Last Year's Bitter Loving by StarSpray  

The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year’s leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year’s bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide. 
- “Time Does Not Bring Relief” by Edna St Vincent Millay

- - 

For many years, especially since the end of the Third Age of the Sun, Ingwë had spoken on and off of reuniting all of the Elves that now lived in Valinor. They had been sundered in myriad ways both large and small on both sides of the Sea, and even among the Teleri of Alqualondë and the Sindar of Taur-en-Gellam there was distance and sometimes tension in spite of the great love between Elu Thingol and his brother Olwë. Not to mention the lack of almost any relationship at all between the Eldar in the east and the Avari who had settled in the west. 

And now it was really happening—preparations had been underway for the better part of two years, and now this summer Ingwë’s great gathering was finally to take place. He had written to Finarfin personally to ask him to come—more an uncle inviting his nephew than the High King requesting a Prince’s presence, although there was no escaping the fact that it was that too. There was no escaping the fact that Finarfin had, for a very long time, been the King of the Noldor in Tirion, or the fact that his brother now wore the crown—and the fact that it was known to everyone that their relationship was somewhat strained. To refuse to go would be to undermine all that Ingwë was trying to do, and if Finarfin wasn’t sure anymore how he felt about his brother—either of his brothers, really—he both loved and respected his uncle, and so he had written back to say of course he and Eärwen would gladly attend, with all of their children. Even Aegnor, newly returned from Mandos and still overwhelmed by it, was looking forward to the festivities. 

The very idea, though, filled Finarfin with nothing more than dread. Nearly a hundred years had passed since he had handed the crown over to Fingolfin and he still woke up every morning scarcely less exhausted than when he had gone to bed, anticipating all the problems he would need to solve that day or the disputes he would need to arbitrate before he remembered that he did not have to do any of it anymore. 

Six thousand years and more had passed since the War of Wrath had been won and still more days than not the old injury in his knee grew stiff, and often painful. 

Once in a while it did not hurt at all, and on some of those days he walked down the coast, seeking the wilder waves and the colder winds. He had never expected to come upon Fëanor there—and had been even more surprised to find him so quiet and thoughtful, wary and self deprecating and just—sad. Fëanor was many things in Finarfin’s memory, but sad was not one of them. They’d spoken of grief and their father and Finarfin’s kingship—and there had been yet another surprise, to be complimented—and Finarfin had come away feeling at least as though the air had been cleared a little. They knew where the other stood, and that should let them avoid any outright conflict that summer. Indeed, Fëanor seemed determined to avoid conflict with everyone. Almost Finarfin wondered if it was really Fëanor who had been released from the Halls.

Fingolfin was another matter. Finarfin had asked Fëanor to send Fingolfin to him, since if he was going to speak to one brother he might as well try to speak to the other. It was just…

Fëanor had never known Finarfin, not really. They had hardly ever spoken, before. Finarfin was there to be ignored and disregarded, and if as a child that had hurt, he had grown up and grown used to and even thankful for it. What peace they could find now would have a brand new foundation with very little from the past to disturb it. But Fingolfin had been his beloved older brother, his protector and dearest friend, in whom he had confided everything and who had confided everything in him in return—at least for a while. Somehow that trust had been lost during the unrest leading up to Fëanor’s exile, for just because Fëanor had been the most outspoken in his volatility did not mean that Fingolfin had been any less restless, any less reactive. It had felt as though cracks were running through their whole family in those days, not only between Fëanor and his house and the rest of them. 

And then the cracks had splintered, the Light went out, and the world broke apart. 

Finarfin had taken himself that afternoon to a far corner of the gardens, where it was very quiet but for the breeze through the tree branches overhead. He had a bench there piled with cushions underneath a dogwood tree where he often retreated when his knee bothered him too much to do anything except try not to move it wrong. Today was a bad day—he had more of those than he would ever admit to anyone except his wife—and of course it was also the day that Fingolfin was to come. 

He’d brought a book but couldn’t focus on the words. When he heard the the quiet crunch of gravel he looked up expecting to see Fingolfin—but instead it was Galadriel. It was easy to put on a smile for her. “There you are, Atya,” she said, smiling back as she came to sit beside him. “What ails you today?”

