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doodle-pops · 2 months ago

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Drunken Autumn Nights

Fingon x reader

A/N: Some fluff for a change instead of my usual October content. I was in the mood for lots of cozy autumn fluff this time of year. So, to start Flufftober, have some Fingon. Enjoy!

Warnings: fluff, intoxication (drunk reader), humour

Words: 2.1k

Synopsis: The best way to spend autumn nights when your beloved was free of duties, was to give him an impromptu (drunken) task.

The evening had settled with a soft breeze that rustled the vibrant leaves, painting the world in shades of burnt orange, deep red, and gold. Fingon and you had chosen the quiet seclusion of a small forest clearing, far from the demands of his duties as Crown Prince. The air was crisp, biting just enough to be refreshing, but not so cold that it chased you indoors. A perfect autumn evening, really—where the natural beauty of Arda was at its finest, and the skies had only just begun to darken with the twilight.

You had both brought a few bottles of wine along, eager to unwind after a particularly long stretch of obligations that Fingon had been forced to endure. He had been working tirelessly, and the chance to escape into nature was a rare one. So here you were, seated on a blanket in the soft grass, bottles uncorked and laughter already in the air. Fingon poured another glass, watching the liquid swirl before he handed it to you with a gentle smile, his eyes sparkling beneath his dark, braided hair.

At first, the conversation had been light—about the trees and how their leaves looked like flames against the sky. About Fingon’s recent duties and how he felt relief now that he could spend time away from court. But as the night grew older and the wine flowed more freely, something began to shift.

You were laughing at something Fingon had said—something about how Maglor once tried to compose an entire song about leaves, and it somehow ended up being a dirge for lost love. “He’s so dramatic,” Fingon chuckled, his smile widening as he glanced at you. “I swear, if he could write a tragic ballad about his morning tea, he would.”

But you weren’t really listening anymore. Not properly, anyway. The warmth of the wine had begun to work its magic, wrapping you in a pleasant haze where everything felt a little softer, a little funnier. You leaned back, gazing up at the sky that was now peppered with stars, and took another long sip from your glass. Fingon’s voice was still in the background, but your thoughts were wandering, losing focus, drifting like the leaves that tumbled gently from the trees.

“Fingon,” you said after a moment, your voice just a little too loud and slurred at the edges. “Did you know…did you know that leaves…they fall because they’re trying to run away from trees?”

He blinked and glanced over at you with a bemused smile. “Run away? Is that so?”

You nodded, as if you had just revealed some great secret of the universe. “Yes. Yes, they’re done with the whole tree business. They’re like, ‘Nope. I’m out of here.’ And then—” You made a dramatic hand gesture that sent some of the wine from your glass sloshing onto the grass. “—they just drop, you know? Just…they’re free.”

Laughing, Fingon set his glass aside as he leaned back on his hands, watching you with clear amusement. “I had no idea you were such an expert on leaves.”

“Well, now you do,” you said, leaning forward as if to share something even more important. “And, and the pumpkins…do you know why we carve them?”

“I’m almost afraid to ask,” he said, trying to hold back another laugh.

“It’s to scare away the spirits of all the pies we didn’t make last year,” you said with utmost seriousness. “They’re vengeful. That’s why they’re orange. It’s the colour of rage.”

At this point, Fingon was openly laughing with his head thrown back, the sound rich and warm in the crisp night air. You, however, were utterly lost in your own world of autumnal conspiracy. “And the hay bales! Oh, don’t even get me started on those. They’re…they’re a trap for the woodland creatures. But they’re too clever. They know. That’s why you never see any animals near hay bales. Only humans fall for that trick.”

With all your enthusiasm for conspiracies, Fingon had shifted closer to you, his gaze soft but still amused as he took in your increasingly incoherent ramblings. “You’re quite the scholar tonight, aren’t you?” he teased affectionately.

“Of course,” you said, finishing off your glass of wine with a flourish. “I know all the secrets of autumn.”

The wine had hit you hard by this point, your thoughts growing more tangled with every passing moment. You tried to stand up, but your legs wobbled beneath you, and before you knew it, he was at your side, his hands gently guiding you back down to the blanket. “Easy now,” he murmured, his laughter still lingering on his lips. “I don’t think you’re in any state to be walking around.”

You pouted and rested your head against his shoulder as your body felt heavy and warm. “But I wanted to dance with the ghosts,” you muttered, your words slurring together.

Fingon raised an eyebrow. “Dance with the ghosts?”

“They’re here. Watching us. Waiting…” You waved your hand dramatically at the trees, your voice taking on a ghostly tone. “Ooooooooh, they want to join our fun.”

Wrapping an arm around your shoulders to steady you, he chuckled at your statement. “I think you’ve had enough wine for tonight.”

You frowned. “But what about the spirits? You can’t just ignore them, Finno. That’s how they get you.”

“I’ll make sure to keep an eye out for them,” he promised as humour danced in his eyes. “No spirits are getting to you while I’m around.”

As if weighing the sincerity of his words, you squinted up at him. After a moment, you seemed satisfied and leaned further into him with a contented sigh. “Good. Because I’d hate to be taken by a ghost during the best part of autumn.”

Fingon smiled down at you, brushing a stray lock of hair away from your face. “Of course. I wouldn’t let that happen.” Watching as you settled back onto the grass, your thoughts drifting along with the gentle flow of the brook. The night was growing cooler now, but the warmth of the flask still lingered in your veins, keeping you comfortable as you continued to mumble incoherently about leaves, stars, and whatever else your mind latched onto.

Fingon shifted slightly, pulling his cloak around himself as he kept an eye on you, making sure you didn’t attempt any more dangerous feats. He had grown accustomed to your antics over the years, and while he knew he’d likely have to deal with the aftermath of your intoxicated state in the morning, for now, he was content to enjoy the absurdity of it all.

“You know what else is spooky?” you muttered with your eyes half closed as you lay on the grass, your voice a little more sluggish now as the effects of the alcohol weighed down your limbs.

“What else is spooky?” Fingon asked, clearly humouring you as he shifted to sit more comfortably against the tree, his gaze still trained on you with a mix of amusement and fondness.

“The moon,” you mumbled, as if you had just revealed some great cosmic secret. “It’s always watching. But not like…the stars. The stars are nice. The moon is…suspicious.”

“Suspicious, you say? And why is that?” he chocked as he attempted to bit back a laugh bubbling in his throat.

You struggled to sit up again, your movements clumsy and uncoordinated as you pointed a wobbly finger at the sky. “It just hangs there, all big and bright, but it never says anything. Always just…lurking.”

“Lurking,” he repeated, nodding solemnly, though his lips were twitching with barely concealed laughter. “I see.”

You waved your arms dramatically, nearly losing your balance as you did so. “Exactly! One day…one day it’s going to do something. I’m telling you. We need to keep an eye on it.”

Before you could topple over completely, he reached out to steady gently. “I’ll be sure to keep watch,” he said, his voice gentle and amused.

Satisfied that he had taken your warning seriously, you gave a drunken grin. “Good. Someone has to. You never know when the moon might make its move.”

With a soft sigh, you finally allowed yourself to flop back onto the grass, your body sinking into the cool earth as the last remnants of daylight faded away, leaving the sky a deep, velvety blue. Fingon watched you for a moment, the smile still playing on his lips as he pulled his cloak tighter around himself to ward off the growing chill.

Despite your increasingly ridiculous ramblings, there was something endearing about seeing you so carefree, so lost in your own drunken thoughts. He rarely saw you this unguarded, and though you’d surely regret the amount of alcohol you’d consumed come morning, for now, he was content to enjoy the peaceful, if slightly absurd, moment.

