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Chapter Text

One would suppose, last night had taught Arwen to fear silence.

For too long, her beloved partner and she had been confronted with the complete helplessness of being cut off from the outside world in the cruel hours of the White Tower Poisoning that had only just ended. In the foreseeable future, Arwen would definitely not find the inner peace that especially the absence of every outside stimulation had often provided her with in the past. When at some point, she had only been able to cower beside Aragorn on the floor of his bedroom chambers and hope for rescue, with heavily armed enemies outside of barricaded doors and windows, his silence had been the worst.

That and the complete hopelessness in Aragorn's eyes after the Stewardaides had injured him with a special blade. A man like the King of Gondor and Arnor usually faced every challenge no matter how big. But when Aragorn had realized, a rare poison was flowing in his veins, something in him had broken. He'd thought to have lost the fight before it had even begun.

And Arwen had soon run out of words to convince him otherwise.

Still not being able to do anything more than sitting around inactively in an office in the Houses of Healing after having being freed, in the company of one of Aragorn's old Ring Companions from the war, while the healers had feverishly tried to find out anything about the poison, hadn't exactly made her any more talkative.

No one could find comfort in such a situation. Not when a whole group of skilled craftsmen was trying in vain to stabilize their leader's condition just a few rooms apart.

Now that morning was starting to break and they finally let Arwen inside that certain room though – probably only by order of one of the best healers in these realms except for Aragorn himself, who had had to be dragged back to the city by her collar first, after a suicide mission in North Ithilien –, she almost yearned for a little more quietness.

Here at Aragorn's sickbed, she was ceaselessly surrounded by healers and nurses instead who were provoking unnecessary discussions. That was almost worse than the uncertainty before.

The likeliest antidote that the scientists had discovered by now, not least thanks to the help of Erestor, Arwen's old friend from Imladris, was fortunately not as rare as the poison itself, but it was made up of many different ingredients. If one of them was missing or was being of lower quality, it made the whole mixture unusable. A few herbs had first had to be collected in the area around Minas Tirith, others hadn't been available in the necessary quantity. Therefore, even more, precious time had been wasted, since to top it all, the remedy had had to brew over the fire for a long while.

It was only by the help of strengthening potions that the healer had somehow been able to keep the King away from that dangerous line, the crossing of which would have had his heart stop.

Until that point, they all had still hoped that Aragorn would immediately recover after being given the antidote. It was too late for such an easy victory though. Now, no one could do anything anymore but pouring water down Aragorn's throat that his body, tortured by a high fever, urgently needed.

Which was another reason why Arwen couldn't be even a little happy that she could at least be by her beloved's side now. They had basically given up hope, that was all. Since not only Tarisilya but probably everyone at the court knew by now that she had been with the King on the devastating night of the attack, they didn't want to deny Arwen being with him in what was possibly his last hours.

That a few of the Stewardaides responsible for this were dead, was no triumph. This battle was far from over, not here and not out there in Nord Ithilien where a few members of Arwen's folk were being threatened by these fanatic enemies of the King as well, her best elvish friend among them.

And still, Arwen couldn't do anything but clumsily hold Aragorn's hand, tensely watching every feverish spasm that had him toss and turn, the nightmares that tortured his mind and had his eyes twitch under his lids. She silently stared at the pale, sweat-covered face of the man that she was being officially betrothed to since last night by mannish standards as well, and prayed to the Valar. She only stirred to impatiently wipe her eyes because tears were the last thing that would change anything right now, or when she gave Aragorn something to drink. When she brushed back his stringy, dark curls or raised his hand to her lips to breathe a kiss to it.

There was no doubt, this day would be just as long as the prior night, and her strength was beginning to fade.

If they were all being very unlucky, this catastrophe wouldn't just destroy the living symbol of Men of their new peace after all the terrors of war. Legolas' advisor Thondrar, too, who had been badly wounded by a warg in the course of the crisis at Cair Andros, had been brought into this room, and his condition was just as critical. That fact hurt especially Arwen badly, who had seen this elf snap the necks of aggressive wolves with his bare hands in the past, and had learned from him how to pierce an orc's carotid with an arrow even on horseback, in full gallop.

Legolas' wife had insisted on having both patients in here to be able to look after them at the same time. Again and again, Tarisilya raised her voice to snap at someone to bring her something, to do something entirely different, to work faster, or to just leave their post so she could take their place.

Though she knew that it was unfair, Arwen just wanted every single one of these people to be as far away from here as possible. She would probably have personally chased everyone away who wasn't being of any use right now if she hadn't felt petrified, unable to even turn her head to regard Tarisilya with icy glances.

Arwen would cling to hope until the last second but the situation's despair was choking her. Should the poison indeed already have created too much havoc in Aragorn's body, she wanted at least to be able to say a quiet good-bye. Maybe he would be able to hear what she wanted to murmur in his ear and leave these realms with her endless love in his soul. That was something she wanted to do without having to mind any rules of decency, without complete strangers standing beside her, men who, at most, had spotted Aragorn from a distance so far. And without her words being known in the whole city shortly afterward.

At this point though, she couldn't admit it to herself yet that the time for that had come. For the moment, she had to put up with the hustle around the two of them.

Only when Tarisilya's nagging sounded through the room repeatedly within just a minute, Arwen yanked her head around. "Can you be quiet? If you want to keep on being rude to people, please get Thondrar to another room. If you don’t plan to take care of Aragorn anyway, leave him in peace!"

Sure, Tarisilya probably couldn't do anything for Aragorn either right now; the outburst wasn't fully justified. The other she-elf had made a big sacrifice by personally creating the antidote. Precious time that would maybe cost Thondrar his life and definitely prevent his full recovery.

Still, Tarisilya did deserve Arwen's anger; after all, she had sneaked out of the city in secret yesterday to get to Cair Andros. This thing had only happened to Thondrar because he had had to come to help Tarisilya during that highly risky Waterfall Rescue there, already being injured himself. Tarisilya had set all of Arwen's warnings at naught and then hadn't immediately been there when she had been needed here so urgently, that was just how it was.

Maybe it would have been better for them to talk about this, but Tarisilya hardly looked up from her work. She stood by her decision. Thondrar and she had not only saved Legolas but also an elf from the settlement along with her newborn child. But the price had been high.

When the other she-elf took her hands off Thondrar's grotesquely swollen upper arm, Arwen startled as she had to fear, it might indeed already have happened that one of the patients hadn't made it. Too bitter this development would have been, too big the fear that it wouldn't take long now for the second one to draw his last breath as well.

But it was tension, too, that had her recoil. Just one wrong word from Tarisilya's lips would be enough to have Arwen lose it at last. And that would waste the last of her mental energy today that she needed to save, to be able to keep on sitting here.

To her relief, Tarisilya only instructed one of the healers to change the bandages on the brave elven warrior while she sat down at Aragorn's bedside and rested one hand on his forehead. Arwen could only imagine how much the last few days – without any rest, haunted by the fear for her husband and going to battle against superior enemies – had worn the other she-elf out, but except for a short tremble, she didn't let it show. The same determination that she had started this whole endeavor with wouldn't leave her for even a second before the two patients' fate was decided.

Determination alone wasn't enough to fight a serious sickness though. "Ioreth, the book, please."

The woman grimaced. She seemed to consider telling the she-elf to kindly get the thing herself for a moment. But then she left her place by the door after all. Until now, the grey-haired woman had mostly been watching everything, knowing that the healers that she had personally schooled for decades could have achieved as little as she could – which was almost nothing – in a case like Thondrar's. So she had remained in a waiting position, to be able to step in, in case of emergency. And to be informed about everything, Arwen thought slightly unkindly, who had got to know Ioreth as someone very resolute but also a little gossipy at her own stay in the provisory sick tent of Cair Andros after the Battle of the Black Gate.

However, the slightly sturdy woman wasn't just overbearing and filled with endless seeming energy; first and foremost she was experienced. Of all the people here, she was the one Tarisilya had had to teach least. While she noticeably didn't appreciate it, having been bested by a sometimes immature seeming she-elf, she had not said even one bad word about the Princess since she was helping out here. And her curiosity was something, nothing could rid the woman of anyway. When she took the book, clad in red leather, from Thondrar's nightstand that Tarisilya had already been skimming a few times earlier, she couldn't help but take a short look inside.

Arwen knew this thing very well. On the day of Tarisilya's wedding, she had quite resolutely taken it from her friend, so that she finally would abandon some superstitions regarding a few legends about the moon and her origin.

Ioreth, too, promptly stumbled upon the Poem of the Moon on one of the first pages and eyed Tarisilya slightly disconcerted. "Not half as romantic and glorious as the stories that people usually tell about you, Your Highness. Are you sure this is something, you can help anyone with?"

"It's my mother's story," Tarisilya replied briefly. "I do not plan to make it mine. Someone is approaching who has no business being here. Please make sure he doesn't come in."

That confused the healer even more, but then she heard quiet footsteps outside as well and immediately stumped to the door, with tight shoulders and her head held high. Whoever that was would definitely have to get past her first.

Given how hard Tarisilya tried not looking that way, Arwen had a pretty good idea regarding the visitor, even without having enough attention left herself right now to hear noises hardly detectable for non-elves. Besides, it was easy enough to recognize Erestor's deep, smoky voice even from a distance, a sound that an equally angry tone from Gimli mixed with, who was condemned to wait in the corridor just like everyone else. If Arwen heard that right, the two were arguing because no one had thought of contacting Gimli when the troubles at Cair Andros had become known, thanks, in part, to Erestor's unfortunate misconception that the dwarf had been in Rohan at the time. The two of them were undoubtedly longing for good news just like everyone else at the court. But even authoritarian figures like the Ring Companion and Lord Elrond's – and right now, Aragorn's – advisor would have to capitulate to Ioreth who had made the Houses of Healing her own little Kingdom.

Tarisilya obviously had bigger things to worry about right now. Her usually so gentle green brown eyes had narrowed, turned into unusually dark shining pools. Her full lips had turned into a hardly visible line. Her mother's book laid right next to Aragorn's head; on it, her right arm where she wore the bracelet that Legolas' father had given her for the wedding, that had a picture of her mother in it. In the bright noon light falling in through the big windows, the jewel was glistening as if it had come to life. Her right hand's fingertips stroked Aragorn's forehead, his temple, while she spoke quiet words in Sindarin, growling rather than murmuring, too quickly even for Arwen to understand each of the phrases in her mother tongue. If she hadn't known better, she'd fear the other she-elf wanted to curse her patient instead of helping him. Her left hand was on his chest, right above his heart. It seemed to Arwen, it had got a great deal colder as if an open window was allowing the icy January in. Daylight didn't really seem to brighten the room anymore, almost as if a fine fog had spread.

Then Tarisilya started to sing, a song that Arwen had never heard from her father or her brothers when they'd cared for patients. It didn't sound like one of those long, lamenting hymns from Lórien either, more like a hissed and stammered prayer.

with the silence now broken, cast your eyes at me

you have seen me before

let the night feast on your fears

I have come for you

the shadow keeps on growing

keeps on chasing time until its up

stride on ever faster

even if you might not know the way

what fate has chosen to happen

will not wait for us

I have come for you

I have come for you

Alarmed, Arwen started to get up when Tarisilya slumped forward with a small scream, breathing heavily. With her forehead braced against Aragorn's shoulder, she cowered on the bed for a few long moments before straightening up again, like in slow motion. The next words, Arwen easily understood again, although they were being spoken even more quietly. These, she had heard from her family before often enough. "Thuio, Elessar. Sedho … sedho."

Whatever it was that Tarisilya had done, Aragorn apparently sensed it even in his unconsciousness. He was breathing a bit stronger than before; the twitches of his limbs that had haunted him even in this condition seemed to have become at least bearable for a short while.

Arwen didn't leave Tarisilya out of her sight for even a moment when she got to her feet sluggishly. She seemed a little paler than before, but the qualm already seemed to have passed.

Instead of her being able to feel gratitude, her anger just grew stronger. "You can't be serious! You never let patients suffer on purpose before! You could have done that much earlier!" She grabbed Aragorn's hand once more and turned away to study his face, not inviting any reaction. She simply couldn't care less what her friend had to say about the reproach.

The other she-elf seemed to sense that and didn't even try; there wasn't time anyway.

Her mood visibly hit bottom when Ioreth appeared in the half-open doorway, looking back and forth between her and Erestor. "What?"

"News from North Ithilien, Your Highness." After having seemed unnerved a moment ago, Ioreth now radiated exactly the deep compassion that made her such a good healer. "A few of Prince Faramir's soldiers are back."

Tarisilya's hand clenched around a bedpost. Ioreth's expression left no doubt that there was bad news, but how bad? "Fine. You have half a minute."

"How gracious."

When Erestor impatiently pushed past Ioreth, his eyes fell on Thondrar. His skin, always so unnaturally pale anyway, turned another shade whiter. Apparently, no one had informed him yet how bad his old acquaintance really was doing. "Did you send a message to Imladris?"

"Why? There's nothing to report yet. By the time, a delegation from the valley arrives here, he'll already be training again." Tarisilya clearly tried sounding more optimistic than she was. "Besides, this is a sick room, not a meeting hall; unqualified remarks don't help anyone here. Your time is running."

"Your husband's fate doesn't seem to be very important to you." After a night as long as this, not even Erestor could properly voice his usual cynicism. Arwen had seldom seen a more tired elf. "The arrested Stewardaides were taken to the prison. The leader could flee, along with about half of these insane people. The rest of the soldiers stayed with Prince Faramir at the Dead Marshes to support His Highness of Eryn Lasgalen."

"Doing what?"

The relief that nothing had happened to Legolas at least, had Tarisilya realize only belatedly the kind of terrible news that message could only mean. Her knees gave in; she had to drop on a chair next to Thondrar's bed. "Where are the others? What did they do to them?" How loud she suddenly was being, in here of all places, made it clear that Tarisilya, as well, was at the end of her strength.

"I hope Faramir's troops will have found out until I get there. Gimli and I are leaving together. There’s nothing left holding him here." Erestor tried to hide in vain how much it was upsetting him, seeing a she-elf lose control like that whom no one had ever seen so vulnerable during a healing session.

He briefly nodded at Arwen and quickly went back outside before a treacherous wrinkle in his usually so stoic face could possibly reveal real emotions.

"Get him back." Tarisilya didn't even seem to realize that she was giving Ioreth yet another order without having the right to; but the woman, visibly shaken by what she'd just heard, took that one without a comment as well.

"What now?" With a snort, the black-haired elf approached once more. "My half a minute was up."

"I don't like people bleeding on my office floor." Tarisilya pointed at a few stray drops of red on the bright wooden planks.

"Ioreth, take care of it, please. Judging by the hole in the tunic, left lower back."

"Don't you have anything better to do, Ilya?" Erestor allowed the healer only reluctantly to maneuver him onto a third bed, but then stared at the deep stab wound on his waist pretty dumbfounded himself. "Oh."

"Oh?" Ioreth threw her arms in the air in disbelief and immediately started caring for the infected injury that was still bleeding away. "I bet that's from your fight in the King's House, am I right? How can you walk through the Citadel for hours with something like that and not notice?"

"Insensitivity to pain. Hereditary." The wound seemed to have affected Erestor for quite a while already, given how communicative the King's advisor suddenly became, how he was sounding less and less snappy now.

"Which is why Lord Glorfindel gave up trying to train you back then if I remember right," Tarisilya let out. "You never knew your limits."

"Right. We have something very elementary in common there, don't we?" Arwen was already expecting one of the usual arguments between her two friends, but after Erestor's last comment, they luckily went silent.

With the treatment completed and three quick, neat stitches in place, Erestor could at least stand straight again. Before he left, he stopped at Thondrar's bed again, worriedly shaking his head. "Send a pigeon anyway, Ilya. Lord Elrond himself encouraged Thondrar to accept this challenge in North Ithilien. He has a right to know what happened. And so does Thondrar's father."

"As soon as I can get out of here for a few minutes." Tarisilya was focusing on her patients again but listening closely, one noticed, her tone had changed. That Erestor had helped to save Aragorn and Arwen and especially that he wanted to ride to Ithilien now in spite of his condition, impressed her visibly; at least she spared him the usual pettiness. Instead, she was searching for a word that didn't exist in her vocabulary when it came to this eccentric Noldo.

He put her off. "I'm doing this for the others, not for you. I'm way past that, though you've been refusing to acknowledge that for centuries." Whether it was Ioreth's healing herbs or the latest events: At least for a few seconds, the coldness in Erestor's dark eyes was replaced by old grief clearly directed at Tarisilya. The tension that had been prevailing between them the whole time was nothing but a wall of pure disappointment.

"I wish you could have understood me at some point, that's all." Tarisilya's eyes were on the bare white wall when something escaped her that she had been hiding quite well since she had first crossed Erestor's way again last year, in the courtyard after his arrival in Minas Tirith.

"Oh, but I have for a while." The deep emptiness of a dream given up on left big circles under Erestor's eyes which had them look even more piercing. "You go through all the fires of this world for him. You were never ready to do the same for me. In the end, that made it quite easy to cut you out."

Though it brought tears to her eyes, Tarisilya's notorious defiance now helped her looking at Erestor after all. "You always knew that I wasn't certain if we could make it work at all."

"That was never what I blamed you for, child of the moon." A gesture usually meant for comfort didn't send shivers only down Tarisilya's back when Erestor wiped away her tears almost with contempt as if they were his enemies. The impersonal form of address that elves usually paid their respect to Tarisilya's fate with, sounded like pure scorn from his mouth. "Only that you haven't tried with all of your heart like you promised me. And now, Ilya, it's me who never wants to talk about this again."

In the silence, the door quietly closing sounded like thunder.

Tarisilya watched Erestor leave for a few long seconds before she lowered her head and swallowed her last tears, her eyes closed for a brief moment. "I did try. That's why it hurts so much."

"As a healer, you should know that a mere attempt is never enough."

Arwen grabbed a cloth from Aragorn's nightstand and soaked it in the water bowl next to the pile to put the cooling fabric on his heated forehead, her fingertips stroking through her beloved's beard.

"Why don't you ask Erestor how much it hurts him that you just tried instead of constantly blaming him?"

Her eyes grazed Thondrar's lifeless figure once more. "Go back to caring for your patients already. The world is bigger than your problems. What's between Erestor and you, you've already been carrying around long enough. You'll get by a few more days."

"You don't understand." Though the anger between them kept on growing, for now, Arwen's admonishment had helped; Tarisilya continued her treatment.

"There are many things you don't understand. Do you seriously think I'm letting His Majesty suffer on purpose? You know me so little? When next you visit your father, get him to explain to you why things like the ones I just told him, to share his pain, should never be said out loud as long as there are any other possibilities. And while you're on it, once this is over, ask Aragorn if he would have wanted another patient to die because of me wasting my powers to shield myself from such dangerous magic so that it won't seduce my soul. I can't change what happened. If my actions do result in Gondor losing the King that it had had to wait for so long, that's what I'll carry with me in grief for a close friend my whole eternity. But I will still not apologize for saving my husband's life. You would have done exactly the same, Nauriel."

"Don't call me that. Not now." Arwen's hand had turned into a fist. Only the weakness that was still in her bones after the disturbing night prevented her from jumping up. The new surname that her grandmother Galadriel had given her at Tarisilya's wedding and that so far, actually, only Aragorn had used, in the few moments when they had been alone, shattered the rest of her composure.

"There's a big difference between a rescue mission and reckless stupidity. You shamelessly exploited others worrying about you and sneaked out because you knew exactly how wrong it was! Look at the price, Thondrar has paid for that! How difficult would it have been to ask for help? Send someone else with the knowledge you had? How much of your pride would it have taken to ask Erestor, for example, so that it wouldn't be an injured elf of all people standing by your side, just because you mean much to him? Is it worth Thondrar's life that you finally proved your stubbornness to everyone? Tell me!"

"Let's cut it out. That isn't helping right now." Tarisilya's pained glance at Aragorn showed Arwen just how right she was, and that the other she-elf was only frantically trying to push all this away from her, to not let it hinder her work.

"If it gets worse again, tell me. After all that Aragorn has done for Legolas and me, it's probably the smallest sacrifice, bearing the same darkness that had once Saruman and Sauron fall already." It should have sounded ironic, but at least it assured Arwen that Tarisilya understood the situation very well, that she was suffering with her and was ready to go even further beyond her limits to make up for what she had done wrong.

It helped to make Arwen's anger subside at least a little. Tarisilya was right about one thing: There was no use at all, arguing right now.

Chapter Text

If anyone – his own father, for example, with a skeptically raised eyebrow – had asked Legolas at the end of the war why he wanted to establish an elf settlement in North Ithilien of all places, he could have named many reasons, all of them having something to do with a unique landscape and some distance to other realms that would soon die out. Just a few hours after entering the only place in this area that he'd never wanted to approach, all of these reasons were forgotten. There was hardly an area still radiating as much darkness as the Dead Marshes even millennia later. Leading his people close to them, trading both on their wish for a new home and on his reputation and his noble status, seemed like a bad dream to Legolas in hindsight.

Putting the blame on Aragorn's enemies would have been far too easy. While the Stewardaides had acted in cold blood, on a long-prepared plan, gathering when the elves they hated so much had started construction at Cair Andros and striking when their victims had been counting on it the least ... They hadn't mustered up the courage to wipe out their unloved neighbors. Instead, they had doubtlessly hoped that either a pack of wargs or the Dead Marshes would do that unpleasant job for them. Either way, the consequences were catastrophic enough.

And Legolas had known the danger that these misguided men were posing, damnit, at the latest since Arwen's kidnapping. Nevertheless had he brought simple workers and even she-elves lacking every bit of fighting experience to this hazardous area, to fulfill a dream that was in truth only his own. How little he was doing for it, the kidnapping of his charges had clearly proven. If he could somehow manage to get his people out of this situation unharmed, he would happily pick his comparatively uncomplicated life as a King's son back up again, one without duties since Eryn Lasgalen would soon not exist anymore anyway, and without the fear of being responsible for the death of beings close to him.

For the moment, there was very little for that hope to be based on though.

If one had never tried searching an actually reasonably sized plain like this, they wouldn't know how many problems that confronted you with. Starting with the fog, as if the swamps had their own black soul and wanted to prevent the soldiers and Legolas from detecting the lost persons. They could only see a few feet ahead; even the fire that Faramir had told his men to kindle at the edge of the swamps was only visible as a weak red point in the distance. Without it, the warriors would have been lost too. Again and again, they hailed each other to make sure, everyone was still there.

Many of these usually surely courageous voices revealed an unease that Legolas wasn't able to shake off either. It was one thing, knowing from tales how many elves had fallen here in the War of the Last Alliance. It was another, actually standing on this very battlefield and spotting bloated, snow-white faces at every second glance into the muddy water surrounding the narrow paths through the swamps. It instinctively made you want to stop in terror, even if you'd seen a lot of bodies before. In curiosity, too, that could become deadly, when giving in to temptation.

Therefore, Legolas forced himself to move on, every time after lowering his head once more, in spite of Faramir's admonishments to exactly not do that. What had happened here was long over. The fallen were being honored in songs and legends; the grief was processed. The immortal among the victims had hopefully been released from the Halls of Mandos by now, sent back to a better life in the west.

It was the present day that had brought him to this field of destruction, not the past. As long as he kept that in mind and the fire didn't go out, nothing could happen to him here.

Far too many others before him had not had that certainty and had paid the price. Legolas had often wondered how the Hobbits had survived walking this plain in the war, even with Gollum's help.

He could have asked them; they had lived in Minas Tirith long enough. But there had just been no time for anything after the war, for nothing at all, especially not for being there for his Ring Companions or his wife. Just like in that cave that Legolas had been stuck in after the warg attacks on the settlement ... Here, in this place that was at least as dull, he also realized, there'd hardly been a day of rest since the Companions had started on their quest in Imladris. Well – once all of this was over and he would go back to Eryn Lasgalen, together with his wife, there would be enough of it.

The elves from his old home that had followed him here so trustingly, would surely be happy, especially the youngest one among them who had often been homesick lately, in spite of all enthusiasm. After this gruesome experience, there was no doubt that Avrelas would happily rather let his King snarl at him again because of a cup of too cold tea than keeping on looking death itself in the eye.

If they all actually would … Only the Valar knew how long this search might take and if they would be successful.

When Faramir suddenly stopped, Legolas first thought he wanted to gather his people for a reorientation – probably advisable right now –, but then the Steward suddenly knelt down. Maybe he had forgotten his own nonstop lectures?

Crossing the puddle between them in a single jump, Legolas joined him. "Careful."

It was useless, trying to hide the anger growing with every hour that they went without a life sign of the lost elves. In spite of his own neglected responsibility towards his people: Legolas had not forgotten that it was due to Faramir's momentary foolish trust in the Stewardaides that the elves had been chased into the Dead Marshes at all. That was unforgivable; which also was why Legolas had been blocking every of Faramir's half-hearted attempts to start a conversation about it.

That was no reason to watch this careless man kill himself though. Legolas addressed him again when he didn't react right away, still keeping his eyes firmly on the water instead. Whatever it was that was there, it had all but paralyzed Faramir. Legolas didn't think himself strong enough to not be influenced by that as well, especially in his weakened condition. "We don't have time for this."

"Are you sure, Your Highness?" Faramir's toneless voice deepened the impression that he'd fallen for a dark fascination but when he slowly turned his head, Legolas understood how wrong he was. Faramir's head was completely clear; his pale eyes were wide open in shock and compassion. What Legolas had thought to be a trance, was in truth a sinister realization.

Though his mind was screaming at him that he was making a big mistake right now, Legolas looked into the water as well.

A corpse was trapped halfway beneath the shore, floating sideways; through the dirty, greenish surface, you could hardly even make it out. This was none of the bodiless shapes presenting only memories of beings whose bodies had long decayed. This dead person was real. They hadn't been lying here for a whole Age.

Though there was long black hair languidly floating over the still face, Legolas needed but a second to recognize the merely three hundred years old elf who had moved to North Ithilien against his parents' explicit wish, always looking up to Legolas in admiration. Every task they had given the boy – mostly errands to Emyn Arnen, which was probably why Faramir had recognized the elf immediately –, he had carried out without objection and had valiantly fought every yearning for his home.

Legolas immediately reached out his hand to pull the corpse to the surface, free it from this unworthy grave, as if that would have made any difference now.

But this time it was Faramir roughly pulling him back. "Far too dangerous." He held Legolas tight by his upper arms when he tried to fight him, and Legolas was too exhausted to free himself immediately. "Look at me! Do you want to fall in and die too? Or do you want to find the others so that there won't be even more victims?"

Only once it was said out loud, the realization that one of the elves had indeed not survived this crisis, finally took shape, punching him in the stomach like an iron fist. Legolas fell to his knees; a long, choked scream escaped his throat. Behind his closed lids, he was seeing images of his charges, of their cheerful optimism, of many evenings with lovely singing by the fire, of their endless energy for the work in these lands' wilderness … And the vision that had haunted him so often in the last few hours, of how he would find every single one of them right here in these ponds, their bodies bloated like Avrelas', their eyes filled with deadly terror. What if there weren't any survivors? What if they'd come far too late?

Faramir's empty words in his ear turned into a meaningless whisper. Nothing that would make any difference.

Not even the war could possibly have prepared Legolas for this overwhelming feeling of guilt.

He had been right the whole time; every time his father had tried to prepare him for ascending to the throne, at least for the unlikely case of his demise in some battle, and Legolas had fought the idea tooth and nail. He was simply not born to be a leader. He had never been able to forgive himself for making mistakes. And now another one had cost people their lives that he should have protected with his own, robbing them of the possibility to keep walking this world that they had loved so much. Maybe his father would finally believe him now?

The voices grew louder, so unbearably loud that he considered covering his ears. Why couldn't they just go away? The only thing left to do here was discovering the dead anyway and then get on his way to their families to tell them he had failed. He didn't need anyone for that.

Unfortunately, they didn't do him that favor. Instead, the painful pressure of Faramir's gloved grasp vanished. Someone was touching his forehead. This time it was tender, soft skin, not rough leather. A bright voice was whispering words to him that he had last heard Tarisilya say in Helm's Deep when she had healed him from bad physical and especially mental wounds. Words in Sindarin.

"Drego morn! Thuio. Echuio, Thranduilion. Echuio."

Only slowly, firmly convinced that the well-known voice would turn out to be just an illusion, Legolas opened his eyes.

A smile of relief brightened the grief-stricken face of a very strong-built, black-haired elf from Imladris. Indeed, it was Camhanar, the husband of one of Legolas' oldest friends … and of the she-elf that Legolas had protected from a murderous warg in said cave. "Stand up, Your Highness."

Still dazed from a shock subsiding only slowly, Legolas followed the prompt, bracing himself on Camhanar until his legs would carry him again. Bit by bit, his mind began to accept that not everything was lost, that at least the other soldiers had been successful with their search.

Partly, at least. Though there weren't all of the missing people present, at least a big crowd of other elves had gathered around him, some of them slightly injured, silently watching the scene. They, too, showed relief when Camhanar got Legolas to become part of his surroundings again.

"It's easy to lose yourself in dark feelings in this place." Camhanar kept on firmly clasping his arm as if he feared Legolas throwing himself headfirst into the swamps any moment. "We have spent the last few hours, when all we had left was hopelessness, in the same stagnation. But now that our leader has come to free us from this trap, we will fret no more. Three of us are still out there and need help. Those for whom there is none left, we will have to mourn afterward." The way the Noldo was looking at the water revealed that Avrelas' death was nothing new for the group.

"In the dark, with no sense of direction, even for elves, it's impossible to stay together, no matter how hard you try. None of us noticed that he was staying behind. When we heard him fall, it was already too late. And when we ran back to help, we lost contact with the others." Although the treacherous tremble in Camhanar's voice was hard to miss, he was dealing with the loss a lot more composed than Legolas just had. The responsibility he had been given since the Stewardaides' attack, didn't allow for any weakness.

