THE DOOMSMAN
Title: The Doomsman
Author: Serenity
Author's Email: serenityabrin@hotmail.com
Pairings: Elladan/Namo; Oromë/Elrond; Elrohir/Erestor
Rating: NC-17
Summary: A new destiny unfolds.
Sequels/Series: Follows 'The Hunter'
Disclaimer: I don't own them; they're all Tolkien's.
Warnings: angst
* * * * *
Spider silk was not as fine as the threads flying through her nimble fingers. The gossamer fiber wove into a tight pattern, color vibrating from within each strand, shifting until it became the exact shade envisaged in the weaver's mind. Colors inconceivable to mortal minds twisted into the forms of elves and men, into the awkwardness of their youth, the glory of their achievements, the fierceness of their passion, and the agony of their deaths.
But the current image dancing under her fingertips was wholly other. It shifted constantly, never leaving a lasting reflection of the creature in whose likeness it was made. So like the man himself, no real substance just shadow and air. Dark clouds of cloak billowed out around the figure, woven in as close to a loving fashion as the weaver could devise.
Yet perhaps more astounding was the careful construction put into the other figure, a wholly ordinary creature who was destined to do the extraordinary. This was the moment of revelation for his destiny, the moment when it first became reality, woven into the knowledge of the Powers.
Save perhaps the knowledge of Námo.
The thought gave the weaver pause, her fingers hovering over the last few threads. She wondered if he knew what would come, if he had foreseen and rejected it, hiding it in the deepest part of his heart. Or perhaps this one thing alone remained a mystery to him. She hoped so.
The weaver let her delicate fingers gently caress her tapestry, over the ordinary figure wrapped among the clouds of shadow and air.
Perhaps not so ordinary after all.
Her cool gaze flickered to another tapestry, hung prominently in front of her loom. The warmth and light in this picture was blinding by contrast. The Hunter woven in his natural shades of green and brown, his arms wrapped around his husband who peered out of the tapestry with an amused expression. Oromë might not be the most beautiful or awesome of the elite Valar, but he was certainly the happiest, and for this his brothers and sisters were envious.
The weaver glanced back at her newest creation, searching for some flicker of the same warm happiness in the faces of the figures entangled together. It was said that the weaver could not spin any picture that she could not conceive, but as she was Valië, never before had there been something pertaining to Eä that she could not capture.
Save this.
In her heart she saw the barest glimmer of what the tapestry promised, but it seemed so remote from the truth of the now that the image did not come clearly. The ordinary figure shone with more brilliance than did her own dark husband. Perhaps it was too much to expect from him.
"And what do you expect from me?" the thought echoed through her bones. Vairë did not turn, knowing her husband stood in the doorway gazing on her newest creation. She made no attempt to hide it. Indeed, she wished he would come closer to be sure he saw it clearly and knew what it foretold.
"I make no assumptions about you, my lord," she thought coolly. Her tone was quite devoid of any nuance, a habit she had gained from a long life with her remote partner. It was hardly necessary to express anything when talking to someone who already knew what was going to be said; indeed the entire conversation was already but a memory to him, and he was correspondingly uninterested.
In perfect character, Námo made no response to her. A picture of him formed in her mind's eye, standing silently, unmoved half in half out of the doorway like some ominous omen, the lines of him blurred around the edges. There was something undecided, vulnerable about where he stood but the aura of otherness about him contradicted any impressions one could make.
"Would you examine my newest creation, my lord?" Vairë asked, unwilling for her husband to leave without acknowledging the destiny spread out before them. For the first time in millennium she was curious, curious to know what he thought, how he would react.
To those who knew him as well as his wife, there was a moment's hesitation, an aura of wariness about him that seemed so foreign in one so remote, before he glided silently to her side. The utter stillness about him was not in itself unusual, but Vairë caught a note of disquiet thrumming through him as he gazed on her newest tapestry.
No measurement of time could gage how long they remained in silence, both gazing at the subtly changing picture. A slight stiffening of Námo's shoulder warned his spider-like wife that he had finished his contemplative mood. She did not need to turn her head to know he was studying her now with the same intensity he gave to anything he noticed.
"You now weave mere possibilities?" he asked, tonelessly as per usual. Vairë merely canted a delicate brow.
"You deny the truth of what I weave?" she asked, a little surprised. Námo glanced back at her exquisite work, a slender hand reaching out to graze the silken fabric. It did not go unnoticed that his pale fingers slid gently over the face of the half-elf in a gesture reminiscent of a caress.
"I see much hesitation and uncertainty in this work," he thought to her, and Vairë could not argue the point. Though she knew with certainty that this would come to pass, the passion necessary seemed beyond the detached Vala standing before her. She made no attempt to hide her doubts from him, hoping to hear an echo of the truth from his own soul. Predictably there was no faint reverberation, just the endless, empty void of the Doomsman.
Námo turned back to her tapestry, regarding it critically. Vairë cocked her head, studying him in turn. It seemed almost as though he were unwilling to meet her gaze, to confront this problem directly. Very unlike him. Perhaps there were echoes singing after all and she had never listened in the right way before. Or perhaps the destiny of the young creature in her tapestry disquieted her husband enough to force movement and change in the unmovable, the immutable.
"I hear no trouble within your heart," Námo began, with a touch of hesitance. Vairë had no need to ask him what he meant, but she was less sure how she should answer. Glancing at the tapestry, she memorized the lines and planes of the young face before her.
"You must admit we have never sung in harmony, my lord."
