The Brightest of Us All by Ilye

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Chapter 3

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Maitimo woke up screaming.

Lalwendë was already there with the healers when Ñolofinwë arrived hot on Fëanáro's heels. She looked up at them both, teeth gritted, as she bent over the bed close to the mattress. She was clasping Maitimo's head to her breast with one hand and had the other pressed across his chest to hold him still. One of the healers had his legs and was struggling to pin them down as he writhed and arched with a strength that defied his frailty.

"What is going on here?" Fëanáro thundered, his expression black. His hand was on his sword-hilt and the air fairly crackled around him. "What are you doing to him? Let go!"

"I am trying to keep him still!" Lalwendë flung back at him. "He is having a nightmare, or a vision, or – ah!” She grunted as Maitimo twisted, snarling, and clawed at her with his left hand. “And with the greatest respect, this shouting isn't helping either."

She turned her attention back to her nephew, whose screams had petered out into a whining against her shoulder, even though he still tried to fight her. "Maitimo, Maitimo, shhhh, come on. You'll hurt yourself like this – come on, you're with family. You’re safe."

A vice-like hand landed on Ñolofinwë's shoulder. He glanced backwards to see Findekáno, face pinched and eyes wide.

"What's happening?" he breathed, peering over Ñolofinwë's shoulder and into the room. "I heard him across the camp, I – let me through, Father, I need to get to him–”

Another scream rose from deep inside Maitimo's chest, wild and strangled and not quite Elven. Everyone winced. Ñolofinwë turned to catch Findekáno, but his son was too quick and ducked under his outstretched hands to slip inside the room. Ñolofinwë cursed and called his name, but Findekáno paid him no mind and darted for the bed.

"Thank you, Findo." Lalwendë’s voice was breathy with relief. "Help me hold him – he will open his wounds if he–”

Findekáno grabbed hold of Maitimo’s groping hand before Lalwendë could take another set of fingernails to the face. It made Maitimo contort and he strangled out another scream. The sound made Fëanáro flinch so violently that he nearly elbowed Ñolofinwë standing behind him.

"For pity’s sake! Can't somebody gag him?"

The activity in the room shuddered to a horrified halt as everybody stared aghast at him. He looked as though he was burning white-hot. Maitimo’s sobbing cries swelled to fill the void, his eyes fixed blindly on a point between the ceiling and Angamando.

Ñolofinwë’s throat clenched in anger that his brother could even think such a thing. But before he could issue reprimand that it was almost certainly restraint and pain that had caused Maitimo’s distress in the first place, Fëanáro took an ominous stride towards the bed and locked eyes with Findekáno. Each looked as murderous as the other, but Findekáno wasn't armed and Fëanáro’s palm was still on his sword. Ñolofinwë suddenly found himself fearing for his son's safety. But instead of drawing blade, Fëanáro just stared at Findekáno as though he were barely refraining from spitting on the floor, then spun on his heel and stormed out of the room.

Findekáno glowered at Fëanáro's retreating back for the barest of moments before Maitimo cried out again and snatched his attention away. Ñolofinwë waited just long enough to see him take orders from Lalwendë before he went in pursuit of Fëanáro.

It was morning, and the camp was just springing into life. Fëanáro was moving fast through the camp, but his streaming red cloak and the disturbance he left in his path made him easy to follow. Ñolofinwë’s fury rang in his ears with his pulse as he marched in his brother’s blazing wake. It felt like wading through the shimmering heat of a mirage, with the confused faces of the disturbed citizens he passed hazing at the edge of his vision.

Fëanáro weaved between – and sometimes through – his subjects’ daily morning activities until he reached the encampment gates. He ignored the guards who saluted his approach and, without warning, broke into a run. Ñolofinwë kept following. They ran down the approach from the lake to the gates, where Fëanáro took a hard right and disappeared into the trees. He was quick, but Ñolofinwë was taller and not wearing armour, and easily kept pace. More than once he saw Fëanáro glance behind just before accelerating, but still Ñolofinwë kept him in sight until finally they approached the far edge of the woods.

Here it seemed that Fëanáro had reached his destination, for although he was still aware of Ñolofinwë’s presence he slowed and then stopped. Ñolofinwë shifted to a walk for the final approach, keeping one eye on Fëanáro whilst he tried to gauge their surroundings.

