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Flawed and Fair	By : tehta Category: -Multi-Age > Slash - Male/Male Views: 945 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings (and associated) book series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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Victims of Lorien

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Ecthelion hated Glorfindel.

He hated Glorfindel's easy charm, his ready laugh, his air of entitlement and
serenity. Above all, he hated Glorfindel's golden beauty, so rare on this side
of the Great Sea.
That shining hair was a particular irritant. For one, it was overrated: he had
heard it compared to sunlight, when, in reality, at night it was barely
brighter than a candle flame. And then, it was a serious safety risk:
Glorfindel would insist on wearing it unbound even when dressed for battle,
ignoring Ecthelion's cautionary tales of hunters whose free-flowing hair got
caught on something at the worst possible moment.

Ecthelion hated Glorfindel because there was no real reason to hate him.
Because he was brave, and kind, and neither shallow nor pretentious. Because he
got up early and did all his work without complaint, but still managed to
sympathize with the work-related complaints of others. And because, in spite of
all his obvious charms and graces, and in spite of all that ridiculous hair, he
was a competent warrior and leader of men.

And then, Ecthelion hated Glorfindel because he was so universally loved. It
wasn't as if people did not love Ecthelion also, but that love was of a
respectful, remote kind. He was admired as a tough but reasonable captain, and
as an unusually accomplished singer. Glorfindel was loved on a personal level.
Complete strangers would find it quite natural to wish him a happy begetting
day, right there in the street. Ecthelion had heard random people discussing
his beauty and his warmth as if they were perfectly acceptable topics of
general conversation, matters of shared interest.

Ecthelion, meanwhile, wished Glorfindel gone, gone and forgotten. Daily,
hourly, he longed to recover his peace of mind, to finally stop counting
Glorfindel's many fine qualities. For the true reason why Ecthelion hated
Glorfindel, a fine man he might so easily have come to love as a brother, was
that Glorfindel was perfect, while Ecthelion himself was flawed through and
through. It did not help that few were aware of his flaws, nowadays; Ecthelion
himself knew the wrongness was still there, and he hated Glorfindel for
throwing it into such sharp relief with every graceful gesture, every movement
of his golden head.

It was not jealousy. That would have been a natural response to all those
perfections, slightly dishonourable, perhaps, but nowhere near as shameful as
the truth. Still, Ecthelion did not want to be suspected of so petty a feeling,
and so he worked hard to keep his hatred hidden. He worked even harder to keep
it going. He needed it: his dreams made that clear. For, when Ecthelion dreamt,
his loathing would abandon him and he would spend time with Glorfindel quite
happily. Sometimes, they would simply feast together, without restraint, or
engage in elaborate swordplay, or ride difficult, spirited horses. Innocent
pleasures, all -- but Ecthelion was subtle enough to read the meanings behind
them. Worse were the dreams that needed no interpretation. Ecthelion cursed the
public baths of Gondolin, where a warrior was expected to sit beside his peers.
Without all the information his unwilling mind had picked up there, his dreams
would never have been so maddeningly and verifiably accurate, at least in their
surface details.

---

One morning Ecthelion woke up feeling quite drained after a vivid dream in
which Glorfindel had taken a poisoned arrow to the upper thigh. It had fallen
to Ecthelion to suck the venom from the wound, and then to dig for the arrow
with his dagger. Quite vigorously. It was a new dream, and its combination of
realism and blatant allusion had proved very potent. Really, the best thing
that could be said about it was that it had not been one of his Fingon and
Maedhros fantasies. He did not know why the story of that cliffside rescue
should have sounded such a resonant note within him; all he knew was that
Glorfindel's hair would sometimes take on a red tinge in the evening sunlight,
and that, outside of his dreams, he had never seen Glorfindel helpless, or
disheveled, or even visibly pained -- which was just as well, since the merest
thought of it could make him as hard as the rock beneath the city.

It was all wrong, in so many ways. For one unwed to be haunted by desire was
bad enough, but to be haunted thus by unnatural desire -- it was the most
spectacular failure of will and character imaginable. Once upon a time,
Ecthelion had believed that the Valar must be weeping for him, but then he had
remembered that they -- well Nienna, anyway -- wept mostly in compassion, and
that he deserved none. Now he imagined them angry and disgusted at the way his
weakness had, at times, conquered both his body and his mind.

Although, really, one might have expected Lorien to have done something about
the dreams by now. For one, they were starting to interfere with Ecthelion's
ability to perform the tasks required of a Lord of the Guard.

On the day after the poisoned-arrow dream, Ecthelion began his work feeling
rather peevish and disagreeable -- but determined to keep his temper. If he
could not fix his great flaw, he would at least attempt to be the best man he
could be in lesser ways. He would be calm and fair.

