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atlantablackRating: T+
Relationship: Celebrían & Celegorm • Celebrían & Celegorm & Finrod
Word Count: 10,957
Content Warnings
Summary:
Celebrían sails.Or: Celebrían makes some choices many would find questionable, Celegorm grapples with the difficulty of having genuine interactions with anyone, and Finrod was completely prepared to rip Celegorm's throat out too if he'd harmed Celebrían. Everything is going totally fine.
They send her to Lórien first and she flees. She stays with her grandfather and Finarfin does not understand. Finrod tries to help and she doesn’t know how to let him. She smiles a lot. Nods. Grits her teeth and tries to find anything, anything, to spark a desire to live in her chest again.
And then three years later, wandering the streets of Tirion, she hears the whispers - the Fëanorians have begun returning - and for the first time since she arrived, a small spark of interest takes root in her chest.
I left myself in a lost and found box
Maybe in the summer I can brush the dust off
Ticking slows, am I a ghost?
Fifteen | Xana
☀︎
Celebrían sails.
Leaves her husband and children and parents and sails to Valinor. Feels too weary to feel guilty and thinks she’d feel guilty about that as well if she could muster up the energy.
They send her to Lórien first. She stays a week before fleeing, probably less politely than she should have. The air had been too still. The quiet unsettling. They offered to put her to sleep so she could heal, and she had thought about closing her eyes without knowing when she'd next wake and had to swallow down the urge to reach for a weapon she didn’t have.
She came here to heal, not to fade. Her family wants her to heal, and she’ll do it for them until she can find the energy to do it for herself. She does not trust herself to not fade away if they put her to sleep. She flees.
She ends up staying with her grandfather for lack of better options. Finarfin is so clearly at a loss as to what to do with her. He tells her they’ll get her anything she needs but she doesn’t know what she needs. She smiles. Nods. Grits her teeth and tries to find anything, anything, to spark a desire to live in her chest again.
She walks the streets of Tirion. Grits her teeth and swallows down the panic that always comes from being around too many people. Goes back to her room and cries until she gags. Thinks she should be in awe that she's in Valinor and instead just feels… empty. She'd tried to explain it to Elrond once. The way it felt like someone had reached into her chest and carved out everything that mattered, had left only a vague sense of duty to live for her family behind. That had been what got her through when she didn't know if anyone would find her. She could not die and leave them to find nothing but her body. She couldn't.
Elrond had tried to hide the haunted look that crept through his eyes. But she'd seen it. She knows he'd understood, and she'd never brought it up again.
Finrod tries to help. Her brilliant, shining uncle that she used to be so excited to one day meet. He really does try. But he has healed from the awful things he'd gone through and that makes jealousy curl up in her stomach so thick she wants to puke. It is good, she supposes, to know that she can still feel something. That has to mean there's hope.
And so it goes for three long years. She cooperates when one family member or other talks to her. Listens but can't ever muster up the energy to hold up her end of the conversation. If she had the energy to care about stupid conversations then she wouldn't be in Valinor yet.
She wanders the city, only cries half of the time now. She stares at the ocean and loses time. Watches a beautiful white bird circle through the sky and vaguely wonders if she should say hello to Elrond's mother. It sounds exhausting. Elwing will want to know about her son and Celebrían can't. She just can't.
And then three years later, wandering the streets of Tirion, she hears the whispers - the Fëanorians have begun returning - and for the first time since she arrived, a small spark of interest takes root in her chest.
☀︎
They say that Celegorm the cruel is haunting the forests again and she considers this seriously. Elrond had only spoke of Maedhros and Maglor. The other Fëanorians had been long dead by the time they took the twins in and neither Maedhros nor Maglor had spoken much about the three who died during the slaughter in Doriath.
Feral, Elrond had said once when she'd curiously asked, erratic near the end. Cruel. He'd overheard a few bitter conversations here and there and that had seemed to be the general consensus. But he's been allowed back so the Valar must be certain he won't harm anyone.
Her mother would likely lock her in a room if she knew what Celebrían was thinking about doing. But Elrond she thinks, Elrond would likely pack a bag and go with her. He was actually able to defend himself though. She can passably shoot a bow and knows the correct way to hold a sword even if the only thing she knows to do with it is swing. So, in this instance, she effectively knows nothing useful at all.
She considers the sole dagger she has, a beautiful thing that has gold vines wrapped around the handle. Finrod had said that it had helped him when he'd first come back to have a weapon on hand even if he logically knew he didn't need it. It was a lovely gesture even if she still didn't particularly care to spend time with him. It also would be completely useless if Celegorm was in fact not safe.
She still straps it to her belt. She carefully packs a light bag to take with her, not sure how long it'll take her to actually find him if he's truly just roaming the forests. Some food, some medical supplies, just in case, one set of clean clothes, flint to light a fire because she can do that here and not worry about orcs hunting her down by the light of it, a bedroll. She calls that good enough. Oromë's forest is not so terribly far if she's missed something inconvenient.
She does not tell anyone she's leaving. Leaves a note on her bed stating she's gone on a hike, that she'll be back in a couple days. Slips out of the palace without being seen and starts off down the road. It isn't until she's left Tirion proper and is surrounded by nothing but fields and trees that the panic starts trying to creep up her throat.
It is, on the one hand, nice to not be surrounded by people. On the other hand, she has to sit down on a rock and simply breathe for a while so she doesn't breakdown. She is alone. There could be anything out here. There isn't anything dangerous out here. She knows that. She's fine. She keeps walking.
Has to sit down again a few miles later.
It takes her far longer to reach the forest than she'd thought it would. And then she's standing on the edge of the forest, staring into the trees at the shadows filtering through the branches from the evening sun, and has to back up and sit down on the grass before she starts screaming. She pulls her legs up and buries her face against her knees. She's certainly fucking feeling something now. The frustration hovering around her is suffocating. It should not be this difficult to just walk to a forest.
She's still focused on her breathing when a voice jolts through the air. "This doesn't really seem like an ideal place to be having a breakdown."
The fear that strikes through her is so abrupt she doesn't have a moment to form any kind of reasonable thought before she's grabbed her dagger and thrown it with as much force as she can in the direction of the voice.
When her vision focuses, her breathing still far too erratic, she sees that, not only has she missed, badly, but that the elf looking at her with an amused smirk is, she's pretty sure, the exact one she was looking for. She blinks at him, tries to think of something to say, and then puts her head between her knees and tries to just breathe.
