A/N: Ok so I was kind of hoping to have the next main chapter of CM out before this side chapter. But honestly I had so many people in the reviews/comments saying how badly they wanted to see Legolas and Co.s reaction to Aragorn and Ellie's cliffhanger, I kind of had to write this.

So with that in mind, please enjoy this gratuitous angst-fest of a side chapter, in which Gimli, Boromir, and our favourite elven princeling learn exactly what happened to their two companions during the Warg Attack...

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Gimli had never encountered a fight he didn't relish.

Whether he enjoyed the battle or not, something in him had never strayed from the belief that each battle had a purpose. A meaning. A whetstone upon which his skills and temper were ever being sharpened.

Only two fights had ever come close to causing him true regret.

The first was the Fellowship's battle in Balin's tomb. The second, the warg riders' attack on the Rohan refugees.

Though it wasn't until the fighting was over that he would know it.

The dwarf slammed his primary battle axe down on the neck of a dying warg, putting the groaning beast out of its misery. The weak sound of its final whimper made him wince beneath his helm. Though he'd never admit it, he had always had something of a secret soft spot for untamed animals and creatures of the wilds — something his father had found both frustrating and amusing in his youth. But these things...

Whatever they had been before, their orc masters had long since twisted them beyond any hope of repair.

"Poor wretches," he muttered, yanking the axe out of the beast's corpse with little effort. It was still near pitch dark on the battlefield, the only light sources coming as the surviving soldiers relit their torches and they picked their way through the carnage. They had lost many, but not as many as he'd feared. Enough to get them safely to Helm's Deep at least. And although he couldn't immediately see them, he was at least certain without a doubt that one of their number had survived.

And likely without a single blond hair out of place either.

"Legolas!" Gimli boomed into the gloom. "Nineteen!"

Barely two seconds later came the elf's reply. "Twenty-two!"

"Bah!" he grumbled, following the echo of his companion's voice through the dark until he found him, Boromir, and Theoden's lieutenant Gamling all dispatching a few remaining semi-dead orcs. "A few lucky shots early in with that bow, princeling. That's all that saved you."

"If telling yourself that comforts you, my friend," Legolas answered with a small smile, rising from cleaning one of his blades on the grass.

Gimli was no connoisseur of emotions, but even he could tell the smile the elf offered was wooden and forced. Not even the good fight they'd just won, or their impromptu friendly contest of kill tallies had managed to draw the lingering hurt and conflict from his expression.

'Still sulking over the lass,' he thought grimly. Honestly, given what was going on around them, he was having trouble understanding why the pair couldn't just speak their minds freely to each other. By now any Dwarven couple would have done so, likely kicked the stuffing out of one another for a bit, and then promptly made up again.

'Mahal-damned Elves, I swear. More years in them than sense.'

Gimli was half tempted to launch straight into a similar lecture he'd given the girl in question earlier, but was saved from that bad decision by King Theoden striding into their clearing. The left side of his face was smattered in black orc blood, and there was a nasty looking tear in his left sleeve from a stray warg fang, though he hardly seemed to notice.

"How many dead?" he demanded of them.

"Two dozen at least by my count," Boromir answered. "Though there are likely more unaccounted for."

Gamling nodded in agreement, grimly adding, "We also lost Háma."

Theoden's steadfast expression cracked a little at the revelation of his dead captain, but he quickly closed his eyes, and nodded once in acceptance.

"I see. A blessing then, that their sacrifice meant we did not lose more."

Gamling murmured a halfhearted agreement, but neither Gimli or his fellows joined, Boromir and Legolas both openly frowning. They all knew damned well their numbers were stretched thin enough. Even holed up behind the thick walls of Helm's Deep, they would be hard pressed to defend the people inside with barely a handful of men who could lift weapons, let alone knew how to use them.

Theoden glanced around at them all, his own frown suddenly deepening.

"Where's the ranger?"

Gimli blinked. He had been so caught up in the aftermath of the battle and his fool of an elf companion's wallowing that he'd barely noticed Aragorn's absence.

Legolas was instantly scanning around wildly in the dark with his hypersensitive eyes, searching for any clue to the ranger's whereabouts. Boromir too wasted no time in marching straight to where they'd seen him last — near the edge of a rocky cliff where Gimli remembered him shouting at someone he hadn't quite been able to see.

"Aragorn!" Legolas shouted into the dark, a worried note the dwarf had seldom heard creeping into his voice.

When there was no answer, Boromir and Gimli both joined.

"Aragorn?!"

This time, there was a reply.

Wet, cackling laughter from the dark only a few feet away.

"Deaaad," the strained voice sang gleefully. All three of them automatically raised their respective weapons in response to the voice, but quickly relaxed again when it became clear where (or rather what) the sound had come from.

