#people leave Raenor alone about Wulfwryn challenge: level impossible

[captainderyn]

[Fictober24] Day 6: "I'm not giving up."

Prompt: 6. "I'm not giving up."

Fandom: LOTRO

Pairings: Wulfwryn/Raenor (implied)

Warnings: None

SPOILERS FOR: The 'Reasonable Request' quest and the Noriel and Wynmar quests in general.

Summary: Raenor debates with Noriel about loving a human in an attempt to get her to open up to what she truly wishes for. Noriel pushes Raenor, as so many have before, oh whether his choice to love Wulfwryn is a reckless pursuit of heartbreak.

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The affection of elves was difficult to obtain and even more fiercely guarded. Elves had a centuries, if not longer, lifespan to mull over love and tended towards holding onto that love until the end. As such, elves often waited years to finally decide who that One would be and were cautious to what many mortals would call the point of folly. 

Raenor, supposed, he had been the same. For several centuries he’d devoted himself to his studies under the tutelage of Talagan in Edhelion and thought of little else but his literature, music, and the history around him. Then for longer, darker years, he’d wandered Rivendell like nothing more than a wraith of who he’d once been as he’d grieved and questioned his place in this world. 

“You threw all of it away for a human woman.” Noriel scoffed as he drew to a close his own story that she’d asked him to tell. She looked over at him with wide, disbelieving eyes. “You’re throwing centuries of love and steadfast company away for what…fourty years? That is a mere blink in our eyes.” 

Raenor hummed in discontent, leaning his forearms against the stone wall before them. Across the pavilion, Wulfwryn and the Rohirrim Wynmar gathered their weapons to head into the wilds of the Great River. No doubt to have a conversation as necessary and unpleasant as the one he had walked into presently. 

He grew weary of the interrogation he faced each and every time one of his kindred saw the woman he chose to walk beside. The indignation that he would be so reckless, the declaration that he was making a horrendous mistake that he would regret for the rest of his years. 

“You looked stricken when I said that no elf of this age would love a mortal, for their lives are fleeting as a breath.” Noriel continued. “So in some part of you, you must recognize that you are damning yourself to grief untold.” 

Raenor steeled himself with a breath, schooling his face into an impassive expression as he turned his gaze away from the retreating forms of Wulfwryn and Wynmar. 

“You and many others think that I acted foolishly and without thought, implying that the feelings we find ourselves with are cold and calculated measures taken.” he said, words clipped. “Yet I would rather savor a taste of the best years than deny myself the chance at all.” 

Noriel’s expression screwed up as though she tasted something sour. “I just simply cannot see how it would be worth it!” she said. “The thought of the inevitable…nay, I cannot bear it.” 

Nor could Raenor, some days, when his own mind betrayed him and ruminated on exactly what it would feel like to have Wulfwryn ripped away from him. Yet, he’d had many others torn from him who were meant to be eternal. The years they were granted were not a guarantee. Talagan had lived many years before Raenor and was meant to live many more alongside him, yet the Dourhands had squandered that. 

“True, those days will be dark. But I am not giving up on the affection I feel nor the partnership I’ve built just because I fear for the future.” Raenor softened his voice as it had sharpened into daggers. “Mellon Nin, I believe perhaps the grand ideal you use to deny yourself what you want is just a masquerade for fear.” 

Noriel looked down, running her fingers along the grooved lines of the stone. 

“How will you bear it?” she asked softly. “When it happens?” 

He did not have an answer for that and he pondered in his silence for long moments. “I do not know, truly.” he said. “I suppose the same way I bore the grief of Edhelion. With the aid of those around me to lessen the pain.” 

Time may have passed in swathes of grays and blurs and he may have wandered aimlessly and without passion for living during much of that time, but he had come out on the other side of it. Wulfwryn herself had helped guide him, though she hadn’t known it at the time, from the last clutches of his grief. Just as he had, unknowingly, pulled Wulfwryn from her own sorrow. 

Raenor and Noriel stood there together in contemplation, in the quiet stillness that could fall between two elves when there was no sense of urgency, until Noriel took a long, ragged breath as if struck. 

Something had come over her, as her voice shook when she asked; “Is it worth it? To love like that?” 

There was no hesitation in Raenor’s voice when he answered near immediately: “I would do it a thousand times over, just to experience life alongside her again and again.”