Hot resolve welled up inside of Aragorn as he watched Legolas storm halfway across the bedchamber, halt suddenly, and whip around to glare at him. The Man took one look at that furious expression, defensive body language, half-crazed gleam in those blue eyes, and moisture on both pale cheeks and knew that something horrible had happened between the end of dinner and now. There was no other explanation for it – he'd known and loved Legolas for a very long time and he'd never seen the prince with his emotions so, well, exposed before; and Aragorn had no doubt in his mind who was the cause of it.

"Legolas, tell me what happened," he urged as he walked over to him. Oh, what a fool he had been to wonder why his love had been acting so coldly toward him! But perhaps that had been a part of Legolas' plan the entire time, to hide his true intentions in this treacherous situation until they could talk alone.

Legolas didn't answer him at first; he was too preoccupied with breathing heavily through his nose. Aragorn felt a particularly strong surge of fury to see Legolas so angry and upset that he was having too much trouble controlling his breathing to speak. He reached up to lovingly caress the elf's cheek. "What did" –

The threat of physical contact was enough to jar Legolas out of his efforts to control his emotions and he harshly smacked Aragorn's hand away before it could connect with flesh. "Don't," he warned in an even tone, struggling to maintain a completely false façade of being at least partially calm. "I came here because I have to talk to you, but first we need to get one thing straight: you are not going to touch me. Do you understand: that can't happen, and next time you try something worse is going to happen to whatever part you try to touch me with."

"You're safe here," insisted Aragorn sympathetically and protectively. It was obvious to him that Legolas' demeanor was bordering on hysterical, for why else would the elf actually believe that whatever spies Eomer might have could see what they were doing in the privacy of the guest chamber? His poor, poor love – it was clear that he must have been living in terror for a heartbreakingly long time. "Everything's going to be all right."

"I know," said Legolas in a terse tone, still fighting the internal battle between keeping his emotions in check and letting them take control. "That's why I'm here; I can't let this continue."

Now they were getting somewhere. "No, you can't," agreed Aragorn, his voice determined. "It's all right, melanin; it's over now. I'm here and I'm going to make sure that Eomer never hurts you or Caladel again."

"What?" demanded Legolas sharply.

"It's plain to see that Eomer did something horrible to you," declared Aragorn as rage burned within him. "Tell me and I will make him pay. Does he beat you? Has he been holding you and Caladel prisoner? Oh Valar, is he threatening to make sure that you never see Caladel again if you don't marry him? You can tell me, Legolas; and together the two of us can find Caladel right now and get you both out of here. I'm going to take care of you both from now on."

Legolas stared at him incredulously for a moment or two before he started to laugh. It was not the beautiful, melodic laughter that the prince had when he was happy but rather something that was free of good cheer and fully of sarcasm. "This has to be the Valar's cruelest joke on me yet," he chortled, shaking his head. Why had he been so determined to control his emotions? It seemed that Aragorn wasn't going to acknowledge the truth unless he hit the Man over the head with it. "I don't know which notion is so absurd: the idea that Caladel and I need you to be our brave avenger or that Eomer would actually do anything to make that role necessary."

"Maybe you should sit down," suggested Aragorn in a calm, soothing tone that barely betrayed the growing anxiety he had about his love's uncharacteristic behavior.

"I'll have you know that if I thought that anyone posed even the slightest threat to my son's well being there wouldn't be enough left of him after I got through with him for anyone else to do vengeance," Legolas went on as if the Man hadn't spoken at all. "And as for what Eomer's done to me, Aragorn, that's no secret: he loves me. He accepts me, he understands me, and he has been nothing but kind to both me and Caladel."

"We both know that's not true," responded Aragorn gently. He knew that it wasn't in Legolas' nature to seek help or even admit there was a problem; but he was more than ready to coax the whole tale out of him bit by bit, as that knowledge would more than likely be key to saving his love and newfound son.

The elf nodded his head rapidly. "You're right: he did do something to upset me," he conceded, enraged when he saw hope creeping into Aragorn's expression. "He told me that I have to sort things out with you and that we can't start our life together until I do so. My fiancé essentially let me go so that I could find out if my feelings for you would get in the way of our marriage."

