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When Haleth had reached her limit on communal grief, she slipped away into the woods to mourn in private. There was a succor indeed in seeing a similar sadness reflected back in everyone else's tearstained face, but that's all it was, a similar sadness. Two day hence, after a great deal of discussion and planning, they'd leave Thargelion behind for Estolad, exchanging familiarity for a renewed sense of safety, and, thus, the need for one last collective expression of woe in their homeland. All of the Haladin had lost someone close to them when the Orcs had besieged them, and most had lost several. The allegedly lucky ones had had a body to lay to rest in one great burial mound, salvaged from the Orcs or from the cold waters of the Gelion, bloated and tangled together in one rocky bend. Haleth numbered among them; she'd dressed and cleaned her father's body herself. Late, late at night, so late that even the Orcs had held off their relentless attack to lick their own wounds. The only sounds to break the silence had been the shaky breaths of her sister-in-law as she'd attended to Haldar's. Her father's armor had been stripped off nearly as soon as his body had made it past the gates of the stockade, fated to be repurposed for some less fortunate warrior, clad in insufficient armor, but his torn clothes, those remained. Not that his relatively fine amor had helped him much, in the end. But Haleth would have traded the armor and the body both for her brother, alive again. Stupid, so inconceivably stupid for Haldar to rush out and get himself killed for the privilege of laying out a stiff corpse. She had looked in her father's slack face and had seen nothing, no relief from her pain, no sign that someone dear to her had animated that body once.
Not that she could say any of that. Those without envied her and those with clung to that cold comfort. Everywhere she went—winding between the campfires and the groups of kin singing ancient songs of mourning—people wanted to touch her hand and tell her how much her father or her brother had meant to them. There were tales of brave rescues and cheering words as they'd struggled together to erect the stockade. Everybody was so sorry for her losses, just as she was sorry for theirs. But none of them had known Haldad as a father, only Haldar, and he was now gone too. So she was left alone in the grief for the man who had so unyieldingly taught her how to hunt, how to be someone worthy of respect, and had still cosseted her through all of her childhood fevers with a kiss to her forehead and a tender devotion to all her whims. More people had seen the same side of Haldar as she had, grasped a measure of what she had lost, but none of them could understand her rage. Her sister-in-law hadn't. Grief had hallowed her clever, smiling sister-in-law out and wore her like an ill-fitting dress. Haleth found her unrecognizable.
Before wandering into the forest, she appropriated a skin of wine from one of the Elven guards ringed around the outskirts of the clearing. His solemn expression didn't even flicker, his glowing eyes directed outwards towards any shadowy threats. If Haleth didn't know better, she'd have thought he was swallowed up with sorrow along with the Haladin, expressing regret for their late rescue of her people, but she'd spent much too much time rubbing elbows with Elves lately and sincere repentance and a desire for atonement was not an emotion Elves had the ability to feel. Arrogance, pride, haughty condescension, now those they all had in spades. Oh, Haleth was not being very fair, but her father had taught her very young that nothing about life was fair, and she'd wasn't going to shirk any of his lessons now that he could no longer instruct her further.
Without any conscious input, she found herself back at the burial mound. The ground around the tomb was bare dirt, packed flat from the trampling of many feet. The whole of the Haladin had circled it earlier for hours in a great wandering herd, while the thin, spring sun beat down on them. The hill itself was crowned with new growth. Only after long consultation had the Haladin consented to allow one of Caranthir's Elves to sing that flowering into being. Haleth hadn't wanted them to, had not wanted them to touch any part of their suffering, had not even wanted to let them participate in their retrenchment. But the Haladin had willed otherwise, and she was nothing if not their servant. She was no longer a daughter and a sister, so this was what was left to her.
The tears didn't come here either, trapped behind all of the words she'd wished to say earlier. Her eyes burned, and, yet, nothing. The stolen wine slid smoothly down her throat and did not help. When the soft footfalls of an Elf gliding near silently over the crush of old pine needles shook her from her stupor, the purloined skin was still mostly full.
"Lord Caranthir," she said in greeting. What other Elf would dare to seek her out? She continued to face the dark mass of the hill. The moon had retreated behind a cloud many long minutes ago, and all she could see was the impression of shapes.
In response, there was a click and then the gentle light of one of the Elven lamps cast her shadow against the mound. "Chief Haleth," he said.
She was right. All of the other Elves talked around addressing her. She refused to respond to lady or Lady Haleth, and they refused to call her anything else. Chief was a compromise brokered between her and Lord Caranthir alone. Why he hadn't ordered all of his followers to cleave to their accord was a mystery, but she hadn't bothered to try to understand.
Haleth let her eyes adjust again to the light and gathered up every scrap of courtesy left to her. She tipped her head backwards until the false threat of sobbing receded. "If you've come to collect your wine, I can pay recompense tomorrow," she said, turning.
Caranthir stood stock still at a formal remove. There was no twitching with Elves, no fidgeting. When they were stationary, they committed, fixed so thoroughly to the ground it almost seemed like they were about to grow roots and become one with the land, but then they'd move and the illusion would break. and it'd become unthinkable instead that they'd ever stop. His armor gleamed unnaturally in the light, all unearthly red hues. Once, at her limits, she'd asked him if they'd picked red for their banners out of practicality, so they'd have to launder less to remove all the bloodstains after battle. He stalked out of his tent at his inhuman pace, muttering under his breath in a language she hadn't understood, and had returned only once she'd begun to leave.
"No," he said, "it's a gift."
