Ithildin; Beren & Luthien who: beren and lúthien. where: tol galen. when: now...then. doesn't matter. rating: PG 13 for married kissyface. :DD
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It is the raindrops that first wake Lúthien. They slant, sliding over her skin, pooling in the crook of her arm that lies bent above her head. Her fingers flutter, finding the sensation odd and intense. And slowly, gently, her eyes open to gaze at the birch and willow branches swaying lazily above her. It makes her sit up quickly--and what meets her sight elicits a gasp. Tol Galen. Dripping and barefoot, she stands and rakes her fingers through short locks. How? Why?
Each drawn breath is a struggle in itself at first as the long forgotten sensation of pain drifts languidly through him. Pale eyes taste the shock of awakening. The grey skies and the rounded drops of rain are tangible. Real. Not a dream anymore. He stands with a swift movement even too sharp for his own calculated execution, parched lips licking the colorless liquid that streaming down his face and a hand clutching at his bare chest as if to seek proof. Of what? Life. Life? He is speechless.
"...and shall I breathe with half a lung?" she questions, kneeling once again to rake her fingers through the glistening blades of grass. A sharp intake of breath--she bends low: sharp. Palms unfurl, firmly meeting the sticky ground.
His voice is caught in his throat as he narrows his eyes, vision seeking out all that is familiar around him. "Tol Galen," the harsh whisper is more an affirmation to the torrent of questions clashing in his mind rather than a statement. And he seeks meaning for the strained breath that is slowly calming down into a steady pattern. If he's here, then she must be too. It is a name, a question, a plea and a prayer as his voice rises higher than the clamor of rain and wind. "Lúthien?"
His voice rolls over her with the wind and it makes her vault to her feet. She would always believe in that voice--it was his. The quiet tenor vibrating as if thrown from lips warm and moist as her own. "Beren--" straining to see, she shields her eyes and begins to walk forward, with the bend of the house.
Running a hand over his face, he blinks to clear his vision, silently straining all his senses to trace the source of the voice he recognizes so well. He turns and swiftly walks the small distance that seems to separate them, reaching out as he calls her name once again.
It is their hands that meet first and tightly, she curls her fingers around his palm. "...come in out of the rain, love," she whispers, pulling him under an overhang as she brings their entwined hands to rest over her chest and wraps her other arm around his waist. She breathes deeply with the intensity of the sensation.
The petal-soft warmth emanating from her is a comfort beyond reckoning. He engulfs her in his embrace, taking a look around them as the question returns to his lips, "But how? Why now?" The words are a bruise colored whisper against her forehead as closes his eyes.
"I don't know." Her lips meet the edge of his chin as the last syllables drop quietly. It is his arms--his presence emanating life and comfort, that makes her smile languidly, despite their confusion. She leans against him. "Why not?"
And as soon as her words are voiced, his smile grows in its intensity and his lips seek out hers in a firm kiss filled to the brim with the raw sensation of his absolute love for her.
Her smile, pressed against his, only widens as each sensation becomes more palatable. Fingers dig into the small of his back as she returns his kiss, her warm lips scorching an exploration over the smooth planes of his face.
Doubt passes as he slips up a hand to brush against the lines of her face, alternating breath with his kiss. Eyes closed, he falls surrender to the rippling tenderness that her lips and hands induce in him, comforting him and jarring his sense into acute realization of her all at the same time.
Reluctant to pull away--even for a moment, she shifts in his arms to turn the handle to the door lying behind him. It falls open noisily on squeaking hinges and she smiles crookedly. "Let's explore? Don't let me go."
With a sigh, he nods, curious eyes shifting from her face to the now open door and back to her once again. For a moment he simply stands in silence, studying her profile closely, etching new memories of even the most minute lines that appear at the side of her eyes when she smiles into his thoughts. Then without warning, he smiles and steps behind her, closer still as he circles her waist with his arms. "Let's see what we've returned to." So if they move, they'll have to move together.
She laughs softly, curling her arm up around the crook of his neck as she inches into the filtered evening light. Dust swirls lazily around their feet as they move through the threshold. "...it looks the same."
Advancing further into the room with her, he takes a deep breath, holding it in for a few moments before he let's it out. He trails his fingers along a wall dusty with memories and lowers his face to whisper in her ear, "It still smells the same. Let's open all the doors. Every window."
