Under the Elen

Title: Under the Elen – Part 1: Husbands (a sequel to In Earendil’s Light)
Author: Gloromeien
Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com
Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan, Legolas/Elrohir
Summary: A horrific premonition calls the questing twins home.
Rating: NC-17 in total.
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. Remember, though, that 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 One

Yavië, Yen 3018, Third Age

The night was fierce, sightless, beneath the giant trees of Carrock, their raven-wing branches and tar-heavy leaves blacking out the hospitably rotund Ithil of the late autumnal season. A brutal exhaustion had forced them westward from the Mirkwood Mountains, where the Woodland Elves still made their stand against a motherload of Orcs. Their garments mired in violet, heathen gore, their bodies scarred and beaten by days of relentless combat, Elrohir had though to make their bed in the seething mulch at tree-foot, when Elladan had suddenly, though not unexpectedly, collapsed. Thankfully, no festering wound felled him, merely the final depletion of his near-boundless energies. As the plagued forest hissed out a guttural lullaby, Elrohir gathered Elladan closer to him and sought sleep’s blithe refuge.

Sleep, alas, eluded him.

Their warmblood steeds, long flown from the fray, would hopefully forewarn their return to Imladris, if Virgor and Leirac were not, as was r frr frequent custom while in the sanctuary of the Rivendell valley, distracted by the burgeoning cobapples trees which preceded the gates. Elrohir swallowed back his stomach’s fitful lurch at the thought of an orchard’s full of cobapples, sweet peaches, elape vines, and oarberry bushes that awaited their own return to the valley, ripe and ruddy as they could only be in the harvest season. For a moment, he envied the animals’ lack of reason, which allowed them such guiltless indulgence, the ecstasy of their gorgings. His own pack hid but a half-crust of lembas and a near-empty water flask; Elladan had lost his saddle-bag to a warg’s thieving fangs. The ox-hide leather was perhaps a fitting repast for a warg in its last seconds of existence, though Elladan had wished the creature would choke on it to spare him the arrows.

The darkness held close as a hangman’s mask. Only the pale cast of his brother’s skin, cool as Ithil herself through the grime, was visible in the night’s shroud, the coarse wheeze of his breaths and the quick thump of his heartbeat the only audible sound. When they’d come upon the battle, then two days long, by some strange turn of chance, neither had hesitated to join with their Woodland fellows, which was much appreciated by Mithbrethil, who led the charge. Yet even before this encounter, Elladan had seemed unsettled, such as Elrohir had only witnessed in him once before. He’d thought those soul-braising days long past, but, as the days of battle wore on without interruption, the strain on Elladan’s resolve became palpable. Long reputed the most skilled and valiant warrior in Imladris, only one as vitally dear as Elrohir could make the sum of these lapsed momentd tod total their effect on his twin’s stealth; total them he had, and the result was unnerving.

Glorfindel must be in some grave, unforeseen danger.

This, and only this, could cause an elf-warrior of Elladan’s tenacity to even consider retreat. Thus, when Elrohir had feigned a message from their Lord and Ada begging their imminent return, Elladan had not quarreled with him. By that time, the battle tides had turned in Mirkwood’s favor and their absence would not be long felt. Indeed, the cacophonous shrieks and war cries to the east had quieted some with nightfall descended; Elrohir prayed that his binding-brother would emerge victorious by the morn. The teeming forest itself required sleep.

Elladan’s, however, was proving more troubled by the minute. Scored fingers gripped into his sides, the once-leaden body now clenched, quaking, as garbled curses were muttered into his chest. Elrohir huddled thloseloser together, but a glacial wind kicked up as if by Elladan’s own boots. The phantom gusts pelted them with thorny sticks, shards of root, and clumps of fetid moss, a cyclone of swept up leaves flapping like bat’s wings. Elrohir had heard from Legolas that the Shadow-sick Mirkwood had been known, of late, to take on the misery of its occupants, to give elemental life to their most scathing dreams. The elf-knight wondered if, with Elladan in such cleaving throes, this was not presently the case.

