A/N: I needed an outlet for my feelings and this happened. It's loosely inspired by a post I've seen on tumblr which described the emotions playing on Thranduil's face during his confrontation with Tauriel (the bow-slashing scene, as well as the one on Ravenhill) and "Sum of Our Parts" by Mary Lambert. Of course I've taken some liberties and changed things up to suit my plot, but I hope you won't mind too much. I really, really needed to get it all out and writing is always the best way for me to go when I have too many things on my mind.
This story is only one of the upcoming one-shots that I will be posting here under one collective title. There will be much more of them and not all of those will be connected plot-wise, so don't be surprised if another one will be, let's say, a Modern AU, because it can (and probably will) happen at some point ;D
Also, I would like to inform you that I'm taking Thranduil/Tauriel fanfic requests from now on. If you would like me to write you a story, please write me a PM with details/send me a message on tumblr (I'm "lossie92" there) :)
I would recommend listening to "Emotional Soundtracks" by felicjl (on youtube) while you read.
And now, enjoy my writing at its gloomiest. If you will like it, please favourite and review. I really appreciate your input! :)

Summary: "Her heart sang for him, the tune soft and gentle, and she was unable to resist that call – not then and definitely not now."
Genre: Romance, Hurt/Comfort
Rating: K+
Other info: post BOTFA AU

MORE THAN OUR SCARS

"Which part of you is still in the wreckage?
Which part of you clipped your own wings?
Which part of you will begin at your own end?
Which part of you will you let live again?"
-Mary Lambert, "Sum of Our Parts"

Before she met Kili, before her word had been painted in greys and before it had all basically gone to hell, Tauriel took many things for granted.

Her life had been simple then. Inside the vast caverns of the King's Halls, in the shade of Mirkwood's trees, she was supposed to feel safe and no suffering should have been able to touch her there. For a long time, far longer than was probably needed, she had been shielded from every danger. Her innocence and the pureness of her soul were only a few precious things that should have stayed with her forever. Even in her line of work, where death started to follow you like a shadow the day your fingers curled around your first bow or the hilt of your first blade, there was a possibility of living without the burden of someone's blood on your hands. After all the gruesome stories about great battles that had brought pain and loss alongside victories where just that back then – just stories which, while still horrifying, couldn't physically hurt her in any way.

She had been naïve, so very naïve, to think that life would spare her any more pain after her parents' tragic death that she had played witness to at a very young age.

Love hurt.

There was no other way to say it. The feeling was just as wonderful as it was painful, and Tauriel didn't want it – not now, not then, and not ever again – but it came to her all the same.

She watched in silence as the dwarves took Kili's body away and thought bitterly that maybe it was for the better. His heart would have been broken, just like Legolas' was, and she would have felt even more grief over her own stupidity than she already did. She had never meant for this to happened. Kili was a friend and a good person, and she had wanted to help him, because there was so much life and joy in him that she couldn't bear the thought of losing it forever. That was the reason why she had disobeyed the command of the king and went after the company of dwarves; why she had healed Kili and why she had threatened her king so he would see reason. It was all because she couldn't control the need to protect what little goodness and innocence was left in this wretched world. There was none left in her, at any rate, and for a split second she thought that maybe she would be able to make up for her own loss by saving someone else's soul from suffering through the same agony.

Legolas went after her, because he was too kind-hearted for his own good and his love for her was more than she has ever wanted it to be. He probably thought that if he tried a bit harder then maybe she would finally give in and returned his feelings. Of course it didn't work like that and so now he was gone as well – off to the North, getting further and further away with every breath she took. She had driven him away from his home, because her stupid heart couldn't chose him and couldn't love him in the way he deserved to be loved.

Her affections were her own and hardly logical, as most emotions were. She had given away all the best she had a long time ago to someone who didn't even know what to do with it or at least that was the impression she got. It wasn't a waste, as far as she was concerned, but maybe her decision was too impulsive. She had been barely off age at the time, still but a child, and she had gotten it into her head that she could fix him.

She looked up at the solemn figure of her king, breathtakingly beautiful as he was in the glow of the early morning sun, and cringed internally at herself. She had been such a child in her way of thinking. How could she have ever thought that mending him would be an easy task was beyond her.

Thranduil was standing a few steps away from where she was still sitting on the frozen ground. His eyes were closed, his posture rigid, and his face was a perfect mask of cold indifference, but Tauriel knew him too well to be fooled by this image of aloofness. Most would have missed it, but she had years upon years of experience with reading him. She could see his pain in the way his hands shook just a little or how his lids seemed to be squeezed too tightly. They were little things that told a story of someone close to a breaking point. She had seen him like this a few times before and every single one made her want to cry.

