'I cannot say yet,' Aragorn answered. 'As for the king, he will go to the muster that he commanded at Edoras, four nights from now. And there, I think, he will hear tidings of war, and the Riders of Rohan will go down to Minas Tirith. But for myself, and any that will go with me...'

'I for one!' cried Legolas. 'And Gimli with him!' said the Dwarf.

- The Return of the King, The Passing of the Grey Company

So, this second installment was inspired by this excerpt from ROTK. I was struck, reading it, by the utter trust that Legolas and Gimli display towards Aragorn: they haven't even heard where he's going, but they promise to follow him wherever his path may lead. And it is not a promise of individuals, but a promise given in friendship, for fellowship, 'And Gimli with him' thus binding Elf and Dwarf together in their loyalty to the Man who will be King.

And later, when they do know where he is to go:

'If you would understand them better, then I bid you come with me,' said Aragorn, 'for that way I now shall take. But I do not go gladly; only need drives me. Therefore, only of your free will would I have you come, for you will find both toil and great fear, and maybe worse.'

'I will go with you even on the Paths of the Dead, and to whatever end they may lead,' said Gimli.

'I also will come,' said Legolas, 'for I do not fear the Dead.'

Gimli, son of Glóin, shifted his feet, settling deeper into the guard's stance he had assumed at the edge of the wavering circle of light. The flames teased at the night, flickering in the dark, yet failing utterly to pierce the shadow that surrounded them. The shadow that breathed, but did not live. That stilled, but did not rest. That could kill, but could not be killed, for it was long dead.

In all honesty, he most likely did not need to stand guard this night, for no one living would dare to approach their camp with the thronging dead gathered about it. Under any other circumstances in which he found himself surrounded by the shades of Men - not that he could think of any - he would have guarded his companions all the more fiercely against these ghosts, but he knew that the one sleeping but a few lengths away from him was their best protection, not his battle axe. None of the shades could raise their hand against the heir of Isildur. They were bound to his will, coming at his call, settling at his word.

That his friend had complete command of them, however, did not alter the fact that they were utterly unnerving.

So he stood guard anyway, taking comfort in the cold certainty of discipline, the warmer reassurance of a protector's burden. They rested now a few short hours in the shadow of the great stone, before the dawn brought yet more haste to nip at their heels. He ought to sleep, for he knew the next few days would be long and hard and bitter, but he knew he could not find the path of dreams with the oppressive presence of these beings that were neither living nor dead...

"You, too?"

He did not startle. It was not sound that had alerted him to the Elf at his shoulder, nor even disturbance of the air, but the slightest shift in the rhythm of the earth. The ground itself had not given the slightest outward indication of one whose steps were lighter than the wind, but his sheer familiarity with this Elf had woven his awareness into the thread of stone, and he knew.

"I cannot rest," he murmured. "The Dead are here."

"Yet they will still be here on the morrow, and doubtless the day after," Legolas returned. "You will have need of rest, in those days, and in the battles to come."

"As will you," he retorted.

"I am Firstborn, and so - "

" - Need less rest, and can go longer without sleep, and am generally able to escape all bodily needs, yes, I have heard it all before!" He interrupted none too politely. "Except the last bit isn't quite true, is it, Master Elf? You too are weary."

Legolas laughed almost soundlessly, letting one hand come to rest gently on Gimli's shoulder. "Ah, you know me too well, my friend. I will admit I am uneasy. The ghosts of Men do not concern me, but this is a dark road indeed. And it leads..."

"...To the sea," a soft voice interjected. Gimli frowned heavily, and saw his expression mirrored perfectly in the Elf's. He spared a moment's amusement at the thought that barely a few months prior he would have been most insulted by such a comparison. They turned in synchrony, and levelled their most fearsome glares on their errant friend, who had propped himself up on one elbow.

"You are sleeping. Or you should be. And you should most definitely not be talking, as that is most detrimental for sleep," Legolas informed Aragorn, sounding for all the world as if he was reprimanding a stripling learning the ways of the world. Aragorn did not appear much impressed, however, as he rose to a seated position, although remaining on the ground.

"Yet the two of you have just been discussing how you both ought to be resting, but are not," he said wryly. "Dare you reprove me for faults you yourself show?"

"Our need for rest is not as grave as your own!" Gimli exclaimed. He examined the Man in the dying firelight, and felt his frown deepen. His face was drawn, almost as if with pain, though Gimli guessed it to be weariness. The lines of care and the hollows of his cheeks marked the weight that rested now on their friend, growing with each passing hour; the shadows in those grey eyes recalled the terrible battle he had waged with the Eye. He had eaten little of the scant meal they had had after setting up camp, and that only under the combined efforts of Legolas, Gimli, the twins, and his lieutenant Halbarad. Gimli sighed heavily. He had watched Aragorn closely throughout the long ride from the Morthond Vale to the Stone of Erech, and although he himself had been greatly invigorated by the escape from those endless tunnels - not that he would ever admit that particular fact to anyone - he had seen that even as the horses began to stumble his friend had begun to sway in the saddle, although his voice remained strong and unyielding as he called them on, ever on. Where he had drawn the strength to give that demonstration by the Stone, crying out to the dead and actually having them answer, Gimli would never know.

