Chapter Text
The open plains of northern Rhovanian offer no protection from the frigid, biting wind that swings southward like a scythe from the north. The long, yellowed grasses stir like great waves beneath the wind’s force, and they whisper that the great grey clouds above promise winter’s first storm.
“We have lingered too long.” Legolas says, his hood pulled far over his head to shield his face and hair from the wind. “Winter is here.”
The two soldiers ride upon Arod’s back, just as they have always done. To their right lies the Running River, its current low and unhurried from the dry autumn. They had traveled along its side for weeks since leaving Fangorn, taking the longest route home around the eastern edge of Eryn Lasgalen, lingering for too long upon the plains for no reason other than to prolong their departing as long as possible. Neither of them spoke it aloud, not even beneath the moon when the veil of propriety became thin and Legolas glowed softly as though he were made of starlight itself. To speak of the parting was to name the unspoken and undefined shapeless thing that lay between them, and to acknowledge that they could not forever journey across Middle Earth at one another’s sides.
When Legolas kept watch, Gimli dreamed of never parting. He dreamed of his hair and beard gone grey with age, and Legolas as youthful as ever still at his side as they charted their world from the borders of Mordor to the western edge of the Blue Mountains. Always at one another’s side, faithful to one another in a matter that few would ever comprehend. In these dreams Gimli’s face was lined with deep smile lines forged by Legolas’s presence.
Yet these were only dreams, and Gimli did not live within a dream. Here winter was approaching like the deep inhale after a released breath, and in the cloudy distance, the smoke and rooftops of Laketown could just be seen, even by dwarven eyes.
Beyond that, Erebor.
“Aye.” Gimli agrees. “Do you think we shall reach our homes before the storm arrives?”
Legolas turns to face the west properly for the first time in many days, where the easternmost edge of Eryn Lasgalen lay like the open sea. The cold wind pushes his hood from his face, and Gimli sits so close to him that a few golden hairs fall across his own face, thin and soft as silk.
“The wind is strong and the clouds are dark. They are moving quickly, and I can see the storm falling over Eryn Lasgalen. We should be lucky to make it to Laketown in time, much less my father’s halls or Erebor.”
Perhaps this was another excuse to delay their parting by a few days, but it was not one that Gimli was going to reject. Memories of the previous winter crack like an egg; snowdrifts as tall as mountain trolls, a cold so fierce it threatened the quest itself, a storm so ferocious that they chose Moria over its cold.
Perhaps the coming storm would be nothing like that one had been, but neither seemed keen to risk a repetition.
“Laketown it is then.” Gimli declares, trying to hide the joy from his own voice. He was glad that the elf faced away from him, so that he could not see the smile upon Gimli’s face.
“I feel slightly ashamed.” Legolas admits as he pushes Arod further north, towards the wooden spires of Laketown. “It’s been so long, my father is likely beginning to truly worry.”
“Two more nights will not break him.” Gimli assures, although he had begun to fall victim to his own guilt of being from home for so long. “He will see the weather and understand.”
“Perhaps.” Legolas agrees. “But my father has never been particularly understanding.”
In all their time together, Legolas spoke of his father very rarely. When he did it was only in snatches, in off-hand mentions that left Gimli with the distinct impression that he was not to ask further questions about the elvenking. Perhaps it was simply the crater sized wound of Gloin’s imprisonment by Thranduil that kept Legolas quiet, or something else that Gimli could not begin to guess at. Either way it wasn’t something he could quite understand, as he was certain that by this point in their relationship it should have been abundantly clear to Legolas that nothing the elf said or did could truly turn Gimli away, not unless Legolas’s own happiness was at stake.
Perhaps that was the crossroads they had come to, marked by the grey roll of snow clouds and the spires of Laketown. Between the great sky and the plains Gimli felt erased, blotted out.
All that Gimli had not said burned like dragon fire in his chest.
Legolas pushes Arod to a hurried trot that is nearly a gallop. Legolas’s ears have gone slightly pink from the cold, but he did not put his hood back up. Gimli’s arms are wrapped around his waist, in a manner that had become as familiar as falling into sleep.
“I have never been fond of Laketown.” Gimli admits into the silence, feeling uneasy in the face of Legolas’s tension. Perhaps the coming storm was worse than what Gimli could fathom, or perhaps it was the looming threat of their separation that had Legolas quiet and unsure. “Even after the Battle of the Five Armies. Something about it unnerves me.”
“It is an odd place.” Legolas agrees. “The men have always coexisted in relative peace with my father’s kingdom, but the trust was always uncertain. My father never allowed me to visit alone, especially when I was young. He told me that many desperate and dangerous men lived there.”
“We will have to be careful. An elf and a dwarf traveling together draws eyes in all places, but perhaps no place will be worse than Laketown.”
