All That You Can't Leave Behind by Grundy

Chapter 1

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Eärendil has rarely in his life been frightened, and only a few times since his childhood.

In the wake of Ondolindë, he had found it difficult to be scared of much. He’d been a child when the city fell. In the space of a day he’d gone from never having seen violence before to nearly being killed by the cousin he looked up to with all the admiration of a child for an older kinsman who had never before had so much as a harsh word for him, and then seen his father kill his cousin.

He’d spent a long time after Lomion went from being his cousin to being a crumpled bundle on the ground so far below expecting to die no matter what Atto said. Not only his grandfather, but nearly all the other lords of Gondolin had perished by the time they reached the Way of Escape. Only three besides his father had still been with them, and Laurefindil had been killed fighting a balrog to protect their ‘retreat’ – a retreat Eärendil understood only much later was little more than headlong flight. He was being carried by then, so he’d been able to see what was happening to their city over his mother’s shoulder. (Ammë told him to put his head down and sing to himself. He hadn’t.)

The few hundred survivors had spent the next several hungry, increasingly cold months on the long trek to the Sea, with the possibility of being ambushed by orcs or worse at any moment. Even when they’d first reached the mouths of Sirion, there was still danger, for though no word of it had reached the Hidden Kingdom before its fall, the Sindar at Sirion were survivors of the Kinslaying at Doriath and had little love for Noldor. Had there not been not only children but some Sindar among the Ondolindrim, they probably would have been turned away.

By the time they’d settled into life in the Havens, there just hadn’t been much fear left in him. It was as if he’d used up all of it as a boy, and there had been little left for the youth or the man.

Oh, he’d been nervous when he first started courting Elwing – who wouldn’t be, trying to talk about love to the most beautiful woman in the world, a descendant of Lúthien and a queen in her own right besides? He’d known for years that he loved her and she was the only one for him, but that didn’t make it any easier trying to work up the nerve to ask if she felt the same.

He’d nearly been sick to his stomach when he’d approached Celeborn and Oropher for their permission as her elder kinsmen to wed her. He was still more than a little surprised they didn’t refuse. Nevermind half mannish, he was a Noldo, raised among Noldor, and had never quite managed to lose the accent in his Sindarin that marked him as one of the golodhrim. The only explanation he can think of is Galadriel. (He’s positive she’s the only reason Thranduil Oropherion never arranged some sort of ‘accident’ for him. Even so, he still can’t help hoping the insufferable bastard had survived Sirion. And Oropher. And… everybody, actually, but that wasn’t very realistic, was it?)

He hadn’t been scared so much as heartsick when his parents explained to him what they intended as Tuor began to show signs of old age. Sailing West was death for any Exile, but for one trying to bring a mortal with her it was nothing short of madness. In the end, he could not stop his mother from trying, even if he feared it was the last time he would ever see either of his parents. He knew when she got that look on her face, arguing was useless.

He’ll admit he probably would have been frightened if he’d been home to find out about Elwing’s pregnancy and be present for his sons’ birth. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, he’d returned from a voyage scouting the coastline south of the Bay of Balar to a complete surprise, and nearly collapsed from the shock.

He’s known fear each time he put to sea since then, but not for himself. It’s only ever been for his family, for Elwing and their boys – the pieces of his heart he couldn’t take with him when he went. He feared that he might find the Dark One had swept down and killed or carried them off while he was away searching for somewhere safer, or that he would return home to another child he hadn’t known he had begotten, or worse, to discover that just as Elwing’s pregnancies were unexpected as those of a mannish woman would be, she could also be killed by childbirth.

Eärendil was frightened now, and not just because his young sons were still on the shores of Middle Earth without either him or Elwing to care for them, or because the Lords of the West could still decide to kill him at any time. (He was starting to feel slightly more confident on that score, because if the Valar wanted to strike him down, they might have done it several dozen times over by now. He’s been wandering around the Blessed Realm all of today and the best part of yesterday as well.)

No, he’s frightened because he –  Eärendil, son of Itarillë Turukaniel, of the House of Finwë – had just come within sight of Tirion. It was his people’s city – his family’s city. He was a golodh returning to a home he had never seen and knew only from the tales and songs of his elders, and he suddenly realized that for all those tales and songs, he had no real idea what to expect. Even in his youthful daydreams, he had never really thought beyond reaching the shores of Aman.

He still believed it was safer for Elwing that she remained in Alqualondë, surrounded by her Telerin kin who would surely object should the Valar try to claim her subject to the same penalty as an Exile for finding her way to their protected land. But he secretly wished she was by his side. He would have felt braver if she were with him – and perhaps a little less like he was coming empty-handed.

After all, what besides his marriage and his sons did he – or any Exile – have to show for their time on the Hither Shores? Everything they’ve built has been destroyed, every victory they’ve won has proved short-lived. But Elwing wasn’t with him. (He just might be as great a fool as Thranduil has always claimed.) So as he doggedly set one foot in front of the other on the road that leads to a city grander by far than the one of his childhood, he could only worry.

He did not expect his mother to be here. She had surely met the same fate as every other who had attempted return, and was languishing in the Halls, difficult as that might be for him to imagine. His mother was far too full of life for him to picture her among the dead. Nor did he expect to meet his grandparents, or anyone else who had died in Beleriand or on the Ice.

But there might be others. Should be others. This is Aman, they’ve been safe here since the rising of the sun. His grandfather’s mother, aunts, and grandmother. Both Galadriel’s parents. Laurefindil’s father.

