Chapter 15

Warning: this chapter contains detailed descriptions of grief, and may upset some readers. Please read with caution. If you find that you don't do well with deep depictions of grief/sadness/anxiety, please skip this chapter entirely and ask for a summary instead.

Much love,

Aobh

"Eat. Eat." Gildor Inglorion demanded as he pushed the tray of food towards where Leda was perched on the end of his plush bed.

She very narrowly resisted rolling her eyes.

They'd been going in circles for what felt like hours; stuck in an awful cycle of him trying to get her to eat his lunch and her trying not to rupture a blood vessel each time she refused.

Lindir ebbed in and out of her peripheral vision as he paced along the edges of the sandy-rock room. His bronze armour caught the sunlight that streamed into the room through an oval window-hole and refracted it back ten-fold, creating an ever-changing light show across the walls and floor.

Olorin had taken a seat by a desk below the window, and had spent his time rifling through papers scattered across it, pretending to ignore them all.

She pushed the tray back to him. "No, thank you. You should eat it."

He frowned at her rebuff and the expression deepened the circles under his eyes.

Her lips pulled taught at the sight.

The skin of his cheeks was sunken, and had taken on a greyish hue. His arms were splotched with deep, purple bruises and his naked abdomen was covered in thick, criss-crossing bandages. The cloth covering the wound she'd unsuccessfully tried to treat was stained red on his side. She felt sick whenever she glanced at it.

To put it simply: Gildor Inglorion looked like shit. And that was her being kind.

She'd spent a lot of time ignoring the memory of her journey to the Stronghold. It was relatively easy to compartmentalise the terror and fear and death by putting all her energy into getting home and wrapping her head around the concept of 'magic'.

But here, seeing Gildor Inglorion look like hell, holed up in a weird hospital hacked in a city within a mountain, she felt her throat constrict at the memory of hands around it and the ugly, blood-stained truth she'd been ignoring began to glare back at her:

This was her fault.

She was the reason Gildor Inglorion was here. And why Belwen was probably in a similar state in another hospital room. She had no metric to judge their numbers or skill, but she was close to certain in knowing that they probably wouldn't have been so grievously injured if she hadn't been stupid enough to fall through an active Vortice.

She cleared her throat to dispel the feeling of ghost hands around her throat as the room began to feel incredibly small.

"Just eat a little." Gildor Inglorion insisted, causing irritation to briefly obscure her squeeze of remembered fear.

"I said no." She said firmly.

It must have come out a bit sharp though, because Olorin coughed pointedly and made a show of shuffling the papers around especially hard.

Suppressing a scowl, she counted to five in her head before attempting to rephrase.

"I meant, that you're injured, Gildor." She said, trying to make her voice soft. "You need to eat, not me."

But if anything, her perfectly reasonable response only made him more stubborn.

"I am fine, Little Leda. I want you to-"

He broke into a horrid cough. It was the same type of expulsion she'd heard on patients who had been in head-on vehicular collisions. The grating hack of internal injury.

The sound of it rattled inside of her ears until she felt nauseous. The ghost hands returned, tightening so severely that for a split second, Gildor Inglorion's shuddering form morphed on the edges and turned dark grey and snarling.

Olorin moved far quicker than she had ever seen him, poured a water into a wooden cup and held it out. Gildor Inglorion drained three before the shuddering of his shoulders died to small tremors. Leda watched with mountain worry and noted with some alarm that when he sank back against the stacked pillows, he looked paler than before. Regret lodged itself at the top of her throat.

This really was all her fault.

"You need to eat so you can heal." She tried.

He didn't reply, but his eyes rolled lazily towards her and so she rambled on.

"I don't- you-" She swallowed thickly, gesturing vaguely to the bloodstained bandage. She couldn't seem to find the words to say what she was feeling. "A-after what I-I-"

She choked off. Behind Gildor Inglorion's bed, Lindir's constant pacing finally stilled. Even Olorin ceased his continuous paper rustling. Silence rushed into the spaces their sounds left empty.

Gildor Inglorion's eyes grew so sharp that she found it difficult to keep contact.

