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Death Still
The War may be over, but death still comes to visit... and for one elf, this is more cruel and devastating

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Minas Tirith
After the Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen

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The city was abuzz with constant activity.

Everywhere that one turned, in almost all hours of the day, things were moving. Homes and shops and offices were being re-built, markets moved all sorts of goods and services, and carts hauled construction materials and post-war wreckage and detritus up and down the sloping, winding streets of Minas Tirith.

The city had come from the heights of fear and the brink of destruction, to victory and celebration. First they relished in survival, and then the return of their King, and now, in the afterglow of their King's marriage to the elven Evenstar, they awaited an heir and dared to look to their future.

There had been feasts aplenty, helplessly intertwined with tending to the injured, looking for the missing, mourning the dead and now, finally... it was time to get back to work.

The twists of fate and godly caprices that brought Olorin – Mithrandir to some and Gandalf to others, amongst a host of other names both favorable and not – to the city continued. He'd been prominent in its deliverance, and now he couldn't walk the streets without his counsel being sought for one thing or another. In this bright morning's walk, he'd blessed two newborns thrust his way, been told to scare the boots off of three erring juveniles who'd been up to mischief, been consulted on the structure of three houses, and been invited to four breakfasts.

And to think all he wanted was to get to the markets for a good smoke!

Unfortunately it had run out; there were still price controls and rationing in place as everyone worked toward normalizing commerce. And while he praised Aragorn and his post-war Council for their wisdom, the wizard was also tempted to unleash an unholy rage at the travesty! The travesty! of him having so little pipe-weed at his disposal given his sacrifices and his limited time on these shores and this aging, needy body.

Minas Tirith (and the cowering tradesman who had given him the bad news and witnessed his face redden with mounting displeasure) was spared the wizardly wrath when – finally thank the gods! – three young soldiers heard of Gandalf's plight and offered to share their rations.

They were amongst the many uniformed servicemen dispatched around the city, which was still under guard and curfew while it recovered. They told the wizard they had been tasked with its defense while the more experienced soldiers had fought alongside Gandalf before the Black Gates, but that they knew of his heroism.

"This is the least we could do for you," they said enthusiastically, and he happily stood with them as they talked about their lives and work. He was amongst the soldiers when he heard the arrival of two good friends.

"I made that for use, not ornamentation!" Gimli the Dwarf berated the companion who walked gaily beside him, the elf Legolas, who was swinging along an admittedly ornate cane that was so well-made it could have been used even without infirmity and only for affectation.

The wood-elf, who'd gone from broken leg to crutches to finally, the cane, was just toying with it now. He twirled it in his adroit fingers, pointed it at things, let it swing wide with his strides. He was already walking better than Gandalf.

"I didn't need it during the wedding, did I, Elvellon?"

"A few hours on a healing leg for the sake of your vanity is one thing," Gimli snapped, "It is quite different for daily functioning!"

"Vanity?!" exclaimed the prince, aghast.

Beside them walked an older wood-elf, Maenor, whom the wizard recognized as a high councilor of the Elvenking Thranduil of the Woodland, as well as the best healer of their land. He had been dispatched in care of the injured prince, whose recovery since Maenor's arrival had been very speedy indeed.

"Let him swing it around as he wills for a moment, Master Dwarf," Maenor laughingly said. "He might not remember it but he used to do that as a child with fallen branches and things. Pretending to be like his adar you see, except the Elvenking had a straight sword and occasionally, royal staff or scepter."

Legolas pointedly ignored them then and instead, called out to Gandalf delightedly. He stepped toward the wizard with much enthusiasm, and a half-hearted attempt to stop pretending to be Thranduil and begin using the cane as directed by its irate maker. His cheerful approach, however, was marked by a slight wrinkle on the nose of his otherwise smiling face at the sight and smell of the pipe-weed. The Woodland Prince also stood an arm farther away from Gandalf and the soldiers than Gimli did, whose interest was piqued.

Beside him, Gandalf felt a slight hesitation on the part of the young soldiers, who correctly assumed their supply was now about to be further diminished.

"Any to spare for this poor Dwarf?" Gimli asked them, knowing they would offer whatever they had for a hero of the War, a member of the Fellowship, a friend to their King, and a well-loved figure amongst the soldiers.

The group then stood on the sides of the road, speaking about improvements on the city and things they were planning on doing in the coming days and months. Gandalf listened on quietly as he smoked, and hid the smile in his lips. It was delightful, hearing about hopes and plans again.

The idyll was disturbed by the sound of a strange rumbling and a vibration at their feet, and for a war-ravaged city and a traumatized people, any potentially threatening sensation was met by sudden caution or frozen horror.

"Help!" someone suddenly yelled, from somewhere up the road.

"Out of the way! Out of the way!"

"Watch out!"

