Who Told Me Time Would Ease Me by sabcatt

In Aman, he cuts his hair short only twice in all the Years of the Trees, vain creature that he is. Once when he loses a bet with Findaráto, and once when Curufinwë’s latest stroke of genius—some new polymer—turns out to be rather more sticky and prone to popping than his calculations had predicted. He yells at Curvo for it, ostensibly for experimenting in the family kitchen and really for rendering him ugly—how foolish he will think himself later!—and gets a stern lecture from their father in turn.

“It hurts now, but it will not hurt later,” Fëanáro says. “Your hair will grow back, but the memory of cruel words may last forever. Do not repay a temporary hurt with a permanent one.”
 

 
The third major haircut in his life is the second stand he takes against his father. It is not fair, he knows; Atar did not know. He must not have known. He is mourning too. But Maitimo was the only one of his family to argue against the burning of the ships, and so he is the only one who can mourn Ambarto—ai, my little brother!—publicly without declaring his folly to all and sundry, so he does.

He slices his hair off roughly above the shoulders, as was once common amongst the Eldar before they came to Aman and away from the sorrows of the Moringotto’s works (or so they thought), and pretends not to notice the pain in his father’s face at the sight of him.

(He is not so good that he could acknowledge it with anything other than fury and—though it burns him to know about himself—satisfaction, that he is repaying to his father at least a portion of the hurt Fëanáro, in his pride, has done to them all.)

The darkness when the Enemy’s forces attack this time is less than the last, but there’s still a moment—just a moment—where he’s young and foolish in Formenos again, Grandfather telling him to gather his brothers and go—he shakes his head and the newly-short braids hanging from his temples flash across his vision, and (thankfully) the moment is gone.

He fights. His brothers fight. For days—if days can be said to exist, with only stars wheeling overhead to light the battlefield—the stars, ever distant, reflecting on blades and pools of blood alike.

His father fights. He blazes—far off the front lines, there are fires all around him. Atar is burning, or maybe the world is—he doesn’t know. Atar is—Atar—

Atar is rasping great breaths inwards, desperate to get the last word in, to finish his latest speech. Maitimo missed the first part of this one. Maitimo wishes Atar couldn’t breathe because of some new fumes Curvo has cooked up in the kitchen with Tyelko’s encouragement. Maitimo is watching his father die. This is too much. He wishes they were all back home. Too much. Oh, Amillë, I am so sorry.

“Nelyo—Pityo—Telvo—my sons—I am sorry—do not mourn me overmuch. Only avenge me.”

I will not avenge you, Atar, not now, because you will not die, please, I cannot—I cannot—

“Swear to it. For me, and your grandfather—he deserves your vengeance as much or more than I do—do not let our losses be in vain. The Silmarils—remember our oath. Children—I am sorry to leave you so soon—Telufinwë, I am sorry. I love thee. My sons, I love you all. Do not—only—”

For all his anger against his father, it is hard to begrudge a final reassurance to a dying man.

(And this talk of oaths, in their father’s final words… Maitimo may not have been able to save Ambarto from the flames, nor to protect his father from them, but maybe—this time, if he speaks well enough, maybe—maybe this time he can save the rest of his brothers, as much as he still may.)

“Atar, I swear I will avenge thee, and thy father as well, though I should die in the attempt. I will uphold our oath, and I shall lead my brothers who remain, thy beloved sons, in the same.”

“And… do not…”

There is ragged fire dancing in Fëanáro’s eyes, a vision not yet of embers but neither of the conflagration they have all become used to. Maitimo grasps his father’s hand in both of his, pressing tight. It is warm. It is almost burning. He presses his lips to the back of his father’s hand, knows he will taste ash later. It is all the forgiveness he can offer, and a promise.

“I will not mourn thee more than thou deservest, Atar. I will not cut my hair for thee.”
 

