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"Triage"

The work of rebuilding a war-ravaged world begins immediately after victory at the Black Gates. But first, Legolas has to look after himself and find his friends.

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The Morannon
Third Age, 3019
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The dead were left where they fell.

Those injured but able to walk delivered themselves to the nearest aid station, these small camps set on the fringes of the battlefield.

Those injured and unable to do so remained where they were for assistance by able-bodied comrades who could bring them in, or in the absence of these, to await retrieval from litter-bearers who could enter the field at the conclusion of the fighting.

Legolas Greenleaf numbered amongst the second category – more or less. When Sauron fell, the eagles came, and the masses of their enemies retreated, the battle was over and won. But it was finished for him, only when he caught sight, no matter how fleeting, of his friends still-standing at various ends of the field. Only then did he allow himself to leave, dragging himself to aid using a commandeered orc spear as a walking stick.

He practically collapsed on top of one of the harried healers receiving the surge of injured soldiers, but having gotten this far on his own steam, the Woodland Prince knew he was still better off than most of the ailing men in his midst.

The healer set him down to lie on the ground, and he bit back a hoarse, pained cry – his left leg was broken between hip and knee, and even the gentle landing had spots dancing in his eyes and his stomach churning.

"Tell me where you hurt, soldier, quickly now," the healer told him in a clipped voice as she motioned for a young boy, a child really, to come forward and assist her.

Legolas gasped as the healer and the boy started divesting him of his cloak and released him of the straps that held his weapons. The small movements were away from his injury, but every shift sent fire up and down his nerves.

"Broken left leg, that is all," he hissed, which had the healer quickly abandoning his upper body and turning toward his legs. "The fracture did not break skin."

The boy took over removing Legolas' weapons and personal effects, looking at the curious, obviously un-Gondorian pieces carefully before putting them inside a sack. In the meantime, the healer quickly took a knife to Legolas' left boot and breeches, and tossed aside the pieces to expose the battered limb beneath.

"How could you have walked on this?" she asked with a grimace, as she felt at the surroundings of the injury.

He'd fought on it as he had to, and then walked on it. But perhaps she did not need to know all that.

"I had to," Legolas replied through grit teeth as he craned his neck to take stock of the limb himself. It was inflamed and discolored, misshapen from misaligned, fractured bones. It looked both better than he feared and worse than he hoped. He lowered his head to the ground and shuddered.

The healer barked orders at the boy to get bandages and splints, then abandoned the leg for the moment in favor of Legolas' head. She reached two hands to his neck, felt his pulse, and turned his face from side to side all while observing the movement of his eyes.

"No apparent injuries to the head or neck," she murmured, then lowered her hands over his chest and felt his heart and his breathing. She nodded to herself in satisfaction, and helped ease him out of his tunic such that his torso was now covered only in a thin shirt. She lifted it to expose his chest and stomach, and pressed at his ribs and abdomen gently. "No apparent injuries to the organs within," she added.

She lowered his shirt quickly, for his trembling did not escape her. "It is just as you said, and I am pleased to report there is still good circulation in the extremities below the break. You will live."

"I gathered," Legolas said wryly.

Her lip turned up in mild appreciation of his morbid humor, as she grabbed at one of the thick blankets from her supplies and laid it over his upper body and uninjured leg.

"You are in mild shock from the pain though," she relayed, "and we will alleviate that with warmth and medicine. I will also immobilize the injury. That will have to be it for many hours however, I'm afraid. I am qualified to assess injuries here but not set your leg, and our surgeons are overwhelmed and heavily engaged in more serious injuries."

"I understand," Legolas said with a nod. "I appreciate your time and your straightforwardness."

While they waited for the boy to return with the supplies she requested, she served him hot, medicated tea and tucked the blankets beneath him to stave off the chill. She then used a small pot of paint to lightly smear a yellow mark on his blanket near his shoulder, which he assumed was indicative of the status of his health. She left his side to tend to a rush of new arrivals.

For a long moment, he was left to his own devices. The medicine he was given was not nearly enough to dull his pain, and he deduced the healer had given him a human dose based on what she estimated from his age and bulk. It was far from appropriate to satisfy the demand of an elven body. She'd either never treated the Eldar before, or had somehow mistaken him for an adan.

He tried to draw upon his own strength and meditations, and he hovered in this quiet, gray place patiently. He also watched as his healer and the rest of her troop of first-line aid providers worked. They quickly evaluated the incoming soldiers and then attended to them according to both immediacy of need and likelihood of survival.

Soldiers in serious states but were likely to recover with immediate treatment were attended to quickly. They were barely in the aid station long enough to get a bright red mark painted somewhere on their bodies, before they were whisked away in litters to a surgical tent further away from the battlefield.

Those who required further treatment but could survive to wait, like Legolas himself, were marked in yellow and settled either sitting or lying down in the aid station. There they would have to wait for an indefinite period of time, for transfer to the surgeons only when the worst cases were finished.

