The sun already rode high when he crawled out of bed the next morning.  Of course he could not see it here in his royal chamber hewn beneath the ground, but he could well feel it.  

As the lamps flared to life at his bidding, Thranduil sank into the heavily cushioned chair, too pensive for the moment to bother making himself presentable.  All the household slept late this morning.  Indeed, the hardest working servants among them had only been dismissed in the early hours of dawn, not so very long ago.  Hardest working, but by no means least appreciated.  Their service would be amply rewarded, as always.

Thranduil picked absently at an imagined snag in the arm of the chair, unable to find the fragile peace of mind he craved.  The evening had been crippled by the reminder of something none of them wanted to acknowledge yet, and when he had at last found sleep he had been plagued by dreams of surf and seagulls.  Legolas was playing with fire, and unless he contained his own he could easily burn several others, particularly those nearest him.  The last thing Thranduil wanted now was another epidemic, but he felt he was losing the strength and the will to go on fighting it.  He had long evaded the call of the West, but now to what purpose?  The harder he grasped this life, the less he had left to hold. 

He ran a hand over his brows, both in exasperation and in an attempt to smooth away that twinge of a headache lurking behind his eyes.  He had known that quest of Elrond’s would have repercussions, which is why he had feared it from the first. 

He had felt the first stirrings of the Sea long ago, but had willfully smothered it to follow his father into the East.  It had been no great loss to him then, for he had no desire to be taken by Valinor.  But now was he held back by more than stubborn principle alone?

“Good morning, my Lord.”

He started at the sudden but soft-spoken salutation.  “Good morning, Gwaelas,” he sighed, giving him informal leave to enter.  After attending him so many years, the capable Nando knew how to read his lord's mood from a distance.

“I trust I find the King well today,” he smiled.

“No, the King is not well today,” Thranduil returned, but not without a hint of a wan smile himself.  They both knew what concerns hung over him now. 

Gwaelas smiled; it was just another day in Lasgalen.  “Perhaps some breakfast will improve his outlook,” he suggested.

Legolas closed his eyes against the pillow, unwilling to face the day and all it would bring just yet.  To have survived yesterday was a relief, but today there were other concerns to be addressed, trials that had nothing at all to do with Gimli.  They were inescapable, but if he could avoid them for another few moments he would. 

Last night the call had come again, and now he regretted to have invoked it for all the unrest it had caused him.  In a futile attempt to merely escape it for time he had deliberately closed his mind in the black oblivion of real sleep when at last they had all retired.  But now he knew that to have been a mistake all its own after a night like that, now that his head seemed twice as heavy as it should.  For the moment it was a miserable morning.

“I know I shall earn your displeasure today regardless, my lord,” he heard Erelas say, and at last he turned to squint up at him.  The lamplight was hard enough to endure now in the dark of his room, though he knew outside the Sun was mocking him far more.  “I know how you dislike to rise late, and deemed this the lesser of the two evils.”

“You were quite right,” Legolas said groggily with more sardonic formality than usual, letting himself fall limp again and pulling the cover over his head.  “Thank you.  You have my permission to withdraw.”

“As you wish, Legolas.”  

He knew Erelas was smiling, but he refused to get up until he had gone.  He was procrastinating, but at the moment he did not care.  Hiding from the realities of life had never seemed more inviting.  But nothing would be resolved if he never chose to face it, so it was with great reluctance that he forced himself up and brought the lamps to life. 

He dressed quietly that morning, setting aside the finery of the day before, choosing instead a simple but elegant tunic of dark woodland colors.  In that at least they had unreservedly adopted the ways of their silvan people, preferring the verdant shades of the forest to the old princely greys of Doriath. 

He was mostly silent as Erelas attended him, more pressing concerns weighing upon his mind.  Erelas – who had long been his chaperon, guardian, tutor, and almost a second father – did not press him, but tactfully left him to his thoughts.

“Master Gimli sleeps still?” Legolas did ask at last.

“Like a log, my lord,” the other said.  “Shall I wake him?”

“No, let him sleep,” Legolas smiled as he turned to leave.  “He needs it.”

So saying, he entered the corridor and began his resolute walk to his father’s study.  He had waited this long, and now he thought it best to openly broach the subject and have done with it, for he kept no secrets from his father.  Still, that seemed to make it no easier.  The tapestries along the walls only worsened it, flashing before his eyes the old memories of their long lives, all he would be called upon to relinquish.  If he lingered still, it was because he had not yet the heart to sever all the ties that bound him here.  It would be a bitter task, he thought, to deliberately fray those bonds in the coming years by drifting ever farther from home, but he had made his choice.

He could only pray his father would not embitter their parting more.  Thranduil would have every right to resent his leaving, even to refuse his consent.  Perhaps he was imagining more than he should, but the thought had begun to smack uncomfortably of willful betrayal on his own part.  Was this indeed a manifestation of some weakness unworthy of the sons of Oropher?  The Elvenking deserved better from his own.  That possibility tormented him, and for a moment he hated the Sea with all its damnable desire, and would have thrown it aside like a wet blanket if only he was able.  

In a renewed agony of conflict, he found himself standing irresolutely at the curtained entryway of the King’s inner sanctum, reluctant to knock.  He knew his father was inside, for he felt his presence there, a benign power that had long been a comfort to him but had now become all the more a silent accusation for it.  

Worse, he knew his father was equally aware of him there despite the  gem-bedewed drapery between them, waiting with quiet patience for his resolve one way or the other.  Was he ashamed to face his own father?

It wrung his soul, but he did rap on the door.

“Come in, Legolas.” 

