Author's Note: Hmmmm, not much to say about this one. More Legolas-torture. Aragorn will be back...I'm not saying next chapter...okay, I am. Aragorn'll probably be back in the next chapter, unless I have something drastic to add.
PS - Don't worry guys, no intention of a Legolas/Eowyn romance. I didn't really from the beginning, but I like to keep you guys on your toes. *grin*
Abandon, Twilight and Trust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legolas stood in mute stillness through the entirety of the next day, feeling the hot sun beat down on his shoulders and not feeling it. He did nothing but hear and see. He did not think, only felt with all the senses given to him. There were hours when only the plains talked to him, the wind moaning and the tall grass whispering into his ears. It was a loud place even in the silence, layers of voices and lives.
At one point, he began to dream feverishly in the blistering heat. He knew he was dreaming, but knowing didn't make the dream any less terrible. Mirkwood was burned to the ground, all around him. He heard screams, terrible pealing screams, but could see nothing to make them. Anduril lay on the ground at his feet; it wasn't only broken, anymore. It was shattered like fine glass. He didn't know how he could recognize it as Anduril, but he knew in his soul that was what it was. He realized that Boromir was standing next to him. All around him, there was a cold white light, and awful crying. Boromir stood next to him, wearing the most sorrowful expression Legolas had ever seen. Blood was dried on his face in streaks. Arrows jutted out of him. Legolas would have been terrified, but knowing he was dreaming took his fear from him. He only felt a iced, empty grief.
He woke from the dream about midday, jerking awake with a low cry. The sun was a hellish inferno, hotter than the forges of Barad-dur, beating down mercilessly. He felt a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, and he had to squint to see across the plains. Sweat trickled down his forehead, stinging his eyes. Still, he would not move. If all the elements rose against him, he would not abandon.
Surely, he must come, Legolas thought, never leaving this place where Aragorn fell. He'll come, or I'll die of grief. It was bad enough with Boromir, but Aragorn... He shook his head slightly. He had always considered Aragorn an Elf, even though he knew better. He had never even entertained the thought that Aragorn could ever die. Would Estel fall just as Gondor had found its lost king? No fate could be so horribly cruel.
By the time dusk came, making the fields look as if they were ablaze, Legolas knew Aragorn would not come. He would not admit it to himself, but he knew it. He, Legolas Greenleaf, would fall into shadow. If not this day, then the next one.
It wasn't until dark evening of the second day that Legolas returned to Helm's Deep. He had stood out in the cold darkness and the hot sun for two days and a night before Gimli spied him from afar on the grasslands, and went out to meet him.
The dwarf was appalled by the broken resignation in Legolas's face. He didn't think the elf would ever give up, but two days of nothing but staring into bloodied, swirling waters, waiting for a form he would never see, and two days of watching out across the plains, waiting for a single, wearied figure that would never arrive, had taken its toll on the Mirkwood prince. He had the beaten, hammered gaze in his eyes that Gimli had seen in Boromir's eyes, after he had fallen to the orcs.
Legolas looked like a creature waiting to die. He staggered slightly, his face pale as if he was stricken with shock; he swayed even though he wasn't wounded in any way that Gimli saw, and the dark half-moons beneath the elf's eyes were terrible to see. Out on the cliff, he had looked tranquil and composed, prepared to wait out the ages for Aragorn. Now, it seemed all that strength had been stolen from him by the fiery sun, cold moon, and indifferent stars.
"Legolas! You've come back!" Gimli called, forcing a surly kind of cheer into his voice. It sounded forced, too, but it was the best he could manage. Legolas looked up, his eyes meeting Gimli's for a second and looking through him before he dropped his gaze again. Legolas did not hail back. He simply kept walking, his steps dragging like a horse beaten into its last legs, head lowered. If elves could fall sick, Gimli would say that Legolas was ill. He thought that sick or no, Legolas was probably ill, although no herb or salve could cure this hurt.
When the dwarf came up to Legolas and touched him casually on the shoulder, the elf jumped and stared down at him with crushed sufferance. Beneath his hand, Gimli could feel the elf's whole body quaking steadily, as if with the chills of fever.
