And death would be his reward by Myrcella1  

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But it was not for him

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The echoes of Mereth Aderthad carried far into the cold, night air. The sounds of harps and flutes, woven with the joyous, clear voices of singers, vibrated over Ivrin like the promise of a new era. The feast was in full swing. Somewhere out there, by the great fires, toasts and laughter rang out, melting old grudges in their bright glow and forging new friendships.

But not for Maedhros. To him, this joyous clamor sounded like a dirge that no one else could hear.

Maedhros pulled Findekáno by the arm, drawing him abruptly into his tent. The air inside was stifling, heavy with the scent of burning coals and the rich aroma of Doriath wine, of which he had drunk far too much this evening. But it was exactly this wine that now gave him a strange, feverish numbness, replacing fear with the courage to do something he had planned for a very long time.

Everything was finally falling into place as it should. The crown fit well on Nolofinwë's head. Much better than the one he himself was meant to wear on his brow for all time. By renouncing his claim, he had simply done what he was told long ago - he ceased to be a king the moment he was cast to his knees before Morgoth, Lord of the Destinies of Arda, Giver of Freedom. This great feast, this feigned unification, was the perfect clasp to close all his struggles.

He let go of Findekáno's hand and turned to him, leaning his sound shoulder against the wooden pole supporting the canvas. He was breathing a little faster.

The need that had been building inside him for many years choked him now with unimaginable force. He wanted, just for one single night, to feel like himself again. He longed to prove to himself that he could still feel something beautiful, that he was someone more than just a ruined, broken body that everyone around him was afraid to look at.

He had had enough. So incredibly tired of the polite glances filled with pity and compassion from his uncle, his cousins, and even his own brothers. They all tried so desperately to look only at his face, nervously averting their eyes from his mutilated arm, from his stiff, unnatural movements, from the pale scars jutting out from beneath his collar. They were afraid to touch him, as if they believed he would crumble to dust at the slightest gust of wind.

And what tore at his heart the most - even Findekáno did it. His sweet Findekáno. Maedhros looked at the prince's disoriented, still-smiling face illuminated by the flickering glow of the coals. He knew full well that after everything that had happened, he had no right to call him "his," but tonight he desperately needed to erase that darkness from his memory.

What he desired more than anything was to finally feel those hands on his skin truly. He wanted to be touched with real, burning desire, and not like shattered, re-glued porcelain. He wanted to be kissed with passion, with force, with greed, and not with that terrifying caution. He no longer wanted those light kisses, delicate as butterfly wings, that Findekáno placed on his brow with a reverence fit for a martyr. He did not want that careful, overly tender touch.

He wanted to finally be Nelyafinwë again. He longed to be Russandol, the copper-haired beloved that Finno had desired in Tirion. Not Maitimo. Never again Maitimo.

Before Findekáno could open his mouth to ask even one of his questions, Maedhros pulled him violently against himself. With his surviving hand, he embraced him tightly and silenced him with a kiss - hungry, possessive, and desperate. He drank him in entirely. Findekáno let out a quiet, stifled sound of surprise, but almost immediately parted his lips eagerly, letting Maedhros's tongue in, surrendering to this sudden wave of heat.

Everything should have been perfect. And yet, for some unknown reason, instead of the desired wave of pleasure, Maedhros's stomach suddenly twisted into a hard, icy knot. He felt this coldness radiating up his chest. With all his might, he ignored the feeling. He forced himself to. He broke away from his cousin's lips for a brief moment, only to take a deep breath, and returned again, this time placing a series of hungry, feverish kisses on his neck.

It's Finno, he repeated to himself painfully in his mind, tangling his fingers in the dark braids threaded with gold to stop the sudden, treacherous trembling of his own muscles. My Káno, I am safe. I want this.

Just as he was about to move further, his lips already brushing the laces of Finno's silk tunic, the latter suddenly flinched and gently pulled away from him. His eyes were darkened with desire, slightly clouded, but he was breathing heavily, putting distance between them. "Russo..." he began quietly.

His fingers rose and began to untangle Maedhros's surviving hand from his braids. He did it slowly, with such devastating, hesitant caution, as if Maedhros were some skittish animal that would bolt at the slightest careless movement.

"Are you sure? We don't have to, if you don't want to. If you just want to spend time away from the eyes of others..."

That pitying tone burned Maedhros like living fire. That was exactly the look, that same sparing pity he had wanted to escape by coming to this stifling tent. He ignored the rising nausea. He ignored the cold sweat that suddenly bloomed on the back of his neck beneath his heavy, festive robe.

"I want this," he said firmly. His voice sounded hoarse, but he used the dregs of his iron will and forced it not to tremble. "I want you, Melmenya."

"I just want you to feel at ease," Finno whispered, gazing deep into his eyes.

His hands finally fell upon Maedhros's stiffened waist. But instead of gripping him firmly, instead of pulling him close with strength, Finno touched him so lightly, barely brushing the fabric of the robe with his fingertips.

"Tell me if at any moment you feel uneasy. If anything hurts, we will stop immediately."

Maedhros gritted his teeth in helpless frustration. His circlet - not copper, never again copper - dug into his temples. The cold metal painfully reminded him of its existence, but it had to be there; it kept his thick, curly bangs in check so they wouldn't, for anything in the world, reveal his disfigured brow.

He pushed it away from himself. He pushed away the fear. He had to lead. If he let Findekáno take the reins, if he once again just had to wait motionless for someone else's touch... not only would he be waiting until the remaking of Arda, but he would also feel so... small. Like that time when...

Don't think. Don't think. Don't think.

"Don't talk so much," he growled softly.

He did not wait for another fearful reply or reassurance. He threw himself forward again and captured Findekáno's lips with his own. He kissed him hard, almost brutally pouring all his desperate need to be his old self into the gesture. He sought absolute oblivion in it, trying at all costs to drown out something that was rapidly swelling inside him and irritatingly resembling panic. He wanted to feel that he could still desire and take and not just endure.

Findekáno returned the kiss with equal, fiery greed. His breath immediately quickened, tearing quietly in the stifling air, and his arms wrapped around Maedhros's back. Yet even now, in this feverish moment, his body instinctively avoided the right side. Finno's hands roamed over the fabric but carefully bypassed the straps of the brace and the emptiness left by the severed hand. This small, pitying evasion, though dictated by tenderness, only fueled Maedhros's desperation.

He broke away from him with a loud, ragged breath. He himself began to tear at the metal clasps of Findekáno's cloak, completely ignoring the painful stiffness of his own muscles. With a little help from Finno, the heavy fabric finally fell to the rug.

Maedhros slipped his hand beneath the fabric of his tunic, touching bare skin. He stroked the hot back, slid his hand down to his waist, and gripped his hips tightly. Findekáno closed his eyes and curled under the touch, arching and writhing in his arms like a cat. He tilted his head, quickly and briefly kissed Maedhros on the lips, and then, with almost boyish mischief, placed a soft kiss on the tip of his nose.

Maedhros moved his hand and began nervously untying the ribbons at the neck of Finno's tunic. Finno immediately tried to help him, but Maedhros growled softly and pushed his hands away. Stubbornly, methodically, he loosened string after string, wanting to prove to himself that he could still undress his lover. When he could finally pull the fabric up comfortably to take the tunic off over his head, he yanked the material and accidentally snagged him hard with the tip of his stump.

A sudden, icy, and radiating pain pierced through him, exploding in what used to be his right arm. Maedhros went rigid and clenched his teeth with all his might. He burned with pain, black spots flashed before his eyes, but he dug his nails into his own palms, trying at all costs not to let out the slightest sound and betray his weakness.

He breathed shakily as the wave of pain subsided a little, and touched Finno again. He swept his gaze around the tent, frantically wondering if he could lift his beloved onto the nearby carved vanity using only one hand. Findekáno, as if reading his mind, made the task easier he stepped back and, with a fluid motion, sat on it himself, immediately pulling Maedhros back between his knees.

Maedhros looked deep into Findekáno's dark eyes. He searched them for even a shadow of objection or fear, but finding nothing but burning desire, he gently began to take off his undertunic, which Finno eagerly and nimbly helped with. Then Maedhros stepped back. Fighting the hard framework of the corset that prevented him from bending in half, he squatted stiffly and clumsily at his feet. He unlaced his boots one by one and tossed them into the corner of the tent.

Findekáno swung his bare legs happily. He reached out, throwing his arms tightly around Maedhros's neck, and a moment later wrapped his legs around his hips. The Noldo took a deep breath, tensed the muscles on the left side of his body, then lifted him from the vanity and carried him straight to the large, made bed. Because he didn't have a second hand to set him down softly, he simply dropped him. Finno giggled like pearls falling, landing in the bedding.

Maedhros froze, standing over the bed. For a long moment, he traced his half-naked beloved from top to bottom. He admired his gracefully arched neck. Finno was so beautiful and alive, softly illuminated by the warm, golden glow of the coals. His dark hair, thickly interwoven with gold, lay scattered in artistic disarray on the pillow, and his lips, half-parted in a smile, practically begged to be kissed. Nelyo felt a sudden lump in his throat at the sight of this absolute beauty that he was once again permitted to look upon.

"Russo, are you going to stare at me like that all night? Come here, I need you."

At these words, Maedhros was violently torn from his lethargy. He climbed onto the bed and lay down on it. He dropped onto his right side, ignoring the uncomfortable pressure of the brace, and moved very close to Findekáno. He leaned in and placed a long trail of hot kisses on his bare shoulder. His surviving hand squeezed the waist possessively, ran slowly over the tense torso, until it finally wandered down to his hips. Then his fingers slid down to the last layers of clothing that still separated them and found the strings of the dark blue hose, to slowly untie them.

But Findekáno could wait no longer. In a surge of sudden impatience, he pulled the fabric of his own garments, stripping them off himself, and then pulled Maedhros firmly by the waist, forcing him to straddle him.

The yank was so unexpected that Maedhros lost control of his own body for a moment. He tried to catch his balance and instinctively wanted to lean with both arms - including the useless stump - on the shoulders of Finno lying beneath him. Pulled down by his own weight, he swayed dangerously, but Findekáno was ready; he immediately caught him securely with both hands, holding him in place

Trapped in his stiff corset, Maedhros could not comfortably lean down to his beloved's face in this position. Seeing this, Finno rose from the pillows without hesitation and sat up, closing the distance and once again giving Maedhros full access to himself. They fell into each other's arms, joining their lips in another wild kiss, and parted only when they ran out of breath.

When they separated, greedily gasping for air, Finno shifted restlessly under his weight, suddenly averting his gaze to the side. His breathing was still uneven, but a shadow of hesitation appeared in his lowered eyes. A warm hand rose from Maedhros's back and rested very gently on his left wrist, softly but firmly stopping the caress.

"Russo..." Finno whispered, smiling with a hint of uncertainty and slight, entirely innocent embarrassment. "Would you like to undress? I feel a little... strange about this, when you haven't even shed your cloak from your shoulders."

Strange.

That single word hung in the stifling, wine-scented air of the tent, ringing in the Noldo's head like the strike of a bell. Maedhros blinked, as if suddenly, brutally torn from a deep lethargy.

Of course. Finno was completely right. It was illogical, absurd even. They were lovers, they were lying on a bed, they were going to sleep together - it was an entirely natural, next step to shed their own clothes.

The fact that he hadn't even thought about unfastening the heavy straps at his neck and getting rid of the layers of fabric until now was purely due to distraction. Yes. He had just been so focused on the desire to give Finno pleasure, so consumed by the need to prove that he could still give and take, that he had forgotten about himself. Of course, that was exactly how it was.

With absolute, iron determination, he told himself in his mind that absolutely, beyond any shadow of a doubt, his deep reluctance to undress had not the slightest connection to all those dark nights. It had nothing to do with the memory of a body shivering with cold and terror, exposed, naked, and left to the cruel mercy of the Master. It had no connection to the disgusting, burning fact in his mind that He, watching him tremble, almost always remained partially, and often fully, clothed at the time.

