Chapter Text
It becomes a habit before long: when they’re both in Tirion, and they have a night during which no one will miss them, they get together in one of Nerdanel’s many-roomed, echoingly empty house, and drink a good cellar of alcohol. They switch off on who brings the alcohol, and before long it becomes a habit to pick up a cask of something wherever they’ve spent the past few weeks to enjoy with the other. They were never good friends before the whole business: too different and too focused on their chosen fields- until, of course, they were abandoned.
Nerdanel a good fifty years before Anairë, that’s true enough, but Nerdanel’s not exactly in the business of comparing who’s got the worst scars. They both understand each other in a way that nobody else can in Tirion: widows who cannot mourn their husbands, parents who cannot mourn their children, because they are not dead.
Only gone.
Gone where Nerdanel cannot follow. Where she will not follow: and that’s the rub of it all, that this is Nerdanel’s choice, as much as it can be anything, and she- while she doesn’t regret the choice of itself- does regret the pain surrounding the choice, inevitable and inexorable and terrible.
“Tulkas’ breath,” says Anairë, grimacing as she consumes the spicy, scarlet-colored drink in her hand, made from fermenting some strange fruit in Yavanna’s Pastures.
“No,” says Nerdanel wryly. “If anything, it’d be Yavanna’s breath, wouldn’t it?”
“Has anyone ever called you a pedant, Nerdanel?”
“Yes,” she says, leaning back in her chair and breathing in the smell: it’s Carnistir’s chair, and it still smells like the hair lotion he’d favored in Tirion, underneath all the dust and mustiness. “My husband was very clear about my faults when he left.”
Anairë rolls her eyes, which is by far better than Mahtan’s pursed lips or Nerdalië’s look of distress whenever Nerdanel mentions her husband. It’s why they do this, really, Nerdanel thinks: there’s something to the memory of her family which isn’t just pain. There had been a time when her sons had been sweet boys, and her husband had been a kind man, and her family had not been responsible for the most terrible deeds in all of Arda. Nerdanel’s fairly certain that the rest of them are too busy plotting- vengeance, or triumph, or something monumentally stupid and grand- to remember that, but she isn’t.
“I think sometimes,” says Anairë, morosely swilling the contents of the glass, “it’d be better if we’d fought, you know. Nolo and I.”
Nerdanel winces at the shortened name, borne of years of internalizing her husband’s disgust, and tries to hide it by taking a long sip of the drink. She regrets that immediately: Yavanna’s alcohol is full-bodied and the kind of rich that blazes down her throat. But it also distracts her from sneering at Anairë, and that’s always a good thing while she has three rants still lined up on her tongue.
“Then I’d at least be angry,” continues Anairë. “But no: he left, and he was so busy leaving to be with his brother that he didn’t even see me! I don’t know if he even knows now whether I’m there or not!”
“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Of course he misses you.”
“He didn’t ask, did he?” says Anairë. “I don’t know what I’d have done either, if he’d asked. If I’d have had to fight with him.”
“You think you’d have gone to Beleriand?” demands Nerdanel incredulously.
“If he’d asked,” says Anairë miserably, “I think I would’ve. I mean: would it have been worse than this?”
She waves a hand, encompassing everything: the room, the house, the city, the entire island. Nerdanel slumps backwards. It’s true enough. This particular room’s was aired out by Nerdanel when she returned to Tirion two days earlier for this express purpose, and the only other truly functional rooms are her kitchen, her study, and her bedroom. She tries to rotate the room she meets Anairë in between the entirety of the house so at least no single room’s in worse disrepair than the rest. This house is on the verge of collapsing, held up only by her husband’s cunning work and magic. The city’s a deluded mess of dead people returned to life and cowards and zealots and the worst kind of hypocrites, interspersed liberally among all the people for whom Finwëan family issues remain unimportant. Nerdanel rather likes those people for whom this doesn’t matter at all, but there’s an edge of disinterest to their faces that she can’t help but find grating.
This is her family.
“Well.” Nerdanel tries to rally. “Well. Do you regret it?”
“Regret isn’t strong enough,” says Anairë. “And it isn’t weak enough either: I don’t know. But I miss them. My daughter! My sons! And now all I have is this. Ashes. Dust.” She throws back the rest of the drink, makes a face, and pours out a full measure for herself. “Memories, too, I suppose. Is that enough for you?”
“I don’t think it’ll ever be enough,” says Nerdanel, truthfully enough. She peers into the depths of her glass and sighs, letting the truth slowly swim out into open air. “I don’t think I’d do anything different if I could go back. But maybe… maybe I’d kick my husband out before he ever lost his mind, and keep my sons with me- I’d have worked for that, at least. If there’s one thing I can’t forgive of him, it’s how he died! How he took everyone away from Aman and then just died, the stupid selfish coward!”
It’s a rant that Anairë’s heard many times, so she just sighs and nods. “But would you leave Aman?”
“No,” says Nerdanel. “Never for myself.”
“For your sons?”
She closes her eyes. The truth does frighten Nerdanel, even now, because she’s a mother, and when she first held Maitimo, the depth of her love for him had terrified her. Because she knows her abilities and her limits, and she won’t test them ever for herself.
But her sons…
“I don’t know,” she whispers.
“We,” says Anairë, with the focused fury of a properly inebriated woman, “promised each other no lies.”
“Then yes,” says Nerdanel. She doesn’t dare look up, hands clasped tight around the glass, tight enough to shatter it. “Yes! I love him, and I love them, and it matters not to me where they have gone or what they have done.” Her eyes shut. “Unconditional love, Anairë, did I swear: unconditional and eternal, and I meant it then.”
A hand brushes over her wrist, taking the glass and setting it on the floor. “Clearly,” says Anairë, “Fëanáro is not the only one in your family who takes oaths seriously.”
“Do not speak to me of his name.”
“I’ll speak to you of whatever I wish. I love Nolofinwë: I loved them all. And now we do not even know if they will reach Beleriand.”
“Bah! As if you know that Beleriand will be safer than that ice!”
“We can hope,” says Anairë.
And that, thinks Nerdanel sourly, is likely all that any of them can wish for now: hope.
…
Hope, stinging and paltry, just as painful as it is sweet.
Ashes and dust, Anairë had said, and it’s truth: the ash of grief and the dust of death and the echoing silence of loneliness.
Nerdanel pounds stone into shapes of beauty and ugliness until all she tastes is marble and stone, and nothing of salt.
…
Then Fëanáro dies, and Nerdanel stays in Tirion; and then Maitimo is captured, and in a pain so vicious it hurts in Nerdanel’s own breast, she leaves Tirion behind.
