here we go again by lonelyvisitor  

---

a man after midnight

---

As cheers to Finrod’s toast resounded in the courtyard, amid the gaiety Gil-galad felt a great and ambient dread. There were plenty of issues to raise his concern—he supposed most of them were his own fault.

At the moment he was wondering where Orodreth had gotten to. His father had not seemed satisfied by what seemed to be a perfectly cogent explanation for their three unexpected guests.

(Of five total, but Gil-galad hadn’t the faintest idea why Celegorm and Curufin had turned up, and this too churned his addled mind.)

“Ereinion?” Celebrían passed him a shot of miruvor, the first of many persons who were attempting to do so; her own jeweled knuckles were crowded with little cups. “Are you well, my love?”

He knew she could read his anxiety, even without the mind-speech of long marriage. They’d spent enough hours together bearing the theater of polite society, all those well-intentioned questions about Middle-earth as it seemed that it was speeding toward its downfall.

One wonders what the point of sticking around there really was. And what became of your herald, anyway—oh, he’s her husband as well? How curious!

Celebrían’s hand lingered in Gil-galad’s as the sweet burn went down his throat, her eyes inquiring.

It was then Elrond slipped between his spouses without an upward glance to scry this subtle tension. He prided himself on reading the both of them better than anyone, but he was evidently reeling from his own social ordeal and subsequent alcohol consumption.

“You heard your uncle, my darlings. Our marriage bed awaits.”

Yet he was rubbing at the point between his brows as if to fend off a migraine.

Gil-galad set down his shot, holding up a hand. “If you would but permit me—one moment, one moment only—I will return—”

Elrond’s gaze sharpened heraldically. “My liege, I would strongly urge—”

Yet this protest was drowned out by the thrum of the crowd, music and laughter—and gossip, eyes lingering on Gil-galad as he crossed the floor—

“Rodnor!” Finrod’s firm grasp spun him around, and with more laughter Gil-galad found himself drawn in an asphyxiating embrace, then propelled back to a chummy clasp. “Oh, I hope you didn’t mind the little performance. Couldn’t be helped, you see, couldn’t be...”

Gil-galad inched out from under his hand. “Indeed, Uncle, it was...most unexpectedly... festive—if you would excuse me.”

But Finrod’s grip was strong, and his gaze unfocused. Gil-galad thought of how much wine had been on that boat, not to mention how many rounds had been raised in honor of the song and its singer.

“Oh, I’m so very glad you asked me here — you’re a bigger man than your father. Little Artanáro!” His look turned maudlin. “I would have spoiled you rotten if I was still around. Valar, but you would have been shiny, such a darling, shining boy, the Crown Prince of Nargothrond! You might have been my son...”

Now Finrod’s face crumpled in sentiment, and Gil-galad found himself likewise frozen by the display of emotion, confession close to welling from his heart—

“On the subject of sons, has anyone seen Tyelperinquar?” Dabbing his soiled face with a handkerchief, Curufin slunk up. His roving glance fixed upon Gil-galad. “Ah.” A beringéd hand was proffered. “Curufinwë Atarinkë Fëanárion. We’re related, somehow or another. Great party.”

This conversation was thankfully cut short. Finrod, festive mood recovered, was suddenly making eyes and murmuring things at his cousin, while Curufin attempted to retain the air of disaffection he’d seemed completely stripped of during the performance, mesmerized as he had been by Finrod.

Gil-galad had little interest in seeing where this was going, and so resumed his task, scanning the dark and crowded courtyard for Orodreth.

This was of course when Fingon came directly into his path. 

###

Orodreth sought the starlit terrace. While its many comfortable chaise lounges would surely come in use during later phases of the evening, there was no food or wine here, and so for the meantime it remained abandoned — save for a tall and handsome shadow standing in the corner.

“Tyelpe,” Orodreth said.

The endearment came out breathless, unbidden. Yet Orodreth felt no mortification at his overfamiliarity; he could still feel the kiss in his fingertips. He rushed across the tiles, propelled by the same gravity that brought him tumbling earlier through that trapdoor.

But Celebrimbor did not bend toward him. Leaning on the balustrade he kept his eyes locked on the moonlit waves, and his long clever fingers knit together tightly.

Orodreth slowed as he came to his side. “That wasn’t—” he started, then sighed. “So you didn’t know your father and uncle had come out of Mandos.”

Until this morning Orodreth hadn’t either, which he was about to say. But Celebrimbor laughed bitterly.

“I have no father.” He shook his head. “Nor any uncles.”

And Orodreth remembered the court of Nargothrond, his own voice declaiming from the throne as Celegorm and Curufin were cast out.

Tyelpe had been steadfast at his side. It was not just the matter of Lúthien and Felagund. Centuries of rancor cleaved him from his blood—from the Oath that had not bound him, barely more than a babe at its speaking, and yet had torn him from his mother, made him kinslayer, tossed him across the Sea.

