Add Another Stone by StarSpray  

Hello, my old heart
It’s been so long
Since I’ve given you away

And every day
I add another stone
To the walls I built around you
To keep you safe
- “Hello My Old Heart” - The Oh Hellos

- - 

First Age 465
Nargothrond

Finrod dismissed all his attendants and sat down before the mirror to remove his jewelry. He counted three rings and two bracelets before the door opened without a knock. Right on time. The door shut, not quite slamming, and he heard the lock fall into place. Then a low growl: “Do not involve yourself in this, Findaráto.”

“Do not forget yourself, Tyelkormo,” Finrod replied, keeping his tone mild as he fumbled with the clasp on his next bracelet. He shouldn’t have worn this particular one today; it was prone to catching. Finally, he got it open, and carefully set it into the jewelry box, keeping his movements slow and deliberate. Controlled. “I am not and have never been yours to command, least of all here in my own city.”

Celegorm stalked across the room to lean over Finrod, who still did not look up, not even to catch a glimpse of him in the mirror. “This is madness,” Celegorm said. “He seeks a Silmaril, Findaráto. You know what that means!”

“It means he has more courage than all seven of you put together—” Finrod knew as the words left his mouth that he was playing with fire, and when Celegorm’s hands drove him from his chair to the wall, fists bunching in the fabric at his shoulders, it did not come as a surprise. He let it happen, let Celegorm lean his full weight against him; Celegorm was bigger than he was, slightly taller and bulkier, muscles hard under the fine linen of his shirtsleeves, but he wasn’t trying to do harm. Not yet.

“Don’t you dare,” Celegorm snarled. “Do not speak of what you do not understand!” Their faces were mere inches from each other, and Finrod felt heat start to coil in his stomach as want slammed through him, making his heart race even as he managed to keep his breathing even. He knew that Celegorm saw it anyway—he saw the same fight happening behind Celegorm’s eyes; this was not the first time Finrod had been shoved against a wall, but usually it was for very different reasons. Now they were both furious, but whether that ended with them in bed or opening an irreparable rift remained to be seen. 

Or both, Finrod supposed. He felt oddly detached from himself, from everything that was happening—he’d known this would never end well, but had fallen into it anyway, almost accidentally after a night of drinking, both of them angry and grieving, bodies almost but not yet fully healed from the Dagor Bragollach. Finrod’s own heart was broken beyond repair, but at least when Celegorm pinned him to the mattress or when Finrod had him wrestled to the floor, when there was nothing but skin and mouths and teeth and mingled breaths, it was easy to forget about everything else. To forget to be wise, to forget that he was a king, to pretend that he and Celegorm were both free to be only themselves—all hunger and heat, without any crowns or oaths or anything else to come between them. It had been years now of a sometimes-tense but mostly-easy alliance, of evenings spent telling stories or planning stratagems while they played chess, of arguments and negotiations—and of the reckless thrill of secret trysts and white-hot want that was more intoxicating than Nargothrond’s finest wines.

Turgon would not have hesitated to tell him how stupid he was being. Turgon also wasn’t there. 

But if he had known it wouldn’t end well, he had not expected it to end like this—or for it to hurt so much. 

“I can’t let you do this,” Celegorm said, his voice low and quiet and dangerous, rumbling through his chest into Finrod’s. “You know that. You know that I can stop you—I can turn all of Nargothrond against this, and I will.”

“You don’t have to,” Finrod said quietly. He grasped Celegorm’s wrists, but only loosely; he didn’t dare hold on too tight. “What if—Tyelko, what if we joined together? What if we were able to retrieve all of the Silmarils, and fulfill your Oath and Beren’s quest at once?”

“Surrendering a Silmaril to Elu Thingol would not be fulfilling the Oath.” Celegorm shoved himself away and turned to pace across the room. Finrod leaned against the wall and wrapped his arms around himself, missing the warmth and knowing with that terrible certainty that plagued him more and more of late that he would never get it back. 

“I can reason with my uncle,” he said anyway, even though he knew better. He would never again see the shining halls of Menegroth or wander through the glades of Neldoreth. The weight of the oath he had sworn to Barahir sat heavily on him, as heavy as the grief—for Barahir, for Bëor, for his brothers, his uncle. Himself. Still—for a moment he dared to hope that there might be some way to change the notes of this song. If Celegorm would just listen, they might be able to—

He wouldn’t. Instead he just turned around with an expression as hard and as bleak as the Helcaraxë before it softened into something desperate. Finrod almost did not recognize him—if Celegorm had ever been soft, he was not anymore; they had certainly never been soft with one another. That was not what either of them had wanted, and he didn’t know what to do with it now. “Please,” he said, very quietly, “don’t do this. Please do not make me act against you, Finrod. I do not want to.”

“Then don’t.”

“I don’t have a choice!”

“Neither do I!”

There it was. The Doom of the Noldor playing out again. No matter what they did, it was always just behind them, just waiting to trip them up. Finrod looked at Celegorm and saw blood on the quays of Alqualondë, black in the starlight. He saw the ice at his feet and the flames on the horizon—and he saw his friend and his erstwhile lover, poised to become his enemy. 

To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass.

But Beren—Beren walked under a very different Doom. Finrod could not see what lay ahead, except that his own end was coming for him, dark and cold, but he was certain down to his bones, as sure as he knew the sun would rise again, that Beren would make it. And if Beren made it—then all that Finrod did now would be worth it, because the world would make it. He didn’t know how, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t need to know.

Nargothrond would fall, someday. Maybe Doriath would too. Maybe even Himring might one day succumb to dragonfire and the might of Angband. But Finrod refused to believe that all hope was yet lost. His own death, his own broken heart—those meant so little, in the end. They were but small notes in a far greater song, one that he could not hear the whole of, yet he knew was going to be beautiful in the end. 

He could try to explain all of that, but he already knew that Celegorm wouldn’t listen. His own Oath rang too loudly in his ears, and he had long ago lost his faith in everything except perhaps his brothers. Almost Finrod could see it, the Oath, wrapped around him like twisting vines, thorns digging into his heart, eating away at him like poison. It was almost enough to make Finrod regret taking him into Nargothrond after the Bragollach.

But only almost.

“If you go with him, you go to your death,” Celegorm said finally. 

Finrod laughed and did not try to disguise his bitterness. “Death is coming for us all. Even you—your end will find you in the dark as surely as my own will.” He turned away and pulled off the Nauglamír. “All we can decide is how it finds us. Mine will not find me faithless.”

Celegorm crossed the room again, catching Finrod’s hand. “Finrod,” he said, almost whispering. “I—”

“Don’t.” Finrod pulled his hand free, hating how it was only now that his voice shook. “We have never lied to one another before. Do not start now, in pretending we are something we’ve never been.”

A flash of something Finrod couldn’t understand passed through Celegorm’s eyes before his expression went blank and hard again. “Fine,” he said, and stepped back. “Death might find you faithful to the children of Men, but you will meet it friendless and alone, having forsaken your own people and your own kin, fallen from wisdom into folly. I hope you are satisfied, Felagund.”

Finrod met his gaze. “Perhaps,” was all he said. Let Celegorm say what he would, let all of Nargothrond turn its back. Their paths were laid; the song would unfold as it was meant to. The chance for change had passed, if indeed there had ever been a chance at all, and it was out of their hands.

Still, when Celegorm left, this time really slamming the door behind him, Finrod sank to the floor and wept. 

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Valinor
Third Age

Finrod had, over the long years since his return to life, managed not to think very much about Nargothrond or his death or his cousins at all—not if he could help it. They came up in conversation occasionally, but he did not dwell upon them. 

At least, that’s what he told himself. When his mother asked him once why he never spoke of his city, he said, truthfully, there was no point. Nargothrond was gone—defiled by Glaurung and then broken and drowned with the rest of Beleriand. He’d known it wouldn’t last, and it hadn’t—and even if it had, there could be no returning, not for him. At least when he had last seen it, it had still been beautiful and safe and strong.

And if—when he was alone—if he sometimes drank a little too much wine and cried himself to sleep for all that he had lost (everything—he had lost everything, and even knowing it was coming did not make the loss hurt any less), well, that was his own business and no one needed to know. Those nights were few and far between, and the rest of the time he found great joy in exploring again the lands of his youth, so different now under the Sun, and in reuniting with old friends and meeting new ones. He reestablished himself in Tirion, his father’s son and heir, and hosted parties and attended banquets, settled disputes, and smiled his way through meetings and ceremonies. His cousins started to come back, one by one. His brothers, too—save one. Nothing was easy, exactly, but he was happy.

That all came crashing down on a sunny afternoon in late summer, just on the edge of autumn. Finrod had eschewed jewels and fine robes and even shoes, and had retreated into his gardens with a book to lose himself in poetry, to pretend nothing else existed—no cousins, no invitations, no duties, not even parents or newly-returned brothers. He sprawled out in a hammock and set it swaying with a light kick off the ground. Birds sang in the branches above his head, and the late-season flowers were blooming, sweet-smelling and colorful. There was not a cloud to be seen in the sky. The only thing missing was music, but that would have required another person’s presence, and so Finrod was more than content with birdsong and the wind in the leaves. 

