To Live Again: Waiting Between Worlds {Lord of the Rings Fanfiction}

Between Worlds

Legolas lingered just beyond the grand pillared entrance to the Healing Halls watching the quiet comings and goings of the palace staff.  He had been there since dawn and it was now sometime past eleven o'clock in the morning, and still he had made no attempt to enter the dwelling.

Having been left with his father's unsolicited wisdom the night before, Legolas had been unable to rest and spent the rest of the night tossing, turning, and torturing his mind. As much as he wanted to ignore his father's ridiculous sentiments - that somehow he and his adoptive mother had a bond unbreakable - it was hard to do just that. He wanted to claw his heart out of his chest and throw it away when his thoughts swirled around the last memories he had of his Nana.

It was fragmented, too bright, flashes of events now that the horror lay in the past.

His jump had been successful, he had caught her, and somehow managed to reach the far side narrowly before most of the falling debris took out the huge chunks of stairwell and outer walls. It was not his most graceful of landings, and the jolt to the ground had caused his Naneth to tumble from his arms. She might have hit her head then, he couldn't recall, but he did remember that she was awake briefly. When he had pulled her off the ground - panicking that he would never get them safely out of the disintegrating structure in time -she had cried out for him, or at least he thought she had?

Legolas had been certain she had weakly called his name, and he had promised her then and there he would get her out safe and sound, because that was what he did...he was her little rescuer.

That is what she called him. But now that the days and weeks had dragged on, he began to wonder did he imagine it all in his mind. Had she never spoke at all? Would she ever speak again? He had heard the cries she made, he had felt her pain when he kept watch by the fortress, and now he had only wished he had been brave enough to have been quicker.

Now they wanted to take her away...but he had only just found her.

Yes, in his heart Legolas had failed. He had never been gifted and ethereal like his little sister, he had never been wise and careful like his baby brother, and he never shared the bond they did with their mother. He had never been jealous before, he had never had need to be, because he and his Nana had something special, something his siblings would never have...they had their hearts.

It was a stupid, ridiculous, childish, and completely outrageous notion, but Legolas always felt he had captured Clara's heart and she kept a special piece all for him - as he did for her. No one could ever share their story, no one would ever know the secrets she told him of the colourful lands beyond the stars where she came from...where she was sent from to look after him.

No one could ever take away the dragons they fought, the adventures they travelled on, and the bridges they built together. There was no one like his Naneth because no one had a Nana quite like his, for she had been everything and more of what he had always dreamed of in his young heart.

Once he thought he had special powers, that his imagination could make anything happen, for Clara was always able to make it happen with her pictures, her ideas, and all her wonderful stories. Now that he was grown he realised he did not have super powers, but he truly did have the love of a mother who would do everything within her ability to make him still believe he had. Now she was gone and there was nothing he could do to bring her back, he did not have the power, it was all just a beautiful illusion.

Swallowing a painful lump in his throat and wiping the tears from his eyes with his sleeve, Legolas pulled himself up straight and decided to get this over and done with.

There was no point in putting this meeting off, he needed to go and see his Naneth's condition for himself, he needed to judge for himself if Lord Elrond's suggestion had merit. Yes, he knew his Adar was totally opposing to the thought of sending her away, but the more he had mediated on the suggestion over the course of the night he understood the Healer's point of view, and, if the only reason his father hesitated was because of the hurt it would cause his children then Legolas needed to be the mature one.