And Death Shall Have No Dominion by Prackspoor  

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Part One. Descent.

Zero: Close

 

When they climbed onto the eagle, the poisonous fumes of the Thangorodrim clogging their throats, ashes on their faces and clinging to their lashes, Fingon was sure they were both going to die.

They were too slow and someone had to have seen them. The Thangorodrim were ever-watched, ever-guarded. Surely some abomination had been watching them from the darkness and would come crawling out of a crevice any moment now. His bow and harp lay shattered at the foot of the peak hundreds of feet below when he had thrown them away in order to have both of his hands free to help his cousin. He was not sure where his sword was. He might have dropped it as well.

Turgon would strangle me if he knew. On the other hand, I am doing a splendid enough job getting myself killed without his help.

After having cut Maedhros free, the good thing was that his cousin was… well. Free. On the downside, his entire weight – earlier held by his shackles – was suddenly in Fingon's arms. Maedhros was slick with grime and sweat and blood and he was slipping through Fingon's hands. Fingon was frantically trying to keep himself and his cousin on the back of an eagle that was clinging to a vertical wall of stone. Thorondor's sleek feathers were sliding through the fingers of his left hand and the grip of his right arm around Maedhros' chest was loosening against Fingon's will. Fingon looked down to find something, anything which might give him a better hold on his cousin, and that was a mistake.

Under a sickly sky blotched with dirty reds and browns the Thangorodrim were a wall of solid featureless blackness, dropping about six hundred feet down where they met the vast desolate ashen plain that stretched from horizon to horizon. Fingon could see something silvery twinkle on the ground, a world away. An arrowhead?

Oh well. Whatever it was, he would not be getting it back any time soon. In this instant, the muscles in Fingon's lower arm cramped and his fingers almost opened their death grip. He wouldn't be able to hold their combined weight for much longer. Fingon turned his face upwards again and straight into the blood-and-dirt-clotted mane of his cousin. He spat out a few strands of the dirty copper hair that had gotten into his mouth. “Maedhros, hold on to me, I'll try to—Valar, don't play dead now!”

At least he hoped Maedhros was only acting. Light-headed with over-exertion, hurry and fear for his cousin, he craned his head to look down past Maedhros' head. Blood was dripping in pulses from his cousin's arm with every beat of his heart, so Maedhros couldn't be dead just yet.

“Maitimo!”

Maedhros mumbled something unintelligible.

"What?" Fingon leaned closer.

Maedhros swallowed, apparently struggling a few moments to unstick his tongue from his palate which must be as parched as the desert around them after being chained to the mountain for the Valar knew how long. His voice was quiet and formed the words only with great difficulty. “Leave me. Drop me.”

Fingon thought he'd misheard. He must have misheard, because the Maedhros he knew could never have sounded so lost, so tired of life, so utterly defeated. He dismissed it as some stray echo twisted by the evil jagged faces and ridges of the Thangorodrim, and with an effort that made his arm and shoulders scream, he pulled Maedhros up and a bit closer to him and shouted to Thorondor: “Fly!”

The eagle lurched under them like an earthquake. There was a flurry of feathers, a whistling of wind and a sharp snapping sound in Fingon's right shoulder. He felt a joint dislodging itself when Maedhros' weight sagged and everything that was keeping him from falling were Fingon's stiff, cramped fingers digging into his skin so deeply they were drawing blood, clinging to his cousin's ribs like clutching a rail—and it was so wrong that he was able to do that in the first place, Maedhros was not supposed to be so wasted, so thin—

They barely made it past the Anfauglith before Fingon's strength gave out at last, and when Thorondor landed on the shore of Lake Mithrim, on the opposite side of where Maedhros' brothers had set up their camps, both of them fell off his back like sacks. The eagle eyed them with an expression that seemed almost disdainful. (Fine, so maybe he did not like Finwë's kin, who could blame him?)

Fingon slumped to the ground, heaving out laboured gasps, breathing in the smells of healthy soil and fresh air and in that moment he did not know how he had survived the past months walking the desert plains of Morgoth's realm without dying, because how could you live without this?

“Thank you,” Fingon said, rolling around so he was lying on his back, the smell of grass and water and life all around him. He was feeling so giddy with relief and excitement, was only barely able to hold in a loud laugh. He looked at the eagle perched on the grass next to him. “Thank you. I am in your debt.”

Thorondor did not answer. The eagle only gave him a brief glare that quickly wandered on to a point beyond Fingon's shoulders.

Fingon's heart plummeted and he struggled to all fours, crawling over to where his cousin was lying on his side in the grass – mutilated, starved and ashen-faced, like a blight upon the verdant green all around them. Maedhros' face was white, his lips colourless, and his chest was rising and falling in ever-weakening, horribly-laboured heaves. There was no longer a stream of blood trickling from his stump.

“No. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.” Fingon rolled Maedhros onto his back and shook his shoulders. “We've come this far, don't you die on me now, don't you dare die on me now—”

Just across the Lake, he could see the banners of the House of Fëanor and Fingolfin unfurling in the rising wind. He could hear the noise of the camp, the mingling of shouts and orders, of trudging boots, the swift steps of messengers running to and fro, the whinnying of horses.

So close.

So close.

