![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starsprayRating: T
Characters: Finwe, Original Characters
Warnings: (past) Character Death
Summary: In the dark woods near the Waters of Awakening, Finwë's brothers are taken. In Valinor, when the Trees wither, Finwë is slain. In the Fourth Age, things take place long thought impossible.
Note: This fic takes place in my meanwhile the world goes on 'verse, but can be read standalone. The last chapter will contain spoilers for the end of A Hundred Miles Through the Desert.
First Chapter
Will there really be a morning?
Is there such a thing as day?
Could I see it from the mountains
If I were as tall as they?
- “Will there really be a morning?” by Emily Dickinson
Death had been strange, a kind of halfway existence, dreamlike and hazy, a sudden cessation of the agonies of his last hours—and now life was waking up, except it hurt again, lungs inflating for the first time, heart lurching into motion, the grass against Urwë’s skin soft and sharp at once. The air had a bite to it that burned his nose, and the smell—he didn’t know what he was smelling. Grass and damp earth but also—flowers? There had been a few flowers that bloomed in the starlight at home, but their scents had been faint and nothing at all like this.
He opened his eyes to a sky tinged silver-blue. It was so bright, but there were no stars. Where were the stars? Fear drove him up, palms sinking into the springy grass around him, and he found himself in fact surrounded by flowers. The colors were all wrong. There were too many of them. It was too bright and nothing looked right and—
“Urwë?”
Urwë twisted around and nearly fell over. “Lindo!” He was there, his brother, alive and whole and looking just as bewildered as Urwë felt. It took a second to make his limbs work, and then he scrambled through the flowers to throw his arms around Lindo’s shoulders, and Lindo buried his face in Urwë’s hair. They were both naked and the air was cool enough that it would be uncomfortable soon, but that didn’t matter because they were alive and he had his brother back.
“Where are we?” Lindo asked, voice muffled.
Someone had explained it to him, Urwë knew. Someone kind—there had been a woman who never stopped weeping, and there had been a man with a stern face that belied the gentleness with which he had spoken. One of them, or perhaps it had been someone else, had told him that he would return to life, that death was not the end for the Quendi—that he would be brought back not in the land of his birth but in a brighter place, where the Dark Rider could not harm him, where he would be safe, where he would see his family…
It felt like a dream, still. He raised his head and saw a great wall rising up before them at the top of the gentle hillside on which they sat. At its base was a door, small and unassuming, plain dark wood set into the severe grey stone.
Something was different, though. The light had dimmed in the few minutes that Urwë had not been paying attention, and something about it made dread coil in his stomach. Lindo also raised his head, and at that time someone emerged from the wood at the bottom of the hill. He was clad in soft grey, and carried a bundle of cloth in his arms. He glanced skyward and then hurried up the hillside. “Urwë and Lindo, yes?” he said, smiling at them as he knelt down beside them. “I am Olórin—here, you must be feeling a chill by now.” The cloth in his hands were clothes, soft robes of a fabric Urwë had never seen or felt before, soft and smooth over his still-tender skin, in a loose style unlike anything he had worn before. “It will be a bit of a shock, of course,” Olórin went on, “to come back to life so suddenly, and so far from the lands you knew. I am sorry for it. But—” The light changed again, turning a sickly yellow-green color, and Olórin turned away from them. He murmured something Urwë did not understand, and then reached for them. “Come. I’m so sorry, we cannot go as slowly as we should.”
“What’s happening?” Lindo asked as he stumbled to his feet. Once they were standing he reached for Urwë, who gripped his hand tightly.
“I don’t know,” Olórin said, “but—”
And then the light went out.
Lindo pressed closer to Urwë, who wrapped his arms around him and looked up, seeking for the stars as he always had—but there were none. It was wrong—there should be stars in the sky, not just an empty expanse of darkness.
After a moment Urwë realized that there was still light, of a kind—Olórin shone softly, as though he himself were a distant star, though he stood right in front of them. He held out his hands again. “Come with me. We must hurry—”
“Not into the wood!” Lindo protested, shrinking back against Urwë.
“The wood is safer than the open,” said Olórin. His expression had been cheerful and kindly. It remained kindly, but now he was very grave, and if Urwë was not mistaken he was as afraid as they were. “Something terrible has happened to the Trees—to Telperion and Laurelin—but they are far from here. Please, you must trust me. I am a servant of Lady Nienna, here to keep you safe.”
There was no choice but to trust him. He reminded Urwë of the tearful lady from the Halls, who had been so unfailingly kind. So he reached out and grasped Olórin’s hand, finding it warm and strong. Lindo held onto Urwë as they made their way down the hillside and under the trees. It was very dark there—but it was dark everywhere, and Olórin seemed to grow a little brighter, revealing the path before their feet, well-trodden and with nothing to trip them up. They had to stop several times so Lindo and Urwë could rest—their bodies were too new, too unused to doing so much at once. Olórin apologized over and over again, and promised they would be able to rest as much as they needed or wanted when they reached the shores of Lórellin.
