I Drink To Thee

Posted: May 2004
Title: I Drink to Thee
Author: LadyHawksShadow
Type: FCGen
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Elrond
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. I do not profit from this story.
Special Warnings: Angst. Drabble
Beta: RiverOtter
Timeline: AU
Author's Note: I started this for the OEAM Birthday Challenge. However, after writing it, I decided it was too sad for a Birthday story and went with something else instead (Surprise! If any one is keeping score).

Summary: Elrond drinks a toast.

*~*

Through the long days, I awaited your coming. Each hour was an agony of love and fear and pain. Many births I attended, but none like yours. Your coming heralded the end of an Age, for I already knew what you would be. I had seen and my heart despaired even as it rejoiced.

I knelt on my knees, never feeling the bite of stone or the tension in my back. Your mother cried out and I saw you for the first time. Your dark hair was plastered to your perfectly round head and one tiny fist waved frantically, as if signaling to me. I reached forth my hand and withdrew you from your mother's womb, warm and wriggling. Turning you over, I stuck my finger into your mouth and withdrew the mucus plug and your tiny body shuddered and heaved as air filled your newborn lungs.

My knees trembled and my own breath hitched, as if I, too, were taking my first breath. Tears filled my eyes as I looked at your mother. Her face twisted with pain and the fine sheen of sweat glowed on her forehead, but joy shown in her eyes. Reluctantly, I handed you over to another, my palms regretting the loss of your wet warmth as I knelt once more between Celebrian's trembling thighs. For my joy—nor my anguish—was yet complete.

Moments later, I held another babe in my arms, identical to you in every way. Your opposite. Your equal. Your other half. Antithesis of one another, and yet incomplete alone. Like you, he fit so perfectly in my palms. And when his tiny lungs were filled with his first breath, he wailed every bit as loudly as you did, until your thin cries filled the room with discordant harmony.

From that moment on, was my doom sealed. I watched you grow, the both of you side by side, like young willow trees. The sound of your laughter filled the days and gave meaning to the life I built for myself from the ashes of my many losses. Even I learned to smile again as you confounded your tutors. Never could they tell one from the other. Nevertheless, I knew. My ears knew the distinct, barely discernable, timbre of your voices. My nose knew each of you by smell.

Over the years, I learned to distinguish one set of footsteps from another. Even in my sleep, I knew the tread of who crept into the room at night to cuddle up in the great bed Celebrian and I shared. The time came when neither of you came in the night seeking solace and from that moment on, I held my breath as you went from elfling to maturity and finally, majority.

My heart despaired when you brought home your mother after she was brutally assaulted. I watched my handsome sons become killers. You learned to delight in the taking of orc ears. You became Orc Hunters unequalled in all of Middle earth. And when your mother sailed to the west, I watched as you were forever changed.

I hoped that watching her sail would unseal the doom laid upon me. For a while, there was hope that what I had foreseen would not come to pass. You settled into a routine and patrolled Imladris' borders and even ventured into the Woodland realm where you learned the ways of our cousins. You traveled with the remnants of the Dunedan and learned skills that only men possess. But when Arathorn died in your care, I knew that my hopes had been in vain.

As I raise my glass to you this evening, I imagine that I can smell your unique scents; hear the tread of your footfalls upon the stairs. In my mind, I can hear your voices; your laughter. I will drink this bitter toast to you, on the day of your birth, and wonder where you are. Do you yet live in the crumbling ruins of the place that I built? Do you yet haunt those halls, faltering as age steals from you immortality? Is Minas Tirith your home, as you stand guard over Aragorn, now the King of Men? Or have you all ready faded, passed beyond the realm of mortality?

Whichever it is, I know that you have done it together. Just as you came into the world together, so shall you leave it. That much I am certain. I drink to thee, my sons. In remembrance. In hope. Unto the breaking of the world will I remember you, Elladan and Elrohir.

*****

THE END

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