No sooner had he opened his book, however, than the soft crunch of gravel on the path heralded his housekeeper. “Your cousin is here to see you, my lord,” she said.

“Which cousin?” Finrod sighed, dropping his book onto his stomach. 

“Curufin.”

Finrod’s chest went tight and for a moment he wasn’t in sunny Tirion but in lamplit Nargothrond, as Curufin’s quiet and razor-edged voice spoke words of fear and dread that gripped every heart in the room but ten—ten who had remained loyal in spite of everything, and whose loyalty Finrod had repaid with nothing but the fulfillment of all the fears and pain that Curufin had spoken of. None of them had yet returned from the Halls, not even Edrahil. 

He closed his eyes. “I did not know he had returned to us,” he said, keeping his voice light and careless.

“It has been some months, I think—he has only just come to Tirion. Shall I tell him you are busy?” Merilas sounded rather hopeful. She would like nothing less than to send him away, Finrod knew, for she too remembered Nargothrond—all of his household did, all heartbreakingly eager to make up in some small way for how the city had failed to stand behind him at the end no matter how many times he told them that it was needless; he had hardly had to look when he’d begun establishing himself again separate from his parents. If he did not wish to see Curufin, there were more than a dozen elves ready to keep him out, and they would not be kind about it. 

It wouldn’t solve anything, though. “No,” he sighed again. “He would only come back some other time. Bring him out to the fountain; we can speak there.”

“Straight away?” Merilas asked, gaze sweeping up and down as Finrod got to his feet. 

“I don’t need to impress him,” Finrod said. He did not want to impress Curufin. Let him know that he was not worth the effort it would take to put on a pair of shoes, let alone don any jewels. Finrod watched Merilas walk away, and then went to the fountain, which was closer to the house than the hammock. It had been a gift from Nerdanel not long after Finrod had removed to his own household in the city, some years after his return. Finrod had always liked his aunt, and she had always been very kind to him—it was she who had first put a chisel into his hand when he had been a child, though he had not learned as much from her as he would have liked to before the seeds of discord had been sown in Tirion. He hadn’t thought about the fact that it was her work when he’d told Merilas to bring Curufin there, but it wouldn’t hurt, he thought now as he watched the water arc in gentle streams up from the open petals of the marble flowers to fall like soft rain into the basin below. 

Curufin came walking down the path with his hands in his pockets and his head bowed. His hair was loose but for a pair of simple and thin braids twined back to hold it out of his face. He wore simple ornaments: a plain silver chain around his neck, and an armband of silver set with small bits of jet that glinted in the sunlight. Finrod resisted the urge to fold his arms over his chest. The breeze picked up and swept a few strands of hair across his face, but he didn’t move to brush them away either. 

The thing about forgiveness, he thought as he watched Curufin approach, was that it was so much easier when the object of it was far away—or dead. It was so much easier to let it all go when those responsible weren’t there, unable to do any more harm. 

When Curufin lifted his head Finrod couldn’t stop himself from smirking a little. There was a scratch across one of his cheekbones, pink and fresh, as though someone’s ring had caught the skin when they slapped him. “Your wife was pleased to see you, then?” he said. 

To his surprise, Curufin did not scowl or snap back at him. He only looked tired. His gaze strayed for a moment to the fountain; Finrod saw him recognize his mother’s hand, and saw that he was not surprised. Finally, he met Finrod’s gaze. “I didn’t expect you to let me in,” he said finally. 

“I did not expect Mandos to let you out.” This was only a slight exaggeration, really. Caranthir and the twins had been released already—Finrod had had awkward first meetings with all three of them, with apologies on their side and stilted words of forgiveness and peace on his. Doriath and Sirion—those were not really his to forgive, though he had had close kin in both it was still not a wrong done to him, personally, for he had been long dead. And though he had never been particularly close in friendship with either Caranthir or Ambarussa, Nargothrond had been a trading partner with Thargelion for many years, to the pleasure and enrichment of both. He could meet any of those three in a ballroom or on the street without blinking, though it was unlikely he would do either, for they had removed themselves from Tirion very quickly after those initial meetings. Still, they all had to learn to live together again—he was willing to put in the work.

Or he had been willing, before today. 

Finrod had welcomed both Curufin and Celegorm and all their people into his city. He had been glad of their numbers, glad of their skills, glad of two new voices in his council. He had liked them both—had considered them his friends. He had trusted them. And in the end, when it had mattered most, Curufin had looked him in the eye as he had taken that trust and shattered it like glass. At least Celegorm had tried to speak to him privately first, had warned him, had not tried to pretend that their oaths now clashed and there could be no further alliance.

Now Curufin was here—for what? If Finrod had thought himself a forgiving person before, he realized now that he’d been wrong. There were some things he could not forgive. He realized now that he no longer cared how bound they had been by their Oath. He did not care that they had all been under the Doom of the Noldor that took everything they did and twisted it until they stabbed themselves in the back with their own good intentions. Curufin had not acted with good intentions when he had stood before all of Nargothrond and spoken until not a single person in the entire city, not even Finrod’s own brother, could look him in the eye. Everything Finrod had been telling himself about the way things were meant to be and how his own pain didn’t matter—he found rather suddenly that he didn’t really believe it, not in his heart of hearts. It could have happened differently, and it was not because of him that it had not. There was no longer anything depending upon his grace or his wisdom; no lives hung on his ability to extend those things to Curufin—and so he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

All he had been telling himself about leaving the past behind him and looking forward—it had all rested on the assumption that he wouldn’t have to see Curufin again. That even if Curufin ever returned from Mandos, they would never have to meet. “Why are you here?”

Curufin met his gaze. “I wanted to apologize,” he said. 

Finrod couldn’t stop the incredulous laughter from bubbling up. “To apologize? To what end?”

“That isn’t—I am not here to ask anything of you, Findaráto. I am sorry. That’s all I came to say.”

“You are not forgiven. I almost can’t believe you had the nerve to come say anything to me at all.”

Finally, a spark flashed through Curufin’s eyes. He had taken his hands from his pockets, and now they balled into fists. “You aren’t the only one who lost everything—”

“Yet I am the only one who seems to be expected to stand before he who stole it all from me and smile prettily and assure him that of course all is well, just because we have both passed through death and come out the other side? No. I will not.” It would shock everyone, he was sure, from his parents to his cousins. It shocked him, that this anger had been sleeping inside him all this time, just waiting for something to wake it up. “I don’t want your empty apologies.”

“What do you want then?” Curufin demanded. “What do you want me to do, to prove it’s not empty? If there’s anything—”

“You know there isn’t. There is nothing you can say and no gifts you can give me that can ever come close to making up for any of it. I trusted you. That was my mistake, I know—and it is not one I will make again. Can you truly stand there and tell me that you would not do it all over again exactly the same way?”

Curufin hesitated, which was answer enough. “I don’t know,” he said. “I want to say I would not. But I don’t know. I never wanted you to die, Findaráto. Especially not like that. I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to fight with you. Forgive me or believe me or not, that’s your choice—I just—you deserved to have me look you in the eye when I said it. That’s all.”

Maybe someday Finrod would appreciate that. He couldn’t, in that moment, and couldn’t make his tongue form the words thank you, not when his mouth was full of the memory of blood and his ears still heard Curufin’s voice speaking very different words in a very different place. So he said nothing. 

After waiting for a moment, Curufin just nodded, as though he’d expected this. “I won’t trouble you again,” he said, and bowed—a deep bow, as to a king rather than the prince that Finrod was now—and departed. He waited until Curufin had long disappeared down the garden path, and then turned to flee in the other direction. He passed the hammock where he’d left his book, and came to a tall and proud oak tree at the very rear of the garden. A running leap brought him high enough to grasp the first branches, and from there it was a simple matter of climbing. The bark was rough under his bare feet and against his palms, and he relished each scrape and scratch. A handful of finches took flight as he passed by, and a squirrel darted away and down the trunk. 

By the time he was high enough to be hidden from sight and hearing in the thick foliage, he was out of breath and shaking—not from the climb, but from the feeling of something lodged in his chest, under his ribs, crowding out his lungs and his heart so that neither could function. He curled up in a fork where several branches parted and hid his face in his arms.

He just stayed there, for hours, leaning against the branches and listening to the birds, and to the thoughts of the tree. Trees cared nothing at all for the woes of elves, especially those that had come to pass so far away and long ago, long before this one had been even an acorn. Usually Finrod found such things comforting. He liked to wade out into the Sea or to lay back in the grass and stare up at the stars and know himself small—to know that the whole of Arda, the whole of Eä, was vast beyond comprehension and that whatever happened to him, the song of it would continue on, beautiful and unknowable and eternal. To know that there were stories playing out all around him that would never touch him and that he could never touch. Just then, though, his own story felt so heavy, as it had not since he had awoken before the doors of Mandos in a body made new, and it seemed there was nothing that could adequately distract or reassure him. He had always known that he was but a tiny part, a handful of notes, in the greater Song—had always known that the whole was something beautiful, even if he couldn’t hear all of it. That no longer felt like reassurance. It felt horribly unfair.

As evening fell, he felt slight shaking in the tree that heralded someone else climbing up. He neither moved nor looked until Fingon pulled himself up onto one of the boughs that grew out of the fork. “Did you forget you were to dine with your parents tonight?” he asked. 

