Fic a Day, Day 15 - The Visitor
Aug. 15th, 2020 09:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
grundyscribblingTitle: The Visitor
Author: Grundy
Rating: FR13
Crossover: LotR/Silmarillion
Disclaimer: All belongs to Whedon & Tolkien. No money is being made here, it's all in good fun.
Summary: The sons of Fëanor weren't expecting anyone.
Word Count: 2625
Note: Three cheers for the weekend.
The presence of Namo was unexpected. None of the sons of Fëanor expected to be released anytime soon. Maedhros knew that even Makalaurë did not truly expect it, no matter what his peredhil grandchildren might think. And Fingon stolidly refused to leave without his mate.
Yet there Namo stood.
“There is one who wishes to speak to you, Kanafinwë Makalaurë,” he said.
Makalaurë blinked in surprise.
“We are allowed visitors?” he asked in confusion.
Aside from Tindomiel, who came and went as she pleased – a state of affairs that appeared to irritate the Doomsman, though he had not put a stop to it – he had never heard of such a thing.
“Normally, I would not permit this,” Namo replied. “But perhaps you may succeed in talking sense into her.”
He looked around at the other occupants of the room, who were now wondering who he might be speaking of. Tindomiel needed no one’s permission to wander about the Halls and spoke with who she pleased when she pleased.
“The rest of you may remain,” Namo announced. “But on the condition that you keep silent. Make no sound whatsoever. I have not permitted her speech with all her kin.”
He waited until he had the agreement of six intrigued Fëanorions and Findekano before he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.
The next sound they heard was him speaking to whoever the visitor might be.
“You have said so before, young one.”
“I thought you would see how funny it is,” a woman’s voice said. “You get it, don’t you?”
“I understand that you find it humorous.”
“Oh, come on! It’s the greatest joke in all Eä,” she replied, sounding almost as if she might laugh at the thought.
“Anariel?” Makalaurë demanded hoarsely.
The door swung open to reveal the tiniest nis any of them had ever seen. Elwing had been taller, Maedhros thought, for all her growth had been stunted by bearing Elros and Elrond at such a ridiculously young age.
Her entire face lit up at the sound of Makalaurë’s voice – at least, as much as a face could with the eyes firmly covered.
“Haru!”
“You are still under the same stricture, young one,” Namo said sternly.
Her expression indicated she wasn’t bothered.
“It’s not like I forgot. No peeking in the underworld. Even if the consequences here aren’t nearly as bad as some of the stories in California.”
“Dire enough, I would think. Ten minutes,” the Judge replied. “No more.”
“Got it,” she replied easily. They might have been discussing the weather in Tirion for all the care in her voice.
And yet… looking with the eyes of the dead, Maedhros saw that all was not right with this little one.
Quite aside from her size, he could see her fëa – and it was as amazing a collection of damage as he had ever seen, scar layered over scar in a horrifying collage. He recognized the style of the work only too well. Impossible though it should have been, he knew that he was looking at a survivor of Angband.
Someone, and he had little doubt who, had tried very hard to break the girl.
“Anariel? What are you doing here?” Makalaurë asked cautiously. “You are not dead.”
That drew another brilliant smile.
“Nope, not dead yet,” she answered cheerfully – remarkably so, considering her words did not seem to rule out dying. “There’s someone here I need to speak with. I think this little visit is Namo hoping you’ll somehow change my mind, but I wasn’t going to say no when he offered.”
“Someone you needed to speak to.”
To Maedhros’ ears, his brother sounded resigned – it was much the same tone he’d always taken with their father whenever he knew arguing would do him no good.
“Yep,” Anariel replied. “There’s an elf who has answers I need.”
“And it couldn’t wait until whoever it may be is rehoused?”
She shrugged in apparent unconcern.
“You know how I hate long waits.”
His brother sighed.
“You are well?” he asked.
She grinned.
“More or less.”
