Author's note: There are three chapters after this until the end of this story.

Also, I would like to make a request regarding reviews. While I am generally open to discussion and constructive criticism, at this point in the writing process—over five years in—it is not helpful for me to receive public critique in regards to (a) this story's premise or (b) my interpretation of Tolkien's canon and its implications within fanfiction. I am happy to discuss the decisions I have made a private forum—my inbox is open! (At this point, however, the story's course has long been fixed, so the discussion would be only for our own edification.) Additionally, public negative feedback is simply not conducive to my well-being at this point, so I thank you for respecting that boundary. Again, reviews in general are appreciated and my inbox is open for ConCrit-related to canon and worldbuilding discussions. I do love talking Tolkien! :)

Anyway, I look forward to hearing from you each time I post! As it has been for many people, this year has been a particularly long and hard one for our little family, full of big struggles and small triumphs. Through it all, fanfiction and fan communities have been true life rafts for me, so thank you for being part of that. I hope you enjoy.

PART FIVE:

Young Day, Young Times, Young World

Chapter Twenty-Six

It had been just over three days since Ithildim brought Legolas the Superior Board's decisions in that hollow tree of their younger years, and today was his first time back in the Halls since then. He had spoken with his father on a few occasions while spending time in the woods with his friends, and Ithildim had run a few messages back and forth from Lumornon, but his family had, otherwise, respected his need for space. That morning, however, Saida had "scouted" ahead for them and, when she returned—clutching a folded parchment with the Elvenqueen's schedule printed neatly on it—Ithildim escorted Legolas to the shared baths beneath the Halls, in the room behind the kitchens.

They did not often use the shared baths because they tended to be overrun by those families living within the Halls in the mornings and those soldiers working closest to the Halls at night—and the heated water supply was limited due to the unreliability of the kitchen mechanism that fueled it—but Legolas had not been clean since long before the hearing, and he could not abide returning to the family's rooms without putting himself back in order...

And so, Saida stood now outside the door while they bathed and, while Ithildim finished quickly, Legolas found himself sinking further into the carved stone basin, water rising to his lips and ears as he watched Ithildim clamber from the tub, begin to dry and dress.

"You will turn into a frog, you know," Ithildim muttered around the hair thong clenched in his teeth as he loosely braided back wet hair, "if you stay in there much longer."

"A frog would be cooked in here by now," Legolas argued, as he surfaced slightly more so he could speak.

"Yes, well," Ithildim said. "I will go to tell your brother you are back, if it is alright with you."

"Thank you."

Ithildim pulled his overshirt and cloak back on and then dropped a folded linen at the edge of the bath before turning away.

"Will you come back?" Legolas asked as Ithildim reached the door, put a shoulder to it.

"Of course I will come back," Ithildim said, barely stopping to reply but casting a smile over his shoulder as he pushed it open.

And then he was gone and out the door, and Legolas let himself sink lower until just his nose was above the water, for he was alone and in silence for the first time in days—and warm to his core for the first time in just as long—and he had some thinking to do before Lumornon arrived to pull him back into the whirlwind of their diminishing family.

Three days earlier, the morning after Ithildim brought the decisions

The morning after the hearing, when Legolas did not return to the Halls as planned, his father had come to him in the woods. His friends had left the bower with silent bows and then his father sunk down immediately beside him, settling atop the empty nest of blankets left by Ithildim and Saida. He let his shoulder touch Legolas' and carefully dropped a hand to his knee, with a gentle air of comfort he had not used in years. It was warm and steady and Legolas's soul fluttered about it like a moth to the flame, but he was not burned—

"Your mother is not well," his father said then, so abruptly Legolas almost laughed.

"I think I may have noticed that there is something wrong..."

Thranduil smiled wryly beside him and Legolas felt him turn slightly, brush back the unbound hair from his cheeks.

"She will have to go, Legolas," he had said. "Her mind... It is flown, I think, and she cannot anymore endure the darkness."

"She is resilient, I think," Legolas said, and he leaned just slightly into his father's side, let the heat of him radiate from both shoulder and knee—

"Aye, she was resilient, child. But right now, resilience means leaving, and, for us, it means letting her go…"

Legolas said nothing to this at first, for he already well knew she would be leaving, and he had begun to feel guilty that he no longer wished her to stay, for all those weeks ago when he had first returned to the stronghold that was all he had wanted…

"And what of Piniriel?" Legolas asked then.

