28. A marriage wish

Author's note: those who remember some of Hugo Weaving's facial expressions at the Council of Elrond back in the FOTR movie will likely be amused at something with Fingolfin in this chapter.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

The naming ceremony for Lówen went very well nine days later. She was quiet because she was very focused on sucking on a wooden amulet that she had gotten as a gift from her oldest brother. No one was really sure how she had managed to grab it in that way and put it in her mouth.

"That one was not really meant as a pacifier…" Rûsa said softly to Rog at seeing what his youngest sister was doing while Maedhros was trying to make Lówen stop sucking on the amulet. Rog patterned his shoulder as a sign on that it was alright.

"No need to worry, it is too big for her to swallow, she is too little to do much else than sucking on it."

"True…"

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Once the ceremony and the following traditional meal was over, many in the Noldorin royal family noticed something that was not normal, namely that Rûsa tried to calm down himself by slipping on a glass of wine. As he never drank alcohol normally, especially thanks to an absolutely dreadful cocktail of mixed, high-strength strong alcoholic drinks that Fëanor once had tricked Rûsa into drinking shortly after his rebirth in order to make him stop trying to eat on things that was harmful for Elflings, it was a sign of how serious it must be for him.

"All right, Rûsa. What is it that makse you be so nervous that you drink alcohol to calm down when you never touches alcoholic drinks otherwise? You didn't even touch any alcohol before the coming-of-age ceremony!" Maedhros asked bluntly to her oldest son, who quickly put down the still half-filled glass back on the table at her words. She was not the only one to wonder why he acted so strange.

"Is it because you get stressed over all the invitations to the various celebrations that you have received every day now? We should have warned you about that, there are some people who would love to hook you as a law-son married to one of their unwed daughters. It was the same for my sons and grandsons back in the Years of the Trees before everything went south," said Finwë in an apologetic tone, mentally rebuking himself for not having thought of that earlier. He should have known that, with his own family back in their younger years. Behind the High King, his three sons and their wedded children shared an agreed look of suffering at the mention of that. Especially Maedhros and Fëanor, who had been the highest catch on the marriage market before Nerdanel had caught him and the Kinslayings had ruined what good chances for marriage Maedhros once had.

"N-no...it...it is not the invitations that troubles me...most of them comes from haru's old supporters and they have told me that the invitations is merely for show…"

Rûsa would have started to bite on his thumb nails, a very old habit of his that surfaced every time he was extra nervous or stressed and which his family in vain had tried to make him stop with, had not Maedhros quickly placed Lówen in his arms just to prevent that.

"Sit down, sweetheart."

He obeyed and sat down on a couch, carefully holding his younger half-sister as he did so. He was not too surprised that Maeglin took the chance to sit down beside him, looking as if it simply had been a mere coincidence since he still had some small free space beside him in the couch.

"Is it something else, then?"

Maeglin used her sitting position beside him to write on his back with a finger:

Let's try and get the reveal over before you get too afraid to say it to everyone.

Half by instinct, Rûsa held Lówen as if she was a shield to defend him against any possible negative reaction for what he was about to say.

"Well...the thing is that...coming of age is also a sign of that I am seen as old enough for marriage, right? There...is a lady I have been meeting for a couple of years in private…"

Maeglin tried to not show anything in her face or eyes that could betray her as the lady in question, twenty years of secret meetings behind their families backs was not just a couple of years as he tried to put it as.

"Yes?"

It did not matter who it was that asked, Rûsa tried so hard to remain calm. Well, no one really blamed him for suddenly becoming so nervous to speak about it that he ended up speaking it as one long word but not like an sentence:

"IreallylovesherofmywholeheartandIwouldlovetomarryherbutwearenotsurethatourfamilieswouldagree…"

Inhaling a deep breath and straightening his back at the end, he found himself unable to say anything more.

"Huh?"

Half of the royal family was confused as they had only managed to catch a few words of what he had said, while others had caught on the problem a bit.

"Is the main problem what once happened in the family and our past deeds?" Fëanor asked with a side-look on his children, who got the hint that he meant the three Kinslayings. Unable to say anything more because he could not find the right words, Rûsa instead made a old Elvish handsign to confirming that it was at least half the problem, but thankfully not the whole one. Maedhros shared a worried look with many of the other family members in the room, she had known that there was very high risk of her children facing difficulty in finding someone to marry thanks to who she was, and it looked like Rûsa had gotten in that situation right now. Suddenly they heard the familiar sound of Yuë tapping his fingers on his slate to get attention, this was something he tended to do when he was not sure that his Ósanwë would be heard by everyone around. But it was what he had written on the slate that surprised everyone:

You sit differently when you're next to Maeglin, Big Brother.

