Chapter Twenty-One: Quildë

Crying in Legolas' arms felt like catharsis. Bilbo didn't quite understand her situation. Glóin was a dear friend, but was a little too gruff and abrupt – a little too dwarvish. Arwen she'd only known a few days.

Legolas had known her, and had known a little of what had been between her and Glorfindel. He held her tightly for a long time, murmuring apologies.

'I should have come for you. I should have searched for you when I didn't hear from you again. I thought maybe once you'd found your husband, you'd want to return to your old life, away from us – but I should have known something was wrong. I thought it was strange, and I did nothing. I'm so sorry. I did nothing.'

'He's not even my husband,' Azshar mumbled into his shoulder. Legolas pulled back, his face carefully blank.

'Yes. I heard that.'

She drew in a deep breath. 'I know what you must think of me,' she said. 'I know what you all must think. I shouldn't have believed what Maglor told me.'

'There was no way for you to know he was lying,' Legolas began, but Azshar shook her head, tasting acid in her mouth.

'I didn't even doubt him for a second. I was stupid, weak, senseless. A gullible lamb led to her own slaughter.'

'Why did you believe him, then?' he asked quietly, not quite meeting her eyes. 'Why didn't you doubt what he told you?'

'You don't know what it's like, not knowing who you are,' Azshar said. 'I might have the courage to face an orc, but losing your memory is a different battle altogether. It eats you out from the inside. It's debilitating. It's like drowning in an ocean without knowing which way is up, and when Maglor appeared, I thought he was going to pull me to safety.'

'No one blames you for what happened,' Legolas said. 'Not me, not Elrond or Gandalf or Glorfindel.'

'I hate myself for believing him.'

'He just knew you well enough to say what he knew you would trust.'

'Glorfindel will never forgive me,' she said, tears slipping down her cheeks again. She gave him a watery smile. 'These past few days, I haven't been able to stop crying.'

'I'm sorry, Azshar,' he said again. His face was earnest and contrite. 'I can't begin to imagine what you've endured.'

'I really am glad to see you,' she said. Clouds were scuttering across the morning sun. Arwen, Glóin and Gimli had disappeared into the gardens.

'I was looking for you for hours before I found you here,' Legolas said. 'Glorfindel told me you were here, and that your memories had been taken again.'

Azshar's head jerked up. 'Glorfindel spoke to you?'

'I saw him last night, though he didn't say much. He rarely does.'

To her embarrassment, her face crumpled yet again. 'It's been… a difficult time,' she said with a wobbling voice. Legolas took her hand and squeezed it.

'I suppose you saw him too,' he said carefully.

Azshar's breaths were growing uncontrollable and short, and her heart squeezed painfully in her chest. 'He wants me – out of his life,' she said. 'I know it has been a long time for him, but – I can't understand why it hurts so much –'

'Stop,' Legolas said, taking her firmly by the shoulders. His fingers dug into her, grounding her. 'Breathe, Azshar, you're panicking.'

She was crying, and her heart was pounding. It felt like walls were closing in on her; she was a mess.

'I think I need him, Legolas,' she whispered. Her hands were shaking. 'I thought I could hold on until I saw him again, but he pushed me away, and – I'm falling apart…'

'Sit down,' Legolas said. 'Sit down. I want to tell you what happened while you were away.'

She sat opposite him, pressing her hands to her face until minutes later, she felt the panic finally begin to ebb. When she looked up, he was watching her with trepidation.

'You don't seem quite the same as the last time I saw you,' he said.

She clasped her hands together. 'I am not the same person that was at the Battle of the Five Armies,' she said quietly. 'My memories being taken, then violently returned… the years I spent sleeping… I feel as though I'm slowly being chipped away. There is less of me here than there once was.'

'People aren't made to sleep for decades, let alone centuries,' Legolas said. 'If you can even call it sleeping. It seems more like death to me.'

Azshar shuddered despite the sun. 'I suppose I'll never know what kind of person I was before my first sleep,' she said. 'I imagine I'm just a shadow of her now.'

