all the songs and kings of old by queerofthedagger  

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all the songs and kings of old

Finarfin learns how to wield a sword on the piers of Alqualondë. The white wood is still stained pink from his brother’s deeds; the boats, those few that remain, still bear torn sails, broken masts.

The Elves around them still flinch, at the sound of steel against steel.

It is not that Finarfin knows how to fight any better than the Teleri, but it had been Olwë’s condition for forgiveness. Had been part of Finarfin’s pardon, one of the many requirements the Valar had named—to teach what the Noldor had learnt in secrecy, so that the next time rebellion arose, none would be caught unaware again.

It is only the first in a long line of things Finarfin has to learn; to fight; to beg forgiveness for deeds not his own; to live with the fact that often, people will not grant it.

To be a king. To fill that position that his brothers so viciously fought for, until their stubborn pride tore the world in two.

The world stays split. Eventually, the jagged edges smooth over, and the piers are bleached to shining white again, but there is ever, now, a before, and an after.

In the after, there is no such thing as a return to normal. Tirion is empty, a city of ghosts; his father’s palace a mausoleum of the slow, inevitable fall of a dynasty. Finarfin cannot bring himself to change much about it—his father’s study that, for years, Fingolfin alone inhabited. The rooms of their childhood, preserved for all of them to visit and for just as long, untouched.

They had been split into a three-headed beast for so long now, Finarfin cannot recall when the shadow had first crept in. Only wanders empty rooms, abandoned forges, the sun-bleached remains of his sister’s studio, and tries to forget about the snarling, frothing rage that the messenger from Formenos had brought—his father, dead. His father, smeared across marble steps like the first, unbleachable stain.

His father sacrificed to the mirage of paradise, and oh, how Finarfin had felt it then, the fire of their line. How it had spurred him on. But not, it turns out, far enough.

The wisest of your house, Manwë had called him, full of sorrow and kindness, at the trial of Finarfin’s pardon.

Finarfin, as the years pass, is ever less sure if it is wisdom or cowardice. He had, after all, made it an art form through long, gold-washed days of childhood, to sidestep his brothers’ quarrels. To wander the gardens with his father and not take a side, when he bemoaned his eldest son’s squabbling.

And squabbling it used to be, until, until, until—

Finarfin visits his mother, where she and Findis have removed to Valimar. They do not speak of Lalwen. They do not speak of Fingolfin. They do not speak of the children.

They speak, in truth, very little, for how can one speak of matters of the heart, when all that used to live in such a place has been turned into kindling?

“You should bring Eärwen next time you come,” his mother says, when he is set to leave.

Across her shoulder, he can see Findis wince in sympathy.

“Of course,” he says, and kisses her cheek. She, too, looks like she knows it for the platitude that it is. She, too, looks too tired to maintain the play beyond its lines.

For a bright, startling moment, Finarfin feels the guilt as if it were the first day. What right has he, after all, to mourn his wife’s distance? It is only his own fault; is only a spatial distance, one born of pride, and past deeds, of inaction and a tangled, hard-knotted refusal to rebuild the structure of themselves, that he cannot even quite explain to himself.

(Although that is not true because ever when he thinks of her, he thinks of the children, and ever when he thinks of the children, he hears the Ice calling, sees Finrod’s dark, determined eyes, sees them turn away, turn away, turn away—)

What right has he, after all, to mourn his wife’s distance, where his mother’s husband has gone beyond the world? When his father will not return, not for the sake of any of them?

Finarfin leads his people. He visits his mother and his sister. He holds balls and dinners in his father’s palace, and wanders its quiet halls at night.

He ignores the pull that wants to drag him East. He ignores the dreams. He ignores the rage, masquerading as remorse, where it tangles in ever-curing roots around his bones.

His children die, like flames sputtering out.

Aegnor and Angrod disappear together, the long-since quiet, idle connection unravelling one bright day in early spring.

Finarfin staggers before his court, hand going to his chest. The room falls silent.

In the years after, they have come to recognise the way it hits a person, how a bond dying will manifest, inevitably, on one’s face.

Then again, perhaps calling it recognition is overstating things.

