From That Rubble by StarSpray  

'Cause from that rubble, what remains
Can only be what's true
If all was lost, there's more I gained
'Cause it led me back to you
- “From Now On” - The Greatest Showman

- - 

When Fëanor and Nerdanel had returned to Tirion after spending the first years of their marriage away from the city, they had immediately begun to plan and build a house of their own, one that could hold their growing family—though even they had not intended then to have quite as many children as they ended up with—and the students that Nerdanel was already beginning to take on, as well as their workshops and collections. It had been ambitious to start with, and as the years went on they had added rooms and wings and once an entire new floor. It was their voices in concert that had sung the songs for the laying of the foundation’s first stones, and Nerdanel’s sweet voice that sang the blessings over the last tile laid on the roof. 

Fëanor thought of that house often, but he did not get up the nerve to actually go to see what was left of it until years after his own return from Mandos, and to Tirion. He was busy with other things—feeling his way forward with Curufin, trying to regain something of what they’d lost. Trying to build something entirely from scratch with Fingolfin, and with Findis and Lalwen. Slowly getting to know his mother. Finding his own way back into the crafts that he’d once loved, teaching this new body that muscle memory that his old one had grown so used to, and acquiring some new scars along the way. Trying to figure out who he was now, when it so often felt as though everything that had made him him had been either burned away with his first body or left behind in Mandos.

Finally, though, he got up one morning and decided that continuing to avoid the house felt too much like cowardice, and whatever he had been and might still be, no one could ever have accused him of that. 

It was still standing, the old house. The walls were slowly crumbling, and many of the windows were broken; the gates into the property were entirely gone, and the gardens overrun with crab apples and thistles and anemones. Dandelions pushed up through cracks in the flagstones of the courtyard. Fëanor pushed the doors open with some difficulty, for both they and the tiles inside had warped. They were faded to browns now, no longer the brilliant and beautiful colors that Nerdanel had made them long ago. The walls were empty but for cobwebs and lichen and mildew, and the rooms devoid of furniture, the air stale and still. He made his way upstairs, though the stairs themselves were broken and unsteady, walking through the dusty rooms and seeing in his mind’s eye what they’d once been. Maglor’s had been messy and chaotic, with clothes strewn about while somehow he always still seemed to know where everything was that he wouldn’t let anyone touch even to do laundry—a striking contrast to how neat he kept his instruments and books in the music room downstairs. Maedhros’ room had been next door, neater at first glance but organized in such a way that only made sense to him, with bookshelves stuffed full and always a pile of letters waiting to be opened or replied to sitting on his desk. Celegorm’s had been neat enough, but there were always feathers or muddy paw prints to be found somewhere; and the twins’ room, when they had been old enough to venture out into the wilds with their brother, had been much the same—and they’d always kept prisms in the windows, so their walls were forever shining with rainbows. Caranthir and Curufin had fallen somewhere in between Maedhros and Maglor on the scale of tidiness, neither of them spending enough time in their rooms to make much mess to begin with. 

The room he had shared with Nerdanel had been cluttered and clean by turns, always bright, always warm—until it wasn’t. 

Fëanor closed the last bedroom door in that wing with a soft click. The house had never been this quiet. He heard scratching somewhere in the walls, and spotted evidence of other animals’ nests—squirrels or birds or other small creatures that made their homes in the city. Glancing around, he saw cracks in the walls, in the floor. The songs sung over the building had held for so many centuries, but even in Valinor buildings would crumble and fall if not continually maintained, and this house was no exception. 

Someone would have to tear it down before it fell down, Fëanor thought as he descended the stairs. Then he stepped out into the overgrown gardens to see the workshops in even worse shape than the house, to see the forge where he’d made the Silmarils with its roof already half fallen in, and realized that the only person he would trust with such a task was himself. He was the reason it had fallen into such disrepair, so he needed to take charge and…do something. There wasn’t any use in trying to repair it, as every part of the building would need to be rebuilt almost from scratch anyway. So the only thing was to sing the walls the rest of the way down and cart the rubble away somewhere, and then…

There would be no point in building a new house just to rattle around in by himself, but the thought of leaving this plot of land bare and empty was even worse. But he could figure that out later. 

Whatever he did, though, Fëanor couldn’t start without speaking to Nerdanel. On the one hand, he was always glad of an excuse to see her or even to write to her—but on the other hand, it never went as well as he always somehow hoped that it would. She held herself at arm’s length, always, with distrust in her eyes and the memory of all the things he had said and done in the dark hovering between them like smoke thick enough to choke on. 

She was also busy—currently in Avallónë teaching—and Fëanor wasn’t at all sure she would be pleased if he turned up there unannounced, or even announced; he also wasn’t sure that she would even open any letter that he sent. So he went to find Curufin, finding him in his workshop with his daughters, who squealed and threw themselves at Fëanor as soon as he stepped through the door. “Hello, Atya,” Curufin said, as Fëanor hoisted first Calissë and then Náriel into his arms. “I wasn’t expecting to see you today.”

“I have a favor to ask, but it can wait,” Fëanor said. It wasn’t a conversation to be had in front of small ears, but he did not want to send the girls away either. His granddaughters were the two brightest spots of this new life of his, the only two people in the world who could be truly happy to see him without it being complicated, and he wanted to take advantage of every second he got to spend with them. “What are you making today?”

Later that afternoon, after Celebrimbor came to take his sisters away to see a performance in the city’s main square, Curufin asked Fëanor, “What was the favor you wanted to ask?”

“If I write a note to your mother, will you see that she gets it?”

Curufin’s eyebrows rose just a fraction. “Of course. Has something happened?”

“No. I just—something should be done about the old house before it falls in on itself. I can do it, but I don’t want to if Nerdanel has other ideas or plans.”

“I don’t think she does,” said Curufin. “I think the last time she went there was before any of us were out of Mandos except maybe Maedhros—to fetch the old palantíri.”

“I thought they all got sent to Númenor.” 

“Probably not all,” said Curufin. “There’s the biggest one in Avallónë, and some others I’m sure rolling around in a storeroom somewhere—but I meant the nine smallest ones, the ones you made first, remember? They would have been useless in Númenor.”

“Oh.” Fëanor had almost forgotten those. He almost asked why Nerdanel would have gone looking for them if all her sons were in Mandos—but of course Maglor had never come there. He had never been easy to find, even for Fëanor, wrapping subtle enchantments around himself almost without thinking. It had been something of a joke and an annoyance in his youth. Fëanor supposed that during his exile it had been survival; still, even the briefest glimpse would have been a comfort to Nerdanel. “Well, regardless, the house is falling apart already, and I need something to do. I might as well tear it down myself.”

“And then what?”

“I don’t know yet. It will take some time to clear out the gardens first—I’ll figure something out.”

“I don’t think Ammë will object,” Curufin said, “but I’ll send your letter with my next one.”

“Thank you.”

“Atya,” Curufin said as Fëanor turned to go. “Are you all right?”

Fëanor stepped back to kiss Curufin’s forehead. “I’m fine. I just need a project.” Something to fill up his days and take his mind off of all the things he wanted to be doing but couldn’t. “How are your brothers?”

“Fine,” said Curufin. “No word yet from Lórien, but that’s usually a good thing.”

“Of course. I’ll bring the letter tomorrow.”

Nerdanel’s answer came promptly: he should make sure to clear out the storerooms and basements first, but beyond that he was free to do whatever he liked with the house. It is probably a good idea to just tear it down and build something new, whatever it ends up being, she wrote. She did not offer help or any other opinions, but that was all right. This felt like something Fëanor needed to do alone, at least to start with. When it came to actually carting away the rubble he would need other hands, but for the time being he was able to uproot crab apple trees and weeds, and sort through the detritus of his old life by himself. 

He started the next morning, with a shovel and a hatchet, mentally splitting the gardens up into smaller plots that he could tackle one at a time. It felt good to be doing something—something with tangible results he could see immediately, something that left him with aching muscles and dirt under his fingernails. And if it also made his heart ache to see what had become of the home he’d built and had once thought would be where his heart would dwell forever—well. That was only to be expected, and no more than he deserved. 

Fëanor did not work at the old house every day—he did not even want to. He had other things to do—he was still a Prince of the Noldor, though he’d laid down his claim to the crown itself, and Fingolfin wanted Fëanor’s involvement even beyond what it took to keep up appearances. He wanted to hear Fëanor’s opinions and ideas, and if they often disagreed it was no longer fraught in the same way it had been long ago. 

It was still strange. It was good, but strange.

He had other projects too, smaller ones—toys for his granddaughters, tools or component parts that Curufin or Celebrimbor needed for their own work, ideas that he sketched out and then made just for the sake of making. He saw his other sons sometimes, mostly at a distance—Amrod or Amras would speak to him if they happened to meet on the street or at a party, briefly and of nothing more significant than the weather, but Caranthir and Celegorm continued to avoid him, and Fëanor wasn’t sure which one he felt worse about. 

Then, nearly a year after he started his house project, all of his sons vanished. He went to see Curufin and found Rundamírë at home alone. “They’ve all gone off on a journey south and west,” was all she could tell him, or all she would tell him. “Tyelkormo was very insistent.”

Fëanor and Curufin had fought just a few days before—it had been about something very stupid on the surface that Fëanor couldn’t even remember anymore, but underneath it had been about all the things they avoided because neither of them wanted to think very much about the past, much less talk about it. And now Curufin was gone—and the last time Fëanor had had an unpleasant encounter with one of his sons that drove all of them to leave, they’d ended up spending an entire summer getting as far away as it was possible to go. He tried to think of what lay south and west of Tirion. Imloth Ningloron lay to the south but farther east, near to the Pelóri. Thingol’s realm was also in the south, but Fëanor couldn’t imagine all of his sons going there—no matter how friendly they were with Daeron.

Then he noticed how quiet the house was. “Where are the girls?”

“With their father. This will not be a long journey, and I’m sure they’ll be very eager to tell you all about their first adventure when they return.”

Well, that was something. If Rundamírë was talking about adventures, and about the girls being eager to see him when they came home—and that they had been taken along in the first place—then perhaps it was not their argument that had driven Curufin out of Tirion. 

The abruptness of it still made Fëanor uneasy. He hated not knowing, and that drove him ultimately to Imloth Ningloron, where Elrond just blinked at him in surprise and denied knowing anything about it.

“It’s true they visit here more often than you do, and I am very fond of them all, but that doesn’t mean they make a habit of consulting me when they make such plans. And if this was as sudden and unplanned as you describe, I’m really not sure why you think I would know anything about it anyway.”

That was fair, but still frustrating. 

Usually when Fëanor visited Elrond they ended up debating something—about history, or language, or sometimes something philosophical. Fëanor wasn’t blind—he knew Elrond did not always enjoy those arguments—but Elrond was one of a very small number of people even now who would argue with him, and if Fëanor didn’t spend a few hours sometimes fighting someone about some stupid issue of grammar in an obscure dialect of Sindarin he thought he would either go mad or get into a much bigger argument about something much worse with someone with whom he couldn’t afford to argue. 

He wasn’t in the mood to argue on this occasion, so he just browsed through the library for an afternoon to keep up the fiction under which he’d said he’d come, and then left Elrond and Celebrían in peace—only to run into all seven of his sons on the road. That solved the mystery, at least: everyone had gone to escort Maglor and Maedhros home, though how they knew it was time was beyond Fëanor’s ability to guess. Maglor came riding ahead, with Daeron at his side, but reined in abruptly when he spotted Fëanor, jerking his hand to his chest as though it pained him suddenly, expression transforming from a smile to a look of unhappy shock. The rest of his brothers came up behind him, Maedhros moving to his other side, as Calissë came racing ahead on her pony, entirely unaware of the sudden tension in the air. 

Calissë’s uncomplicated joy at the sight of him did not entirely erase the ache under Fëanor’s ribs at the sight of Maglor’s distress and at Maedhros’ stony silence, but it was enough to allow him to smile as he dropped out of his own saddle to lift her up and kiss her.

Curufin also smiled to see him, coming ahead with Náriel, but all of his brothers were frostily polite. For his part, Daeron was all smiles that warned of danger should Fëanor make any misstep, which was only to be expected, but the flash of irritation at it faded away when Fëanor saw just how tightly Maglor was holding onto Daeron’s hand. The warning was not Daeron being insufferable, it was Daeron being protective—and Fëanor suddenly liked him much better than he had a few minutes before. He looked away quickly, though, still distrusting what Daeron might have to say, and turned his gaze to Maedhros and Maglor’s faces instead. If they were not happy to see him they looked healthier than they had before, without any signs of sleeplessness or the kind of pain that lingered. That was something.

The conversation was painful and awkward, and Fëanor knew he shouldn’t, but he had to ask, “Did you find what you sought in Estë’s gardens?” Please say yes, please say yes, please be all right— 

“We did,” said Maedhros. He met Fëanor’s gaze evenly, but his face was a mask of almost emotionless calm; his horse shifted beneath him, betraying the tension he was otherwise hiding so very well. The Maedhros Fëanor had once known had never held himself thus, had never even tried to hide his thoughts or his feelings—he had never had to. This was Maedhros of Beleriand, Lord of Himring. Both Maedhros and Maglor were not nearly as fragile as they had both appeared when Fëanor had last seen them, but there remained shadows behind their eyes that would never fully retreat. Similar shadows hovered behind Curufin’s eyes too, and Celebrimbor’s—in all who had gone to Middle-earth and lived and fought there. They were shadows whose shapes Fëanor did not and could not know, and as he made his excuses to Calissë before preparing to depart, he had the sinking feeling that those shadows, and all of the things his children had experienced that he could never understand, were what made up the gulf that lay between them. He did not know how to cross it, or if such a crossing was even possible. Once, Fëanor had scoffed at the idea of anything being impossible. He knew better now—and now far too many things seemed so. 

None of his other sons spoke. Celegorm remained in the very back of the group, keeping his gaze lowered as though he couldn’t stand even the sight of Fëanor. Caranthir beside Maedhros did meet Fëanor’s gaze, but aside from the flush on his cheeks he too was so terribly hard to read. Ambarussa each offered a brief smile, which was something, but the whole scene was one Fëanor would have liked to avoid. He had wanted to know where they had all gone and whether they were all right, but he hadn’t wanted to intrude on it, or force his presence upon them. He had promised he wouldn’t, and it was a promise he intended to keep, however hard it got. 

Fëanor bid them farewell, summoning another smile for the sake of Curufin’s daughters. “Atya,” Curufin said quietly when Fëanor turned to him. “Before I left Tirion—”

“It’s no matter. I’ll see you when you return—enjoy your summer, Curvo. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

As Fëanor rode away he heard Maglor calling out behind him, voice sudden and bright—a burst of happiness that had Fëanor slowing and turning before he could think better of it. He was just in time to see Maglor canter away down the road, his dark hair flying out behind him as he leaned forward in the saddle, every line of his body speaking to his eagerness to be at home again. Good, Fëanor thought as he turned away again himself. They were all happy, and that was far more important than anything he might want for himself. 

Back in Tirion, Fëanor threw himself into his house project—for three days, before he managed to pull a muscle in his shoulder badly enough that the healers scolded him while putting it into a sling, and he was forbidden from so much as setting foot in his workshop, let alone going back to pulling up plants and digging out roots. He didn’t need the lectures and had to bite his tongue bloody to keep from snapping back, and then had to endure Lalwen laughing at him over it. “Oh, but isn’t it nice to know they aren’t still afraid of you?” she teased after sweeping into his rooms upon hearing about it. “Even twenty years ago no one would have dared to point out what you were doing wrong—well, except for me!”

“There were plenty willing to point out all I did and was doing wrong the moment I stepped out of Mandos,” Fëanor tried to growl, but he found it very difficult lately to stay annoyed with Lalwen. She twisted his hair into an elaborate set of braids for him, since there was a banquet that evening he needed to attend, sling and all—his mother was in Tirion, alongside Indis. It was rare enough that Indis returned to Tirion from Valmar that it usually heralded all of Fëanor’s siblings gathering in the city, even Finarfin. “Is Arafinwë going to come tonight?” he asked Lalwen as she hunted through his box of jeweled hair clips. 

“No,” she said, retrieving a few he had made while experimenting with moonstone. They weren’t his favorite—he didn’t quite like the cut of the gems—but she fastened them to his braids anyway. “I went to invite him, but his knee is giving him trouble and he did not want to make the journey.”

Fëanor had seen Finarfin twice since his return from Mandos. Both times Finarfin had been decidedly cool—almost cold—and had made it clear that whatever his brother and sisters’ feelings on the matter, he had no desire for Fëanor’s friendship. That had not been particularly surprising, but he had seemed distant even from Fingolfin, when in their youth the two had been as close as Maglor and Maedhros had been. And that rift, too, could be laid at Fëanor’s feet. His deeds and his words had fractured their entire family from top to bottom and the worst part now was that there wasn’t anything he could do to mend it. It was up to Finarfin and Fingolfin to find common ground again, and anything Fëanor might attempt to do now would just make it worse. 

“Does his knee often give him trouble?” he asked now. Finarfin had not been limping either time Fëanor had seen him, but he’d heard the tales—of how he had been wounded during the War of Wrath and yet still led the final charge against the gates of Angband. That was what had worsened the damage to the point that even now it still sometimes pained him. 

“No, not terribly often,” said Lalwen, her smiles and laughter fading away. “The mild climate and the sea air help, he says. Still, it makes for an unpleasant journey even as short as the ride is through the Calacirya, and he is not yet weary of seclusion and retirement.”

“He deserves it—the peace and quiet I mean,” Fëanor said after a moment, as Lalwen finally finished whatever she was doing to his hair. He rose, but not quickly enough to beat her to the wardrobe. “Lalwen, I can pick out my own clothes.”

“Not when you aren’t supposed to move your arm too much! Don’t worry, I won’t try to dress you—there are other people waiting to do that. Here, wear these robes. They go well with the moonstones.” She pulled out a set of dark blue robes with pearlescent embroidery down the front in intricate and twisting designs. His mother had made them, of course—all of his fine and formal clothes these days were made for him by Míriel. He still found himself sometimes reluctant even to touch them, because all his life before the things made by Míriel had been so precious, kept preserved and hardly ever taken out of their chests. Finwë had only worn robes she had made on high holidays or for solemn ceremonies. Now, Fëanor could wear clothes made by Míriel’s hands every single day if he wanted to, and not worry about damaging them because she would just come to sew them up again, or make him new ones. He still hadn’t gotten used to it. 

When he greeted Míriel that evening she smiled to see the robes he wore, and then frowned at the sling. “What in the world did you do to yourself, Fëanáro?”

“It’s just a pulled muscle trying to uproot a stubborn tree,” he said, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “It will be fine in a few days.”

“What are you doing uprooting trees? Or is this part of your project at your old house?”

Fëanor did not ask how she knew. His mother knew more about what went on among all the Elves of Aman than anyone ever expected from one who came so seldom among them. “Yes,” he said. And then, because he did not want to talk about that, he added, “My sons have returned from Lórien.”

Míriel smiled up at him. It always surprised him when he saw her how small she was, because she loomed so large in his small child’s memories. “Yes, I know,” she said. “Indis and I are going to Imloth Ningloron when we leave here. I have had so little opportunity to get to know any of my grandsons, and now they are gathered all in one place at last and I intend to take full advantage.”

“Good,” Fëanor said, though that place under his ribs ached a little, knowing he would not be there too. “But why is Indis going?”

“Elrond and Celebrían are her grandchildren too—and she is also very fond of your children, and she is my own dear friend. Is that not enough?”

Of course it was, but the fact that Fëanor had managed to let go of most of his resentment did not mean he knew how to talk to Indis or even what to think about her. There was a small part of him now that had caught and clung to the fact that, as she had once been the reason his mother could not return, she was now the reason his father could not—though he knew that was neither fair nor true. There were many reasons his father could not return, and the biggest one was that the Valar had decreed it. Indis and Míriel both had gone many times to plead before them, that they might reverse their ruling, but to no avail. That they both loved Finwë was clear. Fëanor knew his problems with Indis were in his own mind only, and even just for Míriel’s sake he wished he could let them go. He just couldn’t manage it yet.

The banquet was pleasant. Fëanor was teased a little for having managed to injure himself, and it was nice to be able to laugh at something. There was dancing after the meal, and he contented himself with a glass of wine and a seat near a window to watch. Míriel was a lively dancer, but she did not remain on the floor for long before coming to join Fëanor, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling from the exertion. Every time he saw her, Fëanor found more traces of his sons in her face or her movements or her voice. The silver hair she shared with Celegorm was the most obvious, but Maglor had inherited her grey-green eyes, and Curufin her stature; Ambarussa danced like she did and with the same boundless energy and bright joy. Both Maedhros and Caranthir had her smile. It was harder to say what he himself had most clearly inherited. His looks came from Finwë, and as for the rest, it was hard to hold up such a mirror and see clearly when he only felt like himself, and the only one who would ever volunteer such observations was Finwë, and—well, Finwë was not there. When Fëanor had been younger Finwë had told him he had Míriel’s cleverness and curiosity. Fëanor liked to think that was true, but he did not feel very clever or very curious, these days. 

Míriel and Indis stayed for several weeks before they departed for Imloth Ningloron. Before she left, Míriel brought two tapestries to show Fëanor. “Macalaurë wrote to me before he and Maitimo left for Lórien,” she said, “and asked me to weave a gift for Maitimo. I thought you might like to see it.” She unfurled the first. It was a fortress set upon a high hill, dark grey stone against a clear blue sky, and the hill itself overlooking a plain of green and gold grass. As the fabric settled it almost seemed that the grass was rippling in a summer breeze. “It is Himring,” Míriel said. 

“It’s beautiful,” said Fëanor, running his fingertips over the ramparts. “Maedhros asked for this?”

“He has no idea,” Míriel said. “Macalaurë wanted it to be a surprise. This is the scene he asked for, but I have made another as well.” The second tapestry was of an island, surrounded by blue-grey waves with gulls circling over the worn and wind-rounded walls, where dark and stubborn trees grew. In the distant background was the shoreline of the mainland. “Perhaps Maitimo will not like this one as much—but I have a feeling he will be glad to know that the walls still stand, even now.”

“I am glad to know it,” said Fëanor. He hoped Maedhros would like the tapestries—both of them—and was even gladder that it had been Maglor to ask for them. “And I’m—I did not get a chance to tell you before, but I’m glad that you went to Avallónë to welcome Macalaurë when he came home.”

“It did not feel like a homecoming for him, though he was very happy to be reunited with Elrond,” said Míriel as Fëanor helped her roll up the tapestries. “I think returning to Imloth Ningloron this spring is his real homecoming.” She lifted a hand to cup Fëanor’s cheek. “Take care of yourself, Fëanáro. I do not want to return to Tirion to find you injured again.”

“It was only a pulled muscle,” Fëanor said. He leaned down to kiss her. “I’ll be fine, Ammë.” 

Later, Fëanor joined Fingolfin in his study for a glass of wine. They met like this with increasing frequency of late, talking of everything from politics to the weather to Fëanor’s granddaughters. They were evenings that Fëanor looked forward to—a thing he would never have believed possible before his return from Mandos. 

That evening they sat by the window, looking out over the gardens with the cherry grove just in view, as the stars came out. “What have you been doing at your old house?” Fingolfin asked. “Clearing out the gardens, I know, but why?”

Fëanor shrugged, studying the contents of his wine glass. “Something must be done about that house. It will fall down eventually.”

“It does not follow that it must be you that tears it down single-handedly. Are you sure you do not want help?”

“It’s not as though I have much else to do.” He had gotten to the point where he was no longer focused on the weeds and the vines but on clearing out the boxes and chests from the storage rooms. More had been preserved than he’d expected, and that was it’s own kind of pain, opening up each box to see a little bit of his old life tucked inside, cushioned by cotton or by straw. There was a certain relief, though, that made itself known whenever he could look at it and see progress made. He felt like he could breathe a little easier. Maybe from the outside it looked like some kind of self-imposed punishment and maybe sometimes it felt like it, but that wasn’t what Fëanor was trying to do. “I need to build something new there,” he said after a few moments. “To do that, I must first clear away the old and broken things.”

Fingolfin did not try to argue. “Is there anything you need for it?”

“No. Not yet.”

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I was the match and you were the rock, maybe we started this fire
We sat apart and watched all we had burn on the pyre
…
Do you understand that we will never be the same again?
The future’s in our hands and we will never be the same again
- “Things We Lost in the Fire” - Bastille 

- - 

The summer passed quietly. Rumors started up with more persistence than before about some great gathering Ingwë wanted to hold. Fëanor had heard talk of it before but hadn’t paid much attention. Fingolfin seemed amused by it. “Better him than me,” he said to Fëanor over another evening glass of wine. “I held my Mereth Aderthad—I’d hate to attempt anything as big as what Ingwë wants.”

“Was it not a success, your feast?” Fëanor asked. He’d spent the afternoon going through boxes of toys that had been packed away long before the house had been abandoned. He’d taken a few to keep himself, attached to particularly bright memories, and sent some to Curufin’s house for when he and his family returned, should the girls want them. The rest were already broken or too worn to be of any use as toys, but he couldn’t make himself throw them away, either, these last remnants of his sons’ childhoods. Now, he was willing to talk about anything else—including politics, including Beleriand.

Fingolfin shrugged. “As far as it went—the Noldor were all able to come away from it unified, at least, and I could stop worrying about conflict breaking out between my children and my nephews, and turn my attention to the north where it belonged. It would have been better if a larger party came from Doriath, but I wasn’t going to push my luck—and it was Daeron and Mablung who came, which was no small thing itself. Daeron is, well, Daeron, and Mablung was a chieftain among Thingol’s marchwardens and among his trusted councilors. He still is the latter, though there’s of course not much call for marchwardens nowadays.” 

“They are close kin, are they not—Daeron and Mablung?”

“Yes. You remember Mablung’s parents, Lady Lacheryn and Lord Belthond. Daeron is their nephew.”

“What of his own parents?”

Fingolfin shook his head. “I have never heard them spoken of. Do you and Daeron still cordially dislike one another?” Fëanor shrugged. “You know that will cause trouble for you now that Maglor is back.”

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do about it.” Daeron came surprisingly often to Tirion, but hardly ever to the court, so it was rare that they met in person. When they did, Daeron was cheerful and polite, but with an edge to his smile that was subtle enough that Fëanor thought he was the only one that noticed. He was, certainly, the only one meant to notice. All of Fëanor’s sons liked him, treating him like an extra brother, and Curufin’s daughters adored him. Fëanor’s opinion had risen since that chance meeting on the road over the summer, and he thought he might like Daeron if circumstances were different—if he had managed to keep biting his tongue when they’d first met. 

Fingolfin set his wine aside and started unraveling his braids, sighing as the tension on his scalp was released. “You could try speaking to him,” he said as he dropped a few jeweled clasps onto the windowsill beside the orchids he kept there with their delicate purple blossoms. “That is usually how such conflicts are resolved.”

“Even if I knew where to start, I’m unlikely to have the opportunity any time soon,” Fëanor said. 

“I’m not saying you need attempt anything now. Only that when you do find an opportunity, it might be a good idea to take it.”

“Is it making trouble for you?”

“No. Daeron’s problem seems to be with you and you alone, and I would probably not know about it at all if we hadn’t spoken of it, though he’s also made himself a bit unpopular with some of the older scholars and loremasters here in Tirion. That’s far less personal, though, and if they’re going to grumble to anyone about it, it isn’t me.”

“I do know about that. I think it’s just a bit of jealousy. Rúmil likes his work, though.” Daeron’s writings revealed him to be, in addition to breathtakingly talented in music and remarkably self-assured, clever and thoughtful, and it was out of genuine interest that Fëanor picked up every paper or treatise that Daeron wrote that made its way to Tirion. In that way he had learned three new languages and several alphabets and even more history of the lands east of the Sea of Rhûn. It was with regret that he sometimes thought of the lands in Middle-earth that he had never gotten to see, of the mountains he had never so much as glimpsed, let alone climbed, the people he had never met and the stories he had never heard. The closest he would ever come now were the words of others; and of all those who cared to share their stories, Daeron was one of the best—a storyteller to his core in both verse and prose. 

The next day Fëanor gave himself a break from clearing out storerooms in favor of tackling the gardens again, to get as much done as he could before it got too cold for such work. It had rained overnight, and the soil was slick and muddy, making things both easier and more difficult. He left the saplings and brambles alone and dug up stubborn thistles around the sides of the house. Under one large window had once grown a patch of peonies, all soft pinks and deep purples. Caranthir had loved them as a small child, and had always chosen them as a hiding spot when such games were played—or even just for the sake of hiding. The peonies were long gone, now, but it was still easy to remember them, and to remember the sound of Caranthir’s badly-stifled giggles when Fëanor walked by, loudly pretending to have no idea where he could have gone. When he eventually poked his head out from the stems Fëanor would swoop in to pick him up, tossing him into the air and making him squeal, and then tickling him when he caught him again. 

Now Fëanor tried to remember the last time he’d heard Caranthir laughing, and couldn’t quite do it. He definitely couldn’t remember the last time he had made Caranthir laugh.

“You’ve done quite a lot in such a short time.” Nerdanel’s voice made him jump, and Fëanor turned to find her standing some feet away, arms crossed as she looked around. She was dressed for travel, in sensible clothes and with her hair caught back in a simple plait. “Have you gone inside yet?” she asked.

“Yes.” Fëanor wiped his hands on his knees as he rose to his feet, though he was muddy all over so it just smeared everything around. “I didn’t know you had come back to Tirion.”

“I’m not staying long—I’m going to Imloth Ningloron directly.” Nerdanel looked him up and down, and her lips twitched in what might almost have been a smile. “Are you really going to do this all by yourself?”

“How else would I do it?” Fëanor asked before realizing how that sounded. Her expression shuttered. “I just—”

“There might be some things in the storerooms the boys will want. We did our best to preserve everything—though I couldn’t tell you why. No one thought any of you would ever come back to want it again.”

But they had hoped, Fëanor thought, even if they hadn’t realized it at the time. “I’m sorting through it. I don’t intend to just throw everything away, and I can ask Curvo to pass things onto his brothers if they wish.”

“Well—good.”

“Are they well? The boys?” Fëanor asked as Nerdanel started to turn away.

She did smile then, when she glanced back at him. “Yes,” she said. “Very well—and Calissë and Náriel are delighted with their uncles. I’m sure you’ll hear all about it when they return home in a few weeks.”

“And you are well, too?”

“Yes, I am. Are you?”

“Yes, of course.”

Nerdanel left, and Fëanor found he didn’t particularly want to be at the house anymore either. He went home and ended up sketching out designs for peonies carved out of amethyst and quartz, though he didn’t know what he’d do with them when he made them, except offer them to Caranthir, who would probably not want them. He finished the drawings anyway, and put them away. Even if he never made them, someone else might want to, someday.

Several weeks later, Fëanor happened to be visiting Celebrimbor when Curufin, Rundamírë, and the girls arrived home. He’d come to ask his opinion on a new railing Anairë wanted for a balcony, made of wrought iron that he had thought to shape into dancing figures. Celebrimbor was himself in the middle of sorting through scrap pieces of glass, deciding what he wanted to keep and reuse and give away to other glass makers. “You could do a dance sequence, perhaps?” he said as he reached for a particularly jagged piece. “Each figure another step in it, like the—does Anairë do spear dancing or is that just Lalwen?”

“Just Lalwen, and this is for a guest room.”

“Used by Vanyar, by any chance?”

Fëanor snorted. “How in the world would I know that?”

Celebrimbor grinned at him. “Well, you might want to find out—oh damn—oh—” He cursed in Dwarvish as the piece of glass slipped in his grip. He tried to catch it but only succeeded in slicing open his hand before it hit the ground and shattered. Fëanor immediately reached for the nearest rag to press to the cut, and Celebrimbor did the same.

At that moment Curufin entered the workshop. “Tyelpë?” He abandoned the heavy-looking bag in his hand and hurried over. “What happened?”

“My fault,” said Celebrimbor, all smiles gone as he gritted his teeth. “Just—stupid—I wasn’t watching—and it was broken already anyway—”

Curufin calmly peeled back the cloths to look at the cut. As he did Celebrimbor looked away, grey-faced as Fëanor had never seen him before. Celebrimbor had never been squeamish. “Sit down, Tyelpë,” Curufin said briskly. “Atya, there are bandages in that cupboard.”

Fëanor glanced down at Celebrimbor’s palm, at the blood still welling up. “That will need more than bandages,” he said, but went to fetch them. He also grabbed the broom, lest someone else come in and either get cut or track some small piece of glass back into the house where Náriel or Calissë would be going barefoot. 

As Fëanor swept, Curufin focused on Celebrimbor. “Tyelpë. Are you going to faint?” When Celebrimbor shook his head he asked, “Do you want me to stitch it, or Tindehtë?”

“You, please.”

“Wait here then,” Curufin said as he wrapped a bandage around Celebrimbor’s hand. “Keep it elevated—”

“I know, Atya.”

Curufin hurried back to the house. Fëanor finished sweeping up the glass, and then went to catch Celebrimbor when he swayed—closer to fainting than he had apparently wanted to believe himself. “It’s all right, Tyelpë,” he said. “I’ve got you.”

When Curufin returned he kept his tone light, but Fëanor saw the worry in his eyes as he directed Celebrimbor to the floor. “You don’t need to crack your head open as well as your hand.”

“This is stupid,” Celebrimbor muttered, but he obeyed readily, and leaned back against the shelves, turning his head away as Curufin sat cross-legged beside him, already opening the healer’s kit. 

“Not stupid,” Curufin said. “Here, sip this.” He handed Celebrimbor a bottle, and Celebrimbor sipped it obediently. His color improved immediately. 

“Should we not seek a more skilled healer, if it’s so bad?” Fëanor asked. He knelt on Celebrimbor’s other side, so he might have a shoulder to lean on if he wished. 

“It’s not that bad,” said Curufin as he set to work, threading a needle and unwrapping the bandages. Already the bleeding had slowed considerably. “Nelyo was hurt far worse than this on our journey west, and I stitched him up fine.”

“He was what?” Fëanor looked at Curufin, who froze for a second, evidently realizing that he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He’d told other stories, harmless ones, silly ones, of the journey to Ekkaia and back—but he had never mentioned injuries. 

“I just don’t like the sight of blood,” said Celebrimbor, staring resolutely at the far wall, apparently unaware of the sudden tension. 

Fëanor let the question of Maedhros’ injuries go, and looked back at Celebrimbor. “I don’t remember you having such trouble before,” he said, and knew it was a mistake the moment the words left his mouth. It was more than mere squeamishness—he could see something dark and haunted lurking behind his eyes.

“Yes, well. Things change.”

“Tyelpë—” He meant to apologize, but Curufin gave him a sharp look and he fell silent. There would be time later. Trying to apologize in another way, Fëanor guided Celebrimbor’s head to rest on his shoulder so he could just close his eyes and not worry about whether he would faint or not. Celebrimbor sighed, and took a few deep breaths as Curufin worked. He was very quick, but neat, and that was troubling in a different sort of way—a reminder that once upon a time Curufin had had to treat much worse wounds much more often, in far more dangerous places. A reminder that he and Celebrimbor had both experienced war in a way very different than Fëanor had—he had only had the briefest taste before it killed him, while they had been shaped by centuries of it in ways that meant they moved through the world now very differently than he did. Most days, they were simply his son and his grandson and things were easy—they spoke the same language still when it came to art and craft and to most everyday things, but when it came to the past, it felt like no language was enough to pierce the barrier that rose up between them. 

