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Chapter Text

When Turukáno says that he has procured a local guide, and proposes a leisurely journey exploring the lands further south of Tol Sirion, something in this offer sparks a wanderlust that Findaráto has not felt in years, and he assents with delight. His only stipulation is that they do not bring any of their respective retinues, the followers that they have accrued as the sons of Finwë’s sons, and Turukáno agrees with such alacrity that Findaráto imagines his cousin has felt as stifled as Findaráto had himself following the accords of the Mereth Aderthad.

 And so, when they meet upon the isle of Tol Sirion, Turukáno and Findaráto can greet one another with all the back-slapping embraces and the unbridled ribaldry that otherwise they would have had to restrain. And when they begin their journey following the Sirion’s waters further inland, the cousins are accompanied by only the first rays of dawn, the jaunty sounds of birdsong, and the Avari guide whom Turukáno had promised.

 This guide is a taciturn fellow, not much given to speech or even expression. He seems to understand Quenya, but he will not speak it; he hears Turukáno’s orders, but he will only acknowledge and follow such as seem good to him. When he must communicate, he gestures; when gestures fail, he falls back upon a deep, wordless grumble and a shake of his unruly head. He is lean, and shadow-pale, and tall for his kind; he is watchful at all times, pale grey eyes as observant and mistrusting of the Noldor he guides as of the lands they traverse.

 Turukáno gives his name as Edrahil, and Edrahil, if that is truly his name, does not introduce himself. Turukáno speaks to him only to give orders, or to ask whether such and such is safe for eating or sleeping or hunting; otherwise, the two seem content to ignore one another, with Turukáno focusing upon entertaining Findaráto and their guide employing himself as he pleases.

 Though the journey is pleasant and tranquil otherwise, something about that arrangement bothers Findaráto immensely. Simply because Turukáno cannot coax words from his bondsman – for that is how Turukáno describes his association with this guide: as a contract he bought from a Sinda chieftain – is not grounds enough for him to dismiss the Avari until he needs him, at least not to Findaráto. And this is to say nothing of the notion that a thinking creature’s labor may be bought and sold, once his mark has been put to a bond.

 Findaráto brings this up with Turukáno once, and it becomes their first, indeed their only, argument of the entire journey. For his cousin laughs off Findaráto’s concerns – it is the custom here, he says, and nothing that the Noldor brought East with them. Besides – it is a bondsman’s place to listen to his lord, why is that even in question? So if Edrahil does not care to treat Turukáno with anything but silence and contempt, why then Turukáno feels no need to respond with anything more in kind!

 Findaráto could not disagree any more strenuously, and Turukáno, shaking his head, sighs that it is obvious Findaráto will never lead a kingdom. Findaráto, his temper flaring hot, shoots back that if this belief – this idea that one fell beneath tradition but rose above one’s fellow creatures – is the cost of kingship, why then no, Findaráto has no interest in that role whatsoever! Turukáno, never one to pass upon a challenge, returns that Findaráto’s understanding of kingship is fatally flawed, and Findaráto is near to shouting when he returns that leadership is service, first and foremost, and service to any end one’s people might need.

 And so they go, round and round and round, their voices rising loud enough that Edrahil actually looks up at them from his place across their camp. His face remains as set and void of expression as it ever does, and after a moment his eyes return to his knife and his carving as if they had never left. Findaráto barely notices the movement, and indeed sees it only from the corner of his vision. For a breath he wonders whether the guide can even keep pace with the lightning-fast, anger-slurred Quenya of the argument, and then he is swept away again by the next bout of Turukáno’s foolishness.

 In the end, he and Turukáno must admit that neither of them will convince the other, and eventually, as they begin walking again the next day, they move on to other, less fraught topics. It is an imperfect solution, to Findaráto’s mind, but at least it is a solution of sorts – and one, he thinks with a certain amount of wry and ungenerous amusement, whose need for tact and civility makes it open to them as cousins only because they are sons of Arafinwë and Nolofinwë rather than of Fëanáro. 

 But still. Simply because Findaráto cannot persuade Turukáno that he is right, does not mean that Findaráto ceases to believe he is right. And perhaps, he realizes, the error of his ways will be more evident to Turukáno if he can see them.

 So Findaráto begins speaking with Edrahil himself, instead of letting Turukáno take the lead with his bondsman. And his words to the guide go far beyond the curt orders that Turukáno addresses to him. Even if it is just to ask the Avari’s thoughts on a matter of proposed policy – for as they go the cousins continue to discuss kingship, though with Nolofinwë’s reign over the Noldor surely neither Findaráto nor Turukáno will ever be kings – or to solicit Edrahil’s agreement that some bit of gossip is particularly stupid, Findaráto takes care to include the guide in every ensuing conversation.

 Turukáno looks at him with bewilderment the first time Findaráto does this, and Edrahil stiffens almost imperceptibly with surprise but does not respond. And as Findaráto continues to talk to their guide as if – no, not as if, but because – because the Avari is a fellow creature, eventually Turukáno begins to do the same, until within days the cousins are both speaking to their guide the same way they do with one another. And still Edrahil never responds, but sometimes Findaráto thinks that he catches the Avari watching them – or no, just watching him – with a slight furrow to his brow, as if wondering what beneath the stars has happened to effect this change.

 And so their exploration continues on, til one evening they reach the spot that Turukáno, wonder as evident in his voice as it must be upon Findaráto’s face, says that he has heard the Sindar call the Meres of Twilight. And aptly named they are, the Meres!

 Merrily flows the Sirion by, much as it has done their entire journey – as good as a fourth companion to their rambling, with its cheerful wordless murmuring voice. But here, though most of its waters continue on in their passage toward the Sea, some have been diverted, gentle, into shallow glassy sheets of lake: modest bodies of shining water that even now, as the cousins look on in awe, reflect the fire of Arien’s declining light a thousand-fold. The flame and gold and rose and violet of Her descent beyond the Sea shimmer upon the waters of the Meres, dancing with every wisp of breeze and refracting with every lapping wave, til all the world around them seems ablaze with shining light. 

 “Come,” a voice says quietly, in Quenya rough and oddly stressed; beside Findaráto, Turukáno starts with shock. For the one who has spoken to them is Edrahil, and the Avari has taken three steps forward onto the waving swathes of gilded grass that wind amongst the Meres. Their guide, now simply a silhouette outlined in soft but brightest gold, gestures for them to follow him, and Findaráto finds himself taking a step forward without another thought, for – he cannot look away.

 It is as if from within a dream that the cousins follow where their guide leads them. Treading amidst the Meres as day wanes and night falls is much like walking the very skies, with all the riotous hues of sunset glittering about them, enveloping them. But even that is as nothing to what happens when Arien has gone and the lights of Varda begin to emerge. Then, where all the Meres had been alight and a-riot with color and light before, now their waters lie still and soft and velvet-dark, gleaming only where they reflect the very jewels set into the dark heavens above.

 To walk the Meres of Twilight at night is to step amongst the stars.

 Tears of wonder and of thanks stream unbidden down Findaráto’s face; behind him, Turukáno seems to give a muffled sob. Ahead only Edrahil’s back is visible, and it is not possible to tell how this sight affects him, but the Avari walks slow and proud before them, and Findaráto wonders, absently, if he and Turukáno are the first of their people to see the Meres this way – as not even the Sindarin but only their unruly cousins the Refusers, the Unwilling, have done. It can be nothing save a fancy, but – as they go, too, Findaráto can almost imagine that he hears singing, low and distant and alive with wonder. Echoes, almost, of those who awoke in that eternal night at Cuiviénen so long ago, and who must have seen the world much as Findaráto and Turukáno are seeing it now: alive with water and studded with stars.

 Eventually the cousins are guided back to the shores of the Sirion. Eventually they lie back atop the soft grass at its banks and gaze up into the stars, which are set above them once more and not spread below their feet. And eventually they fall asleep, for the first time setting no watch amongst themselves and spreading no blankets between their bodies and the earth before they fall into exhausted slumber such as neither has ever experienced before.

 And Findaráto dreams.

 So still the children of the Noldor lust for kingship.

 And Findaráto dreams.

 Though how differently you see it than your kinsmen, than your forebears.

 And Findaráto dreams. 

Then let kingship be your stand between your people and Our brother in His fallen ways!

 And somehow he is still dreaming, but now great, brine-dark hands seem to open his eyes, and Findaráto is powerless to resist the visions they bring. And oh but they are heavy things, these dreams that Findaráto dreams! Apparitions unsayable and unspeakable in all their grandeur, portents both joyous and loathsome in their scale but inseparable too from one another. For Findaráto dreams a city carved of stone, of glittering jewels put to better use here than they could be in the West – he dreams of a kingship such as no prince of the Noldor has ever held, of a people secure and hidden, of another people found and freed. And then all turns, and Findaráto dreams of a last stand in a fen, of snakes that devour one another’s tails – a covenant of blood spilling out before his throne, a people sundered and shaken, a death died small and ignominious beneath uncaring enemy eyes.

