Ionnath Estel 17

Ionnath Estel

Part 17

Posted: July 4, 2009

*****

If, on the banks of the Anduin, the pain of Legolas' presence seemed somewhat to diminish, the pain of Haldir's absence waxed to take its place; in neither case did Elladan's heartache abate, though the aches were the fruits of his own devising. Many miles stretched between Thranduil's palace and the Great River, and each step of the way the trees of the Greenwood loomed above, breeze-tossed branches dipping and swaying like a thousand chastising fingers: the forest felt the insult to its beloved son, and knew the full measure of his part in it. At last, they released their grip upon him and spat him out under the bright sun an afternoon's ride from the Old Ford on the water's edge, but all the while he could think of little else but the certain farewell behind him, and the uncertain welcome ahead.

The Gladden Fields unfurled in all directions, a deserted plain of gorse and short grasses giving no sign that evil had been done there, or that his own kinsmen had fought valiantly and perished horribly in that wholly unremarkable place. The earth bore no trace of the ancient violence, but Elladan could feel it: a strange, plaintive echo, a faint and woeful song upon the air bearing testament to folly and loss and to mysteries Elladan could fathom, save to know that they were in some manner unfinished. The knowledge preyed heavily on his mind and he descended further into his brooding, the lonely hours punctuated only by the grating calls of crows.

He considered that he was acting in total lunacy; that he may have set Legolas aside only to have Haldir spit in his face. But he could not remain silent when faced with the news of Haldir's betrothal, and if his concern was met with scorn and he was cast aside yet again, well, then, so be it: he would remain alone-- a fitting price for his meddling. Yet surely there was some greater wisdom at work here, some larger design of which this act was some small part! He could not believe he would be doomed to loneliness, nor Haldir to a marriage bereft of passion.

He arrived, body stiff and aching, at the edge of the woods to fading daylight casting the forest floor in deepening hues; at last his travels delivered him to the very spot from which he had departed. Though he knew the Galadhrim had followed his progress from afar, they had seen no need to hinder his progress yet. No-one waylaid him at the eaves, and for that he was grateful, for he could disguise neither his fatigue or his consternation. He passed a cluster of soldiers, the Marchwarden among them, taking their evening meal. A few nodded to him in welcome while others watched him curiously, but none spoke or rose to greet him. Still, he imagined as he passed them that a score of suspicious eyes bored into his back. If he could last but an hour more, he would reach the empty telain reserved for tired visitors seeking a night's rest before journeying on to the settlements deep within the green, or to Cerin Amroth and the burgeoning villages that blossomed in the shadow of the king's great dwelling.

He had nearly reached his destination when the Marchwarden approached. He did not bid Elladan stop, but stepped directly into his path, and while his face appeared scrupulously free from expression, Elladan espied a sort of malevolent mirth playing around the corners of his eyes and mouth, a subtlety that fell a hair's breadth from disrespect.

He said, "Welcome back, Lord Elladan. Did you not find Greenwood the Great as welcoming as you had imagined?"

The question stank of innuendo, for which Elladan had no patience whatsoever. "Do you imply that King Thranduil and his son lack hospitality?"

Ignoring Elladan's riposte, he said, "I assume you come to accompany your family back to Imladris." His tone gave no indication he felt even the least bit chastened.

"I come on business of my own. I was not aware my family was still here; I assumed they had returned home quite some time ago."

"Your Granddame coerced your Grandsire into prolonging their stay." The Silvan's expression grew nearly smug. "The Noldor and Sindar, for all their vaunted skill and wisdom, have not yet found a way to grow mallorn trees outside the Golden Wood, so they must linger here and wonder at ours."

"Coerced, you say? No doubt my Grandsire would find your unenlightened assumption amusing. If he had wished to depart, he would have done so; my Granddame is well-equipped to care for herself on the road alone." Against all inclination, he forced on an ill-fitting mask of diplomacy. "But since you see fit to speak so dismissively of my relations, let me remind you that had it not been for my Granddame, you would have no mellyrn to crow about. She brought the seedlings of your beloved trees from the Blessed Realm and laid them in Lorien's soil herself. She and my Grandsire tended them and brought them to fruition long before the Tawarwaith claimed this land for their own. Or do the Silvans now teach their own brand of history to the young, one that disregards the contributions of any born beyond the forest's eaves?"

The Marchwarden apparently thought better of furthering this line of discussion, and spoke his next words with more deference. "Lord Elrohir is staying not far from here. I imagine he and his...companion--" his lip curled with distaste"--will be pleased for your company." He gestured with his arm toward a well-worn path winding into a dense copse.