Oh. He had forgotten. Finrod couldn’t make himself move, though. “I’ll see them tomorrow,” he said, hearing how dull his voice sounded and unable to care. “I’ll give my excuses then.”

“What are your excuses?” Fingon asked. 

Finrod sighed. “I don’t know yet. Did they send you?” It seemed unlikely; a messenger with a note would have sufficed for his parents; they would not know there was reason for anything more. 

“No. I heard you met with Curufin today.”

“Did you?” Annoyance sparked, but he was too tired now to hold onto it. 

“Don’t worry, he isn’t going about telling everyone about it—but he was seen coming and then going.”

“Have you seen him?”

“Yes. But it is not me to whom he owes the greatest apology.”

“No, that is to Lúthien—or whoever of her family resides now in these lands. Elwing, perhaps.”

“Elwing would slam the door in his face, as she did his brothers,” said Fingon. “I advised him to send a letter instead. But you know what I mean. Did he? Apologize?”

“Yes.”

After a few beats, Fingon said, gently, “And?”

“You would have me welcome him back with open arms, I know,” Finrod sighed. “To say the past can remain in the past, drowned under the waves like my fair city, and here in the Undying Lands we can start anew. I just—”

“I would not have you do anything you feel you cannot—or that you do not want to,” said Fingon. “I haven’t forgiven him either, you know, for what he and Celegorm did to you.”

“I know it cost you Nargothrond’s numbers in the Union—”

“That isn’t why, Finrod. Or—of course that was part of it then, that and our last chance at a real alliance with Doriath. But I don’t care about that anymore—it’s long over and done, and we were never going to win anyway, however foolishly hopeful we felt at times. There wasn’t room for more personal hurts in the midst of a war, but now we have nothing but room for them. You must know how we mourned for you. All of us. Maedhros was furious—he would have stripped them both of all command and locked them up in Himring if we could have afforded to.”

Finrod understood that, and he’d never really begrudged the lack of repercussions, not on his behalf. The Noldor had never recovered from the devastation of the Dagor Bragollach, and whatever their faults both Curufin and Celegorm had been skilled fighters and field commanders, and they had been needed, especially for the Union. It would have been worth it, had it not turned into the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. His anger now was all for himself, and had nothing really to do with what anyone had done after he had died.

“I want to, though,” he said, finally lifting his head so he could look at the leaves gently swaying above them. “I don’t…I do not want to be this person. Someone who cannot let go of ancient anger. I thought I had.”

“Even if it’s well deserved?”

“That’s just—I don’t know if it is. It feels selfish, and—”

Fingon reached over to tangle his fingers in Finrod’s. “You died the most selfless death of any of us,” he said quietly. “If anyone is entitled to a little selfish anger now, it is you. Just—do it on the ground? You’ll regret spending the night up here.”

Finrod managed a smile, and squeezed Fingon’s hand before sitting up. They made their way to the ground, and once there Fingon wrapped his arms around Finrod, holding on very tightly—almost fiercely. He was warm where Finrod was chilled, but he declined when Finrod half-heartedly invited him to stay for dinner, or at least a drink. As he turned to go Finrod asked, “What will you do when Maedhros comes back?”

Fingon paused, something complicated passing across his face. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “I miss him, but I don’t know if he’ll ever want to come back, and…some days that feels like the heaviest of griefs, and other days it’s a relief. As long as he does not return, I can pretend that there is nothing that would stop me from welcoming him back with open arms and a glad heart. What will you do when Celegorm returns?”

All of Finrod’s muscles went stiff and tight at the thought, fear and rage and grief and longing filling him up in equal measure until he thought he would drown. Seeing Celegorm again would be so much worse than Curufin, and he couldn’t even explain to Fingon why. “I don’t know.”

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The next to return from Mandos was Turgon, and Finrod was at first very glad of it—here was his best friend again, with whom he had shared his childhood, with whom he had once shared everything—all his secrets, his dreams and ambitions. In Turgon’s absence in Valinor he had done his best to offer Idril what support he could, though truthfully she needed very little. She was very happy with Tuor in Avallónë, dwelling by the Sea under the blessing and protection of Ulmo, where their son could visit whenever he could return from his long voyages through the sky. This meant Finrod got to play the role of fond and indulgent elder cousin—something like an uncle, something like a friend.

And at first it was as wonderful as Finrod had hoped—he and Turgon met again in gladness, both eager to return to the easy friendship of their youth, and he was there to see Turgon’s reunion with his daughter. There were tears and there was laughter, and for a little while it seemed that all would be easy. 

It was not only death that had parted them, though, and the years between Turgon’s vanishing into Gondolin and Finrod’s death had been long, and many things both good and terrible had happened to change them both. They had each made choices the other did not understand, and instead of trying to find common ground, Turgon was judgmental, and Finrod found himself growing defensive. 

Especially when Celegorm’s name was spoken. Turgon had no love at all for the Sons of Fëanor, that had always been true, but the way he looked at Finrod when he questioned his choice to allow both Curufin and Celegorm into his city— “What else was I supposed to do?” Finrod asked. “Do not pretend to know what was happening outside your precious mountains, Turukáno. Do not pretend to understand what the Bragollach wrought, for it touched you not—”

“Touched me not? I had to bury my father—”

“While the world outside fair and green Tumladen was on fire, and some of us could not even retrieve bodies to bury.” Finrod knew he was being cruel—he couldn’t imagine what it would have done to him if Finarfin had ever died—but the words spilled out anyway, each one worse than the last. “At least I know why Celegorm and Curufin did what they did. They did not scheme and plot behind my back for years while I was none the wiser.” Turgon’s face went white. “I did the best I could with what I had—and it was your father who wanted to mount an attack on Angband before the Bragollach. I did not want to because you had taken so many of our people and just vanished—”

“I would have opened my gates, had such an assault been mounted!” Turgon snapped. “I did open them when—”

“How were we to know that? It is my understanding that even your brother did not know you would come until you arrived—how could you expect us to trust that you would just know when you were needed, when we had no way of knowing if you were even still alive?”

“I did what Ulmo—”

“No, you didn’t,” Finrod said flatly. “Not when it mattered.” 

At this Turgon’s face went from white to red. “At least I did not abandon my city to kinslayers—”

“No, you just ignored all the signs and messages—”

“I had my daughter to think of—”

“Your daughter knew better than you what was needed! At least she listened—”

“I did what I thought was best for my people. You died in the dark for someone else’s selfish quest—”

“I remembered the Fens of Serech!”

There it was again. The Doom of the Noldor was no longer an active force, no longer dogging their heels, but it seemed they would all be paying the price forever. The stakes were no longer high, and all there was to think about now were their own hurt feelings and their own guilt and anger; there was no enemy to take those feelings out on now—there were only themselves and one another. It did no one any good to have arguments like this, but Finrod had missed his cousin, his friend. He had been half in mourning for him ever since news reached him of Vinyamar’s sudden abandonment, haunted by the unknown. He would have liked to have someone now in whom he could confide at least something of his lingering heartache, but both he and Turgon were cursed with their family’s pride, and as long as Turgon was prepared to look down on him for accepting any Fëanorians into his city, Finrod would defend that choice in spite of his own private regrets—and he would, apparently, find himself voicing the thoughts that he knew were better left unsaid. It had been a mistake in the end, allowing Celegorm and Curufin into Nargothrond, but he also didn’t know what he should have done instead. They had all benefited from it until Beren had come—and higher things than they had begun moving, the tides of fate beginning to change, sweeping them along whether they would or no. The difference between Finrod and Turgon was that Finrod had followed when called. Turgon had refused. They had both died, but Finrod wondered if Turgon would say, as he still felt that he could, that his death had been worth it. 

Invoking Serech brought the visit to an abrupt end; Finrod regretted the words—far worse than anything Turgon had said to him—as soon as he said them, but they were both of them too angry and hurt for any apologies to really mean anything. When he left Turgon to his seething, Finrod went home and packed his things and told Merilas not to expect him back any time soon. It had been several years since his unwanted reunion with Curufin, and though he hadn’t seen him since he just knew that he was somewhere nearby, and if things with Turgon were going to be almost as tense—well. Better if he just got out of Tirion entirely, for a little while at least. Once he had found unending delight in roaming and exploring, on both sides of the Sundering Sea. It had been best with a companion, but now Finrod craved solitude.

He passed out of Tirion and into the west, through woods and over streams. He spent days in meadows full of wildflowers, lying among the blossoms and thinking of nothing at all except how beautiful the world was as he watched the clouds drift by overhead, and the butterflies and bees at work closer at hand. He fished in little rivers and ate blackberries off the brambles, sun-warmed and tart, staining his fingers and lips purple. He sang with the larks and raced the wind, climbed hills and cliffs and explored little caves behind waterfalls. It was high summer when he departed from Tirion, with hot days and warm nights, and he spent his evenings watching the fireflies all around him, sometimes taking out his harp to play songs for them to dance to. 

If there was no one with whom to share these small joys, there was also no one to witness when he lingered in places for days, even the bright blue summer skies not always enough to lift his spirits out of listlessness, or to see the tears that fell into the pools and the streams where he sat for hours, just watching the water flow by without thinking of anything at all. 

