if you don’t care, just don’t say anything. i don’t need your polite excuse or your fake sympathy. i don’t need your waning attention. i don’t need you to ask me how i’m doing if you can’t even pretend to attentively listen to me. don’t pretend to be my friend. don’t try to be my lover. your insincerity is showing, and i’d hate to see that as your true colours.
— don’t make me despise you even more than i do now, you’ve already tainted what’s left of all our good memories.
. . . the black smoke which seemed to churn over all the knee-jerk positive things people said at difficult times obscured the view. It will be okay. It's all for the best. They were not true.
I am afraid that, by the nature of the prompt, this is not an entirely happy ficlet :s I hope you can forgive me <3
Characters: Idril x Tuor x Maeglin
Words: 1 840
Warnings: lies, well-meant and otherwise, mental pain, anguish, imminent doom
Idril knew that something was wrong.
She would never have told him as much, but Maeglin—Twilight son of her father’s sister—was much less mysterious than he might have thought.
Of course, he had not gotten to know his extended family, so he had no idea how much of his grandfather and his uncles were inscribed in his face, his gestures, and his movements.
She, on the other hand, remembered—she had been but a child, swaddled in her mother’s arms, but she recalled her father’s brothers perfectly—the heroic, often silly stories, the warmth of their love, and their roaring laughter—as well as she remembered Maeglin’s mother.
“Cousin,” she said now, trying hard to break through the armour of compounded grief and hardened resentment. “You know that you can talk to me, don’t you?”
A part of her wanted to reach out, yearning to cup that pallid cheek in a poor imitation of her mother’s grace and generosity. Still, she didn’t dare—too fierce was the fire burning in the other’s unfathomable eyes and the cruel twitch of his sensual lips he tried to dissimulate.
“I know,” he replied, but there was a hint of mockery—twisting like a knife in her heart—colouring his voice.
Idril flinched back as if feeling the sting of his rejection like a physical blow.
“There is nought that should preoccupy you, Princess.”
It took a moment until Idril could identify the sickly, sinking feeling in her chest—Maeglin was lying to her, and he was not even really trying to hide that fact. It seemed to her that a part of him wanted her to know.
Before her ire, tinged with an almost puerile feeling of betrayal, could overwhelm her and make her say things she would not be able to take back, she forced herself to remember that she was her father’s daughter and heir—she had to rise to the occasion with as much grace as she could muster even as her heart broke.
Breathing in and out slowly, she stared at the stranger who had his uncle’s smile and his grandfather’s frown, seeking a way to connect with him.
Had she suspected that he might react positively to such a confession, she would have offered him all her most precious memories as a token of goodwill and kinship—more yet, she would have laid that part of her heart that was duty and loyalty at his feet to soothe them, sore and weary as they were from running from she knew not what terrible threat.
“Please,” she breathed instead. “I see that you are suffering, share your burden with me,” she wanted to cry, but she was too afraid that her words would be met with scorn once more. “Something seems to be troubling you.”
“If you say so.” It was not a concession—it was a doleful accusation. She had heard these very words drip like poison and be flung like arrows from the lips of her ancestors, and she hated herself for finding echoes Finwë’s tired overindulgence, Fingolfin’s affectionate permissiveness, and her own father’s pained stoicism in her own demeanour.
As tears burned in her eyes, she reached deep into her soul to find her mother—warm and brave—but there were only the ashes of Turgon’s inconsolable silence where she sought to find Elenwë’s reassuring smile.
“Please, do not worry on my account,” Maeglin pleaded darkly.
“What are you not saying?” she thought, sadness overshadowing her dying wrath. His words tingled like a warning instead of settling like a blanket of comfort around her heaving shoulders.
“As you wish,” she said tonelessly, her voice cold, her face motionless. “Tuor is awaiting me—you know where to find us, should you change your mind.”
“Are you well, my love?” Tuor asked softly.
“Of course,” his love, his shining miracle, replied in a voice and inflexion that sounded so much like her father’s that he was dumbfounded for a moment—he had learned much about the enigmatic, enchanting creature he adored so deeply. Still, he was reminded every so often of how much his feeble, woefully mortal mind would never be able to grasp.
What secret grievances and momentous misgivings were pondered behind that smooth, fair brow even as she humoured him by making pleasant conversation about his diurnal duties and delights?
To this very day, she had refused to share many details about her time on the Ice and her mother’s death—she claimed that she wanted to protect him from the pervasive rot of grief that would gnaw on every happy moment they experienced—but Tuor was no longer sure that he fully believed that.
“How is Maeglin? Have you conversed with him?” he asked instead, probing at the open wound she probably thought he knew nought about.
Idril loved her cousin in ways Tuor could hardly even begin to grasp—all he knew was that the unfortunate orphan who had found refuge in Gondolin was of a rare and alluring beauty which complimented his beloved’s in the most maddening ways.
