Chapter Text
“Be welcome, Queen-”
“Just Arwen, mellon, please.”
“Arwen,” Legolas nodded, letting her step past the threshold and into the courtyard proper. The tension in her shoulders released as she breathed in the scent of the yellow roses blooming along the white stone wall. “Be welcome.”
“Yellow roses…” Arwen smiled, turning slowly to take in the wonder around her. “Imladris favoured the reds, and Grandmother the white, of course. Yet these are sweet as honey to the tongue.”
Among the tree branches, small birds chirped merrily; a sound he barely remembered from his earliest childhood at home, yet here they flourished among the flowers he had encouraged to grow beyond their span outside the walls.
“A favourite of my own mother’s,” Legolas admitted, letting the door close softly behind her. Reaching for a fat bloom, he let the tips of his fingers trace a silk-soft petal. “And of my own. Ada kindly sent a few plants.”
“You have sung to them,” Arwen nodded, carefully touching another rose and bending to inhale the soothing sweetness of it. “Made these stones a home… despite being strangers to this realm.” For a moment, her face turned sad, but in the next the sorrow was wiped clean. “They are happy here.”
“So are you.” It was not a question; her happiness was a quiet radiance visible every day.
“Yes,” Arwen nodded, letting the bloom go. “Even in the sorrowing moments.” She touched her middle, briefly, but the thought was clear as day on her face.
“Master Elrond will have seen it, mellon,” Legolas promised gravely, taking her hand between both of his with a gentle squeeze. “As will the Lady Galadriel, I am certain.”
“I know,” Arwen smiled. “And yet…”
“It is not the same,” Legolas nodded. “But believe that they are joyous with you in the West – I should not wonder if Bilbo is at this moment composing a lullaby! – as we are joyous with you here.”
“Thank you.” A bird chirped, stealing Arwen’s eye and her gentle smile reappeared at the way it hopped from branch to branch – there was a nest in that tree, Legolas knew, well-hidden and containing two ever-hungry mouths waiting to be fed. “Will you show me this garden?”
“It will not always be summer,” Legolas said, setting off down the flagstone pathway that curved away from the door, Arwen’s hand resting in the bend of his arm, “but the lighter seasons will last longer within these walls, and grant more rest to the weary than without them.”
“I feel it.”
“You would,” he agreed, “and more than most – but even mortals will find peace here, if but for a moment.” He gestured at the bright blossoms. “These are Ada’s roses. He always nurtured a few bushes around the Halls, in memory of my mother. She grew them first, after the Great War, to soothe the injured fëar of the soldiers returning from the Gates.”
“They hum with sunlight,” Arwen said, her eyes closed as she continued to walk, trusting him to lead her steps. Legolas felt her fëa brush gently against his, a hello soft as the light breeze around them, before it moved towards the flowers, taking in those aspects mere eyes would not see. “And a song of peace.”
“Those who lived through those days saw more than any elf should bear,” Legolas replied, quoting a lesson of Thranduil’s from his earliest childhood. “The flowers carry the hope of the homes and hearts they left behind to protect them – and the joy of their homecoming undimmed by the grief that dogged their weary steps.”
“Will you open it to the public?” Arwen wondered, drawing back into her body once more, peace settled on her like a gossamer veil thinner than the one covering her hair in the Gondorian fashion of her new Court.
“It shall be a gift, I plan,” Legolas said, leading her to a stone bench where the wall had been lowered enough to grant a view across parts of the city. Beyond the walls, the wheat-yellow fields on the Pelennor shone in sunlight; harvest would soon begin. “In honour of this new Age of Men.”
“The last gift of the First-Born to the Second,” Arwen said quietly.
“Hardly the last,” Legolas chuckled, giving her a cheeky grin. “Yours will come after, by my reckoning.”
Arwen laughed, the musical sound of it floating out over her new home. “So it will be, mellon, so it will be indeed,” she nodded, resting her hand over the place where her son was quietly growing, soon to be announced to the people he would one day rule. “And more besides, I dare hope.”
“As many as the giver of life will grant you,” Legolas nodded. “And if you go by the toasting in many an inn, you’ll fill the tower of Ecthelion to bursting.” Gimli had come to town in pursuit of bargains for Aglarond – trade, he had decided, would only be fair and prosperous if it came to the Caves from all sides, small as the place might yet be – and they had spent the previous evening responding to more than a few of such toasts.
Gimli was still abed when he left at dawn to prepare the last final touches on his gift. A gift for the city, sure, and his friend Aragorn more than most. But the heart of it was for Arwen, built as a living memory of all Elvendom entwined with the stone of her new country.
“Three would suit me,” Arwen laughed. “That was enough for Adar, and I shall be content with that number – Erestor would have told you three were too many!”
“Then I shall hope no less than three may be your lot,” Legolas smiled, not for the first time wondering at the bounty of Men that were their children. Himself, the youngest of four, had been considered a blessing beyond measure – only the far-distant Nerdanel had birthed and raised more children than the King and absent Queen of Mirkwood, and yet he had seen families here in Minas Tirith and in Rohan both boasting 10 or even 12 children! “Erestor was ever a worrier.”
“True… and yet I shall miss him,” Arwen sighed, leaning back against the stone backrest and letting her eyes take in the city below.
For a moment, Legolas simply enjoyed the sounds of the busy streets below reminding them of the sheer amount of life surrounding them. The bench was old. He had taken the duty of receiving a number of pieces from the councillor Erestor when Aragorn – even three years on, he was not used to thinking of the man as Elessar – had despaired of knowing what to do with the shipment on top of his other duties. In his garden, it had found a home.
“It is the nature of life, mortal or not, to miss what has passed into the West,” Legolas replied, using another of Thranduil’s phrases. He understood and yet did not, the longing in Ada’s words; far to the north, Greenwood still lived, her people unbowed by the hardship of a war of attrition gone on for millennia.
And yet he knew the day would not be long before Thranduil’s desire to reunite with his beloved would see the last Elvenking leave his realm and the people he had so carefully guarded for thousands of years behind, following the call of his heart westward.
For himself, the call of the Sea lingered, sinking further into his bones; a song could be ignored at will, but one day, he, too, would follow the call of the gulls, he knew.
Shaking off the notion, Legolas steeled himself, pushing that insistent voice to the back of his mind. He had things to do in Middle Earth, yet, after all.
Most days the song was near-silent, anyways.
“I have lived with it as long as I might recall,” Arwen sighed, startling him from his thoughts. Legolas felt briefly odd, realising that what he had known of himself since before Galadriel's prophecy – if he was honest, at least – was something Arwen had felt since her earliest years; a dream she would never fulfil. “I know it well.”
“The bitter and the sweet,” Legolas said quietly, repeating words Aragorn had once spoken through tears. “As was the choice of Lúthien.”
“I thought I knew it, then,” Arwen admitted. “But it is a choice unrevealed in full until it is made, I think. And yet… I count the sweet the greater, too.” Again, her hand went to her middle, and a gentle smile spread across her face. “Yes, the sweet is the greater.”
Legolas only smiled, closing his eyes to enjoy the warmth of the sun on his face; Firien it might be, but in the garden the chill had not yet found them.