Five Times Caranthir Fought With His Brothers (And One Time He Didn't) by grey_gazania

He's frowning over a complicated theorem when Tyelkormo slouches into the room and kicks the door shut.  "I can't believe you," he says.  "You're barely grown and you're already leaving for some girl."

Two, he thinks as he inhales, three, five, seven, eleven.  He lets his breath out in a sigh and says, "I'll still be right here in Tirion. It's not like I'm moving to Taniquetil."

"Yeah, but now you'll spend all your time with her," he says with a scowl.  "What's so great about her anyway?"

Carnistir turns his gaze away from his brother, focusing on the crooked gouge on the desk that's been there as long as he can remember, so long that the edges have been worn smooth.  Thirteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-three.

"I mean, she's pretty, I'll grant that," Tyelkormo continues, "but she can barely string a sentence together."

"She's shy," he snaps.  "And you glowering across the table the whole meal didn't help anything.  You were even worse than when Makalaurë brought Cuinessë for supper!"  No. He breathes in again, loosening his fists, and counts.  Twenty-nine, thirty-one, thirty-seven.

"Cuinessë wasn't stealing my brother," Tyelkormo snorts.  "Your girl isn't shy – she's stupid. And you're stupid for wanting to marry her."

Forty-one, forty-three, and it's no longer enough; he feels the heat rising in his face, and his fist crashes against his brother's jaw.  They tumble to the floor, the lamp shattering beside them as blood runs from Tyelkormo's mouth and Nerdanel's footsteps pound down the hall.

"You're not. You're not actually considering this." Curufin's voice is flat and cold, and he looks at Maglor with narrowed eyes.

Maglor shakes his head.  "No, I am not considering. I've decided.  We can no more attack than we can remove to the south."

"So you're just going to leave him there?" Celegorm is pacing the small room like a caged animal, three steps one way and four the other, oblivious to the way the twins have pressed up against the wall to avoid him.  "I can't believe you."

"Couldn't we send someone to rescue him?" Amras ventures.

It's all wrong, Caranthir thinks, only half-hearing Maglor forbid any such attempt and don't-you-dare-try-it-little-brother.  He looks drawn, worn down by the fighting in a way that Maedhros never was.  Never is, he corrects himself, and shakes his head to clear it.  "There are six people in this room," he says, interrupting Celegorm's ballooning rant.  "And two-thirds of them are being completely stupid."  He presses on, ignoring their glares.  "Even if we do leave, do you really think the Enemy will just let Nelyo go?"

"So we rescue him--" Amras repeats.

"--and fail, and get killed or taken captive.  Or we attack, and break ourselves on Anband's walls until we're exhausted, or until Moringotto kills Nelyo just to get rid of the noise.  Kano is right.  We stay here. That's all we can do."

Amrod stalks over and shoves him, hard.  "You're heartless! I'm ashamed to call you my brother!"

It doesn't hurt; there's a layer of ice under his skin that keeps their hands and words from bruising.  "So I'm heartless.  At least I'm talking sense.  There is nothing we can do for Nelyo that won't make things worse."

Celegorm is seething, ready to shout again, but Maglor pushes to his feet before anyone can say another word.  "Out.  All of you, out.  You're giving me a headache."  He herds them toward the door and shuts it firmly.

Later, when Caranthir is hunched over outside, retching into the grass and trying to forget the screams and crunch of bone, Maglor finds him.  "You're clammy," he says, his voice oddly distant in Caranthir's ears as he brushes some hair out of his brother's face.  "What happened, Moryo?"

Caranthir knocks his hand away and then wipes at his mouth.  "I agreed with you.  And if you don't get out of here now, I'll hit you for it."

Chapter End Notes

Caranthir-the-Slightly-Psychic originated with Dawn Felagund.

The day before they are to meet Fingolfin and his people, Maglor grabs him by the elbow and pulls him behind the forge.  "I am going to have my hands full tomorrow," he says, voice low, "so you are going to behave yourself.  No insults and no picking fights; you can be civil with our cousins for one day."

"If I agree to be a good boy while you play lickspittle, will you let go of me?" Caranthir glares pointedly at the fingers digging into his arm – it surprises people, sometimes, how strong Maglor's hands are, and if he has to prise his brother's fingers open it will be unpleasant for them both.

Maglor does let go, but hisses, "Play lickspittle?  Did you listen to nothing Nelyo said to us?"

"Of course I listened, you claybrained imbecile! You haven't heard me argue."  He struggles to keep his voice down.  "Not that anyone can hear much of anything over Tyelko's shouting, but if you'd pulled your head out of the clouds for an hour you'd have still noticed!"

"I've been organizing this entire damned ceremony, Moryo! Nelyo is not exactly able to do it all himself.  We owe Nolofinwë; we will do this properly."

Caranthir snorts. "We owe Nolofinwë nothing.  We didn't force them over Helcaraxë, and if they'd had any sense they'd have gone back to Tirion.  The only person we owe anything to is Findekáno.  And I know Nelyo needs your help," he says, dropping his voice further.  "He may have our brothers cozened, but he's not half as recovered as he tries to seem.  As it stands, he isn't capable of ruling."

