United, Divided: The War of Telerin Aggression by eris_of_imladris

Two Little Boys

This chapter revolves around the HoME canon of Amrod dying at Losgar. Feel free to skip this chapter if that’s not your thing.

Two little boys had two little toys
Each had a wooden horse
Gaily they played each summer's day
Warriors both of course

At Alqualondë, it stopped feeling like a game.

Ambarussa’s swords were slick with blood. They couldn’t meet each other’s eyes as they tried to wipe them clean, to clear the steel and their minds from the battle.

It wasn’t that he didn’t understand why they fought. Their grandfather was dead, the world’s light was extinguished, their people were split down the middle, and their foe was an ocean away. They needed boats, and the Teleri had refused to help. If they weren’t going to help, Fëanáro had told them in his tent, they were the enemies of the Noldor and their mission.

And yet, the Teleri were still people. People of all ages, people with interests and loves and hobbies and cares and worries. Just like him and everyone he knew. But the people here show no regret, or if they do, they hide it so deeply that they will soon forget it. They have no qualms about killing those who are just like them, only fighting for a different cause. Husbands, wives, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers.

He thinks of his own mother who he parted with in sorrow, who begged for him to remain by her side. He wishes he could see her face again, but wonders if she would understand the choices he’s made, why his cleaning rag is red, why he did what his father said. Why he raised his sword in anger against other elves, why he stepped onto their boats like he owned them just like Morgoth had done with the silmarils.

The Oath pulled at him like a puppet’s strings, trying to dictate every action he would take for the rest of his life. This was what it would be like, he realized. One battle after another, one life after another taken by his own hands. The part of him that was truly him would have to perish, or else his mind would simply burst from the strain.

He walked down to the boats as swiftly as possible. Moored on the shore, they towered over him with their graceful necks and slender bodies. He boarded one, not the one he’d been on before, but a smaller one more suited to a lone traveler. Could he flee? Could he truly escape what fate set in store for him? He knew his mother-name, much as his father pretended it wasn’t true.

He found his way below decks. Not quite looking for a way to steer, but not avoiding that either. Noting the provisions, eventually finding a thin blanket to wrap himself in. His thoughts whirled at an unimaginable pace as he yearned for the simplicity of Tirion, of the life he knew and loved and lost. Somewhere he didn’t have to question his actions, where everything made sense and his loyalty didn’t suck the blood from his veins.

The rocking of the waves, even just the slightest motions, brought that time to life. The blanket felt like a little remnant of home, something familiar as the whole world changed. The wood beneath his body as he laid down was firm, unyielding. At least one thing still felt the same.

When he wakes, the darkness in the air has somehow gotten darker, and a small distant flame pierces through. A campfire, perhaps, something his family has made. It’s all too fitting, he thinks, for the house of the Spirit of Fire, but the flame of his own spirit isn’t in the fight anymore. He turns around, wraps himself in the blanket, and returns to sleep.

When we grow up we'll both be soldiers
And our horses will not be toys
And I wonder if we'll remember
When we were two little boys

Tomorrow’s dawn is blood-red as the ships’ remnants lie on the shore like beached whales. Their bones are charred in the bare light the horizon can muster.

Ambarussa looks over at the blanket he laid out the night before, still as pristine as he’d smoothed it before turning to go to sleep. No one slept there last night; certainly not his brother, who made things messy just by looking at them.

He opens the flap of the tent and starts to walk through the makeshift camp, stepping over bits of wood and sharp pebbles. Some are shiny enough to intrigue his father, but he is not there, nor is his twin. A fragment of worry worms its way into his mind as he scouts the shore, watching everyone go about their ordinary tasks as if they had not destroyed the masterworks of a former ally turned enemy the night before.

There are two redheads on the shore. Two, no more. Counting him.

“Where is my brother?” he asks his father, pushing inside the tent meant for matters of war. Fëanáro stands by a clumsily drawn map as scouts point out what he needs to know, as if anything can even be identified in this darkness.

Fëanáro looks at him strangely, asks if he was not with him. When was the last time he saw him, Ambarussa wonders? They are never far apart.

The answer comes too quickly and tells more than he wishes to know. “I saw him walking towards the boats,” he says, and there is no need to finish the sentence. A sudden panic burns in Fëanáro’s eyes as the others look around in disbelief, as he tries to claw some semblance of sense from the situation and what it has become.

But nothing makes sense to the other half of Ambarussa anymore. His soul lies underneath the sea, and now, he is merely a part of a whole. Is this what Fëanáro feels, living without his father? He tries so hard to find some similarity with someone, anyone, if only to not feel the crushing weight of being the only one in the world to know this pain.

Fëanáro’s answer is simple, like it was before Alqualondë. Simple words of traitors and then he moves on so quickly, still speaking so eloquently, not like when he knelt before his father’s body and the grief sapped all the words from his brilliant mind. Does he feel nothing for his son? Does he even have a heart under the fire of his spirit that now kills his own kin in addition to all they slew at Alqualondë?

Fëanáro finishes the meeting and leaves without a word of apology or shame. Ambarussa does not see Fëanáro close the flap of his sleeping-tent in a rage and grasp it nearly hard enough to yank it out of the ground, kneading the unforgiving fabric, his face flushed bright red as a river of tears flow down his cheeks. He only sees the stern figure retreating with the kindness of the enemy.

Did you think I would leave you dying
When there's room on my horse for two
Climb up here Joe, we'll soon be flying
I can go just as fast with two
Did you say Joe I'm all a-tremble
Perhaps it's the battle's noise
But I think it's that I remember
When we were two little boys