Mercy, Love by Elleth

The lover Findekáno cuts loose from the precipices of Angband has once been Maitimo.

It is anger that guides his hands, half-frozen not only by Helcaraxë, which he conquered and survived, not only by the abandonment in Araman, but by the bitter winds that lash the mountain and help his dagger cut through dying flesh and shattered bone.

"You will not die before you explain. Before you atone. Before you answer me!"

The words howl into the wind. Maitimo, a half-conscious shell, breathes out snatches of Findekáno's song back into his face and asks for death.

It is also love.

Through cracked lips Maitimo reveals that his name now is Maedhros, a sharp and guilty word on Fingon's tongue, the final syllables like the cut of his dagger. Maedhros screams himself hoarse with nightmares and yet doesn't wake. Though he doesn't speak of them in daylight, Fingon knows - the orcs, the lashes, the burnings, the myriad untold sufferings. They are wrought on Maedhros' body as well as in his fëa.

When Fingon rests, the anger is there still. Now it buries, raw and blunt, into his own chest. Atonement it may be, but this is not what he wished for.

Maedhros asks for death as he asked before on the mountain. He asks outright. He crosses blades with Fingon unarmored and wielding his sword in the left, twisting him into defense after defense and into wall against wall, following after, leaving opening after opening into his ribcage and his heart.

He also claims Fingon's lips in one bitter kiss after another. There is anger there, too, and Fingon cannot blame him. Angband poisoned him and chained him and starved him, a shadow that won't lift. "What is the difference?" Maedhros asks. "Torment unending is the same, whether there or here."

The House of Fëanor removes to East Beleriand, and Maedhros settles at the first line of assault, willing and wishing for death yet again.

Fingon remains at Barad Eithel, becomes High Prince, marries. The anger stays constant, sometimes mellowing and sharpening into guilt. He is praised for fashioning a white-hot blade of defense out of the ruin that Maedhros was. The very daring even say that this is the Song claiming victory over Morgoth, twisting something horrible into something good-to-have-been.

Fingon thinks back to the days of Maedhros screaming in his sleep - which never stopped - and lies his assent, smiling.

When the Sudden Flame has burned its course and all the news of ruin comes on raven wing and by dust-choked, war-worn messenger, Fingolfin rides away northward, and never returns.

Fingon breathes easier when the crown and confirmation come to him. Maedhros stands at attention in the crowd, his burning eyes upon his new Lord. When the three of them - his wife, Maedhros and himself - retire afterward, it is Maedhros, who tastes of ashes, who speaks Fingon's own gratitude and grief into his mouth.

"At least your father was not captured, nor conquered. At least he was permitted to die."

There are others that were captured and that lived, a fate that Fingon wishes on no one, but still cannot make himself grant them - or Maedhros - their freedom or what death he might. His love is too selfish and the Noldor too dependent on Maedhros to keep the leaguer.

Steely, Fingon sends the messengers from Angband away that come to parlay for the freedom of one after the other. Captives are made examples of. Finrod dies in anonymity rather than give himself up to Sauron. It goes so for years, and Fingon shatters in his grim responsibility over and again.

It is Maedhros' heart that uplifts in hope with tidings of the victory of Lúthien and Beren, and although he cannot contain all his brothers, he seeks a new league and a new unity, a new purpose. He sways Fingon by no longer speaking of death for himself, although his sleep is plagued still these centuries later.

And Fingon himself dares to hope, thinks of that old grief and guilt and the dagger slicing off Maedhros' right hand - and vows to be the hand he took and lay all his grief at the feet of Morgoth, where it rightly belongs.

They hack a captive to pieces before Barad Eithel as though they know that Fingon is watching, as though they want to kindle his wrath rather than his pity for one less suffering spirit in the world. But they kindle another's wrath - the man's brother who is the one to rush out to start the war that - he does not know yet, being filled with hope still - will come to be called the Unnumbered Tears.

Fingon's first tears fall when the gates of Angband slam in his face and the same Gwindor is now captive. They don't fall for his fallen.

Fingon sees Maedhros' banners march across the battlefield, sees the red hair flying on his helmetless head like a standard of its own, and laughs in the midst of the fight. They will win the day, and the night, they will win peace and the Silmarils and perhaps an end to torment for those that come after them.

And perhaps even Maedhros will know rest.

But the dragon comes and drives them apart. This time he and his archers avail nothing, and behind the dragon come Balrogs, hewing their way toward him.

Fingon's guard draws close around him. Tides turn.

His guards fall valiantly, leaving him singled-out and alone. There is neither time nor reason for tears now. But in isolating him, Morgoth betrays his hand. He knows what would be the worst blow to the morale of the Noldor and the free peoples - their king not slain, but taken and tortured into a disfigured, nightmare-ridden spectre of his former self.

He never, he thinks defiantly, lifting his head to face Gothmog, thought of Maedhros that way.

The fire-demons toy with him, exhausting him until he stumbles, now easy prey to subdue.

One slings its whip around him from behind.

Fingon pushes to his feet one last time, sword and standard in hand. In his mind's eye he sees Maedhros, so full of hope, and sees his wife, and both their arms around him, and hates the Doom of the Noldor and Mandos and Morgoth and the entire world turning upside down.

And in spite of the whip holding him he struggles toward Gothmog, a song last sung on Thangorodrim on his lips, and in his ears the faint answer from above, begging for death.

So be it. He leaps, and the axe descends.

This, too, he does for love.

In the silent aftermath of their flight, there is weeping. Maglor enters his brother's tent, sets his harp down softly and sits in spite of the pain in his war-shattered leg. "I shall make you a song for him. I shall make a song for all that are fallen, if it takes until my own life's end. May it contain all the grief you feel."

"No song nor tale can contain it all," Maedhros replies at length, quieting. "And not all tears are an evil, Maglor. At least he was not taken. He refused. He died. And that is mercy."

Chapter End Notes

You know the quotes I lifted directly from Tolkien - the grief of the Nirnaeth not being contained in any song or tale, and Gandalf's "Not all tears are an evil", which strikes me as a sentiment that the Noldor would be well aware of.