Summary: You arrive at the First Grove, the first site within the king's palace grounds, but further from the palace. You travel with Navë, Hareth, Branniel, and your guards, planning on using Hareth's memory as fuel for your healing of the corruption. What you don't expect is for the Elvenking to witness this experimental attempt.
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Previous Part: Chapter 4
Author's Note: Hi folks! I've been so excited to post this chapter! We are really getting into the weeds of this corruption in Mirkwood. I love how it turned out. Your comments and kudos mean so much to me! I literally freak out every time I see one. I can't believe people are liking this lil long fic of mine. Blows my mind.
I do not use generative AI in my writing
Scene 1 – Preparing for the Grove
“So he said yes?” Navë pokes her yellow-haired head out of the door to your quarters.
“Yes, he did,” you smile, knowingly. Candaer also smiles at her excitement, his dark eyes glinting as they look upon your happy attendant. “You’re coming.”
That afternoon, you and Navë go back to the healer’s storeroom to get more vials, a small blade to scrape, and basic healing supplies in case someone gets injured later. With Fergrath now on-watch outside of your door, it is just you and Navë remaining in your quarters. You prepare some less-delicate clothes for tomorrow, and begin to walk Navë through the basics of healing while sprawled on the covered floor, a richly red carpet cushioning your repose. The skirts of your blue-grey dress fan out like ice over blood.
“Here,” you hand her some gauze. “So now pretend that here –” you gesture to a spot on your arm with a beauty mark for a reference point. “– is a stab wound. How would you wrap it?” The amber-eyed elleth squinted her eyes at you, slowly lowering the gauze. As she lowers it, a smile creeps onto your face.
“No. I must clean it first before I dress it,” Navë tilts her head, challengingly.
“Well done, but clean it with what?” You raise an eyebrow, looking at the array of herbs in front of you.
“With…athelas?” She asks, gesturing to the curly leafed stalks bundled together tightly.
“Not alone, or at least, when the men brought this plant from the West, they taught others to boil it for its best properties, so either reach for this, which we already extracted –” you gesture to a small bottle with a greenish liquid in it. “– but more importantly, you must also call the spirit of the person to come and aid you in healing their wound.”
You extend a hand to her, and she takes it softly, looking up to you. “Healing the spirit comes with will and song. Sing a song of old to me,” you ask.
“Of old? What do you mean?”
“Of your history, a song from the Woodland Realm that I would not otherwise be familiar with.”
“The Feast of the Stars is coming up, and there is this one…this one often gets sung,” she clears her throat. It is not in Sindarin, my lady. You may need some practice to learn it. The more simple translation says, ‘I go walking/Beyond the forest/Where the world falls away/And the white light/Of forever fills the air.’”
“That’s so beautiful,” you melt into the ethereal meaning. “Please sing it to me so that I might join you come the festival.” Navë smiles and begins to bind the wrappings upon your arm – just as you showed her – singing softly,
“Hae ephadron
Theri thaur
Am na dhû
Ias fîr i ambar
A trehil I ‘alad ‘lân uir ‘wilith”
The sound of her voice rings delicately and serenely off of the natural curves of the walls of your rooms. You hum in appreciation, closing your eyes for the duration of the song. Your arm is fully bandaged – and bandaged well – by the time she finishes the song, humming the melody again for you almost as another verse.
“I’m glad you like it,” Navë smiles, pausing and setting down your arm. “Do you think the forest can truly hold onto such memories?”
You pause and consider, then tell her, “Bodies can remember pain, no matter how well you heal them,” you hold up your beautifully bandaged arm, realizing it is the arm that was choked by mud in the tumultuous woods. “So, at least in theory, if bodies remember, then – perhaps – forests do too.”
“In theory?” Navë bites her bottom lip nervously.
“That’s all we have for now,” you sigh. “We should rest before tomorrow, but thank you. I shall practice your song.” Navë stands from the floor, and helps you ready for bed before leaving for her own rest. Not many more words are said, yet you find yourself in the most content of company.
Scene 2 – Arrival at the First Grove
Hareth and Branniel meet you, Navë, Candaer, and a very tired Fergrath at the large palace doors, all of you dressed practically for the mission ahead of you – much more practically than for a simple medical errand.
Doors open with a gust of biting wind, and guards call out to each other as you make your way outside.
It has been nearly a week since you were last outside of the walls of the king’s palace. Judging by the tense looks on all three elleths’ faces, the whiteness of their knuckles, you can’t be sure how long it has been since they have left. The wet stone of the bridge splashes droplets around the ankles of your boots, but your boots rise to just below your knee. Leggings tuck into your boots, a light sleeveless ranger’s tunic with a mock neck peaking just above your mother’s clasp that rests back where your throat meets your collarbone. You wear your dark blue cloak of Mithlond, the Grey Havens. Your hair is pulled back with clips that look like the vines of the forest, a detail Navë felt quite clever adding.
Hareth’s shoulders nearly reach the lobes of her pointed ears, tense. Her face twists with every step.
“Lead on,” you encourage her, placing a hand on her shoulder. You give her a warm smile, “You know the way better than I.”
“You have a map, don’t you?” She snaps. I’d be emotional too, your heart squeezes thinking of how difficult it must be to leave along the path you once walked with your great love. Branniel carries a small rucksack of supplies over her shoulder, a few paces behind, more in step with Candaer and Fergrath. She watches Hareth closely, brows furrowing at Hareth’s tone.
Navë is uncharacteristically quiet, taking cautious steps, walking next to Candaer who helps her jump over larger puddles instead of having her move ahead. Cute.
“I do have a map, if you’d prefer,” you swing your small pack around, about to dig through it when she puts a hand on yours to stop you.
“No, it –” she shakes her head. “It’s fine. Follow me.” You nod, bowing subtly. She takes a breath and starts down a very bumpy path, littered with vines and roots, leaves and debris. You all watch the woman weave and bob through the vines, her brows knit together in memory, her lips pursed. Her eyes trace the ceiling of trees that must have been green before. Nimbly for her age, she moves with pace, intentionally, and it does take some effort for the rest of you to keep up. You follow the flashes of silvery-grey hair as she traces the nearly forgotten trail to the First Grove.
As you got more of a look at the back of her head, it suddenly occurred to you that Hareth wore her long grey hair down today – with the exception of only two small braids that tucked behind her ears. It’s not like her, you realize, to wear her hair down at all instead of a practical and tight, low bun.
You turn to Branniel to ask her about it. “I think she wore it like this with her husband,” she says. “Though, this is the first time I am seeing it.” You clutch at the swans of your clasp, bowing to each other.
In your vigorous pace to follow the senior healer, after only ten minutes on foot, you come to a dome of branches, bound together like a shell, great trees with roots as tall as you form a massive circle the size of a grand courtyard. The dome covers a large pit of briar. Within the pit are cracked stone benches, carved arches and large roots that drop down into the pit to form archways. You imagine couples arm in arm, imagining where they once passed. Pale white buds peppered the thorny briars, flowers that would never bloom in this corruption or cold. Blackened vines choke old stone walking paths.
Hareth stops at the very edge of the path and goes very still.
Scene 3 – White Flowers
“Is this –” You begin to ask. Hareth gives a solemn nod.
“The Grove,” she says, voice tight.
“How have we never come across this place before, Fer?” Candaer remarks in awe.
“Did you see how bad the path was to get here?” Fergrath replies, pulling a twig from the buckle of his boot.
You shoot them a glare, nodding over to Hareth who seems frozen in thought. Navë steps on his boot sharply to double down. He cringes in realization, mouthing an apology.
You step to her side, lacing your arm through hers. She clutches onto you, her eyes still fixed ahead. “Tell me about him,” you encourage softly, trying to follow her gaze down into the thorny courtyard.
She gave a teary but sharp HA! “You’re just trying to get me to tell you so you can use it,” she retreats defensively, pressing her eyes shut, as if trying to keep her memories of her husband hidden behind her eyelids, keeping them for herself alone.
“Use it to heal this place. Isn’t that what we both want?” You ask, earnestly. She doesn’t reply, but she releases the tension on her eyelids. You pause in consideration, then speak again; “Was he handsome?”
“Oh, like you wouldn’t believe,” she laughs despite herself, blinking softly. The wall of salty tears wobbles in the waterline of her tired eyes. She lifts her hand to blot them away, but it just gives permission for more tears to patter upon the bleeding earth.
You wait for her to continue. The rest of the group waits a few yards behind the two of you who were at the edge of the vine dome. After a moment, she squeezes your arm, encouraging you to look where she points. With a sniff and a straightening of her posture, she says, “We met each other while he was courting another elleth, taking her around the Grove. The problem was that she and I were…seeing each other privately.”
“Hareth!” Branniel exclaims.
“I used to have my fun too,” she smiles slyly back at her apprentice. “But she and I were not each other's One. We knew this. Though, I did not want to admit it at the time. I completely tripped him on their way out. He got covered in mud and she laughed at him. He was so embarrassed that I felt horribly. I smeared mud on my own outfit, and she thought me so strange. She left. And we spent hours together that day. Every day we would try to look out for each other in this grove. There,” she pointed to a bench across the way, “he would bring me ridiculously large flowers. I didn’t even know what to do with them, but he’d tuck them behind my ears.”
When she drops your arm to touch the place behind her ear, you let the story course through you, reaching out to the vines of the dome.
Hareth continues as you begin to channel your energy into the place in the dome where it swallows the stone path down into the grove. An entrance should be here, you intuit. You focus in, closing your eyes.
“We argued about what plants work better for treating head pains. I told him he gave me head pains. I can’t tell if he made me laugh or if I was too clever in teasing him, making myself laugh. Either way, we laughed here.”
Navë instinctively reaches for Candaer’s arm, and he extends it, blushing. She rests her head against his shoulder. His black hair contrasts with her golden straw-colored hair.
White light blooms from your palms, and Hareth heaves a shaky breath, muttering, “A healer from the sea indeed.”
The rot loosens. Some of the vines begin to shrink back into the earth, pulling and parting in the shape of an entrance way. Some of the flower buds begin to open and bloom. “Yes!” Hareth claps her hands, exclaiming with tearful delight. “Flowers like these ones.” You allow her memory to course through you like a song, proud of the joy you are bringing her. For a brief moment, even as she is done speaking her memory, when the healing should have run its course, you feel a momentary surge where you more deeply connect with the ground. The path’s roots uncurl from their walking stone captives.
Then, as soon as the surge starts, it stops. The roots slow their descent into the earth. They stutter. Your palms don’t lose energy, but rather you feel the tug of something much more challenging to overcome. The entrance into the First Grove courtyard is not entirely open, though the roots have braided themselves into an arch around it, only one or two roots stretch across the opening. There’s a resistance to going further. You open your eyes.
Across the First Grove, atop a horse of white, the elvenking watches, a violent expression across his face.
Scene 4 – Projections in the Mire
The Elvenking sends for his horse at the break of day. He informs his guard that he will be personally witnessing the healer that was given to him. Thranduil, donning his silver armor, makes his way from the palace tenuously, waiting for your party to go ahead. Taking a longer path around to the grove than the one his senior healer would most likely take, he canters cautiously among the trees, using their dark cover to observe from a distance. He imagines that he should be concerned that his guards do not notice him, or appreciative that they do not react if they do notice him.
Icy blue, discerning eyes seek to make their judgement. He finds you across the way, slightly obscured by the dome of vines, but his sharp vision and sharp hearing never fails him. Wholly absorbed in trying to hear you speak to Healer Hareth, Thranduil catches your voice, soft, lilting, persuasive: “Use it to heal this place. Isn’t that what we both want?”
His mind drifts to things he remembers truly wanting. What did he want with you…he imagines the slope of your neck in the dress yesterday, the shape of your waist. What did you truly want with him?
Finally, he sees the light, the glow pouring from your hands engulfs your body in a halo of light – its purity unseen since the likes of Galadriel. He considers, purity, yet you are covered in mud. Thranduil leans forward, drawn in by your beauty. There is serenity in your face, yet an intense focus. You are clearly powerful, yet so unguarded.
His lips part in shock when he sees it. Your will and light begins to move the vines around the dome. They pull back into the earth. He felt an unfamiliar stirring beneath his armor, his heart speeding up at the thrill of watching you. You, this new thing to behold, a weapon much sharper than promised.
What if you did fix this forest for him? Hareth, whom he has known since he was a young ellon, is an incredibly hard person to get through to. Was memory truly so powerful when combined with your touch? Hareth, of all people, letting herself be guided…
Thranduil ponders his own memories here. Imagining her. The mother of his child. His late wife. Had they not walked here in the Grove together? She carried their son in these gardens. She listened to his woes. Yes, their marriage was political, but they shared so much. He presses his eyes shut, trying to keep his grief at bay.
Atop his horse of white, the platinum-haired ellon opens his eyes to gaze on the grove. He can’t help himself. Looking below him, he faintly pictures the First Grove when it was greener, imagining his family whole. He pictured the shape of a life before loneliness hardened around him. The most painful form of hope pierces his heart; a yearning for what might never be again until he is nothing but the spirit which holds his long memory.
How long it has been since his life felt like this memory, bittersweet as their marriage was. He imagines her long pale eyelashes as they closed when they kissed under one of the arches at dawn. He remembers when they closed for the last time.
This pain, at first a dull yearning for this place to be healed, the dull yearning of nostalgia corrupts like the black branches above him. He wants to cry out in anguish as the projections of his own mind dissipate until he stares plainly at the briar that separates you from him. Guarded by armor, he feels bare as you open your eyes, the glow gone, and you see him.
You. Have you done this? Had you pulled him into your magic? Your healing process?
“My Lord! I am so honored to see that you came to witness this! The grove responded to the theory!” You shout across the thicket. You are too far away to read your expression entirely. Thranduil scowls at this, for how dare you be joyful at misery being the cure for this sick wood.
Once you call out, Hareth whips around to look at him with alarm, worry plastered across her face at how vulnerable she had been in front of the Elvenking.
Shame and wrath rise within him, guarding him better than silver armor could ever. “Quiet!” He hisses across the way, cutting through the tightening air. He rides his horse almost all the way around the grove. Then, he dismounts, storming over to you.
He towers above, every bit the wrathful king Elrond said he would be. You immediately turn red, realizing that you forgot yourself in your excitement. You bow down, curtsying deeply, gaze on the forest floor. You hear your guard companions clink as they drop into a deep bow behind you. The other healers join your curtsy.
Every step towards you, he allows the knife of memory to twist in his heart, glaring at you, you sharp thing.
