Chapter Fourteen

Elrond watched the rising sun, but felt nothing of its warmth while he stood out on the balcony to his study. Thranduil's despair, his tears and the wreckage of his kingly voice as he had commanded Elrond and Galadriel to leave, as he had cursed Elrond for ever saving his life even once, cursed Galadriel for laying her hands on his wife's body, was a catching as the aura of the Black Breath. There was no good way for these past days to have unfolded, but with Thranduil succumbing to his broken heart and Legolas sundered from his only living parent, Elrond could not help but feel that it had all gone awry. He could see only where his hand had changed the course for the worse.

Soft, slender arms wrapped around him, a long, warm body pressed against his back.

"My mother says Thranduil is doing very poorly," Celebrian said quietly.

Elrond twined his arms around hers. "I wonder if she should have kept the truth from him."

"His imaginings would have tormented him all the days of his life."

"What she showed him brought him no solace," Elrond said, seeing Thranduil's anguished face in his mind. Galadriel may have restored his glamour while he was under her magic, but the pain on his face was its own scar, one no amount of medicine or magic could heal.

Elrond turned around to face Celebrian. She looked better, some colour returned to her face, but still had a heavy shawl about her shoulders.

"I think Thranduil's days may be very few," he said. "He commanded Galadriel and I to leave."

"Still, we should look in on Legolas—"

"He sent Legolas away as well."

"Where is he?" Panic drained what little colour there was in Celebrian's face.

"He's with the children. I could hear them."

Celebrian braced a hand against his chest and wilted with relief. "What will we do if…"

"I don't know," Elrond said. "I want to say that he could stay here, but that is not up to me."

Celebrian shook her head, perhaps at the idea of turning out someone in need when Imladris had fostered so many. "He's so young, Elrond."

"I know." Elrond closed his hands over Celebrian's where it lay on his chest and kissed her forehead. He hoped she did not feel the hitch in his breath while he tried to hide his welling eyes. "Don't ever die."

Celebrian kissed his lips, loosing his tears down his face. She lingered close, cradling her other hand to the back of his neck, stroking his hair.

"I'll send for Legolas," she said when she finally pulled away from him.

"Give him a little while longer. He was in a state after Thranduil shouted at him."

"What will we do if Thranduil lives?" Celebrian said almost to herself. "Father and son sundered when they are each other's only comfort."

Celebrian returned inside before she could answer herself, if she had any answer at all. Elrond had no wisdom to offer. He turned back to face the valley, half light, half shadow under the rising sun.

"If you could, would you know the fate of your foster father?" Galadriel's voice came from the doorway after a mere moment of silence. She must have been waiting for Celebrian to leave.

Elrond was quite astounded by the question. "That is not something I have thought on in thousands of years."

"But you did ponder it once. Did it disturb you, not knowing?" Galadriel came up to the balustrade beside him.

The many memories of loss Elrond had been keeping at bay these dark few days shook in his mind like beasts in a cage. Old as it was, the memory Galadriel asked for was harmless now, but Elrond had to keep the others from escaping to run rampant on his resolve.

"It made me sad to think of him alone and despondent," Elrond replied. "If he lived on, I hope he found peace."

"If you could know his death was brave and that he thought of you in the end, would that be a mercy to your conscience?"

Even for Galadriel the questions were strange. Not questions or wisdom or morality or justice, truly a personal question for which she wanted a personal answer.

"It was so long before I even heard he had gone," Elrond said. "There was nothing I could do; it was not as if I could go after him with any hope of finding him. But I suppose that knowing for sure would have been a balm to me in darker time when I was given to thinking about it."

He watched Galadriel absorb his response, but her face was unreadable.

"If you're asking if I think you should show to Legolas what you showed to Thranduil, I don't have an answer for you. But it nearly… no, it destroyed Thranduil. Would you be prepared to see that pain on Legolas' face?"

"I feel he should have the chance to know."

