Elrond gasped as he woke from nightmare visions. Drenched in sweat, he rose to rinse his face and seek the source of the terrible images that clung to him, receding only reluctantly into the black well from where they had sprung. In the dim candlelight burning in honor of Ilúvatar, Elrond’s vision swam until he saw the source of the horror. He watched with anguish as Frodo batted his hands in front of his face at things not truly there but entirely vivid and real to him. The Elf lord’s grief increased as his little brother suffered this new assault but his admiration and love and humble awe grew at the same time as Frodo stumbled on despite it all.

Elrond was dismayed that the light from Galadriel’s phial did not penetrate the darkness of the Sammath Naur while it had shown so brilliantly in the black of Torech Ungol, but he knew he shouldn’t have been. He was more distressed that his own attempts to reach his brothers were blunted, as he well knew the dark power of the place.

All powers are subdued here but My fallen child’s. And My own.

Oh, Adar, stay with them now especially. The darkness is so deep.

They will always have My light.

Hope flared up in Elrond’s heart as Frodo’s light grew as bright as that of one who had been on the other side. But a moment later, it was crushed when the power of Sauron overwhelmed the frail vessel in which the light was held. Elrond felt very intimately the violation of Frodo’s fëa. He cried out in his own fëa and out loud, though he did not realize he had, wondering how anyone could bear such torment.

When Frodo’s spoke in a voice that was not his and said such terrible words, “I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do. I will not do this deed. The Ring is mine!” Elrond lived over again the nightmare of Isildur’s failure.

NO!!

He watched in agony as Frodo disappeared, claimed by the Ring. A terror and a grief he had never known before in his millennia of life, not even when he had actually stood with Isildur where his fëa stood now, overwhelmed him. Why hadn’t he been strong enough then to prevent now another who was dear to him from suffering and failing because Isildur had failed, because he had failed?

Where are you, Adar?! He is lost. Elrond’s voice seemed to echo back through the last age as he had asked the same thing then.

I am with him, My child, came the same response.

How can You be? If You are, why then has he failed? I thought he...You...

Did I not tell you that the burden would be too much for him in the end? No created being could withstand that power forever. You knew that. He knew that. Olórin, Galadriel, Faramir, all My children realized it. Indeed they hardly dared to hope that Iorhael would even make it this far. But he is endurance beyond hope, beyond all but Panthael’s.

Tears coursed down Elrond’s cheeks of which he was barely aware, tears of mirrored failures now pummeling him twice as hard. I thought...I tried so hard to trust You, Adar, that everything would be all right, but it is not.

It is as it was always to be, My child. Your brother has shown great strength and in his weakness, I will show My strength. He has not failed. I gave both your brothers the grace to be who I created them to be ‑ Bronwe athan Harthad and Harthad Uluithiad ‑ to help right the wrong of Isildur. They have done that. Your other brother and I will fulfill the rest.