The darkness helped until the wine wore away. And then it became as endless and timeless as eternity. He felt completely lost. He did not know where he was going, where he was headed, only where he wanted...needed to be. Buried in her arms, so far within her that none could tell where she ended, and he began. He drank again. He could not bare the pain that threatened to consume him without the wines numbing effect. He cursed his own selfishness once more. Just s it had been what had nearly driven them apart, and then brought them back together, this time, it had been their complete undoing. The door flew open. "Do you not knock?" he slurred from his place upon the floor. There she was, she stood before him, as fierce and beautiful as the Valar, her face a mask of fury at the sight of him crumpled in the corner.
"Why have you done this to yourself!" she ordered, snatching the wine bottle from his limp fingers, emptying it into the sink.
"That was good wine," he protested half heartedly. She put her hands on his hips.
"Haldir, you will get off that floor this instant before I make you clean it!" she said angrily, before wrenching him up herself. When she had awoken to find him in her bed, she had thought that he was there to seduce her, until she realized that he had been the familiar presence she had felt in her dreams for the past seven nights. And she knew there was no lust in his attentions. And she demanded an explanation.
"Why have you come to me?" he asked dispiritedly, feeling like salt was being rubbed into an open wound at the very sight of her. How he loved her, he thought in his alcohol dulled mind. How splendid she was.
'You must think me stupid Haldir? I have come to ask you why you were in my bed this night, as you have been for the last seven."
He looked at her in amazement.
'I don't jump to conclusions Haldir. You of all people should know that."
He continued to stare up at her.
"I'm waiting," she said, tapping her foot at the pathetic looking March Warden, crumpled at her feet. "Why do you steal into my bed like a frightened elfing?"
Haldir sighed in defeat, his voice a little slurred from the wine. "Because dreaming of you was no longer enough to sustain me. I had to touch you." His voice grew clearer, and more impassioned. "I can no longer stand being without you. I have to be near you every second, I need to feel you in my arms, even for those few hours in the dead of night when I know not whether you can feel me with you. I am tired of denying and suppressing what I feel for you, and I am tired of being alone. And most of all, I am tired of being without you. I would give up forever to touch you, to have you as my own. That is why I come to your bed at night, and leave before you wake. That is why I steal into your arms like a frightened elfing, Cahra. Because I am. Because even when you sleep, you stave off my loneliness, and make me feel I am so much better."
His eyes never left hers, "Where has the wine gone?" he murmured, more to himself, than to her, before he collapsed into a drunken stupor, his impassioned speech having left him more exhausted than he realized. Or was it the wine? He slipped from awareness. Cahra looked at him for a long time, tears in her eyes, before she knelt down beside him, and pillowed his head with her lap, and wrapped her arms around him. "Oh Haldir," she whispered to him quietly, shaking her head, rocking him like a child as she held him close.
A/N; sorry all. I just couldn't resist the Captain Jack Sparrow moment. Where is the wine gone. lol. And that last line of Cahra's, imagine her saying that to the opening bars of 'BROKEN' by Seether and Amy Lee. It nearly brought me to tears. lol. so there you go. Short chapter, but up quick.. Enjoy. Thank you for the reviews everyone! And be prepared for the lovely long chapter that's coming. It will blow your socks off (undoubtedly with the cheesiness.lol)