As you look at the ground, waiting for his approach, to your horror, the vines begin to creep back. Slowly at first, then as he gets closer to you, they roar out of the ground. You turn before he storms over to you, curtsy be damned. You rush to the spot where you had healed the wounded grove, and attempt to save it, wildly willing your healing to come to these vines to no avail. The entrance is doubly covered in brush with the king’s tandem wrath.
The flowers wilt within seconds. You drop to your knees, cupping the dead petals, he doesn’t halt his stride, even as you kneel on the ground. His boots stop just feet from your knees.
Hareth, who never dropped her gaze when she curtsied, stands to her full height when the kind stops. She looks between the king’s seething countenance and the corrupted and wild growth. And then she understands.
Scene 5 – Hareth’s Stash
Looking down at the half-elf curled on the ground, cupping a dying flower, Thranduil seethingly bends down, silver crown atop his head shining. “Rise, healer of Mithlond,” he commands calmly, summoning surprising coolness despite his apparent anger. Rather, his eyes are piercing in his analysis of the vengeful vines. “I would like an explanation of how you did this. I watched you have some limited success before the vines returned, something I have not seen from my healers yet.” He moues a disappointed frown to compliment his bored expression, as he shoots a look over to Hareth who purses her lips, but does not lower her gaze.
“They were entirely instrumental in my work today,” you say in your party’s defense. You brush off your tunic, standing from your despair at the failure of the vines in holding down. It hurts to drop the petals to the ground, just for them to become another layer in the earth. “I listened to Healer Hareth speak of her late husband and their times here. The story…it helped me channel my own healing.”
“You would make grief into a tool, and call the result healing?” He scoffs mirthfully. You have to tilt your head back just to look up at him, the already tall elf feels like he casts a menacing shadow over you. You feel a burning feeling of shame across your cheeks. You did fail. You failed like you did with the river vines.
“I offered my memories, my lord, they were not exploited. They were freely given, to be used to repair this grove.” Hareth says, her own expression icing over. Branniel adjusts the bag on her shoulder, her expression fixed and firm in agreement with her teacher.
“I require a full report, and until you can tell me how you mean to prevent this backlash, you do not leave the grounds of my palace just to further corrupt my kingdom,” Thranduil says, eyes flashing as they meet yours. Your eyes sting in guilt and apology, but through it all, as you hold his intense stare, you swear you see pain beneath his commanding gaze. Just as he turns, you catch his arm at the silver bracer.
“I never meant to –” Your heart feels pulled towards his pain. He heaves, breath heavy with anger. His eyes snap to your hand. His mouth barely parts, then closes again. He snatches his hand away. His chin lifts. He looks stricken – eyes wide before they narrow and look past you as he regains control of his expression.
Thranduil mounts his horse.
“Go back to your quarters,” he says in a surprisingly soft yet still commanding voice that you’ve never heard before. The thrumming of your own heartbeat in your ears overwhelms you. He rides off, back down the main trail, the white haired ellon on his great white steed.
“What in Valar’s name were you about to do?” Hareth snaps at you incredulously, face full of concern. “Give the king a hug?”
“I - I don’t know. I just…” your words trail off as you see, in the king’s wake roots burst out of the ground, thorns and thickets grow. The roots finish pouring back, reclaiming most of the progress you made and then some, closing up most of your way back.
“Did you bring your sword?” Fergrath asks you, heading towards nature's wrath and beginning the hard work of chopping at the new vines.
“Come now, this worked!” Hareth nudges you. It makes you smile faintly, though the shame of disappointing the Elvenking was still sitting heavily on your sternum.
“And you were quite the cynic, too, no?” Navë says to Hareth, trying to encourage you.
“Listen. I’m happy to be proven wrong. This grove accepted your help. You have something very special, child. A powerful gift,” Hareth admits. She then drops her voice to a low and hushed tone so as to speak only to you, “However, we do need to speak privately.” You look over to her, the pit in your stomach and pressure on your chest only deepening. You nod.
You cut and chop your way through with the help of Breeze, Fergrath, and Candaer. You come back to the front entrance. Knowing that you had a looming limitation on exiting once you entered those doors made it feel like you were entering into a form of imprisonment, though you knew you could leave at any time and go back to Rivendell. Though, it would mean another treacherous journey back, just to admit that you had failed your lords when they entrusted you with such a mission. Perhaps you couldn’t just leave at any time: bound by your mission and the Elvenking.
The party makes their way to their respective rooms, Fergrath following you and Hareth to the healing wing.
“Please wait outside,” Hareth says before slamming the door in the red-haired ellon’s face.
“Hareth!” You exclaim at her rudeness.
“We need to talk about the king, and like it or not – friend or not – his responsibility is to the king. I would say, I’ve lived longer than King Thranduil has. My responsibility is to the realm.” You let that sink in, pulling a worn chair away from one of her large tome-ridden tables. She doesn’t sit.
Hareth moves to a back cupboard, stained a dark and rich brown. She opens it up, pulling out a bottle of wine, grabbing a knife and beginning to open it. She does not ask if you want a glass, pouring rich blood-red wine into a silver chalice. You have no idea until she hands it to you just how full the cup is. It is very full.
Sitting down in front of you, she takes a long swig of her wine. “Drink.”
You take a sip of the wine, the bombastic scent of cherry and flowers and rich verdant soil hits your nose before the rich drink touches your tongue. “Wow, this is beautiful,” you go back for another sip.
“Don’t mention it,” Hareth waves, clearly trying to focus the conversation. “Did you see him as you were healing?” The elder healer did not need to clarify who he was. The silver-crowned Elvenking was at the forefront of your mind.
“No, only at the very end. I usually need to close my eyes to focus on the healing, if I know that it is a larger amount of energy that I need to summon.”
“Good. Then I’ll tell you what I saw,” Hareth leans back in a chair, starting to tie her hair back into a tight knot.
“When I spoke of my husband, when you were working, the grove seemed very open. And when King Thranduil watched at first it looked like your healing held well.” Hareth tips her glass to you.
“Do you think the king…so, you think the king helped?” Your mind races.
“I know he was looking at you. I’m not sure. He seemed fairly neutral, and the roots were moving well into the ground. Then he changed to this dark, dark expression. It was quite sinister.” Her voice darkens as she imagines it again.
“And that’s when the roots stopped moving?” You ask, trying to follow her logic.
“Exactly. And when he rode away, after you tried to reach out to him – which we still need to unpack whatever that was –” she looks at you sharply as you start to blush, looking down into your goblet of wine. “– I know you also saw his distress and the wake of corruption that bloomed behind him.”
“I did see that. So, you’re saying that he’s causing this or that he’s…what?”
“If he didn’t cause this, then he certainly – at the very least – has a significant role to play with you being able to heal any of this,” Hareth stops rocking on the back legs of the chair, leaning forward, elbows on her knees, smoothing her hair back with the hand that isn’t holding the wine, unnerved. She looks and sees your bewildered expression.
Sighing, she adds, “In other words, if your healing is a door, we can open the damn thing, but the king has to stop slamming it shut. Even better, is if he could open the door all the way and keep it open for you to do what you need to do.”
“What if it was a coincidence?” You ask, weakly.
“Do you honestly believe that after what we saw?” Hareth rolls her eyes, finishing her goblet. You now see why she poured you a cup.
“I don’t know what to think right now, nor do I have a good explanation for grabbing his arm, I don’t know. Do you think he hates me after this? I have absolutely killed this whole effort by not thinking!”
“Drink.” Hareth repeats. You take a shaky sip. “Our king is a passionate one. He cares very deeply about the safety of the realm,” she grants.
“I can’t imagine how scary it must be to see the vines come back stronger after I healed them,” you say softly. “He just looked so…hurt. I –” you almost, even now, wish you could reach out. Heal that broken look in his eyes. Grief…but for what? You recall your preparations for going to Mirkwood, how Elrond had warned you of the king’s temperamental nature, and warned you that he lost his wife over a millenia ago. You knew they were an arranged marriage, but were they in love? Did they stroll together in the First Grove? Did they kiss under the arches like Hareth and her husband?
A knot forms in your gut as you imagine Thranduil bending down, gently cupping an elleth’s face in his hands, her similarly white-blonde hair long and perfect as he kissed her passionately, filled with the care he had for his home. You imagine him melting into the kiss. How he would shift and sigh. How you would pull him in by his arms. How you would soothe him with your lips. How –
“Valar, tell me you’ve had wine before,” Hareth curses, waving a hand in front of your face. You blink, hard. Fuck…what were you thinking?
“I have, it’s just been a long day,” you explain, though you can feel the warmth of the wine beginning to spread to your fingers and chest. You do feel lighter, but so warm. The heady flavor of the wine lingers on your tongue.
“Mhm,” Hareth looks at you askance. “You should still meet with the king for the report. I suspect you’ll want to clear the air as well,” she pours some more wine into your cup before you can protest.
By nightfall, conversation flows…more loosely between you.
“Be honest, do you think he hates me?” You palm your forehead in tipsy anguish. Navë taps at the door, cracking it open.
Hareth assures you sleepily, “My love, you have absolutely no way of knowing that, nor can I condone you wallowing in your own anxiety! All. Will. Be. Well.”
“My lady, it is such a late hour. Candaer was looking to relieve Fergrath at your chambers but you are still…here,” she pauses, taking in the now drunk bottle of wine in front of you.
“Decompressing, are we?” Navë laughs.
You give a small nod.
“Let’s get you to bed though,” she giggles, as you stand. You don’t wobble. You weren’t too lost in your cups, but you did feel a pleasant buzz across your skin. You give her a smile and a laugh as she ushers you out the door.
“Did you save me a glass?” Fergrath jokes, eyes floating shut from exhaustion.
“Oh, no! Was I supposed to bring you a glass? Is that a thing here?” You wonder aloud, bringing your hand to cover your mouth. A light dizziness hums in the back of your neck, a welcome buzz from the wine.
“No, it’s not. Now, walk us back and you must go to bed as well,” Navë scolds your guard. You make your way back the winding path into your hallway, passing a few elves who glance in your direction, but most of them tipsy or destination-focused themselves.
You make it to your quarters, greeting the dark-haired ellon at your door. You push inside with Navë, stripping with every step as you go further into the room. “I have to report to the king tomorrow, Navë,” you start. “I really do think he hates me, and I’ve lost all favor with him. Now, what will I report to my lords back home and in Rivendell?”
You slip on a comfortable night garment, and crawl into bed.
“How desperately do you believe him to hate you?” Navë asks, regret already pouring into her words as she asks. She looks upon you, your whole countenance wracked with anxiety. “I do have a…person I know who tends to the king in his quarters,” she whispers, looking towards the door.
“I used to see him before…”
“Before you and Candaer?” You ask, oblivious to her attempt at stealth.
“Shhhhh!” She covers your mouth with her hand. “Yes, but he is now married and very happy. We are friends alone. Still, you have to promise not to say anything. He works as an attendant to the king. I can ask after the mood of King Thranduil tonight, see if his behavior is out of the norm. He owes me a favor, but obviously he would get in trouble if you reveal that you know anything.”
You vigorously nod, agreeing to these very agreeable terms.
“Very well. I will try to find him tonight. You’ll owe me then,” Navë smiles at you. “Now, rest.” You feel your heart float to ease. Your forehead releases its tension that it has been carrying subconsciously. You sink into your mattress and allow your dreamless rest to take you.
a/n: this came from my brain and you can have it before i go on a small vacation!🥰 also i am not dead, just busy. anyway, hope you enjoy, and remember that comments+reblogs+nice asks motivate the writer! ❤ no warnings, just fluff & fun.
disclaimer!! no AI has been, or will be, used in my writing.
⊹ ࣪˖ FRODO
best believe he’s been preparing for the day ever since your last birthday – everything needs to be as lovely as possible for his beloved
he’s not the greatest cook, but with the help of some trusted friends, there is amazing food and sweets all for you
definitely gets you the absolute most sentimental and sweet gift ever, which may or may not be your own personal poetry collection that has accumulated over months of thoughtful, loving writing on his side…
you get lavished in kisses and hugs more than usually; he also doesn’t let go of your hand the whole day, no matter if you’re in public or in the coziness of your home – the location is up to you, he will adapt to anything
⊹ ࣪˖ SAM
the sight that greets you first thing in the morning is a stunning bouquet of flowers right on your bedside table
you may wonder why you woke up alone, today of all days, but within moments, this sweet boy appears at your side with a hefty breakfast tray
and he shyly gives you a heartfelt written letter too
he certainly takes a day off from all his tasks – it’s all about you, after all!
basically he cooks up a feast – what an amazing gift – and you host a small get-together at your home; not too overwhelming, but still quite hobbit-like
constantly keeps checking in to make sure you are having a wonderful time
⊹ ࣪˖ MERRY
surprise party?? ABSOLUTELY – but there’s a catch – the party happens on the day after your birthday so that you don’t suspect a thing at any point
and also so that he can have you all to himself, selfishly, on your special day
there are some loose plans he suggests – places and activities you enjoy, but he’s always down for anything you want – and it’s a good idea to let you think that you’re in control of everything so you really don’t suspect a party…
you have to stop him from proclaiming praises of you in the street
the following day when you get beyond shocked by the party with all your dearest guests, your facial expression is worth all the scheming he went through
literally straight away he starts planning how to out-do himself next year
⊹ ࣪˖ PIPPIN
he loves a fun occasion and he’s basically more excited than you are, it’s really sweet – he loves that he gets to celebrate his favorite person
however, he will stress himself out with choosing a gift and actually might resort to just asking you what you would like most
but definitely surprises you with something of his own choosing on the side
however you choose to spend the day, he’s happy to oblige, but at some point you will certainly end up out and about, and have a drink or two
trust he will hold a cheesy speech in your honor (if not even a spontaneous song), and you are definitely pulled up to dance wildly and be the star of the evening
⊹ ࣪˖ARAGORN
the whole day is devoted only and exclusively to you, no matter all the obligations and circumstances, he is all yours on your special day
starting by being woken up by the most loving kisses and a whole bunch of them
he is not that big on gifts – however, if he knows it means a lot to you, he will deliver, trust me – but you are certainly receiving something either very useful, very thoughtful or both
loves to whisk you away somewhere and just give you all of his attention and affection, over time this becomes a nice tradition (you slightly suspect he does it for himself too, to some extent, but what is there to complain about?)
you best believe you shall get outpours of romantic words and poetry!! dreamy sigh
⊹ ࣪˖ LEGOLAS
loves to see you happy and to shed positive light on you, no matter the occasion – he’ll take it!
he is very interested in your people’s birthday customs and eager to adapt; most of all he enjoys the fact that he gets to give you a gift; or in his case, at least two or three, most finely crafted by his kin – only the best for you, naturally
if you wish to have a celebration with many guests, he is happy to oblige, but he is hoping you’d rather let him take you on an adventure of his own
so he can show you some of his most favorite places in nature, and the most beautiful ones, just for you
but no matter how much he appreciates the beauty of the surrounding nature, he will make sure you know that your grace and fairness surpass all of it, by far
waxing poetry at you for like, half the day at least
⊹ ࣪˖ BOROMIR
you receive a royal treatment to say the least, and whatever wish you may have is this man’s command
when it comes to choosing some gifts for you, he is surprisingly indecisive (partially self-doubt, partially unable to find something worthy of you), so you receive a whole bunch of things, which await you as soon as you wake up
he will see it done that all your favorite foods are prepared for the day, including a big cake if you like that
naturally, there is a big celebration, and you just know he toasts to you tens of times throughout the evening, his keen eyes never leaving your frame for a single moment
however, you end the day quietly, on a terrace under the stars with whispered compliments and breathtaking kisses
a/n: this came from my brain and you can have it before i go on a small vacation!🥰 also i am not dead, just busy. anyway, hope you enjoy, and remember that comments+reblogs+nice asks motivate the writer! ❤ no warnings, just fluff & fun.
disclaimer!! no AI has been, or will be, used in my writing.
