Author's Note: This is my entry for the January 2016 Teitho! challenge, "Escape" (my very first story for it; did not place). The story is complete, and I will post it here in chapters. It will differ from what is posted on Teitho due to typo-corrections and editing for plot inconsistency.

The story's title references an interaction between Cirdan and Mithrandir at the Grey Havens in Appendix B of Return of the King: "Take this ring, Master," he said, "for your labours will be heavy; but it will support you in the weariness that you have taken upon yourself. For this is the Ring of Fire, and with it may you rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill."

Finally, a lot of Ithildim and Legolas' thoughts and behaviors are based on firsthand experience in my profession, from both observing myself and my colleagues. However, for more general information on secondary trauma, please see the National Child Traumatic Stress Network webpage (under "Resources"), or google "secondary trauma," "vicarious trauma," "burnout," and "post-traumatic stress disorder." Remember to always always ask for help when you need it!

To Rekindle Hearts

Chapter 1: A Prologue, of sorts

Third Age 2459 (last year of the Watchful Peace, 560 years before the War of the Ring)

Southeast of the Elvenking's Halls, somewhere near the Forest River and the southwestern shores of the Long Lake

Legolas leaned toward the water and retched for the third time in as many hours, hugging his arms to himself as he bent at the waist. He straightened himself and wiped his mouth with the back of his left hand, before flicking the saliva and bile toward the stream. Legolas wiped what remained on the tail of the tunic that peeked from beneath his drenched overshirt.

He spoke. "This is truly not how I imagined this adventure would end, Ithildim."

Legolas leaned against the steep clay and crumbling loam wall of a narrow ravine and closed his eyes, water rushing less than a meter away from the tips of his muddied shoes; it dripped from the tip of his nose and plastered a lock of hair to his face, which snaked from his brow to his temple and down his jaw before dancing from his chin in a twisting spiral—it sent water from its tip like a faucet. His clothes were coated in a fine mix of mud and clay and blood, and Ithildim looked much the same.

Ithildim laughed weakly from his vulnerable position. He sat on a large slab of heavy shale that was more than half-buried in the newly born river's ravaged shores. His elbows were propped on his thighs and his head tucked between his knees; his fingers were interlocked and laid over his bent neck, and he occasionally moved them as one unit from his neck to the top of his head and back, pulling his braids—dark as moonless midnight now from the water— up and down and up and down, moving to a rhythm Legolas could not hear.

Legolas thought Ithildim looked rather like he was bracing for the sky to fall upon them. Which, Legolas supposed, it might.

It had been raining since dawn.

"I had not thought before," Legolas continued, pulling his right arm farther up his chest and holding it there at the elbow with his left hand, positioned now so his curled fingers brushed his cheek, "but we might die here."

Ithildim moaned. "Legolas, that thought has crossed my mind more than once these past hours, and you are just now considering it?"

Ithildim unlinked his fingers and lifted his head, letting his hands and forearms dangle in front of him as he considered Legolas' reaction.

"I do not wish to die, and I did not want that for you, even though I offered up my life to those men," said Legolas. "We might have been fine were we not cornered by a river in a gully that we did not really know existed. So until now, no, I had not really thought of it."

Ithildim stared at Legolas for a moment in disbelief, unable to decide whether his heart bid him scowl or smile at his friend; as worried as he was, he was still very angry about the events that had led up to their current entrapment.

When Legolas tilted his head to the left questioningly, Ithildim's gaze was broken and he said with stiffness, "Please, Legolas, go ahead and just wish us out of this unwelcome mess. Wish the spring rain away, wish the mountains hold back their melt! Wish that you had not been overwhelmed by utter irrationality; that we had not been pursued by boorish men twice our weight. Wish that Mithrandir had not come to us for this and that we had not accepted!"

Legolas frowned. "It would not do any good to wish those things," he said, pausing. "I have upset you."

"No," Ithildim said. He shook his head. "I was already upset."

Ithildim took a steadying breath, and held a hand out to Legolas, who stepped away from the wall and closer to him. Ithildim rose off the shale, pulling Legolas to him by the shoulder, and pushed him down onto the rock. Legolas crossed his legs in front of him and tucked his ankles beneath his knees. Ithildim pulled on Legolas' left side lightly to indicate he wanted him to scoot further back on the rock, so Legolas used his left arm to steady himself as he readjusted his body, and Ithildim held tightly to Legolas' upper arm. Ithildim settled himself, too, onto the slab. He wiped rain from his eyebrows, and then took Legolas' head into his hands.

Ithildim pressed one hand to either side of Legolas' face and peered at his pupils. Satisfied, he held a finger in front of his friend's face and moved it from one side of his vision to the other; Legolas tracked Ithildim's finger with his eyes best he could (which was not very well), as he knew he was expected to do, and as he had required the same of Ithildim during various expeditions throughout the centuries.

But Ithildim's eyes narrowed, and then he threw up his hands and exclaimed, "I cannot see in this cursed rain!"

Legolas looked at Ithildim calmly, but with a furrow in his brow. "I think you are weary. You should rest, my friend."

