~Numb~
Legolas had learnt what it felt like to lose people during the quest to destroy the One Ring. First when Gandalf had fallen into shadown, and then when Boromir had been kiled by the Uruk-Hai. With each death, his understanding of what loss felt like had grown.
As an Elf, he had been unaccustomed to losing friends to deaht, and as well as being painful, it had been confusing for him as well. The Battle of Helm's deep had wiped out that confuion, leaving him with little feeling left at all. A good thing, in some ways, as the deaths that he had seen in the battles that followed had hurt him less. He had begun to think that watching someone die would no longer hold any pain for him.
He had been very wrong.
Death in battle may have held no pain for him any more, but watching as someone died of old age, while he stayed eternally young, had flung him into a whole new realm of torture.
Knowing that someone he loved was slowly dying, and that he was powerless to help them, had him feeling like he was being ripped apart.
When Aragorn, son of Arathorn, King Elessar, had died, Legolas had been with him. He had watched as one of his closest friends, and lover of old, had finally stopped breathing, after days of struggle. It had felt like the breath had been sucked from his own lungs, and Legolas had panicked, unable to breathe for several minutes himself.
He'd had no idea what to do, and seeing Aragorn die had made him review his thoughts on his immortality.
What he had once thought of as a blessing, quickly became a curse, and for perhaps the first time since he had been a child, many centuries ago, Legaolas wept, Aragorn's cold hand clutched tightly in his own.
It was several hours before Arwen came to check on her husband, and by that time the numbness that Legolas had been feeling inside since the quest to destroy the ring had grown, resting over his heart like a block of ice, unfeeling and leaving him dead inside.
~End~