Disclaimer: No money is made off of this story. Everything belongs to
J.R.R. Tolkien. A little bit belongs to Peter Jackson. A tiny smidge
belongs to Miranda Otto and Orlando Bloom. But most belongs to Tolkien!
Summary: Sort of Alternate Universe. Legolas awakens in Rohan to overhear a plot for his murder. And now he must capture the traitor. but will he end up falling in love with her instead? Legolas/Eowyn. I know, I know.
Rating: PG-13
Note: As of January 14, 2003. I revised a lot of this story so if you had read the first two chapters before, I suggest you read them again. Or not. It's up to you, really. This story goes off of the movie. Okay, so anyway, it starts when our travelers land in Rohan. and it then totally deviates from the plot of the Two Towers. Gandalf is not there for plot reasons. And I know Legolas's eyes are light blue but since Orlando Bloom doesn't wear his contacts for half of the movie, I've settled on "dark" eyes to give him a more brooding look. On with the story!
Another Note: I am so sad! Fanfiction.net is having problems uploading my web pages, so now I have to upload Word documents. and all my italics are gone! Darn.
A long time ago in a kingdom far, far away.
The Silence By: Scatterheart
One
The nights descended upon Rohan like thick curtains of raven velvet that smothered the kingdom into deathly silence. With the setting of the sun, the buildings turned to stone and the people into mute statues. It was as if they carried a silence that spoke of the years of hidden brutality and sadness that befell upon them, and it was as if the silence was one that a visit from an old wizard could not so immediately heal.
Legolas awoke to the cold and horrid silence with a vast, empty feeling in his chest. Rohan, he thought, and did not open his eyes. He knew there would be nothing to see except the blackness inside the castle walls, and the blackness would echo the silence, and the silence taunted at his most private thoughts and threatened to bring them out.
He turned over on the hard wooden cot and tried to abandon himself to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be an important day. Tomorrow they would be departing for Helm's Deep, and he could not afford to be fatigued when danger would be nipping at his heels, and at the heels of hundreds of men and women and children.
Tomorrow... tomorrow he would be gone from this wretched place.
From the cot to his left, Gimli snorted loudly and defiantly, sounding immersed in an exciting dream of battle. He was not in the cold silence, Legolas thought. He was out in the raging battlefield, strong and handsome and triumphant, living the life of a hero that every man, dwarf, and elf wanted to live.
On the far left of the room Aragorn exhaled warily at Gimli's sounds, but did not otherwise stir. He too sounded lost in a dream, and Legolas knew it was not one he wanted to wake from. Aragorn was swimming in his visions of Arwen, and it was her unbreakable promise that kept him stoic and kept him alive. Just as Gimli had his battles, Aragorn had his eternal companion. And so both of them were deep in love, and it was that love that almost made them immortal.
Legolas was surrounded by a silence that carried nothing and held no promises. Only memories of a woodland that was now deserted and gone, and the last remnants of an ancient people that was proud and beautiful and dying.
A sickening dread bubbled up inside his stomach and made him want to curl together in agony. He didn't want to stay here anymore, not in this silence. He wanted to go back where everything was lush and green and untouched, and he wanted to damn his pride for making him embark on a futile journey that was eating away at his very soul...
"You!"
Legolas was instantly alert at the voice that cut through the silence. His muscles tensed and he readied himself to spring.
"It can't be! What are you doing here?"
The female speaker was on the other side of the thick wooden door, perhaps as far as four rooms away. Her voice was so muffled by the distance that even Legolas's elven ears had a difficult time picking up the words. He knew that Aragorn and Gimli were too deep inside their dreams to be alerted, and that the guards standing in vigil at their posts were too untrained to even hear a sound.
"You are banished from Rohan, you snake! Why are you back? Get out of here before I sound the alarms!"
"My dear, dear Eowyn," a man responded coldly.
Legolas hissed between his teeth. This is Grima Wormtongue's voice, he thought. He had been banished today. So the treacherous man has returned. And Eowyn...
"Eowyn, don't pretend you are so stupidly brave. If you sound the alarms you will soon be martyred to a pathetic country that will be forgotten before your carcass rots. And we don't want that to happen to your beautiful little face, now do we?"
"You bastard!"
"Come, come, love. Let's not be rude. I am not here to threaten you or offer you bad tidings. I am here to... negotiate with you. Peacefully."
