A/N: A great song that goes with this chapter is a super old one, not well-known "Summer, Highland Falls" by Billy Joel. It kind of fits the fine juxtaposition of great happiness and misery and how they sometimes come together.

-ooOOoo—

To Mr. B. Surrey

Academiae Hall, Old Minas Tirith, Gondor

Dear Cousin,

Yes, you may see me and my family. Let us let bygones be bygones. Just promise not to start another war over a hill. You are welcome at my home, though I wouldn't let it be known abroad in the shire who exactly you are. There are some leftover sore spots that might not take kindly to your presence.

I am interested in what you found. What did you read? What did the elven text have to say? I suppose I wouldn't mind it if you told us the tale of the elven scribe.

Regards,

T. Brown

Wiltshire, The Green Wood, Rhovanion

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ENTRY TWENTY-ONE:

The King of Dale and the dwarven King Dain left us shortly thereafter. Dol Guldur wasn't their fight anymore; they had to see to their kingdoms and make sure they remained free considering the war for Middle Earth into which we'd all been forced. Thranduil bade them leave but to send word if they needed the aid of his kingdom and his elves; he was now indebted to them for their friendship. It was a new place in which Thranduil found himself; the reliant waters of debt and debtors in friendship and favor. I wondered if he felt uncomfortable. He played it off well, as he was supposed to, being a king.

After the dwarves and the humans departed, it was only us, the elves of the woodland realms and the strange wizard Radagast. The animals milled about with little order; most had gone back to their normal occupations, but a few beasts remained, perhaps to act as sentinels for the rest, in case their strength became necessary. I had a feeling that it was only in that case, in the case of utter necessity, that we would ever see all the beasts of the forest fight for us again.

"Radagast," said Galadriel, and the wizard immediately heeded my grandmother. "Will you join us as we tear down the walls of Dol Guldur?"

"I-I suppose," said Radagast, not seeming very bold about it.

"Good," replied Galadriel, inexplicably pleased with Radagast's limp acceptance. She turned to address us all. "Let us move forward. We will not allow Sauron's forces to regroup before Amon Lanc is reclaimed."

I stole glances at Thranduil when I could. He seemed listless like he was years ago when we approached the Lonely Mountain, as if memories were pushing at him while he tried to move forward.

The path we took to Dol Guldur was direct, through the forest nearly as the crow flies. I could sense in my grandmother the desire to disallow Sauron or the Nazgul the chance to gather before we got there. Her determination was palpable, and I wondered what had caused her to have such a personal stake in reclaiming the mount.

There had been many things I'd wished to discuss with my grandmother over the recent years, and so when I found it, I immediately took the chance to walk beside her. I'd long sent my elk to wander the woods on its own, since it could be of little use to us in the narrow forest trail to Dol Guldur.

"Eren," said Galadriel, glancing at me as I joined her striding through the woods. "How are you?"

Her question seemed so simple as to be pithy, and it took me a moment to figure out how to respond.

"I'm… fine," I said.

She looked at me and smiled.

"And you?" I inquired.

"Fine," she replied, as if it were a joke. I felt foolish as a result. "Now, go on. What would you like to talk about?"

In relief I went on, since small talk was out of the way.

"I… think I have your gift," I said.

"I know," she replied.

"Of course you do," I said, as if that should have been obvious to me already, but it hadn't been. "But… I don't know how to use it."

"You're doing fine," she said simply. She seemed so sure of everything I wasn't at all sure about.

"But how do you navigate your relationship with Grandfather?" I asked. "How do you give him space to think? How do you stay out of his thoughts?"

Galadriel glanced briefly behind, to where Celeborn strode, unhearing and conversing with Radagast.

"Do you stay out of his thoughts?" I asked, wondering.

She smiled at me again.

"Mostly," she replied, with good humor.

"How did you know how to manage it?" I asked.

"I didn't," she replied. "Not at first. It takes time to strike the right balance, and yet, it's never finished. Balance is something for which we must continually labor. That work is never done. There are moments of perfect balance, but they are only moments. Once that moment passes, the work begins again."

That had never occurred to me, for to me it appeared as if my grandparents had the most perfect relationship in existence. I took a moment to let that sink in, considering it as we passed under the dappled forest boughs of the midday forest. Already the forest seemed lighter, brighter, emptied of a darkness which once hung upon it.

"The woodland king is very volatile, isn't he?" inquired Galadriel, surprising me out of my reverie.

"Oh," I said in reply, awkward. "Yes."

She let silence reign.

"He is," I added pointlessly.

