Author's note: Still struggling with school and work in this bizarre online world I now inhabit; still feeling bad about my program, etc,; but I have been enjoying fanfiction! I added a section between Parts 3 and and Part 4, and it is this section, called Intermission. It is 4 chapters and it slows us down a bit, gives us some space from Legolas, before diving back into the final "action" of the story. :) There are approximately 10 chapters left after this one, and 6.5 out of the 10 are written, so we are drawing to a close!

Thank you to Cheekybeak for providing some great feedback and indulging me in a very good conversation to help me better understand Thranduil and his competing roles here. I have worked with families, studied families, and written about families, but I do not actually have my own. She leant a maturity to Thranduil that I could not have gotten by myself, and I am grateful for that. (She hasn't read it since all the edits, though, so all mistakes are on me.)

An Intermission: Interludes

Chapter Sixteen

Legolas and Ithildim

Ithildim stayed with Legolas just a little longer than it took them to eat their lunch. In the rush of Aergwen and Galion responding to his request for help and removing Gwaerain from the room, he had asked that someone call for his father—and Legolas' healer—Anaron, so he could leave his friend without worry and go speak with Saida, before things spun off again. They had planned to address an issue before, but things had deteriorated before they had the chance, and he was loath to make the same mistake twice.

While Legolas had been largely composed, and himself, as they had eaten, there had been a moment after—while they waited for Anaron—that he had fallen suddenly quiet, seemingly wandering deep within his mind, knees pulled up to his chest and head cushioned atop them, fingers looping loosely at his ankles as he basketed himself in silence... It seemed to Ithildim that Legolas hovered somewhere between sleep and a deep-dug anxiety, but it nevertheless afforded him the opportunity to cross to Legolas' table and scratch out a message to Saida, which he then handed to the guard who had—of course—reappeared by the time he opened the door, under the pretense of placing their lunch tray in the corridor. Where the guard had been less than an hour earlier when all this nonsense had taken place, Ithildim could not fathom, though he intended to find out before the day was done.

Legolas startled back into himself when Ithildim again shut the door, and he unfurled and lifted a hand to his neck to rub at his shoulder absently. Ithildim took him gently under arm and ushered him back to his bed.

"If I am not out of this bed soon, I fear it shall consume me," Legolas complained halfheartedly as he leaned back into the stack of pillows.

Ithildim chuckled. "Stranger things we have seen in this forest, but sad would I be to lose you to such a pitiful end." Ithildim sat down beside him, picked up the tin of arnica and yarrow salve, and gestured. "Come, do you hurt?"

Legolas raised an eyebrow.

"All right!" Ithildim said as he twisted the cap off. "I shall just quit with asking and assume it is so until you tell me otherwise. Sit forward and let me help you."

Legolas smiled slightly and inched forward until Ithildim could slip behind him. "I am still in a relatively poor mood, Ithildim. Please forgive me."

"It is nothing. You have said worse to me, and I to you. And today has put me in a rather poor mood, too." Legolas smiled at Ithildim's half-hearted admission. "Tie your hair up?" he asked.

Legolas twisted it quickly into a thick knot at the nape of his neck, and he patted about on the sidetable for a hairpin as Ithildim warmed salve in his hands. Legolas pinned the knot loosely and dropped his shirt so it draped to his elbows. The room was suddenly spun with the sharp scents of rosemary and yarrow, arnica and wild mint, and they sat together peaceably in silence as Ithildim began to work. Over the next several minutes, Legolas' head began to dip and Ithildim let him drift, for he had heard the gentle but intentional scuff of a boot outside the door, which he chose to not yet alert him to. He expected it was one of their unit, volunteered to play guard, though he had not actually told Legolas he had asked for someone to watch over him (and, since he had only a half hour earlier said he did not want to see anyone from their unit yet, he was not quite sure how it would be received).

Eventually, Ithildim pulled back and wiped off his hands. Legolas cleared his head and straightened again, readjusted his shirt.

"I smell like an apothecary," he teased quietly, as Ithildim slid from behind him, stood from the bed, and pulled on his cloak. "Thank you."

