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It is not only Fëanor who wishes to run into the darkness, howling.
Finwë’s stubborn temper runs through all his sons: Fingolfin turned away as his father departed Tirion and they have not seen each other since. Colorless, disciplined letters traveled back and forth between Finwë’s new seat in Formenos and the Noldor court, but - unkinged and heretically furious - he offered no words of love.
Nor did Fingolfin, seething. The bite of the blade at his throat had been too cold, his father’s felt abandonment too hot.
Retreating to the work of rule in Finwë’s absence only calcified his bitterness. Regency was responsibility, serving as King in all but name. The work of judgment suited him, and under his careful touch the Noldor throve. But still he was the second son, the lesser prince, the plodding, dutiful administrator. The banked coals, useful but lackluster when compared to Fëanor’s flash and burn.
Even now, in the panic, he moves to calm, to order, to plan. Managing, as he ever has, that the affairs of daily life may carry on.
But the child in his heart is screaming, screaming, wishing only to find and hold his father, who is gone.
*****
Bereft of paternal warmth himself, Fingolfin will force no separation on his children. He clings greedily to his own struck sparks. If Fingon and Turgon choose the journey, and Aredhel follows, so will he.
He knows Anairë rues it, but she will not intervene. Even with the power of Fëanor’s urging, fully a tithe of their people will stay. Someone must remain and see to their welfare, as the realm wrestles with questions of succession. She will abide in Tirion.
His promise of return does not make their parting any less bruising. Private tenderness hangs in tension with her elemental rage: at Fëanor, at Finwë’s foolishness, at the blind eye the Valar turned to Melkor’s maneuvering. The hooded mantle she wears in the chilly darkness of their leave-taking hides her reddened eyes. Fingolfin’s are equally shadowed when he bows to kiss her hand.
But he cannot abandon their children, those bright fragments of his heart.
He asks her to bless them each, in turn. Fingon is antic, Turgon ablaze. Aredhel’s gaze is brilliant, looking beyond. The torchlight sets their shapes to dancing in the courtyard, warped and wavering against the flames.
Beyond the ring of armored light, the shadows loom.
*****
In Beleriand, Fingolfin hefts a father’s weight of loss.
First, Fingon. He is drawn deep into himself after Alqualondë and Araman, furled around a wound, holding the burnt ships close in his heart. Scouting their dangerous passage in penance for his recklessness, he prowls the leading edge of the host like some hurtsome beast, his edges feathering into the snow. With neither uncle nor cousin to sharpen his claws against upon arrival, he flounders. Then he is gone.
The Fingon who returns from the mountain is not the same. Cheerful, yes: a silver banner for their hopes. Unflagging, undemanding, all generosity and grace. But under the sunshine run dark threads of grief and bitterness and pain. Fingolfin needs him; fears for him. After such heartfelt labor, what will be his son’s reward?
Then Turgon. Bruised-souled acolyte of the Lord of the waters that claimed his wife, he wanders, seeking a place he can call home. Vinyamar is not Formenos, and their parting is warm, but Fingolfin watches the pack trains depart with a sinking sense of dread. Once Turgon passes out of sight, Fingolfin feels his absence in his bones.
Gondolin’s walls only seal his loving out. Turgon’s sketches and inventories and rosters do not soothe his sense of loss; as time passes, they slow to a trickle, and then to a stop. Fingolfin watches the sky for news like a grief-struck falconer, thinking of Finwë, knowing his son has flown.
And Aredhel, hardest of all. All the bright strands of her are plucked from his heart in a single moment – tearing, burning. It sends him to his knees in a council meeting, to every watching lord’s dismay. Fingon steps in, grim-mouthed, as Fingolfin’s memory fills with Aredhel’s childhood weight on his hip, the sweet scent of her infant breath.
*****
It is enough. More than enough. All the sweet northlands are riven and ablaze.
Fingolfin has failed.
Charged to stand in a father’s place, he has rather watched in horror as the darkness swallowed the young ones, one by one. So let him follow again in his brother’s footsteps, hurling his fury against Angband’s walls, riding the wild wind to challenge Morgoth in his rage.
Fingon’s hands on the straps of Fingolfin's armor are bitter and resentful. His own passage of Thangorodrim leaves him no room for hope, and he is already grieving.
Fingolfin draws him close and holds him: his first child; the last child he can so easily claim. The regent’s circlet tilts on Fingon’s brow as he clings to Fingolfin, heartsore and shivering.
Fingolfin understands Finwë better, now. The way his grief flared up like tinder; the love that towered and crumbled into shadows and spilled stones. Fingolfin had thought himself the lesser in his father’s heart, and grudged their separation. But all the small wounds that lay between them meant nothing in those final moments, when Finwë held the door against evil, alone. Overmastered, yet still unyielding.
Defiant on the barricade of his own pale bones.