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Tomorrow, Elrond goes to war.
The pavilion spent days on the fields outside Eregion, preparing for the fight ahead; it was only a matter of when. At nightfall, Elrond arrived back at the tent you share, as usual, and you were curled in a chair with a book when you realized he was standing there at the entryway, not moving.
Your herald—now commander— is rarely speechless. He always has something to say: some wise adage to drop, some historical reference worthy of a loremaster, some highbrow joke that sends the two of you into volleys of banter. But in that moment, he only stood there, watching you, trepidation and tender care in his eyes, his proud shoulders curved by some inner burden. Wordlessly, you stood, reading the expression on his dear face.
“Tomorrow?” you asked.
He nodded once, lips pressed together, and took a step towards you.
You hid your face in your hands as his arms settled around you, and he rested his chin on the top of your head. For a while you stood there, the news sinking in.
Then Elrond pulled back to lift your chin. “Look at me, meleth nîn,” he murmured.
You kept your eyes trained on the embroidered pattern of vines on the collar of his tunic. “If I don’t look at you,” you whispered, “Will you promise not to go?”
His panic was sudden and strong, twisting his elegant features. “Please don’t ask me that,” he said, and folded you firmly into his chest, as if he couldn’t bear to see your tearful face. His hand slipped over your head, the back of your hair, pressing you to him. “I won’t be able to say no.”
“Then I won’t tell you that,” you murmured against his neck. “I’ll only say… don’t you dare go on without me, melwa.”
You felt, rather than saw, him shake his head. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, voice softer then. “It took me forever to find you. I plan to make the most of it.”
For a long while, you stayed there, holding each other as the tent slowly darkened.
***
You have laid out his armour and oiled the leather straps and polished everything until it gleams. His saddlebags are packed with first aid supplies and sustenance, more than he’ll need. On a chair, you set his best green cloak, with the square pin of Gil-galad’s golden sigil perched atop it. Some of Elrond’s papers, his scrawled-through speeches and his poems-in-progress, are scattered across the table, the inkwell still open, as if waiting for him to return to it tomorrow. But he won’t.
It is utterly still inside the commander’s tent, as if time itself anxiously holds its breath. Not even a whisper of summer air stirs the fabric. As a single candle glows in the corner, you lay on Elrond’s chest, ghosting your fingertips over his collarbone, smoothing them along its edge.
Neither of you sleep, despite the small hour. You are painfully conscious of the minutes ticking by, each one a precious gem you could stare into forever. There is so much you could say. Instead, you pour all your love into your touch. Your hand slides up to the corner of Elrond’s jaw, to the soft thrum of his vitality beneath your fingers. You brush your thumb against his pulse and in your heart ask the Valar to preserve it, to keep him safe, to not claim him yet.
“You need to rest,” you say, a quiet murmur.
Elrond takes your hand and stills its searching, drawing it against his lips. “I am resting. This is perfectly restful.”
“Elrond,” you say firmly. Tears rise in your eyes, sudden and absurd; you aren’t humouring a fight on this point. “You need to be alert when you…”
“Let me spend my night how I wish, vanima,” Elrond says. His voice is gentle, barely more than a whisper, but its note of command stills you—when did your smooth-talking, library-dwelling love become so fierce? When did he turn into a soldier? His fingers find your chin and draw it upward until you’re looking him in the eye, and his thumbs brush away the tears that are slipping down your cheeks. “I want…”
His voice catches on a snag of emotion.
Your fingertips skim over his curls, the point of his ear. “Tell me,” you say.
His eyes burn with determination. His breath whispers against your lips when he says firmly, “I want to spend it loving you.”
He kisses you with urgency, a messy slide of lips and a promise of more, and you whisper with a smile, “yes, Commander.”
***
You stay up together, all night. You make love, slow and intentional, whispering together and drawing sighs from each other, both knowing but neither of you willing to say that it might be the last time: both of you afraid to go to sleep because of what awaits on the other side.
You jolt awake from the haze of half-dreaming, your hand clasped in Elrond’s, held against his bare chest as he dozes. It was a nightmare you had, but reality is no less comforting—not when the cold grey light of dawn is outside your window, encroaching on the bliss of being together.
For a moment you raise yourself up to gaze at Elrond’s face, its sternness smoothed out by sleep. You curl his hand—a writer’s hand, not a fighter’s—in yours and give it a squeeze, and with your other hand you trace a thumb over the corner of his eye, where it always crinkles when he smiles, and you whisper, “come back to me, melwa. Come back to me.”
***
When it’s time to rise, birds are singing, voices trilling through the grey air. You wish they’d stop. With a quiet air of ceremony, you help Elrond put on his armour.
You tighten the straps of his breastplate at his shoulders and the greaves around his calves. You’re fitting the pieces together like a horrible puzzle with your beloved at its core, putting all your care into encasing him in safety. But your hands begin to shake, and he notices that your face has gone bloodless. He takes your hands and holds you there until they are still, and touches his forehead to yours.
Outside, a trumpet call sounds, blasting through the sacred silence.
Arm in arm, you accompany your husband outside. Around you is the bustle of departure: Gil-galad’s soldiers rising onto the backs of horses, last checks for weapons, shouted goodbyes. You avert your eyes from a tearful kiss.
Elrond takes your hands and clasps them to his breast. He stands over you with the magisterial sweep of his cloak falling across one shoulder, his armour gleaming beneath it; he looks like a prince of old, every bit Eärendil’s son, and a hidden vault of pride and love for him wells up in you, bringing tears to your eyes.
