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“Never thought I’d die for a diversion,” Gimli muttered, watching as Sauron’s army poured out of the Black Gates like a river of darkness and swarmed forward, surrounding the two small hills on which Aragorn had arrayed the forces of the West.
Gimli could not count the teeming numbers of the enemy that stood before him—they were too many, too foul—but Legolas had the keen eyes of the elves, and he had told Gimli that their force of six thousand was outnumbered at least ten-to-one. They were not all orcs, either, which would have been bad enough; for surely each troll should be counted six or seven times at least.
The hills would help, Gimli thought numbly, at least a little: the incline would grant the defenders an advantage over the enemy who would have to scramble to climb up at them, and the slag pools of fetid Mordor that surrounded the low hillocks would be another impediment—but it would not be enough.
Nothing could ever be enough.
But they had known that even before they had set out for the Black Gates, and they had all of them come anyway. Gimli did not regret his choice to follow his friends into doom, no; but that did not make facing the moment of the end any less bitter. And that moment was almost here, now; they were running out of time.
The enemy paused at the feet of the hills, hissing and cursing and some of them even spitting, and Gimli spun his axe to stretch his shoulders in anticipation of the battle to come. That he would die this day was a forgone conclusion; but he was a Dwarf of Erebor. He would sell his life dearly, and go to his grave surrounded by the broken bodies of his enemies.
Gimli stood near the front of their force, of course, with Aragorn and Legolas and most of the mightiest of their fighters, where the attack would surely be the thickest. He eyed one lumbering troll that was pushing its way through the milling ranks of orcs, an ugly line of drool hanging off one side of its jaw where broken teeth distorted its already ugly grin into something macabre and ghoulish.
“Gimli,” Legolas said, standing so close beside him that his hair would have brushed Gimli's shoulders if there had only been enough wind in this dead land to stir it. His fair elvish voice was light with echoes of distant birdsong, and Gimli could feel himself smiling in instinctive response to the sound even as his heart twisted in sorrow at the thought of what was soon to come for them both. “Gimli,” Legolas said, “may I—I would ask a very great favor of you, my friend, if you would indulge me, please.”
“Of course,” Gimli said immediately. He turned to look up at the Wood-elf beside him, so far from the green woods now, standing like a slender ray of sunlight in that bleak land; and he tried to hide his breaking heart behind his smile. He could not imagine what sort of favor Legolas might ask at this late juncture—or if he could, then it was a favor that need not be spoken aloud, for Gimli had already vowed to himself that he would not allow the Enemy to take this elf alive for torment when the battle ended.
“Anything, Legolas, you know that.”
Legolas gave a strange, half-choked laugh, and pressed his free hand to his face as though to smother some strong feeling; with his other, of course, he held the mighty bow of the Galadhrim that the Lady had given him, and Gimli’s heart gave another pang at the thought of three golden strands tucked away safely behind white walls far away, waiting for a dwarf who would never return to reclaim them—but then Legolas moved, and Gimli’s eyes were drawn instead to tight golden braids that swung before him like dappled sunlit leaves moving in a spring breeze as the slender Wood-elf suddenly swayed, more like a falling sapling than a creature of flesh and bone, and bent himself down close to Gimli’s face.
He caught Gimli’s bearded cheek with his free hand and turned the dwarf’s face up to meet him, and then—oh, and then Legolas was kissing him and Gimli’s mind seemed to dissolve in a blaze of starlight. His whole world narrowed down to those soft smooth lips pressed so tight and hungry to his own; those long fingers twined so gently through his beard to cup his chin in one narrow palm; the brush of heavy golden braids falling down Gimli's broad back as Legolas bent low over him...
Belatedly, Gimli realized that he had reached up to press his hand to Legolas's smooth face as well; he only noticed when the pad of his thumb brushed against the tip of one long pointed ear and Legolas’s breath hitched in both their mouths.
They drew apart, Legolas swaying back upright with a last lingering flutter of his fingers against Gimli’s beard before he pulled away. Gimli’s jaw worked soundlessly around words that would not come, his wide eyes fixed so fervently on the beautiful, beardless face before him that he almost forgot the stink of the orcs and the jeers of their ugly voices in his ears.
