Legolas let himself into the King's chambers after taking a deep breath and squaring his shoulders, as he usually did in the moments before battle. The fireplace in the room blazed with light that was difficult to look at. Someone had pulled the heavy tapestries tight across the rain-streaked windows to prevent the heat from escaping, and to prevent any cool draft from entering. It seemed that the sweltering closeness of the room pushed against his entry as if it were a wall. Even the air felt full of illness and fever.

Arwen had already taken the children and the rest of the staff to the far end of the palace, leaving only he, Aragorn, and a few guards posted far down the hall at the entrance to the royal family's private quarters.

There was no one at all to aid him, Legolas realized.

His first view of Aragorn was his long, red-tipped nose, protruding into the air from the massive mountain of blankets on the bed. The King was swathed in covers up to that nose. Loud snoring that might have rivaled Gimli's filled the room at uneven intervals. The lump on the bed rose and fell laboriously. There was a crackling wetness in the sound of Aragorn's breathing that Legolas found himself wincing at.

Men, even fine ones such as this, were such unrefined, barbaric creatures. As if in exemplification of this, Aragorn's snoring ended on a loud choking sort of sound and he issued a startled sort of gasp and hacked once or twice before falling back into the cacophony of his rest.

Legolas approached the bed silently and studied Aragorn with interest. His entire face was a bloody red, and Legolas could feel the heat radiating from him, even from his distance. Aragorn twitched uncomfortably in his sleep, muttering something that was lost in a fit of hard coughing.

Curious, because he had little experience with the sick, Legolas reached a fingertip to poke a little at Aragorn's flushed temple, and jumped a little, surprised at the dry, waxy, and hot feel of the fever that burned in the Elessar's skin.

"I ab very sig, my love," Aragorn murmured at the touch, reaching up with characteristic quickness of his reactions, and grasping Legolas' fingers within his own. He brought them to his parched lips affectionately. Shocked, Legolas could do nothing but stare as Aragorn kissed his fingertips.

Aragorn's eyes remained closed, but his brow wrinkled in confusion as he contemplated the hand within his grasp. It was too large, there were rough patches upon the first two fingers that he knew did not belong on his wife's silky skin…it was as if the calluses were the result of someone who often plucked a bow.

He jerked his hand back just as Legolas did the same, and startled, Aragorn opened his eyes very quickly.

That proved to be a foolish and intensely painful move, for the firelight seared right through his eyeballs and into the front of his brain like millions of tiny and vicious swords. He clasped his hand to his forehead, holding tightly to it lest it come apart from the rest of his skull.

"You are nod my wife," Aragorn growled in irritation and removed his hand as the first blinding pains receded. He opened his eyes to the narrowest slits possible and glared up at Legolas.

"Aye, well, thank the Valar for that," Legolas said agreeably enough and watched as Aragorn's expression changed from annoyance to one of hope.

"I understand now, Mellod nee. You've come to rescue me frob this prison. Go get Gimleed. Led's go hudig."

"Hudig?"

"Hudig. Hudig. Hudig!" Aragorn tried vehemently to pronounce it, hissed in irritation, coughed, and when Legolas still looked perplexed, tried a different tactic. "Led's kill somb deer."

Legolas grinned. "Yes. I understood you the first time. I just found it amusing to hear you say it again."

Aragorn called him a very offensive name that Legolas understood the first time as well, which made telling him that he wasn't going anywhere at all much more enjoyable for the elf. "You can not go hunting. You are confined to this room. Quarantined."

"Whad are you talkig aboud?" Aragorn asked, pulling himself up on the pillows with effort that left him winded. "Quaradteed?"

Legolas' eyes passed briefly over Aragorn. It seemed that every hair was spiking in a different direction all over his head. His eyes were shot through with red and glassy with fever and water, and set within a face blazing like fire. All of that, along with the fierce growth of stubble on his face and throat and the increasingly dark expression he wore, made him look decidedly menacing.

"Arwen decided," Legolas began, quickly placing the blame where it belonged, "that the rest of the household was in danger of catching your illness. Your advisor seems to have similar complaints, and he spent most of the day with you when you were first feeling ill. The others are not so strong as you, although I may point out that you are actually rather weak and that I have never, nor will I ever, be ill. But that is not the point. You are to be isolated to prevent any more outbreaks of the sickness. You will endanger others, including your own children, if you do not respect Arwen's wishes."

"Where is Arwed?" Aragorn asked, narrowing his eyes.

"She has gone with the household staff, as well as your children, to the North Wing."

"Go ged her. She can nod confind me here in my own roomb like a…like a…" he searched for words wildly, waving his hands around. The exertion cost him, and he doubled over coughing.

Legolas took a deliberate step back from the bed. Not so much to avoid the coughing as to distance himself from Aragorn's reaction to his next piece of news. "Arwen did not want to leave the children in anyone else's care. Especially not if any of your servants are carriers of the sickness. She has gone to stay with them for the rest of the week."

"Then who is goig to loog after me?" Aragorn whined, slumping down on his pillows, and then as the realization of just who would be caring for him started to take hold, his eyes rose slowly to the elf's, and he thought he saw a wicked gleam of pleasure in Legolas' smug stare.

"Well, as I am the only other elf in the city, and as I cannot contract your illness, that task has been appointed to me," Legolas confirmed with satisfaction as Aragorn's eyes widened in what might have been fear.

"I will cerdainly die now," Aragorn sighed in resignation and looked toward the window.

"It could be worse," Legolas tried, in vain, to comfort his friend.

"I ab stuck here wid you and no one else. How could id be worse?"

"You are right. It really could not be. I was just trying to make you feel better."

***