5Author's note: It's been a weird few weeks. First, a massive, destructive tornado a few miles from my house that shut the city down, and now school/work is closed for COVID-19... What should I be doing with this week off? Getting in hours for my assistantship and finishing my master thesis (which is due in 2 weeks), of course. What am I doing instead? Oh, you know... Writing fanfiction.
I found the [very] barebones of this in my phone notes. I apparently started this in 2018 when I was working part-time at a domestic violence shelter. We had a lot of clients at the time either actively using opioids or in recovery. I don't remember what inspired this, but, apparently, something did. Obviously, this is a content warning for themes of addiction. This isn't my favorite thing I've ever written, but I have so missed my Gimli that I'm just grateful he and Legolas got some time together here!
There are references in this story to "Where You Go, I Will Go," to "Humble Gifts," to my interminably WIP multichap story "Enough," and a tongue-in-cheek reference to a few others. (If you catch the fourth, you may know my writing better than I do, ha.) That being said, you absolutely don't have to have read the others to understand this one! :)
I hope you enjoy this shameless little angst and H/C oneshot. No beta - all mistakes are mine.
The Fears We Carry
"The fascinating aspect of henbane is that, despite [its poisonous potential], the plant has been long prized for its medicinal properties and is seen today by the medical community as a very important source of new drugs. This is the odd nature of henbane: in low doses it can be very beneficial. The ancient Greeks and Romans prized henbane for its soporific, sedative, and analgesic qualities, and doctors of the time prescribed the plant commonly (Ramoutsaki et al. 2002). The Roman Dioscorides (CE 77) listed henbane for pain relief in his famous herbal De Materia Medica (Mann 2000).
- Evergreen State University. (2017, January 30). Henbane: Witch's Drug. Retrieved from .edu/plantchemeco/henbane-medicine-andor-magic/
"Henbane is used in traditional herbal medicine for ailments of the bones, rheumatism, toothache, asthma, cough, nervous diseases, and stomach pain. It might also be used as analgesic, sedative, and narcotic in some cultures."
- Dearest Wikipedia
Gimli pulled the rich meat from the bird's ribs, occasionally wiping his oily fingers on the rag that Legolas had launched at him a few minutes before, offered, though, with a less clever barb than usual. While it was true that they were both battered and bruised from their earlier ill-fated attempt at fording a spring-swollen river, the elf had borne the brunt of it, and, so, Gimli found himself glancing up at him intermittently as he worked. Legolas sat across the fire from him, propped up against Arod, who had stubbornly settled himself on the ground behind the elf when Gimli had struggled, unsuccessfully, to arrange the packs into a crude chair. Now, Legolas had one arm stretched the length of the horse's flank to relieve pressure from his ribs, and the other lay loosely in his lap, bound tightly at the wrist and splinted for added surety.
Gimli looked back to his work and moved on to the second cooling partridge. He twisted a leg off and offered it to Legolas with a flourish. He glanced up long enough to see him shake his head and lean more fully into Arod, pulling his legs up toward his body so that his knees knocked together and a ghost of a grimace tightened his jaw and wrinkled his nose. Gimli pulled off the second leg and then dropped them both onto the already partially-filled plate in front of him. The bones clinked on the plate's metal and interrupted the inconsistent drone of the field crickets around them. Meanwhile, Legolas had glanced away as quickly as he could after answering Gimli, and so he sat then amidst the early spring sounds, half-whistling, half-humming, occasionally clearing his throat or coughing quietly—head tilted further back than before, his eyes darted back and forth across the sky, chasing the thin, high clouds that raced along the stars.
Gimli finished stripping the meat from the second bird and piled it onto the plate with the meat from the first. He licked his fingers of oil and juice, and then wiped them on the rag before rising with the plate to settle down beside his friend. Arod craned his neck as the dwarf approached, and Legolas broke whistling to murmur a quiet command to him, before turning his attention to Gimli. As Gimli settled down beside him, Legolas pulled his extended arm in so he could lean up from Arod and forward onto his own pulled-up knees. Gimli placed the plate between them and watched as Legolas cushioned his cheek against his legs and tilted his head toward Gimli. He pulled his arms close to his chest and allowed himself a sigh.
