Be My Voice in This Present Darkness (Legolas x OC)

XXXIX

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✦ BE MY VOICE IN THIS PRESENT DARKNESS ✦


﹙ chapter thirty-nine ﹚




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❛ My voice drowned out in the thunder ❜

『 ▶ Only Time (Enya) 』

Several months passed, and many things came to change about Vana's life. She had wanted to be a ranger again, but she tired so easily now that she practically gave this idea up. So, she had gotten herself a small house with some of the money she took from Mordor, and most of the time she stayed there with her little cat. Sometimes Vana did go on short journeys, but she avoided her old haunts fearing that she'd meet someone she knew—or rather, someone she'd known, who only knew her as she had been.

The children in the nearby village were convinced she was a witch, she knew. Whenever Vana came there to shop she heard their footsteps fade on the cobblestones, but they did not go so far as not to see her. She could see them, too, but she didn't let on about that. She had done it only once, and the little boy had cried. Best to avoid that, she decided.

However, peaceful as her life had become, she couldn't seem to integrate that peace into herself. Her sleep was plagued by fiery visions of her fears and lurid experiences. Her mind wove them into a seamless, and seemingly never-ending, tapestry. Every night she had to force herself awake, as her dreams only became worse the longer she lay down.

Many nights she simply did not sleep at all.

Another great change was her sudden fear of anyone touching in her in any way. When she bought food and her hand brushed against a seller's while giving them money... when someone bumped off of her in the street... she despised it. There were many times she almost struck out at them in the blind panic that followed. The only thing she would let touch her was Mairon, the cat that refused to let her rename him no matter how hard she tried to do so.

And, forever there to remind her of her many adventures, her hands and wrist still bore the burns Sauron had placed upon them. Her wrist had a clear imprint of the eye of Sauron, and dark scarring lined her right hand. They often ached for no reason, so she tightly wound bandages around them, both to try and distract her from the pain and to hide them from her sight (and the sight of anyone she might encounter).

It was in this fashion that she started the day we find her in now.

"Oh, Mairon," Vana whispered, sitting upright in her bed and wiping her tears away with her sleeve. "They came again. They all came again."

The cat sat next to her, comfortably nestled in her pillow and looked at her in the most understanding way a cat is capable of.

"I'm so tired," she continued. "I wish I could stop existing for a while, and get some rest with... with an absence of self. I wouldn't have nightmares like this if I didn't have their fuel in my own head." Even as she talked, she couldn't really tell—or understand—what she was saying. Mairon, ignoring her, put his head down for pets. Vana slowly reached out a bandaged hand to stroke his silky fur. "Good kitty."

She pulled herself up and went into the next room to make food. Her house was only small, it had just one floor. That was all she needed, and it was plenty of room for one elleth and a cat. She stopped at the kitchen door and realised she wasn't even hungry. She sat down at the table and rested her elbows there. She put her head in her hands and soon she had involuntarily drifted off.