A Clouded Gem by Rocky41_7

A Clouded Gem

            There was a part of Fëanáro that was hurting, and Indis had thought for so long if she could touch that part, if she could ease that hurt just a little, perhaps he would not hate her so much. Instead, she learned how jealously Fëanáro guarded his hurt and how viciously he lashed out in his pain.

            She had thought that if she included him in the growth of Finwë’s family, he would resent her less (“A colorless second-rate substitute,” he had sneered at her once when he caught her looking through Miriel Serinde’s unfinished tapestries, things which no one doubted belonged to Fëanáro, not to Finwë). With Findis, she had thought perhaps there was a chance. When Nolofinwë was born, she knew that chance was shattered. When Nolofinwë was born, and Finwë named him after the fashion he had named Fëanáro, there was a part of Indis that was smug at this seeming defiance of Fëanáro’s insistence that he and his mother were the true flowers of the Noldorin royal house, and Indis and her daughter mere interlopers (Finwë, she thought, meant it to bind them together as brothers). There was a greater part that knew it could only lead to trouble.

            She wished she had asked Finwë to reconsider.

            That was one of the few times she ever recalled Fëanáro fighting with his father—really fighting. He had disappeared for weeks afterwards and never said where he went. After this, he was even more insistent on being called only by the name that Miriel Serinde had given him—anyone but his father who called him Curufinwë was met with an icy stare.

            When he began to court Mahtan’s daughter, the entire house breathed a sigh of relief. He was away a great deal then, and when he returned, it was often whistling a tune or twisting a new piece of jewelry between his fingers or with a far-off look in his eyes. No one in Finwë’s house commented that he was so young to be looking towards marriage already, or that Nerdanel seemed such an odd choice of companion for Tirion’s most eligible bachelor—they were only grateful that perhaps Fëanáro was finding his place at last.

            Fëanáro showed a patience around Nerdanel that Indis had never known him to display outside his work. It was as though she need only exist nearby to bring out the best in him. Indis had even seen them allowing her children to join in on some of their projects and adventures around the palace. With Nerdanel, that rigid, aching knot of tension Indis had seen in him since she’d first met him as a child finally seemed to relax and dissipate. When Indis mentioned to Finwë how glad she was that Fëanáro seemed at last to have found a place he was comfortable, to have someone by his side that he trusted entirely, she was genuine. As difficult as Fëanáro had been with her, she could not entirely banish the memory of him as that child in tears, not comprehending why his mother would not return to him. You may rest easy now, Miriel, she thought. Your child has found peace.

            It didn’t last.