His father shifted slightly beside him, lifted his hand from Legolas' knee and clasped them in his lap.

"I think, Legolas," he finally said, "that she will go with your mother, for Aergwen and her healers think it best. The bond of mother and child should not be interrupted, and it will help your mother heal, to learn to be again."

"I do not think…" Legolas began, but trailed off.

His father shifted, then, so he sat facing him from the side, feet crossed in front of him, and hw leant across the space between them so he looked more like a peer and less like a father or a king. There was a tired desperation there, and Legolas pulled his own knees up, turned his head on the inner wall of the tree to face him, too.

"Yes, my son?" Thranduil asked.

Legolas shook his head and did not meet his eyes. What he meant to say was that Piniriel's attachment to Gwaerain was tenuous even now, and the damage of those early years beyond repair, so long had she spent solely in her nursemaid's care and then in his own...

But, though it was true, he could not bear to add more grief and hopelessness to the pain that shone from his father's old eyes, and so he swallowed his words and scratched at his nose. He cleared his throat and softly coughed, glanced away toward the wool-pinned entrance. He felt his father's hands catch up his own, then, and his fingers wove his between, even though his hands felt distant and cold and dead, as if he had sat on them, or held his bow pulled for too long; he was too drained to either accept the reassurance or protest it…

"I understand," he finally conceded, quiet and haltingly.

Thranduil pulled Legolas toward him suddenly, then, and kissed his forehead. He smoothed back his hair as he stood, and then strode jerkily across the small space, paused for a moment at the entrance as if considering, and then he ghosted out the hollow. Legolas could hear murmured goodbyes beyond the wool, and then he was away.

This abruptness was new, and Legolas knew it was because his father was sad and stressed and overwhelmed, but that did not make him feel any less guilty about it...

Legolas slid down the trunk's wall until he was flat on his back and he linked his hands together to cover his eyes; his elbows splayed out to either side of him as his friends slipped back into the room.

.o.

His father returned the next afternoon and Legolas was not as complacent then, for he had had time to think and talk and consider what this fight might be worth and why it might be worth it.

Earlier that day, when the sun was high, he and Saida had pinned back the wool curtain, and he then sat down among the trees' sheltering roots and waited patiently for his father. When he had appeared, Legolas began talking almost the moment he laid eyes on him. He barely left room for greetings before he asked bravely: "Could Piniriel not live with someone else?"

Thranduil raised his eyebrows and sat opposite him, near the place settings Saida had left laid out for supper on the steppe at the tree-cave's lip.

"Besides your mother?" he asked.

Legolas nodded.

"Well," Thranduil answered forwardly, laying a hand lightly on his sharply bent knee. "I cannot keep her alone."

"Father!"

Thranduil sighed. "Legolas, it is no insult to Piniriel... I am only speaking the truth."

"How can you say that?" he exclaimed. "You are her father!"

"And Gwaerain is her mother," he answered simply, and he was watching Legolas closely as he stared.

"Well, yes, but Mother… I am Piniriel's— I am her—"

"Her what, Legolas?" his father asked with a suddenly intense gentleness. "You are her brother. You are not her parent. You think you want to raise her, but you will find you do not."

"Is that how you felt?"

Thranduil stared and frowned, and Legolas knew he had burned him—such simple blows were foreign coming from him and, so, strange to his family; the acerbity did not fit him and was tannin on his tongue.

"No, hardly," his father answered, nonetheless. "But you are too young to be a parent, my son."

Legolas tilted his head to the side and watched him, for this was the root of things, this was where the truth had been skimmed over and rewritten, edged to the side like an unfortunate thing. "Do you truly not realize?" he asked.

"Realize what?" asked his father, his eyebrows up again.

"Have you been so blind not to see?"

"Legolas, that is not an answer," Thranduil said quietly. "This is a series of questions you are refusing to clarify."

But, by now, Legolas would not be stopped. He had planned what he would say, had practiced with Saida and taken counsel with Ithildim, and even if it got away from him now, even if he was left chasing it like an untrained hound, tripping underbrush, he would—

"Who do you think takes care of Piniriel when the nursemaid is away?" he asked before he lost resolve. "Why do you think you can now sleep through the night without being awoken by cries, or by a little hand tugging at your ear?" And he shifted, finally, to face his father more fully, tucked himself firmly between the tree and its gnarled, questing roots before he continued. "It is Lumornon and I, mostly me if I am honest."

