I leave for travels today, so I felt I should further the story at least a bit before I left. o; hence, it's shortness~
oOo
A husband and a father, then.
Thranduil, amidst some manner of madness, orders the old woman to bag him a bushel of her ripest apples. She scurries to his demand. He feigns impatience and turns, observes the opposite street from underneath the narrow discretion of his eyes.
The four of them stroll along the sidewalk.
Both boys follow at either side, bickering amid the noise. One is fair-haired, dapper and older. The other is shorter, all flailing limbs and with marks of grime strayed all across his face. Of the two, he seems the most like his mother. She twirls in her stride, and always her long and wild ropes of hair follow like coiled banners at her back. She clings to Thorin's arm, a jangling latch that never stops. Indeed there is an unusual symmetry etched into the clever lines of her face. Tall, for a woman.
She is loud when Thorin is quiet. She laughs and frolics where he chooses not. She is a hammer struck heavy into the soft of the snow. Brazen, obnoxious, mannish in the floral spurs of her skirts. Yet, he holds her close—so close and tight Thorin keeps her—like a thing that might tear or perish if for a moment he fails.
And he is gallant. Ever-watching.
The woman leans in, cranes her neck up so that she may peck thrice at his cheek. He smiles at last. She sniggers like a child and unhooks from his brace, prancing forward and allowing herself to fall backward a few steps away from him. She knows that he will catch her. And he does. Always.
Had he a reason, Thranduil would retch.
But there is none of both.
Instead, he looks to himself and realizes that his left hand has closed into the shape of a fist. His nails have dug deep into the peel of his skin. He knows without looking that blood-strings now ooze themselves slowly from the pleats of his palm. He turns on his heel and sees that the old woman is gaping at him, horrified.
"Milord, y-your hand—"
Thranduil doesn't speak a word, leaves the apples behind.
oOo
He returns to the sight of Legolas standing stiff at the largest of the vestibule windows.
He looks and sees that there is no moon to greet such night. The stars are veiled. Only wind and fog. Orange light tints itself throughout the wood of the walls, casting shadows. He wants to laugh, but he holds it back. Indeed the entire room would be struck black, if not for the crackling fire Legolas must have recently lit into the inglenook.
Such effort, Thranduil thinks.
He puts down the bottle and spins it gently by the neck.
"All these years, and still you quake at the dark?"
"It is not the dark that keeps me."
"Very well. Then what keeps you?" Thranduil gibes, bringing the bottle to a halt. But Legolas does not reply. "You threw your tantrum, and so I provided. I have purchased for you an entire estate in hopes that you may go forth and dabble into whatever silly habits you may have until you bore. You have your England, and you have your filthy garden." Thranduil pauses, uncorks the wine. "Yet you linger here, sighing into the windows like a timid little lamb expecting to be rescued."
"Do you secrete nothing more than poison."
"And if I did?" Thranduil asks him. "Will you attempt to hang yourself from the ceiling again?"
Legolas does not answer. Thranduil fills his chalice and goes to dust away the lone divan by the fire. He sits down, placing one leg upon the other. From there, he is able to see the better half of Legolas' face; pensive, far away.
Thranduil wets his lips and drinks.
It isn't long until his son's attention finally shifts from the window and more towards him, however. And though the needling taste of Montrachet does well to slake away the passing time between them, Thranduil knows that even wine will never be enough to keep the sallow of his skin at bay. His mind is weary, heavy with thirst. He closes his eyes for just one moment and sees only the man from before: the smell of him, like fleece and cinder, a goldsmith or a shoer, some mountain prince from long ago—
"You are a sad and hollow prison, incapable of feeling," Legolas tells him. "A murderous heirloom of some bygone age who refuses its doom and irrelevance. But you needn't the reminder. You are haunted by it day by day, are you not? As you sit and gloat and drink and fatten yourself with the blood of those you butcher."
Thranduil chuckles. He stands, and notes only that his vision has begun to blur in some places.
"Be silent now, Legolas," he says simply, placing down his chalice. "Grovel and bleat for the next twenty years if you'd like, for I am in no mood to lecture you this evening."
He slips into his cutaway in one smooth motion. Gold and black, bedecked at the sleeves. Already there is exhilaration fizzing into his veins. The colors of the room have amplified. A thousand different scents reel into his nose, and he knows all of them.
"I've matters to attend," Thranduil says. "Make aim not to wreck the furniture while I am gone."
But Legolas is already fast upon him (eyes wide and knowing), evermore fluid as a clover would sway, lithe in his cunning within the thin fabrics he so often wears. Thranduil would know this: how fairly the diamond threads of Legolas' hair drape him, like wisps of silver air. He is everything that Thranduil sees whenever he happens upon his own reflection: a proper duplication, worthy of his gaze.
