I despise author's notes, but I'm going to break my own rule and slap one in here. Firstly, a massive thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter; 19 reviews! I don't think I've ever had so many for one chapter! Thank you!

Secondly, I'm so, so sorry for the lateness of this chapter. Ailing laptop. Not as bad as being swept off a cliff face by a few tons of dirt into a raging river of death, but there you go. For a much fuller apology, please see my profile page.

Ghost

Chapter Eight: Thistle and Weeds

The constricting pain firing through his heart was more than his body could stand. He went down on his knees, the muck offering a shallow and mocking embrace that slathered his trousers in filth and numbed his legs with cruel cold. But for all its scorn, Aragorn did not respond to the intensity of the discomfort, because it could never touch the intensity of his agony. He didn't care. He couldn't. The grief of the others brushed at his awareness, but there was nothing he could do for them, because the terrible truth of what had just occurred left him with nothing more to give. His grey eyes could not leave the scar in the otherwise featureless slope that marked where the ledge had been, where Legolas had been. Perhaps if he stared for long enough, perhaps if he wished hard enough, he would come back.

But we've survived so much together. How can this possibly be it?

But for all his foolish longings, Aragorn was not a fool himself, and he knew with damning certainty that Legolas would not be coming back, not this time.

Everything might have ceased to continue for Aragorn, but the rest of the world did not falter in its turn; the rain continued to drive with all its spite into his face, and the river – though he would not have deemed it possible before – swelled even more, threatening to eat the cliff from under their feet. Not so far away, the incensed shrieks of the remaining Nazgûl at the failure of their cohorts viciously lashed the night to flayed ribbons … but Aragorn did not care.

Still staring at that fixed point in Legolas' fate, made tangible by the deep tear in the earthy face, the image of Legolas' fall played cruelly in his mind with greater clarity than he would be able to see the prints on his own fingers in sunlight. It was like watching Legolas' ghost swipe the meagre support from under that hulking mass of earth. He would never forget the way the elf spun his back to the collapsing wall of muck as though such an action might shield him, his head and shoulders bunching together as he shied from his own death. He would never forget the flare of intense fear in the blue eyes as they fixed with Aragorn's for the briefest of moments before they were extinguished…

Beside him, the hobbits wept openly. Aragorn dimly felt a swell of gratitude towards his dwarven companion, whose hands each braced a shaking shoulder against his own chest, offering them a support Aragorn was quite simply not capable of; his own pain was too great for him to stand, and he could find no resources within himself for the others.

-(())-

Boromir all but flung the writhing hobbit from his body as he crested the precipice, his abdomen glad to be rid of the close contact with the over-large feet. Frodo might look like there was not an awful lot of fight to him, but those feet were powerful, and by the Valar he had put them to good use. Boromir felt a brief hit of vertigo at the wonderful solidity of the earth under him, and his body struggled momentarily to adjust to it. But there was no time to rest following the trial up the near-vertical incline, or to sooth fresh bruises from lashing feet…

Frodo equally felt the dizzying effects of solid ground, but his burning need to know overpowered his stomach and drove him to his feet. He stumbled through the wave of nausea to Sam's side, all but blanking his rescuer. His loyal companion offered him no greeting, his full attention taken by what lay over the edge. When Frodo looked down through the driving rain and inky blackness himself, the totality of the devastation twisted his gut more painfully than he was sure any fit of sickness ever could...

The entire face was swept clean, nothing but a blank black sheet of more heavily compacted earth left to stare expressionlessly across the water at what remained of the Fellowship. It was completely and utterly devoid of any evidence that minutes prior, five servants of the Dark Lord had met their match in the unbending determination of one elf. They were gone, all six of them ... but what sickened Frodo beyond anything he could stand was that he knew it was only a temporary lull in the pursuit, no more than that. He had witnessed himself – seemingly a lifetime ago – the Nine swept away by the enchanted waters of the Bruinen. Even after falling foul of a river blessed with elvish magic, their evil had not been vanquished. He knew they would return again.

But Legolas would not be coming back. What had happened to him was more final and altogether too consuming. He was simply gone, swept into the raging embrace of the river to share the same fate as his foes.