"Thank you." Legolas rested his hand on Camhanar's but pushed it away then. He had never been a friend of such proximity. A comfort of such kind he could only accept from Tarisilya.

Still, Camhanar's efforts had lifted some of the heavy burdens that had made breathing an almost impossible endeavor. "I never knew you're versed in the art of healing."

Legolas felt a bit of warmth returning to his bones; enough to greet the others by grasping their shoulders each for a moment while in his head, he was already feverishly working on a plan to track down the last missing elves, too.

"My wife taught me these words, unaware of how much I would need them one day." Camhanar didn't ask, so the soldiers had probably already reported to him the events at Cair Andros, and that Tauriel and their child were being alright.

Maybe together, they could work such a miracle a second time.

Legolas turned to Faramir. "Send two of your men to the fire together with the injured, please."

Faramir complied without comment, in spite of his visible reluctance to leave the people they'd only just found out of sight. But guided by his loyal followers, they would hopefully be able to leave the most dangerous part of this hike behind quickly enough.

Instead of mobilizing the others for the continuous march though, he took a demonstrative look at the sky that had completely darkened in the last few minutes. The thick cloud ceiling didn't even allow moonbeams through. "I understand you, you know that, but we have to wait for the morning to carry on."

"Until even more will have died?" That was the point when Legolas couldn't hold back anymore at last. "Has not yet enough happened for your taste? You still want to sit around, waiting for things to get worse?"

"You're way out of line." Instead of falling silent in shame because of his mistake last night, Faramir approached him, his jaw high. "Your word might be law in your realm, but you're in a country populated by common Men here. Men not equipped with a Firstborn's abilities. If you thought about these men who followed you here without hesitation for even for a moment, you'd notice that they haven't slept in days and have hardly eaten anything. An elf might be able to stand that easily for some time, but not beings like us, especially not in a place like this, in the middle of winter. Not everything can be achieved by iron will alone. If the men lose any more of their strength, they're the next to fall into the water."

"I'll come with you, Your Highness." Camhanar chimed in, probably noticing that in the light of these quite reasonable points, Legolas was already about to lose the short optimism again. "Those of us still here have fortunately not suffered any wounds but they are very exhausted as well. I still have energy; there's no reason for me to wait."

"You've done enough already." Legolas shook his head in determination. While in his mind, he had already given up his role as the leader of these elves earlier, in this case, he had to give a last order. He could only hope that it would be followed. "In that case, none of us will go. On my own, I would soon share Avrelas' fate, and a search party too small won't get us far."

He saw Faramir return to his men, satisfied, and turned away, his lips a thin line. The Steward might have been right this time, but between the two of them, nothing was clear, nothing at all.

"Your Highness?" Unlike a moment ago, Camhanar suddenly seemed comparatively shy. "Thank you … for everything. Is she …? I mean, how does she look?" In spite of the cruel incidents, the thought of his child had a bright sparkle of happiness gleam in his grey eyes.

"She's as strong as you and as tough as her mother. She has her red hair." Legolas returned his smile with a short nod but then retreated a little.

It was hard to be happy for a couple who had been gifted with the joy of a baby if you had lost your own even before it had been born. Being reminded of that the whole time on top of everything else now would have made the next few hours unbearable.

As Thondrar had surprisingly been taken into a separate room after all and almost all of the healers except for Ioreth had taken their leave for the moment, the room was being just as lonely as Arwen had wished it to be earlier. Enjoy it, she couldn't.

In spite of their fight, it didn't leave her cold, seeing Tarisilya stand at the window bowed down like that, looking outside into the falling night, searching in vain for the moon that – according to her sometimes slightly weird faith – had apparently not given her enough strength to sufficiently care for two patients at the same time. What she had already been afraid of after the catastrophe in Rohan was, unfortunately, more and more proving to be true … At least in some aspects, the talent that she had once been so famous for had indeed suffered from killing that Uruk-hai.

Arwen didn't dare to torture the other she-elf even more and was glad that Ioreth was the one to ask. A few minutes ago, everything had suddenly gone so fast that not even the other healer had really understood why Tarisilya had ordered Thondrar to be carried next door and had chased way all spectators.

There was no answer, only a brief headshake. Right now, Tarisilya didn't want to talk. She needed her energy for the treatment still ahead of her. Since the hope was obviously in vain that the riders from North Ithilien that not only Tarisilya was waiting for would appear in the courtyard under the window, she abandoned her watch post. After hectically downing a glass of water, she sat down by Aragorn's bedside.

Before she could start her dark incantations again though, Ioreth was suddenly standing next to her and looked down at her with her arms crossed. "You need to eat something, Princess. Water isn't enough if you plan to pull another few all-nighters."

"I'll be alright. Firstborn need neither as much food nor as much sleep as Men," Tarisilya answered with a tense smile.

"Do you think you and Lady Arwen are the first elves I got to know?" Ioreth's voice just became louder. "Don't take me for a fool. You've been neglecting yourself for months. You think I can't see that? Do you want to end up feeling like you did after the war when I'd already given you up and only the King could save you?"

Her authority turned into a motherly smile. "For that, I've grown too fond of you. Here, at least take this." She took a big piece of lembas bread from one of the night tables and thrust it into Tarisilya's hand. "A gift from your grumpy friend earlier. He said, you probably wouldn't accept it from him anyway. Do me the favor, please."

Tarisilya sensed that the woman wouldn't give in and got up with a sigh. "Please call me immediately if he's doing worse," she asked Arwen without looking at her, in a neutral tone, before she went outside on the balcony to catch her breath for a few minutes.

As if she'd only waited for that, Lady Éowyn scurried into the room without knocking just a few moments later. "Forgive me." Embarrassed, she bit her lip when Ioreth eyed her punishingly. "People outside are talking so much … I just wanted to see … They say the King won't make it. I've already failed to be around yesterday when I would have been needed ..." Suddenly tears were streaming down her cheeks. Quickly, she wiped them off with the sleeve of her dark dress.

A kind of dress that you could rarely see her wear since her wedding, reminding of the days when she had still been the niece of Rohan's King, woven from simple fabric, with wide sleeves and an embroidered top. Her pale figure and the untidiness of her hip-length hair, too, revealed that she wasn't in a mood to doll up, that she hadn't left her chambers since last night and felt just as wrecked as everyone else.

"Sit down." Ioreth felt bad for the young woman and led her to a chair.

Éowyn's cheeks were flushed. Losing control in public like that made her visibly uncomfortable.

And yet the sight of Aragorn's bed provoked even more tears. "This is just unthinkable. We didn't always agree on things, but he did save us all. He's rebuilt this land, and now everything will be over, just because of a few insane people? That's just not fair!"

"That's what we've been saying for months. Isn't it a little late for you to realize what these fanatics are capable of?" Arwen didn't even look up. The penetrance that Éowyn had forced her way into the room with made it hard to not openly say that she didn't want her to be here right now.

"I'm worried, just like you are, and I have certainly been for a while." Glaring at her, Éowyn suddenly jumped up and came to stand across Arwen, with her hands on her hips. "Is that why you didn't even get me in the first place? Because you think I'm not on your side? I would have helped you, then none of this would have happened."

"No, instead we'd all be walking Rath Dínen right now. I entered the room the second the Stewardaid wanted to dagger him. By the time I had managed to wake you up, especially given you've surely had some sleeping tea once more, the King would have been dead."

Arwen eyed the Rohiril that looked so troubled with more compassion than anger. "Please do not talk about an incident before you know more about it than the gossiping folk. We don't need any more rumors."

Éowyn stepped closer to the bed, trembling with anger from words blunter than any that anyone had dared to tell her in a long time, as Arwen was certain. "That's not what I meant. Being the Steward's wife, I have a right to be informed about everything that's happening at the court. You should already have come to me when Her Highness of Eryn Lasgalen had disappeared instead of insisting to take care of everything on your own. To me, the guards would have listened. And that's exactly what I'll be saying if anyone asks. You better hope that the King will still be alive then to take you under his usual protection."

Arwen got up reluctantly, staring at Éowyn sharply over Aragorn's lifeless body. Apparently, it was indeed up to her of all people, finally teaching that girl who was in spite of her worthy contributions to the war still being so naïve, some facts.

"I'm sorry to tell you that, milady, but you're overestimating your status at the court. Your husband has as much a say in this realm's matters as the King grants him. You on the other hand have no authority here at all. Unlike in your home country, you are nothing more than a court lady in Gondor. If you have orders for me, tell the Steward to give them to me. Otherwise, treat your future Queen as your rank demands it. Better hope that I will forget the way your understandable emotionality just made you talk to me. The King should long have taken vigorous action against the treatment of the Stewardaides by your family as it is. No, I have indeed not heard a single hostile word from you about them. Walling yourself in, in South Ithilien, is much easier, isn't it? If it's true what people are saying about your husband right now, you definitely should think twice before you're talking, Lady Éowyn. Maybe there's a reason why he had so few Stewardaides be taken prisoner in Aragorn's absence back then?"

"How dare you …"

"Get out!" Both of them and Ioreth, too, who had tried in vain to mediate during Arwen's speech, went silent, when Tarisilya's deep voice sounded through the room, so roaring that a couple of birds on the balcony heard it through the closed door and fled, chirping in protest. "Do I need to say it in the Rohirrim's tongue first, Lady Éowyn? I said, get out. This is not a battlefield. I'm trying in despair to save somebody's life; I can't do that with arguments poisoning the air. No one but the healers and relatives are being allowed into this room, and I do not make exceptions for nobles."

Éowyn stared at her in shock, then she stormed outside so hastily that her sleeve got caught in the door handle and she almost toppled over.

"That wasn't necessary," Ioreth sighed. "It's not easy for her either. She feels unwelcome in Minas Tirith, and as far as a few people of the old school are concerned, she is. She's just afraid of the future, like the rest of us. She and her husband welcomed your people very kindly in Ithilien, didn't they?"

"You're probably right. I got carried away. The last nights have really been too long. I'll apologize to her later. There won't be time for politeness before all of this is over."

Caught up in her zest for action again already, Tarisilya approached Aragorn's bed – and collapsed. Almost without a sound, the hardly noticeable weight of an elf producing hardly more than a creak in the floor, and before the others even realized that she was losing consciousness.

"Didn't I say it?" Her hands thrown up in the air, Ioreth bent over her. "I did say it! You heard it, Lady Arwen, didn't you? Why is no one ever listening to me?"

"Spare me the drama, I'm still alive." Tarisilya had quickly woken up again and heard the last words. Dazed, she shook herself a little and got up, bracing herself on the bed, just ignoring Ioreth's arm. The routine that she put away the incident with had Arwen suspect, something like that hadn't happened for the first time. "Help me move the bed, then I can carry on. Can't fall down when you're on your back."

Ioreth looked like she wanted to voice a protest, but the worry for the King was stronger than the one about the only person in reach who might still be able to save him right now.

Arwen dropped on her chair with a grunt, more irritated by the minute not only by Éowyn. When her eyes grazed the other she-elf's far too thin figure, memories of the time after the Battle at the Black Gate came back, of how Tarisilya had still looked even long after her recovery. She took a short look at the balcony, than turned to her friend again.

"Tell me, Ilya: If I went looking, would I find some very full doves out there? Or just a few crumbs you've dropped while eating?" To lose at least part of the energy building inside of her more and more, she joined Ioreth to lend a hand in moving the piece of furniture. "You're of no use to your patients completely exhausted. Does a healer seriously need to be told that first?"

There was no answer, only a tired shrug. Tarisilya still preferred to avoid fights for now, which had Arwen draw more and more conclusions about why apparently, something always had to blow up between Legolas and her first before something changed.

This time, Arwen knew what would come when Tarisilya took her famous book again and opened the same page as earlier.

When the other she-elf spoke up again, Arwen was actually expecting those words again, completely unknown to her before this day, in this ancient dialect even forbidden in many places. But Tarisilya turned to Ioreth again. "Is the King's advisor council still in session?"

"They will be until they learn anything about his condition, as far as I know," the healer nodded. "What else can they do? The Steward is gone, no one knows what really happened in North Ithilien, and the King … The city is in turmoil and concerned."

Tarisilya traced the drawing of an almost full moon adorning the page with her fingertips. "Are the advisors alone?"

"Your charming friend left for North Ithilien with Master Gimli, just like he said he would." Ioreth quickly left the room once she had seen with satisfaction that Tarisilya, feeling caught, was blushing.

"I didn't think I would ever say that, but I wish he was here."

Tarisilya put her book right on the gap between the two mattresses and rested her arm on it, like she had before. Then she put a new cooling cloth on Aragorn's forehead as if she wanted the thin fabric to weaken the effect of her hand. "For the first time since I was an elfling I could really use someone to read the law and textbooks to me."

"Maybe that's exactly why he's not here because that's always the only thing you see in him." For the first time today, Arwen's words lost their harshness. She sounded just like she felt: tired and helpless. It was just a dry assessment that she didn't need to be answered.

What her friend had told her about this apparently forbidden kind of healing had her freeze enough as it was. She didn't even want to imagine what could happen if Tarisilya got distracted right now.

The next few hours, including a few breaks that Tarisilya needed to gather her strength, they spent silently. Those, the other she-elf always used to go outside to look after Thondrar anyway. And her expression never looked any more relaxed when she returned.

Chapter Text

With every minute of sunrise being closer, the remaining elves grew more restless, more and more of them openly pushing for continuing the search for those of their friends still missing.

That made it needless for Legolas to rebel much himself. One challenging look at Faramir was enough.

"Dawn isn't far now. Just a few more minutes, Your Highness."

It took all of Faramir's rhetoric skill to convince everyone that prematurity would only lead to even more victims. Probably to leave no doubt though that he was being just as worried as all of them, he started waking up his men early to have them prepare to leave.

By now, in spite of their fight, Legolas admired the man's stamina. The thick clothes he wore under his dark grey armor couldn't stop him from visibly freezing; ice crystals caught in his strawberry blond hair and beard. But he let hardly any weakness show. With some effort, he just stretched his numb limbs while shaking his soldiers by the shoulder, one after the other. Every now and again, he impatiently coughed into his shoulder. The Steward wouldn't let himself be stopped from this quest any more than Legolas himself; he gave him great credit for that.

"Thank you, Steward. We're ready when you are."

Legolas decided to apologize for his hotheaded words from yesterday later. That their collaboration in Ithilien had ended in such a horrible way was no reason for the two of them to part on bad terms.

Camhanar waited for Faramir to be out of earshot before approaching Legolas. He nodded towards the other elves. "They found some of their energy back; they can come with us."

"I couldn't do without any fewer soldiers anyway, just to have them be brought out of the swamps as well," Legolas explained briefly. "We lost enough time. I trust you to take care of them in case one of them is getting worse again." He sounded surprisingly unemotional, far soberer than yesterday.

That wasn't a reassurance. For the moment, their leader had pushed the grief entirely away from him. He sounded as if he was talking at the morning meeting, before the group would split up, about one of the many daily duties waiting for them in North Ithilien. Only without the usual smile – that the others had always easily known to be fake –, but with his eyes fixed at the swamp, at the spot where daylight would soon reveal the corpse of a far too young elf.

"You don't believe we will find any more survivors." Until now, Camhanar had held on, knowing he couldn't afford even a moment of inattentiveness if he was supposed to take care of his friends, part of whom were being inexperienced in combat.

Seeing Legolas' hopelessness had this stubbornness leave him. He dropped to the ground next to his leader and hid his face against his knees. "I have failed you. I wasn't strong enough."

"It wasn't your job, defending the settlement." The sudden collapse ripped Legolas' from his lethargy. Slightly roughly, he got Camhanar to stand up again. "Get the others. Somewhere out there, our friends are waiting for our help. At least that is what my heart wants to tell me."

"But not what you think." Camhanar kept on standing and waiting there ever until Legolas turned away and looked to the horizon where a few first pale sun rays crept across the puddles.

"In the war, I spent enough time close to Mordor to sense when evil celebrates a triumph. It is cutting into me like the wind that means to push us into the depths of these waters. Innocents have died tonight."

"The gift of foresight has been given to but a few of us." Camhanar did his best, remembering the composure that had already helped him yesterday to free Legolas from such thoughts. "A troubled mind sees many nightmares, especially at this hour. Do not give up, Your Highness. You were the only one of our kin with the will to take another stand for this world at the foremost front. And you have won. You can do it again. You just cannot give in now. I don't know if we can make it without you."

"It is not me who brought peace." Legolas raised his hands, as if in trance, and unfastened the three ritual warrior braids in his gold blond hair that had accompanied him since the beginning of the War of the Ring, replacing them with the same simple tail that Camhanar used to keep his tresses out of his face. "What you speak of, greater men than me have achieved. It was presumptuous, thinking I could create the same my father has in his realm once, based on a legend that was being made of exaggeration and romantic glorification. But as long as there is still one soul breathing in these swamps, no more elves will pay for this mistake. Let the light of the Galadhrim that has been given to me in the hour of despair in Lórien, brighten the way for those I have plunged into darkness one last time. Thereafter, I will put down my weapons and my duties."

"We have your back, Your Highness." Not even as a good friend, one had a chance to fight that much self-hate; so Camhanar did what he had been asked to do, with the sad certainty that Middle-earth was about to lose one of its last great elven warriors to the mistakes of Men.

And that everything that had been accomplished in Ithilien in the last few months would have been for nothing then.

"We're getting far too close to Mordor." Just a short while later, Faramir canceled the search again, reluctantly, with clenched teeth. "Out here, we're an open target for every orc still hostile to the Free Folks. If that's the fight you want to court, do it without my men," he turned to Legolas before he had said even one word.

"Not with how entirely drained these soldiers are and what little information we have about how many enemies are staying in the ruins right now."

Whereas Faramir had expected more arguing, Legolas turned away from the threatening darkness in the distance instead, from the cloud of thunder, flashes, and never-ending rain that still symbolized the terror of Sauron's long existence in this part of Middle-earth even a year after the war.

Following the example, the other elves combed the immediate area with the sharp eyes of Firstborn, looking for traces that would hopefully lead them in a less dangerous direction.

Only once the fog thinned out thanks to the sun gaining some strength, the soldiers who were being better trained in such arts but lacking supernatural eyesight, did the same.

Faramir caught up with Legolas to make further arrangements. His own overtiredness almost had him slip on one particularly slippery spot. Only Beregond's quick intervention kept him from falling. It was one of these moments when he had to be really grateful that one of his oldest friends could see through each of his movements ever since he and Faramir had started their soldier training together. Through his movements, all of his expressions, often, basically, through each of his thoughts. Without that hand on his sleeve coming out of nowhere …

When he straightened up, shivering, one bright light on the surface, in particular, caught his sight, the face of another dead person. An illusion clear enough to remind him of two people he had lost not too long ago in a war similar to the one that had raged here. It wasn't all that unlikely that he was seeing an image of one of his ancestors that bore resemblance to his father surely not just by chance.

If he'd looked harder, not even Beregond could have helped. Faramir's exhaustion started to play serious tricks on him. He wanted to get away from here, as fast as possible. But for that, first, he had to know if there was still any hope for the last missing elves.

"Nothing. I guess the night and rain destroyed the last clues." Still trembling from what had just happened, he came to stand next to Legolas. "I'll send some of my soldiers ahead to the city together with your people. Those of us still capable to do so will go on." Again, he was surprised that there were no objections. By now, even an elf was probably too exhausted for that.

"Captain, look at this." Beregond waved at him, alarmed, and pointed at something that all three of them had almost walked past.

The tracker in Faramir noticed immediately, it was exactly the prints they had been searching for the whole time. Hardly visible and from narrow feet. And the warrior in him who had lived at Sauron's doorstep for years could even make it out where those tracks led with the naked eye. The black soul of this place had sent the last three elves straight to Mordor.

Once they'd showed the others what they had discovered, everyone fell silent. At that moment, they probably all felt the same: the wish to advance even further into the dangerous territory to prevent the worst. But you didn't just run towards Mordor without a plan, especially not when the enemies were being as unpredictable as they were right now.

"We'll follow them." Camhanar was the first one to speak up, with a short look at Legolas to seek his approval. "It's not too late to get them back yet. But if we wait for reinforcements, we'll lose them to either torture or a quick death."

Faramir closed his eyes for a moment to sort out his feelings. Éowyn's face in his memory, looking just as pale, just as fragile as it had ever since the war, didn't make that easier.

"Let's leave the swamps first. We'll take the long way to the city." That offered not one but two advantages: He didn't have to ask the elves to wander between the ponds once more, and he still had a little time to decide what he should do now. A time that he could also use to finally thoroughly eye the elves under his protection on this day one by one, to memorize their faces – something he should long have done; after all, these beings had already been living in his front yard for months. There had been just as little time for such things as for a marriage that consisted mostly of silence and tears right now.

From explanations given by that very one elf of all people that Faramir had found dead yesterday, he vaguely remembered that most of Legolas' followers originated from Imladris. Which explained why they had such a hard time coping with all this. Imladris, being more of a gateway to the west for elves these days than shelter from dangers, had been affected the least by the War of the Ring as far as Faramir knew. Of all the big elven realms, they had been struck least by tragedy, though there had been incidents with orcs at the borders repeatedly. A few of his allies, Legolas had in fact only just schooled in the most important maneuvers of attack and defense, in case of emergency, in the last few months.

Only the warriors, like Legolas himself, like the two silver blond former marchwardens of Lórien, or like Camhanar for that matter, who had served in Lord Elrond's army before his wife's pregnancy … They were being used to death. Even to the death of close friends, to saying good-bye to them for what often was a long time in the Halls of Mandos. They knew hours like this in the same sad way that shook Faramir himself again and again when it happened: because at some point, you realized that the worst thing could be growing numb like that.

It wasn't the first time for him to wonder why this group had wanted to start such a difficult new life in these lands, indefinitely, instead of sailing away immediately like most of their kin. He doubted that he would still get a chance to ask now. Not even the elves themselves would probably know an answer now anyway.

They all were relieved when they finally reached the barren woods separating the swamps from the mountains towering above them, without incident.

The men waiting there had cared for the injured elves as well as possible in the meantime. Every single one of them seemed just as unbelievably tired as Faramir felt, more than ever before in his life.

"Get them to Minas Tirith." It was Legolas, making up his mind before Faramir could even try, giving an instruction meant for both him and Camhanar. Though his words were being clear, everything else usually indicating an order was missing, some attitude as well as strictness. He felt obligated to do this even though every rationality was screaming that he might not come home if he approached Mordor alone. That his wife might be waiting for him in vain for a very long time then.

Faramir startled and turned to Camhanar, but the elf just shook his head while Legolas already set forth on the path north without looking back, the one to the debris of the Black Gate.

"You haven't met His Majesty Thranduil in person yet if you think, there's anything now that can stop an elf of this kind."

A few of the elves and she-elves suddenly started to cry, no longer able to deal with the situation. When Camhanar took one of them by the shoulder supportively, Faramir clearly saw him fighting to not show his own pain openly as well. Everyone in the group was shocked about this turn of events, but no one seemed to feel the need to do something about it.

"Would you leave one of your men behind?" Camhanar asked when Faramir made a move to follow Legolas, to change his mind, by force if necessary. "Would you let people hail you for bringing most of them home safely, knowing that you sacrificed the others for that?"

Beregond was standing next to Faramir once more, grabbing his elbow again for a moment, not in order to steady his leader's stumbling body this time but his soul.

There were reasons for the two of them already having been so close long before Aragorn had appointed Beregond Captain of the White Company of Ithilien. Not even Faramir's Rangers would have realized so easily how badly Faramir wanted to make the mistake right that he had made on the clearing of the Stewardaides. And even though Beregond seemed extremely worn out as, though his clothes were completely soaked, his chin-length brunette hair lumps of ice, his hands very cold … He wouldn't be among those to ride home. Even if that meant not seeing his wife and kids ever again.

"If you want to relieve your conscience, I'm by your side."

Now that someone had made a start, other men spoke up immediately, thereby wiping Faramir's last doubts away. If he hadn't tried at least, it wouldn't even have taken Aragorn to release him from his office. Then it would have been him, unable to bring himself to keep on administering it.

"Your Highness, wait! We're coming with you."

He quickly selected the soldiers most likely still in the shape for another march and sent the others away.

This time, the news that his men would bring to Minas Tirith would be better, but somehow, Faramir doubted that Éowyn would be particularly happy to hear them anyway.

While Faramir had not expected enthusiastic gratitude from Legolas, the elf's silence burdened him more with every step they took towards Mordor. A short discussion of their strategy at least would have been advantageous, but Legolas had no word to spare in that conversation.

If the Crown Prince was allegedly the friendly member of his family, as he'd emphasized in the past, Faramir didn't even feel a desire to ever meet His Majesty Thranduil.

When their destination came within sight clearer and clearer and they still hadn't found any new clues, he finally had his men stop.

Legolas didn't seem to feel addressed by that either, given he kept on walking without even looking back.

An annoyed shout already on his lips, Faramir suddenly saw something in the distance that had him jump forward immediately, with all weakness forgotten for the moment. "Take cover!"

Slightly overestimating the distance to the Prince, he crashed into him so hard that his shoulder plate provoked an unpleasant crunch in Legolas' arm. That had been either luck or instinct though, given how closely one of the arrows whistling towards the group out of nowhere, passed above both their backs before getting stuck in the ground right behind them.

Somewhere in that barren piece of land that was all that was left of Sauron's former home, there were a couple of archers, with such good eyes and such an excellent aim that they would almost have been lucky.

"What is wrong with you?" Faramir didn't let go of Legolas immediately. "Your elven senses leave much to be desired if someone like me has to save you from a threat like that!"

First, he thought, Legolas' snow-white skin color and the horror in his ocean blue eyes came from the attack barely escaped, but when he followed the elf's glance to the side, his own heart skipped a beat.

This arrow had been shot at the Prince for a reason. Instead of feathers, three long strands of hair were inwrought in the rear end of its shaft, two of them silver-blond, one black. Their tips were clotty with blood.

"Come on!" Without regard for a possible injury from the impact, Faramir yanked Legolas to his feet, just in time before further missiles came their way. Those were missing them by a long shot though. Maybe they were only being meant as a deterrent. Now that the orcs had informed them about what they had to say, they apparently wanted the message to be passed on.

Afterward, Faramir wouldn't remember how he had managed to cover the short distance to the others, haunted by the memory of his last battle in the war when a similar offensive had killed his whole group, the attempt to reconquer Osgiliath ending with a fall from his horse before he'd had a single enemy before his blade.

This time, the only choice was to flee if he wasn't to fare similarly. Sure, he could have ordered an attack as well. Under different circumstances, he wouldn't have hesitated, not with what he'd just had to learn, not with how many stories he remembered about elves who had been tortured to death in Mordor in the past, about the cruelties they'd had to endure, often for days, before the only relief in the shape of their journey to the Halls of Mandos had found them. He said a silent prayer to the Valar, wishing the worst for those three was over already and that this hair came from dead bodies. Unfortunately, he knew exactly how small this hope was.

To his relief, his men were returning the attack already. The retreat would prove difficult but unless one of them neglected their cover, they would hopefully make it unscathed.

Seeing the soldiers in danger who had stood by his people for so many long hours revived Legolas' mind. Tearing away from Faramir, he ran into the midst of the men, into the protection of their armor to improve the one of his own borrowed, improvised one, before reaching for his bow himself. After the attack of the wargs at Cair Andros, there weren't many arrows left in his dirt-covered quiver, however, his shots at the shadowy target, almost covered completely by foam, were more effective than those of Faramir's men who were missing a couple of thousands of years of experience. The hail of arrows quickly stopped.

They anxiously awaited a second attack, maybe one from behind that they would notice too late to get through it without losses, but the battle cries of the orcs had fallen silent. There was no doubt at all though that in a minimum of time, more of them would come if the soldiers tried to approach the enemy fortress again.

And next time, they might not be that lucky. In their current lineup, this plan had indeed been doomed from the start, and Legolas had now understood that too, though it was probably the hardest decision he'd ever made in his life as a warrior. They could leave the battlefield undisturbed, heading towards the fire in the distance that they could hardly see anything more of than a blurred circle by now.

The arrow with the gruesome trophy on it that Faramir had passed Legolas instinctively, unable to look him in the eyes though, the Prince carried before him in both hands.

It wasn’t long since they’d left the enemy territory behind when more reinforcements from Minas Tirith came to meet them unexpectedly, in the shape of a Ring Companion. Faramir had never been so happy to see a dwarf.

Since not even the sight of Gimli could get the slightest emotion out of Legolas, it was up to Faramir to greet him, and to learn, with horror, but not really entirely surprised, that there had been a fight in Minas Tirith as well. How badly the King was supposedly doing right now did nothing to calm his guilty conscience about how much time he had wasted, trying to negotiate with Barhit.

"Thank you for taking on this arduous ride here anyway." Many Dwarves weren't the best riders by nature. You couldn't ignore now, either, how hard the trip at too fast a pace had been for the Lord, even with an animal fitting his size.

"In vain and too late, and not for the first time in these last few days," Gimli replied unusually harshly. "If I had been informed as soon as the first problems started at Cair Andros, we might have fewer victims to complain about. Then the King would already be busy planning how to punish these bastards right now who have dared to kill elves. Instead, I've been held up in a tavern in town while Aragorn was almost murdered."

"I personally sent a pigeon to Rohan before I left, but you were faster than it," explained Faramir, tired of justifying something that, strictly speaking, had just been inconvenient timing. "Believe me, if I had the choice, I would go to battle with you anytime. But for the moment, it is more important that we take care of those who have been harmed in the last one. And you're just in time for that."