The damn thing about “so close” was that it was just another expression for “not good enough”.

 

 

 

One: Wake

 

When Maedhros wakes he is alone. He cannot feel his body and he concludes he must be dead. The thought bothers him less than he feels it should. He does not move, he barely blinks, and he lies there for a while, staring upwards at the white empty sky devoid of clouds and so oppressively close that he is sure he could touch it if he reached out. A few minutes pass, and the murky white above him coalesces into the soft structure of linen. He can see the grain of the fabric and he wonders who has taken the sky away and replaced it with a burial shroud. Then again, he's dead. He's not supposed to be looking at anything. He's not supposed to care.

He closes his eyes and drifts off again.

When he wakes a second time, it begins to dawn on him that he might not actually be dead, even though the only thing he can feel is a slight itch in his right hand. Leaving that aside, he feels fine. (A small voice inside his head tells him that there is something deeply wrong with equating the absence of pain with the absence of a body. The thought winds through his consciousness, but it doesn't snag. Like a leaf briefly caught in the brambles of a tree, a slight gust of wind is enough to take it away again and it's lost in the vast emptiness in his head.)

Also, the white sky above him is in fact a tent and he's lying on a makeshift cot with three blankets weighing him down. And his hand is itching like hell. Maedhros rolls onto his side, moving to scratch his wrist and ends up grasping at empty air. He tries three more times, staring straight ahead at the ceiling of the small tent, and fails. He drops his gaze and finds himself gaping dumbfoundedly at a linen-wrapped stump that's somehow become attached to his right shoulder.

Again, there is a nagging feeling that there should be more to this moment than the dull surprise that almost doesn't deserve the name.

Where is my hand?

But there's no one around to ask and on second thought, he doesn't really care because his thoughts are slogging down again, becoming muddied and vague and he doesn't have the heart to work through the sludge and the dirt, digging for something sensible that would explain the situation, because no explanation could give him back his hand, so whatever-fucking-for would he need an explanation, and he'd rather go back to sleep anyway, because he is tired and he doesn't care and he hates the stupid white tent that looks like the winter sky—

When he wakes for the third time it is because somebody is there with him.

“Back among the living?” Speaking to him is a shadow right at the corner of his vision. Maedhros turns his head and a tall black-haired elf swims into focus. He's dressed in light grey tunics and breeches and were it not for the silver bracers on his forearms and the heavy military boots, you'd never know he was a soldier.

It's Maglor. But then again, it’s not. His brother had a solemn, quiet nature, and Maglor had never allowed the Fëanorian flame to burn him up like it had devoured Caranthir and Curufin. The flame had taken over both of them in a blaze that turned their tempers from mere fire into volcanoes, but Maglor's fire stayed simmering under the surface and Maglor had always seemed to be in control of it. Even after the Oath, Maglor remained a calm counterweight to his brothers, his demeanour quiet and utterly measured, delivering even his seemingly spontaneous witticisms with the calculated precision of a fencer's strike.

That had been Maglor.

Maedhros is not entirely sure who the elf sitting before him is.

He looks like Maglor might look if an imperfect god had tried his hand at making elves, getting the overall picture right, but every single little detail that made them who they were wrong. Maglor had not had the cruel twist around his mouth; Maglor used to smile, not smirk and his eyes had been alight with the—albeit fading—light of the Trees.

This elf's eyes are dull and empty like the winter sky. There is no light in them, only fog and clouds and death. And yet he is smiling—no, smirking.

“You look awful,” Maglor says. Pause.

“Who would have thought,” he adds. “Fingon, of all people. The five of us planned your rescue for seven years and did not manage to get you out, and he just traipses right into the Enemy's lands without a plan, like the air-headed idiot that he is, and he succeeds.”

He laughs and the sound is bitter and raw; and it doesn't fit Maglor, because he has always been about witty songs and friendly quips, never about barbs and wires and words that can sting like knives. These little cruelties have always been more Curufin's domain, as far as Maedhros can recall (and he refuses to accept that he could have forgotten).

“A Valarin moron thwarted by an Elven dimwit. I guess there must be some truth to the proverb that fire can only be fought with fire. If we had known that before we would have treated Melkor differently. Lured him out of his den with a carrot, perhaps, instead of besieging him.” Maglor laughs again and the sound is horrible and grating.

Maedhros waits for something more to come because the air is brimming with unspoken words just waiting to spill forth like water held back by a crumbling dam. Maglor looks like he is trying and choking on them like they are a lump in this throat.

Underneath the thick haze of indifference that's separating Maedhros from everything around him, this doesn't sit well with him.

Maglor, the one who's always been the best of them with words, is getting his tongue tied in knots now. He tries, then tries again, doesn't manage to say “I missed you”, and falls silent at last.

Maedhros cannot bring himself to say it in his stead either. He's too tired to speak and it would have been a lie anyway, because he the stranger sitting in front of him is not the Maglor he has missed so much – and this version of Maglor doesn't look like he would appreciate the sentiment, either. So instead Maedhros watches him wordlessly.

After a few agonisingly drawn-out moments of awkward silence, Maglor stands. He pauses and looks down at Maedhros, still not quite sure what to say; the rules of common decency warring with his evident desire to walk out without another word. “Our brothers will be delighted to hear you're back” he says at last and it sounds like a formality, as insincere and hollow as condolences offered at the funeral of a stranger.

