Work Text:
It all started with an addendum, and a summons from the High King. Elrond had been on his best behaviour since they’d come back to Lindon – he still felt guilty about not only disobeying his King’s command but actually jumping off a waterfall in order to do so – and was somewhat surprised at this summons. He’d done nothing controversial in the last few weeks that he knew of – in fact, his life had been a spectacularly boring cycle of weapons training and checking on the soldiers still recovering in the healing houses, and he hadn’t ventured near anything high in weeks. Nevertheless, he went obediently.
When he arrived at Gil-Galad’s office, there were two guests – two very beaten up Dwarves, in fact. One was holding his arm awkwardly and the other had a great slash across his face but they were stood to usual Dwarven attention regardless, staring at Elrond impassively. Gil-Galad was at his desk, reading a rather crumpled letter. When Elrond entered, he started speaking immediately, ignoring any pleasantries.
“I have received a missive from King Durin. It comes at considerable cost to his messengers, as you can see,” – and he here he waved an expansive hand at the two Dwarves – “Some of which were lost on the journey here. However the import of the letter is perhaps worthy of such a sacrifice – the King wishes to cement the alliance between Elves and Dwarves, and work together to bring down the evil in Middle Earth once and for all.”
Elrond tried not to look at the Dwarves – one of whom had a red beard and was bringing up a confusing blend of feelings inside him – and focused instead on what Gil-Galad was saying. “It is odd that Durin the Third wishes to strengthen our alliance, he did not seem – ”
“The Fourth,” Gil-Galad said, and finally looked up from the letter, fixing Elrond with a good hard stare. “This is from King Durin the Fourth.”
The bottom seemed to drop out of Elrond’s stomach. “The…?”
Gil-Galad nodded. “Yes, Durin the elder is dead.”
Elrond had to break Gil-Galad’s gaze at this, stepping away from the desk to look out at the blossom-laden trees outside. It was the height of spring and the air was smelling sweeter everyday. In the courtyard nearby, there was another training session going on, the clash of weapons echoing loudly. Elrond forced himself not to jump at the sound of it. He turned back to Gil-Galad, making sure his face remained emotionless.
“How did it happen?”
Gil-Galad was looking at Elrond but when Elrond turned, he dropped his eyes back to the letter. “It says that the late Durin died a few weeks ago, fighting a terrible and nameless evil in the depths of the mountain. It was his ring-addled efforts to release the beast and cause havoc in Khazad-dûm that prevented the new King from assisting us at Eregion – something he apologises for profusely.”
In the last few weeks Elrond had thought – when he had allowed himself to – about the reasons why Durin might not have come to his aid, and much as he liked to gloomily imagine that Durin simply hated him, he knew in his heart that it had to be for a good reason. He had even wondered if Durin or Disa were dead – or the children – which was about the time he had stopped himself thinking about it altogether.
To stop the destruction of an entire kingdom – well, that was a good reason to betray a promise. You couldn’t argue with that. Elrond knew you couldn’t. And yet…
“So,” Gil-Galad said, breaking through Elrond’s thoughts. “Your friend is King.”
“He’s not my friend,” Elrond said immediately, and then bit his tongue. The two Dwarf messengers shifted and muttered something to each other. Gil-Galad raised a perfectly arched eyebrow but said nothing. Elrond added quickly, “Was there any other reason you summoned me, my lord?”
Gil-Galad looked at him for a long moment, but merely said, “Yes, there was an addendum in the letter addressed to you.” He looked down at the letter again. “It says, and I quote, ‘please tell your feathery shirted idiot of a commander” – The King’s voice wobbled suspiciously but his face remained impassive – “that he should write me a letter and let me know he is well.’” He looked back up at Elrond. “I shall be sending my reply via these Dwarven messengers and an Elf contingent. If you wish to write a letter, I can send it with mine.”
Elrond tried to swallow around the sudden lump in his throat. “There is no need, my lord,” he said, and his voice sounded strangled, as if the lump was choking him. “I shall not be writing anything.”
