#may all your blorbos have the whumpiest time in celebration

[eilinelsghost]

Fight With Thine Own Hand

Happy happy birthday, @that-angry-noldo! You are such a lovely, talented, kind, and caring person and it's been a delight getting to know you over this past year.

I hope the horrors of a completed Orodreth-and-Finarfin-have-the-worst-day-ever bring you some suffering joy(?) on this, your day of birth. ❤️

Apologies in advance for *gestures at everything below*

The laugh rumbled through Finarfin’s bones. He was only half-conscious, the room reeling about him with sickening fluidity, the reek burning his nostrils and stabbing along his throat, raw from the screams of battle and the torment of his journey across Anfauglith. His legs had given out amid the endless descent and at the last he had been dragged by his hair across the threshold and kicked to lie gasping and helpless in the open space before Morgoth’s seat.

And the Foe laughed.

“Your courtesy is somewhat lessoned since the blinding days of Tirion.” Morgoth’s voice drifted over the prostrate form at his feet and Finarfin shuddered at its familiarity. “Your brothers came to me willingly and I find I take offense that your approach is so marked by coercion.”

Finarfin fought to catch his breath. The air was acrid and smoke stung his eyes. But there was Tree Light—Tree Light! Amid the choking dark and terror, the mingled silver and gold touched his gaze for the first time since all he loved had broken beyond repair. Ai, Malinalda… Ninquelótë… His eyes watered from the brilliance, wept as memory rose and drowned him in its familiar despair. Rebellion, repentance, reparation, reconciliation, and yet he too fell now at the feet of Darkness. Airë Manwë, were none of them to escape it?

“It is a poor finish to collect the coward last of all, but I am satisfied. Each whelp of that petty king now accounted for. Each son of his brought down by my hand. It will suffice.”

His eyes had begun to acclimate to the fractured vision of the nethermost hall, impenetrable darkness mingled with unquenchable light. It was like seeing through the glass windows in the palace upon Túna where each was constructed from shards of shaped glass, and the new sun stabbed in fractal light through its facets. Everything image here was pieced together in shards.

There were wolves about the throne, beneath its looming bulk. And with naught but his own hands he slew the wolf who came… No, press down the thought. Memory would only weaken. Despair is what widens the cracks, hope is that which binds them together. Think rather on Tirion. Think on gold and silver, on Ingoldo and Litsemir bending together over the parchment in the library, gold and silver mingled in the light, and gold and silver mingled in their hair. 

Hope. Hold to hope and he would hold himself whole.

Silver glimmered amid the shadow beside the throne. A familiar silver. It ran like the water of Alqualondë’s harbors, there in the far years when those were yet an image of joy and not desperation. When they danced in the twilit brush of Telperion and Laurelin reaching out through the Calacirya, and Eärwen murmured their son’s hair was lit with the very image of that silver…

Litsemir.

Finarfin’s cry was a hoarse gasp as he tried to push up from the stones.

“Down, dog.”

Some force outside himself had control of his arms and they wrenched out from under him, the air knocked from his lungs once again as his chest and face rammed against the floor. Litsemir, Litsemir, Litsemir…His son’s name pounded through his senses. He was a phantom, surely a phantom. They had told him of Orodreth’s end, those few Nargothromdrim he had met in the Falas; the dragon had come and the host’s blood was scattered across Tumhalad in wreck irreparable, and Orodreth was lost. 

Ai, holy Valar, they had said lost, they had not said slain. His eyes dragged upward once again till he saw the face, half-shrouded in gloom but unmistakable. The slight features, his mother’s silver hair, the sharp slant of his ears which had ever been more pronounced than his siblings. Litsemir…Artaresto… How beautiful he was, even here in the clinging dark; half his face in shadow and half lit by the echo of that long lost light. It danced off of him even as it had when he ran through the valley around Tirion, a shy and quiet child brimming over with laughter. The joy in that face was silenced now, etched in the light as though of stone, too pale and too still.

“Söa, the guest cannot stand.”

There was a pause. Then his son was walking toward him, descending the dais with silent steps, and nearing, nearing…

Finarfin reached out to him with all his thought and at once an unbearable weight crushed his senses. It was pressing forward through a bog, every movement a grim wrench through the will bearing down about him, but he was close, he could feel the ripples about his son’s mind like the shimmer of sea water, he could nearly reach him. And then he touched a wall of ice. His thought flinched back in shock and he shuddered as Orodreth’s hands closed about his wrists and pulled him up from the ground with unexpected strength. The guards who stood yet at his sides took hold of his forearms and his son reached up to retrieve the shackles hanging loose in the air above him without ever looking at his face. 

