-squeak-

Full Unfinished Draft

“All of them? Really?” Fingon replied blandly, leaning yet more into the eagle’s clutch of his left hand.

“All seven! At once. And no, we haven’t had some convenient proclamation from Varda or missive from Namo to explain why. Isn’t that fun?” Aredhel asked winningly, perfectly mirroring Fingon’s strained pose as he listened to her announcement.

“And when did that happen?” he asked, one of his curled fingers creeping up the side of his face.

“About two weeks ago! Of course I wrote to you that day, in fact I am sure you have fifty such late letters clogging up your neglected mail-box, but since you have been away from society hunting an imaginary beast for over four months,” her eyebrows popped up for a moment in mimicry of a shrug, “how were we supposed to get word to you?”

“The black ocean snake is real,” Fingon said, fully and comfortably aware he had no proof of that except his own eyewitness account. “And what have the entire seven sons of our dear departed uncle been doing for their first two weeks of life?”

“Oh! Well, as you know, Celebrimbor was sent to get them, and sensibly enough he thought the only thing to do was bring them to their mother’s house. How THAT went, I intend to never know. Anyway it seems they have somewhat gone to the winds since then; Celegorm is reported as having fucked off to the woods already, I assume to offer his throat, stomach, and potentially ass to Orome again, Caranthir has gone bold as you please to Tirion to just restart his life and from what I have heard it appears to be working, Maglor is making bold and immediate attempts to reunite with his adopted child, and as for all and sundry the house of Mahtan has completely and wholeheartedly closed ranks and barred doors around them.”

“Oh, good!”

“Good?”

“Good! Mahtan’s people never wavered in the stance of loving their royal cousins but condemning their actions. Being under his watch should be an actually positive and healing environment for them as they adjust to life. Just about everyone else will have a harder time dealing with them productively.”

One of his clawed fingers threatened to climb up all the way to his eye.

“Yes,” Aredhel agreed. “I think there are some people who may have adverse personal reactions to learning that all seven of Feanor’s sons were suddenly puked out of Mandos even though we had been firmly told we were not getting them back, and have no idea why that has suddenly changed?”

“I’m sure!” Fingon said, stood up from the table, and picked up the bow and quiver he had just removed from himself after many long months at the hunt. He began to belt them again to his person.

“Heading out?” Aredhel asked smarmily.

“Yes, at once!”

“And to do what?”

“To hunt the black ocean snake! Very important, and no one else is going to do it, on account of it not being real! Farewell,” Fingon said, and shut the front door of his house behind him, leaving Aredhel inside.

Fingon really had seen it, its thousand coils stirring eel-like under the waters of the far western shore, the edge of Aman that brushed tauntingly against the realms of Night and Darkness. On that black-sanded shore one could stare up at the great doors at the ends of the world, beyond which was only the deepest pit of creation and the doomed that dwelled in the bottom of it. Stars ringed around that uttermost blackness but did not shine inside of it; the waters, too, were lightless and cold, salted like tears and lifeless. When Fingon chanced to see that writhing wyrm from a high cliff he had galloped his horse toward it was single-minded joy and indeed plunged its hooves and his own feet into the night-black ocean. But it was already gone, except for the velvet curtains of the ocean closing behind it.

What was it? The beast had to have miles of coils in its vast body, pumping a river of cold piscine blood. Such a best had to be known to the Powers but they had never mentioned it. Was it a fellow spirit to the great Spiders of old, left to terrorize deep waters where only fish could feel its tortures? Was it some spawn of Osse the once-tempted, a black thought he had had many ages ago that still squirmed in the deeps of his holy heart? Perhaps a Valar-made guardian of the doors of night and the great prison beyond them, tasked with keeping such fools as Fingon away from its adamant bar?

Fingon did not think he would get it, but the sight of a squirming, reptilian beast did things to him that few other things did. He got such joy from hounding it that he did not care if he got it, only that he saw it again, even once. The thought of plunging once more at a creature so colossal it made him like a finch in the grass filled him with delight. No Balrogs anymore, no dragons. He had been well-made for a world at war, and for a world at peace, he was simply fit. Good enough. To be allowed to excel at violence again, but far from the eyes of any who would be hurt or offended, would be a great gift from the Valar indeed.

The anticipation, though, he was just as suited for if not more. He hunted; it brought him joy. He knew he would be stopped if he were doing something wrong; the bargain he had made with his patron Manwe stuck between his shoulder blades and pulsed.

Hares and fowl, deer and boar, snakes and sunfish; he did not find any river-like wyrm, but he did feed himself while he was gone. It was with a brace of rabbits on the back of his horse that he first approached the house of an Elda two months later as a gift for his host. That was not a house proper, not a personal abode, but a public house; the small and comfortable brewing-house and tavern on the south road outside Tirion belonging to one Finrod Felagund, crown prince.

The chain of events as had been relayed to Fingon was this: After reincarnating, Finrod was offered some outlying house of room of his father’s Palace to serve as his official office, with every party involved knowing Finrod would not staff an office. However, he was now the High King’s eldest son, and he did have to have an official place of contact somewhere, unless he wanted to make it his house and he did not (as he maintained it was Amarie’s house, not his). It was then suggested Finrod build something, and he chose a place outside the city proper and unused to build whatever his heart desired, and what his heart desired had been a brewery, fashioned to replicate the strong liquors of dwarven and elven brew both which Finrod had once drank gallons of in his caverns. And so a tavern was built to also serve as his office (that is, where complaints against him could be mailed) and it was given an official and appropriate name which no one remembered. In five years flat, everyone was calling it ‘Nargothrond’, which Finrod hated but couldn’t fight. To fight fire with fire, he began to refer to the tavern with a number of kennings and eventually landed on his favorite, and the only one he would use or allow anyone else to use, which was why the public house that Fingon was now leaving his horse tied outside of was heralded by a blazing golden sign which read Glaurung’s Den.

Glaurung’s Den was, in Fingon’s opinion, both the finest brewer of high-proof liquor in Aman and its prime location for being a little bit of a bastard. The case in point for that was the very first Elda Fingon saw upon opening the door to the tavern-side of the establishment, a dark-haired half-Noldo with a book of poetry in one hand and a glass in another, seated beneath the twenty-foot portrait of the dragon himself, his gleaming scales and cleaving claws curled around the gorgeously rendered treasures of lost Nargothrond, interspersed with Eldarin bones.

That Elda was Gwindor, and the seat underneath the portrait of Glaurung was his. If he was not there, the seat was empty. (He had been heard saying that there was only one man to whom he would give it up, since he had taken everything else anyway.) The seat did have Gwindor in it a good half of the time anyway; he was Finrod’s unofficial doorguard, a job that conveniently butterflied with being a drunken barfly. Being loyal to Finrod roved quite easy to his most devoted followers. Both politically, as the situation between the once-King and High King Finarfin were generally harmonious, and personally, as Finrod made life very easy and very liquored for the lot of them.

