Left behind

by Athelas

Summary: No one likes to be left behind, Aragorn least of all. While he has to stay at Helm's Deep after the battle he learns to understand that he is not the only one who is left behind. Friendship only, no romance, no slash. Slightly AU.

Disclaimer: Most of the characters in this story belong to J.R.R Tolkien whom I admire greatly. It is his masterpiece, I only lend his characters for my own pleasure, not for money.

Genre: Drama (Non-Slash)

Status: Work-in-progress

Feedback: Leave a review or write an e-mail!
Every feedback, be it constructive criticism or approval, is much appreciated!

A/N: I want to thank Cheryl W for looking through my story and encouraging me with her praise and help. The only reason why you won't stumble over mistakes all through this story is because she helped me correct all the errors a non-native English speaker does while writing. =) Yes, I am still learning English in school and I like it a lot, but it is still far from being perfect.

This story won't be a very long one, only about four or five chapters. I will try and update regularly but at the moment I am very busy and I won't make any promises. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoy reading my little story.

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Chapter One

He was floating in darkness. His body seemed weightless, hanging somewhere in a cosy blackness. Briefly he wondered how he had gotten there but worries and solid thoughts were not made for this place and soon melted away.

Time seemed to pass by, but it did not matter to him. A tiny thought, more a feeling than a serious reflection, began nagging in his mind, even though he tried to ignore it.

There had been something before. Something was happening. He was in this darkness for a reason, but he could not remember what the reason was.

"Lord Aragorn? Please, open your eyes!"

He heard a voice. He knew that voice! But his thoughts were still hazy, his mind unwilling to return to the voice, to solid ground. He tried to bury himself deeper in the comfortable blankets of nothingness, but it was too late.

Aches and pains began to awaken everywhere in his body, even in parts he did not even know that they could hurt. A lot. Simultaneously he became aware of the fact that he lay on the hard ground, the coldness of stone seeping into his body.

'Not nice,' his body told him and he agreed whole-heartedly.

"Lord Aragorn! I know you are awake! Open your eyes, now, or I will go and fetch your Elf companion!"

Elf companion? Who could that be?

He knew many Elves, and every one of them was annoyingly overprotective. Perhaps it was better to comply and leave the peaceful darkness behind. No one enjoyed the mothering of Elves and he least of all.

Slowly he opened his eyes. Light assaulted him instantly and he blinked, trying to make out anything in front of his eyes. The brightness hurt his head and a throbbing awakened in his right temple.

Where was the merciful nothingness now?

He moaned softly and someone shielded his eyes from the bright daylight. A face hovered in front of his eyes and he could make out fair locks. The features were too blurry to recognize.

"You are awake, finally. You had me worried. How are you feeling? Is anything hurting more fiercely than the rest? I told you to rest, but you would not accept my counsel!"

Éowyn!

The voice was definitely hers, but the phrases and questions came out so fast it took him quite a while to understand what had been said.

'Not only Elves are overprotective,' he amended in his thoughts, 'some Humans are as well.'

"I'm fine," he rasped, surprised at how weak his voice sounded. He was not sure at all of his answer, but it was the first thing that came to his mind. Suddenly he remembered the reason why he was lying here and feeling as if he had had a fight with a pack of Wargs and lost badly.

The battle of Helms Deep was over. He was still in the fortress. Even after the Uruk-Hai had lost the combat, there were still some that stayed behind and engaged the Rohirrim in skirmishes. It began to darken again, when finally every one of the vile creatures in the stronghold was killed and the rest upon the field had fled.

There had been no time for rest after the fight. Injured soldiers needed to be tended, dead to be buried. No rest for the weary. Aragorn's skill as a healer was needed everywhere. He calmed the ones in pain, sewed severe gashes, washed grime and filth from wounds, made healing teas and comforted the ones doomed to die until they had drawn their last breath.

He laboured until the first rays of a rising sun greeted the land of Rohan again. Then his body proclaimed that it had finally had enough and shut down on its own.

