And in darkness, light by AdmirableMonster  

Although the sky was still marked with long traces of ugly smoke-filled clouds, a brisk wind was blowing, and the pre-dawn light was soaking pellucidly into the parchment of the heavens.  Light was returning to the world, welling up like fresh water into a long-dried-up spring.  Erestor blinked back to himself to a ferocious headache and a mouth so dried out that his tongue was sticking to the roof of it.  At first, half-dazed, his mind suggested a hangover in Himlad—a moment later, his stomach heaving, he caught the scent of blood and almost vomited.  In a panic, he pulled himself up from the dead tree he had been leaning against and looked around wildly.

The dead plain of Gorgoroth stretched away in both directions, covered in the bodies of Men, Elves, and Orcs.  

Erestor took a deep breath, relief seeping into his bones, and began to laugh, covering his face with his hands.  To be relieved to have wakened to such an ugly battlefield!  But it was not the place he had feared.

With a wince, he checked himself over.  Several of his ribs were very painful, and his arm was probably broken—when he concentrated, he managed to bring to mind the image of putting himself between Elrond and a troll’s club.  His lord had been, as always, weaponless.  Try as he might, he remembered nothing more, and a chill of unease pooled in his stomach again.  Where was everyone?  They must have retreated very hurriedly to have left him behind, although perhaps they had not realized he was still alive.  It was unlike Elrond, though.  He would try to heal a three-day-old corpse.

The first order of business was water.  He tucked the dead weight of his arm into his shirt front with a shudder of pain and got slowly to his feet, looking around.  It might have been foolish to make a target out of himself when he didn’t know who else might be on the field, but he was too tired and thirsty to care.

He limped slowly along a rocky outcropping for a little while; then, bending to necessity, began to search the nearby corpses.  He was in luck: one of the depressingly young-looking Men had a half-filled water-skin still on him, and Erestor guzzled the brackish, lukewarm water until he was nearly sick, then sat back on his heels, trying to clear his mind a little.

He couldn’t stay here, that much was obvious.  East would be deeper into Mordor, where he was unlikely to receive a cordial welcome.  West, then—as the Sun rose higher, all he had to do was turn his back to it and walk. One foot after the other.

He did not know for how long he kept walking, hungry and in pain.  The water-skin faded to a distant memory.  But eventually, almost to his surprise, he came to an end to the bodies—some part of him had wondered if he had wandered into Mandos, all unknowing.  For his crimes, maybe, he might wander among corpses for a thousand thousand years, though it would still be better than the Void and better than he deserved.

The scattering of corpses grew thin as he climbed a shallow slope, stopping entirely when he crested the peak.  The reason was apparent, after a moment—a great pyre already flickered on the white stone ridge below, and Elves and Men and Dwarves were moving wearily to add to it, but they had not crossed over the top of the little hill yet.  Erestor stood, his own black shadow pooling around him, and looked down, trying to decipher whether anyone he cared for yet drew breath.

He saw Elrond first—clad in muted grey and unarmored, he was directing the healers as they sorted out the bodies of the living and the dead.  He was weary but appeared uninjured, his face marked with ash and sweat, but not with blood.  The sight undid him, the relief so strong he had to bend over, breathing in great swallows of the filthy, ash-laden air.

Erestor would have considered himself the last person to invoke the gods in any way—not the least because they certainly would have no warm feelings towards him, of all people—so he might have surprised some of the folk below, but no one was more surprised than he was when a hymn to Oromë shaped itself on his lips and clawed its way ruthlessly out of his throat.

Faces turned towards his, one in particular.  Golden hair glinted in the strange new dawn.  Erestor’s own name floated to him on the wind, from a pair of dear lips he had never deserved.  Alive—alive.  His face was wet.

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Lord of trees, both dark and wild,

Lord of lands lost long ago,

Lord who leads us out of starlight,

Lord whose horn sounds strong and low—

We sing, O lord, our thanks to you:

For your guidance and your strength.

We woke lost beside the water;

In woods we wandered breadth and length.

Call the hounds and sound the horn’s cry!

Spill with honor bones and blood!

Forsake ye not your given vows—

Return to earth what earth is owed.

