The sun was shining through the windows that looked into the citadel of Minas Tirith. Inside the royal bedchamber a beam of light streamed through a narrow opening in the coverings of one such window, giving the room some illumination. Were it a normal morning Legolas and Aragorn might have pulled aside the drapery to fully take in the beauty of the glorious new day before setting out to do whatever tasks that laid ahead for them. Well, that or else they might have been still in bed, limbs intertwined, waking up with a mixture of confusion and serenity that would quickly turn to panic when they realized how late the morning was. More than a few mornings generally started with Legolas – who, being an elf, was the lighter sleeper of the two – shouting to drowsy Aragorn that they'd overslept as he was flying to the closet.

On that morning, however, neither elf nor Man experienced pleasant calmness or the hurriedness that they could find humor in even as they rushed to get dressed. It was not a normal morning. For one thing, Legolas and Aragorn had actually been awake and about since before the sun rose though they didn't have the time to take a break and watch it do so. They were too busy learning quite quickly how much extra care two infants would need, as Gilraen and Meren had kept them hopping all night long. It seemed like if one was hungry the other was in need of a diaper change. If Meren was asleep, Gilraen's crying soon woke her up (and vice versa). They'd spent more time in the adjoining antechamber where two cradles were than in their own bed because, unlike when Eldarion or Laurelin were babies, the couple couldn't take turns seeing to the twins' care since just two arms and two hands were never enough to take care of the problems at hand. Aragorn and Legolas thanked the Valar that both of their little angels were finally asleep so that they could get ready for what the day held.

Of course, even if there had been some miracle and the newborns had slept through the night Aragorn and Legolas still wouldn't have gotten much rest; for their minds were too preoccupied with other matters. One other matter, to be precise: the messenger from Dol Amroth, who bore a letter for their eyes only. The prospect of dealing with the ghosts of the past was not a pleasant one and it was a major reason why they weren't taking a moment to enjoy the new day.

What could Prince Imrahil have to say that couldn't have waited? Every ruler that Gondor had relations with must have known that the royal couple wasn't going to attend to any business that didn't promise total calamity if gone unheeded – had something terrible happened? Had that woman escaped? Was she heading toward the White City even as they got dressed, plotting to kill Legolas and the children as she had a decade earlier? Would they be able to stop her in time if she had? There was no comfort in knowing that she was Gondor's most notorious criminal and exile; thirteen years had passed since anyone in the city had seen her and the chances of her being recognized were very slim. As long as they didn't know what the message said Legolas and Aragorn could at least pretend that it was just Imrahil taking extra precautions but once they read it they would have to deal with whatever horrible reality it told of.

All of this weighed heavily on Aragorn's mind was he sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his boots. With a great sigh he leaned back on his hands and turned his head toward his husband. "Legolas – "

"No, Aragorn," interrupted Legolas simply, weariness and worry driving out any annoyance that the elf might have had about the question that was on the tip of his husband's tongue. He finished putting the last braid in his blonde locks before turning around to meet the Man's gaze. "Don't bother with any more words. I'm going with you to meet that messenger and I refuse to be persuaded to do otherwise."

"But you just gave birth yesterday –"

"Is that what was happening?" asked Legolas, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Well, that explains why two babies were exiting my body. I was quite curious about that."

Aragorn gave him a pointed look. "That's not how I meant it and you know that," he said testily.

"I do," sighed the elf, "and I'm sorry for my shortness. I guess I'd forgotten how demanding newborns can be; and this time we have more of them with less help. Do you remember after Eldarion was born? We were lucky if we got the chance to hold him for a few minutes an hour! The same was true with Laurelin – the hobbits, my father, Gimli, Faramir, and Eowyn were always there. I suppose they think that we've had enough practice to keep everything under control now."

"Mela…"

"Well, the four of us are still alive so I guess we have a handle on things," Legolas continued on. "Last night gave me a new gave me a new appreciation for Lord Elrond and Lady Celebrian, let me tell you! And now we have to deal with this…"

"But you don't have to deal with this right now," argued Aragorn protectively. If he'd had his way, Legolas and the babies would still be in the Houses of Healing. He was dismayed when the prince refused, bad memories triggering his stubborn nature. Losing the debate the day before made him all the more determined to convince Legolas to stay with children and rest now. "The messenger won't be offended if you weren't there to receive him. No one said anything about both of us needing to be there. He's probably not even expecting you to be present; many new parents stay abed for days after giving birth."