It had been years ago when she had first learnt about the king's past. The stories of his life travelled around the halls of his domain through the lips of his kin and in the form of gossip, but there had been truth hidden somewhere in-between the lines. Tauriel was simply clever enough to put it all together into one, discovering a story of a brave warrior who had lost too much and recived too little in return. She did so piece by piece, her curiosity pushing her forward. Somewhere along the way she came to a realization that he wasn't just an unfeeling statue on a pedestal made of stardust and flickering lights, but a being of flesh and blood, who had put on a mask of glacial indifference to hide behind a long time ago. It was not about image or presentation, or any other nonsense of that kind, but rather a matter of self-preservation in a world that seemed foreboding and malicious to someone so broken.

Her heart sang for him, the tune soft and gentle, and she was unable to resist that call – not then and definitely not now.

She stood up and walked over to him slowly, mindful of his state. It was hard to tell if he was even aware of her presence and she didn't want to startle him. She stopped barely a breath away from him, her arms rising on their own accord only to lay at the chest plate of his armour. She didn't dare move for the longest time, simply looking at him and wondering if her earlier actions hadn't undone years of her hard work.

He had been in such a pitiful state when she had first met him – guarded, distrustful, full of distain, and barely holding onto life itself. Healing him was like setting straight a bone that has been broken and then grew together in a wrong way. She needed to break him down, just like you would do with a wrongly set bone, and put him back together again. The process was time-consuming and incredibly painful, but it had been working.

It was impossible to tell when exactly did she fall in love with him, but it had happened. Afterwards, it had been more the matter of healing him so he could love her back than doing so for the sake of it.

Her hands shook slightly as she cupped his face in her cold palms, smoothing her thumbs along his high cheekbones. It was a gentle caress and something she has done on numerous occasions to let him know that she was there, ready to help in whatever way she could. He seemed to relax a bit, because of the familiarity of the gesture. His left cheek was warm against her fingers, just like the right one, but she knew that it was but an illusion. She had seen the scar a few times before, since the spell that hid it from view had a tendency to slip when Thranduil was angry or under the heavy influence of Dorwinion wine, which happened quite often.

And now, just like during those moments of lost composure, he was not the king.

Gone was the regal mask, gone were his coldness and hard unyielding stare. It was Thranduil who stood before her, bare and fragile in the most heartwrenching of ways. It was not an often occurrence for him to come apart so completely. In a place where anyone could play witness to his display of emotion it was even more unusual, but the strain of battle must have been too much.

Fear wasn't something to be ashamed of, Tauriel knew it well. Everyone was sometimes afraid and it was a natural way of things. In Mirkwood most feared spiders and orcs, and the darkness raising in the South, in the ruins of Dol Guldur. Soldiers shuddered at the sight of blood and the gore of a hard battle, although it was an all too familiar sight to most of them. Death was another thing a lot of elves were scared of, since it wasn't natural for an immortal to die and the thought of passing to the Halls of Mandos filled some hearts with dread.

Thranduil was brave, there was no doubt about it, and he wasn't really frightened by any of those things. They worried him, made him anxious and were often times a cause of a headache, but they didn't make him shrink away.

However, there was one thing that had such an effect on him.

Loss.

She had known about it and yet she had still pushed him until he relented and went after her. He had lost so much already – his parents, his wife, and his kin during many wars – and now his son was gone as well, away on a quest that would lead him far from home, and then there were now those nameless elves who littered the battlefield below Ravenhill like scattered broken dolls.

So many have died.

There would be parents without children and children without parents.

There would be widows and widowers mourning for their lost spouses.

There would also be a king grieving for his fallen people.

"How many?" She whispered.

The only answer she got was a beam of light that escaped from beneath his lashes and slid down the side of his pale face. Others came soon afterwards. At first she had tried to wipe them away, but when it proved to be rather futile, she simply pulled him down and embraced him tightly. Fingers wound into the silken strands of his light golden hair, she held him as close as she could, feeling every tremor that ran through his body as he cried silently for those they had lost. She could feel her own tears prickle at the corners of her eyes and so she squeezed them shut, burying her face in Thranduil's neck to hide her despair from the world.

His arms came around her a moment later, bringing her even closer to his body. She trembled when she felt his lips press lightly against the side of her neck.

"Forgive me. It was not my wish to cause you so much pain, meleth," she murmured so quietly she was barely able to hear herself, but he caught her words nevertheless. "Gi melin, Thranduil. Gi melin."

