The Sons of Summer

Mithrim, 2 FA

"I brought you something, cousin."

Maedhros looked away. "Not now."

"Maedhros..."

"Not now."

Fingon looked down and touched the older elf's cheek. This creature, this shorn and broken creature, could not be his cousin...Maedhros had been strong, in his own dried way, like a piece of leather. This creature was white and boneless, with scars on his arms, back, and the nape of his neck...he no longer had any hair to hide them, for Fingon had cut it to his ears as soon as Maedhros began trying to rip it out. Cutting that hair had hurt more than Fingon expected...Maedhros didn't look the same without it, and it made it that much harder to remember a time when Maedhros had not been frightened.

Fingon had kept the hair. It was in a small box under his bed. He never looked at it.

"Maedhros," Fingon tried again.

Maedhros continued looking at the wall. The windows in his room were shuttered, and the fireplace cold and empty. The wall was all there was to look at.

"Let's go outside. It's a beautiful summer day, and I want to show you what I brought you."

Silence.

"It smells like sickness in here. You'll never get well if you don't go out."

At last: "and have everyone see me like this?"

Fingon smiled tiredly, wondering if he had been this obstinate as a child, and if Fëanor had beaten him for it.

"Your hair looks good that way. People will think it was your idea to cut it...and you won't seem as ill if you walk outside enough to get some color. You can lean on my arm if you get tired."

"That's not what I meant."

Of course it wasn't. Fingon had known it wasn't...Maedhros didn't care about his appearance, and never had.

For the most part.

"Oh. You can keep your hand hidden under your cloak," Fingon added, casual. "I have one that drapes to the side. You can borrow it."

Maedhros sighed and leaned back against the pillow. "Please, not now..."

"You'll be happier."

"You care?"

"You know I do."

One of the few rays of sunlight that entered through the shutters it the opposite wall, creating a brief pool of white. Fingon reached over his cousin's head and fumbled with the latch. He threw the shutters open, ignoring the mild shower of dust that coated his head and shoulders.

Maedhros winced away from the light. Fingon could see his cousin well now, almost better than he wanted to....he could see the yellowing bruises that rimmed his eyes, and the branch of dried blood that crept from between his lips and across his cheek. He brushed it off before Maedhros could wince back any further, and took his hand before Maedhros could push him away.

"Just for today."

Maedhros did not, he thought, have the strength to refuse.

Out of doors, in the bright sun, Maedhros looked wholer. The short hair and narrow limbs gave him an almost boyish look, and were it not for the bruises and the stretched, white quality to his eyes Fingon might have mistaken him for healthy. Together, the two elves linked arms and walked from the city into the hills beyond, where the mist had almost been burned away by the sun.

"You see?" said Fingon. "That wasn't so bad."

Maedhros bent and, with the stiffness of the very old, pulled up a dandelion. The plant had long brown roots that snaked like veins over his arm. He tried to remove the flower and stem, but couldn't quite manage it with the one hand allowed.

Fingon rescued the dandelion and plucked it apart, neatly, where the roots joined the stem. Maedhros took it, but did not look up.

"Where is this thing you brought me?" he asked at last.

Curiosity. Good. Bitter, but good.

"It's still out a ways. It needs the room."

Maedhros nodded and slipped his arm once more through his cousin's. Fingon could feel his heart fluttering through his back.

"Maybe we should rest?"

"I'm fine."

Fingon fought the mad desire to hug him.

Through field, and forest...it was not a long distance, but Maedhros had to walk slowly. Fingon wondered how much of the sun's warmth he could feel...or if, perhaps, Thangorodrim was still on his skin, and in some way he was still walking through snow on his way to a mountain and hellwrought steel. Even though the day was gorgeous, one of the warmest Mithrim had felt in months, Maedhros looked like he was marching to his death. He was still beautiful, no doubt about that. Even now, his face had that pale violet quality of Tirion, something that said he was worth being saved...

"...when I was sixteen," Maedhros was saying. "He brought a whole armful to my mother, and laid them down in front of her on the table. He meant it as a joke, he always called them weeds, but she picked them up like they were roses and filled all the vases in the house with them. She made Father a garland, but he wouldn't wear it. He was always just a little embarrassed, that she'd liked them so much."

Maedhros twirled the dandelion between his fingers. One of his knuckles was still swollen, and the stem came up against the lump like a stick against rock.

"Mother always loved you," he said suddenly.

"But you didn't?"

"No. Not always."

Fingon caught him when he stumbled, and let the older elf lean against him. His bones were like twigs.

"Not far now."

They walked. The clearing came up. Fingon whistled.

Maedhros, who had gone hunting with his cousin many times in Valinor, winced. "Fingon, this is madness. I can't hunt, look at me, I'm..."

"A cripple?" Fingon asked quietly.

"Yes. A cripple." Maedhros reached up to adjust the cloak, Fingon's stylish cloak, which only covered one side of the body...

Fingon bent again to retrieve the fallen dandelion, this time twiddling it between his thumbs so he would not be tempted to rip the cloak off and throw it in the bushes. "He isn't for you to hunt with," Fingon said. "He was the most beautiful thing they had at the market. So I bought him for you."

And through the trees and the rare patches of mist, a dog came bounding...something made out of milk and ivory, something long-legged and serene, more star, Fingon had thought, than dog. As the dog walked by, Fingon put out a hand and touched, for just a moment, the fur that was nearly as white as his cousin's white hand.

The dog sat before Maedhros, just as Fingon had trained it to do, and sniffed his cloak.

"He likes you," said Fingon.

"You're mad," said Maedhros. But he was reaching out and stroking the dog's long white muzzle, he was scratching it under the ears. "Does he have a name?"

"The Sinda who sold him to me called him Lachanar. Flame of the Sun."

Between them, the dog glittered like an unspoken question. Fingon took a stick from the ground and handed it to Maedhros. "You can throw for him, if you'd like. We have enough room here, and it might help you build back some upper body strength."

Maedhros took the stick. For a moment, the fingers of the two elves met near the middle--Fingon's hands, brown and knotted, and Maedhros's, milk-pale and scarred. It was Maedhros who released the stick--not having expected it, Fingon let it drop. The dog picked it up in strong jaws and padded a few feet away to chew on it.

"I'm sorry," said Maedhros.

Fingon picked up another stick, but his cousin wouldn't take it. "I'm sorry," he said again.

"No need to be."

For a moment, Maedhros looked up, a son of the late summer, and not of Fëanor at all...with the yellows of dying leaves in the creases of his eyes, and the white sun in his cheeks, and lips, and nostrils...with the red-gold grain in his hair, and across his arms, and across the spot where once in Valinor a right hand had been.

Very gently, Fingon covered the stump of his cousin's right arm with both his hands.

"Keep the dog," said Maedhros. "He was meant for you."