once the skies are clear again by queerofthedagger  

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once the skies are clear again

When Fingon brings Maedhros back, it is pouring rain.

He cannot say why that detail stays with him as much as it does. Maedhros is shivering, the emaciated lines of his body stark beneath Fingon’s cloak. Red runs in rivulets over Fingon’s hands. The cold seeps into his skin as his adrenaline crashes, once they finally reach the encampment.

It lingers in the weeks to come. When Fingon does not dare move away from Maedhros’ bedside, when he sits in icy silence among Maedhros’ brothers. When he argues, argues and argues and argues—with his siblings, his father, his people.

No one understands why Fingon did what he did.

The truth is, neither does Fingon. Watching Maedhros, clawing his way back to life one agonising inch at a time, it feels like blood cloying on his hands all over.

It takes endless turns of the moon, but eventually, Maedhros does get better.

He eats and drinks on his own. He sits up, seems alert when people speak to him. Replies sometimes, rough, short answers that sound like they cost him strength he does not yet have.

He never looks Fingon in the eye. Fingon is terribly, selfishly grateful for it.

There comes a point where Maedhros has regained much of his strength, but is faced with his newfound limitations regardless.

He grows irritable then; snappish, short of temper, ever one word, one failure of a simple task away from ordering everyone out of the room.

He does, that is, with everyone but Fingon. His brothers resent it, Makalaurë most of all even as his resentment is almost indistinguishable from his misery.

It drives Fingon mad, makes him impatient in return. Makes him poke and prod at Maedhros, wondering where the line is, how much he can push before Maedhros stops treating him like—

Like whatever it is he is treating Fingon as, these days. Fingon tries not to think about it whenever he can help it—has not, in truth, thought about it since he stood on Aman’s shores and saw the smoke rise in the distance. Has not thought about it on the Ice, during each and every step that he took. During each death, each shivering night, each hunger pang threatening to swallow him whole.

Fingon has not thought about it—about Tirion’s endless summer days, Maedhros’ tender hands on his face. He is not thinking about it now, how far away all of it seems. How different they are—Maedhros, broken down so far, there is no world in which Fingon could still be angry. Fingon, frozen down to the bone and coming out on the other side of it, someone other than himself.

Maedhros has done his penance, and ten times over so. Fingon knows it, has seen the evidence of it more clearly than anyone else. There is no way he could still be angry.

And yet, it tries his patience, the way Maedhros acts around him, tries it enough that one day in late spring, as storms whip across Mithrim’s planes, he finally snaps, “Will you stop this?”

Maedhros freezes where he stands by the door, watching Curufin leave. They had been talking about weapons wielded left-handed, which had been bound to go poorly. Still, it had been Fingon who had argued against Maedhros starting to train with a shield already, his right arm still in a bad shape, even as the wound where Fingon had mutilated him had mostly healed.

It had been Fingon who said so. It had been Curufin who became the target of Maedhros’ temper.

“I am sorry,” Maedhros starts, his face carefully blank. “I—“

“You keep doing this,” Fingon presses out, and there is a helpless kind of anger inside of him that wants to claw its way out of his chest so badly, Fingon can taste it on the back of his tongue—ozone and lightning, earth charred beneath their feet. “Stop treating me like I will break, like—like you cannot even bear to talk to me. Like—“

“Finno—Fingon,” Maedhros cuts in. “That is not—you have done enough, have borne enough, for my sake. You, of all people, do not need to endure my temper any longer. I hardly understand why you would do all that you have done in the first place. It has nothing to do with—with thinking you will break. You have proven more than often enough that it is no such simple thing.”

It is so unexpected, Fingon is speechless for long moments. Not so much the fact of it—it makes sense, really. It is a very Maedhros way of thinking. It is just—it is just.

“You need not concern yourself so,” Fingon finally says, picking his words carefully. “You have suffered enough. There is nought that I could still hold against you even if I wanted.”

Maedhros looks at him, his eyes dark. The three steps of distance between them feel as vast as the Outer Sea.

“I have forgiven you,” Fingon adds, when Maedhros does not say anything. “I have forgiven you for all of it. Alqualondë, the Boats, the Ice; there is nothing I could extract from you that Morgoth has not long since taken, so you can stop tiptoeing around me. We will be fine.”

It sounds less like a promise and more like a challenge. There is a strange expression on Maedhros’ face, one that Fingon cannot read. He inclines his head, his face pale, and does not move away from the doorway.

Fingon’s throat feels like it is on fire, and he crosses the distance between them, raises his hand. Lets it hover, suddenly awkward and uncertain, and finally settles on touching Maedhros’ shoulder.

“We will be fine,” he repeats, and this time, he does not allow Maedhros to avoid his eyes. “You will heal, and we will find new ways around each other, and we will be fine. Do not turn me into yet another thing to punish yourself with.”

The look on Maedhros’ face is still strange. Still, he raises his left hand, settles it over Fingon’s briefly. Says, voice rough and quiet, “Alright, then; I shall try.”

