Chapter Text
She was taken into the presence of the king like the prisoner she was, hands bound in front of her, head bowed. The two soldiers who escorted her were members of her own company, her former subordinates. They did not look at or speak to her, even when she begged them to know how many of their number had been lost. Brought before the king, she fell silent. She dare not look at him without his leave, and so she kept her eyes on the floor and heard him before she saw him. He sounded as of old: imperious, impatient, expecting to be obeyed.
“Untie her hands and leave us,” he ordered. “Now.”
One of the soldiers stepped in front of her, pulled a knife from his sheath and slashed downward between her hands, cutting the ropes that bound her.
“Edanen, please,” she whispered.
But he sheathed his knife, did a sharp about-face, bowed to the king and left with his companion.
She stood waiting, uncertain what to expect. In spite of his legendary temper, the king was known to be fair, known to give second chances. Had he not already offered her one by sending his son to bring her back when she had left Mirkwood in pursuit of the dwarfs? But there were no second chances where treason such as she had committed was concerned. The best she could hope for was that her banishment would stand.
“Come!” the king snapped.
Startled, Tauriel did as she was ordered. The king watched her step forward, the effort to hide her fear a visible strain. He understood fear and had used the fear of others to his advantage. But there was no advantage to be had here. There was only sadness.
“Sit here,” he said, motioning to the stool beside him.
She obeyed, her eyes still cast down.
“Look at me,” he said.
She raised her head, perhaps a shade higher than need be. She had an innate pride and sense of self that had always amused him. It was why he had promoted her above elves many hundreds of years her senior. He might have smiled at her then, had it not been for what he saw in her eyes when she met his gaze.
“They tell me that the dwarf…” He struggled to remember the name of Oakenshield’s nephew. “…Kili has been killed.”
The king’s voice was markedly softer, but she had been wooed by that gentle tone before only to be met with hardness. She said nothing and steeled herself for the shaft that he would drive through her open wound in just retaliation for her accusation of his heartlessness.
“I am sorry,” the king said.
Those three words, that kindness was more than she could bear. The dam of her resolve broke and grief flooded through her. She covered her face with her hands and wept.
“I am sorry,” Thranduil said again, “because I know how you will suffer and because you are so young, the years will stretch before you in an eternity of sorrow. It is a punishment I would wish on no one and a sentence I would gladly commute if I could.”
She raised her head, her face tear-wet and twisted in pain.
“Why must it hurt so?”
“Because loss is the secret, terrible penalty of love," he said in the weight of his own knowledge.
“Then I wish I had never loved!” she said savagely.
“Do you?” Thranduil regarded her with pity. “Do you wish that you had never known him?”
She turned away from the king but she could not turn away from the truth his words called up. The improbable little dwarf whose dark eyes lit up with mischief and delight, oh she wanted him so! Would forever remember his easy smile, the feel of his hand in hers, and never stop longing for him. To have never known him was beyond her ability to conceive.
“Can it never be healed, this hurt?” she murmured.
“It can be turned to a better purpose,” Thranduil said.
She looked back at him then and it seemed that she saw his grief as a visible shroud and the knowledge that he had carried the pain she now struggled to absorb for nearly three thousand years struck her nearly senseless with awe. Had not only carried it but carried on and served tirelessly a whole people who had no claim of blood or kinship on him.
“What will you do now?” he asked her.
“Do?” she repeated dumbly. “Do you mean I am free? You release me?”
“Yes. I owe you that much. You showed great courage in coming back to help me. But then, I have always admired your courage.”
Her mind reeled as though all support had been stripped away and she felt she might fall into space. Do? What was there to do? Inside the breast of her tunic, where the guards had not searched, she carried a flat, oval stone on which was carved a dwarven runic.
“There is a task,” she said slowly, as though fearful to commit herself aloud, “that I need to undertake.”
“And what is that?”
She closed her eyes and drew a determined breath.
“To travel to the Blue Mountains, to tell his mother how bravely he died. She deserves to know.”
And to return to her the flat stone, the hopeless little charm that had not worked on her reckless boy.
Thranduil nodded his approval.
“And then? What will you do then?”
She did not know. “Then” stretched out in her mind, a blank expanse of empty days.
“Come back to Mirkwood,” the king said.
She looked at him in surprise.
“I cannot reinstate your command,” he said. “And it is likely you would find life among the rank-and-file soldiers uncomfortable, all things considered. But there is other work for you to do. Iothoriel tells me that you show skill in healing. Indeed, I am the example of that skill.”
“That was not me, my lord.”
He held up his hand to silence her.