No one knew what was going on, but the three soldiers promptly went on full alert. It was still the wood-elf warrior among them though, who moved first.

As the rumbling sound became louder and louder, he pushed the whole lot of them out of the way of what looked to be a runaway, heavy-laden wagon that all but whooshed! past them, careening along wildly on the down-sloping road. That's what it looked like, at least; it flew past in a blur, and Legolas had shoved them aside so roughly that a few of their party, Gandalf included, landed on their rump on the ground.

The wood-elf dropped his cane and went running down after it, Gimli and the three soldiers scrambling to their feet and following at his heels.

From where Gandalf and the healer Maenor were seated on the ground, they could hear the rumble of the runaway wagon become more distant, trailed by sounds of screaming and crashing before everything suddenly became silent.

"Make haste my lord," Gandalf said to the healer beside him, "They will have need of you, I think."

# # #

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The scene that met them when they arrived was chaos.

A wary crowd had built around a partially-upturned wagon, which leaned precariously against a stone wall, leaving only a small, triangular gap between it, the wall and the ground. There was detritus everywhere – broken ropes and splintered crates, goods and works abandoned in haste as people in the streets dropped everything and got out of the way, and the items that could not escape the runaway wagon and had consequently been crushed in its wake.

There was a dead dog, and a horse in its last breaths being soothed by its owner as someone poised to put a merciful spear through to its heart. There were a number of people ailing too – mostly superficial scrapes, and a few were limping. It could have been worse, Gandalf thought grimly. It all could have been much worse.

But then, maybe it was.

For there was fervent energy and anxiety amongst the soldiers still, and Legolas and Gimli among them. The elf and the dwarf were amongst a line of warriors and able-bodied men who had positioned themselves around the fallen, heavy wagon, bracing to lift it.

"Get out of here, Legolas!" Gimli told his companion exasperatedly. It sounded like it was the continuation or repetition of an ongoing argument, but then again all of their conversations had that air. "That leg of yours might give!"

"It will hold, Elvellon," Legolas muttered, "Do not mind me and just heave."

"Stop!" Maenor suddenly said as he ran forward, pushing past the crowds to the wagon. Gandalf followed him. The healer's authoritative voice was heeded, though the soldiers, Legolas and Gimli kept their ready positions.

"Is there someone pinned beneath the vehicle-" he asked urgently before exclaiming to Legolas, "Is that yours?!"

They got a better view of the Woodland Prince then, and his tunic was bloodied from belly to collarbone, with streaks at his breeches. He barely gave himself a glance.

"There is a woman trapped underneath," Legolas replied quickly. "I reached her but cannot extract her or help her."

"No lifting until I have a chance to examine!" Maenor commanded, already divesting himself of his robes and very much meaning to squirm beneath the vehicle and check on the injured woman.

"My lord, no," Legolas said. "It is very tight quarters and the balance is precarious and shifting."

"This fool elf nearly got crushed himself!" Gimli exclaimed.

"No one else could get through safely," Legolas said, "And I'm afraid it's been awhile since you needed to exercise the light feet and stealth required."

"Listen to me Thranduilion," Maenor said determinedly, still removing his heavier pieces of clothing. "This needs doing and I will tell you why. If she is freed blindly from being pinned, you can hasten her demise. If she has crushed bones and dead muscle, they contain excretions that are poisonous to the body. If the weight obstructing these injuries from the rest of her is removed, all that poison is unleashed to her heart, to her kidneys and so on, which may kill her sooner than it can be stopped. Second, if she has severed veins and arteries, and she might given how bloodied you look, the weight pinning her acts as a tourniquet; it is keeping her from bleeding out. If we remove it hastily, she could exsanguinate.

"Now what you lot are planning was sound because she would have had no other access to immediate help," Maenor said, "But I am here now, and we need to try. If I cannot reach her, you may proceed. But we need to try. Now explain to me what I should expect."

Legolas grit his teeth but, understanding the logic, nodded.

"She is pinned from the hip down to her legs," he said, "these I could not even see, but from how the blood pools and runs from there, an open wound in that area can be expected. Her left arm is also pinned and unreachable. She has no visible injury elsewhere, not even a scratch to her face. She is conscious if slightly drifting, but can be alert. She is aware of her predicament, and had asked me to find her father in the city. We have his name, and have already dispatched soldiers to bring him here. Her pain is surprisingly minimal. She is very cold, though. I gave her my cloak but offered no other form of relief. I am not certain she could tolerate water."

Maenor nodded. "She is young, seems otherwise healthy and strong?"

"Yes," Legolas answered.

"All right then perhaps we have a chance," the healer murmured, though he sounded skeptical. Legolas led the way around the wagon, to the narrow opening and relatively safe path he had earlier crawled through to get to the poor victim. Only one person could fit in at a time, and only a lithe one. Gandalf listened with half an ear as the younger elf explained to the older what to do and what to watch out for.

