Chapter 47

August 20th, TA 3020

Amongst Halbarad's many words of wisdom, often delivered while smoking halfling-grown weed from a long, wooden pipe, one had stuck with Elladan even after his friend's demise and he remembered it now, as he skidded to a halt in front of the burning building. Of all the things in the world there were to fear, three stood out to a wise man: a stormy sea, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.

"My mill!" a voice howled somewhere in his back, choked with rage. "My mill, the bastard's set fire to my mill!"

The flames rose to devour the quickly blackening courses of thatch, spreading to the rafters below and licking at the walls. His eyes upon the fire, Elladan searched the building for a sign of a human presence; yet no cry rose from inside the old mill, its door thrown wide open and the stillness of its wooden wheel a testimony to its abandonment.

"I'll kill him for this, I swear to Ivon, I will."

A portly man had emerged from one of the houses wearing nothing but a nightshift, a shovel clutched between his hands. As soon as he stepped out, the rain plastered his white hair to his balding head and drenched his nightclothes, leaving pitifully little to imagination; yet the man did not seem to care, his love for his trade stronger than shame or fear.

"Where is he?" he bellowed, waving the shovel around in the manner of a greatsword. "Where is Baeron?"

Elladan, who had been wondering the same thing, grasped the man by the elbow. "Is someone in there?" he shouted over the rushing of water, as the downpour and the stream combined their voices to cover his. "You have to tell me…oh, by Angainor, put that thing down and listen. Is there anyone trapped inside?"

Lowering his weapon, the startled miller spluttered in indignation. "There's no one," he grumbled. "Haven't set foot in there for a month, and my wife's right where she ought to be, if that's what you're implying."

With a snarl of annoyance, Elladan released him to wield his shovel with a determination that spoke volumes about what would happen to Baeron, should he find him before Elladan did. Light footsteps upon mud informed him of Faineth's presence as she, too, had rallied to the fire, imitated by some villagers braving the darkness to watch their mill go up in flames. Their faces, once timorous and prudent, now glowed with the righteous anger of those who understood that looking the other way had not borne the expected reward.

"And how's we to survive the winter, now?" one of the women called out, pushing her soaked hair out of her eyes to glare at her husband. "See how 'sitting this one out' has turned out!"

A sudden glimmer drew Elladan's eye. His stomach lurched at the thought that despite the miller's assurance, someone had found themselves caught inside the furnace; but the gleam had come from deep within the flames – a pair of eyes on the other side, watching the scene through one of the broken windows.

"Faineth!" Elladan barked out and she pounced, needing no other command but the jerk of his chin towards the man hiding behind the mill.

Elladan followed, tearing through the dripping undergrowth to find Faineth wrestling a disheveled man into submission, a knee upon his back as she twisted his arms behind it. "What's your name?" he snapped, searching the surrounding woods for the man's accomplices.

The prisoner bared his yellow teeth at the question. "An' why should I answer you, elf?"

"Because," Elladan hissed, kneeling before him to seize his face between his fingers, "if you do not, I will drag you over every river stone all the way to Cair Andros before I deliver you to the Steward." He could feel the man's bones straining under his grasp, beneath the weather-beaten skin and the layers of muscle, as fragile as an eggshell. Should he increase the pressure in the slightest….

No.

Though violence had long coursed in his veins, Elladan had chosen to renounce that path.

I couldn't imagine you any better, anyway, Mehreen had told would she say if she saw him now, as wild and wrathful as her brother had been? The memory of her frightened face sobered him more surely than the rain that poured from the churning skies.

Unaware of his turmoil, the man rolled his rheumy eyes in terror. "Serdil, my name's Serdil," he wheezed, "an' I didn't hurt anyone! I just set fire to the old mill, as Baeron's asked…."

"Where is he? And where is Rídor?"

"Rídor's bailed out," Serdil complained, struggling against Faineth's restraint, "the coward. Abandoned the cause for the sweet comforts of home." That last part had been spat out with such venom that Elladan released him to wipe the saliva off his hand upon the wet grass.

"And which cause is that? Burning innocent people?"

