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Chapter Text

There is, he supposes, the usual kind of fuss when he steps out of the doors. There are people, here to welcome him back. They do things like give him better clothes, and hugs, and say how glad they are to have him back.

There is his brother. There is his wife. There are his sisters-in-law, one looking quite a bit more worn than the other. He doesn't blame her; he expects in a few hours, when it really hits him, he will look much the same.

Maybe they can talk about it together. Or . . . not-talk-about-it together. Eru knows they'd had enough venting sessions about his brother off and on over the years before everything fell apart. That's one of the reasons he was quick enough to notice her youngest boys needing a saner, steadier father figure in their lives. Why he was stupidly, sentimentally glad every time he caught a flash of copper among the rest of his children's dark and fair heads while they walked through the bitter cold. Why he not only approved of his oldest . . . child's . . . determination in the path they wished to take in life, but did all he could to subtly aid it while maintaining completely plausible deniability.

He's going to have to tell her they are gone, beyond hope of recovery. He's going to have to tell his brother his sole remaining child is his youngest, stranded forever on the other side of the Sea. He's going to have to tell his wife that their stubborn, brave, clever, angry firstborn has led the rest of all their children and grandchildren and probably beyond into the dark, and he wasn't enough to make her reconsider.

He's going to have to tell his mother that now she has fourteen doomed grandchildren, not seven, and she will never meet their descendants. That he has no idea where his sisters are; the dead have not seen them, the living do not know of them. It is as if Findis and Lalwendë ceased to exist as soon as the light went out.

"Did you see any of the children?" someone asks, and Fingolfin shuts his eyes.

"I did," he answers. They're speaking Quenya. It doesn't sound right. "For a while. Before their departure."

"But you're the first to be let out," says his brother. "For a while there was a rumor that Findaráto was coming home, but she never has, and another was released in her place and sent back over the Sea some centuries ago."

Findaráto had been clinging to his daughter so tightly, and she to him, that it was impossible to tell where one soul ended and the other began, the last time he had seen him. He'd looked terrified, had barely said a word, but he had refused to budge from her side.

Fingolfin hoped that wherever they were now, they had at least been allowed the comfort of still being together.

"There were two rebellions of the Ñoldor," he says, and realizes that it has been quiet for a while and now they are walking. Slowly, for his sake, but they are a good distance from the doors.

"Two?" Finarfin asks.

"The one led by Fëanáro, that took us to Arda. And the one led by Findekáno, that has led them beyond the boundaries of the world."

Everyone stops. He doesn't look up from his feet.

Hey, he has feet now. That'll take some getting used to. Arakáno positively delighted in being able to 'walk' on the ceilings.

He wonders if the Eternal Darkness has ceilings. Maybe Fingon will argue some into existence. She's always been a good older sibling. Apparently she's also turned into a spectacularly argumentative ball of badly-repressed fury vaguely formed into the shape of an elf, or perhaps he had just never been allowed to see it before. If anyone could argue substance into the immaterial realm, it would be her.

He is telling the story, he finds.

"I saw all of them, except Maedhros and Maglor, before they left. They died, I heard, but they didn't linger long enough for me to find them. Of the grandchildren, only Aredhel's son was still there and he was very reclusive. There was a daughter of Galadriel, very briefly, and she chose to join the rebellion and vanished."

It had been very brief; he had just had time to process that it wasn't Artanis (much too short) and to realize that he had in fact been told her name (Celebrían Artanisiel) and that she had shouted "Hi Grandfather Ñolofinwë! Emil said if anyone ever met you before she did to tell you that she's still mad about the whole thing but she understands the impulse to self-destructive violence in the face of despair a lot more now! Tell the rest of my grandparents hi from me when you get the chance, you're looking great!" from the end of the corridor (. . . what?) and had promptly vanished from the Halls.

He had tried to remember what he'd done to his niece, but he still genuinely has no idea what he'd done to annoy her so badly she'd told her daughter to inform him of it in case she died first.

"What rebellion?" Anairë demands. She is holding his arm too tightly, or perhaps not. Touching things is weird.

"The one against . . . they were calling it the rebellion against Mandos, but really Finno was just trying to fight all the Valar at once, I think. Mandos was simply the most accessible. I'm not entirely sure what her goal was, apart from getting out and getting Nelyo back."

"Her? "

He shrugs. "There is no . . . no obscuring of that sort of thing in the Halls. Findekáno's fëa is that of a nís. Unmistakably so. I don't know how she managed to hide it as a child. Also, she never missed an opportunity to inform everyone. I heard her correcting her name very loudly to Mandos on several occasions, with the last being followed by an impressive display of the vocabulary of all races of Beleriand." He thinks fondly of overhearing that encounter for a moment. She might have been yelling at the Lord of the Dead, but at least she'd been – not alive, but not forever gone from the world. "Including some she must have learned from Nelyo, because I have no idea where else she would learn to swear in the language of Angamando. He got it right after that."

"Um," someone says dubiously.

"You were right to name him Findaráto instead of Findarátë," he adds. "Like Finno, he's actually a nér. I . . . think they got married, but they never told me so I can't be sure. Bonds can be visible there, and they definitely had one. Which is strange, because I was sure Finno and Nelyo were together – they were very thoughtful about being diplomatic, but they were not subtle when they felt safe – but now it appears . . . I'm not sure. It's very odd."

"But what happened to them all?" someone says.

"I don't know," he says, and sags into his brother's arms. "I . . . I didn't react very well, when Findekáno came to me to talk for the first time. I'd seen her when she arrived, but she was so hurt and insubstantial then that it wasn't obvious that she was a nís, and it took me completely by surprise. Also, Findaráto was all twined around her and I still can't figure that out. I don't even remember what I said, but it was the wrong thing. She was angry, and didn't talk to me again until she and Finrod stopped by while on their way to argue before all the Valar, and that was very brief. Something about either they were going to retract the Doom and let everyone come back or she'd make them eat it. I didn't hear a thing for days. Then there were maiar rushing about everywhere, and Arakáno stopped to tell me he was going with Finno. I didn't know what he meant, he left before I could question him. Then I asked other people, and they told me that Finno got everyone in the family who supported her thrown out of the Halls."

A thought strikes him. "Your sons were there," he says to Nerdanel. "The five younger ones. I only heard rumors about Nelyo and Maglor's deaths. But they were there, and doing well before they followed my daughter. I don't understand why they would."

She is silent for a moment, then "Maglor?"

"Makalaurë," he says. Finarfin went to fight, he thought, he'd seen that much in the tapestries, but he doesn't know how much news he'd brought back. Not much, it seemed.

"Maglor," Nerdanel says carefully, delicately. "And what name did Maitimo choose?"

Fingolfin smiles for the first time, brief and sad though it is. "Findekáno named him Maedhros, when he – she, but she had not yet – whatever. He went by that ever since. When my eldest child brought him back to us, he still did not wish to be addressed as Nelyafinwë for the political implications of it, and he also did not wish to be reminded of the one who abandoned him. He . . . did not react well when we would address him as Maitimo while we cared for him but we had no idea why until he explained his learned aversion to it somewhat incoherently to Turgon, and the reasons why were . . . not something to explain here. Not now. He had finally stopped flinching at hearing it by the time I saw him last, but I do not know if he ever accepted it again. Russandol has only ever been your father's name for him, and apparently later Fingon's, and his relationship to that name was complicated enough that he did not recognize it as his while he was not lucid if it was not said by her, which wasn't very helpful while she was still recovering and sleeping for long periods. And he did not know a word of Sindarin yet to name himself, but Findekáno did, and I think it brought him comfort to be named by her. It made him feel like a person again, was how he put it once."

He belatedly realizes that everyone is staring at him in various degrees of horror. "What?"

"We heard stories," Ëarwen says, when nobody else seems able to speak. "Of Findekáno going to Angamando and stealing away a prisoner named Maedhros, but we thought it exaggeration at the most, and we did not know who exactly he rescued. We – we suspected it could have been Nelyafinwë, but the language barrier and the way it was turned into a story long ago meant we weren't certain."

"Oh," Fingolfin says a little blankly. "Yes, she did."

"The stories are – surely it was not as bad as they seem," Finarfin says. He is still holding him, half holding him up. They were never much for hugging, he and his brothers and sisters. It is nice now. Perhaps this is why he was forever finding his children crammed together and curled up in one tent as they crossed the Ice, not just for warmth, and afterwards too, though they were never again all together in one place.

"How bad are they?" Fingolfin asks recklessly. He can only imagine how distorted the tale has become; it was getting ridiculous enough by the time of his death.

"Ah, well," his brother says, and stops.

"They say that Findekáno was blessed by Manwë in his quest, and he received aid from one of his birds. He crept into Angamando and freed his –" Nerdanel's voice is flat, but here she hesitates. "Some say dearest friend, some say brother, some say lover, some say cousin."

Fingolfin snorts, suddenly amused. Fingon always was a little asshole who delighted in starting rumors purely to confuse people. "Surprisingly, they all got it wrong. I think," he adds conscientiously, because he was never told. "But even despite the odd entanglement in the Halls with Finrod, I believe it should have been 'husband'."

That is still the only conclusion he can reach that makes sense of two important facts everyone always overlooks: the first is how Maedhros managed to avoid becoming enthralled so well that while he always feared it, no one could ever find a trace of Morgoth's or Sauron's power lying wait in his mind to activate, and the second is how in Eru's name his daughter had found him in the first place. He was not anywhere one would expect a prisoner to be, and while her tale of singing at the end of all hope and hearing him respond was quite dramatic and probably had a bit of truth to it – Maedhros had probably done something to draw her eye once she was near him – the corner of her mouth always twitched when she said it, just like how it did when she argued very plausibly as a wide-eyed elfling of thirty that all the cakes probably blew off the windowsill and the crumbs all down her front came from somewhere else.

A (frighteningly strong) marriage-bond is the simplest explanation for both facts, and fits very well with their behavior before and after as well.

Nerdanel is still impassive. "He freed his husband, then, from Moringotto's torments by cutting him free of his chain, and the bird sent by Manwë took them to safety. The details vary, as do the –" She falters now, for the first time. "The level of injuries."

"Ah," Fingolfin says. He can reassure her about that, at least. He'd been the second person to hold Maedhros when he was rescued, after his daughter, of course. He'd been the only one she allowed to touch him. "We thought she'd returned with a body; Turgon was very cross with her for scaring him, but of course he couldn't just say so, he had to pester her – anyway. She carried him down from the back of the Eagle. Aredhel reached her first, then Turgon, then me, but she would only hand Maedhros over to me. She was covered in blood, and we didn't realize it was his from when she had to cut off his hand to free him, so we were more focused on her than on what we thought was the body she was carrying. I did not realize at first that he was alive even while I held him, until she began panicking about it. She was exhausted, with several broken bones, and infected cuts as well, so her explanations were not the clearest. He was wrapped in her cloak, and unconscious. When we realized he really was alive and she wasn't delirious, Aredhel ran to gather the healers, Turgon carried Fingon away to clean her up and be seen second, since though her injuries were bad they were not life-threatening, and I stayed with Maitimo until I could not keep my eyes open. Thankfully Turgon had settled Fingon at that point and she was sleeping under the healers' care, so he came and took my place."

"His injuries?" Anairë prompts him, and he realizes he's been staring at a tree for too long, lost in memory.

He wishes he could hold Maitimo like that again. The terrible things he has done since then do not matter. He is as much his child as he ever was his half-brother's, and not only because he (probably) married his older daughter.

"It was long and painful recovery for him," he answers, his mind flitting over the months he spent unable to walk beyond his room and the years after that of pushing himself endlessly to be better than he was before. "Everyone assumed that the loss of his hand would be the worst, but I don't think he noticed after a while beyond sometimes wishing he could still braid Findekáno's hair as elaborately as he once could. He took to being left-handed with surprising ease. I think perhaps he was always meant to be so. The injury that hurt him the most was the way his shoulder could not be completely healed. He was always in some degree of pain, but he did have various devices his brothers made for him that helped with it. That was the worst physical injury, anyway."

He thinks on it for a while. "I suspect that there were things done to him that he never spoke of except to Findekáno. I have no proof, of course, but he . . . There were so many little things he reacted badly to, that separately meant nothing, but when combined . . . She helped him come to terms with it. Was still helping him, the last I saw them together. Her death greatly affected him from what I saw in the Halls, and while I cannot excuse his deeds after then I can . . . I think I can understand, in part, why he did them."

"But he lived?" someone asks, sounding a little stilted.

"Oh, yes, he lived," Fingolfin answers absently. "He was quite determined to. He regained his strength – became stronger than before – and terrorized Morgoth's forces very well indeed. And it was well-known by then that his brothers were loyal to him but he was loyal to me, so that uncomplicated many things. In reality, they were all at least . . . willing to trust me to not hurt them, and to look after them if it was at all possible. Maglor and Celegorm were the most distant, but Maglor trusted me enough to abdicate and I think I earned Celegorm's trust when I didn't just let his brother do that, but made sure the terms were clear and fair and they would be protected. He thought he had to pay us to return Nelyo and that we had not treated him well, oh, I have never been so furious with Náro as I was when I realized how badly he had twisted the minds of those poor boys."

He wishes he could have done more. He wishes he could have stopped Findekáno from leading then into the fate they had all been so frightened of.

He has failed his children, even Telufinwë who never made it to the shore. Even Galadriel; surely there was something he could have done to have shown her sense and perhaps then she would not still be banned from ever coming home.

He says as much. Everyone looks at him weirdly.

"What?"

"They weren't all your responsibility," Nerdanel says quietly. "Their parents failed them, not you."

"I was their parent," he answers bitterly. "For all of them. There was no one else. I did it gladly and I would do it again, but I still failed them. There and even after death."

There is another silence.

"Did you ever adopt Maitimo?" Anairë asks just as quietly. "If the stories are true, he was disowned before Fëanáro left on the ships?"

"He was," he confirms, remembering the agonized fear in the silver eyes as Maitimo begged to join his host – needlessly, for how could he have turned him away? He would have taken him, any of them, without a reason. And it had proven to be the right decision in the end, because he knows in his heart that if it had been Findekáno alone as their sole instructor on how to survive the crossing, many more would have died. She simply could not have been in enough places and taught enough students as quickly as they had needed. Maitimo was an excellent teacher, and understood how to make teachers out of his students. "But no, I didn't adopt him. I offered several times, but he refused. I cannot blame him. And if my belief is true, he had his marriage-bond with Finno to lean on and that protected him."

A thought strikes him, and he turns to Nerdanel. "I'm a little surprised you didn't know him as Maedhros. He refused to go by his father's name, of course, but he was always unashamed to openly call himself Nerdanellion."

She only stares at him, and then walks on, looking at the ground. "I do not deserve it," she says at last. "I may never have disowned my sons, but I deliberately drew away from them to spare myself pain. I sometimes wonder how differently things would have gone if I had only been stronger."

"Things would have gone differently if all of us had been stronger," Finarfin says, and once again there is silence as they walk away from Mandos' Halls.

Fingolfin is glad he died before he could reasonably be expected to know and relate how his little brother's sons had died. One near-tragedy is more than enough for him to carry news of.

The years pass. Sometimes news comes with newly arrived ones returning home of Galadriel and her husband, Celeborn. Rumors are mixed on whether he is Sindar or Falmari or even Vanyar – apparently some swear he came from Doriath and she met him in Thingol's court, while some say he came with Fingolfin's people and followed her after arriving. A few people insist that he is her cousin, but Ëarwen's certain none of her siblings' children are unaccounted for – and it's not like she could have married back into the other side of her family, because members that were surviving, sane, and unmarried were very thin on the ground before half the First Age was over (Her only option then would have been what, Makalaurë or Ambarussa, and that's if she was willing to ignore the 'sanity' requirement? Fingolfin can't see Maitimo ever looking at anyone other than Findekáno, he'd be genuinely surprised to learn that Makalaurë had ever noticed níssi as anything other than yet more people to write music about, and he suspected that Ambarussa had a partner of some sort already, perhaps a series if they were mortals). Others are convinced he offered her passage to Beleriand during the First Kinslaying.

That one puzzles them all now that Fingolfin has been reembodied, because he is absolutely sure Artanis was definitely there crossing the Helcaraxë with the rest of them. He remembers her wrestling ice-bears and seals, nearly scaring him to death every time she came back bloody and grinning and helping haul the giant beasts back to camp. He remembers how fiercely she fought to cross the battlefield following Arakáno's lead even though it was her first time in combat, and how silent she had been for years after the Battle of the Lammoth. He thinks he would have remembered if she'd had a suitor then. He knew way, way too much about all of his children's personal lives during that time and it was pure luck that he hadn't stumbled into actual proof that Findekáno and Maitimo were married and ruined his plausible deniability on the matter.

Anyhow, they get sporadic, vague news of Galadriel's continuing survival, as well as her perplexingly identified husband's. Her daughter, of course, is gone. There is a lone descendant of Idril still living and ruling his own realm of Imladris, and by all accounts it is a fair and peaceful place allied with Artanis' own realm, but there are also disturbing tales of how he was kidnapped as a child by the kinslayers who orphaned him, and raised in captivity before he finally managed to escape and find sanctuary under High King Gil-Galad.

Everyone thinks that Gil-Galad is said to have been Findekáno's son. Fingolfin thinks Findekáno was up to her old tricks of spreading rumors everywhere because she thought it was funny, because he is in possession of two very important facts not known to most people. Fact One: Findekáno was completely uninterested in níssi and in fact was never interested in anyone except Maitimo; it started from the day she met him as a curious grabby baby who latched on to him for his entire visit and then screamed inconsolably for five hours until she fell asleep mid-howl when he had to go home, and her interest only redoubled when she grew old enough to acquire the first hint of a hormone and was then immediately able to Notice Maitimo Like That. He had not seen it at the time, but she had been a little obsessed with figuring out how to lure her Maitimo into marriage from the age of about fifty until sometime before the Exile when she had presumably accomplished it, and he was just grateful the attraction had gone both ways and that Maitimo had been such a good partner for her. Fact Two: Maitimo may technically have been able to bear the pair of them a child by blood with the hröa he had, but Fingolfin had been the one singing to him and caressing his hair while Findekáno held his hand when the healers did a rather painful and invasive examination of the internal damage and the internal scars left by Morgoth's various torture methods. During that examination, they had informed Maitimo that he would never be able to have a child of his own in any capacity. There was simply too much damage and too much lingering corruption for him to either sustain the creation of a body or support the creation of a soul. Fingolfin had then politely pretended not to notice how devastated his daughter – in her néri body at the time – had looked. So the idea of Gil-Galad Findekánion (by birth, at least) was impossible.

