I'm not too sure what Loth Lorien actually looks like..so forgive me if I get this wrong...I hope you'll just enjoy it regardless but if you want to rant and scream...go nuts :)Time lines are also all over the place. It's A/U but...that's ok :D I own nothing. Nothing at all. Except a dog. But ...he doesn't pay. So. TOLKIEN. Yep. K. ENJOY! :D

I fell asleep, with relative ease as I always did, desperately wanting the dream more then anything in the world. It started the same as always, the watching, the work, the ache, the meeting, everything..until we were alone.

We kissed, hard, I clung to him and he clung back, he kissed down my neck, and I clung to him, and then I opened my eyes, all at once, as he sprung away, screaming in terror. I pulled away and looked at him, it wasn't disgust or anything...it was pure terror.

Erestor reached out to touch him and as soon as he touched his lovers cheek it was as if his hand had been burnt by a flame hotter then the librarian had ever felt.

He yanked it back and blinked rapidly "Glorf..." he said but he disappeared. Just...poofed into smoke and disappeared.

I awoke with a start, his screams of terror ringing through my mind as I desperately tried to understand the changes. Galadriel's words, and the peril in the surrounding feelings.

I scrubbed my face, I had hardly been alseep for 3 hours but I knew that there would be no more sleep for me that night. I rose and dressed in my usual black robes and headed slowly out the door and down the hall.

Wandering aimlessly, was always something I liked to do, and eventually I found my way to a small clearing in the trees, a book idly in my left hand I sat down on the grass and pulled out my favourite quill, and a small bottle of ink, settling in to write a little-perhaps the poetry would ease my mind.

Concentration it seems, was not my friend because only a short while later when I heard a massive commotion. Orophin and Rumil came flying through the clearing, calling to each other and raising an uproar amongst the inhabitants of the forest though nothing was truly clear from the clamour that surrounded them.

Rumil spotted me and called out to me "Master Erestor, please go forth to the healers and make them ready, we have many injured"

I did not question, though I was very confused, and curious, and admittedly a little anxious, I did not question.

I packed my things and flew up the trees, and ran along an overhanging bridge towards the wards of the healers. I came flying in and found that there was a scout in there already, panting and out of breath, the healers looked at me, hopefully and it was clear that no one had gotten any useful information from him.

Stepping forward I gestured my hand to garner their attention "All I know, is that the march warden Rumil has said that there are many injured in the party they are bringing here"

They looked at me, read my serious expression and stirred themselves into a frenzy, they called on all their assistants in the immediate vicinity. "Master Erestor, will you..." the chief healer began but I nodded my head.

"I will seek the rest of your staff, and then the Lord and Lady if no one has gone to get them by now" I said quietly and then turned on my heel and rushed out.

I was very used to this, anticipating their moves and knowing what would be needed without being recognized for it, it will be my job.

Shaking myself from those thoughts I roused the other healers in the wing and then headed towards the royal talon, but paused less then half way there as I saw Galadriel and Celeborn passing on the ground underneath. I bowed, though I didn't think they saw me, but Galadriel looked up, flashed me a look and I saw a mounting fire in my mind. Gasping I pressed three fingers to my temple, and all but ran to my library, taking refuge in the only place I would ever be comfortable.

Six days passed and I didn't learn much about the people in the infirmary. I did learn that they were from Imladris, and had traveled here with Lord Elrond, protecting him as he came here for a random diplomatic emergency that some lower level members of the house hold...me being one of them...didn't need to know about.

I was curious as anybody else, but I also had a job to do-Lord Elrond was the lore master, and my library was one of the most beautiful in the known elven world, and because I felt (in spite of Galadriel's strange words and my dreams) disconnected from the hubbub that was going on around the royalty and their diplomatic talks and missions, I wanted to do nothing more then impress the half-elf with my library.

It seemed easy enough to do, from his very first wandering in he was in love and spent long hours in the comforting dark of my world. I felt a certain thrill of inner pleasure, partially because the half elf lord preferred my place of work and my..sort of..company to that of any one else. Of course he spent more time with Lord Celeborn and Lady Galadriel, but in his free time, when they were busy with their own affairs, he preferred me. My thrills also came from the fact that he was ridiculously attractive. His dark hair, and his face was delicately carved, but traced ever so slightly with age. His grey eyes sparkled with emotion as he read, or wrote, his favourite thing to do was to translate-he did it just for fun. The way his fingers gripped the quill drove me wild.

In the past I might have spent a little too much time being distracted by those delicate fingers, imagining their grip on something other then a recycled bird feather...but all I could think of was my Glorfindel.

My dreams had been completely black, blank, filled with nothing. Not even anything unrelated to the blonde, just...nothing. When I slept, I slept...and it was extremely disconcerting.

After weeks of spending time with the powerful blonde I was completely upset by the fact that now there was nothing...especially when it had ended the way that it had.

Worse was the way that Galadriel's words echoed in my head. You must survive the flames of destruction before you can be TRULY kissed by the golden sun. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean and it drove me to distraction.

Still though, everyone grew slowly envious of me-Silinde alone, grew proud of me for being in such great stead with the half-elf lord, but even Silinde was acting strange, sort of sad and distant, though I suppose that could just be from my own mental confusion and fear.

