Author: Mirrordance
Title: Tempus Edax Rerum ("Time, the Devourer of All Things")
Summary: The Fellowship of the Ring runs across a time-traveling Legolas of the future whose mission is, strangely, to keep them from succeeding…
PART SEVEN: Truer Betrayals
Parth Galen
February 26, 3019, the Third Age
Surely enough, Frodo did stop and think at this, and seemed to steel himself as he looked intently at the elf that held his dear friend Sam, and that blade that rested so near to his tender skin.
"Master Frodo, no…" Sam whispered, gulping carefully and feeling the cold blade touch his flesh, "Master Frodo," he said, clearing his throat and strengthening his voice, "Please just go! Just go!"
Frodo looked at his friend with those bleeding, deep eyes, "Sam… I cannot. I cannot."
"He will not kill me," Sam said stoutly, his lie bold to his ears, "He is still Legolas, after all. He will not kill me."
Frodo looked away from Sam, and towards Greenleaf, whose heart wrenched at the hobbit's faith. But he needed to be stronger. He must not fail. He needed to be stronger. He needed to be cold. Or at least, he needed them to believe he was.
Frodo began to turn away to prepare the boat, but stopped once again when Greenleaf drew the blade closer to Sam's neck and drew a thin line of blood.
"Give me the ring," he said sternly, even as his eyes watered and his vision blurred with his struggling tears, "Give me that cursed ring, Frodo, or only the Valar can stay my hand. I will cut him, and you can watch him die before your eyes!"
"You will not," Frodo told him softly, though he did draw the chained ring from his neck, and looked at it intently, weighing it with his heart.
"Take it and go!" Sam yelled at Frodo, "Please, Master Frodo… Just take it, and go, and never look back!"
Frodo's grip tightened against the ring, and he stepped forward, towards Greenleaf.
"I will give you the ring, Legolas," he said softly, "not because I believe you would kill Sam. He is a friend to you, and so am I, and I cannot believe you would subject us to any pain. If I turned away from here and fled this place to continue this quest on my own, you will still not harm a hair on his head. Nor shoot your well-marked arrows upon my back. You will not."
Greenleaf opened his mouth to protest, but Frodo was not done, and no words could come from his taut-voice anyways. The tears now fell freely from his eyes, and his entire body shook with his failed restraint, with the weight of his burden.
"But still I will yield to your command," Frodo continued, taking more careful steps forward, "Because I've seen how you value our trust and regard--our friendship—and how greatly does your heart break at the thought of losing it, at risking its loss. If you are so willing to give away what your eyes tell me matters all of the world to you, then this must belong in your hands, and not in mine."
Greenleaf closed his eyes, caught his breath and lowered his arm and let his weapon fall dully to the ground. Sam stepped away from him cautiously, as his knees buckled beneath him, with his spirit broken, and bared wide open. He lowered his head, as the Ringbearer stood before him, and thrust the One Ring into his slack hands, as surely as he had placed all his trust into it.
Greenleaf looked up at Frodo tearfully, and closed his anguished eyes as the hobbit reached his hands forward and touched at his tears.
"I have never seen an elf cry," he said quietly.
Neither have I, thought Greenleaf, as he closed his shaking hands upon the Ring.
"I must go," he said to the hobbits quietly, rising to his feet and drawing a piece of cloth from one of his pockets, handing it to Sam but shamefully refusing to meet his eyes, "It is not deep. But there is no excuse. I am sorry."
Sam took it cautiously, "Legolas…"
"I must go," he said again, turning his face away from them, and pressing at the silver buttons on the band upon his wrist. Closing his eyes, he waited for the machine to bear him away, as the hobbits watched…
He opened one eye. And then the other. And he found Sam and Frodo looking at him expectantly. Frowning, he pressed at the silver buttons again, thinking perhaps he did something wrong. This second effort was still to no avail. The third yielded the same disappointing and embarrassing nothingness, and so did the fourth and the fifth.
Laughing bitterly as he began to realize the wild flaw and tragic comedy of the situation, he sat on the ground and covered his teary eyes with his hands as he laughed, the warm slick liquid of his crying staining the ring, so eager was he to defy it, and defile it, maybe throw it, or eat it, or even break it with his teeth.
