Title: Sabatoge
Fandom: LotR
Characters: Denethor, Imrahil, Thorongil, and mentions of Adrahil, Ecthelion, and the girls
Prompt: 'Cause your crystal ball ain't so crystal clear
Rating: PG
Summary: What Thorongil sees he might not get; Denethor's got this flagit thorn in his side.
A/N: I'm tellin' all y'all I don't own anything. Don't ask me why most of my other soundtracks for younger characters from more modern fandoms include classics and a more varied playlist, whereas all I need to feed my Denethor muse is "From Under the Cork Tree" with smatterings of Incubus and the Beasties. It gets you a new ficlet and more polished versions of older stories.
It was not an argument. Neither man would have admitted to that. By family standards, Denethor's voiced concern and Ecthelion's dismissals of his son's fears had been perfectly cordial. Even so, Thorongil remained newly appointed captain to Gondor's eastern border, the Steward remained unconvinced by his son's contentions, and the Captain-General seethed inwardly through the rest of the summer council meeting and the festivities following it that night, though he made an effort - however poor - to convince himself that his tightly-wound fury stemmed entirely from the newest captain's unpredictable nature, Thorongil's secretive past, and how it could come to risk Gondor's safety. That was a factor in Denethor's current foul mood, certainly.
He had not left the Steward's ball immediately after Thorongil's public instatement simply because it would not be politic to allow his temper to override courtesy. If he had avoided his father's gaze and spoken the absolute minimum with his visiting sisters and their husbands before making his exit as early as he could reasonably construe as polite, Denethor had seen and been seen in his unreadable mask of calm by those he'd needed to. His elder sisters were used to seeing him duck away even when he was in a better mood - they had met his eye and given him a mix of not-quite-silent pity, triumph, and exhortation when the one pair of hazel eyes he had truly wanted to see at the ball lingered instead upon the new captain - they would accept their little brother's shortness from long experience with his renitence laced with affection and arrogance.
Imrahil of Dol Amroth had also come to Minas Tirith with his father and sundry other nobles and their retinues, and Denethor's lip did not twist upwards entirely out of courtly training when the young man attempted to delay his exit. "Will you not join us in another toast to your men, my lord?" Imrahil asked before flicking his gaze to where the star of the night abashedly accepted congratulations from his many admirers, quite a few of them female, young, and lovely, though but there was but one admirer that both men outside the cluster about Thorongil found their eyes lingering upon. "You look like you could use a drink."
"I must return to my studies and prepare for early morning duties before the council resumes," Denethor begged off. Though any other friendly face might have been welcome, at least once he had left the public halls of the ball behind, Imrahil was not the man Denethor wished to vent his frustrations with, if indeed the Steward's heir were in the practice of unloading his bile to a sympathetic ear.
Imrahil grimaced. The youth had sat through his first session of the full council of Gondor rather dazedly, occasionally turning helplessly to his father as if to ask Prince Adrahil to put what the Steward's other liegemen had said in context and plain speech. The court of Belfalas ran much hotter and more openly in their courses than here in the shadow of the White Mountains, where little stood betwixt the capitol and the black lands of the east but for rangers that popped out of the trees to the north and disappeared just as quickly. Their women, especially, tended to focus precisely upon what they wanted even when attempting to match Minas Tirith's ladies for subtlety... but Denethor would not think on that. "But of course, duty calls, and you have never been one to shy from it," the young Dol Amrothi saluted his elder. Denethor would have felt better for the compliment if he had not watched Imrahil join the crowd about Thorongil during his last look back at the ball. The young man was charming, above all else, not unlike another who had swept into Ecthelion's court and won hearts where heads should rule.
The Steward's son retreated to his chamber, poured a glass of wine, and went over the minutes of the previous day's meetings until his eyes stopped watering. With too much tension remaining in his hands and jaw to prepare notes for tomorrow, he rose and allowed himself the luxury of pacing his own room. He still heard distant music from the party, snatches of laughter and talk as others made their retreats from Ecthelion's great hall. Much of it sounded inebriated, or at least drunk with giddiness, and Denethor peered out into the corridor before allowing himself the luxury of pacing the back hallway between his own chamber and the Steward's empty study instead. As heir, Denethor had to maintain mastery of himself at all times, but there were days and nights when the walls of his rooms came too close, the air too still, and nothing useful could be accomplished within them until his thoughts could settle. Until then, the Captain-General settled for observation and patrol.
He had gotten to the end of the corridor and halfway back when he heard the creak of the old stairs above his father's study. No one went up there; Ecthelion had abandoned the upper room to storage years ago. Though a more optimistic man might attribute the sound to a wine-drenched fit of nostalgia on the part of the Steward or his daughters, Denethor had never been an optimistic sort. He was stubborn, certainly, but he did not enter the study in hopes of regaining favor with a happier moment spent with his father. The Captain-General considered knocking for all of a heartbeat at the door, but better to apologize for his own intrusion than to allow an intruder to slip away into the gaggle of retiring guests. Denethor kept his hand above his knife as he took in the empty study and the open door to the tower lookout above it. "Father?" he called in a tone neither too loud nor too worried as he started up the winding old stair. It would not do to sound hasty.
"I saw Lord Ecthelion off to his chamber," the dark-haired shadow in the upper room eventually answered him. It was a son's duty to see an old man safely to his room when the hour grew too late for genteel celebrations. Denethor bit back an uncomfortable, irrational burst of anger at both his father and this stranger who presumed too much. For all his humility in the face of public honors, for all he shrunk under Denethor's gaze as he toyed with a candle set next to the dust cover over some rounded plinth, Thorongil went too far. "I thought I had left something up here and thought to fetch it on my way back."
"When would you have been up here to abandon your possessions?" Denethor's steel glare was usually enough to still most men in their guilt, but Thorongil left his hand upon the round top of the covered globe far longer than the Captain-General was comfortable with.
Thorongil's eyes flickered briefly to the stars outside before he swallowed and made his reply. "It must have been my mistake. I have left it somewhere else, most likely." With a deliberate bow, he brushed past the man in the doorway, candle in hand.
Denethor was torn between slamming the impudent foreign-born captain against a wall and searching him for stolen goods and making a thorough sweep of the room. But it was dark, and he wanted as little contact with Thorongil as possible for fear of finding a prize from Dol Amroth as much as from an abandoned storage room. He shuttered the window back up and made his way down in the darkness. As he passed the pillar Thorongil had been standing by, his hand brushed the top of the dust cover. It was hard as stone beneath, and strangely warm.