Gimli couldn't really argue with that, and he accepted the not very discreet hint without objection. While he, too, did not get even a single syllable out of his old elvish friend, he at least managed, with gentle force, to take this damned missile from Legolas before the poison on it could burn his palms further. Wrapped securely in a resilient cloth, in the Prince's quiver, it could at least not cause any more damage.

Legolas did hardly react to that either; Faramir had to wonder if he’d even recognized his friend. But at least he didn't resist either when one of the soldiers helped Gimli to sit on Legolas’ horse behind him and Gimli wrapped his arms around Legolas’ waist to hold on, possibly a little more tightly than necessary.

And no matter how mechanical the movement seemed, Legolas didn’t fail to express his gratitude for his friend’s silent support by squeezing his hand quickly before he spurred his horse back on.

A kiss on the forehead tore Aragorn from a condition that, when being awake for a brief moment a few hours ago, he hadn't expected to ever be able to free himself from. For seconds, his still weakened senses didn't allow anything through but this one sensation, and the thought that apparently, Arwen was still sitting by his side.

When he opened his eyes though, instead of her lovely features, he saw the slightly rounder face of another she-elf above him who briefly touched his forehead and cheek before straightening up and pulling open the curtains before the balcony windows. Blinded, Aragorn blinked a few times, almost expecting the she-elf to vanish again as it often happened in fever dreams, but Tarisilya was still standing there with her arms crossed; he had last seen her look so haggard in the war when she had almost died of a broken heart on a sickbed right before his eyes.

"I thought, I was dreaming …" While his voice was hoarse from the long battle against the poisoning, it still was loud enough. He felt something moving next to him almost immediately – not something, someone.

Arwen was sleeping on her chair, half-braced on the bed, with her head on the pillow next to his, her hand resting on his chest. She probably felt that something had changed but didn't wake up yet.

Aragorn would rouse her, in a moment, when he would be able to do more than turn his head – that alone might take minutes. That infections and pain were gone for the most part didn't mean he was healthy already. Whether he would ever be able to use that shoulder right again alone was probably written in the stars.

But these tumbling thoughts had to wait. For now, he needed to thank the being who had gone through the darkness for him, literally. It was better not to let anyone hear that, not even Arwen. "I wish I'd only dreamed this."

He felt more shocked by the second, eying Tarisilya, her stringy hair that she had reduced to almost half of its former length at some point during this conflict. Parchment-like skin that didn't even look a normal shade in the sunlight, a stubbornly fleeing glance … That was surely not what Legolas had had in mind when he had asked Aragorn to take care of his wife.

"You shouldn't have done this, Ilya." It was the first time for him to call her that since he had first met her in Imladris decades ago. This night had created an intimate bond between them, maybe a closer one than it was beseeming a friendship of this kind. Which was just one of the reasons why he would have stopped her, given the chance.

"You live, Aragorn." Tarisilya of all people who had always refused to call him anything but "Your Majesty", even before he'd become King, let him know by using his actual name as well, that a healing process like last night didn't allow for the same distance as before. Their acquaintance had turned into a deep friendship which did not only mean good things. "You will make full recovery. This realm will not lose your heart, your spirit, and your will to fight. In the end, that's all that matters."

Turning away, she leaned her head against the window glass and looked outside into the light of morning that would have drawn at least a small smile from anyone else and that seemed to hurt her eyes instead. "But your miracle had its price, you know that. I won't make that better by pretending."

"I don't know what I can say except … thank you." The instinctive notion of shrugging only reminded Aragorn harshly that he should better be lying very still right now if he didn't want to fall right back into pain delirium.

"You don't need to. This was and is no one's problem but my own. I have given Gondor its King back when he was already thought lost, that cannot be bad. And I don't have to say good-bye to yet another friend after losing so many already. But I'm afraid." Tears hastily wiped away joined the traces of blood and dirt on Tarisilya's quite worn-looking dress.

"What if people ask me to do something like that again? If they want to know why the life of a child is worth less than a King's? What if someone that I love is dying? My father was thousands of years old when he tried spells like this for the first time, and even then, he still was intimidated by it. Your foster father will never grant me access to Imladris again if he learns about this. When it came to me, this was always exactly what he's been afraid of; he's already told me that hundreds of years ago. And you'll probably have to fire your elvish advisor to keep him from getting rid of me as a potential threat for the King. Yet I had no choice, not after killing that Uruk-hai in Rohan back then. I had to find a way to compensate for the parts of my abilities that I lost. Shall I go back now to doing without them again? Suddenly you don't know when to stop anymore."

"You're not alone, Ilya." Feeling that tiredness wanted to take him again, this time, Aragorn moved his bandaged shoulder on purpose to have the stinging throb in it make him see clearly again. There still was much to say before he could allow himself that luxury. "But I'm not the one you should have this conversation with."

"I know. That at least, I have understood in the last few days." With some effort, the she-elf pushed herself away from the window and wrapped an old robe around her body that one of the healers had forgotten, to hide at least the worst stains on her clothes. "I'll get the others."

"No."

Aragorn's firm tone had her look up in surprise and follow the gesture of his chin towards the gardens with a small grimace. "Wrong direction. Out of the question. I'm not going out there."

"My advisors can wait. The people need to learn immediately that they no longer have to fear for me and the line of Kings, and unfortunately, I won't make it yet myself to appear before them. I also won't let another healer take all the credit due to the elves. If you can't bring yourself to be proud of what you achieved, do it for me and for Gondor. The people need a reminder of how important your kin is for Mankind, now more than ever. Go tell them. I need a bit of time on my own anyway." Given he'd only just got up from his death bed, Aragorn mastered his commanding tone quite well again already.

Only his smile when he turned to Arwen again softened this newfound determination.

"If that's what His Majesty desires …" Tarisilya showed an exaggerated curtsy and left the room with something that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.

Aragorn just watched Arwen sleep for a few long moments, something he hadn't been allowed to do anymore for half an eternity. She still rested with her eyes open though except for appearances, her body was much more equivalent to a woman's than to a she-elf's ever since she'd given up immortality for him. She still was beautiful like a Firstborn though.

The same yearning as years, as decades ago filled him when he eyed her beloved face so close to his, her full, broad lips, her narrow nose, the silken black hair; very clear skin that was still reddened from crying a lot last night. It hurt, having to disturb her, to destroy this peaceful image. Though he had spent a little time with his beloved almost every day of the last few months, it was as if he would really be seeing her for the first time in a while.

Arwen promptly stirred a little in her sleep, murmuring something quietly.

Aragorn gently caressed her arm with his fingertips until she turned her head aside, the fog of dream leaving her deep blue eyes.

His betrothed stared at him silently for a few seconds, then rested one slightly trembling hand on his cheek. "Please tell me this isn't another dream."

"I sure hope not. It's been long since last I was allowed to wake up in such a nice way."

Aragorn rested his hand on hers lovingly, meaning to say something else, but in the next moment, Arwen buried her face against his neck, with her arm wrapped so tightly around his chest that it hurt. A few bright, salty drops fell onto his skin. "Everything's alright, mîl nín. Stop it, please. You've shed enough tears for me …"

"These are tears of joy, you fool." Arwen audibly tried to get her choked breath, her emotions back under control as Firstborn usually so easily could, and nuzzled even closer to him with a deep sigh.

"Insolent as ever." Aragorn had to laugh. With some effort, he made it to put his healthy arm around her.

"As if you would want me any other way." She managed to wipe her last tears on the pillow and wink at him. "How do you feel?"

"I'm alive, and nothing is going to change about that anytime soon."

"Your shoulder?" Arwen's face was already darkening again when she eyed the thick bandages on his upper body. The kind of consequences such an injury usually had now seemed to come back to her, as well.

At least, if you couldn't bank on the support of some of your friends' extraordinary abilities. "After everything, Ilya did for me last night, I'm inclined to believe her optimism. But let's not talk about that right now."

Aragorn's fingertips quickly grazed her lips, then her cheek. After having been certain for hours that he would never be able to enjoy being close to his betrothed ever again, now he couldn't get enough of every smallest touch, every one of her smiles, every shiver running down Arwen's arms when he was fondling her delicate neck like this. He'd denied himself such things out of stupidity and an exaggerated sense of duty for far too long; that would soon be over. "Listen, Nauriel, what I told you before blacking out …"

"Don't worry about that." Arwen interrupted him with a jerky headshake. "You thought you were dying, and you were running a high fever. You were about to say good-bye. I'm not taking you up on something like that. We have time, and the folk is in more unrest than ever. We shouldn't cause even more." In spite of the arduous rationality of these words, the same shadow already darkened her expression once more that had weighed down on her so heavily in the last few months. She tried to turn away, to get some distance between them. Suddenly, she seemed to feel almost as lost as last night.

Aragorn seriously considered punishing himself with a well-deserved slap on his right shoulder for what he had done to the she-elf without even realizing, by making her wait for so long once again. Even for a King, there couldn't be any priority in his life higher than love, than honoring the bond of a family, or he would be just as bad a leader as Denethor at his end. He could never allow himself to forget that again, and his partner shouldn't either.

"Arwen ... believe me, my mind was never clearer than in that night." He motioned her to bend down to him, rested his hand on her neck, and gave her a long kiss. "We won't wait for even another moon. I finally want you to become my wife."

"There's nothing I want more, mîl nín." This time, it wasn't tears of grief in Arwen's eyes.

Cheers arising in the city's streets interrupted the scene. Tarisilya had apparently announced that the King would survive. It wouldn't be long until the members of his advisor council would want to check on him.

In fact, they could hear the first quick steps in the hallway already.

Aragorn only just managed to squeeze Arwen's hand before his first advisor Verilas knocked, storming in without waiting for an invitation to corner him with questions.

In the long minutes that followed, he didn't let go of her even for a single moment either.

Chapter Text

To flee from the wild turmoil breaking loose in the city in the first few hours after the King's rescue, there was only one refuge for the she-elf who was in the center of it, at least until Aragorn would be capable of showing himself to his people. It was one of her most favorite places calling for her, as so often, on the sixth level of Minas Tirith, inhabited by calm creatures who didn't want anything from her, not even her talking to them, but were entirely satisfied with some care and the treatment of small wounds. Any other day, Tarisilya would have been almost alone in the aisle between the stalls, but when even the stable hands started shouting the news to each other, she retreated into Brego's stall.

The auburn stallion was still tired from the trip to Cair Andros that she'd asked of him to look for Legolas. He had only a surprised glance for her to spare before he went back to his extra helping of oats. Every now and then, he flicked his tail, wiping it over Tarisilya's face as if he wanted to dry her tears … or just voice his opinion about weird two-legged creatures who never knew when they should actually be happy.

Only when the horse looked up and backed away, Tarisilya realized that she had been found. Maybe someone wanted to come and get her because the day was already coming to an end again and the patients needed more care.

"Come closer, it's alright." She got up, still a little sluggishly in her exhaustion, and was surprised to look Éowyn of all people in the face. After that scene in the sick room, she hadn't expected to meet the Steward's wife again so quickly.

Brego seemed to recognize one of his old owners. He stretched his head forward and searchingly nosed the top of Éowyn's dress.

"I see, you're still a hog." Éowyn greeted the stallion by briefly blowing into his nostrils and gave him an apple that she had already cut in half so he wouldn't choke on it. Small gestures reminding Tarisilya that Éowyn had a deep connection to Tarisilya's favorite animals, just like her brother, and that in spite of all differences, the two of them had many similarities, too.

Seeing as Éowyn had overcome her pride already and had come to see her, she should be meeting her halfway. "Please forgive me for being so harsh last night."

"I want to apologize as well. I should never have entered that sick room, not like this. The thought of losing Aragorn, especially before he and I ever got a chance to finally reconcile, was just …" She paused, quickly wiping her eyes. "Let me say thank you."

Tarisilya didn't answer immediately because there was something in Éowyn's posture and tone suddenly frightening her. Something that she should actually have noticed before the assassination attempt already, in the chambers of the Steward's wife.

That Faramir did hardly have any time for his partner was one thing. A thing Éowyn would either have to live with or she would have to start accompanying her husband at his duties – the necessary qualifications for that, she had. But these regular separations, a situation that Tarisilya knew only too well, didn't just create loneliness. It also triggered a kind of old yearning that might be sent in the wrong direction if there was no one around to fight it.

The day would come to address that, to spare Aragorn, and Arwen, especially, more grief alone. But it wasn't this one, so shortly after this crisis.

"The least I could do," was therefore all she said, saying goodbye to Brego with a short caress. She couldn't hide here any longer. "I'm already on my way back to the patients, in case you were sent to get me."

"No." For some inexplicable reason, Éowyn smiled. There it was again, finally, after all these long months, the cautious and yet so enchanting smile of the White Lady of Rohan.

A smile that reminded Tarisilya of Éomer and caused homesickness for a country she had never lived in. Maybe – when this catastrophe was over, once she could be sure that her husband and the other elves were in safety – it was time to visit some old friends.

"I was sent to tell you that the soldiers have just passed the city gates. Our husbands are coming home from going to war. Let us go welcome them."

Leaving the stables, the two of them first had to make their way through a crowd though. With so many people wanting something from them, Éowyn had to wonder if she would only be able to leave the house with soldiers soon if Faramir's actions continued to stir so much unrest among men. People fortunately quickly understood that there were more important things right now, as the hoofbeats of soldier horses drew closer to the sixth level. They stepped back respectfully to clear the way.

Which allowed Éowyn and Tarisilya to see immediately that neither the group of soldiers nor the one of the elves were being complete. So much for taking their husbands into their arms again.

So this was why Tarisilya had looked so confused in the stable earlier. That mysterious mental connection existing between elvish lovers after their wedding must have warned her already.

"Milady." The man at the front approached Éowyn immediately. He jumped down next to her and bowed quickly before summarizing what had happened at the Dead Marshes in careful words. He especially emphasized, with the necessary volume, how hard Faramir had fought for the elves, how deeply losing one of them had hit him and that he was even ready to look for the rest of them in the darkness of Mordor.

People in the courtyard started to whisper excitedly; the gathering dissolved. Hopefully, the message would make the rounds in the city just as quickly as the other one of the Steward's possible treason had before.

"And now give me the rest of the bad news," Éowyn ordered once they were alone at last, the stable hands busy bringing the horses away, and a few healers under Ioreth's guidance had joined them to start caring for the elves who were in a state of total shock.

"I can't tell you anything more than I did. I would if I knew anything," the man quickly added when Éowyn glared. In the short time that she had been living there in Emyn Arnen, her temper seemed to have become infamous already. "I do know how strong you are, that no one needs to go easy on you. The fog was hiding what was going on with the others. But I can assure you that your husband wouldn't take the risk and dare to get too close to Mordor."

"Under usual circumstances, he would not."

All of the elves were being brought into the Houses of Healing, even those who actually weren't injured. With Tarisilya and Ioreth there, objections would have been futile anyway.

Tarisilya had her back to her, but Éowyn had heard her cry in the stables before, therefore she knew how this shadow of a she-elf who surely used to be enchanting, was looking right now after she had had to learn that this catastrophe had indeed already cost one of her people his life.

Éowyn could feel the same expression on her own face. So Mordor it was then where this crisis should end – and only the Valar knew how that might go. Éowyn almost wished, she'd had an occupation as well to throw herself into, so she wouldn't spend the next few days seeing images of mutilated bodies and chopped off heads in front of her closed eyes. One of these that might get catapulted over the city wall in the foreseeable future could be her husband's.

"What reason is there now for hope?"

She only realized that she had talked louder than planned when the soldier touched her hand, just for a moment to keep the necessary distance, and pointed at the departing elves.

Another member of their group approached them from the Houses of Healing, as quickly as her own condition allowed. Ignoring all rules of decency in public, Tauriel and her husband embraced each other tightly. Éowyn could see it from here that there were tears in Camhanar's eyes when his wife put their newborn daughter into his arms.

The soldier had meant to comfort her; instead, the sight caused her even more pain. It very clearly brought everything home to Éowyn that she had never had herself, not even at her wedding that should actually have been a symbol for a new start in her life. A few beautiful hours aside though, even that had passed her by almost entirely without a trace.

"Take me to the guesthouse." Only knowing that everything else would have been a scandal, now of all times when the people were finally being a little more well-disposed to Faramir again, kept Éowyn upright until she reached her chambers and could lock the door behind her. Crying, she collapsed on the bed.

"I can't remember telling you, you can get up." While the healers went ahead together with the other elves, Tarisilya had given Tauriel and her husband at least a minute alone, but now she had to disturb them.

"Don't be mad." Tauriel smiled apologetically, never taking her head off her husband's broad shoulder. "I just couldn't wait. By the way, I nursed the baby earlier. She and I are doing much better."

Given that it hadn't been too long since Tauriel had been far too weak for something like that, that was indeed very good news. There would be no damage to this little family by what a few fanatic men had started, so easily, as if it had been just a few days since the language of the elves had been forbidden in Gondor and Mankind had had nothing but fear and hate to spare for the Firstborn.

People's cheers had proven that there were still only a few that believed the rebels to be right; still the anxiety remained, the worry that this little fire could spread.

That Tauriel and Camhanar would hopefully live far away from such riots with their baby soon, was a calming thought for Tarisilya. "I'll ask the King to provide you with soldiers to escort you back to Imladris. Most of his Dúnedain are in Arnor to keep an eye on things there and initiate first negotiations, and Prince Faramir's Rangers are in Rohan right now, so he won't be able to deploy a large group. But Aragorn does owe me a little favor. You'll be back home in no time, I promise."

"Why would we want that?" Only Tauriel's confused question had Tarisilya realize that she was maybe thinking ahead further than the two elves could after the first shock. "Our home is North Ithilien, Your Highness."

The way Tarisilya's mouth dropped open made Tauriel laugh, exuberant laughter falling on the long hopelessness of the last few days like warm summer rain. "Did you think, we wouldn't bounce back? That a couple of men can destroy what we've been building for months? Believe me, someone who has served in King Thranduil's army for over a millennium doesn't get taken down so easily. I have turned my back to the open fight for far too long, I know that now. That has to stop."

"But the settlement is …" Did these people still mean to follow Legolas and her although they had now got to know the dangers first-hand? More than ever, Tarisilya wished Legolas would be here right now to hear all this, to understand that no one blamed him for what had happened like he doubtlessly did.

"The settlement can be rebuilt," Camhanar interrupted her. "The wargs only destroyed the first foundations. Most of the supplies and our belongings had long been taken to covered pits and into treetops that the animals couldn't reach. We always knew that we were living door to door with many threats. Therefore I'm even more relieved to be told that all the wargs are dead. And if some insane people do get the idea in their heads once more that they have to defend a country that isn't even theirs – this time we'll be prepared. If there's something you want to do for us, Your Highness, invite more of our people. Tell them we need the support of everyone who doesn't know yet what to do with their life after the war. We've been given the last task in these lands before we make our way to the west. If I went back to Imladris now, the loneliness there would scare me more than a few oversized predators. Gondor is still filled with life. We won't refuse that gift so easily."

"Thank you, both of you." But it wasn't just happiness in Tarisilya's voice. The recurring worry about her husband that she'd just had to free from a deadly trap a few days ago, remained. There was nothing, no comforting word, no touch that would have soothed that panic, therefore, she was glad that her friends didn't even try.

Camhanar's next question though didn't exactly help her peace of mind either. "I've been wondering about it for days, Your Highness. Tell me: Where is the dauntless warlord of Imladris who sent us help in our darkest hour?"

"Nothing's changed, Princess." As if Ioreth had known where Tarisilya would go next, she was waiting for the three elves in front of a certain sick room at the very end of the ground-floor hall.

"Isn't it time we finally informed somebody?" From that conversation, Tarisilya and Erestor had had slightly too loud the other evening, the healer could probably remember well that the King's advisor had insisted on that. Every healer knew of course the duty to tell relatives about a patient's condition; therefore, the woman did visibly not feel good about this idleness.

"You'll find a white dove in my chambers. She knows her way to Lórien." From a pocket of her dress, Tarisilya took a rolled parchment that she had already been carrying with her since last night and thrust it in Ioreth's hand. "Starting from there, the tidings will reach the other elven realms."

"Is it that bad, Your Highness?" While Camhanar had turned very pale, his wife just stared to the ground in sadness, knowing, thanks to her stay in these buildings, what was written in this letter already.

"Go." Tarisilya nodded at the door. "I'll be with the others in case you need me."

"What?" Camhanar, already about to press down the handle, looked back and forth between Tarisilya and Tauriel.

"Thondrar doesn't want to see Her Highness," Tauriel explained quietly. "I don't know what his problem is. He followed her to Cair Andros voluntarily; no one has forced him. Her Highness saved his life."

"Yes. And that's exactly what he will hate me for forever." Tarisilya walked away with fast steps, to see to those who were still waiting for her help.

So far, the healer had managed to keep most people away from Aragorn's room so that he could recover and sleep as much as possible. But as the citizen's voices were filled with more and more aggression, audible even through the firmly closed windows, Aragorn was glad that Ioreth reluctantly allowed Verilas access.

"Your Majesty." Aragorn's first advisor was out of breath and sweaty. Panting, he braced his hands on his knees. The old man's already slightly frail body trembled alarmingly. "I'm sorry to disturb you ..." He bowed belatedly, wringing his hands.

Aragorn gave Arwen his plate immediately that he had only been able to empty halfway anyway. Not only had he lost his appetite at the latest when he'd been told all that had happened while he had been fighting death. The report of a Firstborn's death hadn't exactly made that any better. And actually, he'd just been busy making a pact with his shoulder so that it would stop torturing him that much, thanks to a whole load of pain-relieving herbs and salves. He needed at least to start doing his job again. To give help to those who would need it most right now, especially to his best elvish friend. It seemed the time for gathering his strength would be over soon either way.

"Speak or you'll have a stroke and will have to lie here yourself."

"People are going unhinged." Verilas' bright grey eyes turned to the balcony. It looked like he was expecting to see men show up there any minute, trying to force their way to the King, no matter how. "They demand to have the Stewardaides atone for their deeds immediately. I'm afraid they'll try to storm the prison if the mood keeps on dropping. If we don't do anything, people will hang tonight."

Aragorn's expression darkened. He closed his eyes for a moment as if that would help to lock out the world around him, to make a decision that actually, he had thought to still have some time left for.

With clenched teeth, he sat up then and scooted to the edge of the bed. "Have one of my government tunics brought here and make sure, there's a path cleared to the Citadel."

"Your Majesty?" Verilas had probably expected the King to act, but not by wanting to leave the Houses of Healing immediately.

"You heard me. I can't have anyone else speak for me. The crowd would take that the wrong way and only the Valar know what people will get up to then. There's space only for few people in the gardens behind these houses; a speech here would possibly do more harm than be of use. You know how it is with word by mouth and how quickly messages can change." Aragorn pulled back the blanket but had to pause as he felt dizzy from the quick movement.

Arwen had stayed in the background so far, but now she stepped forward. "This is utter madness, Aragorn!"

Noticing Verilas' punishing look because she was ignoring the etiquette so thoughtlessly in public, she sighed soundlessly. "You're still far too weak, Your Majesty. There's far too much that can happen on the way …"

"I have no choice. This city can't take any more turmoil. Don't make me repeat myself, Verilas."

Aragorn's irritated tone had his advisor startle so he quickly softened it. If he'd planned to rule as unfriendly, arrogant, and unfair as Denethor had towards the end, he would never have needed to take office. "Just do your part so I can get this done as quickly as possible. I'll be careful, don't worry."

Verilas nodded, visibly embarrassed by the little reprimand, and left the room. They could hear him start order people around outside.

Ioreth's enraged voice in the distance didn't bode well.

Arwen eyed Aragorn with her breath going too fast, her hands clenched around the skirt of her dress. She looked as if she considered tying him to the bed just so he would stay. "Be rational, will you? If it's Verilas delivering your orders, nothing will happen. You only just escaped death!"

"Come, mîl nín." Aragorn motioned her to sit with him.

"People are upset, and they have been for quite a while as you know. One spark is all it takes to light a fire. The citizens want to see how I am doing for themselves. Right now, they won't listen to anyone else. I can do this; I don't even feel that exhausted anymore."

Arwen just huffed. There was no doubt she noticed exactly that just sitting straight for so long was costing him strength already. "Fine. You'll be the one explaining this to Ioreth though. You won't be able to convince her that easily. And she's already angry because I helped Thondrar get out of here the other night." After a brief kiss to his temple, she went outside as well, almost running into the healer in the doorway.

Ioreth started to ask something, but Arwen shook her head in resignation. "The King has made up his mind."

"Thought so." The woman smoothed down her apron in annoyance, staring at her patient. "Hardly any of the men lying here wants to listen to his healers as soon as he's somewhat in his right senses again. And just like with the others I'll make sure that His Majesty has at least a bad conscience about it."

Arwen's grin revealed that she'd have loved to hear the following conversation ...

It took but half an hour until a hole in the masses up to the citadel existed that the soldiers secured as well as possible with their bodies, protected by their armor. The distance between the men was suspiciously large though; another of the many painful reminders of how many capable people the war had cost their lives.

And now it would be Aragorn's job to prevent more dangerous conflicts from breaking out. However, he did already need a lot longer for the comparatively short way upwards than usual. As he walked, he was slightly slumped forward, moving far too slow, the pain the effort was causing him plain to see.

Ioreth who stayed a bit behind him, like a shadow, had her eyes on him incessantly. His advisors didn't leave the King out of their sight either.

Arwen on the other hand had gone ahead, protected from questioning eyes by a long cloak and a hood, once she had made sure, her betrothed wouldn't be collapsing right away. Now she was waiting in the circle of the Citadel together with the other members of the royal household.

The cheering folk didn't even seem to want to notice Aragorn's lousy appearance. They only registered that their leader, that legendary fighter, had once more survived a dangerous situation and was already standing in front of them again a blink of the eye later. For the first time since the war, Aragorn had strengthened his status as a figurehead for these people by weathering the Stewardaides in the most dangerous conflict since his coronation. While the King's enemies hadn't been publicly supported before, they had gotten a lot of secret endorsement from the people anyway.

Now it seemed, every single person between the white walls was against the rebels, demanding their death and cursing them as enemies of the country. This gathering here actually wasn't even really one for the King. It degenerated more into a riot of bystanders and of the resentful against the Stewardaides who suddenly seemed responsible for everything by the second. There were even voices attributing the hard winter to the enemies as they surely had caused it by some dark enchantments, or the dirty water that had made its way into the city from North Ithilien. The Stewardaides had poisoned it, again and again, many were saying, to cast the King in a bad light.

No matter how much Arwen hated these men herself, and although she did intend to help ensure that they would not get away with what they had done, especially not with regard to the death of one of her people: This was madness. If this didn't stop, very soon, there would be random allegations against people completely innocent emerging who had allegedly made a pact with the Stewardaides, just because their neighbors might not like their faces, or because they had had a quarrel with someone who wanted them gone.

Yes … Arwen understood now why Aragorn had insisted on speaking up himself.

Upon reaching the top of the stairs to the White Tower, he had to catch his breath for a moment. A chance he used to wait until people turned quieter until he could be sure that he would be heard.

"That it moves your hearts so much to see me on my way to recovery, makes me happy. Yet there are furious voices that sounded all the way to the Houses of Healing. So tell me what it is that you require."

"Let them hang!" A woman at the very front yelled what everyone was probably thinking; the others roared their approval.

"Exactly! These bastards deserve death!" A particular loud man was making himself heard in the noise already swelling again. "Curse the Stewardaides! Let them end up on the gallows!"

Many people threw their arms in the air. The demand was repeated soon in every corner of the courtyard, the folk screaming for revenge louder and louder.

Arwen could see the guard next to her broaden his stance and grab his shield tighter, in case the crowd would try to put their words into action.

Aragorn raised his hand sharply, looking at the people one by one until it was silent enough again for them to hear his still very quiet voice.

"Under my rule, the death penalty would be a reform that this city isn't even equipped for anymore, as you should know. So tell me: Who of you will volunteer to tie the rope for the hanging? Who will cut down trees and build the gallows? Who will put the rope around these men's necks when it comes to it and push them?"

As expected, these cynical counterclaims suddenly had no one put their hand up anymore, but a grumble clearly remained. "They deserve it! You can't just let them get away!"

"I never said I would. They will receive punishment, and it will not be mild. But do you want to explain to these men's children why they are hanging dead here in this court and will never come home again?"

Aragorn turned to the woman from earlier. "Will you take the bodies down and prepare them for a funeral? Will you take care of the rebels' families until the little ones will be old enough to understand what happened? By then, there will be many families in this city who will look at the King with nothing but hate for judging their chiefs for death. And at everyone here in this yard who screamed for murder so loudly."

Aragorn hissed audibly when his growing exhaustion sent a tremble through his body. Ioreth wanted to lean over to him already but he stayed her with a jerky headshake. He had to go sure that the folk had truly understood him.

"This city has already seen too much blood and death. As long as I am ruling this country, no citizen will raise their hand against another with my permission, not even if they're a traitor. This hate can't be passed on to the next generation."

"What kind of King doesn't even fight back against his own enemies?" There were still some scattered angry voices.

One of the guards wanted to rush forward and bring the owner of this insolent remark to justice, but Aragorn held this man back with a clear order as well.

"Oh, I do fight back," he repeated with a growl. "true, I will not allow the rest of this scum to celebrate these villains as heroes for dying for their cause. Unlike them, I will not just wipe out my enemies. But these men will never see daylight again, never feel the wind on the fields outside the gates on their faces. Never will they enjoy the freedom again that they have sacrificed fathers, brothers, and sons for in the war. After a few years in the dungeons, they will wish without a doubt that I had given in to you today."

No one dared to speak up anymore, but for the moment, no one was moving either as if the citizens had to decide first if this sentence would suffice. But they quickly seemed to realize how much worse life in prison could be, parted from your family and real life. When every day, you only could dream about strolling through the city that the Stewardaides loved so much that they had become traitors for it.

