Sigh

Mellow Soulmate AU.  Sometimes happiness comes in the strangest and most unexpected of packages.  But Lúthien is hardly complaining.  This story is actually most closely related to "Mellow" (the original LOL) and "Skill", both rather older stories.  Of course, "Open", "Collide", "Strawberries" and some others are also related as well, but from an earlier timeline.  And yes, there's a second child, spontaneous though he might be.  Ithilien has existed for three years in my head, give or take, so deal.  Takes place on the eastern side of the Misty Mountains in the Fourth Age (or possibly Fifth?).

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion

Pairings: Celegorm x Lúthien, past Beren x Lúthien

Characters: Lúthien, Celegorm, Ithilien (OMC) (mentions Beren)

Warning: non-canon compliant, non-canon pairing, spontaneous child, return-to-ME AU, hints at insanity and mass murder as well as canonical character death

Song: Corrupted Flower

Words: 1,452
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sigh (verb): to take a deep audible breath; to make a sound like sighing
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sigh

Too many feelings to count did he spin into existence, weaving the net with which to capture her heart.

Sometimes Lúthien wondered how it was that she had fallen in love with the crazy silver-haired hellion that was her second husband.  If anything, she should have hated him or scorned him for what he had done to her people.  She should have been afraid of him for all that he had put her through.  Of his wildness and senility which once had burned down upon her as a rain of fire.

And yet now, so many thousands of years later, somehow, she found him...

Watching from a distance, she was entranced by the willowy bend of his graceful form.  Even without a truly corporeal body with which to interact with the world, every inch of his being was somehow so very beautiful and bright and hot with undeniable life.

She could not help but be attracted.

Of course, his being shirtless did contribute to the princess's distraction.

For all his tallness, Celegorm was just on the muscular end of lithe.  When he turned, every muscle from the waist up flexed in a tempting array of snowy-pale skin and tantalizing firmness, covered in a thin network of scars and yet still somehow incredibly flawless.  And when he bent over...

Well, Lúthien could hardly be called a chaste woman.  And she could hardly be faulted for looking a second time, just to be certain...

Certain that the curve of his delectable rear was worth her wistful sigh...

Charming.  In a strange sort of way.

Perhaps it was his oddly addictive brand of sweetness tempered with the perfect amount of bitter and tang of salt.  Like dark chocolate was the loved they shared, whereas her love with Beren had been milky and melted upon the tongue.  This flavor was no less rich and no less luscious, but different.

Sometimes, he was the most adorable man she had ever met, her Celegorm.

Especially when it came to the flowers.

Clearly the poor man had absolutely no idea what he was doing when it came to the artistry of flower-arranging.  The blooms were in varying states of fullness, some barely budding and some nearly wilting.  The stems were all cut at awkward lengths, none of them even, some sheared as if by a serrated hunting knife.  And the color scheme...

Well, she couldn't fault him for trying.  They were bundled together with a leather tie and a note that made her blush to read.

But she nonetheless buried her nose in the bouquet and breathed deeply of the sweet scent of spring overlaid with his musk, letting out a sigh as her cheeks faded from deep red to pleasant and soft damask in the light of Arien's setting.

Who would ever imagine a cold-blooded murderer bringing his beloved hand-picked flowers?

In the end, it was more of the gesture that counted.

Of course, with a man like Celegorm life could never be anything even remotely resembling perfect or tranquil, for one did not have the time or energy to be serene in the presence of such chaotic vitality.  Her second marriage was not like paradise, like that which she had shared with Beren in their waning years of age and grayness where quiet reigned over the thick canopies of vibrant green trees and the light of the dawn cast a reassuring and peaceful glow on their setting lives.

Being with this Noldorin hunter was an adventure.  With all the fun and the excitement.  But also with all the terrors and the sorrows...

They all thought he was heartless.  Something that lacked simple emotion.  No ability to feel compassion.  To meager scraps of remorse to be found.  Nothing but the lust to blindly kill and kill and kill without hesitation or forethought.

They had no idea how wrong they were.

Perhaps he could pretend at distant aloofness for their sake.  But in the bedroom, in the middle of the night, Lúthien could but sigh softly into the tangles of his sweat-streaked, rumpled hair as he buried his face against her shoulder in the search for comfort.  No different than a child seeking the embrace of his mother's arms after a night-terror.  She slipped fingers into his hair and ran them down his back, long lenitive strokes ghosting over rough skin...

As his tall, powerful form trembled and quivered with the fragility of a baby bird.  As his breaths hitched in sobbing gasps against her neck.

As he asked why over and over and over again...

And she never had any answer to give him.  Only the little comfort she could muster through her own haze of guilt and regret mixed up with the affection and the need to brush aside all that made him weep in terror and horror.

But no amount of soft touches or sweet lullabies could erase the trauma.

And the fearful flashes of the past, of years long bygone that she dearly wished she could forget.

In which there was no semblance at all of the man she had fallen in love with in the Halls of the Waiting and the Gardens of Lórien.

In which those eyes looked upon her and glowed with frightfully efficient and logical cunning, and yet held not a drop of recognition as they settled upon her features and widened in wonder.

In which he did not remember their days eating strawberries and exchanging stories and sneaking chaste kisses.  In which he did not recall the deaths of his brother and of his son and of himself.  In which he wondered where they were and why they were there.

In which he became so exasperating that all she wanted to do was sit down in her chair and bury her face into her hands, releasing a sigh of utter frustration in the attempt to avoid tears.

They were few and far between, those days.

But when they came about it was an awful reminder of what he had once been and what he would always be.  The frightened and confused and tangled and twisted creature always lingering just beneath the surface, crying for help and yet lunging at all who came near enough to reach out and touch in comfort.

Perhaps she had not done this to him alone.

But Lúthien could not lie to herself.  She had committed horrible acts against him, and some fault would always lie heavy in her heart...

And yet there were days like today to shove aside the worst of the memories.

Days when she sat upon the porch in the afternoon sunlight and felt like all those horrible days and nights, all those long years of building Celegorm back into a person from the ground up, all that long time spent slowly falling in love bit by bit by bit...

They were all worth it.

"Come now, say 'ada' for me, Ithilien."

He was sitting in the grass, and their young son was propped up in his lap, cooing and giggling up at his father's face, grasping at the long tail of his silver braid and drooling all over the sacrificial strands.

Most people were frightened of this man before her, who was holding a baby as though he had been born for the job and patiently speaking in a voice crafted to soothe and coax. Most people believed only what they saw in his powerful body and his cold gaze and his haughty laughter, because they knew naught of the truth of his character.  And none of them would ever see this side of him, so terribly gentle as his fingertips tickled his son's rosy cheeks and ruffled the first growth of moonlit hair.

The child squealed and bounced up and down, huge smile showing off the teeth only just beginning to grow in. "Nana, nana, nana..."

"Say 'ada'..."

"Nana!"

An exasperated sigh escaped the lips of her husband even as they came down to brush over the brow of his son. "You will grow up to be such a nana's boy, will you not, ion-nín?"

From that short distance away, Lúthien echoed his sigh.  But, as she cradled her cheek in the palm of her hand and watched them together, playing as a father and son so sweetly on the ground, her sigh was one of contented bliss.

Truly, she was glad to be with him.  Glad to hold his delicate love in her palm.  Glad to be the keeper of his deeply secret heart.

Glad to be by his side.  For she knew not what she would be without his devotion and love. Her Celegorm.