To Live Again: Waiting Between Worlds {Lord of the Rings Fanfiction}

What is Left of Me

Halls of the King -
The Woodland
Realm

The afternoon sun flooded through the gardens and into the subdued corridors of the Healing Halls.  A beautiful chorus of song birds twittered and cheeped filling the space with a calming sound, the happy song, and warm colours a sharp contrast to the isolation that seemed to follow the ElvenKing around like a tormenting spectre.

Thranduil had paused to peer into the golden light from the edge of his wife's abandoned clinic. He couldn't exactly recall what had brought him to this place but he mostly believed it was just to feel close to her.

The space had not been touched since she had last worked in it, evident by the clay bowls and part mixed dregs of concoctions that had been left behind.

Her books and journals had been left open at certain pages and he had read them, trying to savour the last words she had thought, or just to attempt to get lost in her chaotic thoughts as he followed her scrawled notes.  There were personal touches too; a heavy woollen shawl had been cast off and he unashamedly picked it up and buried his face in the material, filling his nose with her scent. She had such a complex scent, floral but also spicy, a herbal tang, smells that clung to her from working with plants and fumbling about in the gardens crafting artistic things.

Thranduil was not sure if being here was a wise decision; if it was just a masochistic attempt at torturing himself, or if it actually helped his heart.

He shook his head at that thought - nothing helped his heart.

Six long weeks had passed since the incident at the old fortress and in that time he felt he had fallen apart at the seams several times. In fact, Thranduil was certain that the healers did not object to him temporarily living in the Healing wing because it was simply convenient for them to be on hand when he predictably snapped. It was their duty to ensure their King remained fully coherent and well cared for, although he was doing his best to give them a daily challenge. Personally he felt that his needs were secondary to Clara's, and on more than one occasion during the day he would vehemently remind the weary healers of that fact.

Clara's condition had been grave when they made it back home, although his memories were fuzzy of that time. His own injuries and exhaustion had caught up with him and he had been put into a forced sleep. Thranduil was later told it was because he was delirious and refusing to let go of his mate and had to be forcefully separated from her. He wasn't exactly ashamed of his actions but he did feel a level of regret. His delirium could have cost Clara more pain and that thought alone forced him to attempt to hold onto what was left of his mind as best he was able.

By the time Thranduil had surfaced, and his mind seemed to be within his own control, he was able to be reunited with his wife...his unconscious wife.

The healers had stabilised her condition but not without a struggle. Many nights slipped by when they thought she might pass, her body too physically damaged for her shattered spirit to hold together, and on each of those nights Thranduil had never left her side. Their bond still existed, he could feel some broken memory of it, but the sickness of her spirit had muddled everything and she appeared entirely unresponsive to his presence. It was that knowledge that utterly destroyed him, for in her time of greatest need he could be of no use to her.

Clara never woke up, not since the moment of her brief clarity before she was thrown by the orc scum, and this was what tortured Thranduil's heart the most. The thought that those would be her last memories; all the horror and cruelty of their world would be what she would have felt. It didn't seem right, it didn't seem fair at all, surely she deserved so much better? So she had never saved a battle with heroic deeds, or became some kind of strange, magic, wielding, Valar blessed creature, or a divine entity that healed the land...she meant so much more than all of that!