The Lord was certain he’d underestimated something; ferocious and fierce, feral and fractious, sinking and simmering past the pelt, hide, and hair of Thranduil, seething and scathing until he seemed eager to leave. The beast betrayed his interest, his devilish, smoldering curiosity with a quirk of his brow, forgoing detachment for the greater need of intrigue and defiance. Thranduil was partial to ostentatious bouts, but lacquered in all his ruffian fury, the Reaper didn’t believe this was a canned performance (besides, Deimos would’ve been a poor audience member). Any and all revelations were attuned to the cold, hard silence, and the demon waited, as he often did, for an ax to fall, for a weight to shift, for a movement or assault, a siege or assailment that didn’t come. Thranduil, instead, nearly left, crackling and fuming, pervading the darkened forest with the stature of his restlessness, and the King had no urgency to follow, only granted a bestowal as the gilded Laurelin shifted back, forced to find whatever words, whatever memory, stirring him into action.
 
Following into his predacious, carnivorous pattern, the infidel listened. His ears twisted as Thranduil delved into the tale he’d wanted to hear, but never asked for again (because some moments were collected and stored for the wounded, the terrorized, the haunted). A protective, exasperated pull of his flesh and bone coiled and curled on instinct, on the retelling of Hotaru (he scoffed at the notion of her ever being helpless) and a monster from her past (and why hadn’t she come to find him, because surely the demon would have persecuted, annihilated, corrupted, and consigned whomever dared to touch one of his own to oblivion, to death, to those final, barbaric moments where all they’d remember was the sound of their last gurgling breaths?). The curiosity wove itself deeper and deeper as Thranduil continued, as he painted the images of tigers, of a morphing golden steed, pretending and setting up his pretenses, his acts, blood prices paid and dealt, furnished and finalized, no more traces left in the dust and sand. Then, he’d healed, and never returned – and the line made no sense to him, because there was no preventing the dual King from his former stature. A beast had been felled, a haunting poignancy had been conquered, the ripple in the current ceased. “Yet, you did not come back.” The Basin had excellent healers. He couldn’t fathom a worthy excuse.
 
Thereafter though, Thranduil dealt his own blow: a question spiraling into the abyss, locked and loaded, transfixing the bestial fiend’s features to stare back at the chasm of gold and leonine possessions. It spoke to him of sentiments that ran deeper than mere connections as ruler and leaders, proffering, bestowing, evidence of a weakness bubbling and brewing through the Laurelin’s dastardly shades and crooked cloaks. The other beast had handed him a weapon. He could have been cruel and vindictive, speaking at length of the last time he’d seen her, barrel rounded and filled with a child (Ashamin’s, he’d been led to believe). The power, the notion, was resting right there in front of him, dangling like a snare, and if he pulled it, tugged at it, he’d have the gaping, open wound Thranduil might have always deserved.
 
Perhaps he had changed in all those years of erosion and despair. Maybe he’d learned from cherishing and loving Huyana, then watching her slip away time and time again, incapable of following her to the ends of the earth. Or he truly didn’t believe Thranduil merited such a stinging laceration to his nefarious heart – if Hotaru wished him to know, it would come from her mouth, and not the Reaper’s. “She is well,” was all he said.