Clarity

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Amrod hides from the reality that has become a nightmare.  Quenya names used (Amrod = Ambarussa, Amras = Ambarto, Maedhros = Nelyafinwë, Maglor = Kanafinwë).  This story is the companion to "Reverie" (blatantly referenced in the text), but is related to "Cheat" and "Overflow" very closely amongst others.  I have no idea where it takes place to be honest, except that it's sometime on the road after the Second Kinslaying.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: past Amrod x Thranduil

Characters: Amrod, Maedhros, Maglor (mentions Amras and Thranduil)

Warning: non-canon compliant AU, non-canon pairing, slash, past non-con implied, mentions war, torture and mass murder, mental breakdowns/panic attacks, possible insanity and/or hallucinations

Song: A Way of Life

Words: 1,197
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clarity (noun): the quality or state of being clear; lucidity
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/clarity

It would have been nice to be able to dream forever.

It would have been nice to avoid thinking.

But Ambarussa knew it was inevitable that his reverie clear in the end.  Like a predator stalking through the shadows of his mind, damning thoughts crept up upon him with their haunches lowered and their jaws dripping, waiting for a moment of weakness to strike.  Waiting to shatter the mirrored reality blocking his vision and leave him unprotected in the cruel elements of a merciless world filled with nothing but pain and disappointment.

For the longest time, he could hide.  But for how much longer, he could not say.

There were the endless green fields from his memory to cover up the scorched, charred landscape bleakly left in the wake of endless war and pillaging.  Fields from his childhood, so clean and beautiful, stretching on and on forever in a swaying ocean of blades and wildflowers, layered over the top of dead grass and blackened earth.  They shielded him from the scent of rot and decay that blanketed the land, overwhelming his senses instead with the smell of fresh blooms in the warm spring air, tugging ceaselessly that diaphanous curtain over his eyes.

If he paid attention, he could taste the sourness on the back of his tongue and see black at the corners of his vision.  But he pushed it aside, lest it burn red.

If he tried, he could convince himself that he was just on a hunting trip with his favorite older brothers in the Noontide of Valinor.  They would ride through thick, lush woods--

A shadow covering the naked and trembling skeletons of trees in a once plentiful landscape that served now as a barren wasteland.

--and they would stop only to sleep beneath the stars in clearings where the canopies cracked wide open to reveal the vast expanse of the heavens beyond.

The silver glow overhead was so familiar, clashing with the pinpricks of light in their unfamiliarly familiar patterns spiraling and dancing in the sky.  If he looked away, he could convince himself that, somewhere in the distance, Telperion was waxing to his full glory and Laurelin his companion waning into restfulness.

That this sheen of silver beauty was part of reality still.

A reality where there was no war, no reason to be glancing over his shoulder all day in paranoia and suspicion.  No reason to believe that his brothers were dead--

Never mind that he knew, somewhere in the back of his head, that Ambarto would always be wherever he was unless death had thrown them apart.

--and no reason to look up into Nelyafinwë's face and not see full and healthily flushed damask cheeks left unscarred by torture, and wide, gentle silver eyes gazing affectionately upon his face from their lofty height, not darkened with war and suffering.

They were still so very bright and so very wrong, but inching in the direction of sin and wickedness left him cringing at the remembrance of splayed bodies...

He would curl into Kanafinwë's side and enjoy sweetly sung melodies within the embrace of warm, soft arms.  The touch of dark locks on his cheeks always reminded him of those days, so long ago, when the musician would perch beside the younger brother and sing tales woven from light and sound themselves into tangible form.

Tales he could reach out and touch.  Tales that always had a happy ending.

His own tale would not end as such, his mind would whisper.  In the end, he was damned just as all of his kin.  More so through evil deeds done to--

He had to believe that tales always had happy endings.  Even if it was nothing more than a pleasant delusion.  It was all that kept him sane, that precious mirror reflecting back his memories.

Because when those fleeting moments of clarity crept upon his psyche and shattered that reflection, Ambarussa shivered with the sudden chill of foreboding and his stomach roiled with the ache of nausea.  In those moments he hid away, alone in the dark when his brothers were sleeping, and he looked out over the land and saw.

Saw the death spread far and wide beneath the hands of the Dark Lord and despaired.  Saw the curls of smoke rising like a bad omen in the distant forest, the marker of the massive pile of burned corpses left in the wake of destruction.  They thought he was captured forever in a world of dreams--a massive delusion--but his brothers were better off ignorant of the truth.  Better off hoping that one day he might recover and return to the way he had always been.

But he knew it was a lie.  Knew there was no going back without falling to pieces.

In the end, Ambarussa knew that clarity would be his undoing.

When he looked upon the world that had twisted and deformed beyond ugliness and desolation, all he could feel were the cold fingers around his heart squeezing and sucking out of him the inherent fire of his blood.  Knowing that his time to fall would not be long off in the future and that their mission was doomed to failure before it had even begun, because never would they recover the Silmarilli through willful and cruel slaughter.  Their fate was a massive trap gilded in silver and diamond.  And they had paid for it and hundred times over.  Paid in pride and blood and love and family.  Paid for it with every drop of wealth they owned, material and intangible.

Until there was nothing left.

And it was then that horrifying red would creep in upon his vision, daring to remind him of pale flesh stained in blood and empty eyes staring at the ceiling from dead, limp bodies.  It was then that Ambarussa would look away from the awful, terrible truth of his life. 

The knowledge of what he had done was simply too much.  Too much guilt and hatred and sorrow for one forsaken soul to ferry.

He would block out the black with green and the red on white of ravaged beauty with turquoise eyes sparkling in sweet innocence.  Would blink and see his brothers as they had been once upon a time in the bliss of their youth, troubled only with studies and politics and silly family feuds, but not weighed down by the atrocities of war, willful murder and...

And he would forget.  Make hazy that transparent glass displaying his sins so openly, bricking them away so that they might not taint his mind with their plague.  That window he would cover until it was frosted beyond sight, a translucent pane blending and bending colors until nothing could be perceived of that from which he hid so desperately.

Until it was all vanished into gold and silver.  Until the dream was back and the happy ending was within sight, a brightly lit pathway traversing through the dark labyrinth of confusion and guilt to some better fortune.

Until the dream was all that had ever existed.  For just a while longer.
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At first I wasn't sure what to do with this prompt, but it worked out in the end, I think.  I had thought at first to make this into Amrod's death scene, but then I just couldn't do it.  Maybe some other time.  I wanted to touch further on his mental state, just because I can.  And because I love him so very much! (But I love almost all the characters, even Sauron, so that's not saying much).

I guess there's not really much to say in the end.  This arc is definitely winding down, no matter how short it might have been.  The twins (or, in the alternate canon, just Amrod) really don't play a noticeable role in any other part of the First Age after Losgar, so I may have to work more at the rebirth and return arc.  Maybe set everything up for some fun dwarrow-elf interaction (which will no doubt spontaneously start reappearing with a vengeance after the Desolation of Smaug comes out... I can't wait!)

Enough of my fangirling, though.  *cough*  Today's song is a beautiful piece by Hans Zimmer (I think it's from The Last Samurai) called A Way of Life.  I have heard someone say that it's similar to A Measure of Peace, but I don't think they sound alike in any way except stylistically (and they sound like they were both composed by Hans Zimmer--he can sometimes be rather distinctive).  This piece I thought sounded sadder, with just a hint of the haunting quality (I blame the string harmonics... so lovely) that I thought this fic needed.

Enjoy, ne~