You turned your head to look at him again, blinking slowly as if it took a great effort to focus. “You’re my favourite person, you know that?” you slurred, a lazy grin spreading across your face. “Always looking out for me…and listening to my nonsense.”

Fingon chuckled softly, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t say it’s nonsense. It’s certainly…creative.”

“I’m a genius,” you declared, raising a finger as if to emphasise your point. “A visionary. No one understands the moon like I do.”

Fingon raised an eyebrow, smiling. “A visionary, are you? Perhaps you should write a treatise on the subject.”

You gasped, as if the idea had never occurred to you before. “Yes! I’ll write a book. ‘The Suspicious Moon and Other Spooky Things.’ It’ll be a bestseller.”

“I have no doubt it will be,” Fingon said with a grin, unable to suppress the warmth that bubbled up in his chest at the sight of you, so thoroughly convinced of your own brilliance in this inebriated state.

The night deepened around you both, the woods growing quieter as the last of the birds settled for sleep, and the soft rustle of leaves in the breeze was the only sound that accompanied the gentle trickle of the brook. Fingon leaned his head back against the tree, his gaze fixed on the sky where the stars now sparkled in full force, the moon casting a silvery glow over the landscape.

Beside him, you had fallen into a more subdued state, your drunken ramblings slowing as your body grew heavier with exhaustion. Fingon could tell you were nearing the point of falling asleep where you lay, and as much as he enjoyed the peacefulness of the evening, he knew it wouldn’t be wise to let you sleep out here in the open.

“You know,” he said after a moment, his voice low but gentle, “it might be time to head back. The moon may be suspicious, but it’s getting cold.”

You groaned in response, rolling over onto your stomach with a grumble. “Don’t wanna move.”

Fingon sighed softly, though his tone remained patient. “If you stay out here, you’ll be regretting it in the morning even more than you already will.”

With a great deal of effort, you pushed yourself halfway up, your head spinning as you tried to find your balance. Fingon was quick to help, wrapping an arm around your waist to steady you as you swayed on your feet. As much as he knew you’d be feeling the effects of your little adventure in the morning, for now, there was a quiet contentment that settled over him, a rare sense of peace that came from knowing you were both safe, happy, and—for the moment at least—free from the worries of the world.

“Let’s get you home,” he murmured softly, his voice barely audible over the rustle of the trees. The night air was cool, but not unpleasant, and as the two of you walked together beneath the watchful gaze of the “suspicious” moon, Fingon couldn’t help but smile.

Despite the silliness of the evening, despite your nonsensical ramblings about leaf spirits and conspiratorial celestial bodies, there was something undeniably perfect about the moment. It was a brief respite from the weight of responsibility, a chance to simply enjoy each other’s company without the pressures of duty or the looming shadow of the future.

And for Fingon, that was more than enough.

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#「 ✦ mina’s flufftober ✦ 」#house of fingolfin #fingon x reader #fingon imagine #fingon fluff #fingon scenario #fingon #silmarillion fic #silmarillion fluff #silmarillion imagine #silmarillion x reader #middle earth x reader #middle earth imagine #middle earth fluff #middle earth fic #x reader insert #x reader fluff #silmarillion #doodlepops writings ✨

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i-did-not-mean-to · 2 years ago

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Cursed Cards - Part I

So, on this blessed day (birthday of my beloved husband and wedding of an author I SO admire), I offer you a little gift.

Here's a commission by @sauroff for my very favourite boys!!! At the end of the small ficlet I've written for it, you'll find the extra Fingon-reaction-panel and the mini-comic I got (I am still screaming) on which I've based the last part of the story!!!

Cursed cards

Words: 1,21 k

Warnings: Russingon (which is a half-cousin-incest ship)

Context: This might be read as a snippet out of my many Modern!AU stories. Either way, Maedhros and Fingon did not know each other well when they were younger because of their fathers' strife.

“Ai Russo,” Fingon called from the door. “You won’t believe what just arrived.”

As he re-entered the room, he was brandishing a small rectangular piece of cardboard triumphantly; from his perch on the sofa, all Maedhros could make out was a cramped block of handwritten text followed by an eerily familiar, sprawling collection of signatures though.

“What do you have there?” he asked cautiously, craning his long, slender neck to get a better look at what he now clearly identified as a postcard of sorts.

“Your mother has sent me a Christmas card!” Fingon whooped and threw himself on the sofa, the newly-obtained treasure protectively clasped against his broad chest. “And it is the best card anyone has ever received.”

At first, Maedhros was so elated to see his beloved brimming and gleaming with happiness at receiving a missive from Nerdanel that he almost forgot how mischievous his mother could be.

After a few seconds of Fingon cradling his precious card without making any move to share its excellence with him though, Maedhros was overcome by doubt and a terrible suspicion.

“What kind of card is it, darling?” he asked calmly, battling the frown that wanted to crease his smooth, pale brow.

“It’s a family picture,” Fingon said, his voice strained with the effort to suppress a merry guffaw. His eyes were glinting with boundless glee as if he was pondering an excellent joke his lover was not yet privy to.

Instantly, the smile on Maedhros’ face froze into a grimace of pure dread. She wouldn’t do that; his mother knew how much Fingon meant to him. She would never have risked exposing her oldest son to ridicule by digging out the worst holiday picture any family had ever taken.

“Show me!” he demanded shakily and gave a small cry when his worst fears came true. “Oh, no!”

As he tried to snatch the card away, Fingon threw himself around, shielding it with his very body and all but baring his teeth in a territorial frenzy. “No,” he grumbled, “you shall not have it.”

Just by the look on Maedhros’ face, he could tell that he’d destroy the missive if he could.

“Oh, how could she?” Maedhros exclaimed and curled up on himself. “We thought, we really believed, that we had destroyed every last copy of that accursed picture!”

“Why?” Fingon asked cautiously, still keeping his prized possession out of the reach of those terribly nimble and strong hands he so loved to feel on his skin. “It’s an adorable photograph…and you look glorious in it!”

“I…what?” Maedhros combed his fingers through his hair nervously; he was mortified at the mere thought of his dishevelled hair and the awful sweaters his parents had made them wear, so he didn’t so much as glance in the direction of the picture Fingon stared at as if it held every truth of the universe.

“The twins were in the process of strangling me and scalping Káno,” he informed reproachfully. “Moreover, we had to take Moryo to the hospital. It was an awful night!”

Immediately, Fingon’s huge eyes turned compassionate, and Maedhros’ discontent was mellowed by the earnest empathy he read in them. “How come?”

“Moryo tried to wrench himself free and Tyelko toppled backwards over Curvo…” Maedhros rubbed his forehead with a long-fingered hand; in hindsight, he could appreciate how ludicrous this sounded and cringed. “Either way, Moryo then refused to let us see his hand, Tyelko had hit his head against the edge of a table, Curvo was no longer cackling but wailing. Even the twins stilled in their mayhem upon witnessing the chain reaction of disaster.”

When Fingon merely blinked, Maedhros sighed deeply. “They all still have the scars and, apparently, my parents do not think that reason enough to annihilate the incriminating evidence!”

Fingon had started caressing the picture with a tender fingertip, tracing those noble, gorgeous features he saw every time he closed his eyes; he was, of course, sorry that Fëanor’s children had paid this work of art with blood and tears, but he could not bring himself to truly regret their sacrifice.

“It’s fascinating,” he whispered reverentially, “to see that you’ve all made good on the promises of your childhood days.”

