From That Rubble by StarSpray  

---

Eleven

---

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.