He sighs incredibly loudly, which is incredibly rude, but she can't breathe and really who cares about being rude. She just needs to count her breaths. Which would be easier if she could focus on anything other than the fear still pumping through her. There's nothing to fear. Nothing.
There are footsteps coming towards her. If she had another dagger she might throw it purely to make herself feel better. Clearly, she stands no chance of actually hitting anyone.
"I'm going to touch your hand," he says, far closer to her than she'd thought. He doesn't wait for a response or acknowledge the way she flinches. Instead, he takes her hand and wraps her fingers around the handle of her dagger.
He doesn't move his hand afterwards, keeps it covering hers. "You have to breathe. You'll never be able to hit anything with this if you don't breathe."
"I can't—" she tries to say, the words horribly strangled, more air than sound. He sighs loudly again. She doesn't think he should be trying to comfort people.
He scoots closer to her and takes her other hand, puts it on his chest and takes an obvious breath. This she recognizes. Elrond had done this with her when she'd panic after waking up from shadowed dreams. She tries to follow along; distantly realizes she’s started crying at some point.
"You're going to have to tell me who taught you to throw like that so I can go tell them what a fucking disappointment they are," he says. His voice is quiet but still obnoxiously aggressive. "Though, I bet I can guess where you got this dagger from, and I know Finrod can do better. I can't yell at him though if he's turned into a shit teacher. Maedhros will leave the halls just to send me back to them."
"You're not very good at being comforting," she mutters when her breathing finally slows enough to let her get words out.
"Who the fuck said I was trying to be comforting? Besides, it worked didn't it?"
She raises her head to glare at him and gets a cocky smirk in return. He still hasn't let go of her hands though and the grip he has on them is very gentle and very loose. Easy to brush off. Not good at comforting but at least aware of how you're meant to go about it.
He lets go of her hands when she tugs. Has possibly the worst manners of anyone she's ever met. He doesn't move back to give her some space, doesn't bother offering her the courtesy of looking away while she cleans her face off and blows her nose. Just studies her with narrowed eyes. Feral, Elrond had said. She doesn't think that's what she's seeing yet, but he definitely isn’t disproving the idea that he is.
"So, why'd you decide to have your breakdown way out here?" he asks once she's dropped her hands and stared back at him. He sounds genuinely curious. She can't imagine many people coming out this way, especially with the rumors that he's back.
"I was looking for you," she tells him, thinks maybe she wants to laugh when his eyebrows go up in disbelief. “I’m Celebrían. Maedhros and Maglor raised my husband. He calls them fathers. So, you're his uncle in a way."
"Ah." The surprise clears away. "Elrond. Could barely get a fucking word about him out of Maedhros. Barely got his name."
"He doesn't want to talk about him?" She tries to decide if that's surprising. Isn't sure.
"Oh he wants to talk about him," Celegorm says darkly, "he just didn't want to talk about him to me. Wouldn't even fucking tell me why."
She thinks about this. Pulls up everything she knows about him and his history. Her mother had not been shy about criticizing the many faults of the House of Fëanor. She hadn't heard a good word about them until she'd met Elrond.
"He probably didn't want to talk to you because you imprisoned and threatened to rape Elrond's great grandmother." She tilts her head, considers. "Also, you killed his grandfather. But mostly the first thing I would think."
He doesn't flinch or even look particularly guilty, but he does give her a very queer look. She realizes then that she'd said all of that entirely too casual. She knows when she'd first heard the story, she'd been appropriately horrified and then when she'd met Elrond been even more indignant about the whole thing. But right now, all she can think of is she didn't know them, and they were before her time. If she's going to start caring about things again she has far more important things she'd like to care about first.
"He's Luthien's great grandson then. Yeah, I'd guess that would explain it. Can't really apologize since she's dead but I'm not going to hurt the damn kid," he says rolling his eyes. She doesn't think the apology would be very genuine based on this conversation.
"He's not really a kid anymore."
"Even better reason not to hurt him. I don't really care to go back to Mandos when I just got out." He shrugs when he says it but he's still staring at her strangely.
"He wouldn't kill you. He's a healer. He hates killing anything."
The strange looks grows stranger. "And where is Elrond that he's letting you come out here all by yourself to have a breakdown?"
She does, for the record, recognize that this is a potentially dangerous situation. But she thinks this might be one of the longest conversations she's actively had since she sailed. It also isn't as if she could do anything if he did become dangerous but she's not thinking about that or she'll start panicking again.
"He's still in middle-earth with our children. I sailed alone." She notes the way her voice goes the slightest bit flat and wonders if that means she's feeling more than she thinks she is.
He stares at her for a while. She's content enough to sit and stare back. It's how a lot of conversations go with her these days. "You almost remind me of Maedhros," he says, head tilting, "after Fingon got him out of Thangorodrim."
A surge of emotion spills through her chest, making everything feel a little too bright. "I—" she pauses, squeezes her eyes shut, shoves it all down, down, down, and takes a really deep breath. "Yes. That would make sense. I think some things I said reminded Elrond of Maedhros too. I stopped saying them once I realized."
"They sent you here to heal," he says. It's not a question. "How's that going for you?"
Her mouth twists quite without her permission. "I'm here." She settles on, gesturing to him and the forest behind him.
He considers her again, glances at the pack she'd discarded in the grass. "The forest scares you?" She nods. "Am I not scaring you?"
She shrugs. "Not yet."
"You seriously didn't have anything more interesting to do? Finrod didn't want to chat your ear off? You didn't want to, I don't fucking know, go to Lorien to heal or whatever nonsense it is they do." He sounds so disgusted when he speaks of Lorien that a laugh bubbles in her throat.
It doesn't quite make it to her mouth, but she'd still felt it. "I went there. It scared me. Finrod does talk to me, but I never manage to talk back." She chews her lip, glances down at her dagger. "Nothing is interesting. It's all just…empty. Blank. I need to get better before my family sails. You sounded interesting."
"So your bright idea was to immediately run off to a forest to find someone you know could decide to hurt you? When you can't even throw a dagger straight." He scoffs. "That is so stupid."
She should feel offended by that. Does actually feel a little offended. "I weighed the risks," she says, "And I can throw better when I'm not crying."
"Sweetheart, I don't think you're in any kind of right mind to properly weigh the risks of shit. Did you tell anyone where you were going?"
"If I had they wouldn't have let me go."
