"You are certain that he is going to be well," I demand, and I know that I am scowling more lines and wrinkles into my face but I do not care. I am pacing a groove into Aragorn's nice floors, but again, I do not care.

We are back in our own rooms. Legolas is upon his bed – possibly the first time that he has used it – propped up against an impractical amount of pillows and swathed in bandages from rib to shoulder. He is as white as the sheets, his bruises stand out like thunderheads, and although I should feel worry and concern I feel nothing but anger.

"If he is going to die, simply tell me," I wave my hand toward Aragorn. "I do not care as much as you think I might."

"Gimli," Legolas breathes, exasperated, but it is soft and understanding and Eru save me, how can I continue to be angry with him? I have been so desperate to hear that tone, to see him and have him close to me, but this anger simply will not abate. "I am fine, I will be fine!"

"No," I bite out. I stalk close to him – perhaps too close. I jab my finger into my own temple. "I can hear you, in here," and then I jab it again in his chest, which is unkind. He curls slightly in pain from it. "And in here. You are not."

I mean to continue to be angry, I truly do, but I pick up one of his hands and he lets me. I curl my fingers – short and graceless and clumsy – around the torn flesh and livid bruising at his wrists. I feel his pulse, steady now and comforting, and I feel all of the fight drain away from me.

"Even after we found you," I try to explain, "even then… you were still lost for a time."

He blinks; he understands completely. For a moment I am back in the village of Burned Sycamore Standing, being forced to hurt him or else let him kill me. I had to break his hand to stop him; he had lost his mind then as well. This madness of his – that he dons and casts off like a jacket – it is a dangerous thing, and not just for him.

"I will be fine," he repeats, and it is as though it is just the two of us in the room. He is speaking only to me; a promise, an apology, a reassurance. He turns his hand, and now he is gripping my wrist as well. He smiles… that accursed smile that I have no defence against whatsoever. I snort in disgust and drop his hand, walk away, but I do not go far.

"I am not listening to you. I will listen to Aragorn."

"He will heal from this, Gimli," Aragorn jumps in, finding a break in our argument and leaping into it. "He has an injury to the head, his wrists are a mess, there is the wound to his chest but the rest is bruising. He is an elf; he will be fine in a matter of days."

"He is an elf who has just been all but beaten by a man," I point out. "When have you ever heard of such a thing? There is definitely something wrong with him."

"You think there is shame in defeat?" Legolas asks me, curious but with a hint of hurt that is far, far worse than any anger I had expected. "He was exceptional. I have fought elves with centuries of experience who did not fight as well as he did. You think of it as a failure? As something wrong with me?"

"No," I snap, and then I breathe. I am done with anger… I am being an idiot. An unkind one. I rake my hands through my hair but my fingers catch on knots and tangles, and I extricate them carefully. "But I have never seen you lose before, Legolas. And I have been worried."

"My friend," he smiles, and then laughs, and by Eru I could thump the lad. "I have been beaten a great many times in my life. I have had to learn, and it seems that this man was born to the blade. I will beat him the next time though, I am sure of it."

I look at him again – truly look – and I see the lines of pain and exhaustion in his face. Fair, he seems always so fair, and I hate it when he has his hair un-braided and loose about his face because he always looks so vulnerable. My Legolas is strong and powerful. This Legolas is beaten and hurt… naught but a young elfling, because in truth, that is all he is.

I sit on the edge of his bed, and he veers toward me with a wide eyed look of alarm until it settles. Aragorn's beds are too soft, I have always thought it, and it breaks the seriousness of the moment… for a heartbeat the two of us share a look and a soft laugh. I am abashed, suddenly ashamed of my outburst, and he looks at me carefully – intense… it is very intense to be looked at this way by an elf. His eyes bore into me, sharp and serious, and I know that he is simply reading me: ensuring that I am well, seeing that I am tired, and he frowns lightly at it. I reach out to pat his face gently.

I have been so very afraid for you.

And he smiles.

I knew you would come for me.

I hear Aragorn huff a sigh of annoyance and I feel shamed again, because he has been just as worried – possibly even more so – and here we are, talking in a way that he can never be a part of. We are excluding him again.