Aragorn vaguely remembered tending to a dying boy with a heavily bleeding wound to the stomach. The boy had sobbed in pain the whole time, clinging to his mother's hand. Aragorn had tried to still the bleeding but he finally realised that there was nothing left to be done except easing the lad's agony. The boy's mother had begged him to help her son, embracing his legs and touching his cheeks. In spite of her pleading, he had given the lad a tea with pain-killing herbs and sedatives. The boy had not lasted long after sleeping peacefully for a while. There had been no more pain in the end.

After the boy had died Aragorn could only remember hauling himself to his feet and looking for support on the wall, one arm outstretched. The room spun dizzily, making it difficult for him to decide which was up and which was down. Then everything went black. He could not even remember how he fell.

"Aragorn? What ails you? Please, tell me."

Well, this question was quite a good one. His whole body seemed to consist of pain; it was hard to distinguish the places where the pain came from. He felt thoroughly exhausted and feverish, probably from the now infected wounds on his shoulders from the tumble of the cliff. And he felt ill. His head hurt, which was not all that surprising after his fall from the wall when it exploded.

'Elladan and Elrohir would laugh at me for falling so many times in such a few days,' he mused idly while Éowyn looked him up and down with a concerned gaze. 'And after that, they would lecture me to no end.'

A new source of pain suddenly penetrated his thoughts and left him gasping for breath. Éowyn had tried to lift his mail shirt to get a better view on his wounds and with that action she awoke a new pain in his side. Only now he remembered where he had it from. A Dunlending bolt from a crossbow had pierced his mail shirt and lodged itself deeply in his side. In the heat of battle, he had given the wound no attention, too entangled in the fight as he had been.

In the aftermath, he had felt the pain in his side, but he had never gotten the time to tend to it properly.

"Éowyn," Aragorn gasped. "Please… do not touch the… mail shirt!"

The White Lady was thoroughly confused by this plea, but complied. She reached for a blanket, then folded it together and shoved it under Aragorn's head as a pillow. He realised that he still lay on the ground of the dead boy's room, exactly where he had collapsed. Therefore he could not have been out for a very long time.

Éowyn studied his pale face for a long moment, then her gaze fell on her hands. Alarmed, she noticed red streaks of blood on her fingers and she looked again to Aragorn's side, where his mail shirt still covered most of his body.

"You are bleeding," she stated the obvious. "I need to see the wound, it will only trouble you more the longer it is left untended."

Aragorn nodded weakly, still trying to manage his pain. The bolt was moved only a tiny bit when Éowyn lifted the mail shirt but it was enough to send Aragorn into a new hell of agony. Desperately trying to stifle his cry of pain, he bit down hard on his lip. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth and the world around him seemed to waver in front of his eyes. The stony ceiling above him was in focus one moment, only to be a blotch of grey in the next second.

"Try and stay with me, Aragorn," he heard Éowyn's voice say as if she was miles away. "This wound is serious. How did you manage to conceal it for such a long time? And how, pray tell, did you stay on your feet the whole night with the loss of so much blood?"

"Practice," he whispered tiredly and felt the grip on consciousness slip from his fingers. He felt a new stab of pain in his side, and he knew no more.

Darkness encroached the land of Rohan. The mountains loomed like giants over the stony fortress of Helms Deep and cast the plains early in shadows. The coldness crept from the stony walls as soon as the sun did not send its rays over the keep anymore.

Legolas averted his gaze from the window and the landscape. Silently, he got up and fetched a second blanket, which he gently spread over the sleeping form of his friend. The Human stirred a bit, but did not wake.

The Elf sighed and tiredly rubbed his eyes. It was rare for his kind to feel such weariness but after more than eighty years of friendship with Aragorn, he had gotten used to this feeling. Whenever the Human was around, trouble was not far away.

He sighed again, this time more acutely. Oh, how he hated it when the Human got injured! He knew no one this stubborn when it came to injuries as Aragorn.

