here we go again by lonelyvisitor  

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how can i even try to go on

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When Finduilas cracked an eye open in the hour before dawn, she saw Gwindor sleeping peacefully on the pillow next to her. And yet it seemed her husband had grown another pair of hands, or perhaps a second body, for two arms were also slung about her from behind.

Recollection resolved through the fog of miruvor; she turned about and knocked into a gently-snoring Celegorm, who murmured and flopped over, taking up even more of the bed.

“Oh, Gods.” Finduilas stretched upward as her husband’s lashes fluttered open, and spoke into his mind: Did we really?

Gwindor cast over a single glance and snuggled back into the coverlet, though the sleepy thread of his thought spooled into hers: He wasn’t bad.

Finduilas rolled her eyes. “Enough of you.” She shoved at the leaden body beside her, as Celegorm jolted from slumber like a hound hearing a chicken. “Leave us in peace.”

“I thought I might stay.” Celegorm pulled the sheet up about himself. “Pillow talk, another drink perhaps...”

“Oh, you thought. Get up. We’ve had our use of you, and now we’ve got the ceremony to get ready for, so if you’d kindly go and ravish someone else—”

“I’m not all ravishing and bloodlust, you know. People always seemed to think that about me, so I began to think it about myself, but in my seven thousand years of grave repentance—”

“How lovely for you.” Finduilas cut him off by climbing over him to find her caftan, unsure why she and Gwindor were the audience for this self-reflection. “But don’t you have closer family with whom to share these sentiments?” With little patience she began to brush her hair before the vanity. “I mean, does your mother even know you’re out of Mandos?”

“I think she does.” In the mirror she saw how Celegorm’s look had turned sad and distant. “But it seems she doesn’t want anything to do with me.”

Finduilas groaned.

###

While the rest of the inn’s denizens lay abed, whether sleeping or otherwise occupied, Orodreth busied himself with the offering.

Somehow there was wine left, a stash someone—perhaps even him—had left in the corner of the larder. He set out a glass and lit a candle, and arranged in this small circle of light a ring of shucked oyster shells (smelly, but the Lady would like that) in the middle of the courtyard, at the crack’s epicenter.

Orodreth was kneeling before this makeshift altar in meditation, attempting to become inspired into prayerful song, when he felt approaching footsteps. His eye peered open on Celebrimbor toeing at the crack.

“Shoddy masonry.” Tyelpe squatted down to examine further, his face glowing in the candlelight. “I know some Dwarves who’d have a thing or two to say to it—at least I used to.”

After the abrupt end of their last conversation his presence was discomfiting, yet Orodreth inhaled deeply.

“Someone called Gimli, son of Glóin is here, and already tried to talk my ears off yesterday —and that was before anything broke.” He shut his eyes again. “You should go find him.”

“Oh?” Celebrimbor sounded intrigued. “Well, he might say that Song and wine is a very elvish approach to a construction problem.”

“I’m making amends to Uinen.” Orodreth was more curt than he meant to be; he was not certain what interest Tyelpe still had in talking to him. “I forgot to invite her to the wedding.”

Celebrimbor slowly nodded. “Maiar are weird about marriage, aren’t they.” Then to Orodreth’s surprise he began to sing.

The language was unfamiliar, wrong-sounding; it seemed impossible it could be shaped by an elvish tongue. Orodreth recalled the few times he’d heard Valarin in the temples of Valmar, how it itched at the edge of one’s hearing, just on the cusp of comprehension. Celebrimbor only sang a short while, yet when he was done the air was buzzing, and the candle flame shuddered.

Orodreth’s voice felt a feeble thing in comparison. “What was that?”

Yet Tyelpe put a finger to his lips, and then he was pouring the wine. Lifting the cup to Orodreth’s mouth.

Orodreth tasted the sea and starlight—some cool and mineral tang, as if the frequency of light that caught on air and water had been rendered potable. It seemed the very essence of blue, the delight of the Lady Uinen.

“That ought to appease her,” said Celebrimbor, while Orodreth coughed in disbelief. “Protection for your realm—lasts a little longer if you catch it in a stone or something, but, well.” He set aside the cup and stood, awkwardly straightening his breeches. “I don’t do that

sort of thing anymore. Anyway, think of it as a wedding present—the rest of my gifts I left with Celeborn.”

Orodreth looked up at him.

“You’re not leaving?”

Celebrimbor shrugged. “You did ask me to.”

“Oh, yes.” Orodreth stood too, uncertainly. “I suppose I did.”

Tyelpe was very near to him. Orodreth might reach out and take his hand again, draw himself between those strapping shoulders. And yet he already seemed so far away, receding again into the distance, or else deep into the past.

“And I must go for my own sake,” Celebrimbor added, clasping hands behind his back; the fire had returned to his eyes, and Orodreth knew he was thinking of Curufin. “This has been a strange visit, but it was good to see you, Artaresto.”

With this Tyelpe stepped forth to pat his shoulder, the touch electric, though Orodreth did not dare lean in.

He thought he heard himself say farewell, but whatever he spoke was lost to a rush of air. For Celebrimbor had unfurled the wings that somehow he had been concealing on his back through their entire conversation, and when Orodreth looked up he was already soaring away into the gloaming skies.