We walked a few more paces.

"Did you know?" I asked her.

"I've always known," she said. "But he has a very specific purpose, and his volatility plays a part in allowing him to fulfill it."

I sighed, considering.

"Have you decided yet what you will do about him?" she asked.

"I do not know," I said.

"Don't you?" she asked, turning her salient gaze upon me.

"Do I?" I asked, feeling a wash of confusion.

She studied me for a moment.

"You do," she said. "You simply haven't put it all together, yet."

"Then tell me!" I asked, dying for answers.

"I cannot," she said.

I suddenly wanted to cry.

"It's because you have to be the one to put it together, or you won't have the depth of understanding required," she said.

I felt like a mess. I didn't know how to put it together. I didn't know what pieces were supposed to be parts of the puzzle. I felt as if I didn't know anything.

After a while I looked back at my grandmother and saw empathy in her eyes.

"I would express regret that you face this trial, Eren, but I won't," she said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Because it is worth the suffering," she said.

I turned my eyes to the path ahead and found myself blinking back tears.

"Just be assured that you have everything you need," I heard her voice say.

I tried to let that assure me, though it didn't very much. A moment later, Thranduil appeared on the other side of Galadriel.

"Lady Galadriel," he said by way of greeting.

I turned my gaze ahead so he wouldn't see my emotions.

"Thranduil," she replied cordially, being one of the few people in the world who could address him so casually due to her age and the fact that she'd watched him grow up.

"We should be arriving at the outskirts of Dol Guldur in the morning, that is if we plan to stop for the night," he said.

"What do you think we should do?" she asked him, almost like a charitable offering.

There was a quiet moment where all I could hear was our footsteps in the forest. I glanced over at Thranduil, and he caught my gaze. There was a gentleness that warmed his eyes when he looked at me, and I found I missed him. He shifted his glance to Galadriel.

"If we come upon them in the night, they will have less time to regroup," he said. "But if we come upon them in the morning, they are weaker in the light of the sun."

"Then I suppose the decision should come down to whether you believe they will be too strong for us in the night," said Galadriel.

"They will not," he said, "In either case."

"Does it then depend on which you would prefer to do?" asked Galadriel.

Thranduil let out a small sigh.

"Let's get this over with," he said.

"As you wish," said Galadriel, though I suspected she knew what he would choose all along, and the outcome was what she wanted.

He moved on, ahead of us, and I watched him go. I wondered if my grandmother made him nervous. I wondered if that was the same sort of unease I gave him.

Suddenly, I felt my grandmother push me in his direction and, after my initial surprise, I gave her a look and saw her smiling, amused. I could see all of this, this entire mess and ball of stress in which I was living, was terribly amusing to her. Maybe I was a little affronted.

"Fine," I whispered to her and hurried to catch up with his stride.

As he discovered me beside him, he looked surprised.

"Hello," I said lamely.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Walking here," I replied, aloof.

"I see," he admitted.

We experienced a silence, yet we continued to walk astride, both too stubborn to talk first, and too stubborn to part first, either. Eventually, he broke the silence.

"Which would you prefer to work on once we arrive at Dol Guldur," he asked, "assaulting Shelob's spawn or the main fort?"

I watched him for a moment, though he kept his eyes on the path ahead.

"Where do you think I would be of best use?" I asked.

"Nowhere," he replied immediately. "Hidden away, safe, elsewhere."

I laughed, though it was out of place to do so, mostly out of wryness.

"Indeed no," I replied. "How would I record what happens for the Greenwood's histories if I don't observe it for myself?"

He looked at me then, remembering, perhaps, my ultimate role in his court as his recorder and scribe. I was that before I fought in his army, I was that before I became his friend, or lover, or neither, or both. A lightening gratitude passed through his features.

"Perhaps you should be wherever you deem it most advantageous for your mission," he said, a gentleness in his voice.

"Perhaps I should be with you," I said.

He smiled, something of shyness shuttering his edges, and upon finding it endearing, I walked closer to his side. We walked together, basking in the glow of our agreement, and on occasion I would catch his sleeve in my fingertips for a pace or two as it was the only act bordering on affection that I could do while maintaining our required decorum.

Our march continued as the day was spent into dusk, then evening shadow. Thranduil caught my hand in the dark and held it close. I felt as if we were holding our breaths, waiting for this to end, waiting for Dol Guldur, waiting for its conclusion to answer our deepest questions. That it could solve our problems was a ridiculous idea; I don't know why we felt like we did. Then again, I never knew why we felt like we did, not from the beginning, so it wasn't anything new. His proximity was an immense comfort at the time, however.