Finarfin had not known, until then, that it would feel like being unmade; like having your heart dragged up your throat and outside of you, something so fundamental there, and then not-there, that you were sure you would never breathe again.

He had not known how terrible the not-knowing would be. That, unlike the immediate agony of it, it would worsen exponentially—endless, impenetrable nights of wandering graveyard corridors made of well-wrought marble, throwing back the questions: what happened—simple. How did it happen—painfully. Would it not have happened, if I had been there?

Impossible to answer; irrelevant, also. He should have been there. He should have been there. His children are dying, and he should have been there.

Finarfin leads his people. He visits his mother and his sister. He holds balls and dinners in his father’s palace, and wanders its quiet halls at night.

When Finrod dies, he leaves the city for three days.

He does not go north. He does not think of the Ice. He rides until his horse is near to collapse, but he does not stray, he does not, he does not, he does not.

News from the distant shores is sporadic and unpredictable. They assemble patchwork pictures from what they learn, what they dream, from the grief that lies in wait for them at every corner.

Finarfin, ever, makes sure to keep his face impassive, his expression mild. Even after many years, he knows that his position is a precarious one if one were to test it.

Oh, in the day-to-day life, it is not obvious if one knows not to look for it. Relations to Alqualondë are colder, of course; Tirion is quieter, the palace less lively. There are fewer feasts, less revelry. Instead, there are traditions for the dead now. There is an unspoken, well-established procedure for when someone goes pale in public, careful steps of custom to follow, to share in the grief without appearance of assent.

There are no definite answers, and so, no one dares to ask definite questions. The Noldor, above all, always walk Aman with the ghosts of their absent kin beside them. Few else care whether their absence means death, or betrayal, or both; in Valinor after, it is the fact of the ghost that makes the verdict, not whence it came from, or where it now lingers.

Finarfin leads his people. He visits his mother and his sister. He holds balls and dinners in his father’s palace, and wanders its quiet halls at night.

He keeps his head held high. He attends the feasts and dances on Taniquetil. He pays tribute, and he keeps his back straight, and he does not cast his mind eastward.

When Eärendil and Elwing arrive in Valinor, he holds his breath.

When the call to arms comes, Finarfin exhales in rattling relief, a century-old weight lifting—just enough to draw breath once more.

See, the truth is—

The truth is that Finarfin does not regret turning back. Or perhaps that is making matters too simple.

Finarfin does not believe that turning back had been the wrong choice. It was not; it is what they should have all done: turn back, rebuild. Learn to live with what has become of the world.

The truth is, he understands why they did not. Understands why it was easier to let vengeance carry them forth, to yearn for uncharted land, to return to that indeterminate, bristling-potential, hazy promise of a home long-since abandoned. He understands his brothers, his children; understands, even, why he himself had almost let himself get swept up in it, he who had always taken care to stay out of his brothers’ battles.

The truth is that it is that understanding, the having-been-there, the turning-back, that used to make him resent them most.

What use, though, to resent the dead? By the time their ships land on the eastern shores, only Galadriel, Maedhros, and Maglor are left of his family. His daughter, according to the people they find, has gone east; his nephews, he soon learns, he would be luckiest not to encounter.

In the war camps of Beleriand, Finarfin assembles the missing pieces of his family’s history; assembles the bits and pieces that make not-regret calcify into something jagged and uncomfortable, where it makes a home beneath his breastbone.

He meets men whose ancestors used to march beneath his son’s banner. Most of their house, too, is decimated now, a strange, hollow kinship that Finarfin wants to flinch from, and that they weather as they bend their knees to him, seeing someone other than Finarfin. He meets victims of his nephews’ terror; meets those who are left of Fingolfin’s people, of Fingon’s, of Turgon’s. Learns how they passed, each of them falling to blazing heroics and bristling despair, and wonders how any of them are ever meant to return from this. How these serrated, brittle remains of a devastated land are meant to be spit out into Aman’s idle serenity, and not break the world all over.

