Who By Fire by polutropos

Chapter 1

Content warnings: mental instability; past suicide attempt; violent killing of a wild animal reported in dialogue; also note that both characters, but especially the non-POV character, suffer from fluctuating mental stability and the narration is ambiguous about their states of mind when they have sex.

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This fic uses the fanon of 'Lightly Toasted Amrod', a canon-conflation/canon-divergence in which Amrod is burned at Losgar (as in 'The Shibboleth of Fëanor') but survives. Chapter ends notes detail this version if you are not famliar. Amrod is the younger twin here; his father name is therefore Telufinwë, Last Finwë. I have also taken from Shibboleth the existence of Fingolfin's youngest son, Argon (Arakáno) and his death at the Battle of Lammoth.

Read Chapter 1

Golden light caught the dust above Nolofinwë’s desk. Had the sun risen already? He looked up to see one of his guards standing in the door frame, his silhouette dark against the light filtering through the corridor window.

“Finwë Nolofinwë.” The guard bowed quickly. “King.”

“Yes, Vórion? What is it?”

Another elf stepped into view beside him. One of Írissë’s hunting captains. “King Nolofinwë, we found a wounded hunter in the woods outside the camp.”

“And?” This did not seem a matter requiring his attention. “Are there no healers available to tend to him?”

“There are, lord,” she said. “But he is not one of our host. He wears the device of the Fëanárians.”

Nolofinwë set down his quill and sat back in his chair. “I see.”

Not one of that host had come to this side of the lake since Nolofinwë and his people had found it abandoned on their return from Angamando. Even news of his own brother’s death Fëanáro’s sons had not had the courage to deliver personally. Nolofinwë had set aside what slim hope he had of an easy reconciliation, resigning himself to a prolonged thawing of tensions.

But now his pulse quickened and his bitter grief stirred at the prospect of meeting face-to-face, at last, with one who had followed Fëanáro across the sea.

“He is alone?” Nolofinwë asked.

“Yes, lord,” the captain said. “We searched all the surroundings, there is no sign that he came with any company. It seems…” she hesitated. “It seems that he was stalking a mountain lion.”

“What?” Were the Fëanárians so desperate that they had turned to hunting predators?

“The beast lay not far from him, slit open from neck to bowels. He seems to have attempted also to remove her head before he fainted from loss of blood.”

Not to eat, then. Nolofinwë grimaced at the brutality of it. There had been similar scenes on the Ice. Hunters so enraptured by violence that a killing meant for sustenance turned into a murder to satiate their hunger for vengeance.

The captain continued, “We wrapped his wounds to staunch the bleeding, but left him until we had spoken to you. His condition is dire, lord.”

Before he was aware of the emotion rising, Nolofinwë’s nails were digging in his palm and his fist struck the desk. “For pity’s sake, bring him here! We are not savages!”

The captain nodded curtly and turned. The guard cast his eyes down, hiding his expression. Nolofinwë seldom allowed his composure to crack, but the idea of this man gripped him with a desperate hope. As if by mere proximity to one who had witnessed Fëanáro’s last days Nolofinwë might tie off but one end of his unravelled soul.

---

The next morning, when the healers told him the Fëanárian had returned to consciousness, Nolofinwë visited his sick bed.

They had warned him that the hunter’s mood was fey, and that his speech, though clear, was disordered and strange. He had not given his name. But the body Nolofinwë set eyes upon seemed at peace: head tipped to one side, lids half shut in sleep.Two red lines, one longer than the other and purpling at the edges, sliced across one side of his face from temple to chin. The lioness’ claws had narrowly missed his eye.

When Nolofinwë took another step into the room, the elf rolled his head up to look at him. Sharp, silver eyes locked onto his. A vise tightened around Nolofinwë’s lungs.

The resemblance would not have been obvious to one who had not spent a lifetime studying, envying every one of Fëanáro’s features. This elf was of slighter build, the line of his jaw softer, his brows less pronounced, and his hair not long and raven black but dull brown, cropped short. But the arching cheekbones, the slant of his nose, even the shape of his mouth—those were Fëanáro’s.

The bitterness of betrayal had corrupted Nolofinwë’s perception of his brother. Years of grinding resentment had erased all memory of Fëanáro’s faultless beauty and replaced it with a man whose visage was as ugly as his deeds. The image of Fëanáro that he held in his thoughts when at last he set foot in Endor was smeared with ash and cracked with frost. But looking upon this elf, that taint was washed clean. All at once he could recall his brother’s face as vividly as if it were him, and not his son, on the cot before him.

