Missing

Canon compliant AU.  Little Fëanor is far too intelligent and too observant for his own good.  As young children oft tend to be.  Quenya names used (Fëanor = Fëanáro).  Also, emya = mama, atto = daddy and yonya = my son.  Just to make that clear.  This is related to "Muse" and "Drive" especially, but many others as well.  Basically the half-repressed origins of the mother complex that started it all.  Takes place during the Years of the Trees.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: b/g

Characters: Fëanor, Finwë (mentions Míriel and other random elves)

Warning: canon-compliant probable AU, dysfunctional families, depression, mention of suicide, death and stuff, obsessive behaviors, child neglect/possible abuse

Song: Russian Lullaby

Words: 1,123
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missing (adjective): absent: lost; unable to be found: not in a usual or expected place; needed or expected but not included
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/missing

Ever since he was little--before he could even truly put words to the feeling that ached and jolted in his chest when he watched other parents with their laughing, joyous children--Fëanáro had realized something wasn't quite right.  That something important was gone.

Missing.

"Where is Emya?  Atto... where is she?"

There were always two.  Two of them and their child.  A tall figure--a man standing guard over his family with pride, playing in the gardens with the little one.  Another figure, shorter and slimmer, shaped differently, and so beautiful--a woman who always cradled her babies close and kissed away their scrapes and bruises so easily.  And then there was the child between them, who was always smiling and laughing and bubbling over with the heady delight of a careless life free of worry and worldly disillusionment.

Even as a child, rarely did Fëanáro smile.  He could not recall laughter.

There was only he and his father and the endless ornate hallways full of cold, lifeless and lavish artifacts.  A museum that his delicate, clumsy fingers were not allowed to touch.  A jungle of breakables and rules and nannies and things little children could never understand.

"She is not here." And his father would hug him close, lay a cheek to the top of his head, and Fëanáro had never understood why it did not feel the same as the embraces he saw between child and father outside the walls of the palace.  Why there was only a thick veil of sadness and an almost smothering layer of pure affection and desperation.

"I am so sorry, yonya.  She is not here."

"When is she coming home?"

He desired her warmth.  Her softness and her comfort and her care.  Her kisses and her voice and her lullabies.

"She is not."

More than anything, just once, Fëanáro wanted his mother.

But...

Most would scoff.  Growing up as a prince, he had always had everything he wanted (or so everyone said) and had been endlessly spoiled (according to his tutors and nannies and the courtiers whispering darkly behind raised hands).  Eru forbid the young prince be left wanting for anything.

Never mind that the child desired only a hug.

Not one of those cheap imitations that his father so often bestowed upon him.  Not some red gleaming jewel masquerading as a ruby, but too garish and too clear to be the real thing.  Not a lie.

He did not want to be embraced and told that he was loved when his father pulled away, held him at arm's length, and looked through him.  Whispered words of affection that sounded like they were meant for someone else, someone who wasn't even there, who overshadowed the child longing only for his father's attention and love.  Finwë would then lean forward and kiss his son upon the brow and send him away.

Send him away.  Would not allow for the boy to sit upon his lap whilst he worked.  Would not allow the child to sleep in his bed after a nightmare.

And absolutely would not allow Fëanáro to speak of her.

"But Atto, I want--"

The grip about his skinny arms became harder.  Slightly painful and pinching.  Immediately, the boy was silenced, limp in that grasp as his father's warmth pulled away.  Left him cold and aching, shivering and resisting with every ounce of innate stubbornness the need to wrap about himself his own arms in a pitiful, lonely embrace.

"Let us not speak of this again, yonya.  There is nothing more to say."

Fëanáro did not bring it up again.

But he never stopped thinking about it.  About her.

About how, if she was there--if she had never left, wasn't gone, wasn't missing--they would all be happy.  Just like those other families he spied on sometimes, laughing in the gardens, tangled together in warm hugs, smiling and nuzzling and sleeping in the golden light together beneath the trees.  In place of those perfect families, always the young prince imagined them, himself pressed between his father's warm, taut form and his face curled up against the slender, silver-dappled throat of his mother as her arms came about him.  As they all became a family together without the burden of death or kingship or other things that his childish mind did not yet understand.

Simplicity became his mantra.  His law and declaration.  The only thing keeping the child from utterly falling apart alone in that house, starving and thirsting.

If only she were here.

Then maybe his father would not stare through him as though he were little more than a ghost of another.  Then maybe there would be smiles and laughter in these cold hallways and marble foyers.  Then maybe they would all be happy together like those other parents and their children of whom the young prince was so envious.

Then maybe Fëanáro would not be so sad all the time.  Or cold.  Or alone.

Little daydreams.  Little passing thoughts.  Little whispers.  Like fuel poured over an open fire, the obsession broke the fence of scorched stone and raced through the dry grass, eating away everything in its path until only it was left, and all energy was directed toward its burning.  Toward its continued existence.  Toward its final completion.

Years and years later, it was still bright and white-hot in his chest.  The memory of his father's distant love and his mother's frown in death.  And the need to fix this shattered and mangled wreckage.  To find the missing pieces and put them back together into a semblance of order.  To make this machine of affection and emotion work.

Young Fëanáro wondered what it would be like, to have a father's pride and a mother's care.  The love of his parents, and not the love of a broken man too shattered and too busy and too frightfully depressed beneath the weight of loss and despair to come out of the dark.  Too lost to be led free of the labyrinth by the child's clumsy little hands that did not know how to help or how to guide, for they were blind and innocent to the true nature of his father's despondency.

No enough.  Never enough.  For young Fëanáro, the spark was lit.  The need become too great to ignore, the fear too potent to push aside.  He loved his father--truly he did--but he was not enough.  Had never been enough.

They needed to be whole.  And only she could fill the void left behind.

Only she, he oft recalled bitterly.  Bitterly and longingly and wistfully.

Only she.