“Drink more of the miruvórë, Tyelpë,” Curufin said as he cleared away the bloody cloths. “Your sisters are going to want to climb all over you when you return to the house.” 

Fëanor helped Celebrimbor to his feet. He glanced down and grimaced at the blood on his clothes—rueful now, though, rather than distressed. “Can you distract them while I change my clothes?”

“Of course.” Fëanor was the least messy of either of them, so he left Curufin to speak a little more with Celebrimbor—offering reassurances that Fëanor couldn’t—and went to the house. 

“Grandfather!” Calissë hurled herself into his arms as soon as he stepped through the door. “We missed you! You should’ve stayed with us in Imloth Ningloron, it was wonderful!”

“I’m sorry I couldn’t,” Fëanor said as he kissed her and reached for Náriel. “Hello, my loves. I missed you very much. Did you have many adventures this summer?”

“Lots!” said Náriel. “Did you know Uncle Cáno’s got hedgehogs? They’re really cute and they follow him around everywhere, but Ammë said they don’t like the city so we can’t have one—”

“That’s very true,” Fëanor said. He gently ushered the girls away from the door so Celebrimbor could slip past without being noticed. He was very quick about it, and by the time Fëanor had gotten them to the parlor he was back downstairs in a clean tunic, kissing his mother and laughing off his injury. As the girls climbed onto Celebrimbor’s lap, as Curufin had predicted, Fëanor turned to greet Rundamírë properly, who smiled at him more warmly than usual. 

Curufin joined them, and it was a relief for Fëanor to wrap his arms around him. He’d missed him—him and the girls—and it was so nice to have them back, even if it did mean hearing about the absurd things Maglor was making up about his own adventures in Middle-earth, to explain away the scars and signs of unelven aging that even Lórien couldn’t erase. Fëanor didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh—for the story of the enchantress and the talking beavers was funny, and even Celebrimbor laughed at it—or to weep at the fact that such diversions were even necessary.

It wasn’t long before Curufin caught his eye, though, and led the way back to the workshop. Apparently Fëanor was not the only one who had been thinking of all the ways he did not know his sons anymore. They had been speaking of it among themselves, and Curufin had brought a palantír back to Tirion—one of the ones from Nerdanel’s house. One that would show him any of his sons—or himself, or Nerdanel—in an instant, but which would be almost impossible to bend toward anything else. Fëanor hadn’t meant to make those first stones that way, but he had made them primarily for that purpose, and they had soaked up his intention like sponges. It was something he had learned how to fix in later stones; those first ones had been tossed into a chest and mostly forgotten, except when he or Nerdanel wanted to know where their sons had wandered off to in those golden years before everything started to go wrong.

With the palantír came words Curufin had never spoken aloud before—of fear, of doubt, of what it had really been like to be Fëanor’s son during those years preceding the Darkening. It wasn’t anything Fëanor didn’t already know, but it was still terrible to hear it said aloud, every word another twist of a knife in his chest, to hear Curufin speak so softly and hesitatingly when he reminded Fëanor of the wrongs he’d done even when his children were small, the ways he had hurt them when he should have been protecting them. Curufin kept his gaze lowered to the scratched and worn surface of the worktable where he rested his hands, as though worried that his words would ignite Fëanor’s temper—as they probably would have, once upon a time. He still had a little bit of Celebrimbor’s blood underneath his fingernails. 

Fëanor felt, abruptly, exhausted. His son was afraid of him even still—they all were, but he realized he hadn’t known that Curufin had taken those first steps, years ago, in spite of his fears rather than in the easing of them. “I do not want to be someone you fear,” he whispered.

“I know,” said Curufin.

He thought he knew the answer but the question slipped out anyway. “How did we get here, Curvo?”

“You taught me to make swords, and then insisted I set aside every ting else in pursuit of that mastery.”

Fëanor remembered that. Remembered how he had counted on that eagerness of Curufin’s to master anything, to rise to any challenge put before him, whether it was a game or gemcraft or—in the end—sword smithing and warfare. In the years since, Fëanor had learned all about how good Curufin had been at making swords, outfitting armies, teaching others, going far above and beyond everything he and Fëanor had done in Valinor. If Fëanor had survived his first battle, he knew he would have been proud of Curufin for it—fiercely, arrogantly proud. Now the knowledge that his son had put aside all the things he loved most—beautiful things, bright things, gemstones and metal sculpture that rivaled his mother’s in finesse—in favor of weaponry, until he was himself nothing more than sharp edges and steel…now it just broke his heart. 

“The way that you spoke of it,” Curufin said, still not lifting his gaze, “of how we would need them—that frightened me for the first time. By the time we went to Formenos—no, even before then, even before you drew your sword at the palace, we were all afraid. Even Maedhros. We followed you because we loved you, but we also feared what you would do if we didn’t.”

They’d been right to fear. Fëanor hated that that was true, wished that he had been able to see more clearly what he was doing then, how he had been breaking the very things he wanted most to protect. 

“I know you won’t go down that same road again, I do, but—” Curufin finally lifted his eyes to Fëanor’s. There were times when he seemed so much older, a strange and fey commander out of ancient wars who had seen horrors and done worse, but just then he looked so young, as young as he had been when Fëanor had first put a sword into his hand and told him to copy it. “—but I would be lying if I said I did not sometimes fear it, all the same.”

If Fëanor should be angry with anyone it was himself. He was angry with himself, a low- but hot-burning coil of rage at the base of his spine, easily ignored most days but sometimes, very rarely, when he was left alone with his own thoughts too long, threatening to erupt into the same kind of inferno that had killed him. When that happened, usually sometime in the dead of night when he lay awake missing his father so much it felt like he couldn’t breathe under the weight of it, he took himself out to his forge, to beat metal until his muscles ached and he had something beautiful or at least useful in his hands, instead of something deadly. 

He did not feel that way, then. He just felt cold and tired, struggling to remain standing with the weight of all his failures hanging on his shoulders. 

He took the palantír, wished he could also take away the worry from Curufin’s eyes, and left the workshop. He glimpsed Caranthir making his way down the narrow alley, but pretended not to, and went to say goodnight to Celebrimbor and the girls instead. Calissë and Náriel begged him to stay for dinner, but he made excuses and promised to see them the next afternoon.

“Is everything all right?” Celebrimbor asked in a low voice when Fëanor embraced him.

“Yes, of course. Don’t you start worrying about me. Are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m—maybe I’ll explain it all to you about it sometime. But I’m fine, really.”

“You can, you know—talk to me about those things.”

Celebrimbor smiled at him. He was a little pale but otherwise seemed entirely recovered. “I do know. I’ll see you tomorrow, Grandfather.”

Later, in the privacy of his bedroom, he sat cross-legged on the bed and contemplated the palantír, absently cataloging all the flaws and how to fix them next time. There was little call for such seeing stones these days, but Fëanor thought about trying his hand again at them anyway. All of his old notes had been lost, and it might be a good challenge—to see if he could recreate this old project almost from scratch. 

Then he set those thoughts aside and picked up the stone. Better, he thought, to start at the end—to see the very worst of what had happened to his sons. It wasn’t anything he had not seen before, because Vairë and her weavers spared no detail in their work, but those memories were hazy and dreamlike, as was almost everything from his time in Mandos. There were only a handful of moments that Fëanor still remembered clearly, which bothered him. He hated forgetting such things. He remembered what had happened to his sons, but not in detail, not really what it had looked like. Now he took a deep breath and leaned over the palantír, calling upon it silently to show him what he wished to see. 

Caranthir fell first, struck by a hail of arrows scant steps into the vast and beautiful entry hall of Menegroth—though its beauty was shrouded in darkness, lit only by the lamps and flickering torches of the Noldor. Fëanor watched Maglor catch Caranthir before he hit the ground, though it was too late—he was already gone, eyes open and unseeing under his helm. Next fell Curufin, struck down just as swiftly as his brother in a spray of bright blood when he slipped in a pool of water from a broken and overflowing fountain and his opponent’s sword found the space between his breastplate and his helm; that same opponent was cut down almost immediately by Maglor, who turned to roll Curufin’s body over, calling his name before he saw that he was already gone, blood mingling with the dirty water spreading around them. Then Celegorm, slain by Dior Eluchíl before the dais where once had sat Elu Thingol and Melian in their splendor. To his horror, Fëanor watched Celegorm hesitate, watched his movements hitch just for a second before Dior landed the blow that killed him. It had to be deliberate—Celegorm was too seasoned a fighter, too good to make a mistake like that, as evidenced by the way he dispatched Dior immediately afterward, before staggering down the step to fall onto the stone floor. His end was much slower in coming than his brothers’ had been, blood pooling underneath him as Maglor knelt at his side, lips moving as he frantically tried to staunch the wound. There was no sound in the palantír, but Fëanor could all too easily guess what it was Maglor was saying, could see his brother’s name on his lips, repeated over and over like a plea or a prayer until the last of the light went out of Celegorm’s eyes. Maedhros was also there at the last, kneeling on Celegorm’s other side, resting his hand on his forehead, but Fëanor didn’t think that Celegorm knew it.

Ambarussa died only seconds apart, years later as Sirion burned around them. Like Caranthir, they were felled by arrows and dead before their bodies hit the ground. Like all their brothers, they were reached by Maglor seconds too late.

Fëanor lifted his head and pressed a hand to his eyes. He knew what he would see next. That was one moment from the Halls that he remembered all too clearly—not the tapestry depicting it, but Maedhros’ arrival there, his spirit still burning as though he’d brought the fires of the earth with him, and in so much pain that it seemed to radiate from him, as though his spirit couldn’t contain it all and so it spilled out onto everyone else around him. Fëanor still didn’t know if he’d only imagined that or not—Maedhros had fled from him and Fëanor had never been able to find him in the Halls afterward. After a minute he took a breath and turned his attention back to the palantír. 

It was dark, storm clouds hiding the sun or the moon—Fëanor couldn’t tell whether it was night or day. The chest bearing the Silmarils opened, though he couldn’t tell whether it was Maglor or Maedhros who had lifted the lid. The jewels lit their faces, rendering them for a moment as youthful and lovely as they had once been in Valinor, before they had been so changed and hardened and worn down. Maglor’s eyes went wide; Maedhros closed his. They reached out at the same time, and Fëanor wanted to stop them, wanted to catch their hands before they could touch the Silmarils because he knew what was going to happen, and surely they did too—but it was as though they couldn’t help themselves. 

Maglor staggered away, mouth open in a soundless cry of agony. The ground shivered and shook beneath them as Beleriand continued its slow, inexorable crumble into the sea; a great rift opened, glowing red with fire and molten stone far below. Fëanor saw Maedhros turn toward it, and behind him saw the shining arc of the Silmaril as it went flying from Maglor’s hand, away into the sea. 

He shoved the palantír away before Maedhros took that final step; it rolled off the bed and hit the rug with a dull thud. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t bear that terrible empty expression in his face, as though he had gone even beyond the pain, as though nothing at all mattered. He’d done that—Fëanor had done that, and it didn’t matter how mad he might have been or what he had really intended. He’d thought himself and his sons invincible, unstoppable, and they hadn’t been, and they had all paid far too high a price for his folly—they and all the rest of the Noldor and of Beleriand, though if Fëanor started to dwell on that he thought he’d go mad again. 

And that was before all that Maglor had endured afterward—all that suffering and not even the relief of Mandos at the end of it. 

He fled the room and the palantír for the cherry grove, where everything was quiet and damp with dew—the closest he could get to his father, these days, where he could pretend for a few hours that at any moment Finwë, who had always known what to say or what to do, might come and find him. 

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One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—
One need not be a House—
The Brain—has Corridors surpassing
Material Place—

Far safer, of a Midnight—meeting
External Ghost—
Than an Interior—confronting—
That cooler—Host—
- “One need not be a chamber—to be haunted—” by Emily Dickinson

- - 

“Look for us during the Long Peace next. That time shaped us as much as all that came after, and in much better ways. We were happy, for such a long time.”

Because Curufin had told him to, Fëanor did, looking for the years directly after Maedhros’ abdication in which his sons had taken their people east and established their realms and strongholds. He saw how proud they had been, in those days when all the Noldor had still held themselves apart from and above the Elves of Middle-earth, believing themselves superior while having turned their backs on the very things that they thought made them so. He watched their war councils, watched them debate with one another, sometimes argue—the palantír showed many things but it did not reveal sounds, and for the most part Fëanor could only guess at what they said. 

Already Maedhros had hardened—they all had, but he most of all. The rest eventually caught up. He watched Celegorm and Maglor both charge into battle and skirmish, swords flashing, teeth bared. Maglor opened his mouth and shouted down the enemy, sending ranks of orcs fleeing northward with the sheer power of his voice echoing off of the rolling hills of Ard Galen. But just as often Maglor galloped across the plains for no reason but the joy of it. He stood in the mornings atop a hill and threw out his arms, mouth open wide as he sang out to the sky. Celegorm took Celebrimbor hunting and rode south to visit the twins; he was fierce and bold but also joyful, delighting in the wild plains and the trackless woods; he too often sang as he rode.

Maedhros rode out too, the most formidable of all Fëanor’s sons in battle, but just as often he remained in Himring, studying maps and laying plans, writing letters and reading the replies. As time went on he started to smile again, to indulge in hunting or in visits to his brothers or cousins just for the sake of visiting—but ever his eyes were watchful and always his gaze strayed to the north, and he never let his guard down except at times behind the high and impenetrable walls of Himring.

Curufin did not often go to battle—only at need. He remained behind, busying himself with building projects and with forging—though in those early days he still sometimes made beautiful things, the bulk of his time was spent making weaponry: creating better and stronger alloys, honing edges, crafting spells so the blades would keep their sharpness, would not nick or dull with time and use. He poured the same effort into armor and shields, into walls and fortifications. Celebrimbor was ever at his side, eyes bright as he rose to each new challenge put before them. 

Amrod and Amras took to the wild woods in the south, hunting the creatures that slipped past their brothers’ vigilance and learning the ways of the land, of the trees and the Green Elves who lived there. They thrived in the wild, though they were not nearly as carefree as they seemed to be now. Caranthir built his stronghold beside Lake Helevorn, and then he planted gardens, groves and orchards; they and the fields his people tilled thrived, lush and bountiful. He was good at many things—at planning, at logistics, at trade and gathering wealth and turning it all into something Maedhros could use in the north—but Fëanor could tell, watching him, that he was not happy. He shied away from nothing, but lordship sat heavily on his shoulders, and it was only in springtime when he walked alone through his orchards and stopped to press his face into the flowers that he really smiled. No peonies grew in Thargelion.

For a long time when they all came together again they seemed truly happy. Maedhros did not offer the same sort of easy embraces or casual touches that he had before, but Maglor always more than made up for it. As the years wore on, though, their meeting grew fewer. When they did come together it was to take council—to argue, with fists slamming onto the table or fingers jabbing at points on a map. Fëanor didn’t have to hear to know those fights were primarily about the Oath, which had slept for a time but then began to stir in their hearts again—about what they might do to get the Silmarils. It was mostly his younger sons who debated and argued. Maedhros just listened, and every time he ended the arguments with a single word or a shake of his head. However much they might disagree, they all deferred to him, every time, without question.

They never stopped embracing one another when they met, but they did stop offering anything more; they stopped acting like brothers and acted more like the soldiers they were all becoming. They grasped hands or arms, they still smiled and joked, but even Celegorm who had always been the most affectionate began to withdraw. They looked to Maedhros not as their beloved eldest brother anymore, but as their lord and commander—all but Maglor, who spent more time than the rest at Himring, and who could still coax smiles out of them all even when they arrived grim and angry, though when he was alone he often wept, looking northward, looking lost. 

Fëanor could see the beautiful things they made and he could see that they believed themselves to be content—even happy. He could see that initial pride softening—not quite going away, but changing as circumstances changed and taught them better. But the Oath hung over them, sleeping for long years at a time but never letting itself be entirely forgotten. He hung over them, though his name never passed their lips—he and his expectations and his last deeds. Maedhros often stared into the hearths of Himring as though he were seeing other, deadlier flames. Maglor composed the Noldolantë and sang it beneath the wide open skies of the Gap. Curufin pounded his grief into every blade he made, making sure he and his soldiers and his brothers were armed with the best weapons it was possible to craft. 

The Dagor Bragollach was the beginning of the end, but they were all changing before then, every step taking them farther from the boys they’d been in Tirion and the young men who had always brought such bright light and joy wherever they went. Blood stained their hands and pain dogged their heels, and though Curufin wanted to convince Fëanor that for a long time the joy they found in the wide and beautiful lands of Middle-earth under the Sun and Moon had outweighed the sorrow—it was hard to believe, watching it all unfold when he already knew how it was all going to end. He could see the Doom of the Noldor hanging over them like a storm cloud; could imagine he saw the Oath wrapping around their necks like a noose. He believed that they believed it—and that was more important—but it was still hard to watch, even though he was proud of them, of all they’d built, fair and tall and strong, even if almost none of it had survived the rending of the world. They’d done it all in spite of their own knowledge of all the ways they were doomed. The joy was as much an act of defiance against the dark as the walls they built and the battles they fought—more so, for the sheer strength of will that it took to look at the dark mountains in the north and laugh instead of scream. 

He lay awake at night, watching the moonlight slowly move over the ceiling of his bedroom, and played games of what-ifs and maybes. What if he had not died? What would they have done then? Would Maedhros still have gone to treat with the Enemy, or would it have been Fëanor hanging from the mountainside instead? Would anyone have bothered to even think of rescuing him, if it had? Would things have gone better or worse? Would it have just come to more bloodshed by the shores of Mithrim, when Fingolfin arrived with his host, frozen and furious?

Those kinds of thoughts were always pointless. They just circled like carrion birds over a battlefield. Fëanor knew this, and in his previous life he had never indulged in them—he had known the uselessness of it, had always wanted to be doing something. Now there was nothing for him to do except to think, and he couldn’t stop. 

What if his mother had never died?

What if he had listened to Nerdanel?

What if he had been slain in Formenos instead of his father?

What if?

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Heart,
I implore you,
it’s time to come back
from the dark

…

Let the world
have its way with you,
luminous as it is

with mystery
and pain—
graced as it is
with the ordinary.
- “Summer Morning” by Mary Oliver

- - 

“They gave you a palantír?” Findis perched on an empty workbench in Fëanor’s workshop, frowning at him as he collected the materials to make the blue diamonds she had asked for. The bright spring sunshine streamed through the window to make her hair shine like a memory of Laurelin. “Whatever for?”

“They need me to understand,” Fëanor said, “since, you know, I wasn’t there—at least not long enough.”

“So they want you to just wallow in all the misery of the First Age, though it’s now been six thousand years and more since it ended?”

“No,” Fëanor said. He couldn’t find the crucible he wanted; Curufin might have borrowed it. “There’s no point to wallowing.” He crouched down to look through the other crucibles in the cabinet, and found one that was close enough. “When do you want these diamonds, again?”

“By Midsummer would be nice, but there’s no rush. Have you spoken to any of them besides Curufinwë?”

“Not really—and I will have these done well before Midsummer. Diamonds are easy.” 

Caranthir had come back to Tirion with Curufin, but he’d continued to avoid Fëanor as he always had. Last he had hard, the twins and Maedhros would be returning home with Nerdanel soon; Míriel had spent the winter in Imloth Ningloron, and had written all about it to Fëanor. She had seemed very pleased to finally get to know her grandsons properly, and Fëanor was pleased also—and, tentatively, hopeful. He was trying not to be, circling the feeling like it was a wild animal that might bite if he made the mistake of looking directly at it, but it was hard to ignore. The palantír was not something he looked at every day, though he did pick it up most evenings, and most of the time it was horrible—battles and wounds and grief and pain—but Curufin had been right that there had been great joy and freedom and life in Beleriand, too. It was hard to see, sometimes, through the knowledge of how it all ended, but the more he looked the more he found. Fëanor was starting to feel as though he knew his sons again, that he might understand better how they thought and how Middle-earth had shaped them, for good and for ill. Even if by the end of this none of them wanted anything to do with him, still, at least he would know better why. That was worth all the tears and all the sleepless nights. And there was still the fact that they had asked it of him—that they had decided together that this might be the thing that let them start to close the distance. That alone spoke volumes—that they didn’t like the current state of affairs any more than he did.

Findis pursed her lips and looked like she wanted to press further about the palantír, but Fëanor started talking about something funny Fingolfin had told him earlier that day, and she got the hint. It was still odd, to know that he could confide in her if he wished—and to find that more often than not he did wish to, if he could only find the words—but if he was going to talk to any of his siblings about Middle-earth or what he saw in the palantír, it would be Fingolfin, or perhaps Lalwen. Findis had not gone east, and Fëanor had long since ceased to begrudge her that, but it did mean there was a very similar gulf of understanding between her and the rest of them—even Finarfin—to the one that lay between him and his sons. Even Fëanor had seen enough to know the general shape of what he had missed afterward even if the important details had eluded him until now. 

None of them were strangers to grief or rage or pain, but there were shades of all of those things, just as there were many shades of the color blue, and he did not want to make Findis, of all people, familiar with the ones he was learning.

And thinking of shades of blue— “Can you tell me more precisely just what color you want these gems to be?”

“Something very light. Like the dawn sky on a cloudless morning in early spring—bright and clean. And speaking of brightness…” Findis paused before going on with a more cautious tone, “You haven’t made anything with light since you returned.”

Fëanor placed the crucible on the workbench above his head and sat back on his heels. “Do you want light in these gems?” he asked. 

“Not if you do not wish to do it.”

“I can do it. Starlight or sunlight? Or moonlight?”

“I know you can do it,” Findis said, frowning at him. “But do you want to?”

He hadn’t done much with light after he’d made the Silmarils—there hadn’t seemed to be any point, since he’d reached the pinnacle of the art. And, well, his mind had turned then to other things instead. He’d wanted sharp edges, not beauty. “Yes,” he said now. He had to start again sometime, he supposed—and he’d never tried to capture sunlight or moonlight. It wouldn’t be difficult, but it would be new—and he hated the way that Findis was talking about it, as though it was something he needed sheltering from. And he had loved it, working with light, making things that sparkled and shone—if he hadn’t, he never would have gotten as far as making the Silmarils in the first place. He found suddenly that he wanted to start making such things again, especially if they would please his sister. That he would never surpass the Silmarils only meant now that he could make whatever he wanted without worrying about how impressive or not it might be. “What sort of light, Findis?”

“Starlight and moonlight, please,” Findis said. She hopped down from the bench and leaned over to kiss the top of his head where he was still kneeling in front of the cabinet. “Thank you, brother.”

He set to work as Findis departed, glad of a new project, something to fill his afternoons and distract him from the piles of boxes and chests still waiting in the storerooms of the old house. Many were too big or too heavy for him to lift up the stairs by himself, and he was either going to have to get creative with some rope, or ask someone to help. The only person he would ask was Curufin, but Curufin had already come once or twice, and seeing the state of the house had so clearly distressed him that Fëanor had not spoken of it again, lest he feel obliged to keep trying.

Several weeks later he found himself back at the house, attempting to lift a chest that he knew was too heavy. It slipped from his grasp and pinned one of his fingers. He cursed as he yanked his hand free, and decided to just give up—never mind that he’d only been there for fifteen minutes. Maybe he’d just go back home and read something. He had a dozen books he’d been meaning to get to and at least if he dropped one of them it wouldn’t hurt. Or maybe he’d go visit his granddaughters and distract himself with their games instead—it was very hard to feel unhappy or frustrated when Calissë and Náriel were climbing all over him or showing him all the things they were making or drawing or learning.

But when he reached the top of the stairs, he found Amrod and Amras standing in the dusty foyer, waiting for him. They wore their hair long and simply braided, and were dressed in the browns and greens he was accustomed now to seeing on them in the palantír. Surprise made him forget there was another step at the top of the staircase—but instead of falling on his face he found himself caught, one twin on each side. “Good morning, Atya,” said Amras, as though it was perfectly natural and not shocking at all for the two of them to be there. 

“Ambarussa?” Fëanor got his feet under him and straightened, looking from one to the other. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” said Amrod. “Curvo said you’re cleaning out all the storerooms. Would you like some help?”

“I…” Fëanor tried to think if Curufin had told him of any change that had come over his brothers. Then he recalled all the times Curufin had good-naturedly complained about Amrod and Amras coming and going at odd times and never with any warning. If they had decided they wanted to spend time with him as suddenly as they did anything else, the last thing Fëanor thought he should do was question it. “Yes,” he said when he found his voice again. “There are several chests I can’t bring up by myself.”

“A good thing we’re here, then!” said Amras brightly. 

As they returned to the storeroom the twins wanted to know what Fëanor was doing with everything, and why he did not want to keep any of it himself. He spoke the truth when he said he had nowhere to keep it—but did not add that he also didn’t want to find a space, or really to keep any of it, except for a few small things he’d found with particularly precious memories attached, tucked away in a box in the back of his wardrobe, rarely opened. There were more things that he thought his sons would want to at least look through, and those he’d been giving to Curufin, trusting that they would make their way to the others eventually.

He bent to pick up the chest that had fallen on his fingers before, and Amrod easily hoisted up the other end as Amras gathered smaller boxes. They filled the silence with chatter about hedgehogs and cats and various small happenings of the past year. Some of those things Fëanor had seen in the palantír—sometimes he needed to look for them all in the present, just to remind himself that they were all together and well and happy—but most he hadn’t. He could have listened to such stories for hours. 

In almost no time at all they had brought up all the boxes Fëanor had wanted to get out of that storeroom that day. “Thank you,” he said once the last box was set down in the foyer, and then realized he didn’t know what else to say. He still didn’t know what they wanted, his youngest sons, in coming to him in this way. He had scrawled out apologies in ink years ago, and tried to show his love in gifts, because even if he had been able to see and speak to them in person, he seemed to have come from Mandos tongue-tied and having lost all the eloquence he’d once put to such terrible use—at least for the most important things—and he hadn’t yet gotten it back. 

Amrod glanced at Amras, who nodded and left without a word, leaving Amrod to stretch out his muscles, looking around, appearing entirely at ease though Fëanor could see his sharp gaze taking in all the details of the crumbling house around them—the cracked tiles, the stains on the walls, the broken stairs. It was the same sort of gaze that had taken in a battlefield and then found the best way to carve through it, all in the space of a second; that had tracked orcs and game alike through the deep woods, never missing the smallest of signs. Then he looked at Fëanor and smiled, looking less like a hunter and more like Nerdanel. He had a smudge of grey dust over the bridge of his nose. “Thank you for the letters,” he said. “I know that’s overdue.”

If he were to be honest, Fëanor hadn’t actually expected any of his sons to read the letters—except perhaps Curufin. “It isn’t,” he began. 

“What I really mean is, thank you for writing two letters.”

Fëanor blinked. “I only wrote one.” Well, he had only sent one—one to each son. The dozens of others that he’d written over the years had been consigned to his bedroom hearth, but they had all just rehashed the first one anyway, trying to find a way to say I’m sorry and I love you and I miss you so much that didn’t seem to fall so flat, and failing. 

Amrod grinned at him. “No, I mean—a letter for me and a letter for Amras, instead of just one to Ambarussa.”

Oh. Fëanor looked away, at the boxes strewn about them instead of at Amrod’s face, as he tried to decide how upset he was at this and whether it was even necessary. “Do others write to you thus?” 

“Well, yes—but to be fair, it’s never letters like the one you wrote, usually just short notes to tell us a bit of news or to extend an invitation.” Amrod shrugged when Fëanor glanced back at him. “It would be silly to waste paper for those things. Just—we didn’t expect it. So…” His smile faded as he watched whatever Fëanor’s face was doing. “Thank you.”

“You shouldn’t—” Fëanor bit his tongue, hating this uncertainty and wishing he could speak without fearing that he would say the wrong thing. “You shouldn’t have to thank me just for that. I wasn’t—I know I was not—” Why was this so hard? “I know I have failed you in so many ways Pit—” No, not Pityo—he hadn’t heard anyone refer to either twin by their father-names since his return, not even Curufin, “—Amrod, but surely I was not so terrible a father that it surprises you that I can tell you apart.” He’d always been able to tell—it had bothered him for a time that Nerdanel had gifted them both only one mother-name, because however alike they were they were still two people, not one person in two bodies, though he’d let it go after the twins themselves had so fully embraced it. 

Amrod’s grin came back, though it was a little more tentative now. “There was quite a long stretch of time where we tried to make it hard for everyone to tell us apart, when we were younger,” he said. “We thought it was funny. Ammë was the only one who was never fooled.” Fëanor did not remember this—probably because they had not attempted the trick on him. He’d been preoccupied with the Silmarils and then with other things for too much of their childhood, and had missed all of those small jokes and joys. The reminder made that particular spot under his ribs ache. “And you can call me Pityo if you like,” Amrod added.

The memory of Maedhros flatly rejecting the name Nelyafinwë came to Fëanor’s mind. “But you do not prefer it.”

Amrod shrugged again. “Not usually, but…well, it’s what you’ve always called me.”

Fëanor felt like he had been given a puzzle with several missing pieces. It didn’t seem possible that his youngest sons would so suddenly just decide that they wanted to see him, to spend a day carrying boxes up and down stairs with him, getting dirty and dusty for a project they could have little interest in. It couldn’t be this easy—it hadn’t been anywhere near this easy with Curufin. The worst part was that the puzzle should have been simple to solve—he should have had all the pieces, but he had never known Amrod or Amras as well as he’d once known their brothers, and no matter how much of their lives he witnessed in the palantír, there was no making up for that absence. 

The quickest way to learn the answer was just to ask, however painful the answer, so… “Why are you here?”

Suddenly, Amrod looked very young. His smile disappeared, along with the cheer that Fëanor realized only belatedly was at least partly feigned. “I miss you, Atya.” It was the last thing Fëanor had really expected him to say, however carefully he was starting to hope for it, and he wasn’t sure at first that he had really heard correctly.

A second later Amrod closed the distance between them, throwing his arms around Fëanor, who found himself holding on far too tightly, except he couldn’t quite make himself loosen his grip. He was not going to start crying, and what came out of his mouth instead of anything important that he meant to say was, “When did you grow so tall?” Somehow in his mind both the twins were small, still—smaller than Curufin, always trailing after Celegorm or clambering onto Huan’s back to ride him like a pony the way that Calissë and Náriel did now. In reality, Amrod stood as tall as he did—almost exactly. 

“That’s how you can tell us apart,” Amrod said, laughter returning to his voice. “I’m taller than Amras.”

“You are not!” Amras exclaimed as he came back into the house just in time to hear. He had a basket in his hands that smelled of pastry and spices. “He’s a dirty liar, Atya. I’m the taller one.” He set the basket down and took Amrod’s place in Fëanor’s arms. He was, in fact, exactly the same height as both Fëanor and his brother. “Don’t cry!” he said, and Fëanor realized only then that he’d failed to hold back the tears. “We’re actually both shorter now than we were in Beleriand. Estë didn’t give us back bodies that had had any Ent draughts.”

Fëanor wiped a hand across his eyes. He knew what Ents were, but— “Any Ent—what?”

“Come sit down, and we’ll tell you all about it,” said Amras. “I found pies! They’re just like the ones they make at Imloth Ningloron, which I’m almost certain is a recipe one of the halflings brought—I hope you like potatoes!”

They ate the pies as a sort of picnic right there on the floor, surrounded by all the dusty boxes, while Amrod and Amras took turns telling Fëanor all about the Ents they had known in Beleriand, and about the surprise of all their brothers when they had arrived at Himring unexpectedly taller than they had been when anyone had last seen them. It was a far merrier story than many others Fëanor had yet heard from Middle-earth, or even seen in the palantír—a story from the Long Peace, when they had room to breathe and to laugh and to live, instead of only survive. It was much easier to really believe they had truly been so happy when he was listening to Amrod and Amras tell the story, still laughing over the jokes they’d made at Curufin’s expense even so many thousands of years later, than it was to watch it all play out in bits and pieces through the palantír. When they ran out of things to say about Ents and Ent draughts, Fëanor ventured to ask what they had been doing since their return to life in Valinor, and found them just as willing to speak of that, too—of their small house up in the mountains, just close enough to where some of their old friends among the Laiquendi, formerly of Ossiriand, had settled that they were not entirely isolated, but far enough away that they could go months at a time without encountering anyone else if they so wished. 

“We hung the prisms you made in the window,” Amras told him, his smile bright as the sunshine outside.

Before Fëanor could think of anything to say Amrod said, “You could come visit us, if you wanted.” But he added quickly, “But I don’t know if you’d be very happy there. It’s very quiet, and we don’t…do much.”

“I don’t do much either, these days,” Fëanor said before he could think better of it. He gestured around them. “Hence…” Hence the house project, something different and separate from his other usual routines. It wasn’t that he did nothing, it was just—

None of it seemed to mean very much, without the people with whom he most wished to share it. 

“It is very quiet there,” said Amras. “But we go among the Laiquendi fairly often, and they’re very merry. Maybe you should come visit us. From what Curvo has said, you could use some merriment.”

Fëanor didn’t wince, but it was a near thing. He’d thought that he was doing a better job of not worrying Curufin. But before he could think of something to say Amrod glanced at Amras and said, “But maybe not too soon. Cáno’s coming to Tirion later this year.”

Something in the way he said it made Fëanor pause. He would have thought Maglor’s coming to Tirion would be a good reason for his own leaving it. “What brings him here?” he asked. 

“Curvo said he would tell you, but we might as well,” said Amras with a shrug that tried to be careless and didn’t quite succeed. “Míriel and Indis have asked Cáno to write a song for Finwë. A proper one to honor his memory.”

Míriel had said nothing of that when she had been in Tirion. The lapse stung, though Fëanor knew it probably shouldn’t have—she surely had not known whether Maglor would agree, and there wouldn’t be any point in sharing a plan if it would just come to nothing. Still—she hadn’t written of it either, after he had agreed.

Amras went on, “No one has been able to do it, and it’s long overdue. So he’s going to be speaking to everyone he can find, because he says it can’t just be his words alone. That means he’s going to want to talk to you too.”

“Especially you,” Amrod added.

As much as he wanted to see Maglor—to see all of his sons, to speak to them without anyone coming away in tears or in anger—Fëanor’s first impulse was to refuse. He did not want to talk of Finwë, did not want to hear what some song made in his praise would sound like, even one written by Maglor. He couldn’t bear it—a reminder to be trotted out at every gathering or holiday to remind them all that he was gone and never coming back. 

And what was worse, it would not be the first time Finwë’s name was spoken between him and Maglor. Fëanor could not imagine that Maglor had anything kinder to say now than he had then. 

Finwë chose you, always, every time, even when he shouldn’t have. In your turn you set the works of your hands above everything, and set us on the road to our own destruction.

He looked down at the paper wrappings on his lap that the pie had come in. The lingering taste in his mouth had turned to ashes. His father’s absence loomed suddenly so large—blotting out the sun for a moment, leaving him in deep shadow. “What sort of song is it to be?” he asked when he could find his voice.

