They had wandered among the high barren rock for days, air thin and keening, pulling further at already tight nerves. Even the Hobbits wore serious faces, fatigue and prolonged strain dulling their eyes.
Legolas strode behind the rest, eyes scanning far-off open spaces and the closer more dangerous gullies alike. Danger, though, had seemed scarce as trees of late; the barren unalive scarps they trekked had to be appreciated for at least that. At least, but no more - Legolas found himself dwelling in a quiet swelling distress, and he longed for whispering blades of grass, for sheltering branches in which to renew his connections with Middle Earth.
Boromir, just ahead, shortened his stride to fall back until he was abreast of the Elf. They had found themselves both doing that in recent days; one or the other would glance about, come to an unspoken decision, adjust his gait. Then the two would walk as one for a time, silent. Now they walked such in lengthening shadows, neither moving ahead of or falling behind the other, neither casting his gaze toward his companion.
Night closed in, but it was not the deep velvet-and-silk of the primeval forest, life seeking itself in ever darker reaches, renewal through the deepest expectations of privacy. This night was of the barren hills, of the scarped lonely heights, and it ran thin, cold. This night was unalive like the ground over which it wheeled, and all that moved within it could feel their isolation.
And in such isolation the Fellowship halted, settled and began looking to fire-warmth, hot food and warm blankets to ward off chill. Legolas laid his pack down, scanned already familiar terrain in unconscious seeking. Life. A lone evergreen, spreading its limbs in welcome. An aspen, shaking itself in the tremulous wind. A field of grasses and wildflowers, reaching for a golden sun, shivering under a silver moon. Life.
But life was to be found not there, not there in the rocks, and even Sam's faithful efforts could only manage a poor fire. It was as though the very flames knew and shied away from their own power in deference to the barren scraped land. And so Legolas searched the night in vain, as he had searched in vain before. As he would search again, longing, until they nine passed from unalive into alive, from rock into dark earth. For this night, he would dwell alone under the cool watching stars, and ache within.
"Are you alright, friend?"
Legolas moved from his mental wanderings back to the aching present and glanced up at the one standing before him. He had heard Boromir approach but had remained kneeling by his things, cloistered within his longing. "I am fine, Boromir," he replied, then, trying to mean it.
The Man was perceptive, though, and merely grunted, sank to his haunches by the Elf. "I've noticed your reaction to our surroundings of late, Legolas."
"Aye. There is no use in denying it. I am sure Aragorn and Mithrandir have noticed as well." Legolas cast his gaze outward once more, sighed. "I miss the forest. I miss the trees, the birds, the grasses."
"Do you miss the Orcs?"
"Nay!"
"Are you sure?"
Legolas snorted softly and raised an eyebrow. "I am quite sure, Boromir. The Orcs are something I definitely do not miss. But thank you for asking."
"You're very welcome. Get some rest, Elf." And Boromir rose, moved away to his own place, settled among his own things.
His wanderings cut short, mind returned to its sharper focus in the camp, Legolas stretched out along his cloak. He looked once more to the stars, wondered briefly what else they might see and whether or not they might speak of it to a disconnected woodland soul. Sensing another's gaze resting on him, he turned his head to meet Boromir's eyes. The Man smiled, nodded; the Elf took that cue and laid down his head. This was the time for rest, not unanswerable questions.
**********
A tendril of light wove itself into ebony fabric, touching and then erasing the stars. It was joined soon by others, faint but determined, and they crept forth with a certainty possessed only by those for whom fate has already written the outcome. They were the heralds of Dawn, she trailing them in their slow flight, and in that moment, for that moment, they knew all.
He woke shivering, the cold not born of ice but of stone, caught like he in a barren place. The night had receded some, replaced by a hesitant clear lift of the sky. The sun would arrive soon, perhaps warm. The Fellowship would rise. But for the moment, for the hushed uneasy reverence of the moment there was only him....
Nay. Another was near. A presence not Orc, not Uruk-hai. Gimli was on watch, beyond sight, and another was near, getting nearer.
