Chapter dump of 5 chapters today. Dont miss any. :-)
Highly recommended you read Finfinfin1's story Protector of Dreams, if you have not already, before this chapter.
Elrohir
It is a whirlwind I am caught in and it feels as if, somehow, I have been left behind. Legolas and Aragorn speak a language between themselves I do not understand.
I am missing something.
And behind it all the thought of my small brothers isolation tears at my heart. We have left him feeling unloved . . . all these years.
Still, Legolas is at the forefront of my mind, sitting miserable, in the dust where I have left him.
I should not have left him.
"What do you hope to achieve?" I call out to Aragorn as he strides ahead.
"I wish to know what he has to say."
"He still cannot write. That was cruel. What has got into you?"
"I know he cannot write and he knows I know that. I do not expect him to. What do you take me for Elrohir?"
"Then why . . ." Nothing about him makes sense to me today. Why give Legolas pen and paper if you do not expect him to write?
"You waste your time anyway." I say in the end. "Take it from me. Once he has decided not to speak he will not. You would be better to simply try again tomorrow. It is the most frustrating thing about him but there is no way round it." In this I am certain, I know Legolas.
But Aragorn spins on his heels to face me and the look on his face is nothing short of amazement.
"What do you mean, decided not to speak?"
"What you just saw. Sulkiness, sullenness, call it what you will. It is how he gets when he is angry, how he deals with arguments. Perhaps it is a silvan thing?"
Yet his disbelief does not dissipate.
"You cannot misunderstand this, Elrohir. You have been together for centuries!"
"I misunderstand nothing!"
"I forget," he says then, "that you never knew Legolas as he was. You have only known the one who has suffered damage."
"I knew him before that, long before that!"
"But you did not know him did you, Elrohir, not really. Oh you threw insults at each other, you watched each other but you did not know each other. If you did you would know that is not how Legolas deals with arguments at all. He is loquacious. He attempts to bamboozle you with words, lots of words, a torrent of nonsense so he can confuse you and wiggle his way out of trouble. Silence is not him, not at all, not Legolas as he was born to be."
He is right. I did not, in truth, know Legolas well before his injury. We had one night together and it is not enough to say you know someone. Now he mentions it I do remember that young Legolas. The one who would spill his words on top of you until you drowned in them leaving you wondering what it was you stood for in the first place. But he has grown and changed since then, as we all do.
"He is not that Legolas any longer." I tell him.
"No he is not, and why is that? How can you not remember this? You were there when we discussed it. You were the one who brought him to us to assess it."
At the back of my mind a feeling of unidentifiable dread begins to grow. I chose to ignore it.
"I have no idea what you mean!"
And Aragorn's voice softens. He moves from incredulity to sadness.
"You do know what I mean. Legolas does not decide not to speak. He cannot speak. You have forgotten it, or perhaps you simply did not want to hear it all those years ago. Can you not remember me telling you of the man in Minus Tirith I had seen once who also lost the ability to write?"
"Yes, I remember that! I am Elven. Do not treat me as a fool, Ar—" I am about to call him Aragorn, which he has just told me hurts him, and I catch myself at the very last, "Estel."
"Then you will remember I also told you he could not speak."
And it all comes flooding back. How did I forget this?
"You said that, but Legolas can speak, and he said that at the time."
"That is not what he said, Elrohir."
And I do remember it then, as clear as crystal. There are times. . . I can almost hear Legolas' hesitant voice as if he is here next to me, when words elude me, when I cannot find the ones I want, to tell you how I feel. It is when I am upset.
I feel sick to my stomach.
"But he has improved since then. This cannot be it, all these years!"
He moves towards me then, and places a hand upon my shoulder.
"If it helps, it took me more years than it should have to understand just how much it affects him. I gave him that paper not to write, but to draw, and I discovered that entirely by accident. His pictures say what his words cannot."
It does not help. It does not because I should have known more than him. It does not help because it has been years . . . years, that we have been together and I have been making these assumptions. A torrent of past arguments where he has sullenly shut me out stream into my mind.
"Does Maewen know this?"
"Well I hope so." Aragorn says grimly, "or it will have been a miserable time for Legolas. Now I think I should have been more clear. I should have spelled this out for all of you."
"Why did he not tell me this?"
