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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