A brief foreword, as is traditional and probably necessary.

This fic follows directly after my last multi chapter fic, The Silence in the Song. Silence took three years to write and is a bit of a beast, and is also the third part in rather a long series. I don't expect new readers to instantly cry 'egad!' and dash off to read that first, because it's a bit of a commitment. You SHOULD be okay without the history, although you won't know some of the OCs I reference and a few things might seem a bit odd out of context. Feel free to cry 'egad!' and dash off to read my back catalogue though; I'm certainly not going to stop you! :)

This fic is two thirds written already, I have a good ten chapters ready to go (more or less) and will not be abandoned. It is far more light-hearted, it isn't going to become the angst-a-thon that Silence became, and I genuinely hope that you enjoy it. Updates will be far more regular, chapters will generally be shorter than this one, but I've already chopped it in half and I couldn't trim it down any further.

Thanks to Lindir's Ghost, who I didn't actually give a chance to beta this. I launched it at her, at it's full original (huge) length, then decided to post it anyway. Sorry love, hope you enjoyed the first read-through in any case! Also to Vanimalion, who is ever a source of support and entertainment during my freakout moments, and to Cheeky Beak who should be very happy to see that Aragorn is present through this whole story. Finally, you get your wish my dear :)

Anyway, I think that's enough from me. I present to you - the Steward of the Second.

Have a great weekend :)

MyselfOnly

~{O}~

Northern Ithilien is waking up.

It has been a long winter, it feels like the longest I have ever known, but now we walk through glens and meadows with the sun warm upon our backs. Hills run with dancing snowdrops, absolute rivers of them, and trees rise up from a mist of bluebells – dappled by shadow and lit brightly by sun. Catkins fall into soft carpets, I can smell flowers and wet soil, and the trees are alive with birdsong. My heart is lighter than it has been in a long time.

Everywhere I look there is a new thing of beauty. The sky is a rich blueness without a single flaw, and then an hour later it is pummelling us with torrential rain only to clear up an hour after that. Thunderheads roll by – crisp white and sullen dark – but despite my lifelong dislike of rain in any form, the vagaries of the weather in spring is something to be borne… it is certainly dramatic, there is no question of that. At least it is not snowing.

We travel steadily southward, toward Minas Tirith. Very steadily. Eru, we would have been there a week ago if Legolas could bring himself to walk past a single tree without speaking to it!

He tells me that they are waking up, that they mumble and sigh and stir and I try to imagine it. He has told me that the voices of the trees are more like dreams: feelings and colours and sensation, an interconnection, a sense of being rooted through all of the world. And because they know only summer, they also know only joy.

I cannot imagine it, although I have tried, but I cannot find it in myself to grow impatient or cross with him for all of our delays. He stands with his hands pressed to the gnarled bark of an old elm… elegant fingers pressed into the rough ridges and furrows of the bark, twisted and coarse. His face is tilted into the bare canopy, his face exposed to the light. Legolas is a creature of the summer, and he is waking up as well.

Sunlight turns his hair to gold, his eyes river-clear and as blue as the sky. He turns to me and he smiles, a rare smile without any barriers at all – wide and guileless – and he laughs simply for the joy of it. It washes the darkness of the winter from my heart, and I cannot help but grin right back, shake my head and lean back against a tree of my own.

Legolas is not always an old archer. Sometimes he is a young elf, because in truth this is all he is.

~{O}~

"I am simply saying that it is barely worth the effort, Gimli," Legolas says.

I ignore him, but he is in one of his strange moods tonight and will not be ignored. "It is too windy, you are wasting your time. It is not even that cold!"

"Well," I huff irritably, "it is a good job that you are not in charge of fires then, is it not?"

Legolas scowls, hunkers down against a log and mutters to himself in his own tongue. I catch most of it but ignore him as best I can, and after half an hour I have coaxed a spluttering and ill-looking fire to life despite the wind. It is smoking badly and a fair gust will certainly put it out, my eyes are red and streaming, but I still give him a smug smile, dust my hands off and sit back. In truth I am blinking tears from my eyes and trying not to cough. It really is too windy tonight.