"Not all wisdom is worth having," Elrond said. "I don't think he cares how she died. I think he cares that she's dead, and there's nothing we can do to change what happened. None among us knows what it is to lose a mother. Our impositions of what Legolas should do are founded on nothing."

"He must be prepared to take up his father's crown, Elrond. His people have been slaughtered. They cannot be left without a leader for long. This needs to be resolved quickly and someone restored to the throne of Mirkwood. It is the privilege to which they were born, a privilege that comes with high personal costs. If Thranduil is determined to die and join his wife, we should honour that. If Legolas must become king, we should prepare him."

Elrond remembered embracing Legolas, how small and powerless his trembling body felt. He wanted only to protect him, as he would his own child, but he could not deny that Galadriel's suggestion was protection of sorts that Legolas might learn to appreciate in his years of rule. For now, it would look like a cruelty for which Legolas might never forgive them.

Legolas, Arwen, Elladen, and Elrohir climbed down from the roof just in time to receive summons to Elrond's study. Technically the request was only for Legolas, but his new-sworn siblings followed. Arwen held his hand while Elladen and Elrohir placed themselves as a barrier between their father's messenger and Legolas. Despite the bright dawn, the day had turned cloudy and threatened a bitter winter rain.

"I'm sure it's only an explanation of how your father is coping now that he's awake," Arwen said. "Maybe he's asking for you."

Legolas kept his darker thoughts to himself. He had burdened Arwen enough; still, he squeezed her hand a little harder.

They were given way up the stairs to Elrond's study, the home of all ill news in Legolas' mind. They day that Imladris was all splendour again for him, without the shadow cast from these grim days, was farther away than Legolas could comprehend.

Elrond, Celebrian, Galadriel, and Celeborn awaited them. Legolas wondered how much more of his grief was doomed to face a jury of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth.

Legolas dropped Arwen's hand, set his jaw, and steeled himself to look Elrond in the face. "It's my father, isn't it?"

"His exposure to the Black Breath left him vulnerable," Elrond said. "I'm afraid he's not bearing the news of your mother well."

"May I see him?"

"He asked to be left alone."

"May I be disobedient?"

Elrond smiled a little at that, but it quickly faded. "He does not want you to see him as he is, Legolas."

"It's too late for that. I've seen the scars—"

"The scars are gone," Galadriel said. "But the full force of your father's grief is upon him now."

"Then I should be with him," Legolas said defiantly to the Lady of the Golden Wood.

"Legolas, I revealed to your father the truth of how your mother died. It is yours to know as well if you choose."

The sight of his mother laid out on a stone altar, the feel of her cold hand unmoving in his had been Legolas' vision of the moment of his mother's death. Facing that had been overwhelming enough without considering how the knife went into her, how she had bled.

"Do you think my father is going to die, Lady Galadriel?"

"Your father is hurt beyond what any other can repair. His recuperation is his task alone, a long and thankless one. His prize will be eternal life without his wife. This is not a dragon or the edge of a knife. This pain will live inside him as a constant and undying threat. It may kill him today or a hundred years from now. It is not something he will ever fully recover from. It is something he will have to survive for the rest of time."

Legolas stared at Galadriel as she spoke, feeling his eyes widen and fill with tears at her hopeless words, her cold tone. He was too transfixed to move as she came towards him. She took firm hold of his shoulders, shaking his tears from him.

"Your father has no strength he can share with you now, Legolas. Come what may, you have only yourself. It is for you alone to decide what you will see and what your will ignore, and the wisdom you gain may save your people. Any minute you could ascend your father's throne. Choose wisely, and choose you must."

Galadriel released him and Legolas nearly lost his balance as if he had been dropped from a great height. He looked up at her, feeling no taller than a child.

"I…" Legolas started, compelled to speak under Galadriel's singular gaze though he did not know what to say. "I…"

He wanted his mother. He wanted his father. But that was out of his power, perhaps forever. Everything had been out of his control since he got here.

