A thousand thank you's to my amazing beta katnor for all of her insight and for catching my stupid mistakes! You're a lifesaver! :)

All of the translations for Irish or Scottish are at the bottom (and this is collected from several sites and Google translate so let me know if there's a glaring error anywhere?)

Anyways, enjoy the chapter and let me know what you think?

Warnings: Language, alcohol references, mentions of panic disorder

Her body was on autopilot. Nairi's heart thundered, the dull pounding of her still-bare feet on the pavement matching as she sprinted, heedless of the sharp rocks occasionally stabbing at her callused soles. Sorscha, Sorscha, Sorscha.

The gun slid in her waistband when she backed up suddenly to turn a corner she'd nearly missed, reminding her of its impartial but deadly presence. Nairi's hand reached behind her and closed around it without her ever slowing down.

"Nairi!"

Shit. Tauriel, all Elven ears and medieval warrior clothes, was chasing her down the middle of Main Street. She wasn't going to get to Sorscha, because Colin was going to kill her. God fucking damn it, Tauriel. She'd hear about it later, she knew, but Sorscha needed her right now.

She was so focused on just running that she almost plowed straight into them. Skidding frantically to a stop that had her slightly battered feet complaining, her eyes took in the scene in front of her. The American cowboy who'd bought her a drink, and Sorscha. One of his callused, tanned hands was pinning her tightly back against him by the throat, the other held a gun to her head. In the corner of her eye, Ean was frozen on the sidewalk. He must have threatened to shoot her if he got too close.

Nairi didn't even think about the gun he now leveled between her eyes instead. It wasn't an unfamiliar situation by any stretch of the imagination. Around her, she was vaguely aware of more people arriving, coming as close as they dared, but her focus was solely on the little girl who meant so much to her. Sorscha was really the only damn thing left in this world she cared about, and she'd die before she saw harm come to Ean's daughter.

"Sorscha, allanah, your dad'd kill me if you repeat any'v this, so probably don't, okay?"

Sorscha didn't even blink, too paralyzed by the situation to react. She looked so small in the bastard's grasp, his hands dwarfing her, the dark tan of his skin highlighting the chalk-white of hers.

Nairi's eyes narrowed, and she planted her bare feet on the burning black pavement and put her own gun up to aim at his chest, above Sorscha's head. "Let her go, you motherfuckin' son'v a bitch, or I swear to god I'll put enough holes in you that Ean can use ya for a sieve, which I'm sure he'd love."

"He said you'd come." He replied tonelessly, his grip on both Sorscha and the gun unwavering.

"Who said?" Nairi spat through clenched teeth.

Her blood chilled when he laughed. Okay, psychopath in a cowboy hat.

"He's coming for you."

"Who is, you absolute fucking douchebag?" she growled, her finger hovering over the trigger.

He laughed again, and she saw his grip tighten on Sorscha. "Oh, fuck this." she muttered. "I'm not fucking around." Unflinching, Nairi pulled the trigger, her heart sinking at the quiet, yet somehow deafening click. She allowed herself to close her eyes for just a heartbeat. Fuck. Fucking fuck. The loaded one was the one sitting on her bed.

Sorscha's innocent eyes were widening further in her fear now, realizing that her "aunt" was in fact weaponless, and she trembled visibly in the man's grip.

Nairi tried to offer as reassuring a smile as she could, then glared again at her captor. On her left, Tauriel stood with a knife in her hand, looking at Nairi. Almost imperceptibly, Nairi shook her head. It's Sorscha, it's my fight. Not to mention the explanations I'll have to give if they all see an elf fighting. Bad.

He had Sorscha, he had her girl, and she was going to send him straight to the depths of hell. "Still not fucking around, cocksucker." she grunted. The gun was pointed at her, not Sorscha, and that was fine. Consequences be damned, she charged straight at him, throwing any attempt at usingTauriel's teachings out the window.

