Love Me Now by Grundy

Chapter 1

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I don't know what's in the stars
Never heard it from above, the world isn't ours

He thought when he first saw her that he’d strayed into a dream. Loveliness like her did not exist in the mortal world, and he had not been among the Firstborn before – though even if he had, he would later learn, she was held peerless even among her own people.

She was also a princess, the daughter of the proud king of Doriath, who loved her dearly and did not mean to part with her to a mortal boy, no matter how daring or brave he might be. A jewel from Morgoth’s crown was the bride price he set, and Beren knew it was meant to be impossible. The greatest princes of the Firstborn had failed to do this, so how was a mere Man to compass it?

He laughed all the same. Next to having won the love of the fairest-born woman in all the world, what was stealing from the Dark Lord? Of the two, he held the first to be the more unlikely– and between his Tinuviel or the Silmaril, he knew which was the greater treasure.

It was at her eyes that he looked, not her father’s, when he swore to return with a Silmaril in his hand. And come what may, to that he would hold. He might lack the foresight of her people, but he had the courage of his. Luthien loved him as he loved her, and he could not bear the thought that she should be disappointed.

He can’t promise her happily ever after – not when he knew that his years are nothing compared to all the ages of the world that she will live. An elf and a man should be impossible. Gaining a Silmaril should be impossible. But for her, he will make the impossible happen.

But I know what's in my heart
If you ain't mine I'll be torn apart

She had not understood, when she first saw him, that they were of different kinds, Elf and Man. Until that moment, she had only ever known her own people. The Girdle held the Secondborn at a distance and she had never ventured beyond the reach of her mother’s power, content as she was in her father’s realm.

She knew of the Secondborn, of course. Her cousin Finrod had spoken of them, and she had listened as avidly as any other to his tales of the curious, short-lived Children, much like elves in their form yet so different in their fate. She had not understood her father’s disdain – fear, even – of them.

“Why should Ada fear them so?” she had asked her mother later, when the two of them were alone. “They cannot match us in strength, my cousins say, and their days are little more than those of horses or jewel birds.”

“Your father has foreseen that one of them will one day do him a great harm,” Melian had replied, with a fond smile for her daughter as she brushed out her hair. “Thus your father would have them kept far from us.”

Luthien had frowned.

“Even the Girdle cannot hold back our appointed doom,” she murmured, feeling in her bones even as her mouth shaped the words that she spoke with foresight.

“True, my dearest one,” her mother nodded. “And yet, wise though you are in some ways, you are still young and know nothing of a parent’s love for their child – for it is his father’s heart, not his sensible mind, that Elu allows to rule him in this. You will understand better someday.”

Her mother’s words had puzzled her at the time, for she thought she understood a parent’s love already. She knew her parents loved her deeply.

But when she looked into the eyes of Beren son of Barahir, she felt the full weight of the words she had so casually spoken. For there was wonder in his eyes – but there was also something more, something greater than either of them staring back at her.

He called her Tinuviel, and she heard not only his words, but the Song beneath them. Finally, she understood. This was the harm her father had foreseen – that his only daughter should lose her heart to a mortal man.
But it being done, she trusted that he would surrender to the inevitable. She brought her intended before her parents, certain that grudging though it might be, their blessing would be given to the union. When instead her father set a Silmaril as her bride price, knowing it to be an impossible task, she felt her heart beginning to break. For all his efforts to thwart what he had foreseen, he drew doom ever tighter about them, until she
felt it strangling as a noose.

She slipped out on a moonless night to find Beren, to aid him. For she knew this much to be true: their joy would not be as her parents’, stretching contented arms out to eternity. It will be ephemeral as the life of an Aftercomer, hard-won and bought with great pain.

But without him, endless though her days might be, there would be only ashes and dust. She is an elf, and her people give their hearts once only. Beren has hers in his keeping, so she has little choice but to follow, to whatever end.

