Bite

Sorry about this.  Chrome likes to make my life miserable.  But worry not!  There shall still be a story tonight.

Canon-compliant AU.  Fingolfin is trying his best to hold together what remains of his family and his people.  Even if that means hiding his own suffering.  Quenya names used (Fingolfin = Nolofinwë, Maedhros = Nelyafinwë, Fëanor = Fëanáro, Fingon = Findekáno).  This story is most closely related to "Waste", but it's pretty much just character stuff and some slight family bonding.  Originally this was going to be from Fingon's POV, but my muse decided otherwise.  Takes place in Helcaraxë just before the First Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: none

Characters: Fingoflin, Fingon (mentions Finarfin, Finarfin's children, Fëanor, Anairë, Turgon, Aredhel, Argon, Maedhros)

Warning: canon-compliant, betrayal, mentions of death (including children)

Song: Eternal Flame

Words: 1,498

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bite (noun): a wound made by biting; the act of biting; a keen incisive quality; a sharp penetrating effect

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bite

The worst part of this desolate wasteland, he decided, was that there was no end in sight.  Day after day, Nolofinwë looked ahead to the east and saw naught but the stretching blankness, the merciless flatness broken with the jagged towers of deceitfully glorious ice, fangs that tore viciously into the dark gray of the sky.  Some days those distant peaks looked so familiar that the prince wondered if they walked in a deadly circle and were lost in white forever.

Some days he wondered--when his faith dwindled and the despair near overwhelmed the fluttering beat of his aching heart--if they would ever see earth again.  If they would ever feel the touch of grass again.  If they would ever feel the lick of flame again.

If they would ever hear the sound of laughter again.

Trailing upon his footsteps, his suffering people crawled through this desolation with sullen, dulled eyes and hunched, quivering shoulders.  And Nolofinwë could not bear to look upon their faces, to see with his own eyes the gazes that were distant with sorrow, that were frozen over with terror, that were broken shards of grief.

Nor could he look upon his children and grandchildren.  Upon his brother's children entrusted to his watch and care.  Upon even the closest and dearest servants of his House.

He did not want to see.

But the worst was his eldest son.  He could not bear to look Findekáno in the eye, for he was afraid of what might resting seemingly innocuously within those depths.

He was afraid he might see the reflection of his heart staring back, gaping and terrible and ready to swallow him whole.  Afraid that, in its piercing, silvery flash of light, he might crack.

He was afraid that they might see.  Every bit as vividly and nakedly as did he.

For the king was as shattered as his people.  As desperate and faithless, drowning in the sinking feeling of his heart and the dousing rain of his spirit.

An oath of brotherhood I swore.  And I would have followed you to the ends of the earth, my brother.  My King.  What more could you have wanted?  Was my word not enough?

What had he done wrong?  What more could he have sacrificed to prove his sincerity and trust and faith?

Nolofinwë had left behind everything for the sake of that face he had always so dearly loved and despised.  For the velvet smoothness and molten passion of that voice.  For the starlight speckled madness and brilliance of those eyes.  For the gravitas and charisma that like a blanket suffused with warmth that blazing spirit unto blinding light.

He had given up his wife.  He had given up his home.  He had given up his birthright.

He had given his life.  He had given his children.  He had given his grandchildren.

He had given the future of his House, the line of his blood.  He had given every last drop of the precious crimson river that flowed through his veins and every last strand of obsidian hair crowning his head.  He had given the very essence of his soul into the keeping of that man...

He had trusted his brother with the safekeeping of his family and his people.  With the safekeeping of his fealty and his faith and his existence.

And he had been betrayed.

It was a wound like none he imagined before.  It burned and festered, grew infected with resentment and the fierce slashing of the razor-sharp shards of his dreams.  It tore at the fragile weave of his soul until he wanted to scream and throw himself down upon the ground, writhing and begging for it to cease.

Nothing could ever draw from his wound the poison that Fëanáro had left behind.