"I am sorry that I made you worry," the elfling says, and he sounds suddenly very unsure of himself. Aragorn has drugged him, I know that he has, and whatever walls Legolas has managed to rebuild these last months are weak and flimsy things. I deflate. I am extremely tired.

"You have nothing to be sorry for, my friend," I say softly. "Sleep for a while. You have still to tell us everything that happened, and there are things to catch up on when you wake, but they can wait a few hours." Because a few hours is all we have, I know it just as I know the beard on my own face.

These numbing herbs will not last for long, and once he wakes he will be trying to get up and leap around, waving his knives about just as he ever does. It is infuriating, absolutely enraging at times, but I have become accustomed to it. Elves are not like us, and Legolas is not a normal elf. I will give myself a nosebleed trying to fight him all of the time.

I pat at his hand once more, partly out of comfort but mostly in thanks for not arguing, and Aragorn – who has been strangely quiet this whole time – goes to his knees at the side of the bed. He bows his head, closes his eyes, and I can see all of the fear and worry that he has carried this last day and night. Legolas smiles, strokes the King's hair, but it is an oddly paternal gesture. I am often reminded of their history, of how Legolas had a hand in raising this man. It still sits strangely at times.

"Ci vêr?" He asks softly, and when Legolas nods he frowns, sounds more like Gimli than Aragorn when he growls: "Gwestol?" And Legolas laughs. I do not know why he is extracting promises of his wellness when he has just told me himself that the elfling is fine. I am starting to doubt Aragorn's healing abilities, or at least his honesty.

"Gweston," Legolas promises. "Ni lôm, menin chaust nîn… let me sleep, go away!"

Aragorn laughs and rises, grips Legolas' shoulder gently as he passes. The elfling's voice stops us for a moment, he says:

"Ci fêl," and he sounds far too sincere for me to make fun of. "Both of you, my thanks."

And of course I become a little flustered, but Aragorn smiles warmly and nods his head in the faintest bow. It is enough, and Legolas rests his head back upon the pillow. By my very beard he might actually sleep, and so I allow Aragorn to guide me out by my elbow and into my own rooms. He shuts the door behind him and I exhale as though I have not breathed properly in days.

"You should rest too, Gimli," Aragorn tells me, but I shake my head.

"It is not even afternoon Aragorn. I feel as though this day has lasted a lifetime but it has barely even begun – I caught some small rest last night, I will be fine."

"Then bathe, at least," Aragorn huffs through his nose. He is unwilling to fight me when he knows he cannot win, but unhappy about it either way. "Eat something, change your clothes, and meet me in the Conference Chambers."

"The Tower?" my eyebrows shoot into my hairline, surprise momentarily wiping all weariness aside. We never meet at the White Tower of Ecthelion. I think Aragorn still feels rather uncomfortable even having a throne of his own, let alone using the building where it is housed. We usually use his rooms in the Citadel, because the top level of Minas Tirith is mostly underground just as we are now, and although the buildings on the surface are showy and magnificent they are not particularly practical. We remain here, or in his personal rooms in the King's House.

"The Tower is closer," he muses, his eyes resting on the door between us and the elfling, "and also… the Steward of the Second has requested an audience, unsurprisingly. I have called off the sacking of the second circle for now, I will meet with her just before dark.

"You would wait so long to see her?"

"I have few advisors, my friend," he tells me softly. "Few but my Queen, a sleeping elf and a dwarf. I would rather speak with you all before I see her, and so I must wait, but so must the Steward and I think perhaps it will be good for her. I would snatch an hour or two of sleep myself if I can; Hob has returned, and although he is rather cross with me, he has things in order for now."

I soften and relent, because I have many things racing through my mind. Did Mouse catch the oil seller? I am certain that they have been questioning the men captured in the vaults – what news might they have on Legolas' captor, and from where do they hail? Their purpose here? I will not get the answers I need, not yet. Aragorn has not slept, not stopped or rested; he has been too busy looking after us. The lad needs a few hours, and so far as I am aware, the Kingdom itself is not in jeopardy.

