Author's Note: Okay, last chapter for this fic. (Hope it's a good one.) I'll work on the Helm's Deep fic, post as often as I can, but I have a research paper due at the same time, so it may be slower coming. By the way, I had no idea what the name of the horse was that rescued Aragorn, since that part wasn't in the book, and I just assumed it was Hasufel. Call it artistic license. And for the people that were worried, this ain't an A/L in any form.
Noon and Valor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legolas fled.
He walked away with the blind, invincible walk of someone overcome with grief or fury, hot tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. All the words he had meant to say had died in his throat, choking him. He berated himself mercilessly, his expression a desperate one, a mix of frustration and anger at himself.
// You look terrible? You look *terrible*?! By the Valar, my everlasting foolish mouth! Could I not tell him that I feared for his life? That I could not accept his death, no matter what all others said? Could I not tell him I care about him, now that I get another chance? Could I not call him brother, just once? Ai, Elbereth, what in the hell is wrong with me?! //
But Legolas knew. He knew that when he handed Aragorn the Evenstar, he could not say those things. He had seen the happiness in Aragorn's eyes when he gave it to him. He knew that to say those things he wanted to say in that moment would have taken away from Aragorn's happiness...would have been the worst, most despicable thievery of Arwen's affection...and so he had kept silent, when his heart cried for him to speak.
// And it's better that way, isn't it? // he thought, blinking hard to ward off tears. // At least he's alive. Thank Gilthoniel for that. //
// No, it's not better! You deserved that moment. You deserved to welcome him. You waited out for him in the cold and dark and terrible heat for two days and nights. You had a chance to tell him exactly what you felt, to lift away all that pain and fear, and you blew it off with a smart remark and a jest. You're a fool. //
For that he had no argument. He only walked faster, plowing past the Rohan men instead of skirting around them. He could hear Gimli calling him back, but he wasn't listening. He didn't want to listen. He didn't hear the grunts of indignation as he pushed past people in his way.
He thought of Boromir. Boromir, who had spoken too late. He had another chance, now, not like Boromir ever did...but he didn't know if he could take it. Boromir pledged loyalty to Aragorn, swore an oath of it on his dying breath. Legolas had tried to speak, to confess..
// Confess what?! // his father's voice spoke in his head, harsh as a winter wind, causing him to wince in reflex. // Confess your loyalty? Your allegiance to a mortal? What would you do, prince of Mirkwood, third Heir, an immortal creature, wisest of all beings, going down on one knee, to kneel at the feet of this ragged wanderer? Legolas! Be the tender-hearted idealist, if you wish, but do not speak nonsense. All men are the same. All men are weak. Men are the reason the Ring still endures. And he's *no* different. //
// He's my friend! Mine! Mortal, yes, but he belongs to the Eldar for as long as he lives! // Legolas thought fiercely, pushing unfeeling past one of the guards to the courtyard. // Aragorn is my brother. He's the king I'll never have the heart to be. I need to tell him that. I need him to know...and I'm afraid I won't have another chance to say it. I do not want to say it in my dying breath, like Boromir did. And I do not want to have to say it in his, when all hope will be lost. //
He stopped running; he hadn't realized he had been running. He found himself standing out on the plains, and had no idea how he had ended up there. All the strength ran out of him, and his legs buckled. He tried to lock his throat against sobs and failed. He began to see in a wavery prism as tears overtook him, and he lowered his head.
Legolas wept, all the lamentation he had suppressed since Aragorn's fall, a crumbled statue kneeling in the tall grass. He wept until it felt as if the tears would pull his insides apart. It was why elves didn't do it much. It hurt, it bloody hurt to cry. His tears came, burning and reluctant. It was more like bleeding from an infected wound. But he cried anyway, in grief and remorse and most of all in a desperate kind of relief.
Aragorn was safe. Aragorn had come home.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aragorn followed.