Taking a deep, appreciative breath, hums a quiet melody into the hollow of his neck. "Sounds the same, too." She turns swiftly enough to catch his lips in a gentle kiss as she nods. "Together."
"I even remember what is behind each door." Tasting the cadence of the melody straight from her lips, he nods and steps back, surveying the familiar hallway quietly before nodding towards the first door to their left. "Library. Study."
Her feet glide over the floor--skipping the third plank automatically. Squeaks. Rapping twice on the door, she blows the dust from the handle and motions inside. "After you, my love."
He bows slightly and walks into the vast room. It is steeped into shadows because of the darkness descending outside and the heavy but worn drapes over the tall windows add further to crush any light inside. He takes a cautious step forward and parts the curtains sharply only to end up coughing slightly as the inevitable cloud of dust rises from the cloth in protest.
"Careful," she murmurs, trailing her fingers across the back of his broad shoulders as she follows behind him. Bending over the desk , she grasps a dust covered and slim volume of poetry, flipping through the worn pages. She stops, smiling softly at the familiar dog ears. The careful prints and penciled remarks in the margin. All his work. She lifts her eyes. "Ber--" and then, she quiets, noticing the lean line of his arm. The tapering fingers.
He can see miles from here, all the way to the bend of the horizon and maybe even further still. His concentration breaks as he rubs his face and looks over his shoulder towards her with a questioning smile before following her intent gaze to his own arm. To his hand. Lips part in shock induced surprise as he wills to curl up the fingers of his right hand and unfurls them. Once, twice. Words escape him and he simply lifts his eyes to hers, holding up both of his hands.
Stepping around the desk, she returns the volume to its place and meets his hands--palm to palm. Her lips press to the side of his fingers as she whispers, "Erchamion, you are no longer." Eyelashes brush against his skin. "How does it feel?"
Traces of feeling. Fingers tremble and he tries hard to surface from this current of surging emotions with something precise. But it all crumbles away as he turns her hands up in his own, running a thumb each against her palms before dragging his fingers along the length of her arms and letting them brush against her neck. "...like I'm touching you for the first time."
She tilts her chin, watching the path of his fingers with rapt attention as she wraps her arms around his chest and fans her palms out in languid arcs over his back. "I would that I could give you endless first times," she whispers, softly running her lips over the edge of his earlobe.
In his silent little quest for feeling and discovering her once more, he sighs as if he has fallen apart and come together again in merely seconds. Pushing closer to her until every single line of his body is parallel to hers, he places his hands on the silken dark of her hair. He lets them travel down heavily to the back of her neck and past the ridges of her shoulder blades, intentionally digging his fingers into the soft flesh along her back bone and finally resting them on her hips. Fleeting laughter. "I didn't even realize until I saw it on your face."
Arching her back, she rolls onto the balls of her feet and presses her body further against him--closer into his hands. Moments pass in quietude. An index finger spirals up the drenched fabric, following the indentation of his spine. "Wonder of wonders," she whispers wryly, grinning in cadence with his laughter. "Now, your books, so lately returned will not know what to do with themselves. Nor your swords; when they see two hands instead of one."
His voice cuts through the silence of the room, breaking it with sudden precision as if to state that no; he was never depending on this miracle to happen, even though he always kept his faith. "I wonder if I'll even remember this tomorrow," words dry from some emotion that isn't surfacing yet, he spreads his fingers on the curve of her waist, gripping at her softly damp clothes to press skin against skin. "It takes away the name bestowed upon me like the weight of a crown, doesn't it?"
"Now you are Beren. Without ever the need," she murmurs, smearing the drying raindrops over the hollow of his neck, "for a title to distinguish the great things you have done. The wars you have waged--but it does not take the honor from both of your hands. Nor the love." Smile. "Perhaps we can write a new story."
He bows his head as he listens to her, eyes scanning his hands as if to find some fault in the one that was missing before, to point out one mistake in the corded flesh and bones and then find another until it becomes a tangled web of reality. But the pale skin bears no new lesion, nor has it faded any from the past. The mark of a cut along the thumb, an accident from childhood - the slanting line of a wound received in battle before he ever set foot in Doriath, it is all mapped out perfectly as if it was never gone. "You make it sound so beautifully effortless, my Tinúviel."