However, he wouldn't put it past his little troll of a daughter to have taken in some random baby and said it was hers, no really, honest, this is totally my child. What do you mean, he's blond and fair-skinned? Would I lie? He fell into some paint or something. Tell them, Nelyo. And of course, Maitimo would. He'd probably found her the baby to begin with. They were perfect for each other.

In any case, a conversation with Ëarendil and Elwing about the truth of the rumored fate of their sons is not pleasant, and Nerdanel has still hands and drifts through their home in silence for many years afterward. She built a home with Anairë in their house in the countryside after their families left them, and since they all get along there is no reason to change that now. They need each other's company. 

Fingolfin is . . . unsettled, by that conversation. It is necessarily brief and difficult, as Ëarendil cannot leave his ship and Elwing turns into a bird seemingly uncontrollably, but he feels there is more to the tale that is being left unsaid. Nobody else wants to go hear about how Makalaurë and Maitimo horribly mistreated an innocent pair of twins – one chose mortality as a result, Ëarendil had said – again, though, and he does not want to go alone. The fate of Elros and Elrond is added in beside the abandonment of Eluréd and Elurín, and people draw their children closer to their side on the rare occasions Nerdanel goes out in public.

She does not go out often.

Finarfin disapproves of letting wild tales about his nephews (and niece; oh, the names people call Aredhel make Fingolfin furious) run loose over the kingdom, but there is not much he can do about it. Nobody says much about Finarfin's children given that he's a king and his children were and are fairly impeccable in the public eye, except for the occasional hint that Findaráto was fond of mortals Like That, but that isn't usually meant in a derogatory way towards her but rather pride about her presumed conquering of them. People are weird. It's the worst in the cities, and at least out in the countryside nobody cares much who Nerdanel or Fingolfin or Anairë are, so they can escape there sometimes. He has to walk a fine line between defending his family's memory and acknowledging they did terrible things, and it is exhausting.

Indis retired from public life many years before. Finarfin was the last one to see her and sometimes Fingolfin wonders if he ought to go check on her, but she hasn't done a thing to save the memory of even her grandchildren by blood, so he doesn't bother. At least he didn't have to tell her all his bad news.

More years pass. Olorín returns from the East, bearing news of Sauron's defeat and accompanied by a small curious being who was instrumental in setting up that defeat – and also about forty dwarves. No one knows what to make of this. Inquiries of Aulë are met with a laugh and chiding advice to be kind to each other. Inquiries to the dwarves are met with axes (sheathed, but very present) and badly-pronounced Quenya. Finarfin spends an evening sobbing in his lap after everything is settled and he has held back a small civil war on the question Dwarves In Tirion: Yes Or No? mostly by willpower and pretending to be Fëanáro at his most imperious (so he informs him after about five bottles of wine), and Fingolfin holds him and soothes him and later writes out all the things he wishes he'd realized in time to say to their father about how badly he failed all of them when they were children and then goes and reads it loudly in front of the Doors of Mandos. Mandos looks at him oddly, but does not interrupt.

At the end, Mandos tells him that Findekáno is very much her father's daughter, and it's Fingolfin's turn to go cry helplessly in his brother's arms.

The dwarves open a jewelry shop in Tirion. The population, being composed of a lot of sniveling stuck-up self-centered hypocrites who deserve to be dumped in Beleriand with nothing and chased by wolves (Fingolfin is just a little angry about the things he overhears about his forever-lost children in the street, even more so when their names are used as curses), goes wild for it. The dwarves look smug, and then they give Finarfin and Ëarwen a bunch of very pretty free items while imposing a steep 'prejudice tax' on anyone they've heard speaking badly about any of Finwë's grandchildren because "Felakgundu was a great dwarf-friend of old and you all look the same and have the same name so how are we supposed to tell all you people apart? you can't prove that wasn't another of her names and we cannot accidentally disappoint our illustrious ancestors so terribly" but Fingolfin's pretty sure they're just kicking back at the same people who opposed them building their shop to begin with. Also, there's a constantly updated list – in their own runes, because the dwarves aren't stupid – of all his children's names, nicknames, Sindarin names, and the corresponding awful things people now call them pinned up in the back room of the shop and dwarves will often mysteriously need to 'check in the back' before coming out and informing a prospective shopper that the price is actually quadruple what it says on the sign, don't you people understand how a genuine dwarven business works?

One dwarf, who proclaims himself Glóin son of Gróin like that means something, follows Nerdanel home. They pronounce each other 'tolerable', and Fingolfin thinks they correspond by letter after he returns to his family. About what, he does not know and does not ask. Glóin frequently remarks upon the lack of dogs in their house, and he suspects that maybe he's just a little strange in the head. Any dwarf who decided they wanted to sneak in to Valinor would have to be, he decides.

He can't fault Nerdanel for wanting an unprejudiced friend.

Years pass. The dwarves learn better Quenya. Fingolfin learns Khuzdul. Olorín's little friend writes reams of odd poetry and is apparently related to a badger, for he digs himself a highly comfortable, sophisticated, and ingenious warren to live in. Everyone learns to build chairs that sort of meet in the middle of the height and size range so everyone is equally stupid-looking when trying to sit on them and that does a surprising amount for interspecies relations. Sometimes, Fingolfin wonders what Turukáno or Maitimo or Findaráto would make of it all, and then he has his silent days.

And then the ship is spotted, far out on the eastern horizon.

There have been no ships from Arda since the fleet Olorín accompanied. All of the Eldar remaining either had something they needed to accomplish or had wished to fade. This is Big News.

The ship avoids the Havens and sets down anchor in a small cove north of Tirion. It's much, much bigger than a typical ship, even bigger than Vingilótë, which must be large to survive the road through the skies.

No one comes ashore. No one comes on deck. But there are dogs on the ship, dogs everywhere, sleeping in the sun and swimming around the hull and barking at gulls and biting anyone who gets too close.

Well, anyone who wanted to stay so long in Arda is a little eccentric, everyone says, and after about a week the ship is Old News and everyone ignores it. The dogs keep sleeping and swimming and play-fighting each other.

Fingolfin hasn't forgotten that Artanis is stubborn, courageous, ruthless, and clever. She's also possibly mad enough to try to sneak back into Valinor by drawing as much attention as possible so everyone is well bored with it before she sets foot on the shore.

He gets the last straggling watchers to leave, and the small guard as well. It's an elven-ship, in Valinor. It couldn't have gotten here if it was evil.

For some reason everyone thinks that's totally true. Fingolfin thinks Nelyo would be having a fit at how easy it would be for everyone to die when they're so naive, Finno would have already been on the ship and come back, Irtë would have flatly refused to stop watching it, Turko would be building a tower or something to watch it from, and Káno would have just yelled across the water to ask if they were all right (before being tackled to the ground in a panic about archers by Nelyo).

Nothing changes. After about a month of watching as surreptitiously as he can, Fingolfin goes home. If it is Artanis, she is either long gone or knows he was watching and wants privacy. If it isn't, well, he's too tired to deal with it. If something attacks, he'll give it a stab (heh) but other than that, it's not his problem.

A week later, he hears someone knocking at the house's main door. He's upstairs in his study trying to help his brother by doing some of his paperwork for him, so he ignores it. Anairë or Nerdanel will answer it.

About five minutes later, he's forgotten about it, and then he starts hearing voices. One voice, to be precise.

"What about up here? There's got to be somebody home. We didn't come all this way just for everyone to have moved out."

His study door is open. The light from his lamp can be clearly seen from the stairs. Fingolfin gets up, mildly exasperated about having some weird person roaming his house but glad for the distraction. He remembers now that Anairë and Nerdanel both went out for the day.

His older daughter is standing at the top of the stairs. She has two enormous dogs peering at him from around her middle, but he ignores that.

He doesn't think he's asleep. He's never been prone to hallucinations. He's fairly sure they called off the five-way prank war last week after someone (Nerdanel) put a clockwork spider in Ëarwen's bed and it malfunctioned and ate the mattress, because everyone else is trying to figure out how it did that.

Findekáno is still at the top of the stairs. She's a little shorter than she was in life, and some of her braids are almost dwarven in appearance. Her clothes are strange. She is, obviously, a nís instead of a nér. There are copper ribbons twined in her hair alongside the golden ones. There is a small . . . squirrel-creature looking around from its perch in her crown of braids, and a mink staring at him from where it hangs over one of her shoulders.

"Atya," she says, looking a little taken aback. Her dogs shift uneasily. The bigger one wags its tail a few times, but the smaller looks at him warningly and shows just a hint of fang.

Fingolfin drops to his knees and sobs. He wishes he wasn't here alone, because then maybe someone would hear him and come make it go away.

"Atya? Atya, what's wrong?"

Her hand on his shoulder is tentative, but undoubtedly there. Fingolfin looks up: she is on one knee in front of him, a hand outstretched. The mink is now sitting on the larger dog, and the strange squirrel is with it. He reaches out, and her skin is warm and the heartbeat flutters in her throat. He pulls her into his arms and clings to her, keening apologies into her braids.

Her arms go around him, and then a while later there is another arm around his shoulders from someone else sitting at his side. He thinks he catches a flash of red.

"How did you get out?" he says, when he can. "How are you here? Are you safe? Will they come for you?"

"Who?" says Findekáno. She sounds worried.

"Get out of what?" says Maitimo.

"We came on a ship," says Findaráto. 

Fingolfin explains, briefly, that he knows they were banished into the Void and he's sorry he couldn't do anything to save them and he's sorry he was such a terrible father to all of them and he's sorry he didn't realize she was his daughter and if the Valar try to take them away again they're going to do it over his dead body.

"What?" says Maitimo again. He sounds worried.

"Why did you think that?" says Findaráto. He sounds confused.

"I'm going to go yell at Manwë," says Findekáno. She sounds furious. She lets go of him, and suddenly there is a large bird where his daughter was.

"Ammë, you're being stupid again," says a new voice. It sounds resigned, and a little bit worried. "Atya, does he need help?"

He stares at the bird vacantly. It had been a nice hallucination.

Then the bird clicks its beak angrily and hops out the open window over the stairs and once it's in the air it grows and grows until it is nearly the size of the one who had brought her and Maitimo back to him, and it flies away.

"Ammë and atya and taryo went to see Grandfather Finarfin," says a vaguely familiar voice. She sounds alarmed. "In public. Does he know we're not . . . whatever Grandfather Fingolfin thinks happened to us?"

Maitimo says something in a language Fingolfin does not know, but he knows swearing when he hears it.

"Oh no," says Findaráto, and then "Do not ask her to do that! We have enough trouble trying to get her to stop fighting things a hundred times her size! Tell Maglor to wait!"

Fingolfin turns slightly and clings to Maitimo instead. He's also his child, and he hasn't turned into a bird and flown away. Maitimo pats him very soothingly on the back and rocks him a little and apparently doesn't mind that he's sniffling all over his shoulder.

"He says they haven't gotten to Tirion yet," he says a few minutes later. "He also says Turko says it looks terrible and he's already thought of a dozen different ways to conquer it. They've stopped; she'll bring them here instead."

Findaráto snorts. "Tell him to stop scaring the guards."

"He says he isn't close enough." There is a pause, and then, "He says you'll feel the same way when you see it."

"Turukáno?" Fingolfin says very quietly. Around him, Maitimo's arms briefly tighten.

"He went to Tirion with them."

It is nice, to suddenly be in a world where Turukáno has gone to Tirion, where Findekáno has . . . gone out on an errand, where Maitimo and Findaráto are pressed close on either side of him and bickering quietly in the comfortable way spouses who have been married for thousands of years do. He closes his eyes and leans into their imagined warmth. Time passes.

It is not so nice to suddenly be in a world where a bird has just flown through the window and dropped a three-foot snake into Maitimo's hair. It is very pretty, silvery-blue and banded in black rings, but it is a snake and it has just landed on Maitimo's head.

Something heavier than a bird is scrabbling at the side of the house. Maitimo appears to be paying more attention to that, though he is gently stroking the snake's glimmering scales. It has coiled around his throat several times and is bracing itself on Maitimo's cheek to lean over towards him and is looking at him beadily, its tongue darting in and out. Maitimo does not seem alarmed by the snake upon his face. Fingolfin is alarmed for him, and at the imminent prospect of also having a snake upon his own face if it keeps to its trajectory.

"Maitimo," Fingolfin says very quietly. "There is a snake around your neck."

"Yes?" he says, and narrows his eyes at the noises. A hand appears in the window, followed by a silver-blond head, and then the rest of Tyelkormo is abruptly heaved up and through the window. He catches himself on the sill just before he drops too far and lands lightly on the stairs.

Fingolfin's younger daughter tumbles after him, landing on his shoulders. She is grinning.

The bird, which is hunkered down next to Findaráto and preening a wing with a wickedly sharp beak, makes a noise like a snigger.

"It might be venomous," Fingolfin says worriedly. He does not want this to turn into another nightmare.

"He is!" Maitimo says proudly. "And he can make his bites nearly undetectable."

"Please put it down."

Maitimo looks genuinely confused. The snake, on the other hand, abruptly stills and then slithers down his arm to the floor, where it then turns into Makalaurë.

Fingolfin shuts his eyes and then opens them. Makalaurë is still there, beside Maitimo. His hair is braided with ribbons in extremely specific shades of amber and blue, and there are flawlessly cut gems of the same colors fixed at their ends. It is quite beautiful, eye-catching, and very, very political.

"You fucker," says Irissë, pointing at the bird. "You did that on purpose."

The bird sniggers again.

"Where are the others?" Maitimo asks the bird. It tilts its head and regards him pointedly, looking remarkably like Findekáno when she was young.

"Elenwë and Arto decided to take the road so she wouldn't have to make two trips," Makalaurë says. The gems in his braids clink softly as he moves. Fingolfin sneaks another look at the disaster that is his eldest nephew – not only is he positively covered in the colors of Finarfin's House and his own, his braids are done in the highly recognizable pattern his own children always favored despite not really having the right kind of hair for them. He's making it work, though. And just to finish the look, some of the braids are pinned into a messy knot just like the ones Finarfin's children would often use to keep their hair up while sparring – that is just as recognizable as the braids. It's a hairstyle named after Artanis, and it's popular. The combination of the two is as good as a public announcement – Kanafinwë Makalaurë Fëanorion, once High King like his father and grandfather before him, no longer belongs to his father's House. Oh, the rumors it would start.

"When will they get here?"

He shrugs, and the gems clatter and chime and wildly dance in the sunlight again, impossible to ignore. "How fast can they run? Arto's fast when she wants to be, but I've never traveled on Elenwë."

"Fast," Tyelkormo says with feeling. 

"He lost a race to her once," says Irissë. " While shifted in his second form."

"It was a sprint and she cheated."

"She roared at you and shifted again and took off while you were still running the wrong way."

Maitimo and Makalaurë giggle in unison. Tyelkormo glares at everyone as he sits down with his back to the wall a little off to one side and in front of Fingolfin.

"Hi, Uncle Ñolo," he says, quite graciously for him, and then grunts as Irissë plops into his lap.

Fingolfin didn't know that applause could sound as sarcastic as Maitimo and Makalaurë are managing to make it.

"You've done so well, Irtë!" says Makalaurë. "Next thing we know, he'll be not leaving his dishes in the sink and apologizing after someone trips over his hunting-things that he's spread everywhere."

Tyelkormo glares at him, but the tips of his ears are faintly pink. 

"I try," his younger daughter says.

There are tiny blue gems glimmering in the fine net that keeps Tyelkormo's silvery hair bound back into a knot, and Irissë's braids are woven through and tied off with deep crimson ribbons. One particular braid at her temple, with a different weave that he has seen somewhere before (but not, he thinks, on an elf) has a single, beautifully carved, unmissable ruby threaded into it as a bead. It is the exact shade of Fëanorian red. Tyelkormo's solitary braid that is tucked behind his ear is in the exact same place with the exact same pattern, though his sapphire bead – the exact shade of Ñolofinwion blue – looks very different in shape. It occasionally swings free, until Irissë grows tired of nearly being hit in the eye and pins it back to stay behind his ear with a clasp made of blue wire she pulls off his tunic. Neither of them act like this is an unusual event.

Fingolfin is afraid to look more closely at Maitimo or Findaráto. The Makalaurë-snake was bad enough.

Speaking of whom, at least Tyelkormo and Irissë are being a little subtle. Makalaurë, on the other hand, looks like he only needs to change into a slightly more sheer tunic and add a choker and some heavy bracelets and he would be mistaken for, well, a war prize shared between the two houses. Fingolfin genuinely has no idea what he's thinking.

The nís who had earlier asked about Finarfin climbs into Makalaurë's lap. She has Artanis' hair and Nerdanel's eyes, and Makalaurë slings his arm around her and nuzzles at her forehead. She closes her eyes and grins.

"Atya, can I do your hair next time?" she asks. Fingolfin stares.

Atya?

Makalaurë hums. "You'll have to fight your emil and ammë, I think. They've got something subversive planned. There were diagrams."

"There's a plan of attack," Maitimo adds gleefully. "We're the explosives. Your ataryo and taryo are the poison."

She giggles. "Can I help?"

"Certainly, we might need a third set of hands," says Findekáno. The bird has disappeared and she has taken its place. She looks a little windswept, but thankfully is not dressed in amber or red. In fact, she's wearing light leather armor, and dark neutral things beneath it. It has a crest on it, but it's subtle and he can't really make it out.

"Why is everyone on the floor?" Turukáno asks. He has come up the stairs with Arakáno.

"There's a sunspot," Tyelkormo says.

Fingolfin looks around. Everyone has indeed arranged themselves to be in the light coming through the windows.

"Huh," Turukáno says, and sits beside Tyelkormo. They lean companionably against each other's shoulders and do not get in a fight. This is how Fingolfin knows he is dreaming.

Arakáno snuggles up to Makalaurë's back. He rests his chin on the top of his head and an arm wriggles about his chest, dislodging the nís.

"Ewww," she says, echoed by the nér he does not know who is now beside Findekáno. She swats him gently on the back of the head, but she doesn't look angry. The nér has something of the look of her, or of Turukáno, especially in profile.

"Hi, atya," Turukáno says. This distracts him from the frankly bewildering sight of his younger son prompting Makalaurë to tip his head back and to the side a little so he can kiss him squarely on the mouth, and Makalaurë easily following the brush of Arakáno's thumb and returning the kiss with familiarity, expertise, and commendable enthusiasm. Clearly this is something that happens often. The nís slithers out of Makalaurë's lap and into Maitimo's, which means she's also sitting beside Fingolfin.