 
Moringotto—he will not furnish his family’s enemy and his grandfather’s murderer with the titles he demands, he will not, no matter how they abuse him—doesn’t deign to have his hair cut. His creatures yank sections out, and doubtless the blades that catch at his skin also catch at his hair, but to cut it—even short enough to shame him—would be to acknowledge him as an Elda, a thinking creature capable of shame, and not just—a toy.

His hair grows slowly, in Angband. Where once it was down to his thighs, by the time he is rescued—rescued—taken away, the ragged tips only brush the ridges of his lowermost ribs. And then it is gone completely, and he thinks maybe the Enemy or his Lieutenant has decided that he is better as a disgraced king than a cast-off carcass after all, but whatever new pains are in store for him in his newest role do not come too quickly. He sleeps.

He wakes, and they are lying to him, but that is fine. He says as little as possible, dissembles as well as his scrambled mind allows him to when he can’t completely avoid answering a question, sleeps again. Findekáno is there, sometimes silent and sometimes vibrant, making demands of the—healers?—and murmuring reassurances, but of course he is not real. His right hand burns with a new pain, when he can feel it at all. Someone calls him Maitimo and he can’t—doesn’t hide the flinch well enough, stupid, stupid—but what is left to do? They have broken his body, scourged his mind, crushed his crown and his soldiers before him, hung him up to rot on that forsaken mountainside and still he has not died, still he has not died—

And now they have cut his hair. It is the smallest of things, he has learned, that make him realize they will always, always, always find new ways to break him.
 

 
He flees to the northeast as soon as he can stand and hold a sword. His brothers follow only grudgingly, making unconvincing excuses as to why there is always one or more of them at Himring, then unsubtly setting spies on him as the years pass and the worst thing he does to himself is keeping his hair cropped above the shoulders.

He lies when they ask why; he says he is mourning for their father, mourning for the Silmarils, for Grandfather, for Ambarto, and when they ask again he says he is mourning his lost self. And any of these could be true—he has no want of things to mourn, they have lost so much—but they are not the truth. He doesn’t know. The fall of his hair down his shoulders is only—it should be nothing but it is not nothing. It is maddening, it is unbearable, it does not strictly hurt but it is a distraction and a torment more potent than even the phantom aches of his missing hand. It does not send him back in his memory as other things do, but those provocations he learns to handle, and this, this, his hair remains the sole thing for which he finds no solution. It is with shameful relief that he cuts it, now, not the smoldering sorrow and anger that had prompted him the first time.

He knows that Findekáno loves—loved—his hair, and he always thinks: maybe, this time when I cut it off, he’ll see. Maybe he’ll realize. The thought hurts, exquisitely. He doesn’t know if it’s a healing sort of pain or not. (He hasn’t been able to tell, since Angband.) Maybe it’s good that it hurts, maybe it means he’s doing something right; maybe it just hurts.

The haircuts are choppy and rough. He hacks at his hair with shears held awkwardly in his one remaining hand, doesn’t care if it comes out uneven because who will comment on this, now? He is already ugly. Findekáno assured him, throughout his recovery, that the wise would know to look past his tattered ears and sunken cheekbone, the manifold scars visible even on his face alone, but he thinks that the truly wise should know them for what they are: a warning. He cannot even protect himself, so how can he protect anyone else? Better that the unprepared stay away from him, that they withdraw in instinctual disgust at his ruined body even if they fail to understand the true meaning of the story written on his skin.

Maitimo—Russandol—once-Maitimo, and now no more—is not strong enough, not good enough, to—well, a lot of things. But the worst thing he does is taking Findekáno’s love. He does not deserve it; he cannot return it. Still, he selfishly accepts it, selfishly clings to Findekáno in the few spare moments they manage to share, selfishly cherishes the letters he receives. In return, he sends off a few short lines of his own, which he knows Findekáno will feel obliged to respond to. If he were stronger, better, he would make a clean break of it, would stop writing. Findekáno might not understand, might hurt at first from the shock of it, but it would be better, in the end.

