Title: Less Black
Type: FPS
Author: Ezra's Persian Kitty
Rating: G
Pairing: Glorfindel/Erestor
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Glorfindel 1st person POV.
Summary: Glorfindel wonders.
= = = = =
LESS BLACK
It mostly changes.
From black to something . . . slightly less black.
I wonder if I'm the only one who notices. Then I
remember we're dealing with some who are older even
than I and I think `yes. Of course. Of course they
notice.' It mostly changes. Around me. From black
to something slightly less.
If such a thing can truly have color. If such a thing
is a thing that even exists and it isn't all in my
mind.
Some people say I've lost my mind, as though it's
something so easily misplaced, like a small novel or a
handy knife. Others say I've gone mad. And I think
`no, I'm not angry.' Madness implies some great show
of emotion, doesn't it? Rocking back and forth and
raving. And I'm not insane either. That would
require total lack of sanity. Crazy, that's the
other. I prefer that one. It can mean so many
things, and when called so by a loved one, there's
generally at least a hint of affection in it, as
though I'm forgiven for being crazy, because it's not
an angry crazy or a lost crazy or a completely crazy.
Just slightly off-kilter and faintly harmless.
Of course, the others, the ones not so beloved, they
would never say so directly, but I have ears and I
have friends. I know what they say about the one who
was taken and returned, as though I didn't have a
choice in the matter. There's always a choice.
I chose to fulfill my obligations in life and I chose
to return to it. We all have that choice, all of us
who die. The trick is figuring out how to come back.
It's a little foggy to me now, like something misty in
my memory. So when they ask, I don't answer.
But am I crazy? What does it mean to be such? It is,
perhaps, merely a state of distorted observation. But
then, I suppose I WOULD see the world differently,
having left it behind me and then returned to it
unlike any other.
If that is the case, it is everyone else who is crazy,
to not see the beauty and goodness all around them.
To not see the light. I watched a tree the other day.
They say I'm crazy for watching a tree, but perhaps
they did not look close enough to see it dancing.
Perhaps I'm the only one willing to sit and watch the
trees.
Perhaps it was more than a day.
More than a day, yes. Because even though he hates
the tall grasses, he waded through and soaked himself
up to his thighs to bring me food and tell me to eat.
I saw his approach, and as he came near I still
thought to myself that it was slightly less black.
Than usual.
"Crazy old one," he called as he came tromping up,
slightly less black. "I've brought you food, you
insufferable star."
He has odd names for me.
"I had this made especially for the old fool who'll
forget it's there and let it sit out in the rain for
an hour. It won't get soggy."
I wondered when I would call him on it. "It must be
hard as stone," I told him.
"Yes," he answered, "But you won't faint from hunger
again if you eat it."
"Why did you bring me food?" I asked him because I
wanted to know.
He got all blustery and it became less black, even
less than usual. "Because Elrond is too busy and
everyone else thinks you're crazy."
"Arwen doesn't think I'm crazy," I pointed out, quite
truthfully.
"Arwen is five."
"Arwen knows," I told him and I smiled.
"Knows what?"
"She knows," I assured him.
He stamped his feet and blustered.
"YOU don't think I'm crazy."
He left the plate and frowned and walked away, and it
grew black again.
***
He plays chess with me. I don't know why. I play
because it's less black around me, but I don't know
why he plays. Maybe he knows, too. He knows it's
less black.
But he thinks it's just because he wants me to
exercise my mind.
Honestly, I don't know why. I always lose, and he's
always grumbling at me.
I forget the rules. It's so complicated. Sometimes
he has to correct me, but usually I ask. "Is this
right?" I say. I always forget.
***
They don't like to give me swords. They think I'm
dangerous.
I've never hurt anyone; I'm always in control of my
weapons, you have to be.
They don't understand that, that I have control over
the blade. They think my mind is elsewhere, as though
I left it at home with my whetstone.
I have to be supervised like a child.
I'm new here, but I'm not a child.
Arwen knows. She laughs with me at them, because we
know things they don't. He laughs too sometimes, but
he tries to hide it. I don't know why; it's always
less black when he laughs. Always.
***
He knows I don't like the supervision, and he doesn't
think it's necessary either. We indulge them, though.
I play with my swords, facing anyone who dares call a
match. There aren't many.
But in the night, we go down together, like children
out of bed past curfew. He brings his weapon. It's a
sword, an old one, when they used to make the hilts as
long as the blades. He's deadly with it, just as I am
with mine. I use the more modern ones. Two-handed
with a narrow blade. It suits me.