"It's just that Arod needs to stand up," Legolas finally said, and Arod regained his feet clumsily behind them, wandering away slightly to graze. "It is not good for horses."
Gimli raised an eyebrow, and when Legolas did not continue, he offered, "What is not good for horses? You?" Legolas cracked a smile. "Elves?" Gimli continued.
Legolas sat up straighter as he shifted again to sit cross-legged; back curved, he hunched over his arms as he grinned and answered. "I forget you do not know horses," he said, watching Gimli lift a bird leg to his lips now. "You are so natural with Arod, after all."
Gimli hmphed in amusement at the wryness, and, so, Legolas continued: "It is not good for them to lay down for too long—horses—for they are so large. It can hurt them."
"What a strange problem to have," Gimli murmured. He finished the leg and dropped the bone onto the plate, watching Legolas rock back and forth, almost imperceptibly, beside him. His arms were still crossed tightly, and eyes were locked onto the fire before them.
"You do not want any of this bird at all?" Gimli said after a few moments of silence.
Legolas shook his head again and raised his uninjured hand to push hair back from his face. Gimli took up another piece of bird and frowned at the leaf of untouched henbane on the handkerchief also between them. The arnica unguent still sat beside the fresh henbane, for they had both used it earlier—and liberally, too—and, also, there was the tin cup of willow-bark tea that Gimli had brewed prior to cooking the bird, and it well and truly empty. Yet, the delicate henbane remained still untouched.
Gimli finished eating his portion of rib meat and wiped his hands on his trousers before considering the elf again. He pulled another kerchief out of a pocket and laid it over the meat to keep bugs away and then pushed the plate away from them and closer to the fire—even if the elf did not want it now, he might later.
Gimli leaned back onto his hands and watched his friend intently for a moment. "Perhaps," he finally said slowly, as Arod came back into the firelight across from them, dried winter grass sticking out of his mouth, comically. Legolas smiled at the horse as Gimli continued, "Perhaps you should lay down. Ease the stress on your ribs for a bit. We have a long time til morning."
"I would rather not," Legolas answered shortly, dragging his gaze back from Arod to Gimli, and straightening in an effort to ease the ribs himself. He cleared his throat and continued: "Lying flat, I think, will be more trouble than it is worth."
"Your lungs still hurt, then?" Gimli asked with concern, noticing Legolas stifle a cough now.
"Aye," he replied, shifting one shoulder higher as he stretched his back so that the side of bruised or cracked ribs could decompress. "Ai, that is better." He smiled at Gimli, but Gimli frowned.
"I wish you would use this plant," Gimli grumbled, scooting closer to Legolas, pushing the tin cup and the unguent aside and scooping the henbane up in the handkerchief, cradling it a hand as he looked up at the elf. "We are lucky to have even come across it, and you are in pain."
"I am," Legolas said evenly.
"Mine was eased enough by the arnica and willow, but I did not find myself pressed between a horse and a rock, either, so I daresay that is not exactly comparable."
Legolas smiled.
"I know there are herbs you do not like, Legolas—I will never give you belladonna again, for example," Gimli murmured, and Legolas found himself laughing quietly as he pressed the hand of his injured arm to his chest; he watched his friend thoughtfully. "But just a leaf, Legolas," Gimli continued, "and you could rest. Not even a full leaf. We are safe here, and, frankly, I need your wherewithal to get us to Minas Tirith these next few days."
"Well," Legolas said immediately, and with an unexpected bite, "you will not exactly have my 'wherewithal' if I take that now."
"I do not need your 'wherewithal' now, you fool—you can be insensate and asleep now. I need your wherewithal tomorrow," Gimli clarified. "If you are cloudy with pain because you have not rested, well, I will not have it then, either."
Legolas inclined his head to the side in acknowledgement of Gimli's fair logic, but he pursed his lips as he considered him.
They sat in silence for a time, side by side, long enough to watch two moths dance around each other toward the fire, where they unintentionally dove forward together—perhaps driven by a slight wind or a heated updraft—and ignited. Subsumed by the flames, the moths caught fire like dust, and then disappeared with a pop and an understated poof.
