A/N: So I was not going to add this note initially but in the end I could not not comment on the deeply saddening news of the passing of Christopher Tolkien. His dedication to his father's work and his immeasurable contribution to the legendarium are the reasons for why so many of us are here in the first place – and why we keep falling in love with Middle-earth over and over again. I know he would have greatly disapproved of (understatement!) this story (of every story I have ever written) but… thank you sir. Thank you for everything.

Chapter 31

No one came for me. Thranduil came not to my door again and nor did Mithrandir. My family also stayed away as the shadows lengthened and deepened, and night fell. Most of all I wanted Legolas, but also I feared him for now I knew no longer where his will ended and his father's began. I did not so much question his love as his motifs. For love I was sure he felt for me, but if it was rooted in subtle designs or desires less fair, I wanted not to be made aware.

I would have cursed Mithrandir for his suggestion which had now set root among my thoughts, had I not learnt to never curse a thing. Curses and oaths had long been the bane of the Noldor and though that doom had been lifted by the Valar after the War of Wrath, I never took any upon myself. And so therefore I sat in silence, staring into a void and perceiving how it engulfed me and emptied me in turn, and left a black chasm where my heart had once been.

This was different than the immense grief that had assailed me at the torment and subsequent departure of Celebrían. What I had felt then had been acute sorrow – an immediate distress which had been dealt me like a blow. This was a building despair that wove its thick, unyielding cords around me until I sat immobile and barely breathing. I was colder than I had ever been and yet I had no impulse to seek warmth. Not even starlight came to me in that black hour for the clouds lay thick over the Valley and drank all their light.

I could never say for how long I sat thus. But finally I rose and by then my house was silent. I found my rooms empty and my bedchamber shrouded in darkness. And there, unseeing and alone, I lay upon my bed, until the night withered away into a washed-out dreary dawn of impenetrable grey.

But I was still Lord and bound to duty, and so when I could delay no longer I washed and dressed and left my rooms. Elves need little sustenance by way of food or drink but may rather eat or drink as it pleases them, and so I forewent breakfast and returned instead to my study. There I firmly closed the door behind me and sank down behind my desk.

There I considered my once-wife but wife no longer. Marriage was generally regarded as an absolute and unbreakable bond among the Elves and though it happened on occasion that two spouses grew estranged they usually stayed together though they might live apart. The act of wilfully closing the heart to another was a rare, and remarkable, occurrence and I knew of few cases save my own. And for good reason, I had swiftly learnt.

Thoughtfully, I traced a darker vein in the wood as it disappeared under the parchments and maps that were piled atop my desk. I wondered then, for the very first time, what Celebrían's life was like in the West. If, perchance, she had found a new love, or if she longed for me as I had done for her not so long ago. If she was happy or sad. Healed or still hurting.

I felt her no longer. Where once the sound of her laughter had stirred my heart only a memory dwelt now and it held no such power over me. Sometimes, during our brightest years together, I thought I could feel her thought brush mine but whenever I reached for her she drifted away.

Ever had she done so, I thought now bitterly. Ever had she drifted away.

But that was unfair. For I had loved her deeply and I had not known the kind of love that Legolas would one day come to kindle in me. There could never be a comparison of them, for theirs were songs entirely different and none could ever drown out the other. Yet even as I scolded myself for belittling the love I had once felt for Celebrían, it seemed to me that the love I bore for Legolas was the greater, and I was ashamed.

Dark were my thoughts in that hour and as the day faltered and a thick dusk swallowed up what light there had been, I finally rose and sought him out.

I needed not search long. He sat among the shadows on the patio where once starlight had danced in his eyes. Before the sight of me he shrank back but I could not deliberately soften the lines of my face for as I beheld him, and remembered his kisses, fear twisted inside me and hardened my heart.

"My lord…" he said, and his voice blended with the deepening darkness around us.

I came to stand only a few feet from him. He was not wearing yellow today and his hair had been hastily braided. The air here was dry and heavy, not like yesterday's which had been wet and wild. Now it crowded in my throat and hindered my breathing, and the tiles under my feet were cold and unfeeling.

"Tell me," I heard myself saying, "the truth." And it was not what I wished to say but I could not stop myself.

"What truth?" He got up, slender and breakable in the night where no stars shone. He sounded confused but perhaps I misread him. "You know the truth."

"I do now," I said. "For your father has spoken of the scheme he devised."

His eyes were wide but not in the way I liked to see them, and he was pale.

