A Length Of Ribbon by Himring

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Chapter 1

Before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad.

Fingon/Maedhros.

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The stiff brocade of the robe is woven with Feanorian flames arrayed on a dark background: rows and rows of tiny flames, sparkling in red and gold and blue, so vivid and lifelike that they seem to leap and play as his limbs move underneath and the fabric shifts and catches the light from a different angle. Surely you could burn your fingertips brushing them along the hem of his sleeve! Further down, the small darting tongues of fire seem veiled in distance as if they burned far off in the depths of a nocturnal forest.

It was a long time in the making, that intricately woven robe. It was made for its wearer in Thargelion two decades before the Dagor Bragollach, by a distant cousin of Miriel Serinde’s who died when that settlement burned with the rest. No one in the Marches has the skill and leisure for such a task now. Fortunately, the more formal and ornate the robe, the less likely it is to go out of fashion.

The fabric is heavy. It imposes its own stately movement on its wearer. Maedhros slips out of the costly over-robe as a warrior shrugs out of his armour after battle is done, as an actor sheds his costume after the performance is over; what is revealed underneath is his customary plain dark grey.  Aphadon, his squire, carefully lifts the irreplaceable garment away, folds it neatly and stores it safely in the travelling-chest.

He returns to help Maedhros remove the pair of jewelled hair combs. Set with dozens of pearls and emeralds the size of thumb nails, they are the gift of the King of Belegost, Azaghal, and cannot be sold for provisions or arms without giving grave offense to an ally and friend. Therefore, they are still in Maedhros’s possession and available on the occasions when, without the castle of Himring as his backdrop, he feels the need to impress outsiders. 

Maedhros’s squire puts the combs away in their box on the dressing-table and helps Maedhros loosen his hair and brush it straight back across his shoulders, receiving the usual thanks for a familiar task. They bid each other good night and Maedhros listens as his Aphadon’s footsteps echo down the corridor leading to his quarters.

He has spent all day dazzling the Lords of Hithlum. It is, in a sense, a futile task, one that should not be required, for Fingon has decided that they will counter-attack and it is after all Fingon who is the King of Hithlum and the High King to boot. But everyone is calling the plan the Union of Maedhros—he wishes they would not, he should have come up with a catchier name for it pre-emptively, but that was a trick he missed—and now it is inextricably tied to his name. And that means that the attitude of people in Beleriand to the plan is far too much tied up with their attitude towards his person.

It is not enough that the Lords of Hithlum should follow Fingon loyally without protest—which they certainly will. If the plan is to succeed, they must have faith in it, and so they must have faith in Maedhros.  Even if Maedhros had only to convince them of his reliability as an ally, he would have his work cut out for him. So much ground that he gained in his long and patient efforts during the centuries before the Dagor Bragollach has been lost; the lords of Hithlum are remembering Losgar and the Doom more clearly than they do successful collaboration and the Dagor Aglareb.

They are not, of course, saying so. In fact, the day has been spent in relentlessly polite conversation and all the questions that were of real concern remained unasked. It was only their eyes that spoke.

Where were you when we were attacked and our lord Fingolfin fell?

I was stuck in a castle amid a sea of orcs and unable to lift a finger to help you. That is the true answer and they know it. It is not helpful at the moment.

Promise us that our women and children will be safe!

They know he cannot.

Will you turn your back on us in our greatest need as your brothers did on Finrod in Nargothrond?

He is staking the Marches on their success every bit as much as Fingon is staking Hithlum but when all is said and done, he is still a Feanorion.

All day, he smiled at them.  All day, he talked about anything and everything and did his very best to appear trustworthy, confident and competent.  His exploits during the defence of Himring have given him the reputation of a hero, an aura of success, and he has been using it to the hilt.

He does not think he has actually uttered an untruth to any of them, but the ones that secretly terrify him are not the ones that obstinately went on doubting him. They are the ones who implicitly seemed to believe everything he said, without reservations. Of course, they may simply be so loyal to their king that they give their trust to anyone that Fingon has decided to trust.

But the true facts of the situation are that the lords of Hithlum had already made their decision, Maedhros thinks.  As in the Marches, those who were not resolved to stay and fight, even against the odds,  either fled in the confusion immediately after Morgoth’s attacks or unobtrusively moved southwards soon after.  What he has been doing, in a way, is simply to try and make them feel good about their decision to remain, to persuade them that the timing is right for the battle they are already committed to. Only, of course, not everyone is a free agent; there are always dependents.

