Ghost Love Score by Raiyana

Chapter 1

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There was no pity in Námo’s white eyes, shining beneath the dark hood of his cloak, when they landed on him.

Fëanor felt oddly pleased by that, meeting the even gaze with an unflinching glare of his own. He had not expected to end up here, to stand before the Doomsman. He did not speak, still filled with the incandescent fury that had consumed his hröa, burning so brightly the world faded from view.

Námo watched in silence. Fëanor resented that. If he was not doomed to the Everlasting Darkness – and standing before Námo told him that he was in Mandos, not the Void beyond the World – then there would be a judgement handed down from this being, who allegedly saw all, knew everything. He resented that as much as he resented the silent scrutiny.

Who were the Valar to judge him, these mighty beings who possessed so much power yet cowered away from hardship when it came to judging one of their own?

How could they judge his deeds when their own actions had forced his hand?

Fëanáro. He had burned, burned so brightly, burned brightly enough to light a fire that changed the world. He heard the voices of those who arrived after him, heard them both curse and praise his name. He wondered which would be the greater, in the end, but it was idly curiosity as he had no way of finding out.

Námo smiled, and Fëanor no longer saw him, saw nothing but a flurry of stars – or were they snowflakes? Seeds dancing on the wind? – stretching endlessly around him.

The stars, whatever they were, danced, moving, some swiftly, some slow, but they moved around him and Fëanor knew they would eventually touch his fëa. His lips twisted in a contemptuous snarl, wondering what trickery this was, what new game the Vala was playing with him as a board-piece.

Because waiting for whatever gambit Námo had just delivered him into to play out was not in his nature, Fëanor – he liked the Sindarin version, short and hard; his Quenya name was somehow softer, floating on one of Nerdanel’s sighs, perhaps – reached out to touch one of the whirling pinpricks of light.

 

Alqualondë. Recognisable; he had helped build some of the grand houses here, after all, left far too many blank walls behind – Teleri liked painting with wet plaster, for unknown reasons, even though mosaics were clearly the more beautiful option for wall decoration.

Red hair escaping from its binds – so familiar that it took him longer than he’d like to admit, even to himself, to notice the hands that were building stone upon stone.

Faces appeared next, almost known, pale hair – Arafinwë? – curling around bared shoulders, sleeveless tunic revealing the play of light on skin, muscles tensing and releasing as another stone was moved.

 

The stars returned, whirling and spinning around him, swift like rapids and slow like the movement of earth.

Fëanor reached out.

 

Námo’s game let him see things, glimpses of past, present, future, and seeing the mess he had left behind was the worst punishment for his rebellion he could imagine. He resented it, watching powerlessly, seeing things unfolding without possibility of changing anything. Was this how Manwë watched the world; another way to drive home how separate the Valar truly were from the Children? Knowing that others were denied the knowledge he found imposed upon his solitary existence grated against nerves more raw than he had ever felt before, but at the same time he craved it, craved both the harsh pain of knowledge without action, but also the sweet agony of seeing each of their faces, seeing the ner they became.

He felt proud of them, despite it all, for different reasons.

He watched as Curvo stopped little Tyelpë – who was no longer little, growing up seemingly from one moment to the next – from taking his Oath, and for a moment he wondered if Atarinkë had been a prophecy rather than the remark on their resemblance he had always thought she had meant.

For a moment, he wanted to ask, wanted red hair wrapping in curls around his fingers and laughter floating in the breeze. Had she known, somehow?

The thought cut through him, the pain of it sharp enough to steal his breath, the sudden certainty that she had always known Curvo was destined to be a better father to Tyelpë than he had managed for any of theirs. As air rushed back into lungs he didn’t really have – existing as a fëa was too peculiar, and he had crafted himself a pretend-shell that resembled his former house rather than live as fire, taking comfort in familiar expressions instead of roaring like an inferno or flickering like a candle when his thoughts changed – he felt an accompanying rush of pride, watching his only grandchild speak with an echo of the fire that had brought a whole people across the sea to fight an unwinnable war.

They believed in him; in Tyelpë they saw a ner worth believing, worth following, and it was glorious to behold.

He watched trials and triumphs, watched as the Oath slowly corrupted his sons, watched as the words haunted them. No cravens nor cowards, his sons, to shy away from their Doom, even as it tore them apart, tore away one after the other.

‘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.’

Nelyo should never forgive him. Nor any of the others, the scars he had left on them would never fade.

