The Clash
At first, he was terribly disoriented, his mind full of a jumble of images that just didn't seem to want to make sense.
...Boromir, Faramir, Aragorn... the sight of broken glass on a wooden floor... Blood... lots of blood.
...A small, dark elf with shining, storm-grey eyes smoothing his hair back and whispering to him in Quenyan as he fought the cramping pains in his abdomen...
He raised a hand up and looked closely at it. At least two I.V. lines had been taped to the back of his hand and they were filled with fluid. One was clear, and the other a dark, maroon red that could only be blood.
Legolas frowned. Why would he need blood again? Come to think of it, why the hell was he in the hospital?
He sighed and closed his eyes. He was so tired. He didn't want to think about what might have happened right now. All he wanted to do was sleep until things made sense again and the dull ache in his abdomen went away.
He probably would have drifted out of consciousness if it hadn't been for the bright flash of violet eyes out of the darkness that made him sit up gasping.
"Mr. Mirkwood! Please, lie down! Sudden moves like that will hurt the babies!"
Legolas blinked up at the pair of grey eyes that had materialized in front of him.
It was that same dark elf he recalled from his memories... but how did she get into his room? And what was she doing here anyway? And did she...
"Excuse me... did you just say 'babies'?" Legolas asked as he let the elf gently push him down onto the bed once more.
"Hmm? Oh yes! Congratulations, Mr. Mirkwood. You're having twins! Quite a surprise for us too. We wouldn't have known until much later if you hadn't been brought in because of the placenta praevia. Even though you are an elf, you were terribly lucky to have been treated so quickly for it," the elf told him as she fussed with both the blankets and a belt of some sort that had been strapped around his belly.
"What is that thing?" Legolas asked as he watched her check the wires attached to a small square box that led to some kind of machine right beside his bed.
"It's to monitor the heartbeat of your children. We want to make sure the fetuses are healthy as well as prevent a miscarriage. Even though we managed to stop the bleeding, your health and your children's health is still at risk."
Legolas blanched at these news.
"So... I... ehm... nearly lost the babies?" he asked, his voice a bit unsteady as he spoke.
The elf finished fussing over his blankets and the monitor and looked at him sympathetically.
"Yes. I'm sorry to have thrown all that at you the minute that you woke up, but we do want to keep that from actually happening, right?"
Legolas took a deep breath in an effort to calm his rapidly beating heart. Nearly lost his children? He was nearly sick at the thought of losing the lives that he had created. Even though losing them may have been better for everyone in the long run, Legolas just felt cold and ill all over. There would have been no freaking way, he realized that he would have ever gotten over such a loss.
No matter how long he would have lived, he would have carried that horrible sense of being incomplete. Of a horrible emptiness that he would have never been able to be rid off.
He wanted to freak out when he realized this. Truly, he did. But he knew that it wouldn't have been good for his children, so he forced himself to remain calm.
"But they will be fine?"
The dark elf nodded at him before she pulled up a chair and sat down, still keeping her grey eyes focused on him.
"Yes. As long as you follow the doctor's orders, I'm sure that you will have a healthy pregnancy and labour."
Lee smiled in relief. That was good news. It looked like he wouldn't have to prevent Yohji, Thom and Duo from killing Casey after all. Even though he did so richly deserve it.
"So where is my doctor?" He asked her, looking around the room as if he expected him to pop out of the woodwork at any moment.
"He'll be in to have a look at you shortly and we will then decide whether it will be better for you to be under my care, or under our combined care, since this is a fairly tricky pregnancy to begin with. The fact that you had the bleeding isn't going to make matters any easier, so we need to be extra careful with you from now on."
Legolas felt like shrinking into himself at these news. He was stunned that things had turned out this way. He had honestly believed that the biggest problem that he would have to deal with after matters with Faramir had settled down would be to find clothes big enough for him as he grew and whether he'd be able to defer the scholarships to St. Adrian's university until he was able to find someone to take care of the child for him.
And now, things had just suddenly gotten even more tangled. Beginning with the changing of his and Boromir's relationship and the effect that it would have on Aragorn and Faramir, then the whole incident at the bar - which Lee was positive had something to do with the whole Boromir issue - the news he was carrying twins, and now this. What was going to be next?
He frowned. Maybe he really shouldn't be asking the question when he was positive that he didn't want to hear the answer. He was sure Fate was still sitting in the corner of the room eager to whip out even more wildcards in order to make his life twice as miserable.
