Fëanorians in 600 Words or Less by eris_of_imladris

Kinslayer

Ambarussa Headcanon: Borrowing the headcanon from “The People of Middle-Earth” that Amrod died on the ships. It’s a devastating headcanon, but I feel like it opens so many storytelling doors that it’s worth exploring.

The first of the twins was born so small that there was a question of whether he could survive. He was Pityo the second Fëanor saw him, so frail that it seemed like even his father’s fire would not be enough to keep him alive.

“He will live,” Fëanor said enough times that others began to believe him.

Even Nerdanel’s name for the child had not dissuaded him. Unlike the cheerful name of his brother, Pityo was called Umbarto, fated – and he had changed it, something not many would dare to do. But his son, little but growing by the day, would not be harmed.

Fëanor looked out upon the water, so triumphant before, so terrified now. He thought little of Fingolfin, who could not use the ships unless he could extinguish the great blazes, but rather, he thought of the younger twin, his youngest child, trembling by his side.

Telvo’s babbled words meant nothing. All Fëanor knew was the ship, the beautiful white swan that had borne his Pityo hither, was adrift in a sea of flames, timber breaking and sinking into the sea, and there was nothing he could do to stop it.

He was the High King of the Noldor, which was everything he had wanted for so long, but he could not help but feel like he yearned to throw away all responsibility, and dive into the water, even if his own fire was quenched, for the sight of a small head of red hair bobbing above the overwhelming waves.

“Which one?” a heartless voice asks, later, and Telvo breaks at last, after he had grown into his height and his talent, so long after Fëanor thought all the danger around the twins had passed. How would he know that the life would leave the boy’s eyes, all the joy he had seen through centuries of life, bright blue fading to an icy gray no different than the waters that took his other half even as he stared on, as helpless as his father?

In dreams, Fëanor watched the ship sink again and again in a great flash, the fire at last consumed by the calm of the sea. The waves roll in, lapping gently at the shore as if they had not just held the most precious cargo.

His twins – one sinking to the depths of the sea, the other breathing but missing half of his soul –were dead by his hand. He was a kinslayer at last.