No matter how far he went, he couldn’t outrun any of it. Days turned to weeks turned to months, the seasons passing as he roamed far and wide. The thought of returning to Tirion was unbearable, because all of his past was there. He couldn’t imagine meeting Curufin on the street without feeling sick to his stomach. Couldn't imagine a world in which he could be merely polite and distant and cold—as surely Fingon had been imagining, when he had spoken of Finrod’s deserving to be angry. He was Finrod Felagund, friend to all, wise and golden Prince of the Noldor, always kind and always smiling. That was the image he had himself cultivated, and so he had only himself to blame for its restraints. He had wanted them all to forget that he was, too, the Finrod Felagund who had seen what happened in Alqualondë and kept going anyway—unable even now to tell if it was a sense of his own doom that drove him forward or just his own ambition—who then lied to Elu Thingol for years about the manner of the Noldor’s departure from Aman; who had thrown his crown to the floor in a fit of anger, putting a sworn oath to a friend above the duties of a king to his city (whatever he told himself about fate and necessity—Turgon had not been wrong); who had battled Sauron and lost. 

Who had, with the last of his strength, summoned all of the rage that had burned within him to tear out a wolf’s throat with his own teeth. 

He lay under a large beech tree, watching the bees hover over the eglantine blossoms twining round its trunk, and wondered what people would say if they were reminded of all those ugly things, if they knew what fury still simmered under the surface of his skin, painful but with nothing to relieve it. He wondered if it even really mattered that he did not want to be those things, that he would have been very happy indeed if it could all have been left behind under Tol-in-Gaurhoth (under Minas Tirith, his heart still protested—his own tower that he had built upon Tol Sirion, taken and defiled; never had he expected it to turn into his tomb). 

His dreams that night were full of wolves, and he woke up in the mornings with the taste of blood on his tongue and the sound of Beren’s grief echoing in his ears. When he went on he paid little attention to where he put his feet, and halfway through the morning he slipped and tumbled down a steep slope only to land in a thorny bush that caught his hair and clothes and tore into his hands when he tried to free himself. He got out in the end, but his already bad mood had soured even further. He ached all over, and the fact that his hands were now covered in his own blood seemed like the worst of a beginner-poet’s attempts at symbolism.

A stream flowed by the bottom of the slope, and Finrod followed it until he found a cool mossy glade where he could make his camp. As he sat by the stream and dipped his hands in to clean them, watching the blood swirl away before dissolving in the swift-flowing water, he thought he heard movement somewhere nearby. When he looked up, however, there was nothing. Still, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he felt that he wasn’t alone. “Who’s there?” he called out. It had been weeks—months, really, though he’d not bothered to keep count—since he had spoken to another person, and days since he’d spoken aloud at all, and his voice was hoarse from disuse. There was no answer. 

He pulled a roll of bandages out and examined the cuts on his palms. They were deeper than he’d first thought, and bled sluggishly, and they hurt. He sighed, and unrolled the bandages. 

Once his hands were wrapped he pulled the twigs and remaining thorns out of his hair, and then let himself fall back onto the mossy ground. It was slightly damp, but the coolness against his scalp was a nice contrast to the heat of the day—even in the shade of the forest—as he stared up at the scattered bits of blue sky just visible through the canopy high over his head. It was very quiet, but for the distant calls of birds, and the water flowing along over the stones in front of him. After a while he hummed a few snatches of song, but didn’t have the heart for it, so gave up. 

That was the point, after all. He didn’t have to pretend, out here. There was no one to see him, bloodied and bruised and covered with dirt, unsmiling and miserable.

When the next day dawned, clouds had moved in. They were not heavy enough to promise rain, but the air was thick and humid. Finrod changed the bandages on his hands and wondered if this was a sign that he should turn back toward home. He kept cringing from the thought, though. He hadn’t yet found whatever it was he was seeking—hadn't yet learned how to rebury all the ugly parts of himself back down deep where they belonged, if he couldn’t purge them entirely, or how to rebuild the walls around his heart that first Curufin and then Turgon had shaken loose, threatening the very foundation of them until all that they were meant to hold inside threatened to come pouring out.

He did not leave the wood, but wandered through the trees, following the stream for a few days before leaving it for a game trail. There were many boulders and rocky outcroppings, mossy and cool, and he climbed up and over them, trying to find something to be happy about. 

He had been happy, for such a long time. It wasn’t fair that the existence of one person—not even in his presence!—could be enough to destroy it. 

Then he passed around an enormous tree and found a silver-haired figure sitting on one of its roots just ahead of him, and realized that it hadn’t been Curufin’s presence that had troubled him nearly as much as the anticipation of this meeting. Finrod froze, throat growing tight, lungs constricting. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to flee or not—whether he cared that Celegorm might think him the worst of cowards. 

Celegorm was dressed for hunting, but though his clothes were travel-stained they were still new—almost as new as his body. He had come from Mandos recently enough that it was still easy to tell, though Finrod had never been able to put into words just what it was that made it so. His quiver and bow sat on the ground beneath him, and he was doing something with strips of leather in his hands, perhaps braiding them together—Finrod couldn’t quite see. Instead of a hunter’s braids, though, his hair was loose, tumbling over his shoulders in gentle waves, making him look very young, as he had looked before war and oaths and doom had hardened and tempered him like steel. 

Finrod remembered plunging his fingers into those strands, relishing the silky softness of them as he pulled Celegorm in—and balled his hands into fists. His palms were still sore, but he dug his fingernails into the scabbed-over scratches anyway. “Fancy seeing you out here,” Celegorm said without looking up. He seemed entirely relaxed, leaning back against the trunk with one leg dangling, the other knee bent. “You’re awfully far from home, Prince Findaráto.”

“What are you doing out here?” Finrod bit out. 

“Hunting.”

This did not feel like a meeting of mere chance, but at least it gave Finrod an excuse to leave. He turned away, but Celegorm’s voice made him freeze mid-stride. “Don’t you want to know what I’m looking for?”

He didn’t turn around. “What makes you think I care?”

“You.” At this Finrod did turn, not understanding, just in time to see Celegorm jump lightly to the ground. “I was looking for you. It was something of a surprise, you know, to return to Tirion and find you absent—and no one knowing either where you had gone or when you would return.”

“Did it not occur to you,” Finrod said, “that I might not want to be found—and least of all by you?”

“It did.” Celegorm stopped less than an arm’s length away. “But we need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then will you listen—”

“No.” Finrod backed away, but Celegorm matched each one of his steps. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t know why you think I’d want to hear your apologies after I—”

“Who said I was going to apologize?”

The words were like a knife slid between his ribs, so neatly that Finrod almost didn’t feel the pain of it. He moved before his mind could catch up with his body, and the next thing he knew his knuckles hurt and Celegorm was staggering back, cursing as he raised his hand to his nose. When he looked back at Finrod, though, he was grinning, blood smeared over his lips and teeth. “There you are,” he said. 

“You—you—” Finrod didn’t know what he wanted to say, but it didn’t matter because he choked on the words anyway. Bad enough that Celegorm was there, but that he had come all this way and not even to apologize—that he felt no remorse at all for what he had done—

“Go on,” Celegorm said. “Hit me again, if you think you can.”

Finrod shoved him, but found his wrist caught in Celegorm’s iron grip so that he was pulled with him. They went down, the fight short but fierce, dirty and violent—but not as violent as it could have been, Finrod realized only once he was on his back in the leaves, wrists pinned by his head, Celegorm’s hair falling around them like a silver curtain. His nose was still bleeding, as was his lip where it had split open, and he would soon have a black eye to go with them, but all the blows that had landed had been Finrod’s. Celegorm hadn’t really tried to hit him at all—it had been Finrod who spilled his own blood, reopening the cuts on his palms in careless fury. 

Now he lay still, panting, and stared up into Celegorm’s eyes as the pain of betrayal overtook the rage. “I trusted you,” he whispered. 

“I know,” Celegorm said. He wasn’t smiling anymore. 

“And you—you—”

“I tried to stop you,” Celegorm said. “I tried to warn you—”

“It didn’t have to happen that way,” Finrod said. 

“You know as well as I do that it did.”

He did know, but there had long ago ceased being any comfort in it—in the thought that it had all been inevitable, that there wasn’t anything they could have done to change it. “No, it—maybe it wouldn’t have been better, but we could have—at least I wanted to try! You wouldn’t even do that!”

“What would have been the point, if it all just ended in failure anyway?”

“The point would have been the trying.” Finrod didn’t know how to say it better than that. “It mattered. Even when we failed. It mattered to me.”

Celegorm regarded him for a moment. A drop of blood fell from his split-open lip onto Finrod, warm and thick as it slid down his cheek. He realized only then that there were tears on his face too, flowing from his eyes down his temples into his hair. “When last we spoke,” Celegorm said, so quietly that Finrod almost couldn’t hear him even though their faces were mere inches apart, “you told me not to lie—not to pretend we had ever been something we weren’t. But that was the lie, wasn’t it? Every day we woke up in our own beds and dressed carefully to hide the bite marks and bruises, and pretended none of it meant anything—we were lying to each other and to ourselves, and we were both so good at it that I didn’t even realize the truth until it was too late. I'm not going to do that, this time. I’m not going to start this new life with lies.”

