Now that they'd resolved to tell Eldarion everything, however, neither Legolas nor Aragorn seemed very willing to start talking. The former drew their son closer and let out a weary sigh as he rested one of his pale cheeks against the boy's head. The latter rubbed Legolas' back with one hand and awkwardly massaged Eldarion's shoulder with the other. A general heavy and uncomfortable silence fell over the bedchamber as both adults sat lost in their thoughts.

Trapped between his parents' embraces Eldarion shifted as best he could. "Well?" he asked with a few sobs still left in his voice. While he wanted to believe that his fathers would never lie to him outright, he wasn't yet quite convinced by their protestations that they did want him when he was born. Aragorn and Legolas hadn't made a habit of lying to any of their children but Eldarion wasn't reassured by their sudden quiet and could be forgiven for doubting their honesty.

"Forgive us, Eldarion," said Aragorn. He ceased moving both of his hands and let his head fall forward until he was resting his brow against the back of his son's head. "There's so much to this tale that it would be difficult to know where to start even if we had practice in telling it. As it is, we haven't recounted this to anyone, including each other, for a long time."

"I've always thought that the best place to begin a story is at the beginning," suggested the boy plaintively.

"Ah, but this is one of those tales that has several possible beginnings," said Legolas thoughtfully, rolling his head so that now it was his chin that was touching the top of Eldarion's head. He mulled over each possibility for a few seconds. "I suppose that the best place to start here would be between five and six months into my pregnancy."

He could practically feel the boy bristling. "Why, I wonder?" Eldarion asked, half spiteful and half insecure. "Are you trying to skip over the part where you two cursed the Valar for inflicting me on you?"

"No!" Legolas admonished him, his voice kind but leaving no room for arguments. "I didn't just pick any time to start this story off; it wasn't until I was five or six months along that we discovered that you were on your way."

Eldarion was positively floored. "You didn't find out until that late?" he marveled. "But that's crazy! There were so much you worried about when you were pregnant with Laurelin, and even with the twins too, that everyone was so adamant about being vital to your health. How did you know to keep a careful eye on how many vegetables you were eating and how much you needed of each one?"

Legolas shook his head. "I didn't."

"Well, what about making sure to get extra rest and limit your traveling?" pressed Eldarion, remembering how angry his papa got when Legolas took him and his sister to Ithilien during the earlier part of his latest pregnancy. "Did you do that?"

Another shake of the head answered that question. "Most definitely not," replied Legolas with a mixture of regret, proud defiance, and nostalgia. "In fact, I spent most of the months of my pregnancy before I actually found out about it traveling between Gondor and Bree."

"You mean you went all the way out by the Shire?" asked Eldarion incredulously. He'd never actually been anywhere near Bree or the Shire – it was pointless to travel to the land of the hobbits, as it was closed to the Big Folk, and his ada and paper were unyielding in their decision that he should be older before setting foot in the somewhat rough Mannish settlement of Bree – but he knew enough about geography to know that it was a long way away.

The many leagues must have seemed especially long for his ada while he was having violent morning sickness. "Wasn't that hard on you, Ada?" Eldarion went on in a more sympathetic tone. He was old enough to remember that Legolas had been just as sick as he had been with the twin while he was pregnant with Laurelin. In fact, the boy had a vivid recollection of petting his ada's hair and cursing the child that was making Legolas so miserable while the elf vomited. "You always get so ill when you're pregnant."

"Yes, yes it was," Legolas told him emphatically, his stomach slightly queasy at the memory of it. "I spent nearly every morning bent over behind bushes – "

"And trees," chimed in Aragorn.

"And even once in my horse's stall," concluded Legolas.

"But you didn't even have the slightest clue that you were pregnant?" asked Eldarion skeptically. That didn't seem very likely to him; after all, elves never got sick like Men did unless something else was influencing their bodies. "Even after all of that throwing up in the morning?"

