Five Gil-Galads Walk Into A Bar by herenortherenearnorfar

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Deck the Halls

Post-reembodiment Gil-Galad fic is always fundamentally weird because this is a character who has built his entire life around his job and then suddenly moved somewhere where that job was already taken care of. He's on enforced vacation now and he simply doesn't know what to do with himself. At least our other ex-Kings of the Noldor had actual lives before they became figureheads. Gil-Galad has molded himself into the perfect High King his whole life! Poor guy.

This is also why so many Gil-Galad backstories work and why I actually don't care that much about Gil-Galad's parents. His core drive is not his parentage, its his responsibilities, his upbringing in the very latest stages of the war. He wasn't built like that, he built himself like that.

Extra points if you can pick up on the secret Gil-Galad backstories two of our Gil-Galads are hiding.

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Mandos was a bizarre prison.

One very rarely encountered another spirit inside. Lovers might find one another, or siblings, parents and children, soul-friends, those who shared the very deepest of connections. But it was largely a journey taken alone. A forever of wandering in endless emptiness, surrounded by textiles and stone the texture of lint.

The ordeal absolved the soul with a washerwoman’s vigor, twisting until the spirit was wrung clean.

The halls were not designed for the convenience of redemption. Mandos never did anything for anyone’s convenience. He was a singularly inconvenient entity. But from the solitude bubbled up new experiences, strange visions borne of the deepest desires of the heart. Without a body to grow tired or a sense of ticking time to drive one mad, isolation became a balm.

Slowly, the fëa healed itself. The lonely labyrinth of Mandos twisted and turned the ails of life away.

At least that was how it was working for Gil-Galad. He hasn’t met anyone else so far so he can’t speak for their experiences. A child, for example, might find the piercing solitude frightening. And for the guilty… who knew what their minds summoned up.

Thus far Gil-Galad’s soul has only given him dreamlike whimsy and confusing nonsequitur. Círdan with the head of a sturgeon, a long empty walk in through the halls Barad Eithel where he’s once more the size of a toddler, the image of Celebrimbor humming an off tune lullaby that Gil-Galad remembers from his earliest infancy as he helps forge Aeglos. Echoes tinged with sadness.

Elrond, or the translucent reflection of him, is a recurring character. A child Gil-Galad couldn’t save, a rangey young man watching in horror as the Sons of Fëanor run away with their hands full of fire, a shining young elf arm in arm with his brother (who is already greying are the temples and slowing in pace). Elrond at war, at peace, laughing with young Celebrían beneath one of Rivendell’s bowers.

Elrond watching him die. Gil-Galad couldn’t meet his gaze, not with his eyes liquefying as Sauron’s black hand charred his skull. He couldn’t hear anything either after his eardrums popped. But the weight of love’s regard is perceived with many senses. Círdan who raised him, Elrond who he raised, Erestor his kinsman, Isildur his friend’s son. He died in front of so many people.

Even that isn’t sad. Mandos is not overly kind (unless you sing to him) but his wife is the keeper of all history. If you look at the intricate tapestries lining the walls the tell you the whole of history.

Gil-Galad has seen his father fall, slain by Gothmog’s black axe. He’s seen his mother, the red rose of Barad Eithel, holding the walls against the last terrible assault when Morgoth’s forces came after the Nirnaeth Arnoediad. He’s seen his father and Maedhros, Fëanor’s most terrible son, the spectre of Ereinion’s young adulthood, twined together whispering boyhood promises. Twined together whispered promises well into adulthood too, his mother looking on. He’s seen the goodness that sparked dread ends and the wickedness that led to fair finishes. The hope after the fall, the shadow over triumph, Vairë records it all. It’s not consolation to the dead. It’s not healing. It just puts the limited perspective of life into a richer context. Suddenly you’re given a glimpse at the story of all of Arda and that selfish story you’ve been telling yourself rings so false.

In those tapestries he’s seen that Sauron has been vanquished. Círdan survived. Elrond lived, married, and after that he stopped watching. He learned from Númenor that there is danger in watching a happy ending to its terrible conclusion.

