Chapter Text
“I’m going,” Tauriel tells him, “and that’s that. You can stay here in Mirkwood and pout, if that is your wish. But there is to be a war, a war the likes of which has not been seen for an age, and I’ll be damned if I stay behind.”
Thranduil presses his fingertips to his skull in a vain attempt to halt the oncoming headache. He cannot settle. Her chambers are larger than the humble appointments she had kept in previous years, but Thranduil still feels like the walls are closing in on him. “Do as you wish,” he informs her. “But if I may –”
“Sarcastic, mocking king,” Tauriel mutters rebelliously. Thranduil studiously ignores her.
“– I would remind you that you have responsibilities here. Who will fulfil your duties?”
“You could find another deputy guard captain at a moment’s notice,” Tauriel replies dismissively, tossing her braided red hair over her shoulder and fixing him with an irate glare Thranduil is reasonably sure she learned from him. “You are prevaricating.”
“And you are remiss, if you believe I will allow you to go off to war and stay behind,” Thranduil retorts, fixing his gaze firmly on his boots. Even after half a century together, he still finds no comfort in speaking of matters of the heart. Especially to Tauriel, her eyes full of light and recrimination. But oh, he has seen so many wars. “If you go, then I must go too. There is no other way around it.” He hears her sigh, like wind through the trees of his kingdom.
“You cannot,” Tauriel says gently, tilting his head up until she can meet his eyes with her own. “I need you to stay here. Someone must look after Amareth.”
“Me?” Thranduil asks in disbelief. Tauriel huffs.
“Who else? Who else is to her as you are?” Thranduil manages not to growl, but it’s a close thing.
“Eru, Tauriel, you know we must not speak of that,” he says through gritted teeth. “There are eyes and ears everywhere.”
“Including little ones,” Tauriel snaps, and sure enough, when Thranduil turns, there is a pair of wide green eyes peeping around a column. “Come here, Amareth,” Tauriel says, and shyly the child comes forward. She has the look of her mother, the green eyes and delicate features, but the silvery-gold fall of her hair is all his, rare enough that even now, ten years after her birth, Amareth still receives curious and suspicious looks from the inhabitants of his kingdom. “Say hello to the king,” Tauriel encourages, lifting her daughter into her arms, and Thranduil manages a faint smile.
“Amareth,” he acknowledges, and the child looks up.
“Sire,” she says in her little voice, for a moment the very picture of her mother. Amareth turns her head to look at her mother. “Are you going away again, Naneth?” she asks. Tauriel’s mouth twists, and only now does Thranduil sense the battle within her. She does not want to leave her child any more than Thranduil wants Tauriel to leave his forests, but there is a higher calling she must obey.
“Just for a little while,” Thranduil says, and very deliberately holds out his arms until Tauriel warily transfers Amareth into his embrace. The child is stiff in his arms, uncomfortable being held by someone who is almost a stranger, but Thranduil ignores that for now. That, and the stab of pain in his heart, that his child hardly knows him at all. “We will have to muddle along, you and I, while your Naneth is gone.”
Later, Tauriel turns over in his loose embrace, bringing their faces close together. “I do not like this,” she admits. “I never thought to have children, but this is not the life I wanted for Amareth, to lose me as I lost my mother and father.” Thranduil shudders, an entirely involuntary motion, and tries to pass it off as a shiver of cold. Yet when he meets Tauriel’s eyes, he knows she is not deceived. It has been a long time since he could fool her.
“You will not be lost,” he says instead. “I will be most irked with you if you should happen to get yourself killed.” There is so much more he wants to say, how she brought light back into his world, how she honoured his fallen wife and eased the rictus of grief that had paralysed him for so long. Yet he does not know how to find the words.
“I see,” Tauriel replies flippantly, but she tightens her grip on his waist. “Then I must be careful, to avoid raising the wrath of my king and liege. That would be the very last thing I would want.”
“Tease,” he admonishes lightly. And then, as quietly as the gentle fall of rain outside: “You know I would be desolate if you were harmed.”
“I know,” she replies, just as softly. “But you cannot lock yourself away from the world this time. If I am slain, then you must raise Amareth. There is no one else.”
“You should inquire of my son as to the sort of single father I make, Tauriel,” Thranduil snips. Tauriel stills in his arms, so motionless as to appear not even breathing.
“You will not do that to my daughter,” she says softly, but oh, the weight behind it. “Not to your daughter.”
Thranduil does not think he could bear to fail again.
“When will you leave for Imladris?” he asks instead, and the tension slowly melts out of Tauriel.
“In three days,” she replies. “That will give me adequate time to prepare, and time enough to prepare Amareth.”
“Truly?” Thranduil asks. “You are a fool if you perceive her regard for you to be so slight.” Tauriel shrugs and turns over again, but Thranduil is acutely aware she does it only to hide her face.
“It is to prepare me as much as her,” she replies lightly, but Thranduil can hear the tears in her voice. “It must be three days. Any longer and I’ll never go.”