An odd look passed across Gil-Galad’s face, almost of disappointment, as if he had hoped Elrond might be better than this, but he simply said, “I see.” He waved a hand at Elrond. “Then I shall detain you no longer,” he said, and Elrond was free to go.
Elrond went outside and sat on a bench, listening to the clangs and loud discussions in the training grounds, and let himself think of Durin. He tried to imagine Durin in his father’s place – sat on that great stone throne, the metal crown on his head with all its jagged points and edges, Disa taking her place by his side as Queen, and there was a stark clarity to the vision, as if King Durin the Fourth was standing before him, and for a moment Elrond missed Durin so hard that it hurt to breathe.
The training session was still going on. Elrond took a deep breath, shoved his thoughts back inside him, and went to join them.
The next attempt was in the form of a full letter alongside a response to Gil-Galad, and the High King summoned Elrond to his office and held out the envelope with his name on.
“For you,” he said, and, when Elrond hesitated, gave him such a severe look that Elrond took the letter without complaint.
He went and sat under the great tree of Lindon, somewhere he had not visited since his literal fall from grace down the waterfall, and stared at the envelope. His name was written on it in Elvish, in Durin’s hand. As a King, he could probably make people write his letters for him, but he had written this one himself.
Elrond thought about opening it. He thought about flinging the thing over the waterfall. In the end, he took it home and put it in a drawer, and tried to forget about it.
It became a pattern, after that. Every time Gil-Galad received a letter – and they would come roughly once a week, sometimes multiple copies as multiple teams of messengers were being sent back and forth now that the roads were so perilous – Elrond would receive one too. All of them remained unopened, and although Gil-Galad offered every time, Elrond never sent a response.
And then one day there were two letters in one delivery, Elrond’s name written so hard on the envelopes that it must have broken Durin’s pen. And then, not long after, three letters, now addressed to ‘that stupid obstinate elf’, and within a couple of months no less than five letters were being sent to Elrond at a time. Gil-Galad had started leaving them in piles on his desk for Elrond to pick up, and always gave Elrond the same oddly disappointed look when Elrond came to collect them. Elrond tidied each and every one away, unopened.
Elrond told no one about the letters, but of course Galadriel found out anyway. She invited Elrond to a seemingly innocuous lunch and then struck whilst in the midst of tea and sandwiches. “I hear King Durin is sending you letters.”
Elrond almost choked on his tea. “I…Yes, he is.”
“Quite a lot of them,” Galadriel said smoothly, and Elrond cast around desperately for safe escape routes whilst trying not to look like he was doing just that. He was trapped though – trapped in Galadriel’s very nice but very secure chambers. The only option was hurling himself off the balcony and he had done enough throwing himself off things to last a lifetime. He would have to escape this prison with words.
So he said, “Yes,” and hoped that would be enough, but instead Galadriel leaned forward and put a very gentle hand on his arm, and Elrond had lost.
“Are you even reading them?” she asked, and of course she would know Elrond was not. He put his teacup down.
“No,” he said, and his voice was far shakier than he realised. Galadriel squeezed his arm.
“He will be apologising in them,” she said. “Perhaps you should read his apology.”
“But that’s the point,” Elrond said without meaning to, the words coming up from where he’d shoved them down for months. “He shouldn’t be apologising, that’s the point.” And then he clamped his mouth shut to avoid anything more coming out, and pushed down his impending tears as hard as possible.
To his unutterable relief, Galadriel said nothing more, simply patting his arm and saying, “Perhaps some more sandwiches?” and afterwards they shared a companionable silence, where Elrond ate far more sandwiches than was good for him to fill the sudden emptiness in his stomach.
Not long after that, an entire sackful of letters for Elrond arrived, accompanied by some very grumpy Dwarven messengers, and were plonked down before Elrond in Gil-Galad’s office with great satisfaction.
