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The day Aragorn returned was when things started happening.

When Gimli was told that Aragorn had returned, he didn't believe it. He had to see for himself, naturally. The dwarf rushed down to the entry hall as fast as he could. It was true, much to Gimli's joy. He rushed forward and embraced the ranger.

"Aragorn, You are the luckiest, uncanniest, and the most reckless man I ever knew! Bless you laddie!"

"Gimli, where is the king?" asked Aragorn. "Aragorn, wait." Gimli pulled Aragorn into a spare room. "There is something I have to tell you."

Aragorn was puzzled. The dwarf seemed near tears. "Gimli, what is it?" Then realization dawned on him. "Gimli, where is Legolas?" he asked, more sharply than he intended.

Gimli closed his eyes. "I'm sorry, Aragorn. So sorry." "Gimli what is it?" asked Aragorn frantically. Gimli thought for a moment before speaking. He considered using euphemisms, but it wouldn't seem right. Legolas had not passed away. Nor had he left, or been lost. "He's dead."

Aragorn's jaw dropped. He felt like he would faint. "Dead?.no, how? Valar, dead?" Gimli nodded sadly. "Killed by orcs." Aragorn nodded weakly.

Suddenly, Gimli began to weep. "I let you down," he whispered. "You and Legolas alike. I let you down." Aragorn felt the same way. "Legolas.oh, Legolas, I could have saved you. But I was too weak, too weak. I let you down."

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That night left the companions with their own thoughts. Gimli returned to the garden, while Aragorn opted for the windowsill in his quarters.

Gimli thought about Aragorn. He was joyful, of course that the ranger had returned. But could you really feel guiltless about rejoicing over the recovery of one friend while mourning another? Could he really celebrate Aragorn's return to life while grieving for Legolas? How was one supposed to act, supposed to feel?

Meanwhile Aragorn sat on the windowsill, smoking and remembering. He remembered his and Legolas' first (and rather unfortunate) encounter in the Mirkwood prisons. He remembered all the scrapes Legolas and he had gotten into when they were younger. Well, when Aragorn himself was younger. A few decades didn't matter to an elf. But to think that his friend was gone. . .no, dead. Not gone to the West, but dead. Aragorn stared at his pipe, remembering how his friend had hated his habit of smoking. With a sigh, he let the pipe slip from his hand. And he cried. For the first time in decades, the ranger cried.

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Gimli was getting cold. He remembered how that blasted elf was never cold, not even on Caradhras. He decided to return to his chambers.

Along the way, he stopped to gaze at the flowers growing in the pathway. He thought of what his father would say, a dwarf looking at flowers. What a joke. In the very corner of the pathway, there was a bush bearing white roses. A thought struck him. How utterly like Legolas those white roses were. Fair, and beautiful, yet dangerous if you tried to take one. Yet they never lasted once they were chopped off from the vine. How poetic, yet how morbid.

Gimli shook his head sadly and continued towards his quarters. He climbed onto the bed (no small achievement, for a dwarf) and settled into bed. As he reached over to blow out the candle on his bedside table, something caught his eye.

On the other edge of the table, in the ghostly candlelight, there was something small, dark, shaped like a rectangle, but flat. Remarkably like that journal of Legolas'. Gimli reached over and grabbed it.

Gimli's eyes grew wide at the sight. It looked like Legolas' book. Gimli didn't quite dare to open it. Instead, he examined the cover. It was black leather, with intricate needlework covering it, also in black. The way the book caught the candlelight, Gimli thought, for a split second, that he saw Legolas' ghostly face worked into the cover. The small scratches on the leather cover were the same. Gimli lifted it to his face and smelled it. It was Legolas' familiar scent, that of fresh leaves on a spring day. It was Legolas' book!

Gimli's heart raced. How in the name of Aule had that book gotten here? It had burned with him. Legolas' journal was always in the pocket of his inner tunic. Unless he had given it to Aragorn. . .

Yes, that was it. Legolas had given his journal to Aragorn. Gimli didn't know when, or why, but he needed to make sure. He slid from his bed and ran as fast as he could to Aragorn's room.

