Warning: Tissues needed, and if I have done this right, loads of 'em.

A.N: We finally get back into Legolas' POV in this one. Just where is the elf prince and what is he going through? Or more importantly, what is about to happen to him? Well, if you want to find out, stop listening to me and go read it!

This chapter is not only beta-ed by NiRi, it is dedicated to her. I could not have done any of this with out her encouragement and advice.

Hannon le, mellon nin.

Lena

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One Friend to Another

16:

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Legolas had long since ceased his struggles in the inky quagmire. Exhaustion and the burning, freezing pain had taken its toll many hours ago. Or was it days? Years?

He could barely think now. He still couldn't breathe. His arms and legs felt like they were chained down, and his head felt fit to burst. There was nothing around him, nothing inside him. Was this death? If so, where were Mando's legendary halls, where was his mother to welcome him with open arms in a tender reunion? Had he done such an evil deed to warrant this agonising punishment?

Legolas wallowed in deep thought now, his mind the only part of him he could keep active.

He hadn't meant to neglect his duties and cause the deaths of so many of his soldiers. He had tried his best, as he always did. Why did they always want more of him, expect him to be the perfect prince and warrior? They wanted some kind of strong invincible being, always the perfect shot, always knowing what to say and do in any situation from calming irate councillors, to shooting down orc, spider and warg.

No, he suddenly thought to himself. It wasn't his people who expected this of him. Had it been his brothers? They had nurtured him when his naneth had died, had made sure he turned up for lessons with the other elflings, be it history lessons or archery and knife work. They had pushed him, strove to make him better than the rest.

"That's not good enough, Legolas!" they had said. "You must try harder, penneth. You can do better than that, Legolas!"

When they had left to sail to Valinor, was it because he was such a disappointment to them? Were they so tired of fixing his mistakes that they had given up on him? He remembered now the ache he had felt when his oldest brother and Crown Prince, Celeblas, had announced to all the family that he was to sail. His son had been killed in an orc raid and his wife Glímara was fading with grief. Legolas had grieved deeply when his young nephew had died. The young warrior had been only thirty seven years younger than him. They had grown up together, practised archery and patrolled together.

He remembered it now, that orc patrol.

He had been there. That was the time he had been captured. He remembered the lashings the orcs had given him then - his back had burned like it was on fire. He had felt the warm blood seep into the waistline of his trousers. He had lost count of the times the whip cut into his skin after the first fifty.

Sirdail had been one of his rescuers. His own nephew had come to rescue him, and had been killed in the fight, while he himself had lived. He had barely got home to the palace alive, wracked with pain and blood loss, but he had lived in the end while his nephew had died. His back had never fully healed from that whipping…………….

And then there was Caladithil. He looked so like their naneth, with the same gentle manner he remembered, the same piercing green eyes. Caladithil had never recovered from the time the patrol he commanded had been cut off by a huge spider nest. For eleven days, he had fought against the spiders under the shadow of Dol Gudur, hacking through webs and traps and ambushes as his warriors got picked off one by one, until only nine of them were left by the time they had been found.

When Cally had finally returned to full health, Legolas had expected him to be the same mischievous, playful brother he had always been. They had been quite the pair when it came to playing pranks on the haughty courtiers that had sought to ensnare the youngest prince and make themselves princesses in Thranduil's court. The stuffy dignitaries that had come to trade wines for weapons or silks hated the days that Caladithil and Legolas held council together. Not much got done on those days. At least, not much in the way of trade agreements.

Legolas fondly remembered his brothers now and all they had got up to, the times they had shared, good and bad. The three had been so alike, yet so very different. No, he realised now, it had not been his brothers that had pushed him for perfection and achievement. Yet Cally changed so much after his last patrol. He didn't laugh anymore. So no one was surprised when he announced too that he was to follow Celeblas and go into the West.

Legolas remembered the sharp stinging pain in his chest the day he said farewell to Caladithil. The brothers' final embrace lasted for a long time until Cally had to pry the younger prince's arms away from him. Then his brother had gifted him with his first smile since the spider ambush. A tender smile from one brother to another, and he had lifted one hand to cup Legolas' cheek.