“A lament of some kind, but what form it will take, we don’t know,” said Amras. He sounded wary, and only then did Fëanor realize that he must not be hiding his thoughts very well. He had to be better than this, lest he ruin whatever this was before it even properly began. “He’s going to ask what you would like to hear in a song for him—it can be anything, really. He says everything new he learns helps him shape the song, even if he doesn’t end up including it all in so many words. He’s spoken to Míriel and Indis, of course, and also to all of us, though I don’t think Curvo or Moryo have given him an answer yet.”

“He also says he might not even be able to finish it,” Amrod added quietly. 

Fëanor took a deep breath and looked up. “Why would he not finish it? I’ve never…I never knew him to leave a song unfinished before.” Sometimes it would take him months or even years of cheerful complaining, but his songs always got done in the end. When he had been very young and new to songwriting, Maglor had sometimes come to him for help. Fëanor hadn’t thought about those golden afternoons in such a long time—he hadn’t recognized at the time just how precious those hours had been, full of laughter and jokes and clever wordplay, those glimpses of Maglor’s mind that few others saw because his songwriting was usually such a solitary exercise. He took it far more seriously than he had often let on in those days—even when the song was itself a joke, he had always wanted to get it just right, and would keep working at it until he was fully satisfied. In that, Fëanor thought, Maglor took after him, though he no longer knew if it was a strength or a flaw. 

“He said once that he was never able to find words for any of us no matter how hard he tried,” said Amras after a slight pause. Another glimpse into Maglor’s mind—into what grief had done to it. “But I think he will finish this one. He isn’t as weighed down by everything anymore, and it isn’t only his own words he’s got. In spite of what he says, he seems very determined to finish.” With that he rose to his knees to gather up the pie wrappings to dispose of. 

Amrod seemed to debate with himself for a moment before he said quietly, “Cáno isn’t angry anymore either, you know. I think he’s afraid.”

“I know that,” Fëanor said, also quiet. Maglor’s anger spent itself quickly—it had burned out that same afternoon they’d met in Imloth Ningloron, leaving him shivering and struggling against tears instead. He had even said, then, that what Fëanor had taken as strength was really fear. Fëanor didn’t agree—he thought Maglor’s strength was that he kept going in spite of the fear, not out of a lack of it—but it wasn’t an argument he either wanted or expected to ever have. “You’re all afraid, aren't you?” he asked. Maedhros had been afraid too—and so had Caranthir, though he’d hidden it a little better after his initial shock. So was Curufin, sometimes, even still.

“We have been,” said Amrod, speaking more frankly than Fëanor would have expected on the subject. “But Cáno is different. He was afraid of everything for a long time, and even after going to Lórien I think some of it lingers. He was afraid of us, before we met again, and even for a while afterward. He thought we would be angry with him.”

That thought made that space under Fëanor’s ribs hurt—a sharper pain than the usual ache of grief. “For what?”

“He wasn’t able to save us,” Amrod said, still speaking frankly—as though their deaths were just something to talk about like the fact that it had rained briefly the day before. “And he threw the Silmaril away.”

I cast it away; I threw it as hard and as far as I could into the Sea at the end of the world, and I would do it again in a heartbeat! 

“We weren’t angry, of course,” Amrod said. “We never were, not with him, about any of it. I think he’s afraid you will be though.”

“I’m not,” Fëanor said. “I told him I was glad he’d thrown it away.” He would have preferred all three Silmarils be cast into the fires of the earth or into the sea—so he did not have to look up in the gloaming to see one shining near the horizon. For a long time he had wished them never made at all. He didn’t think he really wanted that, now, but he was still glad they were all out of reach.

“Do you understand, though, why he might not believe that?”

“I do.” 

When Amras returned they got back to work, spending the afternoon opening up the different boxes to see what lay inside. Somehow Fëanor found himself telling Amrod and Amras all kinds of things about their brothers that they hadn’t known before—things from their childhoods, before the twins had been born. He could tell by the looks on their faces that he was giving them fodder for many jokes, which made him feel a little lighter too. Not everything from the past was dark and terrible. Once upon a time they had all been a happy family—truly happy. Sometimes these days that was easy to forget, even while he longed to have it back. 

In spite of the laughter of the afternoon and the fact that they had appeared at all, Fëanor was still surprised when Amrod said as they parted, “We didn’t come to Tirion just to spend one day with you and then disappear. We’ll see you tomorrow.”

And he did. And the next day, and the day after that—even when he did not do any work at the old house they came looking for him in his rooms or his workshop, to drag him out into the city to see some performance happening in one of the squares, or to try some new pastry that their cousin Súriellë’s wife Míraen had made, or to ask questions about the gems he was working on for Findis—and then to ask questions about Findis herself, and Fingolfin and Lalwen and all Fëanor’s other doings in Tirion. In return they shared things about themselves—little things like their favorite colors or the fact that Amrod preferred peaches while Amras liked oranges, or the songs they liked best to dance to.

Fëanor had felt, after a winter of looking into the palantír, that he understood his sons better. Now he was getting to know two of them, and it was confusing and elating by turns. He kept biting his tongue and then realizing he didn’t have to. 

“You seem happier lately,” Fingolfin said to him one afternoon. He had come to Fëanor’s workshop claiming to want to escape his duties for a few hours, so Fëanor had given him a box of gemstones to sort so they could both be doing something while they talked. Fingolfin dropped a sapphire into a pile of others, and fished around in the box for another. 

“Did I seem unhappy before?” Fëanor asked.

“Findis certainly thought so—at least all this past winter. She wanted me to take away that palantír you’ve got under your bed.”

“It’s not under my bed.”

“Well, wherever you’re keeping it. I wasn’t going to,” Fingolfin added when Fëanor shot him a half-hearted glare. “Curufinwë wouldn’t have asked you to look into one of those without a very good reason. But you were more withdrawn than usual up until Ambarussa came to Tirion.”

“I should’ve picked up one of those stones years ago,” said Fëanor. He returned his attention to the diamonds for Findis, half of which were cut and ready to be filled with starlight. The other half he would fill with moonlight. “I saw everything that unfolded in Mandos, but—well, you know. It’s hazy now.”

“And even Vairë’s threads can’t really capture the reality of it,” said Fingolfin. 

“Yes.” He had also listened to what anyone would tell him, and he had read the Red Book and many others besides—but there was such a stark difference between reading words on a page and seeing what had happened. “And—did you know our mothers asked Canafinwë to write a song for our father?”

“No. Is that why they both went to Imloth Ningloron last year?”

“It seems so. He’s coming to Tirion sometime later this year—Ambarussa told me he wants to speak to everyone before he writes it.”

“Hm.” Fingolfin set another sapphire onto the workbench. “Findis wrote a song for him once, but nothing like what our mothers will have asked Macalaurë to write. Did she ever show it to you?”

“No. I didn’t know she wrote songs.”

“She dabbles once in a while. One can’t spend so much time in Elemmírë’s company without picking something up, I suppose.” When Fëanor glanced up in confusion Fingolfin laughed. “Didn’t you know? Who do you think those diamonds are for?”

“For Findis…?”

“So she can put them into a set of jewelry for Elemmírë—who looks, I am told, exceedingly lovely in shades of pale blue and green.”

Fëanor tried to think if he’d ever actually seen Elemmírë and Findis together. He did not think he had, but he wouldn’t have cared, before, and these days Elemmírë very rarely left Valmar, and he did not often leave Tirion. Findis spent a great deal of her time in Valmar of course, but Fëanor had assumed it was to stay with Indis. “Oh,” was all he could think to say. Then, “Is Lalwen seeing someone I should know about?”

“Lalwen will spend a decade happily alone, and then go a year or two courting someone new every other week before deciding to give it all up again,” Fingolfin said, rolling his eyes fondly. “When something turns serious we’ll know—though we’ll have other things to worry about, what with the Dagor Dagorath starting.”

“I feel compelled to point out that my return from Mandos was once thought to herald the Dagor Dagorath.”

Fingolfin grinned. “True, but even your return never seemed so unlikely as Lalwen settling down with anyone. But we were speaking of songs. I have a copy of Findis’ somewhere, if you would like to read it.”

“I…I would, yes. Thank you.”

“Did Ambarussa say that Macalaurë would be seeking you out, when he comes to Tirion?”

“Yes.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?”

Fëanor shrugged and didn’t look up from his work. He was under no illusion that Maglor would be coming to Tirion at all, let alone to seek him out, if he did not have this project before him. He was still afraid, and Fëanor didn’t know what he was supposed to do to allay those fears. He didn’t know if there was anything he could do. “I suppose I’ll find out,” he said.

“Findekáno has written to tell me that he and Maedhros are much happier. They are delighted to be uncles again, and seem to be determined not to be the responsible ones, unlike when Celebrimbor was small.”

Fëanor couldn’t help but smile at that. “Náriel and Calissë are equally delighted with them. Apparently Cáno was having all kinds of adventures in Middle-earth with talking beavers and unhelpful foxes.” Fingolfin laughed out loud. “And Curvo is just happy to have them both close enough again to visit.”

“So is Findekáno,” said Fingolfin. “Have you heard from them at all—aside from second-hand?”

“I saw them briefly. I was leaving Imloth Ningloron as they were arriving last year.”

“And…?”

“It went about as well as it could have.” Fëanor turned the uncut gem he held over in his hands, watching the way the light through the window caught on its surface. “They’re all afraid of me. They have been since—since well before the Darkening. I still don’t know how to fix it.”

“Doing what they ask of you is the best way, I think,” said Fingolfin. “Though I admit to sharing some of Findis’ concerns. You’ve seemed very tired these past few months as well as unhappy.”

“What is a few months of sleepless nights compared to what all of you endured?”

Fingolfin rolled his eyes. “Nothing you have or will endure can be compared to the rest of us. You will never cross the Helcaraxë or be besieged, or any of the rest of it—though I wish you wouldn’t pretend that your own death was not terrible in itself. There can be no perfect balancing of the scales; that is why we have all chosen to throw them out. Whatever your sons are asking of you, I cannot believe it to be punishment.”

“It’s not, but—”

“Then why require it of yourself?”

“I’m not,” Fëanor said, and glared at Fingolfin when he made a skeptical noise. “But I’m not going to shy away from something they need just because it’s uncomfortable.”

“Of course not—but is this not more than mere discomfort?”

“I’m fine.”

“Are you?”

“One of us won’t be if you keep questioning everything I say.”

Fingolfin relented, but only until they both left the workshop to prepare for dinner. “Fëanáro, it’s only—when you are so deeply unhappy you tend to neglect yourself. You haven’t been lately, as far as I can tell, which is why I haven’t spoken of it until now, but—I just do not want to see you start.” He slipped away down another hallway before Fëanor could so much as open his mouth to reply, so he was left staring at his brother’s back before he disappeared around a corner.

He did not like being so easily read by anyone. In his previous life, only his wife or his father would have said such things to him. Now—

Well, now he had three siblings who said those things in different ways, but he also had neither Nerdanel nor Finwë. In his previous life, he might have listened to Nerdanel or to Finwë only once in a while—and not at all by the end. Now he knew better, but it felt like a lesson learned too late. It felt like he was too late for everything—for his children, for his father, for his marriage. 

He’d meant what he said, though. The grief and the horror and the sleepless nights—that was such a small price to pay if it meant he could have a real conversation with his children without any of them feeling as though they were talking past one another, if it meant that someday they might not fear him. If they might someday really believe it when he told them that he loved them.

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…for his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or of Men, have held their fathers of greater worth?
- The Silmarillion, “Of the Flight of the Noldor”

- - 

Every so often, usually in spring, Fëanor made his way to Formenos. After the first unplanned trip had brought Fingolfin and Findis chasing after him, he made sure to tell Fingolfin where he was going and assure him that no, he did not want company, and yes, he would be back in a few weeks at most. It had been many years since he’d last felt the need to go; this year he tarried in Tirion until summertime, and did not plan to stay longer by the lake than a day or so. Fingolfin gave him a worried look when he shared his plans, but he’d already voiced his concerns and knew that Fëanor had heard them, and so said nothing more.

He never went into Formenos itself. After the first time he hadn’t even looked inside. It was too awful, and just made him remember the terrified and haunted looks on Maedhros and Maglor’s faces when they’d rushed out to catch him before he could reach the broken doors after the Darkening. He’d caught only a glimpse, then, of a bloody sheet laid over a shape that looked like a body but which, he had been certain, could not have been his father. Not Finwë. It was too small. It was too still.

Now he left his horse to graze near the trees and walked around the walls, glancing toward the climbing roses and the butterflies flitting between the blossoms, and the bees collecting nectar. He could see a hive overhead, large and busy, under one of the still-intact eaves. It made him think of one summer spent by this lake—long before the building of Formenos—when Celegorm had been just old enough to start wanting to climb trees. They had found a beehive full of honey in the woods, and Finwë had taught them—Maedhros, Maglor, and Celegorm—the right songs to calm the bees so that they could collect some honeycomb for themselves without getting stung. 

Maedhros had been scared of the bees. Fëanor remembered him hanging back and clinging to his hand even after Finwë had sung them calm. Celegorm, always fearless even as a small child, had had several crawling over his hands, giggling at the ticklish feeling. Maglor had not cared for the bees, but had felt the dripping honeycombs Finwë had cut for them all had been well worth the discomfort. 

Fëanor went to sit beside the grave. It was late enough in the year that the hyacinths had long ago come and gone. Poppies and Evermind bloomed over it instead, red and white and sweetly fragrant, mingling with sword lilies and delicate umbels of Queen Míriel’s lace. Finwë was not there—only his bones remained somewhere under the flowers and the grass and the stones—but it was the closest Fëanor could get to him these days, and it didn’t matter if he sounded foolish speaking aloud to flowers and grass, because no one else was there to hear. “I’ve been cleaning out my old house,” he told the flowers. “It’s falling down already, so I’m going to help it along. I don’t know yet what I’ll build in its place. Ambarussa are in Tirion, and they’ve been helping me. It’s…it’s been nice.” His voice broke on the last word, and he bowed his head. Across the lake a loon called out. They always sounded so lonely, and he had only ever heard them on the Wilwarinen since his return to life. “And Macalaurë,” he went on, as he ran his fingertips over the petals of a flower, “Macalaurë is coming to Tirion sometime this year, perhaps after the Midsummer holiday. He’s writing a song for you. I’m told he wants to speak to everyone about it, even me, but I don’t…I don’t know what to tell him.” He was meant to decide what it was he wanted to hear in a song sung for Finwë. What he truly wanted was for there to be no reason to write such a song at all, for the years to roll back so that Finwë was not only alive but had never died.

He wanted a lot of things, these days, that he could never have. 

“I miss you, Atya,” he whispered, as the wind wept over the lake, rustling in the cattails and reeds and bringing the smell of honey locust up from the woods on the other side. “I thought it would get easier with time, the way missing Ammë did when I was young, but it hasn’t. I miss you more every day.”

He spent the next day walking around the perimeter of the lake, looking for new kinds of butterflies he hadn’t seen before, and skipping pebbles over the calm surface of the water while indulging in memories of teaching his sons how to do it the same way Finwë had once taught him. Of the laughter and Laurelin’s golden light bouncing off of the ripples—of Nerdanel then picking up a stone and outdoing them all. 

When he returned to Tirion a few days later, he found that Findis had also returned from her visit to Imloth Ningloron. She was very pleased with the diamonds, and her cheeks went pink when he asked after Elemmírë. “I had no idea you’d noticed,” she laughed. 

“I didn’t. Nolofinwë told me. What are you going to do with these?”

“There’s that grand feast of Ingwë’s coming up in the next few years. These gems will do very nicely for the diadem and necklace I have in mind for her. It will take me until then to finish them, most likely.”

“How was Imloth Ningloron?”

“Lovely, as always. It was wonderful to see Macalaurë again, and to hear him sing. He seems very happy there with Elrond and his family—and there was a great deal of excitement, for did you know Gil-galad has returned from Mandos?”

“Yes, I’d heard.” The news had swept through Tirion, and Fingolfin had, after he’d gotten over his own giddy delight at his grandson’s return, made a joke or two about being concerned that he might be deposed. Everyone who remembered the end of the First Age, or the entirety of the Second, had been overjoyed at the news. Fëanor was happy for Fingon and his wife, and for Fingolfin, who had not seen his grandson since Gil-galad had been a very small child, and for Anairë who had never met him at all. It was a long time coming, this return.

“I also stopped to see Nerdanel on my way home—and Maitimo and Carnistir were there.”

“How are they?”

“I found Maitimo playing with a hedgehog in Carnistir’s garden. He seems much happier than when I last saw him. More at peace with himself. Have you heard that Macalaurë is coming to Tirion later?”

“I have. Ambarussa told me.”

Midsummer came and went. All of Fëanor’s sons but Maglor and Celegorm came to Tirion for it. He stayed out of their way, and feasted and danced and made merry—and felt merry, for the most part. It was hard not to when surrounded by such effusive celebration. The city was crowded with visitors for the holiday, and it almost felt like Tirion of old for a little while. Things got quiet again afterward, and Fëanor was glad to drop back into his normal routines. He went to the old house most mornings, though he didn't always do much, and his afternoons were spent either with Fingolfin or in his workshop. 

He heard of it when Celegorm and Maglor came to the city, bringing Elrond with them; the twins told him, before they parted late that afternoon—he for dinner with his sisters, and they to join the rest of their brothers in welcoming Maglor and Celegorm back to the city. 

He expected to hear from Maglor before long—a written message of some kind—an invitation or a request to meet somewhere. Fëanor did not expect to go walking through the cherry grove in the morning only to find the door to his father’s workshop standing ajar. He’d only gone inside once, just after his own return. It was empty—cleared out, hollowed out—and he hadn’t stayed more than a minute. There was no reason for anyone else to be there, and he strode forward to yank the door open, expecting some foolish or curious children. “Who is here? This is not a place to—” He broke off when Maglor spun around, eyes wide over the hand pressed to his mouth. They were overly-bright, as though he was struggling to hold back tears. “Cáno,” Fëanor said, taking half a step back. Of course it was Maglor. This place, where he had spent so many happy hours in his youth, would likely mean even more to him than it did to Fëanor. And of course Fëanor had frightened him—again. So much for this meeting going better than the last. “I am sorry, I thought…” 

“It’s all right,” Maglor said. He lowered his hands, clasping them behind his back, holding himself like he was bracing for—Fëanor didn't know what. He was dressed in fine clothes, though not in a style Fëanor was familiar with. He supposed it came from somewhere across the Sea. Though fine it was also practical and easy to move in, loose-fitting pants and sturdy boots, and a long-sleeved black tunic that fell to his knees, embroidered with stars and music notes in silver thread. Fëanor did not recognize the handiwork, but he recognized the faint creases—this was not something Maglor wore often. Whoever had given it to him would not be able to give him any others, and so he would keep it carefully packed away, preserved against time, only taking it out when it felt important—it was what Finwë had done with all the things Míriel had made, long ago. Seeing that Maglor needed to do the same made Fëanor’s heart ache. The maker of that tunic had loved him, and he still loved them. That this day was deemed important enough to wear such a gift meant something, though Fëanor couldn’t begin to guess what.

Maglor had bound his hair up in braids that morning as well, surprisingly elaborate, adorned with silver threads and beads fastening the ends so that they clicked gently together when he moved, and a pair of silver earrings set with tiny sapphires that Fëanor recognized as Curufin’s work. He wore no rings or bracelets, and only a simple silver necklace. It was a far cry from the way he had once dressed, even on a normal day. Once, Maglor had loved to wear bright and colorful jewels in his hair and his ears, with elaborate necklaces and bracelets that jangled on his wrists, and brightly colored robes. These days, Fëanor knew, he wore no jewels at all unless he felt he must, and his clothes were usually far more like what Fëanor himself was wearing at that moment—plain and practical. 

He settled his gaze at last on Maglor’s face. In their previous encounters he hadn’t really gotten a chance to look at it properly—he’d seen it up close often in the palantír of late, but that wasn’t really the same thing, especially since he had primarily been looking into the distant past. It was different, somehow, seeing the scars there in person, seeing the lines around his eyes that should not have been quite so deep.

Finally, Maglor said, “I was looking for you.” His voice shook, but whether it was fear or just the lingering effects of having been startled, Fëanor couldn’t say. 

It wasn’t surprising. Fëanor could think of nothing else that would bring Maglor to the cherry grove at this hour; he would have known from Curufin that it was Fëanor’s habit to walk there in the mornings. It was quiet, and a little piece of his father that still survived in spite of everything—the cherry trees that were descended from the ones he’d planted, and the workshop that had been preserved, even empty, as a reminder that Finwë had once walked there, that he had lived and laughed and been so much more than the stories made him. “To speak of this song you are writing?” he asked, just in case Amrod and Amras had been mistaken, and there was something else Maglor wanted to talk to him about. 

“Yes, if you will speak to me,” Maglor said. 

“Of course I will,” Fëanor said, a part of him wanting to laugh and another wanting to cry at the suggestion that he might not want to speak to his own son—for any reason. But he did not think he could do it in that workshop. Not when it was so empty and dark. “Let us come out into the sunlight.” It wouldn’t be much better under the cherry trees that Finwë had loved, but at least it was green and bright. Fëanor did not look back at Maglor until they reached the nearest tree. He expected Maglor to ask a question, or to say something, but he didn’t. When the silence became unbearable Fëanor said, “I don’t know if I will be able to speak much of him. It is…” Impossible. Unbearable. “Very hard.”

“I understand,” Maglor said. He spoke quietly—so very different from both times they’d last seen one another, when he had been furious enough to shout in one instance, and then determinedly and falsely cheerful in the other. He kept rubbing his thumb over the scars on his right palm. They looked pinker than Fëanor thought they should—inflamed, slightly, as they had been when they’d first met in Imloth Ningloron. They looked as though they hurt, but Maglor did not seem quite aware of what he was doing with his hands. “Grandmother Míriel said that he was the same way,” he went on. “Unable to speak of such close griefs.”

Not for the first time, Fëanor wondered if this was a habit he had learned from his father—some leftover remnant of Cuiviénen’s trials and griefs—or if it was something innate. In the end he supposed it didn’t matter. “He was.” 

Silence fell again, broken only by a bluebird singing in a nearby tree. This time Maglor spoke. “The question I have been asking is what others would wish to hear sung of him. Not all of it will be sung—I cannot give everyone a verse—but all of it helps me to shape the song, to find the words that will capture him best.” He paused very briefly before he added, “It cannot be a complete portrait, because to put something into words is to lose something…but it will be as near to it as I can make it.”

Fëanor had never thought of it like that—of reduction in translation. But of course the Finwë of a song would be less than the Finwë of life. Still, if it was Maglor choosing the words— “Then it will be very near indeed.” He crossed his arms and let himself fall back against the tree, feeling the rough bark scrape over his back through his shirt. That made him think of the marks he knew still covered Maglor’s back, and he had to look away from him, out into the trees, as he turned his thoughts back to the question at hand. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Maglor duck his head, staring at the ground rather than at him. 

He might as well admit just how hard it was. If nothing else, he could not let anything like pride stand in his way again. “I have been thinking of how I might answer that question since Ambarussa told me of it, but I don’t know. Anyone can tell you how great he was—how strong, how brave, how loving. You know all those things yourself.” It honestly seemed incredible that Maglor needed to ask questions in the first place. Of all Fëanor’s children, Maglor had been in some ways closest to Finwë. He had certainly spent more time with him than his brothers—hours at a time in the woodworking shop, learning all that Finwë could teach him and then often choosing to use that space for his own work rather than the bigger and busier workshops at home. He had learned the discipline of using his voice for more than mere music first at Finwë’s knee, too, before he had gone to study under Elemmírë and then the Valar themselves. Finwë had been a mighty singer himself even before coming to Valinor, and Fëanor remembered just how happy he had been to pass that knowledge on to Maglor. 

“There is much I do not know,” said Maglor simply. “And no one knew him like you did.”

Fëanor had to take a deep breath, biting the inside of his cheek hard so he didn’t deny that as vehemently as was his first impulse. When he could speak calmly he said, “I don’t think I knew him as well as I once thought.” And then something slid into place in his mind—thinking of the ways Finwë in the song would be diminished from Finwë in life, and realizing why the idea made him feel uneasy. “Regardless, I would not have him turned into—into a myth, into some figure of legend, to be reduced to his greatest deeds.” He was a figure of legend, by now—so was Fëanor. So was Maglor. But it was harder to forget that someone was real, when you could see them in person, when you had more than just songs and stories. Finwë too had been real, as real as the empty workshop and the cherry tree with its rough bark still digging into Fëanor’s back, and— “He was as flawed as any one of us.” It was only once the words left his mouth that he realized how they sounded. “Do not mistake me—I miss my father, and every day without him is—there are no words for it. I love my father, but I am not blind to his faults. His inability to speak of those most closely held griefs was one. If he had been able to tell me—willing to try to speak of—of his own family left behind or lost, perhaps things might have gone differently. I might have understood better his desire for a large family, knowing that he had once had one.” 

He didn’t really know if it would have made anything better. It probably wouldn’t have. He would have still held that a betrayal of his mother was still a betrayal, whatever the reasons that lay behind it. If Finwë’s faults lay in not saying enough, Fëanor’s had been refusing to listen to what was said. Still—at least he would have known.

“I have been told that his mother remarried after his father was lost,” Maglor said, “and that he loved his younger sisters dearly, though they would not make the Journey.”

Fëanor had known that he had aunts, somewhere in the east, and a grandmother. He had not known that she had remarried just as Finwë had done. If Finwë had just told him… He closed his eyes and pressed his palms against the tree bark, trying to focus his thoughts upon the texture and the way it dug into his skin. Maglor went on, still speaking so softly—so unlike himself, “It is not my intention to flatten him into a mere legend or story. With this song I am trying to do the opposite. That is why I wish to hear from everyone who loves him—and you most of all.”

He still couldn’t look at Maglor; the last thing either of them wanted or needed was for him to fall to pieces just speaking of his father. He kept his gaze trained on the cherries weighing down a branch just above his head. “He had a temper,” he said finally. “It showed rarely. He was furious at Formenos, but far more careful than I was to keep it hidden from all of you.” Even then, full of anger and frustration going in a dozen directions at once, he’d been a better father than Fëanor had ever been. “He was—” His voice threatened to waver and he swallowed hard. “—stubborn. Strong-willed, if you want to turn it to praise instead. And yet often he was too lenient. I don’t know why he did not intervene sooner in the conflict between myself and Nolofinwë. Intervene publicly, I mean, or more forcefully than only speaking sometimes to us each alone.” 

That was something he and Fingolfin had not really spoken of. It had been hard enough to speak of their father at all in the beginning, and now they rarely mentioned his name—following his own example, Fëanor realized with a pang. Speaking of Maglor’s songwriting plans had been the first time in years they’d spoken of him. It hurt too much, considering how each of them had last parted with him in life—hurt and angry and bitter. Fëanor’s parting from Finwë in Mandos had been much kinder, but that didn’t hurt any less, it was just different.

He understood only too well why Finwë never spoke of his lost family. He still wished that he had.

“Would it not have only made things worse?” Maglor asked. 

Probably; Fëanor knew he certainly would not have taken public criticism well, even from his father—especially from his father. “I don’t know. No one can know, for he never did.” Fëanor leaned more heavily against the tree, and thought again of the grave by the lake, and the slowly-crumbling stones of Formenos, and how even that place was holding up better against the passage of time than the house in Tirion into which he had poured so much more love and effort. “Findis is of the belief he will return to us one day. At least she hopes for it, but I cannot. Such estel is beyond me.” He didn’t even really like the word—it was too closely associated these days with the star, the Silmaril. It felt like something broken and sharp that he would just cut himself on trying to grasp at. 

“And me,” Maglor said, hardly speaking above a whisper. When Fëanor looked at him he had his gaze on the ground again. It was so hard to guess at what he was thinking. 

Fëanor hated this, this feeling that his sons were all strangers—the fact that it was more than just a feeling, that they were strangers, grown and shaped by things he was only just starting to understand. Maglor, most of all, was so much older. Even after decades in Lórien he seemed as though the Sea he had spent so many years wandering beside had tried to wear him down too—like it had nearly succeeded. It wasn’t true—Fëanor knew very well that a nerve of steel lurked beneath the surface—but as he stood there clad in black and silver, it was almost like he had faded partly out of the world, drained of color the way everything had been after the Darkening. Fëanor wished he had chosen another tunic that morning, something brighter. 

“Has this helped?” he asked.

“It all helps.”

And then they both tried to speak at the same time. “Atya—” 

“Cáno—”

Fëanor paused, and when Maglor didn’t try again he said, mind still caught up in thoughts of the Darkening, “Was it really so bad—at Formenos—when you did not let me see—”

“It was,” Maglor said, more firm than he had yet been that morning. “We did not let anyone see, Maedhros and I, and he tried to keep me back too when we approached the doors, only I wouldn’t listen.” He hesitated then, and Fëanor could all too easily imagine the scene as they approached the broken doors, stumbling through the unnatural dark, clinging to each other. And he had not been there. He should have been there—or they all with him—and yet—

Maglor went on, “Only Fingon suffered a worse fate, later at the Nirnaeth. Finwë was—” his voice came close to cracking, “—you would not have known him. It would have destroyed you.”

“It destroyed me anyway,” Fëanor said, the words slipping out before he could stop them. 

Maglor met his gaze for the first time that morning. “You do not need that memory of him in your mind,” he said, voice heavy with the weight of all the memories he carried. “We did not let you see because we loved you, and we knew that you would follow him to Mandos then and there.”

“Maybe that would have been better than what came afterward.” Fëanor didn’t know why he had suddenly lost all control of his tongue. He did not want to be saying these things, not out loud, not to Maglor. 

Maglor, though, did not seem fazed—or even surprised. “Such thoughts as that never lead anywhere good,” he said, with the look of someone who spoke from experience. “The Oath was a mistake—the Oath was what led to our ruin. Going east? That wasn’t.” Fëanor blinked, startled. “Beleriand would have been overrun ere the moon ever rose, and the rest of the world would have followed so swiftly even the Valar, had they chosen to act, would not have been able to stop it. Not all our deeds were in vain, however doomed we were.” 

Fëanor was not accustomed to thinking of it like that—to thinking of any of his last deeds as something worthy of remembering for the good they had done. The battle that had killed him had been, overall, a resounding victory—but he did not often think of it that way because he had not lived to see the results of that victory. It was something to keep in mind, maybe, when he looked again into the past.

Maglor ducked his head once more, as though he’d surprised himself with such a speech. He pressed his thumb into his palm again, more deliberately this time. Fëanor did not like that at all. More hesitantly, Maglor said, “When last we met I said some very cruel things.”

“Nothing that you said was untrue.” 

“That does not mean I should have said it. I’m—”

The last thing Fëanor wanted to hear was an apology. Not for that. Maglor had had every right to say what he’d said—it didn’t matter how deeply those words had cut into Fëanor’s heart. He’d deserved it, every word. He reached out before he could think better of it, unable to keep watching Maglor press into his scars to purposely cause himself more pain. Maglor flinched at his touch, but didn’t pull away. “You were angry,” Fëanor said softly, “and afraid, and in pain, and I lay at the root of it all. Do not apologize to me, Canafinwë.”

Maglor didn’t lift his head, and when he spoke he sounded so small and young—not angry but still in pain, and still afraid. “But I am sorry.”

What Fëanor wanted to do was gather his son up in his arms and promise him that everything was going to be all right—but he couldn’t do that, not when he was sure that he wouldn’t be believed. The only reason Maglor was there at all was because he had a song to write. But he was there, and so Fëanor had to take advantage of the moment, in case he never got the chance again. It was something, that Maglor was no longer angry with him, but Fëanor would have rather dealt with his fury than with his fear. “You need not be,” he said, resting his other hand on Maglor’s shoulder. “I am your father; you should always be able to lose your temper, to lash out, without fear of reprisal, especially when I am the one who has hurt you. I know that has not always been true, and I am so, so sorry—and for this most of all.” He squeezed Maglor’s scarred hand, just a little. He didn’t know which was worse—Maglor’s real scars or the marks on Maedhros’ hand that had remained with him even through Mandos and his remaking. That both of them experienced pain in Fëanor’s presence was—there were no words for how terrible that was, and he wished desperately that he knew how to stop it, how to heal that wound of the spirit that kept spilling over into the body. “You were not wrong. I put my works above all those I loved most in the world, and you have suffered the most for it. I’m so sorry. I know it’s not enough, I just do not yet know what will be.” When Maglor lifted his head at last, eyes wide and shimmering with unshed tears, Fëanor kissed his forehead—in case he never got a chance to do that again, either. “I love you, Cáno. I look forward to hearing this song when it’s done.” 

He didn't wait for a reply. Maglor did not seem in much of a state to say anything, and Fëanor had been aware for some time now that Daeron was waiting nearby. He didn't look back as he walked away through the cherry trees, putting his hands into his pockets so he didn’t have to look at his own unblemished palms. 

It was tempting, sometimes, to go introduce himself to Eärendil just so he could ask to touch the Silmaril, to see if it would burn him. He hadn’t, because he knew that wouldn’t be taken well—and because he didn’t know if it would be worse if it did burn him or if it didn’t. 

His intention when he’d gotten up that morning had been to go to the old house to try to rescue some stonework, hopefully without bringing the walls down around him. Instead he found Amras laughing quietly at some old scribbles on a wall in the room that had been the twins’ schoolroom. They were faded, a long-ago child’s clumsy attempt at a family portrait with only half-finished names underneath all the figures—but tangible evidence that those happy years really had happened, that they hadn’t always been so broken and weighed down by grief as they were now. 

Amras asked how things had gone with Maglor, and then invited Fëanor to go with him and Amrod when they left Tirion to return to their home in the mountains—a proper invitation, rather than the half-serious suggestions from before. 

Getting away from Tirion—from everything—sounded wonderful, but Fëanor couldn’t really make himself believe Amras actually meant it, instead of just trying to do something kind.

Then Amras asked, “Did you want to do any work here today?” and didn’t wait for Fëanor to finish his answer before deciding for him. “No you don’t. Come on. We’ll find Amrod and maybe steal Curvo’s girls and go riding outside the city.”

There wasn’t really any arguing with that idea, even if Fëanor was inclined to argue with anything Amras said or wanted at all—and he was never going to refuse a day with his granddaughters. 

They came to the colorful street where Curufin lived, turning the corner just as Maedhros stepped out of Curufin’s workshop with Celebrimbor and their cousin Elessúrë, the eldest son of Nerdanel’s brother Linquendil. Fëanor almost turned around, but Maedhros saw him first and slipped back inside. If Amras noticed, he gave no sign at all, and greeted Celebrimbor and Elessúrë brightly. 

It had been startling to come back to find Elessúrë a man grown with a wife and children of his own. He had been a very small child at the time of the Darkening—and Fëanor had not spent much time around him before then, not since his estrangement with Nerdanel. The rest of her family was cool, polite but far less welcoming than they had once been. Fëanor understood and did not begrudge it, though he felt the loss keenly. Elessúrë had been standoffish at first, but now he seemed as friendly with his cousins as he might have been had nothing ever happened, and if he also seemed a little uncertain when speaking to Fëanor—well, at least he was willing to try. 

Upon learning of the day’s plan, Calissë came flying outside to throw herself into Fëanor’s arms. He lifted her up and kissed her hello, and it finally felt easy to smile, instead of like an effort he had to put forth. “Hello, my love. How are you this morning?”

“I’m wonderful! Are we really going out riding all day?”

“We absolutely are.”

