Picking Up The Pieces by Grundy  

The Morning After

Tindomiel woke slowly, in a state of satisfaction she’d never experienced before. Of course, she was also a little sore in places she’d never been sore before – or generally aware of, really – but she felt like on balance it was an acceptable trade.

Maeglin was still asleep, and she didn’t feel any urge to wake him. Her husband.

Boy was that going to be fun to explain to their entire (mutual) extended family. Not to mention her big sister, who was doubtless going to laugh her behind off about Tindomiel being the one to complicate the family tree like this after all her comments over the years about the weirdness of it all.

She wasn’t sorry, even if she did see the considerable irony in her being the one to marry a cousin several generations removed. Nor would Anariel be the only one whose reaction she was going to have to deal with. She was pretty sure she would never hear the end of it from certain other people.

Her brothers, for example. They’ve ragged on Anariel for years about almost accidentally marrying Legolas before she’d known the do’s and don’ts of elven sex. Tindomiel was in no hurry to find out what they would have to say about their baby sister actually getting married to a guy she’d known for all of two days. Particularly when they found out her mate was the elf who had still regularly been at the center of debates between them and Anariel when she’d last seen the three of them…

She did have at least one minor point in her favor. She was pretty sure she’d known Maeglin longer than Aunt Irissë had known Uncle Eöl. In Grandmother’s telling, that hadn’t even been a whole day’s acquaintance. (And Grandmother should know, if even half the stories she’s heard about the two of them since arriving in Aman were accurate. She was betting there’d been a highly interesting confab in Doriath or Nan Elmoth at some point after Aunt Irissë and Uncle Eöl’s honeymoon. Unfortunately, the people most likely to tell her the truth about that were in Mandos or still in Ennor.) So at least she’s not the record holder for quickest marriage in the family.

Also, she needed to figure out what to call Maeglin’s parents now that Aunt and Uncle might be a little bit odd…

She briefly reached out to Anariel, thinking to share the joke, before she thought better of it and waved off before her sister could strengthen the connection to the point of picking out of her mind what had happened.

Her older siblings were all more than a bit overprotective, and she somehow doubted her being officially a grownup for the past thirty years would make any difference on that front – in their minds, the adverb was likely to be ‘technically’, not ‘officially’.

Contacting her sister out of the blue to announce she’d just shacked up with her favorite sword-maker might well lead to Anariel showing up sooner than expected, shovel in hand. (Ribcage hats were out of the question. Tindomiel would put her foot down on that. There was zero doubt in her mind that her mate was traumatized enough without adding any of the more graphic Scooby-style threats into the mix.) Thankfully, her brothers were unlikely to say anything horrifying by elven standards. Didn’t mean they’d be pleased about their new brother-in-law, though.

She did somewhat regret not being able to tell Arwen, but there was no way to tell her without going through Anariel. The only one she’d ever been able to reach from this side of the Sea was the sister she’d been made from.

Better to get the rest of the family on-side first. Later. After she’d enjoyed her honeymoon.

For elves, it was a fairly literal concept. Newlyweds didn’t bother with anyone but each other for the first month or so of their marriage as they bonded. And while the Noldor might play coy about it, the Lindar were perfectly frank about the fact that for most couples, there was generally a good deal of sex in that time.

At least, the Lindar of Ennor were. She wasn’t sure about the Lindar of Aman. It hadn’t really come up any of the times she’d been in Alqualondë. Nor had she ever been to any elven weddings, now that she stopped to think about it.

She was starting to feel like there had been some gaps in her education. But Lindar or Noldor, no one could reasonably expect her to be anywhere but where she was – wrapped up in her new husband.

She rather liked his looks. He took after his mother’s side in face – no one could miss he was a Nolofinwion. His hair was dark, of a shade that wouldn’t stand out among either the Noldor or the Lindar. (At least, it wouldn’t unless you noticed that his braids were an old Iathrin style that no one in Middle Earth had used by the late Third Age. She only recognized it because a few people in Neldoreth still wore it on occasion.) She also liked his shoulders, slightly broader than most elves.

She brushed a stray strand of hair back from his face. He looked younger and much more at ease asleep than she’d yet seen him while he was awake. Though she supposed it was possible that once he had recovered properly from his death – clearly he hadn’t yet, given he hadn’t even understood until yesterday that he had died in the first place – he might look that way all the time.