"Well only he can answer that, Elrohir. I have long ago learned not to suppose what goes on in Legolas' mind."
"I have failed him." It is all I can think. All these years and I have absolutely failed him.
"It is not about you though, Elrohir." He spins away from me with a sigh. "Come, let us go down to the beach and give him his space. I yearn to see the sea. Sometimes I think the blood of the Mariner runs through my veins."
It is just an aside but it brings tumbling back that pain he described to Legolas, all that loneliness. There is more I need to say to him.
But I must run to catch him for as soon as the trees open up to the grass and the sand and the ocean he is off and running. By the time I reach the sand he stands knee deep in the waves, sea spray wetting his dark curls, and when he turns to me, where I stand on the shore he is smiling.
I sit down there on the warm sands and watch him. He reminds me of Elladan, so transformed is he by the sea. It is as if those burdens he carries, of Eldarion and Legolas, fall by the wayside.
"Ah, that feels better," he grins when finally he throws himself beside me, dripping wet. "It is as if they work a magic upon me, those waves. They smooth away all those knots of worry."
"I never knew you enjoyed the ocean so much . . . Estel." It is awkward now to call him that, so many years I have been calling another by that name.
"Why did you think I went so often to Dol Amroth?" he laughs.
"Politics?" Now I think on it he did journey there frequently.
"Well that, yes, and Imrahil was good company but the ocean was so invigorating. It was difficult though with Legolas . . . I could not spend as much time as I might have wished near the shore, obviously."
There is something about the light in his smiling face that is so familiar.
"You reminded me of Elladan before," I tell him, "standing in the waves like that. He glows in the sea as well."
And he turns to me in surprise.
"Now he is without the sea-longing you mean?"
"Oh no, he still has that. He will always have it."
"Stop with your nonsense, Elrohir." He flicks some water at me and he laughs. Who is this Aragorn?
"It is not nonsense. He never had the sea-longing—as we thought anyway. Not as Legolas had it. Not the Sindar kind. It was Laerion who solved the puzzle when Elladan and he went to Alqualondë. It is a mannish sea-longing Elladan has. Inherited from Eärendil and Tuor, and looking at you now, perhaps you have a touch of it yourself, brother." I reach out and grasp his face so I can see it more clearly, so he cannot look away.
I know now who it is he reminds me off. Not Elladan.
"Finrod is right," I tell him. "You look like Eärendil. His curls may be golden, but you have his face all the same."
"Eärendil," he shrugs. "I do not think that likely."
"Why not?"
"I am generations separated from him."
"He would not think so. He would see Elros in you, as my father did."
"That was imagination born of desperation." He sighs. "Elrond wished to see Elros and so he did see him. That does not make it real."
I drop my hand, leaving him free to look away back to the waves.
"Is it true, Estel, what you said to Legolas," I say softly. "Have you really felt so homeless? Was Imladris really such a lonely place for you?"
"I was a clumsy, ordinary human boy in the midst of all the beauty and elegance of the home of an Elven lord. Of course I did not fit, Elrohir. You know this."
"You were not a burden, Estel. You were never a duty. They all loved you. We loved you, and you were never ordinary."
"Ordinary when compared to the grace and beauty of the elves. I was the boy who spoke too loud, who could not sit still, who broke everything he touched, a misfit in amongst all that elegance."
"Who ran in long corridors." I add and his face, when he darts a glance my way is split with a grin.
"I remember that!"
"I remember all of it," I tell him. Sitting here next to him as he looks so young in the spray of the sea, unleashes a torrent of memories. "I remember the darkest night, when I plucked a terrified infant from his mother to ride him to safety, my heart aching with the death of Arathorn, and you punched and kicked me until I was black and blue. I should have stayed longer then, in Imladris, and made sure you settled but the Dunedain needed us, Halbarad needed us and Elladan and I . . . Imladris was a hard place to be then.
"I remember the terrified wildcat of a boy I next met who promised he would kill me if I hurt his mother."
"I had no idea how I was going to do that," he interrupts with a laugh.
"Ah but such courage, Estel. I remember you telling me then you had no friends. I should have taken more notice. I am sorry."
"You were my friend" he says softly.
