Author's note: First of all - thank you all so much for the many wonderful reviews and all the encouragement that I recieved over the past couple of weeks. I was quite overwhelmed and touched by the amount of feedback I got since the third movie came out. I am glad that many of you found some consolation in my stories after watching BOFA - this is exactly why i am writing this.

Which leads me to my second point, namely that I feel terrible for not updating for so long! I have not given up on this story, not by far. But with Christmas and all kinds of family obligations - well, you know how it is. But I am back now and intend to get back to updating weekly.

Hope you enjoy this chapter - and Happy New Year to all of you!

Chapter X

Orcs were not the most intelligent of races. Tauriel had had enough experience with their kind to know this. They were driven by their instincts and lacked all self-control, which made it easy for their adversaries to trick them, to provoke them in order to gain the upper hand in battle. Her capturers, she had to give them this, did however not underestimate the skill of an elf-warrior when they saw one, and were careful to not allow her any leeway that might give her a chance to overpower them.

Determined not to let her own temper get the better of her, she had endured their treatment of her, her arms and legs bound, her eyes blindfolded for the majority of their journey through unknown lands. Thankfully she had not been gagged again, except for a short period of time when she had let her tongue be provoked by the insults that had been thrown at her, resulting in a series of curses she had not known even existed in her vocabulary.

Her limbs hurting from a lack of movement and her eyes now accustomed to a perpetual darkness, Tauriel felt a change of her surroundings with the senses still left to her on the fourth night of her enforced journey. The air around her became considerably cooler and damper while simultaneously the sounds of nature became muffled. Aside from those sensual perceptions, she thought that she felt a darkness surround her that had less to do with an absence of sight and more with a heightened presence of evil. She had clearly been brought to a building of some kind and, judging by the cold, humid air that enveloped her, she would have guessed that they had gone somewhere underground.

She swallowed against a sense of ill-boding and tried to inconspicuously flex her muscles so that, if required, she would be able to engage in a physical confrontation without delay. What she had not been prepared for, however, was that first the bindings on her feet and then those on her hands were cut loose, the blindfold roughly yanked off her head, and she was being shoved into a dark room that smelled of mold and decay before she had time to even flinch.

She whirled around, prepared to launch herself at whoever had just pushed her, but a heavy door made of wood and iron was slammed into her face, leaving her confused and breathless, her palms resting against the narrow doorframe.

Turning back around again Tauriel pressed her back against the door, partly to see if it might budge, partly to ensure that no one could sneak up behind her, and tried to assess the cell she had been thrown into. To her dismay she was not able to see much more than she had with her eyes still bound, the room almost completely dark with only a faint, grayish light entering through a slit high up in a wall made of stone.

She took a few moments to calm both her breath and her mind and strained her senses to feel for any other presences in the damp, cold room. As she grew perfectly still, her breaths barely lifting her chest, she realized that, yes, there was someone there with her. Or something.

Tauriel steeled herself for the possibility of an attack when suddenly she heard a voice pierce the darkness of the room, feeble and scared. "Who is there?" it said.

Tauriel gasped, not so much because of the words that she heard, but in which language they were uttered. Sindarin. And not only that, but she also knew the voice that spoke them, even though she would never have expected to hear it again, least of all in this dark, forsaken place.

"Nimwen?" she choked out, hardly able to believe what she was hearing. Carefully she advanced into the room, hands stretched out before her. All she heard from the darkness was a little sob before she felt fingers slide between hers and ere she knew it, a pair of slender arms was thrown around her neck, drawing her into a tight embrace.

"Tauriel," the young elleth who had cared for Tauriel back in Thranduil's halls and had become her friend during this time cried out. "It really is you."

Completely perplexed, Tauriel held her friend in her arms, at a loss for words. When she found her voice again, she gently pried Nimwen's arms from around her neck and looked at her as closely as the sparse light in the room allowed. From what she could see in the almost darkness, the young elven healer seemed fine – physically at least. Her eyes had a haunted expression about them, though.

Tauriel took her distraught friend's face between her hands and spoke to her in their own language. "Nimwen, what are you doing here? Why are you not back home, in the Greenwood?" The fluid, soft sounds of her own tongue sounded strange to her ears and felt foreign in her mouth. So long had it been since she had last spoken it, those very few sentences exchanged between the Dúnedain and her set aside.

Nimwen cast her eyes down and inhaled a shaky breath, her eyes brimming with tears. "I am such a fool, Tauriel," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. A couple of fat tears rolled down her cheeks and it took her a few moments to regain her composure. Tauriel waited patiently, forgetting, for a moment, about all the questions she was supposed to be asking her friend. Where were they? What was their purpose here? "I thought I could be like you," Nimwen finally said, her voice small.

