Beautiful Stranger
Prequel to Silent words, Comfort me
Author's note: Set before the War of the Ring. Hopefully it has got more of a plot than its predecessors do…
To GoldenRose: Why do I write sad endings? I guess it's because I believe in canon as far as possible, and besides, there's just something about hopeless love…
Did I mention it's slash?
Standard disclaimers apply.
Chapter 1
At night, they chained him to the walls.
Ordinary metal could never have held him, but steel forged from the blood and pain of Mordor bound him as surely as the Dark One himself. And though the cursed lengths left his pale skin unmarked, they wrapped his mind in agony.
Legolas bit back the scream that threatened to spill from his lips; they might hold his body prisoner, but he swore that they would never break his soul. Then the guards unlocked the doors and threw the broken, battered body into his arms, and he could not suppress the cry of agony that escaped him.
"Gwain," he whispered urgently, supporting as much of the man's prone weight as the chains would allow.
Gwain reached for his face with a hand coated in sticky blood. As he gently stroked the elf's cheek, his fingers left a spill of red against the white. "Legolas," he managed to choke out, than broke into a fit of coughing that left him breathless.
"Shh, try to rest," the elf said hurriedly, tears spilling unabashedly down his cheeks, "you'll be fine."
Gwain shook his head and tried to smile, but it turned into a grimace of pain. "I won't, and you know it. Please don't cry. I just…" he broke off again, gasping for air that would not reach his lungs, "…just want you to know…that I love you." He convulsed one final time before his heart stopped beating, dying in the arms of the elf he had known and loved so briefly.
The wail that rose broke the peace of the night. Though no sound should have escaped the walls of stone built a metre thick, the Lord of the Keep started awake from nightmares, an inexplicable dread curling through his veins at the terrible howl of loss.
On that night, Legolas decided that all of them would die.
~
Gwain was perhaps twenty when the Prince of Mirkwood quite literally stumbled on him.
Legolas had been tracking an unusual set of prints down a small hill, and was so absorbed in his quarry that he never noticed the young man fishing intently by the adjacent stream. Until, that is, he tripped over him.
They tumbled headlong into the water in a decidedly undignified manner, fletcher and fishing rod flying in all directions as they fought for balance. Eventually, dripping and breathless with laughter, they dragged themselves back onto the bank.
Legolas regained his footing first, and extended a friendly hand to haul the unfortunate soul to his feet. As the man rose, tossing water from soaked linen, the elf's breath caught at the glint of sunlight on water threaded through midnight locks, like crystals set in velvet. His warm brown eyes glowed with merriment, and when he threw his head back to laugh, Legolas was lost in the richness of the sound.
"My name is Gwain," the lithe young man said, smiling broadly.
"I am Legolas," he replied.
Gwain hesitated for a moment, then asked, entreating, "Your garments are soaked through... you cannot travel in that state, will you not accept our hospitality?"
Legolas nodded, still somewhat bemused, and followed Gwain into the nearby clearing, where a clan of the amrod gwaith had set up camp. A race both dark and proud, the wandering people traced their roots from Númenor and claimed kinship with the Rangers.
Heads turned as the elf strode past gaudily bedecked caravans, and many called out cries of welcome. Legolas smiled and nodded and waved as children danced about him and adults bowed to their ancient ally. Quickly embarrassed by the attention though, he hurried forward to close the distance between himself and Gwain.
The man nodded reassuringly, then disappeared into a modest turquoise caravan set up at a corner of the field. Legolas pushed back the hanging beads and followed him in, stunned for a moment by the cool and dark after the noise and light outside.
"Here," Gwain said, handing him the well-mended white shirt and breeches, "It's not much, but there's little else that'll fit."
Legolas glanced at the clothing in his hands, then back to the thinner, shorter man. "Whom do these belong to?" he asked, unthinking.
Gwain's face darkened for a moment, but he shrugged it off and strove for nonchalance as he replied, "They were my father's."
The elf blushed in embarrassment, and hastily apologized.
