Aragorn
Legolas' boy is everything I always imagined he would be. Lithe, beautiful, ethereal, he is the spitting image of his father, but where Legolas is talkative and excitable, Estel is quiet and introspective. Where Legolas shines with a light that is almost blinding, Estel's is more subtle . . . muted.
Now I see why.
He tells me a story that is heartbreaking. He tells me of a child lost in the midst of his father's grief, struggling to make sense of it and failing. He speaks of a Legolas I do not recognise. There are glimpses of my friend in the father Estel describes but they are few and far between,
This is not what I wanted for Legolas. It is not what he promised me.
Is the boy right when he lays the blame all on me?
It is a long night and I do not sleep, though Estel does. So strange it is to call someone else by my own name. Likely he is not even happy we share it. He sleeps the strange openeyed sleep of the elves which so upsets my people when they see it.
I am just glad he is still here and breathing.
I could not breathe myself in that moment I saw him tip into the churning water. My desperate race down the riverbank searching for a glimpse of him seemed hopeless even as I ran, for how could anyone, even an elf, survive that maelstrom? I had only just been reunited with my friend for this? It would destroy him. I know too well about elves and grief. I saw how the damage and loss of their mother affected both my brothers, long after she had gone. For Legolas to lose a son? It seemed unthinkable.
And he was so deathly still when I found him, lying upon the rocks, in the shallows. For a heart stopping moment I truly thought he was gone.
Instead he is battered and bruised, covered in scrapes and grazes, but still here.
And he hates me.
I want him to love me with all my heart. I have daydreamed of spending time with Legolas' boy as he did with mine, repaying all that care and attention he bestowed upon Eldarion. It is a kick in the guts to realise all that lies between us is animosity. Still I am not one to easily admit defeat. I will not give up so easily. With small steps I may yet win him over.
As the first rays of sunlight signal the arrival of dawn I wake the sleeping boy. Legolas will be out searching as soon as he can convince Elrohir to allow it and I would like Estel to look as healthy as I can get him when his father arrives, no doubt in a panic.
The sleep has done Estel good. Never, no matter how many times I am involved in their healing, do I get used to the rapidity of Elven recovery. He is pale and subdued but the smaller bruises already fade, the grazes blur. His movements are more fluid, less stiff. He winces less.
I have used my sleepless night to boil down some athaleas to a paste upon our fire and I slather it over him, much to his disgust.
"I do not need this!" He pushes my hands away aggressively—shades of Legolas indeed.
"I was not born yesterday," I say calmly in the face of his fury. "Do not tell me you are well and recovered. Remember I grew up with elves. I have spent many a long year with your father. You will not pull the wool over my eyes."
"I am not a child." He mutters sullenly, managing to sound every bit exactly like one.
"I would have you looking somewhat fit when your father arrives, so at least it seems as if you could survive the walk home."
"I could walk home if I wished it." It is said underneath his breath but I hear it . . . And despite his words he stops protesting.
He hears them before I do—of course.
Suddenly he is bolt upright. He still has my shirt on and it swamps him, making him look frail and childlike.
"I hear Father calling you," he says.
I whistle. Long ago Legolas taught me the random collection of whistles his people used to communicate amongst the trees. They sound as fleeting as the chirps of birds and I have always been clumsy when I attempt them. Often I would reduce Legolas to tears of laughter as I inadvertently whistled ridiculousness, but with perseverance I have managed to somewhat approximate them. I have always thought it strange he would teach me this, while protecting his silvan language so fiercely. He always steadfastly refused to teach me a word of that.
Estel stares incredulously and it makes me smile. So I surprise him . . . Good.
"How do you know that?" He asks.
"How do you think?" I reply, and then they are on us.
Legolas is a whirlwind of anxiety. I am not elven, I cannot sense fea, but even a fool could feel the waves of tension that engulf us at the arrival of my friend.
"Aragorn!" He sees me first, but it is a fraction of a second only before he locates Estel, behind me in the cave, and I am forgotten, brushed aside. My brother follows, grim faced, a heartbeat behind, with Elladan on his heels.
And that reminds me, I need to talk to Elladan.
"Estel," Legolas envelops his son. He smothers him in his arms. He holds him tight. I can only imagine the nightmare of a night he has endured waiting to locate us. "I thought I had lost you," he murmurs it over and over as he rocks the boy, "I thought I had lost you."
"How is Estel?"
The voice of my son standing silent and serious beside me makes me jump and drags my eyes from the cluster of elves in the cave.
"He is better than I expected." I tell him. "He has survived relatively unscathed, a bit battered but nothing worse."
Eldarion's gaze as he watches this father/son reunion is somber.
"Legolas was frightening last night." He says quietly. "I have never seen him so out of control, Father."
