Yeah, Thranduil's still a crazypants, but this will at least make him actually engage his brain a bit. He hasn't got much choice.

Mercifully, when spring came in earnest, Thranduil often let Tauriel out into the garden. Twice he even allowed her out by herself, but she knew that for what it was: testing. He wanted to see if she would run upon given opportunity.

She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to flee into the forest and not look back, but she knew he wouldn't let her get far – and if he thought he couldn't trust her, he wouldn't let her out anymore. She'd be trapped within his rooms, and possibly even chained again.

So she acted like a good little captive, either working in the garden or running the length of it, trying to get her stamina back. It might not be true freedom, but there was sun on her face and wind in her hair, the scent of green, growing things and fresh earth all around her. It kept her sane. Eru knew how long it would take her to find a way to escape, and she would rather not be as mad as Thranduil by the time opportunity presented itself.

Often he would sit in a chair and watch her indulgently, which irked her, but there was nothing she could do about it. At least she could keep her irritation to herself.

This day the sun was warm and fierce, dappling the grass through the branches, and Tauriel paced, unable to sit still to even work among the plants. Thranduil wouldn't give her any shoes – as if going barefoot would actually stop her, should she try to escape – and the grass was like cool velvet beneath her feet.

"You are restless, Tauriel," he said, amusement lacing his voice. He sat in a reclining chair, feet propped up on a low table, head bare and silvery hair almost glowing in the sunlight.

Tauriel wanted to punch him.

"Of course I am," she said, halting. "Thranduil, you forget I was a guard for nearly five hundred years. I am used to running through the entire forest. Don't you trust me enough by now?"

"You I trust," he said. "Others I do not. It is not safe out there – they would try to take you away from me. They believe I hold you prisoner."

That is because you do, she thought, but she knew that in his madness he would never see in that way. "If they think that because you will not let me out, technically they are right." She forced herself to cross the lawn to him. "Thranduil, I told you I would not leave you, and when has anyone ever managed to force me to do something I do not wish to?" Aside from you. If he would but give her the chance to roam freely, she would behave long enough to lull him to complacency, and not run until his trust in her was absolute.

The trouble with running was that she would not gain much of a head start, and the elk could easily outpace any horse. She could not go without a plan, and she still had not yet found a viable one.

Thranduil grabbed her hand, pulling her onto his lap. She barely suppressed a yelp. "You did not wish to stay with me, at first," he accused, eyes narrowed.

"No," she said, "I did not. You frightened me." He frightened her still, though she was better now at hiding it. Appalling though it was, she'd grown somewhat accustomed to him, and learned to better read the vagaries of his moods.

"You frightened me, too," he said, taking her right arm and pulling back her sleeve. The scars of her failed attempt at suicide ran from wrist to elbow, still pink and shiny. She shivered when his fingers lightly traced them. "I so very nearly lost you."

Not nearly enough, Tauriel thought, while he pressed a kiss to her wrist. This last fortnight there had been more such kisses than usual, and they filled her with dread. "I was lost in grief," she said, and it was true enough – just not the whole of it. She'd grown adept at editing the truth for him, because, while she was a terrible liar, lies by omission were another matter entirely.

"And are you still lost?" he asked, his lips brushing against her skin.

Tauriel shivered again. "No," she said, "but I still grieve." That would surely put him off.

Thankfully, it did – he pulled her down so that her head rested against his shoulder, forehead pressed against his neck. "Do you love me, Tauriel?"

"No," she said. "Not as you love me."

"Someday you will," he assured her, stroking her arm.

"Someday," she repeated, not daring to gainsay him. She was horrified to find she was not horrified by his touch. It seemed that it was another thing she'd grown accustomed to. How much longer would she have to be kept in isolation, before she would let herself be seduced? Not that he'd tried at all yet, but she'd known all along it was only a matter of time.

Eru damn you, Legolas. She hoped he was happy, off running about in the wild while his father played the part of oh-so-gentle captor. The longer this went on, the more creative were the tortures she devised for her erstwhile friend. How could he not have known what he was abandoning her to?

