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'All Our Yesterdays'

All Our Yesterdays
 

Present
It is one of those pauses that come in the midst of even the harshest battle, and I take a moment to catch my breath and look around me.

The young one who carries my standard still remains with me, though soon, very soon, I might tell him to draw back and mark a place of safety to which I will claim I intend to return, which in reality will later be a rallying point for others.

Nearer to me than sense dictates is my heir, my reluctant heir. I watch Elrond, his sword busy, slash and lunge, his face a mask of concentration as he focuses on the business at hand – which, this time, is killing, though I have seen him look thus whilst immersed in a book, listening to music.

Behind him, not close enough to distract him, but marking his back at all times, follows the cool-eyed, ebony-haired agent of death that is Erestor. His sword remains sheathed, for this former student of Gildor Inglorion fights happiest knife in hand. He does what needs to be done with the swift efficiency of summer lightning, yet not once, I’d wager, does he lose sight of Elrond, ready without notice to move between him and harm.

Elendil, the refugee tossed up on these shores, and who has grow from ally to trusted friend, battles Orc with single minded dedication over to my left, his son, Isildur, beside him. I have personal reservations about the son; he is too hot, too hasty, too disinclined for guidance. I am uneasy at the thought of him one day wearing his father's crown, one day soon, should they survive this day, for mortal years are brief, far too brief.

I turn my attention from them and look across the plain, further, much further from us, to the line where the latest additions to the campaign, the young, newly blooded fighters, offer all they have under the command of my golden one, my Glorfindel.

The one thing that could persuade that reluctant warrior to fight in any other position except by my side, was to give him responsibility for these young ones in whose training he himself has been so much involved. Without them, he would now be here beside me, watching me as Erestor watches Elrond, with care made bright and alive by fear. What happens today is what happens, and I can do nothing to ensure his safety; that rests with the skill and courage and will that turned to face the Balrog all those years ago. Any place, though, will be safer than here beside me, the place he has held in battle time and time again these last few years.

For today I face the thing Galadriel foresaw all those long years ago and refused to speak of. I had a feeling, sensed even before I woke, that there would be no more tomorrows. When this final assault began, suspicion became certainty. All that matters now is that I use my death to buy my people and all the free peoples what they most need: the defeat of darkness or, failing that, a respite from war and horror. If I cannot buy them victory, let me please buy them time.

~*~*~*~*~

Iavas 27th
When we broke the line of the enemy on that day when we took command of Dagorlad, there was a general belief that victory was close at hand, no more than weeks away, months at most. Seven years later, I wonder at our naivety. We have been camped in this place of greys and blacks and misshapen, perverted vegetation for so long it has become normal to us, the life we have left behind a dream.

I have been more fortunate than most, for my rank and responsibilities require me to travel north on regular visits to Lindon, to attend to the ongoing business of ruling a kingdom. Most of my army lack this regular distraction from the horror of an ongoing siege, though I try as best I can with the numbers I possess to make sure there is a regular rotation. That way my warriors get to go home on occasion, to spend time amongst those they are attempting to defend.

Glorfindel, ever generous, thinks I am considerate in my attempts to ensure the fighters have regular breaks from this world of darkness and fire and smoke. Erestor knows better. That graceful, midnight-haired being of practicality and cool logic knows warriors fight best when they have occasional reminders of what it is they are really fighting for. The incentive of family comes before anything else, save perhaps clean drinking water.

Glorfindel oversees the training of the new arrivals, guiding them through the dangers of ambush and sudden assault to which we are prey at any time without warning. His sense of purpose, air of experience and warm, generous nature are looked up to, loved and respected almost by all. Where that fails, the mystique of Gondolin, the fabled Hidden City, remains part of who he is, how he is perceived, and this is more than enough, especially in battle. After all, he killed a Balrog. The forces of Elves and Men on this plain have not heard him point out, as he has to me, that he and the Balrog held an equal score at the end of that trial by fire.

