The Future's In Our Hands by StarSpray  

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Caranthir

Written for the Swinging 40s prompt: Victory Garden

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“He sent a letter,” Caranthir said blankly, looking from his nephew to the folded paper in his hand. “To me?”

“To everyone,” Celebrimbor said. “He sent a gift, too.”

“Oh.” Feeling oddly numb, Caranthir took the letter, and he took the gift, too, something half again as big an an apple and wrapped in soft leather. It felt solid, but not terribly heavy. “Thank you?”

Celebrimbor smiled at him. “You don’t have to do anything,” he said. “With the letter or the gift—and if you want to get angry, remember that it was my idea in the first place.”

“I can never be angry with you, Tyelpë.”

“Exactly!” Celebrimbor wrapped an arm around Caranthir’s neck and kissed his cheek before going away, presumably to deliver other letters. Somehow he’d grown taller than Caranthir—when that that happened? And of course he knew that none of them would ever be angry with him. One thing they had always agreed upon was that Celebrimbor was the best of them, and over and over again that had proven true. Even now, it was proving true—he was the most open-hearted, the most hopeful. Caranthir couldn’t think of where he’d gotten it from. Not his father or any of his uncles, certainly, nor his mother. Caranthir liked Rundamírë very much, and she suited Curufin perfectly, but open-hearted could not be used to describe her. Celebrimbor was singular. Sometimes Caranthir wished he weren’t—that the rest of them could be a little more like him. If they had been, maybe things would have gone differently, long ago.

Caranthir retreated to his room. It was small but cozy, with a row of potted plants on each of the two windowsills and a small bookshelf by the desk, which he rarely used. He set the gift, whatever it was, onto the desk and sat down on his bed by the window. He turned the letter over in his hands. The seal was red wax with his father’s star pressed into it, of course—though Celebrimbor also used the star; maybe Fëanor had borrowed a seal from him. His name was written across the front in his father’s bold hand, and the sight of it made his stomach twist up, the same way it had upon seeing him in person by the river. Caranthir had not spoken to him; Maedhros had sent him away immediately, and he had gone, though it had felt wrong to do so, like abandoning Maedhros to some terrible danger. 

That was probably unfair. Maedhros, even now, out of practice and unarmed, could almost certainly best Fëanor in a fight. Of course, that assumed Maedhros would try. Caranthir pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He didn’t want to think about his father. Fëanor had appeared so unlike the last time Caranthir had seen him that it had been almost as though a stranger spoke with his father’s voice—and even his voice had been unfamiliar, far too quiet to belong to Fëanor. He’d spent nearly five hundred years in Beleriand with that ringing voice in the back of his mind, the Oath always there, growing heavier by the decade, a chain weighing him down. Almost he would have preferred Fëanor to come striding back with his old eloquent confidence—at least then there would have been some satisfaction in defying him, in showing him that even if he had not changed they had. Except he’d changed, too. Were it anyone else Caranthir would have described him as uncertain—almost hesitant to approach them by the river. 

He didn’t read the letter. He threw it onto the desk and fled the house out into the garden. His mother was no gardener, and it had been benignly neglected all summer. Plants needed thinning, beds needed weeding. He could dig his hands into the earth and and feel like he too was putting down roots, taking something from the soil as nourishment. As he worked he listened to Celebrimbor and Daeron chatting nearby, and his other brothers moving about and talking with one another. Maedhros was not among them, but when he sat up and leaned just far enough backward, Caranthir caught a glimpse of him through the window of his small painting studio. 

It wasn’t until after Maglor and Daeron departed, days later, that Caranthir finally picked up the letter. It felt like it was taunting him, just sitting there on the desk, and he’d finished all the work in the garden that could be called sufficiently distracting. Curufin had read his letter, Caranthir was sure, but he did not think anyone else had. Celegorm had probably burned his without opening it at all, and who knew what Ambarussa had done. They were a bright and cheerful presence, but rarely confided in anyone except one another—that had been true all their lives. 

He sat on his bed and broke the seal, taking a childish and savage pleasure in watching the star pressed into the wax split in two. 

 

Moryo,

I have heard that you’ve followed in your grandmother Ennalótë’s footsteps since your return. Tyelpë told me of it in a tone that suggested he thought I would be surprised, but I am not. Elrond has also told me that you wrote to the halfling Bilbo Baggins, primarily about flowers. Do you remember the peonies that grew outside of your bedroom window in Tirion long ago? Your favorite hiding spot when you were very small was among them, to the frustration of your brothers when they tried to play hide-and-seek with you, and you were always happiest at your grandparents’ house, toddling along in your grandmother’s wake, learning the names of all the flowers and butterflies. 