"They weren't innocent. Foreign rabble, coming here, taking our women, their filthy skin crawling with disease." Serdil whined. "I had a wife, too, you know. 'Fore I knew it, she'd left me for some mud-skinned wuss with pretty clothes an' gold in his pockets. Baeron understands. His wife's gotten sick because of them, an' he's not ashamed to act…."

The orcs, at least, had had the excuse of Morgoth's cruelty, which had shaped their bodies and minds in a mold made of anguish and anger. Men such as Serdil, however, could invoke no such reason for their hatred. He must have had a heart, once, but even an eye untrained in the art of healing could see it had long since pickled in his resentment.

Remembering his threat, Elladan seized the man by the lapels of his torn coat. "The river…." he growled.

"He's at 'er house!" Serdil wailed in abject terror. "At Siggun's house. But you'll be too late…."

"Amdirfel is out there," Faineth stated at once. "He will find him." The confidence in her voice was unmistakable even as she wound a rope around Serdil's wrists and hoisted him none-too-gently to his feet.

"Go through the forest," Elladan only called out before diving into the darkness.

He would spare the man a walloping from the angry miller and his shovel. Surely, that was enough mercy for tonight.

oOoOoOo

If Serdil had been right about one thing, amongst the heap of inanities that had spewed from his lips, it was about Baeron's utter lack of shame.

Even though Elladan had never met him, he recognized him at once from the pride in his stance and the tautness of his shoulders – the posture of a man who had a task to finish. As uncaring about the disordered efforts of Siggun's neighbors to extinguish the flames by means of buckets of water hauled from the stream as they seemed unaware of his presence, he walked up to the house, as though meaning to help, an unlit torch in his right hand.

From afar, Elladan watched Baeron light it from the edge of the roof while burning reeds dripped into the house like fiery rain. He halted in the middle of an alley and unslung his bow. The storm pelted down on him, trickling into his eyes and down his neck.

Baeron threw back his arm.

A woman hurried past between them, her sodden skirts hindering her gait as she lumbered a full bucket towards the house. Finding an arrow in the quiver that hung at his hip, Elladan notched it. A droplet coalesced upon his lashes, reflecting the flames.

The woman stumbled and almost fell. She halted, hiding Baeron from view, a hand upon her brow as though dismayed by the disaster.

Baeron's arm rose over her head….

Elladan drew his bow and released in one swift breath as the droplet touched his cheek. The arrow embedded itself into the back of Baeron's hand. His fingers opened of their own volition before he could even scream as the blade severed the tendons within. The torch fell into the mud with a hiss; the woman shrieked and fled, abandoning the pail while Baeron stared at the shaft that protruded from his skin.

He turned towards Elladan, finding his gaze in the same instinctive way Elladan had found him amidst the villagers. From the corner of his eye, Elladan saw movement to his left, too swift to be human. Wiping his drenched face with one hand, he let Amdirfel catch Baeron's wrists and drive him to his knees.

A running boy crossed the courtyard. Halim? No, the child was older than he, his blond hair gleaming with the reds and oranges with the inferno. Sweeping down the alley in few brisk steps, Elladan joined the ranger. "Where are they?" he demanded, ignoring Baeron's glower of hatred. "Where is Siggun and the children?"

"Safe." Amdirfel nodded towards the trees that bordered the village, though his jaw contracted in distress. "I have pulled them out before the rafters caught fire, but…my Lord…."

"What?"

"Gaerlin is still inside."

By the spikes of Vorotemnar. Biting back a curse, Elladan turned to face the brazier, the open door of the house akin to the hungry muzzle of a Balrog, which Glorfindel had so often described on his and his brother's request. What had been a thrilling tale, told during winter evenings by a hearth whose flames were long since domesticated, became all too real as the breath of the fire scorched his cheeks.

Fire. It defeated even the strongest of warriors. No sword could pierce it, for it melted armor and flesh alike. Even mighty Fëanor had fallen before Gothmog, and even the Valar had been daunted by Ancalagon's storms. Yet Elladan had no choice but to enter the monster's maw. It had been his decision to drag Gaerlin here, and the least he could do was bring him back.

