starspray | Til We're on the Other Side - Three

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: 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 / Previous Chapter

So listen to the darkness, listen to the patterns
Listen to the breathing sea
Listen to the colors, carry them inside you
They will bring you back to me
Listen to the sirens, listen to the heartbeat
Listen to the turning tide
Listen to the murmurs, carry them inside you
‘til we’re on the other side
In the breaking light
- “The Breaking Light” by Vienna Teng

- -

Eventually, the light returned—or at least new ones were made. First the Moon, soft and silver, then the Sun, blazing and warm. With the first sunrise it was as though the whole world breathed a sigh of relief. Urwë realized only then just how worried Olórin and his folk had been, for Olórin came to them with much easier smiles and an eagerness to teach them whatever they wished to learn. Before, his lessons—mostly in language and tales of their people’s history—had felt half-hearted, rote, something he did because they needed to fill the time and because it was his duty.

Now that the lands were safe and no longer dark, Olórin brightened too. He remained kind but he also began to laugh more, to tease them and make jokes, and Urwë found himself laughing with him even when he didn’t mean to.

Not everything was so bright, though. Word trickled in from the outside world of the rebellion of the Noldor, of nearly all Finwë’s children marching away east—and of the violence that broke out in Alqualondë, so that they left Valinor not only angry and grieving, but laid under a heavy doom as well.

Even if they did desire to go to Tirion, there was no one left to meet them. Just as well that neither Urwë nor Lindo wanted to turn eastward. Now that there was light again, and the world seemed to be opening up like a flower in the morning, and fear was at last ebbing away, Urwë was eager to be gone. Lindo’s eyes too brightened whenever they spoke of their plans, at the thought of seeing new lands and going where few—perhaps none—had walked before. When they told Olórin what they intended, he smiled at them and promised to make sure they had what they needed when they were ready to depart.

Before they left, Nienna came to them again—with more ill news. They knew by now the fraught tale of Finwë and his wives, of Míriel who had faded and died and of Indis who yet lived. Lindo had disappeared for three days after learning of the judgment passed that would keep Míriel in Mandos forever, and Urwë had felt the unfairness of it too. What then would become of those whose spouses had married again before they ever knew of Mandos—before anyone could have known that death was not the end? They had not quite dared to ask Nienna, and Olórin had not had answers—but it was hard to be angry with him over it, when it had not been his decision and he was so willing to admit that he had no real explanations. Now, Nienna told them the newest ill that had come of the judgment.

Finwë would not return. He had fought the Enemy hard, but he had been alone, and his death had been swift but not clean, or painless. It would be years uncounted before he would heal enough for it to be possible to return—but he had also chosen not to, so that according to the statute Míriel might return to life herself.

Urwë couldn’t be angry at Finwë for such a choice—it was made out of love, and his brother had always loved both freely and fiercely—but he could not do more than bow his head to Nienna as she took her leave, gritting his teeth against the furious words that wanted to escape. If the Valar had not passed the statute to begin with, it would not be a matter of if but when both Finwë and Míriel returned, and Urwë did not think he would ever forgive them that, no matter how good their intentions or how kind they otherwise were.

It also meant there was nothing at all to keep them in the east. West of Lórien the lands were wide open and pathless, at times roamed by Elves but never settled. They passed out of the Gardens of Lórien into the pathless wilderness of Valinor, crossing wide open grasslands and through forests both young and old beyond reckoning. Sometimes they stopped in one place for a year, perhaps two or ten; most often they kept moving, eager to see all there was to see now that there was nothing holding them back. Grief shadowed them, for those they would never see again, but Urwë was glad to follow Lindo into new delights, making up names for the new flowers and creatures and trees they came across, and naming the rivers and streams that they followed back to their headwaters in hills and mountains. They abandoned Quenya for their own tongue, for the most part, though as the years passed they met other travelers—wandering Vanyar, mostly—and so it was impractical to forget it entirely.

Then, little by little, other Avari began to venture west.