⊹ ࣪˖ FRODO
best believe he’s been preparing for the day ever since your last birthday – everything needs to be as lovely as possible for his beloved
he’s not the greatest cook, but with the help of some trusted friends, there is amazing food and sweets all for you
definitely gets you the absolute most sentimental and sweet gift ever, which may or may not be your own personal poetry collection that has accumulated over months of thoughtful, loving writing on his side…
you get lavished in kisses and hugs more than usually; he also doesn’t let go of your hand the whole day, no matter if you’re in public or in the coziness of your home – the location is up to you, he will adapt to anything
⊹ ࣪˖ SAM
the sight that greets you first thing in the morning is a stunning bouquet of flowers right on your bedside table
you may wonder why you woke up alone, today of all days, but within moments, this sweet boy appears at your side with a hefty breakfast tray
and he shyly gives you a heartfelt written letter too
he certainly takes a day off from all his tasks – it’s all about you, after all!
basically he cooks up a feast – what an amazing gift – and you host a small get-together at your home; not too overwhelming, but still quite hobbit-like
constantly keeps checking in to make sure you are having a wonderful time
⊹ ࣪˖ MERRY
surprise party?? ABSOLUTELY – but there’s a catch – the party happens on the day after your birthday so that you don’t suspect a thing at any point
and also so that he can have you all to himself, selfishly, on your special day
there are some loose plans he suggests – places and activities you enjoy, but he’s always down for anything you want – and it’s a good idea to let you think that you’re in control of everything so you really don’t suspect a party…
you have to stop him from proclaiming praises of you in the street
the following day when you get beyond shocked by the party with all your dearest guests, your facial expression is worth all the scheming he went through
literally straight away he starts planning how to out-do himself next year
⊹ ࣪˖ PIPPIN
he loves a fun occasion and he’s basically more excited than you are, it’s really sweet – he loves that he gets to celebrate his favorite person
however, he will stress himself out with choosing a gift and actually might resort to just asking you what you would like most
but definitely surprises you with something of his own choosing on the side
however you choose to spend the day, he’s happy to oblige, but at some point you will certainly end up out and about, and have a drink or two
trust he will hold a cheesy speech in your honor (if not even a spontaneous song), and you are definitely pulled up to dance wildly and be the star of the evening
⊹ ࣪˖ARAGORN
the whole day is devoted only and exclusively to you, no matter all the obligations and circumstances, he is all yours on your special day
starting by being woken up by the most loving kisses and a whole bunch of them
he is not that big on gifts – however, if he knows it means a lot to you, he will deliver, trust me – but you are certainly receiving something either very useful, very thoughtful or both
loves to whisk you away somewhere and just give you all of his attention and affection, over time this becomes a nice tradition (you slightly suspect he does it for himself too, to some extent, but what is there to complain about?)
you best believe you shall get outpours of romantic words and poetry!! dreamy sigh
⊹ ࣪˖ LEGOLAS
loves to see you happy and to shed positive light on you, no matter the occasion – he’ll take it!
he is very interested in your people’s birthday customs and eager to adapt; most of all he enjoys the fact that he gets to give you a gift; or in his case, at least two or three, most finely crafted by his kin – only the best for you, naturally
if you wish to have a celebration with many guests, he is happy to oblige, but he is hoping you’d rather let him take you on an adventure of his own
so he can show you some of his most favorite places in nature, and the most beautiful ones, just for you
but no matter how much he appreciates the beauty of the surrounding nature, he will make sure you know that your grace and fairness surpass all of it, by far
waxing poetry at you for like, half the day at least
⊹ ࣪˖ BOROMIR
you receive a royal treatment to say the least, and whatever wish you may have is this man’s command
when it comes to choosing some gifts for you, he is surprisingly indecisive (partially self-doubt, partially unable to find something worthy of you), so you receive a whole bunch of things, which await you as soon as you wake up
he will see it done that all your favorite foods are prepared for the day, including a big cake if you like that
naturally, there is a big celebration, and you just know he toasts to you tens of times throughout the evening, his keen eyes never leaving your frame for a single moment
however, you end the day quietly, on a terrace under the stars with whispered compliments and breathtaking kisses
summary: nightmares still lurk in places of healing, and imladris is no different. you deal with it as you always have: alone. until maedhros returns, and for once someone else can understand your troubles. or: three times night terrors keep you awake, and the one time you find sleep again.
content: gn!elf!reader, hurt/comfort, night terrors, depictions of sleep paralysis, depictions of ptsd. technically part of a series, a timeline where maedhros returns to life to help the fellowship. do elves experience nightmares and sleep like humans? I don't know and I don't care <3
a pearl - mitski ✵ series masterlist
I.
The first time a night terror wakes you up in Imladris, it’s with a quiet gasp.
You freeze as you wake, muscles immediately clenching as you cut off a cry, struggling to catch your breath and stay silent at the same time. You look around, blinking the fog of sleep and confusion of such sudden awareness away, until you recognize the furnishings of your room.
It takes you a long moment to relax your muscles. Another moment to sink back into the mattress, closing your eyes as hoping sleep will try to tug you back down again. It doesn’t work. That heart pounding fear stays with you, choking your breath and pumping adrenaline through your veins.
So you sit up, pulling back the covers and swinging your legs over the side of the bed. You stand up far too swiftly, and darkness creeps around the edges of your vision, which you push away as you wipe away your tears. You pace back and forth for a moment, moving your body until your brain can catch back up to you.
You were safe here, in Imladris. You weren’t in whatever visions were plaguing you, you were awake now. It wasn’t real. Just another nightmare.
A little more awake, and a little more aware, you move to the pitcher of water in the corner of your room. You resolutely ignore the way it makes your shaking hands obvious, porcelain clattering as you pour water into one of the cups.
Then you step out onto your balcony, moving as silent as you can. You open the door with far more care than needed, and leave it open, to let the cool night air into the room. It feels a little like airing out the bad dream, in your still sleepy, shaken state. Like the fresh air will come in, and the rot of the dream will dissipate, leaving through the open door like a foul smell.
You sit yourself down on the cool tile of the balcony instead of one of your seats, and let your legs hang through the columns into the empty air below. Quietly you sip your water, and try desperately to quiet your agitated mind and still stuttered breathing.
This was nothing new. Nothing you haven’t lived through before. You consider yourself lucky you hadn’t screamed out, luckier still that you have your own quarters with walls and a door to quiet any other mutterings you may have let out.
You finish your water, and sit outside for a while longer. The valley is peaceful, but you cannot stop reliving the nightmare, the events replaying behind your eyes against your will.
It isn’t until you threaten to drift off again, forehead pressed against the balcony railing, that you gather yourself up and go back to bed. You’re careful to close the door behind you, unnecessarily quiet in your post nightmare state. It wouldn’t do to disturb the peace with your terrors, you think.
It doesn’t matter - back in bed, sleep does not return to you.
II.
Not the second time, but certainly the second most notable time, you were with company.
Having had a night of drinking with Glorfindel and Lindir, you were in Glorfindel’s rather spacious home. You had started to drift while they were still in conversation, warm and pleasantly tipsy from the Dorwinion wine Lindir had brought.
You don’t remember falling asleep. You do remember waking up to someone shaking your shoulder, and lashing out in your haze.
You instinctively reach for a knife as you awaken suddenly to the shaking of your shoulder and sound of voices. There's nothing there to grab, and as you pat your side, you start to realize you’re awake and not inside your dream, nor facing some sort of attack.
“You’re okay,” a voice murmurs to your left. “It’s just a dream.”
“Right,” you say, as if you’re cognizant of what exactly is going on. You swallow hard and try to remember to breathe. “Sorry, I’m okay, I’m-“
You take a stuttering breath, and another. You realize you’re not in your nightmare, you’re not in your bed - you’re on Glorfindel's cushioned loveseat, one of his blankets now pooled in your lap from when you had sat up so quickly.
Lindir is crouched to your left, his hand hovering above your shoulder now that you’re awake. Glorfindel is close behind.
“You were screaming,” Lindir says, sounding as if it had startled him too. “You wouldn’t stop, so I - I woke you.”
Well fuck, is all you can think. Out loud you say - “I’m so sorry.”
You rub your eyes, resolutely looking down at your lap and ignoring the burning eyes of both of your friends. How embarrassing.
Your nightmares were hardly something you could control, your reactions and sleep talking even less so. But still, the eyes now on you, the knowledge you had disrupted the peace of the evening - it made you want to crawl into a hole and never return.
Embarrassment. Or shame, perhaps. And even knowing your friends were kind, they were now both witnesses to your vulnerability. Doubtlessly judging you, though you knew it would be with sympathy and worry more than anything else. It didn’t stop that twisting feeling inside your gut.
“It happens sometimes, the talking and nightmares - though not so often screaming. My apologies.”
Glorfindel’s hand reaches out, slow enough to give you time to stop him - when you don’t, he settles it on your leg. Meant to be a comfort.
“Have you spoken to Lord Elrond about this?” He asks softly. “I’m no healer, but I know he would have things to help with such maladies.”
Mixtures for a deeper sleep, ointments for relaxation, flowers and herbs meant to keep the nightmares at bay. None you have tried have worked - though, it has been a long while since you were last in such a place that had access to such medicines.
“Nothing has helped in the past,” you confess quietly, “but perhaps he will have something new.”
Lindir hums in approval. “Good. You gave us quite a fright.”
And you know he means well, know it only means that they care for you and your well-being, and do not wish to see you in such a state. Still, the shame burns ever hotter, and all you can do is nod.
III.
You don’t go to Elrond the next morning, or even the next. It takes another couple nights in a row of waking up in a cold sweat, waking up already crying, waking up unrested with a war still playing behind your eyes, for you to swallow your pride and seek him out.
You find him perhaps a week later in the evening, just outside the main dining hall. You must look as bad as you feel, for he doesn’t wait for you to say anything before he guides you into the nearest empty room and sits you down.
He gives you a look, and you sigh and bow your head, and quietly ask about the new age methods for helping with night terrors. You admit to this past week being particularly harrowing, not knowing what is triggering it entirely, and not wanting to bother your neighbors with screams in the night.
“I have a few things we can try,” he says, thinking over the details you’ve told him. “This should help tone down these dreams, and allow you to rest properly.”
The emphasis on your rest is not lost on you, even in your sleep deprivation. Emphasizing a care for yourself, and not the concern of others.
“I would greatly appreciate it.”
The mixture he ends up giving you is almost miraculous for how it helps you sleep, resting through an entire night. It seems to work well.
It lasts all of a week.
It isn't long until you're waking up in the middle of the night again, your heart in your throat. You're unable to move, unable to blink, even as you swear your eyes are open. Your desperate attempts to sit up, to move your limbs, to do anything at all, all fail to move you. It's as if your brain cannot connect to your body.
Shadows flare around the edges of your room. A darkness encroaches, creeping up the faint light of the moon that splashes across your floor. It swallows it hungrily until there's no light left, and you cannot see the shadows in the darkness.
You can feel it though, even as you fail to struggle. You can feel it like pinpricks along your skin, the knowledge that the shadows are creeping towards you, and you will be the next thing to be swallowed.
Closer it creeps, and closer still, wrapping shadows around your ankles and pinning down your wrists-
And then you're sitting up sharply in bed, blinking blearily in the light that the moon casts across your room. In the same motion, you're standing up, bare feet scrabbling against your sheets as you try to shake off the shadows you swear were just clinging to your limbs and weighing you down.
"Get off," you cry out, brushing at your shoulders. Your feet dance up and down, as if on hot coals. "Get off, get off, get off-"
Your foot catches at just the wrong angle, slipping off your silken sheets, and then you're falling to the ground. The impact is jarring, rattling your teeth and bruising your elbow. You scramble back, back away from your bed, running from shadows that aren't truly there.
When you finally feel like you can breathe again, when reality returns to you, you've pushed yourself into a little space just underneath your window. Curled up tight, your legs locked up and your nails digging into your arms. At your feet, the patch of moonlight seems to glow, lighting up your bare toes with its pale touch.
There's nothing on you. Nothing clinging to your ankles, no shadows creeping up your legs. You realize distantly how ridiculous the notion is - of course there’s no living shadow here to strangle you. It was just a dream.
That doesn't stop you from crawling out to touch the moonlight, as if it could protect you from what you had seen. It doesn't stop you from sitting in its glow, curled up like a cat on the ground, as if the light will chase the nightmares away.
The next morning, you return whats left of the tincture you were given, barely keeping yourself from flinching at every shadow that crosses your path. Elrond sets his efforts on making something new after that, something that might truly let you rest.
+ I
The next time you wake up screaming, Maedhros is right next to you.
As you wake up rather loudly, half delirious, hands clawing at your skin, he’s there to stop you. You’re too out of it to put up much of a fight as he grabs you and pulls your arms down, holding you tight until you stop struggling.
He counts himself lucky that you did not wake up too violent, as he has known you to do at times before. All he has to do is hold you until your screams give way to sobs, and you collapse against his chest.
“It’s alright, melda,” he murmurs, rubbing circles into your back. “It’s just a bad dream.”
He continues to talk, low and smooth, until you stop shaking in his arms. He holds you all the while, rubbing your back and pressing kisses to the crown of your head.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper out, voice cracking as you hide your face against his chest.