"Your majesty," said a scout, arriving, breathless in the darkest part of night.

Thranduil released my hand.

"Yes?" he inquired.

"Dol Guldur is yonder, over that rise," said the scout, "and first within the hollow is the spawn of Shelob, wherein their nests flourish."

"We will burn the nests into ash," said Thranduil, and he turned at once to find Galadriel and Celeborn and his captains.

True to his word, by the next hour, the nests of Shelob's spawn lay ruined and smoldering, their foul smoke billowing into the sky in a half-ring round the hill of Dol Guldur, a prior sentry to our coming, a warning to those that still dwelt therein. It had been enough; the elves had tolerated the darkness in the woodlands long enough and their patience had been exhausted. In the dark of the pre-dawn hours, the armies of Lothlorien and the Greenwood assaulted, together, the miserable forces that remained at Dol Guldur, and left no stone unturned, no gully unlit, nothing foul unburned. The darkness of Dol Guldur was purified by fire; by the mundane torch kind of fire, and by the brilliant white fire of my grandmother's ring of power.

I watched her tear apart the standing stones and walls of Dol Guldur with more magic than I had ever seen wielded in my life; I saw a white-hot righteous fury in her eyes which I had never beheld. There was nothing that would stop her from cleansing and restoring Amon Lanc at last. No one's determination surpassed my grandmother's, not even Thranduil's.

At long last, as those few enemies which had not been burned to ash scrambled southward towards, fleeing towards what might be left of Mordor, the coming dawn brought a gloaming to the eastern sky and my grandmother and I walked upon some of the few paved stones left upon Amon Lanc and observed its newly cleansed state. The forest beyond the hill seemed enlivened, with the return of birdsong and the rustling of life. I found myself gazing west.

"Will you go?" my grandmother asked, surprising me out of thoughts I didn't realize I'd been having.

"To the Undying Lands?" I asked, glancing at her, then back towards the west.

It was still purple in that way, where the dawn's pre-sun light didn't reach, and upon that hill I could pretend to see the waves of the sea beyond the last stars that shone in the ending night. I listened, stretching my senses to see if I could feel it calling to me, ascending a few marble steps which still stood, a staircase to nothing, yet perhaps remnants from Oropher's reign.

"Your sister is staying," said Galadriel, still standing on the paving stones below. The rising eastern sun would strike me first, when it came.

"Yes, she is," I said, though Arwen's circumstances saddened me.

"I am not," said Galadriel.

I turned to gaze at her, a question asked in my mind but not spoken aloud.

"My power is diminished," she said, and I perceived the gentle melancholy which threaded through her tapestry. She was sorry to see her power go, but she knew it was time. She was sorry to leave Middle Earth but also knew her time here was over.

"Grandmother," I said, asking, "why did you care so much for the reclaiming of Amon Lanc? I should think your fury seemed as great if it had been Lorien itself fouled by Sauron's ilk, but it was only a hill once ruled over by a long-passed woodland king, and a Sindar one, at that."

The look she gave me was chiding, for I'd spoken of a Sindar as if he were lesser than us.

"I'm only trying to understand," I plead. "Thranduil himself couldn't match your wrath."

Her chiding look faded into an enigmatic smile.

"We are woodland people, aren't we?" she asked in a rhetorical way.

"My father is not," I said.

"No," she said, "He isn't. Neither is your grandfather, though he abides it for my sake."

This was something I never knew.

"Oropher and I had much in common," said Galadriel. "His kingdom was very dear to me. Is dear to me, I suppose, though he no longer rules it."

I stared at my grandmother, wondering what history she shared with King Oropher of the Woodland Realm. Her expression was something which I had not seen before on her face; it seemed distant, remembering, sad and unsure. She looked up at me.

"You're staying, aren't you?" she said.

As she voiced it, I knew she was right. I was staying. I would never go across the sea. I hadn't fully realized it until that moment, but I would stay in Middle Earth, and I had known, somewhere deeply, that I would never leave long ago. The battle with Sauron was not and had never been mine, only a remnant, a purpose for those who lived in and came from another age. They may go but I would not. This was my home.

Her look dissolved into a smile.

"Your resolve gives me comfort," she said. "You will always watch over the Woodland Realm, won't you?"

"Yes," I said, knowing it. I loved the Greenwood, and, unlike my sister, I would remain immortal. For me, there was no other acceptable choice to be made.

