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“They took them, took the little ones… I have failed you all.”
Boromir’s hoarse voice found Legolas’ ears long before his eyes found the grisly scene. Bounding over roots and under branches, he hastened through the forest of Amon Hen, rushing to reach him companions. His quiver was near empty, his bow held tight in his fist. What if there were more orcs? What if Boromir had been cornered? He had to reach him, had to help. With a scuffing of leaflitter and loam, Legolas burst into a clearing.
And skidded to a halt.
Aragorn had already reached Boromir, knelt alongside, his hands pressing to the base of long black fletched arrows, one, two, three, of them, stood straight and true from Boromir’s chest. Crimson blood pooled across scarlet silk, staining the fine fabric to darkest night.
But Aragorn was there. Aragorn could help. He was training in the healing arts. Elrond had made sure of it. He could help—
“Leave it!”
Boromir’s voice barked out in pain, as Aragorn’s hand closed about an arrow shaft.
To Legolas’ horror, the Ranger did so.
“It is over… Men will fall and my city will fall to ruin…”
There was the heavy thud of boots, the dwarf, Gimli, hastening up the hill, and slowing to a stop. The raised axe in his grasp, immediately fell, thudding solidly into the ground with a finality that made Legolas wince. A pained noise left the dwarf’s throat.
But neither of them moved, neither of them could. The idea of moving closer, of speaking, of making any noise, seemed to threaten the precarious moment that hung in the air between them.
“I will not let the White City fall, nor your people fail,” Aragorn reassured, voice strained, choked with emotion, one hand was gripping Boromir’s so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. The other quested through the loam, until he managed to snatch up Boromir’s sword, and pressed it into the Captain’s shaking hand.
“I would have followed you, my brother… my Captain… my King.”
An odd noise from Boromir reached Legolas, a rattle, a wheeze of breath, so soft and quiet he could have mistaken it for the wind rustling through the leaves overhead. One heartbeat passed, as he tried to figure out what this strange sound was, two, three, on the fifth, his eyes fell upon Boromir’s face, on the tenth, a dawning horror settled in his heart.
Boromir was dead.
His face was pale, relaxed, eyes half shut as though dozing off peacefully, if not for the blood straining his lips, if not for the orc blood splattered across his skin. If not for the arrows standing straight and proud from his chest.
“Be at peace, son of Gondor,” Aragorn murmured, leaning forwards and pressing a kiss to the Captain’s brow. “They will look for his coming from the White Tower… but he will not return.”
A choked noise pulled from Gimli’s throat, and the dwarf moved forwards, axe abandoned, wrenching his helm free as he staggered towards the Ranger and the Capta—the corpse.
It wasn’t Boromir. Not anymore. It couldn’t be.
It couldn’t be.
Pounding footsteps, reckless haste, something was sprinting downhill towards their location. Moving entirely on instinct, with nothing but rage and grief and fear in his heart, Legolas snatched an arrow from his quiver, whirled about and released the string in one fluid motion.
There was a startled shriek, and the woman barely flattened to the floor in time, all but sliding the last few feet on her back.
Sáriel.
He’d nearly shot Sáriel. He’d nearly killed her. She’d have been dead. Just like Boromir.
Already she was shoving to her feet. Rage on her face, lips curling back, pissed by his actions. Only to hesitate. Eyes darting from him. To the crumpled form that used to be Boromir. To the others. Grieving.
Legolas watched the realisation dawn of her features, the shock widening her eyes and slackening her jaw, the film of silvery tears that gathered on her lower lashes. How could they mourn so easily? How could they accept Boromir’s death so quickly? Would they accept each other’s death so easily? Would they accept his?
Something twisted and writhed in his stomach, and Legolas panicked.
He stepped back, bow falling from numb fingers.
Another step. A third a fifth a tenth.
One moment he was backing away from the horrific scene before him, the next, Legolas turned on his heel and bounded into the forest. Away from the grief. Away from the death. Away from the suffering. Away from the possibility of meeting the same fate as Captain Boromir.
He didn’t make it very far, not by elven standards at any rate. His ears could still pick up on the sound of Gimli’s lamentations, on Aragorn’s murmurs. But he was far enough away to know they’d not hear him.
A good thing too, as Legolas’ body was betraying him.
