Mellow Soulmate AU. Of naivety and disillusionment. This is most closely related to “Cheat”, “Overflow”
and “Decadent”, but is technically related to everything and anything with the
pairing Amrod/Thranduil as well as anything Amrod-related that takes place
post-Second Kinslaying. However, I like
to think of this as the Thranduil POV of Overflow in a weird sort of way. Takes place in Mirkwood, though there is a
flashback to Menegroth.
Disclaimer: I don’t own
the Silmarillion or The Hobbit
Pairings: past one-sided
Amrod x Thranduil
Characters: Thranduil
(mentions Amrod, Valthoron (OMC), Legolas, Morgoth, Sauron (the Necromancer),
Thranduil’s mother, Thingol, Eru and other random elves)
Warning: non-canon
compliant, slash, soul-mate trope, implied m!preg and past (non-graphic)
non-con (heavily implied), violence and blood, character death, depression,
pure angst, mass murder
Song: Revelation
Words: 1,665
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fate (noun): the
will or principle or determining cause by which things in general are believed
to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do: destiny; an
inevitable and often adverse outcome, condition or end; final outcome
It was a romantic notion
that not many ascribed to, the idea of a fated One.
Thranduil had believed
it wholeheartedly when he was young and full of naïve hope. With barely a century to his name, he had
wistfully dreamed of meeting his One, the person he was created to spend the rest of forever with. Two halves of a perfect whole. Two pieces that created a complete image.
Two souls that would
seamlessly weave together into one. In
wholeness. In togetherness. In happiness.
Foolishness.
How could they not fit together perfectly? That he
would ask himself. How could they not be meant to be?
How could such a meeting—such a partnership, such a connection—not
bring forth the greatest of happiness?
Of course, he had
imagined meeting a lovely young maiden in the twilight of the forest gardens. A nice, sweet girl with bell-like laughter
and rosy cheeks; a girl of his own people, the gray-elves, who would bear him
children and spend forever at his side in the great hallowed halls of
Menegroth. Or, perhaps, it would be a
man. He would not have been repulsed at
the idea of a handsome warrior with a strong bow-arm, someone brave but with a
kind side buried underneath a stern façade at which he could flirt and blush.
They were just sweet
little daydreams that he kept privately locked up in his head. Never would he have spoken of them aloud—he was
too prideful and too stubborn and admittedly too arrogant to reveal such a
vulnerable part of himself—but it had been a part of him nonetheless.
Foolishness indeed.
Dreams were lovely
things. Delusions created to retain
bare-boned scraps of joy in a world consumed by war. Young and full of naïve hope had he been
without a doubt. The war had boiled on
longer than he had been alive, had wrecked distant lands outside the borders of
Doriath beyond all repair and ravaged all that was green and good into barren
wastelands of bones and twisted metal and sorrow. But it had never reached deep within their
borders, to the city with walls carved and painted by the finest hands and
furnished with tapestries woven by the most talented fingers. Jewels and finery and parties and wine dominated
the world of the court of Thingol, not blood and death and dirty, ugly realism.
All romanticism and
beauty and pristine ignorance. All
everything the world was not.
---
Until the day came when they invaded.
The sons of Fëanor, the
golodh Kinslayer’s devil-spawn children from the West, filled with violent lust
for blood and greed to reclaim their pretty glowing rocks. Until that day, those flame-haired monsters
from across the Great Sea had been but a fleeting and ghostly nightmare, merely
a bedtime story whispered insidiously to scare mischievous children into
staying in bed at night. But that was
all they had been. Nightmares to counter
the daydreams.
That was all they had
been. All they had been until fate
decided otherwise. And it had changed everything. Perhaps, he would later think, it was meant to.
But then Thranduil
thought none of that. He had thought of
nothing but fear, but the terror that forced his throbbing heart to climb up
the back of his throat until he wanted to be sick. He had thought of nothing but fleeing and
hiding, running away from the advancing flash of swords down the corridor,
chasing the unarmed inhabitants of a city that had never seen war knock upon
its gates.
He had thought of
nothing but keeping his family alive when he heard the piercing shriek of his
mother. Of her death. It had drawn him
forth like nothing else, pulling him from the safety of his locked chambers
without a second thought—without even bothering to grab a dagger or a bow to
protect himself. And when the door had opened…
he had seen him.
His One. Covered in blood. Standing over the prone body of his mother. Sword aloft in a vicious, cruel arc.
His One.
