Author's Note: This chapter is longer than previous chapters. I take some liberties with Legolas' lineage in this chapter, as most of us do, but I try to keep it within the realms of canon. We will hear news from Mirkwood in the next chapter, and then move towards the end. Thank you for reading thus far!

Disclaimer: Do not own.

Part 2c: Interviews in the Library

To Mithrandir:

"Take this ring, Master, for your labours will be heavy; but it will support you in the weariness you have taken upon yourself. For this is the Ring of Fire, and with it you may rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill."

-Círdan of the Grey Havens, "Appendix B: The Tale of Years," RotK

One month after the Council of Elrond, three days before Part 1
TA 3018, November 28th

Legolas sat at a short table in the library in Elrond's main house. The table was near to a window, and midday sun poured through it as he studied a map of the Misty Mountains closely. It showed many paths through their peaks from the River Gladden in the south all the way north to one of Anduin's sources at Langwell, with notations on safe passage and the last date attempted written in the map's margins. Though the elves of Mirkwood did not leave their home often, they left often enough that this was a map Legolas wanted his folk to be able to use. So after another few minutes of considering, he flattened a roll of parchment and weighted its corners with books. Then, he dipped his pen into the ink jar at his right elbow and painstakingly began to draw.

As he copied the map, slow as a snowdrop's opening after a long winter, Legolas thought on a conversation he had had with the Lord Elrond earlier that day. He was still not entirely sure he had not offended Elrond, but his words were said and the damage done.

A few hours earlier, an hour after sunrise

"How are you enjoying the library, Legolas?" Elrond asked Legolas as he pulled out a chair across the table from him and settled into it comfortably, crossing his legs.

Until that point, the library had been very quiet, with only the occasional scuff of an elven shoe, the ruffle of parchment and book pages, or the heavier step of a man breaking the silence. In his studying, however, Legolas failed to notice any of these noises around him, and so started when Lord Elrond appeared across from him, with his voice and his self and a chair. The notes Legolas had been making were splotched suddenly with ink when he jumped, and he looked up at Elrond, embarrassed to feel a blush burning from his cheeks to his ears as he met Elrond's eye.

"I am not always so easily startled!" Legolas exclaimed quietly. "My mind was far from here. I apologize for my reaction."

"There is no need to apologize," said Elrond, looking at Legolas evenly.

"I am enjoying the library very much, Lord Elrond," Legolas finally answered. "As I am sure you are aware, many of my people choose not to read or write for our tongue does not translate well to the page, and as such we do not have access to so grand a library in Mirkwood. There are only so many books the Elvenking can amass, after all! When I want something to read, I often end up perusing tactical reports, for I have read already all the lore we possess. It is not the most exciting, always, old battle strategy."

"That it is not, Legolas," Elrond said, smiling. "And what have you found of interest in the library of the Noldor so far?"

"Well, lord…" he paused, "Old battle strategy! I am in this predictable, I guess."

Elrond smiled at him, meeting Legolas' careful grey eyes as the younger elf corked the ink and laid down his pen, and then smiled back.

Legolas wiped ink off his hands onto his leggings under the table as he continued."And then, of course, some songs I wanted to learn in Westron, and some history of our kind. Though some of the more recent of it does not seem at all quite right," Legolas finished, though he startled himself with his last statement, and he hurried to add, "Though that is by no fault of yours, Lord Elrond; it is that we in Mirkwood are not so well known to our kin and loremasters in this Age, so it would not be anyone's duty to know."

Legolas had pulled his hands out from his lap and clasped them on the table now in front of him, noticing that he had only managed to smear the ink on his writing hand from his thumb all the way up his wrist, and probably, he thought, make a mess of his breeches.

"It would not be our duty to know what?" Elrond asked calmly, tilting his head in interest.

"Well," said Legolas slowly, feeling quite uncomfortable now that he had breeched this topic with one of the most learned beings in Middle-earth. "The…" he paused looking for the right word, "The culture of the Greenwood."

"I have not traveled there since Thranduil moved his people even further north, almost 2000 years ago," said Elrond.

