Fractures by Elleth  

Chapter Eight: All

No promise, nor oath...?

This chapter contains a brief instance of not-very-graphic sexual content, beginning when Maedhros and Fingon kiss against the stable wall. It is entirely skippable if you're not comfortable reading it. That scene is over when the host begins riding.

When Pilin's hoofbeats faded into the distance eventually, Fingon, as if it were now safe, let himself fall to his knees, as if the strength to stay upright had gone out of him entirely with Alphangil's departure. He knelt in the ash and dust, and Maedhros noticed for the first time how dirty his face still was, Fingon's earlier tear-tracks now once again covered up by dust.

He supposed he did not look much better, especially not after he knelt by Fingon and dusty ash swirled back into the air around them.

"Did I send her to her death?" Fingon asked tonelessly.

"She was on her way to her death. You may have sent her toward life. Hold to that thought until we are at Himring, when you will see whether she lives or dies."

"Or feel it, when she dies before." Fingon reached up to touch his heart, laying his other hand over Maedhros' chest; his touch was almost as icy as Alphangil's had been, even now that the sun was high and the clear day's weather was no longer particularly cold. "I will feel it, when - and - " he laughed breathlessly, unhappily. "- I am afraid of the pain. Not for the pain's sake, but… "

"If," Maedhros corrected gently, thinking of Fingon's shout the night before. "If. Come now, we should go. It is a long road, but as far as my riders went, it is safe and clear, and Pilin will outrun any enemy that crosses his path, if there are any there."

He grasped Fingon's arm and pulled him back to his feet, releasing him only to brush the dust from him. Fingon did not object, however much he hated to be patronized. "Come now. Pull yourself up. You are the High King - mine, and of my people. Keep up appearances for a while longer."

"Have you ever asked whether I wanted to be the High King, whether I wanted this office?" Fingon asked, but the words lacked heat and ardour, revealing only a profound, tired sadness. "I stand by my words from last night, but I would be happier to surrender the crown back to you and your house and watch your back break under its weight. Always, since my father's death."

"You do not mean that," Maedhros replied, wishing there were anything he could do to help Fingon, but short of Alphangil finding the strength to live, it was no longer within his power to change anything. He did not think he could stomach another fight without something between them irrevocably breaking, the fight that Fingon seemed so transparently to long for. "Fighting with me will not make anything better. I know you blame me - not only for passing the crown to your line, but also for Cýronil. The latter I will take upon myself; it was my failure. You, your being King, is not a mistake."

When Fingon turned away, Maedhros moved. His heart decided before his body followed what he should do. Hidden behind the stable wall from the rest of the host, he pulled Fingon in and kissed him deeply.

He knew exactly how to coax Fingon's mouth open, what to do to turn him to wax in his hand, his to mold and form, and Fingon seemed equally eager for something, anything, that was a distraction from the misery. He kissed Maedhros back with a stifled, desperate sound. Only his hands on Maedhros' shoulders lay there motionless, as if caught between wanting to push him away or pull him closer yet.

Maedhros found himself with his knee pressed between Fingon's legs when they broke the kiss at last, and Fingon moving against it almost frantically. Maedhros kissed him again; his hand found its way under Fingon's mail shirt and into his pants, closing his hand around his hardening cock and stifling Fingon's noises with his mouth, swallowing them down like they were honey.

He caught Fingon's release in his palm when it came, finally withdrawing his hand and stepping away. Fingon quietly handed him a cloth and regarded him with half-lidded, exhausted eyes as Maedhros wiped his hand clean.

"I feel like an Orc," Fingon said miserably as he caught his breath. "She is dying, and I - we - "

Maedhros dropped the soiled cloth into the dust and kicked sand over it, just as a trumpet signal sounded in camp. "They're back. Pull yourself together. Saddle Arveril and let us ride."

"You do not need - "

"No," Maedhros cut him off. He could do without.

