Fire Upon White Walls (LOTR, PG-aught)
Jan. 17th, 2007 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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3_ships challenge; I branched out into Elves.
Title: Fire Upon White Walls
Fandom: LOTR (well, The Silmarillion)
Rating: PG-something for implications more than explicitness
Pairings: Maedhros/Glorfindel/Erestor (Maedhros/Glorfindel, Maedhros/Erestor, Glorfindel/Erestor)
Spoilers for: The Silmarillion
Disclaimer: These characters, their settings, lives, deaths, and rebirths belong to Professor Tolkien's estate, not to me.
Glorfindel lifted his face to the Sun, and looked upon white walls. The Sun blazed red-gold behind the peak of the Western Mountain, silhouetting the dark wedge with fire, pouring the day's last light on the white walls of Gondolin above the Western Gate. Gazing out from those walls, silhouetted like the peak of the mountain above him, stood a tall Elf whose hair blazed a darker red than the Sun's, the Elf whom Glorfindel had sought now since before the Sun had swung across the zenith of the sky.
"Russandol," Glorfindel called, striding up, but the Elf who bore that name among others merely stared outwards unblinking, more as if keeping the East to his back than seeing the broad green plain and high shadowed peaks before him. The East, where the Great Enemy dwelt, where the Battle of Unnumbered Tears had brought disaster and ruin to all the fair folk of Beleriand.
The East, where Fingon had died.
Glorfindel stood beside his friend, one of but few Elves who overtopped his own height. "Maitimo?" he murmured, and russet eyelashes swung down in a blink, but the gloved hands on the wall's edge did not so much as flex. One could not, being a made thing and not flesh; Glorfindel laid his hand upon the other, feeling it nearly as hard as the stone it folded around, willing its grip to ease. "Maedhros?" he whispered, for that name was not to be spoken within the walls of this city.
Eyes grey as smoke turned to him, a mouth of stubborn beauty frowned but at least moved, at last. "Glorfindel," replied Maedhros, oldest of the sons of Feanor, as fire flashed in his hair and darkness tinted his gaze.
Glorfindel returned Maedhros' gaze with a sigh. He had not saved Maedhros from the wrack and ruin, at Fingon's behest and despite the oath-sworn madness of his family, to lose him to the shadows in his soul. "You walked abroad? Alone?"
"I wished to move," Maedhros replied, looking again out of the city and away from Glorfindel. "I have lain too long abed."
"And none marked you, with your hair and your height?" Glorfindel narrowed his own eyes, staring at Maedhros' profile as Maedhros stared across the plain, until the grey eyes turned to him again. "If you are known---"
"If anyone knows me for Nelyafinwe, then I shall go to Turgon and treat with him as king with king." The light in Maedhros' flaming hair left his face in shadow, from which his eyes glinted like stern stars. He was beautiful, and grim, and Glorfindel thought few should be able to stand before the will of adamant gleaming from those eyes.
But one who might, one who would, was the King of Gondolin. "That would be splendid, and prideful, and foolish vastly far beyond all telling. The King was unafraid to cast Eol brother of Elu Thingol himself from the walls. I did not bring you hence to healing to merely reserve you for such a fate."
"Why did you save me, Glorfindel of the Golden Hair?" Maedhros's hand trembled once, and but slightly, beneath Glorfindel's. "In the retreat of that foul battle, why did you bear up this one-handed, muddy haired, forlorn Elf, rather than allowing my blood to quench the fires set by my father's vow and my family's madness?" Maedhros hung his head as he spoke, voice so low it was nearly lost in the wind. "Why did you take me from the ruin I wrought and the death I deserved, beside the one who was my dear friend?"
Glorfindel could not answer that with his arms and his lips, as he had during the long nights of Maedhros' healing, not here on the battlements before all the city. But he squeezed the hand below his, and said once more, "for love of a valiant prince."
And Maedhros said once more, words a long sigh of pain and love, "Ah, Fingon, who wished me to live even with his dying breath."
And so Glorfindel replied, as he ever did and every time a little steadier, "Fingon, mighty High King, best of our host and best beloved." Only one tear fell to his cheek, and it might be blamed upon the wind. "But the prince I speak of is you."
Maedhros looked at him full on at that. And slowly, for it was hard going for him when he did so but rarely, Maedhros smiled.