Shaking off Eowyn and the healer's worried, anxious hands, he trailed Legolas, albeit a little more slowly. He was still unsteady on his feet, and every once in a while, the world would seem to tilt beneath his feet. He periodically stopped, letting the earth settle out again. But he went on, nevertheless, despite the protests. Gimli started to follow him, but he held the dwarf back with an upheld hand. A look at Gimli told the dwarf all he needed to know. This was business between Legolas and Aragorn. He needed to see the elf alone.
Gimli understood. Eowyn understood. The healer was furious, and cursed him for standing when he should be lying down.
He made his way through the courtyard, asking which way Legolas had went. Finally, a golden-haired boy with cat eyes who was sharpening arrowheads in a patch of shade told him that Legolas had ran out into the grasslands. Aragorn went out into the wide plains, in the direction that he had been pointed, the direction that Legolas was last seen heading out. There was no sound. The plains were completely silent, save the lonely moan of the wind.
Now there was a sound. At first he didn't know what it was. It came to him in a moment. It was whimpering. A muffled sobbing. The sound of a wounded animal.
He had found Legolas, kneeling like a warrior wounded in the grass.
Aragorn knew that Legolas was weeping. He could see the elf's shoulders shaking with it, in great wracking sobs. He had to resist an impulse to go to him, and the impulse was strong. But Aragorn knew that Legolas would not want him to know he was crying.
He let Legolas cry, until the elf's sobs quieted. When they had, he walked forward, looking down at Legolas, an expression of sadness on his face.
"Legolas..."
Legolas choked back a sob and turned to him, face as perfect and smooth as a statue, and then it shivered apart again, making him a living, breathing, crying thing. Aragorn was reminded of an animal, cornered in a trap, yet unwilling to fight.
"Aragorn." Legolas shook his head slightly, cleared his throat softly. He stood. He clenched his hands in a fidgeting, desperate kind of gesture, although whether it was a rub-off from being around so many humans or not, Aragorn didn't know. It wasn't an elvish trait, to stir and move restlessly.
Legolas's emotions raged inside him, seeking an outlet and finding none. Legolas was ashamed of his tears, even though he had thought it strange why Eowyn was mortified by hers. There was a part of him that thought the Eldar were above tears, although he wouldn't have admitted this. He felt relief that Aragorn lived. But then he wondered what kind of morning they would wake to, whether they would all live to see the next dawn, and that thought brought him back around to a sickening dread. He felt ill, lost.
Almost in a whisper, he continued, hearing the soft quake in his voice. "When I thought you had died...I thought it had all been in vain. Boromir...all of it. And I wanted to tell you..." He trailed off for a second, gathering himself, then, "...I wanted to tell you, I'm willing to die for you, Aragorn. To give up my immortality, like Arwen. I love you. Not because you're our hope. Because you're my brother. In more ways than my own brothers could be."
Aragorn did not know what to say. He did not feel pity for Legolas, who had almost died of grief in his absence, only remorse, and terrible guilt. He looked and saw that Legolas would not look at him. He saw how much it hurt Legolas to admit to those feelings. The elf was often aloof, distant, as if he existed on a different plane than the rest of the Fellowship, as if he refused to get attached to them. Sometimes, he could seem almost mortal, kind and young, hot-headed (as an elf could be) and funny as hell in a wise, dry sort of way. Other times, he did something so alien, so *elvish*, that not even an idiot could ever mistake him for human. Once, Aragorn watched Legolas watch an orc die for more than two hours, studying its pain with a callous, almost innocent cruelty, listening to its shrieks.
Such an offering of love, putting his heart in Aragorn's teeth, to carry or rend as he pleased. It must be truly hard for him to give, Aragorn thought.
"Why, Legolas?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does matter. It matters to me," Aragorn replied, almost harshly, and Legolas winced as if struck. It hurt Aragorn to see it, but it didn't stop him. "Unless you want to turn back for Mirkwood now, before you get in any deeper. If you are, then I guess it doesn't matter. People will die when Saruman comes, Legolas. I wish I could keep that truth from you, but I think you know it well enough for yourself. It's not something I have to say. I could die, and so could you. All three of us could fall. And I don't want your protection, and I don't want your life for mine. I want you to worry about your own life first, do you understand? If you can't protect yourself before me, then go home. Look at me, Legolas."
