Following Maedhros averting the burning of the ships, Fingon worries, Maedhros finds a new reason to live, and Fëanor begins to wonder if he has made some mistakes. And underneath it all is enough love that they're all hoping, maybe just this once, it won't end in tragedy.

“No,” he says once more, cutting his father off. The pressure in his chest hurts. He wanted to rest but instead there’s a great, spiked ball of fury dragging itself up his throat. “If you burn those boats I will walk out there and burn with them. I’ll swear it to Eru if you don’t believe me. Damn myself to the darkness twice.” He had intended to burn anyways, may as well go out the way he’d meant to, let his death mean something this time. Let it be for something that matters.

There must be something truly terrible on his face because his father visibly falters.

“You would not,” his father says but his voice wavers slightly.

In the end, what stops him are Tyelpe’s hands.

There was, he thinks slowly, trudging through the grief mired thoughts, gold ribbons coated in blood, a cold bed, a gaping emptiness in his mind where a marriage bond used to hum. There were years and years with only his brothers and even those dwindled with time.

His ears catch on a voice raised high, panicked, and then with terrifying force, the marriage bond snaps back into place, filling an emptiness he’d only just begun to grasp the edges of, and everything goes very sharp and clear.

Fingon, he thinks, feels the answering burst of confusion, fear, hope. “Fingon.”

In which Celebrían befriends Celegorm and sets off a chain of events no one expected.

He doesn’t need to stay but he knows, that buried in his heart is that same little desire that had sometimes had him looking over his shoulder after he’d left Nargothrond. That little thought that he’d turn to look and find Curufin and Celegorm riding up behind them because they’d realized they didn’t want him to go into danger alone. He just wants his friend back really. Doesn’t know if that’s possible. Especially if Celegorm isn’t willing to even try to apologize. He’s just hurt. He’s never handled that as gracefully as he should.

Or: Finrod just wanted to retrieve his niece and return to Tirion so he didn’t have to explain to his sister why he let her daughter come to even more harm. He absolutely did not want to deal with all the old hurts that seeing Celegorm brought back up. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like he's going to get much of a choice in the matter. Everything is going totally fine.

Celebrían sails.

The send her to Lórien first and she flees. She stays with her grandfather and Finarfin does not understand. Finrod tries to help and she doesn’t know how to let him. She smiles a lot. Nods. Grits her teeth and tries to find anything, anything, to spark a desire to live in her chest again.

And then three years later, wandering the streets of Tirion, she hears the whispers - the Fëanorians have begun returning - and for the first time since she arrived, a small spark of interest takes root in her chest.

Or: Celebrían makes some choices many would find questionable, Celegorm grapples with the difficulty of having genuine interactions with anyone, and Finrod was completely prepared to rip Celegorm's throat out too if he'd harmed Celebrían. Everything is going totally fine.

She sits alone in her room and pulls the silmaril out. Stares at it in the dark until the light makes her cry. Weighs the blood of her kin staining the Fëanorians hands against the yet unspilled blood of the people she’s been told are her responsibility. Holds the question she’s never been able to answer in her hands and makes herself think — what makes a monster? She knows what her advisors say. She knows what her people whisper. She knows their blood will run red regardless of which set of monsters end up finally coming for them.

or: Elwing is sixteen when she finally comprehends the brutality of the war ravaging Beleriand, when she realizes what it means to be told the people of Sirion are hers to protect. She is sixteen and helplessly in love and her advisor tells her that she is safe in Sirion and she cannot believe him. She comes up with a plan to fix it.