They had run three-quarters of a circle around the camp so that they now faced North-east. A vast green plain stretched before them, leading to a stretch of low mountains that ran the width of the horizon. Beyond them the sky was dark and bruised, pierced by the jagged peaks hemming Morgoth into his filthy fortress. It was the ideal scenery for one to brood and plot revenge.

Ñolofinwë stopped level with Fëanáro and faced him, arms folded across his chest. Fëanáro had settled his shoulder against a tree-trunk in such a way that it was hard to tell which was propping the other up. He was staring towards Angamando, as still as the moment two days before when Findekáno had dropped out of the sky on Sorontar’s back and scattered his careful plans into the wind. Now, though, his anger’s edge was gone. It was as though the mad dash from the camp had rasped the sharpness away, until all that was left was a blunted, hollow sorrow.

“Once again, Ñolvo,” he said quietly into the distance, “you shouldn’t have followed me.”

“Well, I did.” Ñolofinwë shook his head. “I’m going to say it, Fëanáro: you are an arsehole. That was a vile thing to say.”

Fëanáro pressed his lips together so tightly that they formed a thin, bloodless line. His pose was soft, but his entire body was rigid and for a moment it seemed that the world held its breath.

"I just can't bear to hear him screaming like that," he said eventually. His voice was like the puff of smoke as a candle goes out. "His fëa is in so much torment – I can hear it screaming too and I can’t do a Valar-damned thing!”

Ñolofinwë took a half-step backwards as Fëanáro’s hand shot up, then flinched as it crashed into the tree trunk. The second time he stepped forward and caught his brother’s bloodied fist before it could collide with the bark again. Fëanáro’s head snapped around and he gawped at Ñolofinwë, as though astonished that anyone would touch him. And perhaps, Ñolofinwë realised, there was good reason for that.

“Of course you can do something,” he said firmly. “You can do far more for him now than you ever could.”

It earned him a look of narrow-eyed scepticism. Ñolofinwë offered him a sad half-smile and dared to reach with his other hand for Fëanáro’s shoulder. There was a shifting of Fëanáro’s weight; a squaring of his shoulders under Ñolofinwë’s hand in a way that was bracing rather than aggressive. Ñolofinwë braced himself too. The next breath he inhaled was thick with smoke and the stench of the battlefield.

“Arakáno died in my arms, you know.”

He closed his eyes. The enemy had retreated as quickly as they’d attacked – an ambush; there was no other word for it. But to slim satisfaction, they’d also left a slough of corpses behind them.

Ñolofinwë had noticed Arakáno’s plumed helmet amongst an array of those stinking corpses. He’d slipped on bloodied mud in his rush to get to him. At first it looked as though his son was simply pinned to the ground by the hulking body of the Orc captain, but after Ñolofinwë heaved it off him he realised that it was much worse than that.

“The Orc captain’s scimitar had nearly eviscerated him. There must have been three arrows in his chest and belly too – great black barbed things, all dipped in some dreadful poison. My poor Arko, he was terrified, and in so much pain. And he was ashamed because he thought he'd failed me.”

Of all things, the taste of that battlefield was the strongest in Ñolofinwë’s memory. Ash was thick on the tongue, and up close the Orcish stench was strong enough to clog at the back of the throat. Arakáno’s face was covered in filthy mud and his lips smeared with his own blood that frothed and bubbled as he tried to stutter out his final words. Ñolofinwë tasted both mud and blood, as he gathered his son close and kissed his face and felt his last breaths shudder across his own skin.

A touch to his elbow brought him back to the present. He looked down to see Fëanáro’s hand cup around his upper forearm, then up again into quicksilver eyes now soft with sympathy. Ñolofinwë blinked rapidly to clear the sudden brightness that had sprung into his vision at his brother’s show of solidarity, and went on,

“Ashamed, Fëanáro! Imagine it. Everything he did for my – our – cause. It wasn't his cause. How could I possibly refute his efforts? So I held him and I told him how proud I was of him. I told him the truth. I told him I loved him. There was no leader and warrior there, no ruler and subject. In his last moments I was nothing but the best father I could be to him. And when we said goodbye, I think he was more at peace.”

Fëanáro said nothing, but it was obvious from the way his brows were drawn together that he’d seen the entire scene Ñolofinwë had just replayed in his mind. Then he nodded, slowly as though deep in thought, before he reanimated and turned back the way he'd come. Ñolofinwë did not miss the briefest touch to his shoulder as his brother swept past him, and allowed himself a relieved sigh as he followed.

