Disclaimer: Not Mine!!!! How many times do I gotta gorram say it?

Oops, wrong show…. :)

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It was many months before Élíriel could bring herself to look at a man, let alone at Imrahil. It was not logical, perhaps; but her heart was sore like her body, and it was right for the blame to fall on him. He had not been there, had come too late; Thrindfast and most of his best men were dead, along with Glosiel, her young maid, who had been riding near the rear of the column.

All of them she had grown up with and were friends with. All of them she mourned for, tearfully, silently. For she had not spoken a word since that hour when, resisting with every fiber of her being, she had been violated by foulness.

Slowly the pain of her wounds diminished, but not the pain that resounded within her mind. Over and over she replayed the event, felt the hate and anger of the orc Dugûk above her, grunting and biting at her neck and shoulders. Too many nights had she woken screaming wordlessly in horror, only to be comforted by Imrahil's mother, the Princess Huornie, who had taken it upon herself to tend the now deeply scarred Élíriel.

But slowly scars fade, or so the kind woman said as she stroked Élíriel's sweaty brow. And when the girl became violently sick in the mornings that followed her body's healing, and Huornie held back her lush black hair, the woman would only frown slightly, and be gentle with her hands as she comforted the girl.

The first man Élíriel spoke to was not a man, indeed, but the boy, Gladtál, to whom she owed her life. It fell to the girl to comfort his own disturbed mind, for indeed he felt the turbulent emotion of shame and failure for not saving Thrindfast, for being too slow to save her.

So in comforting him, she began to see for herself. And her lonely vigil she had kept in Hournie's bower ended, and slowly, so very slowly, she began to forgive Imrahil, and forget Dugûk.

Imrahil was calm with her, patient. With a vengeance his patrols eradicated all threat of orcs, and with soft voice and slow steps, he won back the heart of the girl he had wooed in his travels to Tolfolas. And when her hands rested on a belly now round with an orc-bred child, he could only see her eyes, hidden as they were behind a veil of black hair. She wore it down to hide the scars on her face, but he never saw them, even when it was up, he just saw her eyes, her brilliant green eyes.

No one knew at first, though Hournie had suspected. But as the months passed it became obvious, and again Élíriel haunted the Princess' bower. The lady of Dol Amroth offered gentle words to comfort her, but they barely reached the girl's ears. All she could feel was the life within her, and although memories of how this life began hovered in her mind constantly, she often felt a ghost of a smile hover about her lips.

Imrahil visited her often in the months that followed, his love pure and fiercely bright. She offered once, in humble difference, to return to Tolfolas, to have their engagement annulled. Élíriel understood the impact of what was happening to her, of what the birth of her child would mean. It would be a half-breed and a bastard. There were few men who would tolerate such a thing in a bride.

Imrahil had fervently argued that she stay.

And so she stayed.

And when he had asked her to marry him the next month she had agreed, with a smile in her heart.

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Pain ripped through her as the midwife, Ioreth, urged her to push harder. Huornie's hands rested firmly on her slim shoulders as her body heaved off the sweat soaked bed.

"Almost there, dear one. One…more…push!!!!! Push!" the midwife's voice rose in encouragement as her capable hands grasped the head and shoulders of the babe and guided it out of it's mother's body with an audible plop.

Her gray eyes wide, Ioreth tied off the cord with two bits of twine and cut between them with a sharp little dagger. She tried not to look at the thing in her hands, being one of the few that knew of it's true parentage; despite her being Imrahil's wife, Ioreth knew that this child was not his, she was one of the healers who had attended Élíriel's wounds after the glam had attacked them in the woods.

But the infant's cries drew her gaze and she gasped.

"What?" Élíriel asked, her voice spent with effort, and cracking. She looked up at Ioreth, "What? Please Ioreth! What's wrong?"

The midwife looked up and met Élíriel's brilliant green eyes. "It's a boy, my lady."

Imrahil burst in then, not to be left in the dark when his lady was in need. His face echoed his worry as he strode to her side and grasped her hand, not noticing the others in the room. "Are you alright, dearest?"

But Élíriel would not be swayed from her course; her other hand reaching out to Ioreth she called, "Give me my son!"

"Do you think that is wise, dearest?" Imrahil asked, his eyes gentle, his voice kind and soft. His hand was warm and large, sword calluses rough against the smooth skin of her palm.

She met his eyes and he saw the need there. He looked up at Ioreth, who had aided in his own birth, and nodded. "Bring him, then."

Ioreth approached slowly, the child swathed snugly in her arms, and set the bundle upon the girl's belly. The instant it touched her Élíriel could feel a quieting deep inside her body as her womb contracted instinctively. She wrapped her free hand around the little bundle and looked down at the boy.

He was crying insistently, but they weren't the shrill shrieks of orcish-kind, but the raw lusty bellows of manfolk, and as she gazed down at him he looked back up at her, his eyes bright and blue as every newborn's eyes were, and when their gaze's met he quieted and waved a tiny hand above his head.

His features were small and squashed and wrinkled, but save for the color he was perfectly formed with a full head of black hair. This was the human in him, this fineness of feature; the orc in him was the color of his skin: a strangely compelling mix of gray and green and black, all dappled and flushed with the ordeal of birth. The design of the marks on his face made it look slightly wolfish.

"He's beautiful, " Élíriel breathed, not noticing the shared glanced of the others, only seeing her son. This child was not the cause of her night terrors; there was no evil in him, only the promise of new beginnings. "My Gauran."

Imrahil looked askance at the child. It was Élíriel's son, and for that reason only he did not loathe it on sight. It was against nature for this one to exist, conceived in pain and blood and unremitting hate. But the pure love shining from his wife's face softened his heart. "Gauran, a good name. But Élíriel, dearest, we cannot keep him."

Her eyes met his, shocked and angry, "Why?"

He sighed, and glanced up to his mother, she nodded and beckoned Ioreth to her and they left the room. Imrahil found his beloved's gaze again. "He is periorch, dearest. The people will not forget the terrors the orcs have visited upon them, and they would be cruel. I know you love him, as you should, but think what would be best for him."

"How could I part with him?" she whispered, tears beginning to fall over black lashes. Imrahil could feel his chest constrict at her tears.

"What life could we offer him, when one look at his face could condemn him to hate and fear?" he whispered in reply.

Élíriel heard his words and understood. She could not do that to her son. She bent her head down and kissed his black hair and her eyes closed on a new wave of tears. Her heart began to ache again, like it had not ached for months. Then she stilled, and looked up at Imrahil. A different light began to shine in her eyes.

"Dearest do you not know the Tolfolan custom? When a child is born with a caul upon their face, they were a mask for the rest of their lives, in deference to Eru's will."

For an instance Imrahil did not comprehend what his wife spoke of, then his eyes cleared in understanding. He was dubious, but there was a part of him that soared at the hope in her eyes. "And Gauran, son of Élíriel, being masked from the day of his birth, shall live among the people's of Dol Amroth without fear?"

"So be it."

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Gauran werewolf

Glam orc-host

Periorch half orc