Chapter 2
"Why do I get the feeling we're going in circles?" Merry asked.
Aragorn gritted his teeth, trying so hard not to take out the frustration that had built up over the past two days out on the hobbit. They were currently trying to navigate their way through Emin Muil, which they had been trying unsuccessfully to do since Boromir had departed, and, given that the product of yesterday night was to spend the entire time walking around in the rain, only to end up back at their camp accidentally at dawn, everyone was beginning to get rather sick of this.
They had slept through the day, and now, under the light of the sickle moon partially obscured by the clouds, (in other words, almost complete darkness,) they now tried again.
"Would it help if I climbed onto one of the rocks and see if I could find a way out?" Legolas offered again.
"No," Gimli said snappily. "I've said it before and I'll say it again: you do not need to show off your incredible sight to everyone you meet. Nobody wants to travel with an ostentatious idiot."
"All I want is to get out of here," Pippin muttered gloomily.
"Excuse me," Legolas spluttered indignantly. "I am not an ostentatious idiot! I'm a..."
And so the argument starts again... Aragorn thought irritably.
Just listening to the elf and the dwarf whining and arguing constantly, added to the incredibly irritating hum in his head caused by the headache he had developed, was enough to drive anyone insane.
Aragorn suddenly lost his temper.
"Will the pair of you just shut up!" Aragorn screamed abruptly at the arguing elf and dwarf. "Please! I can't think with you two constantly bickering in the background! And trust me, I need to think in order to find a way out of this infuriating pile of rocks!"
He kicked one of the offending items, hoping to vent some of his frustration. In fact, all that happened was that he now had an excruciating pain in his toe, and started hopping to one side, clutching his foot in agony, while the rock didn't even have the decency to move. It just sat there arrogantly, and, if he hadn't known better, he could have sworn that it was laughing at him.
"Did that help?" Merry asked, completely oblivious to the danger of the wrath he was about to unleash upon himself.
"Of course it didn't, do you suddenly see a miraculous path appear out of nowhere that's going to take us out of here?" yelled the irate ranger, still clutching his toe while the fellowship looked at him, mostly in surprise, but Legolas had an amused look upon his face as he determinedly tried to conceal a smile. Aragorn sat down on a rock, (not the one he kicked,) his arms folded, resembling a five year old who had just had a tantrum. He then glared at the rock that he had kicked, as though it had committed a grievous wrong against him.
"Forget I asked..." Merry said, holding up his hands defensively.
"What we need to do is find a way out of this place," Frodo said, unable to keep the amusement out of his voice at Aragorn's hysterics. "Have we tried that way yet?" He pointed down a path towards the left, if 'path' it could be called.
Aragorn shook his head, irritated beyond belief that he's failed to spot it before.
"Right, well let's go that way," Frodo said, leading the way down the path.
Everyone else started to walk down the 'path,' but Aragorn, whose toe had been broken, couldn't quite get to his feet due to the excruciating pain every time he tried to put weight on it.
A soft, melodious laugh sounded from behind him.
"Need a hand?" Legolas asked.
Aragorn grudgingly allowed Legolas to help him up.
"Thank you, but I can walk perfectly fine," Aragorn said grumpily.
"I'll believe that when I see it," Legolas laughed lightly. Aragorn merely scowled at him, until the laugh dissolved into a smile.
"All right," the elf said. "Walk three steps without my help and without falling over, and you can walk the rest of the way. Go on."
Aragorn smiled confidently and took one step. An unbearable agony flared inside his toe and he yelled out in pain, causing several of the fellowship to turn around in alarm. He nearly fell had it not been for the arms that wrapped themselves around him. When his yelling subsided, the laughter of the elf seemed to rise up, and Aragorn felt less than entirely confident as the lithe figure holding him shook with mirth.
"You don't stop laughing, you die," Aragorn threatened, which merely triggered a fresh wave of laughs from the elf, who now had the backing track of the rest of the fellowship.
"I die, you sit on a rock until your toe heals or one of the fellowship grows a few feet and becomes tall enough to carry you," Legolas countered. Aragorn didn't think it was possible for the elf to look more smug.
"Hey!" Gimli snapped.
"Gimli, stature isn't necessarily an advantage for a warrior," Legolas said calmly. "In battle, you could run around and kill your opponents and you're so short that nobody knows what has hit them until they're lying on the floor dead, about level with your head at that point." The infuriating smugness that coloured his features intensified.
And yet, Aragorn thought, somehow he managed it.
"You-" Gimli began.
"Shh!" snapped Frodo, who had suddenly tensed. He had heard it, a light, pattering footstep.
"But-" the dwarf began to protest, but he was cut off by Aragorn.
"Shut – up – Gimli!" he hissed, before turning to Frodo. "What is it?"