“There is nothing to be sorry for,” he reassures. You shudder against him, the terror of your dream mixing unpleasantly with the thought you had disturbed his slumber.
“But I woke you.”
“And?” He says, like he’s expecting something more. “Next time it will be me waking you.”
Right. Somehow, in the haze of unreality, with the span of more than an age since you had last laid with him, you had forgotten his own nightmares.
You recall old memories, ones you feel more than see, of nights he had held you while you screamed, nights where you talked him back to reality, of warm comfort and the knowledge that the other understood entirely what you were going through because they went through it, too.
There would be no pity, no strange looks, no talking about it unless you brought it up, if you screamed yourself awake - because he did the same thing. You were united in this.
You relax against him again, letting yourself cry in earnest. You had missed him. God, you had missed him.
You have him at your side this time as you pull yourself together. When sleep cannot find you again, he helps you leave your bed. He gets you a glass of water while you pace, so your own shaky hands don’t have to attempt it. He opens the balcony door for you, remembering to turn it quietly, lest you be set on edge again (and for his own sake as well, for there truly were little traumas you both didn’t share). He doesn’t insist on sitting on the chairs, instead sitting with you, dangling his long legs over the edge just as you do.
You sip on your water, quiet in your own mind. Despite the lack of awareness on your end, he’s there to lean against when you grow weary. Solid and steady, and warm to the touch. Refusing to let you face the night alone.
Tomorrow might find you on the balcony again, your positions reversed. He might have his own nightmare behind his eyes, rendering him quiet and afraid. You might rub his back and lean against him, a grounding comfort, unable to stop the nightmares but there to help him through the aftermath.
It still won’t be easy. But it's better together than it ever was alone.
The Innocence of Brutality Pt. 11 [Legolas/Reader]
A.N: Hi everyone! At some point, I will post regularly...oops. Anywayssss…here is another chapter. Please let me know your thoughts :)
Request: none
Pairing: Legolas X Fem!Reader
Summary: The Reader is Rámaitë Mahtar, a warrior spirit race, and she meets the fellowship on their quest to destroy the ring.
Disclaimer: Any mythology relating to the Rámaitë Mahtar is not canon as I made up Rámaitë Mahtar. Also, all elvish was translated from a translator site—it may not be accurate.
Word Count: 2k
Warnings: mentions of war, mentions of torture, violence, fluff, hurt/comfort, blood, injuries, gore, nudity, discussion of sex, saruman being a creep, protective Legolas
MASTERLIST | AO3 | WATTPAD | The Innocence of Brutality Masterlist | HERE for OC format
Legolas stood behind (Y/N) upon the battlements of Helm’s Deep. A solid line of warriors stretched beside them, their bodies forming an extension of the fortress—a living wall filled with fear, dread, and desperate anticipation.
Legolas’s hands moved with practiced grace, though they longed to tremble, as he gathered (Y/N)’s hair and wove it into a tight braid. Legolas had seen his fair share of battles, but something about this one was different. Perhaps it was Sauron? Or maybe the fact that now he was worrying for another: (Y/N). She too has seen war, but he knew not to what extent she had witnessed and partaken in. The air hung heavy with dread and the turmoil of ‘what if’s’ as raindrops began to fall. War would be upon them within the hour. No words passed between them as the moments slipped by—not when he finished the braid, not when the rain turned hard, and not even when the first orc horn sounded.
The battle was a blur—a wash of deep anxiety and fear. It only worsened when (Y/N) took to the air, leaving Legolas’s side. He did his best to keep her in sight without losing his own life, but each time he risked a glance skyward, dread tightened in his chest.
She would dive from above, cutting through the ranks in swift, deadly passes, felling dozens with each strike before soaring back into the sky. It wasn’t long before the orc generals noticed the damage she was inflicting. Soon, their trebuchets and mangonels turned toward her, hurling massive boulders into her path.
She dodged each one with breathtaking precision but Legolas feared she wouldn’t be able to evade them all.
The first boulder tore through the air with a thunderous force, its full weight coming at the Rámaite Mahtar. She saw it coming, her body perfectly in tune with the battle surrounding her. Therefore, she twisted aside, the wind of the stone passing snapping her hair and garments violently in its wake. Another followed, and another—the dark shapes blotting out the sky as they hurtled toward her. She wove between them with precision, each movement a narrow escape and each turn sharper than the last.
Below, Legolas fought on, his blades and bow moving with instinctive grace, but his focus was fractured. Every creak and groan of the catapults pulled his gaze upwards to (Y/N).
What if she could not dodge them all?
The thought lodged itself deep in Legolas’ bones and it would not leave. It buried itself into every crevice of his being and made a home, like a parasite of horror. And, as more stones were loosed into the sky, Legolas felt something colder than fear take hold—helplessness, sharp and unfamiliar, as he watched the skies turn against her.
The battle raged on, fear and dread consuming every soul upon the field, broken only by a flicker of hope when Gandalf arrived at daybreak with the Rohirrim. It was fierce—bloody and unrelenting. Yet, by some grace, perhaps a blessing of the Valar, it came to an end, and Rohan endured to see another dawn. As the remainder of the orcs scurried into the forest and the ents began to rip them apart and finish them off, (Y/N) came down from the sky, landing in front of Legolas.
“(Y/N)!” Legolas called out, rushing towards her. He was quick to slam his body into hers, wrapping her in a tight embrace, which she gladly returned.
“Legolas,” she stated bluntly, pulling away with a frown. “What is it? What is wrong?”
The Elven Prince cupped her cheeks between his two palms, cradling her face. “Oh (Y/N), I do not like watching them try to strike you down. I feared for your life.”
Her brows furrowed deeper. “I am fast. I am Rámaite Mahtar (Winged Warrior).”
He chuckled lightly, for he knew she did not doubt her own skill. She was made for war. She was used to this. But, he? He was not used to the one who claimed his soul and held his heart being seconds from death and a direct target of Sauron.
Therefore, he pulled her close to him once more, pressing his lips to her own in a soft, yet firm, kiss. When he pulled away, he spoke softly, “I love you, my starlight.”
She smiled up at him. “I love you too.”
……
A company set out for Isengard, led by Gandalf and joined by Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, (Y/N), Théoden, Éomer, and a small escort of Rohirrim soldiers. They rode beneath the leaves of the forest and out across the broken lands, the air still heavy with the memories of war as the tower of Orthanc rose into view. But before they could come to its base, they moved through the devastation of the ents.
Most of Isengard was in tatters, its furnaces and shattered machinery drowned beneath dark, murky water that funneled into the deep shafts and forge pits below. Yet, that destruction was not as heart-wrenching as one may think, for it felt like a reclamation by the trees.
The Ents themselves stood proud and strong among the ruin, tall and watchful as they waded through the water and stood guard over what they had seized from the clutches of Saruman.
(Y/N), sitting in front of Legolas, turned her head towards him. “The tree people…” she began.
Legolas nodded, “Yes, the Ents.”
“I know them,” she whispered.
Yet, before he could respond and inquire what she meant, a loud quip of laughter, followed by carefree voices, called out to them.
(Y/N)’s gaze snapped in the direction and, immediately, a large smile stretched across her face. “Merry! Pippin!” she cried out.
She leapt from the horse her and Legolas rode upon, her wings springing from her back. She flew up on the ruins where they sat. She was quick to wrap her arms around them and pull them into a deep embrace.
“When Gandalf told us you were not dead, I was very happy.” She stated.
The two hobbits stared up at her, returning much of the same sentiment. “I am also glad you are not dead!” Merry stated.
“Yes, the last time we saw you, your wings were filled with arrows!” Pippin added.
“They no longer are,” she replied.
“Do you want some salted pork?” Merry began, “It tastes similar to Sam’s sausages!”
The chatter between the three continued until the rest of the company from Rohan caught up with (Y/N). Pleasantries soon followed, along with light scolding over weed and salted pork, before the group finally turned their attention toward the tower.
As they approached Treebeard at the base, he was quick to greet Gandalf. “Wood and water, stock and stone, I can master. But there is a wizard to manage here, locked in his tower.” His eyes then shifted to the winged being sitting in front of Legolas. “Ah, yes…a Sky Reaper. I remember your folk. Very swift. Very fast. The sky did grow dark when you wandered the winds.”
(Y/N) looked up at him, but did not reply. Their eyes locked and, to Legolas, it felt as if Treebeard knew of each crime she had committed in her previous life—and he was right.
Yet the interaction was not paid attention to by many others, for Gandalf called up to Saruman.
As they waited, a short debate started: whether or not to kill the turned wizard. Yet, the discussion did not last long for Saruman appeared above them.
Silence struck as eyes shifted—each person waiting for the other to begin the dreaded conversation. Yet, it was the corrupted wizard who spoke first, for his gaze on (Y/N). “Where did you get that—that Rámaite Mahtar (winged warrior)? I did not see such a creature in any of my visions.”
Legolas reacted instantly. His bow was drawn and an arrow notched within the span of a heartbeat, the sharpened tip aimed directly toward the wizard. “She is not yours to claim, Saruman.” The elf’s voice cut through the silence with dangerous precision. Beneath the calm of his expression simmered something far less restrained—protectiveness sharpened into a simple, direct fury.
A faint smile curled upon Saruman’s lips.
“How fascinating,” the wizard murmured, leaning slightly against his staff. “Such hostility. As though I have spoken of a person and not a weapon.”
At that, the muscle in Legolas’s jaw twitched, his aim staying taught and trained upon the old man.
“I have searched long for whispers of the winged killers,” Saruman continued. “Ancient things. Violent things. Creatures bred for war long before the kingdoms of men learned how to sharpen steel.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “And yet, here one is beside you, leashed by sentiment. Where ever did you find it?”
Legolas’s eyes narrowed.
“Legolas,” Aragorn spoke softly. He reached out and laid a steadying hand on the elf’s arm, guiding the bow down with careful pressure. “We need him alive,” he murmured quietly.
Legolas held Aragorn’s gaze for only a moment longer. Then, at last, he yielded.
The hand that had held the arrow shifted to (Y/N), settling at her womb and curling there, mindful not to let the arrow harm her—subtle, instinctive, possessive.
It was then when Saruman’s lips curled back into that smug, vile expression. It was sharp with amusement, with discovery—as though he had stumbled upon a weakness ripe for exploitation. “How protective you are,” he mused, eyes sliding lazily toward Legolas before returning to (Y/N). “One would think she belonged to you.”
Legolas’s reaction was immediate. Every line of his body pulled taut, sharp and dangerous. Though his bow had lowered, his hand shifted, still gripping the arrow tightly enough that his knuckles paled.
Saruman noticed—of course, he noticed.
“Ah,” he hummed with amusement. “There it is.” He paused before continuing. “She must be very dear to you indeed. Tell me, elf…do you guard her so fiercely because she is dangerous?” His eyes gleamed. “Or because you cannot bear the thought of another laying claim to what warms your bed?”
At his words, everyone froze. The air was full of anxious heat as their eyes shifted to the Elven Prince.
And the sound that exited Legolas’s lips could not be described by anything but a growl—angry and primal. In one swift movement, his bow was raised once more, the arrow aimed directly between Saruman’s eyes. The killing intent behind it was unmistakable, stripped raw and ugly for all to see.
“Speak of her again,” Legolas said sternly, “and I will decorate the stones beneath your tower with what remains of your entrails.”
Several of the Rohirim shifted. Even Gimli looked prepared to intervene if needed. Aragorn too, for a flicker of concern crossed his expression.
“Legolas,” he said quietly—not a reprimand, but a grounding. A reminder.
It did little.
The elf did not shift. He did not soften. If anything, the tension in him sharpened further, as though Saruman’s words had only driven the instinct deeper.
Yet Saruman only seemed more intrigued. “There,” the wizard murmured, almost delighted. “Not merely protective. Possessive.” His gaze drifted toward (Y/N) again. “How very mortal of you, elf.”
Aragorn moved his steed forward, blocking Legolas’s arrows’ path to Saruman. “Enough,” he said, voice steady, carrying the quiet authority of someone used to commanding men who would die for less. “You will not speak to us as though you sit above consequence.”
King Theoden was the next to speak, addressing Saruman. “You stand above the ruins you made,” Théoden said coldly, “and yet you still speak as though you govern what remains.”
Cautiously, Legolas’s bow lowered—for the third time.
The conversation then shifted back to the various debates with Saruman. Gandalf inquiring for information, Sauman promising none but dread. His hand reached into his robes and he pulled out a large murky orb—the plantir.
“Something festers in the heart of middle-earth.” Saruman stated, “Something that you have failed to see. But the great eye has seen it. Even now he presses his advantage. His attack will soon come. You are all going to die.”
It all happened too fast—Saruman’s staff breaking, Gríma Wormtongue striking him down, his body falling upon the spike of the great wheel before slipping into the murky waters of Isengard, and the palantír coming into the possession of Gandalf.
Silence then followed—heavy, final, and almost disbelieving. Then, as if the weight of what had passed finally settled upon them all, Théoden spoke. “We have seen enough of this ruin. We return to Rohan—to our dead, our wounded, and what remains of our strength.”
……
Taglist in the comments because there are too many of you (said with much love) <3
since it's hoa hoa hoa fall soon and LOTR gives me hoa hoa hoa vibes, can you write something for Legolas?? like a harvest or something autum-ny?
Hello sunshine! This one actually made me laugh with "hoa hoa" autumn! xD I whiped up something so I hope you'll like it! Thank you for requesting babes <3
El <3
Legolas Greenleaf- autumn air
𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
GN reader
<3 (SFW)
TW- none
Hua Hua Hua vibes as requested
Legolas and reader are besties in this one ;)
Legolas Greenleaf
As you wander deeper into the shadowed beauty of Northern Mirkwood, crisp autumn leaves crunch beneath your feet, weaving a tapestry of reds, yellows, and browns. The air is brisk and fragrant with the scent of damp earth and ripe fruit, mingling with the faint, lingering aroma of pine.
You can hear the distant laughter of elves, melodic and soft as they prepare for the day’s harvest. Each sound fills your heart with joy—there's something magical about the way the elves bring light even to the darker corners of this ancient forest.
You’ve always admired the elves of Mirkwood. Their grace, their wisdom, and their ethereal beauty leave you in constant awe. Today, however, you are not just an observer; you are part of a gathering to harvest apples from the grand orchards that lie near the forest’s heart.
Among the elves, there is one who stands out—Legolas, your closest friend in this realm of enchantment. With his tall, slender frame and long blond hair intricately braided, he embodies the very essence of the forest.
You catch sight of him ahead, moving with his usual swift precision. His blue eyes sparkle with excitement as he turns to see you approaching.