He is in so many ways my strength. He brings warmth, unfailing good humour, and an unchallengeable affection to every moment we spend in one another’s company. We are discreet as ever, especially in the midst of this combined army with its many cultures and norms, but even in a crowded tent packed with uneasy allies in permanent states of near feud, whose tangled dislikes and jealousies have worn Elrond’s patience to a thin, seldom encountered rarity, he is my respite.

All during this time I have an awareness which I keep to myself. I know many have wondered at my involvement in the smallest details, my probing interest in the concerns of everyone around me. Unknown to them, my ongoing questions about their plans and dreams come from my certainty that I will have no part in this future, that we live now in the time Galadriel foresaw at the beginning of my reign, so long ago.

I will not leave Mordor alive. My main concern now is to leave order behind me and to be ready to sell my life in the way that will best benefit my people.

~*~*~*~*~

Iavas 31st
Can you imagine how difficult it is to find the privacy for love in an armed camp? Glorfindel and I have grown imaginative through need, and have come to accept the element of risk of discovery as part of the nature of being alone. Tonight we managed to arrange to meet in one of the supply tents in the hour after sunset, when the thoughts of most have turned to food, or what there is of it.

Over time we have learnt speed, to get the most from one another in the least amount of time, so that after there will still be a chance for affection and quiet talk. Tonight our bed was in a corner behind some crates, a pile of woven bags; a space small and cramped, making us clumsy. The coarse fabric scratched and irritated, the tent wall strained and shifted in the wind, voices came and went, some closer, others far off, borne by the wind. He had oil which he passed wordlessly to me as we shared a heated kiss that contained all the desire and longing of days during which it had been impossible for us to make time to be together.

The teasing, erotic nature I had discovered in him at our very beginning is never far from us, even at these times, somehow making the surroundings unimportant, the rough textures and cool air on naked flesh less strange. After drawing down his leggings and turning to kneel on hands and knees on the improvised bed, he looked back over his shoulder at me and smiled invitingly. His face looked somehow older, more drawn than in those early days, his hair braided back severely, the lesson of the Balrog well learned. Neither face nor hair were particularly clean as he had returned shortly before from a foray that took him insanely close to the Gate itself, but his eyes are always the same, summer blue, sparkling with fire and desire and love, beckoning me on. Even after so long, the sight was enough to make my mouth go dry and to light fire within me.

While he watched me, I released my instantly hard erection and applied the oil, then I knelt behind him and, gripping his hips, penetrated him smoothly and deeply and proceeded to ride him. Mindful of the risk of discovery, the only sounds we made, besides his low moan upon being entered, were that of flesh slapping against flesh and our harsh breathing.

He reached a hand to stroke himself in time with my thrusts, and the strangled sounds he made in his throat told me the moment when I took him over the edge into ecstasy. Glorfindel has always been a vocal lover and the necessary silence of our joinings while in camp taxes his control. The intense contractions that accompanied his release were all the inducement I needed to follow him, and even at the height of my pleasure I was aware of his skin under my hands and the way the faint light from the lantern in the front of the tent caused his hair to glow like the last of the sunlight. My perfect lover, keeper of my soul.

We dressed almost immediately after, then sat close together, me leaning against one of the crates, while he rested in my arms, lying across my lap with his head on my shoulder. Almost as though we were at home, so often had we sat just so, reading or talking or kissing.

I held his hand and watched his face in the half light, wondering as I regularly do at its mobility, at the way it changes reflecting so often his mood, a passing thought. I realised he, too, was watching me, his eyes unreadable. Finally I had to ask, “Is something wrong? You seem – concerned?”

He shook his head slightly, rubbing it against my shoulder. “Not concerned, no,” he replied. “Just looking.”

At my raised eyebrow he smiled and reached up to stroke my face, his fingertips following the line of my cheekbone, before tracing my nose and then the curve of my upper lip. He moved his hand up to slide under my hair and draw me down for a kiss, lazy and lingering.

”I do this sometimes, usually after a fight,” he admitted. “I try and memorise you. There are no certainties, anything can happen, I just want to be sure I will never forget a moment, a detail, no matter how small.”

“As I do with you,” I told him, though in truth I could no more imagine him dead than I could fly, he is so completely alive and at one with the world. “Did something happen…?”

