Fractures by Elleth  

Chapter Nine: All

The final chapter...

I can't believe we're here. Thank you all for having been along for the ride, for your enthusiasm, insight and kindness, for the hits, the kudos and comments, the help and the troubleshooting. ♥

Maedhros had been in quiet conversation with Nellómin about the next war council as they rode - anything to take his mind off the worry for Alphangil - until Nellómin touched his elbow and pointed: Fingon slumped forward onto Arveril as if all strength had left him suddenly. Once again the image of the Two Trees foundering in the dark in Alphangil's mind rose up unbidden behind his eyes, when Fingon began to lift his voice in a wordless, breathless, soul-deep lament.

It was as beautiful as it was terrible, the song of a slain man, and Maedhros felt a choking cry rip itself free of his throat in response. Their faint hope had proved vain, worse than vain.

Alphangil was dead, and she had died alone.

At last Fingon lapsed into silence and stupor. Mute tears ran over his face and his hands on Arveril's reins went slack; the horse stopped moving and began to rip at the thin, withered grass by the wayside, where wind had blown the ash away. Fingon slipped sideways, insensate and close to falling. Maedhros halted, cursing his stiff legs as he dismounted, and pulled Fingon from Arveril, cradling him for a moment and stroking his cheek. Fingon's eyes found his, but then their brief focus faded back into dim grief, his gaze far-flung as that of a soldier who had seen too much of war.

The host waited, though Maedhros could feel the growing tension behind him, and he roused himself to mount up again. Fingon did not resist or protest when Nellómin and Hwestonnen helped lift him into the saddle before Maedhros. Nimlach snorted in protest, but would simply have to bear the additional weight now; he was in no shape to ride alone.

Fingon's head lolled backward against Maedhros's chest.

They continued their way more slowly now, Arveril guided by Nellómin, since the reason for their urgency had passed. None of the other wounded were in danger of succumbing, but they were all exhausted, both his people and their horses. There were whispers there, both of relief for the respite, as well as speculation and worry. Maedhros could not find it in himself to respond, instead he watched the landscape pass by in an agonizing crawl; his heart like a cold stone in him. By evening they might reach the eastern edge of Dorthonion, where the mountains dipped away to the south, and all that still lay before them were the southern marches of Lothlann and the hills surrounding Himring. The next morning would see them return to his fortress.

Alphangil must have been so close. With her earlier start and Pilin's speed, she would have been nearly to Himring itself before her strength had failed her, and that made the thought all the more bitter to bear and harder to accept, but as with any death, there was nothing for it. Maedhros passed his sleeve over his eyes and breathed deeply, kissed Fingon's hair and rode on.

There would be time to grieve in private, later.

*

She found herself lingering before wide-open doors leading into soft, deep darkness, set with mirror shards that reflected nothing where her face should be. Out of the dark reverberated a sourceless, solemn voice, grave as a mountain, deep as fate.

As you have sworn, foolish child, and as we have heard, there shall be no rest nor even entry into these Halls for you. Houseless shall you dwell, desiring a body, for your hröa is broken beyond living. So speak the Valar.

The doors began to close and shut her out, and she was pulled back, back, back, like a star hurled off course - back to Beleriand, to its entire great expanse lying spread out under her. She saw it all, from the first soft stirring of flower seeds in the soil of her small garden at Eglarest, to Gil-galad, muddied from head to toe and laughing while he was digging for clams with Círdan, to her parents pacing, restless and worried, by the shore of Lake Mithrim, and on into the East to Maedhros' people making their tired way toward Himring, Fingon held tight in the tense circle of Maedhros' arms, tears staining his face.

She wished to reach out to them all so much that even her spirit ached with the need for it, wished to hold her son squirming in her arms, console her mother and father, kiss Fingon's tears from his face and take Maedhros' cares from him, but she was less substantial than a breath of wind.

Then - a pull on her fëa, no less commanding than her death had been.