I settle into one of my chairs carefully. I have only been thinking of my own wellbeing… the elfling's. I am becoming far too accustomed to it being just the two of us, and I am surprised by my own selfishness. It is so ingrained in me now.

"There are a multitude of guards outside these doors," I say. "If you do not need me for a few hours, then I will spend them refreshing myself a little. Possibly tying the elfling to his bed with rope; you know he will not sleep for long."

I turn and frown at the door, and Aragorn laughs, just as he was meant to.

"A few hours, my friend," he nods, and I watch him leave. I have a thousand things burning through my mind, all racing with the speed of the wind and swirling like leaves upon it. I call for a bath to be brought in, I tell the man outside that if I spy a single rose petal he will be eating it, and then I settle down at my desk. I write it all down, pin it to parchment, tether each thought and question until my mind calms and then I clean myself up somewhat.

I change into something soft and clean, I eat, I receive a note from the Queen of Gondor telling me that her husband has finally fallen to sleep, and that I will allow him until three bells past noon at the very earliest or have her to answer to. I smile, crumple the note absently, and then I find myself anxious and unsettled and so I slip through the door between my room and Legolas'.

I fall asleep in a chair at the foot of his bed, carried into slumber by the softness of his breathing and by the echo of dreams of tree and leaf, and of rainfall in the summer.

I dream the dreams of an elf.

~{O}~

The afternoon sun is soft against the side of my face when I wake, and I can feel a cool breeze laden with the scent of new growth from Legolas' garden. The door is open of course, as are all of the windows, but I am warm despite it. For a moment I am unsure what has woken me – for a moment I am unsure where I am and what has happened – and for the briefest heartbeat I feel a flash of panic until my eyes settle on the elfling's bed.

He is sat upright, hunched over with his elbows upon his raised knees, his loose hair like a wash of gold across his shoulders and face. The blankets tent over his legs and his chest is bare, swaddled in bandages, but he is watching me with the clarity of a falcon regarding its prey. He has probably been watching me that way for a long time, unblinking and still, and I think perhaps it is this that has woken me. I mention it often, but it really is terribly uncomfortable.

"You snore," he accuses, and I spend a moment simply trying to unstick my tongue from my mouth. I feel thick headed and stupid, and I am not entirely certain whether I am truly awake.

"You are just noticing this?" I mumble, and he pulls a quizzical face.

"It is not noticing, as much as feeling," he muses. "The floor quivers with it."

I snort, shuffle until I am upright again and not slumped like a sack of oats in my chair, and there are a whole host of muscles in my back and neck that begin to protest. I should stop sleeping in chairs.

"How do you feel?" I ask, and he rakes a hand through his hair… leaves it there, fingers carded through gold and resting upon the back of his head. He looks to the window, to the door, to the outside… to air and light and freedom. I feel a flicker of want, of need, quickly banished.

"Sore," he admits, rubbing his other hand across his chest and shoulder. It is a sign of how far we have come with one another; Legolas rarely admits to such things. "It will fade. I have come through worse."

With his eyes elsewhere I have a moment to look at him without his notice. I have seen Legolas without his shirt before, many times indeed, and so there is no surprise in what I see. Legolas' skin is covered in a faint tracery of scars, silver and faded with age, but there are a lot of them and some are quite awful. He has told me the tales of a few, but he is terribly secretive about his past. He does not like to speak of it.

"What happened?" I ask carefully, and it is just the two of us. I will get an answer right now, without any fight and in complete honesty. He sighs, lifts one shoulder and lets it drop.

"He was better than me," he admits. "The others called him Oren, and he never spoke whilst I was there, not once. He took me whilst I visited the oil sellers, caught me by surprise…I recall nothing except waking in darkness, with the Song gone quiet and the smell of the sea thick in the air. They kept asking why I was here in Minas Tirith, what my relationship is with the King, why I was working with the constabulary. I said nothing, nothing at all, and they were quite angry about it."

