to all things housed in silence by queerofthedagger  

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Amrod

Valinor

The first time Amrod understands what his name means, his mother refuses to let him join the rest of his brothers on a hunting trip.

They have been planning it for weeks, the first long trip without anyone accompanying them. For all the needless caution of it—they are not going far; there is nothing that would harm them here—Amrod has been looking forward to this like to little else ever before.

“It is a feeling,” Nerdanel insists now, now after all the planning, now after all the excitement. Now that they are about to leave, everyone but Amrod already half out of the door.

To his mother’s credit, she looks as miserable about this as Amrod feels. To his mother’s misfortune, he is not feeling particularly charitable right now.

“Right. A feeling,” he repeats, bites his tongue. Cannot keep it in, and tilts his chin up in challenge. “Why only me, then? Why not all the others? Why not Minyarussa—why not, when all other times we are ever the same?”

She waits too long to reply, fixing her eyes everywhere but on him.

“If Atar were here, he would let me go,” Amrod says, the words making it out of his mouth without his leave.

Fëanáro is in Tirion, visiting Finwë, but still—it is true, Amrod knows. Knows, too, that it is a cruel thing to say, that his parents have been fighting whenever they are talking at all, he and Minyarussa always caught in the middle of it, no matter what Nerdanel and Fëanáro tell themselves.

Her expression hardens. She would never lose a bad word about Fëanáro to them, but her eyes speak volumes. In that moment, Amrod resents her more for her silence than he would if she were simply honest and cruel.

“Umbarto,” he says, watching her closely. She does not flinch. “A fine name you have chosen, then; if you feel the need to prove it, this is a poor attempt. I am sure dangerous, terrible Aman will make your point soon enough.”

He leaves without letting her speak. She does not stop him again.

And yet, the conversation lingers throughout their trip, trails in his wake like a shadow he cannot seem to shake. It almost makes him want to prove her right—wants to show her see, here, doomed you have named me, and doomed I am; curse us both if I am going to let that stop me.

It is far from the only time that they clash over this particular topic. The manner changes every once in a while, the things that trigger her overbearing protectiveness of him, that awaken the itch beneath his skin to run, run, run, until he can leave the gilded certainty of Valinor behind and plunge himself into lurking darkness. Until he can rise from it on the other side, and tell her once more, see, see, I am more than what you make me. The factual conflict of it always stays the same, though.

It is not that simple an escape, of course.

Tyelkormo is willing enough to take him and Minyarussa along into the forests. Maitimo ever lets them stay gladly, lets them do as they please, once they reach a certain age.

Still, still. His parents fight more and more often. Amrod knows that not rarely, it is about him; about Fëanáro’s stubborn insistence that there is nothing to justify why she should treat him so differently. About her refusal to fight this out, to insist, to explain herself.

She never does, not even to Amrod. Whenever they brush the topic, her eyes turn dark and her expression haunted, and he cannot bear the wretched love with which she looks at him.

She is only worried, Minyarussa says, whenever they speak of it. Amrod knows this, he does—and yet.

“Easy for you to say, with how she dotes on you, without ever treating you like a small child.”

Minyarussa never rises to the bait; it only ever serves to fan the flames of Amrod’s livid restlessness.

Exile

Unlike most of his brothers, Amrod jumps at the chance to relocate to Formenos. The land around it is wild, and the fortress has none of the stifling splendour underneath which Tirion heaves and moans.

Minyarussa is reluctant. Amrod hugs his mother goodbye and breathes easier with every step that he puts between them.

Those years are some of the happiest of his life. It matters not that their father alternates between absences and bursts of temper—Amrod hardly knows him different, even as his older brothers struggle with it. It matters not that he spends much time in a forge with Curufinwë, learning how to forge weapons, now.

He will never have their father’s skill, will never come close to Curufinwë’s or Minyarussa’s position of the most beloved sons, but he knows his way around an anvil and hammer, and enjoys the comfortable routine of it well enough.

In between, they roam the forests, spend time among their people, wrestle and fight. He wonders if this is how the rest of their brothers grew up. Wonders if he should envy them, or if that comes too close to admitting that something has irreparably changed; that they are all hurling towards something that, even within the blissful peace of Aman, may yet turn the name his mother graced him with into something more than a poor and uneasy joke.

The answer comes in darkness and dread. Comes and finds him cowering in a supply closet of a wash kitchen, Makalaurë holding him fast like iron.