If so, there was but one remedy.

“Gwanur-nin, I know you are weary,” Elrohir murmured to his restless twin. “But you must wake.” Elladan growled at some unknowable foe, but did not stir. “Wake, Elladan! We are exposed!”

With a start, the elf-warrior sprung up onto all fours, his quicksilver eyes wild, watchful, their iridescent glow sign of his somnambulant link to his husband’s threatened /fea/. Elrohir noted, to his ever-gaining disquiet, that the forest had stilled to near-paralysis. After a bleating sigh, Elladan collapsed over him anew, burrowing further into his embrace than he had since they were elflings. In the creeping silence, he cradled his trembling twin, but could think of naught but his own husband, of his Legolas. In his secret heart he renewed his nightly prayer: that he was well, that he was sound, that he was safe, from menace and from loneliness alike.

From some vital, impermeable core within, an answer echoed from afar. Elrohir sighed, as Elladan wrenched himself away, any sign of earlier torment overlaid by a warrior’s implacable resolve.

“We must fly home at once,” he declared, a command not to be easily countered. “We cannot linger, even for the promise of further rest.”

Elrohir knew better than to dare dissuade his twin in such moments. “What ails you, Elladan?”

“The black riders are upon him,” Elladan snapped. “Come, we must make haste, gwanur.”

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

Quellë, Yen 3018, Third Age

As the eloquent tone of the low-chime reverberated through the alcove adjacent to the Halls of Healing, Erestor lit another hallowax candle and bowed to the altar. Before settling into the supplicant’s pose, he offered a supportive hand to Glorfindel, who snorted indignantly and waved him away.

“Save your ministrations for the halfling,” he snipped, his garrulous mood betraying his anxiety.

For hours since the hobbit fellowship’s raucous advent into the quiescent halls of Imladris, Glorfindel had been besieged by their wondering questions, thus his befouled humor. Normally complacent in the mouth of chaos, Erestor instinctively surmised that, once Frodo was delivered and his companions cared for, Glorfindel kept little thought for his own beleaguered state. His mind, as ever, longed for Elladan.

In the Healing Halls, amidst the hobbit frenzy, he had eventually withdrawn into an isolated corner and tempered his own chase-worn nerves with a few hastily whispered prayers. Sinking to his knees, Glorfindel had then attempted a /callar/, a summoning of his soul’s flame to conflagrate with rare intensity. This effigy of light and of hope became a beacon through the otherworld to that of its wandering mate, beckoning this other to flame in turn. For the pious and skilled warrior, the practice was only possible after moments of great strife, an immediate reassurance to one’s duty-absent, yet fear-pricked, bonded. As the /fea/ instinctively emitted a similar pulse when fatally threatened as summons for aid, this second confirmed the beloved’s safety, wholeness, and, in most cases, triumph.

When, after several attempts, the sheen of Glorfindel’s skin dimmed to a waxen countenance, Erestor had become concerned. Though the /callar/ state could not be forced nor unduly prolonged, the Balrog-slayer was more adept than most at its performance. This event was not the first to urge him to connect with Elladan in the wilds, both lovers were careful to preserve the delicate, deeply held nature of their union. Yet Glorfindel had turned wan, almost listless, as if the strain were sapping his life-force. Only after many brusque jolts of shaking, by Estel no less, did he rouse.

The halflings long settled, Erestor had knelt by his friend, the guard-captain’s face ashen.

“Take your ease, meldir,” the seneschal had counseled him. “He will know you are safe.”

“He will not respond,” Glorfindel had explained, both his frustration and his mounting dread writ across his clenched features. “I can no longer sense his… his light.”

