The Prince's Pretend Mother

Seventeenth Entry - Disposed to Speak

{Thank you for your votes on both this story and A Better Place in the last month, LokisLittleVamp!}

A meaning I wasn't supposed to seek,

And finding, of which was disposed to speak.

*

"I did not intend to love him."

Tauriel and I sat in a high alcove, cooled with the tall winter breeze, that looked out over the Misty Mountains, taking time to fill in the blank spaces we had left between each other. She sat half-curled on the bench, her elbow on its rest, her fist against her temple.

"Does one ever intend to fall in love?" I asked, with a tone of lightness but a genuine statement beneath-nobody did. I had not intended to fall in love with a man who I knew had a higher chance of leaving me behind than many other men would. I had tried very hard not to love him simply because of his occupation. But I had, and then I had lost both him and the son we had created. I could not assume Milir had learned his love of service from just his father-Firven too had been very present in his life-but it did seem sometimes that I had surrounded myself with too many similarly minded people. I had already lost my husband, son and brother to their service to the Woodland Realm. It was just as likely, then, that I would lose Legolas, Tauriel and Thranduil as well.

None of us were ever safe. Not truly. The second we permitted our questing hearts to peek out of their bony cages we permitted others to take them from us. Love made us vulnerable. It made us easy to destroy.

"He was different."

I sat half-curled in a position mirroring my foster-daughter's. "How so? I never met him."

"I had thought that a man of another race would be offended in being saved by a woman. I suppose I always assumed the dwarves would be more sensitive, because they are smaller. But Kili....did not even seem to notice. He seemed determined to surprise me."

I smiled. I could hear the lingering surprise and wonder in her voice. "Tell me about him."

She opened her mouth, but found that she couldn't speak. Her lips trembled together and a lost expression floundered in her eyes. "Thranduil told me...."

My throat hardened with worry, though it didn't show in my voice. "What did he tell you?"

"I asked him....after the battle....why love must be so painful. He said...." She ducked her head, pinching at the inner corners of her eyes, then tipped her head back as though gravity could assist her in keeping her tears inside, as she had nearly always been capable of doing as a child. She had had far more practice than any child ought to have. "He said 'because it was real'." She turned her wrenching gaze to me, pleading. "Inladris. Elves only marry once. Do they only love once as well? I know there are different kinds of love but I-" She cut herself off this time, before her voice had time to fade.

I sat up, reaching over to give her hand a tug until she had drifted like a layer of snow into my lap, and I leaned down over her, holding her tightly in my arms, as though I could protect her from even what cut her from the inside. "I do not know, Tauriel. You have always been unique, and the downfall in being such a marked individual often means that there is no one who has gone your path before you, no one who can tell you what to expect or what will work or what won't-only people who will try to understand."

"If I cannot," she gasped, blinking and failing in restraining the glittering reflections of her inner pain. "If I cannot, I will have ruined both of us."

"Love does not take well to guiding," I reminded her. "Whether or not you ever loved or ever love Legolas the way he thinks of you, however that may be, it is the fault of neither of you that you are in pain."