In which Legolas receives a well-deserved beating and an equally well-deserved scolding, and Tauriel realizes a few things she had not, until now, been able to articulate to herself.
For what seemed an eternity, no one said anything – all three sat or stood as though frozen. Finally, Tauriel disentangled herself from Thranduil's grasp, rose to her feet, stalked to Legolas, and punched him as hard as she could.
He rocked backward, rubbing his cheek, and she noted that he already had a lovely purple bruise on his jaw. Someone must have beaten her to it – literally.
"You thoughtless – " she punched him again, harder this time, "selfish little moron –" a jab to his ribs. "Do you have any idea what I went through because you just swanned off into the wilderness and left me?" Finally, for good measure, she kneed him in the groin.
There. That was out of the way.
"Was that really necessary, Tauriel?" Thranduil asked, wincing as Legolas doubled over.
"Yes," she snapped, crossing the floor back to him. "Chain, Thranduil. He left me to that."
Guilt flashed across Thranduil's face, but she couldn't feel bad about it yet. The chain really had traumatized her. Nevertheless, she wrapped her arms around him in silent comfort, her hold more than a little possessive.
Legolas, gasping, finally managed to stand somewhat upright, his face white with pain. "Tauriel, I am sorry," he managed.
"You should be," she snarled. "Especially as you and apparently everyone else but me knew that your father was touched in the head."
"I am right here," Thranduil complained, returning her embrace, for once not too tightly.
She looked up at him. "It is not as though you can deny it."
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Legolas blink, no doubt trying to sort through a mingle of confusion, worry, and pain. "Adar, let Tauriel go."
"No," Thranduil said flatly, still looking down at her. "She does not want me to. Nor will she let go of me."
"Tauriel – Tauriel?" The worry in his voice had shifted to dread. "Tauriel, you must leave. You must come with me."
"I must do nothing," she said, drawing closer to Thranduil and resting her head on his chest. The scent of him, which had once terrified her, was comforting now. It wasn't just that it was familiar, though that didn't hurt at all; for whatever reason, she associated it far more with stale Thranduil than mad Thranduil.
"Someone must send for Galadriel," Thranduil sighed into her hair. "You would be best, Legolas. She is most likely to listen to you."
Since followed that, and Tauriel didn't dare look at Legolas. No doubt she would see on his face the expression she had grown so weary of, magnified tenfold.
"Adar, what have you done to Tauriel?" he asked, at last, fear and rage vying for control of his voice. "How have you made her like this? What did you do?"
Thranduil sighed. "Far too much," he said. "More than I think she will ever forgive me for – that she should ever forgive me for. Which is why we need Galadriel."
"We cannot repair ourselves," Tauriel said, her voice slightly muffled by Thranduil's tunic. "We are both too broken."
"When you are repaired," Legolas said, low and deadly, "you will release Tauriel to me, Adar."
"No," Thranduil said, just as dangerous. "I will not."
"I would not go," Tauriel added. "We have already had this discussion, Legolas, before you arrived. We would both go truly mad, were we separated now."
Legolas was quiet a moment. "Adar…why?" he asked, helplessly.
Thranduil's answer was chilling, though not at all surprising. "Because I could," he said flatly. "Because you were gone, and finally, finally I could. I was truly, completely mad where Tauriel was concerned, and there were none to stop me. Except, in the end, Tauriel herself."
Mercifully, he did not mention how she had done so; Legolas didn't need to know she'd tried to drown herself on top of everything else. The mere thought made her shiver, and Thranduil, as ever so closely attuned to her, tightened his embrace.
"Get Galadriel," he said. "She is the only one who has a hope of sorting this out."
Tauriel turned her head. Legolas's expression remained horrified, and terribly guilty, but mention of Galadriel seemed to mollify him a bit. He cast Tauriel and anguished glance that infuriated her, for nothing, nothing he felt now could equal what she had gone through, when Thranduil was someone else. Never would he have endured anything like that, but she was not quite cruel enough to wish a similar fate on him.
