Work Text:
The separation began as a crack. When they spoke the words of the Oath, his mouth remained closed, and his mind rejected the evil they wove into mantles. He wasn't where he was supposed to be; instead of joining his father, his uncles, his grandfather when they'd gone to take the ships from the Teler, he'd remained with his cousins.
The crack became a ditch when he saw the horrors that followed the taking of those ships, dug deeper and deeper with the cries from Findaráto, from Angaráto and Ambaráto, from Artanis herself, weeping for their slain kin. He would have understood if they'd abandoned him, but they did not.
The ditch became a moat when he witnessed the unfortunate death of Ambarussa the elder and the beginnings of Fëanaro's madness. Neither Maitimo nor Macalaurë stopped him when he left for Nolofinwë's camp and the safety of his cousins' campfire.
The moat became a river when he was left with Nolofinwë's host to cross the Helcaraxë, and it widened and deepened with every life lost to the cold and ice. His uncles and father tried to build a bridge across that river when they'd caught up to Fëanaro's supporters, only to find that Fëanaro himself had perished. Maitimo refused the crown, giving it Nolofinwë instead.
The bridge was razed, the river becoming a canyon when his father and some of his uncles attacked Nargothrond. He forsook his name, forsook his heritage, spitting in his father's face and called himself Fëanorion no longer.
The chasm only widened with each reported death from the family he no longer loved, and widened further still with Findaráto, Angaráto, and Ambaráto's deaths. He only had Artanis to cling to, and she'd chosen another. But she never let him go, keeping a hand always about his wrist to follow in her wake. He only removed her hand when his folly and pride spelled doom for their people. Only then did he return the star to his armor and cloak. The descendants of Fëanaro, after all, were doomed, Oath taken or not.
And even then, she did not let him go until she felt his spirit fly away West, to the home she was no longer allowed to return to. And when he went to Mandos, he found the chasm between him and his blood family was as wide as the ocean, and he was content to stay on his own side of it until the world broke.