The fields outside of the city were wide and empty. Amrod had given more thought to the outing than Amras had, and brought a picnic lunch, after which Amras took Calissë out to teach her some tricks in the saddle that Fëanor knew would have alarmed Curufin—though only because he tended to worry more than was needed. 

That was new, too, the worry—another legacy of Middle-earth. Or maybe just of the Darkening—it was hard not to expect the worst when you knew what it looked like, when you knew how suddenly everything could all go wrong. 

“Did it go well, speaking to Maglor?” Amrod asked as they folded up the picnic blanket. 

“Yes.” Fëanor sat back on his heels. A butterfly flitted past his face, jewel-bright in the sunshine, making him think of the Wilwarinen again. “It was—it was hard, but not for the same reasons it was before.”

“Maybe next time it will be easier?”

If there was a next time. “Maybe.”

It was late when they returned to the stables. Fëanor handed Calissë, exhausted and half-asleep, over to Amras and asked them both, “Do you really want me to go away to the mountains with you?” 

“Yes, Atya,” said Amrod. “We really do.”

“Then I’ll come.” Fëanor tried to smile, but he felt as tired as Calissë—only there wasn’t anyone to carry him home. “Only give me more than ten minutes’ warning. Half an hour, at least.”

Amras grinned at him. “I think we can probably give you a full hour. It won’t be for some days yet, though. Will we see you tomorrow?”

“If you like, though I don’t think I’ll go back to the house.” He’d spent enough time lately surrounded by the past, and needed to ground himself again in the present. 

He took narrower roads and lesser-used alleyways back to the palace. Dinner awaited him in his rooms, alongside Fingolfin, his hair loose and the days finery abandoned in favor of plainer and more comfortable robes. “Aren’t you supposed to be dining with your court?” Fëanor asked. 

“I spoke with Macalaurë today.”

Oh. It seemed a little ridiculous now to have assumed that Maglor had just left after speaking to Fëanor. Of course there were others whose knowledge and opinions he would have wanted, and it had still been early when Fëanor had left him. His had been the first conversation, rather than the only one. “How did it go?”

“It was good to see him—I’ve always been fond of all your sons, you know that.”

Fëanor retreated to his bedroom to wash his hands and face—he’d planned on a bath, but that would have to wait—and change into something that didn’t smell like sweat and horses. When he returned, Fingolfin poured them wine, and pushed a plate across the small table by the window. “How did your meeting go?” he asked. 

“Well enough.” Fëanor stared at his plate and did not feel at all hungry. He picked up a fork anyway, curious about what Fingolfin had spoken of to Maglor, but not knowing how to ask. 

Fingolfin did not seem to have such qualms. “We never speak of him,” he said, pushing some vegetables around his own plate. “I wonder if we should.”

Fëanor had been thinking the same, but at the same time… “What is there to say?”

“Anything—everything. I don’t mean we need to—oh I don’t know. We could just reminisce sometimes, couldn’t we? Speak of happier days. Retell some of his stories or his old jokes. There was a saying among the Edain that no one ever really died as long as their name was still spoken. Hador joked to me once that neither he nor any of his people would ever die at all, with so many friends among the deathless elves to keep speaking their names.”

“It’s not true, though.”

“Well, no, not in the way you mean—I have not brought Hador’s spirit back into the world just by speaking his name now—but their memory remains. That is what will never die. It’s the same sort of idea that lies behind the memorial garden that Elrond and Celebrían have made.”

They ate in silence for several minutes. Out of the window the city glowed gently in the growing evening, as the stars shone overhead. Soon the moon would rise, casting its silver glow through the Calacirya before it climbed up over the Pelóri. “What did you speak of with Cáno?” Fëanor asked finally.

“I told him about Formenos—what it looks like now. We spoke about fear and guilt and anger—and then I shared some happier stories from my own childhood. He asked what I would wish to hear in this song of his, and I told him that I would like to hear something of the life and beauty that has come back even to Formenos. The way that—that life still goes on, in spite of everything. Atar knew that, and I think he would think it important to remember. Even Morgoth couldn’t ruin that place forever. Then he asked if I thought he should visit.”

Fëanor couldn’t help but recoil from the thought. “What did you tell him?”

“That it’s beautiful, but lonely—I didn’t advise him one way or the other. I don’t know if he’ll really go, but I don’t think Macalaurë is any stranger to lonely places. What did you speak of?”

He stabbed a slice of beet with a little more force than necessary. “His faults. Atya’s, I mean.”

“Really? Which ones?”

“His temper. How stubborn he was. The way he wouldn’t—the way he never spoke of anything, the same way we never speak of him now. I didn’t know he had siblings until Thingol told me about them, and I didn’t know his mother—his mother remarried, just like he did. Did you know that?”

“No, I didn’t.” 

“The sisters he left behind were from that second marriage.”

“Things were different then,” Fingolfin said after a moment. “They did not know of Mandos—they did not know that someone could come back. I wonder if the whole…” He gestured vaguely with his wine glass. “All of that, around our parents and our mothers, I wonder if it could have been settled differently if the Valar had just…been able to understand. Just because they are not made to love more than one person as a spouse does not mean we can’t.”

“Neither of our mothers told us of it, either—though they told Macalaurë.” Fëanor didn’t know where else Maglor would have heard it, since he had not spoken yet to Elu Thingol, or to Ingwë, or anyone else who remembered Cuiviénen. 

“No one speaks of Cuiviénen, or those lost before Oromë found them,” said Fingolfin. “It has always been thus—here and in Alqualondë and in Valmar. I don’t think it was something they agreed upon, I think…well, our father wasn’t the only one who found it difficult to remember old pain.”

“We aren’t much better, I suppose,” Fëanor muttered. He took a sip of wine, but it did little to wash away the bitter taste of grief in his mouth. “Amrod wanted to try—some sort of textile art, when he was young. I think it was lace. I refused to allow it, just because I couldn’t…” 

“It’s awful, isn’t it, the way we hurt our children without trying?” Fingolfin sighed and drained his wine glass. As he set it down he said, “I also spoke to Macalaurë of you.” Fëanor said nothing. “I did not expect him to speak so frankly of his own feelings.”

“I’m not sure he would thank you for sharing with me whatever it is he told you.”

“He did not ask me to keep anything in confidence. I do not think he would. You already know that he is afraid—what he told me suggests that the fear has always been stronger than whatever anger he might have felt.”

“I know that,” said Fëanor. 

“I don’t think he doubts that you love him,” Fingolfin said.

Fëanor wasn’t sure he believed that. “Maybe not. It just isn’t enough, anymore.”

“It is the foundation on which all the rest is built. You both took a step in the right direction today. The rest will come with time.”

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There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sink through fading colors deep
To the sub aqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep.
- “Sonnet” by Elizabeth Bishop

- - 

Fëanor hadn’t really expected to see the twins the next day, but Amras came to find him in his workshop where he was busy with the minute and often fiddly work of stringing together a delicate golden chain for a necklace he’d been working on in fits and starts over the last few months. 

“Is this my hour’s notice?” Fëanor asked as Amras sat down and poked his fingers through a bowl of small opals. 

Amras laughed. Even though both twins laughed so easily, it was always worthwhile to know himself the cause. “No—I promise, we’ll give you more than an hour. Maglor asked me to pass on a message.”

Fëanor’s hands fell still and he looked up. “Yes?”

“It’s not bad,” said Amras. He leaned his elbows on the table. “He said to tell you he’s going to go back to avoiding you, more or less, but it’s not because of you. You didn’t say or do anything wrong yesterday—he wanted me to make sure you knew that. He just can’t think about anything else while he’s got this song all in his head. He doesn’t feel as though he can have another heavy sort of conversation yet.”

“…Oh.” Fëanor didn’t really know what he had expected—he hadn’t thought that the conversation had gone badly, all things considered, even if he didn’t think it had gone particularly well either—but now he wondered if he had revealed more of himself than he’d meant to, if Maglor was sending his brother with such reassurances.

Amras was preoccupied with other concerns. “He’s talking about it like it’s terribly important, this song,” he was saying, “and acting like it troubles him horribly.”

The image of Maglor pressing his thumb into his painful scars came back into Fëanor’s mind. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve been told not to worry by both Daeron and Elrond, and aside from Nelyo they know Cáno best. But he was very unhappy last night. But,” he added very quickly, “again, he told me to tell you it’s not because of you.” Fëanor couldn’t tell if it was Amras who was so concerned that he knew this, or if Maglor had really been so insistent as well. “When this song is all done with and he’s performed it either here in Tirion or at Ingwë’s party, or wherever it’s wanted, he’ll be able to turn his mind to other things.”

That, of course, made perfect sense. “I understand that, Telvo,” said Fëanor. “You don’t need to make excuses to me for a craftsman’s focus upon his work. It is important, this song, and he should be giving it all of his attention.” A part of him still wished it wasn’t being written, but that was selfish—just another manifestation of that avoidance he and Fingolfin had spoken of. Finwë did deserve such a song, and deserved all the care and effort that Maglor was putting into it.

“Oh.” Amras blinked, and dropped the opal in his hand back into the dish. “I suppose that is it, isn't it? Usually such things aren’t so…” He trailed off as though seeking for the right word. “Unhappy?”

Fëanor shrugged. “The subject is not a happy one. I hope this will be the last song your brother writes of its kind.” There had been a time when Maglor’s best works were the most joyful, when he avoided serious subjects and delighted most in absurd jokes and wordplay that would make his brothers laugh, and bright and quick melodies that showed off his skill on the harp or the lute. If Finwë deserved to have this song written for him, Maglor then deserved to be able to return to those other kinds of songs afterward—to sing of joyful things and set aside his lamentations.

“He has said it will be. Would you like me to carry any message back to him for you?”

Fëanor shook his head and picked up his pliers. “You don’t need to be playing messenger between us. I will see Cáno again when he is ready. Just knowing that he wants to speak again is enough.” He’d waited this long for even the smallest chance at reconciliation—he could wait a little longer. 

Amras lingered through most of the afternoon, chatting and asking questions, until he left to prepare for dinner that evening. Lalwen came to find Fëanor a little while later. “What are you doing, Fëanáro? You’ll be late for dinner!”

“So? I just want to finish—”

“You don’t want to miss tonight! Macalaurë and Daeron will be singing for us afterward.” Lalwen paused to peer at the sketch of the necklace on Fëanor’s drafting table while he blinked at her in surprise. “That’s quite nice. Who’s it for?”

“No one in particular.”

“Then can I have it?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you!” Lalwen bestowed a sun-bright smile on him. “I do so love having a brother willing to make me whatever jewelry I wish.” She leaned over to kiss his cheek. “Now go wash up! You don’t want to miss the singing, do you?”

“I do so love having a sister to hover over me like a mother hen. Yes, I’ll be there—I might be a little late, but I won’t miss it.”

He still lost track of time, being almost finished with one chain and not wanting to just leave it, and had to rush to wash and change, arriving halfway through the meal. “I was about to send someone to make sure you hadn’t injured yourself in your forge,” Fingolfin said as Fëanor dropped into his seat beside him.

“I was busy,” Fëanor replied. He saw Maglor at the closest table, and when he looked up their eyes met. Maglor looked as nervous now as he had been in the cherry grove, so Fëanor just offered him a smile before deliberately looking away. 

Lalwen leaned forward to peer past Anairë at him. “I gave you plenty of warning, Fëanáro!”

“I was busy,” he repeated, “working on that necklace for you. And I’m here now, aren’t I? Unless something truly remarkable happened that I’ve already missed…?”

“No, nothing remarkable,” Fingolfin said. 

“Well, Elrond is here,” said Anairë. “That’s rather remarkable.” She nodded to where he was seated—not near Maglor, to Fëanor’s surprise, but also not terribly far. Fëanor tried not to look directly, but he saw Daeron leaning over to whisper to Maglor, who had his gaze fixed very firmly on his plate. He also saw others glancing Maglor’s way every so often, and could tell that he was the subject of much of the room’s more hushed conversations. He felt himself bristle, but Fingolfin touched his arm and shook his head minutely, so he turned his attention to his own plate and just quietly seethed. Didn’t anyone realize how much discomfort they were causing?

“He only has to deal with it tonight,” Fingolfin murmured, “and fewer are truly shocked at his appearance than it might seem. Anyone who went to Middle-earth knows better.”

“Should he be made to get up and perform in front of them, then?”

“No one is making him do it. I made a request, I did not give an order—and I made sure that he knew it when he arrived here. He insisted to me that he’s fine—that he and Daeron are happy to sing for us.”

Fëanor glanced at Maglor one more time, and found him shooting a glare across the table at the twins, who were entirely unfazed. Daeron put his hand over Maglor’s on the table as Curufin leaned forward to say something to Ambarussa. 

The meal passed quickly—because Fëanor had already missed the first half of it—and afterward there was the usual mingling and chatter as the tables were cleared and the evening’s entertainment was prepared. Elrond stepped up to greet Fëanor with a smile. “I had started to think you would not make an appearance tonight.”

“I was caught up in some work,” Fëanor said. “I am surprised to see you.”

“I don’t travel as much as I should,” Elrond said with a shrug. “Long habit—one I should try harder to break.”

“Where does this habit come from?” Fëanor asked.

“I put Vilya’s power and my own into my valley, and while leaving was never impossible, it left both myself and Rivendell vulnerable. So when there was need my sons usually rode out in my stead.”

Fëanor glanced up when he heard his own sons laughing nearby. “Do you regret it?” he asked. 

“No,” said Elrond immediately. “I did what I had to. Elladan and Elrohir understood.”

“Where are they now?”

“At home with Celebrían. They’ll all be going to Eressëa soon, and I’ll join them there for the winter.”

“Will Maglor go with you?”

“Yes, at least for a brief time. He wishes to speak to Finarfin in Alqualondë, and of course Idril lives in Avallónë.”

“For his song, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Has he asked you about it?”

Elrond smiled. He did not look at all like Finwë—Fëanor had heard it said many times over that he was the spitting image of Lúthien—but he had much of the same warmth. “He did, actually—of course I’ve never known Finwë, but I can see his legacy in Middle-earth as well as here. That’s what I told Maglor I would like to hear in this song.”

As he spoke Daeron and Maglor reappeared, now with their harps. Daeron’s was the one he always used, carved of dark wood inlaid with silver and blue. Maglor’s was a smaller version of the large driftwood harp Fëanor had seen in Imloth Ningloron, the wood bleached by years of sun and rain. As he stepped onto the small stage he ran his hand over the frame. The wood, Fëanor thought, would have come all the way from Middle-earth with him. 

Elrond was called away, and Findis and Lalwen came to join Fëanor as Daeron stepped forward. Maglor scanned the room, his gaze far away for a moment before he and Daeron bowed to Fingolfin, and Daeron announced that they would sing the first song they had written together, but which had not yet been sung before an audience. All the anxiety seemed to melt out of Maglor as he put his fingers to the strings and began to play. After a few notes Daeron joined him, and lifted his voice in the first verse. 

Fëanor had heard Daeron sing many times over the last few decades. His voice was powerful and bright, and this song in particular was filled with joy and wonder—singing of a traveler whose feet had carried him across the world and over the seas, coming at last to the farthest edge of the world where the waters of Ekkaia were dark under the bright summer sun, beautiful and calm. 

When his verse ended Maglor began his, the response of another traveler who was no stranger to those shores, who had seen them before long ago, when only starlight had ever touched them.

His voice was different, of course, than when Fëanor had last heard him sing. It had grown and strengthened, and when the tales compared it to the Sea they were not wrong. This song, too, was not like any of his that Fëanor had heard before—but it suited both of them, Maglor and Daeron, two wanderers who had walked alone for so long before their paths joined. They sang together like they had been made for it, voices blending and harmonizing effortlessly as they traded verses. Fëanor did not even need to close his eyes to see the things they sang of—of glorious sunsets through billowing clouds across the dark waters, of the smooth round stones on the beaches, of the water itself, calm and cool as it washed over weary feet—to feel both the joy of discovery and the delight of familiar places revisited after many years. 

When the song ended and the applause began, Maglor blinked a few times as though he’d forgotten he had an audience. Daeron turned to him and they shared a smile like they were sharing a secret. When they stepped down off the stage they were surrounded by a crowd of people—to praise them, and to welcome Maglor back to Tirion. 

“I told you it would be amazing,” Lalwen said beside him. “What did you think, Fëanáro?”

“Of course it was amazing,” Fëanor said, blinking away the tears that were threatening to fall. He had heard many of Maglor’s songs played and sung since his return from Mandos, but hearing Maglor himself was very different—so much better, especially since he had never really expected to get to hear him sing again at all.

“Macalaurë has grown a great deal since he last sang in these halls,” said Findis. “And it surprises me not at all that he would come back to sing of the sea—though I would not have expected Ekkaia.”

“I’ve never seen Ekkaia,” Lalwen said. “Did you ever travel so far, Fëanáro?”

“Once,” said Fëanor. He hadn’t liked it—it had been too quiet, too still. The stars shining on the waters had been beautiful, but he and Nerdanel had only gone there so they could say afterward that they had. There were more interesting places to see and explore. Now he thought perhaps he should make his way west again, someday. Maglor had so clearly grown fond of those kinds of quiet and lonely places, and Fëanor wished, suddenly and strongly, to understand why. “I have not seen it under the sun, but under the stars it was just as Macalaurë has sung it.”

After a few minutes Lalwen turned away from Fëanor abruptly, beaming. “Macalaurë!” she exclaimed. “That was marvelous! It was even better than when we first heard the two of you together at the Mereth Aderthad!”

“Thank you,” Maglor said. Fëanor hadn’t noticed him approach. He smiled at Lalwen as he said, “We’re more practiced now at performing together.”

“That’s a fascinating looking harp, too,” said Lalwen. “What sort of wood is it?”

“Driftwood.” Maglor held it out and Lalwen took it, turning it this way and that to see how the pieces fit together. “I don’t know what any of the pieces were originally. I found them in different places on the coasts of Eriador.” When Lalwen handed it back he wrapped an arm around it, almost cradling it against his chest as though it were something very precious to him. Findis drew Lalwen away to speak to someone else, and that left Fëanor alone with Maglor. He was aware of eyes on them—it was no secret in Tirion that Fëanor was estranged from nearly all of his sons. Maglor seemed aware of the eyes as well, and that was likely why he had come over in the first place—so as not to be seen publicly avoiding his father. When he looked at Fëanor all the apprehension and anxiety that had faded way when he sang was back.

“It was a beautiful song, Cáno,” Fëanor said. “I’ve missed your music.”

“Thank you.”

Fëanor thought about leaving it alone, but couldn’t quite make himself. “I’d heard, though, that you don’t like performing before large audiences anymore.” He doesn’t like to be seen, Elrond had said. That had been long ago, but it did not seem to Fëanor that much had changed in that regard. 

Maglor shrugged in a poor attempt to seem indifferent. “I don’t dislike it, exactly—but it’s not so daunting now as it was before I went to Lórien.”

If this was Maglor undaunted, then Fëanor was glad he hadn’t seen him struggling before. He offered a smile and put a hand on his shoulder, hoping it was more reassuring than not, and kissed his temple as he would have done after any other performance of Maglor’s before the court in Tirion, long ago when the Trees had shone through the windows. “I’m so proud of you, Canafinwë,” he whispered. That probably didn’t mean much—Maglor had made it very clear long ago that he did not need anything of the kind from Fëanor, but he wanted him to know it anyway.

He left the hall after that. There would be more music and it was possible someone would start an impromptu round of dancing, but he felt very tired. When he tried to go to bed, though, sleep wouldn’t come, and after a while he gave up and read a book that Celebrimbor had given him recently on the gem-making of Ost-in-Edhil. It kept him up late into the night. Maglor’s singing played over and over through his mind, making him itch to be gone—to go down to the sea, a desire that very rarely overtook him. When he did sleep at last, he dreamed of walking along a lonely shore of pale sand under flat grey overcast skies. He could hear a distant voice on the wind—far more mournful than the song Maglor had sung in waking life—but no matter how far he walked or how quickly, he could never catch a glimpse of the singer.

In the morning he got up early, still tired but also still restless. When the dreams of the seaside had faded at last it had been into a dream of his father—that dream had been so normal, almost mundane, just walking through the gardens and laughing at something he couldn’t remember upon waking. The memory of Finwë’s laughter, though, lodged in his chest like a hot coal, and Fëanor almost didn’t want to leave his bedroom, to step back out into a world where his father wasn’t. 

He wrote to his mother instead, talking about his latest projects, mentioning his talk with Maglor but unable to make himself write out his father’s name, even to Míriel. Then he dressed and went out to the old house, thinking he could yank out some weeds to get over the inexplicable feeling of wanting to punch something. 

When he got there he nearly ran into Maedhros as he came out of the gateway. Fëanor took several steps back, and watched Maedhros clench his hand into a fist. It was not like Maglor pressing his thumb into his scars at all, but somehow Fëanor thought the impulse came from the same place. He deliberately did not look directly at it, instead keeping his eyes on Maedhros’ face. 

Lately, he had only seen Maedhros in the palantír. In Beleriand. He looked so very different now—younger, without the scars or the other marks of war and torment, with his hair bound in a slightly crooked braid that lay over his shoulder. He wore no jewelry, though, not even earrings or a simple necklace, and there were lingering shadows behind his eyes. If Fëanor was surprised to see Maedhros, he was not surprised to see Fëanor. Almost it seemed like he had come there at this time on purpose, but Fëanor couldn’t quite believe that. Of all his sons, Maedhros would surely be the very last to seek him out. “Nel—Maedhros,” he said, stumbling a little in his surprise. Maedhros no longer answered to Nelyo. “What are you…?”

“I hadn’t seen it yet. Since I came back.” Maedhros tilted his head just slightly back toward the house, though he didn’t turn to look back at it. He had seen whatever it was he’d come for. “What are you going to do after you’ve torn it down?”

Fëanor wondered if he was dreaming again. This conversation seemed almost too—too normal, for all that still lay between them. “Build something new,” he said. “I do not yet know what.” It wouldn’t be another house, for there was no point, but aside from that…he’d been trying not to think very hard about that particular future. 

Maedhros looked at him like he was some kind of puzzle that couldn’t be solved. Fëanor tried to think of something else to say, but Maedhros said, abruptly, like the words were torn out of his throat, “Do you remember what you said to me after the ships burned?”

Fëanor blinked. “No,” he said. “I don’t—” He didn’t really know how to explain his perception of that time. “I remember very little, with clarity, after the Darkening.” A few moments stood out, as clearly as though they’d happened just yesterday, but the ship burning was not one of them. That was just a haze of heat and smoke and rage. He remembered being angry at Maedhros for speaking against him, but not what exactly he had said in response.

Whatever it was, it had been terrible. Maedhros’ expression closed off, as though he were carved of stone. “Have you looked for Losgar in the palantír?”

“No.” And he did not want to—he did not want to remember with any more clarity than he already did whatever it was he had said to Maedhros that had destroyed whatever love and trust had yet remained between them. Because that was what it was, he realized now as he looked into Maedhros’ face. It was what he had said at Losgar that had cut deep into Maedhros’ heart and stayed there, dealing a wound that was still bleeding even now.

“Maybe you should,” Maedhros said, and turned away. Fëanor watched him go, and then turned and went back home, going to his forge to hammer out some nails—because punching a wall would hurt more and be more satisfying, but it would also leave bruises that would trigger questions, and at least nails didn’t require him to think about anything.

He was on time for dinner that night, and learned that Maglor had spent the day listening to anyone who would talk to him about Finwë. Rumors and speculation were already swirling about what had happened to him—the scars around his mouth were not very noticeable except up close, and plenty of people had finally gotten a good look at them. It made Fëanor want to punch things again—people rather than walls—and something must have shown on his face because the person closest to him speaking of Maglor very quickly grew quiet and then moved away. 

Most of them had been to Middle-earth. They should have known better. When Fëanor voiced this, Lalwen shrugged. Unusually solemn she said, “Battle scars are one thing. No one looks twice at those. The marks of—captivity—those are different. This isn’t very different from the whispers that went around Mithrim after Maedhros recovered enough to be seen in public—though even he did not have many visible scars, besides his missing hand, at least not on his face. It will pass—it’s just that relatively few of our people have come back to these shores by ship. Those who come from Mandos do not often return with scars.”

“But some do,” Fëanor said. 

“Some do,” Lalwen agreed. “I did.” When he looked at her in surprise she smiled grimly and rolled back her sleeve to reveal a pale and faint twisting mark around her arm. Fëanor recognized it instantly—he had suffered the exact same injuries just before his own death. “Damned balrogs,” Lalwen said, as though commenting on someone’s annoying pet. “I was trying to reach Findekáno—I was too late, though I died before I knew it.”

Fëanor never really knew what to say when someone told him something like this. He had not returned from Mandos with any scars—not visible ones, anyway—and the handful he’d acquired in the years since were only small burn marks that were the result of clumsiness or carelessness in the forge, very similar to what he’d sported long before he’d ever even thought of picking up a sword. 

“How is Maglor today?” he asked instead. 

“Oh, he hates all the eyes on him, but he seemed pleased with what he had been told of Atya, at least when he had lunch with Findis and me.” She paused, then added, “He seemed weary, as he did not when I saw him yesterday. He isn’t used to being around such a large crowd of people, I think. Imloth Ningloron is not a very small community, but it is certainly cozier than Tirion, and less formal. Even the jewels he was wearing today seemed to cause him discomfort. But at least Findis didn’t try poking her nose into his business this afternoon.”

“What do you mean?” Fëanor asked. 

“Didn’t you know? She’s been trying to get them to speak to you—I told her it was useless. They’re all still your sons, and unlikely to change their course because someone else says they should.”

Fëanor sighed, and looked to where Findis was chatting with Rúmil and Anairë. “I did not know,” he said. “If I had, I would have asked her not to.”

“She means well—”

“I know that.” Fëanor glanced back at her, and added, “I’m not angry, Lalwen.”

“Yes, I know. Findis doesn’t quite understand, I think, what it is to have a falling out with one’s father,” Lalwen said after a moment. The way she said it made Fëanor wonder if she had had a falling out with Finwë. He hoped not. “She also never saw Middle-earth. I do not mean to—oh I don’t know what I’m trying to say. Her grief has been no less than ours—in fact I think it has been all the heavier for having to be borne alone for so long. But she takes a different view of some things.”

“I know. But what lies between me and my sons should remain between us. I hope you don’t have any plans to stick your nose into it.”

“Of course not. I’m just glad to see them whenever they come to Tirion. They know that they can always come speak to me if they want a sympathetic ear, and that I won’t offer any advice unless they ask. I’ll stick my nose into all your other business, but not this.”

The next morning Fëanor found Findis in the library. He leaned over the table where she had a small pile of books and paper to take notes. “Findis, sister-mine, please stop interfering. If my sons want to speak to me, they will. If they don’t, that is their choice.”

Findis frowned up at him. “You think I can’t see how deeply it hurts you—”

“Of course it hurts—but the wound is one I inflicted, and it hurts them far more. Leave them be. Please.”

“All right, I will—I’ve already been told off for it several times. You don’t need to join in.”

“I know what you’re trying to do and why, and I am not ungrateful—but I would have my sons speak to me because they want to, not because they feel they must. They have had enough of their lives dictated by me in one way or another, haven’t they?”

“This is not like the Oath,” Findis said.

“No, it’s not,” Fëanor said. “That’s the point, Findis. If there is to be reconciliation it must happen on their terms, or else it will just make everything worse. I’ve waited this long, and I’ll continue to wait as long as it takes.”

“What if that is forever?”

He hoped he sounded more at peace with it than he felt when he replied, “Then it’s forever.” 

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Love doesn’t discriminate
Between the sinners and the saints
It takes and it takes and it takes
And we keep lovin’ anyway
We laugh and we cry and we break
And we make our mistakes…
- “Wait for it” - Hamilton

- - 

Fëanor occupied himself in his forge the next few days. He kept the palantír locked away, knowing what he should look for but unwilling to do it yet. He had that necklace to finish making the chains for, but it was slow work and not complicated enough to hold as much of his attention as he wanted. He dug through his half-started and mostly-finished sketches instead, looking for something he could use a hammer on. Then he realized how disorganized all of his drawers and cabinets were, and so he set about fixing them.

It was on a sunny afternoon, while he sat cross legged on the floor surrounded by drawings and notebooks sorted into piles of various sizes, that someone knocked on the door. “It’s open,” he called without looking up. He expected Findis, or perhaps Fingolfin, come to worry at him—or if not either of them, maybe one of the twins or Celebrimbor, who sometimes brought Calissë and Náriel to visit. 

When he looked up, however, he found Daeron in the doorway, looking rather bemused to have found Fëanor sitting on the floor in the middle of a mess of papers. For a moment they stared at each other in silence. Then Fëanor said, “If you were looking for…” Only he really didn’t know what or who Daeron would have been seeking, out here in the palace workshops. It wasn’t as though he was likely to find Maglor there.

“I was looking for you,” Daeron said, “but it can wait if you’re busy.”

“I’m not.” Fëanor glanced around and then got to his feet, carefully stepping over a stack of notebooks. “I was only reorganizing some things.” He wanted to ask what it was Daeron wanted, but couldn’t quite think of a diplomatic way to do so. “Is something the matter?”

“No, not at all.” Daeron stepped inside and let the door close behind him. His clothes were plain and sensible, soft blues and purples, though he wore strings of amethyst beads wound through his braids, as he most often did at the formal events where Fëanor usually saw him. He also wore the wooden pendant that had been the cause of their original—Fëanor wasn’t even sure what to call it, since he did not think it really qualified as an argument. An argument would have included more back-and-forth than what had really happened. Confrontation, perhaps, was a better word. “Maglor’s fine,” Daeron added. “He didn’t send me, either—he doesn’t even know that I’m here. He’s gone away to Formenos.”

Fëanor blinked. “He—what? You just said he was fine.”

“He is. He just thought he should visit, since he’ll be singing of it, and apparently it isn’t very far. He and Elrond left yesterday.”

“Why didn’t you go?”

“Because Elrond did,” Daeron said, as though that explained everything, “and because I have a few things to do in Tirion before we leave for Alqualondë—including this visit.” He paused, and then said, with surprising frankness, “I would like to apologize.”

Fëanor couldn’t have said what he had expected from Daeron, but it was not an apology. “What do you have to apologize for?” he asked, baffled—not exactly at the thought that an apology was warranted, but that Daeron thought so. Daeron had struck him from the start as someone deeply unapologetic, and had neither said nor done anything in the years since to change that impression. 

“I think we both misunderstood one another very badly when we met, and though I cannot be sorry for what I said, I am sorry that I spoke so harshly,” Daeron replied. “It had not been my intention in coming to Tirion to make enemies.”

“Was it your intention to make friends?” Fëanor asked incredulously, and then bit his tongue hard.

But instead of taking offense, Daeron grinned at him—a real smile that made his dark eyes crinkle. “No,” he said. “Truthfully, I did not expect us to speak more than we did at that first party—I already did not like you, but I was not planning to let you know.”

“I think I should be the one to apologize,” Fëanor said. “You were right when you said I had no right to question you—or Maglor. I didn’t mean…” He hesitated, because he had meant to be insulting, if he were honest. “You just seemed—”

“How I presented myself before your brother’s court was not quite how any of your sons knew me or would have spoken of me,” said Daeron. “Well—it wasn’t very unlike how both Maedhros and Maglor first met me long ago, but from the start I found it very easy to let those masks fall away in private, with Maglor, and never really put them on again when I met the rest of your sons here. Really, I’m a bit surprised that you did not see through them then, because I was not at my best.”

“I did not know what to make of you,” Fëanor said, because Daeron seemed to appreciate frankness over politeness. “You did not seem to really care about anything—and that was at such odds with what everyone else said about you.”

Daeron’s smile turned rueful. “Careless? I suppose I did come off that way, didn’t I? I only meant to seem more cheerful than I was, and maybe I tried a bit too hard. But I had also forgotten,” he said, “that time does not pass the same way for the dead as it does for the living. I have been told that it passes oddly in Lórien, and I can only suppose it is even stranger in Mandos.”

“It is,” Fëanor said. 

“So for you it did not really feel as though thousands of years had passed, did it? Between the First Age and now.”

“I suppose not.” It mostly felt like he had just slept for a long time, and woken up into a very different world than the one in which he had fallen asleep. “But what…?”

“For you it was still all very new, and I suspect rather easy to forget that I, conversely, had had a very, very long time to come to terms with the events of the First Age,” said Daeron. “Both my part in them, and Maglor’s, and so of course it would have seemed strange to you that I was so easy in the company of your sons, and that I would openly wear such a token from Maglor.” His hand went to the pendant around his neck, fingers brushing lightly over the purple flower inlaid into the pale mallorn wood. “For a very long time I did hate him, and I could not bear to come back among even my own people because the grief was so sharp. So I returned to my wanderings in the far east and did not look back. I’ve had many adventures of my own, and met many people good and bad and in between, Men and Elves and Dwarves—and wizards. By the time I felt myself called west—I did tell you the truth, you know, when you asked why I took ship when I did—I had made peace with it. I had long ceased to be angry by the time Maglor and I met again.”

And if Fëanor had stopped to think, he would have been able to guess at least some of that—to recall that it had been a very long time, and that of course feelings could and would change over the years. “I’m sorry,” he said. 

“Thank you,” said Daeron. “I am sorry too—your words then did come from a place of care, I do see that now. If all continues to go well, I think you and I will be seeing a great deal more of one another than we have, and I would not have any resentments linger between us.”

“Continues to go well,” Fëanor repeated. It was going well with Ambarussa, but he hadn’t thought either meeting with Maglor had. They hadn't gone badly, and that was as much as he could have hoped for. But well? Amras had said that Maglor would stop avoiding him when the song was done, but Fëanor knew better than to hang any real hopes on that.

“Whatever you said to Maglor, both the other morning and the other night, meant a great deal to him,” Daeron said quietly. “He is burdened by this song he is writing, and all the grief for Finwë that it has reawakened—but he shed his own anger long ago.”

“But he is still afraid.” Everyone said so, and it was still so obvious, and he still didn’t know what to do about it. 

“Yes, but he is not as afraid as he was, and I think…” Here Daeron hesitated, and then seemed to decide that saying whatever was in his mind would be better than keeping it in confidence. “I think what fears remain are rooted in Dol Guldur, more than in you, even if some of them wear your face. Even the nightmares that I spoke of before—they came from Dol Guldur too, where for a long time he was alone with nothing but his nightmares.”

“I thought Lórien was supposed to—”

“It has! Please do not mistake me. He found great healing there, and he never wakes up in tears now, but—” Daeron shrugged, all trace of his earlier good humor gone, replaced by solemn concern. “There will always be scars,” he said. “On the body and on the spirit. They do not torment him as they once did, but he will always have them. He’s restless and struggling a little now, but only because of this song, as I said.”

“He should not have to write such a song if it burdens him so.” Finwë deserved to be honored in this way, but it should not come at any cost to Maglor’s own peace, hard-won and still-fragile as it was. Maybe that was why Míriel hadn’t told him of it, Fëanor thought. She would have been able to guess at these thoughts and protestations—but if that was true and she asked it anyway…

“He wants to write it,” Daeron said. “He told me once that he was unable to write any songs such as this for any of you, and I think that has weighed on him for a very long time—that he couldn’t do the one thing he is supposed to be good at when it mattered most to him. There’s no need to write such songs for you or his brothers now, but there is for Finwë. This is important to him, and not only because it was Lady Míriel who asked—he both wants and needs to see it through.”

