Hands

Canon-compliant.  Aredhel's thoughts as she lay dying by poison.  Quenya names used (Aredhel = Írissë and Maeglin = Lómion).  Actually, I hadn't originally intended for this to be an inner monologue as she was dying, but I'm glad it turned out as such, because it explains so much that I had never even considered before.  Connects up "Wrong" and "Sweeten" with "Believable" (yes, from all those months ago).  If you ever wondered whey Eöl got off with a punch to the nose, this is why.  Takes place in Gondolin in the First Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Eöl x Aredhel

Characters: Aredhel, Eöl, Maeglin, Turgon (I don't think it actually mentions anyone else)

Warning: canon-compliant, canon character death, unintentional uxoricide, mentions execution, mild sexual content, character analysis

Song: Je Chante Pour Passer le Temps

Words: 990
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hand (noun): the terminal part of the vertebrate forelimb when modified (as in humans) as a grasping organ
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hand

Before it had come, she had known her husband might do something foolish.  She had seen it in his betrayed, wet eyes, in the quaver of his deep voice and the tremors of his tightly clenched hands.  Hands not oft moved to violence, but which spoke of deep-seated emotion cultivated over many long years of terror and bloodshed.

They had been.

And lying as she was, sickened with unknown poison and staring up at the ceiling of her old bedchambers, Írissë could not help but think that she had been a great fool.  Or worse.  Selfish.

On the white sheets, her own hand moved beneath her restless gaze, long white digits stretched out towards a phantom that would never again appear before her eyes.  They were bereft, aching, and even now, after being stricken down by its counterpart, she only longed for the warm embrace of a callused palm on her soft skin.  Familiar and safe.

Many times she could recall such an embrace in the twilight of the forest beneath the eaves of trees that blocked the sunlight, that shaded their personal paradise.  Could recall bashfully averted eyes and the squeeze of fingers around her own in return, and the warmth of small smiles twitching at the corners of frowning lips.

She could recall the feel of her skin being caressed gently--ever so gently--just the tips and nails writing nonsense runes and drawing invisible pictures into her flesh which remained branded there after dozens of years without sunlight.

And she could remember their first meeting, how they had lowered her white shield and showed her a world she hadn't even known existed, filled with passion and wonder.  With such certainty but no less gentleness, they had so easily coaxed her into wild and wicked seduction, and held her in the aftermath.  Long-fingered and elegant.

Elegant even for all their strength.  And she knew that, too, and recalled watching him at work in the forge many a long evening into the early hours of the morn.  For it was his passion, and he longed to share even that part of himself with her.  Directing hands, firm but steady, spotted with little burns from spitting embers and lined from long hours of work at creation and destruction.

Such steady, sure hands.  They only trembled in rage or fright.

As when he returned home in a fury and hurled glasses at the wall, shattering them to bits.  As if her Noldorin cousins did not ever do the same in their tantrums.  And then they would curl and uncurl, grasping at some shreds of emotion he could not seem to catch between his fingers.

Then, they were strong enough to bruise, but never had he harmed so much as a hair on her head in fury.  Not a once.

Only in fear.

And she remembered that as well, vividly, for she could hardly forget seeing fingers widespread and shaking so hard they could barely latch on to her arms, but once there they sat like a vice and shook her until dark prints were left behind on snowy white flesh.  But for his rough voice and sharp actions, his eyes had not been angry.

"Where were you?" he had asked, had yelled, and they were crazed and dark and on the verge of weeping.  He had shaken her until she was as rattled as he, until she cried tears to match those streaming traitorously over his cheeks.

And he had been so frightened.  Írissë had not wandered past evening into the long night again, not without him at her side.  Because she came to know him better than he would ever know or she would ever admit.

He was afraid of being alone, of being deserted.  And was that not precisely what she had done to him?  Thrown all of his love and sweetness and bitterness back in his face as a slap and taken off into the light of day, all because she desired--for what?  To see her brother once more?  To show her son the glory and prowess of the Noldor, whom her husband despised and slandered?  To prove herself to be correct in the end?

What was here that she even wanted, when in her last hours her hands were empty of that which she needed and that for which she longed?

Hands that had led her into a world worth living, even though it came with its own cage and its own bars.  Hands that had shown her naught but love and devotion, that reached out to her and let her see the shadow hiding beneath a sharp protective exterior to softness underneath.

Hands that had taken away that world just as easily as they had given it.  Out of fear and hatred.

And while her brother raged and her son cried, Írissë could not bear to hear their voices speak of execution and treachery when it was her who had been treacherous, who had brought Eöl over the brink into madness by running away to spite his authority.  Perhaps she could not forgive his intention to murder their son, but she understood his fear, how cornered he had been, how betrayed and lost and desperate, and no matter how much fault her brother pushed upon her husband's shoulders, an equal amount lingered upon her own as well.

And the world was fading around her.  Lómion's face faded into the background and his sobs into echoes of a dream.  And the hand that grasped hers was not his.

It was not only the hatred of Eöl that had brought this terrible fate down upon their family, but the selfishness of Írissë.  And she didn't think she would ever forgive herself for forcing his hand.  Or for rending his heart.

She just wished she had the strength to say...
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Because everyone makes out Eöl to be the bad guy.  From the perspective of the Sindar, I would say that it's not too unjustified to say that it was the Noldor who brought war and death back to Beleriand, though it wasn't intentional (obviously), and for Eöl to blame them is neither surprising nor unreasonable.  Certaintly, the Noldor didn't work too hard at making a good name for themselves (read: kinslayings) and Curufin was a bitchface about the entire incident.

Not to say I agree with him trying to kill his son, but I think that he did it for the right reasons, just didn't take care of his personal fears in the correct manner (obviously).  That they didn't agree about the Noldor shouldn't have led to such sundering and gotten so out of control.  But then, neither are characters prone to talking to others, let alone each other, about their fears and disagreements.

Listening to Je Chante Pour Passer le Temps by Giovanni Mirabassi.  Absolutely gorgeous piano solo, and much more melancholy than the title would suggest.  Every time I hear it, it makes me think nostalgia and rain, like someone staring out the window and thinking about times when they were happy or things they can't change.

And then there's the Picardy third.  Don't even get me started. *sighs*

A little inspiration for the story: The Death of Aredhel by ~liga-marta on dA.