It guided her to Himring, toward her body, slack, naked, frail, and wounded to its death. She was laid out on a bed in the healing ward and the words of Badhron came to her again: Your hröa is broken beyond living, and she wanted to weep, seeing what Cýronil had made of her. And yet - Maedhros' healers were fighting to restore her life, pressing down on her chest with desperate urgency to beat her heart for her, forcing their breath into her lungs to breathe for her, calling her name and imploring her to follow their voices back to the light. Where the Elessar was and why they were not using it, she did not know.

It changed nothing. Her body remained empty. She remained dead and could see determination give way to doubt in their faces. If she could not find a way to rejoin herself, they would give up. There would be no holding, no consoling, no kissing for her, forever disembodied. Badhron would have the right of it.

Amid the dread and grief of this future, a sharp-edged flicker of rebellion at the thought. Badhron had rejected her, and she would reject his proclamation in turn.

She would live.

Next they called her, next a breath was put into her lungs, she followed it, air to air, and her wide-open awareness faded abruptly into darkness.

*

Himring was a bare hill, and Maedhros once explained that he had had the trees on the lower hills and the plain felled for defense and clear sight toward the north. There were no other forests nearby until the foothills of the Ered Luin, and even those lay bare in winter.

Why, then, was a green light as sunshine through spring leaves blinding her even through closed eyelids? What beacon was this? How long had she slept? Why was she asleep outside in the forest? It would not do - it was dangerous out. An Enemy servant was still roaming free, a dagger at the ready, a dagger of terrible darkness that would claw and consume and corrupt and kill.

Its pain lanced through her, but the stronger the pain became, the more the green light grew in response, enveloped her, and held her safe in the heaviness of soul and body rejoined.

*

Riders bore toward them swiftly out of the gathering dark, bringing rested horses, provisions and aid. They also bore news directly to Maedhros, who still held Fingon cradled against him on Nimlach.

Maedhros knew he was awake - his breathing was too deep and regular. It was pretense, wanting to be left alone with his grief, and at least for the moment, Maedhros let him be. He only hoped that Fingon would not let it overmaster him, let it seduce him into fading and following Alphangil.

"My Lord," said the leader of the outriders, Company Captain Aurast, even as her wife Ríngannel pushed forward through the riders toward her, impatient. Aurast did not let herself be distracted.

Aurast's eyes, Maedhros saw, and wondered at it, were shining, and not with worry or unshed tears, but with good tidings. He dared not hope. Too often he had seen it offered and then snatched away. The grief over Alphangil's loss was still too raw a wound to believe in any sudden, miraculous turn for the good.

"I bring greetings from Lord Maglor, and news from Master Healer Idhlinn. She and the other healers cannot be here although she knows they may be needed, but they are tending to the High Queen - Queen Alphangil lives. Only barely, but she lives."

Maedhros could not believe her. "She died - the King felt it, feels it still. How?"

*

Fingon had roused himself when he heard the news, but did not seem to believe it, and pulled Maedhros's hand to lie on his chest, whispering, "Our bond is gone, I cannot feel her - are you certain?"

Maedhros could offer no explanation, because Aurast had none to give either, other than to speak to the Master Healer.

Now Fingon stumbled and fell, still caught in his rushed forward motion, on an uneven flagstone of Himring's stable-yard. He picked himself back up with barely any delay. Maedhros could hardly fault him for abandoning the horse, whose name he didn't recall, or for tearing away toward the healing ward in the main courtyard through the gate, where all shutters were closed tight against the night.

The door fell shut behind Fingon.

Maedhros wanted more than anything to follow, but his people still looked to him, and now that they had returned, there needed to be an explanation, lest rumors and lies began to fly, lest his battle plans, strategies and tactics would be doubted or accounted weak. There might still be Enemy servants or spies in his ranks, and they would no doubt seize this opportunity.

