Under the Elen

Title: Under the Elen – Part 3: Lovers (a sequel to In Earendil’s Light)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan, Legolas/Elrohir
Summary: The twins join Aragorn’s charge in Rohan.
Rating: NC-17.
Disclaimers: Characters belong to that wily old wizard himself, Tolkien the Wise, the granddad of all 20th century fantasy lit. I serve at the pleasure of his estate and aim not for profit.
Author’s Note: So many people enjoyed In Earendil’s Light – none more than I myself writing it – and that tale left so many threads unknotted that I decided to explore the aftermath in terms of the actual Lord of the Rings narrative. I have been looking up select incidents in the book, but I am no master at these facts and it should be noted that I have twisted them for my own purposes, stealing from both book and movie cannon. Thus, some parts are still considered a bit AU. Would probably be best to read In Earendil’s Light before this, as little will make sense to you. Here goes nothing!!
Feedback: Would be delightful.
Dedication: To the lovely and gracious Eresse, who here receives (though she didn’t really ask) and whose fics enthrall me. Go read hers first!!

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Part Three

Tuilë, Yen 3019, Third Age

The fairest day they’d seen since taking leave of Imladris so many long weeks ago sank into the horizon as a maid into her evening bath. Burnished golds, copper-toned vermillions, and clouds swollen pink as pig-bellies painted the sky beyond the dusky mountains, the Fords of Isen gradually dwarfing down to the cleaver-blunt peaks of the Westfold. Though the brisk wind still braised their cheeks ruddy, laced as it was with soot and ash, Legolas caught a lingering wisp of ederwood between blinding gusts and was heartened.

He thought, not for the first time that day, but perhaps for thet, ot, of Elrohir.

Not twenty yards from the Gap of Rohan, long grass had sprouted, distracting their weary steeds and slowing their advance some. /We must rest a night at the Hornburg/, Legolas thought to himself, but was reluctant to propose such to Aragorn. As the lone elf among them and with a taciturn dwarf to answer to, he felt the burden of his people’s repute for supernatural strength and prowess. He could not, of course, demonstrate the slightest fear, the barest hesitation, lest the men loose heart. If the pride of elven archers gave way to grief, sorrow, or despair, then how would they themselves fare against the Shadow?

How could he tell the indefatigable dwarf that the endless sea of rock and stone make him weep for Greenwood glades? How could he plague the dreams of the valiant, yet sheltered Rohan warriors with tales of Dol Guldur? How could he rally an awkward throng of Theoden’s adolescent sons, when the slaughter at the Battle of the Hornburg edified even him in its grime and gore? There was but one to whom he could confess himself, of the black recesses of sleep he would not dare descend into, of the bittering of his mercurial spirit in the face of such savagery, of the choking terror that kept vigil within.

One who lately slept beneath a doe-hide coverlet, imagining the war’s bucolic aftermath. Yet how could he return to Rivendell’s splendor, when his dreams were mired in orc’s blood?

An encroaching party of riders breached the Gap behind; at the horn’s groan, Legolas snapped to attention, his bow already strung. His eagle eye picked out its mark, a flame-haired ruffian to the left of the leader, who presently dismounted his horse and ambled towards Eomer. With subtle, yet ready adjustments, the tip of the master archer’s arrow traced his progress, conscious thought giving way to sheer, vital instinct. Until, that is, the man snorted.

Legolas knew him. Indeed, when Theoden ordered their arms down and Aragorn himself embraced the coarse man, he realized he knew them all, these Rangers of the Northern Realms, come to fight in Gondor and regain their lost kingdom. With a wry smile, the Silvan elf near-scoffed at the resulting displays of affection, as two bands of brute horsemen abandoned their steeds and embraced as long-lost lovers might. Legolas loomed above them, still and distant, unable to loose the scent of ederwood now grown fierce, as if he’d passed the day-long perched upon a hearty tree-bow.

The dwarf’s lowly grunt, surely a sign of impeding mischief, rumbled behind.

“These Rangers are trouble enough,” he grumbled pointedly. “But what’s this I spy that follows? More elves!!” Legolas didn’t flinch, though his glacial stare grew stealthy as it searched the company. “Though these at least had sense enough to blend among the others.”

