Chapter 48: Spite for the father
"That is enough!"
Ortholin and Zeria turned swiftly, both recoiling slightly at the sight that move gave them.
Zairil was dangerously furious—her eyes practically glowed with flames. She stormed towards them, eyes narrowed, chin set, and glared between them for a long moment. "This has gone on far too long," she informed them. "Follow me."
Zeria looked ready to flat-out refuse, but closed her mouth when Ortholin began to follow without so much as a quirked brow in protest. With pursed lips she began to follow, before shaking her head and passing him, going to Zairil's side.
Zairil—in a move that made her look as much like her father as she ever had—quirked a brow but said nothing, and the trip through the halls was made in silence. It was only when the signs of elves began falling away to sheer rock that the silence which gripped the two elders was broken.
"You aren't expecting us to go exploring?" Zeria asked, derision practically dripping from the word.
"In a manner of speaking," Zairil replied shortly, before ducking off of the almost-path into a small, rough-hewn chamber that held precisely two boxes, two water-skins, and two days worth of waybread. Zairil led them in, then turned about, shoving a door they hadn't even noticed into place, locking it firmly. "Legolas helped me with the lock, Ada—it will not let you out. Don't waste your energy."
"Zairil, what are you doing?"
"Giving the entire palace a little bit of a respite from your constant bickering, if nothing else. I don't care if you never fall in love, never deepen your bond, but I will not abide this endless pettiness. If you hate each other, declare it, and have done. If not—well, you've even more to talk about in that case, haven't you?"
"Young lady, you let me out of here this instant!"
"I will not, old lady," Zairil countered with a snarl.
"But…" There was a slight touch of panic in her voice. "Couldn't you give us a light, at least?"
"Ask Ada for that—he can provide it better than I."
"Zairil, don't you dare—"
"I'll be back periodically to check on you," she called over her shoulder. She rolled her eyes, but stopped halfway back to the courtyard, bringing a hand to her eyes, closing them.
"I warned you not to get your hopes up."
"I know," she agreed, looking up at Angolar. Her eyes widened. "Where is Tinuviel?"
He glared at her mock-shock. "With her mother," he informed her, wrapping his arm defensively over his middle.
Zairil laughed at how close to a sulky child he sounded.
Ortholin sighed as he stepped back from the door. The magic of it completely refused him—he couldn't open the door. He felt his way to the wall and sat down with his back to it.
"Light?"
He snorted. "No."
"Why not?"
"Because I've grown very sick of Mirkwood in the last days, and I really don't want to look at you."
"So why not simply return to Lothlorien?"
"Are you blind as well as deaf?" he snapped. "Zairil is in a difficult place, right now. Her cousin is wrapped up in his new daughter, and Legolas—"
"Prince Legolas."
"I've heard far too many stories of him as Leaf, troll, or prince-ling to constantly consider him as the crowned prince he is these days."
Silence fell in the darkness for a long moment, before he heard her breath catch—as if to hold in words. Then she sighed, and he could hear her shifting. "What about him?"
He half-smiled, but it was bitter. "He loves her."
"That has been obvious to the court since they were less than a hundred."
"Not merely as a friend."
"Don't be daft."
He rolled his eyes. "Am I the only one who sees it? He loves her… but failed to realize it himself. I think he may begin to understand now. At least, when he looks at her something moves within him, but it is always chased so quickly by pain or fear that I can't read it. Whatever is happening, he is avoiding her—and most everyone else, as well. So I am the only one close to her, right now."
"She has many friends among the guard," Zeria dismissed it.
He shook his head. "Friends. Friends, yes. But they are not close enough. A smile, a laugh—that's all they're good for."
Silence again fell for what could have been hours or mere minutes. "You should have stayed in Lothlorien."
He snorted. "Should haves could cover many things. I should have known the elf I bound myself to. I should have been able to trust that she would tell me my child had been conceived. I should have sought Zairil far earlier than I did, even if I had to come here to do it."
"She didn't want to see you."
"No, you didn't want her to know me. What was the problem, Zeria, afraid she would prefer me to the conniving lady you've become?"
There was a slight hitch to her breathing. "The lady you made me."
"You can blame only your title upon me—the change you affected to go with it is your own abomination."
"Am I not a lady?"
"By title only."
She snorted. "I suppose Zairil is a lady?"
"Yes. Even without her blood, I would call her a lady. She watches the world, and seeks to understand what of it she does not."
"Oh, yes—her unnatural curiosity," she sneered.
