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In the four hundred and fifty-eighth year of the Sun, Maedhros judged the strength of Himring sufficient to hold without its lord a month or two and so rode, unlooked for, to Barad Eithel. He had meant to do it sooner but with his cousins dead and brothers fled, his realm fallen near to ruin, there had been no time to spare for other losses.
How the king knew of his coming Maedhros was not sure but his cousin met him at the city’s great, white gates. There were no trumpets sounded, no honour guard, only Fingon in a plain silver circlet, escorted by two harried soldiers. One of them stepped forwards and Maedhros handed off his weary horse with a nod to her and a pat for the animal.
“You look well,” said Fingon, who had not moved to greet him.
“War becomes me. You look pale.” That was a politic understatement. The king was pale indeed, with his dark hair lank and unadorned about his shoulders and a shadow in his bright eyes.
“It’s been a difficult year.”
A difficult Age. “I’m sorry I could not come sooner,” Maedhros said and wrapped his arms about him.
Fingon had always been free with his emotions and wept near as easily as he laughed. He did not weep this time. “I’m glad you’re here now,” he said, stoic and dignified. “We have much to speak of.”
So they did. Borders to redefine, construction works to approve, tithes to agree upon. Tedious matters of administration which Maedhros had never minded but knew Fingon disdained. They worked together long into the night and Fingon did not speak of the reason he had taken on these duties.
Once Maedhros would have allowed that. When hurt, his own instinct had always been to hide it as a weakness, to seek solitude that he might lick his wounds in peace. It had taken long years to learn that Fingon did not see it so and thought it was a kindness to comfort and cosset, to force company upon him, to chip at his walls until they crumbled and collapsed. And so Maedhros did not leave well enough alone but dogged his king’s footsteps with invitations to spar, to hunt, to drink and, when he had exhausted other options, to bed.
“You don’t need to do that,” Fingon said dully.
It was like looking in a mirror and Maedhros hated his own reflection. He rolled his eyes and kissed his king, kissed the sour grief from his mouth and the chill from his skin, kissed him until Fingon clutched at Maedhros’ tunic as though to save himself from drowning and dragged him towards the bed. Maedhros would have been gentle but, even in his sorrow, Fingon was Fingon and writhed and bit and cursed until Maedhros had pinned him and bruised him and taken him apart.
Fingon did not weep afterwards, as Maedhros held him and the sweat dried on their skin, nor was the shadow gone from his eyes. But he did sigh and say, “I’m being very silly, aren’t I?”
“Unwise, perhaps,” said Maedhros. “I would know.”
“I’ll talk about it. I will. But not now.”
Maedhros might have had objected but Fingon yawned and pressed against him, warm now and relaxed for the first time in days and so Maedhros let it pass.
***
After that came more bureaucracy, more desperate coupling, and more strained silence.
It was not until the twelfth night of Maedhros’ visit that Fingon, deep in his cups, looked up and said, “I don’t know why he did it.”
Maedhros, who knew very well, drained his own glass and said nothing.
“If he’d only waited. If he’d told me what he was planning- he must have known I would have gone with him!”
Fingon was a clever man, far wiser than Maedhros in many ways, but some things he just could not seem to grasp. Maedhros had always loved that about him. “He knew,” he said. “Of course he knew.”
“Better that it had been the other way around - that my father was king yet and I had ridden out to face the Enemy.”
“Better you had died?”
“My father was the statesman, I the swordsman. Always that was so. He could manage this rebuilding far better than I and I...I might have-”
“Won? No. You would not have won,” Maedhros said, as gently as he might. He could add: ‘Your father did not think to win,’ but was not sure that Fingon would understand.
Fingon glowered, obstinate. “I might have.”
His cousin never had learnt how to lose. Perhaps that was Maedhros’ fault for all the games of chess and wrestling matches thrown when they were children. Who but Fingon would have thought that he could march straight into Angband, seize a prisoner and win free? Who but Fingon could have succeeded?
Fingon’s thoughts must have followed a similar path. “They said that you could not be saved and yet I did it. They said the Ice could not be crossed, they said Glaurung could not be slain-”
“Although I take your point, the dragon lives.” Maedhros himself had made an art form out of loss, spent his life calculating which pieces he could sacrifice to best prolong the game. He would have conceded long ago but for Fingon, which left him a tricky balance to keep. His cousin could not fall to despair but no more did Maedhros want him racing back into the Iron Hells to challenge Morgoth upon his throne in misplaced hope. “And what of its master? Such things as he can’t die.”
