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Eönwë has no misconceptions about what he is. He was made for war; in a world re-made, a world without it, he shall be no more. Or perhaps he too shall be re-made, unrecognizable to himself; sometimes he longs for that. Tulkas forgets the wrongness of pain for his love of sport; Oromë finds art in killing on the wild hunt. But Eönwë cannot hold back his revulsion.
Still when they had faced Morgoth in the first battle, it had not been so.
It is all the incarnates, he thinks. Battle is a sport for the Ainur, who may lose their bodies as easily as trees lose leaves, but the bodies of elves and men that lay underfoot are not so easily discarded.
(He wonders idly how Oromë bore to bring his horse to battle with him, loving her dearly and knowing she shall be cut down.)
He’s drifted far from his raiment; the hand that lands on his lower arm startles him. The impulse to strike out, sharp and unlike him and oddly embodied, passes through him as a ripple on the water.
He does not heed it, of course. He is now at camp, in the tent of the elven healers. The tent is roughly-made, constructed of long-carried leather, scuffed and worn. He stands guard in the corner; around him elves and men lay elves and men in various states of undoing.
It is not good of him, to lose himself in thought.
He is surprised to recognize Arafinwë in the elf touching his arm. The king looks oddly out of place here, his light undimmed by the ruin around him, golden armor bright and clean. But his face shows the same exhaustion Eönwë himself feels. The same despair.
“I was told,” Arafinwë says, “that I could find thee here.”
Eönwë hums his agreement; indeed he can.
“I thought,” Arafinwë continues, “that thou wert wounded.”
Eönwë cannot help it; he lets out a low sound something like a half-laugh. He needs no treatment; his body will be worn until it must be discarded, and there is little use repairing it now. But even after the fall of Angband, Morgoth holds claim yet to the minds of some of the former thralls. He is here for the safety of the healers.
“No,” he says, “I cannot be.”
But thou, he does not say, how many ways thou might be. And though he is strong of spirit they swim before his eyes now; Arafinwë’s hands broken in Morgoth’s mines, finely-made fingers healed at at unnatural angles. Arafinwë’s skin peeled off his arms in fine ribbons and wrapped about his fine white neck—for what purpose Eönwë cannot begin to imagine—his breathing coming in strange, ragged bursts. Arafinwë’s fair face burned, his skin bubbling, unrecognizable except for the gleam of his green eyes.
At times he wonders if elven spirits ought to be able to survive such things—would it not be easier, be kinder, to let them slip out of their bodies long before then?
“Cannot be!” Arafinwë’s turn to scoff. “I see the blood on thy wings— the cuts on thy lips. I saw Morgoth with his feet hewn off, thrashing as a worm on the ground.”
There is heat in his words. There is worry.
What a pair we make, Eönwë thinks of saying, for I had seen the worst of the worst done to thy kin, and I, too, think of thee.
But he says nothing. Instead he draws his wing over Arafinwë’s shoulders and pulls him closer. Touch matters more, to the incarnates. Bodies do.