Willingness for the Fire by sallysavestheday

Willingness for the Fire

Tirion believes that Curufin is Fëanor’s favorite son. There is the name, of course: Atarincë is a claim that cannot be refuted. And the looks: one’s face so like the other’s, fierce and fair. And the shared gifts of hand and heart. They move as one body, often seem to share one mind.

But in watching Curufin echo his father, they miss the full truth of the tale.

A mirror's face is glass, but it is backed in silver.

Fëanor weeps when each of his sons is born. Not for them, but for Nerdanel, for what he fears, every time, will befall her. He waits with his heart in his throat until she is at work again in her studio, each birth sparking some new fire of creation within her, making her hands sing and her eyes shine. Then he knows she is safe. That whatever ills his own coming into the world caused his mother will not be repeated.

He weeps for Nerdanel, but not for his children. For them, he crows, puffed up with pride and glowing; his fatherhood worn as a mantle of joy. Infant Maedhros rides in a sling on his chest to court and workshop and market square, his father’s bright light, his proof of happiness. Baby Maglor, in turn, is danced and dandled and sung to all over Tirion, songbird by exposure as well as by gift.

Nerdanel comes to expect her husband’s mingled tears and glee in childbed, his fearful clasp of her straining hands, and his bright laughter as soon as each child’s first cry is heard.

But when Celegorm is born, Fëanor falls silent. He cups his son’s head in a trembling hand, touching the silver floss of his hair in tender disbelief. Celegorm’s dark eyes meet his and hold, and suddenly Fëanor is sobbing, gasping, curling into Nerdanel, clutching the baby that looks like his lost mother close, so close.

Celegorm laughs early, and often: a bright peal that makes his father blanch at first, it is so familiar yet barely remembered. But soon Fëanor coaxes that laugh out again and again, tossing and tickling and teasing until they are roaring together with tears in their eyes. It is that laugh which ties them together, when Celegorm proves to be no willing hand in the forge, no eager scholar, for all his bright mind. What might otherwise have sundered them is bound safely by Míriel’s laughter and Míriel’s hair.

As Celegorm’s skills in the wild become clear, Fëanor preens. So much of his own young life was spent wandering the back ends of Aman: here is a thing they share. They spend long hours diagramming the speech of beasts and birds, improving the efficiency of slings for throwing spears, determining how to build the hottest cooking fires with the least possible smoke. Oromë’s attention, when it comes, is not, at first, unwelcome. Fëanor sees Celegorm’s rides with the Hunt as his fair son’s due, an honor not unearned. Even as his heart hardens toward the other Powers, that tie remains.

But it cannot last. Melkor’s poison works too well. The Valar scheme against you, he whispers. They hold the Eldar in bond.

Celegorm will never forget the look in his father’s eyes when Fëanor spies Oromë’s marks on his chest: the blaze of shock, and disbelief, and then betrayal. “Eru gave you gifts,” his father hisses. “And you throw them away in servitude?" His rage and disappointment are incendiary; they fight for weeks, as Fëanor’s heresy teeters in desperate balance with his love. It is a war of words that wrenches both: Celegorm’s tongue was shaped to match his father’s. Every one of his stinging blows hits home.

Exile to Formenos is like a splash of water on quarreling hounds. The clarity of that sudden isolation reshapes their bond. Like sounding boards, Celegorm and Fëanor echo and magnify each other’s fury at perceived injustice: the line of Míriel set aside by the Valar; the First House made last. Celegorm stalks the woods with deadly bitterness. He of all Fëanor’s children loves most like his father -- flamingly, furiously, eternally. And he knows in his bones what his father has already lost: the silver hair, the silver laugh.

There is no path back from that cold forest.

Tirion will blame Maglor for the Oath, but it is Celegorm’s throat that bays in rage. In the torchlit square, he is his father’s pale shadow, gleaming.