And I'll Bloody Up My Hands (As Long As You Don't Have To) by electroniccollectiondonut

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Chapter 8

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Fingolfin doesn’t say a thing, just waves his hand in the universal gesture for follow me, then casts the door to the Healing Halls one last worried look and walks away. He leads them through the halls for the better part of an hour, changing his mind and backtracking several times before they finally arrive at his study. He ushers them inside with pursed lips, then locks the door and quietly instructs the guard that anything he hears is not to go beyond this room.

Celegorm wonders what exactly he expects from this encounter.

Fingolfin sits down at the desk and gestures for Celegorm to sit in the chair opposite him. Curufin perches on the arm, still managing to look aloof and dignified even with Huan’s great fluffy head nosing at his chest in a demand that he be petted.

“How do you know about-” Fingolfin hesitates, voice catching. “That?”

“Galadriel isn’t the only one with Foresight,” Celegorm says, not quite flippantly. It’s objectively true, so he can’t be accused of lying when Fingolfin inevitably decides they have to write Maedhros about Fingon’s condition.

Fingolfin sucks in a breath and leans back in his chair, studying them closely. “And- you said that I would die.”

“If you ever truly expected to survive a fight with a Vala, then you are an even greater fool than our father always claimed you to be,” Curufin says scathingly.

Fingolfin shoots him a reproachful look and turns back to Celegorm. “What of my children? Do you know where Turgon and Aredhel are? Would Fingon survive the kingship?”

“If you leave Fingon with the crown, he will die,” Celegorm says, trying to sound serious and grave the way Caranthir does when he delivers bits of prophecy.

From the way Fingolfin pales, he’s succeeded. Fingolfin stands and starts to pace, then growls when he only gets two steps before he’s face to face with the wall. “I can’t do nothing!”

“Build an army.”

Fingolfin turns to him. “What?”

“Write our brother. He has alliances, you have political clout. If you do this right, you can win.”

Fingolfin sits back down, considering. Celegorm runs over what he’s just said in his mind, trying to remember if there’s anything else he needs to say.

Oh, right. Luthien has to get the Silmaril first to prove that Morgoth can actually be fought, especially if they succeed in keeping Fingolfin from running out to get himself killed.

“But you have to wait until Luthien of Doriath is married to go to war.”

Curufin and his uncle both look at him strangely, but Curufin has more information to go on than Fingolfin is ever going to get and Celegorm can see it when he makes the connection, mouth falling open for half a second and eyes going wide.

Fingolfin just keeps looking bemused. “Why?”

“Because it’s important. Trust me.”

Fingolfin looks like he wants to argue for a few moments, but eventually he concedes. “Alright. When is she going to be married?”

Celegorm frowns. Dates are not his forte, and he instinctively glances at Curufin for help. Curufin only shrugs and keeps petting Huan. Damn. Well, Luthien was married with a kid before Nargothrond fell, and Dior had been king for what, a year, when they sacked Menegroth? Two? More? And he was half mortal, so he didn’t age like an elf, but he was at the least in his late twenties, so…

“Maybe in eight or twelve years? I’m not sure, but I don’t think it’s very long. Definitely not more than… fifteen years, though.” I think.

“So I have eight years to organize an army against Morgoth?”

The tone he says it in makes Celegorm realize exactly how this must sound, demanding that his uncle build an army by a date that he can’t actually recall. Maedhros would probably whack him upside the head for it, especially with the way he still futilely tries to advocate for diplomacy. Probably will, the next time they see each other.

“Eight or twelve,” Celegorm confirms at last, and it doesn’t sound very confident even to his own ears. “I think.”

Fingolfin studies him for long moments, then sighs heavily. He stands up and crosses to the liquor cabinet, pulling out a bottle of brandy and three glasses. Celegorm takes the offered glass with eyebrows raised. It’s strong, he can tell that without even having to taste it, which makes the way Fingolfin knocks his back in one swallow impressive. Their uncle refills his glass and sits back down, gesturing to Celegorm’s still untouched brandy.

“You might appreciate that if you’re having visions. I remember how it was for all the others to come into their abilities.”

The others he speaks of are all the people in the family who actually do have Foresight, Celegorm knows, and he thinks that if he was telling the truth, he would definitely appreciate a glass of strong alcohol. He remembers very well the way Caranthir used to wake up screaming bloody murder and cling indiscriminately to whichever family member was closest for hours. He drinks, regardless of the fact that he isn’t actually having visions and it’s not even noon yet.

“A letter to your brother, then?” Fingolfin says after he refills Celegorm’s glass, producing paper and a pen from one of his drawers.

Celegorm nods and does not drink again, because the first glass has gone to his head remarkably quickly, and while it’s not at all unpleasant, he’s not very confident in his ability to hold his tongue if he drinks too much. And given the current situation, drunkenly blurting out his secrets could have serious consequences which he’d much rather avoid.

“And what exactly do you expect me to say?”

Well. He hasn’t actually thought that far. Letter writing is more Fingolfin’s area, or even just the area of anyone who ever bothered to learn to write, which Celegorm did not. The refusal to learn his letters was initially to spite his father: what could frustrate him more than refusing to learn the alphabet he invented? Then, after Feanor’s death, it was more of an unwillingness to learn from anyone but Feanor himself, because no matter how they fought, he was his father.

“Tell him that Fingon is hurt and he needs to come here and see him,” Curufin says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Which it is, once Celegorm spends half a moment actually thinking about it.