"Unnatural only in that so many have suppressed their own—or have you truly forgotten how we met?"
Only the soft sounds of breathing and hearts beating broke the silence for quite a while, as both remembered what they hadn't wished to.
"What do you want of me?" she asked at length.
He smiled slightly to hear her speak without anger, spite or craft. "All I ever wanted of you was, very simply, you. The elf who tumbled into a meeting where she didn't belong and unabashedly lifted a brow, daring us to chide her. The elf who loved the wood with a passion unmatched by any other I have known… the elf who vanished two days after our binding."
"She could not be, as long as she was to be called 'Lady'."
"She could have been, should have been. The title means little—especially as you married into it. If Legolas, for example, bound himself to a village elf, none in the court could expect her to behave as a princess."
"Perhaps not right away, but in time—"
"In time, yes. Not in a matter of days."
"And yet you—"
"I wanted you as you were, Zeria, not as some calculating wretch who is cruel to her own daughter out of spite for the father!"
Thick silence descended yet again.
Ortholin sighed, wearily shaking his head. "We have grown so apart we cannot even speak civilly."
"Does that truly surprise you? Did you have other expectations when you arrived?"
"I had no lofty hopes, no dreams of being reunited with the one my soul is bound to. I would think civility is a bare need, considering we have a child."
"Her years are well—she does not need us."
"Need? What child needs their parent once of a few centuries? Need is a troubling thing. Wanting, however—that can be worked with. Zairil loves me, and she loves you, as well, though her love for you is tempered by the wariness you've trained her to hold against you."
"The point?"
"The point… I don't suppose I have one. I love her, she loves me, and I'm tired of having only a few decades before she comes trotting back home to the elf who holds her heart. I have nothing holding me to Lothlorien as strongly as her hold upon me—I intend to stay here for many years—perhaps even to the removal to the West of Lothlorien. Perhaps beyond then, if she does not travel West."
"Her hold upon you is indeed strong," Zeria muttered.
He sighed, lifting a hand to cover his eyes. "Zeria, I'm trying to ask that you keep that blasted tongue of yours civil. So you hate me for not liking the false creature you've become. So you hate that I find your daughter greater than you, as she is not false. I had no expectations of reconciliation when I arrived—I will not claim otherwise. I have lived many years without you, I can continue so for the rest of time, if I must. But I will not spend centuries fleeing the room when you arrive merely because you cannot keep silent for a moment."
"Can't keep silent!" she raged. "I am not the one to instigate our arguments!"
"Are you not?"
"You goad me at every turn with your abandonment of me, and you expect me to remain silent?"
"My abandonment?" he repeated quietly. "I did not abandon you—you wanted me gone."
"Why would I want my husband gone?"
"I know not, but you did. I have never felt as unwanted as when around you—then and now."
She huffed, and he imagined—from the sounds of cloth and the slight scraping of a box—that she'd turned her back on him. Her voice, when it came, was echoing differently. "You claim you wanted me as I was—then why did you try to change me?"
"I was unaware I had."
"You cannot take a wood-elf, call her a lady, drag her to another place of which she knows nothing, and expect her to remain the same."
"You never went to Lothlorien."
"No," she agreed quietly. "But I was frightened of doing so."
"Why?" he asked, mystified. "I had told you stories from the beginning. Sang you the songs."
"Yes—but that made it all the worse. I could see you loved the wood, could see you longed to return, but I had no desire to leave. Greenwood was familiar, comfortable. I grew up in these trees, racing around the villages and under the flets. You wanted to take me to a wood of ancient power and mystery, with high-elves who had sat under the trees, who had basked in the light and glory of the Valar. Can't you understand how frightening that is, alone… but then to make me feel I had to live up to the title of Lady among them?"
His eyes fell from her direction, though in the darkness, nothing changed. "Therein lies our problem," he mused at length.
"What, that—"
"Zeria," he protested wearily. "The problem—" he laughed bitterly. "It took nearly three thousand years for you to say that the idea of leaving Greenwood to travel to Lothlorien worried you. Had you simply told me that, we would have remained here."
"You wanted to return."
"Of course I did! I have family there, friends that I have had and loved longer than you have lived. But travel is always possible, especially in those brighter days. If you were not even willing to go for a brief visit, I would have gone alone, though I wanted them to know and love you as I did. We would have lived here. Where my title gives me a place in the palace, at the table of the King." He snorted. "Three thousand years of silence—merely because you wouldn't trust me to listen to the concerns of the elf I loved enough to expect to have by my side for the rest of the ages."
Silence fell between them once more.
