Title: Walking Wounded

Summary: Danger does not stop for grief or injury. For Legolas, there is no rest, respite, or relief on the seemingly endless road between Moria and Lothlorien. He, with the Fellowship he has sworn to serve, has no choice but to move forward, hurting and heartbroken.

The Story So Far: Less than a day's walk away to the refuge of Lorien coming from the darkness and pain of Moria, but Legolas is really beginning to struggle in ways he can no longer keep from the other members of the Fellowship.

hi gang!

Thank you so much to everyone who read, reviewed, followed, favorited, discussed - or anything else that these modern new fanfiction . net features allow people to do - the second chapter of "Walking Wounded." I am particularly grateful for reviews, especially those who have been sending their well wishes in every new installment. Shout out to: Alanic, White1stteal, Cling0514, Raider-K, Lydwina Marie, She-Elf23 and MissCallaLilly. Your attention and kindness is making this story move forward, thank you!

I hope everyone enjoys this new chapter. It's going to be a bit of a harder read; I like doing 'the medium is the message' sometimes, so I cut into and out of time in a more confusing way here, to mirror the protagonist's growing disorientation. I hope it works out. Either way, I thank you for your time and as always, constructive comments and criticism are welcome!

*NOTE: Uploaded this chapter again with a minor change; couldn't quite stand keeping out a line I forgot to type in, or correcting an error I spotted. Other than that, if you've read this chapter previously, no change really. Hope this does not inconvenience anyone :)


Chapter Three: Something Left


Why in all of Arda are we still walking?

They have been on their feet and moving for endless hours, and yet they still have not reached their destination. Their stops were few and far between, for a quick sit or a drink of water, both of which have lost their appeal on Legolas.

"You are not resting," Aragorn observed during one such stop.

Legolas ignored the question and kept his feet. The truth was, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to get back up if he sat down. He chewed on more of the ground, leafy stimulants that have been keeping him alert, and he glumly noted there was precious little left. He wondered if the hobbits or even the dwarf carried something similar and equally potent. They did, after all, indulge in the occasional unsavory vice.

"You are also not drinking," Aragorn pointed out after he called for the company to resume their endless walking. The man had settled at a quick pace beside the elf at the head of the line. Aragorn, Legolas noticed, had crept closer and closer to him along the length of their journey and had not left his side since night began to fall.

"It makes me feel ill," Legolas confessed.

"You still need it."

"We are nearing our refuge," the elf said decisively.

"You still need it," Aragorn insisted, "you can take a little."

The elf didn't believe so. His last sips from earlier in the day had barely stayed in his stomach, and he feared very much what throwing it up would do to his burning chest and side.

"Speaking of this tires me," he told the adan, and it was a shameless way out of the conversation but an effective one nonetheless.

Aragorn grimaced at him but said nothing else, and they kept walking.

# # #

The skies were bright and clear, but the night was brutally cold in the open space they traversed. It was the quickest way to the Golden Wood.

The elf should have been immune but he held his shivering body close, futilely. If the posture offered any relief he could not really tell. He'd dropped some of his energy-sapping, face-saving efforts at looking hale for their younger companions long ago, not that the hobbits seemed capable of noticing anything at this point. They were exhausted too, walking half-asleep and moving forward by sheer force of will and by leaning on each other. They've long since fallen silent.

Legolas was not doing much better himself, but had re-focused his waning energy on his elven senses, rather than keeping up an image of strength. He walked onwards as if possessed; he had ceased to become a being, but was rather simply a conduit for the movements of the Earth – what could he see, what could he hear, what could he sense...

He stumbled forward, caught himself by his palms and pushed up from the ground, walking again. Beside him he felt the adan stiffen and shift, but he recovered quickly without needing the other's assistance. Neither Aragorn nor any of their other companions said anything, even as the false footing would have been clearly seen by those behind them. They all kept walking.

Before them was a large expanse of plains, and just beyond it, their refuge of glorious trees. Legolas blinked and suddenly the trees were closer. He blinked again and they were farther. He blinked and they were close again, and he blinked and they were far again.

