If you're a fan of Maureen Johnson's Shades of London series, check out my oneshot on Stephen and Rory! If you're not a fan, go read it!
In response to the guest who expressed that half-elven elves couldn't make the choice of mortality/immortality, I've never read or seen anything to indicate so. That could be a mistake on my part, certainly. But this is fan fiction, so a bit of tweaking isn't beyond the rules. Also, Caladhiel is distantly related to both Elrond and Lúthien, which would, I think, allow her the choice.
Another long chapter!
-XXX-
Blood. It is as though the sanguine liquid taints his memories, stains them with their redness, seeping into his very dreams. Wet, sticky, like a rusty oil. The color of power turned to regret. It's his most vivid memory, the life-giving liquid seeping forth with all the force and gusto of a crystal-clear stream – fast, sharp, and unbearably cold.
He'd not been in many battles before. A few skirmish, yes, epics with spiders and wrags and all sorts of creatures. But a fight against those who look so like him? Thranduil had not experienced that before.
It was the fifth day. Beside his father, mounted on a silver stag, the prince had been nervous, yes, but eager to serve his people, to serve Arda, in this fight. Before they begin the charge, he rotated his arms, spinning his sword before holding it at the ready. "Let them come."
Dagorlad. Battle plain.
They were out matched at the start, but arrows soon downed the Men in front. Their lancers fallen, the commanders had little more than swords and axes on their side – this particular battalion was not well-equipped. Or so the Greenwood Elves thought.
He was not aware of his father's stag collapsing, nor did he know Oropher to be mortally wounded. It was not as though, in the disarray, anyone could have found him anyways. As the day wore on his face and hair became streaked with dirt and blood, both his own and his foes'. Around him, utter chaos ruled. He could not discern much – not the passing of the hours, nor his weariness, just the motion of his blade striking down enemies with a swift strike over and over.
Indeed, time seemed to pass at a great pace, until the dragon arrived.
A great black mass, first thought to be as storm cloud, passed overhead. It was not until a great roar echoed through the plains that those of the Last Alliance realized that a dragon was in their midst. Fear struck cold and hard throughout the Alliance.
Thranduil paused in his slaying to look to the sky. The creature, black scales flashing even in the dimmed light of the battlefield, seemed to grin at all below him. Twisting midair, it breathed a hot breath of fire upon the closest line of Men, destroying all life the flame touched.
The prince grit his teeth. Giving a call, he directed his archers to aim for the belly of the beast. He was not the only one. Every commander in range was issuing the same order. All at once, hundred of arrows flew for the creature. A few properly hit their mark, lodging between the softer belly scales. The beast screamed, diving with another mouthful of fire.
He flew in range of the prince, who, without thought, strung the bow that sat on his back. The dragon neared, head-on, fearless. In an instant the prince's arrow had been let loose. And it hit its mark – the left eye of the beast, directly in the middle of its catlike pupils.
The dragon screamed again, and opens it's jaws to release another burst of fire. He, too, makes his mark. The prince falls. Half of his body is on fire.
After a time, he cannot feel the burning. Even when several soldiers rush to his side, beating the flames with whatever cloth they have, he cannot feel it. Everything is dull, fading, his vision (or what is left of it) edged by blackness. His stag lies nearby, moaning lowly – he has been burned as well.
Thranduil can feel nothing of the ruined side of his body. Still, he withers and shivers on the pallet they place him on, uttering muted cries. He does not hurt, yet he knows there must be pain.
-XXX-
After darkness claims him, the prince is in and out of consciousness. He sees flashes of faces, all worried and peaked. A flicker of candle light. Fortesbrawn's face. The feeling of cool water upon his skin, murmuring, gentle words. Spells. Magic.
He wakes slowly, eye blinking blearily before he fully accepts consciousness. And when he does, he thinks that he is dreaming.
It is more than the heaviness he feels, the fatigue, all senses dulled by drugs. It is the sight of the one who sits beside him. "Cala." He wishes to speak it, but his throat will not let him. At the most, he can crook his fingers for her.
She sits by lamplight, golden hair pulled back into a loose bun at the base of her neck, pale and drawn and clearly worried. Even in a stained apron and worn dress, bags beneath tired eyes, she is the picture of loveliness to him. Though, her less-than-polished appearance assures him that this is not a dream, it is not a vision. She is here.
"Cala." His lips move, but no sound save for a bare scratching comes out. He winces, and she with him. She fetches a cup of water, helping him sit up slightly to drink. Once he has drained the cup, she aids him in easing back down. He never turns from her. One hand goes to his, squeezing, another strokes his right brow.
"Nín ernil," she murmurs, fingers light on his skin. "My prince."