“You would sense if he had passed on,” Erestor had assured him, to little avail. “There would be… an absence. Your strength would diminish some.” /You would begin to fade even before the fact was known/, Erestor reminded himself, before examining the guard-captain’s skin with greater care to such dire symptoms. Glorfindel, to his relief, had appeared well enough, so he had suggested they seek blessing by the Valar. The Balrog-slayer, as many of the most valiant warriors, found solace in ritual and in the sacrifice of worship.

Glorfindel knelt at his side, again corralling his senses inward. Erestor took on the proper pose, focused his own fretful mind, then harmonized with the centering note his friend sang true. Despite his earnest concentration, he registered a disturbance elsewhere in the Homely House, then inwardly chastised those rambunctious, ever-starving hobbits. He added a prayer of thanks to the Valar, that Estel seemed to have some small patience with them.

As the minutes passed, Glorfindel’s desperate song became a keening mewl, as their efforts again proved fruitless. He leapt to his feet as only the swiftest combatant could, his sleek frame wrought with tension.

“Where *is* he?!” he growled, coiling his arms together across his heaving chest.

Though Glorfindel remained oblivious to all but his own ire, faint shouts sounded down the outside hall. Erestor began to wonder if all was indeed right at Imladris, but certainly did not want to further alarm his friend. He rose with practiced grace, but did not dare approach the fuming Balrog-slayer.

“He may be in the heat of battle himself,” Erestor conjectured, though he doubted his own words. “The twins are questing, after all. His soul may not be open enough to receive you.”

“That has never occurred before,” Glorfindel grunted, but the thought had caught him up, for better or for worse.

“Aye, if it had, you would not be so provoked, mellon-nin,” Erestor noted kindly. “Regardless, you must not further stress your own /fea/. I fear too much time has passed a p a proper connection to be made.”

“Then what shall I do?” Glorfindel countered. “Rise with the dawn and seek-out danger to allow another /callar/? How else can I be assured that he is not…” The guard-captain faltered. Erestor had never before seen him falter so. “Is not…”

Before Erestor could offer further encouragement, the curtains to the alcove were slung apart and Elladan himself flew forth. Glorfindel barely had time to react, when Elladan seized him by the shoulders and shook him savagely.

“Fool!!” he bellowed, his face flush with rage. “Fool-hardy, witless, pride-sick, arrogant, unthinking, overzealous, glory-blind…arrrrggghhhh!!” As he roared, he tossed Glorfindel back as if an impudent cub. To his credit, the startled guard-captain managed to swallow back his emergent smile. “Have you no reason, nor regard for our binding-troths? Did you not bear witness to their torments, how they gouge and maim, how they pervert the essence of their prey until life and will is sundered within? They pursued me for a millennia! They almost had my heart of you, Glorfindel!!”

“You would they took hold of the Ring, then?” Glorfindel ventured in response, his bemusement no longer so deftly hidden.

“Ring?!” Elladan blustered, incensed by his calm. He pounced on Glorfindel anew, but this assault was cautious, caring. He enclosed his dear husband in a tight, needful embrace. A fearsome shiver shook him as he pressed theices ces close, Glorfindel’s gentled hands stroking the length of his still shuddering back. “What ring holds power over me, other than the band that seals our binding? I would rather melt the mirthril down and drink the molten liquid as lovely miruvor than lose you for the sake of a simple ring.”

His anger spent and his beloved safe, Elladan claimed his mouth in an urgent, edifying kiss, which captivated them both for such time that Erestor soon thought best to take his leave. The kiss was softened to lingering caresses, however, when Glorfindel cupped his beloved’s face in his hands and thereby felt the scars on his neck. He himself had not changed since his arrival, both were in dire need of some refreshment. The grumbling emitted from Elladan’s middle only served to underline this necessity. His young husband, however, remained oblivious to else but he himself.

“Too long have I been absent, meleth-nin,” he remarked. “Two seasons seems an eternity away. I am done with questing.”