"You cannot," Legolas tells him, impeding his path. "There must be another way—"
"And what way would you presume this time?" Thranduil offers. "Must I go low on my knees and feed from the likeness of livestock or sewer rats? Or should I stroll along the thoroughfares and hope to ask nicely?" Legolas is glaring at him, hell in his eyes. Thranduil wants to sneer. "Do not forget that it was you who brought us here, so far from shadow. Do not pretend as if though you did not suckle me so readily at the wrist whenever I cared enough to offer—whilst the slaughter still poured warm and sweet."
"I never wanted this—"
"Does the lie comfort you?" Legolas is shaking all over. His hands are fastened into fists. But Thranduil does not relent. He takes a step forward. A single inch lies between them. "Must I remind you of how willingly you tore apart the farmer's daughter?"
"She was sick and would die," Legolas insists, though his previous tone has all but weakened. "She asked it of me."
Almost desperate. Almost guilty. Almost enough.
Thranduil grins at last.
"A sixteen year old girl asked to be gutted?"
"Have you no heart? Are you so empty?" Legolas hisses. "No sense beyond your vanity?"
Thranduil's smile begins to wane.
"You will place yourself out of my way and lurk back to your window. I will not ask again."
"No."
Thranduil's ire grows by the second. His mouth tenses into a sharp line, a wordless threat honing itself into the cruel narrow of his eyes. He is taller. Stronger. He kills and has always felt nothing. Yet, Legolas remains.
"Lunatic child," he says. "Move now or I will do it for you."
"Self-loving beast," Legolas grits. "Had I the spear or the dagger, I swear I would—"
Within an instant, Thranduil's hand is lashed forward, bruised tight like a scorching brand across Legolas' throat, squeezing through both tendon and muscle with a force in his arm so massive that Legolas is left straining, writhing high upon the wall and with his legs left useless and thrashing beneath him. Thranduil's eyes glimmer with the red of the fire. His teeth are bared, fangs jagging forth into a ravening snarl.
"Will it take a mob, flames at your back to understand that we are always damned. Yet you wallow, flaunt about your pious crooning and think yourself sinless, righteous in the high throes of your sickening little daydreams that someday they will come to accept you. If I am the beast, then you are the coward." But Legolas does not flinch, nor does he weep. He stills into place and stares forward. If he was there before, he is there no longer. Thranduil seethes. "You think me vicious. You think me vicious when I have kept you, raised you, and did all that you could not. I should leave you to the fire, I should break your neck in half—"
"Like mother."
The words chill into the air like mist. It is a scream that shatters glass and leaves only silence.
Thranduil allows his hand to fall back to his side. Legolas slips down to his feet, unmarred. Thranduil's expression is a sheet of solid ice. The fire in the inglenook vanishes. In the dark, Thranduil is terrifying.
With a single flash of movement, Thranduil strikes Legolas across the face.
And after a moment, he does so again.
On his ring, there is blood.
oOo
Snow, and the streets of the South Bank are abandoned. All is dimmed.
A lone carriage rips into the quiet. Three horses. Thranduil observes from afar.
Soon, a woman rises from its wooden carapace. One heel before the other. She wears linen and black tulle-thread on her bonnet. She is perhaps in her fifties. Her jewelry glistens, rattles with secrets of greed and acerbity. In her arms, she holds a small dog.
Thranduil waits for the carriage to disappear into the murk of the fog. When it does, the woman begins to din her way towards the central of a crossing. She is hesitant the closer she comes. The Skeldergate Bridge that follows, Thranduil sees, is a heavy burden on her mind.
He walks to where she is, tall and fair, and wordlessly offers her his arm.
"Such lovely kindness," she says, though kindness is not the only thing she meant.
When they reach the middle of the bridge, Thranduil twists her against the iron-paling as if for a kiss. She reaches for him. But there is no kiss. Only the steel of his hand wrapped around the entire girth of her neck.
He begins to press. Her screams are dry and gagged as her bones begin to break. The dog falls from her arms. It yaps and whines, but Thranduil does not stop, not until red leaks forth at last from both corners of her mouth. The dog scurries. Her eyes roll back. She is limp and broken, barely alive.
For a moment, Thranduil watches her. Then he leans in and bites.
When he is finished, he feeds her body to the river.
oOo
For two days he and Legolas do not speak.
And on the third, Thranduil takes to the custom of making his way through the Lendal Bridge and into the hum of the market when the light of the sun dawdles least.
Always, Thranduil sees him there: silent and pensive and swathed in the gray furs he wears, arm–in-arm with the very same woman.
With tact, Thranduil lingers, learns Thorin's habits by heart.
He is a shoer, ash on his hands. He is no York-bred, nor is he moneyed. He dreams of the mountains; hammer, cool-smelt. The goodness of craft.
Thranduil watches. And soon, it is no longer enough.
oOo