'You might remember one day,' Legolas said optimistically, and Azshar smiled sadly.

'It will kill me if I do. I can say that with certainty now.' He stared at her, at a loss for what to say. She shook her head. 'It doesn't matter. You wanted to tell me what happened while I was gone.'

'Right,' he said slowly, still looking worried. 'Well, we won the battle. We stayed a few days afterwards, collecting our dead and tending to the wounded. I looked for you, but I couldn't find you. I was worried.'

'Glorfindel didn't tell you?'

'Glorfindel had disappeared too.'

'I'm sorry,' she said.

He shook his head. 'Don't be. On our way back through the Greenwood, I came across Glorfindel. He was… in a bad way.'

Azshar sat forward. 'How do you mean?'

'He was injured. When I approached him, I thought he was unconscious, but he got up and tried to fight me. He was half dead from his wounds, but he nearly killed me. I stopped him, and he recognised me. That's when I learned you had been taken by your husband.'

'Maglor wasn't – isn't –'

'I know that now,' Legolas said. 'But at the time I was – bitter. I was almost glad to hear that Glorfindel had been rejected like I had.' He cleared his throat and looked away. 'Tauriel left after the battle, and has never been seen since. I think she went West.'

'I'm sorry,' Azshar whispered, and Legolas shrugged.

'It's for the best. But at the time… I don't know. Glorfindel and I bonded over our misery. He spent two weeks in the Woodland Realm while he was healing, and I don't think we spent a minute of it sober.'

Azshar's fingers were intertwined so tightly her knuckles were white. 'He trusted me,' she said in a low voice. 'I should never have –'

'Azshar. None of this is your fault.'

She didn't believe him, but she nodded anyway. 'Alright.'

'Glorfindel was…' he hesitated, an edge of caution in his voice as though he were hesitant to tell her the truth. 'He was torn open when you left. I think he believed he'd be able to protect you from anyone or anything, but when you left of your own accord with Maglor, willingly… he was helpless. He had no control. That made it all worse. He wasn't angry that you were married, he was angry that you were gone.'

Azshar stared at Legolas, listening to his account almost hungrily. Part of her felt absolutely assured that Glorfindel must still feel something for her. Seventy-seven years wasn't enough to make nothing of what they'd had. Was it?

'Whatever he was before the Lonely Mountain, he is worse now,' Legolas went on. 'Where he was quiet, he has become silent. Where he was taciturn, he has become icy. He was thorough before, but now he is almost without mercy, ruthless. It seems to me that he feels nothing but fury.'

Azshar's lips were pressed together into a thin line. 'So, there is nothing to be done.'

Legolas shrugged. 'Maybe. I don't know. I spent more time with him these past years than perhaps anyone else did, though I see him rarely. But he has only mentioned you twice.'

Azshar's heart sank. 'What did he say?'

'The first was when we were drinking in my father's halls. He drank enough to kill three men, and then he told me that it had all been a lesson.'

She blinked. 'What does that mean?'

'He said, "I knew it would ruin me, and I gave in anyway. The Valar tested me, and I failed."'

Azshar's hands clenched tighter. Tears threatened to spill again.

'The second time was thirty years ago. We were hunting spiders together, and he hadn't spoken a word in days. He looked up at me one night, and said, "She has poisoned me from the inside out." Then he disappeared into the forest. I found him the next day. He had destroyed the entire nest by himself.'

'Thirty years ago,' she repeated. Legolas nodded slowly.

'I want to warn you, Azshar,' he said. 'Even if Glorfindel still feels for you what he felt before – if he even has the capacity to feel what he did – he won't want to let himself. By his thinking, he's learned his lesson. You broke his heart, and he doesn't want to feel that pain again. It's a survival instinct, simple as that. Do you understand?'

'But he's miserable,' she whispered.

'Maybe. But if he let himself love you, and then he lost you yet again…' he shook his head. 'He wouldn't just be miserable; he wouldn't survive it. And Glorfindel believes that he has a duty to this world to survive, or else he would be long gone by now.'

