Rating: PG
Pairing: Gil-galad/Elrond
Summary: Reflections on breaking.
Notes: As often happens, the inspiration for this ficlet came from poetry and was influenced (and beta'd), as ever, by Maybe. This time it was "Break, Break, Break" by the great Alfred Lord Tennyson:
Break, break, break,
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.
O, well for the fisherman's boy,
That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,
That he sings in his boat on the bay!
And the stately ships go on
To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanished hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!
Break, break, break,
At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!
But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me.
I hoped - oh, how I hoped. But it was not to be.
How something so perfect as ours could not be escapes me utterly. But who am I to argue?
Aiya, I am your lover to argue, I am your hervenn. And you were my life, you were my hands and my eyes and my crutch when I needed you. But you are not here now, when I need you most.
Around me Ossë roars and beats at the hard, grey shores. Above me the gulls wheel, sobbing. I break like the waves, sundered and seething, hissing and grinding at the cruel, immovable stones. But I cannot move my tongue or throat to express this choking surge of grief, to roar, to sob for what is not.
The haven under the hill, indeed! Taniquetil looms, but I find no peace, no respite; I preferred the ignorance of a hopeless hope. That I might arrive in the haven of the Eldar to find my broken wife restored, my King reborn... Without hope, what would I have had left? How could I have withstood the sight of my sons reduced to derelict souls bent on mortality, both for themselves and the monsters that destroyed their mother? How could I watch my daughter follow her heart to her death? I turned away.
And for what? For something better? Nay, for the touch of a hand that is no more; for the sound of a silent voice. For a memory. And I break, I break, I break, for my vain hopes and my children and your silence. My heart shattered on the crags there and then that day, when I saw the shadow of Celebríìan and my dear, faithful Glorfindel in the arms of his Ecthelion, but learned that my beloved had not been granted the same favour.
Námo had not seen fit to release him, they said. There had been no word of his coming. Still, I searched the faces of the young with the fervour of the desperate, the hopeless. I strained to see the glimmer of familiarity in the face of a sailor-boy, in the lad who was King of the Castle. But he was not there.
My company lately is of the towering cliffs to my back and the lonely white surf; by night, the quiet house that Círdan keeps. The thought has crossed my mind in a fit of self-pity: Ossë would welcome me so easily. I would feel a tender touch, a gentle hand once more - yet how could the waves break me more than I am already? The hröa bears the pain, yet 'tis the fëa that suffers. I feel like my reflection in the dark, ever-shifting Seas: fractured, distorted, restless. Pulled apart and dependent on so much. But I hold to one last hope, in the coming aeons that stretch before me. You may yet be.
The End
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