Thirty Day Character Challenge: Feanor by eris_of_imladris

Prompt 30

Prompt 30: Show It All Off. Create a fanwork about your character: any format, any genre.

** A/N: This fic is a culmination of my exploration this month because it delves into Fëanor’s mind and weaves together Tolkien’s canon, my headcanons, family dynamics, and strengths and weaknesses.

The Chair

It had started as a habit, but now, it was something he could not stop doing.

The thoughts would enter his mind before a dinner with his father and his father’s second family, whether it was a large court dinner or simply a private function. He would think of the slights against him, and even if nothing had occurred since the previous occasion, he would recall what had happened before, even back to the times when his father held Fingolfin in his lap endlessly and did not offer anything similar to his elder son.

It would then occur to him that he had cause to doubt his father, and to doubt his own place by his father’s side. The meeting in his bedroom when Finwë first told him that Indis would be joining their family would burn bright in his mind, and he would recall every detail, the stones under his feet, the blanket on his bed with the fraying corner, the window leading out to the garden where there was a blonde Vanya waiting to try to replace his mother.

Of course, she had claimed otherwise, as had Finwë, but the truth remained that Finwë treated his children from his second marriage with a certain joy that Fëanor never knew in his childhood, and over the years, the jealousy had only festered more and more, deeper and deeper, into the core of him. Which made him worry about his chair.

He knew what time the servants would begin to set up chairs for the members of the household, and he knew that there was only one place where he belonged: the immediate right of his father’s seat. Indis could take the left, and with Fingolfin to her left, there was at least somewhat of a division between Finwë and his second son, or as Fëanor preferred to think of it, his bastard.

The servants knew of Fëanor’s preference - he could not be shy about something like this even if he wished to retain some measure of courtly politeness - but he never knew whose pocket they were in. Indis dealt with a great deal of the household matters, and perhaps she spoke to them when he was gone at the forge, convinced them to “just this once” let Fingolfin sit by his father, and seat Fëanor farther away.

If he was not there to check that his chair was in the correct spot, this could happen and he would have no idea. And of course, his father would relish the chance to spend time with Fingolfin (as if he didn’t spend enough time already), and then he would tell Fëanor with an exasperated grin that it was just this once, and surely he could accommodate.

Except, then, it wouldn’t be once. It would be a pattern, perhaps even something following his father’s insipid rule of “sharing” and he would have to give up his seat to Fingolfin half the time - and then he would have even less, even though Findis would likely be content to sit near her mother and the other maidens, because Finarfin would soon be of an age to sit at table with them, and then he would get one in three, and then less, and less. The chair would be the way he lost his father if he was not careful, and so, he insisted that the chair be the way that he kept his father.

He started arriving early to dinner. Just a bit, at first, to make sure no one was sitting in his chair, and the thoughts would cease when his backside hit the wood. They would stop at least until the next occasion, when it occurred to him that he had to start arriving earlier, because Indis could have noticed the pattern and had the servants switch things earlier, or perhaps Fingolfin would take one of his books and spend half of the day sitting in his chair, just so that when he arrived, no matter how early he was, he would be unable to claim his place.

The thoughts pervaded his mind the day of an event, and sometimes before, as he tried to think of ways to make sure the chair would remain his. He could speak of it to no one - not his father, for that would risk putting the idea of “sharing” in his head to begin with, and not Nerdanel, who would surely think him silly - but the thoughts stayed in his mind, as had many of his tests.

His tests were made to give him evidence that his father loved him, or did not. There was no alternative, and if he was ever feeling insecure (which had happened more since he declared an intention to wed Nerdanel - he would soon leave his home and start a home of his own, and how would he know if his father loved him then?), it helped him to set up these sorts of tests.

When he was younger, he had set up tests to show his father how misinformed he had been about his son’s life, or he had set up situations where his father would have to exert some (but not much) effort to chase after him, only to find the results mixed. The worst case had been, of course, the day Fingolfin was born, when he had convinced himself that he would need to foster with Mahtan’s family and live permanently in the apprentice quarters until he could work up to making his own forge and his own profits. Then, his father had not sought him after he fled, had not even noticed his absence, and when he had, sent someone who had never even met him. The stranger had carried valuable information, but not nearly as valuable as his mere presence. Finwë had not cared enough about his son’s whereabouts to seek him out.

In his interactions since, his father had tried, but a great deal of the time, he ended up taking a more passive role. Rather than actively trying to figure out what was going on in Fëanor’s life, he preferred to wait to be told, which (to be honest) suited the son’s leadership style perfectly. And yet, without that exceptional effort (added to the ease with which he picked up his babies, the children from his second marriage, and smiled at them and tickled their little bellies), Fëanor had no way of knowing whether his father truly loved him.

His brain whispered this to him in the dead of night at first, in the form of nightmares where he was forced out of his father’s house, or perhaps even forced to applaud for his half-brother as he succeeded his father to the throne. The kingship mattered less than the love his father needed to pass down to him, the acknowledgment of his rights when so much else had been ignored.

Slowly, over time, but starting rather firmly after the birth of Fingolfin, these thoughts had started to infiltrate his days. His work was of such a nature that he could zone out, and if his mind began to wander from the task at hand, he would begin to imagine one of these scenarios, wondering what might happen if everything truly came to pass. Some part of it almost made him want to quit smithing and sit in his father’s home all day, but he also realized that would make him even less remarkable, and would subject him to these anxiety-producing situations each and every moment of the day. He knew himself well enough to know that this would not work at all.

So he stayed at the forge, and as his hammer hit the metal, the thoughts battered at his mind, at the strongest defenses he erected. He worked as hard as he could to push them down, to throw them away, knowing their significance was nothing less than the products of something trying to scare him, but they felt so real that he felt sometimes as if he had no hope for a life without them.

His focus was legendary, and his intelligence superb, but these too combined against him, tried to force him to believe these thoughts even when he had not set a test, even when he knew his chair would be sitting in the same place as it always was, and Fingolfin would always sit either next to his mother or, if she vacated her chair to sit with Findis, then at his father’s left. A position for an advisor at best, but nothing close to the right-hand chair. That showed he was the most important person in his father’s life. A visual symbol to the rest of the court, to anyone who doubted him, and even to Fëanor himself, that there was no denying its power.

For this feeling, for the sheer rush of exhilaration when he knew he had won the day yet again, and each victory augmented the way others saw him at his father’s right side, he had no chance of stopping the behavior. It harmed no one, and although it could be inconvenient to his work at the forge, he would continue to do it until he had proof otherwise - incontrovertible proof that he never needed to doubt his father’s love. Until that day came, he would seek the chair, and he would lean back and shift from side to side, enjoying the feeling of the well-crafted wood, smiling over an empty hall and ruling from a position of lonely love.