A/N: Written because I've been slowly falling back in love with one of the first fandoms I'd ever had.
I'd originally planned to write something lighthearted and crack-ish, featuring a waspish Glorfindel and stubborn-as-a-mule Erestor, but this became surprisingly soft, quiet, and serious(ish). Now mostly friendship with a dash of Gondolinian trauma.
Unbeta'd, so all mistakes are mine. All Elvish used in the work is Quenya.
It is windy, Glorfindel notices. Winds at high places have a quality all of their own – gusty, strong and firm, biting into bone no matter how many layers one has donned. The cold is nothing to an elf who has crossed the grinding ice, and Glorfindel has endured many more hardships besides, and yet –
The height.
It is a beautiful place, that much Glorfindel notices, sheer cliffs dotted with bits of green here and there as if Yavanna has added them as an afterthought. Deep, deep below, a silvery strip of river winds its way through the canyon, and the sky is a glorious blue touched with gold. But it is high, dizzyingly so, and Glorfindel's hands clench of their own accord.
The highest since he has been, he thinks, since that fateful night on Cirith Thoronath.
And yet here he stands, a ridiculous, clunky black harness wound about his upper torso and ankle, waiting for the atani instructor to clip the rope to his body.
Looking down, into the dizzying depths.
Erestor, grey eyes firm but touched with compassion and a hint of mirth, squeezes his hand.
It had been his begetting day. Somehow, Glorfindel feels as if that is a vital piece of information, something that must be told – so he will say it again. It had been his begetting day, when Erestor handed him a plastic file with several sheaves of paper within, stapled neatly and adorned with Erestor's graceful, flowing script.
"You write English as you wrote Tengwar," Glorfindel said, amused. "Will old habits never die?"
"The atani I work with like it," Erestor replied with a shrug. Pragmatic and secure in himself as ever, Erestor had never seemed to mind Glorfindel's good-natured jibing at all. "Says it has that feeling of… antiquity."
Glorfindel snorted. "Oh, yes, we would know something about that." He had never quite understood what it meant when old atani had said they 'felt old' – but, having watched the world break and shift in slow, agonizing bits, the remnants of their people scattered and fading, turning into mere shadows in the corner of humankind's memory…
Yes, Glorfindel understood. Perhaps too much, on some days.
"So what is this?" Glorfindel hummed, fingering the flap of the file. Then he remembered what that day was – his begetting day, or at least as close as one could get using the modern calendar – and lit up. "Ah, a present? Old friend, you need not. You know I appreciate your company more than anything else."
"Yes, a present," Erestor said, fond smile touching his ageless features. "But open it before you say anything else, you old flatterer."
"No matter, I am sure I would like anything you've deigned to gift me. Now, were we back in Imaldris-"
Glorfindel bit his lip mid-speech, the name of their lost home still a little bit too close to the bone. "Imaldris?" Erestor prompted, grey eyes the color of steel softening ever so slightly. Glorfindel laughed, self-deprecating.
"I would never have deigned to wheedle a gift out of the chief counselor, is all." Glorfindel's nimble fingers picked the paper neatly out of the folder, but then his eyes widened as he read the words open it.
"Erestor. Is this what I think it is?"
"I would reckon so." Deep, ancient eyes that had seen as much as he, unreadable.
"I know I am well known for my valor, or at least used to," Glorfindel said. "But you do remember how I died, yes?"
"I do," Erestor replied. "But you won't, this time around. Isn't it time to lay old demons to rest?"
"Maybe," Glorfindel had bit out, terse, fingers deceptively slim clenching the sheet of paper in his hand.
.
Glorfindel is not proud of it, but he is honest enough to admit:
Yes, he sulked. Like an ungrateful child.
How his Ammë would have scolded him. But when he lay down to sleep, dreams of fire and falling – always the falling, flames scorching his face, twisting, clawing, falling down, down, down, never with an end in sight – plagued his dreams, and he woke in a cold sweat more often than not.
The dreams were a hardship unto their own, but harder still was the realization that even after all those years, Glorfindel was still not the fearless elf he would like to think of himself. He had faced down a balrog, laughed in the face of Death itself, and yet-
A simple dream of fire, of the inevitable, inexorable fall, and he was reduced to a mere elfling shivering in fear.
"Why did you even decide to gift this to me anyway?" he had asked, a few days later, when he'd caught Erestor lingering in the hallway with a cup of water.
"Because," he replied, "the reason we hadn't left was not to rot in old memories. Mellon-nin, I still believe that Middle-Earth has much left to offer us. Do you not?"
