Preoccupation | Tolkien RSB 18
After the death of his father Oropher in the War of the Last Alliance, Prince Thranduil forges himself into the King of the Woodland Realm. The consequences, an age later, threaten to unmake all that he has become.
My short contribution to @tolkienrsb! Many thanks to @feanoriansappreciation for beta-reading. Based on a gorgeous piece by dahmumu.
Read it on AO3!
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Rating: Teens
Characters: Thranduil, Elrond, Gil-galad
The air was thick with the scent of blood and smoke. Dark clouds hung overhead, sagging with their own weight, threatening to burst at any moment. The battle had lulled, finally, and for the first moment in what felt like centuries, Thranduil paused and caught his breath. Eyes downcast, he stared at nothing, as rivulets of waterlogged blood pooled around his feet on the marshy ground, everywhere red, red, red—
“Red wine, my lord, yes, barrels and barrels lost!” His butler was saying something to him, something about a severe scarcity of wine in the buttery—which of course, in his household, had its own devoted wine cellar. “Combined with the great amount consumed during the feast, my lord,”—the butler was still talking, despite Thranduil’s obvious preoccupation—“we face a serious shortage—”
—“Shortage of troops, after that foolhardy charge,” Elrond cursed to Gil-galad. His voice carried, still strong with anger after many hours of battle, but now also raw with grief. “Oropher was always brash, but Eru above, I never took him for an imbecile!” he spat. Gently, Gil-galad took him by the shoulder and looked over at Thranduil, his back turned to them, absorbed in his own grief and shock some yards away.
“And now his son will pay the price for that misjudgment,” said Gil-galad, his exhaustion turning to pity at the sight of the young prince, become king long before his time. Gil-galad could not say he did not sympathize.
“We all will,” Elrond replied.
“We all will,” declared Thranduil.
“I’m—I’m sorry my lord?”
“We will all of us feel this depletion of our stores, not only the common folk, but also myself and my kin. So too will we all rally around each other, as we have in every time of hardship, no matter the magnitude,” Thranduil answered. His words had the breeziness of air and the weight of lead all at once. “The wine for public consumption is running low? Then open the reserve vintages, if the situation has become dire enough.”
—“Dire enough already, without the added loss of half the Greenwood companies,” Elrond continued.
“But what half we have remaining will fight until the last breath is driven from their bodies.” Like sudden thunder rolling in on a summer night, Thranduil’s voice cut through the air. Elrond started, not knowing his and the High King’s conversation had been overheard. Gil-galad lowered his moonstone eyes in embarrassment, but Elrond, his blood still up, met Thranduil’s gaze as the now-King of the Woodland Realm turned to face them. Slowly, he began to walk towards the Noldorin lords, and although he picked his way through blood and bodies his eyes never once left Elrond’s. With each step he grew more sure, more confident, transforming from a prince into a king before their eyes. He aged centuries by the footfall.
Reaching them, he stood before Gil-galad, meeting him eye-for-eye, king-for-king. He said only, “I will not repeat my father’s mistakes,” before turning and walking away.
No, he would not repeat his father’s mistakes: too hot-blooded, too brash. It had overwhelmed Oropher in the end, that arrogant belief he could remedy the world’s ills by the sheer strength of his determination. So Thranduil took his father’s headstrong nature and in cold fire forged it into a will of iron, glittering in the sun but frozen to the touch.
His butler was speaking to him again. “Surely, my lord, the shipments from Laketown will arrive before we are forced to open the Dorwinion reserves? Those are rare and excellent vintages,” the butler reminded him—as if he needed it. But the butler’s commentary, however unnecessary, brought to the forefront of his mind the rarely-considered settlement of Men (Men themselves being an infrequent subject of Thranduil’s thought).
Thranduil had had few dealings with Men—or any outside his own realm—since the Third Age began, preferring to send a proxy in his stead for the rare diplomatic or trade negotiation in which the King of the Greenwood deigned to participate. The last real exposure Thranduil had had to the Secondborn had been in the Last Alliance. He had not disliked the Men he had known then; they had some memory of the skill and spirit of his own people, being descended of Elu Thingol, however distantly. The Men of Laketown were not like the Numenorians he had known then, but they had their own skills, and, he had to admit, their own spirit.
If the company of Thorin Oakenshield succeeded in reaching the mountain, they would only unleash ruin—on themselves, and on the people of Laketown. Thranduil felt a twinge in his chest. It was unfamiliar, and it was not pleasant. Once, a long time ago, he might have recognized it as pity.
Thranduil realized he owed his butler an answer. He was tired, and he had a headache, the result of too much wandering in his own mind; he wished to end this seemingly-interminable discourse on the state of his buttery. As he turned to leave the room—his preferred method of not only ensuring the conversation was over, but also that he had the last word—he remarked, “I fear the Men of Esgaroth will have more serious considerations in the coming months than the resupplying of our wine stores. We had best prepare for the worst.”
‘And so had they,’ Thranduil thought. The twinge in his chest persisted.
