Title: In Earendil’s Light, Part 1: Birth Author: Gloromeien Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan and Elrohir/Legolas Summary: Just as tragedy strikes the Last Homely House, and old foe proposes an unusual alliance. Rating: PG-15 for the moment, for mature themes. 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: Wanted to write something elven and epic, this is my shot. I don’t know if this can be considered AU… as it *does* follow the timeline established by Tolkien, it just ‘fills in’ some scenes he may have ‘left out’… *right*. My story, sticking, etc. Hope you enjoy!! Feedback: Longed for, as always. Dedication: For beautiful Alexias and golden Lysis, for wise Epaminondas and rash Pelopidas. I bow to the Shrine of Iolaus, in the wake of the Sacred Band, and offer up to them this proto-Platonic tale of warrior love. Elf-warrior, that is. *************** Prologue Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 139 The argent gauze of Earendil’s light shroud the Last Homely House of Imladris, as if his fairest ship of songs, the Foam-flower, had herself sailed through the halls, stables, and talans, blessing each with an unearthly glow. On this star-kissed night, the peerless elf Glorfindel, sung in his previous life as slayer of the mighty Balrog and beloved of Tuor’s court at Gondolin, crept along the gabled pathways, beneath the watchful shrines to warriors passed or valiantly fallen. Fingon, Gil-galad, Turgon his kinsman… each had brought honor to the Noldor, each had railed against the Shadow with every breath of their might. Glorfindel himself had returned to this Middle-Earth from the waiting Halls of Mandos, such was his charge to Tuor and his kin. As he lurched up the last of the outer steps, he came to a vital halt, resting a gored shoulder against the rippled folds of Feanor’s pewter robes, panting ferociously. The sweat of his flushed brow mingled with orc’s blood, snaking through the sodden gold wisps that framed his sallow face and staining them a cinder gray. He coughed, once, thickly, and spat a copious gob of smoke-black saliva behind him. The motion caused his vision to swim, swoon, and he unceremoniously crashed to his knees. Some time later, a brazing cry ripped through the moon-hushed night, roused him. Though still battle-weary, Glorfindel leapt up to his feet and flew into the Homely House. He burst through the doors to the Hall of Healing, sword drawn, in time to catch the ebullient gray eyes of his Lord and great friend, Elrond Half-Elven. “My Lord,” Glorfindel rasped, the sprint itself almost besting him. “What trouble?” “None, brave Glorfindel,” Elrond beamed at him, before notice of his wounds caused his smile to fade. “You’re injured. Your leg… how can you walk?” “Well enough,” Glorfindel snipped, the proof in his brash strides into the Hall. “Did you not hear your Lady cry? Sharp as a skinned lamb, my Lord.” “Aye, I heard.” Elrond’s smirk returned, along with a comely bashfulness. “You’ve been gone some five years, my friend. There is much news. Such news...” With no regard to his grimed appearance, Elrond fiercely gripped his guard-captain by the shoulders, before crushing him into an ecstatic hug. Once released, Glorfindel fought not to recoil, such was his shock at the Half- Elf’s gesture. Elrond, with a baleful laugh, struggled to explain: “A miracle, Glorfindel, of such elfkind has never witnessed before!! Elbereth has twice-blessed this House of Imladris… twin sons my heart and I have begotten, this very night, under Earendil’s light!!” “*Twin* elflings begotten of a twin,” Glorfindel whispered, the import of the moment stifling every twinge, every ache. “And sons, no less. Heirs.” “Come,” Elrond near-commanded him. “I would see them in your fine company, my captain returned.” “You have not seen them?” Glorfindel inquired, still felled by the news, as they swept into the surgery. “Erestor forbade me enter,” Elrond, in his delight, almost chuckled, where once he would most certainly scorn. “My presence was… a hindrance, as most generously described.” At this, Glorfindel joined in his mirth, until the sight of two pearl-drop babes slumbering in a willow-bow cradle was before their wondering eyes. Their exhausted mother was tucked into a nearby cot, waiting her husband’s tender escort to their bedchamber. “They are dark, as their father,” Glorfindel remarked, as Elrond was presently beyond the power of speech. “Yet their skin is fair as their mother’s and their eyes of her mithril hue.” “They are my treasures,” the Lord barely spoke, overcome. With trembling yet resolute fingers, he whisked the moisture from his eyes and touched each hot brow with his dampened fingers. “I bless you Elrohir, elf-knight, child of Eru and Prince of Imladris, by the light of the Valar above. I bless you…” Elrond stopped, stunned at himself. “By Elbereth, Glorfindel. We’d not ever quarreled… There was no other name.” Glorfindel pondered this, inwardly rallying his slowly-clouding mind. Elrond himself seemed at a loss without Celebrian’s counsel. “What of… Elladan?” the guard-captain suggested. “Half elf. Half man.” “But this may cause him to chose Middle-Earth over Valinor, as my brother,” Elrond objected. “The choice made before the first day of his eternal life has passed, in being so named. What say you?” “I say you grieve your brother still, Elrond,” Glorfindel counseled cautiously. “As such I would not name the babe for him. But your sons may indeed chose the same path as he. The choice remains their own, now, in the future, at the world’s end… Naming this second son ‘Elladan’ does indeed imbue his path with the scent of destiny, but it is a glorious fate for him, to fight alongside his brother the elf-knight, to again unite the worlds of Elf and Men against the Shadow. One son named for bravery, the other for unity. Names befitting the sons of a great warrior and wise ruler, Elrond.” “Well reasoned, my dear friend,” Elrond complimented him. “We’ll make a diplomat of you yet.” With a wry smile, the Lord of Imladris again moved to consecrate his son’s birth. “I bless you Elladan, elf and man united, child of Eru and Prince of Imladris, by the light of the Valar above.” After the ritual blessings, both Eldar regarded the cherubic new elflings for a long, near-reverent moment. Unable to resist the lure of the first new elves born to the Noldor since the second age, Glorfindel reached down into the cradle, stroking a tender finger up the pointed tip and over the leaf-shaped rim of Elladan’s ear. The newborn elf batted open his eyes, taking his first sight of the daunting world. “Greetings, pen-neth,” Glorfindel cooed. “I am your guardian, and tutor.” Elrond, breathlessly touched, quietly scooped up his son and handed him to the blonde elf, who was only too eager to take him up. The proud father soon gathered up the other twin, similarly stroking his little ear, a sensitive point for elfkind and a sign of deep affection. As Glorfindel bent to kiss the baby’s ripe cheeks in welcome, a trickle of blood from his neck wound dripped onto Elladan’s tiny lips. The babe snortled sweetly and lapped away the wetness with a lazy pink tongue, while the captain stared down in horror. Glorfindel froze, afraid he had cursed the child. “He has the taste of it now,” Elrond decreed, resting a calming hand on Glorfindel’s shoulder. “Warriors both, then.” With a sigh of utter contentment, Elrond gestured them towards another ward, to not further disturb Celebrian. “Come, I will brew a broth with the afterbirth and tend to your wounds. There is no more potent elixir in all of Middle Earth, and a peerless remedy for nausea, than a boiled placenta.” Glorfindel followed willingly, knowing better than to cross Elrond on this of any day, yet silently sought young Elladan’s sympathy for the foul soup he would soon ingest in the name of friendship. The elfling beamed brilliantly up at him, his first of many smiles. * * * Part One Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 188 Studiously ignoring his brother’s latest harrumph, Elladan drew the tight string of his bow and anchored the arrow by his right incisor. A hawk-eye locked on the target beyond, he adjusted his stance with minuscule, almost imperceptible contractions of his taut muscles. The slightness of their firm bellies belied the unwavering control and the rapt agility his still-developing form had learnt; soon, with some refinement, to be mastered. His senses keen as a dagger’s edge, his arrow-tip traced Lindir’s progress through the nearby meadow, until the innocent house-master swept into a thicket of oarberry briars, the most common nesting- ground for red-feathered hollets. With the barest hint of a smirk, Elladan let fly. The resulting swarm of squawking hollets thoroughly ruffled Lindir’s feathers, enough to send the startled elf scurrying beneath the tree cover. Behind him, Elrohir’s subsequent fit of hysterical giggles caused him to unceremoniously roll off his stump-perch and into the moss bed below, no doubt staining his new copper tunic. As he deftly sheathed his bow alongside his rawhide quiver, Elladan allowed himself a glint of satisfaction. Two for one. “By the Valar, Elladan!” his brother pouted testily. “Nena completed the embroidery this very morning!” “Noting, if I am not mistaken,” Elladan smartly pointed-out. “That the garment should be saved for the revels of our begetting, in a fortnight.” “Aye,” Elrohir admitted, unable to remain cross with his twin for more than a brief moment. Elladan already stood above him, offering his hand. The older twin snorted, ashamed of his vanity, then took it gladly. “It does not become you to preen, gwanur,” Elladan remarked softly. “We are Sons of Elrond. Our titles are ample adornment, to those who would woo us.” “Angleien is not a wit impressed by titles,” the taciturn suitor griped. “Angleien is the daughter of the stable-keep,” Elladan noted sensibly. “Who will flirt until she’s been thoroughly kissed, and once so will gladly be dismissed when the next swollen-faced temptation catches your eye. She’s too shrewd to be deceived by your weak troths of undying affection.” “She’s a trifle,” his twin confessed. “But an alluring one.” Elrohir paused a moment, considering his brother’s resigned features, then added: “Come with me to the village. You seldom frequent the ale-halls and will be unfamiliar with their currency when we grow to questing age.” “I am well acquainted with the ale houses,” Elladan mused. “And care little for trifles such as Angleien… or Kamarest, or Lilir, or Ceridawen, or whichother maid you abandon me to.” “Am I so thoughtless?” Elrohir grinned warmly. “Remarkably often, gwanur,” the prince grunted ruefully, then allowed himself to again be distracted by the targets. “But if you would court their favors, best be off. Glorfindel has wagered a week’s stable-duty he will best me, and will soon come down for the competition. Unless you prefer to court his displeasure…” Elrohir immediately dismissed this warning in favor of gleaning on the timber in which it was uttered: tremulous, affectionate… almost unspeakably tender. His twin often spoke thusly of their tutor, shrouding his praise, his fondness with a rigid formality Glorfindel himself rarely expressed in his instruction to them. “I doubt either of us could be so *courted* by the fair Glorfindel,” Elrohir replied, his lip-ends curling despite themselves. “Aye,” Elladan agreed, grown pensive. “He alone among our elders seems to recall the time before their majority… and he has lived two lifetimes!” This last was uttered with such unabashed awe, Elrohir could not restrain himself from a peal of mad giggles. Those hawk-eyes set him in their sights, their stare razing. Elrohir swallowed hard. He tempered his response to his brother’s obvious fragility, not wanting to put him off such fearless romantic adventuring among the elders at Imladris. Indeed, for this undisclosed affection, he held his younger brother in considerable esteem. No giddy, willing maids to tame his newly flaming urges, but a warrior and a diplomat doubly learned in the ways of their immortal life. Ada himself had, in one of his more lubricated moments, confessed to Elrohir that Glorfindel and Elladan were destined for each other, though further questioning had sobered him sufficiently to stop his loosened tongue. Yet Elrohir wondered how conscious Elladan himself was of his own heart’s yearnings, and wisely chose to demure. “I will be at Barrowman’s Close, then, should he forget you,” Elrohir informed him. “Forget me?” Elladan pounced, his eyes hollowed. “Why should he forget me?! He himself set the wager at last night’s evensong.” “Aiya, gwanur, I meant no disrespect!” Elrohir groaned, but could not dismiss a knowing smirk. “He will come presently. You will spar. I wish you luck, for he will not be lightly bested, especially for a week’s stable chores.” The older twin patted his brother sweetly on the cheek, then moved to make his retreat. “But do not be too strong with him, else he will chafe. Go gently, and be sure…” /…and even his guarded nature could not long resist you, nin bellas./ As he watched Elrohir go, his stomach prickled, swam. He collapsed onto the tree stump, somber, yet restless as well. Much as he adored his wiles, the elder twin often hit far too close to his heart, knowing implicitly what matters Elladan must thoroughly muse-over and which he must dismiss for fear of intemperance. In truth, Elladan cared little for maids or their glossy kisses, but wished his nature allowed him to gallivant the landscape of coyness and flirtation as freely as Elrohir. The experience alone would better serve his future lovers, whose ministrations Elladan anticipated with longing equal, he was sure, to his genial brother’s. With a pregnant sigh, he set these weighty thoughts aside and searched the meadow for signs of Glorfindel. The tips of Arien’s autumn rays almost brushed the length of the horizon, but his tutor was nowhere to be seen. The wager had been set long before the nightly revels; regardless, Glorfindel had never before broken a promise to him. If anything, Elladan was prone to tardiness, especially where diplomacy lessons were concerned… Elladan shut his eyes a long moment, seeking to silence his dizzy mind. If he waited on any other but Glorfindel, he would have gone to search for him by now. His guardian, however, lately overwhelmed and baffled him in equal measure. It had grown increasingly difficult for Elladan to keep counsel in his esteemed presence, such was his regard for his tutor. At times, he found himself so overswept by Glorfindel’s familiar manner, that the sparest compliment would send him reeling. Elladan was painfully aware of the new, viscerally physical effects the Noldor’s gentility sometimes produced in him, as he was of the ambiguous, heated, yet potent dreams he suffered. Still, he could not long keep himself from Glorfindel’s fine company, nor sought to with any forceful strength of resolve. He secretly feared that once his majority was reached, in little more than a year’s time, he would no longer be able to hide these feelings from anyone, Glorfindel included, and would thus be thoroughly shamed by them, or ordered to restrain them, or banished from Imladris, or worse… Scorned and avoided by the guardian himself. Elladan sunk down onto the moss beds, gathered his legs to his chest. He would remain until sunset, then would seek him out. His apologies would be warmer consolation than his inevitable irritation in defeat. * * * “Afterbirth!!” Erestor exclaimed, his prim face drained entirely of color. “Aye, a broth of it,” Glorfindel replied, somewhat leery of uncovering the cause of his dismay. “A broth, or a tonic?” the Loremaster attempted to calmly inquire. “A broth, if I recall,” the blonde elf elaborated. “With oarberries and brine. Ah, and tree sap.” “Tree