The Mirror Crack'd by AdmirableMonster  

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Beneath the Surface

LAST TIME on the Mirror Crack'd: Anniavas performed a successful surgery, and Fingon kept Maedhros from attacking him.

THIS TIME on the Mirror Crack'd: Fingon has a very trying day, and Dernodhos takes Anniavas to the hot springs.

No major chapter warnings, other than subtle manifestations of PTSD; I would only say tread cautiously if you're sensitive to the kinds of warped thinking that can arise from trauma.

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Fingon hated seeing Russandol like this, face almost as white as the scars that still marked it, chest bare but for the bloody bandages fixed tightly around his shoulder.  But at least he was awake—somber and drawn, as always, but alert.  No longer lost in whatever nightmare the touch of a knife had woken in him.

“Hey.”  Fingon took the chair that Gúlgalar had had the presence of mind to leave at the bedside, and sat in it, legs apart, leaning forward as if he were entirely at ease.  It wasn’t altogether hard; Russandol’s presence, even clouded, shone brilliant in his vision, like a miniature Laurelin.  Yes, Fingon was besotted.  At least some things were easier here than in Valinor.

“Hey.” Fingon knew some of the brothers thought Maedhros’s face had lost its expressivity, but they were wrong.  It was just more subtle now—that twitch of the corner of a mouth was the same as Maitimo’s awkward, hopeful smile had been.  Fingon took Russandol’s hand and squeezed hard, reassuring himself and his husband at the same time.  The smile faded, and Russandol looked away, but he held on, as if to a lifeline.  “Is he hurt?”

“Anniavas, you mean?”

Tension sculpted the lines of Russandol’s neck and shoulders into something fearsome.  “Yes.”

“He’s fine.  He was a little shaken.  You didn’t hurt him.”

“Good.” His shoulders relaxed a little.  “What the fuck was that.”

“You know what that was, Russo.”

Russandol shook his head, movements jerky.  “I took his knife.  I wasn’t going to stop him.  I was going to kill him.”

“You weren’t yourself, love.”  Fingon wanted to pull him into a bear hug, but he was injured and not always capable of that much physical contact.  He contented himself with another firm hand squeeze.  “That fragment Anniavas removed was some kind of black artifact.”

Russandol looked away, his jaw tightening.  He took his hand away to run it across the scarred end of his stump.  “Maybe,” he said shortly, but he was staring off into the distance as if he wasn’t seeing Fingon at all.  

“In any case, you didn’t kill him,” Fingon pointed out, changing tactics.  “You didn’t hurt him at all.  He’s fine.  When you’re feeling better, maybe you should talk to him.”

He knew this wouldn’t solve anything, not now.  His husband was still sick and shaking with loss of blood and with what had happened.  And what had nearly happened.  The healers had cleaned and bound the injury, yes, but Russandol had dark memories he would need to wade through.

“I’ll be waiting on the other side,” Fingon whispered.  “I will always be here for you, Russo.”

Stars, Russandol looked weary, but he nodded.  “Maybe that’s all this is,” he agreed, in that soft, tired voice that meant he could not look beyond the black gates of Angband to see the present.  “I don’t know.  I hope so.”

“Let me be thy hope, if thou canst find none.”

Slowly, Russandol nodded, then turned sideways and laid his head awkwardly on Fingon’s shoulder.  “Always, Finno.  Always, until the breaking of the world.”

Then he let Fingon stroke his hair for a while, tuck him into bed, and kiss him on the forehead, which was a relief.  It had been months before he could bear such intimacies when he had returned from Angband, and some part of Fingon had feared this experience would send him so far back it would be months again.  But it did not seem so—this episode had been violent but contained, at least. Two steps forward, one step back, Fingon told himself as he got up and went to the door.   

Two steps forward out the door took him into the middle of a shouting match between Maglor and Celegorm.

“—can’t just act like you’re in charge!”

“No one else has done a fucking thing!”

Fingon shut the door hastily, to keep Russandol from hearing and deciding that he needed to get up.  Then he shoved his way in between the two of them, for all as if they were brawling cousins back in Valinor, putting a particularly deadly elbow into Celegorm’s left lower rib—a tidbit Aredhel had graced him with—and giving Maglor a dead-eyed stare.  “You’re going to wake up Maedhros,” he said.  “What the hell are you two doing?”

