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feanorianweek · 21 days

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in my cold arms

[Fingon/Maedhros | T+ | 2.5k | AO3]

Tags: Canon Era, Post-Rescue from Thangorodrim, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Hair-Cutting as a Metaphor for frankly too many things, Light Angst

(Very belatedly) written for @feanorianweek day 1: Maedhros

Maedhros has been quiet since Fingon brought him back.

It should come as no surprise, of course, and in many ways, it is not. He sleeps a lot. He sits and watches as his brothers try not to choke or tear each other apart, caught between their relief and their guilt. He eats and drinks, slow and methodical.

It should come as no surprise, but Fingon catches himself thinking that it is. That it sits wrongly on the bruised, beautiful face—the blankness, the fissure cracks of desolation, the absence of fire.

Even sleeping as he is now, Fingon sitting beside his bed in silent vigil, he looks drawn. Fragile. As if he is only half there.

In all the years they have known each other, Maedhros has always burnt so bright that some days, Fingon could almost feel the heat of it, could sense the threat of what would happen to him if he dared come too close.

And Fingon had known that it would not be the same; had known it when he stood on the shores of the Helkaraxë, and when he learnt, later, that Maedhros had been taken. Knew it when he made the decision to find him, when he sang, when his arrow shivered on its string. More than anything, he had known it when he lifted his blade and saw the anguished resignation in Maedhros’ eyes.

He had known that it would not be the same, but Maedhros still looks at the world around him with that same anguished resignation, still looks, sometimes when he thinks Fingon isn’t watching, as if he can’t decide whether he has been rescued or condemned.

It looks wrong on him. No matter what Fingon had expected, it makes his skin crawl to see him like this. Makes him want to pick up his bow and his sword and march right back into Angband, enact his seething, bristling vengeance, claw the fire right out from beneath the accursed mountain until he can sink it back into Maedhros skin, let it warm him, make him whole.

Or perhaps that is overly arrogant. Perhaps Fingon just wishes that he could do something, something other than enduring the thick, lingering tension between them whenever Maedhros wakes. Something other than staring at the severed limb, wrought by Fingon’s own hand, whenever Maedhros sleeps.

He knows that it had been the only way. And yet.

“Stop.”

The voice makes him jolt, gaze snapping up to Maedhros face. He hadn’t noticed him waking, and there is said awkwardness, the unreadable glint in Maedhros eyes, the way that the air in the tent turns heavy with years of unspoken words.

Fingon wishes it were only Morgoth’s crimes lying between them.

“Stop what?” he asks, keeping his tone light. He does not think of how long it has been—weeks since they arrived in the camp. Years, decades since the light of Telperion washed Maedhros in glittering silver, his eyes like gems in the twilight. Since things were easy, shimmering promises hovering between them, a careful dance around a future just waiting for them to grasp it.

A lifetime, it feels, since then. Now Maedhros looks washed out and Fingon’s hands are shaking, and neither any longer knows how to talk to the other.

“Self-flagellating yourself over whatever supposed failure you are ruminating on this time,” Maedhros says, a ghost of a smile touching his mouth. It vanishes as soon as it appeared. “What troubles you, Findekáno? We live yet. We breathe. Is that not all that counts?”

There is no accusation in Maedhros' mild tone, no bitterness. It is in the deliberate absence of it that Fingon sees it regardless, the space carefully measured and side-stepped.

He wants to weep, to shout. He curls his hands into fists until his nails bite into skin.

“Is it? Do you think so?”

He should not ask, should not pose the question like this. It has been decades, but he knows Maedhros, knows the flare of his temper and the meaning of how his eyes flash in response.

It is only a flicker, now, but it is more fire than Fingon has seen in weeks, and so he cannot help but revere it, to feel an answering spark inside his chest. To want to feed the flames no matter the cost.

He restrains himself. He is not here to poke and prod at Maedhros, to merely satisfy whatever his treacherous heart still, always still, wishes for.

Maedhros lifts a brow, and despite the scars twisting across his face, despite the tangled, matted mess of his hair and the ink-deep shadows beneath his eyes, he still succeeds in making it look imperious.