“Iothoriel has lost her apprentice in this war. Come and serve her, learn from her. You will be needed in time. And being needed, you may find, can be of some comfort.”
Tauriel sat looking at her hands, hands that had been trained to fight and to kill. She had no taste now for war or its aftermath. But perhaps there was purpose in healing, in saving someone else from the grief she bore.
“You do not have to decide now,” the king said. “Go. Complete your task. I lift your banishment. A place will be waiting for you, should you desire it.”
Her mind reeling as new thoughts shifted into place, she rose and bowed to him. When she bowed, she felt the shift of another small keepsake that she had tucked into her tunic.
“My lord,” she said. “There is something else I need to return.”
She reached inside her tunic and withdrew the small leather bound volume on orchids that the guards had not thought worthy to take from her.
Thranduil recognized it immediately and was not quick enough to disguise the audible gasp that escaped him.
“My lord Legolas found this in the ruins of your tent,” Tauriel said, holding the little book towards the king.
He did not reach to take it. Instead, he said “Did Legolas read it?”
“No, my lord.”
Thranduil’s eyes shifted from the book to Tauriel’s face.
“Did you?”
But he knew before she could answer. It was in a certain sad tenderness in her eyes. In the dark hours of her imprisonment, seeking distraction, she had found something unexpected, and the king’s private sorrow had kept grim watch alongside her own. She had learned how wrong she had been about him.
She nodded.
Thranduil’s hands clutched reflexively at the silken sheet that covered him, as though to keep himself from hiding his face, so suddenly and completely exposed did he feel.
“Perhaps—” Tauriel started hesitantly, uncertain how far she might go. “Perhaps Legolas should read it.”
His instinct was to snatch it from her hand, instinct borne out of centuries of hiding his true self behind the coldness of duty and inside the pages of little books. Flawed instinct that had nearly cost him everything.
“Give it to him,” he said and this time, he did bend and did put his face in his hands. He did not see her leave and did not see Iothoriel enter but felt her hand upon his brow, cool and soft.
“My lord, you will be ill again if you go on like this,” she said. “Whatever else you think you need to do can wait.”
He leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes, less in obedience to Iothoriel than in utter exhaustion.
“My lord?” Feren came into the chamber. “Gandalf the Gray wishes to see you.”
“No,” Iothoriel snapped. “You have had enough visitors.”
“You will find this one difficult to dissuade,” Thranduil said with a sigh. He pushed himself upright. “Let him in.”
The wizard entered and bowed to Iothoriel as she passed him, glaring.
“My lady,” he said.
“I will be back in a moment,” she said warningly. “Do not tax him.”
Gandalf chuckled to himself.
“Only a fool would disobey, but I will not keep you long, my lord. I am pleased to see you are better. We feared for you when you could not be found on the battlefield.”
Thranduil was in no mood for these pleasantries.
“What is it you have come to tell me?”
“You will have heard that Thorin Oakenshield is dead.”
Thranduil nodded, remembering the fierce, stubborn dwarf who had stood against him.
“I am sorry for his people. He would have made a good king to them.”
“His funeral was held today,” Gandalf said, “and that of his nephews. Bard of Laketown returned the Arkenstone and it was buried with Thorin.”
“That is fitting,” Thranduil said dully. “The Heart of the Mountain belongs with its king.”
Gandalf crossed the room and looked out the frosted window onto the square.
“I am surprised to see your son leaving you so soon after you have been wounded,” he said.
“Are you, Mithrandir?” Thranduil cocked his head. “Is it not what is also in your mind?”
Gandalf turned from the window and regarded the king.
“You sent him north, to the Dunedain?”
Thranduil nodded.
“Strider is not yet ready to take up that responsibility.”
“No,” Thranduil said, “but when he is, he will need help. I am no longer fit for quests and battles. I have strength left only to protect my own, but I send my son into this world you hold so dear.” He bent upon Gandalf a look of dark gravity. “Have I done well, Mithrandir?”
Gandalf bowed.
“Excellent well, my lord.”
For a rare moment, the wizard and the elf king were in accord.
“There is one more who would like to see you,” Gandalf said, smiling. “If it is your wish.”
Thranduil nodded wearily, knowing it was little use to protest. With his staff, Gandalf pulled back the curtain and the halfling, Bilbo Baggins shuffled self-consciously into the room. He was dressed for travel, with a heavy rucksack strapped across his back. Before him, he carried a small wooden chest worked round with iron strappings, a chest Thranduil knew well and his heart surged within him at sight of it.
“I have brought you this, great king,” Bilbo said, “in the name of the dwarfs of Erebor and in some recompense for my—er—shall we say past misdeeds?”
