Title: A Light on the Water
Author: Spiderflight
Disclaimer: I do not own anything the Tolkien Estate lays claim to, nor Peter Jackson's films or the Middle-Earth Roleplaying Game. All original characters are mine.
A/N: I will periodically re-upload revised and edited versions of previously published chapters, as well as new content, so apologies if this system confuses you, dear reader!
Prologue
The cold air slammed into her like a wall.
For a moment, the warm chatter of the bar spilled into the night air as the door creaked shut behind her. Then, nothing.
It was the coldest winter for the past thirty-five years, or so the headlines of the Rhein-Neckar Zeitung announced. Renée wrapped her coat tighter around herself, but the wind still managed to creep in. She still didn't sober up, and she was fine with that. Tequila and good ol' Jack Daniel's did that for you.
Her lips, tongue and mind were so numb by now that they could've been surgically removed and she wouldn't have noticed.
At this hour, no one was out, especially since it was one of those days between Christmas and New Year's that no one gave a shit about.
Renée walked aimlessly down the narrow, cobblestoned streets of Heidelberg. Her balance was so off that she was glad no one was there to see her lean on the houses from time to time.
There was no need for her to look up and see the same old souvenir shops and tourist attractions lining the alleyways. She knew that the postcard racks and mock-lederhosen crowded behind the glass, the snowglobes and witty signs, and even the lace products, hadn't changed in the four years since. In some ways, it made this homecoming of sorts all the more painful.
Renée stumbled on. To her left, the brass monkey statue grinned like a lunatic; the light of the street lamps accentuated the emptiness within his face in a way that slowly unsettled Renée the longer she looked. She didn't see the familiar sandstone towers of the Alte Brücke until she had already crossed under them.
Eventually, she lurched to a stop. It started to snow, big fat snowflakes covering the rough sandstone until the grainy texture was hidden from view.
Across the old bridge where she stood, the Heidelberg castle loomed over the old university city. Even now, the city wasn't completely silent. In the distance, she could hear the two-tone blare of a police siren, and a dog barking into the night. She stared out, and the castle seemed to meet her gaze. The crumbling edges of its ruins and the empty windows only underlined her own broken, empty state.
For once, she didn't want to be strong.
Tears pooled in her eyes, until their combined weight drove them over her cheeks in surprising warmth.
For the first time in months, Renée simply cried. It seemed the right thing to do at this stage - an anti-climax of sensation. It was no more therapeutic than an unflinching compulsion to hold barbed wire as tightly as you could, just to see yourself bleed.
She didn't need to hear the words others said behind her back. She could guess well enough. And it wasn't like they were particularly wrong either. Her own actions had certainly done nothing to disprove the rumors.
Renée knew she was drunk, because in her sober mind, these things had been safely repressed.
The wind blew past her face again, more insistently this time. The Neckar River churned below her, hardly making a noise in the sleeping city. It had come close to freezing several times, and it was only December. It was hard to imagine that 2018 was just around the corner, and that these last days were just the dregs of another painful year.
But there was no reprieve waiting for her in 2018. No hope for better days, because when she torched her bridges, she had stood right in the middle and fallen screaming into the water.
She had written off her degree months ago. Her money was spent; whatever small change she had leftover from the bar, she dug out of her jacket and dropped into the river, one by one by one. And Alec? She shut her eyes, grimacing.
Only a fragile vestige of hope remained: that someone, somewhere, might mourn her passing.
Renée clumsily vaulted the balustrade of the bridge, and let go.