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Chapter Text

He had been waiting for so very long.

For thousands of years, Fëanáro Curufinwë had languished in death. He longed for life like an itch in his fëa, scorching and deep as a wound. His fingers, incorporeal as they were, twitched to hold his tools again: a hammer, a jewel-loupe, a pen. Anything. His heart pulsed like an erratic melody, acutely aware of all that it had lost: his mother, his father, his legacy, his home.

His sons.

His sons. 

Since the War of Wrath, Fëanor had seen only one tapestry of Maglor: a slight, dark-haired figure by the seaside, reaching out toward the horizon. He lived still, as far as they knew; but what if he had Faded, or refused the call of Mandos? And Maedhros had thrown himself to his death; he had arrived into the Halls like an echo of his father, blazing with leftover flames. 

And then, just as quickly, he had disappeared.

Námo himself did not know where he had gone, or else he refused to say. Little pity, indeed. Fëanor had shouted and he had threatened; he had bargained and he had begged. He had roused his other five sons to such fervent revolt that Námo confined them to separate cells. And still, he did not know what had become of his eldest son.

Nothing he tried was working. 

So, after many thousands of years, Fëanor did what was least expected of him.

He sat in silence, and reflected upon himself.

Or, to be more accurate, he reflected upon certain parts of himself. Upon three very specific parts of his fëa, splintered off in long millenia past, and yet attached to him still: the Silmarils.

These days, the first showed him only the dark depths of the earth, and the second only the dark depths of the sea. So it was to the third that he turned his gaze—the third, borne aloft above the earth, sailing among Varda’s stars. 

To Eärendil.

It boiled his blood to look upon him so, this bearer of his star. This meddling half-Elf, this Nolofinwion seafarer; what claim had he upon the work of Fëanor’s hands and heart? What right had he to wear it on his bare brow, when Fëanor’s own sons had been burned by Varda’s so-called blessing?

(Had they done evil? Oh, certainly they had; even Fëanor himself could admit that. But even still—his sons.)

Then again, Fëanor supposed, it was not through Eärendil’s will that all this had come to pass—Eärendil had not asked for this duty, steadfastly though he bore it. Nor did he ever look upon the Silmaril with anything other than duty in his eyes: duty, and oftentimes sorrow. But never greed. That made it easier, Fëanor thought, to stand the sight of him.

Eärendil, he called, through the light of the jewel, rippling through the layers of the world that lay between them. Eärendil.

But Eärendil did not hear.

Over the centuries, Fëanor pushed a little more energy into the scrap of his soul within the Silmaril. A little more power, a little more of himself. 

And slowly but surely—so slowly, in fact, that it took until the dawning of the Third Age—he poured his consciousness into the Silmaril, and out of the Halls of Mandos. It was not a feat most souls in the Halls could have managed—but he was Fëanáro Curufinwë, the Spirit of Fire, he who was called the greatest of the Noldor. And not all of his soul was in these Halls, after all.

At last, one night, Eärendil was gazing through his spyglass at Elrond, his son. Maglor’s son. Fëanor’s grandson. And Fëanor, following his gaze, murmured his thoughts aloud:

Mine, said Fëanor, with fierce, possessive affection.

And Eärendil startled, as if he had heard.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Bearer of my star, Fëanor murmured to him one night, a crooning whisper in the back of his mind, you who shares my light. Will you not speak to me?

He expected no response, other than a tensing of the jaw, perhaps, or a swallow down that golden throat. But—

“It is not yours,” Eärendil said. 

Eagerness wrestled with indignation, with an instinctual flare of wrath. The former won out. Fëanor had waited so long, so long to coax that voice from Eärendil’s lips; had he still lips of his own, they would have curved up sharply in victory.

It is, he said, and then, as an afterthought: But I will not take it from you. 

Eärendil’s eyes narrowed.“You cannot,” he said, decisively. “You are dead.”

I am, he acknowledged. For now. 

“You cannot have it back,” Eärendil told him. “It belongs to all who find hope in its light.”

An Age ago, Fëanor would have raged at that. Now, he only stifled a laugh: I already have it, then, he pointed out, if it belongs to all who find hope in its light.

