Trust Not Blindly, by Zdenka

[zdenka]

B2MeM Challenge: B2MeM 2013 B, Day 4: "Down the swift dark stream you go / Back to lands you once did know..." and I, Day 12: “For it seemed to her a thing strange and crooked in him, as indeed the Eldar ever since have deemed it: an evil fruit of the Kinslaying, whereby the shadow of the curse of Mandos fell upon the last hope of the Noldor.”
Format: ficlet
Genre: het, I guess?
Rating: T
Warnings: none
Characters: Idril, Maeglin
Pairings: Maeglin/Idril (one-sided), Idril/Tuor
Creators' Notes: I once saw a picture of Tuor wearing his white-winged helmet, and it got me to thinking about similarities between him and the Swan Knight Lohengrin from Wagner’s opera. This fic is partly inspired by a scene in Lohengrin where the sorceress Ortrud tries to make Elsa doubt Lohengrin on the eve of her wedding to him. The title is taken from a line in that scene.
Summary: Idril has a troubling encounter with her cousin Maeglin on the morning of her betrothal to Tuor.



Here on AO3. Comments welcome here or there.

Comments

[hhimring]

I can see the parallel with Lohengrin!

This is a very kind Idril--and, it seems to me, a very sincere Maeglin, despite his other feelings.

[zdenka]

Sincere--in a way! I prefer to think of Maeglin not as a cold-blooded manipulator, but as someone who has gotten tangled up in his own emotions and manages to justify what he wants to do in his own mind. He desperately doesn't want Idril to marry Tuor, so he finds ways to justify that to himself and to her. And I wanted a scene where he and Idril talk past each other.

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

This was really good. I liked the sympathetic picture you painted of Maeglin - while he has his own reasons to oppose Idril's marriage to Tuor, he raises some sensible points here (even if he turns out to be wrong, fortunately). Idril's reactions were also very reasonable and sweet. This may have been the friendliest conversation between Idril and Maeglin I've ever read!
The Lohengrin inspiration was woven in really subtly (I was a bit afraid that it would be an in-your-face operatic reference before I read it! ;)), and I particularly enjoyed how you worked in the Hobbit quote.

[zdenka]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked it. It seemed to me that they could well be friendly, at least before Idril becomes aware of Maeglin's feelings and it starts making her uncomfortable.

Heh. I'm glad it wasn't too in-your--face operatic. ;)

[blslarner.livejournal.com]

The jealousy was indeed there, as she saw, but its reason was other than she imagined.

[zdenka]

True indeed. Thanks for commenting.