"I swear to you, my lord, that I know naught of my father's schemes," he said, and there crept now into his voice a pleading note.

"Is that so?"

"Aye. Please, my lord…"

"You did not seek this?" I gestured at my house.

His gaze fled between the wall to his left and me, and back again. "Seek what?"

My throat was tight, knotting the words together but I got them out. "Whatever I would be able to give you. Whatever an… alliance with Imladris would bring your father."

"An alliance…?" But then understanding flashed in his eyes and he took a step forward. "No!" he cried. "My lord, please, I could never–"

And even as the first tear spilled down his cheek I felt how it tore a wound in my own heart; his pain was now mine to bear also, and yet I had surely been cursed for I only shook my head; and I stood like stone unyielding before him.

"Did you single me out for this?"

"No!" And he dropped to his knees before me on the tiles and the air did not stir.

I was not breathing. The black cords wound like iron bands around my chest and drowned out my vision. I had no heartbeat. I felt my body, my hröa, weak and wilting, finally withering. I remembered the blackness of the early days, when my own father had gone beyond reach and my mother had followed. And though he would later shine brightly, and her wings were like a white fire as she flew to greet him, it was with a light that was never meant for me and which I could never touch.

Into the care of Maglor and Maedhros we had come. They, who had pursued and slain many, found us, and though they could have killed both Elros and myself, they let us live. But they were cursed, bound to an oath that they should never have taken, and their doom was hard and cruel. And so they, too, went beyond reach: one destroyed in flames and utter anguish and the other broken by grief and despair.

The years had lengthened under the stars but ere I knew it, they were cut brutally short when my brother one day opened his mind to me. My beloved brother whose choice had cut like a spear through my soul and torn me asunder. He was lost now, lost to me outside the Circles of the World, and never would I see him again.

Later, I stood with Cirith Gorgor at my back and with the accursed soil of Mordor beneath my feet. And the dead were all around me. Never had I known such weariness, and Gil-galad had turned his dust-streaked face to me and though there flashed still determination in his eyes, his fingers trembled around the shaft of Aeglos.

The siege that followed extinguished every light. It was in that time that I looked the last upon brave Anárion and upon Elendil, his father. And when Sauron slew Gil-galad, and his head was twisted back, and his dark hair swept around his face as he fell, I swear my cry equalled those of the Nazgûl above. But I fought my way to that bitter end, though our victory tasted like ashes on my tongue.

The last blow came not in battle. Indeed, it was not even dealt me directly. Had I been there, I might have been able to spare her for gladly would I have suffered in her place. But I had not been there and she had well-nigh perished between the high rocky walls of the Pass instead. She had been returned to me too late and soon I bitterly discovered that I had nothing to set against the poison that was seeping into her soul.

All this came to me in that hour as Legolas knelt before me and the skies were black as jet, and no wind reached me. Perhaps I had grown too used to deceit and trickery. Perhaps I saw deception when there was none. Yet, I was powerless before the threat of it and the memories choked the air out of me and the ground fell away under my feet and I saw nothing. I gave up thought, then, and memory at last, and my knees gave way and the unforgiving stone that was the Ered Gorgoroth swallowed me up and chewed me to pieces until I was no longer.

o.O.o

Silence was all around me. It held me down. It had invaded my mind and filled my heart, and I did not know myself. I had no heartbeat and no breath. I lay swathed in shadows, wrapped in darkness, draped in sorrow.

But I was finally calm. I needed no stars and no Moon and no Sun, for here all was silence, and light was a song and here there was no singing. Indeed, why had I ever needed singing? When I could simply lie here, drenched in this stillness that was like a shroud. Here no constellations gleamed from a vaulted sky and no tails of diving stars traced a silvery line from the depths of the heavens to the glowing horizon. Here, nor Arien nor Tilion would pass in their courses, and their splendour would never reach my eyes. If eyes I had.

Long I lay thus until at last I felt movement and the peace was disturbed by an acrid smell. I tried to turn my face away but I found I could not move and then came a sound I could not place. It soon died away but in its wake came another and on the very edge of the darkness a faint light flickered to life.

For a while this was all I understood but then the world as I had now come to know it seemed to be sliding sideways and more light invaded my silence and I closed my eyes to it for it stung. Cruel it was, and yet alluring, and I was powerless to hinder it from overtaking me. Slowly but steadily it burned, and finally it reached me, and I strained before it. There I saw grey, at first, and then a piercing blue, and there was smoke.

TBC