Hostile Nations by Agelast

Chapter 1

Read Chapter 1

we should be kind, we should
take warning, we should forgive each other

Instead we are opposite, we
touch as though attacking

They are Hostile Nations - Margaret Atwood

The days of darkness had begun again.

But unlike in her father’s stories, there were no stars to guide their steps. A single lamp must do, spilling its meager light throughout her workshop, giving new and sinister angles to the half-finished statues of men and women, beasts and Valar. She didn’t pay attention to the change at all, the block of marble in front of her occupied her attention. The light was too poor to do anything with it, of course. She had not touched it since the Trees had gone out.

But still. She sought refuge in her workshop. At least it was quiet there, though not wholly free from the strife and distress that came trickling in, no matter how little she wanted to hear it.

The news from Tirion was troubling. They said that the King was dead.

She traced the line her chisel had made in the marble, the rough shape of an unfinished brow, white and unstained.

Finwë had always been kind to her, even in the last days before the exile when everyone asked her how she could bear to separate herself from her husband, from her children. He had not asked that, he understood.

The garden-gate outside her workshop creaked open. The step coming to her door sounded too heavy to be Ambarussa. “Maitimo, come in, what news have you?” she asked, putting down her chisel. She turned towards the door, expectantly.

The door opened. It was not Maitimo.

“Fëanáro,” she said, an exaltation as well as a sigh. Though, of course, as always, just the sight of him exhausted her. “You should not have come.”

“I am not really here -- I am in Tirion, drawing recalcitrant lords out of their shells. It is tricky work -- though Maitimo is capable of doing it,” he said, walking towards her, hands out, his fingers outstretched -- rattling some of her projects, breaking others.

He looked no different than he had twelve years ago, when she had seen him last. He was not dressed for the festival, he wore no ceremonial robes, nor any jewel. He was in his work clothes, stained, torn and then mended. Some of the stitches were hers.

His long black hair was tangled, escaped from his braid. His eyes shone bright.

He still possessed the same hard delicacy of form and aquiline features that made the artist in Nerdanel ache for a stub of charcoal or a chisel, to commit him to something, forever.

His beauty was like a knife, and she felt herself be wounded. Again.

The pitilessness of his glance mirrored her own. They stood immobile for a few moments, as much statues as those that surrounded them.

She gathered herself up, bringing more stiffness to her stance. “Why have you come?”

Then Fëanáro smiled, and that transformed his face. He looked suddenly years younger, as if he was as she had first known him, an apprentice at her father’s forge, thrown for the first time among those whose respect he needed to earn, not simply command. He looked vulnerable, for the first time for a long while. And then, another of his quicksilver expressions appeared -- an almost boyish recklessness.

He took a few rapid steps toward her, until they were close enough to touch. “Ner,” he said, in that old, familiar chiding tone, the one he used when she was being determinedly obtuse. “You know why!”

His hands traced lightly on her face, he scrutinized her like she was a jewel. She flushed, remembering that she had not bathed today and that her hair had not seen a brush either.

But then his attention, once such such a burden and yet such a pleasure, had shifted. Looking downward, Fëanáro toed the ground. He said, almost shyly, “There was only ever you and father, for me.” Then he paused, considering. “And the children, of course, later.”

And then he looked at her again, soft and tender, so much like he had when they had first married. She took another step toward him, and their faces bumped awkwardly together, chin to cheek, lip to nose. Gently, almost hesitantly, he kissed her.

It was an unfair kiss, unfair in so many ways. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to pull him closer, kiss him harder.

Instead, he broke off, and she bit off a protest. He pressed his forehead against her, and said in an ardent whisper, “I want you to be with me now. Side by side, as we ought to be.”

She was breathless, her heart beat painfully hard in her chest. “I made my choice,” she said, thinking what a dull set of words she had chosen, heavy and useless.

“Choose again,” he said. And when he said it, it seemed possible. Everything seemed possible, when he said it.

There was a low-slung daybed in the corner of the workshop, meant for the nights Nerdanel was too tired to navigate the stairs up to her bedroom. She pulled him toward it, wanting, more than anything, to wipe that indulgent smile off his face.

They were touching, always, as they made their way there, shedding clothes and inhibitions easily, as if it were the times long before their estrangement.

They collapse into the bed, groaning at the bumped heads and bruised elbows. He pressed kisses on her face and her neck, her breasts, and she sighed, regretting (for a moment) the sagging breasts and stretch marks, the marks childbirth had left on her body.

Fëanáro shook his head, and murmured, “You’re beautiful!”

