faemused | Open To Anyone For Anything RP Post 2

"That, she takes from you, I imagine." He says softly, watching her wistfulness and pride.

"I am glad. We are both of us bound to our roads, although yours, I think, has a better end than mine. But she is free, and that is good, for something of us will survive."

Her attention returns to the here and now, though the wistfulness remains on her face. "I have not asked her of either of our endings, though I know she has seen both. Some things should not be known. But yes, it is a great comfort to me to know that after everything, she will remain, and carry us with her. And that she is happy."

Caranthir wonders absently, how much time he has. Will he be able to say goodbye to Haleth, before the Oath or Doom claim him? (He bets on the Oath, personally)

"It is to me as well." He agrees. "Hah! Old Namo was wrong then. Not everything will come to evil ends, it seems."

Haleth could tell him that much. But no doubt Canien will.

For now she smiles, bemused at hearing one of the Valar referred to with such almost contemptuous familiarity. Her people would be shocked. Haleth never is. "He was. At least one of your creations endures, and is beautiful, with no touch of evil in her."

Caranthir suspects this is because she is half-human, as humans get a rather major advantage in the Fate stakes.

"She must be beautiful, she has you for a mother! As long as she doesn't have my coloring..."

Most humans would disagree with that assessment. Haleth is not one of them.

She snorts a little. "I am not beautiful," she reminds him, a thing she has said before. Strong of features, healthy, determined, many desirable qualities, but not beautiful. Not as the term is reckoned. It is not a matter of self-esteem; to her the adjective is simply inaccurate, so she always argues the point. For a brief moment it feels as though they are where they were years ago, the same friendly disagreement, the same easy conversation. "But she is. She has more of my coloring than yours, but in most respects I would say she is more your daughter than mine. She takes very much after your people."

"I think you are." He reminds. "Not as the Eldar are beautiful, true, but you are beautiful in your own right."

He grimaces. "At least if she looks like you it will be harder for folk to connect her to me. I am not sure that taking too much after an elf is a good idea."

The responses he has always given. How can so much have changed, and so little? Is it always like that with the Eldar, or is that just time? Haleth grimaces a little herself, and does not argue the point. "She has my coloring," she says instead, to reassure him. "Your dark eyes, but my brown hair." Lighter than his by far, but darker than that of most of her kin, a deep chestnut brown. "She has your mannerisms, but my features. It would be difficult for one who did not know you well to recognize her as your kin, I think."

But very obvious to anyone who has seen them both laugh, anyone who will recognize the quirk of eyebrow above the rare flash of a smile.

"That is good." He murmurs, calculating in his mind's eye who he would need to keep from looking at her and realising.

"If she looks enough like you to be one of your people, she will, at least, be able to claim your folk as kin, which should afford her some safety."

Haleth's face stills, and her body tenses minutely. After a moment, she shakes her head. "She is too obviously one of the Firstborn for that. But you speak as though it is yet to come, whereas for her it is the past. She already knows what to do, what was done. Trust her wisdom."

He blinks at her, broken from his train of thought.

"... I... had not thought of it that way. I suppose that is true."

Haleth grimaces just a little, still tense. Carefully she reaches for a stick and pokes at the fire, moving a log to catch alight, sending sparks into the air. "You will need to be wary," she says finally. "Of what questions you ask. Not for her sake, but for your own. There are things better not known, and it is difficult to avoid them."

He looks at her and sighs.

"I will be careful. But you are... tense. What is it, or is this something you cannot say?"

Haleth grimaces again, for she had not wished to discuss this. But at the same time she does, for there is no one else in all the world with whom she might. And Eru knows she has failed to put it from her mind, despite many attempts.

She is silent another moment, looking into the fire but seeing beyond this. "Canien has lived...many years. Many centuries. Ages." Her voice is very quiet. "Long enough to see the Haladin thrive past me, but also long enough to see them eventually dispersed, mingled and intermixed with other tribes of men."

Haleth sighs and rubs her forehead. "And so it should be, perhaps, must be. The Gift of Men is ending, and with endings come change, unavoidable change. It is well. But it is also...difficult, to know that all my efforts now, all the things sacrificed, will be as nothing." The curve of her lip is bitter. "The reward for a Chieftain's hubris, perhaps. It is not my duty to see that the Haladin survive forever, merely to tend to them now, and to prepare for the next generation to follow me. But still, it is hard." She does look at him now, rue in her eyes. "A little like what you feel when you look towards your future, I imagine. A little."

He sucks in a breath and stops to consider what this means - on the one hand, he is pleased, for it means she outlives them all, a part of himself and Haleth that survives despite all odds.

