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The Teacher	By : pip Category: -Multi-Age > Slash - Male/Male Views: 14764 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings (and associated) book series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Forty-seven
Every square inch of terrain must have been searched, and still there was no sign. They had been out here for two full days and a night. Elrond found himself thinking again and again about the time. How long it had taken for the news to reach them. How long it had taken him to get here. So much time, and with every second of it that passed by his terror for Celebrían increased. He had a good imagination, but had no need of it to be aware of what evil Sauron’s orcs were capable of. He had seen evidence of it again and again for millennia.
“Celebrían!” he called out to her, his voice echoing back to him from the mountains, alone. He called again and again, knowing that if the creatures were nearby they would hear him and make an escape, but his grief was limitless. The loss of Elros, his inability to rescue Oropher, the madness he felt when Gil-Galad was slain and, worst of all, the surety that all was and would ever be in vain when Isildur refused to destroy the ring and the chance for enduring peace passed. All of that hopelessness was pale beside this wretched searching.
Wind whipped at him as he rode on, urging his horse onwards with words he wasn’t aware that he knew. The air was thinner now with the altitude as it whistled past his ears, occasionally snapping his braids back onto his face as if to punish him. He could hear it like he could hear those that followed him; Glorfindel and Legolas. The twins were here too, but like him they were desperate and frenzied in the search for their mother. Without stopping to confer they widened the net to cover new ground.
How long had it been? She must be alive, she must! The time… Elrond didn’t have enough of it to shudder. She had to be dead.
He almost missed it. Hunting for her and still he almost didn’t see it.
Perhaps a mile or so distant from the area that the one survivor had mentioned their attacked camp he saw signs of fighting, and he was rushing so quickly headlong that his horse reared before he turned and headed back to it. Elladan and Elrohir looked to him for guidance, though they could see it just as easily. After the struggle, the company of foul creatures had split into two groups and it was impossible to tell which one to pursue. If Celebrían's footfalls were here, Elrond would see it, yet he could not. It meant she had been carried. Something in his fëa hurt at the thought of their hands upon her.
Elrond pointed down the first trail, Elladan and Elrohir nodding together in agreement without any conference between themselves. “Do not leave one of them alive,” Elrond commanded his sons, his voice raw with fury and fear for what may already have come to pass.
They tore off together down the trail, their grey cloaks fluttering behind them, leaving Elrond with this one. He followed it for what seemed like hours, as fast as he dared, Legolas close behind him until he found them. It was over in a matter of minutes. The clearing they had camped in contained nothing but a stinking pile of carcasses and body parts when he and Legolas were done. His sword arm sang with it. Here and there were arrows, the lighter feather of Rivendell mixing with the darker green fletch of Legolas’ arrows. But there was no sign of her. Not a scrap of cloth or a hair from her head. Elrond was distraught, but then he heard a wheezing rattle of breath pulled in between deformed lips and he had hold of the creature in seconds, one hand on the arrow that had felled it, twisting it in the wound.
“Where is she?” There was only death in his voice, but the orc didn’t seem to notice, or maybe it just didn’t care. The creature’s eyes shone yellow, and its breath made him gag, but he remained, looking at it, gracing it with his valuable attention as it expired.
It gurgled, cackling as it understood his words, and the wood of the arrow shaft splintered in Elrond’s hand. He looked down at his hand, sticky with black blood, and for an instant he had a vision of tearing the ribcage apart to squeeze the agony of life from the creature’s vile and still-beating heart.
Before he could threaten such, it answered. “We left her to the others.”
They were on their steeds and on their way almost before it had finished speaking, one thought now in Elrond’s mind. The twins may already have found her. That proved to be the case when they came upon a subdued party of elves and horses walking to meet them. Elrond jumped from his steed to run straight in amongst the horses, searching, and his eyes saw nothing until he saw her, carried on a covered litter between two of the horses.