'I should have noticed something was wrong,' Legolas chided himself. 'When does he ever come out of a battle unscathed?'

Oh yes, there had been the battle with the Uruk-Hai at Amon Hen, as Boromir died. And the one time with the Ringwraiths at Amon Sûl, when Aragorn had been travelling with the Halflings.

'Perhaps these two fights, when he emerged safe and sound, have made me too careless. I almost got used to an Aragorn without injury.'

Legolas still felt his insides go cold when he thought back to the moment early this day when a very distressed Éowyn came running into the yard where he had been burying the dead with Gimli and told him that Aragorn lay bleeding and unconscious in one of the healing chambers. Leaving Gimli behind to fetch Gandalf and a healer, the Elf had gone with Éowyn and had found his friend as she had described him.

Aragorn's face had been terribly pale and only a faint rising of his chest indicated that he was merely unconscious. With nothing left to do other than waiting for the arrival of Gandalf and the healer, he had grabbed the Human's hand while speaking softly to him in the High Tongue.

Together with Éowyn, they had moved him carefully to the bed, where only half an hour prior the deadly wounded boy had lain. His drying blood still coated the blankets and mingled with the blood of Aragorn, which dropped steadily from the wound to his side.

Gandalf arrived a short time later, a healer in tow. The healer, Léod was his name, had not been happy at all to see the man, who had helped him greatly through the whole night, lying injured in bed. While Legolas and Gandalf each sat on one side of the bed and monitored Aragorn, the healer pulled out the bolt. Blood gushed from the wound unhindered now and Léod was pressed to staunch the flood quickly. He succeeded, but only barely. Dressing the wound had not been easy at all, because there were already first signs of infection setting in. The older injuries from the fight with the Wargs, which had gotten inflamed and had caused a low fever, were in addition weakening the Ranger. On top of it all, Aragorn had been running around with a concussion for the last day, which would cause him quite a headache when he awakened.

The healer, however, had mostly been concerned about the wound to his side. The loss of blood was not easy to deal with when a patient was already injured. The slightest movement could open it again.

For everyone in the room it was clear to see that Aragorn would not be getting up for a long time.

Legolas turned his gaze again to the window and over to the mountains, which were now fully blending in with the darkness of the night.

They were running out of time. Gandalf planned to go to Isengard soon and to make sure that Saruman could not be doing any harm again. There was more than that to the journey, but to Legolas' questions Gandalf had only answered, "Picking up a bit of long lost trouble."

'Wizards and their secrets,' Legolas thought, inwardly shaking his head but smiling nonetheless.

But Gandalf had made it clear that Legolas and Gimli should come with him in case that some scattered hords of Uruk-Hai would attack them. Only a few Rohirrim would be going with them because most of them were too exhausted and filled with grief over their dead relatives. They needed time for the burial and caring for the wounded.

Legolas did not look forward to leaving Aragorn behind, injured and alone as he was. Nevertheless he understood the importance of this mission. Gandalf would never ask such a thing of him if there was no reason behind. Two more days they would wait, on the third they would leave for Isengard.

A soft moan brought the Elf out of his thoughts and to the side of his friend in an instant. The Human stirred but stopped abruptly as the motion awoke pain in his side. His eyes flew open and only Legolas' quick reaction stopped Aragorn's hand from clutching his wounded side.

"Do not touch it, my friend. It will merely make the pain worse."

Aragorn's painfilled and slightly confused gaze stopped at the Elf's face. Legolas could see how hard his friend tried to focus on him and he smiled a little. Carefully, he sat on the bed and gave Aragorn enough time to look around and gather his bearings, while he stroked some tangled strands of hair out of his friend's face. The lecture could wait a little longer. Besides, it was no fun when the Human was too sleepy to be offended by his words.

"Don't make knots in it," Aragorn said softly and feebly tried to shove his friend's hand away from his hair.

