A/N: Hey, look, I actually updated! Honestly, this was the last thing I was intending to work on, too - I have too much to do already, so fandom's taken a back seat, and I'd almost forgotten that this particular fic existed. But it occurred to me that I haven't done any writing in weeks, hence this. Now, if I can just summon up the crackishness, I might actually be able to update the rest of my multichapter fics...
Anyway, moving swiftly on before I start to ramble, here's Chapter 5 of the Butterfly Effect. NOW WITH PLOT! and no beta. Will edit when I get around to getting it beta-read and all that jazz. Concrit is love, flames are lulz, adoration is nice but unnecessary, thank you all, blahblahblah.

NOW READ ON...

5

The next morning, for the first time, Nick was awake before the others of the Company. Rather, he was still awake. Exhausted though he was in mind and body, sleep had not come. Would not come, he suspected, for a long time yet. Certainly not until every moment his eyes closed did not bring fresh pictures of Aragorn's face, bloodied and pallid and hideously still in death. Not until he could forget, even for a moment, that it was his fault.

He wanted to go home. More than ever before, more even than in the panicked days before he had stumbled across the Company, he wanted to go home. He was lost in a story that he didn't know any more, in a world he had no idea of how to survive in, with people who had every reason to hate him. He was exhausted, a deep exhaustion that went deep and to the bone, and wounded worse than he had ever been in his life before. And their guide in this savage land, the man he trusted more than any of them to lead them out alive, was dead.

And he, Nicholas Walker, had killed him.

He had never thought it was possible to be so miserable, or so lonely… or so guilty. It wasn't even that saving Boromir had killed Aragorn, not really. It was those days of teaching on the riverbanks, all those slow, painful lessons to let him communicate even briefly, that had killed him.

Nick had had a friend once who had learned Elvish, as a hobby. He had laughed at that then, asked what the point could be in learning a language that had never existed. Now, instead, he wished he had followed Michael's lead, and learnt Elvish. Learnt Dwarvish. Learnt something, anything, that could have erased those weeks of studying.

Then, he thought despairingly, Aragorn might not have died.

There was another thing, too, of course. He had never seen a man die before. He had never seen a dead man before, either, or not in reality. Aragorn could have been a total stranger, a man whose life had never touched his, and still, Nick suspected, he would have nightmares for months about the look on that face, the way the blood had bubbled from between his lips…

"All that is gold does not glitter," he whispered to himself, his pale, bruised face buried in the frayed, filthy knees of his trousers, "Not all those who wander are lost." He looked up briefly, grey-blue eyes flickering around the makeshift camp. After so many weeks struggling not to speak it, his own language fell strangely on his tongue, bitter with regret. "The old that is strong does not wither. Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

Tears were starting to track down his cheeks, leaving thin trails that stung at the myriad cuts littering his hollow cheekbones. Stumbling with exhaustion, he dragged himself to his feet. "From the ashes a fire shall be woken…" he whispered, limping towards the pack Boromir had dropped by the riverbank, and knelt to check through it, his lips still moving, "…a light from the shadows shall spring. Renewed shall be blade that was broken--"

Straightening up again, he bit his lip and stared out at the roaring, rushing falls of the Anduin, dashing his tears away with the back of his hand as he swung the pack onto his back, sweeping Boromir's travelstained old cloak around his shoulders. It swept in the mud after him - the Steward's son was almost a foot taller than him, and broader in the shoulder – but it was better than nothing.

"The crownless again shall be king," he whispered, to the grey light dawning in the east, and swallowed hard. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

He had thought to leave a message, a don't follow me, if nothing else. But he could barely speak Westron, let alone write it, and a message in English would be no message at all. He could only hope that the Company would understand – he suspected that Legolas, at least, would be glad to see the back of him.

The knife Boromir had given him was still lying, forgotten, in the bottom of the boat. After a moment's thought, and another furtive, hunted glance around the camp, the boy snatched it up, pushing it into the pocket of his worn trousers. He would hardly be able to hunt with it – hunting was not a skill he possessed, and he doubted it was one he would learn quickly enough – but if he were to run to woods that might already be swarming with Orcs, he intended to go armed. Of course, one boy with a stolen knife he didn't know how to use would hardly last a moment against even one Orc. Still, there was a steel to him, lost in a life in which he had never needed it, that refused to let him go down without a fight, and so he gripped the knife tightly with one hand, loath to lose it along the way, as he hobbled as quietly as possible towards the treeline again.

