The tremor reached Legolas through the Valar Attention like a distant earthquake felt through stone.
He dropped the cleansing technique he'd been practicing—a smaller version of the light-weaving that required less recovery time—and pressed his hand against the nearest tree for balance. The spiritual landscape was shifting. Something massive was dying.
Smaug.
The certainty crystallized in his awareness before rational thought could catch up. Somewhere beyond the Lonely Mountain, dragonfire had been extinguished for the last time. The great wyrm who'd terrorized the north for over a century had fallen, and his death sent ripples through every magical current in Middle-earth.
Legolas closed his eyes and let the Valar Attention show him what it could. The connection had grown stronger over the months since he'd first experienced it—not control, never control, but greater clarity in the impressions that reached him from beyond mortal sight.
Battle. Orcs and goblins swarming from the mountains. Eagles descending from heights that touched the clouds. Dwarves and Elves and Men fighting side by side against a common enemy.
The Battle of Five Armies. He'd known it was coming, but knowing and feeling were different things entirely.
And beneath it all, threaded through the chaos like poison in a wound, he sensed Sauron's retreat. The White Council had finally acted—Galadriel's power driving the Necromancer from Dol Guldur, forcing the shadow southward toward Mordor where darker fortresses waited.
It's happening, Legolas thought. All of it. The Hobbit timeline is ending.
He made his way back to the palace through forest that was healthier than it had been in centuries. His cleansing work hadn't reversed all the corruption—that would take power beyond his current reach—but scattered glades had recovered, patches of light in the endless shadow. Progress measured in decades rather than years.
The throne room buzzed with activity when he arrived. Messengers had come from the east, their news spreading through the court in waves of shock and whispered speculation. Legolas caught fragments as he moved through the crowd:
"—the dragon is dead, killed by a bowman from Lake-town—"
"—Dwarves have reclaimed Erebor, but at terrible cost—"
"—Thorin Oakenshield fell in battle. His nephews with him—"
Fíli and Kíli. The names carried weight they hadn't before. Young Dwarves who'd marched through Mirkwood in chains, who'd escaped down the river in barrels, who'd faced a dragon and an army and died before they could see their kingdom restored.
And somewhere among them, Tauriel had watched.
Legolas found his father at the center of the throne room, receiving reports with the cold composure that had become habitual between them. Their eyes met briefly—father and son, king and prince, strangers who shared blood but little else. Thranduil inclined his head in acknowledgment, nothing more.
"What ARE you?" The question from months ago echoed through Legolas's memory. They hadn't spoken privately since that confrontation. The estrangement had become routine.
He withdrew to his chambers to wait for news that mattered more than politics.
Tauriel arrived three days later.
She came through the eastern gate at dawn, her armor dented, her blades dark with stains that spoke of recent combat. Guards escorted her toward the palace, but she broke away from them when she saw Legolas waiting in the courtyard.
She looked older. Not in the Elvish way—her features were as ageless as they'd ever been—but in her eyes. Something had changed there. Something had broken and healed wrong.
"You were right to send me." Her voice was steady, controlled. The voice of a soldier delivering a report. "I saw things Mirkwood needed to know. The alliance between Dwarves and Men. The Orc army from Gundabad. The Eagles' intervention."
"And?"
The control cracked. Just for a moment, but Legolas saw it—the grief that lurked beneath the professional mask.
"I also lost—" She stopped. Swallowed. Started again. "There was a Dwarf. One of Thorin's nephews. Kíli."
She didn't continue. She didn't need to.
Legolas remembered the spider attack—how Tauriel's hand on his shoulder had pulled him back from despair, how she'd said "you couldn't have known" when he'd blamed himself for the dead guards. The comfort of someone who understood.
He reached out and took her hand.
They stood in the courtyard as the sun climbed higher, and Tauriel wept for a Dwarf she'd barely known but loved anyway. The tears came silently, without drama—the grief of someone who'd learned to mourn while remaining functional.
"He died defending his uncle," she said eventually. Her voice had steadied, but her hand remained in his. "Thorin had fallen to gold-sickness, then broken free of it. They fought together at the end. All three of them—Thorin, Fíli, Kíli. They fell within moments of each other."
Just like the stories said they would, Legolas thought. The canon holds, even when you try to change it.
He hadn't tried to save them. Hadn't warned Tauriel about Kíli's fate. Had let the timeline play out because changing too much would shatter everything that followed.
Was that the right choice?
He didn't know. Would never know. That was the price of meta-knowledge—the weight of roads not taken, of interventions not attempted, of people who might have lived if only he'd been braver or more foolish.
"I'm sorry," he said. It wasn't enough. It could never be enough.
"Don't be." Tauriel pulled her hand back, wiping her eyes with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before. "You gave me the chance to see it. To understand what was happening beyond our borders. That matters more than my pain."
She looked toward the eastern horizon, where the Lonely Mountain waited with its restored Dwarvish kingdom.
"The world is changing, Legolas. I felt it during the battle—something shifting in the spiritual landscape. The shadow that haunted Dol Guldur has fled south. The dragon is dead. The Dwarves have their home again." A pause. "But it doesn't feel like victory."
"Because it isn't over." Legolas spoke the words before he could stop himself. "The shadow fled—it wasn't destroyed. The war we just witnessed was a prelude. The real conflict is still coming."
Tauriel turned to face him, something sharp in her expression. "You speak like someone who knows what's ahead."
Careful. He'd said too much already.
"I speak like someone who studies the enemy." Legolas gestured toward the corrupted zones that still marked portions of their forest. "The darkness that infected Mirkwood came from Dol Guldur. Now that darkness has moved to Mordor. Whatever happened at Erebor—it won't end there."
She considered this, then nodded slowly. "Then we prepare."
"We prepare."
The sun continued its climb, warming the courtyard where prince and captain stood together. Behind them, the palace buzzed with news of victories and deaths. Ahead, sixty years of preparation waited.
But for now, Legolas allowed himself a moment of stillness. A moment to grieve alongside someone who understood.
The dragon was dead. The shadow had retreated. And somewhere in the Shire, a hobbit named Bilbo had returned home with a ring in his pocket.
The countdown had begun.
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