I apologize for the extremely late update, and for the confusion this is going to cause, because here's chapter two version 2.0. It has changed so much you won't recognize it if you read the "last" chapter two, Omen. I'm hoping that will make it easier to forget everything that happened in that chapter, because that's what I ask you to do.

Anyway - I'm a lot happier with this chapter than with Omen, and most important of all, it works much better with the rest of the plot. A huge thanks to those of you who read and reviewed Omen, I am so sorry for causing trouble, but it's better this way, promise!

Another huge thanks to my beta Atiaran, who has helped me incredibly much by being nitpicky about the grammar and making sure I don't write things twice if I can write them once.

Disclaimer: Nothing's mine.

The Coming of Spring

Course will we to our best live to up your expectations.

Aragorn frowned. That made no sense.

Of we will course do best our to up live your expectations.

The words danced in front of his eyes like the ripples of a busy water surface. He shook his head to force them to stay in order.

We of do best will course to live your up expectations.

If only he had something to smack himself in the forehead with - surely it would make everything better. Aragorn looked around for the paperweight of solid gold, but decided it might be a bit of an overkill. Sighing loudly he returned to the letter.

Best of we will do our to live to up of expectations your course.

"Maybe it is time for a break," Faramir suggested as Aragorn reached for the paperweight. "We've been sitting here since breakfast."

Aragorn glared at him as if he had suggested Aragorn was too weak to go on with the paperwork. Calm as ever, Faramir simply nodded at the window. Aragorn looked out. The sun had not yet reached over the top of the willow in the garden outside, its sharp glare still hiding behind the naked branches, and even though they had been sitting there since breakfast, it was still only a few hours. Still, a break was better than a paperweight in the head. Aragorn sighed, folded the letter together, pushed back his chair and rose.

And that was when the room simply tipped to its side, like a boat on a stormy sea. Aragorn lost his balance. Everything - the walls with their colourful tapestries and paintings, the floor with its elaborately woven carpet, the desk, the bookshelves, Faramir - everything was spinning. He tried to regain his footing, flung out his arms after something to steady him, but there was nothing solid to hold on to; briefly he felt Faramir's hand around his arm...

...and then he was lying on his back on the floor. I fainted, he realised, but he had no time to wonder why, or what was going to happen now. Darkness took him, pressed him so deep into himself he forgot how to think.

He did not mind, because it felt much better that way.

Spring was on its way. Water was dripping from the trees in the garden. The snow was slowly melting away in brown trickles. And when Aragorn woke up, several hours after he collapsed in his study, a swallow sat on the windowsill and watched him with shiny black eyes. He looked back until it flew away, silhouetted against the red glow of the afternoon sun.

It was two weeks since the twins had come. One week and five days since they left. He felt as though he had been falling ever since then.

"Your Majesty?"

The voice seemed to come from somewhere far away. It was soft as snowfall, but still loud enough to pound on his ears. Aragorn struggled to find his voice and croaked:

"Faramir?"

Someone moved a little to his right. Aragorn did not dare to turn his head and look around, fearing the room would start spinning if he did, and all he saw in the corner of his eye was shadows.

"Prince Faramir is not here, your majesty," the soft voice replied. It must be Master Ninquon, the healer. Aragorn had always liked him. "It's good to see you're awake. How do you feel?"

"Where am I?"

"In the Houses of Healing, my lord."

"The Houses of Healing?" Why had they taken him out of the citadel when the royal apartments were so much closer?

When he felt well enough to look around he saw the vaulted ceiling, lit by orange shafts of afternoon light, rows of empty beds, a closed door, and at the opposite end of the room, a fireplace where Master Ninquon sat on a stool in front of the glowing embers. It was quiet, almost tranquil. But he remembered chaos.

Very vaguely he had been aware of people shouting through a closed door, and hurried voices closer to him talking in whispers. Then, as he had stumbled out of the study with Faramir at his side, there had been people staring at him, doors slamming, someone calling out... And like something out of a dream he remembered walking again, this time barely aware of anything around him but Faramir, who steadied him - and Arwen, the only thing that felt safe and solid. He had followed her voice through the thick mist inside his head. And through darkness.

