This Time I Mean It by Novelfinwe  

Everything was twisting and turning, colors blending and blurring in front of his eyes as the world shifted. Nausea welled up in his chest, his ears were ringing painfully, his head was spinning.

He pressed his eyes shut instinctively, desperately, but nothing changed. Still the colors danced before his eyes. The light was painful, almost unbearable, as though Arien was trying to fix him with her gaze directly.

Pain sparked in his skull. He tried to move away but found that he could not. His body felt suspended, held down as though by an invisible might crushing all beneath it.

Where was he? What had he been doing?

He remembered pain. He remembered – nothing. As though a hole had been burned into his thoughts leaving only the aftermath of a raging fire. Burnt, empty, lifeless. And still the world spun, spun, spun in agonizing whirls of color.

Was he dead?

No, surely not. Surely.

Weightlessness continued for what felt like a moment, felt like a yén, felt like an age in the blink of an eye.

Where was he?

Then, he felt ground under his feet. Solid. Hard. He felt clothes touching his body – wrong, wrong, too soft, too fine. He felt light on his face. This too was wrong. Why was the light wrong?

His skin itched.

He opened his eyes – when had he closed them?

He saw colors. Red, red like anger, red like… he saw – no that could not be. Then he saw grey, grey like steel, a blade moving towards him.

Instinct, long honed in Beleriand, kicked in before he could process any of this, before he could make sense of it. He dodged, ducking under the sword before it came too close. (Haltingly, clumsily, as though the strike had never been aimed to hit its mark truly. Sloppy. Who was the wielder?)

Then he twirled around, using his momentum to deliver a devastating kick right into his assailant’s unprotected abdomen as their sword swung past through empty air. (Untrained. A beginner’s mistake.)

A wheeze. His target went flying, sword falling to the ground with a loud clatter, soon followed by another, as his attacker hit the floor hard and his helm flew off his head. (Did he not know how to secure it? Who would send such an untrained opponent to assail him?)

Deafening silence. His heart pumping loudly in his chest. His vision cleared, slowly.

He recognized the ground – familiar, so familiar it ached. The square before the palace in Tirion. Impossible.

He recognized the light – wrong, wrong, impossible as well. Laurelin’s golden hues casting gentle half-light into the square.

He saw shocked faces, all around him. One in particular, stunned, on the ground, for once devoid of anger in its bafflement.

His half-brother, lying in a heap, hand covering his abdomen as though…

A sword, abandoned on the floor. A helm, a distance or two away.

A brother, shocked into rare silence together with the bystanders looking at him in horror.

His father (impossible, impossible), his father hurrying down the steps.

(Where to? To whose side?)

A sinking feeling in his chest.

He felt leaden. He knew this scene. Knew it like the beginning of his nightmares. Knew it for it visited him always, always to laugh at him, torment him, show him where it all had started to go wrong, wrong, wrong.

This was not how it happened.

Panic, sudden in his chest, choking and squeezing. His father at Fëanáro’s side. The judging stares of the people like ice (ice, ice) in his veins.

What had he done?

Chapter End Notes

May the writing gods be kind and bestow upon me the ability to expand this.

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