It was like a flash—all
at once a shattering revelation that left his legs quivering beneath his weight. Thranduil had not known how he knew, just that he knew
and could not deny it. All it took was
that one glance for his heart to break.
Handsome face splashed
with crimson, splattered across the high cheekbones lined with snarls and down
the front of a tunic embroidered with a damning seven-pointed star.
Son of Fëanor.
Green eyes, he
remembered vividly from that frozen moment of epiphany. Very green eyes with pupils blown wide-open
like empty windows gaping into the vastness of the Void beyond. They seemed to dominate the too-pale face,
clashing sharply with the too-bright blood on blanched white skin and the
too-red hair slicked to a sweaty forehead.
Red and green and white.
And pain.
Because he had been a
foolish and naïve child then. Happiness
would come with this moment, the moment he met the One he was destined to spend
forever with. Nothing could get in the
way of that bliss, he had believed. No
matter what it took, if he was with his One they could overcome any obstacle that stood in their way of
togetherness—of happiness.
But not this. Not this.
Not the empty insanity
that stared back at him. Not the sword
that flashed in the light of torches, red and dripping with his mother’s blood. Not the green, green, green eyes that were filled with lust beyond want for spilled
blood.
Not the way a gloved
hand wrapped around his upper arm and dragged him closer without gentleness or
care.
Not the way lips crashed
down over his screaming mouth and sucked out his spirit.
Not the way he couldn’t pull away from that grasp no matter
how hard he tried to squirm away—
He was dragged, kicking
and screaming amongst the chaos of the dying and the dead and the murderous and
the murderers, into his own room from whence he had come out of hiding at his
mother’s agonized screams. And the door
shut behind them.
There was fear and
horror. Dread that crawled over his
skin, chilling.
But none of it compared
to the disillusioned despair.
Cruel was the hand of
fate, to have dealt him these cards through the alignment of the heavens and
the gifts of the Music. He had a One—some
never found their fated mate, and it
was always so celebrated, so joyous—but this was no blessing. There was no happiness. There were no moonlight kisses to be snuck. No giggling together and blushing at
half-censored lewd jokes. No courting or
flirting beneath the boughs of familiar trees and under the shade of vibrant
gardens. No engagement and marriage and
no endless days of bliss winding off into the horizon of eternity.
There was blood and pain
and hopelessness.
There was red and green and
white.
And then there was only
black. Only black. His fate.
---
Sometimes dreams were
lovely little things. They brought forth
what little joy could be found among a world dying as it was choked to death in
the maws of the northern shadows and the greed of the West and the lies that
closed in from every corner. But dreams
had to end. And Thranduil’s dream had
ended that day.
Just once, though, he
wished he could have had his little dream.
Even looking back upon
it—millennia later, from his position of power upon his throne when the shadows
once again closed in around him with salivating fangs ready to tear him open
and eat him alive—he wished he could have had just this one dream.
He wished his fate could
have been different. That his naivety
could have, for once, proven to be true.
That that giggling maiden or stern-faced warrior lingering in the back
of his mind was more than a crafted illusion.
That everything would have turned out for the best in the end because
surely Eru, who wrote the grand ballad that shaped the world, would want to
weave a happy ending for all who held goodness and rightness to their breasts and
not torment His Children ceaselessly without cause.
Maybe, then, he would
have had something to smile about when destiny-turned-reality and the cold light
of the stars wove their strings about his fragile life and wrapped him in webs
of discord. When they found Thranduil
once again damned and alone and wanting.
All he had wanted was to
find his One. And he had. But, looking back, he wished desperately—forlornly
and bleakly and foolishly—that he had not.
Not like that. Never like that.
He would have missed
Valthoron. And he would have missed
Legolas. Or, if he had married a sweet
maiden or a beautiful warrior and lived out his days in peace, he might have
had them both anyway. And maybe they,
too, would have been unburdened by the cruelties and sin of the past that could
not be changed.
Maybe, then, there would
be more than the vortex of black sucking him down.
Maybe… Maybe…
Yet, as he sat upon his
throne and stared blankly into the distance, Thranduil always had to wonder…
Had it all been laid out in the stars? Was it all meant to be? When the Music gave
him Amrod, had it truly been a warped mistake, a note of discord in the great
harmonies that led to this torment?
Was there ever really any hope?
Or, perhaps, he had been destined to suffer from the very start…
Perhaps he had been beneath the cruel hand of fate from the very
beginning.
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