"Yes," Legolas said thoughtfully. "Never in my life did I meet an elf from another land in my own halls. Except for some traders from our kin in Lorien, from whom we are otherwise quite wholly estranged..."

Legolas seemed to remember to whom he was speaking, and he sighed. "But we are just Silvan elves, and I don't imagine I therefore have much to tell you that you do not already know."

"Just Silvan elves?" asked Elrond, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes. We are creatures of our forest, and Mirkwood's Silvan are said by most to be rustic and simple, moved like the wind to wander and run and feel, which I do not think is a bad way to be," Legolas murmured, looking down at the hands clasped before him, more used to holding bows than paintbrushes, to grasping tree limbs than gripping pens. "It has been many years since I was so deluded to believe my people as clever as your Noldor, or even I as cunning as my King."

Legolas met Elrond's eyes and tilted his head to the right so that his honey hair spilled over his shoulder, and he frowned for a moment. "But I am not embarrassed by us," he finally said. "Even here, in this very different place."

Elrond sat motionless and studied the wood-elf's face, who did not drop his gaze as Elrond looked at him.

"And why should you be embarrassed to be a wood-elf?" Elrond asked.

"I am not embarrassed by it," Legolas said, reading Elrond's reactions in his brows as he spoke," but if I were, it would be because we are thought by both elves and other races alike to be disobedient and dim, sometimes craven or thoughtless, and naïve, yet wild and tempestuous and dangerous still—and thus incapable of ruling ourselves without wiser and more refined intervention."

Elrond glanced almost guiltily to the shelves behind Legolas as he spoke, but Legolas waved a dismissive hand, and for a moment Elrond saw a flash of a not-yet King set out from Doriath to the wider world so many millenia ago.

"I had read all that before I came to your library, my Lord," said Legolas. "I grew up, after all, with a small collection of books, selected by my Sindarin kin. I just read here more of the same."

Elrond nodded. "And what about that which you read here is wrong?"

Legolas frowned. "It is not wrong, necessarily, just contradictory. One account says Oropher's Sindarin elves took on the culture and language of the Silvan elves and thus disregarded much of their own; another says King Thranduil speaks only Sindarin in his home, which was maybe true for a time—I do not know; and another yet says that the elves in Mirkwood and Lorien in this Age no longer speak a Silvan dialect at all! I know not of Lorien elves, but I know what I speak, and what we speak with our people, and on the field with our troops."

"I see," said Elrond. He leaned now toward Legolas. "And what about you?"

Legolas looked at Elrond quite wholly in the face and did not speak for several moments. He considered the question. Finally Legolas leaned back in his chair and spoke.

"That question has many possible meanings, Lord Elrond," Legolas finally said, slipping his hands back into his lap.

"You are perceptive," said Elrond. "Let me ask it in another way, more directly: what are you, Legolas?"

Legolas considered Elrond again before speaking. While Legolas had not always held his silence so well, he had learned over the years to slow down his speech and allow room for private deliberation. When Legolas opened his mouth this time to speak, his words seemed reflective and intentional, but it sounded also to Elrond as if Legolas had answered this question many times before, but perhaps not ever with the answer he gave now.

"When I was younger, I thought one of my lieutenants—at the time a Captain; Captain Amonhir—did not like me. I knew he called me to our Commander 'Silvan Oropher,' and I was very rash then, and defensive, and I did not understand my own history, nor find it funny. I was more fickle in my moods then than I am now, and I floundered as I learned to take and give direction; I was overwhelmed easily to distraction by the song of the woods, but leapt into battle with a yearning for justice and a loyalty to my people that startled my superiors.

"I had a lot to learn, but even then I was not craven or thoughtless or dim, nor naïve, for I grew up in a darkness that I had no choice but to fight. I was as joyful then as yet I am, but less wise, for I was so young, and I could not handle my lieutenant's unbridled criticism without Ithildim's calming presence at my side. After an adventure with Mithrandir before the Watchful Peace, that Lieutenant and I reconciled our differences; I grew quite a bit, and we were able to begin our relationship anew, this time with respect. That is all to say, my Lieutenant is a wise and watchful Silvan, and he used what he knew of himself and what he knew of me to force me to grow, for I could not have survived Mirkwood another year as I was then."

