Author's note: I want to seriously thank Cheekybeak for her beta work on this story, and for her medical knowledge. She has been invaluable in brainstorming and compassionate in pointing out the weaknesses in Legolas and Ithildim's relationship and my arc for it, which I do not always naturally see. The way characterization can create—and affect—plot is endlessly fascinating to me. I highly recommend Cheekybeak's writing for a look at raw relationships with well-developed characters and driving plots. Relationships are not something that come naturally to me (in fiction or real life—god bless my partner's patience!), yet I am drawn to write them, nevertheless!

The necklace referenced is a plot point in Enough, that has not been fleshed out yet, as the story is still a WIP...

Nerd note: For those interested, I calculated the distance from Legolas' starting point in Ithilien to the southwestern most point of Belfalas (just to the west of Tolfalas, on the mainland) by looking at an overlay of a Middle-earth map with Europe, and then approximating that distance as the width of the country of Italy from northeast to southwest (which is about the size of the US state of Arizona), or about 237 miles. I have given Legolas a bit of a break here by approximating the distance at about 180 miles, instead, or roughly 60 leagues. (War horses could cover about 40 to 60 miles a day, so it is a hard 3 day's ride from Ithilien to Belfalas.) All in all, Legolas has been gone for a very long time (about four months), and woodelves can be wily, so I gave him quite a distance to wander.


CHAPTER SEVEN


Inland on the peninsula of Belfalas, Fall of Fourth Age 30

Legolas sits cross-legged on his cot in the pavilion we have set up near his own camp, but farther inland. He holds his wrist to his chest, and I wonder if it will have to be entirely rebroken and set again, because it is clearly broken. He must have been in terrible pain these recent weeks, but he was perhaps too caught up in the sea to know.

I can see it in his face as he stares past my shoulder to the wall behind me. His eyes have that look he gets sometimes when a bird's shadow shoots across the ground beside us, or we have ridden too close to the sea, or when thunderstorms roll in from the bay to break upon us at the mountains in summer. I think of it like the surface of a puddle beginning to freeze—each moment that passes, he struggles for the surface; each animal that steps in it stirs it, each degree either frees it or traps it, and Legolas is alternately anchored and drowning. It is horrifyingly confusing to watch and, I imagine, to experience.

But I know he is back now, because he has begun to move. He is chewing the inside of his lip—his lips are pursed to the side, and I can hear his teeth click together as he worries at his cheek. Eventually, he seems to bite too hard, and he startles himself, and his gaze snaps suddenly to me. His eyes are clear, and he blinks and his eyes widen as if they are dry—he clears his throat, but he does not speak.

I am standing several feet away from him, with my arms crossed and pressed against my chest, and, though he stares at me, I cannot move. I have done the initial fawning and crying and pulling him into my arms and now that all that adrenaline is gone, I know it is on to the tending.

But I am so very angry.

And while Legolas is mercurial, he is not a fool. And as much as I resent him some days for it, he knows me, and he is here enough to see past my silence, though I try my best to use my most passive face, as I remind myself that I have much to learn still from him, even though I am angry. After all, I have no idea what has happened since he left, all those moons ago. Perhaps there is more to it than I know—with Legolas, there usually is.

He is assessing me silently, and then his nostrils flare as they do sometimes when he is experiencing some intense emotion, and he glances down, and then back up, and he catches me up in his eyes as he speaks. "Ithildim..."

I do not answer him yet, because I do not know what to say, and I know whatever happens next will be important. He leans forward slightly over his injured arm but keeps his gaze steadily on me, and while there are a hundred thousand words I might choose, not a single one comes out.

Finally, I hold a hand out toward him as I turn away. "Stay," I say, and I call out of the tent for hot water and a healer's kit.

I learned enough from my father and on patrol to know the basics of what Legolas needs, and after Tinu very quickly but systematically fussed over him and ascertained that he was not in immediate danger of dying, Gimli and our two companions left the tent in a rush and left us here, in silence. I have found that unspoken commands being absolutely followed is one of the positives of co-leading Ithilien...

But I would almost rather not be alone with him right now.

Gimli sticks his head in and lifts a hand toward Legolas in acknowledgement as he hands over a small steaming pot, and I take the kit he has pinned in his armpit, and he ducks back out again.

I busy myself on the ground near the tent's entrance, mixing willow bark and marshmallow and a very mild sedative, but I can feel Legolas staring at me as I work, and when I glance up he is focused on my hands as they crush. I thought—knowing as he does the anger barely contained beneath the surface—that he would have been desperate for Gimli to stay here with us, but he is not.

