Utúlie'n aurë, here's another chapter ':)

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Thranduil turned to Galion, who he already knew would be throwing him a knowing glance. Thranduil returned it, but did not say anything; Legolas had always had a knack for making friends, something he and Galion had often joked about. But he felt mostly fondness for the commander, and was fairly sure that Legolas could hear them anyway, so he bit back any comments that might have popped into his head.

Galion bade them goodnight, and Thranduil carefully resumed Beleghîr's place at his son's side and touched a hand to his forehead. Legolas was indeed running quite warm, a slight sheen of sweat covering his skin. He grimaced slightly at the touch and his eyes flickered open.

"Is there anything I can do for you, ion-nîn?", Thranduil asked gently.

Legolas nodded miserably, which Thranduil knew meant he needed help with personal needs. He waited another few minutes for the pain relief to kick in, then helped his son as gently as he could and got him into some of his own fresh clothes for sleeping. Once he was settled back in bed, Thranduil took off his own ceremonial robes, climbed in next to him and waited for the intense pain the activity had caused him to lessen. He knew he should probably let him sleep, but, whether it was due to the lingering effects of drink or not, he had things he needed to get off his chest.

"Legolas."

Legolas turned his head toward him and forced his eyes open.

"I need to know whether you wish to go through with our travel plans, or not", Thranduil said bluntly.

The head turned to face the ceiling again.

"I ask only because I must start planning this now", Thranduil pushed on. "If you have changed your mind and wish to remain here, none will be happier than I. I just need to know."

Silence.

"Legolas." Thranduil had to try hard to keep a sudden desperate urgency from showing in his voice. "Do you want to stay here?" He swallowed.

Legolas again turned his head slowly towards him and fixed him with a gaze that, though clouded and dim, pierced him to the bone. Legolas blinked at him blearily. Thranduil found it impossible to gauge his level of consciousness.

Then he mumbled something. Thranduil's head was the last part of him to decipher his son's words; by the time it had dawned on him what he had said, his blood had run cold, his stomach turned to lead, his throat constricted.

"What?", he edged out, hoarsely, unnecessarily.

"I saw naneth", Legolas repeated. His eyes seemed to drift in and out of focus, and he was visibly struggling to keep them open. Thranduil stared at him, lost for words. His son looked like he was fighting delirium, but there was a disconcerting clarity in his eyes whenever he managed to center them on Thranduil's. Thranduil tried to swallow.

"You … saw her?", he managed.

Legolas nodded. His eyelids drooped again, lingering in a half-lidded position. "I had meant to tell you", he mumbled.

Thranduil's blood insides constricted further. He did not talk about his wife, hardly ever. He could hardly bear to think of her without being overcome with the same old, messily buried pain. He had done his duty in the years following her death and talked it through with his young child, over and over again. It had been easier then, necessary even, and the lively company of his elfling combined with the pain and recovery from the burns he had sustained during the failed rescue mission had been welcome diversions, but after Legolas was grown and away on patrol most of the time, every thought of his wife tore at the old wound with no distraction from his loneliness. He could not afford to let it overwhelm him. It had been easier to push the thoughts away whenever they surfaced, and over the yéni that followed that habit had become harder and harder to break. His closest friends did not broach the subject, and even Legolas had long ceased everything beyond brief referential mentions.

Until now.

Thranduil breathed, trying to calm his nerves. Legolas had seen Elloth, he was only now beginning to comprehend. It obviously could not be true, but why would he be saying it? Was his fever that high?

"You –", he began. His voice cracked. "Where?", he finally managed.

"In the – tree", Legolas murmured, and Thranduil felt his blood turn to ice in his veins. Forgetting everything, he seized Legolas hard by the arm, inadvertently shaking him and making him cry out weakly in pain as his face contorted and his hands clenched uselessly next to his legs.

Thranduil bit his lip and quickly relinquished his grip. "Goheno nin", he whispered. He drew a deep, shuddering breath in a futile attempt to calm himself, then, as carefully as he could, inched toward his son until he was lying on his side, as close as he dared without jostling him with his own movements. He placed a gentle hand on his forehead. It was warmer than it had been before.