"After you what, Little Leda?" He rasped. In the quiet of the room, his voice sounded like a boom. She flinched, angled away and fixed her gaze to a spot on the floor.

He waited patiently for her to reply but it took far longer than she thought to get the words out.

"Gildor Inglorion-" She began.

"No." He interrupted, sounding more like himself than he had all day. "Gildor."

She must have looked confused because he elaborated seriously.

"We are friends, you and I. Gildor is what you will call me."

Shocked, her head jerked up.

His statement should have made her feel better. Despite the dull in his eyes from injury, she could still see the warmth – the want to help her. And she knew by seeing the elves, by knowing them, that the distinction between his full name and first meant something. That he was trying to give her something. She should have been happy. Bu his admission of friendship only made her feel nauseous.

It was too much. She'd experienced it before: the whiplash of emotions in the Stronghold. Jerking from curiosity, to happiness, to elation and then down into guilt, regret, fear until they all merged together. Building and feeding one another. Combining into one huge, cacophonous-

A hand dropped onto hers, startling her out of her thoughts. Her eyes slowly focused, finding Gildor Inglorion – Gildor, she guessed now – smiling softly down at her.

"Little Leda?" His fingers squeezed hers with surprising strength. "Are you well?"

Something about the sincerity in his voice tripled her nausea and flung it outwards unfairly as irritation.

"I'm fine!" She said snapped, snatching her hand back.

He blinked and curled his fingers around the space her hand had left. Her guilt bubbled back tenfold.

Olorin cleared his throat pointedly. She didn't need to hear him shuffle papers to know she was being (probably, rightfully) told off.

"I'm sorry." She said quickly, looking away. "I didn't- I shouldn't have said it like that."

"It is alright, Little Leda." And even though she'd just been horrible to him, she knew he meant it as surely as if he was telling her his name. "I know you did not mean it so."

He might have been talking about the last two minutes, but she got she distinct impression he was also letting her off the hook for what she'd said yesterday to Glorfindel.

Olorin's lesson from earlier reared its smug head.

What we mean and what we say, are often found to be two of a kind.

She wanted to say sorry. For getting him hurt. For hurting him more. For being the cause of his stress now. For turning up in first place.

But like a coward she settled on: "I- ...I'm glad that you're- Good."

He raised his eyebrows. And, awkward, she flailed on.

"It's good, right? Good that you're here. Good- good that you're- uh-"

He cocked an eyebrow. "Good?"

She grimaced. She'd never before had such difficulty in saying what she felt.

"Yes. Sorry. I'm just- trying."

Gildor seemed to choose his words with care.

"You... have no reason to fear me. No harm has come to you here, nor shall it."

"I'm not scared of you, Gildor."

"Shy, perhaps?"

She frowned. "I'm not shy."

He sounded amused. "No, you are not. But then why can you not meet my gaze?"

Lindir must have begun to pace again, because the floor became alive with moving shards of sunlight. It was much easier to look at them than at Gildor who stared at her like they were old friends.

"It's just…" She trailed off, eyes skimming over his blooded bandages. She gulped. "Very different here."

"Ah." He hummed, cocking his head low to catch her flickering gaze. "Yes. I suppose warfare would be different for someone from another world."

That forced a snort out of her and she rolled her eyes at Lindir's side profile.

"Lindir's big mouth, I assume?"

The blabbermouth himself shot her a scowl and pointedly turned away to examine a stem of ivy peppered with pink petals that had sprung from an infinitesimal crack in the wall.

Laughter burst from Gildor. She allowed herself the brief second of pride at making him laugh before one of the papers Olorin had been rifling through caught her eye.

"No," Gildor said between dying chuckles. She twisted her neck, squinting to make out the familiar writing. Wait. Was that- "I did not need to be told you were…foreign. It is not often I see a human woman crawl from a river she was not in befo-"

"Are those my translations?" She blurted out, turning back to him.

If Gildor was upset with her interruption, he didn't look it.

Instead, he blinked slowly and said: "Yes. What of them?"

Her mouth felt very dry. "You…You were learning too?"