“They can be severely inconvenienced.” The light in Fingon’s eyes flared bright. He was, despite his grief, despite his weariness and unkempt hair, still very beautiful.
Maedhros refilled their cups and said, “To Fingolfin Finwion, the greatest inconvenience of our Age. And to you. If you vex the Enemy half as much as you vexed your father, let him beware!”
“Vex! I was the most excellent of sons. You are one to speak of vexing.”
“I only managed it the once. Certainly, I never got blind drunk on backwoods Miruvor-”
“As though I have not seen you so!”
“Drunk but never blinded - I know how to run a still. Nor have I ever gone racing through the streets, naked, on a stolen horse-”
“Borrowed!”
“-or set the summer house on fire-”
“That was Aredhel!”
“It was the both of you. I had it from Celegorm who had it from your sister.”
“Your brother is a liar.”
“You’re thinking of Curufin. Or Maglor, though he would call it creative license.”
Fingon sighed, his levity gone as swiftly as it had come upon him. “Well. I suppose there’s little point pretending now.”
“There was little point pretending then,” said Maedhros, cleaving desperately to that glimpse of gaiety. “Do you think he did not know?”
“I suppose he must have. It used to feel like he knew everything. When I was a boy I’d come to him with a hundred foolish questions every day, and he always had an answer, or if he did not then he would find it with me. Even when he was horribly busy or horribly upset he never let it show.”
“He was a patient man.” Until he wasn’t. For all their differences, real and fabricated, his uncle and his father had been cut from similar cloth. Certainly, they’d contrived to die alike, outmatched and in despair.
“He was a good man,” Fingon said, all in a rush. “A good man and it isn’t fair. All his life my father kept the Gods and this was his reward? Did you hear the eagle came again?”
The Valar were never fair, were never wise - why did we flee their cage if not for that? But now was not the time if ever there would be one. “I did,” said Maedhros, bracing for the blow.
“With news.” Fingon spat the word. “It told me he was dead and his body gone to Turgon. Morgoth would have defiled his corpse, Thorondor said, and expected me to thank him. What do I care for a corpse? I want my father and if they’d come one moment sooner-” He took a breath. “They came in time before. They came for you.”
Maedhros was, fortunately, very good at dissembling and knew he did not flinch. Not for the first time, he wished that Finrod and Galadriel weren’t mourning losses of their own, that Turgon and Aredhel had not vanished into the mountains without a word or backwards glance. Any one of them would have done better at this than he. Even in Aman, even before he had ruined himself, Maedhros had always dealt better with practical concerns - he had bandaged his brothers’ cuts and scrapes but it was Maglor that had clucked over them and told them they were brave.
There were surely kind, diplomatic things to be said now but he could think of none of them and instead got up to kneel at Fingon’s side. Fingon made an unhappy, choked off noise and slumped against him, burying his head in Maedhros’ tunic.
It went on for quite some time; Maedhros held him and stroked his tangled hair and bit his tongue while Fingon shuddered against him, making ugly, animal noises. When the fit had passed he dried his eyes and wiped his nose upon Maedhros’ sleeve.
“I know he taught you better manners than that,” Maedhros said and Fingon gave a watery laugh.
They both watched the fire for a moment, sturdy logs falling to ash within the flames, charring and twisting like the timbers of a ship, like the limbs of those long dead.
“Do you miss him still?” Fingon was sometimes too perceptive for his own good.
“What kind of son would I be if I did not?” The prevarication was instinctive. Whatever Fingon thought he wanted to hear, it was not praise of Fëanor and sorrow for his loss. Nor would Maedhros offer up the anger, the antipathy, and the guilt that marred his last memories of his father to someone whose own grief was so uncomplicated.
Fingon frowned and elbowed him. “A proper answer, or next time I’ll blow my nose upon your hair.”
“Is that what happened to yours?” Maedhros brushed the damp locks back from Fingon’s brow but did not win a second smile. He still looked wretched and so Maedhros gave him what he could. “After your rescue, I thought Father was there in the camp, caring for me. It was Curufin, of course, but the mistake is easily made at the best of times and these were not the best of times. He’d correct me and I’d grieve, accept it and then have forgotten it all by the next day. We must have done it five times over before he could not bear it anymore and refused to be near me until I was more lucid.”
