Chapter 4: Two Reunions
Music for this chapter: Fifth Confluence, Austin Wintory
The afternoon light is casting long, alternating bars of gold and sable over the harbour of Avallónë when the white ship is sighted.
The sighting is not met with any particular fuss; news from Círdan's people had brought tidings of the fall of Sauron to the Lonely Isle and Aman beyond, and now more than ever the remaining exiled of Middle-Earth are returning.
The ship tacks into the wind and comes in cleanly into the harbour. There is no welcoming party on the docks, but this itself is not unusual. There are those whose family are in Aqualondë, or Tirion, who usually do not go further into Avallónë except two docks over, to await the hourly ferry to Aqualondë.
The ship draws even with the dock; someone on board throws a rope. Ship secure, a small group of people descend the gangplank. One of the figures, a dark-haired ellon somewhat taller than the rest, is observed to have a quick word with his companions before striding up the dock alone. A few of those remaining make as though to follow, but the solitary figure halfway down the dock waves an easy hand at them, and they let him be.
As he climbs steadily northward up the cliffside path, with the gulls crying about him and the cool dusk wind catching at his cloak, Elrond wonders he should have sent word ahead.
Círdan had asked if Elrond would have liked to tarry a few days in Mithlond to speak with friends so an earlier ship could send word ahead to Tol Eressëa; Elrond had demurred politely, eager to be on his way.
A change had come over Elrond the moment his feet touched the oak boards of the dock. He has been patient for five hundred years and a little more; he will be patient no longer. Something a trifle mannish rises within him now where he has been Elven and composed for so long, and he takes step after urgent step up the cliffside with his hair unbound and his cloak dancing from his shoulders like a pennant in the wind.
A last few steps to the top of the cliff itself, and there, across a little rise of crisp green grass, lies the house, as exact in description to the first dear letter he received from the west four hundred years ago.
White-painted stone walls glinting in the gold light of the sunset, with views east to the unbroken horizon and south down past the cliffiside to Avallónë below. There is something decidedly very Middle-Earth about its shingle roof and curved windows, with honeysuckle wreathing the arch above its oaken front door.
The door with the star of Fëanor etched at its centre – the seal of Elrond's house, also.
Swallowing past the ache in his throat, Elrond takes those last few steps to the door, and knocks lightly.
Silence.
He tries the door. It is locked, and very soundly so.
For a moment, the disappointment is so overwhelming Elrond can barely breathe.
He had been wrong; he should have sent word ahead after all. He will have to wait for his companions to make the climb up the cliff, and venture a way past the locked door into the house that is technically also his own.
He takes a sharp, pained breath, and releases the knocker, allowing it to fall back against thick oak with a hollow thud.
Then, a faint, merry shout from the back of the house: "In the garden! The gate's unlocked!"
A cherished, familiar voice; a voice that had been broken and wracked with remembered torment when Elrond had last heard it, now clear and bright and full of joy again.
He takes three steps to his right to a little wrought-iron gate, moving as though in a dream; the gate shifts under his hand soundlessly, and he makes his steady way down the small path behind it, with the seashell-embedded eastern wall of the house to his left and a riot of cliffiside bluebells to his right.
He turns the last corner, and comes into a well-kept garden. There are neat rows of fresh vegetables ready to be picked, rosebushes and camellias in full bloom, iridescent in the fading light of sunset.
And there, facing away from him, is a silver-haired elleth kneeling by a patch of lettuce, working with gloves and small spade, a basket of lettuce at her side.
"You can put the boxes in the kitchen," the elleth says brightly, eyes intent on her work. "I'm sorry I couldn't answer the door, but I wanted to get these lettuces in before evening and my attendants are on errand in Avallónë–"
"Celebrían," Elrond says softly, voice trembling.
A whirl of silver hair, like starlight on the shimmering sea, as gloves and spade go flying into the lettuce-patch, and then a patter of feet over grass and she is in his arms.
The curve of her arms about his neck, the perfect fit of her head under his chin, the scent of her hair as he turns his face into her temple–
"Elrond," she is weeping into his collar, voice thick with tears.
Elrond tries to speak, and finds he cannot.
Grief and joy wars within him; the incandescent happiness of the moment is tempered by the nature of the mission that brought him here; the knowledge of what he must tell her, of his foster-father, and their daughter's choice.
He holds on to his wife like a drowning man and has not even the strength to weep.
Perhaps Celebrían senses it; she, who suffered so much, and yet still sought to offer words of comfort five hundred years ago when he had curled over her bedside weeping for her agony.
She steps back slightly in his arms, raises a warm hand to his cheek, and stretches up on her tiptoes to press a feather-light kiss to his lips – not one of particular passion, but of quiet support.