Gimli led him into the courtyard. At one point, Legolas-stripped of grace-tripped and stumbled to one knee, but instead of getting up, he only kneeled there, staring at the stones as if one position was just as good as another, completely disconnected from his surroundings, as if he was dreaming and awake. Citizens of Rohan walked around him, some glancing down at him nervously, others not daring to look at him at all. He did not move until Gimli pulled Legolas's arm around his stout shoulders and pulled the elf to his feet.
"Legolas, what's wrong with you?" he said, half angry and half worried. The elf looked very young, and with the circles under his eyes and the glazed look in them, he also looked very...human.
"When have you last slept, you immortal idiot?" Gimli murmured, helping Legolas along. "I was beginning to think maybe you turned back for home. Home to Mirkwood."
Legolas looked down at his dwarf friend, too wretched to be exasperated by Gimli's help, but forcing a smile anyway. It felt stiff and unnatural on his face, more like a grimace than a smile. "I did not give up on the Rohan."
// I did not give up hope. //
"How are you?" Gimli asked, a quiet rumble. He clapped Legolas on the shoulder.
"Not well." Legolas touched the side of his face again, rubbing his temple in that despairing, exhausted gesture. His face was terribly pale. "I did sleep a little, Gimli. But my dreams were filled with fire and shadow. I can hear the armies marching. The ground trembles. The grass cries under yrch feet. But no word of Aragorn comes."
"Maybe, Legolas...we'll hear no more word of him," Gimli said hesitantly. "Perhaps he really is gone. I hate to think of it, but..."
Legolas did not answer, or even acknowledge that he heard Gimli. He refused to agree. What if all it took was his lost faith to cause Aragorn's death? That one, simple acceptance of defeat? He knew in his mind that the idea was utterly idiotic, but in his heart...he wasn't willing to take the risk. Hope was the only thing that kept him going, and kept these people around him, these Men, going. Their courage hung by a thread. His own bravery was steadfast as the ages, but his faith was starting to falter.
He walked off without answering, searching for darker places, longing to hide away from the light and prying eyes. These Men were not the same as the ones he was accustomed to seeing, not the stern, dark inhabitants of Gondor and Anor. These straw-haired fierce horsemen were too afraid to talk to him, too afraid to approach him, but not too afraid to talk *about* him, in whispers they forgot that he could hear anyway. He didn't even care enough to be insulted. He curled up in a dark corner and pulled his knees up to his chest.
Legolas murmured himself a song in Elvish, a lullaby from his youth. It didn't comfort him, but it did help to make him sleepy, which was something it had never failed for him.
"Pretty," said a voice behind him. He stopped and looked up, seeing a young girl standing there. She was dressed in a dirty shift, and her eyes were solemn. "A pretty song." She talked the Common Tongue as if she had a mouthful of oatmeal, as if she wasn't used to it. Legolas could hear the dialect of the Mark in her words.
"Thank you," Legolas replied softly before turning back to look out the window.
"You live forever, like they say?"
Legolas was startled into a soft laugh. It was an unexpected question, and a welcome one. Anything to divert his attention from his own sorrows. "Yes."
"They say that your horses are faster than wind, too. But if we only had an army of you, we could not be defeated," the girl said in awe, her voice breaking in delight.
Legolas shook his head, still smiling gently. "We can fall in battle."
"But you're brave. My father says you fight like a demon. What do you fear, Master Elf, that we cannot conquer together?" she said, making one mighty little hand into a defiant fist. She beamed a smile at him, and seemed to Legolas an embodiment of the ferocious spirit of her people.
He smiled more broadly back at her, endeared by her innocence, not sure whether her father's remark about him had been meant as a compliment or not. He decided to take it as one. The little girl, at least seemed to think it was flattery.
"Where is Sir Aragorn? Don't you ride beside him?"
Legolas's pain came back on him with a paralyzing depth. He turned his face away, so the girl could not see the expression on his face. "I don't know," he answered, his voice strangely choked, when he could bring himself to speak again.