So he decided to turn his mind to the more practical things that were plaguing him. Like when the hell was he going to get out of the hospital and be able to visit Boromir.
"Cool. So when am I getting out of here?"
The elf, whose name-tag proclaimed her to be Celebrethil Menel, midwife, smiled at him as she looked at the charts that lay in front of her.
"I know that you are eager to leave and be with your family, Mr. Mirkwood." She shook her head in irritation. She really hated the formal bullshit that was necessary whenever she met a new patient.
"May I just call you Legolas? I think that we can divest ourselves from all this formal language already, wouldn't you agree?"
Legolas laughed softly despite himself.
"Yeah, I agree. Go right ahead, Celebrethil."
Celebrethil smiled impishly before returning to the matter at hand.
"As I was saying, Legolas...I know you are eager to leave here, but I am afraid that you will have to remain at least a week for observation. And after that, you will have to have as much bed-rest as possible until the children are born."
Legolas kind of slumped back into the bed when he heard this. It was great that his children were going to be okay, but to have to be stuck in a bed for a whole year? He really couldn't imagine how he was going to stand it.
He ran a hand through his hair and let his hand drop down on the bed.
It didn't seem like anything was going to be easy for him. Ever.
Eowyn walked through the front doors of the school with her shoulders hunched against the cold. Snowflakes clung to her fair hair and eyebrows and she was just utterly miserable.
She just felt like hell. Not only was she sick, she was also terribly lonely. Eomer was always busy with his schoolwork and the hockey team, which left little time for anything else. Including her.
Max, Danny and Glor were all too distraught over what was happening with the Denethorson's and with Strider and Lee, so they were also not really paying attention to her. Sure, she sort of hung around with Sam and Frodo, but it wasn't the same. She just felt like she was a shadow and intruding into everyone's life.
She knew she was lonely when she found herself actually wishing that Arwen was still around. Sure, it was an exercise in self-restraint to not comment on Arwen's self-absorbedness, but at least she wasn't being ignored and shunted aside as if she were nothing more than a piece of rubbish.
Sighing, she rubbed her forehead. Damn. She was burning up! Why the hell did she feel so cold then?
"Maybe going to school wasn't a good idea," she muttered to herself, stopping as a wave of dizziness hit her. She leaned against a row of lockers in one of the lesser used school hallways.
She wasn't a big fan of school, but she went to avoid the constant boredom and loneliness at home. Uncle Thengel was always too busy with his lawyer shit to think about her, Theoden and Eomer had their own lives to deal with. So that left her to either sit in front of the telly and vegetate, read and paint constantly, or while away the days with a couple of joints and a skateboard before she could fall asleep.
So even though she had already thrown up that morning and was shivering from the cold, she made herself go to school. At least she would have others around and that wouldn't make her feel as lost and alone as she felt right now.
She closed her eyes and pressed her hot face against the cool metal of the locker to gain a bit of relief from her fever. It felt so good, she told herself as she sagged against the locker. If she could only stay like this for the rest of the day, it would be nice.
She probably would have fallen asleep if it hadn't been for the voices that intruded into her feverish mind and forced her to open her eyes and blearily search them out.
"—black now. So relax. It was done at Halbarad's shop. No one's going to know. So chill, okay?"
"You sure? I don't want to have my life ruined because you couldn't drive a straight line that night."
"Excuse me? You were the one driving when we hit him."
Eowyn's eyes widened when she recognized the hushed, but still audible voices were coming from the doorway.
What the hell were Theoden and Arwen arguing about? The paint on his car?
She frowned as she slid down to the floor. Why was the paint so important? It was just a car, for fuck's sake. Why should Arwen be all freaked out about it?
"Fuck. How the hell did I know that the little shit was going to run out in the street?"
The sound of flesh striking flesh followed by the sound of soft sobbing made Eowyn sit up straighter and look worriedly towards the doorway where she could see them, Arwen with her hand held to her face, and Theoden looming over her like a menacing shadow.
A shadow that Eowyn knew all too well from her younger days.
When Theoden began to get physical, things were going to get really ugly for anyone in the vicinity. Even though she had never been struck by him when he got angry, she had seen what kind of damage he could inflict when he found a victim. Which unfortunately tended to be Eomer when they had been younger.
His rages were a rare thing, but when they occurred, it was a wiser choice to make yourself as scarce as possible from the area.