“Forgive me the liberty, I pray,” Legolas rasped. His mithril-bright eyes shimmered with unshed tears, in that moment looking suddenly so like the pool of the Mirrormere that Gimli almost felt as though he had been transported somehow back to the hills outside Khazad-dûm, and this desperate death at the doors of Mordor made into naught but a terrible dream.
But the creeping tendrils of fear that marked the approach of the Nazgûl was no dream; nor were the thundering steps of the trolls as they began to scale the hills, nor the shouts of the orcs as they struggled to follow. In moments, the enemy would be upon them. There was so much Gimli wanted, needed, to say; but they were running out of time.
“There is—there is nothing to forgive, Legolas,” he managed to croak.
“I am relieved to hear it,” Legolas replied. “For I could not bear to die without ever kissing you, Gimli.”
Gimli reached up for those golden braids and bright eyes again. “Legolas—!”
Legolas flashed him a brief, bright, heartbroken smile, and then turned away to face the enemy as the orcs rushed towards them. Gimli raised his axe more out of habit than intent and stepped up beside the elf. “Legolas...” he tried again, but his head was reeling and he could not find the words he wished to craft: they all slipped through his mental fingers, like he was trying to scoop gallons of cave-cold water with naught but his bare hands.
Then the first troll reached them, bellowing as it knocked three soldiers of Gondor off their feet to tumble down the hill towards the waiting blades and gnashing teeth of the orcs below. Gimli growled and gripped his axe, and then suddenly Legolas was scaling the troll, blasted fool of an elf that he was!
“Legolas!” Gimli shouted again, and raced to follow his friend into the fight.
The troll was too slow to catch the nimble Wood-elf, but its attempts to do so blunted its attention to the axe in Gimli’s hand as he hacked desperately at its knees. The creature roared in belated anger, even as thick blood wept already down its legs. It reached down to try and swat Gimli away, and Legolas scampered across its shoulders and drove his long knife in deep into the troll’s bulbous eye. Even that was not enough to kill the beast, but when two Rohirrim came up with long spears the troll was too woozy with pain and blood-loss and its sudden half-blindness to bat the weapons away from its throat.
It went down with a thud and a cry of rage rose from the orcs in response. Legolas skipped away from the body and landed on the ground again at Gimli’s side. Shaking with fear, anger, and adrenaline, Gimli caught him by the wrist and gave the slender, reckless elf a shake. “Don’t do that again!” he shouted. “You are going to get yourself killed!”
Legolas laughed, fey and unfettered, his merriment as sharp and keen as the points of his arrows. He slashed his knife through the throat of a climbing orc and twisted easily away from the resulting spray of black blood. “Gimli, we are all going to die here,” he said, wiping the blade clean on the skirt of his tunic before sheathing it and drawing his bow once more. “Put aside your fears, my beloved: we have moved beyond that now. All that is left to us is to make our deaths worthy of those that came before us, and to sell our lives dearly enough that we might hope to buy enough time for others to save all those who may come after from this Shadow.”
His arrows flew true, burying themselves in throats and eyes and black-blooded hearts even as he looked back at the dwarf more often than he did at the oncoming orcs. In Legolas’s eyes, Gimli could see the glimmer of all the years together they would never have: could see the crumbling eternity of an immortal life cut short and the unscalable chasm that lay forever between the fates of elves and dwarves, and which would soon sunder them from one another for all time, even unto the breaking of the world.
This, he realized, was all the time they were ever going to have.
Tears stung his eyes, hot and bitter. It was not enough. They could have had eight thousand years and it would still never, ever be enough—and it did not matter, because there was no more to be had.
Gimli shook his head, swallowing down the urge to weep. He had to focus on the orcs. There were too many coming up the sides of the hill now, too fierce; it was all Gimli could do to swing his axe in time to block their blows and cut them down. It was all he could do to keep close to Legolas’s side, the elf now reduced to fighting with nothing but his long white knife. There were maybe half a handful of arrows in his quiver yet, but even elvish speed was insufficient to allow for proper archery at such a tight distance in this bloody tumult.
Oh, why had Gimli not seen to it that his elf was better armed before they rode off to this final battle? Legolas was deadly with that little knife, yes; but oh, it seemed so short in his long fingers now. Why had Gimli not sought the armories of Gondor, and borrowed some mightier blade for his friend? Why had he not sought the forges, and made him one to suit his lanky frame?
