Mistakes

Right, well, I don't know if I'll ever get caught up, but I'll try to get back on schedule.  Finals are coming up soon, so we'll see how I stick to that, yeah?  LOL.

Anyway, possible canon-compliant AU?  Lalwen has made some hard decisions, but she's strong, and she has no regrets.  Some Quenya used here (yenya = my daughter, yonya = my son, atar = father and emya = mama).  Basically, this is a continuation of "Test" from ages and ages ago.  More feminism and social problems, because Valinor is not a perfect and happy place.

I also just have to say that I watched the HetaOni walkthroughs and I think I just about died.  So the music for this piece is from that, in case you wondered why this went in such a sentimental direction.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion or any other words.  I don't even own the children.

Pairings: OMC x Lalwen

Characters: Lalwen, Aranwë, Finwë, Ecthelion (mentions Indis, Findis, Fëanor, Fingolfin and Finarfin)

Warning: possibly canon-compliant, origins of characters, scandal and social ostracism, sexism and feminist themes, strong female character, pregnancy, premarital sex, single parenthood

Song: Break of Dawn and Saying Goodbye

Words: 1,219
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
mistake (noun): to blunder in the choice of; to misunderstand the meaning or intention of: misinterpret; to identify wrongly: confuse with another
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mistake

Sometimes, one had to wonder.  About their decisions.  About their fate.

If they were taking the right path.  If they were somehow lost.

And it was not as if Lalwen never stilled from her constant tourbillion of energy and wondered in silent stillness.  Every day, she would pause and look out the kitchen window.  Wonder how things could have been different if only she had chosen a different path...

Was she really happy with this life, so different and simple?

With her sweet son, half-grown and already showing the stubborn temperament and undeniable recklessness of her family and blood.  With her belly rounding again, a second child on the way, squirming and kicking beneath her restless hands in the early morning glow.

With no husband in sight.  With no family at her back.  Alone.

"I let your transgression slide once, yenya, but..."

On the window's rough wooden frame, her hands clenched tightly until the knuckles blanched into white.  Truly, she hated remembering those days past now only a few months, looking her father in the eyes and knowing that he was so disappointed in her and her decisions that he could hardly stand to call her "daughter".  That he thought she was making a mistake, ruining her life for a mere droplet of independence and rebelliousness.

He didn't understand.  None of them did.

"Why could not have your only son been enough for you, Lalwen?  Why could you not have been content as you were?"

But that was the strange thing about contentment, wasn't it?  It was easy to seek it in the midst of turmoil and upset, in the midst of depression and unhappiness, but it was impossible to find it when all around you looked and looked and only became sadder...

Here, she...

"Emya, are you okay?"

Away from the landscape that she looked at so often but never saw, Lalwen turned to find her son standing before her with a searching expression in his aged eyes.  Aranwë, her sweet boy, was reaching that point of youthful independence, the itch to do things on his own without her help or guidance, growing up into a powerful young man who no longer needed his mother.  But still he was so very protective of her, the only parent he could ever remember.  Growing up in a house of people who sneered down their noses upon her decision to keep him and claim him as her son through blood...

"It would be a lie to call him anything other." That was what she always said, and she stood by her words to her dying breath.  That she swore.

"A lie that would have saved your reputation.  And a lie that would have made his life easier."

They had wanted her to pretend to have adopted him, the baby she had nurtured in her womb for a turn of the seasons.  They had wanted to deny him his blood rights, to call him the son of another House.  But she had never hidden the truth from anyone, even if it made her a social outcast, a sullied and ruined woman swathed in sin and scandal.

"I am fine, sweetheart," she lied softly, running her fingers through his dark hair.  Her hair, for his father's hair had been a rich chocolate.  Eyes looked up at her with shocking incisiveness--large gray eyes, her eyes, for his father's had been so very blue and so very pure of that calculative glint of royal blood--and Lalwen knew they did not quite believe her.

"Okay..." But he did not leave her side.  Instead, his small fingers wrapped themselves into her skirts, clinging tightly.

And the affection she felt for her baby couldn't have been stronger than in that moment.  Had she chosen to lie... would they have this bond?  Would he look upon her this way, as his true mother, or would she have become nothing more than a cold and distant figurehead?

How could this have been a mistake?

And now, with another baby on the way...

"You have left me no choice.  I did not want to make this decision."

Well, it was too late to go back now and rewrite actions already taken and words already spoken.  Too late for her to take back her wild night of passion in the arms of a nameless man.  Too late for her to change her mind about wanting a second child.

Too late for her father to take back his damning disowning or her mother to take back her scathing scolds and accusations.  Too late for her brothers to withdraw their disappointed and cold gazes or her sister to withdraw the utter scorn in those cornflower eyes.

Too late to go back to the way things had been before.  In a palace as a princess, living in a fantasy dream where all was well unto forever.

Too late for regret.

And yet, she was never certain there was any to be felt.  Here...

Here she was happy...

"You are not welcome within these walls.  No longer are you a daughter of the House of Finwë..."

Her hands lowered from the windowpane, sliding down over her bump again and again.  One child pressed against her side, nuzzling and so very warm, her sweet Aranwë, son of kings.  Another rolling in her womb, seeking the sound of her heartbeat and the soft thrum of her voice humming an old lullaby, her little angel.

They were beautiful.  And she would never consider them mistakes.  If anything, they were her salvation.

In the end, she thought, things had turned out for the best.

No matter how much she wondered and paced and stared out at the landscape beyond her windowsill, never seeing beyond the designs of the grain in the wood, she knew that her decision would never change.  Never would she crawl back on hands and knees to beg forgiveness and give in...

"Unless you relinquish the child.  Hide your pregnancy, and I shall discretely find the baby a good home with a welcoming family..."

"No... Would you ever give up your child in such a way?  How can you ask this of me, atar?"

"Lalwen..."

"No..."

Never would she throw away that which was most precious.

"Come, let us start on dinner." She wrapped a slender hand about her son's back, steering herself and the child away from the frozen place of thoughts and memories and too much wondering for the soul's health and sanity. "There are apples from the tree on the hill that I collected this afternoon.  I will make apple pie if you promise to behave and help prepare our meal... No messes this time, yonya..."

For once, that young face wasn't scowling.  A beatific smile formed, those eyes flashing vividly with the silvered light of pure happiness.  With a hint of something just a little too knowing.  And then the moment was broken with a broad grin that reminded her all too much of her playful older brothers.

"Promise, emya!"

Apple pie was his favorite, after all.  And she loved to see him smile.  Her treasure.

The only mistake she could have made was ever considering throwing this away.