The wizard, on the other hand, busied himself asking for the small healers' packs he knew Gondorian soldiers tended to be dispatched with. There ought to be herbs there that could be of good use.

Maenor vanished beneath the wagon, while Legolas, Gimli and everyone else there hovered around nervously. The upturned vehicle groaned and whined with Maenor's movements from within and beneath it, and they all held their breaths and braced to offer support, but it quickly quieted and stilled. In moments, they heard murmurs of the elven healer's conversation with the trapped woman.

As they spoke and Maenor went about his examination, an engineer for the city who was working on a structure nearby arrived, and started walking around the accident site and conversing animatedly with Gimli on how to quickly and effectively stabilize the vehicle so that the woman could be extracted.

"Legolas!" Maenor called from beneath the wagon, "I need some assistance."

The Woodland Prince lowered himself to his haunches by the 'entrance' to the interior of the wreckage and listened to Maenor's requests. Gandalf was ready with most of them, handing over many of the supplies he had acquired from the soldiers, which Legolas then crawled through the wreckage to deliver to Maenor piecemeal, before backing away to receive and deliver more. The quarters were that tight.

The one thing Gandalf did not have but many of the people around them hurriedly accommodated were sturdy straps and belts for a tourniquet. The wizard was heartened by the Gondorians' earnest concern and quick actions on behalf of the sufferer. Little by little, each generously shared and anonymously offered supply vanished beneath the wagon, delivered along by a foreign prince who crawled and squirmed on his belly and his hands and knees.

When all of Maenor's requests had been accommodated, Legolas stood on his knees on the ground near the opening, waiting for further instructions. He was well and truly grimed and bloodied now, and Gandalf wondered how that woman could still be alive. Anyone who had lost the amount of precious red on Thranduilion's clothes was likely near death by now, not even counting the red that started to run and streak on the ground.

"Ernil!" Maenor called out again, and the wood-elf listened attentively.

"I am here," he said.

"I have stabilized her as best as I can," Maenor reported, and his voice became louder and less muffled as he apparently left the girl and started crawling backwards out towards them, "but her left arm is badly pinned and I can get to it, but the space is too narrow and I do not have enough leverage with which to arrange and pull a good tourniquet. I could use an archer's dexterous fingers, I think. Your digits might have the strength for it, even with limited space."

Not many saw it but Gandalf did, the slight, nervous gulp and intake of air that the young Prince made before replying, "Come out, I am ready."

He was. The moment Maenor was clear of the wreckage, he gave Legolas a briefing on what to do while the elf squirmed his way through the path that led to that – Gandalf was almost certain now - that dying girl.

The wizard sent a prayer up to the gods, nonetheless. They've gone through the impossible end of unlikely odds before, and maybe he hasn't exhausted his cachet with them yet. Maybe.

He looked about him. By his side stood the bloodied and grimed elven healer whose wise eyes already held the outcome of this increasingly fruitless exercise, even as he also knew they had to keep trying. Around them were the Godorians, horrified but alert, eager to help, and measuredly hopeful. There was also Gimli and that engineer with their productive and scientific minds, which raced with solutions to immediate, solvable problems like the stabilization of a wagon and the retrieval of the body beneath it. Already, the two had drafted a team of soldiers who were shoring up the wreckage at strategic points, using bricks and pipes and other construction material.

"How are we doing, ernil-nin?" Maenor called out to Legolas.

"I almost have it!" came the prince's reply.

Maenor turned to Gandalf. "Once he has that ready there is a decision someone must make."

Gandalf raised an eyebrow at the healer, wondering who that someone would be, given that there were no clear lines of command in their current situation. "Go on," Gandalf urged him to explain.

"Once the tourniquet is done she will be as physically ready as we can possibly make her," Maenor replied. "She will already have the best chance at survival in her situation. We can heave the vehicle from her now, and she can be free and brought to better aid. But once we do that, she will quickly lose consciousness and I am almost certain she might never wake again."

"And what is the decision that needs to be made?" Gandalf asked.

"Do we wait for the father she asked us to seek?" Maenor said. "That they may say goodbye, if the worst should come to pass? Or do we simply extricate her as quickly as possible to maximize her unlikely chances?"

"She wants to wait for her adar!" Legolas suddenly called out, apparently hearing the conversation and consulting with the woman.

Gandalf looked at Maenor grimly and lowered his voice. "I suppose we can, for a little while." They might as well wait, if she were to die anyway.

"I am done with the tourniquet!" Legolas reported. "It seems sound-"

Suddenly, a commotion. Gandalf turned in the direction of the sound, and found the gathered Gondorians parting and making way for a new arrival.

It was a thin, frail old man, long gaunt from some kind of sickness but now even more drawn for worry. If he was capable of walking it was not apparent, for he was cradled in the arms of a breathless soldier who had hurriedly delivered him to them.

