Blood and Copper on the Cliffs by Tathrin  

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Blood and Copper on the Cliffs

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Maedhros is dreaming.

Or no, not dreaming: he can tell that much, for he still knows what it feels like to walk in dreams, even half-delirious ones where he is simultaneously aware of the cliff-face behind him and the almost-forgotten sensation of being neither in pain nor numb to it.

Those memories grow a little more worn, a little less real, all the time, and Maedhros wonders what will happen when he forgets completely. Will the world no longer hurt, once he has passed so far through the other side of pain that he can no longer remember a life without it? Or will Morgoth only use that as an opportunity to devise some new torture, some new way of causing pain to which Maedhros is not yet inured?

He wonders sometimes if Morgoth has forgotten him.

He wonders if the new torture has already begun.

For this is not a dream, this vision of a world beyond the cliff and outside the iron doors of Angband: this strange room which glows with the strange light that glides across the skies now. Its walls and furnishings are made of plain wood, simple and undecorated and almost colorless when compared to his memories of Tirion and Formenos and Valinor.

This is a place that can only exist in Middle-earth, Maedhros knows, but it is not the tents to which Maedhros's mind usually wanders when he imagines himself taken off that cliff and returned to his brothers: it is a new place, something his waking mind has never seen. And he is not awake now, he knows, even though he knows that this is no true dream; yet he knows no better word in the tongue of either the Noldor or the Sindar with which to describe these half-lucid wanderings of his fevered mind—or the visions that Morgoth sends him for his torment.

He wishes that he had better words to name them by. If he was his father, he would invent some; but if he was his father, many things would have happened differently. He would not be here on this cliff, for one; and for another—well.

Fire dances again before his eyes, and Maedhros leans his head against the dream of a smooth wooden wall and shudders as the remembered sounds of waves and flames intermingled fill his ears.

"Should you be out of bed?"

The question is spoken in his brother's voice, Maglor's voice; Maedhros answers calmly, as if the sound of a brother's voice in his ears means nothing to him:

"I am well enough."

The wordless response his words engender—air huffed between lips and teeth, high in the nasal cavity; a noise too musical and layered to be a snort, but serving a similar enough purpose that Maedhros does not think even his father ever bothered to devise a more precise term for it, in all the years of Maglor's life—sounds so much like the brother he remembers that Maedhros cannot quite stop himself from smiling.

It does not reach his eyes, of course, because Maedhros cannot allow this terrible not-dream to reach his heart; and at the motion his lip splits afresh, the new skin there dry and thin and too tender yet to be stretched in such a gesture—but it is a smile.

The smile hurts. And not from the blood.

"Tsk," his dream says in Maglor's voice, and a soft cloth comes out to pull Maedhros gently from the wall and dab away the blood. Maedhros braces himself and smothers the urge to recoil, letting the Maglor-shape tend his lip.

"Sorry," says Maedhros, and partly means it: it is good, to remember the tenderness of his brothers. It is also terrible, to know that that tenderness has been subsumed in service to some dread agenda of evil.

Maedhros does not know when this tenderness will twist to torment. He does not even know for sure that it will: perhaps this is the torment, this half-dream designed to taunt him with everything he wants that will not ever be.

Morgoth is not often that subtle, or that patient, but Maedhros finds in many ways that those visions which do not end with his own blood and breaking are the worst of all: because they end instead in waking, and the inescapable knowledge that such things will never again be aught but dreams to him.

That knowledge is a tighter shackle than the one that holds him to the cliff-face, and the pain of it around his heart is much sharper than that which throbs through his arm. An arm goes numb much faster than a heart, and there is a limit to how much pain a body can bear before the sensation of agony starts to crumble beneath the onslaught.

If there is a limit to how much pain a heart can hold, Maedhros has not yet found it.

But he is sure that Morgoth strives to.

There comes a sound of moving hinges and the slide of wood on wood, and then a second voice: "How does he fare today?"

Maedhros closes his eyes. He draws a breath in, long and sharp, through his nose, and he braces himself. He knows that voice, knows its sound in his ears all the way down to his bones. Even when the rest of him has been worn away to dust and smears of blood upon the rock, still he will know that voice.

Even when he is naught but an Unhoused Shade caged in Morgoth's prison-halls, still he will know that voice.

Findekáno.

It is that voice, and the presence that voice presages, that proves beyond all surety that all of this is an illusory torment rather than the truth. Maedhros has not been rescued (could never be rescued) because Findekáno is not, cannot, be here. His father burned the ships, and Maedhros could not stop him, and so Findekáno will never be here.

Maedhros opens his eyes anyway, and turns to drink in the sight of the illusory Findekáno.

It is easier in some ways to smile at him than at Maglor, for Maedhros need not fear giving Morgoth weapons he can use against Findekáno. Unlike Maedhros's brothers, he is safe in Aman still: he is beyond Morgoth's reach and ever will be, and if there is any mercy in the horror of flame upon the water, it is the knowledge that that betrayal spared Findekáno the pains of Middle-earth and Morgoth.

Fëanor burned the ships, and Maedhros did not stop him, and so it does not matter if Morgoth knows how much Maedhros cares for Findekáno. Does not matter if Morgoth learns all the wonderful things about Findekáno that Maedhros knows and loves and which the Dark Vala could turn into weapons against him—for Morgoth cannot harm Findekáno.

He is the one thing that it is safe for Maedhros to love, here in his torment: because he is the one thing that Maedhros loves which Morgoth cannot ever reach.

Findekáno meets Maedhros's eyes now with a thin smile of his own and shadows moving heavy in his bright eyes, and Maedhros's heart breaks a little at the sight, even knowing that it isn't real. Findekáno should be ever light and free and spared from all such suffering: should be a creature of laughter and song and careless dancing over sweet summer grass. He should not have shadows in his eyes; he should not have blood on his hands.

But he does, he does; and it is Maedhros's fault he does.

Maedhros hangs his head, unable to meet Findekáno's gaze any longer, even this false dream of him. Maedhros does not have the right. He lost that at Alqualondë and at Losgar.

"See for yourself, Fingon," Maglor says, and he sounds tired and exasperated and a little tense, as though he is on-edge around Findekáno, which is strange, because their cousin is one of the most cheerful and easy-going people in the entire line of Finwë, and Maglor has never tensed like that around him before—but perhaps Maglor, too, is remembering the way those ships burned, and the betrayal that trapped Findekáno in the safety of Aman against his will.

Of course Maglor is remembering that: he is only a figment of Maedhros's imagination, after all, or a fragment of his memories teased-out into some puppetry of Morgoth's; and Maedhros will never, ever forget the burning of the ships that severed him from Findekáno for all time.

But Maglor called him Fingon, and Maedhros smiles at the sound. He has spent many hours of his torment on that chain pondering idly how Findekáno might have chosen to style his name in Sindarin, if he had come to Middle-earth too and learned the Twilight Tongue; has devised so many possible names he might call Findekáno in this new speech, if ever they could meet again.

If his father had not burned the ships; if Maedhros had had the spine to stop him.

Fingon is a fair enough choice out of the many possibilities that Maedhros has imagined. If that is the name that this falsehood of Morgoth's—or of his own fevered mind—chooses for Findekáno to wear, then Maedhros will utilize it, and gladly.

"Fingon," he says aloud, turning the name over on his tongue. "A fair choice indeed," he observes, and wonders if this is the moment the torment will begin—but no fresh pain comes to pierce him alongside the ever-present aching of his battered body; no harsh laughter and cruel barbs spoken in the voices of those he loves answer his words now.

Instead Findekáno—Fingon—says, "Thank you." He sounds amused, or perhaps bemused; as though he cannot quite believe that this is what they are discussing, and yet somehow can, too. He knows Maedhros well, after all: knows him better than anyone, perhaps even Maglor.

Certainly better than his father knew him. Maybe even better than Morgoth does, although that is an open question at this point. Even Maedhros does not know how much of his mind has been opened and picked-over by the Dark Vala, how much of his flayed spirit has been laid bare upon the altar of Morgoth's torments. That is why he tries so hard to restrain his own thoughts—but there is no need to restrain thoughts of Findekáno, for Fingon will never set foot on Middle-earth. Fingon will never exist, save in the ashes of Maedhros's empty hopes: will only ever be Findekáno, safe in Aman and thus lost both to Maedhros and to Morgoth evermore.

And thus has Fingon become the one refuge that Maedhros allows his battered heart to turn to, as he rots here on Thangorodrim's terrible cliff face.

He allows himself to turn there again now, wondering absently how much of the scenario before him has been devised by Morgoth and how much is his own fevered brain rebelling at the shock of losing his sword-hand and being made so helpless—as though he had been anything but helpless already! ha!