"Legolas?" Frodo asked him uncertainly.
Sighing, the elf opened up his palm at the Ringbearer and offered him the ring, eager to return it.
"Life is funny," he said, his shoulders shaking as he began to laugh and struggle not to cry.
Frodo took it uncertainly, and looked at Greenleaf with confusion and worry.
"You must leave after all," Greenleaf said, trying to keep a straight face, "I on the other hand, have absolutely nowhere to go."
"I do not understand," Frodo admitted.
"Neither do I," sighed Greenleaf, "You must go and fulfill your duty, Ringbearer. They are coming, and once they reach you, they might not find the heart to let you go, and that is not the way of things. Take Sam with you. He is good company. Be strong."
"I do not understand," Frodo said again.
"You must leave," Greenleaf told him fervently, "Go. This quest is yours to fulfill. Go."
His brows furrowing, Frodo nevertheless prepared the boats and left the shores alongside Sam. The two hobbits watched the weary elf sitting upon the rocky shore they had left, still chuckling at himself and shaking his head in dismay all at once.
Greenleaf watched them dock upon the eastern shore, just as Aragorn, Boromir, Legolas and Gimli emerged from the woods. The elf immediately set to work upon laying one of the boats into the water, sighting Sam and Frodo across the way. It is at this time that he noticed he is the only one actually making an effort at pursuit.
"You mean not to follow them?" he asked Aragorn, even as reading the Ranger's face already gave him the answer.
"Frodo's fate is no longer in our hands," Aragorn declared.
"I'm surprised you are not practically swimming across that water to take the ring," Legolas said, eying Greenleaf, whose nose was as red-tipped as his eyes were red-rimmed, and a manic kind-of air surrounded him, full of disappointment and unhappiness, even as he smiled up at his younger self sickly, "Or is having been left here the reason why you are laughing and crying yourself into a stupor?"
"Frodo gave me the ring," Greenleaf said, and all eyes of the remaining fellowship shot to him in shock, "And the funny thing is, I've already said my dramatic farewells, and my blasted machine would not work. How embarrassing. I decided to give it back."
"You mean you can no longer return to the future?" asked Boromir.
"It's good to see the dead do talk," Greenleaf said wryly, the joke to be comprehended only by Legolas, who knew how close the human had come to his end, "Either my blasted machine is broken, which I doubt. Or… there is no future to return to if that ring is not destroyed."
Aragorn's brows furrowed. "You mean…"
"I mean I wasted all my time," Greenleaf retorted bitterly, "What a tasteless joke. How sick of Eru, truly. If the ring is not destroyed now, there is no future for me to return to. But if the ring were destroyed, I cannot save the future from Yuno. Life is funny. And so unbearably long."
"What is there for you to do now?" Boromir asked.
Greenleaf shrugged. "I can stay here and burden you with my unbearable presence and for the next few thousand years exempt myself from the inevitable ravages of Yuno, or I can return to the future and die within the hour. What would you do?"
Aragorn exhaled, hating the anguished defeat that those once and oft-determined eyes now held. He opened his mouth to say something, but Greenleaf cut him off.
"Aragorn," he said coldly, "I needn't have been from the future to know your face when you are about to say something incredibly positive and so madly encouraging. Do. Not. For the Valar's sake."
"We can only move forward as we know it, Legolas," Aragorn said, intentionally calling him by his true name, and expressly rejecting his profoundly impolite request, "We can only hold true to each other at this point, when such greater decisions are beyond us. The ring is out of our hands. The future you seek to protect is now apparently out of your hands after all. But we… we hold true to each other. We will not abandon Merry and Pippin to torment and death. Not while we have strength left. This is all the future that I know and care to see. Leave all that can be spared behind. We travel light. Let's hunt some orc!"
Greenleaf waved his hands tiredly at Aragorn's resolve and enthusiasm, "I wouldn't worry about them. We can wait awhile. They and their capture have their own part to play and the gods spare us, their own trouble to make. Do you know that ultimately, it is that pair who will cause the fall of Isengard?"
Boromir's eyes widened in disbelief. "Truly? And what does the future hold for me?"
"You and I are both about to find out," Greenleaf said, rising from his place and uselessly dusting at his clothes.