“Try ignoring that,” the Dwarven messenger said in triumph, and for the first time in a very, very long time, Elrond had the urge to laugh. He glanced up at Gil-Galad, who was obviously trying not to roll his eyes. “It seems,” he said instead, with great serenity, “That Durin is most eager to hear from you.”
“He will not,” Elrond said, and took the bag of letters back to his rooms, where he had had to buy a new cabinet just to store all of Durin’s communications.
Gil-Galad came to his rooms later that evening, without ceremony but also without warning, and Elrond had to tidy up as unobtrusively as he could while the King prowled around inspecting the mess without comment. Then finally he accepted a glass of wine and sat in a chair by Elrond’s fire, pinning Elrond with a very firm look.
“I shall not make this an order,” he said, “Although part of me wants to, if just to stop my office from being drowned in letters. You should respond to your friend.”
“He’s not – ” Elrond started, then stopped when he saw the look on Gil-Galad’s face. He glowered down at his own glass of wine. “I cannot,” he said finally, weakly.
Gil-Galad let out an exasperated sigh, but said nothing for a few minutes. Elrond drank his wine and considered drinking the entire bottle. Then Gil-Galad spoke, in one long measured speech, and he had never sounded more like a King in Elrond’s ears.
“You should know, Elrond, that there are many ways to fight the darkness that Sauron so champions. Much is done in battle, it is true, but most is done within our own hearts. We must bring the light in there however we can, most especially in these dark times. And the love we have for others is the brightest form of light there is. Do not let yourself be dimmed by your pain, Elrond. Fight that darkness and let yourself love those you care for.”
Elrond didn’t know what to say to that, and for a few minutes they sat silently, Gil-Galad drinking his wine apparently without a care in the world. Elrond fought for a moment against what he wanted to say, and then said it anyway.
“How can you ally with the Dwarves? When they abandoned us at Eregion? How do you know they won’t just do it again?”
Gil-Galad gave Elrond a long look over his wine, but when he spoke, it was quite relaxed, almost companionable. “Firstly, we need all the allies we can get against Sauron, especially considering our diminished numbers. Secondly, King Durin gave his reasons for not assisting us, and I judged them to be sufficient. As a King, the safety of those in your care must come before all else, even your allies. And I have met your friend – while he did seem to like stealing my furniture, I would not say he is an untruthful person.”
Again, Elrond had the almost bizarre urge to laugh, memories of Durin stealing the High King’s table coming suddenly to the fore. That all seemed so long ago now.
“Durin is the most honest person I know,” he said, a little reluctantly. “He will have told you the truth. He – Durin knows his own emotions better than anyone I have ever met, and he freely admits them. He sees the good in everything. He – ” And here Elrond had to stop, because all the wine he had drunk was threatening to come back up again.
Luckily for him, the King said nothing further, although when he departed Elrond’s chambers he did add, “Remember of course, that Dwarves are as stubborn as they are unrelenting. You may be subjected to letters for decades.”
Elrond put on a brave face. “They will stop eventually,” he said, and then they did.
The next time Gil-Galad received a letter, he summoned Elrond to his office, but only to tell him that one had not arrived for him. He said it gently, like you would break the news of someone dying to a relative, and Elrond merely nodded and walked out again.
He tried not to think on the walk back to his rooms, but the strangest feeling – the feeling that he had somehow missed his chance – came back again and again. Maybe Durin had given up on him. Maybe Durin had seen the futility of what he was doing and had stopped. Elrond should have been relieved that he was finally being left in peace, but instead he felt almost betrayed, like he had on the battlefield, only quieter and smaller and more doubtful, because maybe it was him who had been doing the betraying this time.
When he arrived at his rooms, there was a very large crow standing on his desk.
Elrond and the crow stared at each other. Then the crow let out a very confident squawk.
“Go away,” Elrond said, his voice sounding thick in his ears, “Shoo.” And he approached the bird, flapping his hands at it ineffectually. Instead of flying away, the crow gave him a very firm look and squawked again, and this time hopped to the side so that Elrond could see the letter tied to its leg.