"Negotiate, Wormtongue? You? Nothing that comes out of your slimy black mouth is worth negotiating!"
Wormtongue heaved a sigh. "Will you listen to me, my dear Eowyn? I am not as horrible as you think. True, I may support. questionable authority, but at least I manage to stay alive. And you may do the same if you listen to me."
"Then say it once before I cast you out of the kingdom forever, beast."
"I have simply come to say that your tiny band of newfound friends can only bring destruction to this kingdom. They say they are here to save you. Oh, no, Eowyn! Your kingdom can do nothing against the power of Saruman. You will only watch helplessly as your incompetent friends lead you into total oblivion with their pathetic little cause."
"That is untrue! They have sworn to save us from Saruman with their lives!"
"Are you truly this naïve, little girl? They cannot succeed against Saruman! Don't you understand? Against Saruman no one of this earth shall survive! You cannot go against the current, Eowyn. When a current as immense as this one comes, the only hope for survival is to float with the waves. And I know exactly how..."
Wormtongue's voice dimmed into incomprehensible buzzes.
Legolas sat up silently in his cot. He would rouse Aragorn and Gimli, and they would storm into the next room and put a swift end to Wormtongue's miserable life. No, but there are many guards still more loyal to Wormtongue than Theoden. They're standing all through the palace and will outnumber us in the riot that is sure to follow. Legolas clenched his jaw, and with the last shreds of patience, thought, I will wait.
Soon, he heard footsteps approaching the door. The buzzing voices shifted into clarity and murmured briefly to the guards. Then four sets of chain mail boots marched quietly away until their metallic rattles disappeared down the stairs and out of earshot.
They've convinced the guards to leave. Bribes and lingering loyalty to Wormtongue, undoubtedly, Legolas thought grimly.
"You must promise to save my people before I do this, Wormtongue," said the woman, Eowyn. Her cracking voice seemed resigned, broken, tired.
"My lady, I promise," came the chilly response. "I shall be waiting for you tomorrow evening. We will gather together all of the residents. And then we shall speed away to Mordor, where every last woman and child will be saved from Saruman's wrath."
A pause. "And my money?"
"Ah, yes, you pretty little wrench. Here is the key to the safe. And now I must leave. I await you tomorrow! And remember, jab the poisoned needle into their necks and they shall die. End the elf first, as he is the swiftest and hardest to kill. Then kill the fat dwarf. His thick hide will take longer for the poison to penetrate. And finally finish the pathetic man. Ah, darling, why do you look at me so? Do you not wish to kill him?"
"I do not wish to kill any of them, Wormtongue. I am not an evil, heartless beast like you."
"Eowyn, Eowyn, Eowyn. Your stupid lust for the human is useless. You must know by now his heart is bound to an elf by the name of Arwen. An elf, Eowyn. Compared to you, you are simply an ugly old scab off of Aragorn's shoes. Perhaps good for a rutting or two, nothing more. You are lucky that I have the slightest bit of interest in you, or else you shall remain a spinster for the rest of your short life. Understand? Good. Farewell, my pathetic fox. I shall meet you again tomorrow." His hissing footsteps slid away.
Legolas bounded to his feet and made for the door. He stood next to it, flattened against the wall. There would be a poisoned needle in her hand, he calculated cautiously. He needed to capture her and dislodge the needle without waking Aragorn and Gimli; for fear that their cries of alarm would wake the rest of the guards.
The door barely squeaked on its well-oiled hinges as it opened. He saw Eowyn, dressed in a gossamer white nightgown. Her blond hair was flowing free. She held the glistening needle outstretched in her right hand. Furrowing her brow in the murky darkness, she took a barefooted step into the room.
Legolas stepped behind her and caught her around the waist. He struck her right wrist with his, and the needle flew with a jolt out of her fingers and onto a small fur rug. She took a breath to scream; Legolas blocked it with his palm. Momentarily relinquishing a hold on her waist, he reached for the arrow at his belt and poised it at the pulsing vein in her throat.
Eowyn struggled. Legolas scratched the tip of the arrow into her skin, drawing a thin trickle of blood that ended in a tiny crimson stain at her nightgown. She stopped moving. She was panting heavily, a wild look in her pale face. There was something else there, too. A tear on her cheek? Bur it could have been merely an illusion of the weak moonlight through the open window.
Time passed. A minute. Two.