These Avari were those who remembered the Great Journey and who had chosen to remain behind—or their descendants—unlike Urwë and Lindo who had adopted the name later, as a rejection of the Valar only after they found themselves in Valinor. The world had grown only a little less dangerous after Melkor’s imprisonment, for he had had many servants—and the world itself was not without its own dangers. Those who returned to life were not resentful of being forced to come to a place they had turned from, exactly, but they had no desire to rejoin the Eldar in the east. Those who had been born after the Journey and the sunderings were excited for new lands to explore, but felt little kinship with the Eldar and so rarely ventured back there. Many took up wandering. Others settled, building sturdy homes of wood and stone, and tilling fields, and trying to rebuild something of what they had lost.

Eventually, Urwë and Lindo agreed that they were weary of wandering, and joined with one of the towns, building a house of their own near the edge of the woods on its border and watching it grow, slowly, from a hamlet to a small but thriving city. No one knew who they were, there, except that they had been born beside Cuiviénen and come from Mandos after the Darkening. Urwë did not see a need to tell anyone that they had come at the very moment of the Darkening. No one knew, either, that they were kin to Finwë of the Noldor, or his infamous sons and grandsons, and both he and Lindo were glad to keep that a secret, too.

Olórin came to visit them at times, and both Lindo and Urwë eventually gained a reputation for wisdom because of it, for Olórin himself was wise and kind, and always willing to teach anything to anyone who asked him. He brought news, too, of the happenings in the east—on both sides of the Sundering Sea. If much of it was difficult to hear, especially after the War of Wrath came and went and it became known that all but one of Finwë’s children and grandchildren who had left for Middle-earth had died or been lost—well, Urwë grew skilled at hiding it until he was alone with his brother, when they both wept for the nieces and the nephews they had never known, and for the loss of all that Finwë had gained.

When he learned that Melkor—Morgoth, the Hunter, the Dark Rider—had been thrown beyond the Gates of Night, never to return, Urwë took his bow and emptied his quiver over and over into a straw-stuffed target he set in a clearing deep in the woods, until it was shredded beyond repair and he could no longer lift his arms. When he turned away at last he found Lindo waiting. “If they had done that before—” Urwë began.

“I know,” Lindo said.

They spoke no more of it. They rarely even spoke of Finwë these days. It was too hard. More often than not his name stuck in Urwë’s throat, and so he had stopped trying.

Time continued to pass. Lindo became a mighty singer among the Quendi of the west. Urwë threw himself into learning the land, to raising horses and hounds, to leading the great hunts held in the autumn to prepare for winter, and in learning the tongues of all the birds that he could. Sometimes he dreamed—flickering visions of a hazy future, of people he did not know but who shared the shape of Finwë’s chin or the silver-grey of his eyes, but he never knew what any of them meant, whether their futures, in or out of Mandos, were dark or bright.

Olórin came to visit one last time to tell them that he was leaving. “Leaving where?” Lindo asked.

“East. Across the Sea—a handful of us are being sent. I do not particularly want to go, but both Manwë and Nienna have ordered it.” Olórin smiled when Urwë bristled. “No, don’t get angry, Urwë. I know your feelings, but they would not ask such a thing of me if they did not think I was not needed. I am not entirely willing but I am not unwilling, either, if you understand me. But I do not know when I will return, or if I will return, and so this may be farewell—”

Urwë blinked, and in the second that his eyes were closed he saw shadows and flames, and out of them rising a brilliant white light—like the star of hope, but brighter. “Farewell for now,” he said as he opened his eyes to see Olórin sitting before him, silver-haired and soft-eyed just as he had always been. The light in him remained faint and shimmering, far away and yet unveiled.

Olórin blinked at him, and then smiled. “I hope so!” he said. “Farewell for now, then.”

“You really think he’ll come back?” Lindo asked as they watched Olórin walk away down the road a little while later. Dusk was coming on, and the first stars glimmered in the east. One of them was the star of hope, the jewel that their nephew had made long ago.

Urwë glanced at it and then away. “Yes, I do.”