As always, Fingon waited in the doorway, with the sunset behind him, for Gwindor to look him over and then nod. Then he entered.

“Hail,” Gwindor said simply. “You’ve been on the road. Are you here for the prince?”

“Not at all, though I’ll see him in friendship if he’s here,” Fingon replied, knowing that Gwindor was asking him if he needed to drink at a bar or if he needed to talk politics with Finrod. That Gwindor did not title him was no issue at all; he generally discouraged people from doing so. “I have some rabbits for his kitchen, if they’re welcome.”

“Bring them in,” Gwindor said, and stood up to smoothly move from before to behind the bar. “I’ll have a drink ready when you get back.”

As Fingon headed to where he knew the kitchen to be, he felt eyes on him from the Eldar gathered in the room. There were no surprises; mostly people who had once been (and still clearly were) people of Nargothrond, as well as the regular assortment of Sindar and Teleri who enjoyed Finrod’s company and the Den’s particular atmosphere.

It was off that night. He was not usually so stared at. It was not usually so quiet.

Fingon walked into the kitchen and presented his rabbits to the ones working there, who accepted them wholeheartedly. He remained, cautious, getting his bearings, helping skin the rabbits. He popped joints and chatted with the people there; he gathered idle gossip that seemed, all things considered, too idle.

Then, the door opened, and everyone fell completely silent. A man stood the in the doorway, well-dressed, grim.

Fingon blinked. “Edrahil,” he greeted.

Now here was one who still called Finrod ‘King’ whether he liked it or not. “Astaldo,” Edrahil replied, his voice rather strained compared to how it was usually. His arms, braced on either side of the door to the kitchen, took up the light behind him. “What brings you here?”

“I have been long in the wilderness and wished for company,” Fingon replied.

“Have you been alone?”

“Have I been alone?” Fingon repeated.

Bluntly, and searching in his eyes, Edrahil replied, “everyone knows you were always close with your other kinsmen.”

“What,” Fingon replied, his hand still wrapped around a knife that was between two ribs in a rabbit on his lap, and his other hand bracing its snapped neck, “the ones who have just returned?”

“I mean them.”

“I haven’t spoken to a one of them,” Fingon told him.

“What, not one?” Edrahil asked.

“No a one, I have not even seen them.”

“Nor wrote, or contacted any one of them in any way?”

“No, not at all.”

Edrahil smiled warmly and leaned back from the doorframe. “Is that so! In that case, where have you been? No one’s seen you in ages!”

Fingon bit back a smile. He returned his eyes to his work. “Just as I said! In the wilderness, on the hunt, until I tired of it. The only companionship I had were the beasts and sometimes a maiden of Vana or Nessa looking to trick a wayward mortal.” The scent of Manwe on him attracted them, and they did not try very hard to play tricks on him because of it. “You may have heard it that I have taken leave of my senses and got it in my head that some monstrous sea-beast lives beyond the western shore where no living thing can survive; that is true, I have.”

Edrahil then cheerfully plunked down beside him, grabbing a rabbit to skin and expressing a desire to hear all about it. Fingon laughingly complied, and described with great fervor the beast he as certain he had seen, though only once.

He knew what beast stalked in their minds, haunting, or so he had heard, the groves of Orome, now free from the cage he had been kept in for three long ages.

When the work was done they walked back to the bar together. Suddenly, the carefree, cheerful atmosphere he was used to seeing in Glaurung’s Den had returned. Gwindor gave him a drink that was cold and smoky and heavy as iron, and he sat down with him and Edrahil and a few more veterans of the First Age for an easy, pleasant conversation.

After a glass and a half, once Fingon was beginning to feel warm and dizzy and it was fully night outside and both he hearth-fire and the lanterns were lit, the door in the back that led to the brewery was opened, and out from it came one of the most beautiful men to walk the black soil of blessed Aman.

All around the room, people raised their glass and raised a cheer. Finrod, holding a full bottle of something pearl-silver, raised it in return and cheered just as loud back at the room. He swung around to the first person he saw—Gwindor, who had been moving to replenish someone’s drink—and kissed him on the lips. He swung away, his dangling crystal earrings and jewel-encrusted stole glittering as he swayed.

“A fair and fine evening to all! And a beautiful night filled with whatever your heart desires! Hara, love,” he called, and fondly kissed another of his people on both her cheeks. She laughed, and took the mysterious bottle from him so he would not break it. Fingon saw how his hands were rich with jeweled rings; his engagement and marriage bands from Amarie, a great green ring of peridot serpents from King Finarfin his father, pearls from King Olwe and a subtle silver and diamond gift from King Thingol his uncle, slips of electrum and platinum with tourmalines and emeralds glittering on them, and the little golden band, worn soft and restored again and again, which his beloved Balan had given him.

Fingon himself wore a gift from his father on one thumb, and some scattered mementos, but was still too often doing dirty work to be quite so bedecked. He stood, and then got to see the single instant that his cousin realized he was there. His sea-green eyes narrowed and then blew wide; Fingon saw him instinctually poised, in the manner of good kinsmen, between embrace and attack.

He went for both, skirting around a chair to launch himself at Fingon’s side, grabbing the side of his head in one hand and wrapping the other around his waist. “And what’s this that sneaks into my house like an owl in the rafters! When were you going to announce yourself?”

“The complaint of a snake! I just did,” he teased in return, and messed with Finrod’s gorgeous hair. They shoved playfully at each other a while, and eventually were gently convinced to sit down by a barkeep worried about the integrity of their glasses. Fingon slumped back into his chair, and Finrod forward, giving him a kiss on one cheek, once the fashion in Beleriand, where princes showing visible affection for each other would calm troops nervous about another kin-strife. Fingon returned it, feeling Finrod’s warm flush under his lips with a surge of affection.

“And where have you been?” Finrod asked, leaning back again, searching for a drink he didn’t have as Gwindor worked on pouring it for him.

“Alone,” Fingon said, “In the wilderness, on the western coast.”

“Hunting?”

“Hunting.”

“You’ve run us out of beasts, Fingon,” Finrod said, smiling as Gwindor plunked a glass into his waiting hand. “Beasts we aren’t supposed to have, because no one could possibly want them. You know they’re just making up stuff for you to hunt, yes?”

“Not just me.”

“No, you are not the only one who cannot hang up the sword.” Finrod said it like there was absolutely nothing wrong with it; like there were those that smoked pipes and those who liked to watch ladies pass by and those who heard blades singing even when they were still.

“I have found one,” Fingon said.

“Found what.”

“A dragon,” he smiled.

“A dragon. No you haven’t.”

“That is the common opinion.”

“The Powers would not let a dragon abide in Aman.”