It takes some time for the words to sink in before Maedhros realises that a reaction is expected of him. He nods briefly which is apparently enough, because Maglor returns the nod, then pulls the flap of the tent aside and walks out.

 

 

Two: Reunion

 

“The stump looks good on you,” Curufin says. “But it doesn't befit one of my brothers to run around with only one hand, no matter how well it embodies the heroic tragedy of your suffering. I will forge you a club of massive iron you can attach to your left arm and you can use it to shut up the House of Hador at the war council meetings. I'd do it myself, but Fingolfin has placed me under supervision for the duration of such meetings, after...” He trails off meaningfully.

Caranthir smirks wryly, twirling a short silver knife between his fingers. There is a story he is missing here, Maedhros is sure, but he cannot work up the enthusiasm to ask.

So instead Maedhros gazes at his stump and says nothing. They are standing in a slight but perpetual drizzle in front of a commanding officer's tent, waiting to be allowed in. A lead-grey sky spans above them and the air smells of oncoming winter.

It is the first time Maedhros has left his tent to attend an official meeting after his return. It is also the first day he is reunited with all of his brothers since he had ridden off to negotiate with Morgoth. He saw them in front of the tent; they were stalking about like five big predatory cats, with Men and Elves alike giving them a wide berth. When they moved, they moved as one – as if there was a secret way of sharing their thoughts and intentions without uttering them aloud, as if they were just one part of a greater whole. Maybe they were, Maedhros thinks: tied and bound by their father's will and an oath sworn so long in a faraway land. When anyone happened to pass by them too closely, five heads turned simultaneously and five pairs of eyes followed the passer-by until he was out of sight, wary and hostile.

Maedhros had not noticed this behaviour in previous times, because then he had been part of the group. Only now that he was seeing them from a distance, he noticed how dangerous, how dark they looked – as if behind each of them a second, shadowy figure was standing: an almost corporeal manifestation of the madness and malice the Oath has brought down upon them.

They did not greet him as he walked up to them, barely even looked up, as if even that was too much of an acknowledgement of their failure to bring him back. Perhaps they thought that if they pretended he had never been gone, they could also pretend that Fingon had not outdone them by marching into Morgoth's realm and whisking their eldest brother away right under the nose of his watchful gaolers and gatekeepers. When Maedhros had reached their little circle, Maglor and Amras had moved aside to silently make room for him and he had taken the offered spot and that was it. He was back now and that was obviously enough.

His brothers do not pay him any more attention than if he had been with them without interruption, and it gives him ample opportunity to stare at them. He notes the air of deterioration that surrounds them like a choking shroud, which is likely a sign of the Doom's progression as it is slowly but surely tightening its chokehold on them. His brothers stand as tall and proud as he remembers them, and yet they appear old in a way Elves aren't supposed to look, even though at first glance Maedhros is hard-pressed to pinpoint what it is that is causing the impression.

A slightly wary stalk to their gait, maybe; a slump in a shoulder, or the deepening, ever-present shadows under their eyes; or perhaps it is the haggardness of their faces, the way their skin and flesh is spanned too taut over their skulls, and the way even their gums seem to be pulled back from their teeth when you looked closer.

They are loud, bickering and fighting among themselves as always, but their facial expressions look like waxen masks and for a brutal, vomit-inducing second Maedhros thinks he is looking at a group of Sauron's animated corpses. Even as he realises that he is being absurd, the after-image of the illusion is burned to the back of his eyelids, as if his brain had been branded with the idea. He tries to shake it off and finds he is unable to, and he wonders … he wonders if that is not what they all truly are. Puppets, with the Silmarils, Morgoth, Sauron, and their father pulling the strings, even from beyond the grave.

Caranthir whirls around all of a sudden, his dagger clutched in an attack grip, glaring at the closed flap of the big tent. “Who does he think he is, keeping us standing here like errand boys?” he snarls. “When have we sunk so low that we are taking orders from mere Men? Not so long ago, these short-lived, primitive, laughable imitations of our noble race would not have dared to approach us on their knees, not even while grovelling in the dirt where they belong – and now they're making the Sons of Fëanor wait!”

Maedhros listens, wondering whether it is the Oath or his brother speaking now. With Caranthir, it is hard to tell sometimes. He watches his brother walking up and down in ever-shrinking ovals, cursing and ranting, and he is amazed Caranthir could care so much, because he is unable to come up with anything for which he could work up such fervour, such fire.

Maedhros tries to imagine himself joining in, pulling aside the flap and putting this commander of Men in his place with sharp words or violence, and the thought alone is enough to drain almost all of his strength. He feels tired just thinking about it, let alone that the commander has given no offence he can discern. How could he care?

When the flap is finally pulled aside and a tall and proud bearded man in his middle years invites them in with a courteous wave of his hand, Maedhros doesn't even feel relieved to be out of the rain.

It has become too hard to care.

 

 

Three: Strain

 

Meetings tire him. People tire him.

He has been in Angband for nine years (or so they tell him), and during his stay there his life had become a simple stream of days filled with eating, drinking, interrogation, torture, surviving, defiance, more torture, surviving, behavioural conditioning, torture, and surviving.