Across the Sea that day, he had become a man completely his own. That tense hour in the caves Curufin had betrayed no feeling, save a bitter glint to his eyes that mirrored Celebrimbor’s. Yet for all the discontent Orodreth bore against the sons of Fëanor in lives past and present, this evening under the dancing lights he had recognized a kindred sentiment in Curufin: a parent equally awed and terrified to be reunited with their child.

He recalled the morning Gil-galad had appeared at the inn-gate, still shrouded in the garb of the Halls, and asked if he might stay here.

Before he could stop himself Orodreth had reached out in the darkness.

“Indeed,” he said, and took up Tyelpe’s hand into his own. “But your father may yet think he has a son.”

###

“Drink with me.”

Fingon spoke with urgency, shouting over the roar of the crowd; double-fisting glasses of miruvor.

Gil-galad’s head was already spinning, but it seemed to him he had little choice in the matter. Fingon maintained a searing eye contact as they went through the rhythms of their toast.

When it was done he wiped his mouth and stepped to bridge the gap between them, allowing no word edgewise.

“I know why I’m here.”

Fingon was a half a head shorter than Gil-galad. Still even in this silly atmosphere his presence felt larger than life, the aura of his bright flame on the battlefield, of Utúlie’n aurë! cried out to the risen Sun.

Gil-galad’s nervous laughter caught in his throat. “Do you?”

Fingon’s answer was to come forward and clasp him on the shoulder, drawing their brows into a warriors’ embrace.

“Hail Gil-galad Nelyafinwion,” he uttered gravely. “Scion of Kings!” In the close between them Gil-galad saw his eyes were brimming.

“Nelyafinwion.” He slowly backed away to take a look at Fingon, with his dark brown hair, his umber skin, his slate-blue gaze so very like his own. “You think I’m the son of... Maedhros?”

“My son,” corrected Fingon softly, holding Gil-galad’s cheek. “For Maedhros surely was your sire, and what was Maedhros’ was mine in kind. We were bound in all things, though we dared not name it then.”

For an awkward breath some gloom threatened to prevail over his gladness. Yet Fingon swiftly recovered, remembering himself in laughter. “Look at you!” he cried, and gripped Gil-galad’s arms; he twirled an unpermitted finger in Gil-galad’s hair. “The height, the hue— very like Nerdanel’s in the winter, though of course like Haldanárë’s—”

Gil-galad patted the probing hands from his braids, parsing the feminine name: one who hides fire.

“Haldanárë?”

“Oh yes, of course, Maitimo’s captain, a most doughty woman.” Fingon smiled, dabbing a tear with his thumb. “She had been—aiding us, for I was in want of an heir, indeed not long before the Nirnaeth...”

Here he trailed off in memory or ellipsis. Gil-galad surmised that he still might have been sired by either Fingon or Maedhros; he did not doubt this Haldanárë’s doughtiness. He suddenly wished to know everything about her.

“Where does she abide?” he rushed to ask. “Might I meet her?”

It was the closest Gil-galad had come to admitting he believed what Fingon said. The idea that he might have a mother...

Yet Fingon was solemn. “I know little of her fate, save that she followed her lord in all things.” He needed not say any more than this; Gil-galad swallowed, remembering his error in seeking Sirion too late. “And she was always slower to forgive herself than some.”

He glanced away to Celegorm, who was presently doing some sort of striptease on top of the bar.

“The Halls must have her still.” Fingon shook his head. “I have not met her again on these shores.”

All around them lights still flashed, and music thumped and trilled. Gil-galad took in all he’d learned, feeling lost.

It seemed both that a swarm of eyes surveilled him and that no one could see what was happening to him at all.

The truth—whatever it happened to be—was something he had brought upon himself. Yet could he bear it?

“I’m sorry.” Gil-galad looked to Fingon, for a moment letting their faces mirror the same sorrow. “But I must find my father.”

Again he did not turn back to witness Fingon crestfallen, but walked away reeling, more resolved than ever in his errand.

### 

Celebrimbor drew away from Orodreth’s touch.

“Many have named you soft-hearted,” he said.

His voice was not unkindly, yet it was cool. Orodreth sighed. “I suppose they’re probably right.”

Embarrassed by his forwardness, he’d turned away from Tyelpe to fiddle with the silver rings on his fingers. He had much nicer stuff somewhere, but it seemed he was never going to find the time tonight to dress.

“Not I.”

Orodreth stilled. “Oh?”

Now Celebrimbor’s lovely hands flew up into the air, as if to illustrate a theorem.

“You held Minas Tirith against Sauron until the bitter end, and lived. When I came to Nargothrond they were still singing songs of that.”

Orodreth scoffed. “Songs of lamentation, perhaps.”

But Celebrimbor did not seem to hear him. “I faced the very same fate and perished.” He paused in grief. “The same enemy. You were with me, it seemed, as Ost-in-Edhil fell. The thought of you—I must say it brought me great comfort, before the end.”