Three hours later, the sun was westering red and immense behind them. Some would call it the foreshadowing of a calamity. It cast long, dim shadows like scurrying ghosts over the ash-covered road ahead of them as the host finally made its way to the rendezvous point and was re-ordered taking those horses bearing the most wounded and fallen into their center - and then on toward Himring at a slower pace, never more than an easy canter. Maedhros and Fingon rode at the front on Nimlach and Arveril, who seemed ill at ease beneath Fingon, being used to Alphangil's gentler hand, and spooked by her new rider's restless fidgeting at that.

They passed onward silent and exhausted after the sun dropped below the distant Ered Wethrin and shadows fell long across Anfauglith before darkness came. One rider - Ríngannel, a friend and briefly a lover of Maglor's in Aman, who had survived the Bragollach to swell the ranks of Himring with her wife, began a song when the stars rose, but no one else joined in, and she let her beautiful voice plunge into silence again after only a few lines.

Clouds stood before their mouths and the horses steamed in the icy night air.

They rode on through the night at a slower pace for a semblance of rest, especially for their animals, and more than once it seemed like Fingon wanted to complain about their lack of speed, but then thought better of it. Maedhros caught his baleful looks from the side, because he showed no sign of abandoning his people to ride ahead, and for the moment held himself straight and still on his horse, his gaze and thoughts fixed ahead, trying to estimate how far Pilin had come, and how Alphangil was doing.

He watched Fingon carefully for any impression of sudden pain, but - so far, at least so far - it was a cycle of fidgeting, sometimes of helpless, quiet, angry tears that ran down his face soundlessly and unknown to anyone riding behind him, because Fingon somehow kept his breathing perfectly level and his shoulders from shaking, thankfully heeding the advice Maedhros had given him far better than he had expected him to.

"Fingon," he said eventually when they stopped to water and feed the horses. He drew out the lembas that Alphangil had not eaten, broke the wafer in half and handed part to Fingon. They sat, eating, still in silence, until Fingon eventually sighed.

"She is so brave. I wish she did not have to be. It makes me think of Helcaraxë… and how much I hate to lead when times are so hard. Your war better bring us freedom, or I will return the crown to you and ride over the Ered Lindon, and you will have seen the last of me."

When Maedhros looked up, there was a crooked, unhappy smile on Fingon's face.

"Is that an apology for your words earlier?"

Quietly, Fingon replied, "I think so."

"Then I accept it." Maedhros' heart beat a little faster in spite of the apprehension that still weighed it down like a stone.

He looked around furtively - the host was busy minding their own, and although any of them might have glanced in their direction at the wrong time, Maedhros found that he did not in his heart of hearts care. These were his people, they had forgiven greater sins than the one he was about to commit, but he turned his back to them all the same, tugging on the too-short cloak he had taken off the dead soldier who had died in the ruins, since Alphangil had ridden wrapped in his.

With his body shielding Fingon from view, Maedhros pulled him to his feet and kissed him once again. "I forgive you," he said against Fingon's parted lips. "For all that you said and did not mean, and especially for what you said and meant."

Fingon panted into his mouth and shoved against his chest with both hands, forcing Maedhros back a step, although the gesture was full of a hollow tiredness. "You - incredible - I - no, I do not want any more comfort or absolution now, not until I know Alphangil is safe!"

Maedhros reached for him, but Fingon marched back to Arveril and mounted, leaving Maedhros standing and whispers picking up behind him. Fingon had not been quiet.

Maedhros lifted his hand, trying to mask the sudden heartache by standing straight and tall again. "Make ready to ride on!"

*

Pilin ran on far into the night, unopposed and arrow-straight eastward along the road.

Alphangil passed in and out of consciousness, sometimes lulled to sleep by the tireless rhythm of his beating hooves, sometimes in too much pain from the constant movements that drummed into her hurting head, and sometimes because the wound clawed into her with another jolt, passing further and further through her body in cold numbness, except for the constant burning. At other times, when she was awake, her arms grew numb or the bonds holding her on the horse began to chafe - not as badly as Cýronil's orcish ropes, Maedhros and Fingon had made sure of it, but it was far from comfortable, and sleep, if she could get it, was much preferable.

