THE SILMARILLION ONE SHOTS, IMAGINES & SH*t

Adventures Of Ghost Fëanor

He breathed air again, and almost choked on it.

It had been a long time. He would not have gotten something as important as lungs wrong, would he? He’d had only a single corpse to work with, for raw materials. He had not spent as much time as he should have studying living things, when he had been among the living.

The torture chambers of Angband had been good for demonstrations of practical anatomy, if nothing else, but lungs you could see were by definition not working properly.

His hands looked right. And his hair. But then, he knew what they should look like. They probably shouldn’t be shaking. He groped for the sword at his side–-not a good one; the one the nis he’d used for parts had died with.

Sharp enough, though. The solidity of the hilt helped.

He couldn’t stay here. It was too far.

Fëanáro made his way seaward along the shale, picking his steps carefully. It had been a long time since he had to worry about slipping. Part of him welcomed it: weight, and motion, the pressure of the wind, the smell of the sea. The rest was consumed with a frantic hunger, the need to move, to close the distance to himself, for he was incomplete, his spirit screaming with it.

His breath came sharper even as the pain eased, a little, as he crested the hill and was struck by the light of his Silmarils.

It was not so very bright, under the yellow Sun, and yet it was all he could see.

Distantly he noted that one was in the hands of each of his sons. Good boys, they’d finally done it. Better if they’d broken Angband themselves of course, but he wasn’t choosy at this point. Such good boys.

Maitimo was curling himself around the gem, cutting off some of the light. Makalaurë dropped the one he held, into the sand, and Fëanáro scowled at the sight. Clumsy.

He’d spent five hundred years, by the new reckoning, trapped at the side of his Enemy, and in spite of the pain Morgoth had never been so careless with the gems.

Of course, he had set them into that fantastically ugly iron piece, which was probably worse than the ground.

Maitimo seemed to be crying. Fëanáro didn’t blame him. Their quest had gone wrong from the start, and Maitimo had suffered so terribly in Angband, when all his father’s ghost could do was watch, and ineffectually threaten Vala and Maia. And they’d wound up having to rely on the Valar in the end. This was no glorious victory.

It wasn’t even the fulfillment of the Oath-–these were only two of three.

Eternal Darkness, Morgoth had taunted him sometimes, when he’d had nothing better to do than trouble a ghost. (Which had been often; he seemed to delegate a shameful amount of the effort of ruling to his servants, and Fëanáro had informed the rogue Vala of how inferior a king he made, compared to Finwë.) You called this fate upon yourself, foolish Prince. Eternal Darkness, here at my side.

But he had been only a passing shadow, after all, and the Silmarils shone no less clear for all the centuries burning into his accursed flesh.

…Maitimo was running.

Faster than Fëanáro could have managed in this clumsy new body, even on flatter ground than this, running–-no!

It might as well have been Fëanáro himself cast into the glowing crack in the world, except that Fëanáro’s mother had not named his spirit for fire without cause. He had never known burning like this before, not even facing Gothmog. He set lights in the world. He did not himself burn.

When the pain stopped, there was no trace of Maitimo, and only the faintest whisper of evidence that the Silmaril still existed, deep in the earth.

Makalaurë barely seemed to believe it either.

Fëanáro could not stop shaking, as he clambered upright again. Two, two had been enough to anchor him in place; two reunited with the children of his spirit and bound by his Oath had been enough to drag himself back into flesh. One had never been enough. One hadn’t been enough to escape Morgoth’s immediate influence, curse Luthien to the darkest of the imagined hells he had ever heard Morgoth whisper threats of into the ears of Men, for doing the job halfway.

Curse Maitimo there too. How dare he. How dare.

Traitor child. Perhaps Morgoth had broken him after all. Why were there only two sons left, but that his heir had led them awry? Perhaps he had killed them himself. Perhaps he had been jealous. Fëanáro knew all about jealous brothers.

He staggered down the bluff toward the last survivor. Makalaurë would give it to him. Makalaurë had never cared for gems, or any treasures you could hold that did not make music. A frivolity Fëanáro was glad of now. That had probably been why Maitimo let him live.

He gripped the edge of a large rock for balance, hands unfamiliar yet and not wholly obedient to his purpose, tearing now almost away from the winnowed fire of his spirit. Not yet. Just a little longer.

At the edge of the land, Makalaurë bent over the Silmaril again. Reached toward it, shied back as from the memory of pain. Picked it up anyway.

To hand it…no. He hadn’t noticed yet that he wasn’t alone. He turned even more away from Fëanáro, to face the water. Placed his feet carefully. He was shaking.

He couldn’t mean–-no.

Neither law, nor love, nor league of swords.

Fëanáro’s recently regained heart thundered like the orc-drums of Angband, that he had listened to for an Age.

Shall defend him from Fëanor, and Fëanor’s kin.

He was running, urgently, gracelessly. The sound was all but lost in the sea.

Whoso hideth or hoardeth, or in hand taketh, finding keepeth or afar casteth.

Makalaurë drew back his arm, the skin of his hand blackening further with every moment, just as Morgoth had burned, and Fëanáro leapt for his wrist in the last instant.

Dragged the last remaining thief back onto the sharp, unlovely edge of the Nandor sword, and let him crumple with it still in his back as weakening hands snatched the falling treasure from the air before it could strike the ground again.

A Silmaril.

Fëanáro felt well again as soon as he touched it. Not quite himself-–perhaps a little more than half, two of the four parts of him lost to earth and sky–-but enough. Even with just the one. With contact, enough.

Makalaurë blinked up at him, hazily, as the light left his eyes. “Atya…?” He must have gotten the face right, at least.

Fëanáro wasn’t angry anymore. He knelt, the weight of Makalaurë’s head rocked by the press of the side of his thigh. “There, there,” he murmured, somewhat absently. “Rest now.”

The choked noise his second son made might have been meant as words, or just a sob. Fëanáro tugged the fingers of his right hand away from the Silmaril for just long enough to brush them over dark hair, braided back for battle. There was a little dried blood in it. “Rest,” he repeated.

Gazing deep into the last remnant of the unsullied Light, Fëanáro found a tune. One of the few he had ever made; song wasn’t his medium. One he’d made long ago in Aman, as a young father, determined to personally soothe the pain-troubled sleep of an elfling just cutting new teeth for the first time.

Long after Makalaurë had grown cold against him, he was still singing. Alone with the sea and the sky, and the truest work of his heart.

~end