Work Text:
"He was my friend," Elrond says solemnly. "He was my mentor. He..." His voice fails. "He was..."
"He was like a father to you?" Celebrían offers gently.
Elrond shakes his head. "No. I had a father. I know what that was like." The words ring hollow, even to him. He has had three fathers, and all three left him long ago. He does not know. Did he ever?
It is just the two of them, hand in hand by the ocean. The gentle waves lap at a canoe still half in the sand, but the tide is rising. It will take the canoe—and the body within it—out to sea, soon.
Círdan had found the body. It was he who sent the missive to Imladris, informing Elrond of the unfortunate news. It seems all those years of grief had simply left him with no will to live. The Oath drove him to the end, until it tired of him at last.
"He is across the sea now," Celebrían murmurs. "He is..." She trails off, unable to say the words. They would not be true. The Oath still binds him, even in death.
His face is relaxed, still. It is as if he slept. The sight draws Elrond back to his childhood, watching his captors in the night and waiting for the opportunity he and his brother could take to run. The moment never came. The child of the past would not understand what he feels now.
"I came here to bury him," Elrond says. "Not to mourn him. I did that long ago. There is no one left to send his body to rest but me. I cannot praise him. His deeds...they were cruel. They served the Enemy, more often than not. But I cannot hate him, either."
Celebrían wraps her arms around him. She is silent. There is nothing she can say. Elrond is grateful for her presence. That was something he never had. There were rumors he had a wife, a woman who stayed in Aman, but Elrond did not believe them. He never mentioned her, and elves can sense the marriage bond in each other. Elrond, after he made his choice, saw no such bond in retrospect.
The waves are higher now. Celebrían guides her husband back so they will not wet their feet. The sea at last claims its prize, the final son of Fëanor carried away to the land he had forsaken.
Celebrían sighs. "It is beautiful, the sea," she muses. "I can feel the song, calling me to lands beyond."
Elrond feels it too, but as much as he is Eärendil's son, he is also Maglor's. He can no more sail to Valinor than he can catch a star in the palm of his hand. None of his fathers are in his reach.
The canoe drifts away as the sun sets, staining the sea red. Blood, it is always blood. No Fëanorian can escape it. Elrond did not take the Oath, but it binds him nonetheless. There is work for him here in Middle-earth.
Celebrían kisses his cheek. Elrond's heart breaks further. One day she, too, will leave him. She will succumb to the sea-song and sail west, while he lingers behind. Will their sons leave with her? Will their daughter, still growing in Celebrían's belly, pass beyond the horizon even as Maglor does now?
The canoe is a speck in the distance. Elrond watches as the sun swallows it whole. Maglor has left these shores at long last, but his son remains.
Elrond turns away. Celebrían follows him, doing her best to comfort him. She does not know—he does not tell her—that he cannot bear to see the stars come out, not tonight. He cannot take the mockery of another father shining down on him, not when his wounds are so freshly re-opened.