That small, written comment seemed to be what Fingolfin needed to realize who the lady in question must be, based on that he in just that very moment gave the already nervous Rûsa what people had nick-named the "look of doom" that the House of Fingolfin was infamous for, and which Elrond was said to have mastered already at a young age.

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At the same time, the merchants from the Mountain clan was enjoying the journey back to their main camp. They had left Tirion five days earlier once they had finished their business there.

"Nice to hear that everything was well with both sets of your grandparents and that they looked forwards to be great-grandparents to the end of next spring."

"Well, Qucha is still having ten months left before the birth, so they still have lot of time to get used to that kind of news…" smiled Almo in pride, looking really happy over that he was about to become a father. It was a perfect beginning of the three brothers's new life in the Mountain clan and seeing that he currently was the only one with a wife, it had not surprised his older brothers so much that he sooner or later would get his Avari wife pregnant. In fact, they were only too grateful for that it had not happened while Calcanis still had been alive.

"Ow! Try and avoid any large stones on the road, could you please? It is a little hard to keep my balance otherwise..." requested Túrëo when a stone under one of the front wheels caused a jump in the rhythm of the movement of the carriage and he fell backwards against one sack of wheat they had bought in Tirion. He had been interrupted in the middle of making a new wooden figure at the sudden jump caused by the stone.

"Sorry, we will try to be more careful."

"Do not feel the need of making extra trouble just because of me..."

Taking back the half-finished wooden piece and the small knife from where he had dropped them, Túrëo started to work on the small figure again. He was pretty skilled in making this kind of small wooden figures, and even had been offered a chance to be a apprentice to one of the wood carvers in the Mountain Clan when his skills had been spotted by the Elf in question thanks to seeing some of the small toys Túrëo had done mostly in order to pass time as he recovered from the amputation of his lower right leg.

"I am glad that our maternal grandfather could get this textbook about the basic skills a healer needs to know for me. I am glad that I could be an apprentice to the healers in the Clan, but some information from the Noldor are never wrong...hm? Túrëo, what are you carving this time?" wondered Vórimo when he took a look away from the book in his hands to see what the eldest brother was doing. His question also caught Almo's attention. To their surprise, Túrëo blushed slightly before he revealed what it was:

A small wooden head bust of Cúwen.

Thankfully, Vórimo and Almo were not the kind of siblings to tease Túrëo about having a possible crush on someone, especially since all three of them had been charmed by Maedhros' eldest daughter and second-born son in different ways. They had never agreed with Calcanis on kidnappning them, even openly telling their mother that her thirst for revenge would only ruin their lives even more given what their father had already tried to do and he had paid with his life for it. But blinded for consequences of her plan as she had been in her pride, Calcanis had refused to listen to her three oldest sons no matter what they did to try and stop her from kidnapping the two royal children.

"Given that Cúwen and Yuë were ready to plead for mercy on our behalf, I think there is a chance of a friendship in the future."

"Aye, I believe so as well."

Smiling, Túrëo started to make the finishing touches on the small wooden head bust. He planned to paint it later, so it would look so alike Cúwen it could be.

~X~X~X~X~X~X

Back at the royal palace in Tirion:

"So...the two of you have been secretly seeing each other for the past twenty years?"

"...yes, Haru Fëanáro..."

It had not taken too much time or effect for both of their respective maternal grandfather to make the young couple in question to confess the truth. Having seen how terrified Rûsa had been for a moment at the look Fingolfin had given him, Maeglin had tried her best to cover him from the others. Not a easy task, when Rûsa was twenty centimeters taller and a lot more muscular than Maeglin herself, but she knew that the mere attempt to shield him would be a comfort for him right now.

"Explains a couple of things that we all found somewhat odd in the past years, then. Like this that I found in her private forge when helping Maeglin to clean a little extra in there, for example. It is not the colours my daughter normally would use in her hair braids," said Aredhel and held up something. It was a simple braid of three different-coloured yarn pieces, meant to be used to tie up the hair with. Rûsa tried not to twitch at realizing that he must have forgotten it in his hurry to escape out from the forge at dawn before someone had seen him leave.