Amrod tries to move once, to follow Maitimo when he goes to check on what is happening outside. Makalaurë starts humming, low, disharmonious notes that crawl beneath Amrod’s skin, making him stay where he is.

He glares at Makalaurë when he is finally released, but it moves his brother not at all. It is no surprise; is no resentment that can last, when they step into Formenos’ courtyard and find it reduced to rubble.

Even then, Amrod does not grasp the seriousness of it all. Looking back on it later, he thinks none of them do. There is fear, and uncertainty, and an instinctive, driving urge to stick together as closely as possible, but—

But. Truth be told, there is also a thrill sitting in the back of his neck, one that he finds mirrored in the silver of Tyelkormo’s eyes, shining unnaturally in the darkness. There is a drive in them all, as they make for Tirion as quickly as they can—a change, a chance, an upheaval. Amrod urges his horse forward on unsteady ground and hides his wide grin in the blanket of unfamiliar darkness.

The Oath is like a current, and he lets it sweep him along. Lets the torchlight and the resonating voice of his father wrap around him, feels his brothers steady to his sides. Thinks of Finwë, ever a source of joy and comfort, and lifts his sword, certain, so very certain, up high beside Fëanáro’s own.

He sees Minyarussa talk to their mother and, for the first time since darkness raced across the land, something almost like doubt settles around his shoulders.

He knows what she would say. Cannot even blame her, not now, not here. And yet.

He cannot stay. Not for her. He does not know what he would do if Minyarussa did; does not know how to live with the fact that Minyarussa never would. Not, that is, if Amrod leaves.

They do not speak of it, not before they have washed blood off their hands and held each other’s hair, heaving over swaying buckets on a furious ship, both still seeing and not talking of the lifeless eyes of Elves they had once spent their summers with.

Do you hate me for it? Amrod wants to ask. Wants to make Minyarussa look at him, truly look at him; ask if he thinks the name fitting now, or if perhaps he thinks it should have been his, after all.

They do not speak, but the journey is long enough that by the time Middle-earth’s shores come into sight, Amrod feels his own selfishness like a weight upon his shoulders. Feels, when he is truly honest with himself, that perhaps, whatever is about to happen, cannot possibly be worth the expression Amras seems to wear permanently, now.

Amrod wakes to smoke and heat and a quickly fading dream of his mother calling his name. Movement hurts. Panic races through him faster than any rational thought.

The boats, he thinks, frantic. It is burning; it is all wood, and it is burning.

He cannot see. The flames are too bright and the smoke is too thick, and he has no sense of direction, remembers not where it goes onto the deck and where deeper into the ship.

Doomed, he hears his mother in the back of his mind. For once, for the first time in his life, he feels like joining her in her weeping.

He coughs instead. Stumbles forward blindly, leans into the heat; thinks, hysterically, that surely, surely some of his father’s love for fire should have rubbed off on him, only a little, even—just enough to withstand the heat of a forge and the heat of a forest fire, eager to eat him alive.

He cannot breathe. The room sways. He remembers teasing Amras for his seasickness as Ossë raged against them. Remembers Amras’ blank expression, the resentment he tried and failed to hide at having been made to be here.

Amrod cannot leave him to it, cannot—

He coughs, and it gets more smoke into his lungs. It is bad enough to bring him to his knees, and he falls, fear, real fear, finally sweeping through him.

The movement makes his robes catch fire, makes sparks bury into his braids.

Amrod screams, then. He cannot say why he has not before, why he has not called for help, but he does, now—screams and screams and screams as the heat closes in on him and his lungs heave; as his skin starts to blister and the pain tears through him and he thinks—

If only he had listened. If only, if only, if only—

Early Beleriand

He is not sure how long he drifts in and out of consciousness.

He learns at some point that it was his own family that had set fire to the boats. Learns that it was his father who ordered it. Learns that Maedhros alone had stood aside, and thinks not of how that had been for Findekáno’s sake.

He learns that his father is dead. Finds it fitting in a deeply ironic kind of way that Fëanor died in flames, where Amrod did not.

He learns that Maedhros has been captured. That no one is doing anything to free him.

Amrod learns that his mother had been right; doomed to burn. Doomed not to trust any of his family, not any of those who remain, having punished the one who had, at least, been honest with him from the start.

He heals slowly. The healers are inexperienced with injuries such as these, Celegorm says, his voice level. Amrod does not look at him.

Maglor sings for him, sometimes, and out of all of them, Amrod is furious with him the least.