Aragorn felt his stomach twist up into knots. This wasn't even one of the hard parts of the tale, but he knew that they were coming and he hated how helpless that made him feel. "No, we didn't," the Man answered. "Eldarion, you must understand something: until your ada and I found out that you were on your way we didn't think that we could have children of our own."

An astonished Eldarion was rendered speechless. "You thought that Ada was" – he paused to grope for the word that he'd heard discussed by the healing women and whispered by catty female courtiers as they gossiped – "barren?"

"Not exactly," hedged Legolas, struggling to figure out how to explain everything. "No male elf had given birth since the beginnings of Sauron's rise in the Second Age before I had you. Everyone had just assumed until then that the Shadow had robbed us of that ability – imagine our shock when you came along to disprove that!"

And so that had to mean…. "It's true then," said the crown prince resignedly, feeling absolutely wretched. "You really didn't want me. It's not even as if you knew it was a possibility and decided to chance it – you really didn't think that it could happen. I was the ultimate accident."

"That's not true," countered Legolas in such a fierce voice that it made Eldarion a little nervous. "Never, ever, say that again, for I will not tolerate anyone calling my son an accident – even my son himself. You're right in saying that we didn't think that my getting pregnant was a possibility but that doesn't automatically mean that we didn't want you."

"But I intruded on your lives," protested Eldarion miserably.

There had to be an easier way to make the boy understand! "Eldarion," said Legolas, his eyes lighting up a little as he thought of something. "Do you remember how you felt when your papa gave you that fancy hunting knife that I'm not supposed to know about?"

"You, uh," Aragorn coughed, his cheeks turning slightly red. "You know about that?"

"I know everything about my children, Aragorn," replied Legolas flippantly, giving the Man a pointed look before turning his attentions back to his son. He and Aragorn could hash out the keeping secrets and reasons why the Man thought that he'd outright disapprove and forbid it later; right now Eldarion needed them to present a united front. "Well, ion nin?"

"Sure," answered the boy uncertainly, not really understanding what the knife would have to do with an unwanted pregnancy. "I was really excited."

Legolas nodded sagely. "But you never asked anyone for it," he noted. Eldarion wordlessly shook his head in the negative. "Well, I guess that means that you didn't really want it then, huh?"

"No!" Eldarion quickly objected. Maybe his ada was planning on punishing him for ruining his life by tricking him into giving up the wonderful weapon. "I just never asked for one because I thought that you two would tell me no. That doesn't mean that I didn't want it! It's a great knife; I treat it respectfully by always taking care of it, I've never threatened anyone with it, and I haven't used it in a reckless way. Please don't make me give it back, Ada!"

"Believe me, ion nin," said Legolas with a twinkle in his eye. "If I was going to do anything of the sort I would have already before you got too attached to it. I just wanted to think about how you felt then when you try to understand how I felt when your uncles told me that I was pregnant. I never planned on having a baby because I thought that Eru and the Valar would tell me no, even though there was nothing that I wanted more in Middle-earth than a child of my own. Imagine how you felt when your papa gave you the knife and increase it countless times over and then perhaps you might have an inkling of how I felt when I realized that the child in my dreams and waking visions wasn't just a figment of my imagination. You were a gift, my Little Acorn; my miracle."

For the first time since he broke down in front of his parents Eldarion returned Legolas' embrace. "Thank Elbereth," the boy whispered gratefully, burying his face into Legolas' neck. The elf felt a few hot tears against his skin and instinctively rocked his son gently. "I was so – so scared. I thought that you two hated me because I came when I wasn't supposed to."

"Eldarion Telcontar," scolded Aragorn fondly, though his heart broke a little to think that his precious son thought that they could ever feel anything but love for him. "Wherever did you get such a ridiculous notion? When have we ever done anything that told you that we hate you?"

Eldarion faltered for a moment as he pulled away from his ada just enough to be able to look at Aragorn. "You yell at me sometimes," he finally said hesitantly. "And you get mad and ground me too."