Elrond looks into the warm, clear blue of her gaze and sees that she is indeed healed – not unchanged, but unfettered by shadow at last.
He cannot help smiling at that. Perhaps a little tired, a little worn, but a smile nonetheless.
"Come in," Celebrían says, and catches his hand in her own, nearly unmaking him there and then with the familiar curl of her fingers in his. "I can see you're in need of tea."
He allows her to lead him through a path bordered on each side with brilliant, dark-throated tulips, up to a door set in the back wall of the house. She smiles up at him as she pushes it open; a smile that turns into a laugh as he pulls her close to press a kiss to her brow.
They go in, and close the door behind them.
(:~:)
The following days are something out of a dream.
Languid and golden are those precious first days at their clifftop house above Avallónë, where both the new arrivals of Elrond's house and Celebrían's attendants know well enough to give their lord and lady privacy.
Elrond and Celebrían walk the bright-lit streets of Avallónë hand-in-hand; watch sunsets curled in each other's hold, and eat together amongst the emerald grass of the cliff-top, with the gulls crying above and the whisper of the sea below.
But mostly they speak; they speak of all that they have missed, with the sundering seas between them for half a millennia and more.
Celebrían speaks of her recovery in the gardens of Estë, at Lórien to the west, and of Finarfin her grandfather, who remains High King now even with most of Fingolfin's house returned from the Halls of Mandos. Fingolfin had apparently taken one look at the crown in Finarfin's hands, declared himself quite done with the business of being king, and now spends his days gladly doing absolutely nothing of importance.
Elrond speaks first of Arwen's choice, and holds his wife close through the tears that follow; then he speaks of Elladan and Elrohir, and Rivendell and Lothlórien, and Aragorn, son of his heart, whom Elrond is sure Celebrían would have so loved.
And then, on the fifth day, as they are sitting watching the sunset curled together on the south-facing cliffside, Celebrían's head on his shoulder and their hair mixing raven and silver in the wind, he tells her of Maglor, and the Battle of Bruinen.
He is quietly factual and utterly composed, but knows he remains an open book to her when she takes his hand and clasps it tightly between her own. The setting sun takes their shadows and throws them to their left, in long warped shapes.
He steels himself and tells her of his intention to sue for the release of the House of Fëanor at the Ring of Doom.
Elrond expects shock.
Instead, Celebrían laughs, a bright trill of notes in the early evening air.
"But of course!" she says, so entirely at ease that Elrond almost finds himself discomfited. "I would expect nothing less."
"You don't think it foolish and futile?" Elrond says. Círdan had thought so, though he had used kinder words.
"No, not at all," Celebrían says earnestly. "You wish for your father to return. I don't think that foolish at all."
"I don't expect it to be easy," Elrond says, smiling down at her; her laughter is almost infectious. "But I don't think I could live with myself if I did not try."
"And you wouldn't be the husband I know so well if you didn't," Celebrían says. "I still remember the first time I saw you, filthy and bloodstained and staggering into the garrison at Dagorlad looking half-dead. And then you saw me, and a most peculiar expression came over your face – I remember wondering if you were going to swoon away right there and then, or lose your breakfast all over my feet."
Elrond breathes a laugh. "I'd just returned from a skirmish – several skirmishes actually, lasting several days. You must understand, I'd come back filthy and exhausted, expecting to be met with equally filthy warriors, and instead I was greeted with the vision of loveliness that was you. It was quite the shock."
"Yes, but you did introduce yourself very prettily. I was quite taken by that, you know."
"Your father wasn't."
"Oh, he was enjoying himself far too much by making you uncomfortable. It didn't stop you asking him if you could write me barely a few hours later, though."
"Indeed. I remember Celeborn's face. He looked as though I'd asked to marry you on the spot. I wondered if I would make it out of that tent alive."
"And yet you asked, darling," Celebrían says, the last rays of sunset catching her eyelashes as she stretches up to kiss him on the cheek. "I think I fell a little in love with you then already. That stubborn streak. Fëanorian upbringing, they all said behind my father's back; but I thought it quite dashing."
"Your stubborn husband is going to face the Valar," Elrond says, leaning his cheek against the top of her head. "With perhaps the most controversial of requests."
"Well, yes," Celebrían laughs, the sound thrumming through Elrond's side. "And I love you all the more for it. Though I can't imagine what my parents would have said to this."
Elrond clears his throat, and tries not to wince.
A pause.
"Elrond!" Celebrían sounds as though she does not know whether to be indignant or proud. "You didn't tell them?"