“There you are!”
He calls, a smile breaking across his delicate features.
“I feared you might have been lost among the trees.”
You laugh, feeling the warmth of camaraderie blossom between you.
“I might have been, had it not been for your guidance, dear Legolas.”
“Come! The others await us.”
He beckons, his excitement infectious. You follow him deeper into the orchard, where low-hanging branches sway with the weight of their golden orbs.
The apple trees stretch high above you, their leaves painted in the vibrant hues of fall. You take a moment to admire the spectacle around you—sunlight streams through the vibrant canopy, casting dappled patterns on the forest floor. It’s a picturesque scene, one that feels like it has been pulled from the pages of an ancient tale.
The gathering of elves is already hard at work. They float among the trees with effortless grace, their laughter mingling with the soft rustle of leaves in the wind. You are struck by how beautiful they are in this autumn light, each movement a dance, each sound a note in nature's symphony.
“A little clumsier today, are we?”
Legolas’s teasing voice interrupts your reverie. You turn to him, cheeks flushed from the sun and embarrassment. Although you’ve tried hard to fit in with the elves, your human clumsiness often draws unnecessary attention.
Rolling your eyes, you respond-
“I promise I shall be graceful today, just you wait!”
Your heart swells with determination, and you urge yourself to match his fluid movements.
As Legolas shows you how to pick the apples from the lower branches, you feel a sense of peace. He instructs you on how to select the ripest ones, his patience never waning as you reach too high or stumble back on occasions.
“Easy now..”
He chuckles gently, his voice smooth as silk.
“Avoid taller branches. They are not as friendly as they may seem.”
You can’t help but smile at his protectiveness. This is the way of Legolas—always looking out for you, ensuring your safety while nurturing your spirit. You gather a small basket and start filling it with apples, his advice echoing in your mind.
Together, you share moments of laughter and playful banter as you work. Legolas expertly swings up to the higher branches, plucking the juiciest apples with a single flick of his wrist before tossing them down to you. In contrast, your efforts feel clumsy and awkward. Yet, with each passing moment, the forest wraps around you in a blanket of vibrant colors, making every stumble a part of the enchanting experience.
Hours pass in this blissful reverie, laughter echoing through the orchard, the sun dipping lower in the sky, casting a golden hue over everything. Throwing an apple your way, Legolas suddenly says-
“Let us take a moment to admire our harvest.”
You both walk toward a clearing where the sun sets the world ablaze, and you lay down your bounty. The apples burst with color, their gloss reflecting the fiery shades of the sky. You sit beside him, breathing in the scent of the fruits and the earth beneath you.
“This is what friendship feels like, is it not?”
Legolas asks, a soft smile playing on his lips as he watches you.
You nod, your heart soaring at the connection you share.
“I feel at home here, Legolas. With you—among the trees and the whispers of the winds.”
“You understand, then, the heart of Mirkwood.”
He replies, his gaze stretching across the horizon.
“To be among friends, to appreciate the beauty around us—it is a timeless gift.”
As twilight descends, the forest takes on a new life. Shadows play games among the trees, and the soft hooting of owls joins the chorus of the evening. The elves gather nearby to share stories, their lithe figures glowing in the starlight, laughter dancing among the branches.
“Shall we join them?"
Legolas offers, standing and extending his hand to you. You take it, feeling the warmth of his trust and friendship course through you.
As you walk back to the group, your heart is light and free. You can’t help but think that even in your clumsiness, there is beauty. In each stumble, each fall, Legolas is there, steady with his unwavering support.
Together, you weave a story of camaraderie and discovery among the apple trees of Northern Mirkwood, a day marked by laughter and friendship that will linger long after the autumn leaves have fallen.
Here, in this realm of magic, you realize that it isn’t just the beauty of the land that holds your heart—it’s the bonds you forge, the memories you collect, and the unwavering friendship of Legolas that make every adventure truly extraordinary.
Hii guys :). I hope y'all like this little mess I made. Anyways, hope you liked it. Feel free to request anything! Requests are open <3
Summary: Settling into your purpose in the halls of King Thranduil, you get to know the people of his court, ultimately bringing you closer to completing your mission.
AO3 Link
Previous Part: Chapter 2
Author's note: Thank you so much for the love on the first two parts! The comments genuinely keep me going! I am so far into this story now, and I can't wait for your reactions as I keep going onwards. Read on, spider-slayers!
Reblogs and comments are very welcome!
I do not use generative AI in my writing
Scene 1 – Breeze Returns
When you awaken to the sounds of trays being placed with breakfast and people shuffling around you, you rise before someone (Navë) has to shake you. Looking around the room, you see your sword, clothing, and your mother’s clasp is sitting neatly atop one of the dressers in your room, close to the door. Though, given the king’s restrictions, you doubt you’d find much use for Breeze.
“Ah, you’re awake. What are your plans today? I can choose a suitable outfit from the stores, my lady,” Navë asks pleasantly while lighting lanterns about the room. Where do I even begin? You think back to the task at hand: address the corruption. You need help.
While your gifts with nature are innate, a deeper connection to the earth, you know how to train the scholarship of healing and herbalism as you learned it in Rivendell. You have to choose three people to enlighten, to bring into the tradition. Who knows? Before long, their intuition might be able to stretch to identifying the corruption. The most expedient path would be to train others enough and then put your four minds to work, collectively.
And it seems like King Thranduil cares most about the expedience of this, at least based on what he said yesterday. Since Elrond and Círdan care about you bringing Thranduil into the fold of elven cooperation, you need to prioritize his comfort. This is especially true given that this was already an uncomfortable bit of help that your Lords have — somehow — politically cornered the king into accepting.
Thinking back on the afternoon conversation with the ethereal white-haired elf, he did not quite welcome your presence. His gaze, sultry and evaluatory, while flattering, felt more like him appreciating your value to his machinations than anticipating a partnership. Did it matter? You always knew you would have to prove yourself worthy of this partnership. And you were told to anticipate this kind of response from him. Work and progress, you decide, will be easier than wondering why King Thranduil accepted your aid. A plan. You need a plan.
“Navë, where are the healers located in these halls? I would you like you to accompany me today. If you are still interested in healing and herbalism, I would be happy to take you on as a student.” She looks over to you, brows bent beneath bangs, looking like she might give a joyous sob. Though, she bites the inside of her cheek, flicking her wrist to rid the reed she was using to light the lanterns of the small flame. She curtsies deeply.
“I’d be honored.”
“Good. I do need to find two others interested in the learning of this task. Though, I would prefer to find them as time goes on. I am in no particular rush.”
“There are old healing rooms, and there are those who consider themselves trained in the elementary basics of healing and herbalism already, though, again…very limited levels of this.” You recall Fergrath mentioning them last night.
“It would be very helpful to visit them, I believe,” you nibble at your lips in thought.
“I can have something more functional prepared for you today, then.” Navë offers with a short bow. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Do enjoy breakfast in the meantime.”
As she exits the room, she whispers a brief good morning to Candaer, tired from a night on shift, turning to nimbly shuffle down the hallway, a litany of outfits floating in her mind. Though, how could she think about anything else but her half-elven emissary in her care who might teach her how to heal?
Coming back to the room, Navë dresses you without the help of the other two elves from yesterday. They were requested to aid in some preparations for a Feast of the Stars. Today, you wear a simple dark green dress, the sleeves — while billowy — split at your elbow, allowing your entire lower arm access to gesture without feeling as though you will knock anything over in a medical environment. Far more manageable. The boatneck emphasizes the elegant slope of your neck. You wear your own black leather boots, now shining and cared for, and pearl earrings. Your hair is half up, half down again, pulled back off of your face. You feel quite ready to speak with the healers of this Woodland Realm. Of Mirkwood.
You walk outside with Navë. Candaer turns to glance at the two of you. “Good morning. You both look quite lovely. Are we leaving?” Navë nods with a pink tinge to the tips of her ears and the apples of her cheeks. “Very well, lead on,” Candaer says with a smile.
“Yes, well…yes. Come this way.” Navë, tucking her hands into her sleeves, navigates you to the healing wing of the cave system, just a ten minute walk away. During this walk, you see Candaer loosen up a bit, even teasing you lightly that you earned quite the honor: two guards and permission to only walk where the king allows.
“I mean, given all a king might have going on, for King Thranduil himself to monitor, you might be a bigger deal than you let on in the forest, spider-slayer.”
“The Woodland Realm certainly has a generous definition of hospitality,” you dryly note.
“In our realm, dear half-elf, being watched can mean being protected, which should bring you comfort,” Navë suggests awkwardly, though she adds, “Or rather, it can mean you are being evaluated.”
You shoot her a mirthful look. She nervously chuckles, shrugging her shoulders.
You reach an elegantly carved door, the Sindarin phrase for ‘hospital’ is written at the base before you enter. Candaer opens the door for the two of you without knocking, which you grow nervous about. You did not want to seem impolite.
Scene 2 – Healer’s Hovel
Walking into the room, it is filled with tables, strewn with tomes, and glassware and tinctures bubble as they dangle above small flames. You take tentative steps into the room; the L-shape of the classroom with the tree shaped pillars block your view of the whole area. Errant twists and dips in the tall ceiling of the classroom cast strange shadows as the lantern light dances around.
“Hello, I’ve come seeking the healers of this court. Is anyone –” you pause as you hear a loud clatter of something metal and clinking of glass around the bend in the room. You hear a whispered but sharp curse of an older ellith, and the muffled mollifications of the elder by a younger ellith.
The older voice speaks out, “Oh blast it all, okay, yes? Hello? Hello?” Around the corner, you hear a scuttling of footsteps, and a shorter-than-expected ellith comes around the corner, hands on her hips, smudges on her face. Her face is angular and expressive with deep lines embedded. In a severe knot, iron grey hair is pulled back, somehow pulling or lifting her wrinkled forehead and eyelids up too. Her tired expression radiates irritation at having to be taken away from her previous task. She wears a grey tunic, topped by a beige suede apron, faintly stained green herbs, ash, sap, and what looks like the ichorous purple venom of the spiders, now oxidized into a near-black. Her light brown eyes almost shine like an eagle’s – yellow like sand beneath a murky pond in the sunlight. They finally settle on you and your tall, short-haired attendant, dressed in her sage green uniform.
You glance over at Navë, trying to mimic her deferential body language out of respect for the elder healer. “Hmm, and I haven't seen you before. Name, purpose,” she demands of you, raising an eyebrow impossibly higher.
You give your given name, and Navë adds, “Sea-born, from the Grey Havens, emissary from both there and Rivendell. A healer sent to train.”
“I am not taking on any more apprentices, child,” the older healer waves her hand dismissively, starting to turn away.
“Nor am I looking for a teacher. I seek to provide some training in exchange for aid in attempting to diagnose and heal the forest of any remnants of the evil or malfeasance that has corrupted it,” you explain, taking a step into the room, trying to get a look at the apprentice you heard earlier. “It is a pleasure to meet you…” you look at her, expectantly.
“Hareth. Senior Court Healer. I learned as a battle-nurse. It wouldn’t surprise me if you did the same. However, if you think that you’re the first to try to fix the shitstorm outside of this cave system, then I’m not sure you have enough going on upstairs to justify my time towards bringing you up to speed,” Hareth scoffs, turning back into the room.
“Wait – I never said that I thought I was the first!” You exclaim, before pulling back. Don’t get defensive. You breath. “I just want help and I am willing to share what I have learned. Navë has agreed to help me. I would be happy to aid wih your apprentice, but I would never want to encroach. If anything, I hope to collaborate with you, learn what you already know. Please believe that I don’t mean to disrupt – but to genuinely support you with…the shitstorm,” you implore, hoping the joke you make at the end is not in poor taste.
“And the king approved of this?” Hareth looks over skeptically to Navë, who had been biting at her lower lip and watching anxiously at this interaction. Perhaps it was for the best that Navë did not accompany me yesterday, you think to yourself, feeling her nervous aura radiating off of her person.
“Oh,” Navë straightens immediately, prompting Candaer to give a slight snigger at her shock. She realizes she is being addressed. “Yes, Healer Hareth. He asked her to go and seek out three to train in healing and to address the forest’s problems,” Navë nods.
“Hm, yes, very well,” Hareth frowns. She clucks her tongue and sighs, as if accepting her fate. “I’m swamped currently with small tasks. If you’re here to help, then both of you can chop some herbs for me, take that off of my task list, yes? My apprentice Branniel is busy washing glasses and tending to some of the samples we have in the stores back there. I need a second to pull my notes from my journals.”
“Thank you, I look forward to –”
“You know, child, when folks have spent years triaging disaster…I find it is best to lead with compassion. Your optimism towards ‘solving’ this, I mean, I’ve been navigating this since it began! It has only gotten worse, and I have tried many things. Many things.” Hareth turns, gesturing for you and Navë to follow her into her office, that doubled as a healing studio. You realize that around the corner is a long area, filled with beds for the wounded.
She catches you staring. “Two years ago, there wasn’t a bed that wasn’t full. Honestly, we probably could have used your help then.” She clapped you on your shoulder, pivoting to a large supply closet where Branniel stands. Branniel looks like someone who easily lifted injured elves onto beds with her thicker arms. When you see her, she clenches her strong jaw in focus. She has a high nose bridge, straight lines, no bumps from her forehead to the tip of her nose. Almost reddish, dark brown hair is braided down the middle with two braids on the sides. Fitted tunics in a similar functional brown emphasize her strong shoulders and lean waist. With large hands for an elf, you watch her work at the glasses with a delicate cloth. Calluses, herb stains, and old burn marks paint her hands.
“Oh, hey. Navë, right? And I didn’t catch your name,” Branniel put down the glass as you walk in. Hareth casually introduces you, rattling off the herbs she wanted chopped for various batches of balms.
“I’ll be hunting for those files. The king is putting this sea-born healer on the task of looking at the forest’s ailments.” Hareth rolls her eyes, patting the door frame as she exits, her rings clinking on the stone.
Branniel whistles “Should I be impressed now, or later?”
You laugh, “Later, certainly.”
“I was going to say,” Branniel gives a warm, low chuckle in return. “You have been here but a day, and you already got the king of the Woodland Realm to believe you can find the heart of the rot? Splendid. It’s only taken us…decades.”
“He told me I had a very limited amount of time,” you mutter. Navë shoots Branniel a nervous smile.
“How are your knife skills?” Branniel pulls a chopper off of the wall with a whetstone, reaching just past you, murmuring a ‘pardon.’ She smells of peppermint.
“Decent,” you credit yourself. “I had some practice back in Rivendell.”
