#i hope everyone noticed how i cleverly used thranduil's grief to avoid giving ocs names

[trans-noldor]

ending immortality

tw character death and hungry spiders

~

Everything that begins must end. Thranduil had heard that piece of mortal advice long ago. At the time he had sneered—for men and dwarves, perhaps, but not for elves. Not his elves.

Still, the words had clung to the back of his mind like spiderwebs, and now they raced as if from a spinneret as Thranduil sat at his son’s bedside, stroking Legolas’s hair. Everything that begins must end. The spider venom curling through Legolas’s veins spoke of endings. No. Thranduil pushed the thought away. Legolas was but an elfling, not even in his adolescence, and he would not depart for the halls of Mandos. He would not, by the word of the Elvenking. Not like— Thranduil squashed the thought—the memory—once more. He still had Legolas, his precious child, his little leaf, and for Legolas’s sake he could not heed the call of grief, no matter how sweet. Legolas stirred, his face screwing up even through his unconsciousness, and Thranduil jerked his chin at the healer at the far end of the room. The swish of her robes was welcome in the silence that had befallen Legolas’s chambers. Ordinarily the apartments of the royal family were filled with noise—if not questions, then songs that bore the cadence of youth, or else wailing, and it would always be answered by Thranduil or— Thranduil had spoken perhaps ten words over the past two days. The healer pulled the blanket from Legolas, who was now squirming. Thranduil cradled his son’s head as she began the chant, working the last of the magic that they knew how, for a case remotely like this—the treatments for venomous bites had failed, and now the healers chanted for recovery form an orc’s arrow, despite the spider fang he had seen embedded in Legolas with his own eyes. They were lucky to have found him. They would have been lucky to even find his uneaten body— “It is finished,” the healer—Thranduil did not know her name, that had always been—well. The healer was finished. Now all there was to do was wait and hope. Waiting, like all things with beginnings, would have an ending. It had to.

#i hope everyone noticed how i cleverly used thranduil's grief to avoid giving ocs names #thranduil #legolas #lotr fanfic #lotr #lord of the rings #the hobbit #death