He finds that in the meantime he has forgotten the finer points of normal life. There are so many rules, so many unspoken guidelines he has to tiptoe around and mustn't ignore; little courtesies, reading and talking between the lines, flattery and manners and etiquette. Above all he has forgotten boredom (you would think boredom was a luxury after escaping Melkor's pits, but no, no, no, not even that, especially not that.)

He has forgotten so much, and how to put up with living company is one of those things.

He has forgotten how little incentive people have to stick together if there is no threat of torture to spur them on, or no knife to their tongues to encourage them to utter nothing but the truth — or alternatively, exactly what the wielder of the knife wants to hear. Men and Elves meet to discuss battle tactics that should be straightforward and simple, but instead they are circling the truth instead of stating it outright. They blow up speeches of purple prose to epic proportions so eloquence might mask the hollowness of their orations, while their listeners are squirming in their seats, distrust oozing out of every sentence; and all of them are thinking, It could give in now. I could compromise. But I won't give it to them as easily as that, allowing past quarrels to get in the way of present decisions. Sometimes, Maedhros' left hand twitches and he finds himself thinking Morgoth's torturers would have succeeded in making you work together by now; pain makes you exceedingly cooperative— and then he catches himself and remembers that he is not in Angband anymore, even if its shadow is still clinging to him like Ungoliant's webs.

He finds he no longer has any patience for pointless dances around the finer points of meanings of words; no more patience for disputes and debates, or Elves and Men being obstructive and as non-helpful as possible. He is fed up with afternoons wasted in the hot stuffy air of the tents, huddled around braziers with greasy bacon and stale bread as the only food available. (He retched his stomach out and he did not eat anything for three days afterwards.)

He doesn't see the point of making plans. He doesn't care about the stupid war. He doesn't care about the fifth rousing speech one of the generals is going to deliver today. Which is why, after five hours of discussion, he gets to his feet and walks out without another word, leaving dumbfounded silence in his wake. He doesn't know where to go and he has no place he wants to be, so he thinks about where he doesn't want to be and that is among people and it is this realisation that leads him to steer his steps in the direction of the lake.

The surface of the lake is cold and grey at this time of the year, the reeds yellowed and brittle and the grass around trodden down by the countless horses that have been led here to be watered. Prints of hooves and heavy boots are pressed into the soft earth at the shore, forming strange erratic loops and lines. He doesn't step on them, making a game of avoiding the tracks like he'd avoid the gaps between the cobbles in the silver streets of Tirion when he was young. There is no fun in it now with no one skipping next to him, and silence as his only companion instead of the breathless laughter of his brothers who used to try to jostle him to make him stumble and step on a gap. He does not know what he has expected.

His next step lands directly on a hoof print.

At the shore he pauses, unsure, thinking. Then he makes a few steps forward and with every step, his resolve to walk just a bit further strengthens, until his feet are moving by themselves. He walks into the lake and suddenly the land opens up wide before him. The water is a dull mirror of the grey sky above, the wind is rippling the water and cutting the skin of his face. Dark clouds are towering further north. He wades in further and then even the reeds fall behind. The camp is at his back and the wind is carrying its noise away from him and there is land, land, land in every direction, still and vast and empty, but only water around him, and for a moment, he feels at peace. The water bites into his skin and he feels it, feels something, he's no longer numb, and he almost, almost laughs. The water is lapping at his knees and he enjoys the strange, slightly vertigo-inducing sensation of being so close to the mirror-surface of the lake showing the wide merciless sky above. The cold air around him bites into his skin and it hurts a bit, but pleasantly, and it makes him feel alone and alive and alien at the same time.

 

This is how Fingon finds him.

“What are you doing there?”

Maedhros turns around. The lake is lapping at his legs and the icy wind cuts through the wet fabric of his trousers and into his clammy skin. “I'm thinking about taking a bath,” he says, the sarcasm lost because – he realises – he hasn't bothered to change the tone of his voice.

“Fully clothed?” Fingon comes closer and comes to stand at the very edge of the water. A smile is dancing at the corner of his mouth, but it is not enough to chase the wariness from his expression, the cautious prepared look that Maedhros has seen a lot of people give him lately which annoys him to no end.

“So what?” he says. He taps into the challenge, the mockery, the thought of people wanting to forbid him what he wants to do, and the anger it conjures up – which he doesn't even mind because anger is one of the few things he stills feels and he relishes every second of it.

“I'd say it's a pretty bad idea, what with a storm coming up.” Fingon points north, in the direction of the clouds, of the Enemy's realm, of Angband, of torture and pain and a simple life Maedhros was capable of understanding, unlike the confusing, aggravating chaos freedom has turned out to be.

“I forgot. Valar forbid if I get wet from the rain while swimming in the lake.” Maedhros laughs and the sound is shrill and deranged and ugly even to his own ears. He snaps his mouth shut when he sees the look Fingon gives him.

His cousin is standing at the shore, pulling his heavy winter cloak tighter about himself while its hem whips about his ankles. For the briefest of moments, the horrified surprise in Fingon's face reflects Maedhros own madness back at him, but it is gone an instant later and nobody would have been able to tell it had ever been there.