He is focused entirely on me, and the quick motions of my hands, and though his uninjured hand tightens around his wrist and massages it and he scrunches his face, he does not look away as I reach into the kit and shake lint off the tea strainer. In fact, his brows furrow as if concentrating, and he suddenly says:

"I missed your hands, Ithildim."

I look up at him, but I do not answer, and then I go back to my work, standing up to find the small pile of his things we recovered at his campsite, for there is a tin cup, somewhere.

I find it beneath a nearly illegible, crumpled map, and there is a ball of yarn stuffed into it.

He has always travelled with the strangest things.

My anger fades slightly for this is so endearing. My skin feels less cold as I put the strainer on the cup and pour the tea into it. But my hands are shaking, and some of the bark and leaves miss the cup and burn at my fingers.

"I missed your voice and your patience and how you braid my hair back at night—" his voice has caught in his throat, and it is suddenly very hoarse, and he stops talking, and he looks down.

His hair is wild about his face, and there is a section of it whose strands are knotted and matted, I can tell, at his hairline.

He has clearly not tended it in weeks. Legolas has the kind of hair you cannot neglect, for it has a mind of its own. I know he has been away from himself for weeks. The evidence is so clearly before me that it is hard to remain angry.

But it burns me—it burns me so badly—for I have been so worried.

And so I have taken the cup in my hands, wrapped it up in a kerchief, and crossed to his cot before I can stop myself. I place his injured hand in his lap and raise the other to the mug. I am helping him lift it to his lips, but the moment my hand touches his, he starts to cry, and he cannot take the tea, and it hurts so much to watch, for Legolas does not cry, not in front of people, hardly even me.

Oh, he looks dreadful.

I kiss his forehead and pat his cheek and tell him not to cry, for there will be time for that later, and I need him to be himself—strong, present, and trying his very best, because I must know he is all right before I lose him to the sea again.

He is choking on his breaths as he nods, and he coughs, and he is drifting, so I tap his cheek harder than a pat, and he starts, and begins to drink.

I hold the cup to his lips until it is gone, and then I leave him sitting there on the cot for a moment, hands folded in his lap and staring at the ground. I lean out of the tent and tell the healer what I have given him.

I do not want to keep track of it; I do not think I can.

I sit down on the cot beside him and he turns to face me, knees knocking against each other as he twists his hips. He grimaces, and I reach out and straighten his legs, and take up his hands to undo the clasps at his wrists.

He is biting the inside of his cheek again. I undo the clasps at his chest, too, and help him to lift the shirt over his head, and to pull his arms out of it; we work his injured arm out carefully, and I pull off his the tunic completely. He is not wearing an undershirt.

His chest is paler than his arms and face, but still brown, and though he is hunched over like he hurts, there are not many marks still visible on his body. He is not looking at me, and his hair falls around his face so I cannot see him—he is embarrassed. There is much he has to say to me, I can tell, and the stories told by his injuries and his body and his tears are only the start of it...

I have my sleeves tied up around my upper arms, and I undo one of the straps of leather so it falls down, and then I loop Legolas' hair up in a loose knot at the nape of his neck, so it no longer hides his face.

I look at his body again and notice his necklace missing—he has worn that necklace every day since his sister died, years and years ago, and it is not there.

He is still not looking at me, so I put a hand under his chin, and tilt his face toward mine, so we are eye to eye, and very close.

"Legolas, where is your pendant?" I ask him.

He looks at me, and he shivers, and I realize the fall weather is cold to him, and I remember that elves are not infallible—I have not been reminded of this in so long, relatively; we have not been at war for so long—and I am scared again. We are delicate.

Legolas, too, is delicate, and I thought I had lost him. How did this happen?

But my thoughts are cut by his voice—it is quiet and choked by his sigh. "They took it," he says.

I have been looking at the swell around his forearm, but at this I stare back up at his face, and he is staring at his arm, too, but then glancing up at me, and then away, at the tent wall.

"Who took it?" I ask quickly.

"Some men," he says distractedly. "I was gone away—I was so far, Ithildim!—and they wanted my things, and I said no, but I could not stop them."

He is quiet.

And then: "I could not stop it. I saw it happen, and I was there, but I was not... Do you understand what I mean?"

He falls utterly silent now, besides his breathing, and I do know what he means—he was there, but he could do nothing to stop them because his body was three steps behind his mind, and his mind was three steps behind the world, caught up as he was in some current or another.

I try to tilt his head to me again, but he will not look, and he stares resolutely downward—I can feel the muscles in his neck strain against looking at me.

"What did they do to you?" I demand, but he just shakes his head. "Legolas!" I say, and I have grabbed his wrists, and he winces and bites back a grunt, and I somehow forgot his arm, and I have hurt him, and oh, I am sorry.

I am telling him I am sorry for hurting him, and he has leaned into me, and I have taken him up under his arm to get an answer, but still he is not talking.

"What did they do?" I ask him again, for I can think of a thousand things men might want to do to an elf, and none of them make me any less anxious.

This time he murmurs an answer, but he is so so quiet I can barely hear him. "They just took my things, Ithildim." He sighs. "My pendant and my crystals, and the money you packed for me."

"Oh, Legolas," I breathe. "Oh, I am sorry."

I always make him pack money when he travels. He does not like to use it, and he is better suited to bartering, but the men of Gondor these days—they prefer coins.

"It is all right," he says, and he has leaned into me, and breathed out slowly, and as he relaxes I feel his shoulders untense and his whole self shudders as he lets himself go; tucked as he is under my arm, I loosen my grip on his bicep and pull him close instead.

"Did they hurt you?" I finally ask him.

"Yes," he answers simply, and immediately, and he sounds far away. "You know I do not like when people take my things."

I almost laugh, and I feel him chuckle under my arm but then stop suddenly, as if he is hurting.

"When did this happen, Legolas?"

He does not answer, and he is so relaxed against my side I think for a moment that he has fallen asleep. So I sit up straight and turn him toward me, and look him straight in the face.

"When?"

"Oh," he says distractedly, and he tries to shift his hips straight again; I frown at him. "I do not know."

"Elbereth, Legolas!" I reprimand. "Was this the last time you were hurt or have you been hurt since then?"

He shakes his head and looks around the room, eyes darting from the tent entrance to his small pile of things and back to me, as if he has only just really realized where he is and what is going on.

"That was the last time I was hurt, Ithildim. I do not know when," he says. "I do not know."

I breathe deeply and remind myself how the addled mind works, and the tired mind, and the mind with trauma, and the mind of children when they are lost—"Tell me what you saw when it was happening," I say instead.

He frowns again, and forcibly straightens his hips. "I was listening to the surf and I felt the sand on the bottoms of my feet. And the way those tiny shelled creatures—who when they are dead spread themselves out like butterflies' wings—the way they suck at your toes. Have you felt it?" he asks distractedly.

I have not, but I tell him I have just to keep him talking.

"I remember those things," he continues. "And then a man was there, and he was talking to me, but I could not understand him. It was like when I am away for too long and I forget how Westron works. Do you know? How Gimli helps me?"

I nod. I know. Gimli recalibrates him every time.

"And then one was in my face, and then hurting me, and he took my things. And after that, what I saw—I watched the moon set into the morning."

He is far away again, and I take his hands in mine and shake his unhurt one once, and pinch at the fleshy part of his palm until he comes back to me.

"Tell me about the moon, Legolas," I say.

"It was the red moon, Ithildim," he says, and he suddenly looks at me, and so I turn him back to me, so we are once again facing one another wholly.

I put my hands on his shoulders to keep him here, looking only at me, and he does not chew his lip now but his hand is fiddling about— he grabs the hem of my tunic and is picking at an uneven knot while I study him.

"Did you have a red moon, Ithildim? Where you were?" he asks suddenly, and with such honest curiosity that I find my throat closing, and I cannot answer him.

Of course, we have had a red moon—he has only been sixty leagues from us this whole time! It breaks my heart to realize he honestly does not know that, and that the red moon was a fortnight ago. He does not know where he is, or how close he has been to home. And he has been so, so lost.

But all I say is: "Yes, Legolas, we had a red moon, too."

"Oh," he says.

"I was looking for you under the red moon. I did not find you..."

He is watching me now, and his eyes are wide— entirely too large in his wan face—and the circles below them look swollen. He shivers again, and I turn him back toward me, but he jerks away so suddenly—for the third time—that I at first become angry again—I have been terrified for so long, and he pulls away from me when I have finally found him?

And then I realize, and I do not even have to ask him, for he feels the question in my touch—as distant as he is. This connection is what made our troop so successful, but it has not always served us well as lovers. But, in this instant, I am grateful for it, for he offers without prompting: "They punched me in the hip and something pulled, Ithildim; and when he grabbed my arm where it had been broken, it popped. I was so distracted by it. I could not do a thing—all I could hear was the surf, and their words were like soft nonsense in between waves. I let them take it all, for I could not stop them."

I let him turn his legs forward again, and then I stand from the cot, and lay him on his back. I have too many questions about these months and those injuries to ask him right now without overwhelming the both of us, so I set to assuring myself he is hale enough. I take a moment to brush errant hair back from his forehead, and then kiss his lips lightly. When I stand up, he smiles at me in the way that he sometimes does—it is the smile he has when he is feeling guilty, or too grateful—and then he starts to stretch out his legs, but I step in to help instead.

I need him to know, however angry I am, that I still care. And if I cannot say that right now with words, I will show him with my actions.

He lets me straighten them out, and I press him more fully into the cot, so just the small of his back is off its surface. I brush hair back from his face again—it is a habit—and start an inspection of him: his chest, and his neck, and his arms. I feel at his glands and press at his ribs, which seem to be bruised, for he gasps once, grits his teeth, and looks away. His arm has been broken for a long time—maybe since the sea first took him—but it has been fixed more than once. I do not know how, and I think that will be someone else's job to find out.

He is thinner than I have seen him—even after spider bites when you shrink away to nothing for a time, when you are so sick—and his hipbones are stark against the waistline of his trousers; I tug at them, and glance at his face, and he nods. I work them down over his hips and his thighs and then pull them over his ankles and off his feet. I leave his socks on, for I know he is cold. There is a blanket folded at the head of the cot, and I pick it up, and lay it over his arms and chest, and go back to inspecting his hip.

It has been a fortnight, but it still looks painful—it is a brownish-yellow color all over the skin, and it must have been such an angry purple when it happened. I wonder if it had been worse than that, too, and, if it was, how he walked on it for all that time.

But instead of asking I only breathe, "Oh, that could not have felt good to fix."

"It did not," he sighs, and he sounds so grounded when he says that that I find myself peering up at him, and squinting at his face to see how real his presentness is. "Tinu can check it," he continues. "I do not want you to have to do it—it pains me, and you will know it, and I would not ask that of you, after what I have already put you through."

I do not say anything because I do not know what to say. I swallow and look down and go back to my work: running my hands down his thighs, massaging his knees to feel for swelling, feeling at his calves and kneading at his tendons. I eventually take his ankles in my hands and turn them gently; I take each foot in both hands and press along the top, on the arch, and then out along his toes.

He does not react to any of it, except to breathe more deeply, and so I decide that his hip and his arm are the only parts of him that really hurt—apart from the sundry cuts and bruises—at least now. Tinu can check the back of him—I am reassured enough.

When I am done, I pull the blanket over him, and move back up the cot to sit at his head.

He is gone, and I have not noticed.

But it is not the sea-longing—he sleeps.

I place a hand on his chest, and feel the rise and fall of it, and I match it to my own. He has partially come back, though I have found him. If we had not wandered along the coast on a whim, he would still be gone, and alone here and, probably—in a few months—dead.

We sit that way for a long time—me, ruminating and stewing in my miserable hypotheticals and he, hurt and exhausted and asleep.

It is never, ever easy with him.

Finally, I put my hand under the blanket, and I let my hand sink into his chest. Beneath the blanket, he is warm, and though his sternum is hard under my hand, it is like the heat of him rises around me, and cradles it, and I remember all the things I love about him, and all the things I missed.

Ithildim, I missed your hands, he had said—the first thing he said to me besides my name in all our months apart. And though it sounds trifling, I know it is Legolas' way of saying much more. And I missed his hands, too, for in his hands and the things he will do with them—bake, write, garden, love me—he speaks with them far more than he does with his words.

But I know this thing that has happened—his absence—whatever happened in all those months that he was gone... This thing will require us to learn to speak, or we will not come out of it at all, at least not in love.

He moves in his sleep and his fingers seek out my wrist and wrap around it, and hold it tightly; his callouses scratch at my skin—Oh, I missed his hands.

I find myself dropping my head to my chest, and silently crying.

I hear someone at the door, and then they have stepped inside, and I do not have to turn around to know it is Tinu. She can wait.

"Leave us," I say without looking—I do not want her to see this. We are, both of us, so vulnerable right now.

I hear her tidy up the healer's kit, and then she says as she leaves the pavilion: "Linden has sent a bird to Faramir, and I expect Faramir is riding for Ithilien. They will be here in two days. We can take him home."

I do not answer with words, but I nod, and I know she sees it.

She leaves, but after a moment, there is the swish of the curtains and her voice is back inside again. "I have left a vial inside the door. Give it to him, one way or another. Then I will come and fix him up, and you can go elsewhere, and rest."

I clear my throat and nod my head, and find myself saying—very roughly—"Thank you, Tinu."

And she does not say anything, but I hear the flap close behind her, and I pull off my own tunic, and shrug under the blanket beside him, and I wrap my arms around him. He turns his his head into my chest—it rests under my chin. I am barely breathing, but he sleeps.

I stare at the tent wall, and wonder how we got exactly here.


This is the last of my 3 chapter update—thanks for reading! More to come. Please consider leaving a review on the way out!