“Nothing,” he said, reaching for her hand. It was useless to lie to his daughter, and they both knew it, but usually she would accept such an answer as nothing for you to worry about, and they would move on. 

Not this time, though. “Is there anything I can do for your knee? Ammë says it pains you today.”

“I only need to rest it. I walked too far the other week, after being too idle all winter. It’s as healed as it is going to be,” he added when she frowned. They had had this conversation before. “I’m fine.”

“The healers of Valinor are skilled, but what if Elrond—”

“I was tended by Estë herself, Galadriel.” 

“Did Estë tell you that wounds of the spirit can stifle the healing of the body?”

The last thing he wanted was a Vala prodding at any wounds in his spirit. “She did. My spirit is fine.” Finarfin raised her hand to kiss her fingers, where he knew she had worn Nenya for so long. “Where are your brothers?”

She let it go, as he’d hoped. “They’ve gone to walk down to the beach, I think. Angaráto and Ataresto were describing Ithilheledh to Aikanáro.”

“Does he intend to return there with them after this summer?” 

“No. I think he will be content to remain here with you and Ammë, at least for the time being.”

“That would please us both. I have greatly enjoyed having you all here with us this last year.” He had even enjoyed having Maedhros come to stay for a few months over the previous spring and summer. Whatever his feelings toward Fëanor, Finarfin had always been fond of his nephews, and was grateful that they had at last started to rekindle their ancient friendships with his own children and with Fingolfin’s. Maedhros was still wrestling with some particular parts of his past, but his time there with them—away from his brothers and particularly away from his father—had seemed to help. He had left abruptly, but more at peace with himself than he had been when he had arrived.

Fëanor had said that Maedhros continued to be well. Finarfin hadn’t asked for details; he hoped it was true. 

Another set of footsteps on the path heralded, at last, Fingolfin’s arrival. Galadriel rose with a smile for him. “Uncle! I did not know we were expecting you today.”

“Hello, Galadriel.” Fingolfin smiled warmly at her as she went to greet him, and kissed her cheek, falling into the Sindarin of Middle-earth, as so many Exiles still did from time to time. “It’s good to see you. Where is Aegnor?”

“At the beach with Angrod and Orodreth, but I’ll go tell them you’re here. They’ll all want to say hello.” Galadriel glanced between the two of them, gaze sharp and assessing, before she smiled again and swept away down the garden path. Finarfin set his book aside and sat up a little straighter, adjusting the cushions at his back. Fingolfin remained where he was, arms crossed as he cast his gaze over that little corner of the garden, at the lichen-spotted tree trunks and the pale lilacs in bloom. It was early in the year yet for most flowers, though the dogwood was putting out blossoms, but Galadriel had brought elanor seeds across the sea with her, and the little yellow starburst blooms dotted the grass year round. Finarfin liked them because they had come from Lothlórien, her realm that he had never seen—where the granddaughter he had never gotten to meet had spent much of her life and where she had gone to her final rest. 

Arwen was Fingolfin’s granddaughter too, he remembered, watching his brother look down at the elanor blossoms. “Come sit,” he said finally, “so I don’t have to look up at you the whole time.”

“Does your knee—”

“It’s fine. Just sit, Nolvo.” He should have felt more annoyed by the constant questions about his wounds than he did—but annoyance took nearly as much effort as anger, and he was just so tired. Even the joy of Aegnor’s return had felt muted, as though he were trapped behind a pane of glass, separated from all the things everyone around him could feel with such ease. He hadn’t always been like this—for a long time he had burned with forcibly suppressed fury—but it had been so long that Finarfin wasn’t sure he really remembered what it felt like to not be partly numb to everything. That fury, finally unpleased during the War of Wrath, had burned through itself and through a part of him, and he thought sometimes there would be no recovering anything from the ashes.

Fingolfin sat in the chair beside Finarfin’s bench that Galadriel had vacated. For a moment they just looked at each other. Then Fingolfin said, “You invited me, Ingo.” 

“No one calls me that anymore.” Ingoldo had been left behind in favor of Arafinwë, so no one forgot that he, too, was Finwë’s son—that he had a right to the crown, however overshadowed he had been in his youth by his bolder and brighter brothers. 

“Nor does anyone call me Nolvo.”