 In the dreams that Findaráto dreams, here upon the banks of the Sirion, there are shelter and surety, betrayal and agony, light and shadow – life and death and the indemnity of an end that could become either, forever.

 And through it all, Edrahil. At every step, in every hardship, Edrahil.

 Findaráto gasps himself awake, heaving for breath. About him, his cloak is rank and heavy with a sweat that smells of sea-brine; beside him, Turukáno lies still and silent as the dead. And spread before them both, the Sirion flows cheerful as it always has, serene and uncaring of all that Findaráto has seen – of visions that Findaráto knows, somehow, come courtesy of one who must be Ulmo, lord of waters.

 The tears that come now are utterly unlike those drawn earlier by the Meres, and Findaráto does not even know for whom they fall. For himself, apparently a king destined to fail before he even takes a crown? For his people, a kingdom foreordained to fall in their faithlessness? Or for –

 No, the details of the vision are fading fast, and Findaráto cannot say for whom else he might be weeping.

 He stands, suddenly driven to leave Turukáno to what appears to be his peaceful rest. And as he does, Findaráto can see someone sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bank, right beside the river.

 Edrahil.

 He stumbles down toward him, all but collapses in the grass beside him.

 “Did you know?” he asks the Avari, and even to his own ears, his voice seems weighted down by tears, exhaustion.

 Edrahil looks over at him, one brow lifting with what, in a man of expression, could be called curiosity. He had lapsed back into his customary silence earlier, not speaking since that one-word command for Findaráto and Turukáno to come.

 “Did you?” Findaráto repeats, and oh but the tears are threatening to return, the Sirion and his banks and the dark silent form beside him all blurring together into a single, indistinguishable mass. “Did Ulmo command you to lead us here, leave me susceptible to His revelations?”

 Edrahil makes a soft, wordless sound of confusion – as if the name means nothing to him, as if Findaráto’s tears come completely without context. But then Findaráto hears the shift of grass as the guide turns toward him, feels hands settle soft and unsure against his shoulders, feels the weight and wetness of his brine-soaked cloak lifted from him and then the susurrus of grass again as it is cast away.

 Then: “Come,” Edrahil whispers again, only the second time that Findaráto has ever heard his low voice and stressed Quenya. He puts up no resistance as the Avari gently tugs Findaráto toward him, tucking Findaráto’s head against his shoulder and spreading what must be his own cloak, dry and warm about his shoulders. “Sleep.”

 And sleep Findaráto does. Against Edrahil’s shoulder, beneath Edrahil’s cloak, he does not dream again.

Chapter Text

Though Findaráto was the one who dreamt, come morning-time Turukáno too seems uneasy. The cousins and their guide wander for a few days longer and then, as if by agreements unspoken, Turukáno and Findaráto decide that they would both prefer to end their wanderings here and return home.

 Well. Home, such as it is, in the form of their original starting point at Tol Sirion, and then from there back to their own followers and responsibilities.

 Edrahil guides them back up the Sirion, back the way they had come. They do not visit the Meres of Twilight as they return, and indeed, Findaráto never sees those shimmering waters again in life.

 The night they reach Tol Sirion, Findaráto is preparing for bed when he hears the scrape of his door, as if someone has tried to open it without knocking first. This lack of common etiquette is so unusual in itself that Findaráto’s curiosity is piqued and he immediately stands to open the door.

 His unexpected guest is the Avari guide. Who demands, without preamble: “Buy my service.”

 “Ummm?” This is the last thing that Findaráto was expecting to deal with when he opened the door: as such, he thinks he can be forgiven a little confusion. “What?”

 “Buy out my bond,” Edrahil repeats, somehow neither patient nor impatient as he restates this strange request. His voice, now that Findaráto hears it speaking more than one word at a time, is deep, and it rasps with the burr of some unknown Avari dialect; Edrahil is obviously struggling with the Quenya words, but he seems too proud to admit that they give him any difficulty. “I would go – with you. Not – the other lord.”

 Tired as he is and unexpected as is this conversation, Findaráto finds himself just slightly amused that Edrahil either does not know or will not use Turukáno’s name. Still, he keeps his voice gentle as he replies. “My friend, I do not buy people.”

 Edrahil’s eyes are fixed to his face, a first in these few short weeks that Findaráto has known him, and the thought rises unbidden to Findaráto’s mind that he rather likes the look of them: storm-grey, alive with their own energy rather than the spark of Tree-light that he knows shines in his own and in the eyes of all the Noldor. And right now, those storm-grey eyes spark with something almost like anger, almost like desperation, as Edrahil seems to bite back words that Findaráto finds he is actually rather curious to hear.

 Instead, the Avari seems to be trying to explain something important when he says: “Not buying people. Buying their service.”

 Findaráto shakes his head. “I am sorry, Edrahil. But I will lead only those who choose to follow me, not those who feel constrained to do so.”

 Edrahil chews back the words a moment longer, before he finally spits out one more: “Please.”

 Findaráto can feel his brows rising. He has already seen how the Avari will not follow orders, will not ask for resources or guidance, so this plea seems like a tremendous change. “I will think upon it,” he says, his mind already racing to think what might be needed. “What would you have of me?”

 Edrahil grunts something in a tongue Findaráto does not know before breaking off into a list of what he can do – instead of, as Findaráto had meant, what Edrahil needs from Findaráto if he is to join a new command.

  “Can do – anything. Anywhere. Guard, guide, watch, mess.” Findaráto thinks that the Avari is naming places he can work – in war camps, on the road, in a mess or camp kitchen – but Edrahil is already plowing on, reiterating: “Anything.”

 That sounds – almost desperate, and Edrahil hardly knows him. So why such a determined, all-encompassing answer? Turukáno isn’t cruel, and by the end of their journey past Tol Sirion, he was speaking to Edrahil in the same way that Findaráto was. But Findaráto tamps down all of this, asks the most essential question more simply: “Why ask me? Could you not simply leave my kinsman’s service?”

 But something about this is the wrong thing to say, because Edrahil’s face hardens even as he looks away. “Bonded. Cannot run.”

 And then, without a single look back, Edrahil leaves, unmoved by Findaráto calling after him to wait. And so Findaráto, completely puzzled, is left to change back into his daywear and seek out Turukáno.

 At least his cousin is able to explain the predicament in a little more detail, when Findaráto shows up with a hundred questions in a single breath. From what Nolofinwë has gathered, Turukáno explains, the Sindar and the Avari had a tense relationship even before the Noldor added themselves into the mix. One of the only ways that the Sindar managed to maintain kingdoms with fixed boundaries, rather than more nomadic lifestyles like the Avari, was to demand – or to seize – tribute from the Avari who wandered across “their” lands. For some of the Sindar, this tribute took the form of goods; for others, it was paid in services, such as time the Avari spent hunting for their hosts, or bonds, where one member of the Avari group remained with the Sindar in exchange for free passage for the rest.

 Findaráto’s stomach falls with every word. If Edrahil is the bond of his clan, and the Sinda who held that bond just traded it away to Turukáno, then – Edrahil is now very far from his people indeed.

 Turukáno must see something in his expression, because he lifts his glass in ironic salute. “It’s a lot, isn’t it. I promise, Fin, I had no idea that’s what they meant when they promised me a guide and shoved him at me. Probably meant him to serve as bond for them, the way he did for whatever group they snatched him from in the first place.”

 “Doesn’t mean that you should treat him the way you do,” Findaráto returns, but with far less heat than before.

 Turukáno snorts, but it’s not an unkind sound. “Can’t coddle a soldier just because you dislike the situation he came from, Fin. And that’s what he is now, whether he started out that way or not – a soldier. We all are, so long as we live in a world where the Moringotto roams free. And if this one soldier won’t follow orders, then what else am I to do with him?”

 “Give me his bond.” Findaráto only realizes that he’s actually said the words when both of Turukáno’s eyebrows rise nearly into his hair.

 “Thought you were the one who hated the very thought of all this,” he says laconically.

 “I do,” Findaráto promises absently. Because yes, he does, but. . . “But he asked to go with me, cousin. Let his own choice stand for something in all of this.”

 Turukáno’s brows are so high they have nowhere left to climb, but to his credit he doesn’t press for more – he simply nods. “All right, then. Soon as he shows his face in the morning I’ll have him brought in here and told the good news.”

 But by sunrise the next morn, Edrahil has already appeared at Findaráto’s door – or say, rather, that when Findaráto opens his door the Avari is already sitting beside it, one leg stretched out across the floor and the other tucked neatly to his chin. A simple hide pack and a bow and quiver lie beside him, two plain knives are fixed at his belt – it is obvious he brings nothing more. And when Findaráto clears his throat, Edrahil looks up at him with a challenge in his eyes – something that is a question and a test all at once, if only Findaráto had the skill to read it.