Eärendil’s lips morphed into a scowl; Fëanor watched in fascination. In this form, bodiless and drifting, he saw the world as if through a veil: shapes and colors blurred into obscurity, though sharper around the Silmaril to which he was bound. Around Eärendil. He savored every movement, every mote of his light upon Eärendil’s shifting face—the only taste of the world he could get. 

Peace, star-bearer! said Fëanor soothingly. I am already with you. I always will be. There is no need for me to reclaim what is already in my grasp.

He swirled closer, settled deeper, and poured all his burning will into manifesting. Eärendil showed no sign of seeing him, but he shivered slightly, as though he could feel the smooth glide of Fëanor’s grip. Fëanor himself could not feel the warmth of the Silmaril, nor that of Eärendil’s skin beneath his own. But for that one moment—that one brief, shining moment—Eärendil had felt him.

Eärendil’s face had twisted. “You’re dead.”

Oh, yes, said Fëanor, flexing his invisible fingers. He could see them, even if Eärendil could not, limbs of faint-wavering starlight that blurred into the Silmaril’s glow. But I am a little less dead than I used to be. Thanks to you, my friend.

“Thanks to me?”

Aiya Eärendil, said Fëanor breathily, laughing, elenion ancalima!

“What do you mean, thanks to me?” Eärendil’s voice had risen, cracking with panicked fervor. “Come back,” he demanded, when Fëanor said nothing. “Answer me! Fëanor!”

The sound of his name—even twisted as it was, a half-translation of its true form—rippled through the air, like light. There was power in a name, Fëanor knew. What a delicious, invigorating reminder. He lifted his ghostly arm, and watched as it flickered and strengthened, as if tongues of bright flame were licking along its length. He drew in a deep, covetous breath, and for half an instant, he felt it settle in his lungs, as if they were corporeal again—for half an instant, felt the breeze on his skin, caught a flash of the ship and the stars as they truly looked, outside of the veil of death—

For a half an instant, Eärendil turned, and looked squarely at him.

But then the surge of strength faded back, and he was but a whisper in the night once more.

Still, he saw Eärendil shiver again. And when he drifted to Eärendil and spoke in his ear, he saw its pointed tip twitch, as if in response to true sound.

Eärendil, Eärendil, he breathed, eagerness in every syllable of the name. You carry the star. I am in the star. Given enough time, there will hardly be a difference anymore.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Slumped like a housecat, limbs askew, Eärendil slept on his narrow cot. His gold curls spilled like sunlight over his cheek. Beside him, his circlet hung from a wooden hook; as he shifted restlessly in his sleep, the light of the Silmaril shone over him, casting his face in shimmering hues. 

With careful, intense concentration, Fëanor rose from the jewel: a hanging, invisible mass, hovering over the mariner’s sleeping form. Slithering, shapeless, over his chest. Eärendil’s mental shields shone strong, but Fëanor had no need to find a crack in them; he merely followed the thread of golden light, the thread that bridged their fëar through life and death. The thread that had winked into existence the very first time that Fëanor had spoken, and Eärendil had chosen to listen.

He sank into Eärendil as if stepping through a veil, and settled himself into his dreams.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Eärendil was dreaming of the ship. 

It was only natural, Fëanor thought, as he blinked his eyes open to Eärendil’s dreamscape: the ship was where Eärendil spent nearly all his time, and what time he spent outside of it, he primarily spent asleep. As he lifted his head and spread his arms—which, somewhat counterintuitively, felt more solid than they did when Eärendil was awake—Fëanor let his dream-presence expand outwards, swirling over the length of the ship.

Shining flames curled over the deck, devoured the cabin in vibrant orange light. Caught up in the joy of having a body again—or a facsimile of one, at least—Fëanor spun, danced with the fire, his laughter rising in the air like smoke.

And there was Eärendil, standing on the deck, the star upon his brow shining fierce and white. Here, in the shifting, nebulous layers of Eärendil’s sleeping mind, Fëanor felt its light upon his skin, as if he were truly alive again. As if it were greeting him, calling him home.

Eärendil’s eyes raked over him, hooking briefly on his brow—where he felt a circlet resting delicately, summoned out of memory—before they settled, alight with recognition, upon Fëanor’s own eyes. 

