Broken voice

[roselightfairy]

An alternate prompt for Whumptober, and one that finally, finally gave me the chance to articulate a personal headcanon I've had for about a year.

Usual warnings apply. Fic below the cut.

He does not know when his silence ceased to be a choice.

Or, indeed, whether he ever had a choice to speak. Those first days, weeks, years, he knew nothing of his own mind; he walked where he was guided and moved at the bidding of others, for he could not bear to inhabit his own body, his own soul. Only the knowledge that the pain would not end there kept them from splitting entirely apart in the first shock of his grief – the knowledge that all he could do was wait, that here or there the only hope for him was the maybe that stretches so far in his future.

Now Valinor numbs him; the tranquility slips between his body and his spirit, a wrapping of wool to keep the sharp edges from awakening his grief anew. He can see through his own eyes, can even bid his own body to move – but always there is a distance between him and himself, a distance that keeps the pain from the full force of its rawness.

And he cannot speak.

It took them all some time to determine whether it was a choice – Eleniel asking him aloud if he did not answer her because he could not bear to, or because he merely could not – and oh but he is grateful to Eleniel, when he can remember to be grateful. Eleniel, and Siril, and the mother he is just coming to know – he is glad of them, with the tiny shreds left in him that remember gladness. Without them he would have been gone instantly, and he wishes he could tell them that – but he cannot form the words.

He knows them, knows what he would say; and nothing has failed in his capacity to make sound – but there is something missing, something between the desire and the words. Intention, perhaps – as though he has forgotten how to muster the will to force the words forth. He could speak, perhaps, if he could only make himself wish to, but that desire has gone, perhaps forever.

They wonder aloud about it, but Legolas cannot bring himself to explain – cannot bring himself to tell them that his voice is gone. That it passed with Gimli, wherever he is, for however long he will remain there – and that only when he has his husband back, in that promised-someday an eternity away, will it return to him as well.

For now it is gone, and he cannot even bring himself to miss it.