Author's note: Yes, I am aware I have a habit of having too many irons in the fire—it is literally a symptom of my attention problems and I thus, unfortunately, have very little control over that tendency! But in answer to the dozen anonymous questions I have received on various stories over the past few months: No, I am not abandoning my WIPs; yes, I plan to finish them (as the plot to all are already completed). I am just a slow worker in all non-work-related writing!
Anyway, this is an easier-to-tackle one-shot (which may extend into more) that relates to the placement of children in Middle-earth following the devastation of the War. Quite a different vibe and style than I usually gravitate to, but it is what it is! (Also, I tried to make the common Gondorian names Westron/Andunaic-inspired instead of Anglicized, after much hemming and hawing.)
Embarrassingly, I am posting this with absolutely no editing for pacing or plot, and with no Beta—I know if I sit on it, it will inevitably go to that great graveyard of unpublished one-shots. Point is: all mistakes are mine! (Or perhaps the wine's.)
Hope you enjoy! Do let me know if you do.
Orphan Court
Aragorn looked up distractedly as the door at the far end of the room opened and Legolas slipped through it. He slid into a chair by the recorder's desk and crossed his legs at the ankle. As he folded his arms across his chest, he gave the recorder a smile before focusing fully on the front of the hall. Aragorn almost frowned—he had not thought Legolas would arrive until evening, and his presence at court did make him slightly self-conscious. He wondered momentarily what he had said to the guards to gain entrance, but then remembered the sway Legolas held over all his staff, for they adored his eccentricities and the kindness he rained upon them.
In fact, as he watched, Legolas reached over to flip the page of the ledger for his court recorder, and then replenished his inkwell as if that were his job and he were not instead a guest of the King.
The petitioner had taken a breath to continue and Aragorn's attention was immediately drawn back to him. He had not meant to be distracted, but this was the fourth petition of this nature he had heard in the past few hours, and it was beginning to take its toll on him…
He turned his attention back to the petitioner before him—an older man holding a blacksmith's leather apron folded haphazardly behind his back—who was now looking up at him with imploring eyes. A small child sat at the petitioner's feet, barely even a year, and she roly-polied on the floor, trying to hoist herself to her knees but failing, as infants are apt to do. Aragorn watched her instead of the petitioner as he continued.
"…and the problem, O Elessar, King of the West," his subject was saying (Aragorn watched the child fall back onto her stomach for the third time now), "is that I can hardly care for Gimphel as she ought to be cared for, spending all day in the forges and overseeing apprenticeships as I am, and—"
Aragorn looked up from where he had been studying the child—who now stuffed a fist into her mouth with unbridled enthusiasm—and held up his hand for silence. The petitioner's words died immediately as he pressed his lips together and waited for his king to speak.
Aragorn lowered his hand and tilted his head forward thoughtfully.
"Your name again, sir?" he finally asked.
"Gada, my lord," the petitioner said eagerly.
Aragorn nodded at Gada, and then glanced at the back of the room to check that his recorder still wrote attentively. Legolas bobbed his crossed foot absently as he watched the proceedings, but then raised a hand at Aragorn in a silent wave before pointing at the petitioner and lowering his eyebrows, mock reproachful to Aragorn's inattention.
Aragorn felt his lips twitch toward a smile as he looked again at the petitioner's face—his eyes were sunken slightly in his face from exhaustion and shadowed by wild grey eyebrows. There was a smudge of ash on his cheek and his hair was tied back tightly at the base of his neck, peppered and wiry about his face.
"Gada," Aragorn said, and Gada nodded again. Aragorn continued: "And you have said the child's father was killed at Pelennor Fields, and her mother fell sick during the siege. Is that correct?"
"Yes, sir," said Gada.
"Who watches her during the day, Master Gada?"
"My mother, my Lord," said Gada, "and sometimes others when my mother cannot, for she is very old and not well."
Aragorn nodded. "And from whom does Gada obtain her sustenance?"
"I had a nursemaid, my Lord," Gada offered immediately, glancing toward the child when she emitted a happy shriek, having found a way to roll onto her back, "but we could only pay her in hot dinners, and she found a family who could pay her a wage and provide her board, and we could not keep her."