Legolas frowned, and wondered if the Lady's enchantments would extend to him, even if he too were elven kind. It took him a moment to realize his eyes were playing tricks on him, and that his weary, injured body was mistaking today for some other day, when his sense of desperate determination was similar.

In one blink the Golden Wood was in sight. In the next, the trees of his vision grew closer and richer and thicker and darker – he was in the edges of home, of Mirkwood. In one blink he needed to get to the Golden Wood. In the next, he knew he had to get to his father's stronghold.

Blink by blink his sight wavered between past and present, between current struggles and painful memories, his current misery having dragged out a near-forgotten past that in turn encroached into the immediate now, each one bleeding into the other.

He fell to the ground and his eyes slipped closed -

- He opened his eyes and he was in the healing wards of his father's halls. He knew it by the plain walls and ceiling, yet he was covered in the more comfortable beddings of his own suites. It was usually an indication that he'd been in the ward for a while, but he knew not for how long. He took stock of himself. His ears felt stuffed, his vision was blurry, and he felt a strange detachment to his body. His head pounded, dully, and his mouth was dry and stomach empty. He turned his head to find Maenor, the head of the healing wards, sitting beside him and looking at him thoughtfully. He swallowed thickly and licked his lips, but the healer beat him to speaking.

"Do you know why you're here, my lord?"

Legolas let his hands drift up to his chest. "I'd taken an injury," he rasped out, "here." He patted at his bedclothes over his heart, where he expected bandages to be. It was surprisingly flat and free.

Maenor's lips thinned before he said, grimly, "That was a year ago, Prince Legolas. Please, try to remember. We've spoken of this before. Do you remember why you're here?"

Legolas frowned and closed his eyes, but there was nothing. He wracked his mind for some memory, something, anything that would explain his current predicament.

"An injury here," he said, this time of his side. He opened his eyes to find Maenor had rolled his eyes in consternation.

"Unfortunately that is as good a guess as any," the healer muttered, "as frequently as you are here."

"I don't understand," Legolas admitted. His head was starting to pound and his vision spin, and he felt sick to his stomach. He closed his eyes again, tight, and brought a fist up to his mouth.

The healer rubbed at his back reassuringly. "You'd taken a grievous injury to the head, my lord. Some memories, especially those around the incident, may be elusive for a while if not gone altogether. But you are home, you are safe, and you are healing."

Legolas strained to remember, and as if his body was fighting to remember too, he started to tremble, and then shake, more violently. He grunted in surprise and dismay, before the world fell away -

- He opened his eyes. His cheek was pressed against rough, uneven ground. Pairs of boots surrounded his vision.

"Come now, laddie," came the deep, teasing voice of one Gimli the Dwarf, whose mere presence quickly reminded Legolas of where he was and what he was doing there. "Don't tell me the fabled endurance of an elf is below that of a lowly dwarf's."

"Gimli—" Aragorn began to say, but Legolas' hand upon the man's ankle shushed him quickly. Legolas squeezed, hoping to tell Aragorn he knew the dwarf was only trying to get him to rise, rather than give him any real grief. Well, maybe just a little grief.

Aragorn lowered his head to the elf's face. "We have to go on, mellon-nin," he said softly.

"I know," Legolas murmured. He would tell them to get moving and leave him, but he knew that suggestion would come to nothing, so he had to get up. He had to get up. He simply had to.

He took a breath and steeled himself, and was about to push up when he heard traces of a mumbled, thundering sound from the ground. Instead of rising, he pressed his ear even closer to the earth.

"Aragorn," he said, and jerked the human down to his level by his sleeves. The man hesitated and wondered if the elf was far gone, but Legolas pulled at him insistently. "Aragorn, listen."

The man was a good tracker too, and he pressed his ear to the ground next to the elf's.

"What madness is this?" Boromir over them inquired.

"That elf is contagious, is what," Gimli grumbled. Aragorn shushed them, and his eyes widened when he came to the same realization Legolas had. He pushed himself up to his feet quickly and strained his eyes in the direction of Lothlorien. Beside him, Legolas managed to rise up to his hands and knees only, but more or less did the same.

"What are we looking for, elf?" Gimli asked.

"I see nothing yet," Aragorn murmured.