'I need him, Legolas,' she said quietly. The things he'd told her were breaking her heart, but they also had given her hope. 'I can't tell you what his rejection did to me. It's something physical, not just of the heart, but the body too. It's a kind of hollowness, an ache so empty it hurts.'

'You're fading,' Legolas said, alarmed. 'Have you told Elrond this?'

She shook her head. 'He already saved my life from the onslaught of memories. Besides, I haven't seen him since I – spoke to Glorfindel.'

Legolas looked down again and sighed heavily. 'I think Glorfindel has been fading too, in his own way. He replaces his grief with fury and shuts out everything else.'

'I'm going to talk to him,' she said with quiet determination. Legolas nodded.

'As long as you can accept that he's not who he used to be,' he said. 'And that it's unlikely that anyone, even you, can change him back.'

'You used to dislike him,' Azshar said. 'What changed?'

'I've seen him at his lowest,' he replied. 'And I think you were right. He's not as much of a monster as he seems to think he is.'


The hope Legolas had given her pulled her from her devastated state and imbued her with desperate purpose. She walked the paths of Rivendell in search of Glorfindel, silently rehearsing what she would say to him.

She didn't see him for another three days, and when she did, he was limping. As soon as he caught sight of her, he stiffened and limped away.

Rivendell was full of people of all kinds. Elrond had held a great council of elves, dwarves, men, hobbits, and wizards, and Arwen had been quiet ever since she'd returned.

'You won't know about the Ring of Power,' she'd said one night. 'But it contains the terrible power of the Enemy, and now… it will bring great trouble. I have a feeling that something terrible is going to happen, and we are to trust our fate to the Halflings.'

'The Halflings?' Azshar asked. 'Frodo and his friends?'

'Frodo and Samwise are taking the ring of Sauron into Mordor.'

'Are they to go alone?'

'Of course not,' Arwen said miserably. 'Aragorn wants to go.'

'I'm sorry,' Azshar said, but she was suddenly distracted by her own worry. If the peace of Middle-earth lay in the balance of this quest, she had a horrible feeling that Glorfindel would be going too.

Imladris was filled with a sense of anticipation as a Fellowship of the Ring began to take shape. They would leave soon, Elrond said. When the weather permitted, and the air grew colder, and they couldn't possibly leave it off any longer, they would leave.

Glorfindel remained elusive, so Azshar resorted to desperate measures, her newfound hope waning. She found Erestor near the libraries.

'Azshar!' he said. 'How wonderful to see you again!'

'I'm glad to see you too,' she said as warmly as she could manage.

'I was truly glad when I heard you'd recovered from your sickness,' he said.

'Thank you. Erestor – I have an important message for Glorfindel. Do you know where I might find him?'

He eyed her with well-veiled curiosity, but then he smiled. 'Let me take you to his quarters.'

Glorfindel wasn't in when they arrived, and Erestor left Azshar to wait. She stayed while the sun went down, and didn't leave until the next day broke. There was no sign of Glorfindel, but the room smelled like him.

She finally met Bilbo for breakfast, as she'd promised days ago. He was eating with Glóin and his son Gimli, and she joined them with a sigh.

'You look a right mess,' Glóin said cheerfully, and Gimli snorted into his porridge.

'Ignore him,' said Bilbo, shooting the dwarf a cross look. 'How lovely to see you again, Azshar!'

'I'm sorry to have been away for so long,' she said. 'I've been looking for someone who doesn't want to be found.' Even as she spoke, she glanced around the tables of the hall. Glorfindel's blonde head was nowhere to be seen.

'Glorfindel, yes?' Bilbo asked, and when she looked surprised, he just buttered a piece of toast primly. 'I'm not as silly as I look, most of the time. Besides, there are rumours about you two.'

'Rumours?' Azshar asked, alarmed. Glóin leaned forward.

'You don't mean Glorfindel the Grumpy who followed us all the way east?' he asked.