Later he learned that they had taken him out of the citadel through a secret, underground passage, an escape route for the royal family, because he would never have been left alone in the royal apartments. For the King to faint in the middle of the day was no trifling matter; rumour spread quickly, the people of the citadel were in shock, and they all wanted to see him - either because they wanted something to tell their neighbours, or because they thought they would gain something from showing him concern. But no one was let into the Houses of Healing without the healer's permission and the servants working there were not the kind who gossiped. Arwen, brilliant as ever, had understood that was what he needed. Privacy.

The afternoon light was reflected in a pair of round glasses as Master Ninquon turned to him again.

"Can I do something for you, my lord? How do you feel?"

"I'm fine."

"Fine," Master Ninquon replied with a smile. "A warrior like you would never admit anything else, would you?"

"It's not like I've been dying."

"Ah, no." Master Ninquon shook his head. "No. And I think you're right not to be worried, Your Majesty. The Queen tells me you haven't slept very well lately? That was probably why you fainted."

Aragorn nodded, still too tired to give any details, and not willing to do that anyway. The healer seemed to understand - that was one of the good things with master Ninquon - because he turned towards the fire again without asking anything more.

Aragorn lay for a while and stared at the intricate pattern of shadows and ribvaults and fine fissures in the white ceiling. Was there really nothing to be worried about? A thought was taking form in his mind, but he was a bit too tired to understand it yet, so he let it float around in his head while it defined itself. It had something to do with this feeling of emptiness inside him.

You haven't slept very well lately. Ah, no - Master Ninquon was right. And wrong. Aragorn had barely slept at all. That, too, had something to do with that emptiness.

It had first appeared when the twins left. Aragorn remembered it as clearly as when a lightning etches the image of a brief moment into the back of one's eyelids. He had stood in Elladan's room in the guest apartments and stared at an empty bed, at a pile of neatly folded linen on top of the coverlet, at the wall with no weapons leaning against it and the chair with no cloak hanging over its back. Aragorn had only come to ask why the twins had not turned up for breakfast, but as he stood there it was as though the pieces fell in place inside his head. And then he backed out of the apartments and set off running, because the emptiness that filled him was so overwhelming he had to do something to keep his mind from it.

He never stopped to look for tracks; he knew which route the twins had taken. Aragorn imagined they had been up very early, maybe when it was still dark, but when they sneaked down to the Queen's Garden he had been there, as he always was at that time. Maybe they had hidden behind the azalea or on the verandah, and if he had looked closer he could have seen them and stopped them. When he left the garden the sun had risen well above the eastern mountains and he had gone straight to the dining room in the royal apartments where Arwen was already eating breakfast. That must have been when the twins climbed over the wall and down the tree.

"Ahem... your majesty?"

Aragorn would have jumped, if he had not been so tired. Master Ninquon was standing in the doorway. Aragorn had not heard when he left the room.

"Yes?"

"Counsellor Idhren just sent a page down here. He wants to know if you're awake."

Aragorn groaned. "I am not awake."

"I thought so," Master Ninquon smiled. "I'm afraid counsellor Idhren thought so too, because the page wanted me to insist. He said it was very important."

Aragorn snorted. Nothing was ever important when it came from Idhren. "Tell him I'm dead."

Master Ninquon laughed a little. "I can tell him you are severely ill and must not be disturbed. I'm the healer, so he cannot exactly ignore me."

"Say I've got the plague. Then he won't bother me again."

Counsellor Idhren was one thing - it would have been unlike him to be tactful enough to let a severely ill person be when he wanted to talk to him - but Aragorn was quite sure that not many others would bother to walk all the way down to the sixth level and the Houses of Healing, and maybe they had enough respect for the king to not disturb him as long as he was there. The royal apartments were private, in theory, but the King had to attend to any matter of importance; whenever someone approached him with any issue, no matter how trivial, Aragorn felt it was his duty to grant them an audience. Maybe here he would be able to think - and he instinctively knew he needed to think. He needed to know why he had collapsed - because he had done it for a reason. It had to do something with the twins. And maybe with everything that had happened in these past months.