We don't have to hold back then. We shutter all the
windows, so no one can see. We pretend no one can
hear, but they must. All one has to do is walk by and
the reverberations of steel on mithril ring louder
than our shouts and grunts. It's good then, like
before, and I don't have to think much.
I bet he doesn't either, and I bet he thinks it's good
too. He needs breaks from thinking. That's why we go
down in the night.
And that's when it burns brightest. That's when
there's hardly any black left at all. When the world
around us is lit by smoldering braziers, all browns
and reds in the light when the shutters are closed in
the training yard.
I asked why they called it a yard when it was indoors.
No one has yet given me an answer.
We like it then, when it's bright in the night with
the smoke from the fires and the clang of the metals
and nothing that resembles thinking.
***
It mostly changes from black to something less black
around me. I honestly don't think he's figured it
out, not completely. I'll call him on it when he
does.
Until then, I like it when he comes to visit. He
doesn't often. Usually when I haven't come out of it
in a while and he wants to make sure I'm all right.
He doesn't put it like that; he wouldn't. He comes in
yelling and carrying on about the Valar-know-what,
just because he won't outright say he's worried.
I try to listen, I try! But listening's complicated
when it's words. Words are complicated. So mostly I
just watch and that's easy. That's especially easy
when it's him. I'm a little crazy I suppose, and
that's why words are so complicated. But maybe words
are just harder to understand because they can mean
different things, or he can be saying something with
his words when his thinking means something else
entirely. And since I think it usually just means
he's worried, then I don't hear. But then he figures
I'm not listening and he gets blustery again.
But I just watch him, cause even when he's yelling at
me, it's less black.
***
I've started to despair of him. Because I'm pretty
sure he's figured it out. It mostly changes. He just
won't accept it.
But I like to be around him still. And now, for me,
it's less black, too, as though we aren't alive at all
unless we're together.
I think I've fallen in love with him.
I never understood that expression until now, until I
lived it and discovered yes, love - new love - is just
like falling.
I scrabble at the edges of things, trying to keep
myself upright, but you just can't do it, once you
start to fall.
Once you start to fall there's no stopping it. Until
you hit the bottom.
I reached a point about two sentences ago when I
decided to just let it happen. Cause as I fall, it
gets brighter.
I hope he's willing to fall too. Because I do love
him, and it would be a sad thing if he wasn't even
willing to help me back up.
***
We sit in silence when the mood suits us. He's good
at being silent. He sits by the candlelight or by the
hearth and he mostly reads. Sometimes I ask him to
read aloud simply for the pleasure of listening to his
voice, but not this night. This night all is silence.
He reads his novels and I watch him do so.
He is beautiful, even if he does not know it, and I
dare to think it grows less black everyday, but it
mostly changes around me.
***
I'd never gone beyond the Imladrian wall. I worried
that I would lose track of time or become lost.
Besides, there was plenty to occupy myself within the
House. And he never left either.
But one day he knocked on my door and asked me, "Would
you like to go for a ride?"
I couldn't remember the last time I'd been on a horse
and I agreed right away.
He took me to the stables where he said there was a
new animal. He introduced me to Asfaloth.
I took to the beast right away; I could sense we had
something in common.
He said Asfaloth didn't like just anyone, but the
horse certainly liked me.
I mounted him and off we went, tearing through the
gates and into the forest, beyond the Imladrian wall.
***
It was just like our skirmishes in the yard. We were
running; we were racing; we were flying. And we
didn't have to think about anything at all. The rush
of the wind drowned out the sounds of the world and
motion blurred everything around me. I felt so safe.
I only stopped when he did. We dismounted and let the
horses wander. He'd brought food. I wasn't
surprised; it was the sort of thing he would remember
that I would forget. So we sat down in comfy
wilderness and ate the fruit and bread.
***
"Are you happy?" he asked me.
"Yes," I told him.
"Are you happier now. than you were before?" he wanted
to know.
I answered, "Yes."
"Why?"
"Because," I said, "Fantasy is so much more stable
than reality." I smiled. I thought it was funny.
He didn't.
***
In the end, I didn't call him on anything. Because I
was no longer sure of the blackness anymore: what the
blackness was or what it meant or if it was all in my
mind after all. So instead of calling him out, I let
myself fall completely.
It happened like this: one morning I woke up and I
went about my life, and I realized that everything I
saw was simultaneously both brighter and duller than
the way I'd seen before. This had been gradual, but I
hadn't noticed it until that morning.