With a great effort, Legolas raised his head. Aragorn could see miserable fright in his eyes. Fear of what, Aragorn did not know, and he almost asked. But an elf could not admit to fear, not easily. Aragorn saw how Legolas had been standing at the edge of a blade, the edge between crippling grief and an immortal's valor, hidden like a steel hand in a velvet glove. He had been afraid for Aragorn's life, and on top of that, he was afraid for the Rohan, noble and without hope. Aragorn felt a warm rush of love for him. He seemed five centuries young, an elfling child, lost and afraid.
His words were not a child's words. They were the words of a warrior. "I will not go home."
He seemed to shake himself, blinking, and the fright was hidden again like a magic trick, as if Aragorn had never seen it. Hidden, but as if it had never been there. The only remnants of it were the drying tracks of tears on Legolas's face, sparkling with captured sunlight.
"There is something, Aragorn. Something before we go to war. Something I would have from you." Legolas's voice was almost a whisper at this last, but not hesitant. He sank down to one knee.
"Legolas, get up!" Aragorn felt a terrible storm of emotions as he saw the elf kneel at his feet, weaponless. He felt them roiling inside him. Legolas looked so young...so vulnerable, as if he was at his coronation, still a young elf under the age of a century. Aragorn's fingers trembled even inside their clenched fists. He had a terrible vision of Boromir, on his knees in the fell leaves. Boromir's words. // My brother, my captain, my king, // Aragorn thought, swallowing hard. "What do you think you're doing?!"
"You know what I'm doing," Legolas replied, his face calm, though tears were still wet on his face. The wind blew forlornly across the grasslands around them, speaking in a thousand whispers.
Aragorn shook his head, slowly. "Legolas, you don't have to do this."
"I do, Aragorn." Legolas looked up at the Ranger. His blue eyes were as warm as a summer breeze. The moment for grief had passed. He was resolute. "Please. Many years ago, I named you Elf-friend. Now, you will do the same for me."
"Legolas, you cannot do this."
The elf's eyes were unmoving, unblinking as a hawk's, as still as blue marbles. There was no sign of that ecstatic mask there now. This was complete honesty embodied. This was undying loyalty. "Please...Aragorn," he repeated, his voice soft as heather.
Aragorn sighed, looking down at him. "Legolas, the only fealty you owe is to your people."
Legolas replied by remaining silently where he was. His stiff, formal poise said that he was prepared to genuflect all day, if that was what was required. Aragorn was saddened, for the prince of Mirkwood should give no such honor to anyone.
Aragorn scowled, his voice jagged and tired and reluctant. "All right," he said, exasperated. "Dammit, Legolas, all right."
He pulled Anduril from the scabbard slowly and laid the blade across Legolas's shoulder. Legolas closed his eyes. In a voice that was no longer exhausted or rough, but only clear and strong, Aragorn spoke into the day, although no one could hear but the earth and sky and the two of them. He spoke as a king.
"Legolas Greenleaf, you are the best of yours and the best of ours," he said, looking down at the blonde elf. "You are the best of our best, the best that each of us could ever love or ever hope to be. So I pray for your rise, Prince of Mirkwood, and I embrace you well, because if you are not blessed, then our purpose is surely trivial and our future but a mournful ruin of hope. I bless our best, elvish friend of Gondor, and revere, because you bear the test of our valor to the Enemy. So wield fierce in Our name, in the name of Rohan, and in the name of your people."
There was a beat of silence. Somewhere, a hawk cried in the stillness. Finally, Aragorn pulled the sword back and sheathed it, speaking again.
"Are you satisfied?"
