ataraxion | 7 ❂ Text

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7 ❂ Text

This is Thranduil.

Lady Galadriel and I spoke of a dream last month in which two guards spoke with one another while screams resounded from behind a door.

The memory some of us experienced today had those precise screams. Those precise screams, but from the other side of the door.

It is cold in the Biolab. The guards blew on their hands. Arunima wore a heavy coat.

[That is where they make Men into manticores, Elves into orcs.

He's just going to shut off his comm now and try to stop shaking.]

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[He rather dislikes this text thing. It's impersonal. But he'll follow suit.]

Perhaps we should speak.

[Not so much about the shared dreams, maybe. He has a sharp inclination to check in with both Thranduil and Galadriel. Perhaps it's personal experience. Perhaps it's knowing that having the same sort of horrible visions more than once is beyond unsettling.

Maybe he's unsettled himself.

Whatever the reason, he sends the text and makes his way toward the gardens. In the event that Thranduil does not answer, then Elrond will just start looking for him.

He's stubborn that way.]

[He doesn't answer.

There's a trap between the need to be alone and the need not to be alone. A crevice just wide enough for one person to fall into on the way from one to the other. Thranduil always winds up in it, and in sixty-five hundred years, he has never learned how to climb out on his own. Once he wants company, he is incapable of asking for it. It's like walking into a wall, or going suddenly mute. Between him and everyone else, a soundproof plexiglass window. You can see me, but you can't hear me. Can you tell something is wrong?

It's worst when the war memories come. He doesn't talk about the war.

That's why it's best that it's Elrond who turned up first, of anyone. Thranduil is sitting alone in a sheltered grove, knees drawn up, head bowed. Back home, he might look up at the sky and treetops to feel smaller, but there's a sky to look up to back home. He can't bear to feel more trapped than he already does by staring at the ceiling.]

[That's what he thought: no answer. It takes a little time to find Thranduil, but Elrond knows him well enough to begin looking in the right places. It's in the third sheltered little place like this -- woodelves and their groves, really -- that Elrond happens across the Elvenking.

It's worse than he thought.

Perhaps he should have expected it. While the war was difficult for Elrond, it was devastating for Thranduil. They each saw horrors, each bore scars from those days, and they reacted differently. Elrond is a master as distracting himself. Thranduil does... this.

Neither of them say much about what triggers those responses.

He doesn't speak. He doesn't reach for Thranduil. Elrond sits cross-legged in front of him.

And waits.]

[There's shame to it, although he knows there really shouldn't be. Many of the heartiest warriors came away as damaged as he. It had nothing to do with strength. Still, to be faced with someone who somehow got lucky, who managed to deal with it in a way Thranduil never could, makes him wish he could bear up under the memory like a lord properly should.

But when it comes down to it, he doesn't actually have any noble blood. Elrond is a descendant of two of the three original Elven-kings. Does that make the difference?

Or is it that the worst casualties were suffered by Thranduil's people during that war? Cut down in droves like wheat in a field, the last gift his father gave him crumbling in his hands while he stood unable to do anything about it. Even his best-made choices led to death. It was one of his first lessons as the King of the Woodland Realm: in war, both good choices and bad are rewarded in death.

Those screams of his people with their faces hacked to ribbons, hands and feet to stumps, cast on the ground for their brothers in arms to find and grieve, those screams were torn from the tortured throats of the manticores-in-making. Screams of torture their king had never had to hear, because he was too far away to reach out and save them.

Time passes, and Elrond does not leave. It occurs to him that Elrond isn't here to watch, to be strong for him. Maybe Elrond is here to share both their burdens, now that he has heard the screams as well. He cannot bear his pity, but he can bear his companionship. He just doesn't know how to accept it. He's been alone for a very, very long time.

But he lifts his head and leans it back against the tree, eyes falling on Elrond. At least returning his gaze, even if he cannot speak. Maybe some mutual comfort can be shared that way.]

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where are you?

[ Someone needs cuddles. ]

[No answer. You're going to have to try harder than that, Jaye.]

[ Well then.

Time to go sniffing through the gardens. ]

[He's curled against a tree with his head bowed, quietly casting a thousand-yard stare into space.]

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[Eric doesn't bother texting. He knows that Thranduil won't answer. He isn't answering the others and he's willing to bet that the elf has far more of a personal attachment to them than he would feel to him. Instead he starts to make his way straight to where he can feel Thranduil is, the emotions pouring off of him in waves. Thranduil might not approve of their blood bond, but Eric isn't going to just sit back and grin and bear it. If there's any way he can get Thranduil to snap out of it, stop oozing emotions down their bond towards him, then they'll both be the better for it.

And so he finds himself making his way to the oxygen garden as soon as he finds this post. Really, Thranduil, you should have seen this one coming.]

[This is what he objects to most about this blood bond. There's no privacy anymore. His emotions have become Eric's business, and he can't simply hide them the way he hides them from everyone else. And what is he supposed to do about it when Eric is offended? It's the one thing he used to have to himself. Everything else went public a long time ago.

So he manages to at least appear collected when Eric arrives, even if the cold feeling is still in his stomach and he can still taste the black despair regurgitating from it.]

[He knows you don't want him there. He knows that that calm collectedness is just a facade. He can feel what you feel, Thranduil. There is no hiding this from him, however much either of you might wish that could be the case.

Eric looks down at Thranduil for a long moment, standing still and silent, watching. Waiting. For something other than this false calm. He will wait as long as he has to. He's not going anywhere, that much is clear.]

Edited 2013-11-22 22:05 (UTC)

[several minutes pass. He doesn't keep track. Doesn't get impatient. It's when being stared at starts to burn him that he casts a dark look at the vampire.]

This is none of your concern.

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STARFLEET ENCRYPTION 100%

STARFLEET ENCRYPTION 100%

STARFLEET ENCRYPTION 100%

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