Elladan excused himself with a curt nod. As he walked away, his earlier feeling of being surveilled became undeniable, and he turned around. Caranlas, deep in consultation with the Marchwarden, looked up, met his gaze awkwardly, and shut his mouth. Elladan was too far away to hear whatever it was that he had been saying, and too tired to be curious. The Marchwarden met his stare easily, then turned aside, prodding Caranlas to follow. Elladan was more than happy to see their backs receding out of view, and within a few more moments, the talan came into his sights.

His rucksack had barely hit the broad floorboards when Elrohir appeared, bounding up the ladder with what Elladan could only feel was a galling surplus of energy. "Fresh news has wings in the wood, it seems."

"The news only affirmed what I had already sensed myself." Elrohir proffered him a quick, fierce embrace. "I need not ask why you have come; Gildor and I were wagering between ourselves how long it would be before you arrived."

Elladan grunted mirthlessly. "And you will collect the spoils, I take it?"

Elrohir shook his head. "Gildor is apparently the wiser in these matters. I had thought perhaps you and Legolas... well, for your sake, I had hoped..." He shrugged. "I ought to have known you would not make it easy on yourself. Or on Legolas. Or on Haldir, for that matter--"

"Stop." Elladan sank down to the bedroll. "I am too tired--"

"--Forgive me." Elrohir clasped his shoulder tightly "I know you are. And I know you must also be eager to see Haldir. I would only have you think on things before you act. Rash words and rash deeds will only come back to haunt you."

"I was not planning to storm his nuptials with my sword drawn, though that does have a certain appeal." Elladan sank down on the pallet with a weary grunt and tossed a listless arm over his head.

Elrohir solicitously tugged off Elladan's boots. "Your timing is fortuitous; His company is returning from the north even now; perhaps you will intercept him on his way home."

"I should have known you would be one step ahead of me."

"Not ahead of you," Elrohir smiled, perhaps a little sadly, "but beside you. Gildor was so certain you would be back that he took it upon himself to keep track of Haldir's whereabouts. He is a man without equal when it comes to winkling information out from between closed lips."

Elladan mustered his remaining energy to undress, the fabric muffled his voice when he pulled his shirt over his head. "I shall have to thank him."

"Break your fast with us in the morning and thank him then. I will come for you."

Elladan nodded, yawning behind his fist. "It is good to see you," he said as his brother rose and moved to go. "I feared myself friendless here."

"You? Never." Backlit by moonlight, his attenuated figure filled the doorframe. "And I am glad to see you, too."

Once his brother had departed, he roused himself to one last task. He scavenged the leather tie from the plait in his hair, and then rummaged at the bottom of his rucksack where Haldir's pendant had lain so long dormant, like a leaf in winter. He restrung it on the lacing and tied it around his neck. Compared to Legolas' foliate chain it was nearly weightless, but it felt good and familiar against his skin. Having set what little thing he could that day to right, Elladan slept.

* * * * *

Gildor's information had proven better than Elladan could have wished; by the time Elrohir roused him late the following morning, word had reached them that the company would reach the garrison by the time the sun peaked in its path.

"Tread lightly," Gildor advised before tucking into his breakfast with relish. "Perhaps you must accept that he has chosen his lot, no matter how much it grieves you."

"Perhaps I must." Porridge stuck in his throat when he swallowed. He stopped eating for a moment to dribble the honey on a piece of bread, but found that he had little appetite for it. "But I must also wonder that he would commit himself of his own volition to a marriage based on amity alone."

Elrohir reached across the table and plucked the honey from Elladan's hand. "There are far weaker things upon which one might build a marriage than friendship."

"Would you commit yourself to an eternity of 'friendship' with Gildor if that were all he could profess?"

"Of course not," Elrohir replied.

Gildor's laugh was humorless, his tone as dark and bitter as the dregs of the tea now cooling in its pot. "Your brother is not Haldir, and I am not Mithrellas, and we have not the constraints of Silvan proscriptions to hamper us."

"So Haldir is prevented happiness by mere dint of birth? He could be wed for love, save for a vagary of tribal affiliation?"

"Do not trivialize the matter," Gildor warned.

"I trivialize nothing!" Dishes rattled on the table under Elladan's fist, and he knocked his knee soundly and rather painfully against one of its legs. Elrohir cleared his throat pointedly, but neither Elladan nor Gildor acknowledged his attempt to broker peace."That is the entire point! He is trivializing a solemn rite by wedding himself to one for whom he feels little more than fraternal fondness. It is no better than you taking Arwen for a bride!"

Elrohir choked on his tea, a loud, wet cough. Gildor pulled a face that evinced the extraordinary forbearance of a man whose work necessitated patient trafficking with dolts and half-wits. "That is a patently absurd comparison and you know it. You will wreak havoc, my friend. Let it lie."

"If Haldir tells me that this is the life that he freely chooses, then I will let it lie. But not until then, I cannot. The obligation of friendship alone compels me to speak. He and I were friends before all else, and a true friend would not hold his tongue if he feared his boon companion headed down a disastrous course."