No. No, it had nothing to do with that. This was Finno. It was safe here.

"You are right. Forgive me," Maedhros finally replied.

Findekáno frowned.

"Forgive you for what?"

Maedhros stared at him for a moment, as though the answer were obvious.

"For making you ask."

His voice sounded dry, like ash swept from a hearth, but he forced himself to twist his lips into what he hoped was a confident, seductive smile.

His hand moved to the lacing at his neck. The moment his fingertips touched the fabric, his fingers suddenly became icy and stiff, completely refusing to obey him. His stomach clenched into a tight, sick, painful knot, and in his ears he heard the quiet, rising rush of his own blood. His ruined body began to scream, sending thousands of panicked, primal signals, begging him not to do this. Not to throw away his only cover. Every nerve beneath his skin tensed painfully, ready for immediate, animalistic flight, and his lungs suddenly forgot how to draw in air.

He ignored it. By sheer force of will, he forced his trembling fingers to grab the strap and yank it down.

He ignored the fact that he suddenly felt terrifyingly cold. He ignored the rising nausea as the thick, decorated fabric began to slowly slide off his shoulders, exposing him to Finno's gaze inch by inch. He ignored that paralyzing sense of overwhelming, pathetic weakness, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw cracked from the pain.

This was what he wanted, after all. That was his plan for this evening. Everything had to go exactly as he had envisioned it, step by step, so that he could finally regain control over his own life and his ruined body.

Findekáno, seeing with what difficulty and unnatural stiffness his surviving hand was moving, immediately rose slightly to help him. For one striking moment, Maedhros saw in his dark eyes that stupid, unbearable pity he had been fleeing from so desperately, but he chose to ignore it.

He reached softly for Maedhros's shoulders, deftly unfastening the heavy, ornate clasps. He carefully removed the thick outer robe from him, only to toss it carelessly onto the floor a moment later. Then his hands moved down to the chest. With extraordinary care, he began unfastening the rows of small, discreet hooks of the tunic. When he parted the fabric to the sides, the silk cloth easily slipped off the left, sound shoulder.

With the right, however, the matter required a different kind of caution. Findekáno stopped, and his fingers gently eased the right sleeve off, very carefully and slowly unfastening it along the hidden seam, just so as not to snag on anything and hurt the oversensitive stump, which Maedhros had done so clumsily a moment earlier.

When the tunic finally fell, Maedhros was left only in his thin undertunic and the corset fastened over it. Findekáno's hands rested on his chest, and his fingertips traced over the smooth, silk lacings. Finno froze for a moment, feeling beneath his hand, instead of a warm, beating pulse and soft flesh, the soulless, hard stiffness of leather.

Maedhros knew perfectly well that he looked dreadful. He knew what his body had become underneath. So many years of hanging on a bare rock lashed by icy winds, when the entire weight of his tall body was supported solely by a single iron shackle digging into his wrist, had ruined it irreversibly. His right collarbone was bent at an unnatural, sharp, almost breaking angle. The shoulder joint itself, repeatedly and brutally torn from its socket and healing anew in unspeakable agony, now formed a ghastly, hardened lump of twisted tendons and ugly scars. For Maedhros to even be able to stand upright and not howl in pain with every step under the dead weight of his own limply hanging arm, he had to wear a special framework. The leather corset and the brace attached to it tightly wrapped around his chest, supporting the destroyed shoulder and keeping the damaged arm in an artificial position forced by straps.

Findekáno looked up. And not for a fraction of a second did he lower it again.

His dark eyes, with iron, almost unnatural determination, fixed straight onto Maedhros's face, seeking only his silvery eyes. Finno smiled softly, and his gaze was overflowing with fervent love, but Maedhros saw the focus. He saw with terrifying clarity how hard he was forcing himself not to look down. Not to cast a glance at the slashed breast, at the shameful word carved crookedly above his heart, at the corset, or at that short section of forearm that ended smoothly just past the right wrist.

Findekáno, with all his might, with absolute, almost desperate kindness, was trying to pretend he didn't see all these atrocities. He focused on the face, just so as not to cause Maedhros distress. So that he could feel comfortable, even for a moment.

Maedhros felt it. He felt that pitying blindness on his own tense skin, and for one striking, monstrous moment, he felt sick with a grief that squeezed his throat like a vise.

But he immediately pushed it away. He smothered the thought and that painful awareness with brutal force. There is no pity in this, he repeated to himself in his head. Finno is just looking into my eyes because he desires my soul. Only that. Nothing had changed between them. In his imagination, in that clear, pure gaze, Finno still saw in him the most beautiful of the brothers, still desired him, still revered the old Nelyafinwë.

If Finno was pretending with such dedication, he was going to pretend too.

Determined to continue what he had started, and to maintain the illusion of normalcy at all costs, he leaned abruptly over Findekáno lying beneath him. He simply wanted to grab him by the shoulders, pin him to the mattress, and unceremoniously, with his old possessiveness, pull him close.

His left hand gripped the bare, hot shoulder securely, but his right arm... His right arm shot forward in a fraction of a second. It was a deeply rooted, uncontrolled instinct of an old body. A reflex of muscles that had not yet comprehended they were missing something, and which commanded him to automatically seek a second point of support.

Instead of feeling smooth, warm skin under his fingers, however, the heavy wooden splint and metal shoulder cup of the brace struck absolute emptiness. The sudden lack of support on his right side threw him off balance. Under normal circumstances, he would have simply arched his spine to catch his balance, but the stiffness of the corset did not allow him to do so. He could not bend naturally or correct his position. The boning hidden in the leather pulled him limply to the side, and his shoulder yanked with a dull, tearing pain as everything slipped out of control.

Instead of a fluid, dominating movement, the stiff boning of the corset locked his spine in place. His center of gravity shifted violently into the empty space where his arm used to be. He crashed against Findekáno’s chest, the hard leather of his brace striking bare skin with a dull thud. Findekáno jerked backward, his breath catching in his throat. His hands darted upward out of pure instinct, his fingers digging into the rigid leather at Maedhros's waist and bracing against his spine to stop him from sliding entirely off the mattress. 

For one startled moment, Findekáno simply held him there, trying to understand what had happened. He could feel how little Maedhros's body could adjust around the stiff framework, how awkwardly his weight was distributed. Then concern overtook the surprise.

"Russo..." His voice was soft and breathless. "Are you all right? Did you hit yourself?"

Maedhros felt the blood rush to his head, flooding him with a wave of burning, devastating shame that choked him like a gag. This was pathetic. Humiliating. He was supposed to be so confident in all this, he was supposed to lead, he was supposed to be the master of the situation, and he had tripped over his own disability at the first attempt to embrace his beloved.

He summoned the dregs of his iron will to keep his face an indifferent, stone mask.

"I am fine," he cut in quickly and harshly. He forced his ragged breath to calm while Findekáno, with almost irritating caution, helped him regain his balance and straighten himself back onto his hips. "I just... lost my footing."

He ignored it. He ignored the missing hand, he ignored this pathetic error of his own reflexes, and at all costs, he ignored his cousin's concerned gaze, in which once again, like a specter, loomed that terrible, pitying fear for his fragility.

He rested the weight of his body solely on his left arm, trapping Finno in the snare of his embrace, and leaned over him to kiss him once more. He had to do it. He wanted to drown out every slightest doubt in himself. He wanted to overwhelm his own senses so strongly that there would not be an ounce of room left for rational thought beneath his skull.

He focused entirely on the soft lips of his beloved. The kisses grew deeper with every second, increasingly desperate and greedy. They were meant to deafen him, to cut him off from his own mind. Finno let out a quiet sigh against his lips, shivering with the heat of the kiss, and kissed him back with equal hunger.

Yet his hands did not follow the rest of him.

They hovered uncertainly above Maedhros's body, fingers flexing once and then going still. He wanted to pull him closer, but hesitated, suddenly unsure where he could touch him without causing pain.

They broke apart for a moment, both breathing hard. Findekáno's eyes were dark with desire, but there was something else in them too now: uncertainty.

"Russo..." he whispered. His breath trembled against Maedhros's cheek. "May I?"

Maedhros stared at him.

Fingon swallowed.

"I want to touch you. I just... I don't know where it is safe."

Safe

Every muscle along Maedhros's spine locked tight, pulling the scarred tissue across his ribs until it burned. The air in his lungs vanished. A deafening roar flooded his ears, drowning out the crackle of the tent's brazier, screaming at him to throw himself backward, to drag his good arm over his chest, to hide the raw, exposed skin of his throat. His flesh crawled and heated at the simple threat of fingertips brushing against him. In the dark of his own head, a hand reaching out no longer meant comfort or warmth. A hand reaching out only meant a grip closing around his throat, holding him pinned against silk sheets until he stopped thrashing and gave in. 

But this is Finno. Don't be pathetic, he scolded himself ruthlessly, crushing down his fear. It's just Findekáno. Do it.

Instead of moving away even an inch, Maedhros reached out with his surviving hand. He caught Fingon's trembling fingers and firmly pulled them against his chest, just beside the hated straps of the corset.

As the warmth of Findekáno's hand penetrated the cool epidermis, Maedhros had to clench his teeth so hard not to let out a muffled groan. It wasn't pain; it was something far worse pure, almost paralyzing discomfort, a terrifying feeling that his own body was about to explode with panic, tearing him apart from the inside.

But he did not flinch. He breathed heavily through his nose, staring into his beloved's face with forced, iron determination.

He simply had to endure it. Weather the first, striking wave of terror. After all, this would change with time, right? The body would eventually remember what it's like to be loved. It would get used to the light. He just needed to ignore these screaming, primitive instincts.

This was merely Findekáno's hand. The hand of someone he once trusted more than himself.

"Touch me," Maedhros said quietly. He practically forced his tightened vocal cords to work, then leaned down abruptly to silence him with another kiss. He did it as much out of desire as to hide from him the fact that his own breathing was becoming dangerously ragged, cold nausea tightening in his stomach.

Endure it, he repeated to himself like a mantra, escaping into the taste of his mouth, willfully ignoring the growing need to flee as Fingon's fingertips timidly began to trace the bare skin of his lower abdomen. Just endure it.

The touch was hesitant, almost tentative.

Yet the kiss had already left Findekáno breathless. His fingers curled slightly against

Maedhros's skin, as though he still could not quite decide whether to pull him closer or give him more room.

Then a broken sound slipped from his parted lips.

Maedhros froze.

It was quiet, involuntary, and unmistakably full of desire.

For one brief, precious instant, the icy noose tightening around Maedhros's throat loosened. The pounding in his ears receded. All he could hear was Finno's uneven breathing, all he could feel was the warmth beneath his hands.

I can do this.

Something fierce and desperate flared inside him.

He leaned down again, kissing the corner of Finno's jaw, then his throat. His surviving hand slid from the bare shoulder to his chest, pressing him gently but firmly back into the mattress.

He had found what he had been searching for all evening: proof that he could still move another person. That he could still make someone want him. That he could still be the one who decided what happened next.

Findekáno shivered beneath him. His eyes fell closed, and another breathless sound escaped him.

"Russo..."

His hand tightened uncertainly at Maedhros's waist.

"More... please."

His hands, until now woven in Maedhros's hair, slid down feverishly, seeking purchase on his waist, and then on his hips. Findekáno's fingers clenched desperately on the fine linen.

"May I...? May I take them off?" he asked hollowly, breathing heavily, looking at the Noldo with a mixture of pleading and pure desire.

A cold shiver ran down Maedhros's spine, bringing on sudden nausea. But immediately, with cruel, iron force, he brought himself to order.

Of course you must be naked, he told himself in his mind with brutal, cold logic. They were going to sleep together. Lovers who go to bed together take off their clothes. It was a natural, obvious step. He had to do it. There was nothing in this that he couldn't handle.

Despite this, when Finno's hands pulled at his waistband, instinct proved faster than will. Maedhros violently, almost brutally pushed his hands away.

