The Forbidden Child

Yet Another Death

Lessien could feel everything, every shift her body made and every breath she took.

It was as if she was dying and the hands of the Valar were letting her say goodbye.

Some of her other companions' cries filled the air and were magnified, terror racking through them all.

The 'no!' that Lessien had called was still echoing through her mind.

She saw as Merry and Pippin jumped from the ledge they had been perched on and landed on top of the troll. Holding on for dear life, they began to stab the troll relentlessly with their manliest battle cries filling the air.

Legolas was quick to their side.

He made the final kill shot.

The beast moaned, and then fell, at rest at last. It was then, when the beast had fallen, that Lessien was beside her father and Frodo's lifeless body.

"Ada. Ada, wake up," Lessien murmured. She refused to cry.

She shook him repeatedly, dread choking her out.

The blow the troll had delivered would have killed any ordinary man, but Aragorn was no ordinary man.

There she crouched on the balls of her feet, waiting expectantly for him to awaken. Dead was a word, Lessien decided from then on, she would not use.

Beside her, Sam was loudly relenting for his Master, a true relent, for he grieved in a very different fashion than Lessien. He heaved great, heartbreaking sobs.

It was Lessien who first saw it, the slightest fluttering of Aragorn's eye lids, and then the grey eyes so similar to hers appeared.

"Ada!" she exclaimed, embracing him shamelessly.

He shifted with the physical strain that his daughter burdened him with, obviously in pain, but gave in to the hug, and patted her on the back before she pulled away.

"Did you think I was dead?" Aragorn asked his daughter in a chuckle, making a joke of his recent brush with death.

"Not for a minute, for Aragorn and death are two words that do not go together," Lessien replied.

Despite herself, Lessien cleared her throat and stood, offering her father a hand up. She found that she was quite embarrassed.

Frodo still lay motionless and Sam had taken his hand and kissed it, and cried onto it.

As Lessien walked to the duo, she avoided tripping over rubble and skeletons of dwarves and the bodies of orcs.

The rest of the Fellowship was still watching from afar, completely hopeless.

When Lessien stood beside him, she put her hand on his shoulder, trying to comfort her dearest friend without any words.

"He will awake. He is just sleeping, as Strider was. Right, Larahliea?"

When no reply came to Sam's question, he repeated, "Right?"

But Lessien just stared at the body of Frodo with glazed-over eyes.

She had not realized until now that she had a deep love for the whole of the Fellowship. And Frodo's death hit her harder than she thought it ever could. Not only was it a loss of a friend, it was loss of a hope required for their current journey.

Without the Ring-Bearer how were they to continue on? Lord Elrond and Gandalf both said that Frodo was the only one who could bear the Ring, so now Middle Earth was at risk. That was putting it too nicely.