Afterlife

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Haleth did not expect the reality of afterlife.  All Sindarin names used for this one.  The ainu is whoever you want him to be.  This piece is connected up with "Transparent", "Addicted", "Ballad", "Edge" and "Euphoria", and explains, in part, the missing plot points between/within some of them (Ballad in particular).  Also, it has touched on Caranthir's fate, which I have not yet written but have plans for, as well as the couple's future, which I also haven't written but (clearly) have plans for.  Big and interesting plans.  Takes place in the Timeless Halls throughout the First Age and continues into the modern era.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Caranthir x Haleth

Characters: Haleth, Caranthir, mysterious ainu (mentions Fëanorions, Maedhros in particular, Haldad (Haleth's father), Lúthien and two non-OC reborn elves)

Warning: extremely AU, modern!AU, scrying, Tolkienverse human afterlife theories, mystery/ambiguity, mentions war, death, rape, murder, etc, reincarnation, rebirth, suicidal thoughts/actions, mental instability

Song: Diem Ex Dei

Words: 1,964
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afterlife (noun): an existence after death; a later period in one's life; a period of continued or renewed use, existence, or popularity beyond what is normal, primary, or expected
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/afterlife?show=0&t=1371243802

Beyond death lay the Timeless Halls.  And, true to their name, they were beyond anything she had ever encountered before, outside the realm of time and touch.

Stretching on and on, a seemingly never-ending maze of perfection and beauty.  And no matter how long she traversed the graceful archways and the airy, open rooms, there never seemed to be an end to their splendor or their mystery. Light and color bent to a different law of physics here, splashing in arrays that dazzled her eyes and left her stunned in speechlessness.  Sound rang in her ears, more divine than any bard of the earth had ever raised his voice, the choir of the Ainur still echoing eternally against pale stone.

Yet for all the strange wonder--the glory beyond her human imagination's comprehension--Haleth always found herself yearning.  Wandering back to the same room in this ancient labyrinth.

The room with the walls that were not opaque, that did not reflect and were not transparent.  Her fingers would brush the still, flat surface expecting cool stone and feel an indescribable texture, something caught between a humid breeze and warm water.  She had, in her time as a mortal woman, heard of magicians and sorcerers with the power to scry, to spy upon their enemies and allies on flat surfaces of still liquid, but never had she believed such trickery might, in fact, be truly possible.

Not until she had entered this room for the first time and, rather than beholding some work of art that could not be described in mortal tongues or tapestry woven by hands more skilled than the greatest broideress, she laid eyes upon the vast expanse of something familiar, something that made her heart ache heavily within her ribcage.

When she had lain down to die, Haleth had never dreamed of seeing again the wide open grasslands and thick, lush forests and towering, jagged mountains that had encompassed her home.

After all, this was death.  The afterlife.  Surely, she was meant to forget about the struggles and perils of the mortal world, with war and pestilence and enemies coming to rape and murder and reap blood with silent blades in the dark of night.  She should have been content with enough rich wine to satiate her thirst and enough roasted meat to fill her belly.  She should not have wanted more than anything--as below her in the window of sky lay the open wound of Arda Marred, of blackened lands besieged in flame and terror--to return.  To go back.

But she did.

And no matter how long she walked--no matter how many hours she traversed, no matter the wonders she beheld with wide, childish eyes--always she came back to this place of familiarity.

And watched.

At first, her eyes followed the remnants of her people.  They trailed after battles hard-fought and lost to fire and death.  Dagor Bragollach came and went, and hundreds of men and women joined their ranks in the Halls, sent beyond by dragons scorching farmlands to dust and armies in the tens of thousands pillaging those who survived. 

But also, they strayed towards the gathering glimmer of hope in the dawn.  The Union of Maedhros, the little grain of sand made of diamond amongst a sea of rotting blackness.

That was when she first beheld him.