It is no forgiveness; it is just that Maglor so obviously punishes himself already, each day that he is cursed to wear their father’s crown, cursed to convince himself that letting Maedhros rot in Morgoth’s dungeons is the right thing to do.

There is nothing Amrod could possibly say to him that would amount to anything worse than what he is already doing to himself.

He does, once, regardless. Maglor asks, “Do you think it is the right choice? To leave him there?”

Amrod stays silent for a long time, eyes fixed on where Amras is sorting through bandages.

When it becomes clear that Maglor will not leave without an answer, Amrod turns his head to look at him. Speaking still pulls at the scars covering one half of his face, but he makes the effort—never let it be said that he does not give everything for his dear, dear brothers.

“You have already proven that we will do anything, anything at all, even to our own, if we think it the wiser choice. I do not see how this is any different from any other decision you have made so far, Makalaurë.”

He hears the sharp intake of breath, the slamming door as Amras leaves.

Maglor says naught and does not ask again.

He does keep visiting, though, and really, Amrod thinks—almost, almost, almost without bitterness—it is the small things that matter, is it not?

He heals slowly. Eventually, the sharp, urgent guilt his brothers carry wears off, other things more important; supplies for their people, establishing camps and structures. The quarrels among themselves that now never seem to be far.

In some ways, it gets easier. He heals slowly, but he does. Amras rarely leaves his side, and for all the harsh and ugly things that now lie between them, nothing could ever, truly, come between them.

One night, long after they arrived, Amrod hugs him close. It barely hurts anymore.

“We will be alright,” he vows, and exhales at the hitch in Amras’ breath. “We will be, I am sure of it.”

Neither of them believes it, but then, perhaps, that does not matter at all.

Maedhros ’ Abdication

By the time Findekáno returns Maedhros to them, Amrod is as recovered as he can hope to be.

It has been long years.

For the most part, he is fine now; can move with little hindrance, his skin pulling uncomfortably only with certain movements. He is short of breath faster than his brothers. He still cannot bear to have a fire going in his rooms, but he tolerates them outside.

Tolerates half of his brothers again, too, which is also about as good as it is going to get. He has stopped mourning for what he used to have in Celegorm.

And so, Maedhros returns. Amrod looks at him and wonders if Maedhros will ever come close to forgiving them, too—not for their actions, this time, but the lack thereof.

Maedhros returns, and Amrod recognises himself in the horror twisted on the white sheets.

Back in Valinor, they have never been particularly close. Maedhros cared for him, the way he cared for all his brothers. Amrod loved him, the way he loved all his brothers. But there never seemed very much to be shared between them specifically, and so they shared space and time, and little else.

It is different, now. Amrod is drawn to the sick room in the Nolofinwëan camp, over and over, even as their brothers avoid it as much as they can. The guilt of its sight, the heavy air, the stares of the healers and Fingon, always Fingon, sketching the guilt too sharp for them to bear. Amrod, after all, is familiar with their cowardice.

Perhaps Amrod feels less responsible. Perhaps it is just more of a novelty to him, this feeling of bearing responsibility for the misery of one of their own.

Or, perhaps it is simply the feeling of recognising another ruined thing. It matters not. Where at first he can do little more than stay out of the way, his presence eventually, turns useful.

He knows how to change bandages, how to care for hair that has been ruined beyond help. How to feed someone who can barely pay attention, how to talk low and soothing.

The healers and Fingon alike never complain about his being there either, not like they do with his brothers. He hears them talk, once—of how it feels not like betrayal, to help Maedhros. Of how he has paid his due and ten times over, for what was done to them.

Amrod thinks it must be much the same with him. It is refreshing, the lack of pity and guilt, enough so that he cares little for his agreement or disagreement with the logic of it.

And so, he stays. And so, once Maedhros wakes, and sees him, and weeps, they finally find that shared understanding they have been lacking, before now.

“Would that it were not over something like this,” Maedhros says once, turning Amrod’s hand with its gnarled skin and two useless fingers in his one, remaining own. “And yet I am glad that you understand.”

Amrod hums in agreement, and does not think of the shock of water tearing him to consciousness without mercy; about salt seeping into all his wounds like agony come alive; about strong, unyielding arms around him, dragging him along, forcing him to breathe, no matter how desperately he wanted to sink.

“Ay,” he says, squeezes Maedhros’ hand. “So am I.”

Perhaps, then, he should have seen the betrayal coming. He did not the first time, and clearly, he still has not learnt.

