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Leaves of Gold	By : ladyelina Category: -Multi-Age > Slash - Male/Male Views: 1365 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Lord of the Rings (and associated) book series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 3
- 4
- 5
Rating for this
chapter: R.

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Chapter 4: The
River Flows Away

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Be ahead of all
parting, as though it already were

behind you, like the winter that has just gone by.

For among these winters there is one so endlessly winter

that only by wintering through it all will your heart survive.
Rainer Maria Rilke, The Sonnets to
Orpheus, XIII

Translated by Stephen Mitchell
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"I will go to
the Glittering Caves and to Fangorn
with Gimli, and then to my father's country. The time
I will remain away will seem long to you. But I will return and bring my people
from Mirkwood to the forests of Ithilien;
thus the land will be blessed, and filled with lush growth and joy once more. I
will send them to the White
City to plant blossoming gardens, while the
folk of the mountains labour and build the city anew."

Legolas's eyes are dark water with reflections of stars in it.

"Perhaps
sometimes, if the King and Queen so wish, I will visit them as an old
friend," he continues. "I will entertain them with stories of my
journeys and hold their child, who will look at me with his mother's eyes and
smile his father's smile. I may sing him a song in my own tongue, a song of the
moon peeking into a beech forest from between green branches in the half-light
of the morning. And as years pass, I will see on my visits as the firstborn
grows and takes up bow and sword, while the youngest babe is still stretching
in his cradle."

Legolas places my hand upon his chest. His
fingers are cool, yet warm on top of my own. I feel the steady beating of his
heart, and blood is pulsing in my veins in the same rhythm.

"But here, here
nothing will change," he whispers, pressing my hand against his heart,
looking at me as if I were sky and sea and earth, all together.

That is when I cry.

He holds me tightly
in his arms. Somewhere in the distance of heavens stars are bursting to life
and dying away. My tears are petty in comparison, but large and painful as they
are shredding their way out of me.

I fall asleep with Legolas's
face bright before my eyes and his voice a quiet stream in my ears.

I see the green
leaves turn golden against the blue sky. I see the sky fade into a metallic
grey and a chilly wind blow through the leaves that shrivel and wither and are
caught in the wind. I see the tree crook and hang its breaking branches while
moss swallows the trunk. I see life leak out of the tree.

I try to touch the tree
and wrap my arms around it, but I cannot, for I no longer have a body. Lady
Galadriel is standing next to the tree like an ice-white flower in the grey of
the winter. I read sadness on her face. I try to cry out to her, but I cannot,
for I no longer have a voice. She turns her back, walks away and leaves the
tree to die. A mighty storm shakes the wasted trunk, and it shivers, wails,
breaks and screams as a beast struggling in agony. I watch all this from a
chamber of stone behind a barred window, and I cannot break out, though the
scream is cutting to my very core.

I wake with a start.
It is still dark outside, and the soft glimmer of fire is dancing on the walls.
The lantern has gone out. Legolas is standing naked
at the window and looking out. Calm and still while the world is changing.

"Were you
weeping?"

Legolas turns towards me a little too swiftly and
sharply. His body is firm and alert, but his face remains in shadow. It is hard
for me to imagine traces of tears on it.

"I thought you
were asleep," he replies, and his voice tells me nothing.

"I saw you. I
saw you wither and die."

"What do you
speak of?"

I think of the Lady,
the sadness on her face and something else behind it -- absoluteness,
inescapable will to settle matters into their predetermined course. I think of
how she turned her back and walked away.

"Come
here." I say it as a quiet plea, and Legolas
does not resist. He sits down next to me on the edge of the bed. I sit up and
stroke the back of his hand with my thumb. "Something happened to both of
us in the Golden Wood. You do not need to tell me, if you do not want to,"
I say, "but will you still let me tell you? I wish to understand, that is
all."

He nods slowly. I
tell him about the vision that tady ady had painted before my eyes in Lothl�rien; the tree that was the source of strength and
courage to me, a home and shelter; and I tell him about the dream where I saw
the tree die.

