[Written with respect for, but no ownership in, the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, Peter Jackson, Philippa Boyens, and Fran Walsh. I own mostly the silly parts.]
30 December, 3018. Third Age.
From the opposite side of the camp, Anarwen remembered the last time Legolas had fallen into such silence. It had also been the last time she had directly disobeyed his commands, although that came a little later.
It began with the death of Duilin, the captain of Legolas's guard. Duilin had been leading a simple scouting mission to the western edge of Mirkwood. The journey had been planned as a two-day ride from Thranduil's palace, so they had not brought many troops for support. Legolas had been meant to join them, but at the last moment he was called to some minor court function. Anarwen had also remained behind.
From what could be deduced later, a band of goblins attacked the party. Duilin's body was found a week later after the group's failure to return launched a massive search effort. Legolas was not among those that discovered and buried the body. He learned of his captain's death after arriving home with his patrol.
For many days afterward, Legolas mourned Duilin's passing like all who had known the captain. After a month, however, the prince's mood turned inward. His light-hearted manner did not return. Instead, he threw himself into the planning and execution of an elaborate set of raids throughout the forest. Leading nearly every assault himself, Legolas drove his elven forces to the edge of their skill and endurance. He seemed bent on destroying every evil creature in Mirkwood, with his own hands wherever possible. When these efforts proved not enough to purge his sorrow, Legolas began to seek foes on his own. He ordered his personal guards to stay behind while he hunted alone throughout the far reaches of the forest.
Fantastic tales began to make their way back to the palace. Legolas's feats of bravery were rapidly turning him into a legend among his people, but Thranduil was far less enraptured. His son's deeds of daring seemed more like foolhardy acts bordering on self-destruction. Once he learned that Legolas was waiving his own protection, Thranduil knew he could no longer leave the prince to his own devices.
During this time Anarwen longed to find some way to comfort Legolas, but her rank prevented her from making any such attempt. It was not her place to discuss such personal matters with her lord. Had they been able to transcend their stations, however, Anarwen could have taught Legolas more about death than many of Mirkwood's elves.
For although Legolas knew what would happen to all the Eldar upon the death of their bodies, little did he truly appreciate how different this fate was from that of Men. Should an elf be slain or die of grief in Middle-earth, their spirit would still journey to the West, to the paradise of Valinor. The elves were irrevocably tied to Arda in body and in spirit until its unmaking.
However, Men had no afterlife. It was the strange gift of Eru that they should have shorter, more savage lives than those of the First Born. Upon the death of their bodies, Men were gone forever.
The passing of Anarwen's father had left her with a boundless grief made sharper with the knowledge of its finality. Neither in body nor in spirit would she ever meet him again. For this reason, she had chosen the life of the elves, for as one of the half-elven, she was granted the right of this decision. Wishing never again to be parted from those she loved, Anarwen chose the fate of the Eldar.
Legolas had never befriended one of the race of Men, and therefore he did not truly grasp the enormity of this difference. He had also never had to select his own fate, as the peredhil are forced to do. While Anarwen could do nothing to alter the reality of Duilin's death, she could offer her lord perspective and a hope for the future, no matter how distant it seemed.
And maybe it was for that reason that Thranduil sent Anarwen along as Legolas's only guard when he ordered his son away. Nominally, their charge was to scout the eastern edge of Mirkwood and the lands between it and the River Carnen. In truth, it was more like banishment to the least dangerous part of the forest, an area almost totally abandoned by Sauron's minions. The lands just beyond were rumored to be deserted.
Legolas seemed to understand that this farce was the act of a protective father, and he undertook it with silent resignation. Anarwen hoped this acceptance could eventually make its way to his heart, that this season away from battle would heal his soul, but she feared that his impassive face masked something else.
During the early months of their travels, he seemed barely aware of her presence. They ate together, but his faraway look silenced any thoughts she might have had of conversation. As was being painfully repeated with the Fellowship, Legolas deliberately scouted far out ahead of Anarwen, who was terribly confused by his actions. She feared that she had angered him in some way. Because it seemed the only way to be near enough to give the pretense of acting as his guard, she let him set the gap between them. He allowed her to keep him in sight as long as she trailed at a distance.
Finally one evening, Legolas broke his silence. "Stay here. I will return in a while."
The first words he had spoken to her in three months filled Anarwen with dismay. To disobey his command would mean the breaking of her oath to him, but to simply watch while he ventured off alone was an equal breach of her duty. She struggled to put into words some protest that did not resemble insubordination, but he was gone before she could get to her feet.
Two days later, he had not returned and Anarwen was plagued with both dread and anger. His grief had put her in an impossible position and possibly his own life at risk. With nothing to do but stare off in the direction of his disappearance and await his return, Anarwen had reached the end of her sympathy for Legolas. Cursing his name and heritage in the tongue of her father, she set out to find her lord.
A league from their campsite, she realized how simple this task would prove. All she had to do was follow the succession of dead goblins and other fell beasts that were clearly marking his trail.
Within five days she reached the shores of the Carnen. The telltale "thwack" of arrows hitting their mark caused her to take off running. She arrived at a clearing to find Legolas surrounded on three sides by Easterlings. The ground was littered with evidence that members of a larger group had met their deaths with his precisely placed shots, but the remaining men were closing in. There were too many to keep them within the target window of his bow. As Legolas switched to his knives, Anarwen leapt into the fray with her own blade drawn.