sap,” Erestor demanded in earnest. “Are you certain?” “Forty-nine years have passed, but, aye, Erestor, I am certain!!” Glorfindel growled. “What of it? It was merely to sweeten –“ “Perhaps to your swordsman’s ear a pinch of syrup has little import, Glorfindel…” Erestor sighed, unable to continue on. He shuffled dully over to the requisite bookshelf and blindly selected a volume, knowing without having to properly check the answers inscribed there. The guard-captain, however, would require proof, as would Elrond, eventually. Glorfindel observed his purposeful paging out of the corner of his eye, tense and unrepentantly anxious. “How long have you felt… drawn to him?” “All his life, Erestor, as have you.” “Indeed, I have, meldir,” Erestor admitted soothingly. “But not as you are.” “Aye,” Glorfindel conceded, then, with a dry swallow, resolved to tell the toll of it. “I have always felt a particular tenderness for him. When he was but an elfling… I would often have cause to hold him, rather than his brother, to coddle...” The blonde Noldor recalled many a thunderous night, when a white streak of satin would patter across his chamber floor and burrow into his bed. Into his arms, for comfort. “He grew into such an eager student…” The most able he had ever taught. The most graceful… “I am his guardian!! I would never- “ “I understand well, mellon-nin,” Erestor reminded him. “But go on.” “As he approaches his majority…” Glorfindel shut his eyes, as if unwilling to bear witness to his own torment. “My affections have become more… personal, in nature. He… entrances me. His beauty… his sweet temper…” He halts himself, his cheeks burning crimson. “At lessons, I can dismiss this… but I am shamed, Erestor, at night. In private… it shames me.” Erestor regarded his friend with clenched heart. /Curse you, Elrond, for your carelessness./ Cautiously, he approached the trembling elf and lay his hands onto the back of his neck, thumbs stroking the length of his ears. To see one of such valor so beaten by self-beratement, so sickened with unwanted longing, fired Erestor’s will to guide him through the unbidden agony of this accidental binding. The solution, however, would not be pleasing. “There is little wonder you are so afflicted, maltaren-nin,” Erestor explained, with as much gentility as he possessed. “These desires are a natural expression of your…You are bound to him.” Glorfindel’s head flew up; his eyes wide, near-weeping. “Bound?! No…” “I wish it were not so,” the Loremaster continued mournfully. “But I have brewed the potion myself, at least once a year for every year since my majority… the blood of another, diluted, sweetened by tree sap…the draught of betrothal. Of binding.” Erestor paused a moment, his anger overtaking him. “Elrond should have known better. *Afterbirth*!! The very forge of the elfling’s spirit he fed you!!” “He explained it was a potent remedy…” Glorfindel attempted dully. “Aye, if the young one had not already drunk your blood!!” Erestor almost spat, such was his frustration. “The very basics of the binding ceremony… forgive me, meldir, I forget myself.” “You do me great service, Erestor,” Glorfindel dismissed his apologies. “You sing of the regret I must not allow myself.” The blond elf grew quiet a moment, so quiet Erestor’s worry amplified considerably. “Tell me, Loremaster… will I fade?” Strangely, Erestor almost smiled. “You need not,” he related the less-ill news. “You are already bound to him. Unless he – Elbereth forbid it – is killed in battle, you should remain in fair health, your own flint-fire nature and all things considered.” “Spare me the ridicule, if you will, mellon-nin,” Glorfindel whispered. “Aye,” Erestor nodded solemnly. “However, as he reaches his majority, your affections will deepen. Lust will emerge, vicious, consuming. It could very well drive you mad, if unrequited.” “But this is the heart of the matter,” Glorfindel insisted, suddenly animated. “He has not evidenced any similar affections for me. He seems… oddly unaffected, at times, by elf or maid. I am held in some regard, of course, as his tutor, but… my greatest desire for him, Erestor, is freedom. The freedom to chose the mate of his heart.” Erestor absorbed this without comment for some time. At last, he ventured: “I do not doubt the nobility of your intent, mellon-nin. But this freedom you speak of for Elladan does not come without a price.” “I will pay any price,” Glorfindel stated firmly, as if a soldier awaiting orders. “Much as I myself will miss your company,” Erestor began. “You must leave Imladris, for long periods of time. The twins will begin to adventure on their own soon enough, only when they are gone may you return. I caution you not to spend more than a month at a time in their company, and this every decade or so, else the emotions you speak so intently of will become… ferocious. Elrond should have no trouble finding some matter of diplomacy worthy of your attention. If not, simply remind him what caused this trouble to begin with… Time enough will tell if Elladan is felled by a similar binding to you. The only trouble will come if he does marry, and is bound to another.” “I will fade, then, from grief,” Glorfindel guessed easily. “My flame knows well enough the source of its power, it flickers at… at the mere thought of…” Erestor exhaled slowly, rested his brow against his dear friend’s. “Rest awhile, meldir,” Erestor softly advised him. “I will speak with Elrond on your behalf.” Just as Elladan rounded the corner, in search of his tardy teacher, Erestor comforted the gentle Noldor with a tender, utterly platonic kiss. By the time the Loremaster turned away, the room was empty… End of Part One A/N on elvish translations: /Ada/ = Father /Nena/ = Mother /Gwanur/ = Brother /Meldir/ = Friend /Mellon-nin/ = My friend /Maltaren-nin/ = My golden one /nin bellas/ = my strength Title: In Earendil’s Light, Part 2: Near-Death Author: Gloromeien Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan, and some usual suspects… Summary: Just as tragedy strikes the Last Homely House, and old foe proposes an unusual alliance. Rating: PG-15 for mature themes, lust, and angst. You know you love it. 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: Wanted to write something elven and epic, this is my shot. I don’t know if this can be considered AU… as it *does* follow the timeline established by Tolkien, it just ‘fills in’ some scenes he may have ‘left out’… *right*. My story, sticking, etc. Hope you enjoy!! Feedback: Longed for, as always. Dedication: For beautiful Alexias and golden Lysis, for wise Epaminondas and rash Pelopidas. I bow to the Shrine of Iolaus, in the wake of the Sacred Band, and offer up to them this proto-Platonic tale of warrior love. Elf-warrior, that is. *************** Part Two Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,509 As he hurried through the ominous brimstone gables outside the armory, Glorfindel paused a brief moment to survey the much-altered landscape of Imladris. Mighty Earendil loomed above, his sallow beams trickling down as tears from the heavens to bemoan the trying times fallen upon his kin. The captain bowed somberly before the hungry moon, a tattered pearl in a midnight turned scarlet by the raging fires in the valley villages below. The Lady Celebrian was beloved by all. Her people would have their vengeance, if Elrond dared not. Though he had often met up with his Imladrian comrades elsewhere along his travels, often at White Council meetings in Lothlorien, he had not set foot in the Last Homely House for over two thousand years. With telltale severity, Glorfindel regretted that such a calamity as the gentle Celebrian’s abduction and near-fatal rescue by her valiant twins returned him to his now-intemperate home. A chill had descended on Rivendell such that he had never witnessed before. The tree- bows drooped over the shadowed eaves, lifeless yet seeming to tremble, the flowers gathered their petals in as if to swallow themselves whole; even the ardent flow of the Bruinen stilled to a dull trickle. Imladris faded with its Lady, nature her willing servant, slave to her whims. As, he reflected, was her husband in his prolonged hermitage at her bedside. Reluctant to linger too long, Glorfindel swooped up the winding staircase to the Lord’s study, a cloister beneath the eastern peak of the Hall of Fire. Erestor had ostensibly lured Elrond up to this safe-haven on the charge that Arwen need change her mother’s bed-clothes, her father’s presence at such times like a taunt to his wife’s continued desolation. That Elrond was fed this deception without protest spoke volumes of his state of mind. Before the vault-like hearthstone doors, he discovered the dutiful Loremaster. “Mae govannen, mellon-nin,” Glorfindel sung out, before enveloping Erestor in his crushing arms. “Glorfindel!” Erestor cried despite himself, his relief at the guard-captain’s presence almost palpable. The darkling elf returned the embrace with equal fervor; finally someone steady to lean on, after so many months of shouldering a household’s grief. “He has been asking for you, meldir. For weeks, he has begged nothing but your return, your guidance.” Erestor sighed heavily, then rested their foreheads together. “As, I confess, have I…” “How fares my Lady?” Glorfindel quickly inquired, eager for any news that might aid his cause before Elrond. Erestor shut his eyes, then silently retreated from the comfort of his friend’s arms. He could not bring himself to raise his head, such was the truth of the matter’s hold on him. The Loremaster had not yet admitted, even to himself, the defeat of his healing powers by the clinging remnants of Shadow over Celebrian’s blithe spirit. “She is fading,” he somberly explained. “Only the light of Valinor can spare her an eternity in Mandos. She must sail West. She must… depart before winter, else she will…” “But Elrond’s temperance, his wisdom is vital to our people’s survival,” Glorfindel protested vainly. “He cannot leave us!” “He will not,” Erestor confirmed gravely. Glorfindel nodded, once, and sighed as well. /Little wonder the valley grieves for him./ “And the children?” he asked dully. At this, the Loremaster almost allowed himself a smile. “They are children no longer, meldir. Only his injuries keep Elrohir from this meeting, he sits on the Council with his father. Arwen is my storekeeper and scribe; Elladan is in the village as we speak, commanding patrols and keeping peace. He heads our defenses, though he cannot be named captain until you renounce the title.” Erestor examined his friend’s tense features, but found no sign of trouble at Elladan’s naming. “He is… under my command?” the captain queried, with mounting, yet invisible, trepidation. “Elladan’s mettle is of his own making,” Erestor smirked to himself. “He will be charged by none save Elrond, and even then… as you, no doubt, will soon enough discover.” On this lighter note, he gestured towards the doors. “Will you lead this charge, mellon-nin?” “With…-” Glorfindel bit back the word ‘pleasure’, since the task before them would prove anything but pleasurable and perhaps nothing barely resembling successful. They entered without warning. The Lord of Imladris was not to be found at his desk, but gathered into the window seat, his slate gray robes sloppily tucked under him, his tangled braids askew. He resembled, Glorfindel noted almost mirthfully, the twins in their late infancy, disregarding their lessons with studied pouts, keeping relentless vigil at the library windows for their father’s return from Lorien, or Isengard, or simply the village. /Would that Elrond be preoccupied by such trifles now./ “I bring word, my Lord, from afar,” he announced himself without ceremony. Elrond turned, as a ghost might turn, to face him. “Ah, Glorfindel,” he muttered blankly, as if he’d spoken to the guard-captain but minutes before. “What news?” “From Greenwood the Great, my Lord Elrond,” Glorfindel began, unsure if the half-elf was even listening, such was his regard for the light of his father’s star. “Now called the Mirkwood, plagued by Shadow as no other land in Arda. The forest is a blight on the land, a cancer that consumes even the fairest soul.” “What care I for Thranduil’s lair?” Elrond mused, as if sedated. Glorfindel shot a dark glance at Erestor, weary of continuing when Elrond was so bereft, so listless. The Loremaster urged him on. “I have witnessed their defenses firsthand,” Glorfindel explained. “They will not hold another thousand year, without support. The Greenwood will fall to Shadow, and with it the Sindar tribe.” The golden elf moved steadily forward, closing bodily in as his argument encroached upon his morose Lord. “It has begun here as well, in Rivendell. If the villagers are not tempered… they’ll soon welcome Sauron into their hearts. Thus it began, in Mirkwood. The race of men are weak…” “And what must I do to preserve the fiendish race of *men*?!” Elrond seethed, snapping his head around quick as a whip. “Come, Glorfindel, ply me with your words, entreat Thranduil’s favor in this time of my weakness and come to distract me from my purpose with his inflated schemes…” “Be silent, Elrond!” Erestor reproached him in a tone Glorfindel never thought possible from one so docile. “You will hear reason, else I will ship her off at dawn’s first light. Do you hear?!” At this, the Lord of Imladris seemed to visibly shrink into the pillows beneath him. “What can I do, my captain,” he whispered. “What service may I offer them, when I cannot even keep my own… my own…” Elrond swallowed a coarse lump of shame, both at his outburst and at his vulnerability, but he pushed on. “They have ruined her. She will not touch me, nor anyone save Arwen... How can I rule, evenly, wisely, when my heart has been defeated…?” With near-feral resolution, Glorfindel knelt beside his Lord. “Elrond, in these treacherous times even Thranduil has pushed beyond the wounds of old,” the guard-captain hastened to insist. “He, too, lost his Queen to fading. She was abducted from the very tent they rested in, raped and held ransom for weeks. He could not spare her from Mandos… His Greenwood is spoilt, festering with Shadow, his sons hunted for sport.” He paused to allow this grim news to sink in, then played the last of his terrible hand. “Thranduil proposes an alliance of elves, between Lorien, Mirkwood, and Imladris. He journeys here as we speak to court you. I have heard his proposal. I believe it vital for our survival, for the protection of the children. *All* our dearest elflings, whether grown or newly born.” At this, Elrond scoffed, but Glorfindel knew he had struck him. “No elfling has been born to Rivendell for two thousand years.” “No,” the golden elf admitted. “But one was born to Mirkwood.” Even Erestor struggled to absorb this announcement. “The Queen bore another child?” Elrond gasped openly. “But she is seven hundred years my senior!” Glorfindel nodded softly, allowing the rarity of this event to humble them. “A son, five years ago,” he continued with considerable reverence. “Legolas.” “’Greenleaf’, in the ancient tongue,” Erestor softly commented, the import of the moment weighing on him. “A clear portent, my Lord.” “Aye,” Elrond stated firmly, rising for the first time. “Fear not, my brave captain. I commend you your foresight in this matter. I will welcome Thranduil as a brother, and open myself to his regard.” Briefly, he turned back to the window, his gaze stretching up to again meet Earendil’s light. “Hannon le, Ada.” * * * After a brief discussion of the necessities and preparations for the Mirkwood King’s impending arrival, both Erestor and Elrond retired to Celebrian’s chamber, the former to check on her condition and the latter to fret over it. Glorfindel regretted the lost opportunity of another debriefing with the raptly observant Loremaster, but the hour was