Legolas grinds his jaw. “They can say whatever they wish. I hold my friendship with you higher than all else.”
Hope rises in his chest like bubbles in a pot of boiling water. Gimli moves one hand to his own side to keep from doing something rash, like reaching for Legolas’s face and kissing him. “Aye, to me as well.”
Legolas looks over his shoulder, and even amidst the grey uncertainty he is beautiful. “Then it is settled. Laketown might lay between our homes, but it will never come between us.”
The snow began to fall on a bitter, whistling wind as the pair approached the guarded wharf of Laketown. Legolas had pulled his hood back over his face, to hide the distinctive pale gold of his hair and the point of his ears. In front of Gimli, Legolas’s posture had become stiff and tight, as though he were prepared to draw his bow at any moment. Large, white snowflakes fell and stuck upon the deep green of his cloak.
The guards at the end of the lake snap to attention once they notice the arriving pair. Their eyes narrow in suspicion, their gazes drawn first to the elf at the front, then to the dwarf at the back. The sky is dark with approaching night. The flames in the men’s torches flicker in the wind.
“I had assumed that I would see the shadow of another dragon overhead,” One of the guards says, his blue eyes glancing rapidly between Legolas and Gimli, as though he could not decide whom he should address, or to whom was more dangerous. “Before I saw an elf and a dwarf traveling together.”
“We seek only lodging for the night, to avoid the storm.” Gimli speaks, just as another gust of northern sliced across the plains, so loud it nearly swallows his words. “We will then go our respective ways.”
Another guard steps forward, his speartip gleaming in the orange light of the torches. Gimli fights to hide the way his body began to shiver from the cold. He had spent too long in the south, and had nearly forgotten the brutality of a storm swept south from the Northern Wastes. “And where would those respective ways lead you?”
“We bring no harm.” Legolas is quick to interject. “We ask only for shelter from the storm.”
The guard with the cold blue eyes takes a step forward. “We have every right to question those who want to cross our borders, and you are being avoidant. What are your names and where are you going?”
“You see dozens of dwarves and elves each day.” Gimli argues. Beneath him, Arod had begun to shift and snort with agitation. “You do not barrage them with accusations of suspicion. Now is a time of peace for all free peoples.”
“We have the right to refuse anyone.” The guard’s cheeks were red from the cold, his gloved hands tight around the spear to hide their shivering. His gaze returns, over and over again, to Legolas. “You are giving us no reason to trust you, withholding your names and your purpose. These may be times of peace, but they are not yet times of trust. The people of Laketown have cause to distrust both elves and dwarves.”
Stuck between the risk of exposing their names— Legolas’s name, or slow death beneath the falling snow, Gimli feels almost as angry and dejected as he had at the edges of Lothlórien. To be met with such suspicion, merely for what they were, made his insides turn. He longed to reveal his axe, to shout at them for refusing hospitality on the threat of death, but this decision was not his to make. His name did not carry the centuries of meaning and weight that Legolas’s did.
Arod snorts again, and paws at the ground. The wind whistles like a wailing baby, with all the force of the Northern Wastes behind its drag. With every heartbeat, the temperature drops like a stone falling to the bottom of a deep lake.
Legolas looks at the guards for a long, uneasy moment. They do not so much as bother with Gimli. His insides twist and pull with dread, and his hand strays towards the knife at his belt. Gimli is overcome with the impression that they already know who Legolas is, and that they were merely waiting for the confirmation.
“This is Gimli, son of Gloin, of Erebor.” Legolas says at last. “I am Legolas Thranduillon of Eryn Lasgalen.”
Thranduillon grabs their interest like a struck match. Their eyes come alight, meeting with one another and sharing a look that makes Gimli think that perhaps they should risk hypothermia after all. Dwarves run hot. Perhaps they can find a tree well and wait it out, holding one another close as the wind blew hard enough to crack the trees—
“The prince?” The blue-eyed one asks, with a hunger in his voice reminiscent of Gollum himself.
Legolas pulls on the reins to settle Arod. “Yes.”
“Well why did you not begin with that?” The guard with the spear says. “The son of Thranduil is always welcome.”
“And my companion.” Legolas cuts in, his posture stiff and straight even beneath the hood.
The guards seem to remember Gimli’s presence, which is just as quickly forgotten. “Anything, your highness.”
Legolas stiffens at the title, and even Gimli’s skin crawls. In all their travels, Legolas had not once been referred to in such a way. It was knowing, and it was dangerous. The isolation of Laketown, the only way in or out being a singular bridge spreading across frigid water, sets his nerves alight.
