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Legolas sighed and closed his eyes, as if that could shield him from the pain he was creating for the both of them as her voice hit his ears, “What are you saying, Legolas?”
Avaleina’s voice was half choked with tears and the other half ringing with fury. He kept his eyes closed because he knew he could not bear to see her expression when he answered her question.
“I’m saying I don't want to be with you anymore.” He steeled his soul so that he could at least meet her eye for the last part, “I can’t live like this anymore. Loving you hurts more than not.”
She didn’t speak to him, just searched his face looking for cracks in his facade. Her eyes saw through every single part of him, but still her mouth stayed shut.
So Legolas spoke again, “I mean it this time, I really do. I can’t do this. I won’t do this.”
Ava’s jaw quivered slightly but she managed to steady it before speaking, “Legolas, I meant what I said last time. If you did this to me again…”
Legolas finished for her when her voice broke and trailed off, “That it would be my last chance. That if I left you again, I would be leaving you forever.”
It looked as if she might say something long and heartfelt, but in the end she settled on, “Please leave.”
Legolas tired to hell himself it was for the best, even as he stood dumbly in his bedroom for hours after that. His heart bleeding out all around him.
He forced himself to remember this was for the best.
To remember the pain loving her brought him. To remember how much his father still ached from having lost his mother. To remember that this war was not over.
His heart could not bear any more pain than it already carried, he was not as strong as his father. He could not survive the death of a wife.
It was better if they stayed friends.
At least he had lost friends before, he knew what to do with that loss.
0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.
“So, how's Ava?” Legolas asked as he moved his knight into place, taking Farlen’s bishop with a swift swish of his wrist. Since their last conversation it was like he had never existed to her, and still didn’t.
He might as well have been a complete stranger to her.
Knowing eyes flicked up to him as Farlen made his own move, “I’m not sure.”
“Did you not just get back from a patrol with her?” Legolas continued, trying to seem somewhat casual.
Farlen wasn't having it, “Yes, I did. But she also just returned, maybe you should just go ask her how she’s doing.”
Legolas took a pawn and resisted the urge to roll his eyes, “No, I think that’s alright. I don’t think she wants to speak to me, she would probably turn into smoke the moment she saw me.”
“That’s not how I heard it happened,” Farlen commented, not even bothering to make a move so that he could cross his arms to make a point. “Again.”
Legolas waited around thirty seconds before he took that forfeit of Farlen’s turn and took another, “So she did tell you.”
“Tell me what?” Farlen asked, badly feigning innocence.
“That I’m a heartless, cold, shell of an elf.” Legolas supplied.
“I mean,” Farlen said, finally taking his turn, “She didn’t use those specific terms. She was much kinder and more vague.”
“And what do you think?” Legolas asked, knowing that Farlen had an opinion on the matter. An easy thing to know since he seemed to have an opinion about everything that happened.
“I think you’re trying to act like a heartless shell of who you really are.”
“And?” Legolas prompted, knowing that there had to be more to the sentence.
Farlen flicked Legola’s queen off of the board with his fingers, completely ignoring their game, “I think that you’re so afraid of love, the poor thing never stood a chance.
Probably just for the dramatics of it, Farlen knocked over Legolas’ king as well, “I also think that you’re finally going to understand how stupid you at the very last second, as soon as it’s too late.”
Farlen got up from the table and flopped onto the nearby couch, “No more games, I think. You’ve already lost the most important one. Besides, I’m tired.
“Form what? You’ve been home for days.”
Like the world's dullest needle Farlen commented, “I was out with Ava and Eloissa last night.”
Legolas rolled his eyes again, then carefully set the queen back on the board. It seemed like bad luck to leave her on the floor.
0.0.0.0.
The rattling need for assistance vibrated his heart, seconds later the forest echoed with the sound of a desperate whistle cut short.
A searing pain that wasn't his own flared in his throat, like a hot coal had been pushed into it. Not his own pain, that was easy to tell. After just over a year of that connection remaining dormant her mind flared to his.
Avaleina’s pain.
“Go!” Legolas shouted to the rest of the patrol, and they all surged forward towards the call. The call for help from the scouts that had been sent to look ahead.
He tried not to think about how abruptly the call had ended. How his throat continued to burn, every intakes of breath feeling like fresh salt poured over a wound. Every swallow was shards of glass.
The tree’s guided them to their fallen comrades, a path opening up for them seamlessly so that it was nearly impossible for them to get lost.
As they approached, branches carefully laid Avaleina and Lamrin onto the ground from where they had been completely covered by the tree’s. Before Legolas’ patrol had all even come to a stop, they could tell that Lamrin was dead.
His head tilted at an angle that meant it wasn’t connected in the way that it ought to be. Either from breaking or partial decapitation Legolas didn’t know.
He didn’t really want to find out.
Avaleina was making moaning and gurgling noises where she lay on the newly created walkway. Her body jerking and twisting.
Legolas fell forwards and to her side, eyes following the small river of blood to her neck where an arrow sat. Half of it visible and half of it buried inside of her skin. The shaft having already been broken off, either by Ava or the tree’s as she fled the attack.
This was the first time he had seen her face in months, and it was only barely filled with life. Growing emptier by the second.
“Oh, Eru.” Legolas half breathed, half sobbed. Accepting a handful of bandages from another patrol member and trying to pack it around the wound, knowing better than to take out the arrowhead. No matter how much he might have wanted to.
He gently turned her to the side so that she wouldn’t choke on her own blood, her head pillowed on his thigh. His hands trying to stop the bleeding until more help came. Better help.
She gurgled again, and it sounded scared.
Others on his patrol tried to stop her twitching, hoping less movement would mean less blood loss.