The memories of Mandos are fading, but I can remember seeing your realm in the mountains in Middle-earth, how you turned it too into a garden, lush and green by the lake. Thargelion, I am told it was called. Tyelpë described it to me, described the pride and the joy you took in it, and how it burned in the Dagor Bragollach. How you were never the same afterward. Would you believe me if I told you that I wept after hearing of that? I’ve shed more tears for you and for your brothers this summer than I did in all your lives prior to my death. I could not weep in Mandos, and so the tears must all escape now, at once, I suppose. I keep having to stop writing lest I make the ink run.

There isn’t much else that I can say except that I hope you are finding happiness among your flowers. I hope you and your brothers can come together again as you were before my words and demands broke you all apart. I’m sorry, Moryo, so sorry for all of it. For the Oath and all that came afterward, and for making you all walk that dark road without me. 

You might scoff at these words, and at the gifts, but that’s all right. You can burn this letter if you wish and if you never want to see me again—it will grieve me, but it’s no more than I deserve. You would be within your rights to hate me, but I still love you—

 

Caranthir did not read the rest of the letter. He balled it up and threw it into his small hearth. No fire burned there, but he’d light one later. As he released it the door opened and Celegorm came in; they’d been sharing the space since Nerdanel’s house had never been intended to house all seven of them. “What was that?” Celegorm asked, looking between Caranthir and the grate. Caranthir’s face felt hot; he knew it was bright red, the way it always got when he was upset.

“Doesn’t matter,” Caranthir said. He rubbed his hands over his face, hating that his eyes felt hot too, and how tight his throat was. The letter only said what he would have given anything to hear before the end of the First Age—it probably said nothing very good about him that all it did now was make him angry.

“His letter?” Celegorm asked, sinking onto the bed beside him. Caranthir nodded. “You didn’t have to read it.”

“It would’ve bothered me if I didn’t.” Caranthir didn’t lower his hands. “What did you do with yours?”

“Threw it away. I don’t care what he has to say. There’s nothing that can make any of it better.”

“I wish he had stayed in Mandos.”

“Me too.” Celegorm tugged Caranthir’s hands away from his face, and then wrapped him up in a tight hug. Caranthir leaned against him gratefully. He didn’t cry, because he refused to waste any more tears on Fëanor, but he still ached somewhere deep in his chest. He had said to Maedhros that spring that it had felt wrong to sit and discuss Fëanor amongst themselves as though they were readying for a battle. It still felt wrong—but it felt even worse to think about doing anything else.

From the outside, it had seemed clear enough that Fëanor and Nerdanel both encouraged all their sons to study a wide range of subjects and crafts, from history to music to sculpture, to forge work to painting and dance. It was true that Caranthir had always been drawn to the gardens of his grandmother, that he had loved flowers all his life—but his father’s passions were so different, and there had always been that unspoken expectation that barring some spectacular talent like Maglor’s, his sons would follow his footsteps, or Nerdanel’s, rather than Ennalótë’s. There had always been that sense of vague disapproval, even if Fëanor had never spoken it aloud, whenever Caranthir had ventured to speak of Yavanna and her folk. He hadn’t had the same courage of Celegorm, who had fallen in love with the deep woods and the wildness of Oromë’s hunt and had not stopped to wait for their parents’ permission before riding away to join it. Even he had left it, though, later—when Fëanor’s disappointment had grown into vocal disapproval. They had fought over it, but of course Celegorm had yielded, in the end. They had all yielded, because what else were they supposed to do? Fëanor was their father, and they had all loved him, however unlike himself he had become by the time he’d drawn his sword on Fingolfin before Finwë and all the rest of the Noldorin court. 

Caranthir did not hate the forge. He had worked in his grandfather’s often since his return, finding Mahtan a much more patient teacher than his father had ever been, and finding also a quiet sort of satisfaction in making his own tools and in crafting small gifts for his cousins or his mother. But he did not love it, not the way his father had—he’d settled for it in the past because the thought of losing his father’s love had been a far worse thing than settling into occupations or pastimes that did not make him as passionately happy as those his brothers found. The problem, he had grown to believe, was that he’d never had ambition. He had been content to be the unremarkable middle brother among the seven, left to his own devices whenever possible, forgotten by most and disliked by many because he could not always bite back the frustration that welled up in him unbidden, breaking free over the stupidest things. He did not have the drive to create anything great or impressive, or to be a leader, or to do great deeds—which was just as well, since he’d never succeeded at any such thing; even his death had been unremarkable, cut down with everyone around him in a hail of arrows unleashed just minutes after they had entered Menegroth. He hadn’t even seen the caverns beyond the entrance hall. Sometimes he wondered if it would have been better if he had died at the Nirnaeth Arnoediad—that had been the most remarkable of his deeds. Trusting the wrong Men, bringing ruin to them all. It wasn’t his fault, he knew—it was not the fault of the betrayed but of the betrayers, he had been told over and over in Mandos until he finally started to believe it. It was still what he was remembered for—that and his temper and careless words regretted as soon as they were spoken.

