Fanfiction: Wounds That Can't Be Mend 1/2 (The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey)
Title: "Wounds That Can't Be Mend 1/2”
Status: WIP
Fandom: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
Characters/Pairing: Thranduil, Thorin Oakenshield
Disclaimer: The Hobbit @ J. R. R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson. No copyright infringement intended.
Rating: T
Genre: character study
Warnings: none
Summary: As Smaug attacked Erebor, Thranduil turned away, and his army went with him...
AN: Each part can stand alone.
Part Two
Erebor
… and the Elvenking turned away. His delegation and guards followed him, down a corridor of gem-veined stone and the mighty statues carved into it, like a shield between him and the gold-fever, gleaming sinister behind the amusement and pride in King Thrór's eyes.
Something was lost that day, eroded by Dwarven sickness.
XXX
The air was ripe with the stench of sulfur. It was carried up the mountainside by a summer wind tainted by heat as yet unknown to these parts of Middle-Earth, parching the throats of the gathering Elves.
Thranduil watched the chaos below, Durin's folk abandoning its kingdom in haste born of fear and the death that lay behind, faces streaked with soot, some gleaming with tears, but all pale with the shock of being uprooted.
The Longbeard's fate, turned into fugitives in the span of mere moments, carrying nothing but the clothes on their back, the children clutched in their arms and weapons a dragon's might had proven to be useless.
A roar vibrated up towards a sky tinged yellow and green with the promise of thunder, the weather itself bowing to the force of the dragon. Heavy was the atmosphere, by deeds done and the unknown future to come, gathering dark clouds over many a fate, over many a people.
Erebor shook as once fertile soil crumbled underneath its foundation and the plants in the plains withered to blackened remnants of once overflowing life. Parts of the great mountain broke apart, split off with the force of a war machines projectile, the impacts sending dust, screams and bodies into the air.
Seconds of destruction stretched into hours as lives were extinguished while others strained to escape.
The sight was so achingly familiar that Thranduil might have wept, had he any tears left, and been wiling to shed them for Dwarves brought low by their own greed; no matter that the innocent were suffering most.
Some of his memories stood out in sharp relief in a long line of others, their edges not smoothed by the passing of ages.
Then, armies had gathered and fallen before the formidable foe that is a dragon, death passing overhead, raining down scarlet fire. Anyone touched by it had turned to ashes, while the ones trying to hold the lines beside them had melded with the armor that had been meant to protect them. One drawn breath and the fumes had reduced the strongest to lifeless shapes on cracked earth.
The dragon fire had seeped into Thranduil's own skin, boiled the marrow in his very bones, branded the images into the milky center of his left eye: death, defeat and despair.
It burned now, roused by the sight, within the ruin of his face, pulsing with his heartbeat.
Despite its outward calm, antlers raised defiantly, Thranduil felt Voronwë's tension mirroring his own. The Great Fallow Deer's muscles kept twitching, its fur bristling. Fear rose from his faithful mount in waves, yet its service remained willing and steadfast.
As the Dwarves were bound to stone, so were the Elves one with the land, and it screamed in its death throes, sending a ripple of unease through their formation. They would follow where Thranduil led, even into a fiery death that would leave no family under his reign untouched.
Their arrival had not gone unnoticed.
Even at a distance, Thranduil felt the weight of desperation in Prince Thorin's gaze. His shout rose over the cacophony: “Help us!”
Thranduil considered, if only for a moment, and came to his decision as he must, with regret but no remorse. No matter the accusing stare of blue eyes, dawning with realization and the seed of hate, he was the Elvenking.
Thranduil's kin came first, in everything.
An alliance fallen to mockery and spite for the Elves of Mirkwood, eroded by gold-fever, he would still have honored against any other foe. But to fight now would have meant to throw the lives away that had escaped Smaug. - An Elven army close to the hoard the dragon had claimed as his would only provoke the fire-drake to finish the Dwarves he had deemed to overlook in his haste to reach the gold that had drawn him down from the North.
With gentle pressure on Voronwë's flanks Thranduil turned his mount around. His army went with him, back from whence they had come, into the encroaching darkness of Eryn Galen.
No help came from the Elves that day… or any day since.
