Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. I do not own any of the character, places, names, or anything associated with the works of J.R.R Tolkien or the Lord of the Rings (books or movie, whatever). My characters are Anita, Leila, and Arlandria and that is all.
All Fucked Up- The Amity Affliction
Chapter 70: All Fucked Up
The cry had gone up all over the city, it echoed down every hall and filled up each room as it traveled down the levels of Minas Tirith. There was no man, woman, child nor living thing that did not feel it in their core and straight down to their bones. People were weeping, singing, dancing through the streets pausing only to hug each other and cry out in exultation. From the remains of the lower levels to the top of the Citadel and even in the House of Healing the cheering could be heard as those who had fallen under the blade of a Nazgul's knife, and had not woken since the battle, suddenly regained consciousness- Faramir among them.
Anita was the odd one out.
Sauron was defeated yes and, if Gandalf was to be believed, Mordor was little more than a pile of ashes as a reminder of the evil that had once resided there. But over? In the elleth's eyes there was little to warrant the level of relief being demonstrated . Her confusion at the people's jubilation hit it's zenith in the House of Healing. As her had father re-stitched her wounded left leg, lecturing her the whole time about it, Anita had taken the time to people watch and had been studying the reaction of those around her. She didn't understand one bit of it.
Somewhere inside Ani was keenly aware that she ought to be relieved that the war was over, she should have been down right thrilled that the one person she had gone out of the way to save was reported to be making a fast recovery. But there was a heavy cloud that surrounded her, preventing any real emotion from penetrating her heart. She felt nothing. Even when the soldiers who were on the mend had called out to her trying to engage her in their celebrations. "Nehtúlaira!" They had cried out to her, first one soldier and then the cry was taken up by the men in mass, " Nehtúlaira!"...'Wraithslayer' , they called her. It took everything not to visibly cringe when she heard it, even when she kept her face neutral her stomach would twist up in painful knots when they addressed her as such . Anita had begged her father to let her go back to her private room in the Kings House, but given that she had ripped her stitches barely a day away from the Healers, her father was understandably reluctant.
Instead she had been provided a task. She had been propped up in a chair next to a large bed that was currently being occupied by the very small body of a Hobbit who had been sleeping restlessly for the past few hours. If Ani had looked like death when her father had found her in the street, then Frodo looked like a long dead corpse. His skin was sallow and paper thin , there were infected cuts on his arms and legs, and the wound on his neck where the necklace chain had hung was grotesque to look at. The elleth hadn't figured out if he had been granted a room to himself as a sign of high honor for his sacrifice or if they didn't want to risk the common person seeing him in such a state. Her job, as it had been explained to her, was to watch him as he slept and monitor his breathing, occasionally check his temperature for worsening sickness , and to blot his lips with water when they appeared dry. Oddly enough no one had really discussed what she would do it he happened to make a miraculous recovery and wake up. The task itself was boring, but it allowed her blessed privacy and quiet away from all the cheering and celebrations happening out in the city.
"Nehtúlaira," Anita sullenly mumbled to herself as she watched Frodo sleep, gods how she prayed that stupid moniker wouldn't stick. Frodo twitched violently in his sleep once and Ani startled at the sudden movement and then chided herself for being so jumpy, he had done that twice before already and it shouldn't put her nearly as on edge as it was. Reaching over she felt his forehead with the back of her left hand, he was warm but not alarmingly so, she then blotted his lips with a damp cloth after dipping it in a pitcher. Everything she needed has been placed within easy reach of her one good arm.
Frodo surviving as long as he had was nothing short of a miracle- which did seem to be the theme of the week- andAni couldn't stop her mind from wandering back to the possibility that eventually they were going to run out of miracles to cash in to keep people alive; this thought was especially concerning considering the sheer number of men that had marched to the Black Gate that they still had no word on. Among that group of men were Aragorn and Legolas, one was the heir to the throne of Gondor and therefore incredibly important to the recovery of this city she had fought to save, and the other , while still an heir to a throne, was by far more important to her on a personal level. If there was only miracle left, who would she choose to save?