One affirmative shout after the other could be heard that soon merged into a unity of voices that even had to echo all the way down to the city gate.

Aragorn's foresight and his wisdom had once more prevailed with his folk.

The worst tension melted away from Aragorn. At least today, people wouldn't try to express their wrath by using their fists. His decision was indeed being accepted by most of them, not only reluctantly taken like an order, and the aggression seemed to have dissolved.

Together with the worry though, the last strength seeped from his body. He slumped on one knee, his hand clenched around his shoulder that suddenly pain radiated from almost as unrelentingly as in the night when the poison had done its work. Blood started to stain his tunic.

The guards and Ioreth immediately ran to him; new unrest spread in the yard.

Arwen pushed through to him as well. Frightened, she bent down to Aragorn, taking his face in her hands while Ioreth took a look at the reopened wound. "I rather don't say anything or I'll be insolent again."

"This time, I deserve the 'fool'." Clenching his teeth, Aragorn tried to get up but his trembling legs wouldn't let him.

"Can you do that in my chambers, Ioreth?" While Aragorn was acting as a healer regularly himself, as a patient, he never stayed in any sick room longer than necessary.

With a disapproving expression on her face, Ioreth straightened up. "I have to resew the wound. Before this little adventure here, that wouldn't have been necessary. Thread and needle I can only wield down at our place. His Majesty is welcome to recover in the Tower then though if he insists. The bandages can be changed there, too."

She turned to the crowd personally and explained convincingly that nothing bad was wrong with the King.

Aragorn waved a guard closer. He rather walked bracing himself on somebody and being in bad pain than let anyone possibly carry him.

Before they had even passed the gate to the sixth level again, the fanfare of Emyn Arnen sounded from the walls of the seventh … and after a short break, the long-drawn-out, melancholic one of the elves of Cair Andros. Faramir and Legolas were coming home.

It seemed the further treatment would happen with a lot more people watching than planned.

Chapter Text

Aragorn didn't know if he had Beregond's, Verilas', or Faramir's efforts to thank for but he was very relieved that Legolas was being brought before him straight away, shielded by several soldiers, just like Aragorn had been earlier. In his friend's expression, he'd already seen it from a distance that another catastrophe must have happened. Hadn't they had all been hoping badly that after the horrible news of the causality in the Marshes, it was over? That had been very naïve. Understandable words of anger from Legolas would have made the situation in Minas Tirith even worse.

For now, though, the elf didn't seem to be capable of anything but silence anyway. Aragorn had to doubt he even really realized where he was.

Faramir, too, stared away in embarrassment as if he was standing in a tomb, not in a sick room.

Aragorn couldn't take that into account right now. That there had been almost nobody in the city when Arwen and he had almost been assassinated, was something he was mostly responsible for himself, he and his enemies' ingenious plan. At some point in the last few days, he had grown tired of talking people out of feeling guilty for everything happening around them.

This was something Faramir would have to try and deal with on his own. The two of them had a couple of other things to sort out that had taken place while the Stewardaides had been able to strike in the Citadel almost unhindered. Starting with the question of why a group of unarmed elves had been sent out into the darkness of the Dead Marshes with the soldiers just watching.

Since Faramir didn't seem to notice Aragorn's impatient look, it was Beregond at last who told him, once Aragorn had dropped onto a bed on Ioreth's instruction and the woman started unfastening his bandages. The captain's words were incoherent; he ran a hand through his hair repeatedly that was completely dirtied with mud, as if that could help soothe what was going on inside of him as well.

Though the sight of the new arrivals had made Aragorn half and half expect it, it was almost unbearable for him, too, knowing for sure now what had happened to some more of the elves; which was why he turned to Legolas to try and show him his support before the report was even finished.

"I will send a pigeon to Imladris immediately. In one of your letters, you once told me, there are some relatives of your friends still living there. Their parents will be able to feel whether there is any hope still left for them or not. If there is, I will initiate a rescue mission at once."

Without this certainty though, such an attack on a fortress currently impossible to assess was a risk far too big for a number of soldiers strongly reduced as it was. Therefore, Aragorn was relieved to see Legolas show at least the hint of a nod while still stubbornly looking everywhere but towards him. They were both very aware that actually, this inquiry would unfortunately not even be necessary as for prisoners of hostile orcs – especially in their current vengeful, uncontrolled status –, there was usually nothing that could be done.

That at least, they could agree on; but as soon as Beregond had stopped talking and Aragorn had briefly summarized for the others what had happened in the Citadel earlier, Legolas addressed him, cold and repelling as he never had before, not even back then at their first bumpy meeting.

"So what I'm hearing is that murderers are no longer being brought to justice here. How many more will have to die before you change your mind?"

"Do I need to remind you who you're talking to before you stop snapping at me like I am the enemy? Before you remember where you are?"

While Aragorn understood the elf's wrath, he couldn't and didn't want to let anyone talk to him like that. He was this realm's King; his decisions were law, including the ones that his closest friends might not like. He could deal with critique, he even welcomed it when it was due, for that was the only way for him to grow as a ruler and always be certain that he was doing his best. But the provocative way Legolas was voicing it right now was bordering on insolence.

And first and foremost, Aragorn was Legolas' friend. That counted even so much more. He wanted to find a solution for this disagreement suddenly arising between them and not be forced to start a serious dispute.

Ioreth cleared her throat, quite shy suddenly because she felt out of place. "Your Majesty, I really need to start sewing your wound or you're going to risk further infection. If I use large stitches, I'll be faster but the scar will be bigger then. Small stitches will take longer."

"Scars have never bothered me. Just hurry up." Aragorn sat up a little straighter on the mattress, tucking one leg under him to make the woman's work easier for her.

His eyes remained fixed on Legolas, even when the healer started to probe him and he had to clench his teeth. "Can your reproaches wait five more minutes? I tend to be quite a bad conversation partner while being patched up."

"Don't you think you have upset Your Majesty enough?" On the other side of the room, Verilas immediately used the chance to intervene. "He's already collapsed earlier. He needs rest!"

"We are aware of that but this matter needs to be resolved before it can cause even more damage. Once we got this over with, His Majesty can recover while I initiate further steps." Faramir felt visibly uncomfortable. His right hand couldn't stop tugging on the glove on the other side.

"Albeit we should better not have this conversation without your other advisors, Aragorn. Why don't you call them …?"

"No."

Aragorn startled when Legolas spoke up once more, with a suppressed moan when stinging agony radiated from his shoulder down to his chest once more. In spite of some pain-relieving tinctures, his body more and more refused to put up with all this. The wound started to throb, new blood started to drip. Clenching his fist, Aragorn forced himself to focus on the conversation, no matter how badly he felt like throwing anyone out who wasn't working here right now.

He'd already been sitting idle long enough. The realization hit him with an ice-cold shock as he eyed his friend thoroughly for the first time since Legolas had helped him free Arwen from the Stewardaides' clutches. They hadn't been meeting for far too long; ever since then, Aragorn hadn't taken any time to visit his closest ally at least for a few hours, to make sure that he was doing alright … That neglect might take its toll now. All that stress of the last few months had kept him from noticing how far Legolas had really been thrown off course.

In fact, he'd almost not recognized him at first sight, neither by his haggard appearance nor by his voice, once so grounded, that revealed nothing but unbridled hate tonight. To be exact, Legolas' current condition reminded him strikingly of the elf's wife who should rather not be seen by any of her friends in Lórien right now either, or someone might dump her on a ship going west by force after all.

Tarisilya though very rarely expressed her dark emotions with such aggression as the Prince of Eryn Lasgalen just did. "I don't need even more people discussing this matter endlessly instead of making decisions. I thought your meeting with these rebels would have taught you that, Steward. If you plan to keep these criminals here under your care and protection, Aragorn, riots in your folk will not even be necessary. Then it will be the elves who will make their way inside the prison to exact vengeance."

After everything that Legolas and he had gone through together in the war and afterward, Aragorn would never have expected such a threat from his friend. In the weak firelight, Legolas' eyes turned into dark, glowing sapphires. Only the soft glistening in them was still revealing life. His hands were buried in his upper arms so firmly as if he had to keep himself from grabbing his daggers to emphasize his words any moment.

"If you do not have the will to do it, leave it to others. Why don't you banish them, as so many citizens are demanding it? I think that's a brilliant idea. They will meet their fate as soon as your soldiers won't guard them anymore. The elves have already had patience with men who have absolutely no respect for life and innocence for far too long, regardless of them belonging to certain Dunlending-tribes or misguided supporters of the Steward."

Aragorn got up with a jerk, ignoring both the pain in his chest and the healer who wanted to hold him back. In spite of this day having lasted for far too long, his shock granted him the necessary strength to look Legolas in the eye.

His hand was shaking when he pointed at the door. "You better leave this room right now. And do not approach me again before you got your senses back together, Legolas Thranduilion. It is you who just made sure that I cannot stand before you as a friend right now. If you utter something like that within these city walls once more, you will have to suffer the consequences, Prince of Eryn Lasgalen. I will accept that here just as little as you could in your realm. Before you have understood something so simple, you should not be talking to another leader as a representative of your people." Aragorn hoped that the clear distance that the presence of far too many witnesses of the ugly scene demanded alone, would help Legolas see at least the most necessary reason.

While the elf, naturally, had been carrying the formal title of a Prince since birth already, save for harmless diplomatic visits, he'd never had to act like one. That was showing more than ever right now.

It was his father who orchestrated matters in Eryn Lasgalen. If his offspring would ever be ascending to the throne at all, had been written in the stars since the construction of the elf settlement in North Ithilien at the latest. After all, for an immortal like Thranduil, there was no compulsory need to ever abdicate; not to mention that the King, just like most of his people, would probably go west at some point anyway, and then that realm would be another one that stopped existing. Therefore, it seemed, Thranduil had never prepared his son sufficiently for an unlikely emergency.

Legolas was being on thin ice right now. And he didn't even notice.

There was no way Aragorn could suffer that, no matter how much he hated not being able to offer Legolas help in his grief in this night of all times.

What made things worse was that he wasn't innocent about this whole misery himself. Aragorn should already have stepped up a lot louder when on their journey back from Imladris, Legolas and he had run into that one Dunlending when freeing King Éomer, who had confessed to the elf massacre in his lands. On that day, it had still been fairly easy to calm Legolas down, sure … But they still had left the man to die; and Aragorn had personally tasked the dwarves in Moria to hunt down the rest of these bastards. Back then, he had not been King yet, and these people had not belonged to his folk. But he should still have tried to be a good example; maybe then, this thing wouldn't be happening right now.

In the first few weeks after the war's end, he'd just been far too mentally unstable himself to remember the first lectures that both his foster father and Mithrandir had drilled into him most insistently back then: that you couldn't be careful enough with the decision of taking someone's life.

It seemed like no one ever had instilled that knowledge in Legolas. This was a matter Aragorn had to handle not only in the interest of the people but also to protect Legolas from what he wanted to unleash here.

"How much has the war numbed you?" Instead of giving in though, Legolas backed away from Aragorn, retreating towards the window, visibly perplexed about getting to know this side of him. "Was it the many soldiers who fell in Rohan and at the Black Gate? When did you stop counting the bodies? Tell me, what would you have done to the Stewardaides who kidnapped Arwen if we had found her dead? Would they have been judged just as mildly as people who send members of other folks to their death, too cowardly to raise a sword on their own? How quickly can one forget their roots, not caring about the fate of elves anymore who raised you like one of their own?"

"Don't talk about things you don't understand!" Now, at the latest, Aragorn had become too upset for calm words. "Unlike me, you are not a leader, and you've never been one! Right now, I'm doubting that you ever really held leadership of Eryn Lasgalen's defenses. You don't the have slightest idea what it means to be responsible for the lives of others. Didn't you usually prefer to let others decide? In the beginning, what was the Fellowship for you? An adventure to prove something to your father? It wasn't you, in any case, who had to take care of the others and to choose a path after Mithrandir had fallen into the shadow, or who had to live with it that we lost even more people or had to leave them alone because of that. Such decisions are part of a command. For you, battles were a playground. It's not the number of fallen enemies that makes a warrior but the lives he saves."

Aragorn approached Legolas angrily when the elf started to turn away, torn between his pain and a voice, too weak yet, that hopefully tried to whisper to him that Aragon was being right. "Will you kindly look at me after screaming things like that in my face? This is how little you know me, mellon? Yes, the blood of my people is on my hands, but that was the only way I could save this world. Without resistance, everyone in Gondor and Rohan would have died an agonizing death or been enslaved. Where would you have been then? Where would you have built Ilya a home? In the middle of Sauron's realm? I doubt it. You would have saved yourself along with the rest of your kin. Me on the other hand, I have fought for my world. I remember all the dead whenever I look down on the fields from the city walls, glad that all of this is finally over. Now you want me to watch an elf executing a man, starting a new conflict between our people that would never come to an end? It was you who personally stopped me from following my hate in Ithilien, wasn't it? And yes, you even could have done so if Arwen couldn't have been saved. Why exactly am I supposed to not try and do the same for you?"

Only now that he was still looking at a face all but petrified, of someone who was lost too much in his despair to accept anything, Aragorn's voice began to tremble. He could only hope that Legolas would think about all of this long and hard because Aragorn wouldn't find the greatness in him to do this all over in the foreseeable future.

"How dare you doubt my love for your kin! I call one of you my father, another one of you my betrothed, two more of you my siblings. Many others of you, I love like my brothers as well. All my life, my heart has belonged not only to Men but also to your folk. With how you're acting right now though, I have to wonder if maybe I was wrong."

Bitter laughter escaped Legolas' lips. "You're right about one thing: Before the War of the Ring, I was never granted the honor of a big fight. If that makes me a worse Companion in your opinion, you should have expelled me from the Fellowship when you had the chance. Before I was faced with the cruelty of your people in the rubble of Helm's Deep, there was still a way out for me. I did not need any order for my path to lead me away from my family, to support Men in their fight. Pain, humiliation, and violence were my reward, even now while the last of us are trying to make this world better for your folk. My wife is being openly attacked on these streets and our wish for justice remains unheard. You're not the only one getting a lot of doubts in a situation like that."

"You underestimate Men if a few bad experiences already make you judge all of them, even those who always stood by your kind. If you see in me one of those who harm you or support the ones who hate you, I should really have sent you away back then. Our friendship during the war doesn't seem to have meant anything more than the acquaintance before anyway."

Aragorn sat back down on the bed. He had rarely felt so drained before. There wasn't even a single word left in his mind, nothing that could have defused the situation. With his hand placed over his eyes, his posture slumped, he didn't manage anymore to hide the deep grief about Legolas of all people revealing such a dangerous mindset. One that must already have been building in the elf for a long time, but never in such a self-destructive amount, and never so bad that he didn't let anyone help him.

A knock at the door interrupted his next words.

"Your Highness?" Visibly intimidated by the loud voices that people must have heard even at the end of the hall, one of Faramir's soldiers stuck his head in at the door. After quickly bowing to Aragorn, he turned to Legolas. "The men are ready. Have you been able to arrange …?"

"Not yet." Legolas forced himself to lower his arms, not because he was suddenly sharing Aragorn's point of view but because apparently, he had to ask him for something, after this conversation of all times.

"If my King allows, the survivors will now gather for a memorial ceremony for their murdered friends. A fire shall light the celebration yard in front of the White Tower tonight, so no one in this realm will forget what happened in North Ithilien."

"Gondor's thoughts will be with the fallen as well. You can have everything you need for the ceremony. The guards are at your disposal."

Aragorn didn't make it to look up. Something in him had broken earlier when Legolas' eyes, clouded by hate, had suddenly turned to him. There had been a time when nothing in his life had been so important to him as finally fulfill his destiny as a King. Now he wondered what a realm was really worth if he had to sacrifice a friendship for it.

"You have the gratitude of my people." With a plenty impersonal bow, Legolas left the room, waving the soldier along.

There was probably a lot that Faramir had to say, but unlike Legolas, now at least, he saw how weak the King really was. He managed to usher Beregond and Verilas outside when he left, falling back into his role as Aragorn's substitute, insincere as it might be right now.

Aragorn stayed sitting there motionlessly for a moment. Then he called the healer back inside who had excused herself to go to an adjoining room at some point in the last few minutes since those words had been none of her business. Maybe in his chambers, Aragorn would be at least safe from requests for decisions that he simply couldn't make.

He hardly even felt his shoulder finally being sewed close. It felt as if both his body and mind had frozen. There were many difficulties he had expected in the course of his regency but not a rift with one of his Ring Companions of all people.

Legolas had actually expected his wife outside but although Tarisilya had had to be informed about his arrival in the city and could impossibly have missed the tragic news either, he couldn't spot her anywhere, and not in the courtyard either.

Which was why he was in much of a hurry to tell the soldiers what to prepare and in which way exactly before he hurried to the chambers in the guesthouse opposite the King's House that Aragorn had provided Tarisilya and him with after their common journey to the west.

Given how distraught they both were right now, entirely unable to even begin concentrating on the mental marriage bond between them – something they didn't know how to handle so far anyway –, he could only guess. But just as feared, he did indeed find his partner in the bedroom, in front of closed shutters. Just like when he had come back to Minas Tirith after that unnerving search for Arwen back then. Only back then, there had been a proud warrior of Imladris with her to support her. This time, she was completely alone.

And this time, she was seeing him, too. For the first time since their wedding, Legolas had the feeling that Tarisilya was really looking at him, not at grief, pain, anger, self-reproaches, but at her husband, and even while she was wrapping her arms around him with a sob, she was smiling.

"What happened to you?" The catastrophic argument earlier could never have distracted Legolas too badly for him not to notice how much his wife was trembling and that she had lost even more weight since their last meeting at Cair Andros. The grief for their friends alone couldn't be responsible for bringing her down so much; Tarisilya and he were being close enough to know that.

He found the answer on the windowsill, in the shape of a book that Legolas knew only too well. At one of their first meetings hundreds of years ago, Tarisilya had left it with him for him to read. Back then, he had had to be extremely careful about always keeping it on him, to not risk his father possibly finding it, given some of the things written down in it. And now one of the pages that had frightened him so much was being open.

So this was why people in the city were euphorically talking about a miracle. One had happened indeed, but it wasn't what many men called magic in the absence of a better term. It was a miracle that could destroy Tarisilya.

That made it official: This day could definitely not get any worse.

"I'll take care of you, Ilya." Legolas finally pulled Tarisilya closer to him, trying to let her know that he was not recoiling from the things that she had had to do in the last few days, especially that he was not recoiling from her. "I will keep you from becoming what you are so afraid of."

"Oh, will you?" she asked, so cynically that she startled herself. "Even when it's about someone that you don't want to die? Will you ask me then to let them go too instead of getting them back? I will be haunted by this forever, Legolas."

When he silently caressed her cheek, with trembling fingertips, searching for words, in vain, she knew he had understood. There were certain things that no one could change. And today, his own demons sapped Legolas of too much strength to try anyway.

"I just wish I could talk to ada about it." She broke away from him, gently enough to signal him that she wasn't being angry with him. Dropping onto the bed with the book, she crossed her arms on it as if that could make it vanish, undo that she had let the words in it guide her. "He taught me everything. He would know what to do. I can't ask Lord Elrond. I already couldn't bring myself to when Ninor died. Lectures won't help me right now."

When Legolas took her by her upper arms, she shivered, not knowing why. She had never shied away from any of his touches … Then she realized that it was his expression. In the war, this had been exactly how her twin brother Tegiend had always looked when he had pushed her to give up her life on Middle-earth. "Don't."

"I have neglected you for far too long, Ilya. I hurt myself by hurting you. If this the only chance we have left, we'll leave it all behind. We can ride to Mithlond immediately." Now it was him backing away, confronted with open rage where he had probably excepted gratitude and happiness.

"Did you hear anything I just said?" Tarisilya raised to her full height, the strains of the last few days forgotten. Now she just couldn't shut up anymore. When had it happened that Legolas had stopped understanding her to her very core? "I'm already trembling from a temptation that can destroy both our lives, and now you're offering me another? Yes, I want to sail into the west, to my family! I miss them so much, I don't know when I last woke up happy! But I want to be with you as well, and I just can't have both right now. Just let it be! Never suggest that again as long as your heart is not ready for it!"

It hurt, seeing every one of her words hit him deeply, seeing the following silence make him collapse on the bed.

She couldn't even hug him, no matter how much she wanted it. She couldn't apologize for something when she was being more serious about as than about hardly anything else before. She could only nod when he stammered that he didn't recognize her.

"I already told you: I won't leave it to others anymore to fight for our happiness. I don't want anything to stand between us anymore, especially not problems that only exist because I don't dare to tell you something."

Still keeping her distance, she grabbed his hand at least that he had painfully buried on his lower arm, so she could be sure, he was listening. "This time, think before you answer. I am aware that you don't really want to leave, but can the two of us really start over? On a world that only recovers from the war so slowly? As long as our fate might allow us to accompany our friends on their way? Or have we bitten off more than we can chew? Because unless you ran out of hair ties in North Ithilien, you look suspiciously like you've given up."

In similar situations in the past, it had already been Tarisilya's dry humor that had melted the worst tension when none of them had known what to say. Now, too, she thought to see the hint of a grin on Legolas before he shook his head in helplessness. "I don't know, Ilya. I guess, the next few days will show. And you're right, this is nothing that we can decide on a whim. Please get changed, elwen. This day isn't over yet."

Since they'd told her what had happened, it had been clear to Tarisilya that the night wouldn’t pass by without Legolas honoring the victims; so she followed his request without comment, though they had actually not even started to sort things out. But today, they wouldn’t get a chance for that anymore either. Attending the mourning ceremony was the least she could do for her friends who had entered the Halls of Mandos – all four of them, as could be told with almost a hundred percent certainty –, and for their relatives, too.

She just took a brief look back over her shoulder while changing her dress, to watch Legolas search for something appropriate on his part, in the big bundle from Eryn Lasgalen that had arrived for him in Minas Tirith a few weeks ago. As he got rid of his dirty clothes, the far too thin sight of him had her swallow deeply.

Once her husband had put on a black, crystals-adorned robe that had fit him well 20 years ago only, she stepped closer to him, still busy tying up her hair to hide its lousy condition. And to stop Legolas from sadly staring at its reduced length every two minutes, at the symbol of how much Tarisilya was ready to sacrifice for him if need be. And that he couldn't keep her from it. "I remember that one. You last wore it when we celebrated the new millennium of Men. I've already hated it then."

There had been a time when she hadn't been able to get enough of Legolas' rare smile being aimed at her. As these days, it was mostly spiked with bitterness, she almost preferred him to stay serious. "I asked ada to send it in my last letter, not knowing how quickly I would need it."

When Legolas' third failed attempt at redoing his simple hairstyle failed due to his hands shaking, Tarisilya stepped behind him and did it for him. When some crimped strands grazed her skin that had been thin braids at his temple not too long ago, shivers ran down her arms. Just like that, it should all be over, including a hero's legend thought immortal after the war? She just couldn't and would not accept that.

But she couldn't even begin to think about how to possibly support her husband in this bad situation before the two of them hadn't got the most difficult task on this day over with.

Chapter Text

At Aragorn's behest, the oblong, tapered front yard of the White Tower had been closed off so that bystanders wouldn't hurt the mourners more than they could give comfort; therefore, the guards' presence aside, the usually so busy place where once the coronation of Elessar had taken place, was completely deserted. A perfect atmosphere for Firstborn to process something that many of them had never been confronted with before: that the immortality of elves did not mean, they could never be torn from their current lives.

For the many spectators behind half-closed curtains and in dark building entrances, the image had to seem strange; seeing delicate beings in thin robes and fluttering dresses standing in the draftiest corner of the whole Citadel, in the cuttingly cold January air. And these partly curious, partly compassionate watchers would surely have been even more confused, had they been told how unusual it was that all of these elves were indeed freezing.

Finally, Faramir's soldiers who had joined the gathering voluntarily threw the last of collected wood into the fire, and the flames were reaching up high into the night sky.

While the Men discreetly went to the back of the crowd, Arwen approached from the other side, who, a Firstborn herself was grieving her friends just as much as any of the others.

With her came two persons who had actually not been invited and yet in some way, had most reason to be here.

While the elves gifted Faramir and his wife – both very simply dressed for their rank, wearing dark blue and heavy coats –, with at least a quick bow, Legolas and the Steward exchanged hardly more than fleeting eye contact.

Legolas considered sending them away for a moment. When your world was drowning in emptiness, more with every rising flame, exercising leniency was hard. There weren't enough words in existence to sugarcoat that Faramir had failed to attack the Stewardaides in North Ithilien immediately. Legolas was sorely tempted to snap at him like yesterday, to ask him if maybe he thought it would be good for his damaged reputation, disturbing this ceremony.

It was Éowyn who had him keep silent. Faramir had made grave mistakes, and even now, he was still showing an attitude driving Legolas up against the wall, with that detached expression, as if this was one of his men's campfire, but his wife was suffering. The White Lady of Rohan was but a shadow of the woman she'd used to be. If you hadn't known her in the war, you couldn't see this woman even lifting armor, much less wearing it. While Faramir had fatally neglected the problems with his fanatical supporters, his wife's tears were real.

"They're waiting for you." He didn't even really register that Tarisilya had raised her voice until she squeezed his hand.

The heat close by and the flowing light was starting to fill the whole yard and turned not only movements but voices, too, into a rubbery mass, barely noticeable under a load of memories of the elves that they were supposed to honor right now.

In Legolas' head, shadows were dancing in the orange glow, to the sounds of a certain deep singing voice that on some evenings in Imladris back then, had given comfort and courage to the newly formed Fellowship of the Ring and that had been silenced for a long time now.

The flickering light might as well have been the one in a pair of challenging dark eyes at the morning duel, filled with an endless need for more practice, more skill, more perfection that would never be achieved in this life now.

The hissing sparks painted Avrelas' still so scribbly handwriting, like in his reports on Emyn Arnen, onto the almost transparently pale skin of more than one person present.

It was only the sight of two more guests joining them could shake Legolas out of this beginning trance.

One of them was Gimli who in spite of their very limited contact before this crisis came to stand next to him so naturally, as if not a day had passed since the war. Legolas almost hadn't recognized him, in a black robe not all that dissimilar to his own, and his wild red beard firmly braided.

The last elf of the group of Cair Andros still missing was approaching them far slower as his leg was splinted. That thigh would heal at some point as Legolas knew by now … but not Thondrar's right arm that uselessly hung down by his side, almost fully paralyzed.

Legolas was pretty sure that Tarisilya didn't want to see her patient out here, but before she could say anything, she was being stopped by a scathing glance. Thondrar stopped next to Camhanar and Tauriel, more withdrawn and distant than ever so that no one even dared even to look at him. Not because one would maybe have angered one of the most powerful warriors of Imladris but because seeing what had become of him was another stab to many hearts already abused.

And there were few things that Thondrar hated more than pity.

A beginning feud between his wife and an elf that had stood by Tarisilya in lethal danger just a few days ago was just as bad as knowing that none of these images of the dead torturing his mind would take real shape again in the foreseeable future. Legolas had not only lost his first men to this infantile conflict in Gondor; the lives of other elves had been destroyed as well. And maybe forever, too, unlike bodies that would one day walk earthly realms again in the west.

And the people responsible were shielded by the walls of Minas Tirith's prison and could maybe expect to be released in a few years already, to carry on as if nothing had happened.

"This is not the end." After a day like this, there wasn't much strength left in Legolas' voice.

The others were startling anyway. None of them had apparently really expected him to talk to them. All the more quickly they stepped forward now until they stood around him in a tight circle – both cover and support. Everyone was aware that many terrible things had been said between the King and Legolas earlier. That every sentence might now destroy the group's future even more effectively than a few warg claws had managed to. Still, they gathered around him, maybe for the last time before his next quest might divide them all.

For that alone, he had to tell them at least. Legolas forced himself to look the others in the eye, one after the other. "It's not a borrowed piece of land that our friends were forced to leave us for that has been taken from us, but something far more crucial. And I will not just watch time wash away the short lives of men in this realm and make it forgotten, before the last elves have even left this world behind, how many of us have been destroyed in a war that wasn't even our own."

Only now, Legolas was speaking louder, enough for the persons standing slightly apart from them to hear him.

While Éowyn reached for Faramir's hand in an unsettled gesture, Gimli joined the circle of the elves and grabbed Legolas' arm. "Too big words for a night short like this. A dwarf who has to give an elf lessons about restraint, now that is a thing unheard of."

Legolas should actually have been relieved that someone was there to hold him back, just like the part of him that was shyly muttering to him that he was about to bring Aragorn's anger upon himself again. But his own voice of reason didn't reach him. "None of you can understand that."

Even his own people looked disconcerted at that, and Legolas regretted the thoughtless remark immediately. Given the deep friendship prevailing between all the members of the Fellowship and especially between Gimli and him, and everything that they had gone through together, such words were unforgivable.

Before he could try to apologize, Tarisilya grabbed his lower arms so that he would have had to tear away from her just as rudely as from Gimli if he didn't even want to listen. "Legolas, please! Don't let the darkness take you away from me."

"This darkness has been in all of us ever since we live here!" Although he did his best to keep his calm at least towards his wife, the roaring tone in Legolas' voice remained. "And it has destroyed four of us already."

Hectically, he got out the arrow from Mordor from under his cloak, still sporting some remains of the strands of hair that he had hastily severed earlier, to keep them for the actual funeral, planned for a day in the foreseeable future when it was officially confirmed what they all already knew. He couldn't even tell if that was the heat of the dispute on his face or tears. The coldness that had spread in his body left a heaviness and numbness trying to dull every sensation, on the outside and the inside.