The confusion of the campaign's end certainly merited questioning, and he needed to set the record straight: A company of outriders returned bearing Alphangil after spotting her on the plain, leaving Pilin to rest and follow at his own pace. Even the great war-horse had come to the edge of his strength after running himself ragged unchecked for over more than a hundred miles along Dorthonion at Fingon's bidding. By then Himring had been stirred up into action and Maglor, its commander in Maedhros' absence, had sent out Aurast with a search party for the rest of them.

Maglor came toward him through the crowd from the direction of the forges, himself looking glassy-eyed and exhausted, as if he had drawn on some large store of his power, before Maedhros had taken stock of all that needed doing. He was still seated on the new horse, but dismounted gratefully once he saw his brother and handed the reins off to a stablehand fading out of the throng of people.

Maglor kept step beside him as Maedhros strode toward the main house.

"Send out messengers. I know it is late, but have everyone gather on the training grounds in an hour. Everyone, from the kitchen maids to yourself and my other seconds, including Fingon's people and anyone else who might be here - Dwarven craftsmen, any Mannish allies, I do not care. Healers, the wounded and Fingon excepted. Maintain only the most necessary guard on the walls and gates."

Logistics were a comfort, a sign that, for all its griefs, the world continued on. All the same, Maedhros could not help a longing glance at the healing ward before the gates shut behind them. He trusted Idhlinn with his life - she had held it in her hands more than once - but the longing to see Alphangil and quiet the last of his fears was strong.

Maglor nodded briskly, asking no more questions, bowed briefly, and hurried away to see it done. Maedhros made his way to Fingon and Alphangil's chambers, found the door open - knowing Fingon had locked it before they left - and the small engraved casket that housed the Elessar opened and empty, the letter that he had sent to Idhlinn with Alphangil as a sign beside it.

A leaden weight in his chest lifted.

*

" - and I would not care if you were Manwë himself, she needs rest unless you wish to endanger her life yet more after such a - "

Fingon laughed in Idhlinn's face, not in mockery but overmastering joy, tears streaming from his eyes and catching green fires as they fell.

Alphangil's room in the Healing Ward was lit only by a fireplace and candles to allow the healers to see - and by the Elessar blazing green light, set in the center of Alphangil's bare chest. The dark streaks that had crept from the wound in her shoulder had already faded and receded, even if they were not yet wholly gone. As Fingon sat by her bedside and took Alphangil's left hand, pressing kisses to it and resting his face against her palm, he could feel Idhlinn glaring at him from across the room. The sound of mortar and pestle that she worked with to grind some substance or other into powder, made him think that this was what she would like to do with his head for the unthinkable offense of running in her Healing Ward, and he found he did not care at all.

Alphangil was alive, her eyes closed, her chest heaving and sinking with soft breaths.

He could hear Idhlinn's mutterings, though. "I pulled you out of your mother and slapped your bottom until you screamed in my ear so loudly that I thought I would go deaf on the right ever after. Do not think that just because your father - whom I pulled out of his mother - bequeathed you the crown of the Noldor, I owe you respect."

He did not, at the moment, mind those mutterings, either.

Alphangil was alive.

There was a snort at the Master Healer's words, badly disguised as a cough, from Cuingail, the bespeckled healer who was her second-in-command. He was working on Alphangil's right hand, squinting through the glasses that he kept pushing back up his nose every time they slipped. Another healer stood by with a tray of instruments and assisted him. Cuingail was diligently re-assembling a splintered bone in the back of Alphangil's hand. Fingon tried not to look - he had seen enough of Alphangil's blood for the rest of his immortal life - but if she were in any more immediate danger of dying, he was certain that they would not try and heal her other injuries.

Fingon made no reply. He released her hand and bent down instead to kiss Alphangil's gently parted lips - pale, but the breath tickling his own lips left no doubt that she lived, that she breathed. He stroked her hair, now shorn in the back to better be able to attend to the wounds there.

"When will she wake?" he asked.

