Suffering

Suffering

Chapter Four
Thanks for all the reviews.
Thanks to Nemis for betaing this and Kalurien for helping me with the details of pregnancy.

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Elrond’s brow furrowed with worry as he stood on the threshold of the room, looking at Celebrían's still form. There was no mistaking the pallor of her face, or the increasing frailty of her already slender limbs. The child within her was sapping her strength and she was wracked with chills, the coverlet pulled up to her chin.

He entered the room slowly, setting the tray on a low table and lowering himself onto the bed beside her.

"You must eat something."

Celebrían propped herself up on her elbows.

‘Nay, I cannot," she whispered. "I beg you, do not force me. I cannot."

"You must think me no better than an orc." Elrond turned his head away, tears of shame springing to his eyes. "I accept that I have done you grievous wrong, but please believe that I would never force you to eat, and do reconsider. Trust my instincts as a healer if not as a husband. Your strength is waning by the day, harming both yourself and the child which grows within you."

He stretched out a hand to rest on her stomach, feeling the slight swelling. She found that she did not have the will to recoil from his warm palm.

"If you say so, Master Healer."

Elrond slipped an arm behind her shoulders, cradling her against himself. At this, she pulled away, but his grip was firm.

*It scarcely matters*

He gently placed the bowl on her lap and she began to eat the comforting broth, feeling it warm every inch of her body. But then she stopped, confounded by a flavour which she could not place.

"What is in this?" she asked suspiciously.

"There are medicinal herbs, to ease your malaise and aid your return to strength."

She nodded, and finished the bowl before collapsing back onto the pillows, trembling and exhausted. Her husband was glad to see some colour returned to her wan cheeks, and he returned his hand to its former position on her stomach. Any other time, she would have removed it with a sneer, but now the warm security of his body next to hers was all she wanted, and she fell into a light doze.

Elrond lifted one strand of her silver hair to his lips.

"O Elbereth," he prayed. "I am a knave. If it had not been for my inability to control the lusts of my body, she would not be ill. If it had not been for my inability to control the lusts of my heart, she would be safe and miles away from here. Do not punish her for my sins, Lady of the Stars, for she is innocent of all."

In truth, he was terrified. He thought he saw the signs of fading in her lacklustre demeanour, the way that colour had leached from her cheeks, and the sparkle from her eyes.

"I cannot live without her, Lady Starkindler. Do not let sorrow claim her."

~*~

"You are not well, mellon-iaur."

Glorfindel had poked his head round the door after the most peremptory of knocks to find his friend sitting at the writing desk, his hair unbraided and his face worn and tense.

"I fare well enough." Elrond did not raise his head from the page.

"Yet you do not sleep, although ‘tis so late that all others are at rest, and you walk among us as one who had already passed to Mandos."

"Do not speak of such things," the elf-lord barked. "You of all I would not have expected to make such jests."

"Nay, I do not laugh at the Doomsman. I was merely trying to discover what burden you labour under." The fair, merry face became serious.

"’Tis no burden that I bear."

"Then ‘tis for her sake that you worry so." Glorfindel gestured to the slumbering figure, modestly shrouded in thick white sheets.

"Aye."

"Will not you speak of it?"

"She does not bear the child well, and I fear… I fear…" Words failed him.

"She is strong despite appearances," the golden-haired elf-lord paused. "But I did not mean that."

"Nay, I cannot tell you what is in my heart, for that is too sorrowful to be shared."

"Then you wish for peace?"

"I do."

Once Glorfindel had departed, Elrond dipped his quill in the inkpot and resumed his attempts to write the letter.

"My darling Celebrían,

You will never see this, yet nevertheless I write it as you lie in bed. If I could heal your wounds with my own life, I would. If I could buy your happiness with mine, I would. I wish it had never come to this, for it pains me to see you suffering so in my house. Yoght ght ask why, when all I have done has caused you to suffer. Celeb loth nîn, I have loved you since the day I first saw you. I love you still, so much that it rends me apart.
When I see you, I am no longer the Lord of Imladris; I am simply a poor wretch who longs for you. So it has been from the beginning. It was for this reason, not for all the bonds of alliance, I took you to wife. I had hoped, with the foolishness of the ensnared heart, that you would be mine, in body and soul as well as in law. Now I know it can never be so, yet my adoration fails not.
I beg your forgiveness for espousing you.

Elrond."