Fingolfin seems to think so too, because he’s nodding along. “Of course. When he gets here, we can discuss this vision of yours further and convince him to help us build up an army and make a stand against Morgoth.”

Celegorm is beginning to think that he shouldn’t have said he has Foresight, because Maedhros knows what Foresight looks like, and there’s almost no way he can pull off that big of a lie. Maedhros is going to see right through him.

Fingolfin writes out a letter in what has to be some kind of shorthand or code or something, because no one can actually write that fast, can they? He finishes the letter and signs it, then waves at Celegorm and Curufin in a way that’s obviously a dismissal.

When Celegorm stands, he’s abruptly reminded that he started his morning by falling out of a tree. Yes, he’s definitely bruised. A lot. He opens his eyes, not realizing that he closed them, and Curufin hands him the glass of brandy  he’d been planning not to drink. He drinks anyway, because they’re about to leave and maybe if he drinks then he’ll stop feeling the bruises for a little while.

He doesn’t.

“Are you alright?” Fingolfin asks, rising up out of his chair a bit in concern.

“Orcs,” Celegorm says, which is another lie, but it’s going to have to do.

Eventually, they end up back in their room. Curufin wanders into the adjoining washroom and it isn’t long before Celegorm can hear the taps running and smell Curufin’s fancy oils. Today it’s something flowery, maybe lavender. Celegorm sits down at the mirror, gingerly reaching up to redo his many small braids, and almost jerks back at seeing the splatter of black across his cheek.

Right. There’s paint on his face for a reason. They were trying to make it look like orcs shot Fingolfin, not Celegorm. And he didn’t even succeed in actually shooting Fingolfin, he shot Fingon instead. And when he thinks about that for very long, he starts to feel like his insides are all twisted up because that’s not what he meant to do.

It’s not a pleasant feeling, and he’s not nearly drunk enough to be emotional no matter how floaty and warm he’s starting to feel, so he focuses on doing his braids without pulling at his bruises, which is almost difficult enough that he succeeds in ignoring the twisted up feeling.

Curufin comes out of the washroom in a soft robe, dripping water on the rug. “Are you going to bathe?” he asks.

Celegorm opens his mouth to say no, but Curufin continues before he can. “I know you usually use the pond to scandalize the servants, but the warm water might help with all the bruises.”

Oh, that would be nice. “Alright.”

The washroom still smells of lavender, but he can deal with that if it means that his back will stop hurting. He waits for the tub to fill, and he can’t help thinking about all the things he really, really doesn’t want to think of. Like how he could aim a bow better when he was a child than he can now or how Maedhros is probably going to find out what he did because he’s never been able to keep secrets from Maedhros and he still can’t now.

Like how it’s his fault that Fingon is in surgery in the Healing Halls and Fingolfin is drinking alone in his office because he came up with a desperate plan and it went wrong, like it always does.

Guilt, he realizes abruptly. That’s what’s making him feel like his guts are all tied up in knots. It’s difficult to recognize because it’s not something he has cause to feel all that often and it’s barely there, but it gets stronger the more he thinks about it until he’s sure that that’s what it is. He feels guilty for shooting Fingon.

He scrubs all the black paint off and soaks in the water a little longer than is necessary, then he climbs out of the bath and puts on a robe. He does feel better now, he’ll admit that much, at least to himself, and he reaches in to pull the plug on the drain.

When he goes out into the bedroom, Curufin is fully dressed for the day, sitting at the desk reading a few loose sheets of paper, yellowed with age, and drinking a cup of tea that smells dangerously strong.

“Do you think we can go see Fingon yet?” Celegorm asks, not allowing himself to hesitate.

“You,” Curufin says.

“What?”

“You want to know if you can go see Fingon. You are the one who shot him, I am the one who said this was a bad idea. So when you do go to see him, I am not going with you.”

Celegorm is offended at that, because being offended is easier than being hurt. He scoffs. “But you didn’t come up with anything better, did you?”

He doesn’t wait for an answer before he walks out the door and slams it behind him. It’s cathartic. He’s a fair distance away before he realizes that he’s still in just a bathrobe, and he decides that it preserves his modesty enough that he doesn’t need to go back and get dressed because he doesn’t want to talk to Curufin right now. The servants he passes seem to think otherwise, but he doesn’t really care all that much what the servants say about him.

He ends up at the door to the Healing Halls. He was here just a couple of hours ago, but it feels like so much longer. He takes a steadying breath and knocks. He waits long enough that he nearly leaves, then a woman in apprentice’s greys opens the door. She looks surprised to see him.

“Oh!” she says when she realizes she’s been staring. “I’m sorry, I was expecting the king. It’s strange that he hasn’t come to visit yet.”

She shrugs a little and waves him through, but not without a baffled glance at his state of dress. She doesn’t comment, though, which is probably the only thing Celegorm genuinely likes about on-duty healers: they don’t tend to ask a lot of questions that aren’t about health. Which is good, because he doesn’t know how he’d go about explaining that the reason Fingolfin hasn’t come to visit his injured son is that he’s drinking over it, which is not something Fingolfin usually does.

Eru, he just can’t get over that, can he? He shakes it off and follows the apprentice healer through to where Fingon is, in a room off to the side of the main hall. He’s unconscious or asleep, and the apprentice quietly leaves when Celegorm sits down in the chair beside the bed.

He grabs Fingon’s hand, nearly recoiling at the amount of heat coming off of him. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. Fingon is frighteningly pale and still against the crisp, sterile sheets.

Fingon doesn’t respond.