An orc rider lay prone on its back in the mangled grass, weaponless, half beaten into the ground, its empty claws clutched to its midsection. A short bladed knife had been sunk to the hilt into its chest, just below its diaphragm. A good, strong blow, whomever had made it. A killing blow. And judging by the amount of blackened blood leaking between its fingers, the laughing monster wasn't going to remain long in this world.

Just long enough.

Enslaved, twisted beasts with no autonomy of their own was one thing for Gimli to pity. Orcs were a different story. Anything that could actively choose this kind of malice and cruelty was different. Flanked by the Man and Elf both, Gimli brought his axe blade to the side of the orc's neck, pressing just enough for the creature to feel its bite.

"Tell me what happened and I will speed your passing."

The monster's already twisted face contorted into a wicked smile up at them, made all the more hideous by the sadistic joy in it.

"He's d-dead," it chortled, blood bubbling behind its teeth. "Theeey both a-are."

Something deep in Gimli's gut began to writhe in trepidation. An instinct he had long since learned to ignore at his peril. Turning to Legolas and Boromir he saw the same instinct growing in their expressions too.

"Both?" Boromir demanded past his own glare.

The orc coughed hard, black blood spattering down the front of its ruined armour. It was still grinning.

"The manling scum, and the little she-elf. They took a l-little tumble over the cliff."

The twisting feeling in Gimli's gut grew icy teeth. For a split second he and Boromir both could do nothing but look wide-eyed at each other. But Legolas, who had been standing rigid and frozen with anger, blurred forward and seized the cackling creature by its collar. The elf all but wrenched the orc halfway off the ground until they were almost face to face.

"You lie." His voice was perfectly, dangerously calm on the surface, but Gimli could see his knuckles bloodlessly white on the creature's jerkin, suppressed wrath roiling off him like smoke.

"See my eyes! Feel my pulse beat, Firstborn," the orc spat up at him. "You know I speak true!"

Legolas didn't immediately react as Gimli and Boromir watched him, baffled by the orc's choice of words. Then Gimli noticed the back of the elf's finger pressed into the orc's neck, right against its pulse-point, his pale eyes fixed with unsettling intensity dead on the creature's blackened ones.

Then slowly confusion and denial began to creep into the lines of Legolas' face. His gaze drifted down, as if lost, as his grip began to slacken, and with a jolt that Gimli swore he felt as well, the elf's eyes suddenly locked onto the blade lodged just under the chuckling monster's heart.

He looked as if someone had just buried a blade to the hilt in his own chest.

"Elbereth Gilthoniel...*" he choked suddenly, almost too quiet to hear.

For a moment Gimli couldn't understand what had pulled the unsettling reaction from his pointy-eared companion. But then he had the presence of mind to look closely at the knife lodged so deeply in the orc's chest, squinting through the dim light cast by the torchlight.

Finally he saw it.

The familiar handle, with its eight little words carved clumsily into the wood.

Words now stained with both black and red blood.

Oh, Mahal...

"No," Boromir insisted, shaking his head in stunned disbelief. "No, that's impossible! I left her with the other women! I saw her! How could she have...?"

He trailed off into the silence that followed, but Gimli wasn't listening by then. He was too busy looking to the hunched form of the elf beside him. He'd gone as still and silent as the void between the stars, the icy fury dimming within his eyes to frozen denial as Gimli looked at him.

Because it was the lass' knife buried in that monster's gut.

Which, Gimli realised with mounting despair, meant that the figure he'd seen Aragorn shouting at before Gilmi had lost sight of them — it had to have been—

"Ooooh. Was she yours?" the orc's face had lit with sudden glee, baring black, bloody teeth up at the frighteningly silent elf. When Legolas said nothing, barely even seeming to draw breath, the orc howled with mocking laughter. "She waaas, wasn't she!"

Legolas let the orc fall back to the grass, rising slowly to his feet, before soundlessly turning and moving away towards the cliff. The same cliff that the orc had said Aragorn and the lass had...

Boromir cursed, growling something about it being untrue, that they could trust no a word from such a creature, before also turning to begin to search the darkened battlefield for any sign of their lost companions. Perhaps it was a foolish, but Gimli silently prayed neither wouldn't find the bodies. At least then there was still hope.

Even if it was only a fool's hope.

Yet even as he thought the words, his memory reminded him of what he'd heard the lass say back in Edoras. They'd all heard the story she'd told them. Heard the heartbreak in her voice when she'd spoken of her home. They each knew there was only way she would have parted from that blade now.

If she'd been unable to fight back.

And if Aragorn had been unable to save her.

"Your she-elf's gone down to the daaark," the orc began to laugh in a gurgling sing-song voice, manic gaze still fixed on the retreating elf's back. "Your sweet lady's gone to the deep. Poor little thing, neck so slender and thin. Your she-elf's gone down to th—"

Crack.

