Loveless

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Maeglin in the Halls of the Waiting, pondering what once was.  Lómion is the name his mother gave him and shows up once here.  This is kind of connected with "Urban" and most especially with "Passion".  This goes a bit into Maeglin's motivations and such.  Forgive me, I'm very tired and will edit it later, but it may be riddled with mistakes.  Takes place probably in the Second Age in the Halls of the Waiting.

Dedicated to a friend who is terrible at picking non-cliche prompts.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: one-sided Maeglin x Idril, Maeglin x ?

Characters: Maeglin, Sauron, Mandos (mentions Idril, Turgon, Aredhel, Eöl, Eru, Arien, Tilion and a mystery elf whose identity is still undecided)

Warning: extremely AU, precognition, general angst, mentions death (semi-graphic), dysfunctional family issues, one-sided cousin-incest, torture, the works

Song: Only Hope

Words: 1,793
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loveless (adjective): having no love; not loved
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/loveless

How long he had stared at these gray walls, Maeglin could not have said.

Often enough, he did not even truly see them, for their blank canvases served more as a catalyst for torturous images reflected from beneath his eyelids than they did as the planar bars of an empty, cold cell.  All day and all night, as Arien drifted past the tiny window in the corner and Tilion replaced her golden hue with silvered glory, Maeglin just stared.

It was not the chill or the emptiness of the Halls of the Waiting that drove souls into depressed darkness.  It was the walls, he decided, and the memories they projected.

For he looked upon them and saw, saw all of the terrible things he wished he could forget, and forgot all of the wondrous moments he would have cherished forever.  It was not his mother's sweet embrace or her whispered lullabies that came to him entrapped in the shadow of souls.

It was Idril's horrified face as he held a sword to her child's throat.

It was the wary glisten in his uncle's eyes beholding the father's face in the son.

It was the last glimpse of black hatred as Eöl was thrown over the wall and the sound of bones cracking and innards splattering as the body hit the sharp rocks below.

He felt so very, very cold.

"They have never loved you, and they will never love you, but I... I can give you what it is you most desire..."

Golden silk running through his fingers.  Little children with her lovely visage and his dark coloring, or sharp-angled lads with those maddening curls.

"Just tell me where to find the Hidden City, and I will make you King.  And I will make her your Queen, the lady that you love who loves another..."

Like poison infecting the bloodstream, that honeyed voice slunk--hot and thick--through Maeglin's consciousness, temptation at its most terrifying, pulling him towards the choice that his mind screamed was wrong but his heart yearned to be right.

"I will not betray my uncle--my King!"

"Your uncle, who cannot even look you in the eyes.  Your uncle, who never loved you, never cared for you, not even when you were at your lowest and darkest hours, orphaned and alone in the world.  Your uncle, who sees only the treachery of your father in your wild blood..."

"You only prove the necessity of loyalty and fealty."

"What good is loyalty that is unappreciated?  What good is fealty to one who spits upon it with scorn?  Turgon of Gondolin will never love you as a son, and Idril Celebrindal will never love you as a woman loves a man."

It hurt to hear it then, and it hurt to hear it now.  Hurt like being stabbed with a red-hot blade.  Though he had no body which could feel, Maeglin still raised a hand to his chest, clutching as though at a mortal wound over his ghost of a throbbing heartbeat.  He was bleeding, bleeding out all his spirit, all of that intrinsic matter that made up himself, leaving a shell behind.  Lifeless.  Loveless.  Devoid of wants and needs and desires.

Devoid of pain.

"But I can change that... All you need to do is tell me, dear-heart... Tell me what I need to know..."

And he had spoken.  Cried and screamed and wept and cursed all who had ever looked upon him foully.  Cursed his father's derision and dismissal.  Cursed his uncle's flash-judgment and unfair assumptions.  Cursed his cousin's sunny smile and kind heart and cold rejection.

And now it was too late.  Now he was naught but a traitor.  A traitor through love.  A traitor through lack of love.  But a traitor nonetheless, named and remembered not for his great works or talents, but for betraying his people to the enemy, for spilling his heart to the only person seemingly willing to listen, speaking the truth to make the horrible torture whipping gashes across his mind cease!

Maeglin the Traitor.  He ought to have been Maeglin the Loveless.

"Dost thou truly believe as such, child?"

It was a voice he had heard only once before, a voice that had condemned him eternally to a small cell with blank walls that painted murals of his past.  Doom.  Judgment.  Justice.

Perhaps this was justice, punishment for his weakness...

"No... Think that not, little one.  Never that."

Maeglin shivered, wrapping his arms about his intangible being to ward of cold that could not be halted by blanket or fire or fury.  It was soul-deep, filling and freezing and shattering.

He had just... just wanted...

Just wanted her to love him.  Just wanted his uncle's acceptance.  Just wanted his father's approval.  Just wanted to be worthy of his mother's sacrifice and not some useless whelp of a clueless boy hopelessly floundering about as a blade of grass lost in the wind. 

Why could they not love him?  Had he done something so wrong?

"Of course not..." Phantom fingers brushed through his hair. "Believe that not.  Thou wert young and frightened and untried.  Thou hast been punished, but thou art not condemned."

"I betrayed my family.  I should be condemned."  A sob, broken and wretched.