late, his day’s journey arduous, and the famed Imladrian mineral baths beckoned his weary limbs. First, however, he must tend to an old friend. Even as the first echoes of his footsteps sounded on the path, Asfaloth readied the look of a horse forsaken in the name of diplomacy; hastily tied to a tree far from the trough, the hay bales, amidst riotous calls and the fumes of vengeance from the valley beyond. Thus, summarily abandoned by her preoccupied master. When finally his precious steed came into view, Asfaloth’s pout was so miserably rendered as to immediately draw tenderness and sympathy from the gracious Noldor. “There, now, my soft one,” he cooed, stroking the bristled hide of her cheek and nuzzling her nose. “Did I not swear I would be quick? Hardly an hour gone and I am done, say nothing of the bold colors of the view to distract and amaze you.” The horse snorted, reared, and settled back down when Glorfindel pulled a handful of pilfered carrots from his pouch. While Asfaloth chomped noisily on the contraband treats, her master unlaced her reins and gently guided her towards the stable. As they made their rather fatigued way across the yard, two kohl- black Warmbloods galloped past, their ebony flanks rippling like sails in the moonlight over well-muscled flesh. On the fearsome steeds rode equally imposing horsemen, elves of feral might, their braids woven in the manner of the Rohirrim and their armor just as frugally wrought. Only on second glance did Glorfindel note that the further rider was indeed a man of Edoras, no elf at all. When the first dismounted, however, the captain held little care for the second, who took charge of unbridling both battle horses. The first rider wore the colors of patrol captain. After whispered thanks to his Warmblood, Elladan swiftly threw off his weapons, no doubt anxious to report back to his father of the riots in the village. Glorfindel soon realized he would not have known him but for his armor colors, so changed was he from his minority. Where once the potential for beauty lay waiting, beauty now reigned. His face was crisp, aquiline, but betrayed a softness in the arc of his temples, the dulled joint of his jaw, the cream cast of his skin and his voluptuous lips. If his profile was blessed with a noble, elven grace, his body, though markedly fluid in movement, was forged by his Numenorian ancestry. Easily a half-foot taller than Elrond, Elladan was as trim, sinuous, and trained as a prize thoroughbred. Swaths of taut muscle slithered beneath his battle-smeared skin; his rough yet nimble fingers alone seemed capable of crushing an Orc skull with one bare hand. Mouth perilously dry, Glorfindel struggled to quell the titanic, near-incessant waves of feeling flooding through him. His person suitably unbridled, Elladan strode briskly out into the yard, then stopped cold. He stood, caught, confounded by the sight before him for a long moment, then, repossessing himself, bowed in deference. “My Captain,” the new, velvet-thick voice addressed him, causing the blonde elf to barely restrain himself from a jolting shudder. “The guard is honored by your presence, and heartened by your safe return.” Touched by his dedication – by everything about this gallant, implacable young warrior, Glorfindel bowed his head in formal acknowledgement, then raised it with an ample smile. “Elladan,” he culled. “It is I. There is no need for…” Glorfindel sighed as the Prince approached him, his effortless attraction giving way to a tutor’s pride. “My, but you are glorious.” Elladan flushed deeply at the remark, unsure of how best to welcome him, how close he wished to get. He remained aloft, uncertain, even somewhat bashful now that formality was dismissed. “My scouts reported a sojourn in the Mirkwood,” he ventured. “Is there news?” “Your *scouts*? “ Glorfindel inquired with bemusement, to mask his growing admiration. “Aye, my guard,” Elladan reproached, chafing under the duress of his unchecked feelings. “Those under my command.” His quicksilver eyes bore into his long-lost tutor, a deep-seeded frustration surfacing. Glorfindel was taken aback. “It was I who tracked the pack that held my Nena, and I who slew the orc that bound her. Elrohir carried her for miles after the cave and scared off the pack of Nazgul hunting her. You’ll find him much altered as well. Best prepare yourself.” With another curt bow, as well as a hint of a smirk, he made his departure. “Captain.” Before Glorfindel could fathom the first glimmer of a response, he’d cleared the path behind. * * * First came the eyes. The blue of a flame’s cool center, of glaciers melting to spring-water under Arien’s lapping rays, twinkling from behind the indigo folds of his father’s riding cloak; then his fingers, like shards from a shattered moonstone, already with a telltale callous at the lower joint of his left index. Last, when he shyly tucked back a thatch of cornsilk from his close-cropped hair, came the delicate teardrop ear, tuning itself to the hush of the Rivendell valley, so unlike the seething quiet of the perilous Mirkwood. Elrond relaxed his lips, his now perpetually furrowed brow, and opened his hands towards the weary company. Thranduil performed a deep, accomplished bow, but said nothing, waiting for the wood-nymph gathered against him to abandon his tree-tall legs and escape into view. Glorfindel and Erestor, at Elrond’s side, both took a step back, fearing their combined presence intimidated the little one. At last, the elfling sprung out, his speed astonishing his elders. Before they could adjust their agile eyes, he waited, below, for their acknowledgement, his own twin pools absorbing every gesture, every twitch. The petals of his lips curled mirthfully, secretively, as if holding some particularly savory observation captive. “Suilad, Laiqalsse,” Elrond greeted him with immediate fondness. “Nai tiruvantel ar varyuvantel i Valar tielyanna nu vilya.” The tiny elf’s eyes grew wide with wonder at the strange tongue, then whipped back to meet his father’s, though he dared not retreat. Thranduil nodded softly, urging him on. “Mae govannen,” he lilted, struggling to keep his voice steady. “We are indeed well-met, pen-neth,” Elrond replied encouragingly, switching to the more familiar Sindarin. “I have longed to make your acquaintance.” The easily comprehended words seemed to shock the elfling all the more. He fixed his quivering gaze on Elrond, as if puzzling out the strange duality of his existence, then bit back a rising smirk. Just as suddenly, he threw himself onto the peredhil and fiercely hugged his legs. For the first time in many weeks, Elrond’s rich laugh boomed through the courtyard. Glorfindel and Erestor exchanged a pointed look of relief, then sighed in unison. Meanwhile, Elrond had scooped the mercurial Prince of Mirkwood up into his arms. Little Legolas wasted no time in reaching out to the gentle Lord, smoothing an opalline fingertip along the edge of his regal ear. The Half-Elven blinked one, twice, thrice, the meager touch reaching to the core of him, but resisted the crutch of indulgent sorrow. With this simple gesture, the spindly, golden elfling unwittingly mended the tares in Elrond’s heart, as well as the fraying blanket of peace over lush Imladris. He was, indeed, an uncounted blessing. * * * At one with the night’s stillness, Elladan brushed a tender hand over his twin’s damp forehead, then knelt to kiss his brow. He gathered himself into a seat nearby, tucking Elrohir’s flushed arm between his own. This new, most potent fever had assaulted him the previous morning, most likely the result of over- exertion and, Elladan noted sourly, his brother’s determination to sit at their father’s council with Thranduil. The elf-warrior himself cared little for the minutiae of negotiation, but Elrohir thrived in such instances, especially those of such historic significance for their kind. Indeed, in a private moment, his brother had confided ample misgivings about this alliance to him; that their fates, their own personal freedoms might somehow be a subject for debate, for obligation. They were, after all, the heirs to Imladris, as well as her chief guardians. This trenchant anxiety had no doubt spiked the lingering strains of his long sickness into the white hot surge of fever, thus bedding him before the meeting had even begun. Now, as the two elven Lords thrashed out their desperate pact in the Halls of Fire, the twins haunted the Halls of Healing: Elladan cast as troubled spirit and Elrohir as shell of himself. Elladan sighed, shut his eyes. As in weeks past, he sunk down into himself, stretched the sinuous weave of his soul’s eternal flame out through his soothing touch, and linked the slinky tendrils to the ephemeral center of their twinness. With learned calm, he poured the balming heat of his wellness into the heady flow between them, filtering out the dense clots of fever, until the stream ran liquid pure. Elrohir’s eyes fluttered, once, then settled into a heavy, healing sleep. Elladan slipped carefully out of their shared core, regaining consciousness, but allowed a soft fugue to linger over them, stalling his retreat. His spirit’s touch may have dispelled the fever, yet Elladan feared his twin might never fully recover from the scratch of the Nazgul’s claw, the three blood-flecked scars of which were branded across his left eye. Though spared from blindness, the elf-knight had lain comatose for well over a month, only regaining consciousness, and a glimmer of strength, the week before. Erestor and Arwen had dug out the most arcane volumes in their library in search of an undiscovered treatment, though not a one, no matter how obscure or questionable, had been refused him. Elladan himself felt only time would prove the difference between tolerable and intolerable difficulties once recovery had set in, despite the cloying fear of never again being able to ride with Elrohir at his side. Erestor was solid, determined, but terribly cautious, a point of contention between Loremaster and apprentice, who ceaselessly muttered under her breath about an ‘alternative’ Erestor would swiftly deem ‘unthinkable’ and then dismiss. Elladan, with little enough patience for this ridiculous indecision, had literally taken matters into his own hands, returning nightly to Elrohir’s bedside for a course of remedial soul-linking. The results, he proudly noted, proved increasingly favorable. As his thoughts turned inward, the elf-warrior swallowed a tight knot of frustration. If only the same could be said of the loneliness that plagued him. With Glorfindel returned, the fog of indecision had enveloped anew, along with torrents of unchecked affections, which he had repressed for two entire millennia. The shadow of his great regard for his tutor had been cast over every last one of his lovers, no tenderness was as sweet as one the guard-captain might bestow, no gift as knowing, no sacrifice as selfless. Ever since their awkward reunion by the stables, he’d thought of little else but the blonde Noldor, their every subsequent interaction bubbling with promise. Should he reveal himself? Dismiss him for his prolonged, insulting absence? Pledge allegiance, and fight not with him, but against the tide of doubt and singeing desire that daily threatened to overwhelm the garrison-strong emotional defenses of a sworn soldier? At the least, Elladan acknowledged, he no longer believed him beloved of Erestor, who presently tread a romantic minefield far more treacherous than his own. This, however, was poor consolation. His keen mind resolutely overcome by the matters of his timid heart, Elladan replaced his sleeping brother’s hand, slipped out the back of the Healing Hall, and wandered out, into the solace of the trees. He ambled along the starlit track without notice of his way, all paths at Rivendell leading to somewhere familiar and beloved. In some small fashion, Elladan was grateful to calamity, not for the harm it dealt his dear family, but for the chance to return home. Their journeying through the lands of men, though a vital schooling in the skills of warriors, diplomats, and - if he was honest - lovers, had kept him from these kindly hills, the sanctuary of their valley and their parent’s home, for too long. Elladan knew well that, if a time of peace should return, so would his restlessness. Perhaps the time had come for a bond that resisted all forms of severance: distance, duty… even, in death, the waiting at Mandos. As if Elbereth herself had guided him through the ederwood bows, Elladan came upon his father, shroud in a haze of deep thought by the riverside. The prince was somewhat taken aback to find the Lord of Imladris alone, not busy attending his guests, but Elladan also well knew how Elrond valued reflection in times of indecision. He wagered Thranduil had given him much to reflect upon. Careful to tread loudly enough to announce himself, Elladan perched on a nearby stone and waited, drinking in the cool, settled night. His gaze floated up into the star- pricked firmament; soon near-bedazzled by Earendil’s soothing luminescence. As long as his grandfather watched over them, Imladris would be safe. To his own surprise, Elladan found himself speaking first. “Was your Ada as brilliant in life as he is in the heavens, Ada?” Elrond blinked thoughtfully, coming out of his own contemplation. “Even more so, some might well say.” “I wish I had known him,” Elladan remarked, oblivious to the effect this might have. “Aye,” Elrond nodded briefly, but could not say more. “I, too, wish… but my wishes are for naught. The time is as now, and my choices…” “Thranduil has provoked you,” Elladan snorted, displease. “I thought as much.” “I am provoked by his arguments,” Elrond admitted. “But it is the rightness of them that stirs me.” He unwound his legs from beneath him, letting his slender feet dip into the Bruinen. “The time has come to clean the slate, Elladan, in hopes that past wrongs can in some manner be employed as the foundation for a new alliance. A new generation of elves will reign before long, unburdened by our dark history. Your brother Elrohir, of such momentous heart, will be well-sung for his foresight, long after I have departed these shores and my part in this joining is long forgotten…” “Ada, are you well?” Elladan asked, the melancholy timbre of his father’s voice alerting him to deeper sorrows. “What has been decided? Why do you speak so of Elrohir?” Elrond inwardly reproached himself such candor, gripping a solid hand over the prince’s. “There will be an alliance, between Imladris and Mirkwood,” he elaborated. “Your brother… the last elfling has been born to Arda, my brave one. The signs surround us even now; Thranduil, Galadriel, and I are agreed. The time of the elves is fading as your mother fades, there are no young maids in the royal houses to provide future heirs. Alliances must be forged with purer metal, strengthened through the binding of male with male.” Elladan gasped, guessing his father’s folly. “He is betrothed,” Elladan barked, as his mind raced towards some alternative. “You have promised him to Mithbrethil!” “Mithbrethil is longtime bound, as is Luinaelin,” Elrond explained, with ample patience for the ever-more tempestuous twin. Elladan’s face dropped. “The elfling.” “Aye,” Elrond all but whispered. “Ada, why have you done this?!” the elf-warrior exclaimed, fighting to contain his hurt and merely voice his anger. “On the morrow, it will be done,” Elrond clarified, but did not yield to his temper. “It will strengthen him. He will recover quickly, because of it.” Elladan fisted his hands, battling against the ferocity of his objections. Elrond valued calm, reasoned thoughts, would not entertain any other, especially from one so well-instructed in the art of debate. Quaking with tightly bound frustration, Elladan failed to see any logical reason his beloved