And oh, how there is fury in it. How there is guilt, riding across the ravaged land, thinking that they could have done this years ago, decades, centuries. Back when Gondolin still withstood the tides, back when Doriath still bloomed, back when his children—

Back when there may have existed some hope for his nephews, and Finarfin knows that most of his host would scoff in disgust at such a thought, but Finarfin—

Finarfin remembers them in pastiches of the past; in Maedhros’ tinkling laughter at being older than his uncle, and how he would ever treat Finarfin kindly. He remembers Maglor’s performances, the shimmering, thrilling manner of him—like artistry made person, ever untouchable by the disintegrating veneer around him.

Now Finarfin looks at grimly solid reality, the two of them raiding refugee camps and abducting children. Now he listens to stories—a mountainside, a chain, an elf left to torment. A land in flames, a dragon. Brothers dying, one after another.

So it goes. Each story that Beleriand spits out is cicatrised with sorrow and guilt, with violence done and received. Finarfin gathers them up like, once, pearls at Alqualondë. Thinks of his oldest brother, ever-proud but not always as vicious, laughing, telling him he would make prettier ones for Finarfin to wear.

How he did, until he stopped. A necklace of shining pearls unravelling, ground to dust between the unyielding brutality of Beleriand, and the yoke of all their own rotten choices.

In the beginning, their host races across the land like a wildfire.

Orcs fall back before them. Finarfin hears the stories of where they come from and tries to keep them from his mind. The Maiar among their host blaze bright and ruinous, and Finarfin watches the flames; gallops across the open plains, past proud ruins, and keeps his own wish for vengeance tightly leashed.

He has seen what it leads to. Each day, he sees it in castles already returning their haughty stones to the earth.

They have a clear objective. They have a goal, and there is no need, no need, to let his grief wield his sword.

They make good progress. Win back league after league, push back Orcs and Balrogs, fell creatures and Men that fight for the enemy, and ever draw nearer to the dark towers in the north.

Finarfin wonders if it will ever begin to feel like victory.

Time passes differently in this land, but it feels like an eternity must have passed when, one night, Eönwë finds him in his tent.

They have cleared passage up to Hithlum, and the winds of the north blow violently along the mountains.

Inside the tent, all is quiet. At the entrance of Manwë’s herald, Finarfin dismisses the squire who has been helping him with his armour, and pours two goblets of wine. On the table, maps are spread out, little figurines carved back in Aman marking their progress, the positions of the enemy. Of people who are neither such, nor friend, nor family any longer, and who still, Finarfin very carefully does not think of.

“We are making good progress,” he says, in lieu of greeting, and offers a goblet to Eönwë.

They have established a good rapport between them, ever since it became clear that they would lead the Host into the East.

Still, Finarfin does not forget who Eönwë is; does not forget who he is, scion of a forsaken house, come to avenge those who had condemned themselves. He does not forget to keep his hunger in check, the itching of his hand that wields the sword, whenever Orcs taunt him with the fate of those he loved.

Eönwë hums, and steps around the table until he comes to stand before Finarfin. He ignores the offered wine and loosens the buckles of Finarfin’s breastplate that his servant had not yet got to.

His clothes beneath the armour are dirty, and he bites back a sigh of relief when the well-wrought metal comes off.

Aman, of course, has made coexistence with the Ainur a familiar thing; in fact, Finarfin has not known any differently, for all his life. Still, there is a marked difference between encountering them in the streets, at festivals, in forest glades, and to fight and lead and die with them, shoulder to shoulder.

Eönwë, Finarfin has learnt, has very little patience for niceties. So when he looks at Finarfin from up close, ember eyes bright and almost painful to look at, and says, “You have been holding back in battle, Noldóran; do you not understand what enemy you are facing?” it does not once occur to Finarfin to lie.

Or perhaps, he is simply tired, exhaustion made a home within his bones. It is becoming hard to tell the difference.

“I know very well what we face,” he says, stepping away. It comes out sharper than he means for it, but Finarfin cannot dredge up the appropriate regret.

“Then why not fight it with all your might? If not for valour, then for what was taken from you?”