Vomiting was unpleasant, the acid burning at his throat and mouth, the vile sour taste, the clenches and heaves of his stomach. One hand pressed to a tree, the other hand’s fingers into his own abdomen, he hacked, and spat, trying to free his mouth of the purging.
Yavanna, he’d not thrown up so badly since he was a child.
But Boromir was dead and any of them could be next. At that thought his stomach heaved again, but nothing came up, having emptied itself already.
With a soft curse, Legolas swiped his hand across his mouth.
“That bad, huh?”
With a far louder curse, Legolas whirled about, hand closing on the space his bow would have rested. And finding nothing. A good job too, as he would have regretted drawing it. He’d almost shot her once already.
Sáriel was padding through the trees towards him, looking…
Unbothered.
Her eyes were reddened, a few burst veins had stained the whites of her eyes, and her face was fractionally paler. But besides those minor differences, she seemed unmoved, cold, as though one of her fellows hadn’t just died.
There was another twist to his stomach, and Legolas grimaced.
“Here.” She held out her hand, and it took a moment to recognise what she offered. “To take the taste away.”
A waterskin.
Biting down any pride, Legolas held out a hand, trying to ignore how it tremored, and accepted the offering. The water was cold and fresh, so he rinsed and spat the first mouthful, before drinking deeply from the rest.
“First time?” Sáriel asked.
“What?”
Valar his voice croaked badly enough to sound froglike.
“First death? First time you’ve seen someone die up close and personal?” she continued, head tilting as she eyed his face, “you look like shit, so I’m guessing it was.”
Irritation bloomed in his chest, vines of anger of despair of sorrow, twisting and coiling through his body at the blasé attitude of this woman. Boromir was dead, and her she was jabbing at him?
“Sáriel,” Legolas grated, “knock it off.”
There was a flicker across her features, something that would have been too fast for any human to make out.
Regret.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she muttered under her breath despite knowing full well he would hear it.
“Sáriel.”
Despite the sharpness of his voice, despite the warning he’d laced through her name, she rolled her eyes skywards, hands thrown up in mock annoyance, but held her tongue. Instead she turned her back on him, moving through the trees and dropping heavily onto a fallen trunk, elbows on her knees and hands running through her loose black hair. Gripping it at the roots so harshly her knuckles turned white.
It was a gesture he’d seen her do a hundred times, one of frustration, one of stress, one of worry.
In other words, a gesture of grief.
Biting back a sigh, Legolas padded after her and dropped onto the trunk alongside.
Silence settled in their corner of the forest, nothing but the shifting of branches, the murmur of wind, the rustling of leaves, and the distant grieving of the men. It would have been peaceful, it should have been peaceful, but Legolas found his eyes fixed on the waterskin in his hands, turning it absently back and forth as if it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
Or maybe he was just trying to distract himself.
“Is it always like that?”
His question was quiet, unwilling to break the silence.
“What? Filled with arrows struggling to breathe and incredibly painful?” Sáriel asked incredulously, “nah, sometimes it’s worse.”
Legolas winced.
“I saw a guy get kicked by a horse once,” she was continuing, eyes absent as she gazed into the forest as though lost deep in thought, “straight through his ribs, snapped em like twigs and crushed his lungs—”
“Sáriel.”
“Then there was the lass that got pinned by a landslide, rocks slowly crushing the life outta her no matter how quickly we dug—”
“Sáriel.”
“Or maybe the guy that got tortured by orcs for three days strai—”
“Enough!” Legolas barked, surging to his feet and rounding on her, “Boromir is dead! He’s dead and he’s not coming back! It could happen to anyone of us next! Aragorn! Gimli! You! Me! How can you be so, so, so… uncar—”
One moment she was sat on the fallen trunk, hands pulling at her bracers, simply accepting the harsh words he’d thrown at her. He didn’t see her move, didn’t see how her body had grown tense, how she’d stiffened beneath the onslaught of his ranting. The next, her arms were wrapped about his chest, pulling him against her with a grip so fierce and desperate that the words died in his throat.
One heartbeat.
Two.
Thre—
Legolas collapsed.
