Mellow
Soulmate AU. In your final moments, what
do you care about most? Quenya names
used (Maedhros = Maitimo, Nelyafinwë or Nelyo, Celegorm = Turkafinwë, Fëanor =
Fëanáro). This is a continuation of “Reap”
and is very closely related with “Panic” and “Search” as well as all
Celegorm/Lúthien stories (especially Obvious).
This has been in the waiting since I wrote the first part of Celegorm’s
death scene, but I just never had the right word. Takes place in Menegroth just after the
Second Kinslaying.
Disclaimer:
I don’t own the Silmarillion. I just
skewed canon. Oops.
Pairings:
Celegorm x Lúthien
Characters:
Maedhros, Celegorm, Curufin, Dior, Nimloth (mentions Fëanor, Lúthien, Eluréd,
Elurín and Elwing)
Warning:
non-canon compliant AU, canonical character death, death scene, blood, blood
and more blood, mass murder, child murder implied, insanity
Song: The Reluctant Heroes
Words:
1,890
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final (adjective):
not to be altered or undone; coming at the end: being the last in a series,
process or progress; of or relating to the ultimate purpose or result of a
process
From the
moment he had divined his brother’s true purpose here—here within the hallowed
halls of Menegroth, within the home of the woman who haunted each steep and
each breath with the sweet voice of a nightingale’s song—Maitimo had suspected
that he would lose more than the last of his humanity this night.
It was no
secret. One needed only look and not
blind himself with pride and bitterness to see.
To see how those silver eyes darkened in vengeful lust, how those
blanched lips curled and sneered with gleeful desire.
Desire
for death.
And death
had been wrought. Slowly did the oldest
son of Fëanáro wonder the halls as they echoed with the last dying cries and
words, as his soldiers picked through the bodies to mercifully cut short the
suffering of the dying—the betrayed. The
only courtesy he offered was that his boots did not step upon the splayed limbs
or into the pools of blood, never crushing mangled bone beneath their weight or
sacrilegiously tainting spilled crimson with dirt and filth.
No word
yet had come from Turkafinwë, and so he was searching. Searching, but not hoping.
With
emptiness aching in his heart, he found the royal apartments, knew this was
where his younger brother—caught in the fey madness of rage and loss—had gone
in the heat of his passion.
To tear
apart the last bonds holding his sanity together, Maitimo supposed. No great love had Turkafinwë held for the
Silmarilli, and he did not care about them now, would not care about them in
the face of her child. Would not care about them in the face of
death and his own final gasping breaths.
He cared—painfully
and pitifully—only for her love and her betrayal.
Maitimo
dared not call the infatuation pathetic, at least not aloud. It was too raw, an open wound that festered
and screamed with pain beneath the rub of salted insults and scorn. And what good would it have done anyway, to
be crass and rude and childish about his sibling’s foolishness? What good would it have done, to anger his
brother and push him further and further into the insanity and the darkness?
What good
would it have done, when Turkafinwë would never listen to his wisdom in the end
no matter what he might say?
Now, he
found the bodies he had been searching for.
The first was near to the door, a woman in a white and amber gown soaked
with burgundy. Silvered hair washed out
over the rug and the marble of the floor, molten mithril and moonshine that had
lost its luster in destruction. If he
had bothered to touch her—to turn her face upward so that he might appraise her—he
would have recognized her as Nimloth, the Queen.
But he
knew already who she was and did not bother to defile her corpse with his
bloody hands. Instead, he skirted around
her, noticed how her hand reached for the doorway, how her children—three of
them, all so very young—were nowhere in sight.
Taken. Probably slaughtered. And she had died reaching for them…
He could
barely bring himself to care. The eerie
silence closed in.
Mere feet
away lay a dark-haired figure, and Maitimo sighed to look upon that visage
frozen in a contemptuous snarl of pain and hate. Dulled silver eyes glared up at him, and
white flesh was broken by thin lines of red seeping from parted lips and the
slit line of that slender neck.
A hand
had risen, clawed loose the ties of the tunic and grabbed at the chain beneath
even as the tide of life hand spilled from the wound. Almost reverently was the casket of love held
and protected from stain between stiff, cold fingers. Maitimo did not stare for long, could hardly
bear to witness that final act—any more final acts. Yet his feet still carried him forth in dread
and resignation.
What a
pair they made, curled together upon the floor.
The wounds were to the torso.
Dior, he saw first, crowned and stained and fallen and pale like
snow. Blue eyes stared up almost
defiantly, thought the horror that reflected in their depths could not be
denied. A stab through the heart and the
lungs, quick to kill, for it bled like a river unto the white floor and spread
and spread to the edges of other bodies and other pools of blood, all mixing
together and together…
And then
there was Turkafinwë. Exactly where
Maitimo had expected to find him.
Slowly,
he knelt beside the body, taking in the silver hair that was no longer
silver. It was only when he drew around
the fallen form and saw the face that he felt his heart still.
No visage
of rage stared back at him. Wide eyes
looked up and up, distant and blurred with agony. And the sheen of tears dripped steadily down
sharp cheekbones, each droplet landing so singularly within the sea of crimson,
sucked away as though it had never existed.
