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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.)
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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.