Legolas leaned forward so that he could kiss her cheek and whisper to her, “It’s alright, it’s going to be alright. I’m right here, Ava. It's alright.”
The bandage was growing more damp with every breath, the entire thing already sporting a bright red color and dripping through his hands to the forest floor. Molding around his fingers like a horrible second skin.
Ava’s eyes drifted around like they couldn’t really see anything.
He was forced to face the reality of her going to the hall’s without him. The years stretching out before him already seemed unbearable without her. The last months he had avoided her stabbed his soul like sharpened knives.
He had been so stupid.
Eru had given him the most beautiful gift and he had thrown her away because of raw selfishness.
The realization made his own breaths feel even worse than the arrow had felt when Ava called for help.
Legolas pressed his forehead against her temple and wasn’t able to keep himself from sobbing, “I’m sorry. I’m so stupid. I love you Ava, I love you so much.”
The blood continued to drip through his fingers and his tears matched their pace as he felt her body grow colder. The idea of her falling in love with somebody in Valinor, oceans and hundreds of years away from him made his own body into ice.
She turned her head a little so that she could sort of see his face, her eye’s half closed.
Legolas asked her with a choked, broken voice, “Will you marry me?”
She blinked once, long and obvious. The Greenwood Army's sign for ‘yes.’
He pressed a kiss to her lips, wet from both blood and tears. When he pulled away, he searched frantically for a suitable item of nature to suit his needs. Spotting a freshly bloomed daisy, he plucked it from the ground and tied it around her finger as a fake engagement ring.
And then weaved his spare hand with hers, “Do you feel that?”
She blinked once again, more blood oozing from the wound.
“That's your ring,” Legolas told her, pressing a kiss onto her forehead.
With a horrible gurgling sound, her eyes drifted shut.
Legolas tried to badly suppress a wailing sob, and pressed his face against her temple again, pushing all of her power and lifeforce that he dared into her body. Hoping to buy her enough time for real help to get here.
“I love you so much,” He whispered and sobbed, “Please don’t forget about me.”
0.0.0.0.0.0.
When Legolas finally managed to get back home the mood was somber to say the least. Guards wouldn’t meet his eyes and everybody was silent and in their home. Even the wildlife seemed to have taken the night off.
He found his father cradling and gently rocking a limp Avaleina on the cushioned windowsill in her bedroom. Legolas had never seen her so pale, it was as if she was already haunting them.
The sight stole Legolas’ breath and his steps.
The door clicked closed inside a silent room.
For a horrible moment he really wasn’t sure if she was alive or not.
Thranduil didn’t look up from her face when he said, voice softer than the door had been, “She’s alive. Somehow. Barley, she’s alive still.”
Legolas tried to swallow but after the third attempt he gave up, his mouth was getting dryer by the second anyways, “Is she going to stay that way?”
“I hope so,” Thranduil only managed three words before he had to clear his voice, “The healers said they had to fight Mandos for her twice before he accepted she wasn't finished here.”
He didn’t remember his body making any movements but eventually Legolas was next to his father, eyes stuck on her face while he approached. The relaxed state of it had surpassed serene and into troubling.
Not able to bear the sight anymore, he looked to her neck. He assumed it was wrapped in insurmountable layers of cloth, but he couldn’t see a thing from the careful braces the healers had weaved around her neck to protect and keep it still.
The bruise from the wound covered most of her shoulders and up to the base of her nose. He couldn't look at that, either.
So he looked down to her hands, reaching a numb finger out to gently touch the flower that was still tied around her finger. Then it fell listless back to his side.
“Can I hold her?” The words hadn’t come out very coherently, but Legolas knew that Thranduil would understand what he meant and what he wanted.
Thranduil looked up from her face for the first time and to Legolas, his eyes knowing very well what Legolas had done over a year ago. Even if he officially wasn’t even supposed to know about their feelings at all.
“Of course, be gentle.”
Thranduil gently slid his right leg from between Ava and the window to move to the side of the bench and step onto the floor, all the while managing to hardly move Ava in the slightest. Legolas took his father's place, listening with rapt attention as Thranduil gave instructions on how he needed to hold her in order to not cause further injury.
Then, with greater care that any would take with a newborn baby, Avaleina changed which arms and chest cradled her.
Legolas’ tears started the moment he felt her heartbeat as she was snuggled against his chest, he ignored how faint the beat was.
“I’ll be in the other room,” Thranduil said and then excused himself.
Legolas stared down at her pale, still face. Unwilling to wipe at his teas and unable to stop them, he just made sure they didn’t fall on her.
The door clicked shut in a silent room.
One hand came to entwine itself with hers, the flower ring pressing against his finger.
Gently he kissed the top of her head, and then her cheek somehow managed to whisper, “Hello, my love.”
His heart remembered how she used to smile at him when he called her that, “I miss saying that.”
“I miss you,” He continued, feeling how he always felt too light for this world. Like he was in danger of floating away at any moment, unless she was in his arms, “I always miss you. I miss you before you’ve even gone.”
“Please-” He had to stop for several seconds, forcing himself to keep it together by kissing her cheek multiple times with all the gentle love he could muster, “Please don’t make me miss you for too long. I don’t think I could take it.”
She remained pale and motionless in his arms.
0.0.0.0.0.
The feeling of the ring tied around her finger and his hand holding her’s was the only thing that convinced her she existed.
There was nothing where she was.
No light.
No pain.
No time.
Just a ring and a hand.
The occasional sound of his voice was the only thing that convinced her to go back: “Will you marry me?”
Here in this nothingness.
This void.
This place between places and time between times.
She always managed to squeeze his hand. Just once.
For yes.