It was all in slow motion, watching his stupid little eyes widen, his finger squeeze the trigger, the bullet coming toward her. Nairi twisted her shoulders and it sailed past her, and then she raised the empty gun and slammed it into the side of his face with all the strength born of blinding rage. Sorscha fell to her knees when he let her go to collapse onto the pavement himself, but Nairi didn't turn to her yet. With her bare heel planted between his legs, she bent forward over him, hair falling around her face, reveling in his expression of pain and the bloody cut on his cheek. From the shape of it, she'd broken his cheekbone, and she smiled down at him, fractionally increasing the weight on his crotch. "Gabh transna trt fhéin," she said cheerily, then glanced down at her foot and added in perfect English, "if you can."

She registered Ean lifting up Sorscha and carrying her away, and with the object of her primary concern taken care of, she was free to exact one last piece of revenge. With eyes turning flinty, she brutally stomped down on the zipper to his jeans, then cracked the butt of her gun down on the top of his skull.

Unconscious or dead, she didn't know, and as she turned and walked away, she found she didn't care. "Ean!" she called, looking over to where he had carried his daughter. "She okay?"

He nodded briefly, and that was all she needed to see. She could see Sorscha later, and perhaps give into her impulses and hug her until she complained of being squished. For now, she went to stand by Tauriel, who was garnering strange looks from the crowd. "Am I allowed to do that to what-the-fuck's-his-face?"

Straightfaced, Tauriel replied, "What-the-fuck's-his-face would kill you before you got close enough. That was helpful, actually, I can work with how you fight. And," she hesitated. "We need to talk to Thranduil."

"Oh, god, really?" Nairi scoffed, shoving the gun back into the waistband of her jeans. Her veins were still humming with adrenaline, and it wasn't a drug high or the numbness of drink. She never, ever wanted to do that again, not with Sorscha's life at stake, but she felt alive. Like for once in her life she had a pulse. She knew she did, it was hammering insistently from the exertion. She hadn't run that much in years. Thank fuck I ate that sandwich.

"I am glad the girl is unharmed." Tauriel was saying, and Nairi hastened to nod, then turned to face the other woman fully as she spoke again. "You would make a very good mother, you know."

Nairi's eyebrows shot up and she quickly shook her head, fighting the panic in her stomach at that idea. "Oh, definitely not. Anyway, what did he mean, 'he's coming for you'?"

Tauriel hesitated again, her green eyes flickering with something unreadable. "I don't know, Nairi, not for sure, but I believe he may have been working for Roland. He targeted Sorscha to get to you." She looked away. "But if that is true then we were wrong. And we may have no idea what we're dealing with."

"If that's true, Tauriel," Nairi replied from between clenched teeth, a fresh wave of rage crashing over her, "then I changed my fucking mind. If that motherfuckin' dobber touched a hair on her head, I'm in. I'm going to rip the bastard limb from limb, make him wish he'd never been born."

"What did you say to him?" Tauriel tilted her head in question. "At the end?"

"It's Irish. I told him to go fuck himself sideways."

"Enchanting," Tauriel replied sarcastically, but there was a glint of something like approval in her eyes, and Nairi gave a short nod in response. Tauriel thus far had tended toward mocking her profanity, and Nairi knew she'd never seen Sorscha before in her life, but she knew she would have the woman's support if she but asked. Female friendship was a bit beyond her, perhaps always would be, but Tauriel would back her with steel. Innocent lives were something every decent person understood.

"Wha' in the name'v holy fuck-"

Nairi winced, turning to face Colin, who was striding across the street quite speedily for a man of his age. "Say, Colin-"

"Shut ye geggie, girl, I've-"

"Oh for fuck's sake!" Nairi exploded in reply, realizing too late that she'd just succeeded in quieting everyone in the street and drawing their eyes to her. She looked to Tauriel, seeking some semblance of permission, and found her with a blank, patient look on her face. Waiting to see what Nairi would do. She sighed.