"Sweet Eru. Alright. Stand up. I'm going to teach you to throw that thing properly. If you can learn to throw that piece of crap then you'll be fine when we find you a properly weighted one." He stands, reaching for her wrist like he's going to pull her with him and then stops at the last minute. Pulls back and just irritably gestures at her to stand.
She does. Watches bewildered as he walks toward the forest. He stops and turns around when he realizes she isn't following. "Well? Come on."
She looks at the forest. At the shadows. Grips the dagger tight enough her fingers ache. He gives another one of those too loud, overly irritated sighs. Stalks back over, grabs her pack off the ground and holds it out until she takes it and shrugs it back on. And then he holds his hand out, looking incredibly put out the entire time. She thinks if she'd met him before everything she'd have hated him actually.
The idea of touching him isn't as abhorrent as it could be since he'd already held her wrist earlier. And she needs to get better. Which means being able to brave a forest. She takes his hand.
He keeps his hold loose. Easy for her to break away from. But the minute she steps into the forest her grip goes deathly tight. She's sure her nails must be digging into his skin. She can't bring herself to lighten her grip. He doesn't say anything though, just squeezes her hand a little tighter in return.
They don't go too far in. If she looks behind them she can just see the tree line. There's a small camp built in the clearing they stop in. Only the bare basics present. A bedroll, a fire, a few other items scattered around.
"Alright, I can make a target on one of the trees. Or maybe we'll make sure first that you can actually hit the tree."
"I can hit a tree," she snaps and then blinks in surprise. When was the last time she snapped at someone.
He smirks at her, "Sure. Except you only hit one earlier because you tried to aim for me. And missed."
She swallows around the biting urge to snap at him again. Tries to convince herself to let go of his hand so she can hit a damn tree and can't manage it. Her chest feels too tight. Hot irritation welling up inside of it and bleeding into the fear. If she lets go, then. Then. Then she's untethered. This is Oromë's forest. Tirion is safe. Valinor is safe. Oromë's forest is not necessarily safe if there's stuff to hunt inside of it.
"Oh fuck, okay, here, sit down before you start crying again." Celegorm's face is blurry. Or her vision is blurry.
He tugs her to the ground, her back pressed to a tree. He doesn't try to let go of her hand, which is good because she might actually have a real breakdown then. He sits next to her, presses his shoulder against hers, and waits.
"We can leave the forest if you need to," he says once her breathing has stopped hitching alarmingly. "I can set up a target outside of it just as well."
A strangled noise that's maybe, almost a laugh strangles its way out of her. "I don't have to learn to throw it better. What am I going to throw it at?"
"You threw it at me," he points out. "You never know, maybe you'll want to throw it at me again later when you remember how to feel righteous about shit."
"I'm not going to throw it at you," she says, rolling her eyes. Then amends to, "As long as you don't try to hurt me of course."
"Of course. Don't worry, sweetheart, I'm not going to hurt you. I'm done with all that." He sounds genuine. More annoyed than that statement warrants but also genuine.
She tips her head back against the tree and closes her eyes. Opens them again immediately. It's so much worse not being able to see if anything is coming. "Finrod talks about you sometimes. And your brother. When he runs out of happier stuff to tell me." He'd only done it once actually and she's not really sure he’d meant to. He'd been talking while she silently listened and then just drifted into a less than happy topic. It'd been the most interesting part of the conversation, and he'd stopped as soon as he seemed to realize what he was saying.
Celegorm makes a sound like a tea kettle that dissolves into a harsh laugh. "Did you seriously listen to him say Eru knows what about me and still decide to come out here? Did you want to die?"
She thinks he's joking but the words make something in her freeze. "I—" She didn't. She was trying to not fade. She had just been interested in something finally. "No." She takes too long to say it. She can tell by the way he turns his head to look at her. She didn't though. The risk had just seemed acceptable.
"It's not any easier dying," he tells her. "You still have to put in the fucking work to heal and it's worse when you're dead. There's nothing to even distract yourself with. Just your pain and everyone else's pain all the fucking time."
"The rest of your brothers are still in Mandos."
He laughs, an ugly sound that slinks through the air and causes her skin to chill. "Maedhros is still drowning in his own guilt. Fingon will drag him out eventually one way or another. That's his whole thing which makes it not my problem. Curufin won't leave till Tyelpe does and," he does sigh here, a genuine sigh that actually sounds sad. "Well, I don't blame Tyelpe for taking his time if he wants to. They'll leave eventually. Caranthir and the Ambarussa are going to leave soon if they haven't already. They probably just kept their return quieter than I did."
"Elrond is still trying to find Maglor and take him to Rivendell," she tells him when he doesn't mention his last brother.
"Yeah, I wish him the best of fucking luck with that. Maglor's damn good at not being found if he doesn't want to be. Can't believe out of all of us Maglor was the only one to survive. Bastard."
That sounds mean but it also sounds like something one of the twins would say about Arwen. Even if they would say much nicer. "Finrod did say some nice things about you," she tells him instead, meets his incredulous gaze and admits, "well, mostly awful things, but some nice things."
"What, like, oh, he wasn't as awful as he could have been or well, at least he didn't kill me himself!"
Huh. "So you do feel guilty about something then." He hadn't seemed like he cared much about anything.
"Oh fuck off," he snaps, snatching his hand out of her grip, and moving to the other side of the camp to riffle through a bag.
She clenches her fingers slowly into a fist. Unclenches. Wraps her fingers around her wrist and digs her nails in. She doesn't particularly care if someone is angry with her. It's not happened since she got here granted. But it doesn't really matter. What matters is how exposed she is in the woods. Celegorm is right there. That counts as not being alone. She knows that. But.
He stalks back over to her with a knife in his hand, doesn't give her a chance to be alarmed about that before holding it out handle first. "Here. This is actually good work unlike that dagger of yours. Get up. Show me if you can hit a tree before I bother setting up a target."
She takes the knife. The handle is wrapped in leather worn soft from use. She clenches her fingers around it and stands. Moves to where he points, a spot in the middle of the clearing, and then takes aim and throws at the tree he points to.
It does hit the tree. Barely. Any more to the right and it would have only scraped the tree before falling. He scowls at it and then at her. "Who taught you to throw?"