"It was a diplomatic compromise," Elrond says, and leans gamely away from her teasing swat as night falls proper and lamps flare into flame in the house behind them. Southwards, past the cliffs, Avallónë's lights twinkle into existence one after the other, with lamps bobbing merrily on the fishing boats in the bay.
They rise reluctantly and begin to roll up the blanket together. Celebrían gathers up the basket of food and wine.
"Speaking of diplomatic compromises," Elrond says as he tucks the blanket under one arm and catches Celebrían's hand again with the other, "I've written a few letters. One to your grandfather, one to Fingolfin, and one to Ingwë. Then there is the matter of the Valar, of course; I took counsel with Mithrandir before I left, and wrote Eönwë."
"Well!" Celebrían says as they wind around the house and leave the blanket by the kitchen door. "I am sure my grandfather will offer sound counsel, and Fingolfin as well."
"Ah," Elrond says, as a kitchen attendant hurries forward to take the basket from Celebrían. "The letters were…that is to say, I did not write for their counsel."
Celebrían looks sharply at him as they move into the solarium with its graceful glass panels above, from which sunlight is slowly fading to starlight.
"I informed Ingwë of my intentions," Elrond says. "Politely, of course. I said much the same in my letters to Fingolfin and Finarfin. I thought the two of them deserved some warning, as brothers of Fëanor. As for the Valar, I have asked for an audience. I did not say what for."
"Oh, dear," Celebrían says, drily. "And when did you send these letters?"
Elrond makes to reply, but the next moment the beams of starlight filtering in above grow brighter, the air heavier, and then suddenly Eönwë, herald of Manwë, is standing before them, resplendent in bright mail and glowing faintly with sourceless light.
After a moment, Elrond inclines his head. There is nothing else he can do. Beside him, Celebrían makes her own careful greeting.
Eönwë bows solemnly in return. "It is good to see you come at last, Elrond Eärendilion," he speaks, and his voice is like the rushing of starlight, the whisper of mountain wind. "Long has it been since we last spoke on the shores of Beleriand."
Elrond stamps down on the instinctive ire that rises within him at the word Eärendilion. He has been Elrond Peredhel for six thousand long years by choice, and if he were to take any name now by choice it would be–
"You do us great honour with your presence," Elrond says with an easy smile, drawing on years of experience preventing Gandalf and Saruman from going at each other's throats at White Councils.
"I have come on behalf of Manwë." Eönwë says gravely. "Your request for an audience has been brought before the Valar, and they are inclined to grant it."
A pause.
"I am thankful," Elrond says.
Eönwë's keen gaze lances through him. Elrond grits his teeth and throws up steel-wrought walls around his mind.
"Not lightly do the Valar grant you audience," Eönwë says, and there is no censure in his voice, only solemnity. "Should you wish it, you will be admitted to the Ring of Doom three days hence."
"Thank you," Elrond says, inclining his head again. "I am humbled by their generosity. I gladly accept, and will set out for Aqualondë in the morning."
Another grave nod from Eönwë, then his form grows brighter and brighter in its silver mail until it dissolves into stardust, which fades even as it falls to the carpet.
In the silence of the solarium, broken only by the burbling fountain in the corner, Elrond fumbles for Celebrían's hand, and finds her already reaching for him.
"It will be well," Celebrían says, as he folds her into his arms.
Elrond holds her close for a handful of moments, grateful beyond words for her presence, and then goes to pack for the journey ahead.
(:~:)
The first thing Maglor Fëanorion is aware of is emptiness.
There is nothing. He is nothing. He is a disembodied thought, a forgotten memory, still shuddering with remembered pain.
The void.
Maglor waits for his fëa to unravel, to fade.
Then: sudden, impossible warmth; the sensation of being held, despite having no physical form, a fiery hearth that pushes back the darkness.
"Kanafinwë," a familiar voice is saying, forming speech from nothing. "Kano."
Other, familiar presences gather around him; six of them in total aside from the hearthfire that cradles Maglor like a newborn child.
Maglor reaches out with a thought, where he cannot form words with air.
Father?
"Yes, Kano." Fëanor sounds as though he might be weeping, through Maglor cannot sense his father except as a vague warmth about his fëa.
Maglor is very tired, even as an unfettered spirit.
He wants to rest.
"Kano. Kano!" The flames flare about him; an uncomfortable heat now, urgent and almost fearful. "You must think. Think yourself into being."
Think himself into being?
Maglor isn't quite sure if he knows how to do that. He drifts for a moment, and feels a familiar presence curl around him beside the warm flames of his father.
"Laurë," a new voice is saying, sharp with the authority of older brother and captain. "Sing."