Because it had not started with the twins, had it? Aragorn had lost count of the days - he did not have the strength to keep track of them - but he did know that he had been miserable weeks before Elladan and Elrohir came. Their visit had made things worse.

Aragorn pushed himself up until he sat upright, and reached for the cup of cold water he had spotted on his nightstand. He could not drink more than half of it. But it did clear his head. That thought was getting closer, and he sensed it was something uncomfortable.

Again he thought about the morning when the twins left. He had run after them, climbed down the tree faster than he would ever have thought was possible. Or sensible, for that matter. Then he had stood on a street edged with chestnut trees and stared at the barely visible imprints of elven feet in the snow, leading away and down the main street. Somehow he had known it was too late to catch up with them - or maybe he just knew it would not matter. They had made up their minds, and so had he. They would go. He would stay. But he felt as if he had lost something important.

"This is great," he had said, his voice small in the silence of the falling snow. "Great. They're gone. They've left. That's fine."

So why did he feel so empty?

Somehow imagining them out on the roads, free, was even more painful than hearing them talking about it. It had been one thing to turn down their offer when the possibility was still within his reach. It was another thing to realise he had actually lost it.

A day and a night - that was how long Elladan and Elrohir had stayed in Minas Tirith before they set off again. To the south, they had said, though not for very long; then they would turn back to the north, to lands they knew and loved. Truth to be told Aragorn should have known they would leave that night - he had seen the signs before, and he knew how to read them. The evening before the twins had mentioned more than once that they would not stay for very long, that they had things to do and places to see, and if Aragorn had remembered the days he lived in Imladris, he would have known what that meant. Long ago it had been a sort of code. Both the twins Aragorn had come and gone so often there would have been more farewells than anyone could stand, and so they often left in the middle of the night. But not without a word. The evening before they would talk about leaving, without saying when, but meaning they would do it tonight; it had started out as something unconscious, and turned into a sort of ritual. It was a way of saying: I will be gone when you wake up, just so you know, but let's not talk about it.

But Aragorn had forgotten that.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and rose slowly, leaning to the bedpost. Suddenly he felt restless. All these weeks and months that had passed without him doing anything! He was not usually the kind of man who sat still and waited for something to happen: if he had been that kind of man, he would not be king of Gondor. There was nothing as frustrating as not knowing what to do. But these past months, he had done nothing.

And now? Now he did not know what to do.

Just then, the thought that had been forming inside his head became suddenly clear. Look at you, it said. First you faint, then you sleep for hours in the middle of the day. You cannot go on like this anymore. If you have been falling, then you have reached them bottom now. From here you have to go on in another way. You have to solve this.

Aragorn took a deep breath and nodded to himself. Then he walked across the room, trying the strength of his legs, and stood a moment by one of the windows and looked out. The sun was sinking behind Mount Mindolluin, leaving behind a velvet blue sky and the first pale stars. Shadow was creeping out of the corners of the room. The garden outside was already white and sparkling with frost.

If the twins had come back, would he have followed them? As he stood in the darkening Houses of Healing with his forehead against the cold window-glass, he doubted it. He had never regretted his decision - he had only hated that he had to make it. Maybe he wanted someone to come and force him to change his mind.

And now?

Aragorn wrapped his arms around his lean body. He was still dressed in the velvet tunic and trousers he had worn that morning, but someone had taken off his shoes and the long, woolen cloak, and the citadel was cold in winter. He felt lonely, abandoned. Empty.

Tired.

He watched his breath as it steamed the glass up, so that the view of the garden outside faded into a dark blur, with the last red rays of sunlight shimmering between the velvet blue that was the sky and the pitch black mass that was Mount Mindolluin. He closed his eyes and wondered if he would be able to sleep tonight. He wanted it more than anything else in the world.

He had to do something, but he had no idea what. And he feared it would be too painful or too difficult for him to even try.