The wine was a mistake. Ever since they'd met, he'd been trying to give her things—treasure from his ancestral home, finely wrought dwarven arms and armor, land, food—in exchange for bonds of obligation, and she'd rejected it all. If he could not give her back her home and her family, then she wanted nothing from his hand. Her people had overruled her, to a certain extent, but they could not will her to take what wasn't necessary. When they'd met in his lavish tent—his overwhelming wealth on display from the yards and yards of extraneous fabric, showcasing that he could support weeks worth of nonessential work to laboriously weave those decorative flourishes—she'd brought her own meals. She'd thought it funny, almost, his scowls and scoffs as she ate. Finding ways to wind him up, to vent her own ineffectual rage at the situation at someone who could and should bear it, it had brought moments of levity to the slog of the rest of her days, swimming in exhaustion and sorrow. She'd erred here, taking something from him at last.
Long ago, before the Haladin had come over the mountains and met the unfriendship of the Elves, they'd come up with tales about strange creatures that could entangle the mind of anyone foolish enough to break bread with them. Those stories were false, reflecting only echoes of the how the Enemies's servants treated those they caught, mashed up with morals and warnings best suited to molding a child's mind. Haleth had loved them. She'd demanded her father recite them to her a thousand times as a toddler. Haldar, on the other hand, had begged for stories about feats of bravery instead, bored with all depictions of treachery, and so, Haldad had alternated between the types for them. She should have been better prepared for him trying to ensnare her.
However, some part of her knew the wine hadn't been what had sealed her doom. She'd rebuffed all his material offers, but his overtures of friendship—clumsily offered, to be sure—those had been harder to resist. In some ways, she'd been lost the first time she found him funny.
"Here," she said, thrusting the skin at him. "If it's a gift, then let me gift it to you in turn, along with a full measure tomorrow."
He did not move, so she bridged the gap. His luminous eyes tracked her progress, the only sign of motion. It was a relief to be angry at him and at herself again, instead of her brother.
"If not for this, why did you come then, lord?" she asked.
"You left the gathering," he said. Had he tracked her movements so closely himself or had one of his silent guards debriefed him? "It's not safe here. Morgoth's thralls have broken—"
"Is it not?" she asked. "Why did you not leave my people to see to my protection? You've trusted them with that task before."
His forehead settled back into its customary frown. "Those who reside in Thargelion are all under my guard while the Enemy lurks."
There was nothing safe she could say to that, so she laughed, mirthlessly. "Is that a new policy?"
Caranthir did not retreat, but he did consent to grab the skin from her hand and take a long drink. Had someone once taught him to occupy his mouth with something else if all he could think to say was filled with unpleasantness? Because, if so, he had not taken that lesson to heart.
He closed his eyes, his dark lashes fanning out on his cheek, the miraculous Elven light illuminating all the sharp angles of his face as he valiantly struggled to keep a grip on his temper. She almost admired his attempt.
"You don't understand, the size—"
"No," she interrupted, the opportunity at last to finally let out some portion of the words she kept swallowing down. Only a day and two nights until she'd never see him again, so it didn't matter. "No, you don't understand. I lost my father, I lost my brother, I lost my home, because you and yours did not see to our protection. You cannot claim that privilege now. Not to me."
"And for that, I owe the Haladin a great debt. If you would just tell me what recompense you seek. Tell me how to right this wrong."
"You can't," she said, and fuck, there were the start of the tears again. "You can't. You Elves cannot fathom the depth of my loss, what death means. It can't be righted."
"Do you think I don't know loss?" Caranthir demanded, gesturing wildly with the wineskin. "My father and brother are dead as well, trapped in the Everlasting Dark. I am far from my homeland, but, unlike you, who could chose to stay, I can never return. But yet there are still things that could soothe my grief, if someone offered them to me."
It was very quiet, once he stopped yelling. An owl hunting its supper called out in the distance. The soft sound of roots thrusting themselves deeper into the burial mound at an unnatural speed registered.
Shame, rage, both of them made her chest feel tight. "I did not know that about your family. I'm sorry for your loss."
After a long moment, he replied. "You must not have talked to many Elves. Both of those facts feature prominently in our gossip."
"No," she said, "just you."
There was the start of a blush on his cheeks, at the tips of his ears. "They died a long time ago."
"What happened?" Haleth asked into the hush, in lieu of asking if the burden of grief got more bearable with time. She could already read the answer to that question from his face.
"Not long before we came to this land, before the first rising of the sun and the moon, there was a great battle with the Enemy. My father was slain in battle. My brother—" and he did not continue.
She touched his hand where it wrapped around the wineskin, just as her people had touched hers earlier. His skin was hot against hers. That too was a new thing she'd learned about him.
"As payment for my measure of the wine, I'll consent to let you escort me back to my people," she offered.
"I accept," he said, visibly shrugging off his sadness.
It wasn't until they had nearly rejoined the Haladin before he broke their silent accord. "I would not rob you of your homeland as well, there is no need—"
"There is," Haleth said, and they spoke no more on the matter.
When the Haladin made ready to leave the land of their birth, sundering themselves forever from their fallen family, there was one final formal meeting with the Elves. Haleth offered her clan's carefully worded thanks to him and his people. He did not look her in the face even once, the very picture of a supercilious Elven princeling. If the world had been just, arrogance would have been the reason why he sneered down his nose at her one last time. But Arda had been marred in the making and that was not his motivation.
And so, when it had all been concluded and there was nothing left to be done except watch as her people began to set out on the road, she went to him again. She took his hand between hers, his palm as smooth as an untested youth. He still didn't look at her.
"I have one final boon for you," she said, "I won't be angry with you forever. I expect to forgive you sometime in my eighth decade of life. Do you accept my gift?"
He lowered his gaze to hers, giving her another small, private grief to live alongside her other hurts. He nodded.
She was wrong. Her ire towards him faded in her fifties.