“We must be careful.” Legolas whispers to Gimli after they pass the bowing guards. In front of them the large gate of Laketown swings upon as night crawls across the sky. The snow falls heavier now, thick and unrelenting as though the great dragons of the north had returned. “Laketown did not come to my father’s aid against Sauron’s forces, despite the way he aided them after the dragon was killed. Why they did not I can only guess, but the new Master has never liked my father. Or elves for that matter.”
“We will be vigilant.” Gimli promises as his right hand strays to the hand axe at his belt. On either side of the bridge, the waters of the lake are dark as the inside of a cave without light. Erebor’s safety stands tall and distant. When Gimli looks to his right, he can just about see the ruins of the old Laketown.
Somewhere, amidst the black water, lie the bones of a dead dragon.
The guards at the other end of the bridge welcome them warmly after a quick exchange with the blue-eyes guard who followed them. Their hesitancy and distrust are gone and replaced with something that frightens Gimli deeper. Their gazes linger on Legolas as though trying to find Thranduil within his son’s face.
They are taken towards the center of the town, where the grandest houses sit around the market square. Few people are still outside, but those that were stared at the Rohirrim horse and its odd riders. Eyes peered through windows and shutters, through keyholes and the gaps between curtains. Gimli’s fingers twitched against the axe at his belt, and the weight of his heavy battle axe at his back felt heavier than usual. Arod’s ears flicker against his head every so often, and Legolas murmurs quietly to him in Silvan until the horse has eased.
Laketown had always unnerved Gimli. He had never seen the town before it was destroyed by dragon fire, but his father told stories of it as a crowded, grimy place ruled by a selfish and greedy master. The position over the lake was to protect the town from raiders, fashioned at river crossroads to maximize access to northern trade, the long wharf stretching from the land to the town allowed for complete control over access. Gimli had never felt so much like a mouse in a cage. He looks at the wood all around, and even with the dragon long dead, he could imagine the flames.
The guards lead them to the main stables a street away from the town square. Night had descended, but there were no stars amidst the snow clouds, and not even the moon’s bright light could pierce the storm. The wind whistles across the water, and cuts between the wooden buildings like a knife. A paper blows across the street as Gimli and Legolas dismount and Arod is taken away by a stableboy. A torchlight flickers, and is snuffed out.
Gimli and Legolas shoulder their packs. Erebor stands above, distant and solitary as a silent sentinel.
“Something is off.” Gimli mutters to Legolas as the guard guides them away from the stables and towards a proud and grand looking building, the only one made of stone. “Even Arod was uneased.”
“Arod is always uneasy.” Legolas whispers back. “Nonetheless, I agree. Perhaps it is merely the storm. Bad weather has a way of making people anxious.”
“Perhaps.” Gimli grunts, adjusting the pack on his shoulders. “But I did not like how they looked at you.”
Legolas doesn't meet his gaze. “It is the name. It carries much weight here in a way that it did not in the South.”
Gimli nods, and hears what Legolas doesn’t say. Here, the name is dangerous.
The guard guides them past the grand building of the Master of the town, the place where both of them had expected to be taken. The two exchange a look, but follow the guard. Legolas’s back is straight, his shoulders tight. Gimli cannot see his face past the hood, but he knows the elf well enough to know when he is uneasy. Gimli sticks close to his side as they walk. Legolas’s feet hardly leave a mark atop the fresh snow.
They are taken to the front doors of an inn. Yellow lamplight glows softly through the windows, and quick music floats like a feather upon the wind. Raucous laughter follows, and the sign above the door swings with a creak in the wind.
“Why are we being taken here?” Gimli demands. “Should the prince not be given a place amongst the master of the town?”
“Apologies, your highness.” The guard bows only to Legolas. The elf stiffens. “But the Master of the town is away on business. This is the best we can offer at the time. You will still be given rooms, and water for a hot bath, and a warm meal to wait out the storm. Your horse will be well taken care of.”
Legolas says nothing for a few heartbeats. The wind is so fierce that it cuts through the warmth of Gimli’s beard and elven cloak, making him shiver. He longs to reach out and take Legolas’s hand, to hold it within his own for reassurance. But he does not need to. Legolas already knows that Gimli would follow him anywhere.
Legolas tilts his head. “Very well.”
The guard opens the door and bows once more, and seeing little choice between freezing in the storm or spending an uncomfortable night in a human inn, they both decide upon the latter.
Walking into the inn is like stepping through a wall of warmth. A fire roars in a stone fireplace. A man is playing the fiddle, something quick and lively to push away the gloom of a descending winter. The floor is sticky with spilled ale, and the room smells of cooking meat, wet wool, and sweat. Most of those inside are Men, but there is a single table of dwarves that Gimli does not recognize.
“Perhaps this will be better than the stuffy rooms of the master anyways.” Gimli says to Legolas, adjusting his pack over his shoulders. He smiles up at the elf, hoping to lift his spirits. “It has been some time since I’ve had a bed, and ale and music are always welcome.”
