Coldness by ford_of_bruinen

Chapter 1

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There are mornings when opening my eyes seems too hard a task, when breathing in the sweet air around me is a labour more than a joy. Still, more than thirty years under the sun have passed since the tears fell, screams tearing my throat raw as I raged against life. Once I would have raged against the Valar, found defiance and spite against them for leaving us here and turning their eyes; I no longer do. Since that day I do not care for the Valar one way or another: it is life I curse. Life that left me, behind – damaged and broken when he fell.

Cruel irony, cruel fate. Maybe it is Eru whom I should curse and rage against, the father of all and the life giver. Does he take lives as well as give them? Did he, in his questionable wisdom, steal the breath of the best one born to the house of Finwë?

I turn my head towards the window again, watching as the first dusting of snow settles over barren trees and broken stones. He always hated this season; it brought back memories of treachery and pain, of lives lost and powerlessness. He never handled inability to act well. Was that why he attacked before they were ready? No. I forgot - my memory fails me at times, blurring the edges of what was and what could have been, between then and now. He did not attack, he merely followed the flood once it burst, trying to steer it, and failed. Because of me, because of another betrayal as involuntary as the first. There is no such thing as free choice; all choices I remember have been fringed with death and hatred, betrayal and blood.

Were we happy once, in Aman, before the fall, or is my memory betraying me again? I stare out over the snow, smudging the earth as I try to remember. Endless days under the trees flitters past, insubstantial as butterflies, as dreams never grounded in reality. It is all lost.

“Findekáno…” My voice is no more than a whisper but inside me I scream his name as if it would bring him back to me. It does not. The doom of Mandos that followed us into exile holds true, tears unnumbered has fallen and more shall fall.

Once the rumours whispered that my brothers could be slowed and controlled only by two, myself and Macalaurë. Today only Macalaurë’s voice whispers caution in their ears, I give no advice.

The door behind me opens, I have waited for this. I have known it was coming for over a year but it does not matter. Blood is on our hands and souls already, blood of kin and enemies. Our souls are marred by murder and betrayal. The sons of Fëanáro are cursed, not by the oath we took on that day in the darkness of Tirion, not by the slaying of the Teleri on the white shores, but by the coldness in our hearts, our aloofness. Our pride. I loved. Macalaurë loved and still does, may fate be kind to the elleth he married, Atarincë loved and grew bored, the others care only for war and the hunt, for blood and slaughter.

“Please, Russandol.” Macalaurë’s voice is quiet, pleading, a desperate man looking for a lifeline. “Please help me dissuade them of this. It is wrong!”

“You can no longer make them listen?” My own voice is hollow; it always is these days unless I talk to Findekáno, to my dead cousin, lover. The one that is lost to me.

“No,” he answers behind me. “We have fallen too far already, Russandol, you know this. He would say the same.”

I close my eyes then, shutting out the snow covered fields. “Yet his blood is on my hands,” I reply as the silence grows tenser. “We go at dawn; it will bring us to Doriath when the night is deep. I will follow my brothers.”

Macalaurë remains silent. “Were he here he would no longer know you,” he says at last, before the door closes and I am alone.