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Nothing Gold Can Stay	By : TAFKAB Category: +Third Age > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 5309 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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The next day the elf was no better, nor the next. Gimli shook his head and set himself to work. He sent the elf hunting and claimed the pelts while Legolas roasted the meat. He took his small knife and some green sticks and set to work, smoothing slim shafts of green wood and binding tufts of the deer's fur to the ends.

“Are you making arrows?” Legolas frowned in consternation, roused at last to curiosity. “Those will not fly true.”

“They are not arrows, elf.” Gimli kept working. “You have not yet released your pain over Giledhel.” Gimli knew it was so. The elf did not sing or drink wine and barely touched the food they made.

“I have seen many lives end throughout the long years,” Legolas answered, tilting his head back to look at a faint rainbow gleaming in the spray over a rapid in the river. “Yet I have never before believed I should have given my own to prevent it.”

Gimli considered him for a long moment, chewing at his lip, deciding. He stood and shed both belt and tunic, standing before the elf in his undertunic and breeches. Wrestling the garment free of his belt, he tugged it up, turning his back to the elf. “There,” he said. “On my left shoulder near the neck. Do you see?”

“The hammer and anvil?”

“No. That marks me as Durin’s kin and was done when I came of age. Below that and to the right.”

“The figure made of a single line twined in a tangled knot?”

“Aye.” Gimli was forbidden to name his family as his own, but he would not be thwarted. “A dwarrowdam gave birth to a son of the line of Durin, and he gave birth to his own son,” he said, sober. “She did not live to see her son's son come of age, but he marked himself with her sigil, that he might remember always she was part of him. It is a thing dwarves do, wearing our grief upon our skins so the dead may know our reverence, so the maker will know our devotion, so we will not forget. The mark eases the burden of carrying our grief solely in our hearts.”

The elf rose and approached, standing very close. Gimli made himself remain still, though the memory of the vision made him nervous at having the elf so close behind him. He wondered if Legolas would touch him; his skin prickled and fine hairs stood up on the nape of his neck, but Legolas did not.

“Giledhel had a sigil of his own: a seven-pointed star behind three mallorn leaves, with a star of elanor upon them.” Legolas spoke softly and Gimli was sure he could feel the elf's hand hovering over his skin, warm but untouching. Legolas spoke again, quietly. “But it is not the way of elves to wear such a mark, for we remember those who are lost with untarnished memory.”

“Perhaps it is as well. I have no inks or needles to make a mark that will last. But I might draw it on you anyhow.” Gimli offered. “The ritual may be a comfort, and you can wear the marking until it fades.”

“I would like that,” Legolas answered him softly.

Gimli finished his brushes, then gathered walnuts and husked them, staining his fingers with the dark juice. He crushed the hulls and steeped them, mixing his ink with a bit of rust. By the time all was ready, Gimli was so beset with nerves he feared his fingers would shake and spoil the design Legolas had sketched for him using a twig and the soft forest loam. He would have to touch the elf for the first time since the vision. He must be mad; he should never have suggested this.

“Where will you have it?” He made his voice calm.

Legolas considered. “Yours is on your back.”

“I can draw it wherever you wish.” Gimli shrugged. “You might put it where only you can see it, or where it will be seen by others.”

“Here.” Legolas touched his right breast.

Gimli swallowed. “Ready yourself, then.” He fussed with the little pot of walnut ink; it smelled of earth and rust. He had prepared a dozen brushes ranging from thin to thick, some of them with short bristles and slanted tips. He carefully did not watch as the elf peeled off his tabard and shirt.

“Tie back your hair unless you wish it painted.” Under no circumstances would he touch it! The wraith might show him what madness it would, but Gimli was yet Gimli, and he might be property, but he was not paramour. Let Legolas mind his own hair.

Legolas obeyed, winding his long fine hair into a tail and draping it against the left of his neck, out of Gimli’s way. His pale skin glowed golden where the firelight burnished it, but shone silver-blue where the stars touched him in the shadows. Gimli swallowed hard at the sight of the elf's beauty, dipping his brush and making a few strokes on his own wrist, testing the brush, steadying himself.