But his desire for obscurity, his contentment with simplicity—it wasn’t something his father could ever understand, no matter how much he claimed to love him. 

Ambarussa slipped away next, vanishing into the evening after kissing Nerdanel and promising to return in the springtime. Maedhros withdrew into himself again, lost in his own thouhts and forgetting to eat more often than not—and just pushing his food around his plate when Caranthir and Nerdanel reminded him. Celegorm and Curufin lingered, but when Celegorm overheard Curufin telling Caranthir that he was leaving for Tirion, another fight erupted, and—well. That was that. Caranthir couldn’t see a way forward like it seemed Curufin could, but he still believed what he’d said over the summer, that Curufin was the one most likely to be able to really speak with their father, to have a real conversation in which Fëanor might actually listen. It was beyond Caranthir’s abilities or desires, but he wouldn’t take that hope from his baby brother. 

After Curufin and Celegorm had gone, and Fingon had arrived and gone to find Maedhros by the river, Caranthir went back to his room. He’d ended up taking the letter from the fire before lighting the grate that first time, and he’d stuffed it into a drawer instead. The gift—a globe of clear glass with the shape of a pale purple peony inside (at least, he thought it was meant to be a peony), he had put into a chest underneath old clothes he didn’t wear but didn’t want to get rid of. Now he took the letter out, because…maybe Curufin had the right of it, rather than Celegorm. Caranthir was angry, too, but he didn’t want to be. He wanted to return to the relative peace of their journey home, after Maglor and Maedhros had recovered from what they now referred to as the River Incident, when nothing terrible or important was happening, and they were all more or less getting along, not thinking about anything except where they would camp in the evening and whether they should open that last bottle of wine that Amras had discovered in his bag halfway home. 

With a sigh, Caranthir restarted his fire and sank onto the floor by the hearth. He missed Huan, muddy paws and all. At least he was warm and soft, and always knew when someone wanted comforting. Celegorm needed Huan more than Caranthir did, though. He unrolled the paper, smoothing it out on his knees. 

 

You would be within your rights to hate me, but I still love you—I love all of you so much, but I wonder now if I gave you more cause to wonder than any of your brothers, for you were always so unlike me that I was not always sure how to speak to you or understand your thoughts. I’m sorry—for that and for everything else. I’ve written those words so many times now, and said them aloud, but every time they ring hollow. There are no good words for the depths of my regret. Still, I can find no better words, and can only repeat them: I am sorry. I love you.

Whether or not we meet again, I will choose to imagine you surrounded by peony flowers, in a garden as beautiful as those planted by Yavanna herself, as happy as you were when you were just learning to walk. 

 

It was not signed except for a tiny eight pointed star underneath the last line. Caranthir stared, dry-eyed, at the last two paragraphs. It was something, he supposed, for Fëanor to have gained something like clarity in Mandos. It was just not enough, and too late—far too late—for it to mean anything. He balled the letter up again and threw it into the flames to watch it slowly curl and blacken, the broken seal melting and dripping onto the old ashes beneath the grate like thick drops of blood. 

When he went downstairs he found Fingon in the kitchen, looking somber and thoughtful. “He’s reading his letter,” he said.

“Where is he?”

“The painting studio. It’s a lovely space.”

“It was Celegorm and Curufin’s idea.”

Caranthir had always liked Fingon, though they had never been particularly close. He had been a bright presence, Maedhros’ dearest friend and a near-constant visitor in the days of joy in Tirion before everything had started to go wrong. Caranthir had paid little enough attention to the tensions slowly building that he hadn’t really understood how bad it was until Fingon had stopped visiting, and Maedhros stopped speaking of him. Since Caranthir’s own return from Mandos, he and Fingon had struck up something like a friendship. Mostly they spoke and wrote about Maedhros, both of them worried about him as he refused in life what he’d refused in death, lost in his thoughts and in the past. The only things Caranthir hadn’t told Fingon about were the drawings he’d managed to catch a glimpse of, before Maedhros could burn them. He hadn’t told anyone of them, except Maglor. “How is he?” Caranthir asked now. 