There were soldiers with mild injuries too, and they were marked in green and ushered to a dressing station for minor forms of treatment. There were bandages here, and stores of blankets to ward off the cold, hard soaps and towels to wash off grime and prevent infections on small cuts, and apprentices who could administer salves on contusions or do stitches.

Some soldiers too far gone to live no matter the aid they received were given stark black marks, and settled comfortably in a quiet corner of the tent away from the bustle of new entrants and treatment activities. There they were plied with painkillers, cocooned in blankets, and given final blessings and comfort by their friends or comrades.

The whole scene rushed across Legolas' bleary gaze; as a Prince of the constantly-harried Woodland, he has been fighting battles since his youth but not on this massive a scale on an open field. He was more versed in stealth and skirmish beneath the constraint and uneven terrain of the forests. He'd had some experience, yes – in the Battle of the Five Armies, in Helm's Deep and most recently before the Morannon, at the Pelennor Fields. But it was all still strange to him, the efficient systems required by mass-scale fighting and the deaths and injuries they yielded.

When the boy who had initially attended him finally returned, he looked as if he had gone through battle himself. He was breathless, grimed, and apologetic, apparently having been drafted into assisting someone else first, and then someone else after that, and so on. But he had found everything that he was instructed to secure.

The healer who had treated Legolas earlier returned when she saw the boy too, and she now had blood staining her arms all the way up past her elbows. She washed vigorously at a basin of fragrant water and dried her hands on white cloths before touching him.

"Do I need to tell you this will hurt?" she asked, but did not leave him much time to ponder on it.

Legolas cried out and his mind flew for a moment, as she worked two splints and a series of straps around his broken leg. When his thinking cleared, he realized he was writhing and shaking in pain, and the boy was having a hard time holding him down. He fought to take better control of his body.

The boy relaxed too, and backed away with a signal from the healer. She assessed again, Legolas' gaze, his pulse, and his breathing.

"Are you with us, soldier?"

"Not... not going anywhere... trussed thus," he replied breathily.

Her eyes twinkled and she nodded in satisfaction. "That would be wise if you want to recover proper use of the limb." She rearranged the blankets about him, which he did not even realize he had dislodged in his struggles. "You are still in stable condition, but not without risk. You are courting shock, soldier, and there are other hidden dangers with long bone injuries. I beg you keep it immobile, you have damaged yourself enough, especially as I can make no promises on your impending removal from here. I do not know when you can get further treatment or transfer to better quarters, as you know. But if you do not deteriorate further, this should hold for now. I or my colleagues will return sporadically to ensure you do not get any worse."

She stated to reinforce the yellow mark on Legolas' blanket with another coat of paint, while the boy entered his field of vision.

"I would need a name for your effects, sir," he said. "These will be set aside, transferred to proper camp, and you can retrieve them at a later time."

Legolas nodded in understanding. He wanted badly for his custom, twin white knives, the leafy brooch that was his token of the Fellowship and the bow gifted by the Lady Galadriel to remain on his person, but he did not want to be disruptive to the systems in place.

"Legolas Greenleaf," he said simply.

The boy's jaw fell open.

The healer who attended him stopped mid-stroke on the mark she was darkening upon his blanket. She dropped the pot of yellow paint impatiently to the ground, wiped her stained fingers upon her apron, and reached to pull his tangled hair away from his grimed, sweat-slick face and put them behind his delicately-tipped elven ears. She had missed them in her initial, injury-focused assessment, just as he suspected.

She pulled her hand away as if stung, and hurriedly dug into her pockets as she spoke. "I am sorry, my lord. Or is it 'your highness?' I did not recognize you from the blood and grime of battle." She called out insistently for nearby colleagues to come to her aid.

"Did you really single-handedly fell a pack of mumakil at the Pelennor, my lord?" the errand boy asked, awed. He was hugging the heavy sack of Legolas' things reverently.

Legolas was usually more indulgent of the wonder of children, but the healer's frantic movements confused and worried him. Two other healers scurried to his side, and his eyes widened when the woman who had treated him drew out a pot of red paint from her skirts and reached for him.

"What are you doing?" he gasped, squirming away and trying to ignore the flare of pain caused by the movement.

"You will be transported to quarters more appropriate to your rank post haste my lord," she replied, "and will receive immediate treatment there from the royal physician himself. I am heartily sorry for all the time you've had to wait."

He dodged the red paint at the cost of a fresh wave of dizzying pain, but at that moment he would happily take it rather than subject himself to what they had planned.

"There are more serious wounds," he argued, "I can wait. I will wait." For a long, horrifying moment, he thought they hadn't heard him or were going to ignore him, for they were busying themselves with preparing him for movement.

"Protocol is different for nobles and royals," the healer explained as she made another attempt to mark him. "If anything should befall you, the diplomatic effects will be outsize. Our King would have to account for you to your King. If you must know, my lord – your highness?– there is a bulletin released specifically to keep a look out for you."