So he tries not to look at Vairë’s masterpieces. Maybe seven ages of the world will have passed by the time Mandos seems him fit for the society of Valinor. Maybe he will never be allowed outside of these halls, unto the breaking of the world. The Doom of the Noldor, the crimes his father committed long before his birth, may hold forever.

There’s a period of comforting darkness after the halls’ latest soul mangling vision. Darkness is underrated in elven philosophy. Light might be where the fëa dwells in hopeful times but darkness is where it rests and recovers. Gil-Galad floats in it.

Then a new dream begins to coalesce.

This one starts in Gil-Galad’s favorite wine house in Lindon. The rafters are scavenged ship timbers from long ago wrecks, the tables are high and the stools made for gangly elven legs. There’s a solidity to the place that much of Mandos lacks. Colors— driftwood grey and grape red— bloom and Gil-Galad thinks he can smell the sticky sweetness of plum wine.

Amid this new illusion Gil-Galad feels like he has a body again, one with substance, flesh to anchor his wandering soul. It’s all a dream, of course, Mandos is Lórien’s dearest and only brother, yet he sinks into the dreaming.

Trembling, he lifts his foot and step over the threshold, then notices for the first time that there are other people in his favorite bar. They look real too, as true-to-life as he feels, nothing like the distorted memories who have accompanied him thus far. For a moment he allows himself to hope that he’s been allowed some company in this interlude.

The hope fades just as fast. He liked this winehouse because it was quiet, he knew every regular drinker and they knew to be patient with their High King. He recognizes neither of the two elves currently sitting at the bar not from drinking or war, or any other pasttime, in any of the ages he has lived. This does not mean they aren’t real but it makes it less likely that they’ll be good company.

Still, he continues forward. “Hail, friends!”

The silver haired elf near the front has been watching him find his feet but the slender Noldo laying on his stomach inspecting the join between wall and floor rolls, fumbling for a weapon that isn’t there. Good reflexes on him, he moves like a warrior tried and true.

“We are not friends yet,” the silver haired one says. “But hail.”

“Hail,” agrees the third of their number, refraining his course and striding forward. “It is good to find company in these halls. How long have you been here?”

“A handful of minutes, such as time exists,” the paler elf admits. His hair isn’t truly silver, just a very pale and ashy blonde. Like beechwood touched by starlight. “You were engrossed in your work and I did not want to startle you. You’re the first person I’ve seen here as well. As for him,” a nod to Gil-Galad, “He just walked in.”

They seem like reasonable elves, acting reasonably. Even the pace of their reactions mirrors Gil-Galad’s own, they watch each other with the same cautious optimism and begin to relax at the same time.

“It is good to see another soul— I shall not say living soul under our circumstances. What do we think brought us together?”

“I do not know,” Gil-Galad admits, “And though the company is welcome, more than welcome for you seem to be good fellows, I worry at what it portends. Mandos is said to be a solitary journey of the fëa. There are few records of the halls but no records of spirits unmarried and not otherwise bound freely communing within.”

“My thoughts exactly,” the grey elf agrees. “We aren’t married, are we?”

With exaggerated movements the slight Noldo leans against a wall. It seems they’re all adjusting to these facsimiles of bodies. It takes a soul a while to remember how to inhabit even the memory of flesh and intentional grace, elegance while you’re thinking about it, is trickiest of all. Instincts and muscle memory can be imitated, imprecisely, because you never quite think about those blurry moments and therefore they are rendered down as an easy blur. But you have to think about the arrangement of limbs, about shape of a smile.

(It’s extra unsettling because this elf looks like Celebrimbor in miniature. Of course Celebrimbor had that classic Noldor look shared by thousands of other elves; eagle nose, dark hair, intense eyes. It’s the details that really make this fascimile frightening. This elf has the same dimple in his chin that Celebrimbor once had. He has the same low, thoughtful brow.)

