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The Fated

Summary:

The birth of the Ambarussa is not exactly a happy one.

Notes:

Ages here are--Maedhros (51), Maglor (45), Fingon (35), Celegorm (30), Caranthir (17), Curufin (5)
Much of the bones of this story are owed to Dawn Felagund's amazing work in "Another Man's Cage."

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Chapter Text

The front door of the house hangs, half-torn, from its hinges.

Only one man made the door, and only one man could—and would dare to—destroy it. Maitimo pauses with a hand half-raised, a name half on his lips, and runs inside.

The house is in the aftermath of an uproar. His brothers are scattered around the rooms like broken crockery.

And at the head of the long table, her head in her hands, her swollen belly resting almost on her knees, Amil is sobbing.

He goes to her first. It is necessity, if not also a selfish instinct of childhood. He kneels beside her and she leans into his arms, their hair mingling copper and copper.

Maitimo would ask if she is hurt, but that would be a betrayal of another kind.

Atarinkë sends up a plaintive wail, and Amil’s hand closes around his wrist. “Go to him. Please?”

He is ashamed that she even had to ask, that he permitted himself to choose wrongly—yet again—between duties. He finds Atarinkë huddled like a gremlin—gremlins are the stuff of Makalaurë’s ghost stories, and the vivid image has lasted—in the corner of the kitchen. There is porridge on Atarinkë’s wobbling chin. Maitimo picks him up, settles him on his hip, and does his best not to wince when Atarinkë winds small hard fists in his braids and pulls.

“Where is Makalaurë, winimo?” he asks softly. It takes all the strength he has in his bones not to shout, to tremble, to curse Makalaurë for being anywhere but here, when needed—even though it was he, the eldest, who whiled away too many hours around a wine-soaked fire as his family crumbled like embers in a blaze. “Where is Káno?”

Atarinkë has stopped crying. He stares with piercing eyes, the same shade of grey as Atar’s, and Maitimo finds that he cannot hold his smallest brother’s gaze for long.

Carnistir next, then. Carnistir always bears the brunt of family strife visibly: now, he is face-down on the woven rug before the hearth, his fists bunched in it, slamming his forehead against its folds. Maitimo bites his lips and reaches down with his free hand, smoothing back Carnistir’s rough hair.

“Moryo…”

“Do not call me that!”

Carnistir is only seventeen. He still looks like a child, and will not look much different for several years. His face is as red as it was when Amil named him for it, and his eyes are shiny with tears. “Carnistir,” Maitimo amends. His scalp aches; sometimes he wonders if Atarinkë hates him, for he is much more punishing in his affections than any of the preceding three. “Carnistir, I need to find Káno.”

Carnistir pushes himself up. There is no bruise forming on his square forehead; Maitimo is grateful for that. “Káno went to look for you. He took Tyelko.”

“When?”

Atarinkë starts to wail again. Maitimo can bear it no longer—he reaches up and untangles Atarinkë’s talons before he takes a whole braid with him. He says nothing, because the alternative is saying, Káno is a fool for leaving, he should have stayed with all of you, and looked after Amil.

Káno means well. His fatal flaw is that he does not have an eldest’s instincts, and that, in turn, is not his fault.

It is yours.

With one hand, Maitimo straightens the rug. There is nothing else astray here—nothing broken. Carnistir trails him into the kitchen, where porridge is still bubbling (burning) on the enormous stove. Porridge for supper? But of course—Amil is too weary to do anything else, and Atar, apparently, too angry—

And at times like this, the few servants they keep are sent away.

Atar was not angry in the morning, when Maitimo rode away for a rare day of escape and friendship. He was almost merry, his eyes snapping with their hidden depths of fire, his hands turning a gem over and over in his hands as he dreamt of its setting.

You cannot leave them, even for a day. You know this.

There are footsteps in the hall. In another moment, the footsteps reveal their source to be Makalaurë, who bursts in with his hair all wild, and his eyes, somehow wilder still.

