I Know

Wrong AU.  Aredhel knows more about her husband than she lets on.  But perhaps that's for the better in the end.  Quenya names used (Aredhel = Írissë).  Aredhel also is called Íreth (Sindarin of Írissë) once, I think.  This is based off of "Wrong", "Sweeten", "Hands", "Touch", "Believable" and "Scarred".  Actually, this arc is finally developed something vaguely resembling a plot.  It's rather intriguing.  Takes place in the First Age less than a year before Maeglin's birth.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Eöl x Aredhel, past Eöl x OFC

Characters: Aredhel, Eöl (mentions Eöl's past family (wife, son and unborn child) as well as Maeglin by inference and the Noldor as a whole)

Warning: canon-compliant AU, past sex-with-benefits relationship, slowburn, pregnancy, past torture and murder, irrational blaming, nightmares/PTSD

Song: Lelianna's Song

Words: 1,235
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know (verb): to perceive directly: have direct cognition of; to have understanding of; to recognize the nature of: discern; to be acquainted or familiar with; to be aware of the truth or factuality of: be convinced or certain of
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/know

Sometimes he talked in his sleep.

Írissë did not think he even noticed.  Mayhap no one had ever told him of the strange habit.  Or it might have been a result of the nightmares plaguing his rest.

More often than not, he was writhing and thrashing in bed in the middle of the night, fleeing from terrors known only to his mind.  And then he spoke, his voice sometimes a stream of words fast and violent beneath his breath and sometimes loud and wailing and begging and pleading.

And she would lie beside him, stroke at his hair and his face until the lines of fear and grief were washed from his crinkled brows and his cries and sobs died down into slow and even breathing once more.  Cradle him close and ignore how he murmured a name not her own against her pale throat and snuggled closer searching for the comfort of a mate who was naught but a flash of memory.

He cried for them often.  His wife and his son and his daughter.  Had it not been for the nightmares, she would never have known of his turmoil.  Would never have understood his deeply hidden fears and worries.  The reasons--the atrocities--that had crafted his unforgiving mind and his distant gaze.

But she knew.

Why he hated her people so terribly and passionately.  Why he did not get close to anyone for fear.  Why he did not want to call her wife and say he loved her.

Why he put everyone and everything at a distance and threw himself into his work like a madman.

She knew.

And she knew that this day would be both wonderful and terrible for him, her husband and lover.  Could be a balm upon his broken heart but all the same a toxin burning at the festering edges.

She waited until they were alone and all in the house had dimmed to soft quietness.  Until their candles had been extinguished and their bodies were so close that his skin burned against her form where they brushed and melded.

"I have something to tell you, husband."

In the shadows his eyes opened, the faint white sclera glowing against his blackened irises.  He rolled onto his side until they were face-to-face, their brows nearly touching across the pillows.  And all she could see where his eyes, his piercing gaze but inches away, tearing into her cool facade and stripping it away to reveal the nervous energy beneath.  Just looking at her, his lips pursed and his brow furrowed.  He knew something was different.  He knew something was wrong.

"What is it, Íreth?"

How to speak it gently?  She could think of nothing except to lean forward and press their foreheads together, brushing the lengths of their noses, sharing the soft puffs of heated breath in the cool air.  He did not protest when her hands curled in the dark ink-spill of his hair, holding on in silent worry.

Finally. "You are going to be a father, Eöl." Again.

No matter how she suspected he might react to the soft-spoken news, the sight of the pain in his eyes--upon his face, in the upward turn of his brows and the inaudible gasp that parted his lips--still was shocking.  Heart-wrenching.

Perhaps she did not love him as a wife should love her husband.  And perhaps he did not love her the way a husband should love a wife.  They had both come here, together and curled in the other's arms, for other reasons.  For comfort or for fun or for simple affection.

But she knew him.  And until that moment she did not think she loved him.  And yet it was undeniable, her need to comfort her mate in his time of agony.

To brush away the tears that welled and stung upon his dark lashes but refused to fall.

"I am..." At those words, he choked.  Seemed unable to draw breath through the tiny hiccups in his lungs and the trembling of his shoulders.  No matter how he tried to compose himself into some semblance of the typically steely and standoffish man he normally put forth under her scrutiny, it was all crumbling to pieces.

His wife had been pregnant when she died.  When his life had fallen apart.  He talked of their unborn daughter often.  How he wished and wished for a girl-child.

And he dreamed about them.  Surviving the attack and reuniting with him through some miracle of fate.  But the dreams always ended cruelly, with his hoarse voice begging them not to go away when the fantasy inevitably burned to cinders and left him barren again.

"I... You..." His throat convulsed again, voice cracking softly.  Like a child seeking comfort, he pressed his face down against her throat, hiding his wet eyes and trembling lips.  But she could smell the salt and feel the scalding heat upon her skin.

Could feel the way his fingers clutched at her nightgown, twisting the pale fabric as he clung.  Could feel how his chest rumbled and hitched with silent sobs.

"I should be happy.  I... I am happy... I... forgive me..."

All Írissë could do was sigh softly against the dark silk of his hair and allow him to cry.  Stroke her fingers across his back comfortingly, reassuringly, pretending to ignore how he cried against her.  Pretending that she was not witnessing his layers of protective defense stripped away to the soft, vulnerable core.

She wasn't supposed to know.

But I know. I understand.  And I love you still.

To him, she need not speak those words.  Any other woman would have panicked at his reaction, unless she knew the truth.  Unless she understood the pain he must be feeling.  And perhaps also the hope and pleasure and nostalgia so acute it was as being stabbed with shards of glass.  A form of such bitter happiness, a reminder constantly of that which he would rather forget.

She was opening up old wounds.  And he was bleeding.  But, perhaps, it was the good kind of bleeding.  Releasing some of the yellowed pus and gathered infection blackening the edges, allowing it all to seep away and leave behind a wound clean and ready to heal into a scar.  Little doubt there was that such a scar would be a thick rope of twisted muscle and knotted skin, something both ugly and strangely beautiful to look upon, to trace beneath tender fingertips.

But that was fine.  In the end, he scars were a part of him.  And still, she loved him.  Not ideally.  Not perfectly.  Perhaps not even entirely honestly.  But it was so.

She knew too much.

"It will be okay," she whispered. "Everything will be okay."

Silently, Írissë prayed it was not a falsehood that departed her lips unto his ears.  Not a lie that would take what little was left of this half of a broken man and crush it to dust.  Throw it to the winds in her wake to be lost.

All she wanted was to see him smile.  And, maybe, to help bandage those hidden wounds.

To see her child resting within his arms.