And then Aragorn heard it. While everything else was still, he heard the soft sound of footsteps coming from above them...
Aragorn suddenly felt the arm around him vanish, he collapsed onto his injured foot and ended up on the floor, while Legolas spun away from him, drawing his bow and fitting an arrow into it faster than mortal eyes could track. The arrow sailed into the air and hit...
There was a squeal and suddenly a creature fell down, landing on the floor amongst the fellowship with a thud. It was a truly pitiful creature, and the hobbits and the dwarf gazed upon Gollum properly for the first time in their lives.
Legolas' arrow had hit the creature's ankle. When the tip had collided with the bone, Gollum had jumped, tried to grab the cliff but failed, and was now on the floor whimpering.
Aragorn hauled himself up onto a rock. "I have to say, Legolas, as supports go, you're not all that great..."
Legolas didn't reply to him, his eyes fixed on Gollum. He changed his bow for one of his knives and, without so much as a word to the others, walked up to the creature, and pressed the blade against Gollum's throat.
"NO!" Frodo yelled, rushing forwards and wrenching the knife from his grasp. "Don't kill him! Not yet!"
Legolas looked completely outraged. "I have no intention of letting this piece of filth live any longer than it has to!" he snapped, taking the knife back.
Frodo leapt between the whimpering Gollum and the elf, who seemed to have a much darker side, seldom revealed to anyone else.
"Stand aside, Frodo," Legolas snarled.
"No! I will not let you kill him!"
"I said, stand aside!"
"NO!"
"Do you not understand the danger of letting this creature live?" Legolas hissed, as he glared down at the hobbit. "Do you not understand what he would do given the chance?
"Be that as it may, I will not let you kill him!" Frodo repeated. "What has he done so wrong?"
"Frodo," Legolas said angrily, and the entire fellowship could see that his patience was wearing thin. "This creature is responsible for the death of my little brother! If you think that I would let him live then you are sadly mistaken-"
"Legolas, for all our sakes, calm down!" Aragorn finally intervened. "I don't care what personal wrong this creature has done to you but for the love of all things good, just please shut up!"
Legolas reluctantly backed off, casting a scathing glance at Gollum. He sat down fuming on a rock as far away as possible from the creature without actually leaving Aragorn's sight.
"So we know Legolas' opinion," Sam tried to brush off the elf's outburst, but in truth it had shaken him like everyone else. "But it's clear that killing Gollum may be acting hastily. What do we do with him?"
Aragorn rubbed his forehead, his headache reaching a peak. "I don't know, Sam, but for now shall we tie him up and we can decide what to do in the morning?"
There was a soft huff from Legolas, but he seemed to be the only person to object to this. Aragorn, relieved, suggested that they make camp around the corner, where an overhanging outcrop would shield them from unfriendly eyes. Of course, Gollum's screams as Aragorn removed the arrow from his ankle and general outrage as a rope was fastened around its neck was enough to attract any unfriendly ears between them and Mordor.
That morning, Aragorn's headache had mercifully vanished, and the pain in his toe, (which Gimli had threatened to amputate had Aragorn not tried to heal it,) had subsided to a dull ache.
"Right, I fear that we have to decide what to do with this wretched creature," he said to the fellowship at large.
"I say we kill him, and if you had any sense, you'd listen to me!" Legolas snapped.
"Yes, we know that, elf," Gimli said shortly, voicing what the rest of the fellowship was thinking.
"We can't let him go," Frodo said, staring down piteously at the creature. "But I do not have the heart to kill him. He seems so... fragile..."
Legolas tutted impatiently.
"I don't care what we do with him, but I just don't want to spend another day in this place," Pippin said angrily. "It just seems so... lifeless..."
"We can show you the way out," Gollum suddenly piped up. "Yesss... we knows the way!"
Legolas glanced disdainfully down at him. "And you would throttle us as soon as that rope was removed from your neck."
"Legolas!" snapped Aragorn. He, like everyone else, was beginning to get ridiculously sick of Legolas' new side to his character. Aragorn then turned to Gollum. "Would you?"
"Yesss, precious, we would..."
Aragorn stared into the eyes of the pitiful creature. "What oath would you make?"
"We... We would swear... to serve the master of the precious..." Gollum's eyes flitted to Frodo.
Sam glanced at his master, at Gollum, then Aragorn, and lastly to Legolas. Aragorn knelt down in front of the creature.
"Then swear it by that that you hold most dear."
Sam saw Legolas' face harden with disbelief.
"We swear to serve the master... we swear by... by the precious!"
Aragorn's hands tightened around the rope that hung from Gollum's neck. He slowly removed it.
"Aragorn, you cannot seriously be thinking of trusting him!" Legolas hissed.
Aragorn ignored his friend, folding the rope up. "Take us out of here. Then we will decide your fate."
