Author's Note: So I did a kinda collab with Yggdrasil'sRoots, who is my lovely and talented boo. She's precious and adored my sad little headcanon for Tauriel after the Hobbit and then asked if I wanted to write a fic from one side and she write one for the other. I'll post a not-link go here direction thing later when she posts hers. It's total Tauriel/Kili btw, sorry kids, I totally fell into that whole. But here's Legolas's side of the story, which was a pain in my rear to write, let me tell you. Bothered my roommate whinin' about this and she told me to suck it up and that I had brought it upon myself. I had, so whatever. Here you go though, the best Legolas and Gimili I could manage. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own shittttttt, broski.
Edit: Okay guys, copy and past this in your browser and then take out the spaces because here's my boo's part! www . fanfiction s / 9985144 / 1 / Remember
They have only just left his father's throne room, his father's words still ringing in his ears. He should not have expected his father to welcome them through with open arms, possibly a party, but he had all the same. His father, who seems to be the only one in Middle Earth to still hold such a grudge, had met them coolly in a nearly empty throne room before dismissing them without so much as a mention of a feast. He had, however, said other things instead.
"I apologize," he mutters, fingers clenching into fists. "My father should not have said such things."
Gimili snorts at his side, shrugs his shoulders without a care. He still wears his armor, but then so does Legolas. It is odd to think that they need not such items, for orcs have not been seen south of the Grey Mountains in more than a decade. A decade to an elf is nothing, though it has been some time since he has spent much time in the company of elves. He has been traveling with Gimili, sometimes joining the Rangers to chase down the last of the orcs, for what seems like an age, and he feels now the faintest inclinations of annoyance.
"Don't you worry, laddie" Gimili assures him, brash as the blaring horns of a battlefield. His voice is strange amongst the halls within Legolas lived so long, for Gimili is loud where the halls have always been quiet. "If you think that was bad then ye don't remember my da nearly as well as ye should."
Legolas nods quietly, feeling the edges of his lips curl into a smile. His dwarven friend's voice had slipped into his gruff accent the longer he talks. It is true, however; he does not remember Gloin, son of Groin, nearly as well as he should. The dwarf had come through his father's kingdom before the Ring, one of the company of Thorin Oakenshield, which Legolas only faintly recalls. So many dwarves, but he had been focused on the orcs and keeping to his father's orders.
"Are you enjoying seeing my father's halls?" he asks his companion. The dwarf laughs loudly, his merriment abundant.
"I had been hoping you'd still have some spiders to slay," the dwarf grumbles good naturedly. Legolas smiles down at his companion, only to freeze when his sharp ears pick up a familiar sound. Someone is walking toward, their strides quiet but firm. He knows who those strides belong to, had spent an age at her side, ghosting about the forest fighting the very spiders to which Gimili referred. She turns the corner, her hair a vibrant red and her face solemn. She stops when she sees them, an emotion flitting quickly across her cheeks that Legolas cannot recognize.
"Tauriel," he says. His father had given no mention of the captain of the guard, though she should have been in the throne room upon receiving them as guests. His father had been given ample time to pull together a reception, though he hadn't. Legolas wonders if she had even been aware he has returned. Her expression gives him the impression she had not. "Where have you been, Tauriel?"
"Walking among the trees, visiting with stones," his father's captain of the guard replies shortly. The reply strikes Legolas as odd, for Tauriel has never been the kind to walk amongst the trees aimlessly unless something is bothering her. Or, at least, a century before she had not walked among the trees without the intent for patrol. After the Battle of Five Armies, however, Tauriel had wandered between patrols, often returning from "visiting with stones". It was a trait Legolas had not pondered on for some time and he finds himself falling back to old questions, of what stones within the forest she could be visiting and why.
Tauriel tips her head, gazing quietly at his dwarven companion. Legolas snaps his attention back upon the now, drawing to his full height as his hands fist at his sides. He would stand for no more slander thrown at his friend, he thinks, mouth opening to speak, but Tauriel interrupts him. She has always interrupted him, a trait she has always possessed. He thinks she will always possess such a trait.
"Won't you introduce me, prince?" She asks the question quietly, voice low, bordering rough. She does not shift on her feet restlessly, as she once would have. She stands still as still as the stones she speaks of visiting, gazing at the dwarf at his side. Her eyes follow him when he shifts to stand closer to Gimili, watching as he puts a hand on the warrior's shoulders. Gimili turns his face to look at Tauriel, grinning brightly at her, though he bows to her as Legolas introduces him.
"This is Gimili, son of Gloin," Legolas says. Something flits across her face again and her left hand tightens, curling around something in her grip. "Gloin, son of Groin, was a member of-"
"Thorin Oakenshield's company," she finishes quietly, another interruption. Her face is like a shaded glade, everything dark and quiet across her face as a storm rolls through her eyes. Legolas is frozen for a moment, the events of the time wherein Thorin Oakenshield passed through their borders coming to the forefront of his mind and stirring something in his memory. Tauriel had disobeyed his father's commands, chased after the company, though he had lost her in Laketown, chasing the orcs that had descended upon the town looking for the dwarves. She had returned to his side only after the dragon had been slain, quieter than she had been in centuries. She grew quieter still after the Battle of Five Armies, Legolas recalls. He remembers her return from that battle well.
"Tauriel," he said. Around them the dead were being sorted, the injured taken into tents to seek healing. He watched her walk forward, noting the blood dried into her clothes, the way her bow was slung, forgotten, over her shoulder. She had several knives missing from the slots around her belt and the ones that were still there were bloodied, mud covered things. There was something in her gaze he had never seen before, something he could not place. She was pale, like the dead around them, with a cut high upon her cheek and a smear of blood tracing down her shoulder, as if someone had held her, smearing the fluid against her as they fell.
