He sits.

He breathes.

Today is good, he thinks.

Could be better.

Could always be better.

But today is good.

The leaves above them filter through the sunlight, endlessly moving, endlessly whispering their sorrow, their compassion. These things are unavoidable, they say, there's nothing you could have done. You're lucky you had what you did.

I know, he wishes he could say in return, my god, I know.

He sits.

He breathes, now painfully aware of how the body next to him doesn't.

He forces himself to look into the face he loves so dearly. Gray hair and deep-set wrinkles, evidence that time has passed, that this wasn't a dream, that he's now alone.

This isn't right, he thinks. He should be in the ground, with his forefathers. Not here, not the West. Why did he ever dare to hope the undying lands would grant undying life to the dwarf next to him? He knew it didn't work like that. But he hoped.

He had hoped the Lady Galadriel could have saved his love, but there was nothing even she could do for the Lockbearer.

He breathes.

Even here, among his mother and father and family, he fades. They see him, despair lining their faces, he imagines what they're thinking. How could he love Naugrim? How could he love something so stunted and hideous?

Oh but family, they are anything but hideous. They are blessed by Illúvatar, blessed with life, with skill beyond measure, with their own sort of beauty, rough like the stone they were formed in.

It wasn't fair, he thought. His love was still a child practically. Only a few hundred years he had spent on the earth. He had declined in the end, of course, but he had barely been reaching his prime with his craft. How unfair it was to be stripped of that talent so soon.

As he stared into his love's face he imagined what aging so quickly would feel like. To go from spry and limber to bent over and wrinkled in the span of two or three centuries – he shuddered at the thought.

A fate he was spared from.

Oh but how a small part of him longs for it. To have grown old with Gimli… It would have been worth the aches and pains and creaking bones. Instead he had been doomed to watch his One, his love, grow old and move on. He didn't know whose fate was worse.

He breathes.

He hears his name being called.

The words washed over him. His father, his ada, was here, pleading with him not to fade, to stay a while longer.

Ada, can't you see I cannot stay? He starts to say, but stops. It takes too much energy to speak.

He breathes.

His eyes haven't left his loves', open and staring, lightless and cloudy.

Father can't you see why I cannot stay? My love is gone. I do not even know if I will see him when I finally fade, for who truly knows where the Khazad go? To the Hall of Mandos? Elsewhere?

He breathes.

He aches.

His ada has stayed, to watch his youngest son unravel.

Father, go, he tries to say, you do not need to see this.

He blinks and it is dark. His ada is silent. His love is there still, body still unrotten.

He breathes.

His breath hitches.

He turns his eyes to the stars, created so many years ago for his kind.

"Ada, it comes soon. I can feel it."

"Iôn, I know." He felt like a child crying out in the dark – Father hold me, father tell me it was a dream, father help me.

There was nothing his father could do.

He breathes.

His breath stops.

His eyes close.

He slips away.

He floats in the darkness, unsure and afraid, the silence deafening.

Suddenly the song of the Ainur is filling the darkness, lights and color flash before him, and there is his love, as he has always been, as he was in his youth, red beard and glittering eyes, face unmarred by heavy wrinkles. There is a shout, an exclamation, a declaration of love and he is covered in dwarf.

As he wraps his arms around his love in the Hall of Mandos, he thinks, yes.

Today is good.