For what seemed like the fiftieth time I shook my head and continued down the hallway to my library, though I froze right outside the door as I heard voices, Lord Elrond's and someone elses-his sons? And our chief healer.

"I do not think any of us should see him again" Lord Elrond said gravely.

"I do not understand why you think this" His son

"Because, Elrohir, each time we visit him he grows worse" Elrond replied irritatedly.

"I agree, he surrenders to his tormentor, to the balrog when he sees you. The most I can get out of him after you leave, is something about the dark hair..." the healer

"But he has no problem seeing the warriors then? I do not want to leave him completely alone" Elrohir

I bit my lip, I knew I Shouldn't be listening but the blood storming through my veins told me I was about to be changed, a tiny flick of fire up my spine and I KNEW something was about to happen.

"He is saddened by something about them, he will not say what but they sadden him too, we must find a new way to approach his healing" Our healer said sadly, but insistently.

"I know you do not understand Elrohir, but I promise you, " Lord Elrond said slowly, "I will not allow Glorfindel to wander lost in his pain forever.

Glorfindel. Glorfindel. Glorfindel. Glorfindel. It echoed through my mind and I fled, I didn't care anymore about my library, the book under my arm I had retrieved from my rooms for the lord. Nothing. I couldn't care. Glorfindel. The injured elf in the infirmary. Glorfindel. Blonde hair, powerful muscles, golden skin...Glorfindel. MY. Glorfindel. MY Glorfindel. Burning.

I could only manage to make it to my quarters, I collapsed on my bed and drew my knees to my chest. My wide brown eyes, stared off over the expanse of the room, not seeing anything, I took a deep breath and smelt the juniper berries. "Glorfindel" I whispered quietly.

Most times, as I've already said, I love my intelligence, my intellect is my most powerful ally, it has led me to wonderful places in my life, and it will only lead me to better places...most times. But in this case, I wished with everything in me that I could have ignorance. That I wouldn't have known the things that I knew now.

I put it all together. And with all of my being I wished that I hadn't.

The screams...the pain,t he fire, the balrog, the visions, the dark hair, the sadness. I made leaps and bounds and it all made sense. If Glorfindel was a REAL person (which most of my research had pointed to as a possibility, however remote...Glorfindel had died...but...here he was again, apparently, but his death was the type of thing that might be repealed under the right spiritual circumstances. But anyway, IF Glorfindel was a real person, a real elf, laying upstairs in the healing talon. Then perhaps he DID see me, he did see me as the real person I am, perhaps, probably, he too fell in love with me as I fell in love with him. My spirit, visited his in the world of dreams and we mingled.

But the balrog...his consciousness had been altered by being wounded and injured as he had been, badly enough to be tended in the healing wings. In that tormented state of unconsciousness between death, my spirit had been twisted into the death spirit of the Balrog and he thought that I had become the balrog. Now, because of his state of being, he thought that I was not real. That I had always been the balrog and because I knew from my own feelings that the thought of living without him was too painful-he must be feeling the same way. We were connected, and my distractedness, my fear, my anxiety, my pain of the last week...must be in part his.

Which means that I was causing his death. Tears pricked my eyes and ice cold sureness flooded every single part of my body, and I knew then what I needed to do to make it right. What I wanted to do to save his sanity, and his life.

I needed to burn. I wanted to burn. I stood up in a sort of mechanical way, and looked down at my ink stained hands, quietly I looked around my rooms and said goodbye to my journal, my volumes of poetry, my beautiful bed...never used in the way I had always hoped. I began to walk towards my favourite writing clearing, and mechanically said good bye to everything I loved on the way there.

I quietly gathered the things I would require, I wrangled a small case of wine-the stuff that had gone sour, they always laid it out on the back steps of the kitchen, which (deliberately) was on the way to that clearing. I carried it with me, and since no one ever cared about the movements of a librarian I wasn't noticed for carrying it with me. I laid it down beside me and looked up into the afternoon sky.

The poet in me, the romantic side of me told me it would be more beautiful and delicate to do this at night, write a beautiful letter explaining everything and lay it in a tree, then turn myself alight and surrender to the moon and the glistening night sky.

But my burning wasn't for beauty, or poetry. My heart was breaking and all I wanted to do was set my lover free-if I burnt, then Glorfindel would be free-I could burn in the proverbial flames of the balrog so my golden sun could walk free.

So I simply created a small fire, as quickly and mechanically as I could, doused myself in the liquor, whispered a solemn farewell to my life I threw myself into the fired up my right hand, catching fire on the liquor I'd dropped there. The pain all over was instantaneous and overwhelming, I opened my mouth and screamed for all I was worth.

It was agonizing, and instinct told me to roll it out, but Glorfindel's face loomed in my mind and I clenched my eyes shut and forced the flames to lick at my clothes, at my face I flashed out my left hand and dug it into the dirt, just for some sort of grounding presence in my wildly turning mind. It caught in my hair and my robes, burnt down to my chest , I could feel it burning its way through my mind and the smoke flew to my nostrils, I began to pass out, only sort of realizing the presence of hands and cloaks and dirt and water...someone was putting out the fire, and as I tried to protest, as my mind flew from sanity and I fell to unconsciousness I was fairly certain I saw Lady Galadriel, and fairly certain I heard her say "I will not let you perish"