He overstates of course. I can well imagine Legolas' distress. I have been thinking on it all night, while picturing his anxiety. But I have seen him breach his control before. Eldarion, of course, was only a child during the nightmare we survived after Legolas' injury in Minas Tirith.
"You know he struggles with control since his accident. That is nothing new Eldarion."
"This was different. You think I cannot remember what that was like?"
"You remember it with a boy's eyes and we spared you the worst. He will have thought he lost his child. Eldarion. We all of us would be uncontrolled in that situation."
Eldarion, of course, has never had a child. That saddened me, that knowledge when I discovered it, that he missed out on that experience, on that love. He had his love and despite initial reservations we encouraged it—partly because Legolas argued so passionately that we should do. But she could not cope with his status, and the life that would lead them too. I hoped he would find someone else but it seems he never did.
How can he possibly understand the terror of a loss of a child?
"You do not understand the love you have for your child, Eldarion, and the terror of the loss of them."
"You are not listening to me," He hisses angrily. "Once again you are not listening!"
Eldarion and I have been at odds since we found ourselves together in this new world. He has changed and I struggle to connect with him. Arwen has no such problems but Eldarion and I? We dance around each other awkwardly and sometimes I feel I do not recognise him.
"I am listening. I am trying to explain parenthood to you."
"Because I am not one. Yes I get that Father, and I get it is a disappointment but that does not mean I do not recognise troubling behaviour when I see it."
I never wanted him to think I was disappointed in the life he has led, even though I may be. Why does he think that? How have I given him that impression? Am I so transparent?
"You are not a disappointment to me, Eldarion! When have I said that?"
"No matter," he waves away my protests. "That is not what we talk of. We talk of Legolas and I would have you take me seriously."
But I want to talk about him. Still it seems he will not let me.
"Tell me then," I say with a sigh, "what it is you want to and I promise to listen."
"He was a wild thing. Elrohir must be black and blue from attempting to restrain him. Legolas did not care that he hurt him, with words and fists. He would have wandered through the night searching. It was an insanity trying to prevent that. We may as well have had to lock him in a room with Elrohir as a guard. There was no reasoning with him."
This is nothing I did not expect and Estel told me as much last night when I said we would camp and wait.
"I have seen men who have lost a child," Eldarion continues, "I am not completely without experience, Father, and this was beyond that."
"You have never seen an elf who has lost a child."
Neither have I, truth be told, but I have seen elves who have lost. I know Eldarion is wrong to compare them and their grief to that of Men.
"I am an elf!" He mutters, but he knows I can hear it. He says it to hurt me, and while true it is, at the same time, also not.
"Leave me alone!"
Estel's sudden cry prevents me chasing my son down the elven whirlpool he has led our conversation too. It stops our discussion in its tracks.
Estel is on his feet and he is livid. All the Oropherion temper I have long danced around, and often suffered from, in my friend is there for the world to see in his son.
"I do not want this. You chose this. You chose your life and it is not fair I got no choice at all! I want to be Estel no longer. I am not your hope. I am no-ones hope. I am myself. Leave me alone!"
With an agility that surprises me, knowing his injuries, he is off. Dancing between the lot of us as Legolas, then Elrohir, then myself, attempt to grab hold of him.
"Leave me alone!" He cries again as he sprints away towards that drafted river.
Legolas sits upon his heels staring after him, and he is stunned, the devastation of a child's anger thrown in your face written all over him.
"Damn that boy." I mutter.
"Really?" Eldarion is all sarcasm beside me. "It is not easy living a life shaped by the choices of those before you, leaving you no choice of your own. Perhaps you do not understand that, Father, but I do."
He turns on his heels and strides away.
"Where do you go?" I call after him. "Do not make this worse, You are a grown man. It is bad enough we have one recalcitrant child to deal with!"
"Estel is no child." He shouts back. "And I am glad you finally see I am not either! I go after him to bring him back. Perhaps you could take his advice and leave us both alone."
He makes me blink in surprise and then he is gone.
And we stand, the four of us who are left, in bewildered silence.
"What did I do?" Legolas asks Elrohir in the end. "Is this all because we kept the truth of Minas Tirith from him?"
Truth be told I have no idea why they did that. It seems a foolish decision in the extreme but obviously they all of them have conspired in it.
He looks so devastated I cannot help but attempt to fix things for him.
"Welcome to parenthood my friend," I smile gently. "It seems neither of us have a handle on it today."
"Perhaps I never have," he answers.
"The joy of loving the descendants of Oropher," Elrohir says softly, as he wraps his arms around my miserable friend. "Their words can be more cutting than they intend. Perhaps Elladan can give us both advice on dealing with that. He seems best at it."
Just what does he mean by that?