Elrond wonders…and so does Finrod. In Aman, for Bodkin’s birthday.  

“What if…”  

“That is plain nonsense anyway, but if you insist on playing that game then you could as well put the blame on me.”  

Elrond looked at his companion as if he had suddenly sprouted wings.  

“What? How? Why!”  

"It is quite clear, isn't it?"

The waves crashed playfully at their feet and muffled the ring of Finrod’s amused laughter. Elrond shook his head. One of the things that he had found difficult to adjust to in Aman was that nobody here automatically accepted what he said as a surge from the fountain of universal wisdom. It was refreshing, but at times also annoying for one who had been considered the greatest lore master in Middle-earth and was now regarded benignly as a young distant cousin who still had to learn the most basic truths of life.  

“Perhaps my wit is too dimmed by the light to Aman to grab such simple concepts, kinsman," he retorted a bit stiffly. "Would you care to ease my ignorance?"

"With pleasure," Finrod answered good-naturedly, unimpressed by Elrond's caustic remark. "I meant..Oh, but look at that!"

Take this Finrod, for instance, Elrond sighed inwardly as his wife’s uncle raised a long hand to stem his questions and stood in awed contemplation of a string of gannets as they glided over the crest of a long wave in perfect formation and, all of a sudden, soared up high as one. A grandson of Finwë, born in the light of the Trees and raised among the Powers, exiled, killed by Sauron, reborn…and he could lose interest in an important conversation with Elrond Peredhel and stand there with water to his ankles, simply watching as a flock of seagulls performed their unchanging routine before his ancient eyes.  

“Wonderful, aren’t they?” Elrond could not deny that they were. He was glad to spend time by the shores, actually, for it reminded him of the happy days of his youth as he grew up in Lindon. But he had more pressing questions in his mind.  

“They winter high at sea, where the winds and waves are stronger, and only return on the wings of spring, did you know that?”  

“I did. I grew up by the sea-side, after all…”  Elrond did not bother to disguise the impatient edge on his voice. 

“They make me think of our kin as they leave behind the troubled lands of Middle-earth and sail into the welcoming, peaceful harbour of Eressëa…what a change that must be for them! But forgive me, Elrond, I am rambling and you were busy blaming yourself for your wife’s misfortunes…”  

Put that way, it sounded almost ridiculous, Elrond frowned. And still a few moments ago, watching his wife from a distance as she played happily with Finrod’s grandchildren, a sharp pain had threatened to choke him as memories of her broken body and her wounded fëa flooded him unbidden. He had then felt forced to blurt out his guilt as he had not yet done before. What if… he had wondered aloud in pure misery, pondering how he could have spared her all that suffering.  

Wisely, Finrod had raised his brows in courteous interest and had then spat that puzzling statement before turning his attention to the sea birds, thus giving Elrond time to regain mastery of his feelings. And now that Elrond felt embarrassed by his untimely outburst of sentiment, of course his kinsman would not let the subject lie. Prying was a family pastime, it seemed.  

“Now I am busy wondering why I should blame you, of all people, for Celebrían's misfortunes,” Elrond retorted in annoyance. But Finrod was not deterred by his imposing glare, which seemed to have lost its edge in the crossing, Elrond noticed ruefully.

“Oh, that!” the prince chuckled, resuming their leisurely walk towards Olwë’s seashore terraces, where they were to have lunch with the rest of the family. “Well, you started the What if game...Let's assume for a moment that I had chosen to remain in Aman…what would have happened?” Elrond shook his head again and shrugged in exasperation, then obliged by making a guess.  

“I wouldn’t have been born?” 

“Oh, or you would, but who knows whose son you would be? Lúthien might have married poor Daeron in the end…” 

“What of Beren?” Elrond shivered at the thought, following Finrod as he climbed a sand dune.  

“Without my ring, Thingol might have had him killed…or imprisoned…or just sent away empty handed. Perhaps without my meddling my brother Aegnor would have dared to marry Andreth...who knows?” Finrod wondered aloud, in a voice that had suddenly lost its playful lilt. He still grieved for his youngest brother’s fate, Elrond thought in sympathy. “Maybe a child of theirs would have wrestled the Silmaril from Morgoth’s crown…and Doriath would have been spared…”  

“And so Elwing would have not travelled to Sirion and would have never met Eärendil,” Elrond provided the obvious continuation to the story.  

“Who knows whose son you would be, then?” Finrod repeated thoughtfully.  

“The Silmaril would have gone to Nargothrond…or wherever the stronghold of Finarfin's children would have stood…and Maedhros would have had to race Glaurung for the loot.” Despite himself, Elrond was now fully immersed in the game. Finrod cast him a wry smile.  