"I'll do it myself," he tossed out curtly. His voice was sharp, tense as a bowstring.

He pulled back for a moment, interrupting this feverish touch. He sat back on his heels and reached with his left, only hand for the strings at his waist to untie the sides of the thin undergarments.

And that was another mistake.

His fingers, stiffened from nerves and hidden panic, slipped on the smooth string. Without the help of a right hand, without fingers that could hold the other end of the knot and pull in the right direction, this ridiculously simple action turned into a pathetic, humiliating struggle. Maedhros wrestled with the fabric, yanking at it time and time again, and every failed, clumsy movement struck at his fragile pride. He felt a choking, hot lump of shame growing in his throat. He wanted to cry from helplessness. He was so monstrously, unimaginably helpless in his own body. He was a broken cripple who couldn't even undress himself in front of his own lover.

Findekáno seemed not to notice the struggle at all. In his love-blinded eyes, Maedhros was still the most magnificent being in Arda. When the knot finally came loose, Finno drew him closer, his hands settling instinctively at Maedhros's bare waist and then sliding around his hips.

He stroked him there with quiet, almost reverent affection, his touch growing surer as Maedhros did not pull away. For one fragile moment, the tension inside him eased. It was working. He was managing. He was taking control of his own body again.

Then Fingon's hand moved lower, following the natural line of Maedhros's hip toward his thigh.

And stopped.

His fingers had encountered something that did not feel like living skin.

The surface beneath them was unnaturally stiff and uneven, covered in a dense, methodical network of scars. Fingon's hand went completely still.

Slowly, almost involuntarily, he looked down.

Maedhros saw it.

Maedhros watched the exact moment the soft, unquestioning devotion drained from Findekáno’s face. The prince’s fingers went perfectly still against the mutilated skin. His gaze dropped, tracking the uneven ridges, and the muscles in his jaw tightened so hard the bone shone white beneath his skin. Maedhros did not need to see his eyes to know what was spilling into them. The count was carved into the thick silence between them. Scars. Exactly one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight scars. The Master made him remember.

That look broke everything. It hit with the force of a collapsing rock, destroying in a fraction of a second every smallest illusion of control, normalcy, and former beauty that Maedhros had built around himself with such desperate difficulty.

"DO NOT TOUCH ME!" roared Maedhros.

Instead of a simple push, his body acted mindlessly, fueled by pure panic. With his left hand, he braced himself violently against Káno's chest, and simultaneously threw his weight backward with all his might. This sudden, desperate force sent Findekáno, completely surprised and unprepared for such an outburst, flying backward, his back hitting the pillows and scattered bedding.

Maedhros himself lost his balance in a fraction of a second. The stiff boning of the leather corset and his right shoulder locked in the brace prevented him from a soft landing or correcting his position. With a hollow thud, he hit the hard side of the bed, then immediately, determined to escape as far as possible, sprang to his feet.

He stood in the semi-darkness of the tent. Panting heavily and raggedly, he wrapped his only functional, left arm around his waist, as if trying to hold himself together.

In a fraction of a second, the safe tent, the smell of wine, and the warmth of bodies simply vanished. The air thickened again, hitting him with a disgusting, choking mixture of heavy musk, burning spiced oils, and the sickening stench of fear. That phantom, painful touch flared back to life on his skin. Once again, he felt another's dark breath on his neck, the one he had tried so fruitlessly to escape all these years.

Findekáno propped himself up abruptly on his elbow. He was as pale as canvas, his hand reached out in front of him in a gesture of helpless pleading. He completely did not understand what had just happened. He wanted to soothe it, he wanted to reach him, apologize, even though he didn't even know what exactly he had done wrong.

"Russo... by the Valar, forgive me, I didn't know..." he began feverishly, his voice breaking, full of despair. He made an uncertain movement toward him, looking at him with a mixture of horror, pity, and fear. "Maitimo, please, calm down..."

Maitimo.

Maedhros's mind snapped with a deafening crack. That name, spoken in such a way, in the moment when hands exploring his scars had touched him a second ago... It was the Master's name. The name He whispered straight into his ear over his body every single time He added another perfectly measured cut to his skin with pedantic precision.

Before any rational thought could form, Maedhros threw himself forward. His left hand shot out with dizzying speed and struck the figure before him in the face with all its might.

The crack broke in the stifling air of the tent like a whip strike. The figure's head snapped violently to the side. He hit the wooden support of the bed with a hollow thud, and blood spurted from his split lip and brow bone.

"THAT IS NOT MY NAME!" screamed Maedhros. His voice was torn, wild, saturated with absolute, uncontrolled madness. "DO NOT DARE CALL ME THAT! DO NOT DARE!"

Panting heavily, with bared teeth and a gaze full of pure, unbridled fury, he raised his trembling hand again.

He would hit him.

Of course he would.

The hand was already moving before the rest of his body had caught up with it. Another blow. Harder this time. Then another. Until the lesson was understood. Until the insolent mouth stopped shaping that name. Until the Master's smile disappeared.

The Master.

The thought came with the taste of wine and something bitter at the back of his throat.

His raised hand trembled.

Why was the chamber so loud?

Why was the fire burning so strangely?

Why was the silk beneath him no longer black?

He blinked.

The figure before him was still crouched on the bed, one hand pressed against his face.

Blood.

Not carmine silk.

Blood.

A bright red line slipped between trembling fingers and ran down a cheek already beginning to darken beneath the blow.

The mouth was bleeding too.

For one terrible instant Maedhros could not understand it.

The Master did not bleed.

He had never bled.

The Master smiled when Maitimo struck him. The Master laughed. The Master always laughed.

So why was the man before him shaking?

Why was he staring at Maedhros as though he were afraid?

Why were his eyes wet?

Maedhros's breath caught.

Slowly, horribly, the room began to change.

The pillows were not black.

The walls were canvas.

There was no carved bedchamber around him, no polished gold, no familiar scent of oils and wine. Only the dim tent, the dying brazier, the tangled bedding.

And then he saw the braids.

Dark hair threaded with gold.

He knew those braids.

His gaze dropped to the hand still covering the bleeding cheek.

There was a small silver ring on one finger. One Maedhros had seen a hundred times in Tirion.

His heart seemed to stop.

Finno.

No.

Not Maitimo's master.

Not the chamber.

Not the bed.

Finno.

He had hit his Findekáno.

No longer his Findekáno. He was breathing raggedly, trembling all over, with his hand cautiously raised to his bleeding face. He looked at him, and in his eyes, there was no longer an ounce of the pity Maedhros had been running from. There was no compassion either. There was only shock. And fear. True, paralyzing fear of Maedhros.

The hand raised for a blow dropped limply.

Bile surged into the back of his throat, so thick and acidic he choked on it. He tried to double over, to curl into a pathetic ball around his own roiling stomach, but the unyielding leather boning of his corset forced him to remain rigidly, mockingly upright. 

I hit him. 

The thought didn't batter inside his skull; it nailed him to the floor. He stared at his surviving left hand, watching the fingers twitch. It was the only functional part of him, and he had used it to tear open the skin of the only elf who had ever dragged himself through the Hell of Iron to pull him from the iron. He had lashed out with the exact, mindless cruelty of the Orcs turning their whips on a kneeling prisoner. The entire evening-the wine, the silk, the desperate pretense that he could still command his own body, that he could ever be Nelyafinwë again shattered into sharp, humiliating splinters. The Master had never lied. You don't put a crippled, vicious animal on a throne or in a lover’s bed. You put it in a cage and curbed with iron and he had just proven exactly why he belonged in one. 

Angband wasn't left behind at all. He had brought it here with him. He had it deep in his soul, in every ragged breath. The Master hadn't mutilated him at all - the Master had simply brought to light his own innate cruelty. He proved with terrifying clarity that his former favorite was a beast that attacked a hand extended in love without hesitation.

"Finno..." he choked out from his tightened throat. It wasn't a voice; it was barely a thin, pathetic rattle of choking panic.

Findekáno flinched. He blinked heavily, slowly, as if it had only just reached him what had actually happened. A solitary tear slid from his eye, mixing on his cheek with the hot blood. He didn't pull away, but that one reflex - that barely noticeable tensing of his naked body to subconsciously protect himself from another blow - shattered into tiny pieces what was still left of Maedhros's soul.

Terror completely flooded his senses. He couldn't look at him. He couldn't bear the sight of the blood he had spilled once again. He felt unimaginably filthy, rotten to the core, and his own hand suddenly seemed to him an alien, murderous tool.

He began to back away. He tripped over his own feet in a desperate, mindless flight. He backed away further and further, until his back hit the canvas of the tent. He took one more abrupt step back, tangled himself in the heavy rugs spread on the floor, and lost the last of his balance. He found himself in the furthest, darkest corner. Naked, exposed, and shaking so hard his teeth chattered.

His broken body and framework prevented him from any fluid, soft landing. He crashed heavily to the ground right by the pavilion wall, hitting his back against the soft felt and piled cushions. Because of the spine-stiffening corset, he couldn't curl up to instinctively protect his stomach. Instead, he slid a little lower, leaning his back and lowering his head. The only defensive position he managed to take at all was tightly clutching his left arm around his own ribs, while his right arm lay limply on the ground, completely alien and useless.

He grabbed his head. He slipped his trembling fingers under his headband, desperately tearing at his ruined, copper hair, which was now streaked with numerous white strands. He closed his eyes with such monstrous force that bright, white spots exploded beneath his eyelids, and a hollow, hysterical sob tore from his throat. He was nothing.

The silence in the tent became so thick it was choking. All that could be heard in it was Maedhros's wheezing breaths, resembling the rattle of an animal caught in steel traps, and Findekáno's quiet, uneven gasping for air.

Finno remained in the position the blow had left him in. He was dazed. The strike was so brutal that his ears were still ringing. This wasn't a simple, angry slap he sometimes got in the heat of brotherly quarrels in Tirion. This was the blow of someone who truly, with all his might, wanted to wound and destroy. For that one, terrifying fraction of a second, before Russo began to back away, Findekáno had seen in his eyes the absolute, dark emptiness of someone completely alien.

Huddled in the corner, Maedhros shook uncontrollably. From behind the trembling fingers he used to cover his face, he watched every slightest movement of his cousin with madness in his eyes. His warped, terror-ruined mind howled in panic, waiting for only one thing. He waited for punishment. For raising a hand against a master by a slave, an immediate, painful punishment was due. That was the order of his world. Those were the clear, lucid rules he had learned in the dark.

But Findekáno did none of these things.

With his fingertips, he carefully touched his split brow bone. He hissed quietly when the pain finally broke through the numbness from the blow. He slowly lowered his hand and for a long moment simply stared at the red on his fingers. He looked at it as if his mind completely refused to accept that it was his own blood. Blood that his beloved had drawn a second ago.

Maedhros saw this lack of understanding and shock that literally pinned Findekáno to the bed. And right then, something happened that struck him with even greater, destructive force.

Finno, suddenly painfully aware of his nakedness and how dangerous it had become in the cramped tent, reached with his free hand for the discarded bedding. He pulled the fabric reflexively, instinctively covering his chest and stomach, not tearing his watchful gaze away from Maedhros for a moment.

That single, small reflex, that purely defensive gesture dictated by the desperate need to shield himself from Maedhros, shattered whatever was left of him.

Another soundless sob tore from Maedhros's throat. He abruptly raised his left arm and clamped his teeth around his own forearm, biting the skin hard enough to taste the metallic tang of blood. Pain was the only thing he deserved now. He had done it. He had actually struck Finno. And not with a careless, panicked shove, but with all the strength he possessed. The thought made his stomach turn violently. He had ruined everything. Finno was afraid of him. He could see it in the rigid line of his body, in the way he instinctively kept himself back, one hand still pressed protectively against his bleeding face, watching Maedhros with the terrified caution one might reserve for a wounded beast whose next movement could not be predicted.