"You would have kept at that until you died," he accuses. "Just to prove a point."

"I am not so childish, Legolas," I inform him archly. He is not wrong.

Legolas could have built this fire. He probably could have done a better job in half the time but he is notoriously stingy when it comes to campfires. He is unfailingly practical at times; he does not often feel the cold and he does not need the light to see by. If I wish for a fire, I must make it myself, and frankly he can keep his opinions about it to himself.

He shuffles closer though, and I widen my eyes in disbelief.

"Get away from my fire," I instruct him very seriously. I gesture toward it with both hands, a grand and encompassing thing. "You did not wish for one, and so this is mine. You may behold its glory from afar."

He snorts a laugh, and in muted tones of black and sullen red I see his face relax and soften into that smile I see so infrequently these days. I grumble and huff, but I shift and shuffle until there is room beside me. He sits so that our shoulders nearly touch, pulls a handful of grass to throw at me half-heartedly and I bump my shoulder against his. He gives me a fond look, and we settle into silence.

Legolas and I have spent months apart. It has been the majority of the winter and a good part of spring since we last saw one another, but this last two weeks have been a blessing. I have missed him, and I think that he has missed me, and we have fallen into old habits as though our separation has only been for a matter of hours.

I think our time apart has been well spent, because Legolas is certainly far better than he was when I saw him last. He is different, that is something I had expected, but he is not the elfling that I left behind months ago either… broken in both body and mind. He has spent his time wisely: has managed to run off the majority of his madness, has started to find himself. Has started to rebuild his walls.

But still, he is different.

He says that I am different as well, although I know not how. I have spent these last weeks with my father – or rather, in my father's halls, because he has been far too busy to spend much time with me. It has been good to spend time with sensible and sane folk, to walk beneath the mountain and not have anything odd or dangerous happen to me, and although I have spent the time in healing I have also been terribly bored. Dwarves are fine folk – predictable and stout and strong – but I have become far too used to elves. I would never admit this, of course.

"You realise this is how it started last time," I murmur beneath my breath, and although Legolas replies with nothing but a muffled grunt I understand it as though he had spoken. The link that the Shadow gave us is fading, indeed it is almost gone, but Legolas and I were able to read each other before the Shadow forced this knowing upon us.

It is not gone entirely, I can still feel him: a brush of his thoughts intruding upon mine, knowledge that I have never earned, a clarity of sensation that I have never known before… my whole world tinted now through the eyes of an elf. If I concentrate, if I focus, then I can make it stronger and clearer and sometimes we can talk this way, but we do not. As much as this is an honour – and it is an honour – I do not think that either of us wish to be reminded of how we came to be this way. It is too dark, and we will never be free of it if we do not let it go.

It is difficult, though; the last time that we came to Minas Tirith it started off a chain of events that had Legolas and I both ready to die beneath a mountain. It is the reason that the elfling is so different now – permanently on the edge of madness, blinded by the Song of Iluvatar – and also why he and I have so much to fix between us. It is my fault he is this way, entirely my fault, and this journey is nothing but a reminder of it.

"There was no way to avoid it, I had to go to Estel," he mutters glumly. "My father wrote to him. If we do not go to Minas Tirith then Gondor will march upon the Greenwood, and my father says he will hand me over gladly."

"It was your job to write to Estel," I tell him. "When we left Minas Tirith, he told you. You should have written to him in the winter; he could not have marched for weeks – he would have calmed down by the time the snows thawed."

"Aye, but Gimli, knowing me as you do, how was that ever going to be a likelihood? And you could have written to him as well."

