#and also atop the mountains. and also after ungoliant eats the trees.

[dialux]

congratulations on your wedding! finwë headcanons, if you have any? and/or sentences from the 4th page of a wip👀

Thank you!! Also, yk, Finwe’s been the character that I’ve spent the past 2.5 yrs wrestling w to understand bc he isn’t a /villain/ but he isn’t a /hero/ and also what do you call a guy that completely tears his family apart w bad decisions and precipitates multiple massacres??? A patriarch??????

So anyways what I’m trying to say is that you chose the one character I probs would’ve found the most difficult to analyze! Which is why this is a) so long and also b) took so long. Warnings below for... pregnancy, non-graphic birth scene, the whole miriel sich, suicidal thoughts, suicide, convoluted discussions of freedom/safety/life etc etc etc.

Hope you enjoy <333

...

When Finwe is born, he looks up at a sky full of stars and calls it glorious.

...

He has no parents. He has no siblings: Finwe was born alone. He joins the largest group that he finds, and is led by Tata for many, many long years. But there is disquiet in Finwe's heart. Not the disquiet of horror, or the disquiet of fear: the disquiet of ambition. Finwe loved Tata. He loves Tatie, and he loves the rest as well; he loves his people. He would never wish harm on them.

But still it sits in his gut, in his chest, in his throat.

(Never does he let it reach his tongue.)

(That, unfortunately, is a lie.)

He could be better. He could do better. His people could do better.

Surely there is more to life than this quiet whittling deathful existence! Surely there is more that can be done! Surely the Allfather wished for more for them: they are his creatures, they are his beloved children, surely there is more-

...

When Orome comes to them, gleaming as nothing Finwe has ever seen before, everything becomes very clear to him.

...

Before all of that, though, there is Miriel.

She is lovely, yes, but she is more than that: she is the one person that Finwe trusts, fully and completely, absolutely and entirely. She knows his opinions. She knows what he dreams of. When Orome offers to take them to Valinor- when nobody else stands up, when no other elf is willing to plunge headfirst into the unknown- Finwe looks to her.

Miriel is not his wife. Not yet. But her hair catches the starlight, and the weave of the aspen across the crown of her skull looks like molten silver.

Her eyes shine brighter than her hair, and Finwe finds the strength to stand, and to speak.

...

(Later, he goes to her. Tries to apologize. Miriel touches his brow, and then his lips, and Finwe falls silent.

"Go," she says to him. "Find the beating of your heart, Finwe. I will be here when you return.")

...

And Miriel keeps her promises.

...

She is there when he returns from Valinor, glowing and different, and for the first time in the journey Finwe considers that he might have lost something in his quest for safety and security. But then Miriel tilts her head up to look at him, and he can see his own glowing eyes in her silver ones, and Finwe wants, for the first time in his life, something more than to save his people.

They wed that very night.

That is the happiest night of his life.

...

...that’s one way to put it.

Another way to put it: it’s all downhill from there.

...

They start fighting when he tells Miriel, still drowsy and sated, about the details of their agreement with the Valar. And they don’t stop fighting. Half the time they manage to sublimate it in- other- ways. The other half...

The other half, Finwe sets up a dueling system. A circle. Rules: no permanent damage, is the major one. Letting someone yield out, is a second one. How winning the duel affects whether someone’s right or not is far more complex, and takes a while to iron out to perfection, but eventually they get it down to an art. He and Miriel use it the most often, but there are others too, for a variety of reasons, and it’s quickly obvious that Finwe’s managed to fill a much-needed niche in their community.

...

It’s fun, above and beyond being useful, to spar and duel and fight it out.

But- Valar above- they’re doing it so often, nowadays, that Finwe wonders if there’s a reason for it.

...

(When he asks Miriel, his wife kisses him quiet. She holds him tight, so tight in her long, slim fingers, and she kisses him like the rushing waves of the sea, swallowing and being swallowed in turn. Finwe can read her grief and her shock in the kiss: he softens, and answers his wife’s despair with his own surety. Not from me, he says without words. Not from me shall we be sundered.)

