Work Text:
“Elladan?” Aragorn asked urgently, eyes flickering urgently around the trees he had just finished scouting between. “Is aught amiss?”
Elladan could not quite help laughing, high and bitter, at that. “Aught else, you mean?”
Aught else besides the fact that they were mere miles from the worst battlefield in elvish history. Aught else besides the fact that they were several millennia away from home. Aught else besides the fact that they were desperately hiding behind the best illusion Elladan could sing up while roving hunting parties of orcs - and far worse monsters - hunted for the scent of elvish blood - a liquid they had all too much of, thanks to the wounded and currently nameless companion that lay unconscious beside Elladan.
Besides all that.
Aragorn only regarded him steadily, concern in his eyes, and Elladan abruptly regretted that he was no longer little Estel, who would have blushed and looked away instead of looking at him with eyes that were uncomfortably like Elladan’s father’s in their seeming ability to peer into souls.
Because there was, of course, something else.
He looked away, into the dangerous darkness overlaying the trees. “It has occurred to me to wonder what my father will say if I have to tell him that I got you killed over a handful of rocks.”
“I would certainly prefer to avoid that as well,” Aragorn said dryly. “Although it is not quite a fair summation of events regardless.”
Elladan’s mouth twisted, but he didn’t protest further; Aragorn would not concede the point, and it would bring Elladan no joy if he did. Aragorn might have pushed the matter further, but their patient - or, more accurately, Aragorn’s - had the good manners to quite conveniently moan, drawing his attention away. Estel hurried to tend to his patient, which left Elladan free to tend to his concerns.
There were a great many other things to be more immediately concerned about, but it had been thoughts of his father that had put the stricken look on Elladan’s face, and he found it hard to shake such thoughts now.
There had been many times over the years when Elladan had been forced to bring the news to his father that another of Elladan’s cousins had fallen. In battle, to an illness they had not had time to bring them to Elrond to heal, on truly rare occasions to old age - it was always a heavy duty, but it was a duty he could bear.
He had never yet had to bear the news that he had gotten one of them killed, and he truly, deeply, devoutly did not want to begin with Estel.
There had been times, of course, where he wondered if he could have done something differently - if he had ridden faster, left earlier, fought harder - but there had never been a true case for blame.
He had never before, for instance, gone into a troll cave with one of his mortal cousins and completely lost his head over an obvious trap.
It had been a set of silver pins that had caught his eye - pins hung with little bells, decorated with tiny sapphires, silver somehow untarnished.
They had looked exactly like the pins that his mother had worn when she had ridden away, never to return whole. They had been missing when they had at last found her, though it had not been until they were carefully packing her most treasured things away to send with her across the sea that anyone had realized.
It had not occurred to him to wonder how the pins could be so gleaming, here amongst the filth of a troll hoard. It had not occurred to him to think anything, beyond his rage that anything of hers should be kept in the filth and the dark.
He had reached to snatch them up, despite Estel’s warning cry.
And for his pains, he had landed them on the edges of the worst battle he had ever imagined, much less fought in. For a moment, he had thought them in Dagor Dagorath itself, until he had seen the banners.
He was still not quite prepared to accept those banners.
How they’d survived, he had no idea; his memory was not quite as perfect as an elf’s, and he was grateful for that hint of mortality now. All he knew was that it was over, Estel was still alive, and they had even managed to snatch one poor elf away from - from something’s blow as they went.
(A balrog. He was nearly certain that had been a balrog. He had screamed defiance at a balrog - )
Said elf had been barely able to stand, so Estel had dragged him with them as they ran, which could have been a mistake on a practical level if it hadn’t kept anyone from shooting them in the back for retreating with rather less organization than everyone else was.
. . . People had been surprisingly helpful, even.
But all of that paled next to the thought that they were in long lost Beleriand, home of a thousand dangers, and, if all those failed, millennia away from any time familiar to them. Even if Elladan managed to get home the long way, Aragorn certainly would not.
And then he would have to face his father and tell him he had gotten Estel killed over a handful of metal and rock.
Bad enough to get anyone killed in such a way; worse for it to be one of his cousins; unthinkable for it to be the last of his cousins, the current last of Elros’s direct line.
And worse than all of those for it to be Estel, who had chased after them as a child, who had played with his little wooden sword with such seriousness, who had grown up grim and strong and still so, so concerned with what he saw when he looked at others with eyes that scraped right through their souls.
His father, who had managed to forgive the Feanorians, might someday forgive him. Elrohir and Arwen never would.
Nor, for that matter, would Gilraen, who might kill him outright. He would probably deserve it.
He certainly deserved the look Estel was giving him for remaining silent for so long - and, more pertinently, for not helping to tend to the patient.
"Perhaps you are right in your critique of my summary," he said as he handed over the meager herbs they had managed to gather. "It is at least not a helpful summation of events, though I must confess I am failing to think of anything that would be." And they needed some piece of good, needed it badly; aside from their own troubles, the elf they had managed to rescue was fading quickly. If Atar was here -
But he was not, and Elladan had little of his art. Estel had more of it, but they had little to work with here.
"I found no Kingsfoil in my scouting," Estel confirmed grimly. "Though I did find this."
He produced a scrap of cloth. Red. Embroidered with an eight pointed star.
"Tracks indicated the party was headed west," Estel added after a long moment in which Elladan was forced once more to wrestle with the memory of those banners. "I do not think we are far behind them. Our patient cannot travel quickly enough, but if I remained with him, and you ran ahead to beg aid - "
Elladan took a moment to imagine explaining to his father that he had not only led Estel to being trapped in Beleriand, he had left him while there, however temporarily.
He then took a moment to imagine approaching a Feanorian host, in full retreat from what he was dreadfully afraid was the Nirnaeth, to beg aid.
"It seems a risk," he said diplomatically.
"It is," Estel agreed, pouring some of their precious water onto a cloth to once again clean the wounded elf's burns. "But for him, I think they will try to help, despite the dangers."
"For him," Elladan repeated blankly. For him more than themselves, perhaps, strangers as they were, but -
"Especially if they are Maedhros's people," Estel added. "From what some in your father's halls have said, it seemed they regretted the chance to never even the score."
Especially if - ?
Ah.
That was enough time spent wrapped up in his own head if he had missed this. Elrohir would laugh at him.
Estel was right. It was time to take action.
"Alright," he agreed. "I will see if my feet are fleet enough to catch them - and if my tongue is fleet enough to tell them we have found their missing high king before they assume I am a certain other half-elf and take action of their own."
He hoped the more Feanorian of his father's followers would have mentioned if they'd had any unfortunate encounters with elves wearing Elladan's face in the distant past, but that assumed they would remember it.
Given the rest of what had recently occurred, he thought it safer not to assume absolutely anything at all.