"Well, if is the case...you did a very good job at keeping it secret…I take it that you feared what those annoying moral guardians would say if they had gotten words about it..." Eöl started, before Turgon interrupted him:

"Encourage them not! Do you not see the danger of that they could have gone over the line and gotten married too early..."

"Maeglin is my daughter, not yours. You messed up enough much as it is as her "guardian" in that good-for-nothing Hidden City of yours, you overly religious, arrogant, pompous peacock!" Eöl cut back with a annoyed glare over his shoulder, knowing already how Turgon would react on that insult.

"Peacock?!"

"All right, that is enough, you two. Try and not start a fight now, okay? There is another family trouble that we need to talk about…" commanded Anaire in a warning voice to her middle son and law-son. Since Fingolfin and his family were used to the vocal brawls between Eöl and Turgon, they managed to stop the argument pretty quickly so they all could focus once again on Maeglin and Rûsa on the couch. Finwë sighed deeply, this was real mess that no one of them had expected at all.

"Maeglin, you to the the eastern balcony. Russafinwë, you to my study. We will speak with you both one-and-one about this, one version each, both sets of parents and maternal grandparents present with their respective child," the High King finally ordered after a few minutes. No one cared to remind him that Rog actually was Rûsa's stepfather. The young couple in question was quick to obey and went to where he had requested them to go.

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About half an hour passed while Rûsa told his story to his gathered family members along with actually telling them that it had been him who had helped Maeglin escape from Angband, even if he did not mention that she had been forced to be his concubine back then. Not many minutes later, at the eastern balcony, Maeglin comfirmed what Rûsa had said:

"What."

Out of all the older Elves, Eöl and Aredhel was the only ones present to not seem too shocked. But then, they had already been told the truth about their daughter's unwanted relationship to Rûsa back in the Halls of Mandos.

"It is true. Back in Angband we did not know that we were distant relatives…"

"What," repeated Fingolfin in shock.

"As the Warg Rider, he always wore a iron mask over his face. I never saw how he looked like until the Halls of Mandos. But now, when we finally got a chance to actually get to know each other properly as he grew up, we are sure about that the feelings are mutal. We love each other and wish to marry," Maeglin continued as if she had not been interrupted at all.

"Maeglin," Eöl said, "dearest daughter, twilight child of mine, you two do realize that it is not a worry about the past between the family lines that we talks about this, but because a marriage between you will not be seen with kind eyes by all people in Valinor?"

"Yes we knew that from the very start. But Haru Ñolofinwë and great-uncle Fëanor are no longer having that idiotic sibling feud about who was the lawful heir to the crown, or we would never have dared to ask you for a permission to marry like we did today. That's half the battle already." Maeglin answered stubbornly.

"The moral guardians will be furious," Aredhel smirked, "think of their ruffled feathers."

"The Vanyarin moral guardians get offended when the wind blows the wrong way over their roof. And the gossip hens would make a feather into a henhouse when they hear about this. Personally I would perfer Rûsa as a law-son over any spoiled young noble that has no idea what really happened to my daughter in that place. He would be able to defend her if needed," Eol muttered with crossed arms over his chest. That much was true, in many ways Rûsa was better suited as a husband for Maeglin than people knew.

"Ada, Haru," Maeglin said, "please."

Eöl looked at his daughter, who held her breath as he exchanged a glance with Fingolfin. As the two family heads of her maternal family and her birth family, they were the ones Maeglin would need to ask for permission if she wanted to marry. It was mostly formal, given that she was long used to fend for herself since her rebirth. But since she rarely had asked for something like this in her life before, not counting the disastrous family argument when she had expressed her desire to leave Nan Elmoth, Maeglin had a firm belief that her father couldn't deny her anything.

"Rather Rûsa than someone who would belittle you in the marriage because of the events in the past. And it is not like you are too close related either, since you logically only share one common great-grandparent in my father and is descendants of his two different wives," Fingolfin finally spoke as Eöl already had given his view on the matter.

"…you promise you both will keep a low profile about this until you're wed?" Eöl asked Maeglin mostly to remind her that it would not be a easy matter to reveal this family marriage. She nodded.