“You'll catch your death if you stay in there much longer,” Fingon says. It isn't plaintive. It isn't disapproving. He is stating a fact.

Maedhros nods, unconcerned, and then turns around and wades a bit deeper out into the lake just to spite his cousin, to coax a reaction from him, something to which he could respond. He tries to map out the things Fingon could say: if he orders him to come out, Maedhros will stay in because he is tired of people telling him what's good for him. If Fingon is annoyed and walks away, well then Maedhros sees no harm in staying in the lake either, because evidently Fingon doesn't care what his crippled cousin is doing, and guess what, neither does Maedhros.

But Fingon doesn't say anything along either line.

What he does say is, “Well, until you've made up your mind I'm going to go and prepare some tea. Don't come too late or it will be cold and stale.” And then he turns around and leaves Maedhros alone, having somehow managed to find the only sentence that didn't deny Maedhros the full right to get himself killed in the water, but made it sound so decidedly impolite that he could not possibly follow through with it. Maedhros might be an egoistic suicidal cripple, but he would never spit on Fingon's kindness in such a despicable and careless way. He likes to think he was raised better than that.

The sinking sun drops below the clouds and paints everything blood-red. The water turns to a fiery opal, reflecting the inferno of the sunset in the west, the dying embers above and the scorched sky in the east. The wind turns even colder. It comes from the north and it carries the scent of snow and ashes.

Maedhros stays in the lake a bit longer until his calves are numb and then he no longer sees a sense in staying like that, because it's always like that these days: he discovers something that makes him feel less numb and he grasps at it, greedily, scrabbling to hold it close, he rides out the high until the last possible moment, but then, always and without fail, it slips through his fingers and he is left behind, feeling hollow and empty as if somebody has lowered an invisible wall between him and the rest of the world again.

Frustration rises like bile in his throat and before he can think about it he has jumped forward and is diving under the water. The cold pierces him like spears (and yes, he knows what he is talking about), pricking him with a billion needles. It drives the air out of his lungs and sets his skin alight with white-hot flame.

In this moment it occurs to him that he has also forgotten he has just one hand and is wearing a heavy winter cloak that has just now decided to wrap itself around his torso and is so soaked by now that its weight – which is already impressive when dry – has tripled.

Oh damn it.

He is flailing and straining upwards; luckily his jump hasn't taken him very far out into the lake and the water isn't very deep here. But as he strains and paddles and finally drags himself out onto the shore the thoughts going through his head are not, I don't want to die. He is thinking, I can't let the tea go cold, and, Fingon's probably already waiting for me.

He drags his feet, dripping puddles where he goes. Soldiers stop and openly stare at him but he pays them no heed. As sure as Arien finds her away across the sky, he finds his way to Fingon. He always finds Fingon. And Fingon always seems to find him.

He pulls the flap of the tent aside and enters.

Fingon is sitting cross-legged on his narrow cot, a book in his lap and wooden mug full of steaming tea in his hands. He looks up, sees Maedhros, who is dripping a veritable lake onto his carpets, and rolls his eyes.

 

 

Four: Isolation

 

They sit in Fingon's tent.

Fingon is wearing loose leisure clothes and if Maedhros did not know that his cousin was currently one of the commanding officers in a war, judging by his clothing and posture it would be easy to think he was on a vacation at the Bay of Balar: a weird mixture of athletic swashbuckler and sophisticated scholar, turning the pages of his book in his strong, sinewy hands while reclining on his cot.

Maedhros is neither swashbuckling nor sophisticated. He is wearing Fingon's scratchy blanket and staring into the murky depths of his tea.

“Are you trying to divine the outcome of the war from the tea leaves or are you thinking about taking a bath in your mug as well?” Fingon asks jokingly.

“No.” Maedhros does, in fact, want to dip a finger into the liquid to test whether it is still hot enough to scald his tongue (because you can't feel a thing through those stupid wooden mugs), but when he tries he remembers that you can't dip a finger in tea when you only have a stump, and need your working hand to hold your cup. Maedhros frowns, stares for a moment longer and then simply tosses the tea back. He waits for the heat, waits for the burn, his heart making an almost excited leap—but the tea is only lukewarm and he swallows too early and all his hasty action earns him is a coughing fit and nothing else.

It is just another insignificant, formerly effortless thing that is denied to him now, and he grasps the mug a bit tighter. He wants to hurl it and he wishes the mug was made of glass and there were solid walls instead of the tarpaulin of the tent, because he wants to shatter something, to hurt, to destroy. His hands are trembling.

And yet, he won't give this mean, aggressive part of himself the satisfaction of giving in to it – more for Fingon's sake than for his own, but still. He fights the urge down with all his might and he sets the mug down as gingerly as if it was made of porcelain instead of wood. “Thank you for the tea.”

They sit there in silence, not talking for a long while. The only sound are the crackling of the wood in the brazier next to Maedhros and the airy, papery rustle every time Fingon turns a page.

At last, Maedhros climbs to his feet and pulls on his damp clothing, feeling nothing except the uncomfortable stickiness of the wet fabric on his arms and legs. It is like trying to feel the heat of the tea through the wooden mug. Nothing seems to reach him. He turns and walks to the tent flap. He doesn't say goodbye. Silence has settled in his lungs and throat and it actually feels comfortable.

