Bones

Defiant AU.  Eldalótë may have known more than Angrod could ever have guessed.  Entire explanation for this crazy idea: elves are elves are elves are elves.  They just seem to know things.  Quenya names used (Angrod = Angaráto, Finrod = Findaráto).  This is, of course, part of the Defiant AU and takes place before Angrod is rescued.  I would say it most closely relates to "Odds and Ends", "Difficult" and "Garden".  Takes place at first in Dorthonion and then in Anfauglith.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Silmarillion, but I do own this crazy plot involving Angrod's miraculous survival

Pairings: Angrod x Eldalótë

Characters: Eldalótë, Finarfin, Finrod, Eärwen (mentions, of course, Angrod, as well as briefly Aegnor and Orodreth)

Warning: non-canon compliant, non-canon character survival, dead bodies!, mystical elf stuff, soul-mate stuff, visions, vague illusions to slavery and other nasty things

Song: Moments in Life

Words: 1,316
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bone (noun): the hard largely calcareous connective tissue of which the adult skeleton of most vertebrates is chiefly composed; essence, core; the most deeply ingrained part: heart
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bone

It had been a foolish notion.  This, Eldalótë had known from the very beginning of this journey.  For what place did a woman--not even a warrior-woman or a princess or a high-ranking lady, but a gardener--have in a world decimated by war and brutality?  Here, she was little more than a burden to her family.  Extra baggage for her father-in-law to tote around with his entourage as they crawled north through field of battle after field of battle ever northward.

But she had wanted to come.  Had needed to come.  If anything, for the closure that had so long been denied her within the borders of Valinor.

Eldalótë had come to find her husband.  Be he dead or alive.  She wanted to know.

Dead, they told her immediately.  The flames and the panic and the swarms of enemies had swept south in a tide of relentless force and swiped Angaráto's armies and friends and comrades from the face of the earth, as if their people and their settlements and their homes had never existed.  And, it was assumed, the flame had also consumed the prince.  Burned him to ashes.  Left only bone.  Maybe not even that.

Even if it were only scorched remains, she needed to see him.

It took years, however, for the armies of the Valar to crawl far enough north to reach the ruins of Dorthonion and Anfauglith stretched far beyond.  The place where that battle had ravaged the earth beyond repair and left everything crumbling in its wake.  Impatiently, Eldalótë waited, for she longed terribly to see him.  To hold what remained of her beloved.  Or discover that he was not, in fact, dead.

At least, she hoped he was not dead.

Part of her always feared that he might have died and been locked away in a prison of tapestry and windowless walls, never to be released from the Halls for some unknown sin or horror she could not imagine.  For no other reason could she imagine that he would be held so long, denied his return to her side, were it not for punishment.  She did not wish to believe the Valar cruel, but...

We thought he died before me, Findaráto had claimed.  And yet nothing.

It was that which sparked the frantic need clawing constantly at the inside of her ribs and revolting violently in the pit of her belly.  Wriggling and screaming at the core of her being, down to the essence of her spirit and the core of her bones.  It was not the knowledge of death that drove people mad, but the not-knowing that made their minds unravel.  It was the uncertainty that made her father-in-law pace each night like a rabid, caged animal, trapped and helpless with no outlet to appease his nerves.  It was the uncertainty that had caused Lady Eärwen to sit in her chair and sew for days on end, her eyes empty and focused upon the horizon in hopes that her other sons might appear miraculously before her to chase away the gnawing worry.

It was the uncertainty that made Eldalótë take up a sword against the wishes of her family and learn to defend herself.  They never allowed her upon the field of battle, but--"Just in case something goes wrong, I do not want to be sitting helplessly at camp, waiting to be taken by the enemy.  Better that I die fighting than be taken captive."--she had nonetheless made herself proficient.

Anything to keep her hands busy.  Anything to keep her mind occupied.

Until the day they reached the barren plains that had, once, been a forest-painted valley.  Once, Findaráto had described Dorthonion to her as a land wild and overgrown but nonetheless beautiful.  Now, it was not beautiful in the slightest.  Rather, it was simply empty, the skeletons of scorched trees pointing as spears into the gray, dust-filled sky.  Monuments to what had once been a living, breathing land.

There were the dead trees.  And the bodies.  Some still lay, charred black from fire, all hints at their identities incinerated upon their deaths.  Others white-washed of rotted flesh, fallen in the desperate battle that followed, armor still piled in with their remains to mark them friend or foe.

One look at the vast plains told her all she needed to know.

"He is not here."

Eldalótë could not describe how she knew, but all along she had known that she would sense him.  So strong had the connection run between them that she would have been able to pick him out amongst a thousand leagues of bones were all that was left of him a mere hand or foot or spinal vertebrae.  But here she sensed nothing of his death.

There were flashes of his laughing face about a fire, drinking with his companions and warriors... And then flashes of flame and screams of the dying as they perished in agony... The wildness and chaotic horror of battle falling upon them in the night...

But not of death by rusted sword or tongue of flame.

"I know that you want him to be alive, daughter"--I do, as well, she heard him silently impart in a half-stifled prayer--"but fanciful notions will get us nowhere, not now.  Please, just accept--"

Once upon a time, the idea of brushing off her king's advice would have left Eldalótë trembling in terror.  But now she simply silenced the man with a glare and refused the comfort of his broad hand reaching toward her shoulder.  Though he had been nothing but kind to her since she had joined her husband in matrimony, she would not submit to his crushed, defeated resignation so easily.  So pitifully.

"Here, my husband lived.  But here, he did not perish," she said with finality. "Were it Lady Eärwen's body you sought--her death which would have haunted this land--would you not sense where and when and how she had passed?  Would you not feel it in the deepest core of your bones?"

He said nothing, hesitant to believe in Eldalótë despite the fact that he knew she was truthful.

Finally, he sighed. "Very well, daughter.  North, we shall continue."

And mourn Angaráto yet, we shall not.

And, though she would never admit it aloud, she both hated and loved this revelation.  Thrived upon the hope that still writhed through her veins and seared across the insides of her flesh.  And all the same felt the uncertainty--the unknown--closing in to choke her in her vulnerability and fear.

For little was told of the fates of those lost in the Dagor Bragollach.  Except that, if they survived the battle, they had been taken as slaves.

The men who knew more would not speak to her.  Only avert their eyes at her impassioned questions, pretending at ignorance for the sake of her innocence.  To keep her in the dark and shield her from the cruel reality.  But, no matter how they tried to block her understanding and keep her eyes blinded, their avoidance only sparked a worse imagining in her brain.  Only confirmed what she had feared all along.

That, maybe, it would have been better if her husband had been dead.

When she finally did lay eyes upon the fortress of Angband many years later--lost in the black smoke and scorched dust of ravaged and broken land and filth, the home of the Black Enemy and his vast army--the whispering in her bones told her a different story from the desolate plains of Dorthonion.  A story much more horrifying than mere death in battle or blanketed by dragon's fire.

It was then that she finally wished in vain that they had been wrong.