Legolas fixed his mellowed gaze on two gray-cloaked riders to thar, ar, both with drawn hoods. At once, the woodland scent overpowered him, until his throat scratched strangely and his temples stung. These ailments, however, were little bother to him, once the hidden riders removed their hoods and revealed themselves to be a sight for sore, disbelieving eyes.

The full-throttle force of this revelation nearly knocked him from his horse.

Across a barren field, between titanic fords, in a place so bleak and cold only the most ragged of peoples called it home, Legolas looked across a pity-army of pyre-hearts and met the quicksilver eyes of his beloved.

Home, it seemed, had found him even here.

***********************************

As the merry hobbits skipped across table-tops, the yeomen belched, the ale flowed free, the smoke hung blue and sickly below the horse-headed columns, the effulgent hearth crackled with alacrity, and the grog-drenched soldiers howled out yet another slurred chorus, Elrohir surveyed the swooning room with a hawkish glare. Encamped by the fire with Aragorn, Eomer, and some Dunedain nobility, Elladan seemed unrepentantly in his element among the roughshod Rohan and their compatriots. On such a night, Elrohir himself felt no such compunction.

Pinned to his barstool by his husband’s rapacious stare from across the hall, Elrohir held fast to long-practiced elven reserve, though Legolas’ unforgiving eyes writ an eight-part elegy of longing anddesidesire across his searing skin. The archer feigned an eager audience, along with some others, before the blustering dwarf, but those piercing blue eyes had not relented their assault for hours. Elrohir knew, by the ankle-tucked feet beneath his seat and the widening span of his legs, that the only clothed table in the hall had not been so randomly chosen.

Legolas adjusted his hips and pressed forward. Though his face remained poised and somewhat pinched, his incandescent eyes glowed wild in the firelight. The barest hint of a flush tinged his cheeks, not from embarrassment, but from the exertion of restraint. When he surreptitiously dropped a hand into his lap, his lids drooped suggestively, the sleek muscles of his throat contracted, and he finished the movement off by a flick of his tongue. None but those searching for it would have noticed the errant hand settle back atop the dark blue cloth and calmly entwined with its mate, the fingers glistening as if slicked with hog fat.

When that rapturous gaze caught him anew, Elrohir shuddered within.

They had not spoke, not with words, not once since his arrival. The company’s pace for the remainder of the journey discouraged conversation, the course set by impatient Theoden moments after their silent reunion. Once at the Hornburg, Aragorn dragged Elladan and him immediately into private council; therein, the nascent king murmuring a veiled caution against even the most gentle displays of affection between two males in the thick of battle-hard Rohan. Few among the race of men admitted to such practices, most outwardly frowned upon them. Though the nature of elfkind was mysterious and beautiful to them, the men were fraught, frayed in the aftermath of their recent battle, anxious for the charge to yet come. This was not the time to test their morality.

Yet his husband was similarly wrought; thinned by hard-living and disheartened by fortune. Though none of human eyes could perceive the flickering of his soul-flame, Elrohir knew that a mere night of their togetherness could set him ablaze for the entire battle to come, in mind, in body, and in spirit. Elrohir was the archer’s balm, his succor and his sage. With such a revivified ally beside him, Mordor itself would crawl from the new-come King of Gondor, when it would not flee for its wounds. To add to the challenge of a stolen encounter, only Theoden kept private quarters at the Hornburg. There was no creep, stall, or dungeon to conceal them, not even the caves beyond were inhospitable to the Edoran exiles.

By the heady luminescence of Legolas’ eyes, Elrohir inwardly mused, propriety may not last-out the night.

With a swoop and a soft smile, the Lady Eowyn landed at his side.

“Why do you not join your brother at revels?” she queried of him. “Surely your twinship would easily best Lord Aragorn and Eomer at the Battle Game.”

“Forgive me, m’Lady, but you mistake me for a guard-captain,” he humbly replied. “I wear the mantle of fine-honed diplomacy. I care little for the shifting of forces southward, though I will gladly ride along. My interests lie in the intricacies of government and of rule.”

