Have Courage & Be Kind Little Dove

Artanis. The voice in her mind cannot touch her she reminds herself. It is far away and still, still a part of her can feel herself fold into familiar obedient shapes - to placate, to apologise and plead. Artanis you and my sweet silver prince forget who you belong to, my darlings, my precious loves. That he would touch you - I will flay all of him into shreds and scatter those shrieking to the winds of the world so they might hear his lament. 

She is safe in Lorien with her husbands. She is safe. He can no longer touch her. It is a refrain that she must repeat and she hates that all the worse for the way it does not help tonight. Sauron scrabbles at the edge of her mind - he cannot reach her exactly but at the same time he can speak to her sometimes. Can send visions. And it hurts. 

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"I'm here to tell you this" Sedril says "because I want all of you and I mean all of you to get whatever disgust or pity or emotional reactions that make this about yourself out of the way before you talk to any of them. I mean it. They are fragile enough without feeling as though they have done something awful to any of you."

"Why are Disa and Cirdan not here then? And Narvi for that matter? Where is he?"

"Because King Durin, Queen Disa, Narvi and Lord Cirdan know when to ask for advice and far better how to speak." 

Durin sits back down with only a slight huffing noise and Gil-galad admits to feeling some petty amusement. 

"I'm not going to break their privacy and tell you everything but I need you to realise that none of them and I mean none of them are as they were before - you saw a little, High King in your brief visit but I need you to truly understand. None of them are as they were. Every one of them is dangerously malnourished and have healing broken bones. You will see bite marks. Lord Celebrimbor is missing a thumb and he in particular has scars everywhere."

"I'm going to find Sauron and he's going to wish I'll kill him. And I'll start with…"

"King Durin. Respectfully. If you get angry like this near Elrond it will make him worse than he is. Process it here." 

"They are not going to be able to make choices - they will panic at them for a long time. They will flinch and they may not believe any of you are real. They will have nightmares and moments where they are not here at all. And of course, the brands." 

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The new overseer looks at you strangely - not as though he wants to get under your skirts strange - but as though you are his somehow. Vainiel says it to Alacénima under the cover of delivering her her meal for the day (they want her to stay in the vault, to see to the accounts) because she worries about her. Alacénima might be far far far older than Vainiel is (she's been here for hundreds of years, one of the other women had told Vainiel - she and her fathers) but Vainiel only looks at her and sees a slender silver haired girl who tries to live up to her name but cares too much to truly do so. 

Thank you, she says. I'll make sure I'll avoid him if I can. 

And it's true, the new overseer doesn't look at Alacénima like he wants to fuck her but he does look at her as though she belongs to him. Like the master looks at his daughters, Vainiel thinks (she's training to be a maid to one of them - it's a way out and some measure of security because the girl is fond of her already though she'll likely be sent away with her to her husbands house) - a pure sweet thing you keep in a pretty cage and tell them it's protection. 

And it's all wrong for Alacénima. Vainiel does know exactly why the new overseer (Hrothgar) doesn't see it because masters never like to see slaves as people but it's a new one to her, this way of seeing. 

Hrothgar likes to glare at anyone who goes near Alacénima or her father. Fathers. Though his glare has changed towards Sindion* towards Halbrand it remains the same. If not worse. It's strange. All of it. 

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Galadriel ends up hacking off her hair herself (she had snuck a pair of scissors that one of the healers had dropped accidentally). Annoyingly her hands are trembling the whole time but she does it because at least this way, she can say it was all her doing and if this isn't real then it might help when Sauron finds her surrounded by cut hair and glaring. 

Just to her waist. It had been pooling at her feet before - coiled and he had liked it adorned with flowers and jewels and chains until her head had ached with the weight and now, now she is terrified but she is free of it. 

Eventually she even manages to tidy the ends and braid it. Just a simple braid from back when she was allowed them. Her hands shake the whole time and she is irritated at all of it but she had done it. She had done it and there might be something of Galadriel, Commander of the Armies of the North and Princess of the House of Finarfin in her still, except that is absurd. She trembles in terror at cutting and braiding her hair - how can she ever be what she was again? How can she ever look at anyone again. 

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Celebrimbor looks at the weight of the hair that pools about him, that he had once said he felt he missed and throws up everything he has been given to eat. He cannot bear it but he cannot get rid of it - Sauron will hurt someone because of him again and surely, surely this can be his penance - if they are going to order him killed then he should go as a Feanorian, a traitor to his family twice over and worse than any of them but he has been marked as one. And maybe he can stop himself from hurting anyone else. 