“Where in all of Aman were you?”

Maitimo grits down the retort that springs to his lips—where were you? Carnistir buries his face in the edge of Maitimo’s tunic, and Atarinkë kicks down at his head. “I am here now,” Maitimo answers. “Will you take them and put them to bed, so that I may go and sit with Amil?”

Makalaurë feels too much himself to be any comfort to Amil. He will cry if she cries—this is likely why he ran away on a fool’s errand.

To the contrary, Maitimo is sometimes certain that he feels almost nothing at all.

“Do not put them to bed,” comes Amil’s voice from the doorway behind Makalaurë. “We are going to Tirion.”

They all gape at her, surprised. Maitimo is no less surprised than any of them. To go to Tirion—all of them—without Atar, or at least without his blessing?

“Makalaurë,” Amil says, with a smile that does not quite reach her red-rimmed eyes, “Will you call Tyelko in from the yard—without Huan, if you please—and pack a small bundle of clothing for each of your brothers?” She steps forward, reaching for Atarinkë, who is once again tearing at Maitimo’s hair. “I’ll take him.”

“Amil,” Maitimo protests. “I don’t mind.”

“I would like something to hold,” she says firmly—and awfully. Atarinkë goes to her willingly. Maitimo tries to swallow down whatever dread thing has lodged in his throat.

Makalure takes Carnistir by the hand and half-drags him out. In a moment, they hear him calling for Tyelko, his musical voice frayed with worry.

Amil smooths Atarinkë’s cheek with a finger. She looks out the window towards the west. “I have had dreams, of late.”

“Dreams?” Maitimo’s hands are useless; he keeps twisting and untwisting them together. He clenches his fingers over the back of a chair instead. “What manner of dreams?”

“We must reconcile,” Amil breathes. “We cannot stay out here on the edge forever. Not without grievous cost.” She turns back and looks at him, at her eldest son, with a sad smile playing on her lips. “Your father did not like these dreams. He swears I am manipulating him into feigning subservience to…”

“The Valar?”

“And to your half-kin. Yes. We exchanged some ugly words. I said that he is not the one walking around with three fëa inside of him, so he should perhaps consider that I am wiser, for once.”

You are always wiser. Maitimo does not say it aloud. “You asked him to go to Tirion?”

“They’ll be born early,” Amil says. “Your brothers. Perhaps I should have told him that; perhaps it would made a difference. But last night it came to me with certainty: I shall have these children in Tirion, if I wish to live. If I wish them to live.”

Atarinkë whimpers. Maitimo feels as if a cold blast—from whence he knows not—has rippled through the windowpanes and struck him full across the face. “You fear…death?”

“I fear many things, Maitimo.” It is not like Amil to speak so, and even she must realize this, for she shakes herself, and Atarinkë with her. “I told your father I would go to Tirion, and he told me he would rather us all go to the Void. I told him not to wait on us.” She puffs out a breath, looking vexed as she does when clay will not obey her.

Maitimo wishes it were so simple.  

“If they are to be born early”—and here he must trust Amil’s judgment over his own, for Amil is the one who has birthed five children and is about to birth two more, all over the span of only fifty-one years—“Do you think you can travel by horseback safely?”

“It will not be comfortable,” Amil agrees. “But I am safe yet.” She should be; it has only been eleven months. She ought to have another.

“You’ll ride with me.”

“You sound like your father when you speak in that tone,” she says. Her smile has slipped away. Maitimo doubts he could even find its pieces. “Only much kinder.”

Makalaurë tumbles downstairs with Tyelko and Carnistir in tow. Huan is with them after all, tracking mud across the floorboards. Amil clucks her tongue at him, but offers no rebuke to Tyelko.

“There is bread in the cupboard,” she says. “If you have not eaten, eat. Maitimo and I shall be ready in a moment.”