Despite everything else, Aragorn did sleep. He woke up once while the room was still dark, to see Arwen slumped in a chair beside him, moonlight glowing in her hair, eyes half closed with exhaustion. Aragorn smiled to himself, rolled over to the side and fell asleep again.

The next morning he told Master Ninquon he felt well enough to leave the Houses of Healing, maybe after breakfast. Arwen looked much more tired than he was. Aragorn knew, from his own experience, that nights watching by somebody's bedside seldom gave very much sleep. Another thing to add to the list of things he owed her. But he would tell her everything, as soon as he had worked up enough courage.

They woke up almost at the same time, when the morning sun lit up the garden outside and trickled into the room. The day promised to be even more splendid than the one before - all the snow had fallen off the trees, and water rose from the ground in a thin shimmering haze - and Master Ninquon personally brought them breakfast on the verandah.

"But I would not mind if you stayed another day," he said, sounding as though it wasn't important at him at all, but with a sideways glance at Aragorn to see his reaction. "Just in case."

"Thank you, Ninquon, but I don't believe that's necessary," Aragorn said, blinking towards the sun. He was curled up in a chair with what felt like a dozen blankets - it was still very cold - but the sun felt warm on his face. "How are the rumours going? Do the townspeople know what happened yet?"

The healer hesitated, then decided to let the subject of Aragorn's convalescence drop. "There are a lot of theories. One of my assistants visited a woman in the fourth level, and she told him she had heard you were dying."

"That I was dying?"

Arwen choked on her tea, laughing too hard to swallow.

"Goodness," Aragorn sighed, rubbing her back, "and rumours have a tendency to get worse, haven't they? By lunch today they'll think I was assassinated."

"And in the afternoon that you were eaten by demons," master Ninquon smiled.

"And not long after that," Arwen said as soon as she could breathe properly again, "Sauron has returned."

The name made the three of them a bit startled and they fell silent, then laughed it away. Arwen put her teacup down and said: "Seriously spoken, I don't think it will be that bad. It seems to me the townspeople has more common sense than those of the citadel. Like counsellor Idhren. I don't know what he wanted to achieve with fawning over you like that yesterday, but it must have been something."

"You don't say," Aragorn replied with a wry smile. "I wonder when he'll be around again. Don't let him in when he is, Ninquon."

"I don't know if he dares to come," Arwen said, with the sort of mischievous smile that made her eyes glow. "Éowyn told him off yesterday because he wouldn't leave anyone alone - he kept following after Faramir. You know how she is when she is angry. Idhren looked like he thought she'd kill him."

And counsellor Idhren actually stayed away for the rest of that day. Instead lord Cambeleg, who lived at the citadel in periods while trying to marry off his children with some of the other young nobles living there, sent no less than three pages down to the Houses of Healing with the message that he desired to meet the King. Aragorn denied them all, and he did not go back to the citadel.

He felt well, but if he went back, people would expect him to pay them as much attention as he would do otherwise. Aragorn was seldom heaped with work, especially not in winter - sometimes he had to arrange for inspections of the citadel's supplies, or for a pack of hungry wolves to be dealt with, or see to the upkeep of the roads, but that was all. But then there were emissaries from Esgaroth, Harad or Rohan who who came with greetings from their kings, greetings that took several hours to say and included at least three audiences; merchants who wanted to negotiate a few coin's advantage to prices that had been settled years ago; noblemen who wanted him to solve their petty squabbles, or who lived at the citadel for a couple of months or a year and wanted nothing else than gain influence - all stupid, unimportant things that took far too much of his time. If King Elessar was well enough to go through the cloth supplies with master Tawarbênn, then he must be well enough to dine with lord Rafthir and his wife while they tried to marry off their newborn daughter to his surely-soon-to-come son.

So instead he stayed where he was, content to sit on the verandah and watch winter drip and trickle and melt away beneath the mild fingers of the spring sun. The healers did not ask when he was going to leave, and Aragorn did not mention it. It was the first time in months he'd had time simply to rest. If only he could figure out how to heal his deeper wounds.

