Written for the February Teitho! prompt "First" (did not place).

Warning(s): Allusion to child sexual abuse (absolutely non-graphic)

Author's note: 1) I feel professionally obligated to include this A/N due to subject matter. Please remember to speak your truth; ask for help. If someone tells you about something that has happened to them, report it to the people who can assist. If you're a minor, telling a mandated reporter (like a teacher or social worker), will pretty much take care of that. In many places, anyone over the age of 18 is required by law to report known or suspected child abuse/neglect to both Police and Children's Services, and "failure to report" may have criminal consequences. Remember, it is never your fault, and it is everyone's responsibility to stand up for children. 2) This story aligns with the theory that hobbits have similar developmental stages to humans until they hit their adolescence/young adulthood, and then pause there for a while before fully maturing. Therefore, in this story, Elanor is developmentally and physically 9-years-old, similar to a third-grader in the US educational system.

Green Leaf, Black Eye, Hidden Hurt

"Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens," said Gimli.

"Maybe," said Elrond, "but let him not vow to walk in the dark, who has not seen the nightfall."

—"The Ring Goes South," The Fellowship of the Ring

Part I

July 18, Year 8 (Fourth Age of the Sun); 1429 in Shire Reckoning

Bag-End, Hobbiton-across-the-Water, the Shire

Legolas leaned over the small washbasin that Sam had brought to the converted study where Legolas was staying during his visit to Bag-End. He rinsed the day's considerable sweat off his face and from behind his ears, and ran nimble fingers over a swollen cheek that smarted even now.

Legolas peered up into the looking glass above the desk. There, he saw his own face—fair where it was not marked—all angles softened by the candlelight. His cheekbones disappeared in shadow, and his grey eyes cut out above them, glinting still in the diminished light; he saw his round cheeks were pink beneath his tan, flushed from gentle scrubbing, and his loose amber hair—dyed golden, much like Elanor's, by the summer sun—shimmered faintly; a few of the little hobbit's unskilled braids still swung about his chin when he stood from the bowl.

Legolas poked at the right side of his face as he looked in the mirror, and smiled slightly as yet he winced for, earlier that day—for the very first time—he had been punched in the face by a hobbit. To be more clear, he had been punched in the face also, for the first time, by a child, and—more specifically than all that—by a hobbit child. But given his love for the race and his new promise to know well his companions' brood while they yet were young, he was almost certain it would not be the last time his countenance suffered (especially after Pippin's announcement over dinner that Diamond was with child!).

He would though, Legolas thought absently, definitely have a black eye in the morning. The eyelid and the skin where Elanor had struck him twice were more harshly red than his usual flush, and all around it was rather puffy. Below his lower lashes, the tender half-moon curve swelled into a small hill and then began to purple outward across his skin, like a corona, but darkly distorted.

Legolas laughed lightly at the sight—Sam's daughter had a fearsome swing!

It would, indeed, be very amusing, if not for the circumstances.

But a black eye would fade, he thought, for it was the kind of injury that always left, without complication. His black eye would heal this time, and the next time, and any other time, and so too—though with much more deliberate effort— would Elanor's invisible wounds. Legolas would take many more black eyes from countless hobbit children, hobbit adults, and even the ancient might of Mordor, to assure the child had the chance to heal.

Legolas abruptly dropped his eyes from his own reflection, and studied his calloused hands in the candlelight. The green oak leaf Elanor had clutched through the entire afternoon sat there, abandoned, by the washbasin, for Elanor had insisted Legolas take it as a token for helping her.

He could not anymore dwell on this.

Legolas threw himself back onto the tiny couch at the edge of the study, and wriggled his body ungracefully so his head fit between an overstuffed pillow and the wooden armrest. His knees hooked over the couch's far end and his bare feet dangled some distance from the floor.

In that way, he settled uncomfortably—in both body and mind—into some semblance of Elven dreams.

