Chapter Text
He paced and prayed, he screamed and sang to himself, he slept and woke; he marked the passing of days and hours by the motion of a single square shaft of light across the stone floor of his cell; he hoped and despaired with every cycle that it made, until one day the pattern was broken, and a shadow fell unexpectedly; and he looked up, and saw, crouching on the wide stone sill of the one, high barred window, a child.
They stared at each other. Thranduil held his breath. He felt as if one exhalation might send the boy tumbling out. He was a slender thing, and there was something bird-like about the way he crouched there.
A minute elapsed. Then the boy vanished, as swiftly and as quietly as he had appeared. Stepped back through the bars, his grey gaze never leaving Thranduil. Dropped down, agile as a monkey.
Gone.
***
That night Thranduil had a visit from his father.
He knew it was not truly him. His cell was a blind grey hole, with a single square of lighter darkness where the window was; but Oropher was bathed in candlelight, as if he still stood under the lanterns and glittering garlands that had adorned Menegroth. His honey-coloured hair shone, and so did his dark eyes, and light caught in his long deep green robes. Thranduil clutched his ratty cover to himself.
‘You brought this on yourself,’ said Oropher.
Trust him - even as a vision conjured up by a too lonely brain - to point out Thranduil’s faults.
‘It was not my purpose to be captured, father.’
‘No, but you were careless enough to let it happen.’
‘What should I have done?’
‘You should have followed me.’
How long had it been since he’d last seen Oropher? Three decades - nay, more. They had parted on the Iant Iaur, the bridge that spanned the foaming waters of Esgalduin, where beneath them the river flowed red. They had fled north after the attack, a straggling desperate crowd, even as the sons of Fëanor rode south and east to their stronghold. He remembered Celeborn, at the head of the march, taller by half a foot at least than the rest of them, and seeming taller still because of the girl, Elwing, that sat on his shoulders. When they stopped for a brief rest, he saw her standing stiffly by the stone parapet, staring out with empty eyes. There and then he’d known he would serve her for as long as he lived, or she did. But his father had decided otherwise.
‘How could you leave us?’ he asked his father.
Oropher answered now as he had then.
‘There is no hope left for our people.’
‘I do not agree. Neither did Celeborn, or Galadriel.’
‘No. But she is a Noldo, and he, and you, were infected by her Noldo beliefs: an inability to comprehend and accept one’s own defeat. But perhaps this’ (Oropher’s gesture encompassed the close, cold walls, and the iron bars at the window, and the fortress that crouched on the hill) ‘has taught you better.’
‘No,’ said Thranduil. ‘It has not.’
Empty words. Oropher laughed, and dissolved.
***
The next night, Dior came to him.
He seemed so beautiful, so sad. Thingol’s overlarge crown fell lopsided across his brow, a gleaming of gold about the black cloak of his hair.
Thranduil, in his desire to comfort him, almost fell from his stone bench, and crept towards his lord. He wanted to lay a hand on him, but dared not. Besides, Dior looked away from him. A tear trickled down his fair cheek, then his jaw. Thranduil ached with wanting to wipe it away, nay, to dry its source.
‘My prince,’ he said, soft and beseeching, ‘why do you weep?’
‘I weep for my sons,’ Dior answered, ‘my murdered boys, who died alone.’
I weep for you, Thranduil thought, my Aranel, my slaughtered prince.
‘I weep for my daughter,’ Dior went on. ‘Driven from her home…’
‘I followed her, my prince. Your daughter lived, and grew strong, and ruled your people.’
Dior turned. His grey gaze, starlight through water, fell upon Thranduil.
‘Where is she, then? For I cannot find her under the eaves of the wood, nor upon the mountains, nor yet on the vast plains. Not even by the sea did I find her…’
‘Yet she did live there.’
Thranduil remembered the Havens of Sirion, so different from Menegroth, yet fair in their ramshackle way. The house of Elwing had been beautiful, standing with white walls by the margin of the sea. There she had ruled; and taken her husband, and borne her children.
But Dior was not consoled.
‘I found her not.’
And Thranduil remembered also the smoke and the blood. He wished he did not, for now that rain of ash fell upon Dior, and his trickling tears grew red. He huddled against his lord, and grasped at beloved hands, but still Dior wept for his quenched bloodline.
***
On the third night, his mother who stood before him. Her features also seemed drawn, but the expression on her face was one of sadness rather than sternness. Oropher had worn the green robes he favoured in truth, but her gown was dark and red.
‘Why did you come here?’ she asked.
‘For you.’
‘Long have been the years since I last set foot on Amon Ereb.’
‘But you always spoke of it.’
Amrûnis was of Silvan stock, and she had been born before the crossing of Ered Luin, in the Eastern lands that Thranduil had never yet seen. As a young woman she had passed through the mountains, following Aran Denethor, her kin; and she had long walked the green woods of Ossiriand before she met Oropher. But after their marriage he had persuaded her to join him beyond the Girdle of Melian. It was there that she had given birth to Thranduil. Still, she would often speak to him of torrents leaping silver among the untouched trees: Adurant, Duilwen, Brilthor; and further north, Legolin and Thalos… Where Legolin met Gelion, she’d said, you could see far over the plain. Far, far away was the Long Wall of the hills, but closest was the hill of Amon Ereb, rising solitary above the land. When the sun set, its dark head lay against the yellow sky; and its shadow lay very long across the land…
‘My king and kin died there,’ she said softly. ‘I am glad I went to Doriath.’
‘Perhaps it would have been best if you had not.’ His heart was heavy and sore in his chest. ‘If I had not been born. Then you would not-’ Her bloodied upraised arms, the too slender shield of her body, her-
‘My child, no.’
She moved forward, and laid a hand on his. He could see it, brown and slender upon his; but he could not feel it. The ache in his chest deepened.
