thinking about maedhros salvaging a single bloodstained golden ribbon from the mire of anfauglith where fingon fell. there’s nothing left of him, no body to bury, but there’s this. maedhros braids it into his own hair. he wears it as a reminder of fingon, of his own failures, of the cost of trust misplaced. keeps with him always this last remaining piece of fingon and clings to it even as he spirals so low, as he maddens with grief and desperation and his oath, until at the end he’s become someone fingon would hardly recognize. and at the last he casts himself into the fire with fingon’s ribbon woven through his hair, but it’s become so marred with rusty blood and grime and filth that there’s nothing left of its golden luminance, its shine, any of the things fingon had so loved about it. maedhros who destroys himself and with him the last remaining piece of who fingon had been, who they had been; maedhros who through his own actions turns both himself and the memory of fingon into something utterly unrecognizable.