Legolas nods beneath the hood. “Yes. At the very least it is out of the snow.”
“Aye, cheers to that!”
A man with bright eyes and balding hair comes their way, shouldering through the crowded floor of the pub whilst wiping his hands with a towel.
“An elf and a dwarf, traveling together, aye? And the Prince of Mirkwood at that! These are odd times indeed!”
“Yet the great shadow has passed from the world.” Gimli says quickly, disliking the way a few heads turn immediately to stare at Legolas. “It is a time for peace and new beginnings.”
“Hear, hear!” The man agrees. “I am Egill, owner of the inn. I will show you to your rooms, and send a word to the cook.”
They are not given rooms beside one another. Gimli is brought to a room on the lowest floor, one plainly designed for a dwarf. Legolas has to duck his head to fit through the door, and the window looks out to the wooden footpaths and the swirling snow outside. He sets down his bags but keeps his axe and weapons, and chooses to leave his warmer layers on despite the heat. Gimli’s frown deepens when they are taken up many flights of stairs to Legolas’s room.
“Is there any way our rooms could be closer?” Legolas asks, looking around the plain room. From this height one could see over rooftops and across the black water of the lake.
“I’m afraid not. The ground floor rooms are the only rooms with dwarf-sized beds.”
“I do not mind sleeping in a larger bed, should it mean being closer. We have been traveling together for many months.”
Egill’s eyes narrow, and his face twists as though he were choking down a piece of dry meat. “Would you not be glad for some space apart then? Surely even good friends would tire of one another after so long!”
He is my whole world, Gimli thinks. I should never tire of him.
Yet neither of them can think of a response that could encapsulate what they mean to one another. They had seen great death, and had stood beneath the eye of Sauron together. They had laughed beneath the sun and drank under the stars, had even danced together late in the evening of Aragorn and Arwen’s wedding, both too drunk and too happy to care what was thought of it.
Yet here they stood at Laketown. At the crossroads of their parting. After tonight they would have to spend countless nights apart. It was long overdue that they learn how to breathe without one another.
Legolas still says nothing. A muscle jumps in his jaw.
“It is fine.” Gimli relents, ignoring the way Legolas whips around to gaze at him. “One night apart shall be alright.”
“Gimli—”
He can’t look at the elf, or he’ll crack. Egill smiles and claps his hands together, settling the matter. “Grand! Let’s get some food and rest in you.”
The stairs of the inn were built as though they were an afterthought. They wind from floor to floor in a narrow, steep wind, wholly unlike the wide and study stairs built by dwarves. Gimli has to turn his shoulders slightly to fit as he follows Egill down to the pub, his iron-clad boots loud against the wood.
As soon as they had been seated, choosing the quietest corner of the pub they could find to keep out of attention as best they could, Legolas forces Gimli to look upon him.
“Why did you say that?” He hisses. “Plainly they want us separated for a reason we cannot guess at, but one which raises my suspicions nonetheless.”
Gimli waves him off, and takes a long drink from one of the ales that a waitress sets in front of them. The winter wind shakes the building, and the windows rattle and frost. “I know. I will of course come to your room for the night. We shan’t be separated in a place such as this. I do not like the way they have been using your title, and watching you so closely.”
“I do not care for it either.” Legolas agrees, his eyes flitting about the room before looking back at Gimli. Beneath the dwarf’s gaze he deflates slightly, some of the tension unthreading from his shoulders. “I did not wish for our final night together to be like this.”
“Nor did I.” Gimli agrees, and he forces down the images that rise like an unbidden flood through his mind— Legolas sitting on a chair, Gimli between his knees, leaning over the elf, kissing him as though it were their last night of life.
Anything. Anything in the world for him.
Legolas sighs, his hair and face still hidden by the dark hood. Eyes from around the room turn to look at them, lingering on the elven prince, before quickly looking away. The shadows lengthen. The storm wails.
“We must do the best with what we are given.” Gimli mutters, and pushes the ale towards Legolas. “For now we are safe. Drink. Be merry. You are far too quiet.”
“It is times like these,” Legolas muses, taking a single sip of the ale. “That I dearly miss the hobbits.”
Gimli smiles at the image of Merry and Pippin dancing atop a table, clutching at one another with laughter, eyes bright and smiles wide. “I do too. I hope they have made it back to the Shire.”
“I’m sure they have.” Legolas stares at the ale, as though expecting it to jump at him. “I think I would have heard it in the trees and the wind if they had not. They are tough little creatures. I hope to one day go to the Shire myself, although I fear it is too close to the sea to bring me much peace.”
Gimli flinches at the mention of the sea. He takes a long sip from his ale to try to hide the movement, but Legolas knows him too well.