“I guess,” Maedhros agreed grumpily, “I am still awkward, Moryo is still ill-tempered, Tyelko is a savage still, and Curvo never stopped being a sneering pest.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of the prodigious beauty, valour, and strength of your line, but suit yourself,” Fingon laughed and nudged his head against the other’s sharp, bony shoulder. “I wish we had known each other back then!”

“I am glad we didn’t.” Maedhros grimaced in deepfelt embarrassment; he was convinced that his unusual complexion had not done him any favours back in the day.

Nevertheless, his face softened as he finally looked upon the round, chubby faces of the brothers he thought of constantly – with equal measures of love and exasperation – and found that the memories of their younger days made him smile wistfully.

“I love it,” Fingon swore perfervidly, “and I love you!”

What else could Maedhros do but sling his arm around Fingon and press a kiss against that temple behind which his beloved would keep the memory of that darned picture forevermore, even if he managed to wrench the card from him and throw it into the fire?

“Don’t let Maglor see it though,” he mumbled insistently, “or Moryo. They hate it with a passion!”

All too soon, Maedhros understood that he might as well have saved his breath though as Fingon proceeded to carry the card on his person all the time.

More than once, Maedhros was fooled into believing that his lover had found some rare new treasure upon finding him gaping at something – evidently immensely precious by the look on his face – clasped in his hands, only to discover that it was the vexatious Christmas picture all over again.

Unfortunately, all his earnest endeavours to take it from Fingon ended in bitter defeats though.

“No way,” Fingon grinned as they companionably stood in Maglor’s living room, “I’m sending this to Ingoldo!”

With his impeccable sense of comedic – or tragic, depending on whom you asked – timing, Maglor suddenly appeared at their side to see Fingon gauchely trying to snap a picture of a postcard while swatting away Maedhros’ hand.

“Nelyo,” Maglor squawked in a melodramatic voice, “please tell me it’s not that photo again!”

He recognised the colour scheme and the chaotic composition even without getting a good look at the object Fingon so ferociously defended from Maedhros’ half-hearted attempts at theft.

“The very same,” Maedhros huffed, “and – if we cannot dissuade him – Finno will make sure everyone with eyes to see will be made aware of our shame!”

Maglor pondered this for a second and then shrugged. “I look somewhat cute in it,” he declared in a regal act of grace, “and it’s – oh, so much – worse for the others, so…I shall condone the propagation of the monstrosity.”

Astounded, Maedhros merely blinked at this utterance; he had just lost a valuable ally.

“Also,” Maglor continued, his eyes glinting sharply, “I shall have my revenge. Charming a middle-aged lady into handing over pictures of her beloved children should be child’s play!”

Here are the promised extra artworks:

I hope you've all liked this, please give @sauroff a big round of applause for being delightful, generous, and absolutely lovely to work with.

As always, lots of love from my little person!

A hooray to love, to friendship, and to happiness. May December be good to you all!!!

-> Part 2

#writing #fanfiction #the silm #the silmarillion #russingon #maedhros #fingon #maedhros x fingon #maglor #the fëanorians #Modern!AU #Tyelko trying to eat Moryo #Curvo is laughing maniacally #sauroff #commissions #so much fun #stay tuned for part II

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tolkien-feels · 2 years ago

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Húrin and Morwen for the ask game :)

And Maedhros

-@outofangband

@outofangband I hope you know I feel honored you'd entrust me with your faves <3 I happen to have complex thoughts about them, actually! I apologize for how long this will be

Maedhros is here.

Hurin

Sexuality Headcanon: I've mentioned I headcanon Luthien has problem distinguishing between aesthetic attraction and sexual attraction, and I headcanon something similar for Hurin but in the opposite direction. I headcanon the world around him as being greatly affected by compulsory heterosexuality, so he has a very accurate understanding of how he feels about women or anyone vaguely female-presenting. But if someone doesn't register as "probably marriageable" he automatically assumes any sexual or romantic attraction he may be feeling is aesthetic and/or platonic. The vibe is "Yeah I would make out with my brother-in-arms if he asked. That's an average, universal experience and nobody mentions it for the same reason nobody mentioned the sky is blue? Also everybody takes notice of particularly hot people even if they aren't attracted to them" Having said that, he's never been in love with anyone as much as with Morwen, which only reinforces his ideas about how attraction works.

Gender Headcanon: Not only cismale, but one of those people to whom gender comes naturally and doesn't feel at all like a performance, ever

A ship I have with said character: Morwen!! I like the idea of him having had quasi-relationships with unnamed characters, too. I could be persuaded to get into Hurin/Fingon, but I like non-shippy relationships of fealty a lot so you have to do something really interesting to convince me that throwing romance into the mix could make it more fun

A BROTP I have with said character: His family, of course (very much including his brother), and the Hadorians and Nolofinweans as groups. It's not a brotp but I find his relationship with Morgoth fascinating. I'm very interested in his relationship with Turgon, too.

A NOTP I have with said character: Eh. Nothing I actively avoid

A random headcanon: He adores children. His own, of course, but just in general. He probably knows and remembers details about every child of every one of the people he rules over (provided he's had conversations about them, of course), and that's part of why they're so loyal to him - it makes them feel like he cares about them as individuals

General Opinion over said character: I'm not sure I would get along with him if I met him in real life (I think I would find him quite overwhelming) but as a character? Hell yeah, I adore him! One of the greatest heroes Middle-earth has, and in a very unique way, too

Morwen

Gender Headcanon: I'm flipping it around for Morwen and going with gender first because these things are connected. I don't think Morwen quite gets gender. She understands it's a thing, she doesn't see any sort of logic she can grasp onto. She equates gender and gender roles, and then she equates gender roles and social expectations. Which means her gender before marriage was Girl and her gender after marriage is Lady - that's related to Woman but not quite the same. So for instance: I don't think she would allow Turin to cry, because he is growing up to be a Lord and Lords don't cry, but I also don't think she would allow Nienor to cry either, because Ladies don't cry either. If she met a random peasant woman crying, though? That's fine, women are expected to cry. Likewise, she wouldn't wear pants because that's not what's expected of her gender, but she is exactly equally unlikely to wear her hair loose because that's allowed for Girls and Women but the gender Lady comes with the expectation of some level of hairdressing. But also all of this is a performance and she is aware that it is, but so much of social interaction is performance already, gender is just one more thing to the list. That's all gender expression, of course - in terms of gender identity, she's probably somewhere in the agender spec

Sexuality Headcanon: Okay so having established her views on gender are Complicated, I don't think gender is a factor in her feeling attraction (because as established, she doesn't Get gender beyond a kind of performance), but I mean this in a gray aroace way: she's not equally attracted to all genders, she's equally not attracted to all genders

A ship I have with said character: Húrin, of course. And I am still one out of TWO Morwen/Beleg au shippers (shout out to @cuarthol for enabling me <3)

A BROTP I have with said character: Um... Someone who isn't related to her by blood or marriage? Not sure I have any??

A NOTP I have with said character: Everybody I don't actively ship with her makes me go "No, she would never" and lose interest, so I guess All Of Them

A random headcanon: She has an uncanny ability to know what time of the day it is without looking at the sky. She just seems to have an internal clock somehow

General Opinion over said character: I love how complex she is and I love how unlike other characters she is. I would have loved to have an entire book (or tv show, I think this could work as a series) going through her life from childhood until death, because in many ways, her life feels to me one of the clearest explorations of what it means to be mortal in the First Age

#ask game

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arrivisting · 4 years ago

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I’d love author commentary on basically the whole scene at Ekkaia in all my war is done (or any individual part of that scene, if your prefer). Taken together, it’s one of the most beautiful and emotionally complex and heartrending things you’ve written, from the description of the sea itself, to the difficulties of Fingon and Alqualondë, to Gil and the ocean and his ‘mother’, to Fingon and Gil beginning to tackle the thorny subect of Maedhros.

