References in this chapter back to the story The Last Time, where Elrohir says goodbye to Legolas before he departs Imladris with the fellowship.
Elrohir
At first I am a mess of pain and confusion after Legolas' collapse, and Arwen stays with me until I am calm. She shields my mind with hers until the pain has ebbed away to something bearable. I do not know how she does that. How does she bear what I cannot?
"What has he done? What has become of Elladan?" I gasp when I can finally force words out of my mouth, and she strokes my arm with gentle tenderness.
"All is not well with him." She says softly, "for you know this is not our Elladan. He is incapable of cruelty such as this, especially to one so near to your heart."
"He has never liked Legolas. They are always at odds," I say, for it has always been thus. Since the first day Legolas and I found each other Elladan has fought it.
"Are you sure of that Elrohir? Could it not be he likes him too much for his comfort? For Legolas is yours, heart, mind and soul, that much is obvious and Elladan would never hurt you. He seeks to put distance between them."
I do not like the thought of that. Arwen is instinctive and empathetic. She sometimes knows more about us than we do ourselves. I do not know how much of that is due to helping herself to our minds. I choose to think less than perhaps is true. On this point though I must believe she is wrong. I must.
I have only just accepted what happened between Elladan and Legolas. An accident of circumstance is how he paints it. It cannot be anything other than that. I cannot open that wound again, there can be nothing else than that between them. I will not think on it.
"No." I am firm with her. "It is not that. There is something about Legolas he has never liked—and what about Glorfindel? Elladan loves him."
She looks at me with serious eyes.
"Very well Elrohir. If you think so. Still he would never hurt someone you loved, deliberately. He would not."
I am prepared to accept she is right on that. It does seem something Elladan would be incapable of.
"I wish I could understand it," I murmur. "That's all, I wish it made sense."
"Then you must talk to him." It sounds so easy when she says it, but I think it will not be easy at all.
She stays until I sleep. Until fatigue defeats me and I walk the dream paths, and somehow she steers me towards pleasant dreams. I am sure it is her doing. I dream of days before the war when life was simpler and Legolas and I did not have sea-longing or the heavy weight of grief to worry us. When we were happy.
I am awoken by a cool hand upon my brow. Time has moved on but I am not sure how much of it has past. It is Estel who wakes me and something is wrong with him. I am not my sister. I cannot unravel the thoughts of others but I do not need that skill to know this. Estel is a coiled spring of tension and sorrow.
"I did not mean to wake you," he says, smiling at me but his smile is not a real one.
"What is wrong Estel?"
"You have a fever but it is not a bad one, and not unexpected. We can deal with it,"
He deliberately misunderstands me for I am not concerned about myself. I worry about him. He looks exhausted, as if he can barely keep himself upright and I wonder what he has been doing to tire himself so badly. He was not this drawn when I last woke. I reach out and touch his hand as he turns away to get something for the fever.
"I mean what is wrong with you?"
"Me?" He pretends innocence but I see a glimpse of something terrible sitting behind his eyes. "I am tired, that is all. You have been a rather. . . demanding patient." He gives a laugh then but it is a hollow one.
"How is Legolas?"
He pulls his hand away from me then and walks away so I cannot see his face.
"Glorfindel is with him." He says quietly. I may be hurt and fevered but I am not stupid. I know he seeks to distract me and my stomach churns. What is it he withholds from me?
"I did not ask who is with him. I asked how he is." He will not fob me off!
The reply I recieve is silence. Instead he fiddles with the vials that adorn the table in the corner of my room. Intent on staring at them as if he has not heard me.
"Estel? How is he?"
He sighs. A long heavy sigh full of grief.
"It is not good brother." He says eventually, and when he turns back his eyes are filled with tears.
Estel never cries. Never. The last time I saw this was the birth of his son. The churning in my stomach becomes panic. Pure, unadulterated, all consuming panic.
"What do you mean?" I cry. Legolas did not look well when he was here but things were not that desperate surely. His fall was unexpected and dramatic but nothing that could cause more than superficial damage to an elf.
"He hit his head when he fell," My little brothers voice cracks and he pauses as if he cannot continue—but he does. "I cannot wake him, Elrohir. I have tried everything, everything! I cannot reach him and nor can Arwen. . . and he fades. He is barely there. I . . ." and finally he stops. Finally he cannot find the words.
I cannot believe this. He is mistaken. This is not true.
"Elladan!" I cry, "Elladan can reach him. There is none better than him."
"Elladan?" Estel's voice drips with sarcasm at that. "I think not. It is Elladan who has put him in this position after all."
I cannot believe Elladan has hurt him that badly.
"If you explain how dire things are he will help. He will save Legolas for me. He will not let him go." I am certain, so completely certain my brother would do this for me.
"I cannot trust him." Estel snaps and his face is set with a look that tells me he will not be argued with.
I try to pull myself up to sit then, although the pain cuts me in two and makes me gasp. I will not lie here while Legolas fades.
"Lie still you fool!" Estel restrains me with a simple hand in the chest. "You are going nowhere."
"I must see him. If he is that bad I must see him. I can reach him Estel!"
"Oh Elrohir," he sighs, "You do not know where to start. You know that. And you are a long way from being well enough to traipse around. I promise you if I think there is a need I will get you to him. Not now though brother."
I have to admit he is right, I can not even bear to sit upright. My side burns terribly. And I have no healing ability at all, I know that, Arwen and Elladan inherited that but not me. My father's skill passed me over. Never before has that fact hurt as much as it does now. It should be me who helps Legolas. It should be me who saves him.
But I am not strong enough, and I am not talented enough.
Estel leaves me in the end instructing me to sleep but I do not. How can I? Instead my mind imagines a series of possibilities. All of which involve Legolas slipping away from me. A tight band of panic strangles me. I am in the midst of that panic when Elladan arrives.