Finarfin stares down into the blood-red liquid of his wine. Thinks of his father, head split open on virgin-white marble; thinks of the stained piers of Alqualondë; thinks of the fire, cutting devastation across this once-beautiful land, not only fed by Morgoth alone. The same fire that, ever, seems to trail in their family’s wake.

Finarfin looks up at Eönwë, the patient expectancy, the sharp eyes; Manwë’s herald truly does not understand what Finarfin struggles to say, and the fact of it makes once more clear how different Eönwë is to his Lord.

Eönwë is a warrior, a strategist; blazes most brightly on the front lines of any battlefield, and does not shy from the grime and blood of it. Unlike Manwë, he has no trouble comprehending the finely stitched fabric of the truly evil. It is this, more than anything else, that makes it easier to say what Finarfin has barely dared to think, ever since setting foot on these shores and learning of their history.

“They all succumbed,” he says, putting down his wine. Runs his fingers along the sharp blade he carries by day, and thinks of sparring with the Teleri until his limbs shook with exhaustion and the records of their carefully dressed, rightful retribution.

Finarfin learnt how to wield a sword on the piers of Alqualondë, but he has learnt of war only once he followed his brothers, at last. Learnt of violence that does not end only in this land that all his family had been so eager to bleed and kill and die for.

“They all succumbed to wrath and despair, in the end. What if it is—“

A curse, some call the Doom. Finarfin dares not to speak such blasphemy, but he can see in the tilt of Eönwë’s head that he hears it, all the same. It is amusement, though, rather than judgement; Finarfin is not sure whether that should make him feel relieved or condescended to.

“Do you think, Noldóran, that the nature lies in the sword, or in its wielder? Few blades there are that weave doom upon their owner that has not been stitched long before the blade was picked up.”

Finarfin exhales, a sound between laughter and a sob. “If that is meant to be comforting—“

“It is meant to be the truth. You fight for your people. You fight for your family, for what was once their home. You have done your penance, your turning back; let a past mistake not halt all your future. Yours and my kind, we live too long for such a thing.”

They are all wise words, impersonal and delivered in the same, serene cadence that Finarfin is used to from cohabitation with the Ainur. Yet when he looks at Eönwë, majestic and unbowed even in the dim space of the tent, there is something sharper-edged buried beneath.

“You speak from experience.”

“I am much older than you, prone to disregard of authority and wisdom as your father’s line is wont to be.”

Despite himself, Finarfin snorts. It loosens something within him, and he drains his wine before meeting Eönwë’s eyes once more. “I want to visit Nargothrond.”

Predictably, Eönwë stills—not much, no more than a blink, but enough for Finarfin to notice.

“You think it unwise.”

“I think it will not bring you the closure you seek.”

“He built it; of course, it will bring me no closure. My children are dead, and all that remains of them are ruins, defiled and forgotten and bound to sink—or nothing at all. It will bring me no closure. I still want to see it.”

Eönwë, to his credit, does not argue the point further. Merely looks at Finarfin for long moments before he inclines his head, auburn braids shifting with the motion. “Then you should go. We will hold the line for a few days without you.”

It is on Finarfin to pause, then. For all the burning need to see what those in Beleriand’s war camps whisper of when Finarfin asks after his eldest son, he is well aware that it is no wise idea. Is well aware that they can ill afford any break in the fighting, any moment of sentimentality. He had fully expected to be ordered to stay at his post, to lead, to function; had been weighing for days, now, the cost of disobedience against the need to see, at least once, some monument of his children that are no longer in this world. Some kind of proof that they were, once. That they left a mark, beyond the gaping chasm struck right through Finarfin’s chest, and the ash that now threatens to choke them, day after day after day.

“Take a small guard,” Eönwë adds, not having looked away from Finarfin once. “Pick those you trust.”

He does not tell Finarfin to keep it brief. Finarfin does not ask whether Eönwë is sure. Does not thank him, words lodged firmly inside his throat, and wonders if he will come to regret this.

“Good luck,” Eönwë says, and there is little softness in his bearing, but he halts beside Finarfin, settles a warm hand on Finarfin’s shoulder; lets it linger for a little, steadiness and strength seeping from the contact, and then disappears from the tent, as quickly as he arrived.