"Legolas, you are—"

"No, I am not!" He exclaimed before he could stop. "Whatever you are about to say, I hardly imagine it is fair. I have been taking care of Piniriel this past year because someone must—nurturing is about more than just ensuring her basic needs."

Legolas had known he was in dangerous territory confronting his father so outrightly, but if there was ever a time to do it, it was before his mother left, yes? He had thought so before, and yet—

"We take care of her, Legolas," his father said firmly, and there was something dark in his face as he said it, something hurt in his eyes and it cut to his soul... "You are being unfair, child."

"I did not say you do not take care of her!" Legolas assured quickly but quietly, hands gripping his knees before slipping into his lap. "I say only you do not nurture her, Father, not as you did me, or I imagine the rest of us, Lumornon and Felavel... For Mother—" he paused and glanced down at his hands, gloveless now, but tucked within the sleeves of his sweater. "Mother changed when she was born—surely you noticed it, for even I did! Mother is like a raft on the river, now, guideless; she—"

"She is always in the trees..." Thranduil interrupted, murmuring.

Legolas said nothing at first, but then nodded and looked across at his father with eyes wide. "So, do you not see?"

When there was no answer, Legolas cleared his throat, took a deep breath, and pressed ahead.

"It is really no fault of yours, Father, for you are running a kingdom and you pledged yourself to your people before any of us were even imagined, but… Piniriel will perhaps be safe with mother on the other side of the Sea, where Mother can perhaps heal or breathe or steady herself—and where maybe all our kin are, your parents and also hers—"

He felt his fingers begin to pick at the cuffs of his sweater.

"—but Piniriel? She will either forget us and the love she had here, or she will not be able to recover from that loss at all, and her spirit will suffer..."

His father was watching him carefully, for it was the most Legolas had said without prompt in all those days since the incident—

"She is so little, Father," he continued with a plea and a catch in his voice. "Piniriel is so young, and so many changes… It is not good. It has not been good for me and I am grown— she could lose herself."

Thranduil did not speak for a long moment but then moved closer, reached out a hand to cup his cheek. He brushed a lock of hair from Legolas' eyes but it immediately twisted back and bumped at his nose. His father moved to try again, but Legolas beat him to it, tucking it behind his ear and looking away. However, his father urged him immediately back with a light touch of the jaw, and Legolas allowed himself then to be turned—his father's fingers brushed at that barely-there patch of new skin on his chin, and, when Legolas looked up at him fully, his father let his hands fall into his lap. He seemed to disassemble like a pile of bones as he asked:

"Do you hurt?"

"No," Legolas said simply, and immediately, but then he corrected: "And yes... But it is mostly just headaches and such now. It is my heart that suffers; I think I have been badly burned."

"Badly burned? Is that all?" His father's lips quirked momentarily before he cast his eyes away into the forest. After a moment he sighed and looked back at Legolas directly. "You are so much like your mother, Legolas." He shook his head slightly. "All of the good parts of her."

Legolas frowned and spoke quickly: "I do not think she is, necessarily, bad."

"You do not have to say that just because she is your mother," his father countered just as quickly. "You are allowed to be angry; you are allowed to take many turnings of years before any of us are forgiven." Legolas looked away at those words, forced himself to steady and breathe, to slow his mind, before turning himself and his heart back to his father. "She could have— This is not something for you to belittle, child; it is not a thing to tuck away and forget. You almost died."

It was the first time he had heard his father say it aloud. It was the first time he had heard anyone say it aloud, and he did not particularly like it...

"Well, yes," he finally said slowly, and he dropped his eyes from the silver-hot of his father's eyes to the beech-husk of his own skin, where his fingers wove like a loom's shuttle through the knit cuffs of his sweater. "That is bad. But I do not think she is bad. She is lost, Father, and unwell..."