Maglor’s mouth twisted, an expression that would have made Fingon flinch before Beleriand with the way it echoed Fëanor, but he smoothed it out into something almost fetching.  “My dear brother has decided to lock up Anniavas, quite without anyone’s permission.  I was remonstrating with him.”  His eyes flickered sideways.  “I should have thought about where we were.  That was stupid of me.”

“I trust Maedhros, even if you don’t—” Celegorm growled, and Maglor laughed his most irritating laugh.

“That certainly makes a change from every other family interaction we’ve had, Turko!  Or do you only ‘trust’ him when you’re filling in the blanks because he isn’t here?”

Privately, Fingon thought Maglor had a point.  Unfortunately, he had clearly decided that Maedhros was well enough that he could stop acting like the lord of Himring.  As much as Fingon disliked being in Maglor’s presence when he was playing the role of commander, it would have made Fingon’s own situation significantly easier.

“Stop it, both of you,” he said.

Celegorm opened his mouth, probably to say something treasonous and rude about Fingon’s father, and Fingon halted him with a glance.  Being the High King was becoming easier, it seemed: all that practice with squabbling advisors.  “Why exactly did you decide to imprison the person who saved your brother’s life?”

Baring his teeth with his Treelit eyes shining, Celegorm himself could have been the werewolf from the garbled Doriathrim fairytales that had reached Hithlum.  “Why don’t you ask him?” he snapped.

Fingon smiled at him warmly.  “Thank you for the suggestion, Turko.  I think I will.”

* * *

Anniavas did not particularly mind being locked up.  Himring’s dungeon was somewhat minimal—indeed, the room where he had been lodged was quite comfortable, all things considered, with a thick straw pallet and a warm blanket.  He could draw his knees into his chest, pull the blanket over his head, and tuck it beneath his feet.  This was quite cozy and also had the benefit of making the world small and dark and bearable.  There was no one inside it with him to be disappointed or angry, and the ugly knot of shame tucked neatly in the center of his chest was quite manageable.

Even the blanket couldn’t protect him from the memory of Maedhros’s face, of the way it called to some other memory so hard that his back ached with cold, but it could keep the world far away and kind and quiet.  This helped, when he could not stop turning back to that memory, pressing on it like a bruise.  He should not stop, he told himself; he had not been punished properly.  (But was this really the shameful memory?  This memory seemed go with the twin feelings of fear and shame, but there was something about the image of Maedhros lying white and still on the bed, while Anniavas bent over him and a cold voice in Anniavas’s head told him where to cut—)

A heavy clunk and a creak told him that the door was opening.  The blanket could not protect him anymore, but at least he was very certain in himself that he knew how to properly accept a punishment.  He put the weariness and the pain and the fear and the shame away into a strong box, and tried to pull the blanket free.  It was harder than he expected, and he had to half get up to stop it from catching on his heel, but he managed it, emerging minimally disheveled and ready to face—

—Finno.  

No.  Lord Fingon, the High King of the Noldor.

He looked tired.  There were dark shadows beneath his eyes, and his wide, happy mouth was not smiling.  A queer shudder went through Anniavas, and his body flattened itself down onto the cold stone.  This meant he did not have to look at Fingon’s face anymore, and was really almost as good as the blanket, although it wasn’t as warm.

“Anniavas, please get up,” Lord Fingon said, a thread of anger running through his voice.

Anniavas obeyed immediately, and then almost fell again as a strange darkness soaked downward from the top of his head across his vision.  He blinked it out of the way and found, to his horror, that Lord Fingon had him by the elbow.  “I didn’t mean you had to get up so fast you passed out,” the king’s voice said, close to his ear.

“I’m so, I’m sorry, my—Lord—King—”

A sigh blew past his ear.  “Maedhros won’t like it if I tell you to call me Finno.  Lord Fingon, then.”

“Yes, Lord Fingon.”  Anniavas felt a flash of gratitude to Maedhros; he didn’t want to think about having to force himself to address the High King with a naked diminutive.  Lord Fingon set him back on his feet.  “Maybe we should have this conversation somewhere else.”