“Why come after me, then?” Finrod asked. “Why—if you aren’t sorry—”

“Of course I’m sorry. It would be easier to make a list of the things I don’t regret, than to try to list all that I do—but you, most of all. You’re right. Even if we couldn’t have found another way—I should have tried. I should have listened to you, and I am so, so sorry.”

“Then why did you say—”

“Haven’t you ever been goaded before, Findaráto?”

Finrod wanted to roll his eyes, but he couldn’t look away from Celegorm’s. “I hate you,” he whispered.

“That’s fine,” Celegorm whispered back. “I hate me too.” He released one of Finrod’s wrists to cradle his face instead, thumb brushing over his cheekbone, catching a tear. They had never been gentle with one another. Finrod hadn’t thought he wanted it—not from Celegorm, with his sharp grins and sharper wit, with his knives and tight hunter’s braids and eyes that gleamed in the darkness of Finrod’s bedchamber like something dangerous. It had been Celegorm who looked at Finrod and saw most clearly that he could be dangerous, too—that he too had sharp edges, though they weren’t the honed blades of Celegorm’s but something more jagged, broken and irreparable—and with whom it had been, paradoxically, safe to let those edges show, away from the glittering smiles and polite diplomacy of his court. 

They weren’t at war, anymore, though. Mandos was supposed to be a place of healing, where broken things were put back together and rough edges smoothed over. Valinor was meant to be a place of peace. Finrod wanted to be in truth the person everyone saw when they looked at him—he did not want to be what he still was, did not want all this anger and hurt still roiling inside him. There should not be a space in this new life of his for it or for Celegorm, who was still as wild and hard as he had ever been, except— 

Except he had just done his best to beat Celegorm halfway back to Mandos, and he was still looking at him like he was something beautiful and precious, touching his face with the gentlest fingers that were still smeared with dirt and blood, balancing perfectly between sharp and soft in a way Finrod resented and envied and wanted in equal measure. “I hate you,” he said again, and reached up to pull Celegorm down. Their lips met in a messy, bloody kiss. Celegorm slid his fingers up into Finrod’s hair, grip tightening swiftly, all softness gone, replaced by burning desire that felt more like need than want. Finrod felt like he’d been starving for centuries without realizing it, and someone had just given him a piece of the sweetest bread. Like he had been dying of thirst, and finally found a well of cool water. Like he had been drowning and was only now able to reach the surface to take a breath of air. It was such a relief that it was easy, in the end, to just give himself over and stop thinking about anything else.

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Some time later, after they’d exhausted themselves further and torn their clothes half off, and given each other even more bruises—mutual, this time, and far more pleasurable—Celegorm collapsed on top of Finrod, and did not roll away, as he would have once, as Finrod expected him to. Instead he pressed his face into the crook of Finrod’s neck where it met his shoulder. Finrod could feel the heat of his breath ghost across his skin. “I missed you,” Celegorm whispered.

Finrod turned his head, and picked a leaf out of Celegorm’s hair, which was tangled and matted with spots of sticky blood. Finrod’s blood, from the cuts on his palms. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say. His rage was spent, at least for the moment, but he still had no forgiveness to offer, and couldn’t force the truth up his throat—that he had, desperately, missed Celegorm too. 

By then it was getting late, and the night was growing cool as the wind picked up, chasing away the clouds and the humidity. Celegorm pulled Finrod to his feet, and for a moment they just looked at each other. Finrod knew it was better if they parted ways. If they stayed, sooner or later it would just turn into another fight—and eventually Celegorm would start fighting back, and Finrod didn’t think he could bear to hear whatever cruel things he might say on top of what had been said long ago. 

He was so tired, though, and sore, and it was dark, and— 

“Come on.” Celegorm took him by the hand, very gently, and led him to where he’d set up his own little camp on the other side of the tree where Finrod had first seen him, next to a spring bubbling up out of the moss. A fire was already laid, and it was only a matter of minutes before Celegorm had it crackling merrily. They cleaned themselves with the cold spring water, and put on clean clothes—and then Celegorm took Finrod’s hands to smear some fragrant ointment over them before wrapping them in fresh bandages. He did not ask how Finrod had cut his hands in the first place. 

In fact, they did not speak much at all. To speak was to bring up the past, was to risk an argument, was just to invite pain, and Celegorm seemed as reluctant to do that as Finrod was now that the explosion of their initial encounter had passed. Finrod let Celegorm press waybread into his hands, and let him sit down shoulder to shoulder with him by the fire, leaning back against one of the giant tree roots. The bread was sweet and light and with that particular combination of spices Nerdanel used that Finrod remembered from his long-ago youth.

He fell asleep slumped against Celegorm, and roused only slightly when he shuffled them around so that they could both lie comfortably, pressing himself against Finrod’s back and draping an arm over his stomach. They’d never done this before—never slept together, one of them always slipping away in the dead of night in Nargothrond. Finrod had never even thought to want it. 

It was nice, though, was the last thing he thought before sleep claimed him for good. 

Morning came, and Finrod woke slowly, feeling comfortable and drowsy and warm. He couldn’t account for it at first, until he shifted and became aware of all his sore muscles and bruises. Then he opened his eyes to find himself still tucked up against Celegorm, who was playing with a strand of his hair, still pressed against his back and with an arm around him. They were under both their blankets, and though the day would be warm the morning was yet cool, and it was…it was still so nice.

“Why are you here?” Finrod whispered without moving. 

“As I said, looking for you.” Celegorm kissed the back of Finrod’s head. 

“But…” Finrod wasn’t sure what he wanted to ask, or whether it even mattered. He knew that he should tell Celegorm to leave—to tell him that he never wanted to see him again, that he would never make the mistake of trusting him again, not after what he had done. He’d said those things to Curufin and meant every word. 

But he’d just slept for hours with Celegorm at his back, and what bigger show of trust was there?

“There are a lot of things I need to do, apologies I need to make,” Celegorm said. He spoke only just above a whisper, with his face tucked into Finrod’s hair. “But I needed you to be the first. I’m sorry, Findaráto. For everything.”

“How…how long since you even came back? You had not returned when I left Tirion.”

“Oh, I don’t know. A year, maybe. Maybe a little more. I was too impatient to linger in Lórien, and I didn’t stay long at my mother’s house either. I went to Tirion and you weren’t there—so I left to find you.”

Nerdanel lived these days very close to Aulë’s halls, far from Tirion—and even farther, probably, from where they were now, though Finrod couldn’t be quite sure. He hadn’t been paying much attention either to the passage of time or to where he was, trusting that when he wished to return home he had only to turn his feet east, and he would eventually see Tirion on the horizon, shining in the morning light spilling through the Calacirya. For a moment he closed his eyes to picture it, expecting to feel a pang of homesickness—surely he should, by now. 

He didn’t. 

He had, Finrod thought as he watched a rabbit make its way slowly past the little hollow under the roots where they lay, thought himself secure. Thought himself happy, healed—even after Curufin had come and thrown everything he’d believed about himself into question, he’d thought that he could right the ship, could continue as he had been, quashing the anger and striving to forget all about it. He had built walls around his heart and thought them impenetrable. But then, he’d thought the other walls he’d built were impenetrable, too.

“What are you thinking of?” Celegorm asked after a little while. 

It was easier, somehow, to talk like this—without having to look at each other, but with the comfort of closeness and the weight of Celegorm’s arm over his. “I built Minas Tirith upon Tol Sirion, and it was a strong place, a beautiful place,” Finrod whispered. The rabbit hopped forward and nibbled at a blade of grass. “Then the world caught fire and Gorthaur took it and made it an abode of wolves and darkness, until it was broken apart in the end. I also built Nargothrond, that I loved even more, and it was so beautiful, and even stronger—and hidden, and safe—and then that, too, was taken and burned, defiled by Glaurung and become the abode of dragons and their curses until it drowned with the rest of the world. And here—” His breath hitched. His hands curled into fists, ragged fingernails catching on the edges of the bandages. “Here, I dare not build anything, because when it too crumbles in the end it will not be because of dragons or wolves, but because of the rot that comes from the inside.”

“There is no such rot,” Celegorm said softly. 

At this Finrod twisted around to look at Celegorm. “You say that, after I did this?” he asked, brushing his thumb over Celegorm’s bruised eye, already starting to turn purple. “Perhaps you goaded me, but if I hadn’t already wanted to hurt you—”

Celegorm caught his hand and kissed his fingers, the same knuckles that had given him those bruises, before leaning in to whisper, lips ghosting over Finrod’s, “I like your edges, Findaráto, the way you’re sharp as flint under the surface—the way I know there’s always a risk of being cut if I’m not careful. I like that I’m the one who gets to see just how dangerous you are, like a snake in the grass.” He still held Finrod’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and in startling contrast to his words his kiss was the sweetest thing Finrod had ever experienced, soft and warm. “When we heard what you did—how you slew that wolf…” Celegorm’s teeth caught Finrod’s lip, briefly and gently, before he drew back, eyes glimmering in the early morning shadows. “I think I was the only one who wasn’t surprised.”