“I know you do not understand—“ Maedhros starts, and he stands immovable, unflinching.

He reminds Amrod so much of their mother, then, he wants to throw something hard and heavy and unforgiving.

“It is no matter of understanding,” he spits instead, and by then it has been long months since either of them had to stay in a sick bed, but there is still something that feels fundamentally wrong about fighting, now. “It is—after all that we have lost already, how can you give any more of it away? Has it not been enough—“

“What good is the kingship to us, in the wake of fire and captivity?”

Amrod snaps his mouth shut. He has no argument for this, has no reason, really, why the announcement of Maedhros’ abdication rolls through him like a blaze.

“If you think it so strategically useful, you would have told us in advance,” he says regardless because—because it is not about the kingship, truly, Maedhros is right. It is the fact that Amrod had thought—

“If I had told any of you beforehand, no strategic value would have stopped any of you except for perhaps Carnistir and Amras from doing everything in your power to change my mind. You, out of all of us, should know how little strategic thinking factors into any of our brothers’ decisions, half the time.”

That, at last, hits its mark like a punch. Amrod bites his tongue until it hurts, and leaves Maedhros’ chambers without another word.

The Long Peace

By the time he and Amras settle in the south-east, he has mostly forgiven Maedhros. It is less understanding and more the thought that, ultimately, it makes no difference who wears the crown among a clan of people as doomed as they all are, but, well. Forgiveness is forgiveness.

He is still glad for the distance between himself and the rest of his brothers. The southern forests welcome him and Amras, and they make easy acquaintanceship with the Elves who live there, none of them as shocked at Amrod’s scars as so many of their own people still were, in Mithrim.

The Elves in Beleriand, they learn, are no strangers to torment and injury. It could be a hopeless thought, just one more in an overall hopeless land. Amrod knows that for Amras, it is so.

But he finds comfort in it; a sense of belonging that he had thought lost, waking up in a dim, stuffy healing tent with all his brothers around him, looking like they will never be able to meet his eyes again without horror sketched into the lines of their faces.

They spend long, peaceful years there.

They meet Men when they come across the mountains, who live in their lands and mingle with their people. Often, Amrod marvels at them, their short lifespans, their bristling, impervious hope against all odds.

They thrive, in that time, finally free of familial expectations and duty. Maedhros leaves them be, for the most part, except for the occasional family reunion.

So, of course, Amrod should have known that it would not last.

The Dagor Bragollach

The fire does not reach them, but Amrod wakes from the smoke, sweat-soaked and panicked.

Amras is there, but it helps only a little.

Any Orcs that make it down south to them meet a quick end on Amrod’s blade. He still feels it like a failure, their decision not to go up north to join the fight.

“It will reach us on its own in time,” Amras says, the one time they debate it. “What use, then, to run towards it?”

Amrod knows it is not even solely for his sake—Amras, more than he, has little interest in Beleriand’s battles.

And so, they wait. They take in any of the refugees coming down south that are not admitted into Doriath or move on west to Nargothrond. They hunt and restock their stores. They wait on word from their brothers, even after everything, still breathing easier with every carrion bird that tells of another one of them still drawing breath.

Too many do not. It takes a full week for news of Caranthir, and then it is in the flesh, he and a good remnant of his people reaching Amon Ereb in the early hours of dawn.

Amrod orders open the gates and does not think of the letter in his rooms, telling him of Aegnor and Angrod being devoured by flames.

Caranthir stays with them, and for the most part, it is good.

He has never been prone to sentimentality, and he approaches their cohabitation with the same practicality that he approaches everything else with.

Back in Mithrim, he had apologised to Amrod once. When Amrod had held him forgiven, he had considered the matter laid to rest.

It is not that simple, of course, but Amrod prefers it, in truth, over the refusal to admit any fault that Curufin still insists on, or the endless self-flagellation that Amras took years to come out of.

And yet still, still. Everything is falling apart, one piece at a time. Most of their brothers losing their own dwellings to Morgoth is simply the most recent symptom of it.

Umbarto, she had named him. Sometimes he wishes that he could tell her how right she had been, after all; that he could curse her for putting this on him. That he could apologise, weep into her skirts like a small child, for never heeding her at all before it was long too late.

The Nirnaeth Arnoediad

When Maedhros calls for them, Amrod is ready.

He knows that Amras is reluctant. That he, too, thinks that there is no hope to be found in this land, no matter how desperately they want to close their eyes to the fact.

