In which Von Ratched is peeved, Legolas is not happy, and Lorna tries to learn Thranduil a thing.


Lorna knew full well that Von Ratched wasn't going to just cough up whatever it was they needed to kill Thorvald with, so she had Azarael come with her when she went to ask.

Instinct told her not to bring Thranduil, so she sent him off to talk to Legolas. She didn't know why she thought so, but she had a feeling his presence would only make this more difficult, and her intuition had still rarely failed her. Given the number of dreams she'd had of the other timeline, it was probably safe to assume Von Ratched had a fair amount of them, too, and they would not have been pleasant. The horrific relationship, for lack of a better word, that they would have had in that timeline was something they'd dodged in this one, but she didn't want Thranduil knowing any more than he already did, and she didn't think Von Ratched would, either.

He wasn't in the forge, which was apparently a rarity; they found him at a table in the jewelry-making hall, painstakingly crafting a microscope. Lorna had always tried to avoid thinking about him, about who he was and what he'd done to her in another life – traveling, that had been difficult, since he so often rode near her and Thranduil, but ever since they'd got home, she'd successfully avoided him much of the time. Meeting him now was rather difficult, even with Azarael looming beside her. (And honestly, why were so many of the men in her life so bloody tall? A lot of them would dwarf anyone, but especially her.)

She looked at him now with an almost detached curiosity, studying him as a scientist might. He was intimidating as hell, and not just because of his height; there was an aura of tightly-coiled energy about him, so intense that prolonged exposure to his presence could be exhausting. Lorna knew he was some kind of genius, though she'd rarely had cause to see it here – only displays of his power, which, to her annoyance, he was undeniably better at controlling than she was.

How had he done what he did to her, in that other timeline, and why? Oh, she had a vague idea – he'd been obsessed with her curse, and with what he could do with it – but to her mind, that wasn't enough to justify raping and nearly murdering her. In this world, she would never bear the scars he would have left her with. And she wouldn't have to spend God knew how long traveling alone with him.

"Oi," she said, snapping her fingers to break his concentration, "we need whatever the hell it is I'm meant to kill Thorvald with. Marty says you can't go with us."

He looked up, and she was grudgingly impressed by his lack of overt reaction to Azarael. He paled, yes, and his eyes widened a fraction, but that was it. Bastard. "And you intend to listen to an undead child?" he asked.

"It is only wise," Azarael replied. "She says you are needed here."

"And who might you be?" Von Ratched asked, and in spite of everything, that familiar note of arrogance remained in his tone. Lorna wondered if it was possible to get rid of.

"Her grandfather," Azarael said, in the most neutral voice she had ever heard. She watched Von Ratched, waiting for the penny to drop.

Being Von Ratched, this took maybe half a second. He had, she knew, spent two years torturing Sharley in another institution, back when she'd been alive. The dreams of it hadn't gone into details, thank God – but since this was Von Ratched, they didn't really need to. And now he was faced with her father, whose true identity didn't need to be known for him to be creepy as fuck.

"Give us the scalpel, Von Ratched," she said, while he mentally digested that. "Nobody's going to kill you as soon as you've passed it off. Like I said, Marty says we need you, and nobody here knows how to make zombies."

"Yet," Azarael said blandly.

Lorna pinched the bridge of her nose. "Seriously, Azarael, stop helping me."

He said nothing, but when she looked up at him, she'd swear there was something very like amusement in his hellish eyes. Apparently not all Sharley's weirdness came from being crazy.

"Follow me," Von Ratched said, and while he didn't roll his eyes, she kind of had a feeling he wanted to.


Thranduil was semi irked that Lorna sent him off so firmly, but he really did need to speak to Legolas. His son would not be happy about once again being left in charge of the realm, but he was a capable prince, and a capable regent. He had his little council, odd though it was (Galion and Tauriel were not so surprising, but Marty? Truly?), as well as Galadriel and Elrond…and possibly Azarael. Thranduil didn't yet know if the avatar of Death intended to accompany him and Lorna, but he hoped not, despite how useful the being might be.

"I know," Legolas said, as soon as he saw his father. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he'd broken into the wine cupboard in Thranduil's study. "I had thought you must be leaving soon. Adar…I wish I could go with you." There was the faintest note of vulnerability in his voice, something only Thranduil would hear, and it grieved him. Legolas had never been one to sit idle, even when he ought to have; his instinct was to ride out and save the world. To stay behind, while his father went forth – each time must be more galling than the last.

"I would not leave you if I had any other choice," Thranduil said, though it was a lie. He didn't want Legolas anywhere near what he and Lorna were to face, no matter that his son was more than capable of taking care of himself. "But I would have no other for regent. Galadriel and Elrond will look after their own people, and you have now your assistants, strange though they may be." He did not say that the task could well become permanent, should he and Lorna die in this attempt.

Legolas shook his head. He looked, in that moment, so very young, a vulnerability in his expression that he rarely betrayed, even to Thranduil. "Adar, if you do not come back from this alive, I am sending Azarael to the Halls of Mandos to drag you back," he warned. "Whether you are in one piece or not."