The End
Voronwë - steadfast, faithful
Eryn Galen - Greenwood, the Great
Status: WIP
Fandom: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey
Characters/Pairing: Thranduil, Thorin Oakenshield
Disclaimer: The Hobbit @ J. R. R. Tolkien and Peter Jackson. No copyright infringement intended.
Rating: T
Genre: character study
Warnings: none
Summary: As Smaug attacked Erebor, Thranduil turned away, and his army went with him...
AN: Each part can stand alone.
Part Two
Erebor
… and the Elvenking turned away. His delegation and guards followed him, down a corridor of gem-veined stone and the mighty statues carved into it, like a shield between him and the gold-fever, gleaming sinister behind the amusement and pride in King Thrór's eyes.
Something was lost that day, eroded by Dwarven sickness.
XXX
The air was ripe with the stench of sulfur. It was carried up the mountainside by a summer wind tainted by heat as yet unknown to these parts of Middle-Earth, parching the throats of the gathering Elves.
Thranduil watched the chaos below, Durin's folk abandoning its kingdom in haste born of fear and the death that lay behind, faces streaked with soot, some gleaming with tears, but all pale with the shock of being uprooted.
The Longbeard's fate, turned into fugitives in the span of mere moments, carrying nothing but the clothes on their back, the children clutched in their arms and weapons a dragon's might had proven to be useless.
A roar vibrated up towards a sky tinged yellow and green with the promise of thunder, the weather itself bowing to the force of the dragon. Heavy was the atmosphere, by deeds done and the unknown future to come, gathering dark clouds over many a fate, over many a people.
Erebor shook as once fertile soil crumbled underneath its foundation and the plants in the plains withered to blackened remnants of once overflowing life. Parts of the great mountain broke apart, split off with the force of a war machines projectile, the impacts sending dust, screams and bodies into the air.
Seconds of destruction stretched into hours as lives were extinguished while others strained to escape.
The sight was so achingly familiar that Thranduil might have wept, had he any tears left, and been wiling to shed them for Dwarves brought low by their own greed; no matter that the innocent were suffering most.
Some of his memories stood out in sharp relief in a long line of others, their edges not smoothed by the passing of ages.
Then, armies had gathered and fallen before the formidable foe that is a dragon, death passing overhead, raining down scarlet fire. Anyone touched by it had turned to ashes, while the ones trying to hold the lines beside them had melded with the armor that had been meant to protect them. One drawn breath and the fumes had reduced the strongest to lifeless shapes on cracked earth.
The dragon fire had seeped into Thranduil's own skin, boiled the marrow in his very bones, branded the images into the milky center of his left eye: death, defeat and despair.
It burned now, roused by the sight, within the ruin of his face, pulsing with his heartbeat.
Despite its outward calm, antlers raised defiantly, Thranduil felt Voronwë's tension mirroring his own. The Great Fallow Deer's muscles kept twitching, its fur bristling. Fear rose from his faithful mount in waves, yet its service remained willing and steadfast.
As the Dwarves were bound to stone, so were the Elves one with the land, and it screamed in its death throes, sending a ripple of unease through their formation. They would follow where Thranduil led, even into a fiery death that would leave no family under his reign untouched.
Their arrival had not gone unnoticed.
Even at a distance, Thranduil felt the weight of desperation in Prince Thorin's gaze. His shout rose over the cacophony: “Help us!”
Thranduil considered, if only for a moment, and came to his decision as he must, with regret but no remorse. No matter the accusing stare of blue eyes, dawning with realization and the seed of hate, he was the Elvenking.
Thranduil's kin came first, in everything.
An alliance fallen to mockery and spite for the Elves of Mirkwood, eroded by gold-fever, he would still have honored against any other foe. But to fight now would have meant to throw the lives away that had escaped Smaug. - An Elven army close to the hoard the dragon had claimed as his would only provoke the fire-drake to finish the Dwarves he had deemed to overlook in his haste to reach the gold that had drawn him down from the North.
With gentle pressure on Voronwë's flanks Thranduil turned his mount around. His army went with him, back from whence they had come, into the encroaching darkness of Eryn Galen.
No help came from the Elves that day… or any day since.
The End
Voronwë - steadfast, faithful
Eryn Galen - Greenwood, the Great