The words struck like physical blows.
Legolas stood frozen at the garden's edge, his carefully constructed defenses crumbling under the weight of Galadriel's perception. She knew. She'd always known. The message from Rivendell, the "Unsung One" naming, the attention that had followed him since he entered Lothlórien—all of it had been leading to this moment.
"You carry knowledge that should not be known," Galadriel continued, her voice still gentle, still patient. "You wield abilities that break the laws of races. You walk through this world as if you've memorized its paths, because you have—in a manner no one here could understand."
Legolas's throat tightened. "My Lady, I—"
"Do not dissemble." The gentleness hardened, just for a moment. "I did not summon you here for lies. I summoned you because I must understand what you are, and more importantly, what you intend."
The garden seemed to press closer around them, the silver light intensifying until every detail was rendered in painful clarity. The Mirror waited beside Galadriel, its dark water perfectly still, reflecting nothing—as if reality itself held its breath.
"How much do you know?" Legolas asked, his voice steadier than he felt.
"Enough to have questions. Not enough to have answers." Galadriel moved toward him, her steps soundless on the grass. "I perceived your strangeness from leagues away, before you ever entered my realm. A soul that exists outside the Music, that was never sung into being by Ilúvatar's design. You are... impossible."
Unsung. The name she'd given him. Not an insult, Legolas realized now, but a literal description. The Valar had noticed him for the same reason—he existed where nothing should exist, a note in a symphony that had never been written.
"I didn't choose to be here," he said quietly. "I was... placed. Transplanted. Whatever word you want to use. One moment I was dying in a world very different from this one. The next, I was waking in a body that wasn't mine, carrying memories that belonged to someone else."
Galadriel's expression didn't change, but something shifted in her eyes—recognition, perhaps, or the satisfaction of a theory confirmed.
"And the knowledge you carry? The things you know that should be hidden?"
"I know the story." The words felt dangerous, but what was the point of concealment now? "In my original world, this—" Legolas gestured at the garden, the trees, the realm beyond "—was a tale. A story told for entertainment, studied for wisdom. I know how it ends. I know who falls, who rises, who lives, who dies."
"You know Gandalf will return."
The statement punched through his remaining defenses. Legolas felt his composure crack, the guilt he'd been carrying since Moria surging up like bile.
"Yes." The word came out broken. "I knew he would fall. I knew he would fight the Balrog and die and come back transformed. And I let it happen because the story—because the timeline—"
"Because his transformation requires his sacrifice." Galadriel's voice carried no judgment, only understanding. "You have learned the terrible arithmetic of fate. The mathematics that says some must fall so others might rise."
"It feels like murder." Legolas's hands were shaking now, sixty years of buried guilt finally finding release. "I watched him walk toward death. I watched his eyes find mine in the last moment. And I did nothing."
"Because you couldn't save him without destroying everything that follows." Galadriel nodded slowly. "I understand that burden better than you might imagine. I have carried similar knowledge for ages—have watched events unfold that I might have changed, but didn't, because the cost of changing them would have been greater than the cost of letting them proceed."
She moved to stand beside the Mirror, her reflection absent from its dark surface.
"What I do not know," she continued, "is what your presence means for the balance. You are an anomaly, Legolas Greenleaf—if that name still has meaning for you. Anomalies can be salvation, or they can be catastrophe. Sometimes they are both."
"What would you have me do?" Legolas asked. "Remove myself from the story? Disappear into some corner of the world and let events unfold without my interference?"
"Would you, if I asked?"
The question hung in the silver light, carrying weight that went beyond words. Legolas considered it seriously—imagined walking away from the Fellowship, from Frodo and Sam and Gimli, from the quest that would determine the fate of Middle-earth.
"No." The answer came without hesitation. "I've been preparing for this for sixty years. Training, learning, building myself into something that might make a difference. I won't walk away now."
"Even knowing the cost? Even knowing that your presence changes things in ways you cannot predict?"
"The story I knew is already diverging." Legolas thought of Gimli, of the friendship forming faster than canon had suggested. Of Gandalf's final look, which had carried something that might have been recognition. Of small changes accumulating into patterns he couldn't fully track. "My being here has created butterflies—ripples spreading outward from every action I take."
"And you continue anyway."
"Because the alternative is worse." Legolas met Galadriel's eyes directly, letting her see the conviction beneath his fear. "Sauron is rising. The Ring must be destroyed. Whatever else happens, whatever changes I've caused or will cause, that fundamental truth remains. I can't walk away from that."
Galadriel studied him for a long moment, her perception probing at edges that Legolas no longer bothered to defend. He felt naked before her—every secret exposed, every fear laid bare. But he didn't look away.