“Litsemir,” Finarfin whispered as the iron locked about his flesh, “Onya…How has he hurt thee, Artaresto?”

The second shackle was fastened about his other wrist and he felt a rising horror through his senses as Orodreth still made no sign of recognition. “Onya! Yéta nin!” 

There, at last. The slight twinge along the jaw muscle, the little quiver that ever heralded the first signs of the storm. He was alive, he was here yet within the marble visage.

“Artaresto–” he began again, then broke off with a gasp as the chains drew suddenly taught and he was hauled to his feet, arms stretched painfully above his head.

“You have heard the story of your brother’s ruin, I am certain.” The voice rumbled again through the cracked light. The ever-burning gems lit swaths of the chamber about the throne, but some deep, tangible darkness hovered yet about the visage and Finarfin could see naught beyond the sharp edges of his crown. “So you will know that a crushed fly nevertheless may prove an irritant. Your brother died with a debt unpaid, Finwion.”

The shackles were cutting into the edges of his hands, and his feet scrabbled against stone in an attempt to hold his weight, but he had been lifted just high enough that he could gain little traction and no more than a margin of relief. Which brother, he wondered frantically, his reason spinning the possible scenarios. What would the Foe count in liability? There was movement in the shadows about him and he felt the hair prickle at the back of his neck.

“Seven debts,” the voice continued, “if we are to draw the contract clearly.”

Nolofinwë. His apprehension turned to panic as Elwing’s voice sprang from his memory, quiet and clear, recounting the roll of the dead, calling out their deeds in effigy. And he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds, and seven times Morgoth gave a cry of anguish.

“Litsemir,” Finarfin breathed as his son lingered before him, and he saw the shudder run through his frame. “Onya, do you hear me?”

Once more the hall rumbled with mirthless laughter and a pitch of mockery ran through the words. “Tell him your name, laman,[1] so that he may address you rightly.”

Orodreth hesitated and the shiver rippled across his jaw once more.

“Your name!” The intonation was a snarl now and Finarfin saw his son flinch at the sound.

“I am called Söa Ustation.”[2] The ghost of his child’s voice passed over him, cold and flat, fractured as all the room about him. And in that moment the eyes shifted up at last, blue as the heedless gems his mother once cast along the shores with her laughter, piercing and bright as sea spray, deadened now and glassy.

For the first time Finarfin saw the white lines tracing across his face, a lace-pattern of scarring, and he felt hot fury rising through every vein. Holy Manwë, the number of them…And then he saw that the other too was bound in iron. A band wound around the neck before him and the name he had spoken was etched in repetition about its circumference. Filth, the son of Usurper. An empty chain loop rested below the chin, a mockery of where a gemstone might lie, and its laden potential drew a choked strain of profanity from Finarfin’s lips.

“Söa, call out the debt that he might know it in full.”

There was hardly a hesitation this time before his son’s voice began again in rote recitation. One by one he listed the tally of seven wounds, but Finarfin hardly heard them. His eyes were bound to the threaded scars along the cheekbones, encircling the lips, the brows…Varda, there was not an inch without.

“One blow dealt to the thigh of the left leg, severing the muscle. One blow to the wrist of the sword arm.“

“Onya…” Finarfin pressed hard against his son’s thought, pleading against every edge and crevice he could find. Thou art named Artaresto son of Arafinwë, long-sought and beloved. Thou art named Litsemir son of Eärwen, sea’s jewel and song. The ice shuddered against his touch.

“One blow to the right leg below the knee.”

A slight crack had opened and it was with an effort that Finarfin held back from pouring all his love through it to force the breaking dam. Instead, he rested against the fracture, a hand hovering upon a lintel, and held out the memory of twilight, of his own voice drifting through the air amid the sea-brine and rolling surf, of an infant curled within his arms. The hair upon the tiny head was fine as corn silk and shimmering in the mirrored starlight. Hairanna palan-tírienwa, he had sung, endórellon aldarembinë… [3]

It was brittle now, the barricade between them. A fluttering thing forged of fear.

“One blow piercing beneath the eighth rib.”

Fanoiolossë, lyé liruvan han ëar, si han ëaron!

With a quiver of panic, the resistance gave way and Finarfin’s breath caught in a choke. The expanse before him was as splintered as the gloom about them, a trammeled corridor, flinching and terrified. 