“Not on Aman. In the waters, the cold western waters.”

Finrod considered that. Finding, somewhere, just a thread of potential in what Fingon was saying, Finrod became perturbed and changed the subject. “Oh, tell me you’ve at least been in society enough that you’ve already heard the news. I really don’t want to be the one to have to tell you.”

“I know, I know. What, unless it’s gotten even more extreme in the last two months. Aredhel told me.”

“Oh, no, then you know the size of it. Well, you do and you don’t. It’s been everything from all sides. You should see my father.”

“No, I don’t think I will.”

“Good, don’t. He has enough problem children, nieces, nephews, cousins, distant relations, and kingdoms full of loyal subjects to handle, he certainly doesn’t need you.”

“It’s true!”

“Though you’ve been on the top of a ‘wanted’ list the entire time.”

“What f—I didn’t do it,” he replied confidently.

“Yes you did.”

“No I didn’t! You weren’t even there.”

“Do you know what you’re being accused of?”

“Obviously I don’t, because I didn’t even do it.”

“It’s like this,” Finrod said, and turned around in his chair and straightened his back so he could look properly imperious, tired, and no-nonsense. In his father’s subtle, gentle voice, the one people strained over their thrones to listen to, he said, “Send assurance to Thingol that there will be no issue—we have to keep up constant communication, the last thing we need is him to have the time to grow suspicious—invite Lady Nerdanel again to the banquet, and if she shuts the door in your face, just don’t say anything and leave, we’ll try again—keep up watching my daughter’s house but don’t try to be subtle about it, and if anyone sees Fingon, let me know at once. I don’t like that I haven’t seen him this whole time.”

“What in heaven is Galadriel doing?”

“Hosting Maglor.”

“You’re kidding.”

“They were delighted to see each other! Celeborn too! I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Of course he really is angling for more time with Elrond but Elrond isn’t budging on mediated, occasional contact. Still, he certainly is there now. I went to visit him.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did. He isn’t how I remember him. Not at all. Do you know how long he spent over there?”

“Long enough to make the rest of us look like idiots?”

“And then some. Thousands of years on the shores of the world, wandering.” ((I’m still not sure what backstory I want Maglor to have here because I still want him to have been uncontacted by anyone. Ugh.))

“Ugh. Yes, that does make me look like an idiot. I can’t believe how me must be gloating.”

“He isn’t. He’s very different, Fingon. He’s about three thousand years different.”

“Well,” Fingon said. He tried to imagine it. He took his memories of his harsh, miserable cousin and tried to scrape them soft. Who was that? “I suppose I’ll have to see it to believe it,” he said.

Finrod paused. He drunk a good amount of his glass, and said, “you said that without joy.”

Fingon did not immediately respond.

“This is hard on you.”

“I have not much thought about it yet.”

“And what have you been thinking about?”

“Dragons.”

“Oh! Drink that, all of that, immediately. I need you to be more fun.”

Fingon laughed, and did as he was bid. “It’s delicious! What is it?”

“___Fruit distilled three times in grain,” said Gwindor from behind the bar. “And something else I am not supposed to tell you about.”

“I kiss every bottle,” said Finrod with a grin.

“No you do not,” said Fingon, and the same time Gwindor said, “No he does not.”

“You drink too, Gwindor,” Finrod demanded, as if that would help in Gwindor’s case. He did, however, drink, taking a great swig of the liquor, filling his glass again, and then returning to his seat under the luxurious portrait of the monster to who killed him, presuming that someone else would take over the bar for him.

That someone turned out to be Finrod, who jumped up to serve the next person who approached, and eventually Fingon himself, who found himself in less than an hour walking around the room with a jar of mead like a barmaid, filling glasses and laughing and taking up the chorus of whatever song went around the room. He did start a song himself at one point; everyone had always loved the one about taking an orc apart limb by limb, and they did again that night.

When it was almost morning and the time to get a few hours of rest was running short Fingon found himself pulling Finrod with him to one of the Den’s many back rooms, behind the churning and hissing talks of brewing liquor, with the plaques above every door which read ‘We Don’t Care To Know What You Do Here’ in Amarie’s masterful curling script. He tossed his laughing cousin into bed and then fell in beside him; he must have slept immediately, because he remembered no more.

Dawn could not reach the cozy, tapestry-lines rooms of the back rooms of Glaurung’s Den. Fingon dozed, back-to-back with Finrod, half-awake, until the door was unlocked and slid open behind him. He cracked open his eyes to watch the threads on a gold-stitched embroidery as someone entered the room.

Finrod stirred awake behind him, and then slurred, syrupy, “my love.” Fingon closed his eyes again as Finrod got onto his elbows and then lifted his arms to embrace the person that approached him.

“Good morning, Lady Amarie,” Fingon grumbled into his pillow, a golden hair tickling his mouth.

“The other one,” replied Turgon dryly.

Fingon sat up. “Oh, in that case, get off of him,” he sighed, pushing lazily at Finrod.

“No,” Finrod said pleasantly, hanging onto Turgon, who stood nonplussed. “You can’t separate us.”

Unbelievably, it was all a joke. Fingon happened to know that both of their wives had just asked the princes to tell them once they finally started their inevitable affair, but the affair had proved completely evitable. Finrod and Turgon were not passionately involved and probably never would be. Amarie still asked him if her husband and his heart’s-brother were defiling each other and dishonoring her yet when they met up and Fingon had to keep disappointing her.

“Sleeping back-to-back like a band of orcs will ride up any minute,” Turgon amicably mocked them. “Fingon, I know you want to be in mortal peril so badly, but you’re just not.”

“Not true. I found a dragon.”

“A dragon.”

“Do not listen to him about the dragon,” Finrod said into Turgon’s shoulder.

“Don’t think I ever intended to. Hungover any?”

“Not at all,” Fingon said, and he wasn’t. He might have served enough drinks to kill a Balrog the night before, but had not actually drunk much himself.

“Then you’re fit to ride.”

“What, already?” Finrod complained.

“After breakfast,” Turgon immediately folded.

And so breakfast was had, the tavern’s kitchen temporarily claimed for the Kingdom of Gondolin as Turgon grabbed whatever he saw fit and put it in a pan. Fingon made tea and brought out plates, coming into and out of the kitchen. He and Turgon talked lightly or not at all. Finrod sprawled dishabille at one of his tables as his cousins fixed breakfast and plunked it in front of him. Fingon watched Turgon pour liquor into Finrod’s tea before he even touched it.

Finrod picked up the liquored tea, drank half the cup, smiled beatifically, and began conversation with “you’re off the hook, then?”

Turgon pulled out a chair, and sitting down, said “Curufin started it and that’s the official word on the subject, from your father himself.”

“What,” Fingon said.

“I fought Curufin in the market,” Turgon replied.