“Beautiful, beautiful. Hey, I did overhear that you were looking for some folks to teach some of your skills. I would be honored to partake between my duties for Hareth, if you would have me.”
“Only with her approval, but I’d be honored to accept your aid.”
“Would you do the honors of chopping this thyme? And you, Navë, can you grind this dried yarrow into a powder? We are looking for some resin-like wound closure agents.”
“You certainly chose a wise one,” you nod in approval. You adequately prepare the knife and begin chopping herbs. After several jars of finely chopped herbs and ground dusts are sealed up, your forearms ache again, but you hear the sweet reprieve of the knock of the senior healer.
“This kingdom’s forest that you other elves call ‘Mirk-wood,” she scrunches her nose at this insulting term, “has a litany of symptoms and things I have been treating, as I said.” You nod, putting down your knife, walking over to her large table where she moves to lean over a series of journals. The journals are all open and she erratically thumbs through them, squinting at the words.
“I can’t even read my own handwriting sometimes,” she curses under her breath. “Yes, okay,” she looks up at you, “grab that parchment – not that one…yes that one, and a quill, and obviously, yes, ink. Very good.” You pick from around the room, coming back to the large table, leaning over to scribe.
Hareth pulls over a tray to show you samples: spider venom, blackened lichen, corrupted water, bark lesions, root matter.
“Here are the current things we have some research on: rashes coming from the water, exhaustion from some of the spores, black-veined fever, the venom of the spiders in the woods has been getting increasingly more lethal. Trees have been getting sick, but even after pruning, they get sicker. Some folks get dreams or night terrors if they drink from the streams.”
Were my dreams and memories in sleep after I drank from the brooks? I don’t think I drank from the brooks, which made your vivid dream perhaps more concerning, then. You continue to listen, despite wanting to ask a million questions about location, season, recurrence, proximity to water, and whether certain sites resist treatment.
Hareth adds, “And even when we try to brew our traditional salves from the flora of the woods, it might help or close wounds, but then it leaves a sickly discoloration behind. Beyond that, some of our collections and samples resulted in some of my assistants falling ill – some of the lower cisterns and waterways were sealed so as to not spread their infection.”
You think back to the water sounds that you heard last night. The seals must have broken or rotted away. The water is too loud to be sealed successfully.
She looks up to you. You frantically scribble, trying to transcribe the details as quickly as you can. “I am deeply concerned about the rate of decline of the forest,” you say, tapping the end of the quill against your front teeth.
“You don’t say,” Hareth deadpans with an unimpressed frown. You exhale sharply in almost a laugh as you finish your work, despite yourself, maybe just from sheer nerves at Hareth’s wryness. She glares at you for a second before giving a sardonic chuckle in turn.
“Listen, child. Get your bearing here. Thank you for your help today. These will stay here on the table. You are welcome to them. Mostly because I don’t want to put them back.”
You give your most diplomatically sound goodbyes to Hareth and Branniel before the hospital door flies open. A young patrol scout, wearing the same uniform as Candaer and Fergrath were on the day you met them in the forest is carried in on a stretcher by two of his peers, deep urgency painting their faces.
“A spider, bit just outside of the gates here.”
“Multiple bites, you mean!”
Hareth jerks up from the table, rushing to guide the scouts to the area with the hospital beds. The young patrol scout convulses on the stretcher. You run over to the other side of the stretcher from Hareth. The black veins from Candler’s injury were not nearly as widespread. These ones crackle across his skin like angry and vile lightning scars.
He moans, “Too high up, too stuck,” and his fellow scouts shake their heads.
“He was pulled into a tree by one, and they wrapped him up. We got separated. By the time we got there, he –”
“I can see that,” Hareth says. “Branniel! Hot water, clean linen. Healer of Rivendell?”
“Yes?” You see a challenge in Hareth’s eyes as she silently asks you to take the lead. It’s a leap of faith, and you refuse to let her down.
You press the clean linen over the wounds, then reach within yourself, remembering the songs that Istel would sing with you. Humming the familiar tune, you whisper melodies of old. The scout gasps. Slowly, your hands glow their familiar white. The linens and gauze melts with the black venom soaking into its fibers, bleeding like ink over paper. Color returns to the scout’s face.
You got the venom out, but the bites still require treatment. “Okay, cleanse the wound. Wash it with salt water and make sure to clean it with alcohol. Beyond that, wrappings. Rest. Rest.” You put your hand to the young ellon’s sweaty forehead. His tension melts into the hospital bed’s pillow.
“I - that is an incredible talent,” Branniel says, dumbstruck.
“Certainly. I can see why the king…” Hareth trails off, correcting herself, “If you want answers, you need to start investigating the grounds, and no one explores the forest nor below these halls in depth without the king’s leave. If he asks, I will give my support. We can stabilize him from here.”
“Are you sure?” You ask, nervously looking at the scout.
“I’ll choose to not take offense to that question,” Hareth deadpans.
Scene 3 – Majesty
Walking down the stairs to your room, finally, the corridor quiets. Candaer whispers softly, “Careful, spider-slayer, the King approaches.” The ethereal light of the caverns mid-day, bouncing around errant light off of the limestone seems to find him. Ever graceful, chin lifted, sultrily half-lidded, the Elvenking passes by up the hallway. As he passes, heads bow, guards kneel before him. The pearlescent white of his robes, a shiny and patterned jacquard, shines like silvery snow against the ruddy brown of the cave floors and walls, pure and powerful. His hair shines against even the robes themselves, though the blonde of his hair tinges just shy of being pure white, a sign of his eternal youth — blonde not aged white or grey. Grey boots step intentionally, carefully. And long legs guide his gliding down the hall. He wears the autumnal crown of berries and red flowers, the red of it on the branches looks like blood in contrast to the white of his robes.
He makes his way down the hallway, getting closer to you. For a brief moment, though his eyes met no others, before you bent in a curtsy, you swear his piercing eye-line rolls over you. You swear you can feel your own pupils blow wide. A ghost of a smile crosses his face. You curtsy. He does not stop.
Though, you hear him turn to Galion, “I expect her observations by evening.” You know it is for you to hear as well, but you catch Galion whip around behind the king, staring at you as if saying, ‘got that?’
The king moves on. And as he turns out of sight, the hall exhales upon his exit.
You make it back to your chambers. Navë helps you draft the request and warns you not to sound like you are accusing the court of neglect.
To King Thranduil: Ruler of the Woodland Realm,
I have met with your senior healer, Healer Hareth. Thus far, her apprentice Branniel and my own attendant Navë have demonstrated an interest in learning more about the healing education that I may offer. Long term, I would like to see outside into the forest once more in order to analyze what your healers suggest is a trending decline in the health of the woods, even after the War of the Ring.
For now, I would ask your permission to inspect the lower cisterns and the older water channels beneath the halls. I would like to be accompanied by one of the court healers, Navë, and both of the guards that you assigned.
I beg your response at your soonest moment so that I might keep this process going as you wish – expediently.
You sign off the letter with a thank you towards his generosity, not expecting a reply that same night. Candaer takes the sealed note. Later, after a dinner in your chambers, your answer arrives. An ellon attendant knocks on your door with a tray,
“A message for the spider-slayer,” the ellon extends the tray to you. You are unsure how much you enjoy the title of ‘spider-slayer,’ but you suppose it is more flattering than a jab. Take your wins, you think to yourself. You take the letter delicately. It reads:
Granted. At first light, under guard.
You will report findings to Hareth of the healing rooms and be accompanied by Fergrath and Candaer of the eastern watch.
You will not enter any sealed passage without leave.
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Always love when people want to be on the taglist! Feel free to comment if you do want to be a part of it or if I forgot you!
Summary: Settling into your purpose in the halls of King Thranduil, you get to know the people of his court, ultimately bringing you closer to completing your mission.
AO3 Link
Previous Part: Chapter 2
Author's note: Thank you so much for the love on the first two parts! The comments genuinely keep me going! I am so far into this story now, and I can't wait for your reactions as I keep going onwards. Read on, spider-slayers!
Reblogs and comments are very welcome!
I do not use generative AI in my writing
Scene 1 – Breeze Returns
When you awaken to the sounds of trays being placed with breakfast and people shuffling around you, you rise before someone (Navë) has to shake you. Looking around the room, you see your sword, clothing, and your mother’s clasp is sitting neatly atop one of the dressers in your room, close to the door. Though, given the king’s restrictions, you doubt you’d find much use for Breeze.
“Ah, you’re awake. What are your plans today? I can choose a suitable outfit from the stores, my lady,” Navë asks pleasantly while lighting lanterns about the room. Where do I even begin? You think back to the task at hand: address the corruption. You need help.
While your gifts with nature are innate, a deeper connection to the earth, you know how to train the scholarship of healing and herbalism as you learned it in Rivendell. You have to choose three people to enlighten, to bring into the tradition. Who knows? Before long, their intuition might be able to stretch to identifying the corruption. The most expedient path would be to train others enough and then put your four minds to work, collectively.
And it seems like King Thranduil cares most about the expedience of this, at least based on what he said yesterday. Since Elrond and Círdan care about you bringing Thranduil into the fold of elven cooperation, you need to prioritize his comfort. This is especially true given that this was already an uncomfortable bit of help that your Lords have — somehow — politically cornered the king into accepting.
Thinking back on the afternoon conversation with the ethereal white-haired elf, he did not quite welcome your presence. His gaze, sultry and evaluatory, while flattering, felt more like him appreciating your value to his machinations than anticipating a partnership. Did it matter? You always knew you would have to prove yourself worthy of this partnership. And you were told to anticipate this kind of response from him. Work and progress, you decide, will be easier than wondering why King Thranduil accepted your aid. A plan. You need a plan.
“Navë, where are the healers located in these halls? I would you like you to accompany me today. If you are still interested in healing and herbalism, I would be happy to take you on as a student.” She looks over to you, brows bent beneath bangs, looking like she might give a joyous sob. Though, she bites the inside of her cheek, flicking her wrist to rid the reed she was using to light the lanterns of the small flame. She curtsies deeply.
“I’d be honored.”
“Good. I do need to find two others interested in the learning of this task. Though, I would prefer to find them as time goes on. I am in no particular rush.”
“There are old healing rooms, and there are those who consider themselves trained in the elementary basics of healing and herbalism already, though, again…very limited levels of this.” You recall Fergrath mentioning them last night.
“It would be very helpful to visit them, I believe,” you nibble at your lips in thought.
“I can have something more functional prepared for you today, then.” Navë offers with a short bow. “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Do enjoy breakfast in the meantime.”
As she exits the room, she whispers a brief good morning to Candaer, tired from a night on shift, turning to nimbly shuffle down the hallway, a litany of outfits floating in her mind. Though, how could she think about anything else but her half-elven emissary in her care who might teach her how to heal?
Coming back to the room, Navë dresses you without the help of the other two elves from yesterday. They were requested to aid in some preparations for a Feast of the Stars. Today, you wear a simple dark green dress, the sleeves — while billowy — split at your elbow, allowing your entire lower arm access to gesture without feeling as though you will knock anything over in a medical environment. Far more manageable. The boatneck emphasizes the elegant slope of your neck. You wear your own black leather boots, now shining and cared for, and pearl earrings. Your hair is half up, half down again, pulled back off of your face. You feel quite ready to speak with the healers of this Woodland Realm. Of Mirkwood.
You walk outside with Navë. Candaer turns to glance at the two of you. “Good morning. You both look quite lovely. Are we leaving?” Navë nods with a pink tinge to the tips of her ears and the apples of her cheeks. “Very well, lead on,” Candaer says with a smile.
“Yes, well…yes. Come this way.” Navë, tucking her hands into her sleeves, navigates you to the healing wing of the cave system, just a ten minute walk away. During this walk, you see Candaer loosen up a bit, even teasing you lightly that you earned quite the honor: two guards and permission to only walk where the king allows.
“I mean, given all a king might have going on, for King Thranduil himself to monitor, you might be a bigger deal than you let on in the forest, spider-slayer.”
“The Woodland Realm certainly has a generous definition of hospitality,” you dryly note.
“In our realm, dear half-elf, being watched can mean being protected, which should bring you comfort,” Navë suggests awkwardly, though she adds, “Or rather, it can mean you are being evaluated.”
You shoot her a mirthful look. She nervously chuckles, shrugging her shoulders.
You reach an elegantly carved door, the Sindarin phrase for ‘hospital’ is written at the base before you enter. Candaer opens the door for the two of you without knocking, which you grow nervous about. You did not want to seem impolite.
Scene 2 – Healer’s Hovel
Walking into the room, it is filled with tables, strewn with tomes, and glassware and tinctures bubble as they dangle above small flames. You take tentative steps into the room; the L-shape of the classroom with the tree shaped pillars block your view of the whole area. Errant twists and dips in the tall ceiling of the classroom cast strange shadows as the lantern light dances around.
“Hello, I’ve come seeking the healers of this court. Is anyone –” you pause as you hear a loud clatter of something metal and clinking of glass around the bend in the room. You hear a whispered but sharp curse of an older ellith, and the muffled mollifications of the elder by a younger ellith.
The older voice speaks out, “Oh blast it all, okay, yes? Hello? Hello?” Around the corner, you hear a scuttling of footsteps, and a shorter-than-expected ellith comes around the corner, hands on her hips, smudges on her face. Her face is angular and expressive with deep lines embedded. In a severe knot, iron grey hair is pulled back, somehow pulling or lifting her wrinkled forehead and eyelids up too. Her tired expression radiates irritation at having to be taken away from her previous task. She wears a grey tunic, topped by a beige suede apron, faintly stained green herbs, ash, sap, and what looks like the ichorous purple venom of the spiders, now oxidized into a near-black. Her light brown eyes almost shine like an eagle’s – yellow like sand beneath a murky pond in the sunlight. They finally settle on you and your tall, short-haired attendant, dressed in her sage green uniform.
You glance over at Navë, trying to mimic her deferential body language out of respect for the elder healer. “Hmm, and I haven't seen you before. Name, purpose,” she demands of you, raising an eyebrow impossibly higher.
You give your given name, and Navë adds, “Sea-born, from the Grey Havens, emissary from both there and Rivendell. A healer sent to train.”
“I am not taking on any more apprentices, child,” the older healer waves her hand dismissively, starting to turn away.
“Nor am I looking for a teacher. I seek to provide some training in exchange for aid in attempting to diagnose and heal the forest of any remnants of the evil or malfeasance that has corrupted it,” you explain, taking a step into the room, trying to get a look at the apprentice you heard earlier. “It is a pleasure to meet you…” you look at her, expectantly.