"Very well." Gildor rose from the table with his features bent to an expression of resignation. "On your head be it."

* * * * *

Elladan saw no reason to delay any further. The sun climbed steadily up the vault of the sky, and nothing stayed his hand now beyond his own apprehensions. He set out to find Haldir. Distantly, he recalled the feeling of this ground beneath his feet, running paths and hillocks with his brother at his side when he had first come to Lothlorien in their childhood. Centuries had worn away old trails and drawn new ones; some trees had died, and saplings had risen up well beyond their forebears' reach, yet one constant had remained: Haldir.

Assuming that Haldir would head for home upon the completion of his duties, Elladan made that modest talan his first stop. It had not demonstrably changed in the intervening years; it remained the small yet homey haven he had first visited in his youth. After taking a moment to gather his thoughts at the foot of the stairs, he began to climb.

Rían's face registered complete surprise when she answered Elladan's knocking, but she quickly regained her composure and opened the door to him. "Welcome, my lord. I thought you had..." she looked down, a vague cloud of discomfort crossing her features. "I had not heard that you were in Lothlorien."

"I have been abroad for some time," he told her as he stepped over the threshold, "but now I am returned."

Her clumsy attempt to reply was summarily interrupted by another voice. "I might have known you would not stay away."

Orodhínen's grave face regarded him from across the room, a forbidding presence which disconcerted him now as greatly is it had in his youth."Cannot an old friend bestow his felicitations?" He affected a disarming smile, but it failed to move the stony countenance one whit.

"You have come to cause trouble." He grasped Elladan's arm and propelled him back out onto the landing, where Elladan angrily wrenched his arm free.

"I have come to assure myself that Haldir is well."

The door shut firmly behind him. "He is well." The low growl of his words held all the warning of a wolf about to bite. "Depart now, meddler, ere some irreparable damage is done."

"What damage would that be?" Elladan dared him to speak honestly, not in shaded words and suggestion. "What is it you fear?" Let him own his concerns outright just this once!

Orodhínen said only, "Do not do this. Please."

Elladan had not expected an appeal; he had been prepared for coldness and anger, but not for the desperation that licked at those words, and it tied his tongue.

"He has a chance at happiness," Orodhínen said, taking up the slack of the silence, "a chance to fulfill his birthright; would you rob him of that? If you truly cared for him, you would fly from here and never return. Let him go, Elladan. He is not for you."

"I love him, Orodhínen." The words came as naturally to his lips as any he had ever spoken, and to his surprise, Orodhínen did not recoil from them. "But you know this. You have known it all along."

A frown of unadulterated dismay drew down the corners of Orodhínen's mouth, as if a bandage had been removed from a lesser injury and revealed a fatal wound. Truth at last. Truth, and naked vulnerability.

"I will speak with him only once," Elladan told him. "If this marriage is what he wishes, then I shall depart, and I will plague your house no more. It will end here."

"You and your kind have ever been a plague upon my house," he snarled. "You will ruin him, just as--" He looked away as his words faltered, and Elladan did not think them entirely meant for him. "It will not end," Orodhínen said. "It does not, ever."

Elladan opened his mouth to beg some explanation for this arcane declaration, but stopped short upon seeing the sorrow in Orodhínen's face.

"It is pointless to forbid you unless I wish to stop you by force," the Silvan grunted resentfully. "Your star is higher and brighter, and you are accustomed to having things your way. I have pride enough that I will not stoop to bloody your lip to gain your cooperation; I can only ask once more that you consider your actions, and return whence you came."

A small, rueful smile played across Elladan's lips. "That way is closed to me now. I will speak to him, Orodhínen. I must."

Orodhínen did not move, save to close his eyes, looking for all the world as if he had suffered some mortal loss. Seeing no benefit in prolonging the discomfort of their exchange, Elladan took to the stairs with haste.

He had not gone far out of view of the homestead when a rustling in the trees caught his attention. So, Orodhínen had followed him, he thought with no small amount of irritation. He wondered at the man's purpose; he had not cowered from confrontation moments before, and lurking like a caitiff in the bushes hardly seemed a warrior's fashion. Elladan was too tightly wound to call him out, and acted as if he did not hear the slow creak of leaves under a carefully placed foot. The noises soon tapered into silence. Further down the path, sounds of footsteps began again, and presently Rúmil stepped out of the shade and into a patch of sunlight, just beyond arm's reach, still clad in his travel-stained grey uniform and carrying his bow.

"If silence is a warden's stock in trade, you have much to learn, Rúmil."

Rúmil cocked his head in noncomprehension and said nothing.

