Disclaimer: I don't own Legolas, Middle-Earth or something that is already owned by Tolkien. :o)
Author's note: Hugs to everyone who found a minute to send a review. You are the best. :o) I guess, this chapter should make clear some blank points. Enjoy it.
HyperSquishy: He will get used to it, I suppose. :o)
ZELINIA: I decided to try and save your manicure. :o) Here's the explanation. Thank you for your support.
Faerlas: Varendur, ser rili (rili ser?) ! I hope you like it. :o))
Tatiana: Wow! Thank you very much. :o) I really appreciate such compliments.
Callisto Callispi: I'm embarrassed, indeed. Never thought I deserve such praises. :o))) You've almost guessed about the Tenth Walker, btw. Only it's the Second walker in our case. :o)
Name1: Glad to hear that. :o) Let's move on?
Chapter 3.
"A guiding star."
He didn't know how many hours or days had passed. Nothing changed in the cursed corner – wherever he went there was the same red light and the same frozen image of death. He found no way out. Every path brought him to the three tombs in front of the silent palace. There was no day, there was no night. There was no stir of air. Even dust under his feet stayed at its place no matter if he walked calmly or ran, driven crazy with this sameness.
Everything ends, and there came the moment when he gave up. However strong the vitality of his people was in his body, it forsook him. He walked out into the light, sank down near the marble figure of Arwen and closed his eyes, relinquishing all his powers. He saw no point in continuing to fight for his life.
The memories of his past were dancing around him. He relived each of them anew, smiling… frowning… Little by little the bright pictures began to fade… Faces he had known, places he had seen, words he had spoken lost their significance. They came apart like a paper butterfly, fallen into the water. And he, a small elven boy, was crying over its downright wings, and his father was displeased, because he had escaped from the palace to make it fly…
Somebody was shaking his shoulders, trying to tear him away from the river and bring back into the four walls of his room, where for some reason Arwen stood petrified between the tombs of her beloved creatures. If one scrutinized her face, it would be obvious that the tears falling from her eyes were blood-red…
A pitiless hand slapped him once more. He moaned, ungluing his heavy eye-lids. And another slap came, making him wrinkle.
"That's enough," muttered he, having caught the wrist of the attacker.
"Fine," the voice was anxious, "Have a drink."
He swallowed the offered liquid and immediately snorted, spitting it out. It tasted ever worse than reeked.
"Don't like it?" Gwirith wanted to know, screwing up the lid of a shabby flask. She was sitting beside him, her face quite impassive, "Then there is nothing else I can help you with. Stand up."
And she easily sprang to her feet, as if the order she insonified was meant for her. Legolas gripped at the cold rock of the tomb with the intention to pull himself up, but his hands were trembling so violently that he had to let go, heavily falling back on the hard and unfriendly ground. Gwirith pursed her lips in obvious irritation at his sight. Her scorn stung him to the quick, and he repeated his attempt, though it was clear that he wouldn't manage it. This time he found no strength even to chin. Having failed to wait till he understood the vainness of his actions, the girl snorted and held out a hand, at which he gratefully grasped. Her face got a little softer – she leaned to him, letting his arms wind themselves round her neck and embracing him to give him support, while Legolas practically crawled up her body. He must have been too heavy for her, because her forehead grew spangled with drops of sweat, while her chest was heaving with certain difficulty. His pride didn't allow him to go on resting against a weak woman, therefore he pushed her away all but irritably.
"I can go on my own," said he, quite unsure of that.
"Go," agreed smiling Gwirith, "But may I ask where?"
The question confused Legolas, for he was certainly unprepared for her to understand him literally. But he decided to proceed in the same spirit, interested in where it could lead them.
"And where did you come from?"
"I surely wouldn't advise you to appear in there," it could have been a joke, if she wouldn't have sounded so dead serious.
"And where would you advise me to appear?" Legolas wanted to know, stepping closer. She strained, becoming steely.
"And where did you come from?" riposted she with the shift of the stress to "come".
"I thought you were going to help me."
He regretted his words as soon as they escaped his tongue, because she flinched and glanced away, her face awry with a sharp cramp. She blinked, and it seemed to him that something shined from under her eye-lids, but when she looked at him again, her eyes were dry and cold.
"Never ask me to help," said she distinctly, "Nobody knows what my help will bring you. Shun my aid while you can."
"And what if I cannot?" asked he. She dropped her head and sighed with the resignation of the defeated one.
"Woe is you, then," her hand slowly went up to his face to let her finger trace the line of his cracky lips, "And I regret that you hadn't died before I arrived."
With that statement she simply turned away, not even bothering to invite him to follow. Legolas hadn't had much choice but to shadow her, his capable legs soon having adapted to her swift pace. They walked in silence – once or twice she flung her eyes over him, yet they were so quick and cautious that he didn't manage to read whatever was written in the faintly glittering depth of her pupils. All he could guess about was that she was contemplating over some very unpleasant matter, and the conclusions she was coming to didn't bring her much satisfaction.
His head was still spinning slightly as a reminder of his getting over the border of life. Was he feeling sorry for not going further than that – he couldn't say it for sure. Not yet.
