I Will Remember You at Moonrise by Isilme_among_the_stars  

Maedhros

Argon is on my mind as I leave camp with barely more than a sword, harp and bow. There is a dreadful vulnerability to being so divided, I think, watching red Fëanorian flags snapping breeze-blown on masts across the lake. Our brethren, so painfully close, remain ever out of reach.

“Not everyone is as forgiving as you”, father told me, urging patience. But how can I wait quietly when next it could be my other brother, sister or cousin bleeding out on the cold ground? Our sun-shy enemy does not care for our grief or pain. He will spring upon us soon, ready or not. If I can prevent one more death like Argon’s, then gladly, I will climb down the darkest pit in Angband to do so. We were friends once, Maedhros and I, close beyond any right circumstance gave us to be. I hope I am not too late. Sun-kissed dandelions lift their faces before me as my feet turn Northward.

               There was no ambush when Arien leapt, blazing, into the sky. She did not call out to us as Tilion did but wept bitter tears of flame. It was poppies that sprung from the grass at her touch, black eyes amid crimson and white, like our blood mingling with that of orcs in the snow. We marched all the way across the vastness of Ard Galen in anger and sounded our brazen chorus at Angband’s gates, not in joy, but defiance. In crystal skies the golden orb shone unopposed, as Morgoth cowered behind his doors, craven hearted.

The sky is not clear now. Smoke-brown pollution reflects in my cousin’s mirror-silver eyes that beg more ardently than his words, obscuring the jade flecks that so mesmerized me once upon a time. 

               “Kill me, please,” he asks for the second time this day, breath rasping from wasted lungs. Instead, I rest his head on my shoulder, wrap his free arm tightly about my neck and twist thin fingers into my tunic so that he clings, bracing his body with mine against the rough rockface. When my blade swings, the sound of freedom is sickening crunch and blood-curdling scream, not song. It is a mercy that Maedhros lapses into insensibility when he does, and the etchings of pain smooth from his still-beloved face. Though I think it a shame I cannot share the beauty of this flight with him as we emerge from the smog to unstained cerulean skies. Distance renders the emerald and crimson of Ard Galen below in muted softness; delicately unfocussed. 

               “What right has the world to such comeliness amid our torment?” he would bemoan, if my cousin could see it now, missing the point of the sublime entirely. Argon would have inhaled its perfection, savoured the rush of wind against his face and told Maedhros that hope needed no permission: snatching it from the jaws of suffering only magnified its worth hundredfold. I am glad that his last sight will not be ugly, besmirched firmament, nor his last touch the sting of my arrow or blade. He has time to learn, yet. One of these days, come Moonrise, I will teach him.

Chapter End Notes

Arien is the Maia entrusted with the keeping of the Sun and tasked with carrying it across the daytime sky.