Something inside us
Knows there's nothing guaranteed

Ulmo had commanded him to bear a message to the King of the Hidden City, to warn the folk of the Hidden City that their time of grace was nearly at an end. Oddly enough, the Lord of Waters had said nothing about the King’s daughter. It seemed like an obvious oversight, because Tuor couldn’t understand how any man who knew her wouldn’t fall in love with her.

It wasn’t just her beauty, although she certainly had that, with the sunshine hair of her mother’s people and the starlit sea in her eyes. (She tells him with a laugh that she has her father’s eyes. Tuor has to confess that he hasn’t looked anywhere near as closely at Turgon’s eyes as he has at his daughter’s. And probably shouldn’t.) It was beauty of a different kind that ensnared him – her kindness, her intelligence, her unfailing care for her family and her people.

Staying in Gondolin was no hardship when it meant staying in Idril Celebrindal’s company. The only thing that gave him pause was Ulmo’s message, the message he’d been sent to deliver - a warning to Turgon that the time had come to leave Gondolin, for the Hidden City was no longer safe from its enemies. But he reasoned that by staying, he could protect Idril. For as long as he lived, short though that might be to a woman of immortal years, she would come to no harm.

That she could find it in her immortal heart to return the love he bore her – which he had deemed hopeless – would amaze him until his last breath. It humbled him that with so many of her own people about her, handsome, graceful, and ageless, she saw something in him worth casting away the eternity of happiness that should have been her lot in favor of whatever fleeting joy she might glean within mortal days.

When all the forces of darkness came pouring over the mountains, Doom finding Turgon’s people at last, he swore to her that even if it cost his own life, she and their son were going to live – and not as thralls of Morgoth.

And he meant it.

When we've done all that we could
To turn darkness into light, turn evil to good

It was never going to end well. She was a princess of a Noldorin city that would sooner or later fall to the Doom, and he was the herald of its end, a mortal doomed to die. Love should have never entered into the equation.

And yet, somehow it did, slipping in where she had least expected it. For he was brave and true of heart, and accepted with good cheer not only the task laid on him by Ulmo, but the decree of her father that none who knew the way to the Hidden City should leave it again. A lone Man in a city of Eldar, he would be at best a curiosity for the short time allowed him before he passed beyond the circles of the world.

If it burdened him, he never let it show. Where she would have expected a dimming, there was only a brightening, as he found delight in the city and its people. Though his coming was as the footsteps of doom, his smiles brightened her darkening days, and his faith renewed her fading hope.

“Have hope, my lady- the sun still rises, so all is not yet lost,” he told her when he found her in a moment of doubt, fearing that her father’s refusal to heed the words of Ulmo meant they would all be destroyed. Her people – her incredible people who survived both the Dark and the Ice – have known enough of pain and loss. Beautiful as Gondolin may be, she would abandon the city without a second thought if that meant safety for its people. “Let us do what we can, while we can.”

She had no good answer for her father when he asked how she could bear to tie herself to a mortal, to accept that love and joy would be her lot for but the blinking of an eye, with all the ages of the world to follow emptier for his absence. For Tuor’s death would not be as her mother’s or the rest of her fallen kin – he would not someday walk living from Mandos, but depart the circles of the world as was the fate of Men. She only knew that if she did not follow her heart and seize her chance at joy, no matter how fleeting, she would live all those ages with her regret.

She had no regrets. Not in Gondolin, where her cousin had been far from the only lord astonished by her choice. Not in Sirion where they had come as refugees, with naught but the clothes on their backs and what they had gleaned from the forests on their trek to the Sea to give their young son. Not even now, on the Sea, on what may yet prove to be a journey that ends in death.

But he still lives, and the sun still rises, so she still has hope.
 

