Chapter Text
Fingon dampens a rag in the basin and dabs Maedhros’s broken lip. He wipes away the blood trickling down his nose, cleans his slashed eyebrow, and puts a poultice on it. He washes the dust and blood away from the scratches on Maedhros’s forearms, bandages the right one, cut open on a sharp rock. He says nothing. This is not the first time Maedhros has found himself in this predicament, and it will not be the last. The Valar and Eru himself might have forgiven him his sins, but not all in Valinor are so charitable.
“Are you finished?” Maedhros asks once Fingon leans back to look at Maedhros with a critical eye.
“Let me see your back,” Fingon says. “That stone might have damaged something.”
He realizes his mistake almost instantly. Maedhros, busy fidgeting with the bandage, freezes and raises his head. Fingon forces himself to hold his gaze.
“You saw it,” Maedhros says.
Fingon doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
“You were there. You saw it and did nothing,” Maedhros says.
His voice trembles with emotion. After his reembodiment, Maedhros is more inclined to tears. It used to be Fingon who would weep easily with joy and sorrow alike, but now he has to be the one who is silent, the one who is stone.
“What did you expect me to do?” he asks. “Had I interfered, now you would have been shouting that you did not need me to rescue you. What could I have even done? Did you want me to fight those people, to strike them? Maybe to slay them?”
Maedhros is still, eyes wide as if he cannot believe what Fingon said. As if they have not told each other worse.
“The crowd would have dispersed by your mere approach,” Maedhros says.
A tear rolls down his eye, leaving a track in the dust. Fingon has to fight the urge to wipe it clean.
“You will not fight for yourself, but you want me to fight for you,” he says. “Do you not always say that people have a right to their righteous anger?”
The cut on Maedhros’s lip bleeds again. Maedhros rubs it with the back of his hand and smears the blood on his cheek.
“Do you believe so too?” he asks.
Fingon throws the rag into the basin. The water splashes, sprinkling them both.
“Do you know how many lives you destroyed?” Fingon says slowly. “How many families ruined, homes set alight, children left parentless? How many still in the Halls? How many parted forever?”
“Why are you with me then if I am so repulsive to you?” Maedhros asks. “Why did you seek me out when I left the Halls? I was perfectly content to live a solitary life and never approach you again. But you came to me. You said you wanted to renew our love. Why do it if you resent me? Why be with me if you believe what those people did to me is just?”
Fingon takes the rag out, wrings it, grabs the basin, and rises to his feet.
“In the end,” he says in answer to Maedhros's questions, “we all get the punishment we deserve.”