Black Velvet Band

FULL UNSORTED AND UNEDITED TEXT

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((Prologue))

Amarie heard the lovely chiming bell; the bell that her Ingoldo had put above the door so that he wasn’t startled by knocking. Some still did knock, and first, but she made a point of explaining to anyone (who didn’t have the patience to read the sign) about the bell.

She called out, “A moment!” and grabbed her hair-pin to tie her hair onto the crown of her head. She had gotten to used to wearing her hair down in her own house, but with a quick twist and pin she was acceptable. She put a cover on her wet paints and put her brushes in the glass of water, and then bustled to the door.

Odd to not have the children underfoot! The girls and their father had been visiting their grandfather in the palace for a few days now and she was almost used to being at home alone. A glance at the angle of the sun informed her that, perhaps, she had gotten used to it–she had been at her work for many hours and hadn’t realized it.

Perhaps it was them! Ingoldo had thought they’d return perhaps today, perhaps tomorrow. But no; as she approached the door she heard nothing behind it, and her girls would be laughing and chattering if they were all awaiting behind. She turned the doorknob–lovely thing, all of crystal shot with gold, another little thing Ingoldo had installed, and fearlessly pulled it open.

“Welcome–” she began, but only got that far.

A tall Noldo stood above her, a few steps back from the door. His braided black hair was pulled tightly from his face and pinned back with golden pins, an overly practical style only worn by exiles. A golden circlet, thin, princely, rested on his pale forehead. He had princely clothes, also, and they were red, and on his face was an arched-brow expression of scrutiny, the wide-eyed wariness of a man who might be predator or might be prey today.

When he saw her, his eyebrows rose higher. “Greetings, Amarie, daughter of A., wife–”

Amarie screamed and slammed the door shut.

Again, there was no noise behind the door. Her heart hammered. She locked it. She screamed again, for her own benefit, more quietly, and then rushed into the living room where she had just delicately sat down her paints on her little table. She grabbed a chair, dropped it, grabbed a sturdier chair, and rushed back to the door.

Right under the doorknob, Ingoldo had told her, and she had laughed about his paranoia. If you have to keep someone out, put chairs right under the doorknobs, then, if you can, heavier furniture to bolster the chair. As heavy as you can carry. Then, for the windows, with the new locks I’ve put in, you can just set something heavy on the sill; and put the screens in front of them, so they can’t simply break through the glass and get in; confound them if you can’t stop them…

Amarie was layering Ingoldo’s collection of rocks with funny shapes on a windowsill above the sink in the kitchen when Curufinwe Atarince appeared on the other side of it, a scraggly and black tree branch blacking the sunlight. Startled, she screamed again.

He raises his voice loud enough that she can hear him through the thick glass (Ingoldo had had thicker glass put in all the windows as well). “I hardly think this is warranted. I just wanted to see my cousin.”

Amarie, somewhat surprising herself, responded with “Viper! Blood-drinker!” and yanked the curtains shut over the kitchen window. She stacked more stones upon the lace-trimmed edges of the curtain to hold it shut, and then ran to cover the rest of the windows.

She went around the rest of the house doing the same; she only thought she heard him once more, walking around the side of the house. She stood still in the room, listening, and then, with tears prickling at the corner of her eyes, she screamed, “Carrion-crow, eater of men, widow-maker!!”

Once all the house was boarded, she sat in a central room to listen, and stayed there all the silver hours of the night. She repeated her husband’s instructions to her, about how to keep someone out of the house, what to do and where to go if they got in. She had never thought she would actually need those instructions, but she had also never thought that Namo would release the sons of Feanor from the halls of Mandos! But here they were! She had been told it had happened, but she had not thought to see one!

When the night was through and she felt she had her sense back about her, she cleaned her face and changed her garb and brewed herself a pot of hot, strong tea. She dressed in a day-dress, put paint on her face, put on her jewelry, went to the door to unlock it, and then went to her bed and fell asleep.

–

((1: A Little House and a Happy Family))

Holding his wife as she delicately, willfully mastered herself, having come to the end of her tale of what had happened the night before, Finrod asked himself once more if he really deserved this.

He was not unstained by blood, nor was his soul free of wrongdoing. He had confessed to many of them to Amarie; he had had to. That said, it had been quite a bit of confessing and repentance, and one does get tired of it after a few millennia.

Of course, there were a few he had sinned against, and with, and had been sinned against which he had had no chance to reconcile with, and he was, at this moment, struggling to find the desire to reconcile with. He had just been in the palace for five days arguing about it, announced after the fact, the insane decision to just… return every single son of Feanor at once.

There were returned that took longer than a week even to fully wake up. How the fuck had Curvo arrived at his house in five days?

He assured Amarie that she had done everything right; he congratulated her on her expert barricading. (It had taken an hour to get into the house while she slept in the bedroom, covered by a heavy quilt, exhausted. The girls had loved the break-in, saying it was ‘just like your stories, Atar,’ which kind of hurt.) In fact, he gave her tips for next time until she finally laughed about one particularly ridiculous. (“The chimney, Ingo? Surely, even Curufinwe… hm.”)

“I had never felt so panicked before!” She admitted. “I’ve been so afraid, but I never was startled into fear so fast!”

“It’s a different kind of fear to be afraid in one’s house,” Finrod said, and knew from the tone of his own voice that he had to change the subject now.

–

A single day passed, and then there was Curufinwe Atarince, son of Feanor, in gold and red silk, with stars on his brow; there a foot away, on the other side of a doorframe, was the man of the house, Finderato Ingoldo, son of King Arafinwe, in cotton and canvas, with oil staining his clothes.

“I was once promised,” Curufin whispered, as low as his delicate tenor could go, one arm over his chest, the other curled near his face, “That I was always welcome in the home of Finrod Felagund.”

Finrod took a breath, and he said, “How deeply do those old promises hold, Curufinwe?”

Curufin rightly recognized the allusion to his own oaths–his own Oath, specifically. Instead of answering, he said, “Do yours? If you say they don’t, I shall simply leave. Or, if they do, I suppose I must stay; but that is your choice either way. I hear this is what we do, now. Leave ourselves in the hands of those we’ve wronged. I find the concept intriguing, in its own way.”

Finrod closed his eyes, felt his two feet on the ground, felt how his fingers half-clenched over his palms.

After thousands of years. This was too much. This was too much.

“Do they hold?” Curvo asked again.

Finrod let out his breath and met Curvo’s dark, dark eyes. “At the moment, it’s irrelevant;” he began, “You are not in the house of Finrod Felagund, you are at the threshold of the house of Amarie, which is rather another thing.”

Curvo looked up to the lintel, directly at where Finrod’s emblem gleamed in the sunlight. “I see!” he menaced. “Then, does Finrod Felagund hold a house in this land?”

Finrod stood, uncertain. Then, there was a tapping behind him, and a sweeping. His second-oldest, one of her birds on her wrist, dimples in her cheeks, rounded the corner behind him, humming. She said, “Atya, who is at? –oh,” she said, her sentence ended as abruptly as if it had been strangled.

Her golden eyes were fixed wide on the man in the door, so tall he practically stood over it. Curvo, for his part, stared back, his gaze starting sharp and slowly, slowly widening.

Finrod heard him breathe out his nose, quick and shuddering, halfway to a laugh.

“Starling,” Finrod called her, softening his voice. “It’s simply a cousin of mine calling. Not to worry–”

“Curufinwe Atarince,” Curvo said promptly, and it took all of Finrod’s practice as being a father to not show his annoyance on his face. “The fifth son of Feanor. Well met.”

“Hm,” said Portia.

“My second daughter,” Finrod said politely, “Portia.”

“Portia,” said Curvo.

Portia turned on her heel and rushed into the house. “Amme!!” she called.

Finrod saw Curvo tap a single, gold-painted nail on his cheek. “Perhaps you should go,” he said, with a bit of a smile.

He should have wiped the smile off his face, because he saw Curvo notice and mark it. “I have asked a few questions, but I insist on the answer to only one,” he said.

“And that is?”

“Do you have a house, then, that I can call on you?”

No, Finrod thought, and he could have said it. He easily could have said it, but instead he said, “I keep still my house in my father’s estate, though I am only there so often; usually you will meet with my followers, and Amarie is never there.”

Damn it, he thought after hearing himself, damn it, damn it, damn it. Curvo hummed and, obediently, he left, turning sharp on a heel, pulling his tightly-bound hair over his shoulder as he went with a single guiding finger. “Farewell…” he said, and trailed off without saying a name.

Leaving it up to him! Finrod pretended he had not begun calling him ‘Curvo’ in his head already. “Finrod,” he prompted.

“Finrod!” said Curvo, and left.

Finrod did not watch his retreat. (His exit. His departure. He could not let himself think of it in terms of a battle, he already knew that invited dark thoughts in him.) He stood looking the other way, into the house.

After a minute, Amarie rushed over, followed by two of their daughters, and the third was only absent because she had gone back to her husband’s home after visiting her grandparents. “Ingo!” Amarie called.

He smiled. It was no forced smile; even though she was panicked, seeing her brightened him, like he had just been woken gently from an ominous dream. “He’s gone,” he promised.

“Him again!” Amarie complained, reaching past him to close the door. “Has he no family of his own to catch up with? Has he talked through everything there is to say with his son already?”

Finrod laughed a quick, surprised laugh. “I imagine rather that Tyelpe has had to ask for space already! All of you, don’t be afraid,” he enjoined. “He won’t be back here; besides there is nothing to be afraid of.”

Amarie looked at him with obvious doubt. The story had been sanitized for their daughters, born in the realm of bliss and knowing nothing else, but Amarie knew quite a bit more.

“Do not be afraid,” Finrod repeated, a command and a promise.

“I am glad he won’t be back here,” Amarie said, with some suspicion in her voice.

Their daughters raised their eyebrows identically; like fish, they smelled blood in the water.

“I think I need to talk to you,” Finrod guessed.

“Outside,” Amarie demanded.

The girls groaned, sighed, and sunk away, denied their gossip for now.

–

“No, Ingo,” she complained, “No, no, no, no, no.”

Amarie covered her face with a sunflower and stood petulantly within it for a moment. The lovely afternoon sun lay in dappled patched on her gardening-apron; her arms laid at her side, still clutching clippers and a basket.

Finrod laid a comforting hand on her back, but she remained in her sunflower. “Come now, my dove. A fine attempt, but you can’t be more disappointed in me than I am.”

“You just had to tell him to get him gone just once,” she complained.

“Well, I did… and then I told him where to find me,” Finrod repeated.

“Ingo,” Amarie sighed in response, as she might sigh at a particularly mercurial cat who had knocked over a glass again. She rolled her head so that she might look at him from behind the sunflower’s golden petals with one unamused golden eye. “Why would you do that?”

He hummed, a little nervously. “Perhaps I was thinking of the health of my dear nephew Tyelperinquar, to whom I don’t want to cause any strife.”

“Aren’t you cute,” Amarie complained. “Try again.”

“Hm. Maybe I’m wary of Curufin’s ability to cause trouble, and want to read the situation more closely before I ably refuse him.”

“Try again.”

“Perhaps I’m interested in tearing him apart with my nails and my teeth.”

“Oh, not on your father’s estate, you won’t.”

“More happily than I would at my own house!”

“Stop,” she complained, looking up at the sky.

“We did each other wrong,” Finrod said, dropping his voice. “I know. I know that your estimation of the situation was that it was all his fault and none of my own. But I know that I did wrong to him even if he did return it tenfold.”

“Oh, Ingo.”

“It is on my conscience,” he admitted, “Even if you think it should not be. I am not orating now, I’m not spinning a story. I told him where to meet with me for no one but myself. What I did to my family, what we did to each other, rests on me. I want absolution. It is selfish.”

Amarie stepped back. The glimmer in her eyes said, that’s it, the truth. “I still can’t agree. I don’t want you to have anything to do with him.”

“That is why I showed him firmly away from the house. I certainly don’t want you to have anything to do with him.”

“It wasn’t me he hurt. It was you.”

“And it was him that I hurt.”

“He killed you! Oh, and after I showed him off so well.”

Finrod smiled softly. “Had the wives of the Noldor marched and the men stayed behind,” he said, “You would have promptly and politely shown Morgoth the doors of night and marched back for dinner.”

“And you would have still somehow ended up on your asses here with nothing to bother you,” she grumbled. “No, Ingo, you have to, and not just because you have to keep your word now.”

“Is that so?” he said.

“Because I believe he will seek you out no matter what, despite your honestly shocking claims that you think him a man of his word–in the sense that he has a tendency to swear hot-blooded oaths he must then fulfill, I suppose–and if he is going to seek you out it’s best you allow it on a formal level, and set up the time and the place, and have it out in your father’s house and with everyone knowing what’s happening and why. The last thing I want is for him to weasel you into having it done in a private place where he can then make up whatever he wants about it.”

“Amarie,” he said.

“And if I give you my permission to do it, that means I know about it, and that means I can put stipulations upon it,” she said, and brought her shears to bear so she could resume her work on the blackberries.

“I see!”

“If you do meet with him, Ingo, and heaven knows that you will, sooner or later,” she said, “You must tell everything that transpires, and omit nothing; this is a decree of mine, and I will have you swear to it.”

Ingo smiled. “I swear,” he said, “everything that transpires, and omitting nothing. Though, I can gloss long conversations, can’t I?”

“You intend to have a long conversation?? Earendil, preserve us!” she cried. “Yes, you can gloss for length, though I don’t want to hear it’s because you let him go on. Rather, ‘Then, Amarie, I let him have it for ten minutes or so’ would be perfectly acceptable.”

“Ten minutes or so! Would you help me with ten minutes worth of names to call him?”

“Oh!” Amarie said, clapping her hands together. “Honorless blackguard! Carrion-eater! Thief and liar! Slayer of men and children! You, who disgraced the name of the Noldor and all Eldar who dwell in Aman! You who were dispossessed and took your titles unfairly!”

“Ah, wait,” said Finrod, patting his pockets as he searched for a pen.

“And once you’ve really got him, look him dead on and say ‘you’re just like your father,’” Amarie instructed, bringing her shears to bear before her so she could snip an unruly stem from the blackberries, “and then, you leave.”

–

Then Finrod did not see him for three months.

Every time he returned to his father’s palace for business (he went there, oh, a few times a month, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes not at all) he braced himself for news and there was none. None about Curvo; news about Maglor and Caranthir both being gutsy about reentering society, only rumors about the others. Finrod ran into both Caranthir and Maedhros before he saw or even heard of Curvo again, and wasn’t that awkward.

“Oh,” he had said, prince Maedhros, the one they called Maedhros the monster, Finrod’s once-cousin, where he stood overlooking a particularly nice view of the mountains which Finrod frequented whenever he felt like being alone, “My.”

Finrod found himself uncommonly lost for words. Maedhros wore unmarked black garb and absolutely no adornment. His once-scarred face was now clean and had no expression to speak of. He was still missing a right hand (!) and his left hand was burnt black.

Finrod was usually a subtle man, but he could not keep himself from staring at that. 

((which is why you have to write the bit where curvo cries about none of his brothers wanting him so finrod drags him to nerdanel to wait for m. and once he shows up, finrod is bold to grasp his hand and hold it))

Burnt black.

“As per usual, my apologies,” Maedhros had said, and left. Once, in Beleriand, his voice had been a clattering growl, squeezed through a throat that had been badly abused; now he whispered, thin and high, as if trying to replicate what he had once been forced to do.

The point being that Finrod had dealt with that and still hadn’t seen Curvo, after three months, when his initial persistence in dogging Finrod’s house until he got an answer implied to Finrod that he had intended to call on him soon.

This is a mind game, Finrod thought, standing on the veranda outside the family area of father’s palace, holding a glass of wine, looking at the burnt red sunset as it spread across the soft white sky, trying as hard as he could to focus on what Amme and aunt Anaire were saying, but even as the gentlest teasing evening breeze once could wish for did its damndest to soothe his brow he kept thinking this is some kind of mind game. I know him. I wouldn’t think anything of it if it were anyone else but I know he’s playing some kind of game with me.

The best way to lose–no, no, the thing he had to do was to not get too into it. (don’t think about like like a game, don’t think about it like a battle, do not think about it like a test.) He had to keep himself from getting entangled in it. He made himself recognize that he felt excited by the prospect of it all and told himself that that was the enemy. He could not afford to give in to–

Oh, damn it, Finrod, he sighed in his head.

–

He nearly screamed when he came back after a week to be told he had missed him. Curvo had come up to his estate, been invited in, been told Prince Finderato wasn’t in, and he had left a calling card, a piece of fine stationery outlined with a thick border of red, upon which Curvo had only written an address and signed his name (and title).

Finrod stared at it. He’s trying to get you into his territory, he thought, he wants to fight on his–no, no, no, Finrod, this is like talking to a child; he scolded himself. All that happened is that he tried to visit you, in the exact place he was permitted to go, missed you, and left a calling card instead. Politely. All of this is completely normal, and in fact shows strict adherence to local social norms that he hasn’t used in a long time. You are working yourself pointlessly and viewing everything through an adversarial lens when you insist on thinking of it in terms of ‘territory’ and ‘fighting’ and

Does this thing say Formenos in the city line, he screamed inside when he finally registered exactly what address he was being invited to. 

–

((2: Formenos))

Finrod demounted his horse and gave away her bridle with the same reluctance with which he always arrived at Formenos, in the very rare occasions he found himself doing so. The high-walled fortress had been abandoned for a short while after their departure, he had learned, but had not remained that way; as followed of Feanor returned, as they had children or recruited restless youths, the tightly walled city had slowly repopulated itself, growing a second and third ring of equally high, equally thick, equally red-bannered walls. In all of the many yen of his reincarnation, he had only been there a handful of times, primarily on occasions when he and other descendants of Finarfin were purposefully going to engagements there to show that they did not mind being there (they did). 

He wasn’t sure how it had not occurred to him that the unprecedented return of every single son of Feanor (but not Feanor) would be big news for Formenos. He had been trying to avoid thinking about it. It was undeniable, now, that the scarlet fortress was in prime shape, festooned with newly-stitched flags and banners, ringing loud, billowing with smoke from forges and hearthfires.

He amassed an escort immediately, as tended to happen when he actually announced who he was when arriving somewhere. A half-dozen people he sincerely did not recognize guided him through the curving streets, past halls ringing with song and houses with children running around on the mosaic-stone courtyards. Finrod busied himself with learning the names and business of his guides and ignored the twisting in his stomach.

They brought him to the old fort itself, and he was surprised to see it rounded by a ring of growing trees, planted into laboriously transported soil. Despite the high walls and their snapping red banners he felt like he was in an almost normal place once he could hear the songs of birds and the laughers of courtiers. He was led inside, through the iron gates, and brought into a surprisingly comfortable sitting room, despite literally (literally) everything being red, with the occasional gold accent permitted.

Finrod made a mental note to check to see if there was some dearth of red objects in the rest of Aman, or if a rash of red thefts had been reported over the past few years while he wasn’t paying attention.

He was given wine, a plate of cheese, and indoor shoes, and felt a little on edge about it all. He was only waiting, sipping the wine, telling himself he was not being given as last meal, or being played with, or being watch through some unseen hole in the wall meant for spying–oh, who was he kidding, Feanor had designed the fortress, the spyholes were real–for a few minutes before he was greeted, to his surprise, by doors on two opposite sides of the room opened at the same exact moment.

Through one came Amrod, through the other came Amras, and damn him but he did not know which was which.

He had expected to know which was which. One had only breathed the air of corrupting Beleriand for about six hours, and the other had gone gleefully through five hundred years of sieges, sorties, and kinslayings before having his throat cut in the ruin of Sirion. But Namo had done good work and the rest, it seemed, had been covered up; he did not know which was which, and both were dark-eyed, not giving away what lay within. Perhaps red would have clashed with their hair too badly; they wore gray and black, and circlets of copper, and beads of copper in their identically braided hair.

Finrod stood. They both smiled. “How wonderful to see you, cousin!” one said, his low voice more mature than Finrod had apparently expected. The other said, “We hadn’t seen hide or hair of you since the start of the siege!” said the other, and his voice was the same.

No, one of you definitely hasn’t seen me since you lived here, Finrod thought, rather put off by the fact that they were apparently pretending they were both Amras. That was… horrifying, actually.

“Heard you’ve been up and about and corporeal for a while! You look it,” said the first once.

That was nonsensical enough that Finrod had an immediate response. “Too corporeal, according to some! The reproduction strikes some as indecent.”

“I bet it does!” said one.

“Is that even allowed?” asked the other, looking south-wards, as if for Valmar.

“Amarie agreed, so yes,” Finrod maintained.

“Good work there! Most of our attempts at reconnection have involved less ‘kissing’ and more ‘active attacks aimed at my faces,’” Ambarussa said as if there was really nothing weird about this whole situation or conversation.

They were circling the room, somewhat. It didn’t even look purposefully; something got the notice of one, a cup on the counter, a bird out the window, and when he crossed the room one way, the other mirrored the other way, and Finrod was just forced to stand in the middle and direct his dialogue to whoever was closest. “Though not here,” he noted.

“Oh, stars, this place,” one of them sighed, though he was smiling. “It’s been. Flattering?”

“Surreal?”

“Like a nightmare?”

“A relief?”

“Uncanny.”

“I feel as though I am in a trap and both the reward and bait are happiness. Does it stop feeling like that, cousin?”

“I do not believe I know the feeling,” Finrod said.

“You’re being weird, Ambarussa,” said Ambarussa.

“You really did start the conversation like this. Haven’t even seen him for ages and you start the conversation with your unsettled nerves and persistent ennui.”

“Amarie is well, yes, three daughters, all grown, one married, no, I don’t know what we’re going to do about the Kingship situation in the long run but it’s still my father for now, pretty much mentally normal though I’ne gently training everyone into accepting bursts of pique and occasional disappearances which I account to my ‘need to be underground’,” Finrod helpfully summarized.

“Oh! Great! Been dead for a while,” Ambarussa said in response.

“Dead for a while,” the other echoed. “Endless darkness. Wasn’t pleasant.”

“Kind of hard to describe.”

“Ever been struggling to get out of a dream and not sure if you’re awake yet or still asleep and if you’re real or not or yourself or not, but for seven thousand years?”

“I don’t recommend it.”

“I don’t recommend the Halls of Mandos either,” Finrod admitted, “though I was aware of my identity and personhood, which sounds like slightly better accommodations than what you had.”

“That’s what we’ve been hearing! Uncomfortable, occasionally punishing, but not constantly and consistently nightmarish.”

“A ten-thousand-layer nightmare cake.”

“You got out early on good behavior! Fantastic work, Finrod. What good behavior was that?”

“Shameless groveling,” Finrod said confidently. He kept his eyes on whoever was in front of him, and his ears on whoever was behind him as they circled. Their rapid patter fell around him like rain.

One of them smacked himself on the forehead. “Of course!”

“Knew we should have tried it.”

“That ‘pride’ shit. Never actually worked out for us well.”

“Sounded good, never worked.”

“My condolences, gentlemen,” Finrod said. “For the second time around, my advice is more gardening, much less murder. Really as little murder as you can manage.”

“Mm. Not to worry, we’re going back.”

“Back?”

“To Beleriand. Once we can.”

“‘Middle-Earth,’” the other corrected.

“Ah ha, yes, under the waves, no doing, just the East now. Well, once we’ve figured out how, we’ll be headed back and no bother to anyone here.”

“Huh,” Finrod said, honestly flummoxed. “I feel like… that resembles what you did the first time a little closely, and you might want to consider what elements you want to change when it comes to your second life plan?”

“Sure. Right. We were initially going to walk the Helcaraxe ourselves, because it felt right, but…” that Ambarussa, standing about in front of Finrod, slowly turned to the one about behind him. “... ‘The world is round now except not Aman and they are connected but not physically and there is nothing but aether between them except you can sail it with a boat, like, a boat made for the ocean, specifically if you are Cirdan or Earendil?’”

“Nice of them to name names,” the other said.

“...You gentlemen keep us updated,” Finrod said, feeling strongly that they should be told to not throw away their lives again and completely certain that he was not the person to tell them that.

“There is no way you came all to Formenos to listen to us,” the one behind him commented.

“It was not my initial intention, but I now intend to do it for the next several hours,” Finrod said honestly. He had not expected a single thing that had happened thus far and he was slowly recalling his taste for that.

“Ambarussa, he thinks we’re funny.”

“We are, Ambarussa. We’re hilarious. Prince Finderato, what did you come here for?”

Finrod set his face. He was acutely aware he was fucking in for it once they heard it from him. “Who,” he said.

“Who?” one echoed.

“Who indeed?” asked the other.

Finrod took in one breath, and let it out slowly, enjoying not having yet admitted what he came here for. “Curufinwe Atarince,” he said.

“Oh!” said one.

“Oh,” said the other. 

“He came to call on me and left a card,” Finrod continued, hoping to keep the conversation in his hand for now. “He left this as his forwarding address.”

“He did, did he?” asked the one who was now crossing to Finrod’s left side, intrigued.

He didn’t tell anyone he had come for me. He tried to hide it. Finrod took another steadying breath. 

“He isn’t here, though,” the other commented.

Finrod quashed both a sense of triumph and a sense of frustration. “Where is he?”

Inexplicably, both of the twins looked at each other, and then simultaneously said “Roll call!”

With a sudden brightness, one said, “No one knows where Maedhros is! Ever! Sightings are reported regularly and he does come here occasionally, but an exact pattern of movement has not been established. We assume he is planning something and we are afraid.”

The next, “Right now, Maglor is with mother! We have to keep it to just a few of us at a time so that we don’t overwhelm her. The situation is kind of precarious with her, as you may have noticed that the situation is precarious fucking everywhere!”

“Celegorm up and left for the forest immediately upon returning! He has not been sighted since and we are just hoping Orome tells someone after he pulverizes him.”

“Curufin was here just yesterday, but he left in the morning for an intriguing visit to, of all places, the Sindar settlement. I have no idea what the fuck that means.”

“Caranthir is legitimately just reintegrating into society in Tirion, and we do not know where he gets the nerve.”

“And we’re here!” they finished together.

“Usually. And sometimes any of the rest of them are here, as I think this is the closest thing any of us has to a permanent address. And, again, we visit mother sometimes.”

“Everyone wants to be visiting mother, but again.”

“Hm,” one said, and then they trailed off.

Finrod stood through the silence, and thought to himself, this is not what I would call healed.

But they had not been in the halls of healing. They had been in the ‘ten-thousand-layer nightmare cake.’

He cleared his throat, and asked a question he wasn’t sure he should ask. “Celegorm went off without Curufin, then?”

“Oh!”

“Oh,” the other repeated.

“Hm.”

“Yes…”

“Well.”

“Well!”

“So, essentially, after we all found each other alive again, and the initial… emotions were out of the way,” one said, with a waver in his voice, “Well, the two of them. Basically, Curufin said there would be nothing between them and Celegorm agreed. And they turned their backs on each other, and Celegorm left.”

“Didn’t love that,” the other said, flat.

Finrod processed his information. “Before even coming back? Without even seeing anyone? His mother?”

“Nope. Just like that.”

“Weird guy,” the other concurred. “Might be for the best? I hear the consensus is he’s a…” He looked at Ambarussa, eyebrows raised.

“‘Dangerous maniac?’”

“That’s the guy.”

Finrod contemplated whether or not he agreed with that. Even at the time of his death, he wouldn’t have. But there was a certain thing or two which had happened after his death which tipped the scale for many and set it quivering for him.

He also knew that Curvo had been there. For all of those things. How did it go? That he was so angry at having lost to the bitch who rejected his brother and her filthy human consort that he tried to shoot her in the back as she left?

“Anyway, should we tell him you called?” one asked him, lighting his dark eyes on him to search his face.

Finrod swallowed a sip of wine. “If you would–in fact, I believe I’ll leave him a card.”

–

((3: Some Heirs of Fingolfin))

Curvo called on him again, and he missed it. And in turn Finrod went once more to Formenos, and met Maglor, which was even less comfortable than meeting Ambarussa, and when Finrod had a moment to take a good look at his hands he saw that they were tightly-fitting gloves, covering, he was sure, the same mark that Maedhros had. Maglor also had no news about Celegorm and told him he ‘hadn’t a clue where Curvo went off to,’ so Finrod found himself circling the streets of Formenos, and thinking quite uncomfortably on the subject of circling.

((would like to change him seeing Maglor here if I can, so the later scene has more effect.))

The time drew close for him to go on a trip with Turgon, which they did periodically. Amarie always made a production of his leaving; ‘Remember me, my love, when the time comes that you look into your best man’s bottomless black eyes… Think of me before you take his hand, and together create likely the finest Kingdom ever to’ so on, so forth.

He was certain she knew he loved her more than his best friend, and fairly certain she believed him when he insisted there was nothing like that between him and Turgon (there wasn’t).

After he had kissed his wife and his daughters, after he had ridden away, after he had arrived in Tirion at the house of his uncle Fingolfin, where Turgon had arranged for him to rest a night before they set out, Finrod found himself to his surprise in a house full of every Nolofinwean he could think of, barring only Lomion (and good luck to him, the bastard), gathered for no particular reason they would state. They simply folded him in with a glass and a seat at the table, as he was no rare sight among them.

His uncle and aunt sat looking proper and tired; they inquired of his parents and his daughters. Aredhel and Turgon sat together tipsy and laughing, and Itarille and Tuor nearby, Itarille visibly waiting for the music to pick up so she could turn the whole dinner into a dance, Tuor looking slightly more drunk than his relations and like to happily pass out. Earendil and Elwing drifted back and forth from dining room to kitchen, Argon popped into every conversation and derailed it at regular intervals.

Fingon was sitting still, smiling, listening, hand on a glass of untouched wine, before he left.

Finrod marked his exit, but didn’t think much of it at first. Not until he heard Aredhel sigh to Turgon, “Damn it, he walked off again.”

Turgon made a noise. “I can’t go bother him again,” he complained to his sister, “He’s already heard it from me a dozen times. He knows what I’m going to say.”

Ah, Finrod thought, his eyes on the place where Fingon had just tried to stealthily exist. That was the ‘no reason’ everyone was gathered for. Keeping an eye on Fingon.

Wasn’t that sweet?

Finrod stood up and, as he pushed his chair in, assessed how drunk he was. A little, not too bad. “I’ll go talk some sense into him,” he decided. “He won’t be expecting that.”

“Oh, Ingo,” sighed Aredhel, “No one does.”

“Careful,” Turgon said, and he didn’t have to say anymore. Finrod clasped his shoulder as he walked by, and then stalked off to hunt a prince.

That again, he reminded himself, passing through a curtain of shining crystalline beads and into an outer hall, lined with windows to the outside and doors to overlooking balconies. You are not hunting anyone. You can’t keep letting this Beleriandish thinking sneak in. Yet, in that moonlight night, with the sounds of the party hushed behind him and looking for a man in the dark, to whisper and grumble about the troubles of the fractional Noldorin princes, it felt so much like it. He put a hand on his hip once he spied Fingon a little ways down the hall, and then made sure to remove it before he approached.

“I’m too interested in talking to you,” Finrod announced himself.

Fingon only stirred in his eyes, which snapped to him and back again.

Fingon had the strangest eyes. They did glow, but not with tree-light, and not as much as the eyes of elves that had never fallen. But they had been that way for some time. 

Fingon said, “I have never known you as anything but too interested! Atypically curious, with a fascination for things that the greatest of minds couldn’t imagine even an interest in. This ties into your reputation as a notorious pervert.”

“Notorious! That’s not true,” Finrod gasped, a step away from Fingon, having nearly approached the rail of the balcony. “And you’re one to talk! Who says that?”

“Finrod! You published a treatise on the physiology of humans and half-humans, and your notes on hair growth patterns alone nearly had you suspended from every academic publication there is. Be glad Earendil can look you in the eye.”

“I never even asked him. Or Elwing, she just showed me.”

“Hound.”

“I didn’t even ask!” Finrod insisted. He stepped forward so that he could lean next to Fingon. “All this from the infamous maiden King.”

“Chaste,” Fingon agreed, with a bit of a smug smile. “Pure-hearted, valiant.”

“‘Maiden King’ was absolutely a joke. There was no one who could even enter your living quarters without knowing your predilections.”

“I had one commissioned of you too,” said Fingon smugly. “King Felagund and the Werewolf. It showed you from the back, with your arms spread, rending the beast in twain; the center of the painting was your bare ass, and though it was partially covered by the painters’ masterful use of dramatic lighting, one could just barely see between your thighs.”

Finrod called him something very rude indeed, which made Fingon laugh. “And where is my copy of that painting?” he asked, offended. “Where is a copy for Amarie?”

“Somewhere under the ocean, between the one of Glorfindel looking with slack-jawed rapture at his King while delicately fondling his own pectorals and that one particularly distressing picture of Uncle Feanor looking a bit less than pained by being wrapped in the whip of the Balrog.”

“Oh no, no.”

“The one I paid my weight in gold for, and it was worth it every time one of those little bastards shuddered at the sigh of it. Wrapped twice around his chest and once around his thigh, and each of the scores is burning his clothing off. Disgusting piece of artwork. I miss it so.”

Once upon a time, Fingon’s collection of suspiciously erotic artwork featuring his own family had been legendary. Finrod had only seen the very beginnings of the collection but had heard incredible tales of the rest. It was the most inventive and the most expensive method of torture he had ever heard of, and he still felt cold down to his fingertips every time he remembered that that shit was real. “I hope you had more than just one werewolf picture of me.”

“Oh, rest assured, there were people who read between the lines in the stories of the ‘man-friend.’ And the ones that were man-made could be blatant.”

“Well, thank Osse,” said Finrod, as Fingon snorted.

He paused to drink; Finrod watched him lift the glass to his lips, tilt it back, and swallow several times. He hung his head forward, over the railing.

“Over a dozen people here to keep an eye on me, and now they have you in on it!” he said to the darkness outside.

Finrod raised his eyebrows. “You have not seen him,” he noted.

Fingon didn’t react.

“If you had, you would not be so uncertain. You’d be miserable, or murderous, or perhaps happy, but not uncertain like this.”

Fingon’s strange, gray-lit eyes glimmered in the darkness; for a moment he looked out with such intensity, it was like he was parting the night with the blade of his vision, searching for the shadowed one that hid from him. “And you did?”

“Briefly. Accidentally. He took his leave quickly.”

“And how did he look, then?”

“How? Like Maedhros! I did not like it. I will tell you this; the hand you cut is still missing, and the other one is still burned black.”

Fingon shuddered in his shoulders. His face remained tight.

Finrod asked himself, had he seen Curvo’s hands? Was he sure he wasn’t wearing gloves, like Maglor was? How would he feel, if the only hand that could conceivably touch him had been blackened by the jewel that no evil thing could touch? 

“I’m not judging you, cousin,” he said, and turned so that he was leaning backward on the rail, looking inside while Fingon looked outside. “I am myself in the middle of mucking it all up in spectacular style.”

“How?” Fingon asked.

Finrod covered his mouth with his hand.

“...How?” Fingon asked, a little more intently, his voice closer.

“Oh, well, I’m about five or six steps into a very slow waltz with Curufin, because he looked at me exactly once,” Finrod said.

“Ugh. No,” Fingon demanded, putting his hands on the railing so he could lean back and stare at Finrod.

“It’s very stupid. Oh, I’ve told Amarie, she’s tolerating it. It’s so stupid, maybe the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve gone back and forth to his house several times looking for a moment to tell him to go fuck himself and I won’t sleep right until I do.”

“Finrod. You cannot fuck yourself up over Curufin.”

“You have your entire family here running interference so you don’t do whatever stupid shit it is you’re going to do over Maedhros.”

“Yes, but Curufin is trash,” Fingon argued.

“To live for thousands of years, and be accused of having trash taste by Fingon!”

“It is trash taste. Snooty, uppity, and not in an interesting way, just anxious about how he’s being perceived at all times, in his father’s shadow and refusing to get out of it. A socialite with a title. Why did you ever consent to it in the first place!”

“I couldn’t tell you!” Nor would I, if you would not respect it. “You do not see what I do!”

As if Finrod’s words had compelled him, Fingon looked with sudden intensity out into the darkness. It was clear he had forgotten the conversation immediately; Finrod as well, perhaps.

Finrod looked, but saw only the same swaying trees, the same distant hills he expected to see. “Do you see something?” he asked.

“Nothing; but suddenly, I cannot tear my eyes away,” Fingon said, entranced. “Do you think he is out there?”

Finrod decided to answer him honestly. “I hear he is somewhere, but no one knows where. Ambarussa said that he is sometimes at Formenos, sometimes in Nerdanel’s house; both would be good places to try if you decide it’s time to make your peace. Is he here, before us? I doubt it, Fingon. He’s avoiding you. What else could he possibly be doing?”

Fingon resisted for a moment, and then slumped forward on the rail. “He is,” he agreed, with familiar certainty. 

“He’s not there. And we are devoting so much breath to these fools and not focusing on the important question: what, Fingon, have we done to distress Maglor in his several months of being returned? Because I think I only slightly aggravated him once, and that’s not nearly enough grief.”

Fingon could not resist smiling at the thought, which was good. The relationship between Fingolfin’s eldest and Feanor’s second had once been an intricate and strange tapestry; it was not impossible it could be good for both of them, provided any sons of Feanor survived life long.

–

He and Turgon went out on their trip in the mid-afternoon the next day; everyone was a little too hungover for morning. Indeed, on the first day, they barely got a few miles out of Tirion before falling down at the riverside, laying in its soft, cool foam to soothe their brows and falling asleep there.

They traveled the south, the low plains, the grassy hills, the white beaches, the mountains, the shaded forests; there was no goal, and time, which began with structure, days and nights, began to slowly unravel. Finrod lost track of things when he was with Turgon. He forgot all he had left behind, and remembered instead the glimmer of the wings of the mayfly, darting through emerald-green reeds growing on the banks of the slowly-winding river, the circles and ovals of moonlight that wavered on its night-black surface. The went whole days without speaking, and whole days without shutting up. A week alone was spend after they both spied a orange-banded agate in the stone of a ravine and silently agreed that they would have it; without tools, it took time and ingenuity to pry it loose, and then they had to reflect on the fact that they would have no way to carry it back, so it was left for later.

So months passed without either of their awareness. Oh, they had told each other to keep this one short, since so much was happening in Tirion, with the ‘new arrivals.’ It turned out that they were liars, because nearly half a year passed as they walked the leaf-lined grounds of the southern forests, hearing for mere moments the tittering or tapping of the maia of Nessa before they swept on their way, or the hooves of Nahar at night. And, truly, Finrod did not have a real understanding of the amount of time that had passed as they finally drew near again to Tirion, planning first to return Turgon to his family, and again remain there for a night, before Finrod returned to his wife with an armload of fresh flowers and his finest smile.

They were less than a day from Tirion, wading through the river on the way back, delighted, dirt-slathered, shatting about their children, when they heard hooves coming up the other way.

Not an unusual thing, that; “We’re getting close!” Turgon remarked, and Finrod hummed agreement. 

The ridges around the river were high; after all, they were climbing into the foot hills of the mountains. Because of that they did not see the horse, or who rode upon it, until they turned a quite close corner.

On a black mare, bridled with red and gold, with one gloved hand casually clutching the reins, with his hair up in a tight knot and gold pins and clips all around it like a crown, in red-dyed riding leathers, immaculate, was Curufinwe Atarince, and his other arm was around the waist of his wife, night-haired Tanaquine, the calligrapher, who had once sworn she would never go back to her wicked husband in order to be let back into society again.

Well, she hadn’t sworn on anything, Finrod reflected.

Curvo stopped the horse. Tanaquine tensed, and her husband’s arm pulled tight around her side.

Finrod was certainly about to lock eyes with Curvo and heaven knows what next, but Turgon, sounding shocked, said “Oh! Well! It’s been a while.”

Everyone looked at him with varying levels of doubt. Turgon was hunting around himself; he seemed to go for a sword, a dagger, or something, before reluctantly pulling a carving knife out of his trousers.

“It… has?” Curvo asked, staring down at Turgon. He was, of course, well-armed; he had a sword on his hip and another on his horse.

“Rescuing a maiden! Been a long time,” Turgon clarified. “Used to be good at it. Hold on, Lady Tanaquine, we’ll get you home. Villain, unhand her.”

Curvo looked upon Turgon with studden silence. To his credit, he did not draw his blade. Finrod, delighted, reflected happily on the fact that Turgon was his best friend and he loved him and his ability to have the most fantastic possible read on any situation.

“Turgon, you have a paring knife,” Curvo snapped.

“Carving knife! And you have your crimes weighing you down. Get on my level if you dare; if not, I’ll take you on up there.”

Finrod could not let this go un-wingmanned. “Are you going to take that?” he asked.

“I—no, I am not taking that.”

“Stop,” sighed Tanaquine. “Curufinwe, let me down.” She tapped his leather-clad arm with an open palm; Curufin let go of her. In fact, with a look of light annoyance, he leaned over her as she dismounted to help gently guide her down. Turgon, pleased, sheathed his carving knife.

Tanaquine put her hands on her hips and faced Turgon as he approached him. “Do not touch me,” she said.

He stopped in his place. “Certainly not! You’re safe now. Lady, if you—”

“My Gracious Lord,” said Tanaquine, because there was actually quite  significant class disparity between Tanaquine and everyone else here, despite Turgon politely calling her Lady, “Please cease. I do not need a rescue. There was no theft.”

“No?”

“No.”

“You have gone with him on purpose, then?”

“I have.”

Turgon hummed. He looked at Finrod, who raised his eyebrows. To Tanaquine, with paternal concern in his voice, he said, “I have no kinship with you, Lady, nor any claim of responsibility over you, but as a person, I cannot advise that.”

Finrod, who had been keeping it together very well, felt the laugher burst out of him before he could even move to cover it. Within seconds he was bent forward, wheezing into his hands. “Turgon!!” he shouted, and hacked with laughter.

Turgon crossed his arms and looked at Finrod, offended. “What!”

“They’re married!” Finrod heaved between laughs.

“A move I would not have advised in the first place!” Turgon maintained.

“That’s the mother of his son!”

“We have all made mistakes!”

“The brother of my heart!” Finrod proclaimed, clasping Turgon’s shoulder so that he could more easily stay upright. “There are many things which you cannot undo with sheer force of will. One of them is someone else’s marriage!”

“I am aware, or there are men I would have undone all together!—Oh, good, he wants to go.”

Finrod looked over, and felt his heart pop like a firework; Curvo had silently dismounted his horse and was standing a pace away from them, composed and unhappy.

“I do not want to ‘go’, Turgon,” said Curvo, and then he finally met Finrod’s eyes.

Curvo’s eyes were as black as a pit. Finrod looked down, viscerally remembering being at the lowest, coldest depths.

He pulled out. He might have imagined Curvo flinching, tightening and releasing his shoulders, or he might have not. Similarly, he might have imagined the two of them simultaneously deciding, not now. Not yet, but he was nearly certain he felt the sentiment echo, nearly certain that Curvo shuttered his eyes and squeezed his right fist at too precise a moment.

“Finrod,” he said, “I believe we keep missing each other.”

“So I’ve heard,” Finrod replied.

“Who told you to call him by his first name?” asked Turgon, surprised, only mildly defensive.

“He did,” said Curvo; unfortunately, Finrod said “I did” at the same moment.

Finrod avoided looking at his friend. He already knew he was going to be given Gondolin’s finest interrogation after this. “Though I don’t believe that you told me what name to call you.”

“That would be because you neither asked nor returned my farewell; I did notice.”

“And yet you have fared well! Well done. It seems that you did not need my blessing all along.”

…Whoops.

Curvo’s eyes widened. He hummed, his sharp, quiet little ‘hm!’ that he did when he was taking a moment to think about how to eviscerate you, and whether to do it now or wait. It sent Finrod back to the depth of Nargothrod just like a drop of frigid water dripping off a stalactite would, like hearing the low echo of Gil-Galad’s singing echoing dimly through the chambers would.

After several moments of stony silence, Curvo said, “That is a strange thing to say if you would like me to keep asking for it.”

And if this were Nargothrond, Finrod might say, ‘Ah, tactical misstep. Let me do another,’ and depending on his mood, Curvo might allow it or not; ‘Only if it’s a good one,’ he might say, or, ‘Don’t expect me to act like I didn’t hear it.’ But imagine explaining that to present company!

Finrod smiled. “Then I ask your patience! My usual excuse is that fatherhood has addled my wits irreparably. May I ask, then, what to call you?”

Curvo answered after only a second of thought. “Curufin,” he said, safely matching the same level of familiarity as he displayed in calling him ‘Finrod’. But then, with only the slightest gleam in his eye to betray his otherwise arrogant expression, he lifted his hand and showed Finrod the back of it. “And, since you’re being so polite.”

Finrod thought of some brilliant counter-moves he could not perform here, or now, or ever again. He momentarily thought of striking it away. What he did, however, was put his own palm under it, bring it to his lips, and kiss it.

For a second, he felt nothing. Dry skin. It was when he was delivering Curvo back his hand, when his nails accidentally scraped on the soft skin of the underside, that he suddenly felt horribly flushed, like a bucket of hot slag had been poured on him.

Curvo’s face, his whole body sharpened like a knife. He’s covering. Covering up a reaction. Curufin pulled his hand away and returned it to his side, fingers curled like a claw.

Finrod did not wait for him to dig out another verbal barb to brandish. “And next I will ask when we can speak properly,” he began, “because I know better than to take you over when you’re here with your Lady, and because we have consistently failed to meet with each other on our own terms.”

“Hm!” said Curufin. His fingers uncurled and curled again, the legs of a precariously balanced spider. “The place is Formenos,” he decided.

“Good! Then the time is dawn.”

Curvo was not a morning person, but he had asked for it in picking his fortress. He only responded with, “Tomorrow?”

That would just serve to make them both bad-tempered, as it seemed he was just setting out with his wife. “A week hence,” Finrod said, carefully watching Curufin’s face for a hint that that timetable was disagreeable. He did not see one.

“Good,” Curvo said, and turned to Turgon. “Cousin, forgive me for not feeling particularly amiable at the moment; we’ll have to catch up ourselves at another time.”

“We don’t have to,” Turgon assured him. “Lady, are you sure you’re alright?”

Tanaquine lifted up her hands as if suing for patience. “Valar bless me, but I am.”

Finrod worked quickly to unknot the situation, because Tanaquine was clearly getting very tired of them, very quickly, and Finrod himself was proving that he should not speak to Curvo in polite company (which Tanaquine, at least, counted as.) Curvo rode away; he did not look over his shoulder, but he never did.

Finrod waited until the hooves of his horse had faded from hearing. He steeled himself, braced on both feet like he expected to take a blow. Finally, he turned to Turgon, who had, the whole time, been staring a hole into the side of his head.

“Yes?” he asked.

Turgon said, “What was that?”

“A particularly bad showing,” Finrod admitted, sotto voce, tugging on the end of his braid. “I’m pretty rusty!”

“WHAT WAS THAT?”

“A clear loss, if I’m going to be honest with myself. Oh, no, no, no, Finrod, you really can’t think about it that way!”

Turgon, who knew entirely too much about the situation, because Finrod tended to tell his best friend things, expounded on his stupidity the rest of the way to Tirion. Finrod agreed with most of his assessments but argued the point whenever he felt it invalid. They had settled the matter and come to terms again by the time they were home, at which point they were stopped by no less than a troop of concerned gentlemen who questioned them, as newly arrived, if they had seen Curufinwe son of Feanor and his raped bride.

Finrod and Turgon (still wet, still dirty, still dressed like gardeners) looked at each other, looked at the near-mob, and admitted that the situation they had seen had looked pretty consentual to them.

The fact that they had seen the situation and not stopped it was unpopular. Turgon, who did not doubt a Lady’s word, was now completely adamant that there had been nothing to stop and they were all being unjust in censuring him. Calming him back down and getting everyone’s story straight took literally all damn day, the situation was corrected to ‘seduced’ rather than ‘raped’, not that that made anyone more congenial, and in summary, it was well into the night by the time they both stumbled into Fingolfin’s house and collapsed into the bed in Turgon’s old room together. And then, in the morning, they had to profusely apologize to Anaire about the thoroughly muddied status of her home. 

–

((4: Beloved Celebrimbor))

When Finrod finally came home, arms full of flowers, singing as he went, Amarie had been in the home alone. She opened the door to him and let him inside; they went to the bedroom, and over the course of the next few hours, he gave her each of the flowers one by one. He slipped them from the bouquet and handed them too her when they broke off from a kiss, when they turned each other around, when he could break out an arm form beneath it to her and extend it to the endtable, reaching and then coming back.