Ithildim waved a hand dismissively as Legolas looked up at him, wrapping the cotton shawl about himself tightly. "I am going to speak with Saida, find our captains. Work out how this happened."

Legolas dropped his eyes and nodded, and Ithildim fought to prevent a frown—he was not used to this easily discomfited, newly diffident Legolas.

"My father will be here shortly and—" he paused for a moment. "And I understand if you are irked, but Saida and I have taken it upon ourselves to ask one member of our company to stand guard at your door, at all times, until we know better how the Hall Guards failed you."

Legolas met his eyes again and snaked an arm out of the shawl. "I am not upset, Ithildim. I understand, and I am grateful. I am quite tired of surprises in my room." He managed a smile here before pointing toward his desk. "Would you mind bringing me those books before you leave?"

Ithildim grabbed them quickly and sat them on the sidetable. "You will lock the door, though, yes?"

Legolas nodded and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, following Ithildim quietly. Ithildim slipped out, but Legolas caught the door behind him and peered into the hall to identify the guard who had been "assigned" to his door.

"Elednil!" he exclaimed quietly, with a grateful sigh. "I am so relieved it is you."

Legolas leaned further out of the door as he beamed at Elednil, and he reached out tentatively to grasp his hands. Ithildim found himself glancing, fervently, down the hall toward Gwaerain's rooms.

"And a relief it is to see you, young one," Elednil was replying, taking Legolas' offered hands lightly and smiling, too. "You have no idea!"

Legolas chuckled darkly and swallowed a series of raspy coughs; Ithildim shifted his weight slightly, eyes still pinned on the Queen's door. "Yes, I expect the rumors have been something, but here I am, at least. Thank you so much for coming—"

Ithildim turned his attention back before laying a hand on Legolas' arm and interrupting the two abruptly. "Legolas, it would ease my heart if you were safe behind that door before I leave. I cannot stand—"

"Hush, Ithildim," Legolas interrupted in turn, and his smile froze for a moment before he inclined his head to Elednil in farewell. "I go." He held up a hand and softened his eyes before Ithildim could interrupt him again, or apologize for interrupting. "And, yes, I shall lock the door immediately, you mollycoddler."

And then he was gone behind the pine, and Ithildim was left outside with Elednil and that guard at the far end of the hall; Ithildim stood stiff and silent as he waited for the grinding of the lock. He was also immediately cognizant of the soft padding of stockinged feet and then the heavy scraping of a chair across stone. There was a solid thud and the reverberation of wood as it was shifted beneath the handle, as well.

There was silence for another moment then, in which Ithildim listened to the rustling of blankets as Legolas sank back onto his bed, and then the whispering of pages as he flipped through one of his books.

"He is unsettled," Elednil whispered to Ithildim almost inaudibly, and Ithildim nodded as he finally turned to Elednil himself.

In his message to Saida, he had asked her to send one of their unit's warriors—many of whom had been reassigned to help her on the training field—to stand outside Legolas' rooms, in addition to the guard already in the corridor. Sensitive, sharp Saida had sent just the right person. Older, kindly Elednil—older than even Amonhir—Elednil, the steady presence of their patrol who grounded them in ways even Ithildim could not due to his lifespan and experience.

Ithildim clutched Elednil at the shoulder with a grateful but exhausted smile, and Elednil nodded and took up Ithildim's upper arms, squeezing them reassuringly.

"And you are unsettled, too, Ithildim, which is good for neither of you." He inclined his head toward Legolas' door subtly. "Trust me with this."

"I do," Ithildim said quietly. "Thank you."

"Now, go do whatever it is you need to do with a focused mind," Elednil murmured, dropping his voice even lower, for they could hear a gentle cough and the shifting of weight on the bed again, even through the door. "Leave some of your worries with me, understand?"

He released his reassuring grip at Ithildim's arms. Ithildim nodded, and then Elednil pressed a ripped quarter of parchment with Saida's scribbled reply into his hands.