Finrod drew back, though he couldn’t go far with Celegorm’s arms still encircling him. “I’m so glad my death was a pleasing story for you—”

“That’s not what I meant—”

“What did you mean, then? I died, Celegorm, and it wasn’t for you to turn me into some—”

“It was the worst news I ever got,” Celegorm said with surprising ferocity. “I stopped caring—about any of it, except the Oath, and only because that was inescapable. When you died—it was not a pleasing story, Finrod. It killed me, too.” 

Finrod didn’t know what he was supposed to do with that. “But you still—Lúthien, and Doriath—”

“I was a dead man walking already, and you were gone. What did any of it matter? I knew we’d never get the Silmarils back, no matter what we did or who had them—I’m not stupid. I knew what it meant that we were doomed, and my family cursed twice over. If I was already destined for the Everlasting Darkness—”

“If I mattered so much to you, you must have known I wouldn’t have wanted—”

“You weren’t there to want anything anymore, and you only ended up in that dungeon because of Doriath—”

“No. No, do not lay that at my feet—”

“Of course I’m not—”

“Do not say it was for my sake that you did any of it—”

“It wasn’t! I’m just trying to tell you—” 

Finrod pulled himself free, though a part of him regretted immediately leaving the warmth of Celegorm’s arms. He scrambled out of the blankets, startling the rabbit into fleeing. He felt so stupid—for a moment he’d let his guard down, let himself believe that maybe there was something to salvage here, when of course there wasn’t. There wasn’t getting back anything that he had lost in Beleriand. Least of all this.

Celegorm followed, and this time when Finrod swung at him he caught his fists easily, one and then the other, and pushed them down, pinning them to Finrod’s sides, standing so close that Finrod had to tilt his head back to look him in the eye. “Celegorm the Cruel, they called me by the end. Did you know that?” he asked, all softness gone, eyes hard and dark and full of something Finrod couldn’t name. “I deserved it, as I deserve all they will say of me now when I return to Tirion—and when I make my bows and speak my apologies I’ll mean every word, and no one will believe any of it. That’s fine—I don’t intend to stay, so I don’t care, they can all sneer at me as much as they want, and I won’t be there to hear. But I regret everything I did more than any words in any tongue can say, from the swearing of the Oath to the slaying of Dior Eluchíl in Menegroth. If I could undo it all I would. If I could unmake myself so I was never there to do it, I would. If I could trade places with my brother—or if I could consign myself to the Everlasting Darkness in truth so Maglor could be found, could come home, I would do it in a heartbeat. I would do the same if it meant you could return home unburdened by all the anger and hurt that I have caused you.

“You don’t have to forgive me, Finrod. If you never want to see me again—fine. That’s fine. I just need you to believe me.”

“Everything?” Finrod asked before he could stop himself. His voice sounded very small in his own ears. 

Celegorm closed his eyes, and leaned forward to rest his forehead against Finrod’s. “Almost everything,” he amended. “I regret how it ended, but I can’t—no matter how hard I try, I can’t convince myself that it was a mistake. In Nargothrond. Us.”

“I can’t either,” Finrod said. “But I also can’t—I’ve been so angry for so long, with nowhere to put it. I can feel it festering inside me, like a wound—”

“So lance it,” Celegorm said, and released him. “If you need to hit me again, hit me. I deserve whatever you—”

“I did hit you, and it didn’t help. I don’t know what I need—don’t you see? There’s something broken in me that I don’t know how to fix, and—”

“Finrod—”

“I died, Tyelko! And it hurt—”

That was what no one ever spoke of, on those rare occasions when they spoke of death. It was always—do you regret it? Was it worth it? Did you die fighting? Was it an end truly worthy of the songs we have made of it?

He had never dared to say aloud before that it had hurt—had barely dared to think it, in the privacy of his own heart. That the pain had been unbearable. That he did not regret losing his life for Beren’s sake, but it had been agony, and it had not been quick; that he had felt every drop of his life’s blood leave his body, and he had been so afraid—that it had been so dark, and his last living thought had been a child’s desperate wish for his mother.

“It hurt,” he whispered again, eyes stinging with tears that he did not want to shed, “and you weren’t there.”

“I know,” Celegorm said simply. “I’m sorry.”

He did believe him—Finrod believed that Celegorm meant every word that he said. It was all just, suddenly, too much. “Please leave,” he said. 

“Finrod…”

“I need you to leave.”

Celegorm still hesitated. “For good, or can I come back?”

Both, Finrod wanted to say, even knowing it was nonsensical. “Just—just go. Please.”

Celegorm brushed his knuckles with agonizing gentleness over Finrod’s cheek, and then without another word he gathered up his things and departed, leaving Finrod alone in the little mossy hollow. It was very quiet. The trees were so tall that all the birds in the canopy sounded very faint. Finrod didn’t move for a long time, just staring at the tree roots without really seeing them. Only when he was absolutely certain that Celegorm was long gone did he allow himself to break. He sank to his knees, wrapping his arms around himself as he bent over. 

No one ever acknowledged, either, the ghostly marks that echoed scars that some carried back with them from Mandos—that Finrod, selfishly, hoped others had carried back, for he had never shown his or been shown anyone else’s, and he couldn’t bear the thought that he alone had come back so marred. The ghost-scars he bore were nearly invisible most of the time. Finrod hadn’t even realized they were there at all until he’d first heard the Lay of Leithian performed, and woken up hours later from a nightmare in which he relived his own death over and over as the singers chanted in the shadows around him. He had turned on the light and looked down to see livid red marks splayed across his chest, claw marks raked down his sides. They hadn’t hurt, exactly, though they had been tender to the touch. By morning they’d faded again, and he didn’t know if it was only the knowledge of their presence that let him see the faintest discoloration in his own skin afterward, if he looked close enough. 

He didn’t have to look now to know that they were there. The fëa remembered, even when the hröa was new. 

The tears spilled—and spilled, and spilled. He hadn’t known that he had so many inside of him. He didn’t know it was possible to be unable to breathe and yet have his body so continually wracked with sobs. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wept since his return from Mandos, but these tears were different. They were not for Nargothrond or Edrahil or Beren or Aegnor or for anyone or anything else. These were selfish tears, for himself and his own pain and fear and his own broken heart—for the fact that it was still broken even now after he’d thought it mended, and the fact that it could still break again, pieces crumbling away even when there shouldn’t have been anything left to break. 

Eventually, he did run out of tears, and Finrod just sat for a long time, leaning against the tree and listening to its slow, sleepy thoughts. 

As the morning wound on and shafts of golden sunlight pierced the canopy, he roused himself, and gathered up his things, finished breaking the camp and scattering the ashes of the fire long gone cold. Then he chose a direction at random and started to walk, just needing to be moving. Finrod kept his head down and his gaze on the ground in front of him. Soon the trees thinned out, smaller and younger, and the sun shone more brightly through the branches. He could hear birdsong, and soon came upon another stream flowing along merrily, tumbling down a series of miniature waterfalls. He followed it until he reached the edge of the forest, where wide plains opened up before him, golden-green and splashed with bright color where wildflowers bloomed. In the west the sun was sinking in a brilliant display of fiery color. When Finrod looked up he saw the first stars appearing with the coming twilight. 

He was tired, and still sore, and by now he regretted sending Celegorm away. The breeze swept down from the north and it carried a slight bite—summer was waning again. Winters in Valinor were mild, for the most part, but suddenly Finrod dreaded the coming cold. Usually he delighted in the frost and the beauties of snow and ice—but now his mind and heart were full of ancient wounds, and when he thought of the cold he thought only of the terrible crossing of the Helcaraxë. 

Again, he thought of returning to Tirion, to the comforts of hearth fires and soft beds and thick walls to keep out the wailing winter winds. Still, everything in him rebelled at the thought. Returning would mean explaining his absence to his parents. It would mean having to speak to Turgon again, and most likely finding some other old friend or kinsman returned to them—but never who he most wished to see. Never Aegnor. Never Galadriel. He just—

He couldn’t do it. Not yet. Instead of east he turned his steps south, hoping to outrun the coming chill. 

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Both months and miles passed under his feet. He explored mountains and followed rivers to their sources. He sang, sometimes, simple songs he’d learned as a child just to keep time with his footsteps. His voice was rough and out of practice, but that didn’t matter. Neither the grass nor the stones cared. 

Something in his meeting with Celegorm, though, seemed to have shaken something loose. It was like he really had lanced the wound festering inside him, and now that the worst of the pain had passed he could think more clearly. 

The thing about forgiveness, he thought as he stood at the top of a waterfall plunging dozens of feet into a clear pool below, was that it felt easy when the object was far away. But it did not, in the end, have much to do with the other person at all. He wanted to forgive those who had wronged him because he did not want to cling to that bitter anger—he knew it for the poison it was, and he did not want to hold it inside him. 

Yet here he was. Clinging. It was a poison, but letting it go felt like—

It felt like saying none of it mattered. It wasn’t true, and in fact Finrod knew it was really the opposite. But that didn’t change the feeling. 

He thought about calling upon Nienna, but didn’t, in the end. He knew what she would say, and he wasn’t sure he wanted the sort of comfort that she would also offer. 

Eventually his travels led him as far west as it was possible to go. On a late spring evening he crested a heather-covered hill to find the sun setting in a brilliant display of fiery colors over the smooth and dark waters of Ekkaia. He sighed. His feet hurt and he was tired. This was the most beautiful sunset he had seen in years, and he wished that he had someone to share it with. 