"You mean to say—" Boromir began, starting to think about what that statement must mean.
"Don't worry about it," Greenleaf told him soothingly, trying to strengthen his own spirit for the long road he was sure was ahead of him, if this path he indeed would choose to take again, for lack of anything else better to do.
"So you're going to relive all this all over again?" Gimli asked him, his expressive eyes clouding.
"Maybe things will be different," Legolas said, sounding uncertain and not very hopeful at all. But he had taken pity on himself at last, at the ridiculously unfair situation that he now faced, and faced mostly alone.
"I doubt it," said Greenleaf, "And I doubt they should be."
"You know," said Boromir, as the group began to pack their belongings for the pursuit of Merry and Pippin's captors, "If I had a machine that sends me all across time whenever I want, I would go back to Dagorlad and the Last Alliance, and throw the Ring away. And all respect to your kin, Aragorn, for he too is my King, but if he refused, I'd have tossed him into the fires of Mordor with it."
"I hardly detect any respect there at all," Aragorn said wryly, though he took no offense and saw the logic of what the man had said. He was the first to notice Greenleaf pause from fixing his things, as if struck by a thought. "Greenleaf?"
"Thank the Valar you live, Boromir!" he exclaimed, light returning to his tired eyes.
"I'm quite thankful myself," Boromir said uncertainly, glancing at Legolas, and then his manic version, "What are you thinking?"
"This is how history unfolds, all right?" Greenleaf said excitedly, gathering his thoughts, "The ring is made. The ring is destroyed. Yuno arrives years later. And he destroys everything, for nothing can stop him but the long-gone ring. Correct?"
"So you say," Aragorn said cautiously, wondering where this was going.
"This is how history must unfold if we all desire to live at the end," continued Greenleaf, "The ring is made. Yuno arrives. Yuno is defeated by the ring. The ring is thereafter destroyed. However… Yuno would have no future to arrive in if the ring were not destroyed before him, right? Because Sauron would have overtaken us with his forces? I am thinking… I am thinking…" his brows furrowed, "I'm almost forgetting what I am thinking… I am thinking… if I can bring Yuno to the past. If I can bring Yuno to the past, defeat him with the ring, and then destroy the ring right after. Then all will be well!"
"What does this have to do with what Boromir had just said?" Gimli asked.
"I know precisely which past to return with Yuno to," said Greenleaf, "If I returned him here, then we would have to contend not only with the joint forces of Saruman and Sauron at their strongest, but him too. I am thinking, I could bring Yuno to right after Isildur has cut the ring from Sauron's hand, near Mount Doom. At this time, Sauron is already defeated, and the ring is near to where it must be destroyed, and I can toss it into the fires immediately after I use it against Yuno. Does this make sense?"
"Yes, but," Legolas said, though he quickly bit his tongue, and it dawned onto Greenleaf precisely what he was going to say, exactly what he was thinking, at it gave the both of them a mutual grief that they knew they had to set aside.
"Yes but what?" Gimli pressed.
"Yes but nothing," Legolas said evasively, looking at Greenleaf with determined eyes. They understood each other at the last.
They both treasured the friendships they have gleaned from the Fellowship of the Ring. But if the ring had been cast into Mount Doom long ago, none of their paths would have ever crossed. They never would have known each other. But it was also a price Legolas—as himself and as Greenleaf and as anyone else he ever was or ever would be—was willing to pay. His heart for Arda. His heart, for the very life of the friends he would lose completely, never to have them even as mere memories and ghosts.
"So be it," Aragorn said suddenly, and the two Legolases turned to him at the same time, their expressions identically momentarily stunned before melting into understanding of his keen perception.
"It's time for me to leave," Greenleaf said.
"Good luck," Legolas told him, hesitantly offering his hand to shake. Greenleaf took it tightly, before turning to the others and letting his gaze rest upon them lingeringly, knowing it would be the last time he would see them, and fate would not even leave him with a memory.
"Goodbye," Aragorn said, embracing him tightly, "I'll see you again," he lied, only because it sounded all the better for all of them.
Greenleaf smiled at him wryly, understanding precisely what it was, but said nothing. He flicked at the buttons upon his slim black band, and closed his eyes, and vanished before their very eyes.
TO BE CONTINUED…