I should admit something about all my war is done: it's the most fugue-like my writing has ever been. I jotted down a few notes on my commute into work - I was deeply underwater with my PhD at the time, three months away from submitting - and then the idea of writing a sequel to scion seized me so profoundly that I sat down in the Starbucks where my bus stops, took out my laptop, and wrote instead of just collecting my coffee and walking down to my office. I wrote 15k. In one day. In about five or six hours. I've never achieved anything like that before or since - I do have good days where I can knock 2-4k out easily, but not 15k. (You might note that the posted part of all my war is done is only 12k, but I wrote all the way up into the next bit with Fingon in Tirion that you've read, up until Turgon at the dinner table). I didn't sit down or plan events; I didn't actually know much about what would happen: but I knew they were going to Ekkaia and they'd have some kind of resolution there. These are my phone-notes, from that morning:

You can see, I think, something of the way an idea hits me. I note down a few snatches of plot, not necessarily in any order, some lines I think people should say at some point, although I might not use them, sketch out some things (Formenos's ruins were going to feature more heavily, but they're waiting for a later story).

(It makes me laugh, the words my phone doesn't accept - Gil-galad, for one - and the ones it automatically capitalises from where I've yelled enthusiastically about elf things at people. I never stop long enough to correct spelling etc when I'm trying to get something down).

I clearly knew from inception that I wanted Fingon's place to be called the hill of waiting, and had tried out the name in Sindarin; because my verbs are not good, I came up with Amon Dartha. It was when I was redrafting that I realised Amon Darthir had existed actually in Dor-lomin(!!!) and the name was even more perfect symbolically than I'd meant it to be! Did I know that, unconsciously? I don't know.

You can see, too, that the Sea of Ekkaia was almost the very first point to hit me, and that I knew it and the scene there would be important, and that I knew that the story was about Fingon finding a way to tell Gil-galad that he had been loved, and wanted, and that meant talking about Maedhros; and that at the end I wanted Gil-galad to be gently, impersonally, firmly clear that he would not, could not, be staying to wait with Fingon.

Okay, DVD commentary proper - I'm sorry, I remember awfully little about writing this, given the fugue state and my thesis and everything, so I'm not sure how useful this will be!

“Oh,” said Gil-galad when they broke out of the woods and began to ride down over the dune-lands to the rocky shore. “Oh!”

The Sea of Ekkaia was beautiful, in its own way, but that way that was like no other place in Arda, in either Aman or Middle Earth.

It was a dark-blue that was almost black, even in the late afternoon, and the shore was less sand than gravel, a strange inconsistent rubble of rock and broken sea-shells that had been dashed to pieces by the constant fury of the waves. Staring out to sea, one did not see the far-away horizon the way one did on the gentler coast of Belegaer: there was no gentle faraway blue haze through which one might, perhaps, on a clear day, imagine that Middle Earth could be glimpsed, or at least the Straight Path.

No: instead along the horizon there was a seam of silver light, and then a great blackness, where the Sea of Ekkaia met the Uttermost West that was not quite the Doors of Night, but was certainly the end of Aman itself. If you stood on the shore watching, the seam would ripple with a pulse of light, sometimes green and sometimes white.

It was so far from anywhere the Eldar of Valinor lived. While they clustered around the Belegaer like moths to flame, this shore seemed instead to repel them. Was it the sight of the world’s end itself? It might be; yet Fingon thought there was more to why this wilderness was so little visited, this howling black sea lashing itself against a grey shore. It was beautiful, but not in the way Elves liked things to be beautiful: it was too raw, too unfinished, too savage.

It was too close to where Mandos kept his Halls, which were not only a thing of spirit but also matter, at least in the way that things in Aman were both. Too close to where Nienna’s tower looked out into the Void and where she wept, and wept, and wept. It was too close to death and to rebirth, to judgment and to pity.

There's a little Dawn Treader, I think, in this idea of the uttermost West. I don't know why I thought the seam of the world should pulse with strange light, but it's an uncanny kind of geography, so near Mandos and Nienna, and I like the sense that this is the end of the world, but not the end of the universe.

A lot of this came together serendipitously. I knew some kind of memorialisation of the river that bore Gil-galad needed to be part of his story; that meant going to the sea; and it's clear from the notes that I had already decided that couldn't mean Alqualonde because of kinslaying reasons and memories. (And that that too would need to be confronted). Therefore: roadtrip to Ekkaia. Therefore, the question: what would Ekkaia be like? We don't really know anything about it - only the good qualities of Belegaer. This was really written by a process of inversion, a way of pulling what we know about Belegaer inside-out, and imagining a place at the world's edge, a place that was empty, a place that was uncannily close to difficult things, to Mandos and Nienna; a place that seemed to repel the Eldar as surely as Belegaer drew them like iron filings.

I was thinking visually about New Zealand, too. I spent my childhood summers on the beaches up north, mostly around Tūtūkākā, which are bright and lovely, with golden or white or tawny sand, with gnarled pohutukawa and blue-green water. Like this:

That's what beach and sea meant to me, and it was a shock the first time I went to one of the black sand beaches where the wind howled and the colours weren't blue, green, gold, but iron, grey, navy, black. I loved it, but it felt so other, so passionate, so strange. That shock and that wild beauty and desolation were things I wanted to get at, though Ekkaia would be far more wild and desolate still.

They left the horses in the thin sea-grass, and their shoes, too, and walked down to the water. “I missed it,” Gil-galad said, and closed his eyes, breathing in the brine. “I missed it badly, all the long years besieging Mordor before I died.”

I think Gil-galad would be very marked by his upbringing first in the Falas and then on Balar; you don't lose that, if you grew up by the sea.

The wind took up his long dark hair and made a banner of it as they walked along the rough crescent of rocky ground where the waves met the shore, and around their bare ankles small stones tumbled back and forth in the lace-edge of the water.

When I was young I used to stand in the water and let the waves bury me up to my ankles, watching the water move in, out, spreading skirts of lace overlapping as new waves came in. I could do it for hours. There's something very liminal about the water's edge, between the solid land and the sea, which is why I put this conversation in it, I think. They're in a liminal space and at a liminal moment. It's the scene the whole story has been inexorably building toward, the point where all Fingon's painful scraping-away of his barriers finally reaches his skin.

“Sometimes in Middle Earth it became very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said, his eyes still closed, “in the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.” He opened his eyes and looked towards the Uttermost West where the world ended. “And here it is impossible not to. Look at it!"

This is a little more hopeful than the original version, which I don't have anymore, but went pretty much:

"Sometimes in Middle Earth it was very difficult to believe in the Valar,” Gil-galad said. "In the blood, and the mud, and the filth. There were so many great and small unfairnesses, day upon day, year upon year.”

It was a comment more about Gil-galad's rueful scepticism than wonder - because he fought the Dagorlad before he died, because he spent the last ten years of his life in mud and blood and filth and horror. I work on the First World War - its literary legacy and traces in the decades after, more than its immediate experience or actuality, because there was a ten-year period after 1918 where it was more latent than overt, a traumatic lacuna of silence, a Nachträglichkeit- and I thought in the blood, and the mud, and the filth was a little too on the nose.

