Thanks to Niri and Wimsey for their help!

Chapter 14: Pretty words for a broken heart

Legolas let himself into her room without knocking. She didn't protest, though her eyes flicked to his before returning to the book she'd been reading.

He settled himself into a chair, dropping his weapons to his side. He tugged his boots off, and let them fall. She didn't stir, and he didn't speak.

He gazed alternately at her or out the windows, replaying all that had happened in the last weeks. Slowly, his eyes spent more time upon her, even after she finished her reading and set it aside, meeting his gaze.

He smiled faintly. "Still sure you don't hate me for forcing you into this binding?" he asked sardonically.

He still felt nothing from her, save the slight breeze of chilled air around her ankles, the firm press of indented leather under her fingers. The gentle warmth of the chair reflecting back her own bodily warmth. She merely looked at him for a long moment, her eyes as blanked as the emotions she wasn't sharing. "You make it easy for me to hate you… but not for the binding itself."

"No?" he asked. "Then what have I done? I was led to believe you understood my need to say goodbye."

"Say goodbye, by all means," she agreed, her eyes turning to the windows. "But do not hide that there are goodbyes to be made."

"As you didn't hide your… interlude with Glorfindel?"

"Why should I have done so? He and I both knew from the start nothing more than friendship could come of it… nothing more, but perhaps infinitely less."

"Nothing more than friendship?" he asked bitterly, dropping his gaze, focusing them on her bare feet. "It felt like I'd been turned into a target for arrows of a different sort of poison. One that doesn't pain so greatly it can immobilize before eventually turning one numb, but one that burns all the more sharply with every breath, every heartbeat. I felt his hand on your hip, his body against yours, his…"

"His lips on mine? His hand in my hair? As I felt your hands on her? Your fingers digging into her hip, the small of her back, moving up her spine? Do not lecture me on what you felt! You had only the bond to deal with, nothing I felt along with it. Have you any capacity to imagine how terrifyingly overwhelming that was? I not only felt everything you physically did—" she stopped and made a face, looking away, "but I felt every emotion you felt, as well. Your pleasure, your anger, your guilt, your joy, your impotence, your desires—I felt everything you normally would have felt meeting her, everything the bond made you feel, everything—all the resentment, the anger, the aggravated annoyance—you felt for feeling the bond's outrage at your actions. Can you really compare that to what you felt?"

His fingers fastened tightly around the chair's arms. "I admit it hurt you, Anumi. I already ­have admitted it. We spoke of it, and you seemed fairly sympathetic to my feelings at the time. The next day, however, finds you being embraced by an elf you'd not before met. Was not fidelity agreed upon, or was I simply imagining that part?"

"As I was imagining we were to try and be friends?" she countered.

"You are the one who would so test the bond!"

"For Eru's sake, can't you understand for one moment?" she cried, getting to her feet, her calm shattered. "He and I might have been something, had I not arrived here bound to you. Even without that, he's the only one I've been able to allow even a slight interest in, all my life. It seems obvious enough that it is too hard for you to allow me any insight into you, any part of your life… is it so hard to believe I wanted to be kissed, just once? He was the only chance I had… to feel wanted." She dashed her hand over her eyes, turning her back to him, staring blindly out.

Legolas shook his head and snorted. "Which of us has it harder, Anumi? You've given up a death you've spent your life preparing for… or perhaps merely postponed it. When we return to Mirkwood, your position will be elevated. You may still do as you like, but now with all the wood to dance attendance to you."

"And you've given up your position in the guard, your unloved lover, and the hindrance of all those foolish little ladies who want to work on the royal succession."

"You've given up an elf you never had."

"And you've given up on having a wife you can trust."

He tipped his head back. "I've not given up on that, though you're making it very hard to try to trust you."

"Why? Because I'm not perfect, and I wanted to feel something?"

"Because you would swear fidelity one day and fall into a stranger's arms the next!" he snapped, getting to his feet. "I warned you about my own loose ends—"

She laughed, low and cold. "You said you had them. Not that they had long golden hair and lips that know your weak spots."

"So it was because you were angry at me that you allowed Glorfindel to kiss you?"

"I was angry with you," she agreed, nodding once. "Because the longer I thought over what has happened since our binding, the more I feel I would have been better off dead. You may have reasoned everything out flawlessly, Prince Legolas, but you've forgotten I'm a living being with a heart that until recently was very sheltered. You've used me now, twice, to hurt those you care about." She clenched her hands into fists. "I've spent my life trying not to hurt others, yet I find myself being manipulated into it by one who claims he would wish to trust me, to be my friend? Perhaps you can imagine why I was angry."

"I… I didn't… manipulate you," he protested softly, stiltedly.

"Yes, you did. I know you've explained away using me to hurt Kirilan as being entirely for his own good, but that isn't perfectly true. Surely you realized as well as I did that you wanted to prove I was yours, you wanted to shove your possession of me into his face, because I was something he'd never have imagined could go to you over him. You had, once again, won out with what he wanted."

His eyes darkened. "He… needed to understand that you were off-limits."

"He knew that, Legolas. It may still take him some time, but he already knew." She shook her head. "And then, you used me to drive her completely away. You'd said your piece, given her your goodbye, and expected she would simply fall in line and be as done with you as you were with her. You knew she would follow you—perhaps she'd already been doing so, annoying you because she could not fill her heart with ice in mere hours? Asking you to explain why you'd cut her heart without any apparent injury to your own, when she believed you not as cold as that. You knew she'd follow, and you let her. You let her insult me, and never even thought of rising to my defense. You knew I could dismiss her, could run her off, as you either couldn't or wouldn't."

