starspray | Add Another Stone

Fandom: Tolkien
Rating: T
Characters: Finrod, Celegorm, Curufin, Fingon, Turgon
Warnings: (past) Character Death, general Doom of the Noldor, some violence
Summary: The thing about forgiveness, he thought, was that it was so much easier when the object of it was far away—or dead. It was so much easier to let it all go when those responsible were far away and unable to do any more harm.

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The next to return from Mandos was Turgon, and Finrod was at first very glad of it—here was his best friend again, with whom he had shared his childhood, with whom he had once shared everything—all his secrets, his dreams and ambitions. In Turgon’s absence in Valinor he had done his best to offer Idril what support he could, though truthfully she needed very little. She was very happy with Tuor in Avallónë, dwelling by the Sea under the blessing and protection of Ulmo, where their son could visit whenever he could return from his long voyages through the sky. This meant Finrod got to play the role of fond and indulgent elder cousin—something like an uncle, something like a friend.

And at first it was as wonderful as Finrod had hoped—he and Turgon met again in gladness, both eager to return to the easy friendship of their youth, and he was there to see Turgon’s reunion with his daughter. There were tears and there was laughter, and for a little while it seemed that all would be easy.

It was not only death that had parted them, though, and the years between Turgon’s vanishing into Gondolin and Finrod’s death had been long, and many things both good and terrible had happened to change them both. They had each made choices the other did not understand, and instead of trying to find common ground, Turgon was judgmental, and Finrod found himself growing defensive.

Especially when Celegorm’s name was spoken. Turgon had no love at all for the Sons of Fëanor, that had always been true, but the way he looked at Finrod when he questioned his choice to allow both Curufin and Celegorm into his city— “What else was I supposed to do?” Finrod asked. “Do not pretend to know what was happening outside your precious mountains, Turukáno. Do not pretend to understand what the Bragollach wrought, for it touched you not—”

“Touched me not? I had to bury my father—”

“While the world outside fair and green Tumladen was on fire, and some of us could not even retrieve bodies to bury.” Finrod knew he was being cruel—he couldn’t imagine what it would have done to him if Finarfin had ever died—but the words spilled out anyway, each one worse than the last. “At least I know why Celegorm and Curufin did what they did. They did not scheme and plot behind my back for years while I was none the wiser.” Turgon’s face went white. “I did the best I could with what I had—and it was your father who wanted to mount an attack on Angband before the Bragollach. I did not want to because you had taken so many of our people and just vanished—”

“I would have opened my gates, had such an assault been mounted!” Turgon snapped. “I did open them when—”

“How were we to know that? It is my understanding that even your brother did not know you would come until you arrived—how could you expect us to trust that you would just know when you were needed, when we had no way of knowing if you were even still alive?”

“I did what Ulmo—”

“No, you didn’t,” Finrod said flatly. “Not when it mattered.”

At this Turgon’s face went from white to red. “At least I did not abandon my city to kinslayers—”

“No, you just ignored all the signs and messages—”

“I had my daughter to think of—”

“Your daughter knew better than you what was needed! At least she listened—”

“I did what I thought was best for my people. You died in the dark for someone else’s selfish quest—”

“I remembered the Fens of Serech!”

There it was again. The Doom of the Noldor was no longer an active force, no longer dogging their heels, but it seemed they would all be paying the price forever. The stakes were no longer high, and all there was to think about now were their own hurt feelings and their own guilt and anger; there was no enemy to take those feelings out on now—there were only themselves and one another. It did no one any good to have arguments like this, but Finrod had missed his cousin, his friend. He had been half in mourning for him ever since news reached him of Vinyamar’s sudden abandonment, haunted by the unknown. He would have liked to have someone now in whom he could confide at least something of his lingering heartache, but both he and Turgon were cursed with their family’s pride, and as long as Turgon was prepared to look down on him for accepting any Fëanorians into his city, Finrod would defend that choice in spite of his own private regrets—and he would, apparently, find himself voicing the thoughts that he knew were better left unsaid. It had been a mistake in the end, allowing Celegorm and Curufin into Nargothrond, but he also didn’t know what he should have done instead. They had all benefited from it until Beren had come—and higher things than they had begun moving, the tides of fate beginning to change, sweeping them along whether they would or no. The difference between Finrod and Turgon was that Finrod had followed when called. Turgon had refused. They had both died, but Finrod wondered if Turgon would say, as he still felt that he could, that his death had been worth it.