Aragorn nodded and prompted Gada to continue.
"And so I buy milk at market, but she prefers goat milk which is currently scarce, and I cannot get her to eat the food we cook. It has been weeks since she had a nursemaid, and I worry."
Aragorn nodded, and the child reached her hands into the air in tiny fists, and she began to wail. Gada dropped his apron and moved to pick her up, but Aragorn held out his hand again, and he froze.
Aragorn stood from his seat and took a few steps. He sank to his knees in front of Gada and the child and reached out his hands. He looked up at Gada for permission, and once the blacksmith had nodded, Aragorn picked up the child with his own hands and held her to his chest. He stroked her back and looked up at Gada once again, and then spoke:
"So her mother is dead and her father is, too. Who is there besides your mother to watch this child?"
"No one, my lord," he said. "I have no female relatives and all our neighbors are busy with their own matters."
Aragorn nodded and placed his hand on the back of the child's head as she cried.
"So much is changed now, King Elessar," he finished quietly.
"Verily," Aragorn said quietly. "And you have no male relatives to whom you could entrust her?" he continued more loudly.
"None that I trust with so precious a gift as she, for they are young and tempestuous and chasing women of their own."
After a moment Gada blushed at his admission and looked about to apologize, but Aragorn found himself laughing. At his laugh, the child quieted, and Aragorn lowered his hand from her head to her back. Gada smiled cautiously.
"I see," Aragorn finally said in response. "And so then, Gada, what would you have me do for Gimphel, this tiny child with an elvish name?"
Aragorn stepped back toward his chair and sank down into it, cradling Gimphel now in his arms so she stared up at him. Tiny hands reached upward and one closed around the stone at his throat, and suddenly Gada lunged forward and took her tiny hands in his.
"My lord, King Elessar," he sputtered, pressing the child's hands into her chest and then stepping away quickly so he was not too close to his King. "She means nothing by it."
Aragorn stared at him for a moment. "She does not, of course, I know, for she is but a babe."
The child had wrapped one hand around the Elfstone again and fell now into a peaceful sleep.
"Perhaps her mother was right to give her such an elvish name," Aragorn murmured softly. "For she is drawn to their jewels indeed."
Gada watched Aragorn carefully and waited for permission to speak.
"And so, again, Master Gada," Aragorn said, looking up from the child. "What is it you would have me do for Gimphel?"
Gada swallowed and looked down at his hands, now clasped in front of him. "Care for her, my lord. Or find someone to do so," he offered hurriedly. "For I cannot be what she needs. I cannot assure she is safe and well-reared, and neither can any of her kin, though it breaks my heart to say."
"You have apprenticeships?" Aragorn asked.
"I oversee them," Gada corrected, demurely lowering his eyes as he did so. "I am not paid for their apprenticeship for they are not bound to me. I only teach them. It gives me no income with which to support Gimphel, and my mother is so ill now…"
Gada trailed off and Aragorn stood back up and offered Gada the child again.
Gada took her.
"I will provide for her, Gada," Aragorn said shortly. "She will be given to a family who will treat her with the same love and attention I would bestow upon my own child."
Gada fell to his knees and immediately began to sob, as if everything he had held back—dammed behind his words—came forth now like a flood.
"Thank you, my lord!" he cried.
His tears fell onto the face of the babe, who had awoken and petted now at Gada's untamed eyebrows, but she began to cry as a tear fell onto her cheek, and she found she could not rub it off, for his arms were clenched so tightly around her.
Aragorn watched the scene and then looked again to the back of the hall. The recorder was still writing, and he watched as Legolas reached over to turn a page for him again, before fixing his eyes back on Aragorn, the child, and the petitioner. Aragorn watched Legolas as his petitioner settled, and he was worried to see his friend's jaw set sternly, and his eyes shone eerily, as if they either burned with anger or he were about to cry, and Aragorn did not know which—it was moments like these that his friend seemed truly elvish, which—even with Arwen as his wife—it was easy to forget to consider their differences.
Aragorn noted that Legolas had quit bobbing his foot and now sat too stiffly, but he gave it no more mind as he turned back to his subjects and leaned forward in his chair.