He sighed and laid down his pen. The words were paltry when compared to the feelings seething within him, but they had to suffice. He folded the letter, sealing it with the hot wax, stamped with the arms of his ancestors, of whom he felt so unworthy. Reaching down, he placed it in a drawer of which only he knew, and locked it securely.

~*~

"Let me be!" Celebrían winced at the volume of her own voice. "Please let me be. I am well again."

It was true that she had improved a little as winter had faded into spring, but Elrond still hovered anxiously by her side, seeing the lines of weariness etched round her eyes more than their disappearance.

"My lady, you suffer still for I see it. Please do not spurn the help of those who care."

"Care? Care? All you care for is an heir for Imladris, another brat of the House of Finwë," she laughed spitefully. "And all I suffer is your company."

"Very well." The Peredhel executed a curt bow and began to make his way back to thuse.use.

Celebrían placed her hands on her stomach to soothe herself. She was so certain that his concern was only that of a healer for a patient, of a great lord for his dynasty, and that wounded her deeply. She raised her voice in song, a sweet melodych sch she remembered from her childhood. Without warning, there was a flicker of motion deep inside her, not the faint fluttering she had become accustomed to but a determined kick.

"Elrond!" she hollered. With pounding footsteps, he returned.

"What is it, my wife?"

"I think that the child just moved."

“Have you not felt this before?”

“Never this strongly.”

He laid one slim hand over her own, and felt a second kick, surer than the first.

Grinning, without thinking, he brushed a kiss to her forehead.

"You said you would not foist yourself upon me." She shoved him away, trembling with outrage.

"I was not … I did not … This was not…" he stumbled. "Aye, ‘tis best that I do not speak at all, for my words will only damage me more in your eyes."

They sat side by side, not touching, each wrapped up in their own reflections, for a long time. Celebrían picked up her discarded embroidery and began to ply her needle. The delicate blue flowers became rather lopsided as she glanced at her unmoving husband out of the corners of her eyes.

*Will the babe look like him, I wonder? And what will it think growing up with such parents as this? For in truth although I love the child, I also fear for it, to be born to such a cold marriage… I wish I could be what Elrond needs; I wish that he might see in me more than a body to bear his lusts when there is no other, and to carry his heirs …But what can I give him? I cannot even do what he has every right to expect. This pregnancy is hard on me. O El-nîn, would that the world were a kinder place and so much time and pain did not lie between us…*

She wiped a tear from her face surreptitiously, and returned to the needlework she loathed so much, finding in the endless tussle with unforgiving silks a sort of release from the turmoil of her emotions. Elrond carefully draped a shawl round her shoulders against the chilly winds of early spring, and returned to his contemplation of the spectacular sunset, the light of which gilded the treetops but did not quite reach his eyes.

~*~

In the valley, flowers swayed in the gentlest of breezes, and the sun glanced off the waterfalls in a dazzling array of colours, but the Master of Imladris noticed none of this. He had been barred from the birthing room, and sat in the antechamber, methodically un-picking the intricate embroidery on his cuff.

Erestor sat in the chair opposite, conducting a long and largely unheard lecture on the state of the new wing and the prospects for the harvest, until Glorfindel clamped a hand over his mouth and steered him to the door.

"Take this." He stood over his nervous friend, holding out a sheaf of paper and a pencil. "Come, do something else with your hands. Or do you want to appear before your wife and child clad in naught but your hair?"

"She at least would certainly not appreciate that," Elrond sighed, and took the proffered objects. The pencil began to skitter over the page, restless lines resolving themselves into a portrait of Celebrían, not as she had ever been, but lying in bed, smiling up slyly and lustily at some unseen figure. It was an image he had seen many times in his dreams, taunting him and consoling him at the same time.

"Curse him, curse him to an eternity in Mandos with only orcs and Fëanor for company." The hoarse scream from the next room made the Noldo jump and the lead broke, leaving a long black streak across the page. With a muttered oath, Elrond threw the offending implement across the room, and crumpled the page into a tiny ball.

"Why can I not be there? They do not do enough to alleviate her pain." But he answered his own question. "Oh, aye, I know I would not be welcome."

"Little one." He looked up from his desolate survey of the lines between the stone flags to see that Glorfindel had seated himself in the adjoining chair. "I must tell you something."

"What can be so important as to interrupt me?"

"Last year, Celebrían came to me and asked me if you had been Gil-galad’s lover."