Something about that rang hollow, but Maedhros couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
Her hands ghosted through the air in front of her, searching for any obstacles between her and Makalaurë. Finding none, she moved cautiously forward, until she was standing just in front of him.
“I have missed you, haru.”
Her voice had gone quiet, no longer cheerful, and her face had clouded over. It made her look even more impossibly young. Maedhros had the uncomfortable feeling that were she aware of her audience, she would never have allowed such vulnerability to show. He hoped of course that he would win her trust in time, and perhaps his brothers might as well. But for the moment, it felt wrong.
“How long has it been?” Makalaurë asked gently.
“Not quite a yen,” came the answer, with a slight hitch in her voice. “Arwen and Estel are gone.”
“Your brothers?” Makalaurë asked, plainly still trying to fathom why she would be here, much less why the Judge would allow it.
“We were the last elves to leave Ennor,” she answered.
Maedhros had heard evasive answers from his younger kin often enough to know that there was something significant being held back.
Something had gone wrong in Ennor, that much he was sure of. He just couldn’t be sure what. There were all the scars she shouldn’t have – on her fëa, at least. Her body bore only a single mark wreathing her left hand. There was also the careful way she moved, as if she was only just learning to trust her body again. But none of it fit.
Morgoth was long gone, cast out into the Void, and Sauron destroyed as well. He felt like he was missing some vital clue that would let him make sense of it all.
“I am sorry, pitya.”
She tried for a smile, but it didn’t quite work.
“She chose her fate, haru. And I chose this.”
Though what exactly this was, she did not explain.
“I am surprised you needed Namo’s permission to come here,” Makalaurë said. “Tinu never seemed to bother.”
“Tindomiel visits you?”
She sounded mildly surprised.
“Often,” Makalaurë said drily. “Occasionally with mischief in mind. Has she not told you about it?”
She shook her head.
“I haven’t seen her yet. I have been in Lorien some weeks.”
Makalaurë’s shock at that escaped no one, though Maedhros could not understand why. He could easily imagine that it far from unusual for elves newly arrived from the Hither Shores to need time in the healing calm of Irmo’s realm.
“Anariel, what exactly is it you are doing here?” Makalaurë asked, turning stern.
“What needs to be done,” the girl replied, her tone suddenly steel.
It was like listening to Artanis or her brothers – all smiles and good cheer until you pushed them too far, and then suddenly got a sharp reminder that Vanyarin or Telerin though they might look, they were scions of Finwë as much as any of their cousins.
The girl’s body, however, did not match the resolve of her voice. She looked so abjectly miserable that Maedhros was unsurprised that his brother tried to give his favorite grandchild a hug – unsuccessfully, of course, as he had no body. But the child leaned into him all the same, as if the embrace were tangible. Perhaps for her it was.
“You said that once before, pitya,” Makalaurë said quietly.
She flinched.
“I did,” she agreed. A single tear slipped down her face. “Was I wrong?”
Makalaurë looked utterly defeated.
“No, Nairallë, you know perfectly well you were not.”
“If I was not wrong then, haru, I have to believe that I am not wrong now.”
“Will this plan cost you as much?” Makalaurë asked softly.
“I have no mortal siblings left to lose,” the girl replied.
The trained politician in Maedhros thought it a masterful non-answer.
“Xander passed this way before he departed,” Makalaurë told her. “He asked me to give you a message, when I could.”
Her face turned expectant.
“He said he was looking forward to the party.”
For a moment she was completely composed, processing what he had said. Then she smiled, but it was a rather sad smile. She nodded.
“Xander agrees with me,” she said quietly, more to herself than Makalaurë.
“If it’s not too involved a story, perhaps you could explain what he meant?” Makalaurë asked, his tone indicating that it had better not be too involved a story.
“It’s a thing we used to say,” Anariel explained. “Save the world, then we party.”
“He is dead, and presumably Arda is safe,” Makalaurë pointed out.
It was uncanny how much a child-sized nis wearing a blindfold managed to channel the expression Fëanor had always turned on his sons when he was disappointed with their failure to grasp the obvious.