 The silence between them stretches just long enough that Findaráto begins to feel he must say something to break the quiet when Edrahil demands quietly: “Duties?”

 “Duties. Ah.” Honestly, Findaráto had not thought that far ahead, still disoriented by the day before – still distracted now by pale grey eyes lit with their own light rather than anything of the Trees’. “Attend me, I suppose?”

 Edrahil nods, as if to say that this is amenable, and as he pulls himself to his feet Findaráto cannot help but note again that the Avari stands a head taller than he does.

 And so he acquires an Avari shadow.

 Artaresto is the first to mention it, when Findaráto goes to his brother and makes noises about returning to the deep caverns on the west bank of the Narog. The vision from Ulmo has not faded from his mind, and if he is to be a king, Findaráto thinks absently, then he will be damned if he does not seek the safest place to lead his people.

 “Hmmm?”

 Artaresto sighs, impatient but fond, and gestures toward Findaráto’s shoulder. “I asked, since when have you trailed an Avari shadow?” 

 It actually takes Findaráto a moment, and a glance behind himself, to realize the bent of Artaresto’s question. “Oh! Yes. Artaresto, this is Edrahil; Edrahil, my brother Artaresto. Arto, he knows the area and he will be coming with us.”

 “Of course he knows the area,” Artaresto scoffs, somehow both impatient but still fond as he looks away from Edrahil and back to the sketches that Findaráto has spread across the table for his perusal. “Surely it is not that you have always had a soft heart for a hard story or a tall man – or, really, a tall story and a hard man.”  

 “A what-“ No, Findaráto decides, best not to go there, even though Artaresto is being silly and wrong. His younger brother needs no encouragement for his foolishness. “Never mind who I choose to accompany us, Arto, just tell me if you think my idea for this new city sounds feasible, yes?”

 Artaresto does not think it feasible in the slightest, but at least he agrees to visit the caverns and see if there is any way they might be sculpted to house the fortress-city that Findarato envisions. They spend the remainder of the afternoon bickering amiably over who to trust and who to tell and who to bring, but all in all, Findaráto’s mood has risen considerably by the time he finally bids his brother good night and heads back to his rooms.

 At the door he turns to bid Edrahil good night as well – only to find that the Avari is following him inside. Bemused, Findaráto steps aside and lets him, wondering what Edrahil means to do now that the day is over and any retainer’s duties would have concluded.

 It never crosses his mind to fear or fret, or to be anything other than curious.

 And Edrahil repays his trust amply.

 Without Findaráto directing him in any way, the Avari goes through all the motions that would be needed to prepare for bedding down during a night on the road – setting weapons within easy reach, stoking the fire, checking that packs and trunks are bolted closed, investigating window and door. It is only when he returns to Findaráto’s side, and gestures wordlessly at Findaráto’s clothes, that Findaráto thinks to speak.

 He had been too lost in his own thoughts, before. Wondering why he never saw Edrahil do as much for Turukáno, in all the weeks they traveled together.

 “Thank you,” he says quietly. But Edrahil offers no acknowledgement, simply waits. Then, when he gestures again at Findaráto’s robes, Findaráto feels obligated to add: “I am quite capable of caring for myself, my friend, and I need no service here.”

 Edrahil’s eyes narrow, but not in anger. Confusion. “Earlier,” he says – one of the first words that Findaráto has heard from him all day. “You said – you said, attend you?”

 Oh. Ai. Well.

 “I suppose I did, but I hardly meant it in the sense of you performing menial tasks!”

 “Then?” Edrahil prompts, when Findaráto does not immediately explain further.

 Findaráto sighs. “Ai. The truth is, when I saw you sitting at my door, I could not think of anything that I should ask you. But, I think I was also afraid that if I had no tasks to assign, then you would feel obligated to return to Turukáno. And I – I would rather you did not, for I find that I look forward to having you with me.”

 Edrahil just waits, mute and patient, as Findaráto rambles on. At one point, Findaráto even imagines that he glimpses a smile – a tiny, wild thing that sparks and dances at the corner of the Avari’s mouth before spluttering out once more.

 And of course it is only now that Findaráto truly hears what he is saying, and so he scrambles to add: “On the road, I mean! And only if you still cared to, of course!”

 “I care to,” Edrahil repeats quietly, and to Findaráto’s ears, it sounds as if the Avari guide is affirming more than just the desire to leave Turukáno’s service and enter Findaráto’s. The offering of these quiet words, in a language that Edrahil is ill at ease in and avoids where he can, seems to be more than a simple affirmation that he will follow Findaráto in his burgeoning quest to establish a hidden safehold beneath the banks of the Narog.

 “Oh,” Findaráto says, eloquently.

 For either way that Edrahil may mean these words, it matters not – they meant something that Findaráto suspects Edrahil rarely offers any besides himself. And perhaps it is this simple declaration that decides Findaráto, or perhaps it is his realization that Edrahil is the only one of his followers who has told him in so many words that he follows Findaráto not for his name or his rank or his father’s name and rank, but because he chooses to.

 No matter. Whichever one it is, this time Findaráto nods his permission when Edrahil gestures again, and only then does the Avari finally step closer and begin to divest him of his robes.

 Well, Findaráto thinks faintly, Artaresto had been right in one thing after all – the Avari is tall.

 Findaráto has felt the guide’s touch before – that night on the banks of the Sirion, where Edrahil had gently pulled him closer and spread a warm cloak over his shoulders when Findaráto’s own was soaked through with the briny sweat of Ulmo’s vision. And yet, somehow, that gentleness still comes as a surprise now.

 Edrahil’s hands are rough, the skin thick and tough with callouses that must come from years of wielding blade and bow, from an entire life lived hard amongst the wind and rain and woods. But this, these callouses – these are the only roughness that he feels in Edrahil’s hands. Deft and feather-light in their every movement, his fingers are quicker and more clever than Findaráto would have guessed from the breadth of them, and his broad palms are warm and sure.

 And it is good, to feel them upon him – at his neck, his shoulders, his hair, his chest, his ribs.

 It is very, very good, and before Findaráto even registers that he is doing so, he is moving closer. Leaning forward into Edrahil’s arms and then past them, into Edrahil’s body, with a soft sigh.

 He hears a startled grunt above his head but Edrahil catches him, cradles him, as swift and sure as his hands upon Findaráto’s robes had been a heartbeat before. And beside and beneath Findaráto Edrahil holds very still, wary of the sudden moment, but he does not let Findaráto stumble and he does not let Findaráto fall.

 It is very rare and very good. So rare and so good that already Findaráto’s traitorous eyes flutter, then fall swiftly closed.

 “You do not have to do this,” Findaráto tells him, voice a murmur. “Or anything else.” For although the Avari was willing to catch him, it seems important for Findaráto to tell him this, all the same: Findaráto does not want Edrahil to think that this is part of attending him, to use the same word that Findaráto so unfortunately had, and he needs Edrahil to know that he can leave at any time, even though his body has created such a strong and steady bulwark against the overwhelming pressures of Findaráto’s world.

 “Mmmm.” Edrahil’s confirmation that he has heard this, that he accepts this, and that he will remain as he is anyway, comes as a hum above Findaráto’s head and a rumble in the chest beneath Findaráto’s ear. And Findaráto finds that, even standing, he is comfortable enough this way that he could remain here for the remainder of all days.  

 But eventually, to Findaráto’s mute surprise and definite interest, Edrahil lifts him in his arms and carries him to bed, placing him down atop his sheets as gently as he had touched him before. Then before Findaráto can say a word, Edrahil’s footsteps recede across the floor, and in the morning, Findaráto rises to find that the guide has slept by the door, where anyone who might have tried to disturb Findaráto’s rest would have had to deal with him first.

Chapter Text

The way that Edrahil watches him, after that first night when he had helped Findaráto remove his robes, is cautious and careful and considerate; the way Edrahil trails his steps, assured and assiduous and attentive. And over the following days, Findaráto finds that Edrahil will step between him and anyone who dares to speak against him, rumbling in warning; Edrahil will stay beside him, though a respectful distance away, long after any other attendant would have turned in for the night.

 And all of this is slightly awkward, and potentially troublesome, and unavoidably endearing, for there are many who have known Findaráto longer and attended to him better, but still. There is something to the way that his mute new shadow trains pale grey eyes upon him that leaves Findaráto breathless, feeling as though he has accidentally tamed some wild thing that has never allowed its wings to be clipped before.