For his own sake, he wanted her to be alive, until he saw she wasn’t. Her eyes had never had that glassy look in them in all the time he had known her. For her sake he wanted her to be dead, until he saw she wasn’t that either and he squeezed her hand and whispered her name as she looked on him with that cold distance he had seen many times before in other elves, but never in her. There was something different about her. She was hurt, wounded, dirty and bloody but she was still Celebrían – she had to be. Those same eyes fell on their twin sons without recognition, and then they settled upon him again.
“Elrond?” she said, uncertain, her voice broken and faint, sounding so unlike her that Elrond clasped her hand tightly and held it to his chest. “Am I dreaming?”
It was said so quietly, so without hope that Elrond could not bear it. He placed a hand on her forehead, and let her slip into unconsciousness for the long sombre journey back to Imladris, afraid for her life and her fëa. His fingers touched the wisps of her beautiful shining silver hair, and he knew why she looked different. They had cut her hair. Elrond had known pain before this, and terrible grief. Even he had known the cold clutch of hands on his heart when all seemed hopeless. Yet even the loss of his beloved Oropher hadn’t felt like this. She was his joy – they had always been meant for each other – and though they had rescued her, she was gone.
On their way back, the Lothlórien elves that had been sent to meet up with the party responded to the alert and caught up with them, some of them returning to the Golden Wood with the news, such as it was.
There was nothing that could have happened to her physically that Elrond could not heal. He was a brilliant physician, excellent herb master, and his knowledge of the more intricate magical healing arts of the elves was by this time unparalleled in all of middle earth, but it was all for nothing. He could pluck from her mind some of the worst memories to dispose of them. He could lift her heart in gladness because he was her husband and the father of her children. In time, her hair grew again, long and lustrous, although she had looked just as beautiful to him without it. Elrond could do many things. He could make her well and whole, make her forget, and make her sleep, but he could do nothing for the malady that lay beneath. Something had hurt her fëa, and Elrond could not heal that try as he might.
At times he let her continue to sleep while she walked in nightmares, wondering if allowing her to face them in reverie would mean she could lay them to rest. In her waking hours she seemed almost the same, but for the loss of the mischievous fire in her eyes. She haunted Imladris now, her sedate footsteps echoed in the halls where once she ran and danced. Her beautiful voice, which had sung in celebration for all of her life, now seemed to be made for laments. The same melodies she had always favoured now seemed to contain a note or two of melancholy when Elrond asked her to sing them.
Galadriel and Celeborn came to Imladris, and he spent long hours in conference with Galadriel about what might be done, and what had been tried. Even the guard Haldir had come with them at Elrond’s request, to see if he could lift her from the despair in which she was lost. Haldir became a long term guest at Imladris by unspoken agreement, but he was as helpless as Elrond to ease Celebrían’s anguish.
There was nothing he didn’t do. Elrond sent out travellers far and wide for the strangest cures and knowledge to heal her soul. Delicacies he had brought to her from far in the east, including a rose flavoured candy that she seemed to love, but nothing would ease her nightmares. Elrond hunted her out still, and most of the time he felt he had never come to the end of the day when he had been given the news of her capture, and he could not bring her back.
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Partway through the year, Thranduil arrived, Legolas having journeyed back to bring him. Ostensibly, he was there for Elrond, but since he too had known grief, he sat beside Celebrían for long hours, talking to her. If there was a way through this, perhaps Thranduil held the secret of it, and could pass it on. Elrond stood in the shadows of the room for a while, watching, hoping, longing.
A hand pulled at his robes to lead him away for rest, and Elrond acquiesced to that hand automatically, though no one had been able to convince him so far. He looked away from Celebrían, distracted, and found himself staring into the eyes of Galion.
“Come, Eärendilion,” he said softly. “All will be well in the end.” He spoke with an assurance that soothed Elrond in some way.
“When is the end?” he asked, and Galion looked away.
“Further away than you think. Please,” he said, “come with me.”
