#function*

Wulfwryn toyed with the loose end of her plaited hair before sighing loudly enough that it drew Raenor from the mindless state of strumming of his lute he had let himself sink into. “Hm?” 

“You always ask me why I don’t just return to Minas Tirith.” She looking up at him. “Or why I ever left in the first place.” 

The hand that he held up was waved away. “I know you said you didn’t need an answer, but I’m tired of mulling it over alone.” The firelight shadowed her eyes, making them haunted in the shadow. But her expression was hopelessly open to him. “May I?” 

Relief shouldn’t have been so apparent across her face at his simple nod--how long had she been letting this eat away at her? 

“I can’t go back.” even just saying the words seemed to lift a weight off of her shoulders--slumping them down like she no longer had to hold them up and back. “At least...not right now.” 

Raenor tilted his head. There were rumors, certainly, things that Elrond had mentioned in passing, shards of a sword in Rivendell’s halls. None of which he was graced enough to know in full. “Because of the king?” 

“And lack there of.” she agreed, wrapping her arms around herself. “In Gondor...the Stewards rule in the king’s stead. Denethor no longer does his job as he should. There’s a certain paranoia and pain overshadowing him, controlling his actions...I couldn’t keep fighting under that banner.” 

Her voice dropped, almost too quiet to be heard among the sounds of night, rustling trees, and the crackling of their fire. “I want to fight under the banner of Isildur’s heir, if he still exists.” 

The title nudged a small sense of familiarity in the back of Raenor’s mind, some long distant mumbling of Elrond that he had long since forgotten. “You still have hope.” 

For a moment he thought she didn’t hear him, her pause long and uncertain as she drew an idle pattern over the material of her trousers. When she finally lifted her eyes again they were clouded with the uncertainty of her pause, but her voice was strong as stone. “I have to. If I don’t then I turned my back needlessly on my fellows and may be just as good as a traitor. And I cannot stand myself as a traitor.” 

Reaching across the gap between them, Raenor rested his fingertips on the back of her hand. “If you found cause to leave, then you aren’t a traitor.”