…
(“Maitimo is captured,” says Nerdanel, hours before she flees, and her eyes are not red, and her hands are not trembling, but her face is white as ash. “He is not dead.” She takes a long, rattling breath. “He is not dead.”
Anairë does not say anything.
After a long moment, Nerdanel looks up at her. “I wish he were,” she whispers.)
…
It is years later- after the sun rises for the first time- when she returns to Tirion and finds that Anairë is nowhere to be found. Or: she is to be found in her home, but she does not accept visitors. She has not accepted visitors for a long time. She does not speak to anyone, not Eärwen, not her parents; she has not responded to any of Arafinwë’s requests or invitations either. Short of shattering the bedrock beneath her home, they don’t actually have a way to enter her home without her permission.
Nerdanel looks at Eärwen’s exhausted mien and Arafinwë’s averted eyes, and she nods. That night, she packs some of her tools, sneaks out of the castle, and makes her way down to Anairë’s home- the one that she’d shared with her husband and her children, and still inhabits when she’s not with her parents.
The doors are locked.
The doors are locked with Fëanáro’s locks, which means that Nerdanel cannot pick the locks without Anairë’s keys.
Nerdanel sighs, rolls her eyes, and takes out the diamond-dust wire, looping her palms and fingers with a spare cloth, and sets to filing down the hinges.
Inside, the house is dusty and dark and empty: she hasn’t kept any servants for years now, and no single woman, no matter how much she’d be motivated to clean it, could have kept it as spotless as Anairë had always preferred. Now Nerdanel’s feet echo on the stone where the rugs have worn away, and her heart hurts as she slowly makes her way through the rooms: well-preserved but shadowy, every last one a reminder of everything that has left Aman.
Anairë’s not in her bedroom, and not in Nolofinwë’s either. She’s not in the kitchen or the library or the gardens, and finally Nerdanel makes her way to the children’s wing, chewing on the inside of her cheek.
Findekáno’s and Turukáno’s rooms are empty. Írissë’s room is open to the elements- the windows are flung open, and the wind has set all of it to disarray, all the blankets and the papers strewn over the floor- which does frighten Nerdanel enough to check if Anairë’s decided to fall off the windowsill. But there’s no body underneath, and it’s not a high enough fall for it to do anything other than break a few limbs, which Anairë’d ensured when she and Nolofinwë were first constructing the house.
Enough that they can’t get into further mischief that night, she’d told Nerdanel at the house-warming ceremony, but not so much that they never get into mischief again!
(Stupidity, Nerdanel had thought. To allow mischief- to encourage it, even- seems about as counterproductive as parenting can get. And look where it’s left Anairë now: alone, cold, in this dank, miserable excuse of a house with memory like a thorned vine threatening to strangle anyone who walks within.
But then, Nerdanel’s home is no better. She’s got nothing but memory like a roaring wave, nothing but memory, and regret, and the cold, cold comfort of knowing herself to have made the right choice in her lungs.)
When she enters Arakáno’s room, she initially thinks it’s empty. It isn’t: Anairë’s under the covers, curled up, and she’s lost so much weight Nerdanel initially thinks she’s died.
But her eyes flutter, and she looks up at Nerdanel, squinting through the moonshine. For a long moment she doesn’t react. Then her face collapses, and she starts to weep.
Nerdanel wishes she’d make some sound; these soundless, wracking kind of sobs aren’t any kind that she’s familiar with- Carnistir and Makalaurë had been the only ones of her sons prone to weeping, and both were easily soothed. But she steps forwards and wraps her arms around Anairë, and Anairë lets her- or is too weak to so much as try to stop her- and they stay like that even when Nerdanel’s shoulder begins to cramp, even when the sun rises and the castle likely knows that Nerdanel’s disappeared.
Finally, when she seems to have gotten a better handle on herself, Nerdanel lifts her up and carries her down into the kitchen.
“I hope you have some food in here,” she tells Anairë, hunting through the kitchen. There isn’t much: even the pipes are giving off a rusty, reddish kind of water, and there’s mice droppings in the corners of the pantry, which doesn’t leave much hope for anything to have remained. “You look like you haven’t eaten since the sun rose!”
“I haven’t,” says Anairë heavily.
Nerdanel freezes, turning to look at her.
“Arakáno-” Anairë swallows. “He died in the battle. Right after the sun rose.” Tears stand out in her eyes once more, and she dabs them away with her sleeve. “I couldn’t do it after that. I can’t. What kind of a mother can eat and laugh in comfort while her children struggle in a land they didn’t need to go to? My husband. My children. My daughter-” and then she looks up at Nerdanel, and her voice turns bitter. “All for you and yours. Tell me, Nerdanel, why do you get to have all your sons when mine has to die?”
“I didn’t know,” says Nerdanel slowly. “I would’ve come earlier if I knew about Arakáno.”
“Do not say his name.”
“I will say to you what I wish,” says Nerdanel, remembering the weight of Anairë’s hand on her own in a dark room, Carnistir’s memory hanging in the air like a shade long gone. “No. We are the only ones who can understand, Anairë, do not think that I don’t know that. I am sorry.”
But Anairë’s not listening.
“Why do your sons live!” shrills Anairë, seizing the closest thing to hand not nailed down and hurling it at Nerdanel’s head. It’s rather a pathetic attempt: Anairë’s arms have lost too much strength to truly do anything dangerous, but Nerdanel respects the attempt at least. “Why why why why-”
“By chance and by fate,” says Nerdanel firmly. She steps forwards and grips Anairë’s shoulders, and kneels so she’s looking into Anairë’s eyes. “Nothing more. But you are a mother, Anairë: you are not just a mother to Arakáno. Two other sons do you have, and a daughter besides. Live for them.”
“And what,” says Anairë, the bright, hysterical edge of her eyes still shining, “should I forget him? The youngest of them all! That they let him die, my son, my son-”
“You are a mother,” snaps Nerdanel. “We do what must be done, do you understand? He was of age, he could make-”
“-his own decisions?”
Well, thinks Nerdanel. Well. It isn’t as if she has much faith in her own sons’ abilities to make decisions now, not after she spent a lifetime trying to instill independence in them and they all still followed their father into the teeth of ruin and grief.
“No,” says Nerdanel. “But you cannot kill yourself for the sake of another, not even if he’s a son. Not even if-”
-if you love him more than the world itself.
She bites back the words, knowing them to be useless against Anairë’s current predicament. The awful brittle edge of Anairë’s fear fades, slowly, from her gaze, and she curls inwards, hair shielding her face from view. Nerdanel pulls away.
