Locked

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Curufin had to have been married, right?  Children do not spontaneously appear unless you are an asexual bacterium or a strawberry plant.  Quenya names used (so Curufin = Curufinwë Atarinkë, Celebrimbor = Telperinquar and Fëanor = Fëanáro).  Both of the characters here are OCs.  One--Lindalórë--is Curufin's wife in my head-canon.  I'm pretty sure her name is also stolen from the royal house of Númenor, but it's been stuck that way for years now.  And I just made up their second kid's name today.  It has meaning; look it up in a Quenya dictionary if you really want to know, but the suffix -anno should be straightforward if you are familiar with the alias Annatar.  Anyway, don't hate me or anything for loving OC characters.  Takes place in the First Age in Valinor.

Disclaimer: Well, Tolkien owns the plot, but these two are mine.

Pairings: Curufin x Lindalórë (OFC) (not a romantic tale)

Characters: Teldanno (OMC), Lindalórë (OFC) (mentions of Curufin, Celebrimbor, the House of Fëanor, Tilion (the moon) and some other random elves)

Warning: canon-compliant but blatant AU, angsting, stealing, mention of murder and war, dysfunctional familial interaction

Song: Lux Aeterna

Words: 2,069
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lock (verb): to fasten the lock of; to make fast with or as if with a lock; to fasten in or out or to make secure or inaccessible by or as if by means of locks
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/locked

It caught his eye again as he traversed one of the long, empty hallways of his mother's large, open house in the dead of night.  There was nothing particularly special about it--this door--except that despite growing up in this house with only his mother for company, he could not have said for the life of him what was on the other side of that wood.

For as long as Teldanno could remember, that door remained locked.  Even had he wanted to open it, he knew that the only key lay around his mother's neck, against her breast, safe and secure.

"What's inside?" he had asked eagerly as a child, almost bouncing in excitement and eagerness as young, curious souls were oft to do. "Emya, won't you unlock it?"

Her huge green eyes had looked down at him, glistening and lined with sorrow.  At the time he had not recognized what it was that made her smile wither and die upon her beautiful face, that made her so clearly, blatantly unhappy that he also wilted.  It had not been his intention at all to upset his mother; she was all he had, and he loved her greatly.

With soothing, familiar arms and comforting warmth, she had embraced him tightly. "Not today, hínya.  Some mysteries are just not made to be unraveled.  Maybe when you are older."

Only, she never had told him, shown him.

On the very cusp of adulthood, in that annoying and mischievous phase between bratty adolescent and hot-tempered man, he didn't like having secrets kept from him.  There were enough laying around in broad daylight already.  Secrets that they tiptoed around as though they might jump up and bite.  Like his father.

His father who he had never met.  His father who everyone seemed to despise, even his mother sometimes.  His father, whose very name his mother had banned from being spoken in his presence.

Curufinwë Atarinkë.

No matter how she shielded him, she could not stop Teldanno from discovering the truth of his grandfather and father, from discovering why other parents took one look at him and shooed their little ones in the opposite direction, as though he were diseased.  He had grown up a lonely child because of it--shunned--and somewhere in the back of his mind he bitterly laid the blame on his father's shoulders for abandoning him and his mother to go off murdering innocent kinsmen and fighting in a bloody war across the sea.

Could the door be hiding something of his father's?  Or was it something completely different?  Even now, the curiosity, the need to know, burned in his heart, melting into his flesh and bones until he couldn't hold still for it.  He had to know!

And he had a plan.  A plan that involved taking the key from around his mother's neck as she slept and unlocking that frustrating door so the mystery of what lay behind it could be purged from his system, so he could concentrate on his studies at the university and lay his nonexistent father to rest and forget all about being related to the cursed House of Fëanáro.  His mother would never even realize what he had done.