“Are you helping him?” Fëanor asked.

“Not as a musician,” said Daeron. “I told him when it was first brought up that this is a task for Canafinwë of the Noldor, not Daeron of the Sindar. If he asks for my opinion I’ll of course give it, but the words will be entirely his own. He has my support in all other ways, and he knows that.”

That, more than anything else, was reassuring. If only there were some way he could help. All the things Fëanor was best at, though, were not what Maglor needed—and he made his own instruments and didn’t seem to like jewelry anymore, or—

A sudden thought came to him. “Maglor told me that he does not regret going east,” he said. “Does he regret returning west?”

“No,” Daeron said. “He misses Middle-earth—so do I—but that isn’t the same thing.”

“You said before only that it was time, when I asked why you took ship. Is that really all there is to it?”

“Well, yes. I put it to Thingol once as…the verses of my life sung in Middle-earth had come to an end. There could be no return home for me—Eglador, Beleriand, Doriath—that was home, and there is no returning there any more than there can be a return to Cuiviénen. It was chance, more or less, that brought us to Mithlond at the same time. I had intended to take ship, but I did choose that one in particular when I heard that Maglor would also be on it. By then I missed him more than I had ever hated him. As for Maglor—it is true that he only boarded that ship because of the promises he made to Elrond, but even if given a chance now he would not go back. He is happy here. But he does speak, sometimes, of the lands where he used to wander, and whenever he does it is with fondness and a wistfulness that I think he tries to hide even from me. He doesn’t have to, because I feel the same way when I think of the holly groves of Region, or the Esgalduin glimmering under the stars.” Daeron’s voice took on a hint of that wistfulness even then, speaking those names. “There are many here, I think, who feel that way.”

Maybe there was something Fëanor could make for Maglor.

Daeron laughed suddenly. “Oh, I recognize that look—I’ll leave you now to whatever idea has come into your mind. I’ve said what I came to say, and I hope we can meet going forward without any awkwardness.”

“Of course,” said Fëanor. Then as Daeron turned back toward the door he said, “Daeron.”

“Yes?”

“That song you sang when you first came to Tirion—the last one of that performance. Was that one of Maglor’s?”

“Of winter giving way to spring? Yes. Several of the songs that I sang that evening were his—that one he wrote in Rivendell, not long after he recovered enough to begin writing music again. It doesn’t sound so in the beginning, but it is a very hopeful song. Maglor laughs every time I say so, because he so rarely feels truly hopeful himself these days—but what else do you call the unfailing expectation every year of sunshine and daffodils after long months of darkness and snow?” Daeron did not smile, but his eyes had gone very soft—softer than Fëanor had ever seen them. “It’s one of my favorites of his, that song. I chose it that year because I missed him, more than any other reason.”

“It was beautiful,” Fëanor said. “The words and your performance.”

“Thank you.”

“Is this visit meant to be a secret? You said Maglor doesn’t know you intended to come.”

“Oh, no of course not. We don’t keep secrets—it’s only that I knew he would worry, and he has enough on his mind. I’ll tell him about it sometime after he returns. Or you can tell him, if you see him before we leave for Alqualondë!”

“Who are you to see in Alqualondë? Olwë isn’t there,” Fëanor said, before remembering that his own brother lived just outside of the city, and of course Maglor would not leave him out. Elrond had even said so.

“We’re to stay for a little while with Prince Finarfin—and I am to have a little family reunion of my own, after which we might stay for a time in Avallónë, or we might come straight back to Lady Nerdanel’s house. Our plans are not set in stone.” 

“A family—? I thought your uncle and aunt were in Taur-en-Gellam.”

“At the moment they are in Alqualondë—they have been for the past year or so. My parents live there.” Daeron grinned again, but it did not reach his eyes. “It’s rather a long story—I’ve never known them, you see.”

Fëanor had not expected to feel such a sudden sense of kinship with Daeron, let alone sympathy—at least he had had his father, growing up. He could not imagine being orphaned entirely. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh, you needn’t be. I was far too young when they disappeared to remember them. This meeting is long overdue. And now I really will leave you to your work. Farewell for now!”

Fëanor watched Daeron leave, thinking of how brightly he had just spoken of meeting his lost family, and how much it sounded like the way he had spoken of nearly everything when they had first met. Then, he said he had been acting far more cheerful than he felt. Now…? He shook his head and turned back to his piles of papers, gathering them up to put them away. There were enough things for him to worry about without adding Daeron to the list. 

Two hours and a look into the palantír later, he had a rough sketch, and went to find Celebrimbor. “That sounds like a wonderful idea,” he said when Fëanor told him of it, though his tone didn’t quite match the words. “You could make it for one of the windows of his room at Grandmother’s house—I have the measurements around here somewhere—though aren’t you to leave for the mountains soon?”

“I honestly have no idea when Ambarussa want to leave, but I don’t think this will take that long,” said Fëanor. It was a stained glass window—hardly the most complicated thing he could do. The most time consuming part would be the enchantments, to turn the image into something a bit more than just a simple pattern of colored glass. “I might have to ask someone else to install it.” He hadn’t yet set foot in that house; Nerdanel wouldn’t have him under her roof when any of their sons might object, even if they weren’t there, and Fëanor wasn’t going to argue with that. 

“I can do it,” said Celebrimbor. “I should have plenty of time after I finish these windows of my own—they’re very small—and I can take it to Grandmother’s while Maglor is in Alqualondë. But—are you sure? I thought you didn’t think it went that well, speaking to Maglor.”

“I’m not sure, no,” said Fëanor after a moment. He was so rarely sure of anything these days when it came to his children. “But I want to try anyway. If he doesn’t like it—well, he doesn’t have to keep it. I won’t take offense.”

Celebrimbor still looked skeptical, but he picked up the sketch. “What sort of enchantments were you thinking of putting on it?”

Fëanor didn’t have the materials or space for making such a window in his own workshop, but Celebrimbor and Curufin had plenty of room—and it was nicer to work there than in the larger glasswork shops at the palace. Curufin came and went as Fëanor worked on it over the next few days, offering occasional commentary. Náriel came to watch sometimes, fascinated by everything that went on. There was something very pleasing about seeing a stained glass window come together, all the pieces fitting like a puzzle. This one would depict a seaside scene, a stretch of empty shore under a gently overcast sky. Whenever Fëanor looked for Maglor by the Sea, this was the place he most often found him. It was somewhere south of Lindon, all white beaches stretching toward grassy dunes and rolling hills beyond, near to cliffs where sea birds flocked, under which were coves full of tide pools that he’d watched Maglor sit beside for hours at a time, apparently fascinated by the goings on inside them. Fëanor had seen him too gathering driftwood—a piece or two each time he came back to that place in the years between Elrond’s departure and his own. Some must have been made into his harps; Fëanor didn’t know what he had done with the rest.

It was that part of the shoreline that had seen his misery start to fade away into something softer. Míriel had woven Himring, and Fëanor had since heard that Maedhros appreciated both tapestries deeply. He hoped this might offer Maglor the same sort of pleasure. He hummed similar songs over the glass that he had sung over the palantíri long ago, so that to look at the window was also, in a way, to look through it into the scene itself, just enough to make it look more real than it actually was. It was something of an experiment, but when Fëanor stepped back at last and took in the finished piece, he thought he could count it a success.

When the window was done, Curufin looked at it and frowned a little. “It’s so empty,” he said. “I know Cáno always says he likes lonely places, but I never really know whether to believe him.”

“He liked this one,” Fëanor said. He wiped his hand over his brow, feeling odd and unable to account for it. Curufin glanced at him and then rolled his eyes. “What?”

“You’ve been out here for six hours, and I suspect you haven’t so much as taken a sip of water in all that time.”

“Six hours, really?” Fëanor glanced toward the windows and found that evening was coming on. Across the room Celebrimbor snickered.

“You don’t get to laugh, Tyelpë, I know you’ve been out here all day too,” Curufin said.

Celebrimbor held up a flask and the paper wrappings that had once held his lunch. “I have been drinking and eating, thank you very much, Atya,” he said. 

“Oh, damn.” Fëanor sighed, and wiped his forehead again. “I was supposed to dine with Rúmil tonight.”

“I already sent him your apologies,” Curufin said. “You’re dining here instead.”

“Am I?” Fëanor asked, amused. Curufin did that sometimes, especially since Calissë had been born—took over as though Fëanor was his own child in need of some gentle correcting. He was always right, so if Fëanor made a mild show of protesting once in a while, he never actually meant it. 

“If you don’t, the girls will be very disappointed—especially since you’re leaving soon, and they won’t see you until the spring.”

There was certainly no arguing with that. And in a surprising turn of events there were no other dinner guests either. It was a quieter evening than Fëanor suspected Curufin’s house had seen in quite some time, and a particular contrast to the day before when Maglor had returned to Tirion, and he, Maedhros, Caranthir, and Daeron had taken the girls out for the afternoon. Fëanor was informed by Náriel that all of Curufin’s brothers were a little scared of Rundamírë—she laughed at this—and that Curufin himself wasn’t scary at all. Curufin rolled his eyes as Celebrimbor coughed into his napkin to hide his laughter. 

“Uncle Nelyo looks scariest,” Náriel went on, and Fëanor glanced at Curufin, who shrugged. “But Daeron said that’s only his brooding face, and Atya says it’s because he frowned too much when he was our age and it got stuck.”

“It’s true,” Curufin said. 

“It still doesn’t make sense if he got a new face from Mandos,” said Calissë. 

“He frowned too much right after he got out of Mandos too,” Curufin said. Celebrimbor snorted into his wine glass. 

“Why?” asked Calissë.

This gave Curufin pause, since he clearly hadn't thought that far ahead—always a mistake when talking to small children. There would always be another question, however many answers were given. “He came first,” Curufin said finally, abandoning the gentle teasing of his brother for a more serious answer, “and I think he was lonely for a long time. He isn’t lonely at all now, though. Even when he isn’t with us he has Aechen to keep an eye on him.” That made the girls giggle. Fëanor, though, couldn’t quite muster a smile as he was meant to. 

“Was it really that bad for him when he came back?” he asked Curufin a little later, after the girls had gone to bed and Celebrimbor had gone out with Rundamírë to visit someone down the street. “For Maedhros, I mean?”

“Yes. He…well, you saw him when you came back. He wasn’t much better then than he had been when I came back, or when Moryo did, and Moryo came only a few years after him. Mandos was doing him more harm than good, so the Valar just let him out to find his own way. What he needed,” Curufin sighed, “was Maglor, more than any of us—Maglor knew him best, especially after—well, after Thangorodrim, but especially after the Nirnaeth. And then when Maglor did come back and didn’t even write, or send a message…” He shook his head. “It’s our fault Maedhros was lonely for as long as he was, really. None of us knew how to talk to each other for so long, and…I, at least, didn’t even try. He needed Maglor but he should have had us, and he didn’t.”

“None of you are lonely now,” Fëanor said. 

“No. But it took far too long for us to start trying to fix things. We talk about it like your coming was what did it, but I think it would’ve fallen apart after we left Ekkaia if we hadn’t found Maglor there.”

“But you did find him there.” Fëanor leaned over to kiss Curufin’s forehead. “I’m proud of you—all of you. Maybe it took time to get started, but you’re all building new lives for yourselves, together and separately. That takes both courage and strength. I hope you know that.”

“I don’t feel either very strong or very brave,” Curufin said quietly. “I’m just—I worry about things when I know I don’t need to, and—and then I worry that it will restrict Calissë or Náriel, or that they’ll start worrying because I do, when I don’t mean for it—”

“If you need someone to reassure you that all will be well, you only have to ask. If not me, then your mother. I cannot see the future, but you are a good father, Curvo.”

“I wasn’t when—”

“You are now. Isn’t that what you keep telling me matters most? I’m trying to be a good father right now in praising you, so just indulge me and accept what I say, all right?”

That got a smile out of him. “You are a good father, Atya,” he said. “You were when we were young, and you are now.”

“I’m trying,” Fëanor said. He didn’t really know whether he was succeeding—he just knew that if he really had been a good father from the start, he wouldn’t have to wonder if keeping his distance now was really the right thing to do. He wouldn’t have to wonder what it was that he said that cut into his oldest son’s heart so deeply that six thousand years later it kept him from meeting his gaze for more than a few seconds.

He couldn’t change the past, so all he could do was try to be better going forward—to listen rather than speak, to continue letting his sons come to him in their own ways and on their own time. They had time, now, even if it was sometimes hard to believe. He had meant all that he had said to Findis—and that had to be enough, because time was all he could really give them. 

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You have drunk a bitter wine
With none to be your comfort
You who once were left behind
You will be welcome at love’s table
- “By Way of Sorrow” - The Wailin’ Jennys

- -

When he got home that night Fëanor took out the palantír, but only stared at it for a few minutes before putting it back and pulling out a bag to start packing for his winter away in the mountains. Being given only an hour’s warning had been a joke, but he wanted to be ready anyway. As he dug around for suitable clothes, his mind flitted from thoughts to ideas to memories. He had spoken to Nerdanel a few days before, briefly, when they’d met by chance after she’d lunched with Anairë. She had been in a good mood but distracted, her mind clearly on some new project taking shape in her mind. It had taken all of Fëanor’s willpower not to ask about it, mostly because he didn’t think she would have answered him. Once upon a time she could have spoken to him for hours about her ideas and the new shapes she wanted to explore, or the new methods of carving she wanted to try—some of which were her own invention, all of which resulted in the most beautiful things.

He dropped a shirt onto his bed and rubbed his hands over his face. It was his own fault he couldn’t sit and listen to her, or offer up his own ideas for her opinions. They’d once never stopped talking to each other, and both of their arts and their selves had only gotten better for it. No matter how close he got to his brother or his sisters, he would never be able to share that with them, that kind of joining of the minds that had been at the center of everything he and Nerdanel had built. He missed it—missed her—so much that for a moment he felt dizzy with it. 

With nothing else to do, Fëanor sat down and wrote a letter, getting his thoughts out of his head and onto paper. Most letters—to Nerdanel, to his sons, to his father—he burned. But some he kept, locked away under the false bottom he’d installed in one of his desk drawers. He didn’t really know why. This letter joined the small pile of others there, and then he went to get out the palantír again. 

He still didn’t look for Losgar. Instead he looked for the more recent past, not trying to see anything in particular, and found Maedhros jerking awake outside of Mandos. Fëanor watched him sit up slowly, eyes wide and startled as he took in the flowers around him, and the sunlit sky above, and his own body. He looked startlingly different, after all that Fëanor was used to seeing of him in the palantír now, in Middle-earth: restored to the fairness of his youth, but for the dark things lurking behind his eyes—and the missing hand. Sometimes it happened that the spirit had been changed so much that it carried over into the new body. Maedhros was the only one Fëanor knew of who had come back without a limb, but others had also come back with scars—like Lalwen. As far as Fëanor could tell, his missing hand was the one thing that had never bothered Maedhros in this new life, and he didn’t really understand why. As he watched him in those first few moments back in life, he saw Maedhros’ mouth form words, and by now he had gotten good enough at reading his sons’ lips to recognize what he said. Send me back.

Fëanor leaned back with a sigh, turning his gaze to the window, where his own reflection stared back at him, hazy in the soft lamplight. Then he thought—he might as well see everyone’s return, just as he had seen their deaths, and bent over the stone again.

Caranthir returned after Maedhros, waking up in much the same manner. He was surprised but not unhappy, however, and he responded to Estë’s gentle greeting readily enough. He lingered for a long time in Lórien, among the flowers, apparently reluctant to leave until Nienna came to speak to him; if Fëanor were to guess, she told him then that Maedhros had also returned to life, and that Nerdanel would be waiting to welcome him home. Once he did decide to leave Lórien, he did not look back. 

The twins returned to life as they had left it—together. Theirs was a far more joyful return than either of their brothers’, and when they left the flower-covered hillside before Mandos it was hand in hand and already laughing. Amras even turned to wave at the walls and the small door before they passed into the trees. 

When Curufin returned, he reacted much like Maedhros had, though he was more willing to accept Estë’s consolations. Fëanor knew why, though, knew the reasons were different—he remembered, in the Halls, how Curufin had not wanted to leave Celebrimbor. There had just been nothing he could do for him, there, and in the end someone—maybe Námo, maybe Finwë—had convinced him that the best thing he could do was return to life so that he could be there waiting when Celebrimbor himself was finally ready.

Celegorm was the last to come back—years after Curufin, and not long before Celebrimbor. Fëanor didn’t know why he had lingered so long. When he woke it was to Huan sniffing at his face and then licking up the side of it, so the first thing Celegorm did was laugh—right before he burst into tears. 

Fëanor ended that vision there—it felt like too private a moment to spy on, even decades later. If things felt irreparable between him and Maedhros, they seemed just the same or worse with Celegorm. They had clashed often and loudly before the Darkening, as Fëanor’s distrust of the Valar had grown and Celegorm had refused for a long time to follow along. Some things Curufin had said suggested that the hurt went deeper, though, and Fëanor didn’t yet understand just what it was that kept Celegorm from so much as looking in his direction whenever they happened to be in the same place.

Maglor had not come back to Valinor through Mandos, he had come by ship—Fëanor remembered seeing that tapestry, the weaving of the last ship departing from the Grey Havens: the moment he had decided to ask Námo for his own return to life. By the time the ship had docked in Avallónë, Fëanor had been in Lórien, clumsy and awkward in his new body and frustrated at the slowness with which his spirit was settling into it. Now he looked for that docking, and found a larger crowd gathered at the docks than he would have expected—though of course he should have. Círdan had been on that ship, as well as Lord Celeborn, and Daeron, and Elrond’s sons, all of whom had been long awaited by many. He watched Maglor take in the sight, eyes going wide and slightly panicked before he retreated from the railing. Daeron followed, briefly, but though they seemed friendly with one another there was not yet that deep and easy intimacy that was so clear between them now, even to Fëanor during that brief meeting on the road; Daeron did not linger very long, and he glanced over his shoulder with an unreadable expression as he left Maglor below decks.

In the end it was Maglor’s cat that kept him on board until long after the crowds had dispersed, rather than his own reluctance. He finally made his way to the harbor, and paused before a statue of Nienna, where he left a small bit of white stone just before Elrond raced down the street. That was a glad meeting—not merry, exactly, but it was the first real glimpse Fëanor had gotten of the deep love that existed between Elrond and Maglor. He’d only seen them together before very briefly and then at a distance, and afterward had had only Elrond’s own words to go on, and had not yet looked for that part of Maglor’s life in the palantír. Even when he’d seen them together more recently, there in Tirion, it had been at that formal dinner and they had not really spoken to one another. A minute later in the vision Celebrimbor arrived, crashing into Maglor hard enough that he nearly knocked them both over. 

It seemed incredible that Maglor could have doubted the welcome his brothers would give him, after such a meeting. Fëanor sighed again and set the palantír aside. That evening had not been, Míriel said, Maglor’s real homecoming, and she had been right. That had come later—returning to Imloth Ningloron after his sojourn in Lórien, when he was truly happy to be where he was, and when he could be entirely sure of the welcome he would receive upon his arrival. 

The next morning he slept late, and when he made his way to his own workshop he found Celebrimbor already there, looking tired. “Good morning, Grandfather,” he said.

“Is everything all right, Tyelpë?”

“Yes, only—” Celebrimbor had been sitting near the door, staring across the wide room at the forge on the other side, cold and dark. Fëanor hadn’t been using it much lately, being occupied with other kinds of work, and he still needed to clean it more thoroughly before he departed with Amrod and Amras. “It was around this time of year that Eregion fell,” Celebrimbor said finally, falling into the Sindarin of Middle-earth rather than the Quenya they usually used. “Did you know?”

“No.” Fëanor looked again at the forge, and then stepped forward so he blocked Celebrimbor’s view of it. “Want to get out of the city?”

“I…yes. I think I do.”

They went down to the sea, a short ride through the Calacirya, though they did not turn toward Alqualondë, instead heading around the south side of the Bay of Eldamar. A road snaked away south along the shore toward one or two small cities that had been built on the narrow coast and up into the rocky mountainsides, sometime during the Third Age; they did not go that far, instead keeping to the shores of the bay. After a while they left the horses to graze and walked down to the water’s edge. Celebrimbor stood with his arms crossed, hair loose and blowing in the wind, gazing east. “I wish you could’ve seen it,” he said finally. “Ost-in-Edhil. Eregion. Moria, too. You would’ve liked Narvi. I think…I used to like to think you would have been proud of me.”

“I was. I am,” Fëanor said. 

“Except—it all fell to ruin because of me. I was—”

“My understanding is that you were deceived, Tyelpë, and you were not the only one. The blame for that lies with the deceiver, surely?”

Celebrimbor laughed, but it wasn’t a very happy sound. He covered his face with a hand, resting it over his eyes as he bowed his head. “That’s—that’s almost exactly what Frodo said, when we first met. That it wasn’t my fault that—oh, how did he put it? ‘It still isn’t your fault that the best liar in the world lied to you,’ he said.”

“He was right,” Fëanor said. 

“Maybe.” Celebrimbor didn’t lower his hand. “You wondered, last fall, why I got so upset at such a small cut.”

“Tyelpë—”

“It was in my forge—my personal forge, that I’d built with my own two hands. I’d designed everything, built it all from scratch, even cast the anvil myself. It felt like I was—like my life was really starting, when I was finally able to use it. Like I finally had room to do whatever I wanted, to make things that would rival even your works. It was where I made the Three. And in the end…in the end it was just where I died, at the hands of one who I had—who had been my friend, for years. With my own tools. He took me apart, bit by bit.” He lowered his hand from his face, and slowly flexed his fingers. The cut on his palm had healed into a pale scar that would soon fade away entirely. In the distance a gull called out, and from farther away another answered. At their feet the waves washed up over the white sands, quiet as a whisper. In Avallónë across the water, bells rang. “It wasn’t quick. He took extra time with—my hands. I tried to fight back but I wasn’t strong enough. If he hadn’t had his Ring, maybe…”

Fëanor moved closer and held out his arms, unsure if Celebrimbor wanted that kind of comfort or if he just wanted a listening ear. Celebrimbor stepped into them and dropped his head onto Fëanor’s shoulder. He was taller than Curufin, but not quite as tall as Fëanor himself. It was very easy to remember when he had been so much smaller than either of them, bright-eyed and fearless, eager to learn whatever anyone could teach him. 

“I’m sorry, Tyelpë,” he whispered. 

“I miss it,” Celebrimbor said. “The forge. The—the gemcraft. I just—I can’t. I keep trying and I just can’t.”

“Then don’t try,” Fëanor said. All things considered, Celebrimbor was not that long out of the Halls—he had come back sooner than Fëanor, but not until well after the Ring had been destroyed and it was clear that there really was no chance, this time, of Sauron’s return. “It’s not—you aren’t handing him a victory by not pushing yourself now. You had the victory, in the end. You kept the Three from him, and you are here, while he is nothing. Less than nothing.”

“I know,” Celebrimbor said. “I do. And—almost every other day I really am fine. I’m happy, happier now than I’ve ever been, except—Calissë asked me to make her a necklace this morning. Not for any reason, just that she realized all her jewelry is made by Atya or you and—and Ammë was wearing something I made long ago, and so Calissë said she wanted something I’d made and—” His voice cracked, and his shoulders shook as he tried and failed to suppress the tears. “I want to make things for my sisters—with my sisters—and I can’t.”

Fëanor held him as he wept; it didn’t take long for the tears to run out. As he drew back, wiping his face on his sleeve, Fëanor asked, “Do you really want to find a way back to it, or did you just need someone to listen?”

“Both, I suppose. I can’t talk to Atya about it. Or—I can and I have, but—”

“I understand. Does he know what Calissë asked you today?”

“Yes, he’s the one that distracted her so I could slip away. And—it’s…I go into the forge with him sometimes, just to watch. It’s easier now than it used to be, but…” He shook his head. 

“What if,” Fëanor said, “you and I tried to find a way to make it work? At my workshop, not yours—away from your father and your sisters.” There would be no risk of untimely interruptions, and Fëanor’s own distance from this part of Celebrimbor’s past might in this case be a good thing. 

“I’d like that,” Celebrimbor said. He wiped his face again and offered a smile, small but genuine. “I think I’d like that a lot.”

“I’m leaving for the mountains with Ambarussa soon, but we can speak of it again when I return in the spring.” Fëanor wiped a stray tear from Celebrimbor’s cheek. “Until then—try to put it out of your mind. Your sisters know that you love them, whatever you do or do not make.”

“I know that. I just…sometimes I wish they could know who I was without the scars. The ones you can’t see, I mean. It wasn’t…” Celebrimbor hesitated, gaze flicking eastward, going distant. “What he did—with his Ring, he…”

“You don’t have to say it, Tyelpë.”

“Sometimes it feels like there are parts of me still missing. I don’t think that’s really true, but—it feels like it. Do you know what I mean?”

“I think so. And of course you are different now, but different is not the same as diminished.”

“And I would say the same to anyone else,” Celebrimbor said, a little wry and a little bitter.

“I don’t mean you shouldn’t miss who you used to be. Everyone does that, I think.”

“Do you?”

Fëanor looked toward the sea, toward the eastern horizon past Tol Eressëa, as he tried to give the question the thought it deserved. “Yes and no,” he said finally. He missed who he had been when he married Nerdanel, when their children were born—he missed being a husband and a father; he missed being his father’s son. He did not miss at all who he’d turned into later—though he did miss, sometimes, the feeling of certainty that he had carried in those days. It was exhausting to always wonder whether what he said or did would make things better or worse. 

It wasn’t all bad, of course, and there were signs that he might get more of that past self back than he’d dared hope for—but he wasn’t foolish enough to believe it would ever be easy or that it would happen quickly. He had also stopped trying to push himself to do more, to do better, to achieve things no one had done before. He’d already done that, and even at the time it hadn’t made him as happy as he had hoped it would. Now if he wanted to do something new he could do it just because he was curious, and it didn’t matter if he succeeded or not. And if he did not want to, he could just keep doing all the things he already knew and liked best. It was restful. It was also a little bit like coming up for air after being trapped for a long time underwater. 

“That’s how I feel, too—yes and no,” Celebrimbor said, “when I can think about it reasonably.”

“You don’t have to always be reasonable.”

“I know. That’s why I came to find you today.” Celebrimbor stepped back into Fëanor’s arms, sighing as he leaned against him. “Thank you,” he said softly.

They returned to Tirion late in the afternoon, just in time for Fëanor to change for dinner with Rúmil—he’d nearly forgotten again, and when he arrived at Rúmil’s door a few minutes late, his old teacher grinned at him. “Busy day in the forge again?”

“Busy day with my grandson,” Fëanor replied. 

“Even better. Come in—I would apologize for the mess, but I know you won’t mind.” The dining table was scattered with papers and old books, nearly crowding out the dishes laid out for the meal. “I’ve been looking through some old records for Daeron—you know, of course, that he’s in Tirion, and this time we were able to meet in person at last.”

“Had you not, before?”

“No, we kept missing one another. Every time I went to Valmar, it seemed, he would come to Tirion, and be gone by the time I got back. Speaking of leaving—you’re off to the wilds, I hear.”

“With Ambarussa,” said Fëanor. He cleared a pile of papers from a chair and sat down, glancing over the top sheet as he did so. “These are old, indeed.” They were full of notes and scribbles—the first forays into Rúmil’s alphabet. 

“We had a very nice talk the other day about the trials and triumphs of devising letters. Our thoughts had run along the same tracks—and at nearly the same time, if I have counted the years right—but of course the look is quite different.” Rúmil gathered up a few stacks of papers and set them at the other end of the table. “But how are you, Fëanáro? I feel as though I haven’t seen you in ages.”

“I’m well enough—though I’m looking forward to spending time away from the city.” Fëanor paused as Rúmil poured each of them a glass of wine. “Have you seen Macalaurë?”

“Yes, I stopped to speak with him the other day, only briefly. I don’t think I had much to offer for that song of his, but it was good to see him. Have you seen him?” 

Rúmil knew, of course, that Fëanor’s sons were avoiding him. Everyone knew that. Fëanor hadn’t really spoken of it with him, though. Since his return to Tirion they had fallen into something like their initial relationship, that of student and teacher, as Rúmil had taken it upon himself to catch Fëanor up on all that he had missed—in all fields, not only history—in a more methodical manner than Fëanor would have thought of for himself. It had been nice, to be a student again, but it also meant they had not spoken very much of personal matters. 

“Yes,” Fëanor said now. “I spoke to him when he first came to Tirion.”

“Of Finwë?”

“Yes.” Fëanor kept his gaze on his plate. “What did you tell him for his song?”

“A few stories from the Journey,” said Rúmil, who had been one of Finwë’s friends and staunchest supporters in the lead-up to the Great Journey.

“No one ever speaks of that,” Fëanor said after a moment. “Of the Journey—or of Cuiviénen.”

“Coming here felt like starting anew,” Rúmil said. “It was easier to let the pages of that chapter of our history fall shut, and to look forward instead. Certainly it was less painful. There was not a single person who chose to come here who had not lost someone to the darkness.”

“It seems to me that my father lost everyone,” Fëanor said. 

“His father, his brothers—his grandfather too, with whom he was very close in his childhood. His mother chose to remain behind—she would rival you for stubbornness—and his sisters remained with her.”

“And her husband.”

“Ah, you know about that?” Rúmil’s smile was rueful. “Such remarriages were…they were not common, but they were not so unheard of as to be completely shocking. Attitudes changed very quickly here, when lost loved ones returned from Mandos—but of course you know that.”

“I just wish my father had told me.”

“It broke his heart to leave his mother and sisters behind—and his stepfather, who he loved very dearly also. As I said, it was easier not to look back. But I think for Finwë, he also harbored hopes for these lands that never came to fruition, and that made it even more painful to remember what he had left behind.”

“His brothers, you mean?”

“Yes. But not everyone who goes to Mandos can return—and I do not mean for the reasons Finwë remains there.”

“I know,” Fëanor said. 

“There are also those who never came there in the first place,” Rúmil added after a moment. “That is the most grievous—and I do not think Finwë was able to learn which fate befell his brothers or his father or grandfather. And when I asked after my own lost ones, I was told that there are some in Mandos who do not even remember their names—who do not remember that they are Elves.” 

Fëanor remembered, suddenly, the state of Celebrimbor’s spirit when he had come to Mandos, hardly knowing who he was or where or why; he flinched and dropped his fork. It clattered onto his plate with a startlingly loud noise. 

“I’m sorry,” Rúmil said. “This is very poor dinner conversation.”

“It’s—it’s fine. I want to know.”

“It isn’t fine,” Rúmil said. “But this is why we have not spoken of it—we the Eldar, I mean. Even now the grief lies very near to our hearts, and Finwë, at least—he was never one to dwell in the past. It was almost a mantra of his, to not look back, to keep moving forward.”

“Do you know why?”

“No. All I know is that he went out once with his brothers, when he was still young—before he reached his majority, before his voice even finished changing—and only he came back. He was the first, years later, to stand up and say—though he was still young then too, with no authority to speak of yet—that we should pay more heed to Oromë than our elders were at first inclined to.”

“Do you know why his mother and sisters would not come?”

“They wished for freedom; Finwë wished for safety—and he did not believe that we were sacrificing one for the other. You would disagree, I know…”

“I don’t know, anymore, if I do.”

“There were many such arguments and many such bitter partings. Maybe there was no right answer. I don’t know either. I came hoping to be reunited with one that I loved—and I cannot regret it, though that has not come to pass.” Rúmil sighed, turning his wine glass to watch the liquid inside catch the lamplight. “I do not think your father would wish for you to be dwelling on all this.”

“In that, I do not agree. There is—there is dwelling too much in the past, of course, but to never reflect on it at all cannot be any better.” 

At this Rúmil smiled. “You are right, of course—but there must be balance, as in all things. Have you been doing much reflecting on the past of late?”

“Plenty. My own not the least.”

“To what end?”

“Trying to learn from it.”

Rúmil’s smile faded, and he leaned forward. “Fëanáro, if you’ll forgive me speaking so bluntly—your worst mistakes were ones made in the depths of grief so profound I do believe it drove you mad. There can be no lesson learned from that—it was not something you could control.”

“I made plenty of other mistakes that I must be careful not to repeat—but that isn’t what I meant. I was absent from the world for a very long time after I did things that shaped all that came after my death, and if I’m to move in it again I need to understand why and how it has changed—more than can be gleaned from even your writings. That’s all.” Fëanor paused. Then he asked, having almost to force the words up out of his throat, “You really think I was driven mad?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know.” It made a sort of horrible sense—he remembered so little with any clarity after the Darkening. He couldn’t remember what he said at Losgar that had hurt Maedhros so badly, and he couldn’t remember the precise sequence of his thoughts that had led him to swear the Oath in the first place. Alqualondë was a horrific blur. The idea that he had lost not only his father and his Silmarils but also himself, long before he ever died, was enough to make his skin crawl. How was he supposed to prevent such a thing from happening again? How was he supposed to stop himself if he did not even remember how it felt to slide into such madness?

“Don’t forget, I have known you all your life, Curufinwë Fëanáro,” Rúmil said. “I saw the changes that came over you under the Enemy’s influence. That was not you, not who you were or who you are in your heart of hearts.”

“Even he could not make something from nothing,” Fëanor said. 

“You think you are the only one who has ever been angry? Who has ever been resentful, or bitter, or grieved? Of course not. We have all the potential in us for great good and great evil—but you were the target of a Vala’s machinations and hatred, both. Who knows what he was capable of, working as subtly as he did here? I do not believe he only used the rumor mill of Tirion to further his ends. Even you could not be expected to withstand years of pressure on all sides and then to be confronted with the Darkening—with Finwë’s murder—and come out of the other side unscathed. That you did not die of it there at Formenos yourself is still shocking to me.”

He had died at Formenos, Fëanor thought. It had just taken too long for his body to catch up. “That,” Fëanor said aloud, “is not an excuse—”

“It is a reason, at least. It is a reason, too, that you do not need to fear it happening again. You are under no such pressures now.”

With that, Rúmil changed the subject firmly, talking of some rumors he’d heard about the feast Ingwë was really planning in earnest now. Ingwion had gotten involved, and Rúmil thought it likely that Fëanor would come back in the spring to find Tirion bustling as the Noldor got drawn into the preparations too, and then moving on to the latest debates and discussions happening among the city’s loremasters. It was, overall, a very pleasant evening—and Fëanor didn’t think he regretted that initial conversation, exactly, but it left him feeling unsettled and unable to sleep that night. 

Morning brought more grandchildren—this time all three of them, Celebrimbor arriving with Náriel and Calissë in tow, to find Fëanor lingering at the breakfast table with Lalwen. “Everyone’s leaving!” Náriel exclaimed, dramatically throwing herself against Fëanor’s legs. “Even you!”

“Only for the winter,” said Fëanor as he lifted her onto his lap. “You had your adventures last summer, and now it’s my turn. I will miss you all very much, though.”

“Do we have to write to you, too?” Calissë asked, wrinkling her nose at the thought.

“You know your grandfather invented the letters you hate so much, don’t you?” Lalwen asked, laughing. 

“Rúmil invented them,” Fëanor said. “I only fixed them.”