Much unchanged.  Still dark-haired and handsome beyond measure.  Still with eyes like emeralds in heady candlelight, glimmering with a fire that seared soul-deep.  Arrogance lay over his person as a veil that fooled all those who looked upon his smirking, dark face--but it was a shield and naught else.  A thin layer of false confidence protecting against the fierce elements outside that threatened to tear apart something fragile and shivering beneath.

When she was human--indeed, when he had spoken to her like a mighty lord to his servant, like a pig-headed, sexist man to a woman out of her place--she had thought him nothing more than a conceited creature not worthy of respect.  And she had rejected him wholly and completely, left him in the wake of the rising dust of her people without remorse.  Forced him to swear he would not follow her path.  And that he would never again appear before her gaze.  That he would never again speak to her and never again suggest that she--Haleth daughter of Haldad, chief of the Haladin--needed him for survival.

But it was never she who needed him.  And, slowly but surely, she came to realize the truth.  Watched him curiously in moments alone, hiding in the shadows.  Moments when he was not smirking and his hair lay in disarray.  Days when he did nothing but lie on his mattress in the dim light and stare at the blank walls listlessly.

Days when he wept himself into exhaustion.

Days when he spoke to empty air, invoking her name as a prayer of salvation.

Days when he begged for all the suffering and the fighting and the bloodshed to end.  For his pointless, tainted existence to end.

It was clear that Caranthir Fëanorion, Prince of the Noldor, the fierce warrior who had ridden to her aid and acknowledged her equality of strength and valor with his passionate worship, was unraveling slowly at the seams without support to strengthen the threads holding together his skin and spirit.  And his brothers--absorbed in their own pain and their own suffering and their own problems--did not so much as sense the change, the disintegration.  Did not sense the madness creeping up beyond what seemed to be their grown and hardened brother.

Did not see the saccharine sweetness of his heart and his red flush fading away into wane, bloodless pallor.  Day by day there was a little less of him.  A little less of something important and uncorrupted.  Fading slowly like color out of fabric left too long in the bright, unforgiving sun.

In a way, he was just as dead as she.  Living the afterlife.  Already having given up.

In the end, it was that which had killed him.  More so than any blade or arrow.  And Haleth should have been disgusted that a seasoned warrior would lie down and die without a fight.  Should have scorned him and stomped away and never returned to the room of visions.  But somehow she could not hold it against him, not after all those nights in which he held himself in the cold and murmured her name to the open sky, asking her questions and giving her promises as though she might appear as a ghost and reply to his haunting words.  Not when he spoke to her so earnestly...

"Would that I could have been born mortal.  Maybe we would have been together."

"No Lúthien am I, and no sympathy will I garner in the Halls.  But I do wish that I could have joined you beyond the edges of the world.  Wish that we would meet again before the End."

"Every ounce of Eldar blood in my veins, I would have sacrificed for your happiness..."

"Every drop of my own wealth and power and happiness I would have thrown away, if only you would have been happy with me by your side..."

Not when he loved her so dearly, even knowing he would never meet her again.  Even knowing that she had never loved him back.

And Haleth, for her part, had never believed she would change after meeting her end.  Yet here she was, dead and buried under the earth and with her family and kin in the Timeless Halls, falling in love with a man on the other side of the boundary of the corporeal and the beyond.  Falling in love with a man dying of grief and past all comfort.

And still she watched.

Watched his awakening in the Halls.  Watched his rebirth in Aman.  Watched his return to the ragged, wild eastern lands.

Watched the ghostly half of a whole wander ceaselessly, restlessly.  Hopelessly.  Her hands lay often flat against the barrier, against the image of his downcast face, wishing to feel smooth skin instead of soft air of water.  Wishing to stroke away tears that glossed over sculpted cheeks and painted the corners of forever down-turned lips.

"I wish that you could have joined me here, as well.  I wish that I had had the sense to see underneath your ridiculous facade when we still had a chance--a future.  I wish that it could have been different."

But she was dead, and there was no going back.

"Art thou quite certain of that?"