“Would you have your own kingdom, then?” she giggled, amused at his candor.

“I would prefer a forest,” Elrohir indulged her. “Some keen builders, a quiver of archers, and a river running through.”

“You are far from home,” she acknowledged, with no little sympathy. “Far from kindred and your familiar kind. Yet your brother keeps with the bravehearts, Legolas will not quit the dwarf, and you sit here alone.” When Elrohir could find no answer for her, she pressed on. “Legolas will hail you, if you are lonely. In truth, his stare has haunted your countenance since the herald of Evensong.”

Elrohir could not stay the smile that lit him, though he kept his tongue well enough.

“I feared there might be quarrel between you,” she admitted, her curiosity piqued. “His gaze is relentless!!”

“It is a game,” Elrohir deflected, with a glance upwards at Legolas’ impassioned eyes. “A ruse, of sorts. We are long acquainted.” Eowyn, doubly intrigued, closely observed them.

“If I were so regarded by a friend,” she whispered. “I would beg his favor.”

“I hold his favor well,” Elrohir responded playfully, turning back to meet her moon-face.

“He looks fit to flay you,” she admonished.

“Nay,” Elrohir dismissed, then sighed. He examined her round, delicate features, and knew her then for a tenderheart. “We are bonded, m’Lady.”

“Blood brothers, then?” she questioned, knowing there was some fault in her reasoning.

“We are sworn, but not as warriors or brothers,” he confessed, somewhat bashful at the telling of it. “We are… mates.” At her gasp, he further elaborated. “He is my husband.”

After a brief time of astonishment, Eowyn daintily closed her gaping mouth and gave the matter her full consideration. Never once, to Elrohir’s relief, did she seem either alarmed or revolted. Instead, she clasped his hands between her own and beamed resplendently at him, such that Elrohir thought all the mate-less men in the hall must be blind to let her be.

“There is a chamber by the east turret,” she began. “It belonged to Theodred. The King will not allow any to lie there, though were are cramped into the caves. But Theoden is tonight alive with mirth and will sleep soon and soundly. None but I will know if you trestrest there.”

“I am heartened by your gesture, m’Lady,” Elrohir answered, with visible regret. “But I cannot sully a fallen prince’s chambers with-”

“Nonsense,” she dismissed, with the steel of a swordmaiden. “Theodred and I have many a time sullied, as you say, the very same chamber in secret. None will discover you. And I daresay my fallen prince would be… charmed… by the idea of vowed lovers warming his over-frosted bed.”

He regarded her then, this flint-eyed doe of a girl, with a look some might mistake for a wrong-headed favor. He gathered her hands and kissed them soundly, before she pulled him towards the eastern hall.

With a wink over his shoulder, Legolas was on his feet.

*******************8

No sooner had Elrohir thanked Eowyn with a stately bow and crept into the dormant chamber, than he found himself slammed against the rear of the door by an armful of ardent, lust-quaking archer. His lips were parted and plundered with equal fervor, skilled tongue questing forth, sensuous, thrilling. Sure fingers creased over the front of his violet tunic, tracing every ridge of his ribs, the taut meat of his pectorals, then thumbed his peaked nipples through the rough fabric.

“Too long,” Legolas mewled, as he rubbed their flushed faces together. “Too long away…”

His breaths were ragged, nearly fitful, as his bowman’s hands ripped through the binds of the elf-knight’s tunic and he tugged the garment over his head, finishing the gesture with another desperate kiss. He soon just as forcefully divested himself of his own raiment, until they were both bare and bold, not a scrap of cloth between their wrought, sweaty bodies.

Legolas’ skin, gleaming as veil of fine tulle in the stark moonlight, seared to the touch; the lithe length of flesh scorched as it stroked against him. When his own was again claimed by that molten mouth and their hips mercilessly ground, Elrohir had his fill of such mindless mastery. He deftly flipped them around until Legolas was held aloft against the door, panting and wicked-eyed. The kiss Elrohir tamed him with was just as lush and heady, but soulful also. Though he could not for long keep himself from luxuriating in the feel of his husband’s silken skin, he chose to suckle the lissome slope of his neck.