Nausea roiled uncomfortably in Anniavas’s stomach.  “I am not certain Lord Celegorm intended me to depart until he returned?” he said.  

“And why was that?” Lord Fingon asked easily.

This was a reasonable question, but an awkward one.  “I did something wrong,” Anniavas hedged.  “Is the lord of Himring—is he—”

“He’s healing very nicely,” said Lord Fingon.  “Thank you for Russo’s life, Anniavas.”

“I,” said Anniavas.  Even after several months of being routinely thanked by Echeleb and the others for a variety of things he found quite peculiar and unnecessary, Anniavas was no closer to knowing how to respond.  And this situation was more complex than any of the previous.  He swallowed, then bowed, saying nothing further.

After an agonizingly long pause, Lord Fingon spoke again, voice deceptively gentle.  “What did you do wrong, Anniavas?”

It was hopeless.  He did not know.  He had been waiting for Celegorm to come and tell him, so that he could atone for it, whatever form that atonement might take.  “I believe I hurt the lord of Himring,” he said, carefully.  “After all, his reaction—perhaps my blade cut deeper than I intended—”

“The lord of Himring reacted as Lord Maglor predicted he would to a blade cutting into his flesh,” Lord Fingon said dryly.  “There was no way you could have avoided that.”

“There must have been a way,” Anniavas said, stubbornly.  (That cold voice in his head.  He had felt so disconnected.  If Maedhros had picked up on that feeling—) “The way I felt—” he began, but Lord Fingon held up a hand, and he curbed himself.  He had been arguing with the High King.

“In other words, you don’t know why Celegorm shut you up in here,” Lord Fingon summarized relentlessly.

Anniavas remained silent, dipping his head in mortified acquiescence.  

“Even if he had a reason, he shouldn’t have done it this way.  Come on.  I’m taking you back to the dormitory.  You must need rest.”

Something sharp and painful twisted in the vicinity of Anniavas’s heart.  His limbs were indeed very heavy, and he had no notion at all of what time it was.  There was a headache beginning somewhere deep behind his eye, and his body was informing him in no uncertain terms that it would like to sleep.  This conversation seemed to have nothing to do with the chilly instructions of his mind, stitched up tight by the chain.  Stars and bone, his thoughts made no sense.  He did need rest.

“Could you take me to the greenhouse instead?” Anniavas blurted, before he thought.  “I sleep better there.”

Lord Fingon turned, his brown eyes close and very soft.  “Of course, Anniavas.  I don’t think you understand just how great a service you have rendered me.”

* * *

Anniavas woke, heavy-limbed but clear-headed, to buttery sunlight on his eyelids and Limral standing on his throat.  She wasn’t yet heavy enough to cause him significant breathing difficulty, but it was still uncomfortable. When he opened his eyes, she went from whining softly to wagging her tail and prancing, which was more uncomfortable.  He lifted her off, coughed, and cuddled her into his chest.

Something prodded his shoulder, and he sighed, opened his eyes again, and sat up.  Dernodhos had shoved him with her sharp-nailed bare foot.  “What?”

“You stink,” she signed.  “We’re going to the hot springs.”

Until now, Anniavas had avoided the hot springs, out of a nagging sense of discomfort, a feeling that they might, somehow, set off the chilly container of his lost memories.  But it had been a difficult few days, and he had not been able to wash himself properly, which meant he was feeling utterly filthy, especially now that Dernodhos had mentioned it.  And there was the fact that Dernodhos was not the kind of person who easily accepted no, and Anniavas did not feel like having an argument.

They detoured past the kennels to drop Limral off despite her protests.  Anniavas promised he would come back to see her quickly, submitted to having his face washed, and then tucked her up at her mother’s side, though he was not really expecting her to stay there.  She was already showing very vigorous signs of being a talented escape artist.  

After the kennels, the laundry; Anniavas had been wearing the same tunic, leggings, and small-clothes since the terrifying night rescue.  Now that Maedhros was no longer in danger and Anniavas had had a proper rest, this situation was quickly becoming intolerable.