"Maedhros..." Findekáno's voice was quiet and unsteady. There was no anger in it, only shock and an unmistakable edge of fear that made Maedhros hate himself even more. "Don't come closer, please. Just... stay there for a moment."

Maedhros froze. He could not answer. The edge of the leather brace dug painfully into his ribs as he tried to curl in on himself with every ragged breath. He wanted to scream at Finno to run, to leave this tent and never come back. He wanted him to call someone, to tell them what Maedhros had done, to do something - anything - that would make the unbearable sight of that frightened face disappear. Or perhaps he wanted Finno to strike him back, to punish him and make everything simple again. Punishment he understood. This frightened silence he did not.

"You hit me," Findekáno whispered after a long moment. His voice trembled as he touched the blood at the corner of his mouth, staring at the red on his fingertips as though he still could not quite believe it belonged to him. His gaze returned cautiously to Maedhros's face. "I don't know what happened. You were looking at me, and then..."

He faltered, swallowing hard. "I don't know what I did."

"Nothing," Maedhros choked out. His voice was barely audible. He pressed himself harder against the canvas, unable to bear the sight of Finno's face. "You did nothing."

Findekáno remained where he was. He did not approach him, did not reach out, and for a few moments seemed unable to decide what he was supposed to do at all. His eyes were still wet with tears, his cheek already darkening beneath the blow, and there was something lost and frightened in his expression that Maedhros had never seen directed at him before.

"Then why did you look at me like that?" he asked quietly.

Maedhros closed his eyes.

"I thought you were him."

Findekáno went completely still.

He did not ask who. Perhaps he was afraid of the answer.

"Russo..." His voice was barely more than a whisper now. "It's me."

Maedhros did not move.

"It's Finno," he repeated, more firmly this time, though his voice still trembled. "I'm here."

"I know," he choked out finally in a scraped, hoarse whisper, not taking his surviving hand from his face. Tears burned his skin. "I know... by the Valar, Findekáno... run. Please, just get out of here before I hurt you again..."

"Run..." Maedhros repeated, choking on his own sob, still pressing himself into the corner of the tent.

But with every subsequent heartbeat, this desperate plea mixed with something far darker. He was a coward, that much was clear, and of course he preferred Findekáno to leave him, but...

He hit him. He raised his hand against someone who had power over him. He had learned that rebellion had only one consequence. For every sign of resistance, for every wrong move or clenching of teeth, an immediate, painful retribution awaited. Disobedience demanded punishment. It was the only law that maintained order in the world.

So why hadn't Finno hit him?

Maedhros shivered so hard that the leather framework on his chest creaked with every breath. His mind howled with misunderstanding. Why was Findekáno still sitting there, only shielding himself with the bedding? Why didn't he throw himself at him, pin him to the ground, clamp his fingers around his throat, kick him, knocking him to the floor? Maedhros had hurt him, after all. He desecrated the purest, brightest being he knew. He spilled his blood.

The absence of a blow was worse than the pain itself. The absence of punishment heralded something much more monstrous. Punishment was simple and expected. It carried clear consequences, but when the Master was silent, only then did it mean that a torment no mind could comprehend would come.

"Hit me..." Maedhros suddenly blurted out. His voice cracked, but a feverish desperation rang in it.

He tore his left hand from his face and dropped it limply onto the rug. He forced himself to open his eyes. Through tears, he looked at the prince. He bared his face to him, instinctively lifting his chin slightly - exactly as he had been ordered to do before the Master, to make delivering a blow easier. For trying to avoid punishment, the consequences were always even worse.

Findekáno froze completely. His dark eyes, still glazed and full of pain, widened with new, unspeakable horror.

"Russo... by the Valar, what are you saying..."

"I did this!" Maedhros shouted, and his breath turned into a loud, wheezing hiss. With all his might, he dug the nails of his left hand into his own thigh, trying to control the overpowering trembling. "I cut your face! I deserve punishment, do you hear me?! It is your right to dole it out!"

Findekáno slowly shook his head, and another tear slid down his cheek, right next to the drying blood.

"No... I will not hurt you. Never."

To Maedhros, these quiet words were like a ruthless sentence. He cracked under their weight.

Guilt choked him like a noose tightening around his neck, eating him from the inside. If Finno didn't want to mete out justice, it could only mean one thing: he considered him someone so disgustingly pathetic, so irrevocably broken, that he didn't even want to dirty his hands on him.

"Punish me, Finno, I'm begging you..." Maedhros whispered. Tears streamed down his sharp cheekbones, dripping straight onto his bare chest. He wept out of absolute helplessness, out of self-hatred that burned in his lungs. "I beg you. Hit me. Hurt me the way I deserve. Curse me, take anything, just stop looking at me like that! Do it!"

He desired this pain with all the strength of his ruined soul. He knew with absolute certainty that he deserved all the pain in this world. The Master taught him that. Pain hurt, but it also cleansed of guilt. If Finno hit him, the account for the spilled blood would be instantly settled. Everything would return to its proper place.

Maedhros's plea hung in the heavy, wine-scented air of the tent, bouncing off the canvas walls with the echo of an ultimate, pathetic defeat. Findekáno stared at him, and suddenly something broke in his eyes.

Only in this one moment of truthful revelation did Finno fully grasp the horror of the situation. He understood that the visible wounds on the body, the twisted scars, and the mark of the severed hand were merely a fraction of the true destruction. The true, deepest, and most monstrous cruelty of Þauron lay in how methodically Angband had warped his Russo's very mind. They forced him, of his own destroyed will, to beg for pain, deeply believing that he deserved only that.

A quiet, choked sound tore from Findekáno's throat - neither a sob nor a moan of pure despair.

He slowly slid from the edge of the bed onto the woven rug. He completely ignored his own nakedness, ignored the cold and the blood that still stained his pale chest. Slowly, with extraordinary, almost unnatural caution - the kind with which one approaches a wild, mortally wounded animal - he moved closer to the corner where Maedhros was huddled.

At the sound of soft footsteps, Maedhros's body reacted immediately, with the learned precision of a good, obedient slave. He squeezed his eyelids even tighter and bowed his neck.

He breathed in shallow, broken flinches, bracing every muscle for a blow. His mind desperately awaited that sharp, burning pain that would descend upon him as a just, holy punishment for attacking someone so innocent and good as Findekáno.

He waited.

But the blow did not come.

Maedhros sensed the warmth of another body stop right in front of him. Findekáno didn't stand over him to tower, as the Master always did. He knelt on the rug, bringing himself to his level.

Maedhros shivered violently, hearing his cousin's uneven, ragged breathing mere inches from his face. Time slowed to the limit, stretching into an unbearable, monstrous agony of anticipation. Why didn't Finno end this? Why was he prolonging this cruel, psychological tension in which his mind was tearing to shreds?

And then he felt it.

Not the powerful strike of a clenched fist. Not a brutal yank of the hair. Findekáno's two warm, gentle hands rested softly on his trembling shoulders. The touch was so infinitely light, so fervently careful, as if Finno were frantically afraid that Maedhros would crumble into dead dust from the mere weight of his fingers. He felt a shiver down his back.

"Open your eyes, Russo," Findekáno whispered. His voice broke completely from tears, but his iron stubbornness rang in it. "Look at me. I beg you, look at me."

Maedhros forced himself to part his tightly squeezed eyelids. The Master also often liked to force him to look him straight in his burning eyes while meting out punishment. He had a faint, smoldering hope in his heart that at least Findekáno wouldn't make him give thanks for every blow dealt.

Finno knelt before him. His face was a step away. The blood from the brow bone had dried into dark, copper streaks on his skin, but his eyes... Findekáno's eyes overflowed with such powerful, such unwavering and pure tenderness that Maedhros felt a pain in his chest, as if someone were crushing his ribs, breaking them one by one.

"I will never hit you," Findekáno continued in a whisper. He moved his hand slowly, soothingly, from his left shoulder to his tense neck. His fingers buried into the red, curly hair, carefully avoiding the disfigured brow from which Maedhros had torn the headband. "Do you hear? Never. You owe me nothing. You no longer have to pay with pain for any mistake of yours. You are safe. You are mine, and I am yours, and no one will mete out any punishment to you here anymore."

These words hit Maedhros with destructive force. This unimaginable forgiveness was something his brutally shaped-by-the-Master mind could neither comprehend nor endure.

A desperate, drawn-out moan tore from Maedhros's throat, completely tearing down the remnants of his non-existent dignity. His hand shot forward, but not to deliver another blow it clutched frantically at Findekáno's bare shoulder, as if it were the only thing stopping him from drowning in a sea of black water. The stump trembled violently, resting limply against the tense chest.

Maedhros collapsed forward. He hid his tear-streaked face in the hot hollow of Finno's neck and wept as he had not wept since the time the Master took him for the first time. He sobbed loudly, completely defenseless, choking on tears and gulping air in huge drafts. He felt

Findekáno's arms immediately wrap tightly around him, pressing against his mutilated body.

Finno rocked him, stroking his hair and incessantly whispering words of comfort. And Maedhros simply cried, mourning everything that had ever been taken from him, all the lost ages under the stars and, above all, himself.

Yet after a short moment, the warmth of Findekáno's arms, instead of bringing the promised solace, suddenly began to choke him. After the first, violent wave of heart-rending sobbing, Maedhros's warped mind slipped again into familiar, dark paths.

This was all pointless. Forgiveness simply did not exist - it was an illusion, a cruel game behind which always, absolutely always hid an even worse, more refined torment. He broke the most important rule. He attacked. He raised his hand. He hurt. For this, payment had to be exacted immediately, because to maintain perfect order, every deed had to have its clearly defined price.

Maedhros pulled away abruptly, thrashing and breaking free from his cousin's embrace. His breathing again became shallow, interrupted by panicked, asthmatic wheezes. He fixed his terror-crazed eyes on Findekáno's bloody face.

"Why?" he rasped, his voice trembling with feverish misunderstanding. "Why are you doing this? Why aren't you punishing me?! I... I deserve it. I raised my hand against you. I hit you!"

His darting gaze dropped to his left hand. The hand that a moment ago had cut Finno's pale skin with such animalistic brutality. He stared at it with pure disgust, as if it were a vile, alien parasite attached to his arm. How could he have used it against him? How could he have desecrated the only person in this world who had ever loved him unconditionally?

Suddenly everything, with macabre precision, fell into place in his head.

Of course. Finno stayed silent and didn't hit him in the face, because the punishment had to be entirely adequate to the crime. A simple slap with an open hand to the face was far too little for an act of such brazen rebellion.

Maedhros swallowed the thick, salty mucus clogging his throat. He forced his left arm out from the protective cage of his ribs, thrusting it toward Findekáno. He twisted his forearm palm up, flattening his wrist to expose the fragile, blue network of veins directly to his cousin's gaze. He did not pull back. He held it there with the rigid, practiced stillness of a slave awaiting the knife. He had drawn blood, so blood had to be given in return. It was the only law that made sense in his ruined head. He clamped his fingers together, stiffening the tendons in his wrist to make the cut easier, cleaner. Findekáno had to take this useless, treacherous remaining hand. It was the only payment that could balance the ledger. Flesh for flesh. 

"I understand..." he whispered quickly, feverishly, nodding his head in agreement, as if he himself were desperately trying to convince himself of the rightness of this logic. "You are right, you are right… You deserve a rightful recompense. You have complete, sacred right to do so...this hand hurt you, so it must be taken. That is the hard law, but law. You must settle the account."

Findekáno froze. The last bits of color completely drained from his face, leaving it pale as wax. He looked at the extended, trembling wrist, unable to force a single word out of his tightened throat.

But Maedhros would not let go. Surely only the voluntary surrender of the last part of his agency and independence could wash him of guilt.

"I won't fight, I swear to you," he continued in a voice hoarse from crying, moving his wrist even closer to Findekáno's bare, trembling chest. His eyes were full of bitter tears, but they shone with the bright, manic determination of the damned. "I promise you. I will sit completely, utterly still. I won't even scream, so as not to alarm anyone in the camp. I have practice in this. Just... just cut quickly, if you can, Finno. Do what you must. It's right... it's the only right way out. Then you'll finally forgive me, right? When I pay?"