Even when we try so hard
For that perfect kind of love, it could all fall apart

It’s hard to live up to his parents. Luthien was the fairest born maiden ever to have lived, her mother a Maia, her father an Unbegotten king of the Eldar. Beren son of Barahir had been famed for his feats of daring even before he met her dancing in the forest. Together, they had done the impossible - defeated Gorthaur, cut a jewel from the crown of Belegurth himself, and lived to tell the tale.

Well, sort of. They had also died – and his mother had promptly persuaded Mandos himself to grant them not only an unheard of reprieve from death, but also to allow her to share Beren’s fate. The singers may never tire of the tale.

Compared to that, Dior Eluchil has done absolutely nothing of note. He can claim no brave deeds or noble gestures that will be sung through the ages. He counted himself blessed that Nimloth Galathiliel loved him all the same, and that her parents didn’t expect him to go get another Silmaril or collect all the pearls in the oceans or some similarly impossible task before they allowed them to marry. Nor had they protested when Dior took his bride off to the banks of Andurant, near to Tol Galen.

Heir to Thingol though he might be, Dior felt at peace here in the wild, far from the threat in the North. They were well-hidden from the great Enemy, and close to his parents. He would be perfectly content to live with his darling wife and their daughter and baby sons in the little house near the waterfall forever. But his heart warned him that was not to be, the foresight inherited from his mother whispering that this idyll cannot last.

So he cherishes his wife and plays with his children and prays to any Balan that cares to listen that they may allow them their bliss for as long as they can.
 

Oh I don't know how the years will go down, it's alright
Let's make the most of every moment tonight

When Celebrian daughter of Galadriel and Celeborn accepted his suit, Elrond was overjoyed – though it was as well that Celebrian was so attuned to him, for he did not show his joy as much as his surprise. He may be the first husband-to-be in history who immediately asked if his intended had truly thought her answer through.

Celebrian knew that it was not that he did not love her, for he did, beyond words or reason. It was precisely because he loved her that Elrond repeated all the disadvantages to marrying him. The Choice was first and foremost among those, outweighing even the immense responsibility of Vilya and his refusal to accept any royal title – which bothered her not at all, and in truth probably did not bother her mother either, though Elrond believed it did. He did not need to add living in the shadow of the fate of the Noldor, for that is something she has already known all her life.

In that, they are evenly matched, both of mixed parentage, poised between the Noldor and the Sindar, each group ever looking to claim their positives and ascribe any perceived negative to the other side of their heritage. They both played a role in the Last Alliance, though hers will not be sung of as his was, for she had learned much from both her parents and did not need to stand openly upon a battlefield to fight. Her skills were best used preparing for battle. She knows plenty about sizing up disadvantages and assessing risks after all her reconnaissance and scouting work. She also knows how to observe people, adversaries and allies alike.

So she was not surprised that Elrond would point out, again, that while his own fate has long since been decided, his children will also be granted the double-edged choice of the Peredhil should they be born in Middle Earth.

Celebrian simply sighed, and pointed out, again, why his reasoning was somewhat defective – only this time, the summation of her counterargument was phrased less like her mother and more like her father. (In a word, “horseshit”.) She has been waiting on him for several yeni already, and she does not mean to further defer their happiness for however many years, decades, centuries, or millennia it may be until Sauron is defeated utterly.

That their future children may choose the fate of Men will not deter her – she counts it unlikely, but she accepted it as a risk. But she would rather seize what joy there is to be had in Middle Earth while they may. (She does not yet voice her delight that Elrond has moved from ‘child or children’ to ‘children’, for she has ever envied her parents’ tales of childhoods with siblings and cousins and wants that for her own children. Cousins are beyond her power to grant, for she is an only child and both Elrond’s brother and his children were long dead, but siblings…)

She adds only that she feels that the traditional year-long engagement will be quite sufficient in their case, given that Gil-Galad’s greatest frustration at dying in the Last Battle was doubtless that he had not seen their intended union formally announced. When, in a hazy someday on the far side of the Sea, they meet again, she knows his first words to her soon-to-be-husband will be “it took you long enough!”