Legolas stopped speaking, but Elrond caught his eyes again. "Tell me more, Legolas."

He looked at Elrond silently, and then said, "All right."

Legolas leaned into the table slightly so that his upper arms pushed against its edge, and his hair trailed the wood as he began to speak again.

"To me, the wood-elves are the moon and the sun—always shifting and turning and changing, showing parts of themselves here and there—while the Sindar are the quiet stars, ever guiding, ever steady, ever true. It is strange, then, to me, that wood-elves love best the stars. But that was not your question," Legolas fell quiet for a moment, eyes on his notes and abandoned pen.

"But I want to hear more of this answer," said Elrond.

Legolas felt nervous, but he was in this Lord's house and he would not disrespect him in his hall, so he took a deep breath and complied.

"My father did not marry until my grandfather moved north, right before Oropher passed to the Hall of Mandos in the last great battle of the Second Age," Legolas continued. "My mother was the moon and my father was the stars, but I was neither: I was an amalgamation of their peoples, and they did not know what to do with me. I was the second child, and I grew much wilder much faster than their first—or at least I have been told—and then my mother was lost to me when I was still young, and it became cold to grow up in a house of stars when I was born of the moon and so like the sun.

"And even with both of those worlds within me, I cannot say that I am not still dangerous and tempestuous and wild, as the books would say of my kind," Legolas said. "But there is much the books do not say about me and mine, much that is good and gentle and wise, and oh! oh so faithful.

"So I am, I guess," Legolas finished, "Sindarin and Silvan, though maybe most Silvan at heart, but I am with my whole self and my whole soul a wood-elf, and a citizen of Mirkwood, and a child of Middle-earth."

Legolas dropped his eyes from Elrond to study the book in front of him on the table.

"So that is my answer to your question," he said. "If we are speaking about culture at all, that is."

Elrond was leaned back in his chair with his arms crossed upon his chest and a faint smile pulling at the corners of his lips when Legolas looked up.

"Have I offended you?" asked Legolas.

"No," said Elrond quietly, "you have enlightened me. For one so young and Silvan," he winked here, "you are wise beyond your years."

Legolas laughed lightly, lifting his hands again from his lap to fold them on the table. "Now that I am not often told!"

"Indeed?" said Elrond with a smile, and Legolas nodded. "Well, perhaps before you leave my company you will teach me some more about Mirkwood's wood-elves, and your home."

"If you wanted to learn more, I would tell you," Legolas looked down at the book in front of him, and the notes he had taken on woodland battle in his own handwriting to his right.

"Lord Elrond," Legolas said now, almost meekly, his eyes still considering his notes.

Elrond uncrossed his legs and looked at Legolas evenly. "You wish to know when you will be allowed to part from this place."

Legolas for a moment almost looked scared, but then he nodded.

"I have a duty to my king and army, and a company to lead. I cannot stay away from Mirkwood much longer while my soldiers suffer Sauron's evil," Legolas said, looking now at Elrond with such despair and conflict in his face that Elrond leaned across the table, arm extended, to brush a lock of errant hair from Legolas' eyes. Then Elrond put a healer's hand on the younger elf's temple to ease his discomfort.

"No one will suffer Sauron's evil for much longer, Legolas," said Elrond. "For we will either succeed as one, or come maybe to the end of all things. And for my part, I know that wherever you are as this war rages on, you will be brave and true and as loyal to your comrades as ever you were."

Legolas looked at Elrond sharply at this—not sure he wanted to understand the implications of his statement—and his eyes narrowed pensively. Elrond rasied his other hand to the other side of Legolas' head and held his gaze, dark and light grey eyes close together and constant; Elrond could hear Legolas' steady breaths as he spoke his next words.

"You will be well, son of Thranduil," said Elrond. "And you will soon understand."

And then Elrond dropped his hands from the younger elf's face, placed a hand on his shoulder and gently squeezed it, and then stood from his chair and was gone from the library.

