Darkness 6
I am caught in the middle of a nightmare.
I have rested, I have washed the dirt of the road from my face and now I attempt to dress for dinner.
My clothes lie spread across the bed before me but none of them will do, none of them are suitable. I will walk in that room with the beautiful Arwen Undómiel and I will look like a tramp. I can feel the panic rising up within me. Why didn't Legolas tell me to bring something more suitable? Well I am truly losing my mind if I look to Legolas to provide clothing advice.
A knock on the door interrupts my hopeless task and my heart pounds in my chest. It will be the Page sent to fetch me. I am not ready. What should I do? I can certainly not go in my underwear.
Before I can even think about moving the door swings open—why did I not lock it? What is wrong with these people that they walk into others rooms uninvited?
Thankfully it is not the page.
It is Legolas.
He is improved, his face has colour once again, his eyes are bright, and he smiles. I frown as I wonder exactly what magic the King has worked upon him for he is not at all the weary, sickening elf Elessar led away from us.
"Are you not ready?" he asks me.
"Ready? No! I have nothing to wear..." My panic spills out into the room. "Why did you not tell me she was so beautiful!" I cry. I do not even think to ask him how he is.
"Who?" He is genuinely confused at that.
"Arwen. Who else?"
"She is the Evenstar. You knew that. I did not have to tell you, and what does this have to do with the reason you are not dressed?"
"Legolas, look at these..." I through my arms out to indicate the pile of dresses before me. "Imagine how they will make me look."
And his smile widens. When he smiles like that he takes my breath away.
"You will make my heart sing," he says simply.
And I, turning back to the rejected clothing, distracted by my anxiety, let the words slip out of my mouth before I can think better of it.
"I did not know I did that any more."
A wave of confusion passes over his face. He does not understand me.
"Why do you say that?" There is genuine mystification there.
I look at him then, truly look at him. What do I say? The truth?
"We...you...There is so much wrong between us Legolas. I did not know you still felt that."
His eyes widen and he walks towards me, cups my face in his hand, strokes my cheek with his finger.
"Beloved," his breath is warm on my face and he says it like a prayer. "It is not that bad is it?"
Can he mean that? Does he truly not understand how bad it is? I open my mouth and I tell him. I open the box of hurts in my head, delve in and they all come tumbling out.
"Why did you not take me with you to see Taenor's family? Why did you choose Erynion? In the past we would have done that together. You push me away Legolas and it hurts!"
"I told you!" He drops his hand and I am cold without it.
"You had done enough."
"You mean I was not enough."
"No." his voice is firm and controlled, "I mean you had done enough. You have worn yourself out looking after me. You took no rest, Do you think I did not know that? It was a hard thing to do, seeing them. I wanted to protect you. Elbereth, Maewen, you make it so hard to look after you sometimes."
"I don't need looking after," I say sulkily.
"I don't care what you think you need," he spits back, "I love you, I want to look after you. It is what I do."
"If you love me..." The hurts keep coming. Now I have started I cannot stop, "... why do you not speak to me of the sea? Why do you keep it secret? Do you not trust me? I do not understand it and so I do not understand you, and you tell me nothing...nothing! You tell the dwarf, you tell Faramir, but not me!"
"The sea.." his shoulders slump as if he is weighed down by just the mention of it. "The sea is insidious, it winds it's way into everything, every part of my life. I wanted something sacred, something it could not touch. I wanted to keep you, to keep us, where it could not reach us."
The ironic thing is by doing that he has guaranteed the sea has helped destroy us.
"I make you unhappy Legolas, when I used to make you smile. You run away from me. You leave me behind, you choose your new friends over me. There is no space left for me."
"I do not want to choose!" He cries, his control finally broken. "I should not have to but you leave me no option. I love them, I love you, but you will not come with me. You will not try to know them and my time with them is short. What do you expect me to do?" He throws his hands in the air in frustration.
"Is it any surprise I am unhappy?"
So he has said it. He is unhappy. He is unhappy with me.