Some ended up folded or pressed under sheets or pillows, but no matter.

–

Finrod recited every word of the conversation to her, including his estimation of Curvo’s little finger-curls and glances, which he remembered quite well. She sighed or rolled her eyes in appropriate places, and then surprised him by rolling onto her back to say,

“Tanaquine! If there was ever a cold-blooded woman.”

“Well!” Finrod said, surprised. “I always thought she was alright!”

“Of course you think that.”

“I apologize for whatever I did!”

“You’ve committed the grievous crime, my dove, of seeing the best in everyone. No, I don’t think she’s duplicitous or dishonest, I don’t think she’d literally stab you in the back, but I’ve never seen such a joyless or prudish old hen, and she’s even a little younger than me, I think.”

“Prudish! Well, she is serious.”

“She thinks she’s better than the rest of us, but of course she’s just too good to say so. Rather her disdainful silence marks her.”

Finrod had always thought her solemn. Then again, he was inclined to like her well enough, because in many of his positive qualities, Celebrimbor reflected her. It had been her seriousness and scrupulosity, he thought, that had constructed in Celebrimbor the well-tuned moral compass that so many of his relations did not have.

Then again, he had once heard Amarie call a chicken a raggedy old bitch once. Her willingness to judge kept in check his own eagerness to trust. “Pretending I ever see her again, I will be wary of her serpentine ways,” he promised her.

“Serpentine?”

“Cold-blooded, like you said. Though, I am presuming that Curufin will do everything in his power to keep us isolated; he has a good intuition for situations that do not bode well for him and a particularly jailer-like understanding of how to keep personal power, which he will adhere to.”

“Vana, Nesse, Varda, Yavanna; save me from this man. Are you really going to Formenos just to give this man more opportunities to ruin your day if not your life?”

“Well. While it would be very funny to not show my face and see what happens next, I just don’t think it would be–”

“Oh, Ingo.”

“--right.”

“Oh, you don’t think it would be right. Of course you don’t. Oh, you dreadful man. Listen, Ingo.”

“I’m listening, Arre.”

“You have got to keep an eye on yourself. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. You get carried away; it’s one of your best qualities. But you need to be watching what you do while you’re dealing with him. If you want a certain outcome from this, then your actions have to be the actions that lead to that outcome. If you’re acting in a way that leads to something you say you don’t want, stop. Or else reexamine your words for their honesty.”

“Amarie!” said Finrod, and kissed her again. On her lips, he said, “You’re wasted on me! You could keep a Balrog honest.”

“Wasted. I don’t care about if I’m wasting my qualities, I was and remain interested in you.”

Finrod was by no way ready to start again, but remained with her in bed through the afternoon, and was eventually interrupted by his youngest daughter coming home to bemoan their status. Because this was sweet Aman, she was teasing when she tut-tutted them about being disheveled; the nakedness did not bother her, but their unbound hair, a little.

“Indecent,” she sighed; “What kind of example are you for me?”

“I hope to teach you what you should expect from your husband. Devoted, effusive, simpering love, at all times, no matter how inconvenient.” 

She sighed her despair and slumped away to the pantry to eat. As she walked away, Finrod called after her: “Or wife! Wife is fine! If that’s what you’d prefer! It’s your choice!”

“ATAR,” his daughter shouted behind her, as she truly believed that she had the most embarrassing father in the world.

Amarie patted his shoulder. “They get it.”

Finrod looked after her. “I hope so,” he whispered.

–

That was no common opinion he had just voiced. It was not unheard of, but it was certainly not common. He got away with it because of his position and the respect he commanded as the once-King of hallowed Nargothrond, and even so he had been called perverse for even saying it a time or two.

Eldar looked to their examples in the Ainur; they saw only the harmonious match of man and wife, except for the dark suppositions about the devotion of Sauron Gorthaur, the corruptor. It was an unkind comparison, and it had been used to tear down and isolate many a young Elda, treated like they were contaminated.

If the same thing happened to his children, it wouldn’t be Finrod that did it. People grumbled that his reasonable-sounding words had to be related to Beleriandish perversions, to what everyone knew about his cousin Fingon, the ‘maiden King;’ they wondered, if particularly unkind, if he had some personal stake in the unpalatable matter.

Well, he did. Frankly–and he would never tell anyone this, so they could keep wondering–he was uninterested in seeing anyone in his own family go through what Celebrimbor did, ever again.

–

Half-way through the week, Celebrimbor surprised him with a visit. Finrod’s daughters were delighted; they considered him a cousin, even though everyone knew the blood was getting thin at that point. In Finrod’s opinion, there was no reason they shouldn’t love him. He was soft-spoken and polite and considerate, he was generous and quick to help, he was talented, sharp, and had strong intuition, developed from suffering much and learning hard. But he never talked down to his cousins who had not known grief; in their presence, he was equally interested in whatever they were interested in, and never condescending to their opinions about it.

Finrod watched his daughters monopolize Celebrimbor, who they had accosted in his approach, from inside the house for a while, enjoying the sight. Then he stepped outside and enfolded his cousin (oh, nephew, half-nephew, whatever) in his arms. Celebrimbor hugged him back, tightly for a moment, and then loosely, around the shoulders.

“Welcome and well met in the home of Finrod Felagund, dear cousin,” Finrod smiled.

“The Kingdom is smaller than I left it,” Celebrimbor said, looking at the house.

“You make the same joke every single time,” Amarie complained, following Finrod outside. She also embraced Celebrimbor, with continued complaints. “You didn’t write ahead! I don’t have anything ready. Don’t think you’ll work the whole time you’re here, young man!”

“I don’t!” Celebrimbor protested.

Finrod sincerely did not think of him as a ‘young man’ anymore. A thousand years or so between them, they had both spent more than enough long centuries alive, in Aman and in Beleriand. It evened out. Amarie, however, who was smart enough to not die, was willing to condescend if need be.

“You say that, but I’ll find you elbows-deep in fixing something that doesn’t need fixed within the hour. Ingo, while you distract him while I get something ready for lunch? I don’t want anyone… automating the…” she waved her hand. “I don’t know, fence, until we’ve eaten.”

“Automating the fence,” said Celebrimbor vacantly, looking at the fence.

“How would you automate a fence, Tyelpe?” Finrod urged.

Celebrimbor stared off, clearly thinking too hard about how he would do that.

“And off you go, boys,” said Amarie, and left them there.

–

Finrod and Celebrimbor walked around Finrod’s house to the back, where gentle hills were nearly criss-crossed by linking fingers of water, the many streams that came down from the mountain tripping through the valleys. The water was so high that day that, in places, it ran through green grass, making the earth’s tresses rustle like hair in a storm.

Finrod and Amarie lived quite a way out of Tirion. It took half a day to travel there. They hadn’t always lived so far out. They had left some time ago, and it was partly–largely–because of how Celebrimbor had been treated.

In his wisdom, Namo had returned Celebrimbor, long healing, to life after the final dissolution of Sauron, so that his spirit was nowhere on the earth to trouble him. The man who had been tortured for years, the man who had lived through the fall of kingdom after kingdom, the man who had lived on for millennia after the death of almost everyone he knew; Finrod had certainly been prepared to open his arms to him, but not everyone felt the same. There were many in Tirion–too many–who heard the story and only managed to hear that, before he had been tortured to death by him, Celebrimbor had loved a face of Sauron.

To go through that and then be treated like a criminal for it. Not by everyone, but by enough. It hadn’t been the only reason Finrod eventually moved further away from Tirion, but it had been the last straw, and he had said so. 

Of course, that had mortified Celebrimbor and, frustratingly, the results in broader society had been mixed. Some reacted with vitriol, but some, with truer hearts, had banded together about it, made themselves known to each other, and now had a coalition of sorts. Finrod and Turgon both sometimes wrote anonymous papers and letters arguing for the acceptance of the practice (well, Finrod’s were usually anonymous; Turgon’s, never), Nerdanel housed people needing space in her various and empty properties, many friends among the Teleri, who had laxer laws, held meetings and get-togethers, Idril made noise at the various women’s groups she frequented, Fingon assertively acted like himself (how much that ‘helped’ could be debated, but Finrod liked it).

Finrod could not, however, get his father to budge on the matter one way or another, which was his personal, private war.

And, yes, he would think of that one like a war.

“How are you holding up?” asked Finrod; more war-talk, a comparison to the battle ramparts they both frequented, which stood strong against the hordes or crumbled.

Celebrimbor sucked in a breath, and let it out in a long, unhappy wheeze, which rose in pitch until it strangled off at the end.

“That good!” Finrod smiled.

“It’s overwhelming,” Celebrimbor clarified, immediately minimizing. He always did. Expressed his feelings, and then quickly pulled them back. “They’re a lot to handle.”

“True.”

“It’s hard to navigate–I can't guess who wants to have a rational conversation about this, and who is going to rebuke me for even speaking to them. Any of them, as if these aren’t several individual people.”

Point. Finrod hoped he had been taking that that way.

“It’s a lot, but… it’s also nice.”

“I hope it is, at least a little.”

“They’re a lot better.”

Finrod couldn’t resist asking, “Are they?” but he thought he sounded like he was without judgment.

Celebrimbor hummed. It was an echo of his father’s quick, quiet, sharp stab of a noise, but distant, breathy. He sat down on the grass; Finrod followed suit.

“I think people have forgotten, though they claim not to have,” Celebrimbor began. “No, that’s not fair. They remember the facts. ‘He killed my grandfather. My mother never recovered. They killed their own kin thrice. They spelled the doom of Nargothrond. They destroyed Sirion, a town of refugees.’ Yes, I know. I was at Sirion, I was defending the walls. I was in Nargothrond, regularly asking my father if he might not. It was literally my kin, both sides. My mother never recovered either. Lord, do you want to know what happened to my grandfather?”

“Manwe and Varda, the points are so good,” Finrod said, his hands steepled in front of his face.

“But that wasn’t what I meant to say. What I meant to say is, people remember the facts, but they don’t remember them very well. I remember my uncles in the camp of Eonwe! I remember my uncle Maedhros in his last years in Himring! I remember uncle Celegorm near the end of his life, what he acted like! I remember what uncle Amras was actually like by the time he was put down at Sirion! How they are now is a lot better.”

Finrod hadn’t thought about that point. But Celebrimbor was right, he had not the personal experience to make those judgements. He had stopped seeing the majority of Feanor’s sons at all once he made his final move to Nargothrond. He had dealt mostly with Tyelko and Curvo after that, and those were two men he 1. Hadn’t seen 2. Had only seen briefly since their return.

“I’m not a wide-eyed doe, I know they’re still…” Celebrimbor hunted for the word, “Bad, but comparatively, this is so much easier to handle.”

“And you have your grandmother to help,” Finrod noted.

Celebrimbor smiled. “If you are ever in a mood to watch a fully-grown warlord cling to his mother’s shoulders, I know a place.”

“I might be!”

“And it’s not just her. You know she lived alone for a long time. Her family, Mahtan’s family, has really closed ranks to help out. Usually when they’re staying with grandmother, they’re usually staying somewhere on Mahtan’s property.”

The family of Mahtan had a beautiful series of houses and kilns and forges and shops, essentially a small town, belonging to them, red clay, white earthenware, and gray stone. There were plenty of places to hide everyone’s least favorite war criminals so that they were out of the way and everyone had space where they didn’t want to see them. Tough folks, too. Finrod was sure they were fine tackling the sons of Feanor a few at a time.

“I’ve learned from my wife that I have been absent for a significant time,” Finrod began.

“How unexpected.”

“Cruelty! I am wounded. Yes, I suppose Turgon and I were gone longer than we realized. Again, this is unprecedented. How have things…”

“Yes, that is one of the main reasons we’ve had to delay the trial.”

“Ah!” said Finrod, and smacked his own forehead.

A trial! Of course. That happened often enough for problematic returns, he should have been thinking about it. There was no point in having a criminal trial; the Valar had judged and punished. But the trials had a strong social purpose of letting people tell their own stories and match grievance to grievance. Important information came out often enough that they were important to do–everyone learning that Lomion (thank the Valar his mother loved him, the poor bastard) had been enthralled for his most dire actions had been illuminating and very important, in example. Celebrimbor had had one, and Finrod had personally considered its existence an injustice; he had been recorded as interjecting with “How has he harmed any of you?” and “Mind your own house!” several times each.

“Ingo, you’ve practically got a price on your head.”

“I forgot!”

“Don’t worry about it, though. The more pressing matter is that we still haven’t seen uncle Celegorm, not since the day of his return. I’ve been pushing for six separate trials, and if he keeps it up, I might get them!”

“Six, not sev–oh, I’m stupid. Ignore me.”

“It really should be seven, but they won’t say which one is Amras.”

“Weird guys. I noticed a certain implication in your words!”

“Oh, no. Not again.”

Finrod smiled. “Were you there for the return, Tyelpe?”

“I was. A normal invitation, like any other time; I was wondering who it could be, and more so when I was the only one who showed up at the hall.”

“The only one?”

“In retrospect, that was a good idea. You need someone there to handle the initial… difficulties, but frankly, any more than seven is already a crowd.”

That had been wise of Namo, Finrod figured. He did hate it, but he was occasionally unwise himself. Most people had their closest friends and family there to welcome them; only inviting Celebrimbor was tacitly admitting that this was not a reunion to be celebrated, but a difficulty to be managed quietly.

Finrod hated managing things quietly; it usually meant you weren’t sticking firmly to your principles. But even he could see how ‘loudly’ might have gone awry in this case. “I do regret the opportunity to not see them colt-legged with fresh bodies, however.”

“For all of two minutes! And I barely remember, I was too shocked.”

“You got right to work, I presume?”

“I got right to sobbing! Uncle Maedhros couldn’t even use his tongue yet and he was petting my hair.”

“Ah,” said Finrod, now seeing Namo’s wisdom. There were other options for welcoming the sons of Feanor, but few other gentle welcomes, if any.

“So that went on for a while; everyone was glad for, I would say, an hour, then they weren’t.”

“I heard a little of it.”

“From who?”

“Amras, or so he claimed.”

“Well, he may have been right. No, there’s… much old hurt among them. For now, spending a little time on their own, individually… Well, when you think about it, is actually ideal. Before, they were all a little…”

“We can talk about Celegorm and your father.”

Celebrimbor put both hands on his face and made a noise of exasperation. “Of course, we could!”

Finrod laughed. “We could also not!”

“Thunder. Lightning. Heavens. That might have actually gone better if I hadn’t been there. I’ve gotten the dirty summary of what they went through after I parted ways with them both, oh, only a thousand times, and I probably know more than anyone else. Anyway, they’re not over it. They are neither of them over it, at all.”

“I’m… not surprised.”

“Nor I. …Ingo, you know?”

“I did know,” he said, tersely. “And I should have done something about it.”

Celebrimbor sighed.

“If I had done something about it then, what could we have now?”

“Ingo. They wouldn’t have accepted you ‘doing something’ then.”

“Curvo might have. Curufin, drat.”

Celebrimbor, who was a gracious man, did not even point it out. “It’s hardly the only reason my uncle has vanished into the woods.”

“Oh, I know that. What did Amras say, ‘We hope Orome tells us when he crushes him?’”

“It would be polite,” Celebrimbor grumbled.

“Well, if he gets right with Orome, he might get right with everyone else.”

“I doubt that.”

“Most people.”

“Some people.”

“His direct relatives.”

“Maybe.”

“His favorite nephew, I hope.”

“That is not a funny joke.”

“Any of your uncles could have corrected the situation, at any time–well, my respects to Maedhros. Any of the rest of them. Maglor, Caranthir, Celegorm himself, any of them could have had a child and made you some company.”

“Elrond is lovely company.”

“Rude of me, I apologize. In that case, my point stands. As we all know, Elrond is a living treasure, and yet I promise you are Celegorm’s favorite nephew.”

“I’m so flattered.”

“Tyelpe,” Finrod said, leaning back onto the grass, “I recall I started this conversation asking how you are.”

He looked up at the sky, now blue with the light of Arien. After a moment, Celebrimbor said, “I did it again!”

“How are you, Tyelpe?”

After a minute of consideration, he said, “Now that I think about it, I’m fine.”

–

Celebrimbor must have not known that the date was set for Finrod and Curufin to meet, because he did not bring it up during his visit. Finrod wronged him slightly by not bringing it up either. Finrod did convince him to talk over things a little more thoroughly that evening, but when things got too dark, he broke it off and convinced him instead to play a table-game with the girls, who were always hungry for a real challenger. He watched Celebrimbor and his daughters strategize against each other, occasionally serious, usually smiling, burning down a cinnamon-scented candle over the dice and coins and downing a bottle of wine between them before they knew what they were doing. In the end, Celebrimbor happily lost. The contestants congratulated each other and then broke into a conversation Finrod genuinely couldn’t follow, half chatter, half tipsy laughter.

After Celebrimbor (literally) crashed into Finrod’s guest room, Finrod had intended to pop by and ask one more question that came to him, but when he approached the doorway, he found him already fast asleep.

He stood in the doorway a minute, watching him.

Amarie, perhaps sensing the change in his state, came to him and pulled him away. “Do you think he’s more comfortable if you stand over him like a statue?”

“I hope he knows he’s safe here.”

“Ingo, there is nothing you could have done to make that more clear unless you wrote it on the walls.”

“I hope he knows he’s loved.”

“Same answer. Cook him griddle-cakes in the morning if you feel that way about it, but come to bed.”

–

((5: Poor Wandering One))

Seeing as Finrod had chosen to meet with Curvo at dawn, and seeing that Formenos was not that close to his house, that meant he traveled to reach it the day before. It was a good day; the wind was chill and fast, and he had bells on the bridle of his mare, so the whole afternoon and evening passed in hoof-clatter and chime.

He considered lodging at a house in Formenos, or somewhere in the area, but as the sun traveled west and her rays turned the banks of the distant sea, which he could just see form the height of the peaks, copper-red, he found himself sitting down on the mountainside and remaining there, watching the stars come up and turn in their arcs. He slept a few hours beside his mare, then got up again to approach Formenos.

This time, he was properly expected. He had not doubted that Curvo would send a proper party to him. He was folded into the ranks of riders on red-bridled horses, and taken not to the old fortress itself, but to a house nearby, nearly connected to it but standing on the other side of the grove of hard-barked trees, small in size but not at all in grandeur. That was a house of precious stone as much as building-stone; Finrod let himself be a little dazzled.

There, under the obsidian and garnet-dressed doorway, stood Tanaquine, watching as Finrod descended from his mare and she was taken away. She kept watching as he approached, climbing up the set of stone stairs that led to the doorway until he was just a step below her.

“Lady Tanaquine; blessings on your house,” he said, pulling the riding glove off of his hand so he could extend it to her.

“And yours,” she said, and in two words Finrod knew that she knew the truth now.

She had not known the truth the last time she spoke to him. Now, she did. She had asked her husband, perhaps before he laid with her, perhaps after, ‘have you been faithful to me?’ and he had answered her honestly.

She kept Finrod’s eyes as she slowly placed her own hand in his, only one curved finger tapping the skin of his palm. When he lifted it to kiss it, he kissed only the air above it, so that it looked proper, but he did not touch her, as he sensed she would prefer.

Her own eyes were truly joyless.

“Am I welcomed in that house, Lady?” He asked, quietly.

Tanaquine replied, “I know my husband welcomed you.”

“I am asking you,” Finrod said.

“What, will you turn to go if I forbid you?”

“I will.”

Tanaquine thought about it. Finrod straightened up, having pretended to kiss her hand for quite long enough.

He had enough sympathy for her, being able to clearly remember Amarie in the same position. He also, whether he liked it or not, had plenty of sympathy for Curvo.

“Come in,” Tanaquine said, having finished her calculations. She turned her back and walked inside; Finrod followed.

He peered quickly around the glittering walls and arched ceilings of the grand little house, trying to determine if he had ever seen it before. It was vaguely familiar, but he thought not. He did not know if it had been someone’s before Curvo had claimed it or if it had been empty; had it been built for him and then left alone? Had Tanaquine been using it? Had a devoted follower happily cleared out after he said he liked it? There were not yet too many personal effects on the walls or varnished hardwood shelves except for a startling abundance of fancy swords, so he could not tell.

His heart rate increased as he went into that jeweled gullet. He did not yet see Curvo, but he was here, and he knew that. Distressingly, he could smell it.

He did not know if he expected to see Celebrimbor or not, but he didn’t. Tanaquine took him to a sitting-room, paneled with dark stone and bright silver, and, as was correct for a Lady welcoming a guest into her home, carefully and rigidly poured him a cup of tea from a tray that had been set, fully prepared, onto a buffet cabinet. That cabinet was set with a shining silver mirror; he could see the tight anger on her face as she served.

And were you faithful to him? Finrod wondered. By the purity of the feeling around her, he thought she had been. Thousands and thousands of years of minding her own, keeping to her craft, to receive this.

I should have told her, Finrod thought with a sharp drop of his stomach. It was true that he had thought it would never be relevant; again, they had all been told they were not getting the sons of Feanor back. But thinking that she didn’t need to know had always been an excuse. He had genuinely wanted to shield her from unnecessary shame and pain, and he had wanted to keep the stain of it far from her. He knew what she had already suffered from defending her son–or from burrowing herself away from the issue, as it had seemed she had chosen to do when so many were rallying in Celebrimbor’s defense and she did not show her face.

Still.

“No,” said Finrod, and stood up. Tanaquine stopped.

He walked up, and picked up the cup of tea himself, so that she did not have to carry it over to him and serve him.

For a moment, the woman wavered; attending a king, by order of her husband, a prince. Abruptly, she turned and walked out of the room.

Finrod found himself now standing alone in front of that mirror, holding a teacup, looking at himself. He thought about Celebrimbor; he thought about Amarie, saying, examine your words for honesty.

He looked up to the top of the mirror, and around; he saw himself, his yellow braid falling over one shoulder, and felt the pins and needles of nostalgia in his back at how the old silver mirrors reflected him with a dim metallic cast. He started humming and then, under his breath, singing, “and his hair hung over his shoulder…”

Then he heard the soft click of the handle of the door being pressed. He turned and watched it open.

The first thing he saw was Curvo’s hand, and it was not gloved, and it was not burnt or blemished or blackened. He had a carnelian set in gold on his thumb and, on his ring-finger, a jewel that he could tell even from here was wrought by Feanor.

The rest of the man was just like that–the finery of ghosts fit him snugly, his black hair, silk-like, was bound on the crown of his head. He was not armed; he did have his boots on, which went up to his knees. He was looking at Finrod from the start, looking right at him.

He entered, and when he closed the door again behind them, with the quiet click of a lock turning, the two of them were alone. 

It was at the click of the lock–not at any point before, not at first seeing Curvo, not at first meeting his eyes, or hearing his voice or the weird little noises he made, or anything else that he had done, but at the prickling sound of being locked in with him that Finrod felt comfortable, physically comfortable, like he had put down his bag and took off his shoes after weeks of walking.

That’s right, he thought, remembering Curvo, locked-in.

Curvo’s eyes narrowed and opened, like a candle flickering.

“Curufin,” Finrod said.

“Finrod.”

“I want to apologize to you,” Finrod said.

Curufin knew him well enough to know that wasn’t a joke, or an oratorical trick. The same words might have been in another context, but they weren’t now. His eyebrows raised, he tilted his head. “Go on.”

“I did not treat you decently, like I should have. I didn’t treat you right. I let myself make excuses for why I was treating an intimate friend poorly; I let prejudices color my decision-making. I treated you and your brother like enemies in my kingdom; I shouldn’t have let anything get in the way of my hospitality. For your son’s sake, if nothing else. And I just rather upset your wife right now, I believe,” Finrod added onto all the other things.

“Well!” said Curvo. He leaned back only slightly, straightening his shoulders. “I’d never doubted your recollection before, but I have to wonder if you quite recall our time together as I do.”

“I wonder what you mean?” Finrod said.

“’Treating you right,’ ‘intimate friend,’ ‘your hospitality!’ Are you writing the history textbook about it all? In my recollection, we were fucking like dogs.”

Finrod set down his teacup on the buffet like a tree drops a hickory-nut; thud. He finished the movement with a flourish of his hand. “My darling! My gleaming black opal! The way you have with words.”

(They had switched to Sindarin–actually, Finrod noted, they had been speaking Sindarin since the start. It was the only way Curvo could even say what he said, as The King’s Quenya could not be twisted in such a way to even voice ‘fucking like dogs.’ In fact, he had to put a loan-word from Taliska into the Sindarin, but that had been common once.)

“Should I have fallen into your arms at your apologies? Forget my hard feelings at your gentility and politenesses? Have you mistaken me for another? Does that kind of thing fool your wife?”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever fooled her, but she does appreciate the effort!”

“Ah! I don’t.”

“You’re right that I’ve forgotten a few things, because I had forgotten that.” Finrod set his hand down on the edge of the buffet, and pushed himself away from it. He would have preferred they sit, so the situation was a little less volatile, but he wouldn’t invite himself to sit down in another’s house. “Now I recall! You are not interested in apologies.”

“Excellent work,” Curvo insulted him.

“Making me a poor choice for you. You are aware I meant it?”

“That apology?”

“Yes.”

Curvo stepped into the room, three or four deliberate steps. Now they were something like eight paces away; an end-table with a lamp stood not-quite between them. Finrod was between the buffet and a loveseat next to the end table. He knew exactly what his exits were (one behind Curvo, locked from the inside; another on the opposite side, unknown) but took care to not look at them. “I am aware you think you meant it! You, diamond, are unaware that you don’t.”

“My famed vapidity strikes again!” (He was actually called ‘wise one’ in several human cultures, but Curvo could say what he wanted.) “Explain what I meant to me, I’m just too dim.”

Curvo walked diagonal to Finrod; he approached a shelf, where a beginning layer of curiosities and riches was forming; split geodes, opalized wood, sky-stones. The loveseat and the low table in front of it were now between them. “You meant, ‘Curvo, I’ve been carefully covering up what we did so that I can enjoy general acclaim and social status here in Aman; now that you’re here, you know, you might open your mouth. Wouldn’t you be a dear and feel obligated to let bygones be bygones? I have quite a bit going for me here.’”

“Oh! No, no, I remember this one,” Finrod replied. “Let me try.”

Curvo picked up a sky-stone and observed its amber-flecked insides. “By your leave.”

“‘Ingo, pet, that was all a little too sincere for me. I can’t return it, so it makes me feel insufficient. I’ve got a couple thousand years of catch-up to do with fixing my own life and I’m actually feeling overwhelmed; handling this is far too much for me right now, but, having always help myself to an unattainable standard of perfection, I have to act tough through it instead of admitting I need some time. Wouldn’t you just take cuts at me instead so we can bicker? It’s much easier and gives me that instant satisfaction I crave.’”

Curvo lifted up the stone and examined its glimmer with a smile. “And there! With the slightest provocation, you are no longer repentant or gentle at all. ‘Ingo, pet,’ I know you think you meant your apology, but you really don’t think you have to apologize to me.”

Finrod turned to the side and put the tips of his fingers to his forehead, because he had just been played like a fiddle in less than a minute.

“And why would you?” Curvo asked, setting the stone back down. “Heavens, don’t you remember what I did to you?”

Once upon a time, Finrod would have replied to that by saying, ‘No, refresh my memory.’ That, however, was an invitation to a much darker conversation, which he believed he didn’t want. “Then, it appears I am as contrary as always. I know I should apologize to you, whether or not I want to; can you accept that?”

Curvo paused. The tips of his fingers rested on the curls of a conch, balanced on a three-pronged wooden stand. “I know I should thank you,” he responded quietly.

Finrod felt the imminent warning to not poke at that, so he poked as gently as possible. “For…”

“I’ve had about a dozen sources–two or three of which I find credible–inform me that you’ve been looking after my son.”

“Ah,” Finrod said. Curvo hadn’t accepted his apology; would he become angry if Finrod accepted his thanks? While he wasn’t afraid of Curvo’s anger, when he got incensed… Well… “He does not really need much looking after. I’ve defended him, usually compulsively, sometimes foolishly.”

“That I have heard! How interesting it is–first, I am absolutely absorbed in how we do legal documentation now.”

Curufin’s face turned bright for a moment, like he had flipped to the other side of his coin. He was looking at his hand on the table, clearly recalling something in his head. Finrod put a hand under his chin, raised his eyebrows.

“Copies of every single case scribed and mailed to everyone involved, as a matter of course! A minimum of two witnesses required on every movement above simple barter, and one of them cannot be closer than second-cousins to you! Every one of these documents references previous documents via a coded system of classification! And the classification system is really good, too.”

“It has… evolved.” Finrod hated it. He couldn’t give away houses without… papers and signatures and impartial witnesses. Of course Curvo loved it. “There was some matter among the Vanyar ages ago about competing claims on a house that just turned them inside out. And then it turned out that someone had lied about it, which they just couldn’t conceive of. I suppose someone from Tirion walked up to their city and explained to them about writing things down, and checking their work, and things like that, and they liked it but they got Vanyar about it. Now it’s ‘precedent this, approval that, did you get that approved? Do you have the form?’ Do you have the–do you have the form, you’re the one in the fucking legal office!”

Curvo laughed, a quick bark of a laugh. “Of course you hate it. It might slow you down a minute. But I do see your name popping up on various documents often enough, saying things like…” Curvo opened a drawer, sorted through it with the tips of his nails for only a moment, and pulled out a paper. “Let’s see. There. ‘You have judged the man who perpetrated these actions wrongly, and I say so because you have not valued the actions in any way, have not independently examined them, have not even dared to describe them. How do you dare, any of you, to pronounce judgment and censure over an action that you dare not even speak the name of? Are you cowards, my Lords, or did you come here without knowing what you were doing today? I am neither, and I will say it!--’”

“I feel like that’s enough.”

“‘Sodomy!’” Curufin announced, reading intently, a slight flush on his cheeks. “‘All of you who flinched, you may depart! You are cowards, and I would not permit a coward to pass judgment over me!’ Then your father calls you a damned headache and closes the court for the day.”

“If a man were too squeamish to pronounce ‘murder’, or ‘torture,’ we would have shown him out of any hall of judgment in Beleriand permanently. You can’t try a crime you cannot think about, that’s stupid. And if they were pretending to scrutinize Tyelpe’s actions, and there was really only one, at the end of the day, they were so bothered about–”

“How did you get away with that, Finrod?” Curvo asked.

“You may have noticed that my father, the King, was in attendance. This often helps me get away with things–”

“No, the part where, if anyone had their ears open, they would be aware you had done it yourself.”

“Oh, there are rumors, there are whispers; they come and go, and people find something else to whisper about.”

“Why not admit to it, I wonder?”

“Why not! Imagine the reasons yourself, your brain works. Here’s one I keep particularly in mind: I am a better help for others if people don’t dismiss me as ‘one of them’ out of hand. They value my opinion more when they think I have an objective opinion. I don’t believe anyone has listened to a word Fingon has to say in decades.”

“Does he want to be listened to?”

“...Hm.”

Curvo set down the transcript and turned to face Finrod. He saw his eyes flicker down and note the furniture that was between them. He continued walking in the direction he had first been walking, away from the locked door, tracing the boundaries of the room like a wolf patrolling its territory.

…You’ve let your control of your framing slip, Finrod thought, but ‘wolf’ is too far. You cannot think about wolves.

“I hear, also,” he said, taking slow, deliberate paces, “That I am going to be given one of these trials myself. Perhaps independently, perhaps not.”

“You likely can’t avoid one happening,” Finrod admitted.

“Dreadful! You’ll have to be in attendance, I presume!”

“I’ll have to be!” Finrod echoed, and then he said, “Unless I wrote out a statement exonerating you completely beforehand; then I could just sit at home, which is always a tempting option.”

Curvo stopped walking. He had reached the corner of the back wall and the wall with the (potentially unlocked) door; the other side of the loveseat was between them now. He had been inspecting his nails; he curled them under his gaze.

Finrod asked himself when he had gotten so stupid.

They both knew exactly what Curvo had just thought. So as to not be dull (or so Finrod assumed), he changed the topic immediately. “I think that’s enough about you,” he said pleasantly.

“‘How’s the wife, I heard you have children now?’”

“No, absolutely not.” He continued idly walking the wall, toward the one where Finrod currently stood. “I hear you’ve been in the periphery for a few of my brothers, so you may or may not know this, but in case you’ve don’t, I’ve spent the past–hm? Few ages? In a state I would describe as ‘existential torture.’”

Curvo locked the door as he walked by it.

“Likening to torture will appear to be facetious, because I was not in pain, but bear with me a minute,” he continued. “I would say ‘spiritual’ or ‘mental’ torture if I felt I was conscious of a state of pain, which I was not. Instead the thing that was tortured was solidity. Concepts. Boundaries. I was in a state of forced permeability; the walls were not solid. Without walls between concepts, even simple concepts, like ‘myself’, or ‘happening’, or ‘space’, instead there existed a state of perpetual confusion, an unending vertigo, the moment you realize you are about to fall and can’t pull back, crystallized, magnified. I would say it was similar to being in pure terror forever, or the moment of climax, both experiences in which the entirety of the mind is not accessible because a moment of heightened emotion has divorced it from physical experience, but neither is accurate, because they imply a sense of intensity which was also inaccessible, as ‘levels’, ‘comparisons’, ‘context’ were things I did not have.”

Curvo rounded the corner. He was then on the same wall as Finrod, who still stood in the place he had been since the beginning. He looked at Finrod and, as he approached, remained looking at his face. “I realize now that I had been kept at the very moment of death the entire time, the metaphorical ‘eternal darkness’ which I had sworn myself to. Pinned between life and death, kept of the last word of the page, with the hand poised to flip to the next, and refusing to do so; there, cut in two on the razor edge of that page. And in fact, I should not have expected anything else; we had forsworn anything after death, and as such remained there. Are you aware of how I died?”

He stood only a few paces away from Finrod. There was nothing between them. Finrod could smell, as he halted again, that he wore a perfume that smelled like delicate, night-blooming jasmine. “Slain in the halls of Doriath, by the people of Dior Eluchil.”

“True! Wrong. Slain by Dior Eluchil; he’s fast. I hear he was one of those… oh, noble, good-hearted, fair, and so forth Lords of the Eldar, so I assume he’s back. How is he?” he asked, with a sharp, closed-mouth smile.

“No,” said Finrod, feeling a bitter cold spread in his stomach. “No, that is something I will not abide.”

Curvo did not even say anything. His eyebrows rose. 

“You cannot do this,” Finrod continued. “You cannot plunge us into this again. You can act a bastard as much as you want but you cannot bring us to the death of kin again. I can’t do this again, Curufinwe.”

Curufinwe! He thought.

Curufin’s face fell into a new expression, and, similarly, it made Finrod’s heart sink. “See!” he said. “I didn’t even say anything. I didn’t even imply I would. That’s just what you think of me! You don’t think I’m any better than that, and, evidently, you do not forgive me.”

Why would I? Don’t you remember what you did? Thought Finrod, and then felt himself slapped awake.

Wisdom! He thought disparagingly. Had he become so dull when lesser tried? Had he let his introspection and compassion grow cheap because he spent his time around those who needed it little, being content themselves? He missed Edain! He missed humans! He was at his best around them, thriving on the depth of their difference from him, how their strangeness caused his understanding and insight to blossom.

But the two thoughts came together in a much better one, bright with the friction: now that he had demonstrated that he no longer understood Curvo, that he did not properly account him; since his wit had grown less sharp as he was less tried; would it not assist to be whetted? Surely they had not brought back Curvo for him, thinking that was a sort of egotism beyond even Finrod. But in the moment, he felt that way.

Naturally, all of that had happened inside himself, in silence. Curvo was not privy to it; instead he looked down upon Finrod absorbing his accusation, with a face that looked blank, but malleable, clay-like.

Finrod, feeling bright, capable, after his moment of insight, lifted his hand to touch it; his fingers grazed the soft of Curvo’s cheek. And it was soft. It was skin, no matter what it looked like.

“You who have wandered! You can come back. I can endeavor to be of help; it is yet to be seen if I will be of any use at all. There’s uncertainty again! Welcome home.”

Curvo’s voice was tight when he said, “That absolutely does not follow.”

“No? No, it didn’t.”

“Not at all.”

“Then I can ask you how well you remember me! When did I follow?”

“Who told you you could touch me?” Curvo asked.

Finrod pulled his fingers back. He had not been told he could touch him, and he shouldn’t have; extrapolating from being asked to kiss his hand a week ago was still presumptuous. But a window had opened in his head; the house of his skull was airy and light.

“I do remember your unpredictable flights of fancy,” Curvo said. His eyes were wide, his face was masked. “This is surely one of them and, as I do recall, I rarely know what caused it, or what comes next.”

Where Finrod’s fingers had pressed into his skin, Curvo’s cheeks were turning red. Now, as if he had not noticed immediately that he had had his hand in the fire, Finrod’s fingers began tingling. Curvo, losing his composure for a moment, looked at Finrod’s mouth. To Finrod, the moment felt long.

He wants you, said a voice in his head. He wants you, and you could convince him to have you now if you tried. But Finrod recognized that voice as what he affectionately referred to as ‘a Sauron’. He had become quite familiar with how a Sauron works while in the old Necromancer’s care. A Sauron is the voice that urges one to ignore the consequences of an action for fleeting results, or, worse, ignore the effect it would have on someone else. Now, Finrod correctly identified this Sauron as really himself, using Sauronish tactics; all the same, he mentally gave it the same treatment that all Saurons in his vicinity received: He tore out its throat with his teeth.

Who would be served by such a thing? No one but you, old wolf. Instead, Finrod put effort into pulling himself back. “I will better explain myself! I have been slow recently. I just now became happy to see you. After I became aware, as you said, that I do not forgive you, and cannot force it. Now I am genuinely quite glad you’re here; I do not know what happens next.”

“Oh!” said Curvo, and broke away, physically turning from Finrod so they no longer looked at each other. “Here is another thing that has not changed! Your tendency to yank people around based on how you feel in the moment.”

“The moods may change, they do return! I am no different from a clock.”

“Time flies! You had just admitted you had not forgiven me, and now you are happy to see me.”

“I am both. I have not forgotten the past, and I am glad to have you anyway. Now that I see I’m still angry I see I am still happy as well.”

“Ingo!”

“When you dig up dirt, you get worms as well as treasures.”

“This is intolerable; you have to go.”

“Then I will!” Finrod responded. “I do not outstay a welcome in another man’s house.” He took a step, then stopped. “Though you, dark cousin, are still welcome in the house of Felagund. I am decided. Though—I refuse to stack more grief on your wife. I wouldn’t have you visit me without her consent.”

Curvo’s head snapped back to him. The flush on his cheeks deepened. “Do not presume to know what happens between me and my wife!” he snapped. He was not playing a game or testing Finrod; he was angry. “Do not consider her, and do not concern yourself with her consent.”

“That is too much to ask of me.”

“It was not too much to ask of me when you forbid me Amarie’s presence entirely! I have the right to do the same under the same conditions. You bother her; do not see her again.”

Finrod fought over his next words; his feelings clashed, the clarity of a few moments ago gone like a glimmer on the sea. “Indeed she is your wife! And a person.”

“No, you cannot hear it from her. Get gone, son of Finarfin. I will call on you again; I shall be the one to let you know when.”

Why did you have to bring his wife into this? Why? You stupid man. Of course, he had only wanted to fairly consider everyone in the equation; he tended to do foolish things like that. “I am gone! Only–through which door? You locked both.”

“Vexing–” said Curvo, and bit back whatever noun was supposed to follow that adjective. Finrod had a few guesses. He crossed to the door through which he had come and unlocked it. “See yourself out!” 

Naturally, despite his words, Curvo did not budge from his place next to the door, forcing Finrod to walk within arm’s reach of him to leave. He got there and paused; Curvo glowered down at him.

“Well?” Curvo asked.

“Oh,” Finrod said, surprised, “I thought you’d want to finish your insult!”

Curvo made a noise in his throat, which Finrod understood as surprise, because it was a noise he usually made when pleased. They were close enough that he was able to lean into Finrod’s face when he said, “Vexing little cocksucker!” and pushed him out.

-

Finrod found himself at the gate of Formenos, where he had wandered after demanding several things from various passers-by (including his horse, which he had again now). The last of them was waiting patiently beside him: someone who could take a message to his house for him.

Finrod borrowed a piece of paper and ink (he had a feather-pen on him), and stood against the wall to write out the following:

Dearest Amarie,

 

I have learned today that I am a very stupid man. I am going now to visit my sister, who can hopefully fix me as a person. 

 

My love, 

Finrod Ingoldo

He folded it and wrote his address on the outside; as he did not live in a town, the address involved directions by star-navigation that took up more room than the missive, but the messenger was comfortable with it. Finrod paid him for the ink and the time and then bid him farewell as he himself returned to leaning against the wall of Formenos to think.

He had meant what he said, he was settled in that regard. But he had expected very little of it, which was a problem.

Amarie had cautioned him to look for the intent in his own speech. He saw mixed intention in his own speech; he saw the vacillations of a man who was reacting to what was said to him, like an echoing valley. He saw how carefully he had been walking on eggshells, afraid to mention Celegorm, afraid to mention Celebrimbor, afraid to mention Nargothrond, afraid to mention their relationship; anything. Instead he had said what he thought would keep Curvo present and speaking to him, and had let himself turn all around to keep it happening. No wonder Curvo couldn’t follow him! They had been following each other.

He saw the words of someone who wanted the other person in the room very badly. And he was now beginning to feel very angry with him, now that he could see his face in his mind’s eye, smell the whisper of jasmine perfume under his shirt. Now that Curvo wasn’t in front of him, he could see Curvo’s sneer in the darkness; hear his voice denouncing him as a spineless and pathetic excuse for a King, a liar and traitor who would throw his kingdom into flames for some man, a kin-hating and man-loving little cocksucker. The Curvo who had gotten his claws into him to tear up his home was within him; the one with gentle jasmine perfume still seemed to cling to him. He turned like a clock; bright noon, dark midnight, uncertain twilight, rising dawn, old anger, compulsion, love for his kin, bitterness, fascination. He would hardly want a conversation with himself in this state.

“Galadriel,” he repeated, firmly. He looked to his mare. “You hear me?”

As always, she regarded him with patient, equine compassion.

((you have to explain trans gil-galad before the next chapter, unless you split the next two up.))

–

((6: Some Heirs of Finarfin (Sub: She’s Everything, He’s Just Celeborn)))

Galadriel lived in a town which had been established a little after the end of the second age, largely by veterans of the Last Alliance. Finrod was fond of it himself; there was a community feeling there, generally fondness for one’s fellow despite people differences, and general appreciation for humankind. That was in the foothills of the south, looking toward the sea; comfortable for those who had long been in Middle-Earth and liked to think on it. Galadriel and Celeborn lived on the outskirts of that town; then again, everyone lived on the outskirts of that town, which was spacious, and forested, and couldn’t really be said to have a proper town center, unless the hill with the long hall counted.

Finrod went straight out of Formenos to there, which was a trip of three or four or five days, depending on how difficult a mountain passage you chose. He took the long way, and attempted to sort, or at least categorize, the mess he would be presenting to his sister. The sunrises had no impediment as he passed through the peaks, they turned all the world around him into glowing gold, so bright it turned the horizon into a paper silhouette, and the eagles that wheeled around distant Taniquetil into floating dandelion-puffs.

(It was on his final night in the mountains, resting alongside a diamond-clear mountain stream, an extra night he could have avoided if he had taken the direct path, that his sleep was troubled by a dream. The prince who so vexed him clung to his chest that night in a dream of times past; caves featured, the rims of dark caverns, holes, and Curvo’s clever hands curling into them.)

To reach his sister and law-brother’s house, he rode over winding lanes that circled around homestead after homestead, bounced over rivers, dove sometimes into thickly treed places, which convinced one that they had gone back into the woods until the sight of another smoking chimney or sloped roof  flickered through a gap in the leaves. The one he sought did not stand out from the rest; he knew it first by what felt like a wind that whisked around him, through his hair and through his mind; his sister’s distant greeting. He followed it to a house of small height but good, sprawling length, curling stone arches and balconies that were twined with the limbs of trees around them, coiling into each other. The sounds of a flock of birds, many species, hooted and cawed and chirped form its leafy bowers, and a thin tributary of that same mountain-river ran over a water-wheel and through the center of the house to fill the pipes and the baths, and a terraced garden grew thick with vines and budding peach trees out front, and a man with a sword was running screaming out the front door at Finrod. 

Finrod also screamed and drew his sword. He slid off the mare (or fell off of the mare, but landed on his feet) and just barely blocked Angrod’s initial vicious stroke. Angrod assaulted him with burning fervor; Finrod was forced onto his back foot once, and then twice, but with quick thought and quicker hand was able to disarm his brother. He held him for a moment at the point of his sword; then he dropped both and lunged at him.

Angrod wasted no time getting him into a headlock, and they both fell into the vines while assaulting each other. Finrod was dirt-covered and scraped all the way down his arms and legs in a matter of minutes, but he was so focused on getting Angrod’s head in the dirt that he really didn’t notice. Angrod got a good hit on his cheek, but he wasn’t paying attention.

They had squabbled their way back out of the garden and into the path as the lord and lady of the house appeared, descending down the front steps. Finrod tried to pause to greet them, but Angrod, who was a bastard, punched him in the neck, and they both went down again.

“I wasn’t aware that you had gotten a pair of puppies!” Finrod heard Celeborn say as he pinned Angrod’s arm behind his back.

“Look closer,” said Galadriel, “these are my lordly elder brothers.”

“Hello Galadriel! Hello Celeborn!” Finrod said, using considerable strength (and the dead weight of his entire body) to keep Angrod down. “Angrod’s here!!”

“He was quite pleased when I told him you were on your way!” Galadriel smiled.

“I am going to get you!” Angrod informed Finrod from the ground.

“Ha ha! No you’re not,” Finrod counter-proposed, and they resumed their greeting of each other with such enthusiasm that Galadriel actually made them bathe and brush their hair before they could come inside. As they were bathing (which technically brought them inside, but only about halfways, as again, a creek went through the center of the house), Finrod found out that Angrod’s wife Eldalote was in residence as well when she threw fresh clothing at them through a window and Angrod yelled “Thank you, love!”

She laughed at him, her giggles fading with her steps.

I miss Andreth, thought Finrod, an unfair thought that always came across his mind when he visited Angrod and Eldalote. I miss Aegnor. I could have waited ten thousand years at the gate of death to see Balan again, but I chose not. If his spirit ever lingered for me, it did not find me.

He shook off the ungracious thought, dressed himself, and braided his still-wet hair roughly, a travel-braid, good enough for family. Angrod grabbed his shoulder to steer him inside; he pinched it and Finrod elbowed him.

Eventually, they made it to dinner, which as always was mostly prepared by Finrod’s law-brother and fantastic, and while delicately not touching on the Balrog in the room yet Galadriel informed Finrod of the absolute eccentricities of the situation that had formed around Elrond trying to establish ties with his foster-father Maglor while being respectful to his blood parents and extended family (which, see earlier notes, was secretly the same family disguised as several), the whole of which was so marvelously complex that Finrod had actually lost the details she began which by the time she had reached the end, and eventually all he could say was, “By the Valar!” and “By the Valier!” to everything. She finished the story with, “On top of that literally everyone knows that you and Curufin have been meeting in private and I have seen a few that appear to be literally dying to know what’s happening; shall we move on to drinks and dessert?”

Finrod said, “Oh, do you have those little tarts again?” and they did, because at that point it was known that he required the little tarts when he visited.

–

Finrod approached the evening like a siege, and in the end, he was victorious. He was aggressively and strategically evasive, air-headed, distracted, and whatever he had to be until he finally found himself in a situation where everyone else had given up and taken their leave except for himself and Galadriel, him on his third cup of melomel and her about five bowls of grapes and wild strawberries in. When the last had given up and drifted away, and their steps had faded out of earshot, Galadriel raised her eyebrows at Finrod, and he responded, “Well, it’s not anyone’s business, and I came here to speak with you.”

At that, he finished his cup, and felt it slosh between his ears a little.

Galadriel leaned forward to him, her eye-crinkling smile on her face, a tiny wild strawberry caught between two of her long fingernails. “I’m honored!”

“You deserve it! There’s no one better at getting someone’s head put back on right than you. You’re also handy with taking them off, making you an expert in the whole process.”

“Have you gotten your head on backwards again, dear brother?”

“Spinning in circles!” he said, and stood to pour himself more mead. They were out on a porch in the back of Galadriel’s house; from the thin, stone-flowered pillars, all one could see was birds and trees. One of Galadriel’s exotics hopped from chair to chair, and a sweating pitcher of melomel on a low serving-table was now nearly at its dregs. “I need your help; I’m playing with the rest of my life.”