"Turukáno," he answers.

That seems to conclude the conversation.

"I'm hungry," says the nís ingratiatingly.

"You have three children," says Maitimo. The statements do not appear to be related.

" Amil," she says, looking very pathetic.

" No," he says, and boops her nose. "I think Findo has some dried fruit though."

She sits up and stares hopefully across Fingolfin.

"Oh, come here, you little flying rat," Findaráto says with fondness, and begins to extricate a small bag from a pocket.

The nís suddenly vanishes, and the tiny deformed squirrel that had been in Findekáno's hair scuttles over Fingolfin's lap to perch on Findaráto's knee, where it takes a chunk of some strange fruit between its front paws and nibbles away at it. Findaráto absently runs a finger down its back. A very strange-looking relatively smallish piglike thing trots up to him and lays its head on his other knee, receiving its own chunk of fruit and ear rubs. 

On Fingolfin's other side, his youngest child, the innocent baby of the family who never even made it to Mithrim, appears to be attempting to explore his eldest nephew's – once the second most feared person in Beleriand and only not the first because he was slightly better at looking innocent than his grimly intense, morose, scarred, intimidating older sibling – at any rate, Arakáno seems to be trying to find Makalaurë's tonsils with his tongue. Makalaurë is making small muffled noises and digging the hand that he is not using to keep himself upright and balanced into Arakáno's thigh, which has appeared at his side.

"Seriously, guys?" Tyelkormo complains. "I know you're stressed about all this reunion shit, but even Nelyo and Finno are managing to not have their hands down each other's pants every five seconds which has to be some kind of record, and your dad is literally right there. Oh Valar, why are all my siblings so gross, Curvo was the only normal one and now he's in love with that engine he built for the damn boat –"

"And your kids are right here too," Irissë adds virtuously, interrupting Tyelkormo's fascinating exposition. "When we want to traumatize our children, we do it by dressing Huan up as Shelob or something wholesome like that. Small fish in their bedrolls. Mushrooms made of cabbage. Encouraging the little ones to give their brother the ugliest novelty socks they can find. Not public indecency – though they have found some extremely suggestive socks over the years. First of all, Tyelko would have had to have decency to start with, and –"

"Speaking of your kids, how about we have some tea while we wait for Arto and Elë?" Turukáno says. "I have enough for everyone."

"Where's the kitchen, atya?" Findekáno asks.

They end up crowded around the table in the kitchen. It's not polite to eat meals there, but it's also really convenient and keeps the food warmer and means they don't have to walk halfway across the house to wash that table.

They don't keep servants now. Not after how badly it had gone for Nerdanel a few times in the past, long before Fingolfin was reembodied. Even Anairë has had her share of ill-wishers, and servants are a convenient gap in the defenses.

The kitchen table holds eight. Three of the seats are used most days, five when Finarfin and Ëarwen sneak away to visit. The other three were added in a vague wish that maybe someday they would be filled by their missing mother and sisters.

Today the kitchen table holds eleven. This is accomplished by sharing chairs; Tyelkormo looks comedic on Irissë's lap, but Findekáno on Findaráto's and Makalaurë on Arakáno's look quite at home.

Fingolfin recognizes this drink. It is one favored by the dwarves and Olorín's odd friend. It's not unpleasant, and the nís who becomes the squirrel has raided their pantry for cream, honey, and biscuits. He is glad that all three of them are stress bakers, and lately it seems like they are never at peace. They have resorted to putting what they make in the ice cellar, for otherwise it spoils or goes stale before they have a chance of eating it.

He remarks on this. Findekáno and Irissë vanish and reappear with half the contents of said cellar, and spread their plunder out in the sunlight to thaw.

This implies they wish to stay, at least until the end of the day.

Or until Anairë or Nerdanel come home, find him asleep at his desk, and wake him up. He hopes he will get far enough in this dream to see his children ride away as if they are merely going to their own homes, safe and near and alive, instead of – instead of being –

He watches how the sunlight glances off Irissë's scarlet hair-ribbons as she moves her whole body to express herself, sometimes gesturing so wildly Tyelkormo has to catch and hold her forearms to avoid being smacked, and how she relaxes into his touch; he watches how Arakáno's fingers clasped about Makalaurë's hand on his cup are unscarred by knife-nicks and frostbite. How Turukáno smiles easier than he has ever seen and Findekáno is utterly at peace with herself as she yawns and leans back in Findaráto's arms to rest her head on Maitimo's shoulder beside them. How Maitimo does not flinch at the touch and weight of her cheek upon his right shoulder, and how his eyes are not forever scanning the windows and doors at the slightest movement or sound.

At some point as the shadows lengthen Elenwë has appeared, sharing Turukáno's chair, and Artanis is now beside Arakáno and Makalaurë. She has displaced the unknown nér, but he has somehow curled himself into a ball on her lap without turning into any variety of creature and appears to be fast asleep. In lulls in the conversation, he can be heard snoring softly, and Maitimo has swapped chairs with Findaráto and Findekáno to rest his gloved right hand on the nér's dark head, which calmed him almost immediately when he was restless.

"Hey, atya," says Findekáno, and he smiles mistily at her. She speaks more quietly than she has been. "Does Ëarendil ever land, or is he always traveling?"

Fingolfin blinks. "He . . . I believe he can dock at Elwing's tower during the day, but I don't know how often he does."

She nods. "Where is that?"

He tells her.

"Right. We'll keep him well away from there until he's ready, and – and nobody is going to go and throw eggs or any other kind of projectile, I can see you thinking about it, you fuckers. We won't look very reasonable if we openly start the fight in any way anyone can prove."

"We have to nobly finish it," Makalaurë says wisely. "Because we love our son, and surely that is what has ensured our survival these long years."

"Oh, really?" Artanis says brightly. "I thought it was all the, you know." She makes a vague stabbing motion, careful not to jostle her burden.

"The incredible and savage amounts of violence you and Finno and Elë are capable of handing out the second someone looks weirdly at any of us," says Findaráto. He doesn't look too bothered.

"Exactly."

Makalaurë is looking disgruntled. "Can't ever have a nice moment with any of you peasants."

"You can have one with me," says Arakáno, and one of his hands slips off the table. Makalaurë makes an interesting expression for a moment, and his ears flick and then flare out as Arakáno purrs something into one of them; then he tips his head back to rest on Arakáno's shoulder with a series of tiny chimes from his hair ornaments, baring his throat.

In general, it does not help dispel the impression that Makalaurë is now – well, to be impolite and say what most people will undoubtedly assume both from his dress and his past deeds, nothing more than a trophy in the service of Fingolfin's own House as exemplified by his youngest son, and also Finarfin's, though who exactly among them has a claim on him is a little more unclear. Probably Artanis, though, judging by how close she sits to them and how she looks at them.

Fingolfin is pulled from his appalled confusion by a sharp whistle.

"Save it for later," Elenwë says. "Or I'll come sit with you."

Arakáno's hand magically reappears, though both he and Makalaurë look a little annoyed. Artanis smiles sweetly at Elenwë and tosses a coin across the table.

"I'll get that back."

"I went to talk to him," Fingolfin surprises himself by saying. "Ëarendil. Elwing was there too, but she turns into a seagull every time she gets emotional and she gets emotional about every thirty seconds so she didn't do much coherent talking through her own mouth."

He discovers he has everyone's attention.

"Why'd you go talk to them?" Turukáno asks, but his voice is too carefully light.

"We all went. Not Finarfin, he couldn't get away, but Anairë and Nerdanel and Ëarwen and I. It was . . . an odd experience. Nerdanel wanted the truth of all the stories, but she did not much like what she heard. It was nearly a decade before she so much as picked up a sketching-pad again. I've wanted to go back and ask further, but no one else wants to, and I don't want to go alone."

Maitimo and Makalaurë have gone very still. Arakáno has taken both Makalaurë's hands in his own, removing them from the cup, and Findekáno and Findaráto have twined their fingers into Maitimo's left hand. Artanis has covered his right, still on the nér's head, with her own and is presumably resting her other on Makalaurë's leg.

"I didn't like how he talked about them. His sons," Fingolfin says. Here, in this unlooked-for blessing of a dream, he can finally articulate his unease with the tale of the Third Kinslaying. "He didn't know them. As people. He knew them like he'd been told all about them but as the people they were after they grew up. He didn't . . . He didn't seem to remember them in the sort of way a parent does, like the memory of how they would have been when they were babies, being exhausting and cranky and so annoying that sometimes you just want to throw them out the nearest window but at the same time you love them so much you don't care that you haven't had a life other than them since they were born. He didn't feel connected. You say Curufin is in love with a boat engine, Tyelko, but even he is a million times more connected to his son that he accidentally made in some mad inventing fit as barely more than a child himself than Ëarendil is to the boys he made the usual way when he was grown and married."

Findekáno looks mildly amused by this, but everyone else is carefully blank-faced.

"And as someone who has in fact actually seen the Silmarils, all three of them together, and in fact has had them waved under my nose multiple times before everything fell apart, I think I know what I am speaking of when I say yes, they were incredibly alluring and very easy to be ensnared by, but given the choice between any of my children and an enchanted sparkly rock, I would have chosen my child without a second thought – it would not have even really been a choice. Even you, Tyelkormo." Fingolfin smiles briefly, remembering how angry and snappish he had been after Makalaurë gave up the crown.

There is a bitten-off gasp and a clatter. Tyelkormo has knocked his cup off the table, and is staring at him along with everyone else. They look hilariously shocked.

"What? You were perfectly within your rights not to trust me, and you were hurt and angry and didn't have anyone else you could lash out at, because Maitimo was too badly hurt and you loved Makalaurë too much to put that extra burden on him. That's just part of being a parent, taking the bad times with the good. I never begrudged it to you, though I did wish you were a little less wild about it. Mostly because I feared you would hurt yourself or come to harm through the unsanctioned actions of any particularly foolish and quick-tempered one of my followers."

"We weren't your children, though," Makalaurë says very, very quietly. He sounds bewildered.

"Of course you were, the moment it was clear your birth parents cared more for their own grudges or fears than for your survival. All of you, even Ambarto. I admit I was a little stressed about suddenly having fifteen children and two daughters-in-law and three grandchildren instead of four and one and one and half of you weren't even near me and I didn't always do the right thing – two of you died and one of you was captured before we even put down roots in Beleriand, which was not a good start – but I didn't mind. I knew that no matter how they would be twisted, your intentions were not evil from the beginning, not like Morgoth and his followers. I don't approve of some of the actions some of you took, and I can't condone them, but. They're done and over with and it's time to learn and move on."

Tyelkormo is displaying amazing flexibility; he has also curled into a ball, in Irissë's arms, and is hiding his face in her neck. She is absently stroking his shoulders.

"So, with that said: I don't approve of what Elwing did, choosing her Silmaril over her sons. I don't care that if she hadn't brought it West the Falmari wouldn't have sailed the Host back to defeat Morgoth. I don't care that Ëarendil wouldn't have made it back here to raise the Host to start with. There should have been another way."

He is quiet for a while, thinking of all the things that might have happened if only his children had been given their Silmaril. Perhaps they could even have used it to call the other two, and then to destroy Morgoth or weaken him enough to free the land. They were always clever, and he has not forgotten how those gems would only release their full potential for his half-brother and his children.

Fingolfin looks up at a sudden noise. Findekáno has stabbed a knife into the tabletop. She looks furious.

"She told you that? " she spits.

"Told us what?"

"That it was her who called the Valar to intervene? She claims it was her and that negligent –" she slips into an array of languages he does not know " – that managed to get those great bumbling celestial idiots to remove their heads from their backsides and realize we are not like them and being treated according to what is fair between Valar was killing us?"

" . . . Yes?" Fingolfin hazards. He's not clear on the 'how' of how Ëarendil and Elwing got help to Beleriand. Everyone always assumes they just finally got through to them with the sheer scope of Morgoth's cruelty and the Valar had no choice but to face it.

"Plan amendment!" Findaráto announces brightly, but with iron in his tone. "Nobody is going to let Finno go murder Elwing or throw anything at her tower or the ship. Especially if it's explosive or Curvo, Tyelpë, Narvi, Boromir, or Haleth had any part in building it." He has his hand held tightly over Findekáno's mouth. "We can let Tuor and Idril and Tindeóna go set them straight, though."

He cautiously removes his hand. Findekáno calls Elwing something that makes even Irissë blush. He puts his hand back.

"And we're not using language like that in front of Elrond while he's awake. He's got enough to deal with already." Findaráto looks sternly at the nís, who is examining a dagger.

"Just one stab, ataryo? A little one? A flesh wound?"

"No, Celebrían," he says firmly, and then glares at Artanis so fiercely she actually closes her mouth and sits back.

"Bastard," she mouths at him, but doesn't argue.

"I hate it when you're mature and reasonable, Findo," Turukáno laments. "She abused my grandsons."

"She did, but to be fair, she is under the influence of a mind-altering substance and has been since she was three years old."

"The Silmarils weren't, like, cannabis," Irissë says, sounding halfway between amused and appalled.

"No, that's actually nice," Maitimo mutters.

"I don't know, the kids always react to them," Findekáno says at the exact same time, and then continues, "You and little-Káno cheat. Everyone thinks you're just really good with kids but you've got an unfair advantage."

"Seriously?"

"The one she has is still corrupted," Findaráto says firmly. Fingolfin frowns. That doesn't match what he knows.

"What are we going to do, then?" Arakáno asks.

"About the Silmaril? Nothing, why should we do anything? About Elwing lying that it was her who got the Valar to take Morgoth down? That'll be obvious as soon as anyone actually asks the Valar what happened. About Elrond?" Findaráto shrugs. "That's his call, and we support him."

"He's here?" Fingolfin asks, startled.

"Who?"

"Elrond?"

Everyone looks a little oddly at him. 

"Oh, you never met him," Irissë says. "Of course he's here. Why wouldn't he be?"

"What, did you think we brought two random strangers along to visit, Uncle?" Artanis asks.

"Is that him?" he can't help asking.

She runs her fingers through the nér's hair. "Of course."

It's dark, like Turukáno's, but it's as fine and straight and silky as Findaráto's; his skin isn't pale, but it's not as dark as Turukáno's either. If he had to say Elrond resembled anyone he knew, he would probably pick Makalaurë and then Turukáno.

The nís is looking at him. "We met in the Halls, remember?"

"Celebrían," he says hesitantly.

"I'm your great-niece," she informs him solemnly. "And your granddaughter, and your great-great-granddaughter-in-law. Pick whatever's easier."

Fingolfin blinks. "All at the same time?"

She nods.

"Wait, my granddaughter?"

Arakáno waves at him. "Hi atya, remember me, your son? She's my daughter. Therefore, your granddaughter."

Celebrían is all white and quicksilver; nothing about her is in color except her clothes. 

"Wait! And I'm your –" Celebrían frowns. "I think . . ."

"Great-niece again but only half," Makalaurë prompts.

"Yeah, that. One of my cousins made a family sphere, so when we get that set up again you can have a look."

"Who – who are your parents, then?" Fingolfin asks, bewildered, and sighs when Artanis, Maitimo, Findekáno, Findaráto, Makalaurë, and Arakáno all raise their hands.

"Technically it was just me and little-Káno and Nelyo until she was about twenty-five, and then the others found us," Artanis says. "And Káno spoiled her terribly when she was young, so –"

"I did not," Arakáno says indignantly.

Celebrían looks very innocent.

There is a gasp and a clatter as Elrond flails awake and falls out of Artanis' lap. Somehow Maitimo manages to catch him on the way down so he doesn't hit his head, and avoids the strike aimed at his eyes. He sits on the floor, long legs crossed, and Elrond crawls into his lap and presses his face into his neck and cannot catch his breath.

Findekáno slips from Findaráto's arms and goes to kneel in front of Maitimo, one hand curling around the back of Elrond's neck and the other cupped over his hand that is clutching at the front of Maitimo's tunic. She slowly leans forward until he is caught snugly between them; she is leaning almost her whole weight on his back and Maitimo has to brace himself with an arm to keep upright. They are breathing together in a clearly familiar pattern, and slowly Elrond stops trembling so violently and begins to match it as well.

Celebrían is leaning forward with her elbows braced on the table and her head hanging, as if she is going to be sick. Arakáno has a hand spread across her shoulders. She is small enough it nearly spans them at their widest point. Fingolfin wonders if the parents who conceived her were Artanis and Makalaurë; she looks all Falmari and Vanyar until he really observes her, and then the pale glitter of silver in her golden hair and the almond shape of her silver eyes and the fine bones in her hands make it clear that she is kin to Míriel as well. She has more of the beauty of Maitimo than the beauty of Makalaurë in body, but she has the feel of Makalaurë in spirit. She is the draft in the coals and the spiral of smoke, not a leaping tongue of flame or a stubbornly glowing ember.

Though if she was born when there were only the three of them left, that would explain her outer similarities to Maitimo.

"Are you two looping?" Makalaurë asks quietly.

She nods and then swallows.

"Is he aware?"

"Yes," Findekáno says, even and gentle. "Maitimo is trying to help shield him."

"Will distance help or hurt this time?"

"Help," Celebrían says faintly, and bites down on her knuckles for a moment. There are tears welling in her eyes. "Ow, ow, that hurts – "

She is gripping her right forearm. Everyone around the table seems to notice at the same time, and goes still.

"We are still not killing Elwing yet," Findaráto says flatly. "Not until we know all the facts, because I'm not letting us be hypocrites about this after so long."

Arakáno has Celebrían bundled up in his arms. She is stiff, her face tight with pain.

"Atya or ammë?" he asks her.

"I – I – amil?" she pants.

Maitimo looks up, and then back to Elrond, visibly torn.

"Atar," Elrond says. "And ammë. Swap, Tindë?"

"Mm," Celebrían agrees.

Maitimo passes Elrond over to Findekáno, and he sits half in her lap and half out of it with his head on her shoulder and a handful of her braids held tightly in restless fingers. His other arm, his right, is tucked close to his chest. Makalaurë sits as close as he can get to his back and begins to hum what Fingolfin recognizes as a very old lullaby meant to soothe a child in great pain. Not something for scrapes and bruises, more for a broken bone or a forcibly knocked-out tooth.

Arakáno is moving towards the door, Celebrían now like a limp doll in his arms. She is squeezing Maitimo's gloved hand tightly, keeping it pinned over her right forearm held to her body with her left hand.

