In the darkness of dreams and reflections, she used to be able to deceive her heart into loving him. It was in these quiet hours when she was able to look at him and see him for what she wanted him to be. In the moments as he drifted to sleep, one of his arms carelessly wrapped around her waist, she sank into his warm embrace, her back turned to him. The halls were quiet in these moments, but rather than the usual oppressive quiet, it was almost peaceful. And when her husband slept besides her, for once calm and silent, she could close her eyes and replace the stillness of the halls with the unchanging delusions of fantasies and dreams.
In her half remembered, half imagined dream world Aredhel loved Eol the way a wife should. She looked at her husband with the same glance Nerdanel wore when she gazed on Feanor, with that passionate, burning intensity that seemed to block out all other light.
Because they were only dreams, Aredhel limited herself to her earliest childhood memories, forgetting that Nerdanel's eyes had looked like pits of coal when Aredhel had seen her weeping, the heat of her heart still smoldering. Forgetting just how easily Feanor's adoration had been fixed on the silmarils after she was gone. Clarity and easy answers played little enough role in her life, and so Aredhel's dreams remained solidly fixed on an uncomplicated, childhood perception of love. She knew they were half truths, but they were a kind comfort in the sharp angles and walls of the hall, so she held them close, and in the intoxicating warmth and quiet, and, sapping the fire and heat from them, deceived her heart into feeling tenderness to him.
When day came to the eternal darkness, Eol would leave their bed and the swift hands of silence returned once more to stifle her. The absence of Eol's warmth next to her forced her mind awake, and the moment her eyes opened, they examined her life with a sudden clarity and brightness.
Every morning as she was painfully pulled into this illuminated dawn of darkness; she forced her mind over the sharp, brittle truths that seemed to become harsher as they slowly lessened in importance. She knew that the girls she once was, who sang as she raced her cousins through the forest, whose glittering sword stood ever ready to cut its' way to freedom, would never have accepted the cold dark prison Aredhel was building in her mind.
In a prison of iron and chains she would have died fighting, but the music of the hunt, and light of freedom would have remained in her heart. But a maze built by a dark stranger with declarations of love and eyes like liquid iron sapped away her strength slowly until she no longer wanted to fight.
She hadn't even meant to stay in the beginning. Eol offered her refuge from the confused labyrinth she had slipped into, and her exhaustion urged her to accept. Both planned,, careless destiny and Eol's twisted machinations had kept her there.
Eol, seeing the sword at her side, had offered to spar with her, and under his goading she accepted. She had the upper hand until chance, and the inky slickness of her walls had conspired against her, and she slipped on the smooth stone.
As she was recovering, she walked with him through the maze of forest, as the stars hummed overhead, giving just enough light for her to see Eol's fiery eyes. As they walked he would entreat her to stay, telling her all he could offer, all he could love her.
The night that she bonded to him they had been walking this way. Thin veils of mist and cloud sang as they brushed across the stars, however the moons shone yellow though the haze with a passionate intensity. Aredhel became so engrossed in the sky, that she half tripped over a rock, and Eol steadied her, leaving his hand wrapped around her in the pretense of stabilizing her from her already healed wound.
They paused to watch moon which to Aredhel had seemed like a sparkling jewel struggling to become remembered after forgotten ages in netted darkness. Just as it seemed that the moon would speak to her, teaching lessons in darkness or light she would never know, Eol's grip tightened around her, and his lips pressed violently against hers.
He pulled her close, and she wondered what to feel about the sensation of his hair on her neck and his warms skin against hers. For a moment she neither resisted, nor accepted his embrace, and her gaze remained fixed on the bright point in the darkened sky.
She remembered hunting with the sons of Feanor. She remembered the chase, the heat pounding through her veins as she chased her prey. She wondered if Eol saw himself as a hunter, in which case she was the prey. Disturbed by the thought she pushed him off her violently, pried his finger from her wrist where he continued to hold her.
Eol said nothing, but he smiled at her. Her eyes fixed on his faced, and she wanted nothing more than to go for the kill, to feel an echo of those long ago days of freedom and elation. With a speed and ferocity that surprised Eol possibly as much as it surprised her, Aredhal had knocked them both to the ground. The night faded away in passion and sweat and a desperate struggle for release. Even as Aredhel recoiled from him, her body fighting against his, she pulled him closer, the song of the hunt running through her veins and blocking rational thought.
Aredhel left as Eol's wife, and in her mind she could almost hear the moon weeping. Her heart was silent on the matter.
Whole years passed, and even though Aredhel retained her knowledge that their union should have never been, she couldn't bring herself to leave him. She didn't have the strength to return to a world of light. Eol became so much clearer in her mind and dreams than the memory of Caranthir, and Celegorm, and even her own brother Fingon and Turgon.
She wasn't strong enough to leave the deceptive familiar shadows for the unknown world that Aredhel knew no longer existed as her memories perceived it. For many years Aredhel came so close to leaving but in the end she stayed, and told herself it was out of love to make it bearable. She allowed herself to stay, and some part of her wanted to, and that knowledge, more than anything makes her afraid to leave and pretend to be the girl that she destroyed.
However, the desire to return to light lessened with time and familiarity, as she had supposed it would. Aredhel doesn't know when the shadows became lighter but they have. Her walks with Eol no longer seem a burden fulfilled out of custom and illusions. She is beginning to admit to herself that the darkness is bearable because of him. Aredhel is beginning to admit that her dark fantasies have become a more terrifying reality.
When she whispered in his ear of the life she carried inside of her, Eol had laughed and pressed his hand against her waist, and Aredhel told herself that the possessiveness in his eyes was out of love for her, nothing more. Slowly the lies are becoming truths, and she knows that she is losing this chase.
She can't pretend anymore. Eol lays in their bed and as Aredhel watches him, the light from the candles she leaves lit bounces of the cold stones walls and illuminates his ever feature. She kisses him and knows that she is no longer feigning tenderness. When he wakes, grabbing her arms and violently kissing her back, she knows the burning in her heart is genuine.
That night, with Eol face resting on her shoulder, his body wedged tightly against hers, she feels that the shadows reach out to suffocate her, and if she could cry, she would. In her mind Aredhel tries desperately to remember Fingon holding her hand as a child, Alatriel combing her hair, Maglor raising his voice in song.
Aredhel remembers the world and life that she has lost, and tries not to remember that it was destroyed by molten eyes and desperate dreams.