“Portents, omens, visions unaccounted for?” she asked hopefully.

“None; a few might actually be welcome. No, I meant it when I said I was playing with my life, and those of the ones dearest to me, of course, and I doubt there is any higher spirit interested enough in my entanglements to tie some fate around them. Well,” he said, and paused after he set the depleted pitcher back down.

“Well,” Galadriel repeated; with a sense of finality, those his had been a question.

“Why did they do it?” he asked.

“Who, and what?”

“The powers; giving us back the sons of Feanor,” Finrod said. He paused, his drink in his hand, looking into the dark, where unseen insects rustled and chirped. “I have been musing on it only lightly. I hadn’t gotten too far into it. I knew I didn’t know enough about it. But the question had become slowly unavoidable.”

“To you.”

“To me! To a few, I’m sure, though I haven’t sat down with whoever is surely to have puzzled it all out by now.”

“Who might that be?”

“Aunt Nerdanel, without a doubt. As you can imagine, however, the thought of sitting down with her currently gives me the shakes.”

“Why is that?”

“That’s skipping ahead. No, I have only been musing on it teasingly, on the edges of my mind. Why? We were told we were not getting them back. My impression was that the ‘eternal darkness’ would be eternal. Curufin has another theory on it which I will not repeat because I find it terrifying in an impressively concentrated manner.”

“Really.”

“With one ounce, you could terrify a whole city.” Finrod returned to his seat; he leaned back and looked to the sky instead of Galadriel. Clouds concealed half the sky; the brightness of the moon made them silver. “He does not have a theory about why they were returned, or he did not give it to me. It doesn’t really feel right. None of them were healed; they were simply in the mouth of death, at the threshold of the gate, and then spat back out, essentially unchanged.”

“That cannot be so,” Galadriel countered. “I have seen their faces, and they are, in visage, healed.”

“And the visage represents something,” Finrod agreed. “I can recognize that this is not, exactly, the man I turned my back on in my final day in Nargothrond. The change is subtle, and I don’t know exactly what it is. Mere time? I believe he had some awareness of it. The banishment of his Oath? It is gone.”

“How do you know?”

“Please, it’s been nearly a year and no one is dead.”

“Proof in fact.”

“Exactly. Now, it was specifically stated that the return of Feanor means we have a couple days to pack up before everything is undone. I have wondered if this represents a step toward that; a set of seven harbingers to make us aware that the One is taking the first steps to shutter all the doors and windows. If so, why quietly, why suddenly, without clarity, like a letter slipped under a door? Why send it as a whisper to Celebrimbor, why pour them into the veins of Aman like fish in rivers, one here, one there, resembling visitors, not warriors? No byrnies, no swords. It does not feel like the end of things, it feels like I finally found that embroidery needle that fell behind the seat some years ago and disappeared.”

“One may then conclude that they are not warnings of some dread final battle.”

“No. They were returned just like anyone else, which is exactly what feels odd. I persist in trying to treat it like a normal return, but that has proven consistently difficult for me.”

“Has it?”

Finrod took a long drink of the melomel; the sharp sourness of the blackberries was just discernible beneath the sweetness. “One more thing before I get into it. It is the fact that they are not healed which bothers me. Changed, but not fully healed, not in the way the rest of us were, barring such illustrious persons that needed no healing in death in the first place.”

“Such paragons!”

“Yes. No, Namo did not fix them; Namo did not touch them, as they were not in his halls. The work has to be done; the work was given to us. I have decided to take it as a compliment: the great powers which guide us have looked upon the peoples and have appraised us, after many long ages, and everything we have done, to be capable again of good deeds, sufficient to do the work of healing; good enough. Good enough to have our cousins returned. Good enough to fix them. Good enough to take care of it. It is my task, then, to be a good enough person for the work itself; Galadriel, I am in shambles.”

“Oh, no!” she said, and ate a strawberry.

Finrod finally turned his head to look at her; she was seated as comfortably as a cat in a wide wicker chair, her legs off of the side, her braids falling down the back. He smiled at her a while, enjoying her comfort. “No,” he finally said, “I am in indecision, and half-effective, and it bothers me.”

“This is serious. When did you observe yourself being imperfect, my brother?”

“Oh,” said Finrod, and hunted for something to throw at her. He found, eventually, a fallen leaf, and threw it as best he could. It had absolutely no effect. “I will tell you exactly when! In every moment in which I have interacted with Curufin, and all of the times in-between as well.”

“I have heard a little of it,” Galadriel said. “From Turgon, who witnessed an interaction which left a sour taste in his mouth; from Maglor, also, who had been my guest a few times.”

“Yes, because of your law-son’s persistence in making life difficult for everyone else; he has my blessing for the endeavor.”

“Elrond ever chose the hard and honest path. Likewise, you always choose the hard and joyful, an option that others often struggle to see without your guidance.”

“It is plain to me! Listen; in the presence of our cousin, I spin like a broken wheel.”

“Rather, the axle would be broken, if the wheel still spins, but freely.”

“Thank the Valar you are here for me. He began by trying to menace my wife in her house, mere days after returning. He caught me the next day; I felt a visitor in my own body, which felt for itself emotions of sour and bitter complexity which last I saw run as wine on the grave-mounds of battle. We chased each other and kept missing, shooting calling-cards and notes, leaving arrows with our names on them with go-betweens, and the longer it went on the closer I came to feeling the thrill of the hunt. In meeting him on the road, beside Turgon, I felt that we were easily communicating with eyes, letting each other know ‘not now’, ‘stop that’, ‘that’s too far,’ ‘that was a mistake’. He has won back his Tanaquine; he may now have lost her again, because I know for a fact that she has learned that I have mocked her marriage.”

“I would have arguments, but go on.”

“What, that we had both already broken the trust of our beloveds independently before we did again with each other? I do not know if she knows that, but she does know about me. I met him in his house; little house in Formenos, doesn’t even look like him yet. Tanaquine met me at the door like a dead woman, and nearly refused me entry, I think. Curufin and I spoke alone…”

He paused. He watched a moon-silver moth waltz around the light that came from a candle inside Galadriel’s house, the light that his glass refracted and turned around. He drank.

“I began it just right, Galadriel. I apologized. It makes Amarie roll her eyes at me, but I know I did wrong to him. When he–did I tell you the whole of it, all of what he told me about his life in Beleriand?”

“You told me there were things you would not tell me, because it was not your story to tell.”

“Do I have to be so damned conscientious? I had better stick with it. He was vulnerable, and there were things I should not have done. I wanted to apologize to him, and for Tanaquine, and what happened was he convinced me that I didn’t really want to apologize to him, and that in fact I was very angry with him, and I believe he’s right. He found the doorhandle on my head and opened it; now I feel feelings I had left in a trunk somewhere under my bed at Nargothrond and hadn’t picked up since. A dozen of them at least, all at once. Many of them are bad feelings, you know. They shouldn’t be here. No use for this life. I also feel like I must do that again, sometimes soon. I feel like someone scrubbed the rust off of me. Of course I have also become smaller and duller as the rust grew, and that is unpleasant to realize. He called me a stupid cocksucker. He thanked me for paying some mind to Celebrimbor, then told me about how he’s been in the torture of nonexistence for a few thousand years and feels completely unreformed, then I felt like I loved him and said I was happy to see him, he considered slapping me, then I stupidly brought up his wife and he threw me out. He says he’ll find me next which means I can’t really plan my outfit.”

“I see,” Galadriel said.

“Do you? That’s such a relief. Explain it to me.”

“Fear not; I have your prescription. To know the dosage, however, I need the answer to one question.”

“We can only hope that I have it. Hold a moment; I’ll drink again, perhaps it will help.”

Galadriel waited with a smile as he drank half his glass. Once he swallowed, she said, “Do you still desire to lay with him?”

Finrod made a noise of surprise and misery, a noise that stuck in his throat. He covered his eyes with one hand, and squeezed them shut underneath. After a minute, eyes shut, he said “Yes.”

“Then! Yes, younger brother, if you want it of me, I can plan the rest of your life out for you decently. Of course, if you’d rather do it yourself, you can stand up and go forth.”

“No, no, you do it.”

“I still will give you two choices.”

“Damn. If you have to.”

“First: the advice I will not give you. This would be the rational and best advice for almost anyone. You, however, cannot follow it, so I only mention it as an example of what you must not do.”

“Please.”

“Go slow. Be careful with him and encourage him to take his time and think things through. You have eternity ahead of you: ponder and contemplate, take your time as you decide what it is you truly what to be for each other, what will fulfill you both.”

“I did not come here, necessarily, to be insulted,” Finrod informed his sister, lifting his hand off of his eyes and staring up at the stars. “It’s simply a kindly service that your good house provides.”

“Those are the things which I advise you not to do, as it is impossible for you, and you would hurt both yourself and everyone around you in the attempt.”

“Fortunately, you preempted your statement with that warning, so, you did not have to say it again.”

“I wanted to be content that you understood,” she smiled. “So: your choices.”

“My choices! Good. Should I prepare to hate both?”

“Yes. The first choice, and, surely you should be prepared to hear this: no.”

“No.”

“No. You say no, the next time you see him, promptly, and immediately. No. This was a mistake. I cannot forgive, nor forget. There is nothing good to be had between us. Then you part, and remain parted, permanently. It will take strength from you, and develop strength in you. You will be proud of what you find in yourself once your weakness is refined, and you make up in your mind a steel you thought you could not longer forge.”

Finrod nodded.

He had been expecting to hear that. Hearing it felt like he was standing upon the cliff of a canyon; the choice was dire, and compelling. “And the other choice?”

Galadriel paused until he looked at her. “Let’s see,” she said; “What could the other choice be.”

Finrod covered his eyes and groaned again. “Oh, Galadriel.”

“Yes.”

“Galadriel.”

“But this is no simple turn of the coin, because it comes with a requirement.”

“From you?”

“Yes, from me. Finrod, if you make the choice to extend your hand instead of pulling it back, I require one thing of you. And this is serious, and I will hold you to it.”

“What is that?”

“You will be selfish,” she said. “You will be selfish and demanding, forward and uncompromising. You are hungry to be selfless; you are considering what part of yourself and your life to give up with him. You are wondering what piece of yours fits in his emptiness and if you can go without it. It is your pattern; you have never burst free of it. If you want to live with Curufinwe Atarince–not have him, but live with him, as I presume you want a solution to your problem that stands the steep test of time we are all faced with here–you will break this pattern for the first time, whatever it takes. You will keep that piece of yourself, you will not sacrifice it. You will stake territory and keep it. You will demand the things you want and not bend if he fails to produce them. You will not find a way to excuse his behavior, you will demand a change for it. If you have in the end found a Curufinwe you can live with–live, my brother, who I lost once already, driven to his death and apologizing as he went–then that we be one we can all live with too, and so the better will be everyone for it. And just as you would gain from the last one in steel and self-esteem, from this choice you would have gain as well: the things which you want, on your times, without the creeping and ever-growing sensation that you have bargained your pride and your honesty for it.

“It would be nice to know him,” she added, quieter, to the side. “He does have a chance to be his own person, if he’d like to try.

Finrod’s heart was in his throat; his stomach was empty. “These are terrible choices.”

“You have forgotten just now, because you are full of love in the moment. You have asked me what to do with a significant danger. Refuse it, or face it. The thing you cannot do is lie down for it; and you are incapable, again, of slowly figuring out how to harmonically weave your lives together over the course of centuries, so don’t even think about it.”

“I wasn’t, I was thinking up late retorts while I bathed. Galadriel, how the hell do I pick between those things?”

“If I know you, you know already. If that fails, ask your wife. She’ll be happy to decide.”

–

((7: a largely non-symbolic construction project))

Finrod laid awake in the night. That happened often enough, and when once again the time came to him that he could not sleep and instead laid awake circling thoughts which once circled and nothing else, he would, inevitably, give in to the urge his people felt to make something about it. Out of respect for his sister, he restrained himself from building something on her land and from digging a hole in her garden like a dog; instead he went a ways into the woods where nothing really belonged to anyone and started both digging and building there.

Surely, having observed his brother and half-brother bearing sons who loved writing and the art of poetry, crafting jewels and circlets and cloak-clasps, or the making of lovely little things, Finarfin had began child-rearing expecting something other than an elf who at all times felt, sometimes distant and sometimes pressing, the need to go out into the yard and build a gazebo. Finrod was usually repressing that urge, but the effort to instead repress his thoughts had made that untenable. He had completely laid out the foundation by the time anyone found him, nearing sunset the next day.

He assumed Galadriel wasn’t trying, because she surely already knew where he was and what he was doing.

“Hail,” said Celeborn.

“Hail, law-brother,” said Finrod, underneath the edge of the foundation he had just laid, checking the grains of the 144 identically shaped tessellating wooden boards he had just put down on the sub-floor, making sure that their grains were at perfect cross-hatch with each other before he chose how to put the floor on top of them.

“I came to invite you to dinner, but I see you are busy,” said Celeborn, who Finrod knew well enough to tell that he was having a laugh at him, even though he did literally nothing to indicate that. (If he were not amused, he would have just walked away without a word.)

“While I appreciate the invitation and probably should eat, yes, I have to be absolutely certain I have completely aligned every single grain in this structure before I do anything else.”

“Ah. Then attend to the left side; there is a cross-section of wood at a quite unharmonious angle, or so I regard it myself.”

Finrod cursed under his breath and attended to the left side immediately. It was only after Celeborn’s steps began to quietly drift away that he realized he had just been played, and moreover, that Celeborn had only got away with playing him because he was so archer-focused on his work, and he was only so focused on his work because he was trying to not think about his ex-lover’s body, which was fit as a horse but thin and straight and limber as a pale birch tree.

Celeborn returned to Galadriel to, no doubt, inform her that unfortunately, her brother was covered in dirt again. Finrod focused on his work, a structure no one asked for, for a purpose unknown, to stand in the woods until some unknown future contrivance gave it use.

--

Eldalote appeared about a day later, with a parcel of way-bread (bad sign) and a cup of hot tea, which Finrod accepted and began drinking without a word.

They both admired the nascent structure; the skeleton of the six walls were stood up, rib-like interlocking branches, carved not with complex Noldorin designs but simple Edain luck-knots and staves. Finrod had started idly thinking of the designs that Haleth’s people would crave into their posts and eaves for luck, often on quick, temporary buildings, the dwellings of refugees and wanderers, and was now replicating that art on purpose.

“It’s well-done,” she esteemed.

“Halathrin designs,” Finrod said, and drank some more tea. Hot, spiced with nutmeg and clove and cinnamon, and attention to his taste that spoke of at least one of his siblings. Probably Galadriel.

Eldalote hummed in affirmation. She would know, she had spent plenty of time with Edain before she and her husband both perished in the battle of flame, him on the back of his horse and her slain cruelly when the tents of healing were torched by dragon-fire. “Marks of harmony and peace between brothers. Nothing asking for safety from war or from fire, thought. They would know it was made in peace-time.”

“So it is.”

“Would be good for a wedding.”

“Hm.” Yes, it would. He had just been making the marks that felt appropriate, but he could see it now packed with an Edain bride and groom, both red-dressed and strung with bells, covered by one gold-beaded veil, their parents and kinfolk crowded in behind them. “Were you sent to check up on me?”

“’See if he’s still at it, Eldalote.’ And so he is.”

“I’m hardly going to leave it unfinished.”

“No, no one thinks you would. Is it for anything?”

“At the moment? For something to smack with a hammer that does not feel pain.”

Eldalote looked at him with arched-browed judgement. “Look who’s regressing! We don’t do that here, Felagund.”

“Yes. That’s currently the problem I am facing. The things we don’t do here.”

“I’ll let everyone know you are absolutely still at it.”

“Moreso, I think.”

“Eat the way-bread.”

He did. Eldalote treated him to a little inane conversation and took her leave. Finrod looked his half-made creation over, its runes of happiness and fortune and kinship, its simple and plain-hearted design, the large and simple shapes that reminded him of the men he had so loved. Ephemeral, flashing in brilliance, forever gone to him. He had to keep himself from clutching at any scrap that reminded him of them, he had been a menace to Tuor on too many occasions to count. He had been made, he once thought, to be a friend to men, an essentially unfair thing to be made to be. He had had to become a person who rejoiced in losing things and never getting them back, a connoisseur of the beauty of impermanence.

He had reconstructed himself for permanence, to enjoy a wife and children and their children and their children’s children forever (whenever such things as children’s children came). Now he had to miss those old things forever, an endless, low note, instead of the quick and merry true of men and the kingdoms of men rising, falling, rising, falling, rising, falling.

‘The steep test of time,’ Galadriel had put it. To either say no, permanently, or yes, permanently. That should have felt natural to him. That was supposed to feel natural to him. When he thought about Curvo he felt the urge to push and pull, push and pull, to contest, to fall before or behind, surprised by the changes, vexed and confounded and turned around, to be imbalanced, to be at odds.

That was not supposed to feel natural to him. It was not tenable, it was not balanced, it could not be maintained forever, it was not good.

--

“Nearly there! Looks great,” Gil-Galad complimented him.

“Gil-Galad!” Finrod shouted, and quickly got down form the freshly finished rafters, where he was putting down ribs for the roof. He rushed over to Gil-Galad and clasped his hand.

Gil-Galad firmly grasped his hand and pulled him forward. They embraced and then pulled back. Gil-Galad, of course, had no reaction at all to Finrod’s generally earthy state. “When did you get here?” Finrod asked.

“Just now,” he smiled. “Grandfather sent a note that you were ‘present and being very funny,’ and I reflected that that sounded nice, and I really wasn’t doing anything.”

That was a lie if he ever heard one. The High King of Ages was always doing five things at any given time, but doing them all slowly, consideringly, methodically. He was certainly doing them all in his head right now, under his thought, ponderously, and faultlessly correctly. (Finrod loved him.) Many of his once-subjects answered to Arafinwe only in name and Finrod fully understood why. “Such a tragedy that you have to refer to Angrod as grandfather. It is, however, very sweet of him to make sure to call in as many family members as possible while I am struggling so that all can watch and be amused.”

Gil-Galad nodded, a fond expression on his face. “Grandfather has a way of spreading joy!”

“A very particular way!”

“Come, uncle; let me help you with the roof,” Gil-Galad said.

There was absolutely no point in refusing his help. Gil-Galad was going to find a way to help, and if you refused his first offer, he would find a way to help on his own time, and normally in a more effusive way. “Please, but forgive me if I get touchy or defensive; I have adopted this structure as my child right now, and therefore—"

“I am aware of what a ‘Noldo’ is,” Gil-Galad responded, perfectly even, which made Finrod laugh.

They worked through the day together, one on the ground and one on the roof, passing up boards, fixing jambs, discussing design ideas; Gil-Galad was so excellently unobtrusive that Finrod never did feel touchy or defensive, or put-upon in any way, since Gil-Galad, unlike many who would hide their judgement under seeming or quietly disagree, genuinely thought that whatever way the designer felt was best was best. Gil-Galad would never try to take the project away from him or make it his own, his goal was to help the architect realize the structure, as it always had been.

If he wanted the crown, Father would be helpless, he thought, though then again, returned High Kings had never failed to be completely relieved that they were not High King anymore. The only one who would fight him for it, they were not getting back.

He believed.

Well, he thought grimly, we do have Curufinwe, in a manner of speaking. In his mind’s eye he saw the glimmer of Feanor’s jewels on Curvo’s fingers.

“You have taken a turn melancholy,” said Gil-Galad, potentially one of the most sensitive and attuned Elda the powers had ever made. He did not have the gift many of his kin had for working his will, but he could read those of others as easy as his own.

“How many ‘turns melancholy’ have you felt in the past year, I wonder?” Finrod asked.

“A thousand, and I’ve had my own. I missed them as well.”

Missed them! Many people had tried to commiserate with the anger and betrayal Finrod felt, sometimes the anger and betrayal they assumed he felt. Gil-Galad felt and knew that it was the happiness that Finrod felt more strongly and which worried him more sorely. “In your many millennia, and after the many you lost, how much did you truly miss them?”

“Not so often after three thousand years, no, but I wasn’t missing the same ones.”

“No?”

“Many centuries of knowing my uncle Maglor was out there, and that he needed help, seeing him ever only as a glimpse and being ever completely unable to help him. That was always a trial.”

“Especially with Elrond at your side,” Finrod assumed.

“His pain was mine,” Gil-Galad said simply. “Not that I forgot yours.”

Finrod humphed. “I hope you didn’t forget the pain of Beren, or of Celebrimbor, or of, oh, your father Orodreth either.”

“Now you’re being stubborn! Your pain is not less true than my father’s because you also loved them, and he only hated them. Nor is it less true than Celebrimbor’s just because you wear it more lightly.”

Finrod was surprised by and unhappy with a very sharp, sudden drop in his mood. He covered his eyes, and Gil-Galad waited for him to collect himself. Finrod thought quite a few things, all quick, sharp, and stabbing, but the one he eventually vocalized was, “I’m very worried about Celegorm. I know that’s not exactly… the most popular opinion. Seeing as he’s a… what was it?”

“Dangerous maniac.”

“Yes. Always was. No. Not always. Not always. He was, and potentially still is, but he was never happy about it. He wasn’t enjoying it.”

“I remember.”

“I haven’t forgotten what he did. I know he did it. I also know that he hated it, and likely enjoyed it while he hated it, and where do I go with that? Where do I take this? Everyone hates them, justifiably. Most fear them. Amarie does. Where do I take this?”

Gil-Galad hummed consideringly, holding one hand under his chin. “Uncle, have you tried talking about this, with anyone?”

“No, who would I talk about this with?” Finrod asked with a sheer sheen of frustration in his voice, sliding back off of the roof and onto the leaf-strewn ground. “Frankly, who can take it?”

Gil-Galad hummed again, raising his eyebrows.

Finrod put his hands on his waist and stared at him.

Gil-Galad stared back.

“Fine, but I won’t like it,” Finrod said.

--

One hour later, wiping the tears from under his eyes, Finrod said, “I think you should be the King.”

“People often say that as a way to thank me,” Gil-Galad noted. They were both inside the nearly-finished gazebo, looking up at the ceiling with a few dozen tiny slivers of light still coming in between the board. “I find it a weird way to say ‘thank you’ when you could say ‘thank you.’”

“Thank you,” said Finrod.

“Uncle,” Gil-Galad said, a portentous emptiness in his voice that reminded Finrod of his sister, “You already know this, but I think it’s worth saying out loud. You have been hurt very badly.”

“Oh, I know,” Finrod sighed, “I was hurt badly millennia ago and I am so tired of having been hurt badly. It is a boring thing, and does not change. I am tired of being a thing which does not change,” he interrupted himself fiercely. “You know what I was most upset, kinsman, in the past millennia?”

“No, when?”

“When we received the joyful news that Sauron the Defiler had finally been destroyed. And I had been here, lawfully and patiently abiding the rule of the Valar that I live in Aman from now to the breaking of the world, blissfully happy instead of fighting. Gil-Galad?”

“Yes?”

“If they had given you the option to go back,” he asked, “the option to go back and fight, to put steel to the enemy who, though I need not mention, killed us both, would you have done it?”

“The temptation of both answers is strong, which I need not tell you,” Gil-Galad said. “To return to the lands we love, or to remain with the peoples we love; though not all of them. To dare to disobey the Valar again, but to feel like you are fighting against evil again!”

“I know.”

“No, I would not. But, if Tulkas had dragged Sauron around Aman offering free shots, yes, of course, I’d seek to break a cheekbone or bloody his lip.”

“Ha!” Finrod laughed. “Why didn’t he?”

“Sauron was frustratingly incorporeal in later years. Nothing to punch.”

“Weasels. Always doing things like ‘being incorporeal’ or ‘no longer existing in this plane’ instead of squaring up for a real fight.”

“Kinsman.”

“Yes.”

“Fight him.”

Finrod paused. “Curufinwe?”

“Yes. He’s been a shadow on your shoulders for ages. A wraith. Your haunt. You can give him a fight now. Give him a fight.”

“I’ve been told a thousand times that’s not how we do things here. Sometimes by you!”

“Does he know that?”

“Gil-Galad! And he certainly does, he was born here.”

“No, I am joking,” Gil-Galad said with a little smile, “and yet I am not. How to say it? I’ve seen a few of them, and like you observed, they are not fully healed. Or healed much at all, in a few cases.”

“I have questions about what I’ve seen of Maedhros.”

“Hm. It would be a terrible idea in most cases, because it wouldn’t help anyone. I don’t mean you should brawl—we all used to duel, to keep sharp, and while the flash of blades disturbs those who were never exiled, there are many styles of dueling that never draw blood.”

“Not if done right, no.”

“And it would be—that ‘something you’re not supposed to do’, wouldn’t it? Which is what you want to be doing.”

“What!”

“Generally,” Gil-Galad said with a half-smile.

“I must come to this house to be insulted. There is no other explanation,” Finrod continued, and their talk was lighter until Gil-Galad went on his way.

--

Finrod finished the structure and then went back to laying down in it, its now-complete roof blocking the light of the stars from him, so that he laid under shadow instead.

How can it be right? He asked himself. This was the deathless place, the place free from violence and strife—unless they brought it. He had watched thousands of good warriors finally come back into the wholeness of their selves now that the need to do violence was gone. He had seen the utter relief of the ones who had thought it would never end, the ones whose cairns he had sobbed over, promising them he had meant better, apologizing that it had not been better.

Through generally difficult and even hurtful reunions, reconciliations, and differences the returned had managed to keep the peace of Aman, to find the courage and strength to lay down their swords, be defenseless, and find the ability to nurture and create and grow again within themselves. Was he truly the one who would break that peace? Could he endure it?

--

Finrod was on the ground, with fresh bruises pressed against the hardwood floor he had just lovingly crafted. Angrod had his arm around his neck and his face pressed to the ground, and now matter what he did to try to buck him off, it was clear Finrod had lost this one.

He slumped to the ground and then, non sequitur, began to whine. “I just don’t understand, Angrod.”

“Easy. You may be faster, but I am bigger and stronger, and generally better. Younger, you are ‘pettier’ but whether that’s a good thing is a matter of taste…”

“How can I want to hurt someone?” he asked morosely. “How can I still have so much hate in me?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Curufin,” he sighed, the sort of sigh that one heaves when they’re talking about their fucking ex again.

“Oh, Tulkas’ sake, Ingo.”

“You don’t have to tell me that he’s a spirit of malice that has done awful, awful things. I know. It’s understandable that I’m bitter. But how can I want to do violence to him? How can I want to hurt him?”

“Ingo.”

“I bring violence into this beautiful world,” Finrod sighed straight into the ground.

“Damn. Ingo. I have your head in a chokehold, right now, and my elbow in your back.”

“Hurts a little.”

“Yes. I am still your brother, and I still love you.”

Finrod struggled to use his brain.

“Ingo. Please, Valar. Let him think. I fight you every time I see you. We have a ‘relationship’ called ‘being brothers’ which involves ‘violence’ because of our ‘unique exilic culture.’ Which is normal for us, and it’s actually irrelevant that it’s not normal for, like, passerby Vanyar who swoon when they see a hangnail. Sorry you’re such a ((homosexual,)) I can’t help you with that part, but today I give you the gift of stressing about one less thing: Aman will not sink back into the ocean if you throw a punch. All that will happen is that Curufinwe will get a black eye, which sounds great.”

The light turned on in Finrod’s head. “Oh,” he said.

((wouldn’t it be cool if like. I mean you know how Finrod takes in Celegorm and Curufin like right after the battle where he lost both of his brothers? Wouldn’t it be cool if they kind of. Resembled each other a bit. Angrod is described as hot-headed and we see him being a little rash & dumb, what if Celegorm had reminded Finrod a little of someone? I’m wildin I’m guess.))

--

((8: Finrod Gets Pegged))

Finrod returned to Galadriel’s home with Angrod and remained there a few more days, doing the familial catching-up he had intended to do before he had become absorbed in construction. Galadriel did not ask him if he had made a choice; she enjoyed ambiguity, having developed a true taste for it after being right and ignored for so much of her life.

He time passed pleasantly and too quickly; before he marked that it was high time to get back to the wife that he left wondering what happened after his highly anticipated meeting with one of the worst men he knew. He set out one morning and returned home just before sunset on the same day; the weather was fine and his horse, having been treated to who knows what from several doting sorceresses, did not tire.

He nearly galloped into the house once he saw the curl of smoke from inside form the distance; he quickly untacked the mare, kissed her forehead, and rushed inside. Or, tried to—the door was locked. He fumbled for his house key (unusual—perhaps Amarie was in the bath, or perhaps she was still shaken from Curvo’s initial attempt at intrusion) and eventually let himself in.

“Amarie!!” he shouted, throwing open the door and stumbling in.

There she had in her comfortable chair in the front-room; her paints were beside her on a table and her canvas was on her knee. She wore a red dress and her hair was braided practically, and the light of the fire in the hearth made her round-cheeked face and golden eyes gleam. “Well!” she said, “there you are!”

Finrod paused at her tone, his hand still on the doorknob. “Did the messenger not?—Damn, why did I trust a Formenos man.” He came in, and shut the door behind him; two moths and a fly came in with him. “Arre, I tried to send you a note, I went to see Galadriel—”

Amarie lifted her fine-detailing paintbrush and, with a flourish, pointed at the far wall.

Finrod looked, and saw that there was a new picture on the wall, in a golden frame. No—calligraphy? He walked a few steps toward it, and read:

Dearest Amarie,

 

I have learned today that I am a very stupid man. I am going now to visit my sister, who can hopefully fix me as a person. 

 

My love, 

Finrod Ingoldo

 

His own note. But it had been altered—his note had been all in black ink, and now, several words had been underlined in red: “I am a very stupid man,” and his signature below. Then, at the bottom, below his writing, several more red lines had been made, and there were signatures upon them; one was that of his eldest daughter, the other he did not recognize. These were both labeled ‘witnesses.’ Then there was a seal, in lovely gold ink, of a court-judge from Tirion; he wrote that the following words had been attested as record and confirmed by him in his position as judge, and the whole thing was dated three days ago. It was now under glass and in a gilt frame, and placed squarely on the wall between one of Amarie’s best paintings and an embroidery bell-pull form her mother.

“Amarie,” said Finrod, “Did you have this notarized?”

“It is now admissible in court as well as part of published public record in case it is ever of use in future proceedings,” Amarie said with a smile. “I made sure he logged the date so that we know exactly when you wrote down those words and affixed your signature to them.”

Finrod looked at her, at the shimmer in her eyes as the fire leapt and smoldered In them. He walked to her, and carefully put his hand on the rim of her painting so he could tilt it without smudging it. He leaned in to kiss her, and she kissed him back, slowly, opening her mouth to his.

Breaking a moment, he said, “I am quite fond of you, and constantly amazed by what you think up next.”

“How could you not be? You are so incredibly stupid.”

Finrod rumbled in his throat. He said, “I don’t see any of my sweet girls here tonight.”

“No, none are in residence.”

“Darling,” he asked, “would you put on the belt for me?”

--

‘The belt’ was their personal term for a certain device that Finrod had had made for Amarie many, many years ago, though the idea for it had come from discussions between them. Careful inquiries had been made about who to take to make it and how to approach the matter; Finrod had done everything in his power to avoid getting Fingon’s attention and had somehow gotten it anyway. Eventually, it was constructed and fit to Amarie, with minimal possible hands (and, more importantly, eyes) involved in the process in the end.

The ’belt’ itself was of soft, fabric-lined copper that fit around Amarie’s waist and thighs in a clever way; it was not the belt itself, however, but what was attached to it that was important, and which had required such delicacy.

Finrod had had it made to match the dimensions of a human man, an Edain, which had been the most serious hitch in the process (even the person who made them had balked at the dimensions). But the point had been that Amarie had wanted to in part give him back something he missed, and the person he had been messily sobbing about missing was Balan, and Balan had been—

Stately, princely, well-formed, tall and fine; so forth.

Finrod had paid utmost attention to making sure the whole device was perfectly comfortable for Amarie; despite initial awkwardness, it was. That awkwardness, too, had faded after a few tests, once Finrod had proved to be rather…

Finrod screamed when Amarie buried fully in his hole and pushed just past the hot spot deep inside him. He rolled his hips back and felt the brush of her thick thigh tensing against him.

Amarie leaned down and kissed him between his shoulder-blades; he could feel the smile on her face. “Darling!” she laughed.

“Oh, yes,” he panted, and leaned back so that he could hold one of her thick hips, run his fingers along the shining curve of the belt. She grabbed his arm, which he had meant to put right back down, and fixed him there.

His eyes widened. After a moment of stillness, flicking her unbound hair over her shoulder and taking a breath, she began to move in him, not quickly, but thoroughly, moving halfway in and out with each stroke. She couldn’t feel the device, obviously, so it wasn’t quite as taxing for her as it might have been for a ner.

Finrod bit his lip and slowly let it go. He heard himself making noises with each thrust, and he did not work to control them. He never embarrassed the girls when they were there, but they weren’t there.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” Amarie sweetly accused him.

“Oh, nearly all day—” Finrod said, and gasped when she shoved deep into his again. Then, holding his arm fast, she held him in place there, even though he initially tried to squirm.

While the device took some work to physically warm up, it did not ever suddenly ejaculate and go limp. Considering that meant Amarie could keep him on it all night if she (or he) truly wanted, Finrod felt the tradeoff was worth it.

The bend started to sting in his side. He gasped. He made an effort to not whimper.

“I would be quite upset if you were thinking about someone else right now,” Amarie warned gently.

“Oh, Arre, love, radiant topaz, I promise I am completely, fully focused on your cock right now,” Finrod promised. She pushed out once and in again and his jaw popped open.

She hummed. Finrod’s knees shifted on the bed to accommodate the growing sting and she pushed slowly in and out. “So you are! I wasn’t being fair.”

“You still aren’t,” he argued, his voice rasping.

“No?”

“Go in me all the way,” Finrod begged. “Put my arm down, grab my hips, and go in me all—”

Finrod finished with another small, stifled shriek and she went as far in as she could; just slightly, barely too far, so that a twinge of pain prickled inside Finrod, and sent further heat to his sweet spot. His hips bucked. She did, however, drop his arms and grab his hips. He flexed back; she dug in a thumb.

“You’ll have to say my name a few times,” she said, barely keeping laughter out of her voice, “So I know that you’re still with me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Finrod weakly, and then whined in his throat when Amarie pulled nearly all the way out, and back in, and out, and in.

--

Though he did not recall how he got that way, Finrod finished on his back with his thighs parted open and his wife between them, whining her name and clutching at her round hips. He lay beneath her like a freshly slain buck for a minute, panting, wetter than before. Once he could breathe again, he returned the favor, using hands and mouth as inspiration struck him.

Then they laid beside each other, whispering, laughing, drawing closer and tighter as the chill of the night slowly settled in. Amarie curled up in a quilt and Finrod curled around her, and in that wise he finally explained to her everything that had happened in his meeting with Curvo, omitting nothing, not even the wolfish moment of desire that had tempted him to reclaim the one who had once been his, nor the moments of vulnerability Curvo had shown, though he tried to gloss those over for politeness. He then told her everything that had passed in his sister’s house as well, with special detail on the choices Galadriel had offered him in her wisdom.

“And have you decided?” she asked him.

A good part of Finrod had expected she would say ‘Good, you’re choosing ‘no’,’ and that would have been that. He would have abided by it. Of course, it was not that simple; Amarie was not that simple.

“I have not decided,” Finrod said, because Amarie made it easier to be brave around her than almost anyone he had ever known. Even when he was stupidly brave, she could pull him back without horror and tears. “Were I my own completely, I would wait until I saw him again, and know when I saw him, I am sure.”

“Were you your own completely, you would tell him yes,” Amarie said.

“Amarie,” Finrod said, and buried his face in her wheat-gold hair.

“I have been thinking about it,” she said, and rolled onto her back so that she could see his face. “The truth is that I know very little about the situation; you know him, I do not.”

“What you know from hearing about the things he has done,” Finrod admitted, “is still, to some degree, knowing him.”

“Nonetheless,” she said, undaunted. “It feels strange to me, and dangerous, but I have asked myself practically both what I would do if you had no more of him and what I would want if you took him on again. And practically, it is much easier if you simply have no more of him, and I return to having my Ingo to myself, who is usually happy, and sometimes so sharply sad about what he has lost, but I am used to that.

“I have no idea how I feel, necessarily, if I do not return to having my Ingo to myself; I do have the confidence in myself to believe I could handle it. How different is it from knowing his heart is shared with a few others, now gone? I can’t know.

“How does my Ingo, change, thought, I wonder? Does he improve now that he has something back which he has lost; does he become more upset, because of the difficulty of that thing? You have had him back a little for the last year, and you’ve been about the same. More dramatical, a little more mercurial, but so far that has been fun enough. So instead of asking myself questions I cannot possibly have the answers to, I asked myself a question I could answer.

“If this thing does happen,” she continued, a steel certainty entering her voice, “What would make me content with it? That is, what would I need to handle it if it does happen?”

“What is it?” Finrod asked, already swearing to it inside his heart.

“If you do take up with him, I want to be there.”

“Be there?”

“Should you lay with him, Finrod.”

“Be there?”

“Yes.”

“Present.”

“Physically.”

“That would be what makes it work for you.”

“That is what I would need to handle it if it does happen,” Amarie repeated.

Finrod looked over at her, his hair strewn on his face, his eyes shining. “Present! There! As we engage with each other!”

“Yes, Ingo!”

“Oh, but where? Will you just be in the building, or in the room with us? Watching from a chair? Standing over? Beside me? Right before me, in arm’s reach, and able to steady me if you have to? Even to hold me down? Tell me what you’ll be doing.”

Amarie picked up a pillow and shoved it in his face.

--

((9: Glaurung’s Den))

Finrod was very productive again for the next few days; his mind was a gear stuck between the same two teeth, clicking and clicking. He felt like he could not leave the problem of what to do about Curvo alone, but he was also determined to respect the fac that they had parted on questionable terms and Curvo had demanded he contact him first the next time before kicking Finrod out of his house. He was hardly going to show up uninvited, but he had a balrog of a time putting it out of his mind. His youngest came home for a few days and he focused on her; then, restless and aware he was starting to bother his ladies, he took off to go be Tirion’s problem for a few days.

His father, who kept what had once been Finwe’s austere Palace as something of a local social hub, had pretended to offer Finrod an office with them both knowing full well Finrod could not and would not staff an office. He did have to have something of an official space which was his, however, as people who insisted on treating him like a crown prince were going to write him letters, petitions, complaints, ect. So instead, in the outlying gardens of the Noldorin palace, Finrod kept something more resembling a tavern than anything else, which he was known to frequent. There was a place in which his ‘official’ ‘business’ was kept and most of the rest of the space was a brewery, in which they were seeking the strongest distillation that the gentle soil of Aman would consent to provide. Most of the front side was open space where anyone could sit and relax if they so wanted and many did without the awareness that the building technically belonged to Finrod; there were private rooms behind, and Finrod had felt it was truly his when Amarie painted for him the words above each door that led to private rooms ‘We Don’t Care To Know What You Do Here’ in curling, golden script.

Finrod had given the place a very nice, very normal name centuries ago. It was irrelevant, as no one remembered it. Without his consent and, initially against his will, it had come to inevitably be called ‘Nargothrond’ by the slow but persistent will of the people. He had been forced to accept it.

To reclaim it somewhat, and to act like a bastard, Finrod had then commissioned a giant painting of Glaurung among the spoils to take up a large portion of the back wall of the public area, and called it by the kenning “Glaurung’s Den” himself. The seat right under the painting was unofficially considered to be Gil-Galad’s and, to act a bastard, he almost always took it.

Gil-Galad was not there that day when he arrived, road-weary and excited to see what his hard-working bad influences in the back had cooked up in his absence. Gil-Galad’s husband, however, was, looking dignified and dour as ever under the smoky, looping curls of the dragon, drinking from a little crystal glass. Finrod walked up to Gwindor and gave him a kiss on both cheeks, neither of which he wanted, but which he handled beautifully.

“Yes, my Lord,” Gwindor sighed once Finrod was done.

Finrod sat down next to him and spied on what he was reading. Poetry; Gwindor had good taste, so Finrod was sure it was good. “And a wonderful day to you! Gwindor, I saw your husband barely a week past at my sister’s house.”

“Yes, he went to see you,” said Gwindor, and closed his book of poetry, because he knew he would have to break to listed to Finrod before he could get back to it again. “He heard you were in a state and decided to observe it.”

“Yes, he had me sobbing within the hour of his arrival. Vorimaure!” Finrod shouted, catching sigh of a man just in the back. One of his trustworthy ten, a man particularly strong and silent, who did not always speak his mind but never made you question him. Finrod embraced him, kissed him, and embraced him again before Vorimaure made him sit back down.

“You have letters waiting,” Vorimaure told him.

“Yech. I’m sure I do. Could I also have some of our most recent brew waiting?”

Vorimaure laughed and went to fetch both.

When Finrod looked back over to Gwindor, he saw that he had already gone back to reading. Finrod regarded him.

Though he called Gwindor Gil-Galad’s husband, that was more like an honorific that the two let Finrod apply to them. They were not truly tied to each other; that was impossible per the Valar, since Gil-Galad’s heart had been split and he had loved another after Gwindor, and per the Eldar of Aman, because Gil-Galad’s transformation and subsequent male body give them icky feelings in their tummies.

To give them their due, they half-permitted, half-ignored the relationship, seeing it as a special case because of Gil-Galad’s ‘previous identity’, a phrasing that Finrod did not like but could not factually disagree with. And because Gwindor had been his first intended. Still, married they were not, but partnered they certainly were. Finrod had been concerned about how they would get along after Turin’s interruption of their lives (and both their deaths) but they had been, frankly, both unable to contain themselves after seeing each other renewed.

Vorimaure brought him his stack of correspondence, and Finrod said, “Gwindor, help me read these.”

“Help you read them?”

“Yes. Go through them first, and notes at the top if they’re upset with me, and if so, why.”

“What, so you can filter those out?”

“No! Give them right to me. If anyone isn’t upset at all, set it aside, I’ll get to it once I’ve drunk a little and can respond appropriately.”

Gwindor shook his head but did so, noting letters on top with short judgements like ‘misplaced’ or ‘furious’ or ‘I can’t follow it’ or ‘stupid, in my opinion’ or ‘just dislikes your wife—you don’t follow along with that sort of thing, but don’t pay her any mind.’ The process was completed in a few hours; by then Finrod was pretty close to drunk and could attend to writing effusive responses to the happy letters in between greeting and embracing anyone who came in, bar none.

And day became night, which became another day, and so forth, until he was being shaken awake in his bed, which was just once of the private rooms he had fallen asleep in, by Edrahil, who he did not remember being present before, who had to repeat that Curufinwe is here, here, Ingoldo, here, Curufinwe, is, here, now, right here, before Finrod finally got it.

--

While Finrod talked them down, those private rooms were not bare boxes. They were fully furnished, had on-suite restrooms and in some cases parlors, and dresses full of assorted clothes, for which the best descriptor of their quality and appearance was ‘assorted.’ Finrod made himself more blue and green than he had been and pulled back his hair into a rough braid and stared at himself in the mirror.

He did look like he had been drinking for three or four days, but he also looked like he was happy about it, partially because he was the sort of enviable bastard who really had to work at it to get a hangover. Instead he had the look of diffused glow like the liquor had been gently pleasuring him for a while now, and there was absolutely no way of hiding that, no matter how he smacked his cheeks to sharpen and wake up. No, nothing for it.

When he went out there—right now, out there, in Glaurung’s Den, waiting for him—he would have to decide whether he said no or yes to Curvo. He should have decided already; he should know already. When he saw him, either the first word out of his mouth had to be no—and if it was he would stick to it—or else he had to admit that he was saying yes, and he had better commit to acting in a way that was sustainable, that he would not have to apologize for or excuse. Whatever he did, whatever he said tto Curvo, he was sticking to it.

In an impulse, he grabbed a hair-pin with lapis lazuli on it and pinned his hair to a bun on his head. Now he looked a little like he could have been working. He opened the door—this particular room was in the back of the distillery, so he opened it to the sharp and earthy scents of brewing and the sound of water and copper—and made his way to the front of the house. Edrahil stopped him with whispering; Finrod nodded and apologized, but his mind was not on it.

((was never going to say no to him, and he realizes he was only pretending to have an internal conflict because it’s kind of embarrassing that he was decided right away, and that’s disrespectful to Arre too.))

He put his hands on the door that led to the front; he paused, and listened. No one was speaking loud enough to hear; he heard the clatter of a glass, but that was all.

He breathed in and opened the door.

It turned out that it was morning, and quite early in the morning. From the east the sun was only an hour past her rising, yellow and pleasant. Glaurung’s Den was quiet, and empty except for two men, who stood together in front of the main bar, examining a small glass of amber liquid.

((I’ve had black velvet band stuck in my head for hours and it is making me unwise.))

Though Curufin had either ridden through the night or else stayed nearby and rose at dawn to be here, he looked as if he had prepared himself for hours. His hair was tightly bound on his head, with jasper-tipped pins, braided into an ‘everyday’ braid, without particular meaning. His eyes were carefully painted, he was dressed mostly in black with red ribbons, a tight riding-outfit with silk seen beneath. And with him was Gwindor, his own dark hair in a tail, plain clothes covered with an apron, looking like he had just rolled out of bed—in reality he had probably rolled out of bed in the middle of the night and had been occupying himself since—holding up a glass of liquor and explaining the process of making it to the glittering prince, completely, thoroughly unbothered.

Stable, sober Gwindor that a particular quality about him that other former guests of Morgoth Bauglir often shared. He, to borrow a phrase of the Edain, could not be fucked. That fantastic phrase meant that it took truly extraordinary circumstances to bother him, circumstances that even a perpetual problem like Curvo could not manufacture every single day. Prince Curufinwe had come to the tavern; unfuckwithable Gwindor was serving him a drink.

Curvo spied him, and turned, albeit slightly, on his heels, so that he was not impolite to Gwindor, but it was clear that he had seen and marked Finrod. He looked down at Finrod’s clothes. It occurred to Finrod that he had not been dressed nicely once for any time Curvo had seen him post-return, barring potentially the time he had gone to see him in Formenos and been dressed decently.

Finrod was left without use of his tongue, because all he had in his head was whether he was saying yes or no. He walked to Curvo, a few steps, close enough that Curvo decided his previous conversation had been interrupted.

“Finrod Ingoldo,” Curvo said, his eyebrows arched high, his expression prim and blank, “upon reflection, I have been forced to face the fact that I must apologize to you.”

Finrod stopped.

“Oh,” he said, and then, “yes.”

He felt a little dizzy after he said it. ‘Yes!’ Of course, he hadn’t meant…

“It was brought to my attention that immediately haunting everyone I have wronged like a wight is not the accepted thing to do here; I may have notes on this practice on a strategic level, but culturally, I accept have made a slight. A few ages constitute much change to miss, even in an immortal land. As it turns out what felt like giving you a reasonable amount of time to me reads as ‘absolutely hounding you’ to literally everyone else, and considering the frequency with which that phrase has been used, and your history with hounds of all kinds, it may be that the recent situations in which you have acted increasingly erratic were, as it were, uncomfortable to you.”

But you had never intended to say ‘no’, you absolute bastard, Finrod reprimanded himself; in fact there was nearly no possibility at all that you would, but you had to pretend you were conflicted about it in order to seem decent to yourself. And fair to Amarie, whose opinion you had to consult, or else make yourself an adulterer! But you were never going to say no to him really. Not if it was your choice.

“Who said all that to you?” Finrod asked.

“My mother,” Curvo replied instantly.

His lovely aunt, and one of the only people alive he did not currently have the nerve to face! “I’m more alarmed she knows me that well,” he admitted.

“I’m more alarmed that—Edrahil. Well met.”

The door closed behind Finrod. He looked over his shoulder, and there stood Edrahil, looking thunderous. “My lord,” he said.

People only started ‘lording’ Finrod when things were about to go badly. “Yes?”

“Something to throw,” Edrahil requested.

“Oh,” Finrod said. “Oh! Let’s see. Dear, my pockets are empty, how about—”

“You can’t have a glass,” Gwindor scowled.

Edrahil approached the bar. “I know, but I need something.”

“How about—” Finrod took off a shawl, and then put it back on. “No, it won’t carry at all. Not a whole bottle!”

“Put that down,” Gwindor said at the same time, but it was too late. Curvo received a mostly-full bottle of orange liqueur to his face, which smacked into his forehead like a stone, causing him to make an honestly incredible noise. The glass was so thick that that did not break it, but once it landed on the floor at his feet, it split like a melon and poured over his shoes.