“What, hand to hand?”

“Essentially. There may have been a bottle involved.”

“In–in the main street market in Tirion?”

“That’s the one.”

“The one overlooked by the temple–”

“Of Aule, yes, with his very eyes looking down on us and about a thousand witnesses besides. That is what I did.”

Fingon reflected on this as he layered thick toast with rosemary butter and freshly fried mushrooms. “But did you win?”

“Absolutely.”

“Alright, then.”

Turgon was, to the eye, completely unwounded and unruffled. Then again, this might have happened yesterday or a month ago. “But Turgon…”

“Yes?”

“Did he start it?”

Turgon merely hummed in response.

“Oh, you’re not getting away with that,” Finrod said immediately, swallowing the other half of his teacup and then reaching forward to fix himself more of the heady brew. “Legally you’re getting away with that, and I expect Curvo did not fight you about it very hard, but at my breakfast table you’re not getting away with that. I would say it was mutual fault, but you are absolutely burying the lede right now.”

“He did start it. Your father said so. It’s true.”

“It’s not true just because he says it. It’s legally defensible now, yes, but not necessarily true. Who threw the first punch, Turgon?”

“That is not necessarily the start of a fight.”

“Turgon,” Fingon reprimanded, delighted.

“It is certainly not the start of a fight with Curufin,” Turgon continued, undaunted, his attention solidly on Finrod. “The fight had started five minutes before I took it there and I was showing incredible restraint.”

Fingon was surprised by how lightly Finrod was taking this, by his uncompromised laziness of posture and cat-like smile. He didn’t even think it was a cover, either; what had he missed? “Did he insult your beloved?” Fingon asked him, arching his eyebrows.

Turgon sighed. “You mean Finrod, I am aware; he did not. Even Curufin knows better than to be so brash, or else has learned better in his long wait in darkness, though I like everyone else am waiting for that to come to a head as well.”

Fingon glanced at Finrod. He revealed nothing. “But who did he insult, Turgon?” he asked.

“Well,” Turgon said, and drank his tea.

Finrod looked to Fingon. “Curvo made a very ill-fated comment about Lomion.”

“Fuck’s sake,” Fingon said to Turgon, who closed his eyes. “You absolute tool. You complete paternal idiot.”

The most correct thing to make fun of Turgon about, and Fingon wasted no opportunity to do so, was his unflinching devotion to the nephew who had betrayed him, destroyed his kingdom, and essentially ended his life himself. Certainly there had been a very long period of discussion and reconciliation between them but Turgon had never even pretended to not love Lomion completely and unconditionally and stupidly. Even Aredhel was harsher with him. “You cannot be snapping jaws in defense of Lomion’s honor.”

“This was completely calculated on Cururfin’s part,” Turgon defended himself. “He wanted the attention. He specifically wanted uncle Finarfin’s attention. He went on trial and got a job out of it.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. He loves the new legal system. He was delighted by the entire process. He spent half of his own defense asking questions about the filing system.”

“No,” said Fingon, but he knew it was true. “Finrod, did your father employ our cousin Curufin in the course of indicting him for public brawling?”

“That’s an enemy you need to keep close,” Finrod replied, and Fingon reached for the liquor.

–

“By Manwe, it worked on Finarfin too,” Fingon marveled again, flipping back his hair again so he could tie the braids into a tail at the nape of his neck. The wind was high and chill, pleasantly so, in his opinion, as early spring crept slowly forward. Underneath him his mare walked slowly uphill, the delicate green ferns and lichens under her hoofs softening their steps to nearly nothing. “I can't believe it.”

“He’s not an idiot. In fact I don’t believe that trying to rehabilitate Curufin properly is unwise. In any case, ignoring him is less wise.”

“Sure, sure. But the thought of Curufinwe Atarinke standing at the podium for his own trial with his black eyes glimmering and his jeweled hands folded saying ‘Oh I just so love what you have done with the legal system! It is soooo fascinating! If only I could really prod and poke into its crevasses and find all of its loopholes! If only there was a wise mentor who was willing to tell me everything about it! By the way, I look just like your dead brother, don’t I?’ Are we all idiots?”

“Finarfin has not in the slightest forgotten what Curufin did to his son. I think Finrod is right, that he has considered it better to keep an eye on him. Besides, he would genuinely like to see his half-nephews whole and happy. That can’t happen unless they’re given a chance.”

“Yes, of course. I was wondering why Finrod was so content with all of this, too.”

“He enjoys being content.”

“Yes. And I’m sure he’s hoping that uncle Finarfin will get in way over his head with Curufin and realize that he needs Finrod’s help with him. There’s nothing he needs to do now. If he just waits until Curufin does what he’s going to do and the King calls him in to handle it, then he had free reign over the matter and ‘Curvo’ himself.”

A short silence streamed past them with the wind. They crested the hill, gaining a beautiful view of the towers of Tirion beside them.

“...No,” Turgon eventually said, flat. “No, I am completely sure that is not what Finrod is thinking. He is not that conniving. That’s you. That’s what you would do.”

“That is what I would do,” Fingon agreed, “but I won’t call something conniving if it is the response I learned to handle a situation repeatedly. In this case, a parcel of men quite conniving themselves.”

“Oh, don’t do this,” Turgon said.

“I haven’t done anything,” Fingon responded, shocked.

“You haven’t done anything yet,” Turgon corrected. “But you have been thinking about it, and alone, without counsel, which is what has people worried, and you know it.”

“I have not done anything to encourage suspicion,” Fingon countered. “I have not done anything at all, or even spoken to any of them, or even thought about them much.”

“You do not have to defend yourself,” Turgon replied, sounding much like their father. “I’m not accusing you of ill intent. I’m–I don’t want to see you become anyone’s keeper.”

Ah. “You are worried I will willingly take on a task I like to do.”

“Finrod likes to drink himself asleep every other night, but he still shouldn’t.”

“Let us have this argument later, once I’ve actually done something worth arguing about,” Fingon replied tersely, his eyes ahead.

“No, let us have it now, before you have a chance to get yourself in too deep.”

“I haven’t even seen him.”

“But you will.”

“Has he asked after me?”

Turgon had to form his words for a few seconds before speaking. The answer was not ‘yes.’ “I saw him once and then left the room immediately,” he finally replied. “Frankly I don’t know if he even noted I had entered.”

He did, Fingon thought.

“Our father has been visited by, I think, all of them. If not all then I’m not sure who he’s missed. I don’t believe he even summoned them, I think they just came. At least that was what Maglor said when I opened the door for him.”

Turgon did not say why the sons of Feanor had independently chosen to call to Fingolfin even though they did not have to. Fingon chose to believe that, having had millenia to reflect, they had discovered that he loved them. “Did you speak to Maglor?” he asked curiously.

“If you consider ‘Oh, Balrog’s balls’ to be speaking, yes.”