Gimli and Legolas made eye contact at the sound, and Gimli found himself, unexpectedly, laughing. "I hope that is not some indication of our mutual fate," he grumbled.
Legolas laughed, too. "You have committed yourself to the wrong elf," he said. "We Silvans are not so skilled in interpreting these signs." He stifled a cough and continued with a quirk of his head and half a grimace, "Now, your Lady, on the other hand, graced with the light as she is… She might have a thing or two to say."
Gimli pulled the hand Legolas had pressed against his chest into his own, turning it over and running rough fingers the length of the splint, thoughtfully. "I hardly think Lady Galadriel is concerned with reading the behavior of moths," Gimli murmured darkly. "I doubt she has ever concerned herself with such trivial things."
Legolas shook his head in amusement and raised his eyebrows slightly. He pulled his hand back from Gimli and tucked it against his stomach; rocking forward again, he let his hair fall from behind his ears to obscure his vision.
Another moment of silence passed before Legolas was startled by a sudden grip on his shoulders.
"Elbereth, Gimli, what?" Legolas asked tiredly.
Gimli roughly pushed the elf's hair back from his face and turned his head toward him with a heavy palm.
"Why do you avoid it? The henbane?" Gimli asked, with his hand still pressed the length of Legolas' face. The elf sighed again and tried to lean forward more, but Gimli would not let him. "The Valar have smiled upon us, that we chanced upon such a thing after an accident like ours."
Legolas took a breath and allowed himself a real cough—unhindered by concern for Gimli's worry—before looking him directly in the eyes. "I am not dying, Gimli. I am just uncomfortable, and I will heal soon enough. Besides," he said dismissively with an attempt at a shrug, confined as it was, "I have never used this plant before."
Gimli's gaze did not waver, and he found himself not only more determined in the face of Legolas' continued diversions, but somewhat angered by them. He released his grip on Legolas' shoulder and raised his hand to his friend's other cheek. The elf's head was now trapped in Gimli's gentle hold, such that he was forced to either flaunt his defiance by turning his gaze to the ground or, simply, allow Gimli to look at him directly.
Gimli suppressed a smile as Legolas met his gaze determinedly, but with no small degree of consternation, if he had read the flare of Legolas' nostrils rightly. "You are clammy, my friend," Gimli said earnestly, and Legolas immediately felt his cheeks flush, because he knew Gimli was right.
He was clammy and cold, even in this warming spring night, and the cold made him ache—his chest and his lungs and his smashed wrist, but all of him, too. It made the bruises feel less superficial; it allowed the pain to move from his skin and his muscles inward, until he felt it settle deep within, wrapped around his bones and chasing the lengths of his tendons—
"We made a promise to one another, after the battle at the Black Gates," Gimli continued, interrupting Legolas' thoughts and forcing him to re-center. "Do you remember?"
Legolas focused again on the dwarf now, this friend who kept him anchored in the present between thick, warm hands; he determinedly pulled his thoughts away from the pressure and pain that now looped about his chest in pulsating cycles like some bizarre orbit that he had quite suddenly found difficult to ignore. He focused again, and he muttered simply, "Well, I do not like promises."
Gimli rolled his eyes.
"Aye, this I know, but you made one nonetheless," he said, and Legolas admitted it with a slight nod, before Gimli went on. "We decided that we would be honest with one another, that we would communicate directly, for the words we say aloud as elf and dwarf are not always well-interpreted by the other, without this kind of intention."
"Hm," Legolas acknowledged.
Gimli abandoned his grip on the elf's cheeks and took up both hands instead. He squeezed them gently, and Legolas felt his guard lowering.
"I may just be a dwarf," Gimli offered now, "not so keen in feeling the flow of living things as you," he continued. "But I can feel your pain now, my friend. In your hands, I feel it twitch, and when I have looked into your eyes, I know it is not just your body that aches. Will you not respect me enough to tell me, now? So that I may understand?"
Legolas squeezed Gimli's hands back with his uninjured one, and finally relented. "Your logic, Gimli—" he admitted quietly, "—it is as fair as ever."
Gimli inclined his head and smiled at the admission. He let go of Legolas' hands entirely now and allowed the elf to arrange himself as he pleased; it was the least he could do, he thought, if he would demand of him an explanation.