"Because there are times when you do something wrong and need to be punished," said Aragorn as he kindly but firmly seized Eldarion's chin and urged the boy to look him in the eyes. "Loving someone doesn't mean that you let them get away with everything – we scold you and punish you at times because we want you to be safe and grow up into an adult that everyone is happy to respect. Know that we've loved and adored you since before you were born, Eldarion. Why, I didn't spend over two months debating with myself and others about baby names because I wasn't happy that I was about to become a father."

The boy was about to start chuckling along with his papa about how foolish he'd been acting when a realization stopped him cold. Eldarion knew exactly one thing about his birth and if that one thing was true then either there was a mistake in the addition or else someone else was lying to him. "Wait – you only thought about what my name was going to be for two months?" he inquired slowly, trepidation returning to his tone. "But even if you were six months along, Ada, that still doesn't add up to nine. I remember when you two were talking about what to name Laurelin before she was born. Papa, you said that Daerada came up with my name after I was born because you and Ada couldn't come up with anything that seemed right. If you were so happy about having me then why did you wait for so long to start thinking up names?"

"We didn't, Eldarion," said Legolas quietly with a melancholy expression on his face. The elf looked at his husband, who clenched his jaw. "You were born about a month early."

Eldarion's heart stopped for a second. He'd heard about babies who were born that early: there were some that died and others who remained small and sickly for all of their lives. Maybe that was why Findowyn wouldn't look at him twice. "What's wrong with me?" he asked fearfully.

Legolas understood immediately what he meant. "Absolutely nothing," he said definitively. "You are healthy, strong, and perfect. Elvish babies are much more capable of recovering from being born early and you are more than half an elf."

"That's good," breathed Eldarion in relief. "But how could something like that happen?"

"I was beside myself with joy about my condition," the elf attempted to explain, selecting his words carefully. "But it was still a difficult pregnancy, Eldarion. No one knew what to expect and what I needed because no male elf had been pregnant in an age. Elrohir and Elladan certainly never learned how to take care of someone in my condition and the healers of Gondor didn't even know that any male elf had ever been pregnant. The twins spent a long time researching everything that they thought might be important while everyone else had to make do with guessing as best they could."

"In the meantime," added Aragorn, knowing that it was best to be upfront with all of the details now rather than having Eldarion dragging it all out of them little by little and feeling betrayed by their silence. "We were still adjusting to our lives here. It was about that time that your ada and I stopped going out on orc hunts all the time and we didn't like the idea of having to stay in Minas Tirith on such a permanent basis. It was quite a switch for us."

The boy creased his brow, wondering what that had to do with anything, but held his tongue. "There was also a gigantic gathering of many of the leaders of Middle-earth taking place here," Aragorn went on. "As you can imagine, I was kept really busy. I also didn't have a good working relationship with the advisors' Council – which your ada wasn't a member of until a little later – or the best personal one with your daerada. As a result I was away from your ada so much that I'm ashamed to think of it now and he in turn wasn't happy with how I was never around and the way I acted around Thranduil. All of that proved to be very stressful."

"A lot of parents are under a great deal of stress and their babies aren't born a month early," argued Eldarion. He felt very uneasy all of the sudden, as if he was just struck with the realization that he really wasn't going to like what his fathers were about to reveal. "Something else must have happened." He went over things in his mind and suddenly knew. "Something that involved that lady you were talking about earlier, the one that you didn't want me overhearing anything about. What was her name, Lady Nienna –"

"Nienor," Legolas corrected him, unconsciously grasping his belly protectively. Speaking about this with his son was an almost surreal experience and he couldn't help remembering quite keenly the fear and helplessness he'd experienced during that week between the lady's attacks. "Her name was Lady Nienor. She was – well, she had a sickness –"