It takes an age for Maglor to think of a song – any song at all, within his leaden thoughts. There is the sensation of a hand against his cheekbone, impossible and yet incredibly real.
He thinks of lullabies, and two small half-elven children half-asleep–
Maglor opens his mouth to sing, and finds that he suddenly has a mouth, and eyes and ears and a voice–
He blinks up at what is unmistakable face of Fëanor, wrought in furled flame, and there, to his right – Maedhros, whose cloud of crimson hair is a nebula of blazing fire.
Maglor's father and eldest brother both seem to be weeping, their tears molten light-trails across the flames of their skin.
"Hm, he's gone and wrought himself of water and sea-foam," a voice says noncommittally somewhere behind him. "Bit melodramatic, isn't it?"
Maglor twists in place and blinks his new eyelids a little, just in time to see Curufin elbow Caranthir in the side – or a figure of pure starlight that looks somewhat like Curufin throw a bright elbow into the sleek obsidian silhouette that speaks with Caranthir's voice.
"Says the idiot who chose shadow as his primary base of matter," Celegorm scoffs beside them, tossing his head of blazing sunlight that somehow brings to mind fair tresses dancing in the wind.
Twin images of flame, somewhat smaller than Fëanor and Maedhros – candles to Fëanor's hearth – come up to Maglor, and curl carefully around him.
Maglor blinks again and sees features form in their faces – Amrod's smile, and Amras's eye-roll as fresh shouting erupts beside the little group.
Around them there is nothing – no sound, no light, no air.
But yet here they are.
Maglor looks up into his father's concerned gaze, then into the guilt that works at the flames of Maedhros's lips.
Maglor crumples.
"I'm sorry," he says, feeling sea-salt tears spill out onto his cheeks. "I tried. I tried to fulfill the Oath. And when I failed I tried to live, because I knew what awaited us if I were to–"
Fëanor shushes him, and draws Maglor close.
His father's flames do not burn, and Maglor curls into in his father's hold, the guilt and the grief shuddering through him. His form might be water and sea-foam, but it is far from whole – it wavers and trembles with remembered pain: the crisping of his skin as the Balrog scorched him in his armour, the sawing of breath through his ruined throat.
"You all tried," Fëanor is saying now, low and fierce, voice like sparking embers. "You all tried, out of loyalty to me. You have suffered much, my dear, dear sons. I do not fault you for failing."
As his father speaks, Maglor realises the haunting, foul echo of the Oath in the back of his mind has disappeared.
The Oath is gone.
They have all failed, and so are finally free – but at what cost?
Maglor feels the keening gasp wrench its way out of his throat, and now Maedhros is there, pressed close behind him, so Maglor is circled in the arms of his father and elder brother.
"I shouldn't have left you," Maedhros whispers, into the sea-current waves of Maglor's hair. "In my grief I fell alone, and left you to wander in solitude. I am sorry. Of all the things I asked you to do in our cursed quest for the Silmarils, I regret this most. I gave you no choice in this last request."
That strikes a little too close to a source of unwilling, bitter anger that Maglor has held against his eldest brother since that day the Silmarils burned them, and he turns his face into his father's shoulder, trying desperately to hide his expression.
Maedhros curls back a little, as though Maglor has punched him. Maglor supposes he might as well have, and grieves anew for it.
He hates his father, for first speaking the oath that Maglor and his brothers swore out of loyalty; he hates his eldest brother, who left him to carry the Oath alone, broken and burned. And most of all, he hates himself – he who could not endure any longer after six thousand years of solitude, who sought death in glory beneath the eaves of the burning wood at Bruinen, who even now is selfishly glad he is finally here with his father and brothers, even in the eternal darkness.
Fëanor's fiery hand threads through Maglor's hair. Maedhros's palm finds his shoulder. Amrod and Amras draw close, each taking one of Maglor's hands; Curufin's hand lands feather-light on Maglor's other shoulder; Celegorm awkwardly pats him on the back, scowling; and Caranthir sighs as he sits himself close by Maglor's feet.
Time passes strangely here – Maglor weeps in their hold for what might be an hour, a Yén, or an Age.
And yet, in the cold emptiness of the eternal darkness, he is warm. The fëar of his father and brothers press protectively around him, and here with no true bodies shrouding them, Maglor feels every flicker of emotion that runs through them.
There is anger, yes, and guilt, and grief in all its forms – but most of all there is concern. Concern for him.
It is with some surprise that Maglor realises that he is loved.
And with that thought, his trembling finally ceases.
Maglor uncurls blinking in his father's arms. He looks down at himself, and finds his fëa form more solid now, a body of sea currents and foam. The pain of his death has faded to an echo.
