Wanderlust (Legolas LOTR)

Always

This is the chapter I've been waiting to write ever since the first mention of those mysterious fire circles....

Chapter 28: Always

Legolas stormed into the Great Hall, and his eyes scorched the room as he looked for his father. Thranduil was nowhere in sight, but the prince knew just where else to look. With every step he took, Legolas' rage intensified to that of a deadly white heat. By the time he reached his father's royal quarters, the prince had more than enough time to consider a thousand scathing comments that he wanted to hurl at Thranduil.

Not even slowing down for the heavy doors barring his way, Legolas flung them open so hard that they rattled the king's wall delicate wall sconces as he barreled into his father's room, not bothering to knock. He spared one impatient look at Galion, the king's butler, who was building the fire on the hearth. "Leave us," Legolas ordered him.

He scarcely waited until Galion carefully pulled the heavy doors shut before turning on his father. Thranduil sat studiously in a large armchair on the other side of the fire and had the audacity to look amused.

Legolas despised him in that moment. The prince had always been an obedient son, a good son, one who was thoughtful and respectful. Until now. For in that moment, Legolas had never wanted so badly to strike his father, and he was bitterly angry toward himself for even thinking about it, and toward his father for making him feel that way.

"How dare you?" Legolas hissed.

"Dare what?" Thranduil replied innocently with a slow sip from his wine goblet.

"You know what," Legolas retorted, narrowing his eyes. "Thaliniel! She was mine, the only thing in this Valar forsaken wood that was mine, and you just couldn't stand it."

"It was never going to last, son," Thranduil informed him coolly. "I merely hastened the inevitable."

Legolas swallowed hard at the very thought of losing her forever and looked away. "She is more than you give her credit for," he disagreed quietly.

"She rejected you, did she not?" Thranduil asked, and his son reluctantly met his gaze.

"Yes," Legolas exhaled the word in a huff and added, "but I-"

"She rejected you and left you, Legolas!" his father reminded him scornfully.

Bitterly, the prince nodded, only just beginning to understand his father's motivation. "Ada," he began carefully, "Thaliniel is not like...my mother. She is not Elarien."

"Of course she is," Thranduil asserted darkly. "They all are."

"No," Legolas disagreed in a more forceful tone that he had ever taken with Thranduil. "You are wrong."

In one heated motion, Thranduil rose from his chair and closed the distance between them to tower over his son. "She left us, Legolas!" Thranduil stated in a deadly quiet voice, one that the prince felt more than if his father had shouted at him. "In the end, what love your mother may have held for this life was not enough to keep her here, with us." Thranduil concluded softly as he placed his hand solidly on his son's shoulder, "I would not have you risk that kind of lingering scar on your heart yet again."

Legolas brushed his father's hand off. "No," he said, fixing him with a cold stare, his voice equally icy. "Whatever excuses you might make, you had no right to take that choice away from me, to use Thaliniel against me, or to hurt me and her in the way that you did. She is my beloved. And I tell you now, I care nothing for my title or these halls if I do not have her love. I will fade...and leave as surely as my mother did before me."