“I do not wish for death, Fingon; you may all be keeping a close watch on me, but I think I am yet capable of at least closing my eyes and meeting my end if I so pleased.”

It is not that easy, Fingon wants to say, but what use is it to argue. Maedhros is sharp-edged, a glinting blade yearning for blood, and Fingon has rarely ever seen him like this, but he knows him.

So he asks, “Do you want me to leave?” and pretends that his heart is not the pulpy, open mess of a wound within his chest.

Maedhros exhales sharply and slumps back into his pillows. His arm twitches as if he wants to reach for Fingon, and then remembers that he no longer has a hand to do so.

“No,” he finally says, after a pause that feels like years on grinding ice. “No, I would rather…”

He does not finish, and Fingon does not reach for him at the words he hears despite the silence.

Stay. I would rather you stay. I want to stay.

He settles back in his chair and lets his heart settle alongside it. Says, “Whatever you need, Russo,” and pretends that it is not an oath in its own right.

---

Fingon keeps staying, day after day in the dim tent. His father stays his tongue but his eyes speak volumes, and not all of their kin are as sparse with the proclamation of their judgement.

Fingon ignores it. With that, at least, he has long years of practice. And while progress seems slow, while Maedhros’ brothers watch him without bothering for subtlety, while some nights, Fingon still lies awake and feels blood on his hands, hears Maedhros’ screams, hears him beg, well—he at least no longer wonders whether he made the right choice.

Maedhros is alive, and he is clawing his way back to something akin to living too, arduous inch by arduous inch. When it comes right down to it, that is all Fingon wants.

Today, the late September day is brisk, even in the royal tent. He has a complicated relationship with the cold these days, but he doubts that it would be taken in anything but a pointed manner if he asked for furs.

So he sits, and lets his eyes linger on the bandages around Maedhros' arm, the unkempt hair, the battered mess of him.

He has not let anyone tend to said hair yet, none of his brothers and certainly not the healers, no matter how sharp Celegorm’s remarks or Maglor’s quiet offers. How obvious his discomfort.

“You are cold,” Maedhros says, once again catching Fingon off guard. At whatever Fingon’s face is doing, he huffs, waiting until Fingon meets his eyes. “You know me, Finyo; you forget that I know you, too.”

Fingon swallows his heart as it tries to leap up his throat. Smiles. Curls his hands into fists once more, and then uncurls them again, finger after finger, when Maedhros nods towards one of his blankets.

As Fingon takes it, warmth already suffusing his chest that has nothing to do with the actual fur, Maedhros pushes himself up. He is still unsteady, his recovery happening in staggering steps that are not helped by how some days, he pushes himself too much, and others refuses to rise at all.

Today, between the blankets and the tiredness and Fingon in the midst of it, he tangles himself up, leans on his own hair, and curses in a manner so foul that Nerdanel would have washed out his mouth for it.

Fingon reaches for him instinctively, and Maedhros doesn’t flinch away when he helps him to sit. It’s progress, and Fingon gladly takes it as such; he has long since stopped mourning for things he will not get back.

There is a pause once they have sorted themselves out, Fingon back in his chair and Maedhros perched on the edge of the bed. The braziers are rustling in the middle of the tent, and outside, the muted din of voices and people moving spools on without them.

Maedhros looks at him, a determined set to his jaw that Fingon, even after everything, is intimately familiar with.

And yet, when Maedhros says, “I want to cut it off,” Fingon stares at him for a heartbeat, two, too long before the words properly register.

“You what?”

Maedhros tilts his chin up. His eyes flash. Fingon wants to weep.

“The hair; I need it off, Fingon. It’s beyond salvation, and it’s—I need it off.”

Fingon swallows, and forces himself to nod. Deep down, he understands, he thinks; or at least he can try to.

And who is he to judge? Unlike other things, the hair will grow back if Maedhros wants it to.