"She was stark raving mad," interrupted Aragorn a bit sharply. While he respected that Legolas had some sympathy for that terrible woman he couldn't bear listening to him defend her to their son. Eldarion was already feeling insecure as it was; how could the boy understand why his own ada didn't hate the lady who tried to kill them both when Aragorn himself didn't? "Her father was an advisor back then, and he was the worst kind of ambitious. He told her that she was going to be the wife of the most powerful Man in Gondor and, after I became king and married Legolas, that at least she was going to be my favorite mistress and the mother of my child. She believed him wholeheartedly and decided that I wasn't married to her because I was under some strange elf spell – the same spell that made your ada pregnant and 'robbed' her of her chance to bear the heir to the throne."

Eldarion's insides twisted as his mind ran through all of the terrible things that he could possibly be about to hear. He was reminded of the time that his papa warned him against breaking open a beehive. "You may see what's inside and what it's all about," he'd warned, "but think about the number of stings you'd get doing it before you decide that it's worth doing." That's how the boy felt at the moment: stung until it hurt all over with half the hive still swarming at him.

Still, he'd come too far to let it go now. "You said that she couldn't harm this family again," he recalled softly. "Please, tell me what she did before to hurt us. I have to know."

Legolas cupped his cheek and turned the boy's head so that they could look directly at each other. "Before we do that, ion nin, I want you to remember that you and I are fine." Eldarion nodded and the elf plunged ahead. "She poisoned me, my little Acorn, when I was a little over seven months along."

Eldarion let out a horrified gasp and Legolas grabbed his shoulders firmly. "We're all right," he reiterated. "She didn't do a very good job of it. My body rejected the poison almost instantly and it didn't have enough time to hurt either of us beyond a little pain and some more vomiting."

"How could anyone do that to a pregnant person?" wondered Eldarion in sheer terror that there were actually people out there – not monsters or orcs or anything like that, but people like everyone else – who were capable of doing something so heinous. His stomach dropped like a stone when he saw a stormy look pass over Aragorn's face. "And that wasn't even the end of it, was it? She wasn't caught right away and she didn't give up after her first attempt failed?"

"No, baby, she didn't," answered Aragorn tenderly, caressing his son's face with one and holding Legolas' hand with the other. "She was very determined in her insanity and – confronted your ada in the garden when he was there all by himself."

"What did she do?" Eldarion felt panic rising within him when neither of his parents spoke up. Aragorn just looked worriedly at his husband while Legolas turned his eyes downward. "Tell me! I can't see how it can be any worse than being poisoned. You've been doing so well; don't start treating me like a little kid now –"

"She told me that my baby had to die!" burst out Legolas in anguish. "She pulled out a knife and got in a lucky swing while I was still processing what was going on. What more do you want to know, Eldarion? Do you want me to tell you how I felt when I realized that she managed to cut my stomach? Because I can, down to the last detail." A few tears escaped from the prince consort's eyes and his hastily brushed them away. "I thought that she'd killed you, ion nin; and the only other time that I've ever felt as terrified and wretched was when I thought that your papa was dead before the Battle of Helm's Deep during the War."

Feeling ashamed of himself, Eldarion finally understood: Ada and Papa hadn't chosen not to speak about that time in their lives because they didn't want him, but because it evoked painful memories of being afraid of losing him. "I'm sorry, Ada; I'm sorry, Papa," he apologized tearfully, throwing his arms around Legolas and kissing his cheek. Legolas squeezed him back tightly, as if he was afraid that someone was going to try to snatch him away. "I should have known better than to think that you didn't want me."

"It's all right, Eldarion," said Aragorn, kissing the back of his son's head. "We know that this hasn't been easy on you either."

"It turned out fine in the end though, right?" asked Eldarion in a small, hopeful voice. "You obviously did end up catching her."

"The very day of the second attack," confirmed Legolas, pressing a kiss into the top of his head. "She was exiled and imprisoned; and has never set foot in Gondor again."

