Work Text:
From Forest to Sea
by Angela
“Walk with me, Master Dwarf? I would show you the wonders of Lórien.”
Gimli gazed up at the elf's face, searching for jest or cruelty. He saw none. Instead, there seemed to be eagerness behind his eyes. For what, Gimli could not guess. He wanted desperately to refuse, to put his attention back to the task of – but he had no task.
I beg you two. . . at least be friends, Gandalf had urged, and now it seemed to Gimli a dying wish. Such things could not be ignored.
“Need I a blindfold?” His ungracious tongue spit the words before the dwarf could stop them.
Legolas colored. Shame? “Nay, Gimli,” he said, using his name for the first time. “These are wonders which must be seen.” He held out a hand to help the dwarf to his feet.
It was no apology, but Gimli heard something curious in Legolas's voice. Besides, hadn't his mother taught him to meet even ill hospitality with grace?
“Aye, Master Elf,” he said at last. “I will humor you. Show me your trees and flowers.” He stood on his own, pretending not to notice Legolas's outstretched palm.
***
To say that Legolas Greenleaf was skilled with an oar was an understatement. Gimli witnessed him make an art of movement – of rowing and steering and anticipating any upset. Gimli paddled diligently, but suspected that his meager contribution was barely noted by his companion.
Instead, he told stories. At first, anecdotes of life beneath the mountain. But he came to enjoy coaxing surprise and delight from Legolas's voice. His tales turned personal and then almost intimate.
“Ah, I have never known such things of a dwarf,” Legolas said happily.
The truth of it made Gimli fall self-consciously silent.
***
Aragorn knelt before the boat, head bowed. Gimli stood on the sandy beach, bare-headed and empty-handed, his heart scraped raw. He felt, rather than heard, the elf's footsteps behind him.
“First Mithrandir, and now Boromir,” Legolas said softly. “Frodo leaves us and we've lost the little ones. This fellowship is cursed.”
“It is the quest that is cursed,” Gimli told him quietly. “The fellowship, I would not give up for an endless vein of mithril.”
Legolas closed his eyes. “Nor I,” he whispered, then raised his voice in an Elvish song of lament.
Gimli wept.
***
The horses of Rohan were massive, all stamping hooves and tossing heads. Gimli eyed them warily.
“Come, my friend,” said Legolas, reaching a hand down.
Gimli hesitated. Share a mount with an elf? What could be more shameful?
“You said yourself that dwarves are poor at running distances,” he urged. “Ride with me, and I will spare you the effort.”
Grimacing, Gimli allowed himself to be pulled up. It was then, with his hands on his friend's waist and his nostrils flooded with the shining scent of his hair, that he realized how deeply shame could run.
***
Grima Wormtongue circled them slowly. “It is unnatural to see such amity between a dwarf and an elf,” he said at last, his eyes glittering. “Is this more of Gandalf's devilry? Or, can it it be that one of you means to betray the other?”
Affronted, Gimli growled. “Keep peace with that tongue or I will cut it out,” he said, his fingers instinctively reaching for the axe he'd left at the door.
Legolas put a hand on his shoulder. “Stand down, my friend,” he said. His voice hardened. “His kind does not understand fellowship.”
***
Gimli was crusted with orc blood. His boots were soaked in it and beard crunched with it. His axe, notched and imperfect, was heavy in his hand. He was bone weary and blurry, the gash in his head making him dizzy.
He should sit. Wait underground. Aragorn would find him.
But then he recalled the orc ladders, the screams from the soldiers thrown to their deaths from atop their own fortress. And that evil blast of rock and rubble that surely took many lives at once.
It had been some time since he'd seen Legolas.
Gimli pushed his way out.
***
“I like the sound of my name in your voice,” Legolas said, the night of their bargain. “When you spoke your poetry in praise of the Glittering Caves, you uttered my name a full five times.”
Gimli was glad of the moonless night to hide his flush. “Foolish elf! 'Tis no wonder you have no care for caverns,” he retorted, “Counting the number of times your name is spoken when you should be attending to descriptions of beauty!”
“I will see your Caves,” Legolas laughed. “Show me all have I missed in your words.”
***
Gimli was in agony. He knew nothing but a maddening terror that pressed into him like a physical force. Death grasped at him.
Then he heard water. Saw starlight. Legolas.
The elf waited, held out a hand. Gimli had to stop himself from breaking into a run. Together, they mounted Arod, and for just a moment, Gimli let his forehead droop against Legolas's back.
Legolas turned. “Will you make it, my friend?” he whispered.