“Indeed, you know not the awful truth of your hasty words,” Glorfindel turned thoughtful. “Though I am glad of your return. I could not bear to have you gone for war without seeing you once again.”

“War?” Elladan inquired, incredulous, but then he saw the truth in his husband’s eyes and shuddered anew at its import. “The Ring… it has resurfaced, at last. Sauron will come for us all.”

“Aye,” Glorfindel nodded somberly. His finger traced the length of Elladan’s lissome, leaf-shaped ear, a gesture of tenderness between them. “I will tell all of my adventures, but only after some repose. Our fate’s not yet halfway decided… and my husband not yet given proper welcome home.”

“Indeed,” Elladan smirked, eager to forget his ominous words and be reunited with his beloved.

There was, it seemed, little time left for such indulgences.

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

A shrill wind whipped through the gates to the Last Homely House, sweeping along the ivy-dripping walls of the courtyard and swirling their brittle leaves around the dormant fountain at its center. Though reluctant to cover the resplendent canopy of stars above with the thick indigo material of his cloak, Elrohir nevertheless chose to shelter his face from the wild wind. In contrast to the pin-prick lights of the night sky, a trail of glowing lanterns beckoned in the distance, as a party made its way through the heart of the Rivendell Valley.

The convoy from Mirkwood would soon be arrived; among their ranks was the blithe husband he had not seen for almost eighteen turns of the moon, whose sallow grace, on this crisp night, proved too finicky to guide them. Both to ease their path and to quell his anticipation, Elrohir began to sing. Whether in rowdy drinking choruses or among a beatific elven choir, the elf-knight’s voice was rarely raised loud enough for distinction, though this detracted little from its true, poignant tenor. Clear as a glacier stream, filtered ever-pure through his heart’s yearning, the melancholy song trickled over the mountain’s edge, into the hush darkness below. Even the wind sped away, too blustery to bear such a longing melody.

As the last strains wafted into the autumn midnight, a figure crept up behind. With the wind ran off, Elrohir lowered the hood of his cloak to greet his foster brother, a slight, burdened smile quivering his lips. Aragorn’s face was, as ever, similarly shroud by weighty thoughts, though Elrohir had never known him otherwise, since he had been snared by the love of their sister. The ranger and future king seemed, in that quiet moment, the perfect foil to his own encroaching doubts.

“The dark is bitter welcome to your beloved, gwanur-nin,” Aragorn rumbled, alight at his side.

“These are bitter times, Estel,” Elrohir remarked softly. “Where is Ada?”

“Tending the young hobbit,” Aragorn smirked. “Where else?”

“*Indeed*,” Elrohir snorted, then schooled himself.

“Though I wager he judged your welcome of greater comfort to a Mirkwood charge,” the ranger smiled outright this time, lifting a haunch onto the rail. Though his reputation for brooding preceded him, he rarely missed a chance to taunt his half-brother, especially when such sour moods made him such a ready target. “How long have you been parted?”

“Too long,” the solemn peredhel replied. He foist his keen eyes at Aragorn, then, their argent sheen hard as mithril in the starlight. “Yet soon again will we be parted. Perhaps forever long, perhaps… perhaps for some endless time of waiting. If rumor is to be believed, you and your bleak fellowship would lead him straight to Mandos.”

“It is the Shadow that so beckons, Elrohir, not my as yet unfounded fellowship,” Aragorn countered.

“Shadow’s machinations or will-weak fellowship, either blame leaves me widowed.”

“You are not the only one who holds him dear,” Aragorn nearly growled, on his feet in an instant. “Nor the only lover to be forsaken in service of these troubled times.”

Perceiving the ssarssary defiance in his slate-strong eyes, Elrohir swallowed a grin of grudging satisfaction and took his half-brother’s fisted hand in his.

