Through a Mirror Darkly by HannaGoldworthy

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Chapter 2

This chapter uses the lion's share of the Caprice and Chance prompts.  There is no actual bodice-ripping, but some potential noncon is discussed discreetly toward the end of the chapter, so be warned.

And I suppose you could lump this into the Solve a Problem challenge as well, since Amrod did in fact burn with the boats in this story and the name game with him and Amras is also brought up.  However, trying to solve either problem only adds more problems - Amrod's burning (and subsequent early resurrection) is part of the premise of this fic, and the name-game thing is taken from my own experiences with names and siblings (and therefore never satisfactorily resolved for anyone involved).

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Apparently, it was customary for Mandos to release at least one Kinslayer on the first day of Sovallë – the holiday held great significance for the remission of sin, and particularly their sin, and Námo had a great sense of graveyard humor.

 

Apparently, it was also customary that the names of those being released were not made known ahead of time – the guests of Mandos were known mainly by their accomplishments in life, or by their sins…mostly their sins.

 

And, apparently, Amrod Fëanorion had finally done the appropriate amount of time necessary in Mandos to properly atone for his crimes, and be allowed among the living, on Celebrían’s first Sovallë among her people.  Eru only knew how, since he had not upheld the Oath, but Eru did not operate on any earthly logic, so here he was.

 

The joke – for it had to be a joke, Celebrían no longer believed in freak coincidences, not since her sons reached the age of twenty and suddenly developed an interest in setting things on fire – became all the crueler for the fact that it was she who had to deal with the Fëanorion in their midst.  This could not have waited until Elrond was able to make the crossing, no, she was the one who was going to have to peacefully share the Holy Continent with the Sindar’s hated enemy on this blesséd Sovallë, when she had much more important things to worry about.

 

Celebrían caught a glimpse of her scowl in the mirror, and frowned even harder.  Elrond always laughed at her when she was this angry.  He’d say it was the most adorable thing he’d ever seen, and cheerfully traipse out to sleep in the guest bedroom when she started throwing blunt objects in his general direction.

 

Elrond wasn’t here.  And he had some nerve in not being here.  She missed him so much more desperately than she had thought she would, and that took doing.

 

And Opolintë, bless her heart, was not helping in the slightest.

 

“I told you that you needn’t attend the celebration, milady.  What possessed you to go?”

 

Celebrían growled in frustration.  Ëarwen would have and had retreated from such an uncivilized sound, but Opolintë simply raised an unimpressed eyebrow and waited for a more cogent response.  A pang hit Celebrían’s heart, because Elrond would have laughed, and growled back.

 

“I was perfectly fine until that…that Fëanorion showed up.  Who persuaded Mandos to let him go?  He did not uphold the Oath.”

 

Opolintë’s eyes glinted dangerously.  “He also drew no blood in the first Kinslaying, and died by his father’s hand when he tried to renege on his promise.  He was never allowed to be among the monsters you remember.”

 

In that moment, Celebrían remembered that Opolintë herself had gone through the Halls.  Shrewdly she regarded her caretaker.  “Let me guess, you are not simply ‘given to understand’ this information?”

 

Caught, Opolintë could do little more than gape with surprise.  Celebrían nodded, looking significantly toward the maid’s right hand – at their introduction, she’d thought the betrothal ring on Opolintë’s finger was of exceedingly fine make, and now she saw that her instincts had been correct.

 

“Where is he now?” she asked.

 

Opolintë drew a breath.  “My lady…”

 

“Don’t start with me.”  She had perfected this tone with her children (and Elrond, but she was trying to keep her sanity together and thinking of him was hindering that process).  It produced an odd effect in Opolintë – no one had ever brooked this tone with her before, it was clear, and she seemed at once insulted and honored.  However, Celebrían was not going to unpack those years of baggage yet, not when she had so much of her own with which to deal, so she had to stick to her immediate goal.  “I’m going to have to face him.  So, you are going to tell me where he is, so we can get this over with quickly.”

 

“But, milady, you have only just arrived, and…”

 

“If you say one word about my condition, I’ll sneak off and find him without your help.”

 

Opolintë’s expression changed to utter and complete horror.  “Milady, you’ll have one of your fits again!”

 

“And what am I to do otherwise, hmm?  Until I speak with him, I shall dread every step I take out of this room for fear of seeing him without warning.  The very act of leaving will give me a fit.”

 

“Milady, see reason.  I have orders to confine you to your quarters.”

 

“I refuse to walk on eggshells in the country that is my birthright!”  Celebrían realized she was raising her voice, and stopped herself.  The risk of being overheard aside, she wanted to spare Opolintë’s feelings as much as possible.  “I’m going to see him,” she continued, more quietly.  “With or without you, and you cannot stop me.  So, help me.  I’ll see that any fallout is blamed on me, not you.”