"The enemy approaches now from two fronts," Legolas said in a low voice, and hated how it trembled at the edges from pain, cold, exhaustion and inescapably, fear. His companions fared little better. In spite of his gamely taunts, Gimli's face was lined by weariness too, and Boromir looked properly alarmed. Still, Legolas heard the soft clinks of armor and weaponry as the warriors stood up straighter by fighting instinct, in spite of the exhaustion plaguing all of them and the new danger afoot.

"How?" the warrior from Gondor demanded.

"The one we evade from behind us," Legolas replied, "and a sizeable party in front." The elf lifted his hands up in explanation, and grimaced both in discomfort as well as the gravity of his news. "This is the territory of the Golden Wood," he explained, forming an imagined shape of Lothlorien. "The enemy comes from the East beyond it, but will not go through the forest for fear of its enchantments."

"They will go around," Boromir concluded.

"That is what I think they are doing now," Legolas confirmed. "They move north to evade the forest. We, on the other hand, are headed to the refuge by quickest route, straight forward. But when the orcs make a turn from evading the bounds of Lothlorien, they will come from the northwest and we will be spotted here on open ground."

"They will move faster once they see us," Boromir said, "they will hunger for us. And they will cut us off from reaching Lorien."

"Do you think they are hunting us?" Aragorn asked.

"By the sound of their movement they are not in pursuit or specific rush," Legolas said. "I do not think they seek us. But if they continue on this way and we continue thus, they will find us whether they mean to or not."

"Can we not change the direction by which we move?" Gimli asked, "Find a path with cover?"

Legolas shook his head. "If we deviate from this straight path, it will take time enough so that the enemy behind us will catch up to us."

"Is the only choice then between being overtaken from the back or the front?" demanded Gimli. "I refuse to believe it."

"If we go faster we have a chance," Legolas said, even as he wondered how it could be possible. He looked at Aragorn, whom he knew from past experience as being able to engineer the improbable. "I think we've sensed them early enough that if we go quickly, we can slip into the territory of Galadriel just before the orcs make the turn west and we fall in their sightline. We will have the cover of trees and the protection of the Lady's enchantments. We can just make it."

Aragorn had a fist by his mouth and his eyes were glinting in thought and planning.

"How much faster?" he asked the elf.

It was an unimaginably important question, with a complex answer that depended upon their pace thus far against the pace of the enemies behind them and that of the enemies about to appear in front of them, information which in turn depended on Legolas' admittedly waning senses and consequent estimations. The answer would also depend on what the Fellowship was currently capable of given their bedraggled state, and Legolas knew by the strain on his own body and by looking at his companions that they had precious few reserves left.

"A mad run from here to Lorien will give us time to spare," he said tentatively. "But that is not… sustainable. We will lose more time if we collapse along the road."

Aragorn nodded in understanding. "Twice the walking pace broken by a jog, and then twice the walking pace again for respite, followed by a furious dash to the end?"

"Aye," Legolas agreed, "That should carry us through."

Barely, he thought, but he had a firm belief that the proximity of their destination coupled with the desperation of their cause would give them much motivation toward the final leg of the journey and should overpower their exhaustion.

"We may have to carry the halflings at some point," Boromir said, and winced at the sight of Legolas looking as if he was barely holding his body together. "Perhaps we can make plans to this end now, rather than later."

"You must take charge of the Ringbearer, Aragorn," Gimli said.

"I can take Sam," said Boromir, and with the hobbit gardener's fuller figure and the Gondor soldier's considerable bulk, it was the logical choice.

"The elf and I can each have one of the sprightly two," Gimli concluded. "They are fast runners and can be dragged forward where we are unable to carry."

Legolas almost bit out that he could certainly carry a hobbit, unburdened was he by a dwarf's limited height. But his injury was plain for them all to see by now, and he took Gimli's wise plan in stride.

"There are also some things we have to make clear," Legolas said, and his voice shook in earnest now.

"We cannot stop," Gimli said grimly.

"And if someone falls when our enemies draw near," Boromir adds, "we cannot turn back."

Aragorn stared at the hobbits for a long moment. The little ones were crouched quietly among themselves and looking worriedly upon the four warriors holding their fates.