It did not matter that the night shift had reduced the guard room to an
unusable mess, or that his favourite sword was inexplicably missing, or that
the weekly rota sheet appeared to have been filled in entirely at random, and
then by someone with only a marginal understanding of basic spelling and no
common sense. This unknown individual had actually assigned something called a
"hoarse partol" to the White Tower. Since there weren't enough
raspy-voiced men in the guard to form a whole patrol, Ecthelion had to assume
that this was to be the mounted patrol that normally roamed the larger squares.
He had the feeling that getting the horses back down the tower stairs would
somehow become his responsibility.

"So, the night shift has struck again," said Glorfindel.

That was all Ecthelion needed. What was Glorfindel doing in the guard room? He
was off duty. It was right there on the rota sheet: "Off duty -- Lard
Glorf. of Flour", sounding like a cryptic recipe for bad cake. And yet,
there he was in the doorway, and the guards were beaming at him even before he
had walked into the room and offered to help them clear up the mess.

Ecthelion would not beam. He would not wonder whether Glorfindel was there to
talk to him, would do nothing to encourage his already overenthusiastic
friendship. Instead, he bent over his sheet. Still, he could not help sneaking
enough brief glances to see Glorfindel drop to his knees and start cleaning out
the fireplace. Such shameless gallantry infuriated Ecthelion. What was even
more annoying was that he just knew that, although the fireplace was gloomy
with soot, Glorfindel was not going to get dirty -- except perhaps for some
charming, small facial smudge. Even though he was now prodding the ashes with a
poker.

No, not with a poker. With Ecthelion's favourite orc-slaying sword.

Ecthelion tried to count to twelve, but he had only reached five when he found
himself on his feet and walking towards the fireplace. Once there, he loomed
over Glorfindel, hand outstretched.

"My sword," he said.

"Excuse me?" Glorfindel looked up at him, all courtesy and
helpfulness. There was a small, dark spot on his left cheek.

Wordlessly, Ecthelion grabbed for the weapon and drew it to his side with a
wide flourish, spraying soot all around: onto the freshly swept floor, as well
as onto Glorfindel's fancy green cloak. The symbolism was too amateurishly
obvious, too bitter to handle with grace. Shaken, he stalked into his private
office, where the table was covered with untallied weapon purchase slips.
Sorting through them would be a tedious, unrewarding task -- just the thing to
help him calm down. He could clean his sullied blade later. He sat down and
exchanged the sword for a pen.

"Ecthelion."

So Glorfindel had decided to follow him and smooth things over. How typical of
him.

"I am sorry about your sword," Glorfindel said.

"Don't be." Ecthelion glanced up. "I am the one who should be
apologizing, for my rudeness. And for the dirt on your cloak. My apologies. I
do know it was not your fault." He looked back down at the paperwork.

"Well, no, it was not my fault," said Glorfindel. "But... there
is something else, is there not? You seem unhappy with me, somehow. I have been
noticing it for some time."

Ecthelion searched for a reasonable response. "You have done nothing. I am
a disagreeable sort."

"You are a singer, with an artist's temperament, that is true," said
Glorfindel, annoying Ecthelion, who always thought of himself as a warrior
first. "But I have never seen you treat anyone else unfairly. I know I
must have offended you. Please, tell me how, so that I do not repeat the offense.
Let me make amends."

He was leaning forward on the table by then, his hair falling forward past his
ears, catching the morning sun. I have had this dream, Ecthelion thought. It
ended here on this table, with all the paperwork well and truly ruined. He was
very grateful for the concealment the desk afforded, but he hated Glorfindel
for making him need it.

"I told you it is nothing. Surely you cannot expect every single person in
the city to love you?"

Glorfindel shifted uncomfortably, no doubt shocked by the discourtesy of the
question. And yet he remained in the room. "You do not love me, that is
clear. But will you not tell me why?"

Asked a third time, Ecthelion could think of no plausible excuse. He would have
to repel Glorfindel in some other way. "You will not like my answer,"
he said.

"I can take it, whatever it is."

Ecthelion fought down a bitter smile at the irony of that statement.
"Well, then, the truth is this: I am jealous of you. You are well-loved,
an image of perfection. You see, I am a petty sort, that is all. Nothing can be
done about it."

"Do not be ridiculous. You are not petty, and clearly have no reason to be
jealous. I expect that you are simply too courteous to admit that you find me
unbearably smug. A few people do seem to feel that way."

Ecthelion stared at Glorfindel. The expression on his face was knowing. Smug,
even.

"In reality, I am well aware of my many flaws," he said.

"Oh, good." Ecthelion looked back down and shuffled his paperwork.

