Note: Amillë = mother and Atar = father
Disclaimer: Tolkien owns Curufin and Celebrimbor
Pairings: Curufin x Lindalórë
Characters: Teldanno (OMC), Lindalórë (OFC), Curufin, Celebrimbor (mentions of Fëanor, the Valar and Eru Ilúvatar)
Warning: canon-compliant but blatant AU, dysfunctional family relationships, allusions to murder and such, semi-explicit violence, pig-headed men
Song: Show Me Love
Words: 1,697
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punch (intransitive verb): to strike with a forward thrust especially of the first
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/punch
It started with an unexpected knock at the door.
A knock in the hour just after the setting of the sun, when the great purple shadow of the Pelóri stretched over the darkening lands of Valinor, when the stars were revealed from their veil of sunlight, and Teldanno was happily settled before the roaring fire with a heavy tome in his lap. Beside him, in a plush armchair, his mother was tucked between thick cushions with her knitting needles, humming softly to herself. It was just like every other evening, quiet and peaceful, spent in companionable silence.
Except that sound, banging, echoing through their house. His mother's needles paused, her green eyes flickering upwards. The golden firelight flashed across her pale face, highlighting the worry lines that Teldanno despised, etched around her eyes and the corners of her mouth, between her slender eyebrows.
It came again, heavy enough to rattle the doorframe. Sighing, Teldanno set aside his book and stood. "Stay here. I shall see what business our visitor has with us at this time of night."
With a gentle smile, she went back to her knitting.
Slipping out of the room, the younger elf made his way down the empty hallway towards the front door. Through the frosted glass ornately set in heavy oaken wood, he could see the silhouette of a figure, tall, probably male. With pursed lips, Teldanno paused on the other side to unlock the door, taking care as he swung it open just enough that he could see outside around the edge. Being raised a lonely child had not resulted in a particularly sociable adult, and he wanted to get rid of this interloper as quickly as possible.
As it would turn out, there were two interlopers on the front porch. Two dreadfully, terribly familiar interlopers. And he would not be getting rid of them anytime soon.
The one in front, his curled hand still raised as if to pound upon the door a third time, was a few inches shorter than Teldanno. A face that haunted his nightmares burned into his irises; there was no mistaking that posture, those eyes, the sheer intensity of presence that surrounded and engulfed him as he stood within touching distance of the stranger.
Curufinwë Atarinkë was standing in the doorway, as tangible as the cold wood beneath Teldanno's white-knuckled fingers, hard and stubborn. His father was standing in the doorway. After six thousand years of abandonment.
For a long moment, the pair blinked at each other. The empty pit that settled in the younger's gut suddenly heated, was filled with scalding water, scalding rage that quickly rose to boiling point and spilled over the edges. And anything that got within the blast radius of that explosion was just asking to get burned.
"Who are y--?"
Pain shooting through his coiled fist, stinging. But satisfaction unfurled in his belly as well. The sound of flesh upon flesh was loud in the growing darkness. Gasping slightly, he watched the figure topple backwards into the second, sending both of them sprawling out in the dirt at the foot of the short row of steps leading up to the porch.
That felt good. That was all he could think as he stared down at them, at the man who was wide-eyed and sitting up from his undignified position on the ground. Baring his teeth like an animal, the grandson of hot-blooded Fëanáro snarled down at him, wishing he would stand up and approach again just so the young elf had the pleasure of knocking him back onto his derriere a second time. Once had not been enough to quell his growing, blistering fury, not by a long shot.
Sputtering, Curufinwë glared up at him. "Who the name of the Valar are you? What are you doing in my wife's house?" Fury--a familiar reflection that struck Teldanno straight in the gut--flashed across that face, along with a dash of betrayal and fear.
"What right have you to come here, filth?" he spat out, wishing he could do more. Wishing he could spit flames at that two-faced traitorous bastard. "Get thee gone, scum!"
"I am not going anywhere!" Curufinwë was back on his feet and nose-to-nose with Teldanno, somehow coming across as a thousand feet tall despite actually being the shorter of the pair. A hand grasped at the front of the younger's tunic, somehow nearly lifting him from his feet as he was dragged foward and downwards. He had barely a moment to wince before a fist came crashing forward, planting itself firmly in his eye socket.
Tomorrow his face was not going to be pretty. And by the Valar it hurt!
"Both of you calm down!" Hands were grasping again, pulling the pair apart. It was the second stranger, the stranger with his mother's green eyes, half-a-head taller than the first. "Let us speak like civilized creatures and not roll around on the ground like ruffians!"
"Does it not bother you to return home to find another man living in your mother's house?" Curufinwë shouted, and Teldanno felt his heart swell in his throat at the confirmation of the second stranger's identity. His older brother was taller than him, too.