Time kept passing, the years rolling one into another in a blur of seasons and journeys and sunrises and sunsets. Urwë had long ago stopped counting them. They heard distant rumors of the return of those who had perished long ago, as Mandos began to empty a little at a time. Finwë’s children were all coming back, but there was as little reason to seek them out now as there had been when Urwë and Lindo had first come to these lands. Urwë remembered how strange and hard it was to return to life, and though they were returning to lands they had once known they were returning to find them changed; they had enough to worry about without two strange kinsmen appearing without warning.

“Someday, though,” Lindo said one afternoon a few months after word came that Fingolfin had returned and taken up the crown in Tirion again. “We should go to Tirion someday. I would see where he lived. I would—I would hear him spoken of by those who knew and loved him best. Because we didn’t, you know. We didn’t know him as he was here. After he grew up. All there is now is…story. Legends and titles. None of that is really him.”

“I don’t know if I could bear it,” Urwë admitted quietly.

“I couldn’t, if I went alone,” said Lindo. “But I do want to—to have something of him, to walk where he walked and to see the things he made, the city that he helped to build. It’s more than we can ever have of Morwë.”

There were many in Mandos, Olórin had once told them, who might never heal enough to return to life. There were yet others who had either chosen or had been unable to answer the call upon their deaths. Which was their brother’s fate, or their father’s, or anyone else they had known—it was impossible to say. They were lucky enough, Urwë thought bitterly, to know where Finwë was, even if they would never see him again.

When Olórin finally returned to see them on an afternoon late in the summer, Urwë almost did not recognize him. That made Olórin laugh—and that sounded the same, though his voice was different, gruffer, more befitting his guise of an old bearded man. His eyes were dark but glinted with the same light that Urwë remembered—but brighter—and he wore too a ring, gold set with a deep red stone, that was an odd counterpoint to his slightly tattered grey cloak and blue broad-brimmed hat. “Olórin!” he exclaimed when Lindo greeted him. “I have not heard that name in a very long time. I am called Mithrandir these days, or perhaps Gandalf—other names I gained, too, in my travels, but those are the two that I have brought back with me.”

“When did you return—Mithrandir?” Lindo asked. “Yes, that suits you better now than Olórin would.”

Olórin—Mithrandir—grinned at them. “It certainly feels as though it does!” he said. “I was Gandalf the Grey for a very long time, and then circumstances changed, and I was Gandalf the White—but I’ve taken up the grey again, as you can see. I much prefer it. As for when—I returned with the other Ringbearers—with Elrond and Galadriel, and with Frodo and Bilbo. I’ve been busy—and I also had a bit of recovering to do myself, for I was quite weary by the time I took ship at last—but I am sorry not to have come visit you sooner.”

“That’s all right,” said Urwë as Lindo got out cups for tea. “It isn’t as though we’re going anywhere.”

“I hope you are going to the great feast next summer.”

Urwë and Lindo exchanged a glance. Messages had come from Ingwë, and from the great Vanyarin singer Elemmírë, with invitations to all and promises of celebration and cheer—a reuniting of all the kindreds, which Urwë supposed was a nice idea, though he remained skeptical of its success. “We hadn’t discussed it,” Lindo said finally. He had declined to join with the other singers who planned to participate in Elemmírë’s plans for a great song cycle, though he was one of the greatest singers among them. Urwë had not seriously thought of going at all.

“Everyone will be there,” said Mithrandir. “And that includes your brother’s family—all of them, from his own sons and daughters to his several-times great-grandchildren. And,” he added, with a glint in his eyes, “there is to be a smaller gathering sometime during the larger, just for the House of Finwë. It is being planned by his grandsons Findekáno and Findaráto. I remember your reasons for keeping your distance long ago, but they no longer hold. They are your brother’s family, and that makes them your family. A loud and chaotic family, rough around the edges to be sure, but no family of this size could be otherwise. Your great-nephew Macalaurë will be one of the singers performing at the feast as well. He is said to be one of the mightiest singers of all the kindreds of the Elves, named only after Daeron of Doriath—who will also be there, for where one of them is to be found these days, the other is never far away.”