"Tauriel," he repeated, when she answered not.
"My prince," she answered softly. She looked at him as if he was a stranger or as if she saw him through a haze of smoke. She held something clenched in her hand and her whole arm quivered with force against her side. "You live," she said softly.
"As do you," he said. "As does my father."
"The king," she said. "That is… Good."
He glanced at her quivering arm, opened his mouth to speak, but a cry cut across the land. They turned, listening to the sound of voices, and Legolas could just see the dwarf who stood outside the tent. He was bloodied, his hands shook, and within his grasp he held a hat.
"The line of Durin is no more," he told those gathered around him. Legolas recognized them, from the forest; Thorin Oakenshield's company. They would be his company no more, it seemed. Beside him Tauriel went still and when he looked her arm shook no more.
"Gimili," Legolas says, shaking the thoughts from his head as if they were the last cobwebs of the spiders whose poison sunk into their trees no more. "This is Tauriel, the captain of the guard."
"Captain of the guard," Gimili says, chuckling under his breath. "So it is you I have to blame for the lack of spiders around to kill."
Tauriel gave the dwarf a smile, small though it was, and Legolas found himself bristling again strangely. "Yes," she answered softly, "not long after your father passed through these woods I set about to clear their filth from our trees. Now that your fellowship has destroyed the Ring the spiders have lost their hold. One has not dared to cross into our borders for many seasons."
"And what about outside of ye borders," Gimili asks curiously. It has been an age since their last battle and Gimili, as always, is boiling for a fight. Legolas cannot blame him, though he remembers fondly with a smile the way the dwarf had sunk into a chair at the White City and declared he would run over the span of no more kingdoms for the rest of his lifetime.
"You would have to ask the northern guard about the lands beyond our borders," Tauriel answers, surprising the elven prince into blinking at her. "For I know not where the spiders are past the edge of the forest. The forest is my only concern."
"Tauriel," Legolas says sharply. He speaks Elvish, placing a hand on Gimili's shoulder and giving the dwarf a squeeze to show he is not being left out of the conversation. Where he once would have bristled, Gimili simply settles his weight and is patient. "The lands outside our borders have been your concern and curiosity for many years. What now has changed?"
Tauriel gazes at him quiet, with a look he knows on another face. Elrond had a similar look, turning back to gaze at the White City before he had returned to Rivendale, leaving his daughter in Aragon's care. Something settles down Legolas' spine, the feeling like that of ambush in wait.
"He is tall," she says, in Elvish, though there is a hint of something else in her voice, rough like her thoughts were trying to speak in a different language. "For a dwarf, at least," she finishes. She looks up at him then and the emotion in her eyes becomes clear to him, as if the storm clouds above the glade of her face cleared and let the sun shine through. Pain, longing, they flash through her gaze, bright and brief, and then they are gone. Her face is smooth and blank once more, causing Legolas to wonder how long she has been hiding such things from him.
Her fingers curl, shifting around the thing she clutches in her hand. Legolas catches a glimpse of it, dark and small, some kind of stone, before it vanishes again from sight. "It has been an honor to meet you, Gimili, son of Gloin, friend of Legolas," she says, bowing to his companion. "I wish there were spiders left, if only so that I could see if the tales I've heard about your skill in battle are true."
Gimili nods to her, inclining his head toward her as she makes to leave. "Aye, same to you. My father tells me you fought amongst those who were there at the Battle of Five Armies."
Tauriel pauses before she nods, the motion smooth to others, but Legolas knows her well. It has taken him long enough to place the emotion in her posture and now that he has he could spot all the distress within her. Her hand tightens around the stone he knows to be there, though what stone and why she would be holding it he knows not. He longs to ask, but something tells him she would not answer his questions on this day.
"Boe i 'wean," she mutters, ducking her head. She slips past them and out of sight, though Legolas and Gimili do not move. Gimili glances his way, something glimmering in his gaze, and huffs quietly under his breath.
"She had a dwarven promise stone," Gimili mutters quietly. Legolas looks to him sharply, eyebrow rising in surprise. Gimili huffs again, knocking his shoulder into the elf's side as he begins to walk forward once more. "Don't look so surprised; I might not have your elven eyes, but I spot the things I can. Lasses and lads exchange them for promises," he continues. "Mothers make their children take 'em sometimes, as a promise they'll come home from battle."
A conversation Legolas had heard, more than half a century before is brought sharply to the forefront of his mind. He looks up quickly, down the way Tauriel has disappeared, and finds himself remembering a dwarf with hardly enough scruff to call it a beard.
He is tall, for a dwarf, Tauriel had said. Legolas curses himself for taking so long to put together the pieces, but Gimili reaches up and pats his arm. He looks down, only to find the dwarf's eyes have crinkled in amusement, though his smile is small and sad.
"Aye, laddie," the dwarf says, turning to go the way they had been heading, before Tauriel had caught their attention. "I was wonderin' if you knew."
"How did you know?" Legolas asks curiously, voice low with surprise.
"My uncle Oin was the one who found the lads' bodies," Gimili answers, voice just as low. "Told me the tale last time I saw him; the tale of the elf captain with bright red hair. Apparently she had demonstrated her healing abilities in Laketown, before the dragon's attack, but he found her sitting by the lads after the battle, their bodies no longer with breath. She left after telling him there was nothing she could do to bring them back."
"I never knew," Legolas admits quietly.
"Aye, laddie," Gimili mutters. "Before the Fellowship, neither did I."
It seems there is at least one elf within his father's borders that would honor Gimili as an elf-friend. They step out into his father's garden, the lush greenery brighter than it had been last Legolas had seen it. Legolas looks to the stars and is glad even as his heart clenches with sadness.