"We do not deserve you, Elednil," Ithildim breathed distractedly, words falling from him quietly and with speed as he unfolded the paper. "Thank you, thank you again—"

"You have said that, Ithildim—go!" Elednil swatted at him gently with an amused smile.

And so Ithildim went, shouldering past the guard at the far end of the hall as he glanced at the message. He redirected his route to the left and up, to meet Saida at the gates.

Behind him, he left the mess of Legolas' family, yet it was anything but truly out of mind, despite Elednil's advice...

Ithildim had decided approaching Thranduil about what had just happened was not exactly couth. Whether he had grown up dripping mud on the rug in their family room; had bloodied his son's nose by accident more times than he could count; had become such a fixture in Legolas' life in childhood that Thranduil would ruffle the heads of wildflower-honey and its ever-present blackwater counterpart—pressed together conspiratorially when the summer rains kept them pinned indoors—without a second thought, without even looking up from the papers in his hands as he weaved between stacks of blocks built into battlefields, skipped over horrible sketches of skirmishes they had tried to recreate from stories they had heard around festival fires long after they were supposed to be asleep… All that was immaterial to the fact that Thranduil was still the Elvenking and, besides, Ithildim had gotten the distinct impression that Thranduil was maybe handling all of this the worst, or, perhaps, engaging with it least of them all.

And so, he had called for Saida, and they would go to Lostariel together. For Lostariel would know what to do, and Saida would smooth his edges.

And may the Valar still his tongue if he was swept away in his rage, for he did not yet know if it was Lostariel's error—

And nothing had actually happened but—

Ithildim was not often angry, was not often haunted by what-ifs, and so he did not know exactly how to manage this intermittently flickering wrath. He intensely pitied his less anchored friends, for this was like being beaten repeatedly against the trunk of a tree while clung to its spindly top in a windstorm.

He passed out of the gates and Saida was suddenly there with a small rush of air. They spoke in quiet voices as they walked, and Ithildim let the winter's cool crispness sooth his rushing thoughts, and eventually Saida took his arm, and he threaded his fingers through hers.

They walked to the Officer Barracks, leaned together, and quiet, and, as they arrived, Saida stopped for a moment in wonder, hand outstretched, almost smiling—

Soon the woods would be dampened with the quiet of snow, fresh and cold, new, and silent.

Thranduil

Thranduil had excused himself from his council chambers, slipped down to the wine cellars, and then wound his way back up to a carved exit high up on the face of the Halls' hill. A tightly knit and well-knotted rope bridge connected it to a tall beech on the far side of the river that cut the edge of their hill. Within that tree's strong upper limbs was a small outpost—little more than a board—from which one could survey the surrounding forest, the fields cleared for the warriors' training, the expanses of poppies and field flowers in summer, the officers' studies and dormitories, the soldiers' barracks… From here, one could watch the woodsmoke rising from far-flung settlements in winter, could sometimes see rain approach like waves across the rolling forest, could scent the summer storms and winter winds ere they even arrived.

It was one of the few natural places that had remained relatively unchanged in the centuries and millennia since his children were born. He had felt eyes on his back and the urgent energy of another as he fled to this place's solace just minutes earlier, but he had not had to dismiss the tailing messenger nor even turn, and—within moments of noticing the follower—he heard their footsteps slow and then stop, then turn heel and walk away. This place was one of the few in the entirety of Mirkwood that his folk understood (by some unspoken agreement) was province of the Elvenking alone. None would approach him were he walking toward that outpost—even his own family thought twice before following him here.

This place was where Thranduil went to think and also, sometimes, where he went to mourn, when the darkness had crept a mile closer, had poisoned another stream, or had taken away another of the woods' sons and daughters, stolen from beneath the flimsy protection his leadership and waning magic seemed so inept now at providing.

