— The healer —
summary : When you offer your life and your powers to the fellowship, calm and unperturbed Legolas feels his insides knot with themselves. There’s a promise at the tip of his lips and memories that rush through your fingers.
pairing legolas x fem!healer!reader (no use of y/n)
content warning : none, maybe mentions of canon-typical violence but that’s it!
wc : 5,074k
author’s note : this was actually the first thing i ever wrote for legolas the day after watching lotr for the first time! it’s plain basic romance and i love it!!
➢ nini’s masterlist
➢ read on ao3
Rivendell’s calm, its stillness usually unperturbed, was now disturbed by something you couldn’t quite put your finger on. Everything was still the same but slightly out of place. Like the leaves were rustling louder than before, the crystal clear steam hurried and the air simply different.
Heavier with something. A burden.
You couldn’t analyse further, thought. But you knew someone who could. As you crossed a bridge, here he was right in front of you, appearing just like magic when you thought of him. He had this habit of being at the right place at the right time without even knowing it, which made you look out for him more than you ought to. Fair long blond hair flowing in motion with his stride and piercing blue eyes crossed you on the bridge without even acknowledging you. That’s how you knew something was definitely up.
“Legolas?“ you called, turning back towards him. He stoped and turned to you as if he didn’t see you before. You offered him a smile and stepped forward. “Hi, where are you going like that?“ you asked.
“Only attending a meeting, they are waiting for me“ he replied, making no move to leave nevertheless.
“Can I ask you something?" he looked at you expectantly. “What is happening? I can feel something is wrong, out of place in the very air, but I cannot tell what,“ you explain, looking up to him.
“I am sorry, my lady, but I cannot reveal anything. It is a private affair concerning the king.“
You looked at him with furrowed brows, not expecting this kind of answer. Legolas always told you about what was being prepared. The number of soldiers in the troops, his own departure when a quest called upon him. But not this time. You smelt the musk coming off of him dragged by the wind to your nose, and a feeling of panic clung to your skin, irrevocably. The feeling of never seeing him again if you let him go without further ado. The feeling of waking up in the morning and knowing, in your skin, he left without saying goodbye.
You were friends, close friends some might say, courting even if you were crazy enough to think an elven prince interested in a modest healer, as good as she was. You had spent your teenage years together, always somehow in each other’s circle because your apprenticeship as a healer led you to tend to multiple surface wounds he would bring home from his travelling. You had spent your teenage years dwelling over a prince, just like any other girl would because he was so nice and charming, and moreover he acted like he wasn’t heir to the throne. But when duty called you west, in Rivendell, you forgot all about your dreams of elven princes and pinewood scents and bid your adieux, thinking next time you’ll see him you will have to bow to another woman hanging at his arm.
And here you were years later, the royal healer of Rivendell and close friend of the blond boy you so deeply liked hundreds of years before. As always, he was constantly off to something : a mission, a quest, but he came by Rivendell often enough; even lingered there when he had the time. And if you had known he came by so often just for you, you wouldn’t have believed it anyway. With the years Legolas had taken a liking to you, you two were so different yet so similar. Back in Mirkwood, when he was young and reckless and sometimes mean, you were soft-spoken, tender and firm all the same. Now in Rivendell, now that the grief had washed off his face at last, you were the one with burning fire in your heart, yet always so gentle and reassuring when reassurance there needed be. And Legolas he was everything he wasn’t before, calmer, still a bit arrogant but so much more sure of himself, you observed.
You sighed, you would get no information from the elf this time, it seemed.
“Well, be careful will you? It is my day off tomorrow and I would like to spend it in bed, not stitching you back to pieces, yes?“
“I will make no promises, my lady,“ he said, the ghost of a smile torturing at his lips before you rolled your eyes and walked away, back of the neck burning because you were sure you could feel his piercing eyes watching you leave.
You could feel them watching you every time he was in the room, observing your every move, noting your every mistake probably (not that there were many, but to that you will never admit). He resumed walking to his meeting, unaware that you had stopped behind a column to follow him.
If curiosity was a fault or a blessing, you couldn’t say, but it brought you to hear multiple men talk about a ring and a quest. Mentions of Mount Doom were made, of Mordor and Isengard even ; of Sauron. You quickly understood that something was on the verge of happening. Something much bigger than you, something Legolas was a part of. Something you strangely wanted to be a part of too, because your heart called to it. Or maybe it called for something —someone else.
So when the men took their oath, giving their weapons to the cause, you jumped over the wall you were hiding behind and offered what you had too.