For she had slowly realized that this fixation the King had on her was not a new thing. She still didn't know how far back it went, but it was long enough for him to have sketched literally hundreds of pictures of her. The folder she found on his bookshelf clinched her suspicions, and nearly made her ill. Legolas knew his father well – he had to have had at least an inkling of this strange obsession, yet he had never warned her. And look where it had got her.

"You could have almost anyone you want, Thranduil," she said, unable to stop herself. "Why me?"

She felt as much as heard him sigh. "Because all you have ever asked me for are things for the good of the kingdom," he said. "You are guileless and open and pure, and there is so much in my life that is dark. I need your light, Tauriel. I crave it."

And what of me? she thought. What of what I want? Clearly, it had never occurred to him, or she wouldn't be here. Thranduil did not love her, he idolized her, and that left her feeling strangely bereft. Oh, he thought it love, but she knew better. And the worst thing was that he would never seen the difference.

Tauriel shut her eyes, unable to argue it. She simply didn't have the energy. Something about his presence wearied her, yet at the same time set her on edge. His fingers twined in the hair at the base of her neck, and she shivered again. It was not a shiver of revulsion, and that terrified her.

"Thranduil, I know you only wish to keep me safe, but if you keep me confined like this, I will go mad," she said. "I do not care if you must chain me to you – at least take me for walks near the halls. Safety is of little use to me if I lose my mind. I miss having friends. You take such good care of me, Thranduil, but I miss my fellow guards. At the very least, let me see Huoriel." Huoriel, who had been her best lieutenant.

His grip tightened almost to the point of pain. "You need no one but me," he said firmly. "You will not leave me."

Finally, finally her temper snapped, bursting the dam she had so carefully constructed. "I do need more than you, Thranduil," she said, trying to squirm out of his grasp. "I will never leave you, but I had an entire life that is now lost to me. How would you feel, if someone took away your kingdom to keep you from harm and locked you away, simply because it was dangerous?" For Eru's sake, even Aredhel had the run of Nan Elmoth.

A sane person would have seen the logic in her argument – but then, a sane person would not have locked her up to begin with. Thranduil, however calm he could appear, was far more than a stone's throw away from sanity. He rose, and his expression nearly made her quail. Only stubbornness made her stand her ground.

"I am sorry you feel that way, Tauriel," he said, advancing upon her with all the predatory grace of a panther. "You have a new life now, and you will adapt to it. I have given you all that a person needs. Food. Shelter. Companionship."

"Imprisonment," she said, swallowing hard. The closer he drew, the harder it was not to back away. "You say you love me, Thranduil, but you have taken away so much of what I am."

When he reached for her, she flinched, but though his grasp on her shoulders was hard, it was just this side of painful. The look in his pale eyes, however, was beyond terrifying. "It is because I love you that I have not taken away more," he said, his voice soft and deadly. "It is because I love you that you have light, fresh air, the full run of our chambers." He was backing her through the doorway, and she was powerless to stop him, all but hypnotized by his icy stare. Not until they were inside did he release her, and turned to slam and lock the doors.

"You will stay here until you are grateful for what I give you," he said, shooting her a look that made her shudder. It was not vicious or angry; there was little expression in it at all. In his eyes she was back to being an object, not a creature with mind and fëa.

Tauriel didn't dare breathe until he'd left, slamming and locking the inner door behind him. For a moment, she'd been convinced he'd kill her.

She cast a helpless glance around the room. It was warm day, so the fire burned low; she had to light several lamps to chase away the shadows.

He ought to have killed her – and if he didn't want her dead, he should not have left her on her own. Thranduil had made something of a show of disposing of all the sharp objects in the rooms, but there was one thing he had not thought of.

She lit all the lamps in the bathroom, flooding it with a glow that to her seemed obscene. If the boiler had not been lit, the water would be freezing, but she didn't care.

Drowning was said to be a lovely way to die.

When she turned the tap, the water was indeed frigid, but she crawled into the tub anyway. Once upon a time, when she'd had a life, she and her fellow guards often spent their summer off-hours swimming by the river-gates, and this was no different. She leaned back, shivering as the water rose, and remembered those swims, how happy and carefree she had been before the Dwarves descended upon them, before the battle, before the King went mad.