Legolas groaned, keened, too far gone for these more delicate sensualities. He had born witness to butchery, to seething hate, to an altogether different form of ravagement. He wanted to grind and bite and writhe and score his nails across Elrohir’s ivory back till he drew blood. He wanted to be brutally taken by the one who broached no brutality in bed-play, who never so much as plucked a hair from his golden head in all their years of lovemaking. When Elrohir finally took him in hand and teased the swollen length of him, he cried out as if singed by a hot iron.

“*Saes*, Elrohir,” he begged his lover. “Take me!”

“Nay, meleth-nin,” Elrohir chided gently, as Legolas began to shake.

The archer viciously shook his head, couldn’t quite catch his breath, but when Elrohir smoothed tender lips over his soft mouth and laved a saucy tongue, like a mountain cat, over his own, he tempered some. Soon, Elrohir’s scarlet touch was everywhere around him; up his thighs and down his back, across the plain of his stomach and over the nape of his neck, pillow soft support at the base of his spine and worried circles of luring pleasure over his still-heaving chest. Legolas felt blanketed in a downy cloth of his husband’s tender weaving, wrapped tight in his embrace yet his desire loosed by his skillful touch.

When at last Elrohir kneeled before him and lapped the length of his engorgement, Legolas struggled to blink the moisture away from his teeming eyes, all while wrapped in ecstasy’s thrall. Only then did Elrohir allow his fervor to alight, relishing this too-brief intimacy, sucking like a wanton and savoring, when the moment came, his beloved’s tart essence. Fever-wrecked, Legolas collapsed into his arms, jewel eyes streaming yet needful as ever for his husband’s restoring kiss. They rested there awhile, a mess of limbs and sheathes of feathery hair, until the chill of night descended.

Elrohir led a rather bewildered Legolas over to the bed, the very fact of sheets and pillows and covers to burrow in such a trre tre to them. Twined together like two leaves close on the ivy vine, Elrohir stroked his dear one’s back as Legolas recounted the many horrors he’d seen since their last togetherness, of the bravery, of the cruelty, and of the unbearable sadness.

It was thus that Legolas spent himself of heartache, and it was a gentled elf he lay with.

*****************************************

Amidst the cloud-thick climes of the mineral baths, three elven shadows moved as if weightless, their indigo-hued robes billowing as wraiths. For a brief moment, their ombrous forms evaporated from the foggy cavern, only to reappear awhile later, hair unbound and slender bodies bare. Each readied himself for the simmering waters by standing in the eye of the steam gusts. Once their wintered skin was suitably flush, they waded into the brimming basin, hoping the swells would relieve the wait-weary tension in their bones and their intimacies would replenish their cleaving hearts.

Each had their torch to bear, each their heart to buoy with hollow reassurances, each was a beacon to another, far adrift. Erestor knew the overspill of evil at Dol Guldur would soon threaten Haldir at Lorien. Elrond was triply burdened; he fretted over Arwen’s paling, over his twins’ safe return, and over the impending birth of his grandchild, also in the tarnishing Golden Wood. Despite his daily assurances that Elladan was, indeed, well and hale, Glorfindel had been plagued by memory-wrought nightmares of strife from his former life: of Gondolin’s sacking and crumbling, of his renown battle with the Balrog, of his death. As much as the solider of old supported Elladan’s action, the husband was wrecked with fear that his mate would not return whole, if he indeed returned.

As the three wise elders swam over to the whirling pool and seated themselves on the ledge generously beneath the surface, each inwardly vowed to dismiss his sorrows for the duration of their unctuous soak.

“I sung a litany to Iluvatar, ere I departed,” Erestor informed them. “Let us speak only of peace’s reckoning.”

“Aye, of a new age,” Glorfindel seconded. “How can we fight for a future that has not yet been imagined?”

“Well reasoned,” Elrond acknowledged, though this did little to lighten his mood. “And what of your future, Erestor? What canvass of dreams would you weave before us?”

With a tremulous sigh, Erestor considered this.