 And slowly, carefully, through gestures and touch as much as words, they work out what it means for Edrahil to attend Findaráto. The Avari’s new role, they decide, means that Edrahil will wear the green and silver and gold of Nolofinwë’s house, though in more muted tones than Findaráto; that he will stand behind Findaráto with Artaresto as Findaráto speaks to his people, telling them that they are traveling east in search of a place to erect a hidden city. That he will be an ear for Findaráto’s frankest thoughts and a helping hand with Findaráto’s day robes and a quiet nod goodnight, a lingering retreat from Findaráto’s bedside, after Findaráto’s longest days.

 And perhaps, Findaráto thinks privately as the days roll on, all of this will not be so great a disaster as he feared that he had made of it when the word “attend” had tumbled from his mouth all those sunrises ago.

 “A guard, then,” Artaresto surmises, when Findaráto tells him of Edrahil’s new role. “Really, brother, if you wanted a guard then you could have just said as much and I would have formed it for you. And if you just wanted the privacy to fuck your Avari wildling in peace, then I’m afraid you’re far past the time for charades – anyone with half an eye can see what you want in the way that you look at him.”

 Findaráto thinks up some pithy retort to Artaresto’s unfounded filthiness and dismisses him, quietly praising whatever Vala is listening that Edrahil still does not follow much of the rapid-fire Quenya spoken around him. Or, at least the Avari acts as if he does not; he never so much as blinks at Artaresto’s fretting.

 And eventually, one day, Turukáno’s people depart Tol Sirion, and Edrahil does not even watch them go, so completely does he seem to consider himself divorced from his former place as Turukáno’s bondsman. And eventually, one day, Findaráto’s people leave Tol Sirion in their own turn, journeying up the Narog in search of the caverns that Findaráto’s kinsman Elu Thingollo had once shown him. And eventually, one day, Edrahil is joined in his duties trailing Findaráto by a few further souls, hand-picked and commanded by Artaresto to serve as the royal guard for the king of Nargothrond.

 But as careful and gradual and eventual as everything else proceeds, the strange fire that Findaráto finds burning within himself does not. Even as the city of Nargothrond begins to take form, that fire rages fierce and hot and feral, and Findaráto knows, instinctively, that it is not the satisfaction of a skilled architect or the pleasure of a successful diplomat or the pride of a new-crowned king.

 It is the desire of a lover thwarted, perhaps; it is the longing of a man who has seen precisely who and what he wants but knows he certainly cannot have.

 And Findaráto feels this fire acutely. Its flames are fanned to life anew with every touch from Edrahil’s hands, every stray chance he meets Edrahil’s sharp grey eyes, every rare word and rarer laugh that he can coax from that stubborn, silent, tight-lipped mouth.

 But now, just as Ulmo had foretold, Findaráto is lord and king of a great hidden city of stone. And although he may not recall the rest of those visions exactly, Findaráto feels with a bone-deep surety that to approach Edrahil, to entreat Edrahil to quench this roaring fire within him, will also be to draw the Avari into the darkness that Findaráto had glimpsed coming, at the very end of all things.

 And so he says nothing. Does nothing. Tells himself that he feels nothing.

 And perhaps in time that fire would have consumed Findaráto whole, leaving nothing left but a husk atop the throne of Nargothrond. Perhaps, perhaps, save that one night Edrahil does not leave once his duties are done, does not nod his usual silent goodnight and return to the barracks down by Nargothrond’s gates.

 Instead the Avari takes a hesitant step forward and smooths one broad finger gentle across Findaráto’s lips, and for the life of him Findaráto could say which of the two of them it is who is shaking as he does.

 “Please?” Edrahil whispers, his Quenya still as rough and burred as it had been on the night when Findaráto had first heard it. And for once it is Findaráto who is mute, who simply nods, permission and plea all wrapped together in a gesture that he imbues with all the meaning he does not trust himself to put into words.

 And Edrahil, with only the second small smile that Findaráto has ever seen from him, descends.

 But the fire within Findaráto has been stoked so high that it cannot be appeased by just the kiss that Edrahil presses reverently upon his lips – indeed, it only surges higher when Edrahil moans, soft and rough in the back of his throat, as Findaráto presses forward into him. His broad hands rise to rest at Findaráto’s hips, landing delicate as birds upon a snow-laden branch, but his hips roll into Findaráto’s without finesse – once, twice, three times – before he manages to still himself, pull himself back, lean forward until his brow is resting against the crown of Findaráto’s head and he seems to pant in time with the rapid-fire cadence of Findaráto’s thrilling heart.

 “Whatever – you wish,” Edrahil murmurs, and the fierceness, the fixedness, of his storm-grey gaze belies the ever-halting cadence of his Quenya. “Of me. Is yours.”

 And Findaráto cannot look away from him, this fierce wild creature he has somehow ensnared.

 Nor does he desire to.

 He fights to regain the words he needs, when it becomes apparent that Edrahil will go no further beyond kisses, soft bites and gentle suckling against his neck, without some express description of what Findaráto wishes.

 “I wish-“

 Stars upon the Meres but the way that Edrahil turns his entire attention upon him is a heady thing indeed.

 “You to take me to bed.”

 Edrahil nods, grey eyes rapidly blowing night-dark with lust. But still he makes no move, only an inquiring sound, as if to add: And?

 And? Well, and there are oh so many things that Findaráto would like, now that he has had a taste of the man who will follow him and only him, no other king or prince or lord upon these shores. But for tonight. . .

 “Take me to bed and love me. Prove to me that you are mine.”

 And Edrahil freezes. Within a heartbeat, he has gone motionless and stock-still beneath Findaráto’s hands.

 But Findaráto has only one breath more to fret – ai, has he overdone it so soon? Has Edrahil not said, in deed if not word, that he is Findaráto’s and Findaráto’s alone? – before the Avari shudders back to life with a quiet, considering growl.

 “I am,” Edrahil says, slowly, as if this idea is new to him but not displeasing. And then he nods, and with more assurance in every word, repeats: “I am, yes. I am. Yours.”

 A laughter that is at once relieved and giddy and anticipatory bubbles up within Findaráto’s chest, threatening to spill out of him until it rises to the rafters of his chambers. And he cannot quite contain it all as he steps back from Edrahil’s embrace – a peal of that laughter, brief and bright, escapes him as he answers the Avari’s curious look with a wicked smile of his own. 

 “What are you awaiting, then?” he asks, spreading his arms low and teasing to his sides as if to display the fine, thin underclothes that Edrahil had undressed him down to earlier. “If you are mine, then I fear it is now your lot to please me!”

 It takes Edrahil a breath to puzzle through the Quenya words, but when he does, Findaráto is finally treated to the sight of a true smile. And thus Findaráto learns that Edrahil’s joy is slow, and soft, and sweet, and that it spreads across his face like starlight upon the Meres – like that captivating light, it only serves to illuminate a wonder that had been there all along.

 But then Edrahil moves, surging forward to meet him, and Findaráto, still laughing for the joy of it all, must make good use of all his alacrity if he is to duck the hands that rise to clasp him. It is an old, old dance, the way he edges just a step ahead of his pursuer and so entices Edrahil further and further into his chambers – an old, old dance, and one that Findaráto has not danced with another in many, many years, let alone with a man whom he has desired for so long and so quietly.

 And in this, Findaráto finds, just as in their daily lives, Edrahil will heed him at the slightest gesture. Will follow him every step of the way, from their initial place by Findaráto’s door and on into Findaráto’s chambers, up to Findaráto’s bed –

 where finally, finally, Findaráto lets himself be entrapped, ensnared, reeled in. Lets Edrahil kiss him, again and again; lets Edrahil gently pull the last of the clothes from his body, the Avari’s touch still soft and sure, but somehow too so different now from how it had been when just undressing Findaráto as a part of attending him.

 And then the last ties have come undone, the last sleeve shrugged aside, and Edrahil’s hands fall still even as his gaze roams wildly.

 Well does Findaráto know the shape, the form of his own body – he has cared for himself, even pleasured himself, often enough long before Edrahil ever took upon the duty of attending him. But to see the way that Edrahil looks at him now, grey eyes alight with equal parts wonder and hunger, Findaráto feels the pride and the thrill of himself anew – a prince of the Noldor, his skin burnished gold with the light of the Trees and every part of him alive with a vitality that is not of these shores.

 He steps back toward the bed, one hand extended in invitation. “Are you pleased by what you see, my friend?” Findaráto asks, amused at how avidly the Avari’s eyes follow him as he does.

 Edrahil nods, mute and wordless, and he does not even divest himself before he is stepping forward to follow once more, broad hands at Findaráto’s shoulders encouraging him back upon the bed. Findaráto has only the time to take a seat, to voice his approval of the direction that proceedings are headed, before Edrahil swiftly takes to his knees and kisses him again.

 Someplace very different than he had before, somewhere that Findaráto’s entire body is very pleased to feel the Avari’s quiet, clever mouth.

