Going through some of my files from last year, I found two scenes from this that didn't quite make the cut that I wanted to share.
The first is a different perspective on events that were ultimately summarized in one of Celegorm's letters in the fic:
“I’m here to fulfill my oath,” Aredhel said.
Celegorm was less concerned that she said this while covered in a generous splattering of mud and blood than he was by the slightly manic way in which she said it and the white knuckled grip she had on the shoulder of the wide eyed child in front of her. Aredhel had spent much of their youth covered in various levels of blood and mud. She had not spent their youth with that look in her eyes.
Or holding children of unknown provenance.
But she was swaying as she said it, and questions came later when someone came back from a hunt looking like that.
“Alright,” he said. “Three mugs of stew it is. That’ll cover two of the houses at least.”
“And the Sindar,” she said. Her hand somehow managed to tighten its grip on the wide eyed youth in front of her.
Celegorm looked at him again, taking in the details he hadn’t before.
Ever so slightly protective in the way he angled himself in front of Celegorm’s cousin.
“And the Sindar,” he agreed, turning to lead the way to the keep’s kitchen. It would be warm there and better for easing out answers than the echoing hall more formal meals were taken in.]
He met eyes with the guard on duty at the gates who had let them in as he turned and gave a few quick signals in the hunters’ hand sign they had once all used in Orome’s train.
It all might yet mean nothing.
But until he knew for fact that Aredhel had killed whatever had put that wildness in her eyes, he didn’t want so much as a rabbit coming through that gate.
The second scene is actually a slight AU of the ending of the fic. The first few paragraphs match the published fic; it diverges from there.
They’d had no indication this was coming.
If the scouts had given the slightest hint that fire and death were about to come flooding over the horizon, Maedhros would not be here. He would be where he should be: standing with his people at Himring and holding the line, whatever it cost.
But there had been no hints, so he wasn’t there. He was in Hithlum - officially delivering his people’s taxes to Nolofinwe and unofficially seizing a task that could have been delegated so he could uphold his end of that unforgivably foolish oath.
He could have sent Maglor. He should have sent Maglor.
If he had sent Maglor, Maglor would be here, behind the walls of a fortress and with what little tenuous safety anyone could have now, instead out there in the unprotected Gap, choking on ash, burning like their father-
But he had been blind to the signs that must have been somewhere, surely, and he had been afraid, always so afraid to trust this task to anyone but himself, no matter how many times he’d had to, and so his brother was holding the Gap, and Captain Thanduin was holding Himring, and Maedhros was here, uselessly, with only the soldiers who had ridden out with him as escorts to command, and death riding in from every direction.
(And since Aegnor had been late - since Aegnor was now presumably cut off by the truly remarkable wall of fire - they still hadn’t even had the stupid drink this was all supposed to be for.)
(This all, of course, assumed optimistically that Aegnor was not already dead. That Thanduin was not already dead. That Maglor was not - that all his brothers were not - )
“It could be worse,” Fingon said.
It was the first thing anyone had said for long moments in what was supposed to be a strategy meeting in the war room of Hithlum. The words were ground to hoarseness by the long days of smoke and shouting that had worn through even elven throats.
Fingolfin, who had been staring numbly at the map before them, almost all of the hopelessly positioned figures mere guesswork, raised his head to stare at his son. “Worse,” he repeated. “With the siege broken, with the dead beyond counting, the Enemy battering down our gates - “ He cut himself off with an abrupt gesture.
“Aegnor could be here any day with reinforcements,” Fingon persisted.
Maedhros considered the enemy strewn map in front of them and reconsidered his definition of optimism.
Then he looked up again, and his breath caught because for a moment, it wasn’t his uncle he saw before him.
It was not, after all, his uncle who had ever before had that look in his eyes.
He had last seen it on his father just before he charged ahead into the fire.
“Fingon is right,” he said, reaching automatically for the soothing words he hadn’t been skilled enough to get his father to listen to. “If we can predict the moment he’s most likely to break through, we can take advantage of the opportunity to strike at the Enemy. We know he intended to set out almost precisely a fortnight ago; how far could he have gotten before the attack came?”