Aragorn spent two more days behind the white stone walls of the Houses of Healing. On the third morning, cold but sunny with very little wind, a servant knocked shyly on the frame of the open door and said that a horse had arrived with two riders.

"Master Ninquon told me to tell your majesty they want to see you," she said. "I don't know who they are, though."

Aragorn, who had just finished his breakfast and was about to get dressed, lifted his eyebrows in surprise. "I think I know," he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth."You can let them inside. No, wait - I'll go and meet them."

That Legolas and Gimli should arrive sooner or later was maybe something he could have foreseen. In winter, when nothing interesting at all happened, news spread quickly - the king's collapse would naturally be the subject of discussion among travellers in taverns and roadside inns all over Gondor, and those that heard the tales were always helpful when it came to spreading and improving them. Both Legolas and Gimli were intelligent enough to realise that no, Aragorn had most probably not been attacked by a dragon on the courtyard outside the citadel. But, as Gimli said: "When we heard from Emyn Arnen that you were sick, we decided there might be some grain of truth in all the lies." Emyn Arnen was where Faramir and Éowyn lived when they were not in Minas Tirith, and the place where men lived nearest the elvish settlement. Apart from the occasional traveler (either lost or unusually brave) Legolas and his elves got almost all their news from there.

Aragorn met his friends just outside the door to the Houses of Healing, where Gimli impatiently waited while Legolas gave instructions to a stableboy about how to take proper care of his beloved Arod. A thin layer of snow covered the street, though where the sun warmed it it was already melting; winter was as reluctant to let go of Gondor as Legolas was to let go of his horse. When Aragorn saw them, their breath coming as white puffs and their faces blushing from the cold, his smile broadened. At least their friendship had not changed when almost everything else had.

When Legolas caught sight of Aragorn, his eyes narrowed.

"Gimli," he said gravely, "am I wrong, or is that Aragorn?"

Gimli lifted an eyebrow. "Yes, Legolas, that seems to be Aragorn."

"Then why is he in the Houses of Healing but not drugged, tied up or too badly wounded to actually move?"

At this Aragorn burst out laughing, walked over the wet snow and hugged the elf tightly.

"I will explain," he promised. "As soon as we have gotten inside. Would you like to eat something? Do you need to rest?"

"Do you need to rest?" Legolas repeated, as if it were the most ridiculous question he had ever heard. "What do you think we are, Men? If anyone here needs to rest, it should be you." Now he eyed Aragorn with a slightly anxious expression. "You do look a bit tired."

"I've been worse."

"We were a bit worried," Gimli said, when Aragorn knelt down to embrace him. "And when we came to the citadel and were told you were here we were even more worried. You'd better have a good explanation."

"A very good explanation," Legolas agreed.

"I have one," Aragorn said, "and if you two keep quiet for a moment I may even have time to share it."

Together they went back inside and sat down on the verandah where Aragorn had spent his days in the Houses of Healing, covered in blankets. A few white clouds were slowly sailing over the sky along with the swallows, and the day before the hedges that grew by the wall had grown their first leaves. Aragorn fidgeted as if the wooden stair where they sat was not comfortable enough, but truth was the feeling of spring made him even more restless. Everything inside him told him that it was time to leave. Spring was a time for long journeys.

"I fainted," he said, "because I had not slept enough. And then I stayed here because I wanted some privacy. It's not a sign of weakness, Legolas, I rather think it's a sign of maturity."

"I have never said it's a sign of weakness."

"No, but you wanted to. There's not much more I can say than that. It wasn't anything serious."

"And why hadn't you been sleeping?"

Aragorn shrugged. That was not exactly like saying he did not know, so it was not exactly a lie. Legolas looked at him in a way that clearly said he would not let the subject go that easily.

Aragorn looked away. He watched a fly - one of the first - crawling over the floorboards. He hesitated.

"I can't explain," he said, and knew that his friends would be even more intrigued by that reply. But it was true - he did not know how to put words to it. And Arwen deserved to hear it first when he did.