"Well? Out with it. Have you come to warn me away as well?" Elladan demanded. The bright and lively child, so quick to shower affection on his brother, and even on Elladan himself, now wore a closed and wary expression like his father's, as if determining what threat Elladan posed to him and his family. Though Rúmil had not witnessed the incident with Caranlas that had precipitated his prior departure, he had no doubt heard about it in thrilling detail from any of a number of his compatriots, if not from his own brothers, and he looked at Elladan with uncertainty, as if he were a beast that might strike without warning.

"Why have you come?" Rúmil asked.

"That is between your brother and I. Is he far behind you?"

"He did not follow me."

Elladan stood still and bold under the Galadhel's scrutiny. Rúmil said nothing for a long moment, and then sighed. "Do you know the plum orchard near the foothills?"

"Yes." Memory welled up within him, riding hard on a flash of ancient lightning, buffered by the rumble of remembered thunder and the sweetness of a kiss. "I know it."

"He awaits you there."

Elladan's tongue thickened in his mouth. "Thank you," he said, wishing the gulf between them had not grown so wide, but Rúmil only gave a curt nod with his eyes averted.

"Be kind," he admonished as Elladan turned to go. "Whatever your reason for coming here... be kind."

Elladan stopped, his heart clenching in his chest. It was one thing to understand in some abstract fashion that he had caused Haldir pain, but another thing entirely to hear the confirmation of it contained in that simple reproof. He turned to respond, but Rúmil had vanished as quickly as he had come, and no trace of his presence remained. Left with only the emptiness of the forest around him, Elladan pressed on.

The orchard, when at last he reached it, looked differently at the crest of spring than it had when Haldir had brought him there on the sultriest day of a long-flown summer. Just past their prime, the blossoms on the trees fell away from nubby branches to carpet the ground in pink and white. Some other season, he might have found the sweet fragrance a pleasure, but today it provided a hollow echo of the scents he associated with this place: ripe plums and loamy soil, the fresh splendor of an approaching storm. How many of these trees would bear fruit come summer? How many plums would ripen and how many would shrivel on the branch? How many would swell and burst, their dark skins split and oozing rubine flesh? He had not eaten one in many seasons, yet he could still conjure their taste upon his tongue; it was the taste of Haldir. And there, where the hithermost trees raised branches toward the sun, a lone figure, broad shoulders draped in misty gray, stood turned away to the West, waiting.

Elladan took a breath and stepped into the grove.

* * * * *

Rain had accumulated along the banks of the little stream to pool in the forks of tree roots, and marsh grasses bowed and swayed under the filigreed froth of mayfly eggs. The warmth of the lengthening days promised to draw forth the tiny naiads soon, and the skies would be briefly filled with the swarming of an evanescent host. How very different the weight of a choice might seem, Haldir thought, crouching down to doff his packs and examine the pale foam, how different its repercussions, if one had but a single day in which to live. Existence distilled to an instant, no grand expectations or stultifying tradition, only the singular drive to test ones wings, to find ones partner and to seek frantic communion until that little spark allotted them had been spent. Now, the millennial weight of memory oppressed him, though he had not even a thousand years behind him yet. How grand to live so briefly and yet so freely! He suppressed the hollow laughter climbing his throat. It was strange to envy such a transient and inconsequential creature, and yet it was hardly the strangest thing that could be said of him.

All around, the plum trees beckoned, offering images best left in the distant past. Fraught though it was with the burden of recollection, the orchard lay far enough off the usual byways that no one would come upon it by happenstance, and now that the guard had changed and the rest of his company had gone on ahead to the garrison he need not worry that any stragglers might go tromping by at an inopportune moment. If he and Elladan were to meet, it would be here, at the place and time of his own choosing.

Mindful footfalls, the steps of one advancing cautiously but not stealthily, reached his ears over the brook's song of constancy. His breathing quickened, and he cursed himself for the inexplicable flash of longing that welled up in his chest. That was entirely the wrong thing to feel, and he dared not give the impulsive rush of emotion its head, hard as he had fought all these months to wrestle it into submission. He busied his hands to disguise their sudden tremble, working at the buckle on his quiver and setting it aside, unstringing his bow and leaning it with great care up against his bedroll and his packs. The depths to which he could concomitantly yearn for something and dread it confounded him.

All his senses attuned to Elladan's approach, he rose from his crouch but did not turn. "Why are you here, Peredhel?"

"Peredhel, is it still?" The brittleness of his tone gave the lie to the lightness of his remark. "I had hoped that time enough had passed that I might hear you call me by my name."

Again Haldir asked, "Why are you here?"

"I...." Elladan swallowed audibly. "I had word that momentous things were afoot for you." A note of accusation colored the words.