So much death. Frodo couldn't take any more of this, it was too much, all too much ... first Gandalf, and then a handful of weeks later, Legolas. Both of them immortal figures whose lives collectively amassed to thousands of years. And they were both gone. They weren't on a quest to eliminate evil anymore, not in Frodo's view … calling it a fool's errand was overgenerous, even insulting. And it was wasting lives.

But Legolas should not be dead. The thought struck him with the force of a smith's hammer. He needn't have died, he could have been alright. He should be standing with them now, an easy and self-satisfied grin on his face at his own accomplishment, the same expression Frodo had seen him wear when he sparred with Aragorn and emerged the victor. It could have been prevented. They were both gone on his behalf … Legolas' action was entirely for Frodo's benefit, and because of him, he was dead. Anger and guilt melded themselves together in his chest until the two were indistinguishable from each other, growing and poisoning him until reason cowed into some dark corner.

"Why did you do that?" Frodo demanded, spinning on the Gondorian as he was rising from the mud. His incomprehension blurred his perception of the situation. To him, Boromir was not a saviour, but an executioner, a vile betrayer. "We could have helped him! He shouldn't have died! He shouldn't have died!"

"And what would you have had me do?" Boromir retorted, himself made angry by the weight of Frodo's accusative tone. "Would you have had me deliver you and the Ring to their clutches? Is that what you wanted?"

"We shouldn't have just left him!" Frodo shot back. "How could you do that to him?"

Boromir picked up his mud-caked shield, flinging it over his shoulder with little regard for the dirt; he was that covered himself it hardly mattered if he ruined his clothes any further. He had to act, and now ... the elf had afforded him the greatest opportunity he had ever been given, and he would take it with both hands.

They needed to leave, and quickly.

-(())-

Gimli's affiliation with Legolas had been brief. Whilst they had still verbally sparred with each other and more often than not gotten on each other's wick, there had been a growing understanding there, and the dwarf even dared to think there had been a level between them that they might have called friendship, if either of them had cared to look at it closely enough. The difference between their respected races was something they were edging towards overcoming … not that the rock-headedness of the elf had ever made it a very easy transition. He was forced to admit to himself that neither did he.

How he regretted that now.

But still, he knew that the sorrow he felt – whilst strong – did not hold a flicker of light to what Aragorn had to be going through. Whilst Gimli's knowledge of man and elf had been negligible at best, it had been clear right from the very beginning of this damnable journey that a long history of friendship bound their course together, right from Legolas' defensive stand at the Council, to his apparent foolhardiness with regards to Boromir's painfully obvious resentment of Aragorn's identity. As Gimli cradled the two hobbits through their own heartache, he never stopped watching the rightful King of Men kneeling in the muck to his own grief. Aragorn didn't move. What little was visible of his face showed a broken shadow of their leader, a man so deeply entrenched in raw pain he was beyond consoling, beyond tears. To see such a quietly strong and determined character crippled by loss was a tragedy in itself, and Gimli could only pray that Aragorn would find his way back to them in the end…

Snatches of an argument assailed his ears when the wind's direction cared to twist momentarily from the south bank. Gimli took his attention and turned its focus on the figures at the other side. He could just see their three remaining companions at the edge of the much higher cliff. While Sam seemed to be ignoring what the other two were doing by mirroring Aragorn's behaviour and staring down at where Legolas had made his final stand, Frodo and Boromir were apparently quarrelling beside him.

"Here! What goes on there?"

Gimli's shout seemed to touch something in Aragorn, the part that was still their leader and defender. The ranger prised his eyes away from where such a large part of his life had died, and settled on the situation playing out across the water.

-(())-

"I did it because my oath is toyou and the Ring, not to Legolas, or anyone else on this knew that; don't shame his memory by dismissing his sacrifice." Boromir's gaze flitted across the ravine and locked unerringly with the man he had once grudgingly accepted as leader.

But not any more…

He tore his eyes away, breaking the contact, severing the tenuous link they both shared with a foolish past cause he should never have acquiesced to in the first place. He could not stand the stricken grief-torn weakness in those eyes, no more than he could stomach their open and shameless plea to him.

"We have to leave. Now."