Eowyn had stopped panting, and was now standing as still as the sandstone columns of the Great Hall of Moria. Slowly, cautiously, Legolas uncovered her mouth. He still kept the arrow at her throat, adding enough pressure for it to be painful. Eowyn swallowed, shivering, and the arrow tip wavered slightly to the side... and she ducked away from his weapon, jumped back, and flipped out the open window in a flutter of white silk.
Damn!
Legolas jumped after her, grabbing the bow and the quiver of arrows at his bedside. He slung them over his shoulders as he plummeted two stories through the air. He saw Eowyn picking herself up from the stone ground and sprinting down the steps of the palace. He landed lightly on his feet and made a beeline after her.
Eowyn ran through the village, heading for the gate that surrounded the kingdom. She was unbelievably fast, cutting like a ghostly blur of lightening through the darkness, and Legolas could only barely keep track of her. He saw her reach the gate and claw her way up the wooden railings. Then she gave a leap and disappeared out of sight.
Legolas sprinted to the gate and scaled over it like a nimble spider. His legs burned as he crashed landed in the dirt caked ground on the other side of the village, and he wondered if he broke a bone with the jump. And then he saw Eowyn winding her way down the hill, dodging expertly through the grave mounds, and the soreness left him.
I shall not have this woman escape me, he thought, pursuing her tracks. Never had something run away from him like this. No orc, no dragon, no elf, even. But a woman who had planned on selling her kingdom to Saruman? He did not know why he was so blindingly furious, the fact that she was a traitor intent on his murder, or the fact that she was a mere mortal woman.
Eowyn was reaching the bottom of the hill. She gave a fleeting glance behind her, her crystal eyes flashing from behind her golden hair. And suddenly, like a fluttering moth, she stumbled, flailed her arms, and crashed rolling to the ground.
Legolas could make out the little brown tree root sticking out of the dirt, and realized it was what had tripped her. He dashed down the hill before Eowyn could regain the breath that had been knocked out of her. He towered over her with his bow already strung, a razor sharp arrow held taut in the middle. He lowered the arrow to point directly at her heart.
"Don't," Legolas said, his dark eyes staring down Eowyn's pale ones, "move. Or you shall be dead, Lady Eowyn of Rohan."
Note: And there you have it, the first chapter. Please send reviews! Good ones and bad ones are all welcome; I love to know what people think about my writing.
Summary: Sort of Alternate Universe. Legolas awakens in Rohan to overhear a plot for his murder. And now he must capture the traitor. but will he end up falling in love with her instead? Legolas/Eowyn. I know, I know.
Rating: PG-13
Note: As of January 14, 2003. I revised a lot of this story so if you had read the first two chapters before, I suggest you read them again. Or not. It's up to you, really. This story goes off of the movie. Okay, so anyway, it starts when our travelers land in Rohan. and it then totally deviates from the plot of the Two Towers. Gandalf is not there for plot reasons. And I know Legolas's eyes are light blue but since Orlando Bloom doesn't wear his contacts for half of the movie, I've settled on "dark" eyes to give him a more brooding look. On with the story!
Another Note: I am so sad! Fanfiction.net is having problems uploading my web pages, so now I have to upload Word documents. and all my italics are gone! Darn.
A long time ago in a kingdom far, far away.
The Silence By: Scatterheart
One
The nights descended upon Rohan like thick curtains of raven velvet that smothered the kingdom into deathly silence. With the setting of the sun, the buildings turned to stone and the people into mute statues. It was as if they carried a silence that spoke of the years of hidden brutality and sadness that befell upon them, and it was as if the silence was one that a visit from an old wizard could not so immediately heal.
Legolas awoke to the cold and horrid silence with a vast, empty feeling in his chest. Rohan, he thought, and did not open his eyes. He knew there would be nothing to see except the blackness inside the castle walls, and the blackness would echo the silence, and the silence taunted at his most private thoughts and threatened to bring them out.
He turned over on the hard wooden cot and tried to abandon himself to sleep. Tomorrow was going to be an important day. Tomorrow they would be departing for Helm's Deep, and he could not afford to be fatigued when danger would be nipping at his heels, and at the heels of hundreds of men and women and children.
Tomorrow... tomorrow he would be gone from this wretched place.
From the cot to his left, Gimli snorted loudly and defiantly, sounding immersed in an exciting dream of battle. He was not in the cold silence, Legolas thought. He was out in the raging battlefield, strong and handsome and triumphant, living the life of a hero that every man, dwarf, and elf wanted to live.