I kept it, though, because Tolkien was drawing on his own memories of the trenches with the Dagorlad and the Dead Marshes, with those blurred lines of solid land and mud/bog, the living mixed up with the remains of with the dead, all the themes you see again and again in the war poetry and the officer war-books. (Santanu Das is very good on this, as is Eric Leed). Paul Fussell is a bit old-hat now, but his argument that WWI altered the sensibility of its survivors because of their close, consanguinous co-existence with the dead is something I still find valuable. I think there's a lot of WWI survivor in the way I think of Gil-galad, actually, I'm just realising - not that he survived the Last Alliance. He's detached in a different way from Fingon. Fingon's built himself a thick layer of repression/denial, a kind of callous to protect himself from confronting or thinking about what Maedhros did, and what that means for him and to him; Gil-galad is entirely present, but somewhat detached in some ways, the way people who came back from war could be. Not that Fingon and Finrod aren't also separated from the Amanyar by their time in Beleriand and experience of war and death, but Gil-galad lived there for millennia, and he fought a longer, harder, more total kind of war than they did.

But he's at the Sea of Ekkaia, as west as you can get. So much of Tolkien is about that endless longing glance west, that movement: why is this very westernmost edge so under-explored?

I wanted Gil-galad to be softened by this encounter with the sea, so I went back and let his wonder be as much at the spectacle itself as the sea, like the greater hand at work he had sometimes doubted being visible was something wonderful rather than something to be bitter about. I wanted to position him to be potentially open to, perhaps, the Valar; perhaps, to Fingon. I hope he doesn't come off as closed-minded: I think of him as having a fair mind, and good judgment, but - despite placing him here between the sea and the shore - very clear personal lines between what he thinks is just, and what is not. Certainly, it helps a lot, never having known the Feanorians when they had not fallen.

The seam of the universe pulsed with light, and beyond it was – what?

Unutterable nothingness, something worse than death.

Perhaps Maedhros.

This is an important line for Fingon. He hasn't though the name of his own accord for much of the story, flinching away from it; it's only come in when Finrod and then Gil-galad speak the name. This is the first time he's thought it clearly of his own free will, and this is I think the first signal that he's brought Gil-galad here to be as honest and earnest with him as he can be, however much it hurts, or however much it might drive him away. Because if he isn't, and doesn't, Gil-galad will be driven away anyway, and Fingon wants to be connected with him, the first time he's wanted that kind of bond with anyone since he returned.

(I think of Finrod as someone who just kept turning up, regularly, and forcing Fingon to associate with him; and then bringing Amarie; and then his children; and not taking no for an answer. It bothers Turgon rather terribly that they seem to be friends now, when they were never that close Before: that Fingon pushes him away, but allows Finrod to keep pushing; that Finrod does push. He doesn't know about Gil-galad, of course).

He's brought Gil-galad here to show him if possible that he was wanted, to conjure up lost Ringwil where she might be felt if not found; and to do the same for Maedhros. This is a signal that this journey to the sea is as much about Gil-galad's missing father as his missing mother.

The almost-forgotten tang of salt in the air always mingled with the smell of blood in Fingon’s worst memories, and he was not the only one who remembered. The waves were gentle around Gil-galad’s feet, but they boiled furiously around Fingon’s, delivering small spiteful slaps at his calves.

Spiteful was probably the wrong word here. I don't necessarily mean a dramatic boiling or bubbling; but the water is harsh where it touches him, the kind of slapping roughness you get when the tide is coming in rough.

It took Gil-galad longer to mark the difference, engrossed in the joy of the sea and spectacle as he was, and when he did, his face changed. There was something terribly sad in his eyes when he lifted them from the water to look at Fingon.

It wasn’t why he had brought Gil-galad here; but Fingon didn’t want to imagine the look he would receive if he brushed aside the silent question. “No,” he said. “I am not forgiven.”

“So I see.”

They could probably leave it there.

But Fingon won't, because he's trying. He's really trying to connect after all the time flinching away from it, and he's remembering what Gil-galad said about talking, and what Finrod said about mistakes and silences in their first life.

He said, “You said you loathed the thought of being the son of – a murderer. But my own hands have not been clean since Alqualondë, and death didn’t unstain them. All the time you thought I might be your father, you must have known I was a Kinslayer, too.”

I tried to signal this in their earlier tower conversation with Finrod, and Gil-galad's changing of the topic, but I feel like it's a little abrupt here.

“Yes,” Gil-galad said, and his expression didn’t change. “And when the knights that had served you came to me, they told me that you killed that day in ignorance, that you came upon a battle already being fought; that you took up your sword to save those you loved and didn’t question whether it was just. I heard that from others, too, those who had less reason to bend facts to a flattering pattern; survivors of Gondolin and of Nargothrond. I did ask."

“Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. I died ashamed of it, and I live again with the shame.”

"Good!” said Gil-galad, and there was no forgiveness in his voice, even when Fingon jerked his head up in shock. Instead there was the stern ring of a king used to weighing the ideals of justice against the world as it was, the king who had walked arm in arm with Eonwë the Maia, led his people through many full-fledged wars, and held court and meted justice to them for an Age. “That gives me a far better opinion of you than any of the stories did! I’m glad.”

I remember talking to you about this in the comments, about what it meant that Gil-galad wasn't forgiving him. I think I really meant condone, but I also don't think it's Gil-galad's place to absolve Fingon - he wasn't the one wronged! - and that it's important to me that, because Fingon does truly regret it, he doesn't wish to be absolved, to slide away from it. I don't mean he ought to wallow in it or flog himself with it daily, but I think it would be important to him to shoulder and own that guilt rather than ever allowing himself to put it behind him or have someone else tell him it’s quite all right.

I think this is a moment where I show that they're quite similar, too, because even if Fingon wasn't aware that a bracing, clear assessment was just what he wanted, it was what he needed, rather than people being kind (which he's had a lot of, since he returned; and which hasn't touched that central guilt he's hidden from them, that he loved Maedhros, who had done such terrible things. It's prevented him from accepting kindness made him block people reaching out to him. Gil-galad is not being kind, but just, and still reaching out).

It felt like Fingon had been struggling to take a full lungful of air for a long time, and now something constricting in his chest had loosened, as it hadn’t even after the Valar themselves had judged him. It was only now that he realised that he hadn’t wanted Gil-galad to forgive or absolve him. He had wanted – needed – Gil-galad to be better than him, to withhold forgiveness when it was unmerited; and Gil-galad had. He had become the shining legacy they had all hoped he would be, the thing they had all somehow done right.

The water slapped at his ankles again, in impatient reminder.

This is too brief a transition. I should have fleshed the join out more.

“I think Ulmo would come to you here, if you called. You were a king by the sea in Middle Earth, and you may not remember it, but it was a river who gave you life.”

Gil-galad looked at him as if he’d grown an extra head. “What?”

“I brought you here for a reason,” Fingon said. “Where did they go, the drowned and poisoned rivers of Beleriand? I don’t know; but Ulmo might.”

I've really personified the rivers, but I think it's a clear and easy extrapolation from the Withywindle and the River-daughter in The Fellowship of the Ring that I don't need to justify in order to argue that every river might have had its own attendant Maia-spirit. It does make what happened to the Rivers of Beleriand much worse, though, and I wanted to look at the way a character that was a throwaway mechanism in scion ended up being sickened and dying as horribly as Beleriand did; this story was really about following all those lighter bits in scion home, to the end of the line, and looking at the long-term impacts of something that began more lightly. In this verse, Ringwil was a river, but also a person; and I think of her and Finrod as sharing a strange human-river friendship and overlapping enthusiasms.

He clapped Gil-galad on the shoulder, hoping it said all the things he meant it to say. Affection had been so easy for him once, in the life that had been taken from him by the fiery flails of the Balrogs, but now it came hard, and the sea-smell was in his nose, the terrible memories too close to the surface.