Then Anairë looks up at her, and the madness is gone from Anairë’s gaze- the hysteria, the sorrow, the vicious howling emptiness- replaced instead by something that shines, silver as ice under the stars, as a knife in the sunlight, as the moon, glittering-new. The woman that Nolofinwë had married: sweet as a sparrow, with a beak so sharp it did not even hurt when she made her opponent bleed.
“You would know,” she says.
Nerdanel breathes in slowly. I wish he were dead, she hears, echoing in her mind and then back to Anairë: the ghosts of their family, coming home to roost. “I would,” she says.
“I,” says Anairë, “will do what must be done.”
“What must be done,” echoes Nerdanel.
“I don’t know what it is,” says Anairë, tossing a strand of her hair back. “But you’re right: I am not just mother to one son, and it is not like others have proven themselves capable of keeping them from making stupid decisions. As a mother, is it not our duty to keep them from killing themselves?”
“Our duty,” repeats Nerdanel quietly. “Anairë-”
“You do not want to save them?”
“I do not think I can,” she confesses: her oldest fear, her most grievous failing.
“Our sons,” says Anairë, suddenly fierce. “My daughter. If we are not enough, we will make ourselves enough. For them.”
“Anairë-”
“Promise me,” she says, and the determination gleaming in her eyes shifts, showing the edges of the all-consuming grief running underneath it. “Not with an oath. I don’t want your will to be anything but your own. But a promise made here, between us, who lost our children and our husbands, and stand to lose them even more terribly: to try to end this.”
“My husband could not,” says Nerdanel. “Tirion lays empty for all the Noldor that followed him and your husband to Beleriand- and you think we can achieve this?”
“I don’t know,” says Anairë. “But surely you understand that I cannot sit here while my children suffer for a single decision they took with full blessings of their elders!”
“We’ll be under their Doom as well,” says Nerdanel.
“Tears unnumbered shall you shed,” quotes Anairë. Her hand reaches up and clasps Nerdanel’s. “Tears unnumbered have I shed. If I am to shed more- if I must lose more- I will go mad.” Her nails dig into Nerdanel’s wrist, leaving marks. “If you are to lose any of them- oh, Nerdanel, I would rather shove a spear through my guts than have to feel their spirits flicker out. If ever you are to feel it… I would cut your throat myself.”
She thinks of Fëanáro’s death. It had hurt in her bones when he died, and Nerdanel had buried herself in a world as empty of fire as she could imagine, until the howling ravages of her soul had calmed even slightly.
“That terrible,” she whispers. “I knew- I saw Indis’ grief, and I thought- Maitimo- my own-”
“I will never love another,” says Anairë firmly, and Nerdanel knows her to mean my love is not lesser. “But I birthed my children from my own flesh, and I held them in my arms while they were still slick with my blood, and I promised to protect them, and I did not. That is a blunter knife than ever the gift of love that I gave Nolo could cause me.”
A blunter knife takes longer to sever the strands of love. Nerdanel closes her eyes and imagines Maitimo dead, impossible to distinguish the blood from the strands of his hair. Makalaurë, his lovely throat a ruin of scarlet and gore. Tyelkormo with blood over his hands and his knife, eyes shining even in death. Caranthir and Curufinwë, shadows turned both darker and paler by grief, hands still tight on the swords slid between their ribs. And her sweet, sweet boys, for boys they shall always remain in Nerdanel’s memory: Amrod and Amras, hair flaming around them and teeth gritted in the same manner as Fëanáro when he’s afraid but wholly unwilling to show it, facing off against a darkness so vast they seem like twigs in a snowstorm before him.
It does not take much to imagine it, and that is what frightens Nerdanel more than anything else; she’s never been prone to many flights of fancy, and the few that she has have mostly turned out to be premonitions. If this is to be her future…
Nerdanel swallows, and makes a choice.
“For fear and love, then,” says Nerdanel, shifting her hand so she’s gripping Anairë’s hands just as tightly as Anairë is holding hers. “For it is not just our duty to save our children, is it not? It is our right as well.”
Anairë tilts her head to the side, and Nerdanel moves backwards.
“Our right!” she says, and laughs, low and bitter. “Yes. Our right. Our griefs, and our duties, and our responsibilities: though I doubt that anyone shall understand this if we are to ever speak of it to them.”
“No,” says Nerdanel. “They think that once made, our minds are made; once chosen, the path cannot be changed. But circumstances change.”
“Not for hate or anger do we go to Beleriand,” says Anairë, and beneath the ruin of her features, beneath the gauntness and exhaustion, there is something sparking, something lighting like a storm beckoning on the horizon. “For love, and for fear, and for duty. And not quickly! Not with too much haste- with preparation enough to accomplish what we must.”
“We shall need to learn what is happening there,” agrees Nerdanel, wiping at her eyes wearily. “I haven’t spoken to anyone reborn yet- not even those who lost their lives after Alqualondë.”
It had been shame that drove her to the silence. Nerdanel knows this. But it had also been that she just doesn’t know what she’d say to those people, who had loved her husband dearer than she ever had, and surely trusted him more. What words could she ever have for them?
“They went for love of Fëanáro and love for his sons,” says Anairë quietly. “I do not think we can tell them the truth now, but- surely they will understand, when all this is over?”
Nerdanel’s hands tighten into fists. She considers, briefly, being kind. But if they are to do this, then they will do it without any illusions about what this will entail.
“If it ends,” says Nerdanel, and means it as a warning.
Judging by the weary, grim determination in Anairë’s gaze, she knows it well.
…
Later, Nerdanel picks the weevils out of the flour left in the cupboard and makes a thick broth for them out of the potato and dried, crumbling herbs. It doesn’t taste of much of anything beyond salt and the faintest hint of mint, and the herbs only provide for a gritty leaving at the base of the cup. They don’t discuss anything; just sit in silence, contemplating their future. Contemplating all the futures they’re abandoning in favor of their family.
It isn’t, thinks Nerdanel, a sacrifice that I regret overmuch.
Not yet, at least.
…
(Here is a story that Maedhros never tells anyone, because Fingon never asks, and because he does not wish to be called mad: Maedhros knows how many years it’s been since his capture. He knows because there have been thirty nights when the pain faded, and all he can feel on those nights is the soft cold of grass and starlight, and all he can hear is a song of milk and joy.
The pain is always sharper after, as if punishing his hroä for the gall to consider itself above the agony. But there is no one in all the world who sings that lullaby save for his family, and no one in all the world who sings that lullaby in that manner save for his mother, and Maedhros would think his mind shattered if it did not happen so faithfully, one night for every year.
His mother forswore them when they went to Formenos. His mother abandoned them first, before ever Námo’s doom.
Maedhros has never before wanted this badly for his imagination to run true.)
…
…
Nolofinwë had not loved Anairë for her looks.
