with steel from on high by arafinweanappreciation  

The mirror was one of the last in the Havens, the polished silver battered and dented. It was a bit of a luxury, surely afforded out of pity. Finduilas barely recognized her own reflection.

The recovery from the spear wound (still throbbing beneath her ribcage as the scar tissue knit over it– she could feel it even now) was leaving her gaunt and pale. Her face, once rounded, had collapsed into a sort of rectangle, and her freckles had even begun to fade. This was certainly not helped by the fact that she had cropped her hair short in a mourning style. It had also darkened a bit in her time out of the sun, and some of the curl had gone out of it. Her eyes looked too big for her face.

Her clothes, too, were not… wrong, per se, but novel. There were few women here as tall as she, and all Círdan could find that would fit were men’s clothes, though she minded little. She was currently wearing an undyed linen shirt, dark trousers, and the bandages around her stomach. Between those and the sheer amount of flesh that had seemingly sloughed from her frame, her figure was unrecognizable. The days of fashionable gowns were over, it seemed, for more reasons than one. She was not as bereaved as she once thought she might have been.

There would be time to think about that later.

She looked down at the leather vambraces in her hands. They had belonged to Gwindor. He had given them to her, before… everything. She had not known why at the time. Still did not know, really. He had said that he had no more need of them. He had been so cryptic, as the end had drawn closer. As he became more and more ignored. Her eyes swam with tears at the memories that surfaced.

The one time in his life he had stopped to think something through, and no one had wanted to listen.

Blinking back the tears, she slid a vambrace onto each wrist, and began to tighten the laces. She had missed him dearly these last weeks. Him. Her father. Túrin. She wished them all peace, wherever they were. Especially Túrin, unlikely as it was, though she had no desire to fall victim to his ill-fate once more.

She and Gwindor had been happy, once. Perhaps they could have been happy together again. Perhaps that was not something that could have ever come to pass in this life. Perhaps they were happy together in another. Maybe in this life, had things not gone horribly, terribly wrong, she would have wedded Túrin.

She would never find out.

Rage boiled inside her at the thought.

They had taken everything from her– her parents, her dearest friends, the men she had loved, her home, her grandparents, her great-uncles and her cousins, her life, her innocence, her youth, even her own baby brother, killed with their mother when the Falas had been sacked. He had only been eighteen. She and her father had not even been able to mourn publicly.

She used her teeth to tie the knots and spat out the leather cord, vambraces now tight against her wrists, as the anger burned ever-hotter.

The truth was, she should have been dead. The spear that was now leaning against the wall behind her should have killed her. The healers had told her that they had never seen someone survive such a wound, especially without the aid of elvish medicine, as she had been for the first days after the people of Brethil had found her.

She could see only one explanation: the Valar had kept her alive. And they had kept her alive for a reason.

Ereinion Artanáro, last heir of the line of Finwë, the final hope of their house, now High King by birthright, had died that day in the Falas. Yet she found herself looking him in the eye in the mirror, risen again.

The darkness in the north had taken everything from her. Now it was time for her to take everything from them. 

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