“Peace, Estel,” he whispered, with some reservation still. “I know well of your sacrifice. I am brother to a fretful sister as well as fretting husband to a dauntless elf. I would that both weather the coming war; the sister with patience, the husband with vigilance. Yet I am half a man, and know a man’s restlessness, a man’s doubt. As a man and warrior both, I hope you will heed my counsel, in this. When the moment comes…charge. Strike. Do not hesitate. Else we will both suffer the unspeakable consequence.”

Aragorn fell characteristically silent, his half-brother’s sentiments echoing his own preoccupying concerns with destiny, the price of valor, and the Shadow’s incipient rise. The pair loomed on the upper stair, gray and solemn as the statues of their eld The The trail of approaching lantern lights floated past the forest’s edge, the cast of their gauzy beams haloing their bearer’s cloaks.

The formalof tof their garments gave Elrohir pause, as Aragorn glowered behind. He, too, soon caught wind of the peculiar gesture. His lips clenched, forming words with care.

“When I was last in Mirkwood, to deliver the rotted creature,” Aragorn of a sudden expounded. “There was… a palpable frost between the King and his youngest.”

“Much love has been lost between them,” Elrohir noted, though wondered at his intent. “I thought that, as his stay lengthened, Legolas might have sought to re-forge their bond.”

“I think not, gwanur,” Aragorn posited, with extreme caution. “A wise elf might, at present, chose to put aside talk ofdow dow and concern himself with more imminent threats. Such as a son’s preoccupations with a father’s torments. Such cloying thoughts do not allay themselves on the battlefield, after all, but rear the soul when blood rages hot.”

“I see,” Elrohir murmured, with a particularly elven reserve, at his condescension. Thranduil’s machinations were hardly cause for undue alarm.

Goaded by the cool response, Aragorn crossed his meaty arms over his chest and grunted hotly. Only when he saw the party breech the main gate did his ire subside. Even he was not fool enough to welcome the convoy with a surly frown.

While only a dozen lanterns lit their way, a hundred or more riders poured into the courtyard, far more than the expected twenty. By the time their leaders, Legolas and his brother Luinaelin, mounted the steps to the main hall, at least double the original number had trekked in from the forest path, their billowy black cloaks uncommonly dire for the people of the once-great Greenwood and descendent of the lively Silvan wood-folk. Rarely did a Mirkwood elf own tunics darker than maroon, yet these were sheathed as faceless Nazgul, their golden hair bound in tight buns and covered in knit skull-caps.

Legolas himself looked wan, oddly penitent, keeping back from Elrohir and allowing Luinaelin to speak for their tribe.

“Suilad, Elrohir Peredhel,” Luinaelin presented himself, as if a stranger to these lands. “This band of Sindar in my charge humbly requests an audience with the Lord Elrond.”

“Lord Elrond has bid me welcome you, Prince of Mirkwood,” Elrohir explained, incredulous at his behavior but waiting for some further explanation. Aragorn, guessing the worst, remained silent. “I will advise him of further news.”

“I regret that I no longer bear such a title, though from Mirkwood I do hail,” Luinaelin corrected him, to everyone’s shock. “Please address me by my given name, as I hope I may so address you, Elrohir.”

Despite his renown acuity in all things diplomatic, Elrohir proved too worrisome not to give in to emotion. When he dared approach his prideful kinsbrother and clasp his slender arms, he perceived how the other surreptitiously trembled.

“Luinaelin, what is this madness?!” he exclaimed. “What has befallen you?!” The Son of Mirkwood, unable to meet the elf-knight’s questing stare, looked back to his brother.

“We are exiled,” Legolas answered, his face betraying a mix of sorrow and of shame. “By order of Thranduil, the King. A party of Silvan truehearts seeking refuge in this Last Homely House.”

As Elrohir’s incredulous mithril eyes slid from Luinaelin’s pained visage to that of his winsome beloved, the entire gathering stilled. Several suffocating moments passed, Elrohir glaring, Legolas with his head bowed.

“Then refuge you shall have,” the Son of Elrond pronounced, as a communal sigh washed over the company.