The elf’s lips quirked up at the corners; that, too, like his father. “Uncle Nolofinwë. Well met.” His smirk turned to a grimace as he dragged himself up to sit with his back against the wall.

Nolofinwë rushed to assist him, and his chest tightened again when his hand closed around the other’s arm, as if surprised to find that he was indeed present, and real.

He hesitated. How could he ask, Which one are you? The Little or the Last? The twins were near-strangers to him, born when the rift between him and Fëanáro was already too wide for Nolofinwë to have ever known them as children, and they had been mere shadows following behind their brothers on the march from Tirion.

Nolofinwë had never shared private words with either of them; never, in fact, looked into their eyes until now.

“Nephew,” said Nolofinwë, and seated himself on a stool opposite the cot. “I am glad to see you are recovering from your injuries.”

Fëanáro’s son scoffed. “Yes, fortunate for me that I am, apparently, to all but you, unrecognisable—I doubt I would be recovering so well if your healers knew who I was.”

Much as he did not wish to believe it, the same thought had crossed Nolofinwë’s mind. “I will ensure no one learns it.”

“That is probably wise. It would not look good if I died in your camp, would it? But don’t expect that saving my life will put them in your debt, either.”

“That is not why—”

“They will not even notice I am gone. Well—Pityo might, but he is used to my prolonged absences. And I do not plan to tell them I was here.”

He was Telufinwë, then. The Last Finwë, he’d been called, though he had been born when Anairë was carrying Arakáno. How like Fëanáro, Nolofinwë had thought, to use the naming of his own son to assert, as he had with his firstborn, that his lineage was the legitimate one. How like him to sacrifice his children on the altar of his pride.

But was Nolofinwë any better? That is what he had asked himself, when he held Arakáno’s limp body in his arms, already long emptied of life: Had it not been pride that had driven Nolofinwë to lead his child to his death?

He asked himself this again, watching Fëanáro’s youngest adjust himself on the bed, his bandages stained with blood. Telufinwë was not dead, but he was broken. A man who was whole did not set out alone in pursuit of a merciless predator. Only a man who held his life at naught would dare such a hunt.

Nolofinwë gently took his nephew’s wrapped hand in both of his and bowed his head. “No harm will come to you in this camp, Telufinwë, for as long as it takes you to heal. I cannot yet forgive you for your part in my half-brother’s deeds, but I cannot find it in myself to blame you either.”

He lifted his head and was surprised and comforted by the expression on his nephew’s face. The wild light in his eyes had faded, the mocking tilt of his mouth was gone. He leaned forward, and with his good hand he cupped the back of Nolofinwë’s neck and pulled him closer.

He parted his lips as if to speak, but closed them again, sighing as he did. His breath was warm on Nolofinwë’s skin. It was strange, the fondness he felt for this kinsman he had hardly known. Within the hard casing of his grief, a longing unfurled: for connection, for reconciliation, for release.

---

Nolofinwë had his nephew moved into a room in his private quarters. Rumour spread of the wounded Fëanárian hunter in the King’s care, and thus were Nolofinwë’s fears confirmed. Even not knowing who he was, there were those who called for his imprisonment. Angaráto and Artanis first, from whom he had learned of these murmurings; then Turukáno, his disposition calmer but no more merciful.

Perhaps knowing he was their own kin, and seeing his helplessness, would have softened their hearts to pity, as it had his own. Or perhaps it would have fanned the flames of their bitterness. After all, some of them had been close to Fëanáro’s twins, as Nolofinwë had not, and pity was seldom enough to soothe the sting of betrayal by one whom you had loved. Nolofinwë knew that well.

Amrod—the name in the Grey-elven tongue that he had adopted and preferred—received his care more willingly than Nolofinwë had expected. He scoffed when Nolofinwë offered to sing to him, but soon his eyelids drooped shut and he was carried off into dreams. He quipped, “What would your wife think?” when Nolofinwë stripped him and wiped him down, and snickered when he salved his wounds, but he never protested, and made no effort to resist.

Nolofinwë, for his part, was grateful for the ritual of caring for his nephew, and the simplicity of the task. Unlike the wounds that tore through bonds between those who followed him, opening and closing and opening again, crippling the strength of the whole, wounds of the flesh were easily sutured and salved. He took pleasure in observing how Amrod’s bruises changed, like the sky of these new mornings, from purple to blue to yellow; how his skin knit itself back together, leaving only faint scars that would also, in time, fade away.