Artanis and Findaráto watch until they leave, and only then look away.

"They get caught in feedback loops," Artanis says, seeing Fingolfin's confused alarm. "Normally they don't have trouble separating on their own anymore, but if it's sudden and somewhat unexpected and an old hurt, like that, they need help to pull away. She probably gets it from my side of the family," she says with a hint of humor. "Little-Káno and I do that sometimes and Káno has to get between us, and Findo and Finno can go recursive until Nelyo breaks them apart, and Ango and Eldë actually have dampening bracelets they keep on them for emergencies since they don't have a third to intervene and often live alone, unlike Elrond and Celebrían."

"Aiko's just lucky that that doesn't seem to affect Edain at all," Findaráto grumbles. "Or he's just lucky. I've never had a problem with Nelyo though."

"Why was she holding her arm?" Fingolfin wonders. Artanis gives him a flat look.

"I don't know, but I can guess, since it has been a recurring nightmare of his for as long as I've known him. When he was about a year old, he grabbed for the Nauglamír."

"Wish I'd destroyed the fucking thing," Findaráto mutters.

"Elwing broke his arm in three places to make him let go of her prize, two of them in his forearm so badly the bone went through the skin. We don't know how long it went untreated. Long enough to scar through to his fëa. We've calculated that he was about six years old when we took him, and the scar was still raw enough that Nelyo thought he had been cut in the battle."

"The small fact that Nelyo was the first person to actually give him more care than the absolute minimum he needed to survive probably had something to do with it as well," Findaráto adds. "He had to teach him how to anchor himself to his soul and then explain how to use it to feed himself. He didn't know how."

Fingolfin blinks. That had been completely instinctive for all his children. They'd been attached to Anairë quite solidly before they were born, and he had felt them grab on to him and fully nestle down into the parent-bond the first time he had held them. He hadn't the slightest clue how in the world he would begin to explain how to do it to an adult, let alone a frightened and newly-orphaned toddler who didn't even understand what he was talking about.

"We do not like Elwing," Artanis says, cold and precise. "If she has been compelled all this time, we will pity her, and understand her, and offer her aid to recover and move on. But she promised no actions, and therefore everything she has done has had its roots somewhere in her own heart."

"Ëarendil told me that he blames Maitimo and Makalaurë for his other son choosing mortality," he says. It is not tactful, but he needs to know. The way Elrond relaxed into both their hands tells him that the tale is probably a lie, but he needs to know.

Both Artanis and Findaráto snort. "Oh, please," he says. "Elros was a Man at heart. It was clear as soon as he hit puberty, and I think they knew it before. It was just what he was. And he was happy."

"If we're going to blame anyone for 'making' him mortal – which is absurd – I'd blame Ëarendil and Elwing," Artanis adds. "For not giving either of them the early support they needed to develop their fëar like we do and so forcing them to grow almost entirely like mortals from birth until we took them away, and barely enough food and interaction and education to develop like mortals at all. They didn't know how to talk or run properly when we took them, and they were six. That's not as unusual for an elfling, but they were peredhel forced into growing as fast as Men. They were about the equivalent of twenty. And then they stopped growing so fast physically as soon as we bonded with them, because their bodies were twenty but their minds in most ways were still five. We knew their growth was fucked up and nonlinear, but we didn't realize how badly until Celebrían had the twins, who should have functionally folllowed the same growth pattern."

"Finno literally carried Elrond around in a sling for five or six hours every single day for about three years. If he missed more than a day of skin contact with her he would get sick, because she was the first time he'd ever had a mother who actually filled that bond," Findaráto adds. " Nelyo had done everything he could to keep him alive but he was still only one person who was barely keeping himself alive in the end, and Elrond sees him more as a father. He slept between her and Maedhros almost every night like an infant would, or sometimes between her and me, and he almost always sat in my lap or was held in my arms anytime we were all still instead of wanting to be on his own, and he was constantly touching his parent-bonds with all three of us. We essentially had to re-raise him like he should have been from birth, just like we did for Anno after he accepted the Gift. Elros wasn't that dramatically different, but he was very clingy to little-Káno and Ambarussa and Tindeóna. Like having a perpetual fifteen-year-old for ten years. Luckily they evened out after a while and grew up more or less normally from then on."

"It did let Tindë get through her 'boys are gross' phase without disturbing either of them much, though," Artanis says, looking thoughtful. "Too bad Anno didn't get lucky like that."

Findaráto snorts. "He still swears he has a scar on his leg from Merilwë's steel-toed boots. Why Moryo thought his kid needed those is beyond me – "

"Haleth."

" – ah. Yes. And Anno did knock out three of her teeth, so I suppose they're even." Findaráto looks very fond and proud. "He does not fight fair. That's probably why he's Nelyo's favorite."

"I still don't know how they didn't recognize each other when they met in Gondor."

Findaráto shrugs. "He's Nelyo's kid. Nelyo didn't recognize Finno right away after she'd gone away to the Sea for only like a decade when we were young. He just thought there was a weirdly attractive stranger who broke into grandfather's garden."

Artanis snorts. "Smartest stupid person I've ever known."

"I am getting the impression that most of what everyone says about what Maitimo and Makalaurë did to Elwing's sons is entirely false," Fingolfin says, a little blankly.

"Indeed," says Artanis. "Also, a word of advice, Uncle – they're both too preoccupied to hear right now, but don't ever call him or Elros Elwing or Ëarendil's sons in Elrond or Fingon's hearing. Mostly everyone called them the peredhel, and that's what Elros was most comfortable taking as a name. Elrond is still known by it, but when he's really sleep-deprived or on painkillers or drunk, he insists he's Findekánion. It's kind of adorable, really. Don't get me wrong, he's also very attached to Nelyo, but he bonded with Finno almost instantly and I think more than half the time she still sees him as he was when he was little enough for her to carry about all day."

"Turko makes the most hilarious face every time," Findaráto adds. "The first time it happened they ended up in a fight and did some impressive damage to each other, but it wasn't all because of Elrond. Really it wasn't about him at all. Mostly they just needed to have it out about Gondolin and Finno wasn't happy at all about how he handled Irtë's whole situation, and he had been doing a good job of pretending he still wasn't as mad as hell at her for dying and making him take the throne and –" Findaráto stops. He has possibly noticed the overwhelmed expression that Fingolfin can't keep off his face. "Anyway. They beat the shit out of each other one day after we took Elrond somewhere else so he wouldn't know, and Tyelko set Finno's arm and Turko's leg afterwards and then they actually talked to each other about how they felt because Elë held Turko still and Arto held Finno and wouldn't let them up until they remembered how to use their words, and they've been fine ever since."

"I must say that conflict resolution has become much easier ever since I have had the Bear Option," Artanis says. She looks a little smug, even more so than her default state of looking faintly smug.

"The . . . bear option?" Fingolfin asks cautiously.

Artanis nods, and stands up and moves away from the table, and then there is an enormous honey-brown bear in his kitchen. It is tall enough as it sits up on its haunches that he thinks even Maitimo wouldn't reach past its upper chest, and its back is broader than the table.

The bear once again becomes Artanis. "Very useful," she says, and sits again. "For fighting, and emergencies, and transport, and diplomacy, and totally fucking with people's heads."

Fingolfin can see that.

He can also see that sometime since Elrond woke up, everyone except Artanis and Findaráto has vanished from the kitchen. So soon? He didn't even see Turukáno or Irissë leave.

"Hey," says Tyelkormo, sticking his head in through the door from the courtyard, and Fingolfin never thought he would be so glad to see him. "This firepit is amazing. Do you mind if we stay out here tonight? We've got all our stuff."

He is speaking to him, he realizes.

"Yes?" he says blankly. "There – there are spare rooms if you would like to spend the night."

"Courtyard's perfect, thanks," Tyelkormo says, and vanishes again. Fingolfin edges around to make sure he has only gone out the door and has not been sucked back into the Void.

"We make a habit of staying together when one of us has a bad day that is likely to turn into a bad night," Findaráto says, and suddenly he looks much, much older than he ever had the chance to live to be. "It has been hard for him, coming here and knowing that although they most likely will not come to see him, his birth parents who neglected him so awfully could come see him. I think perhaps this is the bravest thing he has ever done."

"It was mostly simple neglect," Artanis says as she rises and begins to help him clear away the cups. "The arm incident did not happen again. I wouldn't be very surprised to learn that was the last time she actually touched him, though. They had a nurse, and then a revolving cast of servants. We don't think that working in Elwing's house was easy, and she was very paranoid of thieves. Neither of the boys had a stable person in their lives to attach themselves to until us, and we were barely fit to keep each other going."

Findaráto has gone outside now too. Fingolfin stares out the window. It is getting on to dusk, and Turukáno and Irissë are building a fire. Elenwë and Tyelkormo are unpacking what looks like bundles of bedding. A small camp is springing up.

"Just to be clear," he says. "Irissë and Tyelkormo are married?"

Artanis nods. "Soul-friends," she says, and then "They bonded mostly to ensure no one else could claim them, in the beginning, but they are very content."

"And Turukáno and Elenwë are married. And Findekáno is married, to . . . ?"

"To Maedhros and Finrod," she prompts, and the foreign names feel strange. "They orbit each other steadily now, without the, ah, extremes that she and Maedhros were left open to when it was just the two of them. When they mutually got it through their thick heads that they all wanted each other, it was a relief. Also, Fingon can do math now, and Maedhros doesn't trip over his own feet as much. I'm not sure what Findo's gotten out of it, besides two very attentive and affectionate partners."

Fingolfin finds that he is wearing the same expression of vaguely cautious detachment that Artanis is. 

"I find them a little too intense to be to my taste, but Findo thrives under their combined force, somehow. He is like one of those plants that is not aquatic purely because the water it lives in is constant mist."

His eyebrows knit together. Artanis always was a little weird.

"I suppose you're more concerned for Fingon, though. She is happy. She, quite frankly, needed two spouses to keep up with her in just about every way, and they can join together to sit on her when she's being stupid. All three of them are good for each other, the best."

He looks over as she breaks off.

"I am, of course, biased."

He blinks at her. Is she blushing?

"I cannot complain very well about my brother's taste in soulmates when my own are their brothers."

"Arakáno?" he asks faintly. It seems unlikely that Arakáno would even be noticed by Artanis, Galadriel of the Golden Wood, the Lady, the witch, the High Queen, whatever else everyone who has sailed from Middle-Earth in these last three Ages has called her. Often she had sounded more like a force of nature or a Maia taken with the Eldar like Melian had been than his youngest niece Nerwen, whom he had held when she was small enough to fit in one of his hands.

"Arakáno," she confirms. "And Makalaurë. My Kános," she adds, and there is possessiveness and satisfaction and contentment there under the surface. "I turned to the Fëanorians after the Girdle fell. Melian . . . was not what I had hoped. I'd thought she would have had enough love to see the curse on that Silmaril for what it was and give it back simply to get the poison out of her family and her kingdom, but she did not. I didn't exactly agree with the 'murder spree' method, but nothing else was working and even just getting the one back would have given us so much more room to maneuver."

She puts down the cup she had been drying for him. "I was one of the ones who led them into Menegroth, Uncle. I knew the new secret routes. I knew the more recent guard schedules. I knew what was going to happen and I agreed with it. I could see no other way forward to keep Morgoth from killing everyone. What was one city if its fall could save every other city that was and would be built?" She sighs, and mumbles "Sometimes foresight is terrible."

Fingolfin isn't sure what he thinks of this, except now he understands why she couldn't come home with her father.

"Tyelko and Curvo and Moryo died there. We'd known it would probably happen, but it rattled us. I bonded with Káno a few weeks later. It did help."

"One of the ones who let them into Menegroth?" That was what sounded strange.

"I did live there, and could go in and out with relative freedom even after Dior was King. But I wasn't raised there, not like Eluréd and Elurín. They knew everything, I knew the most recent modifications. We functioned very well as the Fëanorian shadow team."

"Huh," he says. It's not enough, but he doesn't know how else to respond. As far as he knows, Eluréd and Elurín were killed by Tyelkormo's followers, and were also children.

"Arakáno is – he is our anchor," Artanis says quietly. "Which seems odd given that he is physically incapable of staying in one place all year with any predictability, but he is. Everything was better once he came for us. I believe he saved Celebrían's life by being willing to bond with her before little-Káno or I were even well enough to bond with him, and she adores him." She nods. "We treasure him and respect him and love him very deeply."

"I'm glad he's happy, and you are too," he says. It's true, even if this is all a dream and Arakáno is really lost in the darkness with all the others.

Perhaps there is a bit of truth to it, and he has found Makalaurë, the way Findekáno had Findaráto with her when she was taken. He hopes this is so.

Artanis puts down the last clean dish and smiles at him. "I must join the pile," she says, and looks out the window. There is indeed a huddle of limbs and blankets and braids clustered around the firepit in the courtyard. He can see Findekáno, as she is nearest the house, and he thinks that the shadowy blob next to Tyelkormo's silver head is probably Irissë, but everyone else is obscured in the wavering firelight.

Fingolfin watches the dream for a while longer, and turns away when the fire has died down to ash and he cannot make out any individual features.

In the morning, or when he wakes, they will have dimmed and flattened even more, into nothing, and his children will still be gone. He is glad for the dream, though, and thankful that he got to see what it could be like to have them happy and together, the way it could have been.

"Ñolofinwë!" Anairë is hissing, and shaking him. "Ñolofinwë, our children are sleeping in the courtyard! What the fuck is going on?"

Findekáno inherited her mother's language, he thinks, and stares mournfully at the ceiling.

Then he sits up. He is in his bed, and it is morning, and Anairë looks like she just came home from hunting which isn't unusual, and she is saying –

"You can see them too?" he asks, numb.

"Of course I can see them! I almost tripped over one of them! When did they get here? Where did they come from? Why didn't you tell me?"

It has all been real?

Chapter Text

When Fingolfin reaches the bottom of the stairs and rushes into his kitchen, Artanis is there. He blinks, standing in the doorway.

Artanis is making tea. That is fairly normal.

Artanis is making tea with an entire grown adult person on her back. She looks quite accustomed to it, sometimes tucking items into his hands. That is not so normal.

"Uncle Ñolo," she says, and goes back to getting out every single cup he has.

Makalaurë turns his head and opens one eye. He mumbles something that possibly could have been a 'good morning' and nuzzles back into Artanis' glowing waterfall of loose hair again.

His legs are wrapped around her waist and he is somehow holding on with his elbows over her shoulders, because his arms are just hanging loose. She isn't doing a thing to hold him there, either.

"You are going to talk to your mother, and you are going to be polite about it," she says, and Fingolfin is puzzled. He hasn't even seen his mother for . . . a very long time. The Trees were still alive.

"Mmmmphrrrr," says Makalaurë, and he realizes she wasn't talking to him.

"I am not. I will be talking to my parents as well."

"Hi, atya," says Arakáno from behind him, and then squeaks as Fingolfin seizes him and pulls him into a hug.

"And you are not going to sulk as a snake on your brother," Artanis says firmly. 

He'd forgotten how tall his youngest is.

Makalaurë mumbles something against Artanis' neck.

"No, she won't," she says, at the same time as Arakáno says, "Why would she?" and wriggles a little.

Fingolfin holds on tighter.

"Don't be absurd. If you could have stopped him from doing that we wouldn't have ever left in the first place. Anyway, it wasn't your job to take care of your father. It was his job to take care of you."

"Should I get Finno to come give you the speech she gives Elrond? Uh, atya, I'm glad to see you too," Arakáno says, and wriggles more insistently.

"No," Makalaurë says hastily.

"I'll even do it for free," Findekáno says. For some reason unknown to any sentient being, she has entered the house by climbing through the open window over the sink, falling into it as the inevitable result. At least she is not wearing shoes. In fact, she doesn't appear to be wearing much of anything except a shirt that – judging from how the sleeves are rolled up – probably belongs to Maitimo, and it is serving her very well as a knee-length dress. It is not a very good thing to be climbing through windows in.

"Don't bother," he says even more hastily.

"This is getting a little weird, atya," Arakáno says.

Findekáno climbs out of the sink with great dignity and frowns at it. "Forgot that was there," she says huffily, and rolls up her sleeves again after they have fallen down over her hands. "Anyway! Let's get everyone caffeinated and then figure out how we're going to rework our battle plan."

She is apparently talking to Artanis, for she nods gravely and exchanges a significant glance with her.

Fingolfin feels a slight shiver of dread.

" Atya ," Arakáno says, pushing at him. "This has been nice but I want to go do something else now."

"You know they're still probably going to be dicks about sharing power in a trio," Findekáno says as she picks up cups. "So there's that to get around. We can't concede on that."

"We should confirm our suspicions first. Yesterday proved that things aren't as we assumed," Artanis says.

"Finno! Make him let me go," Arakáno says.

"Come help us carry this, atya," Findekáno says without looking up. She sounds so confident that he will do exactly as she says, but he is not going to – he is doing exactly as she said.

Fingolfin looks down at her suspiciously. Arakáno has already escaped outside again through the window that is the next one over from the one over the sink; he suspects Findekáno intended to come in that way instead. Though why his children have developed an allergy to doors, he cannot say.

"What?" she asks, handing him a platter of food and an innocent look.

"You are very, very short," he says idiotically.

"She got shorter," Arakáno informs him gleefully through the window.

"And we can't let them try anything with any of our mortals," she says, opting to ignore them both. "Didn't Thorin say he was moving here? I wonder how that's gone."

"I know a dwarf named Thorin," Fingolfin says, happy to be relevant. "Actually, I know two of them."

"So there are dwarves here," Artanis says, leading him out the door.

"Lots. And an odd little creature that digs burrows."

"A hobbit," she says glacially, and he thinks he made a misstep somewhere but doesn't know where. "They are not creatures, they are simply another race."

"Oh," he says, a little scared but not willing to show it. He held her when she was a newborn. She shouldn't be that scary.

Anairë is sitting between Turukáno and Elenwë by the newly-woken fire. Irissë has her head in her lap. It looks cosy.

Maitimo has Tyelkormo in a headlock on the other side of the fire, which looks less cosy. Celebrían is sitting on Tyelkormo's stomach. There is a swan on her lap. Findaráto is feeding it bits of bread. Every time Tyelkormo almost breaks out of Maitimo's grip, the swan hisses and flutters its wings threateningly.

Artanis looks over at them and clicks her tongue. Celebrían gets off Tyelkormo, and the swan waddles into Findaráto's lap instead in pursuit of further bread. Maitimo lets his brother up.