“Hareth. Senior Court Healer. I learned as a battle-nurse. It wouldn’t surprise me if you did the same. However, if you think that you’re the first to try to fix the shitstorm outside of this cave system, then I’m not sure you have enough going on upstairs to justify my time towards bringing you up to speed,” Hareth scoffs, turning back into the room.
“Wait – I never said that I thought I was the first!” You exclaim, before pulling back. Don’t get defensive. You breath. “I just want help and I am willing to share what I have learned. Navë has agreed to help me. I would be happy to aid wih your apprentice, but I would never want to encroach. If anything, I hope to collaborate with you, learn what you already know. Please believe that I don’t mean to disrupt – but to genuinely support you with…the shitstorm,” you implore, hoping the joke you make at the end is not in poor taste.
“And the king approved of this?” Hareth looks over skeptically to Navë, who had been biting at her lower lip and watching anxiously at this interaction. Perhaps it was for the best that Navë did not accompany me yesterday, you think to yourself, feeling her nervous aura radiating off of her person.
“Oh,” Navë straightens immediately, prompting Candaer to give a slight snigger at her shock. She realizes she is being addressed. “Yes, Healer Hareth. He asked her to go and seek out three to train in healing and to address the forest’s problems,” Navë nods.
“Hm, yes, very well,” Hareth frowns. She clucks her tongue and sighs, as if accepting her fate. “I’m swamped currently with small tasks. If you’re here to help, then both of you can chop some herbs for me, take that off of my task list, yes? My apprentice Branniel is busy washing glasses and tending to some of the samples we have in the stores back there. I need a second to pull my notes from my journals.”
“Thank you, I look forward to –”
“You know, child, when folks have spent years triaging disaster…I find it is best to lead with compassion. Your optimism towards ‘solving’ this, I mean, I’ve been navigating this since it began! It has only gotten worse, and I have tried many things. Many things.” Hareth turns, gesturing for you and Navë to follow her into her office, that doubled as a healing studio. You realize that around the corner is a long area, filled with beds for the wounded.
She catches you staring. “Two years ago, there wasn’t a bed that wasn’t full. Honestly, we probably could have used your help then.” She clapped you on your shoulder, pivoting to a large supply closet where Branniel stands. Branniel looks like someone who easily lifted injured elves onto beds with her thicker arms. When you see her, she clenches her strong jaw in focus. She has a high nose bridge, straight lines, no bumps from her forehead to the tip of her nose. Almost reddish, dark brown hair is braided down the middle with two braids on the sides. Fitted tunics in a similar functional brown emphasize her strong shoulders and lean waist. With large hands for an elf, you watch her work at the glasses with a delicate cloth. Calluses, herb stains, and old burn marks paint her hands.
“Oh, hey. Navë, right? And I didn’t catch your name,” Branniel put down the glass as you walk in. Hareth casually introduces you, rattling off the herbs she wanted chopped for various batches of balms.
“I’ll be hunting for those files. The king is putting this sea-born healer on the task of looking at the forest’s ailments.” Hareth rolls her eyes, patting the door frame as she exits, her rings clinking on the stone.
Branniel whistles “Should I be impressed now, or later?”
You laugh, “Later, certainly.”
“I was going to say,” Branniel gives a warm, low chuckle in return. “You have been here but a day, and you already got the king of the Woodland Realm to believe you can find the heart of the rot? Splendid. It’s only taken us…decades.”
“He told me I had a very limited amount of time,” you mutter. Navë shoots Branniel a nervous smile.
“How are your knife skills?” Branniel pulls a chopper off of the wall with a whetstone, reaching just past you, murmuring a ‘pardon.’ She smells of peppermint.
“Decent,” you credit yourself. “I had some practice back in Rivendell.”
“Beautiful, beautiful. Hey, I did overhear that you were looking for some folks to teach some of your skills. I would be honored to partake between my duties for Hareth, if you would have me.”
“Only with her approval, but I’d be honored to accept your aid.”
“Would you do the honors of chopping this thyme? And you, Navë, can you grind this dried yarrow into a powder? We are looking for some resin-like wound closure agents.”
“You certainly chose a wise one,” you nod in approval. You adequately prepare the knife and begin chopping herbs. After several jars of finely chopped herbs and ground dusts are sealed up, your forearms ache again, but you hear the sweet reprieve of the knock of the senior healer.
“This kingdom’s forest that you other elves call ‘Mirk-wood,” she scrunches her nose at this insulting term, “has a litany of symptoms and things I have been treating, as I said.” You nod, putting down your knife, walking over to her large table where she moves to lean over a series of journals. The journals are all open and she erratically thumbs through them, squinting at the words.
“I can’t even read my own handwriting sometimes,” she curses under her breath. “Yes, okay,” she looks up at you, “grab that parchment – not that one…yes that one, and a quill, and obviously, yes, ink. Very good.” You pick from around the room, coming back to the large table, leaning over to scribe.
Hareth pulls over a tray to show you samples: spider venom, blackened lichen, corrupted water, bark lesions, root matter.
“Here are the current things we have some research on: rashes coming from the water, exhaustion from some of the spores, black-veined fever, the venom of the spiders in the woods has been getting increasingly more lethal. Trees have been getting sick, but even after pruning, they get sicker. Some folks get dreams or night terrors if they drink from the streams.”
Were my dreams and memories in sleep after I drank from the brooks? I don’t think I drank from the brooks, which made your vivid dream perhaps more concerning, then. You continue to listen, despite wanting to ask a million questions about location, season, recurrence, proximity to water, and whether certain sites resist treatment.
Hareth adds, “And even when we try to brew our traditional salves from the flora of the woods, it might help or close wounds, but then it leaves a sickly discoloration behind. Beyond that, some of our collections and samples resulted in some of my assistants falling ill – some of the lower cisterns and waterways were sealed so as to not spread their infection.”
You think back to the water sounds that you heard last night. The seals must have broken or rotted away. The water is too loud to be sealed successfully.
She looks up to you. You frantically scribble, trying to transcribe the details as quickly as you can. “I am deeply concerned about the rate of decline of the forest,” you say, tapping the end of the quill against your front teeth.
“You don’t say,” Hareth deadpans with an unimpressed frown. You exhale sharply in almost a laugh as you finish your work, despite yourself, maybe just from sheer nerves at Hareth’s wryness. She glares at you for a second before giving a sardonic chuckle in turn.
“Listen, child. Get your bearing here. Thank you for your help today. These will stay here on the table. You are welcome to them. Mostly because I don’t want to put them back.”
You give your most diplomatically sound goodbyes to Hareth and Branniel before the hospital door flies open. A young patrol scout, wearing the same uniform as Candaer and Fergrath were on the day you met them in the forest is carried in on a stretcher by two of his peers, deep urgency painting their faces.
“A spider, bit just outside of the gates here.”
“Multiple bites, you mean!”
Hareth jerks up from the table, rushing to guide the scouts to the area with the hospital beds. The young patrol scout convulses on the stretcher. You run over to the other side of the stretcher from Hareth. The black veins from Candler’s injury were not nearly as widespread. These ones crackle across his skin like angry and vile lightning scars.
He moans, “Too high up, too stuck,” and his fellow scouts shake their heads.
“He was pulled into a tree by one, and they wrapped him up. We got separated. By the time we got there, he –”
“I can see that,” Hareth says. “Branniel! Hot water, clean linen. Healer of Rivendell?”
“Yes?” You see a challenge in Hareth’s eyes as she silently asks you to take the lead. It’s a leap of faith, and you refuse to let her down.
You press the clean linen over the wounds, then reach within yourself, remembering the songs that Istel would sing with you. Humming the familiar tune, you whisper melodies of old. The scout gasps. Slowly, your hands glow their familiar white. The linens and gauze melts with the black venom soaking into its fibers, bleeding like ink over paper. Color returns to the scout’s face.
You got the venom out, but the bites still require treatment. “Okay, cleanse the wound. Wash it with salt water and make sure to clean it with alcohol. Beyond that, wrappings. Rest. Rest.” You put your hand to the young ellon’s sweaty forehead. His tension melts into the hospital bed’s pillow.
“I - that is an incredible talent,” Branniel says, dumbstruck.
“Certainly. I can see why the king…” Hareth trails off, correcting herself, “If you want answers, you need to start investigating the grounds, and no one explores the forest nor below these halls in depth without the king’s leave. If he asks, I will give my support. We can stabilize him from here.”
“Are you sure?” You ask, nervously looking at the scout.
“I’ll choose to not take offense to that question,” Hareth deadpans.
Scene 3 – Majesty
Walking down the stairs to your room, finally, the corridor quiets. Candaer whispers softly, “Careful, spider-slayer, the King approaches.” The ethereal light of the caverns mid-day, bouncing around errant light off of the limestone seems to find him. Ever graceful, chin lifted, sultrily half-lidded, the Elvenking passes by up the hallway. As he passes, heads bow, guards kneel before him. The pearlescent white of his robes, a shiny and patterned jacquard, shines like silvery snow against the ruddy brown of the cave floors and walls, pure and powerful. His hair shines against even the robes themselves, though the blonde of his hair tinges just shy of being pure white, a sign of his eternal youth — blonde not aged white or grey. Grey boots step intentionally, carefully. And long legs guide his gliding down the hall. He wears the autumnal crown of berries and red flowers, the red of it on the branches looks like blood in contrast to the white of his robes.
He makes his way down the hallway, getting closer to you. For a brief moment, though his eyes met no others, before you bent in a curtsy, you swear his piercing eye-line rolls over you. You swear you can feel your own pupils blow wide. A ghost of a smile crosses his face. You curtsy. He does not stop.
Though, you hear him turn to Galion, “I expect her observations by evening.” You know it is for you to hear as well, but you catch Galion whip around behind the king, staring at you as if saying, ‘got that?’
The king moves on. And as he turns out of sight, the hall exhales upon his exit.
You make it back to your chambers. Navë helps you draft the request and warns you not to sound like you are accusing the court of neglect.
To King Thranduil: Ruler of the Woodland Realm,
I have met with your senior healer, Healer Hareth. Thus far, her apprentice Branniel and my own attendant Navë have demonstrated an interest in learning more about the healing education that I may offer. Long term, I would like to see outside into the forest once more in order to analyze what your healers suggest is a trending decline in the health of the woods, even after the War of the Ring.
For now, I would ask your permission to inspect the lower cisterns and the older water channels beneath the halls. I would like to be accompanied by one of the court healers, Navë, and both of the guards that you assigned.
I beg your response at your soonest moment so that I might keep this process going as you wish – expediently.
You sign off the letter with a thank you towards his generosity, not expecting a reply that same night. Candaer takes the sealed note. Later, after a dinner in your chambers, your answer arrives. An ellon attendant knocks on your door with a tray,
“A message for the spider-slayer,” the ellon extends the tray to you. You are unsure how much you enjoy the title of ‘spider-slayer,’ but you suppose it is more flattering than a jab. Take your wins, you think to yourself. You take the letter delicately. It reads:
Granted. At first light, under guard.
You will report findings to Hareth of the healing rooms and be accompanied by Fergrath and Candaer of the eastern watch.
You will not enter any sealed passage without leave.
Tag List: @cassandra-reborn-anew @gerudolivinliv @avdogknight @kohoutkof01 @ladyoflindon @entishramblings @neoono
Always love when people want to be on the taglist! Feel free to comment if you do want to be a part of it or if I forgot you!
Yes, hello, I am the recent order of fics and fries! 🍟
Since I have to choose just one... could you go ahead and do the headcanon for Legolas?
Hello again anon! Legolas is a fine choice indeed. I've taken the medication to be pills instead of injections/other regular forms of medication, but it doesn't come up that much - and what they're for is unspecified. How/why these exist in Middle Earth is also kindly left to the reader's imagination.
(Here's the original request)
❝𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲?❞ « ficlet »
Pairing: Legolas X GN!Reader
Wordcount: 0.3k | TWs: None
✧ As you briefly recount the medication in your hand, your fist closes around them before you look around for the glass.
✧ Finding it, you realise Legolas has entered the room at some point - his eyes just flickering up from your now closed hands.
✧ Before you can speak, he looks away sheepishly, "My apologies, I... should not intrude. I was just curious."
✧ "Curious?" The concept is foreign to you, that you could do anything to pique an elves' interest. Let alone Legolas's.
✧ "I cannot see how they are supposed to be filling."
✧ "Filling?" Opening your hands to look down at the pills, you can't help but laugh a little, "You- you thought these were my breakfast?"
✧ "I haven't seen you eat anything else today." There's a slight flush on Legolas as he says it, "I was not sure what else it would be."
✧ "They're..." You stop for a moment, then carry on, "They're my medication. They help me keep healthy, hopefully."
✧ A silence settles between the two of you, and Legolas goes awkward again. "I see. Are you...?"
✧ "Fine." You give him what you hope is a reassuring smile, before taking the glass of water and grimacing for a moment as they go down. "The most annoying thing is remembering to take them all."
✧ Seeing a little confusion in his eyes again, you add, "I take them daily. Usually before my breakfast."
✧ "I will endeavour not to confuse the two of them again." Legolas's joke is a little shy, but his eyes light up when you offer him a laugh for his remark. "Do you wish to join me to eat?"
A/N: Hopefully you enjoyed this, anon, thanks again for the request <3
Summary: Your friendship with The Flash blossoms into something else among kidnappings, more articles and some very heated matches of Mario Kart, but when he asks you to meet his friends—Arsenal and Green Lantern—you can't help but feel nervous
Word Count: 3.1k
Content/CW -> gn! reader, mentions of stalking/harassment and kidnapping, Kyle & Roy cameos, the infamous bedazzled taser, we're finally getting into the plot
<- previous part - next part ->
froggi yaps -> i did not mean to take more than two months to write this im so sorry ;-; lowkey i never intended for this to be a series so progress on making/outlining a plot + coming up with more conspiracy ideas is very slow going (always open to suggestions, thank you to anon (you didn't leave your user on the form, pls contact me for credit ;-;) for the idea at the end :p)
“So, as much as I love our usual rendezvous,” Wally says nonchalantly, kicking off his shoes at the door like he owns the place. “And trust me, I really do. Writing articles, getting kidnapped, evacuating a city. Thrilling stuff, really.”
You’re half listening to him, staring at the screen of your computer with wide eyes and a slack jaw. The message stares back at you, piercing through you and sending a wave of cold fear through your chest. This isn’t the usual crazy person sending you a conspiracy, or hero trying to get back at a friend.
This is new, this is vicious.
“—but anyway, I thought we could both use some chill time so I, uh, I brought you something.”