‘I wanted to see it,’ he said plaintively.
‘Not that alone. Was it vengeance?’
‘Maybe.’
A sigh, or perhaps the whistling of the wind through iron bars.
‘Child, do not do in my name what I abhor and fear.’
‘But you are not here.’ You lie beside the Esgalduin, in the shadow of an oak, where your bones will tangle with tree roots. Even now she was disappearing, a mere image made by his frightened mind to comfort him, a reflection on troubled waters. But the memory of her still, cold body, pierced by Golodh arrows, did nothing to soothe him. His blood rose in him, hot and dark. A frenzy of anger; he might have risen, dashed the thick door from its hinges, run up the stairs to his captors - her killers, yes, if not the hand that had wielded the bow, then the lips that had given the order -, he would have made them swallow their murderous tongues, and smashed their slaughtering brains…
But of course the door was stronger.
On the way he had nursed such thoughts, to keep himself warm while he trudged alone through the land, fearful of Orcs and other dark things. He would smuggle himself unseen into the fortress, carry out his vengeance swiftly, and then continue East, find his proud father.
Instead…
He had been making his way up a narrow but deep gorge that slashed the land at the foot of the hill. At first, high jagged cliffs surrounded him, but that had made him feel safer, for he was but a few miles from the fortress walls. Then, as he’d gone on the bottom of the ravine had risen steadily towards the level on the plain. He was quenching his thirst from the stream that ran down the gorge when they’d found him - the sharp tip of a spear pricking the nape of his neck… and his woodsman’s pride.
He’d been shackled summarily, without a word or a glance of sympathy, or even anger. A trammelled animal, led (so he believed then, trembling in his chains in spite of himself) to the slaughter. But they had merely brought him to the castle. After a wide low outer gate, he had gone through a first courtyard, where a towering oak tree, thick-trunked and gnarled, grew. In spite of his fear Thranduil had stared at it as he was dragged through the yard, remembering the stories Amrûnis had told him of Denethor’s tomb. Then they had gone through a gate to the inner ward, and there he’d been made to kneel on cold stone, and wait.
There his fear had turned to humiliation, to rage. To be captured, to be - to be - killed, yes - that was one thing, but to wait? They did not have the decency to give a swift death. Instead he had to endure the wait, the soldiers that came and went, indifferent to him.
Then there had been the touch of a boot, nudging him to look up, and there, a few feet from him, eyeing him coolly, was Maglor. Thranduil had not noticed him at first, among the press of the Fëanorians’ soldiers, for his face was plain and so was his garb, a long brown woollen cloak, rather than the blood-stained armour in which Thranduil had seen him twice before.
At the sight of him anger rushed through him. His muscles tightened, like a bow’s rope. He was ready to spring up, challenge Maglor, kill him with bare hands or teeth.
But no. Remembering this, Thranduil in his cell gave a bitter bark of laughter, and then whimpered to himself. There is no need to accept the challenge of a dog, or a worm, and Maglor had looked at him as if he were no more than that, and perhaps less. A guard had whispered in his ear, and Maglor, glancing back to the keep, then to Thranduil, had said (his voice so melodious, so startling, coming from such an ordinary body): ‘Take him to a cell.’
They’d obeyed, and there he was. The door that had shut behind him that day had not opened again. It would never open again. Never, never, nevernevernever
‘Mother!’ he screamed to the empty air. But he was laughing and weeping, and could not easily summon her to his mind’s eye. He tried to hear her voice, softly whispering…
Thranduil…
‘I could not avenge you. I cannot. I will die here.’
Elves were not made to be confined in cells, far from the sun and wind and leaves and hope. And what did he have to live for?
***
Dawn found him in a crumpled heap, hunkering down against the cell wall. He felt bewildered and weak. His nails were torn and bloody, and he could not exactly remember why. He pressed himself deeper against the wall, as if it could ward him, pressed his knees to his chest and his head to his knees.
Then there was a flutter of sound above him. He looked up, squinting against the sunlight. He could not see well, his eyes hot and sore, his lashes thick with grime and tears. ‘Leave me alone!’ he shouted. But the shape in the window did not move.
He wiped his eyes with the heel of his palms, his fists still clenched, fingers shot through with pain. Why would they not leave him to die? He looked up.
The boy was here again.
‘What do you want?’
No answer. But the child edged forward on the stone windowsill, clinging to the iron bars, each of them slightly thicker than what his small hands could clasp. Thranduil this time noticed his unruly hair, so dark as to be nearly black, and his eyes, of a pure, light grey, which stared curiously at Thranduil. All of him - and the boy’s features, delicate and fair even in extreme youth - was fey yet lovely to look upon - and familiar.
But it could not be. Thranduil saw again the face of a dead child, stiff and cold. A trick of hope, an illusion of the brain, that still wants to live, and will deceive itself. And these other children, a tide of blood still upon them, and all their screaming spent, still and lifeless as they were - dragged away. Dragged away…
But that child - the child he could see even now - was not still. He moved, careful, something untamed and wary about him - yet even so, he moved, and moved towards him, even as Thranduil gaped, mind awhirl, and slipped boldly through the iron bars, to come crouch on the inner part of the sill.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered. ‘What is your name?’
The boy looked at him in silence. With every second certainty grew in Thranduil (had he not seen him and his brother in the cradle?), and every second a part of his mind rose in mad laughter and mockery of that hope (dead, dead, dead).
But finally the boy spoke. His voice was low and clear and there was an odd lilt in it that was not familiar to Thranduil. But he spoke and he said:
‘My name’s Elrond.’
Thranduil burst into laughter, and a torrent of tears rushed down his face. The boy shrank back, but did not flee. Then through his tears Thranduil called out: ‘Hello, o hope! I am Thranduil.’