How Fire Holds What It Burns by gaydhros  

On an evening of late summer, in the shining hour of the mingling, Prince Curufinwë Fëanáro strides into Taniquetil’s teeming festival halls with the new-wrought Silmarils blazing upon his brow. That night, fire consumes Findaráto’s dreams.

He wakes gasping through a mouth full of ash. His lungs sear as if burning away to nothing. He chokes on soot as walls of flame surge up and close in around him until their oppressive heat is all he can feel, all he knows, burning and consuming everything in their path.

Terror drives him up in a panic. Findaráto fights free of tangled bedsheets and staggers blindly across the room to the window, throwing it open and catching himself on the sill a mere moment before his shaking legs give out. Great, gasping breaths of air rush frantically into his aching lungs. They still work as they should, expanding, deflating, and expanding again. His hands, too, are unburnt, his skin washed pale under Telperion’s silver turning. His knuckles are bloodless and white from the force of his grip on the sill.

“Ingo?” Findekáno’s sleep-heavy voice comes from behind him.

Findaráto closes his eyes. The shock of cool air is helping; he wills his breathing to even out and waits for his frenzied heartbeats to slow.

Nothing is burning. The world is whole. He is in Maitimo’s apartments in Tirion, and there is no fire, and all is well.

The mattress creaks. Behind him there comes a rustling of linens, followed by the soft padding of feet across the floor. Tentatively, a hand settles on Findaráto’s arm.

Findaráto looks up and finds Maitimo consumed by roaring flames. Orange tendrils lick scorch marks into the ceiling and burn through the floorboards under his feet. His skin blisters, peels, and chars black. His wide grey eyes melt in their sockets, ash pours from the gaping hole of his mouth.

Findaráto stumbles backwards and falls to the floor with a cry.

Then he blinks, and suddenly it is only Maitimo as he knows him: his freckled skin is smooth and unmarred, his face is pinched with concern. The only fire is his unbound hair, flowing over his shoulders like molten metal poured from the crucible. Findaráto blinks again to make sure the image is real. Hesitantly, his galloping pulse begins to steady out.

“Ingo?” Findekáno is out of bed, wrapped in a blanket with a pillow crease lining one cheek. He crouches beside him. “What is it?”

He reaches for Findaráto’s wrist. The moment his fingers close an encircling wire of pure heat constricts brutally around Findaráto, viciously tight, hot enough to eat through his skin. It immobilizes him for the space of a single heartbeat before suddenly it slackens, and the feeling disappears just as quickly as it came. It leaves in its place only a discomforting tingling in his skin and an oppressive, sinking dread.

Findaráto takes a deep, shuddering breath. He lets it out as slowly as he can bear. He reaches fumblingly for Findekáno’s hand and threads their fingers together, leaning into the gentle touch of Maitimo’s hand when it cups his cheek. Gradually, the terror passes.

The terror passes, and Findaráto lets them help him to his feet. The terror passes and Findaráto walks shakily to the basin, splashes his face with cool water, and climbs back into bed. The terror passes and Findaráto buries his face in Findekáno’s chest, lets Maitimo press himself along his back, and closes his eyes, trying to ignore the way his skin still crawls.

The terror passes, but the truth that had shepherded it in has already settled deep into the marrow of Findaráto’s bones and carved out a home there: the flames will come for them, ere the end.

Foresight is a fickle thing. Those unburdened by it always expect it to be so uncomplicated: a blessing bestowed by Eru, the wondrous gift to know. The more complicated truth is that Findaráto knows very little. He Sees, and what to make of what he Sees is left to him, to comprehend it or to not. Mostly he does not.

The future comes to him when it will, without logic or reason, in whichever form it deigns to take. The cloying scent of burning flesh carried on a warm breeze, a bite of food turning to ash in his mouth, a whisper-sear of pain that is not his own when Aikanáro touches his shoulder in passing or Angaráto’s fingertips brush his own. Findekáno embraces him and Findaráto feels the phantom bite of a whip of pure hellfire, constricting around him like the serpent immobilizes its prey before striking with jaws unhinged. Maitimo buries himself between Findaráto’s legs and drags Findaráto’s hand to the back of his head, encouraging his fingers to tangle in flaming locks of copper, and Findaráto must resist the urge to jerk his hand away when the touch burns like hot coals. Sleep offers him some reprieve, except on the nights Findaráto wakes from dreams so vivid his face still stings with the biting wind to find an unfathomably vast expanse of dark sky unfurling across his bedchamber ceiling, its edges stained red as blood.