"Of course." He said, as though she had hit her head. "I requested them from Lord Elrond. Before The Three worked their Will, I thought it better that I learn too. So that we could speak when you came to me as I knew you would."

The space behind her eyes burned. Like a dam breaking, the truth began to pour out.

"I never thanked you." Leda said thickly. Embarrassingly, it almost felt like she was about to cry. "For what you did. For… for saving me."

Gildor tutted.

"That is nonsense." He said and if she didn't know any better, she'd say he sounded insulted. "It needs no thanks."

"No." She said, adamant. "It's my fault-" Gildor tried to interrupt but she barrelled through his protests. "You're here because of me- I got you hurt because I just had to be spat out by a Vortice. And- and-"

"Little Leda-" Gildor leaned forward, tried to touch her shoulder with one of his bruised hands but she flinched back, wiped a hand over her burning eyes and ignored the wetness they found.

"I called you a monster," she said desperately. She was rambling. Probably wasn't making any sense, but something desperate wanted her to make sure Gildor knew that she didn't mean it. Not about him, at least. He had to know that she was thankful, even if it went against everything, she believed in. Everything she'd promised and swore.

"I said- But I didn't mean it that way and all I could focus on was going home and that's important but you- you-"

Gildor sighed and looked as if he wished he could disappear.

"What you say- what you thank me for..." he swallowed, and some non-panicking part inside of Leda noted that his Adam's Apple bobbing with the motion. Just like a human's. "It does not bear thanking. Your thanks implies that there was another path I could have taken. That some great sacrifice was committed. But what is in the past was just, and right. You do not thank for that. You-"

Her lips wobbled. "But Gildor I hurt you-"

"No." He said sharply, sitting up. And before her eyes he changed; his pupils dilated, pushing the bright grey to the very edges of his iris. His lips thinned and his brows lowered, creating shadows over his face. It was the closest she had seen him to anger. "You did not. What maimed me was a scourge. The darkest notes of The Song in flesh. Living death. And it is only death," he spat, "that shall free them."

The room felt hollow in the silence that followed his decree. He blinked, and seemed to come back to himself. His pupils shrank, colour filled his high cheek bones and his brow smoothed. In any other situation, she might have been fascinated by such a severe, sudden change. But as he morphed into the Gildor she knew, he slumped back against his cushions, too exhausted to hold himself up anymore.

She wanted to say something. Anything. She should reach out, she reasoned. Touch him. Comfort him with a hand the way he had done to her. But such a simple action seemed far too familiar. And she was a coward.

So instead, she settled on: "It was awful, Gildor."

He hummed, watched her thoughtfully for a long while before nodding slowly. A shadow passed across his face and if possible, he looked even more frail than he had before.

"Yes." He said simply, gaze sliding away to a point just past her shoulder. He looked miles and miles away. "It was."

They sat in silence for a while longer. Leda kept expecting him to rouse again, but he never roused. And he never blinked.

Eventually, Olorin gently cleared his throat and stood.

"We should make our way back." He murmured before shuffling out, Lindir close behind.

Leda nodded and jumped down from the bed. She made to follow him, but turned back just before the door.

"Gildor." She called. He didn't move at all. And she felt silly, talking when he was so obviously out of it, but the small bit inside her that yearned for something begged to reach out, just this once. "I'll come and see you soon if I'm allowed. If-if you want."

The silence stretched between them. It went for so long that she almost gave up but eventually, his chin dipped into the slowest nod and she knew she'd been heard.

Olorin lead her and Lindir back into the maze-like tunnels of the Stronghold.

"Will he be ok?" She asked aloud, breaking the silence they'd been walking in for the past ten or so minutes. Her voice echoed along the edges of the airy hallway.

Olorin glanced back at her, craggy profile illuminated from the window holes shining in waning sunlight. How long had she sat with Gildor for?

He sighed, and turned back to the front. "Yes. Merenth is highly skilled. He will not perish."

"Who is Merenth?" She asked.

Olorin's staff banged softly against the floor as he walked. "She is Chief Healer."

