Waiting by Gwenniel

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Waiting

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The heat was almost too much to bear, but far more worse were the blazing flames that caught onto fabric and cloth, making everything a dizzying, dancing forest of fire. Yet Fingon did not flinch. He swung his sword again as he shielded himself from the fires. The balrog roared in anger. A whip cracked again and the Elf felt his knees give way. Had the balrog stopped his attack? Still leaning onto his sword, Fingon could look up at his foe and see that another balrog had appeared from behind. There were two of them against him. 'How cowardly,' he thought as he fell. 'Had Maedhros come as he said he would, we would not have fallen.'

Had Maedhros, had Maedhros... but Maedhros had not. His sword had fought its battles elsewhere, Fingon told himself. It was not as if Maedhros had abandoned him. He just had not come no matter how Fingon had waited.

Fingon's thoughts had gone back to that fateful battle ever since he first woke up in the darkness of the Halls of Mandos.

"Now comes the long wait in my Halls," the Judge of the Valar had told him. "It is a time of repentance, reconciliation, and remembrance – you will examine the life you have lived and so maybe learn something from it and return to it – if you ever will – a wiser being."

There was no time in the Halls of Mandos and its caverns seemed never-ending, because the caverns were all in a way similar and the mist reached every corner. The Halls were a quiet place and Fingon wandered the mist alone, but occasionally shapes of the other residents swept past him. Often he knew them, sometimes he did not. He saw his father, his sister, his cousins and even his uncle, but also Elves he did not know and whose faces were not clear enough for him to see before they turned away.

But his red-haired cousin whom he had known all his life was not to be seen. 'Perhaps he is not here yet,' Fingon thought. 'Perhaps he lives on.' He was not sure on whether the thought invoked hope or whether it merely saddened him. His cousin lived on, but separate from Fingon. The two paths that had ever gone side by side were now separated – Maedhros lived in the Middle-Earth and Fingon in darkness.

Maedhros had not been torn apart by battle. He had not gone through that. He had not fought the balrogs or felt them scorch his skin as they burned through his armour. Maedhros knew nothing about it. An unnamed emotion crept into Fingon's heart. Maedhros was not there to see him die, though he had promised they would meet on the battlefield. Maedhros had said he would come. But he had not. Fingon had died alone.

He passed deeper into the hallways of the maze-like domain of the Fëantur. A soothing wordless song echoed in the walls as Nienna's tears healed the dead and the broken.

"Fingon Findekáno," the Valie sang to him when he entered. "Be not bitter, but rather have your heart find reconciliation." She turned her face towards him and pierced his mind. "He was your friend was he not? Forgive him in your heart and learn to love him again. Then you may be released."

"I forgave him when my people thought he had burnt the ships," Fingon defended himself.

"Did you? Or did you forgive out of duty?"

"I have seen the tapestries of the battle. Maedhros was deceived – that was why he could not come to me. I forgive him for that."

"Then there is something else holding you onto these halls, little one," Nienna smiled sadly. "That something you have to find for yourself." Then she wept again and in her voice there was healing but no answers.

His sister's shape fluttered as smoke. She had been allowed to leave, but she could not. Her fëa roamed the corridors, seeking for something – Fingon knew not what or whether she knew it herself.

"Aredhel," he called to her as she passed and was about to once again be caught in the mist that lay in the dark corridors. She stopped and looked at him with empty eyes.

"Yes, Fingon?"

"Have you truly forgiven your husband?" Fingon asked her sister who merely stared back at him.

"It was not easy," she said hesitantly at last. "Moreover, he is no longer my husband."

"Can you break the union of two fëar?" Fingon wondered.

"He sent my fëa here," his sister said. "Can two souls be united if the other seeks to destroy the other?"

Fingon had no reply for her, but she did not stay to wait for one. Again her restless being would have hurried on, but Fingon called out her name again.

"You have forgiven he who did the most grievous deed to you," he said. "Is that not reconciliation? In your heart you have repented your deeds. Why do you linger here?"

"I am waiting," she said and became one with the mist.

Fingon opened the letter and sat down by the candle on his desk to read it. It was Maedhros report from Himring, nothing more special. Yet it was a message from his friend: between the descriptions of the various routinous tasks a prince of the House of Fëanor has to carry out, there were small comments penned down solely for amiability and amusement. Besides, even the dullest tasks that Maedhros wrote about gave Fingon a glimpse to how what he was doing, how he was doing.