“Those are words.”

“Other than that, perhaps I said a few words.”

“Finrod said he’s rather changed.”

Turgon took a breath that Fingon could hear even over the wind, and replied, “I believe it is true that the course of millenia changes everyone, alive or in the Halls or wherever it was that they were. I am sure many will find the changes our cousins have undergone favorable and treat them in turn more favorably.”

“You were just telling me we should give Curufin a chance.”

“No. I was saying that it would be wise.”

Fingon laughed a laugh that bounced off of the sharp gray rocks of the hills. Their father, upon re-embodiment, had built a new house better fitting his developed taste. Just as Finrod settled below Tirion proper to the south, facing Valmar, Fingolfin too was in reach of Tirion but just above it, not quite inside. Comments had been made that he wanted to be between Tirion and Formenos; comments had also been made that he wanted to be between Tirion and Alqualonde. Fingon had uniformly called such comments tasteless, and had been advised to not say much more than that.

Fingon did not usually live with his father, and neither did Turgon, who was very married and very busy providing Idril with younger siblings. They both visited often, however, on account of being fond of their parents and on account of Fingolfin having made a very excellent house.

Fingolfin and Anaire’s residence was often described as ‘antique’ or ‘quaint’, which were polite terms for ‘so directly lifted from Beleriand of the First Age that it is as though Eru scooped it up and dropped it back down over here.’ Built onto the sloped sides under Tirion, its crenelated, statue-bedecked stone walls climbed four stories up its side. It did rather look like a fort protecting Tirion, which did explain some of the pointed comments, but Fingon had seen so many former comrades act as if the eight of a thousand years had tumbled off of their shoulders when they saw its joyless exterior specked with glowering, stained-glass windows. Fingolfin did not put any flags or banners on it, finding it rude to his brother (the High King of the Noldor), and with trees and vines let to grow freely around it it looked half like a routed ruin, the sort of place Edain would crouch in to hide from orcs, its hallways still dusted with the power of its builders but now empty of their song.

Both brothers sighed with pleasure when they saw it. It was mid-day, and the sunlight made the veins of crystal in the dove-gray walls gleam. The debate was adjourned; they hurried their horses to the front gate, where old friends and companions greeted them, people who had lived with his father for centuries uncounted. Fingon went through quite a few rounds of cheek-kisses and hugs and pinches before he was finally let inside.

He had set a single foot inside the door when he was grabbed and put into an impressive pose of arrest by an assailant who completely ruined the effect by laughing explosively and calling him a weak bitch. Fingon sighed and relaxed forward into it. “Argon, you slut,” he sighed.

“Says you,” Argon said, lightly batting the side of Fingon’s head.

Now, to be fair, one of them was well-dressed for the chill spring day and the other one was wandering around his parent’s house shirtless and barefoot, but Fingon both genuinely didn’t mind that and was fully aware he had no power to change it. His youngest brother was a force of nature, and had to be treated as such. The second Fingon felt his grip relax slightly he bucked him, and in short order they were busy shoving each other down the hallway as Turgon followed at a distance behind.

Even as he was roughhousing with him, Fingon asked himself, and what is Argon doing here? It wasn’t as if he lived with their parents either, in fact Argon tended to live further inland among Sindar, whose company he preferred over his more famous relatives. (It was unproven but suspected that he had a Sinda paramour, and Fingon could neither confirm nor deny those rumors.) Argon did not avoid his family but was less likely to be hanging around Fingolfin’s family fortress than anyone else.

Fingon let himself be bandied and pushed through the halls of the house and into the sprawling and fire-lit family room with a smile on his face and laughter in his throat and the firm knowledge inside that this day was targeted, purposeful, and plotted, and that he was not going to go easily or quietly along with whatever had been planned for him.

–

Everyone was there. His father, his mother, all three of his siblings, Idril and Tuor, Elenwe with Turgon’s two little ones, Earendil was there. (Which meant that Lomion was not, but then Lomion was not ‘everyone’, now was he.) His mother kissed him on both cheeks and fixed the hair that Argon had ruffled, Turgon’s youngest son toddled up and clung to his leg. Fingon formulated a quite good barbed remark about not being sure what holiday it was and discarded it, choosing to hoist up his laughing little nephew instead.

((All through dinner, no one says a word. I don’t know if I’ll write that or gloss it.))

–

Idril and Tuor had cooked; Fingon cleaned dishes with Earendil. His father’s house might have looked like a stone from Barad Eithel had been planted in Aman and sprouted battle ments, but in reality many things had changed. Fingolfin did not keep staff and could not be forced to keep staff. It was a family house. Family did include many former captains and household staff and hard-bitten warriors who had once kept the Kingdom of the Noldor in Beleriand running, but they were not servants. Fingon washed glasses and watched the glimmering morning star dry them and put them back in the cabinet.

Fingon opened his mouth and said, “How’s Elwing?” and then he said, “what a question, Fingon.”

Earendil laughed, which had been the point of the little self-recrimination, but a lot was said in that laugh. “Fine, overall! It’s not like we have no experience in handling this sort of thing.”

The collective gymnastics the family went through to remain in general close to both Idril and Lomion were nothing short of masterful and centuries of work had been put into fine-tuning the system. “True.”

“She has ups and downs, sure, but…” Earendil shrugged both shoulders, wide and mannish like his father’s, adding to his air of confident nonchalance. “She always has, and so do I. That’s one thing we get along about that.”

Fingon understood that like he understood a knife-slash cutting through his side, viscerally and immediately. He hummed. “I heard my most errant cousin is trying to reconnect with his… foster… son.”

“He’s succeeding,” said Earendil, and Fingon could not quite read his emotions in his face or voice. “Who Elrond does or doesn’t have a relationship with is Elrond’s choice, and I intend to keep it that way. He’s a Lord of seven thousand years experience, he can make a competent choice about his own relationships.”

Fingon hummed, and thought of something subtle and clever to say, and discarded it. “Elwing is really alright with all this,” he instead responded doubtfully.

“No, of course she’s not perfectly alright. Perfectly alright isn’t really the goal. She wants what’s best for Elrond too, and that’s something we both let go of a long time ago. As for how she’s feeling, that’s something we handle between us.”

It was absolutely none of Fingon’s business. He shouldn’t have even been asking, but…

Damn it, what he was fishing for was not information about Elwing. Yet he couldn’t quite phrase what he really wanted to ask instead. “I hope Maglor has been behaving.”

“I have no idea. I have avoided him. I keep being assured that I’m not actually in dire threat of assassination, but it is hard to feel that way,” Earendil admitted, but smiling, clearly finding it funny. “I have put the rock on the ship rather than myself, but the record with ships is not great either.”