No one ever really had called him Nolvo—he hadn’t ever been fond of nicknames. Finarfin had once been the exception, having started to call him Nolvo as a small child when Nolofinwë had been just a little too long for his clumsy baby’s tongue. He looked away, feeling the faint sting of its rejection, and tried to remember what it was he’d decided that he wanted to say. 

There was both nothing to say and entirely too much. “Did Fëanáro tell you what we spoke of?” he asked finally. Even the bitterness he couldn’t quite quell at the thought of Fëanor and Fingolfin being the best of friends now, as he and Fingolfin had once been, wasn’t as strong as it should have been. It was easy to keep out of his voice—to keep his voice entirely even, devoid of any emotion at all. It was a relief, in fact, to not have to try to put on a smile. 

“Not really,” Fingolfin said after a moment. “He…did not seem quite sure what to make of it. Of you. He also said you seemed tired and unhappy.”

“Well. I am tired and unhappy.”

“Even still?” Fingolfin asked quietly. 

The words spilled out before he could rein them in. “Do you have any idea what it was like—to come back to Tirion alone, in the dark? Only a fraction of us were left, and there was no way to grow food without light, and almost all the best makers were gone. We had lost the friendship of Alqualondë and Valmar was wary too after everything. The Valar were not idle, but we didn’t know that, then, for they moved unseen and we thought ourselves forsaken because of what you had done—”

“Arafinwë—”

“I didn’t know what I was doing! It should never have been me, Nolofinwë! It should have been Fëanáro, and if he was going to take himself away into exile it should have been you.”

Fingolfin said nothing for what felt like a very long time. Finarfin was no stranger to silences—he used them himself often enough, having learned early that it was better to take the time to put his thoughts in order before he spoke, and that patience would serve him far better in the end than haste. He waited, and watched a small bird alight on one of the dogwood branches above his head. 

“If you want me to apologize for leaving,” Fingolfin said finally, “I must disappoint you—I cannot apologize for what I do not regret.”

Of course not. Finarfin didn’t look away from the bird in the branches. “And you took all my children with you,” he whispered.

“They chose it,” Fingolfin said. “I neither asked nor commanded—”

“They chose to follow you, and they died for it.”

“You followed, too!” Fingolfin snapped. “You were willing until—”

“Of course I was willing to go. He was my father too—”

“Of course, but—”

“But it was folly. All of it.”

“I don’t agree. Much of it was folly, perhaps, but not all.”

Finarfin was always tired, but suddenly he was exhausted, just by this conversation. It would just go in circles if they let it, neither of them willing to concede to the other. He didn’t have the words for what he really wanted to say—and even if he did he wouldn’t say them. They would be a child’s words, just hurt that he had been left alone while his older brothers and sisters had gone off without him, taking everything with them that he had ever held dear. That his father had died and his mother had refused to return to Tirion afterward, so it had felt as though he’d lost both parents at once. It wasn’t fair to blame his brother for his children’s choices—they had been made with open eyes, if not with cool heads or steady hearts. But he found himself doing it anyway. 

What did it matter, really? He wasn’t a king anymore—he didn’t have to be fair if he didn’t want to. And he didn’t have to be fully honest if he didn’t want to, either.

Everyone he had known had changed in Middle-earth. He had changed too, in his turn. It hadn’t been easy to find common ground again with his children—that was part of the reason Angrod and Orodreth had removed to their own small town in the Pelóri, and why Finrod split most of his time between Avallónë and Tirion, rather than Alqualondë. There was no strife, but the distance made coming back together easier every time. For months after his arrival from Mandos Aegnor had burst into tears whenever Finarfin had entered the room, but he had been either unwilling or unable to explain why. It had been also easier, somehow, with Galadriel—but she was happy to pass with her husband between her daughter’s valley of Imloth Ningloron and Thingol’s realm of Taur-en-Gellam, and it had been some years since Finarfin had seen her before Aegnor had returned from Mandos unlooked for, bringing all of his children under his roof again for the first time since the Darkening. 

It seemed impossible to imagine ever finding common ground with Fingolfin again. The thought hurt, but it was such an old and familiar pain that he hardly felt it anymore. “I will go to Ingwë’s feast this summer,” he said, still watching the bird. It was a bunting, tiny and colorful. “And I will sit beside you and I will put on a smile and pretend that all is well between us three, you and I and Fëanáro, but do not ask more of me.”