The death so easily swallowed up that sorrow, sucked it away, leaving
only silvered streaks behind to mark the passing of sanity and heartbreak.
Crying. Turkafinwë was still alive—still gasping and
struggling and breathing, a hand
raised as if reaching for someone (anyone)—and he was crying.
“Brother,”
Maitimo whispered, drawing closer, uncaring of soaking his own clothes and
wetting his own hair with blood.
The reaching
hand twitched and faltered. It was only
the instinctual movement of his right arm—handless and lame—that ceased the
fall. Fingers—such a weak grip, so
helpless and drained—gripped taut to his forearm. Desperate and trembling, they squeezed as if
to keep him still, to keep him close and draw him near, but lacked their usual strength
and fortitude.
“Nelyafinwë,”
the dying elf gasped, choked upon his blood and let it dribble with the sweat
and saliva and tears down that once-haughty face. “Nelyafinwë… Nelyo, please…”
“I am
here.” He could not soothe, could not help. He could only stay and wait for the
inevitable. Not even the most powerful
and experienced of healers had a hope of helping his little brother now. But even if they did, he doubted Turkafinwë
would have wanted to live.
“Look at
him.” Laughter, scalded and broken. “Is he not beautiful, Dior, my son?”
My son… my son…
Like a
whirlwind of tumultuous thought, Maitimo felt the realization crash down upon
him. Glancing from the corner of his
eye, he looked upon that face that had frozen in an expression of realization. The last act on earth killing…
Killing
his father. As his father had killed
him.
It was
sad, truly pathetic and repulsive.
Maitimo did not know who he hated more at that moment—Turkafinwë or
Lúthien or Dior or himself—or who he ought to hate, or even if he ought to hate
anyone at all. All he knew was that this
was truly Fate’s declaration of war.
Revenge upon the pride and arrogance of their House. The beginning of the descent into ruin.
He
looked.
There was
no denying the resemblance. To think,
his brother had come here to murder the last of his love for Lúthien
Tinúviel. It seemed, Maitimo thought
sardonically, that his little brother had succeeded in his quest.
“Please,
Nelyo… listen… listen…”
“I am
listening,” he replied, voice low and rougher than he wanted. Such weakness displayed. Such vulnerability lain bare. But, for once, Turkafinwë did not sneer in
scorn and take the bait, ripping him to shreds with that pleasured smirk upon
his corrupted, handsome face.
Lips
struggled with words, and no matter how that tongue slipped out to wet them it
seemed they were too parched to depart words.
A swallow—it must have been painful, for a spasm shook that dying body—and
then those silver eyes looked upon him again.
No hatred stared back, and Maitimo wondered if all this despair and
sorrow had been buried beneath layer upon layer of fury and bitterness and
craziness all this time.
A tide of
it, so many tears and wracking half-stifled sobs. Maitimo tried not to look away, tried not to
feel anything at all.
“The
children,” Turkafinwë finally gasped. “I have a… a final request… for you…”
Of
course, if Dior was his brother’s son, then the princes and the tiny princess
would be his brother’s bloodline.
Grandchildren. Sons of the House
of Fëanáro.
“Tell me,”
he whispered.
“Please…
Please protect them, Nelyo…”
He dared
not say that he thought they were likely already dead. Most likely he would scour the remains of the
city and find their tiny bodies beneath the cut down form of a nanny or a guard,
gutted and left to drown in blood or with their throats slashed in a quick but
frightening demise. Three little
children who had barely lived, their lives destroyed by their own family.
Maitimo
was not yet heartless enough to tell the truth.
Not when those breaths grew thick with blood and the light in those eyes
faded into the oblivion of slow death.
Not when his brother’s last act on earth was to desperately beg for the
lives of his son’s children, holding on to Maitimo’s arm as though it were the
lifeline that kept alive the little faith yet left in his breast.
“You know
I can promise nothing, brother.” Much as
he wished to say otherwise.
“Please.”
Begging and lost and broken, holding on to the very last threads of life to
ensure the survival of those children who were probably already dead and
departed to the Halls. Not at all like
the Turkafinwë he knew, but something stripped naked down to the core, so
intimate and so vital and so vulnerable.
He could
not promise their survival. But…
“I will
try.” That was all he had left to give.
That was all he could offer.
And it
seemed to be enough, for Turkafinwë smiled in his final moments. “Thank you…”
So soft, so relieved. So sincere. Never had Turkafinwë asked anything of him, so independent and wild
was that spirit, but that unshakable trust left the foundations of Maitimo’s
spirit quaking.
No light
was left in those eyes. But that face
was soft. Almost contented in the end.
“I will
find them,” he swore, reaching out to grip at the hand now falling away from
his arm, limp with death. He held it
aloft as the last weak flutters of a pulse petered out into stillness and
silence.
He would
carry out his brother’s final wish.
Letting
that hand fall, he stood and walked away from the carnage and the death that he
had known was fated to pass. Instead, he
turned toward the ruins of Menegroth, eyes alight with a new fire of
determination and need.
Let it
not be said that he would let his brothers down.
He just
prayed he would find more than torn bodies and empty eyes. Or Turkafinwë might never forgive his
failure.
Or that
final smile might have been for naught.
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