"No one. I wasn't a soldier or a fighter. But I tried to pick up a few things on my own when I could." To be more accurate, she had made gleeful use of her freedom outside of Lothlórien to start practicing on her own. She'd never asked for formal training; she'd just wanted to practice because her parents hadn't wanted her to at home. They were proud of Lothlórien, as was their right. They were also proud of the fact that their daughter could grow up safe without having to learn to fight. She might be resentful of that one day.
Celegorm looks pissed about it. "Why the fuck would they not teach you? Do you know how to fight at all?"
"You are being very judgmental," she tells him. "I know how to hold a sword. And how to passably shoot a bow. But no, I wasn't trained to fight."
"Oh well if you can hold a sword that's all right then," he says scathingly. He snorts in disgust as he retrieves the dagger and then launches into a lecture on throwing technique that is actually quite enjoyable to listen to.
☀︎
She had known of course that she would be spending the night outside. She'd packed a bedroll after all. She had not considered that she might be spending the night in the forest. She doesn't know if she can sleep in the forest.
She listens to his lecture and throws knives and eats the food he cooks and then he tells her to get some rest, and she sits there and wonders what's scarier - sleeping in the forest or walking back to Tirion at night.
He can see it on her face she knows because he growls under his breath and glares at the fire. She really isn't sure why he's insisting on teaching her to throw knives when it really does not seem like he wants her here.
"Would you feel safer sleeping in the field?" He sounds nearly calm when he asks but there's still some lingering aggravation she can hear.
Would she feel safer in the field? It sounds…more exposed. At least in the forest if she has to run there are trees to climb. Slim protection but better than a field where there isn't anything you can do except run. She tells him so and frowns at the amusement that flashes across his face.
"Then you'll have to sleep in the forest, and you do have to sleep. It won't do you any favors to stay awake until whenever you go back to Tirion." It's such a reasonable thing to say. But what if she can't. "What the fuck were you going to do if you got out here and couldn't find me and had to spend the night alone?"
She…hadn't genuinely considered it. She would probably have turned and run half-way back to Tirion and then stumbled the rest of the way back. "I would have figured it out," she says instead.
"Right. And you can't figure it out now because…?" He knows why. He's watching her expectantly, but that awful amusement is splashed across his face, and she abruptly finds the capacity to hate something again.
"Don't be a fucking asshole," she snaps at him. She's shivering and the tips of her fingers feel numb. She can't remember the last time she was so terribly rude to someone. Her throat is burning suddenly with a host of vile things to say and none of them are about him at all. She presses it all down with some difficulty until she can't feel it at all.
He laughs at her, this time a bright, barking thing that makes it clear why he belongs in the woods. "We'll find something for you to do with that anger," he tells her, baring his teeth in what is maybe supposed to be a grin, but looks far more like a threat. His teeth, she notices for the first time, are incredibly sharp in a way that can't be normal. "But for now you have three options. Walk yourself back to Tirion in the dark. Sleep in a tree. Or sleep down here."
She looks at the trees, considers how high the branches are, and thinks that falling out of a tree would be a really stupid way to die after everything. She looks back at him. "Are you sleeping too?"
"Obviously. I know this forest. Nothing is going to bother us in this clearing." He sounds entirely confident of that which is…strange. But maybe it isn't. She doesn't know anything about Oromë or his forest.
It's all very logical (or what he seems to think is logical) and absolutely none of it is stopping her stomach from trying to twist in on itself. He studies her for a minute when she does nothing but stare at him and then sighs. It's a quiet sigh, so faint she nearly misses it.
"Here. Come here." He puts her bedroll next to the fire. Not too close but close enough she can feel the heat. And then he puts his bedroll next to it. "Fingon used to do this with Maedhros. Maybe he never stopped. Maybe Maglor did it too. I don't fucking know. But here, lay here, face the fire, and put your back to mine. The heat is supposed to help ground you and if I get up it'll wake you up, so you'll know if I leave."
It's more contact than she's had with anyone since she left Elrond behind. It makes her skin crawl a little bit. But she can't see anything else to try if she wants to get any sleep.
And miraculously it works. It still takes her a long period of time spent staring at the fire to actually fall asleep. But Celegorm's back is solid against hers and the fire is warm on her face and eventually she drifts off.
☀︎
It does, in fact, wake her up the next morning when Celegorm gets up. She has a disorienting moment where she sits bolt upright and can't figure out where she is or why the warmth against her back moved but it only lasts for as long as it takes Celegorm to press a water-skin into her hand.
"I'm going down to the river for a minute. Don't freak out while I'm gone." He doesn't wait for her to answer, just leaves her blinking after him.
She does not panic. She drinks some water. Wonders if anyone in Tirion found her note suspicious. Can't think of any reason they would. She spends the majority of her time alone; a hike alone is not so strange.
Celegorm comes back and shows her the way to the river. Tells her to wash up or whatever if she needs to and then leaves her there. He has an awful habit of just doing things without waiting for anyone's input. She does wash her face, but the cold water wakes her the rest of the way up which means the prickling awareness of being utterly alone in the wild comes back. She doesn't run back but it's a close thing.
She eats some of the lembas she packed for breakfast since all he has is dried meat and her stomach protests the idea of more meat. And then he says, "We're going hunting." Has already grabbed his bow and is staring expectantly at her.
"You want me to go hunting?" That sounds like a terrible idea.
"I have to hunt if we want to eat," he says shrugging. "I doubt you want to stay here alone while I'm gone."
He's right, she is not staying in this clearing by herself for who knows how long but, “I don't know anything about hunting."
"Of course you don't," he looks genuinely disgusted by the idea of not knowing how to hunt. "But I figured you didn’t. I'm going to teach you. Grab that knife. Come on." He turns and starts walking without waiting for an answer so for lack of better options she grabs the knife and scrambles after him.
He does teach her. There's very little actual hunting done at first. But he shows her how to track animals and she's good at being silent. He names every edible plant they pass. He shows her one of the string traps he has laid.
She only has to sit down twice during this. It's the shadows. It's always the fucking shadows. The first time he holds her hand while she takes deep breaths. The second time he wraps her hand around his wrist and presses her fingers to his pulse. Count the beats he tells her, and it's distracting enough that it works.
The actual hunting goes less well.
It starts well enough. She’s feeling cautiously optimistic with how the morning has gone so far. A dangerous feeling and she should know better. And it does go well for a while longer. He tracks animals with her silently shadowing his steps. His bow is in his hand, and she keeps a tight-knuckled grip on the knife which helps soothe the fear that never goes away.
