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The first time you meet your eldest nephew, you are not yet of majority. Fëanáro was a year shy of his when he was married, and there are only twenty-five years between you.
(Always, though, you remember your half-brother as tall and stern, his eyes cold when they fell upon you and longing when they looked elsewhere.)
When his son is born—Maitimo Nelyafinwë, beautiful and third in a line that can never be defined but by all the tension of a string drawn too tight—he comes to Tirion on Túna.
Your heart aches in Laurelin’s hours before he arrives that day, for you have missed him.
He is received with pomp and state by Atar, as though his early marriage was not a frowned-upon affair. He is received by Atar and Amil and their lords, by Arafinwë and of course by you, because Atar insists that you be present.
Nerdanel is quiet beside her husband. Her plain, strong face is calm. If she feels anxious or ashamed, she does not show it. You can admire that, at least. You can admire strength.
The little bundle in her arms does not squall, as Arafinwë often did in his first year of life.
“This is your nephew,” Atar says warmly, to you first because you are second-born. Fëanáro’s face twists and hollows, as though you have taken something from him without even speaking a word.
You do not ask to hold him—Maitimo Nelyafinwë. You do not know what you would do with a babe in arms; you are not yet grown, even if you are also no longer a child. You are tall enough to look your half-brother in the eye, if only he would let you.
The day passes. Praise is passed round like a goblet, praise that means nothing to a man whose greatest joys and dreams are beholden to none other than himself.
You watch him, though you pretend not to. You watch the way he holds his son, the hungry look in his eyes, as if all else fades away like ash on the wind.
You call it greed on Fëanáro's face.
When Findekáno is laid in your arms for the first time, you know it, instead, to be love.
“He is awake,” Írissë says. “You asked to be told if he was awake.”
And Findekáno keeps his own counsel these days, she does not add, though you can read the thoughts running over her expressive features. And Turukáno has no wish to see one of the cousins he curses. Therefore, here I am.
You thank her. You rise, and leave your tent. You can smell the healers’ herbs. You can taste dread like something sour on your tongue. You saw him when Findekáno carried him into your camp.
He looked like a bundle of bones.
In a way, you all are, here and far from home. Leave it to Fëanáro’s son to make the point most harshly.
But these are harsh thoughts. Harsh, and unjust, and you seal them deep within the casket of your childhood grief when you step into the healers’ tent.
There he lies. Maitimo—and you have never liked much to call him that aloud, more an obvious compliment than a name at all. It certainly would ring hollow now, when you can count every rib, broke and unbroken. When you can smell his blood from ten paces away. When his only hand lies twisted and claw-like on covers that are dyed in your own fated blue.
And his face—
Russandol, then. Russandol, ragged-haired, opens first his eyes and then his lips, and every word or name you might have spoken dies on your lips when his face twists in a grimace of child-wonder and he says,
“Atar?”
(You do look like him, you know. You never believed it in your own mirror, but there is truth to what the people say. The same hair, blackly flowing. The same proud, straight nose. The firm lips.)
(The eyes are different, of course.)
(No one else in the world had eyes quite like Feanáro’s.)
You freeze now—still as if ice touched you (and it has). You say, “I am not—” but Findekáno springs forward from his faithful station by the bed, his hand on your arm, his braids swinging from side to side as he shakes his head.
“Not now,” he says, frantic and low. “He is not himself. He would not want you to—”
See him like this. Fëanáro’s son would not want you to see him like this.
You return later to find Russandol, his fever brought down, his lips still grey and pinched where they look like lips at all. He nods his ragged head as if it still carries the pride of its lost beauty and says complacently, “Ñolofinwë.”
His voice is a shadow of its former self, just like everything else.
“Russandol.”
“I spoke—” His eyes are steady, and still quite what they once were, and somehow that is worst of all. “I spoke in confusion, when I first woke. I hope I did not alarm you.”
“You were incoherent,” you lie, but you have never been skilled at lying, even to yourself. “I recall nothing particular that you said.”
Russandol smiles.
It is an awful thing.
Your heart aches, for you have missed him.
“We have much to discuss, Uncle,” he says. He still has charm, if you shut your eyes. He is wielding that charm like a sword, now. You let him turn its blade against you.
(You have always been skilled at that.)
“When you are rested,” you say.
“I shall never be.”
“Still—”
“We are neither of us what he would have wanted,” Russandol says. There is no one else to hear the words. Is this gratitude? Or greed?
(Or is it love?)
“Yes,” you answer.
And you sit in the place that your son occupied in friendship, and you let Russandol sacrifice what ought never have been handed on at all.