We are not lost in the mortal city by AdmirableMonster

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We are not lost in the mortal city

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We are not lost in the mortal city

Smoke spirals up towards the lightening sky, a heavy grey smear across the base of the heavens.  The shores are churned up and dark with the prints of feet.  Blood has soaked into the pale sands, turning them rust-red.

“By the Valar,” whispers Gil-galad.  They are too late.  The Sons of Fëanor have come and gone, leaving terrible devastation in their wake.  He turns to Círdan and sees that his foster-father’s face has been rendered immobile.  “We must search for survivors,” Gil-galad says numbly.  He turns to one of his captains, feeling again the weight of a terrible and unwanted crown (ludicrous, a foundling Child of Angband to be the only one left to wear the mantle of the the Noldor.) “Have our folk fan out through the city.  I’m going too.  The rest of you—” looking at the other captains, “buckets of water.  We must put the fire out.”

He thinks Círdan protests the wisdom of this, but he cannot wait here when one more pair of hands might be the difference between life and death for even one creature.

What have you done? a voice whispers in his head.  He remembers Maedhros—a face of chiseled stone, scarred with the ravages of his torments.  Remembers, with the queer stubborn awe of childhood, the whispers in Himring of the fates of escaped thralls behind other Elvish walls in Beleriand.  How can he have done this?

The settlement at the mouth of the Sirion was a comfortable sprawling mix of fields, wooden houses, and the main tower on the cliff-top, less of a fortress than a light-house, in which even now the lamp is burning, shedding illumination turned pale in the bloody crimson of the rising Sun.  Now the streets are filled with choking smoke and corpses.  Gil-galad moves with mounting horror from place to place.

It is still.  Everything is still.  (They cannot all be dead.  Stars, they cannot all be dead.)

In the end, it is the predator’s senses that lead him to the scent of fresh blood coupled with the sound of a heart-beat nearly hidden beneath the crackling flames.  They take him through a burning gate and up to what must have been a lore-house of some repute.  Shreds of paper and burned leather litter the ground, fluttering in the wind.  A vicious will has been at work here, for he can see the marks of footprints, including those where a booted foot has ground a particularly sturdy tome into the murk.

The building is no longer ablaze, somehow, but half of it is collapsed in on itself, charred wreckage around which still rises a reek of ash and burned flesh.  He ducks beneath the lone-standing lintel and turns into the still-preserved half of the building.  Blood has spattered on the floor and dried.  A little further in, he finds the body of one of the attackers, Fëanorian star smeared with mud and blood.  A broken spear stands out in the center of her chest; bruises bloom along the side of her face, and a little blood has trickled from her ear as well.  Someone struck with her something heavy to stun her before running her through, he infers.

A trail of blood leads away from her and into the next room, where he finds the first living creature he has seen since he set foot in this mortal city.

Huddled in the corner, arms around a Man’s limp body, the Elf has the aquiline profile and dusky skin of a Noldo matched with that particular silver-sheened dark hair Gil-galad has only ever seen in the Sindar, falling in lank, matted waves about their face like starlight.  The dull eyes that look up have none of the light of the Trees that would declare them one of the original Exiles.

Gil-galad automatically gentles his body language.  “You’re safe,” he says, speaking with a quiet confidence he doesn’t feel.  It’s pitiful, how grateful he is to see a single living soul.  The Elf’s eyes flicker to his lips, and they shake their head exhaustedly.

“There is no one here who will hurt you—you have my word as the High King of the Noldor.”

No recognition dawns in those dull eyes.  Gil-galad takes a step forward, putting out a hand—and the Elf shrinks back, trying to cover the Man’s corpse with their own body.  

“All right.”  It can’t be good for the Elf to remain here—smoke still lies heavy on everything—but pushing them too hard could also be terribly damaging.  Gil-galad seats himself on the floor, cross-legged, trying not to think about the fluids that will surely soak into his leggings.  “I can wait,” he says softly.

After a few more minutes, the Elf turns again, cradling the Man’s corpse carefully, as if trying not to wake him, and their hands flutter rapidly through a complicated series of motions not unlike the simpler hwermë that Gil-galad knows.  He raises a hand.  Slower.  Then he gestures, Safe now.  Friend.

The Elf shuts their eyes and exhales a shaky breath.  When they move their hands again, wearily, it is far closer to the simpler mode, and Gil-galad is able to capture the gist, although he suspects he is still missing some of it.