“I do not wish to ask anything of you,” Fingolfin said. Finarfin hated that those were almost the same words Fëanor had used—hated how alike his brothers were. “But I would have things be well between us in truth, not only in seeming. What would you have me do? What do you want me to say? You are my brother, and I love you. That has never changed, and it will never change.”

But you love Fëanáro more, and always have, Finarfin thought but did not say. He couldn’t, even though this had been his idea—this attempt to clear the air before they had to see one another every day in front of all the Eldalië in Valinor. Maybe he shouldn’t have bothered. It was only going to make both of them feel worse, and nothing would be easier later. “I’m tired, Nolvo,” he said, the old nickname slipping out before he could stop it. “I gave all that I had and I have nothing left. What I want is to be left alone—it’s just that this year that isn’t possible. So I’ll give a little more, and then I hope you will all just leave me again in peace.”

“Could you not go to Lórien? It helped our nephews—”

“I don’t want to go to Lórien.”

“But why?”

Because there would be talk. Because he did not want to make the journey. Because the idea of Maiar and Valar hovering over him at all hours, even if—especially if—he couldn’t see them, made him want to claw his own skin off. “I want to be left alone,” he repeated. 

He heard Fingolfin sigh. Then there was a rustle of fabric, and a sudden hand on his arm. When Finarfin turned his head he found Fingolfin kneeling beside him. “I know I failed,” he said softly. “I failed you, and our sisters, and all of our children—Fëanáro’s, too. I’m sorry, Ingoldo. I tried, and I wasn’t enough. But you were—you were stronger and wiser than all the rest of us put together. If we can spend this summer peacefully in one another’s company, I will try to be content. I hope that we find ourselves enjoying it, instead—that this will be a great feast of reuniting in truth.”

Fingolfin knew something about such feasts, though Finarfin had his doubts as to whether his Mereth Aderthad long ago had really accomplished all that he had hoped. “Maybe,” he said quietly. 

“I do love you, Arafinwë, and I miss you.” Fingolfin rose, and then bent to press a kiss to the top of Finarfin’s head. “I’ll see you in a few weeks, baby brother.” 

Finarfin watched him go, and then slumped back against his pillows. Above his head the bunting flew away. His bad knee ached. 

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Ingwë’s grand feast was very grand. An entire city of tents had been erected on the western plains beside a wide reed-lined lake. A stage had been erected, shining in the sunlight by day and gleaming with lanterns by night. Finarfin saw Fëanor’s hand in it. His brother remained brilliant and committed to making beautiful everything he was involved with, and it was easy to admire.

There was music at all hours, and feasts and more private gatherings, and people to meet and reunite with. Finarfin found himself still very glad to have been relegated again to the role of a lesser Prince, King Nolofinwë’s brother but not his heir. He put on a smile when required, did not dance, and found a little real happiness in watching the happiness of his children. 

Three days after they all arrived, Elrond appeared to sit beside him where he had been watching some dancers out of Valmar compare their traditions with their Avarin counterparts. Finarfin glanced at Elrond, and then looked again. “I know that look,” he said, attempting to sound amused but not quite sure he managed it. “Has my daughter put you up to something?”

Elrond smiled at him. “No one has put me up to anything in centuries, Uncle,” he said. “On most notable occasions it has been the other way around. But really, I just wanted to give you this.” He held out a hand, and a moment later Finarfin found himself holding a jar. When he opened it he found some kind of ointment, smelling of mint and something else fresh and clean. “Rub a little onto your knee in the evenings. I have given Aunt Eärwen some dried athelas leaves as well. They are not as potent as fresh, but should still help you.”

“And who says I need such help, nephew-mine?” Finarfin asked.

“You do, Uncle,” Elrond said quietly, smile fading away. “You hide it well, but then so have many others I have known. So have I.” 

“What?” Finarfin looked up at him, startled, and found nothing but understanding in Elrond’s soft grey eyes. “Elrond—”

“I got better.” Elrond offered another small smile as he rose. “You should come visit us sometime, Uncle. Perhaps next year, or the year after—after everything has settled down again. I do not think you have come to Imloth Ningloron since I came west. There is much I would like to speak with you of, away from the noise and the crowds, and Celebrían would like to show you her gardens.”