"...does it require much?" she whispers, taking his hand in both of hers and turning it gently in her fingers. In wonder, she traces the lines of his palm--the marks that make him who he is. The slow, soft cadence of time etched in his skin; every heartache and every joy. She rests her lips in the center of his palm.
"No." In turn he buries his face in her dark locks, breathing in the intriguingly familiar scent of her form. Memories slip past his vision in a frenzy of dreamscape colors and he sees her bathed in them. Lilting under the grace of her love, he traces the smooth lines of her lips with his thumb. "It is as simple as our love that something trivial like time can never change."
"Wrested seperate of time," murmuring, she smiles; offering up soft kisses to his fingers as she takes a step back and curls her fingers around one of the dusty volumes she had earlier been rifling through. Holding it behind her back for a moment, she reveals her find and opens up to one of the many dogeared pages.
"The words have faded but they're not gone," a smile spreads on his face as he scans the lines scrawled in a bold, firm handwriting on the page before him. He reads in a clear whisper, firm lips forming precise words, "I believe you dictated this to me: The poet creates the world in which we live and breathe as conscious beings and 'gives to life the supreme fictions without which we are unable to conceive of it'."
Her eyes travel the broad planes of his face, over his lips and down the arc of his eyelashes. She wants to feel the weightlessness of the words floating from his lips--her fingers travel circles over the hollow of his neck, traveling upward over his cheeks and forehead. Smiling as she breathes in the sweetness of his gently exhaled breath. "It is a revolutionary wielding pen and not a sword."
"Depends on the time and place," he smiles lightly at the touch of her fingers, tilting his head to feel them more acutely against his skin. A thought. "Do you think that maybe we haven't returned alone?"
"I like this time. This place." A nod. She knew, as he did. Though, she would wish her world without the metallic ring of despair--she sighs softly. At his words, a light glitters in her grey eyes. Fingers travel lightly over the bridge of his nose. "...I hadn't considered. It's probable."
He thinks, softly pulling the strings of memories together to finally let them rest under a quiet gaze. "You know, I want to be here, with you, and not pay attention to the noises adrift on the wind. Lost calls." A pause. "At least, not for now."
"To wrest a little music from the evening?" Her bare feet leave swirling patterns in the dust as she sidesteps, pulling his hands with her. Curiously, she walks backward toward the door, sneaking glances down the wide corridors. And she nods, affirming his thoughts. "We will stay here, Beren. As long as we might--as long as you wish."
"To try and make the music an everlasting echo inside these walls once again," he follows her, his hands captured in her grip and eyes flickering over every detail carved into the wood and stone around them. He stops before a door, and pats the worn but sturdy wood with a nod. "Aranel kept his own collected treasures in there. Secretive wonder. I won't mind if he comes back to us."
"I can hear it already," she murmurs, tilting her head as her eyes graze gently over the doorpost. "...he would walk in with muddy boots and a dripping cloak, smile at us and flop uncerimoniously into a chair." A soft laugh. "So much like his father."
Her words draw a smile from his lips, as well as an exclamation. "Well, I tried my best to not walk in with muddy boots and a dripping cloak when he was around. I don't know where he learnt to do that." A firm shake of head. Laughter.
In a split second, she can see the memory; both of them bent over a table in intense conversation, their voices warm and hushed. She can smell the evaporating liquid--the tiny scraps of "outdoor" they bring with them. And then it's gone. She wonders if the same articles of clothing (certainly now, moth eaten) are yet hanging in their wardrobe. For good measure, she gathers handfuls of her husband's cloak and with a deep breath brings his arm to her face. "...your boots are muddy now, my love," she whispers, glancing up at him with a grin.
He looks down immediately as her words are sounded and almost nods in defeat before his lips turn up in a smirk. He eases his feet out of the soiled boots and promptly kicks them aside before looking at her, a solemn expression veiling the shards of frivolity in his eyes. "You have no evidence to support that." Hands in her hands, he pulls her towards the staircase. "Do you think the steps would hold?"
