A very late birthday (or only slightly late half-birthday) fic for Ruadhnait. Hope you enjoy it!
She rode into his lands, dark hair unbound and clad in white, a bright and welcomed gash across the bleak landscape of southern Beleriand.
When the scouts had returned to tell him of her coming, he'd ridden out to find her, more amenable to meeting out on unbroken plain than in his halls. To meet her under dark timbers would have seemed unduly and tensely formal he deemed and unbefitting of their past. And truly, the excitement of seeing her again, the thrill of meeting with her once more had put an ache and an itch in his muscles until he had no choice but to take mount himself.
The scouts had informed him that she wasn't riding alone. He'd dismissed any import behind those reports. In dangerous times, even Aredhel wasn't reckless enough to venture out alone and she must have brought an escort with her, from whatever hidden sanctuary she had found desirable enough to spend years within.
When their meager companies met one another, a small sliver of doubt crept into his mind.
She hadn't truly come with an escort, only one other. A thin-framed youth who, despite the sword at his side, looked like he wouldn't be able to defend her from the perils of the free roads. The boy was standing off to the side, skittishly shuffling his feet around in the dirt, and nervously looking up at Arien's glow and back down to the ground. He bore her dark hair, and the angled features of the house of Finwë, but he was paler than his mother and, Celegorm thought, lacking the proud carriage she always bore. Celegorm hadn't been able to meet the youth's eyes and absently wondered what color were hidden behind those dark lashed lids.
"My son, Lo- Maeglin." She said confidently, though the slight correction had not been missed on her cousin. Celegorm allowed his eyes to slide to the youth again. Had he even reached his majority? Perhaps, but he had the feeling that fine looking weapon dangling in its sheath would be better equipped at her waist instead.
A boy, her son she'd named him, clad in a man's armor and weaponry, said more about the actions of her absence than she would have been willing to speak in words. This child stood by as the single companion guarding the life of the only woman he'd ever truly loved, waiting for his cue to come forward. Perhaps he'd even unsheathe that pretty sword of his. Perhaps (but Celegorm doubted) he even knew how to use it.
Maybe what he'd felt for her hadn't been exactly love in the way one usually constructs notions about that particular emotion, but Celegorm had respected her more than most of the soldiers he labored beside, and he trusted her more than he trusted even his brothers at times. In muted tones, he could speak things to her that he could say to no one else, and perhaps she would laugh or maybe scoff, but then would offer him sound advice and put him straight. Her candor and her wit and her vicious clutch to freedom had always stirred something inside him. Apparently time apart did nothing to change those feelings.
Without thinking, he'd embraced her tightly, as he always had, wrapping strong arms around her delicate –when had she come to be delicate?- frame. She returned his grasp, but reluctantly.
"I come seeking nothing other than fresh mounts and supplies, Celegorm," she growled only moments after they'd finished their greetings. After hearing her words, he jerked away and saw that her eyes held a wild light, the grey in them matching the endless landscapes of the sky in the bleary beginnings of spring. The same grey light that promised life once spring returned.
(Her grey eyes. There was no hint of her Vanyarin heritage in them, and he loved her all the more for it.)
He was lost for a moment, trying to recall if and how much differently they had looked in times past, before he remembered that he should respond.
"What brings you here?" Realizing immediately that she'd just said what brought her to his lands. Supplies and steeds. She'd been gone, missing truly, for so long and for her to arrive unexpected at his doorstep with only those words…He was a resting point on her roads to elsewhere. A sour feeling pooled in his stomach as he waited for her to speak.
"I seek my brother once more." She said it with cool detachment, refusing to meet his gaze, and her pale hands smoothing out the silken fabric of her skirt. The hem, he saw, was stained with travel, not all of it new, and the rich silver embroidery broken in places, aged and never repaired.
"Hmm, and which brother is that?" Celegorm asked, raising an eyebrow, aiming to deflect the blow she'd cast and suddenly very conscious of the elegant surcote and breeches he wore. They seemed extravagant and out of place next to her and reminded him of how many leagues and years expanded between him and her and their days in Aman, hunting among Oromë's company.
She was silent for a time, concentrating on fixing her raiment, and adjusting the knives that hung at her slender waist. For a moment, and a moment only, Celegorm believed he caught a glance of mottled, purpled skin hidden beneath the white sleeves of her gown.
"Turgon, of course. I see no point in going to Hithlum. Fingon has secured those lands, surely."
Of course she must choose the most frustrating and hidden path. Turgon had vanished along with her, no word heard from him in years, and now she sought him out.
