Disclaimer: Everything belongs to the estate of JRR Tolkien. I'm just borrowing his world for love, not money.

Summary: Maedhros examines the motivation of his family following the burning of the ships at Losgar.

I feel useless, kneeling here, watching the ships burn. I can feel the snow beneath my knees, seeping through my cloak and breeches; a spreading numbness that reaches my heart and mind and lips. (No emotion, no thought, no word.) As I hide my face in my hood, I am scarcely aware of Cánafinwe's hand on my shoulder.

I do not acknowledge him.

It hurts, knowing that Fëanorian must now equate with treachery. We are no longer simply kinslayers; we are not to be trusted, our word counts for nought.

Alqualondë was a haze of heat and fury and blood. This, here, is cold defiance, disregard for the bonds of family; ay, and the bonds of love.

I feel Cáno on one side and Turco on the other. They pull me upright and guide me to our makeshift camp. I turn my head to see Father and Curvo standing at the shore, silhouetted by the dirty, dying flames of their senseless revenge. Cáno puts his arm around my neck, blocking my view of the traitors in their exultance.

Once inside, Cáno makes me lie down. He wraps blankets around me. He is worried for me, I can tell. Low whispers; I can hear low whispers between him and Turco before they depart, their voices rising in a hissed frenzy of conflict. (He will fade! He will not!)

I slip into sleep, dreaming of the ice cold spray of the sea, my back to our destination, my eyes straining towards a far shore, growing ever more distant.

Sometimes the drops of hail and snow and seawater felt like cold, cruel kisses. (Love me, betray me.)

When I awaken, I do not know where I am. I have grown so used to the incessant motion of the ship that I feel disoriented, wondering where the swell and dip of the waves have gone. Am I frozen in time, trapped on an unmoving sea that neither carries me away from my home (my heart!) nor bears me to my doom (my death!)?

This brief illusion of stopped time (between time?) ends when I hear a murmur beside me, immediately echoed on my other side. Telvo, Pityo, buried under thick furs, speaking to each other even in the depths of sleep, cheeks flushed, lips moving and both clinging to me as they used to as Elflings.

I disentangle myself from their grasp and they orbit towards each other, still sleeping soundly, still secure in each other's presence. They are too young to be here, but then I think that all my brothers are too young to be subject to the whims and vagaries of a madman.

I pull my cloak on and wrap my arms around myself in a vain effort to stay warm (and how I long for the embrace of another). Once outside, I find Cáno almost immediately. He is sitting by a small fire, talking to Moryo. They both look up at me and I see relieved smiles cross their faces, unsteadily illuminated by the flames. They know, of course they know, why I, above all the rest, regret, mourn, despise the burning of the ships.

"Sit, brother," says Cáno, patting the frost-hardened ground beside him.

I do so and smile tentatively at my two brothers. Curvo has not yet joined them, they tell me, and Turco has already gone hunting. The twins could not be dissuaded from sharing my tent last night, Moryo says. Despite being the youngest, they considered it their duty to comfort me as best they could.

"Do they still kick?" asks Moryo cheerfully.

"Ay," I reply. "And they still mumble incessantly."

We smile again, as though all is well, as though we are not standing on the watershed between horror and shame.

My head drops and I look at the hard, cold ground beneath me. "It will be a long night," I whisper.

Moryo's hand falters as he holds a flask of wine towards me. He does not know what to say. Neither, surprisingly, does Cáno, our poet, our wordsmith, our musician.

I drink a mouthful of wine before I hand the flask back to Moryo. For a while, I am content simply to stare at the flames. There is a world in that shifting landscape of red and black; shadows cast, light and dark.

"Do you remember when you fell out of the tree in Grandfather's house in Tirion?" I ask Cáno, my gaze still drawn to the depth of the fire.

He sounds surprised when he speaks. "I… yes, Nelyo, I do."

"I felt as powerless then, you know. Your hand slipped through mine and I could only watch you fall."

"I was not injured," he says quietly.

"No," I agree. "You bounced as Elflings tend to do. You looked up at me, jumped to your feet and ran off to play another game of hide and seek with Findekáno."

Hide and seek. Chase. (You're it!) Games in the garden, giggling Elflings: genuine memory or wishful thinking? Every season, every century: Cáno through to Ambarussa; playing with my brothers, walking with my cousins, walking with Findekáno and knowing after a time that there would be no canyo to follow nelyo. (Hoping now there will be none to follow me.)

"It's more than a game now, isn't it?" asks Moryo abruptly.

"It stopped being a game when we swore that damned Oath," mutters Turco, coming to sit with us. It seems his hunt has not been successful. (Maybe the twins will have better luck later.)

"Don't speak like that!" chides Curvo, apple of our father's eye, most alike him in temperament and skill and failing.

"What?" demands Turco. "Damned? We are damned, Curufinwë. We are damned by the Oath, we are damned by our own hand and word and action!"

"Yet some are more damned than others," whispers Cáno.

I look at him as he looks at me.

"He will follow, won't he?" asks Cáno softly.

I nod. "Ay, he and his father, for differing reasons. Love and pride. What greater motivations exist?"

"Hunger," says Turco glumly.

"Desperation," adds Moryo.

"The Oath," says Father (the deity has come among us). "What more is needed?"

I do not have the heart to tell him that vengeance is not enough. Greed is not enough. We follow him out of foolishness and love and loyalty. (We betray, we fail, we stumble.)

"Let none stand in our way," says Father. "For our wrath is great indeed."

Let none stand in our way for we are Fëanorians, sons of Fëanor, denounced together. (Shameful though that is, it is all we have.)

Notes:

Cáno/Cánafinwë = Maglor, Turco = Celegorm, Moryo = Caranthir, Curvo/Curufinwë = Curufin, Pityo = Amrod, Telvo = Amras.

…there will be no canyo to follow nelyo: "there will be no fourth to follow third." Reference to Maedhros' father name (Nelyafinwë) and the unlikelihood that he will produce an heir.