He tries again, and this time a whisper comes out. "Cala."
The elf maiden sighs at her name. Her hand tightens against his. "Are you in pain?"
"No, none," he answers in whisper. "You and Fortesbrawn have done good work."
But her face is grim. "I do not know that to be so," she says quietly. "Thranduil. Dragon fire – it is hard to heal."
"I trust you both."
Still she is bleak. Stroking his cheek, she reaches into the pocket of her apron. "We did our best. And there is still more we can do. But…we cannot mend what has been so heavily touched by magic." She opens her hand to reveal a small hand mirror. It's a pretty thing, polished silver set with enamel on the back. He stares at it. In the medical tent on a battlefield, it feels entirely out of place. "I do not know if you shall wish to see it."
"Show me," he commands, voice a little stronger.
Heavily, she lifts the mirror so that he might see. He instantly regrets his insistence.
Half of his face is…gone. From his eyebrow to his jaw, missing his nose and lips, was a nightmare. What had been golden-white skin was twisted, charred, blackened flesh, strings of red muscle and cuts of white bone. The burn extended down the entire left side of his torso, his shoulder, neck, arm, and hand. Sinew and angry red-and-black flesh was all that was left. Looking down, he could see that his abdomen and thigh were only touched by fire, blossomed with rawness. But that was of little comfort to him.
His eye, his left eye, was taped shut with a bandage. He had not even noticed in his drugged state that he was seeing with only one eye. Was he now half-blind? Or was this a temporary problem?
Beside him, the assistant healer watches with wide eyes, biting her lip. Turning slowly back to her, he can see tears welling in the corners of her eyes – tears she was holding back for him.
"I am a monster," he whispers.
"No," Cala chokes out. Her hand is in his again. The mirror is dropped upon the mattress, forgotten. He is glad it is gone. "No, no. You are not. You are never."
"Look at me," he says, voice rising. "Or rather not. I am the stuff of nightmares. I am a cripple, blind –"
"You are not. You are a hero." She cuts him off. "Thranduil, it is not so bad. In time, you shall be able to use your arm again."
"But shall the burns ever heal?" he hisses.
She cannot answer. Silent, she bows her head. He withdraws his hand from her grasp.
"Leave me."
At this, Caladhiel's grey eyes flash. "I shall not."
"I am a monster. A thing. A half-person," he says bitterly. "I do not deserve your attention, nor your care. Go to others more deserving. I am ready to die."
"You are my prince and I shall stay," she replies sharply. "Do not be so petty – there are many here on death's door who would easily insist that I return to you. You have a loyal people, my lord, who will miss you and who will follow you, scars nor not, beyond the edge of the earth. Do not disregard their love for your silly dramatics. You are alive and will remain so if I and they have anything to say about it."
Her speech shocks him into silence. It's just enough so that she might fetch him a second cup of water, and further medications. After administering the drug, she goes back to his bedside. The prince, silent, holds his good hand out, open for her. With the barest of smiles, Cala accepts. She remains beside him until duty calls for her, and by then he is in deep slumber.
-XXX-
He sees her sporadically throughout the next seven days. Still in the heat of battle, there is little time for her to tend to him when he is in a relatively stable state. But she comes. And he waits for her. And she comes.
Fortesbrawn had little to say that Caladhiel had not already told him. The burns were bad, yes, he knew that, but how were they to fix them. The healer assured the prince that he would find some sort of cure, in time. Because of this, even when Thranduil feels strong enough to walk again he stays in his tent. A small number pass through the flap that acts as a door, two nurse, a handful of guardsmen and commanders, and his head healer, not to mention Cala. A pair of guards are constantly stationed outside. He does not know if they are to keep him in or others out. It matters not – he possesses no desire to go outside of the tent. He is not ready to see anyone yet.
He does not know if he ever will me.
"I am a monster," he had told Cala.
"No," she had said.
The prince doubts that others will share her sentiments. Cala's compassion is the only thing that prevents him from feeling like a thing of nightmares. The others, his healer not included, look away, carefully avoiding his left side if they dare look at him at all. He feels like a half-creature. A half-person. A shadow.
She comes. In the evening, when the dying and injured are quieted by nightfall. In the morning, before most of the camp is awake. Cala comes to sit beside him.
Sometimes, to distract him, she recites poems from memory or sings. There are few books to be found in the camp, and most of them are filled with maps and incantations, not tomes for pleasure-reading. So she tells stories as well, when it is too late for singing. Her favorites are of Lúthien.
He likes it when she sings. They are songs of sunshine, tragic love, the far-away sea, magical woods, and mysteries. Her voice isn't the loveliest he's ever heard, but there is a certain charm to it. If his voice were strong enough, it would join with hers. But the fire has gone deep, deep into his lungs. He wonders if he shall ever sing again.
