READ THIS NOTE: If I don't update between now and Friday, it's because I may or may not have internet in the middle-of-nowhere town that I'm staying at. I swear I'm still writing.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Unfinished Tales or anything else by Tolkien
Pairings: Amroth x Nimrodel
Characters: Amroth, Nimrodel (mentions the Valar and the Sindar)
Warning: canon-compliant, cliché-ish?, sappy-ish?, one spouse taking advantage of another?, politics and war
Song: Love Story
Words: 1,560
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compromise (noun): settlement of differences by arbitration or by consent reached by mutual concessions; something intermediate between or blending qualities of two different things
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compromise
She loved him. Truly, she did. More than she had ever loved anyone. And she did not enjoy seeing him in such agony--with his glorious blue eyes that looked upon her with such tender adoration suddenly dark with pain, shadowed beneath furrowed brows. He looked as though she had pronounced his execution rather than...
"I cannot marry you."
And she couldn't.
His hands embraced hers, squeezing with reassuring, tantalizing warmth and safety. Ever would she feel protected within the circle of his arms, but no deceptive veil could shield the truth from her eyes, and no amount of affection would make her blind to reality.
"I love you," he whispered against her lips. His brow pressed against hers, his loose hair falling about them as a curtain, a false defense. "I know not what else to say or do to prove myself and my devotion to you. Or... or is it that you do not feel the same way, Lady Nimrodel?"
"I love you in return, my prince," she replied softly, her voice low, hardly more than a breath. "Never doubt my love for you, my light in the darkness."
But he was the king. The king of a realm that she had once loved, which was being corrupted from all sides by evil and by war. Brought low with taint and shadow. By his people. To become the queen of these golden eaves and evergreen trees would be little more than a lie, a slow-acting poison that would drag her down into gray death and destruction. As queen, she would have maintain a united front with her spouse--would have to agree with her spouse. And to agree with her spouse, she would have to let go of all the ideals and all the dreams that had ever defined her person.
She would have to become another woman. And Nimrodel could not throw away everything important to her--all the pieces of ideology and belief that, put together, created her--for the sake of a man. Not even Amroth, whom she loved with all her soul despite their disagreements and differences.
She could not subject herself to the inevitable hatred and suffering that found follow if she allowed herself to be immersed in the life of a caged queen.
If there was one undeniable fact, it was that she could not coexist with these strangers from the west. And, no matter how much she loved Amroth, she needed to leave this place, to go east and find somewhere untouched by the growing darkness and strife that seemed to overtake the world wherever "civilized" folk roamed.
"Then... then why? What can I do...?" Hoarse and desperate, he held her against him, his arms bands of warmth over her back and his fingers sending shivers down her spine as they stroked through her hair. "What can I do to make you agree to stay with me?"
How very much she wished that she could reply "nothing" and not feel her conscience shedding beneath the claws of guilt.
Why did he have to be so heart-rending? Why did he have to be so honest?
Why did he have to love so much and so deeply?
It should have been easy to throw this relationship away, to turn her back on his devotion, because she had been prepared from the very start for their failure. He was a sinda and a prince, a self-absorbed, conceited, "civilized" man who scoffed down his nose at her people.
Except... except he didn't scoff. And he wasn't the conceited nobleman she imagined when she pictured the high courts of the Sindar flaunting their "wealth" and "intelligence" over the peoples of the forest. He was everything she had ever contemplated in a mate.
And she wanted to stay with him. But not at the cost of herself and all she else loved.
"There is nothing you can say or do." And she hated the darkness that seeped into his eyes with her harsh words, hated the way he drew back as if she had slapped him with all her scorn and hatred. "I cannot marry the King of Lothlórien."
She hated how expressive his wonderfully gorgeous, handsome face could be, how that little crease formed between his brows and his teeth nibbled at his lower lip. How clearly and utterly destroyed he looked as he stood before her, eyes downcast and glowing with tears that he would never allow to fall.
Why were the Valar testing her in this way?
"But if I were not the king, would you marry me then?"
Shocked, she looked up into his eyes, those determined and bright orbs filled with sudden hopeful flame.
