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 NINE: Ghost
Mordor
3441 of the Second Age
Just when all hope seemed lost, the enemy was felled by a broken sword, wielded by an almost broken spirit.
Isildur seemed stunned at his own success, as the Ring fell from the hand of Sauron, who seemed to turn to light and ashes at his loss, downed and defeated.
The ring lay smoldering near to the human's head, and as he reached for it, a strange elf clad in black had beat him to it by a hair, and he looked up in horror at who could be no other than a new villain.
"I will return it in moments," the strange elf promised, just before he slipped the ring on and vanished from sight. Around him, Isildur noticed a new darkness that he could not have thought possible, it being that he was in Mordor and Sauron had just fallen.
"What was that?" he asked the elf beside him, Elrond, dumbfounded.
"He is no elf that I know," Elrond said, puzzled. He looked up at the black skies, "There is evil here that did not fall with Sauron."
* * *
Legolas could tell by the way that Yuno's elements moved that the Destroyer was confused. The clouds seemed to hover, as if they were looking about, trying to gain their bearings. They hung low over the ground, blackening all that they touched and turning them into dust by Yuno's will.
If he had a chance at all, it was now.
The Ring lent him invisibility, and he ran through its borrowed reality, drawing his mithril scimitars and determined for all of this madness to end here and now. He ran through the low black clouds unscathed, for he was unseen and undetected. It seemed eternal and thick and all at once gnawingly empty. There was no up or down or left or right, just inky blackness that reminded him of closed eyes, or better yet, absolute blindness. He was within Yuno's pitch-black coat, and in here somewhere was the Destroyer himself.
The Destroyer could not see him, but Yuno knew he was there, and the blackness stirred with his distress. Legolas suddenly felt radiantly hot, and all at once freezing cold. He was dying inside and out, as Yuno's potent presence filled the inky void.
Legolas moved on, gritting his teeth, and he walked and walked and walked in seeming emptiness, until in the near distance he spotted a glowing flame, that began as tiny as a tear, and became larger as he moved towards it. He hung onto it like a ray of hope, even as his body slowly began to fail him, and he stumbled. Crying out, he rose quickly and began to run, angry and determined, and he ran and ran until the flame stood before him, and took a figure that can be likened to the shape of a man, or an elf.
He charged against the figure with his scimitars raised. He rose to the air, and caught the figure between the slashes of his blades at the descent. The figure broke, and shattered in a booming, hollow shriek that seemed to catch his heart in an iron vise.
Gasping at the assault, Legolas writhed in its grip, and the Destroyer seemed keen on taking his assassin with him into the depths of hell. Still, he struggled. And limp in its lethal embrace, he dared to weather the attack, as the blackness began to dim, and lighten. From black to spotted gray, 'til it allowed for the clearing of the skies.
* * *
When he opened his eyes, he did not even know that he had shut them, and he found himself lying on the ground, breathless and weak. Shakily, he tore the ring from his finger, and watched as the world faded back into how it ought to have been, even if the sight were as foul as Mordor. He gasped, and ached resoundingly everywhere. He could not catch his breath. He could barely move, could barely even think. And in this did he know without a shadow of a doubt that his body was failing.
The ravages of Yuno's attacks would be more than enough to quench all the life of him, and he laid upon the ground a smoldering ruin of who he had been, in more ways than one. But there was time still to do as he had promised, time to do that which needed doing.
Elves and men seemed to converge around him, curious and cautious. Past them moved a Lord Elrond that was younger than how Legolas had ever known him. His brows were furrowed, confused at this strange elf who had come out of nowhere and vanished and felled an ink-black demon and now returned to them. But the healer's heart in him compelled him to move forward, and kneel over the fallen elf and begin to tend him.
"Do not… bother…," Legolas gasped, "Please. Lord… El-rond," he struggled to say, as he grabbed at the other elf's hands and thrust the One Ring into them, "C-cast it… away. Into Mordor… back from… where it… c-came. C-cast it-t away… yourself. B-by your own… hands…"
"I do not understand," Elrond told him achingly, tightening his grip around the ring and around the stranger's hands, "Who are you? What happened here?"
"It is-s all," he gasped, and even tried to smile with the ridiculousness of his fate, "His-story. It all… ends… here. And I… I am no one…"
Releasing Elrond's hands, Legolas at last let his eyes close, and waited for death to claim him.
It is just as well.
After what he had accomplished here, he knew he had no future to return to as himself, and he had no reason to live to go anywhere, and remember all these things that did not happen, and all these things that would not happen. They only uselessly lent him pain with his loss, a loss that only he knew, a loss that only he felt. A loss that only he would ever know, only he would ever feel.
It all ends here…
And some things wouldn't even ever begin…
Like the Fellowship, the singularly good thing that had arisen from all the evil that have plagued his life. With the One Ring destroyed in this moment, the Fellowship never would have been formed. He never would know Aragorn, and Gimli, and the Hobbits, and Boromir and Gandalf.
He never would have known the amusing idiocy and vibrancy of Pippin, the intelligence of Merry, the bravery of Samwise and the earnestness of Frodo. He never would have known the quiet, soothing wisdom of Mithrandir, or the harsh honesty and brutal strength of Boromir.
"If I had a time machine I would go straight to the moment when we leave this place."
"If I had a time machine, I would go back to the time when you ever learned anything about time machines and shut your ears so you wouldn't keep talking about it."
"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."
He never would have befriended a dwarf in a companionship to last the ages, he never even could have imagined it.
"Do you know that we will be the dearest of friends in the end? That the world will never know a greater friendship than yours and mine?"
Gimli's grip upon his axe tightened. "Let's dice him right now. Now we know for sure he is lying."
Estel never would have existed, because Isildur never would have been slain and the line never would have needed protection in Rivendell. He never would have known Aragorn.
~If I had me a machine that sends me all across time whenever I want,~ said Aragorn to Legolas with an inviting grin, ~I would go back to when I first met you and run in the other direction.~
Memories danced across his mind as he embraced his end, and in such thoughts only did he find warming comfort that he had long been deprived of. Some of them were funny, some were stupid and theoretically offensive. Some were kind and gracious, others wordless, some just words unaccompanied by pictures. Some of them he knew well, others were so simple and trivial he had forgotten he remembered.
"I always knew I was meant for great things."
"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."
"They must have very little to do in the future to think of these things."
"I still cannot believe there are two of you. As if it was not difficult enough to contend with one!"
"I have never seen an elf cry."
"He does have a care for that head of hair, and he is probably upset that you cut it."
"I'll see you again…"
One by one and little by little, slow and fast did the thoughts come and fly, one right after the other, one over the other in endless strings that each reminded him of at least ten instances more. In this act did he say farewell to all of his dearest friends, and even to the only self that he had ever known, the self that he had best loved: the one that had been characterized by his compassion for them. The self that he had become because of them.
Farewell.
AN ENDING.