Even in Valinor by Elisif

Chapter 1

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Month upon month, they had held him, wordlessly repeated the same well-rehearsed phrases- pick it up and try again, there is no shame in asking for help, we’re sorry, brother forgive; month upon month, as the memory of that concept called “dignity” returned to him and his wounds began to slowly heal, the gravity of the loss of his hand grew, his seemingly every gain accompanied by the discovery of a new, irreconcilable loss. We understand, they told him.

They lied, for they did not- could not- understand why he resigned to mastery of swordplay ere he had mastery of belt buckles, cloak pins, or quills. The appeal of wielding a weapon was incomprehensible to them.

“Why do you not expend your energy on re-learning how to write? Surely that is more important to you-“

They didn’t understand that fighting was different.

Because he was never ashamed of needing to re-learn it; swordplay was something not even an idiot would expect him to still be capable of, a skill delegated specifically to the hand he had lost, and furthermore, one he knew it was entirely possible to regain. The looks he received from others when they passed by him in the training ground, bluntly striking at practice dummies on his knees if he lacked the strength to stand, were looks of humbled admiration, glances of unvoiced respect.

No one would say the same of the looks he received when he cautiously passed his plate of meat over to one of his brothers to cut it, was shamefully forced to call for help with dressing or bathing or braiding his hair; they were looks of pity, and he detested them.

Pity me for what I endured, but for the love of Arda, do not pity me for what I am he remembered thinking. Then, more selfishly, a thought flaring up from his distant memory: My existence should be worthy of envy, not of shame.

How that self-perception had, however weakly, survived through two decades of knives, fire, and knotted whips intended to entrench in him precisely the opposite view, he did not know.

All he knew was that swordplay only required one hand, that perhaps this skill alone among his losses beyond counting could conceivably be replaced.

They had hidden their eyes and spoken in hushed voices when he broke the first of Tyelperinquar’s old practice blades, cracked the aged wood from one end to the other when the blade flew from his awkward grip and snapped against the rough stone wall of the training yard.

But when the second blade did the same, they said nothing because they knew the blade had slipped not for an unsteady grip but for the sweat running down his arm.

When he told them over the course removal of the splinters of the third blade in his palm that wood was necessary for the winter ahead and could no longer afford to be expended for toys, they wordlessly took measurement of his fingers and wrist and debated the craftsmanship of blunted steel.

And so throughout that year he bit down on his lip against the pain and fought onwards, slashing and parrying until his left wrist throbbed every bit as much as his right, till the sweat from his arms and neck dripped down to reach the one low patch of his back that he could still feel and the faceless dummies split apart to worn rags and bled stuffing from their cracks, till he invariably collapsed to the sodden earth and called for his brothers.

Because he knew that even in Valinor it would have been acceptable to give in to pity after winning a fight.