“You made them too complicated,” Calissë said.

“I do apologize,” Fëanor said, trying and failing not to laugh himself. “I was rather more concerned with how pretty they were, at the time.”

“It’s not complicated,” Náriel said, “it’s just boring.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about writing any letters to me this winter,” said Fëanor. “I’ll be away with Ambarussa in the mountains, so they wouldn’t reach me anyway.”

The visit turned into a series of games—hide-and-seek was a perennial favorite—that had Fëanor and Celebrimbor both disrupting several meetings and racing through the halls and gardens in pursuit of Calissë and Náriel. It had been a long time since Fëanor had laughed so much, or managed to forget about everything else that troubled him. 

He found Náriel late in the afternoon after a round of hiding and seeking in the middle of the hedge maze, apparently distracted from the game by the butterflies that were visiting the rosemary and lavender. Fëanor could tell that she was getting tired, and so he sat down and lifted her onto his lap. “Gonna miss you,” she said, yawning as she curled up in his arms.

“I’ll miss you too.” Fëanor kissed the top of her head and picked a few blades of grass out of her braids. Someday, far too soon, she would be too big to sit on his lap like this, and too old to want to. “I love you,” he told her, “so very much.”

“Love you, too.”

It wasn’t until Curufin had come to fetch his children home that Fëanor learned, from Fingolfin, that Maglor had come to take his leave. “He and Daeron are leaving for Alqualondë the day after tomorrow—when you are to leave with Ambarussa.”

“Was he looking for me?” Fëanor asked.

“No, he didn’t mention you at all—but he seems less burdened now than he did before his trip to Formenos. Try not to worry about him too much—just enjoy your retreat to the mountains this winter.” Fingolfin grinned at him. “I’m still surprised you agreed to go. I would think you’d go mad trapped up a mountain in the snow.”

“I’ve never done it before,” Fëanor said, managing not to wince at the joke—it wasn’t as though Fingolfin knew what Rúmil had said, “and I’ll try most things at least once.”

“I am glad you’re going,” Fingolfin said. “I think time away from the city will be good for you—especially with your sons. But I will miss you.”

“Really, you won’t be glad to be rid of me for a while?”

Fëanor had meant it to be a joke, but Fingolfin just shook his head. “Of course not, Fëanáro.”

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“I am not alone now,” he said, thinking of Daeron, and also of Elrond and his family, and of Galadriel, and—

“No, but you miss your brothers.”

“I shouldn’t,” he said. “They’re right there. They’re—”

“They are changed, as you are changed.”

“I can’t be who they need me to be.”

Nienna folded him into her embrace. She was very warm. Maglor let himself lean against her, feeling the soft fall of her tears on his hair, and the strength and quiet power of her being. “They need you as you are,” she said, “and you need them, do you not?”

- High in the Clean Blue Air

- - 

The day before he was to leave with Amrod and Amras, Fëanor ventured back the house, where he found the ceiling in one of the large parlors caved in. They’d once hosted parties there. Now the spot where Maglor had first dazzled their family and their guests on his harp—made for him by Finwë, before he had started to learn how to make his own—was covered in a pile of plaster and stone and broken wood. Fëanor sighed, and turned away. He went back to the old schoolroom, and carefully cut out the plaster from the part of the wall where Amras had drawn the family. It had been in the back of his mind ever since he’d first seen the clumsy little figures. He went carefully, not wanting to damage it any more than it already was, and once he had the plaster free he wrapped it up in soft leather to carry back home, where he put it into a box marked with signs of preserving and protection in his workshop. 

He spent the rest of the morning cleaning out his forge and doing other small tasks so everything would be ready for his return come springtime. Then he went to visit Curufin once more. 

The girls were busy with Rundamírë when Fëanor arrived, so he and Curufin went out walking through a nearby park. “Are you taking the palantír with you when you go?” Curufin asked. 

“Yes.”

“You don’t have to, you know. We didn’t mean for it to be—”

“I know. I want to—if nothing else, I want to be able to check on you sometimes.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Of course you will, but I’ll miss you.” They both fell silent as they passed a few others out for an afternoon walk. Then, when they were alone again he said, “Curvo—I haven’t yet looked for it, but…do you remember what I said and did just after the ships burned at Losgar?”

“You mean moving inland…?”

“No, directly afterward. I suppose it wasn’t after they burned, but while they were still burning.”

“Oh.” Curufin shook his head. “I don’t, but why would you need to look for it?”

“Because I don’t remember,” Fëanor said. He kept his gaze on the path at their feet, unsure if he really wanted to see whatever Curufin’s face was doing. “I should be thanking you for the palantír, really, because there’s—there is quite a lot that I don’t remember with any clarity, after the Darkening. I need to correct it.”

“I know that you were angry with Maedhros,” Curufin said after a moment, “but we never spoke of Losgar—after he came back, we never spoke of you at all.”

“It is a very bad habit of our family, not to speak of those who are gone,” said Fëanor. 

“I suppose that’s true.”

“Not that I blame you—”

“It’s not that we didn’t miss you, or mourn you. We just…” Curufin shrugged, folding his arms over his chest. “Calissë’s asked me about it a few times since Maglor and Maedhros came back from Lórien. I don’t know what to tell her except that it’s complicated. No, don’t apologize,” he added when Fëanor opened his mouth to do just that. “You don’t have to keep saying it—not to me.”

“It just feels as though every day I find something new I need to apologize for.”

“Well, I’ve already forgiven you for all of it, including everything you haven’t thought of yet. And—there is a lot that we want you to see, but there are things you shouldn’t—”

“I know.” Fëanor put his arm around Curufin’s shoulders and kissed his temple. “I’m all right, Curvo, really.”

“You and Maglor and Maedhros say that an awful lot,” Curufin said. “I’m not really sure I believe any of you.”

“Your brothers only just got back from a very long stay in Lórien. If they say they’re all right, I think you can believe them.”

“And you?”

“I promise, Curvo, if I’m not all right I will tell you.” Fëanor kissed him again. “Don’t borrow trouble.”

“I know. I’m—”

“And don’t you start apologizing.”

Maedhros and Celegorm had left the city that morning to return home to Nerdanel’s house. Fëanor spent the afternoon with Curufin and his family, but did not see Caranthir or the twins at all; Amrod and Amras came for him early the next morning, dressed for travel and clearly eager to be at their own home again. 

“Maglor and Daeron are leaving today too,” said Amrod as they left the city behind, “though of course they’re off to Alqualondë, and we won’t see them on the road.”

“How long are they staying there?” Fëanor asked, curious to know if their plans had changed at all from the vague ones Daeron had mentioned.

“Depends on how well it goes meeting Daeron’s family, I suppose,” said Amras. “His parents live there—I don’t know if you’ve heard.”

“He mentioned it.”

“When did you speak?” Amrod asked, eyebrows shooting up in surprise.

“He came to speak to me when Maglor was away at Formenos.”

“For what reason?” Amras asked. 

“To apologize, he said, so it isn’t continually awkward when we meet in the future.”

“Well, that’s good—that means it went much better than you were thinking it did, with Maglor,” said Amrod. Fëanor shrugged. “If anyone would know Maglor’s thoughts on it, it’s Daeron.”

“Not any of you?”

“He told me something of it,” said Amras, “and I did tell you that he wanted to speak to you again, just not yet—remember?”

“I do.” Fëanor also knew that Maglor’s songwriting was a very convenient excuse, and that it was better not to let his hopes rise too high, and to temper all of his expectations. What had not gone well was his encounter with Maedhros, and if it came down to it, his sons would choose one another over him—as they should—and especially Maedhros and Maglor. 

“Will you tell us what did go wrong, when you first met Daeron? He’s always been very vague about it.”

“I made some assumptions and then made the mistake of voicing them,” Fëanor said after a moment. “According to Daeron, neither of us were at our best at the time. I certainly wasn’t.”

“What assumptions did you make?” Amrod asked. He and Amras were getting bolder with their questions. In spite of the appearance of cheerful fearlessness they had projected from the start, Fëanor had only just started to realize how cautious they’d really been in the beginning. “He’s very good at appearing far more cheerful than he really feels—it was rather startling the first time his smile dropped and he snapped at one of us.”

“Startling is one word for it,” Fëanor said. “I just—he seemed not to really care about anything.”

“Well, now you know that that really means he cares an awful lot about everything,” said Amrod. 

“Yes, I suppose. It’s obvious now that he cares for your brother, so…”

“He does,” said Amras, “and he makes Cáno very happy.”

They passed by Nerdanel’s house; Fëanor glimpsed Huan sniffing around the garden, though he did not see Nerdanel or either of his sons who were there. It was nearly time for the plum harvest, which had always been a very happy occasion whenever their family could join Mahtan’s for it. Past Nerdanel’s house the road ran south, more or less in a straight line, with other roads of various sizes branching off of it every once in a while; Fëanor had traveled very few of them, since they were all made long after he had died. 

“Where, exactly, do you two live?” Fëanor asked as they finally left the road some days later. They retrieved their bags from the horses, who Amrod then gave a sugar cube each and sent them on their way—back to Tirion, or to some other stable, or just to roam where they would, as most horses in Valinor did. Many were very happy to spend their days being pampered and spoiled by the Elves, but there were many herds of wild horses roaming the land as well, and in the eastern part of Valinor there was very little fear of predation. 

“Not too far now!” said Amras as he hoisted his pack onto his shoulders. “Just up this mountain, but there’s no road—not even a good path for horses. We’ll be walking the rest of the way.”

“Why did you choose to come all the way out here?”

“We like the quiet,” said Amrod. He pushed a branch out of the way and held it until Fëanor passed. “When we first came back even Ammë’s house was a bit overwhelming—and it’s very quiet there.”

“It was,” Amras corrected him. “It’s not nearly as quiet now, especially when Caranthir and Celegorm are both at home. But back then the quiet made everything even worse. Anyway, we thought about going to join Oromë’s host, but that was worse than even Tirion on a holiday. Then we heard that some of our old friends from Ossiriand had come to these mountains, so we came looking for them—it was a little awkward in the beginning, but we settled in the end close enough to visit but not so close that we’re always seeing other people.”

“Vána comes wandering through every few years or so,” Amrod added. “She’s taught us a lot.”

Though it wasn’t suitable for horses, there was a path up the mountain—difficult to find at first, but easy to follow once they did. As they went higher the air grew cooler, and signs of autumn began to show in the first hints of change in the leaves, golden and blushing red, and in the chill of the wind that swept down from the mountain peaks very high above where snow remained year-round. Amrod and Amras pointed out landmarks and favorite spots as they went. Birds came at times to land on their outstretched hands, and the twins laughed at whatever the blue jays and sparrows had to tell them.

Finally, they came to a cheerful meadow, through which a clear stream flowed, and where a cottage stood. It was cozy and just big enough for the two of them and a guest—or perhaps two guests, if no one minded being a little crowded. They had their beds in a loft over the main room, which was full of soft cushions and sturdy furniture, and woven rugs on the floors. In the window that caught the most sun hung a silver chain from which dangled prisms. Amras walked by and dragged his fingers over them, a gesture of long-ingrained habit, and the swaying set the rainbows cast on the floor and the walls dancing. 

After they unpacked, Fëanor got to watch the twins go over the house and the little garden behind it, looking for all the things that had gotten worn down or broken in their absence, while they also made a list of what needed to be done to prepare for the winter. Firewood was the main thing, as well as hunting and a visit or two to their friends among the Laiquendi to trade for other staples to fill their cellar. Amras set off after a day or so to take care of the latter, while Amrod recruited Fëanor to help gather firewood while also showing him around the woods that surrounded the meadow. “It’s not really anything like Tirion, I know,” Amrod said as they returned to the house, dragging a large fallen log behind them.

“It suits you,” Fëanor said. Amrod grinned at him. “What do you do in the winter when there’s no getting down the mountain?”

“Well, it’s rare that we’re snowed in so we can’t leave the house,” said Amrod. “There’s always things to do, friends to visit, and there’s still wandering and hunting. When we aren’t doing that we just get cozy by the fire. I have a spindle now, and Amras has the knitting needles that Grandmother Ennalótë gave him not long after we came back from Mandos.”

Fëanor wiped his arm across his forehead when they dropped the log where it could be split into firewood. “Did you ever take up lace?”

“Grandmother Míriel taught me a little bit, last winter. I have the bobbins somewhere; maybe I’ll do a bit this winter, I don’t know.” Amrod shrugged, and stretched his arms. “Do you ever do anything like that?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Fëanor opened his mouth, and then closed it again, realizing he didn’t have an answer. “I don’t know.” Before, he hadn’t been able to bear the thought of it—he hadn’t wanted to learn anything of his mother’s craft if she could not be the one to teach him. Now, of course, there was nothing to stop him. Míriel would be thrilled, he knew, to share her work with him, just as she had been thrilled to share it with both Amrod and Caranthir—though, she’d written, Caranthir’s interests lay more with the process of dye-making than with anything that happened afterward.

“Spinning isn’t very hard,” Amrod said after a moment. “I could show you—if you wanted?”

“I’d like that very much.”

They left the log where it was for the moment, and Amrod led the way inside. He went to a basket near the hearth, full of wool waiting to be spun, and picked up two drop spindles. “Cáno made these for me last winter,” he said, holding them out. Fëanor took one, running his fingers over the wood, sanded and polished to silky smoothness. The wood was pale, and the grain seemed odd. “He made them out of driftwood,” Amrod added, which explained it. “He’s got a whole chest of pieces—I don’t know what he intends to do with most of it, but he made these for me and two others for Grandmother Míriel.” He picked up the basket of wool. “Let’s go outside. It’s not really complicated, spinning, but it will take a bit of practice to really get the hang of it.”

“Most things do.”

Amras returned after two days, accompanied by a handful of others, all bearing winter supplies. Fëanor was greeted cheerfully, as though none of his sons’ friends knew who he was—though they surely did, he thought. Even if they chose to live away from the rest of the Eldar, they had to get news. It was refreshing, though, to be treated as though he were just anyone else, new to the mountains and likely to run into trouble in the snows. 

“We’ll see them again soon—they’ll trade for some of the things we brought back from Tirion, and probably for some favors, if you’re willing, Atya,” said Amrod when the visitors left, and all the supplies had been put away and they could settle into the twins’ normal autumn routine. “And then come winter we’ll meet by the lake to go ice skating—but of course we’ll show you the lake sometime much sooner than that. It will be some time yet before it freezes.”

“How do you send word to your brothers, or hear from them, when you’re up here?” Fëanor asked.

“Birds will carry notes for us sometimes, if we ask nicely—but we don’t usually bother, except to let them know when all the paths are snowed under. But this year we’ll have the palantír—we should write to Curvo and remind him that they can be used for talking, too,” Amras said to Amrod. “I think we all forget that most of the time.”

“Because none of you ever used them for their intended purpose,” said Fëanor, amused. 

“They’re so heavy!” Amrod protested. “Of course none of us wanted to be dragging one around when we went off traveling.”

“They aren’t that heavy,” said Fëanor, though it was true that the stones were heavier than they looked like they should be, and heavier than was convenient for travelers. He never had been able to solve that particular problem—but it was another thing to think about, if he ever did try to make more. 

“Tyelko did bring one when we went out to Ekkaia,” said Amrod. “That was mostly to put Ammë’s mind at ease—he used it a few times to speak to her while we were traveling.”

“We passed it around once or twice to look for Cáno, though it didn’t work very well,” said Amras. “We found you, though—I think you were teaching yourself Westron.”

“I probably was,” Fëanor said. He’d spent a lot of time surrounded by books that summer, particularly in the beginning before he got up the nerve to have a proper conversation with Fingolfin. “That or Sindarin.” He’d learned enough in Middle-earth to be getting on with, but had not been anywhere near as fluent as he wished to be by the time he died. Even now sometimes it felt odd and wrong to speak his sons’ Sindarin names.

“Why did you stay there—in Imloth Ningloron, I mean?”

“Apparently it was Nolofinwë and Elrond’s plan to invite me there anyway,” said Fëanor. They were all lying in the clover watching the clouds pass by; the day was cool but not cold, perfect for lying out in the sunshine. “So if things went wrong they could go wrong somewhere far away from Tirion, I suppose.”

“Elrond was going to invite you to Imloth Ningloron?”

“If your brother agreed.” Fëanor folded his arms behind his head and stared at one of the clouds. “Then I upset all their plans anyway, so…”

“Can we ask why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you go to Imloth Ningloron before anyone invited you? Didn’t anyone tell you that Cáno was unlikely to be happy to see you?”

“They had.” Fëanor kept his gaze on the cloud. “But listening to what others told me—that’s what started all the trouble in the first place. You’d all made your feelings clear enough—but I wanted to hear it from Cáno himself, if he felt the same.” He’d also just needed to see him, to see that he really was there, that he’d really made it home, alive and safe. Even now he couldn’t really regret it. 

“That’s fair,” said Amras. “Though you did take us all by surprise, and that didn't help matters.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Fëanor said quietly. 

“We know.” 

They saw quite a lot of the Laiquendi over the next few weeks. They proved that they did in fact know who Fëanor was, and brought him all kinds of problems to solve and things to make or fix in exchange for favors in kind as well as preserves and wine and mead and other things they had made. Fëanor enjoyed listening to the twins laugh and speak with their friends while his hands were busy; he liked this glimpse, even better than what he could see in the palantír, of what their lives had been like in Beleriand—better than Beleriand, because no one needed to go armed here or to worry about what the Enemy might be doing. 

He also ventured out into the woods on his own, learning the trails and the landmarks around the twins’ little meadow home. He followed streams and found outlooks from which he could glimpse the wide meads of Yavanna in the distance, golden-green, with tiny herds of animals moving across them, and with silver ribbons of rivers cutting through the grass. The mountains in autumn were beautiful, the leaves turning gold and red and orange and falling gently all around him as he walked, the carpet of them on the ground swishing softly under his feet. 

Amrod often took to the trees themselves, and it made Fëanor wince every time—he couldn’t quite hide it, but neither Amrod nor Amras seemed to take offense. His discomfort with heights had no origin that Fëanor could remember; it just made him dizzy to even think about perching so high in a tree, or standing at the edge of a cliff or even just a high wall. Windows were all right, but if there was even the slightest chance of falling, Fëanor would much rather he—and everyone around him—stay away. 

Celegorm, he remembered, would always head for the nearest ledge, fearless and giggling through the lectures Fëanor gave him that never seemed to stick, but in spite of his restlessness never seeming to care that when Fëanor yanked him back he held on a little too tight for a little too long. Maglor had never been afraid either—and he had broken his arm falling off of the roof of Mahtan’s house, sometime when Caranthir had been small. 

It hadn’t been heights, though, that had killed any of his children, unless you counted—

Fëanor rubbed his hands over his face, cutting off that thought before it could go any farther. It made him feel sick in a way even standing at the top of the Mindon Eldaliéva never had. 

“Are you all right, Atya?” Amras sat beside him, leaning back against the sun warmed wood of the cottage wall. Above their heads was the kitchen window, where the prisms swung and glinted. 

“Fine,” Fëanor said. “Just—thinking. Where has your brother gone this time?”

“Oh, I don’t know. He’s impossible to track when he takes to the trees.”

“Do you ever do that?”

“Sometimes, but I move faster on the ground—and, well, he likes the secrets in the canopies, and I like ones among the roots.” When Fëanor looked at him, Amras grinned. “We don’t always go around pretending to be exactly the same. Only when it’s funny.”

“What do you find among the roots?” Fëanor asked. 

Amras’ smile brightened even further. “I’ll show you!” He grabbed Fëanor’s hand and pulled him up and into the woods, where there was far more happening in the dark and shady places under the tree roots and among the stones than Fëanor might have ever guessed. 

Another afternoon the twins showed Fëanor the lake they spoke of often—where later in the winter they would skate across the thick ice and build bonfires on the shore. Now it was still warm, good weather for fishing, and a waterfall plunged down a tall cliff face into it, sending mist billowing up to make rainbows in the bright sun. 

Somehow, as he and Amrod sent stones skipping across the lake’s surface while Amras fished some distance away, Fëanor found himself admitting to having visited Formenos—he hadn’t intended to, didn’t want his sons to worry about it, but Amrod seemed only curious. “Why go there at all?”

Fëanor watched the ripples from his last stone spread out and disappear. “I wanted to see my father’s grave,” he said. “I wanted to see what had become of everything.” One of the few bright spots he could recall from the twins’ childhood was teaching them how to skip stones across the Wilwarinen. Amrod had been more patient than Amras, who had soon run off to chase butterflies through the wildflowers instead. Now they were both remarkably patient, content to sit very still and silent for hours at a time just listening and watching the world move around them. “That lake used to be a place of happy memories,” he said, almost hearing the echo of his children’s laughter out of that far distant place and time. “Now it’s just…lonely.” 

“Maglor likes to say that lonely doesn’t have to mean unhappy,” said Amrod as he picked up a handful of his own stones, sorting through them almost absently. “But I’m not sure if he really believes it or if he’s just trying to make the rest of us feel better about having left him alone so long.”

Having left him alone—as though they’d had any choice in the matter. Fëanor thought about saying something, but didn’t. That guilt, whether it was warranted or not, lay between his sons and he did not want to interfere. Instead he said, “I have seen some of the places he lingered most often. He isn’t wrong—there is great beauty in the most remote and desolate places, and…” By now surely Celebrimbor would have installed the window in Maglor’s room at Nerdanel’s house, though Fëanor did not know whether he would have yet returned from Alqualondë to see it. He hoped that he would like it, in spite of Celebrimbor’s doubts. “Your brother always liked seeking out those places, even when he was young.” Maglor had always liked to go off alone—but it was, of course, very different to choose to take a solitary journey knowing you had a family who missed you and would be glad to see you return. For a very long time Maglor had not had anything like that, and whenever he thought of it that place under Fëanor’s ribs hurt. 

“Like Ekkaia,” Amrod said. He flung a stone out over the water with a quick flick of his wrist. It skipped a dozen times before finally sinking under the surface. 

Ekkaia was lonely indeed. “Why did you all go out there?” Fëanor asked. “I know why you left—but what took you all the way to Ekkaia?” 

To his surprise, Amrod laughed, and spoke of Gandalf and his meddling, the way he’d dropped hints to put Ekkaia into all of their minds. “It could have been worse though,” he added with a grin, eyes crinkling. “Historically when Mithrandir meddles in someone’s life they end up getting sent on some terribly dangerous but important quest. At least we didn’t have to face any dragons!”

He spoke lightly, but that journey had been dangerous. Just because there were no orcs did not mean Valinor was always a safe place, especially far away from all the cities and settled lands. “Curvo let slip that he had to stitch Nel—Maedhros up at some point.” He had to get better at not reaching for Nelyo before Maedhros. It was always harder when he had to talk about something terrible that had happened.

“That was on the way back.”

“What was on the way back?” Amras asked, coming to join them with several fish. While Amrod built a fire and Fëanor helped Amras prepare the fish for cooking, Amras described what they called the River Incident—which was a very mundane name for such a frightening event. Maglor had held back a swollen river with a song so they could cross, but a wild and apparently desperate hunting cat had attacked as soon as Maglor had gotten out of the water. Maedhros threw himself in between them and got knocked into the river as well as mauled—and when Maglor tried to pull him out, they were both taken by the flood that had come down when the power of Maglor’s song was relaxed. It was a horrific story, made bearable only by Amras’ reminder that Fëanor had seen them both since, and he did know that they were fine.

“Anyway,” Amras said, “that’s when the rest of us decided that Maedhros and Maglor weren’t allowed to be the oldest brothers anymore.”

“What does that mean?” Fëanor asked, startled into laughter by the sudden shift. 

“Mostly that they don’t get to complain when we go and poke them out of whatever bad mood they’ve worked themselves into,” said Amras, “and we get to protect them instead of the other way around. That hasn’t stopped Maedhros from threatening to toss us all into the river behind Ammë’s house for worrying at him, but I don’t think he’s actually done it yet.”

As much as he appreciated the image of his younger sons rallying around their older brothers, Fëanor couldn’t help but frown. “Does he need worrying at? I thought all that time in Lórien…”

“Oh, he’s much happier now than he was before they went to Lórien—they both are,” said Amrod. “The fire’s ready for the fish, Amras.” He leaned back on his hands as Amras placed a pan over the flames. “I think the rest of us are just too used to worrying, especially about Maedhros. Even when none of us were really talking to each other, we still worried.”

“Why didn’t you? Talk to one another, I mean,” Fëanor asked. Curufin had said they hadn’t known how, but he wanted to know what the twins would say too. The point of the palantír was to help him understand, because just listening wasn’t enough—but at the same time, only looking into the palantír wasn’t enough either. They needed both. When Amrod and Amras exchanged a look he sighed. “I’m not—I won’t be upset with you. I just want to understand.”

“We know,” said Amrod. “I’m just not sure how to explain.” 

Before Fëanor could decide whether that boded ill, Amras said, “It’s not that we hated each other, or were angry, or something, except that I think Curvo was angry at Tyelko for a long time.”

“That’s because Tyelko wouldn’t talk to him, because he’s an idiot,” said Amrod. 

“And you could be forgiven for thinking that Carnistir was angry with everyone,” Amras went on, poking at the fish as he spoke, “but that’s just because he’s prickly. Well, less so now. A little bit.” He poked at the fish again. 

“We all changed in Beleriand,” Amrod said. “And we didn’t fit together like we once had. Like we still wanted to.”

“In Beleriand, by the time we went to Doriath, the Oath was the only thing holding us together,” said Amras. He did not look at Fëanor as he spoke. “For some of us it was the only thing keeping us alive, I think.” Fëanor didn’t flinch, but it was a near thing. He believed it, though—he’d seen how the Oath had worn them down, weighed on them and crowded everything else out of their minds and hearts, especially after the disaster of the Nirnaeth. 

“And then,” Amrod said, “we all came back and didn’t have that anymore, and didn’t know how to talk to each other or even really what we wanted to do. Carnistir had the easiest time, I think, settling back into life. I think Grandfather Mahtan and Grandmother Ennalótë helped him a lot. Especially Grandmother.”

Because Ennalótë was a gardener, and Caranthir loved gardens. Fëanor hadn’t looked for any of that, but he could easily imagine him digging his hands into the soil and smiling when he leaned in to smell the flowers, just as he had done in Thargelion in the spring. 

“Maedhros had the hardest time, because Mandos didn’t work for him and the Valar weren’t very careful about when they released him to find what he needed in life,” Amras said. “And of course the first thing he did was go and take up one of the palantíri, and the one time Maglor was easy to find…”

Oh. Oh no. “He was in Dol Guldur?” That was another thing Fëanor had not yet looked for—though he knew that he would, in time, whatever Curufin said to warn him away from it. 

“Yes,” Amrod said, and scowled when he added, “and none of us knew anything about that until he came here and Tyelpë met him in Avallónë and then told the rest of us. Tyelko was furious with Maedhros for keeping that secret.”

It was slightly confusing just how they had learned that Maedhros had known in the first place, for the information had taken a very roundabout route to get from Maedhros back to the rest of them, via Elrond and Maglor himself and then Celebrimbor. Fëanor hadn’t realized until that afternoon that Nerdanel had also known—but of course she would have seen it, for she had taken the palantíri from the old house for that express purpose. In the same slightly roundabout way, they brought the conversation back to the question Fëanor had first asked: why they hadn’t spoken to their brothers for so many years. The tense atmosphere between their brothers who stayed with Nerdanel, and the crowds of Tirion, had been unbearable, and so Amrod and Amras had simply retreated, and once they were away, it was easy to stay away. 

“It’s not that we ever hated each other,” Amras added—a repetition of things they had said before, as though they really wanted to make sure that Fëanor knew and understood it. “Although Curvo thought Tyelko hated him for a long while.”

“We just didn’t know how to talk to each other anymore,” Amrod repeated, still echoing Curufin’s own words. “We didn’t know how to love each other, after all that happened and all we did. We joke about being annoyed at Mithrandir’s meddling, but really that was the best thing that could’ve happened to us.”

“Hill cats and flash floods notwithstanding,” Amras added. He took the fish off the flames, and placed the next one into the pan with a loud sizzle. “You can probably find it in the palantír, but that would just be alarming yourself for no reason, Atya. Everyone turned out fine.”

They did, and he knew it, but he would look anyway—he was curious, and still not very good at leaving well enough alone even when he knew it would just upset him. He wanted to see for himself how they’d come together again, how they’d departed as little better than strangers and returned more like the brothers they’d once been and still wanted to be, with all that entailed—the laughter and the tears, the River Incident and the homecoming afterward.

There was no urgency to it, though—even the need to understand what had happened at Losgar felt far away. He could leave the palantír alone and enjoy the warm days and cool nights, and his sons’ laughter, and the sun-spangled surface of the lake and the songs of the birds as they paused in their long migrations to the south. 

There had to be balance, Rúmil had said. He was right, and Fëanor had been trying to take it to heart. The past wasn’t going anywhere; for now it was enough that he could be there in the present, picnicking by the lake in the sunshine with his children.

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So I had done wrong
But you put me right
My judgment burned in the black of night
When I give less than I take
It is my fault, my own mistake
- “Learn Me Right” - Birdy, Mumford & Sons

- - 

Just because there was no urgency, though, didn’t mean Losgar left Fëanor’s thoughts. A few nights later he dreamed of it—hazy images of flames reflected on the water, and the smell of smoke thick in the air. He woke to the smell of something burning and Amras cursing as he rescued the flatbread he had been cooking before it was rendered entirely inedible. For a few minutes Fëanor lay in his bed in their little loft, listening to Amrod laugh, and to the wind blowing around the corner of the cottage near his head. 

Amrod went out after breakfast. To ask one twin was to ask the other, really, what they had seen or done, so Fëanor steeled himself and asked Amras, “Do you know what it was that I said to Maedhros after the ships burned at Losgar?” If he could hear something of it—get some insight from someone else—maybe he would know what to look for when he did finally pick up the palantír again. Maybe it would be easier to make himself do it.

Amras looked at him in surprise. “No,” he said. “I don’t think I knew you had spoken to him at all—you stopped speaking to him, after Losgar.”

“So—you were not nearby?”

“No. If anyone was, it was Maglor.” Amras looked at Fëanor with something like curiosity and something like wariness in his eyes. Whatever he saw on Fëanor’s face seemed to discourage more questions, though, and he let it go. It was a relief, because Fëanor didn’t really know what to say about it, beyond the fact that he didn’t remember—which Amras could guess by the fact that he was asking about it at all.

When Amras went off to do whatever it was he had planned for the day, Fëanor went back to the loft and took out the palantír. First, he looked for his other sons—in the present. He found Maedhros and Caranthir in what appeared to be Maedhros’ painting studio, chatting while Maedhros mixed paints and Caranthir sat on the floor playing with a hedgehog. Both of them were smiling, relaxed and happy in a way Fëanor had not seen in a very long time. When he looked for Nerdanel he found her in her own studio with Elessúrë’s daughter Isilmiel, who Fëanor had only met once or twice—and with Celegorm, who seemed to have taken an interest in stone carving. He was doing less carving of his own than watching Nerdanel, though, and Fëanor couldn’t blame him. She was hard at work on a sculpture of marble—perhaps something abstract, perhaps something not yet identifiable—and Fëanor allowed himself to indulge in watching for a while too. She moved with precision and grace, every tap of the hammer deliberate and perfectly placed. Her hair was coming loose of its braids, like it always did. If the light coming through the windows was a different shade of gold, Fëanor could have fooled himself into thinking he was looking back in time. 

He watched until she stopped her work to step down to speak to Isilmiel, and then he shifted his thoughts. The palantír responded, showing him Maglor in a garden that Fëanor could only assume belonged to Celebrían and Elrond, at their house on Tol Eressëa. He was with Daeron; both of them looked serious as they spoke together, though also comfortable and peaceful as Daeron lay with his head in Maglor’s lap, and Maglor tangled his fingers in Daeron’s hair, fondness shining in his eyes even if he was not smiling. 

Curufin was of course in Tirion. When Fëanor looked he found him with Rundamírë in the rooftop garden, laughing at something as they tidied it up and prepared the planting boxes for the coming winter. Curufin caught Rundamírë around the waist to spin her around and then kiss her. 

They were all well, all healthy and content and even happy. Fëanor sighed and lifted his head to rub his eyes. Whatever else he saw—in the present, his sons were more than all right.

With that reassurance, he turned his mind, finally, to Losgar. 

The scene in the palantír was dark, lit by the stars overhead and by the burning ships. Fëanor saw Maedhros standing some distance from the shore, arms crossed and face a blank mask that was familiar to Fëanor now, but which had been very new then. He saw himself approach, stalking across the sands, and saw how Maedhros seemed to shrink into himself. He had always known his temper could be terrible, but seeing himself from the outside now showed just how terrible it had been at the end of his life. He remembered so little except that anger. Then, he had not seen the fear in his son’s eyes. Now he could, and he wanted to reach into the stone to—he didn’t know what. Do something to stop himself. He watched himself rage at Maedhros—for standing aside, but mostly for speaking up against the ship burning to begin with, and he watched those words land, watched them sink into his son like knives. In that tirade he all-but disowned Maedhros, called him the same sorts of things he’d until then reserved only for Fingolfin—useless, treacherous, cowardly. He wished him left behind in Araman with the rest of Fingolfin’s host, if that was where his real loyalties lay. 

All because Maedhros had stood his ground when no one else had dared to. 

Through it all, Maedhros stood in silence and did not try to speak even when Fëanor at last turned away. He kept his composure even when Maglor stepped up beside him a moment later, only shaking his head at whatever Maglor said, lips pressed tightly together. He looked upset but not surprised, not like Fëanor had half-expected, after the way he’d spoken of Losgar, like the very name hurt coming out of his mouth. Something he had said remained sharp and hurtful in Maedhros’ memory even now so many thousands of years later. All of it had been terrible—terrible and untrue, all things he had said before, only thrown in a new direction—but Fëanor couldn’t guess what in particular Maedhros had been thinking of when they had met in Tirion. 

He withdrew from the palantír and put it away before lying back and rubbing his hands over his face. Most likely, he thought, it wasn’t the words at all—it was the mere fact that he had turned on Maedhros like that, and then, as Amras had said, had not spoken to him again at all. Of course it would keep him wary now. Of course he would not be inclined to believe any apologies Fëanor offered to him. Maedhros was his firstborn, his heir, had been the first in line to follow wherever he led—even after Losgar. Of course he would remember what happened the one and only time he defied his father. It wasn’t as though Fëanor could say he hadn’t meant it—he had, every word. He had been wrong, and he couldn’t imagine anything now that would lead him to such anger no matter what happened, especially if what Rúmil had said was true, but what reason did Maedhros have to believe that?

How did one come back from something like this? 

By the time the twins returned early in the afternoon he’d put aside thoughts of the palantír and the past, and could greet them with a smile and feel for a while that nothing was wrong—nothing that couldn’t be set aside until the spring. 

It didn’t stop his dreams from filling with smoke, and then with shadows—he hadn’t even looked for Maedhros in Angband, but he started having nightmares of it anyway, of hearing his son screaming somewhere just out of sight as he tried to find him in a pitch-black maze of corridors, while Morgoth’s laughter rumbled under it all, like an earthquake. 