Fingon laughed a rather ugly laugh. He deeply appreciated the nerve that Idril’s son, as well as his line, tended to have. They would be asking Fingon to kinslay for them as a favor if it didn’t so offend the other ears in the room. “They wouldn’t dare, anyway. At least Maglor wouldn’t. Provided I still know anything about him, and it seems the general claim is that I don’t.”

“The general claim is that you’re plotting something.”

“I’m plotting something,” he repeated, intrigued.

“The reembodiment of Feanor’s sons doesn’t seem like an event you would be absent for.”

“Yes, which means that I have spied my chance to wrest power and control from our legitimate governance by taking advantage of the instability. Or whatever it was that Fingon does.”

“That–” Earendil paused, and then gave him a very mannish look of annoyance. “That is not what I meant.”

“What did you mean?”

“They’re worried.”

“Worried about what?”

“No. Astaldo. Them. Your cousins. They are getting worried about what you’re planning.”

Fingon thought for a second. Then he absolutely doubled over in laughter, slumping onto the polished countertop in front of him.

Of course. Beautiful. The bloodied and battle-scarred sons of Feanor, the boogeymen that generations of Eldar and Edain alike had put their children to sleep with, growing more and more anxious as it occurred to them that they still had not seen Fingon and did not know what that meant. They knew he was out there, the Ambarussar looking over their shoulders and Curufin anxiously trying to integrate himself into society while looking over his shoulder; Caranthir checking the corners and Maglor calling on old relatives’ homes. Fingon could show up at any moment, but he hadn’t yet.

“By Eru, I had them on the ropes, didn’t I! And they remember it,” he cackled. “Hells. My apologies to Beleriand for dying on the job and not leaving a fit replacement. Your grandfather claimed he could handle them.”

“If he cared to, I’m sure,” Earendil chuckled.

“Oh, it all makes sense. Half of you are worried I’ll put them right back in the Halls.”

“Well–perhaps not so much that,” said Earendil, half a wince on one side of his face. “But if I were in the position of one of them, with the history they have, knowing how people felt about me, knowing the number of apologies I had to make and the hard conversations I had to have… I would be… worried about someone like you. Someone I was once very close to. Someone who still, despite everything, had a hold on my heart. Or so is the claim.”

I wonder who exactly makes this claim, was his first response, and the sort of response that might have benefitted him in Hithlum. And next, Considering all those who fear them, someone who has the power to make them afraid may be a very useful person to some. He might have written that in a letter he then signed as High King. He was so often told that his words were not as expected, and that too could be beneficial.

“This must be exhausting to you,” he said.

“To me?” Earendil asked.

“Were you asked to come all the way here for my sake?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Earendil responded. “We did come here organically, for the most part to seek Fingolfin’s company and advice. Though it has been suggested we start encouraging you to talk to him as well, now that you’ve been located.”

“I had best go of my own volition, then,” decided Fingon, though there was no other decision he would realistically make.

–

Fingon did not say that he would go straight to his father, and he didn’t. He avoided clots of his family, winding halls away from where he heard them talking and laughing, and took a roundabout way to his father’s study, which he knew would be occupied and unlocked at that time of the evening.

Without lighting a lamp, he walked to his father’s desk, and tested drawers. He did not have to pry anything or search much at all; the thing he sought was easily accessible, in a thin drawer under the desk itself. A small envelope, made of mica-threaded paper that glimmered even in darkness. Addressed simply to ‘Arko’ and without a note, it came from the desk of High King Finarfin; Fingon knew that even before he confirmed the curling signature in malachite ink on the back. No one else would call his father that.

There was no missive form Finarfin on the inside either. Instead, there was a note on plain white paper, smelling faintly of alcohol. In fine script in black ink, it read:

Fingon sleeps in Glaurung’s Den tonight. Ingo.

That was all. Fingon flipped the papers back and forth and then replaced them exactly as he had found them. It was no surprise, he reflected; Finrod had even warned him that his father the King had requested to be told the moment anyone found Fingon. Having received the awaited announcement from his son, he made the circumspect choice that it should really be the prodigal son’s father who handled it, so he simply repackaged Finrod’s note and sent it here. Making a nearly identical choice to err on the side of subtlety and having sons to space, Filgolfin had gotten Turgon out of bed and told him to fetch his brother. Besides, Turgon never minded a visit to dear Ingo, even if he had business to attend to as well.

There was a very positive interpretation of all this, Fingon thought as he closed the door to the study behind him; all signs indicated that King Finarfin was not hunting Fingon down for political reasons but concerned as family. The only provable fact, and it was a very neutral one, was that Fingon’s absence had been noted.

Turgon could have been expressing a concern that had been pressed onto him when he worried about Fingon becoming ‘someone’s’ keeper. Or, it may have been suggested, and Turgon might have overheard, that it would be nice if Fingon could be ‘someone’s’ keeper again. There were many who would feel more comfortable that way, after all. ‘Someone’ was quite a person to be left to his own devices.

But only I would think such a conniving thing, of course, Fingon reminded himself as he continued his walk to where he actually expected his father to be. Certainly Good King Finarfin would never.

His father he found exactly where he expected him; not in his cozy study or even his private rooms, but outside on a third-floor balcony, even though the night was growing chill and the hills beneath him were dark. His father loved to see the stars; he liked to look at the world in peace.

As Fingon climbed a short few steps of stairs and approached his father, he watched him lift up from his gaze at the world below, and see Fingon, and smile.

Fingon thought often of a conversation he had had some centuries ago while visiting the other bonded vassals of Manwe. Of course, conversation he had in the halls of ___ tended to stick, because he might be discussing things even with Manwe himself, or Varda, or any of their Maiar, or any of the many and very wise followers of the Powers who inhabited those halls always or occasionally. (Or his aunt Findis, which was not to say that she wasn’t wise herself.) But the particular conversation that often came to mind when he saw the face of his father was one he had had with a common Vanya named Desdemona, a woman who followed Varda and had been long in their teaching.

They had been talking about families. People often asked Fingon about his family, and he was skilled in spinning those conversations into conversations about brothers and sisters and mother and fathers and what they tended to act like, in general, for everyone. Desdemona had mentioned with a hearty and unbothered laugh hat she had always known she was not her parents’ favorite child; her father preferred her older brother, and her mother her more talented sister.

Fingon had honestly rarely thought about such things. He reported to her with pride that his parents rarely if ever showed such preferences. In fact, he thought they had no favorites at all.

“No?” she had asked.

“Well,” Fingon admitted, “Mother does have a weakness for my youngest brother. Her baby. Gave him a special amilisse, after all. But she wasn’t unfair about it.”

“No? And how about your father?”

Fingon assured her that he was completely certain that his even-handed, fair-minded father had and showed absolutely no preference between his children, and Desdemona had laughed in his face.

“The only reason you believe that and the only reason anyone would think that is because you are his favorite child.”