Suddenly, the elf stiffened. His eyes glittered. “The Dead are following.”
Gimli's hands fumbled, his fingers curling into Legolas's cloak. He closed his eyes.
***
It was easy, fighting orcs. His axe was an extension of his body and adrenaline pumped raw power through his veins. It felt good to slash the goblins, to cleave them and feel their flesh and bone give way beneath his weapon.
It was best with Legolas at his back, hearing the thrum of his bowstring over and over. If the wind occasionally pushed the elf's hair across Gimli's cheek, or a blow sent the dwarf stumbling backward into Legolas's strong torso, it was a minor aggravation.
His friend was near; his back was covered. It was easy, fighting orcs.
***
“It doesn't pain you, to have her near?” Legolas asked after a long spell of quiet. They were riding across the plains of Rohan, skimming the mountains in the company's journey home.
He spoke of Galadriel, Gimli knew. He glanced to where she rode, shimmering in the afternoon light, as fiery and perfect as opals. “Nay,” the dwarf said at last. “I would look upon her for as long as I may.”
Legolas fell silent once more, but when he spoke, it was as though moments had passed, rather than nearly an hour full. “It is because you love her,” he said in a voice more reverent than Gimli had heard before. “Knowing your heart was strong enough to carry an elf, mine came to carry you, Master Gimli.”
He did not turn in the saddle, did not try to meet his eye. His back stayed stiff and tall. All of Gimli's joy at hearing his words twisted itself into a fierce knot in his chest. “Do you know what you ask?” His voice was no more than a whisper.
“I ask nothing, my friend. I only share the truth of my heart.”
***
Gimli circled the large chamber, lighting torches. Legolas stood in the middle, his face turned upward. As each flame caught and grew, the crystal ceiling of the cavern sparkled a little more, until at last it looked as though the night sky itself had settled beneath the mountain for them.
The elf drew in a long breath, aghast. It was that beautiful, Gimli knew.
But he could not marvel in it. He looked instead at his friend's awestruck face, the elf's words repeating in his mind. I share the truth of my heart. Legolas was no fumbling child, unable to know his own feelings – far from it. Gimli realized that he would not have spoken rashly; he would not be capable of it.
He gazed at his friend. He wished he could un-know such a truth, banish it from where it had come to live inside him.
Legolas looked at him then, and it was as though all the air had been sucked from the space between them. Their eyes met, and in that instant, all was laid bare. Gimli recognized the ache in his chest for the love that it was, and now Legolas knew that he knew.
***
On their journey into Fangorn, they found a cave with a skylight.
“This would make a suitable dwelling for us both,” Legolas jested, laying down his pack and gazing up at the twilight sky. “You would sleep surrounded by stone, while I lay in starshine. Here we could both be happy.”
A home for both an elf and a dwarf. The idea filled Gimli with a giddy sickness and he couldn't bear to look at his friend's bright face.
“Nonsense!” he growled, because it was all he could muster. “It would be misery when it rained!”
***
The verdant canopy arched like a cathedral of rock – dizzyingly high and dark. Sunlight stole through shadowed leaves, fiery gems in the false firmament. Pillars of wood grew from below, each straining to reach higher, pushing against sky. The earth was solid beneath his feet. The air cool.
“What think you of this place?” Legolas asked, his voice soft and reverent and hopeful.
Gimli was haunted by this forest, this Fangorn. An alien landscape, achingly familiar. Surely there were words in Elvish to describe it, words in his own secret tongue that might do, yet Gimli was mute.
***
“You do not pine for the Lady Galadriel,” Gandalf said, suddenly.
Startled, Gimli looked up.
The wizard leaned back in his chair, no longer attending to the plans for the rebuilding of Minas Tirith. He smoked his pipe, waiting.
“I never claimed to pine for anyone!” Gimli insisted, annoyed.
“And yet you would have your friends believe it,” Gandalf chided gently. “But I have seen you ache more at other partings.”
“The halflings' weed has muddled your head.” Anger flushed his cheeks. “Say no more of it!”
The wizard sighed. “As you wish.”
***
When they returned to the cave with the starlight window, long months had passed, and yet they were unchanged.
“Do you not grow weary of waiting for me?” Gimli asked, staring at the dying fire. “Is there no one else you –”
“An elf, once his heart has settled, cannot be inconstant.”
Gimli rolled over. Legolas's face was bathed in starlight; his eyes were closed. “It can never be,” the dwarf said softly. “Our world will not allow it.”
