#ohmydiplomacy

[breniarchive-blog]

          “Peace,” Thranduil imparts, quiet and still as the winter air. Only for a moment does he observe the object of Henry’s fascination; something to put together rather than take apart ------ but he is easily consumed by the gentle contact, and his eyelids slide blessedly into a close. The hardness of the cool wood floor beneath which his shoulder and hip rest is inconsequential. “I do not mean to disrupt.” 

@ohmydiplomacy // ugh.

[breniarchive-blog]

“Will you stay with me?”

          He is old enough ( tired enough ) to recognize a shift from obligation to choice. It has not been sudden; the question has rested unspoken, politely invisible until now. Thranduil made a habit of turning his head away when the doctor paid him even the most modest attention; all of it kind, all of it honest. He has not known how best to receive it, does not understand how or why it has come to be ------ closeness, companionship, these things are bonds he has forfeit long ago beneath a different sky and under different laws. Though his faculties hold steady, Thranduil finds it a challenge to fully grasp the newness and the revelation that what was once known shall never burden him again. And so this new question stands, laid plain at last, and this time he does not look away. 

          It is a choice. In meeting Henry’s eye, he is returned once again to their first arrival together, standing side by side under the white-gold autumn sun and looking out over the unkempt fields of their new home; grasses dull and even weighted, bent in shallow curves by the stale rain, sweeping high as the waist. And how the world had surged with his sudden vision and stained gold, how young laughter and a flit of soft yellow had disappeared among the far trees. Here in their kitchen, lit only by the light of the spring sky through the many country windows, there is no gold. Thranduil passes his hands ( stained by dirt and mulch and the verdant season ) and the carrots he holds under the warm spill of the faucet, and sets them aside to dry. Something pulls behind his ribs when he thinks of leaving. 

          Wrong, says the heart he has forgotten, it would be wrong.

          And how else shall he bear denying himself the chance to reciprocate, when he feels his own hard edges crack and split and break apart? He is soft underneath. 

          It has taken much to shake it from him; the sorrow stains the worst and he licks it away each morning so the sun will not shine upon it. There is less of it now. Something gentler has begun to take its place, swelling soft, moving like the lulling calm seas between his ribs. The wet and the salt rises and wells in his eyes, holding, but does not spill, and the only misfortune now is the difficulty in finally assigning the name of fondness that these sensations evoke. 

          “------ I will.”

ACROSS THE UNIVERSE.

[breniarchive-blog]

          It is not the silence, ultimately, which sees him relenting. It is the disapproval. And while Thranduil does not repent, does not even so much as affect contrition, he offers at last the only semblance of recognition for his fault that he feels it necessary to give.

          “I confess it; I broke his hand.”

@ohmydiplomacy.