Conversely, some aspects of the body are all flesh, never registering in thought and rarely crossing into the realm of the fëa. Blinking. Breathing. If checked, he doubts any of them would have heartbeats. He feels a sudden sympathy for Eonwë, who he always deemed unsettling. It’s hard to keep a ghostly veil looking mortal.

“Goodness, no,” the Noldo is saying. “I should think we would remember that.”

“There have been stranger marriages, especially among the Noldor.” This is said not with the sharp mistrust of one of the wood elves, who have always half resented Finwë for bringing Fëanor down upon them, but with the wit of a good tempered Noldorin cynic. A young one too, Gil-Galad only knew a few elves old enough to know Finwë, Indis, or Míriel but they stayed close lipped about the relationships that sparked a statute.

“Perhaps some other factor brought us together,” Gil-Galad interrupts, since talking about matrimony is getting them nowhere. “The manner of our death? The bonds holding us back from reembodiment?”

“The bond holding us is Mandos’ whim.” This comes from the dark haired elf. “As for the manner in which I died, it was at the hand of the Enemy. I only regret that I could not do more to destroy him.”

Gil-Galad winces sympathetically. The pain of dying has faded. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember the horror, the realization of his own helplessness, the last gasp from Elrond before his hearing went. “Too many have fallen fighting that foe, myself among that number.”

“I as well,” the silver haired Noldo— he must be a Noldo, he has Galadriel’s flared nostrils and the fine wispy eyebrows Gil-Galad has seen on elves who once dwelt in Nargothrond. There’s a distinctly Falaquendi cast to his features but his bearing is Noldorin, his Sindarin in the choppy Noldorin style. Did he fall in Nargothrond? In the first Havens? In any of the places gone and burned before Gil-Galad was tall enough to hold a spear?

He’s heard plenty of war stories over the years yet he still wants to know theirs.

As if he shares Gil-Galad’s desire, the dark haired elf speaks up with a diplomatic smile. On his unblinking memory face it looks threatening. “I have been terribly rude. We ought to make proper introductions. May the stars shine upon your path friends, even in this starless place! I am called Ereinion, at times Gil-Galad.”

Gil-Galad thinks several things at once including ‘ah, so it was a dream after all,’ and ‘hmm, this seems unusually malicious even for Mandos’ and even ‘but they seemed so real’. Before he can get a single word out of his mouth he’s preempted by the silver specter.

“I’m sorry but I’m Ereinion Gil-Galad.”

The smile on their other companion does dim somewhat. “Friend, you must be mistaken. I have been Gil-Galad all my life.”

“Did you watch Beleriand sink below the sea and take the last boat out of its wreckage?” Silver challenges. “Did you watch the waves of fallen Númenor come to crash upon Middle Earth? Did you stand against Sauron on the Banks of the Gwathló and challenge him to combat? Did you watch Elendil bleed beneath Sauron, did you throw yourself upon them both and perish at the last?”

“Yes! I did do all of those things,” the other Gil-Galad replies, frustration building. “Did you or are you just a mirror of my mind?”

“We cannot establish each others’ reality,” Gil-Galad admits to his supposed selves. “But we can establish that we have memories only I—Gil-Galad would have.”

“Three of us then.” Pale Gil-Galad presses his temples the way Círdan does when he’s vexed. “Very well. What’s Galadriel’s least favorite insect?”

“Red spider mites.” Gil-Galad says quickly.

Beaten to the punch, the slighter Gil-Galad adds, “She complains that there’s another insect in Valinor that eats them but she can’t find any here. Sauron in his days of foul disguise claimed there are some in the lands of the sun in the furthest east but she didn’t believe him.”

“Mandos is clever,” their analogue points out. “And Queen Vairë knows all the histories of the world, even conversations between cousins.”

Gil-Galadriel isn’t prepared to rule anything out yet. And yet there are no records of anything like this in Mandos before. And their fëa are fëa, they shine like any other soul. “He is clever and even he can’t make a person out of nothing. I believe it’s my turn. What did we secretly get Celebrían for her 100th begetting day?” How easily he adjusts to using we for his own private actions. He hopes this question will be trickier, it’s dependent on his own actions and not Galadriel’s preferences.