Instead, every few years he cuts his hair, encloses a short lock in a letter—never more than a few inches, he can never bring himself to let it grow much longer than that—, writes I have cut my hair again. Hopefully you will not mind overmuch because he can’t bring himself to write I am never going to be whole again and you should be mourning me, not writing to me, even I am mourning myself or I feel like a wild thing when my hair brushes my back, Finno, I am only a fragment of what I once was and there is nothing for you in me, there is nothing left in me for you or for me no matter how much we both wish there was or I don’t know why you can’t see that I am nothing, can’t you see, why can’t you see?

After the Siege is broken, Maedhros with his short hair is no longer an oddity. Everyone, it seems, has someone to mourn. Maybe short hair will remain in fashion after this, he thinks almost hysterically; but Noldo memories are long, even when their hair is not. In ten years, twenty, he will be strange again; one is meant to let the grief fade as the hair grows. He is the only elf to have refused that healing in the centuries the Noldor have been in Beleriand, and he will continue to do so until—something. The Enemy’s defeat, his own death, or perhaps the breaking of the world. (Continued grief alone is not his reason—but let them think it so. He cannot be rid of this weakness, but neither will he admit it. To anyone.)

He has held Himring, and he takes no small amount of grim pride in that, but it is not enough. Not enough to ease his fears for Caranthir and Amras, away south in a fortress that was never meant to stand on the front line against the Enemy’s armies; not enough to console Maglor, whose command took more damage than any other, whose voice still hasn’t fully recovered from the smoke, even a year after the fall of the Gap.

Not enough to hold Fingolfin back from a (stupid, suicidal) charge to the Enemy’s gates. Not enough to save his cousin from this worst of griefs.

He rides alone for Barad Eithel the moment he hears of the challenge—there is no need to wait for word of the King’s death. It will come. He leaves Maglor in command with instructions to inform any messenger who brings summons for him that he’s already gone, to hold the fort in his absence, and to heal.

(This last, he knows, is probably the most futile of any order he’s ever given. But for all that words are cheap in war, they are also the only comfort he can give.)

And of words, cheap and otherwise, he will soon speak many. He will swear to serve Fingon with his whole heart, which will be true, and swear that his brothers will do the same, which will be a lie. He will linger in Barad Eithel only long enough to receive new orders for himself, his brothers, and all those they command. He will ride back to Himring with the knowledge that Findekáno, his little cousin, is well-equipped to rule a people that he never should have had to lead, and then he will continue the work of safeguarding the northern marches and piecing his first little brother back together. This is the best outcome he can imagine, so it is the only one he allows himself to consider.

The mood when he arrives at Eithel Sirion is somber. He finds himself rushed through the gates and guided swiftly to rooms set aside for him, is told to make himself comfortable, but his Highness would like to see him at his earliest convenience. He sheds his travelling equipment into a pile on the floor without ceremony and turns expectantly to his escort.

“Take me to my cousin.”
 

 
Fingon looks miserable. Not overtly, but Maedhros has spent enough time hiding his own heartache behind an air of command that he can recognize the same look on his cousin’s face.

“Maedhros. Come in.”

Maedhros moves from the threshold to the center of the chamber. Fingon is standing before a desk at the side of the room. The desk is covered in papers, parchments and other debris, the minutiae of ruling mixed with the dross of everyday life; and somewhere in there lie the forms and documents required to finalize the former King’s death, like venomous snakes among dead leaves.

“There is so much to do,” Fingon murmurs, glancing between Maedhros and the desk.

“Yes,” Maedhros agrees. “And there will be time in which to do it. I have not yet prepared my reports for you, for I rode out as soon as I heard. We may speak of business tomorrow. Today, allow me to comfort my cousin.”

Fingon turns to face him fully. “Yes. Very well. Join me?” He gestures to a day-couch in an adjoining room.

