Flawless by Feta

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Flawless

(edited from original ff.n version)

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I

Fingon slips back into his tense life by the lake, though he no longer dreams.

When the question comes: where has he been, the past few empty days, the days that felt as eternities do?  He answers: – I needed some time alone

His heartbreaking confidence, legendary valiance is clouded. As the second day begins, he lifts his bow again.

He chooses targets carefully, fits an arrow to the string. Perfect aim, grip strong, fingers striving not to tremble. Pose faultless, expression calm, fëa screaming for release. Maedhros’s scent is always on the air, arresting and familiar and never to be caught.

Target: the top leaf of the nearest tree; the tiny knot in the dead branch behind it; the centermost Silmaril of Morgoth’s crown; Valimar itself, faraway and watching, cursing and scornful and mocking.

His last arrow he sends straight into the air; he thinks, that was for you.

 

II.

This is how it went.  Notching an arrow, bending his bow with such a well-trained grace, Fingon took a breath, and another.  He blinked until his vision was cleared.  It was difficult to locate his target on a hroa smeared with crosswise scars, like so many dried-up rivers on a map.

Nothing at all like those blue-lipped children whose fragile fingers turned so cold and numb that they could no longer grasp their mothers’ hands.  This was not the quick slithering of a sheet of ice to overtake and to blanket and to leave the prey faultless in destruction.

Who can be so vain as to pull that age-old “…if you love me…” and who so perfect as to succeed?  Only one who is pure art and mystique.  Only one who is the outcome of an impressionist’s attempt at painting Eru himself.  Maedhros was quiet like nothing else, his closed eyes not like windows to a fëa, but barriers to keep his spirit locked away.

Love meant more than two pairs of elvish lips meeting for one last kiss, or the roar of fire in the distance and the bite of emptiness as ice met unwilling feet.  Love was two bodies, life beating through them, as the One insisted, It has been sung.  And the Valar, the Ainur, the hallowed ones, gazed at that love in wonder.

This is how it went.  He aimed and he shot.    He was the archer, and this was his element.  There was no faltering.  There was no prayer.

 

III

His feet lead him to the Fëanorians, the tainted betrayers, the beautiful, bloodstained liars. That name returns to haunt him – Maedhros, a name the tawny color of rust with the bite of the Helcaraxë beneath it. They hurtle it at his restless form, and from somewhere he finds the defeated will to say:

– …dead.  You were right.

For they had said it a thousand times: dead, dead, as good as dead. He teaches himself a new memory, untrue but so beautiful, a peaceful body lying amongst the stone, red lips smooth and flawless, flawless. Grey eyes shut, dead by any hand but Fingon’s, torment ended.

Fingon now knows that it never ends.

– Then where have you been, this past week? – The voice: concerned, disbelieving, in a way that is utterly Fëanorian. Maedhros would have raised his eyebrows slightly as he used such a tone; he would have stepped back with a reserved, withheld emotion that could never quite be defined. Crossed his arms and spoken again, with a clear voice not yet ragged, not yet damned.

Fingon invokes the false memory, speaks it as truth, voice soft but clear, as shock and dismay twist themselves around the perverse relief echoed through surrounding eyes. A few elves stumble back, horrorstruck, even after all they have seen, but others send hands reaching toward him, consoling, reassuring.

He brushes them off and returns to his archery. Twenty points to shoot the moon, fifty for the sun. A thousand for Mandos, but none as Maedhros shut his eyes with grateful acceptance, silhouetted by his own blood smeared across the mountainside.

 

IV

For blood ye shall render blood, it was once said, and Fingon memorized the facade of crimson staining colorless ice, a desire for vendetta coursing through him. Frozen ice, snow, everywhere; ever-white, Oiolossë, though Varda has forgotten them.

He remembers corpses that looked more alive than Maedhros’s prone body, a twisted fascia behind which a fëa with the strength and acuity of the Blesséd Realm whispered:

– …deliver me…

Nothing may be eternally holy, aina. Nothing is forever beautiful.

 

V

It is twilight, and a hush abides, with murmuring background dialogue combining fluent Quenya with jagged streaks of the New Language. Fingolfin approaches him, Fingolfin who will never be Finwë, father of Fingon who cannot be Finwë-second.

– Where have you been?

Nowhere. It is impossible to exist anyplace with only half a soul, aura frayed around its edges, essence draining into the rocky earth.

– I felt that communication with the Fëanorians was obligatory.

Cold seeps through his words and drips down between them, a bold, open rawness that covers any past emotions with a frosty sigh.

– The traitors, the cowards... the damned?

– Oh, but we are all damned.

A feud may never be healed in a world so broken.

 

VI

And Eru, the One, called forth his first Children, and they were called the Quendi, skilled and ageless, fair and unflawed. And among them the Noldor most wise. A trained hand bent a bow, an undying voice called a prayer; one pair of eyes closed, one remained open, and both were flawless.