ENDING ONE: Chapter Forty: It Was No More
A/N: I don't know why I decided to name the chapter that, I titled it before I even wrote the story. That sentence actually pops up at the very end. Crazy, but I didn't mean to do it. Let that be a lesson to you: an author's mind works in strange, mysterious ways. Enjoy (or hate) this ending. Frankly, I love it, but only because I'm a bit biased, but not because I wrote it and naturally everything that I write is awesome (ha ha). Even though I wrote this one after I wrote the other ending, this one is shorter, and I like the final sentence of #2 more. It's more … uh … I don't know the word. I'm forever forgetting what I'm trying to say. I'm always losing my drift.
…
Aila lay back onto her bed, her mind full of the memories of her escapades in Middle Earth. However, it had been months since Aila had visited her dear friends through the mirror and she always felt like she should remember to go, but she never quite found the time. It was as if she was holding herself back: forcing herself to find homework unfinished and thoughts un-pondered for classes. Whenever she got back to her apartment from her classes at Yale she would be much too tired to travel to another world where she would resume her 18 year old body and catch up on old times as this world froze in time. It didn't appeal to her, night after night.
This night was no different, in either aspect. She wished to go dearly, but didn't feel up to it, so she lay in bed, dreaming of the times they shared, it was around midnight and she knew that she should have been asleep by then, because she had early classes that morning. But something was keeping her eyes wide open. Forcefully, she closed her lids and willed herself to sleep. Heavy breathing and footsteps reached her ears as soon as she shut out the outside world.
Aila's eyes flew open and Arwen's beautiful complexion met her gaze. However, Arwen's face was wrought with sorrow, fear, and urgency.
"Arwen! What are you doing here? How did you get through the mirror? What's wrong?" Her barrage of questions went unanswered and frankly unnoticed as Arwen grabbed her wrist and pulled her bodily from her bed. "Wha--?" But she had no time to finish her question as she was yanked through her mirror to Middle Earth.
Immediately, she was surprised to find that she was not in Arwen's room as the mirror was usually located, but rather one of the private sickrooms of Rivendell. She looked around the room and recognized many people sitting there. Gandalf, Lord Elrond, King Elessar (Aragorn), and several elves that she did not recognize were there. One, she knew, was King Thranduil of Mirkwood. She wondered to herself why he was there. Then her gaze fell upon Gimli, who sat upon the right side of the bed, near the pillow. His eyes shone with tears that he refused to shed. "Dwarves don't cry," was what she was positive he had said.
Then her eyes fell upon the face that lay upon the pillow amidst the soft blankets of the bed. Arwen sat herself down next to Aragorn, her eyes gleaming with tears that plowed paths down her red cheeks. A chair was left to the other side of the bed, opposite Gimli. Pale-faced and gaunt, Legolas lay in the bed, eyes closed in deadly slumber. His hands had been placed cupped at his sides and the warm blankets were tucked tightly around his lithe body.
Standing dumbstruck for a few moments, Aila collected herself and ran to the empty chair that had been left for her. She grasped the elf's clammy hand, which froze her bones with its chill. Aila began rubbing his hand between hers, trying to force some warmth into it with the friction, but she got no response.
"Is he …" she couldn't bring herself to finish her own question. Gandalf bowed his head and stared at the ground, regretting what he was about to say.
"No, he lives. But he is dying." Aila stared at the wizard, her eyes full of sorrow and tears, which streaked down her cheeks and fell from her chin, but she did not care about that. One question filled her mind. "Soon," was the answer. Choking on her tears, sobs rocked Aila's body as she grasped her friend's cold hand.
She laid his palm against her cheek, flinching from the cold that Legolas' hand omitted. Gazing down at her dying friend, she wondered what could have killed him like this, so slow and painfully. Not battle. No person could do this … Crying even harder in her depression, Aila willed herself to feel the blood pulsing through the veins in his hand, but it was still and she felt nothing. She tried to force herself into his mind, hacking away at the mind block with mental swords, but it was useless in his dying throes.
Summoning up all of her courage, Aila began to sing to Legolas in his dying moments. The first song that popped up into her head, to describe exactly what she was feeling. It was like she sung it from Legolas' point of view. Her voice cracked and the others didn't realize the meaning behind it.
