-Note­- Thanks for sticking with this! I'm back from Outward Bound and school's started, so…we'll see how often I can update this, then. There is a POV shift in the second half of the chapter. Special thanks to Indy for a little prompting!

-Disclaimer- Please see chapter 1.

The Way of Things

He didn't sleep much that first night. From his makeshift bed/couch, he could hear the night-noises of suburbia; cars rolled down the road in the small hours of the morning, the next door neighbors seemed to be nocturnal, street lights glared a harsh yellow-orange through the curtains. When at last his eyes fogged and his breathing evened out, it was close to dawn.

His dreams were jumbled and uncontrolled. Messes of images from the forest and the previous day slithered serpent-like through his mind, disorienting him. But too soon he woke to the sight of Elladan thumping one-footed around the room, pulling on a sock.

"Morning," said Elladan brightly. "Slept well, did you?"

Orophin moaned and shut his eyes.

"That well, eh?"

"Hmmmph."

"Then I'm sure you'd love to join us at work today," Elladan said sweetly.

"Only if you drive, not Elrohir."

Elrohir appeared in mock-disgruntlement. "You don't like my driving?"

"With all respect, no!" cried Orophin, getting up, stalking into the bathroom, and leaving Elladan and Elrohir laughing behind him.

(l)

Men were even stranger than he remembered, Orophin mused as he rung up a purchase at the machine- the "cash register"- the twins had taught him to use. Elladan had assured him that it wouldn't be a busy day, but as handfuls of people trickled in he felt a little overwhelmed. The harsh fluorescent lights, the mechanical-sounding ding of the opening and closing door, the strange equipment he slid across his counter to the customers opposite him…

A customer arrived at his counter carrying an armful of strange items Elladan had deemed "absolutely, absolutely necessary"; yet Orophin could not recall having used any of them before. He waited for the receipt to print itself. He put the purchase in a bag emblazoned with "EL'S OUTDOOR GOODS (for the real outdoorsman)" and handed it to the paunchy, middle-aged Man.

"Where's my change?" the Man asked gruffly. Orophin was confused.

"Change?" His mind scrambled for the meaning of this word: a verb, he recalled, but the Man did not seem to be using it as such. Change, change, change…the word floated around in his head for a moment before he gave up.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Yeah, my change. Can you give it to me? Listen, my lunch hour was over ten minutes ago, so why don't you speed up a little? You know, little coins?"

"Oh," he said, his cheeks hot. He checked the receipt, popped open the register drawer, fingered his way through a mess of coins. He deposited what he believed to be the correct amount into t he Man's outstretched palm.

"Sorry, sir."

The Man grunted a "thanks" and Orophin managed a weak-sounding "have a nice day" before the door swung shut, jingling.

Elrohir wandered over, deftly navigating past racks of parkas, rain gear, and shoe boxes. Somehow, Orophin knew Elrohir had heard the exchange, and Orophin could see in Elrohir's piercing gaze that he was being pitied. Looking deliberately nonchalant and cheerful, Elrohir was whistling a Dwarvish drinking tune and carrying a white box. He scanned the store (which was now empty) and flipped a sign on the door so the "Sorry, we're closed" side faced the street.

"Lunch?" he asked, setting the box on Orophin's counter with a thud. A cooler. The box was a cooler; Elladan had told him so.

"Yes, please." He was relieved; it could not escape his tone of voice.

Elrohir led the way into the back room, nodding and continuing to whistle. Cardboard boxes lined the walls, overflowing with woolly socks and long underwear and sleeping bags and things Orophin could not identify. Elladan was already there, sipping from a tall foam cup and surrounded by a mess of papers.

"Bloody taxes," he muttered in lieu of a greeting. "I want lunch."

With a dashing flourish, Elrohir revealed the contents of the cooler: ham and cheese sandwiches, a soggy salad, and a few bottles of juice. Elladan pushed the papers away and they ate together, sheltered briefly from the outside.

(l)

Elladan hated paperwork. Hated it. Elrohir had cleverly shunted his half of the reports onto Elladan's desk with a little "I'll watch the store and look after Orophin if you do these, there's not much there." He wasn't angry at his brother, just a little annoyed. Well, maybe more than a little. But that, he thought with a sigh, was the way of things, wasn't it?

Anyway, Orophin did seem to need some looking after. He had learned the ins and outs of the cash register quickly, but he had not lost the frightened deer-in-the-headlights look he had assumed since he had come to visit; Elladan knew it was only natural, but it was a little unnerving for an Elf who had once been so young-seeming.

The forest Orophin had come from had the sort of air about it that, despite the beauty of the land, reminded Elladan of a funeral. He hadn't said that to Grandfather or Lord Thranduil, of course, but he and Glorfindel agreed on the matter: as the Elves left the wood, the echoes of their existence faded more quickly than the remaining Elves could make up for. It was only, as Glorfindel had told him, a matter of time.

Oh dear, thought Elladan, time. He had plenty of time. But it had been his choice, hadn't it? He had chosen and Elrohir had chosen and Arwen had chosen, too. How wonderful and terrible, that they could choose their fates. He wished they hadn't had too, though; he wished it had been different, that his sister and his nieces and nephews were only across the sea, waiting for him. But that was the way of things, wasn't it?

He looked at the clock in the storeroom (it was a square, ceramic thing Elrohir had brougt with him from his last visit to Crete, something that didn't quite fit in amidst the drab cardboard-covered walls): quarter after five. He sighed in relief, for the day was nearly done.

"Thank the Valar," he breathed, remembering the calendar at his bedside had marked tomorrow as Sunday. Sunday, and the store would be closed. Ah, a day off…he felt a curious kinship to the common working Man. Except he and Elrohir really had no need for jobs; the passing Ages had given them quite enough time to accumulate material things. They had a lot of those sorts of objects (heirlooms from his childhood home, various collected things from his travels, gifts...), most of them in storage someplace; it was the things he couldn't see or hear or feel that seemed to fade.

That was always the way of things, he supposed.

(tbc)

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