He had surely outstayed Ulmo’s tolerance by now. Fingon left Gil-galad there in the water, and didn’t dare glance back until there was thin sandy soil under his feet again.

Only then did he look once more towards the sea.

Gil-galad was standing in the shallows. His broad shoulders were bunched tight, as if he was readying himself for something very difficult, a confrontation with one of the Valar he had long doubted.

Then he spread his arms out, empty-handed, and tipped his head back, and the light on the horizon grew unbearably bright, whiter than white, more silver than silver; and a face began to move upon the water.

I really like this, honestly. Which I can't/don't say often! The temptation to overwrite this was strong, to show this encounter, to describe the Vala: but I think it's often stronger not to show something numinous, to pull away, to let the mind fill it in.

Again, this is Gil-galad as I imagine him: still somewhat distanced from the Valar by the Dagorlad and the things that happened there (and I think perhaps doubly unhappy in that he lived through the end of an Age once before, and that time, at least, the Valar came: they did not come in the Second, nor send so much as a messenger, and such obscenities as the fall of Ost-in-Edhil and the drowning of Numenor had been allowed to happen, and Men and Elves were left alone to come together and break Sauron's grip). Doubting, but not angry; doubting, but still curious. Open to listening.

a face began to move upon the water is of course a deliberate sideways reference to

And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

It took a very long time. Fingon could not watch; his eyes dazzled.

Can you tell I was teaching The Duchess of Malfi at this time? Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle; she died young. That sense of a light too bright and white to look upon; that sense of guilt; that faint reference to life lost untimely. This wasn't meant to be a direct intertextual reference, but that net of meaning was there, lightly. Again, I wanted to under-write rather than over-write. I know I have a tendency to over-write.

And of course - there's a sense here that Fingon is refusing the kind of close enoucnter with Ulmo he could/might have. There's water in his eyes. From the wind?

“Thank you,” Gil-galad said when he rejoined him at last. His eyes were glowing, and he whistled Ceredir to him from where he was tearing ropey roots of sea-grass from the dunes with great relish. “Thank you for bringing me here;” and he didn’t say it the way he’d thanked Fingon for the horse, or the armour, or the sword, or even the lance.

Because this is a real gift, something that means something to both of them, something more honest/painful. Fingon's been trying to connect through gifts but not serious conversation or sharing, like some estranged parents do, throwing money at the problem rather than giving of their time or their selves, and however well-meant, it hasn't worked.

“I didn’t truly do anything."

“You brought me to the Sea. I know – I could see – how difficult it was for you."

"Well,” Fingon said lamely. He cleared his throat. “What did Lord Ulmo say about – oh, I can’t call her your dam! – the Maia who bore you? Did she – was she there?”

The dam pun is Finrod's. Don't blame me.

A little of the light dimmed, but it didn’t quite fade away. “No, she’s gone. Back to the Timeless Halls, he says; but one with him again, Ulmo, at the same time.” Gil-galad made a noise. “I don’t pretend to understand any of it, all the metaphysical nonsense of the Ainur! But he was kind to me, and he told me something of her – that she delighted in the making of me.” The corner of his mouth turned up. “I left the flowers we gathered earlier in the waves for her and the sea didn’t dash them back onto the shore. I’m sure Ulmo broke a few laws of Arda there.”

I like this image of the flowers suspended in the water. I had it clearly in mind from before I began to write.

"You were wanted.”

“I’m beginning to believe it,” Gil-galad said.

“You should,” Fingon said. He took a breath. Talking is how you sort things out; and a long time ago, Fingon had been known for his valour. Gil-galad deserved to know how much he had been wanted, who had called himself a political compromise given birth. The truth of that had stung.

And it was less than the truth. Fingon could still remember the first time he had opened his mind to Maedhros over the leagues between them and let him see Gil’s small face through his own eyes, holding nothing back. He had shown Maedhros the dark long lashes and the squashed baby nose, the milk-blister on the bow of Gil’s upper lip, the way his whole head turned an alarming red when he wailed; shared with Maedhros Gil’s fondness for being tossed in the air, his splashing joy in his bath.

This is is me trying to describe a baby without being too sentimental about it, because Fingon wasn't all, oh look at the toesie-woesies, or my son, my son: his eye was more detached, and you see him in scion thinking of Gil-galad as it.

I've been thinking about why Fingon in no way allowed himself to consciously dote on the baby, why that streak of denial that's so strong in his second life was there in his first light, and really: it would have been dangerous to let himself love him, to see Gil as his son and Maedhros's. He was born at a time of terrible loss, after the Flame, when they all expected they could die themselves. He was moved around Beleriand like a game-piece. Fingon was always going to lose him: he wasn't going to get to raise him, after all, until and unless Morgoth was defeated. Maedhros wasn't going to meet him, until and unless &c. It was easier not to let oneself get attached than it was to confront those hard facts and let oneself be hurt by them. Easier to think of him as a baby Finwean prince, and that only: a political pawn, not a son.

Conversely, Maedhros maintains a physical distance, but not an emotional one. Here's a bit from Maedhros's perspective:

Finrod had told him that. They had written, back and forth, in the long months as Ringwil’s belly swelled, as the child formed, as it began to move and stretch and turn frog-like inside her. They had corresponded constantly during the first months of the child’s life in Nargothrond, and during the first months of his life, Finrod had sent long scrolls detailing every change in Artanaro’s weight, his length, his hair colour, his eye colour, how much milk he’d consumed each day: screeds winging forth to Himring until the child was old enough to survive the secret trip north.

Fingon’s letters had been infuriatingly spare of useful information while the child was fostered at Barad Eithel. Beloved, ineloquent Fingon: Fingon, who had nevertheless shown him the child as no reams of paper could.

Fingon had given him forever the rounded bloom of his full cheeks, and the pursed mouth, sullen in sleep: the feathery, rather cross-looking eyebrows, and the small hands with their deep dimples and smaller fingernails, curled into the edge of Fingon’s furred mantle.

Maedhros had felt the way Fingon hovered between wonder and confusion at what they’d wrought: the way he couldn’t quite manage to think of the child as his own, this thing spun out of air and calculation and freshwater into heavy, solid life. He could have loved him so desperately, Maedhros knew that. He was halfway there, hovering in terror on the edge, afraid of falling. If the baby had stayed in Barad Eithel longer; if Fingon had watched him begin to creep around on fat little knees, to pull himself up on the furniture and to take his first steps – to hear the baby babble turn into words and speech – his heart would have opened to him like a flower, and the child would have become the centre of his universe, the sun in his sky.

Fingon had never known what to do with Idril as an infant, either, but he’d easily become an adored uncle as she grew up. If they’d had more time – if the child had been permitted to stay with Fingon even a month longer before being sent for safety to Cirdan –

Well, they’d never had enough time.

There had been few walls between them then, so he had felt Maedhros’s bright joy, the painful love, in its moment of birth: swelling and swelling like a cloud with rain, as though his heart was growing and his blood was leaking out of him at the same time, transmuting into pure tenderness and iron purpose.

I like this because I think of the Ekkaia scene as a cloudburst, full of emotion that has been swelling and swelling and now released. This is one bit of the breaking-through.

He had never needed to ask whether Maedhros considered Gil-galad a son.

“I don’t want to talk about – him,” Fingon said with difficulty, and the salt breeze stung his face, his eyes. “I know you loathe him, and rightly; and I do, too. I do hate him; or I hate what he did. I do! But you should know – you deserve to – that he wanted you, badly, although he never met you; he never wanted the shadow on him to touch you or to taint you.

