#when you have a small crisis over how old Raenor is

[captainderyn]

Day 9: Worries

Prompt number: 9. “There is a certain taste to it.”

Fandom: LOTRO

Rating: Gen

Warnings/Tags: N/A 

Read on AO3 or beneath the read more

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There is a certain taste that comes with being a warrior. 

Bitter as adversaries force her hand to outcomes to the blade, sharp tangs with each wrong blow that would rip a hole in her lip anew or blood bubbling at the corners of her mouth. 

There was a certain taste to it and it was one that Raenor was not well acquainted with. In his millennia of life he had been within the spacious safety of Rivendell or the gleaming courtyards of Edhelion he had focused his eyes on the art of healing and the simple love of his music, not on grim tactics of combat outside of skirmishes and the necessity to survive. 

He’d never needed to swallow that bitterness. It had very rarely passed his lips. 

She could see it in the way his eyes widened at the disconnected certainty in which she cut down their adversaries. In the way he paled when looking at her injuries that she only spared a cursory glance to. As if she were a different creature than he in the vicious world of fighting. 

In a way, she supposed, they were. 

“Do you hate it?” she asked one day, cleaning the grime and blood off of her armor. The look she met was one of confusion. “How I fight? That I fight?” 

“Why would that bother me?” he asked, openly honest with her as ever and even though she hadn’t known what to expect, relief flowed through her. 

And yet something in her still needed to push. “Because you’re a healer, you aren’t as...as well acquainted with the business....” 

She broke off with a gasp as he moved to press a finger lightly over her lips. “Wulfwryn,” he said, raising his eyebrows at her shocked expression. “It does not bother me; you have your role and I have mine. What you found proficiency is does not make you a monster to me.” 

It shouldn’t have bothered her, she hadn’t even thought that it was on her mind. And yet the cool relief spreading through her was on the contrary as he cupped her cheek and pressed a kiss to her forehead.