“And perhaps Celebrimbor would have been killed there, by one faction or the other, so he would have never been fooled later by Sauron, nor had forged his infamous rings…”  

They looked at each other, sobered up by the implications.  

“So you see the many ways in which I could have spared you the anguish of witnessing Celebrían’s suffering, if only I had chosen wisely, Elrond?” Finrod called back over his shoulder as they trudged up the slippery dune. Something in his voice gave Elrond pause.  

“Those are just speculations, Finrod,” he argued comfortingly. “You cannot possibly know…” The High Prince stopped to cast him a pondering look.  

“Let us make it simpler then,” he continued in a lowered voice. “I could have gone to Middle-earth after all, but then I could have forbidden my sister to marry Celeborn –not that I ever had any chance,” he rushed to admit with a sheepish smile. “So Celebrían would have never been their daughter.…”  

“And had I sailed away when Eonwë suggested –or after the fall of Sauron- I would not have married her…I get your point,” Elrond admitted, raising his hands to stem the flow. It had just dawned on him, the meaning of that strange game they were playing.  

“Exactly. Yet you are tiptoeing around the main issue,” Finrod reminded him as they reached the top of the sand dune. A nesting seagull cast them a brief glance and discarded them as either food or danger with annoying flippancy. “You could have cast Vilya to the fires of Orodruin and sailed away with your family while Sauron was dormant…This way you would have saved your wife and your daughter, one would think…”  

“You…how do you…?” Elrond almost choked in his rage. “Who told you?” he demanded irately, turning his back on his kinsman and fixing his eyes on the moss-coloured sea that swelled in growing agitation as the clouds gathered above it. Ossë was angry. And he could only sympathize with the feeling.  

“Why would anyone tell me?” Finrod sounded honestly puzzled then. “It just makes sense, after all those what if…that this would be your main regret…” Elrond had to concede that, as he trailed reluctantly after Finrod along the crest of the sand dune. His train of thought, even his deepest feelings had become painfully obvious to those around him lately, it seemed.  

“It is sheer folly, useless conjectures, I know,” he said tightly, trying –and failing- to disguise his annoyance. “But I suppose that we new arrivals are allowed a certain amount of silliness, on account of our being unaccustomed to the standard, established, general bliss pervading the place…”  

“Of course you are, and to more than a fair share of sarcasm, bitterness and remorse. And not only you newcomers, but we long-time residents as well, so do not be shy,” Finrod chuckled softly, shaking his golden head and opening his arms as if to better embrace the fresh, salty air that came from the sea before he carefully began the descent. Again, the tone of his voice stirred Elrond’s curiosity beyond the self-compassion that had flooded him for the last hours.  

“Remorse? Here? What possibly can you…” And again he felt like a petulant elfling contesting Glorfindel’s battle tactics in the training grounds. Fortunately, his kinsman had Glorfindel’s patience towards upstarts, and chose not to take offence from the overt contempt in Elrond’s voice. It had to be a Reborn ones thing, Elrond decided.  

“Everyone has regrets, Elrond,” Finrod informed him softly, stopping to pull open an iron-wrought gate crowned by opposing swans. They had reached now the back of Olwë’s palace. “Look there.”  

Expecting to be shown another string of sea-birds doing sea-bird things, Elrond turned reluctantly to follow Finrod’s pointing finger.  

“Eru!” he gasped in awe at the sight. Out of the waves to their left, towards Olwë’s terraces, which reached deep into the sea, emerged a mighty silhouette of foam and stone and seaweed and silvery scales. The Telerin king leaned on the railing of glistening mother-of-pearl and seemed deep in conversation with the imposing creature.  

“It’s only Ossë,” Finrod corrected him distractedly. “They have this ages-long dispute concerning the limits of the tides…From time to time Ossë gets carried away and my grandfather complains that he floods his terraces unnecessarily.”  

The majesty of the Maia was so impressive that for a brief while Elrond forgot his questions and his bitterness, enthralled by the sheer eeriness of the sight.  

“My grandfather still wonders what if he had surrendered his ships to Fëanor on the first place…” Finrod continued with his generous and patient enlightenment of his kinsman. “After all, they were just things, though as valuable as the Silmarils…”  

“In hindsight everything looks differently,” Elrond agreed almost unconsciously and then chuckled softly. “You got me there, Finrod. But surely a reborn in the Blessed Realm has no qualms?”  

“Well…” For a brief moment the bright prince looked quite embarrassed. “I used to travel often to Númenor, and I had a great influence over many of your brother’s descendants –and the party of the Faithful as well. Had I succeeded in convincing the Númenoreans to abandon their folly, they would have opposed Ar-Pharazon’s designs more firmly and Sauron would have never returned to Middle-earth…Numenor would have stood, Amandil would not have been lost, and Elendil would not have landed there…so your daughter would have never given up her gift to marry a descendant of the Kings of Númenor…” he stopped then and pierced Elrond with eyes that were clear as shallow waters. 