"That's…that's wonderful," breathed Aragorn. After all of those years he and Legolas were finally getting some good luck. He didn't know what was behind Eomer's change of heart – perhaps it was seeing how he much he was hurting his so-called fiancé by keeping him from his true love – but for whatever reason the Man was just grateful that the other king had regained his sense of decency.

"I fail to see how," groused Legolas.

"You're always so politically-minded," commented the Man without a care in the world. "There's not going to be any bad blood between Gondor and Rohan if he let you go! When we" –

"There is no 'we' anymore, Aragorn," interrupted Legolas peevishly. "Dear Elbereth, do you ever listen to yourself? Or to anyone else, for that matter? You've decided you've got everything all figured out and either turn a deaf ear or misinterpret anything that contradicts your view. Well, I'm not going to play along with you tonight or ever again! Understand this: I don't want Eomer to let me go. I want to marry him tomorrow, just like he and I planned."

"If that's true then why are you here with me instead somewhere else with him?" debated Aragorn with maddening logic.

It took what was left of a frustrated Legolas' tattered control not to hit him. "Because I need to set things straight with you before we can get married!" he reminded him fiercely. "Because you had to show up, as you have a tendency to do just when I'm getting my life in order, and complicate everything."

"I – I don't understand, Legolas," professed Aragorn, honestly bewildered. "Why do you want to marry him? I know we were torn apart, but we still love each other! Something as powerful and intense as our love will never go away. So why are you doing this to yourself? I may have been forced into a loveless marriage but that doesn't mean you have to suffer the same fate."

"It won't be a loveless marriage!" Legolas practically screamed, furious and extremely annoyed. His hand trembled as he clenched his fists and pointed a finger at Aragorn. "I've made it perfectly clear that I do love Eomer. Why can't you accept that? What, do you think you're so magnificent that I could never possibly fall in love with someone else even after you threw me away like a piece of garbage?"

Aragorn felt his cheeks start to burn. Legolas knew that he'd pierced through the thick layer of self-delusion and struck a nerve. "That is not what happened," the king asserted with a quiet but concentrated forcefulness. "Don't tell me that you've forgotten how my father and Arwen did everything in their power to keep us apart!"

"I don't believe this; but why am I so surprised?" Legolas asked himself aloud. His voice was laced with a dark type of amusement – if amusement was the correct word for it, as he didn't sound as if he found his new revelation funny, but rather painfully ironic. "You've obviously had some grand romantic drama starring the two of us running through your imagination for quite some time. If it helps you endure your real life, congratulations; but don't project it on me because I want no part of it."

The Man opened his mouth to speak but Legolas waved his hand impatiently. "You still don't understand it, Aragorn: we weren't 'torn apart' by Lord Elrond and Arwen's dastardly schemes, or by the cruelness of the world, or whatever else you've managed to convince yourself. We are no longer together because you didn't possess enough courage or willpower to stand up to your father when the time came for you to fight for what we had."

"You are accusing me of not fighting for our love?" demanded Aragorn defensively, a lump rising in his throat. "Well, I don't recall you making any grand gestures on our behalf."

"Because you just came to me after making love to me and then leaving our bed and told me that one of my oldest and dearest friends was dying because she had sacrificed her immortality for you and you had to marry her for it," shot back Legolas.

"Ada didn't exactly break the news to me gently either," said Aragorn.

Legolas would have none of it. "You were in King Theoden's tent with him for a long time," he snapped. "There was plenty of time for it to sink in. You didn't give me a chance to figure things out; you didn't even ask me how I felt about it or if I thought you should marry her or not – you just told me that we could no longer be together anymore, made some comment about how we had been so happy; and then like that you were gone, off to risk life and limb for her while leaving me behind to deal with the sudden end of a relationship I'd planned to spend the rest of my days in."

"She gave up everything she had because she thought I loved her," asserted Aragorn, getting sufficiently irate when no empathy came to the elf's expression. He hadn't expected this verbal attack from Legolas and was left feeling a little betrayed by it, especially after all the years he'd spent obsessing over the mistakes he'd had to make due to outside pressure. "What would you have had me do?"