...

And then they arrive in Valinor, and everything gleams and glows and is good.

For a time, everything is so, so good.

...

But there are whispers of unhappiness.

Discontent.

Miriel tells him of them, night after night, whispering the stories into his ear: of gold light that blurs unhappiness, of silver glows that smudges the shining piercing point of grief. She kisses him. She loves him. She will not stop speaking-

“I am King,” Finwe tells her helplessly. “You should not speak to me of these things.”

And Miriel- always pale, always pale and exquisitely fine as the thinnest links of a silver chain- flushes a bright, furious red.

“Whom else should I speak to, then?” she asks sharply. “You are my husband, you are my heart, you are my king- whom else-”

“-I can do nothing! What use is it, to- to- to say these things, constantly, to notice them, to incite them-”

“-as if this has its roots in me opening my eyes and seeing-”

“-no,” says Finwe wearily. “It has its roots in my decision, does it not? To agree with their treaty. To abide by their treaty.” He swipes at his hair, then approaches, and kneels before Miriel. Clasps her hands in his own, and does not look away from the liquid shine of her eyes. “This treaty saved our lives,” he tells her, begs her, begs her, begs her. “All of us that came- it meant a long, slow and whittling-down life in Cuivienen. All of us that came have come to this land, where we need not suffer that kind of fear.”

Miriel bends forward, so that her forehead knocks against Finwe’s own, so that her loose hair spills around them like a cloud turned to shining metal.

“You once dreamed of things greater than anyone else I ever knew,” she whispers. “But now... I do not know where those dreams have gone. Where is your courage?”

“We have reached those dreams,” says Finwe. “We have touched them, swallowed them, lived them.”

“You have not swallowed your dream,” says Miriel, quiet as death, before she turns away. “You have been swallowed by it.”

...

There is a quiet, seething guild in Tirion now: a growing number that wear a loom on a pendant, the loom that Finwe built for Miriel with his own two hands. It might have been a romantic gesture if Finwe did not know what they represented.

As it is...

“What have they not given that we owe?”

“Freedom,” says Miriel. Her hands do not stop their motion upon the loom, deft and swift. Her hair is braided sweetly, like she is a child amid the beech-trees of a lakeshore once again, not a queen of the Noldor. “Tell me, my lord: what if we were to do something that the Valar disapproved of? How quickly shall they revoke your authority?”

“I think that it depends on the depth of their disapproval,” says Finwe slowly.

“But you think it was worth it, still,” she says. “To come so far. To come here.”

“I don’t know what you remember of Cuivienen,” says Finwe, “but it was no paradise. We lived in fear. We lived in darkness and grief, and it was no place of plenty, or joy.”

“It was no paradise,” Miriel replies steadily, “but it was a place of freedom, if nothing less, was it not?”

“Freedom! Under Tata’s yoke, under Manwe’s- what does it matter!” Finwe growls when Miriel turns to look at him, finally, startled at his sharp surge in temper. “And before the paltry differences you will name- that I know you will name!- I will answer you: freedom lived under the shadow of death, of starvation, of disappearance- that is no freedom at all!”

“But where shall we go now?” asks Miriel, voice infuriatingly even for all that her cheeks are flush and bright. “There was a chance by that lake for us to do what we wished, to defy Tata and flee into another land, to take our future in our two hands and walk into the brilliant horizon. But here there is nothing: there is no one, only the Valar, in the air, in the water, in the soil beneath our feet. Even dying, even dead- they are always there, and will never leave, and have offered us no path to leave. You have led us into a lion’s den, placed our backs to the wall, and asked us to be grateful for it!”

“Between freedom and life,” says Finwe quietly, “I know which I choose.”

“As do I,” says Miriel, and touches the still uncurved- but growing- flat of her belly. She does not wear a crown any longer, his wife, but her hair still shines like one. “As do I,” she says again, voice wobbling, and now it sounds like a deathknell, though Finwe does not know for what.

