In which Sharley starts to notice Sauron's creepy in ways she didn't anticipate, the Elves head, home, Lorna has some severe doubts about her ability to queen, and we see the Return of Arandur.

Sharley was not a happy bunny.

With each step she took, Time felt ever more wrong. It wasn't any happier than she was. It was like a phantom itch, like a buzz of low-level electricity over her skin. The air smelled strange, too; metallic, but in a different way than the Other. It burned, in a way that was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It just…was.

Sauron, mercifully, had decided to keep his trap shut for a while, though he was watching her with a scrutiny that would have unnerved her, if she'd had any energy to spare.

She couldn't really blame him. She was one of several anomalies in his world – very powerful anomalies. Sooner or later he'd try to kill her, which she wasn't looking forward to, but if he was scoping her for weak points, he wasn't going to find any. Sauron wasn't stupid; part of Sharley was morbidly curious to see what he would try to do, when he finally did decide to attempt offing her.

But that was later. She had bigger things to worry about. And maybe he did, too.

Never had she seen Time like this. The lines shudder, jerking instead of flowing, distorted by something that had no care for the destruction they wrought. She wondered if this person knew that Time itself was a living thing, that it could be hurt – and that it could be angered.

Somehow, she doubted it. And whoever it was, they might well find out the hard way.

Darkness fell, and when the stars massed, her pace slowed. She'd heard stars described as diamonds, but diamonds were cold, lifeless. They reflected light, but did not create any of their own. Middle-Earth had no light pollution, nothing to dim the staggering beauty of its night sky.

"You act as though you have never seen stars before," Sauron said.

"My world doesn't have any," she said, not taking her eyes off them. "No stars, no moon, no real sun. Middle-Earth…I don't think you properly understand what a gift you have in it. It's still so young."

"Arda has existed some twenty thousand years," he pointed out.

She snorted. "Earth's been around for four and a half billion, and the Other's even older. Like I said, you have a gift, and you don't even know it. This world has so much potential, provided you three idiots don't smash it. I'd lay odds you're stronger than both of them, but they're strong in ways you're not – especially whoever's fucking with Time."

Only now did she look at him. He was strong, all right, and ancient, but that very strength might get him in trouble. Sauron – especially this younger Sauron – took it for granted that he'd always win, and not without reason. In a situation like this, he was bound to get overconfident. "When we find them, whoever they are, you need to be willing to listen to me," she said seriously. "No, you can't die, but there are worse things than death. And I really don't want to find out what would happen if you went crazy." She honestly doubted she'd be able to handle him if he did. Her mind didn't work like his – nor did the Stranger's.

He regarded her seriously. "Why do you care so what I would do?" he asked. "Why do you care so about this world, when it is not yours?"

Sharley sighed. "Because it's beautiful," she said, "and I would keep it that way, if I can."

She paused, her eyes flicking briefly to the stars again. She really didn't want to give Sauron of all people this ammunition, but she sort of had to. "You might – you might need to stop me," she said. "When it comes to dealing with this asshole, I mean. The Stranger, it doesn't care about this world or anything in it, and I can't always keep it chained."

He tilted his head to one side. "How, precisely, am I going to stop you, when I cannot kill you?"

Again she sighed. "I don't know," she said. "You're creative. You'll think of something. The Stranger'll turn on you, but it's not like it can do anything to you. If you stab me a few times, it'll at least slow it down."

"You truly are a peculiar creature, Sharley Corwin," he said, and she'd swear there was something approaching admiration in his tone.

"So I've been told," she said dryly. "Though I think this thing we'll be facing has me beat in that department. Here's to hoping it and I don't break…everything."

Sauron arched an eyebrow. "I will be rather annoyed if you break this world before I can conquer it," he said.

"And yet you call me peculiar. I'm telling you, you'd get bored, and you'd get bored fast." And that was assuming Eru didn't decide to sink Middle Earth like he'd sunk Númenor. Not that Sauron knew about that yet.

His expression was blatantly skeptical, but whatever. She didn't intend to give him the opportunity to find out she was right.

Sharley knew, now, what she was going to have to do with him, if Bilbo didn't get that Ring destroyed before this was over. She was no match for Sauron; her father, however, was. If it was at all possible, she would drag Sauron into the Other, and let Azarael distract him until the Ring was taken care of.

And weirdly, it grieved her a little. Sauron was one big walking ball of wasted potential, but he was far past reasoning with. None of his potentialities ended well, including for him, but she knew he'd never believe her, because he didn't want to.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"For what I'm going to have to do to you."