He had just passed into the trees, the faint light of dawn fading into darkness again as the trees blotted out the stars above, when a knife pressed against his throat, a hand closing around his shoulder. He froze at once, stopping dead in his tracks, as Legolas spoke softly into his ear.

"In future," the elf said smoothly, lifting the knife away from Nick's throat, "I would counsel silence. Where are you running to?"

Nick opened his mouth, then closed it again, sagging where he stood. He had understood perhaps half of what Legolas had said, but that was enough to know that he had failed – and enough to know that he would not be allowed to leave. "From," he managed eventually, the foreign word heavy with effort and edged by fear, and was almost impressed with himself for remembering even that much, under the circumstances.

The elf released his shoulder sharply, and Nick almost fell, turning to face Legolas with his chest heaving. The grey light of dawn was spreading to the shelter of the trees now, and through the shadows, Nick could see movement in the camp; doubtless Gimli, since the hobbits were still accustomed to sleeping later and he could hardly imagine Boromir would rise early after collapsing as he had the night before. Whoever it was, it was movement, and Legolas had clearly seen it, too; one slim hand closed around the boy's bony wrist, and the elf divested him of his knife before pulling him deeper into the shadows, out of sight of the others. After a moment, out of earshot as well as sight of the riverbank, Legolas released his wrist and motioned for him to sit.

Nick did so, grateful despite himself, for his exhausted legs were beginning to tremble under his own weight. The sun brought little warmth with it; he pulled Boromir's cloak around himself, watching the elf with hunted eyes in the dim half-light.

Legolas sat down opposite him, perched on the heavy root of some ancient tree, and met his eyes unblinkingly. Eventually, he spoke, his voice soft but clear, and slow enough that Nick might understand as much as possible.

"You cannot leave now," he began, and there was a sadness in his voice that was almost as frightening as the anger thrumming in his eyes. "Now that the Númenorean is dead, we are but six. We cannot lose another." Nick hardly had to be fluent to catch the undertone of what Legolas had said; not even you. The elf's dislike for him was written in every line of his face, and although Nick could hardly blame him, when all was said and done, it was an uncomfortable knowledge.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the only words that came to mind were English, and before he could even begin to attempt translating them, Legolas was speaking again.

"Boromir yet holds himself indebted to you. If you leave now, it will but break the Company further. And besides, Nicholas Walker…" The elf paused, as though he disliked the words he spoke now, but speak them he did. "The Company need you, for it may be that you alone will know what yet stands between us and the Ringbearer. Come." He stood abruptly, holding out Boromir's knife, which Nick, stumbling to his own feet, grabbed at once. "Give me the pack. I shall return it to its place, before Boromir wakes to see it gone."

After a moment of watching Legolas' face, something perilously close to defiance in his expression, Nick shrugged the heavy pack off his back, holding it out. Legolas stood there a moment, tall and fair and grim, meeting his eyes, before taking the pack and slinging it over his own shoulder. Nothing was there now in his face of that old light-heartedness with which he had left Lórien; the last of that had ebbed away with Aragorn's death, it seemed.

His eyes had not left Nick's. A shadow seemed to pass across his face, and when he spoke next, that taut anger underlying his words had gone, leaving only a deep, abiding sadness. "I am not Aragorn," he said softly, taking a step back but still holding Nick's eyes. "I am neither Ranger nor King, and it may be that I am a poor guide through such a wilderness. More and more, I wish myself again in Mirkwood, rather than as the leader of a quest that now seems doomed to end in darkness. Still, I have no choice; I must do what will best help us along our way. What will best help us is you." He turned away now, eyes downcast. "You alone know the story."

His feet, light-shod and nimble, made no sound on the leaves and twigs of the woodland floor as he moved back towards the Anduin, half-lost among the shadows of trees. He did not look back, but strode on, leaving Nick to stand there, casting his eyes downwards to his bare feet and the rotting leaves beneath them, and shake his head.

"I don't know the story," Nick mumbled in his own tongue, wiping at the tears that stung his eyes. The words had the weight of a confession to them, but none of a confession's release. "I don't. Not any more."