One story bolstered his courage: that of Ecthelion of the Fountain.

Thrusting his bow into Amdirfel's hand, he turned on his heels and ran. He need not go far; the Dogstail awaited, cold and plentiful, and thus it was that Elladan entered the house drenched from head to toe, his fists clenched against the fear in his heart and the scars on his fingers tingling with the memory of pain.

At once, he was assaulted by the hunger of the flames devouring the walls, the air a poisonous mix of vapor and smoke. "Gaerlin!" Elladan called out, shielding his eyes from the blinding blaze.

Over his head, the vaulted roof was filled with plumes of black smoke that swirled with every gust of wind. Gaerlin's bench smoldered, lapped by forked, fiendish tongues, and the laundry Siggun had hung to dry hung in shreds from burning lines.

"Gaerlin!"

Elladan coughed as the fumes he had inhaled singed his airways. Remembering Andir's desperate fight for every single breath, he pressed the crook of his elbow against his mouth, progressing over warping floorboards and between tufts of burning reed that fell from above. It was then that he saw him, through the shimmering air of the doorway, huddled against the foot of one of the children's beds. His knees drawn against his chest, Gaerlin seemed to await his end, his stringy hair dark with sweat.

"You must come with me," Elladan rasped, his throat scratchy with the acridity of smoke as he lay a hand upon his arm. "This is no pleasant way to die, believe me."

"This is all I deserve, and you know it," Gaerlin countered, his face contorted with grief.

"Your words, not mine." The rafters groaned, twisting under the searing heat, and Elladan's gaze darted to the ceiling of the main room, where the flames now cavorted unchecked. "Gaerlin, this is madness. Two lives lost is enough. No need to add another name to the list."

"You go, then," the man croaked out, shrugging Elladan's hand away as he scuttled further into the corner. "Leave me. Save yourself. Tell Berendir I…."

"I will not be playing courier to a dead man. Either you gather your courage now and tell him yourself, or we both stay here until you do."

Upon hearing himself speak, Elladan realized that for all his boasting, he could well die, here. His sodden clothes had dried, no longer offering him any protection. If even Glorfindel had succumbed to the quenchless wrath of the eternal fire, what chance did Elladan, now mortal, stand?

The roaring of the flames filled his ears, their pitiless rampage growing nearer and nearer to their position. He would die here. Because his honor demanded it and, above all, because of his own naivety. Elladan bent over as yet another fit of cough rippled through his chest.

Normalizing an overheated blade. Hah!

The melting chunk of alloy that his body now felt like was sorely tempted to give Berendir a piece of his mind regarding such a treatment. Should Elladan live another day, he would advise him to leave such a blade be from now on.

If he lived another day, that is.

And to say he had thought himself ready. Despite the mess that was his study, his affairs were in order. He had prepared both Saineth and Redhriel to seamlessly take over his position, so that the Houses of Healing would not flounder and his patients, not suffer for it. His brother was not alone any longer, and his father about to join their mother in Aman. Legolas might miss his harmless griping, but he had both Gimli and Estel to rely on. Elladan had done everything in his power to make his eventual disappearance as painless as possible, but now that he was staring it in the face, he was finding he was not yet done with living.

Oh, he did not ask for much. Of all the pleasures that flashed before his eyes and that he might have considered as a last wish, one stood out as worthy of fighting for.

Mehreen.

To hear her husky laughter, to drown in it until it was all he could remember, even if it meant mending a thousand old books until his spine grew as stiff as a stick. To have her touch his hair, combing her small fingers through its unbound length, from his scalp to the very tips, her skin flushing upon hearing what it meant. Elladan yearned to run his thumb over the tiny mole that teased him from the edge of her full lips, right before he pressed his mouth over that same spot. She would blush and quiver in his arms, as supple as slender as a reed.

The longing unfurled inside him, no less ruthless than the fire around them.

Elladan wanted all of her. At once. And forever – or for as long as he would live.