The girl walked a few steps closer to him, close enough to touch his sleeve, patting it down in a strange soothing little motion. He couldn't see her face, but he could feel her watching him.
"Don't worry," she said. "It'll be okay." She laughed again. "My big brother's a good fighter."
Legolas swallowed back tears and looked over at her, smiling again with serious effort. "I'm sure he is. Finest warrior in Rohan." After a moment of careful consideration, he added, "A regular demon."
The girl dissolved into musical giggles at this, small hands clapped over her mouth in an unconsciously childlike gesture.
Legolas was glad for that beautiful sound, even as miserable as he was. It couldn't lift his spirits, but it kept them from sinking any deeper. He smiled again, faintly, as he turned back towards the hole in the stone wall that passed for a window.
"Taryn...what are you doing there?" A new voice. Legolas turned back towards the little girl. An older boy came forward, putting his hands on her shoulders. He knew at once that this was the girl's brother. They had the same hair, the same face, even the same fierce poise. The little girl looked up at him.
"Tamor...I was talking to him," she said, pointing over at Legolas with absolutely no reserve. He said nothing.
The boy did. His quick, cunning pale green eyes glanced coldly at Legolas, then back at his sister. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, a fleeting gift of affection in an often brutal land that had no time for such things. "Well...leave him be. It's time for you to go to bed, anyway."
"Come tuck me in-"
"Later. Leave us be, Taryn. I mean it. I'll find Father, and we'll come do it together. If I catch you skulking about so late after I say to bed down, you'll be in a world of hurt." His voice was not merciless, but hardened by having to mother someone when he was young himself. It was lovingly stern, but Legolas could hear that the threat was not a bluff.
Defiantly, she walked over to Legolas once more, still grabbing his sleeve in her little hand, as if she wanted to hug him and was afraid to do it.
"Good night. Do not worry," she said, sounding completely nonchalant herself with a child's optimism and painful naiveté. "We'll send them back to the dark. My father says nobody has ever overthrown the Deep."
"Taryn!"
She pulled back from him, feet pattering on cold stones as she ran back towards the courtyard.
The boy looked after her for a moment, then stared back at Legolas. Legolas stared back. Both of them regarded each other for a time that seemed to be an eternity. Legolas noted with vague amusement that the boy seemed to be sizing him up.
"Where are the other Elves?" the boy said finally, voice soft and accusing. "Why don't they come and help us? If Saruman beats us, he'll burn the forests next. He's already destroyed Isengard."
Legolas said nothing, thinking both exasperatedly "Who on Arda made me an ambassador for my people?" and about his duties as a prince. But what the boy said about burning the forests recalled his dream from the day before, and he shivered a little.
"The men have said if we go against Saruman's armies, we're all going to die."
Legolas brought his gaze back to the boy's, reluctantly. There was no fear in his voice, but the boy's emerald eyes were filled with it. In him, Legolas saw, it was akin to dim fury, and that made him think of Eowyn.
"Are you afraid to die?" Legolas asked finally, not taking his eyes from the boy's.
"No!" Tamor's voice was savage, bold. He shook his head violently, a lion's mane of dark golden hair. It was for that defiance in his own spirit, Legolas thought, that the boy probably did not punish his sister for her rebellion against him. "I will win when they come for us, and then I'll march against Sauron. We will not fall."
"You are too young to fight."
"And you are arrogant," the boy countered, smiling grimly. "Would you have someone take my place in the armor? Someone to die in my place? A woman, a child? Would you have my sister wield in my stead? I didn't think so. I am not too young to die...and I am willing to die for my people."
Legolas looked back at him. He was amazed to be able to hear Eomer's voice in all of these untamed people.
// I would cut off your head, beard and all, Master Dwarf, if it stood but a little further from the ground, // he thought, remembering Eomer's proud, disdainful words, and smiled back at the boy despite himself.
"Have hope," Legolas replied, "and perhaps you will not have to make that sacrifice."
"There is no hope in the Mark," Tamor answered, as if it was a known thing, like saying that rivers flowed downhill. There was a terrible assurance; in that voice, Legolas could hear a boy who had been forced to become a man far too quickly.
