I could feel a voice in my head, growling to me. In my mind's eye I closed the distance between us. Felt my fingers tightly gripping her throat. Squeezing tightly. Squeezing the life out of the slip of a girl, her form writhing beneath me untill it struggled no more. Limp. I have no time for this... not tonight, of all nights.
Why this darkness should near overcome me so suddenly I do not know. I wish no harm to the girl. I wonder if it is the same for others who have not done what I have done. Perhaps it is the fine line a man walks between being a man and but a monster. Haven't we all felt such things and simply not acted upon them before? Except I have. Circumstances have aligned and I have taken that step. To the point of no return. I have felt death's embrace wash over a victim of it more than once.
Why did you surface tonight. Darkness, my old friend.
I have traveled the length and breadth of this land in recent times. Now I am here, in Bree-land once again. Perhaps it is the thought I traveled away for naught, and came back here for naught. Perhaps the child by that southern sea I thought was mine is not, I had not contemplated the notion that his mother could have lied to me as she knew I was a man of means. What if her and that father of hers cooked up the scheme together. I think it was mine. He had my look, sort of. And he was the right age. But there is no way to tell to be certain.
In my mind I cannot fathom why it is I came back here. My conversations with that woman in the tavern in town do little but give me cause for doubt. For we have an experience in common in spite of her hatred of me in the past which I deem to be most unreasonable. The urge to run.
I seem to be flitting from one end of Middle Earth to another in search of bastards I may or may have not sired. That is the reason I came back. For there is another woman in the Bree-lands I am uncertain of.
I do not know, there is also the subject of my awkward proposal afore I ever left for Gondor, I am so very tired. Tired of the perpetual conflict within my mind as ever. To'ing and fro'ing.
Thankfully I did not kill the slip of a girl tonight, whom I am fond of. You might think it strange a man can comprehend the notion of killing one he is fond of but there we are. She reminds me of the Rat. At the very least if she had pushed me further I would have severed her at the wrist and she would steal no more. But then I would truly not want that. Yet I would have had to, to be seen to have done something in front of my men. But I wouldn't want her to starve due to a loss of income or succumb to my senseless rage believe it or not. So tonight there was a near miss. I did not give in to the red mist that ever seeks to shroud my reason sometimes.
That crack in my window, I am uncertain what it signifies, passive aggression? I had thought I'd explained myself well. I was running from her in part, I know that. She must suspect that. Perhaps I should offer to run away again and become an unearther of rare artifacts with that bloody woman. An unlikely companion if ever there was one. She doesn't like me so less chance of it hurting either of us if we catch a stray arrow along the way to certain doom. Though I suppose I would miss the verbal sparring.
Damn it all.
