He was (is) close to your heart; he humiliated you repeatedly, but never insulted you. He instructed you in fighting; bruising and hurting, but never truly harming you. He shed light on your childish delusions and seemed to have respected you enough to be always true to you… You suspect that he was like that with everyone at the beginning, but now this Elf before you is forged of truthful lies.

For all of the honesty in your choreographed conversation, you could be sitting with your backs to each other without talking. ’I could have just worn a veil’ you think distractedly; you are not sure if your sight is hindered by your mask or his. Nothing seems as certain now as his irony used to be all those years ago. The words still hold double meanings, but none of you seem to understand the hidden agenda, so lost you both are in this realm of pretence.

’The wine is good, the earth is brown, there are solid, relatable truths to this night’, you think as the blood drums quietly in your ear. It had somehow grown warmer now and everything smells of burning wax and rotten bark and leaves. It had rained during the day; the ground exhales hot humidity into the air until its thick with it; until is hard to breathe even. You desperately crave now the crude chill of the north, you think of it wistfully as you chase down a gulp of wine with yet another gulp.

And then somehow everything that happened or is happening seems uncertain and blurred except a curious understanding between you two; there is no telling if he holds your hands or you hold his.

(His fingers are long and unsettlingly smooth for someone with such a harsh lifestyle, for someone so…physical a being. Your own skin feels calloused and rough compared to his; oddly enough it empowers you. You are no longer a child, he is no longer as assured of you (or himself) as he used to be.

Your fingers move now on their own accord, stroking his palm tentatively, but with a determined, decided purpose; so fierce that it might just conceal your complete lack of passion if not for his emotionless, scrutinising gaze that seems to mirror yours with frightening accuracy.

Everything seems to happen on its own accord from this point; solace is easy to find in someone who is exactly as incapable of giving it as you are.

(Whatever happens here is the work of fate; painful as the murder of C�thalion, twisted as the union of T�rin and Nienor. This deed is fitting of the both of you, of both your ancestries: you revel in the understanding of this powerful, omnipotent design.)

Your skins weep together instead of your eyes now; somehow, somewhere there is a chink in both of your armours; a part of you where the camouflage is failing, where the costume is imperfect, where something seeps out...

 ‘There are some solid, relatable truths to this night’, you think as his breath (heavy with unspoken confessions) clashes against your exhale of unsaid truths, and the third bottle splatters its ruby content all around you for the brown earth to swallow it all with greed.)

‘North, then?’ he asks with a voice full of self-loath, and guilt, and understanding…

And for this one sentence you find that you have no regrets; honest pain is worth all the other dishonest sufferings.

‘North it is.’