"Do not say that!" Legolas said sharply, standing too quickly to be seen, his eyes flashing, and the boy backed away a step in surprise and fright.
"You do not understand-" the boy started, but Legolas would not let him finish. He put his hands on the boy's shoulders, looking down into Tamor's green eyes furiously. Fearful, the boy's hand went for the dagger at his side in a lightning fast gesture that even Legolas had to appreciate. Whatever he was, the boy was no slouch.
"Don't," Legolas said simply, without taking away his hands, even though he knew that the boy could still stab him. He just locked eyes with Tamor, and would not allow the boy to look away. "All I understand is that being resigned to your death will not help the people of Rohan. There is *always* hope."
"I'm an archer of the Riddermark," Tamor replied icily, glaring at him. His posture was stiff and angry. "I'm not afraid of you."
"Don't be. All I am asking is that you hear me. And there can be no courage if you are not afraid."
"I hear you, Elf. Now let me go."
Legolas did as he asked. The boy backed further away from him, hand still on the hilt of his blade.
"An archer, hmm?" Legolas asked, smiling faintly.
"Yes."
"I am an archer of Mirkwood. Perhaps we will fight side by side."
Tamor bowed, despite his cold words before. "I would be honored." When he raised his gaze again, the boy's gaze was resolute and clear of anger. "Excuse me, Master Elf. I must go see to my sister. She won't sleep well unless I do."
As the boy started to walk away, Legolas called to him. "Tamor!"
The boy turned back, eyes meeting his.
"Do you love your sister?" Legolas asked. He wasn't think of Eowyn, now. He was thinking of Arwen. Arwen, who had always been like a sister to him. And Aragorn, like his brother. This brought a fresh pang of sorrow that he did not want to feel. It kept hitting him, usually when he least expected it, like an arrow out of nowhere to plant itself in his chest. He did not want to feel it, but of course he did. He had to.
Tamor scowled slightly. "Of course."
"Then protect her. Do not lose faith."
// Maybe I will learn to take my own advice, // Legolas added to himself, as the boy melted into the shadows.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS - Don't worry guys, no intention of a Legolas/Eowyn romance. I didn't really from the beginning, but I like to keep you guys on your toes. *grin*
Abandon, Twilight and Trust
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legolas stood in mute stillness through the entirety of the next day, feeling the hot sun beat down on his shoulders and not feeling it. He did nothing but hear and see. He did not think, only felt with all the senses given to him. There were hours when only the plains talked to him, the wind moaning and the tall grass whispering into his ears. It was a loud place even in the silence, layers of voices and lives.
At one point, he began to dream feverishly in the blistering heat. He knew he was dreaming, but knowing didn't make the dream any less terrible. Mirkwood was burned to the ground, all around him. He heard screams, terrible pealing screams, but could see nothing to make them. Anduril lay on the ground at his feet; it wasn't only broken, anymore. It was shattered like fine glass. He didn't know how he could recognize it as Anduril, but he knew in his soul that was what it was. He realized that Boromir was standing next to him. All around him, there was a cold white light, and awful crying. Boromir stood next to him, wearing the most sorrowful expression Legolas had ever seen. Blood was dried on his face in streaks. Arrows jutted out of him. Legolas would have been terrified, but knowing he was dreaming took his fear from him. He only felt a iced, empty grief.
He woke from the dream about midday, jerking awake with a low cry. The sun was a hellish inferno, hotter than the forges of Barad-dur, beating down mercilessly. He felt a light sheen of sweat on his forehead, and he had to squint to see across the plains. Sweat trickled down his forehead, stinging his eyes. Still, he would not move. If all the elements rose against him, he would not abandon.
Surely, he must come, Legolas thought, never leaving this place where Aragorn fell. He'll come, or I'll die of grief. It was bad enough with Boromir, but Aragorn... He shook his head slightly. He had always considered Aragorn an Elf, even though he knew better. He had never even entertained the thought that Aragorn could ever die. Would Estel fall just as Gondor had found its lost king? No fate could be so horribly cruel.