...

Miriel is the one person that Finwe trusts wholly. He doesn't know when she stopped returning that to him.

Later, with a distant, distinct sense of horror, he realizes: he’d sworn it to her. But she had never promised it back.

...

As her pregnancy continues, Miriel grows quieter. Her eyes become larger, until she looks almost insect-like, all reflective surfaces and skin pulled taut. Her belly swells into something incongruously large compared to her slender hips and narrow build; it unbalances her, and she loathes it for all that she never speaks to Finwe of any of it.

One night, he wakes to see her on their balcony, peering out at something he cannot see. The silver light of Telperion looks like it’s set her aflame: like she’s turned to a living statue.

“I know his name, now,” says Miriel. She sounds like she’s been crying. Finwe wraps his arms around her, and she tips her head back against his chest. “He will be beautiful. I dreamed- I dreamed of him, tonight, and I know now.”

“Of course he will be beautiful,” murmurs Finwe. “He is your son. Miriel. He is our son.”

“He will have your eyes,” she says. “He will have your hair. He will- be loved, by so many, for so long. He will be the greatest of us all. The brightest of us all.”

“We will love him until the end of the world.”

“He will shine so bright,” she whispers, and reaches out: not to the stars above them, burning with eldritch, Valarin heat, but the red brazier set on their balcony for heat and bare light. “So bright,” whispers Miriel, and she is crying again, and Finwe knows it to be with joy, knows it can be nothing else, but still cannot explain the pang of his heart at the words.

...

When she births him, she refuses to allow anyone not of a small coterie of advisors into the room.

Finwe doesn’t understand why Miriel is so strict about it until she does not recover from the birth- only going paler, insubstantial as paper- and he asks for healers, and she refuses them entry. It had been a diplomatic way of keeping the maiar away from her son, he realizes: a subtle enough method if everything were to go well, but glaringly obvious under the current circumstances. Her stubbornness takes Finwe days to overcome, and she only does after she names her son in the proper manner: Feanaro, she says, fiercely, furiously, before finally allowing her ladies to take him away and surrendering to the ministrations of Este’s maiar.

Not that they can do much. Miriel slips into fever, then into hallucinations. She refuses sleeping draughts for as long as she can; Finwe finally pours them down her throat, incapable of seeing her struggle to maintain the queenly mask over her obvious exhaustion and agony. Into the blessed silence that follows, he takes the rest to name his son: Curufinwe, for the skill he hopes the boy inherits from his mother.

But Miriel does not get better, after that.

...

The maiar can do little more in Tirion. They want her to go to Lorien, to be treated by Irmo and Este, and to that Miriel flatly refuses.

“Do not take me there,” she tells Finwe, voice so sharp it scores across his skin like a knife. For once, her eyes are alive: are bright. “If I am there- I know I will not get better. I promise you that.”

But there are no other choices: the Valar convince him of it. Miriel will pass in Tirion, soon, if nothing is done. The only chance she has is in Lorien. And so they go there, and Miriel does not speak, only stares up at the sky that holds the stars that they cannot see in Valinor. She holds her son sometimes, when she has enough strength, but even that has become an ordeal now: she weeps tears that shine like molten silver whenever she looks into his eyes.

She refuses to look into Finwe’s eyes.

When they arrive in Lorien, she settles under the quiet leaves and pillows her head as the maiar advise, and then reaches for Finwe.

“My pain is my own,” she says. “The Valar can do nothing to save me: all they can do is blunt it, by making me feel it less. But to make it feel less, they will blunt all of it: my griefs, my memories, my loves. My love for you: my love for him. And that, I will not allow.”

“So you will die?” demands Finwe. “You have me, you have a son-”

“You have led us into a lion’s den and asked us to be grateful,” says Miriel, and her hand curves over Finwe’s jaw, gentle as fresh-grown petals of a flute-flower.  “But, my love, you have not stripped us of our spears.”