Swallowing her nervousness, Eowyn looked around for an escape route. Despite being hidden by one of the doors, she knew it was just a matter of time before they saw her.
She was making an effort to get to her feet, but the lethargy that had driven her to lean against the lockers had a strong grip upon her. Her legs, despite her determination, simply wouldn't move and it felt like she was going to slide into blackness any minute now.
"Shut up. That's all you have to do, Arwen. Keep your mouth shut and we're in the clear, okay? Do you think you can do that?"
Eowyn shivered. This was not good at all. They would come here any minute and they would discover her and she was done for, since Theoden would know that she had listened in on his and Arwen's conversation. One thing that Theoden hated was to have his privacy invaded since he was overly paranoid about getting caught doing anything. He would act like a cornered animal if he thought he was going to get busted from someone tattling on him.
"Think. Think," she muttered as she reached up for the locker handle to help keep her steady as she labouriously got to her feet.
If she recalled correctly, there was a classroom, or some unused room down this hallway that she could hide in before Theoden and Arwen found her. The only trick now was to actually get to her feet and get moving before they decided to look in her direction.
Moving sluggishly, Eowyn managed to actually stand up without making too much noise. But the minute that she was on her feet, the dizziness came back ten times worse. She tried to fight it. Honestly, she really tried.
But the dizziness won out, and she just fell back against the lockers, her head and back striking the metal with a loud clanging noise that echoed and re-echoed both in the hallway and in her head.
She groaned when the noise stopped and she found herself looking up into a pair of icy-blue eyes.
"What did you hear?" Theoden hissed the minute that Eowyn's eyes had met his.
Eowyn was going to deny hearing anything, but her brain was a trifle occupied with wondering how the hell Theoden had moved so fast from one end of the hallway to the other without her noticing.
"What did you hear?" Theoden repeated, his voice going down to a dangerous pitch.
"N-nothing." Eowyn whispered. "Nothing at all."
Theoden frowned before he grabbed the collar of her winter coat and pulled her up so that her face was just inches away from his.
"What did you hear?" Theoden asked her again, clearly not believing the answer that he had been given.
"Nothing." Eowyn answered again.
Theoden laughed a short, humourless laugh before he slammed Eowyn's head against the locker.
"Theoden!" Arwen cried out, shocked that Theoden would willingly hurt his own cousin.
"Shut up Arwen!" Theoden barked before he turned his attention back to a stunned Eowyn.
"What did you hear?" he growled before he slammed her head again. "And this time you'd better tell me the truth, or else I'm going to bash your brains out onto the fucken locker."
Eowyn's eyes widened at the threat. Why didn't he believe her when she told him the truth?
"Nothing. I swear. Nothing," she whispered before she made a half-hearted effort to get out of Theoden's inexorable grip before he made good on his threat.
Theoden's eyes narrowed and with a snarl of rage, he took his cousin and slammed her so hard against the metal that it made Eowyn's eyes roll back into her head.
"Tell me! What did you hear, you fucken bitch! Tell me before I fucken break your neck!"
Eowyn only shuddered and let out a mewling sound as she tried to stay awake and away from the painful super nova that was threatening to drag her under.
Another blow to her already throbbing skull didn't help matters any, since it seemed that the only thing that it had achieved was to give her even more of a headache and to make her totally disoriented and unable to give her cousin any answers at all.
She was so confused and loopy that she barely registered the loud fracas that suddenly erupted behind Theoden, causing him to drop her like a stone.
"—Touch her once more and I'm going to tear your spine out and shove it up your ass! You hear me!"
Even though the light made her wince, Eowyn fought to open her eyes. The voice that had yelled out the threat sounded terribly familiar, but she really couldn't place it. Everything hurt, but she had to look and see who it was that had saved her from what could have been a nasty fate at her cousin's hands.
Struggling, she finally was able to see who it was. To her surprise, she found herself looking up at a terribly furious Max. Shocked, she then brought herself to a sitting position where she could see what was happening a little better.
Max had grabbed Theoden by the throat and was now shoving him against a locker and it looked like he was trying to do his best to strangle the human. Arwen was nowhere to be seen and the only other people in the hallway were Glor and Danny and both looked like they wanted to do nothing better than to murder the slowly suffocating Theoden.
"You hear me?" Max yelled again, taking Eowyn's focus off of her cousin and putting it back onto the elf, whose blue-black hair had come loose from the low ponytail he usually had it in and was now floating around his shoulders, making him look like a crazed and very dangerous animal.