So Durin hadn’t given up after all. He had merely found a new way to pester him. A wave of something very much like relief washed over Elrond.
He reached forward and unfastened the letter from the crow’s leg, carefully in case the bird decided to attack him, but it merely stood patiently and let Elrond take it. Elrond put the letter away with the rest and turned back to the crow to find it giving Elrond a very expectant look.
“Caw,” said the bird.
“No,” said Elrond firmly. “I am not writing a response. You can go now.”
“Caw caw,” said the bird, and knocked over Elrond’s ink pot, and sat down to wait.
The bird wouldn’t leave after that. It sat around in Elrond’s chambers, glaring at him, and then when Elrond tried to spend less time in his chambers as a result, merely flew around Lindon until it found him, perched on a branch or a fence nearby and glared at him some more. Eventually Elrond relented enough to buy it some seeds and dead insects, and soon they were having their meals together. A few times the crow would drag out a piece of parchment onto his desk and nudge a pen in Elrond’s direction as a very pointed hint, but Elrond would just tidy them away again. It was a battle of wits, clearly, and Elrond was starting to get the distinct impression that the crow might win.
Right, he thought one day, time this was someone else’s problem. And he took the crow down to Gil-Galad’s office.
“I have a bird,” he announced.
“Yes, I can see that,” the High King replied, staring at the crow perched on Elrond’s arm. “Is there perhaps a reason you have brought this creature to my office?”
Elrond gently placed the crow on the King’s desk. It went willingly, which was a good sign. “Durin sent this crow to me with a letter. I thought you might be able to use it rather than our messengers having to risk the roads.”
“I hear the skies are similarly perilous,” said Gil-Galad, but he eyed the crow thoughtfully. “I have just completed a letter to King Durin. I suppose we might try it.” But when he reached forward to tie the letter to the crow’s leg, the crow squawked in alarm, pecked Gil-Galad’s hand (probably an offence that warranted death) and flapped up onto Elrond’s shoulder, where it continued to scream at Gil-Galad.
“Stop it,” Elrond tried, attempting to shake the crow off. “You – you stupid bird!” and Gil-Galad made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a stifled laugh.
“It would seem,” he said, once the crow had climbed up into Elrond’s hair and finally quietened down, “That this bird has been trained only to receive letters from you.” He gave Elrond a significant look, as if he knew what Elrond had been trying to do. “I think you might be stuck with it.”
So Elrond went back to his chambers with the bird and fed it some insects, all the while swearing as hard as he could.
It wasn’t even a week later that Gil-Galad summoned Elrond to his office again. Elrond left the crow resting on his desk and wisely went to the office bird-less.
“We are planning an assault on some of Sauron’s forces in the near future,” Gil-Galad said. “King Durin and a small retinue will be coming to Lindon for a few days so we might plan a coordinated attack from both sides.”
Elrond’s heart felt like it had tried to leap in excitement and sink in panic at the same time. “Durin is coming here? But he can’t – the roads, Khazad-dûm – surely he should send his advisors here in his place?”
“Indeed he should,” said Gil-Galad, carefully arranging some papers on his desk. “But he has elected instead to come here himself. I suppose you shall have to ask him why when he arrives.”
Elrond’s heart made another attempt at leaping and sinking at the same time. “I will not – ” he started, then stopped and started again. “I will not be talking to him.”
“Well that might be quite difficult since you are to be the Dwarven ambassador whilst he is here,” said Gil-Galad, and this time Elrond’s heart really did sink. He stared at the King in dumb astonishment.
“I cannot,” he said at last.
Gil-Galad raised an eyebrow. “You speak the Dwarven language, you know of their customs, of what is important to them and what is not, of their city and their beliefs. Of course it will be you.”
Elrond tried to swallow down the sudden panic rising in him – it was one thing to ignore Durin’s letters but quite another to ignore the Dwarf standing right in front of him. “High King,” he said as calmly as he could. “I thank you for your kind offer, but I must decline.”