Not quite. Though the chain was nearly enough to make her. She had not yet forgiven Thranduil, but she hadn't forgiven Legolas, either – that might actually take longer than forgiving Thranduil. He had been her captor, yes, but he'd also been as much a victim of his own madness as her, in a different way. Legolas, by contrast, had been happily tripping around the wilderness, clearly not sparing a thought for either of them.
That is not fair, she thought, and you know it. For all she knew, Legolas might have been facing his own trials. She had little place to judge him without knowing what he had been doing while he was away – but she did judge him for so thoughtlessly abandoning her in the first place, and that she did have a right to do. He had known about his father's obsession all along, and had never seen fit to tell her.
"Why did you not warn me, Legolas?" she asked, even as she leaned into Thranduil's embrace. "Why did you never once tell me of your father's…fixation?"
He looked absolutely wretched. "I did not think you needed to know."
Fury flooded Tauriel's veins, molten as lava, her vision actually misting red. She struggled free of Thranduil's embrace, he evidently wise enough to let her go, and stalked across the floor to Legolas. This time she didn't punch him, she slapped him – hard.
"How dare you," she snarled, and slapped him again. "What right in the world did you have to decide what I am or am not meant to know?" She wrenched back her sleeve, exposing the vicious, ugly scars, now faded to white. "Thranduil was a madman then, and you knew it, and not only did you never see fit to tell me, you left me with him!" Now, finally, she did punch him again, hard enough to spit his lip. "If he hadn't come to his senses, I would be dead by now!"
Legolas wiped his mouth, blood smearing on his hand. "Then why do you stay with him?" he demanded.
"Because that madness has changed," she said. "It has not vanished, not truly, but he is himself again, not the alien creature that imprisoned me. We are bound together now, in some strange way I do not understand, and I know him now. Who he really is, beneath the madness…that is who I stay for, who I would never leave. I see what he once was, long ago, and what he could be again."
Strange, how she had never before articulated that, but it was the truth. Thranduil could not possibly always have been thus – she had met an echo of who he might have been already, and she wanted more. Perhaps, with Lady Galadriel's aid, he could grow closer to being that Thranduil again – the real Thranduil, beneath the madness, the coldness that had gripped him for so very long. There had to have been a reason his poor destroyed Queen had loved him so much, and his love for her must have been much healthier than what he had for Tauriel. He could get better, because once upon a time he had been better.
Could she love him without forgiving all he had done? It shouldn't be possible, yet she had a suspicion it was some peculiar sort of love she felt, or was starting to feel. She should not, and she knew it, but the heart wanted what the heart wanted, un-swayed by the mind.
"I will fetch Lady Galadriel, if she will come," Legolas said, "but Tauriel, when this is over, you must go to her."
"No," Tauriel said, crossing the floor back to Thranduil. "As I said, I must do nothing. "I will do what I want, and neither you nor anyone else will compel me otherwise." How was it that she could be so infuriated with him for leaving her with Thranduil, yet at the same time so adamant about staying? She really did need help.
"We will see what she says," Legolas said before he left, his tone vaguely threatening.
She blew out a frustrated sight, resting her forehead against Thranduil's chest. "That could have gone better," she said, wrapping her arms around him.
"It could also have gone a great deal worse," he said dryly, stroking her hair. "At least you did not beat him into unconsciousness."
Tauriel laughed, but there was a tinge of bitterness to it. "Believe me, it was tempting. When you were still completely mad, I devised all manner of creative tortures for him. On involved a red-hot poker."
She felt Thranduil wince. She left where the poker would go to his imagination. "Will you bathe with me, Tauriel?"
She leaned back to look up at him, trying to read his intent in his eyes. "That depends," she said. "Is that truly all you wish of me?"
"Yes," he said, brushing the hair back from her brow. "I know you do not desire me, Tauriel, and possibly never will. All these years my own desire for you has been for your fëa, your mind, not your body. That need never change. I crave your touch, yes, but not in that manner."
