"I only wanted to see her." He repeated and Elladan watched him attentively... silently.
"I was unhappy about ...things..." he glanced away, he did not want to speak of Elrohir and that fear.
"I had not been sleeping, I was plagued by dreams and seeing her, it seemed a solution. She was always good at solving my problems, before she became one of them herself."
He paused for breath and Elladan still said nothing.
"I just thought if I could get beneath the water, if I could get back to that place... It felt there I could almost touch her. Someone found me, I was quite safe, I never wished to harm myself but no one will listen!" It frustrated him so badly the lack of belief in him.
"But for you to reach your mother," Elladan said softly, "For you to do that you have to take yourself away from us. I understand your father's concern."
"I did not say I was thinking logically!" he retaliated angrily.
"Then what if logic deserts you again?"
"My father thinks if he takes his eyes off me he risks losing me and that will not happen. I have told him over and over. I will not abandon him. What kind of son would that make me?!"
"That does not fill me with confidence, Legolas."
He knew Elladan would never understand. He knew he would judge him too and he wished with all his heart he did not have to have this conversation.
"You question my love for my father? You dare do that?"
"Of course not." he wondered briefly how Elladan managed to remain so calm and composed when he himself was in turmoil.
"But I would rather hear you say you wished to remain for your own sake. Not someone else's."
He thought on that...did he want to remain for himself? Was there anything to keep him here besides his father and Elrohir, who wasn't his anyway?
"I wish I had never come here." He muttered, "I wish I had stayed in Arda with the land, my land. They tricked me, they lured me here with false pretences."
Elladan let out a laugh,
"Now you sound like Elrohir! I will tell you what I told him...there is nothing for us in Arda any more. You could not have stayed there, it would have destroyed you as it was destroying Elrohir and I. All we have is here. We have to make this place work for us."
"Elrohir wants to go back?" He was surprised at that. Elrohir was strong and composed, he would not wallow aimlessly as Legolas was doing.
"He has not been happy here. It is hard to find a place we belong, and things are not as we expected."
"What did you expect?" He wondered out loud. It was a revelation to find he was not the only one who struggled to adapt.
"Elrohir expected to be reunited with the one he loves...but it has not gone the way he imagined...to be fair perhaps we both wished for that, and yet here I am, alone." Elladan have him a rueful smile,
All he heard was that Elrohir was in love. No wonder he had spurned him! He had had no idea Elrohir had a love over the sea.
"It did not go as he imagined? Why?" He spluttered, as agonising as it was to hear he had to know.
"Perhaps you can tell me that." Elladan gave him a knowing look and he scowled. If he didn't want to tell him then why bring it up at all? He glared at the ground in front of him and said nothing but his mind whirred on, flitting over a myriad of possibilities.
"Do they hammer on the gates, do you think?" Elladan again changed the subject out of the blue. He wished he would stop with these random questions, he could not keep up.
"What?!" He had no idea what he was talking about now.
"In the Halls," Elladan explained, "Those who have not yet returned to us. Are they there pounding the gates to get out, waiting for us to rescue them...or do they not return because they do not want to? Perhaps they are happy there and we are not enough to lure them out.
He stared at him in astonishment for he had brooded on that very thing himself.
"I have wondered that!" He exclaimed, "I wonder if my mother does not want to return to us. I am not the small boy she left behind. I am not the son she knew. Perhaps I am not enough...but then I think of my father. Surely she would wish to see him again, if not me." He threw Elladan a questioning look.
"Why do you even think on this?" He asked him.
"I have many relatives in the Halls of Mandos. You are not without education, you know their names. There are crowds of them in there."
"So I am to believe you waste time wondering if any of these relatives you do not know love you enough to come back? They have never met you Elladan or you, them. They do not know of your existence! That makes no sense."
Then Elladan quickly looked away and he knew...he had stumbled on to something important here. He should not let this go.
"Elladan?"he asked when Elladan did not return his gaze.
"There is one I love in there."
The reply was so quiet he had to strain to hear it.
"At least I assume she is, for I have not seen her elsewhere and oh, I have looked."
He was horrified with himself and his crassness, his stupidity.
"Forgive me!" He cried, "I did not know! Elrohir never told me ...nor Aragorn. I had heard nothing."
"They did not tell you," Elladan said softly, "because they did not know."
"How is that possible..." he breathed.
"It was years before Estel, and Elrohir...well I did not tell him."
"You did not tell him? You did not tell him!" He could not understand that at all. It went against all he knew of the twins.
"You can say it as many times as you wish, it will not change the answer. I did not tell him, or anyone else...except Arwen...Arwen knew, she was our go-between. Our secret ally." And Legolas wondered if the small sad smile he gave as he remembered was for his sister or his love.
"Why secret Elladan? I don't understand it."
"Because I was a fool." Elladan said bluntly, "a young, stupid, fool and my foolishness has caused me pain immeasurable."
Legolas stared blankly, he had no idea how to handle this...what should he say? He was the grieving one not the comforter. Elladan made it easy for him in the end as he continued. It was as if now he had started this confession he could not stop.
