CHAPTER 28 - Chances to wonder


"She has had nothing to eat? Nothing to drink that you know of?"

Legolas shook his head, regarding a motionless Kal he had lain onto a soft pallet. "We were... speaking, and I... connected, with her," he said reluctantly, not meeting the eyes of the elf maid. "It was then that it happened, too sudden for me to understand why."

Arwen knelt and placed a steaming bowl with athelas brew beside the pallet. She regarded the still fevered being lying there before her gaze caught that of Legolas.

"You did such a thing unknowing of how it would affect her?" but there was no chastisement. Only the determined mien of a healer searching for a root cause.

"It was not the first time," Legolas admitted, looking away from Arwen towards Kal, his grey eyes catching the strained rise and fall of her chest.

"I see," Arwen said. "I have administered essence of uilos, to aid in lowering the fever. She will need to be watched for changes."

"I will stay," Legolas stated. Indeed he felt somewhat responsible.

Arwen placed a hand to his arm. "Her state is stable enough. I cannot determine the cause at this time, but this should pass with enough rest. You need not worry. "

The elf looked down and tightened the sash fastened around his middle, over his grey tunic. "I am not worried."

All he saw was a caring smile, and then felt a palm gently placed to his cheek. Her eyes were filled with an understanding which turned his insides to ash. "Oh Legolas. You have ever been the bravest among us." Then the elf maid dropped her hand and turned to leave without another word.

Legolas lowered his head, unmoving in the wake of the only rebuke Arwen would ever make.


Kal awoke from a state of bleak nothingness. The swelling tide of malevolence spearing through her, before she lost contact with the waking world, was yet fresh in her mind. As were the unwanted memories seemingly dragged, unwillingly torn from her thought and thrown whence she knew not. She stirred with a small wince, rising on her elbows. Then she felt a presence.

"Well met," Kal heard a voice from somewhere to her left.

She turned her head and looked upward, to catch sight of silvery hair gleaming under the fiery light of several sconces. Kal saw she was reclining on a pallet and by her side, sat on his knees, shifted the elf.

"You had a fainting spell. How do you feel?" asked Legolas calmly.

"Well enough," she managed, barring the following thought. More so since you are here. Kal then felt a strong herbal smell wafting through the air.

"We are in the healing chamber, close to the apothecary," he supplied to her questioning gaze.

Kal attempted to move and indeed lifted her head, only to find it spinning. She leaned back onto the unusually soft pillow, her black hair fanned in a mess about her.

"I remember nothing but sudden pain," she told no one in particular.

"I know."

Her eyes cut to his. "Riddles again?"

"Nay," came the offhanded reply, and Kal saw him slowly lean forward towards her.

"What-" she choked when the elf neared closer still, his face come a breadth from hers, so close that a now familiar scent began permeating her senses and memory. Clean, dewy. Good. Riling.

She jolted at the slight, never before felt warm pressure against her forehead. It lingered but a few moments in time, fleeting, but more than enough for her to drift on that scent; one the half-orc remembered from once upon a time, when she had thrown a shackled elf unceremoniously against a tree. It was, perhaps, not the main reason for the foreign tension come pooling within her tired frame. But when he slowly drew away, leaving a fleeting cold sensation over her skin where his lips had been, Kal belatedly wished he had not. That was until she saw his eyes.

"No fever," he supplied. The words came strangely strangled, his posture eerily still. His upper body was still hovering slightly above her, his hands propped on either side of her shoulders. When he bore into her depths her flayed and recuperating mind flew astray, emptily, as newly freed birds from an old and ruined cage. "Rest. We may speak more later."

"What is that which I should be wondering about?" the words spilled from Kal as thoughts of immediate circumstances before her fall hit. The first and last of what Kal remembered since before her sudden collapse.

Now he was changed.

Cornered she realized with a moderate amount of tired surprise. The elf seemed cornered.

He was hesitating.

For the first time Kal had known this creature, he was... unsure? Lost? Rueful?

"We can speak of it later," came the repeated, now dispassionate words, completely at odds with the darkened storm flaring behind his eyes.

Where had this tone been earlier, she wondered dryly? When he was whispering to her, showing her, apparently through some strange ability or magic Kal thought, images of the past? Or were they even...

The Tower. Her mind had burst into flame, the dreaded memories taking over whatever peace, whatever loveliness the elf had attempted to regale her with. And he had seen it as well. She had felt him see it, fear it. Hate it. Kal wondered if he would think... what he would think of it, if anything at all.

"I would speak of it now," Kal barely managed, ruled by the pique of someone having missed a chance. Her hand had reached and was now gripping his garment at his chest, a fact both appeared to notice only in late realization.

"This happened before," her eyes narrowed then.

Under her clutching fingers Kal felt a renewed, wild and irregular cadence. It drummed with a force unwavering, begging to be heard and felt, closer.

"In the woods, in the shack," she followed, her grip relentless on him. Thoughts mingled together finally as her gaze never left his.

Commendably, the elf met her eyes coldly and squarely. "Release me," he said tightly.

His face showed nothing but his set jaw and the silent, grudging plea in those eyes spoke more than Kal would ever glean. Kal then felt his hand stiffly come over hers, fingers firmly latching between hers, pulling them away.

