He asks after them, when first she is well again and able to sit up and talk—several days after landing on Vingilot, as it happens.

"Elwing," Eärendil presses desperately, "what about our children? Elrond and Elros; what has become of them?"

Elwing says nothing, shakes her head and stares out the porthole of the ship. He gives them up for dead, as he must. It seems impossible that they may yet live.

For all gifts, there is a price, for all crimes, there is a punishment, and if there is anything Eärendil has learned, it is that the Valar have prodigious skill at finding punishments that fit the crime, and even greater skill at making a punishment seem like a gift.

The void is lonely, dark and deep.*

The void is silence. The void is solitude. This is what you wanted, wasn't it? You wanted to find Aman, you wanted the Valar to help your people, you wanted them to give you something to do. And they did. They are. They gave you everything you asked for, except that which you desired in your heart, and did not give voice to.

He had let Elwing choose whether they would be Elves or Men, perhaps out of guilt. No, not perhaps. Definitely out of guilt. Eärendil had not been a good husband, or a good father. He had left them all behind, seeking his own parents in Aman (And where were Idril and Tuor, when he set foot on the shores of the Undying Lands? He saw them nowhere, they he had sought). He had left it all to Elwing. Eärendil was sure she could handle it—she was Queen of the Sindar, after all; she had loyal servants and a keen, discerning mind. But that does not change the fact that he left them all behind to fend for themselves. That does not change the fact that disaster befell his family while he was away. So he let Elwing choose.

The Valar would not let the two of them choose separately; they said there had been enough inter-mixing between Elves and Men and that Eärendil and Elwing must be of the same kindred. The choice was given first to Eärendil, but he deferred to Elwing, not just out of guilt over his abandonment of his family, but the realization that the only choice Elwing had ever been able to freely make in her life was her decision to marry him. He would not be the instrument that stripped her of all choice, not again. And he knew, instinctively, what Elwing wanted.

If Eärendil could make his choice, freely, without fear of harming his wife, he would choose the Doom of Men. He knew, knew all too well, that there were many among the Edain who saw their short lives as an unnatural state of being, as a curse. Eärendil knew the stories passed down by the Edain; that men were created immortal, the equal of the Elves; that it was the coming of Morgoth to Middle-Earth that had blighted them and shortened their life-spans (There were the whispers, as well, that it was in fact the Elves who were responsible for the diminishment of Men, and that Morgoth could make them whole again). He knew the stories, but Eärendil was not enamored of immortality.

He had been aware of his father Tuor's precipitous mental decline in the final years before his parents left searching for Aman, however much Idril tried to conceal it from her son. Eärendil was around Tuor too often not to notice. He knew that Tuor was beginning to forget, that his mind was starting to slip, that he was young for this to be happening to him, but still, that it was a sign that Tuor was getting old.

One would think that Eärendil, with such an example before him, would wish to escape the ravages of old age and that he would accept immortality gladly. He wouldn't. Eärendil did not relish the idea of living forever, staying the same while the world changed around him, staying the same while his loved ones grow old. The idea of fading horrifies him even more. Perhaps he was struck by some selfish bent, but Eärendil would rather grow old under the eyes of immortal loved ones than the other way around. And what of his sons, lost to him thanks to his absence? How were they counted, as Elves or Men? If the latter, Eärendil did not wish for them to be alone forever beyond the circles of the World.

But he knew which way Elwing would choose, and he had given the choice to her.

Eärendil sails the skies as an immortal Elf, alone for all eternity†. There are the edicts given to him by the Valar. He must sail Vingilot through the sky on a pre-determined course. When the time of need for him comes in the war that is fast approaching, he will be called down, but he must return to the heavens after that. The Valar intend to cast Morgoth beyond the Door of Night; it will be Eärendil's task to keep watch and ensure that he does not escape. He will have custody of the Silmaril that shines upon his brow, and it will be seen in the sky and taken as a beacon of hope by the Children of Ilúvatar.

Ah, the Silmaril.

Eärendil remembers well the day of his wedding to Elwing, the first day he ever beheld the light of the Doriathrin Silmaril. She was wearing it, unhidden, undimmed; it was storming the day they were wed, but as Elwing entered, the crowded chamber filled with gloom was suddenly flooded with light. Her glossy black curls gleamed; her quicksilver eyes glittered; her white skin glowed. She was radiant, set alight, without a doubt the most beautiful person Eärendil had ever seen, a true granddaughter of Lúthien Tinúviel. She had also seemed insubstantial, like a person made of paper with a light shining behind, or an Elf in the initial stages of fading (Though Eärendil had never actually seen an Elf fade). Elwing had not seemed properly real to him that day. She never seemed properly real again, not while she wore the Silmaril.

It is a holy jewel, imbued with the light of the Two Trees—Eärendil has been told, by those who saw that light, that to look upon a Silmaril is as close as he will ever come to seeing Telperion and Laurelin in their full glory. This Silmaril is a blessed, lucky thing, but it is drenched in blood as well; it stinks of it. And the things it does to the people who carry it…

Like Elwing, for instance.

After they were wed, and especially after Eärendil began his voyages in search of Aman, Elwing always wore it. The Silmaril could always be found bound fast around her throat in its necklace, either worn openly or beneath one of Elwing's perfumed, gauzy scarves. She said that she didn't feel right unless she was wearing it; her tiny hand would fly to her throat to clutch it in times of stress, and her distress would only grow greater if, by some chance, it was not there. All of this, he shut his eyes and did not respond to. It did not strike Eärendil as alarming; he was not with Elwing often enough for him to understand how unnatural her behavior was.