You raise a hand and tenderly brush back the curl that has fallen into his face. “Commander Elrond,” you say, full of wonder. “I’m so proud of you. Melin tyë. More than anything.”
He kisses your brow. “I need you to know,” he says, his voice low and only for you, “That if…”
He falters and has to swallow before he goes on. “If the forces of Adar should, Valar forbid, breach the pavilion, there are weapons and a shield in the wardrobe,” he says. “I put them there for you.”
Out of the corner of your eye, Vorohil has drawn up with a horse for the commander, and you nod hurriedly, your hands tightening in his, distracted by the realisation that he’s to be taken away.
Elrond’s chin juts out as he stares at you. He’s trying not to cry, tears welling like gems in the blue of his eyes. “And if,” he continues, “if I should fall in battle-–”
You shake your head and press a hand over his mouth. “No,” you say.
But he takes your hand away, kissing your palm, his eyes urgent. “Get to Khazad-dum,” he says. “Durin and Disa know to… they will wait for you.”
“They will not need to,” you reply, praying for it to be true.
He presses his lips together. “Elenig,” he whispers.
He crushes you to him. Your hand slides up the nape of his neck, and your fingers sink into his hair, holding tight. His arms around you have lost most of their warmth, foreign in their steely hardness. The cool metal of his breastplate touches your neck, and you shiver, and long for him to be out of this armour and safe in your arms, vulnerable and soft again.
“Little star?” you say, and touch the very one at the upper centre of his breastplate. He hasn’t called you that before.
“My guiding light,” he replies, his fingers slipping through your hair. “I will follow it home. My love, namarïe.”
***
You spend the next hours in the first aid tent, making preparations: standing for hours, not eating or resting, winding bandages as if the motion of your arms will keep you from thinking at all.
Night falls. The city is barraged by catapults. From here, you can smell the smoke.
The pavilion becomes a flurry of activity as morning dawns and survivors begin to trickle back. With each haunted, bloodied face that passes by, a tidal wave of fear builds higher in you, and you busy yourself assisting those who need it, looking up every other moment to see if you can spot his familiar gait among the returning soldiers. You’ve just finished tying a bandage when you glance up, and your breath catches at the sight of a curly head across the field.
Tears prick your eyes at the sight of him. Thank you, you whisper to the Valar, already tearing across the field, stumbling over the grasses, half blind. He doesn’t show signs of limping, and doesn’t look to be injured, but still, as you get closer, you call, “Are you hurt?”
The moment he sees you, he stops short, his face lighting up. “Y/N,” he breathes, “you–”
“Are you hurt?” you bark, too harsh, your voice edged with hysteria. You take frantic stock of him—his arms, his legs, your hands going to his chest, then to his face, staring into his eyes. “Are you hurt, Elrond?” There’s blood on his face—a long cut on his cheek—-and his skin is creased with grime. But he’s here, safe and alright, and as real as the sun, warming you both as it rises over the trees.
Elrond’s arm curls around your waist as he shakes his head, the other hand sliding over your neck. “No, írima. I’m fine now.” His lips meet yours, desperate and seeking, and the dam of terror and relief that you’ve held in all night breaks inside your chest, and you tremble, unable to keep the tears from falling.
***
In spite of his tendency to wield logic against any and all problems, Elrond’s feelings are never unclear. It’s one of the things you love about him, how given over to his heart he truly is, and how he wears it on his face in so many ways: in his gentle smile as he listens to your voice, in the sparkle of his eyes and their crinkled corners when something amuses him, in the expression of surprise that makes him look boyish, even in the square set of his jaw and the frown he wears when he’s determined or angry or concentrating especially hard while writing a letter. It doesn’t last—softness is never far from him.
But tonight, as you help him limp home, he is unlike himself: blank-faced, his eyes empty. You can only imagine what he’s been through, and your heart aches when he tells you that Celebrimbor was slain. He keeps looking at you, brow creased, as if there’s something about you he doesn’t recognize.
You help him shed his armour, and he reverts to his soft self, no longer gleaming, his radiance dimmed by grief. When you arrive back with hot water from the bath, he is still sitting where you left him, eyes closed and head lolling against the single pauldron still on his shoulder.
Murmuring, you touch his cheek as you remove it and cast it away. “Meleth nîn,” you say. “If you sleep before your muscles are salved, it will take you longer to recover.” It’s a trick he taught you.
His limbs are slow and fumbly as you help him undress. Once he’s in the bath, you slip in, too, warm in the steaming water, and squeeze out a cloth to smooth over his face.
There are no words, only gestures of care. Washing the grime from his curls, cleaning the cut on his cheek, rinsing away blood and sweat. His eyes are closed, mouth slightly open as he gives over to your touch, watching you steadily through his lashes.
“I saw you there,” he says.
Water trickles down your wrist as your hand, drawing the cloth over his brow, goes still. “Hm?”
“Are you real?” he asks. He lifts a hand from the water to draw it along your collarbone, slow and wondrous, as if he thinks you’ll disappear. “I had a vision of you, all in white. Like an emissary from the Valar.”
You shake your head. “No Valar here, love. Just me.”
His eyes are tender, pleading. “I made it out?” His hand slips over your neck. His face is stricken, as if he can’t believe what he’s seeing. “It really is you?”
You nod, unfolding your knees from beneath you as you slip onto his lap and wind your arms around his neck. “You’re home,” you say. “This is real.”
He kisses your ear, curious. Then he breathes, “Show me, elenig.”
You don’t hesitate to obey your Commander.