 

He could not even dream that she would forgive him, knowing what he had done to her sons, to her. There would be no healing this wound, this rend in her that would be left bleeding until Dagor Dagorath and the Re-making.

Sometimes, she appeared so clearly in his mind, almost clearer than she had when it was real, when it was happening, when he had been able to act.

Tears spilling across her cheeks, helplessness he had not noticed at the time giving her a defeated posture, making her slump in a way that was simply wrong. She should be proud, standing straight and strong, life and love and fire equal to his own in her heart.

But he had smothered her fire. Eclipsed it, and thus covered his own world in darkness, losing the assured path he had once followed and stumbling off into what he now saw as a mire of grief and maddened fury.

Sometimes, he wondered in dark amusement whether that was the Eternal Darkness he had called upon himself, the absence of any fire but his own.

He rarely saw her, the glimpses never more than the familiar shape of a hand, the curve of her cheek, fragmented sights he felt meant to torment him with what he had lost until the moment he began to wonder if he only remembered these fragments, if what he saw was coloured by his own memory of people and places.

He still remembered the redness of her curls – at least he thought he did. He remembered the feel of her body beneath his hands, those muscles born of shaping stone and hefting hammers. He remembered gentle light playing across skin slightly paler than his own, remembered tracing the scattered stars across her cheek with his tongue.

He saw those stars in the faces of some of his sons, saw echoes of her brightness, marred by the Oath and the deeds they had done. He saw them arrive, brought to him one by one, though they did not see him, and he could not bear to speak to those he loved most dearly for fear they would not hear him.

His sons; how terribly had he shaped their fates?

Looking back at it all, he hardly recognised himself, a creature of grief and pain, unwilling to listen to counsel or reason. She had been right to leave, and that, perhaps, was what hurt the most. To know that he had lost himself so completely that she no longer knew his heart, no longer understood him as only she had ever truly understood.

 

 

 

Nerdanel stood on the precipice, her bare toes kissing the edge of the cliffs, overlooking the roiling sea. The gale blowing around her caught in loose curls, but she stood frozen, uncaring, barely feeling the breath of Manwë as it tangled her hair, pulled at the fabric of her clothes.

Her sons – bar one – were dead, and the last one… was Makalurë staring at the same grey waves that stretched before her eyes?

Her heart was a small wounded thing in her chest, beating slowly, painfully.

Had they been afraid, her sons?

Had they wished for her to hold them, hold them as they breathed their last, calling out to her with voices she could not hear?

Fëanáro had been wrong in haring off after Melkor – Morgoth as he had named him – but as news trickled back to her, tales of Kinslayings – plural! – of kidnappings, of neri that she scarcely recognised as the boys she had once laid to her breast, had raised with more love than she had thought herself capable of feeling… Nerdanel began to wonder if she had not been just as wrong in her stubborn refusal to follow.

Perhaps she could have… that way lay madness, surely. Where was her vaunted wisdom now? How had her feet brought her down this path, taken her from the life she had loved and made her stumble into this unrecognisable nightmare of a future?

Nerdanel… the wise. It left a sour taste in her mouth, the name, a bitter tang of loneliness and grief that it had not carried when he had named her so. What wisdom had been in remaining behind, in letting her sons – her sons! – throw their lives away thus, what wisdom in staying in this place where she was equal parts scorned and revered for the choice?

She had come here, escaping the looks cast her way in Tirion, in Alqualondë.

She had raised Kinslayers.

She had spoken against Fëanáro’s plan, and been banished for it.

Pity and scorn, always, pity and scorn. And pain. So much pain it felt like she had not taken a true breath since before Finwë was murdered.

There was no escape from this pain.

She did not hear her words even as she spoke them, did not care to note how she threw her fury, her agony, her grief, her love into the wind, screamed against the pain that had wrapped her in chains tighter than she could ever escape.

And still she could not hate him.

Oh, they thought she must, those people far away who had never understood what she shared with him, but Nerdanel knew that love was as tightly woven into her fëa as this new grief that cut a thousand bleeding wounds in her heart.

Beyond the pain, however, there was fury, fury strong enough to topple mountains if she let it.

Others had hope they might see their loved ones again, hope that they might make amends with those who had been wronged, those who had left… hope that was denied her.

For that, she did blame him.

For that, she did blame the Valar, their willingness to abandon the Children to their own devices, for that, she blamed even the All-Father, by whom they had foolishly sworn their oath.