twin need be betrothed to an elf not a decade in years, and thus could fashion no argument to unravel this lapse in his father’s judgment. This wrongheaded choice, added to the frailty of his emotional state… Elladan sunk his head into his now open hands, defeated. Then, a solution. “I will do it, if it is to be done, Ada,” he implored. “I will guide the young one, and learn him well. Perhaps, when he is older… He may prove of some interest…” Elladan could not go on, so distasteful was the thought. Elrond, his senses frayed after a long day of debating these same issues, sighed deeply. He searched vainly for some reserves of compassion, then discovered a vital, ever-valid point. He considered this intrusion a moment - as it tread on terrain who’s existence Elladan rarely admitted to even himself, but decided this was the only course to convince him. “But I cannot allow you, nin bellas, to stifle the silent, constant song of your own heart’s longing,” he ventured with unnerving calm. Elladan stared at his father, struck dumb. “Your love for him has been mislaid these long years of his journeying, but his return… You reproach me for binding Elrohir to an elfling, but you yourself were one so young, so green to the world and yet afflicted by a passion so fierce that it has yet to abate.” Elladan fell to stillness, as if willing himself to evaporate. Elrond paused a moment; then, with a glance at the heavens, pressed on. “It would hearten me to know that both my sons were well-matched. Guarded from the Shadow’s claw and ever-steadied by the bonds of love. Have you given no thought to… declaring yourself?” Still unable to meet his father’s eyes, Elladan rasped tightly: “I have thought of nothing else since his arrival. Since his departure, before my majority…” “As long as that?” Elrond gasped, unaware. “Longer, still,” he confessed, seeing no reason to hide the rest, as his father had thoroughly discovered him. “I recall a time when I knew not the naming of such a feeling…but not a time when I bore no love for him.” Impressed by the enormity of Elladan’s admission, Elrond felt his blood surge with the promise of this union. “Then you also should be betrothed,” he concluded confidently, even if Elladan betrayed no such confidence in the matter. “I will see to it.” “No, Ada,” Elladan halted him, far more urgently than he intended. How would he confront Glorfindel, if he could not maintain his composure before his own kin? “It is my charge. I will speak with him.” “These affairs, Elladan, are best conducted formally,” Elrond advised him. “But I would not have a ‘formal’ union, Ada,” Elladan insisted, with such sincerity as Elrond had never afore witnessed in him. “I would… Forgive my impertinence, but I have no wish of another who mistakes himself my father.” As his silver eyes took on the glint of starlight, the darkling elf retreated into the familiarity of their bond. “That I have suits me well enough, indeed.” His meaning easily accepted, Elrond slapped him playfully on the back. “Very well, then. May Elbereth guide you on a fair path in this, for it is no little thing to ask another’s hand in love.” With a halting sigh, Elladan nodded softly, feeling the cloak of his burden drape over him anew. * * * The crisp breeze of an overcast sky swooped through the high-set windows of the Hall of Healing, along the bulbous slope of the arches, and into the stagnant, invisible fumes of fever evaporating from Elrohir’s cooling skin. When the pin- prick wind brushed across his cheek, he snortled, as if roused by the touch of a phantom admirer. The sharp intake of air caught in his constricted throat, forcing him awake in a fit of thick, razing coughs. Wheezing, he grappled for the pitcher on the nightstand and sloppily poured himself a cup of water; spitting up almost as much as he managed to gulp down when another cough would rip through. After several clumsy attempts, he succeeded in drinking enough to settle himself, then eased his spinning head back onto the now-soaked pillow. The damp of the fabric proved soothing. Elrohir nestled an aching temple into the sweat-ripe folds, anxious to steady his swooning and focus on his surroundings. Finally, his wooziness lessened to mere light-headedness. His breathing suitably recovered, his gaze traveled across the still, gray room. The realization that he was indeed home slowly penetrated, as his heavy eyes gleaned over the curtained doorway, the armoire of curatives and herbal potions, the dormant hearth, the other, empty cots, and the visitor’s stools collected in the far corner. Only when he turned on his side did he nearly jump back, at the first, unfathomable sight of a flaxen-haired elfling curled against the backboard of the bed to his right. Elrohir had never seen an elfling before, let alone a child of wholly elven descent, though there was no doubt in his mind that this precious creature was, indeed, that. /But how can that... – *he* – be?/ Impossibly clear blue eyes peered over clenched kneecaps, his barricade of legs secured mid-calf by two white-knuckled hands. The peaks of his nimble ears took on a hummingbird’s blurred quiver, the only trace of fear in his contained, self- armored stance. The fitful stirrings of the formerly comatose must have startled him, the darkling elf reasoned, only further adding to his abandonment in what must be an unfamiliar environment. Small wonder the little one hadn’t climbed into the chimney to hide, Elrohir reflected, also noting the preternatural poise in the elfling’s position. He was equally protected and ready to pounce. /A fighter, then./ “Havo dad, pen-neth,” Elrohir cooed, slowly rising up on his elbows so as not to further intimidate him. “I mean you no harm.” Fiercely blues eyes never wavering, the elfling loosened his grip on his legs. “I am Elrohir, son of Lord Elrond and prince of Imladris.” Elrohir hoped these titles were familiar to him. He dared not press him, preferring that the little golden-hair calm sufficiently to present himself. Suddenly, an indecipherable mix of nausea and hunger bit deep, squeezing the delicate lining of his empty stomach. He sunk back down into the covers, his own arms protectively encircling his abdomen. The elfling’s questioning gaze turned instantly sympathetic; he scampered to the edge of his bed. “Sick?” he squeaked out. “My wound,” the elf-knight explained, despite his discomfort. “It curdles my hunger, to keep me from taking nourishment.” Only then did he consider the effect this revelation might have on one so young. “Yrch?” the elfling queried excitedly, his trepidation forgotten in an instant. “Nazgul,” Elrohir corrected. He lifted pained eyes in time to see the little one’s widen with rapt admiration. “You have fought the black riders?” the elfling breathed in a rush, as if to utter their very name would curse him. “I had no choice,” he mused. “They had my Nena.” At that, the little elf’s face softened, a similar regret echoed in his fine features. He momentarily drew into himself, a shockingly mature desolation seeming to overtake him. Elrohir, content with that, slumped onto his back and begged sleep for his weary bones. Moments before his surrender to the blackness, a dull patter sounded at his side. He looked up to see the elfling above him, now somehow on his bed, curiously examining his battered torso, his sallow face. He at once noticed the scarlet slit on the plum of the child’s upper arm, mended and bound with the usual wraithseed compress. Only then, when the young one laid a warm hand over his stomach, did the unfamiliar scar on his own wrist begin to singe. “From where do you hail, pen-neth?” he posed calmly, though the blood sung within him at the elfling’s balming touch. “What is your name?” “Legolas,” he replied, his lips curling into a pensive smile. “I am of Mirkwood.” As the elfling laid his head onto the elf-knight’s undulating chest, Elrohir wondered at this strange occurrence. Had Thranduil invaded the Rivendell valley? Were his kindred slain? Had he been taken captive? Drugged? Ransomed? Or was some greater mischief unleashed on the Last Homely House by the wolves of Mordor? As he contemplated the repercussions of these bleak scenarios, Elrohir absently stroked a finger along the downy rim of the little elfling’s ear. * * * Setting himself an even, leisurely pace, Glorfindel followed Erestor’s earth-toned Loremaster’s robes through the mist-shroud paths of the forest, their patient strides masking the thunderous reasoning of both their minds, the inner struggle to make some sense out of the unrepentant events of the past few hours. After the brief ceremony of betrothal, Elrond had retreated to Celebrian’s chambers, once again abandoning his two chieftains to the uneasy contemplation of their part in the archaic ritual. Erestor, ever fretful, was the first to give voice on the matter. “The air is sharp,” he murmured. “Out of season.” “As is the time,” Glorfindel chimed in. “It weighs on me, meldir. Why couldn’t the ritual wait on his recovery?” “Thranduil would return to his kingdom,” Erestor mused. “His presence here targets Rivendell, and calamity has so recently struck…” “Then why come at all, when my message would suffice?” Glorfindel grumbled. “I feel I have been a pawn in this, Loremaster. I never heard talk of betrothal when in Mirkwood, this mischief was planned en route, if at all. I like it not.” “Nor I, mellon-nin,” the comely elf agreed, his lips soured into a moue. “But it is done.” “Aye,” the guard-captain near-snarled. “Elrohir is now plagued as I have been. The elfling I once coddled now betrothed to one as dear and innocent as he was, when I held him… It burns me, Erestor!!” Glorfindel turned his head to spit, so thick was his mouth with disgust. “I have spent my energies protecting Elladan’s virtue, when all this time I knew not the risk to Elrohir. I have failed him, meldir. I have failed them all…” Erestor inhaled deeply, then rushed out his collected breath. The guilt seared to his very core, spurred by Glorfindel’s brash admission. The Loremaster could find no words to comfort him, as his own shame singed the edges of every potential argument. All, save one. “Take heart,” Erestor counseled, attempting to convince himself as he strived to convince the captain. “Perhaps now… you may be free to indulge your own heart’s longings.” “How can that be?” Glorfindel demanded, incensed. “Elladan assented to his twin’s binding to an elfling, he will no doubt give audience to any green suitor Elrond may chose for him, ignorant of his own heart’s pining: Orthilor of Cirdan’s blood, or Lintharos the frail, or that brash Haldir of the Galadhrim.” “H-Haldir,” Erestor blanched, then swallowed hard. “He is promised to Arwen.” “Is he?!” Glorfindel snarked with further outrage. “Then perhaps before long they will beget a husband for Elrond’s younger son!” “Perhaps,” Erestor echoed, unthinking. “Mellon-nin, I must inform you of -“ Before the Loremaster could bleat out his confession, a rather spry Elladan was upon them. “Mae govannen, Lambengolmor,” the elf-warrior smirked archly, his quicksilver eyes brimming. “Such gloomy faces, on this day of such… promise.” “You are mirthful, Elladan,” Erestor immediately commented, to allow his friend time to recover himself from the shock of this sudden appearance. The guard- captain’s temper was immediately chastened; in its stead a dreadful stillness came over him, a palpable, perilously brittle restraint. Little wonder, with Elladan so cheerful and mysteriously out of character. “A convoy, from Lorien, will shortly arrive,” he appraised them. “Lord Celeborn, attended by Galadhrim… the fair Haldir among them.” He arched a potent eyebrow, anticipating the Loremaster’s befuddled reaction. Erestor did not disappoint, though Glorfindel shot the preoccupied elf a look of burnished triumph. “When… are they… expected?” the now-shuddering Loremaster managed, clamping his jaw shut to silence his chattering teeth. “Presently,” Elladan ambiguously added, delighting in his Lore-tutor’s ample fidgets. “Best you return home to… prepare yourself, aye, Erestor?” “Well judged, my brave one,” he quickly acknowledged, then beat an astoundingly rapid retreat from the still forest. Even Glorfindel could not help but mark this transformation. “Has Erestor some grudge with Celeborn, pen-neth?” Swallowing the urge to reproach him for the condescension, Elladan focused on the matter at hand and instead remarked: “Has your company been so sparse these long years as to not recognize the pangs of early love, Captain?” “Love?!” Glorfindel exclaimed, the trappings inherent in the discussion unnerving him. He steadied his galloping breaths with iron resolve. “Erestor is in love with Lord Celeborn?” /He’s been nothing but comfort to me, and all these years his heart’s suffered…/ Elladan laughed outright, relishing his power to unmoor both his elders. “Celeborn?” he chuckled, in studied amazement. “A treacherous climb that would be. But our dear Loremaster has envisioned an even more perilous peak to conquer.” Elladan paused to savor the moment, Glorfindel waiting on his every word. “The beauteous Haldir, son of Fearolin.” “The reputed guard-captain of Lorien,” Glorfindel alighted on the reason for Erestor’s anxiety. “Who does not in any case favor the binding of male to male spirit.” “The very same,” Elladan frowned, the weight of the matter finally sinking down. “Ada has bravely taken up their cause by promising Arwen to Haldir, so that he may come to visit Imladris at times when the Shadow’s threat on Lorien abates. But with Celeborn’s accompaniment… perhaps they will at last be bound, and their love revealed.” Elladan smiled sweetly at the thought, turning inward. Leaning back on a birchwood trunk, Glorfindel contemplated this welcome news, as well as the manner in which it was related to him. With Elladan fallen quiet, he allowed his gaze to linger over his hush, regal features, their secrets tightly held. Too long had he let his own closely-checked feelings rule his every action towards the young prince, as witnessed in his reactions just moments before. If he was to truly protect Elladan from this knowledge, then he must regain his favor. This strategy would prove costly to Glorfindel himself, but would no doubt aid his former charge. “And what of your heart, pen-neth?” he ventured. “Is there not some blithe elf- maid that entrances you? Or perhaps, no doubt to Fearolin’s regret, one of the bracing Galadhrim that’s won you with his steel and strength?” The stony eyes that met him hit hard, choke-deep. Then, to the guard-captain’s shock, they moistened. “There is one I favor,” Elladan confessed, his voice shred raw. “Though I am unmannered in these gentle ways, and know not how to…how to express…” He bit into his bottom lip, as if to restrain some untamed truth. Glorfindel pushed off the birchwood and approached him with practiced vigilance, he himself not entirely suited to such gentility. He rested a strong, comforting hand between his charge’s tense shoulder-blades, leaning in to encourage intimacy. Such proximity urged him further on, but he grit his teeth and bested it. “Ada has made it known that he wishes me soon betrothed,” Elladan confided. “Has he suggested other suitors?” the guard-captain inquired. “Does he not approve of your choice?” Elladan shook his head. “He approves it well. I did not think my… my will in this could be granted, yet he himself suggested him, unprovoked.” “Then what stays your happiness, pen-neth?” Glorfindel asked, readying himself for the blow. With halted breaths, Elladan opened his mouth to speak, but found his voice momentarily absent. As a warrior, he had stared down legions of orcs, a host of the Shadow’s minions, the deadly Nazgul themselves, but one look into Glorfindel’s patient, compassionate eyes and his heart was cleft in twain. After two thousand years of