Invoking Serech brought the visit to an abrupt end; Finrod regretted the words—far worse than anything Turgon had said to him—as soon as he said them, but they were both of them too angry and hurt for any apologies to really mean anything. When he left Turgon to his seething, Finrod went home and packed his things and told Merilas not to expect him back any time soon. It had been several years since his unwanted reunion with Curufin, and though he hadn’t seen him since he just knew that he was somewhere nearby, and if things with Turgon were going to be almost as tense—well. Better if he just got out of Tirion entirely, for a little while at least. Once he had found unending delight in roaming and exploring, on both sides of the Sundering Sea. It had been best with a companion, but now Finrod craved solitude.

He passed out of Tirion and into the west, through woods and over streams. He spent days in meadows full of wildflowers, lying among the blossoms and thinking of nothing at all except how beautiful the world was as he watched the clouds drift by overhead, and the butterflies and bees at work closer at hand. He fished in little rivers and ate blackberries off the brambles, sun-warmed and tart, staining his fingers and lips purple. He sang with the larks and raced the wind, climbed hills and cliffs and explored little caves behind waterfalls. It was high summer when he departed from Tirion, with hot days and warm nights, and he spent his evenings watching the fireflies all around him, sometimes taking out his harp to play songs for them to dance to.

If there was no one with whom to share these small joys, there was also no one to witness when he lingered in places for days, even the bright blue summer skies not always enough to lift his spirits out of listlessness, or to see the tears that fell into the pools and the streams where he sat for hours, just watching the water flow by without thinking of anything at all.

No matter how far he went, he couldn’t outrun any of it. Days turned to weeks turned to months, the seasons passing as he roamed far and wide. The thought of returning to Tirion was unbearable, because all of his past was there. He couldn’t imagine meeting Curufin on the street without feeling sick to his stomach. Couldn't imagine a world in which he could be merely polite and distant and cold—as surely Fingon had been imagining, when he had spoken of Finrod’s deserving to be angry. He was Finrod Felagund, friend to all, wise and golden Prince of the Noldor, always kind and always smiling. That was the image he had himself cultivated, and so he had only himself to blame for its restraints. He had wanted them all to forget that he was, too, the Finrod Felagund who had seen what happened in Alqualondë and kept going anyway—unable even now to tell if it was a sense of his own doom that drove him forward or just his own ambition—who then lied to Elu Thingol for years about the manner of the Noldor’s departure from Aman; who had thrown his crown to the floor in a fit of anger, putting a sworn oath to a friend above the duties of a king to his city (whatever he told himself about fate and necessity—Turgon had not been wrong); who had battled Sauron and lost.

Who had, with the last of his strength, summoned all of the rage that had burned within him to tear out a wolf’s throat with his own teeth.

He lay under a large beech tree, watching the bees hover over the eglantine blossoms twining round its trunk, and wondered what people would say if they were reminded of all those ugly things, if they knew what fury still simmered under the surface of his skin, painful but with nothing to relieve it. He wondered if it even really mattered that he did not want to be those things, that he would have been very happy indeed if it could all have been left behind under Tol-in-Gaurhoth (under Minas Tirith, his heart still protested—his own tower that he had built upon Tol Sirion, taken and defiled; never had he expected it to turn into his tomb).

His dreams that night were full of wolves, and he woke up in the mornings with the taste of blood on his tongue and the sound of Beren’s grief echoing in his ears. When he went on he paid little attention to where he put his feet, and halfway through the morning he slipped and tumbled down a steep slope only to land in a thorny bush that caught his hair and clothes and tore into his hands when he tried to free himself. He got out in the end, but his already bad mood had soured even further. He ached all over, and the fact that his hands were now covered in his own blood seemed like the worst of a beginner-poet’s attempts at symbolism.

A stream flowed by the bottom of the slope, and Finrod followed it until he found a cool mossy glade where he could make his camp. As he sat by the stream and dipped his hands in to clean them, watching the blood swirl away before dissolving in the swift-flowing water, he thought he heard movement somewhere nearby. When he looked up, however, there was nothing. Still, the hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he felt that he wasn’t alone. “Who’s there?” he called out. It had been weeks—months, really, though he’d not bothered to keep count—since he had spoken to another person, and days since he’d spoken aloud at all, and his voice was hoarse from disuse. There was no answer.

He pulled a roll of bandages out and examined the cuts on his palms. They were deeper than he’d first thought, and bled sluggishly, and they hurt. He sighed, and unrolled the bandages.