The first two animals he ignores, a doe trailing behind its mother. “It would be wasteful,” he tells her after he’s pretended to shoot at them and muttered, dead, to himself in a satisfied voice. “I don’t need that much meat and depriving the doe of its mother would kill it as good as my arrow would. There will be other days to hunt them.”
She nods, thankful. Her stomach had given a sick lurch at the idea of watching the mother die when the child was right there. They keep moving and she doesn’t know how far into the forest they are now. She pushes the thought to the darkest regions of her mind. Thinking of it now would be a mistake.
And then it all goes sideways. Celegorm goes still at the sound of a hoof against rock, head cocked in a way that makes her think predator. The smile on his face when he looks over his shoulder at her does nothing to dissuade that thought. Feral, Elrond had said. There’s a fey light in his eyes emphasizing the faint memory of tree light that clings to them. His smile is all teeth and vicious excitement. It sends a chill down her spine. She tries to ignore it.
He nods his head in the direction of the noise and starts moving towards it. She follows, breathing shallow, heart beating a hard tempo in her chest. The arrow, when he looses it, flies as true as it can with the way the deer jerks at the last moment. The deer flees regardless of the blood running through its fur and Celegorm lets out a gleeful, wordless cry, hurtling after it.
But the noise to her ears is a shade too dark, verging on guttural. The shadows around her feet seem thicker than they were a moment ago. She closes her eyes and sees teeth. Opens them and finds herself on the ground, pressed into a hollow between two trees. Feral. Isn’t that what orcs are too. It’s not the same. Would she know if it was? Her fingers hurt where they’re curled around the handle of the knife. Her breathing is too loud and she can’t.
She can’t.
She keeps her eyes open despite the urge to curl into herself and block the shadows out. If she closes them she can’t see what’s coming. And if she can’t see what’s coming then she can’t brace herself.
She doesn't know how long she sits there before she hears footsteps coming through the trees and for a moment, her vision blurs, and there’s an orc with blood on its hands making straight for her. She blinks furiously and it’s just Celegorm but still, blood on his hands. He stares at her, head cocked, like she’s another deer to chase. She presses farther back into the hollow and struggles to keep breathing.
His mouth twists and he drops to the ground, crossing his legs. He’s closer than she wants but far enough way that he’s not looming. “Which part was too much?” he asks, eyes flicking down to the knife in her hands and then back up.
She swallows, opens her mouth to speak right as the smell of blood hits her and then she’s too busy bending over to puke to say anything at all.
“Well fuck,” she hears him say. The smell of blood lessens slightly, enough that the taste of rust on the back of her tongue fades. When she finally looks up he’s shed his jacket and used it to wipe most of the blood from his hands. His hands are hovering in the air like he wants to touch her but doesn’t dare. He drops them when he sees her staring, mouth pinched tight. “Not being able to stand the smell of blood is going to make things very difficult for you if you stick around me much longer.”
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and holds her other hand out. He raises his eyebrows but takes her hand in his. His skin is sticky, dried blood still stubbornly clinging to it. She swallows convulsively around the urge to throw up again. “It’s not, I mean it is, but I can handle the smell of blood usually. Just. Maybe not when everything else is happening too.”
“If you say so sweetheart. What sent you cowering to the ground anyways?”
There isn’t a nice way to say, you felt more animal than elf for a second. She settles on, “You finally scared me.”
He grins, which is not the correct response. “Took me longer than I thought it would. I must really be going soft. Nelyo would be so proud. Are you going to run back to Tirion now?”
It’s so obviously a dare. She’s sure he’ll let her leave if she wants but then she’ll spend the next year trying to find something else to be interested in and failing and probably end up out here again anyways. Her mouth tastes vile and her throat hurts and she’s pretty sure there are burs in her hair from the bush she’d shoved herself up against. But she’s also felt more real since she got here than she has in years. Like she’s a real person who can actually feel emotions without them feeling as if they’re coming to her from behind a thick cloud of fog.
“I might throw up again on the way back to camp if there’s more blood,” she says instead of answering.
“Killing animals and skinning them usually results in blood, sweetheart. You’ll get used to it.” He looks entirely too gleeful about that. He pulls her to her feet, grabs his jacket, and leads her to where the deer is.
She does in fact throw up again.
☀︎
After what feels like an age, they do make it back to camp.
She washes up at the river as much as she can while he tries to get the blood out of his jacket and fails. She feels a bit bad about that. Later, sitting by the fire while he cooks, she tries to fix her hair. She hadn’t braided it before running into the forest after him and now it’s horribly tangled and covered in burrs and she didn’t bring a brush.
She glares at one of the burrs on the end of her hair and carefully tugs it out, flicking it into the fire. Celegorm snickers and doesn’t even have the decency to stop grinning when she looks up. Not, she supposes, that she should still be expecting anything remotely resembling decency from him really.
“Just leave it,” he says, snorting when she throws one of the burrs at him. “Seriously. Eat. I’ll help you get them out after.”
True to his word he pulls a comb out of his bag and settles behind her after they eat. It’s unsettling how calm he can be when sitting still or stalking prey through the forest but then turn wild and fey in the next breath.
“Tell me something,” he says after a short stretch of silence.
“Tell you what?”
“I don’t know. Something. Anything. You know far more about me than I do about you.”
She stares at the fire and thinks. This is where all the conversations in Tirion fall apart. It had always felt like when they said, I want to hear about your life! they really meant tell me about your pain. She knows they probably didn’t mean it that way, but it locked her throat up either way. She thinks that if Celegorm wanted to hear about the pain he’d just ask her. It’d be just the right amount of rude.
“I’m married,” she says slowly, “to Elrond like I said. We have three kids. Twin boys, Elladan and Elrohir, and a daughter, Arwen.”
“Groundbreaking, I feel like I know so much about you now.” If he was anymore sarcastic he might hurt himself spitting the words up.
She scowls at the fire. Family is safe. “My mother is your cousin. Galadriel. But you probably know her by Artanis.”
“You’re Artanis’s daughter and you don’t know how to fucking fight? Are you fucking kidding?” He sounds so pissed off that she actually laughs. A small, short-lived laugh, but still an actual laugh.
“My parents were proud that Lothlórien was safe. Safe enough that as a child I didn’t have to worry about fighting if I didn’t care to and I didn’t. When I realized it might be a useful skill and asked to learn, I think they took it as my not feeling safe there anymore. And I didn’t care enough to argue the matter.”