“Sure, haru. Arda is safe. For now. Until Morgoth Bauglir finds a way back. Which we both know he means to do.”
“And you mean to be standing right in front of him when he does,” Makalaurë sighed.
“Of course I do!”
The fury that suffused her face looked very wrong on one so young, but it was nothing compared to the blaze of her fëa, which made it clear enough why both her names invoked the sun.
“Nairallë, there are many who would stand against him-”
“He hurt my family.”
Quiet as they were, her words still managed to carry the rage of the Sea, the vastness of the Sky, and the implacability of the Earth itself.
“Pitya-”
“No, haru! I know what you would say. It is that simple. There is not a single kinsman or woman of mine you can point at and say he has not hurt.”
And for her, Maedhros realized with a start, it was that simple. She might be Elrond’s daughter, but she had so much of Elros in her that it hurt. The son of his heart had been willing to go beyond the circles of the world for the sake of the ones he loved.
“The only one of my family he has never touched,” Anariel continued, “is my youngest sister. And even she hurts because Arda was marred. He hurt my father. He hurt my mother. He hurt my brothers and my older sister, my grandmothers, and my grandfathers. In fact, if you can name me a single one of my family he has not injured, I will do as Namo would like and leave. Though it will not truly change anything, only put it off for a time.”
Makalaurë was thinking. Maedhros could see his brother running through and discarding various relatives.
“Your kinsman Legolas,” he suggested.
Anariel’s contemptuous look was a carbon copy of Artanis’.
“Has not seen his mother since he was very young, thanks to Ungoliant’s spawn,” she replied. “Also, had a non-trivial part in the Ring War, and was physically injured several times.”
“Your grandfather Thingol,” Makalaurë tried.
“The Silmaril he was killed over would never have been in Beleriand but for Morgoth,” Anariel replied, with a few choice Sindarin epithets added.
For one so small, she knew some remarkably bad words. Maedhros fully intended to find out who had been foolish enough to use any of them in a child’s hearing.
“Also, I think we can rule out the idea that the Sindar and the Iathrim in particular weren’t injured by Morgoth. Aside from the Silmaril, there’s the whole ‘taken and rendered into orcs’ thing. Not to mention the part where he thought it was absolutely hilarious to set elf against elf.”
Makalaurë was silent.
Anariel waited, patiently, until her foster grandfather conceded the inevitable.
“I’m not chasing him over shiny rocks, haru,” she said. “I’m destroying him because it’s the only way I see to keep my family safe. If the other two Silmarils ever come to light again, your father can have the bloody things, and I’ll wish him joy of them.”
That was when Namo returned.
“Are you still resolved on this course, child?” he asked.
“Very much so,” the girl replied, turning to go.
She paused just shy of the door.
“If you want just one reason, though, haru? It’s what he tried to do to my mother.”
Maedhros felt like his stomach had just plummeted. He knew enough of Morgoth to know what happened to nissi that fell into his clutches. Surely Elrond’s wife – Artanis’ daughter – should have been safe, better guarded than any other?
Anariel had turned toward the door, so not even Makalaurë could see her expression, but the tension in her tiny shoulders, and the way her hand sought the hilt of a blade that wasn’t there spoke volumes.
“I was supposed to die, you know.”
“In the waste? Or at the Morannon?”
“No, haru. I was supposed to die in California. He meant me to die a mortal death, in a mortal world, without ever knowing who or what I was. The power of the Slayer would never have come to me if he hadn’t intervened. It was a mortal creation, never meant for someone like me. He did it because Slayers all have one thing in common: they die young. He must have thought it was perfect.”
She paused, and for all her voice stayed perfectly flat and emotionless, Maedhros could see her fëa pulsing with the same white hot fury that had burned when she had spit out the words He hurt my family.
“If I had died like he meant me to, my mother would have been stranded in that mortal world. By herself. Forever. If she had died there, she would have been Houseless.”
“I’m sure Namo would have –” Kano began, but she cut him off.