"I didn't know it was him and I was half asleep!" Tyelkormo protests. "Anyway, I'd check first. I always do. I'm a prey animal too."

The swan gives him a nasty sideways look and goes back to eating its bread. Findaráto is petting its head.

"Food!" Irissë says loudly, sitting up abruptly, and chaos begins.

Fingolfin does a headcount once everyone is settled again. There's Anairë, and Irissë and Tyelkormo. There's Turukáno and Elenwë, and Findaráto is beside them with the swan who has turned into Elrond. All right then. There's Artanis and Maglor, with Celebrían and Argon next to them. And finally, there are Maitimo and Findekáno and . . . Fingolfin stalls.

There is a young . . . nér? snuggled up in Maitimo's lap, yawning sleepily as he curls his hands into his shirt and steals sips of tea from Maitimo's cup. He has Maitimo's skin and hair color, though his hair is much darker and has an odd patch of blond on one side, but he has Findekáno's nose and hair texture, and Findaráto's face and eye shape and color.

Findekáno reaches over and gently stuffs an entire slice of rolled-up buttered bread into his mouth. He appears to take this in stride. It is all oddly birdlike.

"Finno," Maitimo says. He sounds tired. 

"What?"

"He's not a baby anymore. Which is good, because you'd have just choked him, but the point still stands."

"He'll always be my baby," she says. Fingolfin is rather proud of this heretofore unseen maternal streak in his oldest daughter. He'd always thought she was much too busy cheerfully killing orcs and luring Maitimo into closets to have time for wanting children, or at least ones that weren't also the responsibility of five other people like Elrond had been. He certainly hadn't thought she'd want to give birth to one.

He's a little annoyed she hadn't mentioned this before now.

" 's fine, amya," the boy says drowsily. "Ammë, is there jam?"

Findekáno regards the food piled about the fire thoughtfully before picking out a handful of jam-filled cookies; she then proceeds to eat her own breakfast with one hand and feed cookies to her (apparent) son with the other.

He saw a bird stuff worms down a fledgling's throat once. It was a very similar sight. They both seem perfectly happy, so he doesn't ask. He's more preoccupied with his daughter's questionable parenting about feeding her child sweets for breakfast than the way she is doing it.

"Where's Merilwë?" Findaráto asks.

Fingolfin looks around, feeling a little paranoid. Where is who ?

The boy in Maitimo's lap shrugs and accepts another cookie. "Probably still roosting," he says, dropping crumbs everywhere.

Maitimo sighs.

"You were supposed to stay on the ship."

"Elrond got to come."

"That's true," Elrond says. "And so did Tindë."

"Did you tell anyone you were leaving?" Maitimo asks.

"Merilwë told her atya," the boy says. Maitimo frowns down at him. "Well she said she left a note," he mumbles. Maitimo sighs.

"Oh, she got a rabbit," the boy says about twenty seconds later, and looks torn. "But there's jam," he argues to no one in particular. "You could bring the rabbit here?"

"Do not bring the rabbit here," Makalaurë says, but he is ignored.

"You were supposed to stay on the ship," Maitimo repeats. "And if you left, you were supposed to tell someone first so we knew where to look for you."

"I told Merilwë!" the boy says brightly. "Not my fault she decided to come with me."

"Annaduinë," Maitimo says flatly, and the boy – Annaduinë, evidently – stills. "Yes, you are grown, but you are not yet adult. We worry about you."

"This is not yet safe country," Findekáno says. "It is not a place any of us can go alone. Merilwë doesn't count, any more than your parents and I do. You can't communicate reliably yet with anyone but her."

"I still think he should have come with us to start with," Elrond mutters.

"Elrond," says Findekáno, low and soft. He looks down and leans into Findaráto, who puts an arm about his shoulders and murmurs something in his ear.

A bird glides down from the sky. Tyelkormo whistles sharply and holds out his arm, and it changes course abruptly and lands there. Its underside is white, the rest of it is black, and it has a cute little crest of feathers sticking out the back of its grey head. It is also enormous, with a curved beak and strong talons. Fingolfin isn't sure how Tyelkormo still has his arm.

"Moryo is worried about you," he informs the bird, looking it in the eye. "He's been panicking at me for the last five minutes. He says you're grounded until you're three hundred."

The bird eyeballs him and makes a weird little croaking noise.

"Then he's grounded with you."

"Hey," Annaduinë says indignantly.

"You are," says Findekáno. Annaduinë looks up at Maitimo with large, innocent eyes and a hopeful expression.

"You are," Maitimo says, unaffected somehow. Annaduinë sulks.

"Did you eat your rabbit?" Tyelkormo asks the bird. It bobs its head. "Right then. Get off my arm."

The bird abruptly turns into a young nís who looks remarkably like both Tyelkormo and Irissë, at least superficially. At a second glance, there is something indefinably non-elven about her.

"Your mother says that she is –" Tyelkormo narrows his eyes. " 'Glad that you are asserting your independence and testing your boundaries like any young fool who thinks she knows everything but she is also as mad as fuck at you for scaring her because she remembers what these people could be like to mortals without even thinking and even though you technically aren't one she is still worried for you and being married doesn't mean you're not still her daughter'. Your father just said you have reminded him of late teen Ambarussa at their brattiest with this and that's not a compliment."

The nís winces.

"And they both agree that while it's too late for you to go back, you're in our care for the rest of this."

"Oh shit," she mumbles. Irissë gives her a frankly evil grin.

"Oh shit, indeed," she says. "Maybe next time you'll be better at not being caught."

"Irissë," Tyelkormo and Maitimo say together.

"What?"

"So," Celebrían says conversationally, and Fingolfin nearly jumps out of his skin. She had come from nowhere. "Grandfather."

He blinks at her and tries not to hyperventilate.

"That's my babiest cousin Annaduinë, and he's also your grandson because emil's his ammë, and that over there is Merilwë, who is technically my youngest cousin if we're measuring it by birth year but eh." She wiggles her hand. "She didn't need to be remade so her mind is a bit more grown still than his. And their aging is sideways anyway because they were born mortal and then he was adopted and took the Gift and had to grow up again from a baby when he was about the equivalent of thirty, and she was adopted but didn't need that but wanted the full experience so all the nerds got together and invented a ritual that turned her into a peredhel just like Elrond since Aunt Haleth was mortal once too. So they look grown and they got married a few years ago but really they're . . ." She frowns. "I think Anno is probably about the equivalent of a hundred and twenty, and Më is more around a hundred and forty. He used to be older but she's passed him by now because of all the –" She waves her hand again. "They'll even out once they are fully adults, eventually. Peredhel aging is the weirdest ."

Fingolfin nods, a little dazed by all this strange information being fired at him unprovoked.

"And Anno is very much amil's chick still. Uncle Maedhros', I mean." She looks slightly embarrassed. "Even though he's old enough to fend for himself, mostly. He can fight really well and he's very smart but he's also still very young so those facts aren't always good. He did some really dangerous stunts in the war when they had to let him go off on his own and now they're kind of overprotective even though he survived and everything."

Fingolfin disagrees with her. A hundred and twenty is barely at the age where the serious tutoring in the finer points of governance begins. Even though his father had been eager to find him a spouse, he hadn't been allowed to even start thinking of looking (or to have anyone look at him, he realizes now) until he had passed his hundred and fiftieth name-day. Annaduinë is not old enough to be out of his parents' house, weird peredhel aging or no.

He sighs. He wishes he'd caught Findekáno's obsession with getting married to her Maitimo before she had actually accomplished it. To be fair, she had waited until she was nearly a hundred years older than he had been when he got married – she'd been born by the time he was the same age as she was when he presumes she got married – but he suspects that delay was mostly on Maitimo's part, because otherwise she'd have married him as soon as she woke up on her two-hundredth name-day and could do it without any of the involved parents having the legal right to protest the marriage before the Valar and get it undone or put on hold, propriety and the planned celebration of Indis' first grandchild officially coming of age completely ignored.

She'd probably have gone over and climbed into Maitimo's rooms the night before so she could wake him up at the morning Mingling and get started on it – would probably have woken him up by getting started on it.

Anyhow, he supposes he shouldn't be so shocked that Findekáno had allowed her son to marry before he was old enough to court, but it did seem odd.

"They're soul-halves, and even though they fought like cats and dogs when they were little we think that was just because they're both new peredhel – well, she is, none of us quite know what the fuck he is by now but he's just fine so we're not too fussed about it – and didn't know how else to handle it. They met again when they were older and it went much more smoothly, and then emil and Aunt Haleth said they should just get married early since physically they're more than old enough and both of them were tired of all the drama," Celebrían says, somehow divining what he is thinking. Apparently she inherited that disconcerting ability from her mother. "Amil didn't really mind since he likes Më anyway. Uncle Moryo was a bit grumpy about it but he's just like that about everyone except Aunt Haleth anyway and he likes Anno so they agreed too once somebody else had thought of it."

Evidently Annaduinë is not Findekáno's child by birth. Fingolfin feels weirdly disappointed by this for no reason he can discern.

The conversation has moved on from the shenanigans of the younger members of the family when he turns his attention back to it. Celebrían has attached herself to his arm and is snuggling it like a pillow, and he doesn't quite know what to do about it. She is yawning.

"So we should probably scrap the plan to tell my parents at the same time as everyone else," Artanis is saying. She looks vaguely disappointed.

"They think you're all dead," Anairë interjects. "So unless you don't want them to believe a word you say, yes, you should go see your parents like a normal person. Perhaps we should accompany you and break the news."

"If you want to," Artanis says. She still looks disappointed. "I'm not having it if they try to be dicks to Findo, though."

Findaráto has just about burrowed into her side. He is still looking at the ground.

"Why would they?" Fingolfin asks, baffled.

"I might have been young, but I remember how uncomfortable they made him and how nobody listened to him. Neither of us were ever allowed to do anything that could be perceived as too masculine, even if it was just because of a stereotype. It wasn't good for the family. He's not a nís and I'm not going to dumb myself down just for the sake of someone else's ego. If they can't handle that my brain is attached to my body, they're not fit to be in charge of anything, much less a kingdom of people."

All right, Fingolfin thinks. Clearly there were some issues with Finarfin's children that he missed. Maybe he'll have to do something about it before they meet him.

A terrible thought strikes him. "Oh no," he says. "Everyone is going to be weird about you being in a trio. It's . . . it still isn't really done, or only two of the family actually admit they're together. Everyone's still . . . not quite afraid of it, but it's still not done."

Findekáno groans. "Still? They've been dead since before the First Age. Grandmothers are perfectly fine with Aunt Findis and Aunt Lalwen. It's not like she's permanently crippled or whatever everyone always said would happen."

Fingolfin doesn't know what to do with any of this information. "Where are Findis and Lalwen?" he asks weakly. "I haven't seen them since Mithrim."

"They built a house in Dol Amroth practically before it was Dol Amroth and have been taking turns pretending to be Maglor on the beach and being the resident cryptid of the city for centuries."

Fingolfin knows all the words, but he doesn't know what they mean when they're stuck together like that. It wasn't fair that his sisters were apparently perfectly fine over – she had said grandmothers ?

"Pretending to what," Anairë says blankly.

"Some of us got kind of drunk one night trying to figure out what to say happened to everyone at the end of the First Age since we weren't supposed to really let anyone know we'd been reembodied and that wasn't a problem but we did have a different big problem because Nelyo and little-Káno were still alive and lots of people wanted to kill them," Irissë says breezily. "And for some reason everyone thought Arto'd moved way east, and we're still confused by that. I mean, she did travel a lot just because she could go more places and talk to people than they could, but it's still weird. So we had to figure out cover stories for Nelyo and little-Káno and it was confusing and stressful so we got a bit sloshed to deal with it and ended up writing pieces of theories on little bits of paper and pulling them out of a bag and somehow we ended up deciding that Nelyo died dramatically and little-Káno wrote a really epic and movingly tragic oral history of our people. Which wasn't really that helpful in terms of a cover story for him so we got out the bag again and decided he ought to wander around by the beach being depressed."

Makalaurë grumbles something under his breath.

"Yes, you are that dramatic," Arakáno, Maitimo, and Tyelkormo say in unison.

"So Finno had us spread a bunch of rumors about how Nelyo died with one of the Silmarils and little-Káno gave his to Ulmo and went off to be a sad sandy hermit and after about a hundred years we were safe. And nobody was looking for the Silmarils anymore which was good because they can't get to them. I mean technically they could have cut Nelyo's hand off again I suppose? But it might not have stayed cohesive and anyway Finno would have killed them for trying so we thought it best to put them out of reach. And one really did get lost because Nelyo dropped it and we didn't find it again until the Third Age, so it wasn't totally a bunch of lies."

Fingolfin might be more confused than he had been when she started explaining.

"For all we know it might just reform," Maitimo says, and then looks thoughtful.

" No ," Findaráto says, echoed a heartbeat later by Findekáno and Artanis.

"No experiments with that," Findekáno says firmly. She is looking a little sick.

"Sorry," Maitimo says sheepishly, and puts his arm around her. "I just can't help being curious."

" No ," she says vehemently into his shoulder, and yanks on her braids for some reason.

Annaduinë scrambles out of Maitimo's lap and he pulls her into it; he holds her like he had held Elrond the previous night and Findaráto comes over to press up against her back.

Annaduinë turns into a small bird that looks like a hunting hawk and flutters over to perch on Elrond's shoulder. Elrond absently begins feeding him bits of meat.

Fingolfin is relieved that someone is making the boy eat a decent breakfast. He wants to get to know Elrond better, since he seems to have sense against all odds.

"Anyway," Irissë says. "The 'official' version of events that Findo and Tuor ghostwrote as some scribe person from Gondolin says that Nelyo's safely dead before the Second Age and little-Káno is either harmless or faded by now. We fixed Arto's story by actually all moving east since there wasn't exactly a lot of west left to live on, and little-Kano's dumbass Celeborn disguise was useful for once. Then our aunts came back and they thought our cover stories were hilarious but said people might get suspicious if there weren't Maglor-sightings occasionally, and then they said they loved us all but would prefer to do it in smaller doses and at a further distance so they volunteered to hike the coastlines from Forochel to Umbar and be a legendary beach cryptid. Which was really helpful, but also a bit awkward because then we had to actually write the damn song and there were a lot of wrestling matches when someone came up with a verse about someone else that they didn't like. Eventually we gave little-Káno creative control over the actual melody and Andreth got final say on the words since somehow she could both be fairly impartial and actually had taste and a bit of talent with words, and Findo sulked for three years that nobody wanted to use his terrible dwarven drinking song as the melody instead. He said it'd be funny and nobody would know what they were singing but every single dwarf ever would."

"I did not sulk ," Findaráto says, somewhat muffled by Findekáno's hair.

"You were sulking," Artanis says firmly. "And to protect Tindë and Elrond, we decided that she wasn't born yet and he'd gotten to Gil-Galad in some unspecified fashion because the boys had nowhere else to go, instead of as our spies."

"As what," Fingolfin says blankly.

"Well, not really spies," she amends. "More like they were the most tactful way to ask him if he'd like to know all his foster parents and his actual parents were back, only somehow they never got around to telling him and then Elros founded Númenor and Elrond was busy and we were all over the place, and then it was just embarrassing because they hadn't said anything for way too long, so eventually the poor boy had to almost die first to get sorted out. It was all very dramatic. You can definitely tell he got all of the Fëanorian drama and the Diorion general propensity for one-in-a-billion improbable events to happen to him."

"The what now," Fingolfin says even more blankly. Gil-Galad is related to who?

"I don't know how you can think they're not dramatic," Turukáno says. He looks puzzled.

"The . . . the one-in-a-billion events?"

"Oh, that. Well, Elwing turned into a seagull when before she could never shapeshift at all despite being part-maia, and the twins managed to travel back through time to before their own existence to marry Pityo and then have Lúthien's oldest great-grandson before she'd actually met Beren to begin with, so," Turukáno shrugs. "They still don't know how they did it."

"I," Fingolfin says, and stalls. " What? "

"Yeah," Artanis says sympathetically. "Short version? Two terrified part-maia children who grew up with near-constant Silmaril-exposure got abandoned in an already enchanted forest, got scared, wished themselves back in time to before the forest was so scary, finished growing up, ran away from Doriath after antagonizing their nice, sensible great-grandfather Thingol into declaring them traitors who should be killed on sight with their radical politics and inability to keep them to themselves, and then met Pityo, who wasn't too much older than their age equivalent. They still hadn't learned any impulse control so of course they were a perfect fit for Ambarussa, they married him, they kept their silence on who their birth parents were, they accidentally-on-purpose had Gil-Galad, they realized it had been a really stupid idea since Thingol was already hunting them in the rest of Beleriand because he didn't trust them because they hadn't been shy about saying Doriath should be open even after they left and then they went and married a kinslayer to double down on it all. They gave him to Finno – "

"Gil-Galad, not Thingol. That'd have been weird," Arakáno helpfully interjects.

" – since Pityo knew she'd protect him, and she did what she does best and started a bunch of rumors to cover the truth. Though nobody knew the whole truth since Eluréd and Elurín didn't fucking say anything until Nelyo half-killed himself trying to save toddler-them out in the forest, and then I knew something was weird because of how they were acting, never mind that they somehow knew Menegroth so well and hadn't bothered to change their names, and I threatened them into telling us the whole truth. Though we concluded in the end that we think Nelyo wanting to save them was what gave little-them the power boost they needed to actually go back in time, so." Artanis shrugs. "Mostly we don't think about it because we start getting Ideas For Experiments."

Fingolfin can hear the capital letters. "Huh," he says weakly.

"And then Eluréd said he'd actually met Pityo for the first time the week before from Pityo's perspective and when he was a child from his own, and he'd saved him from being killed while he was running around looking for Elurín in the chaos, and that's why he talked to him when he met him when they were grown in the first place. So we all got really drunk, and then I finally proposed to Maglor, so then they said they'd been perfectly justified in not saying a thing all those years because they knew we had to sack Menegroth to start with and also they were tired of seeing us be polite to each other while making each other miserable. So we got headaches, and then got married, and later had Tindë, and not long after that they heard Elwing had twins and wasn't being a good parent, so we invaded Sirion half to get the twins and half to get the Silmaril and ended up with the new pair of twins, no Silmaril, and with Eluréd and Elurín and Amras all dead, and after that we all mostly didn't really do any thinking about things beyond surviving because we had to take care of our children until the Valar came and then everyone came back and put us together again. And then I locked Tindeóna in a closet for five hours because I was still mad at them."