Legolas still did not like it. And so in his best muster of his royal blood he declared with finality –

"I am son of Thranduil the Elvenking, Prince of the Woodland Realm, and staunch ally and good friend to the heir of Isildur," he said imperviously. "I command you to desist. I refuse treatment beyond your established medical protocols of triage, rather than your diplomacy. Many others are in greater need of your aid and I beg you not to waste any more time arguing with me on this. Aragorn will agree with me, and I can guarantee you my father, himself a soldier, will prefer it this way."

His commanding tone silenced the room, and the healers looked at each other hesitantly, before complying. The two new arrivals left him with solemn bows on account not only of his rank, but respect for his decision. 'His' healer remained a moment longer.

"I am sorry my lord," she said. "If I had noticed who you were earlier, I would have acted without your consultation. This decision – nay, this sacrifice - should never have been placed upon you. If I had noticed who you were earlier, you would have been long out of here and in relief."

"It is good that you did not recognize me then," Legolas said. His leg was throbbing and his heart was racing, and he was self-aware enough to know that he may regret foregoing immediate treatment later if - when - the pain becomes more pronounced. But it was still the right thing to do.

"I will check upon you frequently for any time you might change your mind," she said. "And if you insist on waiting, you will still be first out of here and scheduled for treatment amongst those who share your health status." He opened his mouth to argue for waiting in line, but she put her foot down. "We will not compromise further on this. If it bothers you my lord, then think of it not as a deference to your rank but a bid to secure your complete recovery. We have to protect the invaluable skills you have been serving us with. Now I must continue with my work. But is there anything I can do for you before I go?"

"I would like word on the status of my friends," he replied. "Last I saw them at the conclusion of the fighting, they were relatively well but I wish to know for certain. I speak of the King," Aragorn had not been crowned yet but she knew who he meant, "Gimli the dwarf, the White Wizard, Eomer King of Rohan, two elves from Imladris, and a handful of hobbits."

"There are a number of aid stations such as this that they may have gone to," she said, "But inquiries of them is the least that we can do for you, my lord. We will also inform them of your well-being, and your whereabouts." Because he hesitated, she pressed, "Is there anything else?"

He licked his lips and swallowed at rising nausea. The pain of his leg was rapidly encasing him, as the battle faded from his veins. "Only if, if supplies can accommodate," he replied shakily, "my people require larger doses of medicine for pain than men. I can barely feel the effects of the first you'd given. We burn through them quickly, you see. But I ask only if supplies can accommodate."

"They will for you," she promised. "I will return with them." She hurried away, leaving Legolas in the still-awed company of the young Gondorian errand boy.

Legolas looked at him wryly, and decided it would be a good distraction from the pain to answer his questions. "A pack of mumakil is perhaps an exaggeration, lad. But they are surprisingly easy to fell, once you find the nerve to come closer."

He brightened, and said eagerly. "I was forced into hiding in the city with the other children. But your deeds were seen by many and stories spread across our land. We are all grateful, my lord. And perhaps I too, can help you in some small fashion. I've been sent from one end of the battlefield to another in service of miscellaneous tasks, you see. And I think I have information you would find valuable."

Legolas took a deep breath in anticipation, all thought of his burning leg rapidly thrust into the background.

"Two hobbits were brought in from Mordor by the mighty eagles," the boy shared. "Alive, but doing poorly. Lord Aragorn and the wizard tends them, and waiting in the wings is another hobbit, the one who had served Ruling Steward Denethor. He was perfectly well, but very worried for his friends. The two other elves in the field - the twin sons of the Lord of Rivendell I understand - they've lent their healing skills to the surgeon's tents. Gimli the dwarf and King Eomer of Rohan, last I saw, have been scouring the fields with a party of soldiers and aiding in bringing in the injured and dying. Now that I think on it, given what the healer had said, they may have been specifically looking for you."

"If you are not indisposed to more important work," Legolas said, "I would appreciate if you can divest them of that one concern. Tell them I am well and cared for, so that they can better employ their attentions elsewhere. They have more pressing duties than this."

"You all take your duties very seriously my lord," the boy said with awe.

Legolas sighed. "We must, for there is really so much that we still need to do."

The boy nodded. "I suppose I'd best do that for you now, then. Perhaps they will still be where I last saw them."

Legolas nodded at him gratefully, and watched as he ran off. The child left Legolas' sack of personal effects in his haste, and the elf reached for it when he saw the brooch that marked him as one of the Nine Walkers winking at him from the sack's half-open top. He grunted as he angled to release it from his cloak.

He was exhausted, cold, and in blinding pain. There was also so much still that he needed to do, things he now had to accomplish with limited mobility, at that. But he managed to free the bauble, and it was a small victory. He held it to his chest and closed his eyes.

He and his friends were alive.

It was a good start.

THE END
February 27, 2019