Legolas chuckled, but let go of the Human's hair.

"My friend, your hair is hopeless anyway. I cannot make it worse than it is now."

"Not true," Aragorn murmured but the hint of a smile played around his lips.

"Yes Human, it is true. Along with quite a lot of other things you absolutely wanted to hide," Legolas said sternly and the smile immediately disappeared from Aragorn's lips as he felt a lecture coming. "What in Eru's name were you thinking to hide an injury like that?"

If Aragorn had not been in great pain already, he would have squirmed under the grim stare of the Elf.

"I would have tended to it, but there was no time," Aragorn answered softly, knowing fully well that his friend would not accept it as an excuse. "There were others in need Legolas, I could not let them die because of my discomfort."

"Discomfort?" Legolas asked, his voice deadly quiet. Then his demeanour changed from calm to downright fuming in less than an instant. The worry for his friend and the long days of fighting had made his temper short. "Discomfort? You are badly hurt! If you had left this wound a day longer untended, infection and blood loss would have caused your death, foolish Human!"

Aragorn, however, felt the anger rising in him as well. He was no child anymore, how dared the Elf speak to him as if he were a little boy of six years! Sixty years ago, he would have cringed under Legolas' angry words and tried to apologise but the situation was wholly different now. There was more at stake than there had been in his youth. Yes, he had been reckless and stupid sometimes in his life, but always there had been only his own life in danger. Unlike now. There were others who depended on him, on his leadership or on his skills as a healer. It was not just Legolas and him anymore.

"Do not call me foolish ever again," Aragorn said lowly. "Did you see the young boys in the fight? Did you see their mothers, praying that their sons and husbands may come back safely from battle? Have you seen the wounds, the gashes, the severed limbs, the men crying out in pain? How can you stand by and do nothing to help them? They believed in me during the battle and they believed in me afterwards to help them, to heal them! For all the mistakes I made in battle, they had to pay for! They are not just foolish Humans, as you tend to think of my race sometimes, Legolas, they are living beings and every one of them in this keep is dear to me!"

Aragorn did not realise that he was shouting now. His usually calm temper was at an end with all the fighting, the dying and his own hurts. The whole argument reminded him too much of their quarrel in the weaponry before the battle, but he could not stop himself.

Legolas stared at him, mouth agape, and the hurt he felt at the angry words from his friends reflected clearly in his eyes. Abruptly, he turned around and reached for the door when he heard the painfilled groan from the Human. The Elf hesitated, wishing to flee the stinging words and his friend's anger. Slowly he turned around.

Aragorn lay curled up on himself in bed, the pain written all over his taut features. He had rolled close to the edge of the bed and now lay in danger of falling off. Legolas refused to imagine what would be the consequences of a tumble from the bed for his already wounded friend.

In an instant he was back at the bed and caught Aragorn, as the Human rolled over the edge in his agony. The Elf felt him tighten more in his arms as the pain got worse.

"Shhh," Legolas soothed. "Another tumble would be one too many this week."

The Human did not answer. He just lay there, eyes tightly closed.

After some time, in which Aragorn remained unmoving in Legolas' arms, the Elf laid him back in the bed, thinking him asleep again. As Legolas pulled the blankets over the still form, grey eyes opened, glazed over in pain and exhaustion.

"I'm sorry, my friend," he whispered, not daring himself to look into the Elf's eyes. "I didn't mean to shout."

"It is alright," Legolas answered, even though his eyes still held the hurt of the angry words. "We will discuss it when you are a little stronger. I will leave you now to your rest."

Aragorn nodded, although he was unhappy to leave things as they were. However, he was too tired to keep his eyes open any longer and surrendered himself to the much needed sleep.

Legolas himself suddenly felt very tired. They really needed to talk! Aragorn's sudden outburst had left him pondering some aspects of their friendship of late.