Legolas rose silently, his senses scraping awkward out over the land. They were forest-born, as he, and ! the lonely rock for them was anathema. But they lurched forth in seeking, and found that which they sought. Aye, an intruder approached the camp, cloaked itself in quiet, blended with the sub-harmonic thrum of the air, the low buzz of light. He could hear Gimli, out from the opposite side of the camp, pacing out a patient and thorough perimeter. But the Dwarf seemed oblivious to this new presence.
Retrieving his bow and quiver, Legolas moved. He slipped forth as a fleeting shadow among the rocks, ever mindful of position, distance. The other was close enough to feel as a new shiver along his skin, closer. He breathed slow and shallow, muscles tensing around rock faces, through paths perhaps carved by ancient water, and sighted his target.
That creature. The one that had possessed the Ring. Or, perhaps more appropriately, had been possessed by the Ring. Gollum. Hunched, twisted, hideous Gollum, creeping forth among stone.
He had probably been fol! lowing them for days, watching, waiting for his time. Had not been spied, nor heard, nor sensed by Men, Wizard, Dwarf, Hobbits.
Or Elf. Not by Elf, either. His presence contained within the strangeness of the land, he had slipped under Legolas' normally sharp perception. He had disguised himself as more stone, as more grit-heavy wind, as no trees or grass, and Legolas had sensed him not, had perceived, if anything, only a peripheral unease he had attributed solely to their environs. The unanswerable questions now had answers, all. Most.
The creature halted; sniffed at the air and cocked his bulbous head, and Legolas drew himself up silent as well. As he watched, Gollum turned and made back along his own trail, a shadowed taint of the gathering dawn. A single glance back, goblet-round eyes scanning the terrain, and he was but that receding half-seen half-imagined shadow that lingers after a nightmare. He was gone.
Legolas turned then, himself, back ! to the camp, prepared to simply move, slip back to his place, sit and experience what life the sun could bring forth with its rising. He would report of Gollum's presence to Aragorn and Gandalf, and they would henceforth take extra precaution against that determined Ring-obsessed being.
But he halted, there against his shielding rocky outcrop. Gollum had not the senses of an Elf, not the senses to detect an Elf, certainly. He was attracted by the Ring, gifted otherwise with adequate hearing, vision. He could, it was true, have sensed Legolas approaching. He could have - but it was not likely he had.
So what had halted him then? What, when he was so close to the Ring? Legolas hovered, his gaze locked on that strip of land over which Gollum had slunk in his retreat, that strip of land touched by evil's sad cast-off. Gollum had glanced over his shoulder once, as though reassuring himself of something; Legolas had assumed in that moment he was simply noting t! he presence of a watching Elf. What else could his intent have been? Unless to reinforce his memory of that terrain, absorb each stony detail for his later return....
Or to pass along those details to someone - something - else, that it might come instead.
Legolas felt himself rise, his legs straightening bold and forthright beneath him. Gimli neared; the Dwarf's steps sounded heavy in Elven ears, light by any other's standard, measured along the perimeter of their rock-bound camp. He came into Legolas' view, squat and present against light that now claimed morning as its domain; his sharp gaze met the Elf's, surprise registering briefly across his face.
And then before Dwarf could move, could voice his confusion, Legolas was darting away, down the trail left by the Ring's former possession, down to catch that creature lest it spread details of the Fellowship to any dark force, and bring that dark force unto them.
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They followed his track, laid down over another's like delicate snow dusted over thick frozen ground. The first track was just that - blatant, attempting stealth but failing. The second was a breath of light air, a breeze shivering in grass, and it was unmistakably Elf. Unmistakably Legolas. They traced it down a gradual rock-strewn lie, down once more from the high barren places.
When Middle Earth came finally to her silent decision, bottoming out into a flat sweep of tundra laced through with twisting streams and home only to scrubby low brush, the tracks faded. The Elf's grew first faint and confused, unsure of itself, then it slipped from existence, daring instinct or imagination to recreate it from a void. The other continued, accepting its solitude, for a time, but then it too flitted out, unravelled in curling strands of moss. That lichened expanse reclined then ! in its false brave purity, for it only spoke of being untouched, and hid the evidence that would prove it a liar. The Fellowship cared not of its delusions, split into groups that fanned out toward the distant encircling woods, at yet other hills, yet other stone-kept secrets.
