{Thank you for all the votes last week and in past weeks, NicholeCarroll!}
I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
When we had been gone for nearly a decade I returned to the Woodland Realm. The guards greeted me with smiles and a nod from each, which I graciously returned. I instructed my belongings to be left in their wagon outside until I knew the nature of Thranduil’s thoughts toward me—I may yet be returning to my old home instead of his.
I let myself into his home and glided as though through my own ghosts—all the other times I had taken this path, walked this hall—to Thranduil’s study. The door was unlocked so I opened it and paused in the doorway, seeing him hunched over figures at his desk, his fair hair falling over his back and down one shoulder. I stood frozen a moment as he managed not to acknowledge my presence, and I felt my insides twisting into their own strange, warm ache.
I had missed him far more than I’d realized. I had loved Thranduil’s strange, distant friendship for centuries, but I had not realized how much the absence of it would sting once I was reminded of what I had left behind.
Then, softly, he spoke. “I tried to separate them for reasons other than their birth.”
“She reminds you of Nelide.”
Momentarily I saw Thranduil’s briefly tightening face drawn in white again, his eyes seeming lined with red just as they had been the day he had placed Legolas in my arms and walked away, unable to look upon the face of the child who had her cheekbones and her predilection for learning all she could. “Yes.”
“And you fear for him. If she were to fall doing what she loves and in which excels, and he were to fall because he loves her.”
“Yes.”
I stepped closer, soundlessly shutting the door behind me, and chose my words with the same care with which we told our children things that might break their hearts but regardless they needed to hear. “Thranduil, you cannot tell me or others that your grief is somehow more sacred than that of others—particularly others who have suffered more. Your pain does not excuse your rising proclivity for causing that of others. You are not special, Thranduil.” I sank into my seat at the corner of his desk, which he had not moved.
His lips twitched once, nearly imperceptibly. “She often told me the same.”
“She is right. Being born to a throne does not mean you are right to it or that it cannot be taken away. You have no right to treat others as though their lives serve you little more than as chess pieces you do not wish to lose. You are not a god.”
I deeply inhaled, gentling further. “With that being said I can understand and can sympathize with your reasoning. I lost three of my family to their love of a fight, their will to protect others. However how much pain would I be causing if I had told my son he could no longer fight, or that he could no longer love until I permitted him to, simply because I feared my past might become his future? Denying him his own loves is just as painful as if he should lose them down the road, and if I should put a turn on it that I believe you will appreciate think of it this way: If you deny Legolas his love now, you are the one who is hurting him. If you let him love Tauriel, and she dies, you will be at rights—though I would not suggest it—of saying ‘I told you so’.”
Thranduil sighed, and I laid my hand carefully over his. “Legolas plans to return home next year. He is bringing Tauriel. He expects her pardon.”
His next sigh was heavier. “And I suppose you shall tell me that without it he will maintain his distance and so, I expect, shall you.”
“I will try to like you again, but yes, I believe he will remain away without it. I cannot guarantee that I will not leave again.”
I listened to him breathe for a minute, and at last he said, without a trace of bitterness, “She will have it.”
I smiled. “Thank you, love.” I stood and placed my hand on his shoulder, looking down over it to survey his paperwork. “What are you working on?”
Thranduil laid his hand over mine. “The worst kinds of numbers.”
I slid them from underneath his other hand and his quill. “Give them to me. You may write to Legolas.”
Thranduil looked at me for the first time in the last ten years. His brief expression was exasperated. “I see you are no less determined than you have always been.”
“People often don’t realize how stubborn I can be,” I murmured as I gazed down at the many columned figures. “On account of my unavoidable charm.”
“That and you present yourself with such a gentle predisposition.”
“It is my secret weapon. Even you are clearly not fully defendable against it.”
“Sometimes I am even glad of that fact.” He gave me a sardonic expression this time and I smiled, squeezing his shoulder. I had missed this king. His attention returned to his quill and I watched as the ink began to twirl across the page. “Do you intend to read my correspondence as well as force yourself into my home?” he inquired. “Again.”
I rolled my eyes and returned to my seat, ostentatiously lifting his tedious sheet of figures so it was between my eyes and his hands. I listened in silence to the scratching of his quill against the parchment, the clink of the metal tip against the emerald inkwell, and the occasional thump of the plain goblet of wine as it came back to the desk after one of us had taken a sip. Thranduil stood an hour later to refill our wineglass. He called from the kitchen to ask if I wanted one of my own.
