I own nothing.
He sits in the silence before dawn, when the sky over the dark pines has just begun to turn purple and gold, aware of little else. He sits there, so unaware that he does not realize that she has at last emerged from the forest until she is sitting down beside him, wrapped her cloak closer about her shoulders—the snows have melted, but the air still has a significant bite to it.
"Where were you?" Turukáno asks without looking at her, and for once when he asks such a question, it's without the edge of panic that comes when Irissë drops off the face of the earth without warning anyone.
"Out and about," Irissë answers vaguely. Turukáno glances over his left shoulder at her. Irissë has her long hunting knife, but not her bow or quiver. She grimaces suddenly, eyes downcast. "Is Father worried?"
"A bit." More than a bit—he was tearing the camp apart looking for her. With Arakáno dead and Findekáno gone, the idea that his daughter had vanished also drove Nolofinwë nearly out of his mind with worry, until one of the camp sentries mentioned seeing her slipping out into the woods. Even then, Nolofinwë went to sleep only reluctantly.
"I should make sure he knows I'm back," she says to herself. But Irissë does not move, and neither does Turukáno. They sit in the silence before dawn, when the whole camp, sans the night sentries, is still sleeping. The birds that fly by day have not yet roused from slumber. A single lonely barn owl swoops down into the pines, returning to its roost after what seems to have been an unproductive night of hunting.
Turukáno wonders who else might come walking out of the forest if he waits long enough. He wonders who or what that person might bring with them, and his stomach turns. Out of fear or anger or something else, Turukáno can not say.
What do I have to do today? Turukáno tries to distract himself away from thoughts of missing brothers. But the thoughts of his schedule, having taken on most of Findekáno's duties with his older brother gone, give Turukáno precious little comfort. He'll likely have no spare time until evening, and not see Itarillë all day once again. Elenwë… How I wish you were still here.
I wish Findekáno hadn't gone after him.
Irissë's hand lights on his shoulder, and Turukáno turns to look into her tired, slightly anxious face. "Finno hasn't come back while I was gone, by any chance?"
Turukáno shakes his head, frowning darkly. "No, he hasn't. There's still no sign of him." Just as there's been no sign of him for nearly two months now, since he slipped away in the night, just as Irissë did last evening. For one harrowing moment, Turukáno had thought she had gone out to join him.
"And we're definitely sure now that he's looking for Maitimo?"
There's a badly hidden strain of hope in her voice, and Turukáno's frown only darkens to hear it. "Yes, we're sure. Makalaurë sent a messenger last night while you were gone—when Findekáno visited the Fëanárion settlement just before he disappeared, he asked about Maitimo at length. He'd wanted to know where he'd been captured." Turukáno sighs heavily, running his hand through his brown hair in exasperation. "And… And you know how he was, from the day he found out that Maitimo was taken! It put a fire in him; he was probably planning to try to rescue him from the first moment he knew!"
And now, Findekáno has vanished into the wild, searching for his cousin in evil lands. Turukáno understands how much Findekáno cares for Maitimo, as much as he sometimes wishes he didn't. He also understands the urge to protect and keep safe those he holds dear—if someone took Itarillë, or Irissë, or Findaráto the way the Enemy took Maitimo, Turukáno would move heaven and earth to get them back. He understands, on a basic level, why Findekáno ventured off to find Maitimo.
He does.
And yet…
Maybe I don't really want him to be rescued. An ugly thought, but there's the truth of it. Maybe he doesn't want for Maitimo to be found. Maybe he just wants him to vanish behind the walls of Angband.
"I wish he'd taken me with him." Irissë stares pensively through the pines at the bands of purple and gold breaking the indigo of the sky. A few stray strands of black hair fall over her face. She has that familiar restless, almost longing look on her face. Wanting to roam out into the unknown. "You shouldn't go into unfamiliar territory alone, especially not if you expect to encounter danger along the way. You need a lookout; Finno knows that." The familiar frustrated tone enters her voice, to match her expression.
"Father would have skinned him alive if he had gotten you involved in this too." And so would I, probably.
"I suppose there's that." She doesn't sound convinced, but then, Turukáno didn't expect her to.
Only someone who has never looked upon the Doors of Angband could say so easily that she wishes she had been asked to follow someone into those blackened lands. And only you, sister, as forgiving as our oldest brother, would agree to go with him. There is no one else in this encampment who would go to such lengths for one of Fëanáro's sons.
"I hope he's dead."