Naturally, he only looked amused. "I still question what you could do to me."

The amusement irked her a little. "Let me put it this way, Mairon: I didn't bring you forward in time – I stole the last two Ages of your life. Your memories, your form, everything you are – your life after Celebrimbor no longer exists. And I can do it again."

Now, finally, he looked just the slightest bit perturbed, though that odd appreciation remained, and honestly creeped her out a little. She couldn't put a name to it, and that just made it worse. Sharley couldn't kill him, could strip him of his power or unmake him, but that didn't make him safe. Because if he couldn't take her seriously as a threat, he wouldn't take the other one seriously, either. And she wasn't lying when she said she didn't want to know what would happen if he lost his mind.

Going to sleep that night without Thranduil felt wrong. Even on the nights he didn't actually lie down with her, Lorna always knew he was near, and now he was…not.

I am disgustingly co-dependent, she thought, staring into the darkness. I should probably do something about that. She didn't know what, or how, or even if she really wanted to, and she was tired enough that, wrong or not, sleep soon claimed her.

When she woke the next morning, she was frigid, even with all her layers and blankets. She stuffed her numb feet into her boots, and went to find a bush she could take a leak behind, halfway freezing her arse off in the process. Tea. She needed tea, and a lot of it.

Though her head felt less floaty, the sensation was still there. She didn't feel sick, though – just weird.

Of the four Gifted, only she and Von Ratched were awake, and she had no desire at all to talk to him. She rummaged through her small pack until she found her little canister of tea leaves and the strainer, as well as her small metal pan and canteen. Faelon and Menelwen a fire going, so she went to sit with them.

The sun was just barely rising – an unusually red sun. Lorna didn't think she'd ever seen one so red in Middle-Earth; it made the dewdrops glitter amber.

"They are burning the enemy dead," Faelon said, when she mentioned it. "The smoke reddens the sun."

Lorna shivered, pouring water into her pan and setting it in the coals. The heat of the fire was beyond welcome. "Are you two okay?" she asked. "After yesterday, I mean." They'd all looked as sickened as she felt.

Menelwen stared into the fire, too pale even for an Elf. "No," she said. "None of us are. That was not battle. That was…I do not know what that was."

Lorna didn't, either. "Those things showed up in the other timeline, too," she said. "I don't know what we did about them, though I think I might'v been dead at the time."

Faelon's grey eyes widened. "Dead?"

"I died, at some point," she said, "and came back. I dreamt'v my death, though I've no clue in hell how I came back. Not yet, anyway."

"What is it like, dreaming of what might have been?" Menelwen asked.

"Bloody weird," Lorna sighed. "My life was so different. I was so different. It's hard to fathom it, so I don't try."

"What was it like?" Faelon asked. "Dying, I mean – what was it like?"

"Fast," she said, taking her boiling pan off the coals. "I got my throat ripped out. I don't think it took more than thirty seconds. I didn't even have time for it to really hurt." Thank God for that, too. The dream-memory she had was bad enough.

"Where did you go, afterward?" Menelwen asked.

"I don't know," Lorna said. "Haven't dreamt that yet. I don't know that I want to." Some things, she was sure, were meant to stay a mystery, until the time came. There was such a thing as too much knowledge, though she doubted Von Ratched would agree.

Thranduil worried, though he knew it was needless. At least worry was a distraction from the decidedly gruesome task at hand.

The Edain of Dale assisted, but it was still slow going. The corpses of the enemy they burned, but they dug proper graves for the fallen Elves – a process both grim and arduous.

Such loss…the Eldar birthed fewer children by the decade. These numbers might not be replaced for centuries, if they could even be replaced at all. Even if they survived this madness, the time of the Elves was waning. He wondered just how long they would manage to linger – how long it would be before the realms of Lothlórien and Imladris took ship.

He doubted many of his people would sail. Valinor held little allure for the Silvan Elves, few of whom had seen the light of the Trees. The Woodland Realm might well endure forever, provided they managed to deal with Sauron and Thorvald and whatever in Eru's name had made these…things.

Thranduil wondered if that was even possible.

To Lorna's relieved delight, Arandur caught up with her midmorning. He hadn't left with the group – he must have followed as quick as he was able.

Physically, he hadn't changed, but his grey eyes were filled with the light of knowledge, and he'd taken to wearing his dark hair in a ponytail, like the humans of Dale. Lorna hadn't realized how much she'd missed him until she was confronted with him.

"You look like life abroad's been good for you," she said, lightly punching him on the arm. "Been enjoying yourself?"

