empty spaces by queerofthedagger

‘Tears unnumbered ye shall shed.’

The sea crashes. The wind is cold and merciless this far up north, the silence an almost tangible weight. Finarfin has not been able to look at either of his brothers since they had left Alqualondë behind.

It feels like waking up—this, now. The dooming voice, the shaking ground. The unease breaking through the deafening numbness that they all have clung to.

Finarfin straightens. Raises his voice. “We shall return,” he calls; it is meant for his own host. He has no hope left for anyone else.

For none but his host, his children.

Finarfin turns. Meets Finrod’s eyes. Galadriel’s. Aegnor’s. There is pleading in the ocean blue of them, pleading and fire and the unyielding pride that all of Finwë’s children tend to wield.

Finarfin is familiar with cursing their nature—in exasperation, in humour, in anger.

“Atar,” Finrod says, his voice low. His hand is curled tight around the hilt of a sword. “Atar, please.”

The sea crashes. The wind howls. In the distance, Tirion’s lights gleam, and Finarfin can see the future stretch ahead of them, smoke and blood, crushed hope and ruin.

He swallows; tastes ash. Holds Galadriel’s burning gaze.

“We return,” he repeats, voice an unshakeable thing.

He knows before any of them move that his children, not even his children, will yield.

Finarfin is familiar with cursing their bloodline’s nature; he has never done so with an anguish so sharp-edged, it almost brings him to his knees.

A moment they hover, the exhaling of a breath.

‘Tears unnumbered ye shall shed;’ he needs no doom, no treasonous brothers, no Middle-earth to believe it true.

Finarfin turns, wordless. The biting north wind freezes the wetness on his cheeks. He returns to Tirion as blinded as he had left it.

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The Ice leaves little room for regret. Leaves little room for anything but sheer force of will, steel bent to an impossible task. One step in front of the other, face numb to the wind, to the whispers, the doubt dogging their steps.

Little room, but not none. The expression on his father’s face, the plea, the resignation.

Finrod watches Fingon with Fingolfin and refuses to let the bitterness linger on his tongue.

He loves his father, he does; he merely hopes that one day—after Ice and hunger and Mandos’ words echoing across empty plains—he may understand him, too.

Bëor is like light in all the dark places. Is laughter and fresh air, a face and a mind and loyalty not entangled at all within the past trailing in Finrod’s wake.

He is all that is good about this Middle-earth. Its open plains, its star-struck nights, the wild, breathing, beating pulse of it—discovery, newness, breathing.

Until he does not. Until he looks at Finrod with something almost akin to pity, old and wearied with age. Smiles as if to say, See? Still always something new for you to learn, Nóm, and then draws breath no more.

Once, Minas Tirith had been the first place Finrod built on these heaving shores.

Now, Tol-in-Gaurhoth is a dark and rank place. Finrod knows that he will die here and almost finds it fitting.

Almost; there is still so much to learn, to dig his hands into. There is still so much to fight for.

Still so much to regret.

When Sauron’s wolves come, it is, once more, no hard choice.

Finrod knows that he will die here. It is the knowledge of his father, waiting, that makes it easier to take the inevitable steps down the road back home.

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To Aegnor, the leaving is the simple part.

Not his father—he mourns it, the harsh and cold fact of it. Valinórë, though; Valinórë has always felt too small, too polished, too tranquil a place to keep him.

He sets foot on the shores of Middle-earth after an eternity on Ice, among misery, and breathes for the first time in his life. Can feel the fire leap to a roar anew, his numbed spirit thawing; looks at Fingon, the wondrous line of his mouth, the light in his eyes, and knows himself understood.

Everything burns; Aegnor basks in the glow.

Andreth is like air to his flames. Unyielding, bright and kindling, like the unflinching heat that has carried him this far.

That will scorch him, inevitable, as was always going to be Aegnor’s fate.

You may dance with the flames, his father used to say, but you may never outpace them. Do not forget it.

Perhaps he had, in the wild and strange woods of Dorthonion. As he looks at her for the last time, the fierce anger in her eyes at the unfairness of it all, he cannot quite bring himself to regret it.

He mourns, all the same.

When the fire comes, Aegnor laughs.

There is no time to run. To wonder if perhaps, their father had been the only one to understand what they were walking towards.

Aegnor will not see him again; he had told Finrod so, had seen him grieve it.

The dragon looms. Aegnor smiles. Let his brother believe it is for love only—this way, at least, it is something Findaráto will understand.

It is no untruth; yet, no number of centuries would have turned Aman into something less easy to kindle, or Aegnor into something less likely to scorch whatever he touches.

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If anyone were to ask, Galadriel would claim that there was a moment when she doubted leaving Aman.

There was not. She knows that there was for her brothers, much as they try to hide it. Obviously knows the uncertainty of her father. What it resulted in.

She wishes she could. That she could claim to have wavered, doubted; that she was what they all wanted her to be—not a storm, not a cataclysm. Someone to sit with her mother, to weep over spilt blood, to practice forgiveness.

She is not. She cannot. She refuses to regret that, too.

One by one, her brothers die.

She learns regret then, the way it slides beneath your skin. How it steals your breath, kneeling in the dark forest, hands to the cold and living earth of it.