We are not warriors.  They came for us all the same.  The song—

Tears trickle down their face, and Gil-galad realizes there is blood smeared across their cheeks and ears as there was on the corpse outside.

Safe, Gil-galad repeats.  Come?

The Elf shakes their head, stroking the hair of the corpse.  He’s sleeping.  Too much.

Gil-galad has to swallow against the nausea.  I’ll carry him.  Come now.  

Where is star foam?

He shakes his head, putting out his hands.

Where is the princess?  Where is the jewel?

Gil-galad shakes his head again.  Words later.  He wishes he knew how to express questions.  Come now.

An irritable sigh, which is at least better than fear.  The Elf shifts again, slowly, getting their knees under them as they slowly attempt to rise.  Gil-galad moves to help support them and take the weight of the dead man.  Is this the only survivor, he wonders, this skinny scholar in their ragged robes?  

They hiss with pain as they rise, and Gil-galad has to move rapidly, shifting the corpse into his left arm and slipping an arm about their waist to keep them from collapsing.  From this angle, he can see what was hidden before—the blood that has collected in their blue robe at the waist, a widening dark stain.  Stars—

“I have to get you to the ships quickly,” he says.  “You’re hurt.”  They give no sign of having heard him at all.

Gil-galad makes a choice.  In later years, he will never know if it was the correct one or not, and it will feature in his nightmares for many nights to come.  Ages later, when he reads the fragmentary words that have survived, he supposes that Pengolodh must have forgiven him at some point, for there is no anger in the description of him—not like that of Maeglin.  Nor is there any mention of his true heritage, which makes him wonder.

He is not wondering about the mark he will make on history now; he does not know that the shuddering Elf in his arms will one day be accounted one of the greatest of the loremasters.  He only knows that they are hurt and that the bleeding must be stopped.  Gil-galad lets the corpse of the Man fall and takes the Elf up in his arms.  There is a moment of peace and then they cry out in a strangled, raw, wordless voice and try to get away.

If Gil-galad were not made stronger by the mingled blood running through his veins, the Elf would certainly have torn themself away, but he is, and Noldo or Sinda, they are pure Elvish.  He gets them wrapped against him in a tight embrace, even as they thrash with pain and the madness of survival beyond all hope and all others, and he runs.

By the time he reaches Círdan and the ships, they have stopped struggling, and he does not think anything has ever frightened him half as much as the stillness of this body in his arms.  I saved you, he thinks.  Please, please let me have saved you.

He’s on his knees in the bloody sand, and the Elf in his arms gives a small, breathy groan.  Círdan is calling for the healers.  “Please,” Gil-galad says, aloud this time.  Círdan’s hand is on his shoulder.  Smoke is still staining the sky like the blood on his hands—particles of ash drifting upwards like the motes of dried blood flaking away.

“It’s all right,” someone says.  “He’s alive, my lord.”  Gil-galad drifts, holding onto these words like a lifeline.

* * *

Pengolodh stares out across the bay, with the ship rocking beneath their feet.  They’re cold; they haven’t been able to warm up since they retreated before the terrible fury of the flames that took the lore-house.  Since they tried to save Dírhaval.  The song had said to sleep.  They rubbed their hands against their arms.  They hadn’t slept, but he had, and he had not woken.  Sleep, they can still hear.  Sleep.  A song that shattered bone and will alike.

A light touch on their arm turns them to see Ereinion Gil-galad, who brought them out of the wreckage of Sirion.  They bow stiffly.  He shakes his head; his hands, haltingly, tell them that he is sorry.

“It is no fault of yours,” they tell him.  They look back at the lighthouse—at the Havens of Sirion, bleeding her entrails into the ocean.  A city should not die, but Elwing is gone with its heart.  The story told by one of the few other survivors has her diving from the top of the light-house with the Silmaril, her vengeance on the murderers who took everything else.

Pengolodh shuts their eyes.  It is always flame and song.  So fell Gondolin to Maeglin’s treachery.  In their hands, they can feel the splintery haft of the spear they drove into the Fëanorian’s chest.  

Gil-galad touches them again, a light brush.  He is asking if they will come inside; they need to eat to regain their strength.  This is probably true, Pengolodh thinks bleakly.  And there is their own vengeance to think of.  They have no jewels to keep from the marauders, but at least they can see to it that the story of what happened here is laid bare.

Words can be their own type of vengeance, and Pengolodh has never had a shortage of words.  They glance back once more at the blackened corpse of Sirion as they allow their savior to lead them back inside.

And so there came to pass the last and cruellest of the slayings of Elf by Elf.