"That's good," said Eldarion as he gently wiggled out of his ada's embrace so that both of his parents could see him smile at them clearly. "You definitely didn't want to be worrying about something so awful when you were giving birth. It would have cut into your bickering time."

Apparently they hadn't finished hashing through the most painful memories of Aragorn and Legolas' lives. The couple froze and Eldarion felt his laugh die on his lips. "There's more," the boy said without a doubt in his voice."

"My Little Acorn," started Legolas cautiously. The crown prince braced himself. "We – well, we told you that you were born early. No one expected me to deliver early and so we weren't prepared for it."

"No male elf had been pregnant since the Second Age," Aragorn reminded his son. "Your uncles were away researching the topic and almost missed the actual birth. It was a good thing that they were so thorough, though, because no one here knew what was supposed to happen. We were lucky to have both their knowledge and them show up in the nick of time."

He really didn't want to hear this but Eldarion couldn't help asking. "How so? What happens in a male birth that would make it so different from others?"

Aragorn swallowed hard. "There's – more – more bleeding," he said. "A special poultice is applied to the skin to control it and no one but Elladan and Elrohir knew about it. Without it..."

"I see." Eldarion's voice was suddenly both cold and utterly devastated. Aragorn and Legolas reached for him but he jerked away and leapt to his feet. "That explains a lot: you didn't tell me because you didn't want me to know what I had done."

"You didn't do anything, Eldarion," said Legolas with a mixture of desperation and resoluteness.

"I almost killed you, Ada," said Eldarion quietly and in pain. "I'm – I'm so sorry for doing that, and then being rude today, and for making you tell me when you didn't want – oh, just for everything!"

The boy ran away then, out of the room and across the antechamber. "Eldarion!" called Legolas after him but the boy was too ashamed to face his ada. All Eldarion wanted to do was hide in his bedchamber forever.

"Eldarion!" Legolas practically screamed, rushing out into the antechamber with Aragorn at his heels only to see the door slam shut.

"Hold a moment," said Thranduil quickly, hurrying over to catch his son's arm before Legolas could follow. "Take a deep breath and tell me what happened. You will not do Eldarion much good if you confront him in this state."

"I have to, Ada," said Legolas distraughtly. "He thinks he's to blame for how bad off I was when he was born. I have to tell him that he was the one that saved me…"

Thranduil pulled Legolas into a comforting embrace. "He is not ready to understand that at the moment," he advised soothingly. "Give him time to deal with all that you have just told him; then he will be able to truly listen."

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

That night Legolas stood by the window in his bedchamber, staring at nothing really while Aragorn stirred restlessly in the bed. Eldarion hadn't emerged from his bedchamber for lunch or dinner and had refused to eat the food they'd sent up to him. Instead of the whole family having fun at the tree grove as the couple had happily planned that morning, the evening had been full of quiet anxiousness. 'Why is this happening?' wondered Legolas miserably. 'Why must my baby suffer for things that were beyond his control? Will we ever break free of this part of our past or will it always influence what the future may hold?'

"My love?" asked Aragorn, breaking through his husband's musings. "Would you mind closing the window? It's freezing in here."

"The window's not open," replied Legolas. "In fact, I was just about to ask you if you wanted me to open it – it's quite warm –"

"Don't do that!" cried Aragorn quickly. Shivering violently, he drew the covers up around him. "Come to bed, I beg you. I can't imagine how you cold you are! Why, I'm almost like ice and I'm used to feeling cold; and you only feel it when you're pregnant."

That didn't sound right at all: did Aragorn really think that he was still pregnant? Alarmed, Legolas hurried to his husband's side. Aragorn certainly didn't look cold, as beads of sweat were running down the sides of his face and his hairline was damp with perspiration. The prince reached out to cup his cheek and gasped when he touched the skin. "Aragorn," he said, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. "You're burning up."

To be continued…