She’s not beautiful by anyone’s standards, much less the exacting standards of the Noldor; too short and with features that are not lovely or striking. Her hair’s dark, yes, but not nearly thick enough to bear too many of the ornaments in the Noldorian fashion. Even her eyes are the grey of a stormcloud, and not the silver of Telperion.
But the first time Nolofinwë came to the Lore Guild, he’d had a question that needed answering- some disagreement between him and his father regarding ruling, one that they both hoped the Lore Guild could resolve. Anairë had spent the afternoon explaining Finwë’s policies, and then she’d sat with him and debated him with enough fervor and humor to bring him back the next week with another question and another long-winded, breathless discussion.
After Finwë left for Formenos, Anairë had helped him with the governance in a quiet, subtle manner. She’d ensured the castle ran smoothly during the day, and she’d ensured that he always had an hour or two to talk to her about things over the night. Anything and everything. They trusted each other: they were never separated, and never desired it.
(Arafinwë and Eärwen lived separately for long years and then joined again, because both loved their respective cities too dearly to abandon them entirely. Nerdanel and Fëanáro… well, enough was said there.
But Anairë and Nolofinwë are scraps of the same torn page.)
Twinned stars. Matched blades. The contrasting, curling edges of a puzzle grander than any they had ever played before. Than any she could’ve known existed before. They are beautiful and matched and joined, inextricable and inevitable; feeding one as one diminishes. Their sacrifices had never been of one or the other, made more by one or the other, because their books had always been balanced in the end- by the unforeseeable, distant end of it all, Anairë had been certain- with love.
This is the important word there: had.
…
He does not come to her when he leaves.
He does not search for her when he leaves.
(Eärwen binds her hands with her own and clutches her close, and Anairë weeps into Eärwen’s soft arms. Arafinwë and Nolofinwë leave with their people, and their wives reach for comfort with each other, cold and pitiful. And then Arafinwë returns, and claims his father’s crown, and Eärwen reconciles with him.
Anairë, who had been queen, who had been loved, has none of that remaining to her.)
He does not speak to her that last night: after Finwë dies, but before his pyre is set alight. He does not even hold her, though they lie in the same bed. Just stares up at the ceiling, and does not speak. Anairë lets him, because this is a grief that none of them have ever experienced before; surely it will change with time.
But they don’t have time, and he takes her children, and he takes himself, and Anairë does not say goodbye to any of them.
…
She wonders, later, when the grief has dulled and the pain has lost some of its sting: did he leave because he thought she would argue him around? Did he avoid her because he knew, in his heart, that she would not let him walk into madness? Did he not speak to her because he did not want her to join him, or because he thought she would not let him go?
She does not think he’s so calculating. She does not like to think her husband can be so calculating, but-
But.
…
She goes to speak to Nolofinwë’s people who died on the Helcaraxë and are reborn, but they don’t seem very eager to talk. Anairë doesn’t blame them: she hadn’t left the safety of Aman, and hadn’t suffered their pain or their grief, and she cannot understand it. But there are things she needs from them, and she cannot just abandon them, so instead she uses the vast fortune left to her by Turukáno and Findekáno- abandoned, really, in the banks, but she’s the only one who’ll ever have access to it now- to buy a large neighborhood in the south-west corner of Tirion.
It isn’t even a neighborhood in truth: it’s been abandoned for decades now, the wood rotting and the stone crumbling. But Nolofinwë’s people have always been good builders, and she has a feeling that they’ll appreciate the work better than the forcible assimilation that Arafinwë’s pushing on them.
When she goes to Arafinwë with her plans, it’s the first time she’s gone to the castle since Arakáno’s death.
It’s changed a great deal. Eärwen’s influence is seen in the silver accents and flowing curtains, where Anairë had always favored muted colors and heavier tapestries. Arafinwë, too, is king for a much diminished people; the politicking and jockeying for power that had been part and parcel of life in court has turned into the barest shadow of itself. Where it might have taken Eärwen weeks to get an appointment with Nolofinwë in an official capacity, all Anairë must do is send a messenger.
She waits in the outer corridor for Arafinwë to admit her, and fights not to pick at the heavy silk robes she’s worn for the first time in months. They’re uncomfortably large- Anairë’s lost too much weight to grief- and uncomfortably heavy, and she doesn’t know if that’s because she’s weaker or because she has less patience now for such discomforts.
Then she sees the tapestry on the far wall, a few feet from the door to Arafinwë’s solar. It depicts their family. Their family, crowded around the base of Taniquetil. The lights of the bonfires leap up, high and shining, and glitter on their faces. Little Artanis is dancing, her silver-gold braids whipping around her fair head. And at the far end is Fëanáro, riding in on his horse of pale white foam, hair braided around a crown, eyes gleaming.
But his sons are there already in the tapestry- Anairë recognizes Maitimo and his brilliant hair, and there’s six others beside him- and so is Finwë, his crown larger by far than any others, fire spouting from its ends, and so is Nerdanel, who Anairë knows hadn’t left Tirion until Fëanáro and his sons all left Aman.
This is not a tapestry of their history. This is a tapestry of what-might-have-been.
“Princess Anairë,” murmurs a woman.
“Yes?”
“King Arafinwë is ready for you.”
Anairë steps inside, and Eärwen is within, with Arafinwë: silver hair plaited back into her customary three braids, tied off with leather strips and blue stone the shade of her eyes. The clothes she wears are Teleri in style; she’s never accommodated herself to fit the fashion of the court, and doesn’t seem to have started after inheriting the crown.
“Sister,” says Arafinwë, standing to embrace her.
Anairë straightens and dips into a swift curtsy so he cannot approach too close. She cannot bear that touch now; she hasn’t borne one since that last night with Nerdanel, and she will not bear her husband's brother’s now- it’s too paltry a replacement, and too much a reminder of all that she’s lost.
“My King,” says Anairë quietly. She lets her eyes lift to meet Eärwen’s gaze, which are still so terribly sad. “My Queen.”
“We were worried about you,” says Arafinwë. “We’ve worried about you for a long time, Anairë. I cannot say how glad I am that you are among us once more.”
“My son died,” says Anairë. I wouldn’t think you’d understand that kind of pain. But those words are harsh and sour, and too cruel by far for either of them. “It was… a shock. Ever more than their leaving.”
“And you’ve never been the halest of us all,” agrees Arafinwë. “Please. If ever there is another shock- another grief- come to us. Our homes and hearts are open to you: ever have you treated us as kin, and kin you remain in our own eyes.”
“You are too kind,” says Anairë. She swallows. “It’s for your kindness that I come to ask for a favor, Arafinwë.”
“A favor?”