"Yeah." Theoden finally managed to wheeze out after Max had somewhat loosened his grip on his neck. "I hear you. I swear I'm not gonna touch her."
Satisfied, Max let him drop onto the ground. But Eowyn could tell that the elf was still terribly angry. There was a strange shimmer in his grey-green eyes as he looked at her cousin and then at her.
"You okay?" he asked her, his voice harsh, but softening ever so slightly for her benefit.
Eowyn nodded, suddenly unable to speak, stunned at his actions and at his savage beauty.
"Are you sure?" Max asked her as he then held out a hand to help her up. "Cause I can take you to Nurse Diamond's office if you're not."
"She'll be fine." Theoden muttered sullenly as he slowly got to his feet.
"I wasn't asking you, Rohan. Now piss off before I'm tempted to make good on that threat."
"Yeah. Shove off Theoden. You're not welcome here." Danny added, his tone menacing.
Theoden snorted. "Fine. But we aren't finished," he added as an afterthought, shooting his cousin a look that promised retribution once they were alone.
"We say you are, Rohan." Glorfindel added, his voice quiet as he spoke.
"As if a little fag like you is going to stop me," Theoden snorted as he straightened his jacket out.
"Well, how about a big fag, his brother, Orophin and Rumil and the rest of the skaters?" Danny asked, stepping forward, his eyes blazing with an angry green fire. He walked right up to Theoden, close enough to make the human take a step backwards and be caught up short by the dented metal locker behind him.
"I'm going to say this to you once, Theoden. Only once, so listen up," Danny hissed, practically spitting in his face. "If you come within two feet of her in the school, we will kill you. If you come within two feet of her outside of school, we will kill you. If you even think about looking at her funny, we will kill you. If you try anything at home, we will tell Eomer what happened here and I'm sure that he will be quite happy for us to help him kill you. Either way, you're a dead man. So why don't you just take this opportunity to save that miserable excuse you have of a life and slither to your class, okay?"
Theoden lowered his head and after a few moments of suspense, he nodded miserably and slunk off. Sure, he could very well take on one elf at a time. No problem. But to have five of them and two hobbits and Eomer against him made his bravado disappear. Discretion was the better part of valour in his book and he was going to follow that maxim and get the hell out of there before he was killed.
"Fucker." Glor muttered as he and Danny watched him leave.
"Nah. More like a dick." Danny muttered as he slung and arm around his boyfriend and turned to look at how his brother and Eowyn were faring.
"Can you walk? Or do you need my help?" Max was asking as he watched Eowyn shakily stand, one hand on his arm and the other on the locker as she tried to walk.
Eowyn shook her head and was about to lie and say that she was well, but her face betrayed her at that moment by turning a lovely shade of greenish-white.
"Stop talking to her and get her to a washroom or something!" Danny told his brother the second he saw her face.
Max blanched at Danny's words, but kept his head. Acting quickly, he grabbed Eowyn and rushed her to the nearest washroom. Which happened to be the teacher's washroom. The male teacher's washroom.
"What are you kids doing in here?" Elrond exclaimed as he was shoved aside by Danny, who held the door open for Max and Eowyn to rush through.
Danny shoved Glorfindel forward, and quickly got out of the room, figuring that Elrond would go easy on his angelic-looking boyfriend. Glorfindel looked behind him and gave the door a glare. Elladan was definitely going to pay for this. Oh yes. He was.
"Well, Mr. Lorien?"
Glorfindel looked up at his dark-haired teacher and swallowed hard as he prepared his excuse.
He was about to speak when the sounds of Eowyn retching filled the washroom, making the explanation moot. Which he could tell simply by looking at the _expression on Elrond's face.
"Mother is a coward." Celebrian told the stuffed bear she was bringing Boromir. "Yes she is. Even though she is my mother and I love her very much, she is still a coward."
Celebrian muttered as she pulled the bear out of the backseat along with a box of Maple sugar candy, albums and books that she was positive Boromir would be grateful for, since he was for all intents and purposes, a prisoner. Both of the hospital and of his own body and she was sure that he was already going mad being locked up between four walls day in and day out.
She also knew, even though she didn't want to truly admit it, that the gifts were to soften the blow of the news that she had been charged to give him.