“Though these be mere musings,” he began. “I would not the tides of probable fate be wholly forgotten. If peace comes to Arda as herald to a Fourth Age, Galadriel will likely retreat from the Golden Wood and sail across the sea. Haldir would follow her thence and I, with him. The Age of Men is upon us and I long to be in the berth of my makers
“I
“I am similarly wistful for a softer time,” Elrond agreed, the creases of time evident on his preternaturally handsome face. “Though my daughter’s choice keeps me mindful of departing too soon for the West, I have perhaps seen too many sorrows to further bear her fading. The soothing bow of Celebrian’s arms nightly calls me home, this promise more luring, far more troubling than the sea’s patient call. I have come to fear that… that my heart may not survive Arwen’s passing.”

“Yet the twins will certainly linger some,” Erestor ventured. “Cross over at the latest hour, with Legolas and… and yourself, Glorfindel?”

“Indeed,” he assented. “I will remain with Elladan as long as needed, which may yet be many years. Valinor’s tranquil shores will be challenge enough for two warriors as we, best delay such arduous contentment until the last.” Both darkling elves chuckled fondly at his admission, conjuring all-too-easily visions of the life to come. “But think you, Elrond, that Thranduil will come along, once the Greenwood is great again?”

“I might ask the same of you, dear ambassador,” Elrond threw back. “You are far more keen to his scattershot ways than I, whom he loathes.”

Further mirth stayed the guard-captain’s tongue some, until he admitted: “I believe that he may very well remain, if only to distort and pervert our legends.”

“Think you he would outlast Legolas’ tarrying?” Erestor queried.

“If only for spite.” Elrond allowed himself a chaste smile, though he and Glorfindel were long agreed as to the mad king’s reasons for alienating his youngest son. “Though I wonder if, in his final hour, he might not see the self-made manner of his soul’s undoing and give sway to a ravaging regret. Perhaps not over Legolas’ loss, but at his ignorance of his unknown grandchild.”

“You judge, then, that he will never know the child,” Glorfindel asked, though he had answered the question for himself long ago.

“I regret, for the child, that he or she will know him only through scorn and prideful tales,” Elrond admonished. “Though I myself will tell them of Thranduil’s valor, if other will but blacken his name.” Just then, a flicker of joy lit the Imladrian Lord’s solemn features. “I will gather my littlest one close and share the secrets of the ages.”

“The child will be fair as Arien above,” Erestor noted, heartened by his friend’s eagerness. “If blessed with half his golden father’s countenance and a scrap of his grace.”

“Aye, the babe will be favored,” Glorfindel murmured, a touch of melancholy in his tone.

“Come now, Balrog-slayer,” Erestor chided. “You are never one to brood.”

“Might your bond-brother’s fecundity have roused a similar wanting in your restless spirit, Glorfindel?” Elrond teased him.

“Perhaps,” came the vague reply. When each other peaked a disbelieving eyebrow, he forced an answer to ready itself. “In faith, I have not, unlike Elrohir, long-desired to parent a child. Though, now that Legolas and Elrohir await such a blessing, I admit to some… some introspection, on the matter. I fear, however, neither Elladan nor I would be able to… to taint our union, even to such a bountiful end.”

“Elladan could not bear the waiting on such an action,” Erestor considered. “But he has the strength of a thousand truehearts. He could certainly perform it, if convinced of your need. Of the blessings you would reap and the love you would bear his child.”

At this proposition, Glorfindel’s eyes grew wistful, beading with unshed tears. Elrond, marking his unspoken desire that events thusly unfold, further sweetened the pot.

“Indeed, on this, I must caution you,” Elrond advised him. “You might bequeath a child of your seed a legacy of black dreams and a sense of never-ending dread. A father’s spirit nourishes its child from the moment of its begetting. There’s no telling what unearthly phantoms a resurrected soul might pass on. Elladan would be the wiser choice of sire, and, once his brother’s child seduces him, a willing participant in conception.”

“This from the proud grandsire of Thranduil’s ilk,” Glorfindel quipped, to mask his longing. Other than Elladan’s safe return from the war, the begetting of a child was quick becoming his fondest wish for their future togetherness. “Better a child of *your* line, you say, Elrond?”

“A child of good health, from whichever line, is my hope for all my many sons,” Elrond concluded, unprovoked by his taunting.