“He was more willing to speak to me than he has been in the past,” Fingon said. He leaned back against the kitchen hearth, arms crossed. He wore no gold in his hair that day, and it struck Caranthir suddenly how much he resembled Finwë. “I’m glad that he and Maglor have spoken.”

“Barely.”

“It’s more than Maglor was willing to do when I last saw him,” Fingon said, and sighed. “But I can’t tell if the estrangement is as bad as Russandol thinks.”

“It’s bad enough. Maglor could hardly look at him the whole journey back. I think they spoke before he left here, but I don’t know what they said. I just know Maglor was happy to be leaving us.”

“Say rather he is happy to be returning to Elrond.”

“I’ve been meaning to ask you—how does Turgon feel about that?” 

Fingon grinned. “I think he tries not to think about it much. But if he can be civil to your father as he has in the last week since he came to Tirion, I think he can be kind to Maglor. They were friends once. Anyway, it isn’t as though Elrond cares what Turgon or anyone else thinks, even his own parents. He loves Maglor, and anyone who might disapprove is just going to have to learn to keep quiet about it.”

“What do his own parents think?” Caranthir had met Elwing, doing the rounds that all of them had done on their return to life. She hadn’t slammed the door in his face, but it had been terribly awkward on both sides. He’d met Eärendil later and that had gone better only because Eärendil was somehow constitutionally incapable of holding onto anger or resentment. Caranthir had come away from it feeling envious as much as relieved. 

“They met Maglor on Eressëa when he fell out of a tree, I’m told,” Fingon said. “I think that did a great deal to dispel any tension.”

“He fell out of a tree,” Caranthir repeated. Fingon grinned again. “Of course he did.” He’d probably been trying to rescue his cat. 

“Speaking of parents,” Fingon said after a moment, “did you also receive a letter from your father?”

“We all did.”

“Have you read yours?”

“Yes. It hasn’t changed anything.” Caranthir turned away, going to the cupboards to start getting things out for dinner. It would be just the three of them, with Curufin and Celegorm gone and Nerdanel away delivering a commission. He didn’t want to speak anymore of Fëanor—not to Fingon. That was another source of envy—that Fingon had been so happy when his own father had come back, that there had been nothing but joy and love in Fingolfin’s reunions with all his children that had returned before him. 

When he did go to fetch Maedhros, he found him leaned over the table sobbing into his arms, the kind of uncontrollable weeping that took you by surprise and wouldn’t let up until you ran out of tears or breath or both. Caranthir had never seen Maedhros reduced to tears such as those, not even after the finding of Finwë’s body, and it made his own eyes burn, though they remained dry. He was too angry to weep—angry for himself, but angrier for Maedhros, who still loved Fëanor just as much as Curufin did, except that he’d suffered the brunt of Fëanor’s rage after Losgar for daring to defy him even that little bit, and had taken up a Silmaril at the end and been burned by their father’s greatest creation, the thing that Fëanor had placed above all of them in value. 

If only Fëanor had just stayed in Mandos. 

Or maybe not, Caranthir thought, once he got Maedhros back to the house. It was because of Fëanor that they’d left, had gone all the way to Ekkaia—it had been to try to come together again, but they never would have had the thought if Fëanor hadn’t come back, if just seeing him hadn’t made Maedhros look as though he’d just come from a defeat on the battlefield worse than the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. Fëanor was the reason Maglor had left Imloth Ningloron, too. They would still be wondering if he would ever come to them, if not for their father. Caranthir couldn’t forgive Fëanor any of it—couldn’t let go of old anger and resentments, or stop piling on new ones, but he couldn’t regret having all of his brothers back either, at least for a summer. It wasn’t like it had been before, but it was something. Even Maedhros had been happy, at least some of the time.

Fingon stayed a few weeks before returning to Tirion. It would be a busy winter, and he would be both wanted and needed. Caranthir did not envy him that. Once they were alone that evening, Caranthir pulled Maedhros into the parlor and sat them both down by the fire, where it was warm and they could curl up on pillows and blankets with books or small projects, and just be. They’d done it often, alongside their mother, since it had been just the three of them there far more often than not. Now Caranthir sat beside Maedhros instead of across from him, and leaned against his side. Maedhros wrapped his arm around Caranthir’s shoulders. “What else did your letter say?” he asked quietly.

Caranthir had told him the bit about Bilbo. Now he said, “Apologies, mostly. He even admitted the words ring hollow.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I don’t know. I don’t care. The time for apologies was before he died.” Caranthir rested his head against Maedhros’ shoulder. Maedhros leaned his cheek against Caranthir’s head. “Do you believe him?”

