I own nothing.
At their coming, they blocked out the light of Anor as she set, for those who lived east of the Pelóri could not make out the setting of Anor from that horizon. Some said they were like a massive forest advancing across the sea, or a vast moving plateau of sable and gold. Elwing would sooner liken them to an angry storm cloud, a herald of worse yet to come. She did not see what else they could be.
When the vast fleet of the Númenoreans was first spotted on the eastern horizon, Olwë sent a messenger north up the coast to the Sindarin city of New Sirion, urging them to evacuate. Flee to the mountains or come to Alqualondë, Olwë advised; the city the Sindar built could not repel an attack of that size, and was not well-fortified enough to withstand a siege.
There were some, a little over half of those living in Elwing's city, who did not wish to go to Alqualondë. They did not care that it was better-fortified than New Sirion; it was closer to the fleet of the Númenoreans, and was more likely to be attacked. Those, Melian led into the mountains. Elwing took the more-willing remainder south down the beach to Alqualondë, and they were quartered in temporary lodgings, or went to stay with any kin they might have had in the city. This applied also to Elwing.
"Why have they come, do you suppose?" Elwing heard Nendil, the elder of Olwë's two sons, whisper, as though he was a child and not one of the two Lords of Tol Eressëa—Olwë had urged his sons to evacuate as well.
"Hush!" Ránelindë his mother hissed, adjusting her stole for what was likely the thousandth time that hour. There were lines furrowed so deep into her brow that Elwing expected them to start bleeding at any moment.
The King and Queen of the Falmari, their two sons, and the Queen of the Sindar were all cooped up in the highest tower that could be found in Alqualondë, at the heart of the royal complex. Elwing sat at the edge of the room on a cushioned chair, feeling as though a wall of invisible brick and mortar, time and distance was separating her from them. She felt as a child, awkward and ungainly and unwelcome. And frightened, and beginning to feel the hot, sticky sickness of commingled anger and shame in her belly.
Olwë stood at the open window (the smell of smoke was sneaking into the room), his hands on the sill, his back to the room. He had made nary a sound since they took up this vigil. Elwing could not begin to guess what he was thinking.
She slid out of her chair and crossed the room to stand at Olwë's side, staring out of the window at the Númenorean armies as they marched through the pass of the Calacirya. They look like a swarm of insects, all in gold and sable, ready to devour all that lies in their paths. Is this truly what the Dúnedain of Númenor have become?
"Why have they not attempted to take Alqualondë, do you think?" Elwing whispered, barely daring to raise her voice to audible levels. She knew it was silly, but she felt as if she spoke too loudly, even in her own quiet voice, the Númenoreans would hear her and try to take her captive. Though the Edhil no longer journeyed to Númenor, the birds of the Undying Lands still made the journeys, and the more intelligent of their number told Elwing that the Dúnedain were bent on conquest. Why then should they bypass Alqualondë, the stronghold of the Falmari?
Olwë started and stared down at her, brow furrowed, much the same as his wife's. Elwing realized that he'd either been barely aware or completely unaware of her presence until she spoke, and opened her mouth to repeat what she had said, but he held up his hand. "I heard you, Elwing." He cast his gaze back out the window, an expression caught between worry and grim satisfaction warring on his face. "It's the Noldor they want. The Lindar may have been the ones who most often visited Númenor's shores, but it's the Noldor who feature most prominently in their legends. It was the Noldor, after all, whom they knew in drowned Beleriand." His tone was especially bitter, and Elwing would hazard a guess that he was thinking that the Noldor faced yet another consequence of the massacre of his people and the theft of his ships in what was marching on their city now.
Elwing hoped that the Noldor were able to evacuate Tirion in time, if only because Olwë's daughter Eärwen lived there, as did Idril and Tuor (Though Elwing did not get one with the latter two as well as she used to). Otherwise, she did not care much about what happened to the Noldor. They were her trading partners, it was true, but if the Noldor were scattered across the continent, maybe some of their craftsmen would come to live in New Sirion. Elwing had only once ever been to Tirion, when she and Eärendil were called to make a choice on the state of their mortality. It had been more than three thousand years, but she still bore the Noldor little love, and cared nothing for their city. Perhaps in another three thousand years, Elwing would feel differently, but she doubted it.