"Navaer, 'Las," he said then, his voice thick with sadness and love. "Keep Ada safe, protect our people. Love them as we all love you…….and do not forget how to laugh like I have done."

Do not forget how to laugh. He had promised his brother he would not. He had promised he would protect the king and the people, and to that promise he had held true. He had forgotten how to laugh. That promise was broken, and he could not remember when he had started to forget.

He had gone straight out on patrol again, after Cally left. He was the last prince of Mirkwood on Middle Earth. His Adar depended solely upon him now, to keep the people safe and the orcs at bay from their borders. Had it been his Ada then, who had pushed him to be all he could be and more, he asked himself now, and not his brothers? Had it been the strong willed, quick tempered king that sent him out on impossible orc raids, against insurmountable odds, and chastised him when he failed? Had it been Thranduil who expected so much from him that he could not deliver? His Adar, King Thranduil - the strong, straight-backed, fair, impartial ruler that all of the elves of Mirkwood followed and adored, and whom men and dwarves feared, hated and misunderstood.

Legolas pictured him now, head bent in studious scrutiny of parchments, letters and battle plans, the crown of leaves and flowers always perfectly centred on his golden locks. The young elf had often wondered just what magic his Ada used that kept that crown so poised on that head. No matter how angry he got, how fast he paced the halls of the palace, how agile he leapt upon his silver stallion, that crown never moved or faltered.

Legolas wished dearly that his Ada was here now. His arms ached to embrace that stiff rebellious king and to cling to those green velvet and silk robes. His heart ached to have that strong body envelope him and protect him from this.

"Ada!" Legolas cried out now in this hell of suffering and pain. If he had the strength left to cry, he would have done so. Maybe he did cry, he didn't know. Maybe his tears got sucked up into the enveloping darkness before they got the chance to fall.

Then once again, the memories came to him, unbidden. Thranduil had begged and pleaded with him not to rejoin the patrols, not to go out again into the shadow, but instead, trust his command to the other trained and experienced captains of Mirkwood's army of warrior elves. Thranduil had embraced him and coddled him, told him he loved him and didn't want to lose him to the Shadow, orcs or spiders, but he hadn't listened. He kept going out with the patrols, he kept up his fight against the evil things of Middle Earth. He fought and he strived and he pushed.

It was all himself, he suddenly realised, here and now in this never-ending abyss of Shadow. Not his brothers, not his father. He was the one who had strived to fight his own single war against the evil that was killing Mirkwood slowly, tree by tree, elf by elf. He had pushed himself to become the best that he could, to be the perfect shot and the perfect commander. One lone elf against the evil Shadow.

He had been so alone all this time. No one could touch him, no one was allowed to get close. He pushed them all away, the elves he grew up with, the warriors that tried to understand and befriend him. He pushed them all way because if he loved no one then he lost no one. If he didn't allow himself to love them, it wouldn't hurt when they died.

He was so very alone, and now he always would be. He almost laughed into the void at the irony of it all. Here he was alone, and it was no one's fault but his own. He knew why, now. It came to him in a blinding epiphany. He had given up. So long ago, even before his brothers had left, he had given up. He had surrendered to the Shadow even while he was out fighting it. It had been inside him all this time, and he didn't know it until now. Now, here in this suffocating blackness of pain, he was so alone, and it hurt. What good had it done? How many of his friends and peers had he truly hurt? All the while believing he was protecting them, he was hurting them. Even his Ada. How many nights, days, weeks did his Ada stare out into the dying forest and cry for him, believing that he would not be coming back?

A great pain welled up inside him until he thought his heart would burst and he would die from it. He waited for it to take him, in fact he welcomed it. A great evil beast was coming for him, and he knew its name. It wasn't some creature conjured up by the Necromancer or some poison invading his body that the orcs had given him. Its name was Loneliness. The Shadow was killing him, he knew. The evil had taken hold of him and was squeezing the life out of him, and darkness had taken his soul. He had given IT his soul the day he had closed his heart to love, friendship and laughter, and now he would pay the ultimate price.

