Chapter 5: Plum Rain

Overnight, the waterfalls beneath Legolas' rooms froze solid. In the crisp, northern wind, Imladris' plum blossoms unfurled. Legolas stood quietly under the eaves, a heavy cloak resting around his shoulders, and looked out over the delicate, tenacious blossoms, their crimson petals crowned with frost.

The wind toyed with the golden strands of his hair, and left the courtyard enveloped in the faint scent of plum blossoms, clean and cold and lovely. Legolas inhaled deeply, smiling softly to himself, and puffed a little breath into his hands to warm them. He had only come out for a short while, but already he felt sleepy.

Touching a hand to his forehead, Legolas breathed out unsteadily and turned his attention inwards. He was contemplating how to speak to Elrohir without being immediately hurled into depths of Moria, when he heard a loud "ah!"

Legolas blinked, and took a step out of the corridor and into the courtyard beyond. "Estel?"

The child retracted a guilty foot and shrank behind a thick cluster of blossoms. He was perched high on a forked branch in a plum tree, and currently trying his best to press himself into the cracks in the tree bark. Legolas' lips twitched in amusement.

"Estel!" Erestor growled, as he came stomping down the corridor. "I said you could take a break, not run away to Lothlórien! Where have you gone, you daft child?"

Estel pressed back even closer against the tree trunk. The heir of Númenor was gifted indeed, if he had managed to to send dignified, scholarly Erestor on the warpath. Even treed, he offered Legolas a cheerful grin, his eyes wide and beseeching.

And Legolas held one finger to his lips, his eyes crinkling into crescent moons as he smiled back.

"Your Highness," Erestor said with stiff politeness, although it was evident that he was preoccupied with thoughts of feeding Estel to giant spiders. "Have you seen Estel?"

Legolas shook out his sleeves and clasped his hands thoughtfully. "Not recently. Have you misplaced him again?"

Erestor stared hard at the small footprints that wound across the snow-lined courtyard, and then at Legolas, who smiled sunnily back at him. A muscle spasmed in his jaw.

"I see," Erestor said, with a formal bow. "I must be on my way, then."

He stormed away, muttering under his breath, and the wind carried snatches of his words back to Legolas.

"Teach him, he said… It will be simple, he said… That child has already taken at least four centuries off my life…"

Legolas chuckled, and his laughter quickly faded into a coughing fit. Breathlessly, Legolas messaged his breastbone.

"He's gone," Legolas called out to the little fugitive in the plum tree.

A pair of bright eyes peered out from around the bough. "Really?"

"Really," Legolas said, drifting lightly over the snow. He stopped beneath Estel's tree and tipped his head up. "Would you like to come down?"

There was an embarrassed silence. "I don't think I can," Estel said, his voice muffled.

"Oh," Legolas paused, somewhat stupefied. This particular predicament had never occured to him before.

"Can you come up and fetch me?" Estel asked innocently, and Legolas gave a helpless little huff.

He studied the tree and came to the resigned conclusion that if he tried to climb it, he would likely become the first wood-elf to die stuck in a tree.

"It's cold up here," Estel said, shivering, and Legolas' brow furrowed with concern. Suddenly, he sympathised deeply with Erestor—the daft child hadn't bothered to recover fully from his excursion on a frozen river before getting himself stranded yet again.

"Wait," Legolas said, beginning to head back across the courtyard. "I will call one of your brothers."

Estel shivered again, and this time he slipped. With a yelp of surprise, he scrabbled back up the trunk. A clump of snow, dislodged by his flailing hands, plummeted to the ground below and made him jump.

Legolas hurried back to the tree, stumbling in his haste. He held out his arms and looked up anxiously at the little boy.

"Be careful!" Legolas chided, trying to catch his breath. He could feel white hair sprouting up along his hairline.

Estel wrapped himself more firmly around the bough, but now, given his very Mannish propensity for incredible feats of clumsiness, Legolas didn't dare leave him alone. Legolas spun in worried circles beneath the tree, his arms outstretched in an attempt to catch Estel in case he fell.

Estel was beginning to regret his impulsiveness. Below him, Legolas stood quietly. The sun cast his long, slender shadow across the snow, where it overlapped with the straight, proud lines of the plum tree. Together, they waited in silence, the human boy and his elven guardian.

At last, Estel's hands grew numb from the cold. Too tired to tighten his loosening grip, Estel toppled from the tree, and finally, Legolas moved.

He caught Estel around the waist, drew him into his embrace, and together, they fell into the snow. Estel popped up almost immediately. Aside from a jolted elbow, he hadn't felt anything at all; Legolas had shielded him from the brunt of the impact.