Findekáno stopped breathing. He stared at the extended, defenselessly bared and trembling wrist, and then very, very slowly raised his gaze to Maedhros's face.

He saw absolute, deadly seriousness in it. Maedhros was not delirious. He was truly, genuinely waiting for it. He was ready, of his own unforced will, to let his second, last hand be cut off, just to behave exactly as he had been ruthlessly trained to do. He believed with all his might that it was the only way to atone for his guilt. From Findekáno's throat tore a sound that was pure, unrestrained, living despair.

"No..." Finno sobbed, shaking his head violently, as if he wanted to wake up from this nightmare. Hot tears rushed from his eyes in a new, powerfully swollen wave. "No, Russo... by all the Valar, what did they do to you there..."

Instead of pushing away this tainted hand with disgust, instead of reaching for a dagger or sword, which Maedhros so desperately demanded as punishment, Findekáno took it in both his hands.

Maedhros flinched violently, and his muscles instantly, painfully stiffened, bracing for the first pain. He waited for the coldness of steel. He already knew this feeling perfectly well, so this time it would certainly be a little easier. He waited for the strike of the blade and the earsplitting crack of severing bone.

But Findekáno drew the trembling, pale left hand straight to his face. With the open side of the hand, he pressed it firmly against his cheek, wet with salty tears. Then he bowed his dark head and placed a long, impossibly hot kiss exactly there - on the thin, pale skin of the wrist.

"I don't want you harmed," Findekáno whispered feverishly, desperately kissing his slender fingers, white-knuckled knuckles, and that trembling wrist that was offered to him as a sacrifice. "I don't want a single drop of your blood. I am not them, do you hear me?! I am not Morgoth! I am not Þauron! There is absolutely nothing to settle here!"

Maedhros watched this spectacle with wide, tear-filled eyes, unable to comprehend what was actually happening. It made no sense whatsoever. It destroyed the entire terrifying order of his world from the foundations up. The warmth of Finno's trembling lips on his skin burned him with an intensity worse than the ice of the Helcaraxë.

"But I hurt you!" Maedhros screamed, and his voice completely broke and tore into pure, deranged hysteria. He tried to violently yank his hand out of his cousin's tender grip. Suddenly, this abnormal, soft forgiveness proved to be the most dangerous, cruelest trap. "Look what I did to you! Look at your face, Finno! It just works this way, that for every rebellion and resistance there is pain! The Master always... he always explained it to me like that! You must... you must punish me, because otherwise this will never, ever pass!"

"No!" Findekáno's voice broke through his hysteria, louder and far more frightened than before. He tightened both hands around Russo's struggling wrist, instinctively holding it against his chest as though he could somehow stop him from offering it. "No, I will not. I will not take anything from you. Do you hear me? I don't care what they taught you there. I don't care what rules they made you obey. I am not going to hurt you because you hurt me."

His breath was shaking violently.

Maedhros shivered spasmodically, feeling beneath his hand that hot, living skin and the steady, frantic rhythm that seemed almost to tear its way out of Finno's chest. This single, intimate touch brought him unspeakable pain, cruelly laying bare just how broken and tainted he was, and how infinitely far he was from the man who could kneel before him now and still look at him with love.

"I deserve it, Finno..." he repeated stubbornly, though all the wild power had drained from his voice. Only a pathetic, justice-begging whisper remained. He closed his eyes, sobbing so helplessly that he slid lower against the side of the bed. "I am completely ruined. He ruined me to the core. I can't even... I can't endure your innocent touch without wanting to flee. I am dangerous to you. I am a monster. Get away from me before I do it again."

"You are not a monster," Findekáno replied with an iron, truly Nolofinwë-like resolve, not stepping back even a pace. He brought his face closer to Maedhros's trembling face, though Maedhros instinctively tried to shrink away from him. "You were terrified. I saw you. You weren't looking at me. You were looking at someone else. I don't understand what happened to you in that moment, Russo, but I know you weren't seeing me when you struck me. And I know you stopped."

Finno very carefully, softly released Maedhros's hand from his own chest, then lifted both hands toward his tear-streaked face. He moved slowly, giving Maedhros every opportunity to pull away, and finally cupped his wet, pale cheeks in his palms. He wiped the tears with his thumbs, his touch trembling with a tenderness that was almost painful to bear.

"You don't have to make sense of this tonight," Findekáno said quietly, his lips barely a breath away from his forehead. "You don't have to promise me that it will never happen again. I don't know what happened in Angband, Russo. I don't know how much of it I can even begin to understand. But I know this: I will not hurt you. Not for this. Not for anything. And I will not take your hand from you. I would rather spend the rest of my life teaching you that my hands are mine to give, and yours are yours to keep."

In Maedhros's ruined mind, something finally snapped. This forgiveness striking from nowhere was so bright, so painfully pure, that it practically blinded him. He could fight it no longer.

From his tightened throat finally tore a choked, hollow moan of ultimate exhaustion. He slumped forward, completely surrendering to fatigue and despair. He hid his tear-wet face in the hot hollow of Findekáno's neck, and his hand clutched frantically at his cousin's back.

Findekáno didn't pull back a hair's breadth. He stroked his back with infinite, loving patience, calmly waiting for the shudders wracking the body to subside a little.

When Maedhros's ragged breathing became even slightly calmer, Finno pulled him away from himself very slightly - just enough to be able to look at his tear-streaked, haggard face. He carefully wiped a wet streak from his cheek with his thumb.

"Russo..." Finno began, and his voice was quiet as a whisper of wind, trembling with fear lest the slightest sudden sound ruin this incredibly fragile sense of security. "Just tell me... Of course you don't have to if you don't want to... what did I do wrong. How did I offend you. I beg you, help me understand. I never want to trigger such terror in you ever again.

The words hung between them in the thick air of the tent, and Maedhros's warped mind immediately shrank with panic.

How was he supposed to explain it to him?

How was he supposed to look into those infinitely loving, care-filled eyes and say that Þauron had made him his personal whore? That those even, fine lines on his thighs weren't the work of orcs, the sudden madness of an executioner, or chaotic marks from a whipping? They were a precise, calculated record of his utter disgrace. Exactly one thousand four hundred and seventy-eight nights of disgrace. The Master took the utmost care to ensure Nelyo remembered every single one of them. He forced him to speak that growing number out loud himself as the cold blade slowly cut his skin right after the last scream had left his body and only quiet, helpless sobbing remained in the stained bedding. One thousand four hundred and seventy-eight times he was broken and taken, until he himself stopped believing he was anything more than a submissive, ruined body left entirely at his disposal.

Maedhros opened his mouth, but only a pathetic, wheezing sound came out. His throat was tight, as if he were wearing his copper collar again. After all, since he had the most unique diadem of the high king forever carved into his brow, it wouldn't do for his old crown to gather dust in the vaults.

"Those marks..." he finally choked out, his scraped voice breaking on every syllable. He closed his eyes, unable to bear the bright gaze of his beloved. "On my thighs."

Findekáno immediately nodded, his brow drawing together in deep sorrow. He gave Maedhros's surviving hand a light squeeze, as though the smallest gesture might somehow give him courage.

"I saw them," he whispered. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have touched you there." His eyes flickered helplessly toward Maedhros's thighs before returning at once to his face. "Did they hurt you? Were you wounded there?"

Horror trembled through his voice, but it was still the horror of someone imagining familiar forms of torture: blades, whips, hot iron, wounds inflicted upon the body and left to heal badly.

Maedhros shuddered helplessly.

"No... It was him. The Master."

Findekáno's expression tightened with confusion and dread.

"He did this himself?" he asked quietly, running a warm hand over Maedhros's shoulder. "He... he made these marks?"

"They are not... wounds." Maedhros dug his nails into the bedding, trembling harder. "It's a record. A count."

"A count? What are you talking about, Russo?"

"He counted them." Maedhros shook harder and harder, and broken, desperate words fell from his mouth, tossed like shards of a broken mirror. They didn't form a cohesive whole at all. "Every... every night. He made sure I wouldn't forget. One thousand four hundred and seventy-eight. That's how many there are. Exactly that many."

Findekáno paled, desperately trying to piece together these fragments of information. One thousand four hundred and seventy-eight. The number was so enormous that his mind instinctively tried to make it smaller, simpler. A number of cuts. A number of punishments. A number he could at least understand.

"By the Valar..." Finno whispered, staring at him in horror. "All of these... he made them himself?"

Maedhros swallowed.

"Every time."

Findekáno's fingers tightened around his hand.

"Why?" he asked helplessly. "Why would he keep count? Why would he want you to remember every single one?"

Maedhros felt a choking lump of bile rise in his throat. He felt terrifyingly sick beneath the weight of the hidden truth eating him from the inside.

"When... when I was there. When I was in his chambers. He waited until the end and... marked me." Maedhros choked on the words. He was a coward, a terrible, pathetic coward. He simply could not say it outright. "He used me, Finno."

Findekáno stared at him, utterly lost. The words seemed to slip past everything he understood and leave him grasping for something familiar enough to name.

"Used you... how?" he asked at last.

Maedhros said nothing.

"Did he make you serve him?" Findekáno tried again, his voice growing smaller with every failed attempt to understand. "Make you do things for him? Humiliate you? Keep you there when you wanted to leave?"

Maedhros closed his eyes.

If only it were that.

The memory of having the tendons behind his knees severed so that he could never again stand upright before Morgoth's throne now seemed, in hindsight, almost like a blissful rest compared to what Þauron had done to him.

Findekáno squeezed his hand with desperate strength, his face twisted with helplessness.

"I don't understand," he whispered. "I am trying, Russo. I truly am."

Maedhros stared at him through a thick veil of salty tears. He didn't have the strength to say it more harshly. He was too great a coward, he felt too defiled and dirty to destroy this remaining innocence in Finno's eyes with his own words and confess the disgusting, sticky truth: he took me the way you wanted to take me a moment ago, and my treacherous, broken body responded in a way it will never, ever be able to respond to you.

However, he couldn't leave Findekáno in this blissful ignorance. He couldn't let his cousin keep thinking that he was the same Russo with whom he once spent nights. He had to tear down this pure, safe world of Finno's, if only to let him better understand the ugly world into which they had arrived.

"Finno..." he began, and his voice was barely a thin, hoarse tremor. "Do you remember... do you remember what the Valar taught us in Aman? About our being? About the fëa and the hröa of the Eldar?"

Findekáno blinked, completely thrown by the sudden, seemingly philosophical change of subject.

"Yes... of course, Russo. But what does that have to do with..."

"They taught us," Maedhros interrupted him abruptly, his breath beginning to tear with panic as he forced himself toward the words he had spent so long refusing to speak. "They taught us that such a thing could not happen. That no one could truly take another against his will. That the fëa would not permit it. That if someone tried to violate that bond between fëa and hröa, the soul would break away before the act could be completed. We were told that the body might be harmed, terribly harmed, but that this..." His voice caught. "This could not be done to an Elf."

A dead, almost ringing silence fell over the tent.

 

The air in the tent grew suffocatingly still, save for the crackle of the dying coals. Findekáno’s fingers locked around Maedhros’s arm like a vise, the warmth of his skin suddenly replaced by a rigid, bloodless grip. His chest stopped rising. He stared at Maedhros without blinking, the blood draining from his cheeks until only the dark bruising around his split lip remained vivid. He sat frozen, listening to a truth that unraveled the very foundation of everything he believed themselves.  

"No," he whispered.

Maedhros closed his eyes.

"I believed it too, Finno," he sobbed quietly, unable to stop the fresh tears burning down his pale, sunken cheeks. "When it happened the first time, I believed the Valar. I thought something would happen. I thought my fëa would leave me before he could... before it could be done. I prayed to Námo. To Nienna. To all of them. I begged my own soul to abandon this body if it had to. I wanted to die, Finno. I was certain I would die before he could force me to remain there."