Without any warning, Gimli struck the creature square across the face with the pommel of his axe.

Truly, he hadn't meant the blow to be quite so hard, but the sudden burst of searing rage had caught him off guard. The strike snapped the orc's head sideways so fast that its neck broke with a wet snap, its mocking song abruptly cut off.

Not fast enough.

When Gimli looked up again, past the red fury creeping into his vision, he found his friend at the cliff's edge, looking straight down into the distant, murky waters — and for a truly terrible second, Gimli thought he was preparing to jump down after them. Still he made no sound, barely even seeming to move in the strengthening wind. But the line of his shoulders was as taught as the string of his bow, as if he were preparing for a blow that might well kill him should it land.

Gimli's fury broke over the sight, mixing with the building grief and denial to form a lingering pain in his own chest. A pain he knew only too well would never truly leave. Him or his remaining friend.

The word surprised him as easily as it had come.

Since when had he begun to think of the elf as a friend?

Since right now, he supposed, considering it. Only a true friend could have garnered that kind of outrage from any dwarf, let alone the desire to do whatever he could to try and ease his companion's pain.

And by Mahal, he was in pain.

Even Gimli could see it past the blank facade he wore now — all trace of the conflict or anger from before gone entirely.

Crouching over the body of the dead orc, he carefully yanked the lass' knife free, being cautious not to damage it as he cleaned it on the grass. Then as quietly as his sturdy frame would allow, he moved to join the elf at the cliff face. Neither of them spoke for several long minutes as they stared down into the dark river far below. The fall was a sheer one, straight down to the cold water. Between rocks that jutted from the black surface, white rapids gnashed and churned in an unending roar that echoed viciously up at them.

"They might yet live," Gimli heard himself saying aloud, and had to fight not to wince at the doubtful note in his own voice. "Aragorn isn't one to fall so easily, and the lass..."

He couldn't make himself finish at the look on Legolas' face. The elf's already white-knuckled fists had abruptly tightened until he swore he could hear the bones creak beneath the strain.

Theoden and the few men who'd survived the battle found them moments later — shaken and pale-faced in the wake of so many losses.

"Get the wounded on horses. Any able survivors will have to walk," the king ordered the smattering of men around them. With a pained but pointed look at Legolas, he added, "Leave the dead."

Legolas didn't move or even to turn an acknowledge the king's words, but Gimli had enough presence of mind to narrow his eyes at him. He knew he couldn't well argue, insist that it was not their dead he was ordering them to leave behind. But that didn't mean he had to show his consent, or leave his suffering companion's side. Theoden might not have been a Dwarf, but he had the understanding of one in that moment. The king stared down at Gimli for a long moment before his gaze softened, and he gave a simple nod of acceptance.

"We must make haste to catch up with the women and children. They will not be safe on their own for long," he said quietly, clapping a consoling hand once on the dwarf's broad shoulder. "Follow when you are ready."

And with that, he turned to the remaining men behind him, guiding them back towards their original path.

Grateful as he was for the king's courtesy, the dwarf warrior found himself without words when he turned back to the elf at his side. He'd never really been good with words, let alone ones of comfort. That had always been Ori's forte more than his.

The fresh loss of Aragorn and Eleanor both, compounded with the memory of the older dwarf who had once been such a close friend cut into him like knives. A friend whose long dead body still remained trapped beneath the Misty Mountains, deep in the depths of Balin's tomb, clutching the tomes he'd loved so much in life even in death. No, he'd never been a master of words as Ori had once been, and never would be. So he did the only thing he could think to — what he silently wished someone had done for him, back when that particular wound had been so fresh and crippling.

He placed a hand on Legolas' shoulder.

And to his surprise, he didn't flinch away.

"Are you well, lad?"

For what felt like the longest time imaginable, Legolas said nothing at all. Not moving, not speaking, and barely seeming to even breathe. Then finally, he drew a single deep breath, his jaw tight against the pain he was refusing even now to show.

"No..." he murmured in answer, barely above a whisper as he finally turned away from the cliff. "But my thanks for asking, Gimli."

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Translations:

* "Elbereth who lit the stars..." — The closest equivalent to a swear by a god (Sindarin)

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A/N: I genuinely can't decide if that was too heavy on the melodrama or not, but in the end this is the scene that has been sitting in the back of my mind for months now — so I had to get it off my chest. XD I guess y'all will let me know what you thought in the reviews.

Either way I do hope you enjoyed this little peek into the happenings outside Ellie's POV, and thanks again for being so patient with me on these slow updates. They might be slow, but they are still coming, and your continued support means the world to me. See you all in the next chapter of CM!

Much love,

Rella xx