“Perhaps,” said Finarfin, and watched Elrond wander off. He was soon joined by Maglor and Elladan and Elrohir, and Finarfin felt something twist in his chest at the sound of the twins’ laughter. In appearance they and Elrond took so strongly after Elwing—after Lúthien—but they sounded just like Finwë, and they would never know it. 

Finarfin saw Eärendil nearby too, with Elwing on his arm, both of them speaking with Ingwion and his sisters. Beyond them he glimpsed Aegnor sitting with Maedhros, playing with his pet hedgehog Aechen. 

The sun was bright and warm, and all around him was laughter and merriment. He felt as though he were somehow set apart from it all, experiencing it as though through some sort of veil that he did not know how to pierce. 

“There you are, Ingoldo.” Eärwen came to sit beside him. “Are you glad yet that we came?” she asked. 

“Of course I’m glad we came,” he said, taking her hand and leaning over to kiss her cheek. When it was all over and behind them, he might even be able to say that and mean it. Even in that moment he was glad to see his son laughing instead of weeping. “I suspect Aikanáro will come home someday soon with a hedgehog of his own.”

“Sometime I really must ask someone where they came from,” Eärwen laughed. “Macalaurë and Maitimo are not the nephews I would expect to collect such small creatures. In the past that was always Tyelkormo.”

“Have you seen the mockingbird riding about on his shoulder?”

“I saw Macalaurë’s cat try to eat it this morning.”

Finarfin rather liked Maglor’s little cat, who was prone to climbing things she shouldn’t, but who had also liked to curl up on his lap while Maglor had visited them two summers before, demanding to be petted and then purring sweetly when he had obliged.

Eärwen leaned over to rest her head on Finarfin’s shoulder. “Have you spoken to your brothers?” she asked softly.

“You’ve seen me speak to my brothers.”

“I mean—when there haven’t been others watching.”

He sighed. “No. We spoke before we came, and—”

“I can tell you miss Nolofinwë. It has been decades, now. Surely it is time to try to make things right? Anairë tells me that he misses you desperately.”

“I rather doubt that,” he said before he could stop his traitorous tongue. 

“Would not Anairë know better than anyone?” Eärwen sat up. “I know you only agreed to come this summer for appearances’ sake, but try to take up the spirit of this gathering, won’t you?”

“I’ll speak to them both whenever that private family party of Findaráto’s comes,” Finarfin said. There would be no audience there but their own family, all of whom were familiar with the tension. He did not expect to enjoy it very much, but it was still possible that he would be surprised.

Eärwen sighed. “Well—all right. What’s that jar?”

“Elrond gave it to me. Did you talk to him about my bad knee?”

“No, but he’s very perceptive—he and Celebrían.”

That evening Finarfin said nothing when Eärwen cast a few athelas leaves into a bowl of steaming water. The tent filled with the fresh smell of wind off the sea, and he felt like he could breathe a little easier, even though he hadn’t thought that it was difficult before. The ointment chased away the stiffness in his knee, too—not only that night, but for several days afterward. He kept trying to find a time to thank Elrond, but suspected that Elrond knew it and was making it hard on purpose. 

Then, finally, the day of Finrod and Fingon’s long-planned family party came—a day where all the House of Finwë left the grander festivities to retreat to the little forest on the other side of the lake, where there was a flower-strewn clearing just big enough for all of them. A little pavilion was set up, primarily so Curufin’s baby triplets could nap in the shade, and blankets were strewn across the grass. Maglor had brought his harp, but Finrod soon absconded with it. 

Everyone was in a good mood, ready to talk and laugh and reminisce a little about other such gatherings on both sides of the Sea, or about old adventures. Finarfin did more listening than speaking, as was his wont, and eventually found himself sharing a blanket with Fëanor, who had been put in charge of his youngest grandchildren. His granddaughters Calissë and Náriel were full of energy, dancing with Elladan and Elrohir to the music Finrod and Turgon were making. The triplets, two baby girls and a baby boy, were only six or seven months old, and just starting to learn how to roll over. 