He wonders why Morgoth bothered to sever the hand. It was not as though Maedhros could do anything against him, even if he had had both hands whole and free and a dozen swords to hold in them.

Perhaps the hand is not even gone: perhaps this is some strange fantasy that his mind has concocted out of frustration at being so long-chained; perhaps this is a symptom of his mind eating itself alive as he dangles there, helpless in the wind.

Maedhros does not know. But he has learned to let himself take pleasure in these moments of illusion or hallucination that offer respite—however fleeting, however false—from his torment.

So he sinks a little more of his awareness into this almost-dream (easy to forget the cliff-face, for once; so easy that he barely feels it now against the bruises of his ever-battered back. Indeed it feels more like a memory than a current agony, which makes it all the more clear to him that this is some torment of Morgoth's rather than a fevered dream of his own mind, for Maedhros's dreams are never now so wholly free of that constant pain—not for long, at least; not for longer than the few fleeting seconds it takes for him to remember) and he smiles at Fingon (not at Maglor; he tries hardly to look at Maglor, for it is much more dangerous to remember how much he loves his brother, who lives ever under the shadow of Morgoth) and he says, "What do you think of Maedhros, then? I fear it will not suit me so well as Fingon does you, if ever I leave this place!"

He laughs, a thin and brittle thing; and both Fingon and Maglor frown at him before exchanging a look of dark concern.

"I think it suits you quite well already," Fingon slowly, speaking slow and careful, as though to calm a skittish horse. "I think that it would suit you howsoever you looked; and moreover, you improve by the day. See, your color is already much restored."

Maglor makes a noise of disagreement, and Fingon shoots him another look, less of concern this time than of sharp censure.

"It is," Fingon insists. "You did not see him dangling on that cliff, Maglor! So leeched of vibrancy had his hair become that it looked more like an old bloodstain than—" Fingon's voice breaks, and his eyes fall; he bites his lip, as though to restrain his words, or perhaps the grief that would follow them.

He draws a breath that makes his own shoulders shake, and the trembling of his graceful form highlights to Maedhros's eyes all the ways that this dream-Fingon does not match perfectly with his precious memories of Findekáno.

Most notable is his thinness, for while Findekáno was ever more slender than Maedhros and his brothers, who all to some degree inherited the strong shoulders of their mother—even Maglor and the twins, always the most willowy of them all—it was not such a marked difference as this grim thinness, which now shows in the boniness of Fingon's wrists where his sleeves are tucked up under his elbows; and the sharpness of the collarbone just visible beneath the sloping neck of his tunic; and the tight notching of the belt around his waist.

In the gauntness sunken around his bright eyes, and the dagger-edge of his cheekbones.

Maedhros wonders if the Fingon he is dreaming looks so much more careworn than the Findekáno he knew because Morgoth wants him to believe that Fingon is really here, on the bitter hardscrabble shores of Middle-earth; or because Maedhros's mind is no longer capable of conceiving of things which are not worn and aching.

Perhaps it is because his own memories are beginning to grow brittle and careworn.

That possibility is the most frightening thing that Maedhros has encountered in some time. If Findekáno is fading from his thoughts, Maedhros will die. His will will crumble; his spirit will fade. It does not matter that death offers no respite for a son of Fëanor; does not matter that to die would mean to let his last defiance crumble and his Oath break unrealized and leave his brothers to suffer on without him.

(His brothers are already suffering without him; but Maedhros tries not to think about that, or them.)

But none of that matters: if Findekáno fades from his heart, then there will be no light left for Maedhros to hold onto. He will die.

It is that, perhaps, which pushes him to step forward and reach towards Fingon, although he realizes only after the fact that he does so with the arm that ends now in white bandages rather than bruised fingers: the need to touch, to ground himself, in the reality of Fingon, even knowing that there is nothing real here.

Maedhros stumbles, his legs weak and unfamiliar with walking, after so long hung on that cliff; but before he can fall Fingon is there, moving even faster than Maglor, to catch him and lift him up again.

(A memory stirs of an eagle, and wind flowing freely through his hair without the confines of the cliff-face to trap it, and warm arms wrapped strong around his shoulders; and Maedhros shakes it away, because he does not want to leave this dream to fall back into that one. Of all the rescues that he has devised for himself in his fevered, drifting thoughts, the idea that an Eagle of Manwë would ever come for him is undoubtedly the most outlandish; and Maedhros would rather take comfort in the more grounded, if likewise impossible, scenario before him now.)

"There, now," Fingon murmurs. "Do not tax yourself; you are still weak as an ice-born babe. Sit down, Russandol!"

Maedhros allows himself to be guided back to the bed.

Maglor huffs under his breath again, more exasperation than affection in the soft sound; but his eyes are very bright, and very damp. "Oh, you will listen to him when he tells you to sit, of course!" Maglor gripes, but Maedhros can see the hint of a smile tugging at his brother's lips.

Maglor, too, looks more grim and gaunt than ever he did in Aman; but that does not worry Maedhros the way the gauntness of Fingon's face does. He was there, after all, when Maglor first set foot on Middle-earth and charged into darkness here; and the crown he left his brother holding will not have been an easy burden to bear, all these endless years in which Maedhros has been locked in Morgoth's torments and Maglor has been forced to shoulder the weight of a command that he was never meant to carry.

(It should have been Fëanor carrying that burden for the both of them; but Fëanor is gone, and only his sons and his Oath remain in the ashes he left behind.)

Maedhros allows himself to sink slowly sideways, until most of his weight is resting on Fingon's shoulder. Fingon slides an arm around him instinctively, holding him upright; and Maedhros lets his eyes close and simply sits there, breathing in the scent and warmth of Findekáno.

Of all the hallucinations that Maedhros has ever devised to comfort himself in his torment—of all the terrible visions that Morgoth has concocted to torture him with—this one feels the most solid. Were he less broken, that would likely worry him; for surely it is not a good sign, that his fevered-dreams are growing more solid around him. But Maedhros is doomed and damned already, and will spend the rest of his miserable existence on the brink of death or worse, so why worry over such a thing?

He has probably gone mad already, and only has no means to know it.

"Tsk," Maglor says again, tongue clucking against his teeth the way it does when he is struggling to come up with the next phrase of a song and does not want to lose the rhythm of it. "Will you be all right to watch him for a time?" he asks. "I need to mediate an argument between your father's hunters and Celegorm's, and that will be marginally less aggravating if I can set the meeting for just before lunch, so my brother will actually have some inspiration to listen and reply instead of mocking or dissembling. I was going to ask Caranthir, but since you are already here…?"

Fingon laughs; it is a very strained laugh, but Maedhros smiles anyway, because he can feel it in his chest, and the reminder of what it feels like to laugh—even vicariously—is both startling in its oddness, and pleasant in its unexpected warmth.

"Yes," Fingon says, "I can stay; I am glad to, and not least for the sake of aiding in such an inspired strategy for the management of Celegorm." He pauses, then asks, his voice going wry, "Did I smell fresh venison roasting on my way over?"

"You did," said Maglor, "and that is part of what the argument is about; and Celegorm would take offense at being made to miss the meal that his arrows provided, which is why I am more hopeful for this meeting than the last."

"An inspired strategy indeed," Fingon allows, with a little more warmth and a little less strain. "Well, then, I will wish you luck."

"I will need it," Maglor replies sourly; and then he hesitates.

Maedhros does not need to open his eyes to see it, because he can hear the hesitation in the taut silence that follows his brothers' words.

Eventually Maglor says, very slowly, as though he is offering his hand towards a creature that he expects to bite him for it, "I was going to have some stew sent up for Maedhros. I could send two bowls, if you would like to eat with him?"

"That sounds lovely," Fingon says. "Thank you."

Maglor's breath catches a little, as though that thanks has a shaper edge to it than Maedhros can hear; and then there is a quick rustling of cloth and hair, as of someone nodding hurriedly and fleeing faster, and then the sound of a door clicking open and closed again.

Now Maedhros is alone with the dream of Fingon, and he does not have to worry about giving away some weakness of his brothers. His shoulders relax and he sags a little more into Fingon's side, into Fingon's arms: lets himself imagine that he is taking a deep breath, much deeper than he can with the angle at which he dangles on that cliff.

The air tastes good. There is no hint of ash or smoke in it, and a little of Fingon.

He smells different, too. (Maedhros is impressed with the veracity of his hallucination; and then he has to wonder if this level of detail is Morgoth's doing instead, and he shudders at the thought of the Dark Valar bending his thoughts to Findekáno with such intensity that he is even considering what Fingon would smell like beyond the shores of Aman; but the arm that holds him tightens, and the warmth of that embrace is almost enough to drive his fears away.)