Smiling, Fëanor spread his hands.

After a moment, Eärendil stepped forward, and grasped them boldly in his own. 

The feeling of living skin beneath his fingers, after all these thousands of years, sent a jolt of shocked joy through Fëanor’s spirit, making flames erupt up between them. Through them, wordlessly, he pressed all that joy toward its source. The Silmaril blazed brighter than ever, but curiously, Fëanor found his gaze straying to the face beneath it: lips parted in a gasp, eyes squeezed shut, head thrown back as if in sudden bliss. His hair gleamed like the sunset, and Fëanor realized with a start that he had never seen him like this before.

(He had never seen him so happy.)

Fëanor reached out, and enfolded Eärendil up into his warm, branding flames.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

When Eärendil jolted awake, it was with Fëanor’s name on his lips.

Breathing hard, he pressed his hand to his mouth, his cheeks flushed a bewildered crimson. Oddly flattered, Fëanor stretched out a tendril of spirit out from the jewel to which he had retreated.

Eärendil, he whispered back, and startled himself with his warmth. 

When Eärendil’s gaze fastened upon the Silmaril, it was with a curious, probing cast of hope. Fëanor gazed back, and noticed for the first time that Eärendil’s eyes held a tiny glint of light—not Treelight, but an indirect echo of it, and a glimmer of a spirit that was not Eärendil’s own. The light of the Silmaril.

Fëanor’s light.

(A thought flickered hazily across his mind: the Silmaril would belong to Fëanor in truth . . . if the one who bore it did, too.)

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Years passed.

The sea twinkled below them, far, far below, a silvered mirror of the sky. Eärendil gazed down at the waves, with all the fierce longing with which Fëanor might gaze at the sift of powders or the click of gears between his fingers, or a beautiful vein of ore. Like it hurt to be torn away.

Can Ulmo reach you here, I wonder? Fëanor mused, his breath ruffling through Eärendil’s hair. Or has he simply withdrawn his favor, now that Varda has staked her claim?

“He watches over me still,” said Eärendil softly. “I’m still a sailor, after all.”

Then I hope, said Fëanor, gravely, that he does not watch too closely.

“Of all the Valar, he was always the most sympathetic to us. Us the Elves, that is.”

Not to all of us, said Fëanor, who remembered the crashing dark waters as they fled from Alqualondë, the Elves lost to icy death beneath the waves. 

“You made it to Beleriand,” Eärendil pointed out.

And you needed a Silmaril to make it back out.

Eärendil merely hummed, and stared down at the sea. At last, he tilted his head upward, casting the jewel-light in ripples over the deck.

“What do you want?” he asked, quietly.

What do I want? Fëanor echoed, and laughed: swirling at Eärendil’s shoulders, slipping through his hair, basking in the closeness of his borrowed light. I want the same thing you want, he told him. I want my family back, and I want to be free.

“I am free,” Eärendil insisted, frowning.

Fëanor laughed derisively, and Eärendil’s frown grew deeper. 

He was silent then, and Fëanor was, too: letting him reflect, as he gazed out into the cold, pretty lights in the distance. The cold, pretty lights that he saw every night, and that did not deign to speak to him. It was a beautiful cage, to be certain, and all the more disingenuous for it: a blessing that had burned him hollow, a journey with no end. 

Eärendil, my friend, my mariner, Fëanor whispered to him, with a sharp, sympathetic twist of fury, my unwitting salvation. 

I will show you what you are missing, star-bearer.

I will show you what it is to revolt.

Chapter Text

Their sons had reunited. Fëanor beamed, draping himself over Eärendil’s shoulders in wordless, scorching joy. Fëanor’s only surviving son, far below in Middle-earth, had found his way to Elrond at last. Fëanor could not quite make out their features through the scope, separated as he was by the curtain of death, but he could see much more clearly than in the centuries before. Perhaps because Eärendil was slowly letting him in; perhaps because it was his son. And his grandson, too.

This journey was a lengthy one, and Elwing had not accompanied them this time. At winter’s end, the Vingilótë drifted at last to the lighthouse on the northern shores, where Elwing awaited their return.