"Show me," he said, standing up straight, coming nearly to Galadriel's height.

"As you wish," she said. She took his arm.

Legolas watched his mother pull herself out of the mud while others fell around her, watched her maim and kill with precision. He felt her panic and her rage. He saw his father bloody and dying. When his mother reached for the knife, he felt as though he were in a nightmare where he could not scream, certain that evil blade in his father's hand was going to be the undoing of his family. She touched the hilt and the vision went black.

It was like coming around himself, the world reforming from blur and shadows, as he saw the orcs surrounding her, heard their voices.

"Master won't be happy unless we got the princeling too."

Legolas!

When he heard his mother's voice say his name—the last time he would ever hear it—Legolas knew what was going to happen not through Galadriel, but through his mother. She was going to kill them all, she was going to do it for him, and her love would cost her her life.

Legolas wrenched his hand away from Galadriel and felt himself falling through infinite darkness. He still felt the fire of his mother's will to fight and reached for footholds, for a wall, for anything. Freeing himself from Galadriel's vision seemed only to take a stone out of a dam of all thoughts he had had since arriving here. His mother lying beside him as they watched the stars when he was a child, the smell of her hair. Catching a proud smile of her approval as she watched him in the archery yard.

Legolas!

His father catching his mother in his arms as Legolas lay in bed, stopping her frantic and violent fists. She screamed for vengeance on the evil encroaching on their kingdom, the evil that had almost taken their son's life. Legolas remembered how it felt to lay dying on the forest floor, spider venom in his veins, and what it had meant to see his father's face then, to hear his voice. His father had saved his life.

Legolas raged at himself for failing to do the same.

"Legolas!"

He looked up and saw Arwen hovering over him. Everything else was dark with nightfall. The floor was hard beneath his back. The sound of the pounding rain flooded his ears.

"I can't," he said, but his breathlessness gave him only a whisper.

"Give him a moment." Elrond swept down beside Arwen, leaning inches from Legolas' face. "Can you move?"

He tested his legs, his arms. His flesh tingled cold, then hot.

"Are you all right?" Arwen asked.

Legolas managed a nod and took Elladen and Elrohir's offered hands to be pulled to his feet. He clutched to them while he recovered his balance, fighting whatever supernatural weight it was that tried to bring him to his knees. He looked up at Galadriel standing placidly a few steps from him. If she were in his mind now, would he feel it?

"I don't want to see any more," he said.

Galadriel nodded and folded her hands in front of her. "Very well. It may be up to you to put your kingdom back together—"

"My father's kingdom."

"And you should know what happened."

"I do. My mother died, along with a hundred others. And it is my duty to see that my father was not killed that day as well."

"That is not for you to—"

"But it is! I am his son! My mother fought for me! My father fought for me! I will not sit by and wait for my father to die!"

Elladen and Elrohir held him tight to keep from charging at Galadriel.

"Legolas." Elrond stepped in front of him and laid a calming hand on his shoulder.

"Let me fight for him," Legolas said.

"Go." Elrond nodded for his sons to release him and Legolas took off at a run down the steps.

"You will cost Mirkwood the leader it needs," Galadriel said. "Your compassion will only cripple him. Legolas will only be king when he learns and accepts the nature of duty."

"Perhaps allowing him to do what he needs to do for his father will teach him what he can do for his people," Elrond said. He looked not at Galadriel, but at his children all standing before him. "A shadow is rising in Middle Earth. We will all do well to remember compassion and mercy in the days to come, or we are no better than our enemy."

"Mirkwood will have the support of Lorien," Celeborn said. "Whatever happens."

"Ruling through such pain will be no easy task for either of them," Galadriel said. "We must all take wisdom from this. The day may come when any of us may understand this sorrow."

The day will come, Elrond Half-Elven. And the world may not be so kind when we are sundered and alone.