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Desperate and grieving, he at last escapes the golden snares and falls into dreamless sleep.
Warm and content, he is reluctant to wake and take up the day’s burdens. Curled against Aragorn’s chest, head tucked beneath his chin and legs tangled together, Legolas shifts drowsily against him, the reason the snow that coats the ground has not left him cold and damp. They had fallen asleep back-to-back the night before, seeking some relief from the cold as friends might, but it seemed at some point they had turned towards each other. The unexpectedly intimate embrace he wakes to seems strangely right in his still-sleepy thoughts, calling forward echoes of sensual delight from the night’s dreams, and he hums faintly in pleasure and tangles them more tightly together.
Legolas wakes at that and laughs quietly, innocent blue eyes smiling up at him when he grumpily opens his own eyes to glare half-heartedly at the elf, who he knew would insist they rise shortly. Legolas laughed again at that and gave him an absent-minded kiss on the cheek before sitting up to disentangle himself from Aragorn and their blankets, and something in his actions recalls to Aragorn’s waking mind more of the previous night’s dream.
Horror rouses in him, swift and sickening, at the recollection, and abruptly he’s scrambling away from Legolas. He just manages pull on his boots and make it a few strides away from their camp before he’s retching at the memory of blue eyes empty with blind adoration and pale skin fully bared to his touch. Stomach emptied, he subsides to dry heaves as Legolas crouches worriedly beside him, a graceful hand on his shoulder in attempted comfort.
“What is wrong?” Legolas asks worriedly.
The innocent affection makes him want to weep. He shudders again at the memories, the lush pleasure he’d felt while dreaming now turned to revulsion and self-loathing that even unconscious he could have thought of using his dearest friend so crudely for his own self-gratification. “Forgive me,” is all he can bring himself to say, “forgive me,” as Legolas guides him to sit on a fallen log.
“You know I would forgive you aught, if I knew what there was to forgive, but Aragorn, what is this?”
He shook his head in answer. “I dreamt... I dreamt such things I cannot bear to speak of, but to know that I could even imagine doing such things...” He shakes his head again, wordless. “You should not trust me so, not after this.”
“Aragorn, you have done nothing to give me cause to mistrust you. I will not throw away all you have done to earn my friendship simply for some night terror.”
“It was not a terror, far better if it had been. No, if you knew you would not trust me so.”
“Tell me then, and let me judge for myself if my trust is misplaced.”
Aragorn looked at him in mute horror, eyes pleading not to be made to speak of this dream that haunted him so, and Legolas only grew more resolved to know what it was that had so wounded his dearest friend.
“You know we have all had dark dreams, sleeping so near to the burden that Frodo bears. Have you not thought that might be the reason for your dream? Tell me of it, do not let it fester. We can ill afford to allow a simple dream to come between us.”
“If only I were certain I could blame that thing, but why would it have even offered such things if I did not desire...”
Legolas waited patiently, his steady gaze unrelenting on his friend’s bowed head.
At last Aragorn began to speak quietly. “I dreamed I was king, and Arwen and I wed, but I had not won that place honorably but by taking – that. It seems I had been convinced that to take It would spare us all much grief and pain, and let me set right old wrongs, and other such noble purposes.” He hesitated then.
“That does not seem so terrible, merely of a piece with its usual temptations,” Legolas said, reassuringly. “We all of us feel its pull.”
“Were all the reasons I used it in the dream so fair-seeming, it would not be so terrible, but then...” Aragorn took a deep breath, as though bracing himself for some harsh task. “You were there, at my side.”
“As I hope to be.”
“Not like that, my dear friend, not like that,” he whispered. “You would never consent to share my bed as only one wedded should, nor would you dishonor Arwen with such a betrayal. Not willingly. Nor were you willing, in my dream. No - I should not have said you were at my side - I dreamt of using the ring to master you, and keeping you always at my feet, or in my bed.”
Stunned, Legolas knew not how to answer that.
“You see now why I said you should not trust me so.”
As Aragorn began to turn away from him, Legolas caught his hand up and instead drew him towards where their packs laid by the fire. The man resisted for a moment, but then something in him eased and he followed obediently. Gathering up his waterskin and a scrap of cloth, he handed the waterskin to Aragorn. “Rinse your mouth, and then drink,” he urged, then wet the cloth from the kettle of water that had been left warming among the coals of last night’s fire and began wiping the sweat and tears from his friend’s face.
Around them, the rest of the Fellowship was beginning to wake, save Gimli who had already been on watch. The Ring had given them all nightmares enough to not question Aragorn’s distress, quietly going about their business and giving space to the two. As he gently tended to his friend, Legolas began speaking quietly in the Sylvan language of his homeland, that which of their companions only Gandalf would understand. “I say to you again, you have done nothing to cause me to mistrust you. I have loved and trusted you as a friend for long decades, and will not throw that away so lightly. Nor am I a blushing youth to be shocked by the odd forms that desires might take.” Aragorn set the waterskin down and opened his mouth to speak, but Legolas drew the warm cloth across his lips instead. “Listen. You told me of your dream, now let me speak my own thoughts.
“I am not so widely traveled as you, but the Men of Dale and the traders who visit them are not all virtuous folk, and I have known some of them to keep comely youths and maidens as bed-slaves. I know what you speak of. But I know you, and know you do not truly desire such a thing.” He put the cloth aside then and took his friend’s strong hands in his own. “Neither am I offended at the thought that you might desire me as a lover. I know you are faithful to your lady, and I do not question that. But the chances of the world are many, and if fate had been otherwise - well. When we first met I understood at last why Beleg chose Turin, though I hope our fates are kinder!” He smiled at that, and squeezed Aragorn’s hands, hoping to lighten the mood, but a new worry was entering the man’s eyes.
“Are you lonely then, my friend?”
“How could I be, with such good friends around me? No, dear one, I am content in our friendship. You are not the first I might have wedded, I am sure you will not be the last. Perhaps even now there is a bright-eyed lord across the Western seas who I will someday wed. Until then, I will be glad to walk by your side in friendship.”
Aragorn sighed at last, the darkness of his dreams lifted, and leaned forward to embrace the elf. “Thank you, my friend, for being so wise in this.”
Legolas returned the embrace without hesitation. “You have comforted me with your own wisdom often enough. I am glad to return the gift.”