The truly disturbing thing was that Thranduil suspected Azarael might just do it. The only real evidence was occasional inflections in the being's voice, but he had a feeling Azarael had a sense of humor buried under all his layers of neutrality. "Then you need not worry," he said. "I have survived many battles, ionneg, and this is but one person. A very dangerous person, yes, but Lorna successfully killed him in the other timeline. Knowing that it can be done is a comfort to me, as it should be to you."

"It is," Legolas said, though now it was he that lied, and Thranduil knew it full well. There was, however, no true reassurance he could give. This journey might easily prove fatal, and there was no glossing over that fact. "Now I need a drink, and I do not wish to drink alone."


Sauron was rather disappointed by the Elsewhere.

It was even worse than what he had seen of the Other in the Mother's mind: land and sky were black and featureless, more barren than any waste his former master had created. What lived upon it – so to speak – might be far more interesting.

There were more of those ugly grey buildings – many more, in a walled-off fortress much more impressive than the Mother's somewhat pathetic collection in Ennor. That had merely been a staging-ground, he realized – the ramp along which she would have launched her true invasion.

How glorious it would have been.

Sharley's Memories spread out, silent in the blistering air, so dry it would parch a mortal thing in little time at all. Whence it came, along with the light, he didn't know; there was no sun here, nor clouds, nor even the faintest hint of a breeze.

Though the Mother was dead, the Stranger remained wary as it walked beside him.

"She will have set traps," it said, scanning the fortress's pale outer wall. "Her mother did. She is of the sort who would rather take everyone with them if they die."

That he could understand. "What is it we seek here?"

The Stranger looked at him. "We seek nothing," it said, and pointed at the Memories. "They seek food."


Von Ratched was actually somewhat irate that he couldn't hunt down Thorvald, because he was extremely curious about the man. No, he had no wish to travel for weeks on end with Lorna and Thranduil, but he wanted a chance to meet his ancestor before killing him.

He refused to bring Lorna and Sharley's disturbing father to his rooms, though he had no doubt the latter could find them anyway. He had forged three swords from the bits of the scalpel, but, though one was shorter than the others, it was still too long for the ridiculously tiny Lorna. If they had time, it ought to be re-forged, or she was going to have difficulty with it – if she even knew how to use it at all, which he questioned. He suspected she was mostly reliant on her telekinesis, which was not enough on its own against someone who really knew what they were doing with it. There wasn't time to teach her the level of control she would need to go up against someone like Thorvald, who would certainly have as great an amount of precision as Von Ratched himself.

He pulled the leather-wrapped bundle out from behind his wardrobe, unrolling it on his bed. The swords were new and clean and very sharp, but he'd put little in the way of decoration to them: the hilts were mostly plain, with only a faint etching of spirals done on the long, cold winter nights. They had best be enough.

Lorna and Thranduil were so disgustingly co-dependent that Von Ratched doubted it had occurred to either one of them that they were throwing the latter at someone who could kill him in literally a heartbeat. Lorna had some defense against another's telekinesis, but Thranduil had none. He should not be going on this little venture, but Von Ratched was quite convinced there would be no stopping him.

A plague on the stiff necks of the Elves, he thought sourly. Well. There was nothing for it. He hoped they were not all about to die.


The telekinesis issue had in fact occurred to Lorna, who had been pondering just what to do about it even while she packed. She and Thranduil had already proved that Elven magic really wasn't compatible with the curses of Earth, and even if it had been, she had no way of putting any kind of…of immunity on him. If only this was the sort of magic done with spells, rather than – well, whatever the hell actually caused it. She didn't know what, and she highly doubted that anyone else did.

The safest thing would be to leave him behind, but she'd have to put him into a bloody coma to actually make that happen. Even if she could find a way to do it, he'd never forgive her, and she couldn't blame him. But neither was she going to let him die – not if there was anything at all she could do about it.

Her hands, occupied with a roll of spare socks, paused. The curses were not compatible with his magic, no, but the pair of them were connected at the brain. She couldn't give Thranduil telekinesis, but maybe she could teach him to use hers.

She stuffed the socks in her pack, mind churning furiously. If there were words that could explain how it worked, she didn't know them, but she didn't need to: he could feel her will for himself, and experience what it was to use her curse by proxy.

Shoving the pack aside, she gathered a number of small objects from around the room: books, wine decanters (naturally), an odd green vase that usually held quills, and a stray slipper (she never had found the other one). She laid them all out on the bed in a line, in no particular order, bouncing on the balls of her stocking feet. When Thranduil returned, she had a lesson for him.

Thranduil wasn't drunk when he reached his room, but he certainly couldn't be called sober, either. Given that this was to be one of the last nights they would spend in relative comfort, he had a vague plan to seduce his wife – which was entirely dashed when he walked through the door, and found the assortment of things that covered the bed. Lorna herself sat in an armchair beside the fire, her legs tucked under her in a manner strongly reminiscent of a cat, brushing out her hair.