The thought of such a choice made her chest seize and her next breath came in a strained gasp. What would make her thoughts go down such a dark path she didn't know, but the silence of the room became deafening and the walls were all too close for her comfort. If her leg was working she would have fled the small space and the haunting thoughts trapped within, that however was not an option. The only form of distraction in the room was the unconscious Halfing. Leila told her once even in a coma a person's brain reacted to being spoken to, Ani didn't know if that was true but she wasn't able to sit in the stillness of the room with her own thoughts and no way to filter or categorize them.
Even as she sat focusing on what she would even say to an unconscious soul the words found their way to her lips and sprung out, " You're lucky." The elleth paused for a moment and stared at the door to see if her voice brought anyone to the room. After a heavy moment of expectation when the door remained closed Anita knew that she and Frodo were definitely going to remain undisturbed until the next maid came by to switch out the pitcher of mostly untouched water.
"You're lucky you are still asleep," She clarified when she spoke to him again. " You fought hard and accomplished the thing you set out to do and now you can rest easy knowing you destroyed the Ring and the people you care about are safe. You can remain blissfully unaware that everything is still a fucking mess, that the world did NOT in fact become a magically wonderful place the instant that you threw that thing in the fire." As the words surged out like unchecked flood waters the elleth sat fidgeting with the bits of dirt under her mostly ruined finger nails, chipped and cracked as a side effect of dragging her broken body across the stone streets in the fight against the Wraith. "It's still filled with death and disease, and full to the brim of crappy people and sorrow. None of that went away when Sauron did, you see? You don't have to come to terms with the fact that even though you put your everything into what you fought for, it is of very little consequence in the grand scheme of things." Frodo remained motionless as the elf spoke, his breathing was more or less even and he appeared overall undisturbed by her talking. Other than the odd random twitch, Frodo looked very peaceful as he rested, if he was suffering in pain there was no way to know it.
Awkwardly the girl adjusted herself in the chair so she could lean closer and whisper, " No one would blame you if you chose to not wake up. There is so much pain that comes after you open your eyes, and it isn't even so much the physical pain as it is the crushing depression that they can't do much about. And you don't deserve that. You don't deserve to wake up to that. You deserve to slip off into eternal peace believing that you saved the world and everything is great now. Sure, there are people who will be sad but you don't..."
Anita didn't finish her sentence. Instead she sat up sharply in the chair- much to the protest of her bound rib cage- and stared at the door. She had become acutely aware of a presence lingering on the other side. The quiet only lasted a short time before Ani's suspicions were confirmed and the door slowly opened to reveal her uncle Elrohir. The elleth's stomach dropped as soon as she made eye contact with him. His hearing was good enough that he no doubt had listened to every word she had just spoken.
"Have there been any changes?" The older elf asked nonchalantly as he entered the room and closed the door behind him, Anita only shook her head in response. Elrohir walked to the opposite side of the bed from where his niece sat and gently touched Frodo's head checking his temperature. His face was relaxed and blank, giving away no hint of what he had just heard.
"You were listening at the door." Not a question.
Elrohir confirmed without an ounce of remorse in his voice."I was."
Anita swallowed thickly, " How much of that did you hear?"
"Enough," He stated vaguely as he opened Frodo's eye lids and checked his eyes reactiveness, avoiding making eye contact with her. Still no change to his expression. Panic was swirling in Anita as she could only imagine what her uncle was going to pass along to her father. Opening her mouth to request his silence on the matter but was cut off by Elrohir before she uttered a single syllable, " I am not in the habit of divulging unnecessary information to my brother."
Ani's mouth clicked back shut and remained that way as her uncle finished his basic examination of Frodo which would tell him what Anita already knew, nothing in his condition had changed.
"It is a familiar sentiment," Elrohir stated evenly, shaking the girl from her thoughts, "I have heard it among soldiers following great battles. A very familiar sad song."
She was trapped in this conversation, unable to leave due to her immobility, she was stuck if her uncle chose to continue this topic. Clearing her throat, Anita tried to test the water and see if he would just let it be, " I didn't mean that I..."
"Hush, child," Elrohir cut her off again, and Anita obeyed. This time he came around the bed and sat on the edge nearest her, his hands folded serenely in his lap, "There is no reason to lie about your feelings. War and death leave scars on all manner of persons, there is no reason to be ashamed of those scars."