"You can leave the child with me today, or you may schedule a time to bring her back at a later date, should you have items you would like to accompany her, or should your mother like to fare her well."
Gada did not respond but continued to silently weep.
"Gada," Aragorn said quietly, leaving his chair so he too was on his knees in front of the man. "Gada, have you heard me?"
The man nodded but did not look up. He pressed his lips to the child's forehead and then wiped a hand hurriedly across his cheeks.
"You will be told with whom she is placed, of course," said Aragorn quietly, watching the man carefully as he spoke—the blacksmith was balding at the top of his head and the hairs were stretched across his skull to where they were tied at his neck.
"I will?" Gada asked abruptly, looking finally up at his king with disbelieving eyes too large in his aging face.
"Of course," Aragorn assured. "So that she may have your love still as she grows."
Gada loosened his grip on the child and nearly began to cry again.
"It is no fault of yours that this has befallen you, Master Gada," Aragorn reassured, "and certainly no fault of the child's. Knowing where she is so that you may see her is the least this court can do. I am certain this has not been an easy choice to come to, to relinquish a child so."
The petitioner nodded and stood again, abruptly, and so Aragorn stood, too, and sat back in his chair.
"We will need to know the location of your business, Gada," Aragorn said straightforwardly. "And the names of the child's parents for this court's record. Will you leave her here today or bring her back?"
"I will leave her with you, my lord Elessar," Gada said, his voice slowly restoring to its previous timbre. "She has no accoutrements besides what she wears."
Aragorn nodded and held out his arms. Gada looked startled for a moment, but then placed the child back within them. He looked at Aragorn questioningly for a moment, and then he bent forward and placed a final kiss on the child's brow and, finally, touched the Elfstone himself.
He pulled away from Aragorn and then dropped to one knee and bowed his head. "The child is Gimphel, daughter of Kali of Minas Tirith. I request not to name the father for the record, as he defouled my sweet cousin and met the end he deserved on the battlefield, even as it was at the hands of our enemy."
Aragorn looked with compassion on his subject—kneeling so deferently below him—and then laid a hand on the infant's chest. who snuggled now against his own.
"The court approves your request, Master Gada" Aragorn said, and he caught Gada's eye as he glanced up, and motioned for him to stand. He did. "May the record reflect," Aragorn continued, "that I, Elessar, King of the West, do accept Gimphel, daughter of Kali, as a ward of this kingdom, to be placed with a family and—if she cannot be—to be loved and cared for by the King's own folk until she is at such an age that she may provide for herself."
He shifted the child so she rested now on his shoulder, and he stood and placed a hand on Gada's own. "Go no, Gada, and rest. Gimphel will be well-cared for. The kingdom thanks you for your attention to the needs of its children."
Gada nodded and bowed when Aragorn finally let go of his shoulder.
"Someone will come to your home in the next few weeks to let you know Gimphel's location. You may go, Master Gada."
"Thank you, my lord," Gada said, and he bowed again, and then straightened. He picked up his abandoned apron and then turned with deliberate and difficult intention. He hurried the length to the back of the room, pushed open the heavy door, and escaped into the afternoon light.
Aragorn sighed and sank back into his chair, the child still warm on his chest.
"Court is over for the day!" he called to the room at large, so that the court recorder and any lingering servants might hear him. "Leave us!"
There was a shuffle as the court recorder organized his ledger and capped his ink and several servants emerged from the shadows to pick up water glasses before all filed out of the hall as one.
Legolas stood, unsure, for a moment, before walking toward Aragorn, who was slumped now in his chair with one hand over his face and the other on the back of the child.
"I assumed you did not mean for me to leave, too," Legolas said quietly as he approached.
Aragorn did not answer until he sensed Legolas was close, and then he rubbed his eyes in frustration and answered calmly: "Never, Legolas. I want you here."
"I thought so," Legolas said as he crouched in front of Aragorn and placed a hand on his knee.
They were silent for a few moments, but Aragorn could feel Legolas' energy building as he waited for Aragorn to speak.
Finally, Aragorn sighed. "What is it you wish to ask, Legolas?"