“I’ve bought some land. A large plot- well, street, really, in the south-west corner of Tirion.”
“Whatever for?” asks Arafinwë, perplexed. “That area’s all but falling apart!”
“Yes. But there are a number of loyal followers of my husband who have been gifted with the chance of rebirth by Námo: and I owe them for Nolofinwë’s failures.” Careful, careful; Anairë must dance this part of the conversation with agility that her feet have almost forgotten. No lies, and only truth: but carefully cultivated truths. “He let them die, when they gave of the utmost to follow him into the Grinding Ice. A home is the least of what I can offer.”
“A ramshackle house more likely to crush them into death once more than be any livable place is not advisable.”
“No, but a rehabilitation area of the city is,” says Anairë calmly. “A place where they can be among people that understand their pains. A place where they need not be anything other than what they are.”
Arafinwë’s hand twitches, as if to touch Anairë’s before he thinks better of it. “That is not your duty alone,” he says. “Nor is it your responsibility to make up for my brother’s mistakes- these Noldo chose their own fates.”
“They chose to follow Nolofinwë into the Helcaraxë,” says Anairë. “They would not have gone if they did not trust him. As a king my husband should have known better, but what is done is done; I cannot bring him back to Aman, but I can help his people. Our people.”
“I just don’t think-”
“Arafinwë,” says Eärwen suddenly.
Anairë looks at her. Eärwen’s been strangely quiet through the conversation; but now she’s standing, and studying Anairë, and her lovely eyes are soft with something that looks far, far too similar to pity.
“Yes?”
They don’t look away from each other, and Anairë knows they’re speaking through their minds privately. She turns away and goes to the window, tapping her finger on the smooth stone hanging. Nolofinwë had always gotten cold quickly, so Anairë had covered the rooms he most favored in heavy tapestries and thick rugs, all the better for insulation. When he’d inhabited this study, the stone hanging had been covered over in a rough woolen weave. She cannot even remember seeing this hanging or its delicate carvings despite all the days she’s spent in the room.
“Anairë?”
She hums in response.
Arafinwë says, heavily, “We accept your proposal. If the reborn are willing to inhabit it, you shall have no hindrance from the government.”
“Thank you,” says Anairë, turning finally to sweep another elaborate curtsy. “I’ll have the rest of the paperwork sent to you by tomorrow.”
…
(Eärwen catches up to her as Anairë is leaving, hand tightening bruise-firm on her arm. Please, she says. Please, Anairë-
Did it take you a long time to weave that tapestry?
Which tapestry?
The one you hung outside your husband’s study.
I don’t understand, says Eärwen.
How long did it take you?
Not… long?
I especially loved the revisionism, Anairë tells her, and knows her voice to be too sweet, so sweet as to be venomous; but she cannot find it in herself to stop. I especially loved the joy you portrayed as truth: all our family joined and contented with the joining.
It was a dream.
And how long before your dreams become our history? demands Anairë.
They are gone, whispers Eärwen.
This is too much. Anairë risks too much. But she is so angry, and she has almost forgotten what it feels like to be this angry: uncomplicated and furious and throbbing with it.
They are not dead, she says loudly. And I will not let you turn them into the saints they are not.)
…
It isn’t easy to get her husband’s people to speak to her, but Anairë has many long years of experience in being charming. She offers them a home and she offers them work, and she then goes to listen to their complaints and their joys, both petty and large. It isn’t easy; there are too many days when she wants nothing more than to curl up in Arakáno’s bed and weep, or simply look up at the stars and the new-formed moon until her eyes bleed silver and not salt. But beyond everything else Anairë wants to save her family, and that is worth the deep-carved exhaustion in her bones and the ache behind her eyes.
…
They move swifter, sacrificing subtlety for obfuscation. Nerdanel has enough projects spinning in the air that she can afford to add a few more without anyone’s notice. Anairë has enough projects spinning in the air that she can afford to add a few more without anyone’s notice.
“Where are you headed?” asks Anairë, looking up from the stacks of papers surrounding her desk to see Nerdanel wrapping her hair in a thick scarf.
Nerdanel grimaces. “Formenos.”
“Formenos?” Anairë lays down the sheet of paper. “Why?”
“For Finwë’s ashes.” When Anairë only sends her an unimpressed glare, Nerdanel relents. “My husband had a number of projects he was working on before he left, and all those notes remain in Formenos. I don’t doubt the majority will be irretrievable now, but any lingering hints- if he was working on anything similar- would be invaluable.”
She still calls Fëanáro her husband, and not his name, never his name; Anairë finds the affectation both irritating and endearing.
“The Valar will be interested,” says Anairë calmly.
Nerdanel shrugs a shoulder. “I’ll tell them I’m cleaning up after my family.”
And after so many years, it’s a known habit for both of them. Nerdanel cleans up after her family and Anairë pays her family’s debts, and they bear up under the indignity with steady grace. It often makes Anairë want to laugh: they’ve captured the hearts of the eldest princes of the Noldor, she and Nerdanel, and none of that had been with a romance of quiet acceptance or demure grace. The world truly does forget all that very, very quickly.
“If you do get Finwë’s ashes, bring them back” Anairë tells her. “He ought to be buried in his family courtyard. Not in that forsaken excuse of a castle.”
…
When she’d first met Nerdanel, Anairë had loathed her. This was all long years before they met as sisters-by-marriage; this was when Anairë’s father had needed to commission a piece from Mahtan and had brought his eldest daughter to teach her the art of negotiating while he was at it. Anairë had not been allowed to join dance- there were others, her father had told her, who were taller than her and lovelier too, and no daughter of his would ever be allowed to be anything less than what they could be. But here was Nerdanel, not ever quite so bulky or muscled as Mahtan’s other apprentices, but still allowed to do as she wished: allowed with such freedom, in fact, that she was hailed as the best stonecarver in all of Arda.
Nerdanel, who had seven sons and a loving husband; who was fairer by far and fiercer without question; who represented every reason for Anairë’s grief.
It would be easier for her to hate Nerdanel, but Anairë’s always been too smart for her own good.
(And, in the end, so has Nerdanel.)
Hatred, in the end, is too simple.
…
They move to Alqualondë and offer their services to Olwë: Anairë for her children, and Nerdanel for her husband.
“A monument of the past,” says Nerdanel. She does not often attempt to look presentable before court, preferring to stay in the leathers and wool of her studio attire, but when she does it’s the more remarkable for it. Her clothes are simple but flattering, and turn her already-striking looks into something truly memorable, especially in the glittering pearl-and-diamond court of Olwë, where everyone wears clothes far more revealing than anyone would dream of in Tirion. “For remembrance and for grief. We know we can never do anything for you that can replace those you have lost, King Olwë, but we wish to do something- as wives, and mothers, and queens, of those who did such heinous acts.”