I eye the bruises at his ribs, his face, and I can imagine just how angry they became. It is written upon his skin. I feel a surge of anger then and it is mine, it is not the elfling's; he feels nothing at all, or he does not feel it strongly enough that I can catch any of it. Legolas turns to me finally, meets my eyes and sees the last glimmer of my anger before I can hide it.

"He was there all of the time when they questioned me," he says softly. "Stood in the shadows, utterly silent, but they were all afraid of him; I could smell it on them. He is a dangerous man, Gimli."

He frees his hair, lets it fall across his face unfettered, and I know that it is an intentional thing; it hides his face for a moment. Even so, I see a glimmer there of something that I could feel even if I could not see it.

Legolas has been captured, chained to a wall, held in darkness in the depth of the mountain for a day and a night. He has been hurt, beaten… his injuries are not simply to his flesh. What he has endured has hurt his fëa more than his body, and I know my elfling... I know him so well by now. He can feel the echoes of it in his heart, bathed in light and with the wind stirring his hair.

To chain a wood elf in a vault of stone – it is the cruellest of things.

"When was the last bell?" I ask, clearing my throat and sitting up abruptly. He tells me, and I rub the last of the sleep from my face. "We have an hour until Arwen will let us see Aragorn, but I will give a bit more time for fear of her shearing my beard in my sleep. If you are well enough then let us take a walk; I will tell you all that happened whilst you were gone, and you must tell me all that happened to you as well."

He blinks at me, tilts his head as though he is a bird. I have changed the subject very quickly, it has not gone unnoticed, but one of the benefits of befriending an elf is that they take sudden subject changes quite well. They do it all of the time – it is extremely unsettling – but it is useful some of the time.

"You are not going to tell me that I must lie abed?" he asks. "That I must rest? I have been preparing our argument for an hour… you could at least hear it."

"You think me daft," I snort, and he pulls a grudging face of agreement. "I can be slow to learn sometimes Legolas, but eventually I come to all things. There is no point arguing with you if you believe yourself well enough to return to duty, none at all. I will only grey my hair in the trying."

He beams, and for a moment my heart lightens and soars. It is a guileless smile, young and pleased and completely unguarded; a rare thing.

"You must write to my father," he tells me. "And Almárean, Ionwë, Idhren and Faelwen and everyone that I know; I have been trying to explain this to them for a very long time. Perhaps dwarves are not as dense as they seem."

"I am an exceptional dwarf," I tell him, "or an uncommonly stupid one, I am yet to decide. I will fetch us some food – you are going nowhere until you have eaten – but you should get dressed at least. I grow uncomfortable with that flimsy frame of yours on show, you should have some modesty."

He throws one of his pillows at me, I catch it and I laugh as I leave him to his ministrations. I go in search of some food, and if I am smiling whilst I do it then I make no effort to stop myself.

~{O}~

It takes a while to get him ready for the world, because he feels vulnerable and exposed and so I allow him his time. Time to braid his hair, time to dress in his warrior's garb and arm himself, time to remove his bandages from both chest and wrists, although we have quite a sprightly argument over it. He says that his wounds are knitted; that the bandages will make little difference now, and simply make him feel trapped and bound.

I say that if Aragorn put them on, Aragorn should be the one to decide when they come off, but although I can quite definitely hear that I am speaking, Legolas acts as though I am not. I let him do as he pleases; if his lungs fall out of his chest and his hands drop off then I shall do nothing but laugh at him, and when I tell him this he ignores me again, so I give up.

I pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to the scar on his chest, the one where a blade skewered him right through this winter past. I do not hear the sound of battle around me, and I do not feel or taste the spray of the Anduin upon my skin. I do not notice it at all. I leave him alone, return to my rooms, and if it takes a while for my hands to stop shaking then I pay no attention to that either.

It has started to drizzle outside; a fine mist that clings to hair and clothes like jewels. It is grey, the wind is stilled, and we walk atop a mountain beneath a sky swollen with unshed rain. It smells sharp and clean, fresh, and Legolas breathes it in deeply. Tilts his head to the cool wetness and lets it dampen his face.