"You carry knowledge of Ring-craft," she said finally. "I felt it when you entered the realm. The understanding of how the Rings of Power function, of what they do to those who bear them."
"The Inheritance Space showed me Celebrimbor's work." Legolas saw no point in denying it. "Pre-corruption notes. The theory behind the Rings' creation."
"And the One Ring? Does it speak to you differently because of what you know?"
The question cut deeper than Legolas had expected. He remembered the night before the Council—the Ring's whispers, its offers, its attempt to recruit him as an expert rather than simply corrupt him as a victim.
"It speaks to me as a peer," he admitted. "It knows I understand what it is. It offers... partnership. Modification. The chance to reshape it rather than simply serve it."
Galadriel's expression flickered—the first crack in her composure since the conversation began. "That is... dangerous. More dangerous than you perhaps realize."
"I know. I've been fighting it since Rivendell."
"And you continue to carry that burden alone? Without telling anyone what you face?"
"Who could I tell?" Legolas felt the question's weight pressing down on him. "Gandalf suspected me, but Gandalf is gone. Aragorn sees that I carry secrets, but he has his own burdens to bear. The hobbits are already struggling under the Ring's influence. Who could help me with this?"
Galadriel was quiet for a long moment. The garden seemed to breathe around them, its silver light pulsing with something that might have been the heartbeat of the world itself.
"Perhaps," she said finally, "that is why you were sent here. Not to carry this burden alone, but to find those who could share it."
"Sent here?" Legolas frowned. "You make it sound deliberate."
"Do you believe in accidents, Unsung One? Do you believe that a soul from beyond the circles of this world appeared in Legolas Greenleaf's body by chance? That you happened to arrive with knowledge of a story that would help you serve the very quest that will determine Middle-earth's fate?"
The questions landed like stones dropped into still water, their implications rippling outward. Legolas had wondered, sometimes, about the mechanics of his arrival. Had questioned whether random chance could explain the precision of his placement—in Mirkwood, as the Prince, with access to the Inheritance Space and its accumulated knowledge.
"I don't know," he admitted. "I've never known how or why I'm here. Only that I am."
"Then perhaps it is time to find out." Galadriel turned to the Mirror, her hand hovering over its dark surface. "The Mirror shows many things. What was. What is. What may yet be, if will does not turn it aside."
Legolas approached the basin slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. The water remained perfectly still, reflecting nothing—not the stars above, not the trees around them, not his own face as he leaned over its edge.
"What will it show me?"
"That depends on what you most need to see. The Mirror has its own wisdom, its own purposes. It shows what it chooses, not always what is wished." Galadriel's voice had grown distant, as if she was speaking from somewhere very far away. "But I suspect it has been waiting for you, as I have been. Waiting to reveal truths that no other force could show."
Legolas stared into the darkness. The water seemed to pull at him, to draw his gaze deeper into depths that shouldn't exist in a basin barely a foot deep. His reflection was absent—or perhaps his reflection was the darkness itself, the void from which he'd emerged when his previous life ended.
"What if I don't like what I see?"
"Then you will have learned something important nonetheless." Galadriel stepped back, giving him space. "Look into the Mirror, Unsung One. See what it has to show you. And then we will speak of what comes next."
Legolas leaned forward.
The water stirred—not from wind, not from touch, but from something deeper. Ripples spread from the center outward, catching light that had no source, reflecting images that shouldn't exist.
He saw himself. Not the Elvish form he wore now, but something older—a different face, a different life, a death that had come too soon. The memories were distant, faded by sixty years in this body, but the Mirror brought them into painful clarity. A hospital room. Machines beeping. The knowledge that this was the end.
And then—
Light. Overwhelming, terrible, beautiful light. The sense of being unmade and remade, of having his essence pulled apart and reassembled around a template that wasn't his own. A voice—or something like a voice—speaking words he couldn't quite remember but that had shaped everything that followed.
You are needed, the voice had said. The story requires intervention. Will you serve?
The memory shattered like glass, and the Mirror showed something else.
A tower of fire and shadow. An eye that saw all things, that searched all lands, that sought the Ring with hunger that had endured since the world was young. Sauron. But the vision wasn't showing him Sauron as he was—it was showing him Sauron as he would be, if the Ring was not destroyed. Middle-earth in flames. The free peoples broken and enslaved. A darkness so complete that even the memory of light would be forgotten.
And then—
Hope.
A small figure climbing a mountain of fire. A gardener carrying his friend toward the only ending that could save the world. The Ring falling into fire, Sauron's eye collapsing inward, the shadow breaking like a fever finally releasing.