What would they think of him?  Would they rejoice to have a kinsman arrive from the East, the first one to return? Or would they be disappointed that it is only him who has come, an unknown boy they have never met, instead of one of those who had left? Or worse – would they even believe him when he claims kinship? He knew himself to look a little like his mother, but no one here could have known her as anything but a young child. And he looked nothing at all like his grandfather.

The walls of Tirion gleamed a brilliant white, but to a son of Ondolindë they were strange, for it was clear they were little more than decorative, a way of demarcating the city proper from its environs. No one could hope to hold such walls against a genuine assault. Beautiful they might be, but not functional.

It was as Elwing had said – his kin had of their own choice left this to go die in Endorë. To her, he had attempted no explanation, for he had known a daughter of the decimated Sindar would never understand their actions. (In the privacy of his own head, now that he could see their city, he was not sure there was any explanation good enough for him either.)

A people who had known so little of war that they built such laughable walls could not have had any idea what they were doing pursuing Morgoth. He did not like to condemn his grandfather and the rest of his family as fools -  yet the thought was undeniably there, lurking in the back of his mind.

As the road wound its way up the impossibly green hill he knew to be Túna, Eärendil began to feel the beginning of disquiet. All was too still. Surely here in the Blessed Land, where there was no Enemy, no Sauron, no balrogs, no orcs, there should not be such a lack of people? Even in hidden Ondolindë, there would have been folk out and about beyond the city walls on such a day, tending crops or enjoying the beauty of Tumladen.

He eventually found himself standing before gates unguarded, and could not decide whether or not to take that as an ominous sign. On the one hand, what need had the people of Tirion for guards, when the Valar themselves ensured their safety? On the other – surely even in a city that had never known attack, the King would wish to know who came and went? Or was life here truly so different?

Beyond the gate, he felt the oddest sense of familiarity, and he realized that it was not just from songs and tales he knew Tirion. He had been told Turukano modelled Ondolindë on Tirion, but he had never before realized just how faithfully his grandfather had sought to recreate the city. Oh, Tirion was much grander – the roads wider, the paving stones fairer, the public art and sculptures more numerous, the buildings larger and more graceful. Ondolindë had been built in secret, with only what materials were to hand in its concealed valley and the mountains around it. But the basic contours of both cities were the same.

If he looked to his left, he could see the road which would lead to the Square of the Folkwell, and to the right, where in Ondolindë Ecthelion’s house would have stood beyond the Fountains of the South, he could see at the end of the broad avenue a pair of intricately sculpted fountains with an imposing house beyond them – a house whose gates were graced with an eight-pointed star that made his blood boil.

Rather than contemplate the house of the Kinslayers, he turned his face forward, to the King’s Way, which would bring him to the King’s Square. Here in Tirion it would not be his grandfather’s tower, but the Mindon that stood there.  The light of its silver lamp was not as apparent in daylight as he suspected it would be once the sun went down – he needed only a few hours more to be sure.

There was much to marvel at in the city, and only now that he saw it could he understand why the adults had often laughed fondly at his pride in Ondolindë and his childish certainty that there could be no city fairer. The gardens, the fountains, the houses, the shops – everywhere he looked, there was something to amaze him.

And yet… there were no people. The King’s Square for all its vast magnificence was deserted. Not a single elf had he seen down a side-street or glimpsed in a courtyard. All this wonder was pointless if the Noldor had vanished. Had they lost all joy in their wondrous city when so many of their kin deserted them? But it had been said that his grandfather’s uncle turned back. Surely there must still be Noldor here. Or was even the Blessed Land not immune from tragedy?

He wandered the city for a while, attempting to hail anyone who might still remain – first, out of habit, in Sindarin, before he recalled that none here would know that tongue. Nor, he realized with a start, had the tongue of the Noldor been banned in their own city!  But no answer did he hear, whether it was aiya or ai or suilad or even more formal greetings in the tongue of his father’s people that he called out.

Deserted or not, he could not quite bring himself to be so bold as to enter any of the apparently empty buildings without leave – though he would have dearly liked to see how the palace of Finwë compared to that of Turukano.

The sun was sinking in the sky by the time he had concluded that he would find neither elves nor help in the city of the Noldor and turned to begin the journey back to Alqualondë. He would ask his wife’s kin how best to proceed, for he had no idea what else to do. (Yes, “speak to the Valar”, but he didn’t know much about them and had been counting on his own relatives to tell him where they were to be found and how best to approach them.)

He was starting back down the road he’d entered the city by, when he was nearly startled out of his skin by the booming voice behind him.

“Hail Eärendil, of mariners most renowned, the looked for that cometh at unawares! The-”

“Hi,” the mariner in question replied flatly, cutting off what he was sure had been building to some long-winded speechifying. (He recognized the signs. He might not properly remember his grandfather’s speeches, for he’d been too little to have paid attention on the rare occasions he’d been present for any. But he’d seen enough of Elwing’s Council to doubt that there had been much difference from the Sindarin nobles except the language.)

The being standing before him was definitely no elf. It had been a long day and if the Valar were going to kill him, he’d just as soon get it over with, preferably without a lengthy preamble. And if by chance they weren’t going to kill him…

“Not to be rude,” he continued, well aware that phrase normally preceded something almost guaranteed to be exactly that. “But who the stinking pits of Angband are you and where are my kin?”