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

Hours later, as he carried a hastily prepared late-night meal to his bedchamber, Elrohir still reeled from the Mirkwood convoy’s advent, though their tale of exile remained untold. Instead, he had been busied with arrangements. The once-princely brothers had insisted on their party’s concealment, no easy feat even within the forest haunts. For the night, the Silvan tribe would camp in the valley’s training fields; some better arrangements waited his father’s skilled attentions. The *princes*, though insistent on remaining with their people even after a suitable camp was erected, were finally lured into proper bedchambers by a roused Glorfindel’s unwavering order. Luinaelin was now embedded in conversation with the guard-captain, while Elrohir had managed to secret Legolas away to their bedchamber.

Shame-wrecked and deathly silent, not a word of endearment had passed between them since his arrival. Amidst the frantic camp preparations, Elrohir occasionally caught a trace of his husband’s troubled eyes on his back, but, when he turned to meet them, they had been hastily recalled. Legolas had followed him to bed as if by duty bound, not a glimpse of relief at the promise of sanctuary there, at the consolation of a lover’s regard, evident on his stoic face. Once behind closed doors, he’d sat himself on the edge of the bed as if awaiting a particularly harsh scolding, even the most basic questions – are you weary? would you bathe? may I fetch some small repast from the kitchens? – met with curt, colorless replies. Some greater mischief was afoot, some Thranduillian scheme only the most patient coddling could unravel; as he balanced the unruly tray along the passageway, Elrohir was doubly determined to shred the filial ties that ensnared his husband’s heart and bind himself anew to its graces.

Curled up by the mist-clouded window, Legolas leap to attention when the door was opened. He watched Elrohir set down the tray with round, anxious eyes, their iridescent pools muted by further shame. When he saw with what care the hearty, if simple, meal was prepared, he sunk into himself, his head again bowed, as if in quiet supplication. This fortuitously allowed stealthy Elrohir to sneak up and embrace him, enveloping his mournful archer in warm, willing arms. At first, Legolas fought against this embrace, but eventually the heat of his husband’s care smote his defenses and, with a piercing cry, he gave in. Legolas hugged him with such force, such desperation that Elrohir thought he might snap his back. Though the archer would not concede to tears, he whined like a wounded animal and clutched his body as if this contact might be their last.

“Melethron,” Elrohir whispered, when he felt his husband’s grip lessen some. “What under the elen has befallen you?”

With a whimper that cracked his very heart, Legolas wrenched himself away. He schooled his countenance as a warrior might, reigning in his emotions until his very eyes seemed crafted of callow blue steel. Elrohir stood aloft, concern and fear overwhelming him. He surveyed the elf before him with tenuous calm, as Elrond might examine a patient of his own family, yet under his care. This was not his husband, his Legolas: warrior of relentless skill, lover of unimpeachable sweetness, partner of such valor and honor that Elbereth herself might steal him away from jealousy. He could not fathom what calamity would cause Legolas to behave so coldly towards him, but he felt he might yet discover one before dawn. His own gleaming silver eyes met with those of steel and of stone; he awaited what would certainly prove to be his confession.

“I… I am exiled from the Mirkwood forest,” Legolas reiterated, as if to gather strength from such a statement of established fact. “I am no longer a Prince of Thranduil’s realm.”

“So you’ve said,” Elrohir acknowledged, betraying considerable frustration. He reconsidered his stance, instead moving to sit in the armed seat of their chaise longue. He gestured for Legolas to sit at its edge, distance enough for a confession, but close enough to catch him up in his arms again. After some deliberation, Legolas lowered himself down. “What precipitated this… bold move on your Ada’s part.”