In another time it would amuse me, the fact I lie here and pay host to a series of my family as they file in and out of my room, one at a time.
Elladan says nothing. He stands at the doorway and stares, white-faced. He has been crying, I can see that much and that tears at my soul. I wish I could ease his pain but I do not know where to start.
"Shall I leave?" He whispers then and I reach out to him.
"I am glad you are here, I wish to speak to you," I say and I mean it. It is the most awkward conversation I think we have ever had.
I plead with him to explain because I need so badly to understand his motives, to grasp what happened within his mind but he cannot explain, not to my satisfaction. Yet again he feels wild, chaotic, erratic, more like Legolas and Elladan and it leaves me confused and agitated. I want my brother. I want the brother I know who will calm me and he is not here.
But when I try to describe that to him, to tell him how he feels, that he is lost to me and this imposter is in his place the colour drains from his face. He is frozen in time, white and drawn and then, midway through our discussion he leaps to his feet.
"I must go Elrohir!"
"No!" I grasp his hand, I will not let him go, not yet. But I am weak and he is the stronger. He pulls away from me.
"I must! You do not understand!" He is right about that. I do not.
"Then tell me brother! Make me understand!"
"There is no time." He gasps, then he is gone and I am left alone, grieving, in pieces.
The day is long and I do not sleep. Instead I worry, for Legolas, for Estel, for Elladan. I am useless, trapped here by my injuries. I cannot help any of them. What goes on outside my doors?
It is evening before Arwen appears, soft and quiet, through my door. She is surprised to see me awake.
"I cannot sleep sister. Tell me what happens. Tell me how is Legolas?"
She takes my hand with a smile and her calmness, her sweetness washes over me and soothes the edges of my fea where it writhes in panic and anxiety.
"He is well," she says softly. "That is why I am here. Estel sends me to tell you. Legolas has awoken and he is well. Elladan has found him."
Elladan! I knew he could do it. I knew he would save him for me. The relief is all encompassing. It engulfs me.
"Estel is with him," she goes on "and he says he is better than he has been for a long while. We will bring him to you tomorrow. In the meantime brother you must sleep or you will not heal."
"I have been worried. . ." I stumble on the words. My tongue trips over them.
"And you need worry no longer!"
I do sleep then. When the anxiety disappears I am so drained I could not stay awake if I wanted to. So I sleep and I dream again of Legolas. Of our days in the sun, before the war, before the sealonging, when all was simple and easy between us. Will we ever get that back?
A soft noise awakes me and the feel of fingers, fine and slender sweeping across my face. When I open my eyes he is there, in front of me, smiling his beautiful, heart-breaking smile.
"Legolas!"
He is pale, his forehead marked with a gash that Estel has stitched and a bruise that meanders down his face but he looks well despite that, oh so well.
"Are you real?" I breathe, "What are you doing?"
"Remembering you."
My breath catches then, for I have done this myself before. It is as if we are trapped within a loop of time, and I reach up to hold his hand that brushes across my face. I tell him then what he told me the last time.
"I am still here."
"But we are not the same."
"No." Suddenly I am filled with disquiet. Something is wrong here. "But our love is."
"I was thinking about how it was before the war. When things were easy," he says then and I smile up at him.
"So was I. I was dreaming it!" We are still the same. We still have our link.
"I am sorry I have changed," he whispers, "I am sorry for it all. The sealonging. Elladan, how much I hurt you. I am always hurting you."
"And I hurt you also. That is the way of it. You cannot help the sealonging Legolas. It is what it is."
"You told me not to follow him." His face fills with anguish as he speaks. "You pleaded with me, you knew it would destroy us and I did not listen. I should have listened."
My anxiety is back churning within me like a thing alive for I do not like this, I do not like it at all.
"Why do you think on this Legolas? You had no choice. I know that, I was wrong, I was selfish to place that pressure upon you. And you are still here! We can cope with the sea-longing if we must." And I feel it then upon him, the softest, gentlest, faintest, breath of the sea. It is back.
"Elladan has given you the sea back!" I cry as the realisation hits me.
"It saved me." Legolas says with a smile. "It is a part of me Elrohir, I cannot be rid of it unless I sail, and it is so good to have it back."
"Then we will cope with that." I grasp his hand but my heart sinks. He is back but the sealonging with him and it eats away at him. I have seen it, it consumes him and destroys him. I will have to think of a way to hold it at bay.
"If you need to sail Legolas, we will sail. I mean that."
"I cannot sail!" His cry is heartbreaking. "I cannot leave Aragorn or Gimli. I cannot!"
"Then I will move here. I will leave Elladan and come to Ithilien. Grandfather will be at Imladris before too long anyway." My mind is racing as I plan this. It will work! I will move here to be with him always and I can hold the sea at bay for him.
But he pulls his hand from mine. He retreats into himself, I feel it. His spirit shrinks away from me.
"I will only hurt you again and I will not. I will not hurt you any longer."
I reach to take his hand back but he will not let me. Alarms go off within me. This is wrong, wrong, wrong. I remember then what was happening the last time as I woke him from sleeping. When I stroked his face and told him I was remembering him, as he has just done to me. He was leaving me.
"No Legolas." I try to preempt him. I will not let him say it. But he talks over the top of me.
"I have decided," he says, "I have thought on it. I need to step aside. Until I sail...just until I sail Elrohir. I need to stay away. I will not hurt you any longer." The words spill out of him but I will not listen. I will not listen!
"No. No. No!"
" Yes!" There are tears in his eyes but he smiles through them. "You will see, Elrohir, that this is right. I will make you understand. We need to be apart. I will still love you."
He cannot leave me. I cannot survive through this.
I cannot let him destroy us!