Disclaimer: I do not own nor make any profit off of The Lord of the Rings or any related works. It all belongs to J.R.R. Tolkien, New Line Cinema, etc.
A/N: In Professor Tolkien's universe, there is no mention of Legolas ever marrying in Arda. This is one possibility that entered my mind. May be considered AU in some aspects, but not very many I would wager. Legolas/OC.
Wildflowers
To Gimli's distinctly non-Elvish eyesight, it seemed that Legolas had become lost in dreams without even sleeping. Indeed, the elf's eyes remained wide open and as clear as the stars on a moonless night. The early morning sun cast a golden-white glow about his friend's lean form and even with Lord Glorfindel standing beside him, it seemed the younger elf shone exceptionally bright.
The reborn balrog-slayer had become a frequent companion for Legolas in the last, waning years of Elessar's reign. Gimli suspected it was a relief to have someone who understood the longing to go into the West while still ignoring the feeling in favor of a promise made. Glorfindel did not seem perturbed as he also perused the ocean waves from Legolas' side, but Gimli was not prepared to take his word versus a line of inquiry.
"Does something pester your mind, laddie?" The stout dwarf did not need to state a name for Legolas to understand the question had been directed at him. Friends did not require so many inquisitions on some subjects after so many years of comradeship as they had enjoyed.
"Nay, my friend." The dutiful response did not seem adequate on its own. "I would not say it 'pesters' me, as yet…"
When Gimli harrumphed in agitation, a small smile crossed the young archer's face. How like his dwarven companion to want more information than what was likely considered proper conversational material. Apparently Glorfindel agreed with Legolas' theory for he too smiled, albeit in a rather more sly and mysterious manner.
"I am simply remembering," the former Prince of Mirkwood cut off what he imagined would have been a particularly unfriendly remark about his unwillingness to discuss anything with anyone.
"Remembering what, for instance?" the red-bearded dwarf insisted, but instead of taking insult at this breech of common formalities – as his father likely did – Legolas found himself in an unorthodox position of wishing to speak that which weighed upon his heart and mind that day.
In blissful memory, the fair-haired archer closed his eyes; sights and scents of a multitude too large to describe flashed through the paths of his mind like the first flurries of snow in early wintertime.
"A lady," came the prince's soft response at last.
Thranduil seemed very mildly aghast at the bluntness of that statement, by Legolas' reckoning, but there was no reason to hide anything now. As far as the archer was concerned, he trusted all aboard as implicitly as he would his own mind.
"A lady, you say?" Elladan, curious as ever, entered the conversation from the prow of the ship where Cirdan had given him the helm for a time. "I have never heard you speak of a lady. Truly, I have never even heard rumor of you finding love in the slightest."
"I have found it," Legolas admitted freely, turning to face his companions as Glorfindel glanced toward him from the corner of his eye. "It is of the love we shared for a time that I reminisce."
"By the Stars," Gimli exhaled loudly in astonishment, gazing in wonder at the stoic friend he had accompanied all these long years after the war had ended. "You must surely tell us of her. At first I believed you to be dreaming in the broad light of day, but I had certainly not expected this."
Smiling slightly, the archer leaned back against the rail of the ship with graceful ease and thought how to begin his story.
"Oh, I did dream..."
The young elf's tone grew misty with reminiscence as he recalled his only love.
"I dreamed of slender arms and gentle hands... Sweet, rose-colored lips... Silken tresses of raven hair brushing across my skin. A tender smile and sparkling deep eyes looking upon me with such a love as only comes once in a lifetime... Yet she was full of fire, my lady; feisty to her very bones and equally as stubborn as she was moody. I will not claim to you that we were without argument or reproach between the two of us. But within the same breath I will tell you that she was wonderful and affectionate."
Thranduil felt his eyes mist over from the love in his youngest child's voice. He had carried the same measure of love for his dear wife for a great number of years and still retained that tell-tale emotion within his heart. Why had he never recognized his son's love-filled heart before? Had he been blind to it or ignored it in some way? It felt treacherous to be so ignorant of his son's feelings. An even greater question to his worried mind remained – why in all of Arda had his son never married this deeply-loved lady? Had he believed his father incapable of accepting her? The theory sounded foolhardy even for the most unrealistic of beings.
Despite the questions brimming in all his companions, the young prince's story faced no interruption. The mist arisen from the sea to rest around them added a great mystery to this unknown tale, as the spice adds flavor to the meat.
"I remember the moment my dream came true..."
Legolas recalled himself standing amongst a field of flowers beneath a high stone balcony before climbing up to his tall, radiant lady as swiftly and silently as any specter.
"I stood in a field of wildflowers, marked only by that dear lady who saw my coming and my going in the silence of a starlit night."