"I would have had you be a little more explicit as to why you were giving that necklace back to her before the Fellowship left Rivendell," replied Legolas hotly. It was strange, but in a way he actually felt better now that he was finally voicing all of his grievances and frustrations to their source. "But since you failed to do that I would have had you not act as if our relationship was some torrid affair to be swept under the rug once our real significant other comes back into your life."

How could Legolas condemn him so unfeelingly? Hadn't he defended him to everyone who implied that their relationship was nothing more than a shameful indiscretion? "It wasn't that simple," insisted Aragorn. "I had obligations to her" –

"I don't believe that anymore," Legolas cut him off. "No matter how vague you made your reasons for it to Arwen, you did break off your relationship with her; and both of us thought that she had already taken a ship to the Undying Lands. We weren't doing anything wrong and yet in everything you did you made it perfectly clear that you were ashamed of what happened between the two of us. I'm not just talking about you leaving me either; it was already there before that in the way you decided that we had to keep our love a secret for the sake of Arwen's reputation."

This was unbelievable! "You were her friend and I was close to being bound to her," Aragorn sputtered. "How would it have reflected on her if the two of us publicly declared that we're desperately in love so soon after her departure?"

"She was supposedly going to Valinor! Middle-earth is but a memory there – she wouldn't have cared what people here were gossiping about." The look of pained frustration on Legolas' face suddenly gave way to another pain, this one born of understanding. "Ai Elbereth; I get it. I finally get it. It's so simple; I should have seen it a long time ago."

"What?" asked Aragorn, half angry at Legolas' lack of care and half fearful about what could possibly be coming next.

"Keeping our relationship a secret wasn't about protecting her reputation; it was about protecting yours as a noble and honorable person," Legolas told him simply. "It's certainly noble and honorable to chastely court a lady and wear the jewel that she gave you into war. It's also speaks well to your nobility and honor that you went out of your way to shield her reputation. And it's far nobler and more honorable to reluctantly sacrifice everything that makes you happy than to seize your own happiness when it could displease others."

"I did what I thought was right," Aragorn practically growled.

"You did what you did because it was nobler for you to leave me for her than it was for you to stay with me," stated Legolas with a degree of chilly finality. "It wasn't honorable for you to have sex with me before we were officially bound, or to harbor a supposedly deep-set love for someone else while courting another. If anyone ever found out about it your reputation wouldn't have been so pristine and you'd spent far too long building it to give it up so easily."

Aragorn wanted desperately to deny Legolas' accusation, to say they were outrageous and that he was insulted that the elf could even think that; but somewhere deep down he knew that it was at least partially true. He had wanted to appear noble and honorable; not so much in the eyes of the public at large but in his father's mind. The Man looked over and saw Legolas staring at him with such condemnation; and suddenly anger began to mingle with his guilt. After all, he might have done something for in part the wrong reason but he wasn't the only one there who was guilty of that. "Is that why you kept the fact that I have another son from me for all of these years?" he demanded.

"How do you know he's your son?" returned Legolas coldly in an eerily calm voice. "Eomer claims that Caladel is his son and everyone else accepts that. How do you know I was faithful to you during the War? Are you so certain that while you were preparing to take the Paths of the Dead I wasn't slipping into Eomer's tent for a fling? I'd only had sex once that night, after all; maybe I was such a little whore that I required more physical gratification!"

"Stop that!" cried Aragorn, horrified. Dear Valar, who had planted such hateful notions of himself in Legolas' head? His face and tone softened as he regarded his love. "I won't tolerate anyone calling you that, even you. I know you, Legolas; you aren't the type of being who sleeps with more than one person, especially when that would mean you're cheating on someone. Nor are you so needy and casual about who you're intimate with that you'd go from one Man's bed to another's in the course of less than an hour. Your faithfulness and integrity were never a question in my mind."

For the first time since he'd charged into the Man's bedchamber Legolas was so stunned he didn't know what to say. That seed of doubt that Aragorn would believe in his fidelity, planted the night that Elrond had indirectly questioned it, had taken root and grown in the elf's mind until he had become convinced that it would be a major point of contention. Finding out that Aragorn belief in it and him even after coming to Rohan and finding out Legolas had a son who called Eomer 'Papa' profoundly shamed him.