Haldir steeled himself and turned. Elladan took in a deep breath as their eyes met, his broad chest rising, and in spite of everything, Haldir's heartbeat quickened beneath the lambent focus of those grey eyes. Damn him for being so beautiful, he thought. Falling plum blossoms decorated his hair, thoroughly incongruous with his solemn bearing. Anyone else might have looked ridiculous, but not Elladan. The collar of his fine lawn shirt lay open, exposing his throat in that cavalier way he had. The golden oak leaves of that land beyond the Anduin had fallen; a mallorn leaf and silver star entwined rested once again on the crest of his sternum, as it had for so long. Haldir shored himself up against the wave of nostalgia that wracked him, and wondered what sort of fool he was to believe that he could look Elladan in the eye and not feel the tidal pull of want. "I make no habit of sharing my private dealings with the world at large, and yet I find they have penetrated even the bed chambers of Greenwood royalty."

Elladan's gaze guiltily shifted. "Your replacement bore the news to Eryn Galen with his dispatches for King Thranduil. You will forgive me if my heart and conscience forbid me from celebrating these tidings."

"So you roused yourself from Legolas' bed to renew your insults against me. Should I be flattered? I assumed you would find it a fitting end for me, what with my provincial cares and my cowardice." It seemed, after the words landed, a petulant swiping of claws, but when Elladan paled, he knew he had struck deep.

"It would be fitting," Elladan replied, "if I believed it was truly what you wanted."

"You do not believe?"

He did not answer the question. "When we parted," he said after a time in a voice sweetened by sorrow, "I let anger speak for me, and I am ashamed of it."

Haldir's hackles rose at the memory of passion marks ostentatiously displayed, the scent of Elladan's sweat and an unfamiliar musk. "Oh, I believe it did far more than speak."

Blood flushed Elladan's cheeks and his jaw tightened, compressing his lips into a downward-curving bow. "I acted out of hurt and humiliation. I believed myself betrayed." He wore that humiliation plain on his face now, as if the memory of his perfidy stung more than the original slight.

Yet Haldir, who felt the ground shifting beneath him like sand, could not afford to be taken in by a display of contrition, however sincere. "I behaved no differently than I warned you a thousand times I must. How could you have imagined it would go any other wise than it did?" Elladan looked away again and Haldir moved to put himself directly in his line of vision again, to force his attention. If this was to be the last time they spoke of these things, he was determined that Elladan would hear every word. "You wished me to be gallant, but you could not see that what you call gallantry I call a man throwing himself to the wolves. There were reasons I kept my peace; I thought you understood." Despite the misery it caused him, he recalled for the thousandth time their parting confrontation and the cruel bite of Elladan's dismissal. Anger sped his breath and pushed the blood through his veins. "It is just as well for me that I did keep silent, since your affections proved fickle as the wind, blowing first one way and then another! I had given you my heart, in spite of all that I stood to lose, but you were in his bed before even one night passed!" The violence of his memory raged like a storm, and he could barely breathe for the constriction in his chest. He felt as though he might break apart in the whirling vortex of pain and anger-- and of love, not least of all. The orchard closed in around him. He needed to escape. He forged forward and pushing his way past Elladan, he growled, "Leave me be, false one!"

Elladan stumbled gracelessly backward before regaining his balance. "Wait--" His arm shot out and he caught Haldir's elbow in a shockingly strong grip.

The touch of his hand sent a frisson of recognition from Haldir's arm straight through to his core, and he jerked away as if he had been burned. Indeed, he had</> been, flesh and memory seared with memories he had tried day after day to repel. "I warn you, Elladan, let me pass."

Elladan relinquished his grip and held up his hands in appeal. "Let me speak. Please. I will let you go soon enough, but give me a moment first. Are all the years of our loving not worth that much at least?"

Ah, how freely he spoke that word! It was unwise to allow this discussion to carry on any longer, lest more foolish, empty words be spoken. He should simply have said his piece, given Elladan his back and walked away. But leaden and dumb, his feet refused their directive, and so he stood and waited.

"It was unconscionable," Elladan told him, "I know. I hurt you, and I wounded another good man in one fell swoop--"

"--Speak not of his wounds!" Haldir barked. "I care little enough for them!" Not well done, he realized, to speak so loudly, to display the vulnerable underbelly of his damaged pride. He sought the reservoir of residual anger within him, drew up the image of the haughty and scornful expression Elladan had used to cut him to the quick. "We are so little alike, you said, that you marveled that we had ever forged a friendship at all," he sneered, but the injury he felt dredging up Elladan's old insult was the cold, dull ache of an distant wound, a pallid scar rather than the fresh slash of a valiant sortie. "You have the unmitigated gall to come here now, fresh from his bed, to question my choice?" The flinty anger and derision that had previously scalded him was absent from Elladan's eyes now, and instead he saw some feverish glow to which he dared not assign a meaning. "Where is he now, your paramour?"

"He is not my paramour. Not any longer."