“And you have my powers,“ you said confidently, everyone now ogling you like you were an unknown creature bestowed upon earth for mischief. The king opened his mouth, ready to ask you to take your leave probably, firing you in the process, you thought, but you’d have none of that. “Forgive me, for spying on you so. But I understand you are leaving for a dangerous quest, one where the possibilities of getting hurt are grand. One in which you will get hurt,“ you looked at everyone, pausing for a second to catch your breath, heart pounding in your chest. You couldn’t believe in what you were doing. “I am Rivendell’s best healer, surely you’ll need someone to stitch you up and keep you from dying. Pardon me again, for intruding so uninvited, but in my heart I feel I must come with you. This is a task above a simple matter of war ; this is the destiny of the people I love and of everyone else. I won’t stand in the dark waiting and doing nothing while you are off dying for Middle Earth. This is what my powers were given to me for."
A wave of looks were exchanged but none of them asked you to leave. In the gathering, you easily found Legolas standing next to a dark haired man and a tiny other. His facial expression was grave, ocean eyes digging right into yours. You could decipher nothing behind it, but you would have if you had heard the way his heart thumped in his chest; like an army of orcs marching towards their enemy. You would have if you had heard the buzz inside his head and known the frown on his face was from worry and not discontent. The tension in his shoulders grew like the cord of a bow ready to snap, but he let out nothing.
Heading back to your quarters after the meeting for the last time before long , maybe for the last time ever, a gentle yet firm hand took ahold of your arm. It spun you around and you fell face to face with the one man you didn’t want to confront. The one you knew had something to say about this. Eyes severe, as calm as a never ending ocean yet burning with something fierce, something that dragged a storm undercover, Legolas handed you an object : silver and heavy.
“Take this. Don’t leave the group, don’t engage in battle, and don’t think my eyes will stray from you for a second“ he said, and the fire in his eyes felt like he was eating you alive and licking at your skin to sooth the burning at the same time.
You took the dagger delicately, fingers brushing his in the process, held it in your hand and examined its shimmery blade under the moonlight.
You smiled, hoping your reddening carnation would fall unknown to the man in front of you in the shadows of the night.
"Well then don’t die on me. That would defeat the purpose of my coming to the quest".
He sighed, a sigh that looked like a laugh in disguise. It was one, but he couldn’t bring himself to laugh seeing the situation and the fact that you willingly put yourself in it. He came by Rivendell so often to make sure you were all right, to put to rest his racing mind when he felt once to many times he was away for too long and you had forgotten all about him. And now he had dragged you in the deadliest mission there was. All because he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. All because when you asked him a question nothing came to him but the truth to satisfy you.
Younger, you would ask so many questions about what was happening in Mirkwood, what was it like to be heir, what were all the grand feasts like. And Legolas would tell you all about it. He would let you know about things you shouldn’t have known; now reflecting upon it, about things that might have gotten you hurt.
Things changed when his mother died.
He shared nothing, replied politely to your greetings but never inquired. And then he was gone for months; months without an end it seemed. He had bid no goodbyes, no nothing, and let your heart ache with worry a bit more with everyday passing. So when he came back to you, you couldn’t say if you were still close. It seemed all the years you had spent together had been for nothing, erased so easily by the grief eating him alive.
You couldn’t possibly understand the pain of losing a parent. You would have never understood how the prince felt now, waking up every morning with a part of him missing. Worse, his very own father, the only one left to love him, became obsessed with finding back memories of his wife in a necklace, only to forget about the only treasure she left behind: her son.
In the following months you took your leave for Rivendell, and with time and many visitings from his part at last, things begun to look like they were before. Only now, you weren’t just a teenager pining for a prince anymore: you were a woman in love with a man so secret in his feelings you sometimes wondered if he perceived you as anything else than the kid you were. A childhood friend, a nice girl, but perhaps not much more.
But then came the looks. Looking at each other across the street, searching for him in the crowd when a party was leaving only to find that his eyes were already on you, feeling observed every time he was in the room. But you weren’t a teen anymore and you couldn’t assume things off of looks; looks like the one he was giving you right now: deep and unreadable, like he was holding the world and you with it. Or maybe it was soft and relieved, like he could finally breathe because he knew you safe with him.
"I will try, my lady, but I think the others will give you plenty of work," he replied, hint of sarcasm in his tone.
"Don’t be so smug, I am well inclined to know you have an habit of getting hurt when you ought not to, even when it’s just scratches," you smiled, matching his tone.
"I apologise, miss. Unless, I wouldn’t if you weren’t so good of a healer."
