Winter

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Winter has fallen over their lives in the aftermath of tragedy.  No Quenya names to be found here.  This piece is, in part, the collision of the Untouchable arc ("Untouchable" and "Isolation") with the Loveless arc ("Loveless", "Cleansed", "Life", "Scowl" and "Push").  It is, of course, related to others, but yeah... I've had this on my mind for a very long time and have simply been waiting patiently for the culmination.  Takes place in Lothlórien at the beginning of the Fourth Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: pre-Elrohir x Mithrellas (background pairings show up)

Characters: Mithrellas, Elrohir (mentions Nimrodel, Celeborn, Elrond, Elladan, Maeglin (Rule 63!ed), Arwen and Aragorn)

Warning: non-canon compliant, non-canon pairings, minor genderbending, pregnancy, soul-mate stuff, depression, elf-mortal relationships, cultural stuff brushed

Song: Peace of Mind

Words: 1,321
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winter (noun): the season between autumn and spring comprising in the northern hemisphere usually the months of December, January, and February or as reckoned astronomically extending from the December solstice to the March equinox; a period of inactivity or decay
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/winter

The elves were leaving.  Bringing to an end this age of statuesque glory.

Leaving behind the trees once golden and brilliant now lackluster and aged.  For the first time in as long as Mithrellas could recall, those trees darkened to the colors of fire and wept their tears of blood, leaving behind barren white skeletons to scar what had once been the eternal perfection of Lothlórien, littering the well-worn pathways with dried pools of life-giving liquid.  The beauty, once renowned, was withering away.  The magic that had once been soaked into every limb and leaf draining into oblivion.

To match her heart.  The emptiness.  The unhappy ending.  And the long months of bitter cold ahead.

Mithrellas wondered slowly, her feet carrying her aimlessly through the pathways she had once trodden as a young woman.  So many years ago.  The echoes of laughter were lunging from the shadows and darting about her upon fleet, dancing feet.  Pictures of Nimrodel's hair whisked away by the wind as she turned, her smile revealed in all its glory flashed and disappeared, the mere reflection of Anor upon the snow...

It was just an echo.  A left over memory of things long past.  Things that could not be reclaimed.  One more face in a list of a thousand faces that she would never see again.

Her fingers brushed against the bark of the trees and felt the cold.  Trailing, touching the rough flesh of each towering trunk.  Soaking it in until her fingertips grew numb.

Were elves meant to feel the cold?

To feel the winter setting in upon their lives?

Her people were made to live in eternal summer, never-ending fields of wildflowers that never ceased to bloom and golden boughs of trees that never shed their leaves.  A world that was never laced in delicate frost and dead leaves.  Not this world of seasons.

But long since had she accepted that she was different.  Not of her elven kind.  Not of the summer stretching on forever.  Rather, she was the wife of a mortal.  The rock set at the core of the river's current enduring yet longing to be free to float away downstream to whatever end might come.

This world, she did not dare leave behind.  To be surrounded by green fields that were never burnished gold and trees whose leaves never tumbled down to decay upon the earth...

Slowly, her eyes drifted shut, and only the wind accompanied her soft footsteps upon the snow.  Caressing at her cheek with a bitter sting.

So cold... so cold...

She glanced upwards, and ahead of her was a figure walking in the opposite direction, boots silent as they carried his lithe form.  Eyes of chipped glass and scorn burned.  A mouth set in an unyielding frown slashed open her reverie.  The man did not look familiar to her eyes, but like a golodh from across the sea.  Tall and broad and sharply angled.

Staring at her with his brow furrowed.  She met his gaze and held on with both hands, boring into the layers of ice to the liquid underneath.  The miasma of hatred and sorrow.  Falling apart.

Slowly, his head inclined in understanding.

Acknowledging.

Tentatively reaching...

---

It was nothing at all as he recalled from his childhood.  All the world seemed to be falling apart at the seams like an old, rotting coat locked away in the dark.

His father had departed from Middle-earth, leaving Imladris seemingly devoid of home and hearth.  The halls seemed to lack their usual luster of comfort.  And whenever his heart ached for advice, Elrohir would arrive at the old study with the well-paced rug to find the windows open and a cold wind invading, stirring the unopened letters upon the bare-boned desk and teasing at the pages of untouched books, open where they were abandoned.  So empty.  So gray.  So lacking.

