Siege Mentality
Chapter Sixteen
I'm going to try a little of Kalurien's reverse psychology here: No, no, of course I don't want you to review. It's never occurred to me that you might review… *eg*
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Celebrían emerged from her chambers, where she had left her husband sitting amid his arrayed possessions and cursing all and sundry in language which would have made Morgoth's toes curl. She immediately wished she had followed her first instinct, which had been to pull Elrond back into bed – or, indeed, onto any space of floor that was not taken up by reams of parchment, darned tunics, or pointy objects.
Aramithea was hollering at the top of her not inconsiderable voice and passing out brightly coloured badges to anyone who did not have enough wits about them to decline. The lady of Imladris caught Glorfindel's eye, and he hurried over, his fair face a mask of worry, pressing one of the small metal circles into her hand.
"What does she say? I cannot understand." Indeed, Aramithea was even less intelligible than your average fangirl – that is to say, possessing the capacity for rational speech of a chicken nugget.
"Read it." Glorfindel looked grim – although that could have had something to do with the vast quantities of Gondorian wine he had ingested the previous night. She did as he bid her.
"Elrond loves Legolas. You know he does."
"What?" Celebrían decided to take matters into her own hands – quite literally, it turned out, as she grasped the lapels of Aramithea's chic overcoat and hefted her several inches clear of the marble tiling. "What mean you by this?" She brandished the badge in her free hand.
"Can't you understand, you daft witch?" the fangirl sneered. "Perhaps you can't read. Your husband loves Leggy-kins, not you. He only has sex with you because you have blonde hair."
At that point, Celebrían decided that it was too amusing to be bothered with and dropped the blathering half-Maia to the floor. She began giggling, and Glorfindel joined in, relieved that – at least for the moment – the Last Homely House was still standing, and had not been toppled by the rage of its lady.
Lord Celeborn began to dance a jig along the corridor, dragging a very confused looking son of Fëanor along with him.
"Ha ha! This explains it. Will you come home now, my daughter?"
"Is this of your doing, ada?" Celebrían inquired, trying to sound severe between her fits of laughter.
"Nay." Celeborn bounced up and down on the spot. Maglor's head collided with the ceiling several times. "'Tis merely that I agree with it."
At that moment, Elrond made his appearance. Not only did he appear very irate, but also he was attired only in his breeches and the flag of Ereinion Gil-galad, which was draped loosely around his shoulders.
"What is wrong, celeb loth nîn?" He ducked instinctively to avoid the stale bread roll that Celeborn lobbed at his head, and it glanced harmlessly off the wall – or maybe not quite so harmlessly as, at a distance of several hundred yards, it hit Gandalf's treasured, and rather battered, hat squarely.
"Here." Celebrían, rocking backwards and forwards with mirth, passed him the offending object. He took one look at it and scowled. Small furry creatures began to scurry for cover, sensing the impending storm.
"What. Is. The. Meaning. Of. This?" Elrond ground his teeth together, and tried to look as imposing as it is possible to in a pair of breeches that have seen far, far better days and a muddied banner. Vilya obligingly diverted a hurricane, which had been hovering over the Sundering Seas, to howl across the valley.
"Well, it's obvious." Aramithea tossed her hair scornfully. "He's blond and cute. Who wouldn't want him? You only shag your wife because she looks a little bit like him…"
"Celebrían looks not a bit like that outrageous oaf." The clouds roiled and seethed, and the first drops of rain fell on the waving treetops.
"…And you don't want us to have him. Therefore, you must want him for yourself," she finished with a triumphant flourish, blithely unaware of the fell force that was to fall upon her,
"I care not if you have him or no." The rain beat against the walls, boiling into the gathering puddles and swelling the Bruinen, as Elrond crumpled the badge in his hand. "I merely wish that you would do so elsewhere."
"Ah hah! That's because you don't want to see him fall in love with anyone else."
"And what of the feckless princeling? I suppose he is in love with me?" Elrond asked tiredly.
"Oh no." Aramithea preened. "He loves me."
"No, me."
"Me."
"Me."
"Me."
The Master of Rivendell watched with some satisfaction as the fangirls resolved themselves into a tangle of tussling limbs. Celebrían, finally recovering from her fit of the giggles, grinned at him. "So it is true what they say."
"And what do they say, my love?" Elrond tugged her into his arms, ignoring the death-glares sent his way by Celeborn of the Golden Wood. It would be hard to tell if this embrace was more for the lady's comfort or the lord's, although the sensible gambler would probably choose the latter.
"Evil contains the seeds of its own downfall."
"Hmm … perhaps we should not try to lose all the fangirls immediately. We could always inflict them on Sauron." The elf-lord's rage had not entirely abated, and the Bruinen, tested to its limits, burst its banks. A tumbling wave lapped at the foundations of the house, and spat something at Elrond's feet, rather like a small elfling who has been confronted with a plate full of Brussels sprouts. It turned out to be one very soggy and extremely disgruntled Istar.
Gandalf hauled himself upright and watched the water draining from his clothes disgustedly.
"What did you think you were doing, Master Elrond? Need I remind you that the Ring you bear is no trinket to be used lightly?" he hissed, and his host looked abashed at the actions of Celebrimbor's craftsmanship. Really, he decided, it would have been wisest if the entire House of Fëanor had been allowed near nothing more perilous than a sandcastle. "I only saved myself from watery grave at the confluence of the Bruinen and the Mitheithel by grabbing onto a passing bundle of floating bindweed."
"Hey!" Pippin shook himself like a small, scruffy dog, and tried to struggle free of the Maia's ferocious grip. "I am no bundle of bindweed. If you must know, I was fishing for some nice trout for second breakfast, and I got caught up in something green which hit me around the head when it came at me all of a sudden from upstream."