He set the bottle of wine at the base of the tree, and then leaned against the side of the structure, arms crossed on the open windowsill, winter wind cutting at his face and whipping at his hair, that one feature of his that it seemed all his children but Piniriel had, in some form or another—whether texture or color—inherited from him. Gwaerain's traits were strong in all of their children but Lumornon, who took after him in all except the color of his hair and his bright hazel eyes; Lumornon reminded Thranduil most of his father's folk, and of his mother's wandering kin of ages past. Ironically, however, it was the very same bright hair and sharp grey eyes that marked his middle children—Felavel and Legolas—as not entirely Silvan in origin, despite the overwhelmingly wood-elven features that dominated them. Piniriel, meanwhile, was the spitting image of Gwaerain, though with eyes of darkest grey like Thranduil's own mother, the strong jaw of his father, and she was truly a whirlwind, even more so than Legolas had been (for he had had a streak of Oropherion steel—cunning determination—even as a small thing), but Piniriel was all thoughts and feelings, leaves on the breeze, sparks chased upward from winter bonfires...

Or she had been. The loss of Felavel and the apparent-loss of Legolas—locked away now, as he likely seemed to her, behind closed doors—had unsettled her.

Thranduil huffed as he thought of his children, and he rubbed a hand over his face as his eyes took in the heavy clouds far away over trees. They had begun to distinguish themselves from the grey flatness of the winter sky around them; a storm was coming.

His wife and his children. His wife and his children and his kingdom. Or, rather, the woods and the folk to which he had committed himself to protect, this first true home he had had since the ruin of Doriath…

He felt pulled into pieces, and the heavy center of himself—steady and unerring—that he had inherited from his own father (that had been grown and shored up sturdy and firm, unreachable, under his very tutelage) was finally failing. Without Gwaerain at his side, he wavered, for long had she succored his grief and allowed him to remain strong for their people. They had been friends longer than they had been spouses, yes, but it was in the death of their fathers and kin during which they had truly connected, truly sought one another's comfort. His own mother had faded after Thranduil returned from war, and Gwaerain's… Gwaerains's mother Dûnnaniel had been considering leaving for the Havens when grief took her first—the unsurety of Valinor, to her Silvan mind, paired with the devastation of her soul at the loss of her husband and son had been too much for her to handle, despite the urgent pleas of her own daughter that she either sail or persevere. Reassurance from Gwaerain that Thranduil had known Noldor who had crossed from there—elves who had seen it themselves—that he had watched his own green-elven kin sail thither in long Ages past was not enough—it was a myth and a mystery to her, and the decision was not made quickly enough and, so, she left them—

Unsurprisingly, then, Thranduil feared that history would now repeat itself with her Silvan daughter.

He knew too well the bitter pain of grief, and the soft sadness that cut into one when they were left motherless by it, even when such loss happened in adulthood. To be abandoned to Valinor was kinder than being abandoned to grief, and less painful, too, for those who were left behind to watch.

He knew this well.

And he worried for his son's soul, for Legolas—who was gentler than he, though no less brave or strong—whose feelings ran deep, spun throughout his body like tree twisted roots and questing vines, as intrinsic to him as organ and sinew. His youngest boy was wild honeysuckle, was rambling, resilient—he always found a way to the sun even when the dark undergrowth threatened to subsume him, and yet… For Legolas, with soul and body so intertwined—and so intertwined, too, with the land about him that he seemed to breathe with the woods, seemed to grow and change with its very seasons— this was perhaps hurting him worst of all, and hurting him more than Thranduil could even begin to understand, for they were simply...different.

Gwaerain had always been the one to reach these parts of their child that he could not. She could tend the garden of him in ways Thranduil could not even begin to comprehend. He was elven, yes, but she was wood-elven, and parenting wood-elves… Well, he was just thankful to have started fatherhood with Lumornon.

But Gwaerain… There was a weakness in her, too, a weakness that was also, like his youngest son, her strength—that depth of feeling and commitment to people and places, to ideas and to hearts, and to the wide and wild waking of the world. But she carried in herself also the indecisiveness of her mother and that frailty of soul and, though she had committed herself immediately to sailing—wasting no time on the figuring like her own mother had—there were practical things that had to be considered before she could leave. There was the scouting of a path, the preparation of a retinue, the organization of Gwaerain's matters of state, the consultation with the top-ranked foresters to determine if travel in such weather were even possible at all, and all of that in addition to political matters, in addition to the evaluation of her crime and her health in the eyes of the law…

And what if, like her mother, Gwaerain could not sustain her grief so long? If she were to fade away before those matters had even been seen to?

