Blameless.
.Blameless
Blameless.
.Blameless
Blameless.
Had she heard it from anyone else, she may have believed it. Had she not rested her weary head on his shoulder and loosed the tears she had withheld like a river breaching a damn, she may have believed it. Blameless. The very notion was foreign to her ears. She had caused them so much pain. How could she simply be without fault because there was an inherent nobility to her actions? Because she had weighed her life against his and found it wanting, she was treated as though she had no fault? Because she had been so long in captivity, the sins and the shame were wiped away with hands unmarred by the blood?
Yet he held her close and tightly and she almost believed it. She was so relieved to see him again that she almost thought he was speaking the truth; that the way Fate stitched itself together was out of her control, and she could take on no blame for the consequences that followed. But then she would think of her brother’s circumstances and the guilt, and the shame and the regret would well up inside of her once more, and it would bind her heart so tightly she thought she would not hear it beat again.
The word blameless echoed around in her mind the way a cry for help reverberates off of the wall of a cave that has been abandoned for a long spell, and there is no way help could ever find it. It sent a tremor down her spine that caused her arms to tighten around him like a terrified child seeking comfort after awakening from a nightmare that seemed so real that it must have happened. She was not without blame. She would never be without blame. He could say it to her a thousand times, one for each member of The Host that has now passed, and she would not believe it. He could beg it and plead it on his knees and she would not consider it.
...But now was not the time for such a conversation. Now was a chance to be held by the one person left in Arda she could trust to share the weight of her sorrow. To share the weight of her blame.
