A/N: No flames please. I know that this goes completely against the books but that is why it is A/U. All characters from the actual LOTR are not mine and I take no claim to them, they are Tolkein's work and he has definitely earned all credit for them. The rest of the characters are mine though aaannnddd I am still debating whether or not to continue with this story so if you like this give me some love and review so I know whether or not to keep with it! Please and thank you!
Not Even Time...
Chapter 1
He sat at the bar, gazing off into space and zoning out with his eyes focused at a particularly boring patch on the white washed wall. It was his typical Saturday night, just him and the glasses of wine that Reinin kept coming from behind the counter. Was the wine good? Not exactly, but it was the closest he had come to Dorwinian wine in centuries.
He had become so focused on his thoughts and his little spot on the wall that he hadn't even noticed the fiery red head that had perched herself on the seat beside him and was playing every card she could think of to try and get his attention. She had just reached out a hand that she fully intended to place a little higher up on his thigh than propriety called for when a strong grasp locked onto her wrist and slowly pulled her hand back.
"Trust me...you don't wanna touch him when he's zoned out like that," the owner of the hand currently holding her wrist warned. "I think he may have PTSD or something like that cause he'll totally flip and lose his shit if ya do," he cautioned again before releasing her wrist and shaking her hand gently. "The name's Reinin," he said softly, his voice drawling ever so slightly with his southern twang, "now, how about you let me make you a drink on the house for your troubles, I reckon I might'a startled you a bit grabbin' you like that, I apologize. I'm just looking out for my friend here," he nearly sang the words as he gifted her with a dazzling smile.
"Your who?" she asked, lost in the hunter green of his eyes and the gentle slope of his cheekbones that peeked out from under his shaggy dark brown hair. An amused grin spread over his face as he nodded in the direction of the blonde guy with the braids she had been hitting on and her faced flushed, "Oh yeah, your friend. Th-the one with the PTSD, right, I almost forgot about him" she stammered out trying to regain the feline confidence and prowess that she usually possessed when trying to pick up guys at the local hot spots, but she kept getting lost in how impossibly smooth his pale skin looked, if she hadn't known better she might have even gone so far as to think he was made of glass.
Reinin knew he had her now. She was so caught up in checking him out that she had forgotten all about Legolas blowing her off for a wall, he thought to himself and tried not to chuckle at the sheer hilarity of the thought. He'd chosen to go for a southern accent and she was just drinking it up. Normally he would have let her continue her advances towards Legolas, she was attractive enough with her long fire engine red hair and blue eyes. It would have been fun to watch Legolas turn red and try to fend her off without causing a scene, but even Reinen knew better than to let anyone touch him when he was zoning. That always spelled disaster for everyone involved...especially Reinen. And tonight he didn't feel like putting his bar or his ass on the line so he'd stopped her.
All too easy, he thought with a sly grin as the girl, Bridgette...or maybe it was Briane, walked back to the dance floor leaving her number behind on the napkin under her now empty glass. Legolas sure as hell owed him for this one, she was a feisty one. One who would likely actually expect him to call and Reinin couldn't help but smirk at the thought. The poor girl had actually thought he had taken an interest in her. No sir. While Reinin had enjoyed her company while Legolas was out of commission, she had been a distraction and nothing more. A sexy distraction in her short dress and knee high boots, but purely a distraction none the less.
Reinin turned his attention back towards Legolas in the hopes that maybe he had snapped out of it and come to, but he frowned when he saw that tonight was going to be one of those nights. Chances are Legolas would be staring at the wall until closing time. Now he almost wished he had at least tried to take Bridgette/Briane seriously. He let out a deep sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his lungs as he topped off the half empty wine glass that sat before his friend. With any luck he might come to with no problems, Reinin thought to himself. "No broken glasses would be nice," he muttered under his breath as he walked the length of the bar to take the order of a young man and his friends, already plastered, who seemed to be out celebrating his twenty first birthday. "If only I could be so lucky".
Life as an Eliel was not easy. As a pure blooded elf Legolas had seen it all. The rise and fall of kingdoms, of civilizations. The disappearance and creation of races. Life, death, anger, pain, sadness and most of all loneliness. He had felt the effects of them all. The one thing he had seen throughout the centuries, but had never managed to find for himself despite how desperately he craved it, was love. The one thing he wanted above all else...but would never come to him. Legolas tried to force his mind away from the pitiful thoughts of that which he had come to believe to be nothing more than a hoax, a sham.
