Protect & Serve LotR-Lord of the Rings Fanfiction - Fan Fiction -WattyAwards2012

Chapter 4: Try to Keep the Faith

Legolas and I turned away from the celebrating Rohirrim and started back towards the Deep. As we walked back, I grabbed the helm I'd removed earlier and set on a low wall. I started to tuck it under my arm, but Legolas gently pried it from my hands.

"How did this happen?" he asked, tracing an indented crease along the top with a long elegant finger.

"Oh, a grappling hook glanced off my helmet as I went to help Gárwine," I commented.

Legolas immediately halted and grabbed my arm, pulling me to a stop as well. "Turn around," he commanded, gesturing with a twirl of his hand.

I childishly rolled my eyes, but did obediently turn around. His fingers cleverly found the bump along the top of my head that corresponded with the rent in my helm. Though his probing fingers were gentle, I barely managed to keep from flinching.

"The skin is not broken," he pronounced, "though I deem it shall ache later."

I turned back around to see his frowning worried face. "It's no big deal, Legolas. A bump to the head is nothing compared to how many men were lost in this battle."

He looked off into the distance. "This battle is fought and hard-won, yet it is rather the battles to come that cause my heart to fear for your mortal body, not the battles already passed."

I opened my mouth to promise him I'd be all right, but quickly shut it. We didn't lie to each other, and I wasn't about to start now. There was no guarantee I could make to him that I'd come out of this war alive, and it pulled me up short to realize the story was changing enough that I couldn't even guarantee the fates of my friends any longer.

Legolas was still staring off into the distance, so I tried to find something to give us both some needed comfort.

"I'm not an overly religious person," I told him in a quiet voice. He glanced back at me curiously as I continued. "I never have been. I guess my mother's family would have been considered more Pagan than Christian, and my father's people don't really believe in religion in that way. They believe they go to the Blessed Fields of Bounty—though that's a poor translation from Silva—when they die. So, I've never really been sure what I was supposed to believe in. What I should put my faith in.

"I guess when it comes down to it, I just have Faith. Faith that there is something better after this life, and Faith that I've been through enough in the years I've been living to deserve a bit of happiness before I go on. You make me happier than I've ever been, so I have to have Faith that when this war is over, we'll get our chance to be happy together. It's better to have Faith in something than to have no Faith."

He lifted his hands and lightly brushed them over my cheeks, unshed tears catching the light in his eyes. "You are mortal and I am elf-kind. When your mortal years are spent, your faer shall go where mortal souls dwell, and we shall be ever parted."

I reached up and grasped his hand against my cheek, turning my face briefly into the warmth of his touch. "If you're saying you don't want—"

His hand suddenly gripped my chin, tilting it up to look intently into my eyes. "Even if the choice were laid before me now to turn from the path my heart has already taken, I would not turn from it. Perhaps others of my kindred shall think me foolish, but I would not trade even a moment of your love for all the long years of loneliness I have already known. Having tasted that love, I cannot give it up; no matter the cost I shall one day be asked to account for."

I stared up at his eyes, lightened to a slate gray by the wetness of his tears. "I know that there is supposed to be different destinations for the souls of man and elf here, but I have to have Faith. I have to have Faith that any gods, or the Valar—if there is any justice within them—they won't part us in death. I have to have Faith."