My Wildest Dream (A Middle Earth Fan-fiction)

Healing

Thranduil

"Try it again, Thranduil." Galadriel tells me gently. She's soft spoken and endlessly patient and blindingly white and Valar, I'm sick of her.

I seize the nearest object, which happens to be a glass bowl of some kind of ointment, and fling it against the wall, where it shatters in a mess of white cream and broken glass. Galadriel doesn't even flinch, and now I have nothing else. I'm trapped in a bed in the healing wing with only what my right arm can reach.

"Thranduil," she reprimands quietly. "You asked to do this."

I did. I wanted her to teach me to hide the mass of scars that will never get any better. Just my luck, landing myself with the only injury an elf can't heal. I can't feel them either, the grotesque red wounds that look like some truly screwed up snowflakes where my muscles show, and maybe that's for the better. There's no pain, what with the oily tinted green slime that the healers put on me.

I felt it, though, when my father decided to backhand me for being stupid enough to run into a dragon. No amount of numbing mint could stop that sting. I know I'll be on the receiving end of more of his ringed slaps if I can't perfect this glamour, so I arrange my features into an icy, Princely mask and look at Galadriel.

"Concentrate. You know what you should look like. You know what you did look like. Imagine it. Realistic, not as you wish you look." She gives me an indulgent smile. "I know you hate your ears, don't even try lying to me. But if you fix half then they won't match. Remember what you were. Build that memory. Focus."

It's exhausting, hour after hour of rebuilding a face that everyone can feel but me. If my father tries hitting me again, he'll connect with flesh but I'll feel him going through my face and rattling my exposed teeth. Galadriel can give me all the hugs she wants; I'll never feel the silk of her dress again. So what's the point?

Illusions. Everything's an illusion. My father loves me. He adores me. The people think we're a model family. He's never knocked me halfway to Valinor in front of them. My mother used to stop him, before she got sick of it all and sailed. But she was ill. So they all believe. And they believe that I am, too, and when I return to them I will look as I always did and they will never know that Galadriel and Elrond both combined their powers to make me see out of both eyes again. And even with all their magic they can't return it to its former blue. So I must learn to hide it. I will be the perfect Prince, and then I'll be married off to the girl my father chooses and I will pretend to love her.

The Kingdom of Greenwood is a game and a lie. And I was born straight in the middle of it all. In Doriath I used to think it wasn't like this---but it was only because I was an elfling, to young to do anything but believe the adults. When my father came to Greenwood, the Silvans loved him, as I suppose they should. He is fair to them, and he tries. He has never yet led this kingdom to ruin, only his own family.

Galadriel, I forget, can read minds. She cups my face in her hands, heedless of my fleshless cheek, and looks at me with love I vaguely remember from my mother. "He loves you." she whispers. "In his own way."

Oropher raised me too well to be self-sufficient. To live behind the mask. I shove her away as roughly as I dare. "I'm fine." I snap. "Have you finished, My Lady?"

She's not angry, but I see pity in her eyes and that's more than I can bear. "Enough." I glare. "I will practice alone. I have no need of you."

"As you wish." The Lady of Light shrugs indifferently, and then exits with a grace my father has never yet managed to instill in me. She's frustratingly impassive. But, I suppose, after four thousand years one isn't fazed by much anymore.

One of the healers stuffs lembas into my mouth and then practically chokes me with some foul brew. When I've finished gagging, I'm hauled off by one of the sword coaches for my most embarrassing lessons of the day---Thranduil Oropherion, champion sword fighter, bowman, and rider, must learn to walk again.