"You are Caladel's blood sire," he admitted quietly. He wasn't sure why he was giving up that secret so easily but it felt important somehow that Aragorn know the truth. "He was conceived our – our last night together at Dunharrow; but I was so distraught over losing you that I didn't have enough wits left to realize I was pregnant until the night before King Theoden's funeral procession set out from Minas Tirith."

"And your sorrow turned into anger," noted Aragorn. Legolas felt some comfort in knowing that the king understood his state of mind back then. That, however, was short-lived, for Aragorn went on to accuse: "Then you kept it a secret to punish me for choosing Arwen and not you."

"That's not" –

"Admit it or I will never believe anything you say again," challenged the Man darkly.

Apparently his feelings of shame, remorse, and hope had come to him too soon. Legolas bristled at the blow that Aragorn had managed to strike when his guard was down. "Fine," he spat out resentfully. "A part – a small part – of me decided that you could have my child after you'd already decided that you didn't want to have me. But whether you believe it or not that truly wasn't the reason why I didn't tell you. I was so afraid, Aragorn; afraid that you'd take him from me, or else force us both to stay in Minas Tirith, thus exposing him and me both to the ridicule and scorn people usually have for known lovers on the side and illegitimate children."

"I wouldn't have let that happen," Aragorn told him, carefully side-stepping having to deny he wouldn't have insisted that Legolas stay if he'd known the elf was pregnant. What he would have done if Legolas had still been determined to leave Aragorn truly couldn't say; he hoped he would have made the right decision, but what would that have been?

"How could you have stopped it?" asked Legolas insistently. "You may be a king but there is no way you can stop people from doing what they do unless you put the fear of painful retribution in them, and doing that would have turned you into a tyrant."

"I would have found a way," retorted the Man obstinately. "You're a very stubborn person, Legolas, and I respect that you like to take care of whatever's bothering you on your own but you have taken it too far. You should have trusted me."

Legolas couldn't contain his sardonic scoff. "If you'll remember, trusting you was how I ended up pregnant and alone in the first place," he pointed out in a hard voice. He sucked in a deep breath and steadied his beleaguered nerves. "Aragorn, you'd already moved on – perhaps not in your heart but certainly in your body and life. It felt like my soul was dying to witness that. I had to trust in myself and what I thought; and I couldn't see how there could ever be a place for me and Caladel in your life. I made the best decision I could."

"I helped create Caladel!" asserted Aragorn, strong in his righteous indignation. "That makes me his father too, and the decision you made was not best for me. I should have been consulted before you up and left with him! Honestly Legolas, what gave you the sole right to decide what was best in the matter?"

"Well, I suppose it was the same insight, or knowledge, or divine permission, or whatever else it was that granted you leave to decide that it was best to end our relationship in the first place!" Legolas fired back, feeling particularly hostile. If there was one thing he'd always known, even when he doubted everything else, was that he was a good father; and it made him furious beyond measure to have Aragorn of all people question that. "It certainly wasn't best for me when you broke my heart."

Aragorn's jaw clenched. "That was entirely different," he said.

"Of course it was different – it happened to me and not you," agreed Legolas sarcastically. "The fact is when you made your best decision Arwen benefited because she got to marry the person she loved; you benefited because you got to keep your reputation intact; and I lost something I held dear. With my best decision Caladel benefited because he doesn't have to be known as the illegitimate child of the married king and his brazen lover; I benefited because I got to get away from your and Arwen's marital bliss; and you suffered in the same way I did after Dunharrow. It's hard being the one whose tossed aside for the happiness and reputation of others, but your pain isn't any more sharp or real than mine was."

"I thought you understood why I decided to marry her," said Aragorn forcefully but with a hint of pleading in his tone.

"I did – I still do," Legolas told him, throwing his hands up in the air. "That's not the point. Understanding you and your motivations was never my problem; I just expected more from you than that."

Aragorn's skin grew cold suddenly as he looked at Legolas with muted horror. There was that awful sentiment again, the one that his father, Arwen, his brothers, and almost everyone else had used to essentially control his actions. He'd thought he'd finally escaped it; hearing it now from the last person he'd ever thought would utter it made him feel like he'd been punched in the stomach. "Not you too, mela," he moaned miserably. "I can't handle you turning on me too with how I failed to meet your expectations."

