Author's note: Irrelevant to the reader, but meaningful to me... I wrote this first scene between Legolas and Gimli about five years ago, and I could never figure out what to do with it, because it felt like it needed to be part of a bigger story. I was so happy to be able to edit it up to use it in this piece. Those two are so near and dear to my heart.

Last chapter. Just a tiny tiny epilogue after this.

Eternity in an Hour

First Age 120

"Hm," Legolas murmured quietly, tucking hair behind both ears and squinting toward the shadows that flickered near the wall as someone hurried along. "I wonder where Barahir goes, today of all days?"

Gimli grunted from where he sat on the bench beside Legolas, leaning lightly on the stick he had planted firmly between his feet. "Perhaps he goes to look after Eldarion, today of all days..."

"Do you think he follows someone?"

"You are the one with the eyes of an elf, not I," Gimli replied, and Legolas glanced at him quickly and laughed under breath before continuing.

"Perhaps I should follow him, too," he mused, and he folded his arms across his chest, as if thinking.

"You should do no such thing."

"If he goes to seek Eldarion perhaps I should be seeking Eldarion, also. He is like a son to me-we raised him together, in a way, and today-even if grown-he loses both his parents."

"I hardly think being a poor influence on a child (well into their adulthood) qualifies as raising, Legolas; but I am not one to argue with the Evenstar's parenting decisions..."

"Yes, well," Legolas replied absently, and he dropped to the bench beside Gimli and bent forward, too, so that his elbows rested on his knees and his hands dangled between them.

Their heads were on much the same plane when Gimli turned to him abruptly.

"She is leaving tomorrow, you think?" Gimli asked quietly.

Legolas did not reply immediately and instead watched Gimli's hands massage the gnarled staff that assisted him.

"I do not think so," Legolas said sadly, and he inclined his head further instead of looking at Gimli to answer. "I know so. She was in the kitchens last night when I was there."

"What were you doing-"

"I was hungry, and I found no rest, and, so, I went to the kitchen," he offered.

"Why I even ask-"

"Are you in a poor mood today, Gimli?"

"Am I in a poor mood?"

There was a silence that stretched between them then, and after a moment Legolas smiled sadly and shook his head, inclining it in apology. "Ah. Yes."

"Good, good, Legolas," Gimli said affirmatively. "I am in a poor mood because our last dearest friend is gone, and his lady is following, and you will leave me soon, too! Of course I am in a poor mood! What do I have to be happy for?"

Legolas blinked and turned to Gimli, tilted his head, and dropped a long hand, light, on the dwarf's knee. "I am not leaving you."

"You will sail, Elf." He adjusted his staff and tapped it impatiently between them.

"I will," Legolas acknowledged. "But I thought you would come with me."

Gimli blinked.

"Legolas," the dwarf said with forced patience. "This should have become abundantly clear over the past one-hundred-twenty odd years. I am not an elf. I will not be welcome there."

"But you are," Legolas answered quickly. "Well, not an elf," he clarified hurriedly. "But... I asked?"

"Who in Aule's name did you ask, you fool?" Gimli snorted and looked up at him and Legolas glanced away and smiled slightly. "Manwe himself?" Gimli pressed.

"No, of course not! Mithrandir, Gimli."

"You asked Gandalf."

Legolas turned his head toward him and patted him lightly on the knee. "Before he left."

Gimli pounded his staff again absentmindedly and patted the elf's hand back before leaning hard over his staff and laughing low and deep:

"What did you say, Master Elf? 'Hey-o, Gandalf! You know my elf-friend?'" He did an impression of Legolas' lighter voice, then, and Legolas could not help but genuinely smile. "'Well I am loathe to part with him-will you make an exception for my wee dwarf and allow him passage to the Undying Lands?'"

Legolas dropped his head into his hands and tilted it to the side to look hard at Gimli. He shrugged. "More or less."

"And what did he say?" he asked with interest.