He didn't mind getting lost in his thoughts, in fact, he rather enjoyed it most of the time. It was much better than dealing with all of the women who tried to get his attention here at the bar. Legolas was interested in love. Someone to bind himself to and spend the rest of their days together. He was sick of an eternity alone, he wanted someone to love and to call his own, even if it meant he would eventually fade and die with their passing. He didn't care if he only got to spend a day with her, he just wanted to meet her. No matter what Reinin said, no matter how much he teased him for "sounding like a chick", he wanted real love—and he highly doubted he was going to find it in a bar. Bars were where people came to get wasted and find a hook up, so the girls who hung around here weren't even worth his time. If they were hanging around bars they weren't interested in love, so he had no interest in them either. But it still amused Reinin to watch him get flustered by their attempted advances on him and so, for Reinin's enjoyment, Legolas continued to come around and keep him company.
After all, he couldn't very well abandon his best friend for the sake of avoiding his own embarrassment. Well, he could... and really he probably should, but then what kind of friend would he be? Plus, how would Reinin and he ever find such outlandish stories? So he continued to frequent the Old Oak, making regular appearances to the pleasure of not only Reinin, but all of the females present.
He turned his thoughts once more to that single thread of hope he held for love. The thread he felt ready to snap any moment and leave him hopeless all together. He should have sailed to the Undying Lands long ago, but he had remained. Waiting for the Valar to bring about that which they had in store for him. Obviously the Valar still had something planned, if not he would have aged some by now. Instead he looked the same as he had when the War of the Ring had taken place all those centuries ago. Back when Middle Earth was still a place, not just words on a page in what was considered a tale of fiction.
With that Legolas felt his thoughts shifting once more, like the sands of time themselves. These were the thoughts he hated above all else and he groaned inwardly knowing that there was nothing he could do to stop them from coming now. His thoughts had turned to his past, to the life he had led leading up to this moment sitting here in the Old Oak pub, to the world he had once known so very long ago...
After the War of the Ring had ended there was peace in the land, and for that Legolas was truly grateful. But eventually all good things must come to an end and, with Aragorn's death centuries later, they did. Men had a funny way of fighting over the silliest of things. Aragorn had been the only man he had ever known to have a truly good head on his shoulders.
The peace of Middle Earth had ended over a rumor. And not even a good one at that! The rumor had been so impossibly false that the fact that the successor to the kingdom of Gondor had gone to war over it still astounded Legolas all these years later. The king of Rohan at the time had heard that his runaway of a son had found refuge in the kingdom of Gondor and had become very well acquainted with the Gondorian Princess, taking her upon the forest floor.
When this folly fell upon the king's ears he had vowed to put an end to the kingdom of Rohan for the defiling of his daughter. Legolas smirked as he remembered the day that news of this war had reached Mirkwood. None in Mirkwood would believe this tale because they all knew that the king of Gondor had long since kept his daughter locked away in the castle for the sake of protecting her purity, he being the ridiculously over protective man that he was. She had never even been allowed to leave the walls of that palace, hardly even allowed to see the light of day...and yet the king dared to believe that she had been taken on the forest floor outside the confines of the fortress in which he held her captive.
What had added to the hilarity of the tale as it spread amongst the elves was the fact that the prince had sought refuge with them in Mirkwood and was not even in the vicinity or either kingdom! The elves had even tried to tell the kings, but neither would listen once war had been declared, and so the woodland elves had watched rather helplessly, and if he was completely honest with himself, rather amused, as the world of men erupted once more into war...all for the sake of words bred in idleness.
Legolas smiled to himself. As sad as it was that this was how men had begun the decimation of the world he loved, he still couldn't help but feel amused at their sheer ignorance and pride...and he was an elf! And a son of Thranduil nonetheless! He knew all about pride! A chuckle escaped his lips at the thought as he continued his staring match with the wall, still lost in his thoughts of the ever changing world around him, the world now simply known as Earth.
Middle Earth had become nothing more than a memory that existed amongst the few remaining Eli-bred. The pure blooded elves of the Eliel were a dying race, as were the Elidwa. Pure blooded dwarves were among the rarest of races to come across, only surpassed in their rarity by orcs and hobbits, neither of which had been seen in centuries. The orcs being believed to have all been wiped out, while the hobbits, on the other hand, were believed to be hiding out in what was called Antarctica. The Middle-Earthians that remained all shared the common belief that Antarctica was being covered by a magic spell that was cast by the last of the Istari, it made the land appear barren and as a wasteland of ice, when in reality its beauty and quaintness reflected that of the shire. The hobbits eternal gift for the sacrifice that their race had made in Frodo bearing the ring, done so at the request of Gandalf the White who had loved him so.