(Almost.)

"Are you cold, Maitimo?" Fingon asks him. "I am sorry; I am still learning to remember what it is to notice the cold. Here, let me get a blanket."

"Why have you forgotten the cold?" Maedhros asks, bewildered enough that he has to open his eyes and tilt his head so that he can look down at Fingon and see his answer.

"The Helcaraxë," Fingon replies calmly. His face is very set, and very hard, and—yes—cold when he says the word.

Maedhros allows himself to be pushed gently upright, so that Fingon can take his arm back without dumping Maedhros to the ground. 

Fingon slides off the bed and crouches to open the chest at the foot of it. There are blankets in there, and bandages. Fingon ignores the bandages and paws through the neatly-folded blankets, leaving them rather less neat when he is done, before selecting one that is a dark green weave like deathless holly leaves.

There is a line of embroidery around the edges, and Maedhros recognizes Caranthir's work; but it is not a design that he has seen before.

Fingon pulls the dream of a blanket decorated in a brother's hand out of the chest and wraps it around Maedhros's mismatched shoulders as Maedhros blinks stupidly at him.

"The Helcaraxë?" Maedhros repeats. "Why do you speak of that frozen wasteland?"

"Because that is the frozen wasteland through which my people walked to reach these shores after yours burned the ships."

Fingon's voice is very tight; his thin face set and his eyes frigid and flat. The grim expression does not suit him.

"Oh," Maedhros says. He blinks again. "Morgoth does not usually bother to explain how you are here when he crafts his cruel visions for my mind," he says at last, when he begins to feel that the weight of Fingon's eyes upon him demands some explanation.

Fingon stares at him. "What?" he says, his voice strangely garbled.

"I know that you cannot be here with me, and he knows that you cannot be here with me, but that is not the point," Maedhros explains, somewhat impatiently; his hallucinations do not usually demand explanations for their own existence in Maedhros's fevered mind. "The point is the pain he can cause through his scenarios of torment, not the logic underlying them. Logic," he sneers scathingly, "was never Morogth's strong suit. If it were, he would have devised a less impossible 'explanation' than the accursed, impassable Helcaraxë—but I suppose he is not astute enough to realize that just because a Vala can take such a road, does not mean that elves can."

Maedhros waits, bracing himself for the onslaught of pain; bracing himself for the comfort of this dream to shatter around him, and the cliff-face to bite once more into his back and the cuff into his wrist and for the bitter wind and burning sun to scour his skin.

(He wonders, idly, if his hand will be back when he wakes up: back on his wrist and back in that cuff, its absence dissolving along with the comfort of Fingon's presence; or if the Dark Lord really did take that off of him, for some abstruse reason. He hopes that it was not to send it to his brothers. They do not need to suffer such proofs to know of Maedhros's captivity and torment; and Maedhros has hurt them enough already by his absence. He does not need to start hurting them by arriving back among them in bits and pieces, too.)

His speech was foolish. He knows it. Maedhros ought to have learned to mind his tongue by now. He has nothing to gain by childishly baiting Morgoth with petty insults, and yet somehow he still hasn't quite entirely given up the habit, despite knowing what will follow: the gentle dream will dissolve, and Maedhros will wake into a nightmare of tortures—or worse, back into the empty, hollow torment of that lonely cliff; lonely enough that even the times of torture in the pits of Angband seem preferable to that endless solitude, now.

He was enjoying this dream, with the comfort of this strange new Fingon. He does not want it to end.

But he has insulted Morgoth, and so in a moment now he will wake, and remember what it is to know only pain. Maedhros draws a last regretful breath, filling his lungs with the taste of the dream before it collapses around him, and closes his eyes.

When he opens them, he is still there.

Maedhros blinks, and looks around, confused. He is still there, in that simple little room that he does not know, the same one he was in before: smooth pine under his feet, clean wooden walls around him. A faint scent of greenery, and water, and no trace of choking ashes. Soft bed under his legs, soft blanket around his shoulders. Fingon standing less than an arm's reach from him, a quietly bemused expression on his sweet familiar face. One hand ending in a stump, no chain upon his wrist. No cliff, no wind, no sun.

Only a little pain.

"I," says Maedhros, and stops. "I don't know what is happening," he admits. His voice sounds very small, and very dry. "This is not how things should go. Is this still Morgoth? Has he finally grown bored enough to leave my torment to his underlings?"

But no; no one who served Morgoth would dare let Maedhros get away with speaking so rudely of their lord without swiftly punishing him for it—even more swiftly and more terribly than Morgoth himself would, out of fear that their lord's wrath would fall on them as well if they did not.

"What is happening?" Maedhros asks again, plaintive as little Tyelpe waking from a nightmare.

Fingon slides onto the bed beside him again and gently, carefully, folds one arm around Maedhros and the blanket and tips him in to lean down upon Fingon's shoulder once again. "You are healing," Fingon says quietly. "You have been saved; you have been freed; and you are healing."

"Why?" Maedhros asks. Why does Morgoth need so badly for me to believe this is real? he means. What does he need to learn from me that leaves him willing to endure insult from my lips in order to coax forth further speech? he means. How is this dream meant to make me betray my people, when I have nothing left of worth to give? he means.

Fingon answers, "Because I could not bear to know you were his captive."

Maedhros's heart stutters in his chest, real enough that he can feel it throbbing in his throat. He swallows, and yet he cannot quite swallow down the laugh that bubbles up within him: incredulous and sour.

"He expects me to believe that?" Maedhros gasps, his lungs aching from the unaccustomed breathlessness of laughter. It is hysterical more than it is amused, of course, for that is the only kind of laughter that has passed Maedhros's lips in years now; but still it is laughter. Still it makes his lungs ache, and his eyes water.

He raises his arm, remembers that it is useless, and lifts his remaining hand to his face instead. Tears spill across his palm, thin and salty. "After Alqualondë, after Losgar? He expects me to believe that Findekàno would come for me? No, even Morgoth cannot be so foolish; cannot be so…so hopeful."

Maedhros spits the word like a curse. It is the only thing he knows to do with hope, now.

The dream of Fingon stiffens at Maedhros's words.

"I am sorry," Maedhros says with all the swiftness with which he has learned to apologize to his tormentors. But then it turns into a very different sort of apology as all the words he has held in his heart for Findekáno come spilling out at once, as though that first sorry opened a dam that has long been at the brink of breaking.

"Oh, dearest one, I am so sorry. For all of it, Finno—all of it! I should have spoken out to father more, should have stood against his pride from the start. I should have refused to leave Tirion, to leave you; should have sought the rest of our family more and my father's praise less. I should have found some way to make him see that he need not be enemies with his brothers any more than I was with mine! I should have—"

Maedhros's voice breaks and Fingon's arms come up around him like the gentle light of Laurelin; or perhaps like that strange burning light that rises now in the sky so bright that it drives both stars and orcs away.

The blanket has fallen, in Maedhros's distress; but the warmth of Fingon's thin arms around him offers more comfort than the soft fabric ever could.

"I should have never asked you to come," Maedhros sobs. "I should have stopped you. I should never have let you stain yourself with blood for my sake, never have let you…let you…"

Fingon does not speak, but he holds Maedhros in his arms like he is something small and breakable, and not a mighty fearsome king; holds him like he is something dear and precious, and not a battered toy of the Enemy whose usefulness has long ago run out. As Maedhros quakes and shrinks down into those warm arms, Fingon presses a kiss into his ragged copper locks and murmurs soothing noises, like Maglor does when Ambarussa wakes from a nightmare.

"I am sorry that I did not stop him from burning the ships," Maedhros whispers into Fingon's too-thin shoulder. "I am sorry I could not find better words to sway him; sorry that I did not brave his rage and take the torch myself and cast it to the sea."

"Maglor said you tried to stop him." Fingon's voice is a small, uncertain thing, so ill-suited to a mouth that has ever brimmed with confidence and joy. "He said you tried."

"I should have tried harder," Maedhros weeps. "I should have succeeded. I should never have let anything sunder us, Findekáno!"

"He would not have let you stop him."

"I know," Maedhros whispers. His voice is hollow, as hollow as the aching hole in his heart where his father's love used to be. "All that was left in him was rage and vengeance. For the Silmarils, he would even have slain me, if I stood against him, I think. But still I should have tried. I should not have stood aside."

"For what it is worth, I am glad that you did not cause your father to kill you. I would have been wroth if I had endured the whole of the Helcaraxë to reach you, only to find that you had died ere the flames had even faded."

"I am sorry that you came," Maedhros tells the dream-Fingon before him. "You should not be here, in the ruins of my mind. You should be back in Tirion, living in joy and peace and ease with Findekáno, not here comforting a failure and a Kinslayer."