Flashback
"I hate to whine, I really do, mother. But why do I have to be the bearer of bad news here?" Celebrian had asked Galadriel as she had packed the box carefully with some of the gifts she had brought back from the east. Although she had planned to give them to her little gowk at Christmas, her mother had suggested that maybe they would be better received at this time.
Galadriel remained silent for several moments, watching her daughter and sipping at her tea, which she had poured into the mug decorated with crudely painted cats and pumpkins that Boromir had claimed as his own five years before.
It wasn't until Celebrian had finally shut the box that she had found her voice to speak.
"I can't do it. That is why," Galadriel admitted quietly, making Celebrian look up at her mother in surprise.
To hear her capable mother admit that she was at a loss at how to handle this situation was an utter blow to her. Sure, she knew that her parents weren't infallible, even though they sure as hell seemed to be when compared to other people's parents. But to hear her mother actually say, "This is too much for me, I cannot even begin to think about how to deal with it" was something that definitely was on par with the sky turning a nice murky shade of reddish-grey and have snow start falling in the middle of August.
She was being asked to deal with that knowledge and to deal with her fragile little brother as well in one fell swoop.
Celebrian tugged at the spikes she had just carefully made out of her bangs and looked at her mother.
"Why can't you do it now?"
Galadriel shut her eyes at the question. Normally, she wouldn't have admitted her weaknesses out loud to anyone, much less her daughter. But this time, she really hadn't a choice. Namely because she knew that she would be lying to herself if she didn't, and also because she knew that it wasn't her place to take a hand in the events that were going to happen. And because she knew very well that she simply wasn't the one to offer Boromir comfort.
It was true that they were closer than a normal family was. But she felt, rather than knew, that there was a thin wall between herself and her son that she couldn't really breach. It wasn't a thing that Boromir was aware of, most of the time, but she could feel it whenever she had tried to get closer to him. That wall was there ever since she had known him and it felt like it was getting harder to breach the older he got.
The last time she had tried to do just that had been the day after he had woken up from his attempted suicide. She hadn't tried to break it ever again, the wall was just too thick to allow for her to get through it.
The only persons that could do that, she saw, had been Legolas and her daughter. Even Faramir, despite the fact that they were brothers and shared a bond that went deeper than any of the bonds they had with anyone else, hadn't been able to breach the wall either. Only those two had managed it. Legolas more than anyone, but it had been done.
She had hoped that Aragorn would have been able to help Boromir get over this latest tragedy, but that hope had been extinguished the minute that she had walked into his room and had found the young human wrapped protectively around Faramir, his long limbs intertwined with the younger boy's as they slept the deep sleep of emotional exhaustion.
She didn't grudge him the comfort that he was now getting from Faramir. All of them were being battered by everything that they were facing and if they had to seek comfort in each other, so be it. The comfort that they had was preferable to either of them just going mad by keeping their grief to themselves.
She opened her eyes and looked at her daughter.
"I cannot offer Boromir the comfort that he will need when he is told the news," she replied before taking another swallow of her warm tea.
"Boromir has never fully let me in. Not like he let you and Legolas in. It would be useless if I tried to talk to him right now. His grief would just make the wall he keeps between us stronger and nothing would get through."
Celebrian shook her head at her mother's words.
"Mother. No. I'm sure that Boromir doesn't—"
"He doesn't realize that he is doing it, Celebrian," Galadriel interrupted her calmly. "He's always had that shield up. I don't blame him for it, since he had to face so much at such a young age. It's his last line of defense and no matter how much I would like to break that wall, it is too strong. Too elusive."
Celebrian ran a hand through her hair in frustration when she heard her mother's explanation.
It was true that whenever Boromir had a problem, he had run to either her or Legolas. That was if he had even reached that stage. Most of the time, he would keep it quiet until he either solved it himself or it was simply pried out of him. When that was the case, it was mostly done by Legolas or herself. She was positive that no one else had ever managed to do that. Faramir was a second choice, but she wasn't sure how much closer they had gotten since she had gone to McGill.
"Shit," she whispered before she looked down at the box on the table once again. Her mother was right. There was no one else to do this but her. Or...
"What about Aragorn? I mean, they are going out and all that. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to go tell Boromir?"
Galadriel shook her head.
"He is with Faramir now. They have their own problems to deal with and even though it seems like it is wrong for them to form a bond at this time, I think that it is better for them to do so."
Celebrian frowned. "Are you sure that it is a good thing? I mean, Boromir adores Aragorn. Faramir, I think, has been in love with Legolas since the first time he set eyes on him. Don't you feel that this is just...I don't know...a rebound thing that is going to hurt them all worse in the end?"
