If you haven't yet seen BotFA, turn back now.
Otherwise, carry on :'(
The last week of summer reigned upon the lush green lands between Mirkwood and the Misty Mountains, bathing the vibrant flowers and singing birds in hazy golden light from early dawn to lingering dusk. Moths and butterflies fluttered between bushes of lilac and buddleia, and a house stood alone in the landscape, boxed by a neat but very much living garden, the thatched roof and wooden beams glowing with a warm health that reflected the mood of the majority of its occupants. From a wooden cradle swaddled in patchwork crocheted blankets, a baby gurgled happily and stared up with wide blue eyes as it touched the large nose leaning over it with one tiny finger.
Tauriel could not look at it. She sat in the smallest room of the house, as far away from the joyful sounds as she could get, cloaked in darkness of her own design. It had become her refuge for two days now, even though Beorn insisted that she should at least get some fresh air or spend time doing something other than crying or staring off into the distance, but she couldn't bear that the world was so happy when she herself could not see a single light at the end of the tunnel. Her world was ending but not in the way that she wished, and even if it were to grant her one wish right now she would still have eternity to wait before she could be happy again. Tears that she thought had long dried up appeared in her eyes once more, and fell slowly into her lap, each one nine months too late to save him.
Five months ago, she had been headed for the Shire. It was a place she had only heard tales of, but by all accounts it was the most peaceful place in Middle Earth, and most importantly, it was far away. Far away from everything that had happened, far away from her home, far away from the mountain that should have been his. That had been early spring, however, and for the North that was hardly better than winter. Her supplies should have lasted for several more months but a torrential rainstorm on the eastern slopes of the Misty Mountains had washed half of them away and left Tauriel stranded and weak. She still wasn't sure that she was glad Beorn had rescued her. She knew she wished that he hadn't insisted on keeping her in and preventing her travelling further until the baby was born, no matter whose sake it was for.
And now, despite the fact that her strength should have been returning, Tauriel did not know if she ever would leave this place again. Over the summer months her health had only deteriorated and apart from the bump of her belly she had become thinner and thinner, in spite of Beorn's diligent efforts to feed her up. Now the bump was gone and she could feel every bone in her body through her pale and almost translucent skin. There was no illness that the shape-shifter could identify but there was illness nonetheless and for once, Tauriel could not bring herself to care. She did not know if she even cared to breathe again. Everything was painful, and no medicine could make it better.
After all these months, love still hurt.
The baby had no name. Beorn had asked twice, but each time she had given no reply and, bless his gentle furry soul, the shape-shifter had not pressed for an answer. She wasn't sure if she could ever bring herself to name the child that brought such pain to her heart.
His hair was dark. That had been the first thing Tauriel had noticed in her delirious state when Beorn had first held out the tiny babe to her, and that in itself had been enough to bring more tears to her eyes, sprung from a different sort of pain. Hardly able to bear looking longer but forcing herself to nonetheless, Tauriel had seen bright blue eyes in the tiny pale face, and those had brought with them a wash of sorrow and regret.
The laughing, caring brother who had been the first to die.
The king who reclaimed his kingdom but never was given the chance to rule it.
A prince, of a different sort, whom Tauriel had loved in a different way but been unable to follow into the North.
The cold eyes of one who had long perfected the art of not feeling. The art which Tauriel was yet to learn and wondered if she ever could.
A fresh wave of sobs wracked Tauriel's body as she remembered the day. Every moment of that fateful hour was branded into the back of her eyelids and no matter how much she tried to forget it she could never picture either of Erebor's princes any more without the accompanying image of their wide, lifeless eyes and grimaces of pain, frozen the way they were when the young souls - too young, by far - departed this life.
They had been scared. They hadn't wanted to die, just when they had so much to live for. They had done nothing to deserve it; seventy-seven - at that age Tauriel had been barely able to put an arrow to string, much less take on a battalion of elite orcs single handedly. She had wanted to blame it on their uncle, but despite his failings where gold was concerned, the dwarven king had genuinely cared for his nephews and she had seen his pain when the golden haired prince had fallen, limp, into the snow beneath that dreaded tower. That King had also paid for the mountian's gold in blood.
Part of Tauriel wished it had ended for her then, too, up on Ravenhill. She had almost begged the orc to finish her, but vengeance would not allow it. She had done her best, and condemned herself to live with the pain it brought afterwards. Oh Aulë, before that moment she had not known what real pain felt like. Of all people, she would not have expected her King to be the one who understood, but now she knew just how real her love had been, and just how cruelly it had been torn away and left her with the cutting shards of her heart and the last direct heir of Durin.
The last direct heir of Durin. It was laughable - the true heir of Erebor, half Elven? Absurd. And yet it was true, and it was clear, and it was the most painful thing of all when Tauriel looked into that child's face and saw her love looking back at her. While the baby itself was small - dangerously small, even - for an elf child, the head had been chubby and rounded and when it laughed, the smile, oh the smile; it was as if the dwarf himself had returned to her and was staring right into her soul again, if one looked past the blue eyes. But of course, Tauriel knew that he wasn't returning and never would. To remind herself of the fact, as she had done every morning since that Battle, tore the shards of her heart into even smaller pieces until it was beyond repair and she knew it.
