures.

He cannot risk it. Not until he has collected himself. Not until he has had a chance to tell Father, and—yes. He must tell Maedhros first.

Aredhel would understand that, at least.

Turgon, who does not suspect a romantic prospect for Fingon any more than he would understand his brother’s desire to speak to Maedhros first, approaches Fingon that evening with a different proposition in mind entirely.

“Maeglin is nimble-fingered,” he says. “And he doesn’t complain. But we’ve still half a dozen windows to reinforce, and I fear he’s flagging. Would you help me, tomorrow?”

Fingon agrees at once, though he knows precious little about carpentry, stone-laying, or glass.

He does not even know which of these is implicated in Turgon’s plan, but he is eager to assist his brother, who has so generously permitted the presence of Maeglin. More than that—who has made a place for Maeglin, when few others would. Even Fingon doesn’t know if he himself wants much to do with the boy, since looking at him will mean looking at the memory of another of Maedhros’ tormentors. For the first time, Turgon’s animosity towards their Feanorian cousins is a boon.

And so, the next morning finds Fingon hammering new boards in place of old, his hands blistering and bruising despite the cover of his old gloves. Turgon’s idea is to narrow some frames, that panes of glass may be fitted in, and to merely straighten and strengthen others, so that the shutters can be closed more firmly.

“Next winter,” he says, “There will be no draughts to freeze Father’s joints in the middle of the night.”

A noble plan, and one that Fingon welcomes as a means of occupation while he mulls over how to proceed. Wachiwi spoke of marriage. Fingon spoke of forever. There is a newness to it all, and yet an unaccountable, indelible rightness to it all.

Since she braided the yellow thread in his hair, since she first laughed with him, since she chafed his icy hands and brought his heart out of the dark—

“Fingon.”

Wachiwi stoops to lift the hammer he dropped in surprise and hands it to him with one of her swift, knowing smiles.

“Goodness,” he says. “You startled me.”

“You are building another wall? Inside the wall?”

“No. Just mending the windows.”

“It never ends.” She shrugs, raking a hand through his collection of nails, and then, almost regretfully, lining them up like little soldiers. “Build, build, build.”

He takes one of the nails when she offers it and says, “It will help to keep everybody warm next winter. Or this winter—however much is left of it.”

Wachiwi asks, almost hesitantly, “Where will we be? Next winter?”

Hesitance is rare from her. Fingon turns to meet her eyes, and in doing so, in seeing his future reflected there, he is suddenly chastened by the thought of every consequential habit he has formed in life.

He is always running—running towards one idea or one person, and away from another. He is always dogged in his pursuit of what he thinks he is owed, but once he has it, his fickle head is quickly turned.

No sooner did Maedhros bare new miseries of his soul than Fingon was ready to leave him to his own devices again. Ready, because the soul-baring was the means of a reconciliation, which Fingon, for convenience’s sake, has been wont to tell himself is a tidy resolution to all their woes.

It isn’t. It can’t be.

Despite garden sunshine and old endearments and the woman before him, it can’t be.

“I don’t know,” Fingon says, soft but forceful. “I don’t know where we’ll be.”

“I will be with you, Fingon,” she says. She does not press another nail into his palm; she grips his hand instead in her warm, hard fingers. “I will be with you always. We have time.”

There is no tidy resolution; only the road forward.

What he must do is often simpler when he does it.

“Time we must use,” he says, suddenly sure that the hour has come, nay, the very moment at which to take his next steps. He puts down the hammer again, and leans the spare boards against the wall. “Thank you, dear one. I’ll return in a little while. If Turgon looks for me, tell him—”

Wachiwi nods. Did her cheeks flush at dear one? He cannot be sure. She says, “Yes. You’ll return.”

Maedhros is alone, toying with a skein of yarn like a disgruntled cat.

“It can’t be done, Macalaure,” he says, almost pettishly, when Fingon has quietly opened the door and then shut it again. Then Maedhros glances up and says, “Oh, cano. It’s you.”

Every time Maedhros calls him cano, Fingon’s heart leaps. He hopes it is a gift among friends, a reminder of the old days—and not a worshipful offering left below the throne of a god.

Fingon is, after all, no god.

“You’ve been practicing your knots, Maitimo,” he says, stepping admiringly close to where his cousin sits. Maedhros is proudly upright in one of the chairs, though he always takes care to elevate his healing leg. It is still strange—wonderfully strange—to see him out of the invalid bedclothes.

“I have been making a horrid nest of Judith’s precious red wool,” Maedhros returns, ruefully. “Ah, well. I’m glad to see you. What have you come for? A few hours’ rest in a real bed? That one’s empty now, you know. You’re welcome to it.”

“I wouldn’t impose,” Fingon says. “No, I—there’s something I would like to speak with you about. Something that is…well, it is serious, but you mustn’t be alarmed. It is good. I think it is good. It is not—it does not concern your—”

“My left hand is safe,” Maedhros says, smiling. “That is what you mean to say. I must admit it doesn’t deserve to be—can’t tie a pair of laces, can’t do much of anything—but I’d be sorry to lose it.” He twines his fingers in the looped yarn draped over his knees. “Now, what is it? You seem very…burdened by the idea of something grand.”

The light filtering through the little window makes something beautiful of the humble room. Carefully, Fingon takes the chair from the far side of the bed, moves it nearer to Maedhros’, and sits down.

Then he says, more simply than he perhaps intended,

“I’m in love.”

“In love?” Maedhros’ face will never be fully divested of its marks of torment, but his eyebrows remain incorrigibly voluble. “My dear fellow. You were fibbing about the source of your happiness the other day, weren’t you? I’ve only my own blindness to blame…I ought to have recognized the glow.”

