Chapter 16
June 27th, TA 3020
"I'm wasting your time, my Lord, aren't I?"
His thick forearms resting upon the table, Gaerlin dwarfed the small room by his stature alone. Though convalescence had melted away some of the muscle that once made him a force to be reckoned with, he remained one of the bulkiest, strongest men of the settlement. Yet as he sat before Elladan, his broad shoulders slumped and his stare as blank as the wall behind him, he seemed to shrink, much to Elladan's dismay. Even the booming laughter that had once been Gaerlin's no longer shook the walls of the settlement, his voice rising no higher than a murmur.
"Of course not, I have time aplenty." Leaning back in the rickety chair opposite of Gaerlin, Elladan entwined his fingers over his stomach, listening as the rain drummed against the slanted roof of the men's dormitory. Silence settled inside the room, taking up the space no longer claimed by Gaerlin. "Now tell me of your work with Berendir."
A dispassionate shrug. "What's there to say, my Lord?"
"Do you enjoy it?"
The flame of a candle that stood upon the table reflected in Gaerlin's eyes as he pondered the question. "It's nice," he eventually offered in a tone suggesting the contrary, "being useful again." Unfurling his fists, he opened his large palms to examine the scars inside, as though seeing them for the first time, and sunk into muteness once more.
But Elladan was not so easily deterred. "What is it about your work that you enjoy most?" he inquired, noting the sagging skin beneath Gaerlin's eyes, and the way his shirt hung off his once impressive frame. Outside, a distant bell chimed, calling the inhabitants to supper, but Gaerlin ignored it without as much as a blink.
Another silence. "When I'm working, I don't think of…." His voice broke. "…of them."
This time it was Elladan who stifled a reaction, loath to spook his patient now that the conversation was taking a turn that one might call productive. He kept his mouth shut, if only to encourage Gaerlin to keep talking, hoping that the shadows that lurked behind those shuttered eyes would finally find a way out.
It was then that the man smiled – an awkward, bitter grimace performed out of habit rather than of sentiment. "You shouldn't bother, my Lord."
Elladan frowned and leaned forward. His nose caught a whiff of the man's body odor, mixed with the fading scent of the soap used by the washerwomen. The smell of defeat. "Why do you say that?"
The flame sputtered as Gaerlin spoke again, slowly, as if to a child. "I know your heart's in the right place, and all, but…" He shut his eyes and slammed his fists upon the table in a gesture that must have dissuaded more than one man, in his earlier years, from picking a fight. Yet Gaerlin's voice remained a mutter as he hung his head and continued: "…But I just can't forget my Aeben, my…my son…and my Tundwen, when… when she…."
Pat. Pat.
At first, Elladan thought the rain had found a way into the room, seeping in between the tiles in a manner much like Saineth had mentioned. Then, seeing the shaking of Gaerlin's shoulders, he understood.
"Please go, my Lord." The plea came as a whisper, the man's breath hissing through his clenched teeth. "I don't want you to see me like this."
Elladan rose. "Are you certain? There is…."
"Please."
Only when the door closed behind him did Elladan allow himself to release the heavy sigh that had constricted his lungs, unwilling to let Gaerlin think he was disappointed. It was difficult enough to get the man to speak as it was – when he was talking at all, that is.
In the first weeks of Gaerlin's arrival to Bar-Lasbelin, Elladan and his healers had watched him endure the various symptoms of withdrawal; yet the most trying part had not been the nausea, nor the aching. The liquor had, at the very least, helped Gaerlin forget what he had lost. When drunk, the man was a threat to others as much as to himself. When sober, he teetered on the edge of a darkness that not even elven skills could keep at bay.
For a moment Elladan lingered in the corridor, hesitant as to what to do next.
He knew full well what troubled Gaerlin. In less than a week, the weight of a first, grievous anniversary would settle upon those once proud shoulders, pulling them towards the earth where his wife and son now rested. To deny, or try to forget, would do the man no good; Elladan's father would have reminded him of the time required for a proper healing, but the difference between knowing and knowing was something Elladan had never fully managed to embrace. Once, he would have turned to Elrohir for counsel and support.
Guilt prickled his skin, raising the hairs of his forearms, at the thought of his brother's letter sleeping in one of the drawers of his desk and of his own silence.
No. Elladan shook his head, chalking off his unease to the dreary weather and his own failure to rouse Gaerlin from his apathy. He would not trouble Elrohir with a matter so trivial. His brother, just like Saineth, now had more joyous matters to think of.
Elladan was on his own.
oOoOoOo
A more optimistic being than Elladan might have expected the tempest to abate in the evening. Said soul would have been sorely disappointed; the downpour did not cease, only lessening at times into a deceptive drizzle intended to lure outside those foolish enough to believe it meant the end of the storm – only to shower them with renewed vigor. The wind howled in the many chimneys of the manor, trumpeting loudly as it slipped between the ridges and the lightening rod and waking those patients already asleep at this hour.
Elladan, however, was not prone to optimism, and neither was he in bed.