Instead of that his thoughts were insistently turning to Gwirith. Somehow he felt that she was the main link in the chain of events, which had occurred to him. He wasn't blinded by the joy of knowing she was alive anymore. Indeed it was a soothing awareness, but it just didn't seem … right. Not after his palms remembering the cold of the blade and the heat of her blood. Not after his taking in her final exhale and seeing the slow fall of her relaxed body. He didn't dream about that, or assuming that he did, he would have to suppose he had dreamt of everything that had followed her expire.
It was Gwirith who had led him into this kingdom of horror. He was driven by her call for help, by his own guilt… But this Gwirith, unlike her ghostly double, didn't seek his protection and didn't reproach him for his deed. Yet she remembered him – he knew it for sure from the way her fingertips glided against his lips – gently, almost intimately. This touch rewarded him for her harsh wish of his death, it pitied him. But was it Gwirith who had touched him?
Her face didn't change much – Legolas had to admit it, though he was trying to find anything to prove he had mistaken his mindless hope for the reality. Her long eye-lashes curved the same way they had two centuries ago, and the eyes, shaded by them, had lost not a drop of their goldish brown colour. But something new admixed the purity of her stare, making it hard to bear it – something dark and merciless. And though she was still beautiful, which couldn't be repealed neither by the weariness, lurking in her movements, nor by countless stains of dirt and dust, about which she obviously didn't care; though his eyes were eager to feast upon her proud charm, she was not similar to the unfolding flower he had seen once. There were other words he chose to match her present state. Extinct flame, that's what he wanted to call her.
So who was it to have summoned him here?
And who was it to guide him through the ruins now?
"Gwirith," he carefully selected the most hushful tone. If she was not the one he had thought her to be, she wouldn't respond. The young woman stopped walking and looked back at the elf, her brows raised in a conventional motion of inquiry.
"Well?" prompted she, not having obtained the expected answer.
"Why has everything changed in here?" asked he, because he needed to ask at least something.
Gwirith tilted her head, making an uncomprehending face.
"Changed?" resounded she, "Nothing has changed in here for I don't remember how long."
"But this is Rivendell, isn't it?"
She looked around and nodded. The place was right, so Legolas shifted his doubts into the field, concerning time.
"When was the War over?" questioned he, for there was no other more or less reliable reference point. Having understood that he didn't intend to give up the interrogation, Gwirith leaned her back against the nearest trunk and sighed.
"Which one?" asked she in her turn. Tiredness inlaid her voice, infinite and hopeless tiredness…
"The Last One," offered he, being sure that she knew no other wars than the one he had just come through.
It was the mere moment she considered over his question, but when she answered, he felt even more puzzled, contrary to all his expectations.
"Three days ago."
"Three days ago?"
The war of the Rings finished three days ago? Then where did a hundred of years got to? He shook his head. Impossible. It was not the world he remembered seeing three days after the Ring sank into the hungry jaws of Orodruin.
"Well, yes. Uruk-hai are trying to divide Gondor. Orc's squabble."
The horrible words left her mouth so easily… So nonchalantly… It seemed that she didn't care about the devastation around her.
Little by little he began to realize what had happened. To realize, not to believe…
"The War of the Rings was lost, wasn't it?" said he quietly.
The girl answered with a slight movement of her eye-lashes.
"And … your race?"
She laughed bitterly and derisively, her teeth glistening between her parched lips.
"Dead," stated she roughly, "all those who hadn't yielded to the Dark Lord died in pain. And those who are alive now wish they had joined them. As well as your race. Only creatures such as you were more persistent in their likings, as you can observe."
Legolas dropped his head. It felt so odd – he knew he had to be ruthful, or furious, or crashed with all this. But there was nothing except loneliness. He didn't even want to continue this series of inquiries – he had heard quite enough. Had Gwirith behaved in some other way – had she cried a single tear or evinced a single sign of compassion - and he might have broken and let the misery overwhelm him. But her indifference, diluted with a fair part of sardonic jest, somehow kept him on the surface.
"Don't you pity them?" but from the look in her eyes he understood that she didn't.
"I pity you," responded she simply, "So I suggest that you should go with me as fast as you can. Because the last elf I saw here was flayed. Alive."
"Then what's the use in my going anywhere?" slowly asked the elf, looking into the hard hazel eyes of the monster, who wore the body of Gwirith, "I don't want to experience the sorrow of being the last of my people. I don't want to hide."
She drew herself up, clenching her teeth with ire, which suddenly revealed itself in every line of her face.
"Are you so slow that you have failed to understand it all yet?" uttered she in a dangerously low voice, "It's not the Middle Earth you belong to. I have no idea how you got here, and I don't want to know it. But what I know is that somewhere there is your world and seeing you so astonished by the sight of this one, I conclude that you won the War. And I'd be glad if you returned there. Or do you prefer to stay and share this fate with us?"
Her zeal was so unexpected in comparison with the previous display of impassivity, that he got lost and chose it best to shake his head in denial.
"Then follow me, and I shall try to lead you out of here," she nodded in the direction of what had been the evergreen garden of Rivendell.
"Do you know how to do it?" surrendered Legolas, because he hadn't any visible alternative.
Another derisive smile quirked the corned of her mouth up, but this time it had a hint of cold and heavy triumph, though he couldn't perceive the cause of her sour elation.
"Oh, yes," purred she, "I believe I do."
A/n: That's that, my friends. :o) If there's anything you want to say – I'm ready to read it. :o)
Waiting for your comments,
Adamanta.