She was waiting at the base of her tower, circling it: a vast-winged albatross, the dark tips of her wings catching the golden dawn light. When Eärendil leaped down to join her, she was a woman again: slight and dark-haired, delicate-boned. 

“Beloved,” said Eärendil, hurrying to her. “Our son!”

Her eyes went lightning-bright. “Our son?”

“He’s finally found Maglor,” said Eärendil, his smile widening; but Elwing’s features twisted, as if trying to pull in several directions. “He was happy to see him,” he added quickly, “very happy.”

“I see,” she said, softly.

The unease had not left her face; Fëanor could not blame her, though a part of him bristled, and another part was smug. Unease, resentment . . . jealousy. Yes, Elrond was Maglor’s son, too.

He wouldn’t harm him, he said firmly to Eärendil, not ever. You know he would not.  

Ever so slightly, Eärendil nodded. “This is a good thing, my love,” he said aloud, taking his wife’s hands. “I don’t believe Maglor will harm him.”

“Hmm,” said Elwing, skeptically.

As they regarded one another, Fëanor hovered between them, his light sliding cautiously over Elwing’s features. Eärendil had brought up confiding in Elwing only thrice, in all the long years. All three times, Fëanor warned him against it, and all three times, Eärendil seemed relieved.

Perhaps he feared her reaction. Perhaps he wanted to keep his newfound companion all to himself. Whatever the reason, Fëanor was glad for it; Elwing had plainly never quite forgiven the sons of Fëanor in the way her husband had, and she would not so easily embrace the father of those who had twice destroyed her home. Those who had stolen her sons. 

She had never shown any sign of noticing him, this strange, distant-eyed bird-lady, who kept to her lighthouse by the sea. He felt her only through Eärendil: the outline of their marriage bond, like a pulsing thread of light.

They were connected, but not intertwined. Eärendil was gone too often, and too far, for anything closer than that. Their marriage was one of fragments, stolen moments together, before he inevitably left again. Over the millennia, Fëanor had watched them drift further and further apart—a romance of legend, a myth in its epilogue; their souls so deeply and helplessly in love, and so deeply and helplessly held apart from one another.

Yes, they were connected, but not intertwined—and that meant she could not sense Fëanor.

She knew something was off, if not the shape of it. She had known for a very long time. Perhaps her eyes even lingered on the jewel, a faint flicker of suspicion. But Eärendil was not fading or withering from it; no, his gold-freckled face was brighter, his eyes aflame with more mirthful light than they had held in millenia. Loneliness was a cruel affliction, but Fëanor had driven it away.

Elwing—a strange woman, with an equally strange husband—did not pry any further.

Eärendil leaned down to kiss her. Fëanor, caught in the memory of the last, withering years of his own marriage, half expected her to turn her cheek.

But she kissed him back, soft and chaste, and wound her arms about his neck. More pleased than envious, Fëanor wound himself about Eärendil’s neck, too, like a scarf of floating chiffon. The air shivered with the rhythm of his intent, unspoken and unheard as it was. Break free. Find his son. Free his other sons. Free Eärendil. It thrummed in his being like a drumbeat, like an Oath. He did not care if he would have to stir the Noldor to rebellion once again, and he did not care who would stand in his way.

He would not fail his sons a second time.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Later, they shook hands, in the fashion of Men, to mark the sealing of their deal. The beginning of their bid for freedom. Fëanor poured all his energy into manifesting the touch, into clasping Eärendil’s sea-roughened fingers into his invisible warmth. 

He reached out with his other hand, and caught a lock of Eärendil’s hair. It curled around his finger, shimmering; to Eärendil, he imagined the movement appeared as if his hair had been caught by an errant breeze. A hazard of wearing no braids, he supposed. That had scandalized Fëanor somewhat at first—a Noldorin prince who wore his hair entirely unbound, fastened with no jewel or ornament save the circlet—but now it was merely . . . endearing.

Eärendil, Fëanor said, against the shell of Eärendil’s ear.

Eärendil’s lashes fluttered. “Fëanor,” he murmured.

Fëanáro, he corrected, on a whim. Call me Fëanáro.