There was nothing but truth in his voice and his eyes. Perhaps one day he would want more, but it was not this day. "Then yes," she said, "I will bathe with you."
All the while on his trek back to the Woodland Realm, Celebdor thought on the Ranger's words. Thought, and came up with nothing.
What else could Tauriel ever have? If she left the Woodland Realm, she would Fade – of that he was certain. And even if, by some miracle of the Valar, someone made her want to, the King would follow. Of that Celebdor had no doubt, either. He would hunt her down no matter where she went, or how far – he would follow her to Harad or Forodwaith, to the very ends of Middle-Earth, such was his obsession. Unless one of them perished or sailed, she would never be free of him, so it was just as well that she obviously did not wish to be. The Prince would see that, as soon as he saw them.
For his part, though unsettled, Celebdor did not see the problem. They were content enough, and Tauriel was hardly a mistress, not the kind of concubine Edain rulers might have. The King was not impugning her honor, nor his own. Yes, they were both very obviously obsessed with, and possessive of, each other. That could not be denied, but it was harming no one. He would not make any effort to intervene, and not only because doing so would be perilous to his own health.
Legolas was horrified, wracked with guilt, and in no small amount of pain. In addition to Celebdor's punch and Tauriel's outright beating, Lady Silwen cornered him and slapped him so hard his ears rang.
"I do not care if you are a prince," she said, before his anger could rise. "You were as thoughtless as a child, leaving that poor girl in your father's grasp, and now look what has come of it." Her blue eyes were positively molten in her living face.
"I am on my way to fetch Lady Galadriel," he said, rubbing his jaw. Why was everyone hitting him in the same spot?
"I sent Celebdor to do that," she said shortly.
"And I sent him back here," Legolas sighed. "I did not realize how bad it was. Celebdor's explanation didn't do it justice."
"No," she said grimly, "it would not. Be wary of summoning Lady Galadriel, my Prince. I do not at all know how your father would react."
"He told me to fetch her, actually. I think perhaps some of his madness is lifting." Eru, he could still taste the salt of his own blood.
"I certainly hope so. And I hope you do not intend to separate them," she warned. "We might not like it, but somehow they have become two halves of one whole."
"They cannot have," he protested. "My mother might be dead, but my father is still married."
Pity entered Lady Silwen's sparking eyes. "You are so young, Prince Legolas, and so sheltered," she sighed. "Your father would not have been incomplete in the first place if your mother was not lost to him forever."
Ice washed through Legolas's veins. "How can you know that?" he whispered.
"I have seen it happen before, long ago. I have passed through the Halls of Mandos once already, long before you or even your father were born. Within them is a ward where the most damaged of his subjects sleep eternal. The fëa cannot be destroyed, my Prince, but it can be damaged beyond repair. Such must have happened to your mother, or your father would not have been drawn to Tauriel to begin with."
That…was not what Legolas needed hear, and certainly not on top of everything else. His mother had died so young that he had no memory of her, but he'd always comforted himself with the knowledge that he would one day meet her in Valinor. And all this time he had cursed his father's disloyalty in fixating on Tauriel at all.
"How old are you, Lady Silwen?" he asked, scarcely aware of what left his own mouth.
"I have seen six thousand years on this shore," she said gently, "and two thousand more in Valinor. There is little to see in Middle-Earth that I have not seen at least once. Much though I dislike it, the King's fëa has fused with Tauriel's in some way I do not understand. Normally it takes a rather less chaste union to achieve such union."
Legolas shuddered. He did not, in addition to absolutely everything, need to picture that, but now the image would not leave his mind. "I did not need that thought," he said. "Lady Galadriel will surely know what to do." She had to, for if she did not, no one would. And that was a thought that could not be borne.
Sorry, Legolas, but you completely deserved that.
Guest: Tauriel was the first person Thranduil wanted to move on with. The reason for his wife's death is never given in canon, so I decided she was killed by the dragon that scorched his face up so much.
Aranel-DiSonne: Oh God, Nanny Ogg...I don't even want to know what she'd do.