(I should probably say that we're more in movieverse than bookverse here, and I'm going with Orlando Bloom's portrayal of Legolas as experiencing the death of someone close to him for the first time.)
This is for everyone who's been so nice about the other stories in this series; it's also a belated birthday present for Teresa and Anna (very belated, in Anna's case, but better late than never!).
Thanks, as always, to Becki and Laiqalasse for the betaing and helpful suggestions.
Inspired by Queensryche's beautiful 'Silent Lucidity', a song about learning to control your dreams.
Disclaimer: Tolkien's, not mine. Written for love, not money.
Silent Lucidity
I can't sleep. The Wood is utterly silent, everyone's sleeping, or resting, or whatever it is Elves do, the laments for Gandalf are over for now, but I can't sleep. I don't feel quite so devastated any more, the tale-telling has made me feel a bit better, but every time I try to fall asleep, the nightmares wake me up again. Gandalf, standing his ground against the Balrog, turning in victory, and his face, his face as the Balrog's whip catches him and drags him down...and I wake up with a jump, and I remember...it's all my fault.
It's no good. I'm not going to get any sleep tonight, not unless I'm so exhausted that I fall too deeply asleep for dreams. There's no use in staying here, under the blankets with the others, because I keep having to stop myself dozing off. I think I'll go for a walk.
I wander aimlessly among the trees, gazing openmouthed at the breathtaking beauty all around me. The trees, what did Legolas say they were called? Mallorns, that's it. They're golden by day, but now they seem to glow silver in the light from the moon and the tiny lights hanging in the trees. I've never seen anything more wonderful. Even the Elves that live here seem more silvery than golden, though they're just as fair-haired and blue-eyed as Legolas.
The thought's no sooner crossed my mind than I catch sight of my Elven friend sitting under one of the trees. He's sitting perfectly still, his expression far away, but he doesn't seem to be quite as painfully unhappy as he was earlier, when we were sitting round telling stories about Gandalf. I looked across at him then, and my heart ached for him. He is immortal, after all; this must be his first experience of the death of someone close to him. He looked so confused and so terribly sad that I just had to go over and talk to him about it. I tried to explain about how the pain of grief eases over time, but I don't know if he really understood or believed me. I hugged him then, I couldn't help myself, all the time bracing myself for him to push me away. Nobody touches Legolas without his permission, nobody sensible anyway, but I couldn't just sit there and watch him struggle with something he so obviously couldn't understand. But he didn't push me away. He seemed to sag a little, as if he was letting go of something, and he rested his head on mine and he thanked me. He sounded almost as though he couldn't believe that anybody would take the trouble to try and comfort him. I told him that we look after our friends, and I think he liked that.
It's that thought that encourages me to go over to him now, and ask if he minds if I join him.
"Not at all, Pippin," he says. "Although I must admit to wondering why you are not asleep with your cousins. It has been a long day."
"I can't sleep," I admit. "I keep seeing Gandalf, whenever I close my eyes."
"Nightmares," he states softly, and I nod.
"Do Elves have nightmares?" I cannot help asking. "I mean, you don't really sleep, not like we do. Do you have dreams, and nightmares?"
He answers my question with one of his own. "How do you do it, Pippin?"
"Do what?" I'm confused.
"How do you bear all the grief your life brings you and still stand upright? You are as devastated by Gandalf's death as I am, yet you can still look around you and ask questions, and smile, while all I can do is sit here and wonder if I will ever be able to act normally again."
"I don't know. I just do it. We Hobbits are a remarkably resilient people." I can't stop a touch of pride creeping into my voice, and I smile up at him, but he is obviously not in the mood for humour. I suppose that if grief is something new to him, then dealing with it by means of humour must be completely beyond his grasp. I make my expression serious again and try to answer his question. "I suppose that it's because life is there to be lived, whatever it might throw your way, and you get on with it through the bad bits because there will always be more good bits than bad." But the words sound hollow to my ears; it's all very well to say these things, but to believe them, when I'm scared to go to sleep because all I can see when I close my eyes is Gandalf and the Balrog, and I know it's all my fault...I don't think I can do it. I hang my head, and I feel tears filling my eyes. I raise a hand to dash them away, and Legolas places a hand on my shoulder.