Fingon's arms around him are very still. "Maedhros…" he says, his voice trembling. "Maedhros, what do you mean?"

"I am sorry that even a memory of you should be made to suffer so," Maedhros says. "All memory of you ought to be ever bright and merry, not careworn and grim like we here in Middle-earth! I do not know if it is my thoughts, or Morgoth's shaping of them, that has worn such weariness into your cheeks, my lovely Findekáno, but I am sorry for it either way. The memory of you deserves to be cherished better than this. If I were stronger, I would not let either him or myself use you in this way; if I were braver, I would not seek comfort to which I no longer have any right in the memory of arms that I betrayed. But I am not stronger, Fingon. I am sorry."

"Maedhros," Fingon says. "Maedhros, look at me."

Hands, gentle but unrelenting, draw Maedhros up out of the comfort of Fingon's shoulders and force him upright on the bed, Fingon's bright eyes staring up into his. Shadows swim there, shadows of grief, cold and bitter, such as Maedhros has never seen in Findekáno's eyes; but the warmth and joy and love are still there, too, blazing like Varda's stars in the dark overhead: blazing as though all the love and wonder of Findekáno's great heart shines ever in his eyes, warmer and more pure to Maedhros's sight than any Silmaril.

"I am sorry," Maedhros whispers again, and he feels as though the frozen steel around his own heart is finally cracking open.

There are few things he has wanted more than for some chance to apologize to Findekáno. If he had been asked to choose between escaping his torment and making his apologies, he would have chosen the latter, and stayed willingly upon that cliff forever with a gladdened heart.

Even knowing it is but a dream, being able to apologize to Fingon for all of it after so long makes Maedhros weep with joy and relief. "I am sorry," he tells his dream-Fingon again, and wishes only that somehow on the far white shores of the Blessed Realm, the real Findekáno might feel the echoes of it too, and know Maedhros's spirit cries for him.

"I am sorry, my love," Maedhros says, and then he takes Fingon's thin face in his one hand, and turns it up even as he leans down, and then he kisses him.

Fingon makes a sound of surprise, and opens his mouth around the gasp of it, letting Maedhros deepen the kiss; and he does.

He presses his lips to Fingon's and there, almost swamped beneath the warmth of him, there is a sharp twinge of pain. Maedhros notes the nigh-ubiquitous taste of blood upon his tongue. Neither the pain nor the blood are worth noting on their own—but this is different.

Maedhros has dreamed of kissing Findekáno many times before. This is the first time one of those kisses hurt.

Perhaps they always should have; certainly Maedhros long fled from such thoughts as though they would be agony. He still does not know who first put the fancy into his head: his own fevered brain, or Morgoth seeking some advantage amidst the torment. Certainly there is advantage there to be found, for Maedhros cannot ever think of Findekáno for long without thinking too of how he betrayed him, and few thoughts leave him as shaken as the memory of those flames at Losgar—not even the blood of Alqualondë.

Maedhros should feel worse about that blood, those deaths, he knows; but what he mainly feels when he thinks of the murder of the Teleri is numb. It is as though that sin is too great for him to fit into his thoughts, too huge to fully understand; or perhaps it is the chaos of that slaying that acts almost like a veil of undeserved mercy upon his mind. That was such a disordered horror, all that frantic bloodshed on the shores, followed by their swift and desperate flight across the Sea with the Doom of Mandos ringing in their ears alongside the echoes of those screams.

Those echoes chased Maedhros all the way to Middle-earth and pursue him even now within his waking dreams, but they were not things that he could dwell upon while they were fighting to not be swallowed by the angry Sea.

When the ships burned, there was nothing to do but stand and watch; when the ships burned, all Maedhros did was stand and watch. And the hollowness of that inaction lingers in his heart like a rot worse than all his dreadful deeds at Alqualondë.

He does not deserve to kiss Findekáno and he knows it, and Morgoth has twisted the knife of that bitterness into Maedhros's heart many, many times during his long dark years in the shadows of Angband. It takes all of Maedhros's will to resist the urge to pull away from Fingon now and brace himself, knowing that this, now, must be the moment when Morgoth will twist the dream: for this is the moment when it will hurt the most.

But he does not brace himself, and there is a sort of victory in that. The pain will come regardless; there is no stopping that, no escaping it anymore than there is escape from the shackle on this cliff-face where Maedhros dangles. But he will enjoy every moment of the joy before it turns to agony, and there is indeed a victory in the taking of that enjoyment, small and meager though it is against the greater triumph of the Dark Lord over his captive.

But Morgoth cannot taint the joy of Findekáno's lips on his, no matter how many times those imagined kisses are followed by cruel laughter or bitter rejection or scathing disgust. Maedhros's heart breaks every time, of course—but until that breaking, for a moment, when he kisses Findekáno, he feels almost free.

It took Maedhros a long time to reach the point where he could allow himself that fleeting joy. How long, he does not know; time ceased to have any meaning to him years ago. But long did he fight the growth of his desire for Findekáno, knowing himself unworthy of ever finding love or welcome in such arms; long did he hide his heart even from himself, in hopes of concealing its beat from Morgoth.

Long did he recoil in disgust from his own desires, but Findekáno is in Aman, and ever will be, where Maedhros will never come again; where he will never be able to taint Findekáno any further with the darkness that sours his own soul.

Accepting that he would nevermore see Findekáno was a bitter thing, and it was knowledge that Maedhros resisted understanding for as long as he could, even though he had surely known it with the first gout of fire that licked the ships—but for a long, long time, he refused to give that knowledge a home within his heart. (Even Curufin eventually stopped pressing him to.) But with that resignation, eventually, had come another: Findekáno was severed from him forever, which meant that Findekáno was the one thing in Maedhros's heart that Morgoth could not harm.

Surrendering to the false joy of Findekáno's imagined kisses had still not been a swift or easy thing to let himself fall into, and long did Maedhros resist that comfort, for he knew well how little he deserved it; but eventually, as the long years of torment stretched on, his resolve had crumbled.

Eventually, there had been so much darkness and pain that he had been unable to reject the temptation of all that was Findekáno.

Knowing that it all inevitably twisted to torment at Morgoth's hand had made it easier, in a way: Maedhros did not deserve the comfort of Findekáno's embraces, and Morgoth made certain that he never enjoyed them for long. The agony of body and spirit that inevitably followed each kiss was a sort of absolution: no, Maedhros deserved no such love, but see: he suffered for it!

Did that not balance the scales then, somewhat? Did not the way his heart was flayed-open by the torture and rejection that followed each sweet moment counteract the guilt that should have barred him from Findekáno's lips altogether? If it hurt inevitably in the end, then it was all right for him to let himself have the moment of comfort first, was it not?

Was it not?

Maedhros no longer knows; but whether right or wrong, he surrendered to it. He no longer had the strength left to resist.

Now he lets the taste of Fingon on his tongue drive all other thoughts away, even that of the knowledge of what always comes after; but when Fingon's hands eventually slide between them and press Maedhros away, they are gentle. He does not laugh; he does not sneer, or snarl, or tell Maedhros that he is a reviled traitor and a worthless kinslayer who deserves all the torment that the Dark Lord can devise; does not say that too much pain and betrayal stain their family for a son of Ñolofinwë to ever welcome the love of a son of Fëanor.

(He does not reach to lift a lash himself, his joyous laugh twisted into something cruel in Morgoth's hands: cruel, and more cutting than any mere blade of torture could ever be.)

Instead he stares at Maedhros in silence for several long heartbeats, his bright brown eyes wide and wondering. Fingon licks his lips, as though uncertain of Maedhros's taste, and seeking to understand it better.

There is blood on Fingon's lips, and a faint burn of pain in Maedhros's where the skin has split open again. Maedhros hardly notices the pain, it is so small; but he cannot take his eyes away from the smear of blood on Fingon's face.

It reminds him of strawberries in Tirion in the summer; it reminds him of Alqualondë.

He feels the bed beneath him, the mattress rough straw that crinkles when he moves. He feels the thick wool weave of the soft blanket that is bunched now around his waist rather than hanging from his aching shoulders. He feels the stitching of the simple shirt he wears, the warm threads of the plain knitted socks that reach nearly to his knees, even long as his legs are. He feels the bruises that dapple his skin, so much more shallow and dull than he is used to knowing them. He feels the layered wrapping of the bandages around his wrist, and the dull throbbing ache where his hand used to be. He licks the blood that stains his lip, and the metallic taste upon his tongue is sharp and wet and fresh, not dry and rusty.