"Please, just let him speak, Atar!"
"We already know what he has to say!"
"He would like to know what you are doing here in the middle of the night!" Teldanno snapped. "You can't just... just come prancing back here like nothing happened! You left! You left!"
"Why you--"
They made a grab for one another again, slipping between the middle party's fingers, and that was when a slight figure appeared in the doorway, her gray and white gown swirling around her ankles, her eyes wide with startled fear as she beheld the two males preparing to make a second attempt each at knocking the other's teeth loose from his skull.
"Lindalórë!"
"Amillë!"
They both straightened, looking up at her with stark, white faces and shaking hands. Between them, the green-eyed stranger stood, staring at Teldanno as though he were some sort of mutated six-legged forest creature instead of a perfectly respectable elven scholar.
"Amillë?" he whispered, tilting his head to one side, clearly confused. "I don't understand."
Sneering, Teldanno took several steps back from the pair, back towards his mother. She was trembling now, her shoulders shaking slightly, a hand raised to cover her lips. How dare they upset her so? Ai Ilúvatar, he wanted them gone from his sight! How dare they come barging in like they belonged here after what they did to his mother? To him?
But his mother's hand on his shoulder stayed any further action. "No, Teldanno."
"But--"
"No," she whispered, shaking her head. He met her eyes, and then drew back.
Curufinwë moved forward, and it took all the young elf's control and concentration to keep from launching himself at the other man again. The urge to harm someone had never been this powerful before, this overwhelming. He blamed his father's blood.
"Lindalórë, what is going on here?" his father--his father, how he hated admitting it, even in his mind--rasped out. "Who is... who is this?"
On his shoulder, her hand tightened, squeezing soothingly. She knew him too well, knew that the tension in his body, ready to rock forward at the slightest hint of threat and pummel his opponent, was coiled so taut it would take but a tiny nudge to set him off. With disgust roiling in his belly, Teldanno wondered if she had had practice with his sire. Nevertheless, she still held his gaze, and the sparkle in her eyes, formerly unknown to her son, was all the convincing he needed to reign in his wild fury. It spoke of pained joy, of bitterly disappointing eagerness, of love.
"Curufinwë, forgive me," she said, and the betrayal flared again in his father's eyes before his mother continued. "This is your youngest son, Teldanno, born in the year 1496 in the reckoning of the Valar." The year you left. The words sat heavy in the air.
With satisfaction, the young elf watched the betrayal melt away into something intensely painful to look upon, but no less than his sire deserved. Those lips parted. "You never told me."
"No," she agreed, remorseless, guiltless. "Come inside. We shall talk, husband."
The interlopers moved past, and Teldanno resisted the urge to hiss curses in his sire's face, instead focusing on bringing the heavy door shut and locking it with a satisfying click. Not that it mattered. Curufinwë probably would not have even noticed at the moment, with how distraught he appeared. Still, Teldanno could not help but feel that even once the shock wore off, the suffering that this knowledge would bring his father would not be enough to satiate his thirst for revenge.
No amount of remorse would fill all his mother's memories of long days and loneliness. No amount of apologizing would return Teldanno his childhood, free from the shadow of his family line.
But he would not stand between his mother and father. Curufinwë was still her One, murderer and traitor or no, and the young elf had grown enough to know that it was not his place to step between two adults. Never mind that it had been his shoulder upon which she had cried all these years. Never mind that she lost a little more of her sparkle every day, fading away into bleakness.
But now, just looking at how she moved, at how her hand automatically reached for his hand, how her lips quirked without a veil of sadness, he knew that she still loved him, still wanted him. If Curufinwë could bring back even a shimmer of the woman Teldanno could remember seeing behind that locked door, he thought he could at least tolerate the man for his mother's sake.
But he would still have to paint his father's face black-and-blue. Curufinwë Atarinkë still owed his youngest son at least a broken nose and two black eyes.
Three, his mind insisted as his face throbbed. Definitely three.
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These two are most definitely related. It's a good thing Telpe has some of his mother in him, or we might have had a brawl on our hands. In any case, maybe Teldanno is being a bit of a brat, but I think it's only natural that he would be upset with his father, even after all this time, especially if his mother started to actually fade. I suppose it can't be said that everything is completely Curufin's fault, but you know how people are.
The song I was listening to: Show Me Love by t.A.T.u. It has nothing to do with the prompt, but I felt like listening to it, and I've liked it for ages now. Sorry I have nothing more to offer you in this end author's note, but I just spent an hour and a half trying to make blogger.com work so I could finish uploading this story and my head is pounding.
Bed time. Yes, definitely sleep time.
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