“No!”

“Yes, and if you ask any of your siblings, they’ll tell you.”

Fingon never had worked up the nerve to ask his siblings if they thought their father showed a little extra leniency and tolerance toward him. He thought about it for long enough and came to the conclusion that not realizing that had literally always been the case had been embarrassing of him. He figured bringing it up in front of any of them would be an enormous mistake he would never live down, and he didn’t want any of them to feel like a second choice anyway. Presuming that it was true that despite everything, and everything was a lot of things, his father held a special love for him, there was only one thing for him to do, and that was being as loving as he could possibly be in return.

His father did not make that difficult. Once he saw Fingon he smiled a smile that crinkled his eyes and reached out his hand. Fingon went to him and they embraced, touching foreheads and clasping arms.

“There you are, Astaldo,” he said, his voice as ever like coals comfortable in a warm hearth.

Fingon let himself be held for a while, until a moment came that he began to feel a little unsteady. Pulling back, he said, “I’m sorry I’ve been gone so long.”

“I didn’t mind,” he said, completely sincere. “I figured you needed the time.”

He had needed the time, but he felt a little guilty anyway. “You must have had your hands full.”

“Not unhappily,” he responded, and damn him if that wasn’t completely sincere as well. Even if it had been hard, it had still been happy. Fingolfin had his family here, and he loved every stupid one of them. “How have you been?”

Fingon hesitated for a moment. He could deflect his father’s questions, for a time, but like a building earthquake they would come back the stronger for having been delayed. “I have been in my way,” he responded, which his father would easily understand as meaning he had been being himself, and badly. “I have been eschewing company, largely because I do not know how I will act in company.”

“Aredhel said you were in rare form.”

“I don’t believe it is that rare.”

“She was aggravated, which means she was worried about you.”

“It seemed just about everyone is worried about me,” Fingon said, leaning forward over the railing so that he would not be looking at his father, but instead out into the placid darkness of the vernal night. “In some way or another, and not all ways equal.”

“How do you mean?”

“I believe some few are worried about how I feel, but most about what I may do.”

His father leaned onto the railing next to him, just close enough that Fingon could barely feel the warmth of his arm. “The suggestions that I might just take charge of a few prodigals again,” he softly agreed, “have been rather blatant.”

Fingon laughed in his throat in response. “I imagine the same is thought about me, but I have avoided being told so. Turgon’s worried about it.”

“Is he? I’m sure he is. He wants you to be well.”

“I know he does. And I know Aredhel wants me to be safe and Argon wants me to take care of myself. And everyone who is everyone wants me to check in so they know I’m not doing something insane or secretly plotting sedition or about to jump over to ‘their side’, which is how I am sure many people still think about it. A lot had been thought or said about me without my doing anything at all.”

“And what have you thought about it?”

After a moment of annoyance, Fingon repeated, “I genuinely have not even thought about it much at all.”

Quietly, Fingolfin said, “I think you should.”

Both of Fingon’s hands gripped the railing. He loosened his fists, but could not quite relax his shoulders. He took in a breath, but only swallowed instead of speaking.

Of course, the last time he had seen any of them at all was the day he died.

Before that, many of the last or second-to-last meetings were… ugly. He had not seen Celegorm and Curufin at all after the day of his coronation, and they had not been well then. He had been forced–no, he had chosen, though unhappy about the choice, to put out a proclamation that they were to be brought to him for judgment after what they did, but their own people would not comply and no one managed to force it.

Naturally he had last seen Amrod in Beleriand, as the followers of Feanor set sail; Amras he had last seen in Himring, and he could not now recall why he had been there, but the encounter had been extremely unpleasant. Amras did not recover from the loss; he grew ever gradually worse. He remembered being sneered at and called a name that Fingon could not have possible thought Amras thought of him; he wondered is he had even known who he was talking to.

He thought he had last seen Caranthir at the coronation too–the eastern Prince had kept up writing regular reports to Hithlum for as long as both Barad Eithel and ___ stood, and so Fingon’s last memoires of the very middle child had been sort notes, laconic but always polite. Caranthir listed losses and destruction like currency, like it meant something only when tallied up and reckoned together. Fingon had been inviting him over to visit from time to time, but Caranthir never took up the offer.

And Maglor, dear Maglor… What had been the last time? It had felt like he was always seeing Maglor until he wasn’t. He glimpsed him in battle, he managed to have one last meal of way-bread and tea in the encampment, or perhaps he heard a high, clear note hovering above the battlefield, cutting through the air above him. That must have been it, that he had heard and not seen Maglor at the last.

Re-learning the expanded history of his cousins, the years after he had disgracefully departed from them, and been more than hard. He had argued, in fact. He had insisted it was not true. Some of them may have thought of doing such a thing, but the others would have pushed back. Caranthir, at least, wouldn’t have gone. Fingon knew him better than that. Amras was–not stable, but not so murderous as to–and Maglor would never, not unless…

“I don’t want to,” Fingon said.

Fingolfin put a hand on his shoulder, and Fingon squeezed the railing tightly again.

He was about to say something, and Fingon feared what it might be, so he impulsively spoke first. “Turgon said they’ve all come to see you. That gladdens me.”

“Me as well.”

“On the… whole, how are they?”

Fingolfin hummed. “Better. On the whole, better. Not the same as others who were re-embodied. I have not been pressing for details, but it seems they were not kept in the same place, or undergoing the same process in returning. I would not call them fully healed in the same way but the instabilities I recall are now smooth and rested. Many seemed still… stunned. I wonder quite a bit about it all.”

“Were they healed in body?”

“Yes, in the main. They have no tree-light in their eyes; they have eyes like Avari instead. Odd, but I suppose it makes sense.”

The prisoners of Angband would all lose their light. If they were truly kept in some vast darkness, then yes, that would make sense. “And were they respectful to you?”

Fingolfin laughed. Fingon said, “I’m serious.”

“You are. They were. They wanted to talk.”

“They know that they can ask you and you’ll answer. And they know they can be honest with you, and you can handle what they have to say. Did you really see all of them?”

“Yes. Even–”

“Celegorm? I was told he’s run off.”

“He has. He did come see me before he left. We spoke. He was very strict that it was all in confidence, and I couldn’t keep him long.”

“I know he went to Orome. At least, if he wasn’t a coward, and I doubt he was. If his head was put back on straight, wherever he was, he would choose to let Orome kill him rather than live in disgrace.”

“Do you think he’ll choose vassalage?”

“I have no doubt in my heart that he will. I think Orome is likely to grant it, too.” some Valar really avoided it, but as in all other things Orome was more likely to blur the boundaries between mortals and immortals.