***
As the women and children stumbled past him, panting and driven like fallen leaves before the winds of a storm, Glorfindel could not help but pause and look back at Gondolin, the city of his life, his city now fallen, her walls broken and stained with fire-light as with blood. Even as Tuor and Celebrindal cried encouragement to the fleeing remnant, driving them tirelessly on, Glorfindel stood in the breath of destruction, cinders singing his cheeks as they blew past, black blood drying sticky upon his sword-hand, and watched the Chief of the Balrogs mount the walls, flexing his wings, snapping his whip, his laughter like beaten brass carrying faint across the plain.
And in this moment of ruin and flame, Glorfindel thought of Maedhros.
Maedhros with his hair like fire, with his eyes dark in the night, and how he had kissed Glorfindel before slipping from the city while it was distracted in its rejoicing in the birth of Celebrindal's star-faced babe Earendil. Glorfindel would have had him stay, encircled by the walls and mountains, warded away from the ravages of Angband and the madness of his father's oath, but Maedhros had just shaken his bright head. "My brothers think me dead," Maedhros had said, "as do the hosts of the Enemy. This cannot be." But even so his eyes were filled with regret, as he buckled his own sword round Glorfindel's hips, as he caught Glorfindel's hair in his hands and kissed him on the mouth like a draught of sweet fire.
And then Maedhros was gone, and despite his oaths to his king, his headship of the House of the Golden Flower, his duties to ward Gondolin's secrecy as he guarded her walls, Glorfindel let him go.
It was that sword whose hilt Glorfindel gripped now, which had cloven orcs and foul worms as the defenders of Gondolin had battled to save their doomed city. He glanced down at it as the last few struggled past him bearing up the wounded, and even in the smoke and the gloom and the blood smeared all along it, its edge caught the light and flickered as with flame.
The distant Balrog pointed and roared; the remnant of Gondolin was not yet escaped. With the fire Maedhros had gifted him would Glorfindel fight the demon's fires, as he turned away from his dying city and fled onwards with the last of his people.
***
The way back from the Halls of Mandos was not one measured in steps or in years. Returned to a new land and a world utterly changed, Glorfindel sat in a window of Imladris, the fortress like a hidden flower built by Earendil's son, and all the sunlight of the valley could not ease the darkness in his heart as Erestor, dark hair draped on his shoulder, told him of the fates of the Sons of Feanor.
"I spoke with him once, in my earliest youth," Erestor said, and Glorfindel held him round his shoulder and his wrist, feeling the living flesh in his grasp, and said nothing. "The flame-haired Eldest of Feanor, and rather, he spoke with me. I was much too awed to put breath to my voice, being not even half a hundred years old, a child of the household of his brother my Lord Maglor. Not when he came to me with his hair loosed over his shoulders shining like the sunset, his hands on the shoulders of two trembling little ones. So I first met my Lord Elrond, who is your gracious host, when my Lord Maedhros set me in his service where I have remained all my days." Erestor smiled, eyes open and eager, and Glorfindel could feel the charm and grace shining across his face like the sunlight.
And, like the sunlight, all Erestor's striving to bring Glorfindel joy could not pierce the thick glooms of his heart. "Tell me more," he murmured, stroking smooth skin with his thumbs, feeling the form and structure of Erestor's fine fingers as they moved in his palm.
Erestor drew breath, and obeyed. "So he brought me the children, and told me they had lived a terrible ordeal and needed good care, that all Lord Maglor's household would center round them but they would be my special charge. 'Keep good care of them,' he said, 'for they are the chief treasures of the Havens at the Mouths of the Sirion, which are fallen.'" The Mouths of the Sirion, Glorfindel remembered, shining on the edge of the Sea, the bright-flagged towers above the blue waves crashing below; the Havens of Sirion, which Maedhros had destroyed with Maglor, Glorfindel knew, after the madness of the Silmaril-oath had taken hold of them once again. After the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, after Gondolin had fallen, and neither Fingon nor Glorfindel remained to stay Maedhros' hand. Erestor did him a great kindness by omitting those stages of the tale, and Glorfindel gave him a smile for it, hoping it shone brighter than its sickly feel.
Erestor smiled back, turning his head a little to pull his sleek dark hair along Glorfindel's skin. "So he gave me charge of them, and when I had shaped my mouth to say, 'yes, my Lord yes,' he bent from his great height and kissed my mouth like a brush of sweet fire, and turned and was gone and I saw him never more."
"His kiss ever was like that," Glorfindel agreed softly. "The spirit of fire lived in him." He pressed his thumb to the middle of Erestor's palm, tracing the line across its span. "Tell me how he died."