Too late, the Easterlings realized that their enemies now numbered two elves, not one, and that their own odds of survival were plummeting. The more quick witted among the group simply ran away. Legolas and Anarwen fought until she had dispatched her last opponent and he slit the throat of his.
He turned slowly to the elleth. Tired, bloodied, and with eyes unnaturally bright, Legolas did not greet her with gratitude for her sudden appearance. He opened his mouth to say something fierce, but he shut it just as fast and stared at her in shock. Anarwen followed his stare to her left shoulder and saw a small dart jutting out from her jerkin. For a full second, both elves stared at the tiny weapon, and then Anarwen's legs failed her. Halfway to the ground, she heard rather than saw Legolas send his knife spinning back along the dart's trajectory to catch an Easterling in the stomach.
The roaring in her ears made it difficult to decide who had cried out, herself, her lord, or the man dying behind them. Colors exploded behind her eyes and she felt throbs of pain spread from her shoulder down her arm and across her chest. When Legolas finally reached her, the agony of his turning her over sent a wall of black down to obliterate her sight.
Thoughts and images swirled and faded in Anarwen's mind until she became aware of a strange sensation. She blinked hard to orient herself and discovered she being held up off the ground. The more curious thing was the screen of golden light near her head. It seemed to glow and shimmer, brighter than sunlight.
The pain returned to stab at her. It also jerked her fully awake. Slowly she realized she was wrapped in Legolas's arms. He was bent over her prone body, trying to draw the poison from the wound before it reached her heart. How very odd it seemed to Anarwen that her lord would think her ruin as simple as a snake bite.
His hands tightened their grip on her, and as if floating above, Anarwen pictured what she and Legolas must look like. The irony of this awful moment struck her as absurdly amusing. Having been treated as one of the whores of Men, she would die here in this grotesque parody of a lover's embrace. But there would be no ellon to mourn her. She would enter the Halls of Mandos having never known even the simplest of joys from a beloved.
Her laugh came out as a strangled, gasping noise. She shuddered violently. With the terrible pain returning tenfold, she put despair aside. Mustn't…You mustn't…You must not risk yourself. The words echoed in her mind, but she could not make the correct sounds. Feebly, she pushed at his shoulder. As he turned to her, Legolas's bright blue eyes swam into view. She tried to force her vision to clear but everything looked watery. Broken and fading, she moved her fumbling hand from his shoulder and touched her fingertips to his mouth. "Do not do this for me," she choked out.
The golden light returned and with it came warmth. His face was very near now. She felt her fingertips move, tracing words he spoke, but they sounded too far away to be understood. He pressed his cheek to her own. Here in his arms, all her thoughts slide away except one. "You are…so very…I…," she whispered but never finished. All had gone black.
She awoke three days later. Exhausted and drained from her body's fight with the poison, she would have to wait another week before travel became possible. Her first sight of Legolas was as the pale radiance in a dark, hazy background. For the days that followed, he kept up an unceasing litany of teasing comments, but he could spur her to little more than a smirk, followed directly by a coughing fit. She could not tell if it was real or feigned for her benefit, but his mirthful manner seemed restored. He took care of her until the day he set her in front of him on his horse so they could ride together back to the Elven-king's caverns.
In all the years since, they never spoke of that summer, the grief that began it or the near tragedy that ended it.
***
"Anarwen, I do not believe that rock poses much of a threat," Gandalf called to her. He offered her a kindly smile and added, "Join us and have something to eat."
The elleth realized that she must have been staring fixedly for some time. She stood up and made her way back to the tree where most of the Company was gathered.
"My lady," Gimli said as he handed her a plate.
"Master Dwarf, you need not refer to me that way. I have no title to merit it."
"My lady, it is my experience that those born with titles rarely do much to merit them," he replied rather loudly.
Anarwen could not help the small grin that came to her face. "Perhaps such an opinion is for want of close acquaintance," she said in softer tones than Gimli's. "But I would agree that valor can be found in the most unlikely places." She glanced up briefly to favor Frodo with a true smile.
Obnoxious little troll! Had anyone favored Legolas with a look, they would have noticed his posture stiffen at the dwarf's remark. He remained with his back to the Company and his eyes fixed on the blue sky.
The dwarf's courtliness to Anarwen was a continual source of irritation. Legolas did not begrudge her the respect of the others, but Gimli's partiality to her company seemed somehow…wrong. He could not put it into words. Nonetheless, Legolas felt a pinprick of ire whenever the dwarf's storytelling, so obviously contrived for the elleth's attention, reached his ears.
"All here are enemies of the one Enemy, Legolas." Aragorn joined the elf at his watch. "You must put these emotions aside or you will lose her forever."
The Elven-prince did not turn to the ranger. He felt as if he had been suddenly discovered in a lie. He was also confused as to exactly which feelings Aragorn was asking him to disregard.
"I have already released her from her oath."
"No, my friend. She is more closely bound to you than ever…And you to her."
Silent minutes passed. Finally Aragorn turned back toward the Company, who were now enjoying the antics of Merry and Pippin.
…bound to her. For another of the many times since, Legolas wondered what Anarwen had tried to tell him that day in the eastern wilderness.