“I have no Ada,” Legolas spat, his anger plain. “I am disowned by the Mirkwood King.” Conscious of his rising emotion, the archer swallowed back his brimming rage and offered Elrohir his explanation. “I discovered, this last midsummer, that Thranduil had for some time known of my allegiance to Lord Celeborn.” Elrohir gasped despite himself, disquiet screaming into his pointed ears at the potential damage this knowledge of Thranduil’s might incur; had, no doubt, already incurred on Legolas’ spirit. “During my long stay in Mirkwood, he behaved in an affectionate and loving manner towards my brothers and I, so much so that I came to believe he had regained some of the temperance I had known of the Ada of my youth. I was, however, thoroughly and heartlessly deceived.”

Pain struck him then, a full, unrestrained blow, and Legolas winced as if aged in man-years. He kept his eyes to the ground, struggling through the next passage.

“I will not trouble you with the revenge he wreaked on Luinaelin,” he continued. “For he had of late joined our ranks. But as your husband… by our hallowed vows I must report… that I have… I have been…” Legolas growled with frustration at his own weakness, but went on. “On the night of the midsummer feasting, the King had my drink tainted with an elixir. The draught dulls the mind and… heightens the senses. You thirst, endlessly, for more, and each cup brimmed with poison. The man who was my father… had his witches spell me, so that in my drunken slumber I might dream. I dreamt of you, Elrohir, I thought that you were near, that we were… intimate. How they so winningly conjured your likeness, I will never come to know, but… I felt you, there, and was roused as only your touch… your sweetness can…” He halted and turned further away, his self-sickness acute. He growled again, shook his head violently, then soldiered on. “I awoke to find a… a woman, in my bed. A female of the Dunedain, a cousin of Aragorn’s as it turns out. She neither remembered the previous night, save drinking a similar potion, but the evidence of what had transpired there was… was clear enough.” Legolas steeled anew, as if preparing for a singe from the eye of Sauron himself. “I… I have betrayed our vow, my bonded. I have betrayed *you*.”

Without a second’s hesitation and with a tremendous sigh of relief, Elrohir again enveloped Legolas in a back-breaking embrace. Legolas, besotted by astonishment, hung limp in his arms, until Elrohir sought out his paled lips and he began to quake.

“D-did you not m-mark me, Elrohir?” he bleated. “I’ve… I -… how can you…?”

“Legolas!” Elrohir chided good-naturedly. “Have you not marked your own tale? You were poisoned and spelled, by your Ada no less, and you act as if you’d taken a hundred lovers in secret and deliberately sought to deceive me! How could I not forgive this… I would not even name it a transgression, since you were victim to a foul plot and in no way accountable for your actions.”

“B-but…” Legolas attempted to object, but Elrohir fixed him with a look of such tenderness and compassion that he was speechless once again.

Elrohir, seeing this defeat unfold, gathered his beloved against him and at last claimed the mouth that had been so long kept from him. As his lover’s kiss deepened and his locked-away emotions were unleashed, Legolas, so keenly provoked, began to weep. Elrohir lowered the beleaguered archer’s head onto his shoulder, never breaking his hold around him. Legolas’ sobs were short-lived, however, as he swiftly composed himself to finish his tale.

“I have not told the last of it,” he rasped, his dulcet voice still thick with feeling.

“Indeed not,” Elrohir acknowledged. “How did you come to be exiled?”

“It took me some months to uncover the root of this foul plot against me,” Legolas recalled. “As I said, my brother was similarly beset by these prankish schemes. When we did discover the cause, the master, and confronted him, a war of wills began. He rallied his supporters, Luinaelin and I were forced to rally our own. All of our fears for the future of Mirkwood, of the Silvan people, were presented to the King. His response was to disown us, and to order our exile from the Mirkwood. To our great surprise… the party you saw packed up and left with us.”

“Argument enough for your righteousness,” Elrohir remarked. “Would you not agree?”

“My cause may be righteous,” Legolas whispered. “But my behavior toward you, my most beloved one… has been grievous in the extreme.”

