A/N: So to get me out of a bit of a slump and try and get the writing juices flowing again (I have been stuck on a certain part of Wrath and Ruin for the looooongest time) I decided to take part in a 15 minute prompt challenge. It's simple, you take a prompt and write what you can in 15 minutes. I won't lie, I went over by 10 minutes for this one…oopsie! Anyways I'll stop waffling now – do read on and enjoy!
Prompt: You are so very broken and no one cares to notice
He wore black now, more often than not, though he was so very clever with it; had the sable outfits shot through with silver or embellished here and there with shimmering opal and goal thread. Sometimes he wore other colours – not that they were any brighter – slate greys and burgundies and deepest, darkest greens and navies. He was in mourning and yet because his black was embellished and he occasionally sported another colour no one noticed. No one but Galion, loyal butler whose role it was to layout the sombre outfits and when the need arose order more – ever dark, ever grimmer.
His smile no longer reached his eyes. Not that he'd ever been given to ample amounts of smiling – sunny was not a descriptor that could ever be applied to his disposition – but at least then the smiles, when they did come, reached his eyes; lit the ice blue orbs from the inside until they shone and invited others to smile with him. Now…now the smiles were rarer than ever and when they came they were so painfully forced, devoid of true joy and they didn't make it anywhere near his eyes. Nowhere near at all. Yet others, caught up in themselves and their own gaiety never noticed. Galion did, he whose job it was to watch and be ready to respond to whatever whim might take his Liege, noticed.
He'd lost all interest in wine and other alcohol. He who was famed for his love of a good vintage no longer found joy or even any relief in it. He had a mouthful at most now with his meals and though his tables were full, they were full of people who were focused on their own wine or their food or trying to curry his notoriously hard to win favour. And so they never noticed his glasses went back to the kitchens mostly untouched. His only exception being the strong shot of vodka that he took alongside crushed Valerian root to ensure a sound night's sleep. Galion, the one who cleared up the small tray of alcohol and medicine night after night, noticed.
And now worst of all, Galion and Galion alone it seemed, had noticed something else. He was beginning to withdraw. Oh yes, he still attended all the meetings and dinners and duties his Kingship required of him and was as gracious and charismatic as ever, yet he had begun to slowly, inexorably pull away. A feigned headache here, pretended tiredness there and most recently bold-faced lies of prior engagements; all ways to squirrel away to be on his own to mope and stare out into nothingness for hours at a time on his balcony, the wind howling in his ears and whipping at his hair.
Oh Thranduil, Galion thought sadly, you are so very broken and no one cares to notice - no one but me.
The thought burned viciously, like bile in the throat but it lent Galion strength. No longer would he let his Liege Lord and his suffering go so unnoticed. Galion would bring it out into the open, into the light.
And with that the butler turned from watching Thranduil watch nothing on his high, windy balcony and marched in the direction of Lord Arahaelon's office. He'd start there.
END.
A/N: Drop me a one liner and let me know what you think - KimiC