Boromir trudged over unyielding mossy ground, eyes ever on the forest wherein he would search, and he marvelled in an idle corner of his mind at the Elf's sheer impetuous will. Gimli had recounted spying Legolas while out on watch, spying him standing motionless and seemingly pensive along a rock ledge. Dwarf and Elf had caught each other's gaze, each held it a heartbeat, and Legolas had bounded off like the hare before the lynx. No explanations, no reason clear. Only after Gimli had fetched the rest of them out there, after they had found the other skulking spoor, had it become clear that Legolas was not the hare in that flight, but the lynx himself.
No matter, though - chased or giving chase, he was not to have gone. He was not to have gone and left them trudging over hard ground, searching with such haste, fists beginning to ache with need for a clear fight, a clear enemy. Instincts surging, taking them along imagination's darkest paths. He was as yet out there, perhaps in the wood, perhaps in the hills once more. Perhaps he was even in the flat tree-less reach Boromir now traversed, concealed by stunted growth, his chase ended....
Nay - Boromir shook his head, shook the traitorous thought physically from his mind. There was no reason to think that Legolas had fallen, no reason to wonder if he still breathed, to ponder as a memory the fluid grace in his steps, the gentle light in his eyes. There was no reason as yet for anything beyond trudging determination, the hours of search-light ahead before dusk would make their task that much again more difficult than it already was.
Damn that Elf.
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The creature had gained a fair lead, had made some haste in his flight down from the rocks, and Legolas tracked him with growing urgency. Gollum's motives were not to be dismissed, not to be ignored as irrelevant, harmless. Gollum's motives were eternally dark, tinged with a darkness preternatural, an echo of the faithless Ring. Even cast out from its favour, even a sad rejected shell of what he might once have been, Gollum still courted and needed and hungered for the Ring. And he could thus be influenced, used by forces even darker than he.
The light had blossomed, unfurled as petals of the sun-swept rose, and was already planning a retreat when Legolas entered the forest, still tracking. He took but a moment, deep in one quiet corner of his soul, to acknowledge the trees and their earthy pull, the pull of family, of familial connection and root and substance. Aye, the trees were his kin, as much as other Elves could be his kin, and they welcomed him as a wandering brother come home.
He slowed then among the ancient monarchs and cast his senses as the fisherman casts his net, sweeping outward, seeking. Sharp scents of pine, fir, and spruce mingled with softer aspen, elm, birch. Ivy, its aroma an uncompromising hunter-green, sailed through the slight spice of moss, the cool tingle of grass. Birdsong, lilting swallow and sparrow, the guttural voice of crow, stood out against sibilant breezes and distant tinkling water and the near soundless resonant hum of light itself, spreading itself thin and dying away. And sights. Jade, emerald, forest greens dipping down to black. Cerulean sky, darker indigo rising. Platinum cloud, shadowed into slate, iron, charcoal. And against such palette, the dark flitting of common swift and the first ponderous wingbeats of owl. Legolas fanned his senses over it all, through and about it, sifting it as rare gold dust from ordinary rock, and waited for that sign of the one he pursued.
Aye...ahead. Gollum was ahead, and was still for the moment. Had he gone to ground? To a tree? Legolas moved, circumspect. He listened and breathed of the creature's scent, his own approach silent.
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He moved with trained speed over uneven terrain, moved deeper into the forest. His eyes scanned and processed and discarded as irrelevant his surroundings; his legs carried him surely forward. Nay, his senses were not those of an Elf, but they were good senses - sharp senses - nonetheless, and he trusted the veracity of them.
There had been a track. Faint. Almost too faint, sliding from the visible world, whispering falsehoods. ~I am illusion~ it had said. ~I am your imagination at work.~ But it had not been either of those things, and as he had followed it through the trees, he had known he was drawing close. It was not the trail of an Elf, and for that he was not surprised. But it was the trail, surely, that the damned Elf followed, so in tracing its path, he traced also the path of that Elf.