Beside him, Legolas was slowly sitting up. He was panting slightly from the effort, and each breath was wet and heavy, as if there were liquid in his lungs. Estel's eyebrows scrunched together.

"You're not well?" Estel said in a small voice.

Legolas reached out and gently pressed a long finger against the space between Estel's eyebrows, smoothening out his frown.

"Foolish child," Legolas murmured, his eyes dancing. "That is not for you to worry about."

The wind rustled through the branches overhead, and carelessly scattered a handful of blossoms into the air. In the plum blossom rain, Legolas smiled down at him. He was thin, even frail, but there was something hard and unyielding in his bones. Sunlight caressed his cheek, and brought out the warmth in his expressive grey eyes, as exquisite as if traced by an artist's hand.

Estel stared, spellbound, and suddenly sprung forward, engulfing Legolas in a fierce hug. He felt Legolas stiffen momentarily, and then a light hand ran through his hair. Legolas smelled like pine, sharp, clean, and brisk. In his arms, Estel felt very safe.

"Thank you," Estel mumbled into Legolas' robes.

Gently, Legolas cuddled Estel close. At length, he made an odd humming sound that sounded more like a sigh, and said, "You are very welcome, Estel."

"They say you hurt yourself trying to save me," Estel said anxiously, tipping his head back to look into Legolas' eyes.

"Hmm, not quite," Legolas said lightly. "I have been feeling poorly for a long time, Estel."

"Why? Did the orcs wound you?"

Legolas flicked his nose. "No."

"Giant spiders, then?"

"No."

"… the bears that are as big as dragons?"

Legolas started, and a soft laugh escaped him. "No."

"But it was because you were fighting, weren't you?" Estel persisted, growing sad. "Everyone goes to fight. And sometimes they don't come back."

"There are some things you must do," Legolas said quietly. "Even if you know they may lead to death. That is duty, Estel, though some even call it fate."

With his words, images rose unbidden to Estel's mind, sights and sounds he had never encountered before, and yet somehow it felt like he had known them forever and a day. It was the wingbeats of crows flying before the yellow winter moon, it was a bone-white city glittering diamond-bright in the summer sun. It was the murmur of leaves unfurling on the cusp of spring, and the thrum of running water threading through solid rock. It was all of these together, and in their wake rose an eerie song that teased at his ear and slipped through his fingers.

Legolas' face was so young, unlined by the years, but in his eyes, Estel saw the falling leaves of nine hundred autumns.

After a long pause, Estel shook his head emphatically, "You're wrong."

"Oh?"

"Yes," Estel said, his features blurring in the light. Legolas raised a hand to shield his eyes, but Estel's figure only grew hazier still, and suddenly it was as if he were seeing not the boy, but the man he would become. "I'll learn to protect you. You and Elladan and Elrohir and Mother and Ada…"

Estel's voice was earnest, bright with a conviction that was old and young at once. "When I grow up, I will keep you safe."

It was an outlandish promise, one easily dismissed as the follies of a child, but Legolas didn't laugh. Slowly, as if in a trance, Legolas reached out and caressed Estel's face with a cold hand, and found that he could not speak.

In the end, it was Estel who tugged at his sleeve and chirruped, "Let's go."

As they made their way across the courtyard, Estel glanced down, and his eyes widened. He worried his lip.

He couldn't yet understand why it so dismayed him to see two sets of footprints in the snow.

For three days, Elrohir avoided him like the plague. At last, Legolas found Elrohir sequestered in a forgotten corner of the library, sprawled languidly across an armchair, his nose buried in a book. Elrohir was nestled in a puddle of late afternoon sunlight, and it outlined the long, lean lines of his profile, the almost rakish arch of his eyebrows. Silhouetted against the valley below, he looked like a figure from within a painting.

He was also holding his book upside-down.

"Elrohir," Legolas said quietly.

Elrohir's brows knitted together as if in deep thought. Without looking at Legolas, he said, "I'm busy."

"Ah," Legolas hummed, and promptly turned to the bookshelf on his left. He brushed a light hand over the dusty spines of the old tomes that lived there, selected one after some thought, and took a seat by Elrohir's side.

As he approached, Elrohir twitched unconsciously, as if contemplating whether or not to throw himself out of the window. Squaring his shoulders, Elrohir set his jaw grimly, as if preparing for a great battle, but whatever he was waiting for did not come. Legolas curled up and began to read, propping up his cheek with one idle hand, and for a time there was nothing but the occasional swish of turning pages.

Elrohir shifted uncomfortably in his armchair, briefly considered stealing away, and then resisted the impulse to slap himself. Desertion in the face of the enemy did not befit a son of Elrond. He shot Legolas a probing glance, but the latter appeared to be engrossed in his book, and did not notice.