"I will look like a hedge by the time we arrive," I mutter to myself, smoothing the rain into my beard so that my hand comes away slick with water. I wipe it upon my leg. Legolas snorts a laugh, but neither of us press any urgency into our pace; we have some time, I am happy to walk about the grounds if this is what Legolas needs, and I twitch my hood over my head. The problem with beards, though, is that they tend to stick out somewhat. I can actually see its gradual increase in volume.

We have passed the entrance to the White Tower twice so far, and each time I have looked upon those beautiful white doors with longing but we have carried on past them. I am willing to allow Legolas his time; I know that he needs some space just as I know that he needs my company.

We pause on our second circuit of the Tower, and we do not necessarily hide but neither do we move from our concealment. We remain hidden in the confines of a stand of flowering magnolia trees; pink and white and bare-branched. We watch the convoy of the Steward of the Second as they enter the Tower, staid and dignified and silent.

There is a man at the fore, I do not recognise him, but he is nothing – nothing to be concerned about. Briar has dressed him as a lord in pomp and finery, and I can see her at the rear dressed as a handmaiden. I can also see her guards – those two tall women with black hair – trailing behind her, guiding a stooped and old man wrapped in cloak and hood. They are fully covered against the rain, but I recognise that confident and powerful walk no matter how they are dressed.

"I do not understand," Legolas breathes. "I do not understand why she must hide who she is; a man in her stead."

"Some edain see difference in man and woman," I explain, because I understand a little better. "A woman tends house and raises children, and does not fight or command men."

Legolas snorts, disgusted.

"Éowyn would have a thing to say about that," he mutters.

"And the elves who are Noldorin think you Silvans quite mad," I point out. "Think how few kinds of elf there are… think how many kinds of men and how different, and then imagine how the dwarves view you all."

His face melts into a smile, open and amused. He watches the convoy as they are received into the tower until they are gone, then suggests that I go in without him; dry off whilst he walks some air back into his lungs. I bark out a laugh that echoes around the stone courtyard. As if I would leave him alone right now!

He rolls his eyes, and we make another circuit around the building. I tell him of everything that has happened whilst he was gone, what little there is of it, and Legolas is suitably horrified that Aragorn was ready to tear down a part of his own city. I tell him that it was a ruse, a way to draw out the Steward, but I think that Legolas can hear a hint of doubt in my voice because I certainly can.

He tells me then of a day and a night in the dark, far beneath the city. Angry men with cruel hands, questions that never ended, and a hidden man who stood in the dark and said nothing at all. He gives little embellishment, he speaks facts and keeps matters short and to the point, but I can feel it in him… the way that he is struggling to shuck free of what has happened. It ghosts upon the edge of him, a rawness that was not there before, but Legolas has endured far worse. He needs only time and air and a free sky above him.

He is silent then. I do not fill it with my prattling but rather with my company, and once he is ready we turn toward the Tower of Ecthelion. It rises tall and wide and huge, a knife blade into the greyness, dizzying and mighty, and I honestly do not know why men must waste stone this way. It is as though they learned how to build things upward, and then decided that this was quite sufficient and they need learn nothing else.

I shake my head, we enter the tower, and we go to find the King.

TBC

Blimey, that was terribly fluffy.

Not a lot happened, I realise this, but I think the lads deserved a bonding moment. There's also one thing I wanted to address, and this is the way I use elvish in my fics. I try not to get too heavy handed with it, but I know I also use whole sentences and do not translate them - I actually try to translate as I go. By Gimli's reception, his observations, and sometimes by the elves repeating what they said in a more recognisable tongue. I know some people find this jarring (sorry, Vanimalion) but Legolas is not speaking his first tongue, and I have mentioned that he tends to slip sometimes. I like to show this occasionally, and I write it the way that it feels natural to. I apologise if this pulls anyone out of the story, or if it is irksome in any way.

Bit late in posting tonight as I had an unexpected visitor to entertain, but this should be received by Cheekybeak in time for her birthday. Happy Birthday my dear - Three Hunters fluff is my promised gift to you! Thanks for all of your support.

Please drop a review - they've been a bit thin on the ground recently so it'd be really nice to hear from a few more people. It really does mean the world.

Have a great weekend :)

MyselfOnly xxx