“He might have played along,” Fingon said, more indignant than Maedhros had ever been on his own account. Indignation was an improvement - certainly, it was closer to his natural temper than misery.
“The loss was hard, on him more than any of us. He didn’t need his nose rubbed in it.”
“You needed your father.” Fingon shifted in his seat, fingers intertwining aimlessly. “Once, while we were out hunting, the ice broke beneath me and I fell.”
Another flinch stifled. The chill of the stone floor was making his knees ache but he’d held less comfortable positions for much longer and listening was the least that he could do.
“I’d been cold all of the march but this was different. It burnt like I’d fallen into flames, so painful I could do no more than sink, my lungs filling with fire. I was on a line - we learnt after Elenwë and Haeredel and all the others - and they pulled me out, but I couldn’t get up afterwards, or didn’t think I could. They dragged me out of my frozen clothes - and that took some doing! Have you ever seen a pair of breeches frozen so stiff they can stand up on their own?”
“No, alas.” Maedhros took Fingon’s tangled hands in his own and ran his thumb over the wavering white scars that limned his fingers.
“It was not quite so funny at the time. Anyway, they bundled me into dry clothes and onto a sledge, and then everyone milled around, getting in each other’s way, while I lay there too cold and sick even to shiver.
“That was when my father came stomping over and dragged me right back off the sledge and chaffed my hands and cursed me and made me walk. I hated him for refusing to leave me to sleep and said some very unkind things, but he only swore back at me until I would stumble of my own accord. I think I would have died then if he had not forced me to move.” Fingon sighed, sniffed and sat up straighter in his chair. “He would want me to pull myself together now.”
“You haven’t shirked your duty to your people. You’ve not cared for yourself though and that, I think, he would want you to amend.” Maedhros kissed the tip of Fingon’s reddened nose and added, “You might start by doing something with your hair.”
“Should I shave it off to show my grief?”
Maedhros’ consternation was not entirely feigned. “I would settle for washing it - no need to be rash.”
“I’ll ring for a bath. Will you join me?”
Eagles, ice and a hundred thousand failures, large and small. The last thing he wanted was to watch Fingon wince and squirm at the scald of hot water on frostbitten toes. “I’d better,” he said. “You’ve leaked all over me. Was that a ploy?”
“You’re the schemer. I am forthright to a fault.”
The servants brought hot water and, if they were perturbed by the lateness of the hour or by Maedhros’ attendance on their king, made no comment in his earshot.
Fingon could have undressed himself with greater ease but Maedhros insisted and his cousin acquiesced so quickly Maedhros knew it had always been his hope. The knots and buttons and interminable layers that were so vital a part of a king’s full court regalia were no easy task with one hand and the water was only steaming a little by the time he was done and Fingon could climb in. Despite that Fingon shuddered and held his hands above the surface.
Maedhros undressed himself more adroitly and hid his own wince as the change in temperature made sharp pain flare in his joints, holding his right arm free of the water. He’d learnt not to be self-conscious - when Fingon looked at him, naked or otherwise, there was usually nothing in his gaze but affection. Rarely judgement. Never pity.
He looked speculative now. Maedhros considered flicking water at him, drawing him closer for a kiss or something else, anything to distract him. But that would be to assuage his own discomfort, not for Fingon, and so he sat quietly until Fingon asked, “Do you think that we can win?”
“I love you,” Maedhros said. “I trust you. I would die for you, the Oath be damned. If anyone can win this war it's you.”
“But you don’t think anyone can,” Fingon said softly.
I trust you. Maedhros could not prove himself false with his next breath. “No.” No more than your father did.
Fingon’s expression was strange and sharp and would have stymied someone who had not spent a thousand years learning to read him. Maedhros had made that study, though, and so was not entirely surprised when suddenly he laughed. “Do you ever grow tired of being proven wrong?”
“I delight in it,” said Maedhros and the breath he drew was shaky with relief. No wound could heal so quickly but he thought it might heal clean. “By all means, make me look a fool.”
“Too easily done,” Fingon said and splashed him. “It really was Aredhel that burnt the house down.”