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Most of the time, he was happy to just be Ambarussa, half of a whole and united with his brother. But sometimes, when he saw his brothers do things that looked amazing, and that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to match even when he was big like them, he liked to whisper his proper mother-name to himself.
Ambarto. Upwards-exalted. He’d asked Macalaure what exalted meant once because Macalaure could make words dance and seemed to know just about everything about them. He’d liked what he’d heard.
Exalted. He liked the way the word tasted on his tongue.
He might be only the second littlest now, one of the ones visitors called “cute” and “sweet” instead of “brilliant” and “prodigious” like his older brothers, but someday that would change. Someday he would do something worth exalting.
He held it close as a warm little comfort against small jealousies right up until the time that Telvo got sick, and he wasn’t allowed in the room, so he decided to follow Carnistir around instead.
Unfortunately, Carnisitr wanted to spend his day reading instead of doing something more entertaining, and no matter how many times Ambarussa poked him, he wouldn’t change his mind.
Poke. Poke. Poke -
Carnistir threw his book down and glared at him. “By the Valar, Mother was right,” he growled. “You are Umbarto, fated to annoy the rest of us half to death!”
“Mama wouldn’t say that,” he said with complete certainty. “Mama says I’m a treasure.”
“Go ask her then,” Carnistir said, retrieving his book, “and leave me alone.”
He couldn’t go ask Mama, because she was in the sick-room and he wasn’t allowed in there, but he saw Atar headed there, and he perked up immediately. Macalaure might know just about everything about words, but Atar knew absolutely everything about them, and probably everything that wasn’t about them too.
He ran up to his father and tugged on his tunic. Atar smiled down at him and swung him in the air before settling him on his hip.
“Hello, PItyo. I’m off to see your brother. Want to come with me as far as the door?”
He nodded against his father’s chest and then said, “Atar? What does Umbarto mean?”
His father froze. “Where did you hear that?”
“Carnistir,” he mumbled. As a preventative measure against getting in trouble, he added plaintively, “I only poked him a couple of times.”
“Don’t poke your brothers,” his father said automatically, but his arms had tightened around him uncomfortably. Ambarussa squirmed. Atar patted his back apologetically and said, “It means fated. Your mother … thought about naming you that.”
“Oh.” He considered that. Fated. It didn’t sound too bad. “What’s fate?”
“The idea that we’re not responsible for our own choices,” Atar said. He didn’t sound happy.
He considered this. “If I’m fated, does that mean it’s not my fault if I poke people?”
“No,” Atar said firmly, and that was the end of that.
…
Except after Ambarussa got to peek his head in the door and say hi to his brother and learned that he would probably be well enough to play again tomorrow, he was still bored.
And he still wasn’t entirely sure what fate was.
So he asked Macalaure since he knew almost as much about words as Atar did.
He found his older brother in his room, frowning at a sheet of music. He reached out and poked him before he remembered what Atar had said about that.
But Macalaure didn’t seem mad. “Hello, Pityo,” he said. “How’s your other half?”
“He’s puking,” he said with delighted disgust. “Mama says I still can’t come in there.”
Macalaure winced. “Probably for the best. Are you bored?”
“I’m fated,” he said with a frown. “What does fated mean, Kano? ‘Cause Atar said fate meant it wasn’t people’s fault if they did things, but then he said it was still my fault if I poked people.”
Macalaure looked concerned. “They weren’t fighting over it again, were they?”
“Who?” he asked in confusion.
“Never mind.” Macalaure sighed. “Fate is … fate is destiny, only with a slightly more negative connotation, generally speaking.”
Ambarussa looked at him blankly.
Macalaure shook his head. “Sorry.” He bit his lip for a moment and said, “In your case, you’re called fated because that’s what Mother wanted your name to be. When she held you for the first time, she knew you’d do something big someday, and that’s what fate is. Doing something big and knowing about it ahead of time.”
“Oh!” He liked that. It was almost as good as upwards-exalted. “Okay. Do you want to play now?”
Macalaure looked ruefully at the halfway completed music. “We might as well use this as a ball for all the good it’s doing me. Alright, Pityo. Let’s play.”
…
Things were a little tense for the next few days, with Atar and Mama snipping at each other and Macalaure glaring at Carnistir, but Ambarussa didn’t much care. He had his only younger brother back, and now they could play again.
…
Umbarto and Ambarto stayed a comfort to him as he grew older and still failed to surpass his brothers. He could sing, but not as well as Macalaure; he could do math, but not as well as Carnistir. What he really liked to do was hunt, but Tyelkormo was better at that than him too.
