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theserpentsadvocate · 7 months

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Five Women Who Never Loved Brandir Son of Handir

Uhhh... so I've been sitting on this one forever, I don't know why. Enjoy my original author's note:

Five things fic, because I wanted to. This is the third five things fic I’ve started, but the first one I’ve finished. (Besides, the Handir one has sort of mushroomed into this weird 5+2 format and I don’t know if it even qualifies anymore.) So, until I finish Five Things That Never Happened To Nienor Daughter Of Hurin and Five Ways Handir Son Of Haldir Could Have Survived The Nirnaeth Arnoediad (And What Would Have Happened If He Hadn’t), have Five Women Who Never Loved Brandir Son Of Handir. Unapologetic shippy fluff, OCs, and odd pairings ahead. Well, odd pairing.

Niniel

It’s spring when she comes to him and takes his hand and at first he doesn’t think anything of it because that’s what she does.

Then there’s a movement of her thumb against the back of his hand and when he looks up she blushes, though her eyes don’t skitter away, and he’s never seen her blush before, and everything changes.

There’s a nervousness in the way she bites softly at one side of her lip, and Niniel isn’t nervous – she gets along well enough normally, but she doesn’t have that sense of embarrassment other people do. She doesn’t fidget. She doesn’t blush.

But her face is flushed, and he wants to raise a hand and brush it against her cheek. He doesn’t.

Her smile is hesitant, and he’s never seen that before either. There are a lot of things he’s never seen.

“I think,” she says, and the smile still edges around the corners of her lips, “that maybe you love me.”

“Maybe,” he says blankly, and although his lips feel numb his voice comes hoarse from his throat.

“I think,” she says, “that maybe I love you.”

Maybe? he means to say, but there’s no sound. The smile dances back and forth across her face, barely there but clear enough.

“I don’t know a lot about love.” It’s half apology. “I can’t remember ever loving anyone.”

And maybe she doesn’t know enough, not to choose. He doesn’t think it really, wouldn’t think it if she’d chosen elsewhere, but he’s used to cutting back, turning away, making endless small sacrifices because that’s what he does, that’s what’s necessary, because his happiness is always second. That’s what it is to be chieftain, to be healer, to be –

To choose happiness is selfish, surely. It’s always felt that way.

“That’s all right,” he says, voice rough as if he’s swallowed a roomful of smoke. “We’ll learn together.”

Moriel

Brandir knows Hariel a little, though she and her family live outside of the Ephel. She’s a trapper and her son’s a woodsman who knows his game so they come to trade. Her daughter’s never come.

“We brought her,” Moriel’s brother says, blunt but apologetic. “I would have come ahead to tell you but Onda wanted me with her. I’m better for calming her down.”

“They’re not fits of emotion,” the girl says clearly. It surprises Brandir; she’s kept her eyes down this whole time, shy or nervous. He can see now she’s a bit older than he thought, maybe only a few years shy of his own age of twenty-five. The shyness, combined with her delicate looks, had thrown him off by six or eight years.

“Getting upset never gets you breathing better,” Aradir points out.

That doesn’t help much. “Hariel mentioned you didn’t travel because of this ailment,” Brandir says, voice friendly and neutral.

“The dust makes the fits come on,” she tells him straightforwardly. “The dogs can’t come inside the house anymore or it happens. I can’t run at all. Sometimes if I get very upset,” she allows, although she quite pointedly doesn’t look at her brother.

She doesn’t look at Brandir either, eyes fixed on her lap, though her voice is far too firm to put it down to shyness. He’s had people avoid his gaze before, but never avoid looking at him entirely. Is it so disturbing –

No. He has a patient.

“Flowers in spring?” he asks.

“Eh, sometimes,” she says. “It used to be fine. I didn’t start sneezing like Aradir. But now it seems like I move and I start wheezing.”

“It wasn’t always like this,” her brother says, more matter-of-fact than worried. “But she started getting ‘em when she was near ten year, they just weren’t so bad then.”

“Sometimes I think I’m going to die,” Moriel says. “The air just won’t go in. It’s worrisome.”