And all day it was the same. I realized that when
people talked, I understood them more than I had, and
when I really listened, I understood completely.
People still thought I was mad, but they talked to me
more and smiled and I realized I had changed. My own
blackness had virtually disappeared in the light of my
love.
And I made I decision. I wouldn't call him out, I
would just let myself fall.
It happened like this:
***
I knocked on his door.
He opened it.
He was surprised, because I had never knocked on his
door before. He would, on occasion, deign to seek me
out, but I had never sought him. (I never had,
because he always seemed to turn up just when I needed
him most, though I'd never told him that.)
He was surprised and, at first, worried. "Is
everything all right?" he asked.
To my own surprise I answered, "No."
"Come in," he said. He moved away and beckoned me
forward. It was late and the firelight from the
hearth was the only illumination in his shuttered
room. I let my thoughts drift a moment: how beautiful
he was, how graceful. Until then, I'd never noticed
the physicality of my love. I loved him because he
cared for me and took care of me and because he spent
time with me and because he was intelligent and witty
and silent at all the right times. And now I loved
him even more. Was love something that never stopped
growing? Surely if it continued at this rate, my
heart would burst from it.
And I knew him to be beautiful.
He made me to sit down in a chair before the fireplace
and he kneeled beside me and took my hand and looked
me in the eyes.
I thought these were all rather promising things.
"What's wrong?" he asked,
"I'm not crazy anymore," I told him.
"I never thought you were," he answered. His voice
was very soft. He was usually quiet, but his voice .
. . I could only describe it as soft.
"I was, though," I said, quite sure of myself. "I was
crazy. When I came back, everything was so alive. I
couldn't look away, even though I was blinded by it.
Did you know that when I met you, we were both
surrounded by blackness?"
He shook his head. He didn't seem to understand.
"Yes," I went on, convinced of it as I always had
been. "It's like a shadow. We both had these sad
shadows, but the more time we spent together, the more
the blackness went away. I noticed it on you first,
because I don't often look at myself. I was afraid
to. But it affected me too."
He was trying to understand me and I was trying to
make sense, but it was hard.
"Like an aura?" he asked.
"Something nearly like an aura," I confirmed, though I
wasn't really sure. "Mine's gone completely now
though. For me, it was my madness. For you, I think,
it was something else. Maybe loneliness. Yes, that
sounds right. I suppose everyone has their own
blackness, and those were ours. But you made my
madness go away. Everything is so much less black now
that it's nearly white." I was euphoric. I knew I
was right. "And yours is nearly gone too."
"How?" he asked. His eyes were huge and brightly
shining in the firelight. There was a certain
desperation to the question, and his hands in mine had
gone completely still, but very warm.
To my own amazement, I blushed. "I replaced my
madness with my love. With love for you."
He gasped and looked away.
"For I long time," I told him, "I thought you were in
love with me, only you didn't know it. I can't really
see the blackness anymore though, so I can't really
tell."
He went silent, and I could feel that his hands were
very tense. He didn't want to look at me, so he
squinted instead at the chattering fire. I let him.
He was thinking; I knew that. He needed to think more
than me, or I just thought through things more simply,
so I let him. When he'd made a decision, he spoke.
"Are you saying . . . ?"
"It's really very simple," I told him. "People try to
make love complicated, or it gets that way by itself I
suppose, but there's no reason for it. I love you,
Erestor." And I kissed the top of his head and
gripped his hands tight.
He swallowed hard and kept looking away. Blustering
again. He was making things so hard, like people tend
to do. Either he felt the same, or he felt
differently. I just wanted him to tell me. He
hesitantly asked, "I made your darkness go away?"
I'd already said that, but I answered anyway. "Yes,
that's it exactly."
Finally, he returned his gaze to me, and it was a
tear-filled one. I realized that I was crying too,
and I wondered why. He told me, "You did the same for
me." He smiled, and it was beautiful. "And you're
right. I've loved you for a long time, but I just
didn't let myself know it." He kneeled up and hugged
me tight, and I held him just as fiercely. "You made
the darkness go away, Glorfindel." He understood, the
same as me. "And I love you."
"I thought it mostly changed around me, but it was
always less black when we were together, because love
filled it up with light." I might have a lingering
madness, but no one will ever convince me it isn't a
good thing. I knew I was right.
We smiled because we were happy and we cried because .
. . Well, because we were REALLY happy. And we
kissed because we were in love.
The end.