Suffering

Suffering


Chapter Five

Thanks for all your lovely reviews and for being patient while I wrote this chapter. Hopefully there will be less of a wait until the next one.

All the cookies in Arda to Nemis for betaing this.

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Elrond glared fixedly at the arched ceiling above him, tracing the fine grain of the woodwork in the dim light which preceded the dawn. It was not the first night sleep had eluded him, nor, he feared, would it be the last. In his own home, he would simply have retired to his study and whiled away the long dark hours in bureaucratic entanglements, but here in Lothlórien there could be no escape from the pristine expanse of sheets, and he was constantly tormented by Galadriel’s voice in his mind, by her welcoming words, which had stopped him dead even as he bowed to her.

//Evergreen is the fir, but even it not not grow in barren soils//

And then there had been silence, a silence so deep that it daunted him, and he could not even meet her uncanny eyes, much less Celeborn’s stern and unfriendly gaze.

He wished he could reach out and take comfort in the warm body slumbering beside him, reassure himself that it was not so, but that, after all, was the root of the problem. More than the disconcerting presence of Finarfin’s daughter, more even than her husband, he feared the ice in Celebrían’s eyes as she looked upon him, the bitter grimace which had twisted her mouth as she had caught him rising, water-slicked, from a forest pool, droplets cascading down the flat planes of his torso. He had read nothing more into her shadowed glance than abject disgust, and turned swiftly away. Thus it was that he did not see the brief flicker of longing in her eyes, the melting of the snows.

With a sigh, the peredhel abandoned all hope of sleep. Dressing quickly, he abjured his usual flowing robes for the simpler garb of the Sindarin elves. Binding his dark hair into a simple queue snaking down his back, he allowed no braids to frame and soften his face. He risked one last fleeting glance at Celebrían, who still slept, her blue eyes curtained by fair lashes, one hand cradling her head. Feeling the treacherous stirrings of his body at even this, he cursed under bre breath and stalked from the flet, out into the first rays of the dawning sun, and jumped to the forest floor, finding an odd sort of comfort in the jarring impact.

*At least there is something else to feel…*

~*~

He heard the small voices upraised in squeals of laughter first, and, before he could smile in greeting, there were hands grasping at the hem of his tunic, trying to clamber up his tall frame as if he were yet another of the mallorn trees.

“Daro, pen-nîn tithin A grin split his face. “Daro. Remember how old your poor ada is. Is it appropriate to treat me thus?”

The twins joined him in peels of laughter which echoed through the shady groves, startling a squirrel which was still trying to find its horde from the previous winter.

“Will you not play with us?” It was difficult to tell from which mouth this came, engaged as the twins were in dancing around him in circles, seeing who could grab his braids first. Not without a pang of regret, Elrond wondered if he had ever been that carefree. But then, he remembered a cold night in winter, frost lying thick on the ground, and Maglor’s face lifted to the stars with an expression of painful joy written deep on his sensitive features, as he pointed out the newest light of all to the peredhil twins huddled under his cloak.

*Aye, there were good times, although not so carefree…*

“There is a tree by the little pool. If you tie a rope to it, we could swing from it,” Elladan burbled suddenly.

Elrond should have noted that there was more hope than certainty in those innocent eyes. Often enough, he had berated himself on his failure to shelter his sons from his own cares, from the debris of his marriage, for the eddying storm clouds he saw in their faces. But the visions had come upon him again in the night, a prescience of he knew not what, only that there was blood and sorrow, harsh laughter drifting on the wind in the leaves, a ring of fire glowing in the darkness… And then the images flowed thicker and faster, no longer coming from beyond, but from within himself – how things might have been, could have been, if only … sweet laughter he would never hear, love which he would never possess taunting him, filling his heart. And so it was that he did not notice, exhausted beyond the brink of despair.

“Nay, little ones. Not now. I have counsel to take with your daeradar…”

And he moved swiftly away before he coul dra drawn back by the appeal in their eyes, the slump of their tiny shoulders.

~*~

Celebrían sat in the deep chair, swinging her legs absent-mindedly, enjoying the burble and chatter around her, the laughter of old friends. The days she had spent in the Golden Wood had been rare indeed in the last fifty years, bound as she was by the unspoken conventions which kept her by her husband’s side. They were, after all, supposed to be, newly wed, fresh to the pleasures he mhe matched mind and the warmth of the marital bed. There was none to whom she could confess that is was not so, that it had all been an airy dream, and she bowed her head before the terrible knowledge in the eyes of her beloved parents.

And now, to be among friends again, not merely an unwanted guest in the house of another… Imladris had never been cold, never unwelcoming, and she had found companionship in Glorfindel’s salacious humour, Erestor’s pedantic good nature. But it was always, irrevocably his – the work of his heart and hands, the joy of his mind, full of the folk who looked to him as their beneficent lord.

“So what is he like?” The voice of Angilliath pierced her reverie, and she started, looking up into the face of the maiden who was bending close, worrying the fringe of her shawl.