The words are out of Turukáno's mouth before they even really register in his mind. Then again, why would they need to? They've been the words secretly harbored in his heart since he learned of Maitimo's capture by the Enemy. Even if he has kept them to himself before now, they've become as natural as anything else he might say. I hope he's dead, that's what he thinks whenever he thinks of Maitimo, for many different reasons. But it still tastes bitter on his tongue to say, and that, above all else, is what surprises Turukáno.
Irissë stares at him, appalled. "You can't mean that," she says uncertainly, eyebrows rising towards her hairline.
"Can't I?" Turukáno asks heavily, setting his jaw in a grim line.
There it is, the bitter taste of defeat, dredged up with memories of Elenwë sinking slowly beneath the ocean as he watched, dredged up with memories of Arakáno breathing his very last. Bitter and devastating is failure, and Turukáno knows quite well whom he has to thank for it. He does not care if Fëanáro was the one who gave the order to burn the ships and leave them stranded in Araman, and that Fëanáro is dead now, unable to hurt them any more than he already has. His sons did nothing to stop him, and Maitimo, the oldest, might have had some sway over his father, if he had tried. Maitimo could have stopped Fëanáro, if he had tried.
Isn't that being unfair? Turukáno still can't help but wonder to himself. Fëanáro had grown perilous and ill-tempered. He did not listen to the entreaties of his wife. Who is to say that he would have listened to the pleading of his sons?
But even when he allows that much room for doubt, Turukáno still hopes that Maitimo is dead.
He hopes that Maitimo is dead, because Elenwë and Arakáno are dead and maybe having Maitimo dead along with his father would even out the books. (But he knows it wouldn't.)
He hopes that Maitimo is dead on account of all the suffering the hosts of Nolofinwë and Findaráto endured on the cruel plains of Ice.
He hopes that Maitimo is dead on account of the near-death of Itarillë.
He hopes that Maitimo is dead, because if he is not, that means that he has lived in torment in Angband this whole time, and that when Findekáno finds him, he may find something that wishes it was dead.
He hopes that Maitimo is dead.
"Can't I hope that he's dead, Irissë?" Her silence says a great deal more than words could. "Can't I assume that Maitimo is dead? So many others have died, so easily. Why should he be unique, and live?"
Irissë sucks in a sharp breath. "Don't say that," she snaps, casting her gaze into the camp to make sure they aren't being watched (always the way with Irissë and arguments) before going on. "You think Maitimo being dead will fix things? It won't. It won't bring back Elenwë, or Arakáno, or—"
"You think I don't know that?!"
"—It just leaves our cousins in as much misery as we are."
Turukáno gapes at her incredulously. "And I suppose you forgive them completely? You forgive them for burning the ships? For abandoning us? For abandoning you?" As he goes on, the tone he adopts and the way her face slowly crumples, leaves Turukáno at least somewhat aware of how cruel his words are, but once he starts, he can't stop. "You forgive them for leaving us to die in Araman, on the Helcaraxë, in the mountains? You forgive them for wishing death on us, for leaving us here to deal with the Orcs and the Enemy's other creatures on our own, weak and starving? You forgive them for all of that?"
She doesn't answer him for a long time. Instead, Irissë stares at him in silence, eyes too wide and too bright, face well and truly crumpled, looking as she has not looked since she was a little girl and things like skinned knees and verbal jabs were enough to drive her close to tears.
That was cruel, Turukáno admits to himself at last, feeling some of the anger leave him to be replaced with shame. Memories spring unbidden to his mind, not of grinding ice nor of unforgiving mountains nor of desperate battles against Orcs. He remembers her as a little girl, running through the halls of Fëanáro's house with their cousins. Tyelkormo, who was barely any older than her, but the others as well, even the Ambarussa, who were born after she was well-grown, and Maitimo, who was grown by the time she was born. He remembers the way she looked up to Nerdanel and the way she was accepted as sister by their cousins, just as readily as she was accepted as sister by her own brothers.
It's difficult to admit that he remembers that side of them. Difficult for Turukáno to admit that he remembers the side of their cousins that could be tender and kind and caring. Difficult for him to admit that Irissë has every reason to feel conflicted, that while he was never terribly close to them, she was once nearly a daughter of the family. Every time he tries, he sees dead faces, and it sours him on truth.
"I… I… No, I…" She struggles to find anything to say at all, the confusion of anger, grief, caring and weariness all too apparent on her face. "…I don't know, Turukáno," Irissë says at last, quiet and tired. "I really don't."