Olwë takes a long time to answer. When he does, it’s in a voice of grating stone and exhaustion.
“We cannot ask for you to pay for that which your people did,” he says. “As we do not burden a son with a father’s sins, we do not place your husband’s sins on your shoulders.”
“It is a burden I accept freely,” says Nerdanel. “As a queen, if not a wife.”
“And you, Queen Anairë? Do you say the same?”
“Yes,” says Anairë. “I do.”
“A monument,” says Olwë. The sun shines down on his crown, and pearls the size of his fists shine back, bright as the Silmarils. His hair, silver and smooth, is the same as Eärwen’s hair, and his eyes are as blue as the sea right outside. Once, he’d been ageless and beautiful as any of the Eldar, but now the pains of grief have worn him down into someone grim and cold, like sand sheared away to reveal bare granite beneath. “Yes. If given freely, if given with kindness- we will accept.”
Anairë bows deeply, so her hair falls over her face. In the darkness of the shadows, she lets the faintest of smiles curl over her lips.
…
(She kisses him, in her dreams, with warmth and with rage. She dreams of his hands on her waist, his shoulders under her fingers, his laughter like a boom of thunder. In her dreams, they are king and queen: their crowns run like liquid gold down their spines.
Sometimes, the dreams change to ice and dust, and Nolofinwë’s hands are cold on her spine, and the silver of his gaze is the color of the steel of his sword. Those are the best dreams: the ones where she wakes knowing what she’s lost. There are worse dreams, of course; of Nolofinwë’s knives in her body, and his screams in her ears, and the blood of Alqualondë on her hands.
But the worst dreams are when they don’t change, and she wakes up warm, and it is reality that reminds her of what she’s lost.)
…
They build a monument, Nerdanel crafting the stone and Anairë crafting the message.
It’s a grand monument, a statue large enough to cup the docks in a stone hand; on each finger is carved the names of those who died at Alqualondë. They requisition a warehouse on the docks. There are pieces of dust and wood and stone everywhere.
In the very back, under a tarp cloth, the blocks of marble gives way to salt-smoothed wood.
…
…
Eärwen is with her mother when Anairë screams through her mind: Eärwen, you have to come, you have to- quickly! Quickly! Now!
“Anairë,” says Eärwen to her mother, in brief explanation. “I- she’s- I have to go.”
“A problem?” asks her mother, rising to her feet and brows pulling together.
Eärwen tries not to wince when Anairë’s screams go higher.
“An urgent one, I think.”
She steps forwards to the balcony, measuring the angles down the cliffs. It’s been a long time since she had to move so swiftly down to the beaches- Eärwen avoids them as much as she can- but Anairë also doesn’t sound like she’s going to be able to wait for that long. Her skirts are heavier now, and it will be more difficult to scale downwards, but- but she has a feeling it will be necessary.
She hesitates for a moment and then she folds the hem of her skirt into her waistband, shrugs at her mother, and clambers over the balcony railing.
…
Anairë’s in the dock-based workshop that she and Nerdanel have commandeered. It’s too quiet inside; they aren’t anywhere in the front sections. Eärwen shuts down her bond with Anairë- she’s too close now to get anything other than echoes with this level of hysteria- and pushes through thick pieces of tarp and heavy marble until she finally comes to them.
“Eärwen,” says Anairë.
She’s hunched over Nerdanel’s body, who’s splayed out on pale wood, her bright hair spilling over. For a moment, Eärwen doesn’t understand why Anairë’s hands are tangled in Nerdanel’s hair; then she realizes that Anairë’s hands are red with blood, not hair.
“What happened?”
“We were- talking,” says Anairë, distraught. She presses a hand to her hair, sitting back on her heels.
Eärwen moves forwards quickly and touches Nerdanel’s wrist, looking her over for injuries. There’s a lot of blood seeping from a head wound, and darker, redder blood from a deep, sharp cut running from where her shoulder meets her neck down to the meat of her shoulderblade.
“Anairë,” says Eärwen. “What happened?”
“We were talking,” says Anairë. “It was- she was fine- and then the board slipped, the nail- it was free- I didn’t- I tried to stop it- but the blood-”
“Alright,” says Eärwen. “Alright, it’s fine. She’ll be fine. I’m here.” She tries to pitch her voice to soothe, as she hasn’t had to for too many years. “It probably won’t even scar, Anairë. Not if I can get her to a healer in time.”
“You’re a healer,” says Anairë. “That’s why I- that’s why I called you.”
“I can keep her alive,” says Eärwen carefully. “But I’m not the best healer in Aman. It would make more sense for you to…”
“No other healers.”
“Anairë-”
“No other healers,” she repeats.
“That’s… probably not going to be possible.”
“Keep her alive,” says Anairë, voice going high and sharp with distress. “Keep her alive. We’ll explain everything later. Promise.” Eärwen blinks, and Anairë presses a hand to her shoulder, scarcely seeing the blood- it seems- that’s turning her skin tacky. “Please.”
It’s been so long since Anairë even looked at Eärwen. It’s been even longer since Anairë looked at Eärwen with eyes that don’t shine with disgust or hatred. And Eärwen misses her friend, in a manner that she doesn’t even miss her children.
Eärwen turns back to Nerdanel and starts to sing a song of healing.
…
Later, she sees the way the floor beneath her is not made of marble or shale-stone, and how the wood is smoothed in the manner that only salt and water can manage. She sees the etching curve of a prow, beginning to take hold, a few feet away from Nerdanel’s prone body. What pushes everything together in her mind is the long, straight column that sits in a groove on the boat, made of marble but otherwise indistinguishable from a mast.
And then there’s the guilt on Anairë’s face, of course, when she returns, face and hands washed, but clothes still stained scarlet.
“How is it?”
“She’ll recover,” says Eärwen crisply. “It won’t be very pretty- the scar on her shoulder- but it won’t hinder any movement. And the head-wound just bled badly; they tend to do that. I’m sure Nerdanel’s had worse incidents before.”
“I panicked,” Anairë admits.
“Yes, I can see that.” Eärwen folds her arms over her chest. “The question is why.”
“Because of a lot of reasons.”
“Because of one reason, I think.”
Anairë blanches. “Eärwen-”
“There’s a few reasons to build a boat as large as this one,” says Eärwen flatly. “But there’s only one that I can imagine for hiding it from everyone.”
“It’s part of our memorial display,” says Nerdanel.
Anairë turns to look at her, desperate for aid, and Nerdanel hauls herself upright, one hand going to the shoulder patched over with seaweed. Her face is very white, and when she speaks her voice is strained, but there’s no mention of the pain that must surely be overwhelming in severity to her. Eärwen hadn’t expected her to wake up so quickly.
