I own nothing. Well, actually here, I do own stuff, because, y'know, OC centric chapter. Sorrrry
WARNING: Blood, a bit of violence. Also, possible self-harm trigger. Read with caution.
NO CHANGING FACT
Harsoen didn't want to have to worry about the brat. With Mallyn gone on a trip to her sister, it was up to him to make sure the brat was fed, watered and clothed. If he'd wanted a pet, he'd have a hunting dog, to actually do him and the home some good. Instead, he got a strange girl with pointy ears, that apparently wasn't an elf, as much as she looked like one of the pixies. And here he was, rapping his fist against her closed door. He really wasn't cut out to be a father. Maybe in another thirty years, when he was too old to do anything else, but now..."Glory. Open up."
There was silence in response, and Harsoen rolled his eyes. "If you're in there, and you know at all what's good for you, you'll open the door."
Then, very muffled, he heard, "Go away."
Harsoen had to grit his teeth against anger. "Bite your tongue. This is my home, and you don't have any place to be telling me what to do in it."
That said, he lifted the latch of the door. However, it didn't swing open. He breathed out a curse, kicking at the bottom of the door. It didn't budge, and he only succeeded in stubbing every toe on his foot. He knew this room (their small pantry, technically) didn't lock from the inside. The brat must have braced it. Now what did she need to do that for?
"Go away!" the girl repeated, her voice now reaching an almost panicked shriek.
"You have ten seconds to unbar the door before I break it down myself and give you a lashing you'll wish you could forget."
Harsoen was tremble with anger. So just because Mallyn was gone, the brat could act out? Not without punishment. She needed to understand that his word was law, or they would be having a serious problem here.
"No!"
"Ten...nine..."
"You won't do it!"
He had to grit his teeth, continuing the countdown. "Eight...seven..."
"No, no, no! Stop it!"
"Six...five.."
"Please! Stay out! Please, I'll do anything!"
Ah, a different approach. Now she was just a pathetic brat instead of an irritating one. "Four...three.."
"No!"
With her last screamed protest, Harsoen decided he'd quite had enough, and the door was swinging on its hinges with one good hit from his solid shoulder.
The light in the pantry was dim, and it took him a moment for his eyes to adjust. And once they had, astonishment mixed with his rage. The girl sat hunched in the corner, her knees pulled up to her chest. He cheeks were streaked messily with tears and snot, her large watery eyes staring up at him horrified. But the really striking detail was the dark liquid dripping over her hands where they clutched at her ears. Harsoen strode a few more steps ahead to get a clearer view, and looked down to see one of the kitchen knives on the dirt floor a foot or two from her, also spattered with blood. "What've you done?" he managed to grit out, his hands shaking.
The girl said nothing, frozen in terror.
Harsoen scooped up the knife from the ground, brandishing it towards her. "What's this? What were you doing with this?"
She flinched away from him, curling further into the corner, a sob tearing out of her lips. Harsoen growled in annoyance, kneeling down in front of her, throwing the knife aside. To his disgust, there was now a smear of blood across his palm. "Where's the blood from?"
She cowered further from his demands, hiding her face in her knees, her tiny, bloody hands still clutching fiercely onto the sides of her head. That would have to end. He was able to encircle her wrists entirely in his hands, and as soon as he'd touched her she threw even more of a fit, squirming about, kicking her legs at him, all the while, screaming like a banshee. He pinned her flailing legs down with a shin, before wrenching her hands away from her head. He could have sworn he felt her hair rip some, but paid no mind to it, in favor of inspecting what he'd uncovered. The low light only allowed him to see that there was blood running all down her neck, coating her ears, the darkest at their very top. "What is this?" he prodded, tone shaking with constraint to keep from shouting at her again.
The girl shook her head frantically, trying to tear her hands free as she sobbed hysterically, eyes so wide he could see their whites all the way around.
An instant later, he released her wrists, to send the back of his hand cracking across her cheek. She froze, one last gasping scream choking out of her lips. Harsoen spoke low, though his tone was laced with fury. "What were you doing?"
After a moment she shook out of her daze a bit, her hands reaching back up for her ears as she trembled violently under his gaze, but he grabbed her wrists, shoving them back into her lap. "No. Speak."
"I...I don't..."
"Don't stutter," Harsoen growled.
Her lower lip began to tremble again, tears welling in her dark eyes. "I don't...don't know."
"Liar," he hissed, reaching out to grab her chin as she tried to hide her face. "Speak clearly, and tell me why in the name of the sweet Valar you've done this to yourself."
She stared up at him, tears trickling down swollen, bloodied cheeks, no sound coming from her mouth.
"Now."
The warning in his tone seemed to terrify her enough that words came spilling out of her mouth. "I hate them...I hate them, and I wanted them gone. Mama and Ada and Kallyn, they're all gone and they always hate me no matter what I do, and I just wanted to be normal and I thought—I thought that if I could make them just like yours or Mallyn's or Kallyn's or Mama's it would all get better and my heart would stop hurting so horribly. But it didn't work! It just hurt and there was blood everywhere and it hurts so bad-"
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard," Harsoen deadpanned. She thought that cutting off her pointy ears would make it all better? That that could bring her parents back? "Your ears don't change anything. Whether you've got them on your skull or you've got a bloody stump in their place, that won't change anything. Your mum and da will still be dead, and you'll still be stuck with me."
She seemed stunned out of words, and he released her chin. "You're even more daft then I thought. Your ears? That's bloody stupid..."
"I just wanted to be normal..." she said in a nearly unheard tone.
"Well you're not," he reminded her sharply. "And your ears don't change that. So you'd better wise up, or you'll end up deaf as a doornail, then dead as one. Y'hear?"
A slow nod was all he got in response, and he sighed, the rage leaving his body. "Stupid..." As much as he wanted to, he couldn't leave the brat here to drown in a puddle of her own stupidity. Mallyn would throw a fit.
It was another hour before he was finished. He'd cleaned and sewed up the girl's ears as best he could. One had gone back together pretty well, but she'd hacked a good chunk out of the other. It was likely that she'd be left with the scars of this event into her adulthood. Maybe it would keep her from doing anything so stupidly thoughtless again. He scoffed as he placed her sleeping body down into her cot. If she didn't get smarter she'd be dead. No detriment to him. Just a bit of screaming, then gone. But it would be terribly quiet without her…
Harsoen shivered tremendously, shaking his head to knock those borderline fond thoughts from his head.
This girl was a burden. A lonely, sad, and broken burden. But it wouldn't very well do her any good to be a deaf one as well. She'd have to learn that things like that don't just get better with the nick of a knife. Some things just were bad, and you had to deal with them. He'd learned that and so would she. Or she'd just die.
He shook his head as he left to go wash her blood off of him. He really wasn't cut out to be a father.
Alright. This was a bit weird, I admit. I wrote it half-a-forever ago, when this had just popped into my head, so…yep. I am starting to run out of already written stuff to post here, so if you have any ideas or requests, I would be overjoyed to hear them! (Next chapter's going to be quite a bit more Kili-centric, I promise.) Review!
NEXT CHAPTER: Autumn Nights