Gandalf's heart jerked in his chest. The old man had no hopes of getting beneath that accursed wagon and crawling on his belly to his dying daughter. This was it. This was as close as they were going to get to each other.

"Her father is here, Legolas!" Maenor cried.

Gandalf heard the wood-elf give cheery encouragements to the woman, something along the vein of - "Ah, see? Your adar is here!"

"I did tell you to just hold on."

"Everything will be all right..."

How someone as forbidding as Thranduil had ever raised someone so sunny in that darkened forest of his would always be a mystery to Gandalf – and the wizard's heart ached at the young elf's false hopes. By the gods, he did not even know he was lying, did he?

"Should I come out now?" Legolas called out.

"In a moment!" Maenor called back, focusing his attentions on the girl's ailing father, so that he may be able to explain the situation and discuss their options.

When the weakened old man's well-lined face crumpled and he started weeping quietly, Gandalf turned his eyes away.

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There was no safe or healthy means by which the old man was going to be able to reach the trapped woman. They all knew it. But Gimli the Dwarf and the city engineer crafted a solution that would at least allow father and daughter to have some contact.

Maenor stayed with the old man, for he was also ailing and would soon have to make a decision upon his daughter's fate. Legolas stayed with the young woman in the wreckage. Gimli and the engineer created an access hole near where the woman lay trapped, such that father and daughter would be able to see each other.

"You have a few moments to speak," Maenor told him gently. "And then we must lift the wagon and free her, if she is to have any sort of chance at surviving. But say what you need to say, for the odds are very, very poor, and you both have a right to know that."

The old man nodded, and he dried his eyes and steeled his face before leaning toward the hole crafted by Gimli and the engineer. He also reached in with a quaking hand toward his dying child within. His daughter had no strength to lift her only free arm to clasp him back though, and her eyes watered at her inability. Wordlessly, Legolas did it for her, and he kept her strengthless arm lifted as father and daughter finally held each other.

"Father," she said, voice thin and breathy. "I am sorry...I... I wouldn't be able t-t-to care for you... anymore."

The old man gripped her hand desperately.

Gandalf wondered how he would play it, for this was a scene he in his uncountable years have borne witness to many a time. Would he resort to comforting lies, as Legolas had? Or Gimli's constructive productivity? Or Maenor's managed expectations? Would he comfort, or be the one to receive it? Would he make unfair demands the wretched woman had no ability to give – 'be strong, stay with me...' Would he rage at the gods and the sorry state of passing like this at a time of victory? Or would he receive his and his daughter's fate with resignation, prayer and peace?

They held each other quietly for a long moment, but she was drifting, and the old man spoke at last –

"I had hoped for better things for you, child," he said softly, "I am sorry it's come to this. Sorry I could not forge for you a better world. Sorrier than I can say. When you sleep, know that you bear my heart with you away. And soon, we will be together in paradise with your mother and all your brothers. You have cared for all of us well, and no one could ask for a better daughter. No more pain, child. No more pain. Think only of love."

He spoke soothingly, and she had closed her eyes and smiled. The lines of strain and grief vanished from her face, and Gandalf thought she was beautiful.

"We set her free now," the old man said to Maenor, even though he still clutched his daughter's hand fiercely.

Maenor nodded. "Legolas," he called out, and handed the younger elf a piece of cloth he had doused in sleeping oils. "Put this to her face, make sure it covers her nose and mouth."

The wood-elf kept one hand to the woman's arm that he was supporting, and reached with his free one to receive the cloth. He used it as instructed and the woman breathed it in with barely a reaction. In moments, she was deeply asleep.

"She will feel no pain," Maenor promised the father, who nodded and with a final, frantic squeeze, released his daughter's hand. Legolas lowered it to her side and patted at her knuckles reassuringly, even as she was past knowing it.

"You need to remove yourself from there, hir-nin," Maenor told his prince. "The structure is as secured as possible from what we could see here, but there are too many unknowns. If they heave and things break or fall, you may get caught."

"I would rather stay if I am not in the way," said the other quietly. "If a sober dwarf arranged it, I have every confidence."

Gimli, who had overheard, snorted but said nothing. Maenor looked to Gandalf, but the wizard had nothing to say either. There was no talking Legolas into abandoning a dying woman right at the point of extreme danger.

In Sindarin, Maenor hissed at his prince: "I have no intentions of comforting another grieving father if you get my meaning, Thranduilion."

"You won't have to," Legolas said stubbornly.

Maenor sighed. Gandalf knew what it meant.

"Listen close!" the wizard called out to the soldiers who started to position themselves at strategic points around the wagon. "We lift in 3, 2 –"

# # #

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She was alive when they pulled her out.

But to everyone's shock, there was another body with her.