I open my mouth but I have nothing to say, because he is right. Aragorn might have tasked Legolas with writing to him, but I knew that he would not. I knew all along, and even if he had written a thousand letters there was nothing to stop me sending tidings of my own. I poke at the fire with a particularly sturdy stick, sending sparks up toward the blackened sky. The wind catches them and sends them in a dervish.

"What would I have told him, Legolas?" I ask quietly. "How could I possibly have put it into words?"

There is a silence that settles between us then, but there is a lot said in that silence. In moments I hear it all, feel it all: exhaustion, grief, loss, the utter sadness and hurt that I carried all of this winter past. I feel every moment of it, crushing me until I struggle to breathe, and Legolas rests his hand upon my shoulder. He grips it painfully, brings me back to our little campfire on the Pelennor. I clear my throat and poke angrily at the fire.

Legolas does not look at me, does not react, but I know that he can read my heart as though it is his own. I know because it is not the first time – not the first time he has felt my memories, not the first time that I have felt his. The two of us keep re-living the winter over and over again and we cannot break free of it.

"Estel will understand," Legolas says softly.

I do not reply – because out of all of our friends I know that Aragorn will understand better than any – but it does not mean that I wish to talk about it. I turn and I catch Legolas' eye – so raw and open and hard to meet now. He softens it with a blink and a smile, and I take a deep breath… release it carefully.

"He will try," I concede. I meet his gaze, although it is difficult, and I push my feelings toward him because the last vestiges of what the Shadow gave us means he will hear it. I try to make him understand. "He will never truly know."

"Of course not," Legolas turns his attention back toward our sickly fire. He jabs a few pieces of firewood in strategic places, shifts the wood around, and suddenly it is healthy and strong and I cannot help but scowl at how annoying that is.

He turns back to me, and eyes of summer blue fight past every defence I have; an elven gaze burning into my thoughts. I consider how like his father he is now: more distant, more intense, more sad. It was not there before – not before the Shadow, not before this winter – but it is there now.

"You and I are the only two who know, but he will not ask."

I do not wish to speak about it any longer. I do not wish to acknowledge it, I do not wish to ever mention it again. With Legolas it is different; Legolas is… Legolas. It is not the same with him, it never is, because I do not have to discuss it at all. Legolas simply understands.

I rub at my beard, I close my eyes, and he grips at my shoulder again.

"He will not ask, Gimli," he repeats softly, and I nod. I believe him, and I am glad, because I do not think that I could talk about it even if I wished to.

~{O}~

We are half a day from Minas Tirith, and Legolas has found a small stand of apple trees. They are small and wizened, as apple trees always seem, and I often think of them as looking like old men. Curled brown fronds of winter-dead ferns choke the ground, but I can see fresh green fiddle-heads poking up through the scruff and my clothes catch on bramble thorns.

Legolas presses my hands to the bark of the eldest tree, its branches looping and low and wide. I can see the faintest hint of milk-white flower buds pushing through, rich green leaves unfurling like an exhale, and although I am very dubious about this I allow it… I am excited, of all things.

The Shadow gave us this ability to share a mind and heart, and through it Legolas has shown me wonders I had never imagined possible. I have heard the Song of Iluvatar – pure and perfect, the way only the Firstborn can hear it. I have heard the singing in the Stars and watched their stories, I have felt what it is to hear and see and know everything around me… be a part of it like a melody. I have felt the wildness of the wood, the calling of the wind and the joy in the storm.

Our time is running out, and Legolas still has much he would show me before he no longer can.

He pushes my hands to the bark, clumsy and thick and graceless, and he covers them with hands elegant and white and scarred. I stretch my mind toward his – I know how to do this now, and it is easy… so easy.

I hear the waking of the trees in spring, and it is overwhelming.

They are giants, far larger than their size. Their thoughts are like air, stretching deep down below them and extending out around them… whispers and words in the wind, colour and sensation. This tree is old and sleepy and slow, but it is happy. It is surrounded by its children, happy to feel the sun, and it knows that there is an elf here because it is suddenly very focussed upon the sparrows that build a nest in its branches. It pushes forward the image/thought/feeling of them like a proud parent showing them off, presenting them to Legolas, and I am nothing more than an observer when the elfling replies.