On the far left of the room Aragorn exhaled warily at Gimli's sounds, but did not otherwise stir. He too sounded lost in a dream, and Legolas knew it was not one he wanted to wake from. Aragorn was swimming in his visions of Arwen, and it was her unbreakable promise that kept him stoic and kept him alive. Just as Gimli had his battles, Aragorn had his eternal companion. And so both of them were deep in love, and it was that love that almost made them immortal.
Legolas was surrounded by a silence that carried nothing and held no promises. Only memories of a woodland that was now deserted and gone, and the last remnants of an ancient people that was proud and beautiful and dying.
A sickening dread bubbled up inside his stomach and made him want to curl together in agony. He didn't want to stay here anymore, not in this silence. He wanted to go back where everything was lush and green and untouched, and he wanted to damn his pride for making him embark on a futile journey that was eating away at his very soul...
"You!"
Legolas was instantly alert at the voice that cut through the silence. His muscles tensed and he readied himself to spring.
"It can't be! What are you doing here?"
The female speaker was on the other side of the thick wooden door, perhaps as far as four rooms away. Her voice was so muffled by the distance that even Legolas's elven ears had a difficult time picking up the words. He knew that Aragorn and Gimli were too deep inside their dreams to be alerted, and that the guards standing in vigil at their posts were too untrained to even hear a sound.
"You are banished from Rohan, you snake! Why are you back? Get out of here before I sound the alarms!"
"My dear, dear Eowyn," a man responded coldly.
Legolas hissed between his teeth. This is Grima Wormtongue's voice, he thought. He had been banished today. So the treacherous man has returned. And Eowyn...
"Eowyn, don't pretend you are so stupidly brave. If you sound the alarms you will soon be martyred to a pathetic country that will be forgotten before your carcass rots. And we don't want that to happen to your beautiful little face, now do we?"
"You bastard!"
"Come, come, love. Let's not be rude. I am not here to threaten you or offer you bad tidings. I am here to... negotiate with you. Peacefully."
"Negotiate, Wormtongue? You? Nothing that comes out of your slimy black mouth is worth negotiating!"
Wormtongue heaved a sigh. "Will you listen to me, my dear Eowyn? I am not as horrible as you think. True, I may support. questionable authority, but at least I manage to stay alive. And you may do the same if you listen to me."
"Then say it once before I cast you out of the kingdom forever, beast."
"I have simply come to say that your tiny band of newfound friends can only bring destruction to this kingdom. They say they are here to save you. Oh, no, Eowyn! Your kingdom can do nothing against the power of Saruman. You will only watch helplessly as your incompetent friends lead you into total oblivion with their pathetic little cause."
"That is untrue! They have sworn to save us from Saruman with their lives!"
"Are you truly this naïve, little girl? They cannot succeed against Saruman! Don't you understand? Against Saruman no one of this earth shall survive! You cannot go against the current, Eowyn. When a current as immense as this one comes, the only hope for survival is to float with the waves. And I know exactly how..."
Wormtongue's voice dimmed into incomprehensible buzzes.
Legolas sat up silently in his cot. He would rouse Aragorn and Gimli, and they would storm into the next room and put a swift end to Wormtongue's miserable life. No, but there are many guards still more loyal to Wormtongue than Theoden. They're standing all through the palace and will outnumber us in the riot that is sure to follow. Legolas clenched his jaw, and with the last shreds of patience, thought, I will wait.
Soon, he heard footsteps approaching the door. The buzzing voices shifted into clarity and murmured briefly to the guards. Then four sets of chain mail boots marched quietly away until their metallic rattles disappeared down the stairs and out of earshot.
They've convinced the guards to leave. Bribes and lingering loyalty to Wormtongue, undoubtedly, Legolas thought grimly.
"You must promise to save my people before I do this, Wormtongue," said the woman, Eowyn. Her cracking voice seemed resigned, broken, tired.
"My lady, I promise," came the chilly response. "I shall be waiting for you tomorrow evening. We will gather together all of the residents. And then we shall speed away to Mordor, where every last woman and child will be saved from Saruman's wrath."
A pause. "And my money?"