One such nightmare drove him out into the sunlit, golden autumn woods in the morning. He walked for what felt like miles. Getting lost was never a real worry; he had always been good at navigating, and by now he was familiar with the forest immediately surrounding Amrod and Amras’ home, with all the landmarks they had shown him and some he had discovered on his own. He found a fallen tree that was almost as thick around as he was tall, and climbed up to walk along its length, stepping between broken branches and over patches of moss. 

He sat among those branches for a while, thinking about broken things and ways to repair them. There was never any putting something back precisely the way it had been. Curufin had spoken to him of the way Maglor had learned to repair broken crockery—a method Fëanor had seen, briefly, when he’d visited Nerdanel’s workshop before leaving for Imloth Ningloron so soon after his return from Mandos. She had had a cup holding pencils that had once been broken, but then put back together with the cracks painted over with shining gold. He hadn’t known then that it had been a gift from Maglor, sent with a note from Eressëa when he felt unable to come to her himself. 

Think of us like that, Curufin had said, and it was easy to see what he meant. 

There was breaking, though, and there was burning—and in spite of his previous stirrings of hope, Fëanor believed more and more strongly that what lay between himself and Maedhros was only ashes. He had struck the sparks and ignited the flames, but it was Maedhros who had suffered for it, who still bore the scorch marks and scars. 

Fëanor looked down at his palms, before curling his hands into fists. He tried to remind himself that he had just looked for Maedhros—Maedhros in the present, right then—and that he was happy. He was painting lovely things and teasing his brothers and doting on Calissë and Náriel. As long as Fëanor was nowhere nearby, he was very nearly carefree. 

The problem was that he didn’t know what Maedhros wanted. Even if it was that he never wished to speak to Fëanor again—at least that was something Fëanor could give him, something clear and straightforward. Trying to fumble his way forward like crossing a frozen river in the dark was an exercise in both danger and frustration—anything he said or did might be the thing to break the ice and send them both plunging into the current to drown. 

He wished—as he always did, at least once a day—that his father were there. Finwë’s mere presence wouldn’t fix anything about this particular problem, but he would at least be someone Fëanor could talk to, someone who might have advice. Fëanor had too rarely listened to Finwë, before. Now he would give almost anything to hear what he had to say, whether it was comfort or recrimination or—anything. 

Movement in the corner of his eye made him start, and he looked up to see a familiar figure moving through the trees. Nienna smiled at him from behind her veils as she stopped beside the log on which he sat; she had taken on a form tall enough that neither one of them had to look up to the other in order to speak. Of all the Valar, Fëanor had found that it was Nienna who most often sought to shrink herself to an Elf’s size—to meet them where they were, rather than to look down at them from on high. Even so, he remained wary—though he had not forgotten her words of both encouragement and warning when he had sought to leave the Halls. “Lady,” he said. “I did not call to you.”

“No,” she agreed, “but I heard you still. Sorrow weighs heavy on you today, Fëanáro. What is it you mourn?”

“It is no heavier today than any other day,” he said, dropping his gaze from hers down to his hands again. Speaking to Nienna was always dangerous—her mere presence seemed to unlock the gates that held back both tears and words that one wished to leave unspoken. As though to prove it, he found himself saying, “I just—I miss my father.”

“I know,” Nienna said. She placed her hand over his where it was clenched in his lap. “But you are here with your sons, and is that not cause for joy?”

“Yes, of course, but I do not know what I will find when I return—” He bit his tongue hard and closed his eyes. He wished she would go away. This was not her business to meddle in.

“You mean Maedhros?” Nienna did not move, though surely she could tell that he wished her gone. Fëanor said nothing. “If he did not love you, if he did not miss you, this estrangement would not trouble him as deeply as it does. Do not despair, Fëanáro. There is hope yet for healing.”

“Not for everything,” Fëanor said. 

“Maedhros has said that, too,” Nienna said. “You may be glad to find yourself proven wrong this time.”

He would love to be proven wrong, Fëanor thought but did not say. Instead he said, “There can be no healing of the wound left by my father’s absence—not while he is sentenced to languish forever in Mandos.”

Nienna withdrew her hand, but said gently, “It was his choice—”

“It was a choice he should have never had to make!”

“You are right,” Nienna said, to Fëanor’s shock. He looked up, meeting her gaze before he could think better of it. “Were it left to me, I would not have passed such a judgment. I know the sorrow that has come of it, Fëanáro, yours not the least. But it was not my choice, and though they listened to my objections, my brothers and sisters in the end did not agree. Neither you nor I have the power to overturn the decree of the Elder King, but know that I hear you, and I weep with you.” She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his forehead. He closed his eyes against the sting of tears, and when he opened them a few seconds later, he was again alone in the woods. 

“Are you all right, Atya?” Amras asked when he returned to the house an hour later. 

“Yes, of course.”

Amras looked at him skeptically, but if he and Amrod were pushy with their brothers, they weren’t with Fëanor—not yet, anyway. “Want to see one of my favorite places on the mountain?” he asked. 

Fëanor blinked. “Yes? But—”

“It’s not too far. Come on!”

His favorite place turned out to be a small cave tucked among a tumble of boulders, where a small and frigid stream bubbled up and flowed away, eventually to join with other streams and then, someday, with the rivers far below that wound their way toward the Sea. From the cave they could look out over the mountains, marching along north and south, now clad in the brilliant colors of autumn, just starting to fade to soft shades of brown. “This is where I read your letter,” Amras said. “I happened to come at just the right time of day, too, so the sun caught on the prisms when I unwrapped them, and all the rainbows shone on the wall there.” 

“I didn’t really expect you to read it at all,” Fëanor said. “Any of you, really.”

“Why write them, then?”

“I couldn’t say any of it to you in person, so it was the next best thing. It was also Tyelpë’s idea—that and the gifts. At least—you’d have a choice, whether to open the letters or speak to me or not.”

“It does mean a lot,” Amras said softly. “We all recognize it—I hope you know that, and that we appreciate it.”

Fëanor looked back out over the mountains. “Don’t you think this is sort of a lonely place?” he asked, thinking of the reservations all his sons seemed to have about Maglor’s fondness for them.

“It doesn’t feel lonely,” said Amras. “It’s not that far from home, and sometimes if the wind is right I can hear the Laiquendi singing. This place isn’t anything like Ekkaia. It’s just quiet and out of the way.” He had stepped inside the cave, and now came back out, his hair catching the sunshine and gleaming like burnished copper. “It’s nice for thinking, without Amrod chattering away at me.”

“Where does Amrod go to think?”

“Nowhere!” Amras flashed a grin, and Fëanor found himself laughing in spite of himself. 

The next morning Fëanor went walking alone again, thinking of what-ifs and of Losgar and of all the things he’d gotten so very wrong; he didn’t stop anywhere that time, half-fearing that Nienna would come to find him again. She didn’t, but Amrod nearly fell out of tree on top of him instead. Before he saw Fëanor he looked unusually solemn and thoughtful, but that disappeared into a bright smile in an instant. “Good morning, Atya!” he said, staggering a little as he hit the ground not quite where he had intended. “Sorry—I wasn’t looking where I was going.”

Fëanor looked up. The tree was very tall. “How far up were you?” he asked. 

“As far up as the branches would hold me, so nearly at the top. I had a nice chat with a blue jay.”

“What do blue jays talk about?”

“Well, I chatted. It may or may not have been listening.” Amrod grinned when Fëanor laughed, and then asked, “What are you doing out here?”

Fëanor glanced around and realized he’d walked farther than he’d intended. “Just walking. It’s very quiet.”

“Lots of birds have gone,” said Amrod. “It will be even quieter when it snows. Is it too quiet?”

“No.”

“You won’t hurt our feelings if it is,” said Amrod. “I know it’s not for everyone, trapping yourself up a mountain for the winter on purpose, and you’ve still got a little time before that happens.”

“It’s also something I’ve never done before,” Fëanor said, echoing his own words to Fingolfin, “and I’ll try almost anything once. I don’t mind the quiet—I would have once, I think, but not now.” In his youth he would have chafed against the stillness—there had always been too much to do, to learn, to explore, and Fëanor wondered if even then he had known, somehow, that it would all come to an end. That there wasn’t as much time as everyone tried to tell him there was to do everything that he wanted to do. 

“Can I ask what you were thinking about, that brought you out here?”

Oh, what a question that was. Everything and nothing at all. “Just—trying to figure out where it all went wrong.” Sometimes it felt like if he could figure that out, he would know how to fix it—or at least he would know how to stop everything from going wrong again. 

“If you think about that too long you’ll just wind up at the very beginning of everything, when Melkor introduced the first notes of discord into the Great Music,” said Amrod. 

He wasn’t wrong, but Fëanor had thus far managed to rein himself in before his musings got ridiculous. “I’m trying to figure out where I went wrong,” Fëanor said. 

“You aren’t going to go wrong again, Atya.”

He said it with such easy confidence. “Did you acquire some form of foresight as well as few extra inches with the Ent draughts in Ossiriand?” Fëanor asked, trying to turn it into a joke, because as nice as it was to know that at least one of his sons had confidence in him—it felt misplaced. 

“No,” said Amrod. “That would have been awful. Foresight can be useful, I suppose, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it make anyone happy. I like the here and now just fine—I don’t need hints or visions of what the future holds. But there’s nothing left to go wrong, Atya. Morgoth is shut away beyond the Doors of Night, and Sauron is utterly destroyed. All the rest of their servants are gone too, and none were ever as strong as either of them. The only harm that can find us just comes from ourselves.”

“That’s rather the problem,” said Fëanor. Yes, the root of it all could be traced back to Morgoth, but he had still needed soil in which to plant the seeds of his malice, and had Fëanor not proved himself fertile ground? “If I—”

Amrod embraced him, pressing his face into Fëanor’s shoulder and holding on very tightly. “You don’t have to wonder where it all went wrong,” he said. “I know exactly where it went wrong—where it reached the point of no return. It was when Grandfather Finwë died, and that wasn’t your fault, and nothing like that is ever going to happen again. You frightened us before that, because you were so angry, but it wasn’t anything like afterward. And I’m not frightened of your temper now.”

Maybe it was Nienna’s lingering influence, because Fëanor did not mean to whisper, “I am.”

For a long moment, Amrod didn’t speak. Fëanor adjusted his arms around him and rested his cheek on Amrod’s hair, letting himself just enjoy this moment of quiet. It was true that Morgoth and all his most powerful servants were gone—but having endured the shattering of peace before, Fëanor didn’t think he would ever really believe that it couldn’t happen again, whether it was the result of their own actions or not. If the sense of not having enough time had once driven him to always be doing and seeking and learning—now he just wanted to hold onto every moment like this as long as he could. 

Finally, Amrod said, “You know what it looks like now, when it gets very bad, so you can stop before it gets there.”

Rúmil had spoken of madness—and there was no stopping that, not from the inside. “And if I cannot?”

Amrod drew back, looking him in the eye. His expression was not often this serious—he and Amras both preferred to be laughing, to make jokes and tease each other. They even spoke lightly of serious things, most of the time. Theirs was a determined kind of happiness, a steadfast refusal to give into the kind of melancholy that Fëanor couldn’t seem to climb out of. “We’ll tell you,” Amrod said. “Amras and me, or Curvo, or Fingolfin or Findis or someone. We know what it looks like, and we aren’t afraid to speak up anymore. You just have to trust us enough to listen.”

“I do trust you, Pityo,” Fëanor said. That was one thing he could say for himself—he trusted others, including all those Amrod had named, far more now than he had trusted anyone in his previous life. But if it came down to it—if something went wrong, however unlikely it was, and he lost control…he didn’t know if he would be able to listen. “It is myself that I no longer trust.”

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Roads go ever ever on
Under cloud and under star,
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green
And trees and hills they long have known.
- The Hobbit

- - 

Autumn wound on, and Fëanor put the palantír away, for the most part. When the first snows came, he wrote a note to Curufin to send along with the one Amras scribbled out. Not long afterward a mockingbird Amrod greeted by name appeared at the window with a note from Celegorm with news from Tirion and of all the rest of their brothers. Fëanor was surprised to hear that Curufin had allowed Calissë to travel all the way to Thingol’s court in Taur-en-Gellam with Maglor and Daeron, but glad. She would have a wonderful time.

Winter brought harsh cold, and snow that blew into drifts as tall as the cottage, so that more than once Amras had to climb out of a window to dig out the front door. With very little to do outside, they kept the fire going and told stories. Fëanor idly sketched while they talked, or picked up a spindle like Amrod, just to be doing something with his hands. Amrod and Amras had many more stories of both their lives in Beleriand and since returning to Valinor, and they were eager to hear the stories Fëanor could tell—of his own youth and the travels he had undertaken both alone and with Nerdanel, and sometimes with Finwë, before Maedhros had been born. 

“Do you think you’ll want to go traveling again sometime?” Amrod asked one afternoon. “I mean, like we all used to.”

“Maybe someday,” said Fëanor. “I haven’t been back from Mandos that long, all things considered, and things in Tirion have been keeping me busy.”

“You mean learning how to actually get along with your brother?”

“That part wasn’t as hard as I feared,” Fëanor said. “But—getting to know him, and Findis and Lalwen, that takes time.”

“Not Arafinwë?” asked Amras.

“He very rarely comes to Tirion.”

“You could go visit him.”

“I would if he invited me. Arafinwë prefers the peace and privacy of his own home, and I can’t fault him for that.” Fëanor doodled a simple looping pattern across the top of his sketchbook page.

“You haven’t offered to let him punch you in the face, like Findis?”

“I haven’t really had the chance. It’s not the sort of conversation you can have over the banquet table.” Fëanor smiled briefly when the twins laughed. “He has no reason to want to speak to me, or even to go through the effort of punching me, and that’s fine.” Honestly, Finarfin’s desire to keep his distance and remain only frostily polite when they did meet was much more in line with what Fëanor had expected from all of his siblings. Meeting Fingolfin in Imloth Ningloron and finding him not only willing but eager to do so much more had been the first real shock of Fëanor’s new life—after the first one, of course, of waking up outside of Mandos in the first place. He would like it if he and Finarfin could have at least one conversation, sometime, but forcing the issue wouldn’t help. Finarfin knew where to find him, if he ever changed his mind. 

“Where would you like to go, when you travel again?” Amras asked. 

“There are cities in the west that were only built after the Darkening that I would like to visit. I know Ingwë’s intention with that feast of his is to restore friendship between the Eldar and the Avari, so maybe if it goes well I’ll make my way west sometime—if someone wishes to go with me. When I do go traveling again, I do not want to go alone.”

“We’ll go!” said Amras brightly. “Maybe by then things will be so much better that we can all go.”

“I’d like that very much,” Fëanor said after a moment, but he couldn’t muster the same optimism and hope that the twins could. He listened as they laughed and talked of all that might happen on such a journey, making fun of all their brothers while they weren’t there to defend themselves. It was nice to imagine, even if he didn’t really believe such a thing would ever happen. As they talked he continued to sketch, idle designs for things he thought might be needed for the upcoming feast. It was only a matter of time before the call went out for craftsfolk—if it hadn’t already. 

Eventually, Amrod returned home from a morning’s walk to announce that the lake had frozen, and the wind had cleared most of the snow from it—therefore, he said, it was a perfect day for Fëanor to learn ice skating. 

As cozy as it was to stay indoors by the fire, Fëanor was glad of something to do outside, where the air was biting and bracing, the world brilliant and brightly white with the sunlight reflecting on the snow. They made their way down to the lake, and Fëanor watched Amrod and Amras strap on their skates. Amrod immediately pushed off, gliding away effortlessly with a quiet scrape of metal over ice. Fëanor strapped his own skates on with little trouble; he could see, he thought, how it was done. He just had to—

No sooner had he gotten to his feet than he found himself landing hard on his backside, legs splayed out in front of him. “Careful!” Amrod called, his laughter echoing off of the frozen waterfall. 

Amras laughed too, but he held out his hands to help Fëanor up. “At least your feet didn’t go in opposite directions like Tyelko’s did. He pulled a muscle and then was grouchy about it for the next week.” 

Fëanor watched both Amrod and Amras as they moved, and was more careful in his second attempt to copy them. That went much better—he had always been a quick learner, and there wasn’t anything really complicated about ice skating, and once he got the hang of it, he very much enjoyed it—even if it did leave him sore the next morning after using his body in ways it wasn’t used to. Skating was so much smoother and faster than running, and felt just a little more dangerous, but in a way that was thrilling rather than a cause for fear. The worst that could happen was a fall and some bruises—and once he got the hang of it he understood what Amras meant when he said it was the closest a person could come to flying.

He took out the palantír more often as winter wound on, with little else to do when they ran out of things to talk about or when the twins were off in the woods on their own errands or wanderings. He turned his thoughts in the stone to the darker parts of the past, wanting to know, and also wanting to just get it over with. Maedhros’ years in Angband were terrible, and he did not watch much—except for his rescue at the last, when Fingon dared the slopes of Thangorodrim with no more than a song and a prayer. It was another reminder of how Fëanor had underestimated his brothers and their children. 

It was terrible, seeing what came before—his son, trapped in the dark, tormented by things both real and unseen as Morgoth sought over and over again to break his will and mold him into something he could use. Always, though, he failed. Maedhros suffered, but the fire in his eyes only blazed all the brighter. His despair was a hard thing, of clenched teeth and continued defiance even when it seemed as though it would never end, when he was hung at last from the cliff side in agony and at a truly dizzying height—and when it did end, he gritted his teeth and picked up his sword and made himself even stronger than he had been before. The memory of the pain stayed with him, always, but it did not rule him, and it was not in the end what finally broke him—that was the Oath, a thing of Fëanor’s making rather than Morgoth’s. 

He did not look for Maglor in Dol Guldur—not yet. That would be worse in many ways.

He did look for both Maedhros and Maglor in the present afterward, whenever he picked up the palantír. It wasn’t always reassuring—he saw Maglor several times curled up by a fire with his cat, staring into the flames with an absent and listless expression, or scribbling out a page of writing before shoving both paper and pen away as though whatever he had written had pained him. He was in Taur-en-Gellam, but it was hard to tell whether it was his writing that was troubling him or if the visit was not going well in other ways. Fëanor never liked to spy on the present for too long—it wasn’t what he’d taken up the palantír for, and some glimpses felt far more intrusive than he wished to be.

Maedhros seemed to be much more at peace, laughing with Elrond and Celebrían or walking along the shores of Eressëa, splashing through the waves that washed up over his ankles. He looked far less tired than Fëanor had seen him since before the Darkening, either in person or in the palantír. 

A good distraction from the gloom of the past were the nights they went back down to the lake, when only the stars lit the world, and the Laiquendi all gathered to skate and to build bonfires and tell stories and sing songs. They brought mulled wine and mead, and baked rolls stuffed with spices and dried fruit in the coals. 

The winter passed peacefully and surprisingly quickly. Curufin had taken a palantír home with him, and Fëanor spoke to him once or twice, learning all about the preparations underway for the coming feast, and about what Náriel and Celebrimbor were doing. 

Once upon a time, so much forced idleness would have had Fëanor wanting to climb the walls for lack of something to do. Now he found it restful. It wasn’t as though they were always trapped inside, and he liked walking through the winter woods as much as he had enjoyed them in autumn. The deep snowdrifts changed the look of everything, softening it and seeming to glow even at night, even under a cloudy sky. He spent hours watching the way it caught and held the sunlight and the moonlight, and sketched out a dozen different patterns of snowflakes that he thought he might make for Calissë and Náriel—little shimmering things to hang in their bedrooms, or to wear in their hair. 

Spring filled the mountains with the sound of flowing water as the snow melted, dripping from the eaves and the trees, and turning the ground all to mud under their feet. The cracking ice in the streams echoed, and Fëanor spent a morning watching chunks of it plunge down the waterfall into the lake, further breaking up the ice there. 

One afternoon Amras joined Fëanor by the window with a small stack of paper in his hands. “Have you seen Maedhros’ work?” he asked. 

“I had heard he wished to take up painting, but that was before he went to Lórien.” He had also watched him sort through pigments and clean his brushes—but he had not glimpsed any of the paintings themselves. He did not want to—not until or unless Maedhros shared them himself. 

“He has taken it up, though I don’t have any paintings.” Amras held out the papers. “I meant his drawings.” 

Oh. Fëanor took them and flipped through them quickly at first, glimpsing both simple pencil sketches and more colorful drawings. He set them on the table to look more closely. “He’s very good,” Amras said, “especially at people.”

“Yes, he is.” Fëanor paused over a portrait of Nerdanel with daisies in her hair, caught in laughter. “And flowers. When did he take up drawing?” All of Fëanor’s sons had learned, of course—drawing and painting, sculpting and dancing, singing and forging and glass-blowing and dozens of other things besides. Maedhros had dabbled happily in everything, but this habit of carrying a sketchbook and pencils wherever he went was new. 

Amras shrugged. “I think almost as soon as he came from Mandos, but only because Ammë made him, so he had something to be doing, to keep him busy. None of us ever saw his drawings until we went out to Ekkaia. I think he burned them all.”

Fëanor could think of two reasons for that—either the drawings were terrible, or the subjects were worse. “Why?”

“Until our trip I don’t think he was drawing what was in front of him. I think it was all nightmares—but that’s just a guess, since I never saw any of them. I don’t think he even showed Findekáno.”

The next drawing was of the twins and Celegorm, sitting on the grass. Then there was Mahtan with Calissë on his shoulders, and Ennalótë showing Náriel a flower from her gardens. Maglor’s cat perched in a tree, and Curufin sat with his wife and children around the dinner table. The scenes were all small ones, domestic and invariably cheerful—a very far cry from whatever Maedhros must have drawn and then consigned to the fire.

As Fëanor placed a drawing of a hedgehog sniffing through some bluebells and Queen’s lace on top of the stack, Amras said, sounding more hesitant than he had since the summer before, “Atya?”

“Yes?”

“What was it that happened at Losgar—that was troubling you last fall, I mean?”

He’d been half-expecting this question ever since he had brought it up. Fëanor didn’t look away from the hedgehog drawing, taking in the details of the Queen’s lace and its delicate umbels. Finally, he said, “Maedhros and I met briefly in Tirion, by chance. He asked if I remembered Losgar.”

“Did you?”

“Not well. I remember many things a little clearer now that I’ve gone back to look for them—truly, I think I should have picked up a palantír years ago—but before then much of it was…hazy. Mostly I just remember the heat, building and building until at the end I just—” He shook his head and covered his eyes, taking a moment to banish that particular memory. He had not looked in the palantír for his own death, because that he remembered all too well. “He was right—Maedhros was right about the ships, and about Nolofinwë and Findekáno. I didn’t listen, and then—he did not deserve the things I said to him afterward. I don’t know what it is in particular that still troubles him so, but maybe it doesn’t matter. I should not have said any of it. I wish I could take it all back.” All of it—from the swearing of the Oath to the burning of the ships.

Amras nodded slightly, as though this just confirmed what he had already guessed. “Do you know what you’ll say to him when next you meet?”

Fëanor sighed. “Probably what I just said to you. I just don’t know if that’s what he wants to hear. Or needs to hear. I don’t know any of you anymore, not as I should, and Maedhros—” Nothing he said to Maedhros had been the right thing, ever since he’d returned from Mandos. His mere presence seemed to bring back all those terrible memories with such force that they caused him physical pain, and how was he to stop that except by staying away?

“You’ve just spent all winter getting to know us,” Amras pointed out, “and you know Curvo just fine.”

“Not the rest of your brothers. You’re all so changed, and—” Here was something hard to admit: “I’m not sure I ever knew Tyelkormo or Carnistir as well as I thought I did. Looking back…I don’t know what I should have done differently, but there must have been something.” He had thought about it often over that winter, and he thought he might know where he’d gone wrong with Celegorm, but Caranthir—somewhere between playing games in the peonies and the Darkening, he had withdrawn, and somehow Fëanor hadn’t noticed. 

“You can’t change anything in the past, but you can do things differently in the present,” Amras said. “You are doing things differently.”

“I’m not sure it’s enough.”

Amras shrugged. “Maybe it isn’t, but you can’t know until you actually speak to them. And…” He looked away, out of the window. “I’m sorry Amrod and I waited so long. We were never really as angry as the others. I’m not sure I can explain why we kept putting it off.”

Fëanor thought he could guess—he did know the twins better now than he had before, and he knew all of his sons well enough to recognize the loyalty they had to one another over almost anyone else. It did not surprise him at all that Amrod and Amras had waited until Maedhros and Maglor returned from Lórien before making any decisions, regardless of what they felt themselves. “You don’t owe me any explanations,” he said. “Or apologies.”

At this, Amras rolled his eyes. “That’s now how this works. I am sorry that we delayed, even after we decided that we did want to try to make things right. I’m sorry that it’s turned into something that looks like we’ve been punishing you, because that’s not what any of us intended—but you said yourself intentions don’t matter as much as what actually happens. It’s not fair—not to any of us, really—and I’m sorry for it.”

“The world isn’t fair,” Fëanor felt compelled to point out. “It never has been.” If it was—well, they wouldn’t be sitting there now, because he could think of a dozen things off the top of his head that would not have happened. 

“Celegorm said that too once, sitting almost where we are now,” said Amras. Because Celegorm was his father’s son, even if he did not want to be. Fëanor swallowed a sigh as Amras went on, “And I told him that that’s why we have to be fair, to ourselves and to one another, if the world won’t be. Maybe if everyone tried harder the world wouldn’t be as unfair as it is. We haven't been trying as hard as we should have, and I’m sorry for it.”

Fondness welled up in Fëanor’s chest, and he tugged on one of Amras’ braids, marveling a little at how grown up his sons all were. “When did you get to be so wise, Telvo?”

Amras wrinkled his nose, looking much younger again. “I don’t know if that’s wisdom,” he said. “That’s just the least we can all do, to try to make the world better after all the ways we made it worse.”

“It sounds like something Elrond might say,” said Fëanor, “which I think means it is very wise.” He glanced down at the drawings again, and straightened the pile. “I still don’t think you should apologize to me. I knew when I came back from Mandos it was unlikely any of you would ever wish to see or speak to me again. I was and am willing to endure it.” It had never been easy, and it was not going to get any easier—but there was quite a lot a person could endure when given no other choice. At least he could know, now, that they were all right, and happy. 

“Why come back at all, then?” Amras asked.

“I hoped that I was wrong. And…” Fëanor didn’t look up. He drew out a portrait of Míriel, sitting beside Maglor as he played his harp and sang. She was smiling at him, her hands busy as always with a bit of cloth and a needle. “I know what it is to be parted forever from a parent,” Fëanor said. If he wanted to know his sons, he should allow them to know him too. He had never been able to explain to them his grief for his mother before, because they had lived in a world where such a thing was never meant to happen—and had only happened once. Now this kind of grief was all too common, and he no longer had to struggle to find the right words. “First my mother, now my father. I cannot ever speak to him again, however much I want to. At least now all of you have a choice in the matter. You can avoid me or seek me out as you wish—I am here. I don’t know how to make any of the rest of it right, but I can at least give you back that choice.” 

That was what Findis, well meaning as she was, had failed to take into account. She could not imagine ever not wanting to see or speak to Finwë, and so couldn’t understand why Fëanor’s sons might not want to see him, in spite of everything. She did not realize that it was to give them the choice that he had returned, more than anything else. 

“Honestly,” Fëanor said after a moment, looking up to offer Amras what he hoped was a convincing smile, “I didn’t expect to be released. I asked, and was as surprised as everyone else when the answer was yes.” 

Amras’ face was doing something complicated. “And…you don’t regret it?”

“No. No, not even for a moment.” It was difficult and often lonely, but all the good things in this new life far outweighed the bad. “The worst part is missing my own father, but I knew it would be, and he did not want me to linger just for his sake.” Finwë had always been urging them all toward life, as soon as he sensed they were ready for it. It was a comfort, sometimes, to know that Finwë was as healed as was possible for a spirit in Mandos—that Morgoth had not broken him beyond all hope of healing—and that he was at peace. He was no longer in any pain, and that was no small thing. 

“Did it make that worse, talking to Maglor?”

It had made it easier, Fëanor thought—or at least easier to speak of Finwë to others, like Fingolfin, like Amras. “No,” he said, “though I’m not sure it was very helpful to him.”

“He says everything helps. That’s the whole reason he’s in Taur-en-Gellam now—to talk to Thingol.”

He had spoken to a lot of people, Fëanor thought, in a very short amount of time—their whole family over the course of the last summer and autumn, and now Thingol and whoever else in his realm might have known Finwë. “He’s working very quickly,” Fëanor said. “I spoke of it to Indis briefly, before we left Tirion…” They’d ended up beside one another somehow at some afternoon party of Anairë’s that Fëanor hadn’t felt able to avoid, since he was going to be away all winter. Indis was always kind, but he still felt awkward, and at least Maglor and his song had been a safe topic of conversation. “She said there is no particular occasion for which she and my mother want the song. No reason for him to work so hard so fast.” And to cause himself undue distress in the process—Fëanor hadn’t forgotten Amras’ own worries from the summer before. 

“I think he wants to sing it at Ingwë’s feast, whenever that will be,” said Amras. “In the next year or two maybe.”

But that still didn’t make sense. “It isn't as though it is necessary, though. No one will object if he does not have it done by then. In the past he used to work for years on songs much smaller in scope than this one.” It wasn't as though Finwë would go unremembered at Ingwë’s feast if Maglor did not have the song completed—there were other ways, other ceremonies or traditions that would be observed. It felt like he was missing something. 

Amras only shrugged. He had been worried before, but that seemed to have all passed. “I don’t know. He seems to feel that it’s very important, this song—I mean, obviously it’s important, but he won’t give any particular reason. Daeron or Elrond probably know more, but they aren’t sharing either. Maybe it’s just one of those things where he can’t put it down because if he does it will be too hard to pick up again.”

“Maybe,” Fëanor said, but that didn’t feel right. 

“Neither Daeron nor Elrond will let him push himself too hard, you know. Maybe it’s just that this is the first song someone has asked him to write in a very long time. And it was Grandmother Míriel who asked, as well as Indis.”

“Maybe,” Fëanor said again. There was something about it that bothered him, but before he could grasp what it was Amras rose and asked him to help gather more firewood, and whatever it was slipped away. 

Maybe he would be able to ask Maglor when next they spoke—whenever that might be. 

Once the initial rush of snow melt ended and they could be relatively sure that descending the mountain wouldn’t leave them covered in mud, Amras found a songbird willing to take a note to Imloth Ningloron. Fëanor had looked into the palantír, and found almost all of his sons there save Caranthir, who had lingered in Tirion with his betrothed, Lisgalen. Even Celebrimbor had come along, somehow escaping the chaos that was ramping up in the city. 

“Are we going to walk to Imloth Ningloron, or do horses linger in these parts to wait for you?” Fëanor asked as they made their way at last down the mountain. 

“We might have to walk a bit, but there are a few horses that know us well and are usually around,” said Amrod. “I can’t wait to hear what everyone’s been up to all winter—it’s lucky they’re all going to be at Imloth Ningloron at the same time!”

“Lucky is one word for it,” said Amras, glancing at Fëanor. 

“I likely won’t stay long,” Fëanor said after a moment. “I’m sure I’ll be wanted in Tirion, anyway—”

Amrod scowled. “You shouldn’t have to leave immediately just because—”

“It’s fine,” Fëanor said. He tugged on Amrod’s braid. “I’ve told you before, I don’t want to force my presence on any of you—I promised that I wouldn’t. Imloth Ningloron isn’t a small place, but it’s not as big as Tirion. I’ll stay long enough to say hello to Curvo’s girls, and then I’ll go see what chaos is unfolding in Tirion in Tyelpë’s absence. Let your brothers do what they need to at their own pace.”

In the end, they made a handful of miles down the road before encountering a trio of horses willing to bear them. The weather when they set out had been overcast and damp, but the skies cleared as they rode north, and the days grew warmer. Flowers were blooming along the roadside, and the air smelled fresh and clean—of damp earth and grass. The Pelóri marched along in the east, and to the west the lands opened up into the wide fields where Yavanna walked. Once Fëanor thought he glimpsed her, standing tall as a tree with her arms outstretched to welcome an enormous flock of birds into her palms. Amrod and Amras sang often as they rode—traveling songs from Middle-earth. It was as pleasant a journey as the one south had been, and as much as Fëanor had enjoyed the peaceful idleness of winter in the mountains, he was glad to be moving again, to be returning to more familiar lands where other Elves dwelled. He was even looking forward to returning to Tirion to be thrown into the middle of preparations for the upcoming feast. 

He just had to hope that everything would go smoothly in Imloth Ningloron, first. 

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This love, it is a distant star
Guiding us home wherever we are
This love, it is a burning sun
Shining light on the things that we’ve done
- “Into the Open Air” - Julie Fowlis

- - 

Imloth Ningloron was awash in flowers, the air smelling sweetly of niphredil and daffodils as Fëanor and Ambarussa rode down the lane. “There you are!” Lady Celebrían said as she stepped outside to greet them. “We’ve been expecting you!” 

“Hello, Celebrían!” Amras said. He and Amrod stepped up to kiss her cheeks. “Where is everyone?”

“Out in the gardens or in the library, I think. I know Calissë and Náriel are with Celebrimbor by the pond,” she added with a smile for Fëanor. 

As others came to take charge of the horses and the baggage, Fëanor was glad to smile a greeting to Celebrían and then go in search of his grandchildren. He heard them long before he saw them, and had only to follow the sound of laughter through the winding paths. Once he nearly tripped over a hedgehog, and paused to watch a second and then a third scurry out of the grass and across the path to disappear into some early-blooming dandelions. 

As he came around a bend Celebrimbor saw him first, but before he could say anything Náriel happened to turn around. “Grandfather!” she shrieked, and Fëanor knelt just in time to catch her and then Calissë when they ran to him. “You’re here!”

“Hello, my loves,” Fëanor said, kissing them both, and then getting to his feet again to embrace Celebrimbor. “How are you?”

“Very happy to be out of Tirion for a little while,” Celebrimbor said with a grin. “How are you?”

“Very glad to see you,” said Fëanor. “I want to hear all about what’s happening in Tirion—and what you’ve been doing all winter,” he added to Calissë and Náriel. “I’ve heard that someone went on another adventure.”

“That was me!” Calissë exclaimed. “I went all the way to Taur-en-Gellam with Uncle Cáno and Daeron! It was wonderful!”

“I can’t wait to hear all about it,” said Fëanor, “and about what you were doing too, Náriel.” He lifted her up and kissed her cheeks. “Did you have any adventures of your own?”

“No,” she giggled, “but I made lots of things with Atya and Ammë and Tyelpë!”

There would be plenty of time to hear all about what the girls had gotten up to, but they were just as excited to see Amrod and Amras again, and ran off to find them after a few more minutes. Fëanor was left with Celebrimbor, and put his arm around his shoulders again. “You’re really all right?”

“Yes,” Celebrimbor said.

“I haven’t forgotten what we spoke of before I left.”

“Neither have I. That’s one reason I came out here, actually—I wanted to speak to Elrond about it.”

“Have you yet?”

“A little, but mostly I’ve been trying to keep up with my sisters. Have you seen Atya and Ammë yet?”

“No, I only just arrived, and Celebrían directed me out here.”

“Well, come on then—you haven’t heard the most exciting news yet.”

“What exciting news?” Fëanor asked. “About the feast?”

“No!” Celebrimbor laughed and pulled him back toward the house. 

