A/N: I wanted to write something from Legolas's perspective showing what he thought in the early stages of the Fellowship, considering that he was by far the eldest and most experienced (aside from Gandalf). This strange, slightly rambling one shot emerged. Enjoy.
Ponder
You don't sit down when it is your turn to take the watch. You stand, on the slender limb of a tree that you've scuttled up in an effort to make yourself feel at home. You don't know if the others would approve, but at this precise moment you don't particularly care. There are many things that they have done that would be thought downright idiotic back home. It has been with a growing sense of sadness that you have realised how young the mortals really are. You always knew it, objectively- but to see it in the flesh is disconcerting, to say the least. It drains just a little bit of the already depleted hope you hold in this war. Considering where you're from, that's saying a lot. Of course, you wouldn't freely admit that you've thought about the apparent hopelessness of the cause. To everyone else you appear just as you do always: carefree, joyful, with a clear head and a light heart. It's how you have got by all these years that you've spent being brought up in a place stained with darkness- from the gnarled trees like widow's fingers to the fog that hangs like a veil, thick over the nights, shrouding any number of dark creatures even from your sight. Eru, the blackness has bled even into the name of your once glorious home- Mirkwood they call it in the common tongue, so that the very mention of it speaks of malice, of hostility. Eryn Galen you have always known it as, the Greenwood, and it still is in parts. But they are only small safe havens, islands in a vast ocean of evil, encroaching seas gradually consuming even them. The darkness is relentless back there, beating upon your defences like waves upon rocks. It may take hundreds of years to see it, but the rock will be hollowed out eventually. Mirkwood will fall eventually. No matter how strong the rock, the elves you know and love, nothing can withstand a constant onslaught forever.
You were born and raised there. Your family, your friends are there. You've heard it said that hobbits live lives isolated from the rest of the world, but you know that your culture is probably just as secluded. You'll concede that Mirkwood trades with Dale and the recovering town of Esgaroth- sometimes even with the dwarves, though relations there are somewhat curt. Mostly, though, you and your kinsmen don't travel. You don't leave the vast masses of the wood. You hear tales of places that exist elsewhere but they feel as real and as physical as Beleriand does, and that was destroyed eons ago. It's one of the reasons that you decided to come on this trip. One of the reasons Lord Elrond would have chosen you. There are many perks to being a Mirkwood elf in troubling times. For one: you're certainly used to them.
For two: (well, mainly due to the first one, you think) there is a sort of grudging respect for you. But also wariness. Definitely wariness. Delegations from Eryn Galen to Imladris are few and far between. When they do come, the elves of Rivendell tread lightly around your kinsmen, as though they are afraid you might break. You know this now from experience- this was your second journey there, although you weren't the head of the party on the first occasion- and you've also heard tales told back at home. It's like- well, years of war has made you more practical than your western friends, who play heroes and wise men and make big battle decisions that save no lives. You know the reality of conflict. You have known it since you were very, very young. They know that you know it.
For them, your laughter is too loud, your jests too jolly. You take insult too easily and are too quick to defend yourself. War has made you like this, they say quietly, though they do not let you hear it. And they are right. Really. Their only error is in thinking themselves above it.
But in the end, you were chosen for this task. You did not think it a great honour, as you know some might have. It is merely a necessity, a means to a purpose. True, there are others Lord Elrond could have chosen- capable warriors, with skills that probably far surpass your own in swordplay. But they carry names too recognisable and leadership too strong. The time of the elves is over, they say, let men determine our future now. Your job is not to prove the race of the Eldar to the enemy, but rather to blend seamlessly into the background. Help the ring bearer quietly. Do not become weighed down by pride. That is why they chose someone like you. Silently talented. Not that you think of yourself as such.
You wonder now at the wisdom of such a choice. You may be suited to the task but certainly not to your companions. Aragorn you know well enough, Aragorn you like, Aragorn was raised among elves and so knows your ways. You have not formed an opinion of Mithrandir yet, in the two days you've been walking. He is a comforting presence, and the perfect leader for a quest such as this. He is not yet a friend, but you trust him.
