memories like bullets, fired from a gun
I found a tidal wave
Begging to tear down the dawn
Memories like bullets
They fired at me from a gun
A crack in the armor
I swim to brighter days
Despite the absence of sun
Choking on salt water
I'm not giving in
I swim
-Swim, By Jack's Mannequin
The first time Tauriel sees him, the world is on fire.
Beneath her feet the ground trembles in anguish, bombs falling like bats in the night, and she's bloody from fingertips to elbows. The smell of death and hopelessness is thick in her nostrils. Christ, she doesn't even remember the name of the town she's in and soon, from the looks of things, no one else will either. Tower's crumble beyond the open tent flaps and for the first time in two years, she truly wonders if this will be the end of the world. The end of all things.
How could anyone or anything possibly come back from this?
"Nurse! Nurse!" someone shouts and she fights her way back to reality through a wave of vertigo.
Sound penetrates; the falling of bombs, the anguished cries of those in the medical tent, and the desperate pleas of the soldier standing at her side, carrying a wounded man in his arms.
"Please, miss," the fair haired man begs, tears glittering through the dirt and blood on his face. "Please save my brother." His accent is thick, Irish she thinks, and it's as though he comes from some other time, some other place.
There are no spare beds, she knows, and less than a handful of doctors are already fighting to save the lives of hundreds as dozens of nurses flit between beds like harried doves. The gash in the wounded man's side does not look promising, he more than likely needs a surgeon, she thinks, but it will be hours before she can possibly wrestle one away The poor lad likely has only minutes.
She looks back to the desperate solider, his face hopeful, pleading, and the same steel which had driven her to join the army with her own brother in the first place burns in her breast. Some part of her whispers that maybe if she can save this soldier's brother, her own might come back to her.
Legolas -his name is the whisper of silence between bomb falls and the shaky breath when yet another misses their shoddy camp.
"Follow me," she tells the soldier and passes through a secondary part of the tent where the supplies are kept. There are already several other injured men within, strew about like forgotten rag dolls on shoddy blankets or nothing at all.
Some are merely bandaged and sleeping, others hover near death with no one to save them, no one to offer comfort, alone in a foreign country-
Tauriel forces herself to focus and set's several supply boxes together then throws a sterile white sheet over them. The solider lays his unconscious brother down and she washes her hands in a large bucket in the corner.
"Go into the next room," she tells the man, his blue eyes impossibly bright in the darkness. "There are surgical kits lined on the far shelf next to the kerosene lanterns, bring one to me."
He blinks at her dumbly for a moment, clearly on the verge of going into shook, before nodding and lurching to his feet. In the meantime, Tauriel lights a lantern and wrangles one of their few remaining IV kits from a nearby crate. She manages to insert the IV when the soldier returns, handing her a kit as well as an armful of bandages and tools she hadn't asked for.
"I just grabbed whatever I could see," he said, immediately at his brother's side as she set the supplies aside and examined the wound. It was deep in his gut and still bleeding heavily.
"Some of his intestine is damaged, I will need to repair them," she says in a steady, calm voice, meeting his gaze as bravely as she can. "I am not a surgeon, though I've seen and assisted with the procedure several times."
"Please, do whatever you can," he begs as a man screams in agony.
"Even if I manage to do everything right, he still may die. Of blood loss or infection or just from the sheer trauma, and he will suffer a great deal before that." She wants him to understand, to know what he is asking of her. God, she's afraid again.
He nods, ferocity burning in his eyes. "My brother is a fighter, miss, he'd want you to try."
Tauriel draws in a deep breath and reaches for a bottle of sterilized cleaning solution. "Alright, but I'll need your help."
They work for hours and the world around them falls away. She no longer hears the bombs, pausing only when one is close enough to shake the tent and threaten her stitching. He nearly dies twice. Likely of blood loss and shock, but eventually she attaches the last suture, her patient's chest rising and falling shallow beneath his blood soaked uniform, and falls back to the floor with a groan.
The fair haired solider looks down at her, eyes wide. "Will he make it?"
She closes her eyes, limp against a stack of crates and desperate for a shot of whiskey.
"Only time will tell. If he can make it through tonight, he has a good chance."
A stretch of silence and her ears buzz with exhaustion. When had she last eaten? It felt like decades ago.
"What's your name?" he asks and she pries her eyes open. Under all the grime and blood she can tell he is handsome.
"Tauriel," she says. "Tauriel Greenwood."
He throws her a small salute. "Captain Fíli Durin, at your service, Madame."
She smiles despite herself and gives him a little salute of her own as he rises stiffly to his feet. Captain Duin looks down at his brother for a long moment before heaving a sigh and leaning over to press a kiss to his forehead.
"I must return to my unit," he says with true regret. "Look after him for me, will you?"