He was quiet for a minute and he could feel his father watching him but his emotions were building, now, and he did wish his father had just left it alone, let him handle it as he might; but those emotions moved in the space between them now like a steadily growing mountain stream—

"Father," he finally managed, for it had crested and burst forth more intensely than he had meant it to, and he was not strong enough to resist when his father sat there trying to attend beside him, doing those things he had not realized he had craved all these weeks until they were so suddenly offered... "Father… She says I am like her, too. But I do not want to lose myself as she has; I do not want to hurt someone I love. I think—"

But his words were lost and he could not finish.

In that moment, all his father's careful words and intentional movements were carried away in his storm, and when Legolas met his eyes directly, he was, for a moment, frozen in time with the father who had lifted him up into trees, who had cut meetings short to meet him in the fields after practice, had tended scraped knees and bowstring bruises—

"And you will not, child," Thranduil answered then, and he held Legolas' gaze so firmly he could not even blink.

"How do you know?"

"I know you," his father said easily.

"But you know mother, too," he protested, "and she became someone new without your noticing..."

His father frowned and glanced away momentarily, and then admitted: "I noticed something, but I did not want to accept it." He paused but continued before Legolas had the chance to open his mouth and inquire. "You are different, Legolas. You notice tendencies in yourself and immediately you address them. You have been doing that since you were a child."

Legolas sat quietly and listened.

"You crawled too fast and stumbled down the steps— you did not do it again," his father enumerated. "You bit your mother and she took away your milk and, so, you did not bite her again. You provoked your brother by insulting his work and, in that way, you learned not to insult him. It might have taken you longer with Captain Amonhir because you have not always felt his reprimands justified, but once you accepted it would serve you to breathe before reacting, it happened overnight and—almost overnight, too!—your progress reports improved."

Legolas blinked, and his father sighed.

"My point is this, Legolas—you are aware of yourself, which is more than most people can say, sometimes even me."

Legolas was quiet for a long while, watching his father and the winter woods, letting the thoughts settle in and organize themselves in his mind, letting them slip into place in the image he kepy of himself in his head. He could hear Ithildim adjusting his seat a few trees away, and, finally, he answered:

"I will believe you, Father."

Thranduil smiled slightly. "Good. I need you to believe me. I cannot lose you to grief and supposition, too."

But that pricked at his recently-reassured heart like hot needles, and before he could stop—

"I do not wantto just be an item to be lost, to be guarded and kept! I am a grown person, Father!" Legolas swallowed and breathed through his nose, closed his eyes and steadied himself from the inside out before he clarified, clipped: "It is that— Everything that has happened comes down to me not having been considered as my own person."

His father held up his hands in surrender and immediately conceded: "I know, Legolas, and I hear you. I am sorry."

Legolas felt his cheeks burn as his father continued:

"And I will think about Piniriel, about her staying."

His heart soared at that, and he almost leapt from his seat in surprise and excitement but he restrained himself.

"But," Thranduil held up his hand. "I am making no promises, my son. We must do what is best for her."

"Oh, I understand! Anything is better than no hope at all."

"Good. But just remember, if you are not a thing to be kept, neither, then, is she. Piniriel is also not yours. You must be prepared to let her go."

"All right, I understand. Of course."

And then his father stood and bent to kiss his brow, and—before Ithildim had even slipped from his perch—he was gone and down the path.

"Would you like to talk about it?" Ithildim asked him kindly, as he settled onto the roots beside him. He tugged him into a one-armed hug and sent a whistle for Saida's return.

But Legolas did not want to talk about it, so they only sat together and watched clouds skip across the bright winter sky, through the gaps between silvery branches.

.o.

The day before returning to the Halls

One more day passed before Thranduil came back to the giant oak, and it was the very evening before Legolas would return to the Halls himself.

Decisions had been made and Legolas would not be pleased, his father had said when he arrived, as means of introduction. And then he was explaining the decision and nearly begging for Legolas' understanding and, while Legolas was young, he was old enough to recognize defeat when he heard it, had lived it and tasted it already many times in his life...

Legolas had fought the inevitable, had argued his point, had advocated for himself best he could in these bizarre circumstances, and now, it seemed, it was time for a nominally-elegant retreat, a concession, a kindly surrender (if he could manage it). He was hardly hurting anymore, that was true, but his emotions still reared, riotous, at the most unfortunate of times...

He was sat on a low branch naked with winter and, as he listened to his father explain, he swung his legs in the cold winter air so the wind cut round him like ribbons. His father stood with hands on hips at the base of the tree, head tilted back and watching him.