Earlier that day

"Pippin and Diamond will be here by noon with the little ones, back from their visit, and they've got news for us! So you must be back by elevenses, Elanor," Sam said to his eldest child on the front steps of Bag-End, "to help."

Sam sat on his heels in front of his daughter and grasped the dangling strings at her neckline in both hands, tightening her loose summer shift; he tied a bow loopingly and let the ends fall down the front of the salmon fabric, stopping just before the hem, where green bloomers peeked out below her knees.

Elanor nodded gravely and pressed a small hand to her chest, bowing her head to her father as if she were his squire.

Sam laughed loudly.

"But I'm serious, fair Elanorellë!" said Sam, with mischief in his eyes, and he stood now to his full height and placed calloused hands on Elanor's small shoulders. "You keep getting caught up in young Mister Greenhand's landscaping, and it's only going to get you in trouble, if it keeps making you late for supper."

Legolas leaned against the wall of Bag-End, his arms crossed in front of him and head bowed slightly so that his forehead touched lightly the overhang to the left of the large red door, and he smiled at the pair brightly. Though it felt like just a moment since the last time he had travelled to the Shire, it had actually been several years, and for Elanor that was a very long time indeed, for she had been but a toddling child when last Legolas was there, and she stood now a defiant young girl before him. And Sam was such a father! How quickly mortal time passed.

Legolas noticed now that instead of looking mock serious, Elanor was frowning fiercely at Sam with something like hurt in her eyes, and Sam looked at her, in turn, confused. Though it had been many years since Legolas was small, he remembered the pain of misunderstood conversations that often passed between father and child, and so he stepped in—perhaps unwisely—to alleviate the stress he sensed between the two.

Legolas ducked out from beneath the overhang and dropped to his heels, so he was level with Sam and only a little taller than Elanor. He raised a long, sun-stained hand to shield his light eyes from the midmorning sun.

"What your father really means, I think," said Legolas softly, leaning toward Elanor conspiratorially, "is it will be my first time meeting so many hobbit children, and you may have to teach me what to say and do, for you are the only hobbit child that yet I know. I have been told that little ones are a lot to keep up with!"

Elanor looked at her father for a moment, as if for permission. Sam nodded to her, and then Elanor turned a small smile up toward Legolas, though he noted that at the edges of her wide eyes there welled a few tears, though he dared not ask their origin—he had only been there a day and it was not his place (and he knew little of children, and nothing of hobbit children, and only feared, therefore, that asking would make whatever it was worse). But her big green eyes were like glades of grass with flecks of goldenrod, and the tears made the hazel amplify so that they shone up at Legolas like streaks of amber, and the sight made something inside him clench; he reached out timidly to tuck a long golden curl behind one of her small ears.

Elanor slipped her arms around her father's waist and then lifted up a childish hand to touch Legolas' own honey-hair. She ran pudgy fingers down the length of it and then touched the tip of his ear lightly. Legolas turned his head to the side obligingly, and she tucked a few wavy locks behind his ear, too, and then smiled at him.

"All right, Sam-dad," Elanor said. "I will be home on time, if I can."

"You mean, you will be home on time," Sam corrected lovingly, patting her back as she continued to stare up at the tall elf.

"I will be home on time if Mister Greenhand will let me leave," Elanor replied softly.

Legolas turned his head back toward father and daughter and narrowed his eyes at the child for a moment, as he thought about her strange words.

"If he will let you leave, Miss Elanor?" Legolas asked, feigning innocence in the tone of his question.

"Yes," said Elanor, pulling back now from her father and crossing her arms across her flat chest and slightly-rounded, youthful belly, her eyes looking at the downy brown hair on her father's feet. "Sometimes Mister Greenhand needs lots of help with his new garden, and he doesn't want me to go away when I should."

"Is that so," said Legolas evenly.