Gil-Galad’s eyebrow raised somehow even higher. “It was not an offer, it was an order. And luckily for me, I am King, and thus you must do as I order. You are doing it, Elrond.”
And that was that. Short of jumping off the waterfall again – and Elrond really couldn’t be doing that more than once, Gil-Galad would ban him from Lindon permanently – there was nothing Elrond could do. He would just have to communicate with Durin as little as possible. Surely he could do that. Perhaps it would even show Durin how futile it was to talk to Elrond, and he would leave him alone. And he could take his rotten bird back.
Yes. And then everything would be all right.
Nothing was all right. Gil-Galad had forced Elrond to be part of the welcoming party when the Dwarves arrived, so Elrond stood, as irresolute as a dandelion head in a spring breeze, and watched the Dwarven retinue march in.
He had decided that he would be as formal as possible with Durin right from the beginning, and do his job and his job only, but he had not been ready to catch sight of Durin again, not really, and when he laid his eyes on the familiar red-haired, red-bearded figure marching at the head of his retinue, with his father’s heavy spiked crown on his head and his hand clenched around the handle of his favourite axe, all Elrond’s determination seemed to melt away like ice in water.
The retinue stopped before Gil-Galad. There was a new authority that seemed to sit on Durin’s shoulders – he was holding himself more regally than when he had been a Prince – but when he glanced over at Elrond his expression softened, and there was a definite twinkle in the dark eyes over that crooked nose. Elrond fought to keep his face impassive, even as his nerve was failing him.
“Elrond,” Durin said, a little too politely.
Elrond kept his eyes firmly on Durin’s crown, to avoid looking into those friendly eyes. “King Durin,” he said woodenly, which seemed to give Durin pause. Beside him, Gil-Galad filled in the strained silence with his welcoming speech, and everything was fine until Elrond had to show Durin to his rooms.
It was an extremely awkward walk. Elrond filled in the silence with rehearsed comments about various amenities and times for meetings and formal dinners, but it was nothing Durin hadn’t already heard before, and he knew it. The air was thick with tension.
When Elrond finally got Durin to his room, he had planned to escape as quickly as possible, but Durin took one look around the room and then said suddenly, “How’s Craban?”
Elrond frowned. “You named the bird after the Elvish word for ‘crow’?”
“Well, we Dwarves have never been very creative when it comes to naming things,” Durin said cheerfully, pacing around the room, and poked a thumb at himself. “Case in point. Durin, son of Durin, grandson of Durin.” And he grinned at Elrond, and it was such a Durin grin, so full of joy and not a little mischief, blazing like the sun, and Elrond had missed that grin so, so, so much.
He raised his eyes very firmly above Durin’s head. “Unless you have any questions, I will take my leave.”
“Just one,” Durin said, sounding so annoyed that Elrond involuntarily dropped his eyes down to look at him. “When are you going to remove that stick from yer arse and talk to me properly?”
Elrond bit down his response as hard as he could – it took all his diplomatic powers to do so. “If there are no proper questions,” he said tightly, “I shall leave.”
“Elrond,” Durin said softly, just as Elrond got to the threshold, and his voice was so quiet that it was somehow loud in the room, stopping Elrond in his tracks. He looked back over at Durin. Durin had removed his crown and for a moment seemed very small.
“Elrond,” he said again. “I am sor – ”
But Elrond had left the room before Durin could finish the word.
He almost ran back to his own chambers, slammed his door shut and sat in his desk chair, trying not to cry. On the desk, the crow eyed him suspiciously.
“Hello, Craban,” Elrond said tiredly, and the bird gave such a happy screech, and hopped over to Elrond to bump his head against his fingers, that suddenly Elrond was laughing instead of crying.