A choked sob tore from his throat, legs bucking beneath the weight of his grief, hands fisting in the back of Sáriel’s cloak. It was too much, too hard to remain standing, too hard to remain upright. Everything hurt. His head his heart his body his fëa—his soul. Everything hurt. It hurt it hurt it hurt.
Sáriel was murmuring, something low and unintelligible, arms locked about him even as his weight slowly had her crumpling to the ground. Knelt in the leaflitter and loam, with him all but sprawled against her, his face buried in her shoulder. But her grip didn’t loosen, didn’t ease up, fingers pressing into his shoulders, her face tucked into his own neck.
Was she crying?
Was he crying?
Did it matter?
No. Not really. Boromir was dead. He wasn’t coming back. He was dead.
How long he remained sprawled against Sáriel Legolas didn’t know, but what he did know was that her grip didn’t loosen. Not even after the light in the sky shifted, not even as the damp of the earth soaked through the knees of his breeches. Sáriel, this brash, rude, outspoken, irritable, loyal, protective, and caring human woman, didn’t let go.
Eventually, the sobs that had choked him, started to ease.
He must have been crushing her, her legs must have become numb, but she gave no complaint. And as Legolas’ senses slowly returned, as his grief slowly started to fade, he had to wonder why she hadn’t let go.
“How do—” His voice was unrecognisable, a pained croak of hoarseness. With a wince, he tried again. “How do you stand it?”
“Stand what?”
Her own voice was little better, sounding loud with how close her lips were to his ear.
“Knowing you’ll die soon?” he clarified.
“Define soon.”
The blasé retort was the last thing he needed, but in a good way. It was the last thread to drag his battered soul back to the land of the living. With an annoyed grumble, he loosened his grip. It took a second for Sáriel to do the same, reluctantly uncurling her fingers from where they’d tangled in his cloak, his shoulders, his hair. But finally he was able to sit upright and meet her eyes.
“You’re mortal,” he said quietly, “you die and that’s it. No Halls of Mandos. No return. No Valinor. Nothing. How do you stand it?”
She inhaled, long and slow, so deeply he wondered how it didn’t hurt. Or maybe it did.
“What did you call it? The ‘gift of mortals’?” she asked, a trace of sarcasm trying to cling to her voice, but easily slipping free. Her heart not in it anymore. “We get to die, we get to rest, we get to leave this realm of pain and suffering and just cease to exist. While you and your kin get to live on, for ever and ever and ever, and then when you do die, you can come back again, or choose to relax in that Hall of yours.”
That was a gross simplification, but not exactly wrong.
“How do we stand it?” she repeated his question, “what I want to know is how do you stand it?”
Legolas’ throat felt… tight.
“Is Boromir’s the first death you’ve seen?” Sáriel asked quietly.
“The first… first mortal of significance to me.”
“Significance,” she repeated with a snort. “Your first mortal friend you mean?”
With a huff, Sáriel resettled, shifting about so she was sat cross legged before him, with a subtle wince that told him how numb her legs must have become during their embrace. She’d stomached the discomfort purely to keep comforting him.
“We are all too aware that we might die,” she started, the gentleness that slipped into her voice was unusual, rare, he’d only heard it once before, shortly after Gandalf had fallen. She’d been trying to comfort the Hobbits, and now she was using it to comfort him. “Many of us brush against death, some more so than others. Maybe it’s your grandparents dying peacefully of old age, maybe it’s your sibling getting murdered, or maybe it’s random like the guy down the street getting run over by a cart.”
“Please tell me you’ve not seen that happen.”
“Twice.”
Legolas wrinkled his nose in horror, earning a muted laugh from her.
“My point is, we get used to it,” Sáriel pressed on, “dying for mortals… its as much as a part of living as childbirth, of love, of eating and breathing is. It happens. We have no control over it. It, just, happens. So what point is there in fighting it?”
“But… you don’t know what comes next?”
“I don’t need to,” she answered easily, the faint trace of a smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. “I can choose to believe what’ll happen next. And if there is nothing but the end. Well… I’ll be dead so it won’t bother me.”
“You cannot be serious,” Legolas protested, a frown furrowing his brow.
“Deadly serious.”
For half a beat he stared at her, before a despairing groan pulled free of his chest at the terrible pun. But his reaction earned a quiet laugh.