The water rose.

She wanted those days back – craved them – but they, like so much else, were lost to her now. Her life was lost to her; her heart beat, but that was all. Soon enough it too would still.

The water rose.

Damn Thranduil. Damn Legolas. And damn herself, for not doing this sooner. At least it would be over soon.

The water closed over her head.

Thranduil was in no good mood when he returned to his rooms, and more than a little drunk.

Selfish Tauriel, wanting more, when he had already given her so much. She had his home, his protection, his love – how dare she demand more of him?

She would learn. He would not keep her locked away so long that she sickened, but she would learn to be grateful for what he gave her. If only she would learn to love him, she would not want more.

She was not in his study, nor was she immediately visible upon entry to his bedroom. There was a crack of light beneath the bathroom door; presumably she was in there, sulking.

It was not just light, though – a stream of water eddied beneath the crack. Already there was a considerable puddle on the bedroom floor. Was she really childish enough to flood the bathroom?

"Tauriel," he snapped, shoving the door open, ready to castigate her soundly.

What he saw froze him where he stood.

The water came from the bathtub, which had long since overflowed. In it, red hair floating around her like seaweed, lay Tauriel.

No. No, no, no.

Thranduil fell to his knees beside the tub, wrenching her out of it with considerable difficulty, for her form was entirely inert. The water was frigid, unheated from its river-passage beneath the caverns, wicking its way through his trousers. Tauriel's face was blue with the chill of it, her eyes closed. No. No. Eldar only closed their eyes in death.

She wasn't breathing.

He kicked the tap off and carried her out into the light, water soaking through his tunic. He staggered a little on his way to the warmth of the hearth, falling hard onto his knees again. Maneuvering her onto her stomach was not easy, but he braced her over his left arm and hit her back, hard, with his right. The water had been so cold that she might not truly have drowned.

Oh Eru, do not let her have drowned. Do not let her have gone to Mandos to escape him.

He did it again, and again, but it was nearly a quarter of an hour before she coughed a great gout of water onto the floor.

Relief flooded his veins, and he turned her in his arms, watching the color return to her face. She didn't wake, but she breathed, and her pulse fluttered beneath his fingertips.

"I'm sorry, Tauriel," he groaned, burying his face in her frigid hair. "I'm so, so sorry." He ought to go and drown himself, but he had to take care of her. She could not be left like this.

Still she coughed, and still she did not wake – but perhaps that was for the best, for he could not have borne the recrimination in her eyes. Recrimination he knew he deserved.

He lifted her to the divan, shoving it closer to the fire for warmth, and hurried to get her dry clothes. She still had a clean nightdress, but he had to get her dry first. He snatched several towels from the bathroom, the water soaking through his boots, and hurried back to her.

This was not at all the way he would have wanted to first undress her, but there was no choice. He stripped off her clothes as gently as he could, rubbing her all over with the towels in an effort to bring some warmth back into her limbs, wringing out her hair before struggling her into the nightdress. All the while she was limp as a doll, but still she breathed.

He brought her to the bed, trading his own wet clothes for dry trousers, and brought her under the blankets with him. She was shivering now, as the blood began flowing in her veins again, and Thranduil drew her close, holding her as though his own life depended on it. Her breath was a comforting warmth against his chest, though her damp hair was cold. Gently he stroked her arm, though whether it was for her comfort or his, he didn't know.

He should let her go, should send her back to her own rooms and release her from his presence, but he couldn't. Tauriel was everything to him now – he could never let her go.

Ever.

She was wrong about one thing. He truly did love her, and he would make her see it. But first, he was going to have to make a few concessions.

Clearly, they could not go on as they were.

Good Thranduil. You're actually in the first stages of halfway starting to use your brain. Tauriel is not, in fact, merely an extension of yourself, which you'd best get through your head, because there are still so, so many ways she could kill herself.

How did she survive that, you ask? Mammalian Diving Reflex. Unfortunately for Tauriel, the water was cold enough to kick that in, hence her survival.