“Add in their future prosperity and the salvation of Arda,” Glorfindel improved. “And we are in full agreement, *Adar*.”

With this stout proclamation, the three retreated to their inner thoughts and further assuaged their anxious spirits.

****************************

Elrohir, listless and sated, poured over his husband as if nctunctuous bowl of cream and seeped himself into his clefts and hollows, his face clotted in the crook of his neck. When Legolas had been emptied of his ire and his sadness had evaporated through the constancy of Elrohir’s regard, sleep had proved a feeble master. They had loved the night through, hotly and tenderly, in the near-dark of Theodred’s forgotten chamber.

This last coupling had limber Elrohir astride his fugue-headed husband; the latter had been caught in the thrall of a peerless rapture, as the darkling elf rose and eased himself onto him, undulating as if in the sweep of a long sigh. Engrossed by the meticulous deepening of his impalement, Elrohir had withdrawn himself with the same languorous grace as he had descended, the grip of pleasure so acute that he hadn’t even needed to moan. Eyes shut in besotted concentration, tongue poised on his teeth as if awaiting a caress, with each slow penetration, he had purred resplendently.

Legohad had born this sensual assault as a long, luring soak in a steaming mineral bath, his half-lidded eyes entranced by Elrohir’s slow dance above him. As he had been drawn ever-deeper into his beloved’s glutinous heat, the viscous warmth had raised through him like a lava flow, until every limb, every muscle, every bone had simmered with bliss. When at last, with an impassioned groan, he had erupted, Legolas had been surprised to find himself doused with amplerts rts of Elrohir’s singeing setheitheir spending, as their souls, as one.

Longly had they lain together in Theodred’s dank, lantern-less chamber, only the cinder-glow embers of the recent, still raging battle-fires beyond the slit-windows as illumination. Their breaths, heavy with moisture from the damp morn and the looming caves, were conversation enough between such longtime lovers; though Legolas, noting that Elrohir did not sleep, eventually thought better of their silent contentment.

“Our son is restless.”

Elrohir stilled, as if replaying the words to suss out their intended meaning, then his head sprung up. From the cool argent of his eyes, Legolas felt the prick of his curiosity and how he fought to withhold its sting.

“Our *son*?” he questioned, as if inquiring after a misplaced cup of tea. For the first time in many months, Legolas evidenced in their private quarters the barest hint of his renown mischievous nature.

“Neyanna presently lies beneath the lone willow in Lorien,” he elaborated, with studied patience. “He senses our presence there. The heady vapors of our loving have for years nourished the comely tree and, now, it coddles our young one. The rustling leaves whisper our legend to him, as they glide over his sleeping mother’s womb.”

“How… how may you…?” Elrohir asked, his throat rasped by this affecting image.

“He sings to me, through the ether,” Legolas explained, in a hush. “A voice of such aching sweetness that I might weep the day-long were its timbre not so heartening. It was thus that I knew him of my seed, by this sunrise lark’s song. In early days, I knew not what spirit beckoned me so, until Neyanna confessed herself and I discovered him. As his form grows fuller, the song grows fainter. Now, only in the wake of our passion can I make out the lonely melody.”

“He… he is lonely?” Elrohir queried, with no little apprehension. His silver eyes glistened with sympathy for their child, so new yet faced with such consequence.

“He knows not where we have gone,” Legolas further elucidated. “Where *I* have gone. He hearkens to his mother, but it is the heat of our elven spirits that warm him in his waiting. He knows me as his sire, longs for me to… to sing to him.” Legolas takes a breath, overcome by the speaking of such a secret, and changes tact. “He longs for you as well, meleth.”

“He knows me?” Elrohir gasped, a faint pride blushing his cheeks.

“Aye,” Legolas continued. “He names you Ada. He brooks little confusion between us, merely strikes a different chord when singing of one or the other. Mine… mine is the more solemn tone, yet pure as the flow of a mountain spring. Yours is low and blithe, like the last breath of summer through the forest glades. He feels your absence keenly. He struggles, at times, to meet your heart in the otherness… and has therefore grown restless. He would be born!!”