"Don't do that – don't take all of the issues you have with your family and try to make me feel guilty about them," cautioned Legolas wearily. He ran a hand down his face and briefly covered his mouth as he regarded Aragorn with a tired, jaded look in his eyes. "I never expected you to be the great king of Gondor and Men, or the redeemer of the line of Elros and Isildur, or the all-around savior of Middle-earth, or anything else Lord Elrond, Gandalf, Arwen, or your brothers had in mind; but I did expect things from you. That's what happens when you profess to care about someone: they start expecting you to treat them with dignity and respect. People expect the people they love to be strong enough to stay with them when others want them to be apart. When we rekindled our relationship and I – I gave you my body to love I expected you to at least make an effort to keep what we had alive, and not just by hiding it away in your heart either."

"You're right," said Aragorn softly. Legolas nearly fell over in surprise. "I've lamented for years how I let myself fail you so utterly. It was the worst mistake I could have ever made giving you up so easily just to get the approval of someone who would never have given it to me. I'm sorry for that, Legolas."

He'd honestely never expected Aragorn to apologize, and hearing it now made him feel all the mroe better because of it. The elf deflated visibly as he let out a long breath. "I'm sorry too," he apologized in a calmer and quieter tone than he'd used in awhile. "I'm not particularly proud of many of the things I've done since you married Arwen. It didn't bring me any pleasure to forsake everyone I cared about so abruptly and cruelly; nor did I get any smug satisfaction from keeping Caladel's existence a secret from you."

Aragorn gave him an imploring gaze. "Why did you do it?" he asked, this time with no blame in his voice. "I know you were angry and afraid, but you've been angry and afraid before without sending yourself into exile."

"I guess I was trying to protect myself and everyone else," reasoned Legolas sadly. "My options back then were very limited and the consequences of all of the choices I could have made weren't pleasant, to say the least. I did what I did because it was the one thing it felt like I could do that wouldn't completely obliterate people's lives, either physically or emotionally. I'm not saying that I thought it wouldn't cause any pain, but this way seemed like a more…contained sort of pain."

"I hate that you kept all of this to yourself," lamented Aragorn. While now he could comprehend his love's motivations better and was (for the most part) no longer angry, he couldn't help feeling a little regretful about what they'd lost because of it. Fantasies were running through his mind about what might have happened if Legolas hadn't guarded his secret so closely. "I'll grant you that I wasn't exactly totally available for you to come to back then, but there were others you could have turned to. Elrohir and Elladan" –

"And I would have told them what?" broke in Legolas. "My dear friends, I had sex with your foster brother before he became your sister's husband and now scant months after their wedding I find I'm bearing his love child. I don't think that would have resulted in a very helpful conversation."

"Maybe not," admitted Aragorn begrudgingly. Elladan's behavior since Solstice was proof that he wouldn't have been too sympathetic to Legolas' predicament; and Elrohir didn't know anything about this, so it was hard to argue how he would have reacted one way or the other. "But you had other friends. What about Gimli?"

"Despite everything, I was still very enamored with you; I didn't want to be the reason why you got hurt," said Legolas with a roll of his eyes. "And I'm sure that having an enraged dwarf take an axe to your genitals would have hurt you."

Oh, yes; there was that. Perhaps the only thing that had saved him from Gimli's axe when the dwarf did find out (for now he was sure that Gimli knew where Legolas was when he had confronted the Man in Minas Tirith) was the fact that he had time between the discovering and seeing Aragorn as well as Legolas' need for discretion. "The hobbits, then?" he suggested.

Legolas just stared at him. "All right, it probably wouldn't have been prudent to tell one of them," Aragorn conceded to his silent protest. Frodo had just been through so much during that time in their lives and no one would have burdened him with more troubles than what was absolutely necessary. Sam had been too preoccupied with caring for the haunted hobbit to offer his undivided sympathy to someone else. As for Merry and Pippin…well, they possessed the chatty nature that all hobbits had; it was probably best not to share things that you'd rather remain a secret with either of them.

The Man thought for a moment. "What about my father?" he asked. "You could have told him. Yes, I know he's Arwen's father and that he wanted her and I to get married after finding out she was mortal, but he loved you too."