But Nolofinwë could not allow them to see.

"Atar...?"

With a deep breath, he faced his eldest son.  Tried to hold at bay the howling, baying winds that struck his cheek as the clawing of icy talons, turning instead to look into blue eyes.  Eyes the same shade as his own.  Eyes that were darkened with emotion and with fear.

Bitterness was not the way of his oldest child, who had a kind heart if a foolish head.  Nor was hatred or resentment or anger.  Instead, there was disappointment and sorrow and worry.

A heaviness that he had never wanted to see in the shoulders of his child.

"What is it, yonya?" he asked, drawing the younger elf close so that he need not shout through the blizzard.  Like this, they were pressed together shoulder-to-shoulder, their faces but inches apart.  So near, the potency of those eyes--of the stinging tears frozen into adamant upon dark lashes--wounded deeper still, and with greater agony.

There were no words forthcoming from his offspring's lips.  Rare was it that Findekáno would seek his council, for he and his child had always had their differences of opinion, a disheveled rift in their relationship that had only widened with the long years.  More a head of house and a scion than a father and his son.  And so he knew it must be dire if the child should seek his company willingly.

If he should appear so weak before the man he thought despised his weakness.

Always had Findekáno tried to be strong for his father.  The heir.  The firstborn.  The eldest.  He had tried to be responsible and brilliant, tried to match stride for stride the vast loping gait of the first son of Fëanáro, and he had failed utterly.  The legs of Nelyafinwë were long and the focused determination of his mind on par with his sire.

No chance had Findekáno ever had of winning such an ill-conceived battle.  But he had tried.  And, often, Nolofinwë wished he had not.

For its scars ran deep.  Never did Findekáno look upon his father with a smile.  Never did he come pleading for advice.  Never did he come seeking comfort.

Never did he come upon the brink of tears.  Not until this day.

And Nolofinwë did not need words to understand, for those lips parted and offered none.  It was as though the bite of the wind had stolen away the fancy speech his son had prepared to give, left only the blankness and the hopelessness and the brokenness behind, too shattered to find even the prose to explain.

But the father knew.  The bond of brotherhood between Nolofinwë and Fëanáro had not been the only bond shattered that day when the flames echoed across the water in a last fading lick of warmth.

Silently, he offered his arms.  And he pretended not to see when Findekáno wept.

Any who had seen them embracing would have called him cold.  Still did he stand, as though he were made from the very ice that tormented their people, that killed their children and drowned their friends and stole away their lives.  They would have seen a blue gaze as empty as the glisten of an aquamarine gem, the palest in color and the sharpest of edge.  They would have seen a face carved of stone, stoic and set with a strong jaw and an uncompromising frown.

They would have seen nothing of the pain that rattled his insides, scoring clawed across the inner cage of his ribs and up the tight column of his clenching, convulsing throat.  They would have seen nothing of the weight of failure and despair that weighed his feet down with the strength of a mountain’s foundations, determined to bear him over the edge and into the abyss.

They would have seen nothing of the grieving husband and father.  Or the betrayed, estranged brother.

They would have seen nothing at all.

But Nolofinwë could not afford to break and weep.  He could not afford to give in to the catharsis of comfort in the arms of his son.  He had to be strong, for all eyes were upon his every word, his every movement.

His every heartbeat and breath and moment.

None could see how he winced inside at the sting, how his spirit curled up in the face of a tirade of wicked blows and sobbed for an end.  None could see that, to Nolofinwë, the wheals and welts of the frigid winds upon his cheeks could not compare to the bite of the bitter loss.  The broken bonds of family.  The ragged threads of faith.  The loyalty left in utter destruction.

This suffering of the body he could endure.  But watching his son cry... It only further shredded at his desperate façade, pounded at the gates of his stubborn resolve to fight away the agony.  He looked upon his child, and he knew exactly how Findekáno suffered.

And there was nothing—nothing—he could do to end that pain.  That, perhaps, was the worst torment of all.