"Why?" A sick sort of curiosity forced questions from his mouth that he would have preferred to leave unspoken. A vision came to him unbidden of Legolas' golden hair spilling over Elladan's skin, and his roiling stomach contracted in a sour knot of jealousy. "Did he not please you?" he added as a bitter taunt.

Elladan must have seen his provocation for what it was, and did not rise to it. Without so much as a blink, he answered: "I did not have room in my heart to nurture another, for you took up lodging in its chambers long ago. And there you stayed, even after we had parted. " He looked at Haldir with unadorned longing, as if petitioning permission to step closer, though he made no move. "In the end, even a prince of Eryn Galen could not depose a simple Galadhel of Lorien, and he knew it. We both knew it. Now you know it as well."

Every emotion contained within Haldir was magnified and partnered with some opposing instinct, an uncomfortable push and pull of adversarial forces whipping his heart this way and that. He struggled to hold on to his umbrage, the one line that ran steady through the fray, but each moment, it grew more difficult. Each moment, the lump in his throat swelled and hardened, cutting off the breath in his lungs, leaving him light-headed and off balance. "You will forgive me if my heart and conscience forbid me from celebrating these tidings," he parroted, earning from Elladan a fleeting smile of chagrin.

They stood in silence for a time, under the shower of falling petals. Haldir did not know what to say, or what to do other than to contemplate his hollow victory. That Elladan had returned was of no help to him now. In betrothing himself to Mithrellas, he had done what duty required of him and what tradition demanded, not what he had desired to do; if he wished to lay blame for his current straits, he need not look any further than his own face. He sought within himself the energy to draw back his fist and hurl a punch at Elladan's jaw, to exact the price of all his hurting from that once-loved, still-loved hide. But anger failed him utterly, and he felt only the plangent weight of loss.

"You were right to call me coward," he admitted dully. The throb of his heart sounded as loud to him as his words. "That is the truth of it."

"You cannot do this," Elladan said, bringing them around at last to the matter that could no longer be ignored. "You know you cannot."

Haldir shook his head. "I am not like you. You have a luxury of choice that I cannot afford." Just beyond the boundary of the orchard, a shadow moved along the treeline. A sparrow swooped from a tree limb and flew low over their heads before lighting on a nearby branch. "Legolas makes a better champion." It was a vicious truth, but it demanded acknowledgment.

"He is not you," Elladan whispered urgently. "There is no one but you."

Hope surged wildly through him, followed by the keen edge of despair. Too late. It was all too late. "I have nothing to offer you, Elladan. Not now."

But Elladan would not be so quickly deterred. "Would you consign yourself to any less than your heart desires?"

"I cannot have what my heart desires."

Elladan moved nearer. "You can." Though his words were softly spoken, the intensity of his stare beguiled. "What of Mithrellas? Would you sentence her to a union that is little more than a sham, with a man who will never love her as anything more than a sister? Will you bite your lip and soldier your way through dutiful couplings long enough to get her with child? Do you think you will even be able to rouse yourself--"

"I am able!" Haldir snapped in desperation. His forbearance had faltered with every word out of Elladan's mouth, and he lashed out desperately with one final sally. He was cruelly pleased to watch Elladan's eyes widen with comprehension, to hear the deflating sound of his breath leaving him as if he had been punched. Unprepared for the visceral pain radiating now from Elladan's visage, from his whole body, he shouted in frustration. "You have no idea of the way I must live, damn you! You cannot even imagine! You have nothing to fear, and nothing has ever been denied you!"

"Nothing, save the thing I most desire." With one long-fingered hand, he touched the silver pendant. "I had it once, and it slipped from my grasp. I should have fought to keep it. To keep you. I should never have let hidebound naysayers nor bloodless threats nor stubborn pride stand between us. I failed you then-- failed us both!-- but I will not make that mistake again."

"You are too late. What I have done cannot be undone."

"It is not too late!"

The force of insistence in Elladan's whispered words reached his ears like an oar extended to a drowning man, a momentary glimpse of salvation before the cold tide of reason reclaimed him. "What would you have me do? Forswear my oath?"

"Are you not already in your heart forsworn?"

He could not speak the ruinous truth, yet Elladan took his hesitation for an admission all the same. "Say the word, Haldir. Say the word, and I will go from here and never return."

But in that moment, speaking was the one thing he could not do. His tongue had grown heavy in his mouth, and his traitorous heart beat wildly against his ribs. In his mind's eye, he caught a spectral image cast in scarlet and black of the first time they had touched in passion: Elladan bared to the waist, torso aglow in the firelight, beckoning him with words so similar to those he spoke now, demanding Haldir own his desires, demanding his collusion, curse him! His conscience, the spindle around which this thread of flame was spun, pricked him, drawing blood as if to remind him of that from the first, he had been complicit in his own downfall.