He makes to rise. “Of course; do you want to do it now? I’m sure I can find you a knife or—“

Maedhros fingers close around his wrist, his touch warm. It is loose enough that Fingon could pull away if he wanted to, but he doesn’t; there is little that he wants to do less than to pull away from Maedhros. Never has.

“I want you to do it.”

It lands like a punch, like the ice of Helcaraxë down his back.

“Nelyo,” he chokes, the name tripping off his tongue even though he has not used it in many, many years.

“Well, I can hardly do it myself, can I?” Maedhros says, but he is smiling, his grey eyes almost dancing with mirth.

Fingon loves him so much that it burns.

“Of course,” he says. “Do you—now?”

Maedhros nods, and gestures for Fingon to move off the chair so that he can take his place. “Do you have a knife? There is one beneath my pillow, otherwise.”

Of course there is. Fingon takes his own from its sheath and moves behind him, and then he stares down at the fiery, beloved head.

He takes a strand of hair between his fingertips, careful; it feels rough, the knots and tangles and grime within it unmistakable; he wonders at it, the strong disdain that Maedhros has for it.

“How short do you want it?” he asks, and his voice comes out hushed. They haven’t been this close since before Valinor went dark, and Fingon—

Well, Fingon had thought that he had got a little bit better about the snarled riot of love inside his chest. He had thought that months upon ice and assumed betrayal would have at least allowed him to cut off some corners of his heart and harden it.

He is a fool, of course. He had known it when he learnt that Maedhros stood aside in Losgar, and there had been no doubt when he had walked into Angband with bow and harp alone.

It is only here though, Maedhros’ head bowed with trust before him as he asks this of Fingon—of Fingon to wield a blade upon him once more, of Fingon to take this burden, of Fingon to do this deed—that it hits him, harsh and unrelenting, how there is never going to be anything but this.

“As short as needed,” Maedhros says, and he shifts, almost, almost, almost leaning into Fingon’s touch.

He doesn’t. He wouldn’t. And either way, it is not about that, and so Fingon takes the knife and ignores the way it flashes in the firelight, the memories that want to lay themselves across the scene.

Strands of hair fall red like blood upon black stone, and Fingon’s hands don’t shake the same way that Maedhros isn’t trembling. Which is to say that neither of them does, but it is a careful, arduous exercise of restraint and bitten tongues.

Fingon tries not to touch more than he needs to, but his fingers keep finding skin. Keep finding the even way of Maedhros’ skull beneath the shortening hair, and he tries to be gentle about it; after everything, he wants to be gentle. Wants, more than anything, for his hands to bring relief, not pain.

He cannot tell if this deed will do so, but Maedhros had asked, and so Fingon will answer.

Strand after strand, the infamous hair falls. It is ceremonial, almost, as if alongside it the tension gets cut away, too, a weight lifting that has been making a home between them.

The end result, regardless, is uneven and chopped, and Fingon cannot help but run his fingertips through the remains of it, trying to memorise the feel of Maedhros, calm and complacent beneath his hands.

He stops once Maedhros tips his head back, blinking up at him.

“It suits you,” Fingon says, before he can stop himself.

Maedhros smiles, relaxes a bit further. It makes him lean back against Fingon, his shorn head right to the centre of Fingon’s chest.

“Thank you, Finyo, truly,” he says, and Fingon should move away, give him space. The blade is still heavy in his hand, and Maedhros’ bandages seem stark in the dim light.

Maedhros catches his wrist before he can tear himself away, keeping him in place, easy. There is a crease between his brows, uncertainty lingering in the lines around his mouth.

“Stay?” he asks, voice low; his fingertips press against Fingon’s pulse.

His head swims. Maedhros tugs at his hand until it rests over his chest, the beating, fiery heart of him. He asks again, “Stay with me?” and Fingon finally, finally, finally relearns how to breathe.

He leans forward, presses his lips to the shorn, vulnerable head of his. Hides his smile there and drops his knife, counting the beats of their hearts—one, two, steady.

“Always,” he says, and for once it is an oath that he thinks neither of them will come to regret.

#feanorianweek #feanorianweek 2024 #thank you!!!!#maedhors

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