Sorrow and Joy
Chapter Three
Thanks for waiting for this chapter. I'm sorry that it's been this long.
A/N: Please don't hurt me for doing this to Haldir. In the end he's not going to be OOC. Remember that this is a very young Haldir full of barely suppressed rage against the world. I intend to show him growing into the personality we all know and love from the books *huggles Haldir* But at the moment, this is concentrated on Elrond's family.
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"How fare you this morning, pen-nîn tithen?" Elrond stood in the doorway and smiled gently at his younger son, who was propped up against the pillows, his black hair still shocking against the pallor of his face.
"I am much better, ada," Elrohir said, bouncing a little. "May I go outside and play?"
"Nay, my son."
"But why?" His lower lip trembled threateningly and his father was reminded all too well of the emotional quagmire his son had stumbled into.
"You have been very ill." Elrond perched on the edge of the bed, tenderly smoothing back a lock of hair which had fallen into Elrohir's face. "Do you not see that you must rest?"
"But that was only because I could not eat," the elfling protested. "But look, I am eating now."
Indeed, the low table was scattered with discarded fruit peel and biscuit crumbs, all tangled up in the snarled and frayed remains of a cloth belt which the younger twin stubbornly refused to wear.
"But your breakfast has not yet been brought to you…" The elf-lord was momentarily confused, until he caught sight of the unmistakable traces of pocket-lint clinging to the one remaining biscuit. "Ah, now I begin to understand. Elladan was very kind to bring you a snack."
"Yes he was," Elrohir said eagerly. "'Ladan wants to go and play by the Bruinen … but can I have breakfast first?"
"You may have breakfast, but you may not play outside."
"You are being cruel, ada!" he wailed with the bitterness of the very young.
"Nay, ion-nîn," Elrond sighed, beginning to understand the petrified look which had affixed itself to he High King's face when he had been confronted by a pair of peredhil twins whose delight had been to get themselves thoroughly lost and draped in seaweed exploring the rock-pools of Balar. "'Tis for your own good that I forbid this. You have not yet recovered your full strength, and I would not wish you to make yourself ill."
"But…"
"No buts," the elder elf declared firmly. "Would you like me to tell you a story?"
"No." Elrohir folded his arms across his chest in a passable imitation of his mother when she was angered. "I do not want any silly stories. I want my breakfast, and then I want to play with Elladan."
"Would you like porridge?" Elrond stood, absent-mindedly brushing crumbs from his burgundy robe.
"Can I have honey?"
"Yes, little one, you may."
"Lots and lots of honey?"
The older peredhel nodded.
"Would you like Elladan to bring your toy soldiers?"
At this the sulking elfling perked up a little, although he tried not to show it.
"Please."
Elrond padded softly from the room, thinking glumly that he would surely suffer the consequences of this once Elrohir's enforced confinement was over.
"You crept too early from my bed this morn," Celebrían whispered in his ear, and, startled, he turned, catching her in his arms. She was, he noticed, still wearing her soft, gauzy nightgown under a loose dressing gown.
"Hmm … I must agree with you. Far too early, meleth-nîn." He buried his face in her luxuriant silver tresses, his hands creeping round to caress the sensitive skin of her back through the fabric. "Unfortunately, as time and tide wait for no one, neither do our sons. Elrohir had all but convinced himself that he is fit to run and scream in the trees as usual, and Elladan was priming his brother with a pre-breakfast snack."
"I seem to remember another elf of this family who would not be kept in his bed by sickness," Celebrían laughed, gingerly picking a scrap of apple peel from his robes.
"I was not sick," Elrond retorted austerely. "I am an elf. Elves do not fall prey to sickness."
"You are half-elven, dear my love," she murmured against his strong jaw-line. "Pray what was it if it was not sickness?"
"The twinge of an old wound; naught to keep me from my duties in that dread time."
"You were sneezing, El-nîn, and had a raging fever so high that I could feel it from ten paces distant. Admit it: you had contracted … a … a cold."
They stopped for a moment, content in one another's arms, to recall her first visit to Imladris, and the unfortunate and embarrassing malady which had struck down its lord.
