Thranduil was with his son, his eldest, who was being, as his father said, needlessly stubborn.

"They're running low," his son said. "Others need it more. Just because I'm a prince doesn't mean I'm entitled before anyone else."

They were running low on anti-venom. The healers were reserving it for those who were most at risk; those with multiple stings or bites, or those elves who were frailer. Like the children. Children the same size as his youngest son who never should have been in danger. How their king had failed them.

"They do not offer it because you are a prince. You were stung three separate times."

"I am fine, father. I will live. Let them save it for a more dire case."

Yes, he would live. But he would have a rough time of it. Spider venom was not kind, and riding it out would mean pain, for hours, and fever, and in extreme cases it could lead to permanent damage to vital organs. That was unlikely in this case; his son had a high dose of venom but he was strong and healthy and he'd been bitten in the past, giving him some level of immunity.

As his king, Thranduil admired his self-sacrifice and bravery. As his father, he wept to see his son in pain. Internally, of course. He would not lessen his son's gift by making him feel guilty for it.

At least it was only one son who now lay infirm in a bed. He had a private room, one concession to his rank that the prince couldn't contest, not least because he was unconscious when they brought him in. His brother sat sleeping in a chair in an uncomfortable position that would likely leave him with a sore neck later, but he was exhausted and neither his brother nor his father moved to wake him. He had been the one to bear his wounded brother to the chamber and he had gone back out to help more wounded, for hours, before he'd been dismissed and allowed to see his elder brother again.

The king had duties as well that drew him away. He had to see the battle to the end, the horrible, misjudged battle that had been a mistake from beginning to end.

Thranduil was a good father who cared for his family. And his family was his children, but it was also his people and anyone under his care as king, which was the silvan elves but also the trees and the animals and it was the forest itself. The forest screamed for aid as it was beset by shadows, and its king responded. He sent his healers to cure the sickness, which in this case meant warriors to battle the darkness. And all who he sent to fight for him were his kin, but some few were actually his, the children of his wife, and almost, almost he was glad that their mother was not there to watch her sons go forth into battle.

The spiders needed to be destroyed, or at least driven from his forest, from his family. They needed to be destroyed, but he made so many mistakes, too many, and he should have known better. He should have sensed the true depth of the nest they sought to destroy. He should have recognized the evil and unnatural intelligence in the spiders' actions. He should have known there would be tunnels. He should have known.

They won the battle, but the cost was high, much higher than he had anticipated, higher than any battle had cost them for a yeni, for a millennia. Twenty-eight dead so far. Such a tiny number to have such a devastating impact upon his kingdom. Twenty-eight immortal beings cut short. And only seven from among the fighting warriors. He had thought he'd been careful, that they'd planned well, that the healers, the children he had allowed to pretend to be warriors while hiding back behind the lines, the wounded…they would be safe while the seasoned warriors destroyed the nest. The nest was supposed to be small, manageable, and the spiders stupid and quick to die.

Seven warriors died while bravely bringing down the dark menace of their forest. Eleven more died when they were meant to be safe, when the tunnel opened up and the spiders poured out where they weren't meant to be and leapt upon the wounded and unarmed. The spiders still didn't have it as easy as they might have wanted. Even wounded warriors can still fight, and apprentice warriors, children, had training if not experience, and healers are always ready to protect their charges with their lives. Eight healers did just that. And two children.

Twenty eight dead. So far. And over a hundred wounded. They were running out of anti-venom, and out of just about every healing supply held in store, and bandages.

Thranduil still didn't know where Legolas had gotten to. He knew he was not among the dead. Even if, somehow, no one had thought to tell the king that his own son had died, Thranduil himself had seen to the dead and his son was not there. Two children were, barely in their thirties, their smaller, weaker bodies unable to combat off the venom that an older elf might have survived.