By the time dusk came, making the fields look as if they were ablaze, Legolas knew Aragorn would not come. He would not admit it to himself, but he knew it. He, Legolas Greenleaf, would fall into shadow. If not this day, then the next one.
It wasn't until dark evening of the second day that Legolas returned to Helm's Deep. He had stood out in the cold darkness and the hot sun for two days and a night before Gimli spied him from afar on the grasslands, and went out to meet him.
The dwarf was appalled by the broken resignation in Legolas's face. He didn't think the elf would ever give up, but two days of nothing but staring into bloodied, swirling waters, waiting for a form he would never see, and two days of watching out across the plains, waiting for a single, wearied figure that would never arrive, had taken its toll on the Mirkwood prince. He had the beaten, hammered gaze in his eyes that Gimli had seen in Boromir's eyes, after he had fallen to the orcs.
Legolas looked like a creature waiting to die. He staggered slightly, his face pale as if he was stricken with shock; he swayed even though he wasn't wounded in any way that Gimli saw, and the dark half-moons beneath the elf's eyes were terrible to see. Out on the cliff, he had looked tranquil and composed, prepared to wait out the ages for Aragorn. Now, it seemed all that strength had been stolen from him by the fiery sun, cold moon, and indifferent stars.
"Legolas! You've come back!" Gimli called, forcing a surly kind of cheer into his voice. It sounded forced, too, but it was the best he could manage. Legolas looked up, his eyes meeting Gimli's for a second and looking through him before he dropped his gaze again. Legolas did not hail back. He simply kept walking, his steps dragging like a horse beaten into its last legs, head lowered. If elves could fall sick, Gimli would say that Legolas was ill. He thought that sick or no, Legolas was probably ill, although no herb or salve could cure this hurt.
When the dwarf came up to Legolas and touched him casually on the shoulder, the elf jumped and stared down at him with crushed sufferance. Beneath his hand, Gimli could feel the elf's whole body quaking steadily, as if with the chills of fever.
Gimli led him into the courtyard. At one point, Legolas-stripped of grace-tripped and stumbled to one knee, but instead of getting up, he only kneeled there, staring at the stones as if one position was just as good as another, completely disconnected from his surroundings, as if he was dreaming and awake. Citizens of Rohan walked around him, some glancing down at him nervously, others not daring to look at him at all. He did not move until Gimli pulled Legolas's arm around his stout shoulders and pulled the elf to his feet.
"Legolas, what's wrong with you?" he said, half angry and half worried. The elf looked very young, and with the circles under his eyes and the glazed look in them, he also looked very...human.
"When have you last slept, you immortal idiot?" Gimli murmured, helping Legolas along. "I was beginning to think maybe you turned back for home. Home to Mirkwood."
Legolas looked down at his dwarf friend, too wretched to be exasperated by Gimli's help, but forcing a smile anyway. It felt stiff and unnatural on his face, more like a grimace than a smile. "I did not give up on the Rohan."
// I did not give up hope. //
"How are you?" Gimli asked, a quiet rumble. He clapped Legolas on the shoulder.
"Not well." Legolas touched the side of his face again, rubbing his temple in that despairing, exhausted gesture. His face was terribly pale. "I did sleep a little, Gimli. But my dreams were filled with fire and shadow. I can hear the armies marching. The ground trembles. The grass cries under yrch feet. But no word of Aragorn comes."
"Maybe, Legolas...we'll hear no more word of him," Gimli said hesitantly. "Perhaps he really is gone. I hate to think of it, but..."
Legolas did not answer, or even acknowledge that he heard Gimli. He refused to agree. What if all it took was his lost faith to cause Aragorn's death? That one, simple acceptance of defeat? He knew in his mind that the idea was utterly idiotic, but in his heart...he wasn't willing to take the risk. Hope was the only thing that kept him going, and kept these people around him, these Men, going. Their courage hung by a thread. His own bravery was steadfast as the ages, but his faith was starting to falter.