In horror, the other elves turned away from one of the most popular symbols for an orc's sadistic tastes on the weapon, but Legolas didn't allow them to shut out any of this. "Let the remainder of the torture that our fallen friends went through now turn to ash and hope that it's all four of their souls who have found peace in the Halls of Mandos by now." He hurled the arrow into the fire with more strength than necessary. Remains of the usual poison that almost all weapons of Mordor were being coated in – and that, in a sober light, might already have been enough to destroy the bodies that these strands of hair had been torn from in the last few hours –, produced a dark darting flame, with a loud hiss, accompanied by a disgusting metallic smell.

"Let the fire consume the darkness in our hearts and fill us with new courage! Carry this image with you henceforth, so that it might remind us every second of how much our companions had to suffer."

None of the others even dared to breathe. The usual sounds of the night had stopped as well. Shouts of soldiers, the animals in the yard, the songs of nightingales … For a moment, life stood still.

It felt good. Knowing that right now, Legolas could have asked anything at all from his people, even the attack that he had threatened Aragorn with, left a dark kind of euphoria that covered up even the despair and the grief.

Then it was gone. The fear of this thought, of a kind of power that he'd never wanted, was too big. There would be no order tonight, no oath. Only a request for solidarity that they all needed more than ever right now. "As the flames carry our tears to the stars, let their breath write the names of our friends in the clouds so that every elf still lingering on this world will learn, from the depths of Eryn Lasgalen to the widths of Imladris, from the sky over Lórien to the portal of Mithlond: The fate of the elves of Cair Andros will not go unpunished!"

Once more, Legolas turned to his people one by one.

Tauriel and Camhanar, just like the former marchwardens of the group, didn't need further prompting. Straightening their intimidated postures, they stepped even closer to him.

The others followed after a brief moment of hesitation.

Arwen on the other hand had taken more than just one step away from him, with a shocked headshake.

Tarisilya wasn't moving either; she stared at Legolas as if she was seeing him for the first time.

Legolas managed to ignore her dejected appearance for now. His wife had shown him earlier that this crisis had changed her; now it was his turn to do the same. They would have to talk about that later when no one would be listening.

"For now, let us free our thoughts to accompany our friends on their last journey."

It was a grief anthem of his own realm that he started to sing, but the others chimed in immediately.

Only Thondrar stayed silent once more; Legolas had never heard him sing. He always said, his voice wasn't made for it and that he didn't want to be his father's echo. At least he was silently saying the words of melancholy and wishes to the Valar; that counted just as much.

In this, at least, they still were all together. The rest would be decided at dawn.

the sun stays low this day

knowing that without you I will not rise

yet zillions of stars don’t ask for grief

they call us to shine

they write your name

in every of their turns

and paint the path you chose high above

your eyes glitter in Anduin’s brightest glow

your hand guides my sword

it will stall before the strike

and whisper of what is yet to come to pass

your life was the gift of the Valar

and your miracle they left with us

our hearts are one with yours tonight

and for all days to come

the trees are empty now

yet welcome those who follow

I wish I had their heart

never closer than this night

with Eru in the sky

still further we’re apart

time will bring new light and fate

and mend the pieces left

for never will be gone your quest

and ours is to stay

After the ceremony, Arwen went to Aragorn's chambers without addressing anyone. She had never felt more out of place.

It surprised her that the two of them were being left alone without hesitation on the King's request.

Maybe it was the silence prevailing in the Citadel and the look in Aragorn's eyes, discouraging anyone from wanting to stay with them, to make sure that the etiquette would not be breached. Aragorn's pain, the physical and especially the mental one, was plain for everyone to see, so he was being allowed the distance that he needed from everything tonight.

Arwen was tempted herself to withdraw to the new temporary quarters assigned to her after the Stewardaides' attack, because after taking her inside, her beloved was just sitting silently on his bed for half an eternity, reacting almost to nothing. Having to see him like that was unbearable. But she sensed that Aragorn needed her right now, so she stayed.

From a window, she watched the elves' meeting in the yard starting to end. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around her body, the wailing sounds of the grieving songs still in her head.

What made her freeze the most though, deep in her very soul, was the echo of Legolas' words. Something had just been started out there that would plunge life in Gondor and maybe on all of Middle-earth into a new crisis. And all she had been able to do was stand there helplessly.

"I'm sorry, Estel. I don't know how I could have stopped him."

"No one could. I tried it with everything I could think of saying. I know what my duty as a leader demands of me next but my heart shies away from it, even after everything I had to hear him shout all the way in here earlier."

Arwen could feel Aragorn tremble under her hand, her skin far too cold as so often, since the war, when she came to stand beside him and touched his neck carefully. But when she tried to pull it away, he grabbed it sluggishly and held it tight, absently nuzzling against it.

For a few minutes, the silence in the darkened room was interrupted only by the last quiet voices in the courtyard.

When Aragorn spoke up again, his whisper sounded as if it might break any moment. "I'll have to send him away from the city. Now, at the latest, he's made sure that he can't be tolerated here any longer."

"I know." Aragorn's hand clenched around hers as he looked for support, and she kissed it, signaling him that she did agree although this was about none other than her best friend with the elves. If that stubborn Sinda had been in the room right now, she would have had to strike him with the handle of her sword; maybe that would have helped him, finally getting something into his head for once. "Legolas will understand, someday, when his pain doesn't control him so much anymore."

"Which can take an elf a while though, can it not?" Aragorn stared at the ground in bitterness. "Maybe I won't even be alive to see his anger at me go away."

Arwen didn't have any comforting answer to that either; any of those would have been a lie.

At last, her betrothed sank back into the mattress and asked Arwen to join him. With his healthy arm, he held her close, caressing her back, trying to reach every free inch of skin with his fingertips, without any forbidden motives like in Imladris back then. That way, after a while, he could at least get the break that his body needed so badly.

Tarisilya startled from her heavy thoughts when Gimli let go of her arm. Only now she realized that the yard was almost empty by now, but that the dwarf had been there the whole time, though he would have had every right to just leave after Legolas treating him like that. "Thank you."

Legolas might have hurt his companion badly earlier and might also have done so for a while now, with many things left unspoken between the two of them, but Gimli had stayed here right beside her, supporting her. For a second time, after he'd already protected her from some boorish drunks in Minas Tirith once.

"I know, I've said that before, but he doesn't mean it."

"I've had to bury a couple of people myself, Princess. No one thinks clear on evenings like this."

Her glance made Gimli feel visibly uncomfortable, and he was quick to get some distance between them but today at least, his voice was lacking every hostility. She could have sworn, his knobbly face was showing a few wrinkles more tonight. Though he made no move to approach Legolas who was the last to remain by the fire, he clearly showed that he wasn't being indifferent to the lost elves' fate. That the bitter enmity once existing between Dwarves and Firstborn did at least not concern him and his people anymore.

But something else seemed to be on his mind, too. "I'm sorry if this is not a good time, but I looked in vain for your tight-lipped friend from Rivendell at the ceremony. When we parted ways at Cair Andros, he actually said he’d ride back here. He didn't get himself injured again, did he? That elf is so clumsy, let me tell you! When we attacked the Stewardaides, I almost expected his head to roll over the ground any moment!"

"Erestor?" Tarisilya stopped him, startled as it was only now that she realized that she had indeed not met her favorite nuisance anymore since that evening in the Houses of Healing.

Actually, she had thought he had arrived with one of the groups of soldiers earlier, but when she looked at Faramir who was still standing nearby the guesthouses, he just shook his head.

"We were not even aware that we were supposed to get even more reinforcements from Minas Tirith. Wherever the Lord has really ridden to, he never reached us. Do you think something happened to him?"

With big surprise, Tarisilya found herself suddenly worrying about someone that she usually wanted to be as far away from her as possible. It annoyed her that she hadn't even noticed Erestor be missing due to her personal aversion, though an elf that proud and stubborn would probably not have been fond of anyone playing his minder anyway. She would have loved to just let someone else handle this but Legolas didn't look like he would be able to decide anything anytime soon, and Aragorn was hopefully just busy recovering, finally.

Besides, it was not only Gimli but she had also been the one Erestor had told where he was going. By that, in a way, he had got her blessing, after all, it was for the elves of Cair Andros that he had left. Whether she liked it or not, she was responsible for him coming back. If he'd fallen off his horse thanks to his limitless delusions of grandeur, and was lying around with a broken leg somewhere, she really didn't have a choice but to make sure he got help.

"Please send two of your people, Steward. He surely didn't make it far."

"I will keep you posted."

Faramir showed the hint of a bow and left her alone then, hurrying after his wife who led the way to their chambers. For the first time in quite a while, these two would maybe find comfort in each other's arms again tonight.

Tarisilya wished for the same but knew, unfortunately, how bad the chances of that were. Yearningly, she turned her gaze to the gate to the sixth level. Hiding away in the stables again, or in the Houses of Healing, sounded more tempting by the second. Anything would have been more pleasant than the following conversation. Besides, it was perfectly possible that such a talk would get interrupted by soldiers …

"We should leave." Finally taking heart, she went to join Legolas. "After what you just said, I doubt they'll want us around in Minas Tirith any longer."

"If they mean to throw anyone out, that's between them and me." While Legolas was still staring into the flames burning out, part of him seemed to notice who was standing there next to him. He instinctively reached out his hand for Tarisilya. "You saved His Majesty's life. People won't allow it that they send you away. And the other elves are not responsible for their leader's words. I'll leave tomorrow, and I think they'll go with me. We can think about our next steps in Lórien. I would appreciate you staying here until I have an idea about what will happen now. Or do you want to leave?"

Tarisilya shook her head before she had even really thought about it. She had her duties here, given they would indeed not try to take them away from her. Among other things, a friendship that had been existing for centuries and that had suffered almost as much as the one between the King and her husband lately. She wanted to help Arwen and him, and Legolas and him as well, but to do the latter, she was being too close to Legolas and appreciated Aragorn too much. Someone else would have to mediate there, someone that Legolas would listen to. Whoever that might be right now.

Besides, it scared her how obsessed Legolas was with a revenge that would under different circumstances have been cancelled in a few years at the latest. Apparently, her husband sometimes needed a reminder of how quickly in their short lives Men could change for the better.

And first, he needed to hear something that didn't seem to have reached his ears so far. "Lórien? Valar, Legolas … Did you even ask the others? They don't want to give Nord-Ithilien up. The elves you have brought to Gondor won't be going home just because you lost faith in yourself. If you won't leave the city as a friend of the King, make at least use of the next few weeks and get the people back to Cair Andros so that they can continue what they have started, until Thondrar can maybe continue leading them."

"You want me close by, to make sure that I won't do anything that goes against your conscience," Legolas remarked surprisingly soberly. "You could have told me without using the others as an excuse. No, that's alright. You are a big part of my life, Ilya. You have a bigger share in my decisions than anyone else. You need to be able to support them and you're suffering from every of my mistakes. It is better for you to never let me forget that."

He grabbed her arm almost a little too tightly when she tried to turn away in dismay. "I will do my duty towards the dead but not at the risk of plunging my family into sorrow. To figure out the right way, I have to talk to the others in private. That's possible in Ithilien, too, if that makes you feel better, given the Steward doesn't chase us away. It would be more convenient for him without a doubt, not having to bear seeing us anymore."

"I can't bear seeing you like this, Legolas. Not today." Spending the night in Brego's stall became a more tempting option by the second. "Not so shortly after the others … I'm still trying to process myself that four of our friends have suffered an injustice like that. I can't handle your hate on top of that. I want to be alone now."

"You have been alone for far too long already, Ilya. Like so many other things, that's my fault. Let me at least start to make it right." A few of the sharper lines around Legolas' eyes vanished, together with the impatience to exact vengeance immediately. What remained was a lost youngling, far too pale and too thin, clad in too dark clothes, who in spite of three thousand years of experience didn't know where he belonged.

If Tarisilya had left him standing there now, she would have done the same that she had blamed him for so often: leaving him alone. She loved him too much for that, and in the last few months, she had missed him too much for that, too. "Only if you leave this evening here at the fire to stand beside me as my husband. Or I can't make that."

"I will try." The last energy of anger left him when he took her in his arms; he would almost have toppled over.

Which reminded Tarisilya that she hadn't even checked in detail yet what shape he was actually being in after the warg attack. "Let's go."

"I have no idea how you can get any work done in here." After stopping by in the public bath of the guesthouse that had fortunately been empty, Legolas found Tarisilya at the desk in the chambers' bedroom, bent over a chaos of vials, glasses, small boxes and used parchments. Not to mention that the lighting was bad and that he was wondering how someone could find anything on this desk ... Admittedly, he hadn't expected his wife to be busy with something so sober right now.

"Give me a second." Tarisilya held a half-full reddish vial up to the candlelight and added something pasty from a slightly bigger vessel without spilling anything – remarkable, given her hands had lost some of their prior steadiness quite a while ago.

"What is this?" The sweetish smell of apples filled the room. "You're not actually cooking for me right now, are you, elwen?"

The weak attempt at joking was hardly being acknowledged with more than a raised eyebrow. "There's food on the nightstand. One of the servants was being thoughtful. Have a few bites and start getting out of that robe."

So that was what this was about. One of Tarisilya's famous tinctures for some minor scratch from the last battle; he should have known. Sighing, Legolas dropped onto the mattress and followed his healer's orders, at least the one about undressing. The other, he chose to ignore. He had last been hungry when the name of his home had still been Greenwood the Great.

"Oh, and by the way …" The eyebrow cocked another half an inch more. "According to the Noldor's customs, it's the elves who do the cooking as you should be aware of. So if anyone here is responsible for dinner, it's you."

"Believe me, no one would want to eat that. But we'll talk about that once we've finally settled somewhere for good." It took him only half a sentence to bring up the messy situation once more instead of keeping up the light banter; this was getting frustrating real quick.

Legolas was fast to look away, grabbing some fruit now after all. His wife wouldn't have let that go anyway. He had been her patient too often to not know that.

"Turn around. Lay down please."

Since the ceremony had ended, his body reminded Legolas insistently that he had been sitting around on hard rock for far too long, unmoving. So he did as he'd been told, secretly glad for the chance to lay down on a soft mattress again instead of an uncomfortable den, for the first time after long months.

That was a comfort he sometimes missed, sure, but not even such trivial thoughts managed to silence the voices of the dead inside his head. Actually, there was no time to rest at all. He had no right surrendering to idleness while four of his people …

The echoes of the self-reproaches in his mind went silent all of a sudden when Tarisilya's dripped what he'd thought to be a healing tincture onto his shoulders. Warm and smooth it landed far away from any wounds that were already closed anyway. His wife had sat down next to him and pulled his braid aside. Without asking him, she started to massage him with the oil she'd mixed, surprising him with a kind of closeness that had not existed between them for a long time. "Ilya …"

"I have to." She didn't let him speak. "Seeing as I can't help you with words, let me heal your body at least."

"After what happened last year, I just didn't expect you to …" He paused, at a loss of how to explain himself.

"What do you mean?" Tarisilya asked flatly, without letting go of him. "That we lost our child and never helped each other with that grief? Or do you mean that your wrong assumption about me not wanting you to touch me anymore because of this, is a perfect excuse to hide that you're afraid of it yourself?"

"Ilya, by the stars …" Completely bewildered, he turned on his back, shocked about the harshness that she was talking about the biggest loss in both their lives with.

And because she had noticed something that he hadn't even been aware of himself until now. While in the night of the warg attack, Tauriel had tried to tell him for how long he'd been hiding behind barriers in his own mind already that had long started to crumble, these lies had still been too comfortable to give up on even then. Now they had collapsed in on themselves. Now he would have to deal with the matter.

And that meant first and foremost a question that he should have asked Tarisilya long ago. "Does that mean you want to start over? Forget what happened?"

"We never will." She guided his hand to her belly which brought them both to the brink of tears immediately.

"I often wake up thinking I can feel our little one inside of me. Then it's as if not a day has passed. I can only pray to the Valar every night that they have taken our baby into their care. Sometimes I dream about seeing it again. I'm hoping with all of my heart that it can forgive us someday. But this doesn't mean, our life is over, does it? I want to have a family with you, Legolas, no matter the shape. None of the things shaking our souls in all these centuries managed to change that. I want to fall asleep next to you at night, and in the morning, I want you to wake me up with a kiss. When will we stop making things harder for each other? I want to be with you, that's all I'm asking. If the Valar should ever bless us with a child again, no one will be happier than me. But my love for you does not depend on that. If you really think so … Or if it's any different for you …"

Legolas cut off her last disheartened words with a gentle kiss.

At least this one off-key note in the symphony that was their relationship, they had finally been able to wipe out.

Chapter Text

When Tarisilya’s husband backed away at last, he was smiling. Unlikely as it had been, in this night of grief of all times, they had made a big step back towards each other ... And that had been the first, urgently necessary change before Tarisilya had even been able to think about if she could help this messy situation that Legolas had got himself into tonight, and how.

"There's nothing that could ever change how I feel about you, Ilya. Please don't be afraid. While I can't tell you yet where I'll be drawn to, eventually, I'll never be further apart from you than a few day's journeys. We will have this bed that we will wake up in together. On the most beautiful talan, you've ever lived on, on the oldest, biggest tree of our new home, wherever that might be."

"You want to live on a talan?" Tarisilya skeptically pictured a wood-elf trying to handle the slight fear of heights that these people were rumored to have. "Now I know that you really need to relax. Come on, let me continue."

There was a certain subject, Legolas had just been evading very cleverly once more. It was her, actually, who had helped make it possible for him to do that back then, by building this protective wall in his mind in Helm's Deep; but if he kept that up, the anger on Men in him would unconsciously grow as well that he should only be feeling for a few single ones. If he needed her to point that out for him, if that was what she could for this quarrel between the realm leaders to hopefully be smoothed down soon, then she would sacrifice even the harmony of this night to that, with a heavy heart.

For the moment though, what she was focusing on was his tense and partly injured back muscles, both with massage techniques learned over the course of centuries and her healing abilities, until she felt Legolas starting to breathe deeply and evenly.

After a brief caress over his shoulders, she scooted away from him a bit. "Those breeches need to go, too. Did you think I would stop in the middle?" She grinned weakly when he turned his head to her questioningly. "From someone who knows each of your moves, you can't hide that you're walking like an old dwarf."

Given how slowly he was obeying, she had to wonder if he'd maybe had fallen asleep which didn't exactly ease her conscience. He could have needed that rest right now. However, he needed to have healthy legs too if he wanted to get back on a horse tomorrow, and given how much effort it took him, getting out of the last piece of clothing as well, she was well-advised to insist.

His attempt to radiate coolness failed miserably. Legolas wasn't a simple patient who had to deal with being unclothed in his healer's presence. Now, there was really no way for him to hide his bad mental condition anymore. Besides, it hurt that so much of the passion usually prevailing between elvish lovers during the days of the children had vanished, that the two of them didn't even really dare to look at each other, in a situation that under different circumstances would have led to much more.

After a moment of consideration, Tarisilya sat down parallel to her husband, drew up the skirt of her dress, and crossed her legs so Legolas could rest one of his on them. The support of the elevated position and the sensation of her skin on his instead of the coarse fabric helped. Starting at the knee, she stroked downwards again and again, with firm pressure, not even giving in when Legolas startled back because she was grazing an especially painful cramp.

"Almost done." She left a fleeting kiss on the pale skin under her hands and reached for the oil again. This time, she chose a spot much higher to begin. Now there was no way for him to hide his tremble anymore when she covered the length from his behind to his knee with the same movements as before. Suddenly, he was working so much against her that she had to let go. "Have we drifted apart so much that something as simple as a massage causes you distress, elwen?"

"This is exactly what I tried to avoid." Legolas pulled the light cover over his body in irritation. Tarisilya noticed quickly that he was still being in pain. "The time is not right, that's all."

"When will it be then?" Tarisilya put the oil vial aside. "How long will it take you to stop thinking about some men violating you when I touch you, now that you start to remember what happened? Until you stop fighting even the chance that it could get better because this is one of the many things you can't talk about with me?"

"Ilya, come on, that's not true …" But the cover was instinctively being wrapped even closer around his body so that it was covering his back now, too. "You've carried my pain for me in Helm's Deep and cut it in half just by that alone. What else is there to say about it? Have I not let you know after our wedding that I'm done with this matter?"

"That was a long time ago, Legolas." That he refused to confide in her hurt even more than his coldness that was actually directed at someone else entirely. The intimate nearness between them in that night he was talking about and the one in another, shortly afterward, when she had been pregnant already, had long stopped existing.

"What is that you want to hear? That I've been dreaming about it for a while now? That I'll never be able to enter the woods of Rohan or Dunland again without thinking about it? I never said that a year was enough to just forget it, Ilya. But I won't let two men who have long have become food for scavengers destroy my marriage. What they did back then has nothing to do with you."

"Then look at me, elwen." It wasn't a plea or a friendly request; it was an order, something she had never dared to give him before. She would have wasted a chance that wouldn't come again so quickly if she gave in now. If he wanted to keep on lying to her so badly, he would not do it in their bed.

He must have heard her undress as well, still, he seemed overwhelmed when he obeyed in resignation, and Tarisilya's bare body was suddenly nestled against his. At that moment, the cover between them that under different conditions would have been extremely annoying was the last bit of protection.

First tears fell onto Tarisilya's neck when the last stones of the wall crumbled that had helped Legolas get through the war – and, among other things, to never lose sight of his endeavor of friendship between Elves and Men that had already suffered so much today anyway.

When her husband finally made it to put an arm around her, it felt like the unwilling touch of a stranger. "I wish for nothing more than the bliss of finally laying with you again, Ilya. But the poisoned air of North Ithilien brought back every fear."

"Tell me what it is exactly that you are afraid of." She caressed his face, ignoring the tears though it hurt every time, seeing a composed being like Legolas cry because it was robbing her of a safety that had existed ever since she knew him. He needed to understand that there was nothing wrong with showing weakness.

"Losing control." Even while he was saying it, revealing what was weighing down on him so much, he was facing that very fear, thereby showing Tarisilya once more that he did trust her, better than any empty promise could have.

"In Helm's Deep, I have been confronted with the reality of war for the first time in my life, long before I ran into these Dunlendings. Before that, I was able to protect most of the Fellowship with my bow, but that evening I realized how little of a difference a single weapon makes when thousands of lives are at stake. It was no longer in my hands. And it's always been like that since then. I was either not there when I was needed or I was facing superior forces alone. Suddenly nothing I once was proud of matters anymore. I mean ... I can't even take care of myself as the day after that battle at the Hornburg showed quite clearly back then. How could I ever believe that I can protect a whole settlement?"

Bitter self-hate, an emotion that Tarisilya had never seen in Legolas before regarding this matter, mixed with his resignation. He stared at the plain white ceiling as if he could find answers there that didn't exist.

"Tell me." Tarisilya scooted closer to him, bracing her elbow on the pillow next to his head. "Just this once, so you can leave it behind and look to our future again. Let me come with you and be there for you, the way I should already have been back then."

"Ilya … Again: You already know everything." Though he never gave up examining that paint on the wall, she knew about the plea in his eyes. The part of him that had wanted to enter the Hall of Mandos after that experience back then was still trying to fight the unavoidable.

"Wrong." She left a tender kiss on his neck. "My powers and what weak mental connection we had back then have shown me the few odd images in your mind, that's all. This makes me know more than your other healers but what really happened, is being hidden deep inside you. From now on, with that shield now gone that we built together that night, it will always be there on bad days. On days like these, I don't want to have to suffer instead of being able to help you, elwen."

With a long kiss on his tight lips, she let him know that she was being there for him, still and forever. "Why did you leave the Hornburg after the battle anyway?"

"I needed to be alone. There's a huge difference between counting how many orcs you take down and walking by children's corpses." When Tarisilya wormed her arm under his neck, Legolas nuzzled his cheek into her elbow, gratefully taking the offer of looking at her only when he felt ready for it. "There was no day before that and none after when I ever came so close to giving up again." For long minutes, there was no sound but Legolas' breathing going more and more irregular; Tarisilya almost had to suspect, he'd changed his mind.

Then he suddenly looked up at her and told her. About the poisoned arrow that, due to the shock after the battle, had come out of nowhere and had almost rendered his shoulder useless forever. And about the lashing.

"I could have handled that. I have experienced a lot of pain in my life, you know. I fought orcs in a half-dead condition who had more strength than that boy with his belt. It was the helplessness that was the worst. And the humiliation. Being restrained, knowing that in open combat, these primitive bastards wouldn't have survived longer than a few seconds, having the face of that drooling thug right before me …"

While he'd sounded somewhat composed so far, now Legolas was suddenly straightening up as if Tarisilya had been the one staring at him, enjoying the sadism of watching other beings suffer. With his knees drawn to his chest, he turned away from her and dodged her next touch on his back. "Don't … please." It took her a moment to understand, he didn't just mean that she should keep her distance right now. Part of him was trapped in the past, whispering in fear from what had come after the beating – a triumph that he had surely not granted the Dunlendings.

Or maybe he was also asking her not to keep pushing for the last time, but that was the one thing she couldn’t do. "Who was it? The one with the belt?"

"Too young. That's at least what the other said when he sent him away. The scum that is this one Dunlending tribe educates their offspring in killing early enough but they're too immature for them to gaze into the abysses of their eldest. Even if they've killed women and children in Helm's Deep only hours earlier. The truth is, that adolescent boy also wouldn't have batted a lid. I could hear it in his voice. Makes you wonder, inevitably, if there is still any hope for the rest of this folk."

Tarisilya cursed silently. This was even worse than thought.

No, it had not only been that crisis in North Ithilien now that had made Legolas lose his faith in Men. That deep hate that he suddenly could no longer manage to have only for the few who actually deserved it, had already been existing in him for far longer. If Tarisilya had found the strength to have this conversation right after the war, it would maybe never have got this bad between Aragorn and her husband. Then Legolas might have understood earlier that he was working himself up into a dangerous kind of aversion, one that his father had set him an example of with his baseless hatred for the Noldor under Lady Galadriel's leadership for half an eternity.

She could only hope that it wasn't too late. And also clear something up that had been haunting her since she had felt that Legolas was dying on her way to Mithlond back then. The pain that Legolas' body had signaled her then in the course of the healing had never left a doubt about how these two Dunlendings had completed their torture before the Huorns had stepped in. But no one knew how far the men had really been able to go before their death. Not even Aragorn whom Tarisilya had asked on their journey to the west. If she wanted to help Legolas, she had to accept another repulsive image forming in her mind, on top of the terrible ones existing already.

"Did he …?"

"I'm not any stronger than the elves who found their salvation back only in the Halls of Mandos after a thing like that, Ilya," Legolas stopped her sharply. The muscles working ceaselessly beneath his much too pale skin had once more become steel ropes; he was shuddering again and again. With every word, he was losing himself more to disgust, to everything that had made him seek the darkness in Rohan.

"Without you, I wouldn't be here anymore, but not even the strength of our love would have sufficed if that bastard had managed to get more his dirty hand on me before he found his end. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. I've just seen far too much death and violence in my life." He rested his forehead on his knees. "Sometimes I almost wish those men would have finished the job. My father is a true fighter. I'm not, seeing as I cannot even leave the impressions of a single war and a few hours of torture behind. If elves are being granted the mercy of dying of a broken heart, I wonder why the Valar didn't allow me that."

Tarisilya was right next to him immediately and pulled him close again. "Because you have a purpose here. Lady Galadriel always knew. You are the rock between Elves and Men. When the two of us will long have gone west to our families, the far descendants of Elessar will still remember your name. Although your rage does not allow you to see that right now: You were always their friend, even more than any of us. You never met them with prejudice and mistrust. Don't make that a habit now, just because a few of them haven't learned anything from the past. They need you."

She leaned closer to his ear as if not even the nightingales outside the window were allowed to hear her next words. "I need you. Come back to me, please …"

"I'm right here, Ilya." She was regarded with an expression that she had last seen at their wedding, filled with all the emotions binding them to each other. "I have been gifted with a wife that rode through the Gap of Rohan in the middle of the war for me, only to free me from this nightmare. No one but the Valar themselves could tear me away from you even for a while. And even then I would have a few things or two to say about heartlessness to Mandos."

Tarisilya laughed away the last sob in her throat and nuzzled close to her husband, relieved when he wasn't tensing up again. "If you're being like your father then when he's being angered just a little bit, Mandos will send you back voluntarily at once."

Legolas' arm on her back was still not moving an inch. This hadn't been more than a start, and painful enough on top of it. "I'm sorry. I just couldn't watch this."

"I'm not angry with you. Just give me some time to forget these villains' stench, Ilya. Without you, that would have taken another few years, maybe decades. Let me put my life on Middle-earth in order and make the decision between the loyalty for my people and the one for one of my closest friends who stopped speaking my language. After that, my mind will be completely free for you. And if the Valar are being gracious, for our little family." It was something that he had promised more than once already, and somehow, she had become bitterer every time.

But something was different tonight. Legolas was never questioning it even for one second that she was staying here, under the supervision of someone that he was calling an enemy right now. He let her do what she wanted and whatever he was planning to do, he did in consideration of her. For now, she didn't need to worry about him engaging in something rash, though personally, she wouldn't have guaranteed the imprisoned Stewardaides that they were being safe. This matter was far from being solved yet. But all these things would only start mattering again once the sun would come up.

Tarisilya finished the treatment of this old wound with a kiss on Legolas' forehead. "I'm well used to waiting for you, elwen. Lay down again." She caressed his knee for a moment, only through the cover for now. "If you won't even make it to Cair Andros tomorrow, the others will wonder why I care for every patient dutifully except for my husband."

The hesitation before the blanket was dropped to the floor only lasted a second. No, things weren't like they'd used to be yet. What time it would take until that changed, was now everything standing between them.

Tarisilya could live with that. After all, being a healer, it wasn't like you had no sense of tact.

She was acting with a lot less determination than before, waiting until Legolas had his leg back on hers again and was ready to accept the first movements of her hands working his muscles for him. She restricted herself only to what was necessary, ignoring the deep yearning for spoiling him with caresses, for mapping his skin with her lips – so far, they had hardly had the patience for something like that in their nights together.