"Yes," Legolas replied, smiling softly. He had his official place at Aragorn's side. He was no longer a member of Thranduil's elvish legions. He had earned a charge that was more than ally or a representative of Mirkwood in the Fellowship. His bow, while a weapon of Lothlorien, was now an instrument of the justice of Gondor. He carried Aragorn's command, and was, however irregularly, a member of the Gondor armies, and the loyal sworn servant of Aragorn, as well as his friend.
Aragorn sighed. "Good."
They smiled at each other for a moment-a good moment, Aragorn thought, like the one before they had gone off to pursue Pippin and Merry. That false cheer in Legolas's stance and poise and voice was gone. Ever since the beginning of the quest, there had been less easy moments between them. More sharp, serious words. There were silences that were cold, not between just the two of them, but like a chilled mist that encircled the hearts of all three of them, Gimli and Aragorn and Legolas, making small talk or jest seem petty.
Legolas put his right arm across his chest and leaned forward in a graceful elvish bow of respect. Before, standing out on the cliffs, waiting for Aragorn's return, he had briefly considered leaving the Rohan. He considered fleeing to Forlindon, far to the west, beyond the hills and fields of Eriador and the Shire. He contemplated running to this place, where he could live out his years, and no one would know his name.
As Aragorn returned the address and put a companionable hand on his shoulder, Legolas decided he didn't care if he ever saw the far valleys of Forlindon on the western coast. Or Valinor, for that matter. They walked back to the Deep in a comfortable silence.
Those moments lasted forever in Legolas's memory as miraculous ones. Partly because they were miraculous, at least to him, and would forever be to him the end of his middle childhood, the end of any doubt he had ever had in Mankind, and his beginning as a warrior for Elessar, king of Gondor and Arnor. But they were partly miraculous because there would be no such calm again for them in the bloody days that followed.
In the days that followed, in the days of Helm's Deep, peace and mercy never made an appearance.
But miracles did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Woo! I actually finished a multi-chapter fic! *dances* And it's your reviews that prodded me into doing it, so I take no credit. (This was supposed to be a one or two-chapter shot, remember? lol) Man, didn't it grow into a monster of a fic, though? Anyway, write in with more suggestions for the Helm's Deep fic, title undecided, if you feel like it, 'cause I love to hear from you!
Noon and Valor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Legolas fled.
He walked away with the blind, invincible walk of someone overcome with grief or fury, hot tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. All the words he had meant to say had died in his throat, choking him. He berated himself mercilessly, his expression a desperate one, a mix of frustration and anger at himself.
// You look terrible? You look *terrible*?! By the Valar, my everlasting foolish mouth! Could I not tell him that I feared for his life? That I could not accept his death, no matter what all others said? Could I not tell him I care about him, now that I get another chance? Could I not call him brother, just once? Ai, Elbereth, what in the hell is wrong with me?! //
But Legolas knew. He knew that when he handed Aragorn the Evenstar, he could not say those things. He had seen the happiness in Aragorn's eyes when he gave it to him. He knew that to say those things he wanted to say in that moment would have taken away from Aragorn's happiness...would have been the worst, most despicable thievery of Arwen's affection...and so he had kept silent, when his heart cried for him to speak.
// And it's better that way, isn't it? // he thought, blinking hard to ward off tears. // At least he's alive. Thank Gilthoniel for that. //
// No, it's not better! You deserved that moment. You deserved to welcome him. You waited out for him in the cold and dark and terrible heat for two days and nights. You had a chance to tell him exactly what you felt, to lift away all that pain and fear, and you blew it off with a smart remark and a jest. You're a fool. //
For that he had no argument. He only walked faster, plowing past the Rohan men instead of skirting around them. He could hear Gimli calling him back, but he wasn't listening. He didn't want to listen. He didn't hear the grunts of indignation as he pushed past people in his way.
He thought of Boromir. Boromir, who had spoken too late. He had another chance, now, not like Boromir ever did...but he didn't know if he could take it. Boromir pledged loyalty to Aragorn, swore an oath of it on his dying breath. Legolas had tried to speak, to confess..