Curvo swore in Khuzdul (his preferred language for cursing; Finrod’s was Taliska) and stooped over, holding his face.

“Get out of here!” Edrahil shouted, as angry as he was triumphant.

Finrod tried so hard not to laugh, but he couldn’t help it. He put a hand on the bar so he could wheeze in a way that was hopefully quiet. Still, fresh as he was in body, there was no way Curvo didn’t know exactly what he was trying to hide.

“I think this establishment does not belong to you?” Curvo asked, standing back up, pushing his now slightly-disheveled hair out of his face.

“My lord, if he does not get out, I am going to throw him out,” Edrahil said.

Finrod pushed his giggles down. “Neither of you are doing either of those things. Edrahil, stand down. I invited him. I’ll take him to the back where you don’t have to see him. Gwindor—keep it up.”

Gwindor, who had been leaning against the bar and holding a glass, solemnly raised the glass.

Without further ado, Finrod grabbed Curvo’s arm and began to walk him back. He pulled him into the distillery, and was unsurprised when Curvo slowed to examine the workings of the machines as they went, the iron and silver alloys that bound barrels to pipes to wheels and levers.

I wonder if he’s smithing already? Finrod thought. It took Celebrimbor a century to get over the shakes whenever he tried, and Lomion (Valar bless the poor bastard) even longer, but with Curvo…

Finrod walked him to a private room (but not the room he had just been in, he chose one without a bed, because he didn’t need distracted) and was forced to pause when Curvo looked up at the writing above the door.

“We Don’t Care To Know What You Do Here,” he quoted.

“We generally don’t,” Finrod agreed, opening the door.

“Is this where you actually do business, then?” he asked as he slipped in, with only a shade of double entendre in his voice.

“No, you just saw that room. It was the one with the liquor.”

That particular private room was, incidentally, somewhat cave-like, crammed between brewing contraptions on ever side, and somewhat open to them up top, so they could hear the hum and hiss of their slow fermentation. It was set with candles in orange globes and decorated with nature scenes in tapestry, autumn trees and sunset-red oceansides. There was a couch as well as two small chairs, so they could chose to sit as close as they wanted, and Finrod was hoping he was smart enough to not test that.

Curvo looked at it, and said, “I cannot believe you called this place Nargothrond.”

“I didn’t,” Finrod protested immediately. “I gave it a completely normal name that no one even remembers. It was the will of the people that dubbed it Nargothrond, and I, for the record, call it Glaurung’s Den.”

“That’s more like it,” Curvo agreed, taking a close look at the nearest tapestry. “How many of them are cognizant of the fact that you never met the beast?”

“I was told it could not be The Wolf-man’s Den no matter how much I begged. This is simply the compromise.”

“Ugh,” said Curvo, and, though that look of casual disgust remained frozen on his face, he stood still, and unthinking, looking at a tapestry, but not looking at it.

Finrod waited, even as the seconds stretched on. Once upon a time, Curvo had been… taking after his father, he had never had great powers of the mind, in that his osanwe was usually thin and literal and his foresight was minimal. He could, however, speak words of power, and bend wills if he were to some degree permitted, and in later days, he had seemed to be developing… something like proper foresight, but not like. He had developed a sense of doom, could taste it as it neared, and had a knack for personally avoiding it even when it snagged everyone else around him. Finrod had been surprised, actually, when he heard how soon after his own death Curufin had finally met his. Then again, how many outlived him?

But all of that considered, Finrod had been trained to fall silent and wait when Curvo grew portentous. What he was about to say was likely grim, but sometimes very useful.

Without speaking, Curvo collected himself, and then sat down on the couch, slumped slightly over its arm. “Ingo,” he said softly.

Finrod’s next few heartbeats were a little harder than he recalled asking for. “Yes.”

“Torn to pieces in the dungeon of the Deceiver’s tower, mauled by wolves each night!” he said, and, frankly, he sounded shocked. “What was it like?”

Finrod sat down, across from him, in a chair. “You left out the most important part!”

“What was that?”

“Torn to pieces in the dungeon, mauled by wolves, ect, after watching every single one of the others being torn to pieces, after I faced the Deceiver himself and, in a contest of song, in a tower I built, failed to defeat him.”

Curvo looked at him.

“Well, it’s not the song part, it’s the ‘failed’ and ‘every single one of them’ parts,” Finrod said, a little more weakly. “Well, except Beren. I found the strength the save Beren. The strength I didn’t have for the last ten people I watched be eaten by werewolves.”

Curvo looked at him with round, black eyes, eyes he couldn’t help but think as looking like an Edain’s, full of internal passion but without the light of the trees, without the shimmer an Elda’s eyes were supposed to contain. Then he looked down a little and, to Finrod’s shock, they sat in silence for a few minutes.

Finrod grew more concerned that Curvo was seeing something that he did not want to say. This quieter mood, however, was also not without its precedent. Curvo had many rooms he kept inside himself; though he seemed like it sometimes, he did not simply haughtily react to whatever was happening around him in the moment. Times when he looked more inward were once dangerous, as he often had to flinch away from what he found. Finrod had, however, found out much of what he knew about Curvo in these moods, more in ten years in Nargothrond than any number of years of familial bickering in Aman.

And it reminded him of Celebrimbor. It reminded Finrod of Celebrimbor very much. It reminded him of watching them both curled up like this, distant from each other, in equally dark moods and unable to touch, unraveled in the winding caverns.

Finrod wanted to touch him. He waited.

“How long ago is that for you?” Curvo asked, and his voice was in a way it only got when he felt very dark indeed. “By your own reckoning of time. How it had felt.”

“Thousands of years,” Finrod said.

“I get it,” Curvo said, having reached a grim conviction. “It makes perfect sense. I thought it was quite a bit of time, but still not so long as I expected. ‘It seems soon’, I thought, but then again, we are still last of almost all to come back, and, obviously, in our own way. But it’s been long enough for everyone else to heal, which is the point. A world where literally everyone else is happy; it’s just you who is like this. Eternal darkness! Excellent work.”

Finrod repressed a shudder in his shoulders. Again, he was reminded too much of Celebrimbor at his worst, agonizing over what he had done for a monster. “Happy is a relative term,” Finrod began, “and you should have seen already that how true that is varies by the person.” Curvo reacted well to being challenged, even in a situation like this. “Everyone is much better than they were in a relative sense. Given three thousand years, you will see a marked difference. How old were you when you died? Were you even a thousand years old? I wasn’t. You’re probably not very good at happiness yet—by my reckoning you never were—but you’ve hardly had any time at it.

“And one more thing—sure, let me have it in a minute, but I am going to have my say first—you are not nearly the only person who still feels the pain of death inside, and I don’t just mean that your brothers are in the same position. Go have a real conversation with Gwindor; seek out Lomion (and I hope he’s alright, whatever he’s doing, the poor bastard) if you want a truly awful evening. Haven’t you spoken to your son?”

Curvo hunched a little more over the arm of the couch, the fingers of one hand slipping over his face. He said, “I didn’t want him to be like me.”

Then he corrected himself. “No, that is absolutely a lie. I did very much want him to be just like me. When I was a young father—yes, you’re right, I was so young, I was barely more than a child myself, and at the time nothing sounded better than to raise up a dazzling son I could show off who thought like me and spoke like me and backed up everything I did and, oh, you know, would live and die for me and commit atrocities for me because he loved me so much. But if I had known myself better then, I would have known better.”

Finrod paused. His hand was searching for a drink which was not here. He put it on his chin. “Allow me to walk that back a little, and say that I see quite a bit of his mother in him too,” he said.

“If only there were more! No, I know what you mean. Her kindness. Her solidity. Instead I get to see very much of me in him now, and regret all of it.”

It occurred to Finrod that, in the time between he last saw Curvo and now, he may have spent some time with Celebrimbor, and they may have had a much more thorough conversation than they had had before. Depending on how much Curvo knew now about what Celebrimbor had been through, this could be considered a mild reaction he was having right now. “Is this about him trying to marry Sauron or about him being murdered by Sauron?”

“MARRY?” Curvo snapped, sitting upright.

Finrod imagined that drink he could be having in his head, and how lovely it would look sitting on that endtable. “Please tell me you did know they were involved.”

“Well, I could hardly not know that, I cannot count how many people took it upon themselves to inform me. ‘Do you know what your son did?’ ‘Oh, well, the King told me, and my mother, and my uncle, and a nephew I’d never even heard of, and every one of the surviving captains and companions who tried to look after him before being killed themselves, and Galadriel herself, but why don’t you let me know too?’ What the—let me do this in Khuzdul,” he said, and then said something incredibly emphatic.

“You know I can’t speak Khuzdul,” Finrod complained. “They wouldn’t teach me.”

“Let me attempt, albeit poorly, to translate. What, for the love of—no, in the name of Aule—and you have to imaging I am imbuing ‘fucking’ into every word—What in the fucking name of fucking Aule do you (fucking) mean, tried to marry him?”

“Well, he couldn’t. Sauron was already married, and lying about it, so Tyelpe couldn’t have married him if he tried. Sauron did fake a bond though, so Tyelpe actually thought he had been married to him and still thought that for years after returning, but never said anything to anyone, of course, but once he did we checked, we went to Varda and checked—”

Curvo stood up and stormed out of the room, dropping Khuzdul curses like boulders behind him.

Finrod, aware that there was a small collection of men who would gladly shoot Curvo down with very little provocation nearby, followed him out. Curvo wound a string of fury through the twisted pipes and rafters as he walked in angry circles. Finrod stood at a point where he could mostly see him and watched.

Gwindor, Edrahil, and a few others showed up before long; Finrod held up his hand, and they were still and silent.

Curvo stopped in front of Finrod, and, in Sindarin, screamed, “WHAT WERE THEY DOING? GALADRIEL? ELROND? GIL-GALAD? HIS PEOPLE WHO WERE STILL LEFT WITH HIM? I KNOW THEY WERE THERE!”

“Galadriel, dissuading him as best she could, but he was a Lord with a Castle and he wasn’t listening to her. Elrond, staying as far away from that creep as he could. Gil-Galad, and please don’t come after him about this, doing his best to support Celebrimbor’s relationship long-distance despite his misgivings. His people? Making rings with him, so, do all the yelling you like there. Oh, and we may as well put Maglor in the hot seat too; what was he doing?”

Curvo screamed, “I’LL RIP HIS DAMN HEAD OFF,” and Finrod tried really hard not to laugh, but he did.

“Curufinwe. Listen,”

Curvo screamed, “WHAT WAS HE DOING THAT WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN WATCHING AFTER HIS ONLY NEPHEW?? COUNTING?? SEASHELLS??”

“There is no evidence to make me believe that Tyelpe would listen to Maglor either.”

“We couldn’t have known we’d all die!” He said suddenly, stopping behind a brewing-barrel, so that Finrod could hear but not see him. “It feels inevitable now, perhaps. But Maglor did not die for ages. We didn’t have to die. But what would we have done if we had known we would, and he would be left to handle it all on his own?”

Finrod debated the wisdom of the words in his head, but his sister’s voice came to him, demanding that he be forward, uncompromising. “I have talked to him often about his life in the second age, and even he will tell you if he asked that he pushed away from everyone who wanted to help him, left their Kingdom, and kept them at arm’s reach on purpose. When you blame everyone else you can think of for not helping him, you are forgetting the man himself.”

“Never!” Curvo said hotly. “He’s stubborn, he’s self-assured, more now than he ever was. He is a prince and he was taught to be sufficient unto himself; how could I forget who taught him that when I was there?”

Curvo’s tone was somewhat dangerous. It was between anger and self-pity, which was a state in which he was capable of very much. Finrod responded, “He did not learn this through childhood lessons, he learned his isolation through losing everyone, and from nearly constant betrayal. Blame yourself if you like, but identify the correct offender: it was not teaching him princely ethics but then making him watch you betray them that made him break from you, and, eventually, all of us. Which was itself only a secondary wound to the fact that we all died. And no, you did not make that happen.”

Curvo was silent.

Finrod was still, and too aware of the watching men at his back. He thought of what to say; or perhaps he should not say anything at all, but leave him to it, let him recover by himself, which had always been his preference.

It had.

No, he thought, suddenly revolted. It took him a second to realize why. It was because he hated leaving Curvo alone to lick his wounds and always had hated it, but he had been forced to acquiesce because Curvo demanded it. It hurt his pride to be so emotional in front of someone, even a lover. And to keep the peace, to please him, Finrod had accepted it, let Curvo train him into it. Now he was triggering that training, falling silent and impudent, unwilling to speak further, because Finrod had delved to deep into what hurt him. This was his signal, he was supposed to go now.

Galadriel’s wisdom came to him again. Demanding. Selfish. If he was going to do this with Curvo—if he was going to put him back into his life—he demanded the right to help him. He demanded Curvo’s emotions, his vulnerability, and selfishly, if he had to.

Finrod took a slow, steadying breath, and then walked around the barrier Curvo had put between the two of them. Curvo was red-faced, staring at the ground, and at first he wouldn’t acknowledge Finrod. Finrod first thought to grab his arm, but then remembered Curvo’s very fair complaint that he had not yet given him permission to touch him—not this renewed body, not this altered self. Finrod demanded the same autonomy, so he would certainly grant it to Curvo.

“Come with me,” he said instead.

“Where,” he asked tersely.

“Back to the sitting room, you disaster.”

The slight suggestion that Curvo was making a scene was enough to get him to sharply inhale, put his hands on his red cheeks for a moment, and then sharply follow Finrod. His eyes were closed; he was following the sound of his footsteps. He followed Finrod back in, waited for him to shut the door, and then sat down on the couch.

Finrod sat down beside him, which he had found unwise to do before.

Then Curvo put his face in his hands, and Finrod sat silently through his angry crying—his teeth were grit, his fingers clenched on his face, and he cursed between his sobs—for quite a few minutes. Curvo did not move to touch him or ask for anything from him. He cried, but it was a fit; it began to slow before too long, though his breaths still hitched and crackled.

Finrod them moved to hand him a handkerchief, which he grumpily accepted.

“There’s some comfort in it,” Curvo said, through a thick throat, his voice almost comedically nasal, his face swollen and his expression dignified. “This is about as abysmal a result one can get from parenting. He formally broke ties of kinship with me, I never heard from him again, I died in disgrace, nothing I taught him helped him and in the end all it did was facilitate the isolation and unhappiness and blind pride which led him being willing to accept despite clear warnings the love of someone who only wanted to hurt him. Who killed him. The good thing is that I can’t make it any worse.”

“Well, you can, and I think that bears thinking about.”

Curvo pinched the fingers of one hand on his forehead and held the handkerchief out in the nails of the other.

Finrod took it. “I’m serious. You are alive and so is he, and he isn’t doing badly, despite everything. You can make it worse.”

“Finrod.”

“What I mean is that giving into despair just lets you off the hook for your future actions, which you already know. If you act a bastard, yes, you can make your relationship worse again. Or you can make it better.”

“I’d love to,” he said miserably.

“Well, good. Fantastic. Do so.”

“Are you going to give me your parenting advice, oh doting father of three renowned beauties?”

“What, do you want it?”

“No.”

“See, I knew you didn’t. Lean on the wisdom of your wife; their relationship is good.”

“It seems to be,” Curvo said cautiously.

“Or your mother. There was a time she wouldn’t go anywhere without him.”

“Really?” Curvo asked, and though he still did not look at Finrod, he could hear in his voice he was actually interested now.

“When I first came back, it was accepted fact that Aunt Nerdanel kept to herself and did not attend any engagements. You could invite her, and she would reply with a polite refusal, but she wouldn’t come. Until Tyelpe was returned; for a few years—and this was all a few years after he was returned too—but for a couple years he lived with her and no one saw much of either of them, and I said to myself ‘if that’s that, then, I suppose that isn’t bad at all,’ though I personally regretted his seclusion. But then he set up on his own, and then one day he made an appearance at a dinner, and he had a date on his arm; his grandmother, dressed in a day-dress, looking like she wasn’t sure where she was or who any of us were. I barely remember the evening, I was in a state. Now she can be seen from time to time, but only with Tyelpe, that is, only if he takes her.”

Curvo stared down with a complicated expression in his reddened eyes, but Finrod could easily guess at the ingredients of that mixture. He had himself felt enormous satisfaction and happiness with the loving relationships between his children and parents, and enormous relief. Such relationships were not guaranteed in their family, and to contemplate the souring of them made him fear to be alive. What if, as grown women, one of his strong-willed daughters had decided she couldn’t stand Earwen’s protectiveness, or Indis’ sometimes overbearing regal guidance? Finrod could himself remember being young, fresh, and feeling, though innocently and with best intentions, that King Finwe could use some shaking up and new perspective from time to time. He had meant well, but after what he had seen in later years, he did not think he’d have that daring now.

“They’re close,” he repeated firmly.

Curvo started. “Well, how could they fail to be?” he asked. “They’re both good people. The problem with me is that I am either perfect or awful, I don’t believe I have ever managed ‘good.’”

“Curufin, I could not have possibly put it better myself!” Finrod said, impressed.

“Ride yourself, bastard,” Curvo replied, without much heat, “I’m certain you have the necessary curiosity to figure out how. I know myself, and I always have known that’s my problem, even as a child. I was either perfect or falling apart; there wasn’t anything in-between.”

“And you have always known yourself, and you have always been incredibly judgmental toward yourself, and it has never helped,” Finrod stressed.

Unfortunately, that plunged Curvo right back into dark anger. Finrod watched him do the bare minimum of squeezing his eyes shut and taking a breath before he spoke. “How sweet! Unsurprising, for you, considering how much of a masochist you are, and how useful I am as a tool to enable that. Do you think I should take my judgmental eye off myself, and do whatever I want instead? Are you eager for what happens when I do that? As if you don’t remember what that’s like? You think it’s just fine if I let myself do whatever I want?”

Unfortunately again, this sounded like foreplay to Finrod, in that this is exactly what foreplay used to sound like. “You’re not—”

“I don’t want to do good things. I don’t have the urge to be good. You have to remember what you’re asking for if you ask me to stop managing myself with a firm hand.”

Finrod could feel his heart start thudding harder, and it was not because he was afraid of Curvo. He’s genuinely upset, Finrod reminded himself. He’s not flirting with you. Please act normally. “I do remember, in fact, and I remember that all of that happened even though you were keeping a close eye, a firm hand, and so forth on yourself the entire time, or doing what looked like your absolute hardest to do so.  Your method is bad. It doesn’t work.”

Curvo opened his eyes and stared at him, genuinely offended, momentarily lost for words.

“I am telling you to go back to the workshop,” Finrod continued, feeling a little stupid, not sure if he was about to cause a breakthrough or an accident. “It didn’t work. You know it didn’t work. You just said so. That’s literally your opinion. Try again.”

Finrod had, however, used a little linguistic trick he hadn’t even thought about, a metaphor so common that it was simply language to him. Curvo, suddenly blank, repeated the phrase out of that whole speech that he had thought about the least: ‘Go back to the workshop,’ he said. Then he stood up to leave.

Finrod just stared at him for a minute. Then, he got up to follow but, to his surprise, he was not pacing through the room again. He appeared to be leaving. Finrod caught up to him walking out of the bar, past Finrod’s men, who were watching him with acute interest. “Wait—” said Finrod, but Curvo was not going to. “For Manwe’s—am I calling you, or are you calling me?” he shouted after him.

“I don’t know,” shouted Curvo, and turned down the path that would take him through the groups of the palace and to the stables, and then away, to who knows where.

Finrod said, in Taliska, “What the fuck.” Edrahil, who also spoke it, started laughing.

Finrod wove a hand into his hair and felt it was several days unwashed. He did not even look at Gwindor, but when he held out his hand, Gwindor put an already-poured glass of ((whiskey)) into it. He pulled it to his lips, still staring at the place where Curvo had vanished, and drank a great, burning mouthful of it.

“Not that I was asked, but I didn’t order any sons of Feanor,” Edrahil chuckled.

“Technically, neither did I,” said Finrod, and drank again.

“That’s right, I had forgotten that you hadn’t run into him before,” Gwindor said to Edrahil, leaning on the bar.

Finrod hummed as he swallowed. “And I had forgotten that you keep running into him,” he admitted. Every time Curvo had come looking for Finrod at Glaurung’s Den, Gwindor had been the one who saw him and took his calling card. “Gwindor, do you think you spend too much time at the tavern?”

“Your highness, this is your receiving hall, and I am one of your sworn men,” Gwindor reminded him.

((You might be thinking, I find it weird that Gwindor is still Finrod’s man instead of Gil-Galad’s. Honestly, I think it is weirder to be your husband’s subordinate. But since I got to play with them both having proper male roles in their society I get to do fun details like that.))

“No, this is my Den of Debauchery, which is what the large dragon painting and partial nudes are meant to convey, and you are getting dangerously close to being a tavern-keep.”

“Your highness,” Edrahil interrupted, “this is the most well-known gathering place for people of certain inclinations in Aman, and Gwindor is one half of the only sanctioned husband-and-husband marriage on the continent.”

“Not out loud, man,” said Finrod, and drained the glass. “And as such he’s my nephew, in a way of looking at it; the nepotism is getting obscene.”

“The nepotism was always obscene,” Gwindor calmly argued. “Yes, I’ve been seeing a surprising amount of Curufinwe, but that’s half coincidence and half the fact that everyone else knows I’m willing to handle it. He’s cordial; I will treat someone politely who treats me in turn. I admit hearing him wail over his son has softened me a little.”

“Not I,” said Edrahil, firmly but lightly. “I knew he loved his son in the first place, and I remember that not changing at all how he treated him, or the rest of us. I’ll do the same again next time, unless commanded not to.”

“It won’t come from me,” Finrod reminded him. He had made it clear that he was done giving commands. In fact, he was cautious with requests, since his followers often took them as commands.

“You seemed pleased to see him,” Edrahil noted.

“It’s your right to be as angry with him as you will. You experienced all that I did and can be angry on your own behalf.”

“I did not experience everything that you did.”

“I am both pleased and displeased with him, Edrahil; my reactions are complex and would disappoint my mother.”

“I would never give you less than you give me, and everyone else who once followed you into fire, in defiance even of your father,” replied Edrahil, “which is the right to your own life, including your own feelings, on your own terms.”

Finrod squeezed his eyes shut and sighed.

“I do hate what you’re doing with it, though,” Edrahil assured him. “I absolutely hate it.”

“There we go,” said Finrod with a smile, and happily sat down to listen to Edrahil question his choices for the better part of an hour.

--

Who once followed you into fire, in defiance even of your own father were the words that echoed faintly in his head as he stood across from High King Arafinwe Ingoldo the next day, dinner cleaned up and him about to make the trip back to Amarie (fancying in the moment a bit of night-riding).

It wasn’t like they hadn’t talked it over. They had talked it over a hundred times, it was just the sort of thing that showed back up, no matter what you did.

“Yes?” Finrod asked, because they had just said good-bye, and as he turned to go, his father had tapped him on his arm.

“Something’s wrong,” Arafinwe said in a gentle whisper.

Finrod knew it was a question. He swallowed. “I’m sure you’ve spent the past year listening to people tell you about what’s wrong.”

Arafinwe pondered this. A bit of a night breeze came in the doorway his son was holding open; it picked strands of his golden hair out of their net. “We’re looking for him,” he said.

Finrod paused. “Celegorm?”

“There hasn’t been a single sighting. Rumors from people who chose to live in the wilds, but nothing that could be definitively pinned down. No one has seen him. I admit I don’t know if that’s a comfort or not.”

Arafinwe thought he was afraid.

…Was he?

He was away from home often. Amarie had struggled to keep Curvo out, and Curvo had not been trying very hard. Celegorm was rarely in a bad enough state that he would just attack someone, but, once Finrod had been keeping constant tabs on Celegorm, and now, he could not even guess what state he was currently in.

Like all of them, he had once been his family. But it was hard to forget how he was at the end…

He focused on the positive: Valar bless the old man, he wanted to protect him. “Have you tried setting my aunt Nerdanel out in the woods with some fresh steaks?”

A smile crept up one side of Arafinwe’s face. “Come now.”

“I’m not worried about it,” said Finrod, which may as well have been true. He had enough else on his mind and all of that worried him much worse. He looked out; that warm breeze was on the tops of the white trees that lined the streets down the slope of the mountain. “But you are?” he wondered.

“How can I not be? As you said, I’ve been listening to people try to convince me that this is a problem all year.”

“You don’t think it’s a problem?”

Arafinwe did not even have to think when he said “Not any more than usual. It was always a problem, and the problem only got more complex when time went on and more and more people were pulled into the conviction that it was all a terrible problem that needed immediate solving. More people; more difficulties. Harder for many to take, yes. But I can’t think of what problem they present us with that we haven’t faced before. Lomion’s claim to infamy was toppling a city and getting his relations killed, and we have found a way to live with him; most do not interact with him, but we found a way to navigate him living and being in contact with his family without strife despite the difficulty of solving the problem. Many who drew blades at Alqualonde are back and have found ways to make peace if not amends. Elwe is largely hated and even considered an enemy of the people by many, and he has been living peaceably with his wife for… two? Two thousand years now?”

Finrod paused for a moment, then said, “Somehow, I always forget that Elu is out there living as blessed Melian’s trophy husband until I’m reminded again.”

“He doesn’t really do much else,” said Arafinwe placidly. “And I’ve noticed that the biggest problem I’ve had so far… the biggest… thirty or so problems I’ve had so far are. Maglor’s. His. How to…”

“Near-constant histrionics?”

“Hm. And Findekano, though that’s less ‘a problem’ and more ‘upsetting.’”

Finrod felt a twinge of guilt. That was a lot of people he had not checked in with very recently. The list was getting long, and still the only place he truly felt like being was at home with Amarie. “It will be much worse for some to handle. It is… The magnitude of the problem is enough that I think it does become another thing.”

Arafinwe sighed.

“I…” said Finrod, and didn’t know what to say. He wanted to just accept them. He wanted to feel good and special about being able to accept them. But he was afraid too. He wasn’t sure he could handle it either. He knew how much suffering he could take, but he wasn’t sure how much of his people suffering through it that he could handle before he broke and closed the door.

How many people would he stand against for Curvo? Could he be that selfish?

“Sometimes,” Arafinwe murmured consideringly, “I wonder if it would be better if we broke all of you off, somehow. Not that I want to separate exiles physically into a different town or even quarter, because that isn’t a solution. But like when you and Turgon go off for a while, or he and Aredhel and Lomion spend time away. It’s good for everyone. It’s just that you all handle each other better when you’re not worrying about us, and I’m not blind to that.”

“Father,” Finrod said.

“I remember being told that in exile, it was considered unethical to take the claws out of a cat,” Arafinwe said. “Of course, it had to be explained to me what a cat was; a creature of the Enemy that men and Elda alike had both come to love. Strange, but I had heard stranger.  And it was explained to me that initially, Noldo would take out the claws of cats, because otherwise the pets could and, inevitably, would wound their owners, because the wickedness could not be bred or loved out of them. But they were taught to not take out the claws by Sindar, and it came to be agreed among all exiles that a cat should not have its claws taken out. Everyone attests that that way is better. And for my life I still cannot comprehend why even though it has been explained to me. I know you understand. I know your siblings and their children and childrens’ children understand. Gentle Elrond or peaceable Gil-Galad would never take the claws out of a cat, even though they are the ones who will then have to clean up the blood. This is all without addressing the fact that they have to be fed slaughtered animals!

“You handle each other better, and I am aware of that. To some degree I am always trying to imitate it, to find what makes people I despaired to heal calm and even beautiful around you or around Gil-Galad. I don’t think I’ll ever fully understand it, which is a fact I cannot fully regret either. I don’t believe I want to. I have, over many years of practice, become effective at hearing the concerns of the people who remained here and solving them.

“No, I don’t really know how we’re going to solve this problem. But I know someone will know, and I hope I have treated them well over the years, because I will need their help, whoever they are.”

Finrod swallowed, but it was no use. His throat was terribly backed up. Arafinwe laid his hand on his shoulder, and they stood together for a few minutes.

Finally, after he felt capable of speech, he whispered, “I miss my snakes so much.”

Arafinwe, with a smile in his voice, said, “I find your descriptions of snakes appalling and your attachment to them suspect, but I wish you could have your snakes too.”

--

He would have to visit Celebrimbor again, and be straightforward about visiting his father; he would have to visit Turgon again and do the same. He would have to visit Fingon to see if he needed anything, and eventually bit the bullet and visit his Aunt Nerdanel, and Elwing, with whom he had a complicated and unique relationship on account of her being a descendant of Balan, the great-granddaughter of Barahir, the granddaughter of Beren, and in his opinion under his protection, and in fact the more he thought about it the more it was high time to visit Elwing.

To do that, the easiest thing to do was to visit Elrond and ask him where she was at present and how she fared. It was not always an easy thing to find her, but it was an easy thing to find Elrond, who was generally sedentary and had what even Finrod thought was an impressive appetite for company of all kinds.

And so Finrod happily wrote Amarie that he was headed to Tol Eressea to visit Elrond, and not because he was a shame of a person at present but because he wanted to see Elrond (descendant as you know of my beloved Balan and a kinsman and absolutely delightful company, My Love, Finrod Ingoldo.), and took his mare down the mountain before leaving her at the stables in Alqualonde and taking on of the regular ships out to the island.

He was not used to announcing his presence at Elrond’s home; it really wasn’t necessary, for him or for anyone. He wasn’t surprised when he got there to find that he already had company, because he typically did; the guests rooms in his high-towered white house, twisted like a conch and riddled with windows through which one could see the crashing waves of the sea, were bright with color and sweet with the scent of burning amber and myrrh. Finrod was thrown laughingly into another one; he dropped his bag on the bed, took off his shoes, and hurried right back downstairs to find Elrond.

He found him outside, him and his incomparably beautiful niece Celebrian, sat on one edge of a salt-stained and greened outdoor table, having what looked like a light lunch together, chatting and laughing with their guests. Finrod picked up speed and, as he looped around the spiral stair that was leading him to that sunny, salt-scented, mosaic-floored courtyard, he saw the table was laid with tea in pink glass cups and plates of grapes and raspberries and olives and pistachio-dusted honeycombs. He was nearly about the sprint out of the stairs and into the courtyard when he turned a corner just far enough to catch a glimpse of their guest at the other end of the table, straight-backed, wearing deep blue, with hair like the night of the new moon, caught on the top of his head with a silver pin.

As such, what happened was that Finrod nearly flew off the stairs and skidded into view and, without having time to think of anything more clever to say, the first thing he said to Kanafinwe Makalaure was “Stars, they let you out?”

((I no longer like how I initially characterized Maglor. I may cut this scene entirely or I may gloss it instead.))

Elrond, who had been startled, half-stood, then stopped. Celebrian, not even turning to look at her uncle, shook her head minutely.

Maglor, who had already been straight-backed, squared his shoulders and looked down his nose like an offended python. His eyes looked Finrod down with a snap, and Finrod realized he had done it again; he looked like a stable-boy at best.

You do still dress up, right? He asked himself.

Maglor flicked the fingers of one hand together like he was snapping a fan shut. “Clearly, anyone can just walk in here, so what does it matter?”

“You certainly don’t belong in a hall of has-beens! Never-weres are supposed to go to the place down the road.”

Elrond sat back down, putting a gently curled fist on his forehead.

((may not actually go with this, we’ll see. If not, I can just send him back home without and do the jewel scene next. If I do this too I can have Finrod have his realization about the ‘hm’ thing.))

“Oh! I must have gotten lost. I have an honestly dreadful sense of direction, you may recall. Directions to your establishment, kind cousin? I hear it’s the place to be if a person has truly hit. Rock. Bottom.”

Finrod grabbed a chair, not breaking eye contact with Maglor, and sat down. “Maglor!” he exclaimed.

“Finrod!” Maglor returned, placing the fingers of one hand delicately on the rim of his tea cup. He worse still ight gloves over his hands, and his pair went up below his long sleeves so nothing of his skin could be seen. “’Most beloved and most fair of Finwe’s heirs!’ Or so I’ve read. How, you witless wastrel, are you getting away with that?”

“Thou unceasing cantor! Thou miserable minstrel! I didn’t kill hundreds of people!”

“Oh!”

“And I am prettier than you.”

Maglor tipped up his chin again, and a flash of a smile flickered on his face, and instead of responding (likely he wasn’t willing to get too petty in front of his foster-son), he made a quick, stabbing, definite noise. A little “hm!”

Curvo’s ‘hm.’ Sharp, derisive. It was more musical on Maglor’s lips, but still distinctive. Celebrimbor’s, too, though it was sarcastic or self-deprecating when he did it.

How in the world had Finrod forgotten that they had all inherited that quirk from the same man?

“Gentlemen,” Elrond pleaded aspirationally.

 “When it comes to this—damn,” said Finrod and Maglor at the same time, though with different rhythm.

“I know you both are individually,” Elrond said firmly.

Finrod knew he had to behave, because he was so curious how Maglor had found a paternal instinct inside himself and what he acted like when it was affecting him, and this was his first chance to see it. “Then let me be the first man to act like it!” Finrdo declared, folded his legs, and set his hands on the table where Maglor could see them (common courtesty, once, after everyone had seen enough thighs stabbed with forks). “Celebrian, darling, how are you today?”

Celebrian gave her uncle a most completely fake smile, but she responded in kind anyway. “Well enough, uncle; simply being alive and aware has one treading water these days, yet I remain upright.”

“Excellent; Elrond, my dear?”

“Well enough, uncle,” said Elrond with a poorly disguised laugh in his voice. “And you?”

“Well enough, though indeed things really do never keep happening, whether a person has had quite enough of them or not.”

“Which reminds me; did you manage to get ahold of Curvo?” Maglor asked as he settled back comfortably into his chair.

Elrond and Celebrian identically raised an eyebrow at Finrod.

“Maglor,” Finrod said, “I have run into him thrice since we spoke last, and found time in the meeting to deliberately enrage him against you. Have fun, by the way.”

Maglor gaped at him, and then covered his mouth with one gloved hand.

“What?” Finrod asked him.

“I am simply reflecting on the power I have now,” said Maglor happily. “Finrod, everyone wants to know what in Her name is going on there, but no one can pin either of you down long enough to say. Do you know how many people are begging for information?”

“I find that astonishing, as it appears to be all I talk about anymore,” Finrod complained.

“Yes, but you don’t stay in a place for longer than three days.”

“That’s not true. I just spend half a year being absolutely nowhere with Turgon.”

“And my congratulations as always with respect to whatever relationship it is that you two have.

((“But I have missed some great part of the story, I think,” Maglor said curiously. “Because, of course, I have only had Curvo to tell it to me,a dn he will lie. Cousin, I was sure you hated Curvo. What purpose is meeting him thrice even serving?”

Finrod paused. He cleared his throat. He said, “Curufin is not entirely wrong. In part, I do hate him.”

He managed to dodge Celebrian’s eyes, but not Elrond’s. Once they caught him, Finrod was fixed still for a moment, trapped under glass.

“Yes, nephew?” he said, just a tick unevenly.

“I meant to say,” Elrond said, and there was a slow creep of power into his voice, truth-telling and perhaps fore-telling, “That it is not like you to hate, and I don’t believe that you do now. But I could not say it.”))

--

((10: Last Glimmer))

Still with the many others he should visit and check in on in his mind, but wanting to be with Amarie and his daughters above all others in his heart, Finrod settled into home and wrote letters. Long letters to each of his Nolofinwean cousins (and a short one checking in to his aunt Anaire and uncle Nonofinwe themselves), a letter of intermediate length to Celebrimbor which mentioned noncomitally that they should discuss a certain subject (really, Tyelp, you know which one) in a little more depth when they had the opportunity, shorter letters to his sister and various relations of blond hue assuring him that he was still alive and not causing disasters yet, and he pulled out a paper and wrote ‘My most Honorable Aunt Nerdanel’ and then after a few minutes of staring at it put it in his desk-drawer and locked it.

((placeholder names to search and replace later: 1. Beatrice 2. Portia 3. Viola. Though to be fair. Having him give them Edain names (but not these, in-canon names) would be cute.))

He had brief visits, but he kept his attention on Amarie, and on Beatrice, Portia, and Viola. Considering where his life was potentially and frighteningly headed, he had to make sure Amarie felt secure, and with enough time to pay attention and watch them at their business he was starting to see strain and concern in his daughters as well, which he regretted not seeing before.

They didn’t necessarily know what had happened recently, but they didn’t have to, because they were aware that the actions of these people, freshly returned, strangers to them, had caused their father so much grief and, in one way of looking at it, his life.

He had talked a little with all of them about the things he had endured in his past life. He had talked at great length of the beauty of Aman under the Trees, of the wonderful world Beleriand once was and in his opinion always was, even in its dimmest ages, but he kept his accounts of the hard times… flowery. He loved to talk of the beauty of fleeting things, the strange, compelling, quiet, nearly inexpressible awe the snowflake-delicacy and raindrop-quickness of the ephemeral world of quick season and mayfly people instilled in him.

Sobbing naked except for viscera in the dungeon of the Enemy. Not as much.

He had been worrying the idea that it may be time to tell the girls a little more when a gift came for him.

He had been working through a pretty complicated update from the court in Alqualonde (he could enver focus on that sort of thing in Glaunrung’s Den, better to just take it home and read through it there) when Viola, his youngest, shouted for him from the front. He got up and got moving quickly, because he could hear the horse’s hooves in the next moment.

All four of them were in the front rooms, looking out the windows, two to each, buzzing and clucking to each other. Finrod went to the front door and opened it, and saw three riders on horse back, Formenos people, or else he didn’t know what they looked like. His brain insisted he knew them all but did not helpfully supply names; he greeted the one he did recognize as, to his lack of surprise, a member of Curvo’s household (and once a member of his guard.) “Well met.”

“Well met,” she repeated, along with the same pleasantries he had offered her, and a “King” in there, though that was polite enough to be uncomfortable at this point. She dismounted, and, though she had a blade on her, she did not draw it, which Finrod found encouraging.

“What brings you here?” he asked.

“My Lord sends me with a gift,” she said, and from the packs on her horse she removed a box about the size of a head, made of gold, naturally with unpleasantly pointed stars emblazoned everywhere they could go on its surfaces.

Finrod’s heart sank like a stone. ‘A gift’ could be anything, and once upon a time, it was almost always a thinly veiled warning. Curvo had once ‘gifted’ him a dagger with his name engraved on the blade. The method of gifting had been grabbing him from behind, so he startled, ad then pressing the hilt of the blade into his hand, with a whisper of “I was thinking of you, my diamond, as I toiled in the forge today.” Finrod had had to quickly decide whether or not he wanted to ask what that meant and had, predictably, made a pun about hilts and handling instead.

Finrod politely thanked the messenger. He handed her the box, and after only a moment of hesitation, knowing he was being watched both by his own and by Curvo’s guard, he opened it.

Then he gasped, a choked, shuddering gasp of fear, and fumbled the box so badly he nearly dropped it. Nearly—he clutched the sharp corners in the soft of his hand to just barely balance it.

Inside was a jewel. Not a gem, not a stone, a jewel. Hand-wrought, forged from light, from power, from craft. It was not actually very large as they went, perhaps an inch and a half across and nestled in a generous bed of black velvet, and, after the initial shock at its glow and glory passed, not too bright or brilliant as hand-wrought jewels went. It was dusky gray in the main, but a light shot from the middle like rays of sun piercing heavy clouds, soft yellow, and their light drifted on the shimmering gray waves the hundred facets of the jewel barely contained. It seemed to beat at itself, seeking a way to burst further forth. And yet the light, though startling, and beautiful, was not the point of the thing; the ever-shifting gray waves were, a deep, silty lake wearing daylight as mere ornament.

It wasn’t that Finrod hadn’t seen its like in some time. He had; Celebrimbor might pitch this one over his shoulder as a shabby experiment before making three greater ones in the afternoon, many of which he then went on to destroy, because he hated both gifting and keeping them. To see them at all, one had to watch them in work. No, neither its beauty nor its value startled Finrod, he had seen the like a thousand times, and better. It startled him because Curvo’s caressing hand was on it, and he could feel it. And because he had just been given a jewel whispering with delicate power from Curufinwe, and it should not really be necessary for him to explain why his throat felt like it was closing fast.

Finrod mastered himself, focusing on how the corner of the golden box bit into the joints of his fingers. That was no good; Curvo would ask how his gift was received, and “with abject terror” was not the response he would want.

Hopefully.

Finrod pulled it together and thanked the messenger, perhaps more politely (and lightly) than necessary. He said he would write a note in return, and walked into the house.

He passed by the girls without looking at them, dropped the box onto the dining-room table, and went into his study. He shut the door behind him, sunk into his chair, put his hands on his face, and made a noise even he found pathetic. Then he opened the drawer, pulled out a fresh sheet of paper, and looked on it for a minute before letting his heart write for him, whether that was a good idea or it wasn’t.

Curufin,

I get it! I told you to ‘go back to the workshop,’ and you took it literally. This explains your sudden departure, your ensuing silence, and the quality of the jewel itself. You hadn’t made one in the time you’ve been back, had you? I remember stones which I was helpless but to stare into for hours, like I was charmed by a serpent. It you recover such talent again, practice some caution with how you wield it, we can’t have people fainting into your arms on the street.

Curufin, why can I feel your hands around my neck in this jewel? That’s rude; if I try to complain about it, I’ll sound perverse. I don’t know if I’m forced to consider whether or not this is a ploy, or if I really do consider. I will refrain from writing anything indecent; it’s beautiful. I will call on you next, as I need some time to collect myself.

It is possible you thought nothing of it, or did not think this of it, and in that case, you can congratulate yourself on catching me writing intentions into your actions again. Write a note next time, unless you are enjoying making me wonder, in which case, enjoy yourself as much as you like.

I note you didn’t name it—is it my turn to be the mother? “Last glimmer.” In my head it is the dim light you see between your eyelashes before your breath is squeezed out, and you did tell that bastard he was squeezing too hard.

Finrod.

Finrod thought, as he folded the note into thirds and stuffed it into an envelope, I already cannot remember what I just wrote, but I think there were a few things I should not have written. Suddenly, though he had not been so concerned with it in years, he was focused on saving face; he marched the note to the messenger, thanked her again, traded proper politenesses, offered refreshments and rooms that were turned down, and bid them well. They left; straight-backed, he turned back into his home, shut the door, and locked it.

He had marched right past his family the first time. Now, when he entered the dining room, where they were seated around the table examining the jewel with the seriousness of a table of wizards (that is, appearing grave but only superficial), they all looked up at him with very similar pointed glances.

Were it just Amarie, he might point his glance back. Faced with his daughters, he felt something in him waver, then snap. He folded his arms lightly around his chest and inclined his head forward, looking down. “I’m sorry,” he said.

It must have not been the response anyone expected. There was a short silence, and then Viola said, “Daddy…”

Finrod was surprised by the force of the unhappiness that hit him. He said, “A moment,” and walked back to his study again.

He stood. After a few minutes, Amarie appeared in the doorway. She also stood a minute, and waited. Then, when Finrod didn’t move, she walked into the room and behind him, and wrapped her arms around him.

Finrod leaned on her. She pulled him in tight.

She said, “At dawn, your Highness, or should the troops attack in the dead of night?”

He chuckled, and it was not a light laugh. He swallowed. “Dawn, dawn. Trying to take them unawares is a mistake. These men are never unawares; besides if we abandon the politeness of civilized combat, they will take it as permission to do so themselves, and stoop to levels of uncivilized combat that you—that I hope that you cannot imagine.”

Amarie rested her head on his shoulder. He tilted his own so that he laid on it, and could feel the softness of her gold hair, the warmth of her sweet breath. She said, “The girls aren’t used to thinking about you that way.”

“What way?” he murmured.

“Like an exile.”

The shudder in his core did not make it all the way to his skin. “I was.”

“But they don’t think about you that way, because you don’t act that way.”

“Hm.”

“You don’t. You don’t act quite like the rest of them.”

Finrod cleared his throat. “Someone like Fingon or Turgon has kinslaying laying on their shoulders,” he whispered (because yes, he counted Eol, and so did Turgon). “I died well—nobly, I mean—and only have the blood of unfortunates on my hands.” So he called orcs and deceived men. “It can be—it can be hidden.”

“Not always,” Amarie whispered.

“Not perfectly,” Finrod agreed.

Amarie squeezed him closer for a moment, and said, “I think you have to tell them.”

Finrod pressed a hand to his eyes, and then pulled it down. Putting a calm into his voice that even he didn’t believe when he heard it, he said, “Would you brew some tea, love, and let everyone know I’ll be out in just a few minutes?”

Amarie kissed him under his ear, then left.

Finrod let himself cry for a minute, though it did not really bring relief, since the tears were frustrated, stressed, not true and sweet. He cleaned his face and got going.

--

Amarie had made a pot of licorice-root and spearmint and field mallow, both comforting and bracing, soft and bitter. Perfect, of course.

Finrod had dressed down to his shirt and put his hair in a tail. He took a long drink of tea and said, “It seems like it’s now about nine months past the time I should have discussed a few things with you girls.”

Portia said, “Oh, we won’t be mad if you already told Celebrimbor years and years ago, of course.”

Finrod stopped and reflected on how well he had just been insulted. He said, “That was very good, Portia.”

Amarie petted Portia’s hair, and despite her never meeting a cat, she did a fantastic imitation of a pleased cat.

“I think we will be mad if you should have told mom years and years ago and didn’t,” Beatrice said consideringly.

“Oh, if it’s something I haven’t told your mother, then it’s not fit for this table,” Finrod said confidently. “Well, some of this won’t be anyway.”

Beatrice and Viola made the same little interested “ooo” at once. Portia wrinkled her nose. Amarie, who was the prototype her gossipy daughters were emulating, should have been embarrassed and was not.

Finrod couldn’t help but chuckle, and this time honestly. “You’ll want to dampen your enthusiasm ahead of time, this is not going to be nearly as fun as it sounds.”

“Then shouldn’t I enjoy my enthusiasm now, if it will inevitably be dampened?” Viola asked.

“I fold immediately. Your moods can be as damp or as dry as you want them to be.”

“Soaked,” Viola said.

“Ah, with an extra shot, please,” Beatrice requested.

“Could mine be dry?” Portia asked.

“Arre, how do I start this,” Finrod asked.

“You girls know that your father went through a lot while he was voluntarily living in the land of suffering and decay,” Amarie said.

“Yes, thank you. I did; I think to preface this I should say—don’t give me those looks, I’m not winding up for a lengthy legal defense, this is going somewhere—I should say that I always thought it was prima facia ridiculous to try to shove the facets of exilic life into Valanoren boxes. What I don’t mean to say is to think we can’t be judged for the things we did, I do think so, and I do the judging myself all the time. What I mean is that one thing we were absolutely without, after a time, was an objective or, crucially, untarnished judge. There was no one who did not have their hands dirty, and that makes a crucial difference in how people handle each other. When you know there is no one at all who can effectively judge you or shun you for your actions, that there’s no one without weight pressing down on their own soul…

“I’m no longer sure where I’m going with that, so that’s enough preface. Things were different there, and we did things we would not and, in some instances, cannot do here; for me, though I’m sure not necessarily for others, the primary difference is the existence of Edain.”

His girls nodded, Portia with her face on her folded hand, Viola listening attentively, her hands around her tea-cup, which she only sipped at like a bathing bird. If they, or anyone, knew something about their father, it was that he loved the second-born.

“Well, Edain die. And it is not the same; they die, and are gone. Most of my noble peers could nto face that fate and chose, consciously or subconsciously, to pull from them, and not entwine themselves in their fates so much. Those of us who did… well, we mostly died. And it is not the same. That is why you’ll never meet your uncle Aegnor, or…

“No, that is not the right place to start. Well, pits. Arre, how do I do this?”

“Not the way you did it for me,” she supplied.

Finrod toasted her smartly with his cup and drank some. It was bitter-hot on his tongue, and it fortified him somewhat. “Speaking of your cousin Celebrimbor,” he said after he swallowed.

“Mmmhm,” Viola said.

“We love him,” Beatrice offered.

“Thank you! Don’t make me cry again. Well, you’ll recall that he’s caused a scandal in every city he’s ever lived in on account of his passion for neri.”

Ther was a pause. Viola said, “Frankly, I wish I recalled.”

“Every city?” Portia asked.