"Why are they doing this?" Elwing heard Olwë mutter. "Do they not know their own danger?"
"They probably do not," Elwing remarked sourly. "They are a rash people. If they see something they want, they reach out to take it with no regard for the consequences of their actions."
He laughed loudly, and everyone jumped, but Olwë did not seem to notice. "Completely unlike you, then."
Completely unlike me?
Since she had come to live in the Undying Lands, Olwë had been of great help to Elwing, far more than Arafinwë or Ingwë. It had been stonemasons of the Falmari who had built the tower that she had first lived in, and when the Sindar began to flock to her, it had been Falmari stonemasons as well who built the first few buildings of what would become a great city. Olwë provided aid and advice to the Queen of the Sindar, without ever asking for anything in return. Apart from one incident a few centuries back, when he seemed to think that perhaps the Sindar were planning to supplant the Falmari, relations had always been friendly.
There were times when Elwing wondered if Olwë would have been so supportive had they not been kin. Once she had met him herself, Melian said that Olwë was much like his brother, and yet unlike him as well—"more temperate in mood, if you understand me." Elwing wondered sometimes how Olwë would have reacted had a Sinda who was not his kin had raised a city so close to his own. But whatever the reason behind it, she had his support and acceptance.
I think that they are more like me than you suppose.
Olwë seemed unable to bear the sight outside the window any longer; he pressed his hand on top of Elwing's shoulder briefly, and moved away. The four of them, parents and sons, sat close together in silence, faces taut and pale. Elwing wondered if they worried for the one missing from their number, and wondered if Arafinwë would evacuate his city, or try to defend it when the Númenoreans knocked upon his gate.
Their King, especially, is very like me, or me as I was. My blood has run true in some respects, it seems.
The Edhil no longer visited Númenor, but the birds did. So too had the Eagles that Manwë had sent in what was frankly a pitiful attempt to cow the Dúnedain into penitence. The Eagles of Manwë were stronger than any of their race, but even they needed to rest after so long in flight, and they often took their rest in Elwing's city, conversing with she who understood their native speech.
It was not that she particularly wanted to hear any more stories of decadence and debauchery from the island kingdom. It was not that she wanted to hear tales of the King's idolatry, his blasphemy, the great evils he did and allowed to be done. But Elwing asked after those tales as though possessed. She did not wish to know, but she needed to know, and the Eagles told her all that they knew in return.
She was not proud to be the foremother of Ar-Pharazôn of Númenor. Her descendant rode at the head of that vast invading army, and likely as not, many of Elwing's other descendants marched in that army as well. She knew the stories. She knew that he had sought dominion over that which was not his. She knew that he had forced himself on she who should have been the rightful Queen. She knew of the persecution, the worship of Morgoth. She knew of the most monstrous sins of all, the burning of Nimloth the White Tree, and the sacrifice of so many on Sauron's altar.
Whenever you saw something you wanted, you reached out and took it, didn't you? And an idea, a concept, it consumed you utterly, didn't it? Consumed you so utterly that you would do anything to achieve it, no matter how monstrous.
How had it come to this?
Elwing tried to imagine what Númenor had been like when Elros ruled. She had never laid eyes on the island, and though she had heard many stories from the Falmari, rarely did Elwing take story as fact. She tried to imagine what it had been like when her son ruled. Elwing conjured up a place in her mind that was rather like Alqualondë—fair and merry, full of singers and joy and simple wisdom.
Elros… Elwing had no idea what Elros must have looked like. For her son, she conjured a face halfway between her own and Eärendil's. Her colorings, but with Eärendil's features. He must have been a great ruler, Númenor's founders, for even the blasphemous Kings who rejected their roots revered him.