Leda frowned. She wasn't outwardly uppity about her doctorate as some of the other Doctors on her ward (Christ, it seemed so long ago that she was on shift with Annette), but she couldn't help the curl of her lip.

"And does she have much..." she searched for the word less likely to cause offence. "...training?"

Olorin surprised her by laughing raucously. His tangled mess of grey hair shaking over his shoulders.

"I shall tell her you said that."

She grimaced. "Please don't."

They turned left, and Leda had to steady herself at the noticeable decline. Here there were no more windows, only blue-flamed lanterns hung evenly spaced along the walls.

She peaked back at Lindir following and allowed herself a moment to marvel again at how quietly he moved. She kept expecting to hear his armour at least, the uncomfortable zing of metal glancing off itself, but even that was quiet, moving like water with his measured steps.

"Young Gildor will be well." Olorin said, pulling back her gaze. Her turned right and she followed. "His Song does not end here."

"Gildor mentioned that earlier." Leda said, tripping over her feet as the new path dipped into a further decline. She stuck her hands out, running them across the smooth walls to keep her steady. "I thought he was just using a likeness but-what does that mean?"

She hadn't realised, but the hallway was growing narrower and darker. The lanterns here were spaced further apart than before.

Olorin hit the butt of his staff against the floor. She gasped, ready to duck again, but instead of sparks flying from the white rock, it began to emit a gentle white glow that lit the rest of the way.

Ahead, the tunnel came to a dim end, a surprise for her because she hadn't even thought their rat-like tunnels had an end. She'd begun to think that their tunnels might span the whole of their weird world.

Olorin strolled to a stop and turned to watch her with a strange expression. She got the strange feeling that he was pleased with her question.

"That will have to wait." He said.

His expression morphed, shifting from curious to solemn. She felt a skitter of apprehension along her neck.

"We have arrived." He intoned.

She frowned. Behind him, she noticed a dark doorway cut into the rock behind him. She would have missed it, but the glow of his magic-stick lit the area around it as though it were a black hole, sucking in all the light in the universe.

"This isn't my room." She said uncertainly.

"No." He said quietly. "There is one more stop to make before you may rest."

He turned, and made his way through the entryway, leaving them in the gloom. The dark swallowed him whole.

"Come." His disembodied voice floated back. "And do so quietly. We must pay our respects."

She swallowed thickly and looked to Lindir, who looked as serious as she had ever seen him.

"Is this where he kills me?" She half-joked, choking down a bark of nervous laughter. Deep down, she thought she knew what came next.

She could barely make out Lindir's face in the dark, but when he spoke, his voice was as grave as Olorin's had been.

"It is not your death that awaits." He bade, finally breaking his silent treatment. "Go. And do so as he says; quietly. I will wait for you here."

You don't have to, she told herself, even as her feet carried her through the threshold into the dark after The Wizard. Some old ingrained fear reared up as she blinked into the darkness. She couldn't separate floor from ceiling from wall, it was that dark.

She pressed her hands against the sides of the narrow tunnel, and walked so quickly that she tripped three times on the hem of her ridiculous dress.

Eventually, murky light began to twinkle from ahead. She was going so fast that she almost knocked into Olorin when she emerged. He steadied her with an absent hand as she blinked to adjust to the new dim space.

They were on a balcony with a low, rock ledge.

Below them stretched a cavernous pit and above, a roof that darkened to black. She didn't know where it ended but knew instinctively that she was deeper in the Stronghold than she had ever been. The air felt heavy and she swallowed, it tickled her throat like it was tangible.

She could just about make out a group of elves, huddled at ground level around a mound of what looked like glass that shone sickly in the dim light. Around them, other mounds of grey-shining glass were dotted around.

To the sides of sides of the space that she could see, other elves stood on similar balconies, all staring down at the group. She couldn't make out their expressions, but she still shuddered. She had the insane thought of running back the way she had come.

"What-"

Olorin hushed her harshly, and her mouth clamped shut. She wanted to ask what the hell they were doing there, but then someone began to sing, and everything ceased to matter but the song.

From this height it was impossible to tell who the singer was, but Leda was sure she'd never heard singing like it before.