There were other marks on his nephew’s body, though, past Nolofinwë’s skill to heal. He had stifled his surprise the first time he had seen them: large areas of Amrod’s back and legs where his ruddy skin appeared to have been peeled away, leaving behind patches that were unnaturally smooth and pale. Nolofinwë said nothing, deceiving himself into believing it was some imperfection of his birth. But though he’d never seen such extensive scarring, he knew well enough what fire did to the skin.

The untold tale hung thickly in the air between them.

It was nearly told, one morning, when Nolofinwë’s thumbs lingered over the taut texture of his back.

“Well?” Amrod lifted his head from where it had been bowed to his chest. “Are you going to ask how I got them?”

Nolofinwë splayed his hand out over his back. “Mm. If you wish to tell me.”

Amrod rolled his neck back and groaned. “I don’t care,” he said. “One way or the other, it doesn’t matter. Do you want to know?”

There was a warning in Amrod’s eyes when he turned them on Nolofinwë. “It is not a pleasant story.”

“No, I imagine not.”

Amrod chuckled; the way his smile crept up one cheek, so effortlessly derisive, was so like his father. He should have been offended, but Nolofinwë clung to this living fragment of his brother, as he did with so many of Amrod’s mannerisms.

“Tell me,” Nolofinwë urged.

“You have to know, Uncle—he was lost.”

Nolofinwë pinched his brows together. “Who?”

“Don’t be stupid,” Amrod said. “My father. Your brother. Fëanáro.”

That name had remained unspoken between them. Once out, the syllables vibrated restlessly inside the too-small space.

“But what does Fëanáro have to do—”

“I will come to that. My brothers refused to see how far it had gone. He was good at performing, wasn’t he? He could rail against the gods, and you believed him, because he spoke like a god himself; he could command an army to march into the sea and drown, and you trusted him, because he spoke with such conviction. And we needed conviction in that Darkness. So we followed him, to whatever end.”

Nolofinwë’s heart galloped. Was this not what he had wanted to know, since first he heard that a Fëanárian follower had been found near their camp? How Fëanáro had lived his final days. How he had met his end.

But now that the tale was being offered to him, a shuddering took hold of his limbs.

“Uncle?” Amrod cut off his speech, his concern sincere. “You are shaking.”

“I’m sorry.” Nolofinwë balled his hands into fists and shoved them under his crossed arms. “I have much on my mind. Perhaps now is not the time.”

Amrod’s eyes roamed over his face, as if seeing him anew. “You loved him, didn’t you?”

It was a long time before Nolofinwë answered, “He was my brother. Of course I did.”

Then he rose to leave, but Amrod stopped him in the doorway.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?” asked Nolofinwë.

“For taking care of me.”

---

What need was there to rush the tale? If indeed it needed to be told at all. Perhaps some things were better left locked away in the vault of the past.

A sense of ease was born of that moment of understanding. Nolofinwë prolonged the length of his visits. He filled the silence that might have been filled with tales of grief with readings from books of lore, or with banter over a game of strategy.

Amrod healed swiftly, and with the approach of his departure, Nolofinwë felt the connection between them straining for something more.

On the twelfth circling of the Sun since Amrod’s arrival, he was brimming with energy and moving about on his own. It pained Nolofinwë to leave him without company, and he had let him into his own rooms, where there was at least more space to stretch his limbs. His kin and counsellors would have been horrified to learn he had left a Fëanárian alone in his private rooms but he had grown to trust Amrod more than he trusted most of them.

The only thing he feared is that his nephew would slip out without a farewell. So it was with mixed relief and amusement that he entered his room to find he was not gone at all, and in fact had made himself quite comfortable.

“Good evening,” said Nolofinwë, shucking off his overcoat and draping it over a chair.

Amrod was stretched out on his bed, his good arm bent and propping up his head; the hand of the other, which he had only removed from its sling that morning, was holding a book open on the bed.

More amusing was the fact that he had changed into a pair of Nolofinwë’s trousers and an old tunic that he could only have dug up from the bottom of a chest. The embroidery—a trim of water lilies with frogs and salamanders hidden among their blooms and stems—was done by Indis. It would have pleased his mother to see a son of Fëanáro wearing it.

“Ah, there you are.” Amrod snapped the book shut and waved it at Nolofinwë. “I didn’t know you were a scholar of the natural sciences.”