How proud Legolas was to be an apprentice warrior, to be allowed to be a part of the attack on the spiders. His brothers had laughed, not cruelly but in the way adults tended to laugh at children who fancied themselves grown. Thranduil had not laughed. He could see the man in the child and it filled him with a horrible mixture of pride and dread.

This was his wife's child; the child who was only still with him because his mother protected him with her life. He was his wife's final gift, and his childish games and glee was the one bright song that still existed in his father's heart now that his wife was gone.

His sons were in pain, he knew that; all three of them were hurting and the youngest perhaps the most. Knowing that his children were in pain and not being able to cure it was almost more painful than the tear to his own soul with his wife's passing. And now his little green leaf, his small child who sang silly songs to birds and loved to climb and delighted in the stars and in snow and in every part of the earth as though each and everything were new and strange and wonderful…he had grown silent and songless and now he searched to no longer be a child at all and he would fight monsters.

It was painful to see the child struggle to be a man, and to know he was intent on throwing himself into danger. It was painful to feel as if he was letting his son down somehow, and not being able to help it. The boy's mother was dead, and his family could still see her in her son's eyes, hear her in her son's songs, and it hurt, and the boy seemed to know it hurt, and they couldn't stop from hurting each other. Why wouldn't the boy seek out danger, if he thought he caused everyone hurt?

Danger, it seemed, had found his son. Again. He knew he wasn't wounded, because he hadn't seen him being tended in the healing ward (and he had looked, every time he saw a small form in a bed he paused, and it was never him, but he couldn't help but look) and anyway, if his son were wounded (if he were dead) someone would have come and informed him. But his son wasn't there. Which meant he was likely injured in a different way, in his heart from seeing all the death and destruction around him. Again.

He was likely in a tree, in his favorite tree, high above the world. And now that the king finally had time to himself, time to be a father and not a king, and he had seen his wounded son and he had seen his other son, heart wounded and exhausted but uninjured, now he could seek out his little leaf and bring him in. Still, he hesitated. If ever there was a time he missed having a partner, it was times like this, for if he could he would split himself in two so that all his children could be seen to at once.

His son, in pain and fevered and half asleep, somehow noticed his father looking at the door and knew what he thought.

"Go," he whispered. "I have El to keep me company."

Thranduil opened the door.

And found his youngest son sprawled upon the ground, his torso wrapped in bloody bandages and his body shaking and spasming in a sort of fit while three different healers surrounded him, calling for anti-venom and bandages and the king.

It would be days later that the king would understand exactly how this had happened; how his son could be so horribly injured and then left alone for hours and hours. It happened by accident, of course, and that was almost worse, because there was no one for the king to rail against or blame.

He should have been told his son was injured. No one wants to tell a father their young son was gravely hurt, though, and those who knew put it on each other, and the elf who had carried his son into the stronghold, refusing to put him down or relinquish him to any other until he'd laid him on his bed, had been badly injured himself. Once he'd left the prince to the care of a healer, he allowed himself to be taken to a free bed and had passed out.

The healer had dressed the prince's wounds, then gone out for a second dose of the anti-venom. The entire healing ward was in chaos. They had stuck everyone in the large wards, because most all cases were dire and it was easier to see to everyone together than have some tucked away in quieter rooms. In the chaos, the healer managed to get injured himself. He was already exuasted from being afield and tending to patients for hours, and he slipped on someone's blood and managed to sprain his arm and knock his head.

The other healers set him up in a corner with a glass of wine, because there were no painkillers to spare, and the healer had asked after the prince, had asked if anyone was seeing to him, had demanded that they see to him in his private room.

By unfortunate timing, the elder prince had just been brought in. Everyone was exhausted, the ward was in chaos, and no one thought he could mean the younger prince. The healer was assured the prince was seen to (no one dared admit the prince had refused the anti-venom, the healer was already worked up and he clearly needed some rest and healing himself).