'Nothing too worrying,' Bilbo assured Azshar. 'There are simply whispers that I catch in passing. It didn't go unnoticed that Glorfindel left Rivendell with a certain elleth, and then returned without her in a much fouler mood. That's all.'

'I don't suppose any of you have seen him?' she asked hopelessly. The three of them shook their heads.

'The last I saw him was at the Council of Elrond,' Glóin said, glancing at Gimli. 'Though this one might be doomed to become better acquainted with Glorfindel than he'd like.'

'Gimli is to join the Fellowship of the Ring with Frodo and Sam,' Bilbo explained.

'Someone had to do something about the disproportionate number of elves joining in,' Gimli grumbled.

'Why?' Azshar asked, a sinking feeling in her belly. 'Who has joined in?'

'Glorfindel is going,' Glóin said. 'And the princeling from Mirkwood. What's his name? Lendleboss?'

'Legolas,' Bilbo said. 'Aragorn will be going too, and Gandalf will be their guide. And then there's Boromir of Gondor, who's sitting by himself over there.'

Azshar glanced to where he was pointing. There was a bear-like man sitting alone and picking thoughtfully at a plate of food. He caught her gaze and smiled at her.

'Elrond means to appoint one more person too, so that the nine of the Fellowship can match the nine Ringwraiths,' Gimli said.

'Word has it both Elladan and Elrohir volunteered, but Elrond is keeping them here in case Rivendell needs to be defended,' Bilbo added.

'Glorfindel should stay too,' Azshar muttered. 'I need to find him. You're sure none of you have seen him?'

'I'll keep an eye out,' Gimli offered. She thanked them and left the table to walk through the gardens once more.

That night, she decided to try sleeping again. Elrond had advised regular, nightly sleep as a part of her recovery, but Azshar had avoided her bed almost religiously since waking up. She hadn't been in a good state while she was awake, and she imagined her nightmares hadn't been cured by her latest stint of enchanted sleep.

But exhaustion, as always, caught up to her. The night was still and warm when she let her eyes close, and sleep found her quickly. So did her nightmares.


She was hanging from her wrist of the edge of a cliff, in utter agony. She was crying without tears, no water left behind her eyes. She wanted to die. She wanted to die, but even that was denied her.

Suddenly she was falling, falling, falling – until she landed with a jolt in a dark hole. Her heartbeat grew faster and faster. She stared up at the small circle of grey sky above her, breathing shakily. She had to escape…

But it was too late. A dark shape blocked the light above her. It was a boulder, she realised, a falling boulder –

It struck her hard, pinning her to the ground. Another fell, and then dozens more. She was crushed beneath their weight. The sky above her faded into absolute darkness. She screamed.


She woke with a ragged cry, lurching out of the bed and onto the cool stones of the floor. Her breathing was ragged and tears were streaming down her cheeks. Azshar wrapped her shaking arms around herself and dropped her head onto her knees.

Since waking in the tiny room on Weathertop, she'd been plagued by a creeping sensation that the world was going to close in on her. The days she'd spent huddled in darkness before Aragorn had rescued her had left her scarred in a way she hadn't yet realised. She kept crying, until suddenly she heard a slow, quiet exhale from just outside her door.

She froze, falling absolutely silent. There was someone outside. Someone who had likely heard her screaming, but who hadn't come in. Arwen would have come in, she thought. So would Legolas. With rising anticipation, she got to her feet unsteadily and opened the door.

Glorfindel jerked upright from where he'd been leaning on the wall, taken by surprise. He watched her with wide eyes, his jaw clenched. She stared back at him for a long moment, neither of them speaking. Then she stepped back and opened the door wider.

'Come in,' she said. It wasn't an offer, but an order. After another long moment, Glorfindel obeyed. She closed the door behind him.

He paced to her balcony and stood looking out at the stars, his back to her. She drew in a deep breath. 'The dreams have changed,' she said in an unsteady voice. He didn't reply. He didn't even move, so she tried again.

'I was in your quarters.'

'I know.'

He said nothing more, but even those two short words made her heart clench. She went on.

'You were cruel to me last time we spoke.'