“Well? Yes, I believe so, a little problem at least once. He caused a brief scandal that honestly got lost in the rush of everything else going on not long before we all left Tirion the first time, there was definitely a misunderstanding involving some Sindar ner that caused problems in Hithlum, I think there was a nearly exactly similar event in Himlad, there was definitely one ruined occasion in Barad Eithel while we were all trying desperately for at least surface respectability, and as the man that ran Nargothrond I promise you that everything that could cause a problem did at least a dozen times; I hope he was left alone in Tol Sirion but I can tell you that his actions in his own city have continued to retroactively cause problems everywhere he has lived since. Did I miss?... Well, I don’t ask too many questions about life in that gap between my demise and his breaking with Gil-Galad, I assume Gil-Galad was too… I mean… it wouldn’t have been a problem in Gil-Galad’s eyes, but not everyone—”

“Yes, every city, let’s move on,” Amarie sighed.

“Yes. And I have, I think, made something of a name for myself for always arguing his side of the matter, And Gil-Galad and Gwindor’s, when it comes to the same subject; and Fingon, when I have to, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Portia agreed.

“Yes, everyone knows,” Viola said.

“Because try as I might, and being able to compare their actions to such things as physical torture and burning down refugee havens, I just cannot find it in myself to condemn actions such as these men have taken out of love of each other.”

“Yes,” Portia agreed again.

“This is so established, and so clear,” Viola said.

“Well, yes,” Finrod said, and then, “Um.”

They looked at him.

“Well, I have also done these things,” he said.

“Yes,” Portia agreed once more.

There was a pause.

Viola set down her cup and said, “Was that a secret?”

Finrod said, “What?”

Amarie covered her mouth.

The girls looked at each other, and then they began speaking over each other.

“Well you—you have really made it a point to let us know that you don’t mind what kind of spouses, gender neutral, we take for ourselves—and you are very passionate about defending Tyelpe—” Viola babbled.

“You are the proprietor of the most infamous and only Noldo-run establishment where neri can meet other neri on a nearly publically acknowledged and accepted basis. What are we supposed to think?” Portia argued.

“Mom told me,” Beatrice said.

Amarie turned to her, shocked. “What? I didn’t!”

“You were pretty drunk,” Beatrice admitted, looking up as she searched the memory.

“I never said that.”

“Alright. What you said was—Well, dad was in Tirion, at Nargothrond the Tavern, and it was just you and me at home, and we were both pretty drunk, and you said, ‘Oh, he’s probably wasted himself, crying to Gil-Galad about how he misses his broad-chested Edain’, and I said, ‘Oh!’ and you said, ‘Oh, I mean like the men, you know, how they have big, thick breasts like—‘”

Finrod said, “Amarie!!”

Amarie said, “I never said that. I never said anything like that.”

“—and thighs like pillows, yes you did!”

“I probably did say that, but I cannot believe you repeated it,” Finrod said, affronted.

“Father. I love you, and respectfully, I have listened to you wistfully whine about ‘your Balan’ for centuries. I think I would have to be stupid to not know,” Beatrice continued.

“Well! That,” said Finrod, and paused.

He drank some tea, and breathed out a heavy, hot breath. Looking down, he said, “That makes the next thing I have to tell you all a little easier.”

Except that it didn’t. After a moment of struggling, he said, “I miss Balan very much. Ugh,” he said, and had some more tea. “No, properly. Some attempt at properly. At first I was enchanted with all of them equally, with the second-born as a whole. People so like us, and so unalike! I wanted to know everything. It was many years before I even fully recognized that my love for Balan was surpassing that of the other, too many in his opinion, and by that point he had already become part of my court, and respected there, I will add. I was inseparable from him before we were married, and in love before that—how can I even say it? Everything he did was surprising and strange. He was hungry for things that were new, as much as I was. Almost everything made him laugh; his life before had been painful and hard and marked by loss, and he sprang out of it always aware that it could all end again, any time, and that he was obligated by the Good Gods he believed in to enjoy their beautiful world as well as he could, in defiance of his grief, before his day came. I think every other Edain who wed an Elda had gone into it begging forgiveness for their unseemly lust and humbled by by being allowed to touch the world of the immortals. When I proposed to Balan, he laughed at me and said, ‘sure!’”

“You’ve been saying ‘married’ and ‘wed’ a lot,” said Portia was a sort of awe in her voice.

“You couldn’t have, right?” Viola asked.

Finrod paused. “Why not?”

“Because of our mother?” Viola said, indicating Amarie with one hand.

Finrod paused to think again. “Do you girls think…” He turned to Amarie.

“Oh dear,” she said.

“I wasn’t married to your mother before my exile,” Finrod said, “I wasn’t even engaged to her. We were attached outside wedlock, which was just as daring then as it is now, if not moreso. We both got a lot of trouble about it, actually. Balan was my first spouse. Your mother is the second.”

Viola’s hand clapped over her mouth.

“I suppose we never clarified,” Amarie continued awkwardly. “Though how I would clarify that without mentioning Balan in the first place, I don’t know.”

“I didn’t think of it,” Finrod admitted.

All three of Finrod’s daughters regailed him with choice words in a row. His indignantly assured them that they were legitimate, even according to the Valar, that their mother was his real wife, that his marriage to Balan was considered an Edain marriage and thus was dissolved by death, that no one was a bigamist (he did not reply to ‘cheater’), and that they could use their fine brains to figure out the reason why they shouldn’t be concerned about any ‘unknown family’—

“Unless you want to consider the descendants of Balan in the form of Dior, and his children, and their children, etcetera, to be family, but I was hoping you already did!”

“That’s—” said Viola, and then the girls all rapidly and in half-sentences came to several realizations about the highly respectful and generous manner in which their father treated the descendants of Luthien, which he had always called the descendants of Beren, and openly, so none of this should be that surprising.

“His sons didn’t act like this,” Finrod interjected tersely. “Balan’s sons had been trying to convince him to remarry since their mother died, and they liked that I could behead someone with a table knife. They thought leaving their father with a beautiful, magical spirit-man who lived underground and wanted to spoil him rotten was a fantastic retirement plan and then they went off to kill orcs and build cities.”

“By Varda, and he’s the ancestor of Tuor, too,” Beatrice fretted.

“Balan? Yes he was, on his mother’s side, nine generations his sire. Don’t try to test me about this family tree, girls, I’ll describe the exact connection between Turin, Elros Tar-Minyatur, and Melian the handmaiden of Yavanna and make your regret we even started here today.”

“What your father means to say is that though this is far in the past, it is still very important to him,” Amarie sighed.

“Yes, I probably could have said that.”

“And I’m sure he also just forgot to say that none of this changes how me feels about any of you as family, or about me.”

“I did forget that,” Finrod said, and leaned over to kiss Amarie on the cheek; she returned it by turning in and kissing him on the lips, slow. Finrod laid his hand on her cheek, and turned back around to say, “And I do mean it. I would not trade anything for what I have with my family now, and each of you. And I do mean that, and I know I mean that, or I would be where Aegnor is now.”

The choices he had made! To some, especially those who had never breathed the withering air of Beleriand, the things he had said made him vile. The concept of even choosing between two spouses breathed a corruption and decay—the death of a husband! The rejection of his memory in marriage!—that would make a truly high Elda shudder. Indeed, Beatrice was now looking away, with her brow pinched in thought; Viola was looking down into her teacup. Did they wonder if this dulled their father’s love for them, or did knowing what he had sacrificed for the love they now owned sit ill with them?

“Giggling about you being a lover of neri and knowing about so serious a truth is difference,” Portia said, her tone considering. “But… I don’t understand what brought this on, or why you felt you had to tell us now,” she said.

Portia was, as always, demonstrating that she was as sharp as a newly forged knife. She had her gold eyes on him, staring, piercing and unafraid. Probably the most revealing thing Finrod could have done was look at “Last Glimmer”, his newly-dubbed gift, as it lay glistening in velvet in the middle of the table, so of course, he did.

She followed his eyes, and stared also.

Portia was so smart. Immediately, she covered her mouth with her hands. The other girls, however, had not caught on, so Finrod was forced to speak.

“The time after Balan passed away was… bleak,” he said. He loved to speak of his Balan, even when it pained him. The story that followed could be more… complicated. And while his open-hearted girls could see the beauty in his marriage to Balan if they wanted, they would not see it here. “Unlike Turgon, I had not completely cut ties with my kin, but Nargothrond was out of the way, and designed to be a shelter, easy to hide in. Hide I did, for a while. Then I poured myself into the care of Balan’s descendants, trade and friendship with the dwarves, with keeping our people alive, war; war is an unending task, something you can fill every hour of every day with, if you like. Building, stockpiling, growing, repairing, plotting. Then, after the battle when I lost your uncles… I mean, by Manwe, the battle where we lost the High King, half of Beleriand, the peace of the seige, and yes, both of my brothers… a couple of cousins came to me for aid. Celegorm the fair and Curufin the crafty, with his son behind him. I couldn’t have turned them down even if someone foretold exactly what would happen. Not after everything I just lost. That…”

Finrod froze. He could not even lift his cup to drink. He said, “Arre, just tell me to do it already.”

“Just do it already.”

“Damn. Curufin seduced me, not that I was a hard catch. We were lovers for years before he betrayed me. I quickly realized he had completely lost his mind and tried to help him, but I was trying to move a mountain with a single pickaxe there. That’s why I am acting completely unaccountable around him and even with the Valar helping will continue to do so. He will—he’s still trying, Arre, how else am I supposed to interpret this?” he asked his wife, indicating the jewel with an exhausted flick of his hand.

“You’re interpreting this right, if dramatically,” she replied.

--

They both engaged in a lot of comforting their daughters for the rest of the afternoon. They were not exiles, they had not seen what he had seen; they did not understand. The web of passion and detestation, compulsion, rejection, loss and lust which he and Curvo had woven between them would be inexplicable even if he tried, and he did not want them to understand.

There was no getting around it. It was not as simple as loving someone else. They could understand and accept that he had loved Balan. The feelings he had about Curvo were feelings that he was not supposed to have, and no one wants their father to have them. They saw him like an exile now, he knew in his heart.

The haunting hands of their crimes in fallen Beleriand reached past their graves! They always did.

The easy route would have been to let Amarie blame Curvo for everything, but he stopped that quickly. He said what he always said, even when she protested; he did not do those things alone, and if Finrod paid for it, so did he. To tell much more would be to reveal secrets Curvo had entrusted him with, and even now he would not. He focused on his daughters, on assuring them that everything had been real. It had all been real, every year of their lives with him, every moment of his love.

Amarie’s brief attempt of levity in claiming “really, it’s exactly like Fingon and Maedhros, so who can be that surprised?” only caused more fuss. However, Viola’s statement, meant in earnest, gesticulating fist clutching her wettened handkerchief, that “what I can’t stand is the knowledge that you are Tyelpe’s Queen Indis” broke the news into sudden, crackling hysterics; Finrod was nearly sobbing by the end of it and everyone needed several minutes to recover.

“Your strategy in being especially gracious to him now reveals itself,” croaked Beatrice, wiping her eyes.

“Strategy? That’s simply atonement,” Finrod countered. “I love Tyelpe dearly and like a nephew; that’s a fact. I am also very aware of the fact that he knew everything that was going on between myself and his father and that there is nothing I can fully do to make up for that ordeal.”

“So you,” Viola began, and cut off to cough. “So you did tell Celebrimbor about it years and years ago!! Father!”

“No, he had the misfortune to witness it!”

“Who all knows, then?” asked Portia, her voice both soft and rough. “How many?”

Finrod winced. “Once upon a time I would have been able to list everyone who knew the truth on a hand,” he sighed. “It became nearly an open secret near the end, mostly because…” No, he couldn’t say that. “…Well, because of Celegorm, essentially. But now I’m forced to say ‘nearly anyone who was anyone in my court in Nargothrond, since they’ve had a few millennia to compare notes, though they’ve been incredibly good sports about pretending,’ and the real answer is, I am sad to admit, ‘Anyone who was present at the Yule Party of 463 after midnight.’”

He had told Amarie about the Yule Party of 463, so she made an awful noise in her throat. Most of the next hour and until dinner was spent in the girls doing everything they could to convince him to tell them what happened in the Yule Party of 463, and Finrod kept the information from them with an iron will and the insistence that they would not come back from the precipice of that knowledge thinking the same way about him, ever again.

((future scene with the girls like “Tyelpe what happened after midnight in the yule Party of 463” and Finrod getting to be like ha!!! He was not present after midnight at the Yuel Party of 463. He went to bed early because he was Depressed))

--

He put Last Glimmer safely into a drawer in his bedroom, and closed the drawer.

Amarie came up to him as he stood, and wrapped her arms around him. Finrod buried his face in her neck.

The calls of the nightjars and the crickets called outside, melodiously sweet, missing the rasping, sighing call that once lulled him to sleep in the grassy plains of Beleriand.

He said into her hair, “Do you know what I find truly unfair?”

“What?” she asked.

He said, “I did not wed Curvo. I wouldn’t if he had asked. I loved him, but not wholly, and not aright. I was not devoted to him and he not to me. I wanted to change him even as I loved him and was relieved to be rid of him even as I missed him.

“I did wed Balan, and loved him, wholly, with all of myself, and did until his last breath and do unto this day. I was devoted to him, and he to me, and wouldn’t have changed a hair on his head if I had the power to keep him in place instead of watching the color leach away. I miss him even now, and will have to face eternity missing him, a prospect I still must face with bravery, and with shame, knowing that it does split my heart when you deserve me in full.

“I will never see Balan again, no matter what I do, not even if I begged every day in front of the Ring of Doom, not if I waited for ten thousand years on my knees. There is nothing I could do to get Balan back, but the Valar will throw Curvo at me once they’re sick of him.”

Amarie held him in place. She said, “Do you want me tonight?”

“It wouldn’t be right,” Finrod whispered, “but would you let me lay beside you?”

“I would,” she said, and they went to bed together.

--

((11: A Couple Notes))

Finrod woke up to a chill, white dawn that he could feel on the tip of his nose, and looked up at the thin light of morning, and thought, Curvo is ruining my life from a distance, and I’m supposed to just handle it?

Then he thought, that’s a pretty dramatic way of phrasing it, and then got up to make a pot of tea. Dark, oxidized tea leaves, red clover, lemongrass; he took his straight but set out milk and honey for the girls.

One by one, they got up, hugged him around his shoulders, and fixed their cups of tea. Proper Portia was the last to awaken. After pouring her cup, she stood beside him.

“Yes?” he asked.

 “I had something of a boyfriend before I married my husband,” Portia said suddenly, slightly flushed.

Finrod paused. “Your mother might have mentioned it,” he admitted.

“I bet she did,” Portia said, and put two spoonfuls of sugar in her cup, whisking quickly. “I even knew it wasn’t going to end well at the time but I still spent my time with him anyway. I felt foolish. I didn’t know how I could be acting that way, and I was surprised and ashamed that I wouldn’t stop. Mother helped me straighten things out so I could marry without worry.”

“Your mother is a wonderful woman,” Finrod said. “Making it doubly vexing that some still treat her with polite disdain because they know she had a lover or two before her marriage. Now, I was one of those lovers, and the first one, but does it matter to these…” Finrod trailed off with a sigh. “If I have any wisdom at all, it’s that there is no one who has sole possession of goodness or who knows the only way to be good. Those who have lived in the light of the Valar all their years often think they do. It is easier for them to be good, which I will grant, as I always have. But I have known phenomenally good people who will never be blessed with the light or favor of the Valar and indeed were dealt punishment after punishment for their good deeds, and nonetheless, though they were very different, they were very good.

“There can be a shrinking of thought that comes with only knowing one way of life. People here can be very good, and very narrow. They have a blindness to the good outside the narrow, which I pity. Portia, if you’ve ever seen someone butterflied, you will not give a shit that someone had a boyfriend before marriage.”

“Father,” she sighed.

“I see the pressures of being a daughter of Arafinwe are as vexing as the pressure of being a son of Finwe were when I was young!” he said gently. “I felt like I had to be an uplifting example for all, and let them down by being imperfect. I have found much more success in being a hope for people like me, and gifting my efforts to them, instead of people who don’t really need them. So, if someone is demanding unrealistic perfection of you, next time, I’d ask what on earth they need it for.”

Portia had been rolling her eyes at him, but she did listen to the last sentence. She pondered something in it, but Finrod wasn’t sure what. After some thought, she said, “It does seem to me that people who need nothing often ask for much!”

Finrod laughed heartily at that. After, he bothered his daughter to tell him a little about that last boyfriend; prim as ever, she glossed over the details of the matter but entrusted him with her feelings on them, which was what mattered.

--

Finrod had a few quite difficult and quite lovely days as his daughters found him at random times to ask nearly unexpected questions, ranging from the delicate to the surprisingly pointed.

He had wondered which of them was going to ask him how it ‘worked.’ It was Viola. She didn’t blanch until she asked if it really fit there, and he answered honestly.

After a few days, he heard the ringing bell above the door go off; and again, and again. He walked out of his study and saw that what he heard was everyone else in the house running out to greet a guest, and the guest, as it often was, was Celebrimbor.

Finrod paused in the doorway to watch his daughters flock their much-beloved cousin. It always soothed his heart to watch them get along. It especially soothed his heart now.

They were especially giggly about greeting him today; of course they got over all their troubling and stressing feelings about the affair (ugh) the second they could trouble someone else about it. Celebrimbor was looking steadily more confused and uncertain about the barrage of teasing he was being faced with, so Finrod eventually got himself off of the doorpost and over to his nephew.

They clasped hands and then embraced. The girls started giggling again, and when Celebrimbor pulled back, he was looking down at Finrod with a look of confusion bordering on vexation.

“Ingo,” he said.

“Tyelpe,” he replied, “You might notice there’s something in the air here today. We had…” he paused for the chorus of laughter. “We had a… family discussion the other day.”

Celebrimbor was not dumb. He had once been somewhat awkward and slow to pick up on silent cues, but he was no longer that, either. He looked over at the girls, made a somewhat uncomfortable noise in his throat, and said, “Did… you.”

Viola burst into a torrent of laughter so bad she bent over.

“Well,” said Celebrimbor, and turned back to Finrod with surprising sternness. “You’re about to have another!” he said, lifting up a finger to point at him.

“What!” Finrod said, genuinely surprised.

“It’s been a madhouse in Formenos; yes, I’ve been trying to live with him, not all the time, but on and off, and I usually find myself leaving after half a day. But it’s especially intolerable right now, and it’s your fault.”

“I—what—” Finrod built up his very best playful indignance, splaying his fingers on his chest, working on the hint of amusement that he sensed buried inside of Celebrimbor’s real frustration. “I haven’t done anything!”

“Yes you did,” Celebrimbor countered, “You wrote a letter.”

“A letter?... I did, yes!” he recalled.

Celebrimbor said, “You cannot have forgotten about this.”

Finrod looked away, abashed. “Well, I remember being incensed when I wrote it.”

“Huh!” Celebrimbor made that Feanor-hum, in his throat, his own version of it. “I won’t say you weren’t provoked, but incensed is a word for it! Come in, then, and have a look at what you did.”

Finrod read:

Curufin,

I get it! I told you to ‘go back to the workshop,’ and you took it literally. This explains your sudden departure, your ensuing silence, and the quality of the jewel itself. You hadn’t made one in the time you’ve been back, had you? I remember stones which I was helpless but to stare into for hours, like I was charmed by a serpent. It you recover such talent again, practice some caution with how you wield it, we can’t have people fainting into your arms on the street.

Curufin, why can I feel your hands around my neck in this jewel? That’s rude; if I try to complain about it, I’ll sound perverse. I don’t know if I’m forced to consider whether or not this is a ploy, or if I really do consider. I will refrain from writing anything indecent; it’s beautiful. I will call on you next, as I need some time to collect myself.

It is possible you thought nothing of it, or did not think this of it, and in that case, you can congratulate yourself on catching me writing intentions into your actions again. Write a note next time, unless you are enjoying making me wonder, in which case, enjoy yourself as much as you like.

I note you didn’t name it—is it my turn to be the mother? “Last glimmer.” In my head it is the dim light you see between your eyelashes before your breath is squeezed out, and you did tell that bastard he was squeezing too hard.

Finrod.

“Well!” he said, handing it to Amarie. “Yes, I certainly remember all of that now.”

“Well,” said Celebrimbor, and, failing to come up with anything to finish his sentence, put his hand on his forehead.

After reading, Amarie said, “Ingo, what in Varda’s name.”

“Can I read it?” asked Beatrice.

“No,” said Celebrimbor, Finrod, and Amarie at once.

“Did you copy this? It looks like your handwriting.”

“I did; and my father is keeping the original on his person, so it wasn’t easy, mind you.”

“Uh oh,” Finrod said.

“First thing; I am grateful both that you convinced him to take up his craft again, whether you did it by accident or not, because it’s good for him. And I also thank you for insulting the quality of his first attempt, because that’s also good for him. But did you have to do the rest of it?”

“I have a documented history—I suppose not documented any more, but it used to be materially documented—of being particularly stupid around your father.”

“Well, we’re certainly building that paper trail back up,” Amarie sighed, and slid the paper back to Celebrimbor to keep it away from Beatrice’s grabby hands.

“I presume he is not leaving the forge,” Finrod began.

“If only! No, he’s spending about ninety percent of his time in there, but it’s the other ten percent that’s the problem.”

“Even worse. He’s eating and sleeping, meaning he won’t just die on the anvil and leave everyone else alone.”

“Again, if only,” Celebrimbor continued, and paused to thank Portia for bringing him a drink. “Eating, yes. Sleeping, I doubt. He spends most of his time being a terror, but in that way where you really can’t—”

“Call him out on it, there’s an easy excuse for everything he does, I know,” Finrod finished.

“So it just gets worse—as it stands I just leave the room if he acts that way, and it works, for a given value of working,” said Celebrimbor, who was very much the Lord of Ost-in-Edhil right now, and Finrod didn’t begrudge him it for as he needed the solidity it provided. “No, the problem is mother, who would never put him off like that, and insists on getting patiently through it.”

Finrod drew himself up as, immediately, a pinprick of heat began to throb behind his eyes. “If he is giving your mother trouble, Tyelpe, I don’t care what kind of politeness or decorum—”

“Trouble! I think that’s the most delicate way of putting it. No, I know exactly what he’s been giving her, and I should never be so aware of that, or so capable of hearing it.”

Finrod stopped.

He said, “What.”

The girls started shrieking, in that pitch of hilarity between horror and delight. Amarie looked truly incensed, in a way that told him that this was going to be all she was going to talk about for days.

Finrod, shocked, said, “Well, no wonder you’re being so blunt right now, how are you getting any sleep yourself?”

“Again, by leaving the building,” Celebrimbor grumbled, putting his chin in his hand.

“You are telling me—hold on, give me that note back.”

Celebrimbor handed it back.

“You are telling me that your father is petitioning your mother for so much intercourse that it is becoming a Formenos problem, and you blame it—” he flourished the note, which he had simply needed as a prop—“on this?”

“Specifically the original one, written in your hand, which smells of jasmine.”

“All my stationary smells like jasmine, it’s stored in a drawer with jasmine oil so that it will.”

“Of course. Yes, Ingo, I do blame it on the letter, and the hand that wrote it, because whether I like it or not, I can remember what the two of you were like together.”

“Curufinwe Tyelperinquar, you have dealt with so much.”

“I am beginning to believe that myself.”

“Listen. It’s not too uncommon, just after someone is returned…”

…And in saying that he was thinking specifically of his dearest friend Turgon, who, unless someone else was keeping quiet, might have the record for ‘shortest time elapsed between returning to life and bedding his wife,’ and it could have been shorter if Fingolfin hadn’t pleaded with Turgon and Elenwe to please wait until the Halls of Mandos were in the distance.

“Ten months after he’s returned?”

“Somewhat uncommon, but so is our Curufin. He did not have his wife back immediately, so it just be delayed…”

“Perhaps, but she blames you too.”

“What!”

“What she said was—and I was just having breakfast, I was at the table, having toast, tea, completely normal, not bothering anyone,” Celebrimbor insisted, motioning with his hands, “When mother comes in looking a little ragged on the edges, she’s still fixing up her hair, her brow is pinched, and I simply say, ‘good morning, mother’, and she says ‘good morning my dear one’ like she has never felt a single one of those words in her life. I ask, ‘is something the matter?’ And she fixed me with a look like I’m just one of them, and do you know what she said to me?”

“’You know your father, dear?’”

“She said, ’I was too easy on that golden-haired cocksucker. Next time I see him, I’m smacking him.’”

“What?” Amarie gasped, snapping her teacup down on the table.

“Well!” Finrod said, and sat back in his chair. He looked at Amarie and said, “You know, love, I thought I knew Tanaquine, but I’m not sure I do.”

“I’ll take her eyes out.”

“Now, Arre, she’s right. My hair is like gold.”

Amarie rolled her eyes to the heavens, but what she intended to say next was interrupted; Beatrice suddenly gasped, a harrowing, shocked gasp, and Finrod looked over to see she was holding up the note and reading it. He looked uselessly down at his hand which was, of course, empty.

“Girls,” Amarie said sharply, and moved to stand; all three fled with the expert tactical skill of long-distance archers to the next room.

“Oh, leave it, it’s too late,” Finrod sighed. “Well, first thing’s first,” he directed at Celebrimbor, “Remind your mother that married or not, it’s always her choice what she does or doesn’t do for him.”

“Hear, hear,” said Amarie.

“I will not be bringing up the topic. These are my parents. You can tell her yourself!”

“I am confident she does not want to hear it from me. Second—these points are both evasive, but that’s why I’m getting them out of the way first, so they stop running around in my head—tell me that this man is not still being a tyrant to you about your preference for neri.”

“Thank Manwe, no! Now that he’s—I would say lucid instead of ‘better’, but now that he’s lucid he’s not being a bald-faced hypocrite. We are not seeing perfectly eye to eye but he’s at least not trying to use that against me.”

“He had better not. Oh, stars—this is evasive too, but hear me out. I made a mistake when I last spoke to him, yes, we are going to talk about how I’ve been speaking to him, but let me apologize for this.”

“Which is?”

“I had gathered he knew about The Relationship, but I let out the word ‘married’ around him, and it seems he hadn’t heard that before. That was my fault, I should have been more cautious.”

“That was you?” Celebrimbor said curiously. “No, I’m not mad. He was going to learn that detail eventually, I was less keeping it from him and more trying to only bring up sensitive topics one at a time. I wondered who did end up telling him, but he didn’t say.”

“I let it slip. I’ll tell you that however he acted around you, he had a fit about it in the moment. Absolute meltdown in the brewing room. Exact same thing I was telling you about every other day while we were all underground; he can see that he’s muddied it all up, he is aware that he performs parenting failures as a hobby, he has some inklings of a solution but can’t come to grips with executing it.”

“Same as always.”

“It is, and I hate it for you. He latched onto me saying ‘get back into the workshop,’ which wasn’t even what I meant in context, and I’m glad that it’s been good for him but I was trying to really advise him to think hard about known behavioral problems he has, and whether or not he wants to keep exhibiting the same exact problem behaviors for all eternity, but, it has become evident, what he heard was ‘words words words words Workshop words words Make Something Shiny.’”

“Hm,” Celebrimbor judged. “I should come down harder on it, but it’s just not the worst thing he could be doing.”

“We could optimistically hope that working on his presumed jewel deficit will double with him working mentally on his problems. It’s not impossible.” Generationally, he fell between ‘creating more problems for everyone while I make my little rocks’ and ‘coming to grips with my problems and generating potential solutions for them as I make my little rocks (but this apparently excludes making my little rings).’

 “I don’t know; I’m about to spend a lot less time with him for the time being, because there’s no reason to stress myself about his problems, especially when I was needing a break anyway.”

“That’s it,” Finrod said proudly.

“But we do need to get around to the fact that you are seeing him,” Celebrimbor said, a look between scorching and simmering on his face, leaning forward with his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand.

“Yes; I was going to get around to it, but I wanted to get a couple things out of the way.”

“They’re out of the way as much as anything is; the worktable is pretty cluttered.”

“Now, ‘seeing him’ makes this sound a little more structured than this is,” Finrod began.

Amarie cut him off immediately. “No. Nuh-uh. This is pretty structured.”

Finrod pulled in a breath, and then let it out. “You know what?” he said. “Let Arre give you the rundown. There’s essentially nothing she doesn’t know and she’ll tell it with less of a bias.”

It worked, because Celebrimbor found it funny, and Amarie gave a better picture of everything that had happened since Curvo came back and they first encountered each other than Finrod could have. Finrod did not find factual fault with her description, but presented in the daylight, he did find that is all seemed rather…

“…You make it sound like we’re dueling each other,” said Finrod after she had finished, “or playing rounds of a table-game.”

“Are you not?” Amarie asked frankly. “There appear to be moments where you like him, or he likes you, but those things never happen at once. At least one of you is always trying to contend, even when you don’t admit it, Ingo, and even when you aren’t being malicious, which you aren’t. You can play a table-game in a friendly way, but it’s still a competition. And you get shockingly upset when he does one better to you. To contrast with how sportingly you take a loss to me, to be clear.”

Finrod could feel himself flush. He said, “It turns out losing your Kingdom, home, and the rest of your family to someone once does affect you.”

“That is not the only thing that is affecting you,” Amarie informed him.

“Arre, that is his son.”

“What have I not heard at this point?” Celebrimbor complained.

“Fine, I will speak plainly; both of us did not long last our disastrous affair. I know I still feel drawn to him and I would be so demure that I would be lying if I said I thought he didn’t feel the same thing.”

“He does. Again, I wish I didn’t know that, but I do.”

“How—never mind,” Finrod said. He was embarrassed but not too surprised that he had to ignore a pulse of heat under his stomach at that confirmation. “Because you were privy to far too much while we were underground and to some degree that was my fault.”

“Not really,” Celebrimbor said, but moved on. “Listen, I just want to know what to expect. Is this happening, or is it not?”

“The girls are going to be so mad they ran off to gawk at the forbidden letter instead of remaining to eavesdrop,” Finrod sighed. “Not if Tanaquine wants my head, it isn’t. It was wrong of me to court her husband—roll your eyes at the terminology if you want, I am going to be as respectful as I’m allowed—it was wrong in the first place, because even though she was not present, he was married. Now it would be monstrous of me. So, as long as Tanaquine does not consent, the answer is always no, and yes, I keep reminding myself of that.”

Celebrimbor, chin still on his curled hand, glittering with emeralds, looked pointedly at Amarie, and then back at Finrod.

Amarie and Finrod looked at each other.

“Well,” they said at once.

Finrod gestured at Amarie with his palm. She gestured back at him with her backhand. He sighed. “My gracious and frankly peerless wife… is… open to ideas.”

Celebrimbor lifted his head and looked with genuine shock at Amarie.

She wryly said, “Oh, I forgot, we’re the couple known for our flawless cleaving to traditional bonds of marriage and fidelity, aren’t we? Oh, no, wait, we’re the couple who are notorious for having had several other partners each.”

 “But you do know who we’re talking about,” Celebrimbor said.

“Yes; that’s the gentlemen that I screamed insults at when he approached my house last, and he has since been banned from the vicinity. We’re acquainted.”

“Right,” Celebrimbor said.

“If you’re wondering whether I’m as concerned that Curufin would in theory respect my wife as I try to respect his, yes, I am concerned, but I am confident the matter is in good hands,” Finrod clarified.

“So you are seriously considering this,” said Celebrimbor morosely. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Ingo, that… worries me.”

“And I know why; and first I will remind you as I remind everyone, that it was definitely—”

“The werewolf, it was the werewolf that killed you, and Curufinwe was a—”

“’Factor leading up to’ at best, there’s a good lad. And secondly, everyone goes out of their way to insist to me that this wasn’t my fault, I didn’t do anything wrong, so forth, and fortunately I have persisted in refusing to listen to that. I do know what I did that was wrong, and I can correct it; I was hungry for what Curvo could give me and willing to ignore my safety to have it. I felt guilty that I was safe and others were fighting and dying, including my brothers, and I wanted to endanger myself as well. I was eager as everyone else for acclaim and a challenge, and I was a widower, which is no easy thing to be. Most problematically I was using Curvo’s behavior to harm myself, and I feel no more impulse to do that now.

“When I went to see my sister, aware that I was following old patterns and alarmed, she gave me an ultimatum; she listened to my situation and said I could do one of two things. She said I could refuse Curufin completely and maintain we keep each other at a distance, or I could take the challenge back on, but selfishly. She was incredibly insistent on that point. Selfishly, on my terms, without permitting him to do anything I did not permit and not allowing his trespassing of boundaries. I will be honest now, though I was not admitting it out loud before: I have clearly chosen the second option. Now, that does not have to mean a relationship, and it won’t if not everyone is agreed. But it does mean I am dealing with him one way or another. And by that I mean my way, as much as the concept is alien to me, because Galadriel told me to, and what am I going to do, not do what she says?”

Celebrimbor’s eyes had slid down to the table as he thought. He pulled his hair back anxiously; his clawed ring snagged in his braid. “I… I find both of those options… comfortable. Possible. And if I am to selfishly admit something… this would be the option I would want you to pick, too. I…”

“Have no confidence he wouldn’t make my boundaries your problem? I don’t know that you should,” Finrod admitted. “I haven’t become blind to his… massive difficulties with respecting the needs of other people. To put it. Nicely.”

“Well, and I am uncomfortable with that, partially because it sounds like a relief,” Celebrimbor continued, frustrated. “I would love some additional help in handling and rehabilitating him because it’s really hard, but I hope you understand that I don’t want to foist that off on someone, especially not someone who got hurt badly doing that work in the first place. I don’t—”

“Well, that’s—”

“No, let me finish,” Celebrimbor said, his palms on the table, his eyes lowered in frustration. Finrod folded his hands. “This is really uncomfortable. We’re doing exactly what we used to do underground, trading him between people able to willing to handle him and trying to hand him off without him realizing whenever he exhausted someone. It was never a good method, or a good way to treat someone, but it always seemed like we only had to hold out a little longer, and then things would get better, but they didn’t. They never did. I don’t like how quickly we fell into the same pattern, and I don’t want to fall into that pattern. We thought we were managing him, but since it didn’t work and he just used the system to ruin his relationship with everyone individually, I just think we have to admit that it doesn’t work. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.”

“And I just told your father that he has to honestly admit to it when his previous patterns didn’t work, even when he thinks he was doing the right thing,” Finrod admitted, feeling heavy. “No. You’re right, and we should look at it. That didn’t work. We wanted to help him, and we wanted to fix the problems we had with him individually, but the fact is that the method didn’t work. It felt like everything we could do, at the time…”

“Because we let him turn every single relationship into a private affair,” Celebrimbor added with sudden fire. “We were all too tired to handle him all the time, because he acted like every single social situation was a siege, and everyone wanted a nice night without his histrionics, and Manwe knows he couldn’t be left alone too long, so we let him conduct literally everything in private, just him and whoever was on his plate tonight, and usually rumors about what had done had circled the caverns twice before we could even meet up and get the real story.”

“Peaks, I’ve never had a rumor mill like that, and I never will again.”

“I hope not!”

“You’re right, Tyelpe. It didn’t work, it doesn’t work, and if we’re pretending that we want him to be part of society for the foreseeable future, we have to change how we handle him.”

“I want to stop handling him,” Celebrimbor said, afraid, passionate. “I just want to know him. Have a relationship with him. I know it can be done, because I did once. And I know the problems were his, and not mine, and that it shouldn’t be up to me to fix this, but I do want to have that relationship, and more pressingly, I cannot have the absolute disaster that was trying to know my father at the end of his life again. After…

“Well, let me be honest. After going through something similar myself, I can’t stand it. It’s too pathetic. I know that’s an unkind thing to say, but it’s how I feel.”

Finrod hummed, unhappy. There were echoes of Curvo’s experiences in what happened to Celebrimbor (by way of Sauron), though if he were asked, Finrod would deem that Celebrimbor’s trials were worse tenfold. “If we could convince him to have a normal conversation with you, dear one, you would have so much to talk about.”

“I don’t want to convince him, cajole him, coerce him, or otherwise force him to do anything. I just want him to be better.”

Finrod nodded. He paused a moment, knowing he needed to really think.

“Well, forgive me if I‘m oversimplifying the matter,” Amarie said, who had been sitting and listening politely, “But it sounds to me like he does need that interaction, instead of going off for solitude; it helps some people, but not others, I know it never worked for either of us. And it sounds like he’s too good at manipulating an intimate situation, so, these situations should be more public, with more impartial witnesses. So? Let’s throw him right back into court. Full gallop. We’ll tell your uncle he has a new aide again.”

“…My uncle Nolofinwe?” Finrod asked.

“Exiles tend to respect him more than your father,” she said honestly enough. “It sounds like he needs more hard-headed people in his life.”

“That may be so, but I sincerely doubt the court needs more of my father in their lives,” Celebrimbor said hesitantly. “There’s almost nowhere where there isn’t… someone he deeply offended, at least. And before the trial…”

“So we need to do this damn trial, what’s taking so long?”

“Celegorm,” said Finrod and Celebrimbor at once.

“Oh, that’s it. The… what was it…”

“Dangerous maniac.”

“Dangerous maniac on the rampage, right.”

“There doesn’t appear to be a rampage,” Finrod noted. “There appears to be a complete silence and lack of information, which is what’s so worrying.”

“Varda damn it. We’re having dinner,” she said.

They looked at her.

“Them, him, the wife, whatever emotional support military officers they want to bring, the girls, Gil-Galad, I don’t care. We’re having dinner. Friday.”

“Amarie,” Finrod said, shocked.

“You’ve made it clear you are going to do this, and you know what? I’m sick of watching you do it badly.”

Finrod placed a hand on his heart.

“Yes, love, that’s the problem,” Amarie sighed. “Sweet stars, you love this ner so much, even when you’re trying to be civilized about it. And you are trying so hard to be responsible about managing it and fumbling it all over the place because you keep getting carried away in the moment. You are probably both doing heaps better than whatever you were doing underground, as you say, but this is a situation that needs someone to be normal, and neither of you are ever going to manage that. We’re going to have a formal dinner, we’re going to act like the civilized Eldar we are, and everyone will go home secure in the knowledge that we can manage it.”

After a moment, Finrod said, “Are you sure?”

“Ingo,” she said, putting down her cup, “There are only two ways this can go. It can go over well, and then everyone feels a little more secure and sure-footed. Or it can go badly, and in which case, I have that ner within arm’s reach and in my home, and the law is on my side. Now get me some stationary so that I can write an invitation, and don’t perfume it or kiss it or write any embarrassingly charged innuendos on it; it appears I have to do this myself.”

--

((12: What Men Do))

In light of that, Celebrimbor decided he would just stay a while. The girls all squealed about it, and Portia hurried to write her husband a letter to let him know he was coming over as well, and there was nearly a communal meltdown when it occurred to everyone that they really only had one proper guestroom, but with some clever stacking preparations were made. Finrod kept reminding everyone that this wouldn’t happen for several days if it happened at all, but even so the rest of the day was as fervent a storm of activity as if they were all perpetually late to get started, and finally he collapsed next to his wife in bed near the middle of a night, slightly drunk and exhausted.

They murmured to each other, and cuddled close and then a little further, and then after the darkness had settled on both of them like the fire’s warmth, Amarie whispered, “Ingo, there’s something I don’t understand.”

“Oh, my Arre, there is so much I do not understand.”

“I think, actually, there is something I don’t know,” she clarified.

“Probably. There’s so much to say, even after all these years.”

“I have always wanted to respect your wisdom about this,” she whispered, “And it had usually proven wise to do so, because while you may seem sometimes to meander or waver in your path, you always turn aright, and it turns out that the meandering had a purpose.”

“Perhaps I simply never fail to find a purpose in my meandering.”

“Oh, Ingo. Because of that, I have always respected that you refused to tell me very much about… Curvo,” she said, trying out his familiar name with awkward distaste.

“I always wanted…”

“Not about your relationship, but about him,” she said. “You told me, a very long time ago, when you first told me that there had been a relationship, that there were things you couldn’t tell me about him.”

Finrod was silent.

“You wouldn’t fully explain what drew you to him; other than the fact that watching his hands work or hearing his voice when he chastises sends you into animal lust, yes, I do remember that.”

“Yes, so do I, and I’m working on not remembering so hard.”

“But you couched your—you wrapped your affection for him up in mystery, you always preempted your accounts of your gentleness and weakness toward him with warnings that there were things that you would not say. Even with him dead; I remember you saying, ‘dead or not, if he wanted to take it to his grave, and I know he did, then I will leave it there with him,’ and I thought that was so noble, really, and I still do. I loved that.

“But now that he’s here, and not in the grave—things are changing very fast, and I think—well, I think I want to be involved in what you’re involved in, because that’s what I feel a wife is. And I think I need to know why you love Curvo, my dear, if I am trying winding myself up to support it, and I think that I may well be. Or else if there’s a good reason I shouldn’t hang him by his ears, well,” she shrugged.

Finrod was silent for a while, looking up into the darkness. Amarie waited.

He said, “I still don’t know if it’s right. I still feel… I feel…” he thought. “I can remember the shame… the shame with which he spoke of these things, and how he made me promise not to tell. Celegorm, specifically. Or any of his brothers. Or his son, though he already knew, at that point. Oh, I still don’t know if it’s right,” he said, “but… I also think of what Tyelpe said today, that if we can solve this problem, it won’t be each of us in a private room, nursing our wounds.”

He struggled, and said, “But you mustn’t use it against him—really, even if he’s being completely terrible, even if you think to defend me by doing it. Never.”

“I understand,” she said.

“Yes, you should know, because something—somehow—it has to come out into the light. He has to heal of it, and I tried once, and did nothing but make it worse. Well, perhaps not, but nonetheless it did not become better. But Amarie,” he said, and turned to face her, barely visible in the close night.

“Yes?” she said.

He looked away again. He said, “It is so hard to dig up something so long buried. How do I even start? You have to understand that this is a story we had to piece together from scraps; some things I know because Curvo told me himself, some things Tyelpe knew and told me then, or long after, and some things I heard from Celegorm, and had to ponder what among the things he claimed were real or weren’t, and some from his people, from what they knew from seeing him when he thought he was alone, and some even from the people who knew the tip of his blade instead of the hilt, as much as it hurt to hear… I suppose it will be too hard to tell it like I heard it. It make most sense to just start from the top, and tell it chronologically. It will still be hard.

“Amarie, there are things you don’t know about Edain, and that is not because you couldn’t figure them out, it’s because you have to really spend time with them, especially groups of them, to know it. They are different from us in very fundamental ways, and in ways that don’t come across in noble Tuor or our lovely peredhellen. They were made differently, and one of the starkest differences is that they cannot feel the spirits of other, and, in many cases, their own. This comes with many effects, but one that is particularly shocking if you’re not used to it is the fact that they do not necessarily feel the results of evil actions they commit. Some do. Tuor would. Andreth or Balan would, and indeed most of their proud house. But an Edain is not necessarily born with the ability to feel the pain of others; some do and some don’t, and the skill needs nurtured. Whereas us Eldar have no choice but to feel the pain of those we wound and the damage it does to our souls, and those who commit wicked deeds do it either in twisted enjoyment of that pain or with the determination to endure that overwhelming pain with our eyes focused on the end that such terrible means serve. Yes, even the worst Elda feels it when they do harm; ask Fingon if you don’t believe me, who leapt to slay his kin when his believed was threated, but ask yourself how badly you want to know before you do.

“I say all this to say that any Edain is capable of such things as we have to fall very far to accomplish. Sometimes this was a wonderful boon; there are times, Amarie, that someone should be sent back to Namo, and an Edain can accomplish this and then heal, while it would stain me forever. But there are also…

“Other than slaying, I think—and I think the destruction of Sirion was the worst crime an Elda has committed—I think the other worst crime we can commit is rape. And it isn’t easy. There are only a handful of Elda that have accomplished or ever considered it. That’s how you get someone like Eol causing the first shift in marriage law in actual ages. That’s why everyone is really on edge about Celegorm being out there, this unimaginable crime. How can you imagine it? We are Elda. The perpetrator would feel it.

“If they want to, an Edain can just do it. Most don’t want to. Most never would. But if they wanted to, they could do it, and not feel anything except what their flesh feels. So, in times of war, if they—it was only the troops of Morgoth, the men sworn to him, who would do it. But they would turn it into a weapon, to break their enemy, as a threat. It’s very effective, too. I have seen and often sheltered the women so used.

“People. Not women. People.”

There was a silence. “Ingoldo…” Amarie whispered, a slight quiver in her voice.

“He said that he had made a stupid miscalculation,” Finrod whispered. “He had his brothers had just had a bit of a spat, and he was off alone. He made an error in calculation when a band of Morgoth’s forced found him on the road. They were overwhelmed. It was easy to tell Curufin was the leader. They killed most and had a few captive. They—what the fuck and I supposed to say? I heard the joke that they can’t tell a nis from a ner a hundred times, because we both look so beautiful to their eyes. Balan used to joke about it sometimes. ‘I can’t even tell if you’re a man or a woman, Ingoldo, and I think I don’t care.’

“Curvo could fight off fifty such men. Oh well, they had a hundred. And figuring easily that this was a leader of their enemies, and deciding him fair enough, whatever he was, someone made an example of him.

“Don’t say anything. Please just let me finish. There were still three captains left alive; one of them got lucky and got a knife in her hand. By the time the fight finished the second time, it was only Curvo and that one captain left alive. Laice. I know she returned, but I haven’t spoken to her once. She cleaned him; he swore her to utter secrecy. ‘Don’t tell anyone. Don’t tell my brothers.’

“Celegorm… No, let me say first, that this event happened about a century before the awful battle which took both my brothers and our King, and it appears that Curvo did successfully hide what happened. He had seen how such things crushed spirits, and it would not crush his men. No one was to know. As far as I know he accomplished that. But it… started changing him, quickly.

“I can’t say I fully understand. I am fortunate to not fully understand. But I know that, while he didn’t become what he would become immediately, he started changing. Celebrimbor later said he could pinpoint a time when something had happened, but he had no idea what it was. It was, I think, only a few years before the Bragollach that Curvo began to break his trust to his wife. In fact I may know the day, but that’s a bit of rumor and piecing together things on my part. What I do know is that he began to seek out ner, because he was slowly rotting in his heart. And because he had always had an interest in them, yes, even as his son does, though half-way compared to Celebrimbor, which was always why he was so harsh about the subject, though I’ll leave off on that for the moment. No, what had been done to him, and the fact that he had pressed it down until it was like a diamond in his heart. And he—this is—

“This is insight from later, from when I was one of his myself. But he sought to replicate what had been done to him. But, cruicially, in situations that he could control, so that he could do it again, but control the outcome, or be strong through it in a way he wasn’t the first time, or… enact… experience it… more as though he were… the one doing it. So I consented to act with him, and not only once. But let me return—the Bragollach. Fire. Morgoth.

“What to say? We lost half of Beleriand and countless lives, and our King, and Angrod, and Aegnor, who because of the twists in our threads of fate I may never see again. How was I after that? Well, can you conceive I would have thrown away Celegorm and Curufin and Celebrimbor from my door? I wouldn’t, and never felt ready to, no matter how bad things got.

“And can you imagine the battle treated any of them well? I hadn’t interacted with my cousins much in the recent past, us being on separate sides of the continent and often at odds politically, but I knew they were different immediately. Not just Curvo.

“Celegorm.

“Right. Amarie, my cousin Celegorm was always a religious fanatic, that being one of his central traits. He was called by Orome very young and never… intended to falter in his service of the Vala. But following his father necessitated it.

“I can say if anyone regretted chosing to swear their soul of Feanor instead of the Valar, it would be Celegorm, though I’m sure they all did. To Celegorm, it was… very important to believe that he was still a hunter of Orome. But the problem was that he wasn’t. He had been cast off a long time ago. Still he needed to believe that he was, or would have been, if he hadn’t sworn his Oath, that he was only a technicality away from being one of Orome’s at all times. But his bonds of Orome, on his forearms, had rotted off—rotted—and his arrows did not always fly true, and his wisdom was flawed, and in every way it was clear the Great Vala had rejected him.

“He used to ride the Wild Hunt, Orome’s charge across the lands, and on that hunt, so he told me, the riders would be drunk, though not on wine. On the very presence of the Vala, the thrill of the hunt, and ectasy that nothing else could match. But he did his best to find something that could match—he had a collection of… substances, herbs, drinks, all kinds of things that would put him into a state like drunkenness. Worse than drunkenness, and it got worse as he spent more and more time in that state. I don’t know, Amarie. I don’t even fully know. He was bad already when I took him in, already far worse than I had seen before. There were times he did not know who he was talking to even though I was right in front of him and, again, he got himself into this state to imitate being in the Wild Hunt. We pulled him off of other people several times, trying to fight them or worse.