“You,” she said, her breath going ragged and shallow, “were always the most bold-faced liar.”

He grinned and shook his head.

He had such a beautiful mouth, with a full lower lip that she bit at, listening to his surprised whine with some satisfaction. His hands were everywhere, cupping her breasts and pulling down the last of her breeches and inserting his blunt fingers into her, one and then another. The scars of his knuckles rubbed against her, his fingers flexed and rubbed against her clit. She gasped, arched against against him, her throat bared. He kissed it hard enough to bruise, with a hint of teeth.

She glanced down at him and the look he gave her was wicked, wide-eyed and brows winged upward, a parody of innocence. He knew all too well how to undo her.

But he was not alone in that knowledge, not at all. Nerdanel was as proud of her skill as Fëanáro was of his. And what was more -- she could, if she wished, bring the greatest of the Noldor (the greatest of the Eldar) to his knees, or, to be more accurate, on his back.

“Nerdanel, love, please,” he said, his voice urgent. He was hard against her thigh, and his hands plucking at her waist, like an impatient child. She slid closer to him, and he lifted his hips, thrusting into the increasingly fraught and shrinking space between their bodies. “Please,” he said again, his lips red and debauched, puckered and ironic, yet sincere, so sincere.

It was frightening, how right it felt to have him inside her, how she took for granted that he should surge forward and take her, pulling her down and pinning her against him. His thrusts become less measured, more frantic.

They moved together. Once again, they were a perfect match.

He came harshly, almost angrily, inside her. He did not pull out right away, but kept going, until she came for a second time, with a noise in her throat like a sob. They lay together, a tangle of limbs, heated skin against skin. For a while, silence reigned, and it was easy to think that the darkness that surrounded them was night, a cover made especially for them.

Fëanáro mouthed against Nerdanel’s shoulder, his voice quieter, more uncertain than before. “We could have -- another? A girl this time.”

She closed her eyes, willing to keep her eyes dry. Her voice was steady when she said, “It’s too late for that.”

“I suppose.”

They lay quiet for a time, content to be together. Fëanáro’s right hand rested on her hips, his left traced plans on her skin, blueprints on flesh. He pressed a final kiss on the back of her neck. “Come with me.”

“Fëanáro...”

His hands tightened, his fingers digging into her skin. Plans gave away to commands, however gently stated. He buried his face in her hair, speaking quietly. “We would be a family again. As whole as we can make it.”

She pulled away and turned to face him. She spoken quickly, “The way you have chosen can only lead to more death. If you could just see --”

His eyes narrowed, and he shifted away from her. “Death awaits only for those who killed my father and stole my life’s work.”

“You that you could kill -- that you could win against a Vala? Fëanáro, be reasonable!”

He snapped back at her. “Reason would have me cowering in my house while all around me the world breaks apart.”

Nerdanel got up and began to dress quickly, hating to be exposed in front of him now. After she had pulled her tunic over her head, she turned back to him. Fëanáro still lay sprawled in the bed, watching her with hooded eyes.

She grit her teeth and bent down to him. “Your life’s work, Fëanáro, are your children, and you would sacrifice them for some pretty jewels.”

He spoke up to her, his eyes never leaving her face, “You never understood what the Silmarils truly are...”

“Go on your mad quest, if you like. But --” she hesitated, knowing that as she did so, she lost. Still, she went on. “Let Ambarussa stay, at least. They are so young.”

“If you truly cared for them, you would ask for all of your sons to be spared, not just the youngest.”

And with that, he got of the bed as well, kicking away the blankets. Despite how he burned before, he was all coldness now, anger radiating off him like chill wind. He did not care if Nerdanel watched him, he declared this with the stiff set of his shoulders and the straightness of his back.

Soon, they were both decently dressed and wholly apart.

Fëanáro neither looked at her nor spoke, as he made his way to the door. She followed him out, her bare feet making little noise against the wooden planks of the floor and out to the gravel of the garden walk.

Outside, no star shone over the swirling blackness of the air above. Fëanáro reached the gate before turned again to Nerdanel. He waited for her to speak, and she did, her words weighted heavily with foresight that sometimes came upon her. “Fey and fated you will be, and all who follow you. Farewell, Fëanáro.”

His mouth twisted and he gave an ugly laugh, short and utterly without humor. “Mad and lonely, you shall be, apart forevermore. Farewell, Nerdanel.”

Her hands wrapped firmly around the gate post, she said, “So shall it be.”

He nodded, and turned away at last.

Nerdanel watched him go, and felt no regret.

She reassured herself that she did not.