"Kano?" Fëanor says.
Maglor hugs his father once more, tightly, and then quite deliberately gets up and embraces each of his brothers in turn, enduring Caranthir and Celegorm's squirming, and last of all throws an arm around Maedhros's shoulders and pulls him close.
"I don't truly hate you, you know," Maglor says into his ear. Maedhros makes a choked sound deep in his throat, and a moment later, there is a flare of new light and there are two hands at Maglor's back instead of one.
"Well, I'll be damned," Celegorm says drily. "His hand's finally back. Only took him six millennia."
Maglor feels Maedhros's newly formed right hand lift off his side. It curls into a shape in the corner of his vision, and Maglor hides a grin.
Celegorm makes a furious noise, and Fëanor says reprovingly, "Nelyo."
"Sorry, Father," Maedhros says blithely, over Caranthir, Curufin, and the twins' laughter.
The laughter does not echo, but it makes the emptiness about them less dark and oppressive.
"Now," Fëanor says, once more as focused as he was in life, fiery eyes glimmering with inspiration. "I believe that we might–"
"Hold," Celegorm says sharply, with the snap of military command in his voice, and all six brothers instantly freeze; centuries leading war-companies in Beleriand has trained that response into all of them. Fëanor takes a little longer, turning to his son and furrowing his brows, but Celegorm holds up an urgent hand and cocks his head to listen.
"Laurë," he hisses sharply. "Do you hear–"
Maglor closes his eyes, and casts his awareness as far as he can in all directions.
At first, there is nothing, nothing but the ringing silence of the void.
But then, faintly, somewhere to his left, and far off: a heavy, thunderous thud, quickly followed by another. A slightly longer pause follows, then the same two ponderous sounds again.
Thud-thud. Thud-thud. Thud-thud.
Maglor snaps his eyes open. "Is that–"
"Footsteps," Celegorm says. "Heavy footsteps, growing steadily closer. A wounded creature of some kind, one that walks with a limp–"
A pause, in which they all consider their present location, and what creature might walk with a limp in the void beyond the world.
"Shit," Caranthir says, with feeling. Beside him, Celegorm's face is twisting into a snarl.
"Wasn't he chained?" Amrod yelps, as he and Amras press closer to each other, seemingly without realising it.
"It's been six thousand years!" Curufin hisses back. "I think even you could unchain yourself after six thousand years with nothing better to do–"
Maglor flinches.
"Be quiet, all of you," Maedhros says sharply, with the sharp crack of command in his voice. "We have two options before us: fight, or run. As slim as our chances are, I am inclined to choose the former; we have no option of shelter here, and I do not think we will be able to evade him forever–"
"No," Fëanor says. He is looking at Maglor.
Maglor glances down at himself, and realises his spirit-form is shivering; the water-currents of his skin growing agitated, translucent.
He looks away from his father and brothers, ashamed at the blatant display of his own cowardice, but the next moment his father is before him, holding him close.
"Do not be ashamed, my son," Fëanor says, pressing a kiss to Maglor's brow. "We have all had millennia to heal in Nàmo's halls. You have not." He raises his head, and Maglor feels the force of his father's stare, even though it is not directed at himself.
"We run," Fëanor says. "We run, as quietly as we are able, and we strategise. And when Kano is recovered, and our plan refined, we turn and fight."
Maglor looks at his father then – all of them do, souls alight with the fire of Fëanor's words.
It is not a question of possibility. It is not a question of faith, or trust, or history.
They stand there in the cold emptiness, Fëanor and his seven sons, and though they swear no oath, their minds are as one.
The turn together and run, spirit-feet silent, dimming the light of their respective fëa as much as they can, and already Curufin and Fëanor are conversing in quiet, whispering snatches, speaking of spirit-swords.
To Maglor's keen, musical ears, he hears the moment the thud-thud of Morgoth's steps pause, as though seeking something – and then the sound resumes, steady and unceasing, like a skewed beat of a war-drum that draws ever closer.
He is suddenly horribly aware of the empty space between them and the terror that hunts them – no forest, no hill, nothing but cold, dead emptiness, and silence.
What power would the music of Maglor Fëanorion hold here, beyond Eä, beyond the world that Is?
In the distance, Morgorth's steps quicken, and insidious laughter rises in the emptiness.
Maedhros catches Maglor's hand and pulls him forward, and they run on.
A/N: I had to cut it somewhere, so Elrond gets to throw hands next chapter instead.
Next up: Elrond meets some unexpected cousins on the way to throw hands with the Valar, and the Fëanorians play cat-and-mouse with a fallen Ainur.