Dénouement by sallysavestheday

Dénouement

From a Fellowship of the Fics January 2024 trope roulette prompt: "second chance romance," and "scars."

This fic uses the version of canon in which Amrod burned with the ships, and assumes that neither Feanor nor Maeglin has Returned.

It is one thing to have been murdered, as so many of them were.

It is another to have been murdered by someone who loved you, regardless of how twisted and rancid that affection had become. Few can comprehend that pain, or understand the scars it leaves behind.

Amrod watches Aredhel work the crowd at her home-coming party, remembering the tales and the tapestries, looking for shadows of Nan Elmoth in her step. He marks her filtered jubilance, her cautious glee, the tension in her shoulders when she steps away from the stability of the ballroom’s wall and moves into the light.

They both know the sting of it, he thinks: the bright rush of the flames; the javelin’s bite. It lingers, in a way that other hurts from a fraught first life do not. Love, as a weapon, cuts deep in the soul, and Mandos can only smooth the edges of those wounds. The Returned must find their own cure, make their own peace, if they can.

It helps, he supposes, that her husband chose not to follow the call. Disdaining the comfort of the Halls, as he did everything else to do with Valinor, he has passed into silence and smoke. If she wills it, she is free to find her own path and start again.

Amrod laughs, a little grim, a little sore. It sounds so easy – remaking oneself.

His own Return has been a tangled maze of pain and regret and renewal. Only slowly has he emerged from a self-imposed isolation, venturing out with Nerdanel to a small party here, a quiet event there, keeping to the shadows where he can. He still winces in the light, shudders when he gets too close to the hearth. He stays out of the forge.

His face is as smooth as it was when he was young, but he knows where the burns were. He remembers melting into himself, isn’t always sure that what he sees truly comes through his eyes. On bad days, his whole body sparks and flares under the skin. He has never fully escaped the fire.

As Aredhel circles the ballroom, he sees the weight of her new life settle and press her down. Her eyes are wary, although she smiles and smiles. Her face grows stiffer and more brittle as she greets each new well-wisher, clinging to some semblance of charm. Her hand creeps to her side as though an old wound pains her. Those long fingers clench in the fabric of her gown.

Something twists in him, watching her: this battered hawk of a woman straining against the jesses of her past. When their eyes meet, she stills, catching the edge of his thought, and flushes, deep and red and painful to watch. They don’t speak -- there is no need, and what they would say to each other is not suited to the festive atmosphere. Amrod doesn’t stir from his refuge in the shadowy corner, but he nods in recognition, and raises his glass.

They meet next in the wet woods, as the seasons turn and sorrow’s song hums beneath the leaves. She is riding with a fey aimlessness; he is stalking, intent and grim. Without discussion, they fold their paths together, wandering through the trees. A day turns into a week, and the silent comfort of each other’s presence lasts. They pass a slow moon’s hunting and foraging in near-stillness, building a quiet understanding. When the month turns, they part, both steadied, more centered and calm.

After that strange journey they drop into and out of one another’s lives with increasing frequency, seeming to sense each other’s need. Amrod waits in the garden when it rains, face turned to the cooling sky, until Aredhel appears to run through the wet meadows with him, both of them panting and loosing strange, wild cries. Aredhel thunders into Nerdanel’s back pasture at the dark of the moon, eyes as wild as her mount’s, shivering and shy of all touch until Amrod maneuvers his own horse alongside her and their knees and elbows brush. Then they are off, charging into the dark, wracked in the bleak wind, keening.

Years pass, and years, and years. It is a long walk from despairing solitude into one another’s arms, meandering through the thickets of memory, slowly unpicking the thorns. They pace in that direction steadily, never speaking of their destination but as quietly sure of it as they are of the sun, of the salt in the sea. There is no hurry. The peace they are moving toward will keep.

Eventually, it is spring again. There is a bird singing, somewhere in the blossoming trees.

Aredhel cups Amrod’s face in her hands with the coolest touch he has ever known – his raw nerves sing with it as her fingers trace the burns no one else can see. But her mouth is warm: all her fettered breath falls loose in a sigh when he draws her close and kisses her. She has trembled, always, since Returning, but in his arms, curled against him, she lies still.

It is more than enough, for a second beginning. Call it a blessing, to fall knowingly into this weary sweetness, this gentle understanding.

To embrace, at last, this tender, tranquil joy.  

Chapter End Notes

Fandom often writes Aredhel's happy-ever-after with Celegorm, because of their canonical friendship (and I've done so once, myself), but Crispy Amrod just GETS HER, in a much more visceral way. So here's one where they get each other, in the end.