She posed no resistance as the elf brought her hand back to rest at her side, before he straightened and regained his seated position. The lingering touch on her wrist was a novel thing as the elf retrieved his hand in an odd, wavering spell.

Legolas now sat with his back resting anew against the wall close to her side, hands in his lap. Kal wondered what kept him here then, if certainly not his eagerness for conversation and reveal.

"You are in no state to speak of anything, now," Kal heard his voice. Farther away now, the same voice, the same soft breath which had tickled her nose and face moments ago.

"You did this then, you..." Kal rose unsteadily propped on her elbows. "And then you denied it," she said even as the realization caused a frown to appear on her drawn face. One she sharply directed his way. "Why?"

Legolas appeared to be studying the many hanging dried herbs on the walls with unflinching interest. "Because I was not sure why it happened. Because it should not have been possible."

Kal twisted her upper body slowly as she rose against the pallet and turned to face him fully, her knees come bent under her. She propped herself on her palms, inspecting the thoroughly discomfited manner of the being before her.

"There may have been a time when I thought you were mute, but since I know you are not, more detail would be welcome."

His eyes flashed at the barb as Legolas met her gaze briefly, but soon lost the fire of whatever retort he bit back. He sighed tiredly, causing unease to brim inside of her. "I fear you and I are more similar than you think."

Her brow creased. "Explain."

The elf leaned resignedly against the wall, his head resting against cold stone. "Did you never ask yourself why your appearance stood so apart amongst your former brethren?"

Kal felt somewhat grateful for his lack of spite in referring to her time among the armies of Mordor.

"Not as such," she admitted. Where was he going with this now?

"Have you never truly asked yourself why you were so unlike the orc in so many things, why you bleed differently, why your needs were other than theirs?" and surrendering to whatever novel urge now spurred him, the elf leaned forward from the wall towards her, his elbows resting on his knees.

Kal swallowed at the intensity of those beams of stormy light so mercilessly set on her.

"No," Kal spoke quietly. "At least not in a constant manner. I had not much chance or reasons, did I? To wonder."

The elf lowered his head in acknowledgement of the hard and trying life she surely had led, same as he and all of his kin. When had the line of opposing sides melded and blurred so much, that he could not even guess as to where its ends lay anymore? "I suppose you did not. When I met you, I felt it. I felt you were something else, though I dared not entertain the thought of what set you apart from them for too long. There was also the fact that I was in danger of losing my life, and you were beating me," he said in a failed attempt at dry wit. "But despite your allegiance and behavior at the time, it was ever there."

Kal listened raptly, both worried and grateful he was speaking. Both unnerved and somehow, in one stubborn, hidden recess, betrayed and lied to, thinking back to what she had felt, seen, when the elf tended to her in the dwelling of Faramir. How real it had felt, and how cold and dismissive his eyes had been when Kal asked him of it later. Aye, it was good he was speaking. Better late than never, she pondered wryly.

"What was ever there?" she dared ask at last.

The elf leaned forward imperceptibly. "I believe, you are... you are not too different to myself, or Tadion, or indeed any other elf you have seen."

Kal sharply drew back, her head begun to spin in the most irksome manner. She brought a palm to her forehead. "You have either gone mad or I have. Because it sounds as if you are saying that we are of the same kindred."

"That is what I am saying. Partly, at least."

Kal shifted away from him, attempting to keep her growing... something at bay. "That is impossible."

"Is it?" Legolas continued, undeterred and emotionless. "What happened earlier is impossible to achieve unless the soul of the other, the fëa as we call it, is of the same... make," he settled for the earthy term.

"Sha!" Kal exclaimed in the black speech, uncaring of his wince. "Ridiculous," she stared towards the door, arms crossing.

"This is why I wished to speak later. You are yet weary," the elf offered. And additionally, he thought, in order to ask her of that dreaded miserable place he had witnessed in her memories.

"Then I suppose, if it were true," Kal disregarded his remark, "I have my answer as to why you led me here. Not because you saw some chance of redress. Not because you... we, were become friends on certain terms. But the chief reason being, you thought I was partly elven in nature, and a chance of redemption seemed far likelier than if circumstances were different," she said thoughtfully.

"Do not hurl your unfounded conclusions into my face, Kal. I have kept things to myself to give you time. I have never lied nor been intentionally dishonest with you." His tone had been colder than before, and Kal felt the strong underlying rebuke.

"Perhaps not until it suited-" she looked away, her thought interrupted by what Kal heard were fast approaching footsteps.

Both companions turned their gaze to the entrance, which soon revealed a stiff and sharp glanced Tadion.

His gaze roamed swiftly over them both before his mouth subdued a snarl. "You are needed," was all he said to Legolas in the elven tongue, even as the other was already rising, sensing the urgency of the entreaty.

"What is it?" his brother asked, on his feet and striding towards the entrance.

"Orophin has caught sight of intrusion, on the bank close to the crossing," Tadion stated, his manner changed from disgruntled sibling to reporting captain. "Uruk-hai."


A/N:

Sha! = Hmpf! - expression of contempt (Black Speech)

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I wish you all patience, wisdom in making the right choices, and safety. As the greats have always said, this too shall pass.