Part Seven: Healing Arms

Elanna slowly made her way toward what remained of the main gate of the city. Her path zig-zagged so that she might check on those who had fallen. Most were dead, but some few she found alive. Stanching blood, covering them with confiscated cloaks, she took what immediate care she could of them and used spears from which she hung tattered strips of cloth to mark where they lay so that they might more quickly be brought back to healers.

The city walls had been breached and as many bodies as lay upon the open field, there must be the same within. She did not think she would find Mithrandir soon, but it seemed as if her sense of him had grown, like a magnet pulling her inner compass toward him. A haze drifted over the plain and here and there the sun broke through the shreds of the black cloud that had covered the land.

A gleam of steel caught her eye, the tip of a sword peeking from under an Uruk-hai corpse. She put her heel against him and shoved, rolling him partly out of the way. She stooped and picked it up. Marking the runes etched on its length, the perfect weight of it, she knew it was elvish-made. There would be more treasures such as this, if one was only willing to delve among the spoils. It was a fine sword, better placed in the hands of Men. It would go well with the elven shield that she'd found and slung over her shoulder. She tucked it in her belt, alongside her scabbard. Her helmet hung from the chin strap at the small of her back, her gauntlets at the right. She had little room to carry any other scavengings.

Looking toward the gates, still many yards away, she saw the green swarm of spirits fade in a gust of wind, and wondered at their passing. Where did they go, the souls of Men? Then she saw a figure in white standing on the field. Her heart beat faster. She started to gallop, leaping over bodies of men and from top to top of the dead enemy. Her helmet bounced against her backside, the swords clanked, and leather creaked as she ran. "Mithrandir!" she shouted. The figure grew in her sights: white cape, hem filthy and spattered in black blood; white--not grey--hair, flying free of the leather band that held it. A sword was at his side, but he held no staff. Aragorn was with him.

She stopped twenty feet away. An exhausted smile flickered across Aragorn's face. He said something to the wizard, who turned.

"Mithrandir!" she said. She saw surprise, relief, and gratitude chase over his gruff features.

She walked slowly the rest of the way until she stood within an arm's length. She surveyed the lined face. His beard was much shorter and neatly trimmed, his stance though tired, shone with a vigor she had not seen before, as if he was lit from within like the Valar. But his eyes were the same, or if not the same, I more /I , more wise, more kind, and filled with her own reflection. She gazed at him. "It is a long journey I have taken to stand before you, yet it is not half so long as your own."

He shook his head. "Elanna." Spreading his arms wide he took her within the sweep of his cloak, holding her tightly and saying her name again and again.

Aragorn sat back and let his chin drop to his chest, closing his eyes, for just a moment in the grip of exhaustion. The parade of wounded through the Houses of Healing seemed endless and all, it seemed, were in need of his touch. A distant part of his mind rejoiced that there were so many injured rather than dead, for then, king or no, there would be nothing he could do. But the greater part of him could barely move and yet refused to give over to the selfish desire for sleep.

A weight pressed his shoulder and he raised his head. It was Gandalf, crouching down beside him, concern in his blue eyes. "Aragorn, you have done enough, it's time you looked to yourself."

He shook his head. "I will, but not yet."

"There are none left here on the brink of death. Eat, sleep. They'll still be here when you wake."

Aragorn grinned sardonically. "And will you sleep too, old friend? Or do you not heed your own counsel?"

"There is strength in me yet," said Gandalf.

Aragorn hung his head back, stretching, and caught, out of the corner of his eye, the glimmer of a golden head. It was the Lady Elanna, shed of her armor, bare-legged in a men's grey shift that fell to her knees. She stooped over a pallet, giving instructions, and then moved to the end of it to grasp the foot of a soldier who was still dressed in the tattered remnants of a uniform of Gondor. With a sudden jerk, she set the broken bone of his leg, bringing him up with a howl. He collapsed and she left him in the hands of two healers to move to the next bed.

Aragorn glanced at the wizard, who had also turned to watch. "Gandalf, I make a pledge to you: I will go sleep and eat, if you will go to her while there I is /I still strength left in you. If you do not, I don't understand what we fight for."

Gandalf barked a laugh, but he pushed himself up to stand and said loudly, "What does an old man have to do to get some attention in this place?"

Naked, Elanna sunk her face in a basin and threw her head back, blowing out a lungful of air. The shift she had worn, she had given over to Gandalf so his bloody robes could be cleaned. Water drops spattered the stone top of the sideboard in the room he had claimed as his own. Part of the room's balcony had given way, and rubble was on the floor, but the remaining walls were sound, and the bed was large, if dusty. A red sliver of dawn was just visible on the horizon.

While Elanna washed, Gandalf rummaged in the sideboard itself and found a small bowl of apples and a hardened end of bread. He offered them to her while she blinked, dripping, at him, but she shook her head before drying her face on a towel.

"Orc blood is as foul as the creatures themselves," she said, muffled. "It stings my eyes. It's hard to believe they were ever elves."

"They fight like elves," he replied, carrying the bowl over to the bed and stretching out on it. He propped himself up on one elbow and selected the best of the apples. "Stronger than their appearance. Tenacious. Insensible to pain."

"Now that's where you're wrong. We feel pain. And we grow weary. And we regret." She moved the towel up to ruffle her damp hair. "Why did I ever spend so many years hibernating in Imladris while you wandered over the earth by yourself?"

He crunched into the apple. "Hardly by myself. There was Aragorn, and Bilbo, Glorfindel, and the children of Elrond, to name a few." Four more bites finished the apple off. He chose another.

"But never me."

"You sought Imladris for sanctuary. I understood that. And it's not like you haven't played your part. You taught Aragorn, comforted his mother, and sat among the White Council. Knowing you were there was like an anchor in the storm for me, whether facing orcs under the mountains or driving Sauron from the depths of Mirkwood." He pursed his lips, thoughtfully. "Yes. Even when I passed into the light, it was you that drew me back."

Elanna let the blanket fall and crawled across the bed, over the top of him, shoving the bowl aside. Her mouth met his, with the lingering taste of apple. She kissed his cheek, his closed eyelids, his large nose, as his arms surrounded her again, lifting and shifting her so that they were both more comfortable. His head was cradled against her cheek and he tilted it back to graze his teeth along her throat. He tugged on his long shirt, pulling it out of the way so that she was sitting skin on skin. His flesh was warm between her thighs. She rocked back and forth, slowly, as his hands roved over her back and bottom. With a sudden turn, taking both of them, he flipped them over so that he was on top of her, pushing upwards enough on his arms that she could stroke his chest.

"Your scars are gone," she said out loud as she came to the realization. Elves rarely bore such marks, any more than they bore the marks of age. Her fingers played across his skin: lean warrior arms and knotted shoulders. He was a wizard, but he swung a sword as often as a staff.

"Yes."

"It's truly wonderful," she whispered.

"I'm gratified you think so." His hair was a white curtain around his face.

"There have been finer beds than this," she whispered, "But never one so welcome. Where you go, I will go; where you fight, I will fight. Words seem of so little importance now, only action matters."

His knee spread her legs and she gave herself over to their passion.