His footsteps were quick and silent as he approached her bedchamber, only Tilion present to witness his sneaking as he slipped into the room and went to the bed.  His mother was on her side, her eyes staring off into space, distant and glazed over, and she didn't so much as twitch when he came into what should have been her field of vision.  No, she was definitely asleep.

Getting the chain from about her neck without pulling at her delicate skin was a little more difficult, but after five minutes of gentle tugging, he lifted his hand and came away with the ornate gray key swinging before his nose.  Quickly, he retreated.

And, of course, he didn't notice her blink, didn't notice her breath hitch softly as he closed the door behind him, its click echoing softly in the night.

Too focused on his destination, he left in a rush and found the door, near breathless with anticipation of what might be on the other side.  When he inserted the key, it rattled in the lock to the rhythm of his trembling fingers.

The door opened, creaking softly, into a yawning maw of darkness.

Gulping, Teldanno stepped over the threshold.  The moonlight was blocked by heavy, dark curtains, and when he pulled them back in a rush of cold, stale air and dust, the light poured into the pit of darkness, mottling the walls and the floor with silver, uncovering the treasures that had been locked tightly within, hidden from sight.

There were pictures.

The largest was a portrait of his mother and a face he did not recognize, but a face that looked enough like his own that he knew it was his father staring back at him with a devilish smirk and stark silver eyes , eyes that seemed to draw him forward and drown him in their intensity.  And it was only a picture!  To think what truly meeting the man's eyes would have been like...

Moving past, he found more paintings, more of his mother's smile which looked alien to the young elf.  In these pictures, she looked so happy, a kind of happy that her young son knew with jealousy and hate in his breast that he didn't have the power to return to her.  His father had stolen away the bright young woman in these pictures, had ripped her apart and left her alone in a gray, empty house with a son to raise on her own.

Another large portrait revealed itself soon after, and Teldanno paused, staring at his parents, and at the bundle in his mother's arms.  Immediately, he thought was that that bundle must be him, their infant son, but he then paused, blinking.  His legs wobbled and turned to jelly, and he had to lower himself onto the floor, stirring the thick layer of dust on the wood, lest he topple over in shock.

A sibling.  That had to be a brother or sister.  He had been born after his father had left.

I have a brother or sister.  The thought was like a bolt of lightning to the brain.  It had never even occurred to him that he might...

And just like that, his hatred for his father doubled.

Was it not enough that he took away his wife's happiness and love and smile?  Was it not enough that he had abandoned his son to be fatherless and shunned all of his childhood?  What more could he have taken? Teldanno had once asked himself.

Here was his answer.  He looked around, and more pictures appeared, of a young elf with his mother's eyes and father's bearing, pictures of this stranger growing from infanthood to adulthood, until he found with his eyes an image of that same green-eyed stranger standing side-by-side with his father, the top of his head several inches higher than that of his sire.  His brother had been taller than his father.

Fiercely, a sob of anger and overwhelming something caught in his throat and choked him.  He didn't know what to think about this, what to feel.  Even looking at them, smiling and happy, father and son, made his belly feel as though someone were stabbing and twisting into his gut with a sword.  If his eyes were stinging, he would never admit it.

"You should not be here, yonya."

He shot up so fast he almost lost his balance.  There, in the doorway, was his mother.  She was still in her nightgown, her hair undone, a candle held in one graceful hand so that its soft glow penetrated the icy stillness of this formerly undisturbed crypt.

"Amillë," he choked out in a rush, his tongue tangling over the words he wanted to say. "I... Please forgive me, I was foolish.  I..."

"There is no need to apologize," she crooned, running her hand over his cheek, her touch soft as butterfly wings.  He was taller than her, he realized with a start, as he looked down into her gaze. "I thought this would happen someday.  You are more like your father than I would like to believe sometimes.  You have his curiosity and his stubbornness."

The last thing he wanted was to be compared to him, but Teldanno bit down his harsh reply.  Now was not the time; he didn't want to upset her further, didn't want to make the tears pooling at the corners of her beloved eyes fall. "It was not my place."