Other beings like Olórin were there too—some appearing out of the air, or vanishing like shimmering mist on a nonexistent breeze, all of them shining gently in the gloom. They were not Elves, Urwë realized only belatedly. They were something else—but he did not feel afraid of them. Olórin was kind, and these others seemed very much like him. There were other Elves there too, older than Urwë and Lindo but with a strange light shining in their eyes that was very like the light that had filled the sky until the world had all fallen to darkness, and when they tried to speak to one another they found the words all wrong.
“You have been in the Halls for a very long time, I’m afraid,” Olórin told them. He bade them sit on a blanket spread over the grass near the lake shore, and then brought two more to wrap around their shoulders, for it had grown cold in the dark. “The tongues of your peoples have changed quite a lot in the intervening years. That is one of the things I am here to help you with—or it should be. I’m afraid all of that will have to wait until we can be sure it’s safe. Are you hungry? You must be hungry—these bodies have never eaten at all before!”
The food was strange, but good—nothing that Urwë had names for, but which Olórin taught them, all in the strange new language that held echoes of their own tongue—just enough to make it easy to learn. Someone had kindled fires along the lakeside, and if the sky had not been utterly black, Urwë might have been able to imagine them back by the waters he knew—back home. He missed, suddenly and sharply, his parents and his other brothers—Morwë who had been lost long before he and Lindo had been taken, and Finwë who had escaped at the last.
There was little to do as they waited. Time passed—how much was impossible to tell—and Olórin filled it with stories. He told them of the great battles between the Dark Rider and the Valar, his brethren—those who ruled these lands and who had promised the Quendi their protection should they cross the world to join them. He explained who the Valar were, and told them of the Creator and of the Great Music sung before the world was ever made. Urwë found then that he understood more than he had thought—for he had always been able to hear it, the echoes of that Music that lived still in the waters at home. When he listened hard he could hear a whisper of them in this lake, too, that Olórin called Lórellin, in the midst of the Gardens of Lórien, where the Vala Irmo had his domain, and Estë his wife the healer, and where Nienna came, the weeping lady, to comfort those who were sick at heart.
Those were all very pretty stories, but the darkness remained—the Trees that Olórin spoke of were gone, and something more was at work, hiding the stars. Urwë kept looking up, kept searching for anything, even the smallest glimmer of their light, but until a great wind came with driving rain that had them all fleeing to the shelter of the trees, there was nothing. Urwë held onto Lindo as they sheltered between the roots of an enormous beech, and thought with a sick feeling in his stomach of the roots where he and Finwë had hidden themselves when the Hunter had come.
Then the rain passed and the clouds parted, and a cry went up from the other Elves, for the stars were back. Urwë stepped out into the open with Lindo, both of them blinking up at the brilliant spill of them across the dark sky. Relief warred with fear in him as that particular certainty grew in his heart—the same kind of certainty that had told him long ago he would never make it home. Something terrible had happened. Worse than the destruction of the Trees. Urwë cared nothing for Laurelin or Telperion, however beautiful they were supposed to be. The Hunter had escaped his bonds and he had done something else—and whatever Olórin said of the Valar, they had either chosen not to or had not been able to stop him.
Urwë was young, still—younger even than the other Elves there who had been born in these lands while his spirit had dreamed in Mandos. But he knew better than to ignore the misgivings of his heart. “What have you not told us?” he asked Olórin when he came to them. “There is something you haven’t shared with us—you spoke before of leaders among our own people who led the way here. Who were they? What are they doing now?”
“We were told that we might find our own kin here,” Lindo added. “Did the lady only mean we would find each other?”
Olórin’s face was very grave. “Finwë, Ingwë, and Elwë were the three who came with Oromë to see Aman for themselves, and who urged the Eldar to follow them back afterward,” he said. “That was long ago, now, and since Melkor’s release—he feigned his repentance and took the chance he found to sow discord among the Noldor in particular—among your brother Finwë’s people. His sons have quarreled, and when one was exiled, Finwë went with him, feeling that the Valar had overstepped. I cannot say whether or not that is true—I have not been to Tirion of late, and I know very little of what has been happening. But Finwë’s exile is why he was not here to meet you at the doors of Mandos. We had thought to wait a little for peace to settle, perhaps for Fëanáro’s exile to come to its conclusion, before we sent for him. It was quite shocking for you already, returning to life in a strange land, and we thought it would be better if you were able to grow more comfortable, both in life again and here in Valinor, before we gave all three of you such another shock—for he is so much older now, than you are. He is a father and grandfather, you know, as well as king of the Noldor.”
“I don’t care about any of that,” said Urwë. Finwë was alive, and he had grown up to do incredible things, just as Urwë had foreseen. “Where is he? Can we go to him? If the Hunter is gone—”
“You should not leave Lórien yet,” said Olórin. “I will send for Finwë as soon as may be, but I do not know what is happening in the north, in Valmar or by Ezellohar—”
“I don’t care!” Urwë said. “If Finwë is—”
“Urwë.” Olórin reached for his hands, and met his gaze. “I promise, I will take you to your brother as soon as I can. In the meantime, you need to rest and build up your strength. Your spirits do not yet sit as firmly in these bodies as they should. You need time.”