Maedhros sits at the very edge of the couch; Fingon seats himself right next to him, leaning into Maedhros’ shoulder. Together in silence, they breathe.

“I must cut my hair,” Fingon finally says.

Maedhros hums in vague agreement. Eternal shine the lamps that illuminate the stage of political theater, and Fingon probably mourns his father in truth as well. It will be a shame; Fingon’s hair is as much a part of him as Maglor’s voice is to his brother. But then, Maglor could not speak for two weeks after the taking of the Gap, and at least cutting his hair won’t hurt Fingon.

“Will you do it? For me?”

No. No. Maedhros wants to run, suddenly, wants to stand up and leave, wants to ride back to Himring and maybe further, east over the mountains until he does not have to think. This is not—is not—there is no reason to panic, yet he feels like Fingon has just asked him to cut his throat, not his hair. Everything about this is wrong.

He keeps breathing, even as his heart stutters. “Surely—I cannot be the best choice. You do not want a Fëanorion to help you mourn the father our father abandoned.”

“I want my cousin!”

The sudden volume does not make him flinch. The anger in Fingon’s eyes comes close.

“Both our fathers are dead, Maedhros. We are not them. You have never hated me on your father’s behalf and I have never hated thee, at least not for any actions but thine own.

“If you do not wish to help me cut my hair, if you, my oldest cousin and the eldest of our house still living in Beleriand, will not aid me as I request, then say so. Because I will not hear your excuses couched in concern for what other people might think—you have never cared for the opinions of others so much as you pretend to, and I would rather you deny me outright than lie to me like I’m still a child!”

Maedhros closes his eyes briefly and tilts his head downwards to bump against Fingon. He takes Fingon’s hand in his own. (He never feels the loss of his right hand so acutely as when he tries to comfort his family, and falls short.)

“I am sorry. It is not that I do not want to help you. I know well the pain you feel right now, and it is my dearest wish that I could ease even the smallest part of it. I only… wonder that you should want my help.”

“And why shouldn’t I? I know you of old, you who have bandaged my scrapes as a child and my wounds as an adult; I have no objection to you tending to injuries of my fëa as well. And besides I have no father to guide me, and I fear to do something wrong if I proceed on my own. I have never cut my hair before.”

“Never?”

“We couldn’t—on the Ice. We lost many, but it wasn’t—wise.”

Fingon’s eyes are shining. Maedhros did not see if he ever looked this vulnerable, after the Ice, after Elenwë and Arakáno and the hundreds of other deaths that they’d faced. By the time Maedhros was aware enough to apprehend anything, Fingon had clearly decided to put on the familiar affect of valour, and never let Maedhros, in his fragile state, see any demonstration of the doubts or fears that must have assailed him.

“And after—Arakáno, it still was not… it did not occur to us. Not after so long.”

“I am sorry.”

Fingon giggles hysterically. “Sorry! Well! Sorry you were not there to remind me of the noble customs of the Noldor? I accept your apology; and you may make it up to me now. Only please take more care with my hair than you do with your own. I understand why you do as you do, even if I do not agree—oh, do not look like that! It is no secret you think yourself ugly, and it is no secret to anyone but you that most of our people still find you fair beyond all justice. But never mind—now is not the time to dredge up old arguments. So?”

There is still something pressing outwards in Maedhros’ chest, still something saying that cutting Fingon’s hair will hurt him as it hurts Maedhros, will hurt them both, but his cousin is looking at him with an unguarded and sincere hope he hasn’t seen in centuries, and it’s not so difficult to say yes.
 

 
After Fingon’s hair is unbraided, and carefully cut, and re-braided to his satisfaction, they return to the day-couch. Fingon is freer with himself now, as though cutting his hair helped him shed some greater weight, and he stretches his legs out along the couch, leaning his torso into Maedhros’ lap, running his hands along Maedhros’ arms and occasionally rearranging the both of them altogether.