Legolas waited, still and patient. Gimli made him sit up straight, turning him to face the fire and adjusting him so he could reach his canvas. The elf’s living skin made silk seem coarse and cold. Gimli’s face flushed red, but he hoped it was not apparent by firelight.

This was not a moment for such frivolity or fear. This was a solemn ritual, even if the marking would not last.

The thought steadied him, and he touched the brush to Legolas’s chest. “Speak of Giledhel,” he directed. His fingers were thick and coarse against smoothness, ruddy and dark-stained against the porcelain-perfect skin.

Legolas obeyed, halting words falling from his tongue. He told Gimli of Giledhel’s loyalty, his skill with a bow, how he loved to dance, his favorite vintage of wine, the markings upon the fletchings of his arrows.

Gimli drew the flower first-- the same blossom Legolas had set in Gimli’s hair, a thing the elf called elanor. He would not have Legolas know he now kept the blossom pressed in his pack. Its five petals formed a perfect star, its throat a tiny circle Gimli placed well above the elf’s nipple.

Legolas tried to watch, his head bent close.

“Look later, elf. I need the light.” Gimli could not bear to chance the touch of that golden head, that shining hair, against his own. He inked the brush, darkening his marks where it was needed by going over them again, and moved on.

Mallorn leaves, three, made a layer behind the blossom, their graceful triangles traced with delicate veins. Gimli held his lip between his teeth as he dipped his brush. Carefully he applied himself to shading, re-painting parts of the design with the dark ink. He switched brushes for a finer line, the brush-strokes dull against the elf’s glowing skin, and all the while Legolas spoke of his friend, his cheeks wet and gleaming in the firelight.

Next the star behind the leaves-- seven points, interlaced, with loops of vine curled about, eclipsing the star in places, twining behind it in others. Gimli worked slowly, patient, losing himself in the intricacy of the design. He wanted to make no mistakes here in the most intricate part of the pattern. This was the part most like dwarf-work, the careful carving of interlaced knots gracing armor and stone.

Elven Star by Don't Eat the Paste, inspiration for Giledhel's sigil

The elf never moved, his breath warm on Gimli’s cheek. Finally Gimli finished and blew on the last strokes to dry them, pulling back. He set the brush and ink aside.

“Giledhel is with you,” he said quietly. Legolas studied the design.

“You have a skilled hand indeed,” the elf murmured, and Gimli could hear his admiration in his tone. “Giledhel would be pleased.”

“I was taught to engrave metal and stone, and to etch metal using wax and acid. I was always skilled with drawing. My cous--” Gimli caught himself. “An old dwarf told me his hands were not steady, so I learned to help him.”

Legolas’s eyes snapped up to meet his. “Again you stop yourself. You may not name your family?”

“Dwarves are held kinless while we serve others under oath. It is the same for any service. If I wished to become a master smith, I would apprentice myself to one. I would be his while I trained. No other covenant could be made or honored until I finished.” Gimli shrugged.

The elf nodded, then tilted his head back and looked through the tangled branches to the stars. He began to sing softly. Gimli thought it a lament, sweet and sad, but with a driving pulse beneath the song that waxed and waned. No stately sorrow, this, but a driving, hunted anguish.

He closed his eyes, but the elf was waiting in his thoughts, so he opened them again. Legolas still sang, the tail of his hair trailing over his shoulder. A wisp had come free at his temple to flutter in the breeze. It all but begged to be tidied. Gimli’s mouth went dry at the sight, and his fingers twitched with a sudden surprising impulse to touch it and tuck it back. He closed his fist, breaking the delicate brush he held. His fingers tingled, thwarted, still remembering the touch of satiny skin.

Insanity. If he did not take care, the wraith’s poisonous vision would overthrow his mind!

Longing for calm, Gimli reached into his pack and pulled out his pipe. He filled it with tobacco, his movements slow and stubborn, his thick, sturdy fingers stained with walnut-juice and rust. The pipe lit readily when he made flame on a twig with a spill from the fire. He puffed slowly, staring into the glowing bowl. Ale would be a blessing, if he could drink enough of it to send him into sleep without dreams.

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Nothing Gold Can Stay