With careful, hypnotic precision, Moy made her way down the path, around the edges of the caverns. It was a rough go, as she slipped along the rocks and followed… well, something. She wasn't sure exactly what she was feeling anymore, but it felt at once like she was finally on her way home, as she was at that exact same moment falling far away from all she loved.

With one last inopportune slip of her foot, she clattered all the way down. Down, into a thin gorge and into the dark. Though it seemed like a long way down, akin to tumbling into an abyss, eventually Moy landed in the sand with all the grace and elegance of an elf. That is to say, she landed facedown in a jumbled-up pile of her own limbs.

Her femur was cracked, and she knew it would not heal.

She was… she was where she meant to go?

She was at the edge of a small pond, with dotted blades of colorless grass grew and she might have even seen a darting minnow. The strange chance of life being found, even in the deepest valley of death was not lost upon her.

Across the pond was something else, a simple archway constructed from simple, unpolished stone. And a figure.

The archway was calling to her, and the beating of her long-lost heart pounded in her ears, speaking to her in a whisper she could no longer hear. It was overwhelming as she crawled through the water towards the figure beneath the arch's stare.

She could barely see, her vision ebbed and flowed like the tide, but it was her brother protecting her from a treacherous house spider, no, her father with his arms outstretched.

It was Ioded, smiling kindly, with laughter in his eyes, and it was Doru, Doru! Telling her to never give in, never let them win.

She saw Legolas reaching down, offering her a hand as she flailed in the water was suddenly was pulling her down into it's empty depths.

Then she was sitting in a small pond again, as her once love crouched beside her, and she stared into Caelon's eyes.

He was not her Cae anymore, for his eyes were emptier than they'd ever been before. Empty of joy and despair and a fool's conception of love. His form was withered, grey and lifeless and cold like steel.

"We cannot pass over the great seas, yet our souls bound to our bodies seek escape." His mouth moved like a rusting beartrap, grinding with disuse and decay.

Moy's vision was still a blur, and the pounding in her ears was heightening, yet she could not block his voice from her mind.

"It was destiny that we should meet again, Moy." His hand reached for her, and she flailed away, splashing water into the suddenly stifling air

All Moy could do, all she could croak out was a single word.

"W-Why?"

"Because I love you, and I cannot let you go."

"That wasn't love, it was torture!" She was screaming, and no one could hear. Ugly wracking sobs letting out all the fear and suffering of a millenia.

"All roads for us lead here. I knew I would see you again before the end. I am part of the Eldar, and I cannot die."

Moy thought back to that long line of the lost, to what could have been any number of real lives. She thought of Legolas, and of love, true unselfish love. But nothing with him was meant to be, real as it is, as it was.

Reaching down, grasping fingers around the broken bone of her leg, she felt the snap and a searing course of pain. Running a finger along the jagged edge of it, her vision was clear as a lifeless lake, as she stabbed the end of the bone into Caelon's throat.

Moy shoved his corpse aside, fingers dug into the stone of the earth, as she dragged every screaming limb of herself she had left towards the archway.

Ba-thump, ba-thump... ba-thump…

Then silence, and the pond was still once more.

Legolas found her this way hours later, collapsed against an ancient archway which led to nothing but the cavern's stone wall. On her face was something akin to a smile.

He should have been overjoyed, standing there amidst his dearest friends and watching a good man become an even greater king.

He wasn't. He was happy for them, proud even, nevertheless, he could not help feeling… melancholic.

He had buried Moy himself, alone alongside the shore of the seas that called him.

The others might not have cared for her, or her defensive off-putting mannerisms, but he felt her absence like an open wound, one that tore him apart from the inside out.

She should have been there, with him. At his side, no matter her looks nor flaws.

Then again, she wouldn't have liked the stares and the whispers.

Whispers be damned.

He sat in an unused bed, thinking.

A glint of red caught the corner of his vision, and he looked up.

She sat across from him, with a hint of a smile.

Her hair was the reddish gold of the sun, a frizzy, curly mane untamed. Her face was thin and only half that of a grown woman's. Her nose was a bit beaky and her cheeks were ruddy and freckled.

He had never seen her eyes before, the colors of earth and honey.

She leaned forward and playfully flicked his chin.

"Don't you have any expression other than brooding or stoic, my prince?"

He could not speak, yet his eyes said all they could ever say and more.

She kissed him lightly on the nose, and her laughter echoed from all sides like music.

"Now go, cross the seas already. You've waited long enough."

"But you, you won't be there... "

She shrugged. "In dreams maybe, but what matters is not what could have been, but what shall be. All elves shall travel on in due time."

"Perhaps, in due time."

She was gone from his eyes, but her last whispers felt against his ear, they remained for ever.

"My long forgotten heart within you beats, as my bones shall lay in the earth."

This story has been a hugely important piece in my life that I found myself coming back to write for in the times I needed it most. I hope you all enjoyed, and I would appreciate knowing your thoughts either here, on Ao3, or in the realms I more commonly traverse such as twitter at: Aries_AlyssaGD