And in darkness, light by AdmirableMonster  

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Freedom

This chapter in particular is the most warnings-heavy.

Content Warnings
- Implied/referenced child murder
- Questions of the possibility of redemption for someone who has committed said child murder
- Discussion of mercy-killing
- Lashing out at yourself and your closest loved ones while in a really bad mental state
 

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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.