"She was from the forest. One of my Grandparents people, my mother's maid, and I decided in my wisdom my family would not accept her. I was so young when it started. Barely more than a boy. I thought I knew my father and judged him to be lacking. I was certain he would forbid it. That he...they... would say she was not suitable. How wrong was I? I know now with the wisdom of age that he would have helped us. He would not have stood in our way.
Why is it youth blinds us so Legolas?"
"So you truly told none of them...not even Elrohir."
"Not even him. I feared he would reject her. I told you I was a fool. Arwen argued with me but I would not listen. I knew better. It was such a waste, it would not have changed the outcome but we would have had so much more time with each other before..."
It was then Legolas saw the flaw in his story for it surely could not have been like that. He could not have hidden this that well, it was impossible.
"But Elrohir would know! He would have sensed your grief...the loss of a beloved. He would know Elladan! And your father also."
He was not sure why Elladan would be lying to him but he knew with a father who was a gifted healer and a bond as close as the one he shared with his brother there was no possible way Elladan could have concealed this.
But Elladan simply shrugged,
"It was lost in the confusion. My father, my brother, they had their own grief to deal with. It was not unexpected that I was grieving too. They were so terrible, those days, Legolas...you have no idea..." then he looked at him intently, "well perhaps you do...even Arwen forgot, for awhile, about my other loss."
"I still don't understand." It seemed that was all he could say, he was just repeating himself but that had made things no clearer for him.
"She was my mother's maid Legolas!"
"I know, you told me, I understand that."
"She travelled with my mother, she was riding with her to Lothlorien. She was killed when they took her. My grief, my grief for the loss of her was overwhelmed by the tragedy that was my family. They were all so broken. How would they notice I was shattered into slightly more pieces than the rest of them?"
He looked at Elladan in horror as true enormity of it was bought home to him. To grieve with no support...to be all alone in your despair...he couldn't even imagine it. Even in the depths of his grief for Aragorn and Gimli...and his mother...people who loved him had been there. He may have pushed them away but they had been there nonetheless.
"How did you survive it?" he gasped, "Why did you not sail with your mother?"
"My father needed me, my brother needed me...and I needed them. My mother was not my mother then. And anyway if I had come here. I would still have been alone. She would not have been here. I did hope she would be here now, but maybe it is still too soon. Your mother has not returned yet after all. Still it seems we have been apart for long enough. I am weary of waiting."
Suddenly he felt ashamed. Elladan had borne this all alone and he would never have known. Yet here he, Legolas, was with more support than he could ask for, floundering in misery and getting nowhere.
"What do you do?" He asked, "How did you keep going?"
"There were people who loved me. I found joy in other thIngs, little things. Life has not been a total misery, although to be truthful for awhile it was. For awhile that was all it was."
"You MUST to tell Elrohir!" He leant forward earnestly, "You must, Elladan. It is wrong that I know this and he does not. And your parents...They could help you. Perhaps they have heard news?"
"Ah Legolas, it would just upset him, that I have hidden this for so long...and what good could it do?"
"He will be upset, that is true, and not without reason but he would recover from that. It is not fair to not allow him to help you now. What about your grandparents? You must ask them, they would know her family...perhaps she is there? Perhaps she has stayed away frightened she is not good enough?" He was getting carried away he knew but he felt compelled to help somehow, he could do something to fix this. It was so long since he had been the one to offer help rather than have to take it.
"I have been there...it was the first place I went. She is not there."
"Someone must know something Elladan. You must tell them. You must speak to your father at least!"
"You make it sound so easy Legolas." Elladan sighed, "it is not that easy to unburden yourself to those closest to you. Especially when you have deceived them. Have you told your father what you felt when you arrived here? Have you told him you worry your mother chooses to remain in the halls rather than seek you?"
"It would upset him. He worries enough as it is. I do not need any more worry from him!"
"Perhaps his fear would be less if he knew more Legolas."
He did not wish to seek any more help from his father. He did not want more questions and watching and restraints put upon him but he had an idea. He was absolutely certain he had to act to motivate Elladan to come clean.
"I will tell him," he said defiantly, "If you speak to Elrohir and Elrond."
"You do not know what you ask Legolas."
"I know it is what you need to do. I know I cannot carry this secret for you. I cannot hide it from Elrohir."
Elladan watched him with serious eyes and he wondered what thoughts were flicking through his mind as he did so.
"That is not fair Legolas." He said eventually. "You speak to one person and I must strip myself bare in front of two. I will do this...if you speak to Elrohir also...tell him what you think he said to you...tell him what you believe for I swear to you, you have it wrong."
He did not think he had it wrong, and after today he no longer thought the twins knew each other as well as they thought. Speaking to Elrohir about this plainly was the last thing he wanted to do. He did not know if he had the strength but he was done with running and done with being an object of pity. He was Legolas of the Woodland realm, one of the nine walkers, he had guarded the ring bearer and stood in front of the Black Gate before the might of Sauron. He would not flinch from this. Not this time.
"I will then." He said quickly before he could change his mind. "If you swear it too I will speak to him."
Now he just had to work out exactly what it was he would say.