Once his hands were wrapped he pulled the twigs and remaining thorns out of his hair, and then let himself fall back onto the mossy ground. It was slightly damp, but the coolness against his scalp was a nice contrast to the heat of the day—even in the shade of the forest—as he stared up at the scattered bits of blue sky just visible through the canopy high over his head. It was very quiet, but for the distant calls of birds, and the water flowing along over the stones in front of him. After a while he hummed a few snatches of song, but didn’t have the heart for it, so gave up.

That was the point, after all. He didn’t have to pretend, out here. There was no one to see him, bloodied and bruised and covered with dirt, unsmiling and miserable.

When the next day dawned, clouds had moved in. They were not heavy enough to promise rain, but the air was thick and humid. Finrod changed the bandages on his hands and wondered if this was a sign that he should turn back toward home. He kept cringing from the thought, though. He hadn’t yet found whatever it was he was seeking—hadn't yet learned how to rebury all the ugly parts of himself back down deep where they belonged, if he couldn’t purge them entirely, or how to rebuild the walls around his heart that first Curufin and then Turgon had shaken loose, threatening the very foundation of them until all that they were meant to hold inside threatened to come pouring out.

He did not leave the wood, but wandered through the trees, following the stream for a few days before leaving it for a game trail. There were many boulders and rocky outcroppings, mossy and cool, and he climbed up and over them, trying to find something to be happy about.

He had been happy, for such a long time. It wasn’t fair that the existence of one person—not even in his presence!—could be enough to destroy it.

Then he passed around an enormous tree and found a silver-haired figure sitting on one of its roots just ahead of him, and realized that it hadn’t been Curufin’s presence that had troubled him nearly as much as the anticipation of this meeting. Finrod froze, throat growing tight, lungs constricting. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to flee or not—whether he cared that Celegorm might think him the worst of cowards.

Celegorm was dressed for hunting, but though his clothes were travel-stained they were still new—almost as new as his body. He had come from Mandos recently enough that it was still easy to tell, though Finrod had never been able to put into words just what it was that made it so. His quiver and bow sat on the ground beneath him, and he was doing something with strips of leather in his hands, perhaps braiding them together—Finrod couldn’t quite see. Instead of a hunter’s braids, though, his hair was loose, tumbling over his shoulders in gentle waves, making him look very young, as he had looked before war and oaths and doom had hardened and tempered him like steel.

Finrod remembered plunging his fingers into those strands, relishing the silky softness of them as he pulled Celegorm in—and balled his hands into fists. His palms were still sore, but he dug his fingernails into the scabbed-over scratches anyway. “Fancy seeing you out here,” Celegorm said without looking up. He seemed entirely relaxed, leaning back against the trunk with one leg dangling, the other knee bent. “You’re awfully far from home, Prince Findaráto.”

“What are you doing out here?” Finrod bit out.

“Hunting.”

This did not feel like a meeting of mere chance, but at least it gave Finrod an excuse to leave. He turned away, but Celegorm’s voice made him freeze mid-stride. “Don’t you want to know what I’m looking for?”

He didn’t turn around. “What makes you think I care?”

“You.” At this Finrod did turn, not understanding, just in time to see Celegorm jump lightly to the ground. “I was looking for you. It was something of a surprise, you know, to return to Tirion and find you absent—and no one knowing either where you had gone or when you would return.”

“Did it not occur to you,” Finrod said, “that I might not want to be found—and least of all by you?”

“It did.” Celegorm stopped less than an arm’s length away. “But we need to talk.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“Then will you listen—”

“No.” Finrod backed away, but Celegorm matched each one of his steps. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t know why you think I’d want to hear your apologies after I—”

“Who said I was going to apologize?”

The words were like a knife slid between his ribs, so neatly that Finrod almost didn’t feel the pain of it. He moved before his mind could catch up with his body, and the next thing he knew his knuckles hurt and Celegorm was staggering back, cursing as he raised his hand to his nose. When he looked back at Finrod, though, he was grinning, blood smeared over his lips and teeth. “There you are,” he said.

“You—you—” Finrod didn’t know what he wanted to say, but it didn’t matter because he choked on the words anyway. Bad enough that Celegorm was there, but that he had come all this way and not even to apologize—that he felt no remorse at all for what he had done—

“Go on,” Celegorm said. “Hit me again, if you think you can.”