His rounds finished, he was heading towards the part of the manor where his study awaited, stalking through corridors grown silent save for the whistling of the gale. The lamps swayed gently, mingling the tang of burnt oil to the scent of rain, casting moving shadows upon the floor.
Someone, somewhere, was crying.
Elladan halted. It may have been a figment of his imagination, or the cries of the storm, but the voice had sounded female, which was unexpected in the men's wing in itself, especially at this hour of the day.
Had his ears deceived him?
The whimper came again, this time unmistakably a woman's; it seemed to filter from beneath a nearby door. Cautious as to remain silent and not spook the patient in question, Elladan crept closer, before pushing the door open as slowly as he could.
The woman was sitting with her back turned towards him, huddled on the iron steps of the staircase that led to the basement, her arms wrapped around her knees. Elladan's movement had opened a way for a draft to rise from the darkness and it rushed to meet him, disturbing the flame of the single lamp that hung by the door.
The woman startled, gasping as she turned to face him.
"I did not mean to frighten you," Elladan said with as much conviction as he could muster – not only because it had been a long day, but because the woman before him was none other than Mehreen, and he remembered all too clearly how startling her had turned out last time. And the time before.
Elladan had no intention of making it a habit.
She raised her chin. "I'm not afraid."
Still as proud, Elladan noted, unable to deny his annoyance, just as Mehreen's dress billowed in the draft, raising goosebumps on the tanned skin of her neck.
Proud, and freezing.
He watched her repress a shiver, the knuckles of her hands clasped before her whitening with the effort. In the scarce lighting, her tear-streaked cheeks seemed hollow, underfed, the skin beneath her eyes puffy in contrast.
Elladan sighed. "Come. It is time you returned to the dormitory." Even he was not as disillusioned as to allow her to catch her death to prove a point.
After a moment's hesitation, Mehreen nodded towards the door, bidding him to precede her out and Elladan, too worn to take offense at being commanded in his new home, obeyed; yet the odd, precautious way in which she picked up her skirts to climb the few steps that separated her from the story drew his attention.
"You may want to have those wounds looked at."
Mehreen stilled steps away from the door, as though to make the doorway an obstacle against his inquisitiveness. "It's nothing," she proclaimed; her swollen fingers begged to differ.
"They could get infected. And then what will you do?"
Proud she may be, but there was doubt in those pale green eyes as Mehreen bit her lip, still wavering on the threshold. "Why do you even care?"
She did not trust him.
Nothing new there. Many a patient who came to Bar-Lasbelin were wary of strangers, and of so-called healers who had abandoned them to their fate once the injuries upon their skin had mended, blind to those beneath the surface – when they did not deny their existence altogether.
"I do not. Not in the sense you may think, at least. But I am a healer, and it is my calling to help people in need."
"Don't pretend you want to help me." Mehreen lowered her head, shoulders hunching against the cold, and Elladan stifled a growl of annoyance. Why did he even bother? If the fool wished to see her hands rot, so be it; he could not help her against her will.
He turned on his heels. She knew the way out, did she not?
"I know you'd rather have me gone."
"You know nothing." The sharpness of his own voice surprised Elladan. What was it about her that made him so angry? "You did not ask to come here, you have made that abundantly clear…and you certainly do not seem to want to stay."
"I tried!" Elladan blinked. Had she really stomped her foot? "I tried, I tried so hard, yet everything I do is useless! These people hate me, they all do…."
"And why do you think that is?" Elladan paused, his blood racing hot inside his veins at the sight of her teary pout. "Shall I give you a hint? These people, as you call them, are in pain. They have lost everything they loved, everything they had built with their own hands and had thought was safe from harm. And you, what have you lost? Nothing," he spat out, "for you have built nothing, except a lifetime habit of comfort and ignorance."
A sharp pain inside his palm jerked Elladan from his fury. Puzzled, he unfurled his fists to see the crescents of his own nails imprinted into his skin. He raised his gaze to Mehreen's stricken face; somehow, she had withstood his attack, her wounded hands clutching the doorframe for support as she stood, ramrod straight, as though carved out of jasper.
Those eyes….
Elladan could have smacked himself. Mehreen was hurting beyond the burn in her hands, or the sting of his callousness.
"I…I apologize." He heaved a shaky breath and ran his hand through his hair. "It was my own ignorance speaking, and I…."
"You're right."
"What?" He could not believe his ears.
"You're right," Mehreen repeated, her gaze lowered towards her feet, her voice a mere whisper that Elladan strained to hear over the wails of the wind. "I've built nothing." A delicate shoulder rose in a half-hearted shrug. "It was never expected of me. I was taught that women are only good for one thing…."
Of course. Elladan flushed, tearing his gaze away from the tiny mole nested at the hem of one full, soft-looking upper lip. He should have known as much, rather than letting his temper run his mouth.
"You have more worth than that."
Mehreen sniffled, her fingers worrying the cuff of her sleeve, but it seemed to Elladan that some of the tension had left her body, a breath of relief unlocked by his words.
"My offer still stands, should you wish to take it. You shall need your hands in working order, if you want to prove wrong to those who would have wagered against you."