The gaping maw in Fingon’s chest still howls, but the weight on his shoulders lightens, at least a little.

It is as much as he dares to ask for these days anyway, so that’s alright.

Maedhros, to his credit, does try.

It helps that he can leave his rooms now, that they take walks along the lake shore, that their talk turns to things other than wounds, their recovery, and the lack thereof.

Still, the distance between them stays, measured and gaping. Still, Maedhros only ever looks at Fingon with a glance, with a crease between his brows, with sorrow pressed deep into the lines around his mouth.

Fingon wants—he wants. To bridge the gap. To rage at it. To shake Maedhros, demand answers for questions he does not even know how to ask.

He says none of this; keeps Maedhros company, trains with him when he picks up a sword again, ignores how it makes his own people turn from him more and more.

He is not giving up on this. He cannot.

It will pay off eventually. He believes it, because he must.

“I will cease the crown to Nolofinwë—in gratitude, in an attempt to mend the rift between our houses, and, most importantly, because it is right. In the line of succession, he should come next. To make sure that conflicts will be minimal, my brothers and I will take our people east.”

The announcement is simple. In the last year, Fingon has got more used to this now being Maedhros’ manner increasingly; none of the grandiosity of Valinor left, all the elaborate splendour he used to be so known for long stripped away.

It is not that Fingon always minds, that he does not understand. Today, though, the unflinching words feel as unforgiving as a blow to his sternum.

He hangs back as the commotion plays out before him. The Nolofinwëan encampment is still bare-boned in many ways, but with the crowds of people and the formality of the Fëanorians before them, it could almost resemble court days in Aman, whenever their grandfather had removed to his summer residence outside of Tirion.

Fingon shakes the thought. Maedhros stands tall, answers question after question. His brothers look on in various stages of obvious contempt.

It feels like something is slipping through his fingers. It feels like sinking beneath ice, lungs burning, burning, burning.

“Why would you not tell me?”

Maedhros turns from where he is standing by the window. He seems unsurprised to see Fingon in his doorway.

“Was it not a nice surprise?”

“Russandol,” Fingon snaps, the name slipping out before he can stop it.

Maedhros flinches as if struck; recovers quickly, more quickly than he ever would have, back—back when.

He walks over until he stands close, until Fingon has to tilt his head back to look up at him. He can count on one hand the number of times they have been this close since they set foot on these shores, and the majority of those would have been during sword training.

Fingon’s skin burns with the absence of it, and yet, and yet. He can never seem to bring himself to reach out, to touch, to cross the distance.

“Why East? Why not tell me? You keep—“

“Findekáno,” Maedhros says, and his voice is terribly, horrifyingly gentle. There is a look on his face that wants to break Fingon’s heart. “You have not forgiven me. You say you do, and you—you want to believe that you have. But you have not actually done so. You say you do, and every time you do, you look like you still hate yourself for it.”

“That’s not true,” Fingon says, stomach dropping to his feet. There is ice creeping down his back, and outside, the wind is howling. It will rain soon, autumn moving across the land.

Fingon thinks of blood on his hands, of bone breaking beneath his fingers. Thinks of crimson staining the ice red, of watching the tears freeze on Idril’s face. They had to beg her to stop crying, so she would not waste what little strength she had left.

He thinks of Maedhros begging him for death, and tastes smoke and burning wood in the back of his throat.

“I do not blame you,” Maedhros says, and he touches Fingon’s face then, a brief brush of fingertips that cuts Fingon to the bone. “But perhaps—perhaps it will be better. The space, the—the distance.”

I do not want you to go, Fingon wants to say. He cannot get the words past his lips.

“I will miss you,” he says instead, and that, at least, is true. He already does, after all.

Maedhros smiles, sadness leaking from the cracks of it. He does not answer; presses a kiss to Fingon’s forehead, lingers, and then steps back.

They do not talk again before Maedhros and his entourage disappear into the eastern fog.

When they meet again, Fingon has learnt to love this strange land.

It has been years, by then. It is only his father’s summoning that brings Maedhros out of the east; that gets Fingon to put aside the tangle of guilt and anger and sadness that has stayed his hand whenever he thought of writing a letter.

“It is good to see you,” he tells Maedhros when he arrives. It is true, for what it’s worth. Maedhros’ smile looks real when he inclines his head.

It is a good feast, a good couple of days. They orbit around each other, drawn together over and over. They talk, careful at first, then more easily, wine and song helping to make them relax a little. Something within Fingon thaws at each time he looks at Maedhros and does not feel like breaking open.

Still, he is not sure anything big would have changed, beyond smoothing over the sharpest edges, if not for Maglor.

He finds Fingon on the last evening, down by the lake.

He has been sitting by the water for a while, trying to get away from the crowd; trying to order his thoughts, the looming end of the festivities putting him into a maudlin mood.

