Somewhere ages and ages hence

[texasdreamer01]

Title and Platform: Somewhere ages and ages hence (AO3) (tumblr)
Rating: Gen
Fandoms: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Characters: Bard the Bowman, Thranduil
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Tumblr Prompt, Mentioned Thorin Oakenshield - Freeform, Mentioned Bilbo Baggins, Past Relationship(s), mild flirting
Summary:
"It was marriage season in Dale, the first in generations. What need did Thranduil have, to sit here instead of in his woods?"

Laketown had been scarce in festivities, due mostly to its precarious building upon the lake and its capricious series of Masters that left the rest groveling upon what they could catch.

That was a chapter completed, though, much as Bard wished for it with the trappings nostalgia often carried. Dale was a complex beast, and its steady reconstruction had not only merited its own celebration, but also the headache that came with the formal re-establishing of ties between other kingdoms.

It was not a simple life, no, but it was an eventful one.

Thranduil sent him an amused look from where he was sitting, faint creasing of his lips that would hardly be discernible to any but an elf. He cocked an eyebrow in return, pressing his lips together firmly to dissuade anyone’s notion that he was anything other than dutiful and vaguely grim.

He had to hand it to the one neighboring king not in attendance – Thorin certainly had the right of it with such a countenance. It was easier to keep up than smiling at every turn.

Another toast went up from those assembled for his neighbor’s wedding, and he raised his tankard on muscle memory alone, wondering vaguely if the beer Dain had sent in a message of goodwill would get them as drunk as the formal reopening of the city. Bard watched Tauriel clank her drink with those sitting beside her, hoping it would at least be an amusing mess to preside over.

Rounds were made in which everyone was invited to speak. Given that the woman who had once been a fishmonger as he had been a bowman, it was certainly an event of elevated status now that she had been entitled a lady, particularly so since her remarriage was to one of the first travelling merchants that had accompanied a diplomatic envoy from Gondor. He was happy for her, truly, but it seemed the so-called “wedding season” was in the air, and Bard was internally groaning at how many children would be born by the end of the year.

It was enough to making him consider retiring to his room with a glass of wine and a good book. Still, he needed to be considered mannerly for a lord of Dale, and he dragged himself into mild carousing for the third wedding in a month.

---

Thranduil had found him among the festivities, himself having elected to stand to the side in a polite manner. Secretly, Bard thought he was just using the imperious, distant reputation of elves to get away with people-watching at leisure, and said as much when his tankard was refilled.

“It is good to see the people of Dale have much to celebrate,” The elf smoothly redirected, smiling at his frown. Smiles were something Thranduil was coming by more often these days, and Bard thought it was perhaps because so much death could only warrant so much grief.

Perhaps elves had the better end of the stick with their long lives. He shrugged, eyeing the beer dubiously and wondering when the polite cut-off point was. Given that the elf king himself had refilled it, he was willing to wager this wasn’t it. Taking a sip, he sighed at how perfectly smooth and malty it was; good for mending one’s goodwill, no doubt.

“Is this why you’re here for yet another wedding?” Bard asked wryly, mimicking a toast to the man. He was obliged with a tilt of the head, provoking a grin out of him.

“No,” Thranduil said simply, setting the pitcher down with an ease that belied the strength his willowy form held, sliding into a chair next to him amidst the faint gaping Bard was sure he was doing, “Though I admit it is pleasant to see so much joy after the battle, and that there is so much one can find to celebrate.”

“That… there is that, yes,” The beer was looking more tempting, although he was sure being deep in his cups wouldn’t make this situation make any more sense, “I’m remembering what Master Baggins said once, that he was always presiding over the weddings in his home town. He seemed glad to have escaped it.”

A laugh, low and threading easily through the noise of the musicians and dancers closer to the center of action. It made his skin prickle, wondering how the sound paired so well with the first stars beginning to sparkle on the dusky horizon. He looked away, lest his gaze be caught, and found his attention pinned to the incongruous paleness of the king’s hands upon the wood of the table.

Thranduil was dressed more casually for the event, if one considered less layers of robes than usual a degree of casual- and he was stopping those thoughts right there before they could wander off. Another sip of beer settled finely on his tongue, and he was beginning to wonder if he would surpass his limit by the end of this conversation.