"If I do this—" Legolas finally started, and then paused. "If I do not object…" He trailed off. "Can you promise me Piniriel will not be hurt? Or, at least, that she will be all right?"

His father raised eyebrows at him from the ground. "I cannot promise that, Legolas."

He huffed. "But is it not a 'parent's oath to protect'?"

"Apparently, you have not outgrown eavesdropping, at the least," his father answered lightly, with less accusation than Legolas thought he maybe deserved.

"I am an adult, Father, and yet no one was telling me anything. What was I meant to do?"

Thranduil looked away briefly and then back up at him. "I have apologized for not being honest with you. You, of all people, deserved truth, but it was so sudden and things have been... complicated."

Legolas did not speak for a long minute and instead kicked his legs, buttoned the top clasp on his jacket so it was tall about his ears, and then finally:

"Am I right in understanding, then, that you cannot make a promise, Father; a promise that you or mother will uphold a parent's oath?

"Child…" his father breathed out in a sigh, but Legolas was immediately interrupting, for he only wanted to understand—

"No, Father, listen—"

"Legolas!"

"Was yesterday only false hopes—"

"You are out of line, Legolas."

Legolas' cheeks burned in the cold winter air and his heart beat so heavy in his chest he almost could not breathe. He lowered his eyes—

"You know we do not make oaths in this house."

Legolas nodded, eyes downcast, and he heard his father take a deep breath before going on:

"The only oaths your mother and I have ever made are the ones we made to our people and to one another, and the oaths we made to each of you as parents when we first felt the spark of you. We have never failed in honoring those oaths until now, and… Your mother did what she did from a warped sense of her oath as a mother, Legolas—in the depths of her grief—and I cannot— I will not, my son, make a promise to you about your mother and Piniriel that I do not know that I can keep."

Legolas could feel his eyes burning, then, and he blinked hard and looked away, tried to calm the cold building like floodwater in his chest, pressing on his heart and lungs—

"You will risk Piniriel because you will not make an oath?" he finally whispered, and the effort it took not to weep was a pain in his throat, cold pins in his chest as if he had sprinted too long and too far without rest.

"No, child, emlineg, no…"

In less than a second his father had swung himself onto the low branch beside him; he leant forward with hands flat on his knees to peer into his downturned face.

"Legolas, I need you to listen to me. Do you understand?"

Legolas nodded but did not look up; he was ashamed of how hurt his heart was, how delicate this situation had exposed him to, maybe, be.

His father's hand pressed gently on his chin and Legolas turned his face but did not quite meet his eyes.

"Are you hearing me, then?"

Legolas made a noise of acknowledgement in his throat and pulled his chin away, watched his fingers trace the seam of his trousers as he listened.

"What I can promise you is this," his father said firmly, and his presence was fire dug deep in a pit beside him, and it was strong and reassuring. "I am doing what I believe to be best for everyone involved. What is best for your mother, for me and your brother, and, yes, even for you and Piniriel…"

Legolas only barely stopped himself from shaking his head, but he knew his father saw it nonetheless.

"Child, without your mother this family will not be enough for Piniriel, and, without Piniriel, your mother will not be enough to make it to the Havens… All would be lost for nothing at all."

Legolas was silent and he slipped his hands into the sleeves of his sweater to grip his elbows tightly; he felt his back curve against his will as he warded off this new reality, a truly sisterless future.

"I have—" Thranduil stopped. "You know strategy, Legolas. Your brother and the defense counselors are often impressed with your natural inclination for understanding motive, disentangling complex situations..." He paused and there was the sound of evening birds around them. "That is to say— you understand, at least theoretically, Legolas, what is considered in making decisions, in evaluating threats and predicting outcomes—"

But something caught in his father's throat, then, and Legolas looked up sharply, watched his father take a breath before meeting his eyes as if he prepared for something dreadful.

"This is a sacrifice we must make, my son, to minimize future losses."

The forest was full of the riotous quiet of wood-song as Legolas waited—

"Do you understand, Legolas?"

Legolas reached his hand out and placed it on the smooth of the bark between them; he looked up into the sky as a snow-finch startled, just as his own soul felt fit to scream from that burned place in the center of his chest—it burst from the tree beside them.

"Yes," he finally managed quietly, and he felt his father follow his gaze to the bird.