“A year’s travel alone without her mother’s knowledge.” Again the answer is prompt and precise.

“We pretended she was staying with us in Lindon so she could explore on her own. Forging the letters home was hard, I constantly thought Galadriel would find out and take her vengeance, and Elrond was so disappointed since he’d wanted to finally meet her. She enjoyed it greatly though.”

Correct, correct. They all know it and watch each other, unable to be suspicious of their apparent self but certainly concerned about the situation.

“Right,” the smallest Gil-Galad nods. “Right. What nickname does our master of arms like to call us?”

Only one of them can truly answer this and the pale Gil-Galad beats Gil-Galad to it. “Gel-Gladh”

Driven to add something, Gil-Galad says, “Because he thinks we should laugh more.”

Thinks, thought. Lindon’s arms master was alive when Gil-Galad died but a battle promises nothing to no one.

There’s a soft cough from the doorway of the replica winehouse. “I’m sorry,” comes a new voice, very soft and gentle. “I couldn’t help but overhear, are you named Gil-Galad? Because that’s my name too.”

All Gil-Galads are too polite to swear but they do exchange some looks of abject horror.

“Yes, I know,” the new Gil-Galad joins their small group. “I wouldn’t want me here if I were you. It’s a terrible complication. If it helps I think I might have an idea about the root of our shared dilemma.”

He’s also short, this interloper, and he has hair of a rich dark gold, a honeyed Vanyarin beauty rarely seen on this side of the sea in latter years. Even his voice is musical.

“How long have you been listening?” Slight Gil-Galad inquires.

“Just long enough to hear that we are all in some way Gil-Galad? And that we all share broad memories, at least of the last age. What we don’t seem to share are our appearances. I assume these fana are true to our memories of our lives?”

They all agree. These are approximations of the bodies they wore when they lived, however impossible it is for them all to have lived as four different Gil-Galad’s with four different bodies in the same Arda.

“That suggests the difference between us lies in our blood, not our experiences.” New Gil-Galad looks at Pale Gil-Galad and frowns, as if he’s seeing a ghost. “You look like Orodreth.”

“You are very kind to say so,” Silver haired Gil-Galad seems to be the most snappish and yet somehow most gracious of their number. It takes skill to spin anger into artful words without missing a beat. “He was my father— I— he was not your, then?”

If they were still alive Gil-Galad and Slight Gil-Galad would be gasping.

New Gil-Galad spreads his hands on the table, fingers splayed, fascinated by the fact of a body, that small miracle that the rest of them have been distracted from. “No. Nor did my… cousin have a son, such that I know of.”

“Then who is your father?” Gil-Galad must ask.

There’s a moment of hesitation before New Gil-Galad answers, “Finrod, King of Nargothrond.” He might be lying, goodness knows they know each others’ tells, or maybe he’s just hesitant to divulge his lineage for some shameful reason. The stories do say Finrod married Amarië after he returned to Valinor, and elves are naturally suspicious of remarriage or second love.

“I suppose it’s polite to share. My father was High King Fingon.” Gil-Galad is a little proud of the fact that he outranks all of them in the succession order (technically, Noldorin succession laws have included every system under the sun— by some standards Finrod’s son would inherit over him simply by being older— but they default to primogeniture when all other measures fail.)

Now they’re all looking at Slight Gil-Galad. He wavers for a moment, lips pressed stubbornly together, an active signal of reluctance in a newly returned body. “I do not owe you my lineage, though you are me.” He says after a pause that would be awkward anywhere but Mandos, which is made for waiting. “I will give it only so we might find an answer to our shared plight. My father was Darataur, last surviving son of Denethor who the last king of the Laegrim.” The name is not familiar but the pattern is, Laegrim words stretched to fit a Sindarin mold, only echoes of native intonation remaining. He can even pick apart the name, find the old Eldarin roots and guess at the meaning; Darataur— a great forest.