Fingolfin joined them as Fëanor picked up his baby grandson to blow raspberries into his belly until he squealed with laughter. Finarfin ended up with little silver-haired Nityanandë in his arms, steadying her as she braced her little hands on his shoulder to look around at all the other things happening in the clearing, and found himself thinking if his own granddaughters. Celebrían and Finduilas had been born in Middle-earth, and he had never gotten to see them as children, let alone hold them as infants. He knew and loved them both now as adults, but he had missed getting to be a grandfather to small children, and now found himself with yet another reason to be faintly envious of Fëanor, who was so clearly delighted with the triplets and with Calissë and Náriel, who in turn so obviously adored him. 

It was almost nice, though—a glimpse of what might have been, a glimpse of what it was like to have two brothers instead of only one, or none at all. Finarfin was careful not to look at Fingolfin, though, afraid of seeing the hope in his eyes when all three of them had to know that this peace would not last past that afternoon. 

Then, abruptly, the world turned upside down. 

Two years before, Maglor had come to Alqualondë to speak to Finarfin of Finwë. Míriel and Indis had asked him to write a song for him—and an attempt at a joke on Finarfin’s part had ended up revealing that it was not only a song to honor Finwë, but to take before the Valar in one last attempt to convince them to overturn the statute that kept him in Mandos. Maglor had not been confident that it would work—and neither had Finarfin, though his doubts had not come from the same place. Maglor had doubted his own skill. Finarfin had doubted the mercy of the Valar.

They had both, it seemed, been wrong. Maglor had taken his song to the Máhanaxar the summer before, and now here was Finwë, pushing through the honeysuckle to catch Fëanor in his arms a second before Fingolfin hauled Finarfin to his feet to chase after them. Finarfin stumbled, his knee not painful but stiff enough that it took a few steps to loosen—and then he wasn’t thinking about his knee at all, or about anything except his father. He was there, really there, alive and laughing through his tears. 

“Arafinwë!” Finwë’s arm wrapped around his shoulders, pulling him in close. “My Ingoldo, oh how I’ve missed you.”

The next few hours passed in a blur. Theirs was a very large family, and Finwë was careful to take several minutes with everyone—especially those he had never met in life. Celebrían recruited her sons and a few of her cousins to rearrange everything so they could all sit and speak to Finwë and one another more easily. As soon as he could Finarfin caught Finrod. “Did you know, Findaráto? Is that why you planned this?”

Finrod shook his head. “No! We started the planning long before Macalaurë’s song was ever finished—and I didn’t know until he went to the Máhanaxar that he intended to take it to the Valar.”

“You were given no hint?”

“No, nothing! I was sure that Grandmother and Míriel would make it—but that was at least as much hope as it was foresight.” Finrod grinned suddenly. “Though when they both disappeared so soon after Maglor returned to Tirion we all really ought to have figured out why, except it seemed impossible that the Valar would act so quickly, or without telling anyone.”

It was the quickest the Valar had ever acted, Finarfin thought as Finrod slipped away to speak to Fingon. Or almost the quickest—they had answered Eärendil immediately, and all the preparations for the War of Wrath had been undertaken extremely fast. It had been as though they had just been waiting for him. Maybe they had only been waiting for Maglor too—for something like his music that would move things in a way the mere words of others couldn’t. 

Even his own words. Finarfin had gone more than once to the Máhanaxar while he had still been king, though it had been very hard to slip away unnoticed on such a private errand—had fallen to his knees and begged for Finwë’s release, for the overturning of a statute that surely everyone could agree was deeply unfair, desperate not to rid himself of a crown he’d never wanted but just to have his father back. And now he did, and it was impossible to resent Maglor for succeeding where so many other had failed, and not only because Maglor himself seemed overwhelmed by it. Finarfin remembered too the bone-deep grief and lingering horror he’d seen in his eyes when Maglor had spoken, briefly, of having seen Finwë’s body after Morgoth had gone. Finarfin had gone once to Formenos, soon after the first sunrise, and he had seen the broken doors, the cracks in the floor—the bloodstains. That had been bad enough. It was no wonder both Maglor and Maedhros had fled the clearing after Finwë’s arrival, needing to take a few minutes to master themselves before facing him. 