Myself included.
oOoOoOo
He really ought to bring his study to a semblance of order, Elladan mused as he let Mehreen in, seeing it through her eyes and wondering what she made of it. While he and Saineth ran the rest of the Houses according to a tight schedule and a set of strict rules meant to ensure the patients' safety, Elladan's study remained a place subjected to neither. Plants grew untrimmed upon the windowsill, obscuring the panes in their search for the sun. Books lay piled upon a trestle table, cracked open on pages Elladan had perused before being called to his duties, weighing down pieces of parchment bearing sketches in charcoal half of which remained unfinished, well-buried under the mess. His armor stood in a corner, gathering dust and, for a moment, Elladan feared Mehreen may flee at the sight; but she strode through the study with her mouth open, forgetful of his presence. More than once Elladan caught her fingers twitching as she yearned to touch this or that tome, and found himself smiling at her curiosity.
"Do you live here?"
She had paused by the stairs, a hand resting lightly on the railing, her profile turned towards the obscurity that reigned on the loft.
"Indeed," Elladan mumbled, all the while wondering why the thought of her seeing his bed bothered him so. Unlike the rest of his study it was tidy, for Elladan made it every morning – a habit acquired in his days amongst the Dúnedain, when rolling up one's bedroll was the first thing one did after rising – and he had no reason to feel troubled. And yet….
"Please, sit."
Attributing his disquiet to a late lack of companionship, Elladan shook his head to clear his mind, and went to rummage through the shelves that lined the wall for a very specific pot while Mehreen took place in the only free chair of the study. "You shall have to show me your hands," he ended up gently urging when, after a good five minutes, she remained unmoving, her hands folded in her lap.
"Yes. Yes, I…." She bit her lip, avoiding his eyes. "Perhaps I could…?"
"I will not hurt you. You have my word."
Slowly, so very slowly, Mehreen extended her arms to lay her wrists upon the table Elladan had swept free of the clutter, her fingers blossoming around her small palms. Her breath hitched in her throat as Elladan reached into the pot to dab a layer of salve over each broken blister and each oozing wound.
She shivered under his touch. "It's cold."
Elladan looked up to see her following his every move; his gaze trailed down the slight bump of her aquiline nose, down her long neck and to the hollow of her throat where her pulse vibrated, framed by shiny locks. The dull blue of her dress only seemed to enhance the bronze hue of her skin – the very skin he had glimpsed of more than he had a right to see, and which was blushing under his scrutiny.
Elladan cleared his throat. "It is the mint in the salve," he stated matter-of-factly before wiping his hands on a linen towel and putting the lid back on the pot. "Here. Keep it, and apply again tomorrow morning before wrapping your hands."
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
He busied himself with the contents of the cabinet, aligning the vials so as to allow Mehreen a moment to gather herself. From what Elladan remembered, an unsupervised, masculine presence went against Haradric customs, and perhaps her teachers would have preferred to let her suffer rather than ask for a man's help.
It was the rustling of pages in his back that drew his attention. Elladan turned around, only to see Mehreen ensconced in the lecture of one of his books, the pot of salve forgotten. Biting his tongue before he made another mistake in berating her for staining the pages, he took a step towards the table.
Mehreen was reading, a frown creasing her forehead as she followed the writing with a finger, oblivious of being watched until Elladan's shadow fell upon the page. Only then did she look up, an awed smile upon her face. "This is in Haradic!"
"So I have noticed."
And spent many a night poring over, trying to decipher the wisdom scribbled over the parchment. The volume in question had been one of the several found in the prisoners' belongings after the battle of Pelennor; bound in leather, it was masterpiece of rare beauty, with indigo-dyed parchment covered in golden ink. Elladan had surmised it must have been the property of one of the Haradrim medics, for the intricate illustrations that adorned the pages represented various parts of the human body, with copious annotations in that same, loose handwriting. Said images had long intrigued Elladan, who hoped to uncover, through the understanding of foreign knowledge, a solution to the ailments of his land.
Wrinkling her nose, Mehreen closed the volume, leaving a greasy print upon the cover which she then tried to wipe away with her sleeve. "Not a lecture I would recommend," she declared with a straight face before rising from her seat.
Astounded, Elladan stifled a snort. "Unfortunately I would not know," he admitted, crossing his hands in his back, "I do not happen to read Haradric."
"A pity." Nursing her glistening hands against her chest, Mehreen halted in the doorway. "Then may I…borrow it?"
He hesitated. The book possessed undeniable value – a value lost on anyone unable to understand it – and seemed harmless enough to be trusted in the hands of one whom some might still call an enemy, though all Elladan was seeing, tonight, was a lost, lonely woman.
"Not unless you are willing to translate it in exchange," he ventured, certain she would refuse so tedious a task in favor of her usual, simpler chores. The recipe he and Elrohir had perfected worked wonders on simple wounds such as hers, and her hands would be as new by the same hour tomorrow. The Mehreen he had thought he knew would not burden herself with something that could be avoided….
"Oh!" A shy yet genuine smile spread across her lips. "Of course, I can do that."
…Or maybe he did not know her at all.