For a moment, the smile tugging at his face and the fire wave crashing onto you feel like old time again. Like nothing had changed and you were still exchanging back and forth in Mirkwood’s realm.
You felt the tip of your fingers tingle and your ears turn red. « if you weren’t so good of a healer », what he meant by that, you couldn’t possibly know. Did he mean he was getting hurt on purpose to see you? Or was he implying that he didn’t fear getting hurt if you were mending his wounds? You shook your head and led him off with a gesture of the hand.
“Good night, Legolas. Go rest, now.“ you said before walking back to your appartements first, thumb playing over the dull edge of the blade and its decorated flanks.
Maybe things were slowly returning to the way they used to be. Maybe fear needed not be if he could watch over you like he said he would.
The road was long and restless, it has been several days since your departure from Rivendell and by chance, you had encountered very few problems. It’s been hours now since you first entered the forest you were in. Gandalf said it should only take you a day to cross it but you were starting to doubt, and your legs were beginning to call for rest. Everything was more dark in a forest, the trees protecting you from the light of the sun. So when it began to set, you had but a few minutes until full dark.
“Lassie!“ called Gimli. You had spoken very few with the dwarf, but you had a feeling he was nice enough. “I heard you already knew the pointy-eared princeling over here,“ he said, pointing his chin at the blond.
You laughed softly at his antics, “Yes I do, sir. I am from Mirkwood myself, we spent our childhood together,“ you explained.
“Aye, a brave girl you are then! Keeping up with him for so long!“ he laughed loudly, too loud to escape the impeccable hearing of the one you were talking about.
Legolas, who was walking in front, turned around and stopped in his tracks to wait for you two, frowning slightly at the dwarf while you were still laughing.
Your eyes met as you spoke, “He is not half as disagreeable as you think him to be, don’t worry.“
Something in Legolas’s eyes set calmly at your words, gaze never tearing away from you.
“Ha! Would you hear that, princeling not disagreeable? All elves are by nature disagreeable, girl! In fact, you are the first fine one I ever met!“ he declared, his compliment making you laugh once again.
“Because you think yourself agreeable, dwarf?“ a voice cut through your laughter. The elven prince asked, obviously arrogant in his tone, eying him down.
You contain your giggles from the silly argument that is about to happen and almost roll your eyes, but a voice cuts the quarrel short before you can and Gandalf advises that the fellowship sets camp here for the night. You all apply yourselves to the task, quarrel long forgotten on both parts, it seems.
Few hours later, as everyone is already fast asleep, you maintain a vigil by the fire camp. Sat on a log, the flames lighten your skin and warm up your toes, even if elves don’t feel the wrath of the elements as much as others creatures do. Behind you, footsteps on the leaves. Undetectable for everyone else but obviously not for you; you have the same hearing as their author. You don’t turn around. Such lightness of foot could only be one person, and so could the fire burning in your neck.
“Are you planing on observing me all night or should I invite you to sit with me?“ you ask, playful.
You know a smile plays on his face, and it is but a matter of seconds before the elegant body of the blond sits right next to you. A respectable distance, as always. An etiquette of politeness and good behaviour you respect in front of each other. You are not kids anymore, you had learnt growing up. The prince was not to be handled so convivially or played with now, touching was rare for elves. Your gaze turns to his face, his features enhanced by the glowing orange light of the fire: sharp jaw and perfect skin, aquiline nose and powder pink lips. His lips you ought not to dwell on. You do nevertheless and hope he doesn’t see it when your breath comes out a bit more quickly than intended.
He does. Of courses he does. But he lets nothing be known of it.
“So you think I’m agreeable?“ he asks.
What a stupid question, you think; surely he must know. Now it is his turn to observe you under the dancing light in front of you. It’s his gaze that destabilises you, and the way he never stops playing with the feathers of the arrow he has in hand with his pointer and middle finger. He is an example of composure while you melt under his hold. You curse yourself for not being as calm as the other elves. Such is the price to pay for your power, it seems.
“Surely, you know what I think of you, Legolas“, you say without looking away, earning a quizzical frown on his beautiful face.
“Do I?“
“You should,“ you reply.
