Golden Lads and Girls All Must by sallysavestheday

Golden Lads and Girls All Must

Argon is surprised, more than anything.

Riding in the rear of Fingolfin’s host, he had not been part of the panicked, slippery misery of Alqualondë. Until this moment, he has never known the disrupting jolt of his blade striking home; the sick, slick slide of its withdrawal. That his arm moves as it has been trained to do is fortunate, for his mind is elsewhere, puzzling. 

He has never truly imagined what it would be like to be face to face with an enemy that hopes to kill him. The Orcs that descend on them are more monstrous than in any childhood tale, and yet they are somehow pitiful, with their ragged ears and their empty, almost-Elven eyes. No, this is not at all what he expected.

It is hard to hold onto his battle-fever when he keeps noticing things – his painter’s senses are flung open and wide. Here the starlight on someone’s armor catches his eye; there the arc of an arrow’s descent into the surging horde. He notes a tattered surcoat, flickering at the edge of his vision; the necklace on some charging Orc, metal and bead and bone almost elegant against its blackened hide.

On the Ice, he had planned his first works in this new land to be explosions of color: blossoms and auroras and great sheets of fire. But perhaps capturing the silvery fog of this battle is more urgent. He is not certain, now, that he will be able to paint flowers. He must first clear his mind of blades.

Argon stores up images and sensations for later, plotting. He will paint a mural, perhaps, on the wall of his father’s palace-to-be: silhouettes of their snow-worn, hungry people, stunned yet valiant in the waning night. Or a gray and black and starlit muddle that speaks to the bitter grace of the fight. Some miniatures, to remember those he knows are dying, even now. And a small series of Orc faces, overlaid with a shadowy rendering of the cramped and weary souls he senses inside.

Lost in his observations, he has waded far ahead of his assigned company when the blow comes. It, too, startles him – after all the buffeting, true pain is a surprise. He ends the Orc that has struck him with an instinctive backhand swipe, but then it is too much, and he is crumpling, sinking, falling. Feet are on his neck, scrambling over his back, pressing his hands down into the reeking mud. It is dark, under the scrum, and for the first time, he is afraid.

Fingon finds him there, in the new moonlight: the silver of Argon’s pauldrons gleams out of the pile of his darker, fallen foes. He hauls his brother from the heap and turns him to face the sky, calling for a healer. Argon’s eyes are wide and wondering, tracking the strange, pale light, trying to focus. It is so bright!

Exposed by the moon, Fingon sees his own face reflected in Argon’s cuirass: he is mottled and frantic, eyes wild, teeth bared in a furious snarl. Argon, in contrast, almost smiles. His face wears the look of smooth abstraction he escapes to when caught by a vision, conjuring colors, imagining brush strokes, gauging the perfect light.  

Always his brother has danced thus at the edges of the world, Fingon thinks: lost in his daydreams, his hands moving in creation almost of their own volition. The palace caretakers in Tirion learned quickly to leave the lower walls free of decoration, lest his childish fingers muddle older works or damage treasures. Young Argon left the fruits of his imagination in mud or chalk or paint wherever they struck him, without regard.

Finwë, charmed by the unexpected beauties that spilled from those tiny hands, had bordered and labeled them: Yavanna's Gifts, Carried Inside. Inspiration After Breakfast. View From an Interrupted Nap. Small Argon had been his favorite companion for gallery walks, king and child hand in hand, wandering, wondering. Fingon remembers them laughing together, bent over easels, rolling brushes on their tongues, coming to family lunches with their mouths still striped in orange or purple or green.

But Argon’s lips are red now, redder than they should be with the taste of his life leaking up and out of his mouth. The moon silvers the slash in his stomach, but the edges are raw. Fingon gathers him close, cries out again for a healer. The cold slows everything, but the blood in the snow beneath them keeps spreading.

“No, no, no, Arko. Arko, stay with me.” Fingon wipes the stains from the corners of Argon’s mouth; he rocks his baby brother as he had when he was young, panting with the beginnings of despair.

Loss he has already learned, and anguish, and regret. But it was Argon, alone of all of them, who came to him after the slaughter on the docks, cleaning Fingon’s face and arms and gazing at him with that deep look, that search for perspective. When Fingon made to rise, to flee, Argon held him still with strong, sure hands. “You won’t do it again, Finno. I know it.” Argon’s fingers had been warm in his own, curled as though around a brush handle, remaking him in some new image. “I know you. You are better than this.”

Fingon shouts again: for help, for forgiveness.

He grips the gaping wound, trying to force its edges together. “Arko. Look at me.”

But Argon’s eyes are still on the sky, on the new moon, and the darkness that lingers at its margins. They widen, tracing the path of a shooting star, as all his sweetness spills out into an ending, cupped in Fingon’s trembling hands.