 Nargothrond and her stone are good enough to contain the first startled cry of their king. And in his surprise, one of Findaráto’s hands clenches in his bedsheets, but the other? The other flies to the knot of hair adorning Edrahil’s head, and fists within it. But, far from pulling back to shake him off, Edrahil simply smirks, another look that is new to Findaráto, before leaning forward and taking him deeper still, just to pull another cry from Findaráto’s throat.

 And perhaps it is true that Edrahil has no kind thoughts for lords, either the Sindar who first turned him bondsman or the Noldor who first kept him so. But also it is true, it must be, that someone somewhere upon these shores once taught Edrahil what devotion is, for Findaráto is reaping the fruits of their labor now.

 Everything that Edrahil does not seem to trust himself to say in Quenya, he says this way instead, with lips and tongue and throat and careful hints of hidden teeth. He shows a tenderness, a playfulness, that Findaráto had not expected in him, a creature of so few words, and if Findaráto had the presence of mind to be thinking of anything save the man between his legs right now, he would be cross with himself for failing to imagine this, this – everything.

 But as it is, it is only when Findaráto’s thighs about his shoulders are trembling, not with completion but in expectation, that Edrahil gently shrugs them off and stands. He rises back to his full height in the vee between Findaráto’s legs, which fall apart to greet him, and runs the back of his hand across his mouth before grinning down at Findaráto.

 “More?” he rumbles, pale grey eyes alight with something that looks incredibly like joy, and Findaráto can only nod: yes please.

 Only then does Edrahil finally shrug off his own clothing, the green and silver and gold that are Findaráto’s colors falling to the floor of Findaráto’s chambers heedless of where they will come to rest. A natural assurance shines through every action as Edrahil clambers up to join Findaráto and arranges Findaráto across the bed in the way that he apparently wants him – Findaráto finds himself alight with warmth as he is settled back against his pillows, his soles planted atop his sheets and his legs nudged wide so that Edrahil can kneel between them. Edrahil’s entire body overshadows Findaráto’s when he leans over to rest their brows together, and his own interest is evident between his legs; Findaráto angles up for a kiss but Edrahil ducks aside, perhaps not wanting him to taste himself.

 “Let me,” Findaráto demands, seizing his lover’s chin and pulling Edrahil’s face, his gaze, toward him. “I want a kiss, stubborn thing, trust me when I say that I know where you have been and that I could not care less!”

  Edrahil grumbles at his rambling, amused, but indulges him with a shallow peck before leaning back, tracing a path of hot, open-mouthed kisses down Findaráto’s body until finally Findaráto feels a gentle finger rubbing even lower than the Avari had ventured before.

 “Yes, yes!” he gasps, when Edrahil gives a questioning rumble. And he would have added more, perhaps something about lovers being terrible teases, but then Edrahil is leaning up again, rasping something about needing oil, and it strikes Findaráto that he is helping to delay his own satisfaction here and he ought to do something about that.

 With luck, they do manage to find a vial of oil – which is good, for Edrahil was beginning to look desperate enough to storm out into the halls naked, seeking one – and Findaráto is quickly brought back to the peak of his desire, first by Edrahil’s careful preparation and then by the Avari’s slow, careful slide into him.

 He kicks at his lover’s thighs as Edrahil stills. “Not going to break,” he manages to gasp. “Move. Move!”

 And Edrahil, with a silly little smile, leans down just enough to press a kiss to the tip of his nose before lowering himself so that he is blanketing Findaráto’s body with his own, and finally, finally begins to move. And soon it is all that Findaráto can do to wrap one arm about his neck and the other beneath his arm, and hold on as Edrahil sets out to learn what Findaráto likes best and give it to him.

 Well before the break of dawn, Findaráto is woken when the warm chest he has tucked himself against moves – Edrahil trying to leave the bed quietly and make his way back to the barracks for his shift of the day.

 “Come back,” Findaráto demands, making a sleepy grab for his best source of warmth, and Edrahil, with a low chuckle, captures his hand and presses a kiss to each of his fingertips.

 “Tonight,” he promises, sounding as regretful as Findaráto himself does. And this becomes a promise that Edrahil keeps, so long as Findaráto abides in Nargothrond and welcomes his guard into his chambers.

Chapter Text

After so long in the wilds of Ossiriand with only the pack upon his shoulder to supply him and a bedroll between him and the dirt, Findaráto’s chambers back in Nargothrond seem positively opulent when he finally returns to them. Soft clean sheets and a stuffed coverlet seem the height of decadence after traveling with Balan and the Edain toward Estolad, and Findaráto stretches himself across his own bed with a shudder of appreciation for the luxuries that he had nearly forgotten he enjoyed here.

 The quiet is another difference. Findaráto had only been alone for the first few weeks he traveled away from Nargothrond; soon afterwards, his encounter with the Edain, the Secondborn, had changed his journey from being a solitary ramble away from the responsibilities of kingship into a journey of another kind, guiding Balan and his people further into Beleriand in search of a new home.

 But he is home, now, and Balan has said that he will see his people settled in Estolad before he joins Findaráto in Nargothrond. As the Secondborn reckon time, this may be a year or it may be two, and then Findaráto will be able to see more of the Adan who captivated his imagination so.

 Everything about the Secondborn of Ilúvatar had fascinated Findaráto and his consummate curiosity ever since that fateful night when he had stepped into their camp and taken up one of their rudimentary harps. Only imagine – a whole tribe of people, waking under the shadow of the Moringotto in the east and following their intuition westward in search of those whom they called the gods! Imagine scaling the Ered Luin with not just the strong but also the elders and mothers and babes, and little more than the faith in a brighter world on the other side! And for Balan himself, imagine being born to leadership beneath such a heavy destiny!

 All of these questions, all of these suppositions, have pleased and distracted Findaráto to no end. So when Balan had offered to join Findaráto as his vassal, to explain the ways and stories of his people and to live out the end of his days in Nargothrond, Findaráto had assented with gladness, and said that he would send some of his own folk out to Estolad to guide Balan here whenever he was prepared to leave. He and the Edain had parted ways upon the banks of the Narog, with Balan’s folk headed further west upon Findaráto’s direction and Findaráto returning home to write letters of introduction to his Fëanorian kinsmen who hold Estolad.

 But now that he has been reunited with his bed, Findaráto is beginning to think that those letters can be delayed for another day while he sleeps in the peace and security of his own home. Indeed, he is just drifting off when he hears a quiet, tentative knock at his door.

 Ah. Well, perhaps Findaráto was a fool for thinking that he could avoid Edrahil any longer – he had seen the emotions running high in his guard’s eyes when all of Nargothrond had turned out to welcome their wandering king home – so he lifts himself with only a small sigh and goes to let the Avari in.

 Only, it is not Edrahil standing there. Instead, it is one of the other guards, a young Noldo who seems almost frightened at being so close to his king when Findaráto opens the door.

 “Elendur,” Findaráto greets him, already wondering what might have happened if this young creature has been sent to him at such an hour. “Have you come bearing a message for me?”

 “No,” the young guard admits. “I was told you might require attending before you turned in for the night, and that I was suitable enough to manage the work before your new vassal arrived.”

 It is such a bewildering and unexpected message that it takes Findaráto some time to understand the implications of what is being said – and who must have fed Elendur these words. But when the realization strikes him, it hits in tandem with the fact that Elendur is near Findaráto’s own height, and has paler eyes than most of Findaráto’s people.

 Not quite grey, but then that is a rare color among the Noldor. Perhaps Edrahil thought blue was close enough to tempt him.

 Elendur takes an involuntary step back before the wrath that must be blossoming across Findaráto’s face. “My king?”

 “Go back to your rooms,” Findaráto tells him, fighting to keep his voice steady. “I can see to myself quite well, and whoever told you otherwise must have been mistaken in his meaning.” Then, when Elendur nods and is turning to flee, Findaráto calls after him, as casually as he can manage: “Who bid you come to me, though?”

 Elendur’s answer is exactly what Findaráto had expected, and Findaráto’s bewilderment and anger only rise as he throws on an over-robe and stalks toward the barracks, fuming.

 Though he has been to every part of Nargothrond, the soldiers’ quarters near the main entry point into the city are one that he does not frequent often, and he draws some curious looks as he makes his way there. But despite the rarity of his visits here, Findaráto does know his way, particularly to the small set of quarters where he is headed now – unless that too has changed during his time away in Ossiriand.

 Edrahil has never locked his door, and Findaráto has never knocked. Neither of those things changes now, though perhaps other things have.

 When Findaráto enters Edrahil is curled in his cot, with his back to the door. If Findaráto were any less angry, feeling any less betrayed, then this position would have been his first sign that something is not well, for Edrahil always sleeps facing the door, the better to see anyone who might come through it with the intent to attack him.