"We must lighten our loads," he determined. "Speed is of the essence. And we must discuss this with the halflings. They need to know what's at stake."

Legolas kept his seat on the ground and regained some strength while Aragorn briefed the hobbits on the situation and the company shuffled about, keeping only what was essential and distributing the weight of the indispensable items amongst themselves.

Before long, they were rising again and each warrior tasked with a hobbit beside him, then moved forward half-running.

Legolas walked a fast pace alongside Merry, with Aragorn and Frodo beside them. Behind them were Gimli and Pippin, and Boromir with Sam. They moved quickly and quietly, wasting no breath for chatter.

Legolas knew he was slowing when Merry began to overtake his wider strides. The hobbit adjusted, and nearly collided with the admittedly rather fast Pippin behind him.

Legolas redoubled his efforts and for a long moment, the group kept a good and steady pace. But before long he was breathless and dizzying. He made a misstep to the side and nearly stumbled at the correction forward.

Merry, perhaps the most perceptive of the hobbits in spite of his propensity for getting into trouble with Pippin, looked up at him worriedly.

"Legolas?"

"Keep moving, Merry," Legolas told him quietly.

The walked thus for long hours that escaped Legolas' counting, but the skies were beginning to lighten when Aragorn called for a brief drinking pause. The elf understood with some dread that they were about to begin jogging now. He grimaced at what that could do to the injury that was now really dogging him.

As everyone took the time to partake of water, Aragorn came up beside him. "You need to drink, Legolas."

The elf shook his head vigorously. "You don't understand. If I get sick, I will lose more than what I'd taken in."

Aragorn sighed, and said, only for Legolas' hearing, "This cannot go on, my friend."

"It won't be too long now," Legolas promised.

One way or another, it was the truth.

# # #

They began to jog.

"Steady there, Peregrin Took," Legolas heard Gimli say from behind them. The hobbit had apparently gone a bit faster than a jog, and indeed, by Legolas' estimation, the pace of his running footfalls would not be sustainable for a long period of time, for a hobbit.

"Save some of that for later," the dwarf told him gently.

To Legolas' sharp ears, Pippin's steps adjusted. It was a good thought, to save some energy. Legolas wondered how much he had left to put away for later too.

I am near spent, he conceded to himself.

I might not reach safety, he thought, if experimentally. It made his eyes sting, but only for a moment. They all knew the risks in coming on this quest. Gandalf's loss only brought this fact to greater clarity. Anyone of them could pass into death.

If I can just get them to Lothlorien, he decided, I will be ready to face whatever comes next. I will be ready.

# # #

The sun rose in the horizon and Aragorn called for a pause.

Legolas more or less stumbled into it. His momentum carried him forward and he had no strength in his aching core to keep him up. His legs gave way and he fell crouched to his hands and knees on the ground.

His vision whited out for a long moment, and suddenly the senses that have been so attuned to his surroundings were shut off without warning. The world shrank – the sun and the skies and the ground and the distant woods and mountains, the smells and sounds, the company he kept, all vanished from his perceptions. Everything narrowed to the white hot pain at his side and back. The world and his cares shrank back to not even just himself – he could not even feel his arms or legs - but the suffering that consumed him. He imagined it as a ball of fire sitting inside his chest and belly, eating away at everything around it. He had ceased to exist, and everything beyond that core of pain was gone. He closed his eyes –

- He opened his eyes. He was in the healing wards again, and his body was on the tail-end of the violent trembling that has been plaguing him sporadically since the head injury he had suffered. At least he remembered things better now. The healers said the shaking was already shorter and less severe than when he was first brought in. They would vanish altogether in time.

He let his body still; the tremors literally involved the entirety of his being and were exhausting. He sighed contentedly when it ended, and his gaze drifted to the presence he had long felt sitting by his bed. He had thought it was Maenor, or any of the other elves who'd come and sat with him in the King's stead over the time Legolas had been confined there, but for the first time, he realized it was the Elvenking himself.

Legolas jerked in surprise and almost fought to sit up straight. He knew it was not the first time Thranduil had been beside him in vigil, but it was the first time he was aware enough to notice.

