#silmeme

Sooo. Like I said yesterday, I’ve always thought of Beregond as a widower. He’s got one kid, who’s good-hearted but a bit of a handful. (I stumbled across Borlas late in the game , so he hasn’t really made it into my headcanons. Maybe that will change when I get to his section of HoMe.)

And urrrrr, I just have all these feels! Like, if you know Beregond, you know he’s stoic in that really rare way – not unfriendly or even close-mouthed, just uncomplaining and to the point. He’s steady and unflinching and strong and in most media that would carry an automatic helping of grim seriousness, but not Beregond. He’s kind and friendly.

And thinking of him dealing with the death of his wife and the raising of his son that way – goddamn it.

This is a headcanon meme, not a wibble meme. I will do better.

Okay. So. I think by the time we meet him, his wife’s probably been dead for about three or four years, so he’s been on his own with Bergil since then. (No word on whether Bergil’s Uncle Iorlas is Beregond’s brother or his brother-in-law, but he lives in Lossarnach anyway. But he’s totally Beregond’s brother-in-law, duh; his name doesn’t  start with ‘B’.)

And they have a bit of a pattern, or maybe I should call it a silent deal: Bergil can have as much freedom as he likes during the day, provided:

-he doesn’t get into serious trouble

-he doesn’t get into less serious trouble (for stupid kid stuff) more than one or twice a month

-he’s home at a reasonable hour (he does kind of have a canonical curfew, so.)

-he spends time with his father when Beregond isn’t on duty (exceptions made for escorting visiting pheriannath around the city, obviously)

There’s a deal with their neighbour that if Beregond is pulling night duty, or late evening duty, she checks up to make sure that Bergil is keeping his curfew and eating actual food for dinner instead of all of the sweet-cakes out of their pantry.

Mooore Brandir headcanon. No problem.

I’ve realized this is headcanon mainly because it's always sneaking into how I view different AUs – anyway. I’m always thinking of him as kind of touch-starved.

Like, it was fine when he was a kid. Kids get lots of physical affection anyway, and his mom liked to put her arm around his shoulders and his dad liked grabbing him and swinging him around and there were generally lots of hugs from the grandparents and the great-grandparents and uncles and aunts and even his cousins.

And then he got a bit older, and he was still fine, but he started holding himself back a bit, because by now he’d broken his leg and gotten used to being different and to being left standing back when the other kids rushed in (and anyway he couldn’t really run in for hugs anymore). Everyone was busy and distracted and unhappy because of the huge decimation at the Nirnaeth and there was just… less cozy hugging in general – but no one really noticed.

But then he got a bit older, and started half avoiding physical contact with people who weren’t family because sometimes they would get odd about his walking stick and anyway he never knew what to do with it (drop it and have to pick it up again? Change his hold on it awkwardly? Leave his grip the same and risk accidentally whacking them with it? Pause, lean it against something, and then hug them?), and because there was this silent unspoken pressure about being strong and capable because he had so much to make up for it, and without actually thinking about it he chalked up his need for human contact half to weakness and half to childishness, the same way he did with his need for support and reassurance. But it was still okay, because fifteen isn’t too old for your parents to hug you and they didn’t care anyway.

His mother died when he was nineteen and Handir didn’t really have the same way with gentle arm-touches that could reassure you all at once… but he did have a penchant for really concentrated hugs – the kind of full-body, not-brief ones that carry I love you or I’m proud of you or even Goodbye easily inside them, and if anything those came a little more often after Beldis died. So that was all right, for a while.

But there was still a lot of pressure (and a good bit of it was definitely internal) about getting things right and doing things right, especially as he took over as the Haladin’s main healer, and that meant not showing his own weakness or vulnerability to anyone except his father (even if they wouldn’t think less of him, there was a strong feeling that it wasn’t right to burden other people with his insecurities; he had a responsibility to them, not the other way around) and it meant a certain distance – what we’d call professionalism.

And then Handir died, and if a healer was almost always technically ‘on the job’, a chieftain always is, so it feels irresponsible to him not to hold himself aloof in certain ways – keep his stronger emotions, weaknesses, wishes to himself – and on top of that, after getting blindsided by Hardang’s attempted upset, he doesn’t feel like he can really trust people the same way – before, he let his guard down around family, but Hardang was family.

So he stops inviting touch, and that means that most people stop touching him, without any of the people involved really being conscious of what’s going on. He gets the occasional pat on the shoulder or clap on the back from Hunthor, or sometimes a hug if Hunthor or Manthor is particularly drunk – and aside from that, he’s the one touching people, always, to fix them or calm them down or make his advice stick, and he doesn’t mind that but it’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.