 Or Findaráto.

 “I cannot decide what I think of you sending Elendur to me,” Findaráto says evenly, closing the door to Edrahil’s quarters behind himself. “I am caught between thinking you craven, for being unwilling to come to me yourself, or else imagining you unfaithful, and thinking to stave me off with a pretty boy while you bedded a prettier one here.”

 Cruel and cutting, every word is a testament to the tumult of emotions that tumble round and round in Findaráto’s heart and mind as he thinks of the young guard who had been sent up to his rooms. But Findaráto cannot catch even a flinch, a wince, out of Edrahil upon his cot.

 So closer he stalks.

 “Which was it then, soldier – craven, or unfaithful? Or perhaps that you simply tired of me, a prince of the Noldor, when by choice you would rather bed a wildling among your own people?”

 He is close enough now that he could reach out and touch Edrahil, run his fingers along the Avari’s neck and spine, and it is only now when he has gotten this close that Findaráto can see how Edrahil is shaking.

 Very slightly. But he is.

 “Thought you might. Want another. While you waited.”

 In all the years that they have been together here in Nargothrond, the burr in Edrahil’s Quenya has never abated. Nor has the broken slowness of his words, the halting way he speaks as if his tongue might turn against him, should a single one be wrong.

 But in all the years that they have been together, this has never infuriated Findaráto as greatly as it does tonight. For, it seems, the slowness of his speech and the deliberation of his words means that Edrahil has had long to think about what he will say, and still, this is what he chooses.

 A rejoinder that does not answer any of the accusations that Findaráto has made against him. Not one.

 “Interesting, as that sounds very much like something a guilty man might say,” Findaráto snaps. “You cannot even be bothered to tell me that my fears are unfounded, or to explain why you sent one of my guards up to my room to see if I would lie with him in place of you?”

 There is a movement that might be Edrahil shaking his head, but the Avari will not even turn to look upon him, and that perhaps concerns Findaráto the most. Edrahil has always met his eyes, even if he would meet no other’s.  

 “You truly have nothing to say for yourself,” he says slowly, quietly. “Incredible.”

 And then, more quietly still, something that surprises even Findaráto as he says it: “I thought you were different from the others, the ones who have only ever wanted me for my name or my rank or even my body.”

 It is as if this realization lets all of the air from his lungs, and Findaráto has to lean against the wall to steady himself. “Please, tell me – tell me this is not so. Even if you have tired of me, even if we will never sleep together again, even if you must lie to me – tell me that you did not simply use me.”

 In the stillness that follows, Edrahil responds – or repeats? – dully: “Tell me.”

 “Tell you what?” Even to his own ears, Findaráto sounds defeated. “I know you know a bit more of our tongue than this, soldier, surely you have more for me than that. Tell you what?”

 “The same.”

 “Which is what?” Findaráto almost shouts, close to tears of frustration. 

  “That you did not – use me,” Edrahil whispers, and whatever dam his broken Quenya is usually confined behind seems to be breaking down. “You left. No word. No warning. Just – gone. Then, today, back, but. With news another – another man is coming. News that he – that he will be yours.”

 Oh.

 Oh.

 “Oh.”

 That would change everything. 

 “Edrahil, I just – I needed to get away from all of this, and I thought it better not to tell you, for I could not have you following me.” But all the events of this night have taken on a very different cast indeed in the light of Edrahil’s understanding, and Findaráto can almost imagine the chasm between them growing with every word, every accusation, that Findaráto has hurled at the Avari in his own hurt.

 Asking Edrahil to lie to him, when Edrahil thinks that is what Findaráto is doing to him.

 But before he can continue, the Avari is sitting up. Still facing away from Findaráto, his hands play idly with the sheets atop his cot, and his voice has moved beyond sadness, into a bone-deep exhaustion, when he tells Findaráto: “You are – a king. Noldor. You will do – whatever you wish. As kings do.”

 There is a well of grief, of pain, in Edrahil’s admission that Findaráto will do as he pleases, and it is more than just the desolation of thinking that he has lost his beloved to another man. Specters of whatever Sinda lords had bound him, shades of his time with Turukáno, shadows of other histories that Findaráto did not even know existed. . .

 “That is not the way things are,” Findaráto whispers, his voice almost breaking with the weight of what he has inadvertently done. “And Edrahil, I am sorry you have had to live with that. I did not even think.”

 For the Avari has stayed in Nargothrond, has he not? Even unknowing whether Findaráto would return to the city, or indeed to him, Edrahil has waited for him all this time, and even tried to please Findaráto by sending him another potential lover if Edrahil himself would no longer do.

 It is overwhelming, and almost without realizing what it is that he does, Findaráto makes his way across the room and takes a seat at the head of the cot, at Edrahil’s back. Edrahil startles at being approached, and the lines of his back bespeak his wariness, how he is unsure of what Findaráto will do, but the Avari remains where he is – trusting still, even after all the fears that he has endured in Findaráto’s unexplained absence.

 Findaráto leans forward with a sigh, so that his cheek is resting against his lover’s spine and he can wrap his arms about the Avari’s ribs. Edrahil relaxes, ever so slightly, at the contact, and Findaráto nestles closer against his back.

 “Wish you could,” Edrahil says eventually, when they have finally rearranged themselves more comfortably across his cot.

 “Could what?” Findaráto asks, from where he has pulled away his lover’s shirt and buried his face between the blades of the Avari’s shoulders. Findaráto is not normally the one behind his lover, holding him, but that is how they have ended up tonight, and he is determined to make it work, Edrahil’s greater height be damned.

 “Could leave this place. Could come with me. Away.”

 “Oh?” It does sound nice, actually: he has only been back in Nargothrond for a day and already Findaráto is remembering why he left in such a precipitate hurry, with the politics and the squabbling and even his beloved stone walls closing in around him. “This is my kingdom, though.”

 “I know,” Edrahil says softly, perhaps thinking that Findaráto means to remind him of his place. “And it means – much to you.” Then he is quiet for the space of several moments – long enough that Findaráto begins to think that he has fallen asleep, heartsick and careworn as he had sounded earlier. Findaráto presses a kiss to the top of his spine and resolves not to wake him in the morning, unless someone comes looking for them both.

 But then Edrahil begins to speak again.

 “I – I do not care. About this place. It is yours. So I stay. But that is all. The only reason. The day you want to leave, I am ready. To go with you.”

 “Where would we go?” Findaráto asks, deciding to indulge him.

 “East. Back to the trees,” Edrahil says simply, and Findaráto is struck anew by how little he actually knows of the Avari, and even of his own lover.

 “Someday, if I am to leave, I will go with you back to the trees,” Findaráto promises, tracing absent patterns along Edrahil’s spine. Edrahil shivers beneath his fingers, perhaps at the intimacy of having such a vulnerable spot touched, but he does not stay Findaráto’s hand.

 For they both know that Findaráto will never leave Nargothrond, not really. Despite his frustrations with it, his journeys from it, he has poured all his spirit into this city, and it would take the power of an oath, or his own death, to make him leave it.

 There will be no return to the trees for Edrahil, not so long as he remains with Findaráto, and they both know it.

 Struck anew by how completely Edrahil has redrawn himself to fit Findaráto, Findaráto clasps him tighter in mute apology. Edrahil says nothing, just settles one shaking hand atop the two that are clasped at his waist, and they never speak of it again.

 Even when Balan comes to Nargothrond, renamed Bëor for his allegiance to Findaráto, and Findaráto spends the next few decades attached to him, learning everything he can about the Edain, Edrahil says nothing and asks nothing. Even when Findaráto and his folk, Edrahil included, are saved by Barahir at the Fen of Serech and Findaráto swears an oath to his rescuer’s house in his gratitude, Edrahil shakes but holds his tongue. And even when Findaráto’s kinsmen, Curufinwë and Tyelkormo of Fëanáro’s line, come riding into Nargothrond seeking sanctuary, and the Adan Beren comes seeking the fulfillment of Findaráto’s oath, Edrahil is silent.

 Even as the world begins to fall apart around them, Edrahil does not mention his hidden longing for the lost trees of his homeland again.

Chapter Text

It has been many, many years since Findaráto last recalled the dark visions gifted him by Ulmo. Whatever dreams he dreamed, that night along the banks of the Sirion near the Meres of Twilight so long ago, Findaráto has been lucky enough to either forget them, or else to wall them back in some far corner of his mind, unable to be reached or even remembered.

 He knows that the visions were painful, and that they spoke of his end. But this is about all that Findaráto has been able to recall of them, for these past centuries upon centuries, and he has not been much inclined to dig deeper into what he no longer remembers.