So this evening wasn't going to end until all of Legolas' old wounds had been reopened and were bleeding anew. "It wouldn't have" –

"He counted you a member of his family, like a much-loved nephew," interrupted Aragorn, caught up in imagining what he believed would have been the end of the horrendous separation of himself and Legolas as well as the beginning of living again instead of just existing. "He always used to say that the only reason you weren't his son was because someone else was your father. Once he found out that you were pregnant he would have realized that there was nothing else we could do but be together. He would have wanted you at least to be happy – he might have even helped us" –

"He did know!" burst out Legolas, anguished. He couldn't bear to hear about Lord Elrond's helpful nature or how much he loved him anymore! It still hurt him more than he could say to have had the elf lord reject and essentially betray him in the end, thus destroying their close bond.

"He what?" gasped Aragorn. "He never told me."

It was all Legolas could do not to start screaming with sorrow. "He wouldn't have," the elf said darkly. "I went to him moments after I figured out I was pregnant. He put his hands on my stomach and confirmed that there was life growing in there. Then he asked me if I knew who the sire was."

Aragorn's mouth fell open in outraged shock. "I felt the same way," commiserated Legolas, melancholy. "After I dashed his hopes by telling him that I was sure it was you he implied that I got pregnant on purpose to hold on to you. Next he made me feel like I'd be inconveniencing you if I turned to you, which in turn made me feel like I couldn't go to my father or anyone else. Finally, Lord Elrond offered me a…solution, I suppose you could call it: he left some cotton root bark out for me on his nightstand."

"Which would have caused you to miscarry," breathed Aragorn, utterly floored by this new information. His heart hardened momentarily as he thought back to the guilty look on Elrond's face during an argument when Aragorn had told him that it wasn't his child's fault that Arwen was the other parent and not Legolas. "I didn't know he was so cold that he would rather have had his first grandchild gone than to risk Arwen enduring any emotional pain," he added, talking out loud but really speaking to himself. He saw in his mind the dear little boy that was his firstborn son; the way Caladel had used all of his limbs to hug Legolas that afternoon, the way he'd held Silmariën's hand and bonded instantly with Eldarion, how he'd brightened instantly at the mention of Rivendell, and even how he'd been so cheeky with Aragorn in the same way that Legolas was when he was feeling surly. He'd only known that Caladel existed for a few short hours and still Aragorn couldn't fathom not having him in the world.

"I took the herb from the nightstand, but only to make him think the baby was gone," Legolas concluded his tale. "I threw it away and washed my hands immediately. I was so obsessed with hiding myself and the baby from the world. I know it wasn't the ideal way to handle the matter but do you now see why I chose to do it that way?"

Very slowly, the Man nodded solemnly. "Oh, my dear Legolas," he sighed wearily, actually cracking a smile, sad though it was. "We've both been such fools."

"You just lost me, Aragorn," said Legolas bluntly, not sure if he liked the change in the Man's tone and demeanor. He'd actually been feeling pretty good about how their conversation was going but now Aragorn was acting like…like they had reached a reconciliation rather than a conclusion with a mutual understanding. "We may not have made the choices we would have made in hindsight but I can't see how we've been completely foolish."

"We were manipulated by an elf that had lost control of his schemes," Aragorn explained with a sudden spurt of passion that made Legolas more than a little uneasy. "He all but admitted it when I figured it out; during the time he was in Minas Tirith to help Arwen with her first pregnancy. He set me up from the day he told me my true name – probably even before then. I was only seeking a distraction from my pain after our relationship ended after that summer in Mirkwood when I pursued Arwen, but he encouraged me to think of it as more than that by continually challenging me to prove myself worthy and I fell for it; not because I wanted her love and respect, but his. He thought it would be safe to use that to motivate me to claim the throne of Gondor because he believed that in the end she wouldn't love me enough to give up her immortality to be with me."

"That's – twisted," marveled Legolas. "He wasn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination but this…

Aragorn bit his lip mournfully. "I don't think it was deliberate," he reiterated. "Things just got out of control. Ada definitely didn't expect you to get so tangled up in it and he did everything he could to drive a wedge between us because he'd invested too much in his plans to give them up. It almost worked too, but that's over now."

"It is," agreed Legolas cautiously. "We understand each other now…"

The Man squared his shoulders and smiled at the wary elf. "We should be together," he declared.

