But One Star of All

Fourteenth Entry - The Worth of a Son

I yawned as I lay on the couch I'd had added to Legolas's room, as his plaintive cry woke me again and I once more began dimly rocking his deep cradle. "Darling, you simply have to sleep," I sighed. "Just because I'm not necessarily going to work tomorrow doesn't mean four days with nearly none won't affect me. I am borderline homicidal, I assure you."

He whimpered again.

"No I am serious," I assured him, propping my cheek on the inside of my bent arm. "I can't even visit the kitchens anymore; there are too many deliciously sharp instruments with which to do the deed."

I heard his door lightly open, and lifted my face. I recognized the footsteps in an instant, and laid it back down again. "You should get some sleep."

Thranduil sat beside me and stroked my loose hair back from my face. "You should as well. You know we can hire someone to rock him if the situation is this dire."

I sighed. "No. I'd hate to make someone else do for him what I already can." I could not, for example, comfortably travel outside our home with our son. Just because I was accustomed to our suspended, rail-less pathways, did not mean I was willing to risk Legolas to them when I could not see. If I wished to go anywhere with my son, I could not carry him myself.

I had learned how to do most other things. But everything I possibly could do for him myself, I would. Doing otherwise felt far too similar to giving up.

Thranduil's thumb gently traced an old scar outside my eye, and I flinched, not having realized it was visible again. I focused, trying to hide it, but didn't have the energy, and bit my lips together. It was only when I was truly exhausted that the reminders of my time with the orcs returned like this, but that meant Thranduil only saw them when I could not help myself, then he remembered when he had been unable to help me too. When the twists of my life had nearly been the end of both of us.

I lifted my hand to hold his palm to my face, closing my eyes and sighing. "I'm sorry."

"Let me rock him for the night."

"You have far too much on your plate tomorrow, love. I can do it."

"I cannot," he said with a rueful chuckle. "I'll not watch you dissolve any longer, my love. Or do you believe I cannot do just as excellent a job at parenting as you?"

I smiled, and pushed myself up to meet his lips with mine, though I had to stop rocking to do it, being unable to guide my lips to his without a reference. "You are too generous."

"I am merely being practical. It took two of us to make him; likely it will take the both of us to raise him as well."

"Quite likely," I agreed, and with a groan unthreaded my legs from behind him. "Enjoy yourself then. I'll leave a note requesting something special for breakfast."

As it so happened we did both survive his first few months. As well as a few after that.

I came home one afternoon to hear Thranduil pacing slowly down our hall while he read his reports. I frowned, laying my cello gently aside, as it had cracked in the impending fall chill, and had only just been fixed. "Darling, what are you doing?"

"Reading."

My brow furrowed more deeply. "Are you going somewhere?"

"Only retrieving a glass of wine."

"And how long have you been engaged in that endeavor?"

"Oh, only a few minutes."

I sighed. He never walked this slow, not unless he was contemplating something yet too heavy to release unattended. "Very well then. Where is our sweet son, might I ask? At this rate he might outstrip you."