Finrod shoved him, but found his wrist caught in Celegorm’s iron grip so that he was pulled with him. They went down, the fight short but fierce, dirty and violent—but not as violent as it could have been, Finrod realized only once he was on his back in the leaves, wrists pinned by his head, Celegorm’s hair falling around them like a silver curtain. His nose was still bleeding, as was his lip where it had split open, and he would soon have a black eye to go with them, but all the blows that had landed had been Finrod’s. Celegorm hadn’t really tried to hit him at all—it had been Finrod who spilled his own blood, reopening the cuts on his palms in careless fury.

Now he lay still, panting, and stared up into Celegorm’s eyes as the pain of betrayal overtook the rage. “I trusted you,” he whispered.

“I know,” Celegorm said. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“And you—you—”

“I tried to stop you,” Celegorm said. “I tried to warn you—”

“It didn’t have to happen that way,” Finrod said.

“You know as well as I do that it did.”

He did know, but there had long ago ceased being any comfort in it—in the thought that it had all been inevitable, that there wasn’t anything they could have done to change it. “No, it—maybe it wouldn’t have been better, but we could have—at least I wanted to try! You wouldn’t even do that!”

“What would have been the point, if it all just ended in failure anyway?”

“The point would have been the trying.” Finrod didn’t know how to say it better than that. “It mattered. Even when we failed. It mattered to me.”

Celegorm regarded him for a moment. A drop of blood fell from his split-open lip onto Finrod, warm and thick as it slid down his cheek. He realized only then that there were tears on his face too, flowing from his eyes down his temples into his hair. “When last we spoke,” Celegorm said, so quietly that Finrod almost couldn’t hear him even though their faces were mere inches apart, “you told me not to lie—not to pretend we had ever been something we weren’t. But that was the lie, wasn’t it? Every day we woke up in our own beds and dressed carefully to hide the bite marks and bruises, and pretended none of it meant anything—we were lying to each other and to ourselves, and we were both so good at it that I didn’t even realize the truth until it was too late. I'm not going to do that, this time. I’m not going to start this new life with lies.”

“Why come after me, then?” Finrod asked. “Why—if you aren’t sorry—”

“Of course I’m sorry. It would be easier to make a list of the things I don’t regret, than to try to list all that I do—but you, most of all. You’re right. Even if we couldn’t have found another way—I should have tried. I should have listened to you, and I am so, so sorry.”

“Then why did you say—”

“Haven’t you ever been goaded before, Findaráto?”

Finrod wanted to roll his eyes, but he couldn’t look away from Celegorm’s. “I hate you,” he whispered.

“That’s fine,” Celegorm whispered back. “I hate me too.” He released one of Finrod’s wrists to cradle his face instead, thumb brushing over his cheekbone, catching a tear. They had never been gentle with one another. Finrod hadn’t thought he wanted it—not from Celegorm, with his sharp grins and sharper wit, with his knives and tight hunter’s braids and eyes that gleamed in the darkness of Finrod’s bedchamber like something dangerous. It had been Celegorm who looked at Finrod and saw most clearly that he could be dangerous, too—that he too had sharp edges, though they weren’t the honed blades of Celegorm’s but something more jagged, broken and irreparable—and with whom it had been, paradoxically, safe to let those edges show, away from the glittering smiles and polite diplomacy of his court.

They weren’t at war, anymore, though. Mandos was supposed to be a place of healing, where broken things were put back together and rough edges smoothed over. Valinor was meant to be a place of peace. Finrod wanted to be in truth the person everyone saw when they looked at him—he did not want to be what he still was, did not want all this anger and hurt still roiling inside him. There should not be a space in this new life of his for it or for Celegorm, who was still as wild and hard as he had ever been, except—

Except he had just done his best to beat Celegorm halfway back to Mandos, and he was still looking at him like he was something beautiful and precious, touching his face with the gentlest fingers that were still smeared with dirt and blood, balancing perfectly between sharp and soft in a way Finrod resented and envied and wanted in equal measure. “I hate you,” he said again, and reached up to pull Celegorm down. Their lips met in a messy, bloody kiss. Celegorm slid his fingers up into Finrod’s hair, grip tightening swiftly, all softness gone, replaced by burning desire that felt more like need than want. Finrod felt like he’d been starving for centuries without realizing it, and someone had just given him a piece of the sweetest bread. Like he had been dying of thirst, and finally found a well of cool water. Like he had been drowning and was only now able to reach the surface to take a breath of air. It was such a relief that it was easy, in the end, to just give himself over and stop thinking about anything else.