"I would... I would never think to ask you to surrender your birthright for me." Could she really expect him to throw away all that he loved and cared about, all he had worked for, just because of the woman he loved--especially when she could not do the same? "I would never think to ask you to give up what you believe in and what you worked hard to achieve in order to make me happy, Amroth."
"But I would." His breath was hot over her cheek, his eyelashes a flutter against her skin. "If I abdicated, I could live with you by the river. Just the two of us. No politics. No power struggles."
And how she longed to say yes. But this offer would change nothing.
"I cannot... Amroth, I cannot stay here. Please, make this no more painful than it needs to be. We were not... we were not meant for one another..."
"We were meant for one another." Their bodies pressed together, his hard muscle to her soft curves, and they fit together so perfectly, as one creature entwined. "I will give up the throne. My cousin Celeborn and his lady wife can have ruler-ship of Lothlórien. I never asked to become king, and I never wanted to become king. If you ask me, I will give up everything... Just stay..."
And Nimrodel hated herself for the idea that writhed its way into the back of her mind at his unthinking words of utter devotion. At the word everything. Hated that her heart was so selfish and greedy as to take advantage of his willingness to sacrifice.
But it was the only compromise her mind would accept, though her heart longed to be generous.
"Come away with me," she whispered, reaching up to frame his sun-kissed face in her palms, to trace her thumbs over the rise of his cheekbones and to rake her fingers through his silken hair. "Come away with me--to somewhere peaceful where there is no war and no violence--and then I will marry you, my prince."
"Away with you?" And the hope--no longer a mere ember, but a blazing fire--in those words stung her like a toxic dart. Because she knew she didn't deserve this man. She hated his ideals, his morals and his people, and still he loved her enough to give up everything he knew so that she would be happy. Would that she could pay him back in full for his love, but Nimrodel did not think she ever could give him a gift as precious as that which he had offered her when he spoke...
"I will, if that is what it takes to make you happy." His hands came away from her, but only to remove the band of his House and place it instead upon her slender finger. "I will abdicate, and we can go wherever you wish, just please...
"Please, marry me?"
Traitorous tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. Gulping heavily, she tried to rid herself of the throbbing lump in the back of her throat, the one that left her voice wobbly and caught with horrible joy and shame. "Yes," she gasped. "If you keep your word, yes, I shall marry you. My prince."
And he laughed in such pure relief that her heart sank. "I will not be a prince." His smile could have lit Anor a thousand times over.
"You will always be my prince," she replied, wrapping her arms about his neck and clinging tightly. For she was a greedy creature, and she never wished to allow him to leave. The epiphany of her own selfish love left her trembling and sobbing even as his devotion touched her to her very core and shook apart the foundations of her prejudice.
And if her face was hidden from his sight--her escaping tears from his pure joy--it was for the better. She would not allow herself to spoil this wondrous moment for this indescribably perfect man.
Because, for all her mind called it a compromise, she knew the true manner of this transaction, of this forbidden love affair between two individuals living in opposite spheres of reality. And she knew that he was doing more than conceding a little to her whims and demands.
He was sacrificing.
And she could not sacrifice in return. She could only take and take.
And hope that one day she could find a way to pay back this immeasurable debt. To give.
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Okay, so again, the second time I've ever written this pairing. This is all Nimrodel characterization, if I'm completely honest. I re-examined their story and I thought it seemed a little unfair. She doesn't like Sindar and she doesn't like this and she doesn't like that, but she has absolutely no problem asking him to give up everything for her. He's only the king, but she can't make a sacrifice and put up with his people for him--no, he's expected to give up everything he's worked for to make her happy.
Sorry that I bash on the chicks a lot. I guess it's just that, as a female myself, it's easier for me to "villainify" a female character. Then again, I bash Fëanor all the time so it can't all be about gender. Or perhaps it's just about who I sympathize with more on any given day. Anyway, don't get me wrong, I like the pairing. We'll have to see if I like them enough to give them both a happy ending, though.
Written to Love Story, a love theme supposedly composed originally by Beethoven. Of course, the song in the video was not originally written (as in the exact score wasn't written) by Beethoven (because you can hear the soft-rock undertone and drums were not part of a piano-violin duet even during the late Classical period), but it is nonetheless gorgeous and sexy and passionate. Thus, I used it for the "emotional upheaval" points to go with this piece. You should listen to it. Because it's awesome :3.
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