milliways_bar | (no subject)

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"Go. Go! Take this journal and write down everything you can remember. It will help, I promise you."

"Princess--"

"Do not argue. Find somewhere quiet, where you won't be bothered."

"The kids aren't a bother."

"They are also not quiet."

* * * * * * *

It's been a long time since he's been here, enough that if pressed he couldn't actually say how long. He hadn't exactly meant to come, either, but he'd been thinking about finding somewhere out of the way when he walked out of Shuri's lab, and there's no question that Milliways fits that description better than anywhere else.

About ten minutes later, Bucky Barnes is settled in at one of the quieter booths in the back, the journal open in front of him. (A close observer might notice that each page is subtly embossed with the logo of the Wakandan Design Group.)

He's holding a pen in his right hand and tapping it against the blank page. From time to time he sets down the pen and picks up the cup of coffee waiting beside him instead. A swallow or two later, he repeats the process, swapping cup for pen.

His left hand is immaterial to the whole process, as it's entirely absent. A series of gauze bandages are barely visible under the collar of his shirt, and his left sleeve is neatly pinned shut over where his arm used to be.

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"Uh, likewise."

He swaps pen for coffee and takes a sip.

"It sure has. I couldn't even tell you how long."

For all that he's missing an arm, for all that he looks exhausted, he seems more at peace than he has in the past.

"And here it is always hard to tell," Elrond agrees. "For all that I come here frequently, time moves in leaps and bounds on this side of the door."

He takes a sip of his tea.

"You're being well taken care of?"
The bandages seen to indicate so and the look on the Man's eyes does too. Even more so perhaps

"Just one more weird thing about this place."

He swaps coffee for the pen once more and rolls it back and forth between his fingers.

"I am. More than I deserve to be, I figure, but they're trying to convince me otherwise."

"Without knowing them, I am inclined to agree. On principle," Elrond replies with a small smile.

He blows lightly on the tea to cool it. The scents are reminiscent of a woodland glade, florals mixing with pine.

"Mind if I ask why?"

Elrond looks at the rising steam from his mug.

"As a child, I was held captive by two brothers, who are generally considered among my people to be cruel and evil in every way. And they did do much that was cruel and evil and wrong. They did rob my brother and I if a childhood and my parents made the choices that took them away from up lately because of the actions of these two."

There's a pause.

"But in time, we knew them in another way. The older was broken and hard and unused to kindness. His younger brother tried to be kind to us. In a way I think he also did it to convince himself that he still had kindness within him."

He looks at James.

"Very few beings are wholly one way or another."

He listens in attentive silence to Elrond's explanation, then nods.

"What happened to the brothers? In the end?"

"They won. They retrieved the jewels they had sworn to retrieve. And then they lost. For the jewels scorched their hands. Maedhros, the elder brother, threw himself in a fiery chasm. Maglor left everything behind and disappeared."

He has told of this.manh times before. But there is still pain there. For all of the losses.

"They saw there has never been any meaning to what they did, just the madness their father had enveloped them in. And so they lost themselves."

Not much of a victory, he thinks, taking in Elrond's reaction as he tells the tale. For anyone.

Bucky shakes his head, and swaps the pen for his coffee again.

Elrond sips his tea,quietly.
Then he asks, "Were you offered the pen and paper along with the bandages?"

He might have done the same.

"With the... ah," he says, realizing that the gauze is visible at his neck.

"Not exactly. They're still trying to figure out the best way to cover my shoulder, and this is the latest. The journal was handed to me just before I got here."

He sounds resigned to it, if not entirely accepting.

"Well, it pleases me that healers use the same methods across the worlds," Elrond says.
"Should you ever meet Glorfindel, my seneschal here, he will gladly tell you of his suffering at my hands."

"Oh?"

He raises his eyebrows.

"So the journal thing is ... a method?"

It figures. Shuri's sweet, utterly determined, and terrifyingly brilliant.

"It can be. I have used it in that way, certainly."

He smiles.

"It can help with - perspective."

"Perspective."

He huffs out a breath that could be a sigh or a laugh or something in between, and glances down at the empty page.

"Right."

"Some things cannot be rushed," Elrond says, quietly.

"Not even if we want them to."

Much less when we don't. He doesn't say that.

"It's more like I don't know where to begin," he admits, frankly.

Only that's not quite right, is it?

"... I mean how. How to begin."

Elrond nods.

"That first sentence," he says, agreeing. "I spoke at length about just that with an old friend. He wanted to write down his adventures but in the end he decided that the best place to start was with who he was. What deep inside was still true of him, adventures or not."

This time the breath that wisps out of him is anything but amused.

"Yeah, well... for me, that's the hard part."

Elrond nods.

"Is that a place to start?"

He should not offer advice, but he finds it difficult not to - offer something.

"Is it helpful if I tell of not knowing where to start due to - not knowing -"

He pauses.

"Due to having lost my purpose."

"Maybe," he admits.

"I don't remember how much I've told you before." He sets everything down and lays his hand flat against the page, then looks up at Elrond.

"Lost your purpose?"

Elrond nods a little. "You have told me some. That who you were was taken from you. And I know, I can see, that you have known much pain. Much suffering. What I can share, is not the same. Only insofar that it left me with no words to begin with."

He nods down at the journal.

"I have been many things over the years," he tells him. "But for a long while, the answer to who are you would have been not the King's Herald, not the Lord of Imladris, but the one who loves Celebrian. I knew that I would always protect her. That she would never know sorrow."

His smile is small and sorrowful. "What a fool was I. The roads were dangerous. She had travelled to visit her parents as she had often done and her party was waylaid. The orcs that had taken her - hurt her."

He doesn't elaborate.

"I did not keep her safe from harm. I did not save her. And when we returned home, I watched her wither away, all my healing draughts for naught. And if I could not keep her safe, and if I could not make her whole, how could I claim to love her? If she could not bear my touch? And I remember how I felt, when I saw her board the ship that would take her away, saw her walk aboard without looking back. And I remember sitting down later in front of an empty page and all I could write was 'I do not know how to begin. Once I knew my purpose. But I failed and now all words are senseless markings. And I do not know what to do.'"

He doesn't need elaboration. It's all too clear. His eyes darken as he listens in silence.

"I'm going to guess," he says, finally, "that you... found something to do. In time."

"I'm sorry about your -- about Celebrian."

He nods.

"I had duties. I still do. And so I have filled my life with those. It is not a bad thing. And thank you."

"Did the writing help?"