On the other... on the other, it makes Haleth sad.

"So old." He says quietly. "She will outlive us both, then." Carefully, hesitant as he is with none but her, he reaches for her hand.

"I suppose it is. But she will remember for us, Haleth."

She is almost as hesitant as she takes his hand, but closes her fingers around his. "She will, and that is a comfort to me, above all other hopes or comforts or joys," Haleth says quietly. She looks down at their joined hands, then slowly strokes her thumb along the side of his palm. "And you are right. The Haladin may be gone in her time, but she remembers them. Even Ages later they remain part of her, and she of them. That...that is no small thing." She takes a small, shuddering breath. "Thank you. That is a better way to look at it."

His fingers curl around hers, and he nods.

"It is a nice thought." he murmurs with an awkward smile. "That we endure, long after we are gone."

"It is," she agrees. She stares at their entwined hands, the easy, natural way their fingers join. Her expression is still pained. "We do endure there, and are loved, long past our passings. She remembers--"

Haleth breaks off suddenly, and draws a long, shuddering breath. "She remembers us living as a family, and that happily, even though you had to come and go with the seasons," she says, so low the words are difficult to hear. But she owes him this. Canien will tell him of it also, but Haleth at least owes him this much. She holds his hand hard, as though he may disappear. She would not blame him if he did, if that legendary temper of his truly turned against her for once. "All my expectations were wrong, my conclusions faulty, my actions poorly chosen. I do not know how to apologize for what I cost us both. All we could have had--"

She breaks off again, for the first time in all their dealings sounding choked, her voice thick. Haleth does not weep, not since the enraged tears she'd for the deaths of her father and brother burned all other tears out of her, but there is an echo of tears there, in the grief of her words.

He sucks in a breath of his own, pain stabbing across his face as his hand tightens convulsively on hers.

"Fuck." he hisses, turning from her to slam his fist into the ground.

It isn't Haleth's fault he reminds himself, trembling in fury. She made the logical decision - as angry as he had been, he KNOWS it was the correct decision. It's why he made no attempt to track her down after his anger cooled.

But this! To know what they might have had... ah, but it hurts.

It hurts her also, and for once it shows. She does not flinch from his curse or his moment of violence, but her eyes are closed and her head bowed. When his grip tightens on hers, she holds all the harder.

She has been as angry and grieved with herself even as he now is. But there is nothing she can say.

Edited 2019-08-07 10:22 (UTC)

He has to take a few long moments to master his temper - Haleth is not Celegorm, who would scuffle with him until he feels less upset - and he has no wish to last out at her.

"Fuck." He says again heavily eventually, and sighs.

"I... damnit. I don't know what to say, Haleth."

"What can be said?" For once she sounds bitter, even grim. "My judgement proved to be in every way wrong. She is proof that you would have more than justified any faith I placed in you, but I gave you none, nor myself. Perhaps it was naught but cowardice on my part, for all that I convinced myself it was prudence." She laughs, but the sound is dark. "I wonder that you will even speak to me after such insult. Surely none in all the world has earned your ire so much as I."

"Not entirely." He sounds tired as he turns back to her. "You had every reason to expect the worse - that she is evidence that sometimes the worse doesn't have to come to pass is no reason to throw out the existing evidence. Besides. You told me at the beginning that you were barren - she's clearly from a world where you are not, so who knows what else is different."

He shakes his head. "My parents fought until they drove each other apart, despite being desperately in love. I won't make that mistake."

She smiles a little, sad but fond. "Still the same, logical Caranthir." She loves that about him as much as he loves how practical she is, and had no expectation of it changing, nor any wish for it. His innate honesty will not let him overlook reason, even if that reason is turned against him. It is one of the first things they found they had in common, and one of the first things that attracted her to him.

She looks down at their hands, still fiercely joined together, neither of them having slacked their grip so much as a whit. She has not wished to hope, much less to assume, but..."What would you have, then?" she asks softly. "At this point where we have found ourselves, how would you progress? You have said I am forgiven; I had not even looked for that much generosity, nor given it to myself."

Haleth looks up at him, searching, not her usual direct calmness but something almost vulnerable. "I asked you earlier and you said it did not matter, but tell me now: do you still wish for what you wished then, despite all that has changed?"

Edited 2019-08-09 11:13 (UTC)

He tightens his grip and sighs.

"I am... stubborn." He says slowly. "And reluctant to give up my dreams. If you wish to try, Haleth, I am willing."

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I meant lash

honestly I read it as lash, hadn't even noticed

<3