faderift | (no subject)

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WHO: Thranduil + closed prompts for Galadriel, Atticus, Ellana, Gwenaëlle, Myrobalan, + open!
WHAT: Thranduil's phase one afflictions are noticed by several and enable the behavior of others.
WHEN: Mid-Firstfall
WHERE: The Gallows
NOTES: Hit me up for a starter on Plurk (

pr0ph3t) or make your own!

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Galadriel listens as they run; Thranduil moves at a loping gait that has her slightly annoyed by how unflappable he appears. She is vain, perhaps not as much as he, but the disparity in their appearances has never been quite this dramatic. She shifts the weight across her back, Gwenaëlle still sleeping deeply, her limbs limp and draped across Galadriel's shoulders.

"Quite an ordeal," Galadriel agrees noncommittally as they reach the base of the steps. She takes a moment and regards the stairs up before she continues speaking.

She could give him her accounts, let him know what she had been up to with Gwenaëlle during his absence, but that is not why he is here. Thranduil could take such accounts from Gwenaëlle without bothering to find her, let alone run alongside her.

"I imagine it could have been dealt with more swiftly, but it was good of you not to burden your wife with rash decision."

“The murder of her father, you mean,” he says, and shakes his head. “No. As much as she begged, as the thought crossed my mind, no. She would come to hate me for it. He offers her protections I cannot.”

He waits until they remount the steps, legs churning—minding the ice and watching Gwenaëlle in Galadriel’s arms, though not overlong. This, oddly enough, is not one of the activities where he would be accused of being her lover.

“Cousin,” he says, and then, “Galadriel,” using the name Celeborn had chosen for her with such care, as he always does. “What would you have done, if she was yours? Knowing what we know and planning what we plan.”

Galadriel slows a bit and looks at him, her expression inscrutable by dint of the flush of exercise that has taken her. It is an odd question and one that is...at once difficult to answer and extremely simple. She cannot look at the woman on her back, not without risking rousing her by shifting all of her weight to one side, and so she does not.

"An interesting question," she says and turns back to keep running. It is an obvious tactic to delay the answer, she doesn't bother hiding it. Thranduil has known her long enough that he knows how few of her replies are flippant or easy and there is no need for artifice to make them seem otherwise.

"I would have done much the same as you did, I expect," Galadriel replies after a time. "But I would not have spared the assassin, and her father would have suffered some darker torment than I care to conjure for a hypothetical."

When they reach the next plaza along the route up the steps, she turns her head to him. She doesn't do him the discourtesy of looking him over, but it is a near thing.

"I presume you have prepared for the next attempt?"

He waits—so much of their conversation is waiting, in one way or another. There is so much wool to be gathered in near on ten thousand years that taking a moment or two to sort through it can be excused.

“She begged for the assassin’s life,” he says, slowly. “And then for her father’s head, all in one breath. Galadriel, I cannot get the sound of it from my mind.”

And no one to share it with but Galadriel, who understands him in a way no one else does. He needn’t explain things to her, or account for differences. She knows him, in a way no one else can, no one but Celeborn, who lived through it too, and those of their generation. He looks down as they go, watching the steps as they come, sparing a though for his wife, and how well she sleeps through all of this.

“Yes. Wards on my doors like those of Mirkwood. No one enters or leaves that I do not know of, and allow in.” And strong ones, as strong as he can muster, even if it drains him to do so. More can be set, if all goes to plan, once he can make use of glyphs. “And a knife under my pillow. Sheathed.”

She inclines her head as he tallies his precautions, as though he needs her approval of anything he does, and continues up the steps alongside him. Her path is more well trod and she doesn't bother looking down as she runs. It is the best he can do and, at the moment, she can offer him little assistance. It is no wonder she runs as she does, that she strains and stresses and desperately claws for physical strength--she has lost a token that only Thranduil truly comprehends the scope of and neither of them will speak of it aloud.

Speaking cannot conjure the shadow to these lands, but it is still too near a threat to risk.

"It will haunt you, such things always do, but take solace that she lives and that the fool assassin didn't use poison that might've truly wounded her," she says and there is a note there, an explanation as to why she would have killed that man and spared her father that goes unspoken. Thranduil is no less severe than she, his own borders no more open than hers had been, and all for the same reasons. He understands without the words being uttered.

"Her strength is building rapidly. I think she resents me for making her undertake such things," Galadriel says and quietly changes the subject. "She is learning old military forms as...meditation more than for use, but they will serve her regardless."

“If she died,” he says, and leaves it at that. The Men have a custom wherein the non-ruling spouse—so often a queen—has the privilege and duty of begging for mercy for the condemned. Her death, if it had been a violent one, yet another poignant example of what a lack of elves did to this land—he would not be as merciful as he intends.

“She resents the sun for shining,” fondly, they are perfect companions, “but she needs the lessons. The old forms are useful—Noldorian, I assume, for that sort of sword, antesolarian—but she is small and fast. She will not take to the bow, but perhaps knives.”

He has the ones Legolas left behind still. Maybe she will like them.

“But you, cousin,” he switches. “Any luck with your search?”

"Noldorin?" she repeats and cocks a brow at him. "When have you seen me willingly use a sword?"

She continues jogging and pointedly ignores the question about her searching. It is not a topic to be spoken aloud, not here, not anywhere, and her mood shifts as she ponders it. She is silent a time and then shifts the conversation back.

"I shall teach her small blades, I am not unskilled with them," she offers. "But she will require your aid for sparring, I expect. Spearwork is too deeply ingrained in my combat and it would not do to teach her to counter that alone."

“I know you prefer to,” and he makes a little shooing gesture with his hand, illustrative enough, “—but surely your father had you trained with some matter of bladed stick or sharp object while still in the Blessed Realm?”

She ignores it, he does not press, keeping his teeth together as the go up, still. These stairs are a mannish excess. An elven architect would have done—better, even if he couldn’t consider how.

“Spears,” he says, exasperated. “I will spar with her, and lose affection with my dear love for it, but you are right—she needs it, and she is clever enough that my handicap will possibly give her some success at it.”

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