He walked off without answering, searching for darker places, longing to hide away from the light and prying eyes. These Men were not the same as the ones he was accustomed to seeing, not the stern, dark inhabitants of Gondor and Anor. These straw-haired fierce horsemen were too afraid to talk to him, too afraid to approach him, but not too afraid to talk *about* him, in whispers they forgot that he could hear anyway. He didn't even care enough to be insulted. He curled up in a dark corner and pulled his knees up to his chest.
Legolas murmured himself a song in Elvish, a lullaby from his youth. It didn't comfort him, but it did help to make him sleepy, which was something it had never failed for him.
"Pretty," said a voice behind him. He stopped and looked up, seeing a young girl standing there. She was dressed in a dirty shift, and her eyes were solemn. "A pretty song." She talked the Common Tongue as if she had a mouthful of oatmeal, as if she wasn't used to it. Legolas could hear the dialect of the Mark in her words.
"Thank you," Legolas replied softly before turning back to look out the window.
"You live forever, like they say?"
Legolas was startled into a soft laugh. It was an unexpected question, and a welcome one. Anything to divert his attention from his own sorrows. "Yes."
"They say that your horses are faster than wind, too. But if we only had an army of you, we could not be defeated," the girl said in awe, her voice breaking in delight.
Legolas shook his head, still smiling gently. "We can fall in battle."
"But you're brave. My father says you fight like a demon. What do you fear, Master Elf, that we cannot conquer together?" she said, making one mighty little hand into a defiant fist. She beamed a smile at him, and seemed to Legolas an embodiment of the ferocious spirit of her people.
He smiled more broadly back at her, endeared by her innocence, not sure whether her father's remark about him had been meant as a compliment or not. He decided to take it as one. The little girl, at least seemed to think it was flattery.
"Where is Sir Aragorn? Don't you ride beside him?"
Legolas's pain came back on him with a paralyzing depth. He turned his face away, so the girl could not see the expression on his face. "I don't know," he answered, his voice strangely choked, when he could bring himself to speak again.
The girl walked a few steps closer to him, close enough to touch his sleeve, patting it down in a strange soothing little motion. He couldn't see her face, but he could feel her watching him.
"Don't worry," she said. "It'll be okay." She laughed again. "My big brother's a good fighter."
Legolas swallowed back tears and looked over at her, smiling again with serious effort. "I'm sure he is. Finest warrior in Rohan." After a moment of careful consideration, he added, "A regular demon."
The girl dissolved into musical giggles at this, small hands clapped over her mouth in an unconsciously childlike gesture.
Legolas was glad for that beautiful sound, even as miserable as he was. It couldn't lift his spirits, but it kept them from sinking any deeper. He smiled again, faintly, as he turned back towards the hole in the stone wall that passed for a window.
"Taryn...what are you doing there?" A new voice. Legolas turned back towards the little girl. An older boy came forward, putting his hands on her shoulders. He knew at once that this was the girl's brother. They had the same hair, the same face, even the same fierce poise. The little girl looked up at him.
"Tamor...I was talking to him," she said, pointing over at Legolas with absolutely no reserve. He said nothing.
The boy did. His quick, cunning pale green eyes glanced coldly at Legolas, then back at his sister. He leaned down and kissed her on the forehead, a fleeting gift of affection in an often brutal land that had no time for such things. "Well...leave him be. It's time for you to go to bed, anyway."
"Come tuck me in-"
"Later. Leave us be, Taryn. I mean it. I'll find Father, and we'll come do it together. If I catch you skulking about so late after I say to bed down, you'll be in a world of hurt." His voice was not merciless, but hardened by having to mother someone when he was young himself. It was lovingly stern, but Legolas could hear that the threat was not a bluff.
Defiantly, she walked over to Legolas once more, still grabbing his sleeve in her little hand, as if she wanted to hug him and was afraid to do it.
"Good night. Do not worry," she said, sounding completely nonchalant herself with a child's optimism and painful naiveté. "We'll send them back to the dark. My father says nobody has ever overthrown the Deep."
"Taryn!"
She pulled back from him, feet pattering on cold stones as she ran back towards the courtyard.
