To Live Again: The Road to War {Lord of the Rings Fanfiction}|

23. If I told You...?

The silence is deafening, and I can't help but think I have made a huge mistake but I couldn't hold it in any longer...not now that it is so real.

There is little light in the moderately sized room, bar the ghostly glow of an almost diminished fire. The flecks of grey ash blow out from the hearth and dance about the patterned marble, they are fascinating movements but not so interesting that they could ensnare the King's attention for longer than a few minutes. However, Oropher has been transfixed by the dying flames for well over twenty minutes - a long time to sit in silence by anyone's standards.

I bite my bottom lip and return my tired gaze to the walnut table that I've been sitting at. I stretch my palms out on the cold polished surface, from a distance one would assume this table was nearly perfect, but under my hands I can feel the notches and cracks in the grain. This desk has seen many years' service, and I absently wonder how many nights has Oropher sat here and pondered some political issue or worried over his people, or his family. If this desk could talk it would certainly lay bare many a secret; I imagine it would tell of tears, and strains, of angry mutterings or the odd moment of amusement.

Here in the King's private study it is easy to see the many imprints of Oropher's soul, he is all over this room; in the décor, in the books and parchments, in the precise and regimented running of his handwriting over his various documents. There are even little things like clippings of scrawled drawings Legolas and Celairiel had given him. Other personal artefacts and belongings that I assume mean something significant to him, and I am instantly appalled that I never asked what they were and why he kept them? It is becoming increasingly apparent how little I know this elf.

To my left sits an empty armchair, only half an hour ago it was occupied by my husband, but now it lies vacant. The only telling that he actually sat there is the fact his green robe is strewn haphazardly across it - he walked out without it. 'Walked out' may be understating things a tad, he sort of blew out of the room in a dazed stupor. He was neither upset nor was he actually coherent, he just muttered the words; 'I need to check on Legolas, and...' then left.

I understand his reaction completely, it is not often you find out the reason you became King was because your beloved Father was brutally murdered in a senseless battle. I only hope that he understands the logic of my long silence, this is not something you wish to tell another person, particularly if the information comes from a fictional book in your reality, and may not actually translate here. Particularly if your actual being in said fictional world sort of breaks every logical law in existence, and Valar only knows how much has been rewritten from me just landing here. Oh god...I should never have said anything!

"Do not trouble yourself with guilt Clara."

Oropher's softened lilt pulls me from my anguished thoughts and I lift my tear filled gaze from the desk. He still stands leaning against the mantle of the fireplace, his eyes drawn to the cooling embers, his broad shoulders sagged under some tremendous weight. He sighs heavily for a moment before flicking his gaze to mine, and gracing me with a small sad smile;

"I am not upset with you child, and neither is Thranduil," He tells me as he straightens up from his hunched over stance. "It is just...a lot to consider."

"Oropher, I am so sorry," I whisper, not fully trusting my voice in the gloomy quietness. "I just couldn't keep silent any longer, not with the very real possibility of you going to war. It breaks my heart, this is not what I want for you and it certainly may not come to pass! I mean it was just a story I read when I was a youth, I don't even know all the facts, and this is reality...for me...it is not the same, nothing is the same."

"Peace Clara," Oropher murmurs with a slight chuckle and raises his hand in a silencing gesture. I automatically bite my tongue and return to sombrely staring at the desk. "I would not trade places with your troubled and burdened mind for all the riches in Arda. What you have wrestled with all this time, the ins and out and rights and wrongs, my goodness I don't believe I could have been so reasonable."