Monster

Mellow Soulmate AU.  The Halls, as usual, do not prove to be the restful safe haven they oft are made out to be for the restless soul.  I just used Sindarin names because I'm a lazy bitch.  Maybe I'll change them later, maybe not.  Anyway, obviously part of the Cheat arc, particularly related to "Overflow", "Reverie", "Clarity" and "Crash" (the Reverie sub-arc).  Takes place in the Halls of the Waiting in the late First Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: past one-sided Amrod x Thranduil

Characters: Amrod (mentions Thranduil, Fëanor, the Fëanorions, the Valar and Eru)

Warning: non-canon compliant AU, slash, past non-con (semi-explicit aftermath), discussion of murder, including child-murder and infanticide, torture mentioned

Song: Zakuro

Words: 1,225
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monster (noun): an animal of strange or terrifying shape; something monstrous: a person of unnatural or extreme ugliness, deformity, wickedness, or cruelty
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monster

When Amrod had closed his eyes, felt the stabbing pain of the swords in his back slipping away into darkness and death, he expected to find oblivion on the other side awaiting his arrival.  Perhaps a world of eternal cold, a sightless and senseless and endless tunnel of black filled to the brim with the dark, cackling laughter of the wicked condemned.  A hell in which he was chained by door-less black walls and floors and ceilings, trapped forever alone with naught but his cloudy thoughts, the shattered reverie.

In punishment, he expected the Void.  So was sworn by his father and his brothers and he himself beneath the red torches in Aman.  Reclaim the Silmarilli or be damned to rot.

But he did not awaken to nothingness or eternal torment for his sins.  Nor did he awaken to a mindless labyrinth of confusion in which everything could be washed away--blood, filth and the ink in which his greatest crime was written.

Instead, he awoke to a world of gray and guilt.

There was no more room for pretending.  The blissful veil of ignorance was vanished and all was laid bare to his eyes, beneath his trembling fingers.  And he could not look away.

Could not look away from the facts.  From the images of mangled bodies--not twisted and orcish but pale and beautiful--spilled at his feet.  Their blood stained upon his clothing and face.  Their guts twisting around his ankles and crushed beneath his boots.  Warriors cut down without mercy or hesitation.  Women slaughtered as they fled, stabbed in the back and dragged down by their hair.  Children, who cowered into corners and whimpered as he stood over them, a dark silhouette heralding the end.

They were the worst, the little ones.  They never tried to flee.  Only to hide further and further in the shadows, crushed against the wall.  When the killing blow came, some did not even instinctively raise their hands to defend.  Did not understand at all that they were about to die.

And the infants...

He shuddered and gagged even remembering what had been done in the heat of temporary insanity.  And then spent an hour heaving though there was no food to expel from the shadow and smoke of a dead spirit without physical manifestation.

But it was killing.  A crime that Amrod had long imprinted upon his soul.  The people of Alqualondë brought to their knees with ease, the shock of the blood and the smell and the terror following the shuddering aftershocks of adrenaline-fueled battle-rage, he recalled all of them clearly.  Had long accepted their reality and thus his own condemnation.

He was a murderer.  A Kinslayer.  Some might even have called him a monster.

Though, until that day--that dreadful day in Menegroth that had solidified the instrument of his ultimate tragedy--Amrod would have disagreed.  He had not killed out of desire to slaughter or lust for satiation of sadistic urges.  He had not murdered those men and women and children for no purpose, without reason or without cause.  No matter that most self-righteous men considered the cause of the Oath unworthy and unjust, it had been sworn before the Valar and Eru himself, and it could not be revoked so simply as breathing out a denial.

The brothers had been forced to carry on.  To slaughter any in their path, as they had sworn.  And the people of Doriath had dared to put themselves in the way.  To make themselves the next target of senseless bloodshed over a glowing stone they neither needed nor wanted.

It had been justified to the sixth son within the recesses of his mind.  Sinful and wicked, but the choice that weighed out to a lesser of two evils.  If that farce could be called a choice at all.

But after all of that.  All of the death at his hands.  All the horrors by his blade.  After that...

Was him.

So beautiful that Amrod shuddered and felt his mind go hazy at the mere sight.  At the mere memory of the sight.

Of the sleek blond hair hanging before glowing blue eyes that flashed in fear.  Of dark, elegantly curved brows and thick black lashes fluttering as a bird's tremulous wings.  Of the young, still slightly soft features and the pull, pale pink lips parted in gasps.

The connection had been instantaneous.  The attraction had been instantaneous.  But Amrod had not been in his right mind.  When one was slaughtering the innocent, they never were.  And all he remembered in the faded gray and red images of the time spent lost between consciousness and lust for death was the shocking, undeniable knowledge that it was important that that young elf not escape has grasp.

Important that the beauty stay.  That they be intimately connected.  Closer than family.  Closer than brothers-in-arms.  Closer than the closest of blood siblings.

That did not, however, excuse him.  Not then and not now.  Not ever.

Perhaps that was why he had deliberately forgotten.  Why he had chosen reverie rather than the truth of what he knew he had done in that bedroom in Menegroth.  To that body so vividly imprinted upon his mind, spread out with white, soft skin and wide, horrified eyes.  Dead--from the shock or the horror or the pain or the loss of blood, Amrod would never know.

Just dead.  Dead with smears of semen and blood painted across his inner thighs.  Though he did not remember the joining with any clarity, he remembered the aftermath as plain as broad daylight.  Remembered trembling against the wall and fighting against the knowledge of his crime.  A crime far more horrendous than murder in the name of an oath.

A crime performed out of desire.  Not forced.  Not coerced.  

He had wanted to ravish the slender body.  Had wanted to leave his mark on pale flesh and as deep within as he could reach.  And, in the midst of the high of battle, he had not thought twice about assuaging his wants like an animal.  Like something less than a person.

Like a monster.

And it itched and burned beneath his flesh like hives.  Ached behind his eyes as he was forced to see again and again.  To watch and suffer in silence and solitude the overwhelming guilt and regret.

Amrod did not try to justify his actions.  For what he had done to his fated, there could be no justification.  No words that would make everything okay again.  No actions that could soothe away what atrocities had already been committed.

No atonement that could take away the guilt.

And, somehow, these gray halls filled with the empty echo of the worst moments of his life, they were a worse torture than any amount of empty black forever-ness.  A worse punishment than sitting alone in the dark going mad from grief and lack of sight.  A worse fate than anything the Void could possibly have offered, for even corporeal torture, breathtaking agony biting into his skin and soul, would have been less painful than this.

Than staring his inhumanity in the face.  Than breathing in this toxic realization.

Than learning to accept what he had become.
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I have no excuse, other than that I'm reading the fucking hottest piece of fanfiction to cross my screen in over a year and didn't feel like stopping.  For once, uke!Alucard.  Fuck, so hot~  *cough* Anyway, so I was distracted, that's why this is late.  Seriously.

Further development into the psyche of a psychopath.  I blame Hellsing for this.  And my whiteboard.  Sorry about that, it's too late to be writing these things.  Not thinking coherently.

The song is gorgeous, though (Zakuro by Suilen from the Hellsing Ultimate OST) and I love listening to it, especially when it actually plays in Episode 7.  Not to mention I almost cry every time, because OMG Pip is dead!  And it's just so sadpasta. v.v  But at the same time, this is like Seras' epic moment where she finally becomes a vampire for real, takes Pip in and is epic enough to slaughter that bitch Zorin.  Yeah, I'm so biased, I know.  But seriously, one of my absolute fav scenes in the OVA.  Can't wait for 10.