“Pardon?”

“What is your husband like in … you know…?”

Cold hands on her skin … burning lips against the crook of her neck … a lean, tense body braced above her on strong arms … clouded eyes staring into the far distance…

“I…”

But she was saved from answering by the precipitous arrival of her twin sons.

“Naneth…” Elrohir began hesitantly.

“Will you come and play with us?” Elladan elbowed his twin in the ribs for not being quick enough, bouncing up and down on his toes. “Please?”

“I must make my excuses, my friends.” She smiled indulgently upon the two small elflings who so resembled their father, despite the more delicate cast of their features. “It would seem that duty calls to me…”

~*~

After she had finished attaching the length of rope, begged from march-wardens, to the aged tree which grew out over the unruffled waters, Celebrían sank into the cool grass. It had involved a thorough soaking of her blue skirts as she tested its strength, and now she futilely attempted to brush the water from her dress as she watched the elflings throw themselves into the water with wild abandon. Yet she could not help but notice the constant glances they shot beyond her, the hopeful expressions fading into disappointment.

At last, when they were well and truly sodden, shivering slightly in the summer breeze which rustled though the treetops, they came to sit beside her, snuggling into the shelter of her arms, their dark hair dripping onto her.

“Elladan, Elrohir, what is it?” she inquired.

There was a long silence, and she began to doubt that they would answer her. Instilling as much cheer as she could into her voice, she asked, “Have you made a new friend you were waiting for?”

“Many, many new friends, naneth. Everyone here likes us very much,” Elladan answered guilelessly.

“So they should.”

“But…”

“But?”

“It is not them.” Elrohir’s words came out in a rush, and he turned his head into the damp fabric of her robe. “Ada would not play with us.”

“Would he not?” Celebrían tasted bitter anger in her mouth.

“He was busy speaking with daeradar, but we hoped…” Elladan shrugged, trying to reassure her, alarmed by the sudden stiffening of her body.

“Your father is very busy. Many burdens lie upon him which are unknown even to me.” *Especially to me*

“We would still have liked it…”

The absolute stillness seemed to stretch outwards, encompassing even the trees. The twins occupied themselves by trying to see how many elanor and niphredil blossoms they could poke into the strands of hair which tumbled over her shoulders.

“Ada is a very great hero, is he not, naneth?” It was Elrohir who spoke at last, with his customary precision which reminded her so much of his father.

Celebrían repressed the urge to yell out, to proclaim that he was nothing of the sort, nothing but a coward in his own marriage. She clung to the spar of hatred in the lonely ocean on which she had been cast adrift for so many years, remembering the hot eyes of a Noldorin maiden from Lindon fixed on her husband’s face. Yet she knew that it would be unjust…

“Aye. That he is.”

“’Tis not easy having a hero for a father.”

In that instant, she could have hunted Elrond down and struck him where he stood, hearing the melancholy in the voices of her children.

“Nay. ‘Tis hard indeed to have a legend in his own time for a husband…”

~*~

Celebrían slammed the door hard, kicking the wood for added effect. She knew not which impertinent fool had conceived the idea to give them chambers where they were tcloscloseted together - *some lovelorn wretch*, she thought savagely – but at this moment she cared not, glad of the solid thud of wood against wood.

She had left her sons busily destroying their grandfather’s renowned composure with their antics, and would not be halted in her wrath.

“What in the name of all the Valar did you think you were doing?” She made no attempt to keep the snarl of baffled disgust from her voice.

Elrond glanced up from the letters he was patiently inscribing.

“What was I doing?” he answered in a flat, incurious tone.

“To brush your sons off thus, herven. To treat them as nothing, herven. What, I repeat, were you doing?”

“I have never done anything of the sort.” He rose, twirling a quill agitatedly between his fingers. “If you refer, as I perceive you do, to this morning, I had a meeting with Lord Celeborn…”

“My father would not care if you were late by a yén.” She cut him off brusquely. “Dear Eru, Elrond, has your mortal blood suddenly overcome you with intimations of doom? Have you forgotten the choice you made? There is time and enough to spend with your sons.”

Elrond blanched at the reminder of his twin, and his own anger was kindled to full flame, sure as he was that her contempt for him was composed in part of ill-concealed disgust for the heritage of Men which he bore within him.

“There is no time, Lady. Have you forgotten Isildur’s folly? Ha esc escaped you that Sauron may return yet to dominion of all Middle-earth? That Morgoth’s discord goes so deep in the Music that it will never be undone?”

“So it is I who am remiss?” Celebrían spat, rankled by the suggestion of callousness. “You neglect your children, and that I cannot understand, for I see that you love them. I know why you forsake me, but this eludes me. Them you cherish; I have not your love as you have not mine.”

Elrond had been on the brink of raging that he loved her, that it was for love of her that he let her be, but her last words checked him.

