“You always were my favourite nephew,” Fingolfin said, once they knew Fingon would live.
It was patently untrue and had Galadriel hissing like a kettle come to boil and Curufin pursing his lips against a smile. Maedhros, fresh from rinsing clots of his cousin’s blood out of his hair, thanked him gravely and moved the subject on, to the matter of kingdoms and supplies.
“Fool,” Curufin snapped afterwards. “We can use this. The crown-”
“Is something we are well rid of.” Our priority is the Oath, he would have added, not long ago. “Fingon will not take well to being maimed,” he said instead. “If you’re so concerned with winning hearts, see what you can do for him.”
“It was not so bad as all that,” Fingon insisted, when he was well enough to insist upon anything. “Merely dull.”
“Boredom was the worst torture they could imagine for you, no doubt,” Maedhros said and held him through the nightmares without comment. It was, perhaps, the worst torture he could imagine for himself but that was a maudlin, self-indulgent thing to think.
“The ballad that I shall make of this!” Maglor cried. All his resentment over being left to rule as regent had vanished in the face of such a song. “A light of hope, blazing against the dark! A triumph of love and loyalty over wicked cruelty!”
Maedhros remembered well the eagle’s words and remembered too that Morgoth’s followers were loyal. He let Maglor have his song though, for they were in desperate need of hope and because it would likely annoy Fingon a great deal.
“I cannot believe you let them make a song of it,” said Fingon, greatly annoyed. “Fingon the Valiant they called me and yet in this great accounting of Noldorin deeds I am a useless, swooning lump. First my hand and now my epithet. What will you steal from me next?”
“Keep the Valiant,” Maedhros said soberly. “But add that stuffed horse I never returned to the tally of my crimes.”
“Do not think I have forgotten. Cloppy will be avenged once I can wield a sword again.” That Fingon could and would learn to fight with his left had not been in doubt since the moment he first woke.
There were apologies to be made. For the ice and the docks and for not being handier with a file. But when Maedhros opened his mouth and saw the look on Fingon’s fair, scarred face, he knew they would not be welcome. He kissed Fingon instead, and that was accepted with unprincely enthusiasm.
Love was not sufficient reason for so many things. But for some it was.
Published
just moving along like everyone else 