“Namo’s call doesn’t reach beyond Arda.”
The certainty with which she said it bothered Maedhros greatly. How could she be so sure?
“There would have been no way for her to return,” Anariel continued. “The rest of our family would never have known what happened to her. And he didn’t care about that at all. She was just an afterthought. He wanted me. At first I thought he did it because he was scared of me for some reason. But eventually I realized it was because he knew nothing would hurt my family more. I was the perfect weapon.”
Maedhros wanted more than anything to gather up Elrond’s baby girl and tell her that she was not a weapon of any sort, because however she came by it, he knew this knowledge had hurt her as badly as any physical pain Moringotto could have inflicted.
Maybe more. Her likeness to his father may not be just in mannerisms. Curufinwë Fëanaro had never forgiven himself his mother’s death.
“That’s the joke, you see,” she continued, her voice now light and impossibly pleasant. “The one Namo doesn’t think is funny. Morgoth made me a weapon, but when he did, he also made me the one person who could actually beat him. Because he overlooked something important: I’m peredhel, in more ways than one. I’m a descendant of Luthien – and through her, of Melian. I’m not just kin to the Eldar and the Edain, I’m kin to the maiar and the Valar themselves. And he thought it was a good idea to supercharge me. It’s the funniest joke in all Eä- his perfect weapon is going to be his undoing.”
“Anariel, what are you planning?”
Makalaurë had tried stern again, but all it yielded him was an impish, Elros-like smile.
“Sorry, haru. That old saw about ‘two can keep a secret if one of them is dead’ doesn’t apply to elves.”
She was out the door before he could argue.
Author: Grundy
Rating: FR13
Crossover: LotR/Silmarillion
Disclaimer: All belongs to Whedon & Tolkien. No money is being made here, it's all in good fun.
Summary: The sons of Fëanor weren't expecting anyone.
Word Count: 2625
Note: Three cheers for the weekend.
The presence of Namo was unexpected. None of the sons of Fëanor expected to be released anytime soon. Maedhros knew that even Makalaurë did not truly expect it, no matter what his peredhil grandchildren might think. And Fingon stolidly refused to leave without his mate.
Yet there Namo stood.
“There is one who wishes to speak to you, Kanafinwë Makalaurë,” he said.
Makalaurë blinked in surprise.
“We are allowed visitors?” he asked in confusion.
Aside from Tindomiel, who came and went as she pleased – a state of affairs that appeared to irritate the Doomsman, though he had not put a stop to it – he had never heard of such a thing.
“Normally, I would not permit this,” Namo replied. “But perhaps you may succeed in talking sense into her.”
He looked around at the other occupants of the room, who were now wondering who he might be speaking of. Tindomiel needed no one’s permission to wander about the Halls and spoke with who she pleased when she pleased.
“The rest of you may remain,” Namo announced. “But on the condition that you keep silent. Make no sound whatsoever. I have not permitted her speech with all her kin.”
He waited until he had the agreement of six intrigued Fëanorions and Findekano before he vanished as suddenly as he had appeared.
The next sound they heard was him speaking to whoever the visitor might be.
“You have said so before, young one.”
“I thought you would see how funny it is,” a woman’s voice said. “You get it, don’t you?”
“I understand that you find it humorous.”
“Oh, come on! It’s the greatest joke in all Eä,” she replied, sounding almost as if she might laugh at the thought.
“Anariel?” Makalaurë demanded hoarsely.
The door swung open to reveal the tiniest nis any of them had ever seen. Elwing had been taller, Maedhros thought, for all her growth had been stunted by bearing Elros and Elrond at such a ridiculously young age.
Her entire face lit up at the sound of Makalaurë’s voice – at least, as much as a face could with the eyes firmly covered.
“Haru!”
“You are still under the same stricture, young one,” Namo said sternly.
Her expression indicated she wasn’t bothered.
“It’s not like I forgot. No peeking in the underworld. Even if the consequences here aren’t nearly as bad as some of the stories in California.”