"Lorna," he said, "do I even want to know?"

She looked up at him and grinned – an expression that made him wonder, vaguely, if he ought to be nervous. "I'm going to teach you," she said, hopping to her feet. A slight stagger told him she'd likely been at the wine, too.

"I wish I had not asked," he said dryly, until she explained her objective. The truly worrisome part was that it actually made sense. "Do you not remember what happened the last time I touched your mind so completely?" He didn't think he was ever going to forgive himself for it, for all he'd been terribly compromised by Von Ratched beforehand.

Lorna winced, very slightly. "Different circumstances," she said, which was possibly the most diplomatic way to put it. "I'm letting you in now. Hell, I'm inviting you. I don't see any reason why this shouldn't work."

She might well be right. Their time on the road to Gondor (more specifically, some of the things they'd been up to in their tent, that made the others so amusingly awkward the next day) had taught him that it was entirely possible for them to truly share minds without triggering any madness within his. That did not, however, mean he could actually use the other facet of her curse. "Will it hurt you, should we succeed?" he asked, as she crossed the floor to him. "Surely your ability was not meant to be shared between two people."

"I don't think so," she said, grabbing him by the hand and leading him to the bed. "That's what we're about to find out. I don't have any way at all of explaining telekinesis to you – honestly, I don't think there is one – so you're going to sort'v…piggyback onto my mind, and see what it feels like when it's used."

She guided him to face the bed, and stood in front of him, her shoulders against his ribs. Yes, she smelled a little like wine, along with the habitual lavender and fir, her tiny right hand warm when she laced her fingers through his.

He looked down at the crown of her head, the silver in her hair so bright against the black. It hadn't advanced, for she couldn't age right now, but he feared the day Sharley removed her block – the day Time would flow for Lorna once more. A fragment of a song rose in his mind, something he'd taken from Lorna's: shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.

Her pointy elbow dug into his stomach. "Focus," she said. "Let's make sure we survive Thorvald, before you start brooding about my damn mortality again."

"I do not brood," he said, insulted.

Lorna tilted her head back to look up at him, arching an eyebrow. "Seriously? Thranduil, allanah, you could out-brood Hamlet, but what do we say to the God of Death? 'Not today'."

He didn't snort, but it was a near thing. Earth produced some rather odd, if compelling, entertainment. "Very well. I am focusing."

"No, you're not, but we'll fix that." She brought his hand up with hers, and bit the knuckle of his index finger. Hard.

Thranduil didn't jerk his hand away, but it was a near thing. "What—?" he started.

"Now I've got your attention," she said, laughter in her voice. "Get this right and I'll shag you later."

"And if I get it wrong?" he asked, glowering down at her hair.

"Then I'll bite you again. And not in the fun way."

Thranduil didn't sigh, but it was a near thing. "Very well. Show me." She'd pay for that later. Somehow.

Feeling her take control of his mind was quite odd – yes, he was consciously granting her permission, but ceding such control to her felt beyond strange. He knew already that he could feel what she did, if they so chose, but he had never really paused to wonder what using her telekinesis would feel like.

"See through my eyes," she said. "That way you'll know what I'm looking at."

Thranduil had been blind in one eye for so long that binocular vision came as a shock. Though keen for an Edain, Lorna's could not match that of an Elf – but she saw something he could not. When focused properly, her eyes traced faint lines, curled around each object. They were translucent, so fine as to barely be visible, shifting and eddying as if in a breeze, light as spider-silk.

"All right," she said, "this is easiest if you use your hands, so we'll start that way, but on the trip north, I want you to practice without them. It's better if whoever you're using it against doesn't know it's coming. I'm going to grab the book – memorize what it feels like." She held out their linked hands, and he had no words at all to describe the sensation that flowed up his arm. It was…warm, but more than warm, and alive. It was energy such as he had never known it, tingling along his nerves.

Nor could he articulate the power that tugged at the threads, raising the heavy volume. The effort was slight, but he could feel the well that it drew from, somewhere within Lorna's fëa. Thranduil had known his wife's power was considerable, but he hadn't realized the depth of it, and he wondered if she had yet, either.

She – and he – drew the book toward them, and she let it drop into his hand. "Okay, now the vase," she said, while he set it aside. "I'm not shagging you until you've worked out how to do this yourself."

"You do know how to give an apprentice impetus," he said dryly. "Very well, Dilthen Ettelëa. Let us try again."


Thranduil's going to need that ability. The only reason Lorna and Von Ratched both survived Thorvald was because they could telekinetically tag-team him. (And even then, Von Ratched would have died if Lorna hadn't saved him – which she really didn't want to do, but they were going to need him later.)

'A plague on the stiff necks of the Elves' is said by Aragorn in The Fellowship of the Ring. 'Ennor' is what the Elves call Middle-Earth. (They also call it 'Endor', but yeah, I can't use that without laughing.)

Title means "Preparations" in Irish. As ever, your reviews feed my brain. Om nom nom.