Elrohir gave up first.

"Alright, stop pretending," he said crankily. "I know all of the books on that shelf. How interesting can a treatise on the Hobbits' black market for mushrooms really be?"

Legolas closed his book with a snap, eyes glittering, and already Elrohir began to regret having spoken.

"I am sorry, Elrohir," Legolas' voice was low and steady. "I was wrong to put Estel at risk by concealing the full extent of my injury from you."

"I…" Elrohir's lips twisted in a bitter smile. "But you aren't sorry for keeping it a secret, are you?"

He thought he saw sadness dart through Legolas' eyes. "No."

"What if you had suffered an attack during an ambush? During a raid? How many lives would you have cost your kinsmen?" Elrohir's words sharpened with anger. "Your soldiers deserve a commander they can depend on, not one who might collapse in the thick of battle!"

"You are reckless, Legolas," he hissed. "By what right do you gamble with the lives of those around you?"

Legolas paled, and for a heartbeat Elrohir thought he might faint. But Legolas only straightened his shoulders and bowed his golden head.

"I know," he said hoarsely. "At first, it happened only during winter. Once, if at all. Later, I was always able to get away before it became a problem on the battlefield. I thought I could control it. But this year…"

"Oh, Legolas," Elrohir said wearily, "why do you always think that you must do everything yourself?"

Legolas' sudden burst of laughter made Elrohir jump. It was piercing, coloured bleak.

"You did not see my father the year we lost my mother," Legolas said in an empty voice. "He nearly killed himself, did you know that? I was barely a century old then, and afterwards I…"

He had been only a slender sapling of the forest then, and overnight, he became the only thing holding up the war-scarred skies of the Woodland Realm. Legolas read petitions on Thranduil's behalf, wrote decrees in Thranduil's hand, fought battles in Thranduil's name. It was then when people had begun to call him sun-prince, the Greenwood's most brilliant star, but he couldn't bear to think back to that year. The only thing that had chased him through the centuries since was the memory of his father's blank, staring eyes.

"… I couldn't leave him alone," Legolas said, a little breathlessly, because of the many complex, interwoven threads that bound him to Middle-earth, this was strongest one of all. "I stayed because I thought I could control it, but I was stupid, arrogant—"

He struggled to catch his breath, and alarmed, Elrohir rose to his feet, because Legolas was breathing in irregular, shallow pants, like a fox caught in a snare.

"—and Rilithil," Legolas' voice was an anguished cry, "Rilithil should not have died! Ah!"

Leolgas doubled over, curling his hand against his chest with an agonised moan, and Elrohir almost stopped breathing. He made an involuntary, vehement gesture, as if to cross over to Legolas' side, but his feet were rooted to the spot. In the end, he couldn't take a single step forwards.

"Legolas," Elrohir said shakily, white as paper. "Legolas, don't scare me. Shall I fetch Father?"

Even dazed, Legolas heard the real fear in his voice. With a grimace, Legolas forcibly swallowed the blood he could taste at the back of his throat.

What was he doing? He hadn't come here to do this, when was the last time he had lost control like this?

Black spots swam at the edge of his sight, there was an odd, malicious humming in his ears, and savagely, Legolas dug his nails into his arm. If he fainted now, it was all over. Elrohir would carry this with him for the rest of eternity.

Sure enough, as the humming faded, he heard Elrohir saying wildly, "… I was jesting, Legolas, don't take it to heart. Legolas, please…"

His words were a stake, piercing deep into Legolas' heart. Shuddering faintly, Legolas straightened. Even before he managed to fully return to himself, his lips were already curving in an apologetic smile.

"Don't be afraid, Elrohir. I'm alright."

Elrohir looked at him as if he were seeing a ghost. From somewhere deep inside, the Ringwraith's spectre cackled.

See? And you have the temerity to call yourself Protector of the Realm? You do not know how to protect, elfling, only how to destroy.

Elrohir sank back into his armchair, burying his face in his hands. His wrath had vanished like rain on sun-baked stones.

"And by what right do I judge you?" Elrohir whispered. "I wasn't there to help you, I let you shoulder this burden alone, and now I stand by and condemn you?"

"Stop," Legolas said. He was still ashen, but suddenly his eyes were the furious, imperious grey of the Sundering Seas. "Don't say that, Elrohir. Never say that."

"I should have been there to help you," Elrohir said blankly, and he seemed to be staring right through Legolas, his gaze lost in the years that lay behind them both.