Idhlinn huffed through her nose and moved over to the fireplace set in the back of the room to retrieve a steaming kettle. "That remains to be seen, but I expect it will be several days at the very least. We had to bring her heart back into beating before the Elessar could work its power, and I had Maglor sing over the dagger to end the spell that it forced onto her and then had him melt it down for the healing to begin beyond simply preserving her. She was dead - I saw her be turned from the gates of Mandos when I looked into her mind. She had passed the brink of life, but somehow, by some sheer stubbornness, pulled herself back."

"She had. I thought - there was no - no. Yes." The urge to cry rose in Fingon's throat unbidden, and more tears followed. "She - "

Idhlinn's booted steps across the marble floor came closer, she touched his shoulder with uncommon gentleness, and a cup was pressed into his hand, steaming with a wholesome herbal scent. "Drink, it will help calm you down."

Fingon blew on the tea and drank it down quickly, trying not to scald his mouth, handed the cup back to Idhlinn and turned his attention back to Alphangil. She was still bruised around her eyes and her face was so pale that her freckles stood out from her brown skin more pronounced than usual.

Fingon found himself repeating a game they had often played in their courtship and the early days of their marriage, tracing constellations in the jumble of marks on her forehead, cheeks and nose, really just a transparent excuse to touch the beautiful woman before him, but now he steered clear of the broken nose - more expertly set by the healers than with his attempt - and the other scrapes and bruises on her cheeks. He just needed to convince himself that she was real - that this was real, that Alphangil was safe and real and alive.

At the same time, he felt a warm, leaden tiredness spread from his stomach into his limbs and the rest of his body, and his eyes drooped. Idhlinn came to him again and steered him away from the bed, shushed his protests that he needed to be with his wife and that Idhlinn had drugged him, although she also admitted that she had, and sat him down on the bed next to Alphangil's.

He was asleep almost immediately.

*

Maedhros had early on learned that one did not run in Idhlinn's healing ward, unless it were to provoke her wrath, and few people were quite so reckless. He was almost certain that Fingon, with his sprint across the courtyard, had not slowed his step inside in the hurry to get to Alphangil's side.

Idhlinn came up to him as he approached, drying her hands. He breathed in deeply; the ward smelled of herbs and clean sheets, of scrubbed marble floors and of Cuingail's collection of teas. The scent never failed to comfort him, and had never failed to comfort him since he had woken in Idhlinn's ward in Mithrim after Angband, lucid enough for the first time to register it as a place of healing. It allowed his anxiety to drain away now, at least a little.

They stood together wordlessly for a moment, and he could feel Idhlinn studying his face, the tiredness and more than that, the dirt he had not bothered to clean away before the assembly. Bathing had seemed far less important than declaring Cýronil wanted for the abduction and killing of the High Queen, and the death of seven of his people. He'd promised a bounty large enough to make Caranhir's face flush angrily and speak up if not for Rowenn's hand on his arm.

He swore the populace of Himring to vigilance and attention against other traitors in his ranks and had his scribes pen messages to all the remaining Elven settlements as well as to their Edain and Naugrim allies, with orders that if Cýronil showed her face at any, she was to be delivered to Himring or Hithlum alive, and a flock of birds went out carrying the missives. He left Maglor to oversee the aftermath, and walked straight to the healing ward: He had delayed too long already, and although he trusted Idhlinn and her skill with his life - and Alphangil's - his need to see Alphangil and convince himself would brook no more delay.

"She sleeps," Idhlinn said. "So does Fingon. He is fine, and as I can judge it as of now, she is out of danger. Cuino saw to her hand. I recognized your skill with all else. You did well, Maedhros, and it may well have bought her enough time and strength to make it far enough still clinging to her life by the thinnest of threads. Had she perished any less close to Himring, there would have been no bringing her back; her body would have deteriorated far too much beyond even the Elessar's capacity to restore - "

Idhlinn stopped herself when Maedhros threw his arms around her and wept, shaking and letting go of the harrowing grief he had carried all this way. He shook his head. "I thought I was losing her, and I could not bear it."

