From That Rubble by StarSpray  

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Ten

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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

 

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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.”