Making It Right

Part 12

Posted: April 2003
Author: Kharessa Bloodrose

*****

The White City had become a city of color and motion in the week preceding the marriage of King Elessar to Princess Arwen Undomiel, Lady of Rivendell. Throughout Minas Tirith banners bearing the emblems of Gondor and Rivendell swayed in the breeze. It was impossible to get away from the festivities and preparations for further festivities, from the music of minstrels and bards, from the laughter and excitement. The people were proud of their King, elated at the fairy tale wedding that would soon take place, waiting with barely restrained enthusiasm for the new songs and stories that would be made in honor of this. They had suffered war and want for far too long, and now they intended to forget all of that in this week of hectic merry making.

The arrival of the elves had been the cause of much excitement and commotion. The humans were in awe of the elves, their eyes reflecting reverent wonder at the sight of these creatures of incomparable grace and beauty. Nothing was too good for the fair folk who had come to see their lovely Arwen wed to the human king; for the time being in Gondor, all one needed was pointed ears and silken hair to be treated like royalty. Legolas was amused to note that some of the women of the city had begun copying the elvish hair styles. Here and there among the kerchiefs and utilitarian knots could be seen imitations of the Lady Galadriel's flowing waves, and even the occasional braids of an elven warrior. The humans did not seem to differentiate them as males and females. It discomfited Legolas, but he chose not to dwell on it.

He had escaped to the palace gardens, needing to feel the harmony of earth to settle his spirit. When Aragorn had first taken him to see this retreat of green and flowers, he had expected to find it sorrowful, a misplaced patch of tamed wildness boxed in stone. Instead he had found it a haven. The gardens spoke to his soul of life and renewal, of growth that could reach sunward even from a place of cold, white stone. The song of the leaves rustling in the wind here was no less joyful than that which was sung by the trees of the green wood. It was a persuasive song, and on the days when Legolas had come here to rest his sore and aching body he had found rest.

He allowed his thoughts to drift, letting his mind coast on the surface of the garden's being. His feet carried him to the central fountain by long habit, and when he again focused fully on his surroundings he found himself gazing into dark, almond shaped eyes. The Lady Arwen stared back at him from across the cheerfully gurgling streams of channeled water, and Legolas stood frozen, frightened, utterly lost.

"My apologies, Lady, for disturbing you. I will take my leave." He began to turn, desperate to be away, to flee from this terrifying vision of feminine beauty. Bright panic flared in his chest, and for a moment his mind was nothing but white light, white noise.

"Wait, Legolas." Her voice was soft and low, stopping him in his tracks. "I would not have you leave so swiftly when I have had no opportunity to speak with you. Come here and sit with me."

His feet moved, the muscles of his legs obeying nerve impulses he was not aware of relaying as he approached the Evenstar. Eschewing the carved marble seats, she folded herself gracefully down upon the soft grass. For a moment Legolas gazed down at her uncertainly, and she quirked a delicate eyebrow at him in gentle amusement. With unaccustomed awkwardness, Legolas seated himself beside her.

"I pity you, Legolas, that you cannot forsake your immortality as I can." Her voice was melodic, but he could hear the genuine sorrow in her voice. He glanced at her sharply, and she offered him a sad smile.

"Oh, I have heard the words of my brothers and father who think it is such a tragedy that I choose to do so. They do not know whether to celebrate my joy or mourn my loss. But I tell you, you are the one for whom to weep." Her hand brushed his lightly, then squeezed. "Estel did not know what he was doing when he sought my heart, nor did he know when he captured yours. How could he?"

Her laughter was tinged with bitterness, and Legolas frowned in confusion. "I do not understand you."

"No?" Again she raised an eyebrow. "I love him, Legolas, I love him with all my heart. But sometimes…" Now it was her turn to look away. "Sometimes I hate him, too." Her hands clenched into delicate fists in her lap – small, white, ineffectual. "You do understand, do you not? I gave him my immortality, Legolas, and I did it because by that time it no longer mattered. If he had left me then or in another hundred years," she sighed raggedly, "the result would have been the same."

Legolas found himself nodding. He did understand, and he knew that this was in part why he had fought against this so hard.

"We say that men are weak, but we are weak, too. Our hearts and souls are our vulnerable points, and you and I didn't guard ours so well, did we?" She smiled lopsidedly and touched his cheek. "I have not the heart of a murderer, Legolas."

He looked at her delicate face and wanted to hate her, wanted to feel jealousy as a human would. He could not do it; the predicament she was in was too like unto his own.