A hand, then, was suddenly heavy and warm on top of his, and his father's fingers curled about his palm, providing a barrier of warmth between himself and the cold bark.

"Yes," Legolas whispered again quietly.

And it was almost not a lie.

They sat together in silence until the sun set, and then his father left, and Saida came to fetch him from the tree.

The three of them ate together, then, in the day-warmed hollow; they wrapped each other in blankets and cloaks, and then they told stories of lighter times, until they had passed through night into morning.

Back in the baths

Lumornon knocked on the door and, when he received no answer, he thanked Saida and sent her on her way, slipped in through the door to the public baths and closed it behind him. He started speaking before even looking up, ordering the change of clothes he had brought for his brother on the bench nearest the door before he had truly processed that Legolas had given no response to his greeting.

He straightened and dropped the shawl he had been holding, turned stiffly and with slight trepidation to the sunken baths toward the far wall—

And then he sighed.

Legolas appeared to have fallen asleep, wandering in dreams, but the water must have long gone cold, for Lumornon could see even from the door that his lips had lost color.

Lumornon crossed the room and laid a hand against one of the cisterns of rerouted water from the Forest River to check its temperature, but he was in luck for the second round of bread-baking had started while Legolas and Ithildim bathed, and the water was already warm again. He tugged at the steel bar to move the pipe from above Legolas' basin to the one beside him, and he pulled out the pin at the bottom of the cistern so water rushed down and the tub began to fill.

Beside him, Legolas stirred and sat abruptly straight, pressing his hands together and blinking as he looked about the room, took in his brother and the steam that had begun to fill the space between them.

Lumornon knelt beside his younger brother, shed his own tunics, and then thrust a hand down into the middle of the basin for the drain-plug. The cold water began to spiral away and Legolas turned from his brother to watch it.

"What were you doing in here so long, emlineg? I assumed you had already dressed in your old clothes and only waited for me?"

Legolas wrapped arms about himself and began to stand, and Lumornon took him beneath the armpits to steady him.

"I was just thinking," he answered quietly.

Lumornon tugged him toward the newly-filled basin and sat him on its edge, pushed the pin back in the now-empty cistern and opened the hatch at the top for it to refill.

"No, you were sleeping," Lumornon observed, toeing off his shoes and stepping out of his trousers until he too sat opposite his brother on the basin. "And you are frozen."

"Ithildim thought I would cook like a frog if I stayed in there too long, but I think I have proven him wrong," Legolas muttered, not meeting his brother's eyes and chafing his water-wrinkled hands as he sank down into the water. "I was just happy to be warm, and look where that has gotten me."

Lumornon smiled and joined him in the tub. Legolas had already ducked his head beneath the water and risen with more color in his cheeks, and he had set to working oil through his hair and disentangling a few days' worth of knots.

"What were you thinking about?" Lumornon asked casually.

Legolas looked up from his hair immediately and met Lumornon's gaze without wavering. "Piniriel," he said simply.

"Legolas…" Lumornon sighed.

"You asked," he said with a shrug; he had begun to pick at the underside of his hair with a comb someone had left at the edge of the basin.

"We have discussed this endlessly these past few days, brother."

"And I still do not really understand why you do not just ask her what she wants." He had not looked up and had flipped his hair to the other side, worked more oil in and tugged at a tangle.

"Because she is three, Legolas," Lumornon said shortly, for his patience had finally begun to waver—he did not want to lose Piniriel any more than Legolas did. "And—in case you have not noticed—she is currently refusing to speak."

There was a look on his brother's face—as he pointedly declined to meet Lumornon's eyes before sinking into the water to massage his scalp—that was simultaneously wise, judgmental, and wildly immature. He broke the surface, then, blinking, tendrils plastered dark to his cheeks and snaking about his neck.

"What?" Legolas asked flatly. "Do you think I have been speaking to her every minute of the day when no one is looking, whispering lies into her ears, coercing her into wishing to stay?"

He met Lumornon's eyes and Lumornon felt something inside him break. His brother was not well.

"Legolas—" he said in the pause.

"Have you decided Mother is right now, too? Turned a blind eye, as Father? You know I take care of her! That I have always taken care of her, since Mother began to— Well, you know."