Tauriel frowned. "What do you mean?" she asked, genuinely confused. And then, with a sense of dread settling in her stomach, "Nimwen, what did you do?"

A sob escaped the young healer and she tried to avert her face, but Tauriel gently took her by her shoulders to make her look at her again. "My dear girl," she said, her voice much softer than before, "what did you do?"

Nimwen took a couple of calming breaths. When she spoke her voice was small and a little hollow. "I realized that he would never look at me the way he looks at you. Not in a thousand years."

Tauriel knitted her eyebrows together. "Who?" she asked. But then, before Nimwen could answer, realization settled in her stomach like a cold, heavy weight. "Legolas."

The young elf-maid's breath hitched on a small sob. "I thought that maybe after you left with the dwarf he would…" her voice trailed off.

Tauriel knew not what to say. Of course she had known that her friend had a soft spot for Legolas and maybe a small part of her had hoped that one day the two of them would grow closer. But she should have known better, should have known that the thought was unlikely to so much as enter Legolas' head. She had known him for the greatest part of her life and while he was in general not affected by his status as prince of the Woodland Realm, he went through life without taking too much notice of those around him, those below him – Tauriel herself being one of the few exceptions to this. The young healer would not have left much of a mark on him, much less would she have sparked his interest. "Oh Nimwen," she mumbled, at a loss of things to say that would comfort her friend.

Nimwen took a shaky breath. "The more time passed, the more I felt that I needed to get away, that I needed to put some distance between me and him before it was too late, before I would not be able to put this behind me." She paused, looking slightly embarrassed. "So I packed my things and left, telling myself that maybe there would be a place where I could find happiness that was not Mirkwood. Telling myself that I could have an adventure of my own…" She trailed off, her gaze growing distant and unfocused.

Tauriel squeezed her friend's shoulder to bring her back to the present. "What happened?"

Nimwen sighed. "Well, I did not get very far, as you can probably imagine." She looked around herself. "I traveled South but was captured by a band of orcs after a mere could of days." She laughed mirthlessly. "It's probably just as well. I was miserable out there on my own, Tauriel."

Tauriel drew her closer and gave a little sigh of her own. "My dear friend," she said. "I am glad we have found each other, despite those terrible circumstances." Nimwen did not reply, but from the tightening of her embrace, Tauriel knew that she felt the same.

When Tauriel felt that her friend had calmed down sufficiently, she took a step back and looked at Nimwen in the little light that their prison supplied. "Tell me," she said, "what place is this that we have been brought to? What is our purpose here?"

Nimwen pressed her lips together. "I do not quite know," she replied. "They brought me out every couple of days ever since I got here…" She fell silent, frowning.

Tauriel swallowed against a sudden dryness in her throat. "Did they… hurt you, Nimwen? Torture you for information of some kind?" The thought of the young, innocent healer being physically hurt seemed so terrible, so wrong that Tauriel felt anger rise inside of her like a raging flame. Nimwen, while strong and brave in her own way, was not a warrior and Tauriel feared that she would not be able to cope with such cruelty if it was dealt to her.

To her immense relief her young friend shook her head, albeit hesitantly. "No," she said, "I would not call it that." She paused, as if trying to find the right words to explain what had happened. When she looked at Tauriel again, there was fear in her eyes. "Tauriel, there is someone here who commands those orcs, but he himself is no orc."

Tauriel frowned. "A man then?"

Nimwen shrugged. "I think he is. He acts mysteriously, as if he were a sorcerer of some kind, but I felt no genuine power in his presence. Just a certain… madness of the spirit."

This had to be the 'master' that had been mentioned to her before. "What does he want with us?" Tauriel asked.

"I wish I could tell you," Nimwen responded. "At first he was not unfriendly, at least not entirely. But soon he seemed to grow impatient with me, even though I have never been told what to do, how to act or what they want with me here."

She seemed to become increasingly distressed and so Tauriel stopped her with a hand on her arm. "It is alright," she said, trying to calm her. "We will find out what is going on soon enough and then we will stop it. I will stop it." She would have to question Nimwen more thoroughly on this matter at a later point in time. But for now she did not want to put too much strain on her friend's already fragile nerves.

Nimwen covered Tauriel`s hand with hers. "I am so glad you are here. But you must think me utterly useless."

