Theoden had never been one to look down on the dwarven race. He had more than a little admiration for their skills in mining and metalwork, and thought of them as an honourable people. However, he had never fully appreciated the terror they could invoke in an enemy. Never, that is, until he was faced by a furious dwarf warrior brandishing an extremely lethal looking axe.

"A spy?" Gimli bellowed, his face bright red beneath his beard. Aragorn had followed the dwarf back into the hall, and while he was yet to draw a weapon, Gandalf suspected that this restraint would not last long. While the heir to the throne of Gondor had learnt much diplomacy over the years, he would instantly forget all this tutelage if one of his friends was threatened. Gimli, the wizard suspected, had never mastered diplomacy in the first place, and now seemed eminently willing to behead the King of Rohan then and there.

"Gimli, lower your axe" Gandalf said, trying to maintain a reasonable tone of voice. "This is a misunderstanding, nothing more." He looked at Aragorn as he spoke, willing the man to understand that there was more to this than a prejudiced king. Both Theoden and Gimli looked ready to disagree, Gimli if possible clutching his axe even tighter, but Gandalf spoke before they could, requesting that both Gimli and Aragorn go to Legolas, and assure him that the current confusion would soon be sorted out. The dwarf looked reluctant, but Aragorn beckoned him out, shooting Gandalf a look that said there had better be a good reason for this. When the two warriors had left the hall, Gimli muttering crossly every step of the way, Gandalf was able to turn his attention back to Theoden.

"It is a misunderstanding, is it not, my old friend? This isn't really about the elf, is it?"

Theoden drew in a breath as if to argue, but then looking at Gandalf, he slowly shook his head. "When Wormtongue arrived at Edoras" he said, speaking slowly and wearily, "everything he said and did made such sense. He made me believe that if I trusted him, it would be alright. My people would be safe. But they weren't."

"It was Saruman who made you trust Wormtongue, not your own judgement" Gandalf said. "Saruman is now gone from your mind, and Worntongue has fled from Rohan. Your people are safe, for now, because of your actions."

"Safe?" cried Theoden, looking anguished. "How am I to tell the wives, the mothers, the children of the fallen that we are now safe? How many thousands of my people died last night, because I followed the advice of more strangers? And how many died because the elf could not stop the wall being breached?"

"Theoden, if you had not fought Helm's Deep would have been breached in a matter of minutes, and you would have no people left today" said Gandalf urgently. He understood that the king was grieving, and that the fear Saruman had inflicted would take time to dissipate, but he had to make Theoden realise that the battle had been the fault of the enemy, not those who had fought for Rohan.

"If Legolas could not prevent the explosion, nobody could. He has fought the Shadow for longer than you have lived – "

"Exactly!" Theoden interrupted. "Why is he not fighting the enemy in his own home? Why would he come here and fight for strangers, unless he had some ulterior motive?"

"If this evil is not stopped, it will overrun Mirkwood just as surely as it will overrun the world of Men. The elf is fighting the same enemy whether he is here or not" said Gandalf impatiently. While he appreciated Theoden's fear, his illogical arguments were impossible to reason with, and the wizard suspected that his time was limited before he once again had a furious dwarf and man to deal with, as well as an irrational king.

The guard outside Gandalf's room shifted as Aragorn and Gimli approached, but wisely made no move to stop them entering. Gimli marched into the room with the air of someone who has been silent for far too long. "It's a stupid mistake, laddie, that's all it is. For an over-tall pointy-ear you're not a bad fighter, and if that idiot of a king does not realise that soon I'll go and knock some sense into what's left of his brain! A spy, indeed? What was he even thinking? I'll soon show him – "

"Why not?" The quietly voiced question stopped Gimli mid-rant, and a look of confusion replaced the anger in his face. But it was Aragorn who spoke first. "What do you mean, Legolas?"

"Why shouldn't he think I'm a spy," the elf replied, getting up from where he had been perched on the windowsill and starting to pace agitatedly around the room. "I arrive here, a stranger to his lands, and stand by and do nothing while his fortress is blown up!"

"Legolas, stop this!" said Aragorn forcefully. "You could not have done any more than you did. I was there, I saw you trying to bring the orc down."

"So you saw that I did not succeed! If I'd done something differently, maybe aimed for an eye rather than the heart, perhaps the orc would have fallen. Maybe – "

"And if that orc had been killed another would have taken its place! There was nothing you could have done about it, save continue to fight when the wall was breached, which you did. You have nothing to blame yourself for."

Gimli had been uncharacteristically silent throughout this exchange, but now he moved further into the room, trying to force the elf into eye contact. "He's right" he said, "there's nothing more you or any of us could have done. When Theoden comes to his senses he'll see that."

Legolas was silent for a moment, before eventually nodding slightly, and returning to the windowsill. He still looked far from happy, but the guilt and self-doubt in his eyes had lessened. Aragorn breathed a sigh of relief inwardly; through all the years he'd known Legolas, the elf had been annoyingly quick to blame himself for anything that did not go to plan. He suspected that Legolas would continue to berate himself for the less than fatal shot for many years, but if he knew that he could not have prevented the explosion, that was enough for now.

Aragorn now just had to hope that Gandalf could make Theoden see sense, and the sooner the better – Gimli was once again caressing his axe ominously.