While Legolas was not so ruled by his emotions as he once had been, he still felt them as strongly. When they rose in his chest and flooded his mind in a haze, he now simply held his tongue, and let the moment recede ere he opened his mouth. It was not an altogether pleasant experience, but it had, among mortals, saved him a lot of embarrassment and pain.

So, while Legolas was confused by the power Mister Greenhand seemed to wield over Elanor, and while almost bowled over by a sudden rush of sickening worry, "is that so" was all he could think of to say. He tilted his head to the side for a moment, questioningly, but then pushed aside the ill-ease to smile at the little hobbit, instead.

Legolas' smile stirred something in Elanor, and she remembered for a moment a flash of Legolas' kind face from her much younger childhood. He had before, on the only other occasion she had met him, made Elanor a very fanciful crown of wildflowers, and then woven it into her hair with delicate braids, as if very practiced in the art of making crowns. Elanor remembered light and laughter and the lilting tease in Legolas' voice when he made a crown, too, for the gruff dwarf, Gimli, with whom he travelled that time; and Elanor remembered running under the stars with dew on her feet and flowers in her hands, chasing her father and friends until they tumbled onto the ground, and her Sam-dad had taken her into his arms, and the elf's soft voice sang until she fell asleep; but when she awoke in her own bed the next morning, Legolas and Gimli were gone.

The memory made Elanor curious again, and she looked up at Legolas now with a bright smile on her face, looking forward to the day.

"But I like to help with the siblings, Mister Legolas," Elanor said, pledging to get away from Mister Greenland and his onerous chores as quickly as possible. "And I will help you learn to talk to them, if you want, so I will come back on time, if I can, so you won't be all confused or alone."

Sam laughed and knelt again before his daughter.

"You are as queer as you are sweet, my Elanorellë," he said.

"And you are as hungry as you are smart, my Sam-dad," said Elanor.

Legolas laughed. Children did not at all understand grown-up humor, though they might try to emulate its structure, and that he found amusing.

"Very well," Legolas said to Elanor. "I will look forward to learning from you soon!"

"I am a good teacher!" Elanor exclaimed happily.

And then she kissed her father on both cheeks and wrapped her arms for a moment around his unbuttoned linen vest, before bounding down the steps with the energy of five grown hobbits. Her curls bounced unbound at her shoulders and fell in waves across her face, and her olive skin was lit bronze by the summer sun as she racketed out the gate and down the lane, like a late-summer cyclone.

Sam stood and shook his head confusedly, watching Elanor's small form dodge a Proudfoot's wagon when she reached the bottom of the hill; she followed the path sharply around a bend and out of sight toward Underhill. Legolas folded his knees in front of him and sat on the top step; he looked up at Sam.

Sam sighed and sat down beside the elf, and he spoke.

"Elanor may not seem it," Sam said. "But she's sad. It's the first time we have ever seen her this sad, and she won't say how come."

Legolas placed a hand on the hobbit's thigh and patted in gently, turning his head to consider one who he had never thought would become such a friend.

"Children are like that sometimes, Samwise," Legolas said sagely. "At least elf-children. Their parents are, in a way, too close to them, so they will not confide in them their secrets."

"But you don't have children, Legolas," said Sam, as Legolas moved his hand from Sam's leg and dropped both hands limply between his own folded knees. "What do you know about children?"

"Well," Legolas said with seriousness, meeting Sam's eyes flatly, "I was one once."

Sam looked at Legolas for a moment, assessing, before Legolas threw his head back and laughed jovially.

"Well," Legolas insisted, "I was!"

"Oh, I don't doubt it, Mister Legolas," Sam said, and he grinned. "I can only imagine you were a handful yourself."

"You imagine rightly," Legolas said with a sad and distant smile, watching the hobbit's face for a moment before continuing. "Well, I will be here for a time, if you will have me, and I would help you however I can, in fixing what is wrong."

Sam pushed a lock of curling brown hair out of his eyes and looked at his companion.

