Fingolfin had thought he had seen Feanor desperate last time. It is nothing compared to Feanor now.
He had thought to find his brother stirring up the people. Instead, he finds him outside Celegorm's sick room, drawing up plans to depart immediately.
"We're not ready yet," he protests immediately. "It takes time to prepare an army, Celegorm's not even fully healed yet - "
Feanor slams him against the wall. "Time. What time do you imagine we have?" he snarls. "With two hands you promised but with one hand you gave. Do you think I never saw that part of the tapestry in all my long years in Mandos?"
Suddenly Feanor's grip is the only thing keeping him upright. "Ungoliant," he breathes.
"We have but days until she will confront him on the Ice," Feanor says, backing off now that his urgency has been communicated. "I do not trust him to be as careful of my sons as he was of my gems." The dim torches they are now forced to rely on are nothing next to the fire in his eyes. "I have lost three already, I will not lose more. Not again."
Fingolfin swallows and pushes himself off the wall. Then he takes his life in his hands by saying, "No matter what you do, you won't be fast enough."
Feanor freezes in place, gaze murderous, but he doesn't deny it.
Fingolfin forges on. "We have to trust that they're still alive and move onward. It's the only way."
Feanor's shoulders slump in defeat for the first time Fingolfin can remember. It doesn't bring the satisfaction he'd once thought it would.
"Father's on our side now," he says, hoping to stir the fire back up. "We'll have a bigger army than last time. We will save them. It will just take time."
"Time for him to destroy them," Feanor spits, but he doesn't argue the point further. "I need the Silmarils back from wherever you've stashed them."
"You don't actually think - "
"He'll honor an agreement, no, of course not," Feanor says impatiently. "I need to forge a weapon that can harm him, and that light is the best clue we have. Better to get as much of the work done here as I can while I still have all my tools."
"I can help," Celegorm offers.
Fingolfin turns to see his nephew braced against the door to his room, deathly pale and half supported by Huan but standing.
Celegorm ducks his head. "I know I'm no Curufinwe, but I do still remember what you taught me, Ada."
There's something of a commotion building in the front of the healing wing. Fingolin listens with half an ear, but most of his focus is on Feanor's suddenly softened face. "Your help would be much appreciated. Perhaps Celebrimbor's too; it'll do the boy good to have a project."
And perhaps the mind that had helped devise the rings will have useful insights, young as he yet is, Fingolfin mentally fills in, although he suspects Feanor's motivations are a combination of both. In Feanor's distraction, he's used the wrong name for his grandson, but Celegorm will likely just assume he's meant some young apprentice. It shouldn't be a problem.
"And then we will hunt Morgoth with it," Celegorm growls with dark satisfaction.
The commotion is growing closer, but Fingolfin thinks he might be the only one who's noticed. Feanor's eyes have gone hot again.
"We will be doing nothing of the sort," he snaps. "You will be staying here with your mother."
Celegorm looks as if he's been slapped. Any thought of interfering vanishes immediately, however.
Mainly because:
"He will not," Nerdanel says. A few healers trail uncertainly behind her, commotion finally explained. "If you think I am staying safely anywhere while three of my sons are held captive, then you really do know nothing of me, Feanoro."
Feanor stares at her like she's a vision. He takes a half step forward, reaching hesitantly towards her before falling back. "Nerdanel."
Nerdanel, Fingolfin notices, has taken that same half-step forward.
"I am - very glad - you've decided to come," he says haltingly.
A bit of the fight goes out of her at the lack of opposition. "I didn't come for you," she reminds him, but her hand still twitches toward him at the pain in his eyes.
"I know," he says quietly. "We will get them back, Nerdanel. If it costs me every work I have made and every drop of blood in my veins, we will get them back."
Fingolfin is the one who twitches forward this time, in case that promise shows signs of becoming an Oath, but Feanor restrains himself.
Nerdanel nods firmly, but her eyes are over full. "We will," she agrees. Then she pushes forward and embraces Celegorm. "You need more rest," she tells him with her head still buried in his shoulder. "Come along."