Legolas felt the thrum of evil in the dark before he heard it. He sensed it closing in on him, felt the vibration through the blackness as his last moments and memories passed before his eyes and cut through his heart. He closed his eyes and fought down the mind numbing fear. He hated this with a vengeance, this loneliness. This was not how he wanted to die. He wanted to die a warrior, in a company of warriors who knew and loved him and who would mourn him, if he had to die at all. He was immortal, he had a lifetime of lifetimes ahead of him on Middle Earth and then in Valinor with his brothers and Naneth and Adar and all the faithful friends he had lost. The last thing an elf and creature of light was ever meant to be was alone in the dark.

The rumble of unseen power came closer; he could feel it, could feel the hairs stand up at the back of his neck. Then the pain suddenly spiked in his chest and he gasped as a faint light grew on the edge of his vision. Something came closer through the inky, clinging darkness. A shape hovered just on the edge of the light, on the edge of his vision. He saw a face now, the visage of the last person he would ever expect to see again. The image was blurred and he struggled to focus on it. The vision was far away, small and round with long straggly curls and dark grey eyes that held hope and innocence.

It was Estel.

The one being that he had finally begun to let into his cold closed heart. Why think of him now? Surely he had let the Shadow take him before this little one was of any consequence to him? How could such a small insignificant being mean anything to him now?

Even as he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. Innocence was a powerful tool. The child loved unconditionally, and by this innocence, love was given in return no matter how hard he had tried to prevent it. It was effortless to love a child such as Estel. The boy had not judged him, had not tried to push him and make him open his heart to him, and because of that Legolas' heart had been opened. He could not guard his heart against something he hadn't realised was there.

With the acceptance of Estel into his heart, the prince began to feel something else. A warmth spread through his limbs and the pain finally began to ebb for the first time in how long, he did not know. Suddenly he heard music, and words with that music, a song in a lilting soprano and tremulous tenor all at once. The words didn't register, but the melody cut through the dark silence like a new sunrise after a long dark storm. Legolas breathed and floated as the music grew in strength and the darkness faded from around him. Taking a deep sudden sob of breath he caught the unmistakable scent of athelas. As the music defeated the silence and the light banished the dark, the clean smell of the ancient elven herbal remedy flooded lungs too long starved of anything.

The image of the dark haired child before him began to take a more corporeal form, solidifying into something real. Estel seemed to float before him, as he too floated in the growing light that before had been nothing but a freezing, suffocating dark. Dark eyes the colour of the sky after a summer rain, grey with a hint of sun to come, met his across the void. A smile began on the little boy's face, nothing more than a quirk of the lips that grew to a grin, and the boy stretched out an arm towards him. Finding now that he could move, Legolas reached out a hand. The small human arm came closer until he could touch the fingertips with his own. Suddenly his hand was gripped in a warm, chubby palm.

"You are not alone, Legolas," the boy suddenly spoke, as the small fingers clasped his own ever firmer. "They are all here, the ones who love you the most. They always were right here," the child continued. "You just didn't know where to look."

"Where are they, Estel?" Legolas asked him, his voice sounding small and scared in this vast place of nothingness.

"Come with me, and I will show you, Legolas," the child replied, and the small hand that held his curled its fingers around his wrist and pulled.

TBC.

I had several OC's in this chapter, so here I will introduce you to them.

Celeblas: Silver Leaf; Crown Prince of Mirkwood and Thranduil's oldest son.

Glímara: Fiery Gleam in her Eyes; Princess of Mirkwood, wife of Celeblas.

Sirdail: Flowing Feet; Son of Celeblas and Glímara, died on patrol with Legolas.

Caladithil: Moon Light; Thranduil's middle son, nicknamed Cally by Legolas.

also:

Avareth: Noldor;Stubborn Female; Imladris healer to Elrond, once tutor to Elladan and Elrohir.