A/N: Something short and a bit different today. Scenes in previous chapters are mentioned so I might suggest skimming through some of the chapters where the elves are just hanging out. Also Chapter 3. I'm not going to say enjoy, because I feel like that would be rude under the circumstances.


Chapter 15: Soft You Tread Above Me

The sky and the ground met in uniform hue that morning, matching each other in their cold whiteness. The evergreens stood out in stark black on the horizon line, heartless wardens watching the bereaved without feeling.

Gilrohir walked so he did not have to stop, to sit or lie down, did not have to remember the weight of Elrodan's head upon his lap or the warmth of his body beside him while they lay together. In the cold loneliness of the woods, he could forget and would not have to notice the emptiness Elrodan had left behind him.

He had chosen the final place by walking toward the icy mountains on the outskirts of the Pole until he could no longer hear anything but the sound of his feet on the ground. The cave in which he had found himself was solitary and quiet, a perfect place to rest.

The silence pressed on Gilrohir's ears so hard as to cause pain. If he could have been glad for anything though, it would have been that. He preferred the silence to the shared grief in the heavy lament shared by the wood elves, a sparse yet weighty melody even the mortals among them could grasp, even if they didn't understand the words.

Words. Words haunted Gilrohir on this day.

"You were never so hard on me."

"I could be if you like."

An axe slid through the ice as Gilrohir hacked at it without mercy, the force behind each swing serving as the only sign of his rage. He had taken the axe from Orëna while she busied herself with the injured. Again and again, soon with the stars and the aurora as his only light, he carved, hacking away as if to drown out the sound of the memories inside his head.

"You were never so hard on me."

"I could be if you like."

"Later perhaps."

A slab of ice split in two. The commander who wore his armor like a second skin was now clad in only a linen shirt and trousers. The armor remained in his tent. The salty moisture of sweat and tears mixed on his face and dared not freeze to his hot skin. Soon the slabs of ice were reduced to bricks.

"Later perhaps."

Words echoed in his mind like cruel taunts. Gilrohir piled the bricks into a circular platform, then piled more on top of that in a ring until he had a circular wall a few feet high. He took up Elrodan's cloak and laid it on the ground inside.

"Later perhaps."

Elrodan had loved poetry. He had loved the tales of old, reading the histories and the legends that lay far beyond even elven memory. To his joy, he had found himself in one at last, only to be the first to die. The cruelty of that burned bitterly in Gilrohir's throat, so he walked and walked then hacked away with the axe again and again until his calves and shoulders ached.

For this alone on Death I wreak the wrath that garners in my heart

The wall grew ever taller, brick by brick. And still the words haunted him without pity.

He put our lives so far apart we cannot hear each other speak.

Those words in particular were hailstones to Gilrohir's mind. Elrodan had fallen in love with the mortal word in a way Gilrohir never could. What had Elrodan said? That mortality encouraged humans to "feel everything and feel it passionately." As though their lives were too short to waste a moment to feel something, anything. Had Gilrohir been more fanciful, he might have thought that embracing human poetry had been inviting mortality into their lives like a curse.

But Gilrohir was not fanciful. He would not, could not allow himself to feel anything but the icy chill around him. And he would not voice the howl of grief that was in his heart. He would store it there and unleash it when and where it could do the most damage. Then perhaps, as was his only remaining hope, he could face oblivion. Perhaps he would find Elrodan waiting for him there, and they would speak again.

Gilrohir picked up the body, which had lain beside him all the while, wrapped in cloth, sheltered from the cold even as the warmth of life left it. He uncovered the face. Elrodan's eyes were closed now in his lifeless repose, their bright, summery green dulled and locked away behind his lids. Pressing his lips into the fine hair, Gilrohir kissed the cold brow one last time and lowered the body into the circle. Picking up a flat wide slab of ice that had survived the axe, he slid it over the top of the circle until the tomb was sealed.

"Later perhaps."

An entire human life is a long while to live without any regrets, and the life Gilrohir had lived would equal hundreds of lives of mortals. Nevertheless, any and all regrets he might lay claim to had coalesced into one. There would be no later.

Gilrohir fell to his knees before the grave of his lover and wept.


A/N: I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I am so so so so so so sorry. Sorry.

Chapter 16 should be up this weekend.