A Silent Echo by Rocky41_7

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A Silent Echo

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A Silent Echo

In the last few weeks under the gentle warmth of the spring sun, Fingolfin had done his due diligence. He had reviewed the manifests back as far as a decade. He had spoken to everyone who might have even an inkling of a hint of a clue, particularly those whose families had been split up. He had sent out scouts, and gone tracking himself in search of a reliable trail, and set Lalwen on the hunt. And with all his investigation, he returned again and again to the same conclusion: Aredhel and Turgon had planned this.

All over the sudden and stunning disappearance of two of his remaining three children and nearly a third of the population of Hithlum, Noldor and Sindar alike, were the fingerprints of Turgon’s meticulous mind. Not only had he planned it, Fingolfin felt grimly sure, but it had been years in the making. The evidence was there: the way Turgon had insinuated himself into the business of managing their supplies, the way he had been quietly but steadily obtaining approvals to move those who had gone with him to the further outskirts of their territory so they might eventually vanish more noiselessly, the connections he had been making among the lords—for indeed, several lords had gone with him, including Lord Ecthelion and Lord Egalmoth.

Not only had the process taken years in itself, but likely had been years in the planning before even the first of Turgon’s moves to start consolidating people and materials, which meant that it might have been over two decades his children had been planning to abscond in the night without so much as a whisper.

Beyond the windows that stood above Fingolfin’s desk, a light rain pattered, and Fingolfin’s mouth twitched in something too rictus to be called a smile. Turgon had done his work well—he was no Fëanor, but he must have made a remarkably convincing case.

While the conclusion was, in one sense, reassuring—whatever had happened after their departure, they had not been snatched from their beds by orcs of Morgoth—it was also what most troubled Fingolfin personally, bringing his mind back and back and back again to a single question: Why hadn’t they told him?

What was it that was so urgent, so momentous, so delicate that it had to be kept secret even from family?

Aredhel and Turgon had always been especially close. Fingolfin and Anairë had worried he would be sour about no longer being the youngest of their immediate family, but it was not so. He had received her kindly, and once she began to plump up and walk and babble, he had been delighted with her and taken it upon himself to be her mentor. While their interests diverged only more with age, the closeness had remained. If one of them had begun this scheme, Fingolfin was not surprised the other had become a part of it.

However, he imagined it left Fingon, sitting despondently across the desk from him, with many of the same questions that Fingolfin had: Why didn’t Turgon and Aredhel trust them anymore?

As to Fingon, Fingolfin felt relatively sure he knew the answer: they did not want their plans getting back to him, their father. Fingon had been condemned by his closeness to Fingolfin and his role as one of Fingolfin’s premiere advisors. It was not something likely to bring much comfort to him. Fingolfin wondered if they would have brought Argon into their scheme if he still lived.

“Father.” Blast. Once again, his eldest had been talking, and he had not been listening.

“Yes?” Fingolfin blinked and tried to look unruffled, a pantomime somewhat spoiled by the terrible shadows under his eyes.

“I asked if you wished me to send the scouts out again.”

Fingolfin’s fingers drummed arrhythmically on the desktop.

One would think that the traverse of so many people would have left a mark, and yet none of their scouts had thus far been able to say even which direction they had gone. Not only had been there no word from either Turgon or Aredhel, there had been none from any who might have noticed such a massive party on the move. It was as if they all simply turned to mist in their beds. Fingolfin would have been impressed, were he not so vexed (and still, he was impressed, for it was an incredible feat his children had managed).

“What is your mind?” he asked Fingon, to stall for time.

He did not wish to alarm anyone, nor publicize this event across Beleriand, but he had written a quiet note to Finrod. If anyone to date still knew the contents of Turgon’s mind, it was he, and Finrod had been an able partner since taking up leadership of what remained of his father’s people, and Fingolfin trusted him: he begged Finrod to keep his scouts’ eyes open for any hint of Turgon and Aredhel’s passing.

The blow of Finrod’s response made it clear to Fingolfin how much he had held out hope that Finrod would already know, and share, the location of his cousins and their people: Finrod claimed completely ignorance of any schemes or ideas of Turgon’s related to his departure. He promised to watch for them and ended with some cryptic encouragement which almost tempted Fingolfin to believe his nephew knew more than he was letting on, but he dropped it. Now more than ever, he needed to focus on the practical and not go chasing phantoms.

“Let us send them out once more,” Fingolfin declared, and Fingon’s tense look made him almost certain he had just been explaining why they should not do that.