"Yes, but those were all Mannish females," countered Legolas. He put down his comb and rose, walking over to the bed to stand beside his husband. "I am a male elf. You must know as well as I do that my body's capacity to heal itself returns to its regular strength very quickly after the end of a pregnancy. Elladan and Elrohir examined me themselves before I left the Houses and they said that I'm quite well and recovering nicely."

The king wasn't going to have to keep as calm and rational if possible if he was going to talk any sense into the elf. "But your body isn't back to normal yet," Aragorn pointed out.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

He should have known better than to think that bringing up the need for Legolas' body to recover was the right approach to take. Legolas, despite trying for years to acknowledge that he had limits and admit when he'd reached them, was still instinctively defensive if anyone even implied that he might not be physically up to doing something. Unfortunately it was the best argument that Aragorn had at the moment. "It takes a couple of days for your birth canal to fully close," he stressed, knowing deep down it was a futile effort but feeling the need to point it out anyway. "You've always rested until that happened before."

Legolas gave him a hard look. "With Eldarion I had to," he argued. "In fact, I seem to recall being unconscious until it was more than halfway healed –"

"I remember," interjected Aragorn wryly. Indeed he'd never forget the first twenty-four hours of his son's life when Legolas lingered between life and death while he sat at his bedside, holding the baby in his arms and contemplating how he would be able to raise him on his own should the worst happen.

"And with Laurelin," the elf continued, though his expression softened when he saw the pained look in his husband's eyes, "I think that we can both agree that we took more precautions than were necessary."

"That doesn't change the fact that you did rest," replied Aragorn, "and nothing bad happened because of it."

"My dear husband," laughed Legolas gently. He sat down and took the Man's hands in his. "I had to contend with a newborn baby and a seven-year-old who was disappointed that we brought home a girl instead of a boy while you left to deal with the Council and the court. If that's what you deem as rest then may I suggest that you get plenty of that kind of rest and I meet with the messenger."

"Legolas," crooned Aragorn tenderly as he drew his hands out of the elf's grasp, raising them up so that he could cup and caress his husband's face and neck. "I should have been more help to you back then."

Legolas sighed. "I didn't say that to make you feel guilty," he said. "You were supposed to agree that I'm not a dainty little invalid and stop pressuring me to stay here all day."

"I know that you're well enough to listen to whatever news that Imrahil has for us," admitted Aragorn begrudgingly. "I suppose the problem is that I don't see why you want to. You were so – vehement about not hearing it yesterday."

"Because our daughters had born not two hours before!" cried an exasperated Legolas. "Even if I'd have cared to have any sort of unpleasantness mar that occasion I wasn't exactly in the best condition to receive the information. Having a stranger parading into my birthing chamber, oddly enough, didn't really appeal to me."

Aragorn swallowed hard, trying to bury the anger that had been swelling in him since the errand runner told them of Dol Amroth's messenger, lest he explode at the wrong person. "One day makes do no difference to me," he said in a deliberately calm and low voice. "One day, one week, one month, one year – it doesn't matter! That woman – she already – she was gone – I didn't even think – and then –"

"I know," said Legolas sympathetically. "After Eldarion was born I thought about her several times a day. I would be holding him, feeding him, changing his diaper, trying to calm his cries, or whatever else; and then suddenly I would find myself back in the garden, listening to her tell me that my baby had to die. As time went on I would only think of her once a day, then once every few days, and so on until my thoughts rarely strayed to the lady at all."

"Rarely?"

"She was never completely gone," confessed Legolas quietly. "One thing or another would bring on the memory of her. Usually it would be when Eldarion was doing something for the first time; when he lost his first tooth, as he squirmed through his first Council meeting, the first time I saw him handle a real sword. I would watch him grow up before my very eyes and suddenly remember how if she'd had her way he would have never done any of those things; she never wanted him to have a life at all."

"You never told me about any of this before," noted Aragorn in a whisper, confused and a little alarmed. He and his husband had decided a long time ago to share all that was troubling them with one another. The strain of trying to protect each other had once put their marriage in jeopardy and neither of them wanted to go through that ordeal again. He hated the idea that Legolas had decided to suffer those memories in silence rather than confiding in him.

"Was I wrong to assume that she weighed as heavily on your mind than it did on mine after Eldarion was born?" asked Legolas. He smiled a little when Aragorn gave him a look that told him that his assumption was indeed correct. "We had many long conversations about our fears and concerns back then."

"But I didn't know you still thought about her."

"It wasn't as if the memory of Lady Nienor plagued me," Legolas sought to assure him. "There were just times that something would happen to make me think of her. It didn't happen very often and it left my mind almost as quickly as it came when it did. It hardly seemed worthy of mention."