He stares at Fingon, so gaunt and worn and different from the smiling careless Findekáno he used to know, and he takes one shuddering breath.

He remembers an eagle, and a blade, and wind in his hair.

"Oh," said Maedhros. His voice seems to break open on the word, like guts spilling loose and bloody upon the quays of Alqualondë. "Oh, but—but this cannot be real!"

The wonderment in Fingon's eyes clouds to concern. "Maedhros—" he says; but Maedhros is pulling away, shaking his head and struggling with the weight of air in his lungs.

"No," Maedhros says. "No, this—this is a dream, or a torment, or fever-madness after torture. It is not—cannot—be real. Not you, Findekáno—Fingon."

"Why am I not real?" Fingon asks him. There is a strained, careful gentleness in his voice that makes Maedhros's heart pound in deepening dismay.

"You cannot be here," Maedhros says. Panic is clawing its way up his bones and he presses his aching empty arm tight against his chest, as though to hold his heart inside the cage of his ribs ere it can beat its way free. "Not in Middle-earth, not—not with me."

Fingon very, very slowly sets a hand upon Maedhros's shoulder. He does not squeeze—does not grip, or hold, or try to restrain; but only touches him, light and steady.

"I am here, Maedhros," Fingon says. "I crossed the Grinding Ice, and came to Middle-earth that way. It took a—a very long time. When we arrived, you had already been—been gone for many years of the Sun. But I came for you—do you not remember? The arrow, and the eagle? The song?"

Maedhros's mind is a whirling vortex. A thousand contrary hallucinations are crashing into one another, breaking like the planks of burning ships falling to sink lost into deep black water. A thousand torments, a thousand imagined rescues—and one, one that was real.

The arrow, and the eagle. The song. The song that Fingon sang, when he came for him.

"You…came."

Maedhros's voice breaks. His shoulders are heaving, but his eyes are dry. He cannot seem to remember now how to cry.

"I am sorry I did not come sooner," Fingon says. His voice is still very soft, but now the thread of gentleness that runs through it sounds less like chains of careful control than of simple guilt. "Everyone said it was a thing that could not be done, and we knew so little of Middle-earth when we came—I let my family's sorrows restrain me; let your brothers' fears and guilt bind me."

"But you came anyway," says Maedhros, musing over the impossibility of the words in his own mouth; of the ache in his arm that proves it all true: the one wound not dealt by Morgoth, the one wound that really matters.

"I could not bear to not," Fingon admits. "I tried." It is his voice, now, that breaks; and his eyes shine wet as the Sundering Sea, but his sharp brown cheeks are dry. "For five years of the Sun, I threw myself into any work that anyone could find, and I paced, and I fretted, and I snapped and snarled and clawed at the chains I could feel wrapping tighter and tighter around my heart with every cycle of the Moon—until I could not bear it anymore."

"You came for me," says Maedhros. "You came, and you sang, and I heard you."

"Yes," says Fingon; and he smiles now, through his unshed tears.

Maedhros does not smile. He blinks, bewilderment spreading through his bones like rot. "And…did I dream…surely the Eagle was not real?"

Fingon's smile does not waver. "He was," he says. "Thorondor, the King of the Eagles. He it was who lifted me that I might reach you, and carried you with me from the darkness of that place."

"But the Great Eagles are birds of Manwë," Maedhros protests. "Why would one of the servants of the Lord of Air come into Morgoth's darkness for me?"

"You are worth coming through a great deal of darkness, Russandol," says Fingon, still smiling.

Maedhros finds that he recalls how to weep after all.

Fingon holds him while he cries, and Maedhros buries his face in beautiful black gold-threaded braids and breathes in the forgotten scent of hope that lingers in their thick dark strands. Fingons's arms are too thin, in their simple linen; but they do not waver at Maedhros's weight, and hold him secure through the shaking of his tears.

When at last his eyes run dry, and the ache pounding in his head matches the throb of his arm, Maedhros sits up again, and wipes his face clumsily with the heel of his remaining hand.

"I am sorry," Maedhros says, and means it more than he thinks he has ever meant any words before, even those he swore in Oath to his father's wrath and losses. "I am sorry for—for everything. For Losgar, for Alqualdondë, for the Helcaraxë. I am sorry for my father, and yours, and sorry that you are here in Middle-earth where there is so much fear and sorrow."

"I am not sorry to be here with you, Maedhros," says Fingon, and Maedhros's heart twists in his chest like a torturer's knife.

"You should be," Maedhros whispers.

"I have never been very good at doing what others think I ought," says Fingon, as lightly as though they were still youths laughing unfettered and guileless on the shores of Aman; but there is a shadow in his eyes much darker than any of the troubles that hung over them there.

Maedhros looks down at Fingon's hands. They are thin, too, and etched with strife as they never were in Valinor. The palms are pale against the sweet brown of his skin, and they are bare of rings. It is strange, to see Fingon's hands so thin and unadorned.

He cannot see the blood on them any more than he can the blood that stains his own paler hands—hand; but he knows that it is there. Will always know that it is there, on both of them.

He sets his fingers in the palm of Fingon's hand and shudders with his sorrows.

"I am sorry," Maedhros whispers, "that I have stained your spirit with my shadows."

Fingon's hand turns and catches Maedhros's fingers before he can pull away, trapping him in the tenderest cage that has yet held him; and Maedhros's breath hitches in his throat as sharp as though pierced by a swift arrow.

"We spilt that blood together, Maedhros," says Fingon, with sudden fierceness. "The stain of that is as much mine as it is yours."

"No," says Maedhros, the word spilling from his lips like blood. "No, Findekáno! The sin of Alqualondë was not of your doing."

"Nor was it of yours, I think; yet, we both did deeds of great horror there," says Fingon.

"It was not your fault," Maedhros insists. "The blame of your deeds there lies at my feet; the guilt of it should, also."

"You cannot take my guilt from me, Maedhros," says Fingon, his gaze as firm as the steel of a shining bright sword. "It was my hands that lifted that blade, my hands that ended those lives. It was my rashness and my folly that made of me a murderer, not you."

"You would not have killed anyone if I had not been there, already fighting."

"It was still my choice to follow."

"And that still makes it my fault."

"It does not! You are not listening, Maedhros. For it was not you I followed, was it? It was your father that drew us both onwards, your father and our own hot pride and eagerness for glory."

"I have never wanted glory," Maedhros says quietly.

"I did," says Fingon, his voice bleak and his eyes hollow. His grip on Maedhros's hand tightens. "I did, Maedhros. You know that I have never loved your father; yet his words that day stirred my heart and fired my blood. I followed him, Maedhros. I followed him. Not you: myself, and Fëanor. That was my choice, and my ruin. You cannot take that from me, no matter how dearly you wish you could."

"You might have followed Fëanor," Maedhros says darkly, "but you would not have killed for him."

Fingon looks away, his face going tight with pain. "You think too highly of me, Maedhros."

"Do I?" Maedhros counters. "If you had seen your half-uncle fighting with elves of the Teleri—fighting with anyone, in truth—would your first thought have been that he was the wronged party? Would your immediate urge have been to draw blades and rush to Fëanor's side, to save him from his enemies? Or would you have hesitated, suspecting that he might have brought their wrath upon himself? Suspecting that he might as like be the aggressor, and not the victim after all? Had I not been among that host, would you have joined the Kinslaying? Or would you have thought better of it, and spared yourself that sin? Be honest with us both, Findekáno!"

Fingon hesitates, his teeth worrying at his lip, smearing away the blood that Maedhros left there, as his hands will never be clean of the blood of the quays of Alqualondë.

"We cannot know what I would have done," Fingon whispers eventually.

"But we know what you did do," Maedhros says. "And why you did it."

"You think too highly of me," Fingon repeats wearily.

"My mind may be a broken sepulcher of torments and hallucinations, but in this one thing, at least, I am certain," says Maedhros; and means it. "I think of you no better than you deserve. Yea, and it was not me that Eagle came for at all, was it?" he asks, and the words are a challenge, but not a question.

He has pieced that much together at least, now that he understands the reality in which he has somehow, inexplicably, found himself enough to start looking for solid footing under the shadows that still cloud his thoughts and memories.

"The Eagle came as a message of hope," Fingon whispers.

"You are that hope," says Maedhros, and he means that too.

Fingon laughs, and looks away; but he does not argue.

That feels like a victory. It is strange, that feeling: Maedhros has almost forgotten what it was like, to feel anything other than cold endless defeat.

Fingon runs his thumb lightly across Maedhros's knuckles, as though he is tracing the unfamiliar pattern of scars and calluses in order to commit the changes of Maedhros's battered body to his memory one inch of skin at a time.