“I would that he be born, to hear of him,” Elrohir sighed, awed by this revelation. “Yet I would he tarry some, so I might be there to cradle him. Will you tell him of this?”

“I oft have,” Legolas assured him, finally letting a smile bless his gentle features. “But he is, alas, his father’s child.”

Despite Legolas’ teasing tone, Elrohir fell quiet awhile. As the archer’s worn fingers raked through his hair, he digested this unexpected news.

“It was for this you turned away from my loving,” he ventured, with slight hesitation. As Legolas was finally cheered some, he was loathe to somber him. “You would not have him know of your shame, or our togetherness, before he had first heard my own heart’s song and loved me for his own.”

“I sometimes reflect on who between us is truly the finer archer,” Legolas mused good-naturedly. “I admit no design to my purpose. When first our little one beckoned me from the beyond I… I spoke naught of your regard, for I was not sure if, with my revelation of infidelity, I would still be so cherished. When you forgave me so readily, so unabashedly… I could not conscience such acceptance. I hid, from your love, from his knowing of my transgression. To bear the burden of my quest, I required… a bleakness of spirit. Sobriety.”

Elrohir sighed his displeasure, but tightened his embrace. “In belief you are ever an elf of Mirkwood, maltaren-nin, though you broke with its mad king.”

“Prince of Mirkwood, Silvan elf, or forlorn exile,” Legolas dismissed. “There are but few titles I hold dear. Husband. Father. Beloved.”

By this time, the far wall was awash, roseate in the aurora. The cuffed clomps of the squires echoed from the courtyard below; the horses would soon be readied and their packs weighted with supplies. Already the rattle of chain-mail vests sounded through the corridors, the resounding clank of armor portage and ofrd-hrd-hilts on polished shields. The day was waking, and with it came the call of war. Soon the Great Horn would bellow through the Deeping Walls, they would ride out, with their sword-brothers, to reign or to ruin.

Legolas slid down to face his hush lover, stealing another draught from his soft, sensuous mouth.

“The dawn will not wait,” he murmured, with resignation. “Yet I would love you again, before morn.”

“I would be loved,” Elrohir responded, his playfulness returned. “Before morn and after yon.”

“You are ever-loved, my beauteous Star-Rider,” Legolas vowed.

*******************************

Citadel of Minas Tirith, Yen 3019, Third Age

At the order of his dismissal, Elladan teetered on the cusp of collapse, but could not yet give credence to his exhaustion. Instead, he abandoned his sword in the midst of the Golden Hall and lurched towards the door. As he shuffled, each step more taxing than the last, through the exit and down a torch-lit passage, he spied Legolas tuck in to Elrohir’s side and the two take leave for their loving. He knew that they would love before sleeping, despite the immovable weight of their fatigue, as none who’d faced the bloody waste of the Pelennor could do other to shake that hellish image.

With his desperation for the solace of the sacred hall came motion, with continued motion came an easing of his aching legs. Mired in oily orc blood and still striped with gore, Elladan fought to dismiss the battle-flashes that plagued him. A catapulted stone crushing a crescent of men asughtughtlessly as their houses behind. Horsemen splayed and pinned to the ground by a stake, their steeds gutted for sport. Babes gone limp in their mothers’ arms, mothers childless in a blind instant; children scurrying from firing hordes into gulfs of flame, preferring to be burned than bludgeoned. A soldier chose to chance his life, but these innocents made no suact act with fate and with skill, though their deaths would be honored as kings were.

If his mother’s torture had taught him the guiltless tenor of evil, the ravagement of these humble city dwellers taught him of its futility: Sauron sought power for power’s sake alone. He would not even have a people to enslave, just a solitary wasteland of rubble and fuming pyres. What was Arda without its splendor? Why sunder the very land whose bounty you seek? The answer, he feared, would forever elude such as he, so he strove to quit this circular reasoning and focus on his waning steps.

No sooner did he stagger into the center of the sacred hall, than Elladan found he stood before an enormous statue of his Adar. Rather, his beleaguered mind reminded him, a magnificent stone rendering of Elros, his father’s twin and first King of Men. Yet the mirror-sharp likeness to Elrond at once heartened his dispirited son, so that he tottered the few last steps to the base of the statue and fell to his knees before it.

