Go

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Thranduil may not be able to kill Amrod, but can he live with him?  All Sindarin names, once again.  Because I'm a lazy shit.  This is a continuation of "Divided" and "Victory" but occurs before "Delivery".  Technically, these pieces all happen in the time-frame of "Cheat", but that's beside the point.  Following Cheat-canon LOL.  Takes place somewhere in Mirkwood early in the Third Age.

Disclaimer: I do not own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Amrod x Thranduil

Characters: Thranduil, Amrod (mentions Eru, Fëanor, Nerdanel, Amras and the other Fëanorions)

Warning: extremely AU, slash, mild sexual content, past non-con, past violence/murder, stalking behavior, past m!preg, insanity

Song: Broken

Words: 1,759
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go (verb): to move on a course: proceed; to move out of or away from a place expressed or implied: leave, depart
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/go

It was utterly terrifying.

The affection.  The dependency.  The wanting.

The smile that wanted to twist his lips when green eyes blinked up at him beneath shy, dark lashes in the early morning light.  The unceasing urge to run his hands over rippling muscles, shadowed and gracefully curved, and watch them ripple and flex at his every whim.  The want that settled low inside him, that screamed to be touched in return, to be kissed and caressed from head to toe, to have words of love and devotion whispered beneath his jaw as his spirit touched the sky at the heights of ecstasy.

But the most frightening were the moments between the bouts of forgetfulness, when his mind was not lost beneath the shattered remains of that dam once tasked to hold back the oblivion of pleasure and passion.

Those moments, he would lie in the grass and feel the closeness of the other body beside his, the radiation of white-hot spirit melting against his skin, dripping in a veil of sweat down his nape to be lapped up by a hot tongue and brushed away by honeyed lips.  And he would shudder with desire, with the need to be close to his other half, to be wrapped up in powerful arms, to be stroked and kissed and loved.

But in the back of his mind there was always that little voice, no longer locked away tight behind invisible bars.

That little voice that wondered when he had begun to need this tainted touch.

That little voice that wondered to where his pride and dignity had vanished.

That annoying and insidious and painfully observant voice that whispered the word traitor and whore in the back of his mind.  What kind of king was so weak-willed to need comfort--to need companionship and union of the body--from the man who had destroyed his young innocence, who had ripped apart his fragile world and left behind shambles?  What kind of person was he, that he woke up each morning in the calm silence with the fading stars overhead and wished he would never need to leave this little slice of perfection that was the silken blanket of red curls and the heavy, steady beat of a heart beneath his ear?

And every little brush of skin on skin would burn as a fresh wound.  Every kiss would feel as acid upon his flesh.  Because he shouldn't love this man, shouldn't desire him, shouldn't need or want him.  Thranduil knew he should want to be as far away as possible, that the color of russet on emerald in his peripheral vision and the kisses pressed across his shoulder blades should make his stomach turn in revulsion, should incite the wicked memories of blackened, maddened eyes and cruel, bruising hands and ears deaf to screams and pleas.

Who wouldn't have been frightened and uncertain?

No matter how wonderful the catharsis of forgetting was, no matter how it filled him with brief joy and bliss, it was hollow in the end.  Because the memories and thoughts would return, and the incessant voice would hiss in the back of his mind.  And his body and heart would betray him again and again.

Until the uncertainty was eating him alive, gnawing in the pit of his belly as he laid in the lazy afternoon sunshine, bare and vulnerable with the company of the last person he should desire at his back, with that embrace hot around his waist, feeling safe and secure and altogether dangerous.

And suddenly he needed to stand.  He needed to go.  Somewhere.  Anywhere but here.

He needed to think.  He needed fresh air without the scent of cinnamon burned onto his tongue and golden bubbles of arousal rising in his belly.  He needed the feeling of fabric covering naked skin and weighing down his too-free limbs.  He needed to be able to breathe without the heady lightheadedness of fear twisting and turning inside.

He needed to get away from this illusion!

And he needed it now.  Or he thought he might...

"Amrod..."

Or he might give in to the madness offered so freely.  He might never leave again.  And he would be a prisoner to temptation and empty forgetfulness.

And he feared.

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Only a fool would expect paradise to last forever.

Amrod knew it was not forever--not eternal light driving away the darkness.  He knew that the bliss they had was only temporary, no matter how much his heart clenched at the creeping thought, no matter how much he longed to deny the truth and look the other direction.  Ignorance had never offered reward or relief in his long, painful life, and it was not a path down which he would wander after thousands of years of failure and disappointment and torment.

He could see the way shoulders would tense as his fingers skimmed across their smoothness.  He could see how eyes would flicker in wary surprise when he brushed through long, pale hair and held it to his nose to take in the lush scent.  He could see the shivers and shudders and twitches that followed his slow movements and the rise and fall of his callused warrior's hands.

He could see the fear that writhed beneath the protective exterior.  Because Thranduil could never hide anything from his gaze, not even behind a dozen layers of chilled nonchalance and royal heraldry.

