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It seemed to come to him out of the blue, that memory.
Elrohir. Couldn’t have been a day over ten, a little boy with big eyes peering in through the gap of his office door, which had been carelessly left ajar.
“Erestor. I’m hurt.”
He had sighed deeply. Skinned knees were not his specialty, and he had no idea why the boy hadn’t sought out Elrond, his father and a healer to boot.
He made his common gesture of crooking two fingers and wagging them impatiently in a curt gesture of beckoning. “Come.”
The boy edged into the room, opening the door only enough to squeeze through.
Erestor frowned at the child. “Where are you hurt?”
Tears pooled along the dark lashes but did not spill. Elrohir choked on his answer, “I don’t know!” And he pressed a hand to the center of his own little chest and pushed as if to stop his very heart. “Here, I suppose,” he’d guessed, slipping even closer to the concerned Counselor until he had pushed himself up along one side of the desk, only an arm’s reach away.
As much as Erestor loathed to contemplate what it would mean for the future, he reached out for the boy and Elrohir rushed in. One would think he’d come home to a parent. Erestor lifted the youth onto his lap, a gesture that ordinarily would have received complaints that he was ‘too old for such affections.’
But Elrohir did not complain, burying himself in the undeniable safety of Erestor’s black robes, as though to shroud himself in the same shadows constantly attached to the dark Elf.
“Then it’s not a bruise or scrape, little Elrohir? A hurt of the heart, is it?”
“Aye!” he squealed, as though to grasp the new concept and fully embrace it. A hurt of the heart, a thing he hadn’t known had existed until that day.
“What happened,” Erestor asked in a far gentler voice than any in the Valley had ever heard, and only little Elrohir was privy to. “Tell me.”
“Was Legolas! He said . . .”
Erestor shook his head, but there was not a trace of anger to be found in dark, mellow eyes. Only sadness. “What did the boy say?”
Elrohir forcibly calmed himself and concentrated on getting the words out, unburdening his tiny heart. His whine became a whisper. “He said mean things. He called Nana a word I never heard before, and he said ‘Peredhil are trash!’ and that we aren’t real Elves and we’re all going to die. He said the Valar hate us because our blood is tainted, and he said . . . he said more mean things.”
Then it seemed all life went out of the little elfling. He stopped pulling at Erestor’s robe and just relaxed into a ragdoll lump on his lap, tears draining away.
Erestor held him close. “Was Prince Legolas mad at you when he said these things? Had someone made him upset?”
Elrohir nodded.
“Then I hope you can forgive him for it, Elrohir. But you must also know that none of those things is true. The Valar love each and every one of us. Men and Elves and half-Elves. And spirits and trees and dwarves--”
“Dwarves?”
“Yes, dwarves too. They love little twins, and they even love little princes who can sometimes be mean. There’s nothing wrong in being who you are, Elrohir, especially the parts of you you can’t change. This is the way the Valar made you. You are perfect to them. And your mother and father and brother love you.”
Elrohir sighed deeply and sat upright, solemnly meeting Erestor’s eyes. “Why do words hurt so much?”
“Because the spirit is even more eternal than our bodies,” Erestor told him, pushing a thread of black hair out of the boy’s face. “And if you feel a little better, than you have learned that words can heal as well. I think that perhaps Legolas let his royal temper get the best of him, and you may well get an apology from him sooner than you think. Then, I believe you will be right as rain.”
Elrohir turned up the corners of his mouth in a hopeful smile. “That would be nice,” he said, carefully sliding off Erestor’s lap. He turned to regard the Counselor closely. “Thank you, Erestor.”
“You’re welcome, little one. Now, go off and find your brother. Torment your teachers as usual.”
The smile broadened and Elrohir scampered from the room.
His little footsteps were still echoing down the corridor when a large shadow consumed the doorway.
He looked up to find Imladris’s resident gossip grinning down at him. “Glorfindel, go away.”
Glorfindel had laughed, shook his head, and – for once – did as he was told.
= = = = =
Memories were funny things.
That had not been the only conversation he’d held with Imladris’s prince Elrohir.
The child responded profoundly to what Erestor described as ‘hurts of the heart’ and became more familiar with them as time went on. Such is the way of life.