Thranduil had not been keen on discussing the queen, not in the least, but this was the first time since his official debriefing that Legolas had said anything at all about the tree. The tree he had been hidden beneath for a week, the tree where he had lain in terrible pain and watched his friend die next to him, unable to help; the tree he had been recovered from more dead than alive.

"Ion-nîn", Thranduil began hesitantly, wondering how best to encourage his son to keep speaking. He had no time to form a coherent thought before he was cut off.

"After Tuia died", Legolas went on. "Thought it was her at first … was confused …" His eyes were closed, his face tense with pain, his words slurred, but he kept talking. "But it was naneth. She wanted me to come with her. I did not want to … she stayed with me for a while. She had a … beautiful voice. She sang … I remember … following her."

Thranduil watched the rapid rising and falling of his son's chest. He couldn't speak, so he slipped his free hand into Legolas'. He squeezed tightly, and Legolas squeezed back. Neither of them let go.

"I didn't think – I thought – I didn't want –" Legolas broke off as a shudder ran through him from head to toe. He moaned softly in response, his head and neck arching backwards, then twisting back and forth, struggling for some form of release.

"Sssshhhh", Thranduil managed, stroking the agitated elf's head, trying to calm him down but it was difficult when he himself was in turmoil. Legolas' hand was clenching very hard around his own, and yet he could feel it trembling. An acute fear for his son squeezed into his insides, somewhere next to the tangle of grief and pain already rooted there. He wondered if he should fetch a healer, but was reluctant to leave.

"I didn't want to go with her", Legolas rambled on. "But I was broken, I was dying, I just … wanted it to stop. And I left, Ada. I went with her." He shuddered again, moaning softly in response to the movement. "I don't know how I … you called louder, I suppose."

Thranduil's heart ached, and he was lost for words, lost for action. He desperately wished for Galion, or anyone, to join them, just so somebody would know how to react to what he was hearing. And yet he was glad nobody else was hearing this.

"Ada, do you think –" Legolas broke off again as his body was wracked with violent shivers, which in turn elicited another cry of pain. Thranduil was starting to get seriously worried about his state of health now, which served to distract him somewhat from the subject of his son's rant, but was hardly preferable. "Do you think she is there?"

"Legolas, let me get you some more medicine", Thranduil forced out, trying to pull away so he could get up but Legolas' death grip on his hand only tightened further.

"Do you think she is there", Legolass repeated stubbornly. His eyes were tightly shut, his words slurred and only intelligible because Thranduil wished so fervently for him to drop the subject. He concentrated on breathing, on trying to control his body's reaction. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly as the ghost of flames danced over his left side. His skin smoldered anew.

There. In the West, in the Undying Lands, the home of the Valar. The thought felt so foreign. He hoped she was there, he hoped they were all there and not stuck, floating, disembodied, in the Halls of Mandos, but it felt only like the lesser of two evils. He ached to have her here.

"I do not know", he whispered finally. His free hand wrapped around his shoulder, side and face, trying to cover as much of it as he could, curling in on himself beside his son. He wanted to comfort his son, but neither his mouth nor his body would cooperate.

Legolas stirred at his anguished movements, dragging his eyes open and shifting his upper body slightly toward his father. He reached up and placed his right hand on top of Thranduil's, which was still clawing helplessly at his old burns.

"As I said before, Ada", he murmured. "I want to stay here … but I can't." He squeezed both of Thranduil's hands in his own. "I will tell her of your love, Ada. I promise."

A sob tore through Thranduil's cowering torso at those words. Legolas, with difficulty, rolled himself completely onto his side and pulled Thranduil's face close to his chest. The first tears the king had cried in yéni for his spouse flowed from his eyes and into the shoulder of his son. Her son. Their son.

oOo

Long after Legolas had drifted into an exhausted slumber, Thranduil stayed with his face nestled into his shoulder, willing the floodgates of his grief to shut again so that he could find rest. It was no use. That was not going to happen tonight.

