Found:
Two days. Two meetings with the same man. Ryheric.
By his own words, he saw a ghost and sought to... I'm not sure. Breathe life into it? Prevent its wispy essence from dissipating entirely? Help? He has his explanations, yes, but I'm not certain how much belief I put into them.
All I know for sure is that he challenges me in a way that... and that I've laughed more in this forty-eight hours than I have in the past six months.
I've made no secret of the reason for my melancholy. He knows of Rowan, of my loss. of my heartache and despair. He knows that I'm not ready for more than what can be found at the surface. He is unperturbed by this, which is to the good. He's not after anything from me, as best I can tell. He's just.... there. For now.
Alike me, he is a wanderer. Alike me, he is hesitant to form attachments, knowing how fleeting they are and how difficult it is to hold onto them. He expects nothing. He seeks nothing. That makes it easier somehow, to talk to him, to open up, to...
A challenge was issued. A request at first, asked more than once and less, I think, for my sake than for his own. It doesn't matter. Despite my reservations, I rose to it all the same. I had to. This... dithering, maudlin thing that I've become is anathema to me. He offered me the chance to brush it aside and be me, even if only for a moment.
Make the decision at the time, face the consequences later. It's how I've always worked. So, the decision was made. I kissed the man. And now, in the aftermath, I must face the guilt of my action.
It's stupid! He's dead! Any promise made to fidelity can no longer be binding. That knowledge kills me. It meant something when I gave that commitment. It meant something when I gave to him that which I had never given to another. But now, he's gone. It's rendered meaningless. So why does it still pain me so deeply to act against that vow? Why do I feel such searing guilt for it?
I want to be her again. To retreat into that cold and empty place. I want to be...
I won't.
I'll go to Erebor instead. Easy enough to lose myself to the road, to remember how to be what I should be when I've no choice but to be it.
Forgive me, my love. I can't go on this way. Something has to give. Something has to change, or something has to end. I know what you wanted; for me to move on, to not wait for you. I know what you told to that pissing Ranger who oversaw your demise. Easier on me, right? A kindness, to ask me to just give up and be happy, as if you and we meant nothing. Maybe to you. Never to me. I understand though; you believed that it was a kindness, never realizing it to be a cruelty. I forgive you that, even if I will never forgive this pain. I honour your wishes as best I can. I breathe still. That's all can do for the moment and even that is so hard.
There's no point in asking why. Just accept the world for what it is; desolate, pointless, filled to the brim with pain and horror. And then survive just to spite it all. Only, that spite lessens when all I want is to lie alongside you, to float away as ashes upon the breeze as I watched you do. But fuck Death, right? And fuck you for leaving me!
Forgive me, my love, but I despise you for what you've done. Your sense of duty to a people who hated you, who saw you as nothing and no-one until your expendable existence became useful to them, will never make any sense to me. We had that conversation, did we not? If it came to a choice between them taking you back and staying with me, you said you'd choose me. They didn't even offer you that much, and still you chose them. Did I mean so little? Or did they mean so much? Does it matter? The result is the same. You chose. You chose them, and you died for it.
The words you spoke to me... were they all a lie?
I admired it in you. That sense of duty to others. That willingness to help. That drive for redemption. I admired your selflessness. I saw such promise, some form of guiding light, in your will to do good works, however small, however unremarked and unnoticed. Now... Now I know it's all bullshit.
I offered you everything that I was, everything that I had. At least I was honest about my selfishness. I never hid it. I never lied to you.
I loved you. I still do. I always will. But I can love you and hate you simultaneously. For now, just be thankful that you're not here to face it.
I wish...
I wish...
The road will clear my mind.