A cruel thing to subject his wife to, he thought, and his children, the risk of that. To risk them carrying that in their memories forever…?

And so, it burned his heart to acknowledge that Piniriel was, perhaps, the key to sustaining Gwaerain through the necessary steps succeeding her transgression, and it burned him even more to admit to himself that Piniriel might very well be better off with an ill but healing mother, in Valinor, than she would be here with him, in Mirkwood, motherless; the youngest in a family whose paternal figure was just as a much a father to his subjects as his offspring. He had left so much of the parenting of Piniriel and Legolas to Gwaerain…

And then Piniriel and Legolas, themselves, were another matter altogether.

The wind picked up outside the thin outpost, and the thick tree creaked as its limbs shuddered, preparing for the oncoming snow.

Thranduil knew Legolas needed to report to Lostariel, if he refused to stand before the board to report the incident himself, which Thranduil certainly understood and fully supported. He did not need, per se,Legolas to disclose the details of the injury—for Gwaerain had told well enough what she had done, and Anaron's reports were painfully thorough—but he did not think he could find a way to explain to Legolas why his words were needed without breaking him... He did not want to tell him the reason why, that Gwaerain would be leaving and that the councils supported it, but that they needed Legolas to report to the Superior Board to assess whether Piniriel would be safe to sail with her at all…

It all set Thranduil on edge.

Gwaerain was intermittently reasonable now—intermittently detached from the waves of grief-induced illness that buffeted her—but she had also— She had also nearly killed their son in her desperation for him, and...

Thranduil tightened his cloak about himself; he slipped rings off his fingers and dropped them into his pocket, for they left his hands smarting as their metals burned with the cold.

Legolas had two more days to decide to speak on his own—and while it was not his want for him as his father—the Superior Board had voted that if they had not received such information that might inform the situation regarding Piniriel by that time, then they would appoint a council and call Legolas before them themselves. Thranduil had considered putting his foot down at that pronouncement, but councils existed for a reason, and they had never faced a situation quite like this—these were the times of crisis that a government was designed for during peace...

But to tell Legolas this? That the reason he needed to make a report was to allow the Board and the healers to assess the safety of Piniriel were she to leave over sea with her mother? That he could not do. For one, he doubted Legolas' ability to give his report without presenting it with the goals of the council in mind, for this was a very delicate time for his healing, now, and he had perhaps come to rely on his sister too much these past years, without his father's notice... And another, to tell him that his own words might be used, seemingly, against him, to take away his last remaining sister? It would break his heart—both their hearts—and he did not know if that was something Legolas could weather at the moment. Every time he had seen him, his spirit felt anxious and flickering, one minute high and the next minute low, circling the drain like a waterspout.

But something had to happen, for he would not allow his son to be broken apart in front of his councilors, not if he could help it, even if it meant breaking him himself in his own defense.

Thranduil ached as he considered it all, for he was highly aware of the wound this would tear in their relationship, no matter how he approached it. Whatever he did, the devastation of it would take years for them to heal, for Legolas was still young—intimately hurt and already betrayed—and he still saw sometimes with the blinders of youth.

(Though he knew he, too, saw sometimes with blinders of his own, with the lens of a King in place of a father.)

The wind grew high around him, and the snow began to fall beyond the fields.

Far out and away, he watched Legolas' ever-faithful friends trekking hand-in-hand to the officers' barracks, Ithildim leaning uncharacteristically into Saida, as if seeking strength from her smaller form.

Thranduil pulled his arms into his cloak and sank to the floor of the outpost. Leaned up against the sturdy trunk with legs crossed, he turned to the unopened bottle of wine beside him and, as he drank, he watched the snow slowly hide the growing darkness of his people's land.