 But all of that changes the day Curufinwë takes to his feet, declaiming Findaráto and his oath to Barahir before all the court and all the people of Nargothrond. And then it is as if the shouting of his council, the whispering of his people, and the armored jostle of his guards closing their ranks about his throne all recede to some great distance before Findaráto, and the dreams that first came to him that night so long ago now rush forward to envelop him in a great wave of darkness once more.

 Great, brine-dark hands open his eyes, and again Findaráto is powerless before them and all that they would show him. His beautiful city of stone seems to crumble about his peoples’ heads, their halls and their homes returning to the uncarved rock from which they had been born; a bridge that he has never built, and never would, goes up in flames before the steady advance of a dragon, golden-eyed and gold of hide, and Nargothrond falls. The snakes upon his father’s ring, the same one that Findaráto had given Barahir, let one another’s tails fall from their mouths and turn first their eyes, then their fangs, upon him instead; but no sooner have they come to devour him, then Findaráto sees that they are actually consuming all of those whom he loves most dear instead.

  Beneath fang and claw Balan dies, and then all his progeny. Then Artaresto and Finduilas, and Guilin and his missing sons, and young Tyelperinquar, and Edrahil.

  They die in Findaráto’s place, all of them. Over, and over, and over again.

 Enough.

 “Enough!” he declares, standing in a shimmer of green and gold and silver, and his guards part like the sea before him as Findaráto stalks down the steps from his throne. Even as he passes toward the chairs where Curufinwë and Tyelkormo are seated, Findaráto is taking the silver crown of Nargothrond from his own head; as he reaches them, he casts it away behind him.

 Both of his cousins turn to watch the crown as it falls, tracking the slight clink of its precious ores against the stone as it drops to the chamber floor and rolls. Curufinwë makes a quick, precise gesture at some follower Findaráto does not see, and there are booted footsteps; the sound of his crown rolling stops as someone picks it up. But Findaráto does not turn to see who has recovered the symbol of his leadership, the sign of everything he has given and done for the city, the people, who turn against him now. And instead he focuses on his cousins.

 “Kinsmen.” Findaráto’s name for the Fëanorians stills even the muffled whispers that had broken out behind him when someone lifted his crown, and his next words ring out across the hall, unimpeded.

 “Never have I been so disappointed that we share the blood of one grandsire as I am today.” Curufinwë looks outraged at the reference to Fëanáro’s old angers about the line of Indis, but beneath the table Tyelkormo smacks his brother still, sensing how precarious their hold over the Nargothrondrim is and how poor a time this is to interrupt a king newly dethroned.

 If the situation were any less dark, any less dire, then Findaráto would have to laugh. But instead, if he cannot swallow and carry on, he knows that he will weep – here and now, before all the court and all his people.

 “You denounce me for the oath I made, in gratitude to Barahir and his house when he saved my life. As if you did not have a worse oath, a darker one, hanging as a millstone about your own necks! You remind my people that my pursuit of your father’s cursed gem will awaken your own infernal bonds, as if those gems are worth any of our lives; you cow my people with threats of war, as if you did not cast yourselves upon our goodwill when you were sick and starving.”

 “Well. I say to you that, whoever you have ordered to take my crown, I wish them joy of trying to keep it until I return triumphant with a Silmaril from the Enemy’s crown.”

 And only now does Findaráto turn to see who it is that Curufinwë had ordered to recover the silver crown when he cast it aside. He turns –  

 Only to find that it is Edrahil who had caught it up.

 Edrahil, who cares nothing for this city of stone and its politics, but only for Findaráto. Edrahil, whose nose is broken and bloodied as he silently elbows away two Fëanorian soldiers who are trying to wrest the crown from his grip. Edrahil, who straightens in pride when he sees that his king’s eyes have fallen upon him and the crown that he has recovered.

 The Fëanorians who would impede him fall back as Edrahil steps forward. Silently, he holds out the crown to Findaráto, freely offered from open palms; when Findaráto shakes his head, Edrahil jerks his own head mutely toward Artaresto, and at Findaráto’s nod, passes the crown to him instead. With the kingship of Nargothrond secure in Arafinwë’s line – or, more probably as the Avari sees it, where Findaráto wants it to be – Edrahil falls into step beside Findaráto as he leaves the council room.

 The murmuring rises up behind them once more as they go. But no one else follows them, or dares attempt to impede their passage.

 Findaráto makes for his chambers, trusting Artaresto to see that Beren is given suitable quarters and supplies. He does not trust his own hands, his own voice, to do so anymore. Besides – let this act of mercy and provision toward a stranger be the first act of the new King of Nargothrond.

 The door to his chambers closes behind him and Findaráto startles, unsure what has happened until Edrahil brushes past him and dumps two packs upon his bed.

 “Sit,” his lover encourages him quietly, his voice somewhat muffled by his broken nose, still unset and dripping with blood. But Edrahil pays it not the slightest mind. “Will gather supplies for us. Sit. Rest.”

 He thinks that he murmurs a quiet thank you, but Findaráto cannot be sure. Now that he is free of that stifling hall, away from the poisonous hints and threats of his cousins, Findaráto buries his face in his hands and struggles to breathe. Edrahil rumbles with anger and sympathy somewhere behind him but otherwise gives Findaráto the space he needs to struggle with what his kinsmen have done, and Findaráto will ever be grateful for such moments of practical loyalty. 

 Little time can have passed when there is a cautious knock at his chamber door, and Findaráto starts. But before he needs so much as decide what he should do, Edrahil is there, a snarl shining through the blood from his nose and his hand at the hilt of his sword. He opens the door cautiously, and just to the slightest degree – enough so that he can peer out, but not enough that anyone could get in.

Could reach Findaráto. 

 “We are coming with our king,” a shaking voice declares, loud enough for Findaráto to hear it. Edrahil snorts, but looks back at Findaráto. “Should be – safe,” the Avari admits, and Findaráto nods: let them in.  

 And in steps Elendur, the young guard whom Edrahil had once sent to Findaráto in his place, and he is joined by a handful of his peers as well as a lady’s maid, a cook’s apprentice, and some of the stablehands – nine in all. Behind them is Finduilas, who chivvies them inside and then closes the door herself, coming right to Findaráto and sitting beside him.

 “Father has seen to Beren and persuaded the people that you are in the right,” she reports quietly, knowing full well what her uncle would ask of the mess behind him had he his usual presence of mind. “But that blasted Oath has done its work too well: the people are all afraid to support you openly, for fear of death or worse should they do more than stand aside and let you go.”

 She does not say, go to your death, but she does not need to. She is clever, Artaresto’s daughter, and surely she has already reached the same conclusions that Findaráto has been delaying in his own mind.

 So Findaráto nods, only half-hearing her. This is how everything ends, then. “And these?” he asks, looking between his niece and Elendur for some explanation of the nine Nargothondrim who have formed a loose circle behind their princess.

 “We are coming with you, my king,” Elendur repeats quietly. “We are loyal to you, not the silver crown, and you will not be alone in this journey.” Several of the others ranged around him nod in agreement, and Findarato suddenly feels a broad hand descend soft to his shoulder.

 It is Edrahil – of course it is. And he nods his agreement with Elendur – of course he does.

 And Findaráto knows must dissuade them all.

 “No,” Findaráto whispers, the tears rising behind his eyes. “There is no good end to this story, children. I must go alone.”

 It is the same realization that Finduilas has surely reached. If these nine, ten counting Edrahil, come with Findaráto and Beren seeking a Silmaril from the Moringotto’s crown, then they will die, or else be enslaved and worked until they are dead, or else be captured and mutilated, made into unliving creatures of the Moringotto’s dread lieutenant.

 But then in a rush Edrahil is kneeling beside him, and, utterly uncaring of who will see it, he takes one of Findaráto’s hands. Curling Findaráto’s shaking fingers over his own, Edrahil leans down and presses a bloody kiss to his knuckles: then leans back, and actually speaks before others, as he rarely ever does.

 “I am not here – to earn a good ending,” he says quietly, his words as short and his speech as halting as they have ever been. “My life – is no story, and I – swore myself to you, long ago. Nothing, and no one, can change that. My lord. I go with you. To any end.”

 None of the other nine kneel, or speak, or kiss his hand, as Edrahil has done, but they murmur their agreement with his broken words as if he has spoken for them all. And Edrahil, still kneeling, presses one more crimson kiss to Findaráto’s hand before standing and issuing broken orders – everyone who is coming must bring supplies, and what weapons they can find, and will travel in pairs lest others attempt to waylay them. They will sleep in the chambers beside Findaráto’s, and they will be ready to leave before dawn breaks, a day hence, to give him time to plan a route for their flight from the city.

 It is only when Edrahil has dismissed the others, and given Finduilas some message to pass Artaresto, and taken a seat beside Findaráto to ask gently what he needs, that the tears Findaráto has been damming all evening finally begin to trickle free.