"I could use all the help I can get with her! Sometimes it makes me so hot I could shout," Sam replied. "She's only gotten worse since she started helping that youngest Mister Greenhand, my Gaffer's gardener's son, Holman's boy, you know."

Legolas did not know, but nodded nonetheless. Sam continued.

"Elanor was so angry at first about Mister Greenhand rearranging their family's garden—they've been friendly with us Gamgee-folk so long as anyone can remember—" Sam explained, "so Rosie and I thought to let her learn diplomacy on her own, instead of just being rude to him at market. It's been since late spring that she started 'negotiating' with him, and I can only guess from her moods that it's not going well!"

"Gardens are a divisive topic, I have recently learned," Legolas affirmed.

"Yes, well then," said Sam with a curtailed huff. "Don't I know it? Perhaps she'll want to talk to you, because she certainly doesn't want to talk to me, or her mother."

"She will want to talk to you again soon, Sam," said his friend. "It is how youth are. But I will be here if she wants to tell me about her garden, and all the problems with it."

Sam stood and held out a hand to Legolas, which the elf took, though he did not need the hoist, and Sam set off toward the center of Hobbiton, with Legolas trailing interestedly behind him.

"I want to finish tending the grapes we planted last year for my Gaffer before Pippin gets here," said Sam. "He may be all grown up with a wife of his own, but to me he's still a whirlwind!"

"That he is," Legolas said, stopping in front of the young brown vines and wide, flat drooping leaves. "How may I help?"

Sam looked for a moment immensely relieved.

"Oh good!" he exclaimed. "You can reach the bunches at the top, and get all those dead leaves off. I shan't need to drag out a bench after all!"

Legolas looked at Sam with amusement, but then only nodded. He set to work on tiptoe, inspecting the leaves and gently picking ripe grapes, handing them down, with care, to the distracted parent below.

Several hours later it was—to Legolas' surprise—past time for elevenses. Sam was quite ready to go back to the house to await Pippin, Diamond, and his children's arrival, but he had thought to wait for Elanor to pass them at the center of Hobbiton, and so walk back to Bag-End soon with her. But now it was past time—almost noon, Legolas thought, looking at the sky—and the little hobbit girl had not passed them yet. Legolas could see the frustration and worry in Sam's face as he peered again to the road at the edge of the town square. Legolas briefly wondered how many times his father had peered longingly down Southward paths while waiting for his own delayed arrivals, but he dismissed the thought quickly and spoke instead to Sam's worry.

"Would you like me to go fetch Elanor?" Legolas asked simply, before continuing when the hobbit remained silent. "So you can head back to Bag-End with the grapes, and we will help to prepare for the meal when we return, together?"

Sam sighed and wiped his hands on his knees hastily.

"Yes, please, Legolas," he said, his voice a low murmur. "Go. She is so frustrating right now that I don't think I could drag her home without yelling at her."

Legolas laughed.

"It will be well, my friend," he said, smiling. "She will grow out of her contrariness soon. I do not mind to help."

"She is only nine, Legolas!" Sam cried, throwing his hands into the air. "Nine! I don't think you understand exactly how much growing she has yet to do!"

Legolas raised his eyebrows at Sam's consternation and then shrugged.

"You are right, I think," Legolas conceded. "I have absolutely no concept of hobbit maturity, nor development."

Sam laughed at Legolas' helpless confession, and the elf continued.

"But still," Legolas insisted, "it will be well. It always is, after all!"

And so Legolas turned away from Sam and set off in the direction in which his friend had been apprehensively staring.

"Around the hill, past the hole with the white door, and at the second bend take a left—there's a big oak in the front yard—yellow door—and the garden is round back!" Sam called at Legolas' back as he picked up his pace into a trot.

Legolas turned as he ran and waved to Sam.

"I will find her!" he called, and Sam sighed, picking up the heavy bucket of grapes.

Sam slid the bucket onto his arm so its handle yanked painfully at the crook of his elbow, and then he started the long and hot walk back up the hill to his wife and his home.