“Memorial display?” she asks.
“Yes!” exclaims Anairë. “Memorial display! We wanted- we weren’t sure if it would be tasteless or not- but we wanted to have it done and-”
“-see if King Olwë allows it,” Nerdanel finishes smoothly.
Eärwen rises and approaches the sides of the boat. It’s well-done, but clearly constructed by inexpert hands. There’s a reason why Fëanáro had-
She tries to cut the thought off without saying anything, but then she sees Nerdanel’s eyes- pale and sharp and tense, and she finishes it deliberately, letting the emotions grate against her bones.
There’s a reason why Fëanáro had stolen the boats from the Teleri, and not simply built his own.
“I would believe you,” says Eärwen calmly, “if not for the fact that every word you’ve spoken to me since waking has been a lie.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do.”
“A crown does not make you all-knowing,” says Nerdanel, tilting her head up.
“All-knowing?” Eärwen scoffs. “I do not need so much knowledge, Nerdanel. Neither of you are quite as good at lying as you think you are.” She holds up a hand when Anairë makes a wordless sound of protest. “And there’s only one thing I want to know, really, at the end of all this: why.”
“Why,” says Nerdanel. She laughs, short and sharp, like gratings of broken glass, and Eärwen knows the next words she’ll speak will be the truth. “You dare to ask us why when- when they’re all there?”
“Why didn’t you go with them when they first left?” asks Eärwen, turning around.
“Because I didn’t think this would happen,” says Nerdanel. “I trusted my husband one time too many.”
“You trusted him?”
“To take care of my children? To not die? Yes.”
“I think Fëanáro has enough sins not to lay dying at the wrong time on his shoulders,” says Eärwen wryly, only for Nerdanel’s face to twist into a rictus of fury and struggle to her feet.
Anairë reaches out and grinds her fingers into Nerdanel’s injured shoulder, forcing Nerdanel to gasp wetly and collapse backwards. “Don’t mention his name,” she tells Eärwen.
“Who- Fea-”
“Yes,” says Anairë. “Him. She doesn’t like hearing his name. It doesn’t make sense, but.” She shrugs, as if to say, grief, you know? and then arches an eyebrow at Eärwen. “Is that all you want to know?”
“I don’t-” Eärwen breathes out long and slow. Holds onto her temper and her ability to reason; she’ll need it in the face of Nerdanel’s ferocity and Anairë’s oratory. “No. Was any of it real?”
“Was any of what real?” asks Anairë.
“This. This- repentance.”
“Of course it was real,” says Nerdanel harshly. “Of course it is: we are the queens of the Noldor who left, and the wives of the kings of those who left. When I wed my husband, Finwë told me that there are debts that we shall have to bear that no other shall need, simply because of who I was wedding. I shall repent for my sons and for my husband every day of my life if necessary.”
“But clearly not,” says Eärwen. “Because you’re leaving the people you owe the repentance to.”
“After we’ve paid it,” Anairë points out quietly.
Eärwen snorts. “This is not a one-time debt!”
“Yes, well, they don’t get to use my sons as a shield against the world either,” says Nerdanel. She gets up, gingerly, and then moves to a work-table covered in papers. Most of the ones above are either ship blueprints or clearly the plans for the statues, but underneath are maps. She unrolls one and stabs at it until Eärwen goes to join her. “My sons are protecting Beleriand: their castles are here and here and here. A shield against Morgoth.” Her voice and her hands don’t shake, but there’s something- some note, some fragile edge- to both that makes Eärwen wary. “I went to Formenos and saw what happened there, when Morgoth wanted those Silmarils. The destruction. The sheer power. And this was when my husband had the time to build fortifications.”
“So you don’t think they’re enough.”
“I know they’re not enough,” says Nerdanel, turning haunted eyes back to Eärwen. “It’s why I know I have to go.”
“To what end?” asks Eärwen. “They’re- two queens are not going to be worth anything, Nerdanel. Not even the scraps of anything. You’ll hold no power, and no armies, and-”
“-and that’s the same mistake that everyone’s been making from the beginning,” says Anairë.
Eärwen turns to her. “What mistake?”
“That we need an army.”
“You do need an army.”
“No,” says Anairë patiently. “We’ll never beat Morgoth in arms or power. Last time it took all the Vala before he could even be captured. And now none of them seem inclined to do much about him so long as he doesn’t attack Aman, or something equally as destructive.”
“With my sons all but guaranteed to be the first casualties,” whispers Nerdanel.
Eärwen sighs. “So. Not an army. Not power. Then what?”
“Intelligence. Planning.” Anairë folds her arms over her chest, and her lips pull up into the barest hint of a smirk. “Audacity.”
“The two of you,” says Eärwen. “Against all of Morgoth’s forces. It’s impossible.”
“Not impossible. Difficult. Very difficult, even. But not impossible.”
“Anairë-”
“We’ve developed weapons over these years that you couldn’t dream of,” says Nerdanel tonelessly. Eärwen turns to her, and sees a stone token resting in her palm. She takes it and inspects it: good knotwork, and intricately-fashioned in the stone, but surely not even the finest of Nerdanel’s creations. “This can fool a Vala.”
“Fool a-” Eärwen bites her tongue. “Fool a Vala?”
She can’t quite help looking over her shoulder. Surely they would- the Valar would not-
“They don’t actively watch us,” says Nerdanel, shrugging. “We’d have been found out by now if they were.”
“Anairë,” says Eärwen. She can expect this kind of treason from Nerdanel- she’d married Fëanáro, what more excuse does she need?- but Anairë? Sweet, soft Anairë, who listened to Eärwen, who held her for those long days after Alqualondë before Arafinwë returned- how could she? “This is madness!”
“Perhaps it is,” says Anairë softly. “My son is dead, Eärwen. My son is dead, and my husband could not save him, and I will never forget that. Nerdanel’s eldest son was imprisoned for thirty years, and she will never forget that. And our people- how many of our people! Dead!” She shakes her head, and there are tears standing out in her eyes. “It is our right. It is our duty. As mother and queen.”
“I’m queen now.”
“Then come with us, if you wish it. But this is what I choose.”
“Come with us?” asks Nerdanel sharply. “You cannot-”
“I need time,” says Eärwen.
“You have time,” says Anairë calmly. She holds out a hand, stopping Eärwen from leaving. “But before you go: you asked me not to go with Nolofinwë, and I listened to you, and for that you repaid me by abandoning me to die in my grief.”
Eärwen blinks at the words, delivered in such an even voice that it makes the sting of the words worse.
“Do you think I didn’t try to enter your home?” she whispers.