“He wasn’t like that all the time. There were times he was exactly as I remember him, strong and quick-witted and hot-tempered and funny and passionate and caring, and it just made finding him addled out of his wits at the end of the night hurt more. I think Maedhros or even Caranthir had been keeping him in line, but Curvo… didn’t care to.

“Oh, stars, Amarie. Alright. I told you that Curvo had begun to seek out ner to… well, on the one hand to replicate what had been done to him, and on the other to satisfy a desire he had always felt and never indulged. Just the worst way of going about it, I recommend marrying the first man you ever see instead. But even that state had degenerated, because when you start treating… when you start using the bodies of the people around you, sometimes in manipulative or coercive ways, especially when you try to convince people to be violent toward you, they sometimes act unpredictably. There were those ashamed fo what they had done with him, and those who rejected him. He had convinced himself he had to do this. I understand, this I understand, but it is very hard to explain. Enacting this terrible thing had caused more bad things to happen to him, and he had become… certain… that everyone was going to hurt him eventually. Largely because he kept hurting people and they kept reacting to that. So he had started always starting it himself. He thought, you’re going to hurt me eventually, you’re going to sue me eventually, so I’m going to start it, I’m going to be the one to use you first. If he started it, he could control it.

“Before he—while he was still convincing me, before I ever started with him, and unbeknownst to be until later, he… I think a complicated series of events happened. Celegorm got very rough with someone one night. He was, of course, out of his own head. Curvo was having a particularily bad night. He and Tyelpe had argued. I supposed it finally occurred to him that Celegorm might hurt him too, and he decided, as he always did, and perhaps always will, that he had to start it so he could control it.

“I’m sure Celegorm didn’t even know who was laying with him the first time.

“He told me about it. That’s how I know. Curvo told me. ‘Tyelko didn’t even know it was me until he woke up in the morning,’ he said, ‘And then he said he would kill himself, and I had to talk him down.’ Myabe I should have pressed him for a few more details, but Amarie, can you fucking imagine?

“The first time changed them both, however. I know they kept doing it, and I know Celegorm was not always unaware of who was in bed with him. I know because he tried to threaten me with that fact when he perceived me trying to get between them, you know, ‘You think he belongs to you? I’ve had him too, and he’ll never chose you over me.’ I think… I think once Celegorm was aware of what happened, and, especially, once he repeated it, did it on purpose, knowing what he was doing, he knew then and certainly he had fallen from grace, and that he could not regain it. That is a state that enables horrible acts no matter how badly they strike your soul. I wish I could say that was the only time I felt someone in that state!

“Not that I knew about any of that when I first found myself looking at my cousin too long. I sensed where there was something wrong, in the way they acted with each other, or by themselves, in words that seemed too strong, or in moods—especially Celebrimbor’s since at first I could not always tell what he was reacting to when he seemed to get upset out of nowhere. Things his father or uncle had done that I could not pick up on, not at first.

“Oh, Arre, I’ve told you about this, how Curvo seduced me, a game of riddles that had me hunting for answers, leaving gifts in places I thought he couldn’t get into, whispering into my ear; feeling certain he couldn’t be doing what I felt he was doing, and feeling it all the same… I suppose what made no sense to you is why I stayed with him after a moment or two or ten of weakness. Because he was hurting so badly, my love. My song, you know me. You know me. I had never seen someone hurting like that before. Because I was made by He who made us all in some strange way, I reach out to snatch other people’s pain like I’m hungry for it, like some unknown place in me can only be filled by pulling them in. I’ve seen people in more pain, mind; I mean exactly what I said, I’d never seen someone hurting like that before. The deeper I delved, the more complex the maze, and there wasn’t an end.

“Not until Beren pulled me out, and by then I was sore happy to see him. I knew I had degenerated myself at that point; I knew I was worse than I once was. I did things for Curvo and for Curvo’s own good that I wouldn’t have even debated doing before. At some point—I knew what the two of them did with each other, and I knew Curvo’s history and the things that had happened to him, and the number of partners he had, and I was still doing things that I think still would shock you, ending the night with his sable hair around my neck, falling asleep buried in it. Once I knew more about the road he had taken to get there, those moments of purity, when I felt his labored breath even out in sleep, and him still into a rest like death, felt more precious than gems, than a cool breeze in a scorching summer. This is what is genuinely intoxicating about loving a very bad person, Amarie, the good moments are like gold, like salvation, like coming back from the dead. Yes, he did choke me unto the point when I thought I would die, and in anger, and he did lay with me at night and then spend the day spreading half-truths and venom about me to pull my men away from me, all along lusting after my Kingdom more, perhaps, than my person, and he put his face into my hair and told me how he wished he could just stay that way; he also opened a chest of jewels and stones, priceless treasures he made with his own hands, poured them onto my bed like hail and asked when it would be enough. How he told me how much he regretted what he had done to Celegorm, and despaired of the fact that regret would not stop him. He was so out of control of himself that every day was a surprise, nothing could be predicted. There was no end to the metamorphoses, there was no limit. I could travel forever and there were new surprises.

“And when I died they got worse. We all know what happened once I was gone. Eventually Orodreth grew wrathful enough he exiled them; Celebrimbor could no longer stand either of them, no matter who they were supposed to be to him. After they commited, or perhaps attempted to commit, one of the most impressively appalling crimes an Elda ever has.

“I feel certain that even then Curvo did not tell Celegorm the truth; instead, he aided him in attempting to rape Luthien with his own history locked in his heart, presuming he still had one. And then died at the hand of her son. Good show, Dior, and I hope you have a good lock on your door.

“I know why people list me among his victims, or at least among those he wronged. I won’t deny I was wronged. I certainly was. But you are also obscuring the truth if you do not admit that I was willing as I went, even as someone lets thorns rip thir hands as they reach for a brambled blackberry. And I did owe him better, no matter what he did, because it was obvious from the start that it wasn’t good for him; and I did owe better to his wife, and his son, and to everyone in Nargothrond, who certainly didn’t expect me to let the Kingdom pass from hand to hand, one golden coin at a time, gambling away its future on my bet that it could eventually become a good enough, grand enough Kingdom to house even them, to be their home, to help and heal them, if I just sacrificed enough for it.

“I could have stopped it. ‘No. Get out.’ Simple as that. I know, because Orodreth did it. But I never had any intention of saying no. Not really. Not then, not ever. I think… what I think is that we are in that Kingdom now. Good enough. Grand enough. True enough. I think we have finally become capable fo helping them, solid enough on our feet and firm enough in our foundation. And I am going to try, but I have to be certain that I won’t do the same thing again. Give it away because I think if I can just cut deeper, I can cut out the pain.

“It turns out that’s not how cutting works. That metaphor got away from me.”

Finrod fell silent. There was more he could say; likely there was more he should say. And yet he looked at the amount of what he had said, the pile of it all, and knew it was enough.

“I don’t know what to do with that,” Amarie said. She was crying.

Finrod took her hand. He said, “No one does. That was one problem we had to face and some couldn’t. There isn’t something to do with suffering. You can’t make it into a jewel or a sword, it’s wet. You can’t bake it or brew it, it’s bitter. You can’t even make it into a song, it chokes your throat. You can’t always excuse or drain it. You just have to have it. You have to have it and not try to burn it away. That’s where the trouble is. You might note all the burning that happened. You can’t do that.”

“That’s not fair,” she said. “Someone can—hand you that sort of thing at any time, and you just have to keep it?”

“I’m sorry,” Finrod said.

He held her. After a minute, she collected herself, and dried her eyes. Finrod kissed her hand. “That’s not—it’s not like I haven’t seen my fair share of suffering even here. We all have. But why should it be that some people are handed so much suffering, when suffering is something that takes so much time to resolve, and takes so much form you?”

Finrod said, “It turns out that that is why the Ainur did not want us to go to Beleriand.”

“Oh, you prick.”

“There’s no other way to put it. It’s unfair. You’re handed too much to handle and then handed more. It turns out there isn’t anything to do about it. You become a different sort of person, the sort of person who can handle carrying all of that. Edain are made for it! It’s incredible.”

“Oh, sod it all. Tell me about the Edain, Finrod. I think I could do with a little of it tonight.”

And he did, for quite a while, until she was steady enough to start talking back at him. Finally, she said, “I’m not handling any of that.”

Finrod said, “If it gets to the point that any of you have to, any of you who don’t deserve to endure it, that’s where I draw the line. That’s what he can’t do. So if he has too much pain for one person to handle; well, that’s too bad.”

--

Dinner is going wrong, but not in a way Finrod can put his finger on.

Something isn’t right, but it is elusive; an insect scuttling around the plates, under rims, behind baskets, through their twined weave, too quick to spot, heard under the clattering and mumbling. Finrod can practically smell the rot. He does everything he can to remain spirited, he keeps his eyes on his daughters, on the strain of their smiles. Curvo is right across from him, and with every guilty glance Finrod spares him, he changes. Bright as day, mired down in shadows. Smiling, scowling. Dressed like a Prince, soaking wet.

Finrod has been noticing that Amarie is gone for the past hour; he keeps noticing and then ebing distracted. There’s something else to handle in the moment. Tyelpe. Celegorm. Portia. Viola. Beatrice. His father. But she has been gone so long, he finally stands up to look for her, leaving the candleflames of the dinner party behind him, the hushes and sussurous strains of singing, though he never thinks about the fact that he does not know who the bard is, cannot recognize their absolutely even voice, something between Maglor’s almost daunting, bladed solidity of tone and Gil-Galad’s bird-like, wordless calling.

The stone hallway stretched on; he checks rooms and they are blank, they have nothing in them. Scoured clean. There is a bedroom, a parlor, an office, then a vast, waterlogged cave, its stalagtites dripping, its outer limits lost in inperctptible shade, then a drawing-room, then a bedroom. He walks and walks, knowing he is looking for Amarie but without a clue where to start to look. She is so willful; she has gone where she may, and if she does not want found, he may find her never.

When Curvo is there behind him, it is a sudden thing but an unremarkable one. He did not hear his approach, he did not need to approach. He is there, and Finrod stands against the wall, his shoulders an inch away form the cold, bare stone. Curvo walks up to him and stands before him, clothed in red light, a forge-glow, like the light of coals, and a sheer dress, a night-dress, delicate and unwarlike.

Curvo extends an arm, bare of jewels, tipped with long, unpainted nails, perfectly shaped to delicate roundness, and places his fingers on Finrod’s neck. He can feel then resting there, like the legs of the dragonfly on the reed, but they don’t feel right, they don’t feel like enough.

Finrod stands completely still.

When Finrod doesn’t resist, Curvo wraps those fingers sroung his neck, and presses. It isn’t hard pressre, and it isn’t light. It’s solid, like being put under a heavy blanket, or fastening a belt around his hips. Curvo whispers, “Like that?”

Finrod leans his head back so that it rests on the stone wall, so that Curvo’s fingers can grasp the whole of his neck. “Yes,” he groans.

Curvo curls his fingers, not to take away Finrod’s air but so that he can feel the tps of Curvo’s rounded nails on his skin. “I’m not squeezing too hard,” he informed him.

“No,” Finrod said, “It’s too light.”

Curvo flattens his hand again and expertly presses, pushing Finrod’s throat shut only a little, so that his breath, rather than stopping, becomes harsher. Finrod feels his blood going faster, his fingers and thighs begin tingling, his heartbeat in his guts. He moans again, blatant, the sort of noise he would stifle if he thought anyone was in the house, let alone the next room.

Curvo calls him appalling. Finrod better bears his throat. For a minute Curvo squeezes, subtly, with Finrod’s breaths, pushing in a little when he sucks his breath in, loosening with his release. As he presses, he says, “You know where you want me. Exactly where it hurts. Tell me where it hurts. You kept it under the bed and forgot about it. Now that you have uncovered it again you’re delighted, wanting to flip through all the pages, read every word, remember who you were and how it felt in those dust-covered, ruined days. That poisonous nostalgia that’s obnoxious to everyone who has to witness it but feels animalistically satisfying to you. How to explain that you want to burrow in the dampest, darkest caven of Glaurung’s Den and roast in the breath of the sleeping dragon again, that you desperately need to be there all throughout the fall, for every last second that you missed, cut off? That you know with your blood that you can take the Nest you lost back out of me, a Kingdom to everyone else but a Bedroom to you? You are wise enough to know that the dark days were the glittering Kingdom; you are profane enough to want them back. You can have it all, circle it, put teeth of gold around it, wear it on your wrist, own it, finally nothing in the darkness, finally nothing you can’t display, finally nothing that has to be locked away in shame. You’ll bend Valinor itself to deviancy, they will understand the beauty you found in it.”

Finrod moaned and writhed and Curvo extended his other hand to touch Finrod between his legs. His palm rubbed up and down his length, which throbbed with heat. Finrod pressed into him, both the hand that was giving him pleasure and the hand that was beginning to hurt.

Curvo leaned forward. He stopped touching Finrod’s length, he braced himself on the wall so he could kiss him, mouth open, full of burning heat. Finrod pushed his tongue into his mouth, turned his head so they could lick into each other. He could feel the snapping strength of his jaw, the sword-weilding deftness of his hand on his neck, the solidity of a war-formed ner drawing ever closer to his body. He loved it with a fierce heat; a ner, a man, sharp-angled, hard, looming over his body.

He pressed a little too hard into Finrod’s throat and he choked. Curvo’s hips pressed on him, and Finrod hungrily rutted against him. He could feel the heat of Curvo’s sex but he couldn’t quite lock onto it. It was not enough. He was not breathing, but it was fine; he didn’t need to. He felt the hand around his neck as warmth, a warmth that was seeping all the way into him. He wordlessly begged Curvo to take him all the way, press him all the way down, into something like ashes, crushed, hot, base.

“Bend them over,” Curvo said, “They’ll like it eventually.”

--

The quilt was only on Finrod’s ankles, wrapped around them, and his head was off of the pillow. But the grace of the Valar alone he was still on the bed; he was cognizant of being awake right before he was cognizant of being hard.

He opened his eyes because his first thought was to look for Amarie. With uncertain, unfocused worry, he was aware that he had just been looking for her. He sat up messily, pulled his tengled hair out of his face, and saw in his disorientation that she was seated upright on the bed, eating a stick of licorice-wood, which she kept nearby for her stomach, and watching him with prim interest.

Finrod made a noise that was intended to be her name, and then cleared his throat.

Amarie raised her eyebrows, and a little smile crept onto her lips. “Take your time,” she said.

Finrod rubbed his eyes, then his mouth. He swallowed. “Ugh,” he said.

Amarie said, “Your body was calling out so loudly for him in your sleep I wouldn’t be surprised if he could feel it in Formenos. Not your voice, luckily, though you made some rather compelling moans.”

Finrod said, through a gummy throat, “Never let me speak so deeply about the past so late into the night again.”

Amarie said, a laugh in her voice, “I am astounded you can have that sort of dream after that sort of conversation.”

“Say that again,” Finrod grumbled, “Except honestly.”

Naturally, she couldn’t. She laughed at him, and though Finrod was out of sorts, it warmed him somewhat.

“Enemy’s taint. I need to bathe, immediately,” he sighed.

“Do you…” said Amarie, looking pointedly down.

“No, I think I will ignore it spitefully,” Finrod groused, and began to stand up. She laughed at him again, and he said, “Later, but not while I’m still in this mood. It can go away for now.”

--

Finrod had said that, but when he had gotten all the way through washing his hair and was still restless and aroused, he decided he would rather commit the small hypocrisy of taking himself in hand afte he claimed he didn’t have to instead of spending the day a little more frusturated (and stupid) than he had to. Fortunately (though embarrassingly) he was worked up enough that he could finish quickly and without thinking of much at all, instead doing whatever felt good until he shuddered, groaned in his throat, then caught his breath again, and cleaned himself up.

He had always been an advocate of self-pleasure. He felt it solved many problems quickly and the people who were too ‘proper’ to approve of it just set themselves up for future problems. And in fact he and Amarie had decided centuries ago that they would handle themselves if they weren’t thinking about each other, or properly focused on each other in the act. It worked for them. That was why her offer to help him when she was very aware he had been thinking about Curvo was… unusual.

He put the thought out of his head for the moment and focused on more savory subjects, literally. He did have a dinner to plan, even if it were to be a few days from now, if it were to be. Celebrimbor would be staying through the week; he was going to need distracted from his thoughts, so Finrod might as well make up an incredibly intricate dinner plan so they all had something to do to pass the time.

--

((13: A Slight Shimmer on His Lips))

The reply came the next day, and it was very easy to tell Tanaquine wrote it. That was for two reasons. Firstly, Tanaquine’s craft was calligraphy and she was one of the most practiced calligraphers in the continent, so both Finrod and Amarie had to stare at the note for several seconds before they could begin reading it. Second, it was normal.

To the household of esteemed Lady Amarie, wife of the honored King Finrod Felagund,

               Good tidings and proper thanks to the royal household for your kind invitation. We are humble to accept the invitation and will arrive at your residence at sunset on this Friday. The gracious offering of lodging may also have to be accepted, in consideration of the distance between our abodes and the relative isolation of the King’s household.

Then Tanaquine went on to list exactly who would be in attendance—herself, Curvo, and two servants, a female relative of her own named Miranda and a male guard named Ariel—if Finrod remember him right he remembered him as an absolute champion of a throat-cutter—as well as the number of horses which would need boarded. That was the sort of formality Finrod had done away with as soon as he could get away with it, but it wasn’t weird for her to do.

What Finrod did find weird, and which made him feel overall guilty in a nonspecific way, was that after thanking them again, Tanaquine signed the letter ‘My Good Lord’s Obidient Servant,’ which was an anachronism, and a politeness, but he was afraid she meant it.

“Yavanna and Nesse, she writes like…” Amarie said, and then waved her hand in the air.

Finrod nodded, and they remained staring at the note for a while.

“This is the woman who called you a cocksucker and said she’d smack you a handful of days ago,” Amarie reminded him.

Finrod nodded and, again, remained staring at the note.

“I never got the feeling before,” Amarie said, and paused. Then she continued, “I never really thought that she matched Curufin, or that anyone could.”

“Hm,” Finrod said.

Amarie closed the note, slipped it back into its delicately embossed envelope, and said, “Well, we have a few days. Tyelpe, darling?” She shouted over her shoulder.

“Yes, Aunt Amarie?” he shouted from the bottom of the ravine through which the creek ran (Finrod did not know what he was doing down there).

“They’re coming,” she shouted.

Celebrimbor replied, “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” and Finrod nodded along to the sentiment.

Amarie whacked him on the back of the head with the note and said, “Go build something,” and so he did.

--

Viola, who had the goldest eyes, wore a dress of spring-green with pink peonies stitched upon it, and a ivory girdle, and had her hair up in a bun with golden pins.

Portia, who had the most noble face (that is, the one who reminded Finrod most of his father) wore a high-collared yellow gown that was braced to her form with gold. Her husband Bassanio, who had arrived just the night before, and who had that lovely dark High Vanyar complexion, wore a similar yellow gown but with lovely sapphire accents. He arrived haranguing, but Portia knew well it covered his anxiey, so she assured him until he left off.

Beatrice, who had the lightest and softest hair, wore it in a pearl-pinned braid which she tossed over her shoulder and over her coral-orange daygown. She dressed the least formally, and in fact had initially left off jewelry before Celebrimbor, who was technically accompanying her, dressed her in a set of his own make, her sighing about it all the while; “it’s too heavy, Tyelpe; do I have to wear the tiara; why don’t you put on all the baubles yourself?” Of course, Celebrimbor was pretty well baubled himself, dressed in a crimson to match Beatrice’s coral (and to please his father, no doubt) and furnished with his own jewelry anywhere he could set something.

Amarie wore white, and looked like a star.

Finrod had looked at himself in the mirror three hours ago, and had said, “Alright, then, Ingo. Get them,” and now he was dressed in a full suit which was gold as much as it was heavily embroidered jade green fabric, and had his hair caught up in a moderately elaborate hair piece, and both his eyelids and nails painted in a film of gold that shimmered, and after a moment of thought and a stronger moment of pique, put on heeled shoes that gave him several inches of height and an almost chime-like clatter as he walked.

When he left the bedroom, walked down the hall, and entered the sitting room, each one of his daughters looked up at him with a communal glower the likes of which he really thought he had to have done something to deserve.

“Good afternoon?” he asked.

“Father,” said Viola pointedly, “You are not supposed to outshine the ladies.”

“Shine harder,” he said, a comment that proved incredibly unpopular.

Eventially, Celebrimbor defended him. “He’s been dressing down quite a bit, you know. This looks like a Tuesday in Nargothrond.”

Finrod re-appraised himself. “I was really going for better than that.”

It was agreed that Celebrimbor’s standards were too high. He admitted that his standard for real peacocking was Maia-high, and the topic was changed. Light arguments were had, nearly everyone (except Celebrimbor, who lived for millenia and was still a barely passable cook) went into and out of the kitchen, fiddling with one dish or another, one drink or another; Viola, who prided herself on mixing drinks that qualified as psychological weapons, tasted her mixture enough times that she was a little ruddy-cheeked by the time they heard hooves walking in the distance.

“Calm down,” Amarie said, and absolutely no one did. Then, putting his jeweled palms out, Celebrimbor stood, walked to the front door, and walked out. Finrod and Amarie looked at each other, made a few faces, and aquiesced. Amarie stood herself, firmly indicated that everyone else should stay seated, and walked to the door herself.

Celebrimbor walked outside to meet them up the road. Amarie stood in the doorway, just as Tanaquine had when Finrod came to Formenos. Finrod sat with his daughters and pretended to be calm about the fact that the could hear, but not see, the party approaching the house.

He could hear Celebrimbor greet them; he could hear the lightest strain of Tanaquine’s voice, surprised to see her son. A few minutes passed, certainly in the process of demounting and stabling the horses, which he was certain Celebrimbor was handling himself (likely with the help of the severants, or at least Curvo’s guard.) When he heard steps approaching the door, he could resist no longer, and stood so he could walk to the other end of the hall, and watch Amarie greet her guests.

Their house was not large. He was certain that every one of his cousins, even the most modest, lived in or possessed something that dwarfed it. It was hard to see Curvo past Amarie in her modest, person-sized doorway, but he saw him anyway, a burgundy shadow blocked out by her white light.

He heard Curvo greet Amarie with full politeness, giving her every name and title she had. He saw him bend down onto one knee, and take her pale hand in his. He saw Curvo lift that hand to his lips—painted subtly dark—and, just as Finrod had in Formenos, kiss the air about an inch above it, so that he did not really touch her.

And he could hear Amarie, straight-backed, her other hand posed primly on her waist, clearly say “No. A real one.”

Curvo froze. Finrod froze. He might have imagined the sound of Celebrimbor sighing in the distance, or he might not have.

Finrod saw Curvo’s fingers curl into Amarie’s, and that he lifted her hand back up to his lips and, Finrod imagined, gave her a kiss that was real enough for her.

Curvo then asked something in a low voice; Finrod couldn’t quite make it out. But he knew what it was after Amarie responded “You are, and as are all in your party; come in with my permission.”

Not letting go of Curvo’s hand, she helped him stand. Then turning toward Finrod she let him into the house, in fact by his hand, so that in another second he was in the hall behind her, and both were facing Finrod at the other end.

Amarie did not pause to let Finrod take in his fill of Curvo’s appearance, but he did anyway. Celebrimbor had guessed right, not that it was hard; he was in red, a a deep mahogany-red robe that Finrod was honestly tempted to call a gown instead. It was stitched all down with alternating garnets and onyxes, in their natural colors, so he glittered like a beetle, and his shoes and his nails were both shining black. His body was not yet as firm or strong as it once had been, so the black girdle that pulled his gown in at his waist pulled quite thin indeed (and emphasized the swell of his chest above it). His hair was braided in an elaborate court-braid, and on it he wore a golden circlet, not too large, not too much. Or, it wouldn’t have been, if hadn’t been so thoroughly set with natural garnets, their colors fading in to each other, that it was more gem than gold.

The fit was fantastic. Finrod couldn’t even make a comment about it, because anything at all he said would inevitably sound either greedy or lustful. He just had to keep his mouth shut, which he did, and so did Curvo, so that they approached each other silently until they were within arm’s reach. Then Amarie held out Curvo’s hand and then let go of it, and Finrod reached forward to grasp it. They were both so ring-clad that they clattered against each other when their fingers, instinctually, twined.

When they did, Finrod felt the twist as if it was his core that had been gripped in a fist and turned.

Finrod held him for a moment, and then he let him go. He saw Curvo exhale. He had been looking at his hand, but now he looked up at his black eyes, under eyelashes that were certainly treated with something to make them dark or full, or else Finrod was becoming roused right here in the hall, but the less he focused on that, the better.

“Finrod,” he said.

“Curufin.”

“Does my son stay often at your house? He seemed reluctant to merntion it.”

“Often enough, and your son is reluctant to mention anything.”

Curufin extended the fingers of one hand and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling, a wordless aquiesence to the point.

“No comment on the fitness of the house, then, or its unfit size?” Finrod asked, cheating somewhat so that he faced the inside of the house. He raised his hand; this way.

“A comment about its size? What do you take me for?” Curvo asked.

Finrod hesitated, and then said, “Pass; there is nothing I can think of to say that I should.”

Curvo smiled and said, “Ha.” As Finrod stepped forward, he followed him into the sitting-room; there was so little space between there are where they were that it was barely a step before they stood in front of Finrod’s daughters.

Beatrice was seated on the settee with her arms folded on the arm, Portia and Bassanio sat together on the couch across the way, and Viola stood between them, two glasses of her mixed drink in her hand. Every one of them stared openly and nigh-challengingly at the newcomer, and no wonder. Not a single one of them had seen him before, and he represented a gap in their understanding of the world that came before then that, previously, had been immense.

Tyelpe’s father, and Finrod’s…

Finrod had already pulled in a breath to make proper introductions, but then Viola walked forward confidently, across the room, and extended out one hand to Curvo, offering him one of the drinks.

“Viola ____ Ingoldeon, daughter of Finderato Ingoldo and Amarie,” she said, her chin high and her face plain and unrevealing, “I shape glass, and I mix drinks; these are both mine, so if either is no good, just cast it down.”

Curvo reached out to take the glass, carefully keeping his fingers far away from the young lady’s. He opened his mouth, but couldn’t get a word out before Beatrice suddenly stood up.

“Vi, this is untenable,” she complained.

Violace looked down her nose at her. “Well, you were just sitting there.”

Beatrice stood up, her layers of skirt in one hand, which she then flicker behind her in a salmon rush. She strode up to Curvo, lifted up her hand, and said, “I am Beatrice ____ Ingoldeon, and I am Finderato Indolgo and Amarie’s eldest daughter.”

“Of course,” said Curvo, who could not possibly be more sensitive to sibling order politics, and fluidly knelt down (not even agitating the surface of the drink Viola had handed him) to kiss Beatrice’s hand. Again, a real kiss, and like Finrod had expected, it left a slight shimmer behind on her skin. Finrod saw Beatrice and Viola look at each other, but did not have a guess what they were thinking.

Curvo stood. Beatrice, from the couch, said, “And I’m Beatrice, the middle child, so does it really matter?”

“Beatrice,” sighed several people, identically, at once, and Curvo said, “Of course it does; that’s only one to lose before your position is very different. Your husband, Lady Beatrice?” he asked, and Finrod detected the very slight twitch of his upper lip when his eyes settled on the Vanya.

Finrod had hopes that he could improve many of Curvo’s deeply-held problematic beliefs, but he was going to be racist about Vanyar until the day he died, and Finrod knew it. He only hoped that Bassanio did not detect this, or did not care if he did. Beatrice narrowed her eyes, but Bassanio stood and walked over to extend a hand. He introduced himself with both his names; there was no real title he could add from his own line, which was not noble, so he added Ingoldeon to himself as well, with the declination that made it clear he had joined this family, which made Curvo relax somewhat. He took his hand normally, to all outward apperances, and, upon letting it go, gave Finrod the slightest flicker of his eyes.

Finrod cleared his throat. “Then. I have the surprise pleasure of introducing to you all Curufinwe Atarinke Finweon, the son of Feanaro Finweon and Nerdanel Mahtaneon, Prince of Himlad and of Nargothrond; nowhere that still exists, but isn’t that how it is for all of us?”

“Most, I’ve noticed,” Curvo said smoothly. ‘but for myself, no; I’ll be adding Prince of Formenos, though you had no way of knowing that, so, there’s no slight.”

Almost everyone who had ruled or co-ruled in Beleriand had been immensely relieved to stop; there were a few that were generally bothersome in Arafinwe’s court or who de facto ruled their own litte quarters or even towns, at this point. It would be splitting hairs to say Galadriel didn’t, technically, run her neck of the woods, for instance. This was a turn of events that should not have surprised Finrod and, after a moment, it didn’t. Who else was going to claim that title when it had been resisted by anyone who could have grabbed it for so long?

He bit back his initial renspose of ‘of course you are’ and instead said “My congratulations to the red guard, who must be delighted.”

“Sometimes alarmingly, and you can give your condolences to Tyelpe, who is crestfallen, whenever you wish,” Curvo responded.

“Will you be having a coronation? You’ll have to let me know three months ahead of time so I can plan appropriately.”

Curvo wrinkled up the lower lids of his eyes; not a smile, not a grimace, not quite anything. “I believe that it has been decided that the… what’s the word? ‘Optics’ are ‘terrible.’ Nothing’s happening until after the trial, of course, which I can now anticipate as being entirely my own.”

“They’ve agreed to sperate them! Good,” Finrod said at the actual pleasant surprise. “Trying you all at once would of course be a miscarriage of justice and, more importantly, logistically nightmarish.”

“No, it was agreed we’ve reached the point that we need to have these trials, and we cannot wait for Celegorm, so we may as well do them one at a time and let it all shake out,” Curvo sighed. He took a sip of his drink and said, “Oh,” in such a way that Viola grinned, pleased.

“And why, pray tell, have we reached the point that we need to go ahead with these social trials, Celegorm or no Celegorm?” Finrod asked.

“Oh. There was a real fight. Miss Viola, this is fantastic,” he said.

“Pomegranate, cherise essence, licorice root in syrup, and one of father’s brews,” she beamed.

Finrod, who had told himself not to, looked at the glass to see if there was a print of Curvo’s lip on the rim. There was, a shift-like silver shimmer. “A real fight?” he asked.

“Very real.”

“Well,” Finrod sighed, “It wasn’t Celegorm and anyone, so who was it?”

Curvo took another sip of the drink, and then lifted up a single finger. “Maglor,” he said.

“Uh-oh,” Finrod said, because while he would believe that any of his Feanareon cousins had gotten into a brawl, there were those who would do it on the drop of a hat, like the Ambarussa, and those who would only do it if they had jumped past upset and into murderous.

Like Maglor.

“And?” asked Finrod, hesitant.

“Any guesses?” asked Curvo, with a bit of a glint in his eyes.

“Just tell me.”

He lifted up a second finger and tapped the two together. “Fingon.”

“Oh—” Finrod began, and followed it up with several works in Taliska that were essentially untranslatable into Quenya.

Maglor and Fingon had an absolutely indescribable relationship. Finrod didn’t even have another relationship he could think of to compare it to. It was not, as some might assume, a relationship that revolved entirely on their mutual love for Maedhros, or any jealousy related to the matter. They had always treated each other in an absolutely weird fashion, long before knowledge of Maedhros and Fingon’s relationship was public, and having more to do with each other than they mutually did with most people near the end of the First Age had eventually made the relationship downright nonsensical. Finrod had heard more about it than seen it, but he knew it was its own animal and that species had a population of one.

“Are they dead?” he asked with a note of genuine concern.

“No casualties, but I believe a few bones had to be set.”

“Tulkas, Nessa, and Orome,” Finrod complained. “When?”

“Yesterday, which is why you haven’t heard about it.”

“Where?”

“Where do you think? Tirion, central square, busy marketplace, broad daylight.”

“Of course. Who started it?”

“Is that a joke? They both started it, and to answer your next question, they both deserved it.”

“Right,” Finrod said, forced to assumed that was true. “What ended it?”

“Is that also a joke?”

After a moment of thought, a pleased grin spread across Finrod’s face, and he put a hand on his heart. “Turgon.”

Curvo lifted his glass in a silent toast and drank.

“And they were friends again immediately after Turgon separated them, I assume?” Finrod sighed.

“Whatever it is they are, yes, they were that again immediately, leaving Turgon the most aggrieved person on the scene. Unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that there were… I’m going to say… about a thousand witnesses, that Fingon threw Maglor bodily into a stone wall, snapping a rib or two, and that Maglor stated, and I quote, ‘I’ll kill you, bitch.’ I assume with a more emotional delivery than that.”

Finrod re-covered his eyes, and said, “Why.”

“Finally, a good question. I have been asking that repeatedly myself.”

“On the bright side—Viola, darling, would you mind pouring me a glass? On the bright side, I haven’t had a chance to accuse someone of having ‘Himring Manners’ in a very long time, so—”

And then Curvo laughed, having to quickly lower his drink and then sputter against the back of his hand. Finrod was glad that the sudden lift in his heart was hidden in there, because it was embarrassing. “If only everyone were wearing animal furs and a lunatic threw a bottle of wine down the stairs, the set would be perfect. And that, to wrap up my story, is why we’re now trying everyone individually.”

“And Maglor first, I assume?” Finrod sighed.

“No,” said Curvo, with a sudden blankness in his tone, a shift between one state and another; “Me first.”

 Finrod paused. “You first.”

“Well,” he said, “Yes, it ended up that way.”

“Why?”

“Well,” said Curvo, and a bit of haughtiness settled onto his face, but badly, like it hadn’t been pinned up right all the way across. “Well, because I asked to go first, of course.”

“And why did you ask to go first.”

“Well,” he said again, “Otherwise—essentially it was decided that the most fair thing to do would be to go in age order, and of course it would be. But I thought,” he said, and it was very rare for Curvo to trip over his words like this, very rare indeed, and rarer still was the sudden downcast turn of his eyes, “I thought that really, Maedhros shouldn’t have to go first. All things considered.”

Finrod found his words stuck in his throat, for a moment.

“Since we’re doing a string of them, not—well, they’re all be attended by gawkers and gossips, but the first one, no matter what, is going to be an absolute show. It’s going to be a carnival. And I thought, Maedhros…” he said, and was absolutely lost for words.

“And are you interested in your own being an absolute carnival, then?” Finrod asked.

Curvo rolled his eyes, and somewhere around found a bit of the poise he had just stumbled out of. “Well, no, but I can handle it. He tried to argue me down but I shouted until I got my way, you know how it is. Though, of course, Finrod, that was something I was going to bring up to you.”

“Oh, stars, which part?”

“I can’t imagine you’re interested in the situation being an absolute carnival yourself; you know, there are a couple of things you could do to mitigate it,” he said, looking shamelessly into Finrod’s face.

Finrod, who had been effectively disarmed by Curvo’s awkward affection for his lunatic brother, felt his face go numb, and then hot. He’s trying to wheedle an exoneration out of me, he thought, and then, but you’re the idiot who mentioned you might do it, you know.

“What am I listening to,” sighed the unmistakably exhausted voice of Celebrimbor, coming up the hall.

The attention of the entire room turned to him, because there was no one in the building that did not adore Celebrimbor.

He had his mother on his arm, who was dressed modesly but flatteringly in a high-collared saffron-orange gown. Curvo had put a matching circlet on her, and she was looking down and, to Finrod’s eyes, quite ill. Behind them he could see the handmaiden Miranda and captain Ariel, who was, in fact, the skilled slitter of throats that Finrod recalled. Orc throats, but it was a transferrable skill.

Seeing Celebrimbor with his father and mother both really emphasized the fact that he was significantly taller than both of them. In fact, it made to whom he was a throw-back a touch too obvious. Finrod watched the approach, because he wanted to see how Curvo and Tanaquine treated each other; without smiling, Curvo brightened, and then frowned.

“You’re still unwell,” he said.

“I’m well,” she disagreed, but with her eyes cast down.

Beatrice and Amarie both started at the same moment, Beatrice saying “How about you—” while Amarie said, “You both—”. They looked at each other, and Beatrice held out her hands.

“You both should take a moment to refresh yourselves,” Amarie said politely. “I’ll take you to the wash-room, you’ve been riding so long, and through the hills.”

Tanaquine opened her mouth, but Curvo grabbed her around her arm and thanked Amarie. Finrod saw Tanaquine flush, but lightly; he looked way when her eyes flickered at him from under her eyelashes.

Celebrimbor made a noise, but quietly enough that he had likely intended to keep it to herself. Once the others had walked off, Beatrice said, “Oh! Excellent,” and hurried over to attach herself to Celebrimbor’s arm.

He smiled fondly, though there was still strain under his eyes. “Hello, Bea.”

“Hello, Tyelpe!” she grinned.

“Tyelpe,” Finrod said, watching the place where the couple had just vanished, “Was that…”

Celebrimbor huffed. “They’re fine,” he said.

Finrod really should have aquiesed to his wisdom, but he just couldn’t. He knew Curvo better than he should, and things did not seem fine.

Still, there was no point in making Tyelpe more anxious when there was nothing to be done in the moment. Instead he busied himself with properly greeting and placing Miranda and Ariel in his memory; he had been acquainted to both but never intimately. Miranda was a distant relative of Tanaquine’s, and they were girlhood friends that were loath to separate; Ariel, a Beleriand-born warrior, was dim in Finrod’s memory because his life had been short, ending at the battle of flame like so many others. (Someone that had not known Curvo afterwards or even dewelled in Nargothrond; Finrod imagined that choice was intentional.) Finrod made sure both were refreshed after Curvo and Tanaquine, and then he engineered things so that it was largely he and Amarie bringing food outside to the outdoor dining table while the girls dazzled everyone with their rapid and hard-to-follow conversations in the sitting room.

“It turns out she gets travel-sick, which is one reason she rarely ventured far outside Tirion in her youth, which, if I interpreted things correctly, ties into a fear of being away from home at all which she is somewhat embarrassed about,” Amarie informed him in a whisper, layering porcelain plates on her arms. “She’s always been a homebody, but it seems to run deeper than that.”

“Well, I couldn’t have known that. Did it seem like Curufin was impatient with her?”

“No, not impatient with her, he’s clearly very used to this problem, but I could also tell he was strained in general.”

“He is, and I can tell you how I know; he’s been very muted so far.” Some sly suggestions, some off-color comments, but nothing like what he could do when he was confident in his position. Finrod grabbed a handful of glasses in one hand and a pitcher of water in the other. “I don’t know what to make of it yet, if he’s just concerned about behaving around Tyelpe, since he knows how thin the ice he’s standing on is with him, or if there’s something else going on. The thing about the trial—”

“I know,” she agreed, opening the back door with her shoulder, “There were a few things going on there. I’m not sure how I feel about it yet.”

They carried their arm-loads out to the table and placed them down. Finrod said, “He has to be sincere about his concern for Maedhros, because the grip Maedhros has on the hearts of his brothers—Maedhros was an established adult by the time Curufin was even born and my uncle Feanor was already beginning to change for the worse. Or so I was always told. Most of them think of Maedhros as a father as much as a brother, thought I wouldn’t say that to any of them. Especially not, you know, Curufinwe Atarince. So I know his concern is genuine, but the way he framed it—”

“Yes, what was he trying to get at?”

“Do you remember how I told you that I said something stupid to him about how I could, in theory, exonerate him ahead of his trial in writing if I wanted to?”

“Well, the little weasel,” Amarie grumped, her mouth twisting as they bustled back into to grab more plateware. “Would you do it?”

“No, that would be lying,” Finrod said, holding the door open for her. She squeezed his hand as she passed by. “I do not hold him blameness, nor have I in my heart fully forgiven him.”

“I didn’t think you had,” she said with some suspicion. “And yet I could also see you watching him like you were promised the evening with him.”

Finrod winced. “And even while trying not to. Answer me honestly; do you find him beautiful, or are you unaffected?”

“I find him beautiful, and I am not particularly affected,” she said, handing Finrod a basket of cloth napkins and silverware. “Anyone could do the same with twenty pounds of garnets of their own. Though, beauty aside, I have already noticed that peculiar charm you keep trying to explain to me, and I see why you struggle so much to explain it.”

“Yes, you see.”

“He is decidedly being uncharming,” Amarie grumped. “He is saying unpleasant things and omitting his social graces with obvious falseness, even sneering at you as he does so,” she said, piling more plates upon her arms. “And yet when he does it I soften to him for some reason I cannot discern. You come to like it so quickly, though I have no idea why.”

“I have been telling you,” Finrod compained, opening the door again so she could hurry past him. When it shut behind him and they were outside, he continued, “I have had far too much time to think about the subject and interest in doing so, so I am able ot offer you wisdom that you are absolutely going to hate: he’s sexy.”

“No,” Amarie said automatically, sliding plates one by one off of her arms and onto the table, which landed perfectly in place. “He’s what?”

“Sex-like as a descriptor. It’s clunky in Quenya. His imperious nature and general disregard are not obviously attractive, because they are terrible qualities to live with, but they are compelling in a more sinister way. His forcefulness and prying, especially the way he tries to get into your business with no provocation, are conductive to certain situations, and most people are not nearly so pushy outside of those situations. He has a nature that makes him awkward if not downright disruptive in any delicate setting but which lends itself to pounding iron into submission on the forge, forcibly taking over Kingdoms, or convincing someone to come to bed with you, and you can tell. And, naturally, the more you’ve seen it, the more you can see it,” he grumbled.

“Should I leave you alone?” Amarie asked, shocked.

“Please, no. Make sure I am not alone all evening,” Finrod asked her, and after giving him a withering look, she leaned across the table to kiss him.

--

They sat down at sunset; the sky was slowly being taken over by a vibrant hibiscus-pink, the long table was set so everyone had comfortable space, the river ran happily behind the house, and the cool of evening made the air so pleasant on the skin nearly everyone closed their eyes for a moment when they stepped outside.

The table had no chairs at either end; Finrod found that practice uncomfortable, because, of course, he would have to seat himself at the head of the table, and he had gone out of his way to establish that he had stepped down from such things. (Worse, it implied he was ruling his family as King, and his daughters would have responded to even the suggestion with outright rebellion.) He also disliked seating couples across from each other; he would rather be able to touch Amarie and, were he across from her and seated with the gentlemen, he would be much more likely to be able to touch Curvo, which he shouldn’t. Instead he had the seats arranged quite informally; he and Amarie sat on one side, Amarie on the very end, and Tanaquine and Curvo were seated beside each other and across from them. Celebrimbor was at his father’s hand, because oddly, that was most likely to keep peace instead of the other way around, and Ariel and Miranda were next to them. Opposite Celebrimbor was Beatrice, and nex to her, of course, were Portia, Bassanio, and Viola; fortunately Bassanio and Viola, close in age, got along quite well, and entertained each other even when Portia was distracted.

Curvo did comment on the unusual seating, and Finrod’s daughters spoke over each other to emphasize there was no way to get Finrod to accept a seating arrangement that didn’t literally let him hold his wife’s hand through dinner.

“It’s true,” he said, and no one wanted to know any more about that.

Amarie did not sit down immediately; they observed just enough protocol that the first thing she did was pour drinks, serving her husband first, and then the guests, and then the rest of the family. She had gotten as far as Viola, intending to work her way back down the row, when Viola said, “Thank you, mother! Tyelpe, you look more like your mother that your father.”

Amarie closed her eyes and moved silently onto Bassanio. Viola smiled.

Tyelpe, as if he hadn’t thought about this plenty before, looked over at his parents, before doubtfully asking, “Do you think so?”

“Sure; I’ve always thought you had a softer face than the Finwean side, which I now see certainly comes from Aunt Tanaquine.”

“Well,” Celebrimbor said, “Mother is very beautiful, so…”

“And the softer nature to go with it,” said Curvo, which was just a comment that absolutely no comfortable follow-up to go with it.

Tanaquine said, “Stop,” in a way that was decidednly uncomfortable.

“I’ve seen him with Aunt Nerdanel enough to form my opinion that he looks rather like her,” Amarie countered flawlessly, pouring Portia’s drink. “There, love. And that’s where the size comes from, anyway.”

“Right, he looks like Mahtan, an opinion I have held for ages, which people insist on not seeing,” Finrod seconded.

“While I don’t see it in my face, it is my best explanation for why I have to be so inconvenienly large,” Celebrimbor awkwardly agreed.

“But you got the noise from him, which I have been delighted to discover,” Viola continued brightly.

“The noise?” Celebrimbor asked.

Viola leaned over her plate so that she could catch Portia’s eye. Portia, caught, leaned forward as well. After a moment, they placed their hands under their chins and, in tandom, flawlessly imitated it: “Hm!”

Both Curvo and Celebrimbor seemed genuinely shocked. It was likely neither had ever really thought about what, to outsiders, was rather an idiosyncracy.

Finrod chuckled. “In that you girls are hearing the ghost of the same man,” he said, “Among a few other things they both do. Dear, pour yourself one,” he said, as Amarie had come back to her place.

“Gladly,” she said, and poured herself a respectable glass. She lifted it up; traditionally, such dinners started with three toasts, so all else did the same as well.

“I’ll do all three,” she said, meaning both that they were doing the traditional three toasts, and that she would be doing them all herself as the Lady of the house. Another option would have been opening it to anyone that would like to, but, since everyone had to drink after each toast and people came up with more ideas they more they had drunk, it could take some time.

The first toast was always offered to the Ainur; the host either named a few or thanked them all. Amarie said, “To Manwe and to Varda, who reign over this land; to Aule, who has always blessed us.”

Safe, and sparse, but Finrod expected her to play it safe. Everyone lifted their cups and then drank.

The second toast, however, was to the ancestors or the beloved dead. That could be much more fraught, but, naturally, Amarie had a straight path through. “To beloved King Finwe, whose gentle hand we remember fondly.”

Some with downcast eyes, they drank.

The third toast was to the company, and that was usually the easiest one to make; yet in present company it could easily be blundered. Not so from Amarie; she grinned and said, “And to Celebrimbor specifically, and anyone who disagrees can just set down their cup.”

No one disagreed except Celebrimbor, who flushed and grumbled something into his hand. He was, however, smiling.

When everyone sat back down, except for the girls, Finrod unthinkingly leaned against Amarie, not fully but not subtly, pressing their shoulders together. He saw that, across the way, though Curvo clung faultlessly straight, Tanaquine clung to his arm. She still did not seem settled or happy, however, and Finrod quickly looked away, so she had the option of just fading into the background if she wanted it.

Amarie’s part finished, Finrod’s daughters stayed up and began to serve the food. The spread was largely light and cool, to accentuate the pleasantly warm evening; fresh melon salad with mint, cold cucumber and ginger soup, lemongrass river-fish and peppered pearl grain, smoked salmon on watercress crackers, assorted pickles on plates, green and yellow and pink, shaved squash and jackfruit with chili and ginger piled high on top.

Finrod’s table had once been haltingly described as ‘Like if you were a judicious clean eater of raw vegetables and fruit… but you also ate everything.’ Angrod had once more accurately described his taste as ‘he still thinks he’s on his twentieth year on the Helcaraxe and no size of storehouse can convince him otherwise.’ Everyone was given a small portion of everything, with the reminder, as always, that they did not have to eat the meat, and that if they wanted more of anything, they could grab it after that point. All of this echoed the formal dining system of having waiting women on hand, but without… that. Finrod wouldn’t let the girls spring up to help everyone after that point, since in his opinion, they should be eating as well. He said as much, “Everyone can take whatever they want after this point; I don’t want to see any of you three jumping up to serve people.”

Because a person couldn’t say anything in this house, all of the girls immediately piped up with some version of “Tyelpe can do it” or “Up to you, Bassanio.” And, because a person really could not say anything in this house, the gentlemen both meekly agreed.

Curvo stifled a laugh with his hand.

Finrod, sighing, said, “Valar help me, I’m supposed to let that go.”

Amarie sighed.

Curvo’s fingers curled away. “I couldn’t help but think: isn’t this exactly what he would do, with no one keeping an eye on him?”

“No one keeping an eye on me? Do you not see the amount of people doing that? That’s what Amarie is entirely for.”

“That’s a lie,” Amarie said, “I cannot possibly do everything I do and keep an eye on you the entire time. Nor would I.”

“I mean that you have gone out of your way to establish a separate realm in which gender roles absolutely do not matter and everyone can be as domineered by their wives as they well like, which is, in retrospect, probably what you wanted to do all along.”

Finrod, offended, said, “Yes.”

Curvo laughed. Portia, also offended, said, “What father is serious about is letting people live their lives in a way that fits their nature; no one is served by living in an unfit way for show.”

Bassanio, unbothered, after swallowing a bit of melon, said, “I would note that I don’t feel particularly domineered; I usually just let Portia have her fit and then fix things when she’s done.”