Legolas' head felt clear, and his mood light, so he closed the books he had opened, stacked his parchment, looked around the room to see if he could get away with his next move, and then slipped out the window. Legolas hit the ground in a crouch and sprang into a run, making for the walls that held the forests from Elrond's valley, and seeking a haven, for just a few hours, from this delicate political world of secrecy and half-truths, those things which he never had, and never would, really understand.

Legolas drew now the borders of Rivendell on his own map, and labeled it thusly, before blowing on the ink and leaning back, waiting for it to dry before continuing. He was startled for the second time that day to look up and see someone sitting silently in the chair in front of him, the very same one Elrond had sat in earlier.

"Mithrandir!" said Legolas. "What brings you here?"

"You!" said Mithrandir. "I wanted to talk to you about the Fellowship."

"Whatever for?" asked Legolas, though he was beginning to think more and more that he knew why he kept being sought out by Elrond at odd times.

"Gimli son of Gloín is joining the quest for the dwarves, and Boromir of Gondor for the men," said Mithrandir. "There is still much debate over who to send for the elves. Aragorn wants someone pure of heart."

Legolas gave a short laugh, "And good luck to him in that endeavor!"

"Would you go?" asked Mithrandir quickly but quietly, barely more than a whisper.

"Would I what?" asked Legolas sharply. He hissed as he realized he had blotted the map with the palm of his hand as he watched Mithrandir talk. A bit of blurry Tengwar was now printed backward on the heel of Legolas' palm.

Mithrandir grinned. "Would you go with me on the quest?"

Legolas looked at the ink on his hand, and then his ruined map, and then at Mithrandir, who watched him closely. He watched Mithrandir back for several seconds, absolutely still, before responding.

"I would go," Legolas finally said.

"Hm," said Mithrandir. Then: "Who would you select for the elves?"

"Me?" asked Legolas, with a smile that reminded Mithrandir of a much younger person. "I… I do not know. I would perhaps send someone mighty and storied and brave, or someone very loyal, with much kindness and patience and warmness of soul, someone with such natural leadership, like Ithildim. I would send perhaps Ithildim if I would not worry for his return."

Gandalf took off his hat and looked across the table at Legolas. "Those are good reasons to send Ithildim."

"Are you sending Ithildim?" Legolas asked suddenly, with a surprise. "I am his second and I would have to lead then alone. But if it is what is best for Middle-earth then it is what is best for me," he finished.

Mithrandir shook his head. "No, I do not think we are sending Ithildim."

Legolas stared again at Mithrandir without speaking, unsure of what to say.

Mithrandir ignored Legolas' eyes and instead pushed his chair back and stood. He held out a hand to the elf across the table from him.

"Will you come with me?" Mithrandir asked.

Legolas pushed his chair back a little too loudly for the library. "Will I what?"he whispered urgently.

"Will you help an old man to lunch and keep his company for a while," Mithrandir said with a smile, holding out his arm for Legolas to take as he rounded the table.

"Ai Elbereth," Legolas muttered softly, taking Mithrandir's arm. "You will make me old too soon with all your twisted words, Mithrandir."

Mithrandir smiled. "You are a delight to see react."

Legolas guided Mithrandir through the library's open archway and when he threw back his head and laughed it was like sunshine.

Mithrandir smiled as Legolas began to talk to him about the beauty he saw in the carved benches of Imladris, and the great joys he had found in hobbits, and the annoyed nature of the most recent missive from Commander Lostariel. His voice, babbling comfortingly like a brook, made Mithrandir's heart swell.

There was not on his arm the mightiest warrior, nor the wisest elf, nor one who would by his actions alone change the future of Middle-earth—there was not a perfect being, if ever one existed. But there was there a light heart and a kind soul, and laughter that could draw anyone from the edge of despair and send them forth with confidence to face whatever foe might come.

Mithrandir let go of Legolas' arm and patted him on the back when they reached the dining hall, and then he called over Bilbo and introduced him to the elf. Mithrandir watched Legolas' reaction with delight, as Bilbo finally met a child of the Elvenking.

Thank you for your time. Next we enter part 3! Please consider leaving a review.