Disclaimer: I own nothing recognisable.

The Elves of the Greenwood are not like the Elves of Imladris, or Mithlond, or Lothlorien. They do not leave Arda, unless by death in battle. They do not waste lives when there is a choice to not fight. They do not give up on their own. Legolas and his cousin are no exceptions.

Prologue: The Cave

Legolas opened his eyes, but there was no difference but for intense, burning, grating pain. Clenching his eyes closed again, he felt blindly about him. Dust filled the air, but of more immediate concern to Legolas was the rocks; for the passageway he had been exploring but a minute earlier, was now reduced to rubble. The lanterns had gone out. He rose from his protective crouch, dashed his head against a rock, and flinched back, this time feeling the way with his hands before getting back to his feet. The air felt thick, and he felt something slowly trickling down his forehead. He attempted to open his eyes, and this time it hurt less, but there was still no light to see by.

There was a sound, though. To his right, and a little in front, he could hear quiet sobbing. "Aldanna?" he called, for his cousin had been in front of him when the ceiling started to rumble.

The sobbing was cut off with a quick breath, and his cousin's voice answered, though it was unusually weak. "Legolas?"

He sighed with relief. She was awake, that was something. But they hadn't been alone in the caves, he remembered. His bodyguard and best friend had come with them. "Tathar?" he called, waiting with baited breath for an answer. None came.

Legolas was starting to panic. They had no light, the air was so full of dust that his lungs were already straining, and heavy rocks surrounded them, in every direction he reached.

With a sinking feeling, Legolas realised that Tathar might have been crushed.

He was hyperventilating. A voice came out of the darkness before him. "Legolas. You have to calm down. In, two three, out, two, three, can you do that for me? Breathe with me. In, two three, out, two, three," as the familiar voice counted aloud, Legolas calmed down, breathing slowly and deeply. After a time, he had control of his breathing, and achieved a calm, clear head.

"I'm alright," Legolas called back, once he was able to think clearly. "I think I was just in shock. Are you alright?"

"No," Aldanna replied, tight lipped. The strain on her voice made it clear to Legolas, now that he was thinking normally, that she was in an immense amount of pain. "Can you move?" she asked, and Legolas attempted to feel the rocks and boulders surrounding him.

"I can stand," he replied, "but the passage is completely blocked behind me."

"Alright," she forced through her pain, "are you injured?"

"No," he answered. "Most of the rocks fell behind or in front of me." He gingerly stepped towards her voice, and came up short when his head made contact with a great, strong root. A sharp burst of pain reminded him of the fresh wound on his forehead. "There is a root here, the rocks must have fallen either side of it."

"Or it got so excited that the bloody tree moved," Aldanna muttered through gritted teeth. She must have been in a lot of pain, because she was not in the habit of using sarcasm, and usually trees were her favourite thing in the world.

"I think I can move these rocks, make us a way out," Legolas called, feeling the rock wall behind him. Many of the rocks here were relatively small, and he could lift them without difficulty. "I might be able to free Tathar." They heard a clatter as Legolas shifted one of the rocks, causing a small slide of pebbles.

"Maybe. But he's unconscious or dead, and I'm afraid I need your help, right now." The voice which floated out of the darkness nearly stopped Legolas' heart.

"What do you mean?" he asked cautiously, turning back around. He cracked his eyes open, but the absolute blackness meant he saw nothing. The dust had settled a bit, and so his eyes did not grate or burn, fortunately.

"There is a rock on my leg. My thigh is bleeding, a lot. You need to lift it off me, and then tie your cloak around my thigh to stop the bleeding before I lose too much blood."

Legolas gulped. "Keep talking," he ordered, and he followed her voice, as she described her condition. With every word, Legolas' heart sank further. She had a large rock on her thigh, and she was seriously concerned that the bone was crushed. That same leg's ankle was bent inwards, and she could not free it from between rocks. The other foot she could not feel at all, and she wasn't even sure that she still had a foot, for she felt only the sharp edge of a broken rock on her shin, other than blinding pain. A rock had painfully hit her back during the fall, and she was unsure if it had settled on top of her, for she could sense little other than pain. Smaller rocks would leave bruises all over her body, and she felt something sticky on her forehead, which could only be blood. She had fallen forwards, and attempted to catch her weight with her arms, which she thought might be broken.

When he reached her, he knelt beside her in the darkness.

"We will make it out of here alive, Aldanna. I promise."

"Then take this rock off me before I bleed out!" she screeched shrilly, before biting the sound off sharply. "I'm sorry. I need you to put a tourniquet on my leg. Now."

Legolas knelt in the cramped space, fitting himself in between two large rocks. Luckily, neither of them had landed on her. He reached forward, to find that she had indeed been knocked forwards by the rocks, and was lying prone. "Don't move," he instructed as he ran his hands from her shoulder, down her back to find the rock. "Is this the one?" he asked, slightly lifting the rock from her leg.