Erestor remembered that as the day that Elrohir outgrew childhood, although perhaps it was not so. It was preferable to remembering other conversations. Elrohir, still young, had once accused Erestor of having so much hurt in his heart that he was incapable of loving. Erestor did not dissuade him of the notion, though it seemed a troublingly accurate sentiment. The more free time Erestor had to himself, the more he pondered those hurts, often pinning down a terrible memory to relive over and over, knowing that by doing so he was only deepening the wound. He had explained that to Elrohir, too. Forgiveness went a long way toward keeping the heart healthy. But he found that too often he could not abide by his own advice; he could not forgive himself.
There, too, had been a discussion of hurting one’s own heart. Never purposely, but guilt and regret could do such things.
Again came that word forgiveness, and by the time Elrohir was no longer a child, he fully believed that both Erestor’s and his own heart were covered in scars that would never heal.
The Counselor knew the boy had talked of it to his twin. Elladan regarded most of Erestor’s ideals as foolish, and ‘heart hurts’ were no exception. “Pain lives in the body, idiot. Not the head,” Erestor had once overheard.
If only that could be true.
When Celebrian had gone away, Elladan finally understood. He had, with only a lowering of his eyes, apologized to Erestor in a way that words never could. A hurt heart, truly, was more painful, unreachable, and longer lasting than any physical wound could ever be.
There were others that Erestor had watched grow up, a thousand others, but none had been so close as Elrohir, and it had been Elrohir to tell him, “Erestor, why do you leave your heart in pieces? Why haven’t you ever put it back together?”
Elrohir did not need to know the evils of his past, but had only to look into sad, mellow eyes to know that what he said was true, and a part of Erestor was broken.
He had haltingly answered, “It would not go well with me. I could not find all the pieces, and stitching back together what remains would only create a mockery of the joy that I knew as a child. I dare not risk it, Elrohir. Now go, and pray you never know the hurts I have known.”
That had been the end of it. No more conversations of the distinctions between emotional and physical, mental and social. The boy Elrohir, the friend was gone.
Yet another hurt to be accounted for and remembered, wondering if he had pushed the boy away or if he’d simply grown up.
Erestor lay in bed every night. It was that terrible time knowing that sleep would eventually claim him, and he was too tired to return to work. And so he lay still as the dead, as though pretending sleep would create it.
And every night, the stillness hurt more than the last, until he could feel himself straining under the weight of it, to keep the pain at bay.
Pain.
‘Where are you hurt?’
‘I don’t know!’
So many debates and lectures and words words words. Words to feed the mind, words to heal a heart. There were no words left to Erestor, not for his own heart.
But still he sought them, and clung to the scholarly truth of distinct definitions.
It was not only a ‘pain.’
It was not so severe as a ‘stab.’
Nor was it as stifling as ‘anguish.’
‘Agony’ and ‘misery’ were far too histrionic for someone of his estate.
But ‘woe’ and ‘injury’ it surpassed.
It came to him as he lay there so quiet and still.
‘I ache.’
Yes, that was it. An ache that extended so far into his soul that he swore he could feel it in his body too, creeping along his back and into his fingers and all across his head. An ache of sustained pain related to some deep-seated desire.
Desire, that might be more than half of it. He sometimes wondered.
An ache for a loss, coupled with a sorrowed longing turned him into what he thought must be the most miserable creature on Arda.
There was a desperate craving that inhabited his very skin, that bled down into his muscles so that his hand convulsed and searched out the cold spot beside him in the cool linen of his bed.
Loneliness never hurt so much.
= = = = =
All those many hundreds of years ago Glorfindel had overheard that tender exchange, and never mentioned it since. So unlike him, to take no advantage, even an emotional one, over a political opponent, for though they each had their place in the House, forever were the two at odds about this and that. Glorfindel had never previously failed to embarrass Erestor when the opportunity arose.
So it came as a distinct surprise that he would casually mention it to him thousands of years later.
“Elrohir always was fond of you, after that day.”
“What?”
“That day, when little Legolas made such terrible fun of the poor boy. Why he went to you I can’t imagine, nor why you reacted as you did. Twas the first sign I’d ever witnessed that you had a heart.”
“Humph.”
“I thought you’d say that. Why so reticent, dear Counselor?”
((‘Dear Counselor…’ it reverberated though his head, that indolent pet name.))