He had left her as he had come, a pale ghost which leaves no visible mark, but whom has affected much. At times the solemn, lonely part of his mind had questioned if he was not just that… a specter of insignificant meaning in a life of such color, beauty, and energy that it could never be replicated by any life that might inhabit the world.
"I remember the night I begged her to leave with me."
Legolas' voice grew impossibly sad and Thranduil's eyes flew to the face of his son for some degree of understanding. Who was this lady that had taken so much of his son's heart and yet left his family in complete ignorance of her undeniably important place in the prince's life?
The last King of the Greenwood pondered this puzzle with a frustrating lack of answers as his son continued to speak.
"It was in the same gently flowering field where she had first grasped my heart so tightly."
Such was the strength of their love that Legolas would have risked duty and honor and title for her heart. His very family, he would have willingly given up for the only thing she had to offer... her love. Yet nothing more would he have asked of her, for her affection stood as a far greater offering than mere riches or title could have provided.
"She would not come," the prince admitted ever more sadly, but with resignation.
However, his friends' bristling grumbles and exhales made Legolas smile once again as he added softly, "It was her request that I not abandon my family and my duties. She begged it of me; to go back and take only the memory of our blooming romance with me upon my return."
The formerly snarling and snapping countenances of his younger friends aboard were swiftly replaced with the shocked or softening faces of ones who understood the sacrifice of a loving heart. Legolas' beatific smile was their reward for this understanding. It seemed compensation enough for the rejection they had become so offensive of a mere moment ago.
"Where is she now?" Elrohir tentatively inquired of the young blonde elf, wary of speeding hurt to his heart.
"She passed unto the other side a great many years ago."
Legolas' worn, stormy features bespoke the sorrow of his parting to all who looked upon him.
"She sailed?" Elladan looked with empathy upon his friend, thinking on the pain his mother's choice had brought their family, even unto that very day as he and his brother sailed to greet her and their beloved father.
Legolas did not speak, but turned away toward the sea in a fit of deep and difficult sadness. Stars above, would he ever see her lovely face again? Valinor might be the blessed realm of rest and peace, but how could one move on without the other half of their soul? No answer claimed the archer's mind to satisfy such dark thoughts.
"Nay," Celeborn spoke at last, a deep sorrowful façade wrinkling the otherwise smooth skin of his brow. "She did not sail."
The implications of this unexpected statement left a heavy silence among the passengers of the ship.
Thranduil could not comprehend how much he had never known of his own son. Even Lord Celeborn seemed to understand the strange and unwritten events which had occurred so long ago. Would Legolas even speak of it again, if his father asked it of him? The former King had no wish to cause pain to his youngest, but he wished dearly to understand that which he had not been a part of.
The conversation became lost in the wind as they traveled ever nearer to their destination. Gimli refrained from words for the moment, but ever did he wish he knew some words of comfort for his dear friend. Thranduil found no way of broaching this sensitive topic with his child, even as much as he wished he could help.
Legolas spoke no more, but continued to stare out at the sea in longing for the lady who consumed his heart's desire. Glorfindel stayed ever by his side with a hand upon his shoulder, leading all to believe the elder elf knew more than any who this beloved lady had been and how she had passed from Arda.
Days or perhaps weeks passed this way, it did not truly matter to any but Gimli, who became increasingly agitated by the length of their voyage. Lord Cirdan's estimated travel time must have been off kilter by at least a week, he felt certain of it! Something could not be right or they would have been there by now.
Not a full day had passed from this thought than did Gimli fall tumbling from a wave which rocked the entire ship about. Círdan stood entirely unfazed by the increasingly rough going and by the time Gimli had noticed any change in the rocking of their vessel he was already on his feet and gazing at the whitest beach he had ever beheld in his lifetime.
So many elves waited in the quay that the passengers looked at one another in rapt curiosity. Certainly it could be no small wonder they had attracted such a host, what with seven renowned elven lords aboard and a not-so-unknown dwarf as their companion.
Legolas' eyes easily caught sight of Lady Galadriel at the head of the queue, along with a silver-haired elf whose presence made Legolas cry out in joy – the first sound he had made in days. Elladan and Elrohir followed the archer's line of sight only to exclaim similar joyful proclamations at the sight of Haldir, returned to them from Mandos. Celeborn chuckled amusedly at the young ones, glad himself the young Captain had been returned.
Beside his son, Thranduil spotted his wife and elder children amongst the front lines as well, looking more radiant than he had ever seen them in Arda.
"Legolas, there!" he commented happily to his son, whose jubilant face upon seeing the rest of his family felt beyond heartening for his father's worried mind.
As the ship docked, those aboard stepped off with varying emotions coiling amongst them, Círdan and Celeborn leading the way toward Galadriel. Elrond's sons followed their grandfather and the mariner with a confidence all their own and matching grins. Legolas gently and calmly gestured his father to walk ahead with Gimli, whom the King had taken an especially large liking to ever since the dwarf had comforted his son upon the death of King Elessar. Glorfindel took the hint for what it was and stepped off with the Prince, all the while eyeing the crowd for the one elf he dearly wished to see whole and healed of darkness.