"No matter," he assured him, "It happened last winter, six months ago. We had traveled too close to the cursed lands of Mordor, and raiders fell upon us. My parents fought to their deaths in our defense." He turned to Legolas with eyes too bright, "They died with honour."
His pain was still so raw, so real, that Legolas hurt for him too. In another time and place, he would have gathered the man in his arms and held him until the sorrow had melted from his soul. But the ways of the Elves were not those of Men, and so the only comfort he could offer was silence.
An indeterminate amount of time later, he recalled the garments he still held. Stripping off his wet clothing, he exchanged them for dry ones. Then, unsure of what to do, he turned to leave, but paused halfway out the door, and hesitantly asked, "May I return these tomorrow?"
Gwain nodded, embarrassed by his brief outburst, "We should still be here then. If not, we will be travelling south, to Rohan."
~
Legolas returned the next day, and the day after that.
There was always something that drew him to accompany the amrod gwaith a little further on their journey; a change of clothes, an offer of trade, and finally, the honest lure of friendship.
As summer melted to autumn, the elf became a common sight around the camp. The bond between Gwain and himself deepened as well, and soon it was as if there had never been one without the other. But if what he felt for the man went beyond the bounds of friendship, the elf kept it to himself.
The raiders came in winter, almost exactly a year to the day that Gwain' parents had died. From the first, it was clear the clan was lost; the able-bodied men were too few, the women and children too frightened and many.
Gwain shrugged into hardened leather hunting gear, the closest thing to armor that he owned. Legolas watched him with shadowed eyes, and when he turned to go, the elf picked up his bow and stood at his back.
"Leave," Gwain said, not turning around, "This is not your battle."
Stoic silence met his words.
"Leave," Gwain repeated more forcefully, anger colouring his tone.
"No."
The man stalked away furiously, but could not outpace the elf that followed doggedly at his heels. Finally, at the edge of the battlefield, with the thunder of horses' hooves ringing in their ears, Gwain stopped, and pushed the elf from him harshly.
"What must I say to make you understand?" he asked Legolas despairingly, "This clan is mine, these people are mine - this fight is mine alone."
Legolas looked at him steadily, and wondered that the man had never guessed. "You will never be alone while I am here," he answered quietly, letting the veil fall from his face and the walls crumble around his heart.
In the midst of the confusion and wonder that shone through Gwain's eyes, a trace of the longing he had felt for so long was mirrored in the man before him. Pulse thudding in his throat, Legolas took a step forward, but then the first of the horsemen raced to meet them, and what might have been was lost in the fighting that followed.
Legolas took up his bow and daggers and plunged into the melee. Through the screams of the wounded and the mist of red that rose, his eyes tracked the position of one person and his steel carved a bloody swath to keep the life one man.
It was over too soon. The not-quite-dead were left groaning where they lay, and what survivors there were bound in chains and led away. Reeling from sheer exhaustion, Legolas had only the strength to feel relief that Gwain was not among the pile of bodies burning in a communal pyre when the raider came to bind him.
After trudging for half a day through soil churned to mud, the chain of prisoners was brought to a large fortress, which Legolas deduced half-consciously was somewhere in Wold. Yet, the splash of red and yellow that painted each assailant's armor betrayed their master from Mordor. The pieces of the puzzle did not fit, and curiosity flared for a moment through the dullness that clouded his mind.
A whip on his back shocked him fully awake. He turned to defend himself, realising too late that it had been the worst thing he could have done. Thus far, general confusion had forestalled his captors' realization that they held one of the fair folk, but now, staring in horror at elvish eyes filled with rage, the guard struck him heavily on the back of his head. As darkness rose to claim him, green eyes caught and held brown ones filled with despair.
~
Hours later, when he awoke in the cell, Legolas found the cursed steel around his wrists, and his life no longer his.
© ai 2003
I promise it's A/L. Wait and see. : )
Sigh…It's the first day of the strike against Iraq…hope there'll be peace soon…