The next few days were a nightmare of confused emotion. Elrond had already shored himself up against his feelings as hard as he could, but he had reckoned without Durin’s natural ability to be so loveable. He could try to avoid Durin, but there were meetings and dinners that he simply couldn’t get out of, and since he had to be a quasi-translator for both languages and both customs, it unfortunately meant a lot of talking with the damn Dwarf. And the damn Dwarf was such a good person, why did Durin have to be so incredible? Why did he have to come up with such clever ideas that could take them down so many avenues of discussion? Why did everything he said have to be something that Elrond understood, or agreed with, or had thought of as well? Why did they have to share so many values and outlooks on life? Why did they have to be so…so compatible?
It was difficult to remember that Durin had betrayed Elrond when he was cracking jokes at the dinner table that he knew would make Elrond laugh, if he wasn’t trying so hard not to. It was difficult to remember that he had left Elrond to die when he made an extremely Dwarven jibe at one of the more pompous Elves that only he and Elrond understood, and they had met eyes over the table, and almost lost their composure. Elrond’s impassive façade was cracking more and more every day.
It didn’t mean Durin wasn’t affected by Elrond’s stiff behaviour, although he was clearly trying not to rise to it, and in fact was being more polite and complimentary to Elrond than he had in years (and didn’t that feel odd? To have Durin be so nice to him when one of their favourite pastimes was swapping insults about each other?). But eventually one evening, on a silent walk back to his rooms, Durin cracked.
“This is ridiculous! Why would you even be the ambassador in these discussions if you don’t want to talk to me properly?” he snapped, just outside the door to his rooms.
“Gil-Galad forced me to,” Elrond snapped right back. “And I am trying to make reparations to him. And why are you even here if Khazad-dûm is in such danger, you should have sent advisors!”
“I’m here to make reparations to you, you stupid dumb elf!” Durin shouted.
“Well believe me, I would not be speaking a word to you if I didn’t have to!” Elrond shouted right back, and they both went quiet.
It had been a cruel line, perhaps unnecessarily cruel, but Durin’s forehead was wrinkling like he didn’t understand. “Even after all I have said in my letters?” he asked more softly.
Elrond hesitated – just for a moment, but he knew Durin had noticed. “Yes,” he said, and walked away then and there.
The next day, the evening before Durin was set to return to Khazad-dûm, Elrond came back to his rooms to find his door open. Upon barging in, he found Durin stood at his desk, one hand petting Craban and another holding a fistful of his letters.
“I knew it,” he said, and his voice was shaking with rage, “You haven’t opened a single one.”
A wave of anger rose up in Elrond, so strong and yet so gloriously, gloriously pure and simple after his confusion over the past few days. No longer did he dislike Durin but also like him very, very much, now he hated him.
“You broke into my rooms!” he shouted.
“I was visiting my crow!” Durin yelled back. “Why didn’t you read them?!”
“My crow,” Elrond shot back, unaware that he had considered Craban his until right this second, “And I didn’t need to! There was nothing you could say that would make this right!”
An ugly, uneasy sentence fell between them. Elrond closed the door behind him; it was clear Durin wasn’t going to leave until they’d had it out between them.
When Durin spoke again, it was quieter, but the intensity was still there, and a note of desperation had slipped into his voice. “I was in an impossible situation,” he said. “I thought you would – Can’t you see that, Elrond? I had to try and stop my father, he would have brought Khazad-dûm down around our ears. He almost did, and he paid for it with his life.” He took in a shaky breath. “Don’t you think I worried about you? Don’t you think I was torn? I was so scared that you would die because I wasn’t there, and yet – and yet what could I do? What would you have done, if it was Lindon? You would do the same. I know you would. I know you would, Elrond.”
All the anger – that lovely, easy anger – was rapidly draining itself out of Elrond. He walked slowly over to his chair by the banked fire and sat down. Durin stayed where he was, fingers still clenching around the unread letters.
“Yes,” Elrond said at last. “I would. I know why you did it Durin, I understand and I would do the same. That’s the problem. You should not need to apologise to me, and yet – ” He stopped himself suddenly, and Durin stepped a little closer, hovering near the other chair.
“And yet what?” he said more softly.