Warmth runs up Maedhros's arm from Fingon's touch, and he shivers. That is even less familiar than the sensation of success.

When Fingon's hand goes still, Maedhros finds himself holding his breath, as though afraid that even breathing will break the fragile moment; as though he still cannot believe that torment will not follow on the heels of any joy.

Perhaps it will. Perhaps this is when the  pain begins.

It does not matter: Maedhros still will not flinch from the blow before it falls.

It is Fingon who breaks the stillness, speaking in a voice so soft it does not even stir the gold-threaded braids that hang down and veil his face from Maedhros's eyes.

"Why did you kiss me?" Fingon asks.

The moment breaks like bones.

Maedhros pulls his hand back, and this time Fingon lets him go.

"I…" Maedhros says; and the words shrivel in his mouth, dry and bitter as orc-flesh.

Fingon does not move. He does not look at Maedhros; he does not turn and laugh, or raise a lash, or dissolve into the face of Morgoth, leering at Maedhros beneath his crown of stolen Silmarils.

He waits, silent and patient.

Maedhros draws a shuddering breath and swallows. "I thought you were a dream," he whispers.

Fingon looks at him then, and his brow is furrowed in concern again. "Yes, you said that," he says. "That you did not know this was real, that I was here or you were free."

Maedhros nods, speechless and frozen as cold stone.

"I am sorry for that," Fingon says quietly. "Sorry that you have suffered so much you could not even trust your own mind; sorry that you did not know at once that you were free of Morgoth's hold at last. Sorry that I did not make it clearer to you, or see more clearly the cause of your discomfort and disconnect here. I understand that, now, and I sorrow for it. But…"

Fingon pauses, his throat working as he swallows against uncertain words.

Maedhros trembles, pinned beneath Fingon's bright gaze as though held against a cliff-face by the spear of some sharp feathered shaft.

"But," Fingon continues, "why did thinking I was a dream cause you to kiss me like…"

Like a lover, he does not say, but Maedhros can hear the unspoken words singing in the air between them as though wrought there in sigils of living fire.

Shame and self-hatred well up so bitter on Maedhros's tongue that he can barely force it to form the words he chokes out in answer; but he has to speak. He owes Fingon that much.

He owes Fingon so much more than he can ever repay; and yet all Maedhros gives him is poison.

"I am sorry," says Maedhros now, his voice a wretched thing, strangled with horror and revulsion—just like him. "I am so weak, Fingon. And Morgoth—even being in his presence is a torment, and he and his servants have so many tools beyond mere presence. I was afraid. And so alone. I could not—I could not bear it, Fingon, I am sorry. He broke me, and I…I dared not seek comfort in thoughts of my brothers, for I knew that any thoughts of them would show Morgoth weaknesses that he could use against them.

"You were safe, I thought—beyond his reach, Findekáno. So I thought of you, when I sought comfort. Over and over, in the darkness of Morgoth's demesne, I thought of you." Maedhros swallows and tastes salt; although he does not know when he began crying again. "You were…you were the only light there, Findekáno. The only light that did not burn. And I…"

Maedhros presses his hand over his face, as though he can hide his shame as easily as he hides his eyes.

"I do not know when it started," Maedhros confesses in a ragged whisper. "When it—changed. The love my spirit holds for yours. When it became a thing of wanting and passion instead.

"I fought the change, the knowledge of it, for so long," he adds, as though that will make it better: as though the admission of a failed effort will absolve him of some of his wretchedness in Fingon's eyes. "I knew it was wrong, that I was unworthy of you—but I was so weak, Findekáno. So alone, so broken. Lost. I knew…I knew I was beyond hope, beyond saving. And I thought you were safe. So I convinced myself that there was no harm in—in taking a comfort I did not deserve from my thoughts and memories of you, in letting myself dream of impossible joys amidst the unending darkness. I am sorry."

Maedhros is glad that he spilled the rest of his apologies out at the start, before he even understood that it was Fingon to whom he spoke, and not his delirious memories of Findekáno. If this is the last apology that Fingon will let him offer, at least he spoke the rest once already. It is not enough to make up for all the horrors that Maedhros has brought to Fingon's life; but then, nothing ever could be.

He cannot bear not looking at Fingon any longer—and he has already established his weaknesses, anyway—so Maedhros lets his hand fall.

Fingon is looking at him, his bright eyes swirling with uncertainty and his too-thin face unreadable.

For a long time—so long that Maedhros begins to think wildly that he is still on that cliff after all, twisting in the wind—Fingon says nothing.

At last his lips part, and his tongue runs across them, a little flicker of fleeting movement that makes Maedhros's heart twist and thrash inside his chest.

"So then," says Fingon quietly, "it was joy you sought, in kissing me?"

"Yes," Maedhros says, the word a rasp like a death-rattle.

"And it is a joy that you are sorry for, now?" Fingon asks. "Now that you know that it was me you kissed, and not a dream of he whom I used to be?"

"Yes," Maedhros says, aching. "I would never have dared to take such a joy from you, if I had known you were real. I am sorry."

"I do not want you to be sorry," says Fingon. "I am glad that thought of me could bring you comfort in the horrors of that place, when I could not be myself at your side."

Maedhros stares at him. "But…Fingon, I…"

Fingon cups Maedhros's trembling jaw with his warm, steady palm. The smile that crosses Fingon's lips is as tremulous as Maedhros's heart feels against his ribs, a cobweb in a windstorm on the brink of being torn apart—but the light of his eyes is bright and clear.

"I am not sorry," Fingon says, "and I do not want you to be. No matter what, Maedhros—I do not want you to be sorry for this."

Maedhros's lips twitch, but no words emerge. He does not know how to be anything but sorry, now; yet he does not know how to argue with Fingon, either.

"It is only such a great change, and I was not truly at your side to feel it with you," Fingon continues.

"I know," Maedhros says at once. "I know, and I am sorry. I will never speak of it, act upon it, again, Fingon; I swear to you, this goes no further—"

Fingon's thumb on his lips stills Maedhros's words faster than any iron shackle or barbed whip or flaming brand ever did.

"So I ask," Fingon continues, as though Maedhros has not spoken, "if you might…if we…" Fingon draws a breath, shaking, hesitant as Maedhros has never seen him hesitate before; then he squares his shoulders, and says, "I ask only if we might sometime kiss again, so that I might have a chance to know my heart as well?"

Maedhros stares at him.

He stares for so long that Fingon draws away, dropping his gaze as his ears flush, their pale brown points darkening to a mortified carnelian, rich as fresh blood.

"Forgive me," says Fingon. "I do not mean to—"

Maedhros reaches for him with both hands; remembers belatedly that he only has one; and catches at Fingon's sleeve with his remaining fingers.

"Yes," Maedhros says hoarsely. "Yes, or—if you truly want…?"

"I want to know," says Fingon. "Please. It is—it is a thing that I have never thought before; and I was too surprised to think of anything properly when you kissed me just now. I do not want to overstep, or to—to remind you of dark days, Maedhros," he adds hurriedly, and his eyes are haunted. "But if…at some point…if you think you might be able to kiss me now without remembering those times…"

"Kissing you was the only time I was free of that darkness," Maedhros says.

Fingon smiles, and the shine of it upon his face is brighter than any Silmaril.

He takes Maedhros's face gently between his palms and shifts closer to him on the bed; and Maedhros raises trembling fingers to Fingon's cheek, hardly daring to touch, as though he fears that those sharp ice-starved bones will slice his remaining hand to ribbons; but Fingon leans into his hand, and Maedhros gathers his courage and tilts Fingon's face up to his.

There are tears running down over his lips, salt mingling with the blood, but the only thing Maedhros can taste is the sweet burst of Fingon's mouth upon his own.

They kiss for a long time; or perhaps it is only for the fleeting span from one heartbeat to the next. Maedhros cannot tell. His head is reeling, his heart a drumbeat of thunder in his chest and his blood blazing like lightning through his veins.

He expects the lash to fall any moment; but he does not brace against the blow.

Instead of a lash, one of Fingon's hands inches up to cup the back of his head, and Maedhros all but collapses down upon him with a sob.

Fingon pulls away quickly, but Maedhros does not: he clings, weak and desperate and wretched, and the throb of his heart aches a thousand times worse than his maimed arm where he has the bandaged remnant of his wrist pressed against Fingon's shoulder.

"Did I hurt you?" Fingon asks.

There is blood on his lips again and worry in his eyes, but no disdain.

No disgust.

Maedhros's heart begins to beat a little more steadily. It is not a hopeful rhythm, but—but it's not a despairing one, either.

"No," he croaks.

"You're crying," says Fingon.

Maedhros nods. "You're not," he says.