His head turned slightly. 'I was honest.'

She took a step forward. 'You can tell the truth without being unkind. And you don't need to hurt me in order to drive me away.'

'What do I need to do then?' he asked, turning around deliberately and meeting his gaze. 'Tell me.'

'You need to prove to me that you mean it when you say you never want to see me again,' she replied, taking another step closer. 'You need to look me in the eye and say honestly that you are happier without me.'

'It isn't about my happiness,' he said. His voice was a little hoarse. 'It's about duty.'

Azshar's heart clenched in her chest. 'So you admit that being with me makes you happy.'

Glorfindel shot her a sarcastic look. 'What is this, an interrogation? I have admitted nothing.'

'But you –'

'But nothing,' he said scathingly, his voice rising. 'Our brief entanglement seventy-seven years ago was a mistake, and I regret it profoundly.'

That stung. Azshar's hand came up to close around her locket. 'Why?' she said in an embarrassingly small voice.

'Because it hurt,' Glorfindel hissed, closing the space between them. Angry words suddenly started pouring out of him. 'And I couldn't handle it. When you left, I didn't know what to do. Something broke inside me, and there was – there was no way for me to fix it. I can't just – I have a duty here, I was sent back for a reason, and I can't let you stop me again. I'm not going to let it happen again. I can't let you.'

She stared up at him. His pale face was framed by stars. He looked haggard, not just as a result of little sleep, but after living through long, lonely years that had worn him down. She took a small step closer, and she was near enough to touch him.

'It isn't going to happen again,' she whispered. 'I'm not going to leave you this time.'

'Azshar, no –'

She caught his hand in hers. It was trembling. 'Listen to me. If I have a husband, a real one, and he comes to find me… I'll tell him he's too late. I don't know who I was before, but I'm Azshar now, and this promise is the only one that matters to me. I am not going to leave you again.'

He let out a shaky breath, staring down at her with wide eyes. He was torn, she realised, between doing what he wanted and doing what he thought was right. She wished she could make him see that they didn't have to be different things.

'I'm yours,' she whispered. 'Trust me, please. I'm not leaving you, no matter what.'

And there, finally, almost imperceptible in the darkness – a single nod.

Azshar wanted to collapse in relief, but Glorfindel was still staring down at her like she was something fragile and flighty, like he wasn't quite sure that she was really there. She threaded their fingers together, her heart pounding, and slowly reached up with her other hand to touch his cheek. His eyes fluttered closed, and there were a few seconds of perfect stillness.

Then he wrenched his hand from hers and grabbed her, pressing her to him and kissing her so hard it almost hurt. It was clumsy and desperate, like he'd been starving. She felt it too. Kissing him was shocking relief to the pounding despair that had been strangling her. Their teeth bumped, their breath mingled frantically, his tongue folded into her mouth, and suddenly her pain was gone.

He pressed open-mouthed kisses down her jaw and then her neck, staying there with his arms wrapped around her like a vice. After a moment, he stopped kissing and just held her, his face pressed into the crook of her neck. Azshar felt a wetness on her skin, and her eyes widened as she realised he must be crying.

She held him as tightly as he was holding her. It was going to be alright, she told herself silently. Everything, more or less, was as it should be. They were together again. They would be alright.

He pulled away suddenly and looked down, his hands not quite leaving her. 'I should go,' he said hoarsely. She shook her head.

'No one will notice,' she said. 'If they do, I don't care.'

He didn't argue, and she led him to the bed. They lay down, her head on his chest, arms once again wrapped firmly around each other. Azshar fell asleep gradually, listening to the slow thump of Glorfindel's heartbeat.

For the first time since Weathertop, she thought that waking from her enchanted sleep hadn't been such a bad thing.


Every hour that Glorfindel had free, they spent together.

When Elladan, Elrohir, and Aragorn left Imladris again to go scouting, Glorfindel told Elrond he would be staying behind for once. Elrond watched Azshar closely with an expression she couldn't quite place: curiosity, maybe, with a hint of sadness. But he said nothing about it, so neither did she.

