((Note: This story takes place after Carry On , Every Story Ends - Part 1 , and Every Story Ends - Part 2 , and before The Last Temptation of Addiela ))
Exhausted from hours of fighting the relentless push and pull of endless waves, Addie now collapsed on the warm sand of the shore, physically unable to continue searching any longer. Her limbs were sluggish and ached in protest to being moved, the sounds around her were muffled by the ringing in her ears and the fast pounding of her heart, her lungs were on fire and her breathing was labored; and yet, she wanted nothing more than to be able to keep searching for Hawke. These past few hours had yielded nothing- not a body, not a piece of clothing, not a sign of anything that belonged to either Hawk or the horse that had steered them both beneath the salty water. The light of day had faded and it brought with it the harsh reality that was beginning to set in; as she lay there, unable to move, waves lapping at her feet, she realized that there was no rescuing him now, he was gone.
Tears began to well in her eyes, tears of grief and tears of anger. If she had been more careful in her watch over him, if she had not left the keep to join the others in preparation for the transport, if she had remained vigilant until the very moment they led him to the wagon, then, perhaps she would have known that the hounds had tied him to that horse and he would still be here. Addie’s anger grew, not only at herself, the Viper, Hawk’s father, the hounds, and the others, but also toward the Great Sea. She turned her head to the side and looked across the expanse, failing to understand how something so beautiful, so powerful, could also be so greedy. Why had it chosen to swallow him up in its fathomless embrace, to become his grave? The very sound of the waves mocked her, their rhythmic pounding against the shore boldly informing her that they had now become Hawk’s pulse.
Addie’s body began to tremble and her gaze turned distant as something inside her mind just… snapped. Images of those she had lost, those that had abandoned her, and those she had failed or hurt flooded her thoughts. Then, she thought of Hawk. She remembered how apprehensive he was of going back to Dol Amroth- his mother’s home, she remembered the promise that she had made to him- a promise that she would not let any harm come to him here, she remembered his reply that she should not make promises unless she was sure that she could keep them, and she remembered what his last days were like, full of torture, pain, and loneliness. She had failed yet another.
Who was she to make that kind of promise to him in the first place? She had never been able to help anyone; she only seemed to make things worse. As she thought those things, an old, familiar vision crept into her mind- one she had thought of as only a nightmare conjured by the whispers in the basement of the Forsaken Inn:
She stood in the middle of a sea of faces, yet, she seemed very alone, her figure shrouded in darkness while those around her were in the light. Some of the faces she recognized and some she had yet to meet. As her gaze turned to each one, they fell, never to rise again.
Her mind and body had once been possessed by the Fell-spirit of Tham Lorn named Olnathron and she had thought that dream to possibly be a warning of another one more powerful using her as a tool of destruction. She still fears that may come true one day, however, in this moment, she can’t help but wonder if that dream could have meant something else. "Am I just a watcher, then, a watcher of misfortune and death? Is it my lot in life to oversee the suffering of those I hold dear?” Her mind further drifts into darkness as she looks up toward the stars, they seem so far away now.
