Beautiful Stranger
Prequel to Silent words, Comfort me
Author's note: ahh!! I need some encouragement to finish this people.
Standard disclaimers apply.
Chapter 5
Dusk found the weary travelers at the northern boundary of Rohan. Rolling plains of snow-covered earth stretched for miles in every direction, fringed at the edge of Aragorn's vision by row upon row of tall green trees.
"We should reach Lorien by tomorrow evening at the latest," he said to the elf.
Legolas lay close by the fire, swathed in blankets. He turned pain-glazed eyes to the man beside him, and watched as he threw another twig into the flames. The twisting tongues of red and gold ate at it hungrily, lulling him into the beginnings of a fever dream. He shook it off, and tried to concentrate on what the man was saying.
As light bled from the sky, Aragorn's voice filled the small clearing, a constant murmur of human sound in a land otherwise devoid of Man's presence. He talked of childhood games, and wild parties under moonlit skies. He talked of the family he'd always known and the father he never knew. He talked because the prospect of a laden silence was too dangerous to contemplate.
Legolas listened to the rise and fall of the cadences, a stream of words that made little sense to him in his somnolent state, but which provided distraction enough from the ever-present pain. Then a hitch disrupted the smooth flow of his monotone, and Legolas struggled to focus his attention on what the man had just said.
"…Arwen," Aragorn had said, his voice gone slightly husky.
The elf pushed himself onto his elbows to hear better.
"…Tinuviel, I called her," he was saying, "for her beauty is such, dark and rich as the waters of Bruinen at night…"
"Yes," the elf whispered almost inaudibly, caught off guard by the rush of bitterness he felt at the man's words, "there is no fairer among the Eldar in Middle-Earth."
Aragorn looked at him strangely, and asked in muted tones, "Do you know her?"
"Yes," Legolas said again, staring off into the distance, "Once, long ago, when we were young…" He turned the preternaturally bright green eyes on the man and asked, "Do you love her?"
Aragorn hesitated, then replied, "I suppose I do, though I cannot say the same of her feelings for me." It was his turn to gaze into space. He continued, "If to want to protect someone no matter the cost, if to be willing to give everything for that person to be happy is love…than yes, I am in love."
The elf nodded: his face remained carefully blank although his heart had sunk at the words. He lay back onto the pile of soft cotton blankets and buried his face into the cloth to hide the tears that trickled unbidden down his cheeks. And so he never noticed his companion's brown eyes had been fixed on him for that last sentence, burning with a sacred light as they swept up and down the long line of his body.
~
It was snowing again when they arrived; on the outside, not in Lorien. The weather was always perfect in Lorien, and they watched the autumn leafed trees in mute appreciation from their snowy vantagepoint.
They crossed that invisible boundary between Lorien and the rest of the world, and waited as a fair-haired elf detached himself from the shadowy cover of the forest to approach them.
"Haldir," Legolas greeted the new elf.
Haldir bowed in acknowledgment and motioned for the rest of his party to come forward to take up their belongings. "She has been expecting you," was all he said as he led them deeper into the amber woods.
The route through tangled brush and tiny streams seemed at once both familiar and strange. He knew that he had been this way before, but all the world seemed hazy when viewed through a veil of pain, and Legolas could not quite recall how he ended up before the majestic figures of Galadriel and Celeborn seated on their high-backed thrones.
The Lady of Lothlorien was gowned in her customary lengths of silver-on-white gauze, and glowed with a cool radiance. In her lilting voice, she bade her guests come closer, and bestowed a smile upon them.
"Estel of Rivendell, foster-son to Lord Elrond" she addressed the man first, "whose true name is Aragorn, son of Arathorn, of the line of Isildur."
Aragorn glanced at his companion from the corner of his eye, but the elf had not startled at the Lady's revelation.
She turned her considerable regard then to Legolas, her misty blue gaze holding the green as she spoke directly to his mind.
How do you come, my kin? she asked.
"As a stranger, my lady," he whispered back.
Galadriel nodded. "So be it," she said, and raised her voice for those assembled to hear, "The Golden Wood bids you both welcome." At her authoritative wave, two figures alike in both face and build stepped forward.
"Elladan! Elrohir!" Aragorn cried in delight at the familiar sight of them.
The twins smiled and took his arm, leading him away from the high-ceilinged audience room. Legolas watched him go, and Galadriel watched him watch.
"Kinsman," she called him when the three were out of earshot, "we should see to your needs." A small group of elves moved to help him from the room, almost carrying him down the long hallways to a chamber where he could rest. Their competent hands soothed him into the large soft bed and after water had been brought to wash his wounds, they left to him to his privacy.
Legolas leaned into the satin cushions, and had just closed his eyes when she entered, shutting the door firmly behind her.
"You are running away," she accused.
"I know," he replied.
"But you do not know what you run from," she said, "Him, or yourself? Legolas…"
He raised a hand to stop her words. "I come as a stranger," he reminded her wearily.
"And so you do," she replied, "and you may rest anonymous here for as long as you wish, but…kinsman, you cannot love him."
"I do not know what you speak of," he lied, turning away.
Galadriel merely continued as though he had not spoken, "He will be King, young one, a great king of Men. His fate is written in the stars, and the Undomiel shines at his side."
"So what?" he said before he could stop himself.
The Lady sighed, and went to sit next to him on the bed. At her gentle touch, the Ring on her finger flared, and the shackles around his wrists sprang open. She tossed them away from the bed in disgust.
"You could not have him for eternity," she said softly.
"I don't care about eternity," he cried, abandoning all pretense, "To live for the here and now - that is all I ask."
She looked at him steadily, and Legolas felt his fair skin begin to colour. He raised his head and forced himself to meet her stare for stare.
"Could you really?" she asked, infinitely gentle.
The resolve he'd gathered slowly melted away, and he seemed to sink into himself. "No," he murmured more to himself than to her, "I suppose not."
Galadriel gathered the silent elf in her arms, trying to soothe away the fear and tension. But Legolas remained still, taut as an arrow nocked in a quiver, and all her whispered consolation could not ease his sorrow.
After a while, she heard him sigh and say, "It's too soon…I feel like I've betrayed Gwain."
The Lady shook her head. "Love does not work that way," she said, "We do not choose it, it chooses us. Besides, if there were only room for one in our hearts, what a tragic world this would be."
She lay him gently back onto the bed and kissed his brow. "Rest, my dear," she said as she prepared to leave the room, "Things will seem better tomorrow, I promise."
© ai 2003
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