// Confess what?! // his father's voice spoke in his head, harsh as a winter wind, causing him to wince in reflex. // Confess your loyalty? Your allegiance to a mortal? What would you do, prince of Mirkwood, third Heir, an immortal creature, wisest of all beings, going down on one knee, to kneel at the feet of this ragged wanderer? Legolas! Be the tender-hearted idealist, if you wish, but do not speak nonsense. All men are the same. All men are weak. Men are the reason the Ring still endures. And he's *no* different. //
// He's my friend! Mine! Mortal, yes, but he belongs to the Eldar for as long as he lives! // Legolas thought fiercely, pushing unfeeling past one of the guards to the courtyard. // Aragorn is my brother. He's the king I'll never have the heart to be. I need to tell him that. I need him to know...and I'm afraid I won't have another chance to say it. I do not want to say it in my dying breath, like Boromir did. And I do not want to have to say it in his, when all hope will be lost. //
He stopped running; he hadn't realized he had been running. He found himself standing out on the plains, and had no idea how he had ended up there. All the strength ran out of him, and his legs buckled. He tried to lock his throat against sobs and failed. He began to see in a wavery prism as tears overtook him, and he lowered his head.
Legolas wept, all the lamentation he had suppressed since Aragorn's fall, a crumbled statue kneeling in the tall grass. He wept until it felt as if the tears would pull his insides apart. It was why elves didn't do it much. It hurt, it bloody hurt to cry. His tears came, burning and reluctant. It was more like bleeding from an infected wound. But he cried anyway, in grief and remorse and most of all in a desperate kind of relief.
Aragorn was safe. Aragorn had come home.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aragorn followed.
Shaking off Eowyn and the healer's worried, anxious hands, he trailed Legolas, albeit a little more slowly. He was still unsteady on his feet, and every once in a while, the world would seem to tilt beneath his feet. He periodically stopped, letting the earth settle out again. But he went on, nevertheless, despite the protests. Gimli started to follow him, but he held the dwarf back with an upheld hand. A look at Gimli told the dwarf all he needed to know. This was business between Legolas and Aragorn. He needed to see the elf alone.
Gimli understood. Eowyn understood. The healer was furious, and cursed him for standing when he should be lying down.
He made his way through the courtyard, asking which way Legolas had went. Finally, a golden-haired boy with cat eyes who was sharpening arrowheads in a patch of shade told him that Legolas had ran out into the grasslands. Aragorn went out into the wide plains, in the direction that he had been pointed, the direction that Legolas was last seen heading out. There was no sound. The plains were completely silent, save the lonely moan of the wind.
Now there was a sound. At first he didn't know what it was. It came to him in a moment. It was whimpering. A muffled sobbing. The sound of a wounded animal.
He had found Legolas, kneeling like a warrior wounded in the grass.
Aragorn knew that Legolas was weeping. He could see the elf's shoulders shaking with it, in great wracking sobs. He had to resist an impulse to go to him, and the impulse was strong. But Aragorn knew that Legolas would not want him to know he was crying.
He let Legolas cry, until the elf's sobs quieted. When they had, he walked forward, looking down at Legolas, an expression of sadness on his face.
"Legolas..."
Legolas choked back a sob and turned to him, face as perfect and smooth as a statue, and then it shivered apart again, making him a living, breathing, crying thing. Aragorn was reminded of an animal, cornered in a trap, yet unwilling to fight.
"Aragorn." Legolas shook his head slightly, cleared his throat softly. He stood. He clenched his hands in a fidgeting, desperate kind of gesture, although whether it was a rub-off from being around so many humans or not, Aragorn didn't know. It wasn't an elvish trait, to stir and move restlessly.
Legolas's emotions raged inside him, seeking an outlet and finding none. Legolas was ashamed of his tears, even though he had thought it strange why Eowyn was mortified by hers. There was a part of him that thought the Eldar were above tears, although he wouldn't have admitted this. He felt relief that Aragorn lived. But then he wondered what kind of morning they would wake to, whether they would all live to see the next dawn, and that thought brought him back around to a sickening dread. He felt ill, lost.