If she’d looked at him even once since they’d come through his door, he would like her for that. It’s worrisome.

“I can examine you,” he tells her. “But I think I know already. I can’t cure it, but I can give you medicine for when it happens. You’ll have to put it in boiling water and breathe in the smoke.”

“Good thing there’s always water on the boil,” Aradir comments. Brandir pushes up from his chair, trying not to notice that Moriel turns her head away while he arranges his crutch.

“I’ll fetch you some,” he says. “But I’ll have to prepare more.”

He left the door open as he puts together a packet and after a few moments hears Moriel whisper harshly to her brother, “That’s the chieftain’s son?” He swallows hard.

“What about him?”

There’s a soft thwack. “You never warned me he was handsome.”

Brandir almost drops his entire bundle of dried herbs on the floor. He swallows hard and fixes the crumpled leaves properly inside the cloth packet and then makes himself walk back through the door before he loses his nerve. It feels a little like the world’s turned sideways.

He’s never been handsome before.

“You’d better keep these with you,” he says. His voice is too brisk, but he forces himself to look at her. “About half what’s in the packet in a pot of hot water, to ease your breathing. I can make up something that will make the attacks less likely, but they’ll still happen.”

“But we don’t really know for certain if this works yet,” Moriel says diffidently. She meets his eyes, briefly, and then her gaze skitters around the room before she focusses somewhere just above his left shoulder. Her entire manner seems very different. “On me, I mean. I probably shouldn’t risk an attack somewhere with no hot water anyway, until I’m a bit better.”

“That’s probably wise.” His voice sounds even, which is a marvel considering all he can really think about is that Moriel herself is very pretty and surely she’s had practice speaking to all sorts of men?

“Then I guess I shouldn’t leave just yet.” She forces her eyes back to his and smiles a little awkwardly, but her voice is more confident. “I suppose I’ll have to stay a while.”

“Ah,” Brandir says articulately.

Moriel’s brother grumbles something under his breath, and she kicks him.

Lalaith

The dog doesn’t really look like a dog, but it’s clearly an animal of some kind. That doesn’t feel like much of an achievement, when his father’s birds are so detailed that you can identify the species even when they’re not the same size as real ones, but it’s… something.

Nienor plops down beside him, all carefree eight years of her. “What’s that?”

“It’s just a… thing,” Brandir says, setting it down.

“Lemme see.” She picks it up.

“It’s supposed to be a dog. It’s not very good…”

“I like it,” Nienor says decisively, putting it down again. “You should give it to my sister. She has all kinds of animals Labadal made her, but she doesn’t have a dog. Only wild animals.” She frowns. “Maybe there’s a wolf.”

“I’m sure your sister would be nice enough to accept it,” Brandir says, cringing at the thought of his rough effort next to that of a lifelong carpenter, “but it’s really not good. My father does much better.”

“I bet she’d like it,” Nienor says. “She likes you.”

“I know.” Urwen likes everyone. And everyone likes her, but she isn’t conceited about it.

“Don’t you like her?”

Brandir frowns. “Of course I like her. She’s very nice.”

“Then why haven’t you given her flowers or something? Girls like flowers from boys they like.” She frowns back at him in consideration. “You’re kind of a boy. You’re younger than Turin. Maybe you’re too old to give her flowers. You should give her a necklace or something. Or the dog.” She brightened. “Can you make a necklace out of wood? Or a bracelet? Do you think you’ll get married? Naneth wasn’t that much older than Lalaith when she got married. If you get married, can I be – ?”

Finally Brandir manages to drag his internal organs back into his chest from wherever they’ve disappeared to and stop her by waving his hands in the air in front of her face. It’s not very polite, but he’s having difficulty with words.

“That is not what I meant,” he says finally, as calmly as he can manage. “I like your sister. And I like you, and I like your father, and I like…” He hesitates. Morwen always makes him feel deficient, like he’s broken, not just damaged.

“Oh.” Nienor stares at the ground. “She’ll be sad.”

Brandir wants to argue with her – clearly she misunderstood her sister the same way she misunderstood him – but he can’t think what he should say first.