"But sometimes, to 'get on with it', you first have to let the grief take you. Have I understood you correctly?"
I nod, trying to swallow the sob that's threatening to burst from me any moment.
"I can't. I'm - I'm afraid."
"If it helps to cry, Pippin, then cry you must. Anything that helps you should not be pushed away."
Suddenly it overwhelms me, everything I've been trying not to think about since we escaped the darkness of Moria, and the guilt rises in my throat, threatening to choke me.
"I don't deserve help. It's my fault."
He's puzzled. "What is your fault, Pippin?"
"Everything. The orcs and the goblins and the Balrog and Gandalf - Gandalf..." I trail off, and he waits patiently for me to continue. I'm not sure that I want to tell him, I'm afraid of his reaction, but a little voice tells me that it's best to get it out in the open, because then they can decide what to do with me and I don't have to hide it any more. I take a deep breath and close my eyes; I can't look at his face as I tell him, I don't think I could bear to see him realise that I'm to blame for it all. "I knocked that skeleton down the well, didn't I? And the orcs and the goblins heard it, and they came for us, and then the troll, and it all disturbed the Balrog, and it came and, and..." I can go on no further, and I wait for his verdict upon me, tears streaming down my face even though my eyes are still closed.
He is silent a moment, and then I feel his hand on my shoulder, his other hand tilting my chin up.
"Open your eyes, Pippin. Look at me. Look at me," he repeats when I do not obey him, and reluctantly I open my eyes to see him looking back at me not with condemnation, not with anger, but with compassion. I am so startled that I almost forget to breathe.
"Pippin, you must never blame yourself for Gandalf's fall. The orcs would have found us anyway, sooner or later, and once they were alerted to our presence, the Balrog would have been disturbed before long. What happened, has happened. Gandalf fought bravely, but he fell, and it is now up to us to carry on the quest on his behalf. Never blame yourself, Pippin. I may know very little of death, but guilt and self-loathing are not unfamiliar to my kind, and I have seen how they can poison a person's spirit. Let go of them, Pippin, grieve cleanly, without the taint of guilt. It was not your fault." He speaks the last words especially slowly and clearly, as if to drive them home, and though I can't seem to let myself believe them completely I do begin to feel a tiny bit of hope cutting through the despair that I had been trying to hide even from myself. I nod, slowly, and he squeezes my shoulder. The simple gesture only makes me cry harder; another sob breaks free, and Legolas tentatively puts an arm around my shoulders. He's learning, I think to myself, and the thought that someone normally so aloof is making an effort just to comfort me finally finishes me off. I turn to him and bury my face in his shirt, sobbing it all out into his chest. His other arm goes around me and he rubs my back gently until finally I have no more tears left. I pull away, rubbing my eyes and somehow feeling a little better.
We sit quietly for a moment, lost in thought. I feel myself becoming sleepy, and I only just manage to jolt myself awake before my eyelids fall closed. Legolas looks down at me, puzzled for a moment, but then he seems to remember what brought me here in the first place.
"I did not answer your question, did I, about whether Elves have nightmares. You already know that we do not sleep and dream in the same manner that you do, but we can still have nightmares. Not often, but living as long as we do provides us with plenty of material to disturb our rest."
"What do you do when you have a nightmare? Can you wake up out of it?" Focussing on the conversation helps me to forget my unhappy, guilty thoughts, helps me push them away a little.
"Sometimes. Other times we may become trapped, just like you do sometimes, forced to face our horrors until we come back to ourselves terrified. But we do have a certain amount of control over our dreams, so if we catch a nightmare in time, we may confront it and send it back where it came from. It does not always work, but more often than not I have found it helpful."
"I wish I knew how to do that," I say, suddenly very jealous of Elves and all the amazing things they can do.
"If I knew it would work, I would try to teach you," Legolas says, "but I do not know how the dreams of a Hobbit work, and so I cannot say what you should do."
