AUTHOR: shoneaugen
EMAIL: shoneaugen@hotmail.com
DISTRIBUTION: Ask and ye shall recieve.
FEEDBACK: Pretty pretty please?
DISCLAIMER: Legolas, Haldir, and Helm's Deep are Tolkien's; I just bring them out to play. And yes, that last line is a direct quote from the books, Appendix A.
SUMMARY: Mortality doesn't spare the arrogant. (Legolas POV, TTT spoilers)
NOTES: Once more, I find myself brain-dead and severely lacking in any kind of normal inspiration. Forgive my mistakes.
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We've won, he mused, glancing to the west as if he could yet still see the retreating backs of the Uruk-Hai. Or have we?
The hours, days ahead were long and passed, for the main, in grief. Victory was bright and short-lived; loss lingered through daylight and nights to come, tendrils of shadow wrapping about the minds of those still alive in the terrible time of aftermath. He was no meek stranger to death, despite his immortality - and still, the cries of the mourning branded his mind. The wails of children strayed from parents, the pained groans of the wounded - and worse by far, the quiet tears of those who were all too familiar, and yet still grieved, with the losses of war.
He had forsaken sleep, turned away from the blood-riddled nightmares that would await his slumber, and gone to take back the dead. The rising sun revealed what shiftless Ithil had not; the bodies of their casualties, men and elves, lay like so much slaughtered prey on the ground and bridge among the corpses of the Uruk-Hai. Spilt blood, shining and scarlet yet in the sunlight, laid claim to any ground not hidden beneath bodies, and the rank smell of death weighed the air. Men and elves, faces lined with sorrow, sorted through the dead, laying Rohirrim and Firstborn upon the ground at Helm's Gate while Orcs and Uruk-Hai were piled to burn.
He worked mechanically, tirelessly sorting through faces unknown and still mourned - here a boy to all appearances younger than Frodo, there a man white-haired and frail in old age. And inwardly he still cursed, still raged at Aragorn's decision to lead these children, these elders to their deaths. These of the Firstborn, immortality dashed away in hard metal and rank blood. And all for what? Their spoils of war? Their women's lives? He closed his mind to the despair that clawed at the fringes of his consciousness, the nagging impulse at the back of his thought to flee this fortress of death and find solace in the quiet of life and the living. Hands sticky with blood, he worked, blocking out the keening lament of those inside the keep.
And still his hand faltered when he came upon one more of the Eldar. He squinted in the darkening sunset, fingers flexing against his will against the bloodstained tunic in weave almost identical to his own. His left hand strayed upward, lingered over a death-pale face stilled in an expression of shock, and finally lowered to close Haldir's eyes as he closed his own. Dropping to his knees, he tried to cling to his belief in his dislike for the once-haughty Lorien marchwarden, tried to cut away the dull ache in his chest at having recognized one of the dead. Gurtha n'lembaya lle, astalselen en amin. Aa' menealle nauva calen ar' malta. His eyes burned despite himself. He stood, then, and bore the galadhrim warrior away; lay the body on the gentle slope at the Gate, in the flickering light of the Orcs' pyre, and to the lullaby of death-knell.
we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.
** gurtha n'lembaya lle, astalselen en amin. aa' menealle nauva calen ar' malta. = death would not leave you behind, my brave cousin. may your paths be green and golden. (farewell)