The notes swelled around her, squeezing her tightly, despite not understanding a word of the lyrics. As the song lengthed, she felt a pressure on her shoulders, in her chest. A weight, the crush of grief. It came so suddenly that she wobbled, had to grip the balcony for support. She hadn't felt that pain since- since-

She tried to breath slowly through her nose, but it felt like there wasn't enough oxygen left in the world for her to ever breathe properly again. And just when she thought she might pass out, the crowd parted, and the song swelled and her heart swooped the same way it had ten years ago when, excited, she'd opened the door to welcome back her parents but instead had been met by a Detective and two grave looking Bobbies.

Logically, she knew that people died every day. She was a doctor. She knew this. But there was something so deeply upsetting about the song. And it kept rising. It swirled around her, growing and growing until she didn't know where it ended and she began.

Feeling like she was about to lose herself, she spun and ran back into the dark hallway. Delirious from the song and grief. It beat inside her head and ears, rooting itself into her very being.

Lindir caught her as she tripped out, bracing her weight against his armoured chest. At his touch the song (finally) stopped rising. She could hear herself squeaking, gasping, screaming, maybe. Within the riot, she thought, I'm finally going mad like Dad.

Lindir lowered them to the ground, and she took comfort from his steady arms, and the cool press of his breastplate against her flaming cheeks. Eventually her crying turned to snuffling, and her heaving shoulders calmed to shivers. It took her a moment to realise that the song was gone. As suddenly as it had rooted inside her brain it had fled. Leaving a ringing hollowness inside.

Her thoughts were her own, finally. But she felt so drained. Heart racing, bones still buzzing from the memory of whatever had just happened.

Through bleary eyes, Olorin's scuffed grey boots came into view and then his knees, his thighs and then his chest as he knelt beside her. She looked up, feeling miserable as she trembled in Lindir's grip.

"What- what-" her voice warbled in her throat. "What the fuck was that- what did you do to me-"

"I apologise." Olorin's face was troubled as he took stock of her shivering frame. "I did not think the song would affect you so."

"Why-" She rubbed at her eyes, unsurprised with how her hands came away soaked with salty tears. "Why did you do that- what was that-"

"It was a mourning song. For the last of those that had perished on your journey here." He grimaced. "I did not think it possible for you to be consumed so. What with how difficult it is to see your mind, I thought the affects would be mild."

"Was that- was that-" She found she couldn't ask the question she knew the answer to.

He sighed deeply, guessing at her next unspeakable words.

"No. It is not Belwen. Though there were times that it might have been." She felt sick all over again at he rush of relief she felt that it was someone else. "This was Ilthen. He succumbed to his injuries and has passed onto Mandos' Halls. The last of the soldiers buried from the River Skirmish and attempted siege."

Leda tried to sit him, but Lindir's arms tightened in a clear stay order. She'd never admit it, but she was secretly thankful he'd done so. She wasn't entirely sure she'd be able to follow through with sitting up.

"I apologise, Miss Ackerman." Olorin said as she trembled miserably. And he sounded it too. Sorry, that is. And ashamed, if the way his eyes seemed unable to hold her gaze for longer than a second. "It seems your aversion to this world is unpredictable."

She noted his carefulness in not apologising for showing her at all.

"But why?" She croaked.

Olorin sighed again and took his time to consider his words. When he spoke, his voice was a crack in the quiet of the hallway.

"I do not hold your words against you." He began. "But I know that you judge them for a necessary war from the privilege of an outsider. You see the sins and blood that must be spilled for peace as sport and this is not so."

She opened her mouth but he cut her off.

"I do not need to see inside your mind to know what you truly believe." He admonished. "Do not insult me by giving polite lies. You think them barbaric for survival but this is what they fight to prevent."

Shamed, she closed her mouth and swallowed, wrestling with herself. Even now, even knowing, logically, that they killed to save her- that Gildor had chopped the Orcs in half to get her to safety, she couldn't shake the feeling that it was still wrong.

To have just seen what they lost- to feel their pain in the song and still think that they were wrong. She was alive because of them. Because of Gildor and Belwen. Did she have any right to judge the manner of her own saving? To judge them audibly after she'd felt exactly what they'd lost?