"Was it so very long ago?" he asked in a low voice.
"Not so long ago, but it seems as if an thousand yéni have passed, and I can never be that maiden again – for which I am profoundly glad, as she had not half the blessings which have been bestowed on me."
"You count me a blessing?" he teased, but he could not quite dispel the lump of emotion in his throat.
"Aye, that I do. I remember an elf-lord who could scarce drag his eyes from his books to look upon the daughter of an old ally."
"I dared not, for fear that you might spurn me, a war-wearied half-elf."
"And yet here we are," she said in a husky undertone.
"Here we are indeed … despite the fact that I might have perished of this … cold. As I remember it, you were no patient nurse with the bedside manner of Estë herself. You threw a heavy pile of books at me and the proceeded to read them yourself." There was an intense, burning light of affection in his grey eyes.
"Ah, so you admit that you were ill?" she giggled.
"What recompense might I receive for my loss of face?"
"If you are patient, I might tell you … or I might leave you wondering." And with that, she pressed a swift kiss to his lips and disentangled herself from his embrace. "Come, El-nîn, I believe we have a pair of ravenous elflings to feed."
~*~
Elrond paused in the doorway of the room, the flask of restorative serum held lightly in his hand. From within he could hear shrieks of laughter, punctuated by the feigned noises of battle. The twins sat on the bed, dark heads bent close together, hair intermingling, acting out a ferocious battle with two armies of grim-faced elven warriors wrought from wood, carefully painted.
However, now the battle seemed to have ground to a halt due to an altercation between those directing it.
"No, you cannot be adar. I get to be adar, because I am the eldest, as he was."
"But you always get to be adar. Why can I not be him this time?"
An affectionate smile curved Elrond's lips at this, but, just as he was about to announce his presence, the next words halted him.
"But I do not want to be Gil-galad. He was stuuupid. Ada would not have got himself killed by silly Sauron. I do not want to be a bad warrior. He must have been really useless, because I would just have hit Sauron with my sword and he would have been deader than dead. But Gil-galad was useless. Look…" And Elladan proceeded to demonstrate quite how vulnerable the High King had been with many gruesome sound effects.
It was foolish, he reflected much, much later. But at the time, he had been stung by the death of the elf who had been a father to him when there were no others left re-enacted with such casual disregard, and, more, by the pang of guilt which overwhelmed him at the thought that his teaching had so remiss, so egocentric as to leave his sons with this image.
The fragile glass container slipped through his nerveless fingers and shattered on the tiled floor, unnoticed by the squabbling elflings. Silently, his face a blank mask, he turned on his heel and stalked away.
~*~
Eventually, it was Celebrían who found him, slumped on a bench in an arbor overlooking the tumbling waterfalls, his twilit hair veiling his face.
"Elrond." He did not look up, showed no sign of having noticed her. "Listen to me, Elrond."
"What is there to listen to, my lady?" he inquired coldly.
"'What is there to listen to'?" she exclaimed. "You missed lunch, and have not attended your business all day. More importantly, your sons await a story. What am I supposed to tell them?"
"It seems I am not the best person to tell them any more tales." The deep despair in his voice jolted her from her indignant anger.
"What ails you?" She sat herself down beside him, her blue skirts lapping against his boots.
"I…'Tis nothing to worry yourself about," he said in a tone which was meant to be reassuring, but was so devoid of all emotion that it had the opposite effect.
"But I do worry," she persisted. "Tell me."
With halting, clipped words, never meeting her anxious blue gaze, he explained what he had overheard.
"And so, it seems, they are wrong who name me a master of lore, if I am unable to teach my children of their history."
"Elrond." She slid one finger under his chin, tilting it up until she could catch his stormy eyes. "You make too much of too little. They do not hold Ereinion Gil-galad in contempt, but merely wish to emulate their father, in whom they see many things that are good and pure."
"But what if…"
"If you are so afraid that you have done him injustice," she replied thoughtfully, "then you choose the wrong course to forsake your storytelling. You speak so often of his fall because it is so often in your mind, am I not right?"
