disclaimer: not mine...
rating / warnings: Mature / TW: SUICIDE ATTEMPT
notes: If you want to read more, let me know. I may write a second chapter, depending on how I'm feeling and what peoples' response is like. (It would be about his healing.) As of right now, though, this story is complete.
Please let me know what you think.
Part I
You let your feet run wild
Time has come as we all oh, go down
Yeah but for the fall oh, my
Do you dare to look him right in the eyes?
'Cause they will run you down, down til the dark
Yes and they will run you down, down til you fall
And they will run you down, down til you go
Yeah so you can't crawl no more
And way down we go
Way down we go
Say way down we go
'Cause they will run you down, down til you fall
Way down we go
~Way Down We Go, Kaleo
Red.
There is more blood than he had expected.
It is a silly realization, he decides an instant later. He has seen men bleed out from torn arteries before—has seen Elves and Humans alike drain their lives away with each pulse of their hearts, blood gushing and spurting and spraying from ripped jugulars, cut forearms, pierced thighs. Why should he be any different, a mixture of the two as he is?
Crimson.
It runs from the riven skin, drips from the sleeve pulled up to his elbow to bare his forearm, seeps across the centuries-smoothed surface of his desk, coating quill and parchment and leather-bound book alike. He should care—should care that he is destroying the desk, is destroying the agricultural records he was reading over before he made his choice, is destroying the last book Celebrían gave him before her attack.
But he does not.
He cannot.
He is beyond caring. He is beyond sorrow. He is beyond regret.
Scarlet.
The half-drunk decanter of wine sits abandoned on the corner of his desk, the glass-blown goblet he had been drinking it from lying shattered beneath the window. The pieces glitter in the light of Isil that drifts in through the open curtains, the stars shining cold and white and silver and bleaching from the midnight sky. Gil-estel sails across the heavens, brilliant and ever-watchful, baleful gaze sharper and keener than all the rest.
He does not care. He does not care.
He does not care.
The scalpel he had used to do it lays abandoned on the floor by his chair, half-blunt edge stained red and crimson and scarlet. The handle is smeared with it, the tip dripping with it, the edges dark with it. It had taken strength and determination—but he is in abundance of both. He always has been, since the earliest days, or so Maedhros had always said.
Not that Maedhros would have ever wanted him to use that strength and determination for this.
You did it too, Elrond thinks bitterly, rising unsteadily and stumbling around the edge of the desk to the decanter. He has lost more blood than he had realized. He lifts the decanter in his untorn arm and drinks straight from the lip, his shaking hand spilling a stream of wine down his chin to the front of his tunic and robe.
He does not care about that either.
Who are you to judge me? he sneers at his dead foster father silently.
And what of your other father? a treacherous voice asks him. The one watching you do this to yourself now?
Who is he to care? he demands of his absent father sailing overhead, turning and looking up and out of the window. He takes another long, spiteful drink of wine. Who is he to give a damn, when he abandoned me and Elros to our fates long before the Fëanorians ever came?
And what of your people? the voice asks. Will they not be heartbroken?
Who is anyone to give a damn?! he shrieks to his Valley, draining the decanter.
He staggers and catches himself on the edge of the desk, the now-empty decanter falling to the floor with a crash. For a long second he stares at it dumbly, wondering at the shining shards littering his carpet.
It is like his soul, he decides: broken irreparably, with no hope of healing or restoration. It is shattered, the edges sharp and dangerous—dangerous to himself, dangerous to others. It is hopeless, devoid of life, absent of future use.
It is nothing now—nothing but empty, broken shards of glass. Just like him.
He screams.
She's gone! everything in him wails. She's gone! You couldn't save her, and now you are empty, empty, empty. Broken. Damaged beyond repair. Destroyed.
He lands on his knees amid the shards of glass, ignorant of the way they cut through his hose and into his skin. All he feels is the emptiness yawning within him—in his heart and in his head, black and dizzying and all-consuming—and the blood streaming from his ravaged forearm.
A voice comes from beyond the door to his study. "My lord?" someone calls. "My lord, are you well?" They try the handle—only to find it locked. Footsteps recede down the hall, and Elrond rocks back on his heels, letting his head fall back. The ceiling swoops overhead, and dark shadows crawl along the walls and the edges of his vision, stealing his sight away.
"Why?" he begs. What he begs for, though, he does not know;.
More footsteps. A new voice—one that he recognizes.
"Elrond? Elrond, open the door."
Glorfindel.
"Valar-dammit, Elrond, open the door."
He sinks back, cradling his arm against his chest. The shadows swarm over his eyes, stealing the light of Isil, stealing the light of the stars, stealing the light of Gil-estel.
Thud.
It is almost over.
Thud.
It is almost…
Crash.
"Ai Elbereth, ai Eru, Elrond, what have you don—"
Then: darkness.