Whoever spoke, they were not familiar to her.  Like a child caught in a naughty prank, she turned on her heel and hid the hands that had been pressed so intimately to Caranthir's image.  Behind her was a creature--an ainu whom she had never acquainted, whose face was too gorgeous to look upon for long.  Instead, she gazed at her toes and flushed up to her hairline.

"I have never heard of a man--or woman--being reborn onto the earth.  Not after having passed completely into the Timeless Halls."

Had she looked up, she would have seen the mischievous glimmer staring back at her from within clear blue orbs, gems that put the midday sky to shame for their endlessness and brilliance and resplendent joy. "But if thou couldst go back, live a second mortal life and once again die, wouldst thou not?"

Helplessly, she thought of him.  Alone in the wide open world filled with empty-headed, single-minded drones of a human race, the newest generation well on their way to destruction.  Thought of those nights that, even now, he spent speaking to her as though he knew she could hear him from beyond the walls of reality.  Thought of the tantalizing possibility of lying in his arms, of entwining with his lithe body and joining with his mind, of sharing between them the most sacred joining of soul-mates--the closeness and oneness she had before denied his broken heart.

Thought of ending not only her everlasting afterlife of golden succor in hallowed and gilded halls, but also of ending his perpetual afterlife of blistering sorrow and guilt without redemption and without salvation.  For he was every bit as dead as she, and would that she could have brought him back to life.  She saw, in her mind's eye, his vibrant and long-extinct smile, shy and sweeter than honey as he beheld her face.

Saw, as the world faded to gray, two phantom figures in the twilight with bright, clear eyes and rosy cheeks.  With her nose and lips and hazel eyes, but his angular shape and dark coloring.  And she ached worse than ever.  For him.  For herself.  For dreams that would never reach fruition.

She looked up at the stranger, into eyes that transcended her understanding.  But she refused to look away like the child she must have seemed.

"I would.  If I could."

And he smiled.  Just that simple gesture filled her to the brim with something golden and startling.  Something hopeful.

"Think of it as a gift."

But, surely, he was not serious... Surely, he must be mistaken...

Yet the room she knew better than the back of her hand fell to dust around her feet.  The image of Caranthir's weeping face faded into shadow beneath her fingertips.  The warmth that had so cradled her for many hours beneath an invisible, never-dying flame now cooled to a subtle caress.

To red.  And to the bright light of a new beginning.
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Interpret that however you choose.  As soon as I read this prompt, I knew I needed a mortal character, a human (for lack of a better descriptor) since elves do not have a "heaven" concept in quite the same way.  I mean, really, they don't die.  They leave their bodies and are recycled into new ones, but they never leave Arda.  The Secondborn, however, leave to reside with Eru in the Timeless Halls, which is their "gift" that sets them apart from elves and dwarves.  Thus, this thing came into being.  The metaphorical part was a spur-of-the-moment thing.

The song today particularly pleased me.  Diem Ex Dei by Globus is a lovely song.  I've heard before Christians complaining about the bogus Latin and how it doesn't make sense (never mind that the roots are rather obvious if you know your linguistics) and that Globus is a Christian-band reject that shouldn't bother trying to sound cool by using Latin when they clearly have no idea what they're doing.  To this, I say: do your damn research, people.  You look like idiots to me when you make statements without facts.  Globus is a group that puts lyrics to trailer music and they've written about "pagan" subject matter more often than Christian (in fact, they don't write religious stuff that often).

Sorry for the rant.  The point is, it embodied the mystery of the imagery--no one worth their salt as a true listener of music cares about lyrics that were meant only as a supplement to the already-present musical theme anyway.  It's a beautiful piece.  And I like it LOL.

Also, I have a new picture that I just found yesterday of the Fëanorions--all seven of them.  I had a major squee moment.  Feanorions by ~MatsumotoSensei on dA.  I only wish the twins had more detail-work (because, as I am Telvo, I have a fairly large soft spot for all things Ambarrusar), but other than that I just love the unique style and how each brother has his own spark.