I rack my brains, thinking back to my childhood, when my dreams seemed almost as real as my waking hours. There was something that my sister Pearl told me once, when Merry had just taught me to fly a kite, and we had had such fun playing in the meadow that first time, that I wanted to dream of it at night so that I could do it all over again. What was it?
"My sister told me once," I begin to think aloud, chasing the memory down, "that if you really want to dream something you should think of nothing but that thing before you go to sleep, and when you fall asleep your dreams will form around the thing that you are thinking of."
"That is not so different from the dreams of Elves, then, for we can control what we dream, up to a point. I find it very useful when I have a problem or something I cannot understand; I think about it before I rest, and then when I slip into dreams my mind will often unravel it for me." He pauses, and his brow furrows in thought. "I think that perhaps if you find a happy memory, and hold onto it as you fall asleep, perhaps it might give you something with which to hold off the nightmare."
I hadn't thought of it like that, and it sounds plausible enough, but I'm not quite convinced. "What if it doesn't? I - I don't think I'm brave enough to try."
"You are braver than you give yourself credit for, Peregrin Took." Legolas' tone is serious, and although I don't believe him for a moment, I find myself listening to what he has to say next. "If you cannot hold off the nightmare, you should try taking control over it. Tell yourself that it is just a dream, and then stand up to it, confront it, make it leave you alone."
I must look doubtful, for he places a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "At least try. I will watch over you."
Somehow, the thought of his presence calms my fears a little, and I agree to try. I curl up among the roots of the tree and close my eyes, thinking of that day in the meadow, how Merry had let me hold the strings of the kite and we had run as fast as we could, how the wind had caught the kite, tugging on the strings as it flew up and up, until I had thought I might take off with it and go flying away, high above the Shire...I feel myself sliding off into sleep, and I am there, in the meadow, my best friend at my side, laughing up at the kite as it spirals higher and higher. We run and run, pulled along by the kite, never noticing that the grass beneath our feet has become rocks, and the kite and the summer sun have gone, until something alerts me to the darkness and the smell of something burning, and with a great roar the Balrog is suddenly there in front of me, and there is Gandalf, but where is everyone else? Where is Merry, and Strider? Where is Legolas, where are my friends? I shrink back against the rock, and Gandalf turns to me and bellows "Fool of a Took! Do you not see, it is your meddling stupidity that has summoned this creature! You could not leave that skeleton alone, could you?"
I cower in fear, as Gandalf and the Balrog both tower over me, but now they are one, one huge burning creature, all wrath and flame, and I begin to whimper and call out for help - but there is a tugging on my hands, gentle but insistent, and I look down and it is the strings of my kite, pulling me upright, hauling me to my feet and towards the creature and this is just a dream and it is just a dream and I find myself screaming my defiance back at it with every step I take, this is just a dream, just a dream. And with every step forward I take, the creature takes another step backward, back and back and back, and all of a sudden it is gone, and the kite is pulling me forward and up and up and the rocks overhead are gone and there is grass under my feet and the sky is blue and there is Merry saying "Come on, Pip! Run! It's sinking!" and we run and we laugh and the kite bobs in the sky and I am warm and safe and happy and I am a child again...
And I open my eyes to find the first warmth of the morning sun on my face, and my cousins at my back, and I wonder for a moment how I got here, for was I not just curled up under a tree while Legolas watched over me? I roll over, and Legolas is sitting just a few feet away from me, his back very straight and his eyes very clear, watching me and smiling to see that I am awake. And I realise that I must have gone to sleep under the tree and when I did not wake up from my nightmare, when he was sure that I was sleeping soundly, he must have carried me back here and laid me down under the blankets with Merry and Frodo and Sam, and sat watching over me all the rest of the night.
He inclines his head and says "Good morning, Pippin."
"Thank you, Legolas," I say quietly, not just meaning for watching over me all night, but for looking after me, and putting up with me, for being my friend, and for saving my life in Moria. I try to put all that into my voice, and I think he understands, because he smiles in return.
"I believe you taught me that we look after our friends," he says, and I smile back.
"So I did."