“No.” Maedhros whispered the word, and sounded so young and small and hurt that Caranthir almost wished Fëanor would walk through the door just so he could punch him himself. Findis had given him a black eye; Caranthir wanted to break his nose. Then Maedhros asked, “Have you heard from Curvo?”

“Yes.”

“Has he seen him?”

“Yes. He said it went better than he’d dared to expect.” Caranthir didn’t lift his head to look at Maedhros. “He sounded happy.” More than happy—he’d written with such confidence that Fëanor had changed and really did mean what he said in his letters, had sounded so sure that there was a way forward. He hadn’t tried to convince Caranthir to come to Tirion or to change his mind, but Caranthir could tell that it still troubled Curufin that he was the only one willing to hope—but he was also far less uncertain now than he had been at the beginning of the autumn, and Caranthir couldn’t begrudge him that. He loved his brother far more than he resented his father. “Does that bother you?”

“What bothers me is that I can’t imagine a world in which I would feel the same.” Maedhros sighed. “I can’t be angry at Curvo. He’s been trying so hard to—to make things right, to build something new. I’m the one who told him to go see Atar, and I’m glad that he did. That it went well. I am.”

“I know. You should tell him that, though.”

“I did. I sent a letter and a painting back with Fingon. The painting’s awful, but I promised him I’d try.”

“Good.” Caranthir sat up to toss another piece of wood on the fire. Outside the wind picked up, and rain splashed against the windows. There was nothing to do in the garden; he’d harvested all there was to harvest—which wasn’t much, since Ennalótë filled their larder to overflowing with her own produce—and prepared everything for the winter. It was not big, his garden, not as such things went. He’d had much more extensive flower beds and orchards in Thargelion, but he tried not to remember Thargelion most of the time; there wasn’t any point, except heartache. It had been so beautiful, and he’d been happier there, even with all the responsibilities of lordship, than he’d been anywhere else in his life—except maybe that peony patch when he had been too small to really remember, too small for anyone to realize how unlike his father he was, what a disappointment he would turn out to be, long before that realization came and sank into him like a bruise that wouldn’t go away. 

As he leaned back again, Maedhros put his other arm around him too, and pressed a kiss to his temple. “Why do you linger here, when everyone else doesn’t?” he asked. 

“I don’t know.” Caranthir covered Maedhros’ hand with his own. Maedhros had been the first to return from Mandos. Caranthir had been the second, shocked to find himself suddenly sitting up in a meadow of flowers, of Evermind and hyacinth and poppy. He’d lingered a while in Lórien, getting used to having a body again, and then he’d come looking for Nerdanel, missing her desperately and not knowing where else to go—and he just hadn’t left. “There’s nowhere else I want to go. I just—I just wanted to be somewhere quiet, where I could plant flowers and watch them grow, and not have to worry about—about anything else. I don’t want to be a prince of the Noldor anymore. And anyway, someone needs to make sure you remember to eat.” 

Maedhros’ arms tightened around him, just a little. “Are you happy, though? Forgetting Atar, and all of it. In your life now, are you happy, Moryo?”

He’d never actually thought about it, Caranthir realized. He’d just been taking it one day at a time. Now he thought about his flowers and about the feeling of sun-warmed soil under his hands, about the butterflies and the hummingbirds, and how he could always hear voices and laughter drifting through the trees and hedges from their grandparents’ house; he thought of his small and cozy bedroom, and of the way his mother had shrieked and thrown her arms around him when she’d opened the door upon his first coming there. Since returning he’d been worried about his brothers of course—all of them, but Maedhros and Maglor in particular, one of them lost somewhere across the Sea and the other right in front of him but still somehow out of reach; until that summer he hadn’t known how to speak to any of them again, how to try to regain what they’d lost when darkness had fallen—because he thought that was when it had started, really: the fracturing of them as brothers, even before the Oath, before Alqualondë or the war or any of it. Whatever happened going forward, though, they had regained something. It would be different, but it would be good. He also thought of how no one ever called him my lord anymore, and no one ever asked him to partake in any grand plans or campaigns or negotiations, or expected anything of him at all. Fëanor had written of imagining him in a garden comparable to Yavanna’s, but that wasn’t what he wanted—and it wasn’t something he needed to strive for, either.

“I think so,” he said finally. “I can just—I can just be me, now. It doesn’t matter whose son I am anymore. No one cares.” In that moment, listening to the rain outside and watching the flames on the hearth, he didn’t have to be anyone but Maedhros’ brother, and that meant so much more than anything his father could offer him.