He closes his eyes and tries hard to think himself back into his own moment of high hope: the moment when he heard that the Dark Foe, the Great Deceiver, the one at the heart of his blackest nightmares, had been thoroughly bamboozled by a woman dressed up as a bat. It was utterly incredible; he was so astounded that he threw back his head and laughed right out and, as he laughed, he seemed to have a sense of darkness shifting, possibilities opening up…

***

The footsteps of his squire have long died away. He will not be returning tonight. Maedhros carefully eases the bolt on the door shut.

The apartment that he is quartered in is part of the royal suite. This flight of rooms used to be reserved for Turgon before his departure for Gondolin. When the castle of Barad Eithel was first constructed, the rooms of each of the royal family were connected to a private escape tunnel in case of emergencies. There is a concealed door next to the fireplace. Maedhros knows its location; Fingon has shown him how to open the catch.

He presses here, there, twists this and that, and gives the wall a small shove. The door slides open a bit. Maedhros kneels on the floor. He wads up a small piece of parchment and slips it into the crack, wedging the door open so that the room can be freely entered from the dark narrow passage on the other side. Then he sits back on his heels and quietly considers himself for a moment: Maedhros waiting for Fingon, Maitimo daring to expect Findekano. The strangeness, the temerity of such an expectation!

It is not that he has not been given plenty of reason to expect Fingon.  In fact, Fingon practically commanded him to leave the door open for him. Arguably, he is demonstrating Feanorian loyalty to the High King by acceding to his wishes. He briefly imagines trying to use that argument to defend his actions before the late High King Fingolfin and pulls a wry face—definitely the sort of discussion one would wish only to have if one had managed to arrange a secure exit beforehand.

He sighs and gets up from the floor. It would be easy, indeed it would be surprisingly easy just to remain on his knees in contemplation until Fingon arrives. But it might be quite some time before his cousin manages to free himself of his royal duties and obligations, and he should find a way to make use of the intervening time if he can.

Still, as he arises, he cannot help wondering what it might be like to be part of a normal couple. If he and Fingon were ordinary lovers, would they be squabbling over little day-to-day things and making up again as ordinary lovers do? He does not recall any petty squabbling in Valinor, not before everything went far more wrong than that, but of course his young cousin hero-worshipped him then. Fingon certainly knows better now.

The thought of normality tantalizes, but eludes Maedhros; he cannot get a grip on it. Since Thangorodrim, there has been plenty of routine, sometimes too much of it, but no normality. Normality excludes such as him.

Maybe it is these musings that set off an unfamiliar train of thought as, in passing, he glimpses himself in the dressing-table mirror, or maybe it is those memories of long-ago Valinor. He sees, for once, someone other than the ex-prisoner of Angband, the current Head of the House of Feanor, the Lord of Himring—and he asks himself whether that plain grey attire of his perhaps does not look a little drab after all? Is that hairstyle not a little bit too severe, compared to silky black braids threaded with gold? In short, might he look somehow unappreciative of his expected visitor?

By no means would he wish to seem unappreciative!  But standing in front of his dressing-table and casting his eye over it for anything that might lend just a little splash of colour, he finds himself rather at a loss. There are the jewelled combs in their box, of course. Thumbnail-sized emeralds are excellently suited for impressing sceptical Noldorin lords, but quite out of place in a bed-chamber—he would look absolutely ridiculous in them.

Then he spots a length of ribbon, dropped carelessly next to his comb and brush. Now where did that come from?  Vaguely, he remembers that the table decoration at the evening’s banquet was styled in these colours.  Blue and silver—Fingon’s colours—the idea appeals to him that he could be wearing them, just this evening, privately.

He picks it up—and then it hits him, the way it sometimes does.  Maedhros Feanorion who pretends in his hubris to be the great master strategist capable of saving all Beleriand from the Dark that threatens it—and yet it is a real tactical problem for him to tie a simple, ordinary bow…  

At that moment, he sees a movement in the mirror, his eyes meet Fingon’s as he slips through the open door beside the fireplace, and he knows he has let himself be caught.

***

Fingon sees his cousin clutching a bit of ribbon to his temple with his left hand, the stump of his right wrist pointing uselessly at the back of his head, and instantly remembers:

…how he bashed the damaged hand against the rock in his futile attempt to break the manacle and damaged it still further, how difficult it was to get the right angle and enough space to swing for a clean cut, how he almost dropped Maedhros straight down the cliff once he had finally cut him loose and how he almost plummeted right after him, how eagles are not really designed as a means of a transportation, how he spent hours clutching a stinking scarecrow to his chest, wondering whether it still had a heartbeat…

..all frantic, all bungled, right from the moment he almost released the arrow straight into his cousin’s chest after all because he was so startled by the eagle’s sudden appearance—so feverishly, so stubbornly determined not to squander his unexpected reprieve—only, when he pulled free of Turukano’s clutches and stumbled across, against all expectations the awkward bundle of skin and bones he had deposited in his father’s arms turned out to be still breathing…

How much all or any of that meant to his cousin, even at the time, he does not know. He thinks he remembers seeing a rather bemused look on Maedhros’s face, as if he felt Fingon was going about killing him in an unusually complicated way but was too polite to comment. Between what came before and what came after, perhaps he barely noticed, if one can be said not to have noticed receiving a wound that caused almost immediate physical collapse.