Finarfin remains in the aftermath and thinks how it is this which none of his family had ever learnt to understand; that not everything had to be a hard-bought victory, to be snatched from flames and contest and misery.

He can no longer tell whether he had the right of it, all those years ago. He pours himself another goblet of wine, and tries not to think of what will await him, down in the southern edges of this ravaged land.

They reach Nargothrond in the middle of the day, rain coming down in a thin sheet that is crawling beneath their armour, making everyone in the small company miserable.

Finarfin has heard the stories—of his son’s kingdom, prosperous and beautiful. Of his nephews’ betrayal. Of the forsaken man’s fate, and what he had brought with him, no matter his intent.

Finarfin knows a thing about being cursed, learns the measure of it each day that he spends on these shores and upturns further pieces of the ruin of his house. There is an almost strange comfort to be found in the fact that this is no such singular experience, here in these dark and forlorn lands.

He knows of the dragon, the doomed siblings, of the night when Nargothrond fell. As they ride up the raging river that once served as protection, the one Valar who had not turned himself deaf, Finarfin tries to picture it.

A blooming land, a prosperous city; a place built by their own hands, a freedom carved out with defiance, and in despite of the looming, gnawing shadows.

It is no such difficult thing to picture his children’s joy within it. That is the worst part.

Finarfin’s entourage stays in the open courtyard before what once must have been majestic gates. Now, rubble and stone litter the ground, and the by now familiar stench of dragon permeates everything.

“Are you sure it is safe to enter, my Lord?”

Finarfin is not, but it does not matter. He waves his captain off and dismounts, and walks into the caves with a confidence he does not feel.

The first thing that hits him is the darkness. Beleriand is always dim, clouds, smoke, and ash blotting out sun and moon unless Manwë sends his winds for brief moments of reprieve. But this—

This feels like the darkness after the trees went dark; not just absence of light but a tangible, terrible thing that seeps into his skin, wraps around his heart and makes him think of memories he had long since buried. Of Finrod as a child, bright and full of laughter, and ever uneasy in a darkened room. How he would keep his curtains open for Telperion to spill its silvery light inside, would ever revel in summer days at Alqualondë, would spend weeks in Valimar, where Laurelin shone brightest.

His son, if the stories were to be believed, had died in darkness, and now the home he built is suffused in it. As often these days, Finarfin wonders how one is meant not to succumb to rage or despair, at such cruelty.

He lights his torch and shakes the thought. In the flickering light, the extent of the desolation is revealed to him—broken corridors, carvings still gracing chunks of stone that litter what is returning to earth, already being worn away by the damp of the river, the shaking of the earth, by whatever has made its home in these caves since the dragon disappeared.

The stench lingers. Finarfin is not sure what he expected—a mausoleum, perhaps, similar to what became of his father’s palace. A relic to wander, to mourn in, to walk and pretend that he might yet turn a corner and find his children laughing, his nephews in some sort of game, his brothers fighting as they used to, back when such a thing still held a note of humour, rather than world-splitting violence.

Nargothrond affords him no such illusion. If it is a monument, it is a defiled one; is more warning than memorial, more made example than something to find fractures of his son in.

Eönwë had warned him, Finarfin thinks. If he will ever learn; if they are ever doomed to walk each agonising step through their own folly first.

Finarfin takes a few steps further in, marks the runes on the walls, the flaking gold paint.

And then, the music. And then, the stone that reaches for him. It is faint, dying, almost gone, but the silence is oppressive and Finarfin’s grief a struck bell that echoes, manifolds, resonates what once was back at him.

There, beneath the silence, the song that Finrod had woven deep into these caves bleeds to the surface. It unfurls slowly, hesitantly, and within it Finarfin hears voices—countless voices, building and laughing, creating, crafting. Making a home, a stronghold, a sanctuary, defiance woven into every note of it.

It is fractured, only fragments; incomplete pictures that do not paint a whole, but oh, Finarfin staggers beneath their weight, holds himself up only by sheer force of will.

Through it all, Finrod’s once-bright hope burns, indomitable and certain, no matter the dark night.