searching, he had yet to uncover the compound argument, the eloquent turn of phrase that might victoriously woo the hallowed favor of the Balrog-slayer. Glorfindel had known two lifetimes worth of lovers, what quality could his own troublesome tenacity possess that would trounce their cherished charms? Elladan clung tight to his one indisputable strength of character – his stubbornness – and trod the path of righteousness. “I await but your reply, my Captain,” he murmured to him. “To the question that has yet to challenge you. Would you consent to… to…” Caught by Glorfindel’s wondering stare, unable to longer bear this shaming torment, Elladan pushed into his guardian’s arms and brushed a timorous, unwaveringly tender kiss over his soft mouth. As quietly as he’d come on, Elladan sprung back, his spine instantly sparked with tension, his nerves alight. In his astonishment, Glorfindel unwittingly leaned further into him, reeling from the far, far too brief contact, his senses in a tail-spin, overcome by momentous feeling. “And… and Elrond…?” he mumbled, felled by Elladan’s continued proximity. “He consents,” the prince assured him. “And… when…?” “A fortnight,” Elladan bleated, the significance of the moment near roasting him through. “That is, if… no other journey…” “There is none,” he confirmed. His mind, his reason now entirely engulfed by the surge of his eternal flame, Glorfindel rested his head on Elladan’s stiff shoulder; this tenuous contact enough to sear his cheek with the heat pouring from him. Never, the Noldor swore to himself, would he know of the bond forged in his infancy, of the link that now swells his heart to bursting, such is its command, its sway. Glorfindel, rallying, rose to meet those molten mithril eyes, this last requirement vital to their proposed union. “And you, Elladan… you choose… freely?” “Aye,” he breathed voicelessly, stunned silent. “Then… *Aye*, pen-neth,” Glorfindel finally consented, holding fast to his trembling charge. “Aye?” Elladan gasped, his flush face draining fast. “You… you would…?” Elladan’s resulting sigh gusted more mightily than all the winds of Arda melded into one. He stood up, straight, proud, and enveloped Glorfindel in a look of such intense regard that the Noldor blushed a fierce crimson. Once again, he met his waiting mouth, but this time as a lover would, with passion, with promise; and, like a true connoisseur of such delicacies, he did not linger. “A fortnight, then,” he concluded, catching Glorfindel’s hand in his own and sweetly caressing the palm. “I will presently announce us to my Lord and father.” With a final, glorious smile, Elladan bowed in deference, then strode off into the mist; leaving Glorfindel amidst the clouds, to ponder whether the prince had been, somehow, a vision, or a waking dream. End of Part Two A/N: Significance of the names of Legolas’ brother (and you thought I just pulled them out of my head): Mithbrethil – mith = gray, brethil = silver birches, therefore the ‘gray/silver birches’ (of which I’m told there are plenty in Mirkwood). Luinaelin – luin = blue, aelin = lake, therefore the ‘blue lake’ Mostly, others who’ve named them pick names that I don’t find lyrical enough. Legolas is such a sweeping, beautifully fashioned name. Why wouldn’t his brothers have similar names, also associated with nature? Exactly. Elvish Translations: Quenya: /Suilad, Laiqalasse/ = Greetings, Legolas /Nai tiruvantel ar varyuvantel i Valar tielyanna nu vilya./ = May the Valar protect you on your path under the sky. /Lambengolmor/ = Loremaster Sindarin: /mellon-nin/ or /meldir/ = my friend /pen-neth/ = little one /nin bellas/ = my strength /Mae govannen/ = well met, or welcome /gwanur/ = brother /Nena/ = mother /Ada/ = father Title: In Earendil’s Light, Part 3: Bound Author: Gloromeien Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan, Legolas/Elrohir Summary: Glorfindel and Ellandan are re-bound in… no one is sure, exactly. Rating: R for lust, mature themes, and angst. You know you love it. 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: Wanted to write something elven and epic, this is my shot. I don’t know if this can be considered AU… as it *does* follow the timeline established by Tolkien, it just ‘fills in’ some scenes he may have ‘left out’… *right*. My story, sticking, etc. Hope you enjoy!! Feedback: Longed for, as always. Dedication: For beautiful Alexias and golden Lysis, for wise Epaminondas and rash Pelopidas. I bow to the Shrine of Iolaus, in the wake of the Sacred Band, and offer up to them this proto-Platonic tale of warrior love. Elf-warrior, that is. *************** Part Three Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,510 Elladan eyed the finery spread across his bed, and sighed. He lazily fingered the leaves of gold woven into his wreath-crown, as he inspected the custom-made - and customary - ornaments before him: a tunic of near-diaphanous azure gauze, blue velvet leggings lined with gold embroidery, varnished warg-hide boots, a chain-link vest of stunning mithril ore, a basket of perfumes, lotions, flowers, hair clasps, all to refine his virile essence, all to mask his brute edain ancestry. He tossed the crown into the center, then crossed his arms over his broad chest. “Come, gwanur, you must choose,” Elrohir beckoned from his seat on the window ledge. As soon as he had uttered the urging, he pursued his own by looking out, into the melancholy, yet temperate day. Beyond the elliptical glass, on the paths below, Erestor strolled with Haldir. Between them hung a squirming, all-too-familiar flaxen-haired elfling. The lovers each clung to a gangly arm, lifting the little elf as they went, then swinging him back and forth. Legolas gamely gave himself up to them; the rapturous peals of his giggles sounding faintly through the thick glass. Before long, he’d mastered the rhythm of their movements, improvising a back-flip, a suspended summersault, a launch-and-roll. Again and again he returned to their arms, plying them with a gleeful smile to more challenging levels of agility. Elrohir was heartened to see others suitably plied by the young Mirkwood prince’s mercurial charms. Elladan observed his engrossed twin a moment, smirked, then glared down at the various textures of ribbon to be woven into his braids: silver, indigo, aquamarine, violet. Who was this elf that would be bound to the mighty Balrog-slayer? Surely not the one who had wooed and won him; an elf who’d rode five hundred years with the Rohirrim, who slept in the stables he’d daily scrubbed, had learned to smith the welts in his armor, and had once scaled the sheer face of the Mark with only the use of his hands. Wither this brave elf; unmatched in swordsmanship, patrol lieutenant, border-guard, archer of considerable skill, and noted for his fearsome tenacity? / I have never rested on my titles. Yet on this most precious day, I am named by them alone./ “I have a length of rawhide, from Tuor’s scabbard,” Elladan announced, with such a determination that Elrohir knew any protest would be futile. “An unexpected gift from Glorfindel, the day of our majority, by special courier.” He disregarded another sharp look from his twin, as he rifled through his chest of arms. “It will honor him.” “If he can claim to notice black leather in one of raven hue,” Elrohir reproached him. “And there is but one length of it. What of the other side?” “It will not look so ill, with double plaiting,” Elladan brusquely explained. Elrohir exhaled longly, too weak still to mount any suitable defense against his mulish twin. “Elladan, you are to be bound, not called to arms,” he chided, his gaze again wandering out of doors to the training fields beyond. “The traditional manner of braiding -“ “I am a warrior and a marksman, not a maid,” Elladan growled at him, the nervousness that underlay these brash commands readily exposed. “This luxury mocks outright the respect I bear him, as guard-captain, as guardian, as tutor, as warrior-“ “As lover?” Elrohir smirked from his perch. “These ‘luxuries’, as you say, are but a part of your duty as a prince to his subjects. They do not lessen; they enhance the beauty of what you are. And you are, gwanur-nin, an elf of rare allure, as Glorfindel himself will no doubt uncover, when these trappings are shed and you are bare before him. Is this, perhaps, what truly concerns you?” “I would not brand it ‘concern’,” he offered, now grown bashful. “Longing, perhaps… anticipation… *desire*.” He absently wound the thin leather strap around his hand, lingering on the idea of their future intimacy. “Aye, he is desired. Hopelessly so…” “Such skills, he must possess, in the ways of love,” the elf-knight teased, unable to resist. “Two lifetimes, a host of people from which he has studied well…” Elrohir considered this a moment, then judged Elladan luckier than he’d first suspected. He gestured towards the armchair before the mirror, as the time for preparations crept slowly away. “Aye, and I must prove myself their better,” Elladan mused, as he sat. “Perhaps I am… somewhat concerned.” With ample fondness, Elrohir kissed the crown of his hair, then began to brush through the swaths of shimmering ebony. “Then best allow yourself every confidence,” he concluded, snatching a length of black leather from his own pocket and draping it over his twin’s arm, beside the other. “This, I believe, will compliment Tuor’s scabbard-strap.” Astonished, Elladan wonderingly fingered the leather strip, then met his brother’s mirthful look in the mirror. After a gentle, grateful smile, Elladan let the moment pass without comment. Some matters of import needed not be spoken of to be cherished. Instead, he noted the elf-knight’s eyes straying yet again to the window. “I marvel at your strength, gwanur, mere days after your fever,” he complimented archly. “Over a week, now, Elladan,” Elrohir, distracted, informed him. “You were perhaps too embroiled in this matter of your binding to properly note the passage of time.” “You mistake me, my dear one,” Elladan smirked rakishly. “Every hour was as an eternity. I tallied the minutes as orcs I’d slay in battle, every heartbeat as a blow to the chest.” Elrohir snorted: “You are no poet, gwanur.” “And you, no prince’s consort,” he underlined. “Yet nary a protest escaped from your lips when Ada informed you of your betrothal to a mere elfling.” Elrohir considered this a moment, choosing his words with explicit care. “I have never loved, as you, one above all others,” Elrohir explained, as he set about separating the lengths of his hair. “If by my binding I can better serve Imladris and our people, then a prince of Mirkwood is as fair as one of Lorien, or even Valinor. His manner pleases, he is uncommonly swift, and strong, and merry.” “He will be beautiful,” Elladan further taunted. “Aye, that is plain,” the elf-knight murmured, pensive. “But an elfling, Elrohir,” Elladan protested, the matter still burning him. “He will not long *be* an elfling,” he insisted. “I may guide him as we were guided by our betters, in ways of war, law, propriety, manner… love. Have you not considered, Elladan, that I may fashion him the lover of my choice?” “And what of his will in loving?” Elladan grunted, irritated by his twin’s rather innocent ideas of the ways of love, and in particular the fashioning of an elfling’s desires. “And what do you know of love, nin bellas, if you have never felt it?” “I have loved and been loved by the most valiant hearts among the Noldor,” he snarked, tugging roughly at the hair between his fingers. “You, Ada, Arwen, Nena, Erestor, Lindir, Glorfindel… and already I feel… a… a softness, towards him.” Elladan retreated, having perhaps struck deeper than intended. He considered his own past loves, for he had loved afore, though none as intensely, as unwaveringly as Glorfindel. And what of the Balrog-slayer? Would their potential union have been as richly blessed, as true, without his prolonged absence; during which Elladan had been allowed to experiment, to err, to indulge himself? Would he have been successful in his proposal had it occurred centuries ago, before his travels and his training? Could he then have made a proper match for an elf of two lifetimes gone, when even now he questioned his worth, his ability to please such a hallowed spirit? He abandoned these musings as worthless; Glorfindel had gone, he had grown, and their union would be as it was. He longed, suddenly, for the time to blink by, for the bliss of waking in Glorfindel’s arms tomorrow, safe and sated; the ceremony, the feasting, their first coupling passed and done. For the far more precious luxury of an eternity vowed and together hungered for. His task complete, Elrohir tucked a tender finger beneath his brother’s chin, raised it to take in the striking sight of himself. He had fastened the elf-warrior’s braids with a lock of his stallion’s mane, as was tradition among the horsemen of the Riddermark. Elladan rose to be dressed, his twin selecting a tunic of rich violet, clean rider’s breeches, spit- polished black boots of the dwarf mines in Angmar, but fetched the stunning mithril vest from the bed, a gift from their mother. Elladan himself fastened his dagger behind his left calf and his grandfather Celeborn’s sword at his side. Lastly, Elrohir set his brother’s wreath-crown upon his bowed head, completing the bold look of a peredhel warrior- prince. Elladan stood proudly before him, every inch his fearsome, gallant self. * * * For a brief moment, Glorfindel shut his eyes to the sober feast around him. He imagined himself back at Tuor’s court in Gondolin, at Tuor’s side, freshly arrived from his House of the Golden Flower for one of the King’s lavish repasts. There, as here, as now, the court reveled to stave off fear, off weeping, for each night that passed moved their people closer to war and none knew if, on the morrow, a red dawn would rise. At present newly bound in love, Glorfindel might himself confess to a similar, soul- shroud dread. As his scattershot mind rejoined the company, he gazed over to his side, at Elladan. His husband’s staid features proved similarly reflective, though archly so. Glorfindel could easily trace the journey of his placid gray eyes, from a thoroughly bored Thranduil, to impish Legolas on courtly Elrohir’s lap, from Elrond’s hush gravity to Arwen’s concern, over Erestor’s vain attempts to feign indifference to Haldir’s studied calm, echoed in Celeborn’s regal grace. Last, the mirthril orbs latched on to his, shimmering with unbound regard. Elladan gathered his lazy hand between his own, cradling the length of his arm as if to warm a fretful babe. Though his smile faded, the argent forge of his eyes seared through the space between them, steaming through the length of the Noldor’s skin and broiling his blood to a viscous red lava. Red as the coming dawn; ravagement masked by nature’s cool beauty. Glorfindel knew, then, that this hallowed binding would forever keep him from indulging in its sweetest promises. He could not protect this rare pearl husband, this treasure of the heart entrusted to him, if he were slave to its passions. By knowing him, by opening himself to bliss and therefore blinding himself to danger, he would forsake the vow taken on Elladan’s first begetting-day: to guard him, without falter or fail, every day of his eternal life. The vow renewed just hours before, in the glaring light of those keen, quicksilver eyes. When the rapture that followed Elladan’s appearance beneath the southern balcony’s laurel-strewn buttresses had sunk comfortably in, Glorfindel had exhaled slowly. With this sweeping breath had passed the last clogs of impeding anxiety: it would be now, their joining. It would soon be done. The young peredhel would have seemed sleek and true as rapier’s steel, were it not for the faint blurring of his haloed silhouette beneath the amber skylight. When Glorfindel