Most days, she is grateful. To these people that have taken her in, taught her, let her wander. Most days she breathes the clear air of the forest and feels like she can do anything.

But some days—some days, she rages until the regret is drained from her once more.

Amidst it all, she still never once wishes that she had not gone.

When her father follows, it tears the land apart.

That makes it sound like accusation; by then, Galadriel has lived in Sirion for too long to make it into any such thing.

Still, she cannot help, in dark and bitter hours, to find irony in it. Her father, always the most peaceful of Finwë’s children. The one to turn, to stay. To beg for pardon.

Now he blazes on the battlefield beside Manwë’s herald. Now he brings salvation, most his children long-since dead.

Beleriand sinks. The Eldar are summoned to return. Galadriel turns East once more and swallows her regret.

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To Finduilas, Valinor is a story—one of holiness as much as of darkness, of the Gods as much as of their wrath.

Nargothrond is peaceful to grow up in. Secluded, certainly, but with no shortage of people who adore her, is not lacking in a bright variety of delights.

The land is fair and wide, the kingdom deep and secure. Her mother tells stories of her own people, as old as this land.

Finduilas says once, to her uncle, that she thinks they made the right choice; she likes it here.

He smiles. It does not hide his grief.

Her uncles do not return from battle, and so, Finduilas learns of war.

She learns how to heal. She learns that women are not meant to go out and fight, to ride among the burning land and search for their loved ones.

Her mother does regardless and does not return. Finduilas stands in the open courtyard before Nargothrond’s halls until her throat burns with the smoke. Until she can tell no longer if her tears arise from the choking land or the choking grief.

She waits. Thinks of Valinor and the peace that it promised, until it no longer could.

Nargothrond is far from the kingdom she knew growing up; it does not rediscover its beloved state, even when Gwindor returns.

Even the relief does not last long. Her own heart betrays her, and she weathers it, as best she might. It does not feel fair.

It does not, either, when Túrin does not hear her, no matter that she knows of his curse.

Oh, how Finduilas knows of being cursed. As the Orcs drag her away, she wonders what difference it makes whether it is done by Morgoth or Mandos, when always, doom and sorrow follow—inexorable and savage.

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Ereinion’s history is littered with loss. With holding on.

It is no unique experience at the dawn of the Second Age—the land torn, the remains of their people weary of war.

And yet, many of them did not return, no matter Eönwë’s offer. No matter Finarfin’s, that shining King almost as sacrosanct.

Some kind of blasphemy, Ereinion is certain.

He cannot bring himself to mind. His great-grandfather may be an imposing Elf, a heroic one, one blinding with grief. But Ereinion, much as many others, has only ever known this land. There is nothing for him, beyond the sea.

His family, at least those that matter, are buried here.

His sister’s grave sunken, unsullied. His father’s unmarked, somewhere on the waste that remained of Nargothrond’s last battle, the dead too many to find, to bury.

His uncles burnt up in the north, long ago. Finrod, the one he had known better, at last buried on his isle as it was cleansed, restored.

Gone; they are all gone. Ereinion knows the doom no longer lingers, and yet he feels its legacy—the same, tangible weight that King Arafinwë so clearly had carried as he scoured the land for its memorials.

Ereinion knows that revenge is no wise adviser. Makes it a point, even, not to let it lead him—to listen to Elrond, always kinder than himself, even though he has every reason not to be.

And yet, Ereinion does not treat with anyone claiming to come from the West. He does not hesitate to march on Sauron when he emerges; does not deny the satisfaction of it, his family’s wounds torn open all over.

Perhaps the Doom catches up with him when he dies at Sauron’s hand. Perhaps he finally defeats it, when he takes Sauron down with him.

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The first thing Finarfin thinks when they reach Middle-earth is that it must have been beautiful, once. That it could not always have been this ruin of death and darkness.

His second thought is that he would have liked to see it; to understand, if nothing else, why all his family had been so ready to die for it.

But then, that is not true. After all, it had not been the land that killed them, had been nothing so simple.

Finarfin looks north; there are no tears left to freeze on his cheeks, even as the cold wind blows.

Back when the trees went dark, Finarfin had thought that he knew fear. When his children left, his brothers and nephews and nieces, he had thought that he knew grief.

It had been nothing compared to what was to come. The growing around empty spaces; the artless attempts to fix what was so utterly broken. Eärwen. Their people. The holy peace of their homes.

They felt it, when their children died. They knew nought of the manner or the circumstances, but they knew.

It had been then, bowed over and heaving, that Finarfin first regretted his choice, sharp-teethed and unforgiving.

They had known when their children died, but nothing of the manner.

Finarfin learns now, in the war camps of Beleriand. He almost wishes he did not, and cannot stop listening regardless—of Finrod’s sacrifice, Angrod’s and Aegnor’s defiance, Galadriel’s indomitable will. Of his grandchildren, their legacy—Gil-galad, proud and cold even as he bows to Finarfin.

Finarfin had thought he knew the measure of regret; what it means to mourn them. Still thinking he made the right choice, knowing it.

He takes up his banner and his sword and makes sure, at least, that theirs was not for nothing.

Chapter End Notes

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