Almost as soon as the thought entered his head, he caught a whiff of smoke, and turned to see a curl of it rising up from a small campfire less than a mile away. Sitting beside it was a figure with a head of familiar silver hair, also looking out toward the sunset. 

And all of a sudden, everything was both easy and clear. 

Celegorm looked up as he approached, surprise flickering across his face. He looked even more tired than Finrod felt. “Are you following me, this time?” he asked, though he couldn’t quite muster the right tone for it to be a joke.

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d come all the way out here,” Finrod said. He dropped his pack to the ground and sat down, with the fire between them.

Celegorm shrugged and looked away, back toward the waves. “They say my brother spends his days by the sea, singing his pain and regret into the waves.” His voice wavered only slightly. “I thought I’d…I don’t know. Join him, after a fashion. Since he’s—I’m not likely to ever see him again.”

“Nor I my sister,” Finrod said quietly.

“At least you know where she is.”

“That’s true.” Finrod looked from the flames to Celegorm’s face. “What of your other brothers?”

“Maedhros isn’t going to come from Mandos any time soon.”

“But your younger brothers?”

“They’re fine. They’re with our mother.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“No one wants me there, any more than anyone wanted to see me in Tirion. I did go back,” he sighed, “and said what I needed to say, and none of them believed a word of it. Then I left again, and I’m sure they all breathed a great sigh of relief as soon as my back was turned.” Maybe that was true in Tirion, but Finrod did not believe for a moment that Celegorm’s brothers or his mother did not want him at home with them. But before he could say anything Celegorm added, “You’re wanted, though. Fingon cornered me to ask if I’d found you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“My face was mostly healed by then, but up close you could still see the last of the bruising. I told him you hadn’t been any more pleased than anyone else to see me, but I didn’t know where you’d gone after we parted. I don’t know if he believed me.”

“I believe you,” Finrod said softly. Celegorm looked at him, startled. “You said—everything you said before, I do believe you. And—if I hated you then, I don’t now. I forgive you. All of it.”

“You don’t—some things, Findaráto, are unforgivable.”

“Maybe, but you did warn me beforehand—you said you didn’t want to. I knew you were as bound by your oath as I was by mine, and both of us trapped under the Doom.”

“But you were also right when you said we could have tried—”

“All of those things can be true at the same time. I’m so tired, Tyelkormo. I know I have every right to be angry, but I don’t want to be.”

“What do you want?”

“What do you want?” Finrod asked. 

Celegorm shrugged, turning his face away. The firelight flickered over his hair, and his shadow up the side of the sand dune behind him danced. The sun sank below the horizon, plunging the world into soft purple twilight. The stars flared in the sky overhead, countless and more beautiful than the finest diamonds. Finrod watched them, and waited. At last, Celegorm said, “I don’t think it really matters what I want. Mostly I just want my brothers to be all right—the ones who can be all right. And they are, so…”

“They would be better, I think, if you were with them.”

“They wouldn’t,” Celegorm said, voice flat and very tired. “I was the worst of us—you know that.”

“You were all rather terrible, by the end,” Finrod said. 

“I pushed for Doriath. I would have pushed for Sirion, far sooner than it actually happened, if I’d survived.”

“Let’s not play with what-ifs and might-have-beens,” said Finrod.

“But if it hadn’t been for me Curvo wouldn’t have—”

“We are not in Beleriand, anymore,” Finrod said. “That’s what I’ve been trying to remind myself, in all my wanderings. Beleriand drowned long ago, and the Doom of Mandos is no longer a threat hovering ever behind us. Your Oath, too, is no more. Those verses of the Song have been sung, and—”

“And they echo, still, in everything that we do. Aren’t the two of us proof enough of that?”

“Yes. Sometimes the echoes are very loud—loud enough to drown out everything else.” Finrod looked down at his hands, at the dirt under his fingernails, thinking of how once there had been blood there, though it had been too dark to see. “But echoes fade. Even the loudest ones. The Song is going on, still, and now we can choose what our next verses will be.”

“This is a little more like what I expected from you, when I first tracked you down,” Celegorm said, a thread of fondness winding its way through the words. He picked up a few sticks and tossed them into the fire. Finrod watched the sparks float up, like tiny stars themselves, before they went out. “Or—after you punched me, I expected something like this.”

“The echoes were very loud when you found me,” Finrod said. “Really, it was…first Curufin returned, and then not so very long afterward it was Turgon, and neither of those meetings went how I would have liked them to. I didn't want to see Curufin at all—though now I can appreciate that he came to me so quickly, if only to get it over with—and…”

“What did Turgon do?” Celegorm asked. “I know I’d come away from a conversation wanting to punch him, but you two were always friends.”

“We took very different approaches to the dreams that Ulmo sent each of us, and I suppose…I can’t really understand why he did much of what he did, and he does not understand me either. Maybe there can be a return to friendship for us, someday, but it won’t look the same. But you never answered my question. It does matter, you know. What you want.”

“I want all of my brothers back,” Celegorm said after a very long silence in which Finrod started to think he wouldn’t answer at all. “I want my father back—not who he was at the end, but who he was before. I want—”

“You want…?”

“I already told you, it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“It shouldn’t.”

“One thing I don’t want,” Finrod said, “is to be the thing you use to punish yourself. I allowed it before, but I won’t now.”

“How can you just—just like that, you’ve decided to let it all go?”

“No,” said Finrod. “I am going to have to decide to let it go every single day for the rest of my life. It’s not easy or simple—but that is who I want to be. I don’t want to be—to be so broken that anyone who reaches out risks getting cut.”

“If you figure it out,” Celegorm muttered, “tell me how you did it.”

“I’m telling you now. I’m choosing it—choosing to try.” Finrod watched the way Celegorm’s braids gleamed in the firelight, saw the way his eyes were too bright and the way he kept swallowing. He wondered if Celegorm carried any ghost-scars. 

“Finrod—”

“It’s going to be cold tonight.” That was an exaggeration; the wind off of Ekkaia held a slight chill, but that was all. Celegorm met his gaze, and behind the weight of grief and guilt Finrod could see that old and familiar hunger. It ignited the same feeling at the base of his own spine, spreading, tingling, through all his limbs. “Can I stay?”

“Can you—you think I’m going to tell you no?”

Finrod got up and went to kneel in front of Celegorm, who had been sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest. He unfolded himself now, but stopped short of reaching for Finrod. “We can write a new song for ourselves,” Finrod said, meeting his gaze.

“I don’t want to hurt you again,” Celegorm whispered.

“I know. I’m just—just asking you to try.”

Celegorm’s hands fisted in Finrod’s shirt, pulling him in before either of them could so much as blink. There was no blood this time, and only a few stray tears—mostly there was just heat and hunger that bordered on need, that Finrod never wanted to give up. He wanted to be wanted, like this, to have all the most broken parts of him seen and known and to be wanted anyway—to be wanted because of rather than in spite of them—and to offer the same thing in return. It felt a little like coming home. 

Some time later, as they lay tangled up in their blankets and each other, Finrod found himself staring up at the stars again. “What are you thinking?” Celegorm whispered. He lay on his side, head pillowed on his arm, watching Finrod’s face. 

“Hm?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you smiling like that.”

“Am I smiling?” Finrod turned from the stars to Celegorm. “I was just thinking about how small we are.”

“And that made you smile?” Celegorm huffed a quiet laugh and pressed a kiss to the corner of Finrod’s mouth, and then left a trail of them over his jaw. “Every time I think I finally understand you, you go and say something incomprehensible.”

“It’s just…” Finrod tried to think, but it was hard. “Stop, stop, let me explain—it’s—small doesn’t mean unimportant. We’re like the stars—there are so many of them, and they’re all very small but all together they make the night sky. If you catch enough raindrops, you fill the Sea. Every song is made up of notes that are pretty but meaningless on their own—it’s when you put them all together that something really beautiful is made, that means something.”

“So we’re…you and I, just notes in a song?”

“In the Song.” Finrod smoothed Celegorm’s hair back from his face. “The verses of it that played out in Beleriand…they echo still, like you said, and sometimes they echo so loudly that it’s all I can hear. Sometimes I see only the ground at my feet because I can’t bring myself to look up and see the stars—but I always manage it eventually, and I can see the world again for what it is and what it means. What happened—it hurt, and the pain of it lingers, but it’s not all there is.” He paused, and kissed Celegorm, very softly. “I think I needed to say it aloud, just now,” he whispered, “to really remind myself of it.”

“It’s a very pretty thought,” Celegorm said. He slid his own fingers into Finrod’s hair, and rested their foreheads together. “I don’t know if I can believe it.”

“We were caught, before, by our Doom,” Finrod whispered. “But that’s over.”

“I know.” Celegorm sighed. “You know this is a bad idea. It was a bad idea in Nargothrond, and there’s no reason to think it will go any differently now.”

“There’s every reason,” Finrod said. “Because we are not caught up by doom or by any oaths—what happens now happens by our own choices and nothing else.”

“I know. We can write our own song, you said. I’m willing to try, just—”

“That’s what matters,” Finrod whispered. “That’s all I want.”