When Legolas finally broke the silence by clearing his throat, he had pulled his knees back up toward him and pressed his cheek against them so he could watch Gimli as he spoke. Gimli, for his part, had leaned back, away from Legolas, propping himself up on his hands so the elf might feel like he had more room to speak between them.
"Well," Legolas eventually began. "Have you ever seen a man taken by drug?"
Gimli raised his eyebrows in surprise, for—to be honest—he had expected an admission of a reinvigoration of the sea-longing, not a fear of medicine. Legolas straightened his legs out and maneuvered himself gingerly to face Gimli fully, then pulled his legs back in, with the flats of his feet pressed together, now, so that his legs cut a diamond-shape in front of him.
When the dwarf did not immediately answer, Legolas proceeded promptly: "Even elves are not immune to it, the intoxicating draw of certain substances. Sometimes when they come back from a skirmish, horrifically wounded, and they later recover, physically, but are held in their mind by that release they had from the darkness while they healed… They may treat their own minds even when their bodies do not need it, and so these people—I think—they really only recover in part."
Gimli watched as Legolas continued, for his words had picked up speed, and now the sentences started to roil forward, too, hurried and fierce as the river whose currents had earlier surprised them. "It happens, too, when elves are taken by pain and grief. We live long, Gimli, and there are things that an elven soul must endure even when it does not want to, and there are ways that some people try to ease such painful but necessary endurance."
Legolas pulled in his words abruptly; he tilted his head to the side as he contemplated his quietly considering friend. Wrapping his arms about himself again, he asked his original question: "Well, Gimli—have you seen it?"
Gimli shook his head, and then sat up from where he had lounged so that he almost mirrored Legolas' demeanor, and he waited for the elf to continue.
"Loss…" Legolas said after a beat, with a nod of his head to the side as if remembering something he had tried hard to forget. "I have seen soldiers struggle after healing, but loss is how I know this fear best, personally. There was a time—after my sister died and my mother left—when my father seemed to not even know me." His voice sped through the remembrance as he continued. "Then, it was my brother who was in charge, and I left them, for my father briefly lost himself, and that was only drink."
Legolas dropped his eyes to the ground and Gimli crossed his legs in front of him. "It was that time in my life when I struggled, too, when I wished I might remain insensate by my healer's medicine rather than face the loss of the only family I had known."
His words had slowed now, and he sat now rubbing a hand up and down the center of his chest with a frown. "I have only been lightly treated with those sorts of medicines since then—I am sensitive to their effects." Finally, he looked up from the ground and caught Gimli's eyes, and his lips were pulled, despite the darkness of the subject, into a delicate smile. "As," he said, "you have seen— belladonna, for example."
Gimli smiled, too, and Legolas continued.
"I have also seen it in my company in Mirkwood throughout the centuries." He shrugged now, and absentmindedly tucked hair behind his ears. "They never truly recover—we do not have the means to treat such… Addiction, as it is. We do not have the lore, I think," Legolas trailed off slightly, "and we are not so wise."
Gimli frowned and watched Legolas straighten his back and lean to the side; he closed one eye as he stretched and dropped his head forward at an angle to deepen the pull. He emitted a low hum as if to temper the pulsing pain that ran up and down his ribs like an out-of-tune harp.
Finally, he looked up and tilted his head from side to side until a tight pop released from the vertebrae at the base of his skull. "That, Gimli," he said with a nod, "that is why I will not accept those leaves tonight, though I do trust you, and your lore. This is why I will not take them, and why I try my best not to offer them to others, because I have seen what can happen, and I know myself, and I fear that I am, specifically, weak."
"Legolas," Gimli murmured, "you are not weak."
Legolas laughed quietly, but his eyes did not look truly amused, and he dropped them again. "Gimli, I was not truly scared of Sauron's great ring; I was not scared of the dark that bled into the roots of my forest, the dark that stole the lives of kith and kin. That was not true fear, at least—it was tempered by anger, and a burning, righteous one at that. But today," Legolas shrugged now slightly, "here I am, grown and survived and yet, still, scared of a leaf."