"You will, in time," Cala reassures him when he voices this fear. "I think Fortersbrawn has a solution he is concocting."
She says nothing more on the matter.
He wakes one morning to find her beside him, legs crossed, chin propped on her hand, the elbow of which rests on her knees. She is drowsy, blinking blearily at him, and he realizes that she's likely been asleep in that chair all night. He scolds her.
"You need your rest."
"You were not sleeping well," she counters. "You were having nightmares. I could not leave you alone."
He'll likely have nightmare for the rest of his days. He does not tell her this, but instead thanks her.
The week passes, and he is allowed to see himself once more when Fortesbrawn does his daily evaluation. The bandage on his eye is removed. In the mirror, he can see that the entire orb is now a milky white. It might fade, he is told, with time. There is no sight, but he can make out shards of light. Occasionally shadows.
Other wounds are no better or worse. There has been little change. The burns seem to be something he'll have to live with.
"Better than dying with them," Cala tells him bluntly.
"When you've reclaimed your strength, we shall see about a glamor," Fortesbrawn says. "It requires little magic and focus – you shall wear it as naturally as you would wear a crown. No one would be the wiser."
He'd prefer to solve the problem rather than hiding it. But if this was the best that his healer had to offer he must take it.
-XXX-
Only a day later he receives word of Oropher's demise. It comes first as a mutual cry sounding throughout the camp, then as a messenger.
He weeps.
The battle is over. Sauron has been defeated. Still, Thranduil hardly feels as though they have won.
Cala comes to him that night, somber and silent. She sits with him, holding him as he cries again. She cries too, and he can tell she is already worn out from mourning – that she, too, had wept throughout the day. Their eyes and hearts ache from tears, but they cannot stop.
They fall asleep together in his tiny bed. The maiden wakes before dawn and slips out quietly. He misses her almost as soon as she goes.
-XXX-
Another five days pass. Most everyone had returned to their homelands or other camps. A small group has remained on the plains to care for the dead, though Thranduil stays on his healer's order. Five day pass after the final battle, and Fortesbrawn allows Thranduil to return home.
The trip that would normally take two days lasts six, as the prince's condition requires the most delicate of motion. He rides in the back of a covered wagon, on a pallet, with a nurse and Cala to tend to him. Every bump in the road, every less-than-smooth turn sends aches through his body, though the drugs he has been taking are quite potent.
Finally they arrive. Once back in the Greenwood, he does not see Cala for a long time. The palace healers take her place. He does not know if she remains in the palace or had seen fit to move back to her cottage. He desperately hopes that she has not. In time, he feels pressed to summon her to him.
She comes. Dressed in a brown dress, wearing her healer's apron, hair braided back neatly, the maiden surfaces from the healing rooms. She has been tending to those injured in the battle.
"I tried to come," she says when he reaches for her. "Believe me, I did, but…I was told you were not seeing anyone. Day after day I tried, but I was told you would not see me."
All he can do is pull her hands into his, absorbing their warmth. When he concentrates, he can manage a glamor. Closing his eyes he imagines himself, whole and hale. When he opens them, he feels the faint tinkle of magic against his dead flesh. She watches him, something like concern flickering in her grey eyes.
"I will never cease wishing to see you," he tells her.
-XXX-
He is crowned shortly before his father's funeral. The affair is simple. By then he could hold on to the glamor for long periods of time easily. No one, outside of those on his healing staff, could ever guess that the new king had such a scarred face.
For his coronation, he chooses not the circlet his father was slain in, as was custom, but a dark silver crown, made to look like twisting thorn vines. Metal tooled to resemble ivy surrounds the base. It is a crown of peace – much as he hopes his reign will be. The Greenwood would seclude itself under his rule. The affairs of the outside world must trouble him not….
Soon, Caladhiel slips from his life. It is slowly, as though she is trying to avoid any fuss. But he notices when he sees her less and less about the infirmary. It is as though she is sand, slipping between his fingers. He can only stop a few grains, but soon, it has all blown into the wind. She returns to her cottage and her bees. He makes several attempts to persuade her to return to palace life, but each of his letters are returned with polite note declining. And slowly, thoughts of her fade from his everyday life. Matters of business and state occupy his days now. He has little time to be begging beekeepers back into his life.
-XXX-
Ten years pass as ten years do – slowly, and simultaneously, at a break-neck speed. His realm is not quite thriving – but nor is it in any kind of turmoil. In the decade following his father's death, Thranduil transitions gracefully into his new role as king. Trade has not decreased, though diplomatic interactions with the outside world has occurred less and less under his rule. He still sends envoys to the Elven Realms, yes, and occasionally to those of Men (with them it seemed pointless, really, to establish connections with different kings when they merely dropped like fruit flies). But it is not with the frequency seen under his father's hand.