Slowly, as not to disturb the oblivious elf, he eased himself out of Legolas' embrace. He placed a gentle hand on his forehead, and, content that his fever seemed to have gone down somewhat in sleep, he slid out of the bed and silently left his chamber.

His bare feet led him up and down the winding stairways and passages of the underground realm and finally up to the outer gate. He passed the guards with a slight nod of the head, and if they were surprised to see their king exiting the stronghold, alone and clad only in a light undertunic at that time of night, they did not show it. It was a time of festival, after all; Thranduil assumed he was not the only elf to pass through the gates at an unusual hour. He did his best to straighten his posture and rearrange his features into his usual regal composure, but was relieved when the gates closed behind him and he could leave the Elvenking behind within them.

He walked, not consciously paying any attention to where he was going, or how much time had passed. The trees were whispering around him, but he shut it all out, and didn't stop his mindless advance until the sun was high enough that her light was visible through the dense, black woods around him, and he had arrived where he had been heading all along.

Of course.

The rays of early sunlight glittered in the misty swaths of dew that hung in the air near the forest floor as he stared at the tree before him.

It was old now. Ancient. It had been ageless back then, thick trunks branching out, rough, creased bark perfect for holding onto with ease, generous branches that could easily hold two wood-elves, even if they were not being overly careful. Which they hadn't been. But the tree, in its prime, had held them as they laughed, and the sun had danced, golden through its evergreen canopy.

Now the bark was missing in places, there were hollows in the gnarled trunk, the color seemed to have seeped out. The leaves, once dark green and just pointed enough to tickle softly, looked hard and dry, closer to thorns.

Thranduil placed his hands against the trunk, rested his forehead against it. Suddenly his whole body was pressed against it. Next, he was up in the branches, with no memory of the climb.

Their flet had been here. Elloth had laughed at him for wanting to build one in the first place, teased him about being afraid of falling out of the tree, but he had wanted them to have a proper meeting place, a place where they could leave things and come back to and that would feel like theirs, away from all the pressures of court. Even if court back then had been in the thriving, peaceful Greenwood, and not within the labyrinthine tunnels of the underground stronghold. How Elloth would have hated it.

There was nothing left of their construction, save perhaps some dents in the branches where they had grown around the platform before it had rotted away, but Thranduil couldn't really tell if that was what the dents were from, or how far they would have grown in the hundreds of years since he had last been here.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Hundreds of years. Soon it would be thousands.

And still the ripped end of the thread that had tied him to that wild wood-elf remained torn and frayed, and, unless messily knotted and stuffed into some crevice of himself, dangled loose, pulling at the old hurts, making them bleed anew. Like now. He curled up as tightly as he could, trying to hold himself together. Legolas was grown, he wasn't even that young anymore, and Elloth had missed it all, had never seen how well he could shoot, how tirelessly he fought, how he led his warriors with that fierce but quiet determination of his. She hadn't seen how he had brought Thranduil back from the brink of despair after her death, how patient he had been, how stubbornly he had insisted on staying with his father, no matter how hard the healers and his minders had tried to get him to go somewhere else. How, while Thranduil fell apart, Legolas had held it all together. She hadn't seen how strong, how gifted, how loved he was.

A strangled howl rose in his throat as the unfairness of it all crashed down around him. None of this should have happened. He threw himself against the tree in anguish, his cheek and shoulder connecting hard with the coarse bark. He stayed that way, clinging to the ancient yew, holding onto it, using it as an anchor. The tree remembered him, at least, and quietly shared in his grief, trying to absorb some of it.

He wasn't sure how long it took for the pain to subside enough for anything else to be able to reach him. The sun was high when he became aware of the increasingly stirred murmurs of the trees around him, and could focus on finding the source of their agitation.

He lifted his head up and tensed. There were strangers in the forest.

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To anyone still reading this story, thanks for your patience! I can assure you that the slow updates are not because I have lost interest in this story, but more like the opposite, this fic has been spawning ideas like crazy and I've been having trouble writing them in order. So yeah, more to come! Reviews and favorites are much appreciated, as always, and thanks to those of you who have made time to share your thoughts with me, it makes my day 3