"And then they time-traveled themselves out of the closet when they got hungry and worried about Ambarussa because she'd also put suppression bracelets on them so they wouldn't just come let them out immediately, and they forgot they could just Sing them off," Arakáno says. "They can only do it when they're both together, and really stressed and not thinking about doing it, though, and usually it's only by an hour or so. Sometimes just a few minutes. I think the longest they've managed since their first jump as kids was a week, when Tindë died."

Fingolfin looks down at his arm. It is being held hostage by a gently snoring Celebrían, who is more than alive enough to put his arm to sleep. She looks like a spirit but is surprisingly heavy. At least, he assumes she's who they mean when they refer to someone called Tindë.

He asks about this.

"Tindafinwë," Artanis says. "Little-Káno's name for her. I named her Telepalmë, and then Nelyo actually gave her the name she prefers – Celebrían – because somehow he was the only one thinking straight enough to realize she had to have something we could call her in Sindarin."

"I am very confused by your parenting," Fingolfin says to the entire group. "Though it seems to be working."

"He named Elrond too," says Makalaurë, apparently unfazed by his brother effectively usurping his naming rights to his daughter. "I mean, he came with the name Elrond, but Nelyo gave him a Quenya name so he wouldn't feel left out, though we hardly ever use it because honestly Celebrían was the only time he ever came up with a good one."

"I like my name," Elrond – and Annaduinë, oddly – say indignantly.

"He literally just stuck Turko and Elë's names together for yours, and Anno's is a pun," Makalaurë says mournfully. "Of all the options. And he encouraged Finno to name Gil Ereinion and that's a terrible pun too."

"How is yours a pun?" Fingolfin asks. It's a decent name. 

"The river was called the Anduin," Arakáno explains. "I mean, it's a cross-language pun at least?"

"I think we should ban Nelyo and Finno from ever naming anything ever again," says Makalaurë.

"No," says Artanis. "It's funny to hear what awful ideas they have. But anyway, the parenting thing was – well, it really started because there were six of us when she was born, and three of us were actively being slowly driven insane and us other three were barely functioning as it was. Tindeóna and Ambarussa were better at finding food so they weren't around her as much, and we were close to starving as it was. I couldn't feed her enough on my own, and she wasn't growing, and then Nelyo said it was stupid and started helping me and between us we managed to keep her healthy and growing. After a while it was just habit, and she would go to him just as easily as she would to me or to Káno. Then after Sirion it was just the three of us and suddenly we had two more children to protect and feed and even though thankfully they could all eat normal food by then it . . . it wasn't good. Even without the War of Wrath I really don't think we'd have survived longer than a decade or two. But it wasn't weird to raise them together by then, and when everyone came back and saved us it still wasn't because. I mean, we're all either bondmates or siblings to each other, and it just. Works?"

"Each child definitely has a favorite," Arakáno says. "And it made it easier when there were so many of us, so we all sort of defer to each one's best match on important things and talk out any other smaller issues that happen."

"Who did you have?" Fingolfin asks, curious.

"Oh, Tindë," Arakáno says easily. "Luimë is Arto's entirely, and Elros was a baby hedgehog all his life but he liked Káno. Elrond is Finno's and Anno is Nelyo's, and I live in fear of the day Nelyo fishes a baby out of nowhere and it glues itself to Findo because at this point we all know it's inevitable."

(Fingolfin thinks this is funny. He does not think it is funny about a month later, when Findaráto twirls into his house where everyone is staying one morning as everyone is getting out of bed with a backpack, a besotted expression, and a small squeaking squirmy bundle in a sling across his chest.

At that time, he stares at the chaos unfurling around his little brother's eldest and wonders if Artanis' famous foresight is catching .)

"Even Moryo got one," Findaráto says. "I am waiting very patiently."

"Why don't you just . . . have one?" Fingolfin asks before he can think better of it.

There is an interconnected shrug from all three of them.

"Doesn't feel like the right time," Maitimo says vaguely. 

Celebrían bites Fingolfin on the elbow. He yelps.

Makalaurë sighs, and comes to scoop her up. "She bites," he offers as the only explanation, which is both self-evident and totally useless, and carries her back and pours her into Elrond's lap. Annaduinë – once again the hawk – preens her hair and only occasionally pecks at her earrings. She sleeps through it all.

"I hope she won't bite Ara," he says without thinking. "He'll probably cry."

He means it as in, 'he'll probably cry because he's already stressed enough and something this weird is probably going to send him into a breakdown', but nobody seems to realize this.

"It's just a nip," Artanis says judgmentally.

Fingolfin's pretty sure the only reason his elbow isn't bleeding is that he was wearing layers.

"She probably will bite him," Turukáno predicts. "Because she bites or stabs everyone eventually, and it just happens quicker when she doesn't like them."

"She was a baby and had a baby dagger and you deserved it for not dodging," Arakáno says.

"I thought it would make her feel better."

"Oh," he says, looking touched. "I think if you'd actually told me that was the reason you let her stab you in the leg three times it might have. As it was, I was just frustrated, which made her more and more upset until she ran off to play with Tyelko."

"She bit me on the knee and lost a tooth," Tyelkormo says, though he looks fond.

"The three of you had a beautiful bonding session over weapons, swearing, and nudity up on that roof, and I know because all she would talk about was how amazing 'amilháno Teyko and amilháno Curvo' were for weeks," says Arakáno, but he doesn't look upset.

"I thought I'd fallen into the wrong world when I woke up to find my daughter enthusiastically telling her doll about the numerous virtues of Celegorm and Curufin," Artanis says. "It took me a while to figure out who she was talking about because she couldn't quite manage the 'yel' sound in his name but then Káno explained. Which was just as surreal since he'd, you know, died in my arms centuries before."

"Bonding over what ," says Anairë.

"Up to then she'd thought Nelyo was the coolest person ever and he was still in his paranoid porcupine period so she was very interested in weaponry," Tyelkormo says easily. "And he's less stuffy than Káno about language, and she'd already inherited the Ñolofinwion impromptu casual nudity tendency despite not meeting big-Káno until then, so she came zooming up on the roof having hysterics without any clothes on and bit me on the leg for self-expression. I was up there on watch and sharpening some swords and stuff, and Curvo was up there for the quiet. Big-Káno let us babysit so he could do other stuff and I negotiated her into a shirt again because it was cold and let her help me."

"Excuse me, the Ñolofinwion what ?" Fingolfin demands. He certainly doesn't know about it.

"Negotiated how?" Anairë asks, which is unhelpful.

"Told her if she wore a shirt she could touch the swords and I'd let her say fuck if she liked if she used it in the correct context while she told me why she was so upset," Tyelkormo says, and looks proud of his parenting. "And she did! She's very smart."

"He's actually a really good father," Irissë says in the small silence. "Lómion really bonded with him once he worked through everything, and I think it would have taken centuries longer if Tyelko had been anyone else."

"The Ñolofinwion what ?" Fingolfin demands again, more loudly. Everyone looks at him with mild curiosity, including his children who must have started the whole thing. He knows he didn't.

"Impromptu casual nudity thing," Makalaurë says, as if he is talking to an idiot. "The thing where you think it's a perfectly nice day, you've had a really nice bath for the first time in months, you're holding a warm badger, Nelyo's doing well, you've finally sat on Moryo's head because he's been being a dick about you snuggling your fluffy pretty Káno-badger, everything is fine, and then Fingon charges up wondering what Nelyo's doing but she isn't wearing any clothes and he gets in a fight with her about it and looks like a beet and it's hilarious? And Káno's totally unfazed and acts like it's normal for his sister to just be casually wandering the hallways naked, he doesn't even blink?"

"Context," Artanis prompts.

Fingolfin doesn't think there's enough context in the world to make anything Makalaurë just said make sense. He'd lost him at 'badger' and everything after that had been just as weird.

"It was the first time I ran into her naked in a situation where it wasn't awkward," he says defensively. "I always remember it when someone asks. And then the next week it was laundry day because it was sunny and all four of them and Elë just didn't bother getting dressed until their clothes were clean again and we realized it was something they did. She gets freckles on her back just like Káno during the summer, and I could have gone my whole life without knowing that."

"I knew about it before we left Valinor," Tyelkormo says, alarmingly. "Irtë always wore clothes I brought her because she'd take hers off as soon as she left the house. She was the one who started it, though the rest joined in once they realized how she was keeping her clothes clean."

"What," says Anairë.

Irissë makes direct eye contact with her and grins.

"Her clothes were white ," Tyelkormo says patiently. "All of them. All the way to her underclothes – yes, I did see them, I saw them with distressing regularity. I see less of them now that we're married. You gave endless amounts of white dresses to someone whose favorite kind of entertainment was thrashing around in the woods killing things. Those outfits got stained just walking on a garden lawn. We made mock-ups out of old sheets for her to be seen riding at a very great distance in sometimes, and she wore Curvo and Moryo's stuff they'd grown out of the rest of the time, which was most of it."

"There's no way you could have made mock-ups of some of those dresses she rode in," Anairë says, sounding like she is grasping for sanity. "They took years to make."

"I didn't," Tyelkormo says affably. "It was a team effort. I did the detail-work, embroidery and buttonholes and so on. Curvo did the patternmaking and the cutting. Moryo did most of the sewing, and when he was old enough Amras would learn by doing the bits nobody could see until he was good enough they could both do it. Káno sometimes helped us put a bit of Song on them to look whiter and repel dirt, and he was best at the hems. Amrod made buttons and the rest of the hardware, when she was older, but her favorite was buttons. Irtë stood still while Curvo poked her with pins and got us snacks and read aloud to us while we worked."

"Nelyo kept Finno and Findo distracted, which also kept Turko away," Irissë adds. "Though he didn't know he was doing it."

"I did not," he confirms. "Not at first. And being Irtë's personal tailor team kept all five of them occupied on rainy days so I did not care why we went through an unnatural amount of sheets, once I realized they were sewing with them and not doing weird stuff. Then I just started buying them better fabric and started ordering colored sheets for everyone. And Finno would just come over and wear my clothes before we went anywhere, which is why now she doesn't bother packing any of her own most of the time no matter how often she trips and faceplants."

Anairë looks speechless and her mind is blank.

"How did you manage to even do that?" Fingolfin asks for her. "You were children!"

Everyone looks at him again.

"Children of Míriel Serindë ," Tyelkormo says pointedly, and tugs at a lock of his silver hair. "All of us can sew almost as well or better than our skills at our chosen crafts. Except Nelyo, hilariously. The only threads he doesn't get tangled up in in five seconds are verbal ones."

Maitimo shrugs. "Someone in this family needs to be able to lie consistently."

"I thought you were a diplomat," Fingolfin says.

"Same thing in the end, but sometimes the lies need to have more truth in them when it's political."

"I didn't realize you were all so close even then," he says.

"Oh yes," Makalaurë says. " We all got along just fine. Until Morgoth stole father's soul and everything exploded more spectacularly than Narvi's flying backpack thing she tried to power using a tiny dragon she reverse-cloned from Smaug like Curvo did to himself to make Tyelpë but without the aid of the Valar or any previous intensive study of how the process actually works like he had."

Every single time one of his children opens their mouth to answer a question it just leads to two more questions.

"The dragon survived," Maitimo says hastily, like he's going to be worried about that instead of the news that his brother's soul had been stolen . "We kept it in a very nice big pen until it died naturally."

"Tyelpë cried when we tried to eat it after it died," Findekáno grumbles. She is still curled up in Maitimo's lap, but she looks better now. "So there went that lunch."

"What do you mean , Morgoth stole his soul ?"

Fingolfin is aware that he sounds a little squeaky, but he thinks it's permissible.

"Not directly," Makalaurë says like that makes it better. "But he got him obsessed with the idea of it, because he wanted to do it but wasn't about to risk himself. So he conned father into testing the process and we all know how well that went. Even Morgoth got sucked in by the things, which is objectively hilarious. And Sauron tried to do it again later but couldn't manage it without tricking Tyelpë into helping, and only had enough soul for one item. And Tyelpë figured out how to make things with just as much power without actually losing any of his soul in the process, so really we're much better than they were at everything all the way around."

Irissë and Tyelkormo whoop. Maitimo looks very proud, presumably of Tyelpë. Artanis looks like she wants to whoop but has a reputation to preserve, so she just looks extremely smug.

"He totally deserved it when Luimë and Astar kicked his ass," Findaráto says, also looking smug. No one can look smugger than an Arafinwion.

Makalaurë and Arakáno take a turn looking extremely proud. So do Irissë and Tyelkormo.

"We're just better in general," Findekáno says rousingly, and everyone applauds. It doesn't even seem to be sarcastic.

"We still need to go to Tirion though," Maitimo says, which dampens the enthusiasm and replaces the applause with grumbling.

"This is why nobody wanted you to be the king," Tyelkormo says, but quietly, because Findekáno whips her head around to glare at him just like the bird she apparently sometimes became.

"About that," Fingolfin says hastily. "How about Anairë and I go with you and I'll tell Ara you're here first? I think he'd take it better."

He doesn't know what they think he means, but he says it because he's pretty sure that either his little brother will have the same hysterics on the outside that he has been valiantly repressing on the inside since long before he was reembodied, or he'll do what he usually does, which is to freeze for half a second and then go straight into imitating Fëanáro at his absolute bossiest superior worst. For some reason, that's how Finarfin handles being stressed. It's not very pleasant for anyone.

If he does it to Artanis or Findaráto, Fingolfin thinks he's going to have to hide a body.

"As long as you don't ruin the surprise for anyone else," Artanis concedes gracefully. "I suppose you can tell mother as well."

Anairë reminds him that Nerdanel is in Tirion, visiting the dwarves. They're inevitably going to run into her.

"Oh no," he mumbles.

"What?"

"Your mother is visiting her dwarven friends in Tirion. I'm sure we'll meet her there."

"I just had a great idea," Makalaurë says in the background. "We should open a tailor shop and make everyone pay us outrageous prices for existing like Thorin!"

"Well, we're not children anymore," Tyelkormo says coolly. "We can be polite. Thank you for the warning, though, Uncle."

Fingolfin squints suspiciously. He's not entirely sure that hadn't been his daughter speaking through his nephew.

It takes them another entire day to get on the road to Tirion. To be fair, some of that time is spent while Fingolfin and Anairë pack, and then realize there are only two horses, and then get a firsthand demonstration of why their children mostly don't bother with horses except for companionship anymore.

"Well," Fingolfin says helplessly as Maitimo nibbles at his hair and blinks placidly down at him. He is a very, very large deer with beautiful upswept antlers. Findekáno is a large golden bird and sits on one side of his antlers, and Annaduinë is a much smaller, mostly dark bird and sits on the other. They have assured him that he is young yet, and the faint white bars that mottle his feathers will grow more prominent until he has a white underside and a black back, though it will still be barred. Fingolfin doesn't know anything about birds and wasn't worried about it, but he makes a careful note in his mind.

Findaráto is sitting on Maitimo's head as a small weasel-like creature that is called a fisher. He has both paws wrapped around the base of an antler and looks very comfortable. Makalaurë is wound around both antlers and has his head resting on Findaráto's back and seems to have made himself into some kind of net to keep him there. His tongue flickers in and out.

Artanis has once again turned into the enormous honey-brown bear, and Elenwë is a yellowish-white bear, just a little smaller but not by much. Arakáno and Turukáno are sitting on their respective spouses like they are horses. Irissë is sitting behind Turukáno and Tyelkormo is behind Arakáno, apparently simply based on Elenwë and Artanis' respective sizes.

Merilwë lands on Maitimo's back with a flutter and nearly falls off as she shifts back into elf-shape. She swings herself upright again with a grin and makes herself comfortable.

Mink-Elrond climbs up Fingolfin's trouser leg and jumps up from his head to Merilwë's shoulders. Fingolfin manages not to shriek.

He's finally spotted Celebrían. She's a tiny weird squirrel again and perched on Turukáno's head.

"That is certainly . . . useful," he says, at a loss but wanting to be encouraging.

"That's what the Valar thought. Well, Tuor thought it first, but they liked his idea," Turukáno says.

"Tuor."

Turukáno looks fond. "He's a smart boy."

"What about all your things?" Anairë asks.

"They've got them. We keep anything we're holding when we shift."

"Anything," Irissë repeats. "Regardless of size, weight, and ridiculousness, if there's enough of us touching it. And yes, we totally take advantage of that sometimes."

Fingolfin tries to figure out what she means and then decides he doesn't want to know. "Shall we . . . go, then?"

The horses are strangely comfortable with sharing the road with so many unfamiliar animals, including two bears. The bears have weird saddles. It doesn't really help.

At least Maitimo's arrangement looks remotely plausible, even if Merilwë spends half her time standing up before Elrond shifts back and holds her down. Then she complains about not being able to see.

The bears have an odd gait that looks slow but is steady and deceptively fast. Maitimo follows them at an even trot. He makes a clicking noise with every step, and Fingolfin wonders if it's intentional.

"He's a reindeer," Tyelkormo says when he finally asks. "It's tendons in his feet that make the sound. That's why he stays in the middle of us when we travel. Everyone can always tell where he is even when it's dark or foggy, so we can stay together, but everything else can also hear him, so we protect him."

It's true. He's put himself between Artanis and Elenwë as bears and Fingolfin and Anairë on their horses. Fingolfin had thought he might be doing to calm the horses.

"And if someone gets left behind, he's blessed-fast and big, so he gets to go get them," Arakáno says.

Maitimo bites down very gently on his shoulder. Arakáno pats his nose.

Somehow they get into the city at the end of the day without anyone taking notice. Makalaurë winds around Artanis' throat as a necklace, and Annaduinë and Merilwë perch on Tyelkormo's shoulders, and Maitimo trots at Findekáno's side as what Fingolfin now realizes isn't a dog at all but an enormous wolf, but everyone else is just themselves and nobody notices .

He asks if Artanis or someone did something when they reach his section of the palace and are reasonably safe from eavesdroppers. She shakes her head.

"They don't expect us to be here," she says blandly. "So how could we be? Little-Káno and Nelyo might be recognized, so they stayed shifted, and Anno and Më look like peredhel so they stayed shifted, but they stayed on Tyelko so nobody would be looking at him so much as at them. And having Elë and Tindë on either side of him makes him stand out less."

"If everyone knows we're not supposed to be here, we're definitely not even if someone does recognize us," Findekáno agrees. "See? We were paranoid about it for a long time, but almost always, people only see what they want to. Not always, so we are cautious, but most people most of the time."

"Ah," says Fingolfin, and escapes.