Portia said, “Well,” but Bassanio just wasn't wrong.

Beatrice, with less fire, said, “We will have people walk away uncomfortable from time to time, but my argument has always been that we aren’t hypocritical. We enjoy living lives our own way and encourage everyone else to do the same, whether that means a fully traditional home or an untraditional one. Of course I’ve had a dozen little girls try out cutting down another woman for the first time by snidely reminding me that my parents had lovers outside of wedlock. True, but they have absolutely no expectations for how I conduct myself, which I enjoy.”

“Yes, I–no kinslaying, I’ve said it a hundred times. You ask me if there’s anything I won’t do, and I always say, it’s always been a point of pride that I do not engage in kinslaying, and as such it’s an expectation I have for you as well,” Finrod said emphatically.

“The other day, he said to me, ‘once you’ve seen a man butterflied, you just don’t care about people having partners outside of wedlock,’ or what was it again?” Portia struggled to remember. “And then I made him describe butterflying to me, and, well…”

“He’s been trying to convince me to take a wife for years,” Viola said cheerfully.

“No. What I have repeated is that I do not mind if you do, and will in fact defend you. That said, the prospect of trying to be the first person to wheedle a woman/woman marriage out of the courts is an invigorating one–”

“How much of this is a vested interest in bothering your father?” Curvo asked curiously.

Finrod paused, and, in neither his best nor his worst move of the evening, said, “Believe it or not, I have very little interest in bothering my father, because I like him, his flaws notwithstanding. The reason I advocate for other people to have the freedom I have enjoyed is, believe it or not, not out of some sense of spite or because I enjoy distressing people. I am genuinely unashamed of what I’ve done.”

That statement was true, though in a complicated way. When he reached inside himself, Finrod knew he was unashamed of himself, that he was comfortable with, even loved the self who had loved a man and a ner and a nis. He was often cautious with how he spoke about it, but that was because he knew he was navigating a complicated system of people who would make life harder for him and his family if they were made to look at this self. Those complicated maneuverings, the system of veiling and unveiling, being stressful and taxing, could produce a feeling a lot like shame, the frustration of hiding what he did not truly care to hide. But when he touched the core of himself it was impossible, if just within himself, to be ashamed of it. It was like lying upon the warm grass; it was nature.

Curvo looked at him. Finrod could see him hesitate, waver. While Curvo was still blank-faced, unmoving, Finrod heard him say, Well, you should be. You should be as ashamed as I am.

Finrod’s face went numb, the blood draining out. He felt himself tense. But he did not respond, and he wasn’t sure why at first. Everything suddenly felt sideways, like he was growing faint with bloodloss or not quite asleep.

The Curvo said, No, and then he said no again and Finrod realized his lips were not moving. And now he knew why suddenly his skin was crawling and his blood was thrumming in his ears.

He also knew Curvo had done it accidentally, because he was banging at his skull like a moth at a glass window, trying to get out. The fact that he had done it accidentally was more alarming than the fact that he had done it at all. Curvo had not meant to initiate osanwe; he had fallen in.

Finrod pushed him back. It was visible in Curvo clenching one fist upon the table and swallowing. Tanaquine, at his side, around the arm which has clenched tight, clutched him harder.

((need Finrod to address how that thought felt desperate and unhappy, but it had to be after he’s ben distracted enough to have the space to dissect it.))

“I, too, sometimes wish that my Ingoldo were more tactful, but his intentions are good,” Amarie sighed, which made a few chuckle (mostly his daughters).

Under the table, Amarie squeezed his hand. She did not look at him, but he felt her concern.

He turned over his palm so he could hold her hand. Out loud, he said, “I have let that slip, but in my defense, tact is a slippery and changing thing, and I’ve had to adhere to many very disperate codes of action throughout my lives.”

Beatrice made a quite good joke about that, but Finrod did not enjoy it like he could have. After he let out a breath, and felt the sudden shakiness in his nerves settle somewhat, he felt the aftershocks of Curvo’s thought in his head, and they distressed him.

Unhappy, he thought. Desperate. Curvo’s plea that Finrod should be as ashamed as he was did not feel like the arch-browed judgement of a clean-palmed Vanyar Lord who decried what he did not understand.

And Curvo was in a different situation. He did have much more to feel ashamed of. Yet…

“No, you wre all cheated,” said Celebrimbor, and Finrod had to admit he missed the lead-up to that comment. He ate a slice of cucumber, dripping with seed oil and gentle white wine vinegar. “The best Kingdom to live in by far was Gil-Galad’s. Yes, much better than what I did after parting with them, I’m not just admitting that now, I think I mentioned it in every letter I wrote him, which were almost uniformly asking his advice on how to solve my conundrums. And anyone who says it was ‘really Galadriel’s Kingdom’ can shove that.”

“None of us were going to say that,” Portia said, with the exhaustion born of having listened to this rant a few times.

“Gil-Galad made a society where self-determination was not just permitted, it was the core of society. Self-determination was required. The only people who struggled with that were the ones who felt they needed to be ordered around, and you give a man enough space to think and he will get over that. Every one of us is doing worse than Gil-Galad and that’s just a fact.”

“You cannot be drunk already,” Finrod said to him.

“I’m not, I just think this. You know, early on, I accused him of trying to do ‘Nargothrond but right.’”

“Oh, come on.”

“He of course graciously argued that he was trying to do Nargothrond but more. He liked that in the first place, he just thought you did not give it your all in being a Kingdom where all were truly welcome.”

“Kingdom where—I married a man,” Finrod said grumpily.

“That’s not what I mean. I mean that it was Gil-Galad’s opinion that you always tried to have a truly open and diverse society quietly, and pretended to be Tirion on paper. He was about doing all of that loudly, and as an opening statemen. ‘Welcome to Lindon, we do cross-species marriages here, and I had a sex change.’”

“I do not recall Nargothrond being—the pretense was very thin after a point,” Finrod admitted. “I was not ‘pretending to be Tirion,’ I was ‘a man who was raised in Tirion, and as such—‘”

“And then Orodreth took the helm, which was suffocating, until Turin improved him. But, well, that was the end of things. That could have gone rather well—”

“I was ‘the King who married a man.’ I can’t—Tyelpe, I think I am genuinely insulted by your implication that I was not progressive enough.”

((need to spin this into the girls asking about the Yule Party but Curvo needs to start talking first.))

“Especially because that was the main exploitable weakness in his defense, yes, that is a little unfair. This fish is fantastic,” Curvo said.

((finish up dinner, ‘see, you can do it. You can both be normal,’ gender separate activities, then scene with Quine in the hallway, then scene with amarie at bedtime.))

Finrod looked sharply at Curvo, but only for a second, before glancing away. He wasn’t completely sure if Curvo was covering up being shaken by what just happened between them with some posturing or if he generally had simmered down. Finrod couldf still find a middle way to respond. “What an incredible thing to say as you are again visiting my house!”

“Amarie’s house, I thought! That was emphasized to me several times.”

“Primarily, yes.”

“It’s his house in the same way that the fish is our fish,” Amarie said with a little smile. “It certainly did show up here, and at quite an unopportune time for it.”

“Yes, exactly,” Finrod said, looking fondly at his wife.

“I don’t nessecarily know when he’ll be here or what state he’ll be in, but I know he’ll be slippery and covered in something. Oh, I should have gone with a snake metaphor,” she said sadly.

“A fish is what’s on the table. It’s appropriate.”

--

((skip))

--

That was the rockiest the conversation got. The longer the group as a whole carried on without blows, the more relaxed the more sensitive members of the party became and the easier they found it to carry on conversation. Finrod’s daughters did the bulk of the work in maintaining congeniality until they convinced Ariel to speak and, to everyone’s delight, he was a master at relaying utterly macabre Beleriand stories with parlor-room lightness, such that beheadings took the tone of lightly naughty jokes. Finrod, at least, found that enormously relaxing; the spectres which were doing their best to haunt the conversation were made, for a while, quite pale.

He was also, after a while, keeping an eye on how close Beatrice leaned into him; she seemed to find the reformed throat-cutter’s stories quite… relaxing as well, judging by how soft her posture had become.

They are becoming more comfortable with the unavoidable unpleasantness of my history, Finrod noticed with mixed unease, and suddenly I am unsure how I feel about it.

But he didn’t fuss about it, or about Beatrice’s increasing proximity to the Feanoreon guard, largely because of how immensely hypocritical such fussing would have been. Courses passed and bottles emptied, and practically without knowing how he had gotten that far Finrod was standing up for Amarie’s closing toasts, which were as agreeable as the openers had been, and then, he had his arms full of plates and Amarie was slapping him once, roughly, on the back, saying, “See?”

He did not see.

“You can do it,” she said, loudly and firmly enough for everyone to hear. “That was completely normal. An entire, completely normal evening. You can do it.”

“Completely normal is a stretch,” Finrod argued automatically.

“An entire and mostly normal, totally violence-free evening,” Amarie said, and pushed him inside. “Wash the dishes.”

--

((14: Shame))

In the continuing effort to lean on tradition in order to avoid drama, they separated into gendered groups after dinner. That was funny enough in present company that a few people did laugh after the suggestion, but old-fashioned enough that no one had done it in a while and it had immediate appeal. Amarie, Tanaquine, Finrod’s daughters, and Miranda remained outside in the pleasant evening to do as they would, and Finrod, Curufin, Celebrimbor, Bassanio, and Ariel retired to the front-room. In traditional households there were separate rooms for these things, but it so thoroughly went without saying that Finrod and Amarie had built a house without those rooms that no one so much as brought it up. The evening was so incredibly pleasant that the women really had the better deal of it, even as time stretched and it became a pleasant night.

Before they separated, Curufin and Tanaquine had a quick, tense, nearly silent conversation. Neither looked particularly happy when they parted. Finrod was gnawing on Curvo’s demand that he not interfere with their relationship in order to keep his tongue back.

To keep up the theme of ‘completely normal’ Finrod kept the activities of the evening inoffensive, even though his first (suppressed) instinct was a hunt and his second (suppressed) instinct was an archery contest (where, Ingoldo, he asked). He still thought some kind of contest to be (paradoxically) wise, since he absolutely had to keep everyone occupied instead of sitting and watching and thinking, and five was an uneven number for most table-games.

It was, however, a perfect number for ((NAME)), a notoriously difficult challenge-game that had been popular in Finwe’s court before it became too difficult for the average person. It took a long time, it took intense mental concentration, it needed a judge (which could be Finrod, so he didn’t have to wrestle with the vicissitudes of him and Curvo competing), exactly half of the contestants in the room had played before (so there would be teaching and cooperation to begin with), and, most importantly, the mere mention of it made the two who had played it before (Curvo and Celebrimbor) wince and hiss immediately.

A grin cracked one side of Finrod’s face. “It’s been thousands of years, gentlemen. Surely the sting is not too fresh.”

“And yet it is immediate,” Celebrimbor said darkly.

“To be fair,” Curvo said, “The main reason it stings is that it was grandfather’s favorite, and, I will be the first to admit, my father felt quite strongly that that meant he should be the de facto champion of it. And yet…”

“And yet?” Celebrimbor asked.

Curvo lamented, “He may have been, but I was never that good at it.”

Finrod laughed. Curvo’s ‘not that good at it’ was any normal person’s ‘top percentile.’ “We’ll have to start with a friendly round no matter what, because I will bet you anything Bassanio has never even heard of it.”

“Not once,” he smiled.

“I recall hearing about it,” Ariel said, “but when I was young it was more or less something only nobility did.”

“No doubt,” Finrod admitted. “Let me start by explaining.”

Constance was a game of association which could only even be attempted by someone well versed in high culture, and ancient culture, at this point. It needed a judge because a certain aesthetic sense was involved. The backbone of the game was this: the judge presented a series of images, drawn by a brush dipped in water, and thus temporary, which related to some high-culture work of literature; it could be poems, songs, dramas, or popular literature. The game used to be bound to the chapters of a series of classic novels, but those were now so old that it could not be bet that a table of contestants had read them recently enough to remember them. The idea was that some text or corpus ‘classic’ enough that everyone should know it was chosen, which was divided into sub-chapters or parts, and that the challenge was in correctly interpreting the judge’s selection of images and which chapter or piece those images related to. The contestants would them, on a hidden paper, draw an image which depicted the next part—the next chapter, the next verse, the next song after that once. Thus, if all contestants got one right, the one with the best aesthetic sense won the round. It could be played in twelve rounds, or, until only one (or none) had the correct answer. (Or until it was unanimously decided that the judge was being too obtuse, which happened occasionally). In theory, the first round was easiest, and the judge raised the bars of abstraction, or granularity, or both, until the whole room was stumped.

“I understand the basics,” Bassanio said, after Curvo and Celebrimbor had traded back explaining for fifteen minutes or so.

“The question is,” Ariel asked, who looked quite interested in giving the ancient contest a go himself, “what work are you confident in testing up on?”

With an absolutely serene smile, Finrod said, “The lot of you had better know your Noldolante.”

--

((The game they play in this chapter is based off of the insultingly high-class incense-literature association game played by the characters in episodes 8-9 of the acclaimed supernatural mystery anime Mononoke (2009). It’s a personal favorite of mine, I recommend all and sundry check it out))

Three hours of warfare later, Celebrimbor had won. It was quickly realized by all that they did not have to know the events that took place in the Noldolante; this was an image-association game and they needed to know the particular imagery and metaphors which were used in the Noldolante to illustrate the events described therein, which meant, moreover, that they needed to know the imagery and metaphors etcetera that Maglor had seen fit to use to describe events etcetera and, in an initially surprising but eventually understandable turn of events, it was Celebrimbor who was most in tune with that mindset.

Both Bassanio and Ariel kept on for an admirable amount of time, it was really only a battle of father and son for about three rounds. It was Maglor’s inventive (and honestly inspired) poetic depiction of the fall of Gondolin that outdid Curufin, and he patently did not believe that Maglor used a bull-based metaphor for Turgon until Finrod took his vintage printing off the shelf and showed him. Curvo and Celebrimbor then engaged in, to Finrod’s delight, an exchange of (what he presumed was) insults in Khuzdul. Finrod didn’t understand it, and yet he was convinced that the absolute face-melting nature of the insults was such that everyone else in the room should have been incinerated.

“And the same to Maglor too,” Curvo finished hotly.

Finrod raised and then drained his glass. “Shall you tell him the next time you see him, or shall I?”

“…Have you seen him?” Curvo asked.

Finrod paused. “Once,” he said.

And he thought, and, his hands… but even though he was solidly drunk, he was not nearly drunk enough to ask about or even allude to that. Along with only a handful of other subjects, Finrod believed he would either have to be falling-down-dead-drunk or else, perhaps, undergoing torture to bring up Maglor’s (or Maedhros’) sin-black hands.

Finrod decided to say, “It was distressing.”

He was usually less blunt than that, so he corrected himself: “Somewhat. Distressing.”

Curvo curled a hand and looked down.

Very few topics got Curvo honest like that of his older brothers. Then again, very few things got him so dishonest, depending on the mood. Perhaps it was most accurate to say that very few topics got him so touchy.

Finrod looked at him, and then he looked at the curve of his lower lip, still slightly glistening with gloss, and thought something to himself that he was truly glad he managed not to project. In fact he shocked himself with the crudeness of it. Curvo looked up at him, and it took Finrod too long to look away.

He stood up and said, “I am too drunk,” and began to walk to the kitchen.

He thought, stop it, but Curvo was on his knees in front of him in his mind and saying so did not stop it. He pinched an earring and tugged on his earlobe, an old habit, one Amarie rather didn’t like, and it didn’t do him any good anyway. He got himself some water and drank it, and it tasted like stone, like dirt, and informed him by its natural flavor that he was in fact much too drunk. He had not noticed while he sat back and judged and drank and watched. He stood over the sink and forced himself to drink a little more water, and then a little more, and then he heard something.

He wasn’t sure what it was at first, but he was sure where it was: the little hall between the kitchen and the back door. He thought maybe it was some kind of animal, sniffling and padding. They got in through the back sometimes, since it was hardly ever locked.

Finrod heard another noise, and he thought it heard a little like crying. He put his glass down and walked as gracefully as he could to the other side of the kitchen to look.

For a moment, his stomach dropped like a hot stone, because he saw Curvo in the darkness of the hallway, black and tall and waiting, and like a dream he could feel his hands on him, pressing and hot.

But it could not be, because Curvo was on the other side of the house, and Finrod had not seen him approach—could he have walked around? Finrod felt dizzy, and in-between his certainty about what couldn’t be real and his wonderment about what could be.

The person moved a hand over their face, thin, clutched with jewels, and Finrod understood it was Tanaquine, and she was crying.

No, she was trying to stifle her tears, because she had seen him. Finrod hesitated, caught between the impulse to hurry away out of respect to her dignity and approach out of concern. He was achingly out of his depth with Tanaquine; he knew he represented nothing but problems with her, and he would have liked to resolve some of them, but he had no idea what comforted her and what upset her.

What are the women doing? He wondered frantically. Then, drunk, he thought, well, you can be a woman in a pinch, Ingo, and cautiously approached her.

“Not that you’re nearly the first person to start sobbing in this house,” he said, and Tanaquine did not startle at all because she had seen him ages before he had seen her, “But I find the experience does not improve with time for me, and I doubt it does for you.”

He sounded absolutely stupid drunk. He sounded like an idiot. He hated it. Maybe that was a situation Tanaquine was more comfortable with, though, because she swallowed and wiped her face and looked frankly as comfortable as he had seen her since Curvo came back, which was unpleasant. “I apologize,” she said stiffly.

“You have to know enough about me to know I’m not upset you’re crying in my house, I’m just upset that you’re crying,” he attempted to say.

She cleared her face again. “Yes, I know,” she said miserably.

Finrod said, “Lady Tanaquine, it has occurred to me that I don’t believe we know each other, these last three thousand years in approximate proximity notwithstanding.”

She said, “I don’t believe we do.”

Finrod thought, you are doing so bad right now. Dropping pretense completely, he said, “What’s wrong?”

He offended her. Perhaps it was more right to say that she was offended, since he wasn’t exactly sure what by. Anger crossed her brow, passed through and away. She sniffled. “Oh, what’s wrong,” she said, as miserably as mockingly. Her pale face, wiped clear, was like the face of the moon in the dark, and it occurred to (drunk) Finrod that she was very lovely.

Finrod said, “I can’t apologize. I would like to, but I can’t. It wouldn’t be honest. I’ve been trying to explain this to everyone for a year and I can’t get into it; I know it was wrong and I’m not sorry. Except that’s not it. Except it is, isn’t it? I do know it was wrong and it’s not sorry. Yes. It’s sounded wrong up until this point because I’ve been lying. Trying to sound nice, which is essentially lying. That’s all it is, really. I know that it was wrong, and I’m not sorry, though right now I wish I were.”

Tanaquine swallowed. She looked straight ahead of her, at the other side of the narrow hallway, and said, “You think I’m crying about you, you son of a King, don’t you.”

“Son of a King,” Finrod said with wonderment, momentarily distracted. “I think that’s just about the best I’ve ever seen insulted.”

“Oh,” Tanaquine said miserably.

“Your son told me you’ve called me worse things, and I want you to know that you can say them to my face.”

“Did he.”

“Don’t be angry with him.”

“I’m not. Why must you be so fond of him?”

“There’s nothing to do about that now; that won’t change,” Finrod said. He was dizzy enough that he was forced to lean against the wall, not too close to Tanaquine, but close enough that they could speak low in the little hallway. “I couldn’t tell you if he was like a cousin to me or like a son to me. Some other familial relationship that means precious and constant. Of course, I thought of him as the younger generation once but that was very long ago, and an illusion, as we’re truly not far apart in age. But don’t ask me why I’m so fond of Tyelpe, ask him why he’s so lovely. Who wouldn’t be fond of him?”

Tanaquine, who had been growing steadier, suddenly wrinkled her nose, and then stifled another sob.

“I’ve upset you again. I am sorry,” Finrod said sadly. “I don’t think I’ve said I’m phenomenally drunk yet. Or maybe I have. I am, though.”

“Yes, I can tell,” she complained through her stopped throat. “Who wouldn’t be fond of him? Damn you.”

Finrod looked down at the ground. He swayed a little, and braced himself. “Perhaps you should insult me for a while. I wouldn’t mind at all. It’s a little nice that you actually have a reason to. Listening to that thing from people who—that I haven’t hurt at all, and they just need to be better than me, it’s a little hard to take. Because there’s no point. I wish they would be upset about the real problems. You, however, this is your real problem; everyone acts like it’s stuck in their shoe—like a hazelnut I mean—but really it is your problem, and you should be the one astoundingly angry at me. It’s not a problem if you’re angy with me. I think I’d rather you were, the amount of forgiveness is starting to set my teeth on edge. When do people start hurting me?”

“Oh, you stupid man,” Tanaquine said.

“There, that’s a good start,” Finrod encouraged.

“I am not angry,” Tanaquine said furiously. She repeated herself, pronouncing every syllable: “I am not angry! I am ashamed! Do you hear me? I am ashamed!”

Tears gathered in both her eyes again, she gestured to her chest as if to say, ‘of this,’ ‘of this thing.’ Finrod felt as though his heart were stung, and his head turned. Tanquine cried, “I am afraid, and I am ashamed! How could I not be? How don’t you understand? Didn’t he tell you everything, everything that happened to him? Don’t you understand?”

Dully, Finrod repeated, “Everything.”

“Yes, he told me,” Tanaquine said, tears pearled on her cheeks. “He told me that he told you everything, deep in the night, with you holding him, comforting him. Don’t you understand? How would you feel if you learned that your Amarie had been horribly treated like that, treated like an animal, treated like a slave, used like a breeding mare, and it all happened while you weren’t there and you had no idea? Because you didn’t even have the courage to follow her, didn’t even bother to go with her? Because you hid in your cowardice when he went to war, and then he was tortured, he was broken, and you didn’t even have the nerve to follow him! You weren’t even there! I swore an oath to be with him all my life and I hid away in hardship! I painted landscapes and took tea while he was raped in the mud! He had no one he could tell and he endured it alone! I arranged flowers and curled my hair! He tured to self-abuse to try to handle a wound that festered in his soul! He had no one so he took you to bed! Well, he would have had someone if I had been there! So you comforted him! Yes, he told me that you comforted him, that for all he bit at your hand you made him feel better, if just for the night, if just in the moment! His wife ate panna cotta in Tirion; you comforted him! Well, thank you! Thank you,” she cried, and in a moment of cat-like, lashing anger, smacked him in the chest, shoving him back.

Finrod was pushed backward. He stood, stupefied.

Tanaquine wobbled, thrown off-balance by her own strike. She was completely untrained, Finrod thought, and had had to lash out with everything in her to even shove him.

To the ground, she said, “The knowledge that you had him stings. I suppose. But what’s important is that he was hurt, and I wasn’t there.”

Finrod felt like she had taken a handful of his heart when she shoved him away. He opened his mouth, but all he said was, “Lady…”

“Tell me what to do,” she said, with an edge in her voice. “I don’t care if it’s begging. I can only be so ashamed. Tell me what you do to comfort him. I’m already doing everything I know how to do. But I know it’s not enough. I know it even as I’m doing it. It’s too big,” she pleaded, “It’s too much. I can’t handle it all. He needs more than what I can give him and I don’t know what to do. I’m afraid. It’s bigger than him, too. It looms over him. It’s bigger than both of us and I cannot do anything to help him. For all my trying he grows cold and turns away from me, angry and isolate, and has to go off to be alone because he cannot stop hurting the people around him or himself. What did you do? What did you used to do to make him even a little better? I don’t care what it is. I’m sure I can manage.”

The first thing Finrod did was say something in Taliska, which could not possibly be translated.

In later generations, Balan’s people learned better, but when they first journey from the East they had certain peculiar beliefs that were common among the men of the dark edges of the world. One was a quite fascinating belief in a place that was the opposite of the Land of the Gods, a sort of dark under-world into which they believed the souls of the unworthy would sink. The place was called ‘hell,’ a world for which there was no equivalent in any Elven language because they had not invented the nightmarish concept. ‘Angband’ was the only place that was close, but that had been real and was on earth. Finrod eventually surmised that, knowing that thralls and orcs can from somewhere but not knowing the truth of where, humans had done the incredible work of coming up with a place from which such things could come on their own, and had nearly outdone the Enemy in their imaginings. Hell had never existed and Angband did no longer, nor Mordor, but ‘hell’ was a useful concept for men, who would use its macabre image, sometimes, to express that what they saw in front of them belonged there.

“Oh, hell,” said Finrod, and then cleared his throat. In Quenya, he said, “No, no, I cannot handle this. He would hate that if he heard that. He would hate all of that. Where is your hand?” he said, and then sought it in the darkness, to hold it. He found the tips of Tanaquine’s fingers and she wrenched them back.

He stood still, halfway reaching out, halfway braced to the wall, still incredibly drunk despite it all. “You have to believe this, that he would hate that. Despite everything he has done and has been you have to believe that he would not want to hear you talking like that. At least that. You have to know that he would hate to hear you consider yourself unworthy of him. That is where the boundary is, though even he can’t see it, and doesn’t believe so well of himself, I know and I need you to know that he doesn’t want you to hurt yourself for him.” He said that despite knowing Curvo had gladly seen him hurt, and Celegorm as well; all the same he was absolutely convinced that this was different, and Tanaquine was different. “The thing he could not tolerate is dragging you down to where we have been. You’re his wife, and he has his pride, and he needs his pride. No, you have to listen to this. Pride is a fault in so many men, but I cannot blame Curvo out of all men for his, or for needing it. He needs you to have your pride, Tanaquine, to know that you deserve better, and to demand it. What could possibly be worse to a man who has been through what he has than to know it has debased you too?”

Tanaquine glared up at Finrod with eyes that were lit with hope, or the desire to hope, but still frozen under anger, like under feet of ice. “But what do I do?” she asked. “Tell me what to do.”

In that moment Finrod was fiercely convinced that he would never touch Curufinwe again, that he could not. He would never do anything that harmed the person in front of him, not even slightly. “I don’t know, and I wouldn’t tell you, not even if I did,” he said, “I wouldn’t touh you or alter you for anything. After seven thousand years Curvo went to win his bride back and he was right; he needs you and he needs you to be what you are. I know it. I wish almost he hadn’t told you, because now you have to bear it, and that will change you. And he needs you to be what you are, the person who was right for him in the first place. Be proud, Tanaquine. Be proud. You are miraculous, I can see it. And I have seen it a thousand time; a match-flame, a spark, a glimmer can banish a whole room of dark, and with its head held high, and in an instant. The past is nothing. You are bright, and now.”

“Oh, you glittering tool; you are useless when drunk.”

“I am useless sober, just more succinctly,” Finrod disagreed. “No, do anything you can to not be me, to not try to be what I was for him. What did I do? Encourage his destructive habits, succumb to his temptations, fail to rise to the challenge at last, give up and walk away. If you have changed for him, you are already other than the person he wanted. Stand firm. Be proud. Be selfish. Demand he change.”

Tanaquine said, “You are asking me to be more hard-hearted than I can possibly be.”

Finrod said, “It is going to be necessary. We can’t give into him, not when he’s doing things he doesn’t really want to do.”

She said, “I can’t do it.”

Finrod faltered, and, just like always, he felt his resolve fail. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Can’t you just tell me what to do?”

“I—” and he saw his sister, smiling up at the dancing moths. “I can’t, because I don’t know. Truly I don’t. I don’t know how to tell you what it means to me, that he said I was a comfort to him; he surely didn’t say so at the time. But that doesn’t change the fact that I failed him completely, though I get argued to death whenever anyone hears me say something like that. If a story ends like ours did, yes, you failed each other. I don’t know what I should have done. I do know fleeting comfort was certainly not enough.”

“Even that is more than I have done.”

“Not only do I doubt that, I know it cannot be true. He knows he needs you. He chose you again. He cannot feel that failed himself, surely. You are enough for him. You are what he needs. You need to know that,” he begged. “Please, say it once.”

Tanaquine did nothing but stare up at him.

“Maybe you can’t believe me now, but please remember this,” Finrod begged.

Suddenly came a quiet voice from just around the corner, in the kitchen. “He’s going to check up on you,” whispered Ariel, low. Finrod froze, Tanaquine jumped. Ariel continued, “He couldn’t be distracted any longer. He’s about to come this way.”

Tanaquine put a hand over her mouth, then turned, opened the door, and vanished outside. Finrod, feeling like he would sink into the earth at any moment, slowly ran a hand down his face. “Good,” he sighed, turning around to face the guard who had appeared in the shadows behind him. “I can tell him his wife has taken a bad turn.”

Ariel silenty pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to him.

Finrod accepted it and cleaned away the tears he hadn’t felt gathering. “Good enough?” he asked.

“Good enough. Your voice is raw.”

Finrod noticed Ariel was still holding a glass of wine himself. Finrod gestured for it, and Ariel handed it over. He drained it.

Finrod asked, “What keeps you loyally serving one of the most infamously insane dispossessed Princes in Aman, Ariel?”

Ariel said, “With my requisite apologies for what I’m about to say, I am called a ‘notorious throat-cutter’ because that job was what I truly loved. Being deprived of that work for all eternity, I can at least be around people who still appreciate the art.”

Finrod nodded, and then handed him the empty glass. Ariel went to the sink to wash it.

Curvo entered the kitchen, shimmering. He looked intolerably sexy as he disdainfully eyed Finrod down, leaning against the wall and pinching his own forehead. “You are too drunk,” he condescended.

Finrod raised his eyebrows and flipped the back of his hand at him. “I just saw your wife,” he said.

“And where is she now?”

“After calling me a glittering tool, she stormed back out to the porch,” Finrod responded, and he did not miss the sharp, but searingly genuine, smile on Curvo’s face. He walked over to Ariel and handed him another glass. “Since you’re at it, Ariel, and mind you keep them in one piece; they aren’t ours, after all,” and then he swept by Finrod with barely another glance.

Ariel began to wash that one as well. Finrod could see he was smiling.

Finrod said, “That was incredibly specific.”

“There’s something of an ongoing joke about my sharp eye for sharp objects, or potentially sharp objects,” Ariel explained. “The joke being that I might break one on purpose to aquire one.”

“Did you do it?”

“Break a glass?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Once,” Ariel smiled, “and I genuinely don’t know if he remembers.”

--

((15: Lust))

Things kept fucking happening, and it was yet hours later that Finrod, essentially naked and glittering in several ways, collapsed into bed next to Amarie, also essentially naked, and the softness of her body reddened in places where her jewellry or dress had beein gathered in.

“My feet,” she said dully.

“Manwe,” Finrod repeated back in a similar tone of voice.

“My back,” Amarie complained.

“Varda. Tulkas. Nessa.”

“Do you remember how we used to have whole crews of servants for dinners like these?”

“Irmo. Namo. Nienna.”

“Dozens of people. Scores. Just to serve for a dinner like this.”

“I am one more throb in my temple away from swearing on the name of the Enemy.”

“Twenty or more people to do the work we just did.”

“Morgoth. Fucking. Bauglir.”

“Ingo.”

“He can’t hear me.”

Amarie was exaggerating slightly; naturally Celebrimbor had put in more than his fair share, and while they hadn’t done the heavy lifting, the girls did plenty of the busy work to wrap things up. Now they were asleep practically on top of each other (and Portia’s husband, and Celebrimbor) in Beatrice’s room, which they had turned into something of a base camp, and the guests were spread evenly in the other rooms, with Curvo and Tanaquine in the only real guest room. Finrod did not know what had transpired between them for the rest of the evening and purposefully had not poked into it; the girls had been the ones entertaining the guests as things worn down and everyone gradually decided it was time to retire until the dawn.

“I told you to lie down,” Amarie reminded him, and Finrod stubbornly tossed his head on the bed (which was a little like shaking it.)

“No,” he insisted, “I was drunk as a fish and being stupid, I needed to keep busy.”

“Keep busy, keep busy,” she mocked him. “Every moment of every day; what’ll happen if I have a moment to myself?”

“I’ll think; this has repeatedly proven to be bad for everyone.”

“And what will you think, oh embodied disaster?”

“That I want so badly to press my thumb onto Curvo’s shimmering lower lip,” said Finrod, and then laid a hand on his forehead. “I’m still drunk, yet already becoming hungover? How is it possible?”

Amarie processed that for a moment, and then she said, “And then what?”

Finrod laughed at the ceiling, but quieted himself quickly, because he did have a very small house by Noldorin standards and anything above a low voice could easily be heard in other rooms. “Get bitten, almost definitely.”

“Oh dear. Is that a polite refusal from him?”

“It’s encouragement.”

Amarie made a noise. At the time, Finrod thought it was pain. He reached over and gently rubbed her under her ear, in the place on her neck that relieved her headaches. Amarie said, “I wonder if he worked his way up to that, or if a good bite was what convinced you to take things to the next level in the first place?”

“As you know, I am known for my tendency to use my teeth in a hard situation,” Finrod grinned.

Amarie snorted. “And in a few soft situations that you shouldn’t.”

“I can get carried away.”

“Fantastically.”

“Not everyone would agree with that judgement.”

“I’m certain that anyone who knows what they’re talking about would. Mm,” she groaned again, and Finrod redoubled his efforts to soothe her.

“Amarie, I would give at least one limb to let you gossip about me with Balan, but let’s not reflect too much on the sadly impossible beauty of it, lest we too much upset ourselves.”

“Well, I could gossip with your Curvo, if everything weren’t so intolerable all the time,” she grumbled.

“Alas. Bigamy, adultery, sodomy, and incest combined make any situation absolutey intolerable,” he apologized.

“Incest. I always forget that part.”

“Not particularly close. The only person who could be that put out is grandfather, and would he be?”

“He’d be happy some of you are getting along, I’d bet.”

“He would have married Maedhros and Fingon himself,” Finrod truly believed.

“Mm. Did you call Curvo ‘cousin?’” Amarie asked slyly.

“Amarie,” Finrod gasped, because he knew exactly what she meant.

“Did you?”

“Yes, and ‘kinsman’ too, which he rather liked,” Finrod admitted, feeling himself flush slightly.

“But did you?”

“Ah, well…” without hinking, he dug his fingers firmly into the space under her ear. “Not at first…”

“Ingo—”

“Though, after a little convincing—"

Amarie’s right hand curled around his.

“—by which I mean, when someone asks you to call them something when their thighs are wrapped around you often enough—you eventually—”

Finrod lost his train of thought as Amarie pressed his hand down to her skin, and ran it down her neck, then between her naked breasts.

“Ingo,” she sighed.

Finrod made a shaky noise in his throat, and his eyes trailed down her sun-kissed, warm curves as the twisting of her hips on the bed shook them. His fingers curled slightly on the skin between her breasts.

“Ingo,” she said again, and pulled it down a little lower, to her soft, hot stomach.

“Amarie,” he said, putting a little steel in his voice. His eyes were on her soft stomach and the light dusting of pale hair on her stomach, just above her rather perfunctory underwear.  Immediately awake, there was a heavy throb between his legs. “I—my mind is split, it is not fully on you,” he confessed.

“I know,” she said.

“We’ve always—” he moved to take his hand away and, of course, she let him. He got onto his elbows so he could see her face fully, his head disoriented, dizzy, and a little sore. “We’ve always required each other to be completely focused on each other,” he said.

“We have,” Amarie agreed, “and I think that should be changed. Tweaked, a little.”

“This is the wrong state to be debating exceptions in,” Finrod noted.

“I don’t care about my old partners anymore,” Amarie whispered, her voice full, heartfelt, and underneath, longing. “You loved yours and I loved that about you, but they were all gone. The situation is changed. I…”

“Yes?” he whispered.

“I love you with everything,” she said, “My whole body.”

“And I.”

“When we were finally bound in marriage, and made one, I began to feel you as my other half.”

“Amarie…”

“I feel how he arouses you. Even when you control it. Especially when you control it. I feel it linger after you’ve properly averted your eyes. I can’t tell when you’re thinking but I can feel you thinking about him, feel your palms itching. And you’ve been wanting him, and wanting him, and so conscientiously avoiding him, and so conscientiously avoiding me, and I keep getting hot and dropped cold, and getting hot and dropped cold, and you are driving me crazy, Ingo.”

“Oh,” he said, attention split between how his head felt dizzy and swoopy and how his cock felt stiff.

“I know that you’re thinking about him. I am physically aware that you are thinking about him. And I am so charmed by how you’re doing everything you can to treat me properly and carefully through a genuinely confusing transition. I know you want him and I know you want me and I want you very, very badly. I want your hand between my legs and I want you inside me. And I do not care at this point if you are also slightly distracted, I have been ‘slightly distracted’ all damn day.”

“If you’re mad at me in the morning,” Finrod said, “you started it.”

Amarie was loud when surprised, so the first thing he did was cover her mouth with his left hand, and then he slipped his right into her underwear. The meat of his palm stifled her sharp groan, and then, she bit it.

Finrod gasped himself, and curled his fingers around the wet heat in-between her legs; so wet, and so hot. He pet it roughly a few times, with his whole palm; she unlatched her teeth and opened her mouth, and he pressed his thumb into her bottom lip.

She smiled, then stifled her own soft, sweet noises as he pushed a finger between her lips and along her slit.

“Right there,” she gasped.

“I know where ‘right there’ is,” he murmured through a smile, “don’t overdo it before I get there.”

She giggled, a satisfied and breathy giggle. Her palpable relief that Finrod’s two fingers were petting the very inside of her slit was, in his opinion, very complimentary. He removed his left hand from his face so that he could run it down to her fat, pliable hip and start working her underwear down. She lifted herself up to help him, and soon he was sliding it down her thick thighs. In the dark he could see the purpled head of her maidenhood standing between her legs, and the white lines on the softness of her inner thighs.

He didn’t pull the garment all the way off of her before he leaned down to kiss her, teeth clicking together. She made a noise, and he mumbled, “be quiet.”

“I know—”

“With the girls its bad enough, but the guest room—”

“I know,” she said, and kissed him again.

He pressed his chest to her full breasts; he gripped her side with one hand and slid the other again between her legs, through the golden hair that grew above her sex and right around her maidenhead and down her slit, which was already wetter than it began. He pressed in and turned a lazy circle at her entrance as she pressed his lips to his, then began, slowly, to slide his thumb up her sex, all the way, up, nearly to the tip, and rubbed.

“There, there,” she gasped.

“See, I know where there is,” he said, and she tugged on his hair.

He rubbed her clit and felt his own body begin to grow hot and light. She was so wet between her legs and her sex jumped when he pet it, and her thighs flexed as she breathed out nearly-silent moans. He pressed down on her head and circled it and her hands, which hand been in his hair, ran hungrily down his back, undoing clasps and tugging to bring him from ‘nearly naked’ to ‘just naked (except for the glitter).’ He moved down again, letting up the pressure, stroking lightly, and she moaned just loud enough again that he covered her mouth. She complained against his palm.

“Amarie,” he said warningly, which served to make her moan again, but more quietly.

“Acting like you don’t—Oh.”

“But I’m not right now,” he grinned, though even he could hear how low heat had crept into his voice. He had variant tastes, that was certain, but he had never denied the absolutely fine experience of the soft heat of a woman’s hole and in fact could be as stupid about it as he was about a man. He pressed a few fingers slowly inside her, and she tilted her head back and bit her lip. Her breath came out in a gust like a grumbling fireplace.

He crooked his fingers inside her and beckoned, and felt her softest skin sinking and twitching around his fingers, and leaned in to kiss open-mouther and toothy at her neck and her shoulder, indiscriminately. She whined, and he heard himself, trying so hard to be quiet, turn a groan into a growl.

“Inside me,” she said, so quiet it was only a gasp. “Inside me, Ingo, inside me—”

He slipped his hand up to her hip and immediately pressd his hard sex against hers. Her thighs tightened around him. His sex throbbed.

“Too fast—” he said, without too much heart, and his teeth continued to worry her soft, sweat-slicked neck.

“Just,” she said, and then swallowed her voice as he pushed into her.

His hand tightend on her soft hip as he pulled back, and then pushed further in, and she pulled him wet and wanting into her. “Won’t—”

“I know, I don’t care,” she promised him. “In me. Just—”

He slid in her, snapped up by her hunger every inch of the way, and her palms tightened on his shoulders.

Neither of them made any sound but harsh breaths as Finrod moved away from her, and back in, and again, amrie lifting her hips and twisting to find the right spot, and Finrod rubbing his free hand up her side, grasping at her skin. The muscles of her hole tightend around him and he pressed all the way into her.

He bit her lip and then made a groan that, despite being low, was definitely too loud. She did not complait this time when he stuck his fingers in her mouth, she pulled then in just as she pulled in his cock.

He pulled out, and in; he was so hot he could feel himself gasping. The heat that had built in him like a climbing fire was now rolling down his back in sweat. Too hot. Too fast. He had warned her. Her thighs squeezed around his hips, and one slid up while the other slid down, positioning him so that he was angled just how he liked it inside of her. He had to stay in, and pull only halfway out, so their wet skin against each other didn’t make too much noise. Sill she urged him on, gripping him with the tips of her finger nails, harder, only letting up if he went as fast and as deep as she wanted.

He couldn’t get a hand between them to soothe the heat of her swollen clit anymore, and he was going to finish too soon. Much too soon. He grit his teeth together and did what he had heard many affectionatly call ‘cheating’ and what he called ‘the best damn thing about being married to an Elda.’

Secondborn couldn’t do it, after all, which was one of the most frusturating things about Balan, he would reluctantly admit. Balan finished when he finished and Finrod could neither slow it or speed it except with whatever he could do with his body.

Amarie, however, was his wife and a woman immortal; like a snake lashes out he latched onto her with osanwe, and locked them. Her thighs spasmed around him and she bit her lip to stifle her keen as the heat of their bodies snapped together to match, his cooling slightly and hers flaring rapidly. When her maidenhood spasmed to catch up to Finrod, she whined in her throat and her fingers clawed him. He shushed her, but through gasps as he thrust into her. They were locked, and Amarie was now exactly as close to orgasm as he was.

He thrust into her and she twisted and whined. Her cunt spasmed and tightened around him, and gripped him like a fist around a sword as he drove in deeper. Their mouths opened on each other; Amarie wover her hands in Finrod’s destroyed hair and Finrod palmed her soft breasts and they finished together, matching spasm for spasm, Amarie clenching when Finrod spilled, their heartbeats at the same points in the same seconds in their throats. Finrod clenched on her ribs. She grabbed his scalp. They finished with a final shudder. When Finrod gasped a half-second before Amarie shuddered, the lock opened and the connection dissolved.

Finrod panted on her neck. Amarie slowly, stiffly unwound her fingers from his hair. Finrod shifted his hips, slightly, and when Amarie slowly began to softer her rip on him, he rubbed a thigh between her legs to make sure she was satisfied. She moaned lightly, in her throat.

Finrod pushed his hair from his face, and was about to say something. He forgot it immediately because he suddenly heared a sharp, high gasp from another room.

Both of them froze. Thet looked into space for a moment, and then at each other in the next moment.

Finrod wouldn’t have heard what he heard next if he wasn’t so intently listening in the moment: a low, masculine rumble, responding to the stifled gasp.

Curvo’s voice.

Amarie and Finrod looked at each other, dumbfounded.

Tentatively, Amarie whispered, “Did they hear…”

Finrod wet his lips. “I…”

They heard a noise which was quickly stifled; Finrod would bet a fist-sized ruby it had been silenced by a palm laid across an open mouth.

“They did,” Finrod said.

--

Finrod emerged several hours later after finally sleeping from a very comforting bath confident in one more fact that he technically didn’t need about a relationship he was not supposed to be involved in: Tanaquine was not reluctantly preforming for her husband, she was hornier than she had ever been in her considerable life and justifiably vexed about the reason why that was happening.

Come to think of it, he could feel it when Amarie was particularly roused, it was just that she was usually very forthcoming with requests that he solve the problem, so there wasn’t usually much of a gap between arousal and satisfaction.

It was, therefore, technically, observing the facts, because of Finrod that she was in this state. That was the sort of thought with the tinge of a Sauron, he judged, but because it wasn’t being too aggressive, he firmly locked it out instead of going for the throat.

His concern about Tanaquine hovered around him, not quite substantial. He wished he could convince her to not take Curvo’s pain on herself, he knew well that was a mistake. But he was not in the position to convince her. He would have to mull it over for now.

The morning began with further clean-up, which Finrod’s daughters, less hung-over and exhausted, had mostly done on their own. The lot of them either hadn’t heard what happened last night or were completely unbothered by it, which, being as they had been raised in the prize-winning ‘most sex positive home in all of Aman’, was absolutely likely. Celebrimbor, however, who had been raised by Curvo, gave Finrod a very long look when he saw him in the morning, red-eyed, wet-haired, and tied into a robe.

Reflecting on the fact that Celebrimbor had seen a decent amount last night whether he had heard them or not, Finrod asked, “What in specific would you like me to feel emarassed about?”

Celebrimbor passed him a warm cup of tea, for a moment taking his hand. He turned away and sighed, “Good morning, Ingo,” and as he turned Finrod saw the smile on his face.

Sipping his tea, Finrod returned to his room to dress, figuring that there was nothing to do about his we hair but that he really should be wearing proper clothing the next time he bumped into Curvo. Amarie was just getting up, stretching her back in an arch on the bed. Finrod set down his cup and sat beside her, kissing her between her shoulder-blades. She rolled onto her side and kissed his lips.

“Alright?” she asked.

“Defying expectations, not the worst hangover I’ve ever had. You?”

“My shoulders aren’t good,” she admitted. “I’m going to have to take it easy today.”

He kissed her again. “Just stay where you are. I’ll bring you something.”

“I’ll breakfast in bed, but I’ll have to get up to bathe eventually.”

“I presume. Not upset?” he asked, but he could see she wasn’t.

“No, I rather liked that.”

“Hm.”

“I think that should be a permanent change to the rules.”

“What, exactly?”

“Hm, that you can be mostly focused on me, not necessarily entirely.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “That sort of things can… degrade with time. Doing it once doesn’t feel the same as years of it.”

“If it becomes a problem, we can change the rules again.”

Finrod kissed her once more, and got up to change into a serviceable pair of breeches and nice, embroidered shirt. (It still made him look, as h had been accused of latterly, like a stablehand, but today like a stablehand who had dressed up for the dance, at least.) He told Amarie he loved her, and she responded alike, and he left to get her breakfast.

It was immediately after closing the door that the rean into Curvo. It could have been worse; he was dressed, and the bath ensured he didn’t look like he had just rolled in the hay. Even so, Curvo and Finrod immediately stared at each other more sharply than any morning greeting would have warranted, and both failed to speak for a moment.

Finrod could smell it on him.

Finrod had to process the sensory input of Curvo’s scent and his nearly-unbound hair and the softness of his nightshirt, Curvo had less to get stuck on and was able to speak first. “Well met,” he said cautiously.

Finrod, as was his habit, glanced down at himself and said, “That’s kind of you.”

He said it because it aggravated his daughters; no less Curvo, he saw with satisfaction. “I wouldn’t fuss about your appearance in your own home, and at dawn no less.”

Finrod stifled a laugh. “Yes you would, you did all the time. ‘You look a mess,’ ‘how can you go about like that,’ I could go on.”

“No, you had a Kingdom then, you have a home now,” Curvo debated.

“I see how, in such things, a difference could be deliniated.”

“Certainly. And it’s such a home-like home. Warm,” he said, low, and something caught in Finrod’s throat.

“I imagine it must be intolerable to you, Prince of Formenos,” Finrod side-stepped.

“Tolerable in degrees, but I would start itching to break something after a while, I think.”

Finrod could smell him. He told himself to focus. The ghost of his conversation with Tanaquine mere hours before lingered dissaprovingly behind him. “Did lady Tanaquine recover from her turn?” Finrod asked. “I didn’t see her after that point.”

A sentiment accusatory entered Curvo’s eyes, a silver glint in their darkness. He knew now that Finrod had said something to her, but not what. He did know Finrod enough to surmise that it wasn’t something truly egregious, but there was the accusation all the same. “She was remarkably out-of-sorts when I found her, but yes, she recovered.”

“Good,” Finrod said, and, “I wasn’t aware travel so disagreed with her.”

“Ah. That. Yes, she’s always disliked it. It wears her out,” he said, and Finrod raised his eyebrows. “I hope Aamrie is well,” he said, which was completely normal, in fact required, because Finrod had inquired about his wife already. This was simple politeness, and yet Finrod felt something less polite under his words.

Finrod glaced quickly behind him at th shut bedroom door. “Ah. She’s indisposed.”

“Really.”

“She worked too hard yesterday. I knew it was building up on her but there was nothing I could say to get her to sit down. Some of her joints, you see—her shoulders especially.”