Boromir sighed, one harmless acknowledgement of fatigue and stress, as he scaled a rocky lie where the spoor temporarily dropped off. It regained itself at the other side, as he had expected it would, and continued on its way. Nay, his senses were not those of an Elf, but the Man of Gondor was an experienced tracker, and he was certain he now approached the end of his search. It mattered not, for he would simply continue, simply without hesitation continue, until he had Legolas in his keep once more. Restless at the slow and careful pace his body was forced to maintain, his mind flitted ahead to that moment when he would recover their wayward fellow, their archer, their impetuous sentry. That moment approached, grew nigh, and Boromir found himself increasingly preoccupied with it, with its substance and its tone, with its words and deeds. Legolas had not defied a direct order, to be fair. Yet he had broken faith with them all, once again, running forth as a youngling runs thoughtless and whim-driven.
Nay - Legolas was no child. His years put Boromir's to shame, and Aragorn's as well. Yet he possessed and was possessed by a lingering youth, remaining in that youth while all around him aged. He floated about Middle Earth, sailed over it in often reckless disregard for his own safety. He allowed the vagaries of mood to choose his paths for him, and those paths could be dangerous. Could be deadly.
Boromir shook his head. The Elf was at once so earthly, so firm and grounded, and so ethereal, a flash among dark trees. It did not matter why he had gone, what he chased even as he himself was pursued by his fellow. It did not matter, for he had acted in foolish haste, at the mercy of yet another impetuous urge.
Something would need to be done about that.
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The body was grey and withered, like a sack half empty. The skin - hairless, desiccated - lost itself in creases, stretched taut and dull again, with each move. Atop a scrawny neck was placed a head too bulbous for the rest. The eyes in that head were pale, grotesque.
That creature, all this and a further darkness of intent, had indeed gone to ground: beside a vertical rock face it had made for itself a poor nest of dry leaves, and lay now snug up against the stone. It was awake, but seeking rest.
Legolas edged closer in the concealing night. Gollum could not hear him, but he moved with great care and knew despite this that he was not assured success. The small, wiry being was agile, fast. It - he - would flee with a speed belying such an outwardly low frame. Even an Elf would have work to do catching that one. And Legolas knew that its - his - capture was necessary. Gollum had to be contained, questioned as to his purposes.
The creature stiffened, lifted his head. Those enormous eyes scanned their surroundings; the blunt nose sniffed audibly. Legolas had heard it too - the faint snap of a twig. A solitary foreign sound among all the other sounds of the night, it echoed through a forest now alert, now paused in its flow to listen. The quiet night raising its head, sniffing audibly. The quiet night beasts, pausing. Somewhere the great cat waited sleek and motionless, jade eyes unblinking and one massive padded paw frozen mid-step. Somewhere the wolf sat still and wary, eyeing its goddess moon but calling to her not. Somewhere the owl was a spectral shape gliding through the trees, veering cautiously away. And all about were the trees, towering. All paused; all halted to listen. And Legolas recognized not the single sharp crack of a dry twig, not the quieter rustle of movement he could hear behind it, but the subtle approaching scent of Man.
Of one Man in particular.
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Boromir could feel the presence of his quarry, near and growing nearer with his every step, and he moved with a stealth trained into him. The land pitched itself upward; he could see nothing over the rise ahead. But he continued, circumspect, drawing his sword. Legolas was sure to be there, but what might be there with him? There was no way to be certain that the Elf even stood now, and Boromir swallowed a vague sorrow. He and Legolas had begun on such bad terms, such hostile terms. Such distance and ill-will, from their first meeting at Elrond's council - Legolas leaping indignant to his feet to defend Aragorn's honour....
Oh, that Elf. Leaping, eternally. Defender of honour, of companions. He was reckless with his life, and all who knew him knew that much. He risked himself for he thought that the only way to be useful, as though he were nothing beyond the sheer peril into which he could dive. How many sleepless nights had Aragorn spent, worrying? How many such nights for Gandalf? None for Boromir, though. No sleep lost to the Man of Gondor, the strong stoic warrior. No sleep had he lost over one reckless leaping Elf.
Until now. Until, truth be told, that night when he had caught Legolas slinking from the camp, off on yet another fool's errand.
Another foolish risk to prove how much he cared for the Fellowship, as if that needed proving over and over again. That singularly surreal night when Gandalf had bade Legolas choose who would punish him for his transgression, and Legolas and chosen Boromir himself.