"I'm sorry, Irissë," Turukáno mutters, not looking at her. She's helped him with Itarillë ever since Elenwë died, without complaint, without even having to be asked to do it. Been to Itarillë what he can't be right now, what Elenwë will never able to be again. Fine way to repay her, by needling where he knows she's sore.
"Good," she says stiffly, and seems more like herself when she scowls at him. "That wasn't fair, and you know it."
"I know. But think, sister. How long is it supposed to have been since Maitimo was captured? Years on end. How likely is it that he has survived this long?"
She raises an eyebrow. "Considering that this is Maitimo we're talking about? I would say 'very likely.'"
Turukáno can almost laugh, remembering how ridiculously sturdy their cousin is. But once again, this is the opinion of one who has never looked upon the horrors of Angband, even from afar. In such an evil place, he has his doubts that even the first-born son of the Spirit of Fire would survive for long. "But if he's not? What about Findekáno, what then?"
Irissë shifts her weight uncomfortably, pain gleaming behind her eyes. "It would devastate him," she murmurs, staring past the pines. "He'd be like you were, when Elenwë died. He might not even think to come back."
Turukáno winces. Too true. "Findekáno could die there too. I'm glad he didn't bring you with him." He draws in a deep breath. "I don't want to be the last one left of us, Irissë," he admits reluctantly. I don't want to lose you, too.
There's another reason I'm glad you didn't go with him. It would devastate you too, though not as much as it would him. I don't want to imagine the two of you in your desolation in evil lands, standing over a ruined corpse or looking despairingly over a blackened landscape, wondering where his body lies.
"And if he is alive, what then? What happens when Findekáno finds him? I can't imagine that Maitimo has been well-treated by his captors. Even if Findekáno does find him alive, it's doubtful our cousin will be able to leave Angband under his own power, not after so long." Turukáno imagines it, Findekáno coming across a small cell and finding a broken, ruined Quendë within. A starved, mutilated creature that has wished so long for death that it no longer quite knows what to do with life. In a way, that might be worse for Findekáno than finding Maitimo's corpse. At least with death there is some finality.
"Finno would find a way to get him out," Irissë insists stubbornly. "Once he found Maitimo, he wouldn't rest until he saw him safe and with us again."
I know. That's what worries me. "He'd be in danger every moment until he returned here, if he wasn't killed along the way. And even if Maitimo is alive," Turukáno says heavily, "even if Findekáno brings him back, it won't be over."
They lapse into silence, sitting in the quiet before dawn. Irissë slips her hand into his, and he squeezes her fingers, both to give comfort and derive it.
He can guess that she supposes that he means that Maitimo will have a slow, ponderous recovery to endure after the torments of Angband. Irissë might believe that Turukáno is referring to that. And that is part of the truth, but not all.
Turukáno is not the Quendë in the encampment who is of such a mind towards the sons of Fëanáro, particularly Maitimo, that it would be better if he was dead. He is far from the only one who thinks that way, who has lost so much and is embittered towards Fëanáro's followers, who have not had to endure such loss as they have. What Findekáno does, he does out of love, and worry, and hope. Perhaps he even thinks that rescuing Maitimo will help rebuild the burned bridges between the hosts of the Exiles. But if he brings Maitimo back alive, it won't go that way. Maitimo's survival will aggravate the wounds, not heal them.
Oh, Findekáno.
If Findekáno brings back a corpse or tales of a horrible death, comes back to the camp gray-faced and weeping over the loss of a beloved cousin, a beloved person, Turukáno will not be spiteful. It will be the end of it. He derives no satisfaction from the suffering of his siblings. If Maitimo is dead, and Findekáno grieves, Turukáno will grieve with him for his brother's sake, and try to put it behind him.
But if Maitimo is alive, and Findekáno brings him back with him, there's no telling what's going to happen.
Turukáno—Turgon
Irissë—Aredhel
Arakáno—Argon
Findekáno, Finno—Fingon
Nolofinwë—Fingolfin
Itarillë—Idril
Maitimo—Maedhros
Makalaurë—Maglor
Findaráto—Finrod
Fëanáro—Fëanor
Tyelkormo—Celegorm
Ambarussa—Amrod and Amras
Quendë—Elf (Plural: Quendi) (Quenya)
Note: This is set before it became generally known among Fingolfin and Finrod's camp that Maedhros had tried to stop Fëanor from burning the ships at Losgar.