The boy looked after her for a moment, then stared back at Legolas. Legolas stared back. Both of them regarded each other for a time that seemed to be an eternity. Legolas noted with vague amusement that the boy seemed to be sizing him up.
"Where are the other Elves?" the boy said finally, voice soft and accusing. "Why don't they come and help us? If Saruman beats us, he'll burn the forests next. He's already destroyed Isengard."
Legolas said nothing, thinking both exasperatedly "Who on Arda made me an ambassador for my people?" and about his duties as a prince. But what the boy said about burning the forests recalled his dream from the day before, and he shivered a little.
"The men have said if we go against Saruman's armies, we're all going to die."
Legolas brought his gaze back to the boy's, reluctantly. There was no fear in his voice, but the boy's emerald eyes were filled with it. In him, Legolas saw, it was akin to dim fury, and that made him think of Eowyn.
"Are you afraid to die?" Legolas asked finally, not taking his eyes from the boy's.
"No!" Tamor's voice was savage, bold. He shook his head violently, a lion's mane of dark golden hair. It was for that defiance in his own spirit, Legolas thought, that the boy probably did not punish his sister for her rebellion against him. "I will win when they come for us, and then I'll march against Sauron. We will not fall."
"You are too young to fight."
"And you are arrogant," the boy countered, smiling grimly. "Would you have someone take my place in the armor? Someone to die in my place? A woman, a child? Would you have my sister wield in my stead? I didn't think so. I am not too young to die...and I am willing to die for my people."
Legolas looked back at him. He was amazed to be able to hear Eomer's voice in all of these untamed people.
// I would cut off your head, beard and all, Master Dwarf, if it stood but a little further from the ground, // he thought, remembering Eomer's proud, disdainful words, and smiled back at the boy despite himself.
"Have hope," Legolas replied, "and perhaps you will not have to make that sacrifice."
"There is no hope in the Mark," Tamor answered, as if it was a known thing, like saying that rivers flowed downhill. There was a terrible assurance; in that voice, Legolas could hear a boy who had been forced to become a man far too quickly.
"Do not say that!" Legolas said sharply, standing too quickly to be seen, his eyes flashing, and the boy backed away a step in surprise and fright.
"You do not understand-" the boy started, but Legolas would not let him finish. He put his hands on the boy's shoulders, looking down into Tamor's green eyes furiously. Fearful, the boy's hand went for the dagger at his side in a lightning fast gesture that even Legolas had to appreciate. Whatever he was, the boy was no slouch.
"Don't," Legolas said simply, without taking away his hands, even though he knew that the boy could still stab him. He just locked eyes with Tamor, and would not allow the boy to look away. "All I understand is that being resigned to your death will not help the people of Rohan. There is *always* hope."
"I'm an archer of the Riddermark," Tamor replied icily, glaring at him. His posture was stiff and angry. "I'm not afraid of you."
"Don't be. All I am asking is that you hear me. And there can be no courage if you are not afraid."
"I hear you, Elf. Now let me go."
Legolas did as he asked. The boy backed further away from him, hand still on the hilt of his blade.
"An archer, hmm?" Legolas asked, smiling faintly.
"Yes."
"I am an archer of Mirkwood. Perhaps we will fight side by side."
Tamor bowed, despite his cold words before. "I would be honored." When he raised his gaze again, the boy's gaze was resolute and clear of anger. "Excuse me, Master Elf. I must go see to my sister. She won't sleep well unless I do."
As the boy started to walk away, Legolas called to him. "Tamor!"
The boy turned back, eyes meeting his.
"Do you love your sister?" Legolas asked. He wasn't think of Eowyn, now. He was thinking of Arwen. Arwen, who had always been like a sister to him. And Aragorn, like his brother. This brought a fresh pang of sorrow that he did not want to feel. It kept hitting him, usually when he least expected it, like an arrow out of nowhere to plant itself in his chest. He did not want to feel it, but of course he did. He had to.
Tamor scowled slightly. "Of course."
"Then protect her. Do not lose faith."
// Maybe I will learn to take my own advice, // Legolas added to himself, as the boy melted into the shadows.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~