Legolas screwed up his face and finally groaned aloud a moment after he finished. Gimli scooted closer to him as Legolas pressed a hand to his lower back, the length of which had gone taut and rigid with his continued attempt to quit the pressure on his ribs without something to lean on.
"Legolas, there are some fears that we carry with us where'er we go, no matter our age or the ages of our lives," Gimli said, scooting up close to the elf. He pulled the hand off Legolas' back and wrapped his own arm about Legolas' waist instead. Pressing his other hand onto the shoulder closest to his body, he pushed down on it and forced Legolas to lean into him. "And, many times, we carry them for good reason."
Legolas grunted his agreement and relented in his stubborn strength by dropping his head onto Gimli's shoulder.
"But look, Legolas," Gimli said now, pressing a hand to Legolas' forehead and grimacing. "This—right now—this is folly. You will not rest without relief, and then you will not heal."
Legolas sighed and shrugged Gimli's hand off. "I will heal fast enough."
"You will not. I have told you already—I rely on your sturdy elvish constitution to allow us back to Minas Tirtih quickly, and, if you do not rest, I will—inadvertently—suffer."
Legolas frowned and turned his head slightly to glare up at Gimli.
"And so, too, will Arod," Gimli continued. "He is tired from the ordeal, as well. You know this."
Legolas cleared his throat and dropped his cheek back onto his friend's shoulder—"You abuse your fine logic, Master Dwarf."
Gimli laughed more fully now, and Legolas could not help but feel warmer as it vibrated his cheek and gently rocked him. "Master Elf, I only speak the truth."
Legolas hmm-ed, and Gimli continued. "I will not let you be corrupted by your fears. I will keep the herbs close, and watch you these next few days, though I do not think you so careless nor so weak to fall to them, despite your fears."
Gimli felt Legolas' body tense slightly, and he hissed as a tensed tendon pulled suddenly at one of his injured ribs. "But it is not weakness that causes such addiction," he managed, a spark returned to his voice.
Gimli nearly sighed but stopped himself—"I know, Legolas. I know it is not… You have lost good people," he acknowledged.
"Yes," Legolas repeated into Gimli's shoulder. "I have lost good people."
Finally, he felt his lungs begin to protest in earnest so lengthy a conversation—made all the more exhausting by the anxiety that dogged the topic for him—and now his lungs made their ache fully known; he pushed out a low, sustained, and thin cough in an attempt to ease its painful grip.
A few moments of silence passed after the cough had rasped out, and Gimli clumsily released Legolas' shoulder to press his head more fully onto him, so that his cheek settled now on Gimli's chest instead.
"The henbane will help with the spasms that dog your ribs, and it will ease the pain of your ribs and the ache in your chest," Gimli finally whispered into the crown of Legolas' dark head. "My mother even used it on my cousin as a lad, for his lungs would seize in the smoke from the furnaces. You will fall asleep, yes, and you may be a little confused as you do so, but it will ease you."
There was a heartbeat before Gimli felt Legolas' head move beneath him, and then he met the elf's wide, tired eyes as the he craned his neck to look up at him.
"I understand your fear, and you should not be embarrassed by it," Gimli said when Legolas had still not replied—
"—I am not embarrassed by it," Legolas muttered in protest, but Gimli ignored him and continued.
"—for you have lived long in your young life, and I know that that I cannot even begin to understand." Gimli readjusted his grip on Legolas' waist, and he relaxed more into Gimli, dropping his head slightly. "But I will be here, my friend, and you will be safe, and this will be good for you."
They sat in utter stillness for a minute or more, and then Legolas pulled one of his legs back up toward his body and, finally, nodded into the dwarf's chest.
Gimli felt the stress flow out of him, and he turned away from his friend slightly to scan the ground beside them, seeking the balled up handkerchief with the henbane, for he had set it aside when he leaned back earlier to hear Legolas' story.
"Here it is," he said a moment later, and he used one hand to flatten out the handkerchief on the ground in front of them. Legolas sat up from where he had leaned against Gimli, and he held a cupped hand out in front of him as Gimli tore off a small portion of the leaf. He pressed it into Legolas' hand.