Glorfindel spoke rarely, but he watched her constantly. For the first few days, it was with a wary, hungry expression, but after a while, his eyes flashed possessive and faintly exultant when he looked at her, as if by giving into his impulses he'd won some kind of battle.

If he had been touch-starved before, she didn't know what to call it now. She would fall asleep in his arms and wake in the night to find his fingers combing through her hair, trailing across her stomach, tracing the lines of her face, threading with her fingers. He would press himself to her, wrap himself around her, bury his face between her shoulder and neck and breathe her in.

He never initiated contact, but the second she reached out to take his hand, he would pull her into his embrace. The moment she touched his face, he would kiss her feverishly. The way he touched her was almost always desperate, hungry, and passionate, and Azshar promised herself silently that one day, she would teach him to slow down.

Mostly, she just wished he would talk to her again. She spoke often, and he would listen indulgently, but he wouldn't reply unless she asked him a blunt question. She knew it was just how he was, how he'd become, but she wished she knew how to draw him out.

'Do you remember Mirkwood?' she asked one afternoon. 'You told me your favourite drink was miruvorë.' He watched her, but he didn't say anything. She pressed. 'What did it taste like?'

'Hard to say,' he answered quietly, and then nothing more. She sighed and leaned back into him. If their conversation was stilted, she supposed she had to be grateful that moving with him, touching him, feeling him, felt like the most natural thing in the world.

But the next evening, when he found her in the gardens after he'd been in some meeting with Elrond, he brought a bottle with him. He held it out to her.

'Miruvor,' he said simply. 'It's not quite the same, but the taste is close. And the potency.'

She took it from him with a slow smile, and when their fingers brushed, he took her hand and began leading her through the trees.

They climbed the side of the valley until there was a clearing in the trees, through which Azshar could see the view of the far-off Misty Mountains, silhouetted against the rapidly darkening sky. They sat in the grass. She could hear a waterfall somewhere nearby.

'So,' she said, holding up the bottle. 'Are we drinking this?'

Glorfindel shrugged. 'I thought maybe you'd want to taste it. I couldn't describe it to you.'

She pulled the cork out with her teeth and spat it into the grass. The corner of his mouth lifted, and she took a swig. It made her cough immediately, and she nearly spat it all back out. Her eyes watered.

'It's good,' she said hoarsely. 'It is. It's just – strong.'

Glorfindel was smiling faintly at her, which for him was as good as a full belly laugh. She smiled back and handed him the liquor so he could drink too. He pulled her back against him, so her head was resting on his shoulder.

'Remember Mirkwood?' she asked again. She felt him nod. 'You used to talk more than you do now.'

'I don't mean to be quiet,' he said. 'I just… don't have much to say.'

'Don't you think things?' she asked softly, and he nodded again. 'Why don't you say what you think, then?'

'I don't know. Mostly I don't want to.'

'Even with me?'

'With you…' he hesitated and drank again. 'I just don't know how.'

'It's alright,' she whispered, and he put his arm around her and into her lap to clasp her hand. She took the miruvor from him with her free hand and drank, more carefully this time. It tasted sweet and musky. She felt like she could remember the smell, but she had no idea what from. They watched the stars come out, and it was fully dark before Glorfindel spoke again.

'I want to tell you things,' he said. 'I can imagine myself talking to you, but then… I don't know how. Silence is easier.'

She turned to him in the darkness. 'Do you remember the game we played in the Woodland Realm? When you were drunk?'

'We were both drunk,' he muttered, and she smiled.

'You kissed me for the first time.'

'And I regretted it,' he said bluntly. Her face fell, and he dropped his head onto her shoulder with a groan. 'Not now. I don't regret it now,' he said. 'This is why I don't say things.'

Relief swept through Azshar, and she curled her fingers through his hair. 'Let's play again.'

'Miruvor is a lot stronger than wine,' he said. 'Even Dorwinion wine.'

'Then you'll just have to tell the truth,' she said. He raised his head, but he wasn't smiling.

