disclaimer.
All belongs to JRR. Tolkien and Peter Jackson.

additional notes.
In this work, Legolas classes himself as Silvan- as do most of Mirkwood as it's said they adopted the customs of Silvan Elves when Oropher steeled there after Doriath, meaning Thranduil is also not prejudiced as he was in The Hobbit movies. I also headcanon his mother as Silvan.

October 27th 3018, T.A

Boromir had been taken Lindir up on his offer of the tour two days after the Council of Elrond, expecting, or perhaps hoping, that he would have very little need of it. He hadn't planned to linger long in Rivendell- Faramir couldn't hold Osgiliath by himself and Gondor needed him- yet it was honour that bound him now, the promise he had made to Frodo, no matter if Lord Elrond claimed he wished to think the matter over. It had been something to pass the time, a day stuffed to the brim with history, architecture and Elvish society; Boromir had been asleep within five minutes. The tour had only been made bearable by the gaggle of Mirkwood Elves that had followed them about, making salacious comments about First Age jokes and all manner of dirty jokes that had Boromir trembling with barely supressed laughter and Lindir trembling with fury.

And yet it seemed now that all Boromir remembered of that tour was a sharp-edged and coldly hilarious story Tauriel had narrated about Thranduil, a barrel of wine and the Lady Galadriel of Lothlórien.

When Legolas had first whisked Boromir from his quarters with a breathless promise of "adventure, Boromir, a quest!", Boromir had managed to track where they were with shaky accuracy and only a small amount of disbelief. The blonde Elf, despite his claims to know next to nothing of the layout of Rivendell bar the way to the Halls of Healing, had been surefooted on his way to wherever it was he was taking Boromir to, though Boromir had became lost by the time Legolas had sprinted up a set of spiral stairs beside the library. Even now, Legolas showed no signs of flagging in his enthusiasm; Boromir, though the Elf was hidden from his sight as he sped around another corner, could hear his voice raised in merry song, interspersed with cries of "mae govannen!" and "suilad!" as he greeted passing Elves.

"Silvans," one of them muttered under their breath as they passed Boromir, "as mad as Gil-galad. Thranduilion all the more so!"

At this point, Boromir was inclined to agree though he didn't quite understand the 'Silvan', 'Sindar' and Noldor' thing. (Political factions maybe? Did Elves have political factions? Or did Lord Elrond form the basis of politics and decide on everything himself? Faramir would know, he decided.) Three days of knowing Legolas had not nearly been enough to get used to the almost ever constant cheer and the sometimes mercurial mood swings- the Elf, since their conversation in the corridor after Tauriel had left him, seemed determined that he should be nothing but his sunshine self, et there were times that Boromir would see him glaring at walls or pacing up a storm in the gardens. When asked, Legolas had admitted that the Quest worried him just as much as it worried Boromir and the tidings of Sauron's emissary at Erebor, so close to Mirkwood, were equally as horrifying. Not least, he had added sourly, was the presence of the Noldor nearby helping.

And so it had become a game. With nothing to do, Boromir and Legolas had taken turns inventing games and quests to take their minds off the Ring and the shadow that had seemed to descend over their home lands. A regression into childhood and yet Boromir had not remembered having as much fun, untainted by the knowledge that it would soon come to an end, in years. If Faramir had been there... If Faramir had been with him everything would have been perfect.

"Legolas!" Boromir called out finally. "Where are we going?"

Boromir watched, amused, as Legolas' head popped out from around the corner, like a strange bird peering out of its nest. The prince grinned, white teeth gleaming, and blinked his eyes too innocently to be anything but scheming. "Nowhere," he chirped cheerily, "and everywhere."

"Pardon? How on Arda does that work?" he asked, feeling, as he sometimes did with Legolas, that he was a hundred steps behind the Elf.

"You'll find out!" came the laughing answer as Legolas vanished once more and took up his song again.

The Song of Beren and Lúthien, Boromir thought, more poignant and sorrowful in Legolas' lilting voice than it ever had been in Minas Tirith, where focus had been cast more on Beren's deeds of valour than on his purpose. He had always hated the song and its heartbreak- what good was a story when the tale stole you not from grief in reality and subjected you to pain of ages past?- and yet he remembered his mother, kind hands smoothing his hair as she sung it, sometimes in Common, sometimes in Sindarin and sometimes in another language Boromir hadn't recognised.

"Again she fled, but swift he came.
Tinúviel! Tinúviel!
He called her by her elvish name;
And there she halted listening.
One moment stood she, and a spell
His voice laid on her: Beren came,
And doom fell on Tinúviel
 That in his arms lay glistening."

Finduilas had smiled down at him each night, when the song drew to a close and left Boromir with tears wetting his face, and pressed a kiss to his nose, sweet and gentle and, as he had buried his head in her dark hair, smelling always of the sea. After, when she had faded away, not eating, not drinking, not speaking, Boromir hadn't cried at the lay ever again nor had he been particularly interested to listen to the bards as they sung their version so far removed from his mother's. It seemed fitting that this odd Elf, whom hadn't expected to meet and who seemed to have met his mother at least once, should have been the one to sing it again.

