and my arms are getting heavy by arafinweanappreciation  

Doing his best not to wake him, Angaráto adjusted the blanket over Artaresto’s shoulder, tucking it in tighter against the cold. The wool, against all odds, was still soft and vibrant-colored. He could not claim the same of their tent. Even in this eternal darkness, the wear and fading was visible. He was not sure what they would do once it became too threadbare to protect them from the wind now shrieking outside. Anxiety tightened in his chest, as it always did when he thought too far into the future. They were moving slowly, and no one really knew how long the ice bridge was; how much longer they had to go before they would see stone and vine again. Absent-mindedly, he smoothed his hand over his son’s hair, as he would have when Artaresto was a tiny child, asleep against his chest. Another gust of wind buffeted the tent, bringing with it the sound of pelting sleet. Please, he silently begged whatever benevolent power might be listening, at least let us make it to land. Don’t abandon us here. Eldalótë shifted in her sleep. Angaráto reached over to fix her side of the blanket.

A sound came, then, that was not sleet or wind or the heavy breathing of one who slept. It was footsteps, crunching in the ice outside. They stopped for a moment, and the tent flap opened, granting entrance to both Ingoldo and a cold gust of air. His face was red with cold.

“How did it go?” he asked in a low voice as Ingoldo turned to secure the flap once more.

“As well as can be expected.”

Angaráto grunted. Councils with Nolofinwë should not have been fraught. They had spent half their childhood sharing rooms with his children, invading his study and begging him to come play. He knew them almost as well as their own parents. The only reason Angaráto was on this frozen, Valar-forsaken stretch of sea ice was because of Nolofinwë’s sons. Even if he could no longer stand to look Findekáno in the eye.

But their mother’s blood was reason for distrust, now. Artafindë, he had heard some of Nolofinwë’s people calling his brother. Artanga, he knew they had been calling him.

Ingoldo made Nolofinwë nervous. Angaráto was not sure how many other people knew this, but he found it to be very plain. Ingoldo’s loyalty surely looked fragile after Alqualondë; he was well-known and well-loved, charismatic and clever, and, most of all, a Falmari prince. His silver tongue was more than capable of twisting even proxy guilt and shame into debt. His hands were clean while Nolofinwë’s eldest son’s were stained with the blood of his kin. A not-insignificant number of Nolofinwë’s own host had held back and joined that of his brother after news had spread.

Nolofinwë knew as well as Angaráto that if Ingoldo wanted to, he could tear their people apart from the inside. Angaráto knew that Ingoldo would never do such a thing. He did not know if Nolofinwë believed the same.

Ingoldo shot him a look over his shoulder. Angaráto shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to tiptoe around them,” he said. “They owe us a blood debt. They could at least pretend not to look down their noses at us.”

“Our uncle does not put stock in such prejudices,” Ingoldo said evenly. “We are tiptoeing around each other because we cannot afford even the appearance of division, not because he is holding anything over our heads.”

“I’m sure,” Angaráto muttered, though it was bloodless. He knew Ingoldo was right. Survival was paramount, and they could not survive alone. Still, the chiding expression Ingoldo gave him was so like their father’s that, for just a moment, Angaráto couldn’t help but shrink down into himself like a scolded child.

“What else would you have me do, Angaráto? What would you have me demand of him?”

“Some respect,” Angaráto shot back, straightening. “You are not our father, Ingoldo”- this was something they both knew was only halfway true. The name Ingoldo had many meanings, and the fact that it was also their father’s was far from an accident, considering the resemblance between them in both face and character- ”and you do not need to be.”

That was something they both knew to be entirely false.

“Perhaps not,” Ingoldo replied. “But we will always need someone who is willing to grit their teeth and make peace. And if that makes me our father, then so be it.”

Angaráto only nodded. He was notoriously bad at gritting his teeth and swallowing his pride and his anger, but he could do it for now. Or, at least, he would try.