The Human had never been a selfish person, even as a boy he had always liked to help others. Though he had loathed the burden of leadership, he had accepted it, although unwillingly. Nevertheless, his quality as a leader had shone through everything he did.

However, during the battle and last night, Aragorn had worked himself into exhaustion with such a dedication and determination that it surprised even Legolas. Something had changed Aragorn and though he had thoroughly overexerted himself this time, enormous strength and devotion had lain behind his every move.

Legolas had observed the men and women in the keep looking up to the Human, filled with hope and awe. And Aragorn seemed to accept his role. He seemed to be ready to be their leader and the men followed him willingly.

The defending of the fortress had demanded every ounce of this strength and concentration. The personal needs and personal pleasure had to be put aside even that of their long friendship. It stung Legolas to get neglected by his friend, even when everyone else gained from it, most of all Aragorn himself.

The Elf struggled some time with the fact that it had been jealousy for a good part that had let him act so strangely but finally learned to accept it as the truth.

Aragorn had changed, he had grown to a strong leader, one that was ready to give everything. Legolas on the other hand had been unwilling to accept the change in Aragorn, he still saw the careless youth and reckless friend in him. He had even hindered the Human on his path with quarrels and doubts when he should have supported him.

Legolas hung his head in shame. Suddenly everything seemed much clearer, their disagreements and Aragorn pulling back from him. What an awful friend he had been for Aragorn! Now he felt thoroughly miserable and he turned halfway around to apologise to the Human, but then he remembered that his friend was asleep. Not a good time to disturb his rest now.

Still feeling depressed and shameful, the Elf went to the door and stepped out on the floor to go to find some rest. But he only took one step on the corridor before he came to a sudden stop.

Gandalf was leaning against the wall beside the door, lazily smoking his pipe.

"Are you feeling better now?" the old wizard asked in his deep calm voice, a knowing twinkle in his eyes.

"Why should I be feeling better? I am not the one grievously hurt," Legolas responded, suspicion rising in him that Gandalf knew more than he let on.

"That depends on the way you are looking at it. Physically it is not you, you are correct there."

This answer served merely to strengthen Legolas' suspicion. He narrowed his eyes.

"Gandalf, have you been eavesdropping?"

The wizard only chuckled, smoke drifting from his mouth.

"My dear boy, there was no need to eavesdrop. I am sure the whole keep heard the two of you. I am relieved that Aragorn is finally awake. Although I am sure the shouting has done him no good."

There was no trace of accusation in Gandalf's voice, but Legolas still felt the blame lie heavily on his shoulders. The wizard pushed himself from the wall and laid a hand comfortingly upon the Elf's shoulder.

"Not all of this is your fault, Legolas. It is good that you noticed what is going on and I am sure that everything will work out in time. There will be more of the old Estel in Aragorn once the times are a bit calmer. But at the moment, you must let Estel go so that Elessar can come forth."

Legolas nodded, calmed a little by the soft words of the wizard. They slowly walked down the corridor until they came to a halt in front of the door to Legolas' guestroom which he shared together with Gimli. It was no real guestroom, just a small spare room for blankets and healing utensils, but it sounded very appealing to the weary Elf, even though there were merely two blankets on the floor instead of beds to sleep upon.

"Did you already tell Aragorn of our pending departure to Isengard?" Gandalf asked hesitantly, knowing full well that the Ranger would not like the idea of being left behind at all.

"No, I did not," the Elf answered determinedly. "And I will not. There are enough disagreements and arguments in our way already, I will not add a further one. Besides, it was your idea, therefore it will be you who tells him."

Gandalf grumbled a little but finally agreed. A small smile crept onto the Elf's lips as he watched the wizard walking away, still mumbling to himself something about disrespectful young Elflings. Legolas closed the door, cast himself on the thin blanket on the floor and for the first time in many days, he got some well-deserved sleep.

-TBC-

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I am curious to hear what you think… I won't beg you for reviews, but please know that I would be very happy to get some feedback. As I said before, I appreciate constructive criticism as well.