Nolofinwë snorted. “Hardly. It is a book on gardening. Not of much use for the climes of Endor, I’m afraid. Would probably serve better as kindling.”

“And yet you have kept it. The illustrations—are they yours as well?”

“They are,” said Nolofinwë, sitting down to remove his boots. “I didn’t know you had an interest in gardening.”

“I don’t.” Amrod shrugged and set the book aside. “But I was bored. And your interests intrigue me. One never would have guessed from the way he spoke of you that you were interested in anything other than usurpation. I admit I am somewhat disappointed, half-uncle, that you are not nearly as horrible as I was raised to believe.”

“Well, I am sorry to disappoint you, but for my part I am relieved to hear it.” Nolofinwë had to force his smile. It pained him to think of Fëanáro raising his twins to adulthood and never speaking a kind word about him.

Amrod’s presence was a comfort, but also a reminder of all that was broken and could never be repaired. Did Nolofinwë truly care for Amrod, or was he simply using his nephew to buttress the ruins of his relationship with his brother? Ruins that lined the path he had walked down his entire life and would never, while Arda endured, be rebuilt.

It was too much to ask. He had to let him go.

“Telufinwë–” he began.

“Amrod. Or Telvo, if you like.”

“Telvo.” Nolofinwë liked the shape of the familiar name. “I suppose you’ll be wanting to return to your brothers soon.”

“Why?” Amrod seemed to take genuine offence. “Am I not welcome here?”

“Certainly,” Nolofinwë hurried to assure him, “you are welcome here. By me, in any case. But you know as well as I that it is not practical for you to stay. I am afraid I cannot hold off your cousins’ questioning much longer.”

“Tell them you have taken me as your lover.”

Nolofinwë’s laughter hitched in his throat. “I assure you that would not improve the situation.”

“Isn’t that what kings do?”

“It is not what good kings do.”

“Hm.” Amrod bit his lip, then sat upright abruptly and swung his legs off the bed. “What if you were not a king, for one night?”

“What are you talking about?”

Amrod shook his head with a little laugh. “Nevermind. Come here. I’d like to ask you something about your book.”

Despite the strange glint in Amrod’s eyes, and the warning rhythm of Nolofinwë’s heart, he rose and crossed the floor.

Amrod did not reach for the book. He simply watched him approach, intently, the faintest hint of a smile on his lips.

“Well?” Nolofinwë stopped several paces from where he sat on the bed.

Amrod stood. He grabbed Nolofinwë just above the elbow, his hand pressing into the muscle of his arm. Nolofinwë’s skin warmed beneath the touch.

He was so close now that Nolofinwë’s eyes had to dart about to take in the whole of his face. Nolofinwë inhaled deeply, attempting to gain control of the thundering of his pulse, and his nostrils were filled with the sweet scents of the anise and chamomile oil used to soothe Amrod’s pains. It only made his heart pound harder.

“Telvo, what are you doing?” he asked.

“Unkinging you.”

Then Amrod grabbed Nolofinwë by the nape of his neck, as he had the first time they had met, only roughly now, with both hands; and this time he did not pause over his lips but claimed them, taking the lower one between his teeth and licking along it before kissing him fully.

Nolofinwë staggered forwards and groaned, his mind wiped of thought by the suddenness of the gesture. His body welcomed it, responding as if it had long yearned for this contact. His hands rose to grip both sides of Amrod’s lean waist, even as his tongue searched the wet warmth of the other’s mouth. He was being tugged forwards, his feet tangling with Amrod’s as they shuffled over the floorboards. Amrod fell back onto the bed, pulling Nolofinwë down with him. He slipped a hand beneath Nolofinwë’s tunic, exploring the plane of his chest.

“Even better than I imagined,” he said when he broke their kiss, arching his hips and shuffling himself further onto the bed.

When Nolofinwë locked eyes with him, and saw his pupils blown wide with desire, he pushed himself off and stood with such haste that his vision blurred and darkened.

“Telufinwë!” he shouted, as if chiding a misbehaving child. But his treacherous eyes lingered over the shape of Amrod’s arousal beneath his trousers. He pinched his eyes shut again, clenching his fists at his side. "Amrod,” he said, gaze landing deliberately on his nephew’s face. “This is not right.”

“Is it not?” Amrod propped himself up on his elbows, legs still spread apart. Offering. The tunic was pulled tight, revealing the pleasing shape of his chest and the peaks of hardened nipples. Though Nolofinwë had bared and touched that body dozens of times in the preceding days, now his eyes yearned to drink it in, his hands were near trembling with the desire to roam over its taut muscle. To take him, claim him.