Neither of them moved to his command. Sam was apparently so bewildered by what had occurred that he did not care to wipe the water and filth from his eyes, his lips slightly parted in a frozen expression of disbelief. Boromir doubted that the hobbit had actually heard him. But Frodo had heard him, loud and clear. The hobbit's hurtfully disgusted stare spoke more clearly of his refusal to follow Boromir's command than his mouth ever could … but that look of refusal quickly switched to confusion then dismay as the man strode decisively over to him.

"Boromir, what – no!" For the second time that night, Boromir hoisted Frodo bodily and swung him over his broad shoulder like he was a badly behaved child, paying absolutely no heed to his protesting kicks and shouts. He heard Gimli calling to him across the clamouring of the storm and bawling of the raging waters below, but he wouldn't raise his eyes to them, not now, and never again. The Fellowship was over, either dead or hopelessly split, and he was done with it. He spun Sam bodily by the shoulder, forcing him to move after him as he carried his fighting master away from the cries of the others, away from those steel eyes and their relentless begging.

This was right.

There was no other way.

-(())-

Aragorn watched as Boromir disappeared into the storm. For all Gimli's panicked calling and Merry and Pippin's frantic shouts to their cousin and friend, only a whisper from the past in his mind's ear got through to him… "Boromir's heart yearns to save his people: his will is noble and true, but his desperation for them is keener than his loyalty to us, and the Ring knows it has found a strong tool in him. It perceives us as a threat to its return to Sauron's hand, and it will not rest until it sees us all destroyed. Our Fellowship will falter to its will, no matter how hard we try to keep it together. Something is coming for us in the night, Estel, and I fear we do not have the combined strength to repel it."

He recalled the chill in his core when those condemning words were originally uttered, and they all but choked him now. Legolas had known all along that something like this would happen. His uncannily accurate anticipation of Boromir's deceit made Aragorn's own actions the greatest betrayal to his elven friend. He had been warned and done nothing, nothing, handing Boromir the opportunity with a fool's open trust. He should have gone across with Frodo, it should always have been him, it should always have been him.

And Legolas had paid the ultimate price for his stupidity.

Ai, Legolas. What have I done to you? What have I done?

"…We can't let them go! Aragorn!"

"Is there a crossing place?"

"Where's Boromir taking them? Are they going to meet with us somewhere?"

"How are we going to find them?"

The constant barrage of questions battered him as relentlessly as the rain. The naïve questions of the hobbits did not mix well with Gimli's more knowing silence. The dwarf's quiet fury at their betrayal was as palpable as the storm. Aragorn could not bring forth such raging emotion on his part, finding only a disappointed resignation and unbending shame: disappointment in the weakness of Boromir's heart, and shame at his own failure of trust, not just Legolas', but the Fellowship entire, particularly Frodo and Sam. Shame that he had heard but not listened, that this betrayal was something he could have prevented had he heeded the warning…

It would be an insult to his fallen friend to linger here, kneeling in the mud in a state of fixed inaction, letting what Legolas had died for slip away from Aragorn's control.

Unsteadily, Aragorn found his feet, dirt plastered to his legs like a dense carpet of leaches, sapping the last vestiges of feeling from his skin and making him ache to the bones with cold. He could feel their eyes on him, and he could feel their expectation of him to arrive at some solution to their problem, their anticipation of his words stilling their own tongues. And why shouldn't they? Aragorn was their appointed leader, and he had an obligation to them that simply had to be greater than his own pain. With a steadying breath, he fought to quell the paralysing pain in his own heart and focus his strength. They needed him.

Aragorn faced his diminished company, but quickly diverted his gaze past Gimli's shoulder, because the pity he saw in each face jolted harshly at his quivering resolve. "We will find a means of crossing," he announced, forcing his tone to be authoritative and filled with a strength he did not feel. "We've a greater chance of fording the river if we head downstream. Once we're across, we can come back and find their tracks, if this damn storm does not wash them away." With that he strode away from them, following the snaking river under the pretence that the waters might indeed either broaden and offer a safer means of fording, or that there might be a bridge of sorts. Aragorn did not expect to ever find the trail of the others, or catch them up. He did not expect them to even successfully find a safe fording place in a river so enraged any day soon. In truth, he followed his heart, hoping against hope that he might yet recover the body of a friend, because only in finding him and laying him to rest could he in part pay his immeasurable dept to him, and say goodbye.