"Is it true?" I heard from nearby. I turned to see Thranduil standing just beyond the shadow of the stair. Translucent rays from the sun threatened to breach the horizon just behind him. "You will stay?"

I looked down on him, brilliant white, yet battle-wearied, darkened in spots, sullied by war, yet hopeful. He had not lost hope in things to come. He had, perhaps, gained more hope than ever these past few weeks through the joy of reunifying with his ancient, beloved woodland allies, and of clearing the darkness from his forest, perhaps forever. It brought me happiness to see him like this, but at the same time I knew at once that I would have to be cruel to him, now. It was necessary.

"I will stay," I said, gazing down upon him.

He brightened and ascended a step or two towards me, yet something in my face caused him to halt. I saw caution and unsureness seep into his eyes, but I was sure.

"I will never go west," I said. "I will never go to the Undying Lands."

He watched me, waiting.

"Will you?" I inquired.

It might have seemed, taken out of context, like a simple question. It might have seemed like a small bit of polite elfin conversation, something important to one, sure, but not earth-shattering. He knew, however, what I was asking. He knew what I was demanding. He knew I was giving him an ultimatum. He was either hers or he was mine. He was not ours. I would not share.

I saw a shuttering in his eyes, like the clicking in place of every implication I'd foisted upon him in the moment. His gaze, once hopeful, fell away from me and his body withdrew inward, he lost a step, his descent was small yet profound. He turned towards the west and gazed upon the stars, fading, eradicated one by one in the rising sun's light.

"She is my wife," he said, almost an exhalation of feeling, almost a begging for mercy.

I said nothing, cruel, and waited. It was necessary. I watched tears as they welled unbidden, though he was helpless against them, in his eyes, not falling, but there. They were a physical facsimile of the emotion which threatened to pour from his every seam. Yet, he held it back.

"She is the mother of my child," he said, his voice weak, half-whispered, and he turned his eyes to look at me, as if it were madness that I would ask such a thing of him. As he did, a shuddering in his eyes caused a tear to fall down his face, straight, down, down, crashing into the dust of Amon Lanc, of Oropher's Hill.

I did not relent. I would not relent. I had no mercy in that moment. I watched him, I gazed upon him and felt emotionless as the statues in the Gates of Argonath. It was because I knew, with finality, this was my path. Whether he would walk with me or not would be his choice to make. Was it cruel that I made him choose? Perhaps in the moment, but his wounding, this sword which I thrust through his heart, was inevitable. He had pounded mine with a hammer. He had crushed my heart beyond feeling, almost to my death. We had stretched each other near to breaking. Perhaps it was all part of who and what we were to each other that I would watch him bleed upon the marble steps of his father and could feel nothing for his pain.

Because it was necessary.

He fell to one knee upon a step and wept, helpless, disarmed, broken, weeping, mourning for his wife, long lost to the fading and the Undying Lands, for memories lost and changed by centuries and millennia, for the circumstances which crushed him between this world and the next.

I lifted my eyes from Thranduil to see my grandmother still standing a little way off, upon the same stone as before, and watching us with her gaze. As our eyes met, she gave me one of her enigmatic smiles and I knew I'd found my answer, and perhaps her answer, and perhaps a conclusion to many things left unfinished. I perceived that she would now feel completely at ease leaving the Woodland Realm and Middle Earth under my care.

I turned to see the sun finally crest the horizon in a tiny, brilliant sliver of light, spilling out across the Woodland Realm and the heights of Amon Lanc, piercing the still-rising plumes of blackened smoke from the cleansing fire and making ashes dance like fireflies. I watched flakes of ash float on the breeze, slow, almost suspended, as if time waited, paused, delaying forward momentum until the next phase began. Letting my gaze fall upon Thranduil's crumpled form, I knew it was enough. I allowed empathy to resurge in me, and I descended to his stair and threw my arms around his shoulders, as if I were a blanket, a cloak, a protection.

I brushed his hair behind his ear, gently.

"What will you do?" I whispered, inquired, gentle, tender.

He was nearly beside himself with grief, but he replied through it, as if through a broken haze.

"What else can I do?" he asked as he wept.

I knew he was mine. He, perhaps, was always mine, from the moment we met. I held him and reassured him through tender treatment that everything would be fine.

"I love you," I whispered into his ear.

Though unable to reply, he clenched my hand with a passionate mourning and a euphoric sadness which juxtaposition played across us both like rays of sun would cut and twist through boughs of treetops to the forest floor. We were an inevitability which could only be accepted, everything else be damned.

-ooOOoo-

A/N: One epilogue-like chapter left and this fic will be finished!