“Dire enough, I would think. Ten minutes,” the Judge replied. “No more.”
“Got it,” she replied easily. They might have been discussing the weather in Tirion for all the care in her voice.
And yet… looking with the eyes of the dead, Maedhros saw that all was not right with this little one.
Quite aside from her size, he could see her fëa – and it was as amazing a collection of damage as he had ever seen, scar layered over scar in a horrifying collage. He recognized the style of the work only too well. Impossible though it should have been, he knew that he was looking at a survivor of Angband.
Someone, and he had little doubt who, had tried very hard to break the girl.
“Anariel? What are you doing here?” Makalaurë asked cautiously. “You are not dead.”
That drew another brilliant smile.
“Nope, not dead yet,” she answered cheerfully – remarkably so, considering her words did not seem to rule out dying. “There’s someone here I need to speak with. I think this little visit is Namo hoping you’ll somehow change my mind, but I wasn’t going to say no when he offered.”
“Someone you needed to speak to.”
To Maedhros’ ears, his brother sounded resigned – it was much the same tone he’d always taken with their father whenever he knew arguing would do him no good.
“Yep,” Anariel replied. “There’s an elf who has answers I need.”
“And it couldn’t wait until whoever it may be is rehoused?”
She shrugged in apparent unconcern.
“You know how I hate long waits.”
His brother sighed.
“You are well?” he asked.
She grinned.
“More or less.”
Something about that rang hollow, but Maedhros couldn’t quite put a finger on it.
Her hands ghosted through the air in front of her, searching for any obstacles between her and Makalaurë. Finding none, she moved cautiously forward, until she was standing just in front of him.
“I have missed you, haru.”
Her voice had gone quiet, no longer cheerful, and her face had clouded over. It made her look even more impossibly young. Maedhros had the uncomfortable feeling that were she aware of her audience, she would never have allowed such vulnerability to show. He hoped of course that he would win her trust in time, and perhaps his brothers might as well. But for the moment, it felt wrong.
“How long has it been?” Makalaurë asked gently.
“Not quite a yen,” came the answer, with a slight hitch in her voice. “Arwen and Estel are gone.”
“Your brothers?” Makalaurë asked, plainly still trying to fathom why she would be here, much less why the Judge would allow it.
“We were the last elves to leave Ennor,” she answered.
Maedhros had heard evasive answers from his younger kin often enough to know that there was something significant being held back.
Something had gone wrong in Ennor, that much he was sure of. He just couldn’t be sure what. There were all the scars she shouldn’t have – on her fëa, at least. Her body bore only a single mark wreathing her left hand. There was also the careful way she moved, as if she was only just learning to trust her body again. But none of it fit.
Morgoth was long gone, cast out into the Void, and Sauron destroyed as well. He felt like he was missing some vital clue that would let him make sense of it all.
“I am sorry, pitya.”
She tried for a smile, but it didn’t quite work.
“She chose her fate, haru. And I chose this.”
Though what exactly this was, she did not explain.
“I am surprised you needed Namo’s permission to come here,” Makalaurë said. “Tinu never seemed to bother.”
“Tindomiel visits you?”
She sounded mildly surprised.
“Often,” Makalaurë said drily. “Occasionally with mischief in mind. Has she not told you about it?”
She shook her head.
“I haven’t seen her yet. I have been in Lorien some weeks.”
Makalaurë’s shock at that escaped no one, though Maedhros could not understand why. He could easily imagine that it far from unusual for elves newly arrived from the Hither Shores to need time in the healing calm of Irmo’s realm.
“Anariel, what exactly is it you are doing here?” Makalaurë asked, turning stern.
“What needs to be done,” the girl replied, her tone suddenly steel.
It was like listening to Artanis or her brothers – all smiles and good cheer until you pushed them too far, and then suddenly got a sharp reminder that Vanyarin or Telerin though they might look, they were scions of Finwë as much as any of their cousins.
