"How did she die?"

Aragorn had been about to tell Pippin that he should think before he spoke, but Legolas's hand on his arm made him turn to the elf, who wore a sad smile.

"Do not be angry on my behalf, Estel. If I am not angry with Pippin, you shouldn't be, considering it wasn't even you he asked."

Aragorn took a deep breath and nodded, relaxing again and leaning backwards on his hands. Legolas turned back to Pippin.

"Are you sure you want to know?" he said, a smile on his face that contrasted sharply with the sorrow in his eyes. "It is not a happy story."

Pippin nodded slowly after thinking about it for a minute.

"Maybe if we know, we can help you feel better, Mister Legolas!" said Pippin, and Legolas's smile grew a little.

"I think at this point, I am beyond help," he said. "But thank you."

There was a pause as Legolas thought about where to begin.

"Well…to put it simply, we were captured, my mother and I, when I was very young, equivalent to, perhaps…a four, maybe five year old human. We were in the forest, which was not reached by the darkness at the time, and we were captured by a group of men.

"We were there for almost four months, and they hurt her every day…" he took a deep breath, closing his eyes and trying to remain calm. "And occasionally they would bring me, to hurt me, knowing that it would affect her more to hear her son's screams than her own."

The hobbits all stared at him in horror, and he swallowed thickly.

"Those were some of the most fearful days of my life. But she did not tell them anything of our kingdom. She could not. She was their Queen, she could not betray them. We did not know, but there was a Mirkwood elf, disguised within the humans. He left too late to get help, however.

"It was a day, almost four months after we captured that I unintentionally baited the man, and I told him that if he would fight my mother in a fair situation, she would win. He agreed to fight her, and said I was the prize for the winner. Normally Nana probably would have won, but she had four months' worth of torture wounds on her body. He killed her. I watched her die."

Now the hobbits were openly gaping, and Boromir was wide-eyed, his hand over his mouth. Gimli was also staring openly at the elf, and his eyes were swarming with emotion. Gandalf and Aragorn, who had already heard the story, still looked saddened, and Aragorn came up next to his friend and put his arm around his shoulder in support. Legolas leaned into the ranger, still feeling cold and appreciating the warmth that came from the human.

"A day later my father and his soldiers raided the men's base, brought there by the elf that had been hiding among the men, and they found me. I was so confused, I didn't know where my mother had gone…elves weren't supposed to die. We went home, but my father was so caught up in his own grief he spent two weeks all alone in his room. I don't know exactly what happened to him during that time, but someone had to run the kingdom while he was absent."

Boromir sputtered, staring at the elf before him in newfound respect and awe. He had thought of him as a regular elf before, stronger than any man because of the bodies they were given, but there was apparently an unbelievably strong and resistant spirit within the prince, as well.

"Don't tell me it was you?" said Gimli, also looking amazed and increasingly guilty. "No one that young can take over the responsibilities of a king! Not even for a day!"

"It was me," Legolas said. "And I did. But when my father finally came out of his self-pity, I was already run to the ground, and I was ready to fade. So I went into the woods and came very close to doing so. He found me just in time and managed to convince to convince me to keep living, somehow."

Telling the story and having to endure all the images that came in the back of his mind in the process had exhausted Legolas, and he leaned even further into the ranger, who put his arms around him, noticing that his body was still freezing.

"You can go to sleep, Legolas," said Aragorn, and Legolas did just that, his eyes closing and his breathing deepening. Aragorn gasped at the sight of the elf's closed eyes, but said nothing. Gandalf frowned in worry. Aragorn ran his fingers absentmindedly through the elf's silky hair as he looked at the rest of the Fellowship.

Merry and Pippin and Sam were crying, and Frodo had tears building in his eyes as well. Boromir and Gimli were stubbornly refusing to cry, but even they had tears in their eyes even as they denied them permission to fall. They all stared at the pale, sleeping elf before them, and they could not draw their eyes away, knowing that behind the happy and exuberant soul was a wall of unbreakable strength and will.

"Go to sleep, everyone," said Gandalf, drawing their attention away from the elf. "I will take the first watch."

Everyone nodded reluctantly, lying down and preparing to sleep. Soon gentle snores were heard around the camp, and Gandalf sat and looked out into the darkness, the reflection of the flames of the fire dancing in his eyes.

O:o:O

The next morning, Merry was supposed to be on watch, but he wasn't. He was sleeping soundly, leaning against a rock. So Legolas was the first one to awaken.

Seeing the sleeping hobbit, Legolas climbed into the tree above him and grabbed a pinecone, throwing it gently so it would hit him in the back. There was no mischievous spark in his eyes as he did it, though, he only did it because he wanted to wake Merry and this was the best was to do it without being seen.

Merry awoke with a start, and Legolas saw this and gave a small smile, beginning to weave his way soundlessly through the trees. His keen eyes had seen a lake about a league away, and he wished to bathe. He was still cold, but he knew going in the probably freezing water wouldn't make it any worse, and he felt dirty, having not had time to wash since they left Rivendell almost two or three weeks ago.

Arriving at the lake, he undressed quickly and eased his way into the water, biting the inside of his cheek at the coldness. How did men and other races have the strength to endure this feeling of freezing all winter and every time the temperature dropped?

He dunked his head into the water and gasped at the freezing temperature of the water, but having his head under the water made him feel warmer for some reason, so he did it again, this time staying under for a few minutes, which wasn't a lot for an elf, and he rubbed at his hair, trying to get the grit out of it that resulted from the toils of the travelling.

Some may call him prissy or overly self-conscious about dirt, but he just liked it better when he was clean, if he could choose. He could deal with dirt if he had to, and the discomfort of the grime that grew on one's skin over time, but he'd rather not.

After thoroughly rubbing down his entire body to get the dirt off, he stepped out of the water and pulled on his leggings. As he reached for his undershirt and tunic, however, a voice interrupted him.

"Mister Legolas?"

He whipped around pieces of his wet hair clinging to his face. Sam and Frodo were there, and they were staring at him. Well, more specifically, they were staring at his back, and the scars there.

Sam came up to him, staring wide-eyed at the whip marks that ran all the way down his back. Legolas sighed. Could he not have ten minutes to himself?

"I thought…I thought elven scars faded?" said Frodo, just as stunned.

"Not poisoned ones," Legolas said curtly, pulling on his blue shirt and buttoning it deftly before pulling his tunic over his head. "Not when the whip has a poison to make it so the wound heals five times as slowly. Scars that would normally take a thousand years to heal will take five thousand, and it has been less than three millennia since I got them."

Sam and Frodo didn't know what to be surprised about, Legolas's age or the scars on his back that they had just discovered. Frodo coughed nervously.

"Um, we just came to get you for breakfast."

Legolas shook his head.

"I'm not hungry. But thank you."

The two hobbits nodded, and they began the trek back to camp, wondering at the sudden distance the elf had put between himself and them.

A/N: No cliffie this time.

For more on Legolas's mother's death, see "Caught" and "Hello". Both go into a little more detail, and in "Caught" Legolas actually relives the whole thing.

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