“Fëanáro,” Eärendil repeated softly, and the slight, ringing echo of his Quenya name—his true name—made Fëanor smile in unseen delight. “Fëanáro.”

My star-bearer, Fëanor crooned, dissolving once again into shapeless light; he settled over Eärendil like stardust, like a layer of fiery armor against the cold of the night. I am so very glad you’ve seen reason, he told him, and know your cage for what it is. It will make it much easier to set you free.

Ten years ago, Eärendil would have said, I don’t need to be set free. A hundred years ago, he would have said, You sound insane. Three thousand years ago, he would have refused to answer at all.

Now, all he said was, “How will you do it?”

Fëanor hummed, pleased by his eagerness. His formless spirit melted into Eärendil’s hair, seeped down the slumping, weary arch of his back. Tired. His mariner was always so tired, and still always so patient, so earnest, so kind; a gently flickering oil-lamp, where Fëanor was a wild blaze. 

I have a few ideas, he said. But we’ll have to be patient, both of us.

Eärendil leaned into him, and promised, “I can wait.”

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Soon, Eärendil, jewel of my sky, he whispered—later, many years later, when the Fourth Age of Arda had arrived, and their respective living sons had both made their way to Valinor at last. Soon.

“. . . I don’t want you to leave me,” Eärendil admitted.

His voice was small: trembling, almost. A sliver of a figure, bright and wavering, against the sprawling sea of the stars: two ghosts, clinging to one another. 

I will always be with you, Fëanor reminded him. One way or another.

“Yes,” Eärendil said, “but I don’t want to sail alone.”

You will not, said Fëanor, and believed it with all his soul. I will free you from your doom, as surely as you shall free me from mine.

“Don’t say such things,” Eärendil murmured, with a shiver. A glance around them. “Not out loud.”

Why not? Fëanor laughed, coldly, and swept a glimmering hand through the icy air. No one is listening, he pointed out. Everyone watches you, up here, but nobody listens. You are underestimated, my friend. No one will see it coming.

“The Valar—” Eärendil started.

They won’t stop you, Fëanor swore, lifting his chin. In his burst of sudden, protective ferocity, the starlight sharpened around them. They won’t hurt you, Fëanor snapped, a swirl of strength on his lips, at his fingertips. You are mine. I will not let them.

Eärendil's brow furrowed. “Fëanáro,” he said softly, cautiously. “I am not the Silmaril.”

He laughed again, almost startled by the thought. His sweet, modest mariner; he was not of Fëanor’s making, no, but that made him no less radiant, no less treasured. No less his.

No, Fëanor agreed lightly, and ran his ethereal fingers through Eärendil’s night-chilled curls. But you are mine. 

And Eärendil—smiled.

Mollified, he leaned back into Fëanor’s touch, and Fëanor stroked his hair again. Much as the unbound hair had long since lost its sense of scandal, so too had the shock of touching it—there was still a thrill, but it no longer felt forbidden.

Eärendil was his now, after all.

If Eärendil was his, he had reasoned long ago, so too would be the Silmaril. The Oath, it seemed, did not agree: it lingered on in the depths of his fëa, seduced into near-slumber by long centuries of death. As long as he could not hold the jewel in his hand, it seemed he could not reclaim it.

Fëanor did not mind. Not anymore. Perhaps the star was his by right, but he had found someone worthy of bearing it.

Chapter Text

“Eärendil,” said Elwing.

“Hmm?”

Her eyes were glowing in the dark: faint, an eerie silver-purple shine out of the liquid brown of her irises. Not Treelight. It had unnerved Fëanor at first, but he had long since grown used to it; his own grandson had the same eyes, after all.

Elwing drew the blanket tighter. “Close the window?” she said. “It’s freezing.”

Eärendil, his own limbs bared carelessly to the air, tilted his head in confusion. “No, it’s not.”

“Yes, it is,” she insisted.

“I’m not cold at all.”

She lifted a brow: “Well, I am.”

You’re welcome, Fëanor said, and shifted the radius of his little pool of warmth: it crept outward, washing over Elwing, who blinked in surprise.

Thank you, Eärendil mouthed up at him, and smiled.