The hobbit gave the king an uncertain smile but Thranduil could do no more than whisper “You have my thanks, my grateful thanks.”
Bilbo set the chest in the king's lap and stepped back. Thranduil sat with his hand hovering over it as though it was a mirage.
“And now we shall leave you, my lord,” Gandalf said. “We have a long journey ahead of us. Bilbo?”
But Thranduil hardly heard him and did not notice when they left, so entirely was he taken with the box in front of him. He undid the catch and placing a hand on either side, lifted the lid, fearing lest it was another trick.
Inside, resting on a bed of smaller stones, it lay. A necklace of gems so clear, they took up the soft light of the chamber and made much of it, sparking into dazzling life. They were set into a silver necklace of great delicacy and beauty, the central pendant suggesting a heart that surrounded a silver orchid, her favorite flower.
He lifted the necklace from the box and held it up in front of him. The heavy links draped across and fell through his long fingers. He closed his eyes and in memory he saw her, her long white throat and her smooth breast and he held the necklace out to see how it would lay against her skin.
When Iothoriel returned, she found the box on the floor surrounded by a shower of glittering white stones and the king doubled over in his bed. With great effort only could she prevail on him to lie down and let her make him comfortable. But by no means was she able to pry from his grasp the silver necklace that had tangled around his fingers.
And so she drew the sheets over him and went and positioned herself on the other side of the curtain in front of his door. She let no one else near him for the rest of the day.
***
Tauriel walked out of the Great Hall into a freedom that was an illusion. Part of her, she knew, would always remain captive. But she held onto the hope offered her by her king that she might find purpose yet, and at that moment, her purpose was before her.
Legolas was in the square, strapping provisions onto the saddle of his horse in preparation for his journey. He started when he saw her.
“He cannot have let you go,” he said in disbelief.
“He has,” she said.
“But you are banished, still?”
“No, even that he has lifted.” She explained to him the commutation of her sentence and the king’s offer.
“And what will you do?” he asked her. “Will you go back?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at her and even though he read in her eyes the blight of his hopes, he could not help but make one last reach for her.
“Come with me,” he said and he told himself it was for her sake more than for his, to get her away from her sorrow and into a world where she might find some escape.
“Come with you?” she asked. “Aren’t you going back to Mirkwood?”
He shook his head.
“I ride into the north, in search of the Dunedain—” He looked past her, into the distance. “—And to find some purpose.”
She smiled to hear this refrain of his father’s advice to her, but she thought of the lonely king as she had last seen him, his head in his hands.
“You will be missed,” she said. “The king will miss you.”
“Perhaps,” Legolas said, but this was dangerous ground he was not prepared to tread with her.
“He asked me to give you this.”
She took his hand and in it placed the little book of notes on orchids. He looked at it and a wry smile played across his lips.
“What am I to do with this? I am no botanist.”
“Look at it, Legolas,” she said, curling his fingers over the book. “Read the last pages.”
Puzzled but wanting to do as she asked, he opened the book and flicked through it to see what he had seen before. Drawings of orchids and lines of careful notes, pages and pages of them. Until he reached the last ten leaves or so and there the drawings were different. They were of him.
Meticulous studies, like the orchids, numerous drawings of his face: in profile, looking straight out of the page, eyes cast down; sketches of his hands on his bow, of him running, kneeling, standing, in his service tunic and in court dress. What the drawings lacked in tenderness, they made up for in attention to detail. So minutely observed that he wondered he had never noticed he was being so carefully watched. If he had ever felt that his father had not seen him, had overlooked him, these drawings gave the lie to any such thought.
On the last page was a note, his father’s usually precise hand somehow softer and slanting slightly across the vellum.
“If you could see him now, how straight and tall he has grown, how skillful and brave, how fine his nature, all of your foolish fears for him that I used to laugh at would be set at rest. It is my foolish fear that keeps him from what you wanted most for him. My daily sorrow remains that you are not here to provide what I cannot for the son who is so much yours, so much of you that it breaks my heart at times to look at him. Oh my dear, what you and I have made together…”
The remaining words blurred suddenly and Legolas had to blink hard to see. He closed the little book, unable to read more and slipped it inside of his tunic. He turned from her and mounted his horse.
“You will not come?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Will you come back?”
His horse danced beneath him and he turned it so that he could see the Great Hall of Dale, where his father sat alone. The wall between them was only made of stone. What bound them together was made of stronger stuff.
You will always know where to find me.
Legolas laid his hand over the little book, where it rested against his heart.
“Yes, Father,” he said and kicked his horse into a gallop.