"The tree was
you," I say. "It was always you. But I do not understand the meaning
of this."

Legolas is still and mute as a statue of stone,
as if his spirit had suddenly escaped, leaving behind but an empty shell. When
he finally speaks, there is more sadness in his voice than I have ever heard
before.

"I knew it had
to be her doing. I just did not know how."

"No. It was our
doing. I came into your arms, because I wanted you. Not because I was sent
against my own will. You must never doubt that." I fall silent and
hesitate before continuing. "Unless you have a different
story to tell."

Legolas smiles a quick and faint smile that
flashes in the dark.

"I do not doubt
that. Yet we have been but insects in the webs of those stronger than us,"
he replies. "I will tell you. It is better we both know."

And thus he begins to
tell me. Witch wch word the image is woven fuller and wider, the threads take
their places and the colours brighten. I see my path grow narrow and my fate
tighten around me, and there is no wriggling out of it. The Evenstar
shines far ahead, but another sheen lights my dark
road. My predetermined part is to build a bridge between two worlds, to amend
what has been broken; but I myself must always remain divided in two, without
wholeness. It but build my happiness upon what I have been granted, even if my
will were otherwise.

"Now you know
what message was hidden in your dream," < cla class=SpellE>Legolas
says to end his tale. "But it was wrong about something. I will not wither
and die. I have not taken on a heavier strain than I can bear. We must not drag
the past behind us or push the future ahead as a burden, but take life as it is
given to us in this moment."

"That is
precisely what we have done, and now we are paying the price," I say, and
my voice stumbles and breaks.

Sadness is still
veiling his eyes, but something else ripples behind it. "Then let us at
least make the most of the moments that still belong to us," he replies.

Slowly Legolas draws the heavy bedcover off my legs, until the
chilly night air is licking my skin. His hands move over my body, and he opens
me with fierce, overwhelming tenderness. Then he takes me for the last time. He
sinks into me, is inside me like a knife deep in an open wound: cutting and
burning, making me writhe and scream. One day the coarse patterns of scar
tissue will cover the wound. I will be able to look at it aouchouch it years
from now, alone and in secret, when nobody knows, not even him.

Time and again we
whisper onto each other's skin all we shall never say after this night.

Shadows crawl along
the floor to the bed and spread over us. Behind their mesh silence grows
between us fuller than the words of any language. The cold blade of the moon
descends between us. The sharp-edged morning light opens a gulf between us, and
we stand still on sid sides of it. We watch a story known only to the two of
us turn colourless with the night, become unnoticeable and unimportant as it is
buried under time and memory.

His
story. My
story.

Outside on the
courtyard the White Tree is growing, reaching out its branches towards the sun
and heralding the beginning of a new age. The hour will come when a guard sees
from the highest watchr thr the one who is to step to the throne by my side.
When she arrives, I will take her hand amilemile at her as if I had seen her
face before my eyes every moment, as if her voice had never languished from my
ears, as if her image had never dimmed in my deceitful mortal memory. And songs
will be made of us that tell how all the stars flowered in the sky, when King Elessar wedded Arwen Und�miel, and the tale of their long waiting and labours
was come to fulfilment.

They tell of nothing
else.

When
Legolas and I leave the chamber at dawn, our steps
part into different directions.
I do not look back, and I will never know if he does.

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Notes:

There seems to be
some confusion in canon as to when Aragorn found the White Tree on Mount Mindolluin. The text near the end of the chapter
'The Steward and the King' (RotK) reads, 'And
Aragorn planted the new tree in the court by the fountain, and swiftly and
gladly it began to grow; and when the month of June entered in it was laden
with blossom.' This seems to suggest Aragorn found and planted the tree before
June. However, 'The Tale of Years' (LotR,
Appendix B) lists June 25th, 3019 T.A. as the finding date. Despite my
efforts I couldn't find an explanation for this inconsistency. For the purposes
of this story, I've relied on the date given in 'The Tale of Years', which
places the finding of the tree just before Arwen's
arrival at Minas Tirith and Aragorn and Arwen's wedding on the day of Midsummer.

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Leaves of Gold