She was focused too much to pay attention to her surroundings for now, including Legolas' quiet breathing that went heavier by the minute, and that the oil's discreet smell was mixed with the hint of something else. Or how his body was startling again and again, no longer in resistance though. It was only when she was done treating his other leg, too, and he was turning around so that she could attend to his chest, that she noticed the scattered drops of sweat there and how eagerly he was leaning into the next part of her efforts.

And at his loins, slight but clear arousal – something that she definitely hadn't expected right now.

The look on his face begged her not to say anything, to not destroy this surprising intimacy with questions.

Accepting that wish, Tarisilya dripped another amount of oil onto Legolas' skin, a long line from his collarbone almost to his navel. Then she paused, with both her hands on his upper body, and bent over him until her lips were but an inch apart from his. "With me, you'll always be in control, elwen. Make me stop if your heart asks you to."

His slight nod and the cautious lust still written on his face, said enough.

Tarisilya knew this time it was her turn to lead. In the past, they had always guided and encouraged each other in turn as this whole thing had been just as new to him as to her. This time, she would have to be the one to cross certain lines, to take the right steps at the right time. And to not take her attention from Legolas' reactions for even a second. If she wanted to avoid hurting him, it was her who had to realize when it was time for something to stop. Or she would do more harm than be good for him.

That was why in spite of his approval, she didn't rush anything but picked right off where she had stopped, even more careful than before. Though many of the scars on Legolas' upper body were paling more and more, she had to avoid these spots anyway. Doing that and still being able to treat his muscles properly was turning out to be hard work; but this time, Legolas did commit to it, sinking down into the soft pillows further and further when even the last of pain vanished and he was able to move again without being reminded of the warg attack.

Since he had remained silent the whole time and was staring at the ceiling again nonstop, Tarisilya actually thought that he'd fallen asleep now after all. When she was finally done, she put the vial away as quietly as possible. Something more happening would have been nice; it would have assured her that Legolas was indeed on his way to recovery. But there was no disappointment. Finally being able to sleep next to him again was more than had been possible in the last few months.

She moved to get up, to get rid of the rest of the oil in the washbowl but now it was her suddenly who was startling because of a shy hand being placed on her thigh.

"You can go on if you like." It sounded just like the gesture had felt like but Legolas' gaze was fixed on her bare back, on her legs, her anklet, a detail of her appearance that she very well knew him to deeply love seeing it on her. While he couldn't reach out to her himself yet, him looking at her like that revealed both desire and that he didn't know how far he could trust that sensation himself. "I don't want to hurt you in case the fear comes back. But what you just did … You make the images in my head pale. Help me forget, Ilya. Remind me that we belong together."

The washbowl was suddenly the most unimportant thing in the world. Tarisilya leaned down over her husband, with one hand braced on the bed next to his head again, the other resting above his heart, and looked straight at him until he was the one to raise his head, to put his lips on hers, letting the tip of his tongue play against hers – the final signal she had been waiting for that he wanted this. That he wouldn't only just endure it like the difficult conversation and the massage.

It was nice to feel his heart beating faster immediately when she just let her fingertips draw circles on his skin, to hear a deep sigh being breathed into their kiss, filled with tiredness, sure, but free from every burden.

She didn't want to be crying yet again, but when Legolas pulled the thick wooden needles from her hair with his very own composure that had grown so rare, just a first gesture that was saying so endlessly much though … That was when salt was once more trickling over his skin, mixing with the last glistening of the oil there. She pulled away from his lips to lean into his hand brushing her long strands of hair into place, with her eyes firmly closed, to eat up every moment of what she had missed so painfully. To lock it away deep inside of her for the time when she would be parted from her husband once more.

A fleece of brunette fell over the two of them that Legolas hid his face in for a moment, deeply breathing in her scent to let the protection of both catch him, a barrier that would let no one from the outside into their world only just healed. He had always been so crazy about her hair, about its unusual length; there had been so much pride on his face when she had worn it down …

"I'm sorry if I disappointed you. I had a feeling I had to part from something that is no longer me. It will grow again."

"I always tried to give you all the freedom you need, Ilya, didn't I?" He let his head fall back, with a smile that warmed her soul. "I'm not telling you how to live your life. Your appearance is no exception. I didn't marry you because your hair is a competition for Lady Galadriel's. Besides, it's still just as beautiful. You don't know how good it is to feel it on my skin."

Instead of answering, she dragged the leather tie from Legolas' ponytail and fanned out his thick hair on the white pillow as if she could do a painting of her husband's haggard but still graceful, even features like that.

"Yes, I do. Don't. Not more." Her fingertips on his lips prevented an answer that there was no need for anymore. Instinctively, she switched into a rare old Quenya dialect that she also used during healings. She didn't even know if Legolas could understand it all, but hopefully, he would be able to read her face.

"Let me show you how long I've been hungering for you." She breathed a kiss onto his slightly opened lips and let hers wander, down to his jaw and his throat, following the throb of his pulse. "Stop thinking. Tonight, no one is expecting anything from you anymore. Rest your soul and let our love heal your wounds."

While he did stay silent, he never took his hand off her neck, clearly showing her that he was with her every second, with every fiber of his body, trusting her with all of him as much as his mind would let him.

Where Tarisilya had used pressure earlier, her fingertips were now making their way across his skin just lightly, without her leaving his face out of sight, ready to stop anytime if she saw a shadow on it. It didn't happen. Her caresses earned her more sighs, especially when her touch moved to his belly and his waist, finally to the curve of his behind, her lower arm grazing the hardness at his hips at that. Remembering that Legolas and she were sharing a few sensitive places, she grabbed his behind tighter, which was met with a deep gasp and her lover bending his leg so she could knead the sensitive skin.

The well-defined muscles on his chest started to dance so seductively that Tarisilya just had to follow the movement with her lips, keep this tremble alive with small kisses, the breeze of her breath and the tip of her tongue until Legolas' warmth and his beloved scent intoxicated her so much that she felt dizzy and had to put her head on his shoulder.

With her eyes closed, she enjoyed Legolas' caressing her face, how he was tracing every inch as if he tried to memorize her like that. It would be long after his departure when would she think about that moment again, and the gesture would lose its romantic charm rapidly because the memory of the battle at Cair Andros would return, and of that cruel fate of his hanging in the air was, that was being far more likely than suspected so far.

But at this moment, it was nothing but emotions overwhelming Tarisilya, the relief that this, at least, hadn't got lost for them. Her hand reached a spot on Legolas' chest even more tender than the rest of his skin, more than the scars, too, hardened skin that tempted her to test its sensitivity once more. Tarisilya started to squeeze it slowly, turning her head until her lips found the other, just as pebbled nipple and Legolas' sigh turned into a moan sounding like music. She sucked the small bud lightly, waiting until Legolas pushed up against her, enough to assure her that the bad memories were still where they belonged.

Only then, the movements of both her fingers and her lips instinctively gained strength. She wanted to hear more of these sounds of his lust. When his hand on her neck clenched noticeably, she realized that she had almost forgotten her responsibility. Looking up immediately, she found his expression to be only clouded though, challenging her to go even further. Following her instinct, she scooted downwards, between Legolas' legs without taking her hands off him, sliding them down his sides until she reached his hips. With her cheek nuzzled against his muscular thigh, her right hand closed around his cock.

The combination of these sensations brought back the tremble working through Legolas' body. The heated glistening on his skin spread further with every moment of her leisurely stroking his erection. When he startled badly this time, the reason was not discomfort, but Tarisilya bending forward to nudge the salty traces of his lust on his belly away by playful blowing on it; and he did it again when her grip on his cock grew harder, her bosom pressing down against it. "Ilya …"

"Easy." She let her whisper graze along his loins until her lips were touching the moist tip of his most sensitive spot. Shivering at least as much as him, she let the sensations fill her that some first probing of her tongue brought. Regardless of how bad the last few days had been, right now, a small part of her was glad for her tiredness as it eliminated certain restraints. She just did what her curiosity and her wish to show Legolas some of the most wonderful sides of their love told her to do; and his loud moans proved her right.

Still, it was once more Legolas' hand on her neck stopping her before she could try something more, and this time, his headshake was unmistakable. "Don't … not like this. Not today. I'm not sure how much longer I can keep myself awake. If you want to give this to me someday, I want to feel every second of it. Right now, there's nothing I want more than finally being inside you again anyway."

Tarisilya just nodded and let him pull her upwards so she came to lie on top of Legolas and the reddened center of her desire rubbed against his. It was her turn to moan, with her own most sensitive spot pressed against this hardness, just like on that one clearing back then, on their journey west. The heat in her lower body instantly grew; emptiness was throbbing inside of her, demanding fulfillment.

Legolas' lovingly fondling her behind just made that worse, not better, and another moan escaped her lips. How much she had missed caresses like this …

Pushing her hips up a bit, Legolas prompted her to scoot upwards another few inches, and it wasn't long before his clever fingers were between her legs, making sure with just a few movements, she would be ready for him.

"Look at me, Ilya, please." Though there was a lot that had been healed tonight, at that last moment of falling into each other, he needed her eyes on him, to see the love on her face as he entered her slowly, her image on his mind to start leaving behind what had been torturing him so much since Helm's Deep.

Knowing that Tarisilya did her best although the passion made it anything but easy, the sensation that she had been missing so much, to be that close to him, that filled her with so much joy every time ... And then that exciting position on top of that, arousing both of them so much … When next he pulled her close then to kiss her and her most sensitive spot ground against him with every move, it became a real challenge to not close her eyes under all these impressions.

She managed it, for him, as she had gotten through this whole evening for him, and gathered her last strength to bring them both closer to the purpose of their game by the steady roll of her hips. Every now and then, she collapsed on his chest because of her lust overwhelming her. Soon enough, the tension raised to an immeasurable high point, faster every time that the muscles of Legolas' lower body stimulated that certain spot at the upper end of her swollen folds.

Just when she thought she couldn't take it anymore, Legolas pressed her close to him by her waist, just like at their last coupling, and muffled Tarisilya's increasingly louder moans with wild kisses while starting to move against her as hard and fast as possible.

It took Tarisilya a moment to associate the choked scream she was hearing with herself. For a moment, the tension controlled every cell of her body; she arched up against Legolas' grip.

It was only when she was being sprawled out on his chest afterward, gasping for air, after her husband had given her the second orgasm of her life that she didn't have clumsy movements of her own hands in her youth to thank for, that the heavy, pleasant smell coming from both of them revealed, he had come as well. And that Tarisilya was hit with the nagging realization that in their sudden haste, they had both neglected once more to further explore the possibilities of their mental bond that was floating between them more especially intensely on nights like this.

And they'd also not spent even a single conscious thought on either providing or preventing that the very one thing might come from this night again that would only have caused even more chaos in this whole situation right now. Not that she had any reason to suspect, the Valar would actually be reckless enough already to place this challenge before them again, especially not after today's events … Still. They really had to learn how to treat this subject with more awareness.

All those sudden wistful considerations made it almost impossible to straighten up. Only that she might possibly hurt Legolas if she fell asleep in this position, gave her the energy to.

Legolas didn't even seem to notice. This last effort had been too much for his body, tortured by sleep deprivation, to even feel Tarisilya laying down beside him, with her head pillowed on his chest and the last tears of this night spreading on his sweat-covered skin.

Chapter Text

After the assassination attempt in the Citadel named now the White Tower Poisoning, the exact course of events of which hadn't even been remotely cleared up yet, there was enhanced security prevailing at the court, even before the sun had really risen. Under the eyes of so many additional soldiers, it would have been a pointless attempt, sneaking out of Minas Tirith unseen. So Tarisilya wasn't in a hurry to get outside when she woke from a deep sleep and found the bed beside her empty.

She was certain that Legolas would still be around. After last night, he wouldn't just have vanished.

Besides, the voices and some neighing in front of the King's House revealed that the elves were getting ready for departure, except for those who were still supposed to stay in the Houses of Healing, like Tauriel and her child.

Tauriel's husband on the other hand came to meet Tarisilya before she had even set a foot outside already. "Your Highness." He bowed quickly, looking past her as if he was expecting to see her husband show up behind her, and paused in disappointment. "There was no time left to talk about the further proceedings with you last night, but in our nightly gathering after the ceremony, we were all in agreement. Have you been able to talk to His Highness already? What did he say? Will he stay with us?"

"It's better if he tells you himself." Tarisilya pointed at the gate to the sixth level from where Legolas was approaching the group with his bow and a few bags on his back.

"Have you been in the stables?" That this was where her husband's first path had led him, once the terrible events had lost at least some of their effect and Legolas was allowing himself to look to the future again, filled her with the relief that he hadn't lost everything but his revenge out of sight. That he still cared a great deal about the beings that had been his biggest support in the last few years.

"I planned to borrow one of the horses, but no one's around yet." Legolas tried in vain to not let it show that this was only half the truth, that he had, of course, also tried to find out if the crisis had indeed cost one of his most loyal war companions his life. "I'll ask my father to send one of his young animals to Cair Andros."

"I don't think that will be necessary." Camhanar grinned. "You should have taken a closer look."

A quiet neigh from the gate had Legolas spin around, shocked as if Tauriel had been leading a ghost horse his way, not Arod.

The second the bright stallion spotted his owner, he grew so restless that the she-elf had to let go of him whereupon the animal trotted to Legolas on his own, only slowly due to his serious sickness but never stopping. He would still be feeling the effects of a long time spent in a cold-moist cave for some time to come, but given that no one had expected Arod to ever leave that place again at all, he seemed surprisingly chipper. After following Legolas into two battles in the war, it was clear he hadn't been too impressed by this last catastrophe either. Amicably rubbing his head against his owner's arm, he snorted at him.

It was exactly because of that mutual fondness though, that Legolas wasn't ready though to expose the animal to any further danger. "Send a message to Rohan." After a brief kiss to Arod's nose, he thrust the rope attached to his headcollar into Tarisilya's hand. "I've been using him for my quests for far too long as it is. He's not mine."

It was Arod himself who commented on this plan by starting to prance in place restlessly, now trying to break loose from Tarisilya as well.

"I will gladly write to His Majesty Éomer and ask him what he thinks. But don't you think, Arod has long made up his mind? Until we meet next, he'll be doing well enough again for him to follow you to Cair Andros. Don't deny him his wish."

Tarisilya hugged Legolas for a few long seconds after he'd given in at last. When it came to her own husband, she had been having little patience with following the etiquette in public lately. "Take care of yourself." She kept her voice so quiet that the others wouldn't hear her warning, knowing how much this subject was bothering Legolas, that he had good reasons for never talking about it. But after what she had seen at Cair Andros, she couldn't let him do that anymore. "Do you think I haven't noticed that your eyes are giving you trouble again? If it gets worse, write to me, then I'll be with you in a few hours."

"It was just the exhaustion on that day, Ilya." His expression became withdrawn immediately. "Nothing is wrong with my eyesight."

"And here was thinking, you'd finally stopped lying to yourself last night. Just keep it in mind. I don't want to have to fear for you yet again." She rested her forehead against his with a sigh and caressed his temples fleetingly. Once more, she tried in vain to find what it was that was still causing such bad problems, even two decades later, that she wasn't able to heal it, before stepping back reluctantly.

This wouldn't turn into another of these long separations; after all, she could visit Legolas anytime. If Aragorn wouldn't be willing to provide her with an escort, Faramir would surely be happy to. That just didn't make farewells easier, especially if they had to happen in such a way, still far too impersonal for her taste.

Legolas solved that in his own way, pulling her close again to kiss her for many long seconds, in front of everyone, until she forgot time completely and would probably only have let go of him once the sun had gone down if it hadn't been for the sound of quickly approaching horses announcing some soldiers' presence.

Only when Tarisilya spotted the two men in dark grey, she remembered that more people had been sent out last night when everything had actually been over already. Only it wasn't over at all; they were all shocked to realize it within split seconds when one of the soldiers stopped close to the elves and silently handed Tarisilya a long, black robe. The situation reminded her so much of what had happened at Cair Andros that her hands started to shake violently at once.

Legolas had to spread the thickly rolled-up fabric for her, on the yard's bright marble slaps, revealing the symbol of the Stewardaides that had been cut into it, obviously in agitation and rough-shaped yet easy to recognize by the characteristic burning crown. Just like that, the impression that the situation had been solved at least a bit, vanished.

"I do not believe in a kidnapping." Legolas tried to calm the group down after they had searched the piece of clothing for other traces. "There's no blood."

"But there's this." Tarisilya opened her fist to show him the narrow silver ring in it, sporting a star-shaped black opal with a tiny sapphire in its center. "It was in the inside pocket. Erestor has only been wearing it for a few centuries, but it's an heirloom. Back then when he had dug it out for the first time in Ages, he wanted …"

She paused for a short look at Legolas but couldn't stand the uncomprehending way he was staring at her. Did that really have to happen now of all times, when things had just been so beautiful between them? And this time, it was her fault alone. She should long have told him.

"He wanted me to wear it. I was one of the people he's told where he wanted to go before he left with Gimli; I guess there's something else now that he wants me to know."

"There are still many Stewardaides on the loose in North Ithilien," Camhanar threw in because Legolas was eying Tarisilya as if she'd just turned into Sauron. "He probably wants to hunt them on his own to learn more about their plans."

"But that makes no sense." Tarisilya began to pace up and down, with a heavy heart. She had to deal with Legolas' angry reaction later. Right now, this was about the well-being of someone who had already been causing her a headache for a while. And no matter how much she would have loved to deny that … She had started to care about that somebody again.

"While His Majesty and he might have been friends in the past, he does no longer have any close connections to either Gondor or Ithilien. He's only come here at all because Lord Elrond asked him to, didn't he? And he's been critical towards our settlement from the start. He's never been that interested in other people."

"You're being unfair to him," Camhanar objected immediately.

"With all due respect: You have seen a very distorted image of him back then. Which, admittedly, he doesn't make it very difficult. But if you know him a little, there is no doubt that his mission has always been the protection of life in any way he could possibly fight for it. That his strength is mostly in the mind and that his counsel for the Lord has protected the valley from harm more than once, you should be aware of. And if they'd had let him, he would have made a lot more contributions to the army as well. Apparently, he's now trying to make Ithilien safer for us elves instead. The last quest for the ones still lingering here before he leaves this world together with the others. Thereby, he's openly defying Lord Elrond's order to stay by His Majesty's side. Maybe that's also his way to apologize for all your fights. It's time to turn to the present at last and leave the past behind."

"Our cue." Legolas signaled the others to get on their horses. He himself accepted, with a grateful nod, the animal from one of the soldiers that would at least help him through the first few days of the further journey. "If they stay in North Ithilien, we will run into Lord Erestor sooner or later; then he can explain his actions himself."

He was probably talking about all actions, given how Legolas rode past Tarisilya without addressing her again as if last night had never happened.

Tarisilya stayed behind with her head lowered and her shoulders slumped.

Sitting through a meeting with the necessary composure when you were injured was hard enough. Usually, Aragorn could at least expect a minimum of respect though if he let his soldiers tell someone that the King wanted to see them for a personal discussion before they passed the city gates.

Pushing past his personal guards, pushing his way into Aragorn's living chambers without a warning, and stopping in front of him with crossed arms, that was something he'd maybe have expected from a simple farmer who wanted to declare his discontent about some nuisances, but surely not from a King's son.

It reminded Aragorn strikingly of his first stays in Eryn Lasgalen – when it had still been called Mirkwood –, and King Thranduil giving him similar welcomes. Only that he was the one holding the role of the leader this time and that in the past, Legolas had used to stand by him in such situations. He probably wouldn't be able to count on such support in the foreseeable future.

"If you have something to say to me, you know where to send letters to. In a situation like this, there's no need to call me away from my people and upset them even more." Legolas didn't seem to mind that both Faramir and Verilas were in the room.

The aggression from yesterday had been increased by something else. Something not directed at Aragorn though, given how Legolas' eyes flickered to the window again and again as if he was looking for someone in the courtyard. With his hair tied back like that, Aragorn got a good view of unhealthy dark circles under Legolas' eyes; that both his warrior braids and the cloak from Lórien ruined at Cair Andros were missing, was creating even more distance between the two Companions. Which made it harder and harder for Aragorn to remember their friendship.

"Is it not bad enough that four of us were harmed that badly already? If His Majesty allows, I would like to take care at least of the rest of them before somebody else falls victim to Gondor's enemies."

"Given the way you're coming to see me, I wonder if I have to fear another enemy right now." Aragorn had been waiting next to a bookshelf; now he strode to one of the room's heavy chairs, massaging his hurting shoulder. There was a reason he hadn't welcomed Legolas in the throne room, but with his first provocations, the elf already made Aragorn regret his leniency.

In a truly official setting, Legolas would have needed to follow the etiquette which would have included kneeling before the King, among other things. That his friend would never have done that right now was clear, and Aragorn granted him that pride. It would have driven another wedge between them if guards and servants would have witnessed Legolas refusing to show any humility towards the King.

No one but good acquaintances was allowed to enter Aragorn's personal chambers. The compromise might feel like a little peace offering, and what counted most: In here, Aragorn could tell Legolas without an audience what he needed to hear. And his substitute and the first advisor were functioning as the necessary witnesses for the conversation.

"This is something I did not want to tell you in front of your people. That's the only reason I wanted to see you alone." Aragorn offered Legolas the chair opposite him but was entirely ignored which he took as a sign that he could drop every kindness as well. It didn't matter at all anyway how he would explain his actions. If Legolas would be ready to listen one day, he would hopefully get it all by himself.

"I guess you have an idea what this is about, don't you?"

"Why don't we cut this short?" With his arms still crossed, Legolas leaned against the window, robbing the room of a big part of its light probably on purpose, which made it hard to read his expression.

"If you are of the opinion, our problems will dissolve into thin air once you don't have to see them anymore, I won't be in the way."

Aragorn had to suppress the urge to beat his hand down on the table noisily. "By the Valar, Legolas! Wake up, damnit!"

Though it cost him much of the strength that was only just slowly coming back to him, he started wandering the room again. "You have yelled across the yard of my residence that you don't care what your vengeance will cost you! What kind of King would allow anyone to tell him to his face that they're going to ignore their order? I could already have had you locked up after our last conversation. That I can understand your pain doesn't change the fact that someone else wouldn’t have left that yard as a free person yesterday! People rely on my strength, now more than ever. In the streets, no one is trusting their neighbor right now. Do you have the slightest idea what the deeds of someone with your rank can trigger in a situation like that? It seems that you need some more time to understand that. It pains me to do this but as long as you do not take back your words, you will not enter Minas Tirith again. Your people are of course welcome to stay at Cair Andros, but you yourself are not welcome in the White City until you stop directing your anger against it."

Since Aragorn had expected another snappy comment, he was positively surprised – if one wanted to try and see anything good in all this at all. Legolas left the room without another word, without even looking at him once.

"Do you want the guards to escort him outside?" Faramir asked cautiously. "For both your safety, Aragorn."

"He will go without a fuss. If there's one skill the family Oropherion has mastered, it's dignified exits." Aragorn dropped back onto his chair, with his eyes closed and his mind feeling so heavy as if someone had stabbed him with another poisoned dagger, this time in his heart.

"Besides he might be blinded by hate but he's still my friend. It's not me he wants to raise his hand against. I didn't do this in here to have him dragged out of the city demonstratively then, making sure that every single gossipy woman and every curious child can see."

"As you wish."

While Verilas left the room on Aragorn's nod, Faramir hesitated for a moment, visibly unsure if it was wise to review yet another crisis right away. "We need to talk." Those were, ironically, the same words that he had used to welcome Aragorn after his journey to the west, before telling him about the unrest in Gondor. And this time, things were without a doubt even more complicated.

Aragorn who was still hoping for the storm of painful thoughts in his head to calm down forced a tortured smirk on his lips. "I can only promise that I'll try to listen right now. Not sure about the finding a solution part."

With some effort, he straightened up and fondled the bandage under his tunic to see if it was time to change it. The numbing effect of the ointments started to lose effect. "I know that the needs of the realm can't wait, but even a King is only a man. So I hope you will at least be patient if I'm not being the best discussion partner right now."

"I'm not here to discuss anything but to apologize." By taking the opposite seat, Faramir, unlike Legolas, took the offer of talking at eye level. But then he lowered his face into his hands as he finally was alone with the only one he had to answer to.

"The Dead Marshes Escalation are the result of events from the past that you need to know about. And I want you to hear it from me before word possibly spreads at the court. At the time when fear for his realm and grief destroyed my father, you didn't know him, Aragorn. So I can't ask you to understand that even my loyalty and my love for him were suffocated by his madness in the end. There were seven of us who were ready to stop him if we'd had no other choice. Now there's only Barhit and me. After the war, Barhit fell into this weird obsession with my person which I had to learn in the course of this crisis. He gathered these new people around him, gave the whole thing a pretentious name, and is, for some reason, of the opinion I would still have his back. If he thinks, it will be of any use to him, he will let everyone know that the current Steward of Gondor was once ready to overthrow the leader of this country. I don't know what exactly he plans next or he thinks he can achieve it, but he has another weapon to weaken the peace. I can't and I won't say, none of that is my fault."

"I'd be surprised if you tried." Aragorn stared at his opposite sternly, still trying to process what he'd heard. "What do you want me to say now? This is guilt I cannot free you from. You don't need me to tell you that you made mistakes both in the past and a few days ago, thereby sending persons to their doom who were under my realm's protection. You're the one suffering from that most. That you made decisions outside your authority, that's something we can deal with when neither of us will be so busy dealing with their pain and we won't say anything rash anymore."

He cut off Faramir's objection by raising his hand weakly. "No, I've just had more than enough of that. Next time. As for the Stewardaides … I can only imagine how difficult it must have been, planning treason against your own father. Denethor was a man of extremes in the end who did surely not leave you any other choice than to react just as extreme."

A sigh dripping with disappointment followed. "But why have I not heard about this before? You must long have known about the threat this man poses. Months have passed since Arwen's kidnapping. I find it hard to believe, you had no idea at all. Confessing your sins just a few moments before they'll be possibly revealed doesn't exactly support one's credibility. We could probably not have prevented the scandal, but I usually prefer being prepared. So far, my trust in you was fully given, but how do you feel about me? Just like I need to be able to rely on every advisor and my second in command, they shall do the same. That's what this government was founded on."

Faramir got up and braced himself on the chair's backrest with both hands, his back tense. "I'm not even sure I'm the right man for this government. I'm not a politician. You expect too much, Aragorn; that's the only reason, I'm not always sure I can approach you with everything. Maybe you should reconsider your decision back then. After what my father has done, you could long just have released my family from its official duty; we both know that."

"My decision?" Aragorn scooted forward and opened his wide tunic to unfasten the bandage, ignoring Faramir's questioning look. The wound was burning so badly now that he couldn't ignore it any longer. He had to make sure it hadn't become infected yet again.

"All I ever expected from you was doing your job, and so far, you have. It wasn't me who brought this fate on you. It wasn't me who sent Boromir to Imladris or shot the arrows piercing his body. No one can free you from your destiny. But you can stop running from it. It was your father who made you believe that you cannot handle a life like this; of that, I am aware. But it's also quite easy to use such words as an excuse if you need one. The realm needs someone, in case something happens to the King. And whom should I have appointed Steward? Who could replace a proud line like yours after all these centuries, in the eyes of the people? Tell me! Maybe I will indeed start to doubt my judgment then."

It took Faramir many long moments before he managed to show a reaction to the blunt speech. Moments that in his usual calm manner, he used to eat up what Aragorn was trying to tell him.

Still, his answer was sobering; it made Aragorn truly see, for the first time, how much the last few years and especially the War of the Ring had damaged a man that Mithrandir had always talked with such confidence about. He instinctively wished, the maia hadn't been traveling now of all times and would not have been untraceable as so often.

"Then I guess, all has been said and done between His Majesty and his substitute. Just one more thing: If you don't want to risk the relationship with your Steward, you never talk about my brother in my presence again. I just don't want my failures to be the reason that we lose any more people to this catastrophe, that's all. I've been to the Stewardaides' base. I saw real worry about the future in their eyes. What these rebels did is inexcusable, and whatever you plan, you have my full support. But for my taste, their words are being met with a little too much acceptance from the people. We finally have to do something. That's what I think though it's probably not what you wanted to hear right now."

"You mean, doing something like negotiating with the enemy and making concessions to them without consulting your King first?" That was a reproach now that Aragorn had no choice but to comment on after all.

"That is what has cost innocents their lives, and now we're at the edge of a new feud between Men and Elves. Do you think people will be listening less to parchments and whispers now? At least they're standing behind me again, but you know why? They fear Legolas' hate. From now on, if they gather, it will be to complain about Firstborn. Maybe I didn't act at the right time as I have not understood the whole extent of the danger yet. Or maybe I even made some wrong decisions. Even leaders aren't safe from that. But your way certainly didn't help. If you have other ideas that my advisors and I haven't thought of in the last few months, spill it."

"I will think about it and ask for an audience when next I should feel like having such a conversation. His Majesty may excuse his Steward now." It was one of the rare instances that Faramir said farewell to Aragorn with a bow outside the throne room.

It wasn't long before the message reached Aragorn that Faramir and his wife had left to go back to Emyn Arnen.

"So is this how it's going to be now? You're once more just avoiding every conflict?" Given the hurry Legolas was in, it wasn't easy to actually catch up with him. Tarisilya only managed to confront him on the sixth level, staring at Legolas in challenge ever until he stopped the horse he had borrowed.

"You better tell me now, before I have to start putting up with what people in the streets are saying about you or with watching Aragorn suffer because of you. Because if you don't care about how things are between us anyway, it's me who will gladly choose the deserted woods of Lórien over that."