And though Amrod’s tone was light, his manner unperturbed, there was hurt in the slant of his brows, and alongside the lust blooming in his loins, pity swelled Nolofinwë’s heart.

“No,” Nolofinwë asserted. “No, it is not right.”

“Yet you wanted it. Want it. Is that not why you have tended me? Is that not why your hands have lingered, when you apply your salves? Is that not why your eyes rake over my body before you snuff out the light and leave the room?”

Was it? Had Nolofinwë been so blind to his own desires? He could scarcely think through the fog of his arousal.

“You are not well,” Nolofinwë said.

Amrod laughed abruptly. “Are any of us? No.” He shook his head sadly. “We are all broken, all doomed. Well, may Doom rue the day he saved me from the fire! I will take what pleasures I can from this life to which, it seems, I am bound without hope of escape.”

Nolofinwë snapped, “Do not say such things!” He wanted to gather him in his arms, to protect him from the darkness of his thoughts; but he could not trust himself to touch him.

“You don’t want me, then?” Amrod asked.

No, Nolofinwë thought, of course I do not, I was only taken by surprise. But his pulse beat out a different rhythm. He did desire him, and it was more than lust. It was a yearning for renewal, for life; and, if not redemption, then at least a flicker of it.

It was also dangerous, and reckless, and might shatter to shards his nephew’s already-brittle soul. Might, indeed, cut so deep into Nolofinwë’s own flesh that it revealed wounds he never even knew were there.

“Yes,” Nolofinwë confessed. "Yes, I want you.”

Like a torrent of water parting to reveal the bare rock beneath, the pain cleared from Amrod’s face.

Nolofinwë sank down on the bed beside him, not touching. “But I must know, Telvo. I must know, before I give in to this desire. Tell me how you were burned.”

Amrod stared at his own hands, curled around his knees. When he lifted his chin and turned to Nolofinwë, his eyes were pale and lusterless as ash. But still beautiful.

He sucked a watery breath between his teeth. “He didn’t know I was on the ship. Or, I do not think he did.”

A plume of disgust rose from Nolofinwë’s gut, burning on its way up. He swallowed. He reached for Amrod’s hand, and the memory of pain coursed up Nolofinwë’s arm like venom. He tightened his hold until he could feel the press of bone against bone where their fingers threaded together.

“I was planning to go back,” Amrod said. “For our mother.”

“I am sorry. I know you loved—”

Amrod laughed, harsh and hollow. “No.”

Amrod turned. Their eyes locked. In the channel that opened between them, darkness flowed into Nolofinwë’s thoughts.

“I thought I could make her come back to Endor with me, before it was too late. I tried to persuade Ambarussa to come with me. He told me I was mad. He severed his thoughts from mine. He must have told Father. Or perhaps another of our brothers learned it of him. I have not asked and they have not told me. But if he could not trust the loyalty of his own son, who could he trust?”

The words twisted Amrod’s face with grief.

“I heard the command. I knew he was going to burn the ships. But I…” The darkness swelled.

Nolofinwë gathered his brows, questioning, but Amrod’s thought was grasping at some far off place.

“I was Fated,” Amrod whispered. “I saw my mother charging towards me on a burning horse, holding a spear that trailed fire and smoke, and screaming Umbarto.”

He fell silent, saying at length, “I cannot tell you more than that. It is the last thing I remember. Next I was on the shore, water spilling from my lungs, and it was my brother screaming the name that had been ours, before the fire. Ambarussa.”

The air between them had grown taut and heavy, and Nolofinwë found himself pulled close against Amrod’s side. With his free hand, he caressed Amrod’s cheek. When Amrod did not resist, he leaned closer, brushing his skin with the tip of his nose. Nolofinwë kissed him lightly. A plea pricked at his awareness: Help me remember.

The heat of Amrod’s breath rushed through him, catching flame and casting its light into the deepest corners of his mind. He lowered Amrod down onto the bed, guided his legs up onto the mattress, and kneeled over him. Amrod’s chest rose and fell with heavy breaths as Nolofinwë pushed up the tunic and lifted it over his head.

“I will help you,” Nolofinwë said.

“You have done more than I deserve already,” Amrod said, even as his hands reached for Nolofinwë’s arms, pulling him closer.

Nolofinwë shook his head. This was for them both. Nolofinwë could feel the fire burning beneath him, where Amrod lay, and he craved it. It was the heat he needed to free him from his icy shackles. They were both suffocating. Nolofinwë in his cold, hard sheath; Amrod in his blanket of fire.

