#Raenor has a Really Bad Time in the Epic storyline from like Moria onwards

[captainderyn]

[Fictober24] Day 3: "I know you better than that."

Prompt: "I know you better than that."

Fandom: LOTRO

Pairings: Wulfwryn/Raenor

Warnings: Implied torture/brutality, implied/mentioned injury

SPOILERS FOR: The end of the Dunland epic (kind of), the beginning of the Rise of Isengard expansion

Summary: After the events that befell Wulfwryn and Raenor when leaving Dunland, the words of elves preparing to leave for the Grey Havens fester in Wulfwryn's mind. Raenor knows that something is bothering her, it is just a matter of sorting through the half-truths she allows herself to admit.

Translations:

meldanya: my beloved

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All around them, Rohirrim soldiers shuffled through their nightly routines. Canvas tents rustled closed, the fires still burning outside crackles, and the soft, but constant, din of voices dropped down to a murmurr. 

The noise was a welcome hum after the ringing silence of the pits beneath Orthanc, broken only by the roar of the work camp as Raenor had been dragged to and fro. He shuddered and gave a shake of his head to break his thought spiral, focusing instead on rewrapping clean gauze around his hands. 

“Let me.” Wulfwryn settled down next to him, holding her hands out expectedly. Her voice was still raw and ragged after all the smoke and vapors she’d inhaled running around the orcish work camp, among worse things her overseer had forced her to endure. 

“Raenor.” she said, firmly grabbing his attention. With a shaky breath he held out his hands and Wulfwryn began the process of unwrapping the first gauze he’d attempted. After Moria, coupled now with Orthanc, his hands shook worse than before, his joints aching at the repetitive motion. A healer should be able to wrap his own wounds, but Wulfwryn’s touch grounded him in a way caring for his own hurts didn’t. 

His love’s face was grave as she wrapped his hands and forearms, her eyes darting across the healing red gashes where he’d been chained and other spots where harsh hands had taken joy in meeting his flesh. Whether it had been worse than under Moria, he would not and could not consider. 

He remembered very little of their time beneath Orthanc, only snippets in a dark, earthy cell and other times in the cold halls of the tower, chained beside the White Wizard like a creature on display. In his hazy memories, the most vivid was that of murderous rage, an unknown and sickly cold feeling, when Wulfwryn’s overseer had slammed her to the ground solely for speaking to him in elvish. 

Raenor squeezed his eyes closed, opening them when the pressure of Wulfwryn’s wrapping became tighter. He winced, flexing his fingers, and she paused. 

“You worry about me.” he said matter-of-factly, but not happily. He didn’t wish for her to worry about him. He’d caught the way her eyes strayed to him more frequently, assessing and gauging if they should press on. 

Wulfwryn’s eyes flicked to his face and she pressed her lips together. 

“Of course I worry about you.” she said. “I worry about your healing progress, that our travels won’t hinder that. Your progress under the golden leaves of Lorien…I fear it’s been reversed entirely.” 

She stumbled over her words, sidestepping what exactly had reversed his progress.  Raenor could not escape the thoughts of what happened beneath Orthanc; Wulfwryn was unable to speak it aloud at all. 

When they’d escaped the deep halls of the dwarves he noticed she’d begun to monitor more carefully.  Since they’d entered the Gap of Rohan, her presence had turned into that of a fretful shadow. It was beginning to take a toll on her; their bedroll at night was more often than not empty as she sat unnecessary watches, pacing the perimeter of their camp into the wee hours of the morning. 

He reached up his free hand to cup her jaw, bringing her hollow and tired eyes to his. Her nostrils flared in the way they always did when she fought back emotion. 

“I know you better than that, meldanya, than to believe you when you tell me it is simply my injuries you worry about. Something is eating you alive.” 

Wulfwryn cradled his hand against her jaw in her own, running her thumb lightly against the back of it. She opened her mouth, then closed it, again and again, fighting for what words she wanted to say as though they were stuck. 

“I never should have torn you from Rivendell.” she finally said haltingly, though the minced words were built upon layers and layers of guilt that Raenor had steadily peeled away though their conversations across their travels. 

He held the silence between them, brushing his thumb along her cheekbone. They both knew he’d left Rivendell not only on his own volition to take on the quest Elrond presented him, but also out of his own need to escape the sorrows his home held for him. Those words were just the easiest ones for Wulfwryn to fall back on, the same ones she used to break the dam of whatever truly was on her mind. 

Wulfwryn’s eyes went glassy and she tilted her head back, blinking at the ceiling of their tent. 

“Our journey has done nothing but cause you harm of late.” her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “I fear these last months have done nothing but break you.” 

In some ways it was true, Raenor ceded, his physical body and spirit had been permanently altered by the enemies they faced. Just as his mind had been altered forever by the fall of Edhelion centuries before. 

“I have persevered through many tragedies and harms.” he said softly, pressing for what was beneath yet another mental wall that Wulfwryn struggled against. 

She swallowed, pressing her cheek into Raenor’s hand and shutting her eyes tightly. 

”We have passed many elves in the Great River and before that travel for the Grey Havens for less than what you have endured. When will I push you so far, put you in such danger, that you too will be so desperate for escape as to depart these lands?” 

The words tumbled out of Wulfwryn in a rush and she gasped a tiny breath, as if they were a flooding torrent she’d been trying to hold back. She pressed her lips together until they paled, shoulders giving a telltale shake that belied the wetness gathering in the corners of her eyes. 

In the gaping silence Raenor left as she grasped for words, Wulfwryn opened her eyes to look at him. Her expression was pure devastation and he knew her well enough to know that whatever was going to well to the surface had been festering within her for a long while. 

“It is my hand, my sword, my body that is failing to keep you safe. Every time I fail to keep you out of the hands of the Enemy, I sour this world for you further.” 

He realized now just how many elves they’d spoken to in the course of their journey that lamented their oncoming departure from this world. How many had spoken as though this lifetime was a shadowed mockery of lives they’d lived before. And just how despairing that may seem to a mortal who lives but one short life. 

Though his other hand was half wrapped and the poultice would smear, he brought his other hand to Wulfwryn’s face and pulled their foreheads together, blocking out the world around them. Wulfwryn heaved a shuddering breath. 

“This world is not yet ruined for me, meldanya.” he assured. “These difficult times are but a fraction of the times ahead. I would not be so easily persuaded to leave you.” 

“I am not worried about you leaving me.” Wulfwryn argued, though there was a sorrowful lapse at the end of the sentence that did nothing to convince him otherwise. “I simply do not wish to see you snuffed out so completely.” 

He pressed a lingering kiss to her forehead. “I will not be, I promise. I am far sturdier than you care to admit.” 

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NOTE: if anyone would like further context for the events that transpired in Moria, my fic 'My World Is You' centers around those :)