Admiration, he sends. Fondness, and happiness and greeting all at once. It is an elegant communication, beautiful, and I am carried upon these feelings and thoughts like dander upon a breeze.

It is pure. So pure and beautiful… innocent.

I hear the waking of the wood. I hear a part of the world that I have been denied all of my life, and I wonder how I will ever live knowing that this is beyond my reach. The apple tree surrounds me with hope and sleepy happiness, twisted tightly with the Song of Iluvatar like the clear chime of a bell, and it cuts through the stain of darkness that sits in my heart. It lightens it, fades it, just a bit.

Legolas opens my eyes. He shows me the dreams of trees, and I am overwhelmed… it is too much.

I weep for the joy of it.

~{O}~

"He should have more windows," the elfling observes, although I am far more attentive toward the wine in my hand than the room I am in. There is a fire before me, a deep rug of sheepskin beneath my feet, and I am sat in a wing backed chair that makes me feel as though I am being submerged. I am warm and settled, but the elfling is pacing as though he is about to be attacked at any moment.

"You should tell him," I tell say certainly. "You live mostly in trees. I am sure he will be very receptive to your observations on his windows."

Legolas gives me a flat look, full of scorn, and when I do not respond he returns to pacing. I can feel the agitation in him – scratching at my mind like madness, like an itch – but I cannot do anything for him. Not right now. We are at the very highest point of Minas Tirith in one of Aragorn's receiving rooms, but we might as well be trapped in the deepest dungeon as far as Legolas is concerned. He is ragged, burning… ready to claw his fingers to the bone to be free of the mountain.

The old Legolas could have hidden behind his walls – those good elven walls inside of his heart, born from centuries of hardship and pain and experience. Walls that keep him hidden from the world, safe and sane, and removed from everything that can cause him hurt. The old Legolas could have endured this far better, but this Legolas cannot, because his walls are gone… destroyed by a foolish and selfish dwarf. This Legolas cannot abide being confined, and I have made him this way.

He has opened every window, drawn every curtain, and I am utterly frozen but I do not say anything. I scrape my chair closer to the fire with a screech and his eyelid flickers, but he says nothing. I hate seeing him like this. I hate it.

Aragorn takes this moment to finally arrive, the relief I feel is crushing, and the tension in the room is broken in an instant. I have just a heartbeat to feel a shadow of guilt – there is no way that Legolas did not feel how relieved I am – but it is washed away; the elfling is not so cruel as to hold me at fault for such things, and as soon as Aragorn is with us, everything else… it is of no matter at all.

He looks windswept and harassed, but in my experience he always looks that way. The King of Gondor has a scruffiness that no amount of finery or adornment will ever wipe clean. He is a ranger at heart and always will be – he is still a wolf. Still proud and wild and fine.

Aragorn stands for a moment – dressed in simple clothes, because he is a simple man – and he watches us through a thatch of dark hair that he really should trim more regularly if he wishes to be taken seriously. It is his eyes that mark him – penetrating and pale and intense – and now that I am beneath his regard I really wish that I was not. I spend a lot of time being stared at by elves, and it is very unpleasant indeed, but it is not wildness or strangeness that makes Aragorn's regard uncomfortable. It is unpleasant because when Aragorn looks at you… really looks at you, you wish for nothing more than to be better than you are. To be brave and strong, and to make him proud.

I am not sure that I am worthy of it right now.

"You look awful," he says with a frown, ruining any kingly effect. He is looking straight at Legolas, thankfully, and the elfling's face drops into a stormy scowl. I am in for a long night, I know it in a second, and so I pour myself another cup of wine.

"Well that is rude," Legolas bites out. "Not 'welcome to Minas Tirith', or 'how was your journey', or even 'I have missed you, my dearest friend'. You could have insulted me by letter, I need not be here for it. Come Gimli, we are leaving."