Legolas nodded his head back and forth as if deciding whether or not to answer, and then he tugged at his sleeves and evaded:

"Ah! What he said is not important. But he sent a letter to me, via the hobbits from the Havens, for he conferred with Elrond and your lovely Galadriel, and they reported that they would argue on your behalf and so-please-to come. Mithrandir, at the least, knew I would need you, and that I could not leave you here alone after Aragorn's death, but... But-" And Legolas tilted his head here to look at Gimli sidelong before grabbing the cold edge of the bench and clenching it. "But... He knew that if I stayed with you, I would never leave at all, for my love of this mortal spark; and, so, I would waste into yearning spirit, forever."

Gimli raised eyebrows and rubbed his aching hand hard. "I have never gotten used to your tendency toward drama, and I am not sure I want to be on a ship with you on unknown waters for goodness knows how many months..."

Legolas sat unspeaking for a long moment, and he watched Gimli's aging and slowly wrinkling hands work at one another in thought, tap the staff to a rhythm Legolas could no quite guess. Finally, the waiting grew too much and he asked:

"So, you will come?"

Gimli looked up sharply and took up his hand.

"Legolas," he said, "there was never a doubt."

Despite the pain of the day, Legolas beamed.

"Walk with me to our rooms, then," he said shifting into directness to ease the weight of it all. "I go to relieve Eldarion, and prepare Arwen, and myself."

"All right. You are a good friend, Legolas."

"Mm, well, I am lucky to have had one such as you for so long."

"Yes, well," Gimli murmured in response, and Legolas sprang to his feet.

"Yes well, indeed!" he agreed with a sharp smile, and he held out a hand to help Gimli to his feet.

Gimli accepted the help and then batted his hands away, striking at Legolas' ankles with his walking stick as they started.

"Off with you, then! Arwen needs you, and then I will need you, to finish packing for Ithilien."

Legolas dodged the staff as Gimli continued to bat at him. "Until later, friend Gimli."

"Until later, Master Elf," Gimli replied with a nod and a scowl at the pain in the hip that aged faster than all the rest of him.

Legolas ran hands down his thighs to smooth imaginary creases from his trousers, and then he turned on the balls of his feet and was away, racing down the hall, around the corner and down the corridor, until he eventually came upon Eldarion, with Barahir close at his elbow. The grown men stood in murmured conversation, reluctant outside Aragorn and Arwen's suite in the long hall but-as Legolas approached-their faces seemed to melt into younger versions of themselves, vulnerable and true.

He placed a hand on both their shoulders, before pressing a chaste kiss to Eldarion's brow and brushing Barahir's cheek. He shoved them gently down the hall with a quiet "Go" and, immediately, they went.

Legolas pushed open the door to the King and Queen's inner chambers, then, and stepped inside.

Arwen looked up, eyes dark with mourning, but she smiled when she saw him. He took her hand and helped her to her feet. He held her as she wept, his mind half on her heart and her pain and her life, and half on the unimaginable vistas that were revealed before him now that his loving duty was done.

A light in the West blossomed in his mind, but Arwen—pressed hard under hand against his chest—smelled of the harsh iron of this still-present, still-gorgeous, still fast and mortal place.

His heart burned and he held her fast for a time, until she stopped her tears and looked up with a sudden, disarming smile, eyes dull but sparkling with the memories of a life well-lived. She spoke in that tongue they had patched together over time, a quilt of their cultures, a language all their own, adrift in a city of Men…

"Legolas," she said, and she raised a hand to his cheek and cupped it. "What a fine home Middle-earth has been."

He laughed quietly underbreath and took her in, painting her in his memory, the way he had done with Aragorn—and still did with Gimli—every single day.

"What a fine home indeed," he agreed.

Their hearts swelled and they pulled apart, crossed the room, leaned against the windowsill…

There, they stood together for hours uncounted. They gazed in silence from Minas Tirith's highest windows, and their sun crept ever closer to its horizon.

Fin.