'We both know I'll drink,' he said quietly, not meeting her eyes.

Azshar remembered what he'd said to her by the fireside at the Long Lake. There are things I will never tell you. There are things I never want you to know about me, and I would never want you to ask.

'I won't ask,' she promised. 'Not about things you don't want to tell me.'

He shifted. 'You don't want to know them?'

She thought of the village that Legolas had mentioned long ago. 'Of course I do. But not if it will drive you away.'

He looked away, hiding his face from her in the darkness. 'I don't want to tell you…' he trailed off, and she reached down to pass him the bottle.

'Alright. I'm going to ask you a question, and you have to reply with the truth. If you don't, you drink.'

He looked back down at her. 'Really?'

'Or drink whenever you want. I don't mind.' He raised an eyebrow and drank. She laughed and pushed off him, shifting so that she was facing him, their knees touching. 'Ready? Alright. What is your name?'

'Glorfindel of Imladris.'

'Maglor called you Glorfindel of Gondolin.'

'That has a better ring to it, I think. But it's Imladris now. Do I get to ask questions too?'

'I suppose that's only fair.'

'What did you think, when you saw me again in Rivendell? After you remembered who I was?'

She looked down. 'I thought… I was just relieved. I thought, the world was falling down around me, but now that you are here, I'll be able to live again.'

'And then I told you to stay away,' Glorfindel said.

'You broke my heart.'

'I was doing what I thought was right.'

She nodded, letting it drop. 'What did you think when you saw me?'

'I… panicked.' She smiled and he went on. 'I was so – glad that you were alive. But I was concerned about the effect your return would have on my state of mind.'

'Is that why you left again with Aragorn and the twins?' she asked softly. He looked down.

'I wanted to get away. I didn't know about Maglor lying at that point. I didn't want to see you happy, or even unhappy, with him. I didn't want to see you at all. I wanted to forget you.'

She took a sip of miruvor. 'Don't forget. It's not worth the effort.'

'Hm.'

'Why did Elrond wait until I came back to tell you I wasn't married to Maglor?'

'He thought it would be easier on me. If I had a reason not to hunt you down.'

'And was it? Easier, I mean?'

'No.' He ran a hand through his hair. 'Why didn't you just leave me behind when you had the chance?'

Why did he always end up asking such awful questions? 'Because I love you,' she said. He twisted the silver ring around his little finger. He had never said it back in as many words, but she felt she knew him better than anyone. Glorfindel was capable of love, and he loved her. She was almost certain.

'Why do you love me?' he whispered. He didn't meet her eyes.

'I can't… I can't explain it,' she said. 'Maybe just because the Valar thought you deserved some love, and so they sent me.'

'I deserve many things,' Glorfindel whispered, reaching over to rest his hand on her cheek, 'but not you. I have not met a man that deserves you.'

She covered his hand with hers and stared at him. 'Glorfindel… are you leaving?'

His thumb skated across her cheek and his dark eyes flickered. 'I have to.'

'No, you don't. We could run away, like we said. Have our hidden cottage in the hinterlands.'

'There will be no hinterlands, Azshar,' he said gently. 'If Frodo Baggins doesn't succeed, there will be a war. Maybe there will even if he does. There is an Enemy who wants domination over every free being in Arda. I need to do my part to stop him.'

'You think this is why the Valar sent you back?' she asked, and he shrugged.

'It could well be. I don't know.'

She bit her lip, looking down. 'Please don't go. I just found you again.'

'I'm sorry,' he said, a little stiffly. 'I'm going.'

Azshar breathed in deeply and squared her shoulders. 'Elrond is looking for a ninth member of the Fellowship, isn't he?'

'Yes.'

'Then it will be me.'


Next chapter is on its way. Tune in for Chapter Twenty-Three: Ungwalë, in which Elrond reminds us that old people have love lives too, someone is described as 'rugged' (ugh), Glorfindel continues to run away from emotional conflict, and Azshar is too polite to tell her friends that she actually doesn't care what they think. See you then :) S