When he is in his little brother's rooms, he takes a moment to lean against a convenient wall and bang his head gently on it. 

When they were young he'd always worried about Maitimo and Artanis accidentally teaming up and taking over the world on purpose, but apparently he should have worried about Findekáno and Artanis teaming up on purpose and then taking over the world by accident. He can see how they are a much more efficient duo when he thinks about it; Findekáno will go and do things when Maitimo would have debated and revised them yet again with Artanis until the moment was gone, and Artanis would be pulled out of her perfectionism and focused on one task at a time as a result.

Fingolfin shudders. He hopes that there is still some city standing after the inevitable riot, and not too many people are accidentally killed.

"Are you all right," Finarfin says dubiously from behind him, and then squeaks as Fingolfin grabs him in a hug and holds on tightly.

"You're not going to turn into a bird or a badger," he mumbles, and squeezes tighter.

" What? " says Finarfin, and wiggles. "Ñolo, are you all right?"

"Yes. No? Who knows? I don't."

"What happened?"

Fingolfin assembles his thoughts and opens his mouth to break the news.

"Oops. I actually did get lost. I haven't been here for ages, you know. Sorry," says Makalaurë, who does sound apologetic, and he sprints away down the hall and jumps out the window at the end of it.

They are three levels up.

Fingolfin isn't worried. He's fairly sure that even if Káno doesn't manage to avoid the ground, the ground will move to avoid him or face the wrath of Artanis for damaging him, just like everything and everyone else he has encountered since the end of the First Age.

"I think I'm seeing things," Finarfin whispers, and now he is holding on to him.

Fingolfin pats him on the shoulder. "You'll get used to it."

Now Finarfin really looks worried, which is strange. "Are you projecting?"

"Projecting what?"

He feels him brush up against his mind.

"Oh. No, that was really Makalaurë. Remember that ship? They're all here." Fingolfin sighs. "Though to be fair I did assume I was dreaming all day when they first came to my house, up until Anairë woke me up the next morning and she could see them all too."

"All who?"

He can't gesture expansively like he wants to because his arms are full of little brother, but he tries anyway. "All. Maitimo through Artanis, and their children and grandchildren and possibly more beyond that, I lost them at Elrond."

"I thought you said they'd been banished!"

"I thought they had been, but apparently it was just a miscommunication. Finno says teaching the Valar to communicate is like teaching court etiquette to Tyelko."

" Artanis? " Finarfin interrupts, and now he is trembling. "How – why – how? I thought she was forbidden –"

"Findekáno did . . . you know, I still don't understand what she did, but she did it and it worked and it saved them all, so I'm not asking questions."

" . . . she?"

He nods firmly. "Her fëa was always a nís, and she was born with the wrong body. So was Findaráto. He is a nér."

"No she isn't," Finarfin says automatically.

"He is and if you value your organs you won't call him anything else in front of Finno, Nelyo, or Arto," Fingolfin says urgently. "You don't have to like it, you just have to do it."

"Why them?"

He opens his mouth, closes it again, stares blankly over Finarfin's shoulder, and tries to figure out how to express everything he has seen between Findaráto, Findekáno, and Maitimo ever since they left Valinor and beyond.

"You'll find out," is what he ends up with, which isn't nearly enough, and is unintentionally weirdly ominous as well.

"Do I want to?"

"I don't think that matters. Oh!" Fingolfin suddenly remembers something he can clear up. "I found out who Artanis' Celeborn is!"

"Who?"

"Makalaurë! And sometimes Arakáno. I don't quite understand how they do it, something about trading a hat? They didn't explain it very well. But apparently it was a disguise of Makalaurë's first and then later on they both developed it into a character and kept up the fiction of 'Celeborn' being her husband so they didn't have to answer awkward questions and could take breaks from paperwork." Fingolfin frowns thoughtfully. "I don't think Maitimo and Findaráto bothered doing anything like that because they both like constructing elaborate lies and doing paperwork, and anyway Findekáno just manages the family and doesn't actually run a whole country like Artanis. Oh, and she really does have a daughter, Artanis, that is, Finno only has sons – anyway, Celebrían is her daughter with Makalaurë and she bites in her sleep and turns into a gliding squirrel and she's married to Elrond – are you all right?"

Chapter Text

In his worry over his little brother's emotional stability, he has forgotten that he is just as petty and sneaky and chaotic and spiteful as the rest of the family. Finarfin takes five minutes to assimilate the new information – that their children aren't gone and some of them are doing who knows what in his house at that very moment – and continues on, seemingly unflappable. If he has any sudden 'what' moments, he has them somewhere Fingolfin isn't.

His reunion with his own two children is . . . polite, and slightly stilted, but it probably helps immensely that he leads with an honest apology for the unpleasant things he said in the disagreement they had the last time he saw them, and an equally honest expression of how happy and relieved he is to see them again. Findaráto looks less like a shadow when it is over, and Galadriel looks pleasantly surprised. 

Then Finarfin gets the smirk at the corners of his eyes that Fingolfin hasn't seen since his brother was a teenager, and very cordially invites Galadriel and Findekáno to come join him in open court whenever they like, with whoever they like. He has kept seats for his children there in a weird sort of memorial, and since some of them aren't there there's more than enough space, and nobody can possibly object to Findekáno's presence when she's not only with Findaráto but technically has the exact same rank as Fingolfin himself, who shows up when he can stand it and has even stood in for Finarfin a few times. The seats have been there so long everyone's eyes pass right over them. Even Fingolfin has forgotten they're there.

If nobody thought through the loopholes surrounding posthumous declarations of rank when they belong to a race that rather famously does not tend to stay dead forever, that's their problem. Finarfin does try to make a spirited case for Findekáno taking his place permanently or at least for a few thousand years after both of his own children merely laugh and shake their heads at him, but she kindly and firmly refuses.

He is weirdly happy about who his children decided to marry.

"I grew up with Nelyo," he says abruptly, when it is just him and Fingolfin not-hiding on a palace tower roof, looking at the stars. "Used to be told to babysit him when I was thirty or forty and he was a larva that was just figuring out how to walk. We got along. I liked him. When I got older we weren't as close, he started spending time with your kids, but we still would share commiserating looks across the room when Fëanáro did something weird, and he would smuggle extra cake to me at parties and I brought him those sandwiches with the olive spread."

"Oh," says Fingolfin. Now that he thinks about it, he can vaguely remember a gangly young Ara running about the place with a small tanned face and a mop of curly auburn hair peering over his shoulder. He had always found excuses to be somewhere else far away immediately, because they usually both looked anticipatory and smug. Finarfin had also usually been running away from somewhere with Maitimo giggling wildly while he clung to his back, so that didn't make him want to stick around.

"He was always a kind person. I'm glad Findaráto is happy."

Fingolfin makes an encouraging noise.

"Makalaurë was very sweet when he was . . . well, not a child, but he wasn't fully an adult," he continues thoughtfully. "He was very patient with Nerwen. Let her follow him around and pester him with questions and interfere with his work."

"I think he liked having her chase off his admirers," Fingolfin says. "I can see them doing that."

"Not that I think even the slightest hint of anything improper happened between them when she was that young, but they always have understood each other. And they would, if they were pieces of each other. Like Maitimo and Findekáno. Always close friends, and becoming more as they grew." He sighs. "I'm glad they're happy and they're here and they're willing to talk to me even if I still don't really understand why Findaráto is so determined to be – anyway. At least I still have one daughter, I suppose."

"I'd hold off on too much unconditional gratitude until you see what they do to your court," Fingolfin warns. "Both of mine have turned into unrepentant gossip-starters as their favored way of manipulating people into doing what they want, yours provide a strategic framework of where to aim the chaos and why they want to use it, and Maitimo and Makalaurë feed into both sets with ideas and shameless support." To his dismay, Finarfin is rubbing his hands together and cackling.

"I'm so proud," he says. "Also, do you think little-Curufinwë would build me some bombs? I'd pay for them, of course. He was always the best at making things work right."

"No," says Fingolfin, a little sadly. "Ara. You may not explode your council." He pauses for thought. "Not in the literal sense."

"But why," he says, sounding sixty again.

"Because if I have to sit through the 'murder is bad' class again and this time with you, due to not telling you not to explode your council, I'm going to do something stupid and reckless."

"Oh," Finarfin says, and frowns. "Drat."

"Anyway, death is short and relatively painless. You want to annoy them as much as they annoy you? Let the kids loose on them. A few months of petty arguments and inconveniences and they'll probably be asking you to explode them, and paying for the expenses too."

In the starlight, Finarfin looks beatific. It's the same look that makes people write poems and such about how wise and majestic he is. Fingolfin has the distinct disadvantage of being his older brother, and so naturally considers him a bit of a worm, and also knows that when he looks like that he's usually envisioning fiery screaming chaos raining down upon everyone who has ever inconvenienced him.

He used to get that look after throwing water balloons filled with honey at their eldest brother, and somehow someone else always got the blame even when Fingolfin said he literally saw Ara throw it, he was right there, why doesn't anyone believe him.

"I knew Nerwen was destined for great things," her proud father says happily. Somehow Fingolfin doesn't think he's referring to her many varied and impressive exploits in Middle-earth.

"I wouldn't discount Findaráto," he warns. "Or Arakáno. On that note, please tell me when they come to court so I can bring a bucket of ice water."

"You think someone will set something on fire?" Finarfin inquires, sounding far too intrigued.

"No," Fingolfin says grimly. "To throw on my son when he starts getting much too familiar with Makalaurë in front of everyone. He thinks it's a social experiment, Makalaurë thinks it's funny, and your goblin of a daughter thinks it's a great diversion and test of character."

Finarfin looks disgustingly proud.

It has been a week and a half, and Fingolfin has finally begin to relax, when their children decide it is time to strike. Elrond and Celebrían have returned to the ship, taking the two bird-shifter teenagers with them. He still isn't sure what to make of them; Annaduinë is quiet and thoughtful and a voracious bookworm who had to be literally pried from the royal library when it was time for them to leave, and Merilwë spent most of her time bouncing between pestering the healers and the gardeners and roundly defeating the royal guard in just about every kind of sparring match they could think of. 

Tyelkormo spent most of his time following her around as a wolf, sometimes knocking her down and sitting on her until Maitimo or Irissë arrived to smooth over the situation. Annaduinë at least had not been a problem to keep hidden from the public; occasionally one of his parents would get a distinct look that was a somewhat amusing mix of concern, panic, resignation, and – if it was Findekáno or Findaráto – fond exasperation, and take him a sandwich and then drag him out to make him have a bath and a nap, but other than that nobody could find him in the maze of the library.

One day in the midmorning Fingolfin receives a sealed note from his brother. It contains one sheet of blotter-paper which has: a caricature of one of his most infuriating council members as an orc, something scribbled so messily he can't read it, a rather disturbing smiley face with too many highly realistic teeth, and a little doodle of two children. Upon inspection, Fingolfin decides that it's young Finarfin and toddler Maitimo, mostly based on the hair on young Finarfin and the freckles and distinct eye shape on young Maitimo. They are holding hands, and it is very cute. A half-finished Fëanáro is in the background with a raincloud over his head and a comical look of dismay.

Unfortunately, none of that is very helpful. He's used to getting messages on scrap paper with bits of notes or drawings or numbers on them, but this message is particularly obtuse. Ëarwen isn't in the city, or he'd go ask if she could decipher the writing. All he can tell is that his brother was probably very bored and thinking about his childhood when whatever happened to make him send a note happened. Also, he was excited, because the scribble-message ends in five exclamation points and doodle-Fëanáro is a bit smudged, a line ending in a slash across the paper.

Today is a council day. Fingolfin dresses accordingly, though not showily, and sneaks in through the family entrance. He just wants to look appropriately supportive and respectful of his brother if he is noticed, not to be noticed in particular.

He will not be showing up sans clothing, no matter how many times Finarfin has said it would be funny. Sometimes he wonders if he was dropped on his head too often as a baby.

Fingolfin peers around a curtain that is strategically placed for observing without being seen and immediately has to stifle a giggle. Finarfin is in his usual place carrying on as normal – except he looks genuinely pleased to be there instead of politely pleased with a side of impulse to murder. His council members and attendants seem to be having a bit of trouble focusing.

Fingolfin's troublemaking eldest is in the place he usually takes when he joins his brother. She looks much more relaxed and confident than anyone else in the room. A place has been added beside her for Findaráto, and he is taking notes, nearly hidden behind an enormous stack of dusty old books that he occasionally refers to.

Findekáno isn't taking over, not by any means. She is silent most of the time, and when she does speak it is usually in the form of a question. Notably, one of her hands never comes above the surface of the big council table they are all seated around.

Fingolfin, feeling vaguely alarmed, sneaks around until he can get a look at what she's doing, and then hastily slides further back into the shadowy corner he is in. Maitimo is curled up at her feet, sitting with his back to her. One of her legs is draped over his shoulder and he is resting his cheek on the inside of her thigh. Her hand fiddles absently with his hair and his earrings and occasionally traces along his face.

He is surrounded by stacks and stacks of the same kind of books that Findaráto has above them. After about five minutes of Fingolfin watching them, Findaráto's hand slides below the table with a book in it, and Maitimo takes it and exchanges it with one from his stacks.

Nobody seems to notice.

Maitimo is frowning, ink from the pen in his left hand spotting his cheek and the side of one ear when he occasionally tucks it into his braids there to flick through a book more quickly. Whatever he is doing, it isn't casual or lighthearted.

Fingolfin watches for a while longer and then realizes that Findaráto's scribbling doesn't really match what is happening above the table but does correlate with Maitimo's movements. Maitimo himself only makes an occasional note, right in the margins of the books.

A movement catches his eye; what he had thought was an unusually thick necklace Maitimo was wearing uncoils and shifts. Makalaurë, Fingolfin realizes. Whatever they are doing, there are three of them doing it. Then Findaráto slips a piece of paper into Findekáno's hand and she passes down to Maitimo, who reads it and goes very still. He rolls it up tightly and holds it up to his shoulder. Makalaurë leans over and grabs it in his jaws before slithering down his arm, to the floor, and across to the other side of the table, where he places the paper in a hand that has reached down.

Fingolfin was too preoccupied with making sure Findekáno wasn't going to do anything weird to notice that Arakáno is also there, beside Artanis, who is in her mother's usual place. Arakáno has the same books-and-notes setup as Findaráto.

Makalaurë is clearly the messenger between the groups, which is as ingenious as it is dangerous. Surely someone would notice the furtive movements and look down to discover his children are employing a three-foot bright blue snake to pass notes?

He halfheartedly pays attention for a minute or two to what this stage of the meeting is talking about. It's the taxes. Of course. No wonder his brother now looks ready to declare that the entire kingdom should go back to the nomadic lifestyle of their ancestors. The cost of upkeep for all of Tirion's civic infrastructure has grown exponentially ever since the population started increasing with the returning dead, more than what anyone expected, and it is eating into other important things that are funded by the taxes everyone pays. Things like keeping their very small and largely ceremonial but still important city guard staffed and equipped and actually trained, and maintenance on the country's roads that are not within a day's travel of the city, and helping the newly reembodied find a place to sleep and food and clothes for the first few months after their return, and schools for the tiny but steady new section of the population that is made of new children – it's the first time since before Arien and Tilion that there's been enough children born in the same half-century to need any sort of anything from the government dedicated to their care. The returning dead are revitalizing their country in many ways.

Not everyone is happy about it. It is making them change their ways after several thousand years of undisputed control, after all. Some of the returned want to join this very council. Neither Fingolfin nor Finarfin have any problem with that, as they certainly have the right and expertise and credentials to, but everyone else certainly seems to dislike the idea.

Anyway. The taxes. Every time the amount they bring in increases, the amount they actually have to use decreases, and neither of them can figure out why.

He is abruptly brought out of his thoughts by an ominous sudden silence. Looking around to see what has happened, he realizes it is because Turukáno has just strolled through the entrance, the one that is supposed to be guarded. The guards are fluttering uselessly behind him.

"He's fine," Finarfin says, waving a hand. "Well?"

"The dwarves will do it in exchange for materials in payment and diplomatic immunity for certain actions to be discussed," says Turukáno, and gives the council the calm and reasonable look he uses when he's doing something sneaky. "They also offer to match the staff you have provisionally agreed to hire, if each one who volunteers is given written accord of permanently matching basic rights as them."

Finarfin looks delighted. 

Fingolfin remembers the honey in Fëanáro's hair.

Turukáno placidly folds his hands behind his back. He's still in the middle of the doorway. The guards have disappeared. Tyelkormo is standing just outside the room; Fingolfin can only see him because he is standing so far to one side. Nobody in the room proper will know he's there.

"Did they give a timeframe for completion?" Finarfin asks.

"They have a suitable structure ready right now, and construction can begin on the agreed site as soon as they receive my signal," Turukáno says. "They have accepted her word as security to the signing of the contract, through me."

Fingolfin has no idea what is happening.

Has his second eldest always taken up quite so much space? He is looming somehow, without being near anyone.

Finarfin looks at Findekáno, who nods. "Our terms are met," she says. "As of now?"

"As of now," his brother agrees solemnly, and there is sudden movement under the table. Maitimo appears to be tying the nearest councilor's boot laces together, having abandoned his books. Makalaurë has returned to his usual form and is doing the same on the other side of the table.

Both of them are working as quickly as they can, and going after the ones nearest Finarfin, he notes.

Turukáno shifts his weight, almost unnoticeably, and nods after catching his sister's eye. Fingolfin remembers the look that flits across her face very well, and suddenly wishes he has some armor.

"Immediately, in fact," Findekáno says, stretching out her arms. Opposite her, Artanis is weaving strands of power around her fingertips in an intangible net. Everyone seems oblivious.

Arakáno has just pulled an entire knife out of his braids. Fingolfin has a sudden urge to bang his head on a wall and see if things go back to normal.

"Psst," someone hisses just below him. Fingolfin starts, and looks around to find that he is standing by a window (curtains are a good hiding place) and there is a familiar golden head looking up at him. "Hi, Uncle Fingolfin. Unlatch the window, please?"

Silently, he reaches over and flicks the catch before pushing the frame out. Aikanáro finishes climbing up the gutter and hops into the room before leaning out again to pull a tall dark-haired nís in after him, though she doesn't actually need the help. There is a look in her eye that reminds Fingolfin of Artanis, and that makes him more wary of her than her armor or the very dwarven two-handed axe on her back.

"This is Andreth," Aikanáro says. "Andreth, my weird uncle Fingolfin."

"I am not weird," he protests.