“Of all the stupid decisions,” he mutters, "I always knew Finarfin’s line had more beauty than sense.”
“I am one of Finarfin’s line.”
“Yes. Which proves my point!” He tugs a strand of her hair to emphasize the point. “You heard I was out here and decided it was a fucking brilliant idea to breeze your way to a forest that terrifies you. Anyone with sense would have stayed in Tirion or at least brought someone with them who knew how to fight.”
“I didn’t breeze my way out here,” she snaps. “I had to stop every couple miles to sit down because I couldn’t breathe. It was very much a conscious choice.”
He’s silent for a minute, dropping a section of smooth hair over her shoulder. “I think that makes it worse. What if you’d needed someone to help you get back to Tirion? Or you’d tripped because you were panicking and sprained your ankle or broken something. Then what would you have done?”
“But I didn’t! I made it out here!”
“Yeah, fucking congratulations, and then you sat down and started panicking. I don’t think it was the victory you thought it was.”
“Well, I think I achieved exactly what I set out to achieve. Which is a clear victory as far as I’m concerned.”
“And what were you trying to achieve? Worrying everyone in Tirion when you don’t show back up soon? Being the worst knife thrower I’ve seen since before the sun rose?”
She throws her elbow back into his stomach. He laughs and tugs her hair again. “I just,” she frowns, picks up one of the burrs and squeezes it flat despite the way it makes the tips of her fingers burn. “I just wanted to see if I could still feel something. Anything other than a vague sense of duty to keep living. Elrond always looked so fond when he talked about Maedhros and Maglor. It helped balance out the grief when he spoke about Elros. And I used to be terribly curious about what they’d be like. About what all of you would be like and it turned out that spark of curiosity was still there.”
“How fucking boring is Tirion these days if I’m the only interesting thing you’ve heard of since you got here,” he says scoffing. “What’s the consensus then? Do you still have all your emotions?”
“I certainly still have the negative ones,” she says dryly. “You are doing an excellent job of bringing them out of me.”
“He’s always been too good at that,” Finrod says, stepping out from a behind tree, arms crossed. He’s frowning severely for the first time since Celebrían has known him.
Celebrían flinches back in surprise, a stark contrast to the way Celegorm’s hands go still in her hair.
“It’s rude to sing yourself silent and sneak into someone’s camp,” Celegorm says. His voice is very tight, but his hands stay gentle as he goes back to picking burrs out of her hair.
Finrod’s face contorts into something very ugly for a minute and he only makes a conscious effort to smooth it out when he looks at her. “Rude,” he says, absolutely seething with rage. “You’re going to tell me I’m rude. That’s what you’re going to say to me.”
Celebrían breathes very slowly and tries to clear her mind. Celegorm’s hands are still gentle in her hair. They aren’t going to attack each other when she’s between them. Finrod has never hurt her. Granted, he’s also never looked like he wants to hurt anyone, but he definitely does now.
“Finrod, I swear to Eru if you make her start panicking again, I’ll drown you in the fucking river.” He sounds deathly serious, and she has the brief thought that her mother would be so disappointed if she was the catalyst for another kinslaying.
Finrod looks like he’s seriously considering taking his chances with the river. But he looks at her again and then all the anger seems to bleed out of him at once. When he smiles at her it looks genuine. She remembers thinking how jealous she was of him being healed and now she’s wondering if he just isn’t far better at pretending than she is.
She means to smile back at him but ends up staring blankly at him for too long trying to figure out if he’s going to switch back to anger at the next word out of Celegorm’s mouth.
“How’d you know I was here?” she ends up asking after the silence has gone on too long.
“I’m not an idiot,” he says frowning at her. “I’ve heard rumors that Elrond considers himself half-Fëanorian. And then a day after rumors start circulating that Celegorm is back you decide to go on a hike. One that you very obviously snuck away to go on. I’d have been here sooner, but I didn’t find out until this morning.”
“She doesn’t need you protecting her,” Celegorm says. He sounds like he’s rolling his eyes.
That absurd statement has her turning so fast it leaves a sharp pain in her scalp where her hair is pulled. “You just tried to tell me that I should have brought someone with me to protect me!”
“Oh calm down and turn back around. You’re going to get the parts I already finished tangled back up.” He’s smirking though and she glares, turning back around only after he pushes lightly on the side of her head.
Finrod is frowning severely again when she turns back around. He tries to drop it and smile again when she looks at him. “Stop doing that,” she tells him. “Be mad or be happy or whatever. It isn’t as if he’s been terribly polite to me.”
“Good job, sweetheart. That’ll definitely calm him the fuck down.”
She elbows him again. Grimaces when Finrod’s face goes dark. “You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t exactly trust him around you after what happened last time he was left alone with a lady.”
“Don’t worry, she’s being plenty trusting enough for all three of us,” Celegorm says, managing to both insult her and rile Finrod up at the same time.
“Finrod,” she says as firmly as she can, she must manage pretty well if the way he startles is any indication. “I am fine. As fine as I ever am anyways. If he was going to hurt me I’m quite sure it would have already happened.”
Finrod stares at her. “That, is not as comforting as you seem to think it is. I’m happy whatever you’re doing out here seems to be helping you, but you should not have come out here alone.”
“I know you were eavesdropping,” Celegorm snaps before she can respond. “Which means you already heard me tell her the same thing. No need to be fucking repetitive.”
“Must you be so vulgar all the time!”
“I can be worse if it’ll make you go the fuck away.”
Finrod makes a very interesting sound, somewhere between a song note and a tea kettle. It makes the fire flicker like it’s going to go out. It also makes Celegorm snicker which does not improve anything.
“I’m not leaving until she does,” Finrod says firmly. Falters when he looks at whatever her face is doing. “Celebrían. Do not ask me to leave you here alone with him. Please.”
Oh. There really isn’t a nice way to say please go away right now is there. She shuts her eyes instead, breaths in. Elrond had said please like that too, when she’d told him she wanted to sail. Only once. And he’d taken it back immediately, never willing to pressure her into anything. His voice had broken terribly, and she’d wanted so badly to find a way to stay but she couldn’t. She couldn’t. And he'd taken it back. He'd let her leave.
“Breathe out,” Celegorm says, leaning closer and tapping her hand. “Rían, come on, breathe out.” The nickname shocks her into letting the breath go. It doesn’t really help when the next breath doesn’t want to go in.
