Author's note: Thanks to everyone who reviewed and read the last chapters! I really appreciate all the support and good comments! I'm very very very sorry but I've been away on holiday! A proper holiday this time though! :D Well … if swimming in the freezing sea and chasing after my cousins counts as a holiday. But it was still lots of fun! And I've been at training camps and have had to stay away from home and haven't had time to write so anyone who has stayed with this story I really appreciate it and hope you will forgive me!
Please continue to review! They make me write good! :D
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Aragorn didn't hear his brother's demands for healers, nor did he notice when only three remained to care for him.
But the girl noticed, she glanced around as her colleagues left and debated whether she herself should leave.
One look at the Man sobbing uncontrollably into his pillow, the very picture of misery, on the bed in front of her and she knew she couldn't leave him. She disagreed with Elladan, she was needed here more.
She was startled from her thoughts when there was a hand on her shoulder.
"We need to see his back."
She blinked away the remainder of her tears and nodded hastily, embarrassed to have been caught crying.
She leaned down towards him and whispered that they had to turn him onto his front.
"Why?" He mumbled.
"Because you might have hurt it and we need to fix it." She replied gently.
Aragorn sniffed and didn't shift from his tense position with his head in the pillow.
The girl shared a glance with the older healer debating what they should do. Moving him forcefully would damage him further but not moving him could equally prove a bad option. If his back was left untreated there was no telling how much it could affect him in later life.
The older healer bent down to the Man and spoke, his voice much stricter than his female workmate.
"You need to turn over, young Man, or we will make you."
"What's the point?" Aragorn responded, much to both the healers surprise.
"The point is getting better, making sure you heal properly so you can enjoy the rest of your life and be unhindered throughout it." The woman replied.
"But how will I enjoy it without him?" He whispered with a hint of anger.
The two healers shared another helpless look, the older Elf's slightly irritated.
"Wouldn't Legolas want you to be happy?" he said.
Aragorn turned right round to face them, ignoring the twinges of pain from his back.
"How do you know what he would have wanted?" he vehemently whispered.
Both healers were taken aback with Aragorn's fury. He hadn't ever shown this much anger towards anything before in his life. Even when his first pet had died and the twins didn't tell him for a month, he was angry at them, but he hadn't been like this.
The only difference this time, the girl realised, was that someone had died who he would have died for.
And now he was angry because he didn't.
Her surprised expression softened into an expression of pity for him as she walked to him once more and gently nudged one shoulder across, knowing that asking his permission would only result in more angry words.
He didn't resist but he didn't turn willingly either, they eventually got Estel on his front and were able to treat the damage done when he fell.
Aragorn wept into his pillow as they turned him over as gently as they could. They had given up trying to negotiate with him and he couldn't blame them, he was being difficult. But he couldn't really say why. He was miserable but he had never given this much trouble in a healing room as he himself was a healer and knew that being healthy was of the utmost importance.
But he was uncontrollably angry at everything that had happened. Nerea had betrayed him and he had actually believed she was here to help him and led her straight to Rivendell. How could he have been so stupid? She was obviously evil, right down to the last hair on her head, so why had he taken her to Rivendell? He liked to think that he knew and that he brought her here because she would be caught by Glorfindel and her evil plans would fail, which they had, and she had been caught, with a little help from an unknown Elf.
Fresh tears assaulted him as another wave of anger and blame rose inside him, he didn't even know the Elf's name! And now he could be dead as well. Two Immortal lives, gone, for him.
He knew he wasn't worth it.
The healers gave up their coaxing. Working together they pulled and pushed him onto his front.
Tears still streaked down his face as they poked and prodded his painful back but not from any pain that could be healed by any simple medicine. From a pain that could only be healed by a miracle.
Elrond sat back onto his heals and let out a tired sigh.
"I've done all I can do." He simply said to no one in particular.
He had cleaned and bandaged every cut and burn, set and splintered every break and removed all the shards of the vase he could detect from Legolas' hands. Then checked, and rechecked, almost every inch of his body to make sure there was nothing he had missed.
"But for now, we just have to make him as comfortable as possible and hope that she did not cause severe damage."
The twins nodded, sadly and took a last look at their unconscious friend as he was whisked away to a bed in the healing halls.
Elrond turned to look at his sons. They had worked incredibly hard to help their friend and brother and it showed on their faces just how tired and worried they were. Banishing his own anxiousness he placed a comforting hand on each of their shoulders.
"Legolas is strong." he said meeting the twins' gaze, "He will come through this."
Elladan and Elrohir nodded, drawing a small, weary smile from their father but neither could stop an unwelcome thought from swirling around their heads that, maybe, Elrond was wrong.