"My Lord Glorfindel---" Erestor lagged, clearly unwilling to darken the sunlight with such dark recountings, but Glorfindel looked at him with a gaze that had made all manner of fell creatures quail, that had daunted a Balrog. That he had learned from Maedhros son of Feanor.
Erestor blinked, and nodded, and spoke. "After the War of Wrath and the breaking of Beleriand, the Oath of the Jewels drove my Lords even then. So they took the Silmarils, but..." He faltered, taking a deep shaking breath before resuming his tale. "The pure light of the Silmarils burned their hands, which had been turned to so many fell deeds. My Lord Maglor cast his into a stormy sea, and passed singing laments from the knowledge of all. Long I sought him, but ever in vain. But my Lord Maedhros..." Erestor spoke, soft and clear, fingers in Glorfindel's hair soothing even as his words pierced Glorfindel's heart. "He threw himself with his Silmaril into a cleft of fire."
"And so he passed by fire from the circles of the World," murmured Glorfindel, as he turned his face inward to sink it in Erestor's night-dark hair, as he began to weep.
***
Glorfindel stood on a terrace below Imladris, flowers at his feet as he looked to the dawn-blue West, where Earendil sailed towards home and harbor in the Land of Light. Celebrindal's son, whom Glorfindel remembered as a shining child, now a warrior of might set into the heavens with one of Feanor's jewels; how the world was changed.
And how it was not. The Great Enemy's right hand had set himself to become a new Dark Lord; revealed in his false fairness he had fled to some as yet uncovered evil, and Glorfindel feared for what might befal should that go unchecked.
Elrond feared it, too; his eye took in many happenings, he was wise in many things. Silently he stepped up to stand beside Glorfindel, looking up at the star of his father. "Have you decided?" he asked, simply and quietly.
Glorfindel had. He had from the moment he had set foot upon Olorin's ship; he was returned, from beyond death and with power in his hand, to battle this second darkness threatening to whelm the world, and Imladris was a strong and secret place to fight from as Gondolin once had been. He was returned to fight evil in the name of all who had been lost, in the names of his King Turgon, and Fingon briefly High King before him, and of Maedhros.
"Here I shall abide," Glorfindel responded. Elrond nodded, smiling slightly, and turned; Glorfindel glanced at him and saw the light flaring on his face, and turned as well, towards Imladris, towards the dawn. Lifting his face to the Sun, Glorfindel looked upon white walls.
3_ships challenge; I branched out into Elves.Title: Fire Upon White Walls
Fandom: LOTR (well, The Silmarillion)
Rating: PG-something for implications more than explicitness
Pairings: Maedhros/Glorfindel/Erestor (Maedhros/Glorfindel, Maedhros/Erestor, Glorfindel/Erestor)
Spoilers for: The Silmarillion
Disclaimer: These characters, their settings, lives, deaths, and rebirths belong to Professor Tolkien's estate, not to me.
Glorfindel lifted his face to the Sun, and looked upon white walls. The Sun blazed red-gold behind the peak of the Western Mountain, silhouetting the dark wedge with fire, pouring the day's last light on the white walls of Gondolin above the Western Gate. Gazing out from those walls, silhouetted like the peak of the mountain above him, stood a tall Elf whose hair blazed a darker red than the Sun's, the Elf whom Glorfindel had sought now since before the Sun had swung across the zenith of the sky.
"Russandol," Glorfindel called, striding up, but the Elf who bore that name among others merely stared outwards unblinking, more as if keeping the East to his back than seeing the broad green plain and high shadowed peaks before him. The East, where the Great Enemy dwelt, where the Battle of Unnumbered Tears had brought disaster and ruin to all the fair folk of Beleriand.
The East, where Fingon had died.
Glorfindel stood beside his friend, one of but few Elves who overtopped his own height. "Maitimo?" he murmured, and russet eyelashes swung down in a blink, but the gloved hands on the wall's edge did not so much as flex. One could not, being a made thing and not flesh; Glorfindel laid his hand upon the other, feeling it nearly as hard as the stone it folded around, willing its grip to ease. "Maedhros?" he whispered, for that name was not to be spoken within the walls of this city.
Eyes grey as smoke turned to him, a mouth of stubborn beauty frowned but at least moved, at last. "Glorfindel," replied Maedhros, oldest of the sons of Feanor, as fire flashed in his hair and darkness tinted his gaze.
Glorfindel returned Maedhros' gaze with a sigh. He had not saved Maedhros from the wrack and ruin, at Fingon's behest and despite the oath-sworn madness of his family, to lose him to the shadows in his soul. "You walked abroad? Alone?"