“Let’s get to the hot springs before I decide to lick myself clean,” he said to Dernodhos, who gave one of her spiky, explosive chuckles.  “What?” Anniavas asked sulkily.

She batted his shoulder playfully.  “I think you must have been a cat in a previous life, that’s all.”

The hot springs were located at the northern end of the fortress-compound of Himring, enclosed within high stone walls, and with a simple wooden roof overhead.  Anniavas found himself hovering anxiously in Dernodhos’ shadow, uncertain of the etiquette.  He tried to access useful information in his mind, but found little conclusive and much contradictory.

The natural modesty of Elves requires that they segregate by sex…

Elves do not view differences in bodily anatomy as significant…

Bathing and washing is of cultural importance…

None of it was inaccessible—he was able to approach all of it, but it did not connect, and he did not understand how it could be so, until Dernodhos touched his arm and said, “No clue about your own customs?  I guess that goes with not knowing your origin.”

Oh, Anniavas thought.  Different subcultures have different beliefs and different practices.  This seemed very obvious, and it did allow him to begin to sort out some of the contradictions, but it was also embarrassing and somehow a little intimidating.  No one else was just an incarnate, like he was.  Some were Silvan, some were Noldorin, some were Sindarin, and even those names were insufficient for the complex web of social politics that seemed to define them, of which he had little understanding and no personal intuition.  His cheeks felt hot, and he shrugged, helplessly.

“It doesn’t matter,” Dernodhos said.  “Just means you won’t have annoying hangups.  Come on, then.”

They stripped naked and washed and rinsed themselves in a diverted waterfall of almost frozen water within a small hut built on the side of the hot springs.  Anniavas’s teeth chattered, and his scalp went numb, but the cold drove away the unpleasant, sticky feeling that had plagued him since he woke.  Dernodhos made him bend over and scrubbed him in a businesslike way, avoiding the links of the chain sunk into his back.  The rough stone she used awoke a tingling sensation that Anniavas did not think he was familiar with.  Stepping out from under the chilled water made him feel as if every nerve were awakening, but in a pleasant way.  An oxymoron, in the opinion of his mind, but his body was quite satisfied with it.

“Come on,” Dernodhos told him, and he followed her along the thin stone path into the warm, steam-laden area of the hot springs.  In the summer, the whole thing was probably covered in moss; now, with winter beginning to make itself at home, the path became slicker and more covered in vegetation as the heat increased.

The air in the hot springs was heavy with white steam, giving the whole enclosure a weird, ethereal air.  Bright sunlight filtered in from windows above the wall, just beneath the roof, but other than that the springs were entirely enclosed.  No one else was using them at this hour, for which Anniavas was grateful.  He was in no hurry to display the ugly chain to anyone else in Himring, if he could help it.  The ruin of his mangled eye being constantly on display was bad enough.

The springs themselves were of irregular shape, occupying two levels of height.  The water bubbling up in the higher one, closer to the back, overflowing into the lower one with a soft rushing sound.

“Get in,” Dernodhos told him, nodding her head, and Anniavas obeyed instinctively, responding to the usual easy confidence in her body language.  Once his feet were submerged in the almost painfully hot water, he yelped and glared at her.

“You need to practice disobedience,” she said unsympathetically, but she sat on the edge of the spring and immediately slid in up to her waist, evincing no apparent discomfort, despite the way Anniavas’s feet were sending outraged, painful tingling/burning sensations to his mind.  His mind had—no idea how to handle this, he realized.  He had no idea how to handle this.  Rather desperately, he rifled among the memories, but nothing slid away—all he got was a queer echo from somewhere far away, Elvish and Mannish incarnates do not suffer swift changes of temperature gladly.  But this was not supposed to be happening, something tucked away deep inside him informed him in no uncertain terms.  It would not tell him why.

Anniavas shut his eyes, pulled his feet out of the springs, and sat cross-legged as his body temperature rose gently in the steam.  The gentler warmth loosened his limbs, and the bizarre terror began to fade.  After a few minutes, when he touched a toe to the water with some hesitation, it was no longer painful.  Gingerly, he slipped down into the welcoming waters.