###

Just as dawn crept on the horizon Gil-galad pulled himself away from bed—from Celebrían’s arms, where he had been resting for some sweet unconscious interval. Elrond was already gone, for his costuming for the next phase of the wedding was quite elaborate.

The sheets were strewn with remnants of his previous ensemble, a gossamer spun out of little more than diamonds and spider-silk. After a brief and passionate reprimand directed at his king, Elrond had donned this garment exclusively for the eyes of his spouses.

Memories of the night’s consummation curled Gil-galad’s toes. He leaned down to kiss his sleeping wife upon her silver brow—his wife! indeed, for they all had made their vows in witness of the stars, the marriage ceremony to come a mere formality.

Remembering the ceremonial aspect sobered him, and renewed his creeping dread.

It was he who had wanted his father at his side on his wedding morning. As his sister had said, Gil-galad would have already had him there twice over: Orodreth who had given him his sheltered boyhood, and gruff Círdan who had raised him to a man.

And yet. Now he had drawn three other men into the wedding’s orbit.

Fingon, who seemed more than certain he and/or Maedhros had been his sires.

Celebrimbor, at whom Gil-galad had now witnessed Orodreth shouting something about sons and fathers, corroborating his diary’s vague allusions—only for Celebrimbor to disappear again the moment Gil-galad came into view.

And Finrod—well, Finrod really seemed like he’d just wanted to sing a song. Perhaps Gil-galad could rule him out.

Yet only one person had acted anything like a father to him these past hours. Gil-galad had an appointment to keep.

With a lingering glance on Celebrían’s lovely form, he found his laundered robes and hurried down the walkway to Orodreth’s apartment.

Orodreth was not there. Gil-galad sang alight the crystal lanterns and stepped into the wardrobe, pulling out a few selections; he ransacked the jewelry case on both of their behalfs, for in truth in his wedding jitters he’d left most of his good stuff behind in Tirion and wanted to see if there wasn’t an ear-cuff or two he might borrow for the occasion.

When Orodreth walked in some moments later he looked bemused. 

“What’s all this?”

Gil-galad glanced up from the mirror, testing out a set of studs. “Don’t you need to get dressed? I took the liberty.”

“I’d say it’s far more important for you to suit up.” Orodreth was weary; Gil-galad heard the long night in his voice. “Believe me, no one is going to be paying attention to the fathers this morn.”

Gil-galad's ears pricked at the word 'father', but then he saw where Orodreth’s attention had caught: upon a set of jewels laid on the bedspread, braided mithril and platinum with green and yellow stones. The bracelets bore the motif of the Arafinwëan serpent; when Orodreth slipped one down his wrist it cinched viselike to his skin, as if it were alive.

“Tyelpe made this,” said Orodreth with wonder. “In Nargothrond.”

“And it ended up in my treasury at Lindon, remember? Then Elrond got saddled with it, like everything else—he brought it over for you.”

Gil-galad kept his tone light as he spoke, belying trepidation.

It seemed only a matter of time before he had to tell the truth, or learn it. The idea of both filled his heart with strange fear.

“I suppose the smith will be glad to see his handiwork.” Gil-galad detangled the tassels of his formal underrobe. “Won’t he?”

“I’m afraid he won’t have the chance.” Orodreth spoke plainly, fastening the snaking necklaces over his collar. “He’s gone.”

Gil-galad wanted to ask him to say more, but it did not seem that Orodreth might wish to answer—though he went on adorning himself with Tyelpe’s jewels, setting aside his everyday pieces on the bed as they were replaced.

When he was done he looked radiant, kingly and silvered, even in that wretched houserobe he still wore.

Gil-galad tilted his head, considering. “Some silks would better become your ornament, Ada.”

But Orodreth reached up and steered him by the shoulder. “First things first: the matter of your braids.”

He sat his son before the mirror.

The first memories Gil-galad could recall were of his father’s hands in his hair. Now as Orodreth slipped his fingers into those second-nature patterns it felt as if they were back in Nargothrond, even in those last weeks before Gil-galad had been sent to the Falas, for what they all thought would be the summer, for wouldn’t it befit a prince to learn to sail—

“There we are.” Orodreth kissed the crown of his head. “How do you feel?”

Gil-galad ran his hand over the fishtails neatly woven to keep the sides off his face, leaving the fall of his hair to cascade curling down his back. Simple, perfect.

“Nervous,” he said.

“No need to be!” Orodreth fussed at a flyaway, then grinned at his son’s reflection. “You’ve gotten through the hard part: getting someone to love you. But then that’s always come to you easily.”

It would not be an audience with his father without some backhanded self-detriment. Yet for all that this wedding had done to test him, in this moment Orodreth seemed happy. In the mirror Gil-galad watched as he hummed and sauntered back to the clothes-strewn bed, considering his own outfit.

“Ada.”

Orodreth glanced up. “Yes, Rodnor?”

He looked at Gil-galad expectantly, as his son sought exactly what it was he meant to say.

Perhaps it did not matter whether Orodreth ever learned the truth about the invitations Gil- galad had sent on impulse. Perhaps it did not matter whether Gil-galad ever found out who his parents were by blood. He knew whose hands had raised him.

“The cerulean robes,” Gil-galad suggested. “I think they’ll go best with the gems.”

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