Lumornon, Ithildim, and Company

A door slammed against a wall, far down the corridor near the mess hall. Lumornon looked up from the Defense Council's report he had been reading, for the door sounded almost to bounce on its hinges in its vigor. Lostariel glanced away from copying her notes onto official letterhead, and she met Lumornon's worried eyes. There was increasingly apparent, now, the patter of uncharacteristically heavy steps and the light shuffle of thin shoes syncopating it. Lumornon sighed and Lostariel blew on the ink of her notes to dry it, before slipping her work in the top drawer of her desk. They were both too familiar with the rhythm of those particular footfalls, though for very different reasons, to have any illusions whatsoever about who had stormed into the barracks and was rapidly approaching the study.

Lumornon had almost forgotten that Amonhir sat in a stuffed chair by the door, legs stretched out on a threadbare ottoman, picking at the remnants of his lunch with distinct disinterest. He suddenly put aside his plate with a quiet clatter, stood calmly and stated without inflection: "Ithildim sounds unhappy."

Amonhir pulled the door abruptly inward just as Ithildim tried to push it open, such that the younger elf tumbled inside and regained his footing only by Saida's steadying hand, she who stood quiet but firm beside him.

Amonhir stepped back to lean against the bookcase beside Lostariel's table, across from where Lumornon still sat. Lumornon pushed away his report, folded his hands, and looked up calmly at his brother's best friend, who appeared to be seething (which was, in and of itself, distinctly unusual).

"How in the name of all that is good—" Ithildim began firmly, and his silver eyes flashed accusatorily as he veritably spat out the next, "—was this allowed to happen?"

Lumornon blinked; Amonhir crossed his arms; and Lostariel tilted her head gently.

For his part, Lumornon considered himself somewhat well-informed of the goings on in the woods and the halls, for it seemed that, over the centuries, he had somehow become the supervisor to at least one person responsible for some aspect of every particular function of the kingdom. Thranduil called Lumornon's knowledge and his natural reach a gift; Lumornon himself, however, called it something else entirely...

But the point was: It was not often that people said things to him that he did not already know—or could not immediately figure out—but he was certainly at a loss now. Furthermore, it was not at all often that Ithildim raised his voice—between Legolas and Ithildim, Legolas was the more likely to fly unexpectedly—and Lumornon had never heard Ithildim shout in anything besides joy or upon the training fields, though he knew from speaking to Legolas that he and Ithildim had gotten into quite a few private rows, with Saida as the only witness.

But, still, this—this was different from Legolas' wild and youthful, reactive outbursts, different from an impassioned argument between friends—this was rage and indictment, and it was focused and planned, and now burning.

"Ithildim," Saida said in a low, warning voice beside him, and she dug strong fingers into his forearm, but he jerked away and crossed his arms—

"No!"

Saida was strong and Lumornon had often known her to curb Ithildim and Legolas' less mature instincts, but Ithildim was tall, of a height of everyone in the room but Lumornon, and a full head higher than Saida herself. It did not take much movement, therefore, to alter his center of gravity enough to make her attempts at physically controlling him in such a small space essentially pointless. Saida dropped his arm and rolled her eyes. Stepping back, she locked her hands behind her back in a soldier's stance, inclined her head to the elders around her, and dropped her eyes, at the very same time Ithildim's gaze intensified and he refocused it on the older elves in the room.

"No," he finally repeated more quietly, and he breathed deeply through his nose in an obvious attempt to calm himself. Lumornon watched a hand at Ithildim's side clench and unclench absently, and he surely hoped Ithildim was aware enough of his own actions that he would not be forced to bring him before any councils for misbehavior, for his brother's sake, at the very least.

"I want to know," Ithildim tried again, and he looked first at Lostariel, and then to Amonhir and Lumornon in turn. Lumornon watched him force his hands to relax, a grounding breath shaking him of the tension in his frame so he finally stood more naturally and continued: "I want to know how our Queen was allowed entry into Legolas' room, when she is supposed to be under guard at all times."

Lumornon's mind froze, and his eyes snapped away from Ithildim's hands to his face.