Almost in a whisper, he continued, hearing the soft quake in his voice. "When I thought you had died...I thought it had all been in vain. Boromir...all of it. And I wanted to tell you..." He trailed off for a second, gathering himself, then, "...I wanted to tell you, I'm willing to die for you, Aragorn. To give up my immortality, like Arwen. I love you. Not because you're our hope. Because you're my brother. In more ways than my own brothers could be."
Aragorn did not know what to say. He did not feel pity for Legolas, who had almost died of grief in his absence, only remorse, and terrible guilt. He looked and saw that Legolas would not look at him. He saw how much it hurt Legolas to admit to those feelings. The elf was often aloof, distant, as if he existed on a different plane than the rest of the Fellowship, as if he refused to get attached to them. Sometimes, he could seem almost mortal, kind and young, hot-headed (as an elf could be) and funny as hell in a wise, dry sort of way. Other times, he did something so alien, so *elvish*, that not even an idiot could ever mistake him for human. Once, Aragorn watched Legolas watch an orc die for more than two hours, studying its pain with a callous, almost innocent cruelty, listening to its shrieks.
Such an offering of love, putting his heart in Aragorn's teeth, to carry or rend as he pleased. It must be truly hard for him to give, Aragorn thought.
"Why, Legolas?"
"It doesn't matter."
"It does matter. It matters to me," Aragorn replied, almost harshly, and Legolas winced as if struck. It hurt Aragorn to see it, but it didn't stop him. "Unless you want to turn back for Mirkwood now, before you get in any deeper. If you are, then I guess it doesn't matter. People will die when Saruman comes, Legolas. I wish I could keep that truth from you, but I think you know it well enough for yourself. It's not something I have to say. I could die, and so could you. All three of us could fall. And I don't want your protection, and I don't want your life for mine. I want you to worry about your own life first, do you understand? If you can't protect yourself before me, then go home. Look at me, Legolas."
With a great effort, Legolas raised his head. Aragorn could see miserable fright in his eyes. Fear of what, Aragorn did not know, and he almost asked. But an elf could not admit to fear, not easily. Aragorn saw how Legolas had been standing at the edge of a blade, the edge between crippling grief and an immortal's valor, hidden like a steel hand in a velvet glove. He had been afraid for Aragorn's life, and on top of that, he was afraid for the Rohan, noble and without hope. Aragorn felt a warm rush of love for him. He seemed five centuries young, an elfling child, lost and afraid.
His words were not a child's words. They were the words of a warrior. "I will not go home."
He seemed to shake himself, blinking, and the fright was hidden again like a magic trick, as if Aragorn had never seen it. Hidden, but as if it had never been there. The only remnants of it were the drying tracks of tears on Legolas's face, sparkling with captured sunlight.
"There is something, Aragorn. Something before we go to war. Something I would have from you." Legolas's voice was almost a whisper at this last, but not hesitant. He sank down to one knee.
"Legolas, get up!" Aragorn felt a terrible storm of emotions as he saw the elf kneel at his feet, weaponless. He felt them roiling inside him. Legolas looked so young...so vulnerable, as if he was at his coronation, still a young elf under the age of a century. Aragorn's fingers trembled even inside their clenched fists. He had a terrible vision of Boromir, on his knees in the fell leaves. Boromir's words. // My brother, my captain, my king, // Aragorn thought, swallowing hard. "What do you think you're doing?!"
"You know what I'm doing," Legolas replied, his face calm, though tears were still wet on his face. The wind blew forlornly across the grasslands around them, speaking in a thousand whispers.
Aragorn shook his head, slowly. "Legolas, you don't have to do this."
"I do, Aragorn." Legolas looked up at the Ranger. His blue eyes were as warm as a summer breeze. The moment for grief had passed. He was resolute. "Please. Many years ago, I named you Elf-friend. Now, you will do the same for me."