Galadriel pursed her lips at her daughter's comment.
"I realise that could happen. But the other alternative that I see is that they will be able to build a stable relationship. A less complicated one. One that they are more able to give and take more evenly than their previous ones."
"Mother!! You can't say that!" Celebrian exclaimed, horrified at her mother's point of view. "Those guys love each other! If they just break everything off with each other, it's going to kill them. Maybe not now, maybe not in a little while, but later it will. You can't condone that!"
"I am not condoning it!" Galadriel exclaimed.
"Then why are you so calm about Aragorn leaving Boromir? Which, by the way, he hasn't even mentioned to Boromir himself! Mother, this isn't right! We shouldn't be just standing back and letting them wreck their lives! We should—"
"We should do what, exactly?" Galadriel asked her daughter, her tone weary. "They are their own persons. Whatever decisions they make, they will be the ones to make them and they will be the ones to live with them. We cannot interfere with them! No matter how much we would wish to set things right, we cannot interfere. The course has been set. We cannot do anything now... except to watch and pray that things will turn out for all of them."
Celebrian's eyes narrowed at her mother's words.
"What have you seen, mother?" she asked, her voice soft. "What has the bowl revealed to you about them?"
Galadriel looked at her daughter sharply.
"That you will succeed where I will only fail and that there are still dark times ahead," the elder elf replied before she walked out of the kitchen, leaving Celebrian alone.
Later, Celebrian took the box and the teddy bear her father had bought during a Christmas shopping trip to the car. Celeborn walked beside her, helping her carry the heavier stuff.
"It's silly. But... well... He did have that damned bear he loved so much," Celeborn told his daughter when he had presented the old-fashioned brown bear with the soft green ribbon tied around its neck.
"Oh yeah!" Celebrian had exclaimed when she had taken a good look at the bear.
"What did he call him?" she asked, trying to recall exactly the battered, moth-eaten bear's moniker. She smiled at the memories of how Boromir had fiercely clung to it until it had simply fallen apart.
"Ingo? Idren?" Celeborn's frowned as he tried to recall the name of the bear. "I know that it started with an 'I'... Italo?"
"No. That doesn't sound right... somehow," Celebrian told him as she tugged at a spike.
"I know that it was close to that. But I can't exactly remember it."
She shrugged. "We'll know soon enough when I give it to him."
Celeborn nodded as he looked at his daughter and tried to speak to her, to tell her how proud of her he was and how sorry he was that she was the one to bear such a heavy burden on her shoulders. He hadn't approved of his wife's decision to let her take care of the whole Boromir issue, but she had seen something in her bowl. Something that had made her shut herself off from everyone for hours until she had felt well enough to come back to them and give her daughter that particular task.
"Celebrian..." he tried to say more. Truly, he did. But his mouth got all dry and he could only utter her name. There wasn't anything he could think of to soften the blow. He was helpless. Nothing he could say would help her any. But he wanted to help her.
"I know," Celebrian replied, not taking her eyes off from the sidewalk. "You don't have to soften it for me, dad. We are, after all, servants of the fates that send her the visions. She cannot do anything about it, neither can we."
"I know. I know it is also a vain human hope to wish that things like this didn't occur either. But at times like this, when I see all of you thrust into dark times with no way to prevent it, it makes me indulge in this kind of whim."
Celebrian nodded. "I'd better get going though. Boromir is probably climbing the walls as we speak."
Celeborn smiled, since he knew how impatient his foster son could get when he was bored.
"Tell him I said hi and that I miss him," he told his daughter as he kissed her forehead.
"I will. See you later," Celebrian replied as she put the stuff in the car and sped off, leaving her father standing on the sidewalk.
Those events then led to her muttering about her mother being a coward as she pulled out the gifts and arrange them in a way that would make it easier for her to transport them upstairs to Boromir's room.
"Why did they have to put you on the third floor?" Celebrian muttered as she struggled with the awkwardness of her burdens. Well, at least she had found a parking spot close to the doors so that her trip wouldn't be as long.
After she had trudged through a snowy path and shared an elevator with an annoying seventeen year old and her little brat of a brother, Celebrian was ready to murder someone. She really liked kids, but the little shit's whining was something that could make even Mother Theresa want to strangle him and his sister, who looked like she was trying to out-whore the whores on 95th St.