"You bore it," she said softly. "Come, once you have calmed yourself you may see her, convince yourself, and then go take a bath and rest," Idhlinn said, and Maedhros felt her press a surreptitious, motherly kiss to his hair.

When he trusted that he could breathe again without weeping, he let Idhlinn lead him into the chamber that Alphangil and Fingon slept in. "Of course he did not bathe either before storming in, but he is so deep under now that he did not notice me undressing him and cleaning his face and hands at least. There is one more bed for you here, and as soon as I deem her ready to be moved, I'll have her taken into her chambers. She will need both of you to lend her strength in her healing, as long as you do not tire her too much for a while. I know that her and Fingon's marriage bond was severed by her death - perhaps that is why he did not feel her return - but I am afraid I must ask all three of you to abstain for a while longer before it is re-knit."

The words were said with a fond exasperation that made Maedhros think of his mother.

In the warm green glow of the Elessar, steady and reassuring, that reminded him, once again, of his own recovery after Angband, Maedhros pulled up a chair to Alphangil's bedside. She looked fragile and far smaller than she should be in the large bed, but her breathing was deep and regular, and her face was peaceful.

*

Bright daylight through the curtains tickled her nose, and she sneezed.

It hurt as if her face were strangely tender but it was nothing that did not pass quickly. Alphangil blinked her eyes open slowly as Himring's noontime bells began to ring outside the window. She found herself testing the feeling of a familiar mattress and the weight of her body - that seemed new and unfamiliar, somehow, a little untethered as if something had tried to pull her away from it. She could remember only scraps of how she'd reached Himring - the stone walls of her room with the swan tapestry and Fingon's banner left no doubt of where she was - a long, dark ride over a frozen plain, terror and pain and fading. And then - nothing. A thundering voice judging her, and a void in her memory.

Nothing at all. Death.

She shuddered and felt her right shoulder, where Cýronil had so fatally wounded her, reaching under the nightshirt and finding a knotty, half-healed scar that felt cool and hard under her touch, with almost no sensation in her skin, the mark that the evil weapon must have left. Other than that, she felt almost whole again. Her head throbbed a little, radiating pain from the back of it where it rested against the pillow, and her wrists were tender and swathed in bandages, much as her right hand was.

To the right and left of her in the large bed lay Fingon and Maedhros, both turned toward her and each other, hands joined over the center of her body and Fingon's green gem, even in sleep - for both slept, cocooning her in their warmth and strength. It finally convinced her that this ordeal was over.

She laid her left hand lightly on theirs, closed her eyes and slipped back into sleep.

Chapter End Notes

There you go. Most of you knew already that Alphangil would have to live, because she obviously shows up in later stories (the danger of writing a series non-chronologically! Heh.) but after setting the stakes for her life so high, it would have felt like cheating if Alphangil had simply managed to hang on until she could reach Himring. I hope, given the all the medical handwaving I've done here, especially the integrity of her dead body, isn't too grating. Something something Elessar. ;)

There will likely be a shorter sequel to this that deals with Alphangil's (and Maedhros and Fingon's) healing process. Regarding Cýronil - I also have a story in the works featuring her; the first chapter of that is almost ready for posting, so we absolutely have not seen the last of her yet.

Finally, special thanks go, once again, to Chestnut for their wonderful name list that yielded the names of Arveril and Nimlach, as well as to Minubell for talking me through the medical intricacies of hand injuries.

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I owe a lot of people thanks for supporting me through this: The SWG write-in crowd (you know who you are!) for the enthusiasm and the write-ins that got the majority of this fic written, the phenomenal IdleLeaves for letting me yell at her about this story and generally having an open ear and for her betaing help, and additionally, the lovely, lovely Saelind for her betaing skills to get this polished. Thank you all.