And this. You can see here where I spun off into cliffs of fall, which isn't a scion story, but sprung out of this speech. It was already there in those sketchy notes, too, a lot of what Fingon's saying here: this important line about hating Maedhros, or what he did (that movement from clear certainty to trying to separate the deeds from the loved one; to urgent reptition - I do! I mean it, I really do! - which means he doesn't, can't: this is the heart of Fingon's guilt, because he wants to hate Maedhros utterly, but he can't, and he is profoundly in denial about that).

“He always wanted children; I took that from him even before the Oath did, but I gave it back to him with you. I loved you first of all for that, but he loved you for yourself. Because you existed, against all hope and possibility and fate and chance; and because you were ours.”

Gil-galad said nothing. There was still a wildflower tucked behind his ear, but the brilliance had quite left his eyes.

“Well,” Fingon said at last. “I needed to tell you that. You should know that you were never – not only – you were wanted very much."

Beloved ineloquent Fingon, &c.

They were some miles from the beach when Gil-galad said, “‘Ours’?”

“Yes."

I was trying to let the gaps and breaks talk for me in the text. Under-writing.

The beginning was full of these little breaks, too, because they didn't yet know how to talk to each other; now at the end, that connection, and their conversations, are breaking down again. It's echoing that ride together at the beginning very strongly, but now it's not Gil-galad trying to become acquainted and Fingon giving light, unsatisfying answers. These are the real questions/answers at last, and the whole story has really been about getting to the point of Fingon and Gil-galad in Aman where they actually could have the kind of conversation Gil-galad was trying to have at the start.

Some miles further, Fingon said, “Did you ever meet him in Beleriand? After I died. I always wondered.”

“No,” Gil-galad said.

It didn’t seem like he was going to speak again, and Fingon had begun to assimilate that knowledge, that pain – that Maedhros had never seen him, had only ever known him through Fingon’s own eyes – when he added,

“But I saw what he did. Have you ever seen a whole city ruined, and known the ruiners to be Elves? It wasn’t even a city, poor Sirion! It was a refuge, a place for the desperate, as far to the West as they could get, as close to the safety of the Sea. They had so very little. No great stone palaces, no towers, no spires. Little enough fresh food. They were able to grow so little, and they lived on fish, and sea-weed, and what brave hunting parties would bring back; and hope. They lived on hope, and they thought Elwing wore it around her throat, but the Valar didn’t come for them: Maedhros Fëanorion and his brothers did instead, and they burned and killed and ravaged. I’d say they salted the earth, but it was salt already. To fall on any innocent Elven city would be a horror: on poor Sirion it was the greatest cruelty I ever saw, and entirely pointless."

They said nothing more.

I like this, too, actually. You see a little here of why Gil-galad might be healthily sceptical of the Valar - they didn't come for them: Maedhros Feanorion and his brothers did instead - and that very post-war experience of seeing a descrated, destroyed town. Worse when you had seen it when it was whole, when you knew the dead and fled.

Sirion is, I think, the worst thing the Feanorions did. I find it worse than even Doriath or Alqualonde (though they're all awful!). These were desperate survivors, huddled together at the edge of the sea for protection. So many of their leaders had been killed or lost. Idril and Tuor had disappeared; Earendil was away; Maedhros and the others struck while only Elwing was there, and she was so young, and so alone, and so damaged already by what they'd done in Doriath. And now they’d come again. There's something about the revictimisation that gets me. It's awful.

I wanted it to be weight and counter-weight - that soft, painful, remembered moment of Maedhros seeing baby Gil-galad through Fingon's eyes, something Fingon has clearly not deliberately thought about since he was reborn, but dredges up now for Gil-galad, because he should know: and which is echoed in the beginning by Fingon's question to Finrod. But Maedhros is still the person who did the things he did, and I wanted to set that soft moment of truth against his deeds at Sirion, another truth, to point out clearly why Gil-galad would recoil so hard from this offering, this honesty Fingon wants to be able to give him. This is the dichotomy at the heart of the story: reconciling Maedhros and how one felt for him with what he did, and how one feels about that. It is irresolvable, at least for Fingon, at least at the moment I've ended it at for now.

I don't know if this is quite what you wanted, @warrioreowynofrohan, especially because like I said, I wrote this story in a frantic fog, but I hope this in some way suffices!

#not!fic

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arofili · 5 years ago

Text

Cause & Consequence (ch5 alt draft)

Since some people expressed interest, here you go! @himrings :)

This is from the POV of Ryndil, my Haleth/Caranthir baby, and takes place directly after the Nirnaeth after the Feanorians fled to Caranthir’s stronghold in Amon Ereb. I intended it to be part of Cause and Consequence ch5, but having reread it now after I’ve written ch1 of that fic, I know I’ll have to rewrite most of it to fit the Caranthir characterization as well as the general tone. This confrontation will happen, and there are parts of it I’ll probably keep, but overall I’m gonna have to change most of it.

Still, I had a lot of fun with the arguing Feanorians, especially Maedhros who is less “in denial about Fingon’s death and crumbling entirely as a person” and more “completely Does Not Care about anything now that Fingon is dead, would be happy to watch the world burn because Nothing Matters, but still has his wits about him.” and I really let myself go off with my headcanons! I’ll have a note at the bottom explaining some of them :)

“Who are you?” demanded Celegorm.

Rýndil glared up at him, undaunted by his blood-stained figure and the astonished looks of his brothers.

“I am Rýndil,” they proclaimed. “Rýndil of Brethil.”

“Didn’t I see you in the fighting?” one of the twins asked suspiciously. “You aren’t one of the Accursed’s people, are you?”

“I’m from Brethil,” they said, affronted. “I’m one of the Haladin!”

“Regardless, this is no place for mortals,” Maglor said flatly. “You do know who we are, don’t you, Rýndil of Brethil?”

A shiver ran down their spine. Seven tall elf-lords, gaunt and scarred and bloody in the aftermath of a disastrous battle. Maedhros, the eldest, was a shell of the glorious figure he’d been on the battlefield; they weren’t sure if he was even awake, his eyes were so glassy and unfocused. Grief, they supposed. They’d heard the rumors about him and the High King, after all.

Maglor, leading in his place, trembling despite the firmness in his golden voice. Celegorm, bitter and angry and mean despite his fair features. Curufin, his dark shadow, flint in his eyes and venom on his tongue. Amrod and Amras, mirroring each other in their distrustful glares. And yet despite the blood and dirt and pain, a light shone from each of them. These were men to be feared, men to be worshipped.

And then there was him. Caranthir the Dark. Rýndil’s father, the blood flowing through their veins, the reason they were here in the first place. Gaunt and red-faced, the weary host of his defeated brothers, he had scarcely stopped moving about and making room for them since they arrived.

As much as Rýndil was of the Haladin, as much as they were the child of Haleth, they were bound to this family and people also.

Rýndil stuck their chin out and glared directly at the unobservant Caranthir. “I know who you are,” they said evenly. “You are the Fëanorians. Well, so am I.”

There was a horrid pause, in which Rýndil wasn’t sure if they were going to be sliced open from gut to throat or welcomed with open arms. Even those that hadn’t been staring at them before turned to look at them with open mouths.

“They’re not mine,” said a wry voice at last. Everyone turned to stare at Maedhros, speaking his first words since their arrival.

“What?” he said. “Fingon is—he’s dead. No point in hiding it any more. Yes, I was sleeping with him. We were in love. You’re all shocked, I know—yes, Curvo, I was being sarcastic, don’t even start, I’m well aware that we were the worst-kept secret in Beleriand.”