"Perhaps it was for the best that she heard it from you…" he whispered almost desperately, eyes dark.

She laughed. "Oh, she heard it, alright. I'll give her credit—she knew what I was saying. She acts like a child but she has her own claws, and can read between the lines. Thankfully she's given you up as a lost cause and no doubt would pity me if she didn't think me 'horrible, utterly horrible'," she mocked bitterly.

"Do you need pity?"

She turned away once more. "Do I? I don't really know. As you say, I'm now a princess to a realm… a realm I've not really been a part of. I know little enough of life because I've been living my own death, simply awaiting the inevitable, marking time by the slow, unavoidable escaping of vitality. Still…" A faint smile slowly curled her lips. "Do you know, we've fought more since agreeing to be friends than we ever did before? And it hurts more, now, as well." Her smile grew. "So, yes, I suppose. I am pitiful. Pity me, scorn me… just please do not manipulate me."

He heard the raw emotions in her voice, and frowned slightly. "We've already said you use a mask more efficiently than I," he said quietly. "Am I manipulating you, Anumi, or are you manipulating me? Pretty words for a broken heart, yet I feel nothing. No anger, no pain, no sorrow. I can feel the ache of the cut you've reopened on your right forefinger, yet not a single emotion. How can I trust you, when I should be feeling you, and yet feel nothing?"

She let out a short laugh. "You don't want to feel me, Legolas." She smiled faintly, looking at him over her shoulder. "If you did, you'd have to face this. You'd have to accept that I am your wife—the only wife you're likely to have, unless you truly plan to kill me with indifference. That is an option, I suppose. All you have to do is ignore me, and in a few centuries I'll have faded away, if not sooner. You can marry someone of your choosing, then."

"Would you stop saying that?" he asked, aggravated. "I don't intend you to die, and certainly not because of me."

"No?" she asked, another faint smile curving her lips.

He closed his eyes when she didn't outright accuse him as Glorfindel had. He wasn't relieved. "Anumi…" Finally he sighed, and nodded once, curtly. "You want to know a truth, Anumi? I don't mind that you and Glorfindel kissed. I'd have minded terribly if you kissed Kirilan, but Glorfindel is a good elf and discrete, as well. He will not kiss and tell, nor will he expect anything to have come of it, even while in the act itself. Should you attempt to kiss any when we're back in Mirkwood, I shall be tempted to imprison him and lock you in my chambers—I require a certain amount of obedience, and in my position I cannot afford to lose respect, such as a wayward wife would cause." He made himself move forward a half-step. "What I minded, more than anything that afternoon, was that I only felt what you physically felt, and what the bond protested. I didn't know if you liked it, if you hated it, if you wanted to rage and scream or laugh or cry. I got there, and your eyes were as blank and empty as your emotions had been. I could find nothing, either place."

She looked at him, and smiled. "You don't like being vulnerable," she said softly, clinically.

"No one does," he snapped, annoyed. "You're drawing off-point."

"Am I? You want to feel what I feel, because you feel that a one-sided emotional flow can be used against you. You wish my emotions for no other reason."

He stared at her for a long moment, then shook his head. "You can feel me, Anumi, though I cannot feel you. Do you believe what you're saying? What good does it do for us to fight each other?"

"None," she agreed. "So accept not feeling me. I shall be as unobtrusive as I can be, and of course, a perfectly loyal royal doormat."

Anger flared up in him so violently and quickly that it flashed in her eyes in practically the same instant. He closed the distance between them before she could completely recover, pressing almost against her—making her move back. "I don't want a doormat! Any elf in the wood would become one if I commanded, though some would be more aware of it than others. I don't need you to change, Anumi, nor do I wish it. I thought you mildly interesting before the trip—if it were not for Kirilan I may have even grown to like you, had we ran into each other often enough." He set his hands on her shoulders and shook her quickly. "So would you listen to me for a minute? I don't want a bloody unobtrusive loyal royal doormat! I want a wife."

He dropped his hands from her abruptly under her blank, cold stare, and stepped back. "But I don't have one, do I?" At that statement, a cold, pained sorrow curled through his chest and flashed in his veins, the ache overwhelming for a long moment. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and turned, intending to gather his things and return to the room he'd always been given on his visits to the Last Homely House.

He'd picked up one boot when he felt something crack, beginning to break. He stilled, then released his grip on the soft-worn leather, straightening slowly, knowing if he left now, it would never come fully down.

He could almost hear a crumbling mass fall around his ears, but closed his eyes in the flood of emotions that enveloped him. They stole his air and jelled his blood, darkened his eyes… before a breath of hope curled through them, growing stronger as she approached.

He turned, caught the hand she'd hesitantly extended to him, and brought it to his lips. "It will take time, mate. No small amount of time. But you cannot think burying yourself will make me happy—it merely leaves me half buried." He gently trailed his fingers from her temple to jaw. After watching her eyes for a time of terrible hesitance, he spoke once more. "I am not your father, Anumi."

She studied him for a long moment, and then hope and peace and calm winged through his chest with a breathtaking intensity, making her eyes warm and her smile true. "I know," she whispered, before her eyes fell from his and she tilted her head down.

He smiled at feeling her shyness, her hesitant longing. He took the half-step that separated them and pulled her close, the proximity calming the bond that had gnawed irritably at them both during the last week… as they'd both been avoiding the other, though he more actively of the two.