But Fingon doesn't know that, of course. “Do you want to stay here for the night?” he asks.

Maedhros turns around. Fingon hasn't looked up from his book.

Maedhros thinks. Everything about Fingon – his voice, his posture and his kindness – remind him of warmth, of safety, of home; but no matter that he feels drawn to it like a moth to the flame, he doesn't think he could bear this particular fire right now. Maybe never again. “No,” he answers and turns around again.

“Are you ready for tomorrow?”

Maedhros turns around for a second time. “For what?”

 

 

Five: Crown

 

“I don't want it.”

“I don't understand.” Fingolfin is royalty. He is splendour, sternness, and barely suppressed fire all rolled into one. He is tall, he is magnificent, and he is irritated when he towers over Maedhros, the tent intended for the High King only barely providing enough room for him to stand upright. Maedhros is sitting on the floor, still dressed in his old and frayed cast-offs, which are much too big for him now. He doesn't mind, since he only uses them for sleeping anyway. Everyone else has donned their finest armour for the reinstatement and he's here, looking like he just rolled out of bed. (Which, to be honest, he did, because why the hell not. It is them who wanted him to come here, he doesn't care about any of this.) He's looking up at his uncle, feeling like a child again in more ways than one (having to crane his head to look up at Fingolfin, having to justify himself, being scolded as if he was a wayward, stubborn boy).

“I don't want the kingship,” Maedhros repeats.

“You are the rightful heir. You are the High King of the Noldor. You cannot refuse what you are, just as you cannot refuse who you are.” Curufin steps forward. A slight hiss curls around the sibilants, at once both a threat and a reminder not to forget his name and his legacy.

As if anyone could ever forget that.

Maedhros shrugs and turns his head back to Fingolfin. “Just take it, I don't care.”

He can feel the baleful stares of his brothers boring into his back and if they weren't of the same blood he would be sure that they'd massacre him afterwards. Come to think of it, he is not even sure they won't do it anyway, even though they are related.

“The title is passed along according to male primogeniture, with no respect to brothers,” Fingolfin says. “Your own father made those laws.”

“My father is dead,” Maedhros retorts and when Curufin's eyes narrow and Celegorm's eyebrow twitches he almost laughs. Then he thinks, I am an arsehole.

“You have a strange way of honouring his memory, I grant that,” Fingolfin says coolly, but there is something else in his voice. Something he's holding back that is softer, more vulnerable … disbelief? A Fëanorion freely giving away his legacy instead of clinging to it and clawing at everyone who wants to take it away?

Maedhros sighs. “Good. Fine. Have it your way. How about this: hereby, as the High King of Noldor, I abolish the law of male primogeniture and pass the title of High King to you, Fingolfin, Son of Finwë, to do with as you please and establish any order of succession you like.” He makes a dismissive gesture and then lets his hand drop back into his lap. What does he care about kingships and struggles and kingdoms? As if there was nothing more important in the world than being able to carry a fancy title and strut around with a crown on your head.

Maedhros Nelyafinwë, High King of the Noldor, so what.

He climbs to his feet (more deftly, he's got practise by now doing it with one hand only) and gives Fingolfin a bow. “Take the title, Uncle. You are more fit to carry your brother's legacy than I am or than any of my brothers are. Let this be the recompense the line of Fëanor owes you for the insult that my father inflicted upon you by drawing his sword on you back in Aman.”

Now Maedhros is sure Curufin will try to murder him. Behind him he can hear the sounds of a violent shuffle and then a hand clapping down on someone's pauldroned shoulder and Maglor hissing, “No.”

Fingolfin inclines his head to one side. “Russandol,” he says and his voice is gentle. Maedhros cannot remember the last time his uncle has called him by the affectionate epessë.

“I and everyone else know that you are not well and may not have the leisure or will to think about this. We can postpone this decision until you feel better. I agree to serve as the prince-regent in the meantime, but—”

“No,” Maedhros interrupts and suddenly something blooms in his chest, something wild and mad and suddenly he is on a roll, words pouring out of him as if in a torrent. He is going to do something outrageous, something which will make some tempers boil, and it is exhilarating.

“Take it,” he says and a grin splits his face (as if someone had cleaved through it with an axe). “I cannot even wield a sword right now and as you say, I am not fit to rule now as High King. I do not think I'll ever be again.”

“Nelyo,” Caranthir growls and the diminutive has never sounded more like a threat.

“It's my decision and it is final,” Maedhros says and lays his only remaining hand on Fingolfin's shoulder, and his uncle almost flinches under his touch. “Just look at us, Uncle. Would you not agree that it is in the interest of everyone that a sane man has the crown, with sane sons he can pass it on to?” He smiles brightly, then he bows again. “All hail to you, High King.”

And then he rounds his uncle, throws the flap of the tent aside, and marches out.

Maedhros waits until he is sufficiently far from the camp, standing right at the edge of nowhere where the vast plains begin to stretch out all around him, and then he doubles over with wild, unrestrained laughter.

