#minor cameos by finrod; orodreth; fingon; sauron

[findrahil]

our defiance redeems us

by popular request read: one person the fin-galad fic!

rating: T | no warnings apply. read it on ao3!

A good death, if such a thing exists; an honourable one if not. And if such a thing still does not exist, then a defiant death—that is just as good. I will die on my feet, spitting blood and curses at the Enemy, not kneeling and waiting meekly for the blade to fall.

The Last Alliance will fight, not because they are sure to win or because there will be glory there or because there are oaths to bind them; but because it is right.

Finduilas does the buckles and straps of her armour herself. She has never had an attendant for this, and she will not have one now. I am Ereinion Gil-galad, Starlight Scion of Kings, she tells herself as she looks at her sword, shining deadly-sharp. Her armour fits as well, better even, than her skin. This battle is my birthright and my duty.

She sheaths the sword. She is not one of those who remember a time before war and alliance, or a land fair and green beneath a swift sunrise. She was born into war and raised with a sword in her hands and could hold her own before she could read; and as far as the official story of Finduilas goes, died in war. (They are right, but they have written the timing wrong.) And that is where the narrative of Gil-galad, that for which Finduilas had no name and not enough courage in Nargothrond, begins. Finduilas and Gil-galad are one and the same, but Finduilas is the memory of her father, her mother, Túrin, Gwindor, Finrod, and all the others she has loved and lost; and Gil-galad is the ruler, the valiant, the star of high-fire that laughs at the Enemy, sharp and furious like the sword thirsting for blood, and charges like a comet into the night. In a way, neither of them is any more than masks.

Two sides of the same coin.

Loss makes people bold, Gil-galad knows, and Finduilas hopes that after this final triumph and final fall, Arda will not have to be this kind of bold. Even if she will not see it; even if she will not set foot on this land again.

‘Is it easier?’ Elendil once asked, late one night by a roaring hearth. There is a war on, but there will be time enough to fight it in the morning. ‘To have no wife, no children, no one to lose or leave behind?’

It is not entirely true that Gil-galad has no one to lose, but Finduilas understands what Elendil was asking: no husband or wife, no children, though those are things she might once have had or wanted. But fate has stolen both from her and gobbled them up in its hungry jaws, and armour and authority fit her better than her own skin, so she does not know if she wants those what-ifs still.

The crux of Elendil's question this: is it easier to die if you have no one to lose?

Finduilas gave him no answer then, but thinks that perhaps she has one now. She remembers the years and deaths and tragedies behind her, and remembers one thing that Finrod told her when she was young but not naïve: ‘Love gives me the desire to live, and love will give me the strength to die.’

He is right, she thinks, even if she is not the one of whom he spoke. Centuries ago, behind the stone walls of a then-invincible city, Finrod spoke not of a hopeless, submissive, meaningless death; but of a fighting death. A good death, if such a thing exists; an honourable one if not. And if such a thing still does not exist, then a defiant death—that is just as good. I will die on my feet, spitting blood and curses at the Enemy, Finrod meant, not kneeling and waiting meekly for the blade to fall.

Elendil waits still in her mind for her answer. Is it easier to die if you have no one to lose?

'No,' she would tell Elendil now, through the voice of Gil-galad and with the heart of Finduilas, 'not if you mean a defiant death.' She thinks of Finrod in his last hours, fighting for one Man not because in him lay the path to victory, but because he had loved his father and hated Sauron and would not die meekly and helplessly at the Enemy's feet; and she thought of her own father, leading a doomed charge across a damned bridge not because it would save his people or his city, but because he would not wait for death or capture to come for him, but meet them in battle; and she thought of Fingon in the Nirnaeth, taking up the flaming axe of a felled balrog, careless of the fire burning his hands, fighting not because he thought the Union of Maedhros would be victorious, but because if he was to die he would stand defiant against evil and injustice and darkness to the end.

'The kind of death that comes from saying, We cannot defeat the armies of Mordor, but we will meet them in battle nonetheless?' Finduilas would ask, speaking with the spirit of her friends and kin and allies who had died fighting, died defiant, if nothing else. 'That takes love, and that means having someone to lose. Or someone you have lost and will avenge—that is just as good.'

But Gil-galad and Elendil meet on the field of battle and have no time but to exchange a warrior's embrace before they march to defend their peoples, and take their vengeance, and die fighting. For Finduilas has foreseen it: they must fall by Sauron's hand; and it is bitter to know that it will cost them their lives, whether they end the evil that destroyed their homes, their kin, their joy, or lose to it; but that does not change the fact that they must fight.

Finduilas draws her sword and stands her ground before Sauron, unflinching. By her stands Elendil, and she knows that if she looks over to him, she will see the same grim determination, fire, defiance mirrored in his eyes. She never gave him her answer, but he knows it anyway.

They will die defiant, if nothing else.