The darkness was invading the edges of her sight again.

As Pilin flew onward and she tried to draw comfort from the speed at which he went, she lifted her eyes to the fading sky. A moment - an eternity of darkness and terrible dreams that left her in tears but without memory of them as she startled back awake - later it was entirely black, but studded with a myriad of the stars of winter, lying unmoving on the blanket of the sky like a hoard of shining jewels.

The stars of her name, the Swan, flying high on the northern sky in summer, had almost dipped below the horizon now that midwinter was approaching, but there they were, she thought, seeking desperately for the familiar pinpricks of light.

Still there, still shining. Not vanished yet.

She felt impossibly small - a speck of ash that had burned away long ago under the watchful eyes of Elbereth - and even as she tried to lift her voice to sing the even-song, the pitiless darkness moving through her clawed at her throat like a thing with intent, and she plunged into dark once more.

Next she woke, the stars were streaking by above and around her, and they stank and shrieked and Pilin whinnied a war-cry, kicking and biting to make them scatter, and then they were past and left them behind, and the road was clear again. Only belatedly she realized that they had forced their way through a band of torch-bearing Orcs marching along the road. Had there been a brown-haired woman among them? She hadn't seen Cýronil, but that did not mean that she had not been there. And - had Pilin been hurt?

She listened anxiously, her cheek and ear pressed against Pilin's neck, for a change in his breathing, but neither that nor his gait had changed once he was back on the free track and began to gain speed again. He had not been hurt.

Alphangil closed her eyes against the tears that came up, fear and relief and black exhaustion.

Ahead of her, it looked as if the horizon was lightening. Morning was rising to meet her. She closed her eyes against the oncoming light, instead trying to reach out back across the leagues for Fingon and Maedhros, but could feel nothing.

She was alone, and her strength was fading quickly, as if the growing daylight sapped it away.

*

"She is… she is flickering, as if she were there one moment, and gone then next," Fingon burst out in a whisper at some point after they had ridden well past noon the next day, with only sporadic stops, more concerned with the horses' well-being than their own. Fingon's eyes, when he turned them to Maedhros, were bloodshot after the pursuit, the ride, the long wakefulness and worry, after the tears and the even longer stretches of vacant stares and silence.

Maedhros closed his eyes in return, trying to banish the thought of how Alphangil had cramped and spasmed in their care after they had found her, how she had begged them to not send her away, how he had tried to instill courage in her that she would live.

How, it seemed now, he had been wrong.

"Perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps her strength was not enough," he said under his breath.

"How - how do I go on when she is no longer here?" Maedhros heard Fingon ask, and he had no answer, but Fingon, if he was asking at all, did not wait for a reply and kept speaking, his voice rising now. "Why did I ask her to come with us at all - I sent her to Eglarest for a reason! Why did we meet on Himring, where we know the Enemy is watching, where we know he has spies? You, me, yes, but I should not have let her come! Why did I not stay by her side when we made camp?!" The words finished in a yell.

Beneath him, Arveril danced and nearly broke out to the side before Fingon wrested her back under control with an agonized, wordless shout.

"Fingon!" Maedhros said sharply. "The horse is not at fault. Nor are you. Cýronil is. The Enemy is. He has spies in your hosts and in mine, it might have happened anywhere, had he commanded it. And we will repay him for every soul he took from us. Had you stayed at her side…" he shook his head. "You yourself - you would be slain or taken."

At the thought of Fingon dead or worse, Fingon trapped in Angband, everything in Maedhros hurt like a shock that passed through him, as if losing Alphangil was not already painful enough. Losing both of them was unthinkable. Even if he might go on and try to find a measure of happiness with Fingon, it would never be restored to what it had been. He could no longer understand the person he had been, who had wished hatred undying on Alphangil once for coming between them, when there had always been enough room for him as well.