“My point is, we are used to it,” she said softly, and Legolas blinked as she gathered up his hands in hers.
“How… how many times have you encountered it?”
He couldn’t bring himself to say death.
It was a personal question, Legolas knew that, knew he was pushing the boundaries of their friendship as young as it –comparatively– was. But the way Sáriel spoke of it, the way she seemed familiar, the fact she’d spent so long thinking of it, enough that she could ease his horror at losing Boromir… That wasn’t the wisdom of someone that’s never lost kin.
“Too much,” she said quietly, eyes down and fixed unseeingly on their joined hands, fingers almost absently tracing patterns across his palms. “My parents… I was four. My siblings when I was eighteen. Then my aunt at twenty-six. And since then… dozens, hundreds. But my line of work isn’t exactly distant from death, life was tough, and I did what I had to survive… y’know?”
Entirely without his permission, Legolas’ eyes strayed to the blade on her hip.
Sáriel knew how to use it. He’d seen how skilled she was. How she flowed through battle like a grim omen of death. Dark hair lashing, dark eyes gleaming, dark clothes whirling, dark blades killing. It was a sight to behold, and Legolas was glad he’d never been on the receiving end of her wrath.
“I regret I wasn’t there in time to save Boromir,” she was continuing, voice choking up slightly, apparently unaware of his lingering gaze. “Maybe if I’d been there… maybe he’d have lived. I can’t let you guys die. I can’t. I need to try harde—”
“Don’t,” Legolas said sharply, hands closing about hers to still her restless fidgeting. “Don’t put yourself at risk for our sakes.”
There was a scoff, Sáriel’s usual attitude making an appearance after her prior softness.
“Don’t be daft,” she chided, “you’d do it for me, so why shouldn’t I for you?”
“No, don’t put yourself in harm’s way for me—”
The protest died in his throat, as Sáriel leant forwards and kissed him.
A shock jolted through Legolas’ body, like a bolt of lighting through a storm, it cut through the miasma that had clouded and swamped his mind. The simple action easily banishing any thoughts of protest, any insistences that she shouldn’t try to protect him. It didn’t matter, not when her soft lips were pressed to his. Eyes falling half shut, one hand freed from the tangle of their fingers to touch her cheek, the barest of brushes.
And then Sáriel leant back.
Almost instinctively Legolas leant forwards, following the retreat of her lips, only to snap back into his body with a lurch.
Eyes flying open, he found himself staring directly into her own, dark brown laced through with gold. How had he never noticed that before? Like the lingering sparks of a firework echoed by starlight against a night sky. They were beautiful and stunning, a depth of colour he could have become lost within…
It took far too long to remember how to speak.
“Wha—” His voice croaked, and it took a harsh clear of his throat to find the words. “What was that for?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Sáriel asked, a teasing tone to her voice. Grinning at him in that sharp way of hers, like a cat that had caught a mouse, pleased that she’d caught him by surprise for once. “I’m just remining you that you’re alive.”
His heart was pounding in his chest, mind reeling and feeling oddly… breathless? But Legolas would be lying to say his blood wasn’t thrumming, to say he wasn’t far more aware of… of everything. His body his mind his fëa. Everything was awake just from that simple brush of Sáriel’s lips against his.
In other words… he was alive.
“You alright?”
Sáriel’s voice sounded distinct, and it took Legolas a moment to realise he truly had become lost within her rich brown eyes.
“I… forgot,” Legolas breathed, watching as her brow furrowed, “remind me again?”
She blinked, confused. And then realisation dawned. Already her head was shaking in amusement, a smirk pulling at her lips, the gesture drawing his eyes.
“Don’t push your luck, Princeling,” she warned playfully, “don’t want you getting too used to thi—”
Legolas kissed her.
Hand tangling in her black hair, pulling her to him, earning a quiet purr from deep in her chest. Her hands pressing to his torso, fingers splaying in a bid to keep her balance as he wrapped his arm about her waist, dragging her impossibly closer.
“Fine,” Sáriel huffed against his lips, laughter and teasing to the edge of her voice. “Just this once, I’ll let you off.”
Legolas would have been inclined to believe her, if it weren’t for the fact she was clinging to him as tightly as he was. As though the strength of their arms alone could prevent the Gift of Mortals from taking her beyond his reach.