He stops eating again. Perhaps that is an easier death than he deserves but he cannot and he should not. 

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Celeborn has ceded control of his body for so long he is not even sure he knows how to use it for himself. They had thought they would be safe in the tiny village in Orophers domains. He had worried more for Galadriel, in truth and she had teased him about silver clams because for all they had mourned and lost then they had still had the certainty of each other. 

And then the raid had come, at the outskirts of the war - no desperate last stand but a petty thing - slave traders looking for goods. He remembers hearing their disappointment and glee mingled that they had found elves - if you can make sure they don't slip away then they'll make you riches enough for generations - but you have to make sure they don't and there's no guarantee. 

He managed to keep Celebrian alive and with him on that horrible first months of slavery because there was no other option for him. The slavers had given him another name ("Sindion") and when they had seen that the elfling who he had in a wrap upon his chest had kept him alive they had allowed her to be fed. 

Celeborn knows his precious girl feels guilt at that but he has only ever felt regret for the guilt, not that he lived for her. The mines were brief and awful and those captured with them faded away but Sindion and Alacenima do not. Celeborn whispers his daughters true name to her. My sunrise he calls her, as Mairon calls her rainbow (and rabbit, which is the first time Celeborn has truly laughed in a very long time but she does look like a little bundled rabbit in Mairons arms - he tries not to think of how it makes him feel to see her safe in them and how beautiful Mairon is). 

So it does not occur to him to cut his hair. The slavers had shorn his hair for the mines (it was meant to mark the mine slaves out though how they could be mistaken for anything other than what they were even with hair had never made sense) and then let it grow when they realised he would survive and would be an asset. House Harrêdul tended to keep his hair at a practical length - one master when Celebrian was eleven had wanted it long but not as long as Sauron did. 

His hair pools at his feet now and the weight of it hurts but it had not occurred to him that he might be allowed to chosefor he has forgotten so much of that. In Rhûn as with Sauron it had always been the masters decision. 

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"I'm going to have to cut your hair - to make sure we can dress your wounds."

Sedril is gentle with Elrond but in the matter of fact way that she is with any fellow healer and he appreciates it, even if he cannot imagine being that Elrond - who had been Herald and Healer both - ever again. It seems an entirely impossible concept, as though someone had told him that he might become an oliphaunt who could fly all the way to Arien. But it does matter to him that there is no patronising pity when Sedril speaks to him. To them. 

(No fear either nor hate). 

"You can do it yourself, I can or perhaps, Celebrian could."

Celebrian, he signs and hates himself because he cannot risk her. He cannot. Not for this. 

But she looks at him, the way she does in such understanding and signs back of course I can do it - I can explain it away if we are still in his keeping after all and she is right. She is right. 

It's still awful and wonderful all at once, the process of cutting the hair that had been forcibly grown. 

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Finrod does remember his hair before - he had walked out of Mandos with it short because the weight of it in that stinking fetid cell - a tangled itching snarl (Beren had laughed, a little and said that it still wasn't as bad as his was before he had stumbled into Doriath and Finrod is still unsure if that was love speaking because it had been disgusting) and now it is clean and shining and he thinks he may hate it worse than the snarl. 

He must be well. He must be. Truly he must be. 

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Finding Estel a league or more from Rivendell was a surprise but then it was also very much not a surprise. This little one is not the twins (who would and could manage mischief enough for five and truthfully, it warmed their families heart to see them so carefree - for it was never mean spirited) but he is determined and of course, of course Adar thinks he would walk so far. 

"I'm going to help. Or I was going to help but the Rangers said I should go home but I'm very good at tracking and walking and Karbazír says I am very very quiet."

"You are very good Estel. But sometimes the bravest and wisest thing a ranger can do is to stay home and look after themselves."

"And I'll look after my family! You and Grandpa Cirdan and everyone!" 

(How Estel managed to have boundless energy after walking so far is a sign that he is truly, somehow an inheritor of Freyja's in that regard - Adar can think it without pain mostly these days but still, it hurts). 

"Perhaps but would the brave ranger wish to be carried some of the way home?"

"A Ranger should always be upon their feet is what Karbazír and Ashuruk say anyway." 

Estel falls asleep on Adars shoulder halfway home and Adar makes a note to have a word with some of the dwarves if they ever return to Rivendell - they should know better than to fill a childs head with the idea of adventures and quests. There will be enough peril for little Estel when he grows.