Maybe there was something to be read into his flushed cheeks, but the elf settled more easily into his own chair. Lounging, almost, and those thoughts were quickly shuffled away, too. There was no gaping tunic to politely ignore the depths of, but the shimmer of cleverly-woven silk played well with the almost-invisible blondness of Thranduil’s hair.

“I do believe he traded one quirk of society for another,” Thranduil mused, looking out at the revelers with a fond gaze, “There will be multiple caravans converging on the mountain in the next two years, and the toils of immigration are usually followed by at least a few weddings.”

“Was it the same for you?” He asked, trying to pull up the wisps of memory he had learned about the elves of Mirkwood. They were a mix of people, that he knew, but little else beyond that the king of the wood was an outsider.

Tilting a brow at him, Thranduil looked both amused and curious at his question, then leaned abruptly forward to grab the tankard from his startled grasp. An apology at the tip of his tongue, he could only watch as the elf smirked and took a hearty swallow of the beer, Bard’s face most assuredly red at the sight and its accompanying thoughts.

“We were not necessarily well-liked when we ventured into the woods, no,” Thranduil admitted, licking his lips of foam, “I suppose venturing in to another’s home after your own battle was inspiring of trepidation.”

Bard nodded, finding it easier to focus on the subject rather than the sight out of sheer curiosity, “One would think you well-acclimated. You command their loyalty well.”

“Hmm,” Thranduil cut a glance at him, “I suppose marrying one of them was good cause to unify ourselves.”

A thought niggled at him, and he voiced it before he could think better of it, “I thought elves weren’t ones for arranged marriages.”

“We do not,” Thranduil confirmed, a faraway look in his eye that wasn’t quite grief, but the shadow of it, one as tall as the trees of the king’s wood, “Mirimelle rather sought me out, despite the behest of her family. She told me once it was curiosity that overruled her senses.”

He watched the man take another sip of his purloined beer, the ethereal grace somehow scarcely touched by such a mundane action. Perhaps it was the setting sun that gave him confidence, or the reflected glow of the moon on Thranduil’s skin, but he couldn’t help but murmur, “I can see why she did so.”

Another lifted brow in his direction, and what did it say that Bard found the expression captivating? “Can you?” Thranduil asked, face open in receptive curiosity, “My wife often had a way with words, but danced away from my questions when it pleased her.”

And here Bard thought of his own wife, wondering if in another life the two would have met. Certainly the kind pragmatism would have been well-met by such an illustrious spirit, if Thranduil still loved his own strongly enough to follow on war’s footsteps for a token of her memory. It made him smile, wondering if they both thought their husbands fools from wherever they were resting. Perhaps that is why the man sitting beside him with an astonishingly-slouched posture in the rickety chair glowed in the oncoming starlight.

He shook his head, “I think perhaps it was love that drew her toward you, to see if your heart spoke the same as hers.”

Thranduil stared at him, not quite a smile lingering on his face, but he didn’t dare interpret it as a measure of awe in his direction. He was loathe to let the moment break, meeting the look with one of his own, not sure how many of his emotions were on his face to be read as clearly as a story.

“I think…” The elf murmured, leaning toward him, “That perhaps you are right. You are a font of unexpected wisdom, Bard, and one that is appreciated.”

Abruptly, it occurred to Bard to wonder how long this Mirimelle had been dead – how long Thranduil had been carrying that grief with him, allowing it to fester and attract darkness upon his thoughts. He covered the man’s resting hand upon his own, giving it a gentle squeeze.

That Thranduil seemed as entranced as he did by the sight of their fingers twining over the handle of the tankard did not escape him, but rather made his heart flutter in a way it had done little since the passing of his own wife.

“It would do them a disservice,” He murmured, leaning in as Thranduil had done, “To lose ourselves in grief, and forget what can draw a smile toward us.”

Thranduil’s eyes shone in the approaching moonlight, creased as they were with some warm, unknown emotion, “I agree.”

Notes:

Title taken from Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken".

Written for Barduil month's April 29th prompt, "Marriage".

Thranduil's wife's name picked mostly out of a hat (this one, to be precise). It's a mix of, if I'm interpreting correctly, "mirima" which means "free", and the feminine suffix "-elle", which composes thereabouts to "she who is free". I'm not actually sure if Tolkien's stated anything on that particular subject, but regardless, here she is a native to the Greenwood and probably bewildered Thranduil just a smidge. I'm sure Bard would likely agree with the sentiment of ruffling Thranduil's... well, feathers, a bit.