Fingon laughs, sounding more startled than amused. "Of course I'm not crying," he says. "Why would I be?"

Maedhros shakes his head. "I don't know how to tell anymore."

"Oh Russo," Fingon murmurs, and cups Maedhros's face again. He pulls him down for a second kiss, and Maedhros goes willingly. Fear still grips him like a hand around his throat, but with Fingon's hands upon his skin and lips upon his mouth, it is hard for Maedhros to pay the tremors of terror running through his bones much heed.

He would rather think about Fingon's lips, and tongue, and teeth, and the beautiful thick cushion of his gleaming braids. Maedhros lets his fingers slide into the net of those dark locks and clings, as though he is once again dangling from a cliff and Fingon is the only rope to hold him up from falling.

He is clumsy, with only one hand: even movements that should be easy feel hard, from the effort of remembering he has only five fingers with which to enact them on the world, not ten. His thumb brushes the long point of Fingon's ear, and Fingon's breath catches in both their throats with a sudden hitch and gasp.

Maedhros goes still, but Fingon does not. He shifts closer, rising up on his haunches to press his lips more firmly against Maedhros's mouth and folding both his arms around the back of Maedhros's neck.

Maedhros's back throbs at the brush of Fingon's bony joints across his bruises, but Maedhros hardly notices.

His whole world has fallen down to one thing and one thing only—the feeling of Fingon in his arms—and everything beyond the reach of their overlapping limbs is irrelevant. Morgoth, the crown, the Simlarils, even his brothers: all of that falls away, and for a moment, nothing matters but he and Fingon, together in one perfect—real—moment.

Maedhros is crying again. This time, Fingon doesn't stop to ask about it.

This time, they do not break apart until Maedhros forgets himself and brings his wounded arm up. He reaches for Fingon's face with a hand that isn't there, and instead bangs the end of his foreshortened arm against the hard bones of Fingon's cheek.

Maedhros recoils with a wince and a sharp hiss of air escapes between his teeth as a bolt of agony shoots up his arm and buries itself in his shoulder like a heated blade.

"Russo!" Fingon cries. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Maedhros grunts, cradling his arm. "My fault—forgot."

"I think this one you'll have to let me claim as my fault," Fingon says, and there's a smile on his face; but it falters before reaching his eyes.

Maedhros frowns at him. "How could it be your fault?" he asks. "I'm the one who moved my arm."

Fingon looks increasingly discomforted. "Yes," he says slowly, "but it's my fault that your arm is…well…"

He gestures, and Maedhros stares at him.

"Here, you mean, instead of hanging on that cliff?" Maedhros says. "Yes, and if I was too insensate to thank you for that before, let me do so now."

Fingon looks away, sharp and pained. "Don't thank me for that."

"I certainly shall," Maedhros retorts. "Many times over, and for the rest of my life, for I owe that life entirely to you."

The longer he spends aware that this isn't a dream, the more his knowledge of the world settles around him. His memories of Fingon cutting him down off that cliff and carrying him away on eagle-back are still hazy, and probably always will be, but now that he understands that it was all real the more he understands about what happened, and why, and how.

"If you had not cut me off that cliff, Fingon, I would have died there—or gone mad, and then died." Maedhros shakes his head. "In truth I am not sure I wasn't mad already, before you came for me. One hand will not kill me," he says firmly. "Staying on that cliff would have."

"Still," says Fingon, brushing careful fingers over the edge of Maedhros's bandage, "it is quite a price to pay."

Maedhros shakes his head again. "You would not say that if you knew what it was like to be there," he says grimly.

Fingon's eyes are full of sorrow. Maedhros dislikes the look of it upon his face very much.

"But let us not talk about my arm right now," he says. Foreboding hits him like the twist of a knife. "Unless—unless you are talking about my arm because you are avoiding talking about something else?"

"What?" says Fingon. "No, what would—? Oh."

The blush returns to his ears, and he bites his lip. The blood looks obscene, with Fingon's white teeth pressed in to dimple the soft brown skin beneath the crimson smear of it.

Maedhros wants to wipe it away.

Maedhros doesn't dare move.

"No," Fingon says softly—almost shyly. He looks up at Maedhros through his lashes, and releases his lip to let it curl into a small, hopeful smile. "No, I don't want to avoid talking about other things. I…"

Maedhros, suddenly, does.

"We don't have to," he says quickly. "Not now—or not ever, if you would rather. I don't mind. I—the least of what I owe you is time to think. Please. I don't want to—"

"I like it." Fingon interrupts him, the words coming all in a rush. "I like—kissing you. Feeling you…feeling you wanting me, wanting to kiss me."

Fingon brushes his hand across Maedhros's cheek, the touch light as a butterfly's wings.

"I don't know if I feel the same wanting yet," Fingon admits. "It's too—too new, for me. But I do like the way it feels, to have you want me. And I…I would like to…to explore that feeling more, if you don't mind. That I might discover how far it goes, for me. The wanting and…you."

"I don't mind," Maedhros says in answer. He isn't sure how he manages to speak: his lips feel numb, and his tongue seems to be entirely divorced from his body, as though that's been cut off too. He isn't even sure his brain meant to voice the words, but they fall out of his mouth and into the world anyway, and Fingon smiles to hear them.

At the sight of his face, Maedhros cannot help but smile too.

Elves do not wake to passion quickly, as a rule. From the explanations that his elders gave him in his youth, Maedhros understands that while it is possible for a person to fall suddenly and irrevocably into a deep and consuming yearning for someone else, that is rare: generally, affection blossoms to a long love which deepens with understanding until something shifts, and passion blooms then like slow-growing flowers opening to the golden light of Laurelin, drawing spirits close and stirring the desire for physical consummation over the course of many close-shared years. Sometimes, the desire for physical congress never blooms at all, and the passion remains a thing of spirit alone; and sometimes, it is unreturned, and one can only accept the sweet pining ache of a yearning that will forever live in one heart alone.

It is a thing that generally grows between both parties together, when it grows at all: a need kindled by the beat of two hearts weaving into one—but Maedhros found the kindling flame of his passion with dreams and lies of Findekáno, while Fingon was slogging through the Ice alone. They did not grow into this wanting together; and Maedhros does not know if it is possible for hearts to move at such different speeds and yet still come together.

(Finwë might have known, and Indis; but Maedhros never spoke to them of their love to ever think to ask.)

Maedhros has found so much joy in the passion of his love for Fingon already that he would never be able to view it a disappointment if it remains a thing that blooms only in his heart; but the thought that Fingon returns it this much at least, and maybe more in time, is enough to make him feel as though his ribs might burst from the happiness of a sweet bliss that he long ago forgot how to feel.

"I would explore anything with you, Findekáno," Maedhros says, his voice raw with honesty. "Of all the sorrows that followed me to the shores of Middle-earth, the knowledge that I would never be able to discover these lands with you was one that cut deepest. Without you, I could not see any of the wonders in it that my brothers found amidst our grief and ruin; but I knew that if you had been here, I would have seen them all and more."

"I am here now," Fingon says.

Maedhros wants to apologize for that fact even more than he wants oxygen.

He resists the urge, and says instead, "I know. I believe you, now. And I would wait a thousand years and call the time well-spent if that is how long it takes for you to decide whether or not you want to kiss me again; I would wait ten thousand, and treasure every one of them."

Fingon laughs at him. "I should not like to wait nearly that long," he says, and grins; and Maedhros shudders, feeling the echo of a lash slice across his flesh, as has always followed his kisses with Fingon before.

The imagined pain fades quickly, but the memory of his shame does not.

Another memory stirs with it and he cannot help asking abruptly, "I implored you to kill me, didn't I? When you came to me upon the cliff, before the Eagle—I begged you for my death, I think."

So much of his impossible rescue is a haze in his mind, almost indistinguishable from all the dreams and doubts that came before; but that moment stands in Maedhros's memory with perfect clarity.

Fingon with the bow raised high, and mercy nocked upon its string.

It was the most beautiful thing Maedhros had ever seen.

"Yes," says Fingon. His voice is heavy. He pauses and then adds softly, "It did not sound like a request you were voicing then for the first time."

Maedhros nods. "It was not," he confirms. "I asked it of everyone, eventually: you, my brothers, my mother, my father, my friends; everyone I knew who was paraded before me by either Morgoth's whiles or in my own fever-dreams." He smiles, and twines a long black braid loosely around one finger. The golden ribbon laced through its strands shines brighter to his eyes than the memory of the Two Trees. "I was glad to think it would be you, though," Maedhros murmurs. "You had the best claim to my life, it seemed to me—and still do. If I could give you no better recompense than that, at least I could give you something."

"I do not want recompense, Maedhros," says Fingon.