Legolas lays a single hand upon Gimli’s arm. “I will not sail for many years. Not while you are in this world,” he looks distantly to the west, to Eryn Lasgalen. “Not until my father is ready. It will break his heart.”
“Will that not cause you pain?” Gimli asks, because the veil of propriety that night was thin and torn from the violent snow, and the thought of Legolas in pain knots his stomach like a rope. “To endure the Call so long?”
“It will not be easy.” Legolas looks back at the table, gaze catching on an old stain before looking back to Gimli. “Some days will be harder than others, but that is the way of all things. You keep me anchored. I do not wish to leave Middle Earth, not for a long time. I hate that I have heard the Call. I hate every wave of the ocean.”
“Then I shall stay beside you, as long as my mortal life allows.” He says it with ease, with stone-like certainty.
Legolas takes a long sip of the ale. Eyes look to them, and eyes look away. Frost spreads like growing ivy across the foggy windows. “What will our peoples say? Our families?”
Gimli straightens. On an empty stomach, the ale makes him bold. He grabs one of Legolas’s long, slender hands between his own and holds it tight. “I will stay with you through it all. This prejudice between our peoples is too ancient, too cruel, and most of all too stupid. We have fought a balrog and the Nazgul, have seen the gates of Mordor, and have faced thousands of orcs. Nothing they can say shall tear us apart.”
Legolas smiles, small and timid in the way of elves, but Gimli has been around him long enough to understand that it is his way of beaming. “Would you still be my friend?” Legolas asks. “Even if all that pain had not happened? Even if we had not met at the world’s end?”
Gimli’s grasp tightens around Legolas’s hand. “I do not have the gift of seeing beyond our own times and circumstances like the mirror of Lady Galadriel, yet I am quite certain that I would have liked you very much all the same.”
Legolas’s smile brightens. With his face hidden behind the hood it feels like something precious and secret, something meant only for Gimli. When the quest had first begun, Legolas’s smile had been as rare as mithril, and he stood guarded and distant from the fellowship. To be given smiles and laughter so freely now was an enormous gift. “Then it shall be. I am glad the world has brought us together.” Legolas leans forward and lowers his voice, and Gimli is so grateful to see the elf in a better mood that he could weep with joy. “I am even glad that Gollum escaped, for it meant that I met you.”
Gimli laughs, loud and from the gut. “Daft elf!”
“It is the truth!”
“Perhaps things happen as they should.” Gimli concedes. “Who else would have led Frodo and Sam into Mordor?”
Legolas nods and sips at his ale. The storm rattles the windows, and a pair of men leave the tavern, bringing in a wind like a two-edged sword. Gimli shivers, the cold fiercer than ever now that he had grown accustomed to warmth. “I am grateful to be inside, despite my mistrust of this place.” Gimli mutters into his own ale, the surface reflecting the flickering light of the candle above. “The storm is fierce. Dare I say it is no ordinary storm.”
“My Ada used to say that sometimes the North needs to remind us of its continuing existence, and that is why the occasional fierce and endless storm stretches beneath the Grey Mountains to our lands.” Legolas withdraws his hand from Gimli’s and holds his pint with both hands. “He never did like the cold.”
Gimli opens his mouth to reply, but before he is given the chance a waiter comes by and sets two plates of food before them. Steam rises from the bread and potatoes, and all other thoughts of ancient days and wastelands are dashed from Gimli’s mind. The waiter takes the ale from Legolas and sets a new one before him.
Legolas frowns. “I had not finished that—”
“It would not do,” the waiter replies carefully. “To keep the prince’s glass half-full. This is a finer brew.”
Legolas’s eyes dart to Gimli, who already had half a potato in his mouth. Gimli shrugs, and when Legolas turns back the waiter had already disappeared amongst the crowd. “Perhaps they are only being prudent.” Gimli says after swallowing the food.
“Prudent.” Legolas mutters, separating the meat from the rest of his food and placing it delicately atop Gimli’s plate. “I’ve had quite enough of Men for a long while. It’s a shame they cannot all be like Aragorn.”
Gimli glances at Legolas's now half-empty plate and frowns. He takes the other half of his own potato and gives it to the foolish elf.
“Gimli—”
“I don’t want to hear it.” He says firmly and quickly. “If you insist on being foolish, you must at least eat enough plants to not fall over and faint before you reach your father’s halls.”
They’d had the same argument so many times it had become habitual, a rehearsed push and pull that only once completed could they move forward. Gimli prepares for Legolas’s usual response, something about how he had lived many lifetimes without meat and still stood whole and healthy and had never fallen ill. A pang of sadness echoes through his chest like a struck bell. This could well be their last night together for quite some time, and it could be months or even years before this argument played out once more. Perhaps that is why Legolas’s face softens and why he steps outside of the bounds of their typical rehearsal.
