Love? by ford_of_bruinen

Love?

Read Love?

What is love to one like you? With eternity in front of you?”
The hoarse question cut through the darkness, almost bouncing off the walls in the small cell, or maybe that was just what he felt, trapped here far beneath the light of stars and the caress of winds. It was a good question. What was love and was it different for his kind than to men with their sadly limited lifetimes?
He let his mind wander as he considered the answer. What was love? He closed his eyes, thinking of Amarie and their light-hearted romance; she had promised to wait, but he was no longer the same as he had been then. Were their feelings truly love? Was it strong enough to support the changes to his personality?
He thought of those closest to him, his brothers and his sister. He loved them but it was a slow love, a constant strumming in the back of his ever busy mind, like small parts of himself, of what made him who he was. Could what Angrod and Andreth had be called love, when his brother refused to break tradition despite his feelings? Galadriel and Celeborn, he was almost certain it was a love match, but even so there had been politics involved and mutual benefits. Did that lessen love or was it just another aspect?
Without intention, he drifted back in years, not to his childhood but later, when they were all coming of age, a time of bright passions and confused emotions. Strangely enough it was not the first time he saw Amarie that came to mind….
******
Most guests had retired for the night, there were only a few that still lingered: the oldest four of Feanor’s boys, himself and his sister, both Aredhel’s older brothers (the youngest having been forced to retire with his parents) and Elenwe and her cousin Glorfindel, who were as familiar guests as any other..
The close friendship between Aredhel and Elenwe had always been encouraged, he suspected his uncle hoped the gentle, ladylike behaviour of Elenwe would, sooner or later, rub off on his own daughter, yet it never seemed to. They were as different as darkness and light, Aredhel with her tall athletic figure, raven hair and skin as pale as the snows on the far mountains beside Elenwe's smaller, curvier stature with her bright smile and rosy complexion: the very opposites of Quendi beauty. His aesthetic eye appreciated the loveliness of the pair at the same time as his ever analytical mind wondered what bound them together. It could not be the lack of sisters as his own sister was surrounded by brothers yet never seemed to form close female friendships, and it certainly did not seem to be common interests. And yet as the years had passed, they had gone from good friends to inseparable.
Tonight they had all drunk more wine than they should and the room echoed with laughter and racy jokes. He had spent most of the evening debating one thing or another with Maglor, enjoying the exchange of both wit and ideas. In many ways they were closer than he was to most of his brothers, even if not as close as Fingon and Maedhros.
The soft click of a closing door made him look up, momentarily distracted from his current debate with Maglor, to see the girls had slipped outside. The rest of the room buzzed with conversations and laughter, it seemed no one else had noticed the absence of either girl at the moment. He could not tell why he kept watching them through the tall window, but he did, surprised by how hesitant, almost shy, the movements of Fingolfin’s bold daughter seemed as she reached out towards her friend, and shocked by the easy kiss that followed. It did not look new or awkward, there was intimacy in it, a thing often done and repeated. His society taught him that what he was seeing was wrong, yet there was something simple and stunning about the pair as they stood together in the light of Telperion.
Tearing his eye away he met Maglor’s, seeing the small shrug from his best friend before he once again launched into a new, even livelier debate. Maglor started this one, on the value of a modern society.
***
‘It never ends,’ he croaked, forcing the words past his abused vocal chords. ‘And few, if any, love again. That was what surprised me when I heard what happened. That she would marry, that she would carry a son, there was something unnatural about that…’
‘Who?’ Beren’s voice was confused and almost as painful as his own.
He remained quiet. His memories were crowded with the shrieks of grief from the Helcaraxë, with the long conversations between himself and Maglor, talking and reminiscing about the women they had left behind. Love took so many shapes, yet that one, the forbidden and hidden, was the one that had come to mind at Beren’s question. Perhaps because it reminded him in some ways of Beren’s own forbidden, the hidden, and the condemnation when it came to light. Aredhel’s never had, but perhaps that was still the reason why Beren’s fate had so touched him. Aredhel’s and Maedhros'…
***
Maedhros had returned from Thangorodrim a changed man, not just by the lack of his hand and the scars to his beauty, though those were the most obvious. But he had lost openness, a fairness that had always been there previously. It was not Finrod himself who had noted it, but Glorfindel, Elenwe’s cousin, who had pointed it out one night after too many drinks. It was one of those rare occasions when he had come to visit Turgon in Nevrast and of course Glorfindel was there, the ever present shadow to Aredhel.
What he had not realised at first was the agony behind those words, why this new change to Maedhros mattered so much to Glorfindel. But then, there had been too much wine and it had not seemed to matter since, as always, Glorfindel’s Vanyarin looks made him think of Amarie and question his own sanity for ever leaving her behind. She had wanted him to stay, she had even outright asked him and he had still left. That, despite having taken place over half a century before, seemed far more important to him that night than Glorfindel’s worries about a mutual friend.
It was not until Mereth Aderthad that he found the answer. He had soon become aware of what tied Glorfindel and Aredhel together, and he had finally understood why Glorfindel alone of the Vanyar had followed them into exile. It was in fact so simple that he could not understand that he had not seen it before. Maedhros had asked. Therein lay the answers to all those things, in the simple fact that Maedhros, where himself and Maglor had not, had asked Glorfindel to come. And Glorfindel had come, leaving his family behind - because Maedhros had asked.
Whereas his realisation of the forbidden nature of Aredhel’s feelings had risen from the witness of a kiss, there was no such overt action opening his eyes to that of Glorfindel and Maedhros. In that case it had come from observing them, both in their formal places in the courts and in those few moments where they relaxed, knowing themselves surrounded only by friends. Even so, the only touch he observed the entire evening was a light brush of the shoulder, an almost certainly not accidental mistake of wineglasses and a small smile, for once reaching Maedhros' grey eyes, that they had exchanged as the guests started to disperse. Despite that, Finrod knew and envied them. He envied the bravery it took to walk their path, their loyalty and that deep, quiet love that, once you noticed it, was so easy to see between them, and those things made him miss Amarie more. Made him both happy she was safe in the west and wish that he, like Maedhros, had asked her to stand beside him. He wondered what she would have answered, his Amarie of the gentle smiles and cool logic. Deeply uncomfortable, he had to admit to himself that she would probably have declined, explaining her reasons for remaining most logically and admirably before asking him to hurry back.
***
‘We take it for granted,’ he whispered, breaking the silence again. ‘We take it for granted because of all the years awaiting us, letting us slowly work through our disagreements, allowing us to spend time apart, knowing there will be time together in the future. We should look to those with hidden loves, and to your people. We should learn from you to love fully and in the moment, with the knowledge that no day has a certain ending. What is love to us? It is a certainty of something to come and something else that can wait until the perfect time, like mine and Amarie’s, Maglor’s and his wife’s and Angor and Andreth. We let it slip away believing forever waits, and by now we really should know better.’
He could smell the wolf even before the key was set in the door; it was a rank smell of things foul to nature and of death. ‘They come,’ he told Beren quietly. ’Think of her and of tomorrows.’
Then the door opened.

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Chapter End Notes

This was written back in 2013 but for some reason never posted here.