Maedhros frowns and drops the braid. "Why are you not more wroth with me?" he asks.

Fingon startles and blinks at him. "Wroth?" he said. "For you kissing me?"

Maedhros shakes his head. "No," he says, "or not—not only that. For so much more than that. For…for everything, Findekáno. Fingon. From the first betrayal all the way to the last. There were so many, even before the boats. I turned from you when I should not have, and I am sorry for it. Why are you not furious? You ought to be. You lost so much, suffered so much, because of me. You…you crossed the Helcaraxë, and…"

Maedhros's voice fails. He squeezes his eyes shut against the sting of fresh tears.

"You should be wroth with me," he whispers. "Why aren't you?"

"I am, a little, still," Fingon admits. "But it is difficult to bring that anger to the surface when you are in so much pain."

Maedhros twitches his undamaged shoulder in a dismissive shrug. "It barely hurts at all."

"I do not mean…" Fingon hesitates, his fingers ghosting first across Maedhros's cheek—tracing a bruise that Maedhros cannot see, perhaps—and then down his arm to where it ends in the swath of bandaging. "I do not mean the pain of your body, Russandol, although I am sure that that cannot be so little as you say; but your heart. Your spirit. The pain there burns in your eyes like a fire brighter than any ships; colder than any frost.

"It is difficult, to think of my anger, when you are clearly drowning in more loathing for yourself than even the bitterest of my thoughts could ever hold. I do not loathe you, Maedhros: I love you. I am angry, still, and hurt, yes; but I am not so angry, or so hurt, that I ever forgot the love. That was what made it sting all the more, of course—but the words of recrimination that I nursed so long and close to my heart in the trek across the Grinding Ice are difficult to bring back to mind now. I do not think I need to; I think that you have berated yourself far worse, and for far longer, than I ever could. There is no room for my anger at you, Maedhros, when your own burns so fierce already in your heart."

"I am not angry," says Maedhros.

"No?" Fingon raises his brows, a small sad smile on his face. "Be honest with us both, now."

Maedhros opens his mouth to protest again—and stops.

"Oh," he says.

There is a bitterness to the smile upon Fingon's face now that does not belong; or that would not have belonged, at least, upon the merry face of Findekáno.

But he is not Findekáno now anymore than Maedhros is Maitimo.

Perhaps it suits him now, to be a little bitter.

"I didn't realize," Maedhros says softly.

"I suppose you had no room for it, when you were…"

Fingon's voice trails off, fading the way so many voices fade now when they speak to Maedhros, and fear that their words will fall into his heart like blades.

He did not notice it overmuch, before; because before, he did not know that the people who spoke to him were real. And it was common, for his wandering mind to lose the thread of thoughts: was common for the knowledge of words to splinter like shattered glass beneath the weight of pain and horror that so thoroughly dominated his soul.

But now he knows that he is really here, that the people who speak to him are real and not fragments and figments of his mind; and he finds that he dislikes the thought of being spoken to by those who are too tentative to name the truth.

Maedhros suffered torments. Refusing to talk about that will not undo that pain.

And hearing Fingon—bold, valiant Fingon, who never feared to face any topic clearly in his speech before, even the most fraught; even the ones which Maedhros himself shied from like deer fleeing his brother's arrows—hearing Fingon speak thus, hesitating as though he fears that Maedhros who endured torment will not now be strong enough to endure clear words about it, cuts through Maedhros's heart like another knife.

"When I was being splayed open and savaged beneath the Dark Vala's tortures, you mean?" Maedhros says sharply. He takes pleasure in the flinch he sees upon Fingon's face in response to the harsh words, then immediately feels guilty for being cruel enough to inflict further pain upon one whom he has hurt so much already. "I'm sorry," Maedhros says, dropping his eyes. "I didn't…"

"No," says Fingon, taking his chin gently and turning Maedhros's face back up. "Don't apologize, Maedhros; you are right. You have been so brave, to endure so much. The least I can do is to have the courage to face the thought of your suffering honestly now that you are free of it."

Maedhros cannot shake his head very far without pulling free of Fingon's touch, and he will not do that; but he shakes his head anyway, pleading with his eyes. "You have already done so much more than what anyone might ask of you, Fingon. I cannot ask more of you now."

"Ask of me anything you need," Fingon says, and the earnestness shining on his face is bright enough that now Maedhros is the one fighting not to flinch away. But Fingon only smiles at him, sad and gentle. "I want only to see you well, Maedhros," he continues. He smoothes Maedhros's ragged hair back from his face and down behind Maedhros's shoulders.

Fingons's touch is as soft and as steady as his voice.

"If it will help you to speak openly of your hurts and torments, then we will speak openly," he promises. "If it will help you to loose your anger from the shackles that were so long set upon your spirit—then, I implore you, do so freely, and know that I will not run from it—or from you."

Maedhros feels like his heart has been pierced by a great spear, and every one of Fingon's words is another twist of the shaft, pulling it turn by turn from his chest to fall in a bloody mess upon the floor. He closes his eyes, and makes himself breathe through the pain and glory of a release he does not yet know how to face.

"I don't know if I have the strength to be that angry yet," Maedhros admits in a pitiful whisper. "It—the feeling of it, it burns so hot in my chest, Finno. It burns like—like…" His voice fails; he swallows, and forces the words out again. "I fear that if I feel it now, this anger will burn me up like dried leaves broken for kindling. I am afraid of it, Fingon. It's more than I can bear, right now. There is so…so little of me left, right now, to hold it," Maedhros confesses in a craven gasp.

His breath catches, and his heart throbs where it beats against his ribs. His hand clutches on his sleeve, convulses. Maedhros feels as though he is twisting in the wind: as though he is on the brink of shaking apart, and there is no steady base of stone or metal to shackle him together, now.

"I can't…I don't…"

"Then don't," says Fingon. He takes Maedhros's face now between both his hands, and smiles up at him. Fingons's face is bright, his hands strong and steady. "Set it aside for now, and think of joy instead. You are free, Russo. You are alive, and you are free, and you are here with me in love and joy. The anger will keep; bank it up, and bring it out like a burning brand when you need it. But for now, do not think upon it."

Maedhros nods obediently, but his heart is still throbbing, his lungs still laboring to breathe the clean air out here beyond the pall of Shadow. He moves his hand up in a clawing, fearful stutter to cling to Fingon's braids again, and he is not rebuffed.

Fingons's smile only deepens, his bright eyes kind.

"There, now, that's all right," Fingon says, and slides a thumb across Maedhros's weeping cheeks, soothing the stream of tears away with the same steady, gentle hands that cut Maedhros free of the dark and carried him here upon a breeze of hope and feathers.

"There we are, Maedhros," Fingon says, and Maedhros's breath breaks like stormclouds parting around a shuddering sob. "Don't think about it now."

Fingon kisses him then, and murmurs against his mouth, "Think of me."

Maedhros does.

#

Maglor opens the door carefully. In one hand, he holds a covered bowl of soup, but it is not from fear of spilling Maedhros's lunch that he moves with such slowness: they have all learned not to startle Maedhros any more than can be helped. Doors that open too quickly engender fear in him, and sometimes flailing blows whose desperate strength Maedhros cannot afford to spend; and Maglor has come to loathe the look of fear upon his brother's face.

It is a little better than the blankness that resides there most of the time, but only by juxtaposition against something worse. And there is no joy in that comparison.

So Maglor eases the door open as slowly as though he were intruding on his father's workroom back when they lived in Tirion or Formenoss, and Fëanor's sons were leery of disturbing the thoughts or crafting of some great and delicate project of their father's.

The sight he sees within Maedhros's sickroom once he has the door cracked enough to peer beyond the threshold makes Maglor freeze there, and then draw a breath in for a shout—but before he can loose the spear of his voice upon the world, he sees the smile shining upon Maedhros's face beneath the tears.

This is not the first time that Maedhros has smiled since being rescued. But it is the first smile that hasn't looked like a wound across his skin, despite the blood that stains his chin and Fingon's both. And it isn't the first time Maedhros has cried, but it is the first time he's done so while alert instead of insensate with pain.

Maglor steps back, pushing his youngest brother out behind him, and closes the door firmly.

"What are you doing?" protests Amras, the second bowl of soup jostling a little upon the tray cradled in his hands, along with the spoons and bread brought to eat them with.

"We'll bring their lunch later," says Maglor. "Maedhros is finally resting; let us leave him in peace for a while."

"All he's been doing since waking up is resting!" Amras complains.

He doesn't understand. But then, he didn't see. Amras doesn't know what hope looks like when it comes to them soaring from the skies on eagle's wings.

Maglor nods. "Yes," he says, "but for the first time, he seems to be healing, too."