Legolas's eyes opened, looking long at him. “So we forge a new world,” he whispered.
***
Forge a new world.
Gimli swung his hammer, pounding hard the red-hot mithril. The gates of Minas Tirith were taking shape atop his anvil, bathed in the orange glow of the forges. He wiped his brow with a bare forearm, mingling sweat with sweat.
Forge a new world.
It was what Dwarves did, after all. Anything that could be made could be made at the hands of a dwarf. His own hands were considered gifted. His stonework was prized, these gates a treasure.
His hammer came down again and again. Ore made beautiful.
Forge a new world. Perhaps he could.
***
A sweet-scented vine climbed one of Gimli's new walls, escaped from a garden the Elves had regrown. Its tendrils curled and flowered, its tiny roots clinging to mortar and stone. Gimli studied the tenacious blossom, his work forgotten.
“It is beautiful,” came a reverent voice behind him.
Gimli turned to see Legolas. He smelled of sunshine and growing things; earth smudged his cheek and crusted his fingers. The elf pointed at the curling tip of green, where a tiny bud peeked from behind a leaf. “See how it grows? It gets sustenance from the stone.”
The dwarf's chest tightened. Stone seemed a poor substitute for dark soil. “It has chosen a more difficult path,” he said.
Legolas looked up the steep wall, shielding his eyes from the white glare. “So much sunshine will be its reward.”
Gimli looked at his friend, his heart thudding against his ribs. Legolas noticed his gaze and met it. For a very long time they stood, allowing the bustle of Minas Tirith to live around them.
“Legolas,” Gimli said at last, his voice thick with things too long unsaid.
The old ache flickered in his eyes, then Legolas was gone.
***
They took meals together while both stayed in the White City. That evening, Legolas had arrived angry and drank wine like water. His mood softened, but an edge still lay between them.
“Do not send me away this night.” His voice was low, its music muted.
Gimli growled. “Nothing has changed.”
“All has changed!” Legolas insisted. “Only your fear has not!”
“So you are not an elf, nor I a dwarf?”
“I am Legolas. You are Gimli. That is all.”
Yearning in those grey eyes tempered Gimli's fear. He trembled. “It is enough.”
***
Legolas's song woke him, its lowest notes coaxing him from his warm slumber. It was a short walk from their campsite to the river where the elf sat on the shore, his knees tucked beneath his chin.
Gimli saw the chunks of ice flowing downstream, the mist of breath from the elf's voice. He saw the cold spark of a billion stars in the sky. He stepped over frost-crackling grass to stand near his friend.
The elf did not stop singing, but smiled, motioning for him to sit. His warmth was like a beacon, and Gimli settled next to him on the frozen riverbank. He leaned close, glad of him.
The song seemed to slow, the words getting clearer. Legolas looked at him meaningfully, then back to the sky.
Gimli understood. The next time the words repeated, he sang along, the Elvish tripping on his tongue, the crystalline phrases smoothing rough places in his voice. He was rewarded by long fingers twining themselves with his.
He looked at Legolas, his profile sharp against the starry backdrop. The song was a love song from the Eldar to the icy, glimmering heavens. But Gimli sang it to his Legolas, warm and close.
***
The meal was finished, the candles guttering, and still Legolas and Arwen were tangled in conversation – speaking familiarly of things that passed years before Gimli's birth.
Aragorn spoke softly. “It is not easy, is it, my friend? Loving an elf?”
Gimli started, heated mortification washing over him. How were they discovered? What did he know? He spluttered over his pipe, panicked, until he saw the kind merriment in the King's eyes. This was Aragorn. Strider. He would understand.
“It is not the loving that is difficult,” Gimli said, red-faced, “so much as everything else.”
Aragorn laughed.
***
The candles were no more than pools of wax in their sconces, and Gimli had lost all sense of time – it could be moonrise or nearly dawn, and he would know no difference. He lay gasping on the tousled mess of his pallet, sweat dripping from every surface of his taut, electric skin. Never before had he felt so very spent.
Next to him, Legolas was as smug as a dragon with a new hoard. He stretched with a satisfied groan, twisting his heavy hair away from the golden curve of his neck. He reached for the goblet he'd abandoned hours before and downed its contents in a very dwarf-like swallow. Exertion had made his skin glow with an opalescent sheen – it was a wonder to behold, but Gimli was far too exhausted to do a thing about it. He closed his eyes.
“You wish to sleep, my friend?” Legolas asked. His voice was low and somehow the tips of his hair brushed the fiery skin of Gimli's chest. “Now?”