"You had twenty years to tell me, Ilya." Although it must have been clear to everyone why Legolas had been called back to the Citadel, it was easy to see how much it hurt him that a once so unwavering friendship had been damaged so badly. Judging by how heavily he was slumping in the saddle, it didn't look like he even had the strength for the next journey right now, and certainly none for another argument.

This, Tarisilya could understand; but he had left her alone once too often in the past, for him to go with a grudge again after such a promising night. "At least let me explain. If there had been anything noteworthy to tell you, I would have."

"Obviously not." Legolas harshly shook off her hand on his arm. "This is about trust, Ilya, and about honesty. I always defended him, even back then when his ignorance almost got Aragorn and me killed. I was always of the opinion, that argument between you came from your different views. Now you're telling me that you have opened your heart to the elf you hate like no other of all people, although you always claimed, I was the only one in your life. What am I supposed to think about that?"

"You were the only one, I just told you … Legolas, please get down from that horse. I hate it, having to look up to you when we talk about something like that." Tarisilya tried in vain to stay as calm as she would need to be if she wanted to explain to her husband what had happened in Imladris back then.

"There's no time. In case you haven't heard yet: I'm no longer wanted around here." It was the second time since yesterday that Legolas ignored how badly she was feeling – because of him –, that he just turned away and carried on. Tarisilya could almost believe, he'd just declared everything between them invalid. That after all the trouble they'd gone through, he suddenly wanted to give up on them after all.

Though she knew that his behavior came from the last days' events, it hurt that he didn't even want to listen to her. Until they next met, she would have to live with the memory of his deeply hurt expression aimed at her.

She actually should now have gone to see Aragorn next, to finally tell him about this thing with Erestor so that he could notify Imladris. And to check on his shoulder. Never could it happen again – as it had with King Éomer and that little boy who had died – that she forgot how much her gift had suffered since Rohan. That ever since then, she wasn't allowed to let a patient out of her sight too quickly.

But she only made it as far as Tercelborne's stall before she had to brace herself on the door in tears.

"Your Highness?"

A little girl's shy voice helped her regain her composure; she quickly wiped her face. No matter how little she liked it, it was her now who held the role of the remaining elf in the city. If she didn't want to make the situation even worse, she had to keep on playing the part of the friendly, helpful healer, even at times when she wasn't in any mood at all to deal with admirers.

"What is it, little one?" Her attempt at a smile failed when she recognized Ninis, the younger sister of the very same boy that had fallen victim to the Stewardaides' fire attack back then. Though Ninor's parents had never blamed Tarisilya openly for not being able to save their son, they didn't greet her when they met on the streets, and his father had given up his work in the stables.

"You shouldn't be here."

"Mother and father said, you helped Ninor when he was very sick. I heard that you are sad." The girl shuffled her feet in the hay in embarrassment, visibly intimidated by the tall, elegant appearance of a she-elf. "I was very sad too when Ninor died. Father gave me a cat. It's helped me very much. It just had kittens." Ninis lifted her coarse wool pullover, getting a pitifully mewling, wriggling little something out from under it and holding it out to Tarisilya. "I'm giving one of them to you. Maybe you'll feel better then."

"That's really nice, but …" Completely taken by surprise, Tarisilya stared at the snow-white cat. "I don't have time for a pet. It wouldn't have a good life with me." It wasn't just the gesture of affection that she had not expected.

Though she found it slightly strange that an animal was seriously supposed to make up for the loss that the little one had suffered … Apparently, it had indeed helped. With a sad smile, this child had left behind a tragedy that would have plunged an elf into grief for centuries, maybe for millennia, depending on if and when they would have been allowed to see their lost relatives again in the west. No matter how short mannish lifespans were, and although Secondborn were not burdened with the eternity of memory: At this moment, Tarisilya really understood for the first time how much the comparatively small mind of such a being could bear. Maybe even more than many elves could.

"It's a she. I'm sure you'll take good care of her." With pleading eyes, the girl thrust the animal into her hands. "Her mother doesn't want her. When she ran outside, our neighbor's dog attacked her. Father said we have to drown her. I don't want her to die."

"Ninis! Where are you?" The annoyed voice of Ninor's mother from outside the stable door had them both startle.

"I have to go. Please, take care of her …" The girl didn't even wait for another answer but started to run, just leaving Tarisilya standing there before she could protest again.

"Oh, great." Sighing, Tarisilya pressed the animal to her chest.

It couldn't be older than a few weeks. Half of one of its ears had been torn off, probably by that lovely dog. Its nose was bloody, its fur dull, its body much too thin.

If she didn't want the kitten to die immediately, she had to take care of it at least. Afterward, there was surely someone to be found at the court who wanted to have it. "We'll need something for you to eat first, or no one will take you in, and you really have to live with me."

Her deep voice made the animal calm down, nuzzle against her chest, half-hidden under her dress. Then it started to scream again though, this time in fear because a bark echoed through the stable.

Arwen's dog had noticed the arrival of the newest court member and voiced a protest against it. The black and white spotted animal stopped in front of Tarisilya with raised hackles, not even hearing her voice that tried to call him down over his own.

Rolling her eyes, Tarisilya hurried to the Citadel to arrange what was necessary and especially to get rid of the dog that followed her with his muzzle raised, scenting and yapping ceaselessly.

Chapter Text

At the corner in the King's House behind which Aragorn's chambers were located, Tarisilya encountered a visibly nervous Arwen. Her friend was apparently waiting for the outcome of the conversation just taking place in Aragorn's living room; she was wrapping a strand of hair around two fingers again and again.
The noise the dog was making had her spin around. "By the stars, Fain!" She put one hand on her chest. The other came to rest on the handle of the dagger under her dress, out of a reflex trained for centuries. Only then, she spotted Tarisilya.
Their eyes met for just a moment. Arwen seemed glad when she had to turn away as her dog just wouldn't calm down. "Fain, heel!"

Only now, the animal cocked its ears and nuzzled against her legs, begging for forgiveness with its unusual blue eyes fixed right on her.

The cat on Tarisilya's arm started to writhe immediately. It stuck out its little head from under her elbow and let out something towards Fain that should probably be a hiss once it was grown up.

The dog answered it with a growl and bared its teeth which gave the kitten an excuse to hide in its new temporary owner's clothes again. Fain wagged his tail in satisfaction.

Arwen scrubbed him behind his ears, pretending to be busy with an especially bright spot in his fur before she could finally bring herself to speak up.
"Legolas stormed past me without saying a word earlier. It's like he suddenly wants to forget everything that was ever between us." She paused, forced to swallow thickly. "I'm sorry. I wish, I could do something to help. Legolas gave Aragorn no choice. Please, don't you be mad at him now as well. Aragorn couldn't bear that."

"How could I? I would not have risked the anger of Imladris and conquered my fear of the darkness to save the King if I didn't feel close to him."
The kitten had fallen asleep surprisingly quickly. The sensation of its soft fur against Tarisilya's cheek, of something alive and breathing, took some of the weight off of her. At least her hands weren't trembling for the first time in days.
"One reason for me staying here is to make sure that the bonds of our friendship keep the last cornerstone intact. But even my influence on my husband is limited right now. What kind of love would that be that limited your lover's freedom? I've always asked Legolas to not try and do that to me. Now it would be me who would have to, just so he doesn't' plunge himself into misery headfirst. I don't know if I can."

"Always letting the other have their way can't be right, Ilya. Not when you know exactly that it's wrong, what they're doing."
Arwen watched Fain leave who had finally given up watching the other, unloved animal, probably to snatch some of the leftover breakfast from the kitchen.
"Our job is certainly not to just wait until it's too late. The two of us are among those who know best how fatal Legolas' behavior can be. And you might be the only one he's letting far enough into his heart to make him see that."

"Definitely not right now. When we meet next ... I can only try." Tarisilya shrugged helplessly. Today, there wouldn't be a conversation like that anymore; and there would probably not be one in the next few weeks either. First, everyone involved had to calm down enough to stop feeling like screaming at each other nonstop.

Until then, apparently, at least Arwen and she wouldn't speak to each other in anger anymore.

Arwen had tears in her eyes when she looked through the window to the yard. At the White Tree there that even now, in the deepest winter, was blooming more and more. There was no symbol that stood more for the new Kingdom and its ruler's resilience, but also none showing any clearer than this reborn flower, how vulnerable all of this still was. One threat growing too big was enough, and Aragorn's rule would fall, just as quickly as these blossoms.
The same worry burdened her soul whenever she thought about her hopefully imminent wedding. And about another crisis possibly breaking loose among the people, in case Arwen's worst fears about her own fate would be confirmed someday: if would inevitably turn out in a few years that there wouldn't be an heir to the King, at least not born to her. She could just keep on praying that the Valar would spare her this fate, that her injury from the Battle at the Black Gate would someday be healed completely.
Suppressing such ever-present fears would have been easier if there hadn't been new ones being added to them basically every day… and if the number of people she could confide in wouldn't seemingly be waning more and more at the same time. She, too, had lost Legolas to his anger for now.
"In times like these, the two of them should have each other's back instead of threatening each other. Aragorn's and Legolas' friendship is standing for something so important, and now everyone can watch it fall apart …"

"As long as there's even a single elf living within these walls who remembers their bond in the war, that will not happen." At least Tarisilya did no longer seem to be angry with Arwen because of their own quarrels in the sick room. "On Middle-earth, hope has always kept the things intact that were thought lost. We just have to hold on to that right now. By the way, if there's nothing else for you to do right now … I have no idea how to properly take care of such an animal."
Sighing, she nodded down on the cat. "I have a funny feeling, I won't get rid of that one anytime soon."

Taking a closer look at the animal, Arwen clicked her tongue. "It's just a baby. You shouldn't think so unkindly about a creature that will need you so much in the beginning. It shouldn't be a burden."
She caressed the kitten's nose whereupon it woke up immediately and nuzzled against her with a purr. "Look, it only wants attention, just like all of us." But the lively tone in her voice couldn't hide the sadness filling her especially at the sight of such a tiny, helpless thing. Tarisilya being one of the few who knew about her condition did surely have a pretty good idea what that sigh was about.

And this wasn't only about her infertility. Who had mixed that sleeping draught into the King's wine and the guards' water that terrible night? Apparently, there was at least one Stewardaid who had been staying right here in the Citadel and who probably still did. Knowing that, how could you raise a child here?

Actually, both Arwen and Tarisilya could only hope that a stop would be put to the Stewardaides' activities before they would have their first children at some point. But what if it wouldn't? A family was exactly what the two of them had always wished for from the bottom of their hearts. Even more so now that neither of them would have any relatives in these realms anymore soon. Now that their happiness seemed finally close enough to touch, they really only were aware of the danger that it would possibly always be in.
A questioning mewl sounded since Arwen was just staring away now instead of stroking the kitten. "I'm sorry, Ilya, I didn't mean to lecture you. It's just … You have no idea how tough such small beings, in particular, can be. Remember Fain. The moment the animal gets some milk, it will be happy for the moment. Come on, I'm sure we'll find something for the bigmouth in the kitchen."

Tarisilya accompanied her without objections though she was visibly not quite comfortable with the thought of having an animal companion in her chambers yet. Spending some time together would at least distract both of them from everything else.

With every passing day since the official announcement of the King's betrothal – which, out of respect for the dead, had only been issued a few weeks after the attack in the Citadel –, Arwen was being more bothered by the whole muddled situation. Aragorn had actually assured her that he would get the wedding underway as quickly as possible, but they had hardly anything more than a vaguely planned date so far. Which was not only in the too-distant future because Aragorn's advisors had been terrified and had added for consideration that a short lead time wouldn't allow half as much effort to be put into the celebrations as tradition demanded.

Since a letter, soaked in many tears, confirming the death of the elves captured in Mordor, had arrived from Imladris, Aragorn was doing even worse. Especially because his roots were so important to him, it had to be cruel, suddenly having almost none of the Firstborn nearby anymore, except for his betrothed and two more people who were spending more time than ever in the Houses of Healing, one of them as a patient.

There was only rare news from South Ithilien; they said, the Steward and his wife had retreated completely.
Whatever it was that Legolas was being up to in the north together with his people, so close to Minas Tirith, once they had been given the fateful message from Lord Elrond – no one was having an eye on that either. But except for the most important works on the fountains, no one saw the group making themselves useful for the moment.

A situation that had Arwen worry constantly, a feeling adding to her grief regarding the loss of her old friends whose only hope now was a quick resurrection in a far safer place. Legolas had been one of the people closest to her ever since she had been an elfling. That Aragorn might be forced to launch a military strike against him, even if it would just be in defense, was actually unthinkable. That because of all that, even something as enjoyable as wedding preparations was being handled sloppily, just so that everyone would remain on the alert, made it hard to stay neutral in this matter.
Arwen really wanted nothing more than a smile every now and then, from the tailor, the maids, the cooks, the servants, from any of the attendants who should make the approaching day more beautiful. But often enough, not even her betrothed could bring himself to give her one at their common meals. She had to doubt that Aragorn was even really listening when she told him something.

On some days, she almost wished to have Erestor back for some company, to whose counsel Aragorn had listened many a time since last year. Maybe her father's librarian could have made Aragorn see that his current reclusiveness didn't exactly ease people's fears after the Stewardaides' attack. But for the moment, no one was hearing anything from Erestor anymore either.

To Arwen's surprise, not even anyone from Imladris had anything to say about that certain subject. Glorfindel was apparently still paralyzed in shock about his old friend and - more or less secret - part-time lover having gone on such an insane quest.

The tension at the court could basically be cut with a sword. And it just didn't get any better.

It had already been almost two months since the assassination attempt when one of the prison guards headed Arwen off in the courtyard while she was walking Fain one day. "Your Majesty."
The man made sure several times that no one would be able to hear the conversation which confused Arwen so much that for once, she didn't mind being addressed with a title already that did actually not befit her state yet. After all, too much respect was better than too little.

When she took one of the rare chances to leave the Citadel, always with an escort, she usually couldn't see much of people's reactions to her. No one seemed to be hostile which was in stark contrast to many experiences she had had at the court in the beginning, but that didn't have to mean anything. You only heard the most courageous voices when you were alone; Tarisilya had already had to experience that firsthand as Arwen knew from some scary tales from her friend.

That at least the soldiers were accepting Arwen and were showing her the same respect as they showed the King, made everything a little easier. "One of the prisoners wants to talk to you. His name is Ryscfin. I've been trying in vain to talk to the King for days. I thought you should know at least. Nothing will happen to you if you want to follow the request. We'll see to your safety."

"My safety is guaranteed as long as I keep as far away from these traitors as possible who would sell every smallest approach of the King or his partner as a personal victory to the people. You are welcome to tell the young man that I do not want to see him. Not now and not in the future." Every warmth had left Arwen's voice; her hands had turned to fists. Though this was the guy who had betrayed his people back then and had helped Aragorn and Legolas on their search for Arwen in North Ithilien – he still had been part of the group that had kidnapped her.
Far too many memories of that very incident immediately tried to enter her mind. Murmuring a few indistinct words of goodbye, Arwen stormed off but was being stopped at the entrance of the White Tower from where Aragorn was coming to meet her.

"Is there any trouble?" While he had had so little time when it had come to Arwen in the last few weeks, he still seemed to have an intuition for always showing up in the right moment. The meeting with the advisors seemed to be over for the moment.
Aragorn wasn't being overly enthusiastic when he was being told what this was about but not half as horrified as Arwen had expected either. "The guards and I would of course take care of you every second if you would take on this visit. It was difficult enough, punishing Ryscfin as strictly as the others. After all, he was the only one who realized his mistakes. It would ease my mind if he could at least see that you're doing well again."

"This isn't about you though." Arwen harshly pulled her hand from his. "My safety is not the point; I don't need anyone for that. I don't fear these bastards. But I will not give these people any more of my time. I won't grant them that triumph. They've done enough."
With that, she just left her betrothed standing there as well. Apparently, he wouldn't have understood anyway.

It hadn't been long yet since Arwen had sat down on the narrow bed of her temporary accommodations, which were still quite plainly furnished, when she heard a quiet knock on the door. She heard Aragorn send the handmaid, Ranír, who had only been working for Arwen for a short while, away from the antechamber to be alone with her. Wonderful. So to top it all, she would have to deal with even more chiding looks from the advisors tomorrow morning because the two of them had chosen to be without a governess yet again. No, Arwen's mood really wasn't the best.

She only welcomed Aragorn accordingly reluctantly when he carefully stuck his head in the bedroom door but was indulgent enough to not send him away again immediately. That wouldn't have changed anything. Besides, one millennia-old being in this realm acting like a spoilt elfling was more than enough.
Still, there was unpleasant silence prevailing in the room for far too many long minutes after their brief hello. Arwen stayed on the mattress with her knees drawn up and waited. Just to have anything to do at all, she continued to struggle with getting her fingernails into a presentable shape that had become far too soft and too fragile in the last few months. At least no insufficiently perfect appearance of the future queen could elicit even more critical words from the advisors then.

It was Aragorn who had come to see her, so he should be the one to get of his chest what he had to say. She was sick enough of him being so uncommunicative at dinner recently.
When he finally sat down next to her and caressed her arm carefully, it was hard not to startle back. "Arwen …"

She pushed his hand aside gently but firmly. "No, Estel, not like this. Intimacy can't solve everything."

"And silence never solves a thing, Nauriel." He scooted just a little bit closer to her, not pushing her any further though. "Please tell me what annoys you so much."

"You tell me why."
Her lips a tight line, Arwen put away the file. For now, it wouldn't get any better than this anyway. Maybe later, she could ask that lovely young girl outside for help; she would gladly do her best.

Ranír had grown dear to her heart from the beginning; in that regard, Aragorn and Faramir had had a good nose. The young woman was still a little shaken by the heavy losses she had suffered in the war, but with her innocent, cheerful yet never disrespectful temper, she was filling these rooms with more life than Arwen herself could right now, given all that pressure weighing down on her.

And today, that pressure had become even heavier. Her hands were fists once more, hard enough for her knuckles to protrude sharply. "When did you start having mercy with traitors who were responsible for Ninor's death? Who have now ruined even more lives, and lives of Firstborn no less?"
It was the first time that Arwen didn't manage to hide from Aragorn that this catastrophe of course made her feel just as bad as Legolas, though she would never have acted on her hate in the way that her old friend seemed to plan it right now. It was her people, too, who had been tortured, who had died there. Some of them had lived in her old home for millennia. It would have been all but treason, reaching out to even one of the enemies now.
"You almost beat one of them to death because he tried to kill me, and now you want me to go to them voluntarily? It doesn't matter that Ryscfin himself didn't do much, Estel. I can't look anyone in the eye who did nothing while I was being abused. And I cannot do anything to encourage these people either, right after they've caused the death of elves. Don't ask that of me."

"I'm not. It has always been and it will only be your decision." When this time Aragorn pulled her into a careful embrace, she let him. She could see it in him that the memory of how he had had to find her covered in blood in that cave, was still torturing him.

They had never talked about this much. Arwen had wanted to put it behind her. After all, nothing really bad had happened back then, and she had been in worse distress in her time as a warrior, not very often though. But it was the fear about what else these people were capable of, that sometimes robbed her of her sleep.

To sense that this whole story still made her suffer had the anger boil up in Aragorn again, too. Anger on these men who had done this to her and had caused an even worse catastrophe in these swamps then. Arwen could easily read the wish in his tight expression that he could have forgotten his own rationality and granted Legolas the very revenge the elf's heart was screaming for.
And yet they both knew better. Aragorn, as a leader, and Arwen, as a leader's daughter, had had to realize early in their lives that violence never made a realm safer for its residents. The war was over. Now they could only render their enemies harmless, and that was often a lot more difficult. Perhaps that was simply clearer to the two of them than to someone raised by a King whose realm had known nothing but war during almost his entire tenure.
"I should never have asked you, forgive me. You suffered enough by them, all of you. This whole thing will be over soon. Soon, even the last Stewardaid will be in prison."

"You shouldn't make promises that you can maybe not keep, Estel." Sighing, Arwen put her arm around his strong waist.
"We don't even know who the traitor in here is. Maybe they will never let us live in peace." The thought sent shivers down her naked arms. That prospect was indeed far worse than a possibly useful conversation with an enemy. Though there was little doubt, the Stewardaides would later make their own story of the royal couple entering the prison … It might be worth the sacrifice, though Arwen didn't like it.
"Ryscfin could be a help in tracking the others down, couldn't he? That's why you want to go there."

"He didn't want to talk so far." Aragorn had to feel that some reluctance was melting away from her, that resignation started to spread in her tense muscles. He shook his head firmly. "No matter what he knows, we won't buy it by you torturing yourself."

"I'm in no mood for that. I guess I have made myself plenty clear about that." Arwen showed a self-ironic grin. Her reaction earlier suddenly felt completely overblown to herself.
"But what else can we do?" She got up in a smooth movement, not even realizing it anymore herself how easy she could, so long after the last of her injures had healed. Without a destination, she crossed the tiny room several times.
"In theory, someone could mix something into every sip of water, into every of our meals. We can't go on like this, can we? I'm hardly leaving the Citadel anymore as it is. I don't want to celebrate my wedding, expecting to hear screams any second and be surrounded by guards. And that's only the beginning. Do you think, these madmen will allow an heir of Kings to grow up here, if that even ever happens? They already tried to get rid of me when they only saw a vague possibility that I could be pregnant. I don't want to be that helpless anymore."

Aragorn nodded slowly. "We should at least try. Thanks for changing your mind. I'll get you in an hour."
On his way to the door already, he looked back at her with a humorous sparkle in his grey eyes that Arwen had been missing for quite a while. "Just for the record: You're terrifying even with a nail file, Nauriel."
And in spite of his shoulder function still impaired, he was still quick enough to dodge a pillow thrown at his head.

Like no other building in the city, the prison on the sixth level mirrored the tidings of time. While the smaller part with heavy underground cells built for war criminals hadn't been needed in quite a while, people in the building's larger multilevel part, on the mountainside and protected by high walls, had been in a high alert mode for weeks. Many additional soldiers had been trained since the end of the war so that the men who were endangering Gondor's peace wouldn't only be under constant watch but were - recently - also being protected from possible access from the outside.

In the cover of the night, Aragorn had visited the Stewardaides several times already; but he'd always left without having achieved anything. Trying to talk to these people was completely futile.

Sitting around in windowless solitary cells, being taken care of sufficiently but having no contact with either their friends or their families, should have chastened these men. Instead, their anger on Aragorn seemed to grow every day. They refused to talk to the guards, and they ignored him completely.

That one of them had approached them now gave Aragorn at least some hope. Ryscfin could actually have long been pardoned if he'd come to meet Aragorn halfway. Aragorn needed a reason to set the man free and before Ryscfin hadn't provided any information about the Stewardaides' plans, Aragorn couldn't just act on his own authority. That he could understand Ryscfin's fear about the revenge of the Stewardaides who were still active, didn't change that.

It had been a while since he'd last entered the wing for the convicts, but it still felt like the narrow grey halls tried to crush him. Seeing how many observation windows in the cell doors were being opened reminded Aragorn painfully of how many prisoners he had already had to make. The number of those who had been locked up when Denethor had been in charge was tiny compared to that.

Ryscfin's cell was located at the very end of the hall, slightly shielded from the others. Not too isolated, to not make the punishment even worse yet still under the soldiers' watchful eyes, so that the young man wouldn't be threatened by his former mates.

Arwen walked swiftly by Aragorn's side, her body wrapped in a night-blue cloak, her face hidden by the hood. Even the guard who had addressed her earlier had to look twice to recognize her. For now, she let Aragorn do the talking, entering Ryscfin's tolerably clean accommodations silently but with her head held high. She didn't pull back her hood when the man bowed to her, instinctively getting as much distance as possible between the two of them by striding to the opposite wall.

"Thank you for coming." Ryscfin sat down at the small wooden table, the only piece of furniture in the tiny chamber, except for the bed and two chairs. The man clearly showed traces of being locked up for a few months. His black, stringy hair had grown and thinned a lot. A healthy tan had yielded to the paleness of a lack of daylight. Sunken eyes and continuous, uncontrolled movement of his body revealed the bad mental state of the former Stewardaid. "You don't have to sit down if you don't want. It's not very comfortable here."

"I don't plan to stay here for long, so it won't be necessary anyway. I usually choose my company more carefully." Arwen looked at the man coldly from under her hood. "You wanted to talk to me. Don't make me wait now."

"I know that you're angry with me. They have done terrible things to you." Ryscfin didn't even look up from the stained tabletop once. His fingers were constantly playing with his hair. When he wasn't talking, he nibbled on sore fingertips. "I don't deserve absolution from you. They told me that you'll be married soon; that's already more reassurance for me than I deserve it, for I know that you're happy now. I want to apologize to you. Now that the word is out that the Stewardaides have killed someone again, and Firstborn being close to you and Lord Legolas no less, I can't live with my guilt any longer."

It was visibly nothing but willpower that helped Arwen suppress the urge to hurry over to the man and punch him. "Happy? Just because some of you are behind bars? I have to live in the shadows, ever until the rest of your people have been taken into custody. Exuberant joy looks different."

The young man looked up in concern, eying Arwen's appearance for a few shy seconds. "I wish I could do something to help you."

"You can. I've been trying to tell you that for weeks." Aragorn stepped forward.
"You know where your former friends could be hiding, don't you? You say you don't share your former comrades' views about elves, so prove it. The Stewardaides are threatening another Firstborn. We lost every contact. I don't even know if anything has happened to him while he was on his unauthorized hunt. Only you can give us a hint about where to find the rest of the Stewardaides. I guarantee you your freedom, Ryscfin. Why don't you trust me at least?"

"And who guarantees me my life?" the young man answered bitterly. "No, Your Majesty, as long as there are still people like Barhit out there who was once a living weapon, supposed to overthrow the Steward of Gondor, I can't risk any more betrayal. As long as I'm in here, I'm at least safe. I was the youngest of them. I don't even know who their middleman in the Citadel is. You'll have to find out without me."

"I hope you'll change your mind someday. It would be a shame if you wasted your life in here."
Aragorn nodded at Arwen in resignation, signaling her that it was time to go.

While she followed him, she stopped next to Ryscfin for a moment after all. Apparently, the sight of him had chased away at least a bit of her anger. Actually, this was a really pitiful creature, and they could both only hope that he would get back on the right path himself at some point. Providing the man with another few words of support wasn't asked too much.
"If you're looking for absolution, you need to finally learn to think for yourself and to stand up for what you've done. You might not have been anything more than a big child, barely a grown man, when you were blinded by sweet words. But now you can no longer hide behind your youth. I don't even want to know how it will end next time when you make a wrong decision, seeing what you have already let people make you do so far." She left before he could answer.

With how silent it had been in this hallway lately, none of them had expected one of the Stewardaides to react to the visitors this time. All the more, Aragorn and Arwen startled when there was a voice sounding from one of the first occupied cells that they both knew only too well. It was the man who had tried to kill Arwen.
"Look at that, it's the high-born and his mistress. Did you miss us, little birdy?"

"Silence! Sit down!" One of the guards approached the cell and raised his fist to make the prisoner back away from the viewing window.

"Never mind." Aragorn signaled the soldier to stand down with a quick headshake. "Let them scream out their anger. They will have many more years to cool their temper."

"Of course, I forgot." The prisoner laughed cynically. "The great, gracious King never uses violence, does he? At least not while someone's watching. How's the shoulder, Your Majesty?" The man scornfully eyed Aragorn's arm that was still in a supportive sling, weeks after the assassination attempt.

"Well enough to fight every single one of your friends if they should try to harm me or my people again," Aragorn answered calmly. "As long as you refuse to understand your mistakes, there's nothing to talk about."

"Oh, but that's where you're wrong." The man's grin only broadened. Pressing his face against the bars of the window, he let his gaze wander demonstratively over Arwen's body, licking his lips. "We're not as cruel as these backstabbing elvish criminals, so I'll tell you now. Then you can at least brace yourself. The loyalists of Gondor will not allow a Firstborn whore to sit on the throne and taint the so-called line of Kings with a mixed bastard. Don't you dream that this is over."

"Exactly. Not as long as even one of your kind is being free."
Aragorn tried to quickly lead Arwen away by her arm before there would be even more hurtful words coming.

But she tore away from him rudely and approached the cell with stiff steps. In the weak torchlight, metal was glistening in her hand. A second later, she had thrust her dagger deeply into the door's massive wood, only an inch away from the Stewardaid's face.

Aragorn stared at the weapon in shock that Arwen had always been wearing somewhere on her body since her kidnapping. He hadn't expected her to draw it in here. The cold sound of her voice and the look in her eyes that the hood that had fallen back revealed had him freeze on the spot before he had even taken one step towards her.

"Why don't you say that to my face, scum? This dagger has already cut one of your people's throat before, and I do regret it less by the hour. if you don't want to get acquainted with it even more closely, have care how you talk to the she-elf who is whispering words into the King's ears. He might actually listen to them someday." When the grin on the Stewardaid's face died away more and more, she pulled the dagger from the wood and put it away again.
"You keep on threatening my family, you'll see what a simple whore from the folk of the Firstborn is capable of."
Putting her hood back on, Arwen quickly carried on. Suddenly it seemed, she couldn't get out of this damn building fast enough.

"I have to get back to my chambers. I promised Ranír that she would be allowed to experiment with my hair." Arwen didn't dare to even look at Aragorn from the corner of his eyes, not even for a moment, knowing exactly that he was begrudging her for this outburst. After all, these kind of thoughts was exactly what he'd expelled Legolas from the city for.

But Arwen had never been someone who did just watch idly when someone was trying to destroy her life. Actually, he should have expected something like that. And yet she was visibly disgusted by her own actions. Aragorn had seldom been so aware of how young, by elven standards, Arwen actually still was. Apparently, it had only taken a single crisis in the realm that would soon be hers as well to destroy an emotional calmness that she had been building for an eternity.
And if she didn't learn to handle her own anger very soon, she would possibly fare just like Legolas.