After a great many welcomes had been proclaimed and hands shaken, Legolas relaxed amongst his parents and elder siblings, basking in the love of their embraces and words. Glorfindel waited ever near, but the sight of a dark head drew him further to the middle of the crowd.
"Glorfindel!" a laughing voice claimed said elf's attention for a mere moment before the warrior recklessly pounced the owner of that magnificent baritone.
No one appeared at all shocked when Lord Glorfindel, renowned balrog-slayer and warrior, threw his arms about the former Lord of Imladris and laughed like a child in his happiness. The golden-haired elf could not, it seemed, believe the strength and energy his friend had been imbued with. It seemed as if the younger lord had been fused with light itself for all his bright and shining countenance.
"Elrond," Glorfindel announced, the name a question and an answer at the same time. Awed and grinning in equal measure, the mighty elf brought a hearty laugh bubbling up in his friend's throat. No more words were necessary in that moment. Elrond turned to face his dear Lady Celebrían, whose arms hung from the strong forearms of their twin sons.
"We are all here now," Elrond voiced, contrastingly gentle to his previous high humor. "All whom we may rightfully hope for. Come, let us remove ourselves from this madness."
Glorfindel all too happily retired into the company of this family he had so sorely missed. His only regret was that the lady Arwen could not be there with them.
"Arwen and Aragorn will always be in our hearts and memories," Elrond seemed to read his mind, as he always had. "We have had time to grieve and though we will never forget them, we will shift our focus onto the living... One of whom you have not seen for many a year, my old friend."
Confused words could not pass the golden warrior's lips before a vision of loveliness stepped from behind Celebrían and the twins. No description of amazement, nor dreams of perfection, could ever equal the sense of giddy relief Glorfindel could feel leaking from every pore. With a gentle embrace and a tear upon his face for the young lady so long-missed, the elder elf stepped back only to call through the crowd for the one person who needed her presence the most.
Legolas' family behaved as closely as he had remembered and now allowed his dear dwarf friend to live equally as close in their hearts. Gimli easily grew entrenched in the telling of how he befriended Legolas during the war, during which Legolas had no trouble discerning the telltale voice of Glorfindel calling him out. Heading toward the sound of that clear voice led the archer to a place on the edge of the gathered crowd, where he found Elrond and his wife and sons waiting with smiling faces. Smiling in return, Legolas allowed himself to be embraced by the family he had come to see as a part of his own.
Released from Celebrían's motherly embrace, Legolas felt happier than he had in years. Nearly everyone he could have asked for survived in Aman, happy to see him. If that one special lady could not be there, then he still needed to live for the family he was given, no matter how difficult it might be.
Even as the thought crossed his mind, the fair-haired elf caught sight of a dream he was utterly positive he never desired to wake up from.
"Míriel…" the whispered name dropped softly from Legolas' lips, as if the wind had carried it gently away into the hands of Eru himself for safekeeping.
Legolas realized only slowly he had fallen in love all over again... fallen in love with one of a new, matured spirit and heart; one whose eyes sparkled ever brighter from the tears in her eyes as she laid them upon his face once more; one whose arms held him tighter, whose lips kissed him fiercer, and whose spirit clung ever closer to his… one whose fear was overcome and overridden amongst the sweet hopes of their joined hearts.
Somehow, in-between reassurances and sweet nothings, Legolas had proposed and been accepted. It felt more natural than anything he had ever heard before.
Amidst the kisses and embraces and tears, Legolas found himself looking into his father's drawn face with worry and apprehension he had never felt before.
"Adar," Legolas' voice trembled ever-so-slightly, betraying the turmoil behind his deceptively steely blue eyes as he announced, "I would like you to meet Lady Míriel, the love of whom I spoke. I am going to marry her."
If Thranduil felt shock, his features betrayed nothing of it. Gazing at his son's long lost love, the former king knew exactly why Legolas had not come to him.
"I see now," the elder elf spoke softly, "why you had never told me. Certainly, if I had known you were courting the eldest child of Elrond Peredhel, I would never have blessed it… How wrong I would have been to react so."
Elrond joined his daughter and Legolas in snapping eyes to Thranduil in stunned silence.
"I cannot apologize enough for making you feel and act the way you did, my son," Thranduil gravely continued; Legolas stared at his father in tearful forgiveness.
"Please, Lady Míriel, allow me to invite you into our family forthwith. You are most welcome."
Among his memories in the years to come, Legolas would recall awakening to a mist-covered field, his wife warm and comforting by his side. Legolas would remember thanking Iluvatar that her breath came comfortably and that his life had once again become as colorful as the wildflowers around them.
A/N: Thank you for reading!