Aldanna shrieked, the sound echoing eerily through the tunnel. "Yes," she managed to say, squeezing the words out of gritted teeth. "I am going to faint when you remove it," she warned him. "You will have to put pressure on it. Use your cloak to make a tourniquet." He took the cloak off quickly, hoping that she actually knew what she was talking about. Her father was a healer, and his mother was, too, but neither of them had any formal training themselves, though they had watched their parents any number of times.

"I will. Ready?" he asked, and she took a deep breath.

"Ready," she confirmed.

Legolas lifted the rock away in one great heave, putting it on the rock-dusted floor in a space between two boulders. Ignoring Aldanna's screaming, he threaded the cloak under the wound, and over, and under it again, tightening it with a great pull before tying it closed. Breathing hard, he reached forward to check on his cousin once more. She was unresponsive to touch and voice; and Legolas took the opportunity to palpate her arms for fractures. Luckily, neither arm had any large breaks, but he wondered if perhaps a smaller fracture would be found when they got out of here.

He refused to believe that they were going to die here.

Legolas was now the only one of the three trapped who was conscious. He stood, picked his way back to the root, and placed his hand on it, speaking directly to the tree with his fëa.

The tree was very distressed, something Legolas had never seen before in a plant. He had seen a few trees, immediately surrounding Dol Guldor, which had black hearts and were wholly evil, but this tree was something else entirely.

It felt guilty.

Aldanna's scathing comment about the tree getting excited wasn't far off the mark. It seemed that the tree had felt the approach of the Elves, and had stretched a root closer in order to greet them.

The movement, though, had loosened the rock in which the tree clung to the mountainside.

Legolas asked the tree to deliver a message for him, to which the tree immediately agreed. "Three Elves are in a cave-in in the mountains. Legolas is uninjured and alert. Aldanna is bleeding out. Tathar is missing, presumed dead. Rocks completely block the passage out. Send help!"

The tree passed the message along the vast network of roots which underlay the Greenwood. Legolas allowed himself a moment to relax, for help would come.

Shaking himself back to alertness, Legolas approached the mountain of rocks which blocked the entrance, and presumably crushed Tathar.

It was slow going, and soon Legolas' hands were coated with dirt and dried dust, but he finally managed to move many of the surface rocks into the space under the root. Legolas was nearly blinded when a chink of light entered through a space as he cleared a rock near the top of the pile. Light! They were quite deep in the caves, but a single lantern glowed just beyond the rockfall. Tathar must have dropped it when the rocks fell.

Legolas continued moving rocks, slowly making a dent in the wall. His hand fell upon something soft, and with a shout of joy, he realised that he had found Tathar. He cleared the small rocks first, and found his friend's hand. A moment later, he'd cleared a few more rocks, allowing him to check Tathar's pulse.

Legolas couldn't quite believe his luck when he found the pulse, strong and regular.

He kept moving rocks, but now he was concentrating on getting Tathar unburied. He realisedhe other ellon must be enclosed in a pocket of air, which meant he could breathe, though the air was as dusty here as it was where Legolas had fallen. The light from the lantern was useless, merely casting a small ray of light far above Legolas' head, illuminating the jagged edges of the rocks above, which still threatened to fall again.

Legolas pulled a larger rock from pinning Tathar's shoulder, and suddenly there was a space, and Legolas gingerly reached in, following his friend's arm to his shoulder and then lightly tracing his face. His eyes were closed, and there was a raised bump forming already on his head, but he was breathing. He was unconscious, but alive.

Legolas worked to free the other ellon with a single-minded determination. His promise to Aldanna rang through his ears. We will make it out of here alive.

Some of the rocks Legolas lifted were large, others small, and in the dark he occasionally struggled to find a place to put them that would not block the way to Aldanna. With a gentle sputter, contrasting strongly with the scraping of the rocks and the wheeze of Legolas' laboured breathing, the lantern went out.

The utter darkness returned, with the loss of that tiny glow on the uneven ceiling. Though Legolas could see no less of his task than he had before, the darkness now weighed on him, for he could no longer look up and see the threatening rocks above – they became silent and invisible threats, hanging over his head. Occasionally rocks fell, knocked loose by Legolas' attempts to dig his friend out. One fell, bouncing off his shoulder, and Legolas gritted his teeth, determind to finish digging his friend out, while a shower of smaller rocks and dirt fell upon him. Suddenly, as he liften a large rock off Tathar's chest, a rock directly above his head became unstable, and dashed against his head.

He did not even have time to realise that they were all going to die, trapped in this dark tomb, before he lost all consciousness.