No Resemblance by Elisif

Chapter 1

The chamber was quiet. Though Nolofinwë sincerely doubted that his nephew was sleeping so much as unconscious from shock, blood loss and fever, after the long night of agonising treatment he had endured and that Nolofinwë had presided watch over, the absence of tormented screaming echoed like the calm after a summer rainstorm.

Nolofinwë sat down at his bedside, looked down at him with baited breath, and then tried his hardest to convince his mind that this was in fact his nephew.

He couldn’t do it. Try as he might, his mind simply would not, could not connect the image in his mind of his half-brother’s proud, beautiful firstborn with that of this mangled, wraith-like skeleton now lying crumpled in his son’s bed. Before, there had at least been his red hair to faintly recognise him by, but now that the healers had shaved that off...

His height, it occurred to him; that was still there. Enough of a firestorm had been provoked after all over procuring a nightshirt for their “guest” when the only person into whose clothes he would fit had been Turúkáno... One small thing, at least.

And Arda, that constituted an improvement. He hadn’t recognised the thing clutched in his son’s arms as a person for the first few seconds, let alone his nephew, until it had started screaming and the unthinkable realisation had hit him. Judging by the hushed, appalled silence that had overtaken the crowd as those carrying lanterns came close enough to illuminate the scene, it had hit everyone else at the same moment.

“Give him to me,” he had said, quietly, reaching upwards, close enough to hear the murmurings of his son:

“Shhh, listen I’m going to give you to my father. You remember your uncle Nolofinwë, don’t you? I’m not leaving— I’ll be right behind you, do you understand?— but I can’t get down unless I let go...”

Naked, utterly emaciated, seemingly every bone in his body twisted and broken, filthy, drenched in blood, his wrist open and butchered, some form of injury marking every inch of his skin... Nolofinwë had taken him into his arms and carried him back towards the encampment, choking back genuine repulsion at the sight of him and the memory of once in the same fashion carrying a small child screaming bloody murder over scraped knees and elbows both as he did so.  

He reached over, wrapped his hand gently around the skeletal fingers emerging from under the coverlet, then hearing a pained gasp took a rag from the nightstand in his other hand and softly daubed some of the feverish sweat from its- Maitimo’s, this person was Maitimo- ‘s forehead.

“Shh, shhh...”

This thing was had had become of a small child he remembered, it was the result of what had been done to the son of someone once close to him.

There was a soft creak and he overheard the door of the sick-room being pushed open.

One of his guardsmen he noted looking upwards, not a man with any close connection with the royal family; the simple gesture of opening the door had transformed the scene from a deeply private to a public one and through long years of practice, Nolofinwë responded accordingly. He turned over his nephew’s hand, feigned checking the faint pulse in his wrist and throat and set the hand down, all while donning a mask of political apathy. Not a father grieving in another’s place; a King calmly calculating the odds of his political rival outliving the night, that was all.

“You called for a guard to stand watch my lord...”

He nodded, stood up, reached for his cloak from where he had hung it across the back of his chair, face blank as he did so.

As he departed, he glanced back and allowed the phrase:

“Fëanáro is fortunate to be dead,” to escape his lips.