Legolas' mouth dropped open and he was too incredulous at first to speak. "Have you forgotten a few things?" he finally demanded, not believing his ears. "Even if I agreed with such a sentiment – which I don't – you are married with three children" –

"Four children," Aragorn reminded him.

"Three officially acknowledged children," Legolas amended his rant. "Where do I fit into that; or Caladel for that matter? He and I are a set."

"Our son fits in so well with my other children already," pointed out Aragorn. "And Arwen will not be an obstacle; I don't know how yet but I will find a way to pacify her and get her out of our way."

"Well, maybe you find it easy to throw aside your prior commitments, but I don't," argued Legolas indignantly. "Why should we be together when I'm in love with Eomer?"

"Are you sure that's how you feel about him?" questioned Aragorn in a subtly seductive tone. He took a step closer to Legolas, who forced himself to stand his ground. "Can you look me in the eye and tell me you feel nothing for me?"

Releasing a shuddering breath the prince shook his head. "No," he admitted. "I'll never be able to feel nothing for you – believe me, I tried. But that doesn't change the way I feel about Eomer."

"You're grateful for all that he's done for you and Caladel," debated Aragorn, determined to push through his love's stubbornness once and for all. "That doesn't mean you love him. You can't love two people at once."

"Perhaps you can't," retorted Legolas, feeling a resentful fire kindle within him once again. "But just because that's true for you doesn't mean it's true for everyone. And there is a difference between love and in love; I know I'm in love with Eomer, but I'm not sure if the same pertains to you anymore. You've been…fading more and more from my thoughts this past year."

Aragorn couldn't let him go without a fight, not this time! "Perhaps I wasn't fading so much as you were trying to repress your memories of us," he suggested in a persuasive tone. "What we have between us can never fade: the friendship, the passion, the connection that survived years of separation and a lot of bad decisions. There is no way you could possibly love Eomer in the same way you love me."

"You're right: I don't love Eomer in the same way I love you," conceded Legolas. A proud and defiant gleam came to his eyes. "But I don't love you in the same way I love him either. He makes me feel good about myself; I feel nothing but cherished and blissful when I think about how much he loves me. He helps me find my strength when I don't think I have any left, supports me when I need it, and challenges me when I require a good kick in the pants, as the hobbits' put it. He's proven time and again that he's always there for me and I can't help but know I'm worthy when I see myself through his eyes. I hate myself for having feelings for you because it causes nothing but pain to me and everyone else around me. You forsook me for Arwen, Aragorn; even if you actually left her now how could I ever trust you again?"

"I will do whatever it takes to earn back your trust," promised Aragorn. "There is a way for us; love always finds a way."

"I don't want to be beholden to your vows and declarations of love anymore," Legolas told him, partially angry and partially miserable – he didn't know which emotion was more powerful at the moment. "There is a good Man who loves me and I love him. I can't do this anymore."

He turned and charged for the door, but not before Aragorn saw the confusion in his eyes. He'd gotten under Legolas' skin and he had to find a way to stay there or else he was going to lose him for good. "You love me and you know it," he called after the prince. "And I love you too."

Legolas ignored him and threw open the door, only to stop short at what he found on the other side. Arwen stood there, tears falling freely down her face. She's heard; he didn't know how much of it but it had obviously been enough for her to figure out the true nature of the circumstance at last.

The elf had always thought that he'd feel incredibly ashamed when she found out but now that he was face-to-face with her he found that he didn't. So may people had bent over backwards to protect her but she was not a child; she was an adult, a wife, and a mother. It was time for her to confront the gigantic lie that was her marriage and it wasn't for him to say that she couldn't handle it.

"He's your husband," Legolas told her a little more severely than he'd intended. "You wanted him, you got him, and you married him – now you deal with him."

He pushed past her, leaving the king and queen of Gondor to yell, cry, make excuses, or maybe even actually sort out the shambles of their marriage. Legolas really didn't care what they chose to do; he just knew that he had to get out of there, away from Aragorn and the painful confusion the Man caused him to feel. Somewhere in Meduseld there had to be a place where it would be quiet and peaceful enough for him to find clarity about this feelings for Aragorn and his love for Eomer; and Legolas was going to find it.

To be continued…