Scribbled on the last line on the page, Maedhros had written. "I hope to meet you in the summer again. How I wish these snows would start melting soon! Maybe I will have to make my horse climb there through the snowdrifts... No, do not encourage me to! I just might!"

Fingon had smiled at that. "Very well, stay there until the warm weathers," he had written in his reply. "I will wait."

"I have forgiven him," Fingon told himself every time. "It is not that which holds me here."

The maze they resided in was never the same, yet every hall was the same as the others, save for the one in which Námo sat on his chair and Vairë wove her tapestries beside him. Before them stood Elves that had died, naked before the eyes of the Valar, some shivering, some unmoving. Then they would be sentenced to healing and Nienna would weep for them. Fingon had seen the procedure many times before. He observed every soul that came, sometimes with his sister, sometimes with his father, yet most often alone. There were ones he had never met before, there were some who had been of his people, there were those who had called him their king. But Maedhros was not there. The Fingon would turn away and seek for solace.

One time there came before Námo three shapes Fingon recognized immediately. One had in life been fair and comely, the other dark and quiet yet not without a will in arguments, and the third as crafty and handsome as his father.

"It has started," Fingolfin said beside him. "My nephews' luck has ended," he sighed and Fingon noticed a tear in the corner of his eye.

'Indeed, their luck has ended – if they ever had any luck to begin with,' Fingon thought. But Maedhros was still not with them. Again, Fingon was not sure whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. If Maedhros lived, the resistance against Morgoth had some hope. Yet if he had died, Fingon might not have been so lonely any more.

The blood had soaked their clothes sanguine. Maedhros looked at his remaining hand and his bloody stump with a strange calm. "Perhaps my hands deserve this, considering the deeds they have committed. But in that case you might just as well have shot me as I bade you to."

Fingon shook his head. "Nay," he said. Maedhros looked him into the eyes, the first time since they had met again. Then his knees weakened and Fingon caught him and wrapped a cloak around him and placed a kiss on his forehead. "It is freedom and life you deserve," he whispered although the other Elf was already unconscious.

He saw Aredhel and Celegorm stand together surrounded by the mist. They talked with quiet voices and she saw Aredhel frown at something her cousin said. But at last she whispered something to him and when she leaned away Fingon saw the first smile on her face since the last time they had met in Middle-Earth.

He met her later and asked her what had happened.

Her light was lighter than before. "I blamed him," she said. "I visited him before I went to Nan Elmoth, but he was not there. If he had not been out hunting, I might have lived longer," she looked at Fingon, her eye glimmering from a tear. "I blamed him for not being there when I needed him, I guess."

"What did he say to you?"

"He said he was sorry. Sorry for keeping me waiting. Next time he goes hunting he will take me with him."

The tear in her eye, Fingon realized, was not one of sadness. At last she had been given what she had been waiting for. Not long later – though still time could not be counted – Aredhel left the darkness and at last the stars could shine on her path again.

Fingon would probably not have spoken to Celegorm had it not been for Aredhel, but he sought out his cousin whom he found brooding over his life. When Fingon greeted him, Celegorm looked up and greeted him back – Fingon supposed the fact that the both of them were crownless and dead made it easier for Celegorm to look at him.

"What do you want?" the son of Fëanor asked.

"I wanted to thank you. I am glad that my sister had a chance to meet you before she left. She waited for you patiently," Fingon said. Celegorm made a noise in reply, but a shadow of a smile might have played on his lips. They remained together in silence for a while longer.

'Aredhel waited for you the whole time, Celegorm,' Fingon wanted to say. 'Did you know that? She waited and waited, alone, even after she could have been released to life. She waited because she cared.'

But of this he did not say anything to the cousin in front of him, but when Celegorm asked what Fingon was waiting for, Fingon knew the answer.

"Your brother," he said. "I am not sure whether I want him to come soon or never – one does not arrive here save through death. But as I waited for him in life, I shall wait for him in death as well. We have to face the truth that some things simply have to be brought to an end ere the healing of Mandos will work."

