Promise of Fire by Maggie Honeybite

These feelings of Fingon's are so sad, but also perhaps understandable. It will kill him inside to keep pretending for Maitimo as the months and years pass unless something changes. But my tender heart wants to have hope (even though the Silmarillion is often so very short of that). 

Hi Maggie!  Sooo glad to see you back among us.  I'm pasting my AO3 comment here.

I believe this was the first Maitimo/Findekáno fic I read, certainly among the first, and one I have remembered all these years. I’m thrilled you’ve posted it here and on SWG – among so many luscious other stories of yours. I look forward to getting reacquainted with old favorites and discovering new ones.

As for this story, it is so beautifully expressed, so utterly tragic, so raw in its emotional honesty, that it always brings a lump to my throat. I think this is one of the few stories I’ve read that depicts Kano as struggling between his love for his cousin and being repulsed by his marred body. The way you’ve detailed Maedhros’ wounds in which Fingon’s gaze skitters over them, reveals the extent of the horror Maedhros has experienced. It's much more effective than if you had shown us his torture in flashback. I also admire the way the details are revealed slowly, not all at once.

And Fingon understands. He knows it is not Maedhros’ fault; he knows how he should feel and he knows that any hint of rejection on his part will only wound Maedhros further and more deeply, so he cares for him and pretends. His reaction feels like the real thing to me.

The opening paragraph sets the whole story in a few, well-chosen words. One character is wounded, the other trying to care for him, but there is an emotional distance there: “He is grateful; he thinks I am kind.” The whole dynamic right there.

“I am careful not to give myself away, and he does not think to look for deceit where there once was none.” Oh, this just breaks my heart!

The piece is in 3 movements, really. Almost like a musical composition. The first is the tragic present with Fingon trying to comfort his fragile lover, even though he can’t get past his own horror. The second movement goes to how they were in the past, when young and beautiful and completely, utterly in love, defying convention and everything else. “And yet, how could we abandon what we had discovered together when the marvel of it made even the air around us seem sanctified?” Yes, beautiful.

Fingon makes a promise of eternal love and attraction, "It will always be like fire." “No promise had ever seemed easier to keep.” Seen in contrast with the first movement, this enhances the tragedy.

Then the final movement, back to the painful present, when the “the night’s cover” ebbs, so that Fingon doesn’t even have the darkness to shield him from the truth. “He was once beautiful, but you would not call him that now. He is like a great tree felled by lightning: still magnificent despite its split trunk and charred branches, but no longer touching the sky.”

And the final sentence, when Fingon knows he should warm him with his body as he would have of old, but instead he lies to Maedhros, “ My hands are cold” and he goes to stoke the fire. The fire that he can’t rekindle, at least not yet. Not now.

The story is poetry that lingers in the heart.   Welcome back!