Fingon sat silent and aggrieved across from him, the last of Fingolfin’s children, for the time being. Fingolfin noticed, looking at him then, his nose: it was his mother’s, always had been. Sometimes he made expressions which reminded Fingolfin so jarringly of Anairë it was a struggle not to show it, though on the whole it was Turgon who had taken most after her in looks.

“As you wish, Your Grace,” said Fingon.

Even Idril had gone with them, though this was not shocking. Turgon was not apt to leave her behind after everything they had been through already, nor was Idril inclined to allow herself to be abandoned. She had proven herself more than capable on the Ice, and therefore trustworthy with whatever her father had planned, but Fingolfin mourned the absence of her bright voice and determined courage, and of course, feared of what might become of them all.

Silence reigned over the room, testament to the questions they had already posed again and again, to the answers they could not determine and would not receive. Still Fingon lingered. When it had stretched well beyond the polite, Fingon rose from his seat, much as Fingolfin had seen the elder of Men do—as if there were a great invisible weight upon them. Fingolfin murmured some thanks to him and looked back down at the various outpost watch schedules he was reviewing—which were, frankly, a mess of crossed-out names and times and slapdash revisions and changes, normally things which would not even rise to the attention of the high king were he not seeking more who could even speculate as to where his children had gone—but he did not hear the door, and so he raised his head.

Fingon had paused in the doorway, his fingers on the frame, and looked back. “They may yet return,” he offered. His expression had given way to something both feebler and wilder, and Fingolfin felt keenly aware of what an unsteady place they were in now.

Fingolfin stared at him, trying to decide if Fingon felt it was he or his father who needed this quasi-delusional bit of encouragement.

“It is possible,” he allowed slowly.

Neither of them really needed to point out the obvious: But it was not likely. If they resurfaced, Fingolfin did not imagine it was with the intent of returning to their lives in Hithlum. Too much planning had gone into their flight for it to be a temporary state of affairs.

Rain tapped more insistently against the windows, and beyond the doors and walls of Fingolfin’s office, the clamor of the castle went on. Fingon’s dark complexion was half-subsumed into the low light of the hall beyond the door.

“I will gather the scouts,” Fingon said at last.

“Thank you,” Fingolfin replied.

The questions reeled on heedless of their audience’s comprehension or desire.

***

By the start of winter, there had been still no sign of the missing Elves. It was stupefying. People don’t just vanish into thin air! Fingolfin had raged to the ghost of his father in his bedroom on one furious, exhausted night with too many empty wine bottles foresting the table. They had to go SOMEWHERE! And how was it that no one had seen them? Had they decided to delve into the Earth like Dwarves and were living somewhere right under his feet? Had everyone else in Middle-earth gone temporarily blind?

Aredhel had already been known to vanish for weeks on end without word before or after; Fingolfin now felt doubtless that many—perhaps even most—of these excursions had served this project with Turgon. Was it she who had chosen their route from Hithlum? She who had helped thousands disappear overnight without a sound or a trace? Had Oromë returned to guide her? Did they have some favor of the Valar which Fingolfin had lost when he refused to return to Tirion?

And again, the question continued to torture him, through day, through night, pounding in the back of his mind no matter what else he occupied himself with: Why hadn’t they told him?

What had he done that two of his children had determined they could not permit their own father to know of their plans? At his most optimistic, he could only assume that whatever the project was, it felt so important to both of them that they could not risk their king’s disapproval: for having asked and been denied, they would be unable to enact their schemes even in secret. Most often, he flagellated himself asking when he had lost their trust, replaying their interactions over and over again in his mind, every one that he remembered since their bloody departure from Eldamar, asking when they had decided he could no longer be relied on to support them.

It was true that balancing the various views and opinions of his children and his nephews and niece since their arrival in Beleriand had been difficult—but after their long trek across the Ice, he had thought of them as a team. Disagree they might, but still they all worked towards a common goal: the defeat of Morgoth and the survival and flourishing of the Elves in Middle-earth.

When had Turgon and Aredhel become convinced they must travel their own path, apart from the rest?

He had been tempted to call Finrod to Hithlum to interrogate him, but thus far he had quelled that urge. He had to take his nephew at face value, and Finrod’s grief at the dead silence from his lifelong friend rang true (Fingolfin remembered the sight of them laying out in the yard with berry-stained hands and faces, awkward adolescent limbs sprawling as they gestured up to the clouds, their hair, Finrod’s gold and Turgon’s coal tangled together on the ground). If he began questioning them all now, trusting none of them to tell him the truth, he might as well lay down at the foot of Thangorodrim now and wait for Morgoth’s boot.