"You do not believe me? Truly, I am." Glorfindel stood up very
straight, as if preparing to deliver a formal recitation. "To begin with,
I am somewhat vain. You yourself have often commented on my obsession with my
hair. Of course, it is rather nice hair."

He paused to draw a strand through his fingers. Ecthelion watched it change
colour as it moved between sun and shade: bright polished gold to ancient gold,
the colour of treasure.

"Also, I enjoy being liked far too much," said Glorfindel.
"Indeed, I sometimes find myself wondering what course of action would
make me more likeable, instead of what course of action would be right. And
then, there is my greed. It is not that I like money, but I do enjoy
surrounding myself with the beautiful things it can buy. I have never spent my
own salary on good equipment for my poorer soldiers, the way you have." He
gave Ecthelion a look so full of warm admiration that Ecthelion's stomach
turned. Or perhaps it was his heart that fluttered. At any rate, something
moved around inside him: hevehever organ is in charge of horribly inappropriate
emotion.

"I also enjoy the sensual pleasures more than is seemly."

Glorfindel's voice drew Ecthelion away from the contemplation of his organs.
Then the actual words hit him. He started. Though his mouth opened, he could
think of nothing to say.

"It is true! I love wine and rich food. Really, I am quite certain that a
natural ascetic like yourself would be utterly disgusted by the amount I can
consume when out on the town--"

"I am not a natural ascetic."

"But of course you are. Everyone knows it. You do not care about your food
at all, and as for the other desires of the body... I would be very surprised
if you had ever had any problems with... lustful feelings... even in your early
youth."

Again, words eluded Ecthelion.

"See? I am right!" said Glorfindel. "I, meanwhile--" His
face reddened slightly. He turned to look out the window. "Let us just say
that I sometimes have to concentrate very hard so as not to utterly disgrace
myself. Virtue does not come easily to me. These strange ideas seem to just
seep into my mind at the least suitable moments. Very strange ideas. I suspect
they are not even physically possible."

He was silent for a moment. Since his eyes wererteerted, Ecthelion felt free to
stare at him just as much as he liked. He hated the way the blush only made
Glorfindel look better: healthier and brighter. His lips were reddened and
parted slightly. It was enough to give a deeply flawed man his own ideas. Ones
he knew to be physically possible.

"But I cannot tell you more. You would be utterly shocked,"
Glorfindel concluded.

"Try me," Ecthelion almost replied. But then he realized he did not
want to hear any sort of nonsense about Idril or Aredhel or whatever other
beautiful highborn maiden had captured Glorfindel's imagination. He did not
want her appearing in his dreams, perhaps even -- knowing Lorien's usual style
-- joining in. "Then, by all means, let us not shock me," he said
instead.

"Right." Glorfindel collected himself. "But please do keep in
mind that I have impure thoughts. And dreams. Indeed, I sometimes wonder just
what Lorien is thinking."

This question was so intimately familiar to Ecthelion that, momentarily, he
found Glorfindel's attempts to blacken his own name rather endearing. He had to
remind himself that one of the reasons he hated the self-obsessed twit was that
he was so intrinsically likeable.

"But enough about that," the twit was saying. "I also--"

There was a timely knock on the door.

"Come in," Ecton con called.

Elemmakil, one of his captains, entered and bowed.

"Lord Glorfindel! I am so glad to find you at last -- Lord Turgon has just
sent word that he wants to speak to you, at your earliest convenience."

Ecthelion's first thought was of the patrol in the White Tower. Perhaps Lord
Turgon had decided that the horses might find Glorfindel's presence soothing,
as they undoubtedly would.

"Lord Turgon?" asked Glorfindel. "Why? What has happened?"

"The message did not say." Elemmakil fidgeted. He glanced from his
own trusted captain to Glorfindel, who was trusted by all, and his guardsman's
stance relaxed slightly. "The messenger, however, said that the Lady
Aredhel wishes to leave the city and visit her other brother. And that she has
requested Lord Glorfindel's presence in her honour guard."

Glorfindel's eyes widened. To Ecthelion, also, the first part of the
explanation had come as an utter shock. No one had left the city in centuries.
The second part, however, sounded just right: for who was more suitable for an
honour guard than Glorfindel, even with all his self-confessed flaws?

It was only when he was alone again that Ecthelion realized that he was about
to get his wish: a Glorfindel-free life. The thought slipped past his defenses
and hit him like a sword-hilt to the stomach.

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Author's notes:

1. I want to assure everyone that the puns/misspellings were hilarious in
Sindarin.

2. The much-mentioned Lorien is, of course, the Vala of dreams.

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Disclaimer: These characters and settings do not belong to me. I am making no
money off them.
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