Wrong

Almost canon-compliant.  I absolutely refuse to think that Aredhel was raped and forced to marry her husband.  But that's not to say it was the smartest decision she's ever made.  Quenya names used (Aredhel = Irissë, Turgon = Turukáno).  I imagine Aredhel at this point to be something of a spoiled little girl used to running around playing with her male cousins, heading off into the world not realizing quite what she's gotten herself into without her overprotective brothers to watch out for her.  Takes place in the First Age in Nan Elmoth.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Eöl x Aredhel

Characters: Aredhel, Eöl (mentions Turgon, Fingolfin, the Fëanorions and Aredhel's guard)

Warning: not quite canon-compliant (minor change in time/place of meeting obviously), heavy sexual undertone, nakedness, naivety, kissing and touching, spying/stalking behavior

Song: Away From Me

Words: 1,293
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wrong (adjective): not according to the moral standard: sinful, immoral; not right or proper according to a code, standard, or convention: improper; not according to truth or facts: incorrect
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/wrong

The forest was too still.  Too silent.

Irissë almost held her breath, stepping carefully in the silt along the shore, so softly that her bare feet did not even leave imprints in the sand.  All she could hear was the whispering babble of the river flowing along quietly in the dim light, water appearing black with no glimmer to reflect off the writhing surface.

Quiet.  Alone.  So perfectly alone it was unsettling.  Almost frightening.

She bit her lip.  Really, it wasn't like she had never done this before.  There was absolutely no reason to be so nervous or paranoid.

Pulling off her cloak, she abandoned it in a heap on the shore, followed closely by her gown and shift.  Cold air bore down on naked flesh, but she reminded herself as she unbraided her hair and set her toes into the cool water that there was no one in this lifeless forest to see her unclothed anyway.  Besides, she had gone four days without bathing and was in desperate need of cleanliness.

And the water felt lovely despite its mysterious and unsettling appearance.  With that, Irissë tied her hair loosely in a knot and stepped waist-deep into the gentle current with a sigh, uncaring that should her supposed escort stumble upon her, they would find her as bare as the day she was born like a common woman without shame.  They would just have to avert their eyes as gentleman and patiently await the conclusion of her bath, never mind if they thought her actions improper.

She could not bring herself to care what they might think.  There were many things she couldn't bring herself to care about.

Like her brother's bullying, for one.  Just like her father before him, Turukáno managed to be every bit the overwhelmingly protective older brother that no maiden in her right mind would wish for or ask for.  Following her about, watching her every move, putting her deliberately out of harm's way as if a little bit of sword training would do her grievous injury. 

And then there was the ridiculous stigma against women riding with one foot on either side of a horse.  How else was she meant to ride and shoot at the same time?  But one sight of her in leggings and boots nearly had Turukáno in paroxysms of horror.

Compared to wearing britches and shooting pheasants astride a horse like a man, bathing naked in the river was positively tame.

Maybe too tame.

After all, had she not left home for an adventure?  For something scandalous?  Maybe to ride in and stay without a chaperone with her cursed male cousins (Turkafinwë had been out when she had arrived), or settle down with some barbaric sindar and learn the ways of the land (never mind that the border to Doriath had been shut)?  Anything was better than sitting at home learning to better her embroidery skills like a proper princess of the Noldor.

Ridiculous.  Propriety, respectability, modesty, all of it was a waste of time and energy.  They lived in a time of war and Turukáno wanted her to learn to crochet?  Just ridiculous.

By this time, she had scrubbed every part of herself until all the dried sweat and dust was washed aside, leaving behind only flawless, white skin tingling in pleasure.  Sighing, she looked down upon her body, curvaceous and comely as any woman's, and wished desperately that she had been born male in body, if only for the freedom that it provided, for the social barricades and traps that it negated.  Her hands cupped her breasts and then slid down her sides to wide hips and a flat, soft belly, so feminine and gentle that it had her frowning.  What she needed was an opportunity to be anything but a prim and proper, virtuous and modest young princess.

And then she looked up and froze.

Because she was most definitely not alone.

Because there, on the shore, stood another elf, tall and cloaked in black.  A stranger.  A man.  With a face that carried sharp, cruel angles and a mouth that seemed pursed into a permanent frown.  But somehow despite the downward curve of angry brows into a permanent scowl and the almost un-elf-like harshness of that set jaw, he was gorgeous.  Mysterious and shadowed like something out of a forbidden romance tale.

And his eyes were black.  From so far, the pupil and iris seemed fused as one shadow, ringed by long, dark lashes, their shape delightfully recherché.  Breath-stealing and exotic.

And they were looking at her.

And she wasn't wearing any clothes.

Gasping, her hands tried to cover her breasts and the dark triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs even as she splashed ungracefully through the water and up the shore to her abandoned clothing, leaving definite footprints in the damp silt behind.  Clumsily, she dragged her cloak upwards and held it as a curtain before her nakedness, blocking it from his sight. 

And the stranger's lips quirked ever so slightly at the corners, dark eyes never once blinking yet somehow filling with distant amusement, a glimmer that clashed sharply with another, darker glance.  A look that sent primal shivers through her untried body.

He stepped closer, and the look solidified and burned as a hot coal to bare skin.  Lust.

It was at that point when Irissë knew she should flee.  Knew that she should wrap her cloak tight about her body, grab her dress and take off into the forest in search of her companions.  Knew that she should do anything but stand still as a startled doe in all her bare glory, chest heaving as she looked into hungry, cold eyes.

Knew that she shouldn't feel heat build at the pit of her stomach and spreading downwards to somewhere much, much more intimate.  Knew that she should be horrified and frightened.  Knew that she should back away and not stare back with equal ferocity.

Knew that she should be thinking of anything but how much of an adventure it would be--this dark liaison in the forest with a beautiful, foreign stranger.  Knew that she should be thinking of how shocking and sinful it was that, when he was close enough to touch, she did not object to his hands settling on her arms and sliding downwards.

Did not object when they teased open her fingers and sent her protective shield fluttering down to the sand.  Did not object when he stepped so close she could taste his alien musk on the back of her tongue as their breaths mingled and the abyss of his eyes lured her closer to the perilous edge.

This is utterly wrong.  I should scream and run.  I should slap him and demand that he leave at once.  I should... I should... But... I cannot...

How horrified everyone would be, if they knew that she led a stranger set his eyes on her uncovered silhouette, put his hands on her unprotected body.  How scandalous, that her first adventure carried her into a lover's amorous embrace in the silence of the darkness in which she found herself consumed, carried away and lost forever.  How terrible, that when he kissed her and pressed her naked torso to his clothed form, she moaned as a wanton creature and wrapped her arms about his neck.  That she soundlessly, wantonly pleaded for more.

That she let him take her down into the sand and lie atop her.  That never once did her lips part with words to cease.

Because it feels so very right.
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And thus began a marriage that had many bumps and road-blocks but eventually may have a happy ending.  Well, not in the Silmarillion, but you know me.  "Believable" sort of skips over the whole "I killed my wife" part of the story.  Anyway, I hate the "he raped her" stories because seriously, she wouldn't have run away sooner or faded or something in the many years she lived with him?  He may be a brute, but I have a feeling he can seduce just as competantly as all the other hot elven men on the block.

Anyway, listening to Away From Me by Evanescence, which sounds like it should be the opposite of this story but really isn't.  I've been listening to this one on and off for a very long time (like since last September when I was still slightly obsessed with researching serial killers) and it made me happy, so I used it.

Support this pairing!  They need love!  And I need less of Aredhel screwing her half-cousin Celegorm because I can't stand it anymore! *goes and hides in corner to weep*