My sons. How did we all come to this, my most beloveds?

How do we find the path that will lead us from this darkness, Fëanáro, when you cannot seek it with me?

 

 

She sat in a hall he recognised, her lips pressed tight together as she watched a stranger come before her, speaking words meant to oust her from this place, this seat that Finwë had sat upon when he joined them in exile, and the vehement loathing in her eyes as she stared at the quailing ner before her was something at once alien and so familiar that Fëanáro shuddered to see it on her face. It was a look he had seen on his own face, mirrored in glass, but never in her, never shaped by her brows, her lips, her clenching fingers as anger warred within her.

“No.” Her refusal was plain, only one word; denial, pure and simple.

“You could return to Tirion,” the ner tried, but Fëanáro felt no surprise to see the steel in her gaze harden further. She was at least as stubborn as he; one of the reasons he had loved her.

“You may tell your King that he is welcome to visit me,” Nerdanel replied, and her voice held enough ice that Fëanáro half expected it to come out as a puff of frost, “but I am the Lady of Formenos, and here I shall remain.”

 

She did not sing when she worked.

Somehow – and it surprised him to feel so, having teased her often that her singing was comparable to a cat that had been stepped on – the silence of Nerdanel’s workshop seemed to number among the greatest wrongs he had done her.

 

 

The stars whirled ever onwards.

Fëanor had stopped reaching out, choosing silent endurance as each moment broke him down further.

 

 

In the dead of night, she felt the ghost of his touch, wiping away the tears that only fell in darkness, loneliness, felt the way he would kiss silent apologies into her skin when he hurt her.

It was almost real, and almost real was not enough.

Nerdanel had realised ‘almost real’ hurt even more than ‘gone forever’.

 

 

“I want them back.”

She said it clearly, decisively, like she was Queen – she was, she was his Queen, and no one would dare say otherwise – tired of smothering the fire that burned in her heart. The serving maiar did not reply, but Nerdanel did not care.

What had she, but time?

Settling with her back against a pillar she could have carved more beautiful in her sleep, Nerdanel waited.

What was there, for her, but steely determination?

Loneliness.

Loneliness, and anger, fury that would find no release, no easing of the pain she felt.

What was there, except the scorn and the pity as those who had died in Alqualondë began to return, while she grew paler by the day, losing more and more pieces of what made her her. Hope. It had been the first thing to vanish, leaving her with such fleeting steps she did not even notice its flight before it had abandoned her.

She had not come for hope.

She had not come for anger, for vengeance, not shown up at the Halls as a penitent seeking absolution.

She had come for love.

Love and fire.

Fire and pain.

Pain and love.

 

To pass the time, she sang. Badly. She knew her strengths, and music was surely not among them – Makalaurë’s skill had ever fascinated her, the way his mind seemed to hear melodies in everything around him, his fingers plucking them out on a harp, his lips shaping them in a hum, a song.

Still, she had no desire to begin reshaping this travesty of stone that Mandos called his Halls – parts of it might have been beautiful, but it felt oddly unfinished, as though the sculptor had put down his tools while only half the design had been released from the stone – and so Nerdanel sang.

 

“Why are you here?”

The question came days later, maybe weeks, months, years.

Nerdanel smiled; it was not a pleasant smile. The servant of Mandos took a step back.

“I want them,” she said. “All of them.”

 

 

The stars held no fascination for him anymore, beyond trying not to wince when they pierced his mind with flashes of imagery.

Nerdanel in her workshop, offkey singing as her chisel shaped wondrous things became the stars once more.

The singing continued.

Fëanor started, whirling to peer through the impenetrable haze of stars that seemed to be no fewer than when his punishment had first begun.

Nerdanel.

It could be no other.

Fëanor grinned, feeling a curious sense of uplifting; she really was atrocious, and the sound was more precious to him than anything he could have named in that moment.

Pushing through the stars, Fëanor watched impatiently as each memory blurred together, a collage of thoughts and time.

And still, Nerdanel was singing in the distance.

 

 

Námo’s hidden eyes saw all.

A wave of his hand made the specks of memory that floated around Fëanor whirl faster.

 

 

Fëanor thought he was running, following the sound that had underscored much of his life, in truth, the sound of her voice.

He had left her behind in anger, and now he was running towards her, wishing for no more than a true glimpse.

The irony was not lost on him.