“What does that mean?”

“That we have some measure of will left to us,” says Miriel. “I love you. I love Feanaro, too: so, so very much. But do not ask this of me. I cannot give it to you.”

“Miriel,” he says helplessly, and she kisses him, on the mouth, a kiss that tastes of salt and silver and song: a kiss that tastes like a goodbye: a kiss that tastes of death.

...

Little Feanaro throws himself upon his mother’s pyre. Finwe saves him- he wasn’t in the fire for long enough to even scorch his clothes- but the terror of it sits high on Finwe’s brow, that he might lose both wife and son to the same blazing fury and surety of their convictions.

When he sees Indis upon a mountain, dancing like a swan amid rain and whirling dust, the grief-heavy thud of his heart lifts to see her joy. It is the memory of Feanaro’s blood-certainty and Miriel’s blazing convictions that spurs him to speak to her, but it is her determined, unyielding laughter that makes him ask for her hand. A gentle hand to guide my son, he thinks, and petitions the Valar for a new wife: someone that will be softer, someone that will be kinder. Someone who loves loudly and speaks quietly.

He will not lose Indis, Finwe knows. Miriel burned so bright she burned herself out, but Indis’ candle is in her steadiness, not her brightness. It is something of a relief.

...

And then Feanaro finds out about the entire proceedings, and it is not a relief any longer: it is a mess, a tangled, exasperating, hurtful mess.

...

Things eventually die down- Finwe smooths things over as much as he can- and he has a daughter, then a son, then a daughter, then a son- Feanaro has a wife, and sons himself, and on, on, on-

Quiet joy, steady joy: complicated loyalties and vicious loves, but still joy at the end of the day, bright as the stars and just as uncountable.

...

Then Feanaro holds a sword to Nolofinwe’s throat, and the Valar decide to banish him, and Finwe is left to remember Miriel, hands tangled in her loom, eyes wide and shining: You have led us into a lion’s den, she had said, and it had not been an accusation from her lips, but he cannot unhear it now.

What if we were to do something that the Valar disapproved of? asks Miriel’s ghost. She does not laugh at him, but it is more humiliating, to see how she does not need to do even that to be accurate from beyond the grave. How quickly shall they revoke your authority?

“He is your son,” whispers Finwe.

Our son. And we will love him until the end of the world.

“I do not know what to do.”

We have some measure of will left to us.

“I love him. But I love all of them. I can’t choose-”

Between freedom and life, I know what I choose.

“The Loom Guild is disbanded. They disbanded when you died. They quieted down with no leader and no voice. There is no danger in Tirion, but if they think Feanaro is a new leader-”

You led us into a lion’s den, says Miriel’s sweet voice, sweet as a lily is poisonous, but you did not strip us of our spears or our teeth.

...

Finwe goes to Formenos with Feanaro.

...

It works, for a time. Feanaro calms down; he goes to the reconciliation with his brother. Finwe remains behind in Formenos to wrangle the threads of the Loom Guild without his son’s too-sharp eyes watching him. And he would have succeeded, he thinks later, if not for Morgoth.

But Morgoth does come, and Finwe commands everyone- including the Loom Guild- to flee, and goes to meet Morgoth alone, sword in hand. When he steps out of the home to confront Morgoth, the shining silver of Telperion has faded into utter darkness. The only lights are the stars.

When he’d woken in Cuivienen, Finwe had looked up at the stars and called them glorious. For the largest portion of his life, the stars had been invisible. Now, he looks up at them and remembers- Miriel, Indis, his burning blazing brilliant children.

For the first time in a very, very long time, he can feel the thrum of his heart. The sharp, clean terror; the bright, humming joy. His sword is a line of silver in his hand. Morgoth is a roiling cloud, bearing down on him like an avalanche.

I do not know where your dreams have gone, she had said. Where is your courage?

Right here, thinks Finwe, and goes to meet the inevitable.

...

For the largest portion of his life, the stars were invisible.

Finwe dies looking up at them.