Eyes drifting closed, Eärendil curled beneath the blankets. Elwing lay beside him, not quite touching him; there was space enough for Fëanor to slip between them, a silent, formless being of light. To manifest the outline of a body, limbs sprawled over Eärendil’s own.

Eärendil’s eyes shot open.

They settled upon the ghost draped over his chest, and he relaxed. The scent of him pulsed, just a hint of it: salt and sunflower hair oil, and the trace of the morning breeze. Nearly strong enough to feel real, for Fëanor to feel real—but not yet, not quite.

In silence, Eärendil lay beside his wife, mere inches from her, and yet thousands of miles away. Fëanor, settled between them, bridged the gap as best he could, knitting him back together; while, paradoxically enough, his presence kept them apart.

He pressed ephemeral lips to the slope of Eärendil’s neck: a brief, wordless pulse of warmth. 

Eärendil shivered, and smiled again.

Elwing, watching, narrowed her eyes.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

“You want to know about my father?” Maglor said. “Whatever for?”

Only twice had Fëanor seen his second son in person, since he had sailed at last with his foster-son. Every time, as he beheld him—salt-roughened braids, sea-battered face, walking with a limp and a silver-handled cane—his whole being twisted in feeling, made the light of Gil-Estel ripple strangely. 

Kanafinwë, he murmured, as if saying it enough times could force him to hear. Ai, Kanafinwë.

“I’ve carried his star for so long,” Eärendil said. “He is practically an old friend.”

Old friends, Fëanor echoed. I like that. But his eyes fell upon his son again, and his words dissolved once more: Oh, Káno, my Káno, my brave Makalaurë. If only I could speak to you. If only I could say how much I love you.

Let me tell him, Eärendil said, within his own mind.

It was tempting—agonizingly tempting, to reach out through Eärendil’s lips, to speak to his son at last. But he could not risk it, with eyes all around them, in the heart of the Valar’s power; he could not risk it, with so much at stake, and his son’s life such easy leverage against him. Old paranoia flared to life, drowned his senses, and he prickled like sharp gooseflesh over Eärendil’s spine— 

No, he reminded Eärendil, not about me, not until—

Let me tell him you love him, Eärendil begged.

Please, said Fëanor, softening—desperate. Please do. 

“Your father loves you,” Eärendil said aloud. “To devastation. I feel his love, his passion, poured deep into his creation.”

“Yes, they—they’re like that,” said Maglor, with a hollow laugh. His hand, when he dragged it down over his eyes, was so gaunt. So scarred, so changed. “The Silmarils. But yours seems . . . different, somehow.”

I’m here now, my Káno, Fëanor promised. I would never burn you.

“It is a symbol of hope,” said Eärendil—or Fëanor, or both of them at once. “Its light . . . comforts.”

Maglor’s eyes flickered. “What did you say?”

Calarya aþya, Fëanor reminded him—its light comforts.

“Calarya asya,” Eärendil repeated, in his own accent this time.

“Eärendil.” Maglor raised a brow. “You definitely said aþya.”

“Oh, dear,” said Eärendil, with mild embarrassment. “You and Elrond must be rubbing off on me. Amillë wouldn’t be pleased.”

“No, I imagine she wouldn’t be.”

As they smiled at one another, a low laugh rippled up Fëanor’s throat. Eärendil laughed, too, and so did Maglor: golden-touched, melodious, a sound out of ancient and long-lost memory. A sound that Fëanor would have given the world and more to hear again, and now, at last, he could.

Eärendil’s lips moved: “Thank you, Kanafinwë.” 

It was a strange thing for Eärendil to call him; his brow shot up again. “. . . Maglor is fine,” was all he said.

“Thank you, Maglor,” Eärendil corrected.

Spectral, shifting within Eärendil’s skin, Fëanor kept laughing. He was so, so close to being free.

“I . . . want to try something,” said Eärendil suddenly. He reached into the leather pouch at his hip, and drew out the Silmaril: Fëanor, though his vision of the physical world was much improved by now, reveled in the fresh detail as its light sparkled over his son.

His son, who had gone very, very still.

“Here,” said Eärendil, thrusting out his hand. “Take it.”