"No, I should have told you sooner." She moved past him, standing in front of the family portrait, her eyes on, not her husband, but her son. "Forgive me for keeping them from you."

His breath caught. "Amillë?"

"Your brother, Telperinquar," she whispered, her lips trembling, her hands shaking badly. "Your father loved him more than anything.  He took to raising a child like a fish takes to water, wanted to be the best father in all of Valinor."  Just then, her voice caught, hitching in the back of her throat, and her shoulders started to shake.  Quickly, Teldanno took the candle from her hands and set it aside, instead grasping at her icy fingers, entwining them with his.

"You don't have to--"

"He couldn't bear to be parted from his son," she continued in a shaky voice, as though her younger child had not spoken at all. "When they marched for the sea, he took his son with.  Even when I pleaded that he allow Telperinquar to stay, he insisted that a son's place was at his father's side and would not hear of my arguments."

When she looked at him, Teldanno shuddered at the broken glass of her spirit shimmering beyond the glossy veil of despair in her eyes. "I lied to him about you.  I knew that if I told him the truth, that I was expecting again, he would want to bring us with.  And one day, he would take you away, too.  That one day, he would take you away to war or trailing after those cursed gemstones; that one day, you would not come home to me.  And I couldn't bear to lose you, too."

Her arms came around him, but when they sank to the floor it was Teldanno who held and supported his mother, not her embrace which comforted and soothed the turmoil riled and searing in his heart.

"Forgive me," she sobbed softly against his shoulder.

"There is nothing to forgive," he crooned, closing his eyes and rocking her against him, her head tucked beneath his chin as she cried, as if he were the father comforting his daughter.  Regret overwhelmed his curiosity, regret that he had even unlocked this place to begin with.  Clearly that key had kept more than just his older brother secreted away inside.

How long they stayed there, on the floor, he wouldn't rightly remember later.  Eventually, when his mother had stopped crying, he had taken her back to her bedchambers and left her to sleep.  Then he left to find that room again, to take one last look at the dusty frames that held the past at bay behind layers of misty glass, and then to pull the heavy wood shut tight, so that the air hissed around the corners, spitting particles of dust into the air to dance like snowflakes in the moonlight.

He locked the door nice and tight.  Then he returned the key carefully about his mother's neck without waking her.

After that, the last bit of mischievous child in him seemed to crumble away into nothingness, burned to ash by the fiery hatred wrought through discovery.  Many a night afterwards, he had dearly wished that he had never touched that key, that he could still pretend his mother was all right, that she was not weighed down by the loss of her son, by the callous abandonment of her husband, her One.

Some secrets, he realized, were better left locked away.  Safe and secure in blissful ignorance.
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Even writing this makes me nervous.  I know how people feel about OC characters, but I simply couldn't help myself.  It's an idea that's been festering in my brain since November when I wrote my modern!AU NaNoWriMo piece for the Silmarillion.  I just had to do it.

I don't know what else to say except holy shit this was a long one for a oneshot.  Well, it's not terribly long in truth, but this is the first time I've written more than 2,000 words for a daily prompt.  It's not abnormal for me to write 20,000 word stories, but certainly not all in one day, and not with my college workload LOL. Most of my papers for school don't end up being this long (because I'd get chewed out for rambling and not being concise enough).  But still, it just wrote itself; I had nothing to do with it.

Was listening to Lux Aeterna from Requiem for a Dream, performed by Taylor Davis in this case.  Amazing what you can do with a violin, huh?  It's gorgeous (and I like it better than most versions I've heard, in all honestly).  And here is a picture of Curufin's wife with Righon's interpretation of Curufin: Couple.  It's too bad they haven't done one of those pretty color portraits for her yet, though I know it's in the works, since there's lineart.  I'm looking forward to it.

PS: yonya = my son (shortened yondonya) and hínya = my child (shortened hínanya); amillë and emya are both ways to say mother (the second is more like mama)