He still wondered at that. They had shared nothing, really. Nothing beyond initial hostility, a mutual resentment which they had both fought, for the sake of this Quest, to set aside. A mutual resentment which had, along their journey, faded as a Winter snow melts upon Spring's arrival - they had each been given opportunity to observe the other in battle, in the worst of adversity. And they had each grown to respect the other, if only from a cool distance. But that night had come, dark and deep, and with it wholly unexpected events. Legolas had proven himself once again a reckless risk-seeker and had been caught (thank the gods, thank the gods) before anything could befall him. He had been judged, deemed guilty. Sentenced.
But to choose Boromir as the instrument of that sentence? To choose the one among them who he least knew, next to, perhaps, the Dwarf? That had been a puzzle, enigmatic and frustrating as Legolas himself. A strange surprising package of golden hair and gentle thoughts and grace beyond anything a Man could display. Perhaps he had chosen Boromir for just those reasons - their lack of connection, their lack of...anything.
Ironic. In doing so, he had sparked that very connection into existence.
Ahead of him, the brush parted, quietly, snapping Boromir's focus back to the present. The brush parted, and Legolas stood before him.
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"Legolas -" Boromir bit down his next words as the Elf strode to him, gesturing urgently for silence. "What is about?" he whispered.
"Gollum has followed us for many days now, and I have trailed him here. He lies just through that scrub." Legolas' answering whisper was more movement of lips than actual utterance, and Boromir had to lean forward to hear. Gollum had tracked them for days' time? Without their noticing?
Boromir moved past the Elf, his eyes and his attention focussed now on that brush. "Show me," he whispered, creeping forward, and felt the Elf fall into step just behind. They moved together thus, flustering outstretched tree limbs and hanging ivies and low green ferns as much as light herself might, and no more. They were careful shadows, slipping forth to view their quarry.
Gollum had decided there was nothing. He had listened, cocking his round head, peering into the forest's depths, for a recurrence of that fleeting wisp of sound which had first alerted him; the sound did not recur. So he lay back, bone-and-skin limbs a poor comfort about him, head resting on leaves that crackled and complained beneath him. Their whispers were mindless, though - not intent and knowing like those of his preciousss. They posed him no threat.
What changed, shifting along the sightless fibres of the air, propagating as the very first unseen shudder, straining outward in search of infinity, ultimate unity. The One. What changed, easing and racing forth, sighing in the wind's breath. What changed.
Gollum did not know what changed. Yet something - everything - did. His world was no longer safe and belonging to him alone. He had been...found.
Boromir had motioned to Legolas, and the Elf had reluctantly swung about to approach from one side. They maintained eye contact through the brush, speaking the silent language of trackers, of those practiced in the arts of the hunt. They slipped toward Gollum from two sides, reading in his slumped posture and shuttered eyes a reassuring peace. He had neither heard nor seen them.
Then he had, and his gangling limbs responded with startling speed, his eyes widening. He sniffed audibly, swung to inhale from another direction, seeking. He waited no longer, darting squirrel-swift along the rock wall, scuttling over a boulder and out of their sight even as Man and Elf charged into the clearing.
"Damn!" Boromir sheathed his sword and ran to stare out along Gollum's last observed path. "How did it sense us?"
Legolas was at his side, scowling. "I do not know. He possesses no great acumen. But now that he knows we are after him, he will move with not only haste but great care. We might follow for weeks without success." He sighed and unnotched the arrow he had readied.
"Well, Legolas?" Boromir asked, raising an eyebrow. "Do we invest weeks in the pursuit?" His eyes held still the last point of earth on which he had seen that creature.
"You say this as if we have a choice, Boromir."
"Do we not?"
"Nay!" Legolas snorted. "We must rejoin the others!"
"Ah ha."
"What do mean by `ah ha'?"
Turning slightly, Boromir fixed his companion with a measuring stare. "I mean that you seem rather willing to decide when and for how long you worry the Fellowship, yet behave as though you've no say whatsoever in the doing of it."
"Excuse me?"
"You heard me, friend." Boromir let his gaze wander back out, out to where their pursuer - their prey - had disappeared. It moved quickly, that creature. Like a roach startled by the light. "And I am your friend, Elf," he continued. "I am indeed, or I would not have come looking for you with such fear in my heart."
