A/N- I feel so unloved, no one reviews = (

Chapter 4- The Hard Facts of Life

Arwen was still in a deep state of shock as she cleaned her daughter's wounds and wrapped them. One of her arms was still shaking.

As she found finished tending Leyadriel's injuries, her shaking overcame her and she had no choice but to allow Aragorn to wrap his arms around her, holding her closely.

"What...." She stuttered, "How?"

Galadriel leaned forward and smoothed the hair on her great-granddaughter's head before turning to her granddaughter. "The shadows did this to her."

"Why?" Aragorn asked sharply, "What shadows?"

"The shadows," Galadriel sighed and met his eyes, "are the dead. Orcs mostly, a few other of the Dark Lord's slaves. They know you defeated them and they attack her to harm you."

"But how could they get to her?" Arwen demanded fiercely, "Their dead."

Galadriel sat on the edge of Leyadriel's bed and stroked her soft face, looking to Celeborn to say what she did not want to.

Celeborn cleared his throat and put his hands on his wife's shoulder, then he said, "It is because you journeyed the Paths of the Dead, Aragorn."

The King went wide-eyed with horror and shock, and then guilt set in as he gazed at his child who was wrapped in bloodied bandages.

"How could that have hurt her?" He asked in a quiet voice.

Elrond stepped forth and let Celeborn and Galadriel rest from their explanations.

"In traveling the Paths you allowed the Dead to stain you. Now, the world of the Dead, those that you yourself destroyed, have found you. But where your connection to them was weak, being a mortal, they could do nothing to you. This connection you had was passed down to your children. Your son remained unharmed because he, like you, was human with not enough elvish blood to make a difference to the connection between this world and that of the Dead. But your daughter," he glanced tenderly at Leyadriel, "has so much potent elvish blood that the connection was beyond strong enough for them to enter and harm her. They want revenge on you through your daughter."

Aragorn flinched and squeezed his eyes shut; Arwen put her head against his cheek and let silent tears fall.

Tonight, they had heard their daughter scream out in pain, the pain of being tortured and plagued by creatures with no hearts, no souls and no thoughts except her pain. Tonight, the pain they had ignored had hurt and scarred their beautiful child. And the reason she had suffered was because her mother had been an elf and her father had been a human marred by the Dead.