Eärendil only realized that exact depth and nature of Elwing's attachment to her jewel on Vingilot, when he was set with taking it from her. Eärendil still can not say why exactly he wished for Elwing to give him the Silmaril, only that he was struck with the deep conviction that he would never find Aman if he did not have it as his own. This he never confided to Elwing, feeling foolish, but he did ask, and ask again, to infinity it seemed, for her to give the Silmaril to him.

Elwing snarled and refused. Her bony hands clamped down over the jewel, hiding its radiance. She snapped that he would not take what was hers, that he would not steal that which her parents, her brothers, her grandparents and her great-grandfather had all lost their lives for.

"Are you no better than the Kinslayers, than the ravenous thieves who came to our city and slaughtered our people?! Don't tell me I escaped one group of thieves and murderers just to fall into the arms of another!"

Even now, the memory chills him. What a fool I am! Eärendil rages. How blind! How could I not have seen what was happening to her? It must have been right in front of my eyes the whole time! How could I not see?

Oh, yes. I was not there to see. I was on the Belegaer, chasing after lost parents and hidden lands. And she was in Sirion, becoming this, if she was not this before.

His quiet, listless Elwing had grown harsh and enraged. Her small, frail form crackled with unnatural energy, the sort of which she had never shown herself to be possessed of before. There were times when Eärendil honestly thought that she would leap up and plant her hands on his throat, and he does not care to recall how many months or years it was before he was able to persuade Elwing to even let him hold the Silmaril. Placid she was, until someone suggested that she should relinquish her Silmaril.

How is Elwing now? Is she free of it, of her overwhelming desire and jealousy, or does she wait still for the day when he will come down from the sky, so she can take back what is hers? That is perhaps the only thing that could persuade Eärendil to believe that eternal separation from Elwing is a good thing. At least, if he is up here, the Silmaril can not hurt her.

The Silmaril is a holy jewel. It is blessed and lucky, but it is also fickle and capricious, and it wants to hurt those it touches. It is Eärendil's charge, his duty to let it shine down to the earth far below so that his fellows may have hope. His veins are filled with light; little lights dance back and forth beneath the surface of his skin. The Silmaril is his, and his alone. It will remain his unto the breaking of the world and the breaching of the Door of Night.

And it likes to hurt him.

It knows how to hurt him.

Alone in the silent dark, Eärendil receives flashes of visions of the earth far below. He has never been possessed of foresight; there is no history in either his father or his mother's lines of having visions of things going on far away. It must be the Silmaril's influence. There is no other explanation. He has never received visions or possessed the gift of foresight.

Eärendil has visions. In these visions, he sees two young boys, dark-haired and gray-eyed, fair of face and form. He knows them without ever knowing them. Their names come to him independent of all thought.

Elrond and Elros, his sons.

They're alive, not dead after all. Eärendil's joy at that revelation is short-lived. They are being raised deep in Beleriand, near the borders of Ossiriand and the Taur-im-Duinath, and not by any of the Sindar, or the Gondolindrim. He sees his sons, alive and happy, being raised by another. This one's name comes into his mind the same way the names of his sons did, through a tiny voice in the back of his head.

Kanafinwë Makalaurë, otherwise known as Maglor, son of the one who created me.

Eärendil's mind is full of fear and fury, jealousy and envy and sorrow. His sons are being raised by another man, may well call another man father. And he who has taken charge of them is dangerous indeed, a Kinslayer thrice over. Who knows when he may turn on two innocent children as he has before? Who knows when he may tire of raising the children of his enemy and kill them? Valuable hostages they might make, but they are not indispensible.

Mostly, Eärendil feels his guilt reach up to overwhelm him again.

He was never really a father at all. He was not in Sirion when his sons were born. He never gave them names; the only names his twin sons bear are the names Elwing gave them. They are Elrond and Elros, as named by Elwing; nameless, by their father. He was not there, when Elwing was succumbing to grief and obsession. He was not there, when his children were growing. He was not there when his city was attacked. If he had been, Elrond and Elros would be with him. They would not be being raised by a notorious Kinslayer, in danger of being killed at any time, even if they did know it. They wouldn't be calling a Kinslayer 'Father.'

But then, Eärendil was never there at all. And now, he never will be.

The battle rages all around him still. The corpse of Ancalagon the Black still smokes upon the blasted lands of Angband. None of this matters. Eärendil is being inexorably called back up towards the heavens; Vingilot is sailing rapidly higher of its own accord.

Eärendil stares desperately back towards the ground. "Give my love to my sons!" he shouts, praying that there will be someone to listen, someone who will hear the words, and eventually carries those words to whose whom he lost long ago.

It is silent in the Void, and with every passing year, his bitter loneliness redoubles. Eärendil sails alone through the sky, the silence gathering in his mouth, the light in his veins. With each year, he is less substantial. The Silmaril burns his brow.

End Notes:

* Okay, I like that line of Robert Frost's way too much. I think that's the second time I've used it; I've got to stop.
† For the purposes of this fic (and for the rest of my fics), the part in The Silmarillion about Eärendil coming down from the sky and Elwing flying up to meet him are romantic embellishments.