AN: Not so much a chapter story as a series of very short stories exploring a singular theme-namely, how Fingon and Maedhros process their various traumas in the aftermath of Thangorodrim. A note on the title: I have always loved that Maedhros' Old English name means "Daybreak". As Fingon and Maedhros both underwent terrible experiences and have to struggle towards recovery together, this gave me an excuse to give it a cameo in the title for this collection. (PS: I can't believe I'm finally writing Silmarillion fic after nearly fifteen years of loving these characters and their stories) (PPS: I already depicted this scene once before by drawing it on my tumblr, but that wasn't enough for me so here it is written out.)
I.
"Findekáno?"
It is the first time Russandol has called him by name since—since the cliff. Findekáno, caught just as he began to rise from his seat, looks with startled eyes down to the bed where his cousin had, until now, been sleeping.
Sleeping is perhaps too kind a word for it. But Findekáno does not have words, yet, for most anything to do with his cousin these last weeks.
"Yes, Russandol," he says, as gently as he can. "I am here."
"How came you here?"
"We flew," Findekano says. He remembers the experience as being very cold, and he remembers it had been hard to breathe, so swift was the rush of Thorondor's speed through the high airs. He had curled down as low as he dared over Russandol's body, shaking, clinging with frozen fingers to the eagle's long, slippery feathers as he braced with stiff arms to keep his cousin from falling. The god-eagle's feathers had shone like gold between his bloodied fingers, great shining handfuls of gold. They had smelled like home. He had cried.
Irissë has not spoken to him since he returned except to say that she is envious that he got to fly.
"No," Russandol rasps. "How came you. To Aman. How did—"
"Oh."
The cold, the awful cold rises up between Findekáno's teeth like it never left him, that hateful, familiar rigidity creeping into his throat, his shoulders, freezing and heavy upon his tongue. For a moment he is tempted to lie, or to deflect the question, but Nelyafinwë is. after all, Feanáro's son. He deserves to know.
"We walked the Ice. All of us, except Arafinwë. We walked for years."
Maitimo's eyes used to be only one of his many beauties. Now, they are the only loveliness he has left. Findekáno meets their grey gaze and wonders, not for the first time, why Morgoth did not cut them out. He does not even feel sick, thinking of it. He has been through too much for that.
"I am sorry."
Findekáno does not even laugh at the apology. He just sits there, his hand on the edge of the bed, staring at his cousin. Maitimo's voice is wrecked. His lips are torn to pieces. There is a scar, across the broken bridge of his nose, that looks almost like a second mouth, a twisted, bitter smile that never goes away.
"Findekáno."
It takes him a long while to stammer out each syllable, but still he says the full name.
"I am. I am sorry."
(Itarildë had cried their entire first hour on the Ice, but when her tears froze and they had to thrust her face close to a torch to thaw them, tearing out half her eyelashes in the frantic race to save her eyes, she learned never to cry again. Findekáno himself would have lost his fingers to frostbite if Artanis had not realized what was happening in time to save them. The first time he cut off a man's hand was not on the cruel slopes of Thangorodrim—it was on the Ice, sawing through dead black flesh and crystalized blood and trying desperately not to be sick. The man died anyway.)
(So many died anyway.)
Russandol whispers: "It must have been terrible."
Turukáno would have screamed at him. Artanis would have hit him. Findekáno swallows it down, that endless, endless cold, looking at his cousin's ruined face. At his own hand resting on the bedspread where Maitimo's right hand should have been.
"It was," he says at last. "But it is over, now."