Tauriel nods, a lump rising in her throat, and offers him her hand. He takes it firmly in his, both of them are covered in blood, and shakes it sharply. "You have my word," she says, meaning it.
He leaves, pausing to look at his brother's prone form a final time, and never returns.
They are forced to retreat the following day and she personally sees to Lieutenant Durin's care.
She loads him into the back of an old battered truck with a red cross painted crookedly on the side and sits beside him, busying herself with cleaning what she can of the grime from his hands and face. Like his brother, the Lieutenant is handsome, pretty almost, with dark curls and the sort of lashes any girl would kill for. His mouth is full and she can easily imagine it curled up in a mischievous grin. The thought makes her smile.
If the other nurses have opinions concerning her dedication to the young, Irish soldier's care, they keep it to themselves. They likely think it is more than it is, of course, but it hardly matters now. She would not be the first nurse to find comfort with an enlisted man here, on the brink of Armageddon, and few would begrudge her for it. But that isn't it. That isn't it at all.
Tauriel knows it's foolish, but some desperate part of herself thinks that if she can will Lieutenant Durin back to health, that maybe she can buy her brother's safe return. A sort of cosmic exchange with the universe; karma as they call it in the East.
So she stays near his bed whenever time allows once they arrive at their new clinic, remaining long after she should have gone to bed, and in those long nights, for the first time in years, she prays. Prays for the poor boy who won't wake, for her brother in some far flung field, for her father back in London, and for herself, who can no longer recall what a night free of mortar and bombshells sounds like.
Three days after they leave the front, near midnight, he finally wakes up.
"It's a shame that Nazi bastard didn't kill you!"
"You should have stayed safe at home with your ma and pa, you pampered English Princess!"
"Ingrate!"
"Harpy!"
The door to the recovery room opens and Doctor Baggins pops his head in, frowning. "Is ah, everything alright in here Nurse Greenwood?"
Tauriel colors and ducks her head, aware she has been behaving very unprofessionally, but she has never in her life met a more a infuriating man than Lieutenant Kíli Durin. Fortunately Doctor Baggins is one of the kinder doctors in their makeshift hospital –all the nurses love him, with his kind smiles and dry humor- and is unlikely to punish her for a lapse in professionalism.
"No, of course not Doctor-"
"Aye, there bloody well is a problem," her patient cries from where she's strapped him to his bed. "This woman won't let me out of this bloody bed!"
Doctor Baggins smiles patiently as Tauriel's blood boils. Of all the ungrateful idiots in the world-
"Now, now, Lieutenant, you were very seriously wounded. If not for the quick actions of Nurse Greenwood here you'd likely be cold in the ground," the doctor says and Tauriel lifts her chin, feeling oddly embarrassed. She hasn't mentioned her involvement in his care, feeling like it would be boastful.
The soldier looks at her, eyes briefly going wide before narrowing once more. "I belong with my brother, sir. I need to return to my unit."
The Doctor shakes his head, pity in his eyes. "I'm afraid you won't be leaving us for a few weeks yet. Now, if you won't settle down and cooperate with the staff here, I'm afraid you'll have to be sedated," his voice it stern but then it softens as he places a hand on Lieutenant Duin's arm, "You're of no use to anyone dead, my boy, just relax, get better, and you'll be off with your men again in no time."
The fight goes out of the Lieutenant almost immediately and he turns his head away from them. Doctor Baggins takes his leave, patting her lightly on the shoulder, and she cautiously approaches the bed. Feeling poorly for allowing her temper to get the better of her, she removes the bindings. He says nothing, and does not even looking at her.
His face is pallid yet, or what she can see of it anyway, though there is promising blossoms of color in his cheeks. His mouth is turned down into a deep frown. It makes her sad to see it; he has a mouth made for smiles.
Tauriel sighs, adjusting his blankets and peering at his bandages. "I'll be back in a few hours with your dinner. Let someone know if you need anything."
She turns to leave and almost doesn't hear him.
"Thank you."
Glancing over her shoulder, she finds that he is still not looking at her. "Thank you for saving my life," he says, louder this time.
She swallows thickly, oddly emotional. She can understand what it is like to be separated from a beloved sibling, to worry about their safety and to feel helpless to do anything about it.
"You're welcome," she says and hurries out into the hall, feeling as though she is running away from something, but she isn't sure what.
Tauriel thinks he's asleep when she makes her rounds the following evening.
His face is lax and even more appealing clean and with improving color. He looks younger while sleeping she thinks, guessing that he likely isn't much older than eighteen. Though she is only twenty four -bordering on spinsterhood as far as her father is concerned, however- she feels strangely maternal as she stares down at him. She tugs the blankets up a bit higher, blows out the candle on his bedside table, and makes sure the windows are securely fastened.
In the distance thunder rumbles, or perhaps it is merely the rupture of far off bombs, threatening the horizon.