“I grieve not, maltaren-nin, for the loss of one’s night’s devotion,” Elrohir dismissed his still-gnawing concerns. “Under Thranduil’s rule, to suffer but one night’s poison is a blessing.” The elf-knight stifled a smirk, then eyed his husband sharply. “It *was* but one night?”

“Of course!!” Legolas blustered, his eyes newly alight with fear.

Elrohir chuckled, then sighed. Tickling fingers traced the rim of his husband’s leaf-shaped ear, his gaze turned hot with affection and with regard. Legolas, still bashful, allowed this quiet moment between them, tucking further into Elrohir’s still-vigilant embrace.

“This exile is perhaps not so unwelcome,” Elrohir noted thoughtfully. “If you must now permanently reside in Imladris.”

“And what of the Silvan tribe?” Legolas queried, though he had grown so tired that any further consideration of such matters was troublesome. “What of my people?”

“There may yet be room under our eaves,” Elrohir considered. “There is ample room in Lorien, for certes. Luinaelin, perhaps, will lead them. I must insist, however, that you remain here.” He laughed rather fondly at this, nuzzling his face in the archer’s flaxen hair. “Consider it your penance.”

At that, Legolas swallowed dully. He slipped, with utmost care, from Elrohir’s embrace, then caught up his husband’s lithe hands.

“I have not yet finished, melethron,” he admitted.

“What else, then?” Elrohir groaned. “I would have an end to these confessions, so that I might properly welcome my husband home.” Legolas’ smile was tentative, but it was there nonetheless.

“The night I spent with the Dunedain woman,” he explained. “Was not without… consequence.”

“How so?” Elrohir asked plainly, his interest piqued.

“There…” Legolas began, but became uncertain of how to broach this particular subject. “A… a child is growing.”

Elrohir’s jaw dropped rather unceremoniously, though Legolas kept up his listless hands. The former Prince of Mirkwood witnessed the dawning of realization break within his beloved, then spread from behind his eyes through his entire frame. His posture straightened. His arms tensed. His legs cinched together, his haunches clenched, and his chin jutted out like the prow of a ship.

He beamed bright as the beacon of Gondor over Edoras.

“A child,” he murmured with due reverence. “Your child, Legolas. A peredhel! Of mixed heritage, of your golden, elvish grace and of my mortal uncle’s line… *our* child, melethron.” He cupped Legolas’ face in his hands and kissed him soundly, as if infusing him with a unique, addictive form of ecstasy. “Why, this is wondrous news…”

Legolas, finally allowing himself some soft measure of relief, smirked at Elrohir’s own rather childish behavior. He felt, after months of scarring self-flagellation, that he might eventually be mended.

“The draught the lady drank was for fertility,” Legolas further commented, as Elrohir contemplated the seemingly endless possibilities of the situation. “The conception of a half-elf was meant as the ultimate insult. I fear Thranduil has so repressed the notion of our binding that he forgets how dearly held the peredhel are to me.”

“Instead, his vengeance has wrought our greatest joy,” Elrohir noted with a ever-stretching grin. “Are you pleased by this turn of fate, lirimaer?”

“In truth, I had not considered much past its revelation,” he conceded, unable to resist, now forgiven, another kiss. “Though I had the foresight to bring the lady to Imladris.”

“We must fetch her!” Elrohir instantly fretted. “She must sleep in a bed, not on the fell ground of the training fields!”

“I have seen to her accommodation,” Legolas reassured him. “I am not heartless, meleth.”

“Nay, you are so very kind,” Elrohir purred, drawing him ever-near. His fingers deftly unwound Legolas’ braids, then combed through the loosed lengths of cornsilk hair with unabashed pleasure. “And fine. And fair.” They moved to the ties of his tunic, his lips to the sweep of his neck. “And righteous, and splendid, and fearsome, and humble, and mine to reclaim this night…”

As his beloved elf-knight peeled away his garments, Legolas suppressed his undaunted pangs of shame and attuned himself to his too-forgiving husband’s needs.


End of Part One