“Ada,” he whispered, his words still echoing thr the the quiescent hall, if not through the ether. “We are whole. Elrohir and Legolas take sanctuary in the dead Steward’s chamber and I will soon follow them into the night. Naught is ended, but we have won back the Pelennor. Your sons are unharmed… and I your child long for your succor, Ada.”

Unbidden, Elladan began to weep.

As the tears struck his grimed cheeks, he could again smell the steaming guts of the dragon-beast he’d disemboweled, taste the foul spray of its sick-green, acrid blood. Never had he been assaulted by such a stench in his misery, his revulsion served to temper him. Elladan knew he had not seen the last of such ungodly creatures, nor of the skeletal Nazgul that rode them. His husband, however, had ample cause to be proud of him, as he had stared into that black hole of a hood and beheaded his winged beast, leaving suresurest thrust of his fat-bellied sword for its rider’s invisible eyes. He had seen a yellow-braided Rohirrim stab the skull of the Witch-King of Angmar just moments before, and had thought little, when faced by such seething hate, of stealing the move to smite this one.

After absently swiping his smeared face with his sleeve, Elladan inhaled a chest-ballooning breath and measured out his exhalation. He bowed his head forward, letting his limbs grow lax, then grow light, as he released his cares into the thickening ether. He drifted into the otherworld as a reed over river swells; effortlessly, after such precipitous distress, flowing into the spirit he sought out. In truth, his recent skulk through the Paths of the Dead had solidified his soul-link to Glorfindel, who, though centered in the conscious world, lost some of his essence at Mandos, as all who haunt the halls do. None other, however, had returned to mark this.

As Glorfindel’s warmth enveloped him, Elladan sank to the ground and curled himself into the rapt sensation, so very needful of his husband’s care.

/ I feel the hush of night that surrounds you,/ the elf-warrior told his beloved. /The giddy trees waiting on springtime in the vale, their burgeoning bows and their sap-drunk trunks. You stroll in… the orchard. An owl hovers near. The breeze is chill, but fair-scented, where I am rank./

/You are hale,/ Glorfindel insisted. /Though you might have bathed./

/If I had bathed,/ Elladan countered, heartened by his teasing tone. /Your desire would be piqued. I’d not find any rest before morn. You’d woo me with your singeing flame and your hot words, until all thoughts of battle, strategy, and honor had been raised from my overheated mind in your wake./

/Would such relief truly be so terrible on such a night?/ Glorfindel wondered, sensing both his exhaustion and its dreadful cause. /How have weatweathered the war, mh-nih-nin?/

/I have weathered it,/ Elladan half-answered, reluctant to remind himself of the heinous battlefield. /The Shadow has retreated to Mordor, though not for long. We will soon ride for the Black Gates, though Elessar would take council in the morn./

/The King of Gondor is returned, then,/ Glorfindel remarked.

Elladan could sense his contentment, but also his concern. As much for its release as his own encouragement, he let the day’s bleak images come to him, allowing his beloved the most poignant account possible of all the savagery he had seen, all the darkness he had known. Only when Glorfindel’s memories of Gondolin reared themselves, did he ebb the black flow.

Gondolin, Elladan acutely perceived, for all its devastation did not compare to this. Even bedeviled elves could not be so cruel.

Silence reigned for a long while, both lovers hearkening to the sanctuary of their united souls. Soon, however, even the fact of Glorfindel’s afterlife could not maintain the strength of their bond, the ethereal twine of their link began to fray. Sending a last surge of cleansing heat through the ether, Glorfindel embraced his beloved’s fraught spirit, his ease in parting secured by the small relief he knew he had provided him. Elladan, in turn, let the fire of his soul swell with love, as both mates murmured reassurances to the other and again pledged theevotevotion.

When his fatigue snapped the final strings of their bond and Glorfindel breathed his lalushlush sigh against his cheek, Elladan spread himself across the floor of the sacred house, then peered up, with leaden eyes, into the serene face of his Ada’s twin.

Knowing himself safe beneath his watchful gaze, he slept.


End of Part Three