Then there was the beard. Oh Aulë have mercy, the lad had the faintest hint of soft dark tufts of hair growing on his chin. Then, to counteract that, his ears seemed to take on the slightest point. Tauriel couldn't handle it. It was as if he was just there to remind her of what once was and could have been, then to sink the knife deeper by reminding her that that future had been torn away in an instant.
Beorn had shown kindness beyond words before and ever since her arrival here, and despite first impressions, the bear man had shown considerable skill caring for the baby. She could tell, even though she had not set eyes on her child since his birth. She supposed that she should not be surprised; by the number of animals to be found around the house, Beorn had to be the adopted father of hundreds of creatures over his lifetime.
Tauriel highly doubted that a Dwelf had ever been one of them. The little one - how would he ever find his place in life? Where did a half-breed of two races that despised each other fit in? He would forever be an outcast, shunned by his blood on both sides, unable to settle down or find love in this cruel, harsh world. There was nowhere that would ever truly accept him, and Tauriel wondered if by chance she had ended up in the house of the one person who would not discriminate against her child. But Beorn had done enough already; she could ask no more of him. She would not press upon him the young burden.
It was all her fault and there was no denying it; the number of times she could have turned back, or done something slightly different that might have altered the course of fate, was so overwhelming that she felt sick every time she remembered how things did turn out and how she had in the end been unable to stop it from happening. The final living moments of her dwarf flashed across her mind for the millionth time and a great sob heaved her lithe body. He was not coming back. He would never look at her, smile at her, hold her ever again for eternity and if he was not here, what was the point of trying to get through it? The pain had not ceased or ebbed away, in fact it had only grown, and Tauriel doubted that it would ever end. She could not go on. She was sitting on the edge of a cliff stubbornly turning her head away from the dark abyss beneath that was trying to swallow her up, only to find that there was a solid wall behind her and no way back to the light.
A small shaft of light pervaded the dusty darkness that smelled strongly of animals, and Tauriel squinted through tear-streaked eyes and turned her head away from it. The familiar tall figure of Beorn stood in the doorway, sillouetted against the daylight shining in from behind, and the she-elf sat up slightly, giving the slightest indication that it was okay to come in. The shape-shifter moved into the room, leaving the door ajar behind him, and found a seat on the three-legged wooden stool beside the bed. A horned and wooly head poked through the door curiously but with a look Beorn sent it retreating sheepishly away. He turned to his guest who had become more like a resident for the past few months.
"I have brought food."
"I'm not hungry," murmured Tauriel, hugging her knees to her chest and not meeting the shape-shifter's eyes.
"Still, you must eat, Tauriel," he insisted, placing a steaming bowl of broth in her hands with a small wooden spoon.
She stared at the food for a few moments, feeling her stomach churn and throat contract. Slowly, she took a small spoonful and brought it inch by tentative inch towards her mouth, but at the last moment she squeezed her eyes shut and let the spoon fall back into the bowl. Beorn was just in time to catch the bowl before it fell from her hands and he watched in concern as the she-elf curled up on her side facing away from him and let wave after wave of shuddering sobs wrack her body. He placed the bowl on the floor and closed his eyes in sorrow and pity as his fingers went to the object he had discovered earlier that day, wedged between two creaky floorboards in a room he hardly went in. He had no doubt who the arrowhead had belonged to, but he did not think that it would be a welcome token for his guest at this time, or perhaps any time.
"Sleep, little one," he rumbled in his low voice, "Rest. The child is sleeping now also and he will not make a noise to disturb you. When you awake you may come and see him."
He knew that his hope was in vain; if anything, the baby had been the breaking point for the distraught mother and for once a young life could bring no healing to the heart. Tauriel would not look upon the babe again.
With the gentleness of an eagle's wing, Beorn lifted a blanket from the end of the bed and placed it over the elf. Instinctively she curled up in its warmth, but it could not warm the ice that seeped through her heart, gradually slowing its beat and quenching its fire that had been dwindling for nine months. The bear-man sat with her until her breathing evened out and the tension in her shoulders seemed to ebb away more than it ever did when she was awake, but he knew there was nothing he could do - there was no medicine that could cure the hurts that had been done to this precious, broken soul.
On the thirteenth morning since the baby had been born, as the first light crept through the crack in the door, a pair of dark and haunted eyes fluttered open for a brief second. The face that looked over them was kind but full of sorrow as it listened to the last, hopeless wish of a dying elf.
Tauriel's voice was little more than a whisper, but Beorn heard it anyway.
"Do you think he could have loved me?"
There was only one answer, and Beorn gave it in one word, but he would never know if she had heard because the next moment the beautiful auburn head drifted to one side and a last breath of air left a body that should have been immortal. With tears in his large dark eyes, Beorn knelt by the mother's bedside until noon that day, mourning for the lives that had been lost and the child who would never know his parents.
I have an idea for another two chapters to come after this if anyone wants to read more. They will be much less sad than this, and even heartwarming in a way, I think...the idea is that we all might be able to heal slowly even if we still cry now and again :'(
Please review if you have the heart.