empty spaces by queerofthedagger

Finrod: Grief

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.