“Oh no, I’m not that thirsty, thank you,” I called back, absent as I used the edge of his desk to balance the figures I had appropriated.
But ten minutes after he returned I reached for his glass again and he sighed. “Not thirsty, I see.”
“I said not ‘that’ thirsty, there’s a difference.”
“Remind me not to share with you in the future.”
“Never. It conveniences me too much to forcibly share with you.”
“I have noticed a distinct swell in my available finances since you departed.”
“Of course you did, you were feeding two fewer people.”
“I rather enjoyed having additional money to allocate to other interests.”
“Do I need to seek out your records from the last decade to make sure you haven’t developed any harmful habits since I’ve been away?”
His eyes flashed up and his mouth touched toward something distantly related to amusement. “You would be astonished.”
“That is not always promising.”
“It promises something.”
“Not something positive.”
“Oh, why must you be so particular.”
“Keep stressing me so early in the reuniting of our delightful selves and I will require far more of your wine than you are willing to tolerate.”
Thranduil stood with a number of small scrolls tucked under one arm. “I shall find you a glass large enough to suffice. We have restorations to make.” As he left he dropped a sheaf of paper in my lap.
I lifted my eyebrows at him but he didn’t turn. I laid down the figures and lifted the paper slip.
Bring her home. The Captain of the Guard belongs here.
I smiled. Thranduil had signed already so I found his wax and melted it over a stub of candle, and sealed the scroll, pressing the ring he kept hidden in one of the smallest drawers since he didn’t find it attractive enough to wear into the wax just as it was about to harden. I was still blowing on the wax when Thranduil returned with another two glasses of wine.
“Just in case it is a long day,” he said when he set them at my elbow and returned to his seat with a flourish. “I see you remember where everything is.”
“Of course I do. Ten years cannot dampen a memory I have formed multiple times over one and a half millennia.”
“By the way happy birthday.”
“Thank you.”
In following Thranduil’s prediction it was a long day, and a long night as well. We finished his paperwork in our usual intermittent silence, speaking when we had something to clarify or inquire after or remark upon, and between those brief moments of sound long hours sometimes passed. His work had always come before his preferences, so we finished enough to consider the day well done then Thranduil shoved his papers and ledgers off to the side of his desk, threw his quill into its draining will and slumped back against the tall, carved backrest of his chair. Rubbing his eyes, he murmured, “Tell me about him.”
I sat back in my own chair and turned my first goblet in my fingers as I organized the last ten years in my mind. “He was very reticent the first several years. He took satisfaction in his work with Estel but he….missed something he had once enjoyed. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I can only tell you what I believe he felt, but I believe he was hurt by your actions in regards to Tauriel. He took it very personally, since he and Tauriel are close, regardless of how close. He and she are just the same as they were when last you saw them. The two of them still attend guardly duties similar to those they held here. Estel highly respects Legolas, as they have worked closely together, mostly in training, since Legolas arrived.”
Thranduil nodded, accepting my summary as an appropriate start. I spent the next couple hours telling him of my interactions with Legolas for the past decade, amusing things he had said, things that had worried him, and what had made him more ponderous than usual. At the end of those hours I was about to start on the second goblet to combat the dryness of my throat, and Thranduil had his hands folded over his stomach and his eyes closed. “And what….” he began after a long stretch of quiet, “of Tauriel?”
I watched him a moment to see if he generally wanted to know. “She is well, enough. She mourned for several years. I do not know yet if she understands the nature of her interest in Kili, but I believe she mourns more for lost opportunities than for what she had while he was alive. She herself knows how little time they spent even speaking with each other. She mourned because she feels their friendship could have been just as unique as she is, and it was cut far shorter than she wanted it to be. It reminds me of when she burst into tears on her hundredth birthday because her father promised to take her to visit Dale when she was a hundred and she never got to do it. She never got those hundreds of conversations with a person who fascinated her that she wanted to have. Almost how you have missed these last ten years of our conversations. Only I came back. And her friend never will.” I blinked at him, as he slowly nodded. “She is doing better now though. She has ever been a steadfast friend to Legolas, and I know he highly respects her.”