"Aye," he conceded, bafflement etched on his face.
"Then tell the other tales. I am sure your first expedition was not without incident."
"Ai, hervess, you have such faith in my military prowess." A glimmer of humour shone once more in his eyes.
"If it would stop you brooding thus, I would say that you were the worst warrior in Middle-earth." She smiled, thankful that the grim cloud seemed to have left his eyes. "And I would imagine that Gil-galad was there to save your hide?"
"Aye."
"Then speak of it to them. Come, they are waiting."
"Not yet." He snaked one arm round her slender waist, pulling her against his lean length, and pressed a greedy kiss to her mouth. Groaning at the onslaught of his talented hands, Celebrían responded eagerly.
"What would I do without you, celeb loth nîn?" he sighed, drawing away at last.
"That you have asked before, and I have given my answer," she reminded him, tracing intricate patterns on his thigh.
"Indeed you have," he said with a grin which banished the somberness of his fine features. "But now, meleth-nîn, I believe we have a tale to tell, you and I."
Catching her hand in his, he began the languorous walk back to the house.
~*~
When they reached the twins' room, the toy soldiers lay abandoned on the floor, while the elflings bounced merrily on the bed, daring each other as to who could make the springs squeak the loudest.
"Ada!" They threw themselves at him as one, toppling him to the floor with their exuberance. Landing with his head cushioned on his wife's supple curves, Elrond was loathe to move for a moment – that was, until Elladan and Elrohir began to bounce up and down on his midriff with glee.
"Daro, daro pen-nîn tithin," he wheezed. "Would you like your story?"
"Can you not tell us over supper?" Elladan said dolefully. "We are hungry."
With a pang of guilt, the Lord of Imladris realised that the sun had dipped far into the west, and that the faint din in the distance was the clatter of platters being set on the long tables.
"Very well."
~*~
The twins' busied themselves with spearing slices of meat at least half their own size, and ladling piquant gravy over them until the poor forgotten vegetables were well and truly drowned. Celebrían sipped delicately at her goblet, her eyes smiling at her husband over the intricately wrought rim.
"Ada, the story," Elrohir prompted around a mouthful of chicken while his brother chased a stray pea across the tablecloth with his knife.
"Only once Elladan desists from his quest," Elrond reproved. The younger twin shot a look of false piety at his older brother, and Elladan dropped his knife guiltily, grabbing his fork to stab at a morsel of the succulent venison.
"I have now," he said guilelessly. "I only did it because the pea was defying me, ada."
Celebrían muffled a laugh at the scowl, so like her husband's, as was the stern language.
"Are you settled? No more rogue vegetables? Well then, once upon a time, long, long ago…"
"When daernaneth was little?" Elrohir asked with wide eyes at such an odd notion.
"No, not that long ago. But long ago, when I lived on the Isle of Balar with my foster-father, the High King, Gil-galad, there was to be a party sent to the mainland to hunt for orcs. Now, Elros and I were not that much older than you two, and we wanted desperately to go with our adar…"
"Can we go with you?" Elladan burst in.
"Nay, ion-nîn. Not yet. We were a little older than you, maybe forty-five years of age…"
At the mention of such an unattainably distant age, the elder twin gave up his notions of following his father and Glorfindel out into the wilds – yet.
"But, as I was saying, we wanted to hunt the orcs, and we were permitted to do so. When the day came I do not believe we had slept at all, and so, rubbing our eyes, we went out into the main courtyard, and rode off. Well, the sea crossing was very bumpy…"
"Like this?" Elrohir waved a dish of seasoned asparagus across the table, narrowly missing slopping the fragrant butter over Glorfindel's immaculate tresses. The elf-lord smiled and hastily pried the elfling's fingers from the crockery, setting it down.
"Your children are terrors, mellon iaur. Do you have no control over them?" he remarked sarcastically, but there was deep love for the entire family etched in his handsome face. He had not expected to love them, and yet…
"It appears not," Elrond retorted, slightly distracted by Celebrían's fingers wandering across the nape of his neck. "But, if I am to tell this tale…"
"Oh, pray continue." Glorfindel lounged back in his chair. "As I remember, this one is quite amusing…"
The Master of the Last Homely House glared darkly at him before continuing, "The ship went up and down, and I was quite sick, being very young and very nervous. Of course, Elros laughed at me, and I was determined to prove that I was the better warrior.