She was glad once they all got off the elevator the two children headed over to the opposite ward that Boromir was in. At least she wouldn't have to hear their annoying voices as she tried to talk to Boromir. Thank god for small mercies and all that.
She thought she was going to have a somewhat normal visit with Boromir, despite the news she was going to break to him. Sure, that wasn't going to be a pleasant bit of work, but if she got it over and done quickly, things wouldn't be as sticky later on.
That hope though quickly evaporated when she entered his room.
Normally, the lights would be turned on quite brightly, illuminating the dull beige room that Faramir and Legolas had tried to brighten up by tacking up posters over every available surface. The Manic Street Preachers, NOFX, Bad Religion, Jim Morrison, Van Gogh renderings and Rembrandt all decorated the walls, making the place look less sterile and more homey. Boromir himself would be either sitting in his wheelchair or in bed, either writing, doodling or reading while he listened to music.
But today, the room was dark and silent. Boromir wasn't anywhere to be found at a first glance. At first, Celebrian was ready to panic, since she was afraid that Boromir was somehow gone without any explanation whatsoever.
But as she came closer to the bed, she found him lying in a small huddle under the blankets, his hair limp and greasy, his face ashen gray and slack, his eyes a dull green and red-rimmed as he stared out the window at the darkening landscape outside.
"Gowk?" she asked softly as she walked up to the bed.
Boromir didn't reply. He just lay there, his eyes still focused on the landscape outside his window.
Worried, Celebrian put the stuff down on the bedside table and sat down on the bed.
"Gowk? Please. Talk to me." Celebrian pleaded as she reached over and pushed a strand of hair away from his face and tucked it behind his ear.
She waited for several moments, but when he refused to reply, she called his name again.
"Boromir?"
His eyes shifted from the window finally and rested on her face.
She nearly recoiled from the fragmented pain that she saw in his eyes. She hadn't seen him looking so shattered since that morning... after.
She took a hard swallow. Even though it had been two years, she still couldn't forget the blood in bathtub and how it seemed to soak into everything, staining the pristine walls and tiles, Boromir's clothes, his skin and his hair, Lee's own hair and her hands...
She shook her head. She really didn't want to have those images dredged up again. Once was quite enough for her, thank-you.
"What happened?" Celebrian asked Boromir as she began to stroke his hair in an effort to offer him some comfort.
"Was it the doctors?" she asked him, aware that even though they hadn't gotten any negative news about his conditions, things could have possibly taken a turn for the worst.
Boromir shook his head. "It has nothing to do with me, actually," he told her, his voice low.
He shut his eyes for a moment to gather his thoughts before he spoke. The events of last night were still too fresh in his mind for him to speak freely. Also, they scared him. Nothing like that had ever happened to him before and it was... unnerving... to say the least.
"What happened to Legolas?" he asked her, his voice wavering slightly despite his best efforts to keep it even.
Celebrian's hand stilled on his head. How...how had he known?
"Who told you?" she asked him.
"No one had to. I felt it," he said as he sat up. He pushed his hair out of his face and shifted his weight so that it rested against the headboard of his bed.
"You... you... felt that something happened to Lee?" Celebrian asked him, her voice hardly above a whisper.
"Yeah," Boromir replied, his eyes fixed on his hands as he talked.
"He was in so much pain. And he was afraid and I felt it all. In here," he told her, tapping his chest as to show were the fireball of agony had struck him.
"It was as if he was running around in my heart and in my head. He was...so scared. So very scared and the pain...I have never felt anything like that... it... it... it... felt like I was getting knives driven into my belly. I couldn't think... I couldn't see.".
He fell silent and shuddered slightly before wrapping his arms around himself. It had been an experience that he would have much rather forget than relive it for his sister. But he had to tell her so that he would know for sure whether it had all just been in his head or whether it had really happened.
He truly believed that it had happened. He really did. The feel of Legolas in his head was still there. Not as a harsh silver flame as it had been in those moments, but as a small, soft glow that he could see whenever he closed his eyes and thought about it.
But it could also have been either his imagination or the after-effects of the pain-killers that he got if his back was bothering him.
"But I think the worst thing was that.. I wasn't there to help him. Or to ease the pain for him." He closed his eyes briefly before focusing once again on his sisters' pale face.
"Did anything happen?"
Celebrian nodded, her mouth having suddenly gone dry.
Boromir lowered his head so that his hair was covering his face.