“Maybe,” Lindo said after a moment, which likely meant yes, though now that it came to it Urwë felt as strong a desire to stay away as he felt a longing to go.

“One of the songs Macalaurë is to sing is for his grandfather,” Mithrandir said, speaking more gently—sounding a little more like his old self from when they had first met him. “A song I think you would both wish to hear—and hear from him, and this will be the only chance for that, for he has said he will not perform it again after next summer.” When they still hesitated he asked, “What holds you back?”

“Nothing,” Lindo said after a moment. “Only old grief—old wounds that neither Mandos nor Lórien could heal.”

“We are at the start of a new Age, you know,” said Mithrandir. “It is an age of healing—of reuniting, of reconciliation. I have been watching the House of Finwë find all these things. I admit, I have a particular fondness for Macalaurë—Maglor, as I have known him—for we met in Middle-earth, and he is very dear to Elrond. His road has been a long and hard one, back from the very brink of utter despair. You do not want to miss this performance, not when the song is one as close to his heart as this one. He loved his grandfather dearly.”

Mithrandir left after a few days, claiming to be needed elsewhere. Once he had gone, Lindo turned to Urwë. “We should go.”

“Maybe.”

“Olórin has never tried to convince us of anything that he did not truly think would help us,” Lindo said.

“That was a long time ago, when we were young and didn’t know anything.”

“So?” Lindo put his hand on Urwë’s arm. “It will be hard,” he said softly, looking up into Urwë’s face, “to see the traces of him in all their faces, but is that not better than never seeing anything of him at all? If the discord the Enemy sowed between them all is passed, then we might meet them in—in grief, but maybe it need not stay that way. At least there likely won’t be anger. We’ve heard the stories. They are all incredible. As incredible as he was.”

“Some of them have also been terrible.”

“If they were still, I do not think Olórin would try so hard to get us to go. I have heard the tales of Maglor—of he who harps on long forgotten shores, whose voice is like the sea. Who was long thought lost to us all forever. If even he has returned, then…”

“Don’t, Lindo.”

“I would at least like to hear this nephew of ours, even if we choose in the end not to meet the rest of them, to hear if he sounds like Finwë.”

“We have not heard Finwë’s voice since he was a child,” Urwë said, voice cracking a little on Finwë’s name.

“Then perhaps we might hear something of what he sounded like when he was grown. Even if we don’t—what we spoke of before holds true. What better chance will we have than this?”

Two days after Mithrandir left them rainclouds suddenly blew in, bringing a gentle shower that made Urwë think, for some reason, of tears. The music of the raindrops around them reminded him of the quiet waters of Ekkaia, which he had visited several times over the long years. Yet the lamentation in the Music was laced through with hope like a thread of shining gold, and beside him Lindo paused, turning east, frowning a little. “There is a voice on the wind,” he said. “Can you hear it?”

“No.”

“It almost…almost I would say it sounds like Finwë—what I have imagined Finwë might have sounded like, anyway.” Lindo smiled a little ruefully and shook his head. “Likely it is only my imagination, because he is so much on my mind of late.”

Summer passed into autumn and then into spring, and as summer drew on they prepared to depart. Lindo had agreed on behalf of both of them to travel with the other singers from their city, though he still refused to take part in the performances. Urwë likewise had practiced and sparred with the spear dancers, but though he had devised many of the steps himself he had no desire to show off for their eastern kindred. He was going because Lindo wanted to go and he would not deny his brother anything—but he did not want to be known, not outside their own people; he did not want the attentions of Ingwë or even Elu Thingol, and certainly not those of the Valar.

The feast was held farther west from Valmar than Urwë had expected, on the rolling plains near a wide lake, beside which a large stage had been erected, and all around it a veritable city of tents and semi-permanent structures. It was all easily built up and easily taken down, and strings of gems and crystals had been hung so that it all glimmered in the bright sunshine.