Telvo, at least, wasn’t better than him. They did everything together, just as well as each other, so when after yet another archery lesson where Tyelkormo had left them in the dust, Telvo said, as if out of nowhere, “I wish I was fated for something,” Pityo had an answer almost at once.
“I think you must be,” he said. “Two halves of a whole, remember? Anything I’m fated for, you’re fated for too.”
“That’s true,” Telvo said, cheering up. “Whatever it is, we’ll do it together.”
Whatever it was, it would be glorious, Ambarussa was sure of that.
…
Except.
Except, as he grew older, he remembered what Macalaure had said about negative connotations, and he knew what that meant now.
Maybe he should hope Telvo wasn’t fated, but whatever happened, he didn’t want to have to go through it alone.
But what could happen? He knew bad things happened sometimes; that was why they didn’t have a grandmother like all their cousins did.
Maybe someday he’d get married, and his wife would die like his grandmother did?
But then wouldn’t she be the fated one, not him?
He could die, he supposed, in a hunting accident or something, but somehow a hunting accident didn’t seem big enough for fate, unless maybe it was Telvo who caused the accident somehow and then Telvo was so upset that he died too, and then -
He decided to stop that train of thought before it got any more like the melodramatic plays in Alqualondë that Macalaure wrote home to mock.
Maybe, he thought glumly after overhearing the name Umbarto hissed out in one of his parents’ arguments, maybe it meant he would be responsible for his parents breaking apart.
He made the mistake of saying that to Telvo where Maitimo could hear him, and Maitimo spent thirty minutes telling him that, firstly, their parents would be fine, and, secondly, even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t be his fault even in the slightest.
It sounded very convincing in the moment. Everything Maitimo said always did.
It was only later that he realized the speech had sounded a little practiced, as if Maitimo had been using it on their other brothers, and that reassured him somewhat less.
…
Then -
Swords and trials and darkness so complete it choked.
Fate seemed a heavier word now, but it was still a little comforting, because whatever he was supposed to do, he hadn’t done it yet, and that meant he would make it through this somehow, at least long enough to do it.
He clutched Telvo’s hand tightly as Macaluare sang fire onto a length of wood.
They were fated. They would make it through. Together.
Or not at all.
…
Fate is the idea that people aren’t responsible for their own choices, his father had said.
That seemed like a much more tempting idea after Alqualondë.
He tried to shove that thought aside as he stood at the railing of the ship and looked out across the roiling sea.
Possibility seemed so much bigger now. There was so much he and Telvo might do, so much they might become.
Maybe they would be the ones to retrieve Atar’s Silmarils. That would be a good thing to be fated to do.
Maybe they would be heroes. Maybe -
Maybe anything.
He tried to focus on the horizon and leave all memories of Alqualondë behind.
…
Atar was dead.
Ambarussa looked down at the ash where his father had once been, and a wail ripped out of his throat.
If this was fate, he didn’t want it.
…
They called themselves Amrod and Amras now, and he worried less about being Umbarto. The whole world was war, and everyone they knew was under the Doom, and sometimes he thought that Mother had seen them all bound up in fate but had only at the end been willing to admit it.
The Oath burned in his mind, devouring all paths that did not lead to its ends, and in its brilliant glare, it was hard to remember what Atar had said about choices.
…
Atar had burned to ash.
His brothers did not.
Celegorm lay where he had fallen, trying to cut his way over to Curufin. Curufin’s sword was still buried in Dior’s stomach; arrows made a pincushion of his back. Caranthir completed the gruesome triangle that Oath and Doom had called them to and where choice had sprung the trap.
“We should burn them,” he said. His voice echoed oddly in the hall.
“We should,” Amras agreed, and they turned to look at Maglor.
Maglor turned to look for Maedhros, but Maedhros was gone into the forest, and Amrod was having to fight the dark fear that he wouldn’t come out of it again.
“Alright,” Maglor said at last. “Help me find wood.”
…
The Oath blazed and the world narrowed, so - The Havens of Sirion.
The attack was inevitable. Amrod preferred to do it while there was still a little of his mind free from the Oath’s fire, and Amras agreed.
He reminded himself of that later. Amras had agreed.
That didn’t help when the chaos of battle swept him away from his brother, and his frantic search ended with him kneeling in the street, clinging to his brother as Amras’s blood turned the thick mud dark.
“Stay with me,” he pleaded as he pressed on the horrible gaping wound. “Fated, remember? Together or not at all.”
But the light drifted out of his brother’s eyes.
Apparently, his fate was his alone.
…
He fought - He didn’t actually remember how he fought after that. There was a lot of blood on his clothes, according to Maglor. Only a survivable amount of it must have been his because he survived, again according to Maglor, who had taken to calling him Pityo again for the first time in centuries, and who sang him to sleep as if he was still a child.