Nothing new under the sun, they say, Glorfindel had wanted to say, because he felt old and testy and just the slightest bit bitter. But Erestor's calm eyes bore into him, sincere as always, and he had never been able to resist that look. Not even when Elrond still walked these shores.
So he shrugged, helplessly, and let Erestor talk him yet again into a venture he never would have thought of on his own.
How hard could it be? Atani do it. Let them tie you onto a rope, jump and let go.
Glorfindel kept the vouchers.
Being brave and valorous in the warmth of his living room is nothing like standing at the edge of a cliff, looking down. Glorfindel clenches his jaw, incensed. He was counted as one of the bravest Elda to walk these shores. Fearless and full of joy.
He will not let one simple cliff undo him. He will not.
He is Glorfindel Ristarion, chief of the House of the Golden Flower – he has faced enemies far, far worse than this. But still, standing here, a cliff so very much like one he had known well–
The stench of blood and acrid smoke in his nostrils, the punishing grip upon his scalp, a punishing whip, writhing, burning, flaying his skin as he falls.
The Atani instructor gives him a sympathetic look.
"Bad with heights, eh?"
Glorfindel surprises himself by laughing, choked but clear. "Does it look so?"
"Clench it any harder and your jaw might have snapped," she says, a gentle teasing tone edging into her voice. "It's alright; I was like that the first time, too. But once you get going it feels more like flying than anything else."
She's a straight-backed woman with a strong jaw and laughing eyes, and for some inexplicable reason the expression brings the image of his Ammë to mind. His Ammë, soft-spoken, slender, and yet stronger than anyone he's ever seen.
Ai, emilinya – mother mine, I cannot be your brave little Laurefindë if I let a cliff defeat me, can I?
And Erestor. Erestor, who berates him for eating microwaved dinners and cooks him up a feast behind his back, and who, inexplicably, wants him to learn-
To fly.
Ah, perhaps not so bad then after all.
"It will be good for your peace of mind," Erestor says, matter-of-fact, when their eyes meet. Glorfindel huffs.
"All the things we've seen, and you still think of my peace of mind?"
Erestor shrugs, a smile quirking up the corners of his stern lips.
"Ëa estel illumë, my friend. There is always hope."
It's ridiculous, really, those words spoken in the context of – of bungee jumping, of all things, and Glorfindel begins to laugh, and doesn't stop.
He takes off at a run.
The thing is, Glorfindel thinks he wouldn't have been half as hesitant if they hadn't had to sign the papers.
He had made a point to read through them all, because Glorfindel refused to be a coward and make Erestor sign everything for him, but the documents, written in a dryly legal tone outlining every single horrible thing that could befall him should he disregard the instructor's instructions, were like a thing out of the pits of Angband.
"Doesn't look like something you would do for fun," Glorfidel grumbled, tapping his office depot pen against the coffee-stained glass. "Broken bones? Permanent damage to the head?"
"Only if you act like an elfling and decide to saw your cord off." Erestor gave him a look. "Will you?"
"Careful – I might, old friend, if just to see the look upon your face."
Erestor smacked him across the knee for that. "Be glad that I know you say so in jest, or you might have regretted those words far more than you do now. Now cease; or did you think I know you so little so as not to see when you are bluffing?"
"Bluffing?"
"I am not dignifying that with an answer."
A short pause. Motes of dust spun in the lazy afternoon sun, and Erestor turned to look at him, dark hair touched with a halo of gold. "I am not forcing you in this, you know."
"I know. I know." Glorfindel turned his eyes to the rough weave of the fabric on the couch, not quite yet to face his old friend just yet. "Erestor. Do you truly think I could enjoy this?"
"I do."
Quiet, calm, sure.
Glorfindel has never doubted Erestor when it really mattered.
He put the pen to paper, and signed.
Almost like a bird in flight, he thought, absent-minded, as he admired the scrawl of his signature.
Almost like –
Flying.
Glorfindel's feet leave the ground all at once. His legs keep moving a few more times, even after he is airborne, almost like pedaling an invisible bicycle.
He spreads his arms out wide, like he is told, and holds the position for a second that feels like half of eternity. The sun is tilting but bright, warm and reassuring upon his back, and the landscape beneath spreads out like a tapestry, proud pines and glittering water that shines like the diamonds set upon his old friend's shield.
Then he is falling. Wind, whipping his face, whispering come; be free, be free, be free.
Glorfindel whoops, ecstatic. There are no eagles to bear him away, now, but he is the wing, now, cutting through air like a sword through water. The sky is behind him, the world wide and open and beautiful, and Glorfindel fancies he feels the jubilant swell in Erestor's fëa far above – joyous, carefree, proud.
Glorfindel falls for the second time in his life.
But this time - he laughs the entire way.
[fin]