Wrensong and Roses by Isilme_among_the_stars  

The room smelled… clinical. There was no denying it. Fingon did not like the way Maedhros startled at certain scents, nor how his eyes roved warily over instruments of healing. There were corners of his mind that hurt more than bodily wounds, Fingon was sure, though nought had been said of them. Maedhros had spoken little as yet. Fingon was met, once again, with stiffening and a wide-pupilled stare as the movement of the opening door shifted stale air about the room. It was this that decided him.

“Come, Tyenya,” he said. “Let us leave this room, for a while.”

Maedhros did not object. He gave no answer at all, except to submit when Fingon slid arms beneath his back and knees, and to lean into the embrace. Warm breath tickled Fingon’s collarbone as they slipped down the corridor and away, seeking open air.

“Will you face…repercussions?” Maedhros whispered as Fingon passed the threshold and they were hit with the scent of roses that Maglor had ordered planted when this encampment had been his to oversee.

“Beyond a scolding from a few tetchy healers? I shouldn’t think so.”

Maedhros was not heavy to carry, nor so cumbersome as his long limbs would suggest, but Fingon didn’t think he ought to take him far, frail as he was. Following the sweet breeze, he strode toward the adjoining gardens in which the roses grew. Soft grasses pillowed the ground in a circular lawn around which garden beds radiated outward. Carefully, Fingon set Maedhros down, slipping a hasty pillow, made from folded cloak, beneath his head. Maedhros turned his gaze away from the sun and peered, unblinking toward the nearest greenery.

“Makalaurë…” he mumbled.

“He planted them, yes.”

Maedhros said no more, though a shudder ran along his back.

“Is the air too chill for you, love?” Fingon asked, though the morning was mild.

The barest movement of Maedhros’s head suggested not. “He…”

“He is well,” Fingon reassured, and, realising that the assertion would sound as a platitude—always those had irked Maedhros—he went on, “Makalaurë is thinner than you would like, and had a sour cast to his mouth when last we spoke, but we have all changed so since the darkening. Your brother is safe on the other side of the lake. Two days past he sat by your side. You remember not?”

At the edge of the lawn wrens darted about, uttering the occasional twitter. Maedhros moved not, nor spoke. Fingon ran a hand through his dull, brittle hair, noting how tangled it had become: a problem for later. The quality of Maedhros’s silence, he had learned, could speak volumes: pain came with tight, close silences, and fear with distant, wide-eyed stares. Now, as he watched his cousin’s eyes track the movements of the tiny birds darting to and fro, unearthing insects between the green blades, Fingon thought it a good quiet. He was entranced for the most part. With a songful whistle, Fingon called them closer. Tiny beaks opened as they piped in return and hopped obediently to. Slowly, Maedhros extended a shaking hand. One bold fellow cocked his head and regarded half-curled elven fingers with a beady black eye.

“I saw them,” Maedhros said, gaze fixed upon the flitting birds still. He spoke softly, with a rasp to his voice from a throat no doubt still raw. A week previous, cries had torn from it under the ministrations of hands wielding bone-saw and scalpel, and at whiles since, when the wound was tended.

“Wrens?”

“They adapted even to Angband, where its airs were less foul. Morgoth’s servants loathed their calls. Sport was made of catching them and tearing off their wings. He does not suffer any fair thing to remain unfouled.”

Their impromptu excursion seemed to have unstopped Maedhros’s tongue, and though the words that spilled from it were dark, Fingon was glad they flowed forth. “He shall not blacken every fair thing. These, he will not molest.”

“They trust too well.” Words full of rue, which carried a self-accusatory ‘as did I’ unspoken with them.

“They trust as well as they should,” Fingon asserted softly, squeezing gently Maedhros’s upper arm, far enough from his injured shoulder so as not to cause pain.

“I hear their songs from my bed and think: these too shall be hunted, these too shall be tormented. Nothing is safe. Not the birds. Not us. Not Makalaurë.”

Fingon turned his eyes to the heavens, blinking from them tears that had gathered at Maedhros’s words. High in the firmament a spray of wispy cloud drew together like feathers in Manwe’s wing. Fair was the day, and bright: a stark contrast to the maelstrom of gloom evidently residing in his cousin’s mind. “Perhaps not,” he answered at last. “Not wholly so. Nothing ever was, even when we thought our home untouchable.”

Of a sudden the birds scattered, flitting away as Maedhros jerked his hand back, awkwardly reaching for Fingon as best he could without jostling his agonised body. An odd, choked noise died in his throat, not afforded full voice. Fingon caught his hand and grasped it firmly. “They are protected,” he said. “You are protected. We are not defenceless.”

Carefully, with hands as gentle as a mother cradling their newborn, Fingon shifted their bodies until Maedhros rested securely within the circle of his arms. And as Maedhros buried his face against Fingon’s chest and drew great, gasping breaths, he made no mention of it, only held him a mite tighter.

“We can return to your room, if you wish.”

“No. It has been so long since my eyes beheld green,” Maedhros said and breathed a tear-choked “thank you” after.

“Then I am doubly glad we came, and grateful for your brother’s foresight in the planting.”

“I never understood Makalaurë’s penchant for roses.”

“Truly? I find they have a certain charm: an elegant thing, oft crowned in red, with the audacity to tear the skin of any who dare uproot or mistreat them. What is not to admire?” With a significant look, Fingon coaxed the first amused smile he had seen on Maedhros’s lips since their re-union.

“Perhaps they will grow on me,” Maedhros mused. It was plain how effortfully he strove against grim mood to weave a dim thread of hope into his speech.

“That they will. Nor will our position always seem to you so fraught.”

Maedhros fell silent, and there was a darkness in his eyes, but Fingon noted, also, how they followed the movement of the wind through the bushes and flicked across to the birds when they raised their clear, piping cries. And he did not flinch when a gust brought the scent of flowers to their noses, but breathed in deep.

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