Thanks to @melians-griddle for the tag to share something I've worked on today (no snow here, ho ho). Have a little heartbreak, friends! Tagging @queerofthedagger @thescrapwitch @from-the-coffee-shop-in-edoras @starspray @starsuncounted @melestasflight if you want to come play in the not-snow.
What the orcs scrape from the mire is nearly unrecognizable, so broken and bloodied is it, but it is alive enough to be wrapped in the tattered remnants of a silver banner and dragged, juddering and groaning, to the great iron gates and beyond.
The clash of those gates as they swing closed rings through Maedhros with the discord of a cracked brass bell, echoing in cacophony behind his eyes and in the depths of his disbelieving heart.
“No!” he cries, again and again in a desperate, mounting howl. “No, no, no, Fingon, no!”
Maglor believes him to be mourning. He takes Maedhros’ hollow-eyed distance from the slog and scramble of their retreat to mean that a bond long unacknowledged has been severed, and his heart and mind have broken with it.
But the truth is worse. The bond remains.
And it is stronger now than ever, relaying Fingon’s torment in a stream of haunting misery - each step of it searingly familiar. The chains, the brands, the mockery before the iron throne. The lash, the bites, the blackness of the deepest cells. The knowledge that Fingon is - and will remain - alone.
Time after time the link thins nearly to breaking, only to be snapped back into agony by some dark art, some necromantic evil that Maedhros knows the taste of all too well. There is humor in the pain, then. As though Sauron is laughing down the bond and taunting him.
Maedhros lets Maglor steer them south, barely noticing the path of their retreat, the reordering of their forces in the fortress at Amon Ereb. His mind is bent on Fingon, always, buttressing his lover’s strength, bearing what he can absorb to ease him when he may. His whole self echoes with Fingon’s pain, doubled with his own embodied memories.
Only once is there clarity enough for speech, in the small hours of a chilly morning. Maedhros wakes to Fingon’s voice, wearied but certain, as he ever was, of what must be done.
Russo. Beloved. I have tried, but I do not have the strength, alone. Please. Help me to end this. Help me to go home.
Maedhros laughs, gasping and weeping. Here it is, at last: the fruit of that first, cursed charge in Alqualondë. There would be little pity, they were warned. And truly, there is none.
But he loves Fingon more than life, and always will.
Maedhros reaches with his whole heart, folds himself around Fingon in his mind as he once had in body in the peace of their great bed in Himring. Draws him as close as he can, until he can almost feel Fingon’s hair against his cheek. He wraps the memory of his long-lost hand around the sweet imagined curve of Fingon’s throat. And squeezes.
“Be free, love,” he whispers. “Take the gift you would not give to me.”
There is a flutter in the dark. That bright soul, fleeing.
In the stillness, after, Maedhros dons his mail, and oils his blade. His mind is clear; he has been idle for too long. They must regroup - their focus must be honed. There is a Silmaril in Doriath, and their Oath to drive them on.