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It took the survivors days to make their way out of Mordor.  Glorfindel kept trying to carry him.

“I broke my arm, I can walk,” Erestor told him waspishly.  He spoke a little too loudly and winced at the pain in his ribs.

“You’re going to slow us down,” Glorfindel told him with equanimity.

“I’m not, there are many wounded who are far slower than I am.”

“You’re a fool.”

“Am I permitted my idiosyncrasies, or must every one of my foolish choices be vetted by the great Glorfindel of Gondolin?”  He knew he had gone too far as soon as the words left his lips, but Glorfindel didn’t snap, didn’t turn away, as he ought to have done.  He only ducked his head a little.  “I’m sorry,” Erestor said, after a heartbeat.

“Elrond wanted to go back for you,” Glorfindel said quietly.  “I wouldn’t let him.”

“I assume you thought I was dead,” Erestor shrugged.

“Erestor—” His voice didn’t tremble, but it did crack, and Erestor’s heart smote him.  “You weren’t dead.  If you weren’t so stubborn, that means I might have left you to die.”

“If I hadn’t been so stubborn, I would have deserved it.”  If he had not still been so weary, he would have never said that—not to Glorfindel, at any rate.  Not to Glorfindel, the best thing in Erestor’s life, the kindest, bravest soul, who somehow cared for prickly, closed-off Erestor, with his penchant for bodice-rippers and the guilt that still weighed down his soul.  “I’m sorry,” he said again; again immediate but not fast enough.  Keep your mouth shut, you fool, if these barbs are all you can let fly.

This time, Glorfindel did not reply, but his face was reply enough.  They walked on in silence.

* * *

Weary and in pain, they had just passed through the Morannon into the marshy area beyond when Erestor could no longer hold back the black-tar words.  “I should never have returned.  I should have laid down and died there.”

Glorfindel’s luminous eyes turned to him, burning.  “You should have left me to go on without you?”

Erestor’s lungs filled up with pain.  “You do not know me,” he said harshly.

“Do I not?” Glorfindel asked, as the blood-soaked land squelched beneath his heel.  “Who knows you better?”

Looking up at him, at his infinite patience, his infinite goodness, Erestor broke.  “I am a kinslayer,” he snarled.

“I know,” Glorfindel told him.

“I am worse than a kinslayer!”  He should have told Glorfindel before now.  He should not have waited until Glorfindel had nearly mourned him, until Glorfindel had sunk roots deep into his heart.  But he had not.  He was a fool.

“You’re hurt.  This war has been very long,” Glorfindel told him.  “Erestor, you’ve almost certainly taken wounds beyond the physical.”

“And I deserve them!” Erestor howled, wishing the force of it would shatter his lungs.

“No, you don’t,” Glorfindel returned, calm, steady, pitiless. 

It drove Erestor wild.  Words, long kept back—and he could not now bring to mind why he had bothered—surged to his lips.  “Have you never wondered where the scars on my back come from, my lord Glorfindel?  A punishment from Maedhros Fëanorion after the kinslaying at Doriath, for the deaths of the young princes.  It drove him mad, you know—that they had frozen to death, died of exposure in the woods—that was too much.  The rest of the bloodbath, well, that was the Oath.  The children—that was the breaking of oaths.”

“That was over thirty-five-hundred years ago, Erestor.”

“What amount of time is enough?” Erestor shouted, and it hurt his ribs, and he was glad of the pain.  “Celegorm died.  I left those boys to die in recompense. I could not fulfill my vow to my lord, and I broke my vow to my god.  Do you understand what that means?  By my oaths, I owed any helpless creature a swift and merciful death at my own hands, and I did not provide it.”

“What if they had lived?”

That was Glorfindel all over.  Why was he still standing here?  What did it matter?  Blackness pooled beneath Erestor’s collarbone like the black water they were splashing through knee-deep. “They did not.”  

And still Glorfindel did not push him away, did not turn away from him.  He only held out a hand to help Erestor across a particularly deep puddle.  Erestor ignored it and made the jump himself.  It jarred his ribs and arm, and he moaned in pain.  Fight back, he urged Glorfindel silently.  Don’t just let me attack.  Where is your riposte?

