A Broken Hallelujah - by Vladazhael
It broke him, finally, to learn that the jewel spurned him as well.
oOoOo
Maedhros had met Cirlómiel in Aman, long before either of them knew of the myriad horrors to follow. Back then, she was only the sister of a friend, not much to look at and so far below the scope of his thoughts that it took him half the journey across the sea to discover that she, too, had chosen to leave the land of the Valar and seek something greater in Beleriand.
Neither of them ever found anything greater, save in each other.
It was in Hithlum that she first caught his attention as anything more than a once-removed acquaintance, but not until Himring did they speak as any more than that. There, the cold winds ripping across the hill robbed her of sleep as they did him, and they met high on the battlements more than once in the ponderous dark, only to be chased away again by the storms into the warmth of his library. She loved his books, and said so often enough that he grew to crave her approval of his collection, and her company. Never did she shy away from him there, nor anywhere else, and she spared him the formality of "my lord" and "sir" in favor of the familiarity of old friends - a familiarity he missed, with his brothers scattered across the land.
In time she came to him willingly, without vows and without reservations, to lay her body upon his, and share with him something denied by those who would plead for honor and the old customs. Those vows were for peaceful times and gentle people, she insisted, not for them. They were different, and without each other, too alone. And they had both made their own vows already - the Oath held him, and would until its fulfillment, and she had sworn to her brother, whose eyes were at times too sharp, that she would not marry the Lord of Himring.
And so, she did not.
But she held him fast; of that there was no doubt. It was her confession that had captured him - only a few words, but spoken boldly and early, when he had worried aloud that she had compromised herself too greatly for him.
"Compromise would be for me to bond with some placid young scribe or some other such safe choice for the sake of pairing off and behaving properly. There would be dishonor in that. Instead, I honor myself in reaching out and taking something I have wanted since before I was old enough to fully understand it. You have haunted me, Nelyo, for half my life; now I wish to do the same to you."
He must have acted quite the cad until then to make her believe she did not already. Within months, she showed him more wonder than had graced his dismal life in centuries. Amazing that he had once thought her a mere child, almost beneath his notice! It had been a mistake to underestimate her then; her youthful impetuousness had grown over time into the spirited disposition that challenged and beckoned him in its full blossom. She did not brighten his life, exactly - it would have taken more than a single person to do that, after all he had seen - but she made it move. She shook him. By her boundless nerve she drew his gaze ever forward, and snapped him out of a cold reverie that might have smothered him. It was not in her nature to allow him to suffer from inside - they were too alike, she claimed, and she professed to know to what depths he would sink if left alone with the weight of his responsibilities.
She could have no idea, of course. But if she sought to grant him some measure of freedom, he would not hinder her. The liberty he found coiled within her naked form was as much as he could hope for until the Oath was ended and the Enemy destroyed.
She opened to him readily from the very start, and it frightened him nearly as much as it pleased him to see her so heedless of the danger that surrounded him. But never had she cared for the warnings of others, nor for limits of any kind. What concern had they for what might stop this brash union; for what might keep them from the release of the forbidden?
But always, things change.
Rumors of the Silmarils came to him from afar, and he followed them bravely, as a warrior should, and with little thought to what or who might be left behind, wondering. She grew tired of the sudden loneliness and the secrets, of the Oath's power, greater than her own. She did not fear it, and never had, but she begrudged it that supremacy. She had not come so far, and risked so much, to be put back upon a shelf when her presence was not needed. Her words twisted in his heart - "I will not be overlooked for some trinket!"
They had parted in anger, ever proud; she had almost succeeded in kicking him out of his own chambers and directly out onto the road for this last journey, but at the last moment a door slammed sharply behind her must have seemed more effective. She had not returned to his sight since, though he had delayed his departure for long enough to allow her a chance to come seeking forgiveness - or to forgive him, if that was what must be. Neither had happened; her rejection was real. He felt it far too deeply.
On every night since, when he was plagued by the same lack of sleep that had brought them together, he hoped beyond all reason that she might come speeding after him, mad with love and remorse, too stubborn to be kept safe at home. And each day that dawned in loneliness drove the hope further from his heart, until he thought no more pain could touch him.
The sizzle and ache of the Silmaril ravaging his flesh proved him all too wrong.
oOoOo
Title from “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen.