I fall, and the fear is like nothing I have ever felt before. It is black as pitch down here, down where there is nothing but the rain and the wind that streams past my ears. I cannot see: I cannot see what lies beneath, I cannot see the river although I can hear it. I cannot see what I plummet toward and all the while there is the gut wrenching sense of nothingness all about me. My heart trips and hurts in my chest, my stomach is an icy needle of desperate panic and all I know is fear. I am to die, I am sure of it.

My mind shrieks at me – a blank and wordless cry of panic – but at the same time there are two thoughts that come to me. The first is that I am not to die alone; that the elf falls with me and once again I have allowed it, once more I have failed him, once more I could not stop this. The second is a more unkind thought and it comes to me in a voice not dissimilar to that of my father. It points out that I am a foolish, foolish dwarf for allowing myself to share his fate this way. I have leapt into the darkness for him for the second time in my life, and now I am to die for it. I have no time in which to truly explore either of these thoughts.

I hit the water and it is like hitting stone. It is sharp and painful but then there is nothing but the cold. My fall is arrested, suddenly and agonisingly, but now I have no air and all of the warmth is driven from me in a single moment. For a time I am numbed, too stunned to even know myself or what has happened. I am swept away in water colder than the deepest part of winter, so cold it is raw and bitter against my skin. I cannot tell where the cold ends and I begin, I am nothing but formless thought floating in black iciness without self or sensation, but then I hit against something. That I can feel, that I can cling onto, and with my sense of Gimli reasserted I realise that I cannot breathe.

I claw and kick and fight. I wrestle the water, I am angry and frightened but I will not meet my end. I have survived the fall – although in what condition I cannot tell, every fibre of me is both numb and hurt at the same time – but I will not come to an end now, I will not.

When I reach the surface I feel the air against my face and it feels like quicksilver, like sweetness fresh against my skin. I gasp air until I am choking, I inhale water and spray and am plunged back under more times than I can count before I no longer feel as though my lungs are on fire. It is not enough, I snatch my breath in stolen moments in between falling back beneath the waves, but I am alive.

I can feel rain against my face when I am free of the river and it feels soft now where before it was harsh. Next to the cruelty that lies beneath the surface this winter storm is nothing. I feel it brush against my eyelids, I feel it caress upon my cheeks; there and then gone again. The sound of the water is a presence all by itself – it fills my ears and my mind completely. Beneath the water it is a muffled hush, echoing deep in my heart. Above the water it is a huge sound; a wrathful roar that terrifies me even further.

There is no sense of which direction I face, no sense of how fast I travel although I know that it is fast indeed. I am jostled and jolted, I hit things in the water – debris from the storm, rock and stone and the cliff face itself. The cold has numbed me but I know that I am being hurt, I know that it happens but my concern is only to live. I do not know which direction I face – it is black as pitch – but I know that I will be washed into the Anduin if I do not get out of this river. I will drown, I will be pulled under, I will hit something that will crush my skull or snap my spine and that will be the end of Gimli. I must get free!

I begin to fight again, and this time I seek only to move in one direction. To the side, I must get to the edge of the water. I must seek the shallows, anyplace where I might get my feet under me or find something to cling to. It is risky – the edge of the river is where the rocks will be – but I must chance the risk. I have no other options.

I fight and I wrestle the churning water. My arms and legs are like dead weights, dragging me down but still I fight. I choke and gasp, I breathe in the river itself, but still I fight. I can think of nothing but this battle, my mind is empty of everything except how very frightened I am, but still I fight. I am exhausted, blind and afraid. I have never known cold as deep as the cold I feel right now, I have never known something to steal everything that I am so thoroughly. I fight, because what else can I do? It has become my world.

When I am grabbed there is nothing of me left to feel surprise or relief. I feel a hand curl about my arm, a grip so hard it is crushing and I know who it is. I do not know who I am, I do not even know what it is I am fighting for any more. I do not know anything but cold and dark, the sense of floating in painful nothingness. I know nothing, and yet still I know who has found me. I know because it is the most constant thing in my life: the sun rises, one season follows another, and there is one who watches for me and is there every time I have need of him. Every single time.

I no longer need to fight but for a while I continue in any case. I know not how effective I am, my movements feel weak and uncoordinated but just for a while I carry on. When I cannot – when my strength is finally spent – I hear my name called out. I hear a voice over the roar of the river cursing me, calling me all manner of names and the anger in his voice is worse than that of the river.

Air! Where has the air gone?

I draw it back into my lungs in a heave and a choke. I cough and take in water as much as air, but I had not realised I had stopped. I am losing myself to the cold and the darkness, I am drowning.

The voice of my friend – his name, I cannot recall his name – still calls me terrible names but he is less angry with me. He tells me to rest, to let him bear me onward, but I am to breathe and to hear him. I am not to leave him here in the darkness by himself.

I do as I am instructed… I have been here before.

I remember flames and darkness. I remember stone all about me and a voice by my side, talking to me through an eternity of blind fear. I did not know myself then either, and yet he was there. He is always there.

I float on the blackness of my mind, I hear snatches of past conversations and dream odd waking dreams. It is like a fever, but it is softer… it is like falling asleep. I hear the voice and it keeps me from leaving entirely, and for a time I am annoyed that it will not leave me alone and let me go elsewhere – somewhere where the cold and the fear cannot touch me. Even so I remain and I breathe and I endure, and eventually something changes.

There is solidity again; there… beneath my feet there is solid ground. I feel a different cold against my cheek – the roughness of muddy sand, coarse and metallic with river sediment. Water still laps at my feet but I am free of it and I can breathe unfettered, and so I choke and bark and I vomit water until I feel wrung out and hollow. I am dragged, I feel arms beneath me and the ground scraping by until the sound of the river begins to fade. It is still there, but it is no longer all I hear.

I can hear the rain again and now it sounds quite fine to me. It hisses and sings upon water and sodden sand, a brittle and pretty noise. I can feel it upon my skin, although only barely. I have never known cold the way that I know it now.

The ground beneath my dragging heels changes from sand to pebbles, then to more solid stuff and now grass and weeds catch at my boots. I can smell wet leaves mouldering around me, I can feel my world close and shrink as I am pulled beneath something sheltered and cramped and then I know nothing else.

~{O}~

I float upon nothingness. I dream of sensation and sound and variations of light and darkness. I hear voices and recall nothing of what I hear after I have heard them. I dream the dreams of the exhausted and the hurt, I dream them for a long time.

When I wake it is to hard ground, cold like I have never felt it before and a complete absence of memory that might tell me how I got here. It is daylight and so I can see about me, but only barely. Something blocks my light.

I am in the tiniest of spaces, and after a while I realise that I am in the deep void beneath the roots of a fallen tree. There is dry soil sticking to my clammy skin, dead leaves that rustle and crack when I move. I can see the faint silver lace of tiny spider webs between the fine traceries of long dead roots and all that I can smell is the reek of river and fear. I am not warm, not by any stretch of the imagination – my clothing is water logged and it is winter – but I am certainly not dead and that is for certain. A more perfect shelter could not have been found, even if I am crammed in here like a beetle.

I see finally why the light is so dim in here. Legolas lies beside me, out in the open and beyond the shelter of the tree. He has blocked me in here, sheltering me from the wind with his own body, filling the void with whatever warmth he can provide. Legolas, who has no cloak and who has saved my life yet again. Legolas, who I cannot dare believe is still alive.

He is white as snow; eyes closed and hollowed with purple skin about them. He seems flat and still… still, as he never is. There is no spark there, no movement. No Legolas.

I reach out across the distance that separates us and my hand shakes and trembles. I wipe back the hair that lies limp across his face – no longer the gold of summer. I pick it from his face carefully, too frightened by what I am going to find to rush things. I wipe clean some of the dirt from his face but all I do is expose that terrible whiteness, and then finally I lay my hand against his chest. A beat of my heart, two beats… five and then ten.

Nothing. There is nothing.

My own breath sticks in my throat and I hear the sound that I make – a ragged hitch of air, stuttering and small. The grief that steals over me is a blooming of hot ice, sapping every thought and feeling until I can think of nothing… nothing at all. I try to let out my breath, I try and it falters and chokes. This is not happening, this is a dream… it is not happening.

Legolas.

My hand fists in his jerkin, clenched tightly there upon his chest. He is icy… so very cold. But elves can weather the cold, elves run about in the snow and the deep winter frost without boots or cloak, I have seen them. Elves are strong, Legolas has never been beaten by anything before. Legolas is the wind and the blistering summer heat, he is the storms and the smell of spring in the air after a long winter. He is more alive than any creature I have ever met in any of my days; it sings in him and some days I can hear it… some days it burns against my skin where I walk at his side.

He is so cold and so still. There is nothing.

No…

He would not leave this way. He has lived all of the years within his forest, a battle that started so long ago that cities have risen and fallen whilst he has fought. He has walked by my side through darkness and beneath the mountains, we have run across endless plains together and survived battles none of us ever truly expected to return from. He has sat alone in the darkness for me, he has endured these long months with a damaged heart and the call of far distant shores in his ears. He has dragged me from the edge, time after time, and he would not leave me this way. Selfish, cruel elf… he would not!

Please.

What is inside of me is too big; a burning constellation that I cannot make sense of or contain. It is fire and ice and grief and rage, it is too big… I do not know what to do with it. I withdraw my hand. I cannot stand to feel him so still; it is not my Legolas. He is never still. I watch his face though, and I try to resolve this thing before me as the elf that I know. I watch him as my breath strangles in my throat, suddenly raw and sore. I might fly away with the wind, I might fall apart right here with the grief that I feel burning my skin from the inside, but then I see it.

A faint curl of breath, white against the cold air.

It is barely anything at all; a wisp of nothing. I hold my breath even until my heart hammers in my chest, desperate and urgent for air. I do not release it until I see it again – there, I am certain! It is a breath, it is life… he lives!

Cradled by interlocking roots and upon a bed of dry, dead leaves, sodden and battered and hurt I hold my face in my hands and I weep like a child.

~{O}~

We walk through long grasses in a clearing deep in the wood. It is early summer and the sunset is warm and fragrant, a wine coloured sky fading to navy before us and with bright golden light behind. Birds sing, the air is cooling and insects zip and dart from the grass around us. Everything is peaceful; I have never felt my heart so at ease as it is right now.

The elf walks at my side. His hair is loose and brushed from his face by a warm breeze, he has no weapons about him and he walks with no boots upon his feet. He is smiling, his fingers brush the tops of the grass and he watches everything but only in the appreciation of the beauty he walks in. Legolas shines when he walks in harmony with his Song. I have learned to recognise it in him.

I remember this place. We walked here in the summer, before our ill-fated hunting trip and before the Shadow took hold of the elf. I remember it, because I remember this peace. Legolas brought me here; he wished to show me his wood the way that he sees it. He wished that I might see the good and not simply the darkness of his home.

I recall the change I saw in him then; how brightly his eyes shone and how light he seemed as he walked beneath these trees. I recall the sense of a place blessed, I recall that I was happy here. But this time something is wrong, it is different this time.

Legolas' hands… they are not scarred. They were damaged and barely healed when we walked here last, but now they are pale and unblemished. The sky does not change as we walk, it remains frozen in time. We walk with the setting sun at our backs but it does not set. We walk, but this clearing – small… I recall that it was small – it does not end.

It is a dream. I know it, just as I know that the elf walking at my side is not Legolas, but I do not fight it. I am tired… so very tired. This is a good place, I am happy to walk here again.

"I am sorry, Legolas," I say.

He looks at me quizzically. He is smiling; nothing more than curl of his mouth, a brightening of his eyes, but he smiles at me the way he smiles so infrequently. Legolas is happy and I have missed it… ai, I have missed it in him.

"I am not really here, Gimli," he tells me. It is nothing I do not know already. I know why I am here, I know what happens elsewhere and I know that he may not be there when this dream fades and I wake.

I do not want to leave this place, I wish to remain in this happiness with every breath in my body. But I need to say it to him – I need it.

"I have failed you, over and over again," I tell him. "I did not understand it before, but I understand now."

Away from here, in the place that I hide from: the place where I know I lie icy cold and hurt, where I am buried in the roots of a tree. There, I have left him again. He needs me, he needs me more than he has ever needed me before but I am weak, and I have left him alone. My body has betrayed me, I do not even know if he is alive. That tiny curl of life that I saw in him, it was so fragile: a guttering flame caught in a winter wind.

Does he live? I do not know. I have left him, and I do not know if I wish to wake.

"I have been there at your side and yet still failed you, time after time," I continue. The elf at my side is not him, but I speak as though he is here. "I have been so very angry with you. You have carried me for so long, been a better friend than I have ever deserved and never once have you said a single word about it. You have borne your own suffering and have shamed me, I had thought myself worthy but you have put me to the test and I have failed. I have not been there for you the way that I should have, I have been helpless to stop the things that have happened. I have blamed you, but it is because you have shown me so lacking. It is not your blame to bear, and I am sorry."

It is a long speech, long and without pause and I feel no better for having finally put word to what I feel. When I look at him though, his smile has not lessened. He seems surprised more than anything.

"That is what has been weighing you down this whole time Gimli?" he asks. His tone is gentle, and at any other time this understanding in him would incense me but I am trying to move past such things. I have thought myself fully grown, an adult, but I stand before this immortal child and I feel incomplete. If I ever grow to have even a part of his heart then I will have achieved much in my life.

"You should have spoken," he continues. "I would not have you carry such a weight alone, you will break your own heart carrying it in silence this way. You think too little of your own worth my friend, I would have you see yourself through my eyes even once."

We stand in the summer, days long behind us. There is a breeze that smells of sun bruised leaves, cooling sap and dust. Birds trill and dart in the trees – shadowed but still gilt by the sun that falls behind us. This sun will fall forever, for as long as we walk here. I am frozen in blue eyes: haunted, wild and sad but so familiar to me. He looks at me with fondness and understanding, and somewhere he is dying.

"You are not really here," I tell him.

"No," he shakes his head, "and I am sorry, but you must wake up."

I do not wish to. By Eru, I would do anything to stay here. It is not Legolas, but it is close enough and I am happy here. It is warm and peaceful, my heart is lighter than it has been for a long time. I am so very tired.

I do not wish to wake up, but I do.

~{O}~

It is a long awakening; I drift endlessly upon darkness and sometimes I can smell the summer, sometimes I recall the feel of dew coated and cool grass against my legs. I forget the winter and I know what a setting summer sun feels like; the smell of it, the feel of a cooling and darkening wood after such days of heat. I cling to it desperately, I claw at every fragment of memory but I cannot go back no matter how much I wish to. That time – that summer in the trees – it is long gone and I am a coward for hiding there. I am a coward, but I do not wish to do this any longer. I am tired.

Ai, Legolas. I have never been so tired.

Legolas.

I remember him – the real Legolas – and I let it go; I let that summer slip through my grasp and it vanishes back into memory. It is a good memory, but it is only a memory. I am needed here.

When I feel light against my eyes and can feel my body as my own, there is no warning that could have prepared me for it. I know the feeling of brittle and dusty soil against my cheek, for I have felt this before. I know the smell of old leaves, the secretive smell of a place un-touched by the elements for a long time. I am not as cold as I was. I am drier, although damp still, and so the cold does not cut as cruelly as it did before but all of these things I notice only briefly. Everything else is swallowed and eclipsed by how much I hurt.

My head, my neck, my shoulders and back. My arms and legs, my chest and stomach. Every breath and every heartbeat, every twitch of every muscle. It is agony… all of it is agony.

I cannot tell if anything is broken or whether I am merely bruised on every inch of flesh. I feel for a moment as though I could die right here and now just from the hurt, just from this broken and wrung out feeling. Inside I feel empty and hollowed out, burning hot and itching with the beginnings of fever. For a moment I reach for the summer again but I stop… I stop and I take a deep breath into lungs sore and aching from the river water. Instead I begin the long road back to myself.

I flex and test every screaming muscle, I shift and stretch until I know there is nothing broken at least. No bones, in any case. I am unwell and I am sick, and with every movement my joints and muscles protest wildly, but my bones are intact. It is a miracle, but right now I have no thought for such things. Right now I know only how much I hurt, and what is missing.

Legolas is gone.

I cannot for a moment think that he has left me – it is beyond imagining. Even if he had been well enough I know that he would not leave me this way. He would not leave me to wake alone.

I crack open my eyes and am blinded instantly. The light is searing; my eyes sting and flood with tears but I blink them free until I can make out outlines and shadows, and can eventually resolve my surroundings into something other than whiteness. I can see little more than my burrow beneath the tree and so I take a deep breath, I steel my nerves and bolster whatever resolve I have left to me, and I move.

It takes an age, or so it feels. I wriggle free of the roots and the soil, I shuffle upon my elbows and knees because it is very quickly apparent that this is all I am able to do. Each movement is terrible, everything I touch manages to jolt some bruise or abrasion and every muscle I use seems pulled or strained in some way. It gets better the more I move, I will freely admit it. I am stiffened into stone and so the movement helps, but by Mahal I would have remained still, remained as stone and not known this unpleasantness. I fight my way free of the earth, I carry on.

Once I am finally free I prop myself up against the solid mass of soil and roots that formed my shelter, gasping and wheezing and more exhausted than I should be. I lean my head back for a moment – just a moment – and I look around. I search for Legolas, I need for him to be out here because it is all that has sustained me through this climb out into the air. If he is not, I have no single thought on what I might do. Nothing at all. I am in no condition to start traipsing through the forest trying to find a wood elf, it is a task I would never have undertaken even if I were hale and whole. Only a fool would try such a thing, and despite what others think and what my friend is so quick to tell me, I am no fool.

I search, my eyes tripping over every bough and rock and branch. Curse him, I do not know if I could see him even if he were lying before me. Laegrim elves are the colours of the wood; their hair and eyes the hues of the forest, their clothes designed to blend in. If Legolas does not wish to be found he will not be found. If he is still, I am not sure that I have eyes keen enough to make him out.

But I do, and when I do I am climbing to my feet whether I am able to maintain the position or not.

Such lofty heights reached so suddenly has my head wheeling and the edges of my vision dulling to grey. I hear a roaring in my ears again, only it is not the river this time and I fight with everything I have to stop myself from toppling back to the ground. I fight to stay conscious, I take my first step and ignore how much it hurts. I ignore every protest of my body, I take another and all the while my eyes do not leave what I see.

Legolas has been dragged away, he has not left of his own accord. He lies further up the bank of trees, further away from the river and he is not alone. He lies upon his back, his face turned from me and covered in a curtain of filthy golden hair. Like some terrible ghoul or scavenger bird Callen crouches over him.

The lad looks a true state. He has come from the river just as we have and is in poor condition indeed; he is torn and shredded by the water and the wound upon his chest stains his clothing rust red. I cannot see his face yet, but I can feel what he feels just as I have been able to before. He has no control over himself right now and as I near, I feel the hunger in him.

It is a yawning chasm of need, empty and cold. He has spoken of it before, it has been the driving force behind this relentless chase; he has pursued the elf with dogged focus and now I understand why. I can understand his madness. I cannot stand this feeling; this hollow need. It drives away everything inside of me that knows what it is to be cared for and loved, it replaces every good memory I have ever had and in its stead there is nothing… nothing at all.

I understand his madness, but I have no pity for him.

Callen is cruel and cold, despite that it is hidden behind a boyish face and a quick smile. He speaks kindly and tries to reason, tries to offer deals and compromise but it is a mask. Callen was born wrong – his brother has told us this. His brother, who he has killed so easily.

Calder…

I do not think of the ranger lad. Not now. I cannot carry on with any more grief in my heart, I have not the strength.

I walk with more focus and purpose than I ever have before. Once, in the summer, I ran through the trees with the elf and I believed that the hardest thing I have ever done. We raced the very arrows of the elves, we raced fire and destruction despite our exhaustion but this is far worse. I carry on because I can do no less, and the slowness of my pace is even more painful than the steps themselves. Legolas needs me now, but despite my resolute steps I never seem to get any closer.

After an eternity I am within reach, I am finally there. I pick up a stout branch, the length and width of my arm. I heft it once, twice… I marvel that the lad has not heard my approach but he is too focussed upon what he does. I come closer, I see the delicate pink of his scalp beneath his filthy hair and I know that I can do this and feel no remorse. I am too choked by the terrible emotions I feel from him, I am drowning in them. I see what he does to my friend, I struggle to breathe through his hatred and all I want is for it to stop.

I swing with all of the strength remaining to me and the club makes contact. I crack him about the side of the head and he flies free, sprawling into the leaves and mud with a thin cry of pain and anger. I drop the club and I kick him in the chest, driving him further away. The impact jars my leg atrociously but there is fire in my veins now. It dispels my weariness instantly, and although I know it will be back in due time I make good use of it whilst it is there. It drives him from my mind, my emotions are my own and as he keens and gasps and cries, struggling to gain purchase back to his feet I follow him.

I kick him again and again. Each time he sprawls even further away, each time he falls back to the ground and his cries become more pitiful. I close my ears to them; he is a hateful and cowardly thing, a crawling and revolting thing and I hate him. I hate him with my own hatred, my own rage. It feels cleaner than the rage he has forced upon me, it feels real and right and pure.

I kick him in the face, the chest, the stomach. I drag him upright and I strike him once, twice and then again before dropping him. I wipe my hand upon my leg, feeling dirty from the contact but the sight of his bleeding and damaged face further fuels my rage. I beat the lad into insensibility, and I bellow my rage at him. It releases something in me that has been knotted tight as bindweed. Something in my chest releases and I cry again.

Callen is curled in upon himself now, he has stopped trying to get away from me. I beat and kick at him until everything in me has drained away and I am left empty, but it is not the same emptiness. This is like opening a window in a room after a long fever, like the first clean breeze of spring. It is a summer rain shower, a brittle and frosty blue sky in the height of winter. It is unsullied and real, and I stand there heaving breath like my lungs are the bellows of a forge. I stand over the young man that has caused us far too much pain, and I feel it all drain out of me.

Do I feel guilt at what I have done to him? Not for a second. What I feel instead is the Gimli that has been doubting himself this whole time relax and breathe and find himself again. I find my own heart once more, I find my pride, I reach out and I feel Arda beneath me and it thrums in perfect pace with my own heartbeat. I am a dwarf, I am a son and a friend. I am bred from rock and stone, my heart has been forged in fire and I am more than this. He has made me doubt that and although I hate him for it, I will not give him that power any longer. I leave the lad where he is, because he cannot hurt me anymore.

I have walked the paths of Moria. I have run Rohan and I have stood before the black gates of Mordor. I have fought battles that will live on in song, I have lived history that men will speak of for ages to come. I have experienced darkness that will never be written of and will never be known, but I have survived it and come through complete. I am a friend, and I have a friendship that is endlessly dear to me. It will not be written of, but I know it. I know the importance of what I have done in my time on Arda. I have done all of this, and he cannot make me doubt myself any longer.

I reach Legolas and I crouch at his side, my muscles screaming and quivering in protest but I still have some fire left to me and I push my own pain away for now. There will be time to address it later, but there is much to focus on first. I come to my knees and I rest my hand on the elf's chest, too terrified to think for a second on what might happen if there is nothing there. I leap into the action because there is no time for being timid or frightened… no time for letting my heart fail again.

This time, I feel the rise of his chest and with it I could weep again, but I do not. I kneel for a moment longer and feel the rise and fall of his breathing, feel the bucking of his heart. It is weak, unsteady and with every draw of air I can hear it rattling now, hoarse and raw in his throat. I roll him over so that I can see his face and it is moon pale beneath the dirt.

I sink to my rump, I drag him close and I pull him to me. I hold him to my chest, rest my chin upon his golden head and I allow my eyes to close, just for a moment. I hold him with one hand over his heart so that I can feel the life in him, just as I hope that he can feel mine. I breathe deeply, I breathe in the scent of river and mud but beneath that there is the scent of Legolas, a smell that I have long come to recognise. It is air and earth and life, it is golden and green.

Just for a moment I sit with him. I remember that terrible moment when I thought him gone… truly gone this time. I remember that stillness, I remember what it felt like to see my road stretching out before me without this aggravating and infuriating friend walking at my side. It was a moment, such a short time but it has wounded me. I would wipe that memory clean and replace it with this one, and I give it time. Just enough time.

"He has done something to me," comes a voice. It is choked and thick with blood, heavy with anger and grief. I do not open my eyes, I do not look up. Callen is too far away to concern me right now, I have beaten him into a state that will take him a while to unravel. "He has crippled me."

He spits blood into the ground and I open my eyes. I look at him… a crawling thing still clutching at the forest floor as though he fears he might fly free from it. His teeth are bared – blood covered and there is certainly one missing – but I am unimpressed. He looks wild, but not the way my elf is wild. He is wild in the way of brain fevered dogs, dangerous and mad. I blink and he looks down at the ground, his hands fist and he screams.

The sound is shrill and not entirely dissimilar to the sound of a child having a tantrum. Legolas stirs beneath my hand at the sound and I tighten my grip on him until he stills.

"I cannot take it out of him," the lad continues un-prompted. "I cannot take it, I cannot reach out. I am trapped in here, he has broken me!"

He begins to weep and it is coarse and harsh, self-pitying. I feel a curl of disgust, but I understand his ravings.

Calder, Calder did something. That glowing that I saw; that faint luminescence where the blood of the murdered and the blood of the one responsible mingled. In his last act the ranger lad found a way to protect us just as he had tried to before. He has broken Callen – he cannot use his power over us. I can feel him trying; he can influence us certainly but he cannot take us over and he cannot hurt Legolas.

I feel grief choke me for a moment.

Calder…

"Our companions will find us," I speak lowly. I know that he can hear me, even over his own mewling and sobbing. "They will find us soon, and it is your choice whether you are here when they arrive or not. I have no more time to waste on you. You can stay and risk the wrath of the prince's father. If he lets you live then you will be taken to Minas Tirith and given a fair trial, but if you run then you will be hunted down. The elves of Eryn Lasgalen love to hunt, and if you run then they will chase you."

I do not pay attention to him after that. He silences, he is given much to mull over, but I am done with him.

Once I trust my legs again I carry Legolas back to our sanctuary for no reason other than the fact that it is the only place known to me here. I dare not move him further and I dare not leave – if we are being searched for then we are best to remain where we are. I am not strong enough to carry him any further and I have no provisions, no weapons or tools. Luckily I am too ill to feel hunger but I find a tiny rill of fresh water trickling toward the river, I drink and I soak my cloak in the water. I manage to feed some to the elf; I wring the liquid free and he swallows it reflexively, and once I am happy I wipe clean his face and his hands until he looks far less ghastly. I cannot see him without seeing the deathly I pallor I saw before shadowed across the healthier tinge I see now, and although he seems all the more ghostlike with his face cleaner it serves to banish those images away. His lips are no longer so blue, his eyes no longer so sunken.

When the night falls I have managed a fire. It is a small and sickly thing but it is the best I am going to achieve and the good it does me is worth a hundred roaring hearths. It is not simply the warmth, for there is little warmth to be had from it, but I feel it melting soft against my frozen skin in any case. As it chases back the shadows I feel immeasurably better for it.

Callen has not left. He has dragged himself to sit hunched and silent against a tree not far from where I left him. He does not approach, he stays where he is and I am glad to have something solid guarding my back now that the darkness hides him. I sit with the wooden club I have found, retrieved and safe at my side. I sit against the fallen tree, the elf is curled close where I can feel his shoulder against my leg and where I know he can feel the warmth of our fire. His breathing has evened out although he has shown no sign of waking, and I rest my hand on him so that I know that he lives and he knows that I am here.

I sit at watch the whole night through.

~{O}~

When the dawn comes it is a weak and rain washed thing, but I am glad to see it in any case.

I have dozed fitfully; snatches of sleep grabbed here and there and the dreams that have lain waiting for me have been unpleasant. It is not the first time that I have slept in fear, it is not the first time that I have caught moments of slumber despite that I am in danger and so I have expected it. My dreams have been of attack, of peril, of all the things that could happen with Callen out there in the dark and us so defenceless. It has been unpleasant indeed and when the dawn breaks pale upon the horizon I am gritty eyed and light headed with exhaustion, but all of that is banished when the elf stirs.

I feel him move only slightly – indeed it is the barest of movements at all – but I know him. I can sense the change in him just as he can sense the change in the weather or I can feel the change in the world beneath us. He shifts and I know he is awake, and all of my attention is upon him then.

It is a while before his eyes open, but when they do I see a sliver of wonderful blue and I feel my heart soar. He tilts himself slightly until he is upon his back, and had I not been paying attention I might not have seen the grimace and wince upon his face at the movement. He is beaten and bruised by the river just as I am.

He fixes his gaze upon the sky and what I see heartens me. He is haunted and hollow, frightened and hurt. He claws himself back together again in stages, one heartbeat to the next as he builds his walls again. He builds up Legolas, he reinforces the fortress of his heart and slowly I see the elf I know, but what gives me the joy that I feel right now is the fact that he is able to do even this. He has his Song again.

He shifts his gaze and our eyes lock, and by Eru I cannot help the broad grin I give him. I hide it as best I can deep in my beard but I cannot help the slight wetness at my eyes, I cannot stop myself from reaching out and placing my hand upon his chest once more. He sees me and I cannot imagine how I seem – bruised and battered, a mass of unkempt red hair and beard almost weeping as I am – but whatever it is that he sees, I know that he feels something similar to what is currently trying to burst out from my chest.

His face softens into the palest of smiles, he reaches up weakly and grabs my hand at the wrist. His other hand pats at my knee lightly and he huffs what could be a laugh, perhaps, if it didn't devolve into a wet cough. He closes his eyes again, a faint creasing of a frown at his brow but when he opens them again they are twice as strong as they were when he closed them. He is coming back to himself, he is pushing it all away and burying it deep. His pain and fear, his terrible memories are all pushed into that place deep within him that I will never understand.

When he looks at me again it is with some force, and I read it easily.

You are well?

And it is not a question, it is a demand. I smile and nod.

Well enough.

My hand leaves his chest and I let it slip to where he already grips at my wrist. I grip his back, and so I give him something to pull himself up into a seated position. He hisses and swears viciously the whole of the way until we are propped shoulder to shoulder against the fallen tree. He heaves and gasps at his air but he is upright, and I pay no attention to how he clutches at his ribs or how hollow his face still seems to me, how pale he is. I do not see how he shakes or how weak he is. He is awake and upright, and that is enough. Legolas is strong. I repeat it to myself over and over again.

The elf catches sight of Callen and his whole body freezes into a knot of tension, but then he sees the state the lad is in and realises that he has not moved an inch this whole time. The lad is a miserable ball of self-pity and resentment, huddling near his enemy because the uncertainty of our mercy is better than the knowledge of our wrath. Legolas sees the blood still on his face, the lurid bruising that blooms about his eye, his mouth, his jaw. It is a pretty sight and gives me nothing but joy to see it, but the elf gives me a suspicious look and the half-hearted shrug I give him back does not stop his staring.

"We had a disagreement," I tell him simply. "I believe I won."

Legolas does not seem appeased by this but it is fairly clear what has happened. Elves may be denser than most folk but even they can read such an obvious situation. He is sensible enough not to ask any further questions but he watches Callen now. It is not obvious in his actions – he barely even looks in his direction after his first razor sharp assessment – but I can tell.

"I am sure that my father will wish to win some form of disagreement once he gets here as well," he tells me, shifting with a grimace. His voice sounds hoarse and ragged but it is good to hear him speak. "I cannot say I'm in any condition to stop him, even if I cared enough to do so."

There is bitterness in his voice, quite unlike him, but I understand it. Legolas has been put to the test these last days and it is not simply resentment that I can hear in his tone, I can also hear grief. Neither of us mentions Calder, because neither of us need to. It is a raw wound and one that needs no discussion just yet, not until we are certain of his fate. Not until we know.

Legolas looks up at the sky briefly and inhales, he scans the trees and the look on his face now tells me that he is listening. He listens with everything; he is listening to more than sound and I wonder at the feeling of relief that I feel when he connects with his Song. I have often made fun of the elfling for it – the vacant expression he has when he listens. I do not think I will ever do so again.

When he is satisfied he whistles three flat notes, an oddly mournful sound that I know carries for miles… even further if the one listening is an elf. He calls for Faelwen and his father and I kick myself for not thinking of that prior to now. I do not think that I am able or practised enough to get that odd tone or for it to carry the way his does, but anything would have been better than silence. I am at once annoyed and pleased that I still do not think as an elf.

Legolas shifts again and grimaces and this time I pay more attention. He passes his hand over his chest, feather light and brief but enough to have me looking closely. He catches me watching him and schools his mask into blankness, but if he believes that to be enough to appease me then he does not know me half as well as he thinks.

"Do not stare at me that way, Gimli," he sighs, low enough so that the boy could not hear us even if he were closer. "I am far too old to need a nursemaid."

I feel a flare of irritation that falls swiftly into another, unexpected emotion. I feel a twinge of grief; a memory of those terrible moments when I believed him truly gone. I feel that once more, and then I feel a strange sadness that he still does not understand… even after all this time he does not understand. He is too quick to make light of such things, he thinks nothing of the grief or worry we feel for him and pushes it away. I feel foolish in the face of these reprimands of his, and right now I am too raw and exhausted to ignore him as I often do. I am not often prone to fits of maudlin musings but Callen has my heart all twisted and chaotic and I cannot help myself.

For a moment I consider telling him. I consider telling him what I awoke to; how I believed him dead this time. I would have him feel shame at making light of my concern but I do not. Legolas has always made light of such things and never has it bothered me this way before, he is not to blame; he is simply being Legolas. He is hurt and vulnerable, I should expect him to act this way whether it is right or not. I do not tell him, but some sign of it must pass across my face and so he sees it anyway. Drat him, he reads it in me and I see that shame. A moment ago I wished to see it, and now I would do anything not to.

He looks away, a flash of guilt there and then gone. He flexes and clenches his hands and then hides them in his lap, curling over so that he seems small and unsure. I do not like seeing him this way.

"I will be well," he tells me softly.

"Before Callen and I had our disagreement – when I awoke – he was over you. I imagined the worst, but I can see that you can feel the Song again. Is the Shadow with you still?"

His hand flits to his chest once more, an unconscious gesture. It seems I have guessed correctly – it is this that is causing him pain.

"On the ridge, before we fell… he drew it out too far. I cannot calm it, I cannot send it away again. It is trying to bury itself once more and it feels like a shard of ice in my heart."

His words sicken me but I try to show no reaction to them. He is being honest with me – it is his apology – and I would not frighten away this sudden urge of his to speak some truth.

"Do you recall anything else from before we fell?" I ask him. "Did you see anything between Callen and his brother?"

I need not elaborate on what I mean. I can see it in the grief that passes across his face, in the way he focusses on the ground with far distant eyes. He knows that I refer to the wounding of Calder, the murder of him. I also see that he saw it as well… that luminous glow between them where blood met blood.

"Calder has done something to him," I continue. "It is why he is still here and why we are still as we are. Whatever he was able to do to us before – whatever power he had over us – it is there no longer. Not as it was. I can feel him; I can feel his anger and self-pity and a thousand other emotions that are not welcome at all, but my mind and my heart are my own."

Legolas looks up at me and it is an unusual emotion I see there upon his face. It is puzzlement, the slightest lifting of hope all twisted together with uncertainty. He does not know what this means for us any more than I do.

We fall into silence for a while then, both of us too hurt and exhausted to carry on any longer. I retreat into my mind but what I find there is a blankness that I welcome wholly. I am done with thought, I am done with worry. My heart is free of Callen and I have let go of the self-doubt he has nurtured within me, that has choked and crippled me, but in its place there is nothing at all.

I am with the elf and so I feel safe, and I begin to fall asleep knowing that he is there at watch. The last thing that I hear before I slip into my dreams is him huffing beneath his breath:

"Of course."

I crack open one eye a final time before I am lost to my exhaustion. It is snowing.

~{O}~

My sleep is blessedly free of dreams. There is a part of me that had perhaps hoped to find a wooded clearing in the summer waiting for me in my slumber, but another part tells me that nothing good can come from walking there too often. I have never been one to run away, never been one to hide from anything at all. Walking in that place feels very much like giving up, and there is a touch of madness there. I know not to stray too far into my heart.

I know nothingness, and it is a soft and peaceful place. I am gone for a long time, I know it; I drift upon silent oceans of velvet darkness and although I know nothing of the passage of time, when I awake I know that I have been long gone. I find myself being shaken gently, I hear an apologetic voice pitched only for me to hear. It takes me a while to know myself, a long moment of confusion and blankness before I can answer to myself where I am, what I do here and why I feel as though I have been run over by a horse.

I crack open my eyes to see whiteness; jarring and stark after so much black. It has snowed – indeed, it still falls steadily – and the rain sodden clearing I left behind has been replaced by monochrome tones. Blackened tree and branch stand proud from a bed of pure white, driven and banked in places and melted in the mud in others. It is a patchwork quilt done in light and shadow, the sky is gloomy and grey but the snow stands far brighter than it seems it should. I blink and squint at it, I watch it fall. Some flakes are huge and drift straight toward the forest floor, others are lighter and dance in eddies and breezes too light to feel. It is dizzying. I feel drunk.

"Gimli, they are here," Legolas murmurs again, and in his tone I hear nothing but relief. I cannot tell by the light how long I have left him alone this time. He has let me sleep, he has kept guard over me just as I knew he would but he is hardly in any condition to do so… he is more than ready to hand over the watch now. I wonder how much of him simply wishes for his father, but I know I will never learn the answer to that. There are some weaknesses that he will not share even with me.

I claw myself back into a semblance of sensibility, rubbing my eyes and struggling to my feet. It hurts, but it is nothing that I cannot weather and after a while my sleep fuddled brain catches something that raises alarm in my heart.

'They are here' he has said, but I can hear the footsteps that approach us. The tramp of feet and crackle of undergrowth, loud in the hushed silence of the falling snow. We wait for elves, I should not be able to hear anything at all.

My eyes are straight to Legolas, but he does not seem alarmed. Weary, aye, and thankful all in one but he does not seem worried. Even so I feel concern thrill at me. They may well be here, but they are not alone.

TBC

Apologies to all, this was supposed to go up hours ago but I've had trouble with the site.

Thanks, as always, to those who reviewed the last chapter. I appreciate I took a while to reply to you all but hopefully I got to you all. Feel free to berate me if I didn't.

Can I just say, no matter how many times I re-read Gimli beating up Callen it never gets any more satisfying. Does anyone have any comments on that? Was I too harsh? Not harsh enough :)

I really am only going to leave a short A/N this time as I have nothing to say other than the fact that I'd love to hear from you, I really want to hear your feedback on this chapter as the next one (you may well remember back to chapter 4) is the one I had real problems with, so feedback now allows me to go in and tinker about if I need to. I hope you all have a wonderful day :)

MyselfOnly