Fëanor tried to think of anything else happening in Tirion. “Has Gil-galad—”

“It’s nothing to do with anyone else, but it’s also not my news—hurry up!”

They found Curufin and Rundamírë just inside with the girls, who were thus far disappointed in their search for Ambarussa. “They’ll be back down soon,” Curufin was saying. Then he turned to see Fëanor. “Atya!”

“Curvo!” Fëanor caught him up in his arms. “And Rundamírë—you look well.” 

“She does, doesn’t she?” Celebrimbor said. Rundamírë laughed and smacked him lightly on the arm. 

“You didn’t tell him?” Curufin asked.

“Of course not!”

“Someone needs to stop teasing and tell me whatever this exciting bit of news is,” Fëanor said.

“We’re expecting another baby,” Rundamírë said, taking pity on him. “Next winter.”

“Another baby!” Fëanor exclaimed. He kissed Curufin and then Rundamírë, laughter at the sheer joyful shock of it bubbling up in his chest. This was both the most surprising and the best news he could have come home to. “You kept that a secret when we spoke this winter, Curvo!”

“We’ve only just started telling people,” Curufin said. 

“Does your mother know?”

“Yes, of course—we told Arimeldë’s parents and Ammë first, and then Carnistir because he was the only one still in Tirion—and we told everyone else when we got here.”

“Uncles Ambarussa don’t know,” said Náriel.

“True,” Curufin said as he picked her up. “But they ran off to talk to your other uncles as soon as they arrived, so the delay is their own fault. They looked very serious,” he added, glancing at Fëanor. “How was the trip back?”

“Fine,” Fëanor said, startled. “It was very pleasant—the whole autumn and winter was pleasant. Did something happen here? Is Cáno all right?”

“Only tired, from all the traveling around he’s been doing,” said Curufin. 

“And Daeron didn’t return with him,” Rundamírë added.

That was even more shocking than the news about the baby—and much less happy. “Why not?” Fëanor asked. 

“He’s gone to recruit singers for Elemmírë among the Avari, that’s all,” said Celebrimbor. “It was their plan from the beginning—Atya and my uncles just like to worry at each other.” Curufin made a face at him. “He’ll be back by autumn, I think. This time next year we’ll be preparing to leave for the feast, can you believe it?”

Amrod and Amras came downstairs after a little while, to have Curufin and Rundamírë’s news sprung on them. They had looked very serious, but that transformed into delight in an instant. In the ensuing chaotic chatter, Fëanor scooped up Náriel and escaped out into the gardens. She was quieter than her sister, and he did not want her to feel overshadowed when Calissë started telling her stories of Taur-en-Gellam. “So what was your favorite thing that you made this winter, my love?” he asked her as they stepped outside.

Her face lit up, exactly the way that her father and her uncles’ faces all had as children when Fëanor had asked them similar questions. “Did you know that Cousin Irissë is back?” she asked. “And cousin Lómion too? And Cousin Aikanáro! We haven’t met him yet because he hasn’t come to Tirion, but I helped Atya make gifts for all of them, to welcome them back home!”

“I did know they were back,” Fëanor said. That was one bit of news Curufin had shared when they spoke in the palantír. Fëanor had been very surprised to hear of Aegnor’s return, but also very glad—for Finarfin’s sake—and to hear of Aredhel’s return not only for Fingolfin but for Celegorm and Curufin as well, who had been very close to her in their youth. “What did you make for them?”

Though not as quick to put herself forward as her sister, when Náriel was really excited she often spoke very quickly and tripped over the words as though they were all trying to escape her mouth at the same time. Aredhel had received a hair piece of white gold set with rose quartz—Náriel’s current favorite gemstone. Maeglin had been given a set of armbands made of silver and etched with a design that Fëanor though he would have to see for himself to get an idea of, because Náriel wasn't quite able to describe it. For Aegnor, Curufin had made a very simple set of jewelry, into which Náriel had gotten to help set the gemstones—emeralds, mostly, with green being the color Finarfin had chosen for his house. 

“It’s not as fancy as what he made for Cousin Irissë, but Atya says most people that come from Mandos don’t want fancy things—but Cousin Irissë isn’t like most people.”

Fëanor laughed. “No, she never has been,” he agreed. 

“She’s very nice, though! She laughs a lot. Cousin Lómion doesn’t, but he’s also very nice—he’s friends with Tyelpë. And we met Cousin Gil-galad, and he’s also very nice but he’s also really big, and he was a king for a long time I think? He’s a little scary.”

“I’ve never met Gil-galad,” said Fëanor, “but something tells me he’s only scary now the way you say your Uncle Nelyo is sometimes scary. What else did you make?”

Náriel was in the midst of telling him about one of Celebrimbor’s ideas for next year’s feast when something caught her eye behind and above them. “Oh look, it’s Uncle Nelyo!” She waved, and Fëanor turned to follow her gaze. He saw Maedhros in a window, watching with a look on his face that made that place under Fëanor’s ribs hurt suddenly and sharply—a look of intense grief and almost of longing—before his expression shuttered an instant before he pulled the window closed and drew the curtain across it. 

“What’s wrong with Uncle Nelyo?” Náriel asked, sounding hurt. 

“Oh, it wasn’t you, my love.” Fëanor kissed her cheek and carried her farther into the gardens, away from the house. He thought about trying to distract her, but that would only delay having to answer other questions, and he did not want to feel as though he was lying to her. “He and I quarreled a very long time ago, and I have not yet made it right. It was me that he didn’t want to see, not you.”

“You’re not supposed to wait so long to apologize,” Náriel said reproachfully. “Ammë says so.”

“That’s true,” Fëanor said, “and maybe it would be better to say that I haven’t been able to make it right. It’s…a lot of terrible things happened long ago, and we are all still feeling the effects of them.”

Náriel thought for a moment, and then asked, “You mean like Grandfather Finwë dying?”

Fëanor looked down to adjust his grip on her, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat. “Yes,” he said. “That—that was the worst of all. None of the rest would have happened without it.”

Náriel wrapped her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry, Grandfather. You miss him?”

“Very much,” Fëanor whispered. “I think about him every day, wishing he was here so you could meet him.”

Back at the house, Fëanor retreated to his own room to finally wash and change out of his traveling clothes. Ambarussa’s cottage was very cozy, and he hadn’t minded the closeness at the time, but now that he had his own space again he found it a great relief. There was a lot to be said for being able to lock a door and shut out the rest of the world for a time. He went to sit by the window for a while, looking out over the gardens toward the mountains, and thought of Maedhros at his own window just a little while before. 

“If he did not love you, if he did not miss you, this estrangement would not trouble him as deeply as it does.”

He sighed and leaned his head against the window frame, and watched a swan glide across the pond just within his view. Nienna’s words had been meant as comfort—meant to give him hope—but a greater comfort would be something he could do, some insight into what it was that Maedhros was really thinking.

If there was something in particular he had said at Losgar—that would be something he could work with. If it was just—just Losgar, the whole of it, then Fëanor didn’t know what to say besides yet another apology that Maedhros clearly wouldn’t believe. 

He did not unpack. There was very little chance of any real conversation taking place between him and any of his sons besides Curufin and Ambarussa. Even if he thought they would want to speak to him, he’d had several weeks now to try to think of what to say—and had come up with nothing. 

When he went downstairs to dinner, he came across Maglor, who offered him a small and half-hearted smile. “Hello, Atya. How was it in the mountains?”

“It was nice,” Fëanor said. “How was Taur-en-Gellam?”

“Also nice—have you ever visited?”

“No, not yet.”

That was it. They parted, and Maglor did not appear again that evening. Neither did Maedhros or Celegorm, though he saw Caranthir across the dining hall with Amrod and Amras and also Elladan and Elrohir. 

Elrond welcomed Fëanor with as much warmth as he always did, after dinner when the household gathered for laughter and songs. Calissë brought out a small harp, and Lindir joined her in playing a few simple songs. “How long will you stay with us this time?” Elrond asked. 

“Not long, I think,” Fëanor said, without looking away from Calissë. Her fingers slipped over the strings but she only giggled at the mistake, and paused when Lindir leaned down to help her get started again. “I’ll return to Tirion in a couple of days.”

The look Elrond gave him was knowing. “Don’t be in too much of a hurry,” he said. “It is no accident that Maedhros is still here—we had plenty of warning of your coming.”

Fëanor did look at him then. “What does that mean?”

“You and he need to speak, at least once—to really hear what the other has to say. It has been his intention to wait until Maglor finished his song, but I think he may have changed his mind. And now would be a good time, with you both here, and before things get very busy elsewhere.”

“Does Maedhros think this, or—”

“Maedhros is apprehensive,” Elrond said. “He doesn’t expect you to still be angry, and he knows you deeply regret everything—but he fears what may happen if a situation arises in which he must defy you again.”

That was more than Fëanor had expected to hear, if he were honest. It was something, to know that Maedhros believed that he meant it when he tried to apologize. “I love my son,” he said, “and I—I hope that I have learned from all my past mistakes. But I don’t know how to offer the reassurance he needs.”

“It may be that only time can do that,” said Elrond, “but you can at least listen to what he has to say.”

“Of course I’ll listen. It’s just—it’s not enough.”

“It’s enough to start with,” said Elrond. “The fact that you have been so patient for so long means something, you know. It means a very great deal to all of them—they all know how hard it is for you to step back like you have been.”

Of course it was hard. Elrond was a father—he knew it was a father’s job, when his children were hurting, to make it stop. To help them. To protect them. Fëanor had failed so badly to do any of that, before—and now he couldn’t even try because the trying would only make it worse. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be better if I just—just went back to Tirion? They would all be more at ease—”

“It would not,” Elrond said, kindly but firmly. “By the way, I have letters for you, from Fingolfin and Findis. Lalwen did not write but sends her love. I put them in your room, on the desk.”

“Thank you.”

Fëanor found another letter on the desk too, which must have arrived sometime during dinner. He recognized Míriel’s handwriting immediately, and once he had settled into bed, with the blankets pulled up and a pile of soft pillows at his back, that was the one he opened first. 

Dearest Fëanáro,

I hope this letter reaches Imloth Ningloron at almost the same time you do. I have been busy with my work lately and haven’t been keeping track of time, but I have been thinking of you these last few months. I hope your winter was a good one, and I am so glad that you went to spend that time with your boys. 

In your last letter you asked why I would ask such a thing of Macalaurë as this song. It was not meant to be a burden to him, and I am sorry to hear that it has become one. That was not our intention, mine and Indis’. But it is important—our people have always been singers, as well as speakers, and that is how we recorded our stories and our histories in the time before we could write them down. Your father was himself a skilled and mighty singer, you know. There are so many songs for so many of the greatest of our people—but none for him. Surely you would agree that such an oversight should be corrected? I admit I do not know Macalaurë as well as a grandmother should, but I think if we were to ask someone else he would be both hurt and insulted. He is the mightiest singer of the Noldor it is said—mightier even than Finwë himself. We gave him no deadline, and to be quite honest, I did not expect him to start working on it as quickly as he did.

He is not, however, alone. He has all of his brothers, and Nerdanel, and Daeron and Elrond and his family all ready to catch him should he stumble. Perhaps he does not trust yet that he has you too, but that will come in time. I know how hard this is for you, my love, but patience is not the same as idleness. You are not alone either, you know. You can lean on your own siblings when you need to. At the very least I will be in Tirion next winter—yes, I have heard Curufinwë and Rundamírë’s news! I hope then we will have more time to speak together—to have a proper, long conversation, as we have not had in some years. I’m afraid I am just as prone now to getting caught up in my own work as I was before you were born. It was the only thing, really, your father and I ever fought about. These days it is even easier to feel as though I have looked down for only a moment, only to raise my head and find that weeks or months have passed. That is partly my own fault, and partly just a consequence of dwelling in Vairë’s halls, but I will try to take more time away in the future. 

I love you so much, Fëanáro, and I miss you. You are always in my thoughts.

—M

Fëanor rubbed his finger over his mother’s initial, and sighed. He missed her, but it was a different kind of missing than it had been before. Now, he could write back and know she would read it, and know that he would hear from her again sooner or later, and that she was very happy where she was, with her weaving work. She was there, as he was trying to be there for his own sons.

He missed Finwë every single day, as he had told Náriel, but ever since he’d spoken to Maglor, ever since he’d heard about this song that sooner or later he would have to listen to—the grief of it felt sharp and brand new again. It was no worse than it had ever been, and it was easier to speak of, but it still hurt. It was worse than the grief for Míriel had been, because he had been so young when she died—he had only one or two hazy memories of her then. He had not known her, not the way he had known his father. His mother had always been defined by her absence, and Finwë by his presence, and he still couldn’t get used to the reversal.

There had been cherries in that night’s dessert, and he hadn’t been able to make himself eat a single bite. 

He opened up Findis’ letter next. It was full of gentle gossip and a few sketches of the jewelry she was making for Elemmírë, with a request for his opinions. The sketches were lovely, and he would write in the morning to tell her so. Findis wrote like she spoke, and her conversations were always both calming and interesting—and with his mind still caught up in the past and all its regrets, Fëanor couldn’t help but think of all the years he’d deprived himself of that companionship. 

Fingolfin’s letter was similar to Findis’, though he wrote a great deal more about Gil-galad, who had come at last to Tirion some weeks before. The last time Fingolfin had seen him, Gil-galad had been a small child—now he was grown, having reigned longer than any other High King of the Noldor save Finwë, and now very excited to live his life without that burden. 

I have also been touched to see how both he and Celebrimbor have decided to take Maeglin under their wing. It will cause friction, especially when Idril learns of it, but I suppose that can’t be helped. Maeglin will never be welcomed to Avallónë or Alastoron, but I have made it very clear to both him and anyone who might protest that he is more than welcome in Tirion. I expected a fight with Turukáno over it—he has spoken with Maeglin, though I do not know precisely how it went—but he has gone back to Alastoron and has not replied to my letters. Anairë might visit him in the next few months. Elrond and Celebrían have also very cheerfully let it be known that Maeglin is equally welcome in Imloth Ningloron, and that alone put an end to much criticism. It is sometimes very easy to forget just how formidable they can be, which I know is by design, but I always feel a little bit of a fool for forgetting whenever I do remember. And now Gil-galad is back and the four of them—Gil-galad, Elrond, Celebrían, and Celebrimbor—are an incredible force to be reckoned with.

The timing of it is good, however, because everyone is so busy now with preparations for next year, and that leaves little room for fighting about anything else. Do you remember when I said I was happy to leave all the planning to Ingwë and Ingwion? I fear I spoke too soon, and Ingwion has been writing to me to ask for all kinds of help. Fortunately, Celebrimbor and the Gwaith-i-Mírdain have all stepped up already—I just have to find someone else to hand the rest of this to. I’m not too busy for it, exactly, but I don’t want to do it—and what’s the point of being a king if I cannot delegate such things?

I’ve missed you this winter. I have also been thinking of Atya a great deal—speaking to Maglor brought back all kinds of memories. He would be delighted with this feast, and much more willing than I am to get involved. He and Ingwë always did work very well together, and of course he and Thingol were even closer. Have you heard yet that Aikanáro has also returned from Mandos? He came just after Irissë and Maeglin—and they on the heels of Gil-galad. That’s all of us now, all our family except Atya. It feels terribly unfair, but even writing those words down in this letter makes me feel like a child, complaining of things that cannot be changed. Since my own return from Mandos I have been trying so hard to make the world a fairer place, in all senses of the word. I just wish it were in my power to fix this, too. I have gone before the Valar to plead for his release, just as our mothers have, and Ingwë, and Thingol, and so many others. What else is there to do? It was his choice, and I am very glad for your sake and your sons that Míriel is returned to life, but I hate that it must be one or the other. 

I miss Arafinwë, too. He is so close, only through the Calacirya, but he only sometimes answers my letters, and Anairë has advised more than once to let him come to me instead—just as you are letting your sons come to you, I suppose. Maybe things will be easier now that all of our children are back? Because that’s the root of it—his children followed me, as I followed you, and look where I led them. 

Well, if I cannot speak to my little brother, at least I can look forward to my big brother’s return—but don’t hurry back from Imloth Ningloron on my account. Do write, though, and let me know you have returned safely from the mountains.

—Nolofinwë 

Fëanor set the letters aside and turned down the lamp. Through the open window the breeze carried the scent of niphredil and the ever-present sound of flowing water. The moon had not yet risen, and so the only light came from the stars. Fëanor stared out of the window at the sky as he waited for sleep to come, as Elrond’s words circled in his head alongside Fingolfin’s. 

He did not fall asleep for a very long time. 

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Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,
Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,
Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,
Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,
The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?
- “O Me! O Life!” by Walt Whitman

- - 

In the morning Fëanor woke and then rolled over to bury his face in the pillows again. Outside of his window a bird was singing cheerfully. He felt mostly rested, though he hadn’t fallen asleep until late, but he also did not want to get out of bed. His room was in a different part of the house from all of his sons’, but there was always a risk of running into one of them unexpectedly, and he didn’t think he could bear it that morning. 

Eventually, though, he sighed and dragged himself out from under the blankets, taking his time in dressing and brushing out his hair. As he started to pull it back for braiding, he heard snuffling at the door, and then a scratching noise. When Fëanor opened the door, he found himself staring into Huan’s dark eyes, which were always so knowing—even when he had been a puppy it had sometimes been disconcerting. “Huan? What—hey!” Huan took Fëanor’s sleeve in his teeth and pulled, and Fëanor was unprepared enough that he nearly pitched forward onto his face in the hallway. No one else was there to see, luckily, but there were plenty of witnesses downstairs and outside to laugh at him as Huan dragged him unceremoniously through the house and out into the gardens. Fëanor could either go along with it or lose his sleeve, and this shirt was one that Míriel had made, and even if she could make him a dozen new ones he still didn’t want to damage it. Besides, he thought a little sourly, Huan would probably just grab the other one—or maybe just his arm itself, and then he’d have to deal with getting blood all over his clothes. 

It was useless to try to talk Huan out of something when he was determined—in this he had always fit right in with their family—but Fëanor tried anyway. “Huan, I haven’t even had breakfast—slow down—where are you even—Huan!”

Finally, Huan let him go, stepped behind him, and used his enormous head to shove him forward off the path. Once again, Fëanor nearly fell on his face, catching himself just before he landed in a brown and ragged clump of last year’s flowers. It was a beautiful morning, cloudless and cool, still early enough that dew clung to the grass, and the air smelled of daffodils and niphredil. Birds sang a merry chorus in the trees and hedgerows. Huan had brought him out to a large oak that grew beside one of the many streams that ran through the valley, glimmering in the early morning sunshine.

He had also brought him to Maedhros. When Fëanor glimpsed him in the seconds before he got shoved and had to look away lest he fall, he looked as startled as Fëanor felt. This was not, Fëanor thought as he regained his balance, how either of them had wanted this meeting to start. He kept his gaze on his sleeve as he rubbed his thumb over a few loose threads that had snagged on Huan’s teeth. 

“This is why Maglor calls you a menace, you know,” Maedhros said, tone mild but something strained hovering underneath. For a moment Fëanor wondered what in the world his sons had been saying about him—but then Huan woofed. Fëanor glanced over his shoulder to find him sitting down, tail wagging, as though he intended to keep both of them there until he was satisfied. Menace, indeed.

When he looked back at Maedhros, he found him looking tired and sad, strands of hair already working themselves out of his braid to fall around his temples. He had his arms behind his back as he leaned against the tree, posture deceptively relaxed. “Maedhros,” he said, and then didn’t know what else to say. He still didn’t know what Maedhros had meant when he had spoken of Losgar, and that meant he didn’t know where to begin. 

“Atar,” Maedhros said quietly, and then looked away, across the streams and the gardens. His jaw worked, like he wanted to say something, but was at just as much of a loss as Fëanor. 

Fëanor looked at Huan again, but found him busy sniffing at something on the path by his feet. Then he turned back to Maedhros, hating this uncertainty, hating that even if he couldn’t see them, the marks on Maedhros’ hand were surely hurting him. It was very quiet where they were, but in the distance someone else was singing—there was always someone singing in Imloth Ningloron. Just then the bright music felt horribly out of place—or maybe it was just Fëanor who was out of place, bringing with him as he did so many shadows of the past that everyone else wished to leave behind, marring whatever he touched even when he tried so hard not to.

He had to say something, so he might as well just start with the hardest part. Better to get it over with—to give Maedhros a chance to say whatever he needed to say. Maybe then at least Fëanor would understand. “I remember Losgar better, now.”

“Ambarussa told me,” Maedhros said. He didn’t look away from whatever had caught his attention somewhere downstream. 

Fëanor felt again like he was trying to cross a frozen river in the dark. This felt dangerous, only he didn’t know what step he took would be the one to bring disaster. “You were right,” he said. “About the ships. About Nolofinwë.” 

“I never expected you to listen to me,” Maedhros said, and Fëanor winced. “But I also didn’t expect—” His voice shook and he stopped speaking, biting his lip and blinking rapidly. 

Fëanor waited, but when Maedhros didn’t go on, he said, because it was important that Maedhros hear him say it, “Nothing I said to you was true. Maedhros, I’m—I’m sorry.” It felt like there should be more, but— “I don’t know what else to say.”

“You never say anything you don’t mean,” Maedhros said. He did look back, then, and his eyes were dark with memory and with pain that didn’t seem to have faded at all, even after centuries in Mandos and decades in Lórien. 

There was something he was missing, Fëanor thought with growing unease. There was something he still didn’t remember, or that he did not recognize the significance of. It wasn’t just that he had been angry, there was something else, and he didn’t know what it could be. The ice was shifting under his feet.

“So it doesn’t matter if none of it was true. You meant every word.”

“Maedhros—”

“You accused me of treason. You said I was no better than your hated half-brother. That I was no son of yours—even though that is all I am, all I have ever been—”

Once, being Fëanor’s son had not been a terrible thing. Then it had become the worst thing in the world, and now—now it was just something that hurt, like the scars on Maedhros’ palm and his missing hand that had followed him even through Mandos, something Fëanor couldn’t change or fix or take away. “Maedhros, I—” He didn’t know what to say except I’m sorry and I love you, but neither of those things would make any of this better. 

“But that’s not—I expected all of that. I might forgive all of that, but you—” Maedhros voice cracked, along with the closed off and stoic mask he had been wearing. His face broke open like a wound, bleeding misery and pain. “That was the last time you ever spoke to me—just me, alone. Those were the last words you ever—” He seemed to trip over whatever he was trying to say, like Náriel had tripped over her words, except this was Maedhros trying not to say them. “—and you weren’t wrong. It would have been better if I had burned with the ships.”

Wait.

Wait, what?

“I did burn in the end, but only after I led us all into disaster after disaster—”

Fëanor’s mind raced as he tried to remember Losgar and all that had come afterward, tried to think if there was another conversation he had failed to recall—but there wasn’t. He knew there wasn’t. He had never said that—he would never say such a thing. It didn’t matter if he had entirely lost his mind, there was no world in which this was possible. Except—

You never say anything you don’t mean, Maedhros had said, and he was right, but that just made this so much worse. The ice had broken under their feet and there was nothing to grab onto, no way for Fëanor to pull either of them out.

“Maedhros, what—I never said—Nelyo, I never wished you dead!” Not his Nelyo, not his baby boy who was afraid of honey bees and loved the color blue, who had been the first person to whom Fëanor had ever shown the Silmarils, who had Míriel’s smile and Finwë’s bearing, who filled his sketchbooks with flowers, who seemed to be on the verge of breaking apart before his very eyes. Never, ever would he be capable of such a thought, let alone to say it. 

Maedhros stared at him, expression unreadable. Finally, he said, “You said yourself you don’t remember—”

“I remember enough,” Fëanor said, more forcefully than he’d meant to—he didn’t miss Maedhros’ flinch—but if it meant he would be believed— “I would never say such a thing! I would never think such a thing! You are my son, and however angry I was it could never, ever be enough to wish for that!”

Maedhros just shook his head, even though he had just said himself that Fëanor did not speak words he did not mean. He had to know Fëanor meant every word now, but somehow it didn’t seem to matter. “That’s—”

“I know I did terrible things,” and now it was Fëanor’s turn to struggle against the tears that threatened to choke him, to get out what he needed to say before he couldn’t anymore, “and I said awful things, and I doomed you to walk a terrible road—and I deserve every ounce of whatever hatred you might have for me, but at least hate me for what I actually did!” 

Maedhros opened his mouth again, but no sound came out. He stared at Fëanor like he wasn’t really seeing him—like he was seeing the version of him he remembered from Losgar. Something was wrong, horribly, horrifically wrong, and Fëanor didn’t know what it was. He didn’t understand how the palantír could show him one thing—the palantír which he had made to show only what was there, to be a clear window, not something that could distort or invent anything—while Maedhros remembered something so different. This memory had haunted him for more than six thousand years, but Fëanor was certain that it was not real. 

Both of them couldn’t be remembering correctly. These days, Fëanor was more used to being wrong than not, but he could not be wrong now. Not about this. 

Then Maedhros’ gaze flicked over Fëanor’s shoulder, and a second later Celegorm burst out of the bushes, Maglor just behind him. Fëanor took a step back as Celegorm prepared to take a swing, but Maglor managed to pull him back at the last moment. “How dare you even show your face here after—” Celegorm snarled.

“Celegorm, stop!” Maglor yanked him back, nearly sending them both tumbling to the ground.

“Tyelko, I never—” Fëanor tried to say.

“After everything he did for you!” 

“I didn’t—”

“Celegorm!” Maglor finally managed to step in front of Fëanor—and what a startling turn of events this was, to find himself being defended by Maglor—and Huan took a hold of Celegorm’s shirt, holding him back when he might have just knocked his brother out of the way to get to Fëanor. “Enough!” Maglor’s voice cut through whatever else Celegorm was trying to say. Behind Huan, Curufin appeared on the path, and Fëanor wished, desperately, that he had not been there to hear. The hurt and confusion in his eyes was worse than any anger—far worse than any damage Celegorm could do with his fists.

In between them, Maglor seemed to have grown. He had always been tall, but in recent years he held himself small enough that it was easy to forget that he was in fact of a height with Celegorm, only a little shorter than Fëanor himself. “Maglor, you can’t—” Celegorm began. 

“I said enough, Turcafinwë!” Maglor snapped, and Fëanor had never heard him sound like this. This was a voice out of the wars of Beleriand, the voice that had sent orcs fleeing before the riders of Maglor’s Gap. He did not like hearing that any more than he liked the look on Curufin’s face. “Go back to the house.”

“But—”

“There’s been a misunderstanding,” Maglor said, voice harder than Fëanor had ever heard it, sharp as flint, a voice that would not be gainsaid, “and you aren’t going to resolve it with your fists!”

Fëanor looked at Celegorm, who was furious—but furious in a way that made Fëanor think he was trying very hard not to burst into tears instead. Their gazes met, for the first time in years, and the betrayal in Celegorm’s eyes made Fëanor almost wish that he’d gotten a hit in before Maglor stopped him. 

“What kind of misunderstanding can there be?” Curufin asked, and the thought came into Fëanor’s mind that this was what he might have sounded like in Nargothrond, at his most dangerous. He had seen his sons in Beleriand, but the palantír did not allow him to hear, and hearing what they had sounded like then was somehow very different—it was horrible; they didn’t sound like his boys at all. Even the occasional glimpses he’d gotten over the years of what Curufin might have looked and sounded like as Lord of Himlad hadn’t been like this. “Someone has to be lying. I don’t think it is Maedhros.”

“Curv—” Fëanor began, but Maglor held up a hand, and he thought better of it. There wasn’t anything he could say now that would make any of it better, and most likely he would just make it worse. Of course they believed their brother over him—they should side with their brother over him—it was just that—

There was so much he had done that was already terrible. He couldn’t bear the thought of any of them believing this. 

“I was there after Losgar,” Maglor said, voice still hard; the air seemed to hum around him with every word he spoke as he reminded them all just how deserving he was of the name Canafinwë. “I know exactly what was said, and I say now there are no liars here.”

Fëanor knew that—Maedhros had no reason to lie, especially not when he thought they were alone, and he knew that he was not lying—but it still made no sense. But Maglor seemed very confident, which was something. At least someone seemed to know what was going on.

“Both of you,” Maglor went on, “return to the house. Do not speak of what you heard here until I come back.”

“But—”

Maglor’s voice sharpened further, and Fëanor took a step back, though he wasn’t Maglor’s intended target. “Do as I say, Curufinwë!”

Curufin grabbed Celegorm’s arm and pulled him away down the path, both of them looking over their shoulders at Maedhros, who had remained frozen and silent through the whole confrontation, leaning against the oak tree now like it was the only thing keeping him standing. When Fëanor looked at him, it seemed as though his mind was somewhere very far away, his face ashen, eyes over bright with unshed tears. Huan licked Maglor’s hand very gently before following after Curufin and Celegorm. 

As soon as they were out of sight, Maglor’s entire demeanor changed. His shoulders dropped, and he seemed to shrink back into himself. “Atar,” he said, more softly but with a thread of steel underneath, “please wait here.”

“Canafinwë, what—”

“I will explain, I promise.” Maglor wasn’t looking at him, though. There was still something he was missing. “Please trust me, and wait. Maedhros, come with me.”

Maedhros didn’t move, but he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. “Maglor—”

“Please, Maedhros.” Maglor held out his hand. 

But Maedhros was just as stubborn as his brothers, and he was not someone Maglor could or would even try to command. “No,” he said. “No delays. Explain now. Here.” 

“Maedhros—”

“Now, Maglor,” Maedhros snapped, and Fëanor saw Maglor flinch just a little, as he dropped his hand to his side. He didn’t immediately answer, and the longer the silence stretched the more fear grew in Fëanor’s heart. If neither he nor Maedhros were lying, then one of them was mistaken. If the palantír showed only the truth, then it was Maedhros’ memory that was wrong, but Fëanor still couldn’t understand how.

“What you remember, Maedhros,” Maglor said finally, confirming that awful suspicion growing in the back of Fëanor’s mind, “is not what happened. I don’t—I cannot say I know with certainty why, but I have a guess and I think it is the right one. Atar did not wish death on you. He said he should have left you behind in Araman.”

Fëanor had said that—he’d meant it at the time, and at the time he had expected Fingolfin to turn around and lead his people back to Tirion, slinking back to the feet of the Valar to beg forgiveness. He had rejected the Helcaraxë as a possibility, and it had never occurred to him that they would have tried to cross it anyway. 

It had been disdain and fury behind the wish that Maedhros had been left behind with them, rather than any real wish for his safety—he hadn’t really been thinking of anyone’s safety, then—but that was still so different from what Maedhros thought he had said. 

“I remember what I heard, Maglor,” Maedhros snarled, a cornered animal lashing out because there was nothing else he could do. “I remember it very clearly.”

“But it is not what happened, Maedhros, it wasn’t—you were taken to Angband so soon afterward—”

Oh. Of course. Fëanor closed his eyes, silently cursing Morgoth. Again. “Maglor,” he said, even though he knew he shouldn’t interrupt, except Maglor seemed terribly certain, for someone who claimed to only be guessing, “how do you know what happened in Angband?”

Maglor’s voice shook when he replied, without turning away from Maedhros. “I don’t. What I know is what happened to me. I know what the Enemy was capable of. Lies—it was all lies, from the time Morgoth left Mandos to the moment the Ring was destroyed. This is exactly the sort of lie that he—that either of them would have delighted in.”

“But there is no point—” Maedhros began.

“The point is what’s happening right now—the point is that it’s haunted you for all this time. I’m sorry, but—”

“No! No, I know what it was like when he tried to put things in your head—I know what that looked like, what it felt like, and I never fell for it—”

This was a glimpse into Maedhros’ time in Angband Fëanor hadn’t expected to get and wished he hadn’t. He heard the growing desperation in Maedhros’ voice, the increasingly frantic denials, and all it did was convince him more and more that Maglor was right.

“I don’t know how he did it,” Maglor said, “but—”

“Because he didn’t! Don’t lie to me, Maglor, to try to make this better or—”

“Maedhros, please just—just let me get Elrond. He can—”

“I don’t need Elrond!”

“Maedhros, please—wait—” Maglor reached for Maedhros, but he was too slow, and Maedhros would not be held back. Silence fell as Maedhros stormed away, vanishing around a bend in the path, going in the opposite direction of Celegorm and Curufin, away from the house rather than toward it. The birds in the nearby trees and hedges had fled, and even the stream seemed to have ceased its song as it flowed by. Fëanor looked at Maglor, who stood very still as though frozen—like in the stories he had told Calissë and Náriel. He was shaking, very slightly, though Fëanor thought he could tell only because he was looking for it. 

“Canafinwë,” Fëanor said after a moment. Maglor stiffened. “Are you all right?”

Maglor didn’t turn around. Instead he pressed his hands to his face and took a shuddering breath. “I have to find Elrond,” he said, voice slightly muffled. He did not sound at all like he had when facing down Celegorm, or when pleading with Maedhros. Fëanor took a step forward before stopping himself, unsure if Maglor wanted any kind of comfort that he might be able to offer. Not when he was the source of all of this in the first place. After taking another breath, Maglor lowered his hands. Still without turning around, he said, voice flat and dull, “There are many things you never said, Atar, that still echo in our minds in your voice—the worst thoughts we’ve had of ourselves, our darkest doubts and fears. We didn’t need Morgoth for that; we just needed the memory of your anger.”

Fëanor took several steps back. Each word cut deeper than the last, though he knew he only had himself to blame—but he didn’t know what to say.

“Maedhros’ memory of Losgar is more than that,” Maglor went on, “and it’s not your fault, but you made it very easy for Morgoth to put such a thing into his mind. I know you regret everything that happened then, and I know you are trying to be better, but you should remember that.”

As though he could ever forget. “Cáno—”

“You should avoid the house for a little while. I don’t know what Celegorm is going to do.”

Maglor left, heading back to the house. That left Maedhros alone, wherever he had gone. The thought filled Fëanor with dread, but he remained where he was, unsure of what to do, or even how to find him.

That false memory had been echoing through Maedhros’ mind for centuries. Throughout all of the First Age—from Angband onward, he had believed— 

Fëanor sank to the ground, covering his own face with his hands. Rúmil had spoken of Morgoth’s machinations as more than just rumors, more than just mundane manipulation—it had culminated in the Darkening, in Finwë’s murder and Fëanor’s own swift descent into madness as he dragged all the Noldor down with him. And that was in Valinor, when he had had to move carefully, when he had not been able to put forth his full might for fear of discovery.

There had been nothing holding him back in Angband. For years. 

Fëanor allowed himself only a few minutes to weep; it wasn’t helpful, and he was not the one with the greatest cause for tears. As he caught his breath something bumped into his knee, and he started so badly he nearly fell over for the third time that morning—it seemed impossible that he had rolled out of bed less than an hour ago. When he looked down he found a hedgehog, sniffing around the leaves, sniffing at Fëanor himself. He looked around for the other two, but this one had come out there alone. As Fëanor watched, it circled the oak tree, and then trotted away down the same path that Maedhros had taken. 

Curufin’s words to Calissë about Aechen being there to keep an eye on Maedhros had held more truth than Fëanor realized. He wiped his face and hesitated for a moment, before making his decision. He had given Maedhros both time and distance—but that needed to end. The worst thing he could do now was turn his back and prove Maedhros’ worst fears true. Now that he had chosen a course to follow he felt steadier; it was easier to get to his feet and follow after Aechen.

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