Breathe Again by Lferion

Breathe Again

Flying

Some days Fingon wakes struggling to breathe, feeling the raw absence of his people (friends, fighting companions, Ice-companions) who fell to claw and tail and fang, caught by eye-grip, wreathed by noxious fume. He should have died, choking on poisoned air filling burning lungs, but he had not looked in Glaurung's bitter eye, given that foul fea any purchase on his mind. The staunch defense of his best archers and a shift in the wind -- The Lord of the Breath of Arda is not done with him, has use for him still.

What that use might be does not know.

Loop

When Fingon emerged from Mandos, the sharp-edged, elemental air an assault on Remade lungs that bore the insult of flame and fume and brittle ice limned by memory; the fea's impress. He could choose what marks he kept, what lessons, talismans, reminders. Choose to carry nothing forward. He contemplated that idea for a long moment. No, neither all nor nothing. He was not the nér of those days under Treelight, nor would he wish to be. Keep the scar from the Ice-bear, but not the rest of the Ice-damage. Nothing of Gothmog or Glaurung either.

He would breathe free again.

Spiral

But damage erased from the hroa does nothing to remove the memory of it from the fea. And damage of any kind in Aman was nigh unheard of. Or had been, before the Sun. Though that perhaps had changed. He could not tell, here in the place between Namo's domain and that of the living. He stepped forward, appreciating the gentling of the air, the flush of color brightening and defining the landscape around him, scent, sound slowly coming clear - water, leaf-rustle, birdsong -- and the memories of pain and debilitation receded.

Not forgotten, still part of him, no longer immediate.