All I Ask

Mellow Soulmate AU.  And you thought that all Lúthien had to do was sing and Mandos wept buckets of tears and gave her whatever she wanted just like everyone else in her life.  Think again.  Names: Mandos is called Námo in this one.  Some stories you might want to peruse before reading this (so it actually makes sense because these stories all entwine together in some way to equal this story): "Health", "Reap", "Collide", "Remain" and "Indirect" are good, but just the second would be good enough I think.  Feel free to ignore my suggestion LOL.  Takes place in the Halls of the Waiting in the First Age. 

One last note: major skewing of canon.  You have been warned.

Disclaimer: Tolkien created the Silmarillion

Pairings: Beren x Lúthien, Celegorm x Lúthien (one-sided)

Characters: Lúthien, Mandos, Beren (mentions Finrod, Orodreth, Celegorm, Curufin, Celebrimbor, Thingol, Melian, Daeron, Morgoth, Eru and Varda)

Warning: extremely AU, changes in canon, canon character death, mildly explicit almost-sex scene, semi-explicit death scene

Song: The Long Road Back

Words: 1,892
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ask (verb): to call on for an answer; to make a request of
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ask

Before him she knelt, and Námo stared down at her teary eyes with a firm frown marring his lips, pulling them into harsh lines.  Never before had Lúthien felt so utterly desperate and vulnerable, her heart pounding sharply in the back of her throat.  Even standing before the throne of Morgoth himself had not been so terrifying, because her beloved Beren had been at her back, ready to leap in and protect her at the cost of his life.

Here, she was alone.  She was alone and being judged.  In his eyes, she could see warring thoughts, swirling like deep burgundy with black.  No softness stared back at her, not even a hint of sympathy glistening in those dark depths, not even after singing her heart and soul out at his feet.  All of her feelings, laid bare to his speculative, calculating mind.  Her unbearably sweet love and passion for the human who had captured her in his net of unique charm, with his scruffy whiskers and his boyish grin and his laughing eyes... Oh, but she would die for him again and again were it enough to bring him back and give him the fate they deserved, together eternally at one another's side...

"Please," she gasped, nearly throwing herself down upon the floor. "Please, all I ask is to stay by his side until the life leaves his eyes, until he is old and gray and has lived a fulfilling existence... Please, I promised... I love him..."

"But that is not all you ask, is it, Lady Lúthien, Daughter of Melian, servant of Estë." That voice, deep enough that it resonated through her very bones as though they had been struck, was neither angry nor mocking, merely stating fact. "Nothing there is in your heart that you can hide from me, child."

Then, certainly, he must see and understand that she needed Beren at her side...?

"You cannot hide your love for this mortal man to whom you are barely acquainted," the vala told her. "I do not doubt the depth of your feelings, but your righteousness and naivety, your strangely puerile cruelty, you cannot hide those black little secrets from me in the corners of your mind, blocked even from your sight..."

She started, thinking she may have misheard.  Cruelty?  But she had only ever done what needed to be done so that she could be by the side of the man she loved!  Was that not righteous and admirable to sacrifice so much, to be so brave, for the sake of her undying feelings?

"You can lie to yourself all you wish, but I see all that you have done in your life.  I see also that your world is narrow, provincial.  What does not please your eye, you have chosen not to see.  What does not soothe your mind, you have chosen to forget.  What does not fit the fabricated truth in your heart, you have chosen to ignore."

Those eyes were watching her, gauging her reaction, observing her quick, hiccupping breaths and shaking hands.  And she knew that they could see straight through her.  All the beauty in the world could not faze this creature.

"I love him, and I would do anything so that we might be together," she whispered. "Is that so terribly wrong, my lord?"

His lips pursed. "Wrong?  No, perhaps not.  Not in the essence of the ideal."

"Then why... why are you scolding me?  What have I done?" She gulped, and wished that the tears leaking from her eyes would quit coming, would stop making her voice so rough and broken, would stop making her face blotchy and red. "After everything I have sung unto your spirit, do you still doubt my love, think me a liar?"

"No, I do not." The Doomsman shook his head and turned away. 

For the longest moment, Lúthien felt her breath hitch in her chest, a band of metal pressing down upon her ribs so that her lungs could not take in air to feed her body's hunger.  Helpless, powerless, she sat at the feel of her judge and jury, quivering and weeping, a princess brought low.  This was not her father--not the king who would do anything to make his princess happy--and not her friends--the servants who loved their darling Tinúviel and would do anything to make her smile in their direction for even a moment.  This was not Beren, who could not deny her anything in the world if she batted her eyelashes and offered him a gentle kiss on the cheek.

Finally, after what felt an eternity, his body moved once more, black velvet robes ruffling over the floor, the only sound to mark his presence as a corporeal being. "Very well, I shall give you what you ask, with the Father's blessing.  Beren Erchamion shall once again walk the earth, and you shall walk by his side, Princess of Doriath..."

And her heart soared...

"All I ask in return for this boon is for you, Melianiel, to think of all those who have given their lives and happiness so that you might have it in their stead."

What?

She looked up at him again, and in his eyes she saw, and it rent her heart with a chilled blade, jagged from neglect and wear.  In his eyes she beheld the truth that always she had blocked from her heart, even when it was right before her gaze, the unsettling and frightening and heartbreaking reality that tarnished her innocence, that dulled the brilliance of her assured future at the side of her beloved Beren.

For she could see them again in her mind's eye.

The golden king limp and lifeless upon the earth, his blood soaking into the filthy ground.  His mouth and nails were splattered with crimson stains, and his side was ripped asunder, entrails oozing forth.  And yet his last smile was for the terrified boy trembling in the darkness...