"Do not bring me into this," I mutter, but I am not sure that I was meant to reply. I pull my chair even closer to the fire, prop my feet upon the footstool, and leave them to it.

"You are being too sensitive; you have no right to be indignant," Aragorn pulls a face. "And Faramir is my dearest friend now; elflings who do not write to their friends are replaced by far better ones. Your father wrote to me Legolas. Your father!"

"Gimli did not write either," Legolas mutters obstinately, and I say it a bit louder this time:

"Do not bring me into this!"

"That is… that is absurd!" Aragorn cries, his hands flying out into a gesture of utter frustration. I spend a lot of my life flapping around like that – I am often pushed into this sort of apoplexy – but it is the first time I have seen Aragorn this way. He strides across the room and Legolas moves away, just enough to keep a certain distance between them. I do not think that he realises he has done it, but Aragorn certainly does; I see it in the narrowing of his eyes, the slightest pause in his step.

"When you nearly die," the king grits through his teeth, "you write to your friends. You do not leave it for months, you do not leave it for your father to do, and you especially do not do these things when your father is Thranduil Oropherion. I have a fondness for him, but he is sparse in detail and has a love of excruciatingly florid words. My Quenya is not particularly fluent, Legolas. I had to send out for a translator."

At this Legolas snorts something vaguely like laughter, but he is trying very hard to be cross and will not give in so easily. He folds his arms, hides all of his annoyance behind that infuriating mask of his: cold, distant; insufferably elven.

"You think me an invalid? In need of protection?" he asks carefully. "And you think Faramir better than me? Ha! You are welcome to one another – see if I care at all."

Aragorn closes his eyes and bows his head, pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger and glances at me for assistance.

"Perhaps you should fetch your crown," I suggest helpfully. "It might make you feel better."

This time Legolas definitely laughs – quickly smothered – and I can see Aragorn giving me a foul look out of the corner of my eye. I turn and meet it.

"You started this, my friend; you know how he can be. You have only yourself to blame."

"You are getting as bad as he is," Aragorn accuses. I give no response other than to raise my cup in salute and I hear Aragorn sigh, deflating, just as I knew he would. The man who defeated the darkness and reclaimed the throne of Gondor is helpless in the face of this elfling, or perhaps he is clever enough to know when a battle cannot be won. There is silence in the room for a very long time before he speaks again.

"So," he enquires pleasantly, starting all over again. "Welcome to Minas Tirith. How was your journey?"

And this time Legolas cannot help but laugh. Bright and sudden, a bird bursting into flight.

Legolas and Aragorn finally greet one another like the brothers that they are, and I consider fetching a book to read whilst they embrace. It is fierce and heartfelt, terribly drawn out, but I am rewarded once they are at arm's length again. Legolas is smiling like the dawn – wide and open and true – and I feel his joy like a beam of sunlight through the trees.

It brings a fond smile unbidden to my face, but then it is my turn to be crushed. Aragorn embraces me fiercely enough to drive all air from my lungs, he is laughing brightly and clapping me on the back, and I cannot hide my smile any longer.

Eru, it is good to see him. I have missed him terribly. There have been times of late that I would have given my beard to see him again and now we are here, together, and everything is well.

"Ah, laddie," I breathe around a broad grin, "it is good to see you… so very good."

"He has spent the winter with dwarves, Estel," Legolas confides seriously. "I would not take it as too much a compliment."

"It has been good for my nerves, certainly."

"And your waist," he murmurs, but I take no offense; a sturdy girth is a thing to be proud of in a dwarf. There are many years ahead of me to work on such a thing, but I have been running about with elves for too long – I am possibly the leanest dwarf on Arda.

"Better to be made of stone and leather than twigs and grass," I sniff, and when I catch his eye he gives me a fond look. He rests his hand upon my shoulder – right where he always rests it.

