Broken (sequel to Caught)

The twins

It was five weeks later that the first mentionable thing happened within the kingdom of Mirkwood. There had been five weeks of quiet mourning, and everyone had been subdued. It was another such day when Thranduil sat at his desk, eyes perusing the paper in front of him that spelled out the new trade agreements with Laketown. When he had finished reading and crossed out one section that was completely ridiculous, he signed his name at the bottom, moving it to the growing pile of finished work.

A knock came at the door.

"Enter!" he called, picking up the next paper and reading the first paragraph quickly before looking up to see who it was.

Anomeda stepped in, a stack of papers in her hands. She smiled warmly at him.

"Hello, Thranduil," she said, and he smiled back for the first time in almost a month.

"Hello, Anomeda. What brings you here?"

"Well," she said, placing the small pile of papers on his desk and pulling up a chair from the corner of the room. She sat in her usual perch on the edge of it. "The council has been talking, my lord. They are squabbling amongst themselves about why you have not chosen a new heir yet."

"A new heir?" Thranduil said, the words hitting him like a blow to the face.

"Yes. Now that Prince Legolas has left, they think you need to choose a new heir, in case anything happens to you, or when you eventually follow in his footsteps, which everyone knows you will," she said, cutting off his indignant 'how do you know I am even going to leave?'

"I suppose," he said, and Anomeda smiled, pointing at the papers.

"These are updated copies of the old version of the papers that are needed to change your heir to someone else."

"How am I going to choose someone, though?" Thranduil said, putting his head in his hands and sighing.

"Well, it could be anyone, really, but I would recommend someone with political experience who is well-liked by the people."

"Alright," he said, sighing. "Thank you, Anomeda."

Anomeda stood up, taking this as dismissal, and walked to the door. She turned back to him, wearing a sad smile.

"And Thranduil?" she said. "I'm sorry about your son."

And then she was gone.

Thranduil looked at the paper and scanned it. He just had to put a person and their relation to him and sign.

Who could he put? Someone with political experience, she said. So...one of the council members? He thought of each of them, one by one, in his mind. None of them seemed to fit the bill.

Then he remembered. Anomeda was part of the council, was she not? What better a person to fill in for him, if need be? He wrote her name on the line and wrote "councilor" on the relationship line.

He paused before he signed. Putting his name on that line would be accepting that Legolas was really not going to come back. It would mean admitting that his son was lost.

With a shaking hand and a deep breath, he signed the paper.

O:o:O

"I should have brought a horse," Legolas murmured, walking through the trees. If he had been smart enough to think ahead, he would have brought a horse, food, and other clothes, and then he would not have had to stop so often.

As an elf, he could travel for about three or four days without stopping, but at that point even he had to stop. Especially because receiving the images from the trees had been a constant drain of his energy since he had left, but there was no way to avoid it. He needed to see.