Chapter Text
- This is the scene, as it is made:
- Námo the Doomsman, Aratár, of the Fëanturi, Lord of Mandos, holds open the Door of Night in the Uttermost West of Arda
- Fingon the Valiant, High King of the Ñoldor in Beleriand, son of Fingolfin and never-husband of Maedhros Fëanorian, steps over the threshold of the world and into the Void, into Morgoth’s prison, into Unmaking and Undoing and Silence
- Elrond Peredhel, Lord of Imladris, son of Elwing and Eärendil and Maglor and Maedhros, one of the Wise of Middle-Earth, stands ankle-deep in the dark still waters of the Encircling Sea and screams, begs, no no stop-!
- Aredhel comes into her kitchen that evening and sees Elrond sitting in the front room. She hadn’t heard them come back
- “Tisane?” she calls. “Chocolate?”
- Elrond starts
- “Findekáno, do you want-”
- A hand comes to rest on her arm, outstretched to open a cabinet
- Elrond has come to stand next to her, and his expression is stricken. It is not something that belongs in Aman
- “I must beg your forgiveness, Lady Aredhel,” he says. “I- I truly did not mean for anything like this to come to pass – I thought only that we might grieve together and that a joint petition-”
- (The cabinet she keeps the herbal blends for tisane in is partway open, releasing a strong burst of mixed scents that lingers
- If her eyes are watering, that is why)
- “What did he do?” Aredhel asks, dreading the scenarios she can imagine
- Fingon has been so angry and so contained and so hurt since returning, since leaving Tirion and coming to stay with her
- Her, the one who had fallen to enchantment into marriage. Who loved evil and birthed evil and would deny a husband but not her son the traitor, the twisted one who desired his cousin; and of course he had turned out so his father had been no better and she has so little judgement besides-
- Aredhel hates being around the rest of the Ñoldor for what they say about her son and about her. She cannot stand to live with her father, who never knew Lómion; with her mother, who has never known Beleriand as aught else but a devastated warzone; with Turukáno who has kept all his people of Gondolin about him in his second life-
- She knows her son is in the Halls. He would not see her, and so she had not been able to find him, but she knows he is safe. It is something to hold against everyone else, to wrap in her heart, that bit of anger and spite and love that Lómion is not so far gone, has an opportunity that he will eventually take and return to her
- Fingon has had nothing to hold on to, nothing but memories of insufficient time and of suffering and of fleeting happiness turned bitter for the ending of it all
- He had lasted so little time after being told Maedhros was gone before snapping and going straight to Angband. There have been millennia between the news of the Void and now
- Her brother had not gone to face Morgoth to get Maedhros back, but he would have if it had come to that. He would have lost, and he would have known he would lose, and he would have done so anyway
- The Valar that are left are not evil, but they can be hard, and Fingon has defied them greatly already. Forgiveness is not so easily won a second time around, and even less so for the sake of one so despised for sin and evil deeds as Maedhros
- “Who did he- which of the Valar was it, Lord Elrond?” Aredhel asks, hoping and not, because there are better and there are worse possibilities for whomever he has offended by loving so fiercely. She knows Fingon has already been to see Aulë and left with no peace. The World-Smith favors the Ñoldor and Fëanor’s family still and knows of losing people to the Enemy; better that he and Elrond had begun the petition there than with Manwë though he has shown favor before-
- “Lord Námo,” Elrond tells her, and Aredhel feels her heart stop. The Doomsman, her poor angry grieving luckless brother has angered The Doomsman. “We went to ask if there was anything to be done for Maedhros and Maglor. Lord Námo said he could not retrieve Maedhros though he wished to, for he is bound to remain in Arda unlike those may leave for a short time to steer the cycling heavens, and your brother-”
- Everything about him tightens. He fights his own tears
- “I tried to convince him not to go,” Elrond says and it is begging and Aredhel knows she knows without him having to say more what Fingon has gone and done. “I love him too! But it is not the same as Thangorodrim; if he fails-!”
- Aredhel is weeping and she sees fresh pain on Elrond’s face for it
- “I had hoped Lord Námo would forbid it,” he tells her, quiet and wet and grieving. “But he encouraged it.”
- It is mine to care for the fëar of the Eruhíni, Námo says, and rises, wroth, from his seat in Máhanaxar. And so I have
- You claim that still! Manwë cries, indignant and incredulous
- Have you done yet better, O King of Arda? Námo demands of him. Most akin to Them you may be, but you do not understand Their Children
- Evil done-
- Námo rounds on Varda
- Do not you speak to me of judging evil, who placed a curse called a blessing on those jewels that have so driven us here! the Lord of Mandos spits. Against mortality you put upon them; in a world with death written rightly into it! Against evil you put upon them; that you do not understand!
- Speak not to me again, Námo throws at the other Valar. Lest you can tell me rightly of pity and mercy and grief! Of suffering and its surcease! Of compassion and justice – and of justifications!
- Oromë looks to the empty seat in their circle with some worry
- Nienna has not sat in High Council since the murder of Finwë
- Námo turns to leave
- Until then, I will bear no judgements of yours!
- Ulmo half-rises from his seat
- Doomsman-
- Aulë drops his face to his hands, warning forestalled
- So I am, the Lord of Mandos says from upon the threshold. Beyond him, Maiar and Valanduri and visitors watch in unease
- Brother-
- Speak not to me again
- The silence is deafening
- Deathly
- For I Say, Námo pronounces the Doom of Aman. That there will be no peace in these lands, until one may stand before me, and answer of those things true
- The last unfathomable length of Endless Darkness behind the Door is woven; the last ripple of the Encircling Sea is embroidered about shod feet
- And Míriel Þerindë, High Queen of the Ñoldor, Lost Daughter of the Silvered Pines, and a Child of Fire, shatters her shuttle and snaps her needle and refuses to abide any longer
- In the Halls, the dead gather at the before-unknown boundary of Námo’s realm and Vairë’s, drawn by the light and heat and life of the loom that has seen near every storied deed of the last Ages burning
- In the Gardens, the air is honey-sweet, and filled with birdsong