“Father!” Fingon’s voice cut through Fingolfin’s whirling thoughts and his son’s face swam back into focus, standing rigidly before his desk. Despite some of the best of Fingon’s wishes, his feelings were almost always painfully plain to see on his face. Presently, there was a tightness to his mouth and a glassiness to his eyes that belied any sense of calm professionalism he wished to project. “Shall I go?” he asked, and Fingolfin was somewhat taken aback with the thread of bitterness in his voice.

“Go?” he echoed, blinking.

“It is apparent that I have nothing which currently interests you.”

“That isn’t so, I asked you here.”

“Yet you do not listen to me,” Fingon cried. “So it has been since—you do not listen to me, Father!” He clasped his hands tightly behind his back and hung his head; there was a delicateness, a rawness in him Fingolfin remembered from those first weeks on the Ice, when Fingon could not sleep for the nightmares of blood staining his hands. Did he wonder if his actions in Alqualondë had warranted Turgon and Aredhel choosing not to speak to him of this?

Fingon had always been well-tempered, even-keeled, far more so than his siblings. Reckless, certainly, but he came by that honestly, Fingolfin was aware with rue, and not from Anairë’s side of the family. He so rarely lost his temper; Fingolfin had been relieved in years long past that he could mostly count on Fingon not to rise to the taunting of siblings or cousins. But that meant that when he did lose it, it behooved Fingolfin his father to mind it.

Fingolfin exhaled slowly and bowed his head, pressing the heels of his hands against his forehead.

“I find it difficult to listen to anything, presently, outside of my own thoughts,” he admitted. Perhaps this was too vulnerable a thought to share with a son, yet it was all he could offer in explanation, and he felt Fingon deserved the truth, even if he might scorn it. Had Fingon not yet been by his father’s side through trials enough that he no longer nurtured the youthful vision of him as a force invincible? He must be quite aware already that he was not infallible!

Fingon said nothing, shifting from foot to foot, so Fingolfin raised his head and said, “Do you have time to walk with me?”

At this, Fingon nodded.

Fingolfin left his desk, and went with Fingon up many dusty cobwebbed stairs to the nearest tower, that they might look out over the land and speak with small chance of being overheard. The breeze seemed to clear some of the cluttered thoughts from Fingolfin’s mind, and he closed his eyes, feeling its fingers run through his hair, thinking somewhat longingly of Rochallor in the stables below. Perhaps there was time for that later—perhaps a ride would help him think more clearly. (A lifetime ago they had gone together—Fingolfin and Anairë and Lalwen and the children, with Aredhel hooting and hollering at Lalwen’s antics and Argon braiding flowers into the mane of his mount.)

Fingon approached him at the crenellations, folding his arms, leaning his back against the stone. The light filtering through the thin cloud cover turned his brown eyes golden, though all the wind could manage with his thick braids was to stir a few errant wisps of hair against his cheek. His broad shoulders were hunched; Fingolfin observed him a moment and thought with surprise that Fingon seemed to expect he had been taken here for a private scolding. While he was still gathering his thoughts on how best to address that notion, Fingon confirmed it.

“You should release me from your counsel,” he said in the tone of one who has long considered a proposal before speaking it. His tone was flat, but beneath it lurked the stormy discontent which had plagued him since his siblings’ departure.

“You no longer wish to be an advisor?” Fingolfin asked. “You are the crown prince of this land.”

“You should release me,” Fingon repeated, staring down at the floor. “I have served you poorly, and it is apparent I have lost your trust.”

Fingolfin knew that part of parenthood was handling the surprises of one’s children—for they would always find ways to surprise you, for good and for ill, no matter how well you believed you knew them. Yet he found himself now fumbling in a way he had not since Fingon was far younger, and he could not say if it was the shock of the moment, or the chaos of his own mind of late.

“That is not so—”

“Is it not!” Fingon demanded, raising his voice to near a shout, snapping his gaze up to his father’s, his fingers digging into his arms. His lips were pursed; his eyelashes quivered; and Fingolfin’s hands twitched to take his child into his arms, but he held back. Longing pierced him like an arrow for the days when Fingon wept over scraped knees and broken toys, and Fingolfin could dry his eyes with hugs and kisses and promises of sweet bean buns.

“I should have known,” Fingon elaborated, again turning his face from Fingolfin. “I should have known—”

“You could not have—” But Fingon was a man grown, and had been for hundreds of years, and did not want his concerns dismissed by the coddling of his father.

“I could have!” Fingon insisted, his voice turning harsh once more. “If they had—I put my signature on the movements of supplies. I gave Turgon the jobs which granted him access to the things he took and trusted in his reports. I placed those requests for troop movements and trainings and weapons requisitions on your desk from both of them, which you approved.” A tremor went through him. “I went hunting with Aredhel! Perhaps I was there when she was plotting their exit!” Fingon boxed himself in his with his arms as if trying to compress himself. “I should have known they were planning something,” he said at last, bitterness dripping from his voice, set in the line of his neck as he hung his head.