"I have a thing to ask of you whilst you are here," Aragorn settles into a chair. He sits as though it is a throne, as though he is in the centre of the room although he is not, and I think that in any other company he would be the exact centre of attention. Unfortunately Legolas has started to become anxious again – I can feel it creeping upon the edges of his mind like flames – and he is distracting us both. He wanders about the room, picking things up and putting them back down again, trailing long fingers against fabric and stone and wood. He makes a prompting gesture when Aragorn does not continue – elegant and measured – but he does not look over.

"Faramir is late – he was meant to act as steward for a week whilst you are here. Arwen says that if I do not leave the city and spend time with my friends then she will divorce me, and I believe her, but I cannot go until he arrives. Until then I would like you to spend time with the constabulary – teach them a few things."

"The what?" Legolas drops a tiny ornate glass bottle. I cringe as it shatters into dust but he pays it no mind, because this has snatched away his attention entirely. He looks baffled.

"The constabulary, Legolas," Aragorn repeats slowly, as though to a child. "I do not wish to have a city ruled by an army. I will have my law governed by honourable men, and I will have real courts to mete out justice. An army has no place in a time of peace… not to govern peaceable people."

"That is a fine thing, Aragorn," I say carefully, because Legolas has lost his words. "A fine thing indeed, but I am certain it has not passed you by that neither of us are men. What could a dwarf and an elf teach men of mannish law?"

"Not law," he disagrees. "Any man can learn law, it is justice and fairness and… Valar save me, a modicum of sensibility would not go amiss!"

I toy with making some comment about how this rules Legolas out, but I am trying to be less predictable, and this is far too interesting to be starting arguments. Aragorn rubs his face wearily, tents his hands over his mouth and then huffs a laugh.

"Oh Gimli," he breathes, then laughs again and settles back. "So far the only thing we have done is narrow down that their cloaks should be either white or green, and not any other colour."

"White would be fitting," I offer vaguely, hoping that I am being helpful. "It would be visible, certainly."

"Do you know how much it costs to bleach wool so that it is completely white?" he asks pleasantly. "Well neither did I until recently. The council have spent hours… hours arguing over it. They have also argued over whether they should be armed with swords or perhaps crossbows, or whether this will merely encourage our criminals into armaments. Whether those who served in the military should keep their rank, or whether a new ranking system should be created. Whether there should be divisions, what the minimum joining age should be, how they should be trained and by whom… it is endless! So yes… at least we have the cloaks narrowed down to two colours."

"They should be white," Legolas muses absently, back to wandering the room. "That would look fine indeed – like starlight, visible for all to see. I agree with Gimli though, Estel; I do not know what help we can be."

He replaces the book he has been leafing through, rests his hand upon the shelf. The firelight catches his hair in glints of gold and despite what he says, I see a kindling of something in him. Interest… he is interested in this, and by Eru the lad needs to be distracted right now.

"Legolas," Aragorn quirks the slightest smile, "you were schooled on how to govern a kingdom. You were taught all of this a very long time ago, and you have spent the years in between commanding elves in battle. Gimli is far smarter and far more sensible than you have ever been – I am sure that between the two of you, you can work something out."

Legolas ignores the slight, our eyes lock and a lot passes between us. He is curious, interested, and I admit that I am not particularly adverse to it either. It is certainly a way to pass the time, and if anything it will take Legolas' mind off things for a while. Aragorn scents victory on the air, leans forward and breaks into our private counsel.

"Just meet with them," he pushes. "See how they are, see what they need, advise me on what needs to be done. It is all that I ask."

And I know that he has won. He has put just enough of a plea into his tone that Legolas would never refuse him now, even if he wished to. Legolas rolls his eyes – well aware that he has been manipulated – because he has never really been able to refuse Aragorn anything, and Aragorn knows it full well.

Our sneaky king grins hugely, settles back, and pours himself a cup of wine. At least I know what we will be getting up to for the next few days.

TBC

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