The girl’s body, however, did not match the resolve of her voice. She looked so abjectly miserable that Maedhros was unsurprised that his brother tried to give his favorite grandchild a hug – unsuccessfully, of course, as he had no body. But the child leaned into him all the same, as if the embrace were tangible. Perhaps for her it was.
“You said that once before, pitya,” Makalaurë said quietly.
She flinched.
“I did,” she agreed. A single tear slipped down her face. “Was I wrong?”
Makalaurë looked utterly defeated.
“No, Nairallë, you know perfectly well you were not.”
“If I was not wrong then, haru, I have to believe that I am not wrong now.”
“Will this plan cost you as much?” Makalaurë asked softly.
“I have no mortal siblings left to lose,” the girl replied.
The trained politician in Maedhros thought it a masterful non-answer.
“Xander passed this way before he departed,” Makalaurë told her. “He asked me to give you a message, when I could.”
Her face turned expectant.
“He said he was looking forward to the party.”
For a moment she was completely composed, processing what he had said. Then she smiled, but it was a rather sad smile. She nodded.
“Xander agrees with me,” she said quietly, more to herself than Makalaurë.
“If it’s not too involved a story, perhaps you could explain what he meant?” Makalaurë asked, his tone indicating that it had better not be too involved a story.
“It’s a thing we used to say,” Anariel explained. “Save the world, then we party.”
“He is dead, and presumably Arda is safe,” Makalaurë pointed out.
It was uncanny how much a child-sized nis wearing a blindfold managed to channel the expression Fëanor had always turned on his sons when he was disappointed with their failure to grasp the obvious.
“Sure, haru. Arda is safe. For now. Until Morgoth Bauglir finds a way back. Which we both know he means to do.”
“And you mean to be standing right in front of him when he does,” Makalaurë sighed.
“Of course I do!”
The fury that suffused her face looked very wrong on one so young, but it was nothing compared to the blaze of her fëa, which made it clear enough why both her names invoked the sun.
“Nairallë, there are many who would stand against him-”
“He hurt my family.”
Quiet as they were, her words still managed to carry the rage of the Sea, the vastness of the Sky, and the implacability of the Earth itself.
“Pitya-”
“No, haru! I know what you would say. It is that simple. There is not a single kinsman or woman of mine you can point at and say he has not hurt.”
And for her, Maedhros realized with a start, it was that simple. She might be Elrond’s daughter, but she had so much of Elros in her that it hurt. The son of his heart had been willing to go beyond the circles of the world for the sake of the ones he loved.
“The only one of my family he has never touched,” Anariel continued, “is my youngest sister. And even she hurts because Arda was marred. He hurt my father. He hurt my mother. He hurt my brothers and my older sister, my grandmothers, and my grandfathers. In fact, if you can name me a single one of my family he has not injured, I will do as Namo would like and leave. Though it will not truly change anything, only put it off for a time.”
Makalaurë was thinking. Maedhros could see his brother running through and discarding various relatives.
“Your kinsman Legolas,” he suggested.
Anariel’s contemptuous look was a carbon copy of Artanis’.
“Has not seen his mother since he was very young, thanks to Ungoliant’s spawn,” she replied. “Also, had a non-trivial part in the Ring War, and was physically injured several times.”
“Your grandfather Thingol,” Makalaurë tried.
“The Silmaril he was killed over would never have been in Beleriand but for Morgoth,” Anariel replied, with a few choice Sindarin epithets added.
For one so small, she knew some remarkably bad words. Maedhros fully intended to find out who had been foolish enough to use any of them in a child’s hearing.
“Also, I think we can rule out the idea that the Sindar and the Iathrim in particular weren’t injured by Morgoth. Aside from the Silmaril, there’s the whole ‘taken and rendered into orcs’ thing. Not to mention the part where he thought it was absolutely hilarious to set elf against elf.”
Makalaurë was silent.
Anariel waited, patiently, until her foster grandfather conceded the inevitable.