"What?" His voice sounded weak even to himself, and his mind was overrun with images and memories of the past few days— "What do you mean, Ithildim?"

There was rising terror in him, and he stood without realizing it, knocking into the table in his panic—the tower of ledgers and Noldorin law books stacked in its center toppled with a soft reverberance of leather.

"I mean exactly what I said, Lumornon," Ithildim replied, stepping toward him with a voice deeper than Lumornon even knew he possessed— "How did your mother get into your brother's room this morning, after the damn disaster of the other night? Or have you all forgotten she nearly murdered him?"

"Ithildim!" Saida exclaimed then, and she grabbed his arm and this time yanked him back fiercely, hooking a foot about his knee so he ducked and stumbled, and she was able to maneuver him close to her. He stood, then, with several more feet between himself and his dearest friend's older brother, who also happened to be the Crown Prince. "That is enough!" she hissed. "Legolas would not—"

But she fell silent immediately as Amonhir stirred from where he had leant unmoving against the bookcase. He took a seat at the table, and turned his head slightly toward Lostariel—who had quickly moved to stand at Lumornon's shoulder—while still speaking very much toward Ithildim.

Lumornon could only stare at the scene unfolding around him. His palms were clammy, and he was vaguely aware that Lostariel's hand absently smoothed the sleeve at his shoulder, willing him to steady.

"Lostariel," Amonhir said, dark eyes not once leaving Ithildim's face, which Lumornon noticed in this odd moment of disconnect was disturbingly paler than usual, such that his light eyes looked odd in the dark circles that betrayed the exhaustion underlying this ongoing outburst—"Once Ithildim has remembered his rank and how much his future rides on—"

But Ithildim spoke over him: "Do not speak to me, Captain, of the consequences for my career—"

"—his ability to effectively manage not just others but also himself—"

"—when some failure of yours has threatened Legolas' very life!"

"Perhaps when he has remembered that," Amonhir continued, ignoring Ithildim entirely and barely raising his voice, "you will ask him to report in a manner more befitting his position in the King's Army." He concluded quietly and folded his hands on the table, still staring at Ithildim.

Lumornon stood absolutely still, though there was some part of him that had begun to make sense of things, to vaguely understand that Legolas was not hurt or Ithildim would not be here, yet he had also never seen Ithildim so undone in the hundred-some years he had known him—

He finally found his voice— "Has she harmed him? Is he all right?"

There was a long moment of extended, heavy silence—

"Ithildim?" Lumornon asked again, and he felt the fire he usually buried deep within himself flaring slightly. "I said, is Legolas all right?"

Ithildim suddenly seemed to crumble, to take pity on him.

"He is fine, Lumornon," Ithildim finally answered stiffly. "But he might not have been, and that is what I am here to understand. I also do not understand how come no one has already told you of this—it has been an hour since I found her..."

"I did not tell anyone I was coming here," Lumornon murmured absently, and his hand drifted to Lostariel's on his shoulder for just a fluttering moment.

There was another long quiet in the room except for the steady, rhythmic shouts of a trainer calling out blade patterns on the fields outside the windows.

No one moved, and they stood still in an odd polygon for several long seconds before Lostariel broke the silence with a soft command, and Lumornon dropped his hand from hers unconsciously.

"Sit," she said, and she gestured to the chairs around the table. She pulled one out for herself and sat, tapping the chair beside her so that Lumornon was roused and sat again, too.

Saida stirred from her place at Ithildim's arm, and she gestured at the basket of tea by the fireplace— "May I?" she asked quietly.

"Of course," Lostariel nodded.

Ithildim deflated the moment he sat down at the corner of the table, and his head fell into his hands with such force that Amonhir raised his eyebrows, and Lumornon found himself deeply pitying him instead.

There was the sound of Saida, then, at the kettle, the tinkling of ceramic on brick as she set out mugs on the hearth.

Lostariel gave Ithildim a moment to breathe before reminding him of his place, and his duty.

"Soldier," she said firmly, but not without compassion. "Report."

And report Ithildim did.

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