Tauriel shook her head. "Not at all. Do not ever think that." She glanced towards the door. "At least we know that they will come to get us eventually. From now on we must try our best to memorize every detail about this place, so that when an opportunity for escape opens up, we will be able to grasp it," she murmured, more to herself than to Nimwen.

Turning her head back around to look at her friend, she was suddenly overcome by an unexpected wave of dizziness and staggered slightly against Nimwen who caught her by her shoulders, surprised.

"Tauriel, what is it?" she asked, clearly alarmed, shifting her arms so that she would be able to catch Tauriel in case that she fell.

But Tauriel was already regaining her composure, straightening up while not letting go of her friend entirely, in case that the unpleasant spinning inside of her head would return. "I am fine," she said, but realized that her voice sounded small, weak. "It has not exactly been a comfortable journey. But do not worry, I will be alright in a moment."

Nimwen would have none of that though, and slid her arm around Tauriel's waist, guiding her a few steps across the room to where what Tauriel now realized had to be the silvery light of the moon illuminated an improvised bed consisting of some rags and blankets. "Sit down," Nimwen said, and had Tauriel not felt so faint she would have grinned at the way that the young healer had went from upset to being in complete control of the situation within a matter of seconds. Nimwen did not give herself enough credit for her very own kind of strength and power, she thought.

"Let me look at you," Nimwen spoke gently as she helped Tauriel lower herself onto the makeshift cot, taking her face between her soft, cool hands.

"I am fine," Tauriel said again despite the fact that her stomach was churning.

She tried to avert her gaze, but Nimwen forced her to look at her, searching her face intently with her eyes, stroking her brow with her fingertips while whispering softly in Sindarin. After a few seconds the healer gasped and dropped her hands. "No, this cannot be," she exclaimed, her face a mask of shock and surprise.

Now Tauriel did avert her gaze. She did not know how her friend had done it, but of course she knew what Nimwen had seen. Lying back on the pile of fabric, she sighed softly and covered her midsection with her hands. "Apparently it can," she said, feeling hurt by Nimwen's reaction to discovering her current condition. It was not as if she had not expected something like this, but still it stung to be reminded once again of the disapproval with which her relationship with Kíli was met by most. "But don't worry yourself too much," she added, her voice less steady than she would have liked. "I have not felt anything in several days, so maybe it is already gone either way."

She looked away and reached up to angrily wipe away a tear that had spilled down her cheek at this admission, the thought of which had tormented her for a while now, but which she had tried to push away for as long as she could.

When she glanced at Nimwen kneeling before her, she saw that the shock written on her face had been joined by genuine sorrow. And a little bit of anger. "Why did you not say something sooner? Were you simply going to hide this from me?" she demanded, her tone back to that of a healer. "Lie back, relax."

Tauriel obeyed and hesitantly allowed Nimwen to remove her hands from her stomach to replace them with her own. Exerting a gentle pressure, the young healer moved her hands over her patient's body, pausing from time to time to whisper a few words barely audible to even Tauriel's keen ears.

When Nimwen removed her hands, Tauriel hardly dared to look at her friend. When she did, he heart nearly leaped into her throat upon seeing a small smile grace Nimwen's lips. "You are fine," Nimwen said softly. "As is your child."

Letting her head fall back onto the bed, Tauriel covered her eyes with her hand for a moment, trying to calm herself, but unable to stop a couple of half-choked sobs from escaping her lips, the sensation of relief in addition to the emotional turmoil she had already found herself in almost too much to bear. While she was still trying to pull herself together, she felt Nimwen lace her fingers through those of her free hand, squeezing gently.

"You should rest, my friend," the healer whispered. "Your body requires rest, as does your heart and your spirit. We can speak more later."

Tauriel wanted to protest that she should stay alert, that this was not a time for weakness, but already she could feel the now familiar lure of sleep beckoning to her, numbing both her limbs and lips. And so, holding onto the hand of a friend she had thought as good as lost to her and which she had found again in the most unlikely of places, she let herself drift off to sleep, her last thought being that she would only allow herself a few moments to gather some strength. And then she would be the brave warrior again and she would get them out of there.

It was dark at first and Kíli did not know where he was. For a moment he was not even sure if he had a body, but as his sight was slowly returned to him, so was his awareness of his physical being. He was standing in tall grass, the landscape around him illuminated by the soft orange glow of the setting sun. At the far side of the meadow he was standing on he saw a tree that was curious in shape and a range of sublime mountains beyond.