 

Six: Succumb

 

Maedhros has always thought the destruction of a family would be loud: a thing of screaming and arguments, of hurling things at each other and porcelain shattering against walls. He's been wrong. After having extricated himself so masterfully from the last bit of responsibility to the crown of the Noldor, and having done so in a way that left his brothers distrusting him entirely, Maedhros found himself pushed aside to the very brink of the war and left to his own devices.

Also, he was finding the destruction of a family to be quiet, gradual, and sad.

Maglor visited him once to ask whether he was all right, and Curufin came to deliver a stream of death threats.

After Maedhros had said yes to Maglor and laughed at Curufin, both had left and neither had returned. His other brothers stopped by more than once, but since Maedhros rarely listened to what they had to say and answered on even fewer occasions, his stream of visitors decreased to a trickle and after a while, even his brothers no longer came to see him. Elves and Men were busy fighting a war, and they had other things to do than to look after unwilling invalids. After Maedhros had acted the part of the indifferent mute for a week or so, not even messengers came to his tent any longer to wake him from the fitful sleep he sometimes (rarely, actually almost never) slipped into, in order to beg him to take part in council meetings, or ask his signature for something.

He spends most of his time sleeping these days. Sleeping is not exactly good—he dreams of Angband more often than not—but in his dreams, at least, he is fighting. He is back in chains, mangled and starved and whipped like an alley dog, but he is fighting, he is thrashing, he is defying Morgoth with everything he has, even if it takes him to the brink of what he can bear and oftentimes beyond. In his dreams, he is captured and beaten and there is blood between his teeth and a horrible red grin of his face, but he feels energetic and vengeful and so alive.

When he wakes it is as if someone has poured lead into his veins. Opening his lids to the sting of sunlight is like one of Morgoth's iron brands being pressed to his eyes. Moving, sitting up, and walking around fills him with the same sinking feeling that the prospect of climbing a wall of stone a thousand miles high with his bare hands might have given him once – one of impossible, painful, meaningless effort.

Meaningless like this war, meaningless like this army camped here, while its generals were holding meeting after meeting as if this war could be resolved if they only talked about it enough. He likes to ponder this thought. It makes him angry and anger chases the weariness out of his bones, sometimes enough for him to even get up and prowl the city of tents for a while, throwing glares left and right and thinking about the idiocy of all of this. At times during these walks, mad ideas flit in and out of his minds like shooting stars.

I could go back, he thinks. I could go back and let him take me again. And I'll destroy him from the inside.

He likes the idea, even if it will always remain a mad plan in his head never to be realised, because there is no way a fortress like Angband could fall from the inside unless Morgoth himself wanted it so.

And with that sinking realisation, when dull grey reality has settled back in, a reality where Maedhros realises anew every time how futile everything is and how few possibilities actually exist here – as opposed to his colourful dreams full of blood-red, nightmare-black, choking-ash-gray, torture-chamber-orange – the weariness creeps back into his bones. And if he happened to be wandering the seashore when this deep, dark, and infinite weariness descended, he would sit down on a boulder, hunched in on himself, and it would take hours until he could work up the strength to stand up and walk back to his tent again, all the time not knowing why he was making the effort in the first place.

It has become so hard to find the answers to the endless echo of Whys in his head. There doesn't seem to be a reason for anything that is happening around him and to him, and sometimes he wonders how he has gone about his days before his imprisonment in Angband. He tries to remember, but it does not feel like remembering himself so much as thinking of an entirely different man. He has no more access to the mind and memories of the charismatic, spirited leader he used to be than he had once had to the mind of his father. The first memories he has, the first time he has felt like he was feeling and living as himself now started with waking up in a tent whose ceiling he had mistaken for the featureless white sky of a winter day.

He remembers Maglor greeting him, “Back among the living?” and suddenly he's not sure he is. Living as he recalls it (recalling in a sense only as if someone he knew had told him about an experience he'd never made himself) is not what he is doing now.

He is existing.

He is breathing.

He is eating and sleeping.

And yet he's not sure that's all there is to what they call life. For a while he really wants to go on ruminating, the philosophical question glittering with the promise of fascination, but hooking his attention is hard nowadays and his will and concentration slip between his fingers like an eel.

A bit of colour drains out of the world around him. It may be the sunset of early winter, but then again it may just be him. And then he is left uncaring, staring at nothing in particular and feeling little, so very little, and not caring about it at all.

He thinks about Fingon and his invitation to stay for the night.

 

 

 

Seven: Far away

 

“What are we doing?” Fingon asks.

On his elbows and knees, Maedhros stills and stares at the rug below him, feeling the cold on his bare skin to his right where the tent's entrance lies, while the heat of the brazier warms his left side. He thinks about the question, wonders whether there is a double meaning to it, and then decides he has no time and leisure for cryptic questions and philosophical answers.

“We're fucking,” he says.

Fingon is still, then gives a snort that is almost derisive and Maedhros can almost see his cousin rolling his eyes behind him. He steadies his lower arm on Maedhros' back and leans onto him. “I did not mean it like that. I mean what are we doing here? You did not come here for company, you aren't even enjoying the act. You told me yourself and yet you are here. Why are we doing this? What are you trying to achieve?”

What indeed.

There is an awkward silence, both of them frozen in a position that compromising doesn't even begin to describe, and then something in the air shifts and Maedhros gingerly rights himself.