"'I fear I can't go on,' she said
'I think I would be better dead'
She knelt, she cried, and I held her head
I thought I knew what she was feeling
She turned to close the door
And I assisted in a suicide
Now that she's on the other side
I know what she was after -- To Die.
I can wait
Suicide
I can wait
A cold and wet November day
We lowered her into a grave
I'd never seen her look so brave
Now worms consume her body
I can wait
I can wait"
(No clue what the title is [track 11] by Deep Blue Something)
Tears streaming down her face, Aila's sanity left her. There lay her friend, who had been her only comfort in life. And he was dead. She picked up his hand from his side and kissed the palm, before laying it back upon his chest. The others in the room, seeing his lifeless hand laid upon his chest registered to them that he was well and truly dead.
Each of them bowed their heads in sorrow, but not Aila. She held her chin high exposing her neck. Gulping back nervousness, she was determined in what she was about to do, having no thought at all about what she was about to do, but doing it. Beside Legolas lay his weaponry, as he was so attached to it in life. She picked up one of his long elven knives, but no one else in the room noticed, for their heads were bowed. Raising it to her neck, she took one last quivering look at her friend.
Chaos erupted within the next few seconds. Gandalf raised his head and saw Aila raise the sword to her neck, eminent suicide. Aila glanced at Legolas, just as he began to stir, coming back from the dead. She gasped in shock, hope flared through her, but her movements continued. Gandalf sprinted towards her, trying desperately to conjure a spell to keep her alive. But she was too swift for him or her thoughts to catch up with her. Blood sprang from the slit in her throat and she dropped the bloodied sword from her lifeless hand as she suffocated and bled to death simultaneously.
Legolas, coming back from death, realized what was going on, and tried desperately to get up from the bed. Elrond ran to Aila and Arwen cried aloud, more tears springing from her. Aila fell to the ground from her chair and laid there, a pool of blood spreading from her neck, forming a halo around her head. Her brown hair was spread about her, long and messy, sticking to the thick blood. The others in the room allowed Legolas to run to her and hold her in his arms. Tears ran freely down his face as he begged Aila to come back to him.
"Aila, don't die, please don't die. I love you, amin mela lle! Amin mela lle!" But her pupils were dilating and overtaking her soft brown eyes, covering them in darkness. His breath labored in his chest and he caught a glance of his sword, covered once more in her blood. "No," he said, desperately. His face resonated how helpless and depressed he felt. All emotions left his body and he put his index and middle fingers to her eyelids, closing them in her death. Before anybody else could stop him, he took up the blade as well, cutting a slit in his own throat, falling in death beside his love.
"I should have gotten there in time," said Gandalf, looking in distress upon the two who lay dead upon the floor, sticky with their blood, mingling together. "They both died in great depression. May they meet in Mandos."
"It cannot be so," replied Aragorn, holding back tears, his voice thick with them. "She was not elven."
"So be it," said Gandalf, tears streaming freely down his own face. His old voice cracked with emotional pain. "In life they loved, but in love they died. Here ends the saga of the Light Bearer. May their ways be forever light. Let us only hope that Legolas, at least, will choose to come back to us."
"He will not," said Thranduil. "Never will my son choose to come back, so tragic was his life. So tragic was his end."
"It wasn't supposed to end like this!" cried Arwen, huddled in Aragorn's chest. "Why did it have to end like this?"
"I don't know, melanim." My love "I don't know."
Arwen's world spiraled around her two best friends, who lay on the floor, tangled together. Their chests no longer rose with each breath, their cheeks no longer pink with merriment. No longer could she gaze into their bright eyes, or hear their beautiful laughs, or their sarcastic jokes, or dry humor. Never could they feel their love returned by the other.
Never could their son save elven-kind.
Never.
It was no more.
…
A/N: Kind of a Romeo and Juliet, isn't it? Only the sexes are switched, instead of Juliet pretending to be dead, it's Legolas, and instead of Romeo poisoning himself in distress, it's Aila finally finishing her suicidal actions, and instead of Juliet waking up and killing herself by kissing Romeo's poisoned lips (then stabbing herself with his sword), it's Legolas, who takes up the same sword and takes his own life. It's so sad, isn't it? I cry whenever I read this, and I WROTE it! Boo hoo. I promise, ending two is MUCH HAPPIER! You're gonna love that one … I do.