Your head snaps up when he gets a few feet away, eyes narrowing on the familiar figure of the speedster. He’s grinning ear to ear, a Nintendo DS clenched in each hand. He extends a white one to you.
“You can keep that, by the way. Consider it like an apology gift.”
You’re still silent, the message you’d just read rotating in the back of your mind. The Flash can’t protect you forever. It’s one line, six words and yet, chills walk the length of your spine. Whoever sent it knows, whoever sent it has been watching you.
“Hello? Am I muted or something?” He dips his head down to look at your computer, “what were you working on?”
It’s just as he goes to read it that you quickly close the tab and shut down your computer entirely, swallowing back your fear and focusing back on the speedster. You shakily take the device from him, running your fingers along the cold edges in an attempt to soothe yourself.
You blink, looking up at him. “I haven’t played on one of these in forever.”
“That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” He holds up a bag in his other hand, the familiar logo of your favorite convenience store greeting you. “And I brought snacks. I know, I’m the best ever.”
He’s not sure what he expects you to say to that—a thank you, maybe a playful roll of your eyes? What he’s not expecting is for you to stand up and wrap your arms around his torso, nodding against the warmth of his chest.
It’s only now that you realize he’s changed into plain clothes, jeans and another old band t-shirt that hugs his frame perfectly despite looking about as old as your computer.
“Thank you,” you say quietly, Wally closing his arms around you and squeezing.
He almost makes a joke about the sudden affection but decides against it. You’re unpredictable—it’s one of the things he’s come to love about you—and he wouldn’t dare jeopardize the future of his hugging chances with you.
He’s grinning that same sunshiney grin when you pull away, holding up one of those translucent game cartridge holders. “I hope you like Mario Party.”
Twenty minutes later and you’re both settled on your couch, an old dvd playing on your boxy tv while you and Wally yell at each other over Mario Party.
“That is so not fair!”
You scoff, “you’re just jealous you didn’t think of it first.”
Wally looks at you over the brim of his red DS, green eyes unimpressed. “Maybe,” he admits. “It was still a cheap shot.”
“Just play better, Flas—Wally.”
He blinks. “Oh, speaking of that.”
You pause the game, dropping the DS into your lap to focus on him completely.
He smiles sheepishly. “GL wants to apologize. For the whole attempted kidnapping misunderstanding thing.”
“He sent me an email.”
“He—he did? Did you answer?”
You shake your head.
“Fair enough,” he says. “He does feel really bad about it, he’s not usually so…forward.”
“...forward.”
“Kidnap happy, whatever you want to call it.”
That gets a laugh out of you, Wally’s cheeks pinkening at the sound. You can’t help but think he looks cute like this—dressed in plain clothes, getting his ass kicked at Mario Party on your couch, a slight pout on his lips.
You freeze. When was the last time you had a connection like this, the last time you thought someone was cute? You’ve been locked up in your house for so long, you can’t even remember. Something electric sparks in your stomach, erupting like butterflies.
“I finished your article.”
His eyes widen. “The Arsenal one?”
You can’t help but smile at his reaction. “Do you want to see?”
He nods eagerly, following you to your desk and waiting patiently in the seat that’s kinda sorta become his since he’s been coming over. It takes a few minutes for your computer to boot up, the fans whirring to life.
The screen flickers on, Wally looking away while you type in your password and open your documents folder, pulling up the article. He grins wickedly while he reads it, rubbing his hands together like a cartoon supervillain.
“This is perfect but—”
You frown. But what?
“You don’t have to post it, not if you’re worried about a repeat of…that.”
You shrug weakly, “it’s just a guy with a bow and arrow.”
Wally cracks up, hair bouncing as he shakes his head from side to side. Just a guy with a bow and arrow. He’ll have to tell Roy about that one next time he sees him.
“Plus,” you say a little quieter this time, suddenly interested in the dust collecting between the keys on your keyboard, “I know you’ll come if I call you.”
Wally’s cheeks go from pink to red real quick. So you do trust him again, good to know.
It’s two days before you finally post the article, a bit of pride swelling in your chest when you do. Wally’s gonna be so happy to see it, you can practically see that sunshiney smile on his face.
You’re considering texting him when your computer dings with the familiar sound of your inbox, your flip phone forgotten in your pocket. You open the message eagerly, wondering if it’s Wally already saying something about the article.
Your smile falls immediately when you see what it is. It’s a different email than before—the other one blocked—but it’s unmistakably the same sender.
Don’t ever block me again. I will keep making emails as long as it takes. I’m not upset, just disappointed. Why don’t you answer me? I just want to be with you, is that so much to ask? It’s the Flash, isn’t it? I won’t let him get between us…
You swallow, immediately blocking the email address and turning off your computer. Nausea twists at your stomach. It’s only an email, you tell yourself. It can’t hurt you. But something dark blooms in the corners of your mind, the small possibility that maybe, whoever this person is, they’d go beyond an email.
You’re snapped out of your thoughts at the familiar whoosh of Wally arriving, kicking his shoes off in the same place he always does. You breathe through your fear, forcing your face to be neutral before he makes it up the stairs.
It’s not a big deal. It’s just two emails. Wally doesn’t need to know, it’s only going to make him concerned when he has enough on his plate to worry about.
He rounds the corner, flashing you a smile. “I think that was the best thing I’ve ever read.”
“You think so?”
“I don’t think Arsenal would agree, though.” He chuckles, shaking his head, “his daughter seems to think it’s funny.”
“He has a daughter?”
Wally nods, popping what looks to be a piece of pepperoni into his mouth. “Yeah, said she was gonna show it to all her friends, too.”
“Wait—isn’t he like your age? How old is his daughter?”
“Like Robin’s age? Ish.”
You pause, doing the math in your head. Arsenal has a daughter, a teenage daughter. You’re not sure why but it had never really dawned on you before that most of these heroes have real lives, beyond what you see and what you write about them.
Something sinks in your chest. Does Wally have a family? Was the apartment he took you to just a safe house, and he was really lying about just moving? Your head spins, the stupidity and embarrassment of your crush sinking in.
Of course it was a safehouse. Why would a superhero be dumb enough to take you to their personal home?
Wally pokes your side. “Hello? Houston, are you there?”
You swallow. “Do—do you have any kids?”
Wally catches the slight edge in your voice, the quieter tone, the way you can’t meet his eyes. He frowns, clinging onto your line of thinking like a safety rope, ready to tug you out of the pit you’ve dug for yourself.
“Nope,” he smiles—a peace offering. “It’s just me.”
The storm in your stomach dies. “Yeah, me too,” you say, like he isn’t at your house almost every single day.
Wally staggers over to your couch, flopping on it like he belongs there before whipping out his DS from the pocket of his jeans. He flicks it open with one hand, a grin on his face like he’s just done something majorly impressive.
You get the memo, grabbing your own DS off of your desk and settling in opposite of him on the couch. “More Mario Party today, or did you bring something else I could kick your butt in?”
He holds up another game cartridge, the black and white checkered background all too familiar to you.
“Mario Kart?” You laugh, “okay, it’s your funeral.”
Wally scoffs. “You realize I’m the fastest man alive, right?”
“Not in Mario Kart.”
“Mhm, you’ll see.”
You smile smugly, loading into the game. “You know, ‘The Flash Sucks At Mario Kart’ would make a pretty good article name…”
He gasps, pressing a hand to his chest like he’s been wounded. “You wouldn’t dare.”
You raise a brow. Try me.
Two hours into your Mario Kart marathon—tied equally for Grand Prix wins with Wally—you’ve almost entirely forgotten about the horrible message you’d read when he first came over.
The sun is sinking outside, the Gotham rain having blotted it out for most of the day anyway. You stretch out your limbs, feet brushing the side of Wally’s thigh as you do.
“Oh, they wanna meet you, by the way.”
You pause your game. “Who does?”
“Arsenal and Green Lantern. Well, you guys already met but….you know what I mean.”
You blink. “Like, kidnapper Green Lantern and—and ‘Arsenal uses aimbot’ Arsenal?”
He recognizes that look in your eyes immediately, like a cornered animal, ready to fight or flee or pull off some creative combination of the both that only you could think of.
Tread lightly, he thinks.
“Yeah, those are the ones.”
“And…they want to meet where exactly?”
Wally cringes. In all the time you’ve been spending together lately, you’d acted so…normal that he’d forgotten your gripes about the outside world.
“I’m sorry, Wally.” You shake your head, “but it just—it doesn’t feel safe, or a good idea. There’s so many things that could go wrong out there and—”
“You know I have your back, right?”
And he says it so genuinely that it stops you in your tracks. You look at him, eyes slightly wet and vacant. He has your back.
“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to,” he shrugs. “But we could meet at my place, you could even scope it out first. No phones, none of that. And…y’know, it might be nice for you to talk to people who aren’t crazy. Other than me, I mean.”
“Same diff.”
He scoffs but the smile tugging at the corners of his lips betrays him. Always so quick with the comebacks, always so quick on your feet. Yeah, he thinks. You’ll do just fine with his friends.
It’s two days before Wally manages to wrangle you, Kyle and Roy. Surprisingly of the three, you were the easiest to get back to his house.
“So it’s not a safehouse,” you say the minute you end up back in his living room.
He blinks, confused. “Uh, no? Why’d you think that?”
“I just didn’t think a superhero would take someone back to their real house, that’s all.”
“I…didn’t think of it like that.”
You only nod, going about your sweep of his house. No cameras, no wires, nothing to track you with. Smart devices disabled, wifi double encrypted, webcams taped over.
Wally watches you snoop around his apartment like an electronic sniffing dog, pulling out devices he forgot he had and examining them closely. Usually, he’d be agitated from someone digging through all of his things, taking them apart and reassembling them, but with you he almost finds it…cute?
It’s over an hour before you’re finally satisfied, settling back in on the comfort of his sectional and pulling out your DS.
“Want something to drink?” Wally calls from the inside of his fridge, “I’m having a root beer.”
You nod, “I’ll have one too, please.”
In a flash, he’s setting an iced cold can of it next to you and settling in on the opposite end of the couch. “They should be here any minute.”
You pause your game, taking a breath and digging your nails into your palms. They’re just people, you try to tell yourself. Except they’re not. They’re superheroes, real life people with real life superpowers who real life hate your blog.
“I swear they’re really nice,” he says. “Well, okay, not really. GL is kind of a dick and Arsenal…is also kind of dick. You know what? Just pretend I didn’t say anything.”
You shake your head idly, examining your can of rootbeer for any signs of tampering, The lid is intact, the can is immaculate, there’s no residue anywhere on the shiny metal. For all intents and purposes, it’s safe to drink.
You crack it open and take a sip, setting the timer in your head for 30 minutes. If there’s anything in it, you’ll know by then.
And then the doorbell is ringing and your ears are perking up, Wally rushing to the door to greet them. You trail after him slowly, cautiously smoothing a hand over the t-shirt you decided to wear today.
He opens the door and the two men—still in costume—enter like they own the place. Green Lantern grins and gives Wally a harsh pat on the back, Arsenal clasping his hand with the other redhead’s and pulling him into a bro hug.
You try not to roll your eyes.
“Hey,” Green Lantern greets you, a shy smile on his face. “I’m glad you could make it.”
You swallow and nod, doing your best to not show your concern.
“I’m sorry, by the way. For the whole misunderstanding.” He rubs the back of his neck, “although you did kind of taze me in the first place.”
You slip a hand into your pocket and pull out the bedazzled weapon. “With this thing?”
His mouth falls open, hands raised in surrender. “Is that—did you decorate your taser?”
You smile proudly, turning it over in your hands so he can properly see the array of stickers.
“Well, that’s a first.” Arsenal says from over his shoulder, suddenly at his side.
“I just…really like stickers.”
“And misinformation, apparently.”
You roll your eyes. “I’m guessing you didn’t like my article?”
Wally peeks at you from around the back of his head, offering you an encouraging thumbs up. “Hey, at least you weren’t accused of being 5’9’.”
Arsenal snorts. “Fair enough.”
The conversation flows easily from there, each minute bringing some relief to the tension that’s been eating away at you all day. Despite their heroic feats and dorky costumes, they actually seem like pretty nice people. Nicer than the Bats, at least, whose interactions with you typically consist of some sort of yelling.
At some point, someone suggests playing Mario Kart on Wally’s wii—one of the many devices you’d inspected during your sweep of his apartment. Wally sets it up, passing around the remotes.
You only grin wickedly, knowing what’s about to come to the men around you.
“You’re cheating,” Green Lantern says after your third consecutive win. “You have to be cheating, right?”
You shake your head.
“Maybe you just suck, Ra—GL.”
Green Lantern shoots Wally a look but says nothing.
The minute Wally closes the doors behind them, you breathe a sigh of relief. You can’t remember the last time you’d been around so many people for so long, and your social battery is beyond drained.
It’s only when Wally drops you off in the comfort of your home, both of you slightly wet from the Gotham rain, do you remember what waits for you on your computer.
You pause, barely reaching a hand out to him as he goes to leave. “Um, Wally?”
“Hm?”
“Can I…can I show you something?”
Nerves chew away at your stomach lining like rats chewing a wire. Your breathing feels shallower, heart hammering at your ribcage. He’s going to be upset you kept this from him.
“Of course,” he smiles warmly, following you up the stairs and to your desk.
The usual chair he sits in is still there, a permanent fixture in your life—much the way he is—now. You settle in and boot up your computer, your usual writing application popping up first by default.
Wally fixes you with a toothy grin when he sees your most recent work.
Your mouth falls open when you open your inbox only to see fifteen new messages from a similar email. Another burner account.
You open the top one, letting Wally read it. His face twists into disgust, confusion, anger and finally, concern. You click on the next one and the one after that and the one after that until you’ve made your way through all of the emails for the day.
“How long?” His voice cracks. “How long has this been going on?”
“A week,” you say quietly. “Maybe a little longer.”
“And you’re just showing me now?”
You frown at his change in tone. “I-I didn’t want to give you anything more to stress about.”
“This is—it’s—fuck.” He tugs at his hair, rising from his chair and pacing the room. “I knew you had some crazies on your blog but this is like, next level.”
“Wally, can you…is it okay if you stay over tonight?”
His face goes blank, something close to a blush creeping over his neck. “Yeah,” he swallows, throat bobbing. “I think I could do that.”
You’re up in an instant, wrapping your arms around his waist and hugging him tightly. “Thank you.”
He finally gives into his urges, brushing his lips over the top of your head. “Anytime.”
(Alt Text: BBL or Buttpads: The Truth About Nightwing)
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