He looked up now, to find Legolas watching him again, with eyes that shone just as they had as he observed from the back of the hall. Legolas did not move at Aragorn's utterance but instead remained crouched with his hand at his knee, utterly still as Aragorn was unused to, for generally Legolas moved in all things. But it was only his energy now that thrummed anxiously as he observed Aragorn and the child.
Aragorn dropped his hand to rest on his that of his friend, to capture his attention fully. "Legolas," he prompted.
Legolas pulled his hand back and planted both elbows on his knees as he continued to watch the child with concern.
"What is it that I just watched, Aragorn?" Legolas asked finally. "What kind of court is this?"
Aragorn sighed again and shifted the baby from his shoulder to his arms.
"You just witnessed the ceding of a child from a family to the Kingdom. This child was adopted by the Kingdom because her family cannot care for her," Aragorn said, stopping to hush the child who had begun to whimper. "Today was the day for Orphan Court."
"Orphan Court!" Legolas exclaimed, seemingly shocked. "Orphan Court," he repeated again more quietly, and he watched Aragorn as he soothed the child by rocking his arms gently.
Aragorn looked up at his friend and saw then that the look he had seen in Legolas' eyes was not just anger or unshed tears, but rather both, for his jaw was now set firmly, but—as Aragorn watched—he stood abruptly and then had, just as abruptly, turned away. From behind, Aragorn saw Legolas run his hands perfunctorily over his face, and then wipe his hands on his tunic before returning.
When he turned back around, he was composed, and his eyes were not so bright, and so Aragorn spoke:
"Since the war—"
"But it has been many months since the war," Legolas immediately interrupted.
Aragorn nodded patiently. "Indeed. But it has taken many months, too, for families to sort out children and honestly assess who will care for them. And, so, it did not become a burden to the courts until now."
"Oh," Legolas said simply, and he rubbed a hand on the back of his neck and stood dumbly.
Aragorn watched him with pity—he had known Legolas would struggle with this concept.
"It is strange to elves, I guess," Legolas offered suddenly, "for we do not have so many children that we need an entire court dedicated to it. You know this," he added, waving a hand dismissively. "My friend, for example, we now raise her brother's children together in Ithilien, but they are the only of their age orphaned in this war." He stood quietly for a moment. "I cannot imagine…"
Aragorn stood abruptly and offered him the child, arms outstretched before him, hands wrapped about her tiny chest.
Legolas did not move, but rather stared at Aragorn as if he had lost his mind.
"Would you like to hold her?" Aragorn offered.
And then Legolas stepped forward without hesitation and took the child into his arms. She did not cry, but instead turned her head into the crook of Legolas' neck—face pressed firmly into his shirt—and she wrapped a hand into his hair with intention.
Aragorn thought for a moment that Legolas would faint, or that he had been taken instead by the Sea, so still he had become.
"Legolas," Aragorn said, looking intently at his friend.
Legolas started and looked back at Aragorn. "I am sorry. I was stricken, for she is so small in such a very large world," he said. "I forgot for a moment where I was."
Aragorn took his friends arm and yanked them gently toward the door. "Come. The young are small and helpless, yes, but you have travelled far, as well. Let us go to my quarters. Arwen is to return from her duties soon, and I would be there when she returns."
Legolas' feet kicked into motion and they left the hall to emerge in the late afternoon light. He raised a hand to cup it over the child's head and shield her from the sun.
Aragorn watched his friend closely and then engaged him in conversation as they left the hall, for the weight of Orphan Court weighed on him, too:
"How go things in Ithilien?"
Legolas shrugged, and the child's head bobbed with him as he did so. "It goes—but it is early yet, Aragorn. We have hardly built homes for our folk, yet."
"So, you are not harried by lingering enemies?" Aragorn asked with interest, for it had been a month since he had seen his friend.
"Oh, I did not say that! But that is no concern to me. We either divert them, or we invite them to dinner! Both ways avoid conflict, for the most part, though one of our folk is laid low recovering from an errant blade."
"An errant blade, Legolas?" Aragorn asked with concern, looking at him through squinted eyes. "That hardly sounds uneventful."