Worth it, it seems to laugh, full of sharp-edged joy. In the end, this will all have been worth it.

“Did you find what you sought?” Eönwë asks, the night of Finarfin’s return.

Finarfin finds no strength to rise from his chair. Before him, the table is littered with maps, with tables listing supplies, strength of troops, with reports from their captains.

Eönwë nods as if that is answer enough. He does not tell Finarfin that he had warned him of such a thing, but the knowledge of it hangs heavy within the tent.

“We will push into Mithrim on the morrow, hopefully across the mountain range in the coming days. We have been at a stalemate here for too long; the mountains are too much of an obstacle. Get some sleep, Noldóran.”

He squeezes Finarfin’s shoulder before he leaves the tent. Finarfin tries not to sag with exhaustion at the mere thought.

It had all seemed easy in the early days. Orcs fleeing before them, scattering with the wind; battles won, one after the other, their progress up north almost unhalted, the losses on their side minimal.

Those they had still found alive on these shores had been full of relief, of gratitude. Had been willing to share their knowledge of the land, of Morgoth’s tactics and weaknesses, of where to put down camps, and from where to attack.

No such knowledge, none of the strength of their host, could make up for the fact that this is a continent long-since fallen under Morgoth’s rule. The battles dragged; their supply lines got cut off; they sprang traps, and lost whole companies of good men, succumbed to the poisonous air coming out of the north, and the poor food, to the despair that seems to permeate every stretch of this forsaken land. It had been easy, in the beginning, to shake it off, but oh, how it lingers. How it settles beneath your skin, again and again, no matter how often you scrub it off. How it comes in countless forms—dark dreams and poor sleep, cold and despair and shortening tempers. Day after day of bloodshed. Orcs spitting your children’s names and their fate through bloodied laughter, even as they die on your blade.

They push through the desolate, ruined lands of Mithrim until they reach the mountain range where what was once his brother’s fortress stands empty, weathering the harsh winds. Finarfin knows better, this time, than to pay it a visit.

Another week, and they make it across the mountains, snow and cold like blades against their faces, their hands, their feet. There are a few Elves among them who had belonged to Turgon’s people; once, a good-natured Vanya asks whether it feels anything like crossing the Ice had, and the resulting laughter would have been cruel, if it had not been so full of stale, age-old horror.

They fight. They sleep. They wake. They fight. Inch by inch, they push northward. Are pushed back; lose people; have to retrace their steps, and try again, and never, ever does Morgoth’s onslaught seem to lessen.

And always, beneath the bristling, heaving mess of battle, the music, now.

“It is Sauron’s doing,” Eönwë says, at the end of another long day. They are standing by one of the fires, watching as food is prepared and the wounded taken care of.

Finarfin blinks at him, surprised that it is not merely his own mind having begun to torment him.

Eönwë smiles, a sharp, sad thing as if he knows what Finarfin is thinking.

“Morgoth may wield power, but Sauron’s art has ever been more subtle, and the more ruinous for it. It is a marvel, truly, that they all stood against them for as long as they did, with the Doom dodging their every step.”

A marvel, Eönwë does not say, that Finarfin’s son stood against Sauron at all. Finarfin keeps his eyes fixed on the dancing flames and knows not how to answer. How to articulate that there is no pride to be found in such a thing, only horror. Only failure—to protect his children, to keep them home, to raise them less as-they-were, if only it meant that they did not leave to die for forsaken oaths and blood-smeared honour.

Eönwë, after a moment, sighs. “I knew him once,” he says, the words quiet and halting in a manner so uncommon for Manwë’s proud herald that it startles Finarfin out of his own head. “We used to be—friends, I suppose, one could say.”

The story, of course, is known in Aman; Aulë’s former Maia, most gifted of them all, turned Morgoth’s lieutenant. It makes sense that others would have known him, yet somehow Finarfin had never made the connection. Had never thought, in all truth, beyond his own stakes in this.

It is not the place for apologies. Still, he presses their shoulders together and feels, for the first time in days, a flicker of warmth beneath his breastbone.

It does not last.