Sighing a little, Aragorn allowed his hands and arms to slip down so that he was holding his husband in his embrace. "You said her name," he observed with no accusation in his tone.

"Yes I did," confirmed Legolas. Neither of them had uttered the name of Lady Nienor since a few days after their son's birth. It had been an unspoken understanding rather than an official agreement, created when the emotional wounds that she'd inflicted had still been too fresh. Now, however, it felt like the arraignment was more of a hindrance than a help. "She – Lady Nienor – has become the nameless fear in our lives. We've been giving her the same power that she'd have over us if she was still at large in Gondor. I mean, look at how we handled my pregnancy with Laurelin – we acted as if she were lurking in every shadow, waiting to pounce."

"We never did come right out and say why we were so anxious back then, did we?" Aragorn asked with a dry chuckle. In the back of his mind he could still remember breaking out into cold sweats at the first bite that Legolas took each meal. He could see himself refusing to leave his husband's side for more than an hour or two at a time, and running around like a madman in search of him after he attended any business that had separated them. He'd told himself back then that he was just nervous because even if they'd learned a lot about male pregnancies the last time Legolas had yet to have a good one and therefore needed the extra protection. Now he could admit that it was the shadow of the would-be assassin and not the other health-related problems that was vexing him so much.

"Every precaution we took, the fear we endured; it was all because we let Lady Nienor more important than she actually was at that point, in prison and out of Gondor," said Legolas. A sad, almost wistful expression danced across his face. "You know, I didn't think about her much at all this time. Oh, there were little reminders her and there but before yesterday I hadn't thought of her in weeks. This was supposed to be the first time that I gave birth free from her influence and now look what's happened: she's managed to work her way through our happiness and spread her shadow once again. Can't we just enjoy one birth without her hanging over our heads?"

"Yes," replied Aragorn with a sudden resolve. "I swear to you, Legolas, that today will be the end of all of this nonsense. We will deal with whatever Prince Imrahil has to say about Lady Nienor and then we'll do whatever it takes to put her behind us forever. Bah! Listen to us going on about her and 'her shadow' as of she's just as powerful as Sauron was. She was a deranged young woman who took advantage of various opportunities to get to you when we didn't know any better, for the Valars' sakes! You were right, my love – we make her more important in our minds than she really is."

"You would do well to remember that," Legolas told him with blank-faced innocence. "I generally am right about all things. I have years of experience that you can never hope to get – it makes me wiser about everything."

A playful smirk twitched on Aragorn's lips. "Is that so?" he asked, moving his head so that their mouths were only an inch apart. "Then why do I distinctly recall me teaching you a thing or two on our wedding night?"

"That doesn't count," countered Legolas as the tension slowly drained out of him. "You were just utilizing the wisdom that your brothers passed down to you when your father wasn't listening."

Aragorn lovingly nudged their noses together. "Would it be useless for me to disagr-"

His voice was cut off when Legolas grabbed the back of his head and pulled him into a searing kiss. Moaning in response, Aragorn gently pushed his husband down so that he was lying on his back on the bed with the Man on top of him. It was nice – therapeutic even – to take a minute to kiss like they were still newlyweds without a care in the world and the couple certainly gave it their all. Aragorn could feel the world melting away around them; there were no longer problems with would-be assassins, newborn twins asleep in the antechamber, or anything else. Life itself was nothing other than their two bodies, so close together that they were almost one…

"By Aule, are you two supposed to be doing that so soon?" demanded an incredulous dwarvish voice. "Give the laddie a chance to recover, Aragorn! He doesn't need you begetting more children on him – make do with what you have now for awhile."

Legolas pushed Aragorn's shoulders, reluctantly wiggling out from under his husband. "Gimli," he said, giving the interloper a censoring look. "And Ada," he added, nodding curly to greet Thranduil, who was standing beside the dwarf with his arms crossed and a bemused look on his face. "Are you two incapable of knocking? It really doesn't take much time or effort. What if Aragorn and I had been otherwise occupied?"

"We thought that the babies were asleep and did not wish to wake them," Thranduil offered in way of an excuse. "And it appears that we were right about that. Since you two are to meet with that messenger in a few minutes we guessed that you would be impatiently awaiting our arrival. If you had been, as you put it, otherwise occupied you should thank us, for now you will not be late for your appointment, my Little Greenleaf."

"And besides that," added Gimli with a shake of his head. "I mean, really! You can't be fully recovered yet, Legolas. That kind of 'occupation' can't be healthy for you right now."