"What happened?"
There were several long minutes of uncomfortable silence that stretched out so long that it was nearly painful to just be in the room, never mind to speak in it. Until finally...
"Casey."
Boromir's shoulders stiffened and jerked as if he had received a heavy blow across his shoulders.
"What did he do?"
Celebrian licked her lips as she prepared to tell him the story that she had gleaned from Aragorn's drunken ravings, Duo's and Yohji's stilted explanations and her father's terse comments.
"Ehm... It seems that when you and I were talking, Aragorn over-heard our conversation."
Boromir winced at this, but said nothing. Celebrian looked at him for a sign as to whether she should continue with her tale or not when Boromir nodded.
"Go on."
"He ran out and took Faramir out to a pub where they got plastered. It seems that Casey arrived earlier or later than they did and he tried to make Faramir the unwilling recipient of his attention. When that failed, he was going to cut up his face. Aragorn got there in time and beat the snot out of him."
Boromir smiled briefly at this. Well, at least he wouldn't feel too bad the next time he saw Aragorn. But on the other hand, it meant that he owed him a favour.
"But when that was going on, Lee, Yohji and Duo showed up and Casey attacked Lee."
Boromir's face went utterly white at this statement.
"Is Lee okay then? And the baby?" he asked, his hands bunching up the blankets in his anxiety. He knew how vicious Casey could get when riled. Especially against someone that he held a grudge against. He didn't know exactly what had happened between those two, but he knew that Casey had never forgiven or forgotten whatever it was.
"Lee and the baby are okay. We don't know how long they're going to be in the hospital, but they are okay."
Celebrian didn't tell him that Lee had bled quite a bit and that he was one lucky elf in that he neither lost the baby or his life. She could tell by the way that Boromir's eyes were scanning the brown blanket that he was feeling extremely low right about then and didn't think that the extra information was needed. Boromir needed to get over the shock first before she was going to drop that in his lap.
Boromir nodded and just kept looking down at the blanket, making Celebrian wonder what exactly he was thinking or feeling at that time. She couldn't tell either of these things since his hair covered his face and his eyes were busy boring holes in his blanket.
Some people said that even when they were looking at him head on they couldn't tell what the hell was going on in his mind. But Celebrian never had that problem. She could usually tell what was going inside his messy blonde head with great ease, since she knew how to read the small nuances of his face and how they changed whenever his mood or thoughts did. Often, when she heard that, she had shaken her head in disgust, figuring that those people simply didn't know how to deal with him.
Seeing how well he shut her out by those two simple gestures, she could now understand the frustration that not knowing brought with it.
That feeling of exclusion was also strengthened by the news that he had just shared with her.
She had heard of such a thing happening when she was younger. A bond that went beyond comprehension between elves. A bond that was so deep that the two who had it would share either the strongest joy or the most shattering, soul-wrenching pain.
She was sort of surprised that it had occurred between Boromir and Legolas, since it was extremely rare among elves and she had never once heard of it happening between a human and an elf before. The other factor that had surprised her was that it had happened to the two guys that weren't going out. It was true that Lee and Boromir's friendship went beyond just them being friends, but that bond never manifested itself unless the two parties loved each other without any reservations at all.
So how could it have happened between them if they each were in love with another person? How did they end up building such a strong connection between them that they had managed to share such a painful experience as if they had been one?
She wanted to find out the answer, but she knew that it was no point in asking him or Lee. They wouldn't know. Nor could she run home and ask her mother. Not until all of what lay between her and Boromir was resolved.
"Which hospital is Lee in?" Boromir asked her, breaking into her thoughts with his quiet composed voice that had an edge of barely restrained hysteria to it.
Celebrian blinked. It had been at least five minutes since he had spoken and hearing him speak kind of took her aback.
"George VI. Why do you ask?"
Boromir raised his head and looked at her steadily, his eyes gleaming much more brightly than they had since she had entered the room.
"Because we're going to see him. That's why."
by Jim Morrison
Chapter XVI
In a Little While
"I'd like to fall asleep to the beat of you breathing in a room near a truck stop on a highway somewhere.
You are a radio. You are an open door.
I am a faulty string of blue christmas lights.
You swim through frequencies.
You let that stranger in, as I'm blinking off and on and off again.
We've got a lot of time. Or maybe we don't, but I'd like to think so, so let me pretend."
—The Weakerthans
egolas found himself looking up at the white ceiling of a hospital room.