"It's all I can say. I don't know how to explain. Actually I don't want to talk about it, it's... nothing important."

To his surprise they let him get away with that. Gimli started to talk about how he had only recently come down to Ithilien after spending the winter with his family, and Legolas told Aragorn about the settlement that was now almost finished. Aragorn let them speak, nodding here and there, adding "yes" and "indeed" and "that's so like you, elfling" where it fit. It was pleasant - only when they said something about traveling or the north or the wilderness did he flinch, and never so much they saw it.

He had planned to leave the Houses of Healing that day - but quietly, without any commotion surrounding his return to the citadel. So in the afternoon Gimli and Legolas followed him along the same way he had taken on the day he collapsed, into a narrow alley on the sixth level where there was a hidden door in the wall. It was Elrohir who had found it in the summer following Aragorn's coronation. The twins, along with Legolas and Aragorn, and with some assistance from Gimli, Éowyn, Faramir and Arwen, had made a sport out of finding every hidden passage and room in the citadel. Elladan had won, with two passages, one room (more of a cupboard, Elrohir muttered) and no less than four small compartments in Aragorn's desk. How long ago that felt, Aragorn thought as he led the way through the door, into a tunnel where a set of dusty steps led upwards into darkness. Even Arwen, usually so mature, had joined the game with eager enthusiasm; and Legolas had forgotten his dislike for small spaces when he found a room full of dusty old Dorwinion bottles. Why did they never do such things anymore?

The tunnel led to a rarely used corridor on the first floor of the citadel. Then came the risky part: they had to walk across half that floor to get to another tunnel, behind a tapestry close to the kitchen, because the passages had been built so that no one could get to the royal apartments from the city without the risk of being. The tree by the wall had been an easier way, but even if Aragorn had managed to climb it, Gimli would never make it.

Miraculously they weren't seen. The second tunnel took them from the first floor to the royal apartments on the fourth, and ended just outside Aragorn and Arwen's bedchamber. Arwen met them there. The servants knew Aragorn was coming, but neither counsellor Idhren nor lord Cambeleg nor lord Rafthir knew it yet. Aragorn looked forward to seeing their faces when he appeared in the dining hall in a couple of hours.

"So," Arwen said softly, as Legolas and Gimli left to make sure their saddlebags had been properly delivered to the guest apartments, "what are you going to do about it?"

"About what?"

She sighed. "You know what I'm talking about."

"Ah. Um... you know, spring's here, and I've had time to rest. I think I will be much better."

Arwen looked as though she doubted it, and Aragorn wondered, not for the first time, exactly how much she had understood. She knew for how long he had had trouble sleeping, but did she also know how often his eyes wandered off to gaze at the horizon when he did not think about it? Did she somehow know that his heart leaped every time he heard someone mentioning a journey? Had she noted that he avoided talking about the old days, just like Legolas avoided talking about the Sea?

That last thought made the hair at the back of his neck rise - of excitement, not fear. Legolas and his Sea-longing. If anyone would understand how Aragorn felt, it must be him.

"Aragorn?"

He had been so lost in thoughts he had completely forgotten he had been talking to Arwen. She was looking at him with an amused smile.

"Where were you?"

He smiled back. "In front of a warm fire, drinking tea. It must be time for that now, isn't it?"

"Maybe." Arwen took him by the elbow. "You'd better watch yourself, Estel, you're almost as addicted to tea as you are to those blasted leaves."

It was not until the evening that Aragorn got a chance to talk to Legolas in private. Arwen and Gimli were engaged in a game of cards while Faramir helped Éowyn write a letter to her brother - she did not have the patience to write anything longer than three sentences herself.

"Let's go for a walk," Aragorn said, and Legolas followed him out of the royal apartments. They walked down a long corridor and came to a balcony that faced north. Aragorn leaned against the railing and looked out over the City with its points of light in the darkness, the misty field beyond, glittering with snow in the faint light of the low moon.

"I need to talk to you," he said.

Legolas swung his long legs over the railing so he could sit on it with his feet dangling over the courtyard far below. "I thought so."