THE END #1
A/N: I don't know why I decided to name the chapter that, I titled it before I even wrote the story. That sentence actually pops up at the very end. Crazy, but I didn't mean to do it. Let that be a lesson to you: an author's mind works in strange, mysterious ways. Enjoy (or hate) this ending. Frankly, I love it, but only because I'm a bit biased, but not because I wrote it and naturally everything that I write is awesome (ha ha). Even though I wrote this one after I wrote the other ending, this one is shorter, and I like the final sentence of #2 more. It's more … uh … I don't know the word. I'm forever forgetting what I'm trying to say. I'm always losing my drift.
…
Aila lay back onto her bed, her mind full of the memories of her escapades in Middle Earth. However, it had been months since Aila had visited her dear friends through the mirror and she always felt like she should remember to go, but she never quite found the time. It was as if she was holding herself back: forcing herself to find homework unfinished and thoughts un-pondered for classes. Whenever she got back to her apartment from her classes at Yale she would be much too tired to travel to another world where she would resume her 18 year old body and catch up on old times as this world froze in time. It didn't appeal to her, night after night.
This night was no different, in either aspect. She wished to go dearly, but didn't feel up to it, so she lay in bed, dreaming of the times they shared, it was around midnight and she knew that she should have been asleep by then, because she had early classes that morning. But something was keeping her eyes wide open. Forcefully, she closed her lids and willed herself to sleep. Heavy breathing and footsteps reached her ears as soon as she shut out the outside world.
Aila's eyes flew open and Arwen's beautiful complexion met her gaze. However, Arwen's face was wrought with sorrow, fear, and urgency.
"Arwen! What are you doing here? How did you get through the mirror? What's wrong?" Her barrage of questions went unanswered and frankly unnoticed as Arwen grabbed her wrist and pulled her bodily from her bed. "Wha--?" But she had no time to finish her question as she was yanked through her mirror to Middle Earth.
Immediately, she was surprised to find that she was not in Arwen's room as the mirror was usually located, but rather one of the private sickrooms of Rivendell. She looked around the room and recognized many people sitting there. Gandalf, Lord Elrond, King Elessar (Aragorn), and several elves that she did not recognize were there. One, she knew, was King Thranduil of Mirkwood. She wondered to herself why he was there. Then her gaze fell upon Gimli, who sat upon the right side of the bed, near the pillow. His eyes shone with tears that he refused to shed. "Dwarves don't cry," was what she was positive he had said.
Then her eyes fell upon the face that lay upon the pillow amidst the soft blankets of the bed. Arwen sat herself down next to Aragorn, her eyes gleaming with tears that plowed paths down her red cheeks. A chair was left to the other side of the bed, opposite Gimli. Pale-faced and gaunt, Legolas lay in the bed, eyes closed in deadly slumber. His hands had been placed cupped at his sides and the warm blankets were tucked tightly around his lithe body.
Standing dumbstruck for a few moments, Aila collected herself and ran to the empty chair that had been left for her. She grasped the elf's clammy hand, which froze her bones with its chill. Aila began rubbing his hand between hers, trying to force some warmth into it with the friction, but she got no response.
"Is he …" she couldn't bring herself to finish her own question. Gandalf bowed his head and stared at the ground, regretting what he was about to say.
"No, he lives. But he is dying." Aila stared at the wizard, her eyes full of sorrow and tears, which streaked down her cheeks and fell from her chin, but she did not care about that. One question filled her mind. "Soon," was the answer. Choking on her tears, sobs rocked Aila's body as she grasped her friend's cold hand.
She laid his palm against her cheek, flinching from the cold that Legolas' hand omitted. Gazing down at her dying friend, she wondered what could have killed him like this, so slow and painfully. Not battle. No person could do this … Crying even harder in her depression, Aila willed herself to feel the blood pulsing through the veins in his hand, but it was still and she felt nothing. She tried to force herself into his mind, hacking away at the mind block with mental swords, but it was useless in his dying throes.
Summoning up all of her courage, Aila began to sing to Legolas in his dying moments. The first song that popped up into her head, to describe exactly what she was feeling. It was like she sung it from Legolas' point of view. Her voice cracked and the others didn't realize the meaning behind it.