But beside that image, another. The same mountain, the same fire—but a different outcome. The small figure claiming the Ring instead of destroying it. The shadow triumphant. All the sacrifice, all the suffering, all the death—rendered meaningless by a single moment of failure.
The ending isn't certain, Legolas understood. The story I know is one possibility among many. My presence here changes things—could change the ending itself.
The Mirror rippled again, and Legolas saw himself. Not in the past, not in some possible future, but now—standing at this basin, looking into depths that looked back at him. And in his eyes, something burned. A light that didn't belong to any Elf, any Man, any being that had ever walked Middle-earth.
The Valar's attention, he realized. They're watching. They've been watching since I arrived.
The vision faded. The water went still. And Legolas found himself gasping, his hands gripping the basin's edge, his body trembling with the weight of everything he'd seen.
"The Mirror shows what it chooses." Galadriel's voice came from somewhere behind him, gentle once more. "What did you see?"
Legolas straightened slowly, his mind still reeling from the visions. "I saw... how I came to be here. A choice I made, or a choice that was made for me. And I saw what happens if we fail—if Frodo fails at the end."
"The Ring's destruction is not certain?"
"Nothing is certain." Legolas turned to face the Lady of Light. "Not even in the story I knew. Frodo claims the Ring at the final moment—only Gollum's intervention destroys it. If that intervention doesn't happen, if something changes the sequence—"
"Then all of this is for nothing."
"Yes." The weight of the confirmation pressed down on him. "Everything we do, everything we sacrifice—it all depends on a moment I can't control, a choice I can't make for someone else."
Galadriel moved to stand beside him, her presence a comfort he hadn't expected. "Then we share a burden, you and I. The knowledge of outcomes we cannot guarantee. The weight of futures we can see but not determine."
"How do you bear it?" The question emerged raw, desperate. "How do you keep going, knowing that everything might fail?"
"Because the alternative is despair." Galadriel's hand touched his arm—the first physical contact she'd offered. "And despair serves only the Shadow. We fight because fighting is what remains. We hope because hope is the only weapon that cannot be taken from us."
Her eyes met his, and for a moment, Legolas saw past the Lady of Light to something older—a woman who'd lived since the Trees, who'd seen kingdoms rise and fall, who'd carried burdens that made his seem almost trivial by comparison.
"You asked if you should remove yourself from the story," she said. "My answer is no. Not because your presence guarantees success—nothing guarantees success. But because the story needs all the help it can get. Even impossible help. Even unsung help."
Something eased in Legolas's chest—a tension he'd been carrying since Rivendell, perhaps since his first moments in this body. He wasn't absolved of guilt. Wasn't freed from the weight of everything he'd watched happen. But he was, at least, understood.
"What now?" he asked.
"Now you return to your Fellowship." Galadriel stepped back, releasing his arm. "You continue the journey. You carry your burdens as I carry mine. And when the moment comes—when the choice is made at the Mountain of Fire—you trust that everything you've done has served its purpose."
Legolas nodded slowly. "And if it hasn't?"
"Then we will have fought anyway. We will have tried anyway. And perhaps, in some small way, that will matter."
She turned back to the Mirror, her reflection finally appearing in its surface—golden hair, ageless features, eyes that had seen the light of the Trees and would see the darkness of the world's ending if the Ring wasn't destroyed.
"Go, Unsung One. Rest. Tomorrow you will need your strength."
Legolas walked from the garden, his mind still churning with everything the Mirror had shown. The path wound upward through the great mallorn, past platforms where the Fellowship slept, past Elvish guards who watched him pass with expressions he couldn't read.
But one thing had changed. One weight had shifted.
He wasn't alone anymore. Someone knew what he was, what he carried, what he feared. And that someone had told him to keep going anyway.
Fight because fighting is what remains. Hope because hope is the only weapon that cannot be taken.
Galadriel's words echoed as Legolas climbed toward his quarters. The stars wheeled overhead, cold and distant, but somehow less indifferent than they'd seemed before.
Tomorrow would bring new challenges. The journey would continue. The ending remained uncertain.
But for the first time since he'd arrived in this world, Legolas felt something that might have been peace.
Note:
Read the raw, unfiltered story as it unfolds. Your support makes this possible!
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/Whatif0
Timeline Viewer ($6): Get 10 chapters of early access + 5 new chapters weekly.
Timeline Explorer ($9): Jump 15-20 chapters ahead of everyone.
Timeline Keeper ($15): Get Instant Access to chapters the moment I finish writing them. No more waiting.