Kiss the ground / then turn from it by Elleth

Chapter 1

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Sand scratched along the hull of the ships when they sped out of the harbours of Balar toward the Havens of Sirion long before the sun rose.

Birds, laden with cries for help, had flocked to the island all night, and the outlooks on the eastern shore of the isle not only lit the chain of signal beacons but came to the palace themselves, hastening by horse and reporting that a force was encroaching on the settlement by the Mouths of Sirion.

They had not known whose force; it was too far to see in the gathering dusk even for elven eyes, and when the first buildings burned, the figures outlined darkly against the dancing flames could not be made out clearly: Whether an incursion by Morgoth all the way to the southernmost shore - then his arm would have grown long and his power incredible, if he no longer feared the might of Ulmo - or an enemy who was no less terrible in the ruin they brought, but at least more familiar.

Alphangil righted the circlet with the blue stone on her brow and forbade herself any weeping as her ship cut through the waves toward the mainland. Standing at the prow, she did wind her hands in her short hair and pulled, guessing more than knowing whose fires were burning on the shore. The pain helped her focus, helped her understand her grief.

Balar held almost all that she wanted and needed - she and her son had safety there. They were provided for by Círdan, and Gil-galad was growing into his office with remarkable certainty. Life was good, even if she was lonely - there, and now. She had forbidden him to come, and had forbidden him to send a great host; only Círdan's sailors needed to man the small fleet, healers, and a small bodyguard to accompany her if her heart had deceived her after all.

Spray flew into her face, and she wiped it away resolutely. She did not even want to give the appearance of having wept, not to the lone figure who came into view as they approached the harbour. So the enemy knew.

Landing saw her order her bodyguard to stay, jump onto the pier alone, and race along over the wooden planks toward solid ground. The chainmail covering her chest, unfamiliar, and only rarely worn - travelling between Barad Eithel and the Havens, and then in flight, when Brithombar and Eglarest were taken by Morgoth - pressed into her ribs and made breathing difficult. Or perhaps that was her fear.

She had been left breathless before by the tall figure standing and waiting for her. This time he stood as a statue of terror - a face more haggard than the one she had once kissed, had once seen smile, had once shared her bed, her body and her husband with. Had once loved, and been loved by.

The sword in his left hand was shining in the firelight with red blood, of Elf or Man or both. As she herself stood and watched, thick drops ran down the cutting edge, hung suspended a moment from the sword's curved tip, and fell into the sand.

She did likewise, lowering her head and pressing her forehead and lips into the ground. It all tasted like salt and fire and she dared not look up as she heard his step approaching. Her bodyguard had heeded her orders and not disembarked. Maedhros' people were nowhere in sight, their work done; they were alone.

He stood, let her wait. She shook, with more than only fear. There was the sound of his sword being wiped on a fold of his wayworn cloak, the sharp rasp as it went into its sheath. The touch of cold fingers to her shoulder that seemed to burn even through her armour.

"Alphangil. Queen of the Noldor." he said, and almost she could not recognize the voice. There was something of old still in it - most of all, a confusion that she remembered well because it had been so endearing then, when he had discovered that not only did they both harbour feelings for Fingon, but had grown to harbour them for each other. It hurt her heart to hear the familiar notes, now.

There was more in it, also. His voice was rough, so rough - shouting commands and breathing in smoke during the battle, she thought. But more than that: what she had learned through letters from Maglor, her distant kin by marriage twice over - that Maedhros was once again beset by nightmares, or at least much more frequently than he had had them in the past, before the Unnumbered Tears.

She knew how he could shout when he had them, awakening Fingon and herself, and half the keeps of Himring or Barad Eithel, but not himself.

When she looked up at him finally, after being addressed, she was hard-pressed to keep from weeping in spite of all her promises to herself. His left helped pull her to her feet, and pulled her in to himself, a clash of his armour against hers instead of their bodies melting together as it should have been, a barrier that she resented like little else.

She closed her eyes, thinking that the next moment there must be a blade in her back, but nothing came except for his possessive left hand splayed between her shoulder blades, then reaching up to tangle in her hair at the back of her head.

"I shall have to cut them shorter yet," she said tonelessly against his chest. "Maedhros. What have you done."