The silver healer sitting upon his bed, head cradled in his trembling hands.  There were tidings of his fallen kin, and on his bedside table lay the circlet that belonged only on his brother's head.  The responsibility lay heavy on his shoulders, and the loss of his great joy heavy upon his heart...

The wild-eyed hunter who had taken her to his fire and warmed her hands in his rough palms, who had comforted her when she believed her beloved dead.  Who had surged over her prone body but still littered her with kisses and sweet words of devotion, so gentle with his glass treasure...

The hot-tempered brother who laid his burning forehead against the rough stone of the wall and tried to quell his shaking and ignore the throbbing of his cheek where knuckles had bruised to the bone.  Tried to ignore the swell of despair because his only son had cursed his name...

The liberated boy in the next room, who felt such joy at finally being free and yet... yet when the euphoria faded and footsteps echoed in the distance, terrible longing laid siege to his heart.  There would be no more kissed foreheads, no more soothing embraces, no more comfort in the night...

The worried father upon his throne, staring off into the distance, because his daughter was never coming home and his wife could hardly bear to look into his face.  He had only been trying to keep her safe from the terrors and evil of the world, only wished to bar her from harsh reality...

And the heartbroken friend packing his bags and hitching them over his shoulder, looking out to the mountains hazed in blue.  She hated him, but in the end, though he was jealous, he loved her with all his soul.  All he wanted was to make sure that no harm befell her, and he had completed his mission.

And the world revolved on...

Lúthien blinked her eyes open and felt her spirit screaming in denial.  Because she hadn't meant for these things to happen!  All she wanted was to be with her love!  It wasn't her fault!

But was it not?

"These souls there are, and many more still, who have lost what you treasure most because of your selfish, unthinking actions," Námo told her. "Reflect and repent.  Spend every day honoring their sacrifices.  And when the time comes for Beren Erchamion to return to the arms of the Father, fade away and deliver yourself unto my halls.  By then, I pray some compassion and selflessness may have entered your heart."

He began to move away, and the young maiden, remembering herself, could do naught but rise shakily to her feet and follow after him as a puppy, one last question upon her lips. "But to be by his side for all eternity I would need to be made mortal..."

Námo paused, and her blood froze in her veins, so frightening his visage was when he once again beheld her.  As a dark mountain, he towered over her, his shadow stretching on for miles and engulfing her into a frigid embrace.  For all her mind screamed to flee, she could no more lift her feet to take flight than she could command Varda's stars to shift their patterns or Laurelin's fruit to deviate from its trajectory across the sky.

"You will remain amongst the Firstborn.  The gift of the Followers is not mine to give." The shadows retreated, and Lúthien's trembling legs turned to water beneath her quivering form.  Still, he stood over her, as a statue in the twilight, unforgiving and unaccusing, but all the same measuring her worthiness. "Even had I the power to give a gift so precious unto your soul, I would not.  Such treasures are meant for the stalwart and faithful, the implacable of valor and honor.  You are not one such being."

And that, perhaps, was a worse chastisement than any before had been.  When he turned away, Lúthien did not argue, and in her mind's eye she thought of them where she had never thought before of any but herself and her lover.

And she was ashamed.

Even for the boon she had been given, her heart wept.  She did not deserve such a fate, such a brilliant future of love and devotion to one man who was blind to all her faults, who would cherish her above all else to the end of his days.

When the grayness embraced her, she did not fight.  And when she opened her eyes, it was to the green, vibrant glory of a hidden paradise, and to the exclamations of her lover as he rose from the dead at her side, eyes wide with childish wonder, beholding her with fascination and utter adoration.  They kissed deeply, and he hugged her close as if she were the most precious thing in the universe.

But deep in her mind she thought of them.  And when she returned that embrace, it was with twice the strength she once would have mustered, and twice the emotion bubbling in her throat she once would have touched.

She would not waste or sully this gift with ingratitude or frivolousness.  Every day and night she would treasure.  And in the end, she prayed they could forgive her heartlessness.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Can you tell the tale of Beren and Lúthien bugs me yet?  As much as I understand that they love and care about each other deeply, they screw a lot of people over by extension without meaning to, and everyone is all "it's so beautiful and wonderful", but what's so great about it really other than that they claimed love in adversity and Lúthien got everything she over wanted, the same as she probably has her entire life.  Of course, I altered canon a bit, but at the same time I feel like you have to think about the consequences of your actions.  When she died, I bet her parents were absolutely distraught, and in my head-canon Celegorm loves her so much he would probably die for her, and she just leads him on without thinking twice about how he might feel.

I must say, though, that some other stories need to be perused in order to understand the dynamics of this. Also, since when can Mandos change people to mortal or immortal?  I mean, I know it says in the Silmarillion that he does, but it seems like an awfully large amount of power that should only belong to Eru... Maybe it's just me.

Listening to The Long Road Back from the Spirit (Stallion of the Cimarron) Soundtrack by Hans Zimmer.  Absolutely gorgeous piece of artwork and it plays the emotions so well.  What I would love to do is play this on my stereo, just blast it all the way up and down the block, screw the idiots downstairs who have no musical appreciation for anything other than rap about sex and booze.  But that's beside the point; it really is a wonderful piece.

Some Beren and Lúthien, because I'm not completely heartless: Beren and Luthien by ~Lleayhe on dA is by far my favorite fan-art of this pairing.  Even I will admit that they are an inspirational duo, just not my cup of tea.