When he reached Maitimo's sick room, the screaming had stopped. He met an efflux of healers and servants at the door, wearing the disgruntled expression of the curtly dismissed. Ñolofinwë elbowed his way past them and stopped dead inside the doorway.

Fëanáro's boots were discarded on the floor and he was loading the one remaining servant with his armour. It was the first time Ñolofinwë had seen him without it this side of the Sea. In the far corner of the room stood Makalaurë, his eyes shifting restlessly between his father as he removed his armour and Lalwendë, who was perched on the edge of the bed and soothing the occasional whimper that still issued from Maitimo's throat. Findekáno crouched by the bed beside her, his expression frustrated and helpless.

Maitimo was quieter, but he did not seem any more peaceful. He had curled into a tight ball on his left side with his eyes screwed shut and it wasn't clear whether he was awake, asleep or still in the throes of waking nightmares. He was shivering under the blankets heaped upon him. Even breathing looked painful. Ñolofinwë doubted that he'd stopped screaming because he was more at ease, and figured it more likely because he was simply too exhausted to battle whatever terrors he still saw.

Lalwendë looked up as Fëanáro removed the last of his armour and approached the bed. Her hand tightened where it lay on Maitimo's shoulder, her expression and Findekáno's both suggesting an impending protest.

Fëanáro made an agitated swipe of his hand through the air.

"Move," he instructed abruptly before she could open her mouth. "I appreciate what you have done for him, but don't think I won't have my guards remove you if you resist me on this."

Findekáno tensed. Ñolofinwë took a step further inside the room; he recognised this single-minded direction of Fëanáro’s and knew now from bitter experience not to stand in the way.

"Findo," he said in a low warning tone, "come."

Findekáno and Lalwendë exchanged a glance. She reached for his shoulder, then turned back to Fëanáro. But this time, something in her brother's face must have made her back down, though she did not look pleased. She gently disentangled herself from Maitimo, whispering to him when he shifted and moaned, then ushered Findekáno away from the bed. Fëanáro nodded his approval. Then, he climbed onto the bed at its head.

Findekáno and Lalwendë both voiced a protest and, though he was unsure why, Ñolofinwë also found himself frowning. Fëanáro ignored them all and began to make himself comfortable.

It was Maitimo’s shifting by barest inches towards his father that quieted Findekáno and Lalwendë again. Fëanáro, to Ñolofinwë’s surprise, crooked a half-smile at Maitimo, then murmured something to him and settled cross-legged with his back to the wall. He padded the hollow between his thighs with the folded cape and then, with aching gentleness, he lifted his son's shorn head into his lap.

Maitimo shifted again into a position that looked more comfortable. Fëanáro's head dipped so that his hair slid forwards to cover his face as he murmured something private to him, and then a sudden warmth seeped into the room. It felt to Ñolofinwë like a cape, warm and comforting and safe against the elements. Maitimo sighed, a long release of a hastily-gasped breath, and stopped shivering. He buried his face into the blood-red wool of Fëanáro's cloak and his whimpers ceased.

Fëanáro sighed too, and it was as though a peace chased the tension from the room. It was the first time since Findekáno's return that Ñolofinwë had seen Fëanáro truly calm. Perhaps it was the way that Maitimo seemed to be seeking his father's touch, rather than passive to his medical care or fearfully resistant as he had been when he first awoke. Perhaps it was because Fëanáro felt that he was not so helpless after all, if he could bring his tortured son even the barest measure of relief.

It suddenly felt too intimate; Ñolofinwë knew that if it had been him and his son in their place, he would have wanted privacy. Makalaurë must have felt so too, for he took a step out of the corner with his head cocked in wordless question and stole Fëanáro's attention. Fëanáro's hand settled on Maitimo's head and he looked down deliberately at his eldest's pale face.

"You are dismissed. I will wait with him until he awakes without screaming."

Makalaurë's eyebrow lifted. "That could be some time," he said drily.

Fëanáro's head snapped up again, his eyes now smouldering like coals, and jerked his chin at the door. "Go and be Regent for a while, Káno," he hissed. "In fact: go away, all of you. Especially you, Ñolvo."

Their eyes met across the room and Ñolofinwë knew why he was being so particularly dismissed. Fëanáro's vulnerability was evident; he'd let Ñolofinwë see too much – know too much. Ñolofinwë nodded – more of a shallow bow, really – and hesitated so that he was the last to leave.

"I am only on the other side of the lake," he said, just loudly enough for Fëanáro to hear him. But it apparently went ignored, and so Ñolofinwë took his leave.