“Every life is made out of the deeds and decisions and mistakes committed by many others, Elrond,” he reminded him gently, “so if you are going to blame yourself for not taking ship when you now think that you should, you could as well have a look at how other people’s lives would have been affected in case you had…”  

“That is hardly the matter…”  

“Well, look at it this way: Had Olwë chosen to remain in Middle-earth, or had Finwë refused to lead the Great March, or to marry Indis after Míriel died…neither you nor I would be standing here right now wallowing in self-compassion about our own mistakes...”  

The breeze blew in from high sea and brought the scent and song of deeper waters. Elrond breathed in eagerly and then exhaled, allowing his bitterness to dissolve and fly away in Manwë’s winds.  “And still it is hard to admit…” he sighed sadly.  

“It is,” Finrod acknowledged easily. “We do not choose who we are, but we choose how to act. You were born with a great fate and a sad, difficult lot before you, Elrond, but you might have made different choices. And it would not have mattered in the end, for there would have been other means to achieve the same ends… only your life would have been different, and that of those around you…”  

That enraged Elrond.  

“You mean that all our suffering was in vain, our sacrifices for nothing?”  

“Our sacrifices were our choices, Elrond,” Finrod retorted gently, without losing his composure. Elrond blushed deeply, remembering whom he was accusing of lessening the importance of the deeds of the Eldar in the shores of Middle-earth. “What matters in the end is not what we did," the prince continued, "but why we did it, if we accepted or not our lot and lived it through honestly...even when we were mistaken…”  

“Even when our mistakes were cause of great suffering?”  

“Not any of our single lives is perfect, Elrond, but the whole tale is, for it is Eru’s tale, and it is woven so that even our most painful mistakes are threaded together into full meaning…and turned into another chord in his Music. It just...takes us some time to perceive it,” he added with a playful wink.  

Elrond walked in silence for a while, following Finrod as he climbed the marble stairs towards the terraces, pondering his arguments and stubbornly fighting the wave of bliss that the prince’s words had brought to his troubled fëa.  

“It seems that you have had plenty of time to ponder such deep matters,” he finally let go dryly. Finrod cast him an amused glance and shot back without stopping.  

“This is the Blessed Realm, Elrond, the timeless land of changelessness… Elvenhome, when you are free to dwell on your own musings till the end of Arda... Isn’t this what you tried to recreate in that hidden valley of yours?”  

“Well, we never reached this level of perfection there,” he admitted ruefully, acknowledging the point with an incredulous shake of his head. “Do you mean that we do not do anything else around here but musing?” he asked with undisguised trepidation at the prospect of endless years devoted to such debates.  

“I mean that time has no meaning for us here, no matter what we want to do… We could even start another rebellion, there are no limits for us while Arda lasts... How did it go, Grandfather?” he greeted then, climbing the last steps with a graceful leap. Olwë walked towards them with a mighty, intimidating frown. There were no traces of Ossë, except a large pool on the polished floor.  

“As always. There is no reasoning with a Maia, as I should have learned by now…Are you fleeing the gathering as well?” he asked then with a conspiratorial wink, waving towards the palace. The mingled voices of adults and children engaged in noisy games and conversation reached them, even if muffled by the endless rolling of the waves.  

“Not exactly. We were busy discussing the twisted paths of doom and fate that guided us here,” Elrond sighed tiredly, still processing Finrod’s last tirade.  

“That is a heavy occupation, young ones. I have a flask of cold white wine there…”  

“What if we skip the meal, Finrod?” Elrond asked then with a mischievous smile on his face, suddenly animated by the prospect. The High Prince grinned and shrugged.  

“I am ready to assume the consequences of this particular sacrifice…”  

“Let us go then, I will take the brunt of your Grandmother’s wrath,” Olwë offered magnanimously, leading them towards his private shelter.

“See Elrond, even here in the Blessed Realm there are still great challenges to be faced…and bitter mistakes of incalculable consequences to be made…”  

“It will take time to get used to this,” Elrond agreed most seriously as he sprawled on a comfortable chair and accepted a goblet from Olwë. “But I will do my best!”  

A/N

Then Ilúvatar spoke, and he said: (...) ' nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempteth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined.' (from the Ainulindalë.)

Happy belated birthday, Bodkin, and thanks to Redheredh for her kind prodding. The remaining lameness is all my fault. No twisting or tweaking can replace inspiration, it seems...