Since then, Maedhros has been dealing with being a cripple every day, just as he deals with other things, the legacy of his father, the memory of Angband.  He only ever seems to remember that Fingon had anything to do with it when he sees Fingon remembering it. Just as now, in the mirror, those grey eyes meeting his widen in recognition, realization, rising consternation… 

Fingon does not wait for consternation to turn into the apologetic look he hates. He does not see it often but it goes with words like wrong and burden. He quickly crosses the room, plucks the ribbon from Maedhros’s hand and ties it around a strand of red hair as thick as his index finger.  The bow falls to rest on Maedhros’s cheek.

‘Did you want it like this?’

‘Thank you,’ says Maedhros with real gratitude and begins to turn away from the mirror, only to find himself caught from behind in a rib-cracking hug. He feels the pressure of Fingon’s forehead as his cousin buries his face in his back.

He stands quite still, clamping his teeth shut against the apology that is trying to emerge, knowing it would only make things worse.

‘It was a long day’, he finally ventures hesitantly, by way of compromise.

Fingon’s grip on him eases and shifts.

‘Too long?’, his voice enquires somewhere below Maedhros’s right ear, still slightly muffled.

Relieved, he answers : ‘Well now, that depends. If you were about to suggest a night out on the town, I would have to regretfully refuse…’

Fingon’s grip shifts again and his voice is clearer now.

‘No, I was not going to suggest that.’

***

The following proceedings would be remarkable for how completely irrelevant the word unappreciative is to any part of them—that is, if Maedhros were even capable of remembering in Fingon’s presence that he had ever entertained such a ridiculous notion.

‘Please…oh please’, he says under his breath.

It is an involuntary prayer to an unknown god to permit Fingon to go on being Fingon, and only indirectly has anything to do with what Fingon’s lips and hands are doing at the moment. Fingon pauses and looks up. He feels that bit of ribbon he tied in Maedhros’s hair earlier on slide across his face. The silver thread is a little scratchy. And what he sees beyond that makes him steer Maedhros gently towards the bed.

Fingon is not feeling underappreciated at all.

***

Inevitably, at some point the ribbon must have slipped off. Fingon’s hand encounters it among the sheets as he turns around. He fishes it out and shows it to his cousin, the bow still intact.

‘May I keep it?’, he asks.

Maedhros, who has meanwhile forgiven himself—provisionally, only ever provisionally—gives a small snort of suppressed laughter.

‘But it was yours all along’, he says. ‘It must have been part of the table decoration, tonight, I think’, he confesses, ‘I do believe it was tied around one of the candle sticks.’

Fingon takes a quick look at his cousin’s tousled head resting on the pillow beside him. Maedhros looks a little embarrassed but mainly content to be where he is. Just now, Fingon’s arm, slung as if casually across his waist, is normality enough for him.

‘I know’, Fingon says calmly.

He was watching, earlier—sitting  across from his cousin as he glittered on the other side of the table—how  Maedhros’s fingers started fiddling unconsciously with the ribbon around the candlestick, while he soothed yet more fears, deflected yet another polite attack.  It was the only sign of exhaustion in his cousin that he had observed all that day.

Now he remembers how Maedhros reacted when, a while ago, he told him about the single hair folded in a slip of parchment that he has carried around with him for years.

‘Just one?’, his cousin asked him, shaking out his mane above Fingon's face so that it flowed all about his head and shoulders like a red tent. ‘Have more! Have all of it!’

Fingon looked up into his cousin's shadowed face, so close to laughter, so close to tears.

‘People might notice if you went bald all of a sudden,’ he replied.

Then he wound his hands in the silky strands and pulled Maedhros's head down.

‘You see’, he explains now, twirling the loop of silver around once in his fingers, ‘I can carry it openly and no one will ever know.’

He sees that Maedhros understands what he is saying although he does not answer in words. That slight air of embarrassment has disappeared.  Knowing his cousin does not feel any chill, Fingon nevertheless draws the bedcover up higher about his shoulders to exclude the damp night air.