His feet moved of their own accord and before he knew it, he was approaching the odd tree. Upon getting closer, he saw the reason why it looked so strange – its trunk had been split by lightning and half of its branches were hanging low, blackened, dying. The other side of the tree however seemed reluctant to give up so easily and branches were fanning out towards the sky, small green buds predicting that it would be in bloom soon.

What he was also able to make out as he came nearer were two figures sitting in the grass below the tree's blooming side. He stopped dead and stared, mesmerized, when he recognized the taller of the two figures as Tauriel, her red tresses glowing in the light of the fading sun. In her lap she held a small child, a couple of years in age at the most. The two of them seemed completely occupied with themselves, lost to the world around them. Kíli watched as Tauriel leaned down, whispering something into the child's ear before pressing a kiss to its temple, the gentle smile on her face as she did so causing a warm, fuzzy feeling to erupt in Kíli's heart.

The child laughed, a bright, wonderful sound, and leaped up to chase what looked to be a butterfly through the tall grass. Kíli awoke from his momentary paralysis and slowly walked over to where Tauriel was still sitting under the tree, the expression on her face as she watched the child tumble through the grass one of peace and contentment.

Kíli leaned against the trunk of the tree, wanting to speak, but feeling completely tongue-tied as he, too, watched the child. He saw now that it was a little girl and she truly was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen, her skin pale and perfect as if it had been made of moonlight, her hair dark and wavy, small, pointed ears sticking out between her locks. He could not make out the color of her eyes from the distance, but he knew that if he could, he would be looking into her mother's eyes.

As he swallowed against the lump forming in his throat at the image that presented itself before him, he felt Tauriel's fingers entwine themselves with his. He looked down at her and saw his own feelings mirrored in her gaze. "You were right," she said, smiling brightly. "She is beautiful."

Letting go of her hand, he sank down on his knees beside her and took her face between his palms, pressing his lips to hers in a kiss that spoke of the many things he found himself unable to say right now. "She is perfect," he whispered when he finally found his voice again, his forehead pressed against Tauriel's.

Shifting slightly he put an arm around his love's shoulder, holding her close while allowing himself a few glorious moments where he watched their little girl, this gift that he had not known his heart longed for, but that that was the most precious of all.

Soon, too soon, though, he felt that he could not put off what he knew he needed to do any longer, even if it broke his heart to tear this wonderful moment apart. For while he knew that this was more than just an ordinary dream of his, he also knew that it was not real and that, if he wanted it to become real, he could not allow himself to linger here much longer. Turning his head to look at Tauriel beside him, he pressed a gentle kiss to her temple to get her attention. "Tauriel," he whispered, "I need you to tell me where you are."

She turned her head and smiled at him, a small frown grazing her forehead. "What do you mean, a'maelamin? I am right here. With you."

She looked over to where their daughter was still playing in the meadow, settling back to watching her again. Kíli sighed inwardly – he hated having to be the one to do this. He put his hand to Tauriel's cheek to gently turn her head towards his, gazing at her intently. "This is just a dream, my love. Try to remember – what happened? Where are you?"

The frown on her perfect face deepened and, as Kíli watched realization settle in, the world around them slowly faded away. He wanted to get one final glance at the child, but resisted the temptation, steadily returning Tauriel's gaze instead. He had to find out something that might help him before she slipped away, lost to him once more.

A solitary tear rolled down Tauriel's cheek and somehow Kíli knew that if she looked away now to search for the dream that had just faded away, their connection would break. Steadying her face with both of his hands he asked again, "Where are you, Tauriel?"

She drew a shaky breath, obviously trying very hard to concentrate. "I do not know," she finally said. "It is dark and cold, maybe underground."

Kíli nodded. "What else? Anything, Tauriel, anything that might help me find you."

She shook her head. "I do not remember… there are orcs, many of them. And someone else, I think." Her eyes lit up suddenly. "But I have found a friend here."

Kíli frowned. "A friend? Who?"

Tauriel seemed about to respond, but suddenly the cry of a child echoed through the darkness around them. "Nana!"*

Kíli tried to hold onto Tauriel, but it was too late, she had turned around to locate where the cry had come from, searching the darkness in distress, and before Kíli knew it, his fingers where holding onto empty air, her soft skin no longer beneath his calloused hands. He dropped his hands into his lap resignedly, the loss of her warmth beneath his fingers a stab to his heart.

All he wanted to do now was to wake up, to use what meager information he had been able to obtain to make sure that his love would be in his arms again soon. But he was not so lucky and spent what seemed a small eternity cowering on a cold, hard floor, feeling small and helpless in the vast darkness enveloping him.

* Sindarin for Mom/Mommy

to be continued