"Be careful, Peregrin Took, or I shall finish the task it started," Gandalf warned him, and placed him on the floor, returning to the rather more important business of wringing the water out of his pouch of pipeweed. The Hobbit appeared a little shaken for a moment, but then grinned maniacally, his blue eyes lighting up, and pulled a small and only slightly dented-looking trout from the pocket of his waistcoat. And then another. And two from the other pocket. And half a pound of mushrooms from his coat. And a tiny frying pan from inside his socks. Concluding that it would be too much effort to find his way to the kitchens, and anyway his hunger needed assuaging immediately, he sank down cross-legged on the floor, and, beckoning to Merry, began to make a tidy little blaze right there in the middle of the corridor.
Elrond glanced to his wife for support, but she was too busy trying not to fall over from laughing so much.
Denethor popped his head out of his chamber and looked speculatively at the fire. Alas for his nefarious intentions, his son had commandeered one of the empty storage cupboards and retired there with the Shield-maiden of the Riddermark, vowing that he would not emerge until the Fellowship of Eru-Knows-How-Many (as it had come to be known) was ready to depart. Maglor was busy exacting his revenge for the ceiling-induced concussion that he had acquired courtesy of Lord Celeborn; he was presently holding the Sindar Elf over the flames to see if his silver hair could be forged into anything more useful.
"Celebrían…"
"Yes, herven?"
"Are you not worried that Maglor will set your father alight and then we will have to take him back to your mother in a spice jar?"
"Not really." She shrugged, her lips quirking with the effort of repressing her laughter. Elrond found it really quite irresistible. "Ada has his ways of saving himself. Ah, look now…"
Indeed, Celeborn managed to fling himself away from the kinslayer, squashing a couple of Hobbits in the process. The son of Fëanor looked in bafflement at his suddenly empty hand, and then over at the elf-lord who was grinning wildly and pulling faces, and back at his hand. Celebrían lost control of her mirth and began to weep with amusement.
Elrond realised that no one would notice one more instance of insanity in this madhouse, and that he might as well take advantage of this. With one swift movement, he pinioned his wife against the nearest wall.
"It seems that my lady finds much amusement in the events of this morning," he growled, trailing off as she squirmed happily against him, pulling at the ends of the poor, misused banner to bring him into closer contact.
"Yes. Does my lord not?"
"I confess that I do not." He brushed his forehead against the silver crown of her head.
"Well, I feel that it is my obligation as a dutiful wife to remedy that." She hooked one finger into the waistband of his breeches and pulled him back towards their chambers.
"When have you been a dutiful wife?" he laughed tenderly, deciding that this morning was not, after all, so bad.
"When it suits me…"
"And not when it might mean saving me from spending an evening discussing nautical knots with a certain Teler shipwright, who still, after nigh on six thousand years, cannot tell me apart from my long departed brother?" Really, the movement of her hand against his exposed skin was quite entrancing.
"Especially not then." Celebrían released him, but only to sweep a collection of assorted objects from their bed, and then sank down and smiled up at him invitingly. With a groan of desire he took her in his arms, surrendering himself to the caresses of body and mind that, blissfully, blotted out the chaotic sounds that crept under the door. In a long-practised manoeuvre, they divested themselves of their clothes and crawled under the rumpled sheets, never losing contact with one another, and fell into the age-old dance.
~*~
"Ada? I have your armour. Elladan and I found it in… Oh Mandos, do you have to do this?" The younger peredhel looked appalled as he averted his eyes from the sight of his parents curled contentedly around one another. He had gone an interesting shade of green.
"Apparently so," Celebrían said wryly. "Although it remains to be seen why you do not knock."
"Well, we … that is to say, Elladan, Estel, Arwen and I … thought
that, after his encounter with Aramithea, ada would either be hitting things or have retreated into a
ball in the corner. We imagined that the
news of the recovery of his own armour would cheer
him up…"
"It is pleasant to know that my children have such faith in the health of my mind." Elrond retrieved his head from under the pillows, just as the others clattered into the room, clutching various pieces of his armour. "Mae govannen." He did not sound as if it had been so very well met, and indeed he had been planning to see only his wife for the rest of the day. "And where did you find my armour? I had thought that it was up a tree somewhere."
"No, ada." Arwen looked cheerful. "We did inspect all the foliage first, but then Estel had a brilliant idea. We found it in the rooms of Charity: she had been hoping that she would be able to give it as a gift to Legolas."
"Marvellous: next they will be suggesting that I should turn the lordship of Imladris over to him."
"Well…" Isildur's heir absent-mindedly picked a bit of twig out of his messy hair. "She wished that as well…"
"And?"
"And we introduced her to Maglor. It appears that your foster-father is remarkably protective of both your domains, and your lordship of them. He has found a diversion from trying to bite daeradar. Instead, he has trapped her behind an impromptu barricade, and is demonstrating '102 things that Fëanor did wrong – the blasted idiot of a blasphemous magpie who really should have listen to his wife, and was, all in all A Bad Thing, and I have heard he is presently engaged in pulling my brother's hair for throwing the Silmaril away despite the fact that it burnt him' for her benefit. I believe that there is a considerable amount of fire involved."
"Thank the Valar for this unprecedented instance of good sense on his part. And now, if you would be so good as to put it about that we shall be leaving with the dawn, I would be most pleased. 'Tis best not to delay the inevitable any longer."
Once they had departed, he began shovelling clothes and containers of medicinal powder into his pack, wondering what the morrow would bring. It would probably not be very pleasant, he concluded. He was right.
TBC
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