I’m going to kill you, she hears Celegorm hiss, hopefully at Finrod. There’s a gentle pressure on her shoulder, trying to get her to straighten up from where she’s curled into herself gasping. She didn’t want to think about that. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t. And he couldn’t leave. And her children they— she doesn't want to think about this.
“Rían, seriously, fucking breathe.” His hand is on her back, and she dimly hears him growl before she finds herself being picked up. She tries to panic about that, does hear Finrod saying something very loudly, but she can’t manage any more panic than what she’s already got. He sits her back down a second later anyways, she doesn’t open her eyes to see where. If she just breathes, she can stop thinking about it again. She’d been doing good. She just needs to, to do that again.
His hand curves around the side of her head and presses the side of her face against his chest. Or. No, she realizes, her ear to his heart. “Breathe, for the love of Arda, I can’t punch this idiot until you start breathing right.”
Half of her desperately wants to panic with the dawning awareness that he’s hugging her, or close enough. She’s not let herself be hugged since she got here. She’d barely been able to handle her family hugging her before she sailed. The other half of her also wants to panic but more because she’s pretty sure she’s going to start crying even harder if he keeps hugging her.
“Whatever he said can’t be that serious,” Celegorm says, blatantly ignoring the outraged noise Finrod makes. “You don’t have to do something just because someone says please.” He says it like a joke.
Something deep in her chest goes unbearably tight and then rips when she tries to breathe around it. Do what’s best for you, Elrond had said like he wasn’t blinking back tears. Don’t worry about me or the children. We’ll be fine. We’d never ask you to stay if you need to go. And she had left. Of course she’d left. Middle Earth made her skin crawl. Every shadow had both the potential of being an orc and the very, very real possibility of being an orc. If she’d stayed she would never have been able to leave Imladris again. Lothlórien would have been lost to her regardless of if she’d stayed.
But if Elrond had asked. If he’d said please and not taken it back. If any of the children had asked her to stay. She would have. She knows that’s why they didn’t ask but she, maybe she had wanted them to. She had never wanted to leave her family. She just wanted to stop feeling like danger was waiting around every corner. She didn't want to leave them, but she hadn't been brave enough to stay when they were telling her she could go.
“I don’t want to be here,” she says, the words hard to get out. “I don’t. I didn’t want to.” she loses the rest to the tears clogging her throat.
“Okay,” Celegorm says very quietly and shifts like he’s going to move away.
She unwraps one of her arms from where she’d been clutching her own stomach to grab onto his shirt. She might actually scream if he lets go of her. That seems unhelpful.
“That’s not confusing at all,” he tells her, sounding very put out. But he doesn’t move. Puts his arms around her loosely and when she curls in closer he tightens the hold and starts humming. “Do something fucking useful, Findo. You’re supposed to be good at singing aren’t you.”
She wants to think she’ll do something daring like find a ship and sneak back to Imladris. Figure out a way to live with being there until Elrond is also ready to sail. But even if she could manage something that foolish, she’s not sure she has the nerve to step foot back on middle earth now that she’s left. She’s grown half-used to knowing there are no threats around every corner even if her body doesn’t believe it. But if they’d asked before she knew the safety of Aman.
Finrod’s singing ripples through the clearing like the flowers opening for spring. A slow unfurling. Faces turned to the sun. The clean sound of rain that washes through her and tries to soothe the ache. Celegorm’s humming twist through the song and shoves in the wild horses running over the plains, the eagles screeching as they circle in the sky. A waterfall crashing over a cliff and bursting into foam.
Her breathing levels out before the tears stop. She feels Celegorm sigh in relief when her breathing stops being an erratic mess. By the time the tears stop she feels drained, like a great wound has been torn open and drained. She is, she realizes properly, sitting sideways between Celegorm’s legs, his chin on the top of her head as he holds her. Elrond is going to be so bemused when he gets here and finds out which Fëanorian she managed to befriend. She’s a bit bemused about it herself.
“Well, sounds like you’re breathing again,” Celegorm says, sounding relieved. “If I let you go so I can punch him, are you going to freak out again?” Finrod’s singing stutters.
She turns her head to meet Finrod’s eyes. He looks terribly guilty and terribly relieved when she smiles at him. “Yes,” she says, “I’m afraid letting me go to punch Finrod will make me ‘freak out’ again as you so nicely put it. And didn’t you say Maedhros would leave Mandos to kill you if you were mean to Finrod.”
“All the better if it’ll make him finally drag his ass out of there.” She’s pretty sure there’s something very serious hiding in the way he keeps repeating that general chain of thought.
“Or he’ll come back to beat you up when he finds out you’re corrupting his son’s wife,” Finrod says spitefully, letting the song end.
“Corrupting,” Celegorm scoffs. “I do a nice thing for once and it’s corrupting.”
“You’re very bad at being nice,” she points out, “Elrond would be horrified with, well, probably everything about the last couple days.” She thinks it through again, re-evaluates. “Or, he’d be amused and perfectly normal about it considering who raised him. He’s very unpredictable sometimes.”
Finrod is staring at her. Celegorm is strangely quiet in response as well. She holds Finrod’s stare and waits.
“I think,” he pauses, winces a bit at whatever look Celegorm is giving him. “I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you say his name without flinching.”
She stares. “Did I really? I never noticed.”
"Dammit, he's actually helping isn't he," Finrod says. He looks so annoyed about it too. "Of all the damn people it could have been. You really had to pick him?"
"Yeah, fuck you too," Celegorm mutters.
Celebrían is pretty sure that if she wasn't here they would already be beating each other up. Finrod very much looks like he'd love to start it.
"In fairness, he was just the first one back, I didn't specifically choose him." She's happy with how it turned out, but she probably would have run off to one of the others too.
Celegorm scoffs and then starts laughing. "Eru, Curvo would have run you off immediately. Caranthir would have snapped your head off. Ambarussa would like you, but they'd have no idea what to do with you either."
"And Maedhros?" she is rather invested in having Elrond's foster-father like her.
"He'll fucking love you. And he wouldn't have let me in the same room as you if he'd met you first." He sounds a little bitter, a little resigned.
"Maedhros always had the most sense out of all you," Finrod says agreeably. "I think that says more about the rest of you though than it does him."
"You can fucking leave," Celegorm snaps, "the message has been received. You hate me. Got it."
Finrod's face does something complicated, the corner of his mouth pulling down. But he just says evenly, "I still don't trust you alone with her. I'm not leaving."