"I know what paths to seek" she began, as if reading Celegorm's mind. "I only need fresh mounts and supplies." She finally met his eyes again then and an angry fury burned in them, though where it was directed, Celegorm could not say. A small spark of fire ignited itself in his core as he saw the friend, and for whatever it meant, the love he'd missed for so long show a glimmer of her true self again. Beside it stood another pile of ignitable material, a dark fury, knowing fewer boundaries, one he knew he could scarcely contain even if necessary, at the black imaginations of what had withheld this boundless woman to mark her wrists as he had seen.
Anger, not at her particularly, colored his next words. "You seek a lost city then." He was not surprised when she responded irritably. He'd intended to inflame her, let his fire grow alongside hers, more comforted by her ire than any apologies she might have diminutively given.
"I go where it pleases me to go, and if you can offer me no aid, I will go without it and be no worse for your lacking hospitality." She was proud, a flaw that he knew he could not fault in another, for he bore the same one.
At the periphery of his vision, Celegorm could still see the pale youth, Magelin, the name tasting bitter on his tongue, trying to decide if the outbursts he'd seen warranted his intervention. He remained still, however, and Celegorm guessed that he'd heard harsher words slung at his mother.
All of it, the fire and anger building in his belly, the lack of escort, the bruises, the mistrust shown by his once friend, the child! The son that might have been his if an endless stream of events had unfolded differently, they surged and the pride of his father's blood and the resentment between their houses diffused between their tense forms forming like mountains between them. His jaw tensed and he felt, not entirely against his will, his fists clenching at his sides. She should have known better than to wander into dangerous lands and now she should know better than to seek out her lost brother. Most of all, he thought, she should know what her coming here with a child in tow would do to inflame him.
Despite that, he thought with a long controlled breath, he could not send her away. To let her go North alone made his heart ache, and a tenseness grow in his chest. She was capable, perhaps even more than he, but he could not let her go towards danger alone. He let out another breath, allowing his hot anger to be cooled on the wind that cut across the grey and green fields. He forced his fingers out a stiff fists. Intentionally, he softened his tone.
"Aredhel, rethink this, please. Stay with us. My brother and I can protect you. " Celegorm swallowed the bile at the back of his throat "I'll protect you" he swallowed again, downing a sense of pain and disappointment, "and your son."
She looked him in the eye, and in that gaze he tried to remember Aman, the light of the Trees surrounding them and the thrill of the hunt before them.
Still, no matter his memories, it was not the same. Even if he struggled to recall those times, he recognized that some different cloak enveloped her now. Things he should have noticed immediately suddenly struck him. When had those shadows pooled beneath her eyes? When had her tanned skin turned pale?
"You believe I require your protection?" Her voice was a harsh hiss in his ear.
"Irissë," he whispered, and knew immediately that it had been a mistake for her eyes flashed at the name. It was too intimate, too familiar for all the years they'd spent apart. He reached out for her elbow, trying to be reassuring and calming, trying to make up for the long-lost name he had just spoken.
At his touch, she jerked away. And, merely in reflex, a lifetime of training to be reactive in situations such as these, he caught her wrist as it twisted away from him. His fingers clasping around the suddenly frail looking junction between hand and arm, just where those perhaps imagined bruises had lain, now covered by her pale gown. Stilled there for a moment, he felt the blood beating in her arteries beneath his fingers, wild and quick.
She'd hit him before, more than once, struck him across the face when she felt she'd been wronged. For a moment he'd thought she'd do it again, leaving a staining imprint across his cheek.
She did not do that. And in the seconds before she tore out of his grasp he thought he felt her tremble.
He almost wished she'd hit him instead. A blow to the face would have been less terrifying than the shudder that had quaked her before he loosened his hand.
When she spoke next her words did not falter at all, and there was not tremor in her voice.
"I seek fresh mounts-"
"-and supplies, yes. You'll have them, Aredhel."
Celegorm gave his cousin and her boy new horses, a bright and lively mare with a snowy mane who was eager to be ridden to match her bleached clothing and a dappled stallion who only sometimes balked at shadows. He'd filled their saddlebags with supplies, food and waterskins, ropes, traps. All things they might need, and he trusted she would know how to use.
He provided for her simple requests and for a brief moment, on their leave-taking, they stood close to one another, her hands starting to grasp the edges of his. When he looked at her then her eyes were less harsh than they had been upon their meeting. Her breath was warm and welcome on his cheeks. A breeze swept across the plains, warmer than it had been days ago, twisting strands of flaxen and ebony hair together for a second before she pulled away.
"I thank you for-"as close as she was, her words were caught on the wind before he could truly hear them, and he was immersed in watching her red lips form the words she'd spoken before.
"The fresh mounts and supplies." He answered. That was enough for now. It was all he could give her if that was all she would accept.