Before any of them can ask their questions he adds, “And my mother was Lalwen, last surviving child of king Finwë on these shores.“

“Well, that solves that, thank you for your frankness Lalwendion,” says New Gil-Galad— or, since the naming structure is efficient, Finrodion.

“I do not mean to question your honor,” Orodrethion says, “This situation merely taxes my imagination. To my memory Aunt Lalwen lived and died in the wood of Nimbrethil and yet here you are, as true as I am.”

This is the only excuse the rest of them need to voice their objections. 

“Finrod died unwed, did he not? Truly, I seek to understand.” “I simply do not know how Fingon could have had a son.” Although they are grievance picking, they all dress their protests up in politeness, as if diplomacy is baked into their bones.

“To my mind,” Gil-Galad interupts, “we ought to be focusing on our similarities, not our differences. How are we so alike in manner if we are born of different parents?” Not identical, there are small variations in their character. Orodrethion is the diplomatic skeptic, Lalwendion is always thinking outside the box, Finrodion has the keenest eye for details yet wanders off the course.

Lalwendion offers a simple explanation. “If we were all raised by Círdan from infancy I’d be more surprised if we weren’t of similar mien. We did share a foster father, did we not?”

He barely needs to ask, even bringing up Lord Círdan’s name soothes their tempers. Only Finrodion is holding something back, though he relaxes with fondness it isn’t comparable to the fëar glow of a remembered parent-child bond. “I came into his care older than the rest of you, I think, but he raised me into a king.”

Lalwendion nods, satisfied. “I am less bothered by the hows, which are ineffable as the rest of Ilúvatar’s creation, and more worried by the why. Why are we here now? Why did Mandos bring us together?”

“Why does Mandos do anything?” Gil-Galad asks helplessly. 

“His ways are mysterious,” Orodrethion manages to make mysterious sound like a grave insult. 

Since Finrodion’s entrance both Gil-Galad and Lalwendion have kept themselves oriented towards the entrance, regularly checking the doorway for new Gil-Galad’s come to insert themselves into the conversation. 

As a result they catch the latest arrival rather quickly. If left to his own devices he might have watched and assessed for a while, certainly its what Gil-Galad, and judging from their behavior, all the other Gil-Galad’s, would do. Immediately after making eye contact he instead introduces himself.

“Hail, friends! How good it is to see other souls in this lonely place?”

“Hail!” Finrodion says, smiling but terse. “A quick question, my friend, what is your name and who were your parents? I promise, it’s relevant to this predicament Mandos has made for us.”

If this newcomer is who they all suspect he has been a king in wartime, many times over. He’s justifiably suspicious of their demands and answers only “Ereinion was the first name given to me and as for my parents I never knew them.”

Oh, good, more company.

Orodrethion leans in. “Then you have stumbled on Mandos’ first club for people with the name Ereinion.”

Their newest Gil-Galad hovers at the door. He’s unusally tall, taller than anyone else here, with thick chestnut curls and a round face. Something about his features suggests Iathrim heritage; he has Elrond’s moth’s-wing eyelashes and unlike the rest of them he’s actually figured out blinking. “Good?”

“The catch is that we’re all Ereinion Gil-Galad, High King of the Noldor. And no, as far as we can tell, none of us are lying.”

New Gil-Galad takes advantage of his blinking ability and does so several times in succession. “Beg your pardon?”

It takes them a while to explain and even after that Baby Gil-Galad has his own, justifiable, tests. Once that’s completed and he’s convinced of their veracity as Gil-Galad’s they have questions of their own to ask him.

Lalwendion is leaning over the high table that they’ve all stationed themselves around, standing on tiptoes to pull closer in his excitement. “Who were your begetting parents, since we all seem to have different ones?”

If they thought they were done being surprised, this fresh Gil-Galad proves them wrong. “I don’t know. I was too young to remember when Papa Círdan found me.”