They lingered for some weeks by Ekkaia, basking in the quiet and bathing in its cool waters. They traced new constellations in the sky and made up stories to go with them. They learned each other again—slowly, carefully. They were trying on gentleness, finding that they liked it—even if they both still liked each other’s rougher edges too. 

Eventually, Finrod turned his thoughts toward Tirion, and realized that he had started to miss it. It was time to go home. Celegorm was more than willing to travel with him; both of them were loath to part, now that they’d finally found something worth keeping, though they would have to when they reached the city, for Celegorm was also firm in his determination not to return there. 

The journey back east was long and meandering. There was no reason to hurry and plenty of reasons to take their time, exploring places neither of them had seen before, and showing one another old haunts from their youth, to see how everything had changed and yet stayed just the same. They argued, sometimes, but they laughed more. 

Finally, Tirion appeared in the distance, its white towers shining in the golden slant of the late afternoon sun. “It’s still so strange,” Celegorm murmured, standing beside Finrod on a hilltop. “Seeing Tirion under the sun.”

“You’ll get used to it,” said Finrod. He turned away from Tirion and toward Celegorm. “Where will you go now?” Celegorm shrugged. “You should go to your mother.”

“I can’t—”

“Did you ask any of your brothers, before you left, whether they wanted you to stay or not?”

“No, but—”

“Don’t you think maybe you should?”

Celegorm scowled at him, but it didn’t last, and instead melted into a look of misery and loneliness that Finrod had never seen on his face before. “I don’t…I don’t know.”

“Try?” Finrod said softly. 

Celegorm breathed a sigh, shoulders slumping. “Fine. I’ll try. And when they just send me away again—”

“You don’t know that. But even so, it will still have been worth it.” Finrod kissed him one more time. “Write to me, whatever happens.”

“I will.” Celegorm kissed him fiercely, tangling his fingers in Finrod’s hair, holding him close and tight as though he wanted to memorize how it all felt.

Finrod looked back only once before Celegorm disappeared from sight. Celegorm raised his hand and turned away south toward the road that would lead to Nerdanel’s house. The parting was not as hard as Finrod had feared. He felt buoyed instead by the promise of happier meetings to come, better able to face what lay before him. 

In Tirion, he found his house much as he had left it. His household was glad to have him back, and he was glad to soak in a hot bath and eat a hot meal and sleep in his own bed—though he kept waking in the night reaching for someone who was not there. When he visited his parents they looked at him with keen eyes and then smiled—with a look of relief that he did not think he had seen before. When he asked his father why, Finarfin only shrugged. “You were carrying something very heavy, and you seem to have left it somewhere on your travels,” he said. “You do not have to tell me what it was—I am only glad to see you smiling so easily again.”

“Did I not, before?”

“Not as often as I would have liked.”

Finrod thought about trying to explain—he didn’t think he could, in full, but perhaps he didn’t need to, perhaps only a part of it would suffice. “Sometimes…the memory of my death—it comes back very strongly. I still feel the pain of it at times, and before I left Tirion it was harder than usual to ignore.”

“Was it because of Curufinwë?”

“I did not expect to see him, and it did not help, but I think it was building anyway. I’m sorry that I stayed away so long. I know you were worried.”

“It’s all right.” Finarfin reached across the table to squeeze Finrod’s hand. “I never doubted that you would come back.”

Fingon was equally pleased to see Finrod back and happier than when he had left; he did not ask about his encounter with Celegorm, for which Finrod was grateful, and instead spent several afternoons catching him up on all the newest and funniest gossip, reminding him of all the good things happening around them instead of dwelling upon the painful ones. Turgon was less easy. He had gone to Eressëa after Finrod had left Tirion, but after the initial joy of their reunion tensions between him and Idril and Tuor had flared, and when he had come back to Tirion, they had not followed. Finrod could see also that Turgon chafed at being relegated, again, to the status of a lesser prince—lesser even than he had been before, with Finarfin now the High King and his own father still in Mandos and so not even in the line of succession. 

That frustration bubbled over into picking fights. Fingon had warned Finrod about it, but Turgon kept himself in check for an impressive three months before he and Finrod found themselves alone together for a few minutes during an engagement party for one of Eärwen’s nieces, when he finally brought up the past again. Even then, it did not feel as fraught as before. “I thought you didn’t regret inviting the Fëanorians into your city,” Turgon remarked. He leaned against the railing of a wide veranda that looked out over the gardens, where the party was spread over the lawn. 

Finrod had seated himself on the railing. He took a sip of his wine before he answered, having heard in Turgon’s voice the itch for an argument and feeling able now not to rise to it. “I still don’t know what else you would have expected me to do. They had nowhere else to go. But what makes you think of them now?”

“I heard you broke Celegorm’s nose when you met—wherever it was.” Turgon gestured vaguely westward. 

“Then you heard wrong.” Finrod took another sip of wine. “I bloodied it and I blackened his eye, but I did not break anything.” Turgon snorted. “I can be angry with him for what he did and still not regret my own choices. Do I wish things had gone differently? Yes, of course. But I did the best I could with what I had—that’s all any of us can say.”

“Most of us, maybe,” Turgon muttered. 

“You know my father would not object if you left Tirion to build another city of your own,” said Finrod after a moment. He did not want to go over the past again, not on an afternoon that was meant to be joyous. “Just—perhaps not a hidden one, this time? You could go nearly anywhere you wanted, and there are many who would gladly follow you.”

“What stops you from doing the same?”

Finrod shrugged. Even if he was inclined to confide in Turgon, it was neither the time nor the place for the full truth. “I just don’t want to. I am my father’s heir in a place where that is again mostly meaningless, and I have no desire to be anything more. Maybe someday—but maybe not. It isn’t as though I’ll run out of time to change my mind.” He tilted his wine glass, watching the sunlight catch on the golden liquid inside. It was very sweet and light, and he could almost taste the songs sung by those who had tended the grape vines. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For what I said before. It was cruel, and—”

“And true.”

“I did not mean to diminish your grief for your father.”

“I know. And I’m—sorry.” Turgon spoke the word with a tight jaw, for it was not one he was used to uttering. “Of course you did what you thought was best—you were the best of us, and—”

“Don’t do that. It’s all well and good to speak thus of the dead, but I am not dead, and I would rather not be placed upon a pedestal, if it’s all the same to you.”

“I am trying to compliment you,” Turgon said. 

“Compliment me then, by all means,” said Finrod as Fingon and Angrod came up the steps to join them, “but at least pick one of my many and real good qualities for it, rather than exaggerations straight out of an old song.” Turgon rolled his eyes, and didn’t argue further. 

They were never going to get back the friendship they had shared before, Finrod thought as Fingon cajoled them both into joining the dancing, but maybe they could make something new, if they took it slowly. Maybe if Turgon really did go and build another city of his own, he would feel more settled, and it would make things easier. 

A few days after the party, Finrod happened upon Curufin on the street. He was not going anywhere in particular; Curufin seemed to be coming from his wife’s home, looking tired but less dejected than before. They both stopped short before they bumped into each other. Curufin regarded Finrod warily, and Finrod had to swallow the instinctive urge to say something cutting. 

It was still true that forgiveness was much harder when the object of it was standing in front of him. And it was still true that forgiveness was a choice—one that Finrod was trying—and for the most part succeeding—to make every day. He held out his hand and watched Curufin’s eyes go comically wide. “I know your apology wasn’t empty,” he said. “I wasn’t able to then, but—I do forgive you, now.”

“I never expected forgiveness,” said Curufin without reaching back. “I just—as I said then, you deserved to have me look you in the eye when I said it.”

“And I can thank you for it now,” said Finrod. He did not lower his hand. “I hope someday we can be—well, something like friends, again? None of it would have hurt as much as it did if I had not really cared for you.”

Finally, Curufin reached back. His grip was strong and firm. “I’d like that,” he said. Then, as they let go and Finrod moved to continue on his way he said, “What did you say to Tyelko to get him to come home?”

Finrod turned around, tucking his hands into his pockets as he shrugged. “I just asked him,” he said.

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” Finrod had received a very short letter a few weeks after he’d returned to Tirion, into which Celegorm had tucked a pressed sprig of forget-me-nots, and had scrawled, Of course you were right. When you get sick of Tirion come find me at my mother’s. “I’m glad he listened.”

“Me too,” said Curufin, still appearing bewildered. “Thank you? I don’t—you are incomprehensible, Findaráto.”

“Thank you!”

“I don’t think that was a compliment—”

“But I choose to take it as one!” Finrod laughed at the look on Curufin’s face, and turned away. 

It did not take long, though, for him to grow sick of the city and to slip out of Tirion again—this time with a particular destination to start with. Even if his wanderings had started in misery, they had had moments of delight and had ended in something very close to joy—and he wanted more of that. As Nerdanel’s home came into view, past wide meadow lands full of wildflowers, Finrod found Celegorm also out walking. When they met it was so easy to do so with an embrace—so different from the last time. Celegorm smiled against Finrod’s lips; he carried himself lighter now, too, and the shadows of loneliness that had clung to him had nearly all disappeared. “Where are you going this time?” he asked. 

“I don’t know,” Finrod said. The future lay wide open before them, and he had no idea what it held—it was thrilling. “Want to join me?”

“Always.”

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