At some point, she was going to have some choice words for her grumpy uncle Namo about this whole mess. She had thought she’d already said all that needed to be said on the subject of leaving a fëa alone with no other contact for yeni after stumbling onto Uncle Butthead, but apparently she was going to have to repeat that lesson. Perhaps somewhat more forcefully this time…

Not his fault.

Maeglin opened one eye lazily, and rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him.

“Oh?” she asked archly, doing her best not to be distracted. “How is it not his fault? You were in his Halls. That means you were his responsibility. Yet somehow going on three Ages later, you were still completely isolated. That’s super unhealthy for elves and other normally living things.”

“I didn’t know he was Namo,” Maeglin said simply. “Had he insisted on speaking to me, or tried to bring me out of where I had hidden myself, it would only have made things worse.”

It wasn’t just words.

She wasn’t sure if he hadn’t tried to hide it or just didn’t know how to yet, but she could feel the gut-churning terror that had been his instant reaction to his one encounter with the Doomsman. It was the sort of thing that her Sunnydale-forged instincts would normally react to by running as fast and hard as she could to get away from, screaming her head off for Anariel while she was at it. That not being an option at the moment, she settled for burying her face in his neck and holding him tighter, letting the touch reassure them both.

She felt through their new-formed bond that Maeglin knew that she had no good answer and that she was disgruntled about it. She could feel his chuckle through her chest.

“Still telling him off at some point,” she grumbled. “He could have tried saying something rather than just counting on me doing the right thing without having any clue what was going on.”

“You did though,” Maeglin pointed out, planting a remarkably distracting kiss on the edge of her lips. “So clearly he was right to think you would.”

Beloved.

The word was almost shy, as though he worried she might reject it.

“Of course I worry,” he snorted. “Aman or not, your parents will hardly be thrilled to discover you’ve bound yourself to Maeglin Lomion, betrayer of Gondolin.”

“That’s quite the conclusion you’re jumping to there, buster,” she replied, poking his ribs for emphasis. “First, you don’t know my parents - yet. We’re going to fix that at some point in the near future, by the way. But if you did know them, you’d know their reaction to all this is more likely to be surprise at which daughter just announced her marriage to you. Make sure to look for the suppressed startles when I introduce you.”

That got the purest astonishment she’d ever felt from anyone, Anairon included.

Then again, maybe it was just that she didn’t feel Anairon’s astonishment as vividly…

“Secondly, I should double check that you’re really sure about going to Neldoreth. Because once we’re there, we’ll probably be there for a while. Thingol is going to be absolutely, positively, over the top ridiculous about this marriage.”

“Uncle Thingol? Why should he object?”

Maeglin paused, and she knew he was choosing his words carefully.

“Is it because you’re Noldorin? Is he that adamantly against Mother’s people even now?”

Tindomiel had to work not to laugh. She hadn’t realized until this moment that he wouldn’t have any context for her. But if he hadn’t known he was in the Halls, he would have been completely out of the gossip loop…

“Thingol isn’t going to object,” she told him. “He’s going to be ridiculous because he’ll be crowing about my excellent taste in choosing you rather than one of the Noldor like everyone was expecting but very politely not grumbling about out loud in my hearing.”

“I am also a prince of the Noldor,” Maeglin pointed out with a small smile.

“Hush,” she snorted. “If you know Thingol, you know perfectly well he’ll ignore that completely. As far as he’s concerned, I have just married one of his younger kin. This might actually catapult me, however briefly, to favorite granddaughter status until Anariel arrives.”

“Granddaughter?”

No, that was the purest astonishment - followed almost immediately by minor annoyance that she was finding such amusement in all this.

“My father is the son of Luthien’s granddaughter Elwing.”

Maeglin had no coherent response to the news that his mate was a descendant of Luthien. Seeing how startled he was, she decided that the other half of her father’s parentage was best left until later. They were already severely straining ‘one shocking thing at a time’ as it was.

When he could speak, he managed to splutter, “you might have told me when I said I was seeking my great-uncle!”

“I didn’t want to dump too much new information on you at once,” she said penitently. “We’re not supposed to overwhelm the newly returned – even the ones who returned the usual way. Which you very much did not. So not overwhelming you was really more important than usual, even if we didn’t know it at the time.”

“You’re enough to overwhelm nearly anyone,” he murmured.