But no.  They walked in silence for some time before Glorfindel spoke again. “It doesn’t balance, you know—good and evil.  You don’t put the ugly on one side of a scale and then weigh it against the beautiful.”

“I agree,” Erestor said, with a vicious smile.  “Nothing is sufficient.  Which is why you should have left me there—”

“Erestor,” Glorfindel interrupted him, voice harsh.  Finally.  “If you die, I will fade.”

The ground heaved beneath Erestor, like an unruly horse.  Before he could stop himself, his stomach turned over, and he threw up, gasping and heaving onto the sticky earth.  It hurt fiendishly, but he bit back any noise of pain.

“It doesn’t matter what you deserve,” Glorfindel said, voice dulled with exhaustion.  “Not to me, anyway.  It matters to me that thou art my anchor.  It matters to me that I love thee, even if thou dost hate thyself.  My reward for courage was more toil, and perhaps that is also your punishment, if you must think of it that way.  But I do not think the world is a ledger, kept so tidily.  Let be, Erestor, I know you are weary and hurt, and so am I.  But thrashing about only makes it hurt the more.  Let go.”

“How can I?” Erestor demanded.

“I don’t know,” Glorfindel said.  “I don’t know.  I wish I could have you free of your past, but if I cannot, I will have you chained by it.  It is very selfish of me, I know.”

“Selfish!” Erestor exclaimed, looking up for the first time, to see that Glorfindel was giving him a slight half-smile.

“See how you like it,” he said.  “When the person you care for most in the world keeps heaping abuse onto themself.  A pleasant experience, isn’t it?”

“But,” Erestor tried.  Blackness rose in his lungs—he was not meant for this—a screaming ugly chorus of voices seemed to chatter in his ears.  He and Glorfindel were not the same; they could not be the same.  Glorfindel was blameless, a hero, an innocent.  He was accursed, forsaken, by his own hand. The trouble was—the trouble was—

The blameless hero deserved to have what he desired, and if what he desired was Erestor, if it was only prickly, guilty, murderous Erestor who would do for him—then wasn’t that what he ought to have? 

No, whispered something oil-black in his mind, and something pale and white glimmered faintly in the depths of the water they were forging through.  No, hush, who is telling thee that thou canst be redeemed? Who is telling thee such lies?  Lie down, Erestor, give up, lie down amidst the remains of thy shattered oaths.

A chill went through Erestor, and he stepped closer to Glorfindel.  “I think there is still something sunk into the roots of this place,” he said.  “Perhaps you were right when you said that I had taken wounds beyond the physical.”

A strong arm slid about his waist.  “Let’s move on quickly, then,” Glorfindel said.  “We are still not far from the Black Land, and I feel the heaviness in the air as well.  In fact—let’s go warn Elrond.”

“Yes,” Erestor agreed, and found himself wondering shakily, as they continued, how little that last voice had sounded like his own—and yet how much it had to begin with.

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He stood beneath the pines of Rivendell, with the wind in his face.  Smoke on the wind, the faint sharp scent of early autumn.  He felt foolish.  He was a seneschal and keeper of letters, sometime librarian, now.  The Elf he had been when last he had spoken these words had been dead for millennia: a wild hunter, a vicious-willed, careless warrior.

Yet death, sacrifice, and rebirth were all a part of the Hunter’s domain.

Glorfindel sat cross-legged a little way off, face turned into the wind as well, not speaking.  He looked calm, eyes shut, a faint smile on his face.  It was all different.  Everything was all different.  All the Elves of Imladris had emerged from that final battle changed, if they had emerged at all.  Elrond’s sharp edges were sharper than ever, though he made an effort to swaddle them away in concern and caring, hiding in the shape of a leader the way his foster-father had done before even the Sun rose.  Glorfindel, somehow, was calmer.  Erestor himself—

He didn’t know.  He thought he’d lost something in the murky waters they had waded through to leave the dead lands, but it might be that what he had lost was something he had needed to lose for a long time.