"Aye, she's a bloody elf, an' you all can quit your starin' at her!" she snapped, her voice dropping automatically into a more accurate Scottish accent. "An' aye, there's two more where she came from, an' they'd all thank you to shut yer bloody gobs about it. Enough?"

She was met with a sea of shocked faces, and returned them with a hard glare. That was enough for most of them, folks that had lived their lives in the most superstitious corners of Scotland, and they just looked at Tauriel for a heartbeat and then nodded and averted their gazes. Colin, however, would not be silent.

He blustered and pointed and ranted, his accent growing heavier and his words slipping into more and more Gaelic and slang, until Nairi had had enough. For all his stories of respect and reverence, he was referring to Tauriel as an it, and she snapped. "She can speak for her damn self, Colin, and for god's sake quit being such a tube!"

His mouth shut suddenly at her words, blinking at her for a moment, before he looked at Tauriel and bent his head slightly. "Thousand apologies to ye, Lady." With that, he turned and walked away from them, absorbed by the murmuring crowd, and Nairi rolled her eyes heavenward.

"Sorry 'bout him."

Tauriel's lips were turning up at the edges, and she shrugged. "I think he was more upset that you hadn't told him than that I was here. Now come, Nairi." She inclined her head and started walking. "We have work to do."

Nairi lengthened her stride to catch up, alarm and worry chasing through her. "Such as?"

"We'll talk when we get back." Tauriel said simply. "But you can start by telling me why you put on an accent for those people."

Nairi was caught off guard, not even sure for a minute what Tauriel was talking about. "Oh, that?" she shrugged after a pause. "I came here originally by way of England, had a bit of the stuffy accent, started doing this to get rid of weird looks. Now it's habit."

Tauriel watched her with thoughtful, calculating eyes as they turned a corner. "We should teach you Sindarin."

Nairi's eyebrows raised. "What, your elfish language?"

"One of them."

Nairi, cursing her failed social skills once again, had no response to any of that, and stayed awkwardly silent until they reached her little house, easily recognizable by the still-decimated yard.

Tauriel walked inside first, calling out in a language which must have been the aforementioned Sindarin, and Nairi followed tiredly, wondering if there was some merit to the idea of her learning it after all. She was crashing completely now, the adrenaline leaving her and the full effects of her physical exertion hitting her broken body all at once. A headache was beginning to pound in her temples, and she shuffled over to collapse on the couch, wincing at the sting in her cut up bare feet as they dragged across the rug. She laid down with her feet propped up on the armrest and studiously ignored Tauriel's increasing agitation and Thranduil's arrival.

Nairi let the Sindarin argument go on above her for a solid quarter of an hour, the pain in her head increasing while she watched them. Tauriel was in every way as fire-red as her hair suggested, standing so close that her shins actually touched the front of the couch. Burying her head under the single, flat pillow, Nairi groaned, then peered cautiously out from under it to see Thranduil, ice-cold and cutting even in a foreign language, looming over the back of the couch with his hands braced less than a foot above her head.

"Alright, enough, god damn it!" she finally roared, sitting up directly between the quarreling elves. "What in the fucking fuck, honestly?" An uncreative response, but in her defense, her head ached like mad. "If you're going to shout, do it somewhere fucking else, and seeing as it's probably about me, just do it in fucking English!"

Tauriel sat abruptly down on the cheap coffee table, letting her hands fall onto her knees with a quiet slap. "You need help," she sighed. "It's-that is what we're talking about. You used your power, Nairi, and you didn't even realize it."

Nairi's heart stopped, and she let her head fall back onto the couch, landing on the tips of Thranduil's fingers and electing to not care. "I-what?"

"The-" Tauriel gestured impatiently. "Your weapon."

"Gun." Nairi supplied impatiently. "Shoots bullets. That's not magic, it's mechanical."