"'I fear I can't go on,' she said
'I think I would be better dead'
She knelt, she cried, and I held her head
I thought I knew what she was feeling
She turned to close the door
And I assisted in a suicide
Now that she's on the other side
I know what she was after -- To Die.
I can wait
Suicide
I can wait
A cold and wet November day
We lowered her into a grave
I'd never seen her look so brave
Now worms consume her body
I can wait
I can wait"
(No clue what the title is [track 11] by Deep Blue Something)
Tears streaming down her face, Aila's sanity left her. There lay her friend, who had been her only comfort in life. And he was dead. She picked up his hand from his side and kissed the palm, before laying it back upon his chest. The others in the room, seeing his lifeless hand laid upon his chest registered to them that he was well and truly dead.
Each of them bowed their heads in sorrow, but not Aila. She held her chin high exposing her neck. Gulping back nervousness, she was determined in what she was about to do, having no thought at all about what she was about to do, but doing it. Beside Legolas lay his weaponry, as he was so attached to it in life. She picked up one of his long elven knives, but no one else in the room noticed, for their heads were bowed. Raising it to her neck, she took one last quivering look at her friend.
Chaos erupted within the next few seconds. Gandalf raised his head and saw Aila raise the sword to her neck, eminent suicide. Aila glanced at Legolas, just as he began to stir, coming back from the dead. She gasped in shock, hope flared through her, but her movements continued. Gandalf sprinted towards her, trying desperately to conjure a spell to keep her alive. But she was too swift for him or her thoughts to catch up with her. Blood sprang from the slit in her throat and she dropped the bloodied sword from her lifeless hand as she suffocated and bled to death simultaneously.
Legolas, coming back from death, realized what was going on, and tried desperately to get up from the bed. Elrond ran to Aila and Arwen cried aloud, more tears springing from her. Aila fell to the ground from her chair and laid there, a pool of blood spreading from her neck, forming a halo around her head. Her brown hair was spread about her, long and messy, sticking to the thick blood. The others in the room allowed Legolas to run to her and hold her in his arms. Tears ran freely down his face as he begged Aila to come back to him.
"Aila, don't die, please don't die. I love you, amin mela lle! Amin mela lle!" But her pupils were dilating and overtaking her soft brown eyes, covering them in darkness. His breath labored in his chest and he caught a glance of his sword, covered once more in her blood. "No," he said, desperately. His face resonated how helpless and depressed he felt. All emotions left his body and he put his index and middle fingers to her eyelids, closing them in her death. Before anybody else could stop him, he took up the blade as well, cutting a slit in his own throat, falling in death beside his love.
"I should have gotten there in time," said Gandalf, looking in distress upon the two who lay dead upon the floor, sticky with their blood, mingling together. "They both died in great depression. May they meet in Mandos."
"It cannot be so," replied Aragorn, holding back tears, his voice thick with them. "She was not elven."
"So be it," said Gandalf, tears streaming freely down his own face. His old voice cracked with emotional pain. "In life they loved, but in love they died. Here ends the saga of the Light Bearer. May their ways be forever light. Let us only hope that Legolas, at least, will choose to come back to us."
"He will not," said Thranduil. "Never will my son choose to come back, so tragic was his life. So tragic was his end."
"It wasn't supposed to end like this!" cried Arwen, huddled in Aragorn's chest. "Why did it have to end like this?"
"I don't know, melanim." My love "I don't know."
Arwen's world spiraled around her two best friends, who lay on the floor, tangled together. Their chests no longer rose with each breath, their cheeks no longer pink with merriment. No longer could she gaze into their bright eyes, or hear their beautiful laughs, or their sarcastic jokes, or dry humor. Never could they feel their love returned by the other.
Never could their son save elven-kind.
Never.
It was no more.
…
A/N: Kind of a Romeo and Juliet, isn't it? Only the sexes are switched, instead of Juliet pretending to be dead, it's Legolas, and instead of Romeo poisoning himself in distress, it's Aila finally finishing her suicidal actions, and instead of Juliet waking up and killing herself by kissing Romeo's poisoned lips (then stabbing herself with his sword), it's Legolas, who takes up the same sword and takes his own life. It's so sad, isn't it? I cry whenever I read this, and I WROTE it! Boo hoo. I promise, ending two is MUCH HAPPIER! You're gonna love that one … I do.
THE END #1