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Legolas paced off a few steps, studying the hard uneven ground, its stubborn refusal to flatten out. It would not submit, rose up in defiant hillocks, dipped just as quickly in hopes of catching some careless traveller unawares. It was stone-hard, tough so that only the toughest of grasses could take root, littered through with rocks and dense clumps of infertile clay. It might have been thus ugly and mean to the eye, but Legolas could only regard it with a sort of primal admiration, see it take the wind and the driving rain and the worst of a glaring sun, and hold its life close, and endure.
He had to admire such drive, for resenting it was useless - the ground cared neither way and would continue as it had. Was that not a description Aragorn and Gandalf had used more than once in discussing him? Was there such great harm in being determined and liable to endure? Where was the harm in that?
Yet he felt shame, felt bowed under the weight of it, and had walked in the silence of it as the sun had set and night had taken the land. They were in the open again, far from the woods, far from rich dark soil and thick brush and trees. The tundra swept around them, lonely and cold.
Boromir had halted their return journey with the rising disk of moon; he had found for them an area of some weak shelter, along the curving hiss of a crumbling rock wall. Out in that vast sweep of land it rose, surely built by ancient hands. Gazing upon it, Legolas could imagine a body as sinewy and tough as the grass, as stubborn as the ground, bent to the building of that wall. He could imagine it new, aging under rain and wind and sun, decaying yet remaining, a monument to determination. It was humble, that wall, but possessing a stubbornness that might have been pride. Shame rose in him once more, so he studied the ground and the distant flank of hills and the steel-and-onyx sky. His gaze darted, sparrow- like, from one perch to another, but never alit on the one who stood near and watched him unerringly. Boromir had no trouble meeting a friend's eye.
"You were afraid," he said finally, and it was no question. It required no answer. So he concentrated roiling thoughts and idle musings alike on that which was as rebellious as he. For its part, the ground clumped doggedly into more clay and did not care that he looked.
He would not - could not - raise his eyes, and yet another already answered question rose in him. "You intend to punish me," he said softly, speaking to the stubborn ground.
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Boromir held Legolas in his steady gaze. He saw the Elf's regal head hang lower, weighted by that which none could see but those willing and able to read the lines of a soul. And Boromir, strange as he still found it at times, was becoming slowly adept at reading one Elven soul. One soul that he had approached with caution and wary defense. One soul that had seemed too grass-green, too filled with forest air, too flowing with river-water to ever allow him passage into its realms. One soul that had existed, for him, behind walls of mystery and ignorance, until in one short endless night it had literally unfolded before him, secrets spilling forth. And he had, in the strangeness of the new, aligned himself with that soul, learning to speak in its tongues, learning to breathe as it breathed, to echo the deepest of its thoughts. Nay - he was not of an Elf's soul himself, but of a Man's. But he was learning. So he looked upon his subdued now-friend and felt a burning behind his own eyes, and raged at the mere existence of any burden that could dim such brightness. He sighed. The consequences were necessary for Legolas to learn a shade of caution, and to rid him of the guilt.
"I do intend to punish you," he confirmed. "I do not wish to, but I feel that I must."
"You will deliver it now, or once we are back with the others?"
"Now." Glancing skyward, Boromir sighed again and unshouldered his pack. "We will be seeking our rest here that we may be off with first light. So there is no reason to delay this." He turned to the crumbling rise of wall and wondered vaguely about its builder. It stretched humble and serpentine, standing against the weather as wilful as any proud Elf, and it intrigued him, perhaps for its very mix of valour and collapse, of strength and humility, of endurance and a seemingly bitter resignation to defeat. But he needed not its history, nor its future, to use it as he would. Perhaps its stubborn wreckage might aid in the lessons he needed to teach, and he paused to trail his fingertips lightly along its spine before turning and seating himself. His gaze fell on Legolas once more.
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His throat tightened. This was a moment he remembered most clearly - a moment of seeming suspension, as though he perched on the cliff edge, the air beneath cold and beckoning. And the merest hint of solid ground under his feet was itself leaving, crumbling away. He could not wait long - flee or fall. Defy or surrender. One path would lead him into an eternity of solitude, the eternal absence of warm voices and stories about the night's fire, of deep eyes in which to seek and find love. One would lead him into an eternity of pain, an endless wrenching abyss of tears and recrimination. But that ordeal would then transform itself into gentle touches and kisses and warm arms to fall asleep in. It would ultimately lead him back to those he loved, those who owned his heart.