 

The girl – for she was a girl, for all that she’d been born an Age before Celebrían – gnawed fretfully at one lip for a moment before she replied.

 

“I’ll not tell you where he’s gone, for you’ll be lost in ten minutes.  I’ll show you, milady, if you’ll behave.”

 

“I learned early never to make idle promises.  And stop with this ‘milady’ nonsense.  Forever dispossessed or not, my cousin is to marry you.  That makes us family.”

 

***

 

It turned out that Amrod had been settled in the palace, though not, by his own request, in his old quarters amongst the royal family.  Instead, he took a room with the resident servants, and was plying his chosen craft at the same going rate as any of them.

 

In this particular season, that craft entailed mending the palace tapestries – for they had all been taken down, as adornment of any kind, of body or of dwelling, was discouraged at this time of year.  The term Opolintë used was “ritual mortification,” and it approached the same sort of solemnly repentant Ñoldor balderdash which Celebrían, three-quarters Teleri and born well after all but three members of her extended Ñoldor family died, had grown accustomed to seeing with Galadriel, but had never readily begun to understand.  Still, she supposed it was something to do to mark the time, and it helped in locating Amrod, for he seemed to have gained some notoriety for being unable to sit still.

 

His reputation seemed to be unfounded, from her vantage point in the doorway.  He bent diligently over his work, using a yarn needle and carefully-colored thread to patch a frayed Arafinwëan standard, minding the door not at all.  Opolintë cleared her throat, and joy lit his face as he looked up – but that emotion was fleeting, as careful neutrality crept into his eyes when he saw that Celebrían was with her.

 

Oh, but he looked so alike to his brother in that moment, and Celebrían was nearly drawn back into the passing glimpse she’d had of Maedhros for the second time in the space of a day.  She bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, and willed her disobedient brain to stay in the present.

 

“Well met, cousin Ambarto,” she managed to say agreeably, before Opolintë could glaze over the matter.  “I am Celebrían, daughter of Artanis.  I thought I might welcome you back to the land of the living.”

 

Perplexed, Amrod glanced to Opolintë for the space of a second before meeting Celebrían’s eyes again.  “Oh, you’re Nerwen’s daughter, all right.  Only she tried to sound pleasant through clenched teeth.”

 

The moment of wit took her entirely off guard, so that she even forgot her discomfort.  “It’s that obvious?”

 

“Painfully so, but I’m used to it by now.”  Carefully stabbing his needle through the fabric so that he would not lose it, the boy stood slowly – and he was a boy, for all he was the stuff of legend back in Middle-Earth.  Aside from the unsettling glow lingering about his eyes and the hair she still tried not to notice, Celebrían was reminded unnervingly of her own twin sons.

 

That thought threatened to open another mode of thinking that would hinder her recovery, so she gritted her teeth and willed her mind to ignore it.  Before Amrod could bow as a respectful servant should before his lady, she crossed over to him and grasped his right arm, as she would any equal she had just encountered for the first time.

 

“As I said, Ambarto, you are well met.”

 

She forced herself to look directly into his eyes without shuddering, and as a result had a glimpse of the confused, yet impressed, quirk of his eyebrows.  “Umbarto, if you please,” he said, clasping her arm in return.  “Let’s not pretend that I’m anyone else, not when we both know better.”

 

Celebrían nodded firmly.  “Umbarto, then.  Now, I’m precluded from fasting and mortification, but I’ve still intended to offer my services in some way to observe Sovallë’s traditions.  I’m no stranger to tapestry-mending; would you allow me to help?”

 

***

 

Amrod – or, well, Amarthan, to give his preferred name the appropriate Sindarin translation – proved to be an excellent companion during needlework.  She found she still could not quite look him in the eye, but the stitching provided an adequate excuse to avoid that, and if he noticed he said nothing about it.  Instead, he conversed cheerfully with her, and she could truly pretend she was with Elladan, who had once liked to while away an afternoon talking and reading aloud while she stitched.  Indeed, she found it easy to ask questions of him that she’d be ashamed to ask even Opolintë – she was sadly ignorant about Ñoldor custom, no matter how tirelessly Galadriel had tried to educate her.

 

“So, regarding father-names,” she segued from a conversation about how she only had one name, and that given by her mother.  “Is yours Telufinwë, or Pityafinwë?  There’s been a great deal of discussion about which is correct for which.”

 

She risked only the briefest glance up at him at the beginning of her question, for the sake of politeness; when his answer came, it was with a sigh and a cluck of the tongue, and she did not see his expression.  “You’ll probably think this silly, but I don’t rightly know myself.  Mother was exhausted when Father named us, and she could never quite place which one was born first or which was named what; she knew her names when she looked at us, and that was that.  And in those years, Father was distracted enough that he never minded which son answered to which name, and never bothered to correct us if we were wrong.  We both just learned to answer to both names.”

