Chapter Text
When Elrond first arrives in Valinor, he avoids Elwing.
Oh, subtly. Politely. It’s not even a lie to say that he is exhausted and needs rest, that he isn’t up to visitors for the first little while. And then he’s got the people he’s known and loved the longest to really catch up with, Celebrían and Gil-galad and everyone else who’s here from ages past, a constant stream of visiting family he’s never had a chance to meet before.
It’s not that he doesn’t want to see his mother. He wants very badly to see her, wants her as badly as any little boy wants his mother. It’s only that he has no idea how to say anything to her in a way that won’t hurt, and he’s quite sure that his mother has been hurt from enough quarters already.
But he does, eventually, make the trek out to her tower. He finds himself too nervous to knock on the door, so he goes to sit in her garden instead. The door opens behind him eventually, and then a hand that should be familiar sets a cup of tea beside him.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner,” he says, watching the bay.
“Couldn’t?” she asks. He’d forgotten what her voice sounded like. Or maybe it has changed since they last saw each other. That’s a comforting thought, that they both might have changed instead of just him.
“I didn’t know what to say,” he tells her. She sits beside him, her skirts pooling about her. Green, today, pale like jade, and embroidered all along the hem in some abstract pattern with small precious stones threaded into it.
“And you do now?”
He huffs a little laugh. “No,” he admits. “Not really.”
A breath, and then she says, “Perhaps if you look at me, the words will come.”
Ah. No, he hasn’t looked at her yet, has he?
When he does, she is different. Many memories of his childhood faded with age, but the ones that stuck did so firmly. There are spots and scars on her arms that didn’t used to be there, wrinkles around the eyes like he has himself, even a few strands of silver in her dark hair. They have both changed.
“Why did you leave me?” tumbles out of his mouth before he can think about it. “Why was I — why were we — not worth staying for?”
“You and your brother are worth everything to me,” Elwing says fiercely. She reaches out to take firm, careful hold of his hands. “Everything, do you hear me? And I am so sorry that you ever had cause to doubt that.”
“Then why?”
“Why did Fingolfin ride against Morgoth when he knew it would kill him? Why did Míriel lay her body down for so many long years? Why did—” she cuts herself off, but he suspects he knows what her next example would have been. “I wasn’t well, baby. I wasn’t— I wasn’t well. And what cause did I have to think I wouldn’t die anyway, if I threw it into the sea without taking myself with it? What cause did I have to think my babies would have fates any different from my brothers? Elrond, when the war was over and I had heard you and your brother were safe, I went to Lórien and laid myself down for nearly half a century before I found the strength to rise again.”