“Do you think it will help him?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

Fingolfin deferred to him on the often divisive subject of divine vassalage and contracts. There were many who hated the institution completely or found it distasteful. An Elda willingly giving up self-control to a Vala. Really, they could not imagine why it was that someone would desire that. It had been devised for those who after much sorrow in one life or two had heavy scars on their fea and who needed extra help. Someone who did not need help controlling themselves could not imagine why it would be appealing, and anyone whose fea had fully lost its light would not trust a Vala enough to do it. Neither could understand that it was a balance–Fingon had not given up control of his actions, and made the choice himself to make every single one of them. But he always knew what would happen to him if he trespassed the boundaries of his behavior that he and Manwe had set together. The reminder of his vassalage, which he had had placed between his shoulders, would sear him with punishment until he returned to Manwe to have the pain eased.

It was said that Orome’s marks would instead just kill an errant follower. He knew that Celegorm would absolutely spring for that if it was true, though he wasn’t sure if it was or not. Vassals of one Vala typically avoided others. It was the smell, really.

“It might do well by a few of them,” Fingon said, “but I think only he would choose it. The rest for as long as they lived followed their father’s pattern of self-reliance and distrust of Vala. I don’t blame them entirely, either. But it would make some more comfortable around them.” As knowing Manwe had a degree of personal power over Fingon Astaldo no doubt made some more comfortable.

“It’s their choice either way,” Fingolfin said, his opinion of the matter nearly no matter what the matter was. “They vary. Some seem to be adjusting better than others. On the whole they are better than I feared. None seem to know exactly why this is happening, but I do know it is them. That is undeniable. Several of them asked after you.”

“And what did you say?”

“That Fingon is often out by himself, and I have no idea where he might be or what he might be doing in those times. Usually hunting.”

“Did you tell any of them where I live?”

“I didn’t.”

No, he wouldn’t have. In fact Fingon shouldn’t have even asked him that. “They won’t try it, anyway. It’s been implied some of them are a little afraid of me.”

“That… may not be wrong. A few seem a little intimidated by me, which was never my intention.”

“They’re ashamed of themselves,” Fingon said bluntly. “They care about what you think about them, and they know how little they deserve your esteem.”

“The same motivation must apply to how they think about you. It seemed that several of them did indeed want to hear about you, but were too anxious to ask.”

“I…”

The silence laid on him like a quilt. Finally, he asked, “Did he… ask of me.”

“No,” Fingolfin answered softly. “He did not.”

((Scene left unfinished.))

After a rush of violence, of hot skin pulsing in his armored palms, Fingon knocks his enemy to the ground. With his sword clutched in his hand he mounts him.

Between his thighs is the writhing body of a Dragon, red and black, with gleaming garnet-like scales in vineyard rows. Its reptilian flesh is so hot he can feel it through his armor. Though the Dragon churns and bucks Fingon has it firmly on the ground, on its back; its sore red underbelly wriggles and slides under his parted legs.

Fingon grips the hilt of his sword in both hands and raises it above the beast, aiming its hard point at a place above its groin and under its heart. Its softest, most vulnerable place, quivering, exposed. He grits his teeth and thrusts it down.

Its scaly flesh bursts like a split pomegranate, red and pulpy and pulsing. The Dragon writhes. Its hot skin bucks up at Fingon and burns his inner thighs. He clenches his grip on the hint and buries the blade into the flesh of the beast, digging it inside and tilting it, just a little, to feel the hole he’s made.

The Dragon’s searing breath pours out of its gaping mouth. Fingon can see its tongue, its vermillion gullet throbbing as it pants. He wrenches the blade out of the beast and feels its blood burst out in a spray from its raw, gaping slit. It throbs; Fingon feels the hard blade in his hand and thrusts it down again, into the same wet wound.

He shoves in the blade and widens the hole. The Dragon twists under his thighs and rubs on them. Fingon’s body is as hot as its fire, a heat that builds in him every time the monstrous body rubs his own. He stabs it again, and deep, and its great lungs rumble.

He has to roll his hips forward to stab it deeper, plunging the blade into its body almost as far as the hilt. The Dragon’s hot flesh flexes around it, and gushes searing blood. Fingon can feel it on his hands. The Dragon says his name.

Fingon pants and pulls the blade only half-out before thrusting it in again. Its silver sides are soaked with the Dragon’s blood now. He shoves it back into the wound and feels how its firm muscles yield to his thrusting.

“That feels so good,” the Dragon rumbles. “Harder. Harder.”

Fingon pants with the effort of ramming his sword deeper into the beast, feeling virgin gore split under its tip. The Dragon arcs into Fingon’s spread hips and Fingon rubs back at him. Chainmail clatters on scales. He pulls the blade out and thrusts it in hard.

“Hurt me,” the Dragon begs. “Do it so hard it hurts.”

“Oh, yes,” Fingon pants in response. He grips the sword with one hand so he can thrust it into the Dragon’s wound over and over and run his other hand through the blood pouring down his side. “Yes, you’re so good for me, yes.”

The dragon’s exposed underbelly is soft with gore. Fingon plungest a hand into it and feels the raw, torn skin, skin that had been hidden under scales. He shoved his sword in and twists it, making the beast between his legs convulse with pleasure.

“Finish me,” it begs. Its powerful voice is cracked open with pain and desire.

“Yes,” Fingon moans, “Darling, yes–”

–

Fingon coughs explosively, choking on his own hair, which had fallen into his mouth as he turned in his sleep.

He sat up, clawing at his face. His wet hair trailed down his cheek and his face was covered in sweat. So was his chest, and his stomach, where his night-shirt was bunched into a rumplet wet mess. His body was wet and scorching hot and he could barely breathe.

He coughed and heard until he had breath in his lungs. He pulled the sweat off of his face. Then he shoved his right hand into his underwear, because he was so hard from his dream he felt like he had to rip it off of him.

He jerked himself like he was trying to pull a knife out. He gasped, “Maedhros, Maedhros, Maedhros” as his fist rubbed over his manhood; then “yes, yes, Maedhros, yes,” and that was all it took.

He slumped back into bed, gripping himself. His hair was like seaweed. He was soaked with sweat. The scent of arousal and exertion and seed combined rose from his heated skin. His throat felt and tasted like he was eating carrion on the Helcaraxe.

As his dry breaths slowed and his skin cooled, he recalled Argon mocking him for needing a bath earlier in the day. That need was now pressing.

He stood on weak legs and stumbled into the little washroom adjoined to the bed. That was good enough for stripping naked, taking a bucket of water, and dumping it on himself three or four times, but while the worst of the filth was gone he was still in essence a stray dog which needed much more attention than the initial hosing down. Bleary, faintly disgusted by himself, he wrapped himself in a towel and trudged out of the room and downstairs to the real baths.

Questing Beast

UNFINISHED WORK

Facts

What's it About?

Rating

Relationships

How Far Did I Get

Personal Quality Judgement

The Finished Section

Full Unfinished Draft