Nolofinwë lowered his straining body over him, and he was rain on the scorched roots of Amrod’s memory. Amrod’s mind unfurled, his hips rose to meet him.

As they rocked together, Amrod moaned and writhed, trying to push his trousers down to his knees. “Take me,” he begged. “Take me.”

“Shh.” Nolofinwë held his fingers to his lips.

Amrod’s exposed body heaved when he pulled back and helped him fully out of the trousers, before also stripping himself bare. The appreciative groan, the way Amrod’s eyes drank in every part of him, brought him near the edge. His cock ached to be inside him.

But no; that was not how it was meant to be. He needed to burn, to be the vessel for the fire that was consuming Amrod from within. He rolled onto his back, guiding Amrod to straddle his knees. He opened easily as he prepared himself with his own fingers. Amrod curled down over him, taking his erection in his mouth and sucking. And when he replaced Nolofinwë’s fingers with his own, Nolofinwë was leaking into the heat of his mouth.

Amrod’s eyes shot up, and he was smiling as he popped his mouth off, lowering himself so that the full length of their bodies pressed together. They kissed, lips nipping, teasing, tongues flitting between teeth, enjoying the touch of the other’s bare flesh. And when Amrod entered him with a sigh of pleasure, Nolofinwë was enveloped in a burst of fire.

With each thrust of Amrod’s hips, his mind opened wider. Nolofinwë entered into it. He closed his eyes, he invited the memory in. Salty waves licked at his sides. He was swimming. His arms strained, his foot slipped. He was climbing up the side of a ship. He threw himself over the railing and fell onto the deck. The ship was burning, already burning. Agonised cries struggled to be heard beneath the roar of fire. The flames reached for him, like fingers groping, melting and peeling away his skin—but there was no pain. The fire closed in around him, as soothing as warm water.

Water. There was water all around him, in him, filling his lungs to bursting.

Amrod’s cries of pleasure smothered the memory. A crashing wave extinguished the burning ship, and the vision contracted into a single point of light that burst and scattered across the black of his mind. He was swept up in the surge of Amrod’s release, carried over the edge with him.

Amrod collapsed, still throbbing inside him. He was laughing. For a moment, Nolofinwë was gripped by the horror that he had violated a mind that was indeed lost.

But no—the laughter was soft, musical, like the ripple of leaves in a warm breeze.

Promise me, Nolofinwë wanted to say, promise me you will never try to destroy yourself again. But promises, he knew, were chains. It was enough that he was here. That they were both here, and had survived. For now, they had survived, and that had to be enough.

He slid his hands over Amrod’s smooth back and held him close to his chest. The laughter subsided, his breaths steadied. For just a moment, their heartbeats fell into rhythm. Then the leaves of his nephew’s mind were furled. He eased himself off of Nolofinwë’s body, curled up beside him on the bed, and shut his eyes.

At dawn, he was gone.

Nolofinwë walked down the shore of the lake. Far in the distance, a body stood waist deep in the water.

He plunged, and Nolofinwë held his breath.

He surfaced, and Nolofinwë released it.

---

Chapter End Notes

The fate of Amrod in the The Shibboleth of Fëanor:
- The story is that Amrod was killed at Losgar. Unknown to Fëanor, he had spent the night aboard a ship, because (it was assumed) he intended to go back to Nerdanel.
- The names. In brief: Nerdanel named both her twins Ambarussa ('Top-russet'). When Fëanor asked her to give one of them a different name, she said 'Umbarto', Fated, but said time would decide which of them it was. Fëanor either misheard this, or intentionally changed it to 'Ambarto', High and Lofty. Amrod is (it seems) a Sindarisation of Ambarto.
- Somewhat relevant to the fic is the story that, as Fëanor and their sons are setting out, Nerdanel comes to him and begs him to leave the twins behind or at least one of them. He says she can come with them if she wants to keep her sons. Nerdanel responds, rather ominously: 'You will not keep all of them. One at least will never set foot in Middle-earth.'
- His hair: I misremembered and thought Shibboleth said the younger twin's hair became darker; it was actually the older.
- In the Shibboleth, of Fëanor's sons only Curufin participates in the ship burning. In my take on Lightly Toasted Amrod, I maintain the Silmarillion canon in which all but Maedhros participate.

Title is from the song by Leonard Cohen.

Thanks to Melesta for the beta.