“I’m enough to overwhelm anyone?” Tindomiel laughed. “I’ll have you know I’m the quiet, mild-mannered one of my parents’ children.”

“Indeed, lucky me,” Maeglin agreed, with a kiss that put an end to talking for a while.

---

When coherent speech and thought became possible again, Tindomiel discovered someone – almost definitely Anairon – had been kind enough to leave some small snacks discreetly at the edge of the clearing. Crackers, what must be the last of the cheese, nuts, and jam thumbprints were all stacked neatly on top of a folded sleep roll.

She smiled, although she was pretty sure she owed her best friend the mother of all apologies. Anairon was the one who did pretty much all the worrying for both of them under normal circumstances. He might well have had a nervous breakdown at the thought of how he was going to explain this to anyone.

She returned to the subject of Neldoreth as she and Maeglin gratefully nibbled at the eats.

“Is that truly where you wanted to go?” she asked. “We can still do that if you want, but if there’s somewhere else you would rather be now that you know you’re in Aman and I can probably tell you where anyone you want to see is…”

“It is less that I want to be in Neldoreth than that I need Aunt Melian’s aid,” Maeglin said slowly. “I… am not entirely well. My memory is damaged.”

He seemed almost ashamed to admit it.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened, but it might help?” Tindomiel offered hesitantly. “Was it Sauron or Morgoth that did it?”

Her new husband blushed.

“No,” he replied so quietly she almost missed it. “I did.”

Her confusion was plain enough that he needed no words to know he had to explain.

“When I was…taken,” he told her haltingly, “I knew he would want to know the way to the city. It was the only thing I had of any possible value to him. He did not need to know about our defenses, not when he had already proved he had more than enough to overwhelm us, regardless of what we might once have believed made us secure. He only needed to know where the city was. I suppose the protection of Ulmo my uncle trusted in was still sufficient at that point he could not discover it independently. But with a man of the city foolish enough to have wandered beyond the limits of that protection…”

He loathed himself for his stupidity, she realized, their new bond making it easy for her to pick out what he would not have put into words, not even to her. He was so ashamed of it that he couldn’t bring himself to speak it aloud. He had known the instant he was captured what the price of his overconfidence would be – the city, the people who looked to him, and the closest kin he had left.

“I tried to kill myself,” he continued miserably, “but too late. The orc commander made certain his prize would be delivered to his master alive, if not quite pristine. He knew what sort of reward there would be, and that was even without knowing I was not merely an elf of Ondolindë, but its prince.”

She could see Sauron laughing in his memory, absolutely delighted to have not just anyone, but Turgon’s nephew – Nolofinwë’s only grandson. She shut her mind against any further detail, certain she did not want to know. She’d overheard enough from Anariel about how torture worked not to want to see it happen to anyone she cared about. Especially not when she couldn’t do a damn thing to even the score. Knowing Sauron was already defeated didn’t help in the slightest. She suddenly got why Anariel was so cranky about not getting to fight him first…

She was also starting to understand her sister’s running list of reasons to hit Morgoth as hard as she could. Given that Tindomiel wasn’t a Slayer, she didn’t have much hope of doing serious damage, but she’d quite like to take a swing or two herself.

“Out of sheer desperation, I thought if I didn’t know where the city was, that might be enough to protect it. It wouldn’t matter if I was killed, just so long as the city was safe.”

Maeglin gulped.

“I walled the memories away, locked them up so tight I couldn’t reach them anymore. But I excised more than I meant to – I lost everything about my mother as well.”

And when he said ‘everything’, she realized with a sick feeling, he meant it. He couldn’t even call to mind her face or her voice anymore. He’d obliterated most of his childhood.

It was just as well there’d been no surprise Aunt Irissë so far. That would have gone remarkably badly. Tindomiel wasn’t sure if her mate’s mother could match Anariel for raw fury, but she wasn’t particularly keen to find out. And while some of them had long fuses to go with it, she had yet to meet a Finwion who didn’t have a temper.

“And you think Grandmother Melian will be able to help,” Tindomiel concluded.

She felt like keeping Maeglin talking about the major trauma of his previous life was not the best choice at the moment. He didn’t seem to be finding it cathartic in any way if the waves of self-loathing, shame, and fear were anything to judge by.

“Which is probably right,” she continued bracingly. “I’d go to her first, too, if I were you. Fortunately, we don’t have to go. We’ll get her to come to us.”