"Legolas, you cannot do this."
The elf's eyes were unmoving, unblinking as a hawk's, as still as blue marbles. There was no sign of that ecstatic mask there now. This was complete honesty embodied. This was undying loyalty. "Please...Aragorn," he repeated, his voice soft as heather.
Aragorn sighed, looking down at him. "Legolas, the only fealty you owe is to your people."
Legolas replied by remaining silently where he was. His stiff, formal poise said that he was prepared to genuflect all day, if that was what was required. Aragorn was saddened, for the prince of Mirkwood should give no such honor to anyone.
Aragorn scowled, his voice jagged and tired and reluctant. "All right," he said, exasperated. "Dammit, Legolas, all right."
He pulled Anduril from the scabbard slowly and laid the blade across Legolas's shoulder. Legolas closed his eyes. In a voice that was no longer exhausted or rough, but only clear and strong, Aragorn spoke into the day, although no one could hear but the earth and sky and the two of them. He spoke as a king.
"Legolas Greenleaf, you are the best of yours and the best of ours," he said, looking down at the blonde elf. "You are the best of our best, the best that each of us could ever love or ever hope to be. So I pray for your rise, Prince of Mirkwood, and I embrace you well, because if you are not blessed, then our purpose is surely trivial and our future but a mournful ruin of hope. I bless our best, elvish friend of Gondor, and revere, because you bear the test of our valor to the Enemy. So wield fierce in Our name, in the name of Rohan, and in the name of your people."
There was a beat of silence. Somewhere, a hawk cried in the stillness. Finally, Aragorn pulled the sword back and sheathed it, speaking again.
"Are you satisfied?"
"Yes," Legolas replied, smiling softly. He had his official place at Aragorn's side. He was no longer a member of Thranduil's elvish legions. He had earned a charge that was more than ally or a representative of Mirkwood in the Fellowship. His bow, while a weapon of Lothlorien, was now an instrument of the justice of Gondor. He carried Aragorn's command, and was, however irregularly, a member of the Gondor armies, and the loyal sworn servant of Aragorn, as well as his friend.
Aragorn sighed. "Good."
They smiled at each other for a moment-a good moment, Aragorn thought, like the one before they had gone off to pursue Pippin and Merry. That false cheer in Legolas's stance and poise and voice was gone. Ever since the beginning of the quest, there had been less easy moments between them. More sharp, serious words. There were silences that were cold, not between just the two of them, but like a chilled mist that encircled the hearts of all three of them, Gimli and Aragorn and Legolas, making small talk or jest seem petty.
Legolas put his right arm across his chest and leaned forward in a graceful elvish bow of respect. Before, standing out on the cliffs, waiting for Aragorn's return, he had briefly considered leaving the Rohan. He considered fleeing to Forlindon, far to the west, beyond the hills and fields of Eriador and the Shire. He contemplated running to this place, where he could live out his years, and no one would know his name.
As Aragorn returned the address and put a companionable hand on his shoulder, Legolas decided he didn't care if he ever saw the far valleys of Forlindon on the western coast. Or Valinor, for that matter. They walked back to the Deep in a comfortable silence.
Those moments lasted forever in Legolas's memory as miraculous ones. Partly because they were miraculous, at least to him, and would forever be to him the end of his middle childhood, the end of any doubt he had ever had in Mankind, and his beginning as a warrior for Elessar, king of Gondor and Arnor. But they were partly miraculous because there would be no such calm again for them in the bloody days that followed.
In the days that followed, in the days of Helm's Deep, peace and mercy never made an appearance.
But miracles did.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Woo! I actually finished a multi-chapter fic! *dances* And it's your reviews that prodded me into doing it, so I take no credit. (This was supposed to be a one or two-chapter shot, remember? lol) Man, didn't it grow into a monster of a fic, though? Anyway, write in with more suggestions for the Helm's Deep fic, title undecided, if you feel like it, 'cause I love to hear from you!