An elf child must be very small indeed to be capable of forgetting. Even Gil-Galad, who was only five when he was sent to Círdan amid preparations for the great alliance, still recalls his mother’s red hair and his father’s boisterous laughter, the layout of the castle, his favorite horses.

“Then how did you come to be called Ereinion, how did you take the High Kingship?” Finrodion is hot on the case, though he does look a bit embarrassed by his own barrage of questions

“I knew little in my delirium but that I was related to a king,” their latest addition to the pack of Ereinions is understandably defensive, they’re questioning the throne he’s held as long as any of them. Because he is one of them— you can see it shining through his gossamer eyes— that defensiveness is only expressed as a slight tension about the shoulders, a new wary stiffness to his posture. “Papa Círdan thinks I might have been one of Thingol’s young relatives through his sister or one of Elmo’s younger children. There were a handful of descendants who married around the same time as Lùthien and may have had children to accompany hers, distant though she was. He… he found me not long after Doriath.”

The old elven tradition of baby-grouping, planning children in bundles with friends so they’d have playmates to grow up with, was well practiced. Dior and his children who would be mostly mortal and quicker growing than their peers, demanded an extra full slate of friends to keep up with them.

It was an additional cruelty, rarely spoken, about that at the time of the Second Kinslaying Doriath was unusually full of children.

“As for the crown, it was the plot of a very young elf that worked too well. The Noldor were kingless and falling apart. Círdan kept trying to lead them but they wouldn’t listen to him. Idril had her own people and two rapidly growing children to raise. Lalwen wouldn’t be pulled away from the battlefield. Galadriel was in the east trying to negotiate passage for survivors of Nargothrond through dwarfish mountains. None of them wanting the throne. I thought if I spread a rumor that I was the heir of the High King, secretly entrusted to his care. at least they might listen to Círdan. Unfortunately, they did but they also crowned me as soon as the crown wouldn’t fall down over my ears. I told Idril and Lalwen the truth— they just laughed and said I’d make a better High King than some others.”

Gil-Galad revises his estimation of Círdanion’s— for he seems to view the old elf as more a father than a foster father— age several times over the course of the musically-delivered story. Not a small child when he came into the Haven Lord’s care then, just an adolescent addled by his ordeals, the way some survivors of Angband found themselves lost in heart after leaving. Old enough to be crowned before Valinor came— elves do not have child kings, exactly, but they do extend more autonomy to the moderately young, lanky elflings not yet done growing yet still trusted to marry and have children and reign. Thirty and more when he came to Círdan, somewhere between forty and fifty when he took the crown; probably the youngest of all of them.

“And Galadriel truly did not mind?” That’s the part he keeps coming back to. He loves his cousin but she’s a torch. You hold her up for light, you don’t hold her close.

“Not overly. A bit miffed but she has her own kingdoms to play with. Besides, if she wanted to be High King of the Noldor perhaps she should have tried ill-advised fraud before I did.”

That gets some laughs. Perhaps they should be more protective of their birthright but it’s not like they ever asked to be king. It’s a burden, one which someone must shoulder. If this Gil-Galad took it on as without the crushing weight of inheritance driving him forward then he’s a brave elf. There’s a reason Gil-Galad never wed, never named an heir.

Family is tricky when you only have a handful of surviving kinsmen left, when your family remains under a Doom for actions you never took. Actually, maybe more than a handful of kinsmen. Looking at his fellow High Kings, Gil-Galad realizes that three out of four of them are his cousins. Even Círdanion must be closely related, on the Sindar side of things. He has those high arching Nelyar brows. Cuiviénen started with a hundred and forty four elves and that means that you don’t have to look far to find relations.

Celebrían, Celebrimbor, Galadriel, Elrond. They mirror his remaining cousins. He wonders if he mirrors any of theirs. He has his mother’s sharp Sindarin features and his father’s beautiful hair. At times he’s been compared to his uncle Turgon, or, more unkindly, his cousin Maeglin. Then he remembers a living cousin he better resembles. Grandmother Anairë’s nephew Erestor, most loyal of retainers, is practically his double, close enough to swap places with him at boring court functions (not that staid, dutiful Erestor would ever go along with such a plan.) If they consider Erestor kin, and even if they don’t, perhaps they see him in Gil-Galad’s face.