Sweet Arwen, of course, was no longer there to spruce up the house and greet all who passed with a soothing smile.  Instead, she was in Gondor.  The last he had seen of her was her wedding day to their foster-brother, and she had been all dressed up in startling white, so eager and in love.  So joyous at embracing the future which had nearly slipped through her fingers and into the realm of impossibility and fantasy.

So ready to let go of a bygone age.

And then there was Elladan.  Elladan and his wife, who was so lovely and dark with doe eyes and a shy smile.  Who held her mate's hand tightly as they walked in the gardens and kissed his cheek when they sat beside one another at the dinner table.  Who soothed the elder brother's darkest secrets from rampaging mountain lions into tame house-cats purring beneath her strokes and murmurs.

Whose belly was rounding with their first child.  Whose face was constantly glowing.

Whose smile was so radiant.

For all of them, spring was upon the world.

But Elrohir felt differently.  As the snows came over the mountain passes and he had ventured finally into Lothlórien to see his grandfather, rather than the golden trees and temperate climate, he was met with the frigidness of true winter.

So foreign and frightening.  So very cold.

And now, as he walked beneath the familiar trees and recalled his childhood, it left naught but a sour, unwanted taste upon the back of his tongue.  These hills and trees, he recalled them green and full, when all the world seemed a brighter and more forgiving place.  When the future was still something worth looking forward to and the past paled in comparison.

And yet now home seemed a dream and the memories his only comfort.  Lothlórien was not as he remembered.  Imladris was not as he remembered.  His family was not as he remembered.

They had moved on and left him behind.  Frozen in place.

Not married.  Not happy.  Not at home.

Drifting aimlessly without purpose.  Falling apart... falling apart...

Closing his eyes, Elrohir swallowed the knot that tied itself in his windpipe.  He would absolutely not mourn when to sing lamentation was to court damnation.  He would not dare release his anger when it was all that kept him moving, kept him from freezing solid.  He would not give in...

His hand clenched upon the bark, digging in until blood flowed and the wood cracked.

He would not give in...

And then there were the footsteps.

Soft and light, barely brushing the crystalline layer of cloud blanketing what had once been unchanging and evergreen--what had once been alive.  Glancing up, he beheld her, a pale-haired ghost floating down the path in the opposite direction, the pads of her delicate fingers brushing each tree as one might a beloved child or a coiled snake.

Blue eyes looked up, meeting his surprised gaze firmly.  Yet so very sad and distant were they, something utterly broken and utterly cold.  Like a star shattered and drizzling back to earth.

And he couldn't look away.  Could do nothing but stare.

And feel that connection buzz to life with wonderment.  The kindred soul entwining with a hesitant touch.  The sudden flare of heat that scorched through the stabbing of a cold knife, slicing the blade as though it were mere butter.  Melting...

He could not stop his feet from carrying him to her side.  Drawn inexorably.

Melting...

Or his hand from reaching out to hers in greeting, lifting the cold digits and massaging heat back into their soft pads.  Pressing his lips to knuckles and letting his breath chase away the wind that came down from the north as a plague.

Melting until nothing was left but warmth...

"My lady..." 
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And so there it is.  They finally met one another.  What happened to Mithrellas between here and the end of "Isolation" is a complete mystery to me--maybe she went looking for Nimrodel?  Who knows?  In any case, I've been planning this pairing for a very long time, and I entirely blame Fiondil's story Elf Academy.  I would never have imagined these two characters interacting if they didn't show up in that one awesome and amazing story (that you should read if you haven't yet...).

I have no idea what I'm going to do with them yet.  But something will happen eventually, I'm sure.  As Tolkien never went very in-depth with the "evil" of the Fourth Age, I guess it's up to me to find something for after Sauron.  But for the time being, I suppose some LotR action would not be entirely uncalled for, especially in relation to Ilession and Celebrimbor.  Oh... what fun...

The song is Peace of Mind by TSFH.  Once again, they have created something gorgeous.  Short and sweet and yet it says so much, just my kind of music.  It may not fit all of the story perfectly, but I felt it rather fit the ending wonderfully, and thus I brought it into the fold.

Hope you enjoy.  Happy reading.