Everyone here was so incredibly enthralling—hewn of living stone and adorned by animated gems—that he was perpetually surprised that Idril and Maeglin seemed to bring out one another’s best assets without ever overshadowing the other.
It was a testament to his innate weakness that he yearned to see them together so much; indeed, catching them during a private meeting or tense conversation made his heart race and mind swim, but he relished those few precious, erratic heartbeats of hopeful delirium that threatened to tear his chest apart.
“I have,” she admitted. “He was cagey.”
“Isn’t he ever so?” Tuor replied with easy charm and bent down to press a kiss onto her smooth, flawless cheek. Thus, he nearly missed the flash of anger and pain passing through the bright summer sky of her gaze like an ominous storm cloud. “You suspect that he hides something of importance?”
“No,” she rejoined a little too quickly and too vehemently. “No, never you mind.”
The smile she plastered onto her bewitchingly gorgeous face was too static, Tuor thought as his stomach lurched miserably. The one he had seen laugh, dance, and argue passionately now resembled a forgotten statue of a long-lost heroine, and he loathed the fact that she had ruthlessly and unconditionally shut him out.
He did not doubt that something was weighing on her—a bleeding ache that made carmine roses bloom under her otherwise unblemished skin—and yet he had to accept that she would not share her doubts and fears with him until she deemed it absolutely necessary.
Maybe, she was still shielding and sheltering him, he mused, and maybe, she had just grown incapable of speaking words of dread and imminent doom for fear that her very speech would ultimately conjure up and breathe life into her starkest nightmares.
“He is well, I take it?” Tuor tried one last time, flinging his heart and soul against the impervious walls of Idril’s unyielding secrecy.
“Yes,” she smiled. “Yes, we both are quite well.”
Maeglin stared at the peaceful horizon, unfurling like a golden tapestry beyond the confines of his sanctuary and prison.
Even though there was not a single sign of looming danger in the sweet air yet, the landscape was already ablaze to him, set alight by the voracious flames of his guilt and apprehension.
Idril knew—he was certain of it—although he could not fathom how she could have seen into his head and heart and deciphered the feelings and thoughts even he could not always make sense of.
He replayed his conversation with her over and over in his mind, analysing every word, every movement, every feigned smile, but he could not pinpoint the moment he had given himself away.
Oftentimes, his cousin’s effect on him positively bordered on terrifying—for some reason he could not identify or remedy, she seemed to know more about him than he ever divulged.
It was, of course, common knowledge that Idril was exceptionally gifted and versed in the art of mental communication, but Maeglin had to presume that there was another underlying truth—probably quite simple and therefore deeply perplexing—that entirely escaped him.
“Hello, are you all right?”
He whirled around when the kind, gentle voice of Tuor resounded behind him like a breath of warm air, chasing away the cloying fumes of asphyxiating mist.
“I cannot help but feel that my dearest love is worried about you. Did you fight?”
Maeglin smiled sadly at that; it was true that he and Idril oftentimes did not see eye to eye on matters of the realm, and they had been known to argue passionately about their discord—he almost wished that his crime against blood and soul only went as far as urban design.
“No,” he replied affably. “She has much on her mind these days—motherhood makes her suspect unspoken dangers looming behind every corner.”
The words tasted like ash and bile on his tongue. This was more than a despicable lie; it was a conscious effort to achieve the most reprehensible misdirection.
As Tuor’s smile softened to the point of looking positively boyish, Maeglin knew that he had succeeded in building a rapport based on gender and feigned privilege—within their hearts, they were both aware that Idril was more clear-headed and circumspect than any other person in the city, yet they let the gnawing curse of petty insecurity lead them astray.
As a matter of fact, it was easier to simply claim that Idril was chasing phantoms than to accept that she might see and know more than either one of them could even perceive, let alone understand.
“You’d come to us if you were in need of help, wouldn’t you?” Tuor grinned; his eyes were shining with faith and support, and his conspiratorial grin was unwavering.
Breathing out audibly to alleviate the torturous pressure weighing on his chest, Maeglin nodded gravely.
“Come to dinner soon,” the other pressed on. “I am sure it would reassure her so much; we love you well, you know that, right?”
Again, Maeglin moved his head—heavy with words unspoken and tears unshed—and fled the premises before the valiant Man could dig deeper into the distinctive mist of misery billowing around one he had accepted as a kinsman and friend.
If only they had invited him to their marital bed rather than their familial dinner table, if only they had laid their hands on him to arouse rather than gentle, if only they had spoken of loving passion rather than affectionate indulgence, he might not have quailed and capitulated before the terrible, relentless, corrupting presence of their common enemy.
The truth—bleak and burning—was writ plain across the darkening horizon, and—as so often in his life—Maeglin wished he had been given more time to tell the frightening, humiliating truth before he was forced to swallow the bitter drafts concocted from his craven lies and unspoken desires.
