A/N: Read some great Legolas and Thranduil fic lately; this was inspired.
"For him the grief was still too near, a matter for tears and not yet for song."
He waits.
They are gone to Gundabad, a name that rolls strange and unfamiliar on his tongue, and Legolas climbs to the treetops, watching.
The moon is pale and thin when they return, but their armor does not glitter so brightly in its light.
His father is silent, and alone.
"Where is she? Where is naneth?"
His father's lips press cold against his brow, but he will not answer.
It is long before they tell him, and Legolas does not understand. His mother cannot be dead; she smiled so brightly, before she went away.
The next night, he creeps out of his chambers to find his father looking at the stars.
"Sing for me, adar," he pleads, but his father's face is very still.
"Not yet."
She cannot be dead, but she does not come back. He listens for the music of her laughter to fill the halls again, for her slim, strong arms to close about him.
Legolas. My son. My darling.
He waits for his father to smile, to sing as he once did, until leaves drift downwards and darkness falls. But the trees bloom and fade many times in the Greenwood, and Legolas learns to wait no longer.
Not yet, he tells himself, during the starless nights.
Not yet, beats in his heart as his father becomes more and more his king, and his path turns away from the keep that is no longer home.
Not yet. Not yet.
He takes a step, and another, and another.
Not yet becomes never, and he cannot go back.