Warmth rushed Orodreth’s cheeks; he barely found the air to reply. “It did?” he said. “I did?”

“And brought me here, to Ellairë.” Celebrimbor was looking upon him with those eyes of amber fire, passionate and sincere—before his speech quickened again. “Which is why I must express my gravest disappointment that you would bid me embrace a man with whom I have left all ties sundered—who bears my name but none of my love. I did this, you would do to remember, out of my fealty to you.”

Orodreth felt as if he was sinking, for Tyelpe’s warm words had borne him so high—and yet his voice rose in defense.

“Celebrimbor, I did not say this.”

“‘Your father may yet think he has a son?’ Yes, Orodreth, evidently Curufin does think this, whatever mediocre Maia stamped him out of the Halls — and he is quite mistaken.”

“Then say this to him,” Orodreth muttered; he still thought he might wilt, and yet he had not managed to. “Else he will skulk at you again, and you will run from him, and it will start all over. You must acknowledge him directly, with honesty, if you hope to be free of him.”

Confrontation had never been his own strong suit. Still he had achieved it in his day—or at least once, in the halls of Nargothrond—and come out the victor. Against Curufin and his brother, no less.

But Celebrimbor spat his words. “He is not worthy of my breath.”

Later Orodreth would not exactly remember from whence burst his objection. He was only remembering the first moments he had laid eyes on Finduilas and Gil-galad restored to their second lives: how his heart had broken and reforged within a single instant, sealed up again with silver like a shattered pot.

“A father has a right to know his son!”

The cry shook through him, so that Orodreth stopped to steady himself—though there was more to say, that it mattered not if all there was to know was enmity. Yet in his pause for breath he glanced up.

Gil-galad stepped out of the darkened corridor, standing before them in the moonlight. “Ada?”

He looked from Orodreth to Celebrimbor. There was a confusion on his face that Orodreth had not seen since his son had woken from a nightmare as a child, convinced some shadow in the caves was moving of its own accord.

And of course Orodreth remembered it had been him and Tyelpe then, too, playing backgammon in the royal chambers deep into the night, and no doubt discoursing as they just had. When his cousin stood to leave, his tall and slender silhouette must have been cast somehow against the door of the boy’s room.

“Rodnor, darling, we were just—”
But Celebrimbor was gone, had slipped back unseen into the shadows.

“Oh, Varda’s milk-pail in the heavens.” Orodreth raked his fingers through his yet-to-be- braided hair. “What an awful mess.”

“Ada,” Gil-galad stepped before him. “Let me—”

“Hush.” Orodreth stayed his son, and took his hand. “Don’t be troubled, it’s only—oh, one never knows who’s going to cross the threshold, does one.”

After Celebrimbor’s reminder he was thinking of the night that Sauron’s army had surrounded the watchtower. At least this wedding had not been so disastrous a day as that one.

“And besides, my starlight.” He reached up to slip a braid behind Gil-galad’s ear. “Shouldn’t you be with your betrotheds? The two of them were looking all loveliness. I’m sure they’re wondering where you’ve gotten to.”

Some odd sheen still clouded Gil-galad’s eyes. But then he looked down bashful. “I suppose they must be.”

Orodreth clapped his cheek. “Then go to them. You only get one consummation—at least so they said in my day.” He waved him off. “Go on!”

Gil-galad went, though he turned over his shoulder.

“May I come see you later? Before daybreak. I still must get dressed.”

First undressed, thought Orodreth wistfully, though he spared his son the commentary.

“As it happens so must I. You know where to find me.”

They shared a grin, and when Gil-galad was gone Orodreth sank down to the stones and wept.

Of course the moment his long-lost love appeared and showed a hint of interest, he’d managed to bring it all to ruin. Who would expect any less of Artaresto Angarátion?

And on such a joyous day. He could see the lights of the party, feel the pulsing music through the floor—

—and suddenly a seismic rumble. A loud crack.

It did nothing to stop the revelry. Yet Orodreth startled, eyes refocusing in the moonlight to perceive a long, thin fissure through the tiled hallway that went down to the courtyard.

Uinen was the patron goddess of Ellairë, of all the surrounding barrier islands bathing in her waves. Their residents lived in her gentle guardianship, held off from the storms and surge and underwater volcanoes that Ulmo bandied about from his benthal domain.

Orodreth had made an offering to the Lady of the Seas this morning, hadn’t he? Sent her some symbolic invitation, in supplication for a wedding blessing?

“You knob.” He sighed to himself. “You absolutely didn’t. Patience, O Maiden of the Tides!” Orodreth stood and called out to the Sea. “I’m very, very sorry!”

A Maia’s wrath was the last thing he needed. And yet that it might befall him was somehow not surprising, given the day’s events.

“I swear I’ll make it right,” said Orodreth, to himself as much as Uinen. “Just please don’t destroy my inn.”

###