Truth be told, Fingon has not spoken to Maglor since their host arrived in Beleriand and was greeted not by Fëanor, not by Maedhros, but by him. Has not spoken to him directly since, heart a bleeding mess on his tongue, making him cruel, he had cursed Maglor for abandoning his brother to Morgoth’s whims.

It had not been fair, Fingon knows. He can hardly contemplate the disaster that Celegorm as head of the house, regent or not, would have wrought.

And yet. It is one thing to try and pretend that he had forgiven Maedhros. It is another with—anyone else, really.

All of which is to say, he does not expect Maglor to search him out. They have never been close; even in Tirion, it had ever been Maedhros who had brought them together.

Now, Fingon would not have bet on Maglor wanting to speak to him.

And yet. Maglor settles down on a stone beside Fingon and offers him a goblet of wine.

Fingon takes it. Says, voice even but not exactly kind, “Makalaurë. Something I can do for you?”

There is a beat, uncharacteristic, and then Maglor straightens. “I will say this once, and I will say this only because Maedhros will not. He may very well resent me for doing it, too, but he has more than enough reasons to do so already, so truly, what is one more?”

“Why would—“

“You have not forgiven him,” Maglor cuts in, turning dark, hard eyes onto Fingon. “Now it is not on me to judge you, and I will not. But answer me—what is it that you hold against him most? Surely not Alqualondë; that, after all, was your own doing as much as his.”

Fingon thinks one could rather argue the point, but then, Maglor is not exactly wrong, either. Fingon is painfully aware.

“You know it is not that,” he presses out, knuckles turning white around the goblet. He does not speak about this. He has even less interest in doing so with Maglor, of all people.

“The boats, then.”

And of course, of course it is the boats. Fingon wants—oh, Fingon wants to forgive so badly, but he dreams of leaping flames, of the feeling in his chest like something is crushing his ribs, slowly, inevitably, to dust and grime.

“What do you want, Makalaurë?” he asks again, except that this time, it comes out angry. He has ever had an atrocious grip on his temper.

“You should ask him about it.”

“Why—“

“Have you? Ever done so?”

Pushing to his feet, Fingon puts a few steps of space between them. He is not sure that he won’t ruin his father’s diplomatic masterpiece by strangling a cousin, and he would rather avoid the inevitable lecture that will follow. “Speak your mind, or leave me be, but stop with this. It is none of your concern—“

“Oh, but it is. You can hold me in contempt all you like, Findekáno, me and all my brothers. There is nothing you can accuse us of that we do not hate ourselves for already. But out of all of us, Nelyafinwë, at least, stood aside even when our father would demand differently. I had a feeling you did not know, and that you ought. That is all.”

Before Fingon can gather his wits, Maglor is gone, disappearing back towards the sprawling tents and moving crowd.

Fingon stares after him, his heart a war drum inside his chest.

It feels like falling backwards, water closing above his head.

This time, it is Maedhros who finds him.

Fingon has been sitting in his own tent for—too long, probably. He has been telling himself to move, to find Maedhros, to do something. What, he isn’t sure. It is what had kept him rooted to the spot.

Maedhros stays just inside the tent opening, his face hard to make out in the dim light of braziers and candles.

“Maglor told me what he did. I am sorry, Fingon; he should not have.”

Fingon keeps his eyes fixed on the ground before him, fingers linked tightly. “Would you have ever told me?”

A beat. “No.”

The answer, so simple, is like fuel on Fingon’s temper. “If you think that concealing it from me, that just watching as every single one of your family abandoned us to our fate, makes any of this better, that this twisted kind of self-sacrificing silence on it—“

Maedhros has the gall to scoff. “Stop being silly. That makes no sense.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“You just did. It does not change anything. Whether I stood aside or kindled that first boat, what does it matter? It happened. I left you. Nothing I can say, nothing I can live through that has nothing to do with you in the first place, will ever change that.”

Just as quickly, the fury drains out of Fingon. In the wake of it, he just finds himself tired.

Outside, it starts to rain, soft patter on the tent canvas. The smell of wet earth and new growth invades the tent.

“I do not think that is on you to decide,” Fingon says, his voice soft. He gets up from the chest he has been sitting on and walks towards Maedhros; does not stop until they are close enough, he can read the pain in Maedhros’ eyes.

“I just—“ Maedhros starts, and then cuts himself off when Fingon cups his face with a hand.

He leans into the touch, though, and Fingon feels something brittle and hard within himself crack open.

“I know,” he murmurs, leaning close, temple to Maedhros’ jaw. “Me too.”

There is a long pause during which they stand in the quiet tent, all their history unravelling between them. Outside, the last joyful notes of the feast play out. Inside, Fingon can finally breathe again, everything, finally, falling back into place.

He pulls back and tilts his chin up. Waits, patient, patient, patient, as Maedhros looks at him, wondrous and scared; smiles, bittersweet and aching, when Maedhros finally bridges the remaining distance and kisses him, chaste press of lips and bodies swaying into each other.

It does not fix everything, but—

But. Fingon holds him close. It feels like coming home. 

Chapter End Notes

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