For a moment, Fingolfin was still caught in the hypnotic gaze of his own despairing fury.
Then Maedhros’s words managed to pierce through just enough to get a hook into him.
Unfortunately, it was not the hook Maedhros had intended to throw.
“Aegnor informed you of when he set out to deliver his taxes?”
The question was delivered exactly as incredulously as it deserved.
If this blew up now - if this came out now, with the fire of the Enemy all around them and his uncle already on the verge of being mesmerized by its desperate glow -
Maedhros considered, for a brief moment, the relative merits of claiming to be spying on his cousins.
Sense returned a moment later. The truth, suitably bent, would do well enough. They were cousins; they talked. This was just one more tidbit of careless information tucked into a letter.
But his smoke addled brain had waited too long and the moment had stretched into suspicion.
Always, always suspicion.
By treason and by fear of treason . . .
They had fought so hard against that first; ever since those first maddened weeks they had maintained order, maintained the bonds of liege and loyalty that held them together. He had thrown aside his father’s crown rather than risk provoking it again.
The fear had stayed. Always, the fear had stayed. He wasn’t even sure any more when it had first sunk its claws in - the mountain or the beach or Formenos itself, when darkness had fallen and never quite left.
Fingon was looking at him, waiting on his cue to answer, and that was as much a condemnation as the silence itself. Fingolfin was looking between them, eyes sharpening with the growing knowledge that there was some secret between them that he knew not of.
The fear was choking him. Choking back all his clever words, all his strategies, insisting that this would be where it all fell apart.
“The key thing to remember,” he began, and there he stumbled. What was the key?
The key thing to remember is that it technically wasn’t treason?
The key thing to remember is that we were all really very drunk?
The key thing to remember is that, really, this has probably been a huge boon to our wine stores because after a mistake like that, none of us have been willing to risk getting drunk again, no matter how bad anything else got -
And none of it would do any good, and so none of the words would form, and so he looked to Fingon, helpless in his failure.
Fingon stepped at once into the breach. “The key thing to remember,” he said, “is that it’s all my fault.”
Fingolfin and Maedhros blinked at the exact same moment.
"Your fault?” Maedhros said in bewilderment.
Fingon winced a little. “It was my idea,” he said apologetically.
In the centuries since, he had never bothered to try and reach back and retrieve the memory of who, exactly, had proposed that final, fatal toast. He had assumed, dimly, that it must have been himself.
But now that he thought of it . . .
”What was your idea?” his uncle demanded wearily.
“We swore an Oath,” Fingon said, still deeply apologetic.
“An Oath,” the king repeated flatly. “You swore the Oath of Feanor - “
“A different Oath,” Fingon cut in quickly. “To meet up and drink with the other branches of the family every so often.”
“And the Sindar,” Maedhros put in because they might as well get the whole thing out in the open now.
“A drinking Oath.” The king’s voice had reached new levels of flatness. “You swore an oath on the Powers, and it regarded drinking.”
Maedhros had never seen Fingon wince so deeply.
“Do you even remember the whole Oath?” the king demanded.
“Well,” Fingon said bravely. “That’s the good news! We wrote it down.”
The king did not sound as if he thought this was good news.
“Well, there was some spare space under the treaty . . . “
The king stared at his son for a long moment. Then he looked at Maedhros as if for confirmation.
Maedhros steeled himself and nodded.
Then he pushed past the fear and added, “I feel I should clarify though that it was more my fault than his; I was the one who proposed writing down the Oath to check the wording before we swore it.”
The king stared at him for a few moments and then said, remarkably calmly, “Yes. Because writing it down to make sure you didn’t drunkenly swear who-knows-what is obviously the worst part of this mess.”
“It was on the same parchment as the treaty,” Maedhros reminded him in a fit of self-destructive honesty.
The calmness evaporated. “I don’t care if it was on the back of a tablecloth! I care that rashness is apparently as thick in our blood as - “
In the distance, a dragon roared its approach. Fingon perked up a bit.
This did not escape his father’s attention.
(I feel like this version is funnier than the version I ultimately went with. Unfortunately, it also robbed the climax of the story of the emotional tension it needed, so the more serious/dramatic version it was.)
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