Maglor tips his head and studies his brother with a prickling stare.  "So you do understand that.  What, then, is the problem?"

"It's not right," Caranthir explodes.  "We're betraying Atar; he'd be ashamed if he could see this!"

"Atar is dead."  The word drops like a hammer from Maglor's lips, and it's all Caranthir can do to keep from hitting him.  "Worry less about what he would think and more about how the rest of us will win this war.  And behave tomorrow."  He stalks off, and it's only after thirty-six breaths and a slam against the forge wall that Caranthir follows.

"Thank you ever so much, Carnistir," Maedhros says, once the door to Fingolfin's council room has slammed shut behind them. "That is exactly what we needed. In three sentences you managed to insult our cousins--"

"Half-cousins."

"Our kin," Maedhros snaps. "You insulted our kin, insulted the king of Doriath, undermined our efforts at an alliance – what were you thinking?"

"I ran out of happy primes," he says. His brother's anger is a vice, squeezing the air from his lungs, and he knows his face must be as red as his mother named it.

Maedhros grabs him by the shoulder and shoves him into an empty room. "This isn't a joke!"

"I wasn't joking." He wrenches himself from his brother's grip and turns to glare at him. "Maybe you could laugh his insult off, but I can't. The way he simpers and smirks, you'd think he was Thingol's subject!" Angrod's thoughts have always been painful, from the very first time they met, but his slick obsequiousness in the council made Caranthir want to scrub his own skin raw to rid himself of it. "We may be dispossessed, but at least we still remember that we are grandsons to Finwë!"

"I doubt Angaráto has forgotten that," Maedhros says. "He's simply being a damn sight more diplomatic about it than you'll ever manage. Or he was, until you opened your mouth." He deflates with a sigh, and his voice is quieter when he says, "Mark my words: you'll regret that soon enough. We all will."

Caranthir's head aches from Ulfast's blow, and sudden movements are still causing fits of nausea; only the swift intervention of Celegorm had kept him from falling under the hooves of the man's horse and dying on the battlefield.

Now that the brothers have found one another, he is beginning to wish he had.

Curufin pauses in re-bandaging Amras' arm to glare at him across the fire, and his gaze is far too much like Atar's for comfort.  "They were right under your nose, Moryo.  How could you not notice?"

"There was nothing to notice," he says. Curufin may be the only one voicing it, but he knows they all blame him; he can feel it like the stinging spray of sparks that would fly up from the blows of Atar's hammer. But it is the truth – he saw nothing, felt nothing, not so much as a twinge that would have revealed Uldor's plans.

"A plot by the Enemy got more than half of us killed," Curufin says,  "and you call that 'nothing'?"

"Shut up," he groans, closing his eyes. "I learned their language, Curvo. That's more than any of you bothered with. And I'm telling you, there was nothing. The Enemy must have taught them to mask their thoughts before they even crossed the mountains."

Curufin merely snorts; it is Amras who answers. "You didn't find that suspicious?" he asks, frowning. "That you couldn't read them?"

"I said mask, Telvo. It's not that simple." He pushes to his feet, trying to ignore the way his stomach flips and lurches, and makes to leave. "Now stop talking about things you don't understand."

"--He has no right to it," Celegorm insists. "None! He did not cut it from the Iron Crown. It is ours, and if he will not surrender it, we will take it by force. That is what we swore, to Eru himself!"

Maglor rounds on Celegorm. "Was Alqualondë not enough bloodshed for you? Or is it that you are still so bitter over Luthien's rejection that you would take it out on her child?"

"Makalaurë." Maedhros's face has grown pale and pinched these past weeks under the dual assault of Curufin and Celegorm. "We have tried to reason with Dior, but he will not listen. What choice do we have?"

"You cannot possibly be considering this," Maglor says, and Caranthir is reminded of another meeting, when those words were lobbed at Maglor himself.  No, he had said. I am not considering. I've decided.

The rest of Maglor's retort is lost to the noise in his head as he walks out. Maglor can shout himself hoarse, but it will accomplish nothing. Fear of the Void has been rising in Maedhros for days, as unstoppable as the swells on Helevorn. If he drowns, they all drown, and with Fingon dead there is no one to stop him from sinking.

One oath, twice sworn, for three jewels. And four dead kings and five battles have yielded six men shouting in a tent in the southern wilderness, and nothing more.  Better to get this attack done quickly than to waste time fighting the inevitable.

The winter sun glitters on the icy trees, and it is a few moments before he realizes that he is twisting his wedding ring with enough force to leave an angry weal.

Suppose they win this fight. Suppose they go home. Would she even know him now?

Would he know her?

He stops. Slowly, slowly, he works the ring off his finger, for the first time in over four yéni.  I will not carry her with me. Not to this battle.

A dull crunch, the sound of a foot falling on frozen ground. He turns to see Amrod leaning against a tree behind him, face carefully blank.

"We ride west tomorrow," his brother says.  "We don't want to give Dior any more warning than we must."

Caranthir nods and goes to hone his sword.