The course of action, the swift decision to move, had seemed so. . .sane. So practical, and indeed even noble, at the time of its doing. He had thought of his fellows, they to whom he had pledged eternal allegiance and effort and struggle and even the bounds of his immortal life. He had thought of the dangers already moving to defeat them, the staggering evil against which a Wizard, two Men, a Dwarf, four Hobbits. . .and one woodland Elf would have to fight. And that creature Gollum - that pathetic cast-off - would have thrown more fuel on the fires of darkness, all in futile attempt to regain his precious Ring.
So he had caught Gimli's startled gaze, there on the high wind- seared rock. He had pivoted toward his prey - toward the low sweeping realms they had left. He had whirled and plunged forth, and the others would have had naught to say of it, for he was long gone. . . .
Aye. Boromir's point exactly. He had gone in defiance of anything - of everything - they would have said. He had known they would forbid it, and he had gone. About him the air itself seemed to accuse; under him the cliff edge protested his weight, collapsing slowly away.
He fell. He leaped. Moving to Boromir's right side, he stood and stared at the stubborn ground, waiting.
"You will lower your leggings, friend," Boromir instructed gently.
Legolas fought to control the trembling of his hands, the sudden ineptness of his fingers, but they betrayed him. He looked briefly to Boromir, who merely nodded encouragement and waited, a pillar of patience. Drawing a deep rough breath, he bit down on his lip and stilled his shudders long enough to comply. Then in one efficiency of motion - granting himself no time to think of what would come - he was draped over Boromir's muscular thighs. The cliff edge was gone; nothing solid existed for him but for that which the Man gave.
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He eyed the hands, fingers suddenly awkward and fumbling; he noted the rapid shallow breaths and the lower lip snared cruelly between even white teeth. He caught the faint diffusion of colour across fair cheekbones and brow, the hint of dew in wide soft eyes. His own heart lurched and fluttered so that he was relieved when Legolas had managed to bare himself and assume position. A moment more, perhaps, of that wait, and he would have sprung from the ledge to still those hands, to rock that slender form until the shudders ceased, to rain chaste kisses on the cheekbones and the brow. To wipe the coming tears away and murmur words soothing enough to keep future tears at bay. . .forever. A moment more and he might have forgotten a young sparkle of life in potentially grave peril; he might have lost all memory of the worry and the fear and the near staggering sense of grief that had risen to claim them all when the young one had gone. A moment more and he surely would have failed Legolas.
He could not fail Legolas.
The deep steadying breath he drew was as silent and smooth as he could make it, that he not transmit his own fatigue and crumbling stoicism to the Elf. Legolas would need his strength and resolve now, not the sorrow that plagued him. Legolas had enough of his own sorrow to bear; he had no need of another's. Boromir gave in to one final gentling urge, reached down and ran his fingers through flaxen hair, just once. He placed his hand, steady, in the small of Legolas' back. "Do you understand why you are being punished, young friend?" he asked.
Legolas' voice was quiet, but steady. "For running after Gollum in defiance of what I knew everyone would say. For embarking on a potentially hazardous journey alone, without the strength of my companions. For worrying you all."
Boromir nodded. Good. "That is right." He applied gentle pressure with his left hand, more a signal that he was about to begin than a serious attempt to still the Elf. Had Legolas chosen to fight, one Man would not have had much chance of subduing him. His right hand he raised high, and he breathed a silent prayer for strength as he brought it down.
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The first crack of Boromir's palm against his bottom reached his ears a blessed instant before the pain registered, granting Legolas just enough time to suck in a breath and set his jaw. When the burning sting made itself known, he managed to stay silent, and then the hand was gone and he forced himself to release the breath and draw another. He closed his eyes when the second slap landed, but he was silent still. Such struggle already, and it was only the beginning.
Boromir was of great strength - his hand rose and fell then with dismaying regularity. Each slap was as heavy as the first, and as time stretched out Legolas found himself ever less able to focus on remaining still and quiet. He began to whimper, a soft keening exhalation, with each blow. He squirmed and flinched, squeezing his eyes shut but feeling tears leak from them. He gritted his teeth against rising cries, balled his hands into useless fists.