“One blow hewing the left foot and rendering it lame.”

The gloom reared up as Orodreth’s voice trailed off into silence. Finarfin saw in the corner of his eye that an Orc captain had moved to stand beside them while the litany was recited. He was tall, a match for Finarfin’s stature, and his face was shaped still with lines of beauty. 

“Dutifully have you learned your lessons, laman.” Morgoth’s voice fell nearly to a breath and Finarfin had to strain to hear the words. But he saw Orodreth tense before him as it continued. “Now show them forth.”

The captain stepped forward and held out a knife, long and cruel, and Orodreth’s hand shook as he took the hilt in hand. 

Another memory reached through the tenuous brush of thought and Finarfin’s blood ran cold as the fragmented snatches reached him. A dark-haired Elf, vaguely familiar—Gaelon, captain—bound even as Finarfin was now, the same whispered voice of command, the same drowning panic, a hot iron clattering from Orodreth’s hand and his son’s voice sobbing I cannot, I cannot. Then in a burning rush he was struck with nausea, with terror and horror and a relentless barrage of images—the same Elf again, his body variously contorted and mutilated, alive still and screaming—

The memory broke apart as Orodreth stepped forward, and at last he looked up of his own will to meet his father’s eyes. Refuse, said the Foe’s voice in memory, and I shall decide instead what he undergoes.

“One blow dealt to the thigh of the left leg, severing the muscle.” Morgoth’s voice rumbled in the darkness and the knife shook as it hovered in the space between them.

And at once Finarfin’s fear settled into defiance. This, at least, this he could give. He had left his child in the dark of Araman—he had left all of them pressing onward through the clinging mists, every infant he cradled renounced with his retreating steps—but here he would hold him through every step in the darkness.

“One blow dealt to the thigh,” Finarfin echoed, holding his son’s eye, and through the same path he pressed the song once more, the lullaby encircling each precious fragment within its embrace.

A Elentári Tintallë, his spirit sang as the first strike passed through his flesh.

The melody shuddered with pain and his right arm tensed against the coming blow, tyelpë pendas mírilya…

…menelo alcar elerrimbë! He ground his teeth nearly to breaking as he fought back the threatening scream. The third strike landed.

Hairanna palan-tírienwa, he sang. His blood began to pool upon the floor. 

“One blow piercing beneath the eighth rib.”

…endórellon aldarembinë, Litsemir was weeping. Hold him fast.

Fanoiolossë, lyé liruvan, he sang as his breath faltered,

…han ëar, si han ëaron! The blade hewed through the bones of his foot and he could no longer hold back a cry as he collapsed against the shackles. He dangled, helpless as the blood ran down his limbs. He was dizzy. He could not hold.

“Atta!” The knife clattered to the ground and his son’s arms were about him, clinging and desperate. The chains cut into the wounded wrists, but at no angle could Orodreth lift him without worsening some other wound. 

“Back, Söa. The debt remains.”

“I have done all your bidding!” Orodreth staggered back at once despite the protest, his breath heaving in ragged gasps.

“There is one thing yet lacking,” the voice murmured, “and then this score is settled.”

“Please…” Litsemir whispered, but the captain stepped forward and held out a second tool—four curved spikes, splayed out from a short handle—and he sobbed as he took it within his palm. 

Then through the haze, Finarfin saw the Foe lean forward; and through the haze he saw the face pass at last into the light, scarred with deep trenches along each side—the signet seal of Manwë’s messenger.

Finarfin wrapped his thought about his son’s once more, cradling him close as though they walked again along the twilit sea walls, with the tiny face tucked and slumbering against his neck. Then he lifted his head and laughed into the shadow, and once more in the dark he began to sing—aloud now, his voice rasping out the melody of defiance.

“Come forth, O monstrous craven lord, And fight with thine own hand and sword. I wait thee here. Come! Show thy face!” [4]

Then the strike fell and he knew no more.

1. Laman: [Quenya] tame beast 2. Söa: [Quenya] filth; Ustation: [Quenya] misappropriate, supplant, usurp (the son of) 3. A Hymn to Elbereth, in the Tongue of Valinor 4. The Lay of Leithian, Canto XII, Fingolfin and Morgoth

All credit to @that-angry-noldo and @actual-bill-potts for spawning this au that somehow contains both Orodreth and Finarfin in Angband.

RIP, boys, you're their favorites and consequently they've sent you to literal hell.