It was crushed to grotesque flatness, hidden from sight and pinned from head to toe by large barrels and wheels and planks of wood, dead the moment he had been hit.

After the wagon was lifted and the destroyed body discovered, there were gasps of shock and horrified wails, and a handful of the people around them blanched or turned green and became promptly sick.

Beside Gandalf, a horrified Legolas ran clawed hands over his hair before resting them over his ears, as if blocking off sound. He had paled too, and started taking heaving breaths.

"You could not have known," Gandalf felt compelled to tell him, "and even if you did – there was nothing to be done."

It took the elf a beat, but he nodded his head and lowered his hands. He wiped them over his already heavily soiled shirt, and when he froze, Gandalf realized he now understood a lot of the blood and gore on him had belonged not only to the woman but also the unknown, crushed Gondorian man.

After the woman was retrieved, Maenor went with her broken body to the healing halls to try and save her. Gimli remained in the accident premises with most of the soldiers and other engineers to further secure the damaged areas. Legolas, who had meant to assist the woman's father to the healing halls after her, had been anxiously steered away from him by the Gondorian soldiers. He was a horrifying sight, they said, and Gandalf had to agree – everywhere on him was blood of different provenances, in various stages of bold red freshness and crumbling, dried rust.

"You've done your share, Thranduilion," Gandalf said to him sternly, "Go to your chambers in the King's residences and make yourself presentable."

Legolas glanced at his clothes again and grimaced, did not disagree. He stood his ground a moment longer and watched the unhappy procession of the woman and her father and the healers, though.

"They survived the War," he murmured. "Yet victory and peace brings them this. There is almost a cruelty to it - no sense, and no justice."

"Life unfolds thus," Gandalf said, not unkindly, but firmly.

"So it does," the elf muttered, somewhat distractedly as he wiped his hands fruitlessly upon his soiled clothes. "I shall uh, I shall do as you say, Mithrandir, and change out of these horrid things."

Gandalf watched him go, then quickly turned to more immediate matters: the man who had been driving around that burdensome wagon before it snapped from moorings and slid so damagingly down the streets had been found. He was weeping, apologetic, inconsolable... and also the subject of an increasingly heated mob that began to gather around him.

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The woman was dead within the day.

Her long-ailing father followed by nightfall.

The unknown Gondorian who had been crushed with her remained unidentified. He was slight and from what had been recovered of him, he was determined by the healers to be a young adult male, but that was the extent of information available at least for awhile, for no one had come looking for him. It was widely believed he might not have had anyone else in his life... and with a cruel twist of fate, even that empty life had been taken from him. His existence had been all but wiped from the face of the world.

# # #

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That evening's meal had its most somber moment early on, when the King shared brief kind thoughts not only about the people who had died in the wagon incident, but also a few other fatalities since the end of the War. There were gravely injured soldiers who had lingered on but ultimately breathed their last, and one or two people who were also the victims of some post-War construction mishap – an old man who needed funds and had died pushing himself to exhaustion, a strapping young man who had an unexpectedly weak heart and had simply keeled over dead at a work site. There was a suicide – a soldier who came home a hero only to find his family did not survive the assaults upon the city and though for a while he tried, decided he was lost without them.

"Let us all take care of each other," Aragorn said in conclusion of his address to the group of nobles, councilors, dignitaries still in the City after his wedding, and his and his Queen's intimates present at the dinner.

"Watch each other, look after each other, value each other. Even in victory a lot of us will be orphans, widows, widowers, grieving, troubled, less abled... the world is changed and within it, also ourselves. We put down our swords and spears and reach for spades and hammers. We trade logs of the dead for work ledgers. We exchange war cries for hello's on the streets and conversations at our tables. Where we used to lock our doors and shutter our windows, let us open our minds and our hearts. Look in on your friends. Make new ones. Reach out and be kind, waste not a moment of our lives anew. Every moment from here on out is a gift."

The speech ended with a toast for the dead, and then the merriment began. Gandalf looked about him at the festive scene. It was happy enough, but already a more subdued affair than the unsustainable bacchanalian madness of feasts that surrounded Elessar's wedding. Life was swinging toward a new normal, and Gandalf for one welcomed it. It was the way of things.

If anyone could be counted upon for continued shenanigans, however...

Peregrin and Meriadoc, clearly unburdened by the dignified mantle of their heroic deeds and the newly-acquired titles they had to show for it, were making proper fools of themselves atop another table armed with ale.

Ah, but even for Pippin it was perhaps more by design than folly, nowadays. Gandalf could feel all the show of it, especially as the young Took and Merry occasionally glanced at each other and made themselves more outrageous whenever their Ringbearer friends looked exhausted and adrift.

A changed world indeed...