Tauriel shook her head. "You were too close, it was too fast. The...bullet should have hit you. You manipulated the air around the bullet, Nairi, you slowed it down." Seeing Nairi's face, she quickly held up both hands. "Which is a good thing, you protected yourself and thus saved Sorscha's life. But I know this power scares you, and you love the girl. You would never have consciously attempted to use it near her, of all people, you know what you did to your property."

Nairi's teeth bit hard into her lip, her stomach twisting.

"In this case it was good, but you use it on instinct and out of your control. You don't know what you're doing. And if you don't even know that you're using it, you cannot-" she broke off. "You may kill Roland, or you may tear the very world to pieces. You need to learn how to control it. And," she looked furiously at Thranduil. "If he does not agree to teach you that, I do not know-"

"I don't want him to teach me." Nairi interrupted angrily. "I want to put a bullet in the motherfucker's head, that's all. I don't need some creepy power for that."

Tauriel slumped forward and put her head in her hands, a groan leaving her lips, and then she stood abruptly and walked out of the room. A few moments later, her voice and Legolas's, again in Sindarin, floated out from the spare room, quieter this time. Thranduil still stood behind her, unforgivingly silent.

Nairi let herself fall sideways onto the couch cushions, eyes stinging with unshed tears that she couldn't even give a real reason for. The stress of the day, the thought that she could have hurt Sorscha, the ache in her head, the goddamn elves, it was all getting to her, and she was so far out of her depth. She wanted a drink, some silence, and a chance to go back to hating herself in peace, but that was never going to happen, not now, and she frowned, her forehead wrinkling up.

She'd almost forgotten about the Elvenking when he spoke again, and she shivered uncomfortably at the idea that he'd just been standing there, watching her, all this time.

"You do need it. Tell Tauriel I will teach you how to use your power."

That had her shooting upright, stumbling to her feet to face him, shaking her head and madly running her hands through her hair. "No. No. You don't get to-I'm-I won't. You hear me? I fucking won't." She could feel her chest tightening in panic, her hands shaking at the mere thought of ever touching that power again, and she fisted them in her hair. Get a grip. She was well on the verge of a breakdown, she could feel it, and she needed this over and done with before she lost her shit in front of him.

"I do not care if you pride yourself on being difficult," he snapped out coldly, "this is not negotiable."

She swallowed reflexively against her dry throat, jaw clenched and lips quivering. "Don't you-I-I could kill you!" If nothing else, he had to have some sense of self-preservation. Heartless bastard he may be, but surely he'd want to save his own neck?

Instead, he looked almost amused. He was watching her the way one watched a tiny, fluffy kitten hissing at them, and god, she wanted to get her hands around his stupid throat. She resisted the childish urge to stamp her foot at him as he spoke.

"I think that is a bit beyond you, don't you?"

Smug, arrogant, condescending bastard! She searched for a cutting reply, but came up empty, and could only glare uselessly back at him while he claimed the upper hand yet again. He watched her with eyes like chips of ice, pale blue and unfeeling, and it felt somehow like he was cutting right through her.

For a moment it was a silent standoff, made all the more infuriating by his unfailing ability to treat her like she was absolutely worthless, and then he concluded dismissively, "I'll start with you tomorrow."

She could feel her breathing catch at his words, and in her mind's eye, saw her father hit the floor all over again. No.

"Fuck you." She hated how her voice trembled. Nairi turned on one battered heel and stalked into her bedroom, just managing to slam the door before her knees hit the floor and she gave up on fighting it, surrendering to the fear and exhaustion of one of her more horrific panic attacks in fifteen years.


Allanah - Little dear one (Irish)

Gabh transna trt fhéin - Go fuck yourself sideways (Irish)

Shut ye geggie - Shut your mouth (Scottish slang)

Tube - Idiot (Scottish slang)

Dobber - a worthless cockend (Scottish slang)


Tumblr: girlgonnafly