“Maybe you could like her?” Nienor suggests hopefully. “She’s really pretty, you know. And nice. And she knows lots of funny stories –”

“Why don’t you keep the dog?” Brandir says loudly. “Go on, I don’t mind.”

Nienor looks hurt – she hates being talked down to – but she takes the thing sullenly and sulks off, pouting, without saying anything else. Brandir slides down off his hillock and leans back against it, rubbing his hands over his face. Urwen is pretty and nice, and he likes her stories. And he really, really doesn’t want her to feel sorry for him, which she would if she heard about this conversation.

“I guess…”

He jerks upright. Lalaith is standing there, smiling a little sadly. “I guess things are different in Brethil.”

“A little,” Brandir says, feeling his heart shrivel up inside his chest. “Were you looking for Nienor?”

“She ran off towards the house,” she says. “I guess Mother doesn’t need me to fetch her anymore.”

“She said you had a whole bunch of little animals,” he offers lamely.

Urwen nods. “From Sador.”

Sador. Not Labadal.

“I guess… when Haladin girls want to be sweethearts with a boy, they just…” She makes a vague motion signifying action.

“I… yes, I think so…” He wouldn’t really know how it goes. He ought to stand up, while she’s standing, but his walking stick is too far to reach and he doesn’t want her to see the kind of hobbling he’s reduced to when he doesn’t have it.

“Turin told me about… um, I think it was Bariel…?”

“They don’t usually punch anyone in the face!” Brandir exclaims, humiliation momentarily forgotten. “That’s very unusual!”

Urwen smiles. “I don’t want to punch you in the face,” she says.

“I don’t want to punch anyone in the face,” he responds without thinking. Her expression shifts a bit, but she smiles again with effort.

“Right. I just thought maybe it was… Nienor was embarrassing you, but… well, I guess I was being silly. I’ll just…” She turns to leave.

“Wait, wait,” Brandir says, reaching out for her arm. It’s too far up and he gets a handful of the skirt of her pretty yellow dress instead. It’s soft. She’s a little bit like the dress, and that sounds stupid even in his head. “I can’t… um, I can’t…” He can feel himself going red. “Get up.” Just when he was thinking he hadn’t been humiliated after all. He can’t look at her.

“Oh…” She turns and fetches his crutch for him. His face is still burning when she hands it to him but instead of making some excuse and hurrying away she sits down next to him. After a little while he gets up the courage to look at her again. She smiles.

“I do still like flowers better than wooden bracelets,” she says.

Daerwen

His first duty, after burying his father, had been to bear his condolences to the families of the other fallen warriors. There had been a great many.

It shamed him to think that he couldn’t remember most of those meetings clearly, but it was true. Even those who had been angry, insulting, reaching out for someone to blame and striking close to the places that would truly cause pain – ‘And where we you, safe at home?’ ‘How could you understand, you’re no warrior!’ ‘Do you think to purchase my support, thus?’ – blurred together enough that they, and their suffering, were no individual, distinct entities in his mind.

He should have done better by them than that.

“You probably don’t remember me,” the woman by the fireside said. She smiled, but sadly.

“I do,” Brandir told her. “Daerwen.” He refrained from listing her husband’s name, although they both knew that must be how he thought of her. He’d meant to hold the bereaved in his mind as people, to remember their sorrow, their anger or guilt or acceptance – instead, he’d only managed to catalogue them by their dead. Daerwen’s husband had been Harlas, a spearman, and he’d bled out during the retreat, but all he remembered of her was that she hadn’t screamed or thrown him out of her house.

“You are kin to Aradis, I think,” he said to break the silence. They could have been merely friends, of course, but there was a strong resemblance in Daerwen to Aradis’s grandson.

“She was married to a cousin of my father’s,” Daerwen said, faultlessly polite. There was something in her quiet manner that put him in mind of his mother, so he imagined there was steel underneath. “Though not a close one.”

That meant that Aradis’s dead daughter was Daerwen’s kinswoman and agemate. If she’d ever had children with Harlas, they likely would have played with Mireth’s orphaned son.