“We match now,” Fingon says. “Short hair. No fathers. Dead younger brother. Perhaps we should start a society.”

Maedhros cannot help but snort at that. Fingon’s words are impolitic, yes, but still funny. If they cannot laugh at tragedy, they will laugh at nothing. And laughter is so very necessary, in the midst of all they face.

Fingon’s tone turns from light to pensive. “Why did he leave like that? Against Morgoth, he had to have known—Did he not love us enough to stay?” And Maedhros can hear the unspoken question underneath: with Turko and Írissë gone, was I not enough to stay for? Why wasn’t I enough?

And—here—again—

If Maedhros were a better liar, a better cousin, a better friend—if he had not lost his own father so soon after his father had killed (however accidentally) his own brother—he would say something reassuring, something Fingon would be heartened to hear, something like yes, of course he loved you, it was for the love he bore you and all his people that he chose to ride against the Enemy.

But Maedhros is not a better anything, is not even good, and moreover he is tired, so instead he says, with the unhealed sorrow of centuries behind it: “I do not know why they leave us. Only that they do.”

Fingon sobs, twists, and presses his face into Maedhros’ chest, arms wrapping around and pulling tight so that Maedhros can feel the press of Fingon’s brow against his breastbone. This lapful of sobbing cousin is almost reminiscent of Valinor, yet… so much has changed.

His hand flutters uselessly behind Fingon’s head. He holds there, unable to decide whether he should offer his cousin a touch of comfort when Fingon leans back again, bumping his head against Maedhros’ indecisive hand.

Maedhros moves to withdraw, but Fingon catches his hand without looking, pulls it in front of his face and presses his lips to it.

There are still tears running down his cheeks. Maedhros imagines pressing his own lips to the wet tracks, kissing away his cousin’s sorrow, and hates himself for thinking that in this moment, Fingon is a beautiful, shining thing that he could hold and keep forever.

“I only wish…” Fingon trails off, looks down, then looks up again. “I only wish we might know when our cup of sorrow was drained in full. I do not regret cutting my hair for my father; indeed I feel much relieved, yet I fear—I fear that having done so will invite only more sorrows. Please do not think me cruel for saying it, but thine hair has been short for centuries—dost not thou ever fear that thou hast brought this never-ending tragedy upon thyself with thy show of mourning, as though the sign of one misfortune may call forth others?”

Maedhros sighs. “Oh, Finno.” His sweet cousin deserves better—but so did Amrod, and Arakáno, and Elenwë and Itarillë, and the list goes on and on of people he will never be able to make this confession to. Fingon deserves a better life, a better world—but those are idle daydreams, not to be, and in this world, he deserves to know the truth about Maedhros. So long as Maedhros inflicts his company and his counsel upon Fingon, at least he will be honest about the likely fruits of it.

“I need not fear that I myself wrought the evils I have suffered—why should I fear when I have sure knowledge? It was my choice to swear my father’s oath, my choice to stand aside and not place myself in the way at Losgar. My choice as King to treat with the Enemy, and my failure to impress the need for vigilance upon thy father the King that allowed the Enemy to break our siege. I fear not ill fortune, nor fate, bitter as our doom may be, for the past has taught me that we are, if not the sole, then the chief architects of our futures; I fear only that I will orchestrate yet greater losses, and again have none to blame but myself. I dread only—”

Maedhros could continue, but Fingon grasps his shoulders, saying “No, no! No, cousin, I will not allow thee to blame thyself for acts so far beyond thy control. Is that why thou hast kept thy hair cut for nigh five hundred years? That thou art mourning all those slain by the Enemy’s works as if ‘twere achieved by thine own hand?”

Yes, whisper a thousand echoes of Maedhros, lying endlessly to his brothers, his soldiers, to the Fingon of the past, whose eyes were haunted but never hollow, whose hair was always long and lovely.

“No,” he admits. “It is not that.”