Urwë did not want to wait. He didn’t care about his body or his spirit—he cared about his brother. A Finwë who was older than Urwë or Lindo—older than Morwë, maybe even older than their father—was so hard to imagine, but that didn’t matter. Not if he was there.
News came in bits and pieces, spoken in the strange new tongue of that land. Urwë was learning but not as quickly as he wished. He heard many strange words, sprinkled with ones he knew—he heard Finwë’s name often, and the word for son, or sons. He heard the word Noldor, and the word for east. “What is happening?” he kept asking Olórin, but Olórin only ever shook his head. The news wasn’t real news yet, it was only rumor, and until he knew for sure he said he would not frighten them with mere possibilities.
In the end the real news did not come from Olórin, but from Lady Nienna. She and Estë arrived, clad in grey, Nienna in her veils. Urwë knew her immediately, but if he had been disposed to trust the Valar before, that had been fading quickly. It was they who had released the Hunter, and they who had failed to keep these lands safe as they had promised the Quendi long ago.
Then he learned what had really happened. The Trees were withered—and Finwë slain. “No,” he said, even before Nienna finished speaking. He scrambled to his feet, Lindo beside him. “No, no—that can’t be! He wasn't supposed to be caught! He ran and he escaped! He was safe!”
“Didn’t you know what the Hunter did?” Lindo asked her. “Didn’t you know that he—” He spoke more softly than Urwë, and was shaking all over with the memory of it. “Why did you ever let him go?”
“We do know what he has done,” Nienna said. She sat with her hands clasped loosely on her lap, looking up at them with tears still falling steadily from her eyes. But if someone was always weeping, by their very nature, Urwë wondered if it really meant anything. When he looked at her now all he saw was someone akin to the Hunter, of the same order but clearly not as strong. She went on, “He was not always as he is now. He had a chance to choose otherwise, to come back to us—our brother who we had lost, and mourned, and missed.”
“But he didn’t, and now we must mourn our brother,” Urwë said bitterly.
He and Lindo retreated, away from the other Elves, away from Nienna and Olórin and the other strange spirit-beings. “What do we do now?” Lindo asked. He stumbled a little as they waded into the cool waters of the lake. Tiny silver fish darted around their feet, shimmering in the starlight.
Urwë shook his head, trying to think. It was so hard, past the sick feeling in his stomach and the way his lungs didn’t want to work anymore. Finwë was dead. Finwë had been slain—Melkor, the Hunter, the Dark Rider—he’d gotten to him in the end. “He’ll come back someday,” Urwë said. “We did.”
“I don’t think everyone does, though,” Lindo whispered. “I think—the two of us, I think we were the lucky ones.”
“Finwë will,” Urwë said, unsure if he was trying to convince himself or Lindo. “He wasn’t—he was killed, but he wasn’t taken.” He stared down at the shadows of their reflections in the water and thought of other waters that they would never see again. He thought of their mother, and wondered what had happened to her—if she were here, surely Olórin or Nienna would have told them? His eyes burned, and the tears fell to send tiny ripples across their shadows.
And in the meantime… “I don’t know,” Urwë said finally. “I don’t know what to do.”
“Finwë had a family of his own,” Lindo said after a moment. “Children—but there is trouble among them, Olórin said. Losing Finwë will only make it worse, I fear. They will not want to be burdened with two uncles young enough to be their own nephews, who can barely speak their language.”
Urwë bent down and splashed water over his face. It was cool and fresh—at least that was the same. At least there were really still stars. “We could make our own way,” he said. “It did not sound to me as though there are many Quendi living in the west. If the Dark Rider is really gone, and none of his servants are left in these lands—then there’s nothing to fear.”
“Will they let us?” Lindo asked softly.
“If they’re really as different from—from their brother—as they say they are, why wouldn’t they?”
“Olórin is different,” Lindo said after a moment. “I trust him. He would not tell us to stay here if he did not really think it would help us. I will follow you anywhere, you know that, but let us wait a while. Have you seen anything?”
Lindo was the only person Urwë had ever told of the fact that he saw things, sometimes, before they came to pass. There had been others among their elders with such gifts—but though they were respected they were often burdened, both by the visions and by the expectations that came with them. He did not feel as wise as those elders had been.
“No,” Urwë said after a moment. “The last time I was shown anything—I saw Finwë, leading our people…somewhere. He had a light in his eyes like the Quendi do here. I suppose that vision did come to pass, but I was also…” He turned and stepped back out of the water. They sat on the grassy shore and Lindo leaned against him, steady and warm. “I was so sure that he would be all right. That the Dark Rider would never, ever touch him.” His eyes burned again, and he leaned forward to bury his face in his arms as it really hit him that Finwë was gone. He had been alone; they hadn’t been there, and he had done so many incredible things—and death had been his reward.
Lindo wrapped his arms around Urwë and wept with him. Around them the breeze whispered through the reeds, and a strange bird called out from across the water, plaintive and lonely, as though it mourned with them their brothers and their parents and the lives they should have lived but hadn’t, and everything else that had been stolen from them.