"What I must," he replied coldly. "What I must, not what I wanted. The Havens would not surrender the Jewel, as little as Doriath would before." A flicker of exhausted fire in his voice. "We - such few of us as remain - Maglor and I and some of our people, we have no more choice. We are caught inescapably in this doom, and it goes now toward its end. Amrod and Amras are slain. The Silmaril of Elwing is lost, and Elwing herself is lost. She cast herself into the water as we sought her out and was uplifted as a bird with the Silmaril on her breast, and flew away westward into the open sea. Did you not see it? For doubtlessly you had a watch on the shore."

She shook her head. There had been tidings of some swift white flame low over the water far away, but they had not been able to make sense of it, and there had been no time to ponder.

"Then must you dash yourself to pieces against the might of Angband now for the remaining two stones, if no other choice remains?" she asked weakly. Her mind refused to consider the horror behind him at the Havens, and rather sprang to the horror that lay ahead, for there was no more kin to slay for them - none that gave them reason to.

She hated the thought that there had been reason, no, that Maedhros had believed there to be reason. Hated the blood that stained Doriath and hated the blood that stained the Havens on his hand - blood of the Sindar of her northern kin among them, who had fled to those realms they had still thought safe after the fall of the Noldorin kingdoms that had protected them, only to find that evil pursued them even there.

"My heart tells me," Maedhros replied gravely, after standing silent in thought with her still against him, "that it will not be our fate to assault Angband yet again. We would have to, whether we had the strength or not, were there not foreknowledge on me that it will not be long now until the Oath is fulfilled or broken."

"The Oath," she said, once again close to weeping, and squeezed her eyes shut to prevent her tears from rising. It was her voice that rose instead. "The Oath, Maedhros! Is there nothing else that still drives you?! Tell me, is there nothing else?! Tell me!"

Alphangil shoved against his chest and watched him stumble backward with no resistance, surprised by how lightly he had held himself with her. His defenses had been lowered.

Immediately, she missed him.

She followed, and closed in on him again. Not to slay him, although she could have drawn her own knife now, not even to push, but to hurl herself at him once more, and for her arms to come around him, hold him tight to her, reach up to grasp his hair and pull his head down toward her and kiss him with sand still on her lips. Having heard him, there was only pity on her mind, and a need to know, to understand whom she was speaking with.

The Oath, or Maedhros.

His mouth worked soundlessly against her lips. She tasted more bitter smoke on him, coaxed his mouth open to her, and found him, when they had stood so for too long, yielding into it with a sound that was not a sigh or a whimper, but both at once, and his shoulders shook as he wept openly, finally.

"There is nothing else. No longer," he whispered at last with a terrible, final certainty, long after their kiss had ended and they still stood face to face. "I am nothing else now."

She did not reach to wipe away his tears, but let them rain down on her, falling on her forehead and rolling over her cheeks. How long they stood she could not say, but when she looked up next, the daybreak had grown into half-light around them, and by one of the warehouses some distance away that had not yet caught on fire, she saw a second figure standing and watching them quietly, a short sword in each hand and a harp on his back, not interfering, only waiting. There were two children with him.

He, too, seemed haunted and haggard. She turned back to Maedhros.

"Then it is good that all shall end soon. I have known you, and I have known the man you were, but if all you are now is a hollow vessel for your father's Oath, then I hope you will find rest and peace when your end comes."

Her heart had broken once already, when the bond she had with Fingon had withered into white flame at his death. It broke anew now, when Maedhros once more leaned in and kissed her, and said quietly into her ear, "Thank you."

And then released her. He turned from her toward his brother and they walked away into the smoking ruin of the harbour together.

She let them go.

As she looked back in the direction of the ships and the faces that waited there - judgment, anger, disgust, but most of all sadness - her eyes remained dry. The tears on her cheeks were those of Maedhros, and she began issuing commands, for the search for the wounded that might be saved, and the slain that needed burying. Her people sprang into action.

Then she went back over the pier to the ship, slowly. It would be the last time she set foot on Beleriand before its sinking.

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Chapter End Notes

Many thanks to IdleLeaves for the cheerleading and Saelind for the alpha-read! ♥

The title of this fic is a misremembered quote from Lucille Clifton's Blessing the Boats.