They were all greeted warmly by Ingwion and by Elemmírë, who was smaller than Urwë had expected, but with a presence about her that more than made up for it. Urwë and Lindo hung back, not being among those there to perform, and so they were free to observe all the others who were already there. Daeron of Doriath was easy to spot, when he turned in response to someone hailing him. He was dark-haired and dark-eyed, with an easy smile and ready laughter. Beside him was another, also dark-haired though with strands of white threaded through it that did not seem like the natural white or silver that some sported, and his face was more lined than was usual among the Elves. A scar stood out on his cheek, and he also wore a long-sleeved tunic rather than the shorter or sleeveless styles of the other Noldor around them. He also turned when someone called to him—answering to the name Maglor.

“So that is our nephew,” Urwë murmured to Lindo.

“Mithrandir said he walked a very long road to get here,” Lindo said. They watched a cat jump up into Maglor’s arms, and heard his laughter as he scratched her behind the ears. “He sounds like—” He sounded a little like their father. So did his cousin, golden-haired Finrod Felagund who seemed eager to make friends with everyone with whom he came into contact.

Urwë and Lindo kept their distance. The air of excitement and celebration was impossible to deny, and the bulk of the people had not even arrived yet. As Urwë wandered through the tent city he was greeted warmly by everyone he met. There was no sign in either the Noldor or the Vanyar of that faint sense of superiority that had colored his occasional interactions with them over the long years. Perhaps everyone was merely too excited, or perhaps Ingwë had been doing more than Urwë had thought to change attitudes.

A very large party arrived to great fanfare after a successful hunt, bringing with it a niece, bright and fierce, and perhaps a pair of nephews? Urwë was not sure who they were, but they greeted Maglor with all the deep affection of close kin.

Over those weeks, Urwë heard a great deal of Maglor’s singing—and Finrod’s. They both had fair voices, and both were powerful beyond nearly everyone else there, though Maglor was the greater, Urwë thought. His talents had been honed over many years, and it was clear that music ran deep in his spirit, as much a part of him as his heart and his lungs. In this he was very like Daeron, who brought the whole of the tent city to a standstill when he raised his voice. When they sang together it was as though the whole world paused to listen.

The great and mighty lords and ladies and kings and queens and princes, all arrived at the same time to great fanfare, from the east and south and west. Urwë saw then for the first time all of Finwë’s children—Fingolfin who held the throne in Tirion, and his brother Finarfin with the same golden hair as Finrod, and their sisters Findis and Lalwen, all resplendent in jewels and gold and silver. Fëanor, the eldest—and not the king, which Urwë found curious considering all the tales of the Noldor’s history—was with them too, as alike to Fingolfin in face as Urwë and Lindo were to one another, and in all five of them Urwë could see Finwë—in the way they held themselves, in the shape of a jaw or the glint of silver-grey in Fëanor’s eyes. They were accompanied by all of their children and grandchildren, each equally impressive in their own right.

“I do not think either Indis or Míriel are here,” Urwë said to Lindo later that evening, when they were alone again. “Is that not odd?”

“I have heard it said that Míriel does not come often among the Elves,” said Lindo. “But I would have thought she would come this summer, if it is all as important as we have been told.”

“And Indis is Ingwë’s sister, is she not?” said Urwë. “What would keep her away?”

“Who knows? The ways of the Vanyar and Noldor both are strange.”

At last, a day came when no one of the House of Finwë was anywhere to be found. Mithrandir came to find Urwë and Lindo in the afternoon while they watched Elemmírë and a choir out of Valmar perform. “Are you ready?” he asked.

“Do they know we’re coming?” Lindo asked.

“No!” Mithrandir laughed as he turned to lead them away from the encampment. “They’ll all be very surprised.”

“But is that—”

“Trust me, Lindo—all will be well!”

He led them around the lake and to a small wood, where a path had been marked by bright ribbons tied to tree branches. As they passed beneath the trees Urwë could hear voices ahead, and the occasional burst of laughter. After a little while he saw the trees open up beyond a thicket of honeysuckle, where all of Finwë’s children had gathered, on chairs and on blankets, or just sitting on the grass. A pair of young children ran around, and he heard at least one even younger child as well, starting to fuss before being quickly cheered. Lindo reached for his hand, and they slowed their steps, letting Mithrandir go ahead.