"That is your concussion counseling you," Ithildim hissed. "I do not rest until you can rest; you know this."

Ithildim and Legolas had suffered much together in their childhoods, and then on patrols as youth, and even more as leaders as adults, but this fall had shaken Ithildim more than any had before. Legolas frowned now earnestly, and his eyes looked regretful.

"Ithildim, we are still not on duty. You are here with me as my friend, not as my captain," he said.

"If you think that my oath to you as a friend is any less profound than our oaths to one another as soldiers," Ithildim began sharply, but Legolas looked startled, and Ithildim's voice softened as he continued," Then you are more injured than I initially pronounced."

Legolas laughed, and the sound was almost lost in the patter of rain and the heavy babble of the water beside them. Legolas dropped his hand from his elbow but kept his arm tight against his chest. He grabbed one of Ithildim's hands in his own and squeezed it comfortingly.

"You must not lose hope," said Legolas. "Perhaps the rain will stop in the night and we will be able to navigate this place in the morning; perhaps Mithrandir will come looking for us, or the Lake-men may find our place of misfortune."

Ithildim grinned and placed his other hand on Legolas' temple, silver eyes sparkling naughtily.

"Or perhaps," Ithildim said, "Your father will find out how far we travelled with Mithrandir and seek to find us, and, once done, he will lift us out of this canyon by sheer force of will, and slay us for our idiocy once we are on solid ground. Or perhaps," he continued still, "the Lieutenant will find us and finally, and with great pleasure, strip us of our command before abandoning us to the elements. Or," his face darkened here, "the men that chased us to this pit will come back to finish us off once they realize they could boast an exciting kill to a maid in the tavern," Ithildim said, but then sighed and continued playfully. "Or, even more likely than all that, I will tire of your endless, hopeful suppositions and end you myself right here, on this rock."

"You are incorrigible," said Legolas with a huff, and then a half-smile.

"In that I am not alone," Ithildim replied. He took his hand from Legolas' temple and wiped at Legolas' forehead with the inside of his sleeve; he then pressed the back of his hand to Legolas' brow.

Legolas tsked. "Why would anyone have—in this weather—a fever?"

"Legolas, are you completely addled from your fall?" Ithildim asked. "I am rightfully worried about your body cooling too much in this remorseless rain. There is something still not right about you. Besides," he said, dropping his hand and scowling, "there is nothing else I can do, and I need to feel like I am doing something. My field medicine is failing me."

Legolas lowered the arm he had clutched at his chest to the stone beneath them, resting it in the diamond formed by his legs.

"It is not your knowledge of medicine that fails you, Ithildim," said Legolas, "but your heart."

Ithildim pulled his hand out of Legolas' reassuring grasp, as if burned.

Legolas sighed.

"Just set the bone, my friend; this is nothing new and we have seen and set far far worse. I would rather endure a few more minutes of discomfort than not be able to draw a bow for all eternity," Legolas continued. "In honesty, my patience is waning, and I cannot in this state be held accountable for any rash actions."

"Fine," said Ithildim. "Though I guess Mithrandir ought to have realized we are missing soon."

"We can only hope," said Legolas, with a wink, and then a frown.

Ithildim smiled at his friend and placed a gentle hand on Legolas' left shoulder, clutching it tenderly. After a moment, Ithildim unbuckled Legolas' quiver from his chest, and began to undo the clasps and ties of his friend's overshirt and tunic.

"I am sorry to have despaired. It has been somewhat of a difficult day," said Ithildim, winking, too, and Legolas laughed. "Besides, if I had treated you earlier, we might not have come to be," he waved his arm vaguely, "here in the first place. I do not know that I can forgive myself. I felt overwhelmed and could not make a rational decision."

"I doubt that he would have allowed us to escape unharmed, whatever you had done, or I had not done," said Legolas, and he shrugged. "The man was driven by grief and thus could not be stopped, and you should not have to carry his grief as well as your own. You must forgive yourself this, Ithildim."

All the while, Ithildim gently pulled Legolas' injured arm through the fabrics and worked the shirts off the rest of his body. He draped the rain-heavy clothes on the edge of the rock, then undid Legolas' belt from where it drooped across wet leggings, and laid his friend's pouch and knife with it to the side.

"It is true what you say to our soldiers," Ithildim said, not meeting Legolas' eyes as he worked. "'Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.' Thank you, for that, my friend."

Legolas nodded and Ithildim met his eyes. He dried his hands on the inside of his own overshirt before placing hands on Legolas' bare shoulders and pushing back.

Legolas grimaced as Ithildim pressed him onto the shale slab until he lay flat, bruised skin cooling further against the slick rock, his face and eyes lifted to the grey and endlessly emptying sky. He sensed Ithildim moving to his right, fumbling with something at his belt, but he nevertheless started when Ithildim slipped two pinched fingers past his lips and tucked a bunch of herbs and bark into his cheek.

"Sorry," Ithildim murmured.

Legolas shook his head slightly. "There will be time for that later," he said softly, around the medicine. "Let us first just make it to the rising of the Sun!"

Then he closed his eyes against the water, let out a sigh, and offered Ithildim his arm.