 Findaráto cannot weep for himself, or indeed that madman Beren: their roles in this bloody farce are already set. Beren is so badly love-smitten that he will pursue any token he needs to win his love, even if the quest drags him and another to their deaths, and Findaráto himself is no oathbreaker – he will honor   the oath he made to Beren’s father, to succor his house in any need.

 But weep Findaráto can for those foolish enough to show their loyalty to him as honestly, as openly, as Edrahil has already done, and now these nine as well. Should they change their mind about accompanying him and Beren, there will be no clemency for them in a court, a city, now divided by the Fëanorians’ poisonous words. And should they remain steadfast about accompanying him and Beren – well.

 Whatever becomes of them is upon Findaráto’s head and Findaráto’s weaknesses. He should not have sworn that oath to Barahir in thanks for his own miserable life; he should have had the strength, the presence of mind, the rhetoric, to push away those closest and most loyal to him before they vowed that they would die with him. Or no, if he is being honest – for him.

 But Edrahil does not hush him, or tell him that tears are useless. He merely turns to Findaráto and takes him into his arms, lets him grieve until the dam has been emptied and the river runs dry. Then he stands and takes a place behind Findaráto where he is seated, and Findaráto realizes with a start that Edrahil means to do as he had done the first night he entered Findaráto’s service: help him undress.

 “Thank you, my friend,” Findaráto whispers. Already he finds himself leaning back into the strong hands that unplait his hair into golden rivers, unlink the weight of the Nauglamír and its sister chains from about his neck, lift the heavy robes of state from his frame, and Edrahil clasps his shoulder for a moment in silent acknowledgement.

 When he has done, Edrahil’s arms are full of gold and silver, of precious metals and gems and silks and furs costly enough that they could surely buy him safe passage back to the woods of the east, the homeland that he had once confided to Findaráto that he missed and he hoped to see again some day. But Edrahil does not even look down at the wealth he carries in his arms, or seem to consider that he will never see his homeland again if he dies trying to regain a Silmaril. His grey eyes are for Findaráto and Findaráto alone, and the trust, the faith, that Findaráto finds there, seems to outshine any light of the Trees that he has seen caught in the eyes of his fellow Noldor.

 “To any end,” Edrahil promises softly, repeating his words from earlier with all the weight of a vow as grave as the one that Findaráto once made Barahir. “I do not lie, you know this. You will not be alone.”

 In the end, though, this proves to be the only lie that Edrahil has ever told him, for Findaráto is alone when he dies, wrestling the malformed creatures of Sauron away from the unconscious body of Beren.

 But he is only alone because Edrahil had died first, screaming his rage and defiance in the Dread Lieutenant’s face as he cast himself between the un-wolves and his king. And even in death his gaze remains fixed, grey eyes open, glaring at their foes with a light that none save Sauron himself dare quite face.

 And when the screams have stopped, and the dead have been stripped of anything that can be used or eaten, the bones are flung to festering fens beyond. And so, long before Lúthien Tinúviel pulls the polluted stones of Tol Sirion down about the Dread Lieutenant’s head, the bones of Findaráto Felagund and all his faithful dead are consigned to what were once the Meres of Twilight – no longer waters full of stars, but now still and stagnant, festering with rot.

Chapter Text

How long he spends in the Halls of Mandos before he realizes where he is – who he is – this, Findaráto could not say. Time passes in a different way here, as those slain by their kin or upon the eastern shores are allowed to heal in hröa and fëa – body, spirit, mind, and soul. It is only when their spirits can bear the knowledge of who they were, and what they had done, that the dead regain their memories – indeed, that the dead are permitted to realize they are dead at all.

 Some take this knowledge poorly, grieving their lost or plotting their vengeance against those who killed them, and the souls who fall into these patterns are not released from the Halls for many, many more cycles of the stars. But some take their new knowledge and seek their lost, or attempt amends, and to such souls as these the Maiar of Mandos are licensed to offer early release back into the Blessed Lands of the West.

 Findaráto is among the latter. No sooner does his spirit remember who he is and who he was, then Findaráto begins seeking news of his living – Artaresto, Finduilas, the Nargothrondrim – and his dead, particularly the ten stalwart souls who followed him to their own deaths in Tol Sirion.

 From the Maiar of Mandos, Findaráto learns of the world and its history since his death – the tale of Beren and Lúthien, the fall of Nargothrond, the coming War of Wrath that will chain the Moringotto once more – and he gathers that his ten, his stalwart, are similarly consigned to the Halls, seeking their own healing, though none of them yet remember who they were.

 More and more of those in the Halls remember their lives as the War of Wrath draws nearer; more and more are allowed release into the Blessed Lands, as the Valar build up their forces from those who remember that middle earth they once lived upon and are willing to fight - and even die again - upon her shores once more. And soon enough, Findaráto finds his ten stalwarts again, though only a handful wish to fight in a War greater than the one that had killed them the first time, and none – especially Findaráto – can begrudge them their desire to remain in peace in the West.

 Of his ten, the first who returns to him is Edrahil. The Avari is now mute completely, and his grey eyes have grown dark and heavy with his long confinement in the Halls though his body has been remade in the prime of his youth and all his scars are erased. But when Findaráto says that he will return to Beleriand, that he will fight, then Edrahil remains at his side as faithfully as he did before.  

 The Army of the West passes through many journeys, many labors, many conflicts, as they close in upon the Moringotto in His northern lairs. And when it is done, when Beleriand has been shattered and it northern, western, coasts are sinking broken into the Sea, then Findaráto finds Edrahil standing at the edge of the sprawling war-camp, looking with longing at the great forests that stretch into the sunrise and beyond.

 He knows, almost immediately, what his lover is thinking of.

 “You will not return to the West, Edrahil?” 

Edrahil shakes his head. He looks young, so painfully young, in his reborn body, but already he sports new injuries, new scars, to replace the ones gained in his first life.

 And then, to Findaráto’s great surprise, he speaks. And the tongue that he speaks is not the Quenya he once so laboriously acquired, or the Sindarin he must have learned from his captors but refused to ever voice – instead, this is a language that Findaráto has never heard. Yet by some grace, Findaráto knows what Edrahil is telling him, in this tongue that must be his own.  

 “I dream of going home, my lord.”

 “I am no longer your lord, Edrahil, you must know this.” Findaráto is a king without a kingdom, a leader without a people to follow him, and so he is a lord no more, no matter what one faithful soldier says. And there is more that he could say to Edrahil here – that the Blessed Lands in the West are the home of all elves, that Beleriand is broken and the Avari homelands have surely fallen too, that those who have left the Halls are surely marked never to return to Beleriand’s shores, but –

 He voices none of these things. It is tremendous enough that Edrahil is speaking – Findaráto knows that now is the time for him to listen.

 “My loves will tear me apart,” Edrahil murmurs softly, still staring out toward the east. “I do not belong in the West, among the gods – my place is here. But I swore myself to you til death, though now death has come and gone. But – even if my vow died with me, my lord, my love for you did not, and that love binds me to your side more surely than any bond ever did.”

 Slowly and with great sadness, Edrahil turns away from the great stretch of trees all along the eastern horizon. His grey eyes are hooded, and near to tears, and he pulls his cloak about his shoulders as if to hide the weakness of a wound.  

 “Let us go. Back into the West.”

 But Findaráto has never forgotten a certain secret wish, a promise once whispered to him in the depths of night in Nargothrond – “The day you want to leave, I am ready. To go with you” – and his own promise in return: that if he ever left Nargothrond, he would go with Edrahil.

 East. Back to the trees, to the great woods and forests that must have populated Edrahil’s life before the Sindar, before Turukáno, before Findaráto himself.

 Well. Tirion has kings aplenty now, does she not? Truly, what use could she possibly find for one more? Surely there is no such need, and besides – Findaráto is no oathbreaker, even if the promise made is far more simple, less binding, than the one he once made Barahir.

 He steps closer to Edrahil, tucking himself beneath the folds of his lover’s cloak so that he can embrace him, can feel the warmth of a man who once died for him, who would now cast aside his last chance at his beloved homeland if it means remaining with Findaráto.

 “Mmmmm. I seem to recall a promise that I would go with you the next time, stubborn thing,” he murmurs into Edrahil’s chest. And the more he speaks, the more sure of this he feels. “Enough of war, and politics, and cities of stone, for you and I. Let us go into the East together.”

 And when Edrahil goes stock still and silent beneath his arms, shocked at his offer, Findaráto just embraces him harder. “No more silver and gold for us, my friend, but green and green alone. Come, show me your trees.”  

 And by the time the Army of the West has broken camp, and begins its long journey back toward the Blessed Lands, leaving what remains of Beleriand behind

– by then, Findaráto and Edrahil are long, long gone, having forayed far into the lands that will someday enter the great tales as Middle-earth.