“How unfortunate,” he said, meeting her eyes steadily so she would know him sincere. “I am afraid such losses are common.”

“Certainly.” She peered into the soup-pot, and, apparently satisfied, rose and came to sit nearer him. “I stifle, the way no one ever mentions it. But I suppose it is different for you.”

He looked at her cautiously. The last time he’d been in this house, Aradis had tried to throw him out, but ended by weeping so hard he’d had to hold her bodily from the floor. She seemed to hold no animosity or embarrassment, only worry over her grandson’s injury, but he could never be quite sure of his reception in such places.

“Having no time to grieve, I mean,” Daerwen said. She gave him that smile again, sad and half-yearning but not melancholic.

“And yet I did anyway,” Brandir said, “somehow. It was greatly against my judgement but I fear I could not do otherwise.”

Her smile spread a little, deepening, and lost some of its bittersweet quality. He only got a brief glance before she turned her face towards her lap. “It must have lost its hold on you, if you can say such things.”

“I –” It was necessary he be able to speak without tears or the suggestion they might be coming. “I still miss my father very much, and very frequently. But certainly I am no longer prevented from… going onwards in my life.” Was she unable to do so? At least she wished to, which was a good sign.

“I wonder if… you could put it that way to Aradis? Going onwards. It sounds much… friendlier than the words she uses when I mention hovering less over her grandson.” Her jaw clenched. “Or that I would like to marry again.”

“I think,” he told her seriously, “that you are admirable. And I shall do my best, although I cannot meddle if she has no wish for my help.”

“Of course not,” Daerwen told him. “And I want to thank you. Just hearing someone say it’s not wrong to want to move past him… it’s a comfort. I knew that –” She stopped.

“If you need help – not just interference, but advice or conversation – I am not so far away.” He’d made the offer many times in the last year, although it wasn’t frequently accepted. “You are always welcome, as long as you can find me.”

“Thank you.” There was a pause. He could hear Aradis descending the steps in the other room. Daerwen smiled a little. “I knew that you were the right choice.”

Nienor

The envoy leaves in two days.

It shouldn’t matter quite so much – things have been as productive as they can be, when Dor-lomin’s new leader has somewhat unreasonable expectations – but it does.

Brandir silently and emphatically calls himself a fool.

“Why the stormclouds?”

He laughs despite himself, although he’s startled Nienor managed to approach without his knowing. “The storm clouds?”

She shrugs, leaning against the side of his house. “Aerin used to say that when I was small. I fought with my mother… well, often. ‘Stormclouds’ was kinder than ‘royal sulk’, I suppose.”

“Are you accusing me of sulking?” He takes care to smile, both to dispel the impression and to avoid giving offense.

“No. I only wondered.”

“’An acorn for your thoughts’, we say here.” He gestures to the step. “You’re welcome to sit.”

Instead, she straddles end of the log he’s sitting on. Brandir turns to face her. She’s wearing a split skirt, and he can see she has leggings beneath it.

“An acorn for your thoughts.”

He shrugs. “Just wool-gathering.”

“They seem like unhappy sheep.”

That makes him smile. “Just heavy ones.”

Nienor frowns. “Wouldn’t that be a good thing? More wool? Or warmer?”

“I have a great number of responsibilities,” he offers, half-amused and half-exasperated.

“I suppose.” She sounds thoughtful. “When I first came, I thought you were a strange man by way of a leader.”

Brandir keeps his voice carefully neutral. He’s not sure what to think. “Did you?”

“I haven’t known many,” she acknowledges. “Just my brother, I suppose, and Brodda.” The thunderhead that crosses her face at that name is formidable. “But people still talk about my father. And there’s the Elf-king, I suppose.”

“The king of Doriath.”

“He as well.” He should have known she’d meant Fingon. The People of Hador were married to the Noldor. “Living, dead, good, bad… they all loved war, or their own authority, or both.”

Cautiously, Brandir ventures, “I never heard that Hurin son of Galdor loved either.”