had clasped his slender hands in his, the prince passed on the tremors that betrayed him. The blonde Eldar had raised the quaking hands to his lips, three stealthy caresses had silenced them. Later, at the final stitch of their binding, Elladan had cause to prove his mettle. Ever- caught in the swells of his molten silver eyes, Glorfindel willed himself to mark his tender mouth with his own, but the ferocity of his feelings had stayed him before such noble company as the Lords of Imladris, Mirkwood, and Lorien. Elladan, at this most cherished minute, had thought of nothing like fathers, brothers, lords, or assemblies, but only of the husband who now welcomed him. He had kissed him such as longtime lovers do, with patience, with reverence, with coursing, blistering need. Glorfindel was too overcome, then, too felled by the dam of his resolve breaking to realize the implications of this unequivocal surrender to their shared destiny. That kiss would be the last of its kind they could ever share. Elladan blinked, once, and the spell was broken. The shrill tittering of the surrounding company assaulted Glorfindel’s gauzy senses, as his husband’s gaze once again arced across the low-lit hall. Satisfied, Elladan squeezed his hand near to breaking and leaned in to whisper to him. “I would bathe afore we tuck in, nin ind,” he rasped into the hollows of his ear, his voice ripe with insinuation. “Stay awhile longer, for my father. Then, fetch a carafe of miruvor from the kitchen, and follow to our bedchamber.” “I will, meleth,” Glorfindel assured him, as the prince pecked an eager kiss onto the corner of his mouth. “Well, then,” Elladan smirked, complicit. “Do not tarry.” The elf-warrior rose as a general leading the charge, bowed deeply before the assembled company, and strode off down a torch-lit hall. As Glorfindel watched his bold figure sink into the shadows, a sharp chill seized him. * * * As blithely as his grandmother Elwing before him, Elladan’s lissome arms parted his bathwaters and he rose from the steaming depths, the length of his taut skin as brilliant as the silmaril above. He’d seasoned the bath with coral grinds from the shores of Belfalas, in Gondor, which scored the last of the grime from his pores, leaving the sweeps and slopes of his muscular frame soft, lustrous. He ably toweled his tight-strung body off, resolutely avoiding the thought of his new husband’s justly curious fingers roving the clefts, bends, and hollows long-familiar to the half-elf, soon to be equally well-known by his love. Elladan swallowed hard, struggled for some brief control. *Glorfindel*. /By Elbereth, I never dared hope this day would come./ The young prince was never less than battle-ready; as such, he’d quietly, and rightly, hunted out Erestor’s aid. The Loremaster had prepared him a spray of cascade mist for his hair, a yasbrinth musk to balm his skin, and a more glutinous salve for their coupling. The amber blooms of yasbrinth had adorned the banners and shields of the House of the Golden Flower, its creeping vines had lined the rail of its Lord’s balcony and Glorfindel had always favored its rich, enveloping scent; or so the prince had sussed from Erestor’s Haldir-plied tongue one evening. With lust-heavy hands, he worked the fragrant cream over his chest, legs, arms, meticulously anointing himself for Glorfindel to take his pleasure. As he loosed the obsidian wash of his hair, he chewed a sprig of balemint to refresh his breath. He gulped a cup of spring water, swished, then spat the leaf-strewn mush into the bath. Lastly, he wove a sheet of violet silk around his waist, expertly knotting the fabric at his side and pushing the edge down over the hip-bones, perilously close to exposing him. Wisps of dark hair pooled around his nipples, snaked down the center of his chest to thicken, then dip, at his navel, as if guiding the careful lover to his body’s treasures. Still far too eager to be purposeful in seduction, Elladan tarried at the baths awhile. His mind lingered over thoughts of Glorfindel, that first glimpse of him down the aisle, the look in his eyes at the moment of their binding, afterwards at the table, at his side. He wondered if his husband would be wanting, or modest, or both in good measure? Would he similarly prepare himself with supple oils, or remain coarse, dressed in finery or stripped bare, his hair left in plaits to be sensuously unraveled or hanging, loose and wanton? Elladan couldn’t decide which he longed for more. In the distance, the sentry at the watch called curfew with his burly horn. A wickedly delicious smile twisting the edges of his lips, Elladan took one last drink of water, then slipped through the entrance to their bedchamber. There, Glorfindel waited. Elladan had no eyes for the candle-lit room, for the petal curls scattered over the top sheet, or for the crystal flask of miruvor waiting on the way-table. Glorfindel was still clothed in his finery; Elladan would most gladly unburden him. As he walked through the pools of flickering glow towards his radiant husband, his gaze was fixed on him alone. His breath came in short, hungry pants as he neared, his muscles tense, primed. With precariously held restraint, he brushed his hands up Glorfindel’s broad chest and unfastened the first clasp of his vest, teasing. The Noldor chucked softly, lowered his eyes, flush with arousal. “Here we are, at last,” Elladan smiled, taming down his own roused senses. He flicked his index finger over the tip of Glorfindel’s ears, then smoothed along their downy edge. “How would you have me, melethron?” To his surprise, Glorfindel’s back stiffened to a formal stance. He broke their embrace, backing carefully away. Elladan raised an eyebrow, could the Balrog-slayer himself be nervous? “If you would indulge me a moment,” Glorfindel requested. “I have… a gift.” “A gift?” Elladan twinkled, now ravenously curious. Glorfindel was even more cunning than he had imagined. Presently, the golden elf swept over to the outer door, peered outside, then beckoned someone enter. Elladan, still intrigued, crossed his arms over his chest to cover himself and waited, already growing restless. To his astonishment, a young horseman – surely of Rohan – padded carefully into the chamber, then stood before him, as if for his approval. Elladan would have thought him the bearer of his gift, were it not for the fact that he was glazed with lavender oil like an oxtail roasted for feasting and wore little other than a loin-cloth. The prince of dignity forced his gaping mouth shut; the warrior of honor readied himself for truth’s cruel charge against him. “I must mistake you, husband,” he stated, weighing each word as he would a silver coin. “He bears no gift.” “He *is* my gift to you, my brave one,” Glorfindel murmured, struggling to bury his rising disgust at this he must do. “For your pleasure, in my stead.” When the truth struck, Elladan found himself - despite his best intentions - ill-prepared. He had firstly thought Glorfindel of such colorful palette as to desire them both to enjoy the youth, but not… this perversion. *Never* this. The blood in his veins ran to ice, his bones hardened to brittle, weighty stone. Bile threatened to choke him, but he swallowed it down, along with the torrents of acid-burn sorrow flooding his now-leaden chest. His head throbbed, as if an axe had severed his skull in two, the gory strings of gray matter nested in his hair like a crown of his own entrails. /It cannot be. He consented, we are bound… it cannot be!!/ Though every flint of his soul-fire raged within, Elladan, ever tenacious in the face of adversity, rallied. His titles rarely inspired pride in him, but in this moment he was every inch a Prince of Imladris. He bowed, steady in his grace, and met his husband’s eyes with steel affront. “My deepest thanks, most hallowed Glorfindel,” he almost cooed. “But I must abstain. The day has been…” He clasped his hands behind his back, the knuckles of their clawed fingers bit by pain. “…unforeseeably trying. I would promptly retire.” “He does not please you?” Glorfindel asked, his voice nearly abandoning him, unsure whether the darkling elf’s acquiescence or abeyance would hearten him more. “He is fair,” Elladan dully appraised, unable to bear the sight of the Rohirrim a second longer than necessary. “Please, kind sir, my apologies. You are most…” He could not finish. He turned on his heel, cursing himself, and deliberately ambled over to the wardrobe. He heard the door shut behind him. “Erestor has often told tales of your exploits among the men of the Riddermark,” Glorfindel explained. “I thought he would suit you.” “Perhaps another…” Elladan rested his forehead against the cherrywood door, unable to continue. He felt Glorfindel approach behind him, tensed for his touch. There was none. “*Elladan*,” his husband whispered. “You must not mistake… I am your sworn guardian, I was this long before I became your husband. I have taught you, trained you, known you since you were an elfling… I must protect you at *all* costs. I cannot…” At this, Elladan began to rifle through the wardrobe, extricating his riding tunic, leggings, boots. He dressed swiftly, willfully ignoring Glorfindel as he bleat on with his notions of propriety and of service. Elladan knew something of service to his kin; he knew of devotion, and loyalty, and loss. No fallen compatriot would come close to equaling this loss, in his heart. When at last Glorfindel reached out to him, he reared, eyes blazing, and unceremoniously fled the room, no longer able to take another breath in the stench of his presence. * * * The horns of curfew long blown, Elrohir was more than a bit surprised to look up from the library gamestable and observe, through the fine-crafted stone gables, his twin charging across the guardsmen’s yard to the stables. At first, he though his mind warped by the three decadent goblets of his father’s special vintage of Forochel ice-wine he’d consumed, but Erestor soon raised chin and eyebrow, as well. Although their Battle Game had done little to distract the Loremaster’s thoughts from the ever-so-vital conversation between Haldir, Celeborn, and Elrond currently surpassing its second hour, this latest wrinkle in the day’s supposed bliss caught Erestor’s full attention. Elrohir knew well that his faulting mind could not stand another stress; he raised a hand to stay him. “You are still weak,” Erestor protested. “Physically, I concur,” the elf-knight admitted. “But mentally, dear guardian, I have bested you five times in the last hour. The night is unseasonably fair. Pour yourself another glass, and await the happy news of your own imminent betrothal.” With a wink, Elrohir sauntered off, hardly a twinge fouling his graceful steps. Indeed, between his brother’s nightly séances and days spent chasing after Legolas, he would shortly be right as rain. / If only I had no sense of the coming storm/, Elrohir reflected heavily, as he circled round the stables and slipped through the guard’s entry. The stables were eerily black. Not a lick of moonlight beamed through the roof-peak skylight, pools of forming cloud would soon completely blanket the heavens. As he crept up the back stairwell to the watchmaster’s quarters, not a stallion stirred, not an owl cawed, not a light shone from the loft above; but a windless, scraping chill slowly permeated the air, alerting Elrohir to his brother’s presence. Even in his presumed misery, Elladan reasoned as a soldier would. The Lord of Imladris having doubled the patrols, not a soul would return to the quarters until well after dawn. Yet if his absence went undetected, none would search for him here; save Elrohir himself, knowing well the reliable sense of comfort the barracks always brought him. Still, the elf- knight surmised that Elladan had little thought of being discovered before morn, hardly expecting Glorfindel to sound the alarm. /But what has passed between them to send him fleeing into the night, like a maid married to a miser?/ When Elrohir soundlessly stepped into the doorway, the cold bruised him raw as the hilt of a broadsword. Though he could not yet see Elladan in the rabid darkness, he felt his way to him, forcing his frost-bitten limbs further and further into the glacial room. Never had his twin’s sorrow been so viscerally affecting; indeed, Elrohir could not recall a time when the elf-warrior had felt anything near such crippling misery, not even when they’d discovered their mother, in the orc’s cave. He clamped his jaw shut to halt his clattering teeth, then shoved his rigid legs through the entrance to the small armory. He was certain his awkward, stomping progress had long announced his presence, but when he finally managed to light the wall candle, he perceived only Elladan’s startled look. Elrohir’s face soon dully echoed the sentiment: his valiant brother was crouched among the shield-stands in the far corner, his legs tucked into his chest, silently weeping. Elrohir had never seen Elladan weep before; had not, until that very minute, believed him capable of weeping, such was his self-possession. Elladan did not weep. He seethed, or stabbed, or wreaked bloody vengeance, but rare was the day he indulged his own sadness. Even when Glorfindel had left, before their majority, he had simply bid him farewell and retreated to the training fields, his ferocious dedication to his betterment tripled in intensity. Elrohir’s own sword-hand clenched restlessly, even their cherished guardian was not immune from the brunt of his battle-axe, should his abuse of his brother prove blameworthy. Still, Elladan would not be settled by his rancor. He inhaled deeply, then crouched before his trembling brother. “Aiya, gwanur,” he began, settling down in the corner, but knowing well enough not to touch him unless beckoned. “What is this sadness, on this most hallowed of nights?” “I am betrayed, Elrohir,” he whispered forlornly. Shamed by even this slight confession, he seemed to retreat into himself. “I cannot say more.” “Elladan,” he cooed, risking a steady grip on his brother’s knee. “It is I. The sorrow will not pass if you do not unburden yourself. I have long kept your secrets. I will keep this one, as well.” Elladan dug his chin into his chest, another wave of searing desolation overtaking him. “And if I cannot keep it?” he berated himself. “If I myself dishonor the one to which I was so enthusiastically bound?” This last was bleated out with braising self-abasement, so fierce, so hateful, that Elladan abandoned his defenses, allowing his twin to crawl into the corner of the shield-stands and to wrap his steady arms around him. The elf-warrior clamped his eyes shut to dam another surge of tears, but the salty streams broke through, undaunted. /What has become of me?! Reduced to simpering like maimed Shadowspawn!