"Your home," the Lieutenant says, startling her terribly. "What is it like?"
"What was it like," she says instantly, bitterness burning at the back of her throat, images of cherished halls now burned and broken bright in her mind. A reminder that there was no home for her to go back to.
She can feel the press of his eyes in the darkness.
"I'm sorry, Tauriel," he says quietly and she knows he means it.
He has never called her by name, generally preferring more colorful language, and she blushes like a fool, suddenly very grateful that is dark.
Others have lost much more," she says stiffly and bends to collect his empty bedpan. He leans forward and grips her arm, not hard, but firmly enough to make her look at him. The heat of him bleeds through her uniform and a shiver creeps up her spine.
His dark eyes glint in the pale shadow of the moon through the wispy curtains and the inky ruffle of his hair is silvery, appearing almost wet. She has the most insane urge to touch it, to run her fingers through it and see if it is as soft as it looks.
"Pain isn't a competition," he says, voice rough with emotion. His thumb rubs a short, comforting circle against her arm.
Tears prick and they mortify her.
It's been ages since she's cried. Not since her first months serving at the front, which feels like a lifetime ago, has she succumbed to them. She's just so bloody tired. Tired of blood, decay, burning cities, and dying boys. Before she quite knows what's happening, sobs tear through her and she collapses on the edge of his bed, shuddering with the release of too many dark thoughts and dreams.
Arms, strong and warm, reach out to her, hesitant at first, then resolved as they wrap her in understanding. Christ, she's coming apart at the seams, but for some unfathomable reason he is there to cinch them back up again, holding her together.
"This war will not last forever, you'll find your home again," he says against her shoulder, voice unsteady, and she thinks maybe he's crying too.
Rain begins to patter against the window. Not rockets then, she thinks vaguely, at least not tonight.
Things are different between them.
Awkward understanding and kinship grows in the gaps the war has left behind, but she can't quite meet his eye. He's kinder, more cooperative, and as the weeks turn into a month, they begin to know one another. She escorts him into the gardens when he is well enough, and he tells her stories of home. Of his life in his family's manor, of being part of an ancient line of old Irish Chieftains, and about how much he both admires and resents his Uncle.
"Always pushing, Uncle Thorin is. Nothing ever quite good enough, always expecting more. Better," his voice is a strange mixture of longing and resentment as he tosses a flower stem into the fountain. She watches as it floats there for a moment before sinking slowly to the bottom.
Tauriel smiles a little, thinking how he has just described her father. "Sounds like he loves you very much."
He turns toward her and she recognizes the look he gives her, what it means. Though she knows she shouldn't, she presses her hand over his beneath the watchful eye of a bright sun. His smile is exactly as she had imagined it would be as his fingers clench confidently around hers. They sit there for a long while and she feels warm for the first time in months.
The attack comes a week later, bursting the fragile little bubble they'd built around themselves.
They fly through unfamiliar streets and Tauriel feels as though her feet are barely touching the ground.
"We're nearly there" Kíli calls over the mayhem, his riot of curls a tumbling halo in the flash of a bomb that briefly lights the world like a dying sun.
His voice is fierce and serious, but Tauriel feels strangely unafraid… safe even, which is completely ludicrous considering the situation. Perhaps one could grow used to anything, she reasons, or perhaps she has simply grown weary of always being afraid.
Or, another voice whispers, maybe it is the large, sweaty hand clamped tightly around hers that has filled her with a strange certainty that everything is going to be alright.
They dash around burning wreckage and rubble, other people like slippery shadows flickering through the scorching night, each of them caught in their own version of hell. Her feet ache in her shoes, her lungs burn with exertion and smoke, but she thinks she could likely run for days so long as it is him leading her on.
The clinic had been hit in the first attach and she has no real idea how many might have survived. She'd been in the supply room when the first bomb fell, knocking her to the ground and dazing her, but she'd manage to reach Kíli's room by the time the second struck, and together they'd taken off into the panicked streets. They'd found Doctor Baggins, bloodied but resolute, who'd told them to make for the river. They had both tried to protest but he'd threatened to kill them himself if they didn't obey orders, and so they'd ran.
After half an hour of sprinting wildly through the dying city, the river lays only a few short blocks away, but the artillery fire grows louder and Kíli tugs her into a nearby building. Inside, several dead soldiers lay like scattered pieces of a forgotten game, blood pooling in the moonlight. Two of them bear the swastika like smears of fresh blood on their arms and the other three are emblazoned with the green and white Cross of Lorraine. Kíli curses under his breath and snatches up two French rifles. He turns and hands one to her.
"Can you use this?" he asks and she takes it from him, feeling its weight, heavier than expected. There's blood gleaming across the muzzle.
"Yes," she says, and takes a German pistol from the hand of a dead boy.