“They say that dwarves are driven by greed, but you are the most giving being I have ever met.”
Gimli should have never doubted Legolas’s ability to stop his heart and restart again, his tendency to shift Gimli’s world around the focal point of the elf’s words. A spark ignites, careful as a flickering candle in a hurricane gale. Perhaps his feelings are returned.
Gimli, normally so eloquent, grapples and grasps for words, but all he finds in his chest are inarticulate feelings. Legolas hides a smile into his ale as he sips and the dwarf stares.
“You are far too kind. Yet I must say that what they say about elves is true.”
“And what do they say about elves?”
“That they are very foolish and spend far too much time singing to birds and trees. But perhaps I am glad. It leaves more meat for me.” To emphasize his point Gimli takes a bite of the ham on his plate, and Legolas grimaces and moves away from him, but Gimli can see the smile he fails to hide.
Legolas eats a few boiled carrots and the two are briefly silent to eat and listen to the quick and merry music of Men, the rhythm of which reminds Gimli of an old mining song chanted deep beneath the earth during long and grueling shifts. He turns to Legolas to say something of it, but stops short when he sees an odd and pale expression upon the elf’s fair face.
“Legolas?” Gimli asks after a moment in which the elf has done nothing but stare at his plate. “Are you alright?”
Legolas shakes his head, as though trying to come back to himself but having to first swim to the water’s surface from the depths. “This ale… I think it is affecting me.”
Gimli snorts. “I thought it took many drinks to pierce the resolve of an elf.”
“It does. Which is why I feel so odd.”
At the tone of real concern in Legolas’s voice, the smile and humor drops from Gimli’s countenance like a falling stone. “Odd in what way?”
“I just—” Legolas touches his fingers to his temple as though he could fish out the oddness from his head. He turns to the forgotten glass of water between them and drinks deeply, his fingers trembling. Gimli’s eyes do not leave Legolas’s face, his dinner forgotten as a new song starts. Legolas places the glass back on the table with no grace, water falling atop the wood. “I think I am sick.”
“Sick? Elves do not get sick.”
“I know.” He closes his eyes and breathes deeply and evenly through his nose in the same way Gimli had done many times before when trying not to vomit. Legolas’s face had gone even paler, as though he were turning to snow. The only color to be found lay on the tips of his pointed ears, which had gone red. “I think I need to step outside. It’s too crowded and warm.”
Gimli scrambles down from his seat and quickly comes to the elf’s side as Legolas stands on unsteady legs. Legolas grips the side of the table, and his other hand latches upon Gimli’s shoulder as he takes deep and labored breaths. Gimli says nothing about the storm, about the raging cold outside. He would do anything in the world for him.
“Hold onto me.” Gimli instructs him, helping to pull the elf’s cloak closed to fight the cold. Legolas’s hand, normally cool as a spring stream, is hot against his shoulder. He does not try to push the dwarf away or insist that he can walk on his own, and that alone makes alarm rise like steam in Gimli’s chest. “Let’s get you some fresh air.”
Every pair of eyes in the tavern swivels to look at them as they trudge towards the wooden door. With every step forward Legolas puts more and more of his weight upon the dwarf. Gimli’s free hand twitches towards his axe, but nobody moves towards them. In the corner, a shadow twitches and moves.
Outside, the gale stings Gimli’s exposed skin like the wrath of dragon fire. The world is nearly silent apart from the screaming wind, and the snow muffles noise like layers of stone. Legolas sighs in relief at the cold, allowing the wind to push the hood from his head and tangle in the silver of his hair. The door slams shut at their backs. Legolas’s breath is deep and labored, as though each one hurts.
“I don’t know what is wrong.” Legolas pants, still holding tight to Gimli, who stands solid as a pillar of rock. “One moment I felt fine, and the next the world was spinning and I could hardly feel my fingertips.”
The waiter switching the elf’s ale flashes through his head like the last glimpse of sun before a door closes. Realization cracks like a pick into ore. “Poison.” Gimli breathes, the word trembling in the early night. “They’ve given you poison.”
Legolas’s brows draw together, and he puts even more weight on Gimli. He hardly weighs more than a child, but it is unnerving all the same. “I don’t understand. Why? Why risk war?”
Gimli frowns as they take a few steps further from the tavern, the yellow light from the windows illuminating the snowy wooden ground. Gimli doesn't know where he’s taking them, only knows that they need to get away from this place, away from the danger and the people who want to hurt Legolas. The knowledge of Laketown’s precarious position, with only a single entry and exit, stands stark in his mind. He feels as though hundreds of bugs are crawling across his skin as his paranoia mounts and realization sets in as to just how bad this could go. “War?”