"I thought I had sent you to your death," Thranduil said quietly. It was as much of an apology as Legolas was going to get from the King. The truth was, he had sent Legolas to what was tantamount to a suicide mission, and returning alive was more a miracle than a guarantee.

"My only grief is that you had to carry that decision, adar."

His father had just pulled him from Quartermaster's duties and into the esteemed circles of his councilmen. The difference was jarring for Legolas, to come from humble handwork to the highest offices of the King. He stayed at Thranduil's right hand, and was expected to be well-read, conversant and wise on all aspects of running a Kingdom. He started seeing more of the large picture his father had wanted him to understand. There were daunting intelligence reports and war strategies, yes, but there were also interior and domestic issues to settle, which spanned the wide breadth of important trade deals and more banal property or business disputes and the occasional familial quarrels. The War went on, but people still ate and drank and fell in and out of love. The King, he realized, must be equipped with some enchantment to be able to think and decide and then shift topics and priorities so quickly. His own mind was in a constant state of motion, and there never seemed an end to papers to read and people to see and hear out.

A particular intelligence report, however, came to everyone's arrested attention above all else. An orc chieftain was on the rise near the Misty Mountains, Sithrur, said to be as terrible and fierce as the formidable named orcs to come before him.

Sithrur was a giant white orc known to ride a ferocious jet black warg, easy to spot in a sea of those he commanded. He had strategy and ambition, and had already called upon the hordes nearby to unite behind him. If these other ill forces were wise enough to heed his call, their numbers could overwhelm the elves of Mirkwood, if not their allies in neighboring lands as well.

"Assassination," one of the councilmen had said spitefully, disbelieving. It was hardly a common approach to battling the orc. But if intelligence reports proved true, and Sithrur was as terrible and mighty as they claimed, a rally behind him could spell disaster.

"To cut off the head of the beast," Thranduil murmured thoughtfully, "could scatter its mindless minions to the wind."

"A large army cannot win a direct confrontation at their homestead," another man councilman opined. "But a small stealth team may succeed in getting close enough to kill him."

"It's theoretically low-risk, my King," said another, "Sithrur is not known to have spawned an heir, or has a clever enough deputy to take his place. If we succeed in killing the singular chieftain of an orc host, then the reward significantly outweighs the potential loss of a small team."

Legolas winced but this, he now understood to be part of his father's – and one day his – job: the weighing of life and loss against the gains of battle. As a warrior, he had long been willing to risk his life for a good cause. It was harder from this side, to be willing to order people to their deaths. It was a burden unimaginable, and yet borne so regularly and necessarily, and discussed so objectively here in his father's offices.

"The host around him would be large," Thranduil murmured. "What hope could there be for his assassins to come close enough for success, much less safety afterwards? The risk in numbers would be small for a stealth team, but if we are to send our best... we may not get them back."

"Maybe we needn't come so close," said one of the war advisers, Brenion, a decorated hero whom Legolas had watched and admired as an elfling and would train under as a novice warrior later on. "But we would have to send out soldiers of a particular quality, my King. There are, after all, shots that only a handful of elves in all of Arda can make."

Thranduil's eyes narrowed and his lips set in a thin line. He knew what Brenion was suggesting, they all did. The King steeled his expression to impassive again.

"Assemble the group as you see fit, Brenion," said Thranduil.

The legendary elven warrior opened his mouth to say something else, but Thranduil cut him off with a wave of his hand. "Yes, yes, Legolas may come. But if you would let a father speak with his son first."

With bows and muttered apologies, Brenion and the rest of Thranduil's councilmen excused themselves and hurriedly left him alone with the Prince. The great hall fell into silence as the rustle of their robes and murmur of conversations faded away with them.

"I thank you for letting me help in this mission, my King," Legolas said quietly, formally, as their settings demanded.

Thranduil huffed out a breath. "As if that presumptuous Brenion had left me much of a choice, speaking of you in such terms before the others. 'There are shots only a handful of elves in all of Arda can make?' I know now where from you get this conceit of yours."

"I can only hope I am as good as he claims."