"I am not concerned about it yet," Legolas said dismissively, glancing at him. "Anyway, is Faramir here? For he is not in Ithilien and we have much—the three of us—to discuss."
"He is!" Aragorn exclaimed. "We will meet him for dinner—"
But he was interrupted by the cry of the child, who shrieked now as if all the legions of Sauron chased her with speed.
Legolas jumped with the child in his arms and stared at Aragorn in horror.
"What are we supposed to do?" he asked, stricken. "She is hungry and we have no nursemaid!"
Aragorn smiled at him and thumped him on the shoulder as he hurried them into walking again.
"We shall call for someone to bring us goat milk, as her keeper told me at court, for that is what she prefers," Aragorn said calmly, turning a corner and guiding Legolas by the crook of his arm. "And then we shall put her to sleep in the sitting room. And, then, we will deal with it all tomorrow."
Legolas almost stopped walking and stared at him incredulously. "We will 'deal' with the child tomorrow?" he said. "Aragorn, I am not sure you understand how children work. You cannot just—"
"Oh, Legolas," Aragorn said, with levity finally reaching him for the first time all day—a true levity that he could feel in his heart, spreading all the way from his chest out toward his feet as they began to walk again. "Arwen will be delighted to have a child to nurture for a day. And I daresay," he teased, "that you seem like you will enjoy it, as well."
Legolas blushed and pushed the child further up his chest. "I have always had a weakness for children," he admitted quietly.
Aragorn burst into true laughter as they rounded the corner into his quarters. "I assumed—you took so to Pippin, after all."
Aragorn opened the door to his and Arwen's sitting room.
"Still," Aragorn continued quietly, as they settled onto the settee inside the door, "do not worry, my friend." He reached now to take the child from Legolas' arms. "For I will certainly not tell Gimli of this weakness."
But Legolas did not bother to reply for, at that moment—as Aragorn settled the child again onto his chest—the tiny, orphan Gimphel spit up all over Aragorn's chest, over embroidery and velvet and well-knit decorum...!
Legolas' response was swallowed by his unrepentant laughter. And then, when the child reached up a tiny, vomit-covered hand to grasp again at Aragorn's Elfstone, it was just more than the poor elf could take.
It was an hour later that Arwen found her husband—the King of Gondor, thoroughly covered in an infant's vomit—and a warrior of the woodland realm sat close on a couch, cooing over a tiny child.
She swooped in and sent her love to wash—Aragorn left without complaint—and then she took the child from Legolas' arms.
Looking down at the tiny human child with care, she directed at Legolas quietly: "And so it begins again. To begin to love a child that is not our own before we must give it away."
Legolas watched her cautiously and did not reply, for he did not yet know the pain of which she spoke, but it sounded like heavy grief, which he felt he had had quite enough of.
"But so is the way of mortals," she finally said with a shrug, and a cheeky smile to her husband's dear friend. "It is a strange world in which we find ourselves, do you not agree, Legolas?"
Legolas smiled, too, and then stood to peer out into the hallway for a servant—when he got one's attention, he requested goat's milk.
When he came back into the room, he settled down beside Arwen, and he felt more comfortable with her than he had felt before. "Oh, it is a strange world indeed, Evenstar," Legolas agreed. "And yet," he paused, before starting again with a smile, "and yet here we are! The lengths to which I will follow your husband never cease to amaze me..."
And she laughed, and they sat together with the child passed between them, and they waited for a clean Aragorn to return.
It was strange these things they did to rebuild Arda, but neither Legolas nor Arwen—elven in this human land though they were—could imagine a situation where they would choose to do anything else.
And then the goat milk arrived, and, a few minutes later, a clean Aragorn. The child was fed and then she slept. The adults were brought Faramir, and then, also, supper.
And there in that room—with a sleeping babe on a makeshift bed across from them—they dealt with the problems of the world, and they made a plan for tomorrow. And though that tomorrow was not bereft of darkness, it was at least a tomorrow of any sort at all, and a tomorrow in which at least one child would wake to loving arms, and a bottle of milk, and an army of people determined to find her the perfect home.
THE END