Celegorm pulls in a hissed, angry breath, his entire body tensing, and she knows if she wasn't still leaning on him he'd have launched himself at Finrod already. "Yeah, fuck this. Sit up," he tells her, "I'm going on a walk before I start a fourth kinslaying."
He's on his feet and gone the minute she's out of the way. She frowns after him. Turns back to the fire after he's out of sight and crosses her legs, starts picking the rest of the burrs out of her hair. He'd nearly been done so it's not a particularly hard job.
"Is there any way I can convince you go back to Tirion tomorrow?" Finrod asks plaintively. His eyes are pleading but she doesn't want to leave. And it's such a relief to want something again that she isn't inclined to give it up.
"I'm fine here," she tells him. flicks the last burr into the fire. "I'll come back eventually."
"And when other people start worrying about where you are?"
She shrugs. "I don't know. You could tell them I'm enjoying the solitude."
"Enjoying the solitude," he says flatly. "Celebrían, no one is going to believe that."
"I am enjoying it though!" It's not a lie; it's just not the whole truth. Elrond's really good at those kinds of half-statements.
He stares at her while she spins the comb in her hands. Sounds very resigned when he asks, "Do you want me to leave?"
"You're not bothering me," she says, ignoring that he had in fact triggered a massive breakdown earlier. "I don't exactly like the fighting but it's manageable for now."
"What have you even been doing out here? He's not exactly a comforting person to be around."
"Hm. No, he is really bad at being comforting. He was trying to teach me to hunt earlier. And he's offended I can't throw a knife properly. So, he's teaching me how."
"Ignoring that my sister didn't already teach you that, why do you even need to learn it?" We're in Valinor." He looks a bit like he's sulking.
"I offended him when I threw the dagger you gave me at him and missed," she smiles when Finrod chokes and starts laughing. "I think maybe I also worried him. He's told me I was stupid for coming down here by myself many times now." Stupid or not though it got results.
"I hate that I have to agree with him on anything," Finrod says, smiling ruefully at her. "But even if it was remarkably stupid, it's nice seeing you smile."
"I smiled before! I definitely remember doing that."
"Yes, the most painfully fake smiles I've ever seen. You wouldn't last a day at court."
"Oh. I was trying to not worry anyone." She'd been hoping if she just determinedly pretended she was fine eventually it'd be true.
"I'm sorry to say you did a terrible job of it. But if he's really helping in some way then far be it for me to try to stop you from being here." He looks like the words genuinely pain him. "I think I will stay for my own peace of mind though. Or at least until he decides to kill me, I guess." He sounds as bitter as Celegorm had yesterday.
"It'll work out," she tells him, not sure if it will, but things are working out better than they have been so there's hope.
"Yeah." He sighs and then smiles at her. "I'm happy to know the dagger is getting used though. I wasn't sure if you liked it."
"It's a piece of shit," Celegorm snaps, stalking back into the camp from behind her. "If you were going to give her a dagger you could have at least gotten one that's well made."
"I'm sorry not everyone can live up to your impossible Fëanorian standards," he says through clearly gritted teeth. "I wasn't expecting her to need to actually use it anyway."
"That's a shit reason," Celegorm says, dropping onto his bedroll and turning over. "The smell of blood makes her sick so don't stab me in the back while you're here."
Finrod throws her an alarmed look. "Hunting had mixed results," she tells him, ignoring the narrow-eyed look he gives her when she lays down and presses her back against Celegorm's. It's nice knowing there's two other people here instead of just one. Safety in numbers. She falls asleep quicker this time.
☀︎
She feels strange the next morning. Still drained but also like everything is too loud. Like now that her emotions have come storming back in, they're all making a valiant effort of monopolizing her attention.
She stares absently at the trees as she eats her lembas and takes each emotion and starts pushing it down out of the way. The anger, the resentment. She leaves the sadness all mingled in with her love because she doesn't want to lose the connection to her family again. Pushes down the uncertainty and the—
"Hey, stop it," Celegorm snaps out of nowhere, flicking her forehead and startling her. She loses her grasp on the emotions and strangles an irritated scream when they all come pouring back in. He smirks at the look on her face. "Come on. We're going to check the snares." He walks off before she can respond.
She scowls after him but grabs the knife and moves to follow him. Finrod is watching from the other side of the camp with a concerned look. She waves, turns and takes two steps to follow Celegorm, and then abruptly stops. Stares at the forest. She went in there yesterday. She knows that. But it. The fear feels louder as well today.
"You don't have to go," Finrod says gently, coming to stand beside her.
She does have to. She knows that trying to speed through the trauma like this is awful. Elrond would never let a patient do this if he could help it. She can acknowledge that a little easier today. But she'd rather rip through it than spend the next hundred years slowly working through it.
Celegorm comes back before she can decide if she wants to tell Finrod that. He glares at Finrod as he holds his hand out to her. "Are you coming or not? I'm going to show you how to skin a rabbit if the blood doesn't make you sick again. Let's go."
She considers that. The blood and the flesh pulled away. Feels a little sick, a little jittery. She'll probably throw up again. She didn't have a very strong stomach before the orcs either. But there's also a thick well of desire in her stomach when she thinks about becoming one of the dangerous things in the shadows instead of always being the one fleeing.
She grits her teeth and takes his hand. Ignores the irritated noise Finrod makes and steps into the forest. The shadows are very dark. She digs her nails into Celegorm's hand and keeps walking.
☀︎
Notes:
- In reference to Celegorm's offensively casual dismissal of Celebrían flat out saying, oh yeah you wanted rape Luthien - he does actually have some feelings about that which aren't awful and he would genuinely apologize if she wasn't dead. He's just beyond sick of having everyone tell him he needs to think about what all he fucked up when he's very much done that & in that instance is also very thrown by how unnaturally calm Celebrían is being about it. Which is still.... not fantastic exactly but is some character growth. Will be elaborated on if I write the sequel.
- No, Celebrían isn't magically healed but by god she's gonna do loads better if she isn't consistently dissociating from every painful emotion ever.
- I in no way meant any shade at Galadriel in this. I've never gotten the feeling that Celebrían is a fighter though so I extrapolated on it from there
- in truth I think this pacing should be drawn out so that this happens over the course of a couple weeks. But I am not about to get bamboozled into writing a 50k fic about that, so speed-run version it is!
Originally posted on AO3