“I’m not chasing him over shiny rocks, haru,” she said. “I’m destroying him because it’s the only way I see to keep my family safe. If the other two Silmarils ever come to light again, your father can have the bloody things, and I’ll wish him joy of them.”
That was when Namo returned.
“Are you still resolved on this course, child?” he asked.
“Very much so,” the girl replied, turning to go.
She paused just shy of the door.
“If you want just one reason, though, haru? It’s what he tried to do to my mother.”
Maedhros felt like his stomach had just plummeted. He knew enough of Morgoth to know what happened to nissi that fell into his clutches. Surely Elrond’s wife – Artanis’ daughter – should have been safe, better guarded than any other?
Anariel had turned toward the door, so not even Makalaurë could see her expression, but the tension in her tiny shoulders, and the way her hand sought the hilt of a blade that wasn’t there spoke volumes.
“I was supposed to die, you know.”
“In the waste? Or at the Morannon?”
“No, haru. I was supposed to die in California. He meant me to die a mortal death, in a mortal world, without ever knowing who or what I was. The power of the Slayer would never have come to me if he hadn’t intervened. It was a mortal creation, never meant for someone like me. He did it because Slayers all have one thing in common: they die young. He must have thought it was perfect.”
She paused, and for all her voice stayed perfectly flat and emotionless, Maedhros could see her fëa pulsing with the same white hot fury that had burned when she had spit out the words He hurt my family.
“If I had died like he meant me to, my mother would have been stranded in that mortal world. By herself. Forever. If she had died there, she would have been Houseless.”
“I’m sure Namo would have –” Kano began, but she cut him off.
“Namo’s call doesn’t reach beyond Arda.”
The certainty with which she said it bothered Maedhros greatly. How could she be so sure?
“There would have been no way for her to return,” Anariel continued. “The rest of our family would never have known what happened to her. And he didn’t care about that at all. She was just an afterthought. He wanted me. At first I thought he did it because he was scared of me for some reason. But eventually I realized it was because he knew nothing would hurt my family more. I was the perfect weapon.”
Maedhros wanted more than anything to gather up Elrond’s baby girl and tell her that she was not a weapon of any sort, because however she came by it, he knew this knowledge had hurt her as badly as any physical pain Moringotto could have inflicted.
Maybe more. Her likeness to his father may not be just in mannerisms. Curufinwë Fëanaro had never forgiven himself his mother’s death.
“That’s the joke, you see,” she continued, her voice now light and impossibly pleasant. “The one Namo doesn’t think is funny. Morgoth made me a weapon, but when he did, he also made me the one person who could actually beat him. Because he overlooked something important: I’m peredhel, in more ways than one. I’m a descendant of Luthien – and through her, of Melian. I’m not just kin to the Eldar and the Edain, I’m kin to the maiar and the Valar themselves. And he thought it was a good idea to supercharge me. It’s the funniest joke in all Eä- his perfect weapon is going to be his undoing.”
“Anariel, what are you planning?”
Makalaurë had tried stern again, but all it yielded him was an impish, Elros-like smile.
“Sorry, haru. That old saw about ‘two can keep a secret if one of them is dead’ doesn’t apply to elves.”
She was out the door before he could argue.
no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 02:12 am (UTC)I really like that the scene is through Maedhros’ pov. And oh, is Maglor in for questions once they all get over the shock. The fact that Namo let them all - even Fingon - stay. There’s a lesson/clue/food-for-thought for all of them there, methinks.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 02:18 am (UTC)Pardon the edit.
Edit the last: and isn't Morgoth going to shit bricks when she addresses him as cousin during that last battle...
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2020-08-16 02:28 am (UTC)(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2020-08-17 09:50 pm (UTC)I am also - perhaps inappropriately - amused that neither Maglor nor Maedhros thought to identify Ingwë (or any other random Vanya, ideally even one who stayed in Valinor during the War of Wrath) as a kinsman of Anariel. I think that's as close as they'd get, but she'd still have Arda Marred as a trump card.
(no subject)
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