“Ah, her shoulders,” Curvo visibly doubted.

“Yes,” Finrod said firmly. “She shouldn’t carry too much. They’ve always been a little weak.”

“Goodness. You should have been more careful about overdoing it.”

Finrod had to struggle to not smile too much. He could not let Curvo have the satisfaction. “Alas! With a sensitive lady, there is sometimes no way to be gentle enough. I believe you are aware.”

Curvo was also refusing to let Finrod see him crack. He emitted his Feanorian hum, quick and dsapproving, covering genine pleasure with false displeasure.

“Amarie will be breakfasting in bed,” Finrod continued, perhaps overreaching his ability to slyly insinuate, “Do you think Lady Tanaquine would like to as well?”

“Perhaps she would, though don’t send anyone in to ask her.”

“No?”

“She’s terribly sensitive in the mornings,” Curvo obviously lied. It was a quirk of his mouth, almost invisible, which told Finrod so. He had once loved it. “I’ll bring her something myself. Then…”

“Perhaps you’d both like to freshen up?” Finrod asked.

Curvo looked down his nose at him. “Are your baths unsexed as well, Finrod? But what I am saying, I’m sure they are.”

“What’s wrong with that? That’s the old style,” Finrod said, which was true in itself. Strict gender separation in wuch activities as bathing and dressing emerged in Aman and had not initially been natural to the first generation of Eldar who had woked naked together on the shore.

“Will it be clear in an hour or so?”

“Oh? Perhaps, I think the girls have already washed and Amarie won’t until later. She’s terribly sensitive in the mornings, you know. Why, is there some reason you two have to be alone?”

Curvo looked him in the eye unblinking and completely straight-faced when he replied “Oh, Tanaquine has bruises from riding, which she’s so embarrassed about; she has such delicate skin.”

Finrod desperately wanted to reply with ‘fuck you.’ Holding back his grin was nearly impossible. With nothing better to say, he said, “Why, that’s not her fault, that’s nothing to be ashamed of,” and then he inopportunely realized something.

Shame. ‘I am ashamed,’ Tanaquine had repeated, throwing her hands at him. ‘You should be ashamed,’ Curvo had thought, falling into his mind like he hadn’t seen it beneath his feet. ‘You should be as ashamed as I am.’

“No,” Curvo agreed, “not her fault at all.”

For a moment, Finrod was dangerously close to Curvo’s mind, and they both felt it. Then, Finrod was quite alarmed, because he hadn’t recalled intending to initiate. He turned to the side and held his head; he could feel the words beating under his skull: don’t be ashamed. You shouldn’t be ashamed. There is no reason to feel ashamed.

He swallowed them. The situation was horrendously different, tangled up in the things Curvo had done which were, truly, unambiguously, wrong. They melted into each other, horrific acts and simply unpalatable ones, unforgivable acts and acts which had never been wrong to begin with, committed often in the same names and for the same purposes, packed so tightly against each other that they were sometimes inseparable. Curvo had done nightmarish things. He had done things which made Finrod feel love in dark days. It had always been the same hands.

Aware that it did not follow, unwilling to pretend that connection hadn’t almost just happened, Finrod, sick to his stomach, sighed, “There are really only two things I hope you do feel ashamed about, and I think it should be already clear which; all the murders, and how you treated Tyelpe. The rest of it I would exonerate even in instances where I do not forgive you, on account of my abiding belief that it isn’t the job of some asshole at a desk to make sure you’ve made it up to me. If there is anything in the whole world I do not want, it is shame.”

Curvo, with his voice dropped into his throat, said, “And what just kills me is that I know you didn’t plan that.”

“Plan what?” Finrod asked, exhausted.

“When I asked Tyelpe what he would have me do for him, he said that they only things he wanted me to make up for were the kinslayings and how I treated you. And here we are. And I know you two didn’t even plan that, you just feel that way.

((unfinished))

Finrod made himself slow down and breathe. If he were in Curvo’s situation, he thought, with perhaps both Balan and his sons aggravated at him and both refusing to take responsibility for or acknowledge their own pain, he would feel frustrated at best. “I can be angry at you for my own sake if you prefer,” he said, “though it may require a little bit of play-acting on my part.”

“Oh,” Curvo said immediately, crossing his arms and looking up at the ceiling, “What I would give to play-act such a scenario! Your anger is excellent when you really lay it on and, yes, it’s best when at least partially faked.”

“Well!!”

“The more genuine you are, the duller you are. It’s the easiest way to tell. You start qualifying and clarifying so conscientiously it’s better to just give up and try you another time. Like now; you are completely speaking your mind and I would rather go back to bed.”

“No, but this is interesting; this may be the closest I have ever gotten to making you admit that you are actually repelled by honesty and transparency,” Finrod said, excited.

“I am not; the way you do it is appalling, and that is the common denominator you are noticing. You. Finrod, you are exhausting; you always think you are speaking your mind but you are so determined to push the unpleasant aside that you are typically almost always delivering half-truths, and it is nearly pointless to listen to them. When you are sufficiently worked up, however, you can be exhilarating. Can. Now, if you would excuse me, I would like to get on with my morning,” he said, and attempted to brush past Finrod and toward the kitchen.

Finrod almost reached out to him, and remembered that they had still not established any rules of touch. “I am not letting you go at that,” he said, a little too delighted to be circumspect, “Talking over me when the conversation has gotten difficult, spitting out innuendos and suggestions when you want me to get distracted and forget the last topic, being so aggressive on the topic of our relationship, and right after Tanaquine has–”

“And case in point!” Curvo rounded on Finrod so fast that he instinctively took a step backwards. Curvo was quite close to his face and the slightly sadistic pleasure on his face reminded Finrod of a feeding snake. “And what about Tanaquine? Both times you mentioned that you spoke to her, just now and last night, you tried to insinuate it was nothing, just passing by each other, and I know for a fact that is not the case. I let you lie about it; both times you thought it was completely fine because you were just avoiding telling me something unpleasant. It was not fine, she was terribly upset and neither of you will be plain about what happened. What kind of courtesy was that? Why did she have to run out of your house sobbing? Why was I not told?”

Snap. The jaws closed, and Finrod had been sitting pretty for it. He was less unprepared for it now that he had been when Curvo had first reappeared (though the thrill was not lessened). He said, “What am I supposed to tell you if your wife will not? That is your relationship, the one that you firmly told me to stay out of.”

“And were you staying out of it when she had to flee you crying last night?”

“I hadn’t even finished with your first accusation! The topic we spoke about was that relationship you told me to stay out of, how am I supposed to address that with you? Yes, I tried to tell you lightly, because I was not at all certain how much she wanted or did not want conveyed. I left it up to her to tell you what had transpired, if she wanted to. I did tell you we had spoken; I kept it light because, out of respect for her, I was not sure how much she had just said she wanted relayed. I was trying to respect her privacy, Curvo.

“Second accusation: I found her crying in the first place. If you fault me for staying out of that, very well, you have found me at fault. Shall I fetch you first next time? Does she need your permission to cry, and does her catharsis come from you alone?”

Curvo said, “You are upset, and this is honestly so much better.”

“I am.”

“Disproving another of your claims,” Curvo said, now allowing a rather mean smile to begin to climb up his face as he pointed at Finrod’s chest, “because you are not simply and magnanimously upset on the behalf of those innocents I killed and sweet Tyelpe; you think I have mismanaged Tanaquine and are upset on her behalf as well. That was a lie. You are most upset about Tyelpe, but you find that preference to be ugly and too revealing about yourself, because you feel you should be more upset about the kinslaying, so you carefully put that first. But you are still upset about a myriad of things I have done, small and large, including how I treat my wife, and things in our personal history, and I have no doubt you’re even offended on Celegorm’s behalf and envisioning him as a victim just because he’s alone out there somewhere, and not being offensive in your face at the moment. You are upset that I sent you a fucking jewel, because it made you feel strongly in a way you didn’t like, strongly enough you wrote a blatantly charged missive in return, but you know that’s petty so you try to pretend you didn’t feel it at all. You are upset about many things, incredibly so, and it’s astounding that you cannot internalize the fact that you warp everything tremendously every time you have a conversation in which you are lying all the way through by pretending you aren’t upset. Are you not asking yourself why you keep making a mess of things? You have turned into some history-book version of yourself to blend into high society in Aman the best you can. ‘Fairest and most beloved of Finwe’s descendants!’ ‘Felagund, who knew no fear!’

“I heard what your wife said to you after dinner: ‘see, you can be normal. You can have a normal evening.’ She said that to you, not me. It doesn’t fit, Finrod, and you know it doesn’t. It hasn’t fit the whole time. You can only play-act, and you haven’t even been doing that well, lately, or she wouldn’t have said so. I have no doubt either that you will continue to spend centuries twisting yourself around trying to fit into the mold of Good King Felagund instead of being one thing that you cannot abide: bitter. Unhappy, unsatisfied, unable to let bygones be bygones, not as gracious and forgiving as you believe you should be. Trying to derive everything you need from a life you made specifically around the fact that you can no longer have a bloody one and denying it. Nobly and beautifully rising above the petty and paltry needs we once had for animal satisfaction, enjoying the fact that you have perfectly pretended to be better than it while the rest of us are still struggling with our masks.”

Finrod braced his back on the wall. His fingers were tingling. He said, “I just. I cannot express to anyone why it is that I have missed you so much. I try and people do not understand.”

“That’s so sweet,” Curvo smiled, with words that could individually cut a throat.

“There is not a substitute. I do not know anyone who can do this like this. I feel like I was asleep for years and kissed awake. Even I forget about it. I have to explain why I like you despite the rampant abuse and overthrow of my Kingdom over and over. It just muddies the whole situation so badly; why did you have to do all that? I wish I could say, ‘honestly, just listen to him for a minute.’ But then I have to explain it all again, ‘why is that worth all of the murders, so forth?’ It’s not about that.”

“It would be very easy to explain if you were willing to simply say, ‘I like fucking him,’ but anything that doesn’t set you above such base desires or ugly urges just isn’t good enough for you.”

“Curufin, you are completely right, and completely wrong. You are so wrong it would take me hours to talk through it. You are also completely right, I am both exhausted and exhausting, and trying to be both who I am and who I was in the past is a process of divine frustration that I may never fully solve or even embrace, and yet the work does delight me. Usually.”

“Excellent, I am right that you are lying to the world about who you are and that this is slowly turning you into a facsimile of yourself. What, pray tell, am I wrong about?”

“You have misinterpreted Amarie’s comment, for one,” he said.

“I have never known her well,” Curvo conceded. “How so?”

“That was not a judgment on my character, but my progress,” Finrod informed him. “Things have been rather shaken up at home since you came back on the scene, if you can believe that. Amarie needs the assurance that we can interact with each other without bloodshed or abuse before she gives her full blessing.”

“Her blessing,” Curvo repeated.

“I’m submitting myself to her wisdom on whether or not I can take you up again,” said Finrod, heart pointing in his throat and head swimming. “After all, I have gotten myself impossibly confused by all of the self-denial I’ve been doing. But, as a married man yourself you have to understand why it must be up to her; she does have to feel confident that you won’t chain me up somewhere or knife me once you have me alone. She was absolutely judging you, you egregious asshole, but yes, I was the one who got the compliment for being good.”

Curvo stared at him with a flush that was absolutely anger and likely more on his cheeks.

“Oh, sorry,” Finrod said, “should I have checked in with everyone you’ve fucked before I said so?”

Curvo gently, carefully put both of his hands on Finrod’s shoulders, uncurling his bare fingers, stripped of their jewels, and then roughly shoved him against the wall, and kissed him.

Finrod lost his head for what he would later approximate was about ninety seconds.

Curvo crashed into him with the grace and affection of a wounded warg and Finrod was incapable of not finding it delightful. His mouth was open when he pushed it onto Finrod’s, and he did not have to work to open Finrod’s in return because he smiled the second he felt Curvo’s delicate nails clasp his shoulders. In fact Finrod was still doing nothing but grinning smarily at him when Curvo first breathed into his mouth and then pulled gently upon his lower lip, like plucking a petal. Then Finrod’s eye closed; he opened his mouth purposefully, unthinking.

The coaxing, compelling sense of nostalgia, of almost remembering something he had forgot he had forgotten, seeped from his lips and back into his body like a painting being varnished. He felt brighter, light-headed, immediately more vibrant; the tips of his fingers, questing forward, felt hot and pliable as molten silver when they found the skin under Curvo’s hair, on the back of his skull. Finrod’s fingers moved in poor circles, like a hungry vulture, as his lips were being pressed and pressed again, deeper. Curvo had a particular habit of pulling back, which marked him both metaphorically and literally in congress; he would in every action make sure to pull back, and let his partner have a second of coldness, breathlessness, purposeful remove, before he pressed again. Finrod had moments in-between being kissed and kissed again where he could take half a breath, and almost protest, or almost feel like he was doing something wrong, but it was just a crest above the waves before he was pulled in again. Curvo’s breath was bitter, sour, unmistakably animal, and yet oddly sweet, wine-like, like burning meat.

Finrod was reminded Curvo was taller than him. He was reminded Curvo was strong as his smith’s hands clenched onto his arms and ran down, with a light press which could nonetheless hold him fast. Curvo did not give him his tongue or his teeth; presciptively and presumptuously the kiss was a warning, a tease. It could not possibly serve as a final taste or as a lingering goodbye, because it built, but slowly, on the same action, the close press of lips to lips and drawing on Finrod’s mouth, sucking lightly on first the lower, then the upper, twisting his head slightly, pulling him in, but did not and would not go further. Finrod was held against the wall, and at distance, so he could not take it any farther without using force.

Finrod did not want to take it further. The slowly building press of lips on lips was washing him again and again like waves, building up to an enormous, warm comfort that he was slowly falling beneath. His breaths out turned into low, gentle groans. He was just beginning to feel a low, sweet ache in his guts, kindled by the repated pushing, and pushing, when the kiss ended.

Crucially, and he would come to lament it when he finally realized this, Finrod did not come to his senses and end the kiss himself. Curvo pulled back once satisfied, one hand still curled like a talon into Finrod’s shirt, used his tongue to dislodge a strand of hair from his lower lip, and said, “try not to endlessly philosophize over doing that until you’ve found a reason why it’s good and right that you did it. I want to hear you say, ‘I just wanted to.’ Would you say that, diamond?”

Finrod, running his teeth over his swollen lower lip, confidently said “That was wrong, I shouldn’t have done it.” 

Curvo took a breath in, and leaned back, rolling his eyes to the ceiling. He gestured sharply at Finrod and said, “Well, as long as you stick to that opinion.”

“I have always held that opinion.”

“Yes; I could get you to moan about how wrong and filthy it all was if you were in the right state. After convincing you that it was really me who wanted to hear it, so it was fine if you wanted to say it, dear cousin, so forth. You are so much work, you pretty prince, which I have come to admit was the appeal all along.”

“A prince of the Noldor all through,” said Finrod, somewhat disparagingly. He rolled his shoulders and felt how damn good he felt, like his skin had been pet all over, soft and warm and tingling. “There is nothing like an especially aggravating project. You are supposed to build up, my opal, not tear down.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t make such a mess of yourself. I’ll have to redo you completely.”

“This is the sort of confession of your absolute lack of significant repentance or intent to change your ways which should have me resolving to never see them again and telling the court to slap down the Lomion Protocol on you.”

“Anxious distancing was your normal reaction to becoming aroused before you reimagined yourself as the daring liberator, savior of the downtrodden perverts. Welcome back.”

“I can’t explain this. I keep trying and I just cannot,” Finrod despaired. He knocked his head back against the wall; his skin still felt beatufiully warm and pleasant. “It’s like going back to the oceanside. It’s like smacking someone who has deserved it for years right across the cheek.”

“‘I like it.’ Go ahead. Just say it. I am trying to save you the trouble.”

“Damn you, Amarie is going to slay me.”

Curvo snorted. “Of course you’re going to tell her right away.”

“That’s the next thing I’m going to do,” Finrod promised him.

“You won’t even wait until I’m gone?” he asked, arch-browed. The fingers of one hand had lighted again on Finrod’s shoulder.

“No, I’m already late.”

“What does that mean?” Curvo asked with what Finrod found, at that point, to be understandable concern.

“Well, my wife and I have a deal. Several, we operate on as many below-desk contracts as a ((cave-Khazad)) trading operation.”

“Terrifying.”

“Intentionally prohibitive. Essentially, she is open to potential expansion, but she has a requirement.”

“She’s what?”

“Potentially not completely closed to the idea of expanding the relationship. But she has a requirement, which is that she has to be there.”

“There?”

“Physically there. Present. Witnessing. As such my statement that I am already late.”

Curvo looked at Finrod for a moment, clickling the nails of his left hand together absently. “Well,” he finally said, “Let it never be said that the two of you aren’t well-matched.”

“I don’t believe it ever has been said,” Finrod smiled.

“No complaints that you were ‘previously engaged?’”

“Previously married, and I harped on Edain marriage conventions until everyone was tired of me. Tuor said I was right and there wasn’t much else to do. Curvo, I am trying to so hard to ignore this next point, and I will aggravate you immensely, but I cannot ignore it.”

Curvo blinked rapidly over the rolling of his eyes. The hand that was still on Finrod’s arm squeezed in a way Finrod found arousing. (He was strong. He was still strong. He was already strong.) “There’s no point in asking or not asking. You’re going to tell me.”

“I can’t go behind your wife’s back. I can’t. If we’re going to do this, she has to be involved.”

Curvo’s eyes squeezed shut for a second, and his hand on Finrod’s arm. “I will ask one more time that you entrust the handling of my own wife to me, and not make it your purview.”

“I will, which is why I will continue to take steps to avoid her against my judgement and my nature. But I can’t tolerate not knowing if I do this with or against her permission. Like it or not, her well-being is officially in my interest.”

“Is it?” asked Curvo, with a somewhat dark curiosity.

Finrod, who had not properly conceived of the possibility before this moment, realized that he was playing right on the edge of inspiring worries that he had undue interest in Tanaquine herself. He did not, but her existence cut another gloaming trail to the misty map of their relationship which he had not yet navigated: the potential of making Curvo jealous or anxious over his wife. Just as Finrod had to be satisfied that Curvo wasn’t a danger to Amarie, Curvo had to be satisfied that Finrod wasn’t a threat to Tanaquine. It was the sort of ugly and animal dimension to an oft-glorified situation that Finrod could be poor at handling, because he had found that rarified air above the base things and had gotten so enamoured with it. Whether he liked it or not, being bedfellows with a man meant he was going to get touchy about his wife… especially since Finrod was crossing the line, even though only in the realm of unstructured potential, that should keep Curvo and Amarie far apart.

“Yes, because I am uninterested in selfishly making someone miserable,” Finrod confirmed. “Before you get on my case about it, of course I have induced plenty of symbiotic misery, sometimes accidentally and sometimes when given express consent. You can think it’s me being a prince and a savior all you want but I am bothered by concerns of my impact on her and I do not want to be a source of grief for her.”

Finrod could see Curvo struggling with it, and his instinct was to drop the subject. To let it be a seed he planted for later, to let what was planted in darkness bloom with time and grace. He reminded himself that that had been an ineffective tactic which had landed him in an underground werewolf torture dungeon and Curvo locked in unbroken and vicious patterns which would daily and easily tear up the ground which had been planted.

Be demanding, Galadriel said. “I mean it,” Finrod insisted. “I’m not going to go behind your back and tell her myself. But I insist you do it. I will not subside on being a secret again.”

“You vexing man, there was never a secret, you just thought there was,” Curvo groused. “I bragged about topping the King every opportunity I could and specifically to make people uncomfortable and to lessen their faith in you.”

“As such, consenting to being your little secret avails me not and makes everyone more miserable. I am talking to my wife about this and you are talking to yours.”

“Finrod, you can continue to daydream about how I handle my wife if you enjoy it; I will continue to handle her in private,” Curvo said sharply, finally letting go and leaning away.

“Oh, handle each other however you desire; immediately after you listen to me and my wife if you like, or after telling her enough about me that she can paint an accurate picture of how I did or did not handle you. Now you’re lying; you’re interested in the prospect but too anxious about your own delicate marital situation to honestly engage with it. It would be smarter to take our time but we are both incapable of that. If you want her shut out, shut her out. But that counts me out too.”

That was terrible phrasing. It was the worst phrasing he could have chosen, because he had just deliberately warned himself to not sound like he was angling on Tanaquine himself, and that phrasing completely failed to sound like that. Curvo’s cheeks flushed; one hand curled tight.

“I’ll do this with consent,” Finrod demanded, “Or not at all.”

Curvo leaned down, just a little more, and under his breath, said, “You would do it any way I wanted, and you know that.” And without pausing a second, not even to enjoy Finrod’s reaction, he turned and left.

Finrod hesitated. He had dueling impulses; in the end, he decided that that was close enough to a threat that it was more prudent to let Curvo cool down. (An erotic threat, but a threat nonetheless.) He stood and thought about his choices for a minute, and then fetched tea and breakfast for Amarie and returned to the bedroom.

The door closed behind him. Amarie leaned up on her elbows and smiled at him. He stood there. Her smile slowly dimmed.

“What,” she said.

Finrod said, “Get a pillow, or something.”

Amarie, after a pause, reluctantly picked up a pillow.

Finrod said, “Let me put down your breakfast, first,” and carefully set everything down on the endtable beside the bed. Then he straighted up, put his hands on his sides, and said, “Well, I just swapped spit with Curufin in the hall.”

The pillow came for him swiftly and mercilessly. He nodded, and continued, “Immediately before cocking up the situation so badly that he stormed off.”

Another pillow sprang, right for his face. It was an impressive enough launch that he said, “that’s my girl,” before picking the pillow up and gently tossing them to Amarie so she could throw them again.

She threw them only half-heartedly, and then collapsed backward onto the bed. “Oh, damn it,” she grumbled, and laid there.

Finrod sat by her, and propped her head up on the pillow. He got the cup of tea and set it near enough for her to reach. She blinked blearily at the ceiling.

“Let me help with your shoulders,” Finrod said.

“Oh, fine,” she sighed.

As he soothed her pain, working with his hands, sometimes humming, he explained what happened. He tried his best to explain it right, not being too flattering… and not being too unflattering. Presenting his own choices and actions too harshly, he reflected, had skewed some of his stories. When there were so many countering perceptions to consider, being as truthful as possible had to be tantamount.

And, to Finrod’s surprise, the first thing Amarie said when he had finally finished his story was “Ugh, Tanaquine.”

Finrod snorted. “You really dislike her.”

Amarie nestled her head more into the comfort of the bed. “I stand by what I said in the first place. She’s  a weasel. Her comfort is the most important thing to her. I recognize she’s in a hard situation, but still.”

Finrod sighed. He had had to summarize his conversation with Tanaquine, party because, and as he insisted to Amarie, ‘I really don’t think she intended me to repeat anything,’ and partly because he had been so drunk at the time that the memory was hazy. He wasn’t sure he could do anything about Amarie’s opinion of Tanaquine, though. “But you understand why I’m invested in not ruining her life.”

“Of course. Because you’re decent, a concept some people apparently struggle to grasp. You know, she threw her lot back in with Curufin, now that he’s twice a kinslayer and a list of other such things. She married him the first time when he was new, but she took him again after all those crimes were done.”

“I know. That’s one reason I am sympathetic to her.”

“Hm. I see your point, actually,” she admitted.

“I just kissed him in the hall.”

“Yes. That would be the point I just said that I understood.”

“Darling,” he said. “How do you feel. Really.”

Amarie thought. Finrod sat above her, his hands on her bare, reddend shoulders. He thought of the work he had done for her trust, and to be living a life where neither of them were afraid.

“I am anxious,” she said, her eyes unfocused, looking within. “Things are changing so quickly. I knew there was no stopping it once we heard they were back. I am proud of your choice to accept your former antagonists and try to improve both yourself and them, but I’m also worried. I feel like I don’t really know him well enough to know if he’s changed or if this is all some trick. I’m not really a powerful and canny Lady, like your sister, or a capable warrior like Gil-Galad, or a confident ruler like Earwen or Indis. If thing all go wrong I don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t stop him if things go too far. He has such power over you that I’m afraid of how it will go if I do have to fight it.

“It’s hard to be asked to risk something as precious as a husband. I know you’re capable. I know you’re gotten out of very hard situations. I know you’ll put me and the girls first if you can, the girls especially. But I also know that there was one time it was too much for you to handle, and then you died.

“As always, I will be rising to meet the fate laid out for me, and I have faith that it will be grander and greater than what came before. But if I have to go through several millenia of much less again, I’m going to be very annoyed.”

Finrod laid down beside her, and kissed her. And where Curvo had filled him with delicious warmth, Amarie seemed to empty him, until he was as clear as running water, and as clean.

He held both sides of her head in his hands, and they laid beside each other for a while.

--

Amarie said, “We’ll have to visit your house next time.”

Finrod, who had been doing this formal farewell pretty damn well before this point, clenched all of his nails around his forearms.

Curvo, who had somehow managed to re-Prince himself with limited supplies and probably a genuinely awful physical condition, looking at Amarie in dumbfounded silence.

Tanaquine, evenly, formally, perfectly, normally, said, “Oh, yes, you must. Let me get the calendar from the stable-master when we return; we’ll set a date.”

--

((16: Brothers in Arms))

Finrod wrote a long letter to Turgon, and letters of decent length to all of his Nolofinwean relatives, of course, and to his sister and brother and respective in-laws, a short note to his father, a letter to Elrond and Celebrian, responding to everyone’s previous missives and giving them updates based on how much he thought they wanted or needed to know (and he was quite looking forward to Turgon’s response). He then pulled out some plain stationary, sighed, picked up a pen, and wrote a letter to Dior Eluchil that was neither fun nor pleasant.

He never had much to do with Dior; he knew him, and was fond of him, in a way. Dior had always seemed to dislike something about Finrod, but had never disclosed what. Out of all Balan’s descendants, Finrod could not recall having a more cordial and perfunctory relationship with any, and it might be about to get downright icy.

He started and again failed to write a letter to his aunt Nerdanel. That was a compounded failure of many years, and he shelved it again.

Though he itched to rove he remained at home with Amarie, again on purpose. His daughters came and went as they did, as did Celebrimbor as he did, and others. He and Amarie talked; they rode, they walked, they planted and pruned. Even when unpleasant, it was well. Time wih Amarie had been well for millenia, and remained so, even when Finrod was a bush of thorns, sticking, grasping.

Nearly two weeks passed, and there was a quite forceful knock on the door. Finrod made his bets in his head, then looked at Amarie and made them out loud.

“Celeborn,” he said.

She shook her head. “Turgon.”

Finrod shrugged and stood up. The went to the door and unlatched it; from the other side, it was thrown open.

There were two Noldo at his door, men of quite similar countenance and bearing, though one was suffused with a bright glee, perhaps bright and mischievous, it might be thought, which gleamed in his odd half-lit eyes, and the other, the taller, was equally suffused with grim displeasure. Both were holding a bottle of wine.

Fingon, smiling from ear to ear, shoved his bottle into Finrod’s arms. “Do it,” he said.

Turgon reached in front of his elder brother, pushing his arms back. He, too, foisted wine at Finrod, and then sternly said, “Do not.”

There was absolutely no sense of malice between the brothers; they were completely at ease, simply opposing each other in a natural way, like the tide and the cliff-face. Having said his piece, Turgon turned his back on Finrod and said, “Idril, sweetheart, the stable is over to the left. Your right.”

Fingon leaned in and kissed Finrod’s cheek. Finrod reciprocated. “That was a tactical retreat, wasn’t it?”

“At this point, I just let Turro have his last word; I’m content with the best,” Fingon grinned crookedly.

“I was right,” Amarie called from behind Finrod.

Finrod turned so that Fingon could walk in past him. “Half-right,” he said pointedly.

“Less than that,” Fingon continued as he walked in, “Turgon brought Elenwe and his daughter, and his daughter brought her husband. Amarie, gold of hair and heart!”

“Fingon son of Fingolfin; I will refrain from paralleling your epithet for your sake,” she sighed, but returned Fingon’s kiss and embrace in a genuinely friendly manner.

“There’s no need, I know the color of both my hair and heart,” he returned.

“I wouldn’t go so far as to call you black-hearted,” Amarie defended herself.

“Black-hearted? That’s ridiculous. I have seen both; my hair is black, my heart is red. Are you the sole Lady of the house today, Amarie?”

“I am! The girls are scattered to three of the winds, and have sent Tyelpe to the fourth for good measure.”

“Then, just the two of you? Or does anyone lurk in the deptths?” Fingon asked, gazing into the back of the house.

“You, now,” Finrod said, taking Fingon’s arm to lead him away from Amarie. “No, Fingon, he is not here, though if I would be eager to see anyone unleashed on him it may be you. Come inside, sit down, fill up my ear before your brother gets the chance.”

He placed both bottles of wine down on the kitchen table and Fingon to one side. Then he went into the kitchen to pull wineglasses out of cupboards; six at least, more in case Fingon broke one. (He was not clumsy, but Finrod was afraid he may have remembered his Himring manners, based on what he had heard.) “Fingon, shall we talk about me first or you?”

“Ugh. You, please. I can’t think of what I’ve done work talking about in the past year. You, however—”

“I was told you broke several of Maglor’s ribs,” Finrod interrupted him, carrying three glasses in each hand to the table and setting them down.

“Oh! You know, I had nearly forgotten. Start with Turgon’s, he brought the lighter stuff.”

“Of course he did, and of course you brought a bottle of poison, this is what proof, for dear grandfather’s sake, Fingon.”

“You don’t need to drink it.”

“Someone has to keep pace with you. Fingon, really, before anyone else walks in, what did Maglor say that got you to go First Age on him?”

Fingon leaned back in his chair, so much so that the front legs lifted slightly off the ground. “Something of a warped version is going around, I believe. It began with my mistake; I asked him how Elrond was, assuming they had met up and he wanted to talk about it. Though I did not get details, it seems this is not the case.”

“Uh oh,” Finrod said, and popped the cork off of the bottle Turgon had brought. “No, they have been meeting. Galariel told me, she hosted them.”

“A wise choice, but bad news. That means they had a sour meeting, and I wonder how sour. Anyway, that got Maglor testy, and it was a mistake for me to ask, I admit that. Tense words were exchanged, ‘I see you are now as irrelevant as you were meant to be,’ calling me ‘maiden King’ again, like that isn’t an age-old barb, I said something along the lines of not falling as low as he had, so on, and I really thought up until a point we were going to mutually stalk away; then he said something that…”

Fingon paused, and watched Finrod fill a glass for him.

“Rip off the binding, Fingon,” Finrod sighed, passing it to him.

Fingon took the glass, and said, “He said he was most pleased to see my father’s politeness, ‘He,’ he said, ‘Is staying appropriately low to the ground.’”

Finrod poured his own glass of wine.

“I was surprised by how hard it hit me. I just haven’t even heard anyone bring it up in so long. And the reason I lost my temper was not the tastleless reminder of the brutal way my father perished, but the fact that I know he has been nothing if not courteous in receiving every one of his returned nephews, because he loves them. Damn,” Fingon spat, and then drank a good gulp of wine.

Finrod also drank, and then said, “I think Maglor cares about his uncle, also, and was very touched to be received positively by him.”

“No, I think so too—”

“He has never reacted well, exactly, to affection—well, that’s a lie, once upon a time he did.”

“No, you’re right, that’s exactly it. I’m sure Maglor was so touched by my father welcoming him back that he’s gnawing on it. Maglor is, and I say this both with affection and with acknowledgement of the fact that he wasn’t always, a monster. I have slept in the same bed as him, on the other side of my husband. One of the two is my strangest bedfellow, I couldn’t tell you which. This is within my rights to say, I think, as his kinsman and his friend, dear to my heart; he is a monster. And with my own bias fully in hand, I think he’s the worse of the two, because he was always mourning what he did, and convinced it was wrong, and doing it all the same, sober and sane and pre-meditated. No, you’re right, he is not unfeeling, and my father’s affection went right to his heart, which is the problem.

“I realize that now. I did not really think it through in the moment. Then he threatened to kill me, and Maglor is a man who might do what he says. And then mourn it. I thought to save him the heartache, and defend myself heartily. I can’t wait until Turgon gets in here, so I can tell him his wine is dogshit.”

“I think he is about to get in here, so one more thing,” Finrod said, looking down the hall. “You said uncle Fingolfin has greeted all his nephews.”

“Yes, except Celegorm;” Fingon qualified.

“But the rest he has seen.”

“He has.”

“…Have you seen him?”

“No,” Fingon said.

Finrod changed the topic immediately. He did not know if Fingon was actively seeking him out now, but that did tell him that Maedhros was still avoiding Fingon—and, potentially, everyone. “Well, have you anything to say to me until the room is flooded and Turgon takes over convincing me that I’ve done everything wrong, plus some things I haven’t done?”

“Oh, of course,” Fingon said, setting his chair back down and leaning forward over the table, his smile remembered. “Felagund, you mad dog. Atarinke. Do it. Do it on our uncle’s thrice-damned grave.”

“I love you,” Finrod affirmed.

“Turgon is about to give you good advice. Don’t listen to him. Listen to me. I have incredible advice. I have been thinking about nothing else but this since I read your letter. Make him a collar with your name on it, so everyone knows who to fetch if he bites someone. Lock it on his neck. Give him cuffs. I am so serious. Everyone will feel so much more comfortable about him if they know he has supervision. Walk him around at your heel; we’ll make an absolute show of his rehabilitation, everyone’s problems will be solved and I will have the best day of my life.”

“That’s right, you did weird stuff,” Finrod said with delight.

“Valar and Valarie. Why,” Turgon groaned, entering the room with Elenwe on his arm at just that moment.

“Your wine tastes like dog,” Fingon said, likely only censoring himself because his law-sister was there.

“I absolutely trust your judgement in the matter of what does and does not taste like hound,” Turgon said, smoothly walking his wife over to the host of the house, not even looking at his brother. “Brother of my heart,” he addressed Finrod, “my brother in blood has, certainly, just given you incredible advice. I am here to give you good advice.”

“Elenwe; like the green of spring,” Finrod greeted her, and kissed her on the cheek.

Elenwe did the same, and said, “Ingoldo; like a summer storm,” and he thought she really meant it. He regarded her fondly, and then clasped Turgon’s hand again.

“Brother of mine; he did give me advice, and I do have to credit it; he knows what he’s talking about better than anyone else can or he should.”

“Then he is already the case in point; Ingo, if you take Fingon actions, you get Fingon results. Don’t do it.”

Finrod pulled out a chair, sank down into it, put his head into his arms and then laughed until he felt like he might be sick.

Everyone else gathered around the table while Finrod was insensible. Fingon waited until the moment Finrod stopped laughing, and said, with doe-like innocence, “Fingon results like what?”

Finrod was useless again. Amarie took it upon herself to welcome Idril and Tuor in, but Finrod did it again once he could stand.

--

Finrod did the next morning that which he had not quite dared to do with his other cousin; he hunted. Fingon and Turgon woke him at dawn, and they took bows and spears and rode into the wild hills and into the bright outskirts of the forest. Riding-songs simmered slowly into a comfortable silence, the three each so familiar with each other that the hunt needed no words bandied about.

It could be easy to lose himself in memory with the sons of Fingolfin, especially on such a permissive day. He could remember, for instance, being woken by the sound of his uncle’s uncharacteristically rough, scratchy voice, as he entered the rough shelter of packed snow that his sons had huddled into to say ‘Who’s the blond?’ because he saw all three of his sons, and his law-daughter Elenwe, packed on either side of some golden-haired man; and then ‘Oh, hello, Ingoldo,’ when he grumblingly identified said blond as ‘just me.’

Or he could remember hunting the birds of the arctic with Fingon, to bring back to the women and children and eat none of themselves, and necessity being the thing that caused him to discard his fear and distrust of Findekano, who had cut the throats of his kin. The ice changed everyone, but Fingon was one it changed completely; Findekano walked onto that terrible bridge, blood-stained and biting his tongue, and Astaldo walked off, steadfast and firm, a person incapable of again committing the crimes he had done thirty years earlier.

(Or he could recall that Astaldo, as ever unshakable, taking his face in his hands to kiss him, and kiss him a little too much—and then let him go and lean back with a sigh and ‘Ah, it’s not any good, is it? It has to be him,’ And how he had replied to him, ‘Astaldo, you creature, am I to go through life just acting as though that didn’t just happen?’ Though he had, and rarely thought of it now.)

He could remember swmming the wide and cold mountain-waters of the new continent with Turgon, rife with cold and sinuous fish, waters black in the night and seared through with silver starlight, and waking up with their fingers entwined from the dreams that Osse tormented them with, dreams of caves and towers, fountains and forges, halls and spires.

He could remember the fields of battle on fire.

He could also watch the leaves of the beeches and the aspens around them whisper softly as the breeze rustled through them; he could watch the King who slayed Balrogs paused and consider the wind, his fingers perched between a spear and an arrow, and he could watch the King who had slayed dragons nock an arrow and not release it, smiling crookedly into the branchs as he let a bird who was not yet big enough to die fly away.

Finrod had explained to them both last night that it was happening. Turgon had shouldered his immense disappointment with his considerable skill. He explained that Galadriel’s counsel had already been sought and it outweighed both of theirs; naturally, they aquiesed.

“Turgon,” Finrod had said, drunk as Tulkas at Yule and trying to push his heart out his throat as he spoke, “my brother, I have never for a moment seen you falter in your love of Lomion, the poor bastard, not at his worst, not at any realization or revelation, any moment of lashing out or poison-tipped lying. And Astaldo, dear heart, I drank to you when I heard you had finally loved to death, which we all eventually knew you would. I am begging you both to let me love, unapologetically, and unforgivably, I think, whetting a murderer with love. There will be plenty who punish me for it. There will be so many. I am begging the two of you to understand.”

It was now many hours and some sleep and a pair of hares later, and each had let their hair down to feel the breeze, because there was no barrier of propriety between any of them. Finrod asked, “how is your poor sod of a nephew?”

Turgon hummed fondly; a mist entered his eyes. “Oh, bad,” he said.

“Awful,” Fingon sighed with a smile, sliding the death-arrow out of the bird he had finally chosen to fell. “I’ve rarely seen someone so stuck in himself in my life. The rest of us are in deathless Valinor; wherever he walks, there is around him half an acre of Nan Elmoth, in which he is perpetually stuck.”

Finrod wondered if he could be said to live within a half-acre of Nargothrond. Perhaps when he first came back. “Valar be with you, Lomion,” Finrod sighed, hand on his heart, as if time in Irmo’s gardens and under Nienna’s tutelage had helped the wet cat of an Elda more than fractionally. “Still on his… well… thing with Tyelpe?”

“Oh, what thing would that be?” Turgon said sarcastically.

“You know, the creepy thing,” Fingon replied calmly, smoothing the dead bird’s feathers.

“The bit with the deniably and yet intensely homoerotic letters he writes to him but doesn’t send,” Finrod clarified.

“That thing he does where he forges things for him and then aggressively destroys them,” Fingon additionally clarified.

“The reason you have a sword-slashed statue of Sauron in your home?”

“No, that’s mine,” Turgon calmly stated.

“Oh, is it?” Finrod asked, delighted.

“Anyway, yes, Turgon, we mean the centuries-old festering crush which he has harbored in silence despite not seeing Tyelpe in nearly as many years,” Fingon continued.

“Well, that’s why,” Turgon said, immediately leaping to Lomion’s defense. “He is aware of his flaws and works to correct them. He just… overcorrects. And. Refuses to ever see anyone he has any interest in, ever again, as a feature of said over-correction. Why, has Tyelpe caught on?”

“Not in the least,” Finrod promised. “I doubt he’s thought about Lomion in years.”

“Sweet stars that is not mutual,” Turgon sighed. Finrod snorted. “Yes, he is still absolutely on that thing. He knows it’s a unhealthy pattern and so he tries to hide it. At this point, considering it isn’t effecting

Tyelpe at all and really all that happens is that Aredhel and I occasionally have to hear the worst thing we’ve ever heard from the direction of his room—and that happens periodically anyway, whether he’s brooding on his feelings for someone or his ass of a father or the work of the Enemy or the weather outside—it’s really better than most other things that could happen?”

“I am almost tempted to think Tyelpe would just be flattered,” Finrod admitted.

“That is its own, separate problem,” Turgon said seriously.

“If I said to him, ’Good morning, beloved little cousin! Did you know that your distant kinsman Lomion, known for his murders and the fatal betrayal of his King and kin, harbors dark and ichorous lust for you, which he broods over secretly in the solitude of his forge?’ Tyelpe would blush like he had been handed a bouquet,” Finrod said forlornly.

“You know, it could work,” Fingon considered.

“And your sage judgement is how we know it could not,” Turgon said, and Fingon committed some affectionate violence on him, which Turgon returned in kind.

Finrod halfway watched them roughhouse and halfway ran his hands through the patches of clover and wildflowers, inspecting the white slips of petals in the morning sun. “I am starting to wonder why this keeps happening,” he admitted once they started winding down.

“I just have to listen to how wrong he is all the time, and it gets to me,” Turgon claimed, and Fingon agreed.

“Not that part. I have full understanding of why you have to occasionally reintroduce my dear cousin to the dirt,” Finrod said, not making it clear which one he was addressing. “Indeed, I sometimes travel for days just to smack the crown of Angrod’s head once. I mean that dear, pathetic Lomion has gone frothing insane about a cousin twice, and two different people who have individually gone frothing insane about a cousin are gathered here today to mock him for it. Moreover, Turgon is the only ner here who has not spent an afternoon thinking about another ner’s arms; I think there are several dinner parties I could set with just family in which you continue to maintain the same position.”

“Atarinke’s arms? Pathetic,” Fingon scoffed.

“Wh—he was just resurrected, he’ll fill out! He looked like a willow and hit like a Balrog once. Besides, comparing anyone to Maitimo is unfair.”

“Stars, don’t, I’m in a constant state of near-intolerability thinking about what he’s like, I cannot think about what he looks like or I’ll go hysteric.”

“Not again,” said Turgon, and laid supine.

“Right, he’s down,” said Fingon, and then turned intensely to Finrod and said, “Listen to me. Yes, it is incredibly obvious that this is a higher than usual number of ner in this position, and it’s weird. I can’t get most of them to admit it or even talk to each other but when you have the facts that I have there is only one explanation: Finwe.”

Turgon made a noise that Finrod could translate as ‘not this shit again.’ Finrod, intrigued, leaned forward. “Go on.”

“It goes directly to the top. No one wants to consider this possibility; our grandmother wants me to stop asking her questions very badly. But you and me and Russo and Atarinke and Tyelko and Tyelpe and Lomion and Gil-Galad all go back to exactly one man.”

“You know about Tyelko?” said Finrod, surprised.

“Celegorm?” snapped Turgon as he sat up, even more surprised.

“Yes, the dangerous maniac. Surprise?” Finrod said.

Turgon said, “Please tell me that you did not touch Celegorm.”

“Good news: I did not touch Celegorm,” Finrod was (thankfully) able to say honestly. “Wait, what do you know about Celegorm?”

“…What do you know about Celegorm?” Fingon asked, and then they stared at each other for a few moments.

“Have you seen him?” Finrod finally asked.

“No,” Fingon replied, letting out a huff of disappointment that lowered his body several inches, “no one has seen Celegorm.”

--

Idril had been quite disappointed that none of her young cousins were present, but they had a decent time of things anyway and Finrod and Amarie saw them all off more hungover and less at peace than they had come, which was often the way of their house, really. Fingon and Turgon had both privately told them they understood; that everyone was restless and uneasy despite their mutual understanding was simply the nature of the situation.

Amarie and Tanaquine had set the date for the dinner at Formenos and now all there was to do with live, and wait. The peony bushes blossomed; Viola came in and out. Finrod received a shockingly rational and level-headed letter from Dior Eluchil; among other sentiments, he wrote:

I have never had a desire to dictate what others do; why it is assumed I would I account to your own Noldorin sentiments. I can’t think of a time in my life where I have done other but attend to my own and that is what I intend to continue doing. If you would take up with the more disreputable members of your own family, by all means, please occupy their time. It can only benefit the rest of us if you mind each other’s business thoroughly.

I read between your words an anxiety that you think you are doing wrong by me and mine; put it to rest. Felagund had ever been a welcome nuisiance to the line of Thingol, not an unwelcome one. Your loyalty to my forefathers, the fathers of my father, whose names are otherwise so worn to time that none could read them, will not be forgotten. Indeed I will say, though I have avoided saying it before because I found it too direct a thing to say, that I cannot think of many other undying who have given their life for the few years left to a mortal man. Without that, what line would I be speaking of now?

Beren was a subject no less hard and no less sweet to Finrod than that of his ancestor, Finrod’s husband. Paradoxically, the memory of dead men stuck. His perceptions and memories of the immortals around him changed with time, as with few exceptions they were here to speak their minds, and change them, if need be, to reveal context and explain their thought. His memories of Beren were unmovable stone, a scar which had settled into his skin and could not change with time. To call them up meant the same pain flared up inside him, altered by thousands of years, like it had been the day it was born.

Finrod would never question why The One had made mortal men; to him their value was so unquestionable that he actually struggled to convey what he saw so clearly. Sometimes, however, he wondered about the wisdom of making his own, able to outlive loved ones on the time-scale of continents. Able to fall into this exact pain again, unchanged, like it would be for the next five thousand years, and the next, and the next.

But he would get out of it, and he did, and would occupy himself with the laundry or the garden or the preparation of dinner once more.

--

And the day came, and Finrod and Amarie spent a very pleasant day riding up the steadily climbing hills to Formenos, plucking apples or chestnuts as they went, Finrod humming or whisting or, in amarie joined in on a tune, singing. And as they grew closer and closer to Formenos, Finrod sang to himself, “His eyes, they shone like diamonds; you would think he was King of the land…”

“And his hair hung over his shoulders—and are you sure you should be reaching for that one?” Amarie laughed at him.

“I can’t help it; it’s been horribly stuck in my head, practically since I’ve seen him again. Tied up—”

“—In a black velvet band,” they finished together, and Amarie shook her head and smiled.

So singing they approached Formenos, and Finrod saw that she was more comfortable there than he was, or at least she acted that way. The outside appearance of things, however, did not much worry Amarie; the tipped spears of the wrought-iron gates and the banners of red and black meant nothing to her, or as little as the eye-spots on the wings of a butterfly, warnings meant for some other species. She approached fearlessly, and remained fearless even as it became clear that there were two gentlemen waiting by the front gate, perched nearly lazily on their red-tacked horses with red braids coiled on their heads, and that they waited for them.

“My cousins,” Finrod said one he was close enough to be heard, “Ambarussa, and Ambarussa as well. Good day to you.”

“Good day!” one responded cheerfully, carding his fingers (now tipped with sunset orange) through his horse’s mane.

“Well met, cousin,” said the other, his cheek dimpling, “and well met to the Lady Amarie.”

Finrod still did not know which was which. Time had not yet teased out a difference. They both wore black and copper, and aside from the darkness of their charcoal-lined eyes you might think they were just another of the youngest generation of Mahtan’s brood. Which was exactly what they were, if one had the mental fortitude and determination to ignore their father’s influence on their features.

“I hope you are well enough, though I rather hope you aren’t about to tell me the same thing you told me the last time I was here in Formenos,” Finrod said, as they rode the rest of their way up to the twins, and now faced them from horse-lengths apart.

“That the man you seek is not available? Oh, he is, and waiting for you,” said one of the Ambarussar. “We were, in fact, sent to intercept you.”

“Intercept me! That sounds rather conspiratorial,” Finrod admitted. “Did your brother send you for me, or has a third party sought to circumvent him?”

Ambarussa laughed briefly and sharply, like a crack in winter ice. “Our dear brother, I believe, cannot—”

“Mmm-mm,” the other interrupted, a smirk twitching on his face. “Our dear brother, who?”

“Oh, no.”

“Our dear brother, The Prince of Formenos,” said the one leaning forward over his horse’s mane, with a mocking grandiosity, “I believe, so forth…”

“Oh, no. I can’t. I can’t—”

“You’d best! He’s serious.”

“The whole of Formenos is serious. What I can’t believe is that it passed all the way down to him.”

“Can’t you? We’re just lousy with exhausted, traumatized ex-Kings around here.”

“I did half-expect Moryo to take a go at it.”

“But he didn’t, and here we are.”

 “Guess he knew that Curvo might stab him.”

“Gentlemen, you’ve picked a fascinating audience for this conversation,” Finrod said.

“You’ve picked a fascinating show to watch!”

--

((...No, I don't really believe that I stopped there either.))