Then it was as though a door flung itself open within, and all of him spilled forth. That initial sting had spread, deepened, become a keenly burning agony, and Legolas could hold to his strength no longer. He sobbed hoarsely, desperately. Air was scarce in his lungs; his muscles had been held rigid long enough to exhaust them, yet he felt only the infinite reaches of pain contained in Boromir's hand. The world had contracted to a single point of fire, and it threatened to consume him.
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His first slap had left behind a shocking pink mark, and Boromir had for an instant rebelled against the idea of causing more damage to Legolas' fair skin. That glare of colour had twisted guilt and remorse into him even as his sense of duty had reasserted itself. He was hurting such a dear soul, such a beautiful noble soul, and that had to be a grievous crime.
But he had not faltered, incredibly, and the second slap had been as firm and seemingly doubtless as the first. The third followed it, spreading and intensifying the colour. Then the fourth, and the fifth, and each one after. He felt Legolas flinch and shudder with each, displaying a mere hint of the power contained - restrained - in that Elven frame. He heard the sharp meetings of palm and backside, and saw how the colour blossomed, an unfurling ever deepening red. The colour of pale winter roses in Elrond's garden, that Lord of Imladris speaking of the perils they would face and their need to rely on each other. The colour of a sunset over Lothlorien, the sun sinking weary after her battle for the day. The colour nearly of blood itself, deep red blood that an Elf might spill if he were to wander alone into danger and fall to Orcs or Uruk-hai, or to the pounding relentless Nazgul.
It was enough. He stopped the punishment and felt as much gratitude as if he had been receiving it himself. Over his lap Legolas cried raggedly, shaking, and Boromir heard his own voice flow forth, unbidden, in soft nonsense. " `tis alright now, young one," he breathed. "Hush now. . .just try to breathe." He set those words as a mantra, repeated them over, over, over. His fingers ran softly through a fall of silken hair, rubbed gentle patterns on Legolas' neck and back, and gradually he noted calm begin to take hold. Exhaustion, most likely - but it mattered not. He raised the Elf's leggings with all possible care, wincing himself as that action brought a fresh wave of tears from his friend. And then, slowly, murmuring reassurance, he gathered Legolas up into his arms, held him close.
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It was finished, yet Legolas did not realize right away, so all- consuming had been the pain. But into his ears gradually moved a new sound, soft and beckoning. Boromir's voice was full, sonorous, infused with the strength of the Man. It was steady as nothing else, steady against the shifting tides of an Elf's panic, and Legolas found himself clinging to it. He listened, wanting it never to stop.
When his leggings were raised, he could not help crying out at the renewed surge of pain, and the voice hurried to reassure him. The hands moved to lift him, he a limp unresisting bundle. He found himself held to a solid chest, his face buried against warm skin. A kiss brushed his cheek, then another. The words being spoken were soft as dandelion feathers, and he lay within the utter security of strong arms. Boromir's hair was a veil over him, and in the warm darkness it bestowed he knew the primitive reassurance of another heartbeat, deep and steady in his ears.
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Legolas was soft and pliable and warm. He was a relaxing bundle, moving from raw grief and pain into the twilight reaches of impending sleep. He shifted in Boromir's embrace, nestling like an infant seeking its mother's milk, and the Warrior of Gondor could not have melted more surely than had he his own young safe and drowsy in his arms.
They should have both sought rest. Aye, absolutely, so that dawn would see them ready to go forth and locate the rest of the scattered Fellowship. But as Legolas drifted more securely into reverie, Boromir found himself ever more certainly awake. It was the strangest sensation, that. Holding a sleeping Elf, lavender and sage and starlight bound into one delicate package. The strength to slay a horde of Orcs, the vulnerability to wrap himself in another and sleep. Boromir felt infused with wakefulness, held at a sort of high alert. Legolas lay in exhausted slumber, utterly helpless; he would watch over him.
And so the Man sat straight-backed on the winding rock ruins, the Elf curled up against him, as a cool disk moon sailed from one horizon to the other. They would return to their Fellowship with morning's light; they would resume the perils of the Quest. For the starlit night, they would remain simple and honest against each other, and let the ties grow.
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The End