Elrond did not ask any more questions, all of sudden fearing their answers, and Galion attended to him as if he were one of Elrond's own servants, seeing to his bed and clothes, making him comfortable. Then, instead of leaving, he settled on a chair by the side of the bed.
“Do you mean to supervise me?” he asked in disbelief. Galion smiled patiently and shook his head.
“Only to watch. Sleep.”
Elrond could not defy Galion somehow, and he fell into a light slumber. Whenever dark dreams came near him, he found himself by Galion's side, and the threats disappeared, allowing him to rest.
Things continued in much the same way, day after day. Then, eventually, after one of their conversations, Thranduil stood up and laid a gentle hand on Celebrían's should before turning away. He encountered Elrond, and gave a silent shake of his head. He had failed.
In his desperation, Elrond sought out Galion. “Speak to her,” he asked, “please.” But Galion refused, saying something mysterious about turning to stone and grief and healing. It made no sense whatsoever. Elrond returned to Celebrían's side, and there he stayed.
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Time was running out, and though he did everything he could to forestall the inevitable, Celebrían faded while he watched. The hurt to her fëa was such that to remain was to kill her, and yet he knew she would do it if he asked it of her. Elrond would not ask for that. So it came to be, almost a year after her sons had found her on the slopes of the misty mountains, that she stated her only true desire.
She was so quiet now. Mostly, Celebrían spoke only when spoken to. Much of the time it was as though she listened to something no one else could hear.
“I hear an irresistible calling,” she said softly to him one day. He didn’t ask her what she meant, but he stood by her side and laid a hand on her shoulder as she stared out of the window at the garden. “I feel I must answer it and go home.” Though she had been born in Middle Earth, she didn’t mean here. Not Imladris or Lothlórien, but Valinor.
“Such a melancholy yearning, Elrond. So constant. We are all of us missed. Do you not hear it?” His heart was beating fast at hearing her description. Despite all he had lost, Elrond had never heard it until she could hear nothing else. They were part of the same whole, and it had never been so clear to him while he listened to her longing and felt it as his own.
Celebrían had to leave for the western shores. They were called the Undying Lands with good reason. There she would recover and be Celebrían again, not the ghost of her former self as she was now. Elrond understood all of this, and yet he knew what it would mean also, and he drew in a deep breath of sadness. It didn’t matter if he heard it or not, because he could not accompany her on that last journey.
“I have a purpose here still, and I must fulfil it,” he said, sitting beside her and taking her hand. It didn’t need to be said, because Celebrían knew already. Her cool regard was on the garden before her, and again Elrond wondered if she saw the beauty of Imladris any longer. She said she did, but then she was also saying she wanted to sail.
“I know. Will you follow me?” she asked absently, and the echo of those words down all of the years brought home to Elrond just what was between them, because there was no doubt in his answer at all.
“Where you go, I will always follow,” he said simply, as a statement of fact, and he earned a smile. It gladdened his heavy heart. Of course he didn’t know what was to come, and he couldn’t be certain that he would not perish here in Middle Earth, and yet he promised, because hope is what elves were. Hope was what Celebrían had lost, and she was right, as always.
“If I have regrets during the millennia I have endured here, the worst of these is that I could not save you.”
“You saved me when you shared my vision in the Golden Wood. When you joined with me then, you gave me the gift of my fate. I would not change it, not even now. Because I love you, and because I love our children.”
“I will make the arrangements,” he said, and her hold on his hand tightened just a little.
“Hurry,” she said, and at first he thought he was to hurry to get her away, and his heart jolted. He closed his eyes. “Hurry home to me,” she elaborated. Elrond raised her hand to his lips.
“I will stay to ensure the darkness will never threaten us, then nothing will keep me away from you,” he vowed. Those that had a claim on his heart were few, and many of them would be in Middle Earth after he left. This Elrond knew, but he also knew it wouldn’t stop him. Where she went, he would follow. It was decreed perhaps by Ilúvatar himself.

To be continued...

Author's Note: Thank you for reading. Comments welcome and encouraged, as ever.
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The Teacher