BROKEN; Tauriel grieves
written by milady oakenshield
(This was originally posted on my other account Niobie only because I was having issues with this account. Now that it's fixed, I'll be moving the one-shots I've written over to this account, and compiling them into a collection.)
"I'm broken when I'm lonesome, and I don't feel right when you've gone away."
She stood there at the edge of a cliff, the one that overlooked a large ocean, the one not far from the gates of Erebor. Oh, how even the name brings a string to her heart just thinking about it now. She stands there in sorrow, for her heart is broken. Broken beyond measure. To a creature who lived for thousands upon thousands of years, should steel not strike them down, mending such a broken heart was impossible. An elf did not give a heart out so easily, nor was it ever so easily softened. They only loved once in their lifetime.
Her tears have long since dried up; or, and this is highly likely, she just didn't have any more to spare. A sinking feeling had gripped her heart. It no longer beat the same way it should. It stopped the moment his did.
Tauriel can't bear to think of him now. Not how he was when she found him. For that was the last image her eyes ever saw. She tried to hear his heart, putting her ear to his chest, where she had rested her head of red-fire hair before, but heard nothing. And even then she could not allow herself to grieve for that which was lost, because so many of her kin had perished, and she had a responsibility, not just to her kin, but as Captain of the guard, to keep her head high and deal with the dead and the dying.
He had to wait.
But now the funeral was over. Now she could grieve. And so she did. The others, they could wonder where she had gone, but they wouldn't find her. If they did, she wouldn't come. Tauriel wanted to stand here, overlooking the ocean, gripping tightly to her whatever memory she did have of him that didn't involve danger; there were so few of them, yet, a small single one that almost made her smile despite herself.
Her lips still stinging from that kiss. The one he should never have given her. But at that moment, he was in her soul. Tormenting her. That was not something she could forget. Nor the way her heart twirled when he said her name. That warm tone in his voice. When he touched her, she felt so warm and feverish. It was bliss. He sent shivers up her spine. Her skin was on fire.
It was Tauriel who offered to clean the body – body; the word seems so… final – and so did with, perhaps, some glimmer of hope that it would ease her mental suffering and give her that chance to heal his body again. Heal his soul to enter the Halls of his fathers before him. She made him as she remembered him, and then she kissed his lips, and his heart, for the last time.
Please read and review, and I would DEFINITELY appreciate any prompt ideas. Send me a PM or put your ideas in your comments.