He shook his head again. “A few wounded, no deaths. Though there was a small force of Men who were attacked on their way to fetch water from the clean well up in the hills. Only two survived.”

We fell silent for a moment. The Men’s losses had been grievous, and yet somehow Elendil, my friend and comrade in arms, managed to keep them steady. There was no talk amongst their ranks, so far as I knew, to suggest any of them considered turning round and going home and leaving us to get on with the siege unaided, as was muttered regularly amongst Oropher’s forces. Without his son Thranduil’s steady common sense, much encouraged by Elrond, I would already have lost a portion of my army.

Glorfindel seemed to shake himself out of his mood with an act of will. Leaning up he kissed my cheek softly, his arm around my neck. “No more talk of dying,” he said quietly. “The thought of anything happening to you has kept me awake at night too often before. Why are we wasting what little time we have here on this?”

I held him closer, stroking the tightly braided hair that I loved to feel loose and flowing between my fingers, or caressing my naked body. Finally I cupped his face, held his gaze and said, “These are the fortunes of war, Findel. Anything can happen to either of us.” I had no wish to remind him of Galadriel’s hint that I would not have the eternal life of the Eldar, at least not in Middle-earth, but I suddenly saw with clarity what might happen if I did not give him a reason to continue after I was gone

“If something should happen to me,” I said carefully, hushing his protest with a quick shake of my head, “I am relying on you and Erestor to be there to help Elrond. He would have many decisions to take, hard choices would be before him. And it would be very painful for him – he has lost so much already…”

The golden head nodded, as I had known it would. They were very close, the Lord from Gondolin and the great grandson of her King. “You have been father and brother and friend to him before you have been his king,” he agreed immediately. “Of course I would help him all I could.”

“Do I have your word on that?” I asked as casually as I could manage. “I think he might refuse the kingship, unless the leadership were essential. Would you be willing to withdraw to Imladris with him if necessary?”

Glorfindel looked at me thoughtfully. “If anything were to happen to you,” he said slowly, in a tone that suggested he was even less likely to believe this than I was to accept harm coming to him, ”I could not bear to live in Lindon. I have never known it without you, save for the first few weeks. In fact, save for the first few weeks, I have never known this life without it containing you. I would go to Imladris with relief. And I would help and guide and protect Elrond in any way I could. If you need my word on that, I give it and freely.”

I smiled and bent to kiss him, and turned the talk to other things, to supplies and the possibility of moving the main camp a little closer to one of the water holes. I had what I needed for my peace. I had his word he would support Elrond. Which meant that when the initial pain had eased back sufficiently to allow thought and planning, he would understand he lacked the option of fading. He would have work to do, a promise to fulfill. My final attempt to keep him safe from harm.

~*~*~*~*~

Iavas 49th
Elrond had yet another of his regular run-ins with Oropher today. I would say harsh words were exchanged, but the speech was mainly on Oropher’s side. For diplomacy’s sake, Elrond has perfected a way of expressing most of what cannot be said aloud with the raising of an eyebrow, the twist of a lip.

The problems between them are two-fold. Firstly, they live in two different worlds. Elrond is a citizen of Lindon in the truest sense, familiar with and accepting of a variety of lifestyles and beliefs. Oropher is an Elf of the ’old style’. He scorns cities and modern innovations, has no time for Men and their sometimes incomprehensible ways, and is dedicated, wholly and totally, to his woodland people. His dislike for the ways of the Noldor is such that I sometimes think that, had my mother not been Sindarin, he would have found me unacceptable as well.

Secondly, Elrond is Peredhel. While most of those who know him regard him as an Elf with a rather unusual background, and while I and those close to him are reminded often of his Maian heritage, which, I suspect, might have been the reason for the interest he and his brother held for the Valar, to Oropher he is a half breed, Elf blood diminished by its mingling with mortal lines through Beren and Tuor.

Normally I would take Oropher aside and speak to him severely, just once, with the full authority of the High Kingship behind my words. However, having need for every one of our allies, I am hesitant to widen the rift between him and my inner circle with a conversation that would leave him resentful, possibly more towards the reason for our confrontation than to me. As Elrond is and remains my heir, my hope was to have the time to reconcile Oropher to this fact.

