Thirty Day Character Challenge: Feanor by eris_of_imladris

Prompt 15

Prompt 15: Big Ideas, Part Two. Using one of the big ideas from Prompt 14, revise an existing fanwork so that this idea is more strongly emphasized or create a new fanwork that brings this idea to the center of the piece.

** A/N: This fic is inspired by my idea that Fëanor was still capable of rationality after his father’s death, albeit in a different capacity.

Fëanor looked down into the water, and he could have sworn he saw someone looking back up at him. Just his reflection, he thought, but then again, he did not have blonde hair, nor did he have a gash across his cheek that was bloated with water, just as the hair streamed behind the face of the corpse.

It was repulsive, and he longed to look away. It struck him then that his had been his doing; that it had been his orders that caused the Noldor to attack the Teleri, and that even though the Teleri started it by not lending him the use of their ships, he was still at fault, for they had not raised swords against him. Belatedly, he understood Manwë’s judgment, and he knew as much as he knew anything that he would not be able to return to Valinor.

He was High King of the Noldor. His judgments would make sense to his followers – or they would obey, whether it made sense or not, just as he had listened to Mahtan in the forges. He tried to ignore the image in his mind of the last time he had seen the smith he looked up to as a second father, when Mahtan had told him that he regretted teaching him how to bend steel to his will, for it had only caused destruction. The bloodstained sword in his hand only seconded that message. He rinsed it off in the water as the boat moved forward, past one corpse, only to find another, and another.

His men were efficient, and his tools were even more so, and he hoped that these elves had died without pain. It was odd to think so, when he had caused their deaths, but he had not even thought of it when they denied him, when they broke the alliance that had existed between his father and their king for hundreds of years. The mere thought of it filled him with rage, and he knew he had to take what was his, regardless of who stood in his way. The elves had been all too easy to kill, his steel too honed, his grip on the weapon too fierce.

He had lost some of them, he knew, some of his own men, and he felt even more guilt for that, for leading his own people into something that caused them harm. So few of the Noldor had died under his father’s rule, and yet it seemed like only one had mattered – his mother – and her death had caused so many things to happen so differently that he began to wonder how he had changed the world, what he might have done to the peace of Valinor by letting so many elves die. How many children would be orphans now, fatherless as he was motherless, thanks to him?

He tried to push the thought from his mind as the boats moved forward, and the corpses thinned out and eventually disappeared altogether. The deep blue waters somehow unsettled him even more, as if the ones who died had not mattered at all. They were gone now, in the past, just like his mother, his father, and his peaceful life.

He would never know peace again in Valinor. He could practically see Manwë’s angry face, looking the same as he did when he harmlessly drew a sword on Fingolfin in the square of Tirion. He could see the way Manwë would look at him, no forgiveness this time, sentencing him to something like what he had done with Morgoth long ago, three ages of darkness. He would not have a chance to ask for forgiveness, for those that he had killed were now out of his reach, and only in the Halls of Mandos did he expect to see them again.

His own mortality, now that he was leaving the waters of Valinor, struck him then. He was not going to live forever. He was going to make his best attempt to reclaim the Silmarils, and then he was going to die, whether tomorrow or in a hundred years from then. And he was going to leave everything to Nelyo, who looked agitated as he paced from one end of the boat to the other, his red hair a beacon for any stray arrows. But no, there were no elves left to fire those arrows, he and his followers had seen to that, and Nelyo was safe, if having a hard time processing what had happened.

He approached his son and looked at the pain in his eyes, pain he swore he would never inflict upon any child, let alone his own. He reached an arm around him, and they stood together, watching the world they knew disappearing into nothingness, and the one they did not know becoming brighter on the horizon.

Manwë was not in this new world, waiting to give him an ultimatum of judgment. And he knew, as clearly as he could see in this darkness, that Manwë would be standing there no matter when he got back. He could never return.

The flame felt bright in his hands, and knowing that his half-brother was on the other side only made it even more joyful to set the arrows loose. As the boats burned, knew that that was him burning there as well. He was in exile forever, king or not, and he could only look forward. There was no looking back anymore. His only redemption would be in the three crystals that he hoped would not burn in his hands as brightly as the ships in the night.