Aragorn understood that she had to be alone right now and let her go.

Chapter Text

Arwen wasn't awfully surprised about Aragorn not visiting her another time on that day. That night, she was once more spending endlessly long hours with little to no sleep in which she startled up repeatedly from the sound of her own dagger blade piercing moldy wood in her head, or from the coldness of unbridled hate in her heart. Actually, she was wishing for a comforting embrace in the dark more than ever right now.

But she did indeed only meet her betrothed again in the next afternoon when she was just being on her way to the stables … and so was he, obviously.
"Brego might start to think I forgot about him. I need to give him some exercise," Aragorn explained without really looking at her. "Do you want to come with me?"

Arwen kept her eyes on the ground, still not ready to deal with the anger on Aragorn's face. "I had something similar in mind, so that would only be logical. How is your shoulder doing though? Isn't it too risky to go for a ride again already, Your Majesty?"

Impatiently, Aragorn released the guard always accompanying Arwen from a discreet distance since her kidnapping. The etiquette that Arwen was being forced to follow in public as long as the two of them weren't finally being married, got just as badly on his nerves as on hers.
"I won't be asking too much of myself, don't worry. If there's any pain, I'll stop. I would never risk bringing my Queen's anger upon myself by having to show up at our wedding with a sling."

It was meant as a joke but Arwen's fine ears caught the bitter undertone. "Well, your future Queen certainly brings your anger upon herself often enough, doesn't she? May I explain this thing yesterday, Estel?"

"What is there to explain? You made your point very clear. And by that, you made sure that everyone in this city will soon know, it's not only the leader of the elves of Cair Andros, not approving of my decision, but the future Queen as well." One night had obviously not been enough for Aragorn to deal with what had happened. And it was just as obvious that he didn't want to argue about this matter again, not with the person that he loved most of all people.
"Let us do this another time, mîl nín." With clenched teeth, he started to walk faster, without giving her another chance to speak up.

"Estel, please."

It took the pleading tone in Arwen's lovely, bright voice to have Aragorn pause. Never should she be sounding that way, not because of him. He had already sworn himself that when he had first got to know her. When he had tried to send her away, for reasons of rationality, for the first but not for the last time. He had never succeeded with that in all his life, and that was the only reason, she had to bear such an existence, marked by constant fear, right now. He shouldn't be hurting her even more than the nature of their relationship already did.
He just couldn't help but pull Arwen into a tight embrace. Ignoring a possible audience, he held his betrothed close to him and tried to make sense of his tumbling feelings.
Damn it, how much this whole situation was appalling him at this point.

Actually, he'd thought that at least Arwen would support his views. Lord Elrond would have had a lot to say about even the absurd idea of the death penalty to his dear daughter. It seemed, Arwen didn't remember half as much from certain political lectures received in her long life as Aragorn hoped. He was honest enough to admit, he hadn't seen that coming.
And the consequences of that misconception had been fatal. In front of those prisoners of all people, Arwen had seriously implied that she would try to influence Aragorn in a way that she had no right to do, not as a Queen and especially not as the she-elf by his side.

Arwen wasn't wrong: They had to sort this out as quickly as possible before things between them would possibly pile up just as high as between Aragorn and Legolas. He wouldn't have made it through another cruel fight like that with a sane mind.
"Do you even have any idea what you might have caused in there? Who was it that I have taken with me to that prison yesterday? It certainly wasn't you, with that endless coldness in your eyes."

Arwen backed away gently and signaled him to follow her. She ignored his questions ever until they reached a garden in the Houses of Healing. "This is one of the most silent places in all of Minas Tirith," she explained as she sat down on one of the snow-white stone benches, with her legs crossed. "I don't want to talk to you in the street where everyone can listen."
For seconds, she was visibly searching for words. "I'm sorry, Estel. I've completely lost it yesterday. And I didn't even really mean any of that." She wrung her hands until Aragorn took them in his. "I just feel so damn helpless right now."

"And when did you start thinking, violence is a good way to change that?" It didn't sound like a reproach, more like a resigned statement.

"It is not, but tell me what else I can do to protect us. You are the one responsible for the decisions regarding the city's defenses. I can't make a name for myself with that. I'm just the she-elf by your side, Estel." When she saw him tilt his head slightly, frowning at the unexpected offense, she quickly put her hand on his cheek before he could interrupt her.
"And for now, that is alright. Maybe one day, I'll be able to make contributions to our army, like Lady Éowyn in the war. But no matter how little I might like sitting idle: For the time being, my health is more important. First, we have to know what our little family will look like before I can throw myself into the next battle. All I ever wanted from being by your side was having children with you at some point and being happy, mostly without any danger. But now these insane people threaten to take that away from me. Can you bear the idea that guards will see our children more often than we will because there will always have to be some men posted in their rooms? Don't you know best how it is to live a life in hiding? It must have broken your mother's heart, not even being able to call you your real name for your own protection! I don't want to have to hide our children. Or bury them."
Arwen forced herself to seek Aragorn's eyes though it was clear that it hurt her, having to lay all of this out for him so clearly once more. "I would never try to push you. And I will definitely not criticize your opinion in public or send a murderer to the prison, no matter how much I loathe the Stewardaides. But grant me at least the illusion that these bastards have believed me and that they'll reconsider their next steps. Or … or I don't know what will happen now."
What she was saying was not the worst. The worst was the suspicious glance in her beautiful round eyes. Aragorn had never had to see his betrothed cry as much as in the last few months.

That was something he would ever be able to watch for longer than a few seconds, no matter what happened. And especially in moments like these, that meant swallowing his pride for once.

Aragorn helped Arwen ease her conscience by resting his knuckles on her jaw, pulling her close, and kissing her tenderly. With his arm put around her, he allowed her to hide her face against his shoulder, to seek shelter from everything that had crashed down on her in the last few months.
"I'm afraid, men like that can't be impressed by threats for longer than a few hours. But we'll find a solution, mîl nín. I won't let these people destroy my happiness."

Arwen just nodded silently. At least for a moment, Aragorn's touch helped her believe that now there was nothing that could harm them anymore. Only the sling on his arm disturbed that illusion massively. She clenched her hand in his tunic and nuzzled a little closer to him in defiance. "Le melin." It was just a whisper but even that left no doubt that nothing would ever be able to change that fact, no matter how often the Stewardaides would try to separate them.

Aragorn buried his face against her hair, to enjoy breathing in its scent. "Le melin, Nauriel." For a few precious moments, he sounded just as infatuated as she did.
"Brego is still waiting for a ride, and Alagas is probably pawing at the ground as well. You'll have to come with me to get me down from my horse if I should become too reckless after all alone."

"So I have to pretend to be the voice of reason once more? Who's ever going to believe that?" Arwen followed Aragorn gladly, a quiet laugh on her lips.
It was alright. They had shown each other that even in this crisis, they had each other's back. That was all they could help each other with right now, in times like these when even old friendships didn't seem untouchable anymore.

"What is it?" It was only in the aisle between the stalls that Aragorn seemed to notice how Arwen was repeatedly looking around as if they had been watched in secret. Which admittedly, was rather unlikely, in this area that especially since the fire, only a few civilians had access to on normal days.

"I'm not sure … Wait." Leaning back against a wall, she closed her eyes to find out what was suddenly so different that her mind was in turmoil even before her senses had reacted.

She quickly realized, it was the birds. Their voices had multiplied; even the nocturnal ones had woken up. While the weather had been rainy all afternoon, now the sun was making its way out from behind the clouds. And the cutting wind that often made Minas Tirith such an unpleasant place, had completely stilled within seconds.

The people felt it as well. The shouting of the stable hands, the beating and hammering of the works on buildings and streets, and the weak noise on the other levels, too, that you could usually hear all the way up here, in this very quiet city ring, had been replaced by confused silence.

It was broken by the sound of one of the new fanfares that Aragorn had ordered the Guards of the Citadel to prepare for special visitors when taking office. Thunderous hoof beats and the shrill neigh of a huge horse, accompanied by a quiet, melodic jingle, revealed the arrival of a guest who didn't stop for anything or anyone.

A big smile spread on Arwen's lips, an open smile that she hadn't been able to show for a while. "They stopped for a moment of awe, as the song of the sun, the deep breath of freedom in their chest, and even the glistening blossoms at the wayside screamed it out: A son of the eldest has come into their lives. It's from a book in ada's library, about heroes of all Ages. Erestor would simply call it a love for dramatic entrances, but you get the idea."
It didn’t help to remind herself that they didn't even know what the visitor wanted yet. Or that they would maybe be confronted with another exhausting argument soon. The sudden levity and happiness in her heart allowed Arwen to forget about all the recent catastrophes for a while.

"Ada must have read the words in my last letter right." Aragorn, too, did finally make it to smile at least somewhat honestly again.
Taking Arwen's hand, he quickly led her to the street where an elf would show up in a few moments that he'd been wishing to have by his side as support ever since with his fight with Legolas, as Arwen knew perfectly well.

The white horse with the bell-studded harness stopped next to Arwen and Aragorn abruptly as if its rider would only just now have spotted the two of them, though Arwen was certain that a pair of bright blue eyes had already pierced her from under a dark hood a few minutes ago. The same stallion that had so often carried her courageously in the war back then, pranced in place, with its ears aggressively set back against its head and foam at its mouth from the fast ride. It withdrew immediately when Arwen approached and threw its head up.

"Easy, boy. It's just me." She gently put a hand on the horse's narrow head, ignoring that it was snapping at her, and greeted it with a few words in Sindarin, more singing than speaking them, whereupon it became noticeably calmer.

"I guess Asfaloth will never change. Neither will his rider, I hope." Arwen looked up with a chuckle but became serious immediately as she could make out, in spite of the hood, that the new arrival didn't move a muscle.
"I didn't dare hope that I would see you again, Glorfindel."

"Do not be ridiculous. I have taught both of you how to handle a sword and bow when you came of age. I never go without a goodbye if I can avoid it."

Arwen thanked her friend for the assurance with the hint of a bow and stepped back then to make a moment of reunion possible for her betrothed as well.

She had seen Aragorn together with plenty of other elves, but only when it came to her father and her brothers had she ever noticed the same deep fondness and the same large amount of respect at the same time that existed between him and this particular Firstborn. Reviving this old friendship was exactly what her beloved needed right now.

Just like the soothing sound of this melodic voice not heard in far too long that you just wanted to listen to all day, even when you had been familiar with it for centuries. Its softness often even made you miss the practicality in that voice and the notoriously short sentences. But the other elf's tall figure that only ever really showed when he pulled back his hood and straightened up fully, immediately brought back the reality of a mighty warrior with eyes just as wise as sharp who was carrying the weight of millennia and was equipped with the strength of eons. These were Thondrar's eyes and his golden hair falling down the elf's broad back, and just like her betrothed, Arwen was one of the handfuls of people whom this fact had never been a secret for.

Aragorn promptly squeezed Arwen's hand a little firmer, very aware, just like she was, that it was this very fact that would prevent a carefree arrival.
"I'm very happy that you chose this time to honor the White City with your presence. I wished very much for you to keep me company on the day when Lord Elrond's daughter will finally stand by my side as my wife."

"I will not miss such an important day in the life of the Evenstar. Your family was very relieved to receive the message about your recovery, Arwen. Not only your father and your brothers will come here for your wedding. Everyone still around is proud of how well you settled down here. Travelers entering the valley speak very kindly about you." At the last words, the other elf did not make it to look into her eyes anymore. After all, he was one of the few people informed that there was one certain injury, she was still sporting, invisible to outsiders. And that in a few years, people might possibly no longer want her at this court after all.

"Given the situation, that is a big relief." Arwen had countless questions especially about her family on her lips, but she could see it in the other elf that he wouldn't give her an answer right now. There were other things on his mind, and he became more restless by the second, understandably. "I would be delighted about the chance for a long conversation with you later."

Glorfindel answered the request with a short nod, but then great grief darkened his expression, giving Arwen an idea about his next words before he said them.
"I come on behalf of the one I serve, Estel, but mostly for the sake of the one I love. Take me to my son."

Making their way through the Houses of Healing would probably have taken just as little time as Glorfindel's arrival if it hadn't been for something swift hustling from one of the rooms and sidestepping so unpredictably that Imladris' most famous warrior, one of the last sons of Gondolin, Balrog slayer and eternal doom of the Nazgûl would almost have tripped over it. "What … is that?" Glorfindel stared down at the small animal that hissed at him, entirely unimpressed by all these titles, and then looked at Aragorn with the same disapproving expression.

"A demon." Ioreth ran from the kitchen that the cat had fled from and slammed the door close.
"Get out!" With her hands on her hips, she bent down to the animal that was carrying a big piece of raw meat in its little mouth. She obviously didn't dare touch the cat which Aragorn could understand very well given the many scratches on her hands.

The cat seemed to know that perfectly well because it stretched out on the carpet, purring in satisfaction, so that Aragorn and Glorfindel had to step over it, and enjoyed its prey.

"Your Majesty, please tell the Princess of Eryn Lasgalen to get rid of this beast! It's bothering all the patients, it's interrupting my work, it's emptying our kitchen, it …" Ioreth paused because Aragorn wasn't even standing next to her anymore but had reached the room at the end of the hall. "Everyone here is testing my nerves!"

"The natural enmity between Fain and Conuiril is testing mine, I'm afraid," Aragorn answered apologizing. "She's better off here than in the Citadel where she's being chased by a dog all day. You'll be fine, I'm sure. Forgive me."
Glorfindel's irritated expression quickly had him turn to his noble visitor again. "Give me a few minutes alone with him before you go in there. Losing his combat abilities has been a very hard hit. After the mourning ceremony for the fallen elves of Cair Andros, I had hoped for him to be better. Actually, he wanted to go back to the others. But once it became clearer and clearer that his physical condition won't improve anymore, his soul has started to crumble as well. By now, he stopped talking to everyone. I can't tell how he will react to you."

Glorfindel pushed Aragorn's hand away when he tried to grab the door handle. "This is my job. All your life, you have kept our secret, Estel. That was already a bigger service you did my son and me than I would ever have asked of you. Expect us for dinner. There is much to do."

Aragorn kept his doubts to himself that a patient who had been stubbornly refusing to even leave his bed for days, could be convinced to have dinner with the King. Especially since there was a big distance existing, ever since their first meeting, between him and the person trying to make him see reason. When Glorfindel had been training his son back then without telling anyone that they were being related, there had been hardly any time for father and son to build a relationship.

Aragorn had only tried to spare his old friend some harsh disappointment but given that lately, apparently, no one wanted to listen to him anyway, he took his leave with a short shrug.

Having a life span of several Ages behind you, and if you'd seen countless places of healing – and had been treated in one or two yourself –, you usually didn't flinch from a room regularly filled with death and despair by nature. At least not if it was not your own flesh and blood you had to find there.
Thondrar seemed to be asleep and wasn't waking up when Glorfindel quietly closed the door either which didn't exactly surprise him, given the lack of fresh air in the room. His surprise was even smaller when he pulled the heavy curtains open and opened the window, when he could finally lay eyes on his son again after a few long months. The sight had him collapse on the edge of the bed like the lash of a whip.

Injuries that should long have been fully healed looked infected new. There was little left of a once muscular shape; staying on your back for weeks did that to you. The golden glow of Thondrar's hair that only the sun- or the moonlight could reveal – probably the only reason for only a few elves asking unpleasant questions in the course of the centuries – had turned to dull, matted strands. And his eyes were being closed. Elves didn't sleep with their eyes closed unless they did no longer want to see the world around them.

Preceded only by a short pause, Glorfindel rested his hand on Thondrar's forehead, remembering that such gestures didn't exactly come natural to the two of them. That was a gap between them he'd never been able to bridge. "Am I too late?"

"It's never too late to go home, ada." Surprisingly clear eyes met his. Sleep had been a treacherous deception. "I have waited for you."

"Then all the anger between us back then has not been for nothing." Relief lit Glorfindel's face when Thondrar put his healthy arm around him in an embrace that they had never shared in such a way before.

"It should never have existed in the first place. I know now why you left us alone back then." It was as if someone had replaced Glorfindel's son with a stranger who even accepted his help with sitting up and remained in his embrace, discreetly staring at the covers so that he could pretend he didn't see the so-called living legend of Middle-earth shedding tears at this revelation that Glorfindel had not dared to hope for anymore.
"This world just doesn't make it possible to successfully fight for your cause for long. Us elves, we don't belong here, I know that now. You just didn't want nana and me to be in danger. When danger found us then anyway, it was me who failed to protect nana. And my foolish behavior, my attempt of doing the same all over again, has now been punished. The Valar did not allow me to visit the Halls, so I seek the freedom in the west by your side and leave behind the pieces of a much too ambitious dream."

Glorfindel got up so abruptly that Thondrar fell back down, falling on his right arm that was surely still hurting, suppressing a moan that Glorfindel did hardly even notice. The coldness that he had already been forced to face his son with when they had first met in Imladris, for both their protection, had taken hold of him, making what had happened a second earlier forgotten. "What makes you think that I will take you away from your job in Ithilien?"

It took Thondrar some effort to straighten up again. "What am I supposed to do here now? I failed you, in every way a soldier can fail his trainer and a son can fail his father. What the gossiping folk will now see by your side is a wayward bastard that you'll be able to stand by even less than before."

"How little do you know me?" Glorfindel braced himself heavily on the plain wooden bed frame, the illusion gone that it might not be as bad as it had looked at first sight.
"Ever since you left Imladris to serve the last elves of Middle-earth there is no one that the word of the connection between your mother and me has not reached. I do not allow the memory of her to fade any longer, or the one of you. My love for your mother and my faith in the elves of Middle-earth are combined in you. With this pride, I will leave this world at the latest when my Lord does. You however are still needed here, now more than ever that this land is threatened by war once more. As long as you are, I do not expect to see you in the harbor of Aman."

"Taking the easy way out once more, I see." Thondrar got to his feet, approaching him demonstratively, dragging his right leg.
"So you leave it to me to clean up the rest of the war? In your condescension and arrogance, do you even see me?" He tore the fabric of his tunic off his right arm with a movement unexpectedly strong, revealing deformations and scars, with a satisfied nod when Glorfindel had to look away. "I was not allowed to rest or given a renewed body to return to this world as a great hero. The Valar were obviously not ready to let history repeat itself. In the Gardens of Lórien in Aman, there's at least healing waiting for me eventually, if I'm lucky. In any case, I'm better off there than dealing with people's pity here day by day, by the side of a leader who has no more use for me and whose endeavors I can no longer fully support anyway."

"I do not see a problem. There is obviously nothing wrong with your left arm." Glorfindel gave Thondrar a few seconds to remember that there had never been a more difficult lesson for him than defeating himself and that Glorfindel didn't give in on principle before he managed it.
"If I did not trust you, I would not have let you go to North Ithilien," he continued, gentler but still without compromise. "I have not been fighting for your broken soul for centuries just to lose it to a warg now. I am not leaving here before I know that you will not run from your responsibilities."

"You never wanted me to become as fanatic as you are. Why now?" With the anger, the energy that it had granted Thondrar left him. He fell back onto the bed, staring down at his paralyzed arm braced uselessly against his thighs.

"While I am often unable to see things that sport no beauty, you tend only to hear what you want to hear, ion. I only asked you to build your own legend instead of trying to duplicate mine. You can still do that. People like us are born to either die here or to go to the Undying Lands voluntarily with the knowledge that we have done our duty. This is never easy; that's not a lecture I first had to give you back then."
Glorfindel bent down to his bags and unwrapped the biggest piece of luggage from its cloth, but he was still hesitating. Erestor aside, his son was the only person that made it so hard for him to predict if his words would fail to work or not.
"You are a warrior, a son of Gondolin, of the House of the Golden Flower, just like me. So tell me …" With a yank, he raised the shield he had forged in Imladris, with the rayed sun of his home on it. He held it out to Thondrar in such a way so that his son would be able to see the supportive handles on the inside and the chest strap made of strong leather. "Will you let me teach you one last time?"

That night, Arwen saw Aragorn being a different person. Although her fear was big that this slight smile on his lips and the mirth in his eyes would soon be gone again: For the moment, she was enjoying it and making the best of every second in his chambers before the soldiers reported that her betrothed's guest had arrived.
Her eyes lingered for a moment too long on Glorfindel's regal appearance in a white robe. In combination with his pale skin, it was a symbolism only broken by the color of his slightly wavy hair that he was wearing down tonight, a narrow circlet, and a belt of the same color.

"Milady … Estel." While the clothes had changed, the impatience remained. Glorfindel waited only until the soldiers had left before turning to Aragorn with the same restlessness he had been radiating ever since his arrival. "I did not mean to come alone but Thondrar needs more rest. We will leave Minas Tirith at dawn. Before we do though, I need information or my quest is doomed to fail. Where is Erestor? In meetings like this, I appreciate his sharp mind."

"So do I. Which is why Lord Elrond had originally sent him to Minas Tirith," Aragorn answered after the first moment of surprise – with a bad conscience that Arwen was sharing. This one very important message didn't seem to have arrived then, which did, of course, sometimes happen to deliveries like this. They should have made sure instead of being dead quiet about the matter.
"Unfortunately, recent events have not even left a stable character like the one of Imladris' chief advisor uninfluenced. A few months ago, he started to look for enemies of my realm who are on the run, without both my knowledge and approval. He seems to want to find out more about them on his own. That's what I wrote in a letter to ada. I regret to say, that pigeon seems to have perished. Please forgive me. I know, you two are being close. I'll send a messenger first thing in the morning."

Disconcerted, Glorfindel dropped onto his chair. For a moment, Arwen thought to see deeper pain than just a little worry about a good friend and part-time lover in his timeless features. She wondered instinctively if there was maybe more between the two of them after all than this purely physical kind of relationship that was so unusual for elves anyway.
"Lord Elrond's librarian is hunting trained assassins? I am gone from the front for a year, and suddenly everyone gets delusional. If my time allows it, I will look for him. Erestor usually knows what he is doing but there were many things that have thrown him off balance in the last few centuries. And I had too few chances to support him. There'll be even fewer of them now. After what happened in North Ithilien, the elven realms are in uproar, Estel. Everyone understands your decision, but the Prince of Eryn Lasgalen can't be blamed for what his father has failed to teach him for millennia."

"But he also blocks every attempt to show him." Sighing deeply, Aragorn took a seat as well.
"I didn't want to throw him out, but there's no getting through to him. As a King, I can't accept his behavior. Even Legolas' wife manages to differ between friendship and politics. It's only him who can’t see that he's destroying everything. The King of Eryn Lasgalen didn't just fail to teach Legolas diplomacy, he also passed on his stubbornness to him. Maybe he'll listen to someone who has no horse in this race."

"I will do what I can." With that very serious promise, the subject was being closed for Glorfindel for now, and he started to indulge in food, drinks, and a few sweeping songs afterward.

It was an evening more relaxing than any that Arwen and Aragorn had had in a long time. It strengthened their hope that things might now turn for the better.

Aragorn had expected to be the only one witnessing Glorfindel's departure. But when he came to the stables where Asfaloth was already waiting a few hours later, Tarisilya was standing next to the stallion who was always so energetic and was talking to his rider quietly. Though Aragorn was discreet enough to keep his distance, the wind carried her words back to him and dampened the joy from last evening considerably.

"I can't go to him. He doesn't want to see me right now. I've waited too long before telling him what has made the middle of this millennium in Imladris so hard for me." Tarisilya's hand was resting on something sitting on her shoulder that due to the bad lighting, Aragorn recognized as her cat only belatedly.

Glorfindel took the crestfallen she-elf by her shoulder, more gentle than Aragorn had seen him treat most people before. "There is too much burdening his mind to handle this. He will come back to you, do not worry. A bond of love between elves is untouchable. As for Erestor: I can only give you the same advice as back then. For a while, he loved you; that was not his fault. He and I are among the few elves who are capable of loving more than one person as their partner. That is not always a blessing."

"I know. I will remember." Tarisilya fondled Asfaloth's nose once more, then she stepped back so that Glorfindel could get up on his horse. "Thank you for taking on this."

"It's not all of us who just drop everything here on Middle-earth, child of the moon."
Glorfindel said goodbye to Aragorn far quicker, only waiting for Thondrar to join him, who was being surprisingly safe in the saddle for his lousy condition. It wasn't too long before the two elves that the hopes of Middle-earth were now resting on, had vanished into the night.

"If they fail, I don't know what to do." It was only now that Tarisilya turned to Aragorn. "Can't you try inviting Legolas for a meeting?"

"He doesn't want to listen to me either. He'd probably not even let my messenger approach him." He shook his head tiredly. "No matter how much I'm yearning for peace, I will not waste my energy on things that are useless from the start."

"I know. I don't want to push you. It's just … I need him. I don't know for how much longer I can do without him." Tarisilya led the way to the Citadel, with her arms tightly wrapped around her body.

"Which is exactly why I appreciate it so much that you're staying here to signal the people that not everything is lost. No one asked you to, and you still carry that burden voluntarily. I can never repay you for this, Ilya." Aragorn came to walk beside her and unfastened his cloak, putting it around her shoulders to protect her from the wind.

"Unfortunately, the situation is even more complicated than you know." Fingertips circling, Tarisilya fondled her cat's fur that had thickened thanks to a few weeks of good treatment and was shining brightly in the beginning morning light. Everything seemed to be easier for her than looking at Aragorn when she said her next words. "I'm pregnant again."

For a few seconds, Aragorn was too dumbfounded to speak. Then he briefly caressed Tarisilya's cheek. "While my heart rejoices, my mind is grieving since I cannot promise you that the argument between your husband and me will end soon. Every day that you'll be parted from him will hurt me, too. Regardless of how much your presence here is helping us, say the word and a group of guards will accompany you to Cair Andros immediately. This thing should already not have the power to separate friends. But it's even worse that you and especially your child are being pulled into this."

"Don't burden your mind with that on top of everything else. I'll be alright." She quickly stepped back. "There's always someone watching at this court. For now, I'll stay in the Houses of Healing. That's the place where you're most likely to get the impression that you can make any kind of difference."

"Don't worry about rumors. No one would get the idea of making up such a stupid story. And even if they did? If they would hear about that in North Ithilien, Legolas would at least have a real reason to hate me." Aragorn showed the hint of a bow before he went back to the King's House. In a situation like this, gossip at the court was really the last thing, he could worry about …

Thondrar and Glorfindel hadn't needed an exact description to find the place in the woods at Cair Andros where the cornerstones for a new settlement had been built in the last few months. That they were already being welcomed by fighting noise at the edge of said woods made it even easier. Glorfindel signaled his son to stay back for the moment and keep the horses quiet and approached the voices as silently as possible.

It was fortunately only a training duel but thanks to the dress that one of the opponents was wearing, that reassurance left them with a bitter aftertaste.

"Am I interrupting something?" Glorfindel couldn't watch Tauriel's rusty attempts of defense another second. He left the undergrowth, shaking his head, tempted to take the sword from the she-elf's hand.

Another healer who'd only just started to learn her art in detail anyway, now risking even the smallest chance that her abilities might improve with the help of magic one day. All that endangered by selfish ambitions about going back to battle, wonderful. As if it wasn't bad enough that Legolas' wife had still not realized what a gift her talent was.

"If you did, I'd already have sent you away ten minutes ago," Legolas answered dryly. "You should think about taking these bells off of Asfaloth's headcollar. Did you come as a delegation or a friend?"

"As a visitor." Glorfindel squeezed Tauriel's shoulder for a moment and showed the smallest hint of a bow towards Legolas, to honor a rank that the young Prince was definitely priding himself a little too much in right now.
"A visitor in a strange land indeed, forced to see you defying every tradition. Do you want to bring a healer elf to an open conflict? Could it be, your own people do not even know that? Is that why you are doing this outside your camp?"

"I have long been right in the middle of all this," Tauriel answered for Legolas.
"Don't worry about outdated tradition, Lord. None of us wants to go to battle. And if it can be avoided, I will definitely not kill anyone. I don't do that anymore. But we don't want to be helpless anymore either. In our settlement, we don't raise our swords against each other, that's why we meet out here. As long as we're not being provoked, there'll be no conflict. But I for my part will not wait and flinch if someone wants to hurt my child. Who will soon be waking up, by the way." She waved at Legolas and left, thrusting her sword into the scabbard on her belt.

Glorfindel's eyes got caught on the silver-white weapon and the holster, adorned richly with stylized images of mellyrn leaves. A cold realization hit him. "So Lórien decided to support your endeavor."

"Just like Imladris, I hope. Why else would you be here?" Legolas cleaned the dirt from training off his daggers without looking up, but he couldn't hide the expectant tension inside, at the prospect of finally getting a reaction to his letters from the other elven realms.

"To see you," was the answer that would hopefully sober him. "Imladris does not condone any decision that will lead it into a new war. Besides, I am sure that these swords have not been forged with Lady Galadriel's permission. Who do you think it is that you can put your hopes in, Your Highness? Your father? Did he answer your call?"

"My father." With a bitter laugh, Legolas started to look for wood fit for arrows in the immediate area. "My father always wanted me to take more responsibility and to stand up for what I believe. Now that I finally do, he's afraid of me. So are you here too to tell me what is right and what is wrong, Lord?"

"No."
Glorfindel gave a short whistle whereupon Thondrar joined them, just as shocked by what he'd just seen as Glorfindel. Glorfindel saw a similar expression on Legolas when he spotted his advisor in golden armor, shouldering a shield of the same color on his paralyzed arm and wearing a sword by his side that glistened, too, in the same glow of Gondolin that was only alive in the memory of few now. And sadly, far too much knowledge had gotten lost together with Glorfindel's old home, about what kind of mistakes an immortal had to avoid at any cost.
"My son and I came to make sure that you will know yourself when it comes to it."