"I don't know about that," said Legolas just to be difficult and almost laughed out loud when identical looks of annoyance came to Thranduil and Gimli. It served them right; why did they feel the need to be so overprotective all the time? "But still, Aragorn and I really must go if we're going to get to the throne room on time."

The couple let out a simultaneous dramatic sigh as their forced themselves to stand up. "Have fun with the twins," the elf prince informed them. "Their diapers and other necessities – except for the food, of course – are in the cabinet by the cradles. They were changed less than an hour ago, though, so you probably won't have to worry about that for the time being."

"We put them down maybe forty-five minutes ago," chimed in Aragorn. "That's the longest they've ever slept, so don't be surprised if they're awake and wanting something fairly soon. Most likely it will be food, as it's been a few hours since the last bottle. You'll need to send for more of it from the kitchen."

"And don't forget about Eldarion either," added Legolas. "Laurelin's off with Eowyn and Theomir but our dear boy is wandering around here somewhere. If he goes off without telling you, let us know. And make sure that he stays away from the weapons room – he's developed a fondness for trying to break into there."

"Will you listen to them, friend Gimli?" asked Thranduil in his best put-upon voice. "You would think that they were leaving their precious children in the care of two imbeciles. How quickly they forget that I raised a child on my own for 3,000 years – one that too was overly curious about the weapons room. Oh, I shudder to think about who they are leaving our dear grandchildren with that makes the 'food is in the kitchen' instructions necessary."

"All right, you win," conceded Legolas with a laugh. "Enjoy spoiling your grandchildren rotten and telling them embarrassing stories about their parents. This shouldn't take too long, but we promised to report the message's content to the Council afterwards. Feel free to interrupt if there's some sort of emergency."

Gimli's eyes were steely and his mouth set as Legolas and Aragorn disappeared out the door. "Good luck," he wished them for lack of anything better to say. When the door closed he deflated a little and smiled. "Well, Thranduil, are you thinking what I'm thinking? There are two adorable, perfect babies just waiting for us to wake them up."

"Honestly, have you forgotten everything you once knew about infants?" Thranduil mused, exasperated. "One must never, ever wake a sleeping baby, Gimli."

"Why not?" wondered Gimli aloud. "It doesn't harm them in any way."

"No, but it does, well, it wakes them up," Thranduil told him. "Meren and Gilraen will inevitably be fighting sleep with every last bit of their will whenever someone attempts to up them down; let us then not tempt fate by not allowing them to sleep when they are willing to do so."

"But then it could take awhile before they wake up," the dwarf pointed out. ""What could we do the pass the time until then?"

A knock on the door just then made the question moot. "Oh dear," breathed the elven king, rushing to the antechamber with Gimli close at his heels. Over the sound of two babies crying he yelled: "What is it?"

The door cracked open just enough for a familiar face to peer in. "I'm sorry," apologized Eldarion right away as the noise coming from his baby sisters threatened to give him a headache. "I guess this really isn't a good time."

"Wait, Eldarion," Thranduil called after him as his grandson vanished from sight. After a second the boy's face appeared again. "The babies don't seem to be hungry; I believe that they are just cranky and wish to be held. Is there something that you need? Do you wish to go somewhere?"

"I have a few questions," hedged the boy. "Would it be possible for us to talk right now? If it isn't, when will it be?"

"Listen to the boy, making appointments to see his own grandfathers," said Gimli with a tsk as he sat down in one of the two side-by-side rocking chairs near the cradles with Gilraen nestled in his arms. Thranduil followed suit with Meren. "There's nothing stopping you from speaking now, my lad. What's on your mind?"

"Babies, but not these two," answered Eldarion, gesturing to the infants. "You see, yesterday Findowyn, Laurelin, and I were talking and the conversation led to what I guess you could call a comparison between what happened when Ada was pregnant with Laurelin and what happened this time. We were going to compare mine to, but we couldn't."

Thranduil wasn't sure if he was comfortable with where these questions were leading. "And?" he prompted uneasily.

"And I realized that I know next to nothing about my own birth and the months before it," explained Eldarion in a rush. "Please, Daerada, Grandpa Gimli; I must know something! What was it like when I was born? How did Ada, Papa, and everyone else prepare for it beforehand? And why has no one told me stories about this time before?

To be continued…

A/N: I must really like you people – I got home late after a trying weekend with the family and still typed this chapter up so that I could post it on time. I do appreciate all of you who take the time to read it, especially those of you who also review. Thanks!

We'll find out what the message says in the next chapter, I promise!