GRANDMOTHER!

Melian was there even before she’d finished the word, before Maeglin could ask what she meant.

“Are you well, my little jewelbird?”

Tindomiel had never heard such concern from her maiarin grandmother before, but then again, she had never called for her that urgently either. (And given that the birds would not have reported anything out of the ordinary...) She had the impression she was being looked over very carefully for any possible injury even as the area was being checked for threats on multiple levels.

Melian abruptly relaxed, beaming at them.

“Oh, you married, you darlings!” she exclaimed, before adding reproachfully, “Tinu, you worried me.”

“Sorry, but it’s important, Grandmother,” Tindomiel replied unrepentantly. “We need help.”

Melian waited expectantly, but her attention now focused on Maeglin.

“His memory,” Tindomiel added, hoping that prompt would be enough that he wouldn’t have to explain it a second time.

“Yes, you’ve snarled it up terribly, chickadee.”

Tindomiel’s train of thought came to an unscheduled emergency stop and nearly derailed at learning her mate was ‘chickadee’ the same way she was ‘jewelbird’.

Melian returned her attention to her granddaughter.

“But you should be able to fix this, darling – no need to yell for me as if something dreadful was happening.”

“I can?” Tindomiel blinked in astonishment.

There was a fleeting sense of reproach from Melian.

Of course you can.

Maybe that logic made sense if she thought of it as Maeglin having locked the memories. After all, she was the Key. And he’d said that himself, hadn’t he?

“If you are nervous, I can help,” Melian added. “But you are his mate. It would be better and probably more deftly done if you are the one to attend to it.”

You will know before I will if any damage is being done in the undoing, she added pointedly.

No pressure then, Tindomiel shot back acidly.

“I have every confidence in you, jewelbird,” Melian said.

“So do I,” Maeglin added warmly.

Tindomiel shot him a grateful look before she frowned and tentatively reached for the sides of his face. True, she was feeling her way more with her fëa than with her hands, but she was following instinct, much as she had the first time she’d tried using the power of the Key. And maybe that made it less weird for Maeglin.

Whatever he had done was effective enough to have held before both Sauron and Morgoth, and not broken even when Sauron had been possessing his body.

Oh, Mairon could have undone it at that point, Melian sniffed. No doubt he found it more amusing not to. My little sunbird should have hit him harder when she had the chance.

Tindomiel wasn’t sure when Anariel had gotten to hit him, because she was pretty sure her sister would have mentioned it. She also forbore to mention that Anariel would agree completely with Melian whenever she found out. And then need to find something else to hit until hitting Morgoth was an option…

There.

It wasn’t just that he’d locked away memories of his mother.  That he’d had to do, for she was tightly tied to his memories of coming to Gondolin in the first place. But he’d also protected the memories of his father to a large extent, preserving his childhood where Sauron couldn’t touch it, couldn’t use it against him. Though curiously, that had still left enough for him to remember Thingol and Melian…

He could only hide so much yet remain functional, Melian pointed out, speaking only to her granddaughter. Particularly if it touched on matters he discussed with people he knew in Ondolindë. But much of his early life was easy to hide – few in the Noldorin city wished to hear anything of it, and almost none that his parents were happy together. On the whole, it is surprisingly effective for being Sung in haste and desperation.

Tindomiel was far from certain about what she was doing, but she directed the power of the Key to the spot she’d found, and to another place where she could feel an unnatural tension, unlocking whatever they hid gently. And one more location as well. She did notice there was a slight hum to it that she could almost call music…

“Much better, yes, chickadee?” Melian said, ruffling Maeglin’s hair. “Now you are free to meet your mate with an open mind as is natural. I am very happy for you both. You should come to visit before long. I have missed my jewelbird these past seasons, and Elu is always so pleased to see you children joyful.”

Maeglin, too busy remembering his Ammë for the first time in three Ages, didn’t so much as nod.

“It won’t be right away,” Tindomiel said, stalling for time.

She had no idea what the plan was now, if there even was a plan.

“Perhaps after your parents have given their blessing?” Melian suggested. “That should be enough time, I think. If you do not need me any longer, I will go. I would not have appreciated a visitor when Elu and I were bonding.”

As usual with Melian, she matched action to word rapidly enough that she was gone before her grandchildren could manage a goodbye.