Fading Away

I would have had this done yesterday, but my computer froze last night and I was tired.

Anyway, canon-compliant AU.  When one starts to fall apart at the seams of sanity.  Related most closely to the Cleansed arc, "Scowl" and the Winter arc.  Basically this is picking up on ideas presented there.  I don't know what else to say except first time writing this POV.  Takes place in Imladris during the mid-Third Age.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of Tolkien's works

Pairings: Elrond x Celebrían

Characters: Celebrían, Elrond (mentions Elladan, Elrohir and Arwen)

Warning: canon-compliant AU, family angsting, past non-con and torture heavily implied, possibly character insanity/mental illness

Song: Lost in Hopelessness

Words: 991
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fade (verb): to lose freshness, strength, or vitality: wither; to lose freshness or brilliance of color; to sink away: vanish; to change gradually in loudness, strength, or visibility
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fade

Thin, skeletal white hands lying upon damask and handmade lace.  They shake too hard to pick up the needlework spread beneath their tips, abandoned.  To occupy the mind with thoughtless, effortless endeavors ingrained deep into muscle.

In fact, they almost seem as though one could see right through their pale membrane, picking apart the skin to reveal the dying muscle and blue, throbbing veins beneath.  They morph and warp until their joints bend strangely and their lengths twitch as the legs of a crawling spider.  Monstrous and stomach-churning and withering.

They look sick.

As sick as she feels.

Sitting still all day and all night staring at them.  These strange things that should have been so familiar but seemed more disgusting and grotesque and wrong the longer she stared with blank eyes, trying not to think.  Sometimes she rather wished that she could look away, stop being fascinated and repulsed by their sight.

Stop feeling so cold that her legs would not move.  Stop feeling so empty that her eyes could not summon the tears to cry.  Stop feeling so tired that her body sagged and yet so alert with lingering, leeching terror that she dared not sleep.

She wished to stop feeling this despair.

But she could not.

It took so much energy.  Looking at her husband's face, she knew he wanted to see her smile like she used to, bright and happy to see him, a loving and caring wife and mother.  But she could not feel those things, become again that illusion.  Could not feel the sunlight of the gardens upon her face, its heat somehow warped into chill that burned through her muscle and bone.  Could not take joy in the beauty around her--in the depths of his gray eyes she so adored and his handsome smile she once coveted--because everything fell apart...

Fell apart into shadows.  Into twisted forms that no longer resembled anything beautiful.

Because the hugs of her sons reminded her only of powerful arms holding her down as pain wracked her body and violation ripped open her spirit.  Because the touch of her husbands hand, knowing that he loved her and desired her as a man loved and desired a wife, left her stomach twisting in fear and repulsion.  Because her daughter could not understand or comprehend the suffering of one ravaged and ran away in tears and fury and confusion, abandoning to darkness the mother alone in her sitting room chair.

Alone.  Alone, alone, alone...

With that chilled feeling seeping down her spine.  All warmth drained away, droplet by droplet by droplet, day after day after day.

Until she felt thin.  Like a ghost.  Until her spirit burned out into ash.  Until her heart froze over to keep out the aching pain gnawing and gnawing...

"I love you," he would say.

And she could no longer say it back.

"I need you," he would add.

And she could barely stand his touch.

"Your children miss you."

She was ashamed to even meet their eyes.

"Please, do not leave us."

But, in the end, she wanted to go.  Needed to go.

She was sick.  So sick.

So badly, she wanted to be able to feel heat upon her skin again.  Appreciate the brush of lips across her knuckles and the corners of her lips.  Revel in the squeeze of arms about her small form, crushing in affection and adoration.

So badly, she wanted to be able to love them again.

But Celebrían was fading away.  Day after day after day, little pieces of the woman she had once been--the woman her children still clung to hopelessly, the woman her husband loved and yearned for--were crumbling and falling away until she became something less.  Something transparent and empty and bitter.

A woman who could not kiss or touch her husband, because his eyes would morph into cruel red orbs and his tender smile into a sadistic grin and his gentle hands into tormenting claws pinning her down.  A woman who could not hold her sons or daughter in their time of need, who could not reassure them and draw away the poison of their worries because their fears were all too real and all too true.

A woman who would not even shed tears, because she knew that if she dared let down this frozen veil everything would fall apart completely.  She would melt away into oblivion, a mere remnant of a memory of a dream-woman, ruined by the blazing heat of a cruelly forged world.

And she wanted...

...she wanted to be healed...

...and stay...

And no longer sit in her chair staring at these foreign, dying hands.  No longer be distant and silent for fear of night-terrors and hallucinations overlapping reality.

She wanted to be whole.  For herself.  And for them.

She wanted to.

But in the end she could only sit.

Sit and stare at her strange white hands, wondering if the day was done yet so that she might retire to the safe haven of her chambers.  Away from her twin sons who tried to coddle her in the midst of her distress.  Away from her husband, whose hurt eyes haunted her dreams.  Away from her daughter, so full of anger and upset.

Away from everything that had happened, so that she might fall into that darkness in peace and forget.

Her eyes would open the next morning, and she would return here without breakfast or early morning tea.  Here, to sit in her chair as she once had done, needlework draped over her lap in a waxy mockery of normalcy.

Staring at her hands.

So thin and so white and so disgusting.

Until, one day, they would disappear entirely.

Until, one day, she would disappear as well.