"It was not enough though. I loved Imladris but I could not be there then. After my mother left it was tainted. Yet we could find no peace anywhere else, Elladan and I. It did not matter how many of the enemy we killed, we could not escape the ghost of our mother everywhere we went. You changed that, Estel.
"Suddenly I found myself wishing to return home, wanting to linger when I was there. Because there was a small boy who cared for me, who needed me, who even then I knew was special. You shone with such a light. You bought such joy into our home which desperately needed it. How could you know how you changed it when you did not know what it was like before."
I look across at him. He stares out to sea and I wonder what he is thinking. I am frustrated with myself I cannot truly find the words to express how important he was to me then, and has always been.
"I am sorry for the deception about your heritage. It was a decision I was not a part of but I did not, perhaps, argue strongly enough against it when I could have. It was done for the right reasons but it was not our only option."
It is then he speaks.
"All I wanted was a place I belonged," he says. "I have never been able to find it. Even Minas Tirith was a battle to gain acceptance. But when Eldarion arrived . . . He was mine, finally he was someone so perfectly connected to me. But I have damaged that connection because I have never known how to be the right father for him."
"Oh I think you are too hard on yourself, Estel!"
"I think not," he shrugs. "He is a puzzle I cannot solve. I never had my own father to show me how."
Despite myself he makes me laugh.
"I do not think knowing Arathorn would have helped you! You have no idea the number of times I have seen Legolas completely perplexed over what to do next with Estel. Having Thranduil at his beck and call did not make things any clearer. We have all made a ham-fisted mess with that boy, Legolas, Maewen, Erynion and myself. I have come to the conclusion that is how fatherhood always is. Fumbling around in the dark hoping one of the options you choose is the right one. Despite us Estel has grown into a boy who makes us proud.
"I think you need to ask Eldarion what kind of father you were, and how damaged your connection might be."
"I am afraid of what he might say."
"You are no coward, Estel. But for what it is worth I will tell you my opinion, take it or leave it. You should have seen him. He was a Man to be proud of when you left us. Sensitive, empathetic, firm when he needed to be. He handled the Lords of Minas Tirith perhaps better than even you. But he changed not a thing in your study. Not one thing, though Elladan and I encouraged him too. He filled that room with the essence of you and it became his bolt hole. He missed you with an Elven grief that was unrelenting. He modelled himself on you, perhaps too much, because his weakness has always been an inability to appreciate his own strengths.
"A man who does not know how to be a father does not raise a son like that. I think you have been better at this than you give yourself credit for. Remember, Arathorn had not much practice at fatherhood himself. A warrior leader of a nomadic people? He barely had time to be a parent."
For the longest time he looks out into the water and says nothing, and I let him. The silence lasts so long I jump when he does speak.
"When Legolas and I have tracked down Gimli I am going in search of Arathorn. Will you come with me?"
"Do you not wish to take Eldarion?"
"No. It is not going to be easy. I need someone who knows my father and loves him already. I need someone to look after me. Eldarion I will introduce to my father once I know him. I have imagined meeting Arathorn for so long, since I was a child, but suddenly it is terrifying."
"I would be honoured to go with you, little brother," I tell him and I mean it. Putting an arm across his shoulder I pull him tight as I used to do when he was younger, in that coltish stage between boy and man, awkward and moody. He would storm off for no particular reason and I would find him, sitting on his own out in the garden, and though he might not talk to me he never refused my hug. I think he needs one today, grown as he may be.
"I call you that," I tell him, "not because it is a convenient word to describe an unorthodox relationship, the closest I can make fit, but because it is true. In my heart you are my brother, then, now, and always."
"I could not have a better one," he says softly.
I hope he means it.
"I have learnt something about belonging these last few days," I go on. "It is not something I am good at. Valinor was a struggle until I discovered Eärendil—another elf with a mannish heart, and Imladris, though it was always home I often felt ungainly there, not quite Elven enough. But now I find I have been adopted by an eclectic bunch of wood-elves. Who would have thought it. And though I would say it is the least likely place I would fit they tell me I belong to them, and that feels good. I think perhaps if we look too hard for a place to call our own we risk missing one right under our nose."
But I can say no more though there is much more to say and I do not hear his reply.
"Can you give us a moment, Elrohir."
The voice floats across to us from the trees.
It is Legolas.