 

Here is a memory he shall carry with him long afterwards: Amil leaning against him on the back of the plough-horse, her hands gripping his, pain in the stiffness of her spine. The horse is not their swiftest, but the one who could best carry his weight and hers without uneasiness. Their lighter steeds bear Makalaurë and Atarinkë, Tyelko with Carnistir clinging to his waist.  

Forgive us, Maitimo thinks, and knows not to whom he prays. He holds the reins in one hand and keeps the other around her, around the twins.

Forgive him.

 

Telperion is beaming on Tirion when they arrive, and it is just as well. Fewer eyes are watchful in the evening. The rumors of Fëanorian unruliness will spread, as they always do, but for now Maitimo is plainly, painfully grateful for quiet streets through which they may ride without interruption.

At the palace gates, the guards bow and stand aside. Whatever they may think of the High Prince’s wife and sons in dusty travel clothes, whatever they may think of the propriety of having more children when the last youngest is still almost a babe, they never show it on their faces.

The herald steps from the shadow, bright in Finwë’s livery.

“You are most welcome and well-met, Lady Nerdanel,” he cries. “And my lords. Your chambers are always held open, but the King and Queen are gone from here.”

“Gone?” Amil’s voice does not shake, but Maitimo is close enough to know that her shoulders fall, as if the stiffness he felt before was all her own pretense of strength. “Thither have they gone?”

“To Alqualondë, with my lord Arafinwë and his family.” The herald seems to sense that something is amiss, and adds, with another bow, “They shall return within a week.”

“We do not have that kind of time,” Amil murmurs, so low that Maitimo imagines he is the only one who hears it. She speaks to the herald again. “Thank you, we may yet return. For now, we call upon our other kin.”

“Our other—” Maitimo begins, but Amil has taken the reins from him and pulled round the plough-horse’s head.

“I would see Anairë,” she says. “Come, Makalaurë. Come, Tyelkormo.”

Anairë and Amil are old friends, a friendship unsullied by their husbands’ resentment. Still, Maitimo does not want to imagine the increase in Atar’s wrath if he returns to find that they have taken refuge in Ñolofinwë’s house.

If, taunts a small voice within, the same that wishes to sling retorts at Makalaurë, his closest ally, the same that dogs his steps with criticism even harsher than that which Atar would give. If he returns at all.

 

Ñolofinwë’s house is lesser than the palace, but not by much. In many ways (so the whispers go), Ñolofinwë plays the role of High Prince better than Fëanáro.

If Maitimo has heard the whispers, Atar has heard them too. He shuts his eyes briefly, but no more prayers come.

The guards at Ñolofinwë’s gates are not quite so smooth-voiced, so welcoming. Still, they bow, and still, they stand aside.

Maitimo is grateful to see Findekáno dashing down the front steps. Findekáno is farther from his majority than Makalaurë is from his, but there is something indelibly trustworthy about Ñolofinwë’s eldest. His blue eyes are steady with peace; Maitimo could trust him with much.

Does trust him with much.

“Aunt Nerdanel!” Findekáno cries, and his gaze crosses all his cousins to rest on Maitimo with a warm smile. “Russandol. How came you here? Is all well?”

“Forgive us for intruding, nephew,” Amil answers. “I come to fall upon your mother’s kindness.”

Maitimo knows without looking that his brothers all sit up a little straighter at that, silently protesting the idea that any son of Fëanáro must fall upon the grace of another being, kin or half-kin or no. He himself is too tired to share such familial pride.

That, and Atar is gone. Atar is the reason they are at the mercy of Tirion.

“I shall tell her at once that you have arrived,” Findekáno says, with eager friendliness. He looks for all the world as if they are only paying a social call, rather than arriving in obvious desperation.

“Thank you,” Amil says. Her voice does tremble a bit, this time.

Maitimo dismounts and holds out his arms to guide Amil down. She places her hands on his wrists, swings her legs over the saddle, and faints.