RIBBONS OF RED, RIBBONS OF GOLD by bluehair

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

They are in the bustling Tirion market, and Kanó wants something special to wear in his hair at their grandfather's party, but he didn't find the right thing, that special thing, but oh, those...

“I love the red ribbons, they look so much like your hair! They would always remind me of the times you were so kind and let me braid our hair together!” he says, a bit overly enthusiastic maybe, wanting so much to have Nelyo's approval. Well, and yes, a mark of him on his person, too.

“Hm… let me see… I think these would be much more in line with your father's emblem,” his beloved cousin says, but his eyes are soft and smiling. “Please let me try,” he adds, and yes, if Nelyo braids them in his hair, they could be any color.

They do look good on him, though, and after the boring formal party, Nelyo also takes them off, because he loves so much to pull at his thick black hair while he kisses him silly, and smiles with his eyes, with his swollen lips, while Kanó is just existing in a soft bubble of love.

After this, whenever they have the time, Nelyo helps him with the braids – but even if they don't, Kanó puts the ribbons on, because… because he feels Nelyo's hands on him, all the time he wears them.

*

So he wears them even on the Ice, even if all he wishes, every day, is to wrap them around Nelyafinwë's damn white throat, until his face becomes as blue as his father's emblem.

Even so, he doesn't hesitate for one minute to go look for him, and he's so very happy to have the ribbons, because he almost pulls his hair off in the haste to take them off and tie them real tight around the stump from which ribbons of red life fall, endlessly, until they reach the healers.

*

The first time Maedhros actually cracks his icy wall of silence and yells at him, after… after, it's because of the ribbons – because one dark night, trying hard to fill the crippling, charged air in the tent where the most beautiful being in the whole damn world lies broken, he dares tell him how much they meant to him, still do, and Maedhros rages at him, telling him he's a foolish child, that Nelyo is dead, that Maitimo is dead, that Nelyafinwë is dead, so he should move on, grow up, he should…

So Fingon growls at him that he is a fucking grown-up, and he knows very well what he's talking about, that he moved over the Helcaraxë and didn't take them off, so he dares anyone to make him do it now. Yes, he also knows that Maedhros was actually the only one trying to stop Fëanor, he knows, and he also wants Maedhros to know that, even when he didn't know that, he still felt both his hands in his hair, he still feels them, he will… But they are both crying too hard now to make any kind of sense, so they just try so very hard to comfort each other.

Still, the first thing Maedhros buys, when he is able to move around and do such things, is a big spool of gold ribbon, which he gives Fingon, the night after he gives Fingolfin the crown. It's an apology of sorts, he tells him, because he gives the man such a burden, but Fingon, fool that he is, takes it as a promise for an eternity of happiness.

*

There is one stupid, stupid young elf who comes to Maedhros wearing gold ribbons in his dark hair – but it's a very, very lucky idiot of an elf, because Maglor and Amras are both there to get their brother off him, and he can escape with his wretched life. It's more than a week after when Maedhros manages to actually sleep for a few hours – because the ghost of his beloved Kanó's destroyed body, dead body, only the golden ribbons left to identify it with, is all the time there, when he closes his weary eyes, when he tries to… To what, what is there to live for, what more can be asked of him, what more can they take from him?

*

And then, when they finally have the jewels, the pain burns so red into his hand, the loss so complete, that he is so very thankful when he sees the enticing red ribbon of the chasm in the earth, oh, and there's the beautiful gold ribbon too, like the red ribbons Kanó wanted to wear in the balmy spring of Tirion, like the gold ribbons he did wear for him, that Nelyo goes into it, feeling only relief now, because there's nothing more to feel, just a ribbon of red, a ribbon of gold...