 

Celebrían found herself growing rather indignant.  “I gave birth to twins and never once confused them,” she said, and realized a heartbeat after it left her mouth that the comment was probably rude.

 

Thankfully, Amarthan only laughed.  “Somehow I doubt that.  Your own grandmother was infamous for calling all of her children to her when she only wanted one, but couldn’t sort out the names in her head.  Artanis began to answer to all of her brother’s names, and it was joked among us cousins that Angaráto ran off to the mountains with Eldalótë almost as soon as he came of age because she alone could keep his name straight.  My mother did much the same; she’d cycle through Maitimo, Makalaurë, Tyelkormo, and Carnistir before she remembered Atarinkë’s name.”

 

She was about to retort that she had never done that, but then she remembered one frightful incident when she’d called for Elrohir when she’d needed to speak to Erestor.  At the time, she’d been mortified, and thought she’d never live the matter down.  What she would have done to go back to that simpler time now.

 

“If you wanted to know my father name,” Amarthan continued, blithely ignorant of her internal musings, “the person who’d know immediately would be my father.  But he could grow rather tetchy over something he’d decided should be obvious to everyone even when it was not, so the best person to ask would probably be Maitimo.”

 

She had once had an errant scrap of food that lodged in her throat; no matter how many times she coughed, it continued to tickle her gag reflex at the most unexpected times intermittently for the next week.  The threat of the recurrent flashback of Maedhros was beginning to tire her in much the same way. Celebrían tried to make her sniff sound dismissive.  “Yes, well, my husband was half raised by your brother, and he was somewhat less than forthcoming with that sort of information.  Elrond offered absolutely no solid answers in any of the debates that went on about that very topic.”

 

In her peripheral vision, she could see Amarthan angle himself questioningly in her direction.  He took a moment to answer, which led her to believe he had intended to ask a question of some import.  Instead, he changed the topic.  “Speaking of Elrond, you’d mentioned twins.  What were their names, and had the two of you any other children?”

 

A thrice-accursed Kinslayer was taking pains to preserve her feelings; Celebrían thought she must look even more pathetic than she had guessed.  “Ah, get comfortable.  This is one of my favorite topics.”

 

***

 

After three hours had passed, Opolintë insisted that Celebrían must be taken back to her rooms.  Umbarto waited patiently for his betrothed’s return; her concern had been palpable from the moment she entered the room, and he doubted she’d be able to keep her work at work tonight.

 

Almost to the second he’d predicted, she returned, and sat quietly beside him where he worked at the tapestry loom, in the same chair his fascinating long-lost cousin had occupied that midmorning.  She made no move to disturb him in his work, so he gathered that, as usual, she was content to watch his process; Opolintë was more of a leatherworker in her spare time, but had prevailed upon him to teach her the basics of fancy work.

 

The good thing about meeting his beloved in their afterlife was that they’d both learned by now to be patient with each other.  So, Umbarto continued to work; she’d talk when she was ready, and for now it was enough to have her with him.

 

At last, Opolintë decided that she could share.  “I don’t doubt that you’ve noticed the scars on your cousin’s face.  Have you guessed what they mean?”

 

He shook his head, though he kept his eyes on the tapestry long enough to stab his needle into place for safekeeping.  “Only that she was cruelly treated, and that her captors likely wanted to ruin her beauty.  I don’t think they succeeded, mind, only that that was their intended goal.”

 

Opolintë nodded sadly.  “It was the only goal in the beginning, yes.  As certain orc tribes grew to have…refined ideas, other goals crept in by the wayside.  Those scars are specifically meant to mark breeding slaves.  And she is currently with child, and does not like to talk about it.”

 

There was the shoe whose drop he had anticipated.  “Does her family know?”

 

“The ones here do.  I can say nothing of those she left behind.”

 

“Do you think the child will present a danger?  Or be in danger?”

 

A tear fell from her right eye, the brown one.  “Even children born to orc mothers had to be…conditioned, before they were a danger.  I do not fear the child.  But even here, there are those who remember such things; I fear there is a very real danger, should the child’s origins come to light.”

 

Umbarto got up, and delicately embraced his betrothed from behind.  “This is not your fault,” he whispered.

 

“No,” she replied.  “I know that.  But it hurts to see someone in that position, again, knowing that, even here, I can do little but watch and wait.”

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Chapter End Notes

That sound you hear is me taking the "Secret Baby" prompt just a little too literally.  And, with that cliffhanger left, I'm off to write the next chapter.