/ “Confound it, Elladan!!” Elrohir suddenly spat, his blood bittered at seeing his gallant twin so cruelly undone. “You must tell the toll of it, else I’ll grab that hunting spike and stake a confession from Glorfindel himself!” At that ridiculous pronouncement – his twin having been long ago proved barely useful wielding other than a bow and arrows – Elladan managed to ebb his flowing eyes, but could not loosen the grip of shame that seized him. Still, best confess it, before Elrohir too felt its sting. “When I entered our bedchamber from my bath, ready for… for…” Elladan swallowed hard, his throat, unlike his eyes, parched dry. “Aye,” Elrohir encouraged him. “A sight you must have been.” “I doubt he took notice,” Elladan snarked sourly, his misery slowly giving way to deadly rage. “He had procured another, for my… amusement.” “Another?” Elrohir gasped. “For your bedding?!” Elladan nodded, once, then rasped: “In his stead. He would not consent to our… coupling, so he bought me the favors he presumed I would enjoy… a *man*, Elrohir, a man of Rohan, not even an elf! And a soldier, to quicken my shame and make meat of these years of proving my worth to the tiresome Dunedain!!” Elrohir stared dully at his brother, so blindsided by this turn of events he could not form words to comfort him. The confession, however, seemed to center Elladan, a bleak, resigned vengeance dawning in his stone gray eyes. “I have been careless, gwanur, I see it now,” he rallied. “Diverted from our path by trifles and politicking. The intent of my binding was an alliance, a strength to bear the coming woes, and by our vows it has been forged, not by any presumed coupling. We have lived apart before and survived, we will again.” He rose to a seated position, fixing his still befuddled twin with a razor-keen stare. “Yet our mother sails for Valinor in a fortnight, and her troubles lurk, unavenged, waiting to pounce.” Guessing his brother’s intent, Elrohir selected his next words with a diplomat’s care. “Ada requires the strength of all his children for the bearing of such loss, Elladan. Surely you above all understand that we cannot abandon him to heartache.” “We will not abandon him,” Elladan insisted. “We will rage in his stead, immolating the Shadow’s lairs with the fire of our fury, with the mighty blaze of retribution.” His breath now came in fierce, halting pants, so ready was he to gouge, to burn. “He will know our will is true. He will know it in his heart.” “By Elbereth, gwanur,” Elrohir urged, with feeble patience. “No matter how basely Glorfindel has behaved, you must attempt even the most fragile mending before taking such a… a lethal charge. Even if you only make your grievance known to him… you must strike a truce both parties agree on.” “Aiya, save your diplomacy for the White Council,” he bellowed, then again fell prey to misery. The guard-captain’s wound had struck him gut-deep; Elrohir had not afore realized just how perilously. With a cutting desperation, Elladan pleaded to him: “Elrohir… I must away. I must! Gwanur-nin, you have never known such a… it was a lie! I thought it true, he *made* me trust, he made me believe…two thousand years I waited, hoped, and it was all a lie…” “We will go, shortly after dawn,” Elrohir conceded somberly. A winter-bleak realization come over him; no elf, man, or other thing in the entirety of Arda could ever comfort his wronged brother. “I will prepare Ada. I will say nothing of your sorrow, merely that we wanted to spare him the knowing until after the ceremony. Do you think Glorfindel might…?” “He will not protest,” Elladan replied morosely. “He would not dare oppose me, after… I will wait the dawn with Nena. She will require our comforting, and will wish to bless us.” “I will join you there, my brave one,” Elrohir agreed, as he helped his weary brother to his feet. Once there, he hugged his beleaguered twin tightly to his chest. “You are the dearest soul I have known, Elladan. He does not for the briefest of instants deserve the love you have so carefully borne for him. I hope, in time, he will come to know a lover’s pain, as you have known and suffered it, for so many years. But you, nin bellas, you do not bear it alone. You will never be alone, my dearest one.” Elladan rested his throbbing head on his twin’s solid shoulder, praying to Elbereth for the strength to bear through this. * * * The callous haze of a blood-red dawn hung above the violet-dark Bruinen, as the Lords, Kings, and masters of elfdom gathered in the courtyard to send off the valorous twin sons of Elrond. Erestor coolly eyed the crimson cloud-line, his prim features contorted with bitter resignation. The curtains of his chamber flushed with a rose glow upon his waking just hours before. He had curled himself into Haldir’s silken backside and judged their betrothal favorable to the Valar. Haldir himself did not believe in omens, had indeed promptly declared so, but Erestor had been Loremaster too long to dismiss any gentle glimpse of Elbereth’s favor. Then Elrond’s clarion knock had struck the chamber door; their blessing smote to cinder by the revelation of his ashen face. At their quick breakfast, Glorfindel had suddenly appeared. At least, the ghost of the mighty Balrog-slayer had loomed at the table-end, the spirit that once blazed there so vaporous as to be completely imperceptible to the naked eye. Only Erestor’s keen memory held any lasting image, as none other acknowledged the guard-captain’s presence through some strange common consensus. Celeborn ate steadily, with learned reserve. Elrond himself bore no sign of the mirth he had rediscovered but the day before, though his staunch, resolute fortitude had re-emerged. Thranduil was typically self- involved, but even the perpetually-merry Legolas simply nibbled on his grain-wafer and sipped his oarberry juice, eyes studiously down. Were it not for the roving fingers Haldir kept sneaking between his thighs, Erestor would have found no pleasure in the impressive gathering. Now, as the same gloomy party - Arwen curiously excluded – watched the twins dismount beneath the glaring scarlet sky, Erestor could not refrain from weaving grateful fingers through Haldir’s own ever-steady hand. The blonde Galadhrim turned to wink at him, promising a lazy afternoon of anxiety-relief and of his most doting ministrations. Heartened, Erestor marked the twins. Only Elrohir betrayed the barest hint of desolation at their parting. Elladan stood straight, unbending and immalleable as pure mithril ore, his clever eyes almost relishing the discomfort they caused hollow Glorfindel. Something wicked had passed between them; Erestor was baffled by this behavior, but he would not allow the guard-captain to sleep tonight without some indication of what. Elrond, for his part, seemed wholly ignorant, perhaps willfully so, as he tenderly hugged both his brave sons. In this, Elladan betrayed some emotion, whispering a pledge into his father’s ear. Elrond held fast to the elder twin for a moment, his legs failing him. With typically measured strength, he soon righted himself, as the twins made their way down the receiving line. Elrohir saved his last words for Legolas, scooping the tiny elf up into his arms. “Weep if you must, pen-neth, for sorrow is righteous,” he murmured. “But do not mourn what you have not lost. We will, in the coming years, often journey to Mirkwood, to check on your progress and perhaps teach you some tricks of the Noldor. But you must swear me an oath, maltaren-nin.” Legolas nodded intently, waiting on the elf-knight’s every word. “Learn your lessons well,” he counseled. “In lore, weaponry, strategy, diplomacy, and the like. Learn of all the peoples of this land, travel when you can, and defend your bounty well from the Shadow’s claw. Do this not for destiny, but for your own betterment. Do it with joy in your heart, even in trying times, for only through the grief of learning can you reap Arda’s ample blessings. Above all, be safe, nin bellas.” Legolas studiously drank in his wisdoms with furrowed brow, then, when he finished, hugged him fiercely. He, too, whispered something secret for the prince alone, at which Elrohir smiled softly. While this dulcet scene played out, and the elders’ attention was caught on it, Elladan faced down Glorfindel. His bold stare near-devoured the golden elf, whose stony reserve seemed to chip with every passing second. “We are well-joined, and well-matched, husband,” Elladan hissed to his ears alone, though Erestor did not fail to remark his tone. “I trust I have your blessing.” “You have it tenfold,” Glorfindel forcefully acknowledged, his voice mysteriously weakened. “I wish you nothing but glory, Elladan, the rewards of battle well won. I have never wanted other than your happiness.” “But our binding, husband, saw the fulfillment of my longest-held desires,” Elladan snipped, curdling the compliment – and veiled truth - with a serpent’s venom. “What glory could vengeance bring, when you are already won?” Glorfindel blanched, stunned silent, but nothing could have prepared him for Elladan’s next move. The elf-warrior gripped a fierce hand onto the back of his head, yanked him close, and summarily planted a thick-tongued kiss - ugly, salacious, and desperately wanton – on him. Elladan tossed him back, teeth clenched as if he’d just ripped the meat off a bone, and unleashed a glare of such ravaged heartache that Glorfindel’s eyes instinctively swelled. Sneering at his husband’s weakness, Elladan staggered back, mounted his waiting steed. The twins bowed solemnly, then raced off into the bleeding dawn. End of Part Three Title: In Earendil’s Light, Part 4: Innocence Author: Gloromeien Email: swishbucklers@hotmail.com Pairing: Glorfindel/Elladan, Legolas/Elrohir Summary: The twins pay a visit Mirkwood, and get much more than they bargained for. Rating: R, for mature themes, and angst. 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: Wanted to write something elven and epic, this is my shot. I don’t know if this can be considered AU… as it *does* follow the timeline established by Tolkien, it just ‘fills in’ some scenes he may have ‘left out’… *right*. My story, sticking, etc. Hope you enjoy!! Feedback: Longed for, as always. Dedication: For beautiful Alexias and golden Lysis, for wise Epaminondas and rash Pelopidas. I bow to the Shrine of Iolaus, in the wake of the Sacred Band, and offer up to them this proto-Platonic tale of warrior love. Elf-warrior, that is. *************** Part Four Middle Earth, Third Age, Year 2,555 As they led their steeds through the looming brume, neither twin dared speak. The cotton-thick fog hung low between the densely grown tree trunks of the nascent Mirkwood. The hostile landscape deadened their usual pace, exposing them to the harsher elements of a haunted forest’s nightscape, as well as to the preying eyes of lurking shadowspawn. The onerous scent of decay permeated the cloying smog, as the two elf-warriors trudged their way through the moist sludge of the only path. Even on the outskirts of Fangorn, the princes had never seen such trees: their trunks round and hardened as the ancient towers of Amon Sul, their bows as immovable as pillars of dwarven ore, their roots fat, yet gnarled as the fingers of the witches of Angmar. When Elrohir had cause to lead Virgor, his stallion, over a glade of fallen leaves, he’d cause to note that every one could serve as a bedroll. Even on this sliver of open path, not a beam of starlight could break through the double threat of branch-weave and murk. As the party slogged forward, through another barely penetrable range of moss- leeched roots, the crisp sweeps of a scythe pierced through the static night. Further on, the noxious, near-choking fumes of recent bloodshed assaulted them, moments before they came upon the corpse-strewn remnants of a battlefield. Though veterans of countless charges, the twins had never seen such mutilation: eyes gouged with freshly-broken twigs, skulls cracked on branch knots, skin scored by a flurry of arrowheads, limbs similarly half-ripped from their joint, spores of green, oozing blood mixing with that of elven hue, everywhere, everywhere… A massacre of goblins, with a few brave elves lost in the din. In the distance, the rapturous lilt of an elven choir sounded. Part requiem, part lullaby, the beatific voices hovered just below the cloaking fog, luring the weary princes towards Thranduil’s stronghold. His brother but a formless shadow before him, the air a fugue of smoke and stench, Elrohir prayed the Sindar forces had lost precious few to these latest slayings. * Perched atop one of the few tree-stumps not mired in bloody grime, Legolas observed the proceedings with uncharacteristic quiet. Only with the most leaden reluctance, the result of his youngest son’s most relentless urgings and lightening-fast reasonings, had the Mirkwood king allowed him beyond the elf- city’s battlements. The father had had plentiful reservations, but the ruler’s wisdom had ultimately won out: how would his son be iron-willed in the face of true terror, if he’d never been exposed, even indirectly, to the trials of war? A deal had been struck; Legolas was never, even for the briefest of moments, to leave the sight of either of his elder brothers. Moments after his arrival, any defiance of his father’s command proved unconscionable. At such a tender age, the sights before him instantly overwhelmed. The sturdy Sindar folk worked tirelessly to anoint the corpses of the fallen with wheylax and shroud them in leaf-weave, his brother Luinaelin a somber chief among them. Mithbrethil manned the left handle of a giant scythe, which barely bit, despite hours of effort, into the bark of a murk-rotted tree, where the goblins had held out for weeks, waiting. A small choir had been assembled to soothe the aged oak, easing it into death, but the weirded tree’s voiceless howls quaked through each and every elven heart. Amidst this grief-burdened industry, Legolas sat, silent but rapt. How could Luinaelin, often so squeamish in pranks, corral his senses enough to calmly encase the bodies, the faces of some of his dearest friends, forever? How could Mithbrethil push on, with twice his normal strength, into the raw hide of the sapling he himself had planted, its anguished cries braising through his councilman’s chest? How could the gentle gardeners of their choir find voice among the ruins of their bravest archers? Awed by their example, Legolas curled his legs beneath him and let their manner teach him well. Suddenly, in the midst of carrying a stray arm, Luinaelin froze. He swiftly turned, stilled, then peered into the darkness beyond the blue light of the glowlamps. Legolas’ sharp eyes caught the faint twining of his brother’s lips, as he opened a palm towards the blackness. A stallion, burdened with unfamiliar armor and a healthy saddle-pack, trotted into sight. The steed was clearly not one of their own, yet Luinaelin soon patted her with overt fondness. Legolas tensed, disquiet creeping over him as an army of stealthy, poisonous feeflies. Something curious, vaguely unsettling drew near, though the young elf knew not if he possessed the wherewithal to face it down. He felt suddenly feral with longing, as if no drink, no bread, no endless swim, field-length race, or heady mountain climb could sate him. Was he bewitched by some heathen’s spell? Was Luinaelin? Nothing he had ever encountered had wrecked such havoc within him, not his first orc kill, not his thunderstorm patrols, not even the news of his mother’s passing. He clutched meekly at his bow, waiting-out this unreasonable torment with eyes stuck on his now-smiling brother. Two elf-soldiers emerged from the forest deep, their origins unknown to the youngest Mirkwood prince. Before long, Mithbrethil had joined in their welcome, as well as Aerthlen the Loremaster and Brilucith, their father’s chief council. Warm embraces were exchanged with all. Who were these oddly dark-haired elves, and from where did they hail? Legolas had seldom journeyed to other elven lays, and these too long ago to be properly recalled. Had he himself perhaps encountered them before? They were fearfully unfamiliar, yet stirred such troubles within him… Mithbrethil beckoned him over. Legolas nodded tersely, then leapt down to the grass. As he cautiously approached, he forced his rising discomfort aside, instead concentrating on the elves themselves. After clearing the labyrinth of goblin carcasses, the exactitude of their mirrored features came into view, thoroughly startling Legolas. The raven-haired elves were virtually indistinguishable; both possessed a regal quality, yet also a faint luxury to their undeniable beauty. Indeed, once close enough to truly absorb, the young elf found he could not pull his rabid eyes from them, so plentiful were their graces. Both, in their indivisible twinness, were equally attractive, but the one slightly to the rear of the other… in his sage gray eyes loomed a keen, luring flame, which so culled Legolas that his brother had to clamp a hand on his shoulder to moor him to his side. “Mae govannen, maltaren-nin,” the darkling elf greeted him. “My apologies for being so long away, but the troubles to the South have not slept these last unfavorable years.” His twin also bowed his greetings, but refrained from comment. Had he known him, as well? Who *was* this gallant elf? “Legolas,” Luinaelin reproached him. “Do not tell me you have forgotten Imladris entire? You were so enamored of the Rivendell valley, Ada could hardly persuade you to leave with him!” “Do you not recall the Sons of Elrond?” Mithbrethil echoed. “Many years have passed, but you took such glee in recounting your exploits upon your return. Surely, you’ve not forgotten Elladan and Elrohir?” At the sounding of his betrothed’s name, Legolas gasped quite audibly. He planted his widened eyes firmly in the ground, his cheeks flaring. Though his elders’ affectionate laughter trilled around him, the young prince had no sharp rebuts for them, his mind plagued by an assault of long-denied memories. Horseplay on the banks of the Bruinen, tuck-ins at night in his first-very-own chamber, the merry feast following the binding ceremony, their final walk among the summer birches… the unexplained agony of their parting, Legolas too young to fully comprehend this jarring severance from one so dear. His promised mate, Ada had confessed years after. /Elrohir, Prince of Imladris./ The bent knuckles of tender fingers came under his chin, then lifted up for him to meet patient, glowing eyes. “Plentiful are the Valar’s blessings in you, pen-neth,” Elrohir beamed at him. “How long until your majority?” /Would he be bound so soon?