Thranduil’s voice was solemn, but soft.  Resigned.  Legolas slipped past the curtain, but could not bring himself to draw any nearer.  In his moment of roiling self-accusation it seemed intolerable to presume upon any such familiarity now that he stood on the verge of desertion.  Thranduil looked upon him with something akin to compassion, and not without a keen twinge of regret that his own son should fear to approach him. 

“Father, I . . .”  The words caught in his throat, leaving him uncomfortably speechless.  Elbereth, it would have been easier if Thranduil were prepared to fight it, to yell, curse, or even revile him as he thought he deserved.  But he just sat there, waiting to endure the injury he knew was coming, waiting without a murmur for his heart to be lanced in final reward for his centuries of sacrifice.  “I . . .”  But it was impossible, and at last he sank disconsolately onto the bench that stood there against the wall, burying his face in his hands.

“I know,” Thranduil said, in a deeply sympathetic tone that Legolas had not heard for many years.  “I know.  You are not the first whose hand has been forced.”  He sighed, for this was difficult for both of them.  The silence was awkward.  “Will you not come nearer?  Or must you insist upon throwing my station in my face?"

Legolas stood with a start, not wishing to grieve him more than he must.   Thranduil beckoned to the chair near him that either Linhir or Galadhmir usually occupied, and when Legolas had set himself down in it he turned his own to face him directly.

“What did you expect of me, Legolas?” he asked, a bit hurt by the other’s reticence to approach him.  “Did you expect to be blamed for what is no fault of your own?  What have I done to deserve your mistrust?”

What hurt now was that these were not accusations, but sincere questions.  And Legolas knew that in his reluctance to hurt his father he was only hurting him more.  Thranduil would sooner take the thrust and be done with it than have the sword hang unacknowledged between them forever. 

“I mistrust only myself,” he said in apology, still not quite daring to meet the afflicted gaze opposite him, his hand gone white-knuckled around the arm of his chair.  “I know not what to do.”

“Well, you might try confiding in me,” his father suggested pensively, leaning forward to look him in the eye, silver tracery sparkling on his collar.  “Here I am, your father, in the flesh.  Talk to me, shout at me, weep on me, but please do not shun me.”

Legolas felt tears unshed and unbidden prick his eyes, recognizing that tone of longsuffering clemency, the voice of one who has been inexplicably set aside after so many years of confidence.  And in that he saw silence as the greater evil.  “Forgive me,” he begged.

Thranduil’s brow furrowed for a moment as though those words held for him more significance than Legolas knew.  But somehow he managed a passing hint of a smile, cheerless but comforting.  “I already have,” he assured him.  “Legolas, I could no more command you to stay than I can forever fetter a falcon.  When you feel you must spread your wings, who am I to hold you bound?”

He felt a nameless burden lifted from him, finding sympathetic encouragement where he had least expected it.  His father was the first who had not spoken of the West as a surrender, but as a challenge.  He would not be falling into blissful oblivion but rather ascending into their appointed destination, on to the next stage of their lives.  There was nothing shameful in it.  “But I owe everything in the world to you,” he protested.

“No, you do not,” Thranduil returned.  “I have only done as every father ought, and the part of life I gave you is not mine to possess.  What of your mother?  I like to think she is waiting for both of us.  Twice she gave you to me; I cannot hold you from her forever.”

“No.”  It was a relief to speak plainly about it.  But Legolas could not help feeling some lingering guilt over the fact that he would now succumb to one of the first trials appointed his to bear.  Thranduil had endured many tragedies along the unforgiving road of life.  He had fallen often, but had always picked himself up and continued on knowing full well he would be made to fall again.  Would his son admit defeat upon the first daunting rise?  “You have spent so much of your strength for me,” he said.  “I would that I could be strong now for your sake.”

“Nonsense,” his father insisted, though he could not hide the pang of regret in his voice as well.  He knew what this would cost him.  “I am just stubborn; you are the strong one.  I knew that this day was inevitable.  Do not blame yourself.”  There he paused, sinking back in his chair, flooded it seemed with other memories.  “I feel for Celeborn.  He has lived on borrowed time ever since the day he was wed.  Now that they have come to a pass from which there at last is no escaping, his world is riven at the seams.  I offered him what solace I could as one who has faced the very much the same and lived to remember.”  

His voice trailed away and his eyes lost their focus for a moment, his thoughts perhaps miles away.

“Winter will be upon us before long, Legolas,” Thranduil said at last, idly turning the wineglass on the desk by its slender stem amid the assortment of discarded notes and manuscripts.  “I hear they are taking the horses to the river today.  I think it would do us both some good, and Galadhmir did promise me some time for myself.”  He glanced up with a winsome smile.  “Come out with me.”

Legolas hesitated a moment, much though he would have enjoyed the opportunity on any other occasion, these last practical traditions that heralded the coming winter.  But he felt he was too spent to appreciate that kind of recreation today, and the emotional strain had only aggravated his elusive headache.  “Gimli still sleeps,” he said in excuse.

“Fine,” Thranduil returned with an exasperated lift of his brows and voice.  “If he sleeps, let him sleep.  But today the horses need scrubbing, and I wager that Dwarf is not interested in a swim.  Hm?”

Legolas said nothing, but he had to admit it did not seem like something Gimli would especially hate to miss.  Dwarves did not seem to mix well with tall horses and deep water.  “Give me some of that,” he said at last, pulling his father’s hand toward him and helping himself to some of his wine.  It was something their own people made, not so strong as the stuff they imported from Dorwinion, but enough to wake him up. 

He had learned long ago that to consent to self-pity was a sure way to remain sunk in it.  Perhaps this invitation to a lapse into inelegance was just what he needed.  After all, it was such a simple request his father put to him.  How could he refuse after all that had just passed between them?

“Very well,” he acquiesced at last.  “I shall come.”