Thranduil closed his eyes and sighed. When he reopened them, it was as if he were someone else, someone misplaced in the King's hall, a father only, not the father of a Kingdom. He grabbed one of Legolas' arms insistently.

"I command you to return to me," he said, though he's never looked or sounded less kingly in that moment. In Legolas' eye, he was something entirely more common, and heartbreaking. He was a father.

Legolas was tempted to lie, but only for a moment. He respected his father too much. Besides, it could be their last one alone, or their last one, period.

"It may not be in my power to follow-"

"Then find it," Thtranduil snapped. "Dredge it from whatever depths you can find. Remember who you are and where you're from. More than any other elven realm, Mirkwood demands everything out of everyone within it. We reach the end of our rope often, only to find there is always something left to tug and pull and gnaw on. There is always something left. You are the Prince of such a well-fought-for land and a people of much perseverance."

The King had been right. Sithrur was dispatched by three arrow shafts: one through his head, eye and heart, right before the horrified horde that followed him. Two of these came from Legolas' bow. Many of Sithrur's followers fled in fear of a large elven attack that never came, while others went in disorganized pursuit of his assassins, who had scattered in the forest. Only one of them would return to Thranduil's stronghold alive.

"Do you remember where they found you?" Thranduil asked, weeks later when Legolas was finally aware and on the mend in the healing wards. The younger elf strained, and pressed a hand to the side of his throbbing head.

"Some details still escape me," he admitted.

"You were badly injured," Thranduil recounted, "very much near death. You were no longer being pursued but the forest still held its regular dangers. I think you knew where you could be found, quickly, at that particular time." The King was offering him clues to jog his memory and help his recovery, and Legolas' eyes lit up in realization.

"It was the Quartermaster who found me," he said, with some amazement. "I remembered the supply routes."

"It's odd, isn't it?" Thranduil murmured thoughtfully, "How somehow, all the things you've seen and done prepare you for a point in life when you need them most-"

"Legolas, get up."

Aragorn's command broke through his misery and memory, like a knife slicing through skin and bone and into his heart. The tone was firm and familiar. It had broken through to him before. Most recently, he had been standing on gray, rocky ground before a sudden expanse of sun and sky. He had escaped a darkness that had literally just laid claim to a lifelong friend.

Gandalf fell, and Aragorn had asked him to get the hobbits up. They needed to stand. They needed to get moving. They had to set their loss aside, make for safety, and continue doing their job.

Little by little, Legolas' world re-expanded. There was a trembling body beyond the injury. It was still alive and it was going to fight to the very end. Beyond the body was his company, and they needed him. Beyond their company was the larger Earth, which in turn needed them. Arda needed them, and it was oh so very large, dwarfing – yes, dwarfing – his infinitesimal scruples.

It's just an injury, he told himself. He'd already pulled others up from crippling heartache and set his own aside. That – heartache- was harder wasn't it? This was nothing. After all, what was a little injury, in the face of the sworn duty they had to accomplish?

He regained awareness to find he was still on his hands and knees, and he realized his mental lapse had thankfully been quick. But the gasping breaths he could barely make were loud and clear enough for everyone to now know he was really struggling by now.

"Give him a moment, Strider," Merry said quietly. "He's hurt and he's about spent."

"Ah, Merry," Aragorn said, and Legolas felt himself being pulled up bodily, "Haven't you heard of these Mirkwood elves? There is always something left."

Aragorn sounded confident and jovial in repeating what Legolas had told him earlier in the journey, but Legolas gave him a sidelong glance and knew better. Aragorn was deadly serious, and calling upon Legolas' will and pride and promise with everything he could muster. The man hoisted the elf's arm over his shoulders. Legolas kept from recoiling only because it was a waste of both their strengths.

"Aragorn no," he protested instead, without much heat.

"We made good time," the man told him easily, bearing much of his weight as he began to walk forward quickly. "We are not so far behind that we can leave you to extended misery. Save your strength, mellon-nin. The Fellowship is in greater need of your sharp senses than your stubborn steps."

"For now," Legolas pointed out.

"Yes," Aragorn agreed. "Take rest while you can, my friend. As you know, only too soon we will need to run."

TO BE CONTINUED...