Findaráto Sees, in his dreams and in his waking, flashes of sight and sensation all incomprehensible on their own and yet impossible to fit together into a single coherent narrative. He knows not whether what he Sees is the truth of what is to come, or merely a distorted reflection of the future, or else some trick of Melkor, whose evil now darkens every doorway. If indeed it is the truth, is what he Sees forewarning? Or is it foregone conclusion? Is it a chance to pursue a different path, or inalterable fate?

These are the thoughts that plague Findaráto as he watches the bonfire dance on a quiet evening of autumn, some weeks later. Its blaze reaches high into the heavens, stark orange against a silver sky, and just as the flames dance, so too do Maitimo and Findekáno dance around them.

It is only the two of them. Findaráto watches from the grass, nursing an untouched cup of wine. Maitimo and Findekáno move without care, their reckless footfalls carrying them ever closer to the fire before pulling back, only to draw close again, their robes whirling around them. Findekáno throws back his head and laughs, his unbound curls cascading down his back.

Maitimo smiles and spins Findekáno around. The fire’s glow flickers across his handsome face and catches on his eyelashes, his cheekbones, the strong slope of his nose. It casts his features into strange and uneasy shadow. For just a moment, Findaráto Sees that face— well-known and well-loved, dearer to him than almost any other— hardened in the light of a different fire, tear-streaked and furious, with Findekáno's name and a plea upon his lips.

Maitimo dances too close to the flame and hisses when it burns his wrist. Findekáno takes his hand and kisses the hurt better with an exaggerated smack. Then he turns, and his eyes light on Findaráto.

Even as Findekáno’s face splits into a grin, Findaráto is seized by a doom inescapable. The feeling echoes down through the ever-shifting links of space and time to constrict around Findaráto like a noose. In the depths of Findekáno’s eyes he Sees reflected a world of unlight, a sky stained red above a distant, unknown shore. He Sees the shadows of pain not yet come, he Sees fire and its absence, he Sees light and its lack.

“You are always so maudlin, Ingo,” Findekáno laments, coming towards him. “Will you not join us?”

There is a darkness rising before Findekáno, a terror of shadow and flame looming larger than anything Findaráto has seen. The familiar sear of immobilizing pain cuts through him. He must fight its hold before he can move to allow Findekáno to take his cup from him and set it down on the grass.

“Come.” Findekáno extends his hand. “Whatever troubles you, forget it for a time.”

After a moment’s hesitation, Findaráto says, "As you wish." He lets Findekáno take his hand.

Findekáno pulls him to his feet with more force than Findaráto was expecting. He stumbles, but he does not fall, for Maitimo’s waiting arms are there to catch him. Maitimo takes him about the waist and spins him around with a grin. Findekáno laughs with delight. When Findaráto comes back into his reach, Findekáno’s hand extends to take him again. Then a moment later it is Maitimo’s hand reaching for him, then Findekáno’s, and they dance Findaráto back and forth between the two of them so many times that eventually Findaráto cannot help but smile. Hands reach out and find one another, over and over again. Out of the darkness there is a hand reaching for all three of them, and they will not escape its grasp.

The world rushes past Findaráto in a blur of silver and orange. The hands that grasp him are warm and sure and do not falter. Maitimo dips him low, so low Findaráto’s spine arches and his hair brushes the ground, and a bright laugh bubbles up and out of Findaráto. He lets himself be pulled close by these people he loves who love him in turn, and he dances and smiles, and he trusts Maitimo and Findekáno not to let him fall. He circles too close to the fire and feels the unforgiving flames caress his skin, and they do not burn him. And it is then that Findaráto understands, although it will still be many years before he can put it into words:

Those he loves are for the fire. Findaráto is for the dark.

Chapter End Notes

Thank you for reading! I'm on tumblr @gaydhros <3

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