There was no judgment, no condescension in his voice, which perhaps is what lured her into the sense of safety that compelled her honesty. "I don't see the same scars in other people, I'm starting to wonder if I am the only one."
The older elf sighed deeply, " You cannot know the innermost parts of another heart to know what wounds they still carry, what battles they still fight. Some wounds are so old that you have never known the person without them." There was such a sadness in his eyes when he spoke, it added credence to his words, it was arguably the most emotion she had eve seen her composed uncle express. " You cannot judge how you heal compared to another. Two people identical in every way could weather the same storm and come out the other side unrecognizable to the other person." Anita remembered hearing about her uncle and father when she first came to live in Rivendell, hearing about how they were pranksters and little devils and had terrorized the village. At the time Anita had blown off such stories, finding it hard to reconcile the difference between the hellion Elrohir from the stories and the quiet gentle soul she had met in Rivendell. Now she could sense that these two seemingly different people were in fact of the same life, and she began to wonder what traumatic thing her uncle could have experienced to make his life turn in a dramatic way.
"Oh lord," Anita mumbled, dejected, " So this feeling never goes away? I thought if I just...survived... long enough that I would be finished with it."
"Finished with it? There is no end to grief, or hurt, or healing. It is not a task to complete. It is something you carry with you, a part of you , forever." Elrohir must have recognized the despair in the Anita's face because he reached out and put a comforting hand on her knee. " It is not like a weighted burden you must endure, not if you accept it into yourself; it would be as a new definition of who you are moving forward through life. It is a slow process, I will not lie to you, and it takes genuine effort to mold yourself into this new definition of self, but a slow steady pace forward is better than no pace at as. To stand still with this burden is to be crushed by the weight of it."
Anita broke eye contact with her uncle and instead fixed her gaze on a blank spot of the wall. If her uncle had been meaning to comfort her, it had failed miserably. "Death would have been easier, " She grumbled under her breathe, and when the seizing fear that should normally accompany thoughts of death did not make an appearance, another thought leaked out, " I think...maybe...I wanted... to die." Her voiced trailed off so low she wasn't certain the last word had even been spoken out loud.
"Death would have been easier." Her uncle confirmed, completely ignoring the second half of her statement.
Her dark eyes whipped back around to look at him, confused, " Shouldn't you be giving me a speech about how life is worth living and some day it will all be rainbows and butterflies?"
"Oh if I did it would be terribly insincere."
"Ouch" Anita balked.
"My meaning is, you do not need me to give you such a speech. Much like Frodo has right now, you HAD the opportunity to ease into that forever sleep without the pain and guilt,much like you explained to Frodo, and you made the choice not to. I do not need to provide you reasons to live because you found enough for yourself, it is why you are here now among the living." Elrohir stood, his added height gave his next words an extra air of authority, " You do not need anyone else to tell you why to live, you simply need to remember the reasons you chose to live."
Anita took a moment to process his words and could not find a single argument against them. "You know, you are not given enough credit in our household for your wisdom."
"I am aware." Elrohir stated with a hint of smugness and made for the door. He turned back before he reached for the handle, " We are expecting a herald any day now from the Black Gate to tell us of what befell there...and who survived. Would you like me to send for you when they arrive?"
Fear gripped her and she shook her head firmly. "No, thank you, but I am not ready to face that." Her uncle looked at her quizzically, so she clarified, "In this room, I am safe from reality. I can live in a fantasy where Legolas and everyone else I care for has survived, and there is no need to process more grief. But once I leave this room , the world is what it is and I cannot pretend to live a fantasy any more. So, no, I am not ready to leave because I need what little shred of hope remains untouched by the world outside. It's all I've got left."
Elrohir nodded solemnly, "Then I shall tell them you do not wish to be disturbed, even when the news does reach the city...Nehtúlaira."
"Thank you." She strained, trying to hide the full bodied cringe that overtook her when her uncle used that name. The door closed behind her uncle's retreating form and she went back to the all encompassing silence from before, alone with her thoughts.
But this time with a new task before her.