The discussion falls silent and the forest resumes its song of leaves rustling and birds chirping. A blowing of the wind brings to your nose the familiar scent of musk and pine trees, a hint of mint behind it maybe. It reminds you of your teenage years, when he would come to you for stitching and bandages. It was the only time you could be so close again, touching his skin and inhaling his scent once too much, hoping he didn’t notice. He always did. And the teenager he was always took great pride in it. You even wondered if he didn’t lean closer on purpose sometimes; like that one time you were bandaging his arm and froze in the air when you straightened up to find yourself only mere inches from him, eyes instinctively darting to his mouth. You didn’t mean for it to happen but the feeling of his breath crashing onto your nose made you lean closer for a nanosecond more of the warmth he was radiating of. Or perhaps he was the one leaning down to you. You could swear on everything that was dear to you that there was a shift at your waist, like the fabric of your tunic was being grazed by the ghost of a fingertip, and that you were suddenly so close your nose were brushing. You never had the answer you longed for. You never knew if Legolas was really going to kiss you, because the noise of someone entering the corridor leading to the room you were in made you jump away from each other in a beat. Nothing ever ensued. You never talked about it.
Your breath fell out of your mouth quivering again.
“Are you cold?“ he asked. He knew you weren’t, obviously.
“A little, perhaps,“ you replied. You knew he knew, but you took it as what is was : testing. An invitation.
A second later his cape was draped around you and his skilled archer’s fingers were clasping the fibula at your neck, knuckles tracing unnecessarily the skin here on their way. The goosebumps that woke on their path he also noticed, just like everything when it came to you. Your hand fell to your side on the wooden makeshift bench and you could feel the warmth of his right next.
“Tomorrow we begin the ascension of the Caradhras. Stay close, will you?“ but it’s more of a command than an ask when he bore his eyes into yours like that.
“I will. You said your eyes wouldn’t stray from me for a second, and I know they didn’t,“ you added.
His ocean gaze found yours, deep and steady, like erasing everything else around you; no forest, no fellowship, just you and him and Mirkwood again. You tore yourself away from the memories, still too close to your heart. Closer than you’d like. You straightened up and wished him goodnight, not giving the cape so generously given to you back. He wouldn’t know if you reminisced at the scent, would he?
If things were going to get better, you were unaware of it. You now had but small hopes of the fellowship succeeding, even if the wood of Lothlorien were giving you a small break. Through the Moria, you had lost Gandalf. The one you all looked up to. Without him, the cause seemed too grand to accomplish, the road too dark with questions you couldn’t answer. Galadriel had welcomed you into her domain for the night, the first night in a while you could spend in beds. Here, you were immune to danger, yet you couldn’t rest your eyes one bit. Elves didn’t sleep that much, but lately you felt like sleeping for a thousand years would still not be enough.
Whenever you closed your eyes, visions of Gandalf clinging to the bridge came back to you. Wicked memories of the small moment you thought he was out of danger, and then the flitting hope that maybe you were fast enough to run and save him. You would have; ran across the bridge and died with him, if it wasn’t for Legolas holding you back in his arms the moment you moved. And you would have stayed deep into the Moria if he didn’t lead you out, whispering in your ear not to look back, that everything was going to be all right now.
But you were still in the Moria. Every time you closed your eyes and darkness engulfed you once again, the Moria held your heart.
Against your better judgment, you were now roaming the place at night, trying to find solace and peace amongst war waging in your brain. Away from everyone, a few meters deep into the forest, you found Legolas sitting on a rock. You made your way towards him, gently, without noise, and it surprised you that he didn’t spot you before you sat right next to him. He turned, startled.
“Peace of mind seems hard to find, these days“, you said.
“Indeed,“ he simply answered, now looking at you softly.
The distance between you wasn’t what it was then. You sat so close to him your shoulders brushed and the warmth seeping of his body smeared over yours.
“Do you remember our time back in Mirkwood?“ you asked. But it felt like a crown of thorns embalmed with nostalgia clinging at your heart.
“I remember getting hurt on purpose just to see you,“ he admitted. Your heart skipped a beat.
He admitted to it. That he wanted to see you too. That back in the days, you weren’t crazy for thinking, maybe, he liked you.
“And I remember sneaking out of royal gatherings to be with you,“ he added with a faint smile.
Your heart swelled, and then it sinked again. There was something you never out-grew, something still clinging to your heart like a leach whether you liked it or not. Now wasn’t probably the best time to bring it to the conversation, but what if you had no other time? What if he was the next to fall? What if you both were?
“I remember waiting days after days for months when you left, thinking maybe you’d come back because you forgot to say goodbye. You never did. You never talked of what happened, you never said you carried your grief still,“ you said. And it came out harsher than you wanted it to be. You sucked in a breath, ready to apologise for having taken it this far.
Too far, you thought.
He didn’t answer. Just took your wrist and rested his thumb upon your pulse, a small gesture, a silent elvish language of the heart that said nothing, yet talked louder than words. It meant sorry. It meant I didn’t know what to do, it meant I didn’t say goodbye so I had to come back to you; it meant I miss my mother.