I decided the succession a very long time ago, when I finally realised that, even for the furtherance of dynasty, I could not tie myself to another, that my heart belonged and always would to the golden-haired, reborn hero of Gondolin. There are no formal promises between myself and Glorfindel; they were always unnecessary and, in any event, to do so would be politically unwise in the extreme. So long as there was no exchange of rings and vows, there was still hope, no matter how small, for the daughters of my nobles and the high born of Eregion.

But my heart is his, there will be no other, and the dishonesty and insult required for me to bind, father a child and still continue our relationship is not part of my nature. For a long time this stood as a matter of discord between myself and my council, between myself and Círdan, until finally I pointed out that Elrond, the descendant of the kings of Gondolin and Doriath, had an unarguable right to the succession should ill befall me, and was in future to be regarded as my heir, although at his request I did not have him formally named as such.

No one could have mistaken my intent, however; from that time I treated Elrond as my heir. I even gave him an army and sent him to Eregion to try and salvage the disaster Celebrimbor had allowed to come upon his people in the form of Annatar, that honey-tongued, fair seeming being who turned out to be no friend but our worst memory. Both Elrond and I, upon being introduced to him on a formal visit to Ost-In-Edhil, felt a wrongness about him and decided separately to keep him at a distance, and not allow him entrance to the lands of Lindon.

After he found that gash in the earth that contained the valley of beauty and peace that was Imladris, I named Elrond my Viceroy in the North, gave him my full authority to treat with those he found there as he saw best, and left a decent portion of my standing army under his command, the actions of a King towards his legal heir. Further, I recommended regularly, both to him and to her parents, that he spend more time in company with Celeborn’s daughter.

She is a quiet, thoughtful, kind-natured girl, my cousin Celebrían, lacking the charisma and presence of her parents, which is often the case with the children of the great, but she and Elrond get along well; in fact, he is very much taken with her unruffled prettiness and enjoys her company. I finally got him to admit that, of all the girls who had been suggested as a suitable match for him, she was the only one he might find it possible to love – were he not already in love with someone black haired, amber eyed, and less than suitable for a royal heir.

And on a recent occasion when, orchestrated by Erestor at my request, we both found ourselves on a visit home to Lindon, to the rose granite palace overlooking the sea that has been my home for so long, and that I love and will probably never see again, I gave him the formal declaration of his standing between us. I gave him Vilya.

We were in my sitting room, the drapes drawn against the dusk, a fire burning in the hearth, surrounded by the small things precious to my heart. I love this room; it is where I have shared some of my fondest moments with those close to me, it is where Glorfindel and I first became lovers, there, on a rug before the fire. It is also where Galadriel looked into the future and saw my death and, from love, tried to withhold the knowledge from me. I think she sometimes forgets we share the same ancestry – I do not have her Sight, but I know what I know.

I kept Celebrimbor’s dangerous toy in a simple black velvet bag in a small wooden box in a drawer in my bedroom. I had never been tempted to wear it. I barely remember my mother- she died when I was very young, shortly after my sister’s birth- but Círdan thinks I have more than a little of my personality from her. I do not share the Noldorin fascination for sparkly things containing great power. To attempt to use it would have drawn Sauron’s eye to me, but even had it not been so, I would not have been tempted by its gifts of creation and strength and protection. I do not trust such power.

I had already given the ring of fire to Círdan, knowing no safer place for it than in his care. He has been here since the time of the First Awakening, he has seen the world turn, the fortunes of the Elves change, he will allow no evil near it, nor will it tempt him. Elrond, however, is very much Noldorin in some of his ways, which meant I felt constrained to deliver a small lecture on the dangers of meddling with such things, while the ring lay on black velvet on a table between us.

He looked from it, to me, and back again as I spoke, his grey eyes storm-dark. When I was finished, he picked it up to look at it, turning it over between his fingers. Finally he said,

“You aren’t going to die, Ereinion.”