She's long past mourning over innocence lost and intentions unknown; they are all old and broken husks of human beings now. She tucks the pistol into the band of her skirt and lifts her eyes to find Kíli staring at her intently. It's a fierce, dangerous look, and she takes a step when he does, chasing that risk.
She's kissed a few soldiers before; casual, sad dalliances that were meant to distract both parties, but this… this is different. It's a rallying cry in the bitter darkness of defeat. It's a bright ring of laughter after too many tears. It's the promise of a dawn to come after a dark, endless night.
He pulls away and there is a new fear born in his eyes, a fear with her name written across it in bright red letters.
She touches his face, hardly aware that they are surrounded by death and never more conscious of the heart thumping proudly in her chest. "I'll protect you," she says and he smiles like he believes her.
They send him to the front again a week later, after they share five long nights tangled in a tapestry of arms and legs, learning to breathe again. Stolen moments, brief respites against an endless stream of wounded and dying, and somehow it makes everything all the more vibrant. She wonders if it is a sin to be so happy while the world falls apart.
Neither of them make any promises; they know better than to sully something good with words that might rot to lies in their mouths, but he remains a bright steak of star shine in her mind. He kisses her farewell and leaves her with a necklace.
"It belongs to my mother," he tells her on their last night together, one hand gently cupping her naked breast, the medallion resting against her sternum, still warm from being tucked close to his heart . "I promised I would bring it back to her."
"I shouldn't," she whispers, knowing she'll keep it anyway.
It's silly and cliché and she wants to cry. Instead she rolls on top of him and slides the length of his arousal deep inside her, as though she might be able to keep him safe, as though she might be able to go with him into the rising wave of darkness.
There are letters, at first.
Letters that speak little of battle and often of a world they want to build once the fighting is done. Of places they'd both like to go, things they'd like to see, touches and whispers they'd like to exchange. It's nothing solid, nothing concrete, and it's as though they are merely co-writing some sort of fairytale that neither of them really believes in.
After a year, the letters pettier out, and a few months later they stop altogether.
There is no record of his death, she asks several times, each time feeling more foolish than the last, but that means little. Thousands have died, it might be decades before they account for them all.
She knows it's likely he's moved on, forgotten her until she's little more than a bright speck against the night sky that has grown too far away to reach. She's seen it happen a hundred times. But though she tells herself she is resigned to it, that it's fine, she still dreams of him at night, imagining she can feel him between her thighs, the whisper of his breath against her skin.
If this is love, she thinks, I do not want it.
The war ends and she goes back to London.
Her brother and father are there, waiting for her when she steps off the train, and it makes her almost whole again. Two years pass in the blink of an eye, but still an Irish Lieutenant's smile remains lodged somewhere in her heart.
His mother's necklace, a hand carved bit of silver, has begun to burn against her skin, and she knows she ought to find him family and return it to them. Two years of cowardice, terrified that he might have died and even more afraid that he hadn't. Death is so final, it leaves no loose threads, whereas life tends to snarl and tangle together until it's impossible to decide what to snip away.
London bears scars that have just begun to heal and she walks down streets that ache with the memory of devastation. Her father has rented them a flat on the north side of London and she's been working with an aging doctor on the other side of the Thames's. It's a long trek and a possibly dangerous one. Her father hates it, but after half decade of war, she's rather beyond asking for permission to do the things she wants. Besides, Legolas often walks with her on his way to University.
She's headed to meet her brother, who's already finished his last class of the day, when she spots him, standing with his hands in his pockets, staring up at a streets sign. She blinks rapidly, heels glued to the pavement, sure she has dreamed him from the mist and fog, but then he turns and meets her eye as though he'd expected to see her there.
He walks toward her, crossing the street, not looking to be sure it's safe, and still she cannot move. She isn't even sure she is breathing.
"You look just like I remember," he says, his eyes searching her face.
"I thought you were dead," she whispers, knowing she sounds accusatory but not quite able to help herself. God, she's shaking.
"My brother was a POW, I couldn't come home till I found him, I just... I couldn't. I was on my way to your house," he says, still staring, still tearing her apart with every word. It hurts so god-damn much.
"Is-Is he-" she can't make words. Can't string the sounds together.
"He's fine, well, he's as fine as he can be all things considered. He'll heal with time… just like everyone else," he steps closer to her and she steps back.
"You didn't write," she says, head shaking.
He reaches into his jacket and tugs out a thick stack of letters. "I wrote you several times a week, actually, but they wouldn't let us send letters from where we were."
She's crying and she angrily dashes the tears away. "I may be in love with you."
He smiles and it's almost alright again. "That's grand, because I'd been hoping to kiss you."
He barely has time to finish the words before she's gripped him by the front of his nicely pressed shirt and capturing him by the lips.
There would be plenty of time for explanations and talking and relearning one another, she knows, but for now she holds him on a street corner until her arms ache and her heart burns.