“My father…” Legolas trails off, his feet light across the snow, hardly leaving a footprint at all. Gimli glances at his face and can see the elf trying to piece the thought together and contort it into comprehensible words. “He will have war for this, if the men here are not careful.”
With those words Legolas falls to the snow like a knife slipping from an oyster. The strength leaves him all at once, in a sudden strike. At the same moment the tavern door bangs open and four armed men step onto the wooden street, their pale eyes bright in the gloam, landing upon Legolas like a vein of gold revealed from falling shale.
Gimli, of course, catches his elf.
The men reach them quickly, weapons flashing in the low light of the blizzard. Gimli cradles Legolas to his chest, his toes just barely scraping the top of the snow. Legolas’s eyes are closed, his brows furrowed in pain and his breathing deep and uneven. Gimli had never seen his eyes closed in such a way, and although he had woken many times to the disconcerting blank stare of elven sleep, this unnerves him far more. It is a sign of sickness and pain.
The wind whistles and rattles the wooden boards beneath their feet. The cold presses upon him, and Gimli has never felt further from the heat of the south, from the places where he learned to love Legolas. He holds him tight.
He will have war for this.
A crooked smile like the crescent of a winter moon flashes in the dark as the men approach. The four men are armed, one with a sword, two with knives, and the last with a club.
“Give us the prince, dwarf.” Says one of the men with a knife, the one whose smile was wielded like a blade. “And we will not hurt you.”
Gimli takes a slow step backwards, Legolas’s breath faint upon his neck, warm amidst the numbing wind. He cannot fight with him in his arms, but he cannot let go either. His heart thuds against his chest as though it could crack a rib. Poison.
The men follow his retreating steps as he moves in the vague direction of the stables. Legolas is motionless in his arms. Gimli will not see his immortal life cut short by these cowards that take the forms of men, by those who would weaken someone with poison because they could not take him in a fight. Gimli always knew he would give anything for the elf, and he steels himself for a vicious battle.
“If you come another step closer,” He warns the men that approach like a pack of wargs. “I will not spare you.”
The men glance at one another in mirth, and then burst into cold laughter. “You will not harm us?”
“I am a Lord of Erebor. To harm me will ensure a war you cannot win. To harm him means enticing the wrath of the elven king. I have battled a balrog, slain hundreds of orcs, ran days without rest, and faced the armies of Sauron as the gates of Mordor. I will be glad to take your heads.”
“Oh the Elvenking.” The other knife-wielder sneers, his blond hair dusted with fallen snow. “His unjust and ridiculous debt upon Laketown has impoverished us all.”
Gimli stares at them, struggling to comprehend their stupidity. “So in exchange for his decades of aid, you will ransom his son?”
“We have been told,” The man with the sword says, gaze fixed not upon Gimli but upon Legolas’s pained expression. With a start, Gimli realizes that it is the guard who led them from the gates of Laketown to the inn. His helmet and armor had been removed, returning him to anonymity, but the ice blue eyes and sneer, the unceasing attention upon Legolas, is the same. “That there is nothing he will not give for the life of his only son.”
“You risk war greater than the fires of Smaug.” Gimli warns, adjusting his grip on Legolas and pulling him ever closer. “With an ally who has only ever offered aid.”
“Aid!” Cries the guard. “Aid? That elf,” he spits the word like a curse, “has done nothing but bleed this town dry for decades. We have been forced to suffer the costs of the animosity between elf and dwarf for centuries.”
“So you risk the wrath and anger of both?”
“We should have poisoned you too.” The one with the club chides. “And tossed your body into the lake. Who would have thought a dwarf would risk so much for Thranduil’s spawn—”
With a hand that moves quicker than the blink of an eye or the space between notes of music, Gimli shifts his grip on Legolas to throw one of his small hand axes at the man. The axe buries itself between the man’s eyes and he falls like a stone to the ground.
The other three men stare in stunned silence at the body of their fallen ally. They had not even seen Gimli move, had not seen him so much as shift Legolas in his arms. The movement should have been impossible, but the men did not understand who they faced, nor the anger they had invoked.
“If you take another step closer,” Gimli warns darkly. “You will wish for war with the Elvenking rather than the end of my axe.”
The men move together at once, striding forward like an ocean wave. With great reluctance, Gimli sets Legolas upon the snow, the elf making a small noise of protest as he does so, and the sound cleaves Gimli’s heart in two. With no time to linger or whisper gentle assurances, Gimli steps in front of Legolas’s limp body and drives his battle axe forward into the man with the sword.
The man just manages to catch the edge of Gimli’s axe with the hilt of his sword, and the clash of iron upon iron sends sparks scattering into the cold night like small stars. The man grunts, eyes wide with shock from the speed and brunt force with which Gimli wielded his axe. Gimli witnesses in real time the realization of the terrible miscalculation the man has made.