Fingolfin remembered with childish vagueness his days of trailing after Fëanor, who had always seemed an adult to him, and bawling when he had the door shut in his face, and failing utterly to understand why Fëanor despised him (and also, the joy of those moments when Fëanor deigned to explain some project of his, or allowed Fingolfin to play with rejected models). With more clarity he remembered Fëanor and Findis’ hateful sniping and his mother’s harried efforts to balance two halves of a family which seemed to mix like oil and water, and his father’s dismay when the family dinner table once again turned into a catty dueling ring.

Fingolfin had been adamant with Anairë during their courtship that he did not wish his children to have such experiences. When the four of them had grown up close not only with each other, but also with the children of his brother Finarfin whom they counted in truth as siblings rather than cousins, Fingolfin could hardly contain his contentment. They had quarreled as children do and sometimes exchanged ugly words, but they also loved one another, openly and without rancor, and so Fingolfin had felt satisfied that he had put the troubles of his own family to rest.

Yet here was Fingon, alone, and utterly unable to understand how his siblings had left him behind.

Time is a circle, Fingolfin thought. He sighed, and looked out at the horizon again.

“Whatever they have done, I am sure they thought at the time it was the best course of action…”

“Is that meant to help?” Fingon snapped, glaring. “Their theoretical good intentions mean little when they have left us in such a position! A third of our people they have stolen, with supplies to match! How could they do this to us? How could they be so…so childish? So selfish? Merely for being asked to weather a few decisions with which they disagreed!”

Fingolfin had to bite his tongue to stop himself from leaping down Fingon’s throat to ask what decisions he viewed as the reasons Aredhel and Turgon had left.

He sighed once more and pushed down the urge to rub his temples. Lalwen had been relentless in the search for their missing people, but eventually, Fingolfin could no longer justify such excursions. They were scrambling to pick up the slack left by the departed. Fingon had helped his aunt in these endeavors; Fingolfin knew he had been trying to do as many of his siblings’ abandoned jobs as he could, but it was not sustainable.

Lalwen told him he needed to sleep and eat more; Fingolfin left many plates of food she brought to his office to tempt him untouched, or passed them off to one of his guards or couriers. It was unfair, he thought, that she should have to support him through the loss of three children now, and also his granddaughter. She remained optimistic they were alive, and if she was lying for his benefit, Fingolfin didn’t really want to know.

“Doubtless they had the interests of our people at heart and…” Fingolfin trailed off wearily, finding the end of that sentence did not reveal itself as he had hoped.

“Even when they have done this to us, still you speak in their defense,” said Fingon, scowling. It seemed an unnatural expression on his amiable face.

“As I spoke in yours, when you were convinced we must reconcile all the Noldor,” Fingolfin reminded him. “Your siblings were staunchly against it, if you recall.”

“But I was…” Fingon’s jaw worked as he contemplated some way in which this situation was different from that one. “I did not harm our cause.”

“In the end, no, and I believed then as now that you were right, but think you that Turgon and Aredhel were not genuine in believing that allying with Fëanor’s people would harm us?”

“If you had chosen otherwise,” said Fingon, “I would have heeded it. If I had done as I did and still you saw no path to reconciliation with them, I would never have undermined your efforts this way. I would not have…” His eyes flicked away, fingers squeezing into his arms until his knuckles went pale.

“It is my fault they kept this from you,” said Fingolfin then after a solid pause, for it seemed necessary to acknowledge this. “I have relied on you a great deal here, and certain am I that they believed I would learn of this if you knew.”

Fingon stared away from him. Fingolfin had him, albeit unintentionally, between a rock and a hard place. To insist his siblings should have trusted him to keep their secret was to admit he would have joined them in plotting behind their father’s back. To assert that he would never have kept such a thing from his king was to confess his siblings were right to mistrust him.

He wished he could call in Aegnor and Angrod, summon them to Hithlum for aid. But they were lords now in their own right, and with lands which abutted the Enemy, and they could not be spared merely to cheer Fingon. Perhaps he might send Fingon east—though, under the circumstances, he might not appreciate being sent away from home.

“Do you believe truly that I blame you that we did not anticipate this?” Fingolfin asked quietly as a fresh gust of wind whistled over them.

Again, Fingon’s shoulders hunched.

“You should,” he muttered. “What kind of obtuse fool could be blindsided by such a thing?”