“Those centuries are dead and gone, Golden Captain. Why tear open the history books now?”
“Isn’t that what you’re always doing?” Glorfindel accused. “ ‘Look what happened way back when, let’s not repeat ourselves, what!’”
“I don’t sound like that.”
“Course not.” Glorfindel peered thoughtfully at him, and Erestor turned away. “Why only Elrohir? Why was he the only one to ever see you like that?”
The oaf truly wanted to know.
((The ache was in his fingers, like an old man’s arthritis.)) “That boy was the only one who ever looked for it.”
That shut Glorfindel up, as well it should, Erestor thought, the braggart.
Glorfindel stepped into the path Erestor was making toward the exit. “Now I’m looking,” he said simply.
Erestor was completely nonplussed. “Looking for what?”
Mostly to himself, Glorfindel gently muttered, “For a genius you’re an idiot.” Then the golden brows met in a full-blown frown. “The gentleness inside you, Erestor; why not show it more often? Half the Valley’s convinced you’ve locked your heart away for safekeeping, not because you’re cruel but because you haven’t the time for it.”
“How perceptive of them. Let me pass.”
“No. No, that’s not true at all. And why have you let Elrohir grow so distant from you?”
“I didn’t. He grew up. Simple as that.”
“Simple as that, is it?” Glorfindel seemed almost angry now. “I don’t think it is. Not with that blasted sadness in your eyes.”
((The silence that followed this stark pronunciation was welcome.))
Erestor glared. “You’ve no business gazing into my eyes.”
“Buh, whu…?” he blustered, taken aback. “I wasn’t GAZING; anyone can see it. I’m just the only one…”
“The only one what? Brave enough to come tell the miserable old hermit he shouldn’t be such a spoilsport?”
At a loss, Glorfindel shook his head. “If I’d know it was going to be this hard…” half to himself.
“What would be this hard?”
“Talking to you. Like coaxing water from a stone it is. Only stones are softer.”
“You’re such a wit. Let me pass.”
With a gentlemanly air, Glorfindel backed away and gestured the Counselor through.
= = = = =
The ache traveled. It tended to do that.
Erestor pressed his hand against his stomach as though to quell a cramp, but it had nothing to do with muscles.
Why so bad now? It usually plagued him worst at night, those lonely nights with nothing but darkness and cold bedsheets.
Glorfindel. That rascal. He had no business prying into old wounds and breathing a fluttering into an old, patchwork heart.
It was already late. He wended his way through the shadowed House. To his somber, sedate rooms with the simple bed and spartan walls. He wanted to think. ((Want to torture myself.))
The clothes went away and he folded himself into the cool grasp of the sheets. No body there to greet him, no warm arms to pull him in, no calm voice to whisper goodnights, no comfort. Alone.
That’s what it was, and he well knew it.
No knowledge, no experience, nothing but the whimsical stirrings of imagination that had long fallen sour in their lack of fulfillment.
Nothing could ache so much, he thought, as an old soul alone.
= = = = =
“Elrohir, why is Erestor so sad?”
He turned from his twin to frown up at Glorfindel. “Do you think I would tell you? Even if I knew?”
“Why so accusing?”
Elrohir guffawed and stood from the stool. “Why vehemently deny the Imladris gossip access to Erestor’s innermost thoughts and feelings? Gee, you tell me.”
“I wouldn’t say anything,” Glorfindel growled defensively. “I would never hurt Erestor like that.”
Elrohir frowned at him, not with anger this time, but pity. “Don’t you know, you fool, that you already have? A thousand times? Every whispered comment, every taunting laugh. You’re nothing but a schoolyard bully.”
“Like Legolas?”
Grey eyes widened and Elrohir stepped threateningly toward him. “How do you know about that?”
“I heard you,” was the simple answer. “Telling Erestor. So many, many years ago.”
“Well then. You know your answer. Why is Erestor so sad? Who wouldn’t be, living as long as he has, seeing the things he’s seen, knowing the things he knows.”
Glorfindel’s turn for threats and anger. “You think I haven’t lived, boy? Haven’t seen and known horrors?”
“Then empathize instead of criticize, you old bastard.”
The lad had a point, damn him.
= = = = =
Valar-damn-it-all, stillness just wasn’t working. Never had. The ache was too profound, too firmly embedded, fully entrenched, twisted all up inside him and blurry. He needed movement.