Speaking of adrift, Gandalf's gaze found the fair face of Thranduil's son across the room. The last time he'd seen the wood-elf he was grotesquely bloody, but tonight he was resplendent in dinner formals. He looked like the prince that he was, especially surrounded by a small coterie of his father's courtiers. But he was disengaged, nodding absently at conversations.

But he slanted his eyes up at Gandalf, feeling him stare. He raised an eloquent eyebrow (almost worthy of his father) at the wizard, who gave him a solemn nod. The prince returned it, before turning his attentions better toward his company. He was especially enlivened by the arrival of his bawdy Elvellon.

# # #

# # #

Another day in the City, and amongst the many times Gandalf found himself accosted by its people, twice was late in the day and in relation to Legolas Greenleaf.

First, someone had found the handsome cane the elf dropped in his haste to help during the accident of the day prior. Second, someone had retrieved and washed and pressed the cloak the prince had given that dying woman to stay warm. They would have had it sent up, they said, but the wizard was good friends with Legolas Greenleaf and certain to see him sooner, wasn't he? And they dared not approach those other elves, they added, for they looked oh so forbidding, didn't they?

Gandalf's temper spiked, for what it meant was that they would rather saddle him in this old form, with an errand that necessitated carrying along Legolas Greenleaf's things on top of navigating his own walking stick?! Did they have no care or consideration for an old man (even if he was a wizard within)?

Instead of becoming angry, Gandalf commandeered a nearby soldier who was patrolling the streets. The flustered young man, he decided, would carry the returned items for him, but he would accompany them and see them back to their proper owner as requested.

It was the end of a long day when Gandalf finally trudged up to the residences with his shuffling escort.

What he found there made him realize dragging Legolas' things around was the easy part.

# # #

# # #

The Prince of Eryn Lasgalen seemed to be missing.

There was a small gathering of varied folks outside the cracked-open doors of his chambers.

"He is not inside," insisted one of his guards, "Look for yourself!"

The trouble, apparently, lay with how the wood-elf had excused himself from the day's duties and said he had tasks to accomplish with Gimli the Dwarf, except Gimli the Dwarf claimed Legolas had deigned from joining him in his day's excursions owing to his duties to his Eryn Lasgalen council. He'd not been seen all day even at meals, and the two guards who usually accompanied him he had sent away to stand in his stead at the meetings, it being that they also doubled as his secretary and general assistant.

He was not in his rooms and he'd not been spotted at the city, said Meriadoc and Peregrin, while Samwise and Frodo had shared Legolas' warhorse Arod was still at the stables. The Rangers of Ithilien, whom the prince on occasion escaped to, claimed no knowledge of his whereabouts and volunteered for immediate deployment on a search under their very captain, Faramir – who was about to seek permission from Elessar to do so.

Gandalf watched the small group discuss further options amongst themselves as they drifted off collectively in the general direction of wherever it was they thought Aragorn might be at that moment.

"A wood-elf who does not want to be found will simply not be found!" someone was insisting.

"But what reason could he possibly have to vanish without a trace?"

"Gardens," someone else declared. "Or if not, the nearest wooded forest. That is where he would be."

"Somewhere scandalously high," another hazarded a guess. "Up in the ramparts of a tower-"

Gandalf watched them go, and they were oblivious to him. He tilted his head in the direction of the half-open doors of the Prince's chambers, and wondered.

He took his drafted soldier's burdens of Legolas' cane and cloak, then dismissed him with a murmured thanks. The young man was so relieved to be excused from the wizard's presence that he scurried away without looking back.

Gandalf stretched out his senses to the rooms before him, and almost swayed with the jarring sensation of sea wind and spray, and noise, that majestic noise of innumerable waves slapping against rock and shore, forming the shape of the Earth. He felt kisses of salt on his lips, and grains of sand at his feet, shifting, shifting, shifting until they covered his toes and crawled up to his ankles and anchored him. The wind whipped, the waves crashed, and the thick clouds gathered and danced, as if there was a storm brewing somewhere in the near distance, over the ocean –

He drew himself away, and dragged his mind and soul back to Minas Tirith. He set his lips into a grim line, and he stepped inside Legolas' chambers and closed the door behind him.

# # #

# # #

The wood-elf was not in the antechambers.

Nor was he on his bed.

In the sleeping room, gentle breezes stirred the curtains about the open windows and balcony doors that the wood-elf's quarters had been provided with. The room and the entire scene was quiet and pristine, and it really did look empty except Gandalf felt differently.

He moved around the large, untouched bed.

And there! on its other side, the one away from the door and facing out toward the balconies – the elf lay on the floor, curled about himself, deathly still, staring at nothing. Hidden indeed, from view.

Gandalf's heart jumped a little at the sight, and he ached to shoot forward to touch his friend and revive him from this misery, but Gandalf knew he had to approach with caution. Even as burdened as Legolas was by the sea, one knew better than to catch a decorated wood-elf soldier by surprise.