The dwarf shuddered. Wishing – not for the first time – that he and his kind had been built for long runs and not merely sprints.
***
Whenever they met with the halflings, it was in a dreary little tavern in the town of Bree.
“Why does everyone call you 'Elf Friend'?” Pippin asked, taking a swig of his pint. “It's not like you're the only one. Aragorn has been friends with the elves his whole life!” Clearly, the title rankled him somehow.
“So it's hardly noteworthy,” Sam countered, distracted. Gimli knew he was glad to see them, but suspected his thoughts were at home with Rosie and wee ones.
“Then, what about us Hobbits?” Pippin continued. “There are only four of us – five, I suppose – who have even spoken to an elf before!” His face was flushed with energy, and he looked barely a day older than when they'd left him, over three years before.
Legolas caught Gimli's eye. With the hint of a smirk, he reached across the table, interlacing their fingers. Gimli hoped his beard hid the heat in his face.
“Frodo and Bilbo even – ” Pippin stopped, his eyes widening. “Oh,” he said with a squeak.
Merry cheerfully clubbed him with an empty beer mug. “Pay some attention, Pip!” he scolded lightly.
***
“I would have you meet my father.”
Gimli choked on his breakfast. Surely the elf was out of his mind, suggesting such madness. He coughed and looked hard at his companion, uncomprehending.
Legolas, however, was unchanged, spooning honey over his bread and sipping water. Cool as a mountain spring, fresh as a wildflower.
“I know your father,” Gimli told him shortly, reaching for the pitcher. With Thranduil, reputation was enough.
The elf caught his hand in both of his own. Gimli's body tremored at his touch. “Aye,” he said softly, “but he does not know you.”
***
The gates loomed; the hair on Gimli's neck stood on end.
“Wait,” he urged, his hand on Legolas's arm. “I have no wish to see Minas Morgul. Even with you.” It was an evil place.
“Minas Ithil,” the elf corrected. “Come, Gimli. You may be surprised.”
He was. The city was dark, yes, but everywhere Elves were cleaning, building, planting seeds. One seemed to be coaxing a bare little tree – the only plant Gimli saw – to bud.
“I've never seen elves work so hard,” he said, too blunt.
To his relief, Legolas laughed.
***
“How is a Dwarvish nuptial ceremony conducted?”
Hours had passed, dinner was finished, and still the evening was civilized – mostly because Gimli had not yet managed the task of telling his father that Legolas was so much more than a friend to him. Therefore, the elf's words struck bolts of giddy alarm through him.
“There are many things we do not tell outsiders, no matter how dear to us,” Glóin said, still cheerful.
“And if I mean to participate? Will I then be told?”
The old dwarf laughed heartily. “Ah, Legolas! Has some spry, young thing caught your eye?” His tone made it clear that he believed no such thing. “I promise you, dwarves take marriage much too seriously for you to succeed there!”
Gimli's hand found Legolas's beneath the table. The elf's heartbeat raced like a paralyzed rabbit's. Impressively, he appeared calm.
Glóin continued, unaware. “Like the weddings of men, there is a feast. An exchange of rings. Beyond that, I cannot say.”
Gimli stood, terrified but determined. “No rings!” he barked, hauling Legolas to his feet beside him. “We have seen enough of rings to last a Númenorean lifetime!”
***
Rather than rings, they exchanged gifts they'd crafted.
“I have never seen its equal,” Legolas breathed as he ran his fingertips across the gleaming mithril. He knelt so Gimli could place the circlet over his hair.
The dwarf let his hands linger over his love's smooth braids. “Nor have I seen yours,” he murmured in a voice too low to carry, a voice for Legolas alone.
Legolas's nuptial gift was a delicate chain that poured like water into Gimli's hands. The dwarf marveled at its pale color and light weight. “What metal is this?” he asked, peering at the tiny, finely-wrought links.
“No metal at all,” Legolas told him, “but wood. I carved it from Greenwood ash, so that you might always wear a bit of my homeland.”
He clasped the chain around Gimli's neck. “I would hold you,” he breathed as he leaned close, “until all stars diminish.”
They were not required to recite poetry, as the elves did, nor kiss before their audience, as was the way of men. Instead they gazed at one another, both flushed and proud in their finest clothes, and each promised to be the other's family from that day to the end of days.
***
“It is good that you will be underground once more,” Glóin had insisted, never completely at ease while Gimli lived and worked in Minas Tirith.
“You will always have a home in the White City,” Aragorn had told him, promising to keep his room for him.
