Warning: This story has an Aragorn/Legolas pairing. That means slash. Not yet, really, but it will be later on. Please, if you don't enjoy that sort of thing, don't read it. However, I think the actual plot is more of the focus. So if you're not sure if you like slash, give it a try anyway.
Disclaimer: Creativity plus: I don't own anything.
A/N: This is a prologue, and hence is prose. It sets the emotional state of everything. While the story is fairly metaphorical et al, it has a real plot! I swear! Time-frame is in the Two Towers somewhere, but doesn't follow the actual storyline.
Please leave a review if you would like me to continue this. I don't know what to write if I don't know what you'd like to read. Thanks!
~*~*~
"Why are you asking me this, Aragorn?" Legolas asked with a choked laugh.
"It's hardly sudden. You've been brooding lately. Worrying. Don't think I can't see it. You have fear like everyone, Legolas. Your mask is just tied more securely in place."
"I wear no mask," Legolas protested.
"You must have one fear. Even if it's so slight, so trivial, there must be a single doubt in your mind," Aragorn insisted.
Doubt. //My fear is small. Yet it grows larger because I am afraid that should I say it, my pettiness would appall and sicken you. It makes me ill myself.// Legolas shook his head, his fingers knotting his hair into minuscule braids of their own accord. "I am not so utopian as I may seem, you know," he whispered, voice scarcely cracking out of whisper's realm. "Don't you see, Aragorn?"
Legolas shifted, then touched a hand to the ranger's. One at a time, he peeled Aragorn's fingers from the clenched warmth of his palm. He pressed their hands together, feeling the contrast between each fingerprint, each degree, each bone beneath...
His fingertips warmed against the contact. The flames of the fire heated face and body, and Aragorn briefly pondered how the elf's adept fingers could feel so fragile, so cold under his touch. And yet they burned him, reminded him of her.
Sacrifice.
Adherence.
Insatiable memories.
Equivocated passion.
It all left him broken. Not cleanly snapped, but shattered. In Legolas, he could almost garner the shards...
He pulled back.
"You speak of man's weakness, and fear that it runs in your veins. But the elves never speak of what befell them so long ago, by the core of the earth and hell's fire, we swore to never look upon us as them..." Legolas drew back also, his eyes darting for something else to wreath with their attention. "Orcs are elves, Aragorn. I would like to say that even in mutilation, coated in pain and blood I would not fall to darkness. But millions of my people did.
"And here, I grow so vain that I cannot utter another word. You know what I speak of."
Aragorn sighed, "You fear not only the weakness of your past, but of your own immortality and body."
Legolas nodded mutely. He was not without fault. Not without emotion. Not without fear. It was only through time that his scars had healed, and each time the new skin was stronger than before.
Time had healed every imperfection save his own self-pity.
And each day he bathed in it a moment longer, letting it seep into his skin and soak through his pores.
"I fear the loss of beauty. The loss of youth. The loss of respect," the elf whispered bitterly. "Time has dealt me such control, that without this I am nothing. And lately..." Legolas got up. He was bleeding, willingly, to this mortal man. Letting his words run rampant and choose their own path. "I must go to sleep. I'm not feeling myself."
"Perchance, you finally are feeling yourself, Legolas," Aragorn said, his voice low and mellifluous as always. It hurt his ears, somehow, to hear it now.
"I feel ill lately. In battle...in everything..." he picked up his bow, running his fingers over the curved mahogany. "And especially when..." he cut himself off. //Especially when I'm with you.// He couldn't bring himself to meet Aragorn's eyes. Everything was falling apart. Merry and Pippin taken captive. Boromir lost in the churning of the rapids. It would break him yet...
"You have one consistency that I would trade all of my immortality for," Legolas said, speaking neither to himself nor to Aragorn, but to Man alone. "You can wither away in sickness, or bleed until you are dry as the sand. But I get sick in one fashion only. I can die of a broken heart. And in that, I am weaker than any creature alive." Turning away, he cursed the impotence that was overtaking him. An elf was susceptible to nothing, so why was his voice so hoarse, and his face so hot? "I'm going."
//In his dreams the air was colder than usual. He tread upon the snow, lightly and quickly, running far ahead of his mortal companions. The air grew thicker, the wind more raucous, the sky more blinding in its darkness. He squinted ahead, straining to know the future as he always had. But for some reason, this storm blinded his senses along with his eyes.
And then, he sank.
It felt odd, trudging through the drifts like everyone else.//
~*~*~