/ Legolas feared. “But a fortnight, kind sir.” Elrohir could not help a brief chuckle, then laid a warm, easy hand on his shoulder. “Please, name me Elrohir. Merely a fortnight!! Then we may take some rest. Aye, I am glad of it, for we have seen little peace these last forty-some years, young Legolas.” At the voicing of his name, the princeling visibly shuddered. Elrohir, noting his unease, bent to whisper to him. “I come bearing a message from Lorien, pen-neth, not for your hand. Though I hope there may be time for us to spar. Your fluency with the bow is swift becoming legendary.” Legolas’ cheeks swelled further, the darkling elf’s mere presence causing unfamiliar and uncommonly intense feelings to spring forth. “Will you not escort us to your Adar?” “It would please me greatly,” Legolas replied tentatively, not trusting even his own voice in the presence of the stirring Prince of Imladris. When he turned about to guide them, Elrohir’s hand fell from his shoulder. Legolas felt he had never truly known cold, until that very moment. * * * “He has known little sorrow, in his short time,” Thranduil boasted, as they settled around the desk of his study. “His mother’s passing, surely, but he was not two years old when that calamity struck. This last attack has affected him deeply, though he is far too self-possessed to admit this… not unlike his father.” The elf- king’s laugh boomed through the closely-held room, almost toppling the twins’ sturdy ederwood armchairs. Elladan stifled a laugh of his own. “He burst in here, demanding he be allowed to fight, then later, demanding to help in the recovery of the fallen.” “He is brave, and strong,” Elrohir commended. “This, he cannot hide.” Thranduil paid his comments little mind, choosing a different tact. “I have followed your wishes to the letter, he had never felt the burden of your betrothal. Indeed, I have only recently reminded him, in passing. He has been, as per our agreement, free to roam. Though I hear little of such matters, I wonder if he’s thought of else but his training, as there are no maids even somewhat close to his age and the code of Mirkwood soldiers is rather strict on this matter. No elfling should abase himself with lovemaking before his majority, if he is to prove an obedient and clear-minded archer of Mirkwood. He is chaste as a springtime bud, you have my word of honor.” At this, Elladan visibly cringed; imagining, no doubt, Elrond’s face in Thranduil’s stead and reeling from the shame this vision unconsciously provoked. Elrohir, for his part, smiled fondly. “It was a happy coincidence, our journey North, nothing more. Though it pleases me to feast his majority, and to take some company with him. But I have no designs, at present, on strengthening our bond. He is still free.” “But your arrival is most timely!” Thranduil interjected, easily dismissing Elrohir’s cautious diplomacy. “At the time of a Mirkwood elf’s majority, there is no feasting, no ceremony. He must simply find one to instruct him in the act of love. For one night, or forever, there is no quarrel with either circumstance. And you, his betrothed, resting here! I note the scent of opportunity…” At this, Elrohir blanched white as Galadriel’s robes, oblivious to both Thranduil’s roar of approval and Elladan’s unguarded snickers. “But, Majesty,” Elrohir coughed, his throat suddenly raw. His befuddled mind did not know which he longed for more, the golden prince allowed his freedom or writhing with pleasure beneath him. For an absent moment, both held their allures… /Aiya, this is madness!/ “Surely Legolas has another in mind…” “Which other?!” Thranduil snorted, letting it be known his will was quite often rule in these parts. “The simpering Elostren, an ox-hearder? The ancient Bellanewen, with her dance of the five barrow-leaves? Those pansy-feet in the choir? Should I send for that renown swordsmith Haldir, or perhaps your Adar’s own emissary, the ageless guard-captain Glorfindel, newly arrived this very morn?” With a strangled grunt, Elladan too paled to ghosting. Ever-cunning, he soon colored near-crimson with rage, eyeing Thranduil as he would a pack of drooling Wargs. “You would speak so callously of my husband, *majesty*?” The Mirkwood King took his own turn at skin-whitening. “I forget myself,” he awkwardly apologized. “The perils of age. And I, at your very binding!! Well, you will be heartened by this news. My servant, Serath, will later guide you to his talan.” “I am grateful for your… kindness,” Elladan all but whispered, the reality of the situation hitting home. “I long to…” /What? Wring his neck?/ “As for the present matter,” Thranduil would not be distracted. “I cannot conscience another instructing my son in the bedding arts, when his very betrothed sleeps near. I have given him the freedom agreed upon, and on your parting, he will have it again. But now you must concede to my demands, if we are truly contracted in this, Son of Elrond. Be gentle with him, but be firm.” Elrohir sighed, seeing no way out of this abomination. /If only my desires matched my will, in this./ “You have my word, Thranduil King,” Elrohir confirmed mirthlessly. “I will give him his majority.” From his seat, Elladan felt relief sweep over him. His twin, in his justified anxiety, did not recognize the opportunity before him, the one he himself spoke of years ago, to fashion the lover of his choice. Elladan did not doubt for the briefest of seconds that Elrohir would prove the most gentle, tender, and considerate lover the young prince may ever have. His charms were as well renown in the Rivendell valley as his diplomatic skills; Elladan was sure Legolas was not the first elf his brother had introduced to the love act. Still, the elf-warrior understood his true concern: that a love act does not automatically lead to real loving. /Would that I had had such a chance with my own beloved. Perhaps things would not have soured so…/ When they were once again in their own counsel, Elladan resolved to mention this potent fact to his noble twin. * Later, after Mithbrethil had finished his tour of the compound, the twins finally stole a minute for themselves. He had left them by the Hall of Armor, which housed a collection of weaponry unparalleled in Arda. Elladan paid special attention to the ancient crossbows, fat-bellied swords, and serrated daggers that hung about, each bearing their county’s coat of arms. Elrohir, still reeling from their meeting with the eccentric elf-king, followed close behind. “Curious, is it not,” Elrohir remarked with a playful smirk. “That their library is the size of Erestor’s closet, but the armory is in its own separate talan.” “Perhaps in Mirkwood,” Elladan argued, with a wryness of his own. “Lore and letters help little, when the siege is so fierce, and so constant.” Elrohir frowned at this, but conceded the point. “Well reasoned, gwanur.” “I have been known, when the occasion arises, to be reasonable,” Elladan grinned in response. “Hardly,” Elrohir snorted, and received a swat for his obstinacy. “Perhaps we should speak on it with Glorfindel.” The elf-knight felt the air chill at the mention of his twin’s scorned husband. Elladan, however, betrayed no anger at his brother’s stealth attack. He halted before a spear of such enormity neither elf could imagine one able to bear its weight, let alone launch it. The head was coarsely smelt, to incur the greatest damage, with welts to keep in extra pools of poison; the base ornately carved with yasbrinth blooms. The spear of Glorfindel the Balrog-Slayer, at Gondolin. “You have led us here,” Elrohir noted, wondering at his troubled twin’s intent. “Aye,” Elladan acknowledged. “I knew Thranduil kept it, but I have never known the cause. Such precious bounty, to be entrusted to one so… hostile, in his regard for his Noldor brothers. Glorfindel is so often sent to Mirkwood… He bartered the peace between our peoples. He brought word, to Ada, of your proposed betrothal with Legolas…” Elrohir himself grew cold at this implication, turning to his brother in his shock. “You do not think…?” “I do not *think*, gwanur,” Elladan murmured, the gravity now weighing him. “As I have said, I, too, have some powers of reasoning. Of deduction. When there is such evidence…” Elrohir sighed, the long day’s sights and discoveries threatening to overwhelm him. First, the slaughter of the Mirkwood guard, then Thranduil’s crazed manipulations, now this black news for Elladan… Over their now forty-five years of questing, Elrohir had become the guard-captain’s reluctant champion, urging his brother to put aside past differences and at the very least reveal the depth of his feelings to him. Their fleeing after the binding-night had done no bit of good: Glorfindel had not chased after them, Elladan would not waver on this issue, and neither had spoken since that ominous morn. Yet, no matter how many legions of orcs he slew or Warg-packs he skinned, Elladan could not exorcise the memory of Glorfindel’s betrayal. He lived it now as if he’d never left Imladris, viscerally, continuously, without relief or respite. Elrohir exhaled measuredly, then once again took up the guard-captain’s gauntlet. “There is some evidence,” he began. “But of little consequence if Glorfindel himself has not confessed to it.” “You think he would confess it?!” Elladan grunted, his blood instantly up. “Perhaps there is nothing to confess,” Elrohir suggested, at his own peril. “Perhaps near fifty years of an empty bed have given him cause to repent.” “Forgiveness will take another fifty,” Elladan grumbled mercilessly. “Fifty and five hundred more.” “A small price,” Glorfindel announced himself, emerging from around a far corner. “For such hurt as I have caused you, Elladan.” Both startled twins recoiled immediately, Elrohir moving protectively in front of Elladan. They both, on a deeper instinct, bowed in deference, so astonished at his appearance that they forgot themselves grown, or familiar. Glorfindel took no pleasure in their awkwardness; indeed, where a build-up of hope had lingered, sadness now reigned at seeing his two former charges shrink from him as they would from an enemy. He had so longed to be reconciled with them, but the reality of that process would seem to prove equally painful. Unsure of how to begin, he opened his arms. “Please, my dear ones,” he explained. “I did not mean to surprise. I encountered Mithbrethil in the corridor, and he informed me of your arrival here. I wanted only to… resolve our differences, or, at the least, call a truce for the time being.” Elrohir glanced over at his beleaguered twin, whose chest heaved with unrestrained emotion. Perhaps the reconciliation he had wished for would not be so long awaited. “I have no quarrel with you, Glorfindel,” he stated calmly. “I honor you as my tutor and guardian, as always. I hope we will have occasion to converse, as in older times, during our stay.” He turned back again to study Elladan, who looked on Glorfindel as if a tormenting ghost, or vengeful spirit, then made a quick decision. “Our way has been rife with conflict. I am weary. I shall retire to my chamber.” He bowed again, not waiting for approval. He then faced his twin outright, nodding to indicate his availability, if later necessary. The elf-warrior did not acknowledge him, but Elrohir knew he had understood. After his twin had departed, Elladan felt curiously more at ease, similar to the calm that descended upon him before battle. Even the most innocent skirmish was a test of wills, which combatant had the stamina to outlast the other, mentally more than physically. He had long prepared himself for this raw encounter, more so than any other fight he had engaged in; moreover, Elladan saw no possibility for his own defeat. He had already lost everything. He straightened his posture, fixing his husband’s pale visage in his sights and peering down his perfectly aquiline nose at him. He waited for the overture. “It is shameful, on my part, that coincidence reunites us,” Glorfindel admitted. “I have not kept my promise… the very one that kept me from you-… from your bed. To protect you.” Elladan did not move an inch, his face a mask of arrogant indifference. “I know you do not feel the need of my protection.” “What I feel, o mighty Balrog-slayer, has never seemed to be of much concern,” Elladan snipped. “That isn’t so,” Glorfindel declared, sounding hollow even to himself. “Elladan…” Elladan visibly rolled his eyes, unimpressed with this scattershot display. “What is it you wish to tell me, Glorfindel? That you are sorry I’ve been hurt? I care not. That you have trysted in my absence and now know only my heart will satisfy you? Prove it. Come with me, to my bed, with words of love, and prove yourself my husband, and then I will hear of apologies, and regrets, and weakness. Then I will truly have what you are, for I will know that I am loved as a husband, not the elfling you will not put out of mind.” The elf-warrior marched up to him, his sly, inviting eyes boring imperiously down. “Will you come, then?” “*Elladan*,” Glorfindel mused. “Would that every quarrel be so carelessly resolved.” “That’s excrement,” he dismissed. “Your answer, please.” “Forty-five years, we’ve been apart!” Glorfindel exclaimed, his manner chafing. “Have you nothing else to say but come to bed? Is this your all-purpose resolution for conflict off the battlefield, denigrate and conquer?” Losing the last of his patience with this cursed diplomacy, Elladan launched himself forward and dug a brute fist into the chest of his tunic. “You are no judge of mercy, Balrog-slayer,” he snarled. He tempered a moment, but did not release him, his mithril eyes shimmering with sorrow. “Would you know of my misery? Of night upon night of self-abasement? Am I not wise enough, strong enough, fair enough, did I not learn my lessons well? Am I so coarse, so loathsome a creature that mine own husband will not lie with me? I have known the Shadow’s black urgings, so tempting in my nights of lust that I near gave myself to them. Do you not know how the Nazgul came to being? Have you not heard their wretched cries? The