The Prince's Pretend Mother

Twelfth Entry - What to Make of a Diminished Thing

I stood and followed him as he left. "You are of every concern to me, Thranduil! What ails you always comes back to me."

He whirled. "Then it should not be so! Not all of my concerns are fit for your shoulders and I will not burden you with troubles I do not believe you are capable of assisting me with." He stalked to his rooms and I followed him, scowling.

"Who is best capable of deciding my own capabilities?" I demanded. "I have the right to request to bear some of your burden if I can."

He went to slam his door and I gripped the doorframe. He released the door so not to crush my hand and I slammed the door for him—behind me. "I also have the right to refuse you."

"I only persist to be certain that you do so out of reasoning that I am too weak for your troubles and not some foolish desire to protect me when some would argue that between the two of us I am the stronger."

"And why does it matter to you, Inladris? You owe me nothing! I owe you nothing."

"I care because you are among the diminished few I still love!" I shouted back at him. "Do not force me to suffer because you are suffering yourself." I stepped closer to him, ignoring the heat of the anger in his gaze, and slowly lifted my hands to lightly hold his pale face so he could not look away from me. "You are still worthy of being loved, Thranduil. You do not have to give love to receive it. I have deemed you worthy of mine at least. Why this child's presence in your home has so offset you I do not know. But should you feel the wish to express it you know I am here."

A light knock came at the door.

"Come in, Legolas," I said, and Thranduil turned away from me to stand at the window, my hands dropping.

"Has Tauriel not yet returned?" Legolas asked us, hand on the doorknob, concerned.

I frowned. "No, I presumed if she was not at a lesson she was with you."

He shook his head. "Her first lessons ended hours ago."

I followed him into the hall. "I will help you look."

We left apace, alerting those who were free to help us search for our missing, grieving child. Legolas checked the outdoor training grounds and I the indoor, calling her name.

However it appeared that Tauriel did not want to be found.

~

Thranduil permitted his son and his son's surrogate mother to leave and remained standing at his window for quite some time, considering Inladris's words.

It was not necessarily the child's presence that saddened him. It was that he had meant to have another child her age. Most elves had only one or two children, but Nelide had been different, independent of many of the expectations of their race. She had burned with an inexplicable energy that drove her like a deer before a forest fire. It was a leading cause to why her father had placed her in the lessons Tauriel had been introduced to that morning—to give her a way to expend enough of it that she could learn to be the lady her high station required without fighting her own body's incessant need for movement.

Nelide had not been satisfied with the prospect of only one or two children. She had wanted more. She had promised more. And if she had lived Legolas might truly have a sister Tauriel's age. But since Nelide had not survived his childhood her son was restricted to a siblingless upbringing and just another surrogate.

But Nelide had not survived. And all of her promises had died with her.

Thranduil pushed away from the windowsill and swiftly departed from his home. If Legolas could not have the family he had been intended, surrogate replacements were better than none at all. The king could guess where Legolas and Inladris would first have thought to look so he sought the child elsewhere.

Thranduil's library—open to any who wished to visit—was vast and tall but it did not have the luxury of more than a handful of windows so he knew that if Tauriel was there she would be beneath one of them. As it turned out his deduction was correct—she was slumped over a table, surrounded by books and sheaves of parchment, her head on her arms facing the stars.

He swept to her side and began gathering the papers, separating those she had already filled with notes and drawings from those that yet lay untouched.

"Does it end?"

Thranduil glanced down at the child he had taken to be sleeping, closing her notes and drawings on weaponry into one of the books she had assembled. "No."

"Then how does Inladris survive?"

"Inladris is far more tenacious than she realizes."

"One would never realize to look at her."

"I will tell you then what I once told her: you do not regrow the pieces of yourself that you have lost. You do not heal. You simply grow around what is lost and relearn how to navigate your life without it. You will suffer for the rest of your life but it is up to you to decide whether your suffering stands between you and your future or behind you to force you onward."

Tauriel did not respond but he knew she had heard him. "Come," he said. "You have worried her in your absence."

She slid out of her chair, one hand on the table's edge, and almost immediately stumbled as her knees gave and thudded against the floor.

"When is the last time you rested well?" Thranduil asked, curious, as he laid the books back on the table.

"It may have been a while," she mumbled as she struggled to stand, swaying, eyes wide as though she couldn't properly see.

Thranduil lightly sighed. "Never fear. Inladris once experienced the same." He crouched to lift her onto his hip so he could support her with one hand and her study materials with the other. Tauriel's forehead thumped down against his shoulder as they left the library, her arms around his neck.

Legolas was surprised to find Thranduil settling Tauriel's covers over her shoulders and a pile of books on her desk when the prince returned. "Where was she?"

"The library."

His son nodded. "Inladris worries for you."

Thranduil closed Tauriel's door and proceeded to his own room. "Inladris is not satisfied unless she is worrying for someone."

"Yes. And now she has two."

"She should be overjoyed. Let her know she need no longer search."

He was about to close his door when Legolas's voice stopped him. "Father." Legolas paused, then strode down the hall to stand at his side. "I realize....that I never thanked you. For bringing Inladris here and for appointing her in the first place. I understand how difficult it must have been to have to replace Nelide, but I am exceptionally grateful for your choice to do so, and your choice of with whom to do it. I have been gladdened every day to have her presence in our lives."

Thranduil couldn't bear to look down at his son's gaze, perhaps because of the earnestness he knew emanated from it. "Of course." He wished he had never had to make such a decision. Wished Inladris's presence had never been necessary, that his son had been permitted to love his own mother instead of someone else's. As grateful for Inladris as he too had been, he wished more fervently than anyone else that she had never had to be needed.

He understood that Inladris's post among their family had become equally important to her happiness as Legolas's. That had she not had her own surrogate son, after the death of both her own and her brother she may well have faded into the stars like her mother. But Thranduil suspected, despite Nelide's faith in his heart, that he had always been inherently selfish, and if he could have saved his wife even knowing his action would have condemned Inladris to her own devastation, he would have.

As he stood at his window late that night and well into the austere hours of the morning he thought of the last words that had passed between him and the child before he had left her in her room.

"I don't expect you to love me. I know I will never be your child."

Thranduil had felt the last several centuries of frost that had grown in his heart harden. "In another life you would have been." 

(pg118)

> from The Oven Bird - Robert Frost