It is the others that trouble you. Not them individually, but the differences between their ways and yours are as stark as black upon white. They have limitations in ways that you do not. Never have you thought yourself superior to another before, despite your birth (it simply isn't done that way back home) but you find yourself just a bit condescending when it comes to the mortals you travel with. Not openly, of course, but more and more you catch yourself thinking something, pitying them in a way that you would take insult at had it been directed at you.
You are the only elf here. It's disconcerting, to say the least. Considering that until Elrond's council you had not been in a room whose occupants were not made up mostly of elves. And here you are, on the road to damnation with naught but mortals for companions. And it's strange. You, aside from Mithrandir, are the only immortal here- even if the ring is destroyed and Arda saved your companions will all be dead within 100 or so years. Perhaps more in the case of the dwarf, you've heard they live a bit longer. To you, they are but children, with such a short, short life, a match lit only to be extinguished immediately after. You suppose they must burn all the brighter for their limited time, but it still hard to fathom for one as old as you. They must feel as though their time is running out- yes, that must be why they are always rushing, never just stopping and appreciating the world. They are caught up in the current of life; you are the rocks on the riverbed, calmly watching the centuries tick by.
You have come to realise, with a sense of growing horror, that the war you fight is a children's crusade. There are some who would compare it with the great battles of the First Age- and yet they were fought by elves, by beings who had already spent centuries upon the earth. The youngest among you now is merely twenty-eight. Twenty eight! You were just a babe then, and here he is on the road to a wasteland which he has little hope of surviving. You were just learning to appreciate the world, and here he is bound to a journey that will surely bring him nothing but despair. It is the same for all of them. Rarely do you lose hope- but to look upon such youth and innocence and know how prematurely it will be taken away is hard. You feel an irrational urge to protect them all, to shelter them, and yet you know that none of them would choose that option over the harsh truth. You certainly wouldn't. It's why you make up the unlikely companionship that is, incidentally, off to save the world.
A movement, slight, barely perceptible even to immortal ears, snaps you out of your reverie. It was off to your left- but it did not sound threatened, and yes, when you glance down through the thin lattice the branches weave you see only one of the hobbits stirring. Happy, his name is. Or something like it. You speak the common tongue flawlessly, your father taught you from a young age so you could understand the conversations going on in the court if Men happened to attend. Though you've never really struggled with it- although it is such a strange language, guttural and slow, nothing like your birth languages- the one thing that perplexes you is the names. They're not even names for things- except the hobbit you've just mentioned, and that's just a nickname. They actually make up entirely new words for their children, nonsensical words, meaningless arrangements of letters that give no hint to a person's character. Like Aragorn, for instance, his real name is just a jumble of his fathers, with a different syllable tacked on the end. How could anyone be sure if their child would turn out to be a thing like their parent? Why not call the babe a more logical name, like Estel, to signal his birthright, if that is your aim? And the other one- Boromir, you think, does his name mean anything at all? You hear he is the son of Gondor's steward, but you can never really keep track of mortal rulers, they die like flies. You don't recall hearing a name like that. Or maybe he's named for someone. That's something else you've discovered that mortals do. Name people after others. It sounds faintly ridiculous to you that there should ever be a second Aragorn, or Boromir, or Eru, a second Legolas. Names, once given, belong to one person, and one person only. No wonder mortals have so much trouble remembering their own history.
You glance up at the night sky, at the history of your own people. Elbereth's dome is dotted with stars like scattered diamonds tonight, the sliver of visible moon like a circlet upon its ebony brow. They shine all the brighter for the lack of light on the ground. Here and there a shard of moonlight will throw a sleeping face into sharp relief, slipping through the branches that sway gently, with the hint of a breeze. It is a calm night, and it is beautiful. There is no need to set a watch, for you cannot feel any evil at least in this part of the forest.
And yet you stay anyway. You stay to watch the trees dance and the night breathe. To hear the quiet signs of life in the trees, insects humming softly, like little tunes to themselves. To hear the sighs of the sleeping children beneath you, and to know in part that they rest undisturbed because of you.
You may not stay with this Fellowship forever. You may not form the bonds with them that you have with your kindred back home in such short a time. But you will stay tonight. You will stay at least until the mountain passes, as you told Elrond.
If nothing else, you will stay to shield them from the inevitable end of this journey just a little longer.
A/N part II: This is my first story on here. Also, it's unbeta'd. So if you review I'll officially love you forever.
Go on. You know you want to.