“. . . No,” Maglor said, gray eyes wide. “No—”

“Only for a moment,” Eärendil insisted. “Just to see if it could end your Oath.”

Maglor’s fingers, strip-scarred and bony, curled shakingly over the head of his cane. “I can’t,” he rasped.

“Only for a moment,” Eärendil said again.

“I cannot!”

“I’m sure it wouldn’t burn—”

“Stop,” Maglor hissed, and power rang behind the word. Eärendil froze. With agonizing effort, Maglor’s eyes tore away from the Silmaril. “I don’t want it,” he insisted—slowly, as if to convince himself. “I don’t. Don’t test me like this. Don’t wake it. Let it sleep.”

There was no question of what it was. Fëanor felt it in his own chest: the phantom of his ancient Oath, stirring back to life. 

He pushed it down as best he could, and slid his fingers down over Eärendil’s, curling them over the star in silent command. Anything to conceal it again, anything to wipe that tortured panic out of his second son’s eyes. 

“. . . All right,” said Eärendil softly.

When the Silmaril had been stowed out of his sight once more, Maglor exhaled, trembling, and low. His limbs slumped, a puppet cut free from its strings.

Oh, Káno, Fëanor breathed. My Káno, what have I done to you? Forgive me. Forgive me. I love you. I should have protected you. 

I will fix it, little one. 

He buried his face in Eärendil’s hair, and watched his own hanging braids, outlined in starlight, flash crimson with his rage. Eärendil stroked his thumb over the Silmaril, and kept his phantom company in silence.

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Fingolfin was alive again, and a great celebration was being thrown in his honor. Fëanor had . . . emotions . . . about that.

There was time enough, just barely, for Eärendil to slip into the festivities. Star-circlet in his pocket, he wandered; Fëanor drifted at his heels. He made his way to a party-goer lingering beneath a tree, with a familiar head of gold-woven braids.

Shortly before his own death, Fëanor would have spat at the sight of Fingolfin’s firstborn. But given what Fingon had done for Maedhros . . . these days, to his own slight chagrin, he always brightened at the rare sight of Fingon—though at the moment, Fingon did not look well. He was scowling into his wine, shadows smudged beneath his dimmed eyes; his famed braids were in a plain knot, ruthlessly tight, rather than flowing free.

“You look sorrowful,” Eärendil was saying.

“Don’t mind me,” said Fingon, with an unconvincing smile. “I’m thinking about someone I lost.”

Nelyafinwë, Fëanor breathed—heavy with guilt and grief. It slipped, near-simultaneous, aloud from Eärendil’s mouth:

“Nelyafinwë.”

A brief, bewildered pause; a surveying look. “Yes, but don’t let your grandfather Turukáno hear you calling him that,” said Fingon, eventually, while Fëanor hissed in sharp warning. “I think he’s more offended by the slight than our father ever was.”

Eärendil laughed. “Yes, he would be,” he said. At Fëanor’s wordless, white-hot urging, he added mildly, “Is he in Mandos? Maedhros, that is.”

“Apparently,” said Fingon, a dark flash going over his face, “but I couldn’t find him there. He . . . he doesn’t want to be found, I think. He wasn’t ready. And even if he was, he . . . the Valar will not permit him to Return.”

He should have looked harder, Fëanor seethed, his nails curling like claws into Eärendil’s shoulders. He should have found him. I should have found him. Eärendil, I failed him. I failed my son. The Valar failed my son. 

“That is an injustice,” Eärendil murmured to them both, running his hand over the tree. “I’m sorry.”

Injustice, Fëanor snarled, is hardly a strong enough word for it.

Meanwhile, Fingon was watching Eärendil closely. “You are very forgiving,” he said. “Are we talking about the same Maedhros?”

Don’t you disparage my son! Fëanor snapped.

“I assume so,” said Eärendil, much more politely, “I’ve never actually met him. Red hair, one hand, unreasonably tall, I hear?”

“That’s him.”

“He’s hurt people I love,” he said, “but he and Maglor raised my sons well, in the end, despite the . . . circumstances. And I’m not one to hold a grudge.”

“That does not run in the family,” Fingon said.