“I neglect them not, my lady wife. Do you imagine that I am heartless? They are forever in my thoughts. It is for them, for Imladris…”

“For Imladris alone, you mean. ‘Twas for Imladris you married me, for Imladris you…”

“Do not speak such words when you understand not their full import.” Elrond raised his left hand, its burden flashing in the light which streamed through the windows. “I cannot … I will not … I must not think of Imladris alone. All Middle-earth dwells in my thoughts. This trust which was thrust upon me…”

Almost she could have kissed him then, seeing the baleful light on his finger, wishing to soothe the lines of anguish from his brow. Almost she could have taken him into her bed, to warm him with a fire which even a Ring of Power could not encompass. But pride restrained her, memory of love in vain strengthened the sinews of her outrage.

“Aye, thrust upon you, as all your power is,” she laughed.

“Aye, my lady,” he began, but she halted him with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“I say you nay, Elrond of Imladris, Elrond Peredhil, Elrond, child of the Silmaril. There is ice in your blood, my lord, and you welcome this power, this sacred trust, even as you welcome all glory. Tell me, O High King that might have been, tell me that it is not so. I dare you to relinquish this thing, this folly of a kinslayer’s son. Give this up and I might believe that there lies aught but a stone in your breast, cold and hard, jewel-bright, but a stone nonetheless.”

He remembered Gil-galad’s face, graven with lines of sorrow and of weariness, as he pressed the Ring of Air into his palm, the words spoken then, of necessity and of destined fate, for no other ears to hear. And he was too stubborn, too proud, and, mayhap, too foolish, to recognise that the unceasing weight of the years was not meant to go unshared.

“I cannot,” he whispered, hoping for clemency. “’Tis not mine to give up.”

“Then all your fine words are but as the dew on the grass, gone before Anar is half-way to its meridian. Vilya is but one more outsider in a match doomed from its inception.”

They stared at each other across the gulf which divided them, separate hearts woven together in a single strand of love, although they knew it not.

Elrond felt his face flush with hot blood as he became desperately aware of the dampened gown clinging to her legs, adhering to the smooth curve of her breasts.

Averting his face and turning back to the reading desk, he ferociously quelled the rising need within him, and murmured, “In the morning, I return to Imladris.”

“I am not ready.”

“Nevertheless, we go.”

“I shall not. Lothlórien remains my true home.”

“Yet we must…” He yearned to beg her, but did not know how he might to it without his heart shattering into myriad fragments.

“It is not your place to order me where I might or might not set my feet. I o tao tavern wench to do her master’s bidding. I go where I will and stay where I will.”

“Do as you will. I care not.” The bitterness of his own words stung him, but it was nothing to the wound it inflicted upon Celebrían, and, unseen, she blinked back tears. “Regardless, Imladris calls to me.”

“Elladan and Elrohir must stay with me,” she retorted, surreptitiously wiping her eyes.

“It is not mine to tear children from their mother, nor a mother from her children. I shall miss them, but that I shall have to endure.”

Although she would not admit it, even to herself, she had hoped that her blandishments would sway him. Now there was nothing.

“I see that Vilya has burnt your soul to ash.” She paused, tugging at the gold band which adorned her right hand, although she felt that to do so was to tear her heart asunder. “Well, let it not be for me to keep you from the freedom of the Air, nor for one ring to bind you against another.”

And with the last word, she flung her wedding ring at him. With a dull thud, it hit him square in the chest, and slithered to the floor.

As she turned on her heel and fled, wishing only for the age-old patience and solitude of the trees, Elrond knelt silently to retrieve the simple band. Not a sound escaped him as he furled it into his hand; not a flicker of emotion crossed his noble countenance as he pressed it to his lips, nor as he tucked it into the pocket of his tunic, his fingers lingering on the warm metal.

~*~

And the next morning, having kissed his sons farewell, and turned again and kissed them once more, pressing sugared plums and scraps of marchpane into grubby fists, having swept a courteous bow to his impassive wife, the elf-lord spurred his mount into a trot, passing easily through the encroaching trees and out of sight. Few noticed the desolation in the Lady Celebrían’s eyes, for she had grown accustomed to hiding them. And those who did uttered not a word…

~*~

The clearing was cool, sheltered from the high summer sun by waving branches. The Mirror kept its secrets to itself, yet the air of mystery, of the unknowable, was heavy in that place.

“Was it right?”

“Was what right, husband mine?” Galadriel paused to scoop a leaf from the grass and examine its delicate patterning.

“Do not play games, Artanis. I have known you for long ages, and you me.”

“It was right,” she conceded with a sigh.

“But his eyes…”

“Do not let them deceive you, meleth-nîn.” She watched him as he paced uneasily around the grove. “For he has learnt to show in them only that which he desires to show.”

“And yet all is not as it should be.” Celeborn rested his head on her golden tresses, his arms twining round her waist. “I see it; do you not, my wife?”

“Yet all will be well.” And she would say no more.

TBC


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Daro – stop.

Pen-nîn tithin – my little ones.

Ada – father, daddy.

Naneth – mother.

Daeradar – grandfather.

Herven – husband.