"I thought.." my voice wavers but I plough ahead before I lose my courage. "I have thought, maybe I should go back to the Greenwood. Then you would not have to choose, then you could be happy."
The look on his face is one of pure horror.
"You would leave me?"
For a moment we can only stare at each other. Then before I know it he has me in his arms, my head upon his shoulder. He holds me tight, so tight I almost cannot breathe.
"Do not leave me Maewen, please," he says, "I am Legolas Thranduilion, I do not beg, but I will beg this of you. Do not go, please do not go. Without you I have no light. I will not see them if it will keep you here. I will not..."
His words tumble out in a desperate, garbled rush.
I should feel triumphant. This is what I have wished for these long years since the war. That he will put them aside and truly come back to me. To only me, to the way it was.
Instead I feel sick.
I have turned into someone I do not recognise, that I would ask this of him. I know he loves them, these mortals. He calls Elessar, Brother, and he means it. How can I expect him to give up another brother when he has already lost one? Who am I if I allow him to do this? No wonder he asks where Maewen has gone.
If I let him give them up I will hate myself, and in the end he will hate me too.
I am crying and I cannot stop. My tears soak into his tunic and I wish they would wash away the stain upon my soul, the darkness in my heart. He is right, he knows me so well. I am jealous.
"No." I pull back, out of his embrace and I see there are tears upon his face also. He has never cried for me, or because of me. I have done this to him.
"You will not give them up Legolas." It is, perhaps, the hardest thing I have ever had to say.
"I will try... I will try to know them. I will come with you on your travels if you wish it—if you will help me. I will not leave you.I cannot leave you." The last is but a whisper.
I only hope I can do this. The words are hard to say, the doing of it will be even harder.
He reaches out, his fingers trace across my face, so softly the touch is barely there.
"You will do this for me?"
"I will do it for myself." For I must, I think, if I am to live with myself.
"I am sorry. I spent so long waiting for you and then you returned so changed, with mortals in tow. I have not understood, I am only now beginning to." I drop my head in shame.
He draws near and I feel his arms encircle me. It is not the desperate frightened embrace of before, this one is loving and gentle. This is what we have been missing between us, this soft and gentle love. He murmurs my name into my hair as he holds me.
"Maewen, beloved."
And all my hurts are washed away. His spirit surrounds me, it encompasses me with a love so deep it surely has no end. How can I be jealous of others when I am the one who has this.
Then suddenly he pulls away and breaks the spell. He is alight, eyes sparkling, fea glowing. He is transformed before my eyes into the Legolas of time gone by, the Legolas before Laerion, the Legolas of my childhood.
He dances over to the pile of clothes and pulls a dress out from right at the bottom, a deep turquoise beaded gown.
"Wear this!" His joy is so infectious I cannot help but smile in return.
"Why that one?" It is not what I would have chosen.
"Because it is my favourite." He says it with determination, as if that alone is reason enough and perhaps it is. Why should I not dress to please him and him alone. What does it matter what the Evenstar thinks of me, or these humans. It is Legolas who matters. Legolas and I.
And so I struggle into the dress in a rush for we are late. The Page arrives while I swear and curse whoever it was who designed dresses with so many fastenings but Legolas sends him on his way with a message to the King that we will be there shortly.
He sits behind me then and smooths the wild mess that is my hair, weaving intricate braids to control it. The feeling of his nimble fingers running through it, calms me for it is strangely intimate. I feel cherished, I feel loved, I feel as if nothing can defeat us for I have him on my side.
And when he is done and has surveyed the results of his labour, has turned me to and fro he smiles, a bright and brilliant smile that competes with the sun for its beauty and light. I bask in his admiration.
"You are beautiful," he whispers. "None will be looking at Arwen Undómiel tonight."
I almost believe him.
He clasps my hand and leads me through the corridors to where his friends await us. And strangely I am not afraid, my anxiety has evaporated on the breeze.
For I have him and he loves me.
I need nothing more.