"Ah, yes, you pretty little wrench. Here is the key to the safe. And now I must leave. I await you tomorrow! And remember, jab the poisoned needle into their necks and they shall die. End the elf first, as he is the swiftest and hardest to kill. Then kill the fat dwarf. His thick hide will take longer for the poison to penetrate. And finally finish the pathetic man. Ah, darling, why do you look at me so? Do you not wish to kill him?"
"I do not wish to kill any of them, Wormtongue. I am not an evil, heartless beast like you."
"Eowyn, Eowyn, Eowyn. Your stupid lust for the human is useless. You must know by now his heart is bound to an elf by the name of Arwen. An elf, Eowyn. Compared to you, you are simply an ugly old scab off of Aragorn's shoes. Perhaps good for a rutting or two, nothing more. You are lucky that I have the slightest bit of interest in you, or else you shall remain a spinster for the rest of your short life. Understand? Good. Farewell, my pathetic fox. I shall meet you again tomorrow." His hissing footsteps slid away.
Legolas bounded to his feet and made for the door. He stood next to it, flattened against the wall. There would be a poisoned needle in her hand, he calculated cautiously. He needed to capture her and dislodge the needle without waking Aragorn and Gimli; for fear that their cries of alarm would wake the rest of the guards.
The door barely squeaked on its well-oiled hinges as it opened. He saw Eowyn, dressed in a gossamer white nightgown. Her blond hair was flowing free. She held the glistening needle outstretched in her right hand. Furrowing her brow in the murky darkness, she took a barefooted step into the room.
Legolas stepped behind her and caught her around the waist. He struck her right wrist with his, and the needle flew with a jolt out of her fingers and onto a small fur rug. She took a breath to scream; Legolas blocked it with his palm. Momentarily relinquishing a hold on her waist, he reached for the arrow at his belt and poised it at the pulsing vein in her throat.
Eowyn struggled. Legolas scratched the tip of the arrow into her skin, drawing a thin trickle of blood that ended in a tiny crimson stain at her nightgown. She stopped moving. She was panting heavily, a wild look in her pale face. There was something else there, too. A tear on her cheek? Bur it could have been merely an illusion of the weak moonlight through the open window.
Time passed. A minute. Two.
Eowyn had stopped panting, and was now standing as still as the sandstone columns of the Great Hall of Moria. Slowly, cautiously, Legolas uncovered her mouth. He still kept the arrow at her throat, adding enough pressure for it to be painful. Eowyn swallowed, shivering, and the arrow tip wavered slightly to the side... and she ducked away from his weapon, jumped back, and flipped out the open window in a flutter of white silk.
Damn!
Legolas jumped after her, grabbing the bow and the quiver of arrows at his bedside. He slung them over his shoulders as he plummeted two stories through the air. He saw Eowyn picking herself up from the stone ground and sprinting down the steps of the palace. He landed lightly on his feet and made a beeline after her.
Eowyn ran through the village, heading for the gate that surrounded the kingdom. She was unbelievably fast, cutting like a ghostly blur of lightening through the darkness, and Legolas could only barely keep track of her. He saw her reach the gate and claw her way up the wooden railings. Then she gave a leap and disappeared out of sight.
Legolas sprinted to the gate and scaled over it like a nimble spider. His legs burned as he crashed landed in the dirt caked ground on the other side of the village, and he wondered if he broke a bone with the jump. And then he saw Eowyn winding her way down the hill, dodging expertly through the grave mounds, and the soreness left him.
I shall not have this woman escape me, he thought, pursuing her tracks. Never had something run away from him like this. No orc, no dragon, no elf, even. But a woman who had planned on selling her kingdom to Saruman? He did not know why he was so blindingly furious, the fact that she was a traitor intent on his murder, or the fact that she was a mere mortal woman.
Eowyn was reaching the bottom of the hill. She gave a fleeting glance behind her, her crystal eyes flashing from behind her golden hair. And suddenly, like a fluttering moth, she stumbled, flailed her arms, and crashed rolling to the ground.
Legolas could make out the little brown tree root sticking out of the dirt, and realized it was what had tripped her. He dashed down the hill before Eowyn could regain the breath that had been knocked out of her. He towered over her with his bow already strung, a razor sharp arrow held taut in the middle. He lowered the arrow to point directly at her heart.
"Don't," Legolas said, his dark eyes staring down Eowyn's pale ones, "move. Or you shall be dead, Lady Eowyn of Rohan."
Note: And there you have it, the first chapter. Please send reviews! Good ones and bad ones are all welcome; I love to know what people think about my writing.