Still by LadyBrooke

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Chapter 1

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Childhood

“This is your cousin Nelyafinwë,” Anairë says to her son, as he turns to greet them.  

Findekáno stares up, neck tilted back in order to look at his cousin’s face.

Nelyafinwë leans down. “Hello, Findekáno. It’s a pleasure to see you again.”

“What do you mean, again? I don’t remember you,” Findekáno blurts out unthinkingly.

His mother is angry, but Nelyafinwë starts laughing, and Findekáno thinks that the sound is far more beautiful than the clanging of the smiths or the eagles over Valmar.

Nelyafinwë’s childhood might be ending, but Findekáno refuses to let him grow too old to laugh.

 

Kingship

Nelyafinwë was king for only a short time before he rides out to meet Morgoth.

He is the third Finwë, and he tells Findekáno later that he feels like he was the least of the Finwës to be king.

“And I am no Finwë. Yet I believe you were and I am a good king, Maitimo, regardless of our parents and grandparents.”

Only Findekáno calls him Maitimo now, because he will believe it from Fingon alone.

They move to discuss the strategy against Morgoth and his followers.

Later he will remember the last time someone used his mother-name and wonder.

 

Torture

Morgoth tortures him with chains and shackles, but worst of all is the images he conjures, of Finwé’s death and Arakáno’s (and he would refuse to believe that Arakáno is really dead, but there is no way that Morgoth could have known that much of Findekáno’s expressions and how he cried).

There is no way Findekáno could forgive him for dooming his youngest brother to death, when he cannot forgive himself for Pitya’s death.

He weeps at the thought, and he hates himself for not knowing if he weeps for Arakáno or for the loss of Findekáno’s trust in him.

 

Adjusting

“How can you stand to still call me that and mean it, Findekáno?” Nelyo asks, resting in the bed that his brothers had hastily assembled, as witnessed by the mismatch of healing supplies, Makalaurë’s spare blanket, a bell that Atarinkë had forged, Carnistir’s spare robes, and a lunch dubiously made by the others, all supposed to make him feel better.

He pretended they did.

Findekáno looked at him.

“Because the fact that you were strong enough to survive is beauty in itself, Maitimo. You’re more than what I did to rescue you, and you’re still beautiful with your hand gone.”

 

Coping

Fëanáro is alive, and Findekáno is his friend, cousin, and the son of his father’s enemy, no matter how much his father actually likes Findekáno himself.

Fëanáro is dead, and Findekáno rescues him and becomes second-in-line to the throne Maitimo gives up to the horror of his brothers.

Nolofinwë is alive, and Findekáno is the one Maitimo tells everything he knows and fears.  

Nolofinwë is dead, and Findekáno has to adjust to living after his father’s death, which Maitimo tries to help with.

Findekáno is dead, and Maedhros has to cope with a world that has moved on from him.

 

Unity

Nelyafinwë alone was complete, but lonely sometimes.

Russandol with all of his brothers were complete as siblings, but also overwhelming enough to inspire one to go off and live in the woods for several days (and he was jealous of his younger siblings who were free enough to do that).

Maitimo and Findekáno just was, but Makalaurë later heard a definition of unity where it was something that formed a complex whole, and thought that defined Findekáno with Maitimo.

Elros and Elrond asked Maglor if Maedhros was missing something that made him whole, something more important than his right hand.

 

Beauty  

“Of course you’re still beautiful, Maitimo,” Findekáno said.

“Even after everything?” he asked.

“Even if you remain in these Halls until the breaking of the world and hide away from me, I will still find you beautiful,” Findekáno answered. “I cannot think of you anyway but, even if I sound like the Sindar’s tales of Elu enchanted by Melian by magic.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

“What good are wishes now, when we’ve already lost everything else?”

“I was burned by lava, and you still will not abandon your thoughts of me so.”

“It was never just physical beauty for me.”