Erestor retreated from the bed, snagging a dressing gown, pacing around the suddenly-too-small room. It had always seemed just the right size and now it was too damn small.
He strode, still barefoot, hair askew, eyes muddy with near-sleep and wanting-to-cry, to pull open the brass handled door and step out onto the stone floor of Imladrian corridors.
It sounded a muffled echo-flap down the open hall that quickly died out, followed by a swift intake of breath at the sight of a figure opposite his door.
The doors in this hallway were staggered, so that every open door faced a stretch of wall. Seated on that cold stone floor, solid back along the thinly wainscoted wall, knees jabbed up into the air, golden hair a wishy-washy mane, sat the Golden Captain himself, seeming just as worn and haggard as Erestor.
“Why are you sitting outside my room?” His voice was parched, but it was only for lack of speaking in the wasted hours of the dark night doing nothing but aching. Now his throat had it too, all sore and throbbing. He thought he sounded grouchy and tired. ((Not too far off the mark, pal.))
“Talked to Elrohir today.” Glorfindel’s voice was little better.
“Why on Middle-Earth would you bother that poor boy?” Erestor asked gently, folding his hands before him, chafing against the chill of the night, the arthritic ache. The door was ajar behind him, the place inhabited only by two Elves and stray moonbeams.
Glorfindel had long cast aside whatever mask he daily wore: vapid smile and neat blonde hair and rather vacant eyes.
Those so-blue eyes turned up, easily as sad and mellow and lonely as Erestor’s own. There was no Captain here, no lord nor pawn nor children’s tale. Glorfindel in all his natural fear. “I was worried about you.”
If Erestor had been walking, he would have stumbled. His mind stumbled instead, and his mouth followed. “Uh, why?”
‘Why’ was one of those Bad Questions. Too easy to ask, with an answer that was always hard and seldom welcome. And his third one of the night. What a damn crime.
He covered himself quickly, though no better: “Oh. …I feel startlingly hopeless and adolescent.” His own voice was far too breathless for his liking.
Glorfindel remained seated, hardly moving at all. The rise and fall of his eyelids might have been audible in that living moment. Perhaps he was conscious of how his size and movement could intimidate. “Why should you feel such things? You, the one whose heart can’t be fixed, remember?”
“What are you talking about?”
“I eavesdrop more often than I should.” He smiled. “And also, I have eyes.”
Erestor reached up to drag his hands down his face, as though to push away a pain, to remove his own immobile mask of centuries.
Glorfindel stood then, deeming it safe.
Fear was in Erestor’s eyes, but the fear was not alone.
“Dear Counselor,” Glorfindel whispered so lightly the sound might have been little more than a misty vapor. He stepped non-threateningly into Erestor’s space, and his eyes – suddenly large and overwhelming – were too close, looking into him. “Where does it hurt?”
A tear slipped down Erestor’s cheek and he never knew it. His pale, scholar’s hand dragged along his own body to press futilely against the seeming hollow of his chest. He whined so pitiably: “Here.”
Glorfindel leaned in closer. Too close to meet one another’s eyes. “Me too.”
Had a person been standing ten paces away, they would not have heard the so small words that passed between the Elves in the open doorway.
“You ache?” Erestor wondered.
“I do. You’re lonely?”
“I am.”
Glorfindel heard this in thanks and sighed out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding. He lifted his haloed head and peered beyond Erestor’s shoulder to the dark room, the equally dark fireplace. “Let me come in, my Dear Counselor, and light a fire.”
They moved after that, finding reason and movement in aching and hope. Glorfindel lit a fire, and Erestor retrieved a blanket. There were only chairs in Erestor’s room. No couch, nothing to invite familiarity or closeness. Instead, they sat on the serviceable rug, close to the cheery flames.
The blanket went around their shoulders, not over their laps. Around their shoulders to keep in the glowing heat. They self-consciously wormed close and yet closer until their sides were flush. An observer might have called it cuddling, but the term occurred to neither of them.
Erestor was too frightened to look beside him to realize he was full of a drowsing heat that had little to do with the fire and had easily washed away the last of his pains. “May I hold your hand?”
Glorfindel did not answer. He did not look beside him either. But he smiled, and took Erestor’s hand.
= = = = =
The End