Anairë pushes a lock of hair over her shoulder and doesn’t look away from Eärwen. “Not enough,” she says.
“This is cruel of you.”
“Perhaps it is,” Anairë says again. “But it is necessary. My family is in danger, Eärwen, and there is nothing I will not do for them. You must know that.”
“Don’t,” says Eärwen. “This vengeance is-”
Merited. Cruel. Unnecessary. Necessary.
All true.
It’s every word that Eärwen’s feared from Anairë’s mouth for the past decades. Arakáno’s death, and the silent blame that she never quite voiced to Eärwen. All the heaviest guilts on Eärwen’s spine.
“Not vengeance,” says Anairë, spreading her hands.
And she’s probably even telling the truth; she’s never been the kind to be vengeful or hurtful for the sake of it. But in pursuit of something else…
Well. Anairë’s always been ruthless. It’s well-concealed behind her soft hands and her large eyes, but she’d once been a good queen to Nolofinwë- and it had been her name behind some of the harsher rulings. She’s never shrunk from necessity.
“Weregild,” says Anairë. “For what you owe me.”
“And what’s your payment?” asks Eärwen tiredly.
“Silence.”
Nerdanel breathes out slowly, leaning back against the table, eyes bright with both pain and amusement. Eärwen bites back the instinctive urge to snap at her and nods at Anairë.
“Very well,” she says. “I won’t communicate any of this to anyone. The debts between us are paid then?”
Anairë inclines her head, and Eärwen turns on her heel, stalking out of the warehouse. She doesn’t pause until she’s at the beaches where Fëanáro slaughtered her people: Eärwen knows it because the sand is smooth here, all the jewels and shells washed off with the blood. She sinks into the sand up to her ankles and looks up at the stars, ever-visible from Alqualondë.
Madness, thinks Eärwen.
She wraps her arms around herself, and looks up at the stars, and reaches down into the hollows of her soul where her children reside, all the bonds gone into quiescence from the distance. She misses them too. She misses them so much.
It’s madness.
But still-
Eärwen breathes in salt and sand and damp fish. She closes her eyes.
Still.
…
She’d promised Anairë not to tell anyone.
She had not promised Anairë not to stop her.
…
“Anairë.”
“Eärwen.”
“We need to talk.”
Anairë spreads her hands. “Let’s talk.”
“You don’t need to do this.”
“I don’t-” Anairë pauses, looking at her. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t need to do this? Fine, then! It’s not a need, I’ll concede that much. But it’s a desire so deep I cannot bear anything else.”
“You stayed back once before, when it would have been easier for you to leave!”
“And maybe I would have left,” says Anairë.
Eärwen freezes. “What?”
“Maybe I would have left.”
“You would not.”
“Are you so certain, Eärwen?” Anairë rocks backwards on her heels. “I am not. If you had not kept me back- if you had not hidden me away that night, when everyone was leaving and everything was so chaotic- if I’d met with my husband- I don’t know what I would have done.”
Eärwen shakes her head. Her blood feels very cold in her veins. “You were- I saw you, after your argument with Írissë. You were not in any condition to speak to anyone. To go anywhere.”
“I never told anyone about that,” says Anairë contemplatively, quietly. “I’d almost forgotten about it.” A bitter smile sits on her face. “Oh, if it was my choice alone, I would remain in Aman: vengeance has never held much fascination for me.”
“I know. Which is why I don’t know why you’ve allowed Nerdanel to convince you to-”
“Nerdanel didn’t convince me.”
“I,” says Eärwen. “Excuse me?”
“Nerdanel didn’t convince me, Eärwen: I convinced her.” Anairë lifts her chin. “We decided when she came into my home by filing down the hinges, two months after Arakáno’s death.”
“No.”
“We’ve been working towards it ever after.”
“No,” says Eärwen. “No, no, no. You’re wrong. You know you’re wrong. You said it yourself, just now! If it’s your choice alone you’d remain here!”
“But my children are there,” says Anairë quietly. “And my husband. Nerdanel put it very well a few days ago, you know, that when our children are born we swear to be their shields. And now we’ve sent them to be the world’s shield against Morgoth. What nonsense!”
Eärwen closes her eyes. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you, is there?”
“I love you,” says Anairë. Her hand presses on Eärwen’s elbow, and she opens her eyes to see Anairë closer, grey eyes gleaming. “This hurts me. I never wanted this, and in a perfect Arda I would remain in Aman for all the years of my life. Like the tapestry you hung outside Arafinwë’s study.”
Eärwen chokes on a laugh. “But we live in Arda marred.”
“And there are things I will never forgive of myself if I do not do them.”
“Very well.” Eärwen nods, and reaches up, and grips Anairë’s wrists, and makes her decision. She looks down on Anairë, and bends forwards so their foreheads are pressed together. “I don’t agree with you. That’s- true. But...”
“Eärwen,” whispers Anairë.
Her breath smells like nuts and pine, and Eärwen remembers a time- just before she met Arafinwë, when she didn’t know that Anairë was courting Nolofinwë- when she wanted to kiss her, and court her, and make her hers. It had been so long ago that she’s forgotten it, or simply not wanted to remember.
That life would have been a simpler one. A quieter one.
But not a better one, thinks Eärwen.
Her children are there in Beleriand. And her sons are there, as well, holding the Siege of Angband. They’ve abandoned her, but they have been abandoned in turn as well, have they not?
Eärwen is many things. She is not quite so craven as to watch others walk into death as they save her world and her family.
“The two of you are not enough,” she whispers.
“There’s no one else we can ask.”
“There is one person.”
Anairë pulls away and steps back a few feet, pressing the back of her wrist to her mouth. Her eyes are shimmering with the beginning of tears.
“Who?” she asks. “Indis? Findis? Your husband? We are all that is left, of us all! Of our family, of every damned person in this island, we are all that is left who care for those who have gone! There is nobody else!”
“You have me,” says Eärwen.
Anairë snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not.”
“A few moments ago you wanted me to stay here in Aman, and now you’re willing to change your mind completely?”
“I’m willing to do what must be done,” says Eärwen. She spreads her fingers on the smooth wood railing under her palm, for both stability and reassurance. “Because if it is the two of you alone, it will not be enough. Look me in the eye and tell me that it will!”
“We can manage,” says Anairë coldly.
“Can you? Neither of you are healers. And I am a fair bit better at singing than either of you.”
“This is madness.”
“Perhaps it is,” says Eärwen, and smiles wryly. “But if you are to do this, then let us do it properly. If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”
…
If you are set on leaving, I will not let you kill yourself in this venture.
If you are so set on leaving, dear heart, I will save you.
Even from yourself.