"I wished to move," Maedhros replied, looking again out of the city and away from Glorfindel. "I have lain too long abed."
"And none marked you, with your hair and your height?" Glorfindel narrowed his own eyes, staring at Maedhros' profile as Maedhros stared across the plain, until the grey eyes turned to him again. "If you are known---"
"If anyone knows me for Nelyafinwe, then I shall go to Turgon and treat with him as king with king." The light in Maedhros' flaming hair left his face in shadow, from which his eyes glinted like stern stars. He was beautiful, and grim, and Glorfindel thought few should be able to stand before the will of adamant gleaming from those eyes.
But one who might, one who would, was the King of Gondolin. "That would be splendid, and prideful, and foolish vastly far beyond all telling. The King was unafraid to cast Eol brother of Elu Thingol himself from the walls. I did not bring you hence to healing to merely reserve you for such a fate."
"Why did you save me, Glorfindel of the Golden Hair?" Maedhros's hand trembled once, and but slightly, beneath Glorfindel's. "In the retreat of that foul battle, why did you bear up this one-handed, muddy haired, forlorn Elf, rather than allowing my blood to quench the fires set by my father's vow and my family's madness?" Maedhros hung his head as he spoke, voice so low it was nearly lost in the wind. "Why did you take me from the ruin I wrought and the death I deserved, beside the one who was my dear friend?"
Glorfindel could not answer that with his arms and his lips, as he had during the long nights of Maedhros' healing, not here on the battlements before all the city. But he squeezed the hand below his, and said once more, "for love of a valiant prince."
And Maedhros said once more, words a long sigh of pain and love, "Ah, Fingon, who wished me to live even with his dying breath."
And so Glorfindel replied, as he ever did and every time a little steadier, "Fingon, mighty High King, best of our host and best beloved." Only one tear fell to his cheek, and it might be blamed upon the wind. "But the prince I speak of is you."
Maedhros looked at him full on at that. And slowly, for it was hard going for him when he did so but rarely, Maedhros smiled.
***
As the women and children stumbled past him, panting and driven like fallen leaves before the winds of a storm, Glorfindel could not help but pause and look back at Gondolin, the city of his life, his city now fallen, her walls broken and stained with fire-light as with blood. Even as Tuor and Celebrindal cried encouragement to the fleeing remnant, driving them tirelessly on, Glorfindel stood in the breath of destruction, cinders singing his cheeks as they blew past, black blood drying sticky upon his sword-hand, and watched the Chief of the Balrogs mount the walls, flexing his wings, snapping his whip, his laughter like beaten brass carrying faint across the plain.
And in this moment of ruin and flame, Glorfindel thought of Maedhros.
Maedhros with his hair like fire, with his eyes dark in the night, and how he had kissed Glorfindel before slipping from the city while it was distracted in its rejoicing in the birth of Celebrindal's star-faced babe Earendil. Glorfindel would have had him stay, encircled by the walls and mountains, warded away from the ravages of Angband and the madness of his father's oath, but Maedhros had just shaken his bright head. "My brothers think me dead," Maedhros had said, "as do the hosts of the Enemy. This cannot be." But even so his eyes were filled with regret, as he buckled his own sword round Glorfindel's hips, as he caught Glorfindel's hair in his hands and kissed him on the mouth like a draught of sweet fire.
And then Maedhros was gone, and despite his oaths to his king, his headship of the House of the Golden Flower, his duties to ward Gondolin's secrecy as he guarded her walls, Glorfindel let him go.
It was that sword whose hilt Glorfindel gripped now, which had cloven orcs and foul worms as the defenders of Gondolin had battled to save their doomed city. He glanced down at it as the last few struggled past him bearing up the wounded, and even in the smoke and the gloom and the blood smeared all along it, its edge caught the light and flickered as with flame.
The distant Balrog pointed and roared; the remnant of Gondolin was not yet escaped. With the fire Maedhros had gifted him would Glorfindel fight the demon's fires, as he turned away from his dying city and fled onwards with the last of his people.
***
The way back from the Halls of Mandos was not one measured in steps or in years. Returned to a new land and a world utterly changed, Glorfindel sat in a window of Imladris, the fortress like a hidden flower built by Earendil's son, and all the sunlight of the valley could not ease the darkness in his heart as Erestor, dark hair draped on his shoulder, told him of the fates of the Sons of Feanor.