What must his wife and children have been like? The name of her son's wife was lost to history, never recorded by chronicles who only cared about women as regards to whose daughter, sister, wife or mother they were. The names of his children were recorded, however, Vardamir, Tindómiel, Manwendil, Atanalcar. Elwing's grandchildren, their names were recorded, but there was nothing of what they must have been like in body, mood and mind. Nothing to hint how the line of Kings could have come from Elros to Pharazôn.
There was also nothing said of Míriel the Queen, called Ar-Zimraphel by the one who had so foully claimed her throne, her birthright, her body. There was nothing said of her except whose daughter she was, and whose wife she was, and that she had no sons to her name. Her story was still being written, though somehow, Elwing suspected that it would be over soon now. Míriel was Elwing's descendant as well, a daughter of the line of Elros. How was she in body and mind? Did she cleave still to the Valar, accepting death as a gift given to the Edain rather than a curse? Or was she of the same stock as the usurper of what was hers? Did she too wish to escape death?
You have come to the deathless lands seeking immortality for yourself. You seek to conquer death because you fear it. I know you, son of mine. I cleaved to a jewel because I was afraid to face what I was without it. I cleaved to the Silmaril because I knew that I was nothing without it, because I knew that it was not a part of me, but I was a part of it. It was more important than me. It had more value than me, or anything else. I loved it more than I loved anything else, loved it more than I should have.
I chose death over separation from my jewel; separation found me anyways, so it didn't matter in the end. But when I was asked to chose, mortality or immortality, I chose the latter. I chose because of Lúthien. I chose because I was afraid.
Of what was I afraid? So many things, my foolish, grasping son. You see, Lúthien gave up everything to be with Beren, and ultimately, she had to give up her family, her friends, everyone she had ever known for the entirety of her life, unto the end of time. No one could have ever convinced me to do the same for Eärendil. I knew that he wished for mortality, and I knew that the Powers would not permit us to choose differently. I loved him, but not enough for that. I did not love him enough to be Lúthien.
You. Ar-Pharazôn, or Tar-Calion in the Sindarin you so long ago left behind. My blood has run true in you. Everything in me that is obsessive and fearful has found its way to you. You are afraid of death. You do not understand it, and you believe that you deserve better, so you fear it, and disguise that fear as hatred. Sauron offered you a ghost of a chance of avoiding it, and you seized upon it, and it consumed you and became your master. You are no longer King. You are a man leashed and chained, and Sauron the Accursed holds your leash, and bids you do his bidding, and you do not even notice that you are no longer master of yourself. You do not even notice that you have not been King of your kingdom for a very long time.
And now, you have come to ruin. Do you believe that the Powers will tolerate your impertinence, my doomed son? They are fickle, the Powers. They did not care enough to deliver you from Sauron's whispers. They sent no sign to you saying that he was untrustworthy. But they will punish you anyways, now that you have so flagrantly disobeyed their edicts. Now that you have sullied their pure lands with your smoke-stained boots, your weapons of war, your very presence, they will tolerate you no more. They will punish you, and I do not see how any of the people you have led to ruin will be spared.
Perhaps I finally show some hint of foresight after millennia of life, but I do not think that Míriel will be spared either. The woman you took, the woman whose throne you usurped and whose body you took as your own, do you ever feel remorse for what you did to her? Do you ever pity her? Do you ever look at your 'wife' and think that you stole everything from her? Now you steal her very life from her, though you do not know it yet.
I am not sure what happened, my doomed son. Númenor seemed so bright. My son ruled the land, and there was so much hope. The son I never knew was born free of my curse, but time wore on, and the line of the Kings waned and grew rotten. You were no longer content with what you had. My blood became dominant within you, it must have. It's amazing, isn't it, how easily we slip into madness?
The world shook. All the people of Aman screamed. Alone among them, Elwing was silent.
The world shook. Elwing was not surprised.
Arafinwë—Finarfin
Anor—the Sindarin name for the Sun
Falmari—those among the Teleri who completed the journey to Aman; the name is derived from the Quenya falma, '[crested] wave.'
Edhil—Elves (singular: Edhel) (Sindarin)
Lindar—'Singers'; the name the Teleri of Aman use to refer to themselves (Quenya)