"I was, until…this," he said, and gave her a slightly reproachful look. "You didn't invite me to your coronation. I had to hear about it through King Dain's ravens."

"It kind'v happened in a hurry," she said. "I think Thranduil wanted to get it over and done with, before I changed my mind. Can't say I blame him, either."

"Did he make you wear a dress?"

Lorna scowled up at him. "Yes," she said, "but it was a simple one. And he very nicely took it off me later, too."

Arandur flushed to the tips of his ears, and looked vaguely ill, which was exactly her intent.

"What've you been doing, while we were away?" she asked, taking pity on him.

"The Dwarves created guns," he said. "Gunpowder was harder. A lot of things exploded, which the Dwarves seemed to enjoy."

"I knew there was a reason I liked Dwarves," she said.

"Katje was a great aid in that, once they had the recipe perfected. Both she and Ratiri have been picking up Westron, but I've still had to translate a good deal. Katje and I have also been tutoring King Dain in English. He wanted to learn, so he could better understand those of our walking dead who speak it. And that is a sentence I never thought I would say," he added.

In spite of everything, Lorna had to laugh a little. "We're turning your poor world upside down, for better or worse. I still can't help but feel that none'v us are meant to be here."

"If you weren't meant to be here, you wouldn't be," Arandur said. "Though I cannot imagine why Ilúvatar would allow Thorvald in."

"From what I know'v the other timeline, he doesn't much care about permission. I killed him there, though, and I'll do it here, if only because I've got no choice." Honestly, she just wanted to hunt him down and have done with it. She wondered if she'd had this many impediments thrown in her path in the other universe, too. Knowing her luck, probably. She couldn't bring herself to tell Arandur about this odd sickness – there was no point in worrying him yet.

Things had got so complicated. Part of her missed her earliest days here, when her biggest problems had been nicotine withdrawal and her inability to actually, properly communicate. Now they had zombies and Thorvald and whatever it was they'd just killed – not to mention Von bloody Ratched. She had children who were frozen in time, a title she still had no idea what to do with, and a husband who was going to lose his mind whenever she inevitably died. There was too much riding on her narrow shoulders, and just now she felt like it could crush her.

Lorna simply wasn't built for this kind of responsibility, and without Thranduil next to her, she was at a loss. Who the hell did she think she was kidding? She wasn't a queen – part of her would always be that scrawny homeless kid in Dublin, living totally in the moment because she didn't dare contemplate the future. Hell, she was still that way, but now she had to think about not just her future, but that of an entire bloody kingdom.

She couldn't do it. And oh, that pissed her off – at Thranduil, for saddling her with this, but mostly at herself, for being mad enough to agree to it.

"You seem very thoughtful," Arandur said.

"It's nothing," she sighed. "Nothing anyone can do anything about, anyway." At least she had Legolas to help her, even if he wasn't really much better equipped to handle this than she was. The pair of them would muddle through, even if they probably wouldn't do it very well. Hopefully Thranduil really was already on his way home already. Surely even she and Legolas couldn't fuck up that badly in only two or three days, no matter how out of their depth they were.

She hoped, anyway.

It felt like Arandur had been away from home for years, not months. He'd enjoyed is time in Dale and Erebor immensely, but the looming trees of the Woodland Realm seemed to embrace him, the scent of leaf mold washing over him. Others might find it unpleasant, but to Arandur, it was the smell of home. No matter where he went, no matter how far he traveled once all of this was over, he would always come back in the end. He just wished it was under better circumstances right now.

He wondered how Geezer and Mithrandir were doing, out in the wide world. Probably not too bad, given that Sauron's army was destroyed, and Sauron himself well away from them. They were likely having a much easier time of it than everyone here, since it seemed like every nasty thing in Middle-Earth was migrating its way north.

He looked at Lorna, who had struggled on ahead, talking to people seemingly at random. Had had happened to her face? The army must have seen battle on the way back from Gondor – the scar was too fresh to have happened on the way there. He was likely returning to a people already in mourning.

Still, in grief and in happiness, it was home.

Hi there, Arandur. I've missed you. And congrats, Sharley, for figuring out Sauron's a bit more of a creeper even than you thought.

Title means "Doubts" in Irish. As ever, your reviews fill me with warm fuzzies.

I have an AU of this AU up on my profile, too: it's called "Into the Woods", and it's a modern variation of the Scottish ballad Tam Lin, with Thranduil in the part of Tam and Lorna as Janet. While I've had little feedback on this site, it's been well appreciated on AO3, if anyone would like to check it out. :)