She rubbed her chest, feeling an ache there and a spark of anger as the shock wore off.

"Why did you show me their funeral?" She demanded weakly. This time when she tried to sit, Lindir allowed her to do so with a steadying arm slung across her middle. "So that I feel guilty? You didn't need to put me through that. I understand-"

"No." He said sharply. "You do not understand. You do not understand where you are. Who has protected you." His voice took on a desperate edge. "But you must. You must understand and know what will come next. So that you do not fight so terribly against it and them. "

He stood slowly, dusted his hands on his robes to tower over her. She craned her neck to keep his face in her sights. She should have been cowed, afraid, even. But she was empty. The song had scooped her out and thrown her back together in a mash. She should be angry with him but all she felt was...hollow.

"You have never seen war, this much is obvious." He said.

As he spoke, shadows creeped from beneath his robes, lengthening until the only light in the hallway seemed to come from within himself.

"But death is necessary when the enemy is ruthless. You see both sides as bad as each other. But Orcs butcher, Leda. Children, women, men. Clan. Genocide is their goal. Extermination. There are no peace talks- no staying the hand of this enemy as there is for your Earf. Here they will overrun the land and the elves have dedicated eons to defending it."

She swallowed, blinking as the shadows receded and the dim, murky light of the hallway seeped back.

He watched her for a long moment and then seemed to relent.

"I am... sorry for you. To see such as this; to know that it exists and witness such evil. I know you are a healer- have a healer's heart. But I ask you to try and see. To make the most of your time here. To try and learn as I believe was intended from your arrival."

"You- you know why I'm here?" She said eagerly. "Did- do you know-"

He shook his head quickly and she tried not to visibly deflate

"No. That knowledge is still obscure. But I see further than you think, Miss Ackerman. Though I may not remember you in the Song, there are parts of within it that I have yet to understand. Perhaps you are one of those parts."

There it was again. The Song. She made a tired mental note to get a proper answer out of him about it later.

Olorin stuck a hand down to her and wriggled his fingers until she grudgingly took them, tugging hard as she used him to stand. Lindir stood slowly with her, and only let her go reluctantly when she tried to budge his arm. He eyed her warily. She must have looked horrific.

"Come now, time to rest." Olorin said easily. As though he hadn't just shown her something so upsetting, she didn't think she'd rest again for the rest of her life.

Much of the rest was a blur. Olorin began to lead them back and Lindir hovered far closer than he had before.

As they made to turn out of the horrible tunnel, she turned back, eyes fixed to the black-hole doorway and vowed to never come back for as long as she lived.

Hello!

I hope you're all well and that you're all healthy and happy.

Apologies for any glaring mistakes, I've re-written this so many times I've probably missed a ton. As usual I'm sorry for the lateness and for the shocking quality. I have no guarantees of when I'll update next, I don't want to make any promises that I'll inevitably break. I know that's frustrating, but work is really heavy right now as I've just started, and it doesn't leave much in the way of brain space. I think I'm just having trouble managing everything and making time for what actually makes me happy: writing. I'll get there, I think. But it might take a while to adjust. I'm just happy I even got this one out before September aha. All in all, I am just very sorry it took so long.

Saying that, I also wanted to say thank you SO MUCH for reading. I cannot BELIEVE Vile Vortices has so many kudos/favourites, comments/reviews and hits. I'm just…really shocked. My head spins whenever I think about it. I never thought a story about a black woman in middle earth would ever get this much traction. So, I'd like to thank you for giving me and Leda a chance. I hope I keep keeping you entertained (albeit probably very slowly lol).

As always: find me on twitter at aobh_fanfiction if you have any questions or you want to yell at me about how long my chapters take to write lol

Here's to another chapter of adventure,

Lots of love and joy

-Aobh x

Anon responses:

To the Guest from the olden days, its so nice to have you still here! Thank you for your support the whole way through.

To my two new guests: welcome, and thank you for reading!

To WithAV: thank you again for another lovely review! Hope you enjoy the new chapter.