“Legolas-“ you begun.
“You are tense,“ he observed. He pointed to the space on the ground, between his legs, “Here,“ he motioned.
You kept quiet, the silence between you sacred-like, as you moved between his long legs. Gently, he brushed your hair out of your back, draping them above your shoulder. His soft hands, gentle and expert found their way to your shoulders, electricity dragging between your bodies like fire to your loins. Without a word, he begun working on the knots in your shoulders, skilled hands working them loose again above your shirt. The sigh you left was trembling, more unabashed than you wanted it to be. It made you bite your lips, the way his thumbs were sometimes circling at your very skin, hot licks of flames in their wake. You could swear he was laughing behind you. And when he slipped his hands in your back past the fabric of your collar, it seemed a deliberate way to make your countenance crumble. Hot burning hands against hot burning skin. Never a massage had you feeling at loss for words, yet, here you were. His breath crashed upon the shell of your ear and you caught the way it quivered just the tiniest bit.
You couldn’t help but lean into him, the back of your head resting against his chest, and god help you, you had to stop yourself from cursing when you felt how the years of training shaped him. The air felt thick with tension, like trying to breathe underwater. A tension from hundred years ago. One that followed diligently for years, always here but thin enough to be skimmed over. There was no skimming over it now, though. You could hear its restrains cracking like the trees in the forest.
One of his hands slipped to your jaw, making you tilt your head back to look at him. That’s when you saw the look on his face. Pupils blown wide, breath ragged like he was caging a wild animal inside.
“Tell me to stop,“ he sighed, thumb tracing over your lower lip.
“You know I won’t,“ you only said, breath trembling like a dam threatening to break.
“Please, tell me to stop.“
But you said nothing.
All sense of manners were lost the moment his lips crashed onto yours, hungry for flesh and the inside of your heart, it seemed. He spun you around to get a better grip on you, hands clawing at your hips to bring you close, flush against him. Grabbing the collar of his tunic, you yanked him closer too. You couldn’t feel anything but him all over you, and his lips lashing onto yours, bitting at your flesh like a hungry beast kept inside for far too long. He pulled you up and, blindly, you followed until you felt your back hit against a tree. For a split second, his lips left yours to take the road down your jaw instead, probably to your collarbone, and the sound that passed your lips when his teeth grazed at your skin felt unholy.
You had never seen him so disheveled, so unprincely; he looked good bathed in desperate want and hunger. Your hands got lost in his hair pulling at the roots, and the growl he let out was more than you could manage; head buzzing with white noise, fireworks lighting up in your belly.
“Do you know what hundreds of years of waiting do to a man?“ he manages to ask between kisses. You feel as if his voice, suave and dripping, is a hand that crushes your heart until it’s ready to implode, before releasing it again.
“I can imagine,“ you hush.
The monster in your heart gnaws and claws at the bars, it creeps out in hope to crawls inside Legolas’s mind: to plague him just as he plagued you. Your head falls back against the bark of the tree, his kisses trail up your neck to get to your mouth again, and at the sight of his Adam apple bobbing you have to keep yourself from lavishing onto his throat. His perfect pale throat that seems to beg to be covered in colours for once. His lips, you thought, were the greatest of poisons. Your skin lights ablaze behind his hands that go up and up past your shirt. His thumb traced the outline of your rib, just under your breasts, and that’s when a split moment of clarity hits you. You cup his jaw and make him look at you, half-lidded blue eyes and puppy look suddenly not so sure of themselves. If you didn’t know him so much, you could have thought his eyes had turned brown with how wide his pupils had expended.
“I can stop if you want me to,“ he says immediately, frowning and searching for any sign of discomfort in your eyes, whatever made you push him back.
“It’s not that I want you to, princeling, it’s just that we are in Lothlòrien. The lady of the woods sees all,“ you explain, thumb drawing soothing circle over his jaw.
Legolas closes his eyes and sighs, a long heavy sigh, before letting his forehead fall against the bark of the tree just above your shoulder. His right hand still rests on your lower back, thumb going back and forth over the smooth elven-skin of your body.
“Galadriel… Right,“ he kisses the bridge between your neck and your shoulder. “We should probably keep it for another time…“.
A giggle escapes you at his words, “We should.“
And that’s when it hits him. When he steps away and kisses the crown of your head. Things are going to be much harder now, danger lurking twice as treacherous: because he’d rather see another Gandalf fall than you. He cannot lose another one he loves, not again. And if his bare hands had to kill an army to come back to you, they would kill double.