The two others are upon him, knives flashing in the low yellow light, the scent of smoke and lake water upon the air. Gimli pushes with all his force upon the man’s sword, and the man stumbles backwards as if a mountain had crashed into him. Gimli ducks beneath one slashing blade and meets the other with his axe, pulling upon the knife in a manner that allows him to dislodge it from the man’s grip, weakened from cold.
The knife slides away into the darkness. Eyes peer through curtains and shutters. Gimli keeps himself between Legolas and his attackers, his world narrowed to only this— to the snow beneath his boots, the men around him, and his greatest love limp and dying behind him.
The blond man still with his knife attacks again, slashing the weapon in a wide arc, his eyes wild with anger and hatred. Gimli moves quickly, but the knife scrapes against the armor at his shoulder, the screech of metal upon metal is like a knife through the tapestry of the night.
As the blond man moves with the force of his slash, Gimli swings his axe and cuts deep into his side. The man wails and stumbles backwards. Quick as the strike of a bird’s beak into water, Gimli lifts his axe and swings it towards the other man whose knife he had first dislodged, cutting straight into his chest. The man falls like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“You’ll pay for that, dwarf!” Shouts the man with the sword, who had regained his footing and breath and bore down upon Gimli with a mighty swing of his sword. Gimli takes a step back, nearly trodding upon Legolas’s outstretched arm. He meets the swing of the sword with his axe, and pushes upwards. The man, unskilled, allows the same move to dislodge him again, but this time Gimli will not make the same mistake. He slashes with his axe, and the man crumples to the ground.
He spins to face the last man, wounded and bleeding but still standing with his knife held in front of him. His blond hair is wild and tangled, his cheeks red from the cold. He moves quicker than Gimli expects, lunging with near-elven agility and slashing at Gimli’s chestpiece. The knife cannot cut through dwarven metalwork, but the force of it does knock Gimli to the ground. The wind leaves his lungs and he gasps. It rattles in his chest.
The blond man is atop him instantly, eyes wild and bright. He lifts his sharp knife high in the air to bring it down upon Gimli’s face, the wooden spires of Laketown framing his form as white wisps of snow whip around them. Despite the pain in his chest and the lack of air, Gimli raises his axe with both hands, and thrusts it into the man’s exposed chest.
Blood pours from the wound. The man makes a terrible, choking noise, but the cut was purposefully not deep enough to stop his heart. Gimli rolls them over, bearing atop the man with his axe raised. He knocks the knife from his hands, and steps on the wrist hard with his iron boots. The man cries out.
“Tell me what you gave him,” Gimli hisses. “And I will ease your passing.”
The memory of Rohan slides through his mind— Aragorn gone, swallowed by the river, an orc at Gimli’s feet, the only one with an answer.
He does not relish in this sort of violence, not like he did with orcs. This makes his stomach turn, his vision grey. He could crawl out of his own skin. Legolas breathes behind him.
“You cannot save him now, not even Thranduil can.” The man’s voice is weak and raspy with pain, but none of the hatred had yet left his eyes. “Nor all the herbs of elven healing. He will die. Slow and painful, with rattling breaths and convulsions that will make him weep.”
Gimli growls, and digs the point of his axe into the chest wound. The man howls.
“I will not ask again. What did you give him?”
The man smiles, blood coating his white teeth. “A slaver’s poison, meant to subdue men.”
“Yet you wanted him alive. I know you did not give him enough to kill.”
The man tilts his head slightly, his unnerving smile like the glimmer of a knife in the dark. “Is that a risk—” he is cut off as Gimli shifts his weight, and the man gasps in pain. “You are willing to take?”
Finished with the conversation, Gimli moves with the force and speed of a cave-in. The axe finds its mark, and the man lays dead at his feet.
His shoulders rise and fall in the new silence of the night. Curtains move back into place. Shutters close. Doors lock. Snow gathers atop a motionless elf, and settles upon a dwarf’s red beard. The wind wails as though in victory, strengthened by the violence it has wrought. Bright blood reflects off the snow and seeps into the dark wood. Somewhere in the black of night, Erebor stands as a silent witness.
Gimli tugs on his axe to withdraw it, and returns the weapon to the sheath at his back. He steps away from the four dead men and kneels on the ground beside Legolas. His hands tremble as he presses his fingertips to the place beneath a pointed ear and a sharp jaw. Beneath his fingers a faint pulse jumps. He breathes out.
Gimli is gentle as a songbird despite the violence he has just wrought, and sturdy as stone. He cradles Legolas to his chest, running a hand through his blond hair and wiping away the collected snow. He stands, and staggers towards the stable with Legolas in his arms once more.
“Come, amrâlimê.” He whispers to Legolas. “Let us take you home.”