“Didn’t you?” She sounds surprised. “No one ever speaks of him but the words ‘mighty warrior’ follow.”

“I grant you that,” he says, “easily! But a man may fight like the whirlwind and still bear no love for war. My father always spoke of his kinsman as a young man more in love with a jest and a song than with battle.”

She startles. “I suppose I knew they would have known each other – but I never think of it.” There’s silence for a moment. “When we first met, I thought you weak,” she says slowly. “Now, I think of going back to being surrounded by men who think strength is a sword-arm or the ability to command by force and I cannot think well of it.”

“I have always heard your brother a good man,” he says, although that isn’t entirely true. He’s heard nothing of Turin son of Hurin’s character – only his fighting prowess.

“He is,” Nienor says, almost sadly. “And he is an able leader, although I cannot say if he is a good one.”

That she makes a difference between the two strikes him forcibly, and both her discernment and the hint of praise hiding in the shadow of her words cause his heart to beat distractingly.

“But he’s what he was made,” she says simply. “I don’t know what kind of life it was, hunting orcs through the woods – but I sat in the Easterlings’ hall, and I have no love left for masterful men.”

The sadness of that – a reunion that is but a continuance of the separation – moves Brandir profoundly. He reaches for her hand, to offer what comfort he can, but as their fingers touch she raises her gaze to his, and it takes all his will not to freeze and thus betray himself.

“I have performed my duty to my brother well here, I think,” she says, forcing a ghost of a smile. “I will bear it out and bring back word – and then, I think, it will be done. And then perhaps – ” she glances so quickly at his hand over hers that he almost doesn’t see it, “then perhaps I may return.”

A/N: I wrote parts 1-4 Way Too Long Ago, and then finally finished it, I don’t know, two years back and immediately forgot that I’d finished it. So… Here it is now? Requisite notes:

1. Turin doesn’t exist. He never existed. The story still happened the same way up to this point because, well, it did. Or, Niniel blew him off because he was being really horrible to her friend. Or, he’s off living in a cave somewhere. Or similar. Whatever you like to imagine. :)

2. Handir is still alive and in charge here, obviously. He won’t die for about five more years per canon. Moriel has asthma (as you may have guessed). I described her in my notes once as being a ‘delicate princess with the soul of a drill sergeant’ which essentially means that not only will she fight you, but if you argue back you will look like an asshole. I like to think that when Turin arrives in Brethil she’s also pregnant, and Dorlas’s attempt to use him to unseat Brandir completely dies under the strength of Heavily Pregnant Woman Having An Asthma Attack Because Of You.

3. Some happy (or happier) AU or other where Brethil/Dor-lomin kids are fostered back and forth. Brandir’s staying with Hurin’s family. He and Lalaith are both sixteen. (I put in a backwards-math hint with Nienor’s age and then remembered that not everyone in the entire world has gone and memorized their age differences.)

4. Obviously the shippy part comes later. (Whoops, I guess it’s not all fluff.) But there’s a nice grounding of respect and friendliness and understanding and with a relationship that grows slowly out of that and out of shared grief and especially when accompanied by a dead spouse and requisite baggage (on one side) and political responsibility – and baggage! – (on the other) is going to, well, grow slowly, so the point that I don’t think a snippet from anywhere but much later would even look that much like a romantic relationship, even after it was one. Anyway. I may come back and poke this idea later and I may not.

5. Turin retook Dor-lomin, obviously. Nienor is the head of his envoy to Brethil. (His ‘unreasonable expectations’ are military support that would leave the Haladin with very precarious defenses; Brandir is sending supplies to rebuild and offers of trading instead.) A line I wanted to use but in the end couldn’t fit in: “Aerin, my mother… they all lived in Dor-lomin before the Easterlings came. They call it home, but for me, there’s nothing there but bad memories.”

#tolkien #brandir #brandir son of handir #nienor #my own work #fanfic #lalaith #misc men #silmarillion #unfinished tales #children of hurin #'onda' is my made-up casual term for 'mother' in the haladin's language #since moriel and her brother live farther away from the ephel and haven't been sindarized as much

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