"Do you still long for the Sea? I mean, really long for it - so much it feels like you will be torn apart?"

Legolas bit his lip and nodded solemnly. "Every minute of the day."

"I feel so too," Aragorn said. "But for the wilderness. Or the north. I'm not quite sure which."

"For the north?"

"I want to be Strider again," Aragorn said. "I want to be a ranger. The north was my home. I want to be there again."

"Go back then."

"Don't be foolish. I can't."

There was silence for a moment. Aragorn glanced at Legolas. Despite what the elf had said, when Aragorn looked at him he did not see an elf torn apart by longing, but someone who was strong and at peace. He may have the sea-longing, but he also had something that Aragorn lacked: someone to be. Aragorn had been forced into a role. Legolas had found it and embraced it whole-heartedly.

"Elladan and Elrohir passed through Ithilien a week ago," Legolas said. W

"They said they had wanted you to come with them on a journey, but you didn't want to," Legolas went on. "And now you say you want to. What's that supposed to mean?"

"I said I can't. I want to, but I can't."

"Why not?"

"Why didn't you go with them?" Aragorn shot back. The discussion had taken a turn he did not like. He had wanted to ask Legolas how he could be so peaceful while still longing for the Sea, not be confronted with the same questions the twins had asked.

"I was waiting for Gimli," Legolas replied. "It would have been so easy to miss him out on the road, in case he took another way. But Gimli and I talked about going after them. They promised to camp somewhere near Eilenach Beacon, in Anorien, in a week or two."

"That's a strange place to camp," Aragorn said. It was not very far from Minas Tirith.

"I don't know," Legolas said and shrugged. "Maybe they're waiting for someone else to meet them there. Someone else beside Gimli and me."

Aragorn groaned. So they had not given up after all.

In the last few days he had understood something important about himself. His feelings had changed since the night he met the twins in the Queen's Garden. That night his head had told him not to go with them while his heart begged him to do it; now his head told him to go, because he would feel better, because there was no other way to be happy, because he could not deny himself that forever. But there was another part of him that was scared - maybe a very small part of him that had wanted to stay in Imladris and live a safe and comfortable life, when the rest of him wanted adventures and dangers and fame.

"What I wanted to ask you," he said, "is how you manage to be so... normal. You don't have trouble sleeping, or anything..."

"Sometimes."

"But not always," Aragorn said, and waited until Legolas had nodded before he went on: "How comes it you make it perfectly fine, and I don't? Aren't elves supposed to be more emotional than men?"

"More emotional does not mean weaker."

"I didn't say that. I just don't understand... what do you do that I don't?"

Legolas sighed, shifted position on the railing and pulled one knee to his chest. "I don't talk about the Sea. I try not to think of it. I try not to dream of it. I don't go close to it."

"But I do the same with the north, and the rangers. It doesn't help."

"Well, we're not Elrohir and Elladan - we're different. I suppose you have to do something else."

"Like what?"

Legolas sighed again. "Aren't you old enough to take care of yourself by now?"

"Apparently," Aragorn muttered, "I am not."

Legolas swung both his legs back over the railing so that he faced Aragorn. "If you can't travel like a ranger, maybe you can travel like a king. With servants and soldiers and all that. I would never do it by myself, but I guess I can stand it if you want it. We could go north, perhaps to Arnor. I haven't been there since last summer."

"If what I have heard is right we don't want to be there at any other time than summer - it's supposed to be blasted cold. But maybe we wouldn't even have to go north. Maybe I just need to leave the City."

"You think it's a good idea then?"

"You know me well enough. If you think it would help me..."

Legolas shook his head. "I have no idea, Estel. To me it sounds like a ridiculous idea. If you travel the way a king does you'll bring half the citadel with you anyway. I just can't think of anything else."

Aragorn looked over the railing again. The evening wind had turned. It brought the smells of his homeland, of wilderness and winter, across the southern fields where spring was coming. Anything that could take him there must be a good thing.

He smiled. "No, Legolas, I don't think it's ridiculous. You are right. We will travel, and we will do it like kings."

TBC

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