"What troubles your heart, then?" Legolas asked, settling with that unearthly grace near Aragorn's bedroll. "We have both shared our misgivings, so it is only fair that you share yours, if you wish to join this illicit gathering."

Gimli grinned, but Aragorn's face remained grave. "To the sea," he repeated softly, and in the depths of his heart Gimli felt a stirring of dread.

Legolas looked down for a moment, but the next moment he seemed to have shaken off the uncertainty, and was clasping Aragorn's shoulder firmly, looking him clear in the eye. "What can we know of the future?" He asked. "I am no scion of legend, to have prophecies made about me. The Lady of the Golden Wood sees far, but she has not seen fit to specify what exactly she sees in my future, and for that I am thankful - I should not wish to know more than she has offered."

"It does not mean death," Gimli broke in. This, he had thought on long and hard, for if it had come to it - if the Lady had truly spoken clearer and he had known that a dear friend's death lay at the end of another dear friend's road - he did not know what he might do. He would follow Aragorn, he knew that to the very core of his being, but he might have thrown his pride to the winds and begged Legolas to leave them. But those words did not seem to portend death to him.

"No," Aragorn agreed. He seemed to fear something worse, though. What Gimli had not done, Aragorn had: not quite begged, but asked, with his heart in his eyes, that noble heart that would save them all if he could. As they prepared to leave Dunharrow, he had sought out Gimli and Legolas, and quietly offered again the chance to turn aside, and ride with Théoden to the aid of Gondor by the open paths that led to the Pelennor. Gimli had glared him down, and Legolas had simply looked at him, immovable as the mountain they sought to enter, and mounted Arod.

"Legolas, you know - "

"I know," Legolas returned calmly. "If the Sea calls me - I cannot yet understand what that might mean, Aragorn. Until it stirs my heart, my knowledge of it is futile. But this I do know: I have pledged myself to you, not for fealty but for friendship, although you will indeed be the King of all the West if we win through. Gulls or no gulls, this bond will hold."

Aragorn drew a deep breath, then sighed. He returned the gesture, leaving his hand lingering a moment longer on the Elf's shoulder. "I thank you, my friend." Then he looked deep into Legolas' eyes, and took his hand. Softer, including Gimli in his gesture, he promised: "For as long as you grace our paths, Legolas, we are thankful. And though your heart may turn from the wood, know that in this circle it may yet find rest. We will stand with you, in joy and sorrow, by the Sea and beyond it, till all our days are spent."

Gimli clapped Legolas lightly on the back, and reached out to grasp Aragorn's arm, completing the circle. And felt the spark of his own courage ignite yet again.

"Thank you," Legolas murmured in his turn. He smiled slightly. "You should have known better than to ask me to stay."

"I am sorry for asking that which you would never countenance! Alas, that I must so dishonour the courage of those who would tread dark paths..."

"You speak of the lady," Gimli said. He had marked the parting in the grey dawn between the White Lady and the Lord of the North. Éowyn's tears had troubled him, for she was a lady fair and brave, stern as steel and bright as fire, and he had never before seen her weep, in all the trials she had led her people through. And though Aragorn had not wept, his friends had seen the grief in his eyes when he turned from her and set his face towards the mountain and the dead.

"There! I knew you could not be so troubled at the thought of my future," Legolas said lightly. Then, turning serious in the space between one moment and the next with that quicksilver sharpness of his, "There was nothing else you could have done, Aragorn. She is not meant to be here. The charge laid upon her by her king is not to be lightly thrown off. Had you aided her in doing so, you would have dishonoured him."

"Never would I willingly dishonour Théoden King, but I fear she will not long endure that duty. She has endured it long enough."

"Then that is her affair," Gimli said flatly. "You had no choice, my friend. Her sorrow grieves me, but we had no succour to offer her."

"We left her in despair," Aragorn murmured.

"Let it go, Aragorn. You cannot bear all burdens. Yours is heavy enough. She will find her own path, and perhaps ours may cross again. For my part, I am glad she need not have the Dead breathing down her neck!"

Legolas cocked an eyebrow. "I wished to ask you about that, Gimli. You do not fear death - I know that, from fighting at your side in many a battle. Frankly, I think it would be healthy if you had a little more fear of it. Why then do you so abhor the presence of these shades?"