Celegorm hesitates just for a moment after his mother has disappeared into his room. "I know I failed you once, Ada, but I won't do so again, I sw- "
"No," Feanor cuts him off. "You have not failed me. You have never failed me. You could never fail me." He shoots a look of challenge towards Fingolfin, but Fingolfin has no intention of contesting it. "I would only have kept you safe for a while longer if I could."
Celegorm looks at his father with wide eyes, and Fingolfin feels very much the intruder.
He is also hit with a desperate desire to see his own children.
He excuses himself quietly and goes to do so while there is still time.
The mobilization of the Noldor is even more massive than last time which is perhaps to be expected with Finwe himself leading the charge.
The Valar, however, have still expressed their disapproval.
Feanor paces in the nearly empty command tent. His fear that the Valar's displeasure, sure to only increase, will hurt Caranthir and the Ambarussa's chances of being re-embodied hangs unspoken on the air. He cannot relent, though, not with three of his other sons' lives in the balance, so he is left with a problem he cannot solve, something Feanor has never dealt well with.
Fingolfin stares down at the map in futile hope that it will present a solution that evaded him last time.
"Ada might talk Olwe into lending us the ships," he says. It's well worn ground between them by now. Finwe is in the middle of those talks. If he succeeds, well and good. If he doesn't -
He doesn't have a good answer to that.
"There's the Grinding Ice," he says. "It's passable, we have proof of that this time. I know the dangers. We can go in better prepared."
"It's too slow," Feanor says quietly.
For the Silmarils, for vengeance, Fingolin would have debated that point.
For Feanor's children, he can't.
"We can't repeat Alqualonde."
"I never asked you to do it the first time," Feanor says tonelessly.
It's not the first time that it's occurred to Fingolfin that Feanor will repeat every tragedy from the last time with his eyes wide open if he thinks for a moment it will save his sons.
"Mandos will lay a Doom on us," he says.
"Not on them," Feanor points out. "Not if there's any justice. And he'll probably lay one on us anyway for leaving."
"At which point Finarfin and his people will leave," Fingolfin sighs. "We have to remember to plan for that."
"No."
They both to turn to look and see Finarfin - or, more properly at the moment, Arafinwe - standing at the entrance. It takes Fingolfin a moment to recognize his expression.
Arafinwe never did fury as loudly as the rest of the family, but it was never any less intense for it.
He strides into the tent still radiating it. "I am not turning tail and running back to Tirion."
"Of course not," Fingolfin soothes. "I didn't mean it like - "
"No!" Arafinwe says, and there is nothing quiet about his fury now. "I will not leave my nephews to torment, I will not leave my family to be whittled away to almost nothing, I will not leave my son to be tortured in the dark, I will not let my only news of what has happened be a list of names begged from Nienna, I will not - If I have to swim to Beleriand, I will not - " Arafinwe cuts off, chest heaving.
Not Arafinwe, he realizes.
Feanor's eyes shine with the same realization. "Finarfin."
"Yes," his brother says bitterly. "Me. You're not the only sons of Finwe caught up in things, it seems, and it's going to stay that way this time."
"You really had to beg news from Nienna?" Feanor asks, curiosity apparently overruling any other impulse.
"Not even the echo of your lamentations, Mandos said," Finarfin says, bitterness passing into weariness. "And all Nienna would give us was names. Endless names. It wasn't until Finrod was allowed to return that we knew more, and that was our last word until Earendil." He swallows. "I can't do it again. I can't."
Fingolfin is still reeling. "If you came back, why haven't you been … " He's not sure what, exactly, Finarfin should have been doing, but he should have been doing something.
"I have been doing something," Finarfin says. "It took me a while to realize I wasn't the only one who had come back, and I figured we'd be needing to cross the ocean sooner or later."
Hope burns in Feanor's eyes. "What did you do?"
Finarfin grins with just a touch of sharpness. "I've been buying boats."