But—but.

Doomed Amrod may have been from the start, may they all be, but he will not sit on his hill and wait for the fire to take him. Will not kneel and stick out his neck, waiting like a lamb for its slaughter.

They may not die today, may not even die tomorrow. And so, they may yet take down as many of Morgoth’s brood as they can—if Maedhros wants to tie the undertaking yet to hope he has carved out for himself, well. Who is Amrod to deny him, really?

But then, perhaps, he should have.

Two weeks—of debating hope, of final preparations, of final strategy, of the battle itself. Two weeks it takes, until they are back on Amon Ereb, this time all their brothers with them.

This time, with everything lost, more than he could have feared even in his most despairing moments.

“We should not have fought,” he says to Maglor, during one of those first nights.

He sees Maglor rarely, even now. Maedhros seldom leaves his rooms, and Maglor ever stays by his side—as if this, now, will be able to make up for his lack of doing so in Mithrim, before and after the capture.

“We had to,” Maglor says. They sit in the kitchen, the light low, a pot boiling on the stove. Maglor is sharpening a knife with quick, certain strokes of the wet stone. He hums to it as he does, imbuing it with whatever power his voice lends it. “We had no choice.”

It takes Amrod a moment to understand what Maglor is referring to.

“The Oath? Really, Makalaurë? We have easily ignored it for centuries before. We could have put it off a little longer, until we were at full strength, had perhaps recruited a few more allies. Rooted out those that were no allies at all.”

Maglor looks up at him with sharp, haunted eyes. “It drives us all, followed by Námo’s Doom. You, out of all of us, should know that.”

It is meant to anger, Amrod knows; ever has Maglor been skilled at making his words slide past any armour, slip past all defences.

It is a little startling, in fact, to note that it no longer quite works on Amrod.

He leans across the table, pins Maglor with a look. “Is that what you tell yourself? That it makes you do whatever it is you do? That there is no choice? That that is why you all set fire to the boats, and why we lose battle after battle, why we—”

Maglor slams the knife into the table with such force, the blade shatters. Neither of them flinches, and Maglor stares at him, teeth bared. “Do not deny that you feel it, too, Atyarussa; it drives us all, and it will drive us all to our end. In fact, if you cared to look, you could see that for Maedhros, it already has.”

He leaves the kitchen with quick, elegant strides, leaving Amrod to stare after him.

“It feels different for all of us, I think,” Caranthir says, making Amrod jump. He had not noticed him enter the kitchen from the other side. “It is a contract, one we are bound to. Any contract can be broken; any contract can be a death sentence.”

He takes the pot off the stove and leaves it there, unopened. Touches Amrod’s shoulder briefly as if in comfort, and then is gone again.

The words still do not resonate with Amrod, not in the way Caranthir meant, perhaps. Amrod feels no loyalty, no obligation. It was no Oath driving his father and his brothers, when they set the boats ablaze.

It is not nothing, he knows. It is just that—well. In the end, much like anything else, what does it matter? They will not win. They will not succeed. So what, then, is the point in letting yet another thing wield any power over them?

There is only rage and inevitability. Amrod does not understand the urge to deny either, to let it take away those last pieces of his own will that he still has left, as they hurl toward their end.

Prelude to Doriath

Where, in the first few weeks after their defeat he had understood Maedhros’ absence, his patience grows shorter with it as the seasons turn.

His brother emerges eventually, but it is no longer his brother. Where captivity and torture could not break him, he now sits hollow-eyed and silent. Where learning how to continue existence with a lack of hand, a lack of hope, and continuous pain had not cowed him, he now lets Celegorm take the reins, lets him talk, lets him lead.

Some days, he looks almost grateful for it. Those are the worst; those, Amrod finds himself staring at him with revulsion in his gut that, until then, he had never once felt for Maedhros alone, out of all his brothers. 

So, when Celegorm calls them together—

It is not that Amrod is eager to attack Doriath. That he thinks a success might yet save them. But—

But. A success might rattle Maedhros back to life. Eru, the mere plan might finally get through to him, might shock him back from whatever place inside his mind he has retreated to. Even a defeat might, if they make it out of such a thing alive.

And what does it matter, in the end, what the means for it are? There is only one end awaiting them, whether they fight for victory or to shed the blood of kin; Amrod, unlike the rest of them, has accepted this fact long ago.

And so, when Amras asks, he agrees. And so, when Celegorm calls, they follow.

Inevitable, step after step, ever towards their doom.

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