Disclaimer: Not mine
Káno is short for Findëkáno, which is Fingon's Quenya father name.
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Inferno (noun)
an intense fire
a place or state that resembles or suggests hell
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Long before, in the bliss of Valinor, before Melkor was unchained, or lies came between them, Fingon had been close in friendship with Maedhros; and though he knew not yet that Maedhros had not forgotten him at the burning of the ships, the thought of their ancient friendship stung his heart. -JRR Tolkien, The Silmarillion
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He finds Maedhros - not that he was explicitly looking for him - a little way outside the Fëanorian camp, swathed in a dark cloak and standing at the edge of a steep cliff that overlooks the lake, his black silhouette barely visible against the deep blackness of the night sky.
"You shouldn't be out here alone," he says, when he is close enough. "It's dangerous at night."
He regrets his thoughtlessness immediately, when Maedhros flinches in response, his restless eyes darting instantly around, searching for the threat, his body already stiff and poised, ready to fight or flee.
Fingon raises his hands above his head, a painful knot already tying itself in his stomach, and waits tersely for his cousin still.
"You sound like my brothers," Maedhros says eventually. He offers Fingon a small, apologetic smile, but his eyes - once furiously burning coals, alight with life and joy and happiness - remain dull, painfully lacking in the once fiery spark they possessed. "Always nag-nag-nagging. It's as if they have forgotten that I am the eldest, and I am in a good mind to grab them by the ears and bang their heads together."
Fingon moves to stand beside his cousin."That's just one of the perks of being the older siblings; you never get the respect that you deserve," he mutters in response, almost sarcastically, and for a short moment it feels just like all those times gone past, before their world was torn into tiny, scattered pieces by Morgoth.
It doesn't last, though.
They fall into an uneasy silence, and Maedhros turns his head to examine the lake again, his dull grey eyes drilling into its still, flat surface. Fingon cranes his neck and continues to study his cousin's fixed expression. From this angle, his smile appears to be achingly forced, like his face is a pane of glass that will shatter if he stretches his mouth any wider.
He blinks, and suddenly he can hear a different Maedhros' voice in his head again, rough and raw and haggard, begging with a horrific desperation for Fingon to end his life. (Please, Káno. I can't live like this any longer.)
He pushes it to the side with a practiced, controlled determination. When he is alone at night, lying upon his back and staring sleeplessly at the roof of his tent, he will take out these memories and examine them carefully, with an air of weariness - the way one would tread past a sleeping beast, as if a single misplaced step will cause them to leap up and pounce - but until then they are best left forgotten.
(He has never seen a body that had been so thoroughly abused, with so many scars and missing pieces, and even the thought of it makes him want to hurl up his dinner, or curl up and sob, or run back to the Undying Lands and beg the Valar for forgiveness, because Middle Earth was not supposed to be like this. His cousin looked like he's fallen apart and been forced back together more times than Fingon has had hot meals, stitched up like a patchwork quilt, destroyed and repaired so much that there's almost nothing of the original left.)
The silence between them is agonisingly palpable, and it mounts in pressure, building and building until it seems as if it going to explode between them. Once upon a time, there would have been no such thing as silence between the two of them; they could - and would - talk for days on end, much to the annoyance of their peers. But that was before the Oath, and the Doom of Mandos, and the kinslaying at Alqualondë, and burning of the ships at Losgar, and the treacherous, frozen hell of the Grinding ice; before he was no longer sure if he'd ever be able to forgive the Fëanorians again.
"Is this real, Káno?" Maedhros asks, slowly, hesitantly, eventually.
"Of course it is," he responds instantly, eyeing his cousin with a startled curiosity. "Why would it not be?"
Maedhros is silent for a long time, seemingly collecting his words together before releasing them into the air. "Morgoth used to make... hallucinations, or sorts. Joyful things, to try and drive me mad. It was one of his favourite forms of torture; I think he liked watching me desperately scramble towards a hope that didn't exist." He takes a long, slow breath, in and out, before continuing. "For all I know, this is just another dream, created just to get my hopes up."
Despite himself, he feels something twist painfully in his gut, like a sharp punch to the stomach. He shakes his head, barring all unpleasant, horrific thoughts from his mind. He will take them out and sort through them later, he tells himself, but for now he has a job to do. "Does this not feel real to you?"
"Nothing feels real anymore," Maedhros murmurs, and Fingon can see his grey eyes from underneath her hood, dead and glassy, and fixed on a still point in the distance. He clears his throat before hesitantly continuing. "Usually, the only way to wake up is to die. If this is real, and I were to jump of this cliff and drown, do you think I would just wake up in Mandos?"
"Don't you dare," he growls, placing a hand on his forearm. Maedhros finches away like a startled animal, but he digs his fingers into his arm and holds on. He is is cold to touch, and Fingon can feel the patchwork of indents littering his flesh. He drags his cousin roughly round to face him, his dangerous glare meeting a dull gaze, wide and fearful. "This is real, I promise you."
Maedhros closes his eyes, and exhales slowly outwards through his nose. "That's what they always say," he murmurs, but doesn't press it.
He goes limp in his grasp, and Fingon hurriedly releases him, averting his eyes as he rubs the place where his fingernails dug into his skin. "I'm sorry," he says at last, pathetically.
Maedhros chuckles, but it is an empty noise, harsh and bitter. "Everyone always say that, too."
They are both silent for a long time, Maedhros observing the landscape below them with a weary curiosity. His wispy, flame-coloured hair appears more like a cruel, mocking irony than a symbol of his (no longer) fiery nature, and it tumbles from beneath his hood and sways limply in the wind, the once thick strands of orange now streaked with an ash-coloured white. His gaze is fixed upon something beyond mere vision, something the Fingon does not really want to see, and his scarred knuckles turn white with strain as he shudders and suddenly clenches his fist - singular - around Fingon's wrist with a terrified strength, as if he is afraid that the wind might blow him away.
He is hard to hate, Fingon decides, this sad, broken thing clinging to him; this pathetic shadow of his once fiery cousin - his friend -, who stares into the deep glimmering night sky with a veiled wonder in his burnt out, ash coloured, dead eyes.
But even the dampest of kindling will catch, eventually, and it takes but a spark to set alight an inferno that could one day have the strength to bring down a forest. Morgoth may have doused his fire, but at least Maedhros is alive, and Fingon has all the time in the world.
-end-
AN: Oh Fingon, if only you did. But at least Maedhros does eventually catch fire again, so to speak, but perhaps not so much in the way you intended. (I couldn't resist, I'm sorry.)
Hope everyone enjoyed!