If the elder prince had been taken, by chance, into the same room as the younger, the mistake would have been swiftly rectified. By equal chance, he was taken into the room next door. All such rooms were magically sound proofed. No one heard the young prince moaning, or sobbing, or screaming. No one knew he was there.

All they knew was that suddenly their young prince was fitting on the floor, his small body overcome by spider venom and blood loss. He was not even thirty years old yet, one of the youngest of the apprentice warriors, his body too small, too young. Children were more apt to die of the venom then the older warriors, hadn't the two children already lying dead proven that? And they were older than Legolas, larger.

He was so small in the king's arms when he grabbed his son and held him. He held him with all his strength, just as he had those few years before, when he held him after his mother left them behind. Thranduil held his son as though in holding him he could anchor him to the world, but that isn't how life works.

The call for anti-venom went all up and down the wards, and the answer that came back from all corners was the same: we're out.

Thranduil would kick himself later for not saying it immediately, but the shock of finding his baby child half dead on the floor had almost overcome his senses and he barely understood that there were healers around them let alone what the healers were shouting for. In fact, he might not have understood at all, if the door to his elder's room hadn't been left ajar and his eldest understood and acted.

"Here, anti-venom is here," he rasped from the doorway. He shouldn't have been out of bed himself, but Thranduil wasn't about to scold him, not this time, not when he held salvation in his hands for the child dying in his father's arms.

A second bed was brought into the room so they could move from the hallway. Thranduil carried his child to it, only reluctantly allowing him to be pulled from his arms. The child's brothers joined him at the bedside, his second son awakened by the commotion, and now he helped to prop up his elder brother who could only be convinced to sit upon his own bed rather than lying down again. Thranduil might have insisted he do as the healers said, except all his attention centered upon the activity around Legolas.

He'd be told later, about how brave his little son truly was. How he saved a grown warriors life. How he saved his own life, fighting to the end.

Thranduil would rather have a coward for a son, than a dead hero, but he never said that out loud, and certainly never suggested he was less than completely proud of the young warrior his child was becoming. And he was proud. But he needed his son to live.

He needed his son to live. His family was already fractured, and if they lost their youngest…if they lost the child that his mother had died so as to return him to them, if they lost her final gift to them…they were all lost.

The healers rebandaged the wounds, and they were horrible and hideous wounds that did not belong on a child, and after they had applied what little medicine remained, and cleaned him, then they allowed the king to take his son into his arms again and he held him and while they chanted healing words over him, he held him, and when he stopped breathing, he held him, and when he coughed and breathed anew, he held him, and then he sang.

It had been years since he'd sung. His wife had left, and his family had broken, and the darkness over the forest had spread, and there had been no songs left in him, but he sung now.

He sung, and he held his son, and his sons held him in turn.

Legolas breathed in. And out. His heart stuttered, but it beat, and continued to beat.

Time has little meaning in vigils such as this, and none could say how long it lasted. No one intruded, outside of a healer occasionally checking in on them or offering new medicine, to either injured prince. No one came to suggest they really needed their king in this moment, for there was not an elf among them who didn't believe their king to be exactly where he was needed most.

A long time passed. That is all that Thranduil knew. Perhaps hours. Perhaps a yeni. A long time, while his son lay dying in his arms, but somehow still wasn't dead.

And after that long time, Legolas opened his eyes. He was still in pain. His body ached deeply, and his shoulder and hip throbbed. He wasn't cold though. And he wasn't alone.

"Nana came for me," he said, his voice week but clear. "I waited and waited, and she came for me. Like she promised. But she sent me back. Are you…are you glad?"

"So glad," Thranduil whispered in return. "More than you can possibly know."

It was not a quick recovery, and nor was it painless, but Legolas had is father to hold him when everything hurt, and he had his brothers to tell him stories, and they sang to him. Legolas mended and, it seemed to him, that his family mended a little bit too.

He wasn't waiting anymore. He'd found what he'd been searching for, and it was all around him and it was endless and it was strong.