Then the world tilted again, and Finarfin watched Finwë be put into the position of one granted a long-held wish whose fulfillment had seemed utterly impossible. He had had brothers, once—and now two of them had returned, brought there by Gandalf with that knowing glint in his eyes. Their names were Urwë and Lindo, and they looked as alike to one another and to Finwë as Fingolfin and Fëanor were to one another, though Finarfin was startled to look into Lindo’s face and find his own blue eyes looking back. 

It was startling, too, to realize that Urwë and Lindo had both been out of Mandos for a very long time. How long, exactly, was impossible to guess, and Finarfin both desperately wanted to ask and at the same time did not ever want to know. Some of the things they said suggested they had been back much longer than anyone else, even Finrod; all that was certain was that they had not come back before the Darkening, for they did not have Treelight in their eyes, and surely if they had returned while Finwë still ruled in Tirion they would have come straight there. In the end he shoved those thoughts and questions down and resolved never to think about them again. 

The rest of the day flew by, and eventually the party broke up, agreeing to keep Finwë’s presence quiet until Maglor could perform his song again the next evening, accompanied this time by Finrod and Fingon. That had been planned already, and Finarfin had approved of it—that it be a way for all branches of their House to honor Finwë, rather than only one—and those in the family with a performer’s instinct had all very quickly agreed that it would be the best time to reveal to all the gathered Elves that Finwë Noldóran had returned. 

Finarfin lingered in the woodland clearing with his siblings and their parents—and their uncles. At first Eärwen also stayed, but she soon kissed him and departed, arm in arm with Anairë and Nerdanel, claiming that that night should be for Finarfin and his siblings and their parents, with no interference even from their wives. He wished that she would stay, but said nothing as he watched her disappear past the ribbon-adorned trees that marked the path. 

The glass pane that he sometimes imagined separated him from the rest of the world had cracked, earlier, but as the stars shone in the cloudless sky overhead, and he watched his father embrace Findis, and watched Fëanor sit with his mother, both of them speaking very seriously, Finarfin felt like it had fixed itself, and he could no longer quite feel the enormity of the day’s events. In a way it was a relief. Mostly it just made him feel numb when he knew he should be happy—brilliantly, incandescently happy—because by any measure what had happened that afternoon was a miracle. The world had fractured when Finwë had been murdered, and now he was back and so it could finally right itself. 

His knee ached, dully, in spite of having rubbed Elrond’s ointment into it the night before. He still felt so tired. 

Now that the crowd of grandchildren had gone, Finwë seemed to be trying to take time to speak to all of them alone. Finarfin both ached for it and dreaded it. He wanted desperately to hear his father tell him that he had done everything right, but at the same time he could not expect it. He had done his best, but it had never felt like enough. 

After a while Finwë left Fëanor, who looked far more unhappy than Finarfin would have expected, and came to sit beside him. “Why do you sit apart, Arafinwë?”

“I’m just tired, and have little to say.” He let himself lean into his father’s embrace. There were many things he should say, he knew. I missed you, and I love you, and I’m so glad you’re here, but they all stuck in his throat and he thought that if he opened his mouth all that would come out was you never should have left in the first place. Or something worse. He didn’t want to mar this reunion, not when it was meant to be joyful. If he couldn’t take full part in that joy—that was his own failing, not Finwë’s. 

Finwë kissed the top of his head. “I think we have much to speak of, you and I,” he said softly, “and much of it will have to wait until we return home. But I am so sorry, Arafinwë. You carried such a heavy burden for so long, and you should not have had to.”

No, I shouldn’t, he thought. “There was no one else,” he said instead. “I did what I had to do.”

“And you did it well. I have seen all that Vairë has woven, and though I wish you had not had to do any of it, I am so, so proud of you.”

It was nice to hear—both the apology and the pride. It just felt like it had come too late, after he was beyond the desire for it. Finarfin said nothing, just leaned against Finwë to listen to the steady drumbeat of his heart, and feel the gentle rise and fall of his chest, and the warmth of his encircling arms, which had once felt like the safest place in all of Arda and even now somehow still did, all of it proof that this was real, that Finwë was there. And for a few hours he didn’t have to be anybody except his father’s son, and know himself loved. Until the sun rose, that was enough. 

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