That’s true, Fëanor said, and Eärendil laughed.

“I wish he were here,” Fingon said, closing his eyes. His voice was wracked with bitter guilt; some ancient part of Fëanor was satisfied to hear it. If he had his way, the whole world would be screaming with guilt and rage for the fate of his eldest son. “I’m selfish, aren’t I? He doesn’t want to be here, by all accounts, but I still wish he were.”

“I know the feeling,” Eärendil murmured. 

Fëanor did, too.

His half-nephew was crying now, silver slipping beneath his dark lashes to carve jagged lines down his face. Fëanor, dead as he was, could not cry. He could not cry for those he had killed, and he could not cry for those he had loved. But here at last, sitting before him, was someone who cried for Maedhros. Someone who mourned him so deeply, so truly, that he would not even bite his tongue and smile for his own father’s Return.

It was for that reason, when Eärendil sent him a silent, tentative request in the form of a mental image, that Fëanor surprised himself by saying, Go ahead.

“The sun is setting,” said Eärendil, standing up, and Fingon opened his eyes. “I need to go. But first—here. Hold this for a moment. I think you need it.”

And he reached into his pocket, and handed him the Silmaril.

Fëanor could not speak to Fingon. But he poured all his brightness toward him anyway, everything that was meant for Maedhros: all his fierce fury and fiercer pride; his too-late, too-consuming love. Nelyafinwë will be free, he vowed to himself, with each new pulse of warmth into Fingon’s palm. One way or another, Nelyafinwë will be free. 

Fingon’s fingers spasmed around the jewel, and his head fell back abruptly: “Oh,” he whispered. “Oh.”

“Yes,” Eärendil agreed. “Quite.”

Stay strong, Findekáno, Fëanor ordered him, with one last thrum of light. Do not give up on him.

“Thank you,” Fingon rasped, as he passed the Silmaril back.

Eärendil tucked it into his pocket. “I’m not the one you owe your thanks to,” he said, and glanced up, meeting Fëanor’s eyes. “But given time, there will hardly be a difference anymore.”

“. . . Pardon?” 

Eärendil, Fëanor hissed in warning.

“Nothing,” Eärendil backtracked swiftly, with a smile. “Just a thought. If the dead cannot come to us—perhaps we ought to bring them back.”

Find my child, son of Nolofinwë, Fëanor muttered, unheard, and if you fail, I’ll do it myself. 

“Good night, Great-Uncle,” said Eärendil, ignoring him.

“Good night, nephew,” Fingon murmured, looking dazed. “Sail safely.”

“I always do,” said Eärendil, turning away. “I’m very well-protected, after all.”

You are, agreed Fëanor softly, with a faint, warm brush along Eärendil’s jaw. By me.  

Unseen, Eärendil winked.

(Years later, Fingon faced the back door to Mandos, harp in hand, and called out a prayer to Gil-Estel. 

Eärendil listened. Fëanor blazed. 

The door, naturally, swung open.)

───── ⋆⋅☆·⋆ ─────

Hours before his freedom, strength gathered like liquid beneath his skin. When he—when Eärendil—when they touched the railing of the ship, he could nearly feel the wood beneath Eärendil's fingertips. His back teeth buzzed with exhilaration. 

The night sky was lit up red.

Eärendil, Fëanor murmured.

He could have been a star all on his own, Fëanor’s mariner, standing there with half-lidded, opal-shining eyes, and a smile on his lips. “Fëanáro?” he said, his eyes fluttering open.

Fëanor shifted backward, out of him, just enough to form arms to slip around his body. Marveling at the glide of freckled skin beneath his, so close, so close to feeling real. Thank you, Fëanor breathed.

“For what?”

There were a million things Fëanor might have said. For hearing me, was what he settled on. For keeping my secret.

“Of course,” said Eärendil, voice steady, eyes sharp. “Thank you. For speaking to me. For bringing me hope.”

Bearer of my star, Fëanor whispered. When he framed Eärendil’s face with his hand, bathing his nearly-opaque fingers in light, he did not look at the Silmaril at all. I won’t ever let you be alone again. 

Together, they gazed out at the stars, and waited for the dawn.