"Legolas," Gandalf said softly, as he lowered himself to sit on the ground. He made sure to keep a wide berth. "Legolas."

The wood-elf blinked himself to awareness, and he let his eyes drift and settle upon the wizard in his room.

"Gandalf," he finally said, in a voice grave and unused. Neither of them moved, as if fearing to shatter some unspoken, tentative peace.

"You know, Thranduilion, you have turned the King's house upside down with people looking for you."

Legolas closed his eyes for a moment, and huffed out an irritated exhale. "All I wanted was a morning to myself, and one cannot even have that."

"You've been gone the whole day," Gandalf told him gently. "It is night."

The wood-elf opened his eyes, but was otherwise unable to summon enough desire to care.

"Is this about that accident?" Gandalf asked. "The one with that woman and her father?"

Legolas winced. It clearly was, but instead he murmured, "Why would it bother me? I did not know them."

Gandalf let it slip, for the moment. He asked instead, "Did you get hurt in any way?"

"On the contrary I am well-recovered," Legolas replied. After a long moment, he added – "My leg is healed, my strength restored. And yet..." he hesitated, and this was the kind of answer Gandalf knew would come.

"I still was not fast enough or strong enough or clever enough to change outcomes."

"Death still comes," Gandalf concluded.

"Death still comes," Legolas echoed.

And it will keep coming, neither of them bothered to say.

Deprived of war and its hungry, mass devouring of life, it will come after each mortal now with surgical precision, each person engraved with a specific, designed end.

Well, most persons here.

Gandalf regarded the Woodland Prince thoughtfully. They were friends of longstanding, really, though it was a designation and attachment Gandalf could not afford to give or have lightly during the long centuries of warring. Losing a friend hurt after all, even for a long-lived wizard who's had many and will have many more, and he never had the surprising luxury of grieving. There was always so much work to do. But now that all the work was done, he knew he could allow himself friendships... if he could also allow himself the inevitable partings and goodbye and pain they would entail.

His long years have taught him reserve. The wood-elf before him on the other hand, was not only young for the Eldar, he also hailed from a reclusive kingdom and inexperienced with mortality beyond death in war. The consequence was that he had given himself quite freely to his wartime friendships, the first mortals he knew and loved intimately, really.

And death will come for each of them later, no matter how healed or fast or strong or clever Legolas was. Death will still come for everyone around him. The realization was devastating.

"How do you..." Legolas' voice drifted, and he need not have said the rest. Gandalf knew what he meant - how do you love with the guarantee of loss? How do you survive it? How do you go on?

Gandalf had no answers.

"I cannot stand their company at the moment," Legolas murmured. "They break so easily, even with time so short. I cannot bear them. I uh... I am well-healed now, and all business for my father here is almost at a close. I am thinking perhaps it is time that I came home."

Home, he had said with hope and longing. Home...

But then Gandalf imagined? intelligently predicted? foresaw? that which awaited the young elven prince there.

A child of the Woodland thundered home upon his mighty warhorse. In the horizon, he could see the tree line of his forest bisect the earth and the sky. The closer he came the hungrier he was to get there. He spurred his horse on, and behind him, his escorts cried out "Hyah!" in determined and triumphant cries as they followed their beloved Prince in their own powerful steeds. They were going to be the ones to bring him home.

The warhorse's long, powerful strides ate ground leap by leap. The Prince grinned to himself, but then the smile shivered in his lips, suddenly tremulous for a realization hit him then.

He should have heard the song of the trees by now.

He spurred the warhorse on.

They broke into the tree line and entered the path of the forest that led to his father's stronghold. The leaves and branches touched his hair, his arms, his cheeks – but it was as if all sound had gone.

Was the forest dead, felled by the War after all?!

But behind him, his people each took in these mighty breaths, these ecstatic inhales of belonging and relief. They were home. Not him.

He leapt from his horse to be closer to the ground, and he kept his mounting desperation quiet and secret. With bare palms he held the nearest trunk.

Silence. He fell to his hands and knees and touched the ground, and clawed at the soil.

His companions behind him humored him merrily – did ernil really miss home that much? – but there was mild worry growing beneath the jesting, and here began the stirrings of talk that perhaps the Elven Prince's mind had become troubled since the War.

He walked on that familiar yet now-alien path home. He wondered if the Woodland had cut him off because he was not there to fight for her.

What he did not know was that the land yearned for him as much as he did for it. That it knew what he had accomplished from far away, by the twitting of the birds and the whispers of the winds, by the roots of the trees in the paths he had trodden, winding into soil, connecting everything. What he did not know was that the trees sang louder just because he was near.

He could not hear them, not over the din of the roaring sea that now rang in his ears every moment that he breathed. It underlined everything so much he could not discern it from ordinary hearing.