Still, the Greenwood survives. He was getting along perfectly well as king, his people thrived, and the wood stood strong.
However, he was not allowed to be so content for long. Advisors pestered him continuously, and in his tenth year of ruling the realm, their theme was marriage.
"Ten years is long enough for any king," they agreed. "And you were a bachelor long before you wore the crown."
"It would have been ideal that you took to the throne already married," one added. "Now you must choose most delicately, lest you offend one of your allies. The marriages of kings can make or break alliances. We could have a mess in foreign affairs."
He brushed them off. "I do not require any wife."
"But, in time, you shall need an heir."
"Oh. Yes. That."
-XXX-
Another meeting of his advisor's council, and Thranduil suffered from yet another headache, as he was wont to do following such meetings. The bickering and fuss seemed to rot his brain just a little more each time. He left the conference chambers with heavy strides, thinking that a walk might perhaps ease him.
He chooses a secluded path, one that often goes overlooked for it is close to the surface, so close that windows formed by erosions in the rock allow sunlight to seep in from above. It is as close to the outside as one might get living in his palace. While others might simply go outside, nothing is that simple for the king.
Eventually he walked with a lighter step, his heartbeat slowed, and he felt as though he could breath properly once more. "Temper," he reminds himself.
There is a break in his focus as a melody sounds through the cavern – sweet, though not strong, light and airy. Some dess somewhere below him sings of tathor, of willow trees. It is a sad song of a lonely tree. He knows it, and can faintly trace the lyrics in his mind as she sings. Cala sang it to him, once.
As though summoned by his thoughts, she appears. Along one of the soft mossy spots near one of the many streams that run though his underground domain, she sits. But she is not alone. No, there is a toddling babe with her. Its chubby legs are bowedly attempting to support itself, though Cala holds it gently by the waist. The arms flap wildly, excitedly. With a coo, she tips the babe back, shaking her head and making silly noises. The child howls with laughter, which is mingled with Cala's. Tenderly, she sets the baby on the mossy bed. It sits upright, unsupported, stuffing one fist in its own mouth.
Cala is simply smiling, pleased to interact with the babe. Singing softly, she strokes the wispy brown strands that line the child's skull, duck fluff of hair. She is positively enthralled.
At that moment he's given a terrible thought, one that should not be so terrible – that perhaps this babe is hers.
Immediately he scolds himself. The idea of Caladhiel having a life and a family ought not be so terrible to him. The happiness of any of his subjects ought to be pleasing, if he has feeling on the matter at all, a wondrous thing. And if anyone deserved happiness, it would surely be Caladhiel of Bee's Keep.
He had not seen her since around the time of his father's death. Not only on the occasion, but a few weeks later, at the stately funeral service. He followed the pallet that carried Oropher's body, a carefully crafted vessel pulled by a pair of majestic stags, flowers lain about so as to surround him with layers of white petals. He walked behind, a wall of mourners on either side – the whole kingdom had turned out for the procession – nodding every so often at those he recognized. Cala, dressed in grey, the hood of her cloak pulled up, eyes downcast, was one of those few. He had sought her gaze longer, pausing in his strides to acknowledge her. But she did not look up. She had her head bowed, biting her lower lip.
A few months later, perhaps, he'd spoken to her at the arrival of their last troops. She had been with her friend again. He was king, then, and they'd only spoke for a mere moment -
Yes, that was the last time. He occasional thought he might have snatched a glance at a festival or ball, while observing the goings-on of the village beyond the palace gates, or on days of open court. But he was never sure.
After the war, she'd given up healing. Fortesbrawn had begged her to stay, As had Thranduil,but she said her heart was not in the work – she was not able to have steady hands without the passion to tell herself that this was work she was meant to do. But she still tended to the few he sent her way, on occasion. Thranduil had supposed that she went back to her little corner of the world at the edge of the Greenwood, back to her cottage and her bees. Though, perhaps, she did not go alone.
Somehow this makes his chest ache. Angrily, he banishes the pain. "Not yours to keep," he reminds himself. "Not to be yours."
His father would be aghast to know that his son was having such feelings towards a Silvan elf. A half-elven, as well, despite being a descendent of Lùthien, was still half-elven. Not fit to be a queen, or even a consort.
He watches her only for a moment more before slipping quietly away, as though he'd never come across her at all.
-XXX-
We finally get a chance to really delve into Thranduil's POV! We did backtrack a little, though with good reason.
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