Just This Once by Elisif

Chapter 1

“Findekáno fell asleep in his chair, Father.”

Ink bubbled and splattered from Nolofinwë’s quill, pooled across the vinegar-scented parchment as his hand flicked unexpectedly sideways.

The words were a ghost from his past, a memory seemingly, for a moment, strong enough to wipe Endorë and all its trappings from his surroundings like water from a window pane, but when he looked upwards at his second son, Turukáno’s  eyes were still raw and heavy with grief, the upturned palms of his hands crisscrossed with faint pink frostbite scars, his robes bearing the unmistakable scars of having been used and reused for embroidery practice by a daughter who lacked anything better on which to master the craft. Endorë, then.  

Stuttering- it had a habit of resurfacing when he was nervous- Turukáno brushed a lock of hair hair from his face with an awkwardly balled fist, stared down at his father.

“I told him to sleep, over and over, but he would hear none of it, wouldn’t even leave the sick-room for even a minute… No, don’t get up, I’ll rouse him, father.”

Nolofinwë, having perched himself upwards on his elbows, ignored his son and rose to his feet, dabbed his quill on the inkpot.

“No, Turukáno, I’ll do it.”

“Father, you have your duties here, you shouldn’t distract yourself for trivial things when someone else is able-“

“It’s no trouble, Turukáno, I’ll carry him back to his bed.”

“Carry him? He’s no child father- why in the name of Arda are you smiling?“

“Never mind that, Turukáno, I can’t explain.”

Could he? His son was after all a father too… No, it would bring to light luxury Turukáno could no longer dream of offering his own child, to tell him of the superstition he had possessed in Findekáno’s early childhood, nay, a fear, that waking him from however hard-won rest was preferable to letting him sleep anywhere other than his own bed.

Again, he smiled to himself as he set his quill back in its box, rearranged the parchments into a neat pile ere he left. It had been an unfortunate habit to have developed with a son like Findekáno, who, unlike Turukáno, had never been one to willingly submit to sleep, had in childhood been so invariably inclined to run himself ragged and keel over where he stood that Nolofinwë had come to accept walking upstairs after palace gatherings in Tirion to find him sprawled across his elder nephew’s bed with his thumb in his mouth as routine.

“He’s no trouble,” Maitimo had always insisted, but Nolofinwë had always carried Findekáno home regardless, clutching his warm and ever-heavier body to his chest, listening to how, when he invariably awoke he murmuring through yawns when he inevitably awoke that he had not wanted to leave…

 “Father?”

He snapped back to reality.

“I-“

No. Such thoughts were private, that he was as partial as any parent to fantasies in which his son was still a young child, dreaming sometimes of being handed back the toddler with honey-flecked cheeks and unwinding braids and chubby arms that had flailed in all directions as he ran to leap giggling into his father’s arms, of waking to find the past years a dream and his son coming towards him with a wooden sword at his hip, his babblings of fighting orcs and monsters nothing but childish nonsense… As he offered his secondborn a brief embrace and a kiss to the forehead, he came to the grim realisation that- something he would not easily have admitted- some small corner of him was almost grateful for the unthinkable circumstances that were allowing him to jut once more carry his protesting son to bed and pretend it was so. Almost.

Nolofinwë lifted a lantern from the desk and paced down the hallway, drawing his cloak tightly around himself as a draught skirted around his shoulders, stepped quietly through the trampled and rotting thresh to, fingers flinching at the touch of the freezing iron, gently twist the knob to the oppressively overly heated chamber that had been allotted sick-room for his nephew.

When his eyes adjusted to the weak light and he glanced across the chamber, over at Maitimo’s sick-bed, his heart caught in his throat.

His nephew, bruised purple shadows under closed his eyes, flat on his back against the pillows, still so thin his starched nightshirt crumpled around his neck and arms in layers upon layers of piled folds, his skeletal left arm awkwardly worked free of the pelts and blankets over his emaciated chest. 

His son clinging to Maitimo’s thickly bandaged remaining fingers even in heavy-lidded sleep, slumped face-down over his own arm where he had fallen forwards, his unfurling braids spilling over onto his cousin’s cheek where their foreheads and lashes touched, a flicker of unravelled gold thread glittering against the faint red fuzz that graced his cousin’s shorn scalp.

His son, bleary-eyed, his thumb in his mouth, asleep over Maitimo’s shoulder.

His nephew’s fond smile as he passed Findekáno’s heavy form over into his uncle’s arms, allowed him to carry him back to his own bed, laughing as he flicked his long red tresses from his face, passed Nolofinwë an additional blanket for the long walk back across Tirion with both hands.

Nolofinwë stood silent for some moments, fingers digging into the contours of the lantern handle as he listened to their laboured breathing- his nephew’s sleep for once undisturbed by tormented dreams- before he paced quietly forwards, set aside the lantern, stood gently over Findekáno’s sleeping form, watching his chest rise and fall. A floorboard creaked underfoot as he moved forwards; Maitimo did not stir, but Findekáno groaned slightly and shifted over on to his left side, the impression of his signet ring and folded sleeve clearly visible on his now upturned cheek.

“He can stay here, uncle. I’ll watch over him.”

Breathing deeply, Nolofinwë unfurled the blanket, draped it gently over his son’s back, reached down to tuck the pinched corners in around his shoulders but then changed his mind and drew the pelt outwards so it concealed and warmed their entwined fingers, bent down and kissed the top of Findekáno’s head.

Just this once, he would let him sleep.