They cross the mountains shortly after. They decimate the armies of Orcs before them, even as there is no longer any victory to be found in it. They see Angband rise in the distance, dark and terrible, its towers spitting black smoke and ash until the very air seems too thick to breathe.

At the end of the third day, upon the dusty plains of Anfauglith where so many of Finarfin’s family died, he finds himself on his knees. Finds his heart rabbit-fast in his chest, his hands shaking. Finds his mind filled with Nargothrond’s song, his brothers’ fighting, his children’s faces when they turned away from him.

He understands, then, what he had not before, the malice of the north breathing down his neck. That it was, in all simplicity, not for lack of trying that he had lost them to Mandos, here. That it was not mere Doom, not anything so simple as bad luck, or weakness, or poor chance, that had made this land devour their bones.

Finarfin kneels upon the unmarked mass grave of his people, and is grateful for the first time in many, many centuries that he has not walked among them.

The guilt follows immediately after, for how could it not? For does one evil justify another, one act of violence the abandonment to more of the same? He does not have the answers. Cannot tell, even after all this time, where it had all gone so wrong; where it should have gone differently, and what any of them could have done to salvage it before it all turned to ruin.

Has the punishment served its purpose? Would Fëanor no longer wield his grief like a weapon if only to bear it? Would his children no longer turn their back if only for fear of punishment? Would Valinórë ever feel the same again, now that its complacency has been unmasked? Is it fair to cast such blame, in the face of each choice having been made with eyes wide open?

Finarfin has not the answers. He presses his hands to the dying, wailing earth, the wide-flung ashes of his sons, and lets its song of sorrow settle into the marrow of his bones.

They fight. They sleep. They wake. They fight.

For every two steps they advance, Morgoth’s forces push them back at least one. The Vala himself never shows his face; Sauron’s power runs through their ranks, at times, until the Ainur among them counter it.

Often, now, Finarfin and Eönwë will sit together, a wordless kind of comfort. Often, now, it is the only thing that makes them rise again in the mornings, to do it all again.

And then, the dragons. And then, devastation anew, of such a scale that it throws them back, makes them wither, countless Elves falling to the winged wrath.

And then, and then—

Eärendil, again, coming in the hour of need, unlooked for. What it says about the might of the West that it is the Peredhel born from peril and ill chance who saves them, at last, Finarfin does not dare think about. They rally beneath him, sacred light like salvation, and at last, Finarfin understands why they have all done such unspeakable things for it. Caught in this darkness, its light the only remaining glimpse of peace, Finarfin, too, wants to keep it close for as long as he can.

At last, they progress across Anfauglith. At last, the Orcs flee, the dragons fall, the wolves and Wargs wither beneath their onslaught.

At last, the Host of the West reigns victorious. Finally, finally, Morgoth is dragged from the depths of the earth, the jewels Finarfin’s family killed, and died, and suffered for taken from him.

And Finarfin—

Finarfin, at the end of all things, feels nothing at all.

It does not feel like victory. Even as he and Eönwë stand on the shores, their armies packing up, singing, rejoicing, it does not feel like victory.

None he once loved will return with him. The land they loved is ravaged, is breaking, sinking, is being erased from history, right alongside its inhabitants. Only the tales will remain, retold and embellished; stripped of their details, of the mundane, the love and the sorrow that weeps between the lines.

Finarfin has done his duty, has had his revenge. Has followed them, at long last, and done as they asked, done as they did. And now, what to show for it? What to show for the endless years they have suffered?

Was it worth it, Finarfin wants to ask, the question acrid on his tongue. Was it worth all that sacrifice, all that blood and ruin and loss? Does the laughter and song, the stolen moments shining through the cracks and the love, always the love, make up for it all? Was it worth it? Was it?

Finarfin has no answer. It does not feel like victory.

*
From Sirion's Isle they passed away, 
but on the hill alone there lay 
a green grave, and a stone was set, 
and there, there lie the white bones yet 
of Finrod fair, Finarfin's son, 
'although that land be changed and gone, 
and foundered in unfathomed seas, 
while Finrod walks beneath the trees 
in Eldamar and comes no more 
to the grey world of tears and war.
—Lay of Leithian

Chapter End Notes

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