"I am not leaving you," he declared nevertheless as he came to sit beside Gaerlin, much to the man's dismay. Stretching out his legs with a flippancy he did not feel, Elladan flicked an incandescent clump of thatch off of one boot with the tip of the other. "Anything you wish to tell me, before we both perish?"

"I didn't mean for it to happen…."

"I know. It was an accident…and you are no longer the man who caused it. You know," Elladan added with a tired huff, "it angers me to think that Baeron will have gotten the deaths he so yearned for. I would have much preferred to deprive him of such a pleasure, but I expect one cannot always get what one wishes for." Despite his discomfort, he smiled fondly upon remembering Mehreen's lively chatter. "Besides, someone I know has taught me that what we wish for and what we need may be two different things. You, for instance, wish for forgiveness, though you already have it. Now, were I to venture as to what you need, I would say it to be a new purpose, but what do I know?"

"And what is it that you wish, my Lord?"

"To no longer be alone." Turning to glance at Gaerlin, Elladan lifted a shoulder in a resigned half-shrug, noting the spark of interest in the man's eyes.

"Is there someone who's waiting for you, then?"

"Waiting? Probably not. But I like to think she would miss me." If anyone could overcome his death, it was Mehreen, Elladan mused while watching bright, greedy fingers creep over the doorframe, the wood snapping in their wake. She was much stronger than she appeared; stronger even that she gave herself credit for. "She once blamed me for killing her brother in battle. I never thought something as grave could be forgiven, yet she has found the courage to do so, though it must have cost her greatly." He glanced over at Gaerlin's sullen face, the taste of ash upon his tongue. "I like to think that Tundwen and Aeben have long since forgiven you, as well. Now the questions remains whether you can accept it and move on, or not. And if you really wish to expiate your fault, there is a little boy, out there, who has lost his father, and a woman in need of a helping hand, however difficult she may appear in accepting it. I have no doubt they will manage without you, but their life would be easier if you did not waste yours."

"Easy for you to say," Gaerlin groused, though it seemed to Elladan that his posture had lost its former listlessness. Or perhaps was it the smoke that made it seem so, his eyes crying under its sting? "You've never harmed a loved one, have you?"

"I am almost three thousand years old, Gaerlin. My mistakes number in the hundreds and believe me, they are far more grievous than yours."

All the more reason not to give up on repairing them. Elrohir's letter still lay in one of his drawers, unanswered, and Elladan vowed to do just that, if he ever returned to Bar-Lasbelin. He closed his eyes. The distant cries of the crowd grew louder, urgent in their attempts to stop the fire from spreading. The house shook and shuddered like a dying beast, filling with the acrid scent of charred metal as Siggun's tools silently distorted beyond recognition.

When death finds you, may it find you alive.

So Glorfindel liked to say and, as his last moment seemed to creep closer still, Elladan's thoughts went to the woman who embodied such a feeling.

Mehreen.

Elladan would have wanted to tell her…what?

Surely she deserved someone less bitter than himself and, despite the pain such a thought caused him, Elladan formulated the wish she would someday find such a man. Had he lived a little longer, he would have asked Legolas to watch over her, and make sure than the man in question treated her the way she deserved.

"What'll happen to that piece of filth?"

"Who? Baeron?" Elladan shrugged as he opened his aching eyes once more. "He will be sent to Emyn Arnen for judgement, and to serve out whatever sentence Faramir will deem appropriate. Though I would not expect it to be too severe, seeing how his brain was addled by sickness."

"So he may yet come back here." Gaerlin's voice had turned into a low growl, his shoulders tense with pent-up anger. He had pushed himself off the wall, his large hands resting on his knees, oblivious of the puce coloring of his face as it slowly cooked to a rare state of doneness.

"It is very possible, yes."

"Then someone should make sure he's no longer welcome, when he does."

"Am I to understand we are no longer to die here?" Elladan feebly quipped, and was rewarded with a scowl which, considering Gaerlin's height and build, would have sent a dozen likes of Baeron running for cover. He seized the man's extended hand and leapt to his feet, hissing as a chip of smoldering wood brushed against his cheek. "By Angainor, am I glad to hear that. Now, let us leave this dragon's bunghole!"