But even so -

"Even so, I would rather see you slain - or her dead - than either of you taken. Perhaps this - perhaps it is the kindest thing that may happen to her." If it was a comfort, it was as cold as Helcaraxë must have been.

The look Fingon gave him was poison. "No! She is alone, with no comfort! How dare you!"

Before Maedhros could reply - before he could remind Fingon that Angband was a fate crueller than death, Fingon spurred on Arveril, and sped her down the road ahead at a gallop. Maedhros let him go, even as Nimlach danced and wanted to follow, his hand hard on the reins. Ahead, already shrunk to a speck of his silver armour and Alphangil's brown horse, Fingon veered off the road and up the slopes on their right, and even from the distance, Maedhros could see that he had his sword drawn, swinging at something on the ground. He jumped from the saddle, seeming to land on top of it, leaving Arveril riderless.

Fingon drove his sword home with a furious shout that rang across the distance, and his flashing blade continued rising and descending, rising and descending, rising and descending. Coming closer, Maedhros saw what Fingon had found. On the road, trampled by great hooves - Pilin's, Maedhros presumed - lay three dead orcs, and another on the slope that - Maedhros presumed - Fingon had found wounded but alive, and had just slaughtered.

With the host's arrival, Fingon summoned Arveril, mounted, returned. His dirty face was dirtier now, once more streaked with black blood that he simply attempted to wipe off with his hands, his armour no less splattered.

He was breathing hard, but speaking quietly, and for the moment his gaze was clear and present. "I understand now what my father must have felt after all this," he said with an expansive gesture at Anfauglith. "He loved this land."

"Is she gone, then?" Maedhros asked, anxiously listening within if he felt any absence, any shift, if he could find some awareness of Alphangil. He knew he should not expect to feel anything - they were not married. But how he wished that all three shared that bond, to be part of them fully, part of a happiness like that of his parents when he had been young. To shelter Fingon from the worst of the pain and bear the brunt of it that he deserved, not limited to words and castigation. To take from Alphangil what pain he could.

Fingon shook his head, and something seemed to splinter in his eyes and in his breaking voice. "Not yet, but it will not be long now."

*

Daylight should have driven the shadows from her sight, but they lay more and more like a blindfold over her eyes.

The dagger pierced into her again. Again, again, over and over. It reached beyond her heart and mind, and grasped her, soul-deep.

She screamed out the pain, muffled it against Pilin's neck, against his sweat-lathered coat, could feel her muscles tense against her will as another cramp passed through her. The horse slowed to a walk over ground that seemed softer than the road, as if in answer to her pain after the seizure faded and left her breathless, but he himself was exhausted as well, hanging his head and nearly tipping her forward as he stood shuddering, and finally stumbled on again.

Fading in her sight were frozen plains around her, stretching flat, featureless, horizon-wide and empty all around, except forward. Pilin was making his way to the foot of a cluster of hills now not far away, the highest in the center, citadel-crowned - and toward spots moving on the plain, rushing toward her, or were they hope and wishful thinking?

Pilin stumbled again, shaking her painfully, the host of dark spots rising and getting larger like crows descending on her dying body, darkness vaulting up entirely around her. All she could hear was Fingon's weeping while he thought she slept, Maedhros' kind, earnest, grieved voice imploring her to try.

No promise nor oath.

She forced herself to think, and to shape words from her tired mind to her heavy tongue. She barely still had breath enough to speak them.

"Eru Allfather, Elbereth, Manwë, Badhron, hear and witness - I ask you to hold me to this oath: I swear that I will not pass to the Halls of the Dead."

Her eyes were so heavy.

The pain turned into agony. It pulled at her with clawed hands through flesh and spirit, terribly intentional, down, down, away for good —-

A suffocating night closed in around her.