Something tapped his shoulder, and his eyes flew open.  “Don’t put your hair underwater, it’s not sanitary,” Dernodhos told him.  Something about this was obscurely shameful as well, and Anniavas realized after a moment it was that she hadn’t needed to warn him before now, because his hair wasn’t long enough to need putting up.  But then, neither was hers, he supposed, looking at her head of tight black curls.  And for Dernodhos, that was a choice, not the remnant of a recent wound.  Perhaps, then, Anniavas had learned a different beauty standard.  A faint clue about his origins, he supposed, that he and Dernodhos might be of different stock, but more than nothing.

“I understand,” Anniavas said, and Dernodhos sat back with a nod.  

For several minutes, they sat together with the steam curling loosely upwards.  A strange, pleasant sensation began to steal over Anniavas.  He shifted uncomfortably.  “What do we do here?” he asked awkwardly.

“Nothing,” Dernodhos told him, shaking and blinking as if she had been lost in thought.

“N-Nothing?”  You couldn’t do nothing.  There was always something that needed to be done.

“Anniavas, you need rest.  This isn’t Angband.  The folk are not dispensable.  We rest when we’re tired.”

“The folk of Angband aren’t dispensable,” Anniavas protested.  “They work for their bread, that’s all.”  Then his throat rose up and choked him for his disloyalty to Himring, that he should defend their most terrible enemy.

Dernodhos snorted.  Easy to anger, she also seemed to recover from that anger quickly.  “I was a thrall too, Anniavas.  I know what we’re told—better than you, probably, since I remember it.”

Sinking mutely down into the water, Anniavas only barely remembered not to duck his head under the surface.  “I don’t know how to not do anything,” he muttered after a moment.

“Then you need practice,” Dernodhos shrugged.

“I thought I was to disobey instruction?” Anniavas retorted, hearing his voice emerge arch and a little desperate.

She grinned, showing off her pointed teeth.  “You asked what we did here,” she pointed out.  “I answered.  Not an instruction, or an order.  You’re free to go—if you want to.”

The trouble was, he did not think he did want to; it was only that the idea of doing nothing remained so incomprehensibly impossible, and if one was to do that while here, how could he stay?  He breathed and fidgeted and squirmed beneath the hot water.  He tried to hold still. Not moving made something in the pit of his stomach twist and forced him to motion, fluttering a foot, shifting in his seat.

“How do you do nothing?” he asked after another minute, not looking at Dernodhos.  He realized his mistake when she prodded him with one boney finger, bringing his eye to the movement of her hands.

“It helps if you don’t talk.”  She grinned again.  “Try paying attention to what things are like in here.  Think, if you have to, I guess.  Just practice.”

He sighed.  “All right,” he said doubtfully.  “I’ll try.” Just practice.  Can’t do two things at once: you can’t be disobedient and also do nothing.  Fine.  Disobedience could be for later.  He didn’t enjoy it anyway.

It was startling how quickly he lost track of time.  It wasn’t like sleeping, doing nothing (or trying to), but his thoughts, normally so pointed and purposeful, slipped about like tiny minnows beneath the water.  He found himself noticing first the rippling music of the water pouring out from the higher spring, then following with his eye the folds in the water as they gradually died away in the lower one.

Water, as butter-yellow as candlelight, as thick as soup, warming him like wine from the outside-in, a comparison layered across a fragment of a memory with no context for it.  A voice calls for him like a deep and ringing gong.

Anniavas gasped and blinked.  He was not cold.  The chain in his back was quiescent, and yet that single memory remained, inscrutable and impossible.  What kind of water could move like honey and shine like the Sun?  His mind suggested Cuiviénen, the birthplace of the Elves, but he would need to ask someone who had woken there, and he did not know if anyone in the fortress was that old.  Unlikely, he thought morosely.

The sound of footsteps on soft, wet stone brought him blinking back to the present.  Dernodhos looked up as well.  It was Echeleb, dressed and looking harried.  “Could you possibly have been harder to find?” they asked, but evidently the question was rhetorical, because they continued, “I think you’re going to want to get dressed and—and come with me.”

There was an urgency in their voice Anniavas did not quite know how to read.  “What is it?” he asked, groping for the side of the hot spring.

“Lord Celegorm and King Fingon are dueling.”