“No—no. We have been intentionally private. I—it is only that I have asked if I might court her, and she said yes—”

“Don’t say another word,” Maedhros interjects abruptly. There is something rather like the old sparkle restored to his eyes. “Don’t tell me—yet—who she is. I must reclaim the honor due my powers of perception, and guess.”

“Guess?” Fingon squawks, then attempts to recover his dignity. “Oh, if you wish. I know you are teasing me.”

“Tabitha,” Maedhros suggests, with ultimate confidence.

Fingon blinks. He must be jesting—but Fingon rather expected the joke to take the turn that Maedhros had, in fact, known all along about Wachiwi and Fingon’s bond. Not this!

“Tabitha?” Fingon echoes faintly.

“She is forty or so,” Maedhros muses, “But that is of no moment, if you truly care for her. She is very skilled with herbs and things of that nature.”

“Maedhros, please. It isn’t Tabitha.”

“Judith, then? Good Lord, but Judith is little younger. Was it she who mended that shirt of your so splendidly? I can scarcely see the patch. A wise investment, Fingon, if we are to continue to view human bonds as contracts.”

Fingon splutters. “We shall continue to do no such thing! Enough guessing, I beg. This has made me feel as if I’ve gone about everything wrong—I promise you that I’ve never—”

“Fingon.”

“What?”

Maedhros says softly, “I know it’s Wachiwi.”

Satisfying though this is, it does nothing to calm Fingon’s nerves. Rather, it sends them flickering rosily up into his cheeks.

“She has been a wonder since the start,” he says. “It was I who was ignorant. I did not understand—”

“You were suffering,” Maedhros says, in quite a different tone than the one in which he joked a few moments ago. Sitting upright in his chair, leaning forward a little to meet Fingon’s eyes, he is tall again.

Himself again, in yet another way, and never more so than when he adds,

“It is hard, sometimes, to love people when we are suffering.”

“We’re always suffering, aren’t we?” Fingon says. “In our family?”

Somehow, this is what brings Maedhros’ smile back again. He lifts the skein as if to show off its tangles and says, “Behold the house of Finwe!”

“The house of Finwe is a cat’s cradle?” interjects Finrod, opening the door wide. “This was ajar, by the way—and I heard you two talking. Pardon my intrusion?”

“It’s no intrusion,” Fingon says, stoutly, though he was not done with baring the entirety of his soul. There is much to be said to Maedhros on the subject of Wachiwi—strange to think that he scarcely knows her, despite all she has heard of him—and he does not know if he can properly say it with Finrod present.

“Fingon has been admiring my handiwork,” Maedhros says. “I am damned determined to tie a bow with this mess. Sit down, Finrod. Tell us something droll.”

“Not much to tell,” Finrod says, sitting on the edge of the bed. He is giving Fingon in particular one of the shrewd, amiable looks that occasionally appeared on Uncle Finarfin’s face, and Fingon realizes that he must still be blushing. “The children are being little wildlings, as usual. At least Beren doesn’t seem to mind. And that Maeglin fellow is settling in well—I saw him picking up the hammer you put aside, Fingon, a few moments ago.”

Yes, Fingon surmised correctly—there is something too knowing in Finrod’s gaze. And if he saw Fingon at the window just now…

Best to make a clean breast of it.

“I came to speak to Maedhros on a rather pressing matter,” Fingon says, clearing his throat. “But you might know about it already, Finrod. I—” He decides as he speaks—“don’t mind telling it again.”

Finrod blinks innocently.

“Wachiwi and I are courting,” Fingon says, anxious to avoid any more guessing games. “It seems a very small word for a—a very great thing, but at present I have nothing to give her but my heart.”

Finrod was opening his mouth to say something, no doubt something clever, but now he shuts it again and simply listens. Encouraged, Fingon chances a glance at Maedhros, who has given up his string exercises again and is listening with the faintly melancholy tranquility that he used to afford Maglor’s best symphonies.

“She’s the dearest girl in the world,” Fingon goes on, heartened. “She—she knows when to pry me out of my dark moods, and when to leave me to myself. She has taught me a good deal about the world, and about myself, and I find—I find that I do not want to part with her. Not ever.”

Finrod says, “You know she’s mad about you, don’t you?”

“Is she?” Fingon’s voice breaks in a most unmanly fashion. “I…I had no idea that she cared for me at all that way, until. Well.” He almost said, until I kissed her, and she liked it, but he cannot speak of such things to these more worldly-wise cousins. He keeps his silence.

“By Jove,” Maedhros murmurs, his eyes alight. “Fingon, if you didn’t go and do it.”

“Do what?” (He doesn’t squeak this time.)

Maedhros smiles sweetly with half his mouth. “Claim another victory from the jaws of death. Who would have thought one could philander so pleasingly in Mithrim?”

Fingon would give much to be able to protest the accusation of philandering, but he cannot properly challenge the truth of it. He fidgets with the cuffs of his shirt, looking intentionally grave, then says, “I mustn’t divulge a lady’s secrets, you know. I hope I’ve treated her with all the honor due her, though I can’t always say I’ve given her the attention due her, for I am still learning not to be block-headed and helter-skelter.”

“Block-headed?” Finrod and Maedhros erupt together in laughter.

“The Fingolfians shall always have noblest humility among us,” Finrod says. “We’re all blockheaded in this family, Fingon. You’ll find no judgment here.”

Maedhros nods, as if to say, none at all, and then, shifting his legs carefully and folding his lean hand around the pinned cuff at his right wrist, he says,

“Won’t you tell us all about it, Fingon?”

(He tells them everything.)