"You went out to fight Morgoth and didn't stop to cheat," he counters. "I think you're a fosterling who forgot to go home. Anyway. Do you know the plan? I didn't expect to see you here."

"I didn't know there is a plan," he says, feeling adrift. "I just turned up because your father sent me a weird note I couldn't read."

Aikanáro looks at him for a moment before patting his arm. "Just guard this window, please?" he asks quite courteously. "Don't let anyone out who isn't in the pack, no matter who they are or how well you like them. We're not aiming to hurt anyone."

"Today," Andreth mutters, and slips him a sword from . . . somewhere. Aikanáro gives her a very sappy smile before focusing on the room again.

"Wait," Fingolfin hisses as they begin to move away, creeping around the shadowy edges of the room like hounds on a scent. Is it usually so dark in here? He doesn't think so. "What's the pack?"

"Us," Aikanáro says impatiently. "Family. People with this crest." He taps the center of his armor. 

"It's on the sword," Andreth whispers helpfully, and they melt into the shadows which still seem to be growing.

Fingolfin examines the sword. It has excellent balance and weight. The crest looks vaguely familiar, which could be because it looks like someone with taste redesigned his and both of his brothers' and then managed to combine them into something coherent, but he could swear he's seen it somewhere else before.

The council is arguing with his brother about letting Turukáno represent him without getting approval from them, oblivious to the gleaming knife Arakáno is twirling around his fingers or the way Artanis is snuffing out the lamps everywhere but in the middle of the room or the way Finarfin's eyes are narrowing or the way – Findaráto has just picked up Makalaurë-snake and set him on the table and he is rapidly gliding towards Finarfin.

Fingolfin narrows his eyes. There is a faint shimmer around the snake. Maybe that is what Artanis was weaving. Maybe they can't actually see him.

Still, even if he is stealthy, Maitimo is not a small person and he was just crawling around under the table tying together the bootlaces of everyone wearing boots. How did everyone not notice?

Turukáno is still planted in the middle of the doorway. There is a flash of red and silver behind him, where Tyelkormo is.

Makalaurë curls up on the table in front of Finarfin, who looks down and runs a finger along his scales. The nearest councilors recoil.

"I didn't tell you," he says with great patience. "because I am the King and I am ordering your immediate arrest."

Fingolfin revisits that wish to bang his head on a wall. His idiot little brother can't just arrest them because he's annoyed –

"For many and varied crimes against my people, from theft to systemic exclusion from rights to fraud and quite possibly treason, manslaughter, conspiracy to manslaughter on an honestly disgusting scale, and premeditated murder," Finarfin says into a deep silence. "And because I am sick of the way you quarrel like unsocialized bratty elflings whenever you don't get your way."

Something shining flashes across the space in the middle of the table. Makalaurë snaps it out of the air and spits it out by his brother's hand.

"Definitely treason," he says brightly. "So if you all would follow the directions of my guards without trying to resist, this will be much easier. And cleaner."

"What guards? You don't have any," someone says. Fingolfin knows it's true – it's Valinor, there's no real need for personal guards, the ones around the palace barely know which end of a spear to hold and half of them are these peoples' grandchildren –

Another knife flies through the air, but this one is snatched up just before it hits Finarfin's throat by a hand. It stays there, hanging in midair, caught by the blade between two fingers.

"That would have hit hilt first," says Maitimo. "Do better."

He flips it into his palm and closes his hand. Light flares and something metallic begins to seep through his fingers.

"Poisoned," he adds. "Search them before they leave the room."

"I hired some new guards," Finarfin says, a faint smile appearing as Maitimo rests his chin on the top of his head. It looks a little silly, but Fingolfin takes note of the way it means that his brother is quite literally surrounded; Maitimo is covering his back and his sides, and Makalaurë is positioned very well to attack or defend in the front – as a snake or a person. "They're very good at it."

"The treasury can't afford –" someone begins. Fingolfin knows that stupidity often comes in committees, but he likes to think that none of his old councilors would be stupid enough to keep arguing in this situation.

Maitimo opens his hand and drops a molten puddle of what used to be a knife on the stone table. It sizzles. The light is still radiating from inside his hand, which is strangely transparent.

"We don't want money," he says.

"I negotiated purely in snuggles," says his supremely irritating little brother, whom he wants to shake until his teeth fall out. Because he's irritating. Not because if it wasn't for Makalaurë and Maitimo, he would have just lost his last sibling. "If you would?"

Findekáno shoves back her chair and stands up. "Everyone up," she snaps. "Hands behind your head. Don't move. Search them and then do as we discussed."

Some idiot tries to run for the door. By chance they weren't wearing shoes with laces so they don't have their feet tied together, but they do run straight into Turukáno, who neatly flips them over his shoulder using their own momentum and then tosses them through the doors into the waiting arms of one of the Ambarussa and an anticipatory-looking blond. Apparently they thought he'd move.

Someone else tries for a window and is tackled by Andreth and her axe.

Everything is very orderly after that. Fingolfin is disappointed. In his day, the sudden appearance of a large battle-axe in a peaceful council would have had everyone gleefully starting a very pointy scrum, thrilled at the excuse for an unscheduled break. Or at least glaring disapprovingly and starting an argument so someone could creep around and hit the holder of the axe on the head.

About twenty minutes after the process has begun, a contingent of fully armored and armed dwarves clank into the room. Their leader goes over to talk briefly to his brother, and then they start escorting out the searched prisoners who are thoroughly restrained and, for some reason, shoeless. 

"I thought your father would be here," Finarfin The Fluffbrained is saying to Findekáno when it is over and it is just the six of his children whom he has come to think of as the ringleaders left in the room with him. He has the nerve to sound disappointed. Like he wanted him to come watch him nearly get himself killed.

"I am here," he argues, and then realizes that he hasn't actually moved out of the shadows the whole time.

Maitimo and Artanis considerately don't kill him, and he apologizes for startling them before going over to his dumb baby brother and using all of the inch and a half of height he has on him to loom. "Why didn't you tell me what you were planning?"

"I did!" he protests. "I sent you a note!"

"Was it in code? Your letters are so sloppy I couldn't understand a thing."

"I didn't want anyone to see what I was writing," he says, a faint blush rising. "But you came here, so you must have understood some of it."

"I came here," Fingolfin says with the last of his patience. "because you sent me a note with smudges all over it and five exclamation points and a bunch of something I couldn't read, but I did know where you were supposed to be, and I was worried."

"Oh," he says, looking small and sad. "I suppose the last few days have been rather busy and I forgot to mention the plan to you."

He isn't falling for it. The last time he'd felt sorry for him he'd lost an entire horse in a bet. He'd liked that horse.

"Oh fine," Finarfin says after about a minute of Disappointed Glare. "I didn't tell you about it before because you'd get mad and do something dumb and mess it up."

"I would not!" he says.

"You would," says Findekáno, the shrimpy little traitor. "You always do."

"You're just like your mother," Fingolfin grumbles. Sometimes it is very hard to remember how happy he was when she was born, and to remember why he wanted children in the first place.

"You usually didn't, uh, make much of a plan first if you learned about something that irritated you," Maitimo says diffidently. "I mean, you were good at hiding that you just wanted to punch someone, but Finno does the exact same thing so I know the tells."

"I do not!" Findekáno exclaims with great and hypocritical indignation. "That's Finrod, not me."

"Hey," says Finrod, looking startled instead of smug. "What?"

"She's got a point," Makalaurë says blandly. "Most of us think about, you know, stopping to make a rough plan and grab some basic supplies first, not talking someone who's already panicking into getting the pair of you there really fast and figuring out what to do when you're already in the middle of the enemy stronghold."

"That was an emergency –"

The conversation descends into a three-way argument that is full of incomprehensible arguments, references, accusations, and occasionally entire unknown languages between his eldest spawn, his brother's eldest spawn, and for some reason Makalaurë. Maitimo and Artanis appear to be playing some sort of game, listening intently and either holding up or putting down fingers and making faces at each other. Arakáno, who is sensible, is sitting in Finarfin's chair and sharpening his knife.

Fingolfin looks at Finarfin, who appears just as lost as he is.

The argument ends abruptly when Maitimo glares at Artanis and then punches his brother in the stomach. He retaliates with a kick and they are suddenly wrestling on the floor like elflings. Artanis looks smug.

"Aw," Findaráto says, suddenly looking alarmed. "Arto, why."

"Because I can," she says.

Findaráto collapses rather dramatically over the table.

"What's the problem? It's not like we have to do anything," Findekáno says, frowning, and then Findaráto must say something across their bond because she briefly looks embarrassed before also glaring at Artanis.

There is a yelp. Maitimo has bitten Makalaurë on the ear, but it is not as weird as it could have been, because now they both have four legs and fur. Makalaurë twists around and bites him on the leg and they roll under the table, snapping and huffing at each other. There is still a considerable size difference between them – Maitimo is easily the biggest wolf Fingolfin has ever seen, bigger than the ones from Angband or even Oromë's wolflike hounds – but it doesn't seem to matter in the slightest.

"Fight!" someone cheers from the doorway, and then there is a mid-size white fluffball streaking across the floor to jump on Maitimo's back and roll him into a chair. Fingolfin has just enough time to see his younger daughter in the doorway, looking thoughtful, before she turns into a sleeker black streak that executes a beautiful flying tackle on her sister and knocks her right off her perch leaning against the table, and then there are two very similar black wolves tumbling about, except one is slightly smaller but much, much more of a, well, a giant floof.

He isn't sure how Findekáno manages to see from under all that fur. Maybe she doesn't need to; she recovered very fast and is hanging on determinedly to Irissë's back leg as she tries to run away.

Artanis hops up to sit in the middle of the table and tucks her feet protectively under her legs. Finarfin joins her, trying not to look like he is hiding behind her.

Two minutes later Arakáno stows his knife and hurls himself into the scrum with a leap onto the back of the shaggy white wolf Fingolfin assumes is Tyelkormo, and when they bowl into his legs he hastily decides Artanis has a good idea and climbs up on the table to join them.

"How do we stop them?" he asks. She shrugs.

"Wait for them to get tired," she says. "That's actually the best way to handle them all in general."

His children are very energetic for grown elves who have children and grandchildren of their own. The fight continues, visibly turning into a play-fight, for at least ten minutes as alliances are made and broken and everyone unites temporarily against Arakáno when he turns into a badger and takes out both Irissë and Maitimo in one determined charge that sends them flying tail over paws. Then Artanis' head turns towards the doorway at the same time as the rolling mass of fur on the floor freezes in place for a second before half of them pop back into elf-shape.

"I hate you," she mutters.

"Me?" Fingolfin says, startled.

"Turgon," she says, which doesn't explain a thing. "Turgon and his sense of humor. What do you want?"

He looks around to see who she is talking to; there is a vaguely familiar elf whose main feature is an impressively out-of-control bush of golden hair trying to look stern in the doorway. He is holding something small and shiny in a hand. A . . . whistle?

"He says you should stop fooling around and come help," the elf recites dutifully. "The dwarves need a bit of extra security help while they build the new dungeon –"

"It's not a dungeon," Findekáno says, coughs, and then makes sputtering noises as she spits out tufts of dark fur and glares at Irissë, who pants and grins at her and then licks her face from chin to hairline.

" – and we have work to do, we can't let our guard down now."

"Fine," Arakáno says, greatly put upon, and hauls Makalaurë to his feet. "Killjoy. What are you even doing here? I thought you were just coming along for moral support and didn't really want to leave the ship."

"I didn't. I don't. I've had to climb four trees already to avoid seeing people I knew in Gondolin. Elrond was very worried about you because Thorin sent him a letter about your plans and since he's got more issues about being here than I do I said I'd come keep you in line."

"Oh," says Artanis, and slides off the table. "We didn't mean to worry him."

That seems to be the prevailing sentiment. "Wow," Finarfin says, as all their children vanish out the door remarkably fast.

Their minder – Fingolfin can't help thinking of him as a minder – shrugs and then gives them a conspiratorial grin. "Elrond isn't actually worried. He's been watching all day and narrating the highlights to Celebrían, who's been projecting them in a palantir for the rest of us. It's been great both for timing the plan and just because it's funny." He points out one of the windows before waving cheerily at a swan that is incongruously nestled down on a nearby rooftop. The bird waves back, white feathers almost invisible against the white stone. "If they were less preoccupied they'd have noticed. Turgon gets stressed when everything is chaotic like this and I felt sorry for him. I'd better go tell Elrond to pretend he got a letter. Excuse me."

"I wonder who that was," Fingolfin says a while later. They haven't moved from sitting in the middle of the table, back to back and leaning on each other.

Finarfin shrugs, jostling him. "No idea. I don't think he was one of mine. Unless he's a grandson? Great-grandson?" He sounds a little anxious.

"He looked familiar," he muses. "I think I saw him before I died. I can't remember where though."

There is a short, companionable silence.

"So are you going to tell me what all that was about, then? Why did you need to involve dwarves?"

"Because they're neutral. Well, not neutral, but they won't be bribed by anyone but me because nobody else really has the ability to give them what they want unless they move to another kingdom," Finarfin says cheerfully. "Also I think half of them have a hero-crush on Nerwen or Findaráto or Tyelpë, so they want to be friends with me. Part of what all those obstructionist idiots were doing was keeping them from having any basic civil rights under our laws, so I said I'd get them rights somehow if they'd build me a dungeon that's actually functional and secure and staff it until I can find and train and trust decent guards. Apparently their architects were literally fighting each other to work on it when they learned Findaráto and Turukáno were willing to help. I expect there will be no shortage of hands to build it once they hear the kids will help with that too. Ha, shortage. Nerwen said she'd get Maitimo to be shirtless when they help work on it. Apparently a lot of them have a normal kind of crush on him and Ambarussa. She says it's their hair. Has been since the First Age. Luckily, Findekáno thinks it's hilarious."

Fingolfin tries to absorb this.

"Oh, and apparently their king's youngest nephew is my . . . cousin by marriage in some degree. He's whatever their version of twinned souls is with the younger child of Ambarussa and those twins from Doriath that everyone thought got killed by Tyelko's rogue soldiers. I don't know two sets of twins getting married works and I don't really want to, but they've had two children between them all."

"Maitimo said they're not married to their own twin, just the other pair of twins," Fingolfin says, trying to remember how he had explained it. "It's actually a bunch of overlapping three-way marriage bonds and twin sibling bonds. Somehow. They are apparently very happy. Oh, and the first child was the one my Finno raised, and he's Pityafinwë and, uh, Elurín's, which makes the one married to the dwarf Eluréd and Telufinwë's, because she's like Findekáno was. Came back with a different body. I got a bit lost once they started trying to explain it all."

"Hm," says Finarfin. "Well, it's none of my business, but it's certainly useful for diplomatic relations. Already having a marriage alliance makes a lot of things easier, it was very thoughtful of . . . what was her name . . . I don't remember. There's so many grandkids. Anyway. So the dwarves are building us a proper dungeon and our children are going to be protecting us while I explain it to the public and then I'm making a new council with a nice balance of people who have lived here forever and people who have returned. Nearly everyone on the old one was stealing all that money we were trying to use to help the returning dead and wasting it just because they wanted them to have to live somewhere else where they wouldn't 'mingle' with them, and I'm pretty sure the few who weren't knew about it and kept quiet. It's disgraceful."

"Are you going to . . . investigate, or . . ."

"Of course," he says indignantly. "If any of them really weren't involved and didn't know it was going on I don't want to blame them too."

"Good."

"I thought that was what was happening but I needed some fresh and unbiased eyes, so I asked the kids to take a look and they managed to get through hundreds of years of records and today was the end of that phase of the project." He pauses. "Findaráto is very good with numbers," he says proudly. "And somehow Carnistir helped too, Maitimo said he wasn't really doing anything but letting him borrow his eyes and taking notes he dictated. Those boys have very odd sibling-bonds. Makalaurë also has a good head for budgeting, Arakáno is good at planning and coordinating tactical maneuvers, and Artanis and Findekáno said they'd scare everyone into cooperating quietly. I have to say they did a good job."

Fingolfin narrows his eyes even though they are facing away from each other. "You just told Artanis 'I think the council is up to something shady but I can't prove it' and then handed her the ledgers when she asked for them, didn't you."

"Well. Yes. Sort of. I signed paperwork for them too."

"That was an incredibly sneaky way of making them do your job while thinking it was their idea."

"I know," he says, and snickers. "She's fallen for that ever since she was old enough to hold her head up on her own. And she's forgotten that I am in fact her father and her reputation means nothing to me. Beyond being very proud of her, of course. I think Maitimo knew what I was doing after a few days but he didn't say anything. He's always been a good friend."

"They all turned out much better than we deserved," Fingolfin says somberly, thinking of how hard he had tried to help and support all his children, both his own by birth and by claim, and how often he had failed. "I half expected that if I ever got to talk to Finno again he'd hate me for making him settle down, and Káno for letting him get killed, and the others for, well, for letting them just disappear, but . . ."

"They are better than we are," Finarfin says so quietly he isn't sure he's meant to hear it. "Much, much better."

"But they're here," he reminds him. "We were good enough that they wanted to come back eventually. I doubt they'll stay, but they're here now."

"That's still better than I am," his brother says, tensing. "Because I still don't want to see either of our parents ever again."

Fingolfin doesn't want to get into that touchy subject, which comes up with distressing regularity whenever Ara is vulnerable enough to let himself actually think about all the things he tries to constantly ignore, so he just makes vaguely sympathetic noises and presses his shoulders back against his a little harder. "I'm not going anywhere," he says at last.

"But you did," he answers, and there is another long silence.

What can he say? It's true. Every single person his little brother has ever loved has abandoned him except Ëarwen, and from some very incoherent middle-of-the-night confessions when he was almost too far gone to talk, she either did temporarily go back to her family home or seriously considered it a long, long time ago. That's over now, and they are a good team, but just like everything else, it did happen.

Fingolfin thinks the worst of them all was Indis. She didn't even give a reason, or have an obvious one. She just disappeared so quietly nobody realized she had gone for hundreds of years. At least their father had the very good excuse of being murdered.

"I'm not going anywhere," he says again, and squeezes Finarfin's hand before unfolding his legs and getting off the table.

Or trying to get off the table. Artanis braided their hair together while they were distracted. It takes them thirty minutes, a lot of swearing, half-laughingly threatening each other with scissors, and repeatedly bonking their heads together to disentangle from each other. She braided it tight.

At least at the end of it his little brother is smiling, and they have a new project: remind Artanis that they were pranking their parents and siblings long, long before she was born.