They sat in silence for a long moment, listening to the shrill song of perpetual winter beating against their door and the deep breathing of their family behind them. Artanis muttered something angrily in her sleep, and Aikanáro started to snore a little. Angaráto looked down at his hands, twining his fingers together, flexing and relaxing them in a slow rhythm, feeling his breath in his lungs.

“Why have we done this?” he said, barely audible. He wasn’t sure whether he had meant to speak aloud or not.

Ingoldo replied anyway, shrugging. “You’d have to tell me.”

Angaráto grimaced internally. He certainly did not need much reminding that his brother had never wanted to come in the first place. It had been shocking, in the moment, that he had been so vehemently against it when the rest of his siblings had been of such like minds, even if he was agreeing with Turukáno. The reaction had been so instant and so visible on his face that he knew that Ingoldo could not have simply been persuaded by their cousin. There was more to it than that. Angaráto had felt too betrayed at the time to ask him what it was, and he still had not. There had been a strange distance between them since that day. A distance of the kind that Angaráto had never known before. He and Aikanáro had left earlier than either Ingoldo or their father, bitterness and anger trailing in the air behind them. By the time he saw them again, Ingoldo’s hair was two feet shorter and his face grim, and their father had to be held back from tearing Fëanáro’s throat out with his bare hands. The anger had died by then, leaving only frigid silence. And Angaráto had seen what the cold could do to a person.

“Are you not curious?” he asked hollowly. “To see what lies on the other side?” He had been, at first. His grandfather’s blood singing in his veins, calling him to far shores and distant mountains. The same call that had once brought that same grandfather to the land of Angaráto’s birth. It had waned quickly, in the face of… everything. A different sort of blood drew him forward now.

“Of course I am,” Ingoldo sighed, “but it was never worth this price. And besides-” his gaze flickered to his hands “- there was still much to see at home.”

There it was again, that cryptic resolve, something moving beneath the surface of his guarded expression. But Angaráto said nothing. If there was something that could draw his brother’s gaze away from a new curiosity and hold it with such intensity, or worse, caution him against it, he was not sure he wanted to know what it was. 

Angaráto shifted the subject, lest he find out. “Are Itarillë and Turukáno well?”

Ingoldo shook his head. “They have both recovered from the water, but Itarillë is very quiet, and Turukáno…”

Angaráto nodded. Last time he had news of Turukáno, his family was still failing to persuade him to move from his bedroll. Angaráto had guessed that they would succeed eventually. Or, at least, Itarillë would. He cast a glance towards Eldalótë’s sleeping form, the bronze of her hair visible beneath the blankets. To try to go on with this without her would be unbearable. Had she refused the journey, he would have turned back to join his father by now. But they had come this far, and the danger was not yet behind them. Perhaps it never would be again.

“Ingoldo,” he said gravely. “If anything were to happen to us… Artaresto–”

“Would be safe with me.” Ingoldo finished, voice soft.

“Thank you,” Angaráto replied hoarsely.

Ingoldo inclined his head, reaching out to place a hand on Angaráto’s shoulder. Comforting, for a few moments, then transforming into a vise grip. He looked over at his brother, noticing for the first time the red surrounding his eyes and the dark circles beneath them.

“I can’t do this alone,” he said. A confession. A plea. Words giving shape to the bow of his shoulders. Angaráto could feel their father’s ring digging into his shoulder where it sat on his brother’s first finger, where a wedding band would have gone, if he was married. “I need someone I can trust, without question.”

Wordlessly, Angaráto placed his own hand over Ingoldo’s and held it there. They did not dare to speak oaths aloud, but he would have, if Ingoldo had asked. He did not need to. Even if he had, an oath sworn before Eru Ilúvatar himself would have been nothing against this silent promise.

Of late, Angaráto was not sure of much. He did not know if he would live to see Middle Earth. He did not know what they would find there. He did not know how quickly their doom would catch up to them.

He did know that as long as he drew breath, no one in this tent would face it alone.

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