"I've been given a position training the city's archers." He said shortly, looking over at the fountain. Arwen nodded, grasping the course his thoughts had taken.

"I would not think you'd be content to idle here as a sort of functionless elven emissary, though training the humans must be trying." She laughed, low and musical, and Legolas offered her a humorless smile.

"It is not so bad; I like to teach." His lips tightened. "I can't stay here, Arwen. I meant to be gone before this."

"I do not think you will be able to stay away." Her words were soft, but they cut his soul like a knife blade. "Though I doubt not you will need your escapes, as will I. This city of stone… it is not what I expected."

The two sat in silence, both lost in their own thoughts. The elf princess studied the warrior out of the corner of her eye, taking in the cold, stoic set of his face, proud as only a son of Thranduil's could be. His face gave away nothing, but Arwen possessed a touch of her grandmother's talents. She could see the dull shame behind the façade of stone; not shame for loving a man, but for loving this particular man. She could see the confused anger, fear, and uncertainty.

For a moment her own anger rose within her, and with it the desire to strike out at the beautiful, lost Prince of Mirkwood. With am effort she let the fury drain from her. It was not his fault, and there was no where to direct her frustration and anger. She would not behave as a human would, venting her emotions upon one who was bearing almost more than he could carry.

"We cannot choose whom our hearts will settle upon." Her words were barely loud enough to carry to his ears. "And our Estel is an intrepid, skillful hunter."

"Aye." Legolas studied the ground between them, twining his fingers in the lush grass. "He told me he loved you, but he pursued me. I swear to you, Arwen, I did not seduce him."

"I know." She whispered. "I know what he did in Lothlorien, and I know why he followed you." Again she rested her hand on his. Legolas began to pull away, but she captured his fingers with her own.
"'Twas guilt, Legolas. Our Estel and his never ending guilt, self recriminations, doubts, and misgivings. Always he must have some reason to scourge himself." She shook her head, and her dark hair swayed around her fair face. "He wanted to make amends, and he fell in love, and then so did you. And now there is a bond."

"That is what I do not understand. This should be impossible." Legolas pulled his hand away, and faced the princess. His eyes were bright with trapped anger and confusion. "Elves bond once, with one other, for all of eternity."

"He is not an elf." She looked back at him with equanimity though her heart was filled with pity. "I can bond with no other, and it seems that now you cannot either. Estel, however, is human. They do not feel as we do; he would not share in this with a mortal lover. We have, in our way, trapped him just as he has trapped us."

Legolas pondered for a moment, his brow creasing. "Can he… can mortals… cease to feel?" His voice did not tremble, but Arwen sensed the tumult of emotion behind the softly asked questioned.

"I do not know. I know that for me he has never wavered."

Legolas nodded, his expression still pensive. Arwen sighed inwardly, her lips curling into a small, ironic smile. This is what I have come to, she thought bitterly. Here I sit in the middle of a stone city, comforting my lover's lover.

"I cannot read him." Legolas' words were faint. "I sense his feelings, but it is all confusion." He bowed his head, and when he looked back at Arwen she was shocked to see tears standing in his azure eyes. "I am sorry, Arwen!"

He turned from her, and though she saw no movement in his body and heard no sound, she knew he wept. The elf princess slid over to him, slipping a slender arm around his shoulders. Anger flared anew, but this time she knew it was not the archer from Mirkwood whom she wished to vent upon. Damn you, Estel, she seethed inwardly, Damn you and your carelessness, your penances that wound instead of healing.

"Do not weep, Legolas." She rubbed his shoulder comfortingly. "It seems we are in this together whether we will or no, and I feel no anger towards you." Arwen said the words automatically, but as she spoke she realized they were true. She knew now whom she was angry with, and she quailed from that knowledge even as she prepared herself to deal with it.

She wrapped her arms around the stiff, unyielding warrior, and after a moment Legolas finally relaxed against her. Arwen stroked his hair gently, and when she sensed that he had fallen into reverie she eased him down onto the grass. It was not the reverie of elven sleep that she saw in his unfocused eyes, but that of denial, shut down. The complexity of human emotion was too much; he needed this escape. She remembered the early days of her courtship when she had fallen into the same reverie of emotional exhaustion, caught in the wildness of feelings so much more bright and shining than she had ever experienced before. It had been exhilarating, electrifying, arousing. Looking at the silver tracks of tears on Legolas' cheeks, she doubted if those were the words that he would use to describe it.

*****

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