The idea had often intrigued Legolas and he debated maybe heading that way eventually to look into this "common knowledge" amongst his kindred spirits. However, that would be an adventure for another time. His current adventure was finding his way back to the present through the sea of thoughts that bombarded his mind like the relentless waves upon the sand. The only person who even remotely understood what he was going through was Reinin. His only Eliel friend, his only friend at all really...and the only one with whom he could share his heartache for the Middle Earth he had known...
After the race of man began to spill the blood of their kin once more, his home had changed far more than he ever could have imagined. Than anyone could have ever imagined. The history books had it all wrong...things were out of order, things were missing and inaccurate, pieces of history lost forever at the hands of those who simply did not care to remember it for what it had truly been. And the saddest part was that the only people who really knew what had happened were forced into hiding.
Aragorn and Arwen's inter-race love had been a milestone in Middle Earth. Yes those of different races had fallen in love before, but never had it been so widely accepted as it was when the king of men had married his elven bride. And the fact that the War of the Ring had brought all of the races closer as both allies and friends had helped as well to aid in this acceptance. But as dwarves and elves continued to fall in love with the world of men, their blood was tainted. The world of men had eventually overpowered almost all traces of the races that had once been. The traits which had distinguished them from the other races were so dominant that after a mere few generations had passed it had become nearly impossible to tell anyone's bloodline and lineage. The Semi-races had been born, holding only a few tells as to which race they had originally come from.
Race had not been important for a long time. In fact, for the most part it was irrelevant, it played no major role seeing as the blood of the Semiel and Semidwa was diluted to the point that they lived the normal lives of men. The once great elves had lost their immortality by mixing their blood with that of men. True there were still a few that lived to see exceptional age, but they just wrote it off as being healthy or having good genetics, celebrating this as if it were some accomplishment to live to the age of one hundred and ten. By this point Legolas was nearly two millennia old. The remaining Eliel had all been alive for millennia, but they knew better than to advertize this.
The world of men had lost all touch with where they had come from, writing off their Middle-Earthian history as a piece of brilliant writing by the author J.R.R Tolkien. Legolas couldn't help but wonder what they would do if they knew Tolkien's true lineage. If they knew he had really been the record keeper to the kingdom of Mirkwood and had written The Lord of the Rings as a historical record of the War of the Ring to preserve that dark time in Middle Earth's history, before sailing to the Undying Lands alongside King Thranduil at the turn of the century. He grimaced, the corners of his mouth turning down into an almost pout as the thought that Tolkien probably would have been killed had he been found out crossed his mind.
Man no longer took very kindly to elves or dwarves. This was the exact reason why the Semi's and the remaining Eli's did not mix. The world of men was no longer aware of the existence of dwarves or elves, and those who had taken control of the lands of the Earth intended to keep the Semi-races in the dark, even if it meant killing off the last of the Eli-races. This was why the hobbits were hidden away in Antarctica, and why most of the Eliel had sailed to the Northern Arctic circle to find refuge in the Undying Lands. Not to mention the Ents who, upon the Great Divide of the Lands, that terrible and deathly era that the sorry excuses for modern history books claimed happened before the Earth was truly inhabited and referred to as the breaking up of Pangaea, had been stuck in the land now known as North America and were forced into hiding in the nations National forests to avoid being burned alive. None had moved in centuries. The world that Legolas had known was barely even mentioned in the crap history books of this modern age, misplaced on the time line and referred to ever so briefly and only as the Middle Ages or the Dark Ages. At least the title Middle Ages paid some homage to the once great land of Middle Earth that had been broken apart and now existed merely as Europe across the sea.
Legolas let out another deep sigh as he rather subconsciously began to sip on his wine once more. How had this happened? He wondered to himself again. How had he come to this? With nothing and no one but Reinin left. Granted he loved Reinin like a brother, his attitude had taken a few years to adapt to as it was a quite like his own and so they had butted heads a helluva lot at first. But after a while it became nice to have someone who understood him. It became nice to have a constant friend in these ever changing and far from constant times. But this was the world they lived in now and so, with nothing else to hope for, Legolas hoped beyond hope for love.