“You know, I wonder if that’s why we’re all here,” Finrodion says. “To prove that Gil-Galad isn’t who we were, it’s who we became.”

“Ten different parents and we all got called Ereinion,” agrees Círdanion. He catches on fast. “Mind you there were a lot of kings wandering around in those old days.”

Orodrethion is unconvinced. “Would that serve Mandos?”

“His ways are not meant to be understood,” Gil-Galad reminds everyone again. “Perhaps it wasn’t even on purpose. Like souls draw together and we are very much the same.”

“Some force shaped us all into the same mold,” Lalwendion agrees, a little regretful, “A High King was needed at that place and time and we provided.” Kingship at that particular juncture, in an age of dying and war, supported by Círdan and Idril, caught between the ocean and Morgoth’s fire, makes a Gil-Galad everytime.

“Your point is heard, Lalwendion, Fingonion,” Finrodion agrees, and Gil-Galad is briefly thrown hearing himself referred to by a patronym. “I suppose we all became Ereinion in our time, and Gil-Galad, and Artanáro to our Quenya cousins from across the sea.”

“We we’re not born we were made,” Círdanion agrees, “Yet I believe we have all known that, to some degree. I, at least, have always known that I am Gil-Galad by the demand of the Noldor and nothing less.”

Yes. Gil-Galad knew too that he is nothing but an agent of the needs of his people. Since the crown landed on his too-young head, since earlier, he has been a vessel of their desperation. Now he wonders what he will be if Mandos ever sees fit to rembody him. Who is he in a land with a surplus of kings, without a fading people pinning their last hopes on him? If he is not the last shining star in a dying land then he isn’t sure what to make of himself 

 “So why this?” Círdanion continues, “Even if it is pointless, why us?”

Orodrethion leans dangerously far back in his chair, tempting gravity such as it exists in this grey shade-haven. “A question I’m sure we’ve all asked ourselves over the years. Why us? But we cannot second guess it, we find ourselves Gil-Galad and we find ourselves here. We must make the best of it.”

“I am sure we would all thrive if we were given some paperwork to do or some meetings to lead,” Gil-Galad jokes, trying to lighten the mood among his fellows. “We’re not used to working among equals.”

That earns a few chuckles, intentional, careful bursts of laughter, as controlled as a good tussle.

“Not when Oropher was the king we most often had need to negotiate with,” Lalwendion adds, sparking another swell of good humor. Shared jokes are already a conspiracy, shared jokes with yourself cross the line into treason against the rest of the world.

Yet they are all Gil-Galad and they are here. Dead, peopleless, and on the verge of having to reinvent themselves. A bunch of kings who never should have inherited, stripped at last of their makeshift crowns.

Finrodion, oldest of them all, says what they all are secretly thinking. “Mandos, in his wisdom, has seen fit to put us in a bar. Come, let’s have some drinks and see if the wine here lacks body like we do.”

“This is not the death I was promised,” Orodrethion says primly as they uncork a bottle. 

“We are not promised death.” Círdanion tells him, eyes deep and serious the way Elrond’s get at times. “We are promised Arda. No strangeness is excluded from it. No echo fails to fit into the greater song. Even this. Even us. We have played a part.”

Lalwendion takes a sip and grimaces. It tastes like ghost wine, like a memory and not a sensation. “And what will they sing of us? Hopefully that we were terribly handsome and brave about the burning alive thing.” 

Círdanion must think on that for a while. “That we did what was asked of us until no one could ask any more. And now we have no one but ourselves to look askance to.”

Mandos is not a prison, exactly, Gil-Galad decides, taking another swig of half-remembered plum wine. It is a space between what you were and what you can be. 

Perhaps some day they’ll leave it and see.