A woman’s voice exclaimed suddenly, in the accents of one who had been born in Middle-earth, “Gandalf! What are you doing here? This is a private family party, and you weren’t invited!” It almost sounded rude, but for the undercurrent of laughter in her voice. As Mithrandir replied in similar tones, Urwë glimpsed the woman standing up among the rest, fists on her hips and an amused look on her face, her silver hair caught up in braids around her head like a crown.

“—two invitations went astray in the planning, and I was only showing them the way. I do apologize for their late arrival.”

A hush fell over the clearing, and Lindo glanced at Urwë. Past Mithrandir they saw everyone looking at each other, confusion written across their faces. Mithrandir then turned back to them, his expression softening as he said very quietly, “I did make you a promise, long ago, if you remember—and I am very pleased to have been able at last to keep it.”

“What promise?” Urwë asked, but Mithrandir only winked and stepped back to allow them room to pass into the clearing—and then his words became clear.

Sitting in the midst of the gathering was—almost Urwë thought it was somehow Lindo, except that Lindo was right beside him, suddenly gripping his arm with both hands hard enough to leave bruises. He blinked several times, unable to really believe what he was seeing—who he was seeing.

Finwë rose to his feet, eyes going very wide. He was very newly-come back to life—Urwë could see it in him, in the way his spirit still shone just a little too brightly under his skin, the way he moved as though his body didn't quite feel like his own yet. His eyes shone with the memory of Treelight, the same silver-grey of Urwë’s own. His hair was long and dark, half up in braids to keep it out of his face, and the rest falling over his shoulders, thick and shining like a spill of black ink in the sunshine. In the seconds before he had seen them, he had seemed entirely at ease, entirely happy, as though this clearing in this forest was the one place in the whole world that he most wanted to be.

“Finwë?” Lindo gasped, finding his voice first, and in his shock he slipped back into the tongue of their youth. “But you were—we were told you were gone forever—”

“I thought you were gone forever!” Finwë cried. He crossed the clearing at a run, crashing into first Lindo and then Urwë, weeping openly. “How is this possible?” His voice was different, deep and resonant—he was grown, of course, not the slender youth that Urwë had last seen vanishing through the trees in the dark. Now he was as tall as Urwë was, broad-shouldered and strong—a king, a father, a grandfather, all the things that Urwë had hoped he would be, and he was alive. “How can you be here?”

“How can we—how can you be?” Lindo exclaimed. “We were told you had chosen to remain in Mandos forever—”

“I did. Then the Valar changed their minds. But you were—they said, when I first came, that you were too…” Finwë kept touching their faces, staring at them like he didn’t dare look away. “I can’t believe you’re here. You’re really here. But is it only you? Is—is Morwë, or…?”

“No,” Urwë choked out, finally finding his own voice. “No, only us. But—Finwë—Finwë, you were supposed to run.”

Finwë smiled at him, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “I thought of it,” he said. “I thought of you, when I heard him coming. But—my grandsons were out there in the dark. How could I give them less of a chance than you gave me?”

“We’re so proud of you,” Lindo said, reaching up to take Finwë’s face in his hands, wiping away the tears with his thumbs. “We’ve missed you so much, baby brother.”

“I’ve missed you every day. All my life—and in Mandos. I—” His voice broke.

“Oh, Finwë. I’m sorry. We’re so sorry.” Lindo embraced him, and Urwë wrapped his arms around both of them, hiding his face in Finwë’s hair as tears he’d never thought he’d get to shed began to escape. There was so much to say, so many questions to ask and to answer, but that would all come later. There were nephews and nieces to meet—generations of them—and for the first time Urwë felt excited for it rather than reluctant. Here was at last just what Mithrandir had spoken of—an end to grief, an end to partings, tears of sorrow turned to tears of joy instead.

Finwë lifted his head and reached for Urwë, pressing their foreheads together. “No more running,” he said.

“No,” Urwë agreed. “No more running.”