"I spoke with him once, in my earliest youth," Erestor said, and Glorfindel held him round his shoulder and his wrist, feeling the living flesh in his grasp, and said nothing. "The flame-haired Eldest of Feanor, and rather, he spoke with me. I was much too awed to put breath to my voice, being not even half a hundred years old, a child of the household of his brother my Lord Maglor. Not when he came to me with his hair loosed over his shoulders shining like the sunset, his hands on the shoulders of two trembling little ones. So I first met my Lord Elrond, who is your gracious host, when my Lord Maedhros set me in his service where I have remained all my days." Erestor smiled, eyes open and eager, and Glorfindel could feel the charm and grace shining across his face like the sunlight.
And, like the sunlight, all Erestor's striving to bring Glorfindel joy could not pierce the thick glooms of his heart. "Tell me more," he murmured, stroking smooth skin with his thumbs, feeling the form and structure of Erestor's fine fingers as they moved in his palm.
Erestor drew breath, and obeyed. "So he brought me the children, and told me they had lived a terrible ordeal and needed good care, that all Lord Maglor's household would center round them but they would be my special charge. 'Keep good care of them,' he said, 'for they are the chief treasures of the Havens at the Mouths of the Sirion, which are fallen.'" The Mouths of the Sirion, Glorfindel remembered, shining on the edge of the Sea, the bright-flagged towers above the blue waves crashing below; the Havens of Sirion, which Maedhros had destroyed with Maglor, Glorfindel knew, after the madness of the Silmaril-oath had taken hold of them once again. After the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, after Gondolin had fallen, and neither Fingon nor Glorfindel remained to stay Maedhros' hand. Erestor did him a great kindness by omitting those stages of the tale, and Glorfindel gave him a smile for it, hoping it shone brighter than its sickly feel.
Erestor smiled back, turning his head a little to pull his sleek dark hair along Glorfindel's skin. "So he gave me charge of them, and when I had shaped my mouth to say, 'yes, my Lord yes,' he bent from his great height and kissed my mouth like a brush of sweet fire, and turned and was gone and I saw him never more."
"His kiss ever was like that," Glorfindel agreed softly. "The spirit of fire lived in him." He pressed his thumb to the middle of Erestor's palm, tracing the line across its span. "Tell me how he died."
"My Lord Glorfindel---" Erestor lagged, clearly unwilling to darken the sunlight with such dark recountings, but Glorfindel looked at him with a gaze that had made all manner of fell creatures quail, that had daunted a Balrog. That he had learned from Maedhros son of Feanor.
Erestor blinked, and nodded, and spoke. "After the War of Wrath and the breaking of Beleriand, the Oath of the Jewels drove my Lords even then. So they took the Silmarils, but..." He faltered, taking a deep shaking breath before resuming his tale. "The pure light of the Silmarils burned their hands, which had been turned to so many fell deeds. My Lord Maglor cast his into a stormy sea, and passed singing laments from the knowledge of all. Long I sought him, but ever in vain. But my Lord Maedhros..." Erestor spoke, soft and clear, fingers in Glorfindel's hair soothing even as his words pierced Glorfindel's heart. "He threw himself with his Silmaril into a cleft of fire."
"And so he passed by fire from the circles of the World," murmured Glorfindel, as he turned his face inward to sink it in Erestor's night-dark hair, as he began to weep.
***
Glorfindel stood on a terrace below Imladris, flowers at his feet as he looked to the dawn-blue West, where Earendil sailed towards home and harbor in the Land of Light. Celebrindal's son, whom Glorfindel remembered as a shining child, now a warrior of might set into the heavens with one of Feanor's jewels; how the world was changed.
And how it was not. The Great Enemy's right hand had set himself to become a new Dark Lord; revealed in his false fairness he had fled to some as yet uncovered evil, and Glorfindel feared for what might befal should that go unchecked.
Elrond feared it, too; his eye took in many happenings, he was wise in many things. Silently he stepped up to stand beside Glorfindel, looking up at the star of his father. "Have you decided?" he asked, simply and quietly.
Glorfindel had. He had from the moment he had set foot upon Olorin's ship; he was returned, from beyond death and with power in his hand, to battle this second darkness threatening to whelm the world, and Imladris was a strong and secret place to fight from as Gondolin once had been. He was returned to fight evil in the name of all who had been lost, in the names of his King Turgon, and Fingon briefly High King before him, and of Maedhros.
"Here I shall abide," Glorfindel responded. Elrond nodded, smiling slightly, and turned; Glorfindel glanced at him and saw the light flaring on his face, and turned as well, towards Imladris, towards the dawn. Lifting his face to the Sun, Glorfindel looked upon white walls.
