ii.

Her fair face had haunted the edges of his mind for a thousand years.

Hinder me? the wraith had hissed, almost amused. Thou fool. No living man may hinder me!

She had laughed then, a strange, fell sound that somehow matched the tears streaming down her cheeks. But no living man am I! You look upon a woman.

Reckless despair had been in her eyes; she welcomed Death as it stood before her. It was her eyes, grey as the sea, that stood out in his mind as he stared, past exhaustion, at the dirty canvas of his tent in the lull between battles on campaigns that had begun to bleed into one endless stretch of war.

He recognized her look, for his was the same.

He had spent two lives at war. He had marched across the Grinding Ice, fought in one of the greatest battles of an age, beheld the utter ruin of his people. He had watched countless friends fall, screamed until he was hoarse with grief and fury. He had tried to keep this evil at bay, giving the world short centuries of peace he now knew were a lie, because there was no end. There would never be an end.

Oh, how he envied Men, for even in death he could not escape.

"Is it the Doom?" he had asked Olórin, adjusting the too-heavy sword strapped across his back. He missed the armor forged in Gondolin, scratched and dented and his, but it had been buried with a different body in a different life. (I am a warrior, he reminded himself. I cannot regret.)

Now guised as a weathered old man, Olórin leaned heavily on his staff and looked at him from beneath bushy eyebrows. "Your task is not yet finished," he stated gruffly, stepping aboard the ship, and Glorfindel followed.

He had followed Turgon. He had followed Olórin and Gil-galad; he would follow Elrond unto the Grey Havens. They are gone, he thought, yet I remain. He was waiting, he realized one day as he stared at the bloody blade across his knees, though for what, he knew not.