"Back again?" an Elf sighed, as Legolas went skipping past. She, like all of the Elves Boromir had met, was tall and slender though her face was screwed up in an expression of distaste. "What care have the Elves of Mirkwood for the history of Minas Tirith?"

"None," Legolas replied, drawing to halt, "that I know of at least. Pray, where is this Mirkwood place? I shall ask if I ever have cause to leave the Greenwood again and go there." He sniffed, turning decidedly away from her to smile at Boromir. "Here we are!"

Boromir felt as though a stone had dropped into his stomach.

History of Minas Tirith? Did Legolas believe that Boromir was blind to his own history? His people's? Was this about the disagreement they had had at the Council of Elrond over Aragorn and never spoken of again? Was he truly so staunch a defender of Aragorn that he should go out of his way to rub salt in the wound that had been dealt to Boromir's father?

"Don't scowl so," Legolas reprimanded him, frowning. "You act as though I have dragged you here to spit on your ancestors' graves."

Boromir raised an eyebrow. "Have you not?"

"I don't centre my entire life around Aragorn you know."

"Really?"

Legolas snorted and said, "I've known him since he was ten years old and tearing about the Imladris countryside calling himself Strider. Sixty years or so only against five centuries of life without him. I can think for myself and have been for the majority of my life."

"Aragorn was raised in Imladris?" questioned Boromir, curious for any scrap of information about the man who called himself king. Anything also to distract him from the sting in his chest, steadily subsided as Legolas chattered on.

"Lord Elrond fostered him after his father Arathorn passed," Legolas explained, "and took him in as his own son. Estel we called him, until he found out his lineage. It's easy to slip up sometimes but in Imladris, the place he calls home still, it is allowed."

"And you've known him for sixty years and still don't know your way around his home?" Boromir said, incredulous.

"Lord Elrond built flets, dwellings in trees adapted from Lothlórien, on the edge of the woods after the Last Alliance, so that visiting Wood-elves weren't tempted to start another kinslaying. I stay there mostly." Legolas paused a moment and laughed. "I've been distracted! Hurry, hurry! My Elves need me at sundown to organise their return journey and I wish to share the frogspawn I collected from the pond with the Lords Elladan and Elrohir's boot."

Boromir chuckled, shaking his head, and slipped in the door after Legolas. It didn't surprise him much that Legolas was, once again, terrorising the twin son of Elrond- even within such short a time of being in Imladris, Legolas had been productive enough that they had both had close encounter with buckets of honey and feathers, strange dyes that stained their hair, snakes, beetles and (on the most memorable occasion) a mountain goat. He didn't quite know why Legolas was so insistent on pranking the twin sons of Elrond and oft accompanied his acts with sly comments about kinslaying, Valar and Doriath that made every Elf bar his own hiss like a scalded cat. For Boromir, the names rang a vague bell, meaningless, but he had seen Aragorn shake his head with an unimpressed glare overhearing one of the comments. More chaos, he supposed, for the Wood-elves to delight in.

He took another step further into the room, hearing his footsteps pad near silently on the wooden floors, and frowned. He found himself in a long rectangular room, fifty feet or so lengthwise and ten feet wide with heavy drapes pulled across the ten windows he could see across the far wall, obscuring all light; Legolas had vanished into the gloom and Boromir couldn't discern anything from grey shadow bar vague shapes that leered out at him. What form, he wondered, did this history take that it needed to be hidden away in the dark?

"Come, callon," Legolas called again, "or are you scared?"

"Scared!" Boromir barked disbelievingly. "No Man of Gondor is scared of the dark!"

"Estel is," returned Legolas, materialising beside Boromir again, ignoring the way Boromir jolted at his appearance, raising a hand to press against his chest.

"The great King of Gondor and Arnor is scared of the dark?"

"And bees! And wasps!" the Elf snickered mischievously. "Horseflies, hornets, mosquitoes too."

"I thought he was a Ranger?"

"Arwen would make a better Ranger than him and she embroiders her name into her slips!"

Boromir paused, shooting Legolas a confused glance. "Do I want to know how you know that?"

"Arwen Undómiel Evenstar Elrondiel in full," Legolas confided, artfully dodging the question, "and I am glad she didn't translate it into Quenya do, or something of the sort otherwise it would be much longer. I have no doubt she would be an excellent Ranger though- she wields an axe as well as any Dwarf."

"You do realise I plan to forget this conversation as soon as possible, right?"

"I count on it!" Legolas muttered, glaring momentarily at the floor before brightening. "No matter! We have stuff to do! Follow me!"