Gimli grimaced, and realised with a start that in their conversation - the cadence of it so strangely familiar now, Legolas's smooth tones and Aragorn's deeper voice woven in and out of his own baritone - he had abandoned his tense stance, and been drawn in to the loose circle.

"I do not fear death. And I do not fear the dead. But these fellows aren't quite dead, and they aren't quite alive, and that..." he shifted uncomfortably, wondering if ghosts possessed hearing good enough to overhear their discussion. "It goes against the grain of what death is meant to be, Legolas. It is a distortion, a warping of the passing of years. It is wrong."

He saw that Aragorn understood, and Legolas did not. He groped for words. "See, death - death at the end of one's time, not cut short in battle or taken violently in murder - it is - it is - "

"A gift," Aragorn offered, his voice low.

"A gift. It is holy. Not without pain, mind you, but pain for those left behind, and pain that fades with time, and pain that can be comforted by the knowledge that the lost one is in fact found... that they go to a rest more profound than any we can find on this earth. But this... it is all the grief of death with none of the peace. They are faded from life - they do not eat, they do not laugh. Yet they cannot rest. Do you not feel it?" He pressed one hand to his heart, hammering with the weight of unease, of anxiety, of remembered pain, of longing, of horror, of weariness, of desperation, of bitterness, this seething torrent that drove the shades. That had sent them surging towards Aragorn, at the first sign of an end to this pointless, perennial existence.

"I... I do not. I cannot, I think." Legolas frowned absently, tracing the pattern of his sleeve, wrought with golden leaves. "But I begin to see... Yes." He turned his gaze to Aragorn. "Perhaps this is an errand of salvation to more than one people."

Gimli blinked.

Now that had not occurred to him, and he felt a flash of mingled shame and hope. He detested the Dead, but Legolas was right. They at least deserved a chance to rest, to finally cut the ties that had bound them to life for far too long, and seek the peace that lay beyond. And that was a more cheering thought than dwelling on the unrest they stirred in him!

Aragorn was nodding slowly. Then, incongruously, he laughed quietly. "Leave it to an Elf to empathise with the Dead!"

Gimli snorted, but then he was laughing too, and Legolas chuckling as they looked together into the yawning dark. It even seemed to recede a little. Laughter, it seemed, was a better ward against shadow than fire.

"Now rest!" Legolas commanded with a touch of asperity, pinning Aragorn with a look. "Tomorrow you will be Lord, and by your will the Dead will ride after us, and your men for love of you. And when we come to Pelargir and thence to Pelennor you will be the saviour unlooked for, that all Gondor may be delivered. But tonight you are our friend, and in our opinion you have given too little thought to your own welfare these few days."

"Heed the Elf!" Gimli added with a quirk of his lips. "Never did I think I would say such a thing. Perhaps even we two may find some solace tonight."

Aragorn inclined his head, and Gimli saw, to his relief, that though he still looked thoroughly exhausted, the lines of doubt had faded, beaten back by the laughter they had won tonight. The Man slipped back into his bedroll, with a wordless look of gratitude.

Gimli stood up and stretched, pacing a dozen steps away. He stilled, knowing the Elf followed. They waited until Aragorn's breathing evened into the steadiness of true slumber. He looked at the Man's still form again, and could not beat back the wave of deep affection he held towards this erstwhile Ranger. He was a vassal of the King under the Mountain, but he realised with a sharp, aching joy that he was irrevocably bound also to this King of Men.

Then he turned towards the Elf, and felt a twin surge of - yes, call it love - a brotherhood that ran deeper than any he had felt before, tying the three of them to the destiny of one.

And yet...

"You would never give him cause to doubt," he said quietly. "But, Legolas... do you doubt?"

Legolas met his gaze steadily. He searched those ancient eyes, and read there a touch of fear, a touch of apprehension... but it was swallowed up by steadfast joy, relentless hope, and a rock-solid faith that seemed renewed now beyond what he had seen before.

"I doubted. I am ashamed to admit it, but I doubted, all the way through pass beneath the mountain. I fear perhaps it was pride that drove me sometimes, when my courage failed. But tonight..." He looked over at Aragorn, and then at Gimli, and the light in his fierce gaze seemed to flare. "Thank you," he said simply. "You have both reminded me tonight why I ride with you. I would leave behind the forest, Gimli. I would abandon the ways of my people, and come to forge new ways in a land not my own. I would turn away from the call of the Sea. To abide with such friends as you have been to me, I would give it all willingly. Not because the cost is not great - the price will be heavy - but because the reward is yet greater."

He smiled, and Gimli saw the fear fade away. "I doubt no longer."

And so they walked back towards the fire, now but the last smoking embers on charred wood, and lay down side by side with their friend, and dark dreams troubled them not, until the coming of the dawn.