"Tell me to go." Elladan stood oppressively close. "Send me away, and I shall flee from this place like a hare."

Breath caressed his cheek like sorcery, words wended around him and tethered him with unseen bonds. Haldir's head reeled; all at once, it was as if he was a child again, trapped in the swirling sluice of the cold stream, pulled by tides too strong for him to withstand, borne away by a gadarene rush to a pitiless sea.

"Tell me to go, Haldir. Tell me that it is Mithrellas that you love, and not me. Send me away, so that I know you are certain of what you do."

Though still spoken softly, Elladan's words had gained traction, a confidence eroding the last of Haldir's will. He could feel each one of them against his cheek, could feel the warmth of Elladan's body suffusing the air between them.

"You cannot do it. You cannot send me away."

What else could he do when so provoked? He grabbed Elladan by the shirt, twisting his fingers in the fabric and jerking him near, drawing back his arm to end Elladan's manipulations with a clout, but Elladan did not flinch. His body moved pliantly under Haldir's rough handling, as if to say he would deign to take whatever measure Haldir's hands would mete out to him, whether it be in love or violence. Curse him to the heavens! He carries the blood of Finwë, who begat the Kinslayer... Caranlas' words carried back to him now, resonating in his mind. Oh, for certes there was some dark power in that half-Elven body, or perhaps it was some manifestation of the blazoning Silmaril strapped to his forefather's brow that lit his eyes so terribly now. It mattered not whence that light came, only that it held Haldir surely as a shackle, and the heat that radiated from his body may as well have been the flames of Orodruin licking at his heels. His fist shook, rattling with the coiled energy of the strike not yet delivered. He imagined the solidness of Elladan's cheek yielding to the blow, the splintering of the bones in his hand, the roaring pain to end this torment and set his little world back to rights.

"These were your words to me," Elladan breathed, "and I have never forgotten them, Haldir, not for an instant: deep as roots to the heart of the earth, high as branches to the vaults of the sky..." It was a plea, and a prayer, and a promise... and it was the truth, as evident as the soil beneath his feet and the green-tipped branches of the plum trees that arched above his head.

"Heaven help us both," he murmured in despair, and his stopped Elladan's mouth the only way he could, with lips and teeth and devouring tongue. Drawn to his immolation like a moth to a candle, this kiss that should never have been consumed him entirely, drew his feral heart from slumber even as it disgraced him, defined him even as it defiled him. He drew Elladan closer, feeling the rumble of his moan in his own mouth as if it were his own. The hand still balled in Elladan's shirt clenched tight to the point of shaking, and there, centered in the grasp of a single fist, the last of Haldir's rage spent itself in a violent shudder, the fibers of the cloth giving way and filling his fingers with snapped threads. From somewhere over Elladan's shoulder the robin took wing from its perch with a cry. Another simple truth revealed itself, that he could no more stand against this fate than he could against fire, or earth, or wind, water. He was as he had always been: lost.

Thus lost, he paid no attention to the crescendo of branches rustling behind him until they grew too near to be ignored. He opened his eyes to a flash of russet and brown. He pushed Elladan away, but it was too late; Caranlas had seen all: the vibrant fury radiating from every pore of his skin told the tale. Haldir's stomach plummeted, and he tripped backward as Caranlas tackled him. Pain flared as his head snapped back and slammed against a tree root with a blunt thud.

"Villain! Betrayer!" Caranlas struck him a hard blow across the face. Blood spurted in a hot gush from his nose and a dazzling flare crossed his vision, a thousand blinding points of brilliant pain.

"Stand down, hoodlum!" Elladan had hooked his arms beneath Caranlas' armpits and threw him off as if he weighed no more than a child, but Caranlas was on his feet in a trice, charging at Elladan and driving him back with the implacable force of a man driven by primal rage.

"Fuck yourself, half-breed!" He spun again toward Haldir, leveling him with a fiery glare. "I thought it was this degenerate Noldo who lured you into perversion, but it is you! You are the deceiver, the beast in our midst!"

"Hold your tongue, Caranlas!" Elladan roared, face alight with fell fire. "Your conduct here is offensive!"

"Do not speak to me of what is offensive with your half-blooded kinslayer's mouth!" Spittle splattered across Elladan's cheeks and clung to his lashes. "I will cut out your tongue ere I listen to a word you think to say to me!" A glint in the sunlight revealed the knapped flint knife in his hand.

"Make no foolish threats, Caranlas," Haldir lurched to standing, staunching the flood of blood from his nose against his sleeve. "You are no warrior, and Elladan is not your enemy."

