For colorbloo, who asked for something Éowyn/Glorfindel.
Commentary as well as an explanation of any Silmarillion references will be posted at the end of the story.
prologue
The saddest word
in the whole wide world
is the word almost.
He was almost in love.
She was almost good for him.
He almost stopped her.
She almost waited.
He almost lived.
They almost made it.
—Nikita Gill
i.
She dreamed of it sometimes. There was red, so much red. Screams and smoke and ash and blood, the taste choking her; the sky dark with roiling shadows that rained down, staining a white city gray. A high shriek would pierce the heavy air, and she would stand still, paralyzed with that mind-numbing fear, and it would shriek again, calling.
She would lower her blade in surrender, shaking fingers slick and red.
She would always wake up then, sweating and gasping, her muscles aching as if the battle had been real. That was what scared her the most: that she was not strong enough; that someday, she would no longer have the will to fight.
Her eyes would prickle and sobs would sting at her throat, but she could not weep, because she was strong. She was strong enough, she told herself. Strong enough to curl in on herself and beat back the screams building in her chest, staring at her wall until dawn reached its fingers past the heavy curtains of her bed and she rose, dark smudges under her eyes that looked bruises against the paleness of her skin.
If she allowed any of it to escape, allowed herself to let her guard down for even a second, she knew she would shatter.
The splint had been taken off her shield-arm, but her sword-arm still felt strangely numb, somehow. It would lessen in time, the Halfling had told her, the one missing a finger. (The one who saved us all, her mind whispered, but she said nothing, because glory was a draught that had soon turned bitter, and she thought that perhaps it was the same for him.)
She always rode out through the back of the city, because she could not stand again on those fields. She did not want to remember, not willing to find out what would happen if she tried. She wearied of the stares and whispers that followed her every step. She could not hide here, too bright and golden in a city of twilight and shadow. I want to go home, she had finally whispered into her brother's shoulder, throat aching, and his lips brushed her brow as he pulled her close. You are strong, he whispered back, but she was so, so tired of being strong.