Disclaimer: Tolkien owns the characters (except the obvious OC) and the Doom of Mandos is obviously not mine either. Check out the Quenta Silmarillion for more details.
Pairings: Amrod x Thranduil (weird huh?)
Characters: Amrod, Thranduil, Valthoron (OMC), Legolas, Mandos (Námo), (Maedhros, Maglor and Celegorm mentioned)
Warnings: AU, slash, death, non-explicit violence and rape, mpreg (if you choose to interpret it as such), general angst
Song: Children from the War
Words: 1,074
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cheat (transitive verb): to deprive of something valuable by the use of deceit or fraud; to elude or thwart by or as if by outwitting
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cheat?show=0&t=1360965256
Sometimes, Amrod felt as though he had been cheated out of his life.
Young, innocent, too naïve to realize the mess he was running headlong into--the heartbreak waiting for him just on the other side of the hot blood of adventure--he had taken the plunge after his father and brothers, not caring that he was being used, nothing more than a pawn in his father's desperate plot for wrathful vengeance. He had foolishly lifted his blade and raised his voice with the rest.
And look where that had gotten him.
Blood of the innocent staining his hands. A dead younger brother. A dead father. Four dead elder brothers. Countless lost cousins. Countless tears and endless shame, madness and darkness. Eventually, it had earned him his own death. "Tears unnumbered ye shall shed," Námo had declared, and he had not been lying.
But in the end, not even these unfortunate tragedies truly left him feeling desolate. They were not the reason for his unnumbered tears.
It was the fact that he had found his other half when his sword was poised to slit the young sinda open from throat to groin. Terrified blue eyes had peeked up at him from beneath dark, tear-stained lashes as he paused mid-stroke, his body frozen, mad with lust for blood and grief and greed, but somehow still sentient enough to see the jewel before him.
Not sentient enough to leave the young elf untainted.
But he had not killed the pretty young sinda. He had tried, promised himself he would come back to finish the job, but he had returned to find the elf gone, fled or slaughtered. He had never found the body, though he had searched the scarlet-painted halls of Menegroth for many hours. There had been no closure, and forbidden hope still burned and stung somewhere inside his soul, even in the very aftermath of the ravaging of Doriath and its people.
What really made him feel as though his life had been unfairly snatched from him, his place in the Ainulindalë warped and stained with darkness, was the fact that he knew his other half, lived so near, watched day by day, but could never touch, never speak. Thranduil did not want him. Even after he returned from the Halls, sailed back over the wide ocean more than three thousand years later, the very sight of his tall figure and fiery hair made the sinda blanch and flinch and shrink away.
There was no second chance for him. Not in Valinor, and not here.
He had to watch from a distance. He watched the eldest prince with the golden-red hair and the too-sharp features, knowing not even a name. Somewhere inside him, he wished he had been able to see the flame-haired child running barefoot through the woods, had heard a sweet young voice calling for his atto as soft arms were flung around his neck. But those days were long gone, and the prince was a stranger with an agonizingly familiar face and blazing green eyes. Amrod only watched from the shadows, never closer, and never in the light.
He watched Thranduil become a King, watched the shy beauty drain out of his other half, tainted with war and death. He watched Thranduil stop smiling, watched as he grew weary and tired as the world began to once again plunge into darkness. He watched and longed and wished and waited for something that he knew would never come.
And then, many years later, Thranduil had come to him but once, desperate and half out of his mind, but not out of love. Amrod accepted him and loved him in a strange, possessive sort of way, but they did not know each other, and when they parted there were no words of love, no undying devotion or sweet embraces. Amrod had watched his other go, and he could not remember anything ever hurting so much as seeing his lover disappear into the trees, never to return.
Still, he didn't go after Thranduil. Part of him longed. Still another part understood why Maglor tortured himself by singing the Noldolantë to the raging sea, why Maedhros refused to curl up and die after Angband, why Celegorm drew the face of every elf he'd ever slain and wrote in gruesome detail his own crimes so he could never forget.
He didn't deserve the peace. He didn't deserve his other's love. And that hurt more than anything.
But still, the traitorous hope would not go away.
Amrod watched from amongst the trees. There was a second child, one who grew to be just like Thranduil in face and form, with long, dark lashes and big blue eyes, hair winter-pale without even a hint of flame. Even without a name, with nothing but a face, Amrod loved the child who had the same innocence Thranduil had in the days of Doriath. The same smile. The same sparkling eyes.
Every day--every hour--every moment he wished so desperately that he could have something of them, his family, his future that had been taken away from him with a mere handful of prophetic words and his own utter stupidity and sickening greed.
He would have given anything to be free of his curse, just this once.
Anything to make those words go away.
Yet he never forgot them. No one who heard them and ignored them ever did.
"The Oath shall drive them, and yet betray them, and ever snatch away the very treasures that they have sworn to pursue. To evil end shall all things turn that they begin well; and by treason of kin unto kin, and the fear of treason, shall this come to pass. The Dispossessed shall they be for ever..."
Just once, he wished to cheat his fate, to escape the Oath that lay heavy on his soul, the words that could never be taken back.
But no second chances waited for him here. He had been a fool to even hope there might be. And a fool he would remain to the End of Days, if only he could continue to watch and wait with Thranduil's image in his eyes and name upon his lips, wishing for the love he had no right to touch even in dreams.
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Depressing. I'm not in the mood for happy endings today, even though it's Friday.
In any case, there it is. For some reason, this pairing has grown on me. I blame the story Nauren (My Fire) by Orchyd Constyne--on Library of Moria--that pairs Thrannie with Maedhros. It's the red hair.
And this lovely picture of Thranduil: Thranduil II by *Syrkell on dA (awesome gallery if you're interested in looking around). This picture is part of the reason I'm so obsessed with him, as if The Hobbit (2012) wasn't enough.
Lovely song I was listening to. If you listen, make sure to close your eyes and pretend that the rest of the world doesn't exist. If you don't, you won't get as much out of it. Children from the War by Two Steps From Hell (they have awesome music).
Cheers.
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