“Myself, for one,” Fingolfin said dryly. Fingon winced.

“It is not the same, Father, we were…they…”

“One may share with a sibling what one does not with a parent,” Fingolfin agreed. Fingon gave a small nod, and then covered his eyes with his hands.

“We may only speculate now on their goals and motives and feelings,” said Fingolfin, shifting nearer to his son, so they were almost shoulder-to-shoulder. “And I understand more than you may think how tempting it is to believe the worst, to believe they secretly distrusted us, that they departed in anger and resentment, that they had lost faith in our cause entirely. But this you must remember, Fingon: They loved us, and they were good. I cannot believe, if I am honest, that they would have done this if they had seen any other way around it. I may disagree on the point, but I believe their hearts are genuine. I must believe they have some plan which serves the cause of Elfinesse and they truly think this is the best way for them to render aid.”

“By deceiving us?” Fingon cried. “By stealing from us? By betraying us?”

“They have not betrayed us,” said Fingolfin firmly. “They have weakened our position here, that is true—but they would never betray us to the Enemy.”

“How can you simply believe such things?”

“Not without effort,” Fingolfin admitted. “But the matter in the end is practical as much as sentimental: It serves us not at all to wallow in the thought that they wished to hurt us. Whatever the intentions of your brother and sister, we must keep our minds focused on the goal here, to your point earlier in my office. We can only work with what we have, and now we have no longer Aredhel and Turgon.” It seemed to burn his throat to say it, but it had to be said. Both of them needed to acknowledge this.

Fingon let out an awkward, choked huff, and he wept.

Now Fingolfin gathered his son against him, and Fingon put his face against his father’s shoulder and cried for the loss of his two remaining siblings. There were no more words, for what words could be put to such grief? What words could ever suffice for the loss of a sibling? (For Fingon, who had effectively now lost three?) Fingolfin remembered standing before Fëanor’s memorial, built by his sons, and finding that after so long of considering what he would say when he saw his older brother again, that there were simply no words. He tried to imagine a world in which he was the last one of them—in which Findis, Lalwen, and Finarfin were also gone—in which they had chosen to leave him behind (he could not now think on what Findis and Finarfin thought about himself, Fëanor, and Lalwen leaving for Middle-earth)—and decided it was impossible for him to truly understand Fingon’s pain.

“Forgive me, Father,” Fingon whispered. “I shall do better.”

“No,” Fingolfin replied, tightening his hold. “You have done as well as anyone could, and I am proud of you, and I am grateful to have you here still.” If Fingon had gone with them—if all three of Fingolfin’s living children had vanished without a trace—he did not know how he could have gone on at all. “I will need—have needed—your help in finding our footing once more. I have not been as present as I ought to be, and that is my fault as king, and I must ask your forgiveness for it.”

He drew back to look at Fingon’s face, though his son averted his teary eyes, and clasped his arms.

“It is long past time I reassigned their duties. You have carried too much these months, and for this also I must beg forgiveness. You were right: I have not been listening as I should. And as my advisor, I am grateful you said so.” He let out a long breath, briefly closing his eyes. “I did not wish to admit that it was necessary,” he confessed softly, unsurprisingly. “But this has been unfair to you, and had you not carried this burden so silently without complaint, I should never have let it go so long.” Fingon’s lower lip quivered, but he raised his eyes to look into his father’s gaze, his dark lashes clumped together from his tears. Fingolfin waited until he was sure he had his full attention before he spoke again, this time in the tongue of Tirion: “I am sorry, Findekáno.”

Fingon nodded, and swallowed, and then put his arms around Fingolfin and hugged him.

“I forgive you, Father,” he said, and for only a flash of a moment, Fingolfin thought of words laid aside for Finwë’s return to Tirion, a return which had never come. Even then, Fingolfin remained unsure what those words would have been, in the end.

Fingolfin embraced him again, and they remained there on the tower until Fingon’s eyes were no longer flushed red, and then Fingolfin called his advisors to an emergency meeting to discuss how to reallocate tasks and tools in light of the disappearance and presumptive non-return of Prince Turgon and Princess Aredhel.

***

Years on from those troubled days in Hithlum, in absence of his mother and father, in absence of his aunts and uncles, in absence of his brothers and sister, in absence of his beloved cousins, nearly all of whom were dead and gone, Fingon took up the crown of the high king of the Noldor in Middle-earth, and never, not even at the moment of his death, did he feel more alone.

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Chapter End Notes

My thought is that some of the lords of Gondolin--like Ecthelion and Egalmoth--had been lords among the Noldor, but others were raised to lordship in Gondolin, like Duilin and Rog.

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