"Oh, but my wrath is great enough to make of me more than equal to the task!" Caranlas' hiss was lethal as a snake's. "You have broken faith with my family and debased the gift of my sister's maidenhead with your odious lusts! You are not only faithless, but an abomination!" He moved toward Haldir slowly and deliberately, though his knife-hand shook, unaccustomed to bearing a weapon with violent intent.

The peal of a dagger jerked from its sheath rang clear beneath trees which seemed now almost to quail at the violence in the air. Steel glinted lethally in Elladan's fist. "Raise that hand to him and you will lose it."

"Draw steel here and you will lose more than your hand." Noiselessly, the Marchwarden revealed himself at the mouth of the orchard, accompanied by a warden on either side.

"What's this?" Elladan cried. "You have been tracking me like some animal to be trapped?" His umbrage rattled the trees.

"Caranlas suggested your presence was an ill omen," the Marchwarden said through a tight jaw, making no move to stop Caranlas, who even now brandished his knife at Haldir. "It appears he was correct."

Seeing the murderous depths of Caranlas' outrage, Haldir leaped toward him and wrestled him from the side, pinioning his arms to his side and delivering a swift kick to the back of his legs to buckle his knees. Caranlas raged and thrashed against him, and over the sound of his struggles he feel the movement of the air around him as the wardens sprang into action. He had barely enough time to grasp Caranlas' fist and drive the flint knife into the ground before four arms ensnared him and separated him from Caranlas with great force. His arms were wrenched up behind his back; the knee planted against his spine bore the full weight of the man above him. The taste of soil mingled with iron in his mouth and grit scraped against his teeth as his face was shoved into the dirt. His broken nose sent out another white-hot beacon of pain.

"Release him! You manhandle him like a brigand! I speak as the scion of the House of Elrond when I say to you to let him go!"

"Silence!" the Marchwarden barked. "Your title holds no sway here, Peredhel."

"You must let him go!" Elladan demanded, undaunted. "He has committed no crime!"

The Marchwarden's hawkish eyes narrowed. "No? Perhaps in your libertine valley you embrace lechery, but here in Lorien, we hold to higher standards. We will suffer no depravity here, least of all from one who dares call himself a keeper of the woods. He brings shame not only upon his house, and defiles the uniform of the Galadhrim guardians. We will not abide it."

For once, Elladan was silent. Haldir was nearly relieved; he did not think he could bear to hear another word spoken-- not by anyone.

Head bowed and stomach roiling, he could not tell how much time had passed before his ignominy was compounded by the arrival of his father and brothers. The two wardens who had until that morning been his fellows had let him up from the ground shortly after the display of tempers had been diffused, but now they stood at attention on either side of him, ready to detain him if he tried to depart. The thought of it nearly made him laugh, though he might have vomited just as easily. Where might he go? Already, the news of his indiscretion would be spreading through the woods.

Orophin's eyes darted frenetically from Haldir to Elladan, from Caranlas to the Marchwarden. "What foolishness is this?" he demanded. "Tell them they are mistaken, Haldir! Tell them there is no truth to this... this grotesque accusation!"

Haldir said nothing, because there was nothing to say.

The Marchwarden gestured to his men, who none too gently pushed him in the direction of his father, but Orodhínen stepped backward and would not receive him. "No." He shook his head slowly, his gaze strangely blank, as if focused on something far in the distance, and he did not look at Haldir at all. "This is none of mine. I wash my hands of it."

"Father?" Rúmil's expression pleaded clemency, but Haldir's father paid no heed. Orophin stood poised between them, looking first one way and then the other. When Orodhínen turned and left them there, the wreckage of his family standing in the orchard like so many fallen limbs after a storm, Orophin made his choice. He followed his father out of the glen. All the blood rushed from Haldir's head, as if pulled toward the ground in the vaacum left by his father's absence, and he swayed on his feet. Rúmil took pity and grasped his arm to steady him, but Haldir could not find his voice to offer any words of gratefulness.

"Your conduct in uniform is unbecoming, and I will sit in judgment upon your acts," the Marchwarden announced, looking at Haldir but speaking to the assembly at large. "I will not have the defenses of Lothlorien suffer for your weakness, nor will I allow the honor of my men to be tarnished by your improprieties."

"My family will demand satisfaction," Caranlas said darkly, his expression wild and fey. "The trees do not forget corruption that befouls this land, and you will pay for your transgression."

While the scene unfolded around him, Haldir watched it play out in grim fascination, as if some other hapless gudgeon stood alone at the center of the tragic farce. Shock and horror gave way to helplessness, and he did not resist when Rúmil's hand closed around his elbow and led him away. Elladan tried to follow, but Haldir shook his head. He did not think he could bear to look at him at that moment, let alone speak with him, while his entire world crumbled irremediably around his ears. With leaden steps, he was borne by Rúmil out of the copse, toward what had previously been his home, to await whatever catastrophes fate and folly would rain down next upon his foolish head.

*****

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