Crossroads
Title: Crossroads
Author: Aramel
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Type: Angst/Drama
Characters: Caranthir, Haleth
Summary: For the AU challenge: what might have happened had Haleth stayed in Thargelion. Haleth/Caranthir.
This is still rather rough, but I felt that it would have spoiled the mood to correct it. So I present, without further ado:
Crossroads
He'd invited her to stay in his land, moved by some impulse he'd never had.
She had been silent for a long moment. And she said yes, the wild east-woman who led those who remained of her kin. "But I will not be in your debt," she said, and it was less a question than a statement. "There will be no talk of lord or vassal between us. My people are free."
"Take what is offered freely," he had replied, intrigued at this directness of speech and manner. None had addressed him thus brusquely in long years-- he who had been a prince of the Noldor and was now lord of Thargelion. "Your folk will come to no harm."
So things should have ended-- but as the year waned he found his ways taking him ever closer to the dwellings of the Haladin, and he came at last to her house. She did not seem surprised, and said only, "You are here." He had found no words to answer her. He spent a year there, under the sky and the roofs of the Edain, and roamed the lands with her.
He was due to return in the spring; and one evening he spoke suddenly, and pressed a ring of wood into her hand, and in the firelight and the sunset it gleamed golden. "Haleth," he said, "I--"
And she replied, "Yes."
They were wed that winter, the first union of Elda and Adan upon Arda's face, and he knew that there were many of the Eldar who scoffed at him and laughed behind their hands. See, see the lord of the Feanorians who took a barbarian woman to wife! Surely the curse of madness has descended upon him! And he found that he did not care.
But now... truly had Finrod spoken, that such unions could only be bought with great anguish and grief, for his lady lay dying now in his arms, of no ailment save the weight of years, and he was powerless to aid her. Her breathing was laboured, and her wrinkled withered hand grasped his weakly. She had aged, and he was still young, and this seemed to him an injustice intolerable.
"Carnistir," she breathed, naming him in his native tongue.
"Hush," he told her. He kissed her on the brow. She took a rattling breath and was still.
With a remoteness he'd never thought himself capable of, he laid her still-warm body upon the green grass, and covered it with his cloak. He heard again the thousand jeering voices mocking him for inviting this pain upon himself, for giving his love to one who would die in mere decades, and leave him with not even the hope of a reunion in Mandos. He will regret it one day, when she is old and ugly and dying, you'll see!
Never, he replied in his thought. He knew that he must return now to the blood and death of the northern wars, bearing the memory of her and of their time together, the only perfection in a marred world. And perhaps one day they would meet again, despite the doom of the Valar, despite even the designs of Eru.
He lived on hope.
Author: Aramel
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Type: Angst/Drama
Characters: Caranthir, Haleth
Summary: For the AU challenge: what might have happened had Haleth stayed in Thargelion. Haleth/Caranthir.
This is still rather rough, but I felt that it would have spoiled the mood to correct it. So I present, without further ado:
Crossroads
He'd invited her to stay in his land, moved by some impulse he'd never had.
She had been silent for a long moment. And she said yes, the wild east-woman who led those who remained of her kin. "But I will not be in your debt," she said, and it was less a question than a statement. "There will be no talk of lord or vassal between us. My people are free."
"Take what is offered freely," he had replied, intrigued at this directness of speech and manner. None had addressed him thus brusquely in long years-- he who had been a prince of the Noldor and was now lord of Thargelion. "Your folk will come to no harm."
So things should have ended-- but as the year waned he found his ways taking him ever closer to the dwellings of the Haladin, and he came at last to her house. She did not seem surprised, and said only, "You are here." He had found no words to answer her. He spent a year there, under the sky and the roofs of the Edain, and roamed the lands with her.
He was due to return in the spring; and one evening he spoke suddenly, and pressed a ring of wood into her hand, and in the firelight and the sunset it gleamed golden. "Haleth," he said, "I--"
And she replied, "Yes."
They were wed that winter, the first union of Elda and Adan upon Arda's face, and he knew that there were many of the Eldar who scoffed at him and laughed behind their hands. See, see the lord of the Feanorians who took a barbarian woman to wife! Surely the curse of madness has descended upon him! And he found that he did not care.
But now... truly had Finrod spoken, that such unions could only be bought with great anguish and grief, for his lady lay dying now in his arms, of no ailment save the weight of years, and he was powerless to aid her. Her breathing was laboured, and her wrinkled withered hand grasped his weakly. She had aged, and he was still young, and this seemed to him an injustice intolerable.
"Carnistir," she breathed, naming him in his native tongue.
"Hush," he told her. He kissed her on the brow. She took a rattling breath and was still.
With a remoteness he'd never thought himself capable of, he laid her still-warm body upon the green grass, and covered it with his cloak. He heard again the thousand jeering voices mocking him for inviting this pain upon himself, for giving his love to one who would die in mere decades, and leave him with not even the hope of a reunion in Mandos. He will regret it one day, when she is old and ugly and dying, you'll see!
Never, he replied in his thought. He knew that he must return now to the blood and death of the northern wars, bearing the memory of her and of their time together, the only perfection in a marred world. And perhaps one day they would meet again, despite the doom of the Valar, despite even the designs of Eru.
He lived on hope.