50 Prompts: AU Silmarillion by Urloth

Prompt: Justification (Finrod, Celegorm, Curufin, Celebrimbor)

Summary: The light has left my eyes and all that is left is ashes upon your tongue. Finrod’s actions, well justified, will haunt him forever.

Warnings: Gore, horror, character death.

The light has left my eyes and all that is left is ashes upon your tongue

At first the ghost is indistinct, a barely wavering thing that Finrod glimpses from the corner of his eyes, lurking in the shadows. It is a mist, never appearing in the sunlight, always gone when he tries to get closer.

Choke son of Arafinwë, choke upon my ashes. Choke upon your ill deeds.

In time it is joined by another, an even darker and harder to glimpse shadow. Then another.

They’re not always about. He can go weeks and even months without seeing them and then suddenly there they will be, gentle wisps that a stray wind banishes from his sight.

We your kin did trust you and you cast us into the darkness!

Curufin is the first to become distinct to him, dragging his body across the ground and leaving a long, growing trail of blood behind him. And his lips writhe back from his mouth in a hateful grimace, glinting sharp and ready for Finrod’s neck.

Curufin’s own neck bares a smile to replace the one not on his lips.

Bread.

Celebrimbor is the worst, his shaking hand clutching a sword, his neck at a decidedly wrong angle with a long string of droll lolling out of his mouth.

He looks so frightened.

So very frightened.

Bread to feed the stomachs of homeless innocents.

Celegorm is the last, charred all over and unrecognisable till Finrod catches sight of a familiar ring, melted into the charred, reveal bone of a finger.  Celegorm’s skin is cracked and bleeding sluggish trails of gory red down the cooked meat of his arms and legs.  He shambles along, dark eyes accusing, his hair nothing but grey ash wisps against his scalp.

There is no fight in his body, just a uneven, staggering, trudging step, with no hope of it ending in his expression, what is left of his face to express with at least.

It is a change from the beaten but defiant cousin who spat at his feet and cursed him, fire in his eyes despite his exhaustion.

Bread Findaráto.

He had done the calculations. He had worked out every way they could scrip and save and make room for the survivors. But nothing was to be done, and with a heavy heart he turned away the refugees of Himlad. He turned them away and sent them towards Himring though he managed some supplies.

Nothing more than a token really.

Bread for our lives.

Curufin he dreams of slumped against the ground and grasping from a still pale hand a sword. Valiantly he raises it, trying to fend off the leering orc with its black, crooked dagger, his body pulled protectively over Celebrimbor’s despite the torn stumps of Curufin’s legs which are pumping out his life’s blood.

Celebrimbor does not move beneath his father’s protective shelter. He does not move at all. His head is twisted about, his eyes stare at the sky, and his chest does not move.

Who dares put a price on the life of a man? Who dares calculate how much can be saved if he dies?

Celegorm he dreams of defiantly walking into the flames of a dragon, his armour melting off him, and somewhere in the smoky dream landscape he sees a slumped, charred corpse that might have been canine amongst the bodies he knows by the shape of the limbs are human. Sees the burnt out wagons and tents that are nothing more than cinder waiting for a gust of wind to break them apart.

“There is nothing left,” he hears his cousin’s silver voice sob into his head, cracked and mad with grief, “there is no one left.”

Fair and wise you were proclaimed.

“There is still no sign of the survivors from Himlad,” Orodreth reads the missive, brought by hawk wing to them.

 “Himring searches far and wide, as much as they can at this time, Hithlum searches far and wide, but nothing can be found of them. There is only scorched earth and death to be found between any of the surviving settlements. They are considered lost.”

Orodreth’s voice falters on the last word.

He closes his mouth.

Swallows.

Turns away from Finrod.

Finrod stares blankly at the tapestry on the wall of his office, stares at the branches of Laurelin and Teleperion entwined, and the festival going on beneath with mingled elves of every creed rejoicing in the light.

Fair and wise indeed.