"We start with this small amount, because the strength may differ here than it does in the plants to which I am accustomed," Gimli explained. "In a half hour or so, I will ask you how you feel, and then may suggest you have more."
Legolas nodded and put the leaf on his tongue. He swallowed it, and wrapped his arms back about himself resignedly. Gimli pushed off the ground and crossed round the fire to Arod, who was dozing on his feet with their blankets still strapped to him. As Gimli loosened the strap about Arod's middle that kept the blankets secure, he breathed a sigh of relief to find them blessedly dried.
"Leave one for Arod," Legolas called from where he sat, hunched forward again over his arms, hair disheveled about his face.
Gimli did not reply, but he unfolded one and threw it over the horse before walking back to his friend with the three remaining blankets. He folded two of them in half and then stacked them on the ground lengthwise, beside the elf. He patted the blankets and Legolas looked up. He acquiesced silently by moving toward the blankets and cooperating as Gimli eased him flat. He coughed for a moment, but otherwise did not complain. He folded his arms on his stomach and stared back up at the sky to the clouds that still raced across it, though they skirted lower and thicker and more cautiously now than before.
Gimli settled beside him and Legolas raised his injured arm above him, so it was backlit by the fire and in contrast with the now cloud-darkening sky. "Why is this?" Legolas asked after a moment, and he tilted his head toward Gimli with a wry smile. "Why is it always my arm?"
Gimli rocked back onto his hands, threw his head back and laughed. "It must be because you always fall with your arms outstretched. My friend, I wonder, are you so desperate to protect your face?"
Legolas dropped his arm back to his stomach and set his eyes again to the sky. "If I have to choose between my face and my wrists, I expect I will choose my face every time."
Gimli grunted. "I expect even you could get on fairly well, with a slightly less charming visage."
Legolas laughed quietly, and then Gimli stood again. He pulled off his own cloak and rolled it up, and he slipped it under Legolas' head to support his neck.
"Ai, elvellon," Legolas murmured as his gaze drifted for a moment, before he turned his head again to look at Gimli. "It is not my face I care about. My face is attached to my head, and the head holds the mind, and I am rather fond of that. My mind, that is. It would be more difficult to fix, I think, should it go."
Gimli did not have a response to such a fair defense, so he instead settled again beside his friend and placed a hand gently on the elf's chest. Legolas reached out and patted the dwarf's leg, a gesture he had learned his mortal friends appreciated, and he had come to use it often in reassuring them that he paid attention, that he cared, that he did bob along beside them in their swift rivers of time.
Gimli lifted the hand and ran it, now, down Legolas' still clammy temple, and he took the final blanket from his lap and draped it across the elf's chest. "Sleep," he said. "I will wake you up within the hour."
Legolas smiled, and then pulled one arm tight to his chest beneath the blanket; the other he used to grasp at the hands that tucked the blanket now about him, before he allowed himself, finally, to fully settle. Gimli blushed and muttered to himself, and—once he was sure Legolas would actually rest—he pulled his hand out of the elf's grip, and turned back to the fire. He tended its dying flames, and then considered the last of the bird, as it was clear to him now that Legolas did not intend on eating before the morning. He pulled the plate onto his lap, wiped his hands thoroughly on the rag that had covered it, and then set to it.
As he ate, he vaguely wondered that he was here now in this place between the Glittering Caves and Minas Tirith, tending the Elvenking's recently-resettled son, so absolutely indebted to an elf, and so tied to his soul. He was equal parts amused and proud, and he would not change his choices or Legolas' for all the mithril of his forebearers.
He valued this strange truthfulness and vulnerability that their differences sometimes wrought.
Gimli sucked the juice from the last legbone, and turned around again to check on his friend.
When Gimli had moved away from Legolas and toward the fire earlier, he had let his hand slip from Gimli's grasp to settle on his chest. Now, as Gimli watched, he saw the last of the tension in Legolas' face ease—his lips parted, and his arm slid limply from his chest to the ground beside him, palm turned toward the sky, no longer grasping, but open.
He slept.
Gimli sighed with relief. He tucked the kerchief of henbane into a pocket, and turned back toward the fire. He pulled the final bit of meat from the partridge's leg, and then threw the last of the bird's bones into the night.
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