“Can you get off me?” he asks quietly.

His cousin obliges and lets go, sliding out and away from him.

Maedhros rolls over to lie on his back, listening to his body for a while, feeling out for hints of soreness, for pain, for anything at all, but there is nothing, nothing, nothing because somewhere a cruel god is sitting and laughing at him because he is chasing feeling like shadows only to be denied again and again and again.

Fingon throws a blanket over him and pulls on his breeches and a shirt before sitting down next to him. “Why, Maitimo?”

“Do not call me that,” he says and in the next moment regrets it because there was something, something, something, a stab of regret, a stab of anger, of wistfulness at the memory of his shorn hair that is slowly growing back in, his broken and battered body grown back together all crooked and wrong and weak, his missing teeth, the scars criss-crossing his skin—

“Maitimo,” he repeats slowly.

Fingon watches him, puzzled and quiet and sad. “Yes. Maitimo. Or maybe not. Sometimes I'm not sure whether you really lived when we carried you into the camp or whether you died when we weren't looking,” he says. “Sometimes I doubt whether I really found my cousin and brought him back here with me.”

“My brothers would be delighted if you had brought home someone else instead,” Maedhros says. “They despise you for having outdone their years of careful planning and sitting still, fretting about what to do. A failure on your part would reconcile them with their high opinion of themselves.”

Fingon reaches out and brushes an errant strand of hair out of Maedhros' eyes. “Your brothers worry about you and they would never trade their brother for a personal victory. They love you.” He hesitates a moment before adding, “And so do I.”

Maedhros looks up at the ceiling of Fingon's tent. He is so tired of tents. He feels a lump rising in his throat and out of sheer reflex tries to fight it down before remembering that this – feeling something, any emotion at all – is exactly what he wants and then he lets go and tries to let it out—Valar, it would be a relief to be able to cry. But no, the urge gets stuck somewhere in his throat and he coughs and retches trying to get it out, but his eyes stay dry and his voice stays calm and he isn't shivering, not even from the cold and after a while he just gives up.

“I was trying to feel something,” he says, aware that an eternity must have passed between the question and now, making his answer basically a non-sequitur.

“And it didn't work.” Fingon watches him and it is winter in his eyes as well. Grey, grey, grey, so much grey and so little colour. There is so much pain in Fingon's eyes and Maedhros wishes he could reach out and take it away from him, to have it and hold it and cherish it—anything but that emptiness in his head and chest, his everywhere.

“You're so far away these days, I often wonder whether I only whisked your body away and your spirit is still chained to the Thangorodrim,” Fingon says quietly. “Where are you when you close your eyes?”

Maedhros thinks about this. “I dream of Angband sometimes," he says at last. (This is a lie. He is there all the time, as soon as he closes his eyes.)

“Sometimes I wonder if it would not be better if I returned there.” He does not know where the words are coming from, but he does not try to stop them. “It was terrible, but in a way it was easier. All I had to do was fight back against everything and survive. But this? Now and here? Everything is difficult and nothing makes sense. I do not know how anything is supposed to work. It is as if all of you are speaking a language I do not understand. You worry so much and about things I cannot bring myself to care about. You all talk so much. You plan. But for what? I know that something is wrong with me, but still I cannot see what it is and how to fix it. I think I might be broken, Finno, like a sword shattered in the middle.” He raises his stump before his eyes and stares at it.

Fingon doesn't flinch. He's never been one to shirk away from unpleasantness and danger. But there is a hard line around his mouth and something in his face grows dark.

“Tell me where you are and how to free you,” Fingon says and leans over him, taking Maedhros' face in between his hands. “Tell me how to get you out of there.”

“I don't know,” Maedhros says and for once there is a tremor of emotion in his voice – quiet, feeble, helpless. How do you get someone out of their own head? How does one free a soul? “I don't know, Finno," he repeats. A cold gust whistles through the tent. It carries the promise of snow.

“You're fading away,” Fingon says, his grip almost painful now. “But I won't let you, do you hear me? I wont let you. I swear by my name—”

There is the pain, at last: a shock that jerks through him like lightning and he shoots up into a sitting position, slapping his left hand over Fingon's mouth, steadied by his stump, his eyes wide and his heart hammering.

“No oaths! No more! Not from you, not ever from you!” His arms are trembling; he is shaking all over. “Swear not to retrieve what cannot be saved. Make no oath to bring back what is forever lost. Don't bind your soul to a hopeless cause.”

Fingon still has his hands on both sides of Maedhros' face. He slides them down along Maedhros' neck, his shoulders, down his upper arms, his forearms until Fingon gently takes hold of his cousin's fingers and pulls away the hand covering his mouth.

“No hopeless cause. You're still here.” Fingon smiles. “There is hope.”

“No oaths. Fingon, I beg you.” Maedhros draws in breath after breath, but his lungs feel like they are about to shrivel up and leave him to suffocate.

“All right.” Fingon's warm fingers lace through Maedhros' cold ones and he leans forward to rest their foreheads together. “No oaths. A promise then.”

There is a breathless silence.

"You know this doesn't change anything," Fingon says. "And if I must hound your soul to the end of the world if that is what it takes to retrieve it, so be it. By now you must know that running away even into the darkest of places will not keep me from following."

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