Amrod didn’t protest.
He couldn’t imagine protesting anything now.
…
Maglor had brought children with them. Twins.
Maglor seemed wary of leaving them alone with him, though Amrod wasn’t sure who he thought would get hurt.
It happened eventually, regardless. It was inevitable, he thought. Like fate.
There was shouting going on outside, so probably there was some kind of attack that he had no energy to deal with today. Or tonight, rather, judging by the lack of light.
He rarely had much energy anymore.
The children got shoved into his tent by somebody, and they all stared at each other for awhile. The twins were holding onto each others’ hands tightly, so tightly he thought they would probably bruise.
“That’s good,” he told them. His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears. “Hold on to each other. Don’t ever let go, not even for a moment.”
“We won’t,” one of them whispered.
“Good,” he repeated. “We’re all doomed, but you should face it together.”
The shouting grew closer, and the twins’ hands squeezed even tighter together.
He remembered doing that in that first, crushing dark.
He had a knife under the bed. It was the only one his brothers hadn’t known he had and so hadn’t known to take.
He took it out now and stood by the entrance to the tent.
By the end of the night, it was dark with orcish blood.
…
Maglor thought it meant he was getting better. Amrod thought Maglor never used to be this stupidly optimistic, but then, Maglor was the only brother no one was concerned about leaving alone with knives, so maybe Maglor was onto something. Or maybe it was just one more performance his brother was putting on.
The performance grew more brittle when the twins left.
…
Maedhros wanted them to go after the gems. Maglor wanted to let it go.
Amrod felt the bands of the Oath grow white-hot around him and thought Maglor was taking foolish optimism to new heights if he thought letting it go was still an option.
They went after them. They got them.
Maedhros picked one out of the chest first, and Maglor didn’t seem to notice how their brother stood locked in place as he reached for the second.
Unexpected fury licked through Amrod, and suddenly he wanted to snatch it out of Maglor’s hand, or Maedhros’s maybe, as he felt the Oath whisper mine, mine, mine.
Maglor cried out in pain and dropped it.
Maedhros held his up so that the light reflected in his tormented eyes. “It burns,” he said, and then he laughed.
Amrod shuddered at the sound.
There was a crevice behind them. The fire of the earth glowed in its deeps.
“Fire to fire,” Maedhros murmured, and then -
He -
He took the gem with him, Amrod thought dully later, and the fact that he’d had that thought made him want to scratch out his own eyes.
…
Amrod had two working hands. Maglor had a mostly functional brain. Together, they made it down to the sea.
The gem was wrapped in five layers of cloth and leather now. They switched who was holding it every night.
Every night it wasn’t his, the Oath burned in his mind.
It wasn’t supposed to do this. It was never supposed to turn them against each other. It was never supposed to turn them even upon closest kin.
But every time, it got a little harder to force himself to pass it back to Maglor, and he could see the same burning Oath reflected in Maglor’s eyes.
“It’ll be alright,” Maglor told him once they reached the water. “We’ll figure it out in the morning, Pityo. Everything will be alright then.”
Nothing was alright, and surely even Maglor knew it. They could not hold the fire forever, and when they failed, Amrod knew who would win, burned hand or not. In a hunt he could perhaps best his brother, but in a straight fight, never. Maglor’s sword was swifter than any he’d ever seen, and his voice was yet greater.
It was a comforting thought, he realized. He didn’t want to win that fight. Better to go see Telvo again. Better to leave fire and fate behind.
“It’ll be alright, little brother,” Maglor promised again, and Amrod believed him now. He didn’t resist the soothing notes of the lullaby Maglor began to sing. He just laid down in the sand and looked up at the distant fire of the stars as his eyes drifted shut.
It was kind of Maglor to do it this way. It would be nice to sleep and never wake up.
…
The morning sun came as a surprise.
He rolled over, expecting to see Maglor, hunched in guilt perhaps over an attempt aborted at the very last, but there was nothing but the makeshift bag that held the gem.
Nothing but that, and a set of footsteps that led down to the sea.
It hardly took a great tracker to follow them, but Amrod had to follow them twice to be sure.
The footsteps never turned. They just kept going out into the water.
So his brother had gone swimming. Or - or -
All will be well had been traced into the sand, far above the line of high tide.
Amrod understood then, and the terror of that understanding choked him.
He was the last of his brothers. Heir of the House of Feanor, he thought bitterly, and then he understood in full.
Upwards-exalted into the role of the eldest. Fated to stand last and alone.
If this was fate, he didn’t want it.
But that had never much mattered at all.