Elrond stared down at the floor, loathe to meet Durin’s eyes. “I was the Commander in that battle, Durin. I told my soldiers that if they lived to see the sunrise, you and your army would save them, and they would be all right. I promised them, they would be all right. I was so certain that you would be there, I never even considered that you would not be. And then the sunrise came, and I was so sure you were coming, and you did not. And then I had broken my promise, you see? All the soldiers left died after I told them they would not. They died thinking their Commander had lied to them, had betrayed them. You made me a traitor to them, Durin. You made me a liar.”
And then suddenly Elrond’s vision was blurring and he was finally, finally crying, big wet tears landing on his floor, and it was all coming out now, the resentment, the pain, all those feelings behind the desolation he had felt when he had looked to the sun and Durin wasn’t there. “And I understand that you had to choose your kingdom over me – I – I understand. But I have spent so long being abandoned for something greater, Durin – my parents chose the Silmarils, my brother chose mortality, people always choose something greater. And just once I wanted to be chosen. Even though it’s greedy. Even though it’s foolish. I just…” He swallowed hard, scrubbing his hands over his face. “It is ridiculous, it does not make logical sense but there it is. I am being unreasonably selfish. And so you see, Durin, none of your letters could have helped. Because you did the right thing. I am the problem.”
There was a long silence. Durin stood, solid as a stone, by the chair. Elrond fiercely wiped away his tears. “Please leave,” he said.
Durin paused, as if he wanted to say something more, but then said, “All right,” very quietly, and Elrond listened to his heavy footsteps pacing away from him and towards the door. Then just as Durin reached the door, Elrond heard him pause.
“I have one request,” he said, still in that quiet voice. “Just one, Elrond.”
Elrond stared at his dead fire, resisting the urge to turn around. “What?” he said, proud of how steady his voice was.
“Read the letters,” Durin said, and left.
There was silence in the room. Craban eyed Elrond somewhat balefully from the desk, and Elrond, against all odds, huffed out a laugh. He stood up, scrubbing his face again, and went and sat at his desk. “Sorry for all the shouting,” he said to Craban, and reached over, letting the bird bump its head against his fingers. His eyes fell, almost purposefully, on all the unopened letters sitting on his desk. There were so many, his name on so many envelopes – ranging from ‘Elrond’ to ‘stupid rotten elf, reply to me’ – all asking to be opened. And Elrond had some hours to kill, after all.
“Oh, very well,” he sighed to Craban, and opened the drawer, and found Durin’s very first letter.
Craban let out a ‘caw’ of triumph and promptly fell asleep. And Elrond read right through the night.
The letters started out as he imagined they would, profuse apologies that Durin shouldn’t have to make, long rambling explanations, and those were the hardest letters to read. For a while they simply begged Elrond to write back, to tell him he forgave Durin or he didn’t, either way as long as Durin knew because the not knowing was worse than anything. They were pained, agonised letters, and Elrond felt every one of them in his soul.
But then, over time, the letters changed tone somewhat. Durin was still apologising and asking Elrond to write to him, but in between that was peppered accounts of his day, memories he had of their travels together all those many years before, things they had seen, jokes they had made. He would say, Today I saw the first white star flower blooming in the Khazad-dûm vegetable patches, and my heart was glad because I knew spring was coming and we had done enough work with the mirrors to grow good crops again. I remembered that time we came across a field of them and we lay around in that field all day, making visions out of the clouds above, do you remember? I miss you, my friend, please write to me and tell me anything – tell me you hate me, for all I care, just tell me something.
And then the later letters dealt more thoroughly with Durin’s ruling responsibilities, the questions he would ask Elrond if only he could, and instead of asking Elrond to write to him he would just imagine Elrond was there giving him advice, and most of the time he rather unnervingly got that advice right. Dear Elrond, today I have spent hours of my precious life arguing about Mining Group B leadership. I know if you were here you would have cooled all our tempers within moments, but since you are not, I have had to assume the role of peacemaker, and let me tell you, that is not something I enjoy! Most of the time I think about what you might say and try that, and do you know, it works more often than it doesn’t!