A raw, furious sound tore from his throat.

"But I didn't."

"Not the first time. Not the thousandth."

Findekáno stared at him.

"And he knew," Maedhros whispered. "He knew it was a lie. He knew exactly what was happening to me. He laughed when I begged for death. He knew my fëa would not save me."

His voice broke completely.

"I thought my soul would rescue me. It didn't. I was still there. I saw everything. I felt everything. Every single time."

Findekáno's lips parted in a silent, frozen cry of horror. His entire naked body began to tremble violently. For several heartbeats he could not move, could not speak, could barely seem to breathe. He stared at Maedhros as though he had just been shown a wound for which no name existed in the language he knew.

"Those marks on my thighs..." Maedhros squeezed his eyes shut, no longer having the strength to look at the completely shattered expression on his beloved's face. "When he was finished... when there was nothing left of me and I could barely breathe from humiliation... he took a knife. So I would remember. Every one of them. One thousand four hundred and seventy-eight." His voice had become strangely calm. "That was how many times he used me."

His throat worked painfully.

"The same way you wanted to take me tonight."

The silence in the tent suddenly changed its weight. The hysteria that had choked Maedhros a moment ago, twisting his face into a grimace of madness, evaporated completely. The loud, ragged crying ceased.

Instead, a ghostly, almost unnatural calm descended upon him. He rested the back of his head against the thick canvas of the tent and wiped his face with a slow, tired motion. When he looked at the shocked Findekáno again, his eyes were terrifyingly bright, cold, and completely emptied of emotion. It was the final stillness of someone who had long since stopped expecting anything from life.

"Russo, I..." Findekáno began shakily, reaching a hand toward him, desperately searching for some word that could possibly make sense of what he had just heard.

"You still don't understand," Maedhros interrupted quietly. His voice was completely level now, almost disturbingly calm. "You keep trying to put me into the shape of some noble martyr. You imagine me in a dungeon, starving, chained to a wall, broken by whips and iron, enduring everything they could do to me with whatever dignity they had not yet managed to beat out of me."

Findekáno opened his mouth to protest, but Maedhros lifted his hand.

" It wasn't like that. No one touched me without his permission. Not even them. He was very particular about that. The other prisoners, the servants, the Orcs... none of them were allowed near me unless he said they could be. He wanted me clean. He wanted my wounds dressed properly. He wanted my hair kept the way he liked it. He wanted everything about me exactly as he had arranged it."

His eyes remained fixed somewhere beyond Findekáno.

"He used to tell me that Maitimo had to remain Maitimo. As though that were some sacred rule of the world. Only he was allowed to hurt me. Only he decided when I had been disobedient enough to deserve punishment. Only he could mark me."

Maedhros's voice did not change.

"And when I tried to destroy myself, he stopped me."

Findekáno's face tightened with horror.

"There were times when I thought I could simply end it myself. I tried. More than once. I tried to throw myself against the walls. I tried to tear open my own wrists." He gave a small, utterly humourless smile. " He always would have me put back together. Again and again. 'Once Maitimo, always Maitimo’ .He would have the wounds treated, the blood cleaned, everything restored. Not because he wanted me alive for my sake."

Maedhros finally looked directly at him.

"Death simply couldn't be my reward. "His Maitimo was not allowed to die. He had to remain beautiful. He had to remain useful. He had to remain exactly what he had made him."

Maedhros closed his eyes for a moment, and a hollow, entirely self-deprecating smile bloomed on his pale lips.

"I had an entire west wing of my own, Finno. I slept on the softest goose down. I had my own spacious bedchamber, a private bath, and a grand wardrobe full of the finest, carmine and gold silks, the likes of which none of you, after the ice of the Helcaraxë, have even laid eyes on. I had every luxury one could think of: oils, fragrances, costly ornaments, the finest food, servants at my every beck and call. Other, enslaved elves waited on me as though I were their lord. I could command them, dismiss them, and punish them for disobedience, and I did. I could even walk freely through designated, guarded galleries. I had more comfort, more privacy, more beautiful things, more idle hours, more servants, more luxuries than any prisoner in Angband had any right to dream of."

Findekáno sat on the rumpled bedding, pale as canvas, trembling with cold and horror. He listened to this quiet confession, unable to reconcile the image of such obscene luxury with the horror Maedhros had just described. Somehow, the wealth of it made everything worse rather than better.

"I didn't work in the forge by the sweat of my brow, chained alongside others," he whispered with desperate calm. "The Master gave me every book and every parchment I desired. I had the best materials. I did bookbinding. I drew for him the most beautiful, intricate manuscript illuminations I could create. He let me carve in wood. I made complex astrolabes for him, plotted precise star charts. We held long, refined disputes about rhetoric, dialectology, and linguistics... I was his companion in conversation over a goblet of wine. I played the lute for him in the evenings to pass the time before he went to sleep."

He fell silent for a fraction of a second. His breath hitched slightly, then he leaned forward a bit, and that ghastly smile twisted his lips again.

"And I did all this for one, very simple price. I spread my legs for him whenever the mood struck him."

Finno violently covered his mouth with his hand, choking back a loud, heart-rending sob of protest, but Maedhros did not stop. It was important to him that Findekáno heard everything. That he heard every, most foul drop of this truth and finally stopped looking at him with those adoring, love-blind eyes.

"He made me prepare for it," the Noldo continued with ghostly fluidity. "Before he came to the bedchamber, I had to bathe in scented water, ensure the smoothness of my skin and every hair on my head. They would wash my hair until it shone, oil my skin until there was not a trace of dryness, inspect my hands, my nails, everything. I had to apply rouge to my face to accentuate my features, put on those beautiful, heavy jewels he so generously bestowed upon me, choose the right perfume, the right silks, the right ornaments. Sometimes they would change half of it because he had decided that another colour suited me better that evening. I had to adorn myself, Finno. I had to make myself beautiful for him. Dress up like some exquisite courtesan, polished and perfumed and covered in jewels, so that when he looked at me he would see exactly what he wanted to see, and so that by morning I would have as little reason as possible to cry from pain."

"And when..." Maedhros's voice trembled for a moment, and sweat beaded on his smooth brow. "When I refused... when I didn't have a shred of strength left in me, or when out of pure self-disgust I tried to fight him... they gave me a drink. It was a sweet, thick liquid. I knew what it meant after the first few times. My muscles would go slack almost at once. I couldn't clench my hand into a fist. I couldn't turn my head away. Sometimes I couldn't even close my eyes. I was completely unable to move, and yet I remained awake. I felt everything. I heard everything."

"They would lay me limp on the silk bedding. Other hands... I would hear only their quiet steps moving around the chamber as they prepared everything exactly as he had ordered. They washed me again, even after I had already bathed. They rubbed expensive oils into my skin. They painted my face. They dressed me in whatever he had chosen. They adjusted the jewellery, smoothed the sheets, checked the fire, made certain that everything was exactly as it should be. I remember those cold fingers on my skin. I remember the smell of the oils. I remember the fire crackling behind me. And the Master... Þauron would simply sit beside me in a carved armchair, a goblet of wine in his hand, and watch. He never hurried them. He never had to. He would just wait until everything was perfect, and then wait for me to be able to feel it all."

"Why?" whispered Findekáno through the tears streaming down his cheeks. Understanding such cruelty entirely exceeded the bounds of anything his heart had ever been prepared to comprehend.

"Because he didn't want a dead, silent doll," Maedhros answered, forcing that dead smile onto his lips. "He waited until the paralysis began to fade. Until I could move again. Until I could feel everything properly. He wanted me awake. He wanted me to know what was happening." His voice remained terribly calm. "He liked it when I fought. When I tried to push him away, when I kicked, when I cursed him, when I cried. He would wait until I had enough strength to resist properly, and then he would continue. As if my fighting were nothing more than another part of what he wanted from me."

Maedhros slowly shifted his gaze to his mutilated thighs, where all those shameful cuts hid beneath the fabric. "I learned eventually," he whispered. "I learned that fighting only made things worse. That if I stopped struggling, sometimes it was easier. So I stopped. And then I began doing it before he had to force me. I began going to him when I was summoned without making a scene. I began telling myself that at least this way I was not completely helpless." His mouth twisted faintly. "I even asked for things. Books. Warmth. New clothes. Anything that might make the next day bearable. I made bargains with myself, Finno. I told myself that if I gave him what he wanted willingly, then perhaps I had not lost everything." He swallowed hard. "I was weak. I learned how to make it easier for him, and eventually I learned how to make it easier for myself. That is how I became his private toy."

The silence that fell in the tent as soon as he finished speaking brought absolutely no solace. It was thick, choking, and terrifyingly heavy.

What Finno had just heard completely destroyed and irreversibly exceeded the limits of his understanding of the world. Normal torture, beatings, chains, starvation - all of that was monstrous, but somehow fit within the bounds of imagining the Enemy's cruelty. But this... Making another living being, his beloved Russandol, a will-less mascot for satisfying fleshly lusts? Using him in this way for so many years? For one thousand four hundred and seventyeight nights?

Findekáno's mind choked on this awareness. His beloved, the other half of his soul, had been used, stripped of his dignity, and broken with such refined perfidy that ultimately he himself believed it was all his fault and he deserved it. It simply did not fit in Finno's head. No being, not even the Enemy himself, should be capable of inflicting something so monstrous upon another.

He let out a muffled, hoarse sound, as if someone were simply tearing his heart apart. Tears gushed from his eyes, streaming swiftly down his cheeks and mixing with the dried blood.

His body instinctively jerked forward. He wanted to throw himself toward Russo. He wanted to wrap his arms around him with all his might, pull him to his chest, stroke those trembling back and feverishly kiss his hair. He wanted to scream in his face that it was all a lie planted by the Dark, that he would fix it. He wanted to swear on all that is holy that he would make up for every second of this suffering and that he would never, ever allow anyone to even look at him with the intent to harm him.

But his hands stopped mid-way, suspended in the air. They shivered violently.

Finno was terrified. He was deathly afraid to touch him now. He didn't want to hurt him. Cowering before him was someone so deeply destroyed, someone with a soul so fragile that just a moment ago he had fallen into a murderous panic because his thoughtless touch had reminded him of old torments. How was Finno supposed to hold him now? After all, every unexpected gesture, every touch of a naked body could remind Russo of those cursed nights and of Þauron, who was just waiting to use him again.

It was too much for Findekáno.

"Russo..." Finno sobbed, and his voice was barely a thin, ruined whisper. His hands, still suspended in the air, slowly fell to his own knees, clenching into helpless fists. "...I... I can't even imagine..."

He shook his head, choking on tears. He looked at him through a thick fog of crying, completely shattered.

"It wasn't your fault that he hurt you," he choked out, struggling to catch his breath. "He trapped you in a prison of your mind. He poisoned you. You just wanted to save the remains of yourself in the only way you possibly could."

The sight of Findekáno, who pitied him with tears in his eyes and so trustingly justified how Maedhros had disgraced himself, evoked in him a monstrous, choking mixture of feelings. On one hand, his shattered soul howled with pure gratitude that Finno was still here, that he hadn't left him in disgust, but on the other - he felt a growing, mounting revulsion. How could someone so innocent, good, and pure humiliate himself with such words before something lower than dirt?

Calm descended upon him again like a heavy, leaden shroud. He wiped his wet face with his trembling left hand.

"You still understand nothing, Finno. He wasn't cruel in bed at all," Maedhros said. His voice was flat, emotionless, completely void of tears. "Do you think he was hurting me there? That he inflicted pain when he took me? No. He never touched me to wound me. He touched me to bring pleasure to himself and to me."

Findekáno flinched violently. He listened, choking on his own breath.

"It didn't matter whether I went to his chambers willingly, broken and blindly obedient, or if they had to drag me there by force and I fought as long as I had breath," Maedhros continued, fixing those cold, dead eyes of his on the prince. "The Master... Þauron always, every single time, knew how to touch me in a way that made my body my greatest enemy. The moans escaped my lips on their own, Finno. I myself, of my own will, lifted my hips, begging him for more. I myself tilted my neck back so he would have easier access and could kiss me. I felt it all. Every slightest shiver."