"None of this is your fault, Elrohir. Do you hear me?" Legolas rose to his feet, stumbled once, and went to Elrohir's side. Unseeing, Elrohir continued to stare straight ahead.

"Whatever happened to me had nothing to do with you," Legolas said angrily. "You couldn't have known, and you couldn't have changed anything!"

Elrohir stirred then, his brow furrowing.

"How do you know?" he said, looking up at Legolas, his eyes wide and childlike and dark with sorrow.

A cold hand took his. Legolas' touch was like ice, as if the winter snows had sunk deep into his bones, and yet Elrohir found that he couldn't quite bring himself to pull away.

"Look at me, Elrohir. I am not Lady Celebrían," Legolas' voice was very soft.

"I know," Elrohir said mechanically.

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Then why do you insist on being so conceited, you thick-skulled donkey?" Legolas said evenly.

Elrohir's head snapped up. "What?"

"Am I wrong?" Legolas was gazing at him steadily. "Somehow, you have gotten it into your head that the great Elrohir Elrondion is single-handedly responsible for the welfare of all elves west of Aman."

Elrohir's eyes flashed, and he pushed Legolas roughly away from him. "You don't know what you're saying," he muttered.

"No?" Legolas said tepidly. He had moved back a step, and only a single step, before standing firm. "Why else are you so eager to snatch the blame for matters entirely beyond your control?"

Elrohir shook his head in vexed annoyance. "Legolas, that is not what this is about."

"I think it is," Legolas lifted his golden head challengingly. "This path I walk, I walk because I was born to the House of Oropher, and because I live in a time of war. Unless you could have contrived for me to have been born a field mouse, or perhaps a garden snail, I don't see how any of this is your fault."

Elrohir clenched his jaw, and did not speak.

"So look at me, Elrohir," Legolas said quietly. "I have guarded the borders of Greenwood the Great for eight centuries. Do you think the elfling you carried on your shoulders nine hundred years ago is the same elfling still?"

Gone was the gentle, sickly archer who ran after swans and defaced Imladris' windows with drawings of acorns. In his eyes, Elrohir saw someone who could stand at the head of armies.

"No." It was a word softly dropped.

"Then trust me," Legolas said, a soft, bright smile touching his lips, "and forgive yourself. The choices I have made, Elrohir, they are mine alone to bear."

Elrohir glowered sullenly at the bookshelf behind Legolas' ear, as if bent on burning a hole through the wood with the force of his glare.

"So this is what they teach you in the Greenwood?" he finally growled.

Legolas blinked, befuddled.

"All this cunning eloquence and scheming trickery?" Elrohir continued. He was puffing up with rage, like a cat with its fur standing on end.

"Wha—"

Promptly, Elrohir pounced. He gently tackled a startled Legolas backwards into his armchair, and began raining blows down on his head and shoulders. Elrohir's expression was fierce and flinty, as if he were staring down a giant spider, but there was no force behind his punches.

"You little fox, do you find it very amusing to scare me half to death?"

"Ouch! Elrohir, my nose—"

"That is the least of your worries, princeling. By the time I'm through with you—"

"Elrohir, we left this madness behind centuries ago!"

"No matter whether you are nine or nine hundred years old, I can still beat the living daylights out of you!"

"Help! A kinslaying in the library! Oof—"

On the last day of hrivë, winter rains pierced the thick mists that wreathed the house of Elrond, lining the wind with the cold, bracing scent of renewed earth, and Elrohir left on a patrol to Imladris' western borders. As plump raindrops bowed the nodding niphredil, the wind laughed and swept westwards, accompanying the sound of receding hoofbeats.

From his pavilion above the waterfall, Legolas watched Elrohir go. The vague circles of lantern light clouded his sight with shifting shadows; he could no longer clearly discern the shapes in the valley below. All the same, Legolas stood by the window, quietly listening to the falling rain.

A blast of wintry air rushed through the unlatched window, and he shivered. Before long, he was bent over at the waist, one hand braced against the wall, shaking with violent coughs that seemed intent on tearing him open from inside out. The vial of athelas draught that Elrond had brewed for him was still steaming away on the windowsill, but Legolas did not reach for it.

His coughing grew wet at the edges, and by the time it withered away, there was blood dripping down his chin. Legolas tried to blink away the darkness that lingered at the edge of his vision, but this time it refused to dissipate, and as it deepened, the old wound on his chest began to burn anew. It was a dull, ponderous pain now. Strange, had he ever thought otherwise?

All throughout, the rain continued to thrum a steady beat against the eaves. Quietly, Legolas settled down on the cool stone floor and closed his eyes.

At last, he spoke, his voice filling with cold, regal authority.

"Come out."

Author's Note:

We're almost done! :D