“His respect is a valuable commodity.” His eyes slid open and he gazed over at me. “How have you been these last years?”
“I started a small workshop in Rivendell. At first nothing sold because I made things in the styles that sold here. I had to combine the styles of both havens though to assimilate to the Rivendell fashions. I did well enough after that. Rivendell is beautiful—I should like to visit it again someday.”
“Did you meet Estel?”
“Yes, but he had no need of me the way my two borrowed children did. We spoke several times but never developed the same friendship as he accumulated with Legolas and Tauriel. I am waiting for Legolas to tell me how he takes the tale of his birthright.”
“Do you know it?”
“No. I could have found out while there but I respected the secrecy Elrond had given him. He is welcome to it.”
We covered many topics that night as we spoke, until in the tired hours of the morning I finally rose to seek my rest. Thranduil stood with me. “Inladris.” I turned back to him. “I am sorry.”
I returned, reaching up to cup his face as I had those of my children so many times. “I know, and I am glad you understand, and that I now understand as well.” I stroked my thumb underneath his tired eye. “Do you think you could attempt to find your happiness again someday, Thranduil? You have almost discovered it once or twice, but always you seem to hide from it the moment you recognize it.”
The corner of his lips twitched toward a smile he hadn’t even attempted.
“Thranduil,” I breathed, made miserable by his own suppressed depression, or at least entire lack of joy. Of what worth was a life with no happiness? “Would it please her or ruin her to be watching you from above and see your despair and know it was because of her?”
I knew from the flicker in his eyes this had not occurred to him before, or not quite in so many words, but I couldn’t understand how it wouldn’t have, with a mind as swift as his. I tried to smile for him. “It isn’t your fault she died, Thranduil. You have been a good father, and Legolas chooses his own life now, and it will also not be your fault if anything should happen to him. You must release some of this responsibility you have over the fates of others. Being king does not give you the power to guide every individual’s life—you don’t even have the power to guide your own! Have faith in him, Thranduil, and have faith in yourself, and perhaps even Legolas will find some of his laughter again.”
Thranduil watched me with an impassive face. He impudently stroked my cheek with one finger. “I do not require a caretaker, Inladris.”
“No. You require a heart. Yours doesn’t seem to remember what it’s for.”
He shook his head with a wry expression, his head falling forward until it briefly rested against mine. “Must you mother everyone you care for?”
“The ones who need it, yes.”
“I am not one of your broken children.”
“No you’re a broken old man which means it will be even more difficult and harder to convince you it’s necessary.”
Thranduil’s forehead rose. “I know better than to argue with you further. Are your belongings waiting beyond the door for permission to enter?”
“They’re still in a wagon outside I’m afraid—I forgot to send word for them to be brought up. I will in the morning.”
He shook his head at me as he slipped away from my hands. “Well I am sure you will survive one morning without your jewelry.”
“Of course, since I believe I still wear less than you.”
“Go to your rest, Inladris.”
“Will you as well?”
“If you stop attempting to keep me awake with your woeful introspections.”
“If you’re tired of me leave.”
“You are in my house! Where else am I supposed to go?”
“This entire mountain is your home; you will think of something.”
“Such faith.”
“I wish you had more yourself.”
“Goodnight, Inladris.”
“Goodnight, My King.”
*
Legolas did not wish to leave until Estel had been told of his hidden heritage, so Thranduil and I spent the next year without our children. I made a point to remind him that I still cared about his fate despite the hurts we had caused each other, and on occasion Thranduil did the same to make his appreciation of my return apparent as well. I greeted him with a hand on his shoulder if I was passing him while he sat, and every now and then while we worked he laid a hand over mine to thank me.
“When did you say Legolas was coming home?” I asked him several months later over supper.
“He should be here on the fourth.”
And then the fourth came, and Thranduil and I stood at the main entrance to wait for our children to come home. We saw them enter and my face bloomed into one of my widest smiles to see them home again. I swept forward and wound Tauriel into my arms, as Thranduil went to stand before his son.
I was whispering my words of welcome and relief in Tauriel’s ear and didn’t hear what Thranduil and Legolas said, but when next I looked through Tauriel’s shining hair to see them I saw that they too had wound into an embrace just as tight as mine, and I closed my eyes, my eyes filling with warmth, overjoyed to know my family was not sundered after all.
(pg179)
> From Ghost House, by Robert Frost