Maedhros closed his eyes, and a grimace of absolute, destructive self-hatred passed over his face. He remembered it all too clearly. He remembered how much his treacherous body desired that disgusting heat, despite the terror screaming with all its might in his mind. "Even... even when he finished first..." His voice wavered, dropping to a choked, shamefilled whisper. "He always made sure that I too... found release. It didn't matter that just a moment earlier I was crying, that I was desperately trying to kick him and throw him off me. He touched me so long and in such a way that in the end I simply screamed with pleasure. He made sure I felt pleasure even against my will."

"Russo..." Findekáno stared at him in horror, completely at a loss. "Then what am I supposed to think? You were crying. You were fighting him. How can that - " His voice broke. "How can your body have wanted what you were begging him not to do? Maybe you... maybe you had begun to - " He stopped abruptly, horror flashing across his face as though he had only now heard his own words.

"You understand nothing!" Maedhros suddenly roared. His ghostly, learned calm shattered in a fraction of a second, smashed to bits by a wave of pure fury and burning shame.

He struck his mutilated shoulder against the thick canvas of the tent until the strapped framework creaked. He panted heavily, with a deranged look on his face, ready to tear his own heart from his chest with his bare hands, just so Finno would stop blindly making excuses for him.

"You understand nothing!" he repeated with wild deliberation, fixing a burning gaze on his shaken cousin. "Do you think I'm suffering here because he hurt me? I am suffering because I desire to be his so much that I can't even get hard around you!"

That single confession hit the thick air like a sword strike. Findekáno froze completely, with his lips half-parted.

"Once... in Tirion..." Maedhros was choking on his own words. A short, stupid chuckle of madness tore from his throat as he spat these words out like the worst poison. "Once, a few of your kisses were enough. One smile of yours, a brush of your hand, and I was thirsty for you to the point of losing my breath. And today? You lay naked under my hands. You did everything to give yourself to me. You were beautiful and willing, and I... I felt nothing. My body was dead! No matter how hard I thought about you, no matter how much I wanted to take you... I couldn't feel anything more in me!"

He sobbed loudly. He clenched his surviving hand in his own thinned hair and pulled painfully, wanting to punish himself for his own weakness.

"I tried myself, do you hear?!" he screamed, no longer caring if the revelers outside heard him or if his voice echoed throughout the camp. "I tried to help myself on those cursed nights when I couldn't sleep from terror. I tried to think of anything else, anything that might prove there was still something in me that belonged to me. I touched myself, I tried to make myself feel something, anything at all, and nothing worked. Do you know when my body finally came alive? Do you know when I finally felt anything again? Only when I started thinking about Þauron! Damn it, Finno... I found release thinking about the very man who did this to me! Thinking about his hands, his voice, everything he had done to me! How can you even think there is anything left in me to save?!"

The confession tore from his throat, leaving his lungs burning and a sharp, metallic taste on his tongue. Maedhros dragged a ragged breath through his teeth, waiting for the blow. After all, he had bared the darkest, most disgusting part of his defilement before his beloved. He proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was not a shred of the old Nelyafinwë left in him, and only a broken, filthy thing remained, which in solitude desires nothing more than to return again to the dark embrace of its Master.

Findekáno sat on his heels. His trembling hands went to his face. He hid it in them, and a heart-rending, stifled moan of pain tore from his bare chest. He shivered all over, from head to toe, listening to all these monstrous, disgusting words that Russo was screaming about himself. This unimaginable cruelty choked him, stole his breath. It hurt him so much that he wanted to scream, cover his ears, and beg Russo to stop. To be quiet and never mention it again.

When he finally lowered his hands, his face was completely flooded with tears, reddened and twisted from crying. But there was not an ounce of the revulsion Maedhros had so desperately expected on it.

"Þauron had whole eons to perfect the methods of hurting and breaking his prisoners," Findekáno said in an unimaginably anguished voice. He crawled slightly closer on his knees, ignoring the fact that Maedhros pressed himself deeper into the tent's canvas. "For years he abused you, knowing exactly how to break you. He knew how to make you respond to him, even when you were begging him to stop..." His voice broke. "I don't know how. I don't understand it. But that doesn't make it something you wanted."

"I wanted it!" Maedhros yelled, striking his own thigh with an open hand. He wanted to tear this pity to shreds. He couldn't bear that Finno still didn't see a monster in him. "I desired him, do you hear?!"

"But you were terrified!" Findekáno cried, his own voice breaking. "You were crying. You were fighting him. You were begging him to stop. How can you tell me that means you wanted him?"

Maedhros stared at him through his tears.

"Because it does!"

Findekáno shook his head violently. His breath hitched, and he looked utterly lost.

"I don't know what happened to you," he whispered. "I don't understand how your body could answer him when you were screaming at him to stop. I don't understand it at all." His fingers curled helplessly against his knees. "But I will not believe that this - this thing your body did - makes what he did your choice."

Maedhros gave a broken, furious laugh.

"Why are you doing this?" he choked out. "Why do you keep making excuses for me?"

"Because you are trying to condemn yourself for something I don't even know how to understand!" Findekáno cried. "I don't know why he made you feel pleasure. I don't know how he could make that happen while you were afraid of him. I don't know what he did to you."

He swallowed hard, tears spilling freely down his face.

"But why would he care whether you felt pleasure?" he whispered. "Why would he take such care to make sure you did? Did he want you to believe that you had chosen it? Did he want you to hate yourself for it afterward?"

He shook his head, almost desperately.

"I don't know. I don't know, Russo. But none of that turns his choice into yours."

Maedhros squeezed his eyelids shut, trying to break free from these words that brutally struck the very center of his cultivated self-hatred.

"How can you want someone like that?" he sobbed, curling in on himself and hiding his face behind his surviving arm. He felt infinitely small, ultimately defeated by this light. "How can you look at me and not feel revulsion? I won't be able to give this to you. I may never be able to lie in bed with you again without thinking about this... about him. I will destroy you with this, Finno. I will make us both miserable."

"Then we will never lie in bed together again," Findekáno replied immediately. He said it through a loud sob, but with such unshakable force that Maedhros lifted his head, staring at him in disbelief.

Finno looked at him, tears still streaming down his shoulders and cheeks.

"Do you hear?" he repeated with fervent, desperate love. "If you are to feel such pain because of this... if you are to feel like you did a moment ago, then I swear I will never ask you to undress for me again. I don't need it, Russo."

Findekáno reached out very carefully and placed his hand flat on the thick rug, right in front of Maedhros's bare, scarred foot. He didn't dare move an inch further without his explicit permission, but he had to be close.

"I didn't climb Thangorodrim to find myself a bed-warmer," he spoke quietly, and his voice trembled from pure exhaustion and devotion. "I went there because I couldn't live without you. I love you. And even if until the very end of the world you couldn't bear my touch, I will be here. It's enough for me that you sit next to me. That you simply look at me in the morning when the sun rises. That you live. Don't beg me for hatred, Russo, because I will never give it to you. I will love you, even if you consider yourself a monster, and I will do it as long as it takes for you to finally understand that you are not one."

"I'm not worth it," Maedhros finally whispered.

This confession was so terrifyingly quiet that it barely pierced through the dull roar of the wind hitting the tent's canvas. But to Findekáno it sounded louder and more powerful than any scream.

Maedhros stared at his mutilated arm, trapped in the brace. The promise of unconditional love that Finno had made him a moment ago, instead of healing him, ultimately crushed him. It was simply too great. Too lofty and pure for someone who consisted solely of pain, dirt, and frailty.

"You don't see what I am, Finno. Every day is torture. I am a cripple. Look at me!" He looked up, and fresh, bitter tears flowed down his sunken, pale cheeks. He struck the hard leather framework on his chest with his left hand until the straps cracked hollowly. "I can't even stand upright on my own! I can't walk without this cage, and to put it on I have to ask for outside help like some feeble child. There are days, Finno... there are days when all these scars, every single one of these countless souvenirs on my body, hurt so much that I can't get out of bed. I can only lie there and cry from pain."

He sniffled, choking on this terrible helplessness that ate him from the inside every morning when he opened his eyes.

"I can't dress myself. I can't untie the stupid strings of my undergarments, you saw it yourself a moment ago. I can't even braid my own hair. I am a burden. A useless, broken burden that no one in their right mind should carry."

Findekáno opened his mouth, he wanted to deny it again, wanted at all costs to erase those cruel words, but Maedhros didn't let him speak. A stifling, ragged sob tore from his chest. "Do you know what I think about every day, Finno? Do you know what I wish for every time I open my eyes? Death."

Finno froze completely, and his eyes widened in absolute horror.

"You made a mistake," Maedhros continued, and his voice suddenly became accusatory, saturated with that deep, rusty grief he had carried within him since the very day of his rescue. "You made a terrible mistake not giving me that mercy there, on Thangorodrim. I begged you. I cried and asked for death. I begged you for it twice, Finno, and you refused me! Why?!"

He leaned forward, panting heavily, and in his eyes now shone pure madness mixing with fury.

"Was it revenge?" he asked hoarsely, looking at him askance. "Did you do it for Losgar? Did you want me to suffer for failing to stop my father and brothers from burning the ships? For keeping silent and condemning you to the ice of the Helcaraxë, where you had to watch your loved ones die? If so... you succeeded. My fate is the most perfect revenge you could desire. You took me from there only so I would have to live in this body and remember."

"Russo, by all the powers of this world, I would never..." Findekáno choked out, coughing on his own tears, completely devastated by this monstrous, unjust accusation.

But Maedhros merely shook his head wearily, staring into the emptiness before him.

"These thoughts are everywhere," he whispered, and his tone suddenly became terrifyingly calm, almost dreamy, completely detached from the anger of a moment ago. "They never leave me. They are always there, just behind everything else. For a long time now, I have only been thinking about when I might finally do it."

He looked at his cousin again, but his gaze was entirely different now - softer, strangely resigned, carrying the exhausted certainty of someone who had been living with the same thought for far too long. "I wanted to put everything in order. I wanted to smooth over these disputes between my brothers and you all. To do everything I could so that the Noldors might be united again. So that you would be safe... it was my debt. My last duty." Maedhros swallowed, and his blue lips trembled slightly. "And then... then I wanted to sleep with you one last time. To feel something beautiful."

Findekáno stopped breathing. Every spoken word was like a dagger driven straight into his heart. Only now did he understand why Maedhros had been so determined that evening to give himself to him, why he had forced himself to smile and ignored every warning his own body had been giving him. This had never been an attempt to return to the life they had once known.

It was a farewell.

"I've already found a place," Maedhros confessed in a quiet, tormented whisper, almost as though he were sharing some small, ordinary secret with him. "Just outside the camp. There's a strong branch there. It would hold me easily. Don't worry, Finno... I wouldn't make you see me. You wouldn't find me first. I'd make certain of that. I would go there alone, when everyone was asleep. Quietly. No one would have time to stop me. No one would pull me back again." He swallowed, and his gaze fell to his surviving hand. "I would finally leave when I chose to. Finally, for once, I could decide what happened to my own body."

These words hit Findekáno like real physical blows. Each subsequent sentence was a blade driven straight into his soul and twisted with ruthless precision.

Revenge for Losgar? Hanging himself on a solid branch behind the camp? This evening spent in tears, these feverish kisses and desperate attempt at intimacy... it was all meant to be his final goodbye?

Finno clenched his hands on his knees so hard his knuckles turned white. He felt his entire world, rebuilt with such care, ultimately cracking, crumbling, and turning to ash. He breathed with difficulty, with a hoarse wheeze, as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the tent. He looked at his beloved through a thick veil of tears, unable to force a single word out of himself, while Maedhros continued his confession with a ghostly, dead calm.

