In These Altered States, Rejoice by sallysavestheday

Chapter One

After everything falls apart, most choose not to remember the long years Fingon spent among the sons of Fëanor, close as another brother, in and out of house and hold and forge, learning what they learned from his brilliant uncle’s hands.

Rather, they contrast him with his cousins in as many ways as possible: bright to dark, hopeful to desperate, airy to burdened and weighted down. He is cast as the rescuer, the reuniter, the resister to the very end. That he fell to the same fiery whips as Fëanor is carefully elided in the songs, and Alqualondë was such a very, very long time ago…

With only a little effort, Fingon can be remembered as nearly as far from a Fëanorian as his admirers can get. If Maedhros' shadow looms in the distance, they never sing of it. Not after Doriath and Sirion.

For his own part, it serves Returned Fingon just as well to be believed to be ignorant of his uncle's arts, particularly smithcraft. If he is not looked for, no one will notice him in the forge, shaping his fury into horseshoes and nails and cucumber frames. He may be healed, but he is not yet reconciled with history -- that work is not the province of Mandos, but his own. The clamorous heat of the smithy is a welcome change from the cool inactivity of the Halls, and he has always been inclined to turn raging into doing.

For centuries he battles his bitterness through the crafting of items of practical use, turning the steel he once wielded so bloodily back toward the small magics of household abundance, communal welfare, a worker’s ease. With his hair covered and his fine eyes shaded he might be any Noldo doing the plain work of making: turning out planters and park benches and tools that are clean-edged, smooth-lined, and balanced in the hand. If the pieces he shapes are slightly more beautiful than others', more woven through with Song, well: Formenos was a place of learning, first, and Fingon loved competition as much as or more than any of his peers. What he learned from Fëanor is no subject for public tales, but it lives in his hands, nonetheless.

With time, the urgency of his anger abates. He eases into peace, better able to contemplate with temperance the waste of their ambitions, the breaking and sinking of the land he loved, the sulfurous twist of his brilliant cousins into instruments of Doom. He finds himself migrating from the great forge to the smaller furnaces, shaping more deliberate art, drawing and hammering new gold ribbons for his hair. His shoulders soften; the set of his mouth becomes less grave.

Eventually, Returning Celebrimbor finds Fingon happily perched at a jewel-bench, louped and humming, lazily tapping fine wire into a brooch for Anairë, his mind divided between the delicate work he is finishing and the soft grass of the meadow behind the forge – anticipating the rest he will take there, a long night’s easy sleep under the stars. He has left the sharp wariness behind him at last, and melts smoothly into dreams of tenderness.

Fingon’s glee at having a companion who shares his own complicated history leads them to a joint workshop, much good-natured competition, and a friendship that almost fills the Fëanorian gaps in Fingon’s heart. Celebrimbor knows what it is to find beauty and worth in that which others despise. Fingon understands how grief and resentment can break bonds between fathers and sons. Learners by nature, they pool what they know, working with their hands, working with their hearts, feeling their way back, each to his own happiness.

It is in Fingon’s embrace that Celebrimbor weeps when Sauron finally falls. It is to Celebrimbor that Fingon shyly shows the design of the ring he is planning for Maedhros, asking his opinion of the fine etching and wire-work, of the copper hammered into the gold.

Fingon spends years finessing the curves of the filigree, weighing the ring's circle in the palm of his hand until it is perfectly balanced, spinning it on his thumb until his mind is lost in its twirl. He can almost imagine Maedhros laughing over his shoulder, as he so often did when they were young, leaning in to snatch whatever Fingon was spinning out of the sweet, charged air.

Those old, bright days will be ready for remaking, soon: theirs to reshape with the matchless craft of touch that has outlasted despair.

Chapter End Notes

This grew out of a conversation on the SWG discord about the extent to which Fingon would have been traditionally crafty as a Noldo. I like to think of his being "close in friendship" with Maedhros meaning that he had access to Feanor's teaching early on, since he is later praised for being "skilled in hand" (and because it further complicates the angst!).