He was such a fool. What had he been wasting his time on instead, when he could have—should have—been seeing to Legolas’s safety?
When he could have been kissing him?
Gimli growled, and swung his axe harder, and watched one burly uruk go down gurgling and clutching at its guts. Gimli swung again, and its head toppled free and he could turn to the next enemy, the next threat. Beside him, Legolas whirled and slashed in a flurry of golden braids and a black-blooded blade. He lunged over Gimli’s head to slit the throat of an orc that was angling a spear towards Gimli’s ribs even as Gimli kicked-out low and took the feet out from under another that had managed to get a grimy hand around one of those bright braids.
“Away from him!” Gimli bellowed, and the orc fell back squealing over the stump of its arm. Gimli stepped closer to the elf—his elf—and then they were fighting back-to-back, or back-to-shoulders at least; their disparate heights should have made them terrible battle-partners, but it was so easy to fall into a rhythm with Legolas, a perfect balancing of their skills and statures. Legolas spun high with his short knife and Gimli swung low with his broad axe, and the enemy gave way before them.
But more came, replacing those that fell. Always more came, and the fight went on. Gimli could feel his limbs tiring, his bones aching both from the weight of his blade and from the blows that had glanced off his sturdy mail. A dozen small cuts he could not remember taking bled sluggishly, adding a dull sheen of red to the viscous black liquid that splattered his armor and his skin.
More came, and the Nazgûl followed, and all around them men shrieked and cowered beneath that mindless fear. Gimli fought on, so numb with grief for all that would never be that he barely startled at the cry that the eagles had come. That felt unreal, like something out of some other story; one that had a better ending than theirs. Despair rolled thick across the Host of the West and even Gimli, stout-hearted dwarf that he was, faltered for a moment before it—
And then Legolas laughed.
There was nothing merry in that sound, and the only brightness was the sharp brightness of a pale blade flashing out of the shadows of tall black trees. It was a laugh full of teeth, and claws, and all the dark and dangerous things that lurk within a wood. It was the sort of laugh that would send wise folk fleeing for strong walls and sturdy doors; the sort of laugh that sent children shivering to hide under their beds and wait breathlessly for dawn. It was the laugh of a wild thing, untamed and dangerous, and it rang out light and sharp-edged above the guttural shouts and screams of the orcs and the roaring bellows of the trolls and the ragged dying cries of the men.
Legolas laughed, and Gimli smiled to hear it. He lifted his head high against the weight of Mordor’s bleak despair and raised his axe once more. Legolas was right: there was no longer any cause for fear. They had faced the end already, and the end was here; there was no sense cowering before it. Better to stand tall, and die fighting proud and unbowed and side-by-side, defying the power of the Dark Lord to the last.
And then—and then, on the other side of fear, after all hope seemed so long lost that it was little more than a memory, everything changed.
The Nazgûl fled; the army crumbled; the towers fell.
Sauron was destroyed. And they had lived.
They lived.
Gimli could hardly process it. He turned to Legolas, still at his side, the both of them weary and bloodstained and heartsick from the tangled mingling of hope and despair; and he opened his mouth to speak—but no words came out.
He saw all their tomorrows flow suddenly back into Legolas’s bright eyes and the elf swayed, as though the abrupt lifting of the Shadow had left him for once unsteady on his light feet. Gimli caught his hand and held him, firm and unbending as stone.
“Legolas—” Gimli began.
“Tomorrow,” Legolas interrupted him with a smile. “Let us help the wounded now, Gimli; we will talk on all other things tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Gimli said, rolling the taste of the word around in his mouth; rolling the feel of it around in his mind. “Yes,” he said. “Tomorrow. To think that there will be such a thing!” He laughed from bewildered joy and squeezed his elf’s hand once, tightly, before letting go and turning back to the grim battlefield. “Tomorrow. We will talk on all things then.”
Legolas bent and pressed a light kiss to Gimli’s cheek. “Tomorrow,” he said again, the word heavy with promise; and then they walked off together into the carnage of hopes renewed and deaths well-fought.
“Tomorrow,” Gimli murmured once more to himself, and there on the bloodstained soil of the Black Land, he smiled.