"Hush..." At first he thought he was imagining the powerful arms about his shoulders, the broad chest upon which his temple rested and the black robes which absorbed his copious tears.

"I should.  I should.  Who would ever love someone like me?  A weak-minded, weak-willed fool of a child who threw away everything he held dear for a lie?  The way she looked upon my face makes my skin crawl!  She hates me!"

For a long many minutes--maybe moments, maybe hours--he ranted and cried like a child to the harmony of hushes and crooned murmurs.  But afterwards, after all tears were taken and all tension released, Maeglin fell spent against the stronger frame, fell limp, finally empty, finally bled fully of all lifeblood, an empty husk left behind to rot away in the darkness.  He did not think he could have moved had Eru himself ordered him to his feet.

"Oh, little one..." A hand cupped the back of his head, and Maeglin did not have the energy or thought to be indignant at being treated as a child.  To this ancient creature, he was a child, an infantile mortal, fragile and immature.

"Didst thou know every soul is born with another half?"

Of course, he had heard of mates of the soul.  His mother claimed that his father was her other half, but Maeglin had never believed it to be thus.  Perhaps it was wishful thinking, a delusion that kept her happy under the thumb of a tyrant.  But at the same time, he had seen it before, seen smitten men and women so utterly in love, so utterly in synchronization, so completely one with each other that they could be nothing but the other's missing half.

"I pity my One," he whispered. "To be stuck with me..."

"Thou shouldst not," Námo whispered. "Thou shouldst have faith, have hope.  Someone out there in the cosmos is waiting for thee.  Waiting for thee."

"For me...?" It was a nice thought.  The thought of golden hair or dark locks, of kind eyes and a gentle touch, of smiles and kisses and holding hands.  Of not being ashamed.  Of not being hated.  Of not being the son of a lunatic, but just being himself, just being Lómion.

"That could never happen," Maeglin finally whispered. "Not to me.  Not now."

A hand stroked down his back, tracing the curve of his hunched spine. "Thou shouldst not give up hope.  These empty halls were not made to house any spirit for eternity.  Beyond these boundaries, there is sunlight and open air and warmth.  Beyond these four walls the world awaits thy return to the realm of the living."
"For what purpose?  To be spat upon as a traitor?" the child of the twilight hissed, eyes once again stinging. "I will never be accepted, never be loved.  The Loveless.  The traitorous ghost."

"Thou wilt be loved!" Hands cupped his cheeks, thumbs brushing new-fallen tears. "Thou shalt understand one day.  Thy future lies not here.  Thy hope fades beneath the eaves of my House.  Thy hope and faith and future is out there, waiting for thee."

He looked up into blackened eyes, swirling as the darkest of wines mixed with the glisten of ancient stars upon dark sky. "I never lie.  I cannot lie.  Love waits not here for thee, but out there.  In life.

"And life is worth living.  And one day, thou shalt know happiness," the vala spoke, voice as powerful and supportive as steel beams.  At the steadfast certainty, Maeglin could not bear to look away, to miss a word.

"But thou needest to give life another chance.  Thou needest to put aside those dark memories and insecurities and fears and trust in thyself."

How could he trust in himself when he had betrayed everything he ever loved?  How could he face reality with this black mark upon his breast?

"Have a little faith."

He looked and looked into those eyes, and for a moment, he saw.

Saw smiling faces and stormy eyes with the glimmer of sun off dark water.  Saw himself and another, hands entwined tightly.  Saw himself smiling and saw children running through the grass with bare feet and innocent, beautiful laughter.

Saw another, another who sang to his soul like a resonating bell, striking his core with ferocity enough to knock him from his very feet.

"They are waiting for thee."

And it was a familiar dream of happiness and sunlight and love, a dream that vibrated through Maeglin sharply, painfully, as a broken trinket that could not be pieced together or repainted with a knew scenic view.  To grasp at these ashes was to invite pain, invite suffering...

But to leave them to fly away on a strong wind was to lose them forever.

Faith to collect the dancing shards.  Hope to plant them anew and water them.  Time to allow them to blossom into a dream more beautiful than any that had come before it, no longer a fantasy of realities that could never become corporeal, but a vision of what could be if only he dared to rekindle his fire and reach...

And Maeglin reached...

And came back to himself.  Back to the cold and the gray and the swirling, dark eyes.

"Thou shalt not remain loveless."

And Maeglin believed.  It was worth the pain, this love, this dream.  And he burned and stretched and reached.  And lived and breathed.  And sought.

And found.
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Okay, so Maeglin is a bit more complex of a character than most people give him credit for.  Or at least that's what I believe. I basically don't buy into the idea that he sells out his entire kingdom, his family and the woman he loves just because he's jealous of Tuor.  Maeglin is young, has never experienced war in his life, has been captured by the most cruel, sadistic bastard in Beleriand, has been tortured and mind-fucked and is seduced to giving up the location because Sauron knows how to manipulate people.  If you were in his place, you would be exactly the same.  At least, I know I probably would be.

Forgive any lack of coherence in this note or in the story.  It is very late and I did not get back until around midnight, thus did not start this until a while after that.  Forgive me for being so late.  And listen to the song, because it's amazing: Only Hope from A Walk to Remember, sung by Mandy Moore.  Lovely voice.  Lovely lyrics.  Have loved this song for ages.