"The High King? My foster-father?" Elrond looked as if he had just been struck on the back of his head with a large chunk of granite. "But … but…"

"Aye, that is what I said," Glorfindel smirked. "But then she inquired as to whether you have any lovers now."

The elf’s shoulders slumped further.

"I see what it is. She hopes to be free from the constraints of this sham of a marriage, if I already consider myself at liberty to bestow my affections where I will."

"Perhaps…"

"There is no perhaps," his voice was a deadly whisper. "And indeed who would it harm if I did? Certainly not her."

"So you…"

"How many times must I tell you, mellon-nîn," the endearment had become a curse. "However much I may regret this match, I shall not dishonour her."

He would not say that he had no wish to do so, and thus Glorfindel’s message of hope was left unsaid.

Hours passed, crawling by like the lives of the surrounding mountains. Healers darted to and fro, bearing basins of steaming water and mysterious flasks, their tunics stained and their faces more and more bleak. Elrond huddled into the deep chair, shredding sheet after sheet of paper until the ground around him was carpeted with curling strips. Suddenly, there was a great commotion, and a new voice made itself heard, wailing in protest at its entry into the world.

The Master of Rivendell jumped up and threw the door open. He caught a glimpse of blood-soaked sheets and tangled silver hair before he was peremptorily ejected from the room.

"Not yet, my lord," the healer muttered in apology. "You may see your wife and the babe soon."

Elrond stood there, his hands curling and uncurling by his sides, his eyes tightly closed, but no one came to fetch him. He sank limply to the floor, wrapping his arms round his knees to quell their trembling.

There was another shriek of pain which made him jerk his head up so abruptly that he banged it against the wall, and then all fell into silence except a faint whimpering. It was too much for him, and he sprang to his feet.

This time, when the healer made to intercept him, he was no match for his lord’s fear-laden strength.

Elrond stopped dead at the sight which met his eyes. Celebrían lay on the bed, weary but palpably alive. What had frozen his blood was the two healers gathered around a tiny body, working with all their might to instil life in the babe, who was a terrifying shade of blue.

“My lord,” a healer stammered. “His heart does not beat. Nothing seemed amiss in his birth, but we cannot start his heart and he will not breathe. This nis nothing … nothing we can do…”

In a flash, Elrond was bent over his child, skilful fingers stimulating the unbeating heart. Tears poured freely down his cheeks as he chanted, "Not this, Elbereth; do not allow this, Manwë; do not permit this Eru Ilúvatar."

When he felt certain that he had failed, and that he must confront his wife with the news, he found a steady pulse beneath his touch, and new eyes opened uncertainly, fixing upon him. His son howled, cutting through the air, and Elrond exhaled in relief.

"Yes, ion-nîn, you are here, and I am your Ada." He was giddy with joy, bemused and yet ecstatic at the term.

"And not just his," Celebrían spoke up at last. "Will you greet your eldest son?"

For the first time, Elrond realised that there was a bundle tucked into the crook of her arm, identical feathery black curls poking out of the top of the blankets. Tentatively, he picked the babe up, cradling him against himself as if he might break.

"Twins?"

"Aye. It is a tradition in your family, is it not?" she smiled, overwhelmed by the ordeal of birth and the fresh love which flooded her heart.

"Indeed." He sat on the edge of the bed, and the other child was brought to him. As he held them close together in his arms, marvelling at their features, they fell into a contented sleep. Elrond turned the tiny hands over in his, scrutinising them intently.

“What are you doing?”

“I am checking that they each have ten fingers.”

“And do they?” she laughed softly.

“Yes.” He paused. "What shall we call them?"

"Is not that your prerogative?" Some of the acerbic edge had been restored to her voice, and Elrond winced.

"I do not deny that it is tradition, but I shall not deny you a part in their naming, for do they not belong to both of us?"

"Nay, they belong to themselves."

"Naturally." He handed her one of his fragile burdens. "Would you mind greatly if we incorporated an el- element into their names?"

"No, I would not."

*For then I shall always have something to remind me of you*

"But we cannot merely call them Elmin and Eltâd."

"How does Elladan for this one sound?" She touched the top of the eldest’s head. "And Elrohir for that?" She pointed to the sickly babe who Elrond still cradled.

"They are indeed fine names."

"For fine children," she agreed. Together, for once not divided by their bitter quarrels, they slept, their newborn sons between them.
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ion-nîn - my son.
Ada - father, daddy.
Elmin – star-one.
Eltâd – star-two.