Shivering, he put his arms about his shoulders.  He could not speak a formal oath.  Not anymore, no matter how ritualized.  He had thought about it, he had wrestled with himself and considered it, but now that he stood here in the wind, he knew the words could not pass his lips.  Instead, shivering intensifying, he said, “My lord.  I failed.  I’m sorry.”

The wind caressed his face and dropped a few leaves in his hair.  Erestor stood there for several moments longer, continuing to feel like a fool, and then he turned away and let Glorfindel’s arms open to envelop him.

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Midnight had passed him by some time ago; Erestor was still working on the accounts.  This was not needed, and indeed Elrond would have been quite annoyed if he had known.  But Glorfindel was out on patrol, and Erestor never slept well when Glorfindel was gone.  Or vice versa, unfortunately, but every so often they both suffered a fit of madness and decided that surely, this time, they’d be all right for a few days.  They did always make it through those periods, even if it was always worse every time than they thought it would be.

He did not notice the light approaching until the door creaked open and the sudden brightness of a Fëanorian lantern flooded the room.  Erestor jumped and swore.

Celebrían stood there, lantern raised, her silver curls cascading freely across her shoulders. Her eyes were red, and her nose was swollen.  “Oh,” she said.  “It’s you.”

Erestor and Elrond’s wife shared a mutual and guarded respect for one another.  At one point, Celebrían had believed Erestor to be a romantic rival—Erestor was still unable to fathom why—and the jealousy had driven something of a wedge between them.  It was funny now to contemplate, since Erestor did not think he could ever have even imagined Elrond as a romantic object—a penitence, yes, a youthful lord, even, perhaps, a friend, but a potential romance? no.  And then there was the not-inconsiderably amusing fact that Elrond had been sleeping with Ereinion at the time.  But somehow Celebrían had never been jealous of that.  Well, it was hard to be jealous of Ereinion—had been hard.

“I’m sorry,” Celebrían said.  “That was rude.”

“Rudeness does not bother me,” Erestor told her.  “Can you not sleep either?” 

She shook her head.  “Elrond fell asleep in his chair.  I don’t think he slept last night, and I don’t want to disturb him.  But the bed is so empty.”

“I know the feeling,” Erestor told her, trying to sound sympathetic rather than bleak.  Celebrían gave him a faint smile in a way that suggested he had not been entirely successful.

Perching herself on the desk, she kicked her legs pensively, more like an adolescent than a lady Elf.  “It hurts,” she said fiercely after a moment.  “They say he will be reborn in Aman—Glorfindel came back, after all, but…but…”

“But he wasn’t exactly happy about that,” Erestor said thinly.  “It hurts to lose someone, Lady Celebrían.”

“We’re not friends,” she snapped.  “I don’t need you to comfort me.”

“Duly noted.”  He gave her a slight, respectful tilt of the head.  “But you did start the conversation.  What do you want?”

She growled, perhaps frustrated that he had scored a point.  “I don’t know,” she said.  “I want Ereinion.  I want to truly believe that I’ll see him again.  But—” She bit the inside of her lip.  “Elrond is not the only one who is peredhil,” she said, not meeting Erestor’s gaze.  “I don’t know.  I don’t know.”

Erestor thought about what it would be like to lose Glorfindel, even in the normal course of things, and shivered a little.  There were rumors about Gil-Galad, of course.  But Erestor had not been at Himring when he was first fostered, and he did not know how true any of them were.  It sounded like a situation more complex even than Elrond’s.

“Well, I can’t help you with any of that,” he said.

Celebrían made a little frustrated noise.  “I want to sleep,” she said plaintively.  “I can’t cry anymore, and I don’t want to scream and break things.  I’m too tired.”

Erestor waved his hand at the little cot in the corner.  “I often use that when Glorfindel is away and I can only sleep in fits and bursts in between distractions,” he said.  “You’re welcome to it.  Sometimes it’s easier to sleep if you have someone awake in the room with you.”

“Ugh,” said Celebrían.  She slipped off the desk and padded over to the cot, then curled up on her side with her knees into her chest.  “I won’t sleep,” she said.

He shrugged.  “You can still use it, I don’t care.”

When he looked up from the accounts again, she was asleep after all.  Sometimes all you could do was take care of each moment as it came.  And Glorfindel, at least, would be back soon.

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