Deaf to his welcome, the Prince promised the land he would be worthy of her again.

He started the very next day, after he reunited with his father and let himself be feted the night of his return. He joined the work crews headed to the most damaged parts of the Wood, the parts still healing from the fires of the War. He worked on his hands and knees beside his people, fervently, relentlessly, day in and day out.

The trees healed quickly in his hands because their song was louder, their light brighter, all in an attempt to reach him. But the sundering sea has sundered the elf from the Wood, too, even when the forest was loud in its gratitude and joy. He didn't -couldn't - believe his people when they noted the land's ardent response to his ministrations. All he knew was that he had been cut off, disinherited, disowned.

He worked until his hands bled, and in the quiet, when they were alone, when there was no one to hear, he wept in his father's arms and lamented the trees no longer spoke to him.

His father held him, and though the Elvenking lived through hellfire, here he trembled in fear.

Gandalf saw it as if it had already been lived and burdened, one of the final tragedies of the War of the Ring – Legolas Thranduilion, dead to the forest, at rest no more.

It was another thing Gandalf knew he now owed to Thrandiuil. He'd once brought dwarves and consequent chaos into that forest, had stirred Smaug brought the wood-elves to Battle and death amongst Five Armies. He'd dealt them more death when he, with Aragorn, begged they keep custody of the treacherous and wretched Gollum. And now, after everything, the final blow – he'd been amongst the Fellowship to bring the Elvenking's son within sphere of the sea and its siren song.

"It will not be as it was, Legolas," he told his friend. "You must know that, before you go."

"I know," the other confessed. "Yet go, I still must."

The elf lying beside him was pale and wan, and Gandalf reached forward to touch the young one's cheek. The wizard's human raiment was wrinkled and heavy and worn, especially against the immortal elf's alabaster skin.

"You are cold," he said with displeasure, tugging at the heavy blankets of the bed behind them and settling them about the elf. "Why on earth you've decided to sleep here on the ground is beyond me."

"Aragorn's beds are too soft," Legolas murmured, "I keep dreaming I am... sailing."

His eyes took on that abstract look again, and Gandalf was reminded that this poor elf, from the moment he heard the gulls, had been claimed by the sea. That the ocean's call upon his soul was always going to be just a step ahead or beside or behind wherever he was, at any time. It was always going to be too near, all the promises of it, all the taunting salvati9n of it, especially from earthbound misery.

When you are in pain, came its call, I will ease it if you would only come to me...

"There is no rest to be had there," Legolas said. "I prefer the stillness of solid ground."

"You've acquired a preference for rock," Gandalf teased experimentally. "Spending too much time with a dwarf, have we?"

The elf rewarded him with a small smile, quickly abandoned though, for there was not enough tinder for these flickering flames.

"It really is night," Legolas said. "I must have been wearier than I thought."

Yet he made no move, not even a single twitch of a single muscle, to bother to rise. There was no wind in these sails, either. He was... spent.

Legolas glanced wearily at his door, and Gandalf saw in his eyes, all the miserable, unbearable distance of it, the miles that spread between remaining here and rising, from being alone to facing the world again. It was an unfathomable distance, and an almost unnavigable stretch of space.

"What will I tell them?" he asked, in a voice small and soft, and he sounded lost, more lost than Gandalf had ever heard him considering they'd faced evil and doom together, and the young elf was hardly a novice in war after centuries defending his homeland.

"They will ask me questions – where I've been, why I lied, why I let myself waste away here."

"Ah!" Gandalf cried out triumphantly, "Why Legolas Greenleaf, in this I can help, at least! You will tell everyone I had dispatched you to some wizardly business, the nature of which you are not at any liberty to discuss."

The elf unleashed a surprised, nervous, tremulous laugh. But his eyes shone with a dim hope, and Gandalf latched on to the flickering light.

"That will work?" the elf asked.

Gandalf killed the smile from his face illustratively. "You know it does," he said, with all manner of otherworldly power and menace. "You can expect no further inquiries thereafter, I can guarantee it. If not, direct them to me, and they will ask if they dare."

Legolas smiled, and he glanced at the doors uncertainly again. Gandalf read it in his eyes, that desperate desire to desire to rise, but needing more fuel, more wind, more fire, more time. That need to collect all the broken scrambled parts and reassemble the self.

"But if you don't mind," Gandalf said, "I would like stay here peacefully awhile."

He stretched his legs before him, and leaned on the bed behind, perpendicular to the elf who was still curled on the ground, his thigh touching the top of the prince's golden head.

"It's these blasted old bones," Gandalf said with appropriate venom and dispassion.

They stayed this way, quietly, as the night deepened.

"Thank you," Legolas said, an indeterminate time later.

"Whatever for," Gandalf muttered irritably, before placing a warm, weathered palm over the other's weary head.

THE END
July 8, 2019