The ranger was still on his windowsill when Gimli got there. The dwarf startled the man so much that he nearly fell to the ground, several floors below. "Aragorn!" shouted Gimli as the ranger steadied his self.

"What is it?" asked Aragorn, who was shocked at the expression on Gimli's face. "His journal!" said Gimli. "I have Legolas' journal. Did he give it to you?" "What?" Aragorn was confused. "Explain more slowly. What happened?"

"I had just returned to my room from the garden and I found Legolas' journal on my table," explained Gimli. "Did you put it there?"

Aragorn shook his head. "Of course not. Maybe one of the other soldiers took it?" "No, for certain not," said Gimli. "How do you know?" "Never mind that right now. None of the soldiers could have taken it."

Aragorn was perplexed by this comment, but he let it go. Instead, he grabbed the journal from Gimli's hand and opened it.

Gimli and Aragorn stared at the words. The intricate script, the strange inks. Legolas obviously couldn't take enough ink from Rivendell to last through the whole journey, so he made it himself from whatever he found on the trail. Every night without fail, he would sit by the fire, repairing damaged arrows and fletching new ones. After his task was finished, he would take the berries, leaves, and flowers he had gathered that day out of his pocket and mash them together, mixing them with water and the like to form ink, which he then used in his journal.

Gimli and Aragorn slowly thumbed through the pages. Aragorn could only pick out a few words here and there, and Gimli could read none of them at all, but they both recognized different points of the journey from the color of the ink. There was the red ink borrowed from Lord Elrond while he was in Rivendell, then the grey-green from the plants on the way to Caradhras. Next were the writings from the mountain itself. Here the two friends smiled sadly; Legolas had been so obsessively devoted to his writing that, lacking the necessary wildlife to make ink, he had foregone some of his rations in order to write with whatever he had been eating that day. Aragorn had become rather worried about Legolas at that point, believing that when the food ran out, Legolas would resort to writing with his own blood.

Then there was the text from Moria, where the writing was with the soot from long-abandoned fires. The handwriting was rather wobbly and messy, seeing as Legolas had been writing in almost pitch-black. Then the entries made in Lorien, with silver ink. After that, up until their arrival in Rohan, Legolas wrote with crushed berries from the trail. In Rohan, he had used black ink. The last entry was in blue, borrowed from Eowyn.

Aragorn examined the last entry curiously. "What do you read?" Gimli asked him. "I can't understand much, but the words 'head' and 'fire' seem to come up often. Here is 'battle' no, that word there is 'skirmish' and here is 'death'."

Gimli nearly passed out. "Oh, gods!" he whispered. "What? What is it?" asked Aragorn abruptly. But Gimli was muttering absently to himself. "Gimli? What is it?" inquired Aragorn again. "Aragorn, he knew! He knew!" "Knew what?" "Legolas knew of his death!"

Aragorn looked at Gimli. "What?" he said slowly, clearly. "What did you say?" "Aragorn, he knew of his death, I tell you! Don't ask me how!" "How do you know Legolas knew that he would die?"

Gimli swallowed hard. "Aragorn, Legolas knew of the manner of his death. He was ~ beheaded." "But what does that prove?" asked Aragorn with barely masked panic. "He could have been talking about the head of an order, or he could have had a headache." "But that doesn't explain why he wrote 'burn' or 'skirmish' or 'death'!"

Aragorn suppressed the feeling of dread rising within him and tried to keep a logical mind. After all, one word didn't prove anything. "Skirmish makes sense, and so does death, but what about 'burn'?"

Gimli took a shuddering breath. "Aragorn, they burned his body. The soldiers burned his body, and the book with him."

Aragorn's eyes grew wide. "Oh, Valar, no!"

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Wow, writing angst is the polar opposite of writing humor, I just found that out for sure.

LegolasLover2004: Wait and see. . .**walks off snickering evilly**

NekoMegami-chan: I started Landslide, its very good so far!

Draconic Lupine Moon: Thank you, and I'll try to update frequently!

Starlit Hope: Heehee, I can't wait for our ghost-of-Leggy to show up, either!

Cheysuli: You know, I wasn't planning on writing any more about the book, but you gave me a good idea! So, thank Cheysuli for keeping this story interesting (I hope)!