“It is very far.” Legolas's voice was soft. “But I will be glad to boast that I am wed to the new Lord of the Glittering Caves.”
Gimli thought he finally understood something of elves. It was bittersweet, leaving a place of such happiness, even for the promise of more.
***
He always could tell the instant Legolas saw him. The elf's step, wary among Dwarves, even after all these years, grew lighter, his smile more broadly curved.
This time it had been two months since they had last parted. Thranduil had gone into the West with the last of his court, leaving Greenwood empty of elves. The distance in his eyes told Gimli that the parting had been bitter.
“He wished you to go with him,” he realized.
His friend pulled him into a sudden embrace and held tightly. “It is good to come back to you, Gimli.”
***
Gimli's hands felt large and clumsy as he chiseled a curve into the astonishingly light chunk of driftwood. He'd been working on it for weeks, and it had yet to yield its secret shape. Each night, weary from his work and hungry for sleep, he instead reached for these unfamiliar tools, this unfamiliar wood, slowly easing the creature from where it hid within.
Legolas had been gone for months. A trip to Lórien had apparently turned into a journey to someplace Gimli knew not, and he tried not to miss his friend. Instead, he carved.
And when the carving was finally done, it waited, more patient than its creator, until the day the elf returned.
Legolas traced his golden fingers across the wings, his fingertips smoothing the tiny scratches of feathers. He trembled. A gull, wings outstretched, small enough to fit into the palm of his hand.
He held the bird to his nose, breathing the salt in the wood. “Do you wish me gone from you, that you would tempt me thus?” His voice teased, but not.
Gimli shook his head. “Not that, Master Elf. I needed to remind myself that, each day, you choose to stay.”
***
“Durin's folk consider me deviant for this,” Gimli said, stroking Legolas's cheek.
“For what?” the elf asked, his voice drowsy.
“For being attracted to skin so smooth,” the dwarf told him, tracing a rough thumb across his friend's lower lip. “For wanting to touch your sleek hair and for loving your long limbs.”
Legolas closed his eyes, sleepy beneath Gimli's petting. “I am glad it is so,” he murmured slowly. “For without your hands, I would never relax again.”
“You look so young when your eyes are closed,” the dwarf whispered. “It makes me ache to see your face like this, just as it was when I first beheld it.”
“I was not young then,” Legolas reminded him. Long lashes flickered open. “I haven't been young since hundreds of years before you were born.” He reached up, touching the deep lines around Gimli's eyes and winding grey-streaked hair around his finger. “But the Eldar do not cherish youth.”
“What do they cherish, then?” Gimli asked, tenderness cracking his words.
“A voice that makes their skin shiver with delight,” Legolas told him, his own voice husky. He shivered.
***
In all his years, Gimli had never seen the ocean, and when they came to the Andrast Peninsula, he marveled at the ferocity of the waves as they crashed against cliffs below, as though angrily straining for something on land which they coveted.
Legolas.
His eyes were hooded as he listened, breathed. He did not veil the raw pain that was etched into his face. Longing like Gimli had never seen.
“Shall I die more quickly, then?” the old dwarf asked, reaching for jest but grasping truth. “To set you free?”
Startled, Legolas looked down at him, his agony complete.
***
Gimli knew that Legolas was building a boat. He came to him at work's end, pretending he'd spent the day speaking to trees or singing to flowers, but smelling of sawdust and rivers.
The dwarf could not blame him. It had been many years since another elf had been seen in Greenwood or any of the forests they once tended. And Legolas had grown older. His face had not aged, but was seasoned with too many years of living with sacrifice. His eyes were too often lonely.
Though painful to consider, when the time came, Gimli would let him go.
***
He'd grown too tired to lift a hammer and too weak to swing an axe, but Gimli would never be too old to journey with his dearest friend. This time he sat atop a pony, led by Legolas. The elf would not say where he was taking him, but Gimli knew.
The cries of sea birds came first, followed by the scent of salt and fish. The dwarf's eyes were still sharp enough to spy the sail through the thick greens of the summer forest.
“It is for the best,” Gimli said, his voice old and breaking. “You should not watch me die.”
The elf didn't turn. “I will not leave you.” His voice was low. Fierce. “You will not die.”
So this was how he would have it; things were never easy with his kind. Gimli sighed. “I am no elf,” he reminded his companion. “There is no place for me in your Valinor.”
Legolas looked at him, eyes blazing. “You are beloved by Elves,” he said. “Beloved by me. We will make a place for you.”
Gimli was not too old to love. And now, as ever, he loved Legolas.