“More like all of Arda,” muttered Maglor.

Maedhros ignored him. “My lover is dead,” he said, a deep and righteous grief rumbling in his chest. “And so. This bastard child. Is. Not. Mine.”

Bastard! Rýndil recoiled. They knew it was true, knew that the Fëanorians could see the truth of their relation but also the truth of its illegitimacy in the way that elves had. The way Rýndil only partially understood, like they only partially understood everything about who they were.

No one else spoke. Maedhros stuck his feet up on the table, crossing his arms. “I’m done with dancing around unfortunate subjects,” he said. “Whoever of you bed some mortal woman, fess up. I faced my scandal, time for you all to face yours.”

Still no one moved, until Maglor blurted out, “I know you’re looking to me, Nelyo, but Arasdil’s children had other fathers.”

“What?” Curufin yelped. “You slept with a mortal? And you mocked me for being faithless to Quilla with Finrod! What would Ezellë think of this, at least I didn’t stoop that low—”

“This is rich,” Maedhros drawled, “coming from the person who would never shut up about me being a cousin-fucker.”

“Look, Finrod was the whore, look at him, he had Edrahil and Bëor and at least two of those dwarves, and besides he was already fucking Turgon well before me—”

“I’m asexual,” Amrod said, raising his hands and stepping backward. “It wasn’t me.”

“And unlike some of you, I remember my marriage vows,” Amras snapped. “Thennes may have died in the Bragollach, but if we get out of this blasted Oath and reunite in Aman I’ll be doing it on a clean conscience!”

“Tyelko?” Maglor demanded.

“Hell if I know,” Celegorm growled. “I’m not the type to get tied down—”

“Valar damn it, Tyelko, how many times have we told you—”

Rýndil watched, wide-eyed, as the Fëanorians fell apart into bickering about their various sexual exploits, bringing up long-buried grievances while Maedhros watched with a morbid amusement. Morbid, that was the right word for him; just looking at him unsettled them.

Throughout all this, Caranthir stayed silent in the shadows of his own home, his face growing more and more red. Rýndil looked at him, crossing their arms. They weren’t going to say anything—this was his fault.

“I think I’d know if they were my kid, though,” Celegorm argued. “Has Tyelpë been sleeping around?”

“How the fuck should I know?!” Curufin snarled. “Ever since you fucked up our perfectly good plan with the witch of Doriath I haven’t seen hide nor hair of my unfortunate whelp!”

“I fucked it up?” Celegorm shouted. “Really now?! You sending your boyfriend off to his death had nothing to do with that?”

“It was me,” Caranthir said quietly. The others didn’t seem to hear him at first, though Rýndil saw Maedhros’ eyebrows shoot upward at the confession. “I’m their father.”

Slowly, the Fëanorians fell silent, looking to their middlest brother in astonishment.

“Moryo!” Maglor groaned. “Of all of us, only Ambarussa were less likely!”

“And me, don’t kid yourselves,” Maedhros interrupted. “I had my money on one of the ‘Three Cs’ as I hear they’re calling you all in Dor-lómin. Though I doubt Dor-lómin will be around for much longer.”

“Don’t group me in with those idiots,” Caranthir said scornfully. “Yes, I fathered the brat.”

“I’m not a fucking brat,” Rýndil growled. “And I may be a bastard, but that’s to your shame, not mine, Father. My mother’s people treat me very well.”

“Who is the mother?” Amras asked. “I never pinned you for the romantic type, Moryo.”

“Haleth wasn’t, either,” Caranthir said glumly. “She...conquered me, I suppose. I didn’t even realize that she got a child out of the exchange until I met Rýndil several years later. And frankly, they’re so unimpressive, even for a peredhel, that I’d forgotten about them until—”

Rýndil sprang across the room and bitch-slapped Caranthir to the ground. “Fuck off,” they spat, hitting him where it hurt. “My mother was right to send you away when she did. You’re worthless, all of you Noldor princes, bringing only ruin to this land and blaming it on everyone but yourselves. Look at who brought Beleriand to ashes in this last battle—it wasn’t the Sindar, nor the Edain! It was you lot and your double-crossing friends! And maybe I’m an unanticipated, unimpressive peredhel, but everything I can claim is thanks to Haleth, not you. I may be a Fëanorian, but I’m worth seven of you.” They curled their lip. “And for the record, uncles, I think Celebrimbor had the right idea.”

They gave the stunned Caranthir one more knee to the groin and stormed out of the room. “Thanks for giving me a place to spend the night,” they called as they left, “and for letting me get that off my chest.”

“I like them,” Maedhros observed sardonically once Rýndil had rounded the corner. They hung by the doorway, catching their breath and trying to regain their composure. “They’re not afraid to tell you all the truth.”

“I’ll remind you who led this Union of peoples that failed so disastrously,” Caranthir hissed, “and if tonight has proved anything, it’s that Ambarussa have the right way of looking at things.”

Rýndil didn’t know if they would go that far, but they smiled grimly. So much for finding a place with their father’s people—but at least this venture hadn’t been uneventful.

A/N: So really this turned out to be more of a sequel to “Unanticipated” than part of C&C - my Halenthir characterization there is fairly antagonistic and playful, but after thinking about it I don’t think Caranthir is actually...ashamed of Ryndil, or particularly regretful of their existence, he just...doesn’t know what to do with/about them. So I’ll tone down his disdain for the actual fic, because I don’t think this is really representative of how he feels anymore.

A lot of my headcanons for the Feanorians and their relationships showed up here! I went into more detail about some of that in my longfic “ATATYA.” That fic, however, is not set in the same universe as this one; Ryndil is discussed in Moryo’s chapters of “ATATYA” but he didn’t actually know they existed until after his rebirth in that story, where he does know here.

There are references to Quilla and Ezelle; these are my OCs for Curufin and Maglor’s wives, respectively.

I mentioned Amras’ wife Thennes in this fic - she’s another character discussed in “ATATYA,” but her fate is different here than in that fic. Here, she dies in the Dagor Bragollach instead of absconding with Elured and Elurin after the Second Kinslaying. I have some headcanons about her relationship with the Ambarussa and how that plays out in both fics; one of these days I’ll get around to writing them.

Someone else I mentioned was Arasdil, a mortal lover of Maglor’s. That relationship was something I was workshopping around the time of writing “ATATYA,” but I ultimately ended up going with a different version of his life in my fic “Sins and Sorrows,” which is set in the same verse. I still think she existed, but they weren’t married like I originally envisioned. Basically, Arasdil was a woman of the house of Beor that Maglor rescued from an abusive marriage and had a relationship with. His comment about her children having “other fathers” is just that - he slept with her, but she never had his child. This is an affair that Maedhros knew about, but the rest of his brothers didn’t until this moment.

There’s a lot of swearing here that I’ll probably end up toning down, and I don’t think I’ll be as explicit with Amrod’s line about him being asexual, though that’ll still be there in spirit. And by the end, with Ryndil “bitch-slapping” their father and just Going Off at him and his brothers - I don’t think that would fly in actuality, but it was too fun to resist, tbh.

Also, the main thing this fic is missing is Ryndil’s dog!! They always have a dog with them - though perhaps Tallagar also died in the Nirnaeth.... :(

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this snippet, and if you haven’t checked out the actual fic, you should definitely do that!! :)

#silmarillion #caranthir #feanorians #halenthir #silm fic #oc ryndil #cause and consequence #unanticipated #oc thennes #oc arasdil #atatya #sins and sorrows #this is not FR verse tho #my fic #my writing #tefain nin #himrings

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