So close to death. The ice was simply waiting to devour the rest of them. Turgon had shouted at Fingon for being naïve. Fingon had snapped back at Turgon for not doing anything to help their situation. It had not helped, and Fingolfin had pulled them apart.
When they rested, Fingon would either have guard-duty or simply lie in his blankets, thinking. "Maedhros, what would you say if you saw us now," he mumbled into the emptiness. "If only I would know why the ships had to be burnt." Beside him, his sister stirred in her sleep.
So close to death. He wondered whether death was haunting Maedhros as well. Turgon didn't think so. And through her tears Aredhel vowed death might as well claim all of the ones who had forsaken them. But Fingon did not want that.

There came a time when the figure of smoke and shadow appeared in front of Námo. As Fingon had recognized the other Fëanorians, so did he recognize this one, though he looked nothing like the red-haired tall and beautiful Elf who had haunted his dreams. They said he had died in fire, a fire as hot as the one the balrogs had scorched Fingon with. Only Maedhros had cast himself into it, sought by his own free will.

When they met, no tears of reunion were shed, no embraces were shared. Maedhros looked not much better than he had looked long ago when Fingon had rescued him from Thangorodrim. And this time he was dead.

"Maedhros, I waited for you," Fingon said finally. "Was I selfish? For now you have come and my wish is fulfilled, but you are dead and there is darkness awaiting."

Maedhros made no reply. Then he shook his head slowly. "You wished me dead to stop me from doing the horrors I did, did you not? You are not selfish but just. I should have died earlier."

He did not seem to want to listen to Fingon. He was still deep in his anguish and his remorse. His fëa seemed to simply want to shrink into nothingness, escape the Halls that sought to change it.

"I wanted to meet you again, my friend, because I want to help you. Come"

Maedhros spared him a disbelieving glance, but Fingon led him on in the corridors.

The echo of the song of Nienna greeted them as they entered the cavern she was sitting in, weeping for those who were around her.

"Fingon Findekáno – are you ready to be released now that you have found him?" Nienna asked him without looking at them.

"I cannot leave before I see to it that he finds solace," Fingon said.

"Then we cannot force you to, but do know that he must find solace by himself. And that not all here find it. The Spirit of Fire does not find it, and part of that spirit dwells within Maedhros Maitimo as well."

She sang on. Maedhros had taken little interest of the conversation or the song, but Fingon bade him to sit down.
"Hear Lady Nienna sing," he begged him.

"Why?"

"I waited for you on the battlefield, as you know. So even here I waited for you until you would come."
"You waited out of duty? You are indeed the very same Fingon that I once knew. Waiting for a dishonoured thief such as myself."

"Out of duty? Out of love, rather. I waited because I cared."

Maedhros looked at him without a word. Then something about his fëa softened. "The very same Fingon," he said again. Then the tears of Nienna fell onto him and her song reached his ears.

"I did not have the chance to settle everything before we parted," Fingon said to Maedhros. They sat together, all the while the tears cleansed away the pain of the Fëanarion and Fingon held his hand. "There was no choice for me but to wait for you. And now I had to see to it that you receive the healing you need."

"The healing I need?" Maedhros asked.

"The healing, yes, so that you can return to life."

"Will I want to return to life?"

"I hope you will, Maedhros," Fingon said. "Maybe I am selfish after all. But when I return to Aman, I will be waiting for you once again and I hope for you to come."
Maedhros sat quiet while Nienna's tears fell over them as a summer rain. Then tears appeared in his own eyes as well, as he wept silently. "My father is here. All my brothers are here. I cannot come yet."

They were sitting on the grass, the Two Trees shedding their light over them. Maedhros was plucking strands of grass and rolling them up into a ball in his other hand. Meanwhile Fingon sat in silence, leaning his chin onto his knees, looking at him. When Maedhros tossed away to lump of grass, his palm had turned green and he wiped it onto his trousers.

"Father means for all of us to move to Formenos."

"And you will go there?" Fingon asked.

"Of course," Maedhros scoffed, but not crossly. "He is my father and I love him."

Fingon nodded. He had guessed it. Fingolfin had said Fëanor would probably move to Formenos, and Fingon had known his sons would all follow him.

"Are you upset?" Maedhros asked carefully, shifting where he sat.

"No."

"Because I love you, too. It's just that..."

"I love you back, Maedhros. I can wait."