"We are well made for each other and compliment each other's strengths. Our purpose, our design is similar," Námo answered, his voice like a wellspring echoing from the deepest pit in the earth.
"Perhaps," Vairë responded, a note of skepticism in her soul. "But perhaps not. We have been as we are for millennium uncounted by elvish reckoning. Yet, we are not happy."
"You wish freedom for yourself?" Námo asked, turning to search her fearsomely beautiful face. Vairë caught the sorrow in his heart and quickly sent a calming heartbeat to ease his pain, knowing he feared holding her against her will.
"Perhaps unhappy was an ill choice of words. Rather, we are not complete, or more specifically, you are not complete," Vairë said gravely. She heard the instant contradicting chord in her husband, but he remained quiet as was his wont. "I will not attempt to justify my reasoning. Only will I mention that such a destiny would never have come into existence if there were no discord within you."
"Such discord would readily be apparent as it was in our fallen brother. I am as I have been since my creation, and my soul remains intact, unmoved."
"Perhaps that is the problem," Vairë thought quietly. She was hesitant to reveal her own thoughts in the matter. It was true that she had never thought Námo in need of anything. Before this tapestry she had never questioned his ways, never questioned that the purpose which drove him might not be sufficient nourishment for his unfathomable soul. But the idea sang true to her, like a half-remembered dream. A calm serenity swept through her spirit when she thought of it, making her aware of a tense unrest before unnoticed.
Yet, the realm of destiny and prophecy was not hers. It was a shadowy, frightful place, far too close to the mind of the Creator. She knew Manwë and she knew Námo. Námo was remote by nature and little concerned her. In contrast Manwë could be as kind as a summer's breeze, as volatile as a spring storm, as punishing as a winter's gale wind. But when he spoke to the One, there was a stillness to his soul that terrified Vairë at times, reaching to that deepest part of her that sung in harmony with the younger races whose lives were marked by uncertainty and anticipation. Perhaps there was peace in knowing all that was to come, but much was lost in that knowledge. There was no reason to live in this moment when all was revealed.
Manwë understood this, Vairë was reasonably certain. The stillness never lasted, and Manwë always remained interested in the affairs of his sister races. But it seemed much too far out of reach for Námo. Perhaps the only thing he did not understand. The thought was appealing and frightening at the same time, and Vairë both embraced and shunned it accordingly.
The contrast, the contradiction was the very hallmark of the unknown. Though she herself encompassed such inconsistencies with her mere existence, it was not her sphere and she shied from it. So, she did not speak her feelings, drawing them near her.
But Námo saw further and deeper than all but the head of their order. Vairë could not be sure what suspicion of hers he might see. She prayed to Eru to guide Námo to those insights most beneficial to her husband.
The Doomsman's soul remained particularly inscrutable as he continued to examine her features. Even Vairë, who had never felt the passage of moments, felt the great weight of time pressing in on her as they regarded each other. Perhaps Námo felt this disquiet in her, for he abruptly turned away, though conspicuously he did not return his attention to the tapestry on the loom.
"You are my wife. I hear no trouble within your heart," he repeated quietly, his words slow and steady but sad. "No grief at the . . . inevitable."
Vairë barely heard the words, the hesitation. For the first time in her memory of their relationship, a note of sympathy vibrated in their song. The music was changing, the steady pulse that had remained a constant in the continuously changing product of the One's mind now beat a new rhythm.
It must be terrifying to one without an anchor to the world around him.
"It is true that there is no grief in my heart, my lord, but you must think of this with gladness. A new destiny awaits you. It is foretold, it is inevitable. I am not abandoning you to solitude, but rather freeing you to discover the last mystery remaining to you. I find joy in the prospect, hope that you will grow to your true potential. Your happiness means much to me; my soul vibrates with more emotion than anything else our relationship has created. I fear that says much of what it is to be us. I do not know what 'you and I' means, what it means to be Námo and Vairë. To be separated will sadly not seem so strange. It is true that in seeing you to your destiny, I see no knew horizon for myself to look forward to, but I feel liberated all the same. Not because I have been shackled but because I can help in our Father's great design. I weave tapestries of what has been, what is, and what will be, but what use is that? His children see them, but they are meaningless without guidance. Too often you are the one to give that guidance, not I. I will not begrudge that you are doubtless more suited to the task than I, but all the same, I have never seen my work used to further His design. If I can do this one thing, I will fill my own void," she said, the words tumbling forth as though from some well untapped within her.
Námo remained turned away, his face shadowed from her gaze. However, the Valar used the physical expressions of the body but rarely in reading another being. Vairë listened to the song of her husband, which was as low and deep as a rumble of distant thunder. Unfortunately, the feelings coursing through him were too new, too foreign even to himself for her to make any sense of them.
"I did not know you felt thus. I had always thought your weaving took too much of your time for anything else and thought to unburden you of the chore. You have shown be my error and I will gladly correct it. I shall open this hall to those elves in need of guidance," he said gravely.
Vairë made a very unValar-like huff of annoyance. It was so like a man to miss the point. The thought sent a thrill through her, the idea that she could compare her abstruse husband to his younger brothers.
Standing suddenly, she moved to stand before him. Námo tilted his head slightly in what might have been surprise.
"You cannot deny what will be. You of all should know this," Vairë said, her inner voice low and somber. With the slightest whish of robes, the Valië turned and glided out of the room that she had not left in thousands of years, a final thought drifting back to her motionless husband.
"I shall see this come to pass." It was a vow.
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