"I have muddy toes," she counters, stepping lightly as they reach the staircase. One hand, for a moment, slides free of his to ghost over the simple banister before returning to the warmth of his palms. "...it won't hurt to try."
"I'll go first," he places a foot forward on the first step and balances his weight on the wooden staircase that seems to be voicing its protest at the intrusion in form of several different noises. He holds up a finger as he lets go of her hands. "If it caves in, do not step forward."
"Trust your home, Beren." But the annoyed creaking makes her eyes widen just slightly. A hand darts out to grasp the back of his tunic. "...I go where you go. Let's do this."
"I trust it... but I don't think it trusts me right now," he stands still for a moment to let the flight of stairs become adjusted with his weight before looking over his shoulder and whispering to her. "Gently now, geeently." Another step up.
She steps as he does, shifting her weight over the complaining wood. "...strong. Just, loud. That step has always creaked."
"I think I should find my tools and fix it after all," he nods decisively as he runs a finger through the dust that layers the banister, drawing a haphazord pattern in it and sending some furious particles dancing up in the air. "And polish this."
"...I'll find a rag," she nods, after giving an unbecoming sneeze. "Two more steps. We can do it."
He automatically mouths a 'bless you' and measures the distance from where they are standing to the landing as the grumbling sound becomes too loud and edgy on the second last step. "How about we make a dive for it?"
"Count of three..." She rises on the tips of her toes, waiting for his mark.
"One...two..." grabbing her swiftly in his arms he dives forward, landing on the first floor and making sure she doesn't hit the boards before he does. "...three. We made it. Excellent."
Her arms wrap around his waist as they fall through the air and come to a skidding halt on the floor. Dissolving into smiles, she presses her thumb against his chin and rests her chin on his shoulder as they rise to a sitting posisition. "My hero."
His smirk is smudged here and there by the dust that is so abundantly rampant around them. He gives the creaking staircase a triumphant look before whispering in a demanding tone. "Do I get a kiss as payment?
"...as if you had to ask." Smirk. It wasn't a request. She presses her lips to his in a firm kiss, smearing the flurry of particles that rise between them.
Tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, he places a revered hand on her the tender side of her face, his lips quickly altering from soft laughter to a resolute kiss before he whispers against her lips. "Do you remember the rest of the house?"
All of their time had not altered the strong, familiar planes of his face. She still read the deep furrows in his brow that spoke of unexplainable sorrow--the solitude that even now, is nearly untouchable. And the tiny lines that wreath his eyes when he smiles, blue depths glittering. She interchanges words with feathery-soft kisses. "Twenty six steps down the hallway to the bedrooms and another thirteen to our room with the window I would always throw open in the rain. You never told me to close it."
His eyes linger on her lips as she speaks; the simple marvel of her thoughts shaped into words still leaves him breathless-always thirsting for more. But there has never been an unfulfilled moment and even now as he tastes her kisses, he can feel his silence crumbling for her. It always did. "Because even if the sky was in chaos, I saw you silhouetted against it and I felt life magnified to its very best. It was never an unwelcome feeling."
"...and the only thing that gave me the strength to stand was the knowledge that soon, I would feel your arms around me. Your breath on my skin, forming quiet and formidable worlds. Still is. Will always be." Indulging in her own breathless perusal of the contours of his skin, she vines her fingers around the nape of his neck.
It was startling, the life that has passed them by and the life that still cradles them surreptitiously in its arms. His senses fused with the intricate patterns of her breath and her heartbeat, he moves slowly as if holding up the fabric of a dream, making a study of the structure of her neck steeping down to her shoulders with his lips. "I still believe we can stay like this forever."
"We can," she murmurs, smiling softly and tilting her head. The sensation of skin against skin slides over her in gentle waves of remembrance, as if time indeed had no consequence. She laughs inwardly--there is meaning in each moment. And she would take it, one breath at a time. One beat of his heart that collided and spun with hers. A thousand. Million. Innumerable amounts.
And what if this is a dream; he questions himself silently as feathery kisses melt into long, thoughtful pauses of his lips against her skin. Sitting before her, gathering her closer into his embrace and disregarding the shadowy haze that hangs in the air around them with the scent of moss and rain outside, he is content. No, this is no dream, he asserts to himself. This is who they are - love. A dream that others dream for hope.