"You're being very vague with this 'stuff'," Boromir remarked dryly, following a step behind Legolas as the Elf began to make his way down the hall, counting underneath his breath in what Boromir thought was Silvan. Similar to Sindarin and less formal and with a quiet drawl Boromir could only liken to the differences in accent between Gondorians and the Rohirrim; Boromir counted along with him in the Common Speech, not understanding what he was supposed to be counting and resisting the childish urge to interject numbers out of order as he did to Faramir when his brother took inventory in the archives. Legolas, who was definitely childish, seemed to sneak him an amused look; I know what you're thinking, it seemed to say.

"Vagueness," Legolas nodded, "go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both yes and no. But we're here anyway."

"Here?" asked Boromir and there was the sound of wood scraping against stone, a murmured benediction and the crackling pop of fire flaring up from a wooden torch Legolas had procured from a sconce on the wall.

Elvish magic?! Boromir wondered, surprised.

Yet he had little time to dwell on it as the enormity of what he was seeing registered. A tapestry suspended from the vaulted ceiling, wide enough to take up half of the wall and a mess of vibrant colour. It was done more skilfully than any Boromir had seen in Gondor, as well done as those outside the library and in the corridors of Imladris, each miniscule feature picked out with fine thread and careful hand. It took no stretch of memory for Boromir to recognise the small patch of grass in front of the White Tree of Gondor; every blade of grass had been rendered in shades of sage and clover-green, some shadowed, some still kissed by dew and some trodden as if underfoot. They seemed to sway in still wind, a stirred sea that broke in gentle waves against the gnarled trunk of Nimloth- Boromir stopped himself before he reached out to stroke them, to see if they felt as soft as the grass in Minas Tirith. He swallowed loudly, feeling homesickness rise in a sudden swell of grief.

"It's beautiful," he whispered hoarsely, eyes caressing the image as they travelled up and up and up and-

For the first time in as long as Boromir could remember, he laid eyes once more on Finduilas of Dol Amroth. All the breath whooshed out of him in a shaky gust that started in his navel and trembled up his spine to reverberate in his shoulders. She was just as pretty as she had been the day she died, as warm, captured in time and stillness within the tapestry.

Though it was just the right side of her profile, Boromir saw her now clearer than he had ever done so before. Ebony skin gleamed in the sunlight, unmarked and perfect, striking in contrast to the trailing ivory dress that clung to her, accenting the wide curve of her hips and willowy tallness of her frame; dark hair was curled into a loose bun that sat low on the nape of her neck, heavy with the weight of a dozen pearls that burst into marble veined glory throughout and strands escaped in a wistful informality; and her face was possible the kindest he had ever seen, with gently smiling lips tugged up at the corners minutely and wide eyes a warm golden-brown that seemed to shine with some otherworldly wisdom. Finduilas on her wedding day, Finduilas awaiting her future. With greedy eyes, Boromir followed her arm as it reached out before her, lingering on where her fingers clasped those of Denethor, his father.

A joining of hands, a union of hearts.

His mother.

"She was my best friend," Legolas confided quietly, "an older sister of sorts. I watched her grow up, I grew up with her and then... stopped. In age, or age equivalents, she surpassed me. She was seven when I met her, myself like to fifteen year-old child of Man, and when she married I was little more than seventeen. Eighteen when she wrote to announce her pregnancy and nineteen with her second. Twenty when she died. Aging for Elves is like being stuck in tree sap, everything slower for us.

"Because of this we remember everything. You don't and... and Finduilas, she would want you to remember her. But you were only a child when she died. You wouldn't be expected to remember, not forever. And you won't but that doesn't mean I can't try. This tapestry is her legacy and you were meant to see it- I can't be convinced otherwise."

Tears spilled over Boromir's cheeks. "I remember her," he murmured, "the little things only though. The way she would kiss my eyelids, the way she would sing me to sleep with songs in Elvish, the way she would run her hands through my hair. But- but I can't remember what her laugh sounds like, not properly anyhow, or how she looked when I'd skipped lessons. I can't remember her and it kills me inside because every single day Faramir would ask me for snippets of her, stories for him to treasure, and I couldn't give him that. I lost her."

Legolas' arms slipped around his shoulders and Boromir felt himself tense against the young Elf, awkward and embarrassed. He'd never allowed himself to mourn in such a fashion for his mother, never cried like this in front of anyone and yet some dam within him had shattered under mammoth pressure and a flood surged out of it, obliterating each careful mask he had in place to conceal himself.

"She is not lost," Legolas soothed, rubbing careful circles on Boromir's back. "She is here and she will never leave. She loves you so much. She'll never leave you, I swear."

"Never," Boromir repeated numbly.

On his return to Gondor he would tell Faramir all of this- plan a trip to Rivendell maybe, introduce Legolas and beg tales of the woman that smelt always of the sea- but for now he stood, reduced to a child, safe in the arms of a friend, and grieved the mother he had never grieved before.

to be continued.

translations.
Callon - Hero