Lumornon bit back a sigh and held a palm above the water, feeling the surface tension cling to his fingers intermittently as he looked at Legolas evenly, considered the dark circles under his eyes, little improved even after the time sequestered away with his friends.

"I know this, Legolas. You know I do," he finally said, and Legolas seemed, for a moment, surprised, for he quit wringing out his hair and his lips suddenly parted. "But," Lumornon amended, "I also know that you are young, and you are tired in your body and in your mind and that, first—before your sister—you need to take care of yourself."

Legolas looked away, began to lift himself from the basin by reaching behind him, pressing himself up with a heft.

"You have become cynical and rude these past days and that is so unlike you—listen to yourself, Legolas!" Lumornon spat out the water that had splashed into his face when Legolas hefted himself from the tub, before continuing more softly, "I know you, brother. I know you are not well."

For a moment, Legolas said nothing, simply watched Lumornon from where he sat on the side of the tub, dripping wet but warm again, hair untangled and already beginning to curl about his face—

But then he stood abruptly and picked up the linen Ithildim had left him, scrubbed himself down and then began to roughly pull on the clothes he had worn that day Saida and Ithildim had spirited him away without notice—

"Legolas, I have brought you new clothes—"

"How can you be all right with this, Lumornon!" He cried, spinning around. "We have gone from— We have gone from relatively fine and healthy and whole, from complimenting one another with our different approaches to life and beauty and the song of growing things to—" And he threw out his arms to the side emphatically, trousers slung low on his hips and undershirt loose on his slightly thinning frame. "To whatever this farce is! When they leave, Lumornon, we will be three. We will be you, me, and Father, and—"

Lumornon had let out the water and pulled himself from the tub, and he was crossing the room to Legolas as he gestured and finished, with feeling—

"How are you not angry about this, brother? What is wrong with you?"

Lumornon stood before his younger brother, watched as Legolas tilted his head up to glare into his face, and then Lumornon had taken his extended arms—still hanging in the air where he had thrown them for emphasis, but drooping now—and pulled them in, held him tight at the wrists as Legolas fisted his hands and dropped his head with shame or frustration, Lumornon was not sure, until his forehead pressed against his bound hands.

"I am angry," Lumornon said quietly. "I am, emlineg, you have absolutely no idea, but…"

He trailed off, and Legolas looked up, but Lumornon did not release him.

"I cannot waste these last days we have with Piniriel being angry," Lumornon said quietly, "for then I will not enjoy it, and I will make it worse for everyone around me who suffers, also."

Legolas closed his eyes briefly, swallowed down hard, and nodded.

"And that is not the memory I want Piniriel to carry with her over Sea; it is not the feel of this family that I want her to have when she is older, thinking back on those they left behind, and wondering when she will see us again—"

Legolas was nodding again emphatically, and his hands had unfisted. Lumornon let him go.

"I am sorry," Legolas murmured now, stepping away from Lumornon and turning, shaking the deflated anger from his head and reaching for the fresh clothes Lumornon had brought him. "And thank you for the clothes."

Lumornon began to pick up the pieces of his discarded clothing and dress himself. "You have nothing to be sorry for," he said as he came back to his brother, who was pulling on dry socks and pushing his hair from his face. "I have had more years than you to manage my feelings, and you have more of a job of it than I do—you and Felavel have always been most alike in that—and you are still healing."

Legolas smiled up at his brother gratefully, but Lumornon saw a flash of something concerned and dark flicker across his face before he stood. Lumornon wrapped the shawl he had brought his brother about his shoulders and shoved him out the door.

"Let us go and see our small sister then, shall we?" Lumornon said casually, checking his mother's schedule when they got to the end of the corridor, to decide the best way back from the kitchens. He turned right and Legolas followed, trailing. "She has been missing you—your room is a disaster."

Legolas found himself laughing then, but it choked in his throat a bit and he had to bite back something more. His brother laid a hand on his back and opened the door to the stairway.

"Has she found where I hid her blocks, then?" he managed roughly, adjusting his jacket and looking away so Lumornon would not see him compose himself.

Lumornon laughed. "Oh, it is worse than that—she has found where you hid her paints."

Legolas groaned and followed his brother up the stairs and down the corridor, through the secret, winding way to their family wing and—when they emerged at the far end—he took a deep breath, anchored his heart, and stepped through the door.