And then the final letter, which had arrived with Craban. Dear Elrond, Good luck getting this crow to leave you alone! I have trained him to be as stubborn as a Durin so you know he will never back down from his quest. For my part, I shall write to you as long as my life allows it, on my very deathbed I will write to you Elrond, because when I do it feels like you are here with me and this awful distance between us is gone. Here I can say all the things I want to say, although right now there is only one thing I do want to say and that is – write to me, write to me, write to me, you silent stupid wonderful elf!
Elrond read all the letters once, then went to get a cup of tea and wipe his tears, and then read them all over again, and then read them a third time, and when he looked up at the end of that reading, he realised the day had broken and Durin was about to leave, if he had not left already, and Elrond had not said goodbye to him, and suddenly that seemed so very, very wrong.
Elrond scrambled to his feet, knocking over his chair and waking a grumpy Craban in the process, uttered a swift apology to the crow and then ran out of the room, through the corridors of Lindon as fast as he could go. When he reached the entrance, he saw that the leaving contingent was there, that the Dwarven retinue was marching out of Lindon, and then all his senses flew to the winds.
“Wait!” he yelled, storming through the courtyard and practically knocking Gil-Galad over. “Wait, wait, Durin please wait, wait!”
And somehow, wonderfully, the retinue paused and then Durin elbowed his way to the back of them. “What in Aulë’s name is all this screaming about, you mad elf?” he demanded, but Elrond was too busy running over to him to answer, hurling himself to his knees and flinging his arms around Durin so hard that he bowled the Dwarf over and they both crashed to the ground like two stones, Durin’s crown flying off his head in the process.
“Elrond!” Durin spluttered, flat on his back as Elrond wrapped his arms around him and shoved his face into his neck. “You absolute lunatic – ”
“I’m sorry!” Elrond rambled into Durin’s beard. “I’m sorry, Durin, I read the letters, I should have responded, of course I don’t hate you, Durin, I love you, I love you so much – ” And then his voice was breaking and he was crying again, an odd mix of happy and sad tears, right in front of Durin’s entire retinue and half of Lindon. He waited for Durin to tell him to get off, but Durin didn’t. Instead he wrapped his arms around Elrond in return and they lay in a crumpled mess together, and after a while Durin started laughing, and then Elrond did too, and now they weren’t just an undignified huddle on the ground, but they were also an undignified and hysterical huddle. Eventually Durin managed to wrestle himself in a seated position, but Elrond was still clinging onto him like he would never let go, and the truth was he couldn’t persuade his arms to move, so he simply didn’t try.
“You’re absolutely mad,” Durin said, when he had recovered from laughing, and Elrond felt his fingers smooth down the back of his hair. “But I love you too, and I’m sorry too. And I won’t abandon you again.”
Elrond pulled his face out of Durin’s neck so he could look him in the face, and it was so lovely to be able to look Durin in those dark twinkly eyes of his without hating the fact that he liked him so much. “You can’t promise that,” he said.
“No,” Durin agreed. “I can’t. But it’s nice to pretend, eh?”
And somehow against the odds Elrond found himself smiling. “I’ll write you a letter,” he said. “Valar, Durin, I’ll write you an essay to make up for all the letters I missed, and send it with my crow.”
“My crow,” Durin retorted.
“Our crow,” Elrond countered and they both grinned at each other.
“All right,” said Durin. “But you’ll need to get off me first, and let me go. And find my crown, you absolute feral creature.”
So Elrond did, and they recovered Durin’s crown which had rolled under a bush, and Elrond crowned Durin with great ceremony, or at least it would have been if they weren’t grinning so much, and eventually Durin was righted and the Dwarves went on their way, Elrond standing by the entrance of Lindon to wave at Durin until he couldn’t see him anymore.
And somewhere behind him, amidst all the chaos, Gil-Galad turned to Galadriel and said, with great exasperation, “Thank the Valar for that.”