"I've arranged everything," Maedhros whispered, staring blankly at his surviving, trembling fingers. "Even a parting gift for you. You were the dearest person in the world to me, you know that, Finno. At the bottom of my chest lies a headband. Thick, made of soft suede... I embroidered it with beads, threaded it with a fine chain to bear your blue and gold colors. You don't even know how pathetically long it took me to create it with one hand. How much the threads tangled and how painfully I cut my fingers with the needle... Of course, I know it's pathetically simple, lopsided, and unworthy of someone like you. But I wanted to leave it for you. I wanted you to have something of me that I created absolutely by myself. Of my own free will. And out of love."

Findekáno let out a choked, animalistic cry. He grabbed his head with both hands, and a sob tore from his chest so loud and full of heart-rending despair that it drowned out even the howl of the cold wind tearing at the tent's canvas outside.

It was too much. Far too much.

"How could you..." Finno sobbed, shaking with pure despair. He lifted his tear-drenched, tormented face, looking at his cousin. "How could you even for a fraction of a second think that I went after you out of a desire for revenge? That I pulled you from there, from that darkness, to punish you for the ice of the Helcaraxë and the burned ships?"

He moved violently across the woven rug, completely erasing and closing the distance he had so reverently and carefully maintained until now. He no longer cared if Maedhros flinched in panic or recoiled deeper into the corner in disgust. He had to stop him, he had to bring him back to life and pin him to the ground before this madness consumed him completely. He grabbed his left hand in both of his and pressed it with all his might against his bare chest, right above his wildly, almost painfully beating heart.

"I went there because without you there was no light left in my world!" he screamed through his tears, and his voice broke and trembled on every spoken syllable. "I climbed that cursed rock, in smoke and ash, praying to Manwë only to save you! And when you asked me for death... when you cried and begged me to take pity and kill you, my soul tore into a thousand pieces. I refused you not out of cruelty, Russo! I refused because I simply couldn't lose you! I was selfish, because I would rather carry you on my own back to the end of my days, I would rather look at your wounds and unimaginable suffering, than return to Mithrim without you!"

Finno leaned forward abruptly, resting his tear-wet forehead on Russo's sound shoulder.

"I won't let you," he whispered feverishly, choking on loud crying. His salty tears dripped and soaked into the hard leather of Maedhros's framework, wetting the silk cords. "I won't let you go into those woods. You will not tie any rope, do you hear me? I will sleep outside your door if I have to. I will watch you. I will know where you are. I will stop you every time you try to leave. I will tie myself to you if I must. You can scream at me, you can hate me, you can beat me as long as you have the strength, but I will not give you up to death. I didn't tear you from that rock only for Þauron to take you from me again by your own hands."

Findekáno's heart beat beneath Maedhros's surviving hand with such overpowering force that its frantic, tearing rhythm seemed to penetrate the skin and reverberate all the way up his arm.

Maedhros stared at him, holding his breath. He had done everything, after all. He had thrown the worst, foulest truth about himself straight into Finno's face. He had stripped away what remained of his old honor, shown him his ugliness, his brokenness, finally laid bare the thoughts of death he considered so shameful and so contrary to everything they had been taught to be. He had done all of it to make Findekáno leave him at last, to make him understand that loving him meant being dragged down into the same darkness.

And yet Finno only held him tighter. The words kept echoing strangely in Maedhros's exhausted mind: I will watch you. I will know where you are. I will stop you. There was something horribly familiar in them, though he could not quite bring himself to name it. For one fleeting moment, another voice seemed to murmur behind Finno's, soft and patient and infinitely certain that it knew what was best for Maitimo.

“I will keep you safe,” Findekáno whispered, his voice breaking. “Even if I have to make sure you can never get away from me again.”

Maedhros gave a small, terribly tired smile.

“Like my Master?”

Findekáno recoiled as though struck. His face went completely white, and for several heartbeats he could only stare at Maedhros, his mouth parted in stunned horror.

"No," he whispered at last, shaking his head violently. "No, Russo. That isn't what I meant."

Maedhros looked at him quietly.

"But that is what you said, isn't it?" he whispered. "That you knew what was best for me. That you knew what I needed. That I wasn't allowed to leave."

Findekáno's breath caught. His eyes filled with fresh tears.

"I..." He faltered, unable to find an answer that did not sound like another excuse. "I only meant that I couldn't bear to let you die."

The confession dragged the last dregs of air from Maedhros's lungs. The manic energy that had kept him upright, the furious need to carve his own ugliness into Findekáno’s mind, simply hollowed out. His spine sagged against the unyielding leather of his back brace. The metal splints dug into his collarbone, suddenly bearing the entire, dead weight of a body that no longer wanted to hold itself together. He felt impossibly heavy, like a sack of rotting corpses left rotting on the floor. He could not scream anymore. He could not physically force his jaw to form another word to convince Findekáno of his ruin, because the prince simply kept kneeling there, stubbornly refusing to throw the broken thing away..

"Why, Finno?" Maedhros's voice was merely a trembling, hollow echo. He said it more to the empty space of the tent than to his cousin crying against his shoulder. "I only want peace. My fëa died that day, when he used me for the first time." He swallowed, his voice sinking almost to a whisper. "It was supposed to leave me. I begged it to. It didn't. So I suppose it simply died where it was, and left this body behind to carry on without it."

Findekáno went utterly still. For a few heartbeats he could not even breathe, his fingers tightening helplessly in the fabric at Maedhros's back. He had no answer to this.

"Don't..." he whispered at last, his voice breaking. "Please, Russo. Don't say that as though you're already gone." He lifted his tear-streaked face from Maedhros's shoulder, looking at him with naked desperation. "I don't know whether I can understand what happened to you. I don't know what the Valar got wrong, or what Þauron did to you. But you're here. You're still here." His breath hitched painfully. "And I don't know how to make that enough for you yet. I don't know how to give you back what was taken from you. I only know that I love you, and I cannot lose you again. And the headband..." His voice broke completely. "That headband you made for me with such difficulty... I will wear it with pride every day of my life. But you will give it to me yourself. Straight into my hands. I will not find it in some chest after you disappear."

Maedhros closed his burning eyes. A quiet, completely helpless sigh tore from his throat, and his head dropped forward until his forehead rested heavily against Findekáno's dark hair, braided into intricate plaits.

"It's not that I want to spite you, Finno," he finally whispered. His voice was flat, dry as parchment, and terrifyingly quiet. "It's not that I don't appreciate that you came for me. But I... I am just so terribly tired."

Findekáno sniffled loudly, shivering from cold and crying, then pressed his forehead harder against his shoulder.

"I know. I know you are tired. You will rest, Russo, I promise you..."

"No, you don't know," Maedhros interrupted him, and there was no anger in his voice anymore. That almost made it worse. He stared at the thick wall of the tent, not looking at Finno at all. "You don't know what it is like to wake up every morning and wish you had not. You don't know what it is like to open your eyes and immediately remember that this is still your body. That the hand is still gone. That the shoulder still hurts. That the scars are still there. That you will have to call someone just to help you put this leather thing on because you cannot fasten it yourself. You don't know what it is like to sit on the edge of your own bed and already be exhausted before you have even stood up."

His fingers tightened weakly against the blanket.

"You don't know what it is like to put on your clothes and feel every one of those scars beneath them. You don't know what it is like to have to ask someone else to wash your hair, dress you, tie your laces, because your own body will not do what you tell it to. You don't know what it is like to look at the person helping you and wonder whether they pity you, whether they are frightened of you, whether they are only doing it because they have to." Findekáno's face crumpled, but Maedhros did not look at him.

"And you don't know what it is like to be tired before the day has even begun. To wake up and think, not again. Not another morning. Not another day of carrying this body around. Not another day of remembering what happened to it. Not another day of trying to make it obey me."

His voice dropped even lower.

"Death is not some grand escape to me. I am not dreaming of blood or glory or some final punishment. I am simply tired, Finno. I want one thing that Angband could not take from me and no one else can decide for me. I want to stop. I want to sleep and not wake up tomorrow and discover that I have survived another day I never wanted."

Finno clenched his teeth tightly, another choked sob tearing from his throat. "Don't say that. Please, Russo. Please. Tell me what I'm supposed to do. Tell me what I can do so you don't go into those woods."

"Nothing. You can't do anything," Maedhros replied with a ghostly, dead calm in which there was not a trace of rebellion left. "You can't fix this. You cannot give me back my hand. You cannot take those years out of my head. You cannot make me forget what happened in those chambers, and you cannot make my body forget either. Every day I wake up and it is all still there. Sometimes I hate myself because of what I let happen to me. Sometimes I hate myself because a part of me still remembers wanting the things he taught me to want. Sometimes I hate this body because it betrayed me, and sometimes I hate my mind because it won't let me forget any of it."

Maedhros finally looked at him, his eyes utterly exhausted.

"So what exactly are you promising me, Finno? That tomorrow will hurt less? That one day I will wake up and suddenly be the man I was before? You cannot promise me that. I don't want another promise you cannot keep."

His voice almost disappeared.

"I don't want to live like this anymore. I just want it to end."

Findekáno finally lifted his head. He was completely shattered; his face was swollen and red from crying. He saw in Maedhros's empty, extinguished gaze that no grand words, no promise of a better future, could possibly reach him now.

"I don't know how to help you," Finno admitted, his voice breaking. He let go of Russo's clenched hand only long enough to wipe his wet face with his sleeve, then immediately reached for him again. "I don't know what to do. And I know this is selfish, I know it probably isn't fair, but I can't let you go. I don't know how to stand here and simply watch you leave." He swallowed hard. "Let me help you with the brace, then. Let me tie those stupid laces you can't manage alone. Let me sit with you when it hurts. Let me hold you when you cry. I don't know whether any of it will make a difference. I don't know whether tomorrow will be any easier. I don't know what happens after that." His voice sank into a desperate whisper. "So don't think about tomorrow. Don't think about next week, or next year, or the rest of your life. Just... stay tonight. I'm only asking for tonight, Russo. Please. You don't have to promise me anything beyond that."

Maedhros squeezed his eyes shut. A quiet, uneven sigh escaped him. He no longer had the strength to argue, to explain, or to defend himself against the desperate grief in Findekáno's tearful eyes. For tonight, there was nothing left to fight.

"All right..." he whispered at last, with exhausted resignation. "Not tonight."

These two short words made all the accumulated tension drain from Finno's body in an instant. He collapsed from exhaustion, sinking heavily onto the rug, as if someone had cut him off at the knees. He breathed very heavily, greedily, slowly trying to calm the shivers wracking his naked, chilled body.

It suddenly grew piercingly quiet in the tent. The night rustled in the canvas, and the coal brazier slowly died down, casting increasingly weak, orange shadows.

Maedhros, still sitting stiffly on the floor, began to shiver slightly. Finno, seeing this, rose wearily from the rug without a word and reached for the thick, woolen furs and blankets. He wrapped his beloved in them very carefully, then helped him stand and settle on the bed. He himself lay down right next to him, pulling a dark cloak over his own bare shoulders.

In accordance with what he had resolved earlier, he did not touch him. He kept a safe distance, leaving plenty of free space around Maedhros. He just lay beside him, watching him vigilantly and unblinking, as if deathly afraid that if he closed his eyes even for a moment, Russo would simply throw off the furs, get up, and walk out into the dark of the woods.

Maedhros slid a bit lower onto the pillows. The cold still penetrated his mutilated body, but it was a cold flowing from the inside, straight from his tired and frozen bones. He lay like that for a long moment, listening only to Finno's hoarse, crying-fatigued breathing.

Finally, he slowly turned his head toward him. It was already very dark in the tent, and the fire was dying.

"Finno?" he said quietly, almost in a whisper.

Findekáno flinched immediately, torn from his lethargy.

"I'm here. I'm listening, Russo."

Maedhros fixed his empty, tired gaze on the visible outline of his beloved's face. His hand twitched slightly on the thick edge of the woolen blanket.

"Can... can you hold me?"