"And so it was that, on our second day, we came upon a party of orcs cackling round their meal and setting fire to the trees for fun…"
He would not tell his innocent sons what they had suspected that meal had consisted of. There was a time and a place for everything, and during early childhood over a laden dinner table was not it. Indeed, considering the wide nervousness of Elrohir's eyes, this was the last knowledge he wished to impart.
"…And so naturally we attacked them. Elros was a whirl of bright steel in the moonlight…"
He could still remember the bright geysers of black blood which had spurted out from under his brother's blade, the severed head rolling to a standstill at his feet, and the bile rising from the pit of his stomach.
"…Adar … Gil-galad was a seamless flurry of bright and dark, of glittering spear and midnight cloth, and the soldiers did what they knew to do. But I was afraid, and I stood, stock-still in the midst of battle, my sword hilt slippery in my hands."
The twins looked overawed at the thought of their brave adar not being able to heft his blade, a terror to all.
"And there was this one orc, a big, ugly brute – rather like Glorfindel's horse…"
The scion of the House of the Golden Flower swept him a mocking bow, and the elflings giggled appreciatively.
"…He came at me with his axe held high, and he was going to chop my head off like butter in the dish. I was quite transfixed with fear…"
Again he did not add that he had been unable to bear the idea of killing, even if he was faced with one of Morgoth's hideous travesties, but, for one of his audience at least, such words were unnecessary. Celebrían rested a comforting hand on his shoulder, kneading the knotted muscles.
"I was sure that I was deader than that goose." He pointed to the elaborately dressed bird which adorned the table. "But then, as I was waiting for the fell stroke, a blur of motion came out of the trees, shining brightly in the firelight and the moonlight, and … with a single stroke – as clever a blow as ever elf of Man has struck – the orc was dead at my feet, and I was still alive. I looked up into my saviour's blue eyes – of course, who else could it be but my foster-father?
"I was about to thank him, but he yelled, and then suddenly I saw Elros pinioned by an orc which had had its axe to his throat, although he was trying to push it off. And in that moment, I knew what I had to do, and I could do it, thanks to Gil-galad. The orc fell beneath my sword."
And in that moment, I knew that there were many choices, but none of them easy, and I must make them all.
Her hand came to settle on the back of his neck, her calming fingers drifting through his hair.
Elladan and Elrohir, on the other hand, were enraptured, bouncing up and down in the chairs, letting out wild whoops of delight.
"Ha!" The elder snatched up his knife, stabbing the now cold venison. "Dead orcs! Ha!"
"I am glad you could kill the orc." Elrohir clambered into his father's lap after his mirth died down, clutching at the velvet lapels.
Elrond wondered if he himself truly was.
The healer who does not heal…
'Twas one thing entirely to hate the orcs, to save his brother, and quite another to spill blood. He had, of course, many a time, but never entirely rid himself of that queasy sorrow.
"So am I," he responded, feeling the dichotomy deep within him. But at least his sons were happy, burbling and chucking at the story.
"Meleth-nîn." Celebrían clasped his hand under the table, leaning close to speak in his ear. "Your burdens are mine. And they have no low thoughts of he who saved their father from his own good heart."
He saw that she spoke the truth: Elrohir was dangling out of his arms to discuss the game of ambushing the orcs who had attacked their adar in hissed whispers.
~*~
"Was it good, or merely foolish?" he asked, much, much later, his fingers lingering on the nape of her neck as he unhooked her necklace.
"Compassion is never folly when one feels it truly." She caught him off balance and bowled him onto the bed. "The stories you have to tell are composed in equal parts of sorrow and joy. Now apart that recompense…"
TBC
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Translations:
El-nîn – my star.
Yéni – Great Years – 144 normal years.
Hervess – wife.
Daro - stop
Ion-nîn – my son.
Mellon iaur – old friend.
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