I put my hand over his and he looked up at me and the centuries dropped away, leaving him looking young and lost as he had been in the months after his brother left and he had been trying to find his new place in the world and fill the empty space beside him. “It’s a precaution,” I said firmly. “I want it out of here and in Imladris, the safest place I know. And yes, it’s also a declaration. That ring is part of the High Kingship now. It passes to my heir should anything happen to me. That is you. We are at war. Giving her to your care is something I should have done long since.”

He stared at me, holding my gaze, and turned his hand so that the ring lay between our palms, held by us both.

“You’re not going to die,” he repeated, his voice less sure. He has the Sight, not as it is given to Galadriel with her clear views of future possibilities, but in a way all his own, wilder, harder to control, but no less accurate. Whether he sensed my thought or the ring lent something of itself to him, I have no idea, but I saw the moment when knowledge came to him. He opened his mouth to speak and I forestalled him, saying quietly, holding him with my eyes, trying to make sure he understood,

“I always knew it possible, Gilion. All my life. I have been a warrior since I was tall enough to wield a sword, I made my peace with this long since. Just…” I paused, breathing down the pain and regret that came with the next thought, the one thing I could not find peace with. “Just help Glorfindel when the time comes. He’ll need you then.”

We sat silent for a few minutes, our hands still linked and then, coming back from his thoughts, he nodded. “I’ll keep him close to me,” he promised. “How not? He’s my dearest friend.”

He withdrew his hand and looked down at the ring thoughtfully, then put it back in the bag. “I’ll take it to Imladris – I have to travel there before I return to the south. And when this is over we will drink wine there, looking out over the river, and laugh at our fears, and I will return this to you. You are right, it is part of the Kingship, but I think there may not be another High King after you. It might be better to allow those who remain this side of the sea to choose their leaders and not have to answer to a central power.”

“Celebrían is the other half of the royal line,” I pointed out. “Offer for her and you unite the two strands. Were she male she would be my heir. Together, you will be sufficient to sway the uncertain.”

He smiled at me wryly. “I will not bind simply to enforce my claim to a crown,” he said to me, casually pocketing the most powerful artifact we had left to us east of the sea. “I know far better than you the resistance I would have to stand against. Should the time ever come to pass, trust me to do what is best for your people, Ereinion. I would have no other objective in my choice of action.”

So the ring of air rests now in Imladris, the deep delved refuge that could withstand any siege, that is all but impervious to assault. Elrond returned to us last night, bringing fresh fighters with him, young Elves who have reached an age where they are free now to risk their lives, to live in filth and squalor with foul water that must be boiled even for washing, and a food ration that is barely adequate to keep a bird alive. They have been handed over to Glorfindel, and he will do the best he can to prepare them so that they have the most chance of staying alive.

Neither Elrond nor I have referred to that which passed between us in Lindon, save for his nod before we greeted, which told me the ring was safely stored. His embrace was a little tighter, a little firmer than normal, as though he would hold me back from Námo’s abode by his strength alone - and who knows, he is Lúthien’s descendant with her stubbornness, perhaps he believes he can.

~*~*~*~*~

Present
It is as though the world falls a little away from me, the sounds grow dim, all movement indistinct, save for one on the edge of vision. He rises before me, mountainous, indescribable. One of the Maia, walking in a guise of his choosing. Men and Elves flee before him, but they are slow, too slow, and they die in their numbers at his hand. And then there is an open space between us and my mind is clear and everything around me is etched cleanly as though fresh wrought.

I turn for one final moment and in the distance I see sunlight on golden hair and I feel the warmth of his love. I find I am smiling as I silently say goodbye to the other half of my heart for a time, for however long Lord Námo decrees. For a moment I would give all our yesterdays to hold him close to me one final time, but then I realise I would be selling our memories, his and mine, the purest good that I will take with me into Lord Námo’s realm, the final gift I leave behind for him.

And then, spear held steady, I turn to face the remnant of my future, and it is time as it has been time since the day of my birth.

~*~*~*~*~

Beta : Enismirdal, thank you for being an awesome beta
Also thanks to : red_lasbelin