Nervousness ran heavy and bitter through the air in moments of quiet when they were not in the throes of passion or the afterglow in the aftermath.  Like a cracked glass heart on the edge of a shelf, Thranduil was just waiting to shatter.  One wrong move could tip the bauble from the wooden corner to plummet to unforgiving marble below.

Or perhaps it was already plummeting, and Amrod was far too late to catch it before it smashed against the ground into a million shards, cutting through his flailing hands like poisoned knives.

Because no matter how much he knew, he was all too aware that this paradise--this delicate creation--was all that stood between himself and a different sort of oblivion.

He was just as fragile as Thranduil, and he did not know if he could bear to go back to the way things were before the brief moments of soothing love-making and gentle words.  Could he spend forever watching from the shadows?  Forever lamenting what could never be changed or mended?  Would it not drive him insane?

But if Thranduil asked...

And he knew that day was coming.

"Amrod..."

Shaky and wavering, too soft and too diffident for his assured, adamantine royal lover.  He rolled his head around, pressed his cheek to the grass, and looked upwards at his companion's enchanting dark lashes and the waves golden hair gleaming bright beneath Arien's touch.  It was a different sort of warmth, this presence.  But it could not hold off the cold growing... "Yes, my sinda?"

"I..." Lips that had been kissed until they were swollen and red parted, fluttered helplessly with silent direction.  Eyes as clear forest pools were darkened and looked away, anywhere but into his attentive gaze.  And Amrod shivered with his personal make of fear, the chill of cruel fate creeping down his spine as surely as the sun sank into the West.

"I need... I need to..."

Thranduil did not want to say it.  Feared saying it.  Feared his reaction to being rejected and cast aside as a used bit of trash.  Feared that Amrod might tie him up, keep him prisoner in this dark forest where no one could ever find him or save him from captivity.  Feared to be raped again.

Feared to be destroyed again.

The little fool.

The urge was there.  It never left.  No man touched by thirst for blood and death was ever empty of its ravages.  No man who had killed in the midst of madness could ever erase the addictive burst of power that filled his blood at the screams of his kill, at the sight of their crimson life spreading over his skin in hot slick waves.

But Amrod would never allow that side of him to win again.  Never again.  Once had been enough to destroy every hope and wish he had ever possessed, enough to rend apart the bright future of a boy who only wanted to please his father and brothers but missed his mother and twin terribly.  Enough to destroy Amrod Fëanorion as thoroughly and completely as Thranduil of Doriath.

His One had asked.

"Go," he whispered.  He was proud when his voice failed to waver and flounder, was not lost and adrift in the wound being reopened and bled a second time, rubbed with salt and filled with poison.

It was worth it to see those eyes look at him.  Look into him.  Clear and deep and wonderful, glittering with the light of the stars, divine.  Beyond his reach.  But looking at him, taking him in, widened at the sound of his soft voice and broken answer.

Waiting for that single word to be revoked.  But Amrod would not take it back.

"I said, go," he repeated, louder but with less force.

It wasn't about him anymore.  It never should have been to begin with.  And the delusion upon which was built the foundation of his happiness would crumble into nothingness, and he would fall and fall to a fate that only Eru could knew.

It hurt to watch the naked body he knew better than his own rise from their shared bed of grass, their simple home in the forest.  It hurt to hear the soft pad of bare feet on flexible blades, moving away instead of toward.  It hurt like nothing had ever hurt before to hear no words of parting, no last whispers of love and affection, no little piece of hope to cling to desperately in the darkness just waiting for that last little candle of Thranduil's presence to go out.

But he did not rise from the empty forest bed.  Did not speak another word.  Did nothing but watch the bare back disappear between the trees and the footsteps fade into horrifying silence.  Emptiness.

Arien's touch was cold and the stars' lights were pale.  The world was dark and gray.

But he couldn't see Thranduil's eyes filled with terror and hate.  Not again.  And that was all that mattered.
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It took me a while to find the right prompt to write this scene.  I had "Victory", where Thranduil gives in to Amrod's seduction (with some interesting motivations--and a good thing, too, since the "special delivery" that follows wouldn't have existed if he hadn't in this AU-canon) and then "Delivery" where it seemed that he had once again decided not to be with his One.  Thus I had to find a way to connect the two.  It made sense in my head, but I just needed a catalyst to write it, and a good song.

Speaking of the song, it actually fits rather well this time and inspired a little bit of the piece just from the lyrics along.  I'm not much of a Leona Lewis fan (my best friend is; he stole my Leona Lewis CD and never gave it back *cough*), but Broken for some reason reached me.  And it just fits so well with the prompt that I just had to use it.

And for kicks because I need cheering up: Thranduil at the throne by ~M-azuma on dA.  C'mon Amrod, tell me you don't want to do that~ I'm almost tempted to write it, right there on the throne.