He inhaled deeply, his hot breath fanning against her chilled skin, before he kissed her again. Apparently encouraged by her confession, he took a hold of her head and pulled it away from his shoulder. She blinked at him slowly, her gaze still blurry with tears. His pale blue eyes were reddened, but still as beautiful as ever and seemed to glow with some new-found purpose. He leaned forward and laid his forehead against hers. They stayed like this for a moment, just looking into each other's eyes, before his fluttered closed once again. He tilted his head to the side and closed the remaining distance between their faces, capturing her lips in a tender loving kiss.

Tauriel didn't hesitate to respond and almost melted against him, a soft sigh of appreciation escaping her mouth as they broke apart for a brief moment only to kiss again a second later. The second kiss was less innocent, but just as languid and gentle. It was his wordless confession; a silent promise made to her and her only. His tongue shared a dance with hers, their movements slow, but steady. She could swear that with every sensual swirl of their tongues and every little bite he bestowed upon her lips, all rational thought escaped her, bit by bit. If the world around her ceased to exist in this very moment, she probably wouldn't have cared in the slightest, because right now she was holding her own universe within the confines of her arms.

When she started to feel lightheaded from the lack of air, she pulled away. A mere second later she had to bite her lower lip to stiffen a moan, when Thranduil's fingers moved slowly up her neck and then over the pointed tips of her ears, before moving back down. He repeated this a few times, watching as she shivered and listening to her sighs of pleasure. Unable to handle it for much longer, she caught his wrists, seizing them in an iron grip, and then, without giving it much thought, she brought his hands to her lips and kissed his palms.

The shadow of a smile she recived in response was worth more than any words he could have said instead.

He bent down and brushed his lips against hers once more, only to then move them slowly across her cheek and to the side of her head, where he kissed her softy, first on the temple and then on the ear. Afterwards he rested his head against her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her in the same manner they have embraced before.

Tauriel hugged him close, breathing in his comforting scent of moist earth and pine trees. She combed her fingers through his hair with one hand, while the other massaged his scalp.

"Lirimamin Tauriel," he whispered and she wondered if it was possible for them to stay like this forever. It seemed as if they were hidden from view and scrutiny of the world, safe and sound within each other's arms.

Someone cleared their throat.

Thranduil's arms tightened around her, hindering any possible attempts to disentangle herself from his firm hold. She stiffened for a moment before realizing that at this point it was already too late to worry about proper behaviour or other such things, which made her relax, if only by a fraction.

"Sire," said a familiar voice, belonging to Thranduil's butler, Galion. "I am afraid your presence is required in the city below."

Heaving a deep sigh, the king raised his head from her shoulder, but he didn't turn around to face the ellon as she expected he would. Instead, he looked straight at her, his gaze boring into her green eyes with untold intensity.

"Very well," Thranduil declared in a strong even voice. "Give order to set a camp. Move the wounded there. We will stay for the night before returning to the woods. Arrange a meeting with Bard the Bowman and the dwarf, Dain. I shall speak with them as soon as it is possible."

"Yes, my lord. And should I…" Galion seemed to hesitate, but he then continued after a short pause, "Should I find a suitable place of rest for Captain Tauriel?"

"That won't be necessary," was the king's response as the corners of his lips lifted into a barely visible smirk. "She will be staying with me."

For a second she thought he was jesting. Apparently her shock was evident, because he brought one of his hands up to brush his knuckles against her cheek in an intimate gesture of comfort. She was sure that Galion could see it well enough from where he stood, but found herself not caring about his opinion about it in the slightest. Thranduil's eyes were soft as he looked at her in a quite imploring manner, almost begging her with his gaze alone to not argue, and she understood almost instantly that he needed her, just as much as she needed him.

Maybe it was also wise to finally stop hiding their feelings for each other in the shadows. It wasn't something they should be ashamed of, after all.

"Of course, my lord," the butler replied, amusement colouring his usually rather dispassionate voice. "I shall take my leave now."

They barely took notice of his departure, too occupied with each other to truly notice anything else.

"Stay," the king whispered as he took her hands in his, entwining their fingers together and squeezing them lightly. "Stay with me and never leave again."

Tears of happiness escaped her eyes and slid down her cheeks when she nodded, a smile blossoming on her face.

There were still things they would need to address. There were matters that would have to be discussed sooner rather than later. There were confession left unanswered and new ones to make. There was a future ahead, painted with both light and darkness in equal measures. There was still pain in both their hearts and there were scars that still ached from time to time.

Tauriel knew that it was the beginning of something far bigger than anything she had experiences thus far, but she wasn't alone anymore and Thranduil's presence by her side gave her enough strength to hope and dream about the future.

Translations:
Lirimamin Tauriel – My lovely Tauriel
meleth – beloved
Gi melin – I love you
ellon –male elf