"We planned to keep ourselves to the Avari Clans until the first scandal about this had died out. And fix our own house in Formenos while waiting for the wedding. We are not planning to have children right away, we want to enjoy marriage life alone first for a couple of centuries. Besides, Rûsa is offically just of age, people would start unpleasant rumours about the infamous family fertility if I got pregnant only a few years or even a few months after the wedding, or that he married me in an arranged marriage between our family lines in order to have an heir with stronger claims to the throne despite that he is already third-in-line after lady Maedhros," Maeglin said in a serious voice. As Eöl sent Maeglin away to forge the traditional engagement earrings which an engaged couple in the Metal clan would share until the wedding date, Finwë sighed.

"I need to write an offical statement about this betrothal and order it to be revealed late next spring when you both are as far away from Tirion as you can be and people do not get much time to complain that it is immoral to let you marry each other."

A moment of quiet, then the High King spoke in a quiet voice:

"I can name several courtiers who is going to be pissed over that they lost a chance to get a royal law-son before it even was possible once he came of age."

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A couple of days later, when the first shock over the unexpected marriage request had passed, they held a small and private family dinner to celebrate the betrothal.

"Is it all right that we hold the wedding in Formenos? Just with the family around? Given what a scene people made when they found out that Rog was going to be Ammë's second husband, I do not want something similar to happen at this wedding…" Rûsa spoke carefully once the dessert was carried in by the palace servants. Mumblings in agreement was heard from several others in the royal family, not least Rog and Maedhros herself.

"Fair point. The last thing we need is a minor army of wedding crashers who will interrupt you two in the middle of the wedding vows and scream that you are about to commit an unforgivable sin by marrying an another," Aegnor said and he was not the only one present to shudder at the mental image of that.

"Perhaps we might find a new reason to dust off our old weapons and armor just in case for that," suggested Celegorm with a almost wolfish grin, earning a smack in the back of his head from Aredhel.

"No thanks to that, silly cousin. Maeglin, are the engagement earrings done?"

"Yes, I finished them yesterday."

Placing a small wooden box on the table beside her plate, Maeglin revealed what she had done. No one was surprised to see that she had first created a eight-rayed silver star as the shape and then adding four sapphires on each earring.

"Silver for the Star of Fëanor, sapphires for the House of Haru Ñolofinwë and the number of four gemstones because we are both of the fourth generation in this royal family even if we were born in different branches."

Everyone nodded in agreement, it was a good division of the different symbols to their Houses and their status. After that she had fastened one earring in his left ear and he the other one in her right ear it was Rûsa's turn to show the betrothal necklace he had done for Maeglin. It was a fashionable crescent-moon necklace, created by a mixed black and dark red choker and an turquoise stone forming the centerpiece.

"A crescent moon as a symbol for a new beginning in our lives, along with the closest coloured fabric I could find for our hair colours," Rûsa explained with a very tender look on his beloved bride-to-be as he fastened the necklace around her neck as a official sign of a betrothal between them. Everyone was too focused on them to notice how Celebrimbor and Narvi was having a very quiet yet heated discussion in Khuzdul about how much the three pieces of betrothal jewellery would be worth by Dwarven standards, and that Frëja added in a couple of comments or questions to her parents as well.

"All right, everyone, let us have a toast for the future bride and groom," requested Finwë with a smile as he rose from his chair with his glass in hand. Everyone took their glasses as well.

"For the hope of a future!"

And naturally, it was always one of the children to try and sneak some forbidden wine from the adults when they did not see it because they were focused on the toast.

"Frëja!" scolded Celebrimbor in worry at seeing what his daughter was trying to drink, since he and Narvi had a agreement to not let her drink any alcohol outside some low-alchol Dwarven beer before she was twenty-five. The reason was that since Frëja was the first and currently only known child born between a Elven parent and a Dwarven parent, they did not know how she could react to things like Elflings or Dwarflings in the same age group.

"Stubbon girl…" groaned Narvi as she quickly took the wine glass away from their child and Celebrimbor gently placed his hand on Frëja's forehead to prevent her from trying to take back the glass from her mother. Seeing his own two children trying to use the same trick, Rog